Professor Llywarch held her Friday class outside, in a wide open field behind the greenhouses. Red and green rubber hoops, half an inch thick and two yards in diameter, connected by grey chains, were scattered across the grass. The Gryffindor/Ravenclaw dynamics hadn't really improved over the week: they still kept to House lines. Hermione had told Harry that for obvious reasons she got along with them famously in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, and she was happy to sit with any of them, but they were more or less contemptuous of the rest of Gryffindor.

"They all went as a group to Anthony's house and saw Animal House during Christmas break of third year," Hermione said. "It took me six months to persuade them we weren't like that, but then you were put into the Tournament and they snapped straight back."

"I didn't even enter that!" Harry said.

"I realise, Harry, but how are you going to persuade them?" Hermione asked. "Tell them Lord Voldemort had you entered?"

"Not that I care about those smug gits," said Ron, only half bothering to keep his voice low, "but why don't you?"

Terry gave Hermione a mock wounded look; she replied with an apologetic shrug.

"Because I don't know it wasn't just Crouch working alone," he said. "And for some reason, no-one believes that some lunatic former Death Eater would do something so complicated all by –"

"Good afternoon, Munchkins," said Professor Llywarch, making them all jump again. Today she was in a green camouflage cloak with the hood forward, despite the late summer heat, which hid her quite well against the grass when she kept still. "Today we start on attempting actual Apparition; we're outside because it can be unpleasant if you accidentally materialise inside a wall. These hoops contain local Anti-Anti-Dis/Apparition Enchantments, which obviately can only work with the Headmaster's permission. Everyone, find a green hoop and stand inside.

"The green hoops have the Disapparition fields, and the red ones topographically linked Apparition fields." Hermione and a few Ravenclaws gave little exclamations of admiration. "Meaning you can Apparate from inside a red hoop, only to the connected green one. This way, no-one can collide unless you overwhelm the enchantments, and even then, you'll probably land safely in open air.

"Now, you'll need to remember the three D's of Disapparition, which someone can remind me?"

This wasn't as rhetorical as it usually was when teachers said that: last time, she'd said they were destiny, determinism, and dilettantism, making Harry suspect they probably weren't all that necessary to successful Apparition.

"Destination, determination, and deliberation," Hermione said promptly.

"Six points to Animal House," Llywarch said with approval; she was a staunch proponent of not always rounding point allocations to round numbers. "Now, remember, determination is the most important when learning, as a lack of it can lead to Splinching; this happened to a Hufflepuff this morning."

"A Hufflepuff hurt himself learning new magic?" undertoned Kevin. "Surely not!"

"Three points from Sarcasm House," she went on; he blushed. She had good hearing, with those long ears. "Now, if you perforce Apparition properly, there's a feeling sort of like forcing yourself through a tight, rubbery tube –"

Su began giggling. Hermione pointedly looked the other way.

"Wait – let me rephrase that. It's more a sensation of going really fast –"

"Or, depending on perspective, coming," Padma whispered loudly, and Su dissolved into peals of laughter.

Even Llywarch held a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "Touché … one point to Ravenclaw for good dialogue. But make sure to maintenance that pervasion of determination. It may make your first time take a little longer –" Su's laughter redoubled – "shut up, but it'll be much safer."

And so they spent the next hour and a half not Apparating.

"Not to worry," Llywarch said cheerfully when the bell rang; she waved her wand and the hoops gathered themselves up into bundles which she tucked under her robes. "It took me ages to pull one off – not a sound, Li."

Hermione stayed back after the class to talk with Llywarch; Harry and Ron stayed with her. It was about time to greet the Order member properly.

"So, how was I?" Llywarch asked.

"I don't think anyone's made you but me," Hermione said.

"You didn't exactly make her," Ron said. "You knew in advance that she was in the Order."

"You see?" Hermione said, a touch smugly.

"What's going on?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," said Llywarch, "what gave me away?"

"You called me Hermione in our first class. If you hadn't already met me, you would've called me Granger. Or possibly Dolohov."

"But we hadn't already met you," said Ron. "Had we?"

"Wotcher," said Llywarch, with a wink. "I got off the Hogwarts Express a few minutes after the rest of you. I didn't say anything; I wanted to know how good this disguise is."

"It's brilliant," said Harry. "You completely changed your personality, the way you talk and move and everything …"

"With such a small body, I feel light as air," she agreed. "And I've been practising with it for a while, so I'm pretty well acclimated to it."

"Clever, isn't it?" Hermione said. "Fudge knows her real identity and thinks he has an Auror under cover here, but she's really on Dumbledore's side."

"Fudge thinks Dumbledore's trying to take over the Ministry," Llywarch said. "I've been telling him I haven't been able to find any evidence. He keeps telling me to look harder."

"What an idiot," said Ron. "So if you're on Dumbledore's side, why aren't you teaching us any counter-curses or anything? Someone's going to have to fight You-Know-Who sooner or later."

"For a few reasons," Llywarch said. "One, because Fudge is worried Dumbledore is trying to build a private army."

"What, of students?" Harry said. "And that would be a threat?"

"That's what he thinks," Llywarch said.

"If that'd be a threat, You-Know-Who could knock the Ministry over with a few well-placed safety pins," Ron said.

"Ominous, isn't it?" Llywarch said. "At any rate, Fudge thinks it, and he might do something drastic if he got evidence supporting that. For one thing, I'd likely get fired, and I'd probably be replaced by someone who wouldn't even teach evasive magic.

"Reason two is that you're all school children: you're not going to be single-handedly defeating Voldemort any time soon. If any of you tangled with him, the best you could really hope for would be to get out alive."

"We could try," Ron said stubbornly.

"Try rhymes with die," Llywarch said. "Reason three is that most of the students here are neutral and don't want to fight anyone. Might as well teach them how to survive, then."

"… I guess," Ron said, still not wholly convinced.

"And you all have homework to do," Llywarch said. "Never talk to me anywhere obvious; we don't want anyone to connect me with any of you, especially Harry. Don't take it personally whenever I insult any of you; it's part of my Llywarch-sona. And for goodness' sake, make sure you call me Professor whenever anyone else might be listening. And, Auror tip: unless you're surrounded by privacy wards, someone with an Invisibility Cloak or Extendable Ears or a billion other tools could always be listening."

They turned back to the castle. Ron and Hermione presently began bickering over something trivial; Harry let it wash over him like the sound of waves against a cliff.

Hey Voldemort, guess what I found out about the DADA professor!

… … …

The next morning, Neville and Ron felt up to trying the Animagus potion again. Harry again went down to watch their work, and even Hermione agreed to take the morning off with them.

"I think I know what went wrong last time," Neville said. "We assumed the units were fluid scruples, because that's what Snape uses. Black had all the volumes in metric."

He pulled out a loose note to support this conclusion, in Sirius' handwriting: Note to self: this is all in millilitres. No idea what a scruple is.

"That's our Sirius," Harry said.

"That would mean you'd be using about eighteen percent too much," Hermione said.

"Wouldn't that just mean you'd get eighteen percent more potion?" Harry asked.

Hermione gave him a disbelieving look. "Don't you remember any of the Potions theory we've learnt over the past four years?" she asked.

The boys all exchanged glances.

"It changes things like the thermal mass and thus time taken to transmit heat throughout the potion, and the fractional volatility and so on," she said. "And that causes nonlinear effects, obviously."

The boys stared.

"You can't just double the inputs to double the output," she summarised. "That's why you can't mass-produce potions easily, which is why they're so expensive."

"Oh," Ron said.

"And even that's assuming you used eighteen percent more of the solid ingredients, too," Hermione said. "Which you wouldn't, since the scruple as used as a unit of mass is thirty percent more than the gram. What? My parents made me learn metric."

"In any case, Sirius used ounces for weight," Neville said.

Hermione frowned and pulled Sirius' magic mirror from her magic bag, breathed on it, and said his name.

"Hermione?" came Sirius' voice.

"Hello, Sirius," she said. "I'm with Ron now; we were just wondering why you mixed millilitres with ounces with your Animagus revelation potion."

"Because the only thing sillier than the fluid ounce is the gram," he replied. "Seriously, what weighs exactly one gram? Nothing."

Hermione rolled her eyes and gave the mirror to Harry; Neville and Ron set about preparing the potion. Harry stepped out of Neville's earshot and lowered his voice.

"So how's it going back at the Hole?" he asked.

"About as well as ever," Sirius said. "We have tabs on a few more suspected Death Eaters, we think they have tabs on a few more of us. Arthur seems to be pretty much in the clear, now; the Ministry's given up thinking he was behind the attack on Panemque. He still isn't doing anything for the Order, though; we just can't risk it for now."

"Did you ever find out anything about the man with red hair?" Harry asked.

"It's like he vanished into thin air. No leads at all. He probably isn't even in Britain any more. But that's not important. What's important is that I found that woman from the Circus again. Gigi Rowntree. Harry, you would not believe how much girls like hearing you've been oppressed by The Man. The only thing better is telling her about how I escaped from the unescapable prison. Over Christmas, I'll see if I can't get you arrested and then broken out, and I swear, you'll –"

"Sirius?" came a drowsy feminine voice from the mirror.

"I'll call you later," Sirius said, and the mirror went blank. Harry looked over to his friends; Ron and Hermione were arguing. Neville watched on in distress, trying to stir the potion and calm them down at the same time and failing both.

"I walk to the far end of the room for thirty seconds, and you're already fighting?" Harry asked. "That has to be a record."

"I was only trying to help!" Hermione said.

"Yeah, well, so was Dobby when he sicced a Bludger on Harry," Ron said. "Do you really have to criticise every last little aspect of our work?"

"You were chopping that Shrivelfig with your hand too close to the knife," Hermione said. "You were going to slice your thumb open."

"I was not, I've been doing it that way since first year –"

"Yes, and you've been doing it wrong all that time –"

"It's none of your business –"

"I'm a prefect, if you hurt yourself –"

"Do you have to stick your nose into –"

"Fine!" Hermione said. "Chop off your thumb! See if I care!" And she turned and flounced off.

"Uh, Ron, we need to be adding the outer skin layer about now," Neville said. Ron snapped to attention and began helping with the potion.

"Er," said Harry.

"Don't start," Ron said.

"I'm not agreeing with her," Harry said, backing off, "but if we let her stew over this, she'll be a pain for the entire weekend." And he left the classroom to catch her up.

"I can't believe him!" she said. "I tell him not to self-amputate and he starts yelling at me!"

"I know, I know," Harry said. He cast around for a polite way to tell her that she could sound a little bossy sometimes, before he decided it wasn't worth his skin and folded her into a hug instead. He could feel her muscles all tensed up, even under her robes.

"Thanks," she said. She wrapped her arms around him and took several deep breaths; he could feel her unwind a little.

"Why don't we go and do something relaxing, like," he began, but then came up blank. What exactly did they do together that was relaxing? She liked reading. Maybe … "Hey, didn't you say dancing was supposed to be useful somehow as an Occlumency exercise?"

"Do you want to do that?" Hermione asked, surprised, breaking the hug off. "I thought you weren't interested."

An astute observation. "Well, if it's awful, we can just stop," he said. "I mean it's worth a try, isn't it, if it means we can get our shields up faster."

They were pretty sure Snape had tried to read both of their minds during their last two Potions classes; both kept him at bay long enough to break eye contact. Hermione was fairly certain Snape had read Ron's mind instead, which probably wouldn't have satisfied him: Ron didn't know anything incriminating except his and Harry's work ethic for Divination.

"That makes sense, but I'm not sure we should do it now now," Hermione said. "I mean, we don't have Potions again until Wednesday. We really ought to get a start on that Transfigur –"

The two other Slytherin boys of their year, Nott and Zabini, ran past, Zabini chasing Nott; they were exchanging jinxes.

"Hey!" Hermione said. "Magic isn't allowed in the corridors! Hey, stop!"

Nott jackknifed sideways, into Neville's and Ron's lab. Zabini followed, still throwing spells.

"Uh oh," Harry said. Hermione started toward the room; he touched her arm and motioned her to stay back.

"No!" Neville shouted. "The potion isn't –"

There came a sound like zaankt, and a deathly silence.

"Oh, nuts," Ron said at length.

"Put it out! Quickly, put the fire out!" shrieked Zabini.

"What in Merlin's name did you do?" Neville asked.

"Sweet, merciful God," breathed Nott.

"Why isn't the fire going out?" Ron cried, sounding panicked.

"Okay I'm getting a teacher bye," Neville said, and he came rushing out of the lab.

"Aaaah!" Zabini stumbled backward out of the room, raising his wand; a moment later, a wave of what looked like runny dough surged out of the lab at waist height and knocked him off his feet. Harry, Hermione and Neville turned and ran.

The rising tide of potion was barely feet behind them. As they sprinted along, they passed Tracey Davis, who dropped a book in surprise and was engulfed by the flood with a glop, and a knot of first-years, who ran down what Harry knew was a blind alley. Neville tripped over a crack between two stones and was gone. Hermione got a stitch in her side and slowed; Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her the last few feet to a staircase and up. The doughy potion wave crashed against the stairs and quivered like an angry caged cat.

Hermione gasped for breath, while Harry just stared. A moment later, Professor Flitwick came trotting up.

He opened his mouth to ask, then shut it and just gave Harry a look.

"Neville, potion, stray curse," he said. "People trapped inside it."

Professor Flitwick pulled and waved his wand, and a few cubic yards of the potion vanished; it was viscous enough that it took a moment for more of it to flood into the vacated space. Flitwick went downstairs, maintaining a continuous Vanishing field. Harry and Hermione followed him; they passed Neville, spitting out mouthfuls of the yellow liquid, and Tracey, clawing it from her hair, and soon Flitwick had cleared out the original lab.

"…" said Flitwick. "I'm not sure who, but I'm certain someone is getting a detention for this."

"Today's experiment: failed," Harry said.

"Maybe we should go with the charm after all," Neville said to Ron.

… … …

Professor Flitwick's choir room was empty but unlocked most of the time: after all, it didn't have anything valuable, including the gramophone, which was so old even Ron sneered at it. However, for the time being, it would serve.

"I took some swing lessons a few summers ago," Hermione said, taking Harry's hands. "The basic step is forward on the beat, back on beat, for both the boy and the girl, like this. Yes, like that. The boy's supposed to lead, so whenever you step forward, pull your hands back to pull me forward, and when you step back, push them forward."

"But you know the step too," Harry said.

"You're supposed to do it this way," Hermione said. "It lets you improvise more easily."

"Am I expected to improvise?" Harry asked nervously.

"Well. I imagine its gets rather dull if you don't. Not right now, of course, now we're just getting some muscle memory working so we can try it with blindfolds. The entire point is to try to maintain a shield and spatial awareness even during movement and thinking about other things, which obviously we'll need if we want to stand a chance against Snape if he tries a concerted attack, or something like Veritaserum."

The books had said that Occlumency wasn't useful exclusively against Legilimency: it also could be used to defeat truth potions and other truth magics, such as Anti-Lying Quills and Imperius plus direct orders to tell the truth. This had been instrumental in so many Death Eaters' acquittals after the last war. Voldemort had made all of his inner circle learn the art; he complained to Harry that too many were too stupid to learn it, and he had had to create ranks specifically to keep track of who would be able to resist interrogation.

Hermione started the music and took Harry's hands again, and they began moving. With only a single, simple back-and-forth motion, it was very easy, even with Hermione nagging him to lead her before the beat.

"I feel like it should go on the beat," he said.

"No, I'm supposed to step and hit the beat. You need to be a bit before so I have advance warning," she said.

"That's actually kind of boring," Harry said, after the first song ended. "There is more to swing than that, isn't there?"

"Of course," Hermione said. She pulled out two scarves and Harry tied one over his eyes. "I only remember twirls and the dip, but I'm sure there are some books in the library. I can read up on them if you're interested."

"Er. Let's leave learning dancing from a book as a last resort," Harry said.

Hermione began the music again, then turned it way down, so they could hear each other's footsteps and breathing over it. She then walked over to Harry, tied her own scarf in place, and took his hands. They took a minute to breathe and defocus.

"Lead when you're ready," Hermione said.

Harry listened to the beat: one two three four one two three, and pushed at Hermione's hands. They moved apart, then back together, and apart, and then he trod on her foot. She tripped over backward with an un-Hermione-ish exclamation.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"Okay, maybe that was too big a second step," she said. "Harry, take off your scarf. We'll try it with one of us being blindfolded at a time."

… … …

As much trouble as their new Occlumency experiments were, they were nowhere near as bad as Quidditch. For the first time ever, Harry was unhappy at practices, and one didn't have to look far to see why. Their new Keeper, Cormac McLaggen, was about obnoxious enough to give Malfoy a run for his money, and even more universally disliked. Even Ron admitted Hermione didn't criticise anyone as much as he did; McLaggen told the girls how to Chase, the twins how to Beat, and even Harry how to Seek. Angelina he lectured on strategy, which she accepted stoically with locked jaw.

"You wouldn't have to put up with that if you made Ron Keeper," Harry said, out of McLaggen's earshot.

"Tempting," Angelina admitted, "but McLaggen'd be as bad or worse as a reserve. I can't rationalise bumping him and not having him as reserve; he was far better than anyone else at tryouts."

Fred and George vented their feelings by hitting Bludgers at him when neither he nor Angelina were watching, and by occasionally slipping him some of their Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, but Angelina inevitably found out and yelled at them both for a quarter of an hour, threatening to use Sloper and the boy who'd finished fourth, the Cup be damned.

To top it all off, he flirted indecently with Hermione on the one occasion Harry roped her into coming to practice with him and Ron; she told Harry point blank that with all due respect, they didn't technically need supporters at their next match and that she did have an awful lot of OWL homework.

"He can never be allowed near her again," Harry said after.

"Never," Ron agreed, possibly more in deference to Harry or their mutual dislike of McLaggen than protectiveness toward Hermione.

McLaggen wasn't actively hostile to Ron as he didn't consider him a serious threat (an attitude Harry found rather galling), but kept referring to him as a 'little guy', which seemed to quite effectively grind Ron's already low self-confidence into the mud.

Aside from him, Jack Sloper, the reserve Beater, kept having to sub in when either of the twins were in detention – which happened more and more often, as Snape observed that this would help his own chances of winning the Cup – and he was useless. Worse, he didn't have the twins' uncanny co-ordination, and Angelina ruled they had to abandon their tactic of feeding each other easy Bludgers to better unseat opponents after the second time George knocked Sloper out cold. McLaggen criticised Sloper worse than anyone while he was on the pitch, and Harry had a nasty feeling they wouldn't put their animosity behind them when it came to the pitch.

Even aside from all that, OWL year really was the hardest, by a wide margin. Harry worked out the rule of thumb that each contact hour, aside from being difficult in its own right, was followed by almost an hour of homework, giving a backlog of at least five assignments every weekend. Quite often he worked the entire weekend, and with his slowly progressing Occlumency, Quidditch training, and the occasional detention, he had almost no time to himself to relax. It wasn't until the first Hogsmeade weekend, in October, that he really realised how much he needed a break.

"You do appreciate the irony that it'll come at the cost of needing to work through all of Sunday, don't you?" Hermione asked on Saturday morning.

"We're not forcing you to come with us," Ron replied.

"Who are you talking to?" Hermione asked. "I finished all my homework last night."

Ron grumbled.

Hermione was still getting the Daily Prophet; the post owls came clattering into the Hall at that moment. She unfurled it.

CONVICTED DEATH EATERS FOUND DEAD IN CELLS

"Oh, hello," Hermione said, and began reading aloud to the boys. "The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that several inmates have been found dead in Azkaban of unexplained causes. Speaking from his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, confirmed that as many as fourteen prisoners, eleven of them convicted Death Eaters, have died. The coroner has not yet completed his work, but leaks reveal that none of the fourteen have visible trauma, leading to speculation that Dark magic may have been used."

"Namely, the Killing Curse," said Ron.

Harry glanced over the captioned photos around the article. They were photos of the dead Death Eaters, sneering at the camera, with brief descriptions of their charges.

"Nikolaus Stropolos, convicted of perpetrating the Muggle Massacre of '78," he read. "Archeus Castlewright, convicted of casting twelve, and suspected of over a hundred, spells in support of Death Eater activity, including Anti-Disapparition Jinxes that led to the deaths of Fabian and Gideon Prewitt and Lily and James Potter."

"Bloody hell," Ron said. "This is an Azkaban All Stars list. These were the worst of the worst. Dad's mentioned them, but never said what half of them did. Dolohov, yeah, he's there … Bellatrix Lestrange, she was supposed to be You-Know-Whose second-in-command …"

"Serve her right," said Neville, his brow set. He was on Hermione's left side, reading over her shoulder.

"Who were the other three?" Harry asked.

"I think they might have been suppliers of one sort or another," Ron said. "Look, Christina Lasker, who knowingly stole and sold over four thousand Galleons of Ministry goods to You-Know-Who. Never a Death Eater, but helped them by things like that."

"This can't have been a coincidence," Harry said. "Not fourteen all at once."

"What do you think happened?" Ron asked.

"Dumbledore's the only leader who thinks Voldemort is back," Hermione said, "so he's the only one who'd have anything to gain by pre-emptively killing his followers."

"Dumbledore wouldn't murder unarmed prisoners," Neville said. "He helped put them in there."

"What do you think?" Ron asked Harry.

"I don't know," he said. "Let me mull it over."

[Voldemort, have you read the Prophet?]

[I knew about that story before it broke.]

[What do your sources say?]

[Expletives, mostly. The old man's got one up on me. I had been planning an expedition to rescue them – they were my best shock troopers, after all – so I really should have expected him to try and scorch the earth first. He's slipped up, though, greedy fool.]

[He has?] Harry began eating his corn flakes. He'd eventually realised that he didn't look so suspicious if he kept his mouth busy during his psychic conversations.

[They were magically potent people. He didn't just AK them in their sleep. He brought Body Double Potions – I imagine Snape's been brewing them over the past month – and left those, and kidnapped the Death Eaters. He wants to use the ritual on them.]

[I thought Dementors drained wizards of their powers over time?]

[They do, with a caveat. Occlumency can block most of their effects. My inner circle Death Eaters were all master Occlumens; they're still at full power.]

[But … if he could already overpower you, and he sacrifices another fourteen crack sorcerers –]

[Not to worry. The rituals take time. He's currently holding them in a castle in the Outer Hebrides. I'm going to rescue them.]

[Really? When?]

[In about] there was a pause, as of someone checking a watch [five minutes. I'm outside right now with a platoon of mercenaries. It'll only take half an hour if all goes to plan, but please don't say anything even after then, in case something goes wrong.]

[Good luck, I guess.]

[Thanks, Harry. I'll let you know how it goes. Voldemort out.]

"But the point is," Ron was saying to Hermione over Harry's head, "that Dumbledore is a Light wizard, and the entire point of being Light is that you don't go around assassinating defenceless prisoners, no matter what they did to deserve it."

"He led the resistance against Lord Voldemort – will you stop twitching Ron, it's embarrassing, you're supposed to be a Gryffindor – the resistance against him last time, and now," Hermione replied. "You can't effectively fight a war without killing people."

"It's not about killing in hot blood, it's about murder in cold."

"So what's your brilliant theory, then?" Hermione asked. "Which isn't any more contrived than supposing the Headmaster doesn't share your moral code?"

"Fudge did it," Ron said promptly. "Look, he's worried Dumbledore is trying to make a power grab, right? It only makes sense for Fudge to pull something like this and then try to pin it on Dumbledore."

"Far-fetched," Hermione said dismissively. "Fudge is the Minister for Magic –"

"You just like him because he's in a position of authority," Ron said. "You always do this, like with Snape –"

"Who has, in fact, actually been on our side," Hermione cut back across him, "but as I was going to say, Fudge is a ranking politician, so presumably he knows how to play politics, if nothing else. He lost enough power and money from the attack on Panemque; he's not going to make it look like he can't even guard his own prison."

"How popular do you think this will be?" Harry asked. "I mean, if these were feared Death Eaters, maybe people will be happy they're dead. In that case, Fudge will probably take credit, regardless of whether he was behind it."

"And if Fudge is such a good politician," Ron said, "he would have thought of that already."

Hermione opened her mouth to kneecap that argument, but Harry caught her eye and shook his head slightly, so instead she said, "I – I didn't think of that. I … suppose that's true."

Neville and Ron both goggled at her.

"You … you admitted you were wrong," Ron said, awestruck. "You never admit it when you're wrong."

"Oh, shut up," Hermione said. "I always admit it when I make mistakes."

"And the last time that happened was when?" Ron asked.

"That I admitted it, or that I made a mistake?" Hermione asked. "Either way, a long time ago."

Ron shook his head and returned to his bacon.

As when Sirius first escaped and was known to be prowling around Hogwarts, the security had increased. Harry had caught Professors Flitwick and McGonagall laying extra enchantments around the castle perimeter; the ghosts were often seen standing watch atop the battlements; and a new rule was put in place that a teacher had to be present at the Quidditch pitch during all practices, which rather restricted the available time, since most refused to go out in bad weather.

It therefore wasn't surprising to see that some of that security was visible around Hogsmeade too. Dumbledore obviously didn't have the authority to hire security trolls, but when Harry got there, Ron and Hermione on either side, it didn't take long before he saw Flitwick, who had what might have been a Veela on either arm, and not much later, Rosie Lalor, who gave a wink before mingling with a crowd of Hufflepuff sixth-years.

The town itself was lovely in the autumn, with piles of Gryffindor-hued leaves raked up into mounds every few dozen yards. The townspeople were out in force, always happy to welcome students and ask them whether they felt like buying anything. Ron suggested, as usual, that they get a drink in the Three Broomsticks.

"Hey, Harry," he said. "Have you talked to Cho Chang lately?"

"Cho?" Harry asked. "Do you know, I'd forgotten all about her. I haven't spoken to her since the holidays; I ran into her in Diagon Alley."

"With a girl," Hermione said.

Harry gave her an enquiring look.

"I hear some of the Ravenclaw grapevine in Arithmancy," she said with a shrug. "Lisa said she heard you were with and I quote 'a voluptuous blonde who was slathered on you like too much marmalade'."

"Those Ravenclaws are such wanks," Ron said. "They actually talk like that?"

"True," said Harry. "That was Rosie. I think … I really have no idea what goes on inside her head. I think she might have just been bored; I'm certain she doesn't like me like me."

"Well, whatever the case, it seems to have cemented their opinion of you," Hermione said. "I don't think you'll be dating any of them any time soon."

"Not even that Li girl?" Ron asked.

Hermione huffed. "It's not that she's easy. She has very specific tastes. She's just … proactive when she finds someone who has what she's looking for."

Three or four sharp responses clearly went through Ron's mind, but he had the sense to clamp down on them, barely.

"Hey, I see someone I know," Harry said, standing up, leaving his drink. "Try not to kill each other for five minutes?"

"No promises," Ron said.

Harry made his way over to the far side of the room, where Daphne was sitting with a double mug of strengthened Butterbeer.

"Rack off, Potter," she said.

"What's wrong?" he asked, taking the seat next to her. She looked dishevelled, as though she'd been running; her normally perfect hair was tousled and it looked like she might have been crying.

"The part where you're not racking off," she said. "What are you, my mother?"

"Normally you'd be with Pansy and her friends," he said.

"Last I checked, you didn't like any of us."

"I'm just a little worried, is all. You seemed almost human the last time we spoke. Why aren't you with them?"

"I don't want to tell them even more than I don't want to tell you," she said.

"You have to tell someone," Harry said. "I should know; I'm an expert on bottled-up feelings causing trouble later on."

She glared at him for a moment, then slid her mug over. He took a gulp and passed it back.

"Weasley," she said.

Harry sighed. "What's Ron done now?"

"Not him," she said. "Fred."

"You asked him out," Harry guessed. "And … he wasn't interested."

"That's an understatement." She drank another mouthful. "So here I am, nothing to do 'cept get tipsy and hope none of my friends sees me looking like this."

"Daphne, I'm –"

"What, sorry? Don't give me your pity."

"Look, just – don't give up hope, alright?" Harry said. "Not about him personally, but I mean, you know, life in general."

"If it's between your pity and that platitudinous crap, I think I'd rather the pity," Daphne said.

The door opened, and in came a gaggle of Ravenclaws, including Kevin Entwhistle. Ron hurried over to Harry with his Butterbeer.

"That would be our cue to leave," he said.

"This is silly, Ron," Hermione said. "Okay, maybe they can be a little prickly sometimes, but they're really very nice people once you get to know them."

"Yeah, I think it's the getting to know them part I'm so worried about," Ron said, and they left the pub. "Hey, do either of you smell oil?"

Hermione sniffed. "I think that's diesel," she said. "Maybe there's a fuel depot nearby. For the train, I suppose."

Ron shrugged. "I guess. Where do you want to go now?"

"I do could with a new quill pen," Hermione said. "Let's go to Scrivenshaft's."

"Hey, wait," Harry said abruptly. He stared into the middle distance.

"What is it?"

"I thought I just saw someone duck down a side alley up ahead," Harry said, beginning to walk, fast. "A man. He walked weirdly, like a marionette being controlled by a bad puppeteer."

"Like … someone under a badly-cast Imperius?" Ron asked.

"Yeah. Or maybe some other sort of mind-altering magic," Harry nodded. He pulled his wand out. "He had thin red hair and spectacles."

Hermione gasped, and she and Ron pulled out their wands. "The Circus attacker."

"Stick together," Harry said. "If this is him, I don't think he'll be easy to take down."

They pushed through a crowd of younger students and turned into the side alley. It turned again; they crept slowly toward the junction, as silently as possible. Harry looked into his purse for his Invisibility Cloak.

"What are you waiting for?" came a squawky male voice from past the turn. "I'll bet you've been wanting to meet me for a long time."

Harry exchanged glances with Ron, who looked pale but determined, and Hermione, who was more outright apprehensive, and turned the corner.

The man was leaning against the side of a building. With a longer moment to observe him, Harry could see that he didn't really look all that much like a Weasley: he had the right hair, but nothing else. His face was long and thin, the cheeks hollow. The eyes were orange. His limbs were almost grotesquely long and thin, giving him an extremely ungainly, gawky stride. His jet black wand was in hand.

"Who are you?" Harry asked.

"Who am I, really," said the man. His voice sounded almost like a bird's screech. "I'm someone who's lost everything. Do you have any idea what is left, when everything you ever loved, everything you once cared about, has been taken away? Not a hell of a lot, Potter."

"You drew those Acromantula onto the Circus," Ron said.

"Oh, yes," said the man. "Even after you've lost everything, you gain something to live for instead." His thin, spidery face hardened. "Revenge."

"Revenge against who?" Hermione asked. "Those were innocent people, they were just going to a circus for some fun!"

"You don't have a damn clue what you're talking about," said the man. "When the negligence of an entire society is responsible for the horrors I've seen, the entire society is guilty. If that's because they're too lazy to care, too apathetic to stop the perpetrators, well …" He shrugged. "So be it."

"Twenty-nine people died then," Harry said, levelling his wand.

"Thirty," corrected the man. "Another, later in hospital, of his wounds. And if you're trying to make me feel guilty about it, you just don't get it. It's not that I can't feel guilt. It's that those people don't deserve my pity. They're just as responsible for everyone I've lost, as the man who … devoured them."

"What are you talking about?" Ron asked.

"I'm telling you why this isn't evil," he said. "It's justice. Pertoten flamans."

He pointed his black wand at the brick façade of the building on his right, and a spurt of fire shot out. Some paint on the wall crackled and blackened; the roof caught alight. He jerked his wand to either side, and the fire jet coalesced into monsters: a kelpie, a shark-headed human Harry identified as a dukuwaqa, and something like a bear with a narrow, conical head.

"Aguamenti!" Hermione cried, and shot a stream of water at the fire; it hissed and evaporated without effect.

"Stupefy!" Harry shouted, aiming for the man, who broke off his spell to swish his wand downward, conjuring a silent Shield; the Stunner ricocheted off and into the air.

"Nequ'exire," the man added, then he fired two silent curses at them. One went high; Harry dodged the other.

"Anti-Disapparition," Hermione said. "Get to cover!"

"Impedi–" Ron began, before a Banishing Charm hit him in the chest and sent him flying into the building behind. He fell to the ground.

Harry cast a Disarming Charm over his shoulder, and ran back to help Ron up. He was only dazed, not unconscious, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Fire!" Hermione shouted, running back into the main street of Hogsmeade. "Someone, find Flitwick!"

Harry got Ron out just behind her; a crowd was gathering. "Everyone, get back!" Harry said.

"What's going on?" asked a blonde Ravenclaw fourth-year.

The roofs behind Harry flared up, stoked by the cursed fire, and the flamebear staggered into sight. Behind him appeared Flitwick.

"Fiendfyre," he said grimly. "Give me space," and the crowd formed a semicircle ten yards back from him, as he drew his wand and squared off against the bear.

It loped sideways, circling Flitwick, and Harry's Seeker eyes instinctively tracked its path: directly ahead of it was a pile of leaves, glistening in the sun. That's what the man had been doing when Harry saw him: pouring a potion like diesel over it.

"Watch out!"

The Fiend feinted toward Flitwick, who began the countercurse to dispel it, before it turned and pounced on the leaf pile. There was a split second and –

Harry rolled with the shockwave and was the first to his feet. He was just in time to see the explosion send flaming bits of debris flying overhead, four of which were more Fiends. They ignored the stunned people and homed in on the other leaf piles.

[Voldemort! Do you know how to dispel Fiendfyre?]

[Yes. That's the sort of question you should ask in advance, for future ref–]

[I need you at Hogsmeade, now.]

[I'm hundreds of miles away and under Anti-Disapparition. Hold on.]

There came a volley of concussion waves, as Fiends sprung up all over the village. Most of the leaf piles weren't dosed with potion and only created another one creature, but that still meant dozens of them inside the village, with dozens more clustered around the exits, where most of the leaves were gathered.

"EVERYONE, FALL BACK!" Harry roared over the noise of burning. "GET TO HONEYDUKES!"

Flitwick conjured a blue dome over the knot of people; a flamebird rammed it.

"It won't hold them!" he cried. "Go!"

"Depulso!" Hermione said, and blasted the bird away, but fifteen more monsters converged on them.

The heat was already scorching, and the smoke stung their eyes. All around them, building's dry thatch roofs were catching alight; when the Fiends reached anything flammable, they grabbed and ate it, either multiplying or just sending sparks flying to start more fires.

Harry rummaged inside his purse, pulled out his Firebolt, mounted it, and took off, going through the fireproof dome without resistance. He scanned the village. In seconds, it had turned into a war zone: half of it was burning, isolated knots of witches and wizards were blasting away at the fire creatures, and the exits were already blocked by burning rubble. He spotted a third-year lying prone, swooped down, grabbed him by the wrist, and flew to Honeydukes, which was still relatively unscathed: it was packed with students, some of whom could conjure water, which at least slowed the Fiendfyre down.

"Secret passage in the store room!" he shouted, and coughed on the smoke. "Store room! Go!"

[There's an Anti-Apparition spell active around Hogsmeade. I'll be another few minutes.]

[Hurry! We don't have much time left!]

[I see from here.]

He kicked off again and found and rescued another smoking kid. He went back and forth five more times, before Flitwick's group reached the store. The blue dome was gone, and Flitwick was staggering, reduced to knocking the monsters with Banishing Charms. Rosie had joined up with them at some point and was disintegrating targets with purple beams of light. About half the group was burnt or blackened and leaning against the others.

The unhurt people fanned out to cover the walking wounded as they crowded into Honeydukes and down the secret passage. Hermione, who had apparently hosed herself down at least once and had thought to conjure a Bubble around her head to block the copious smoke, was holding the rearguard, conjuring ice cubes, which lasted slightly longer than liquid water.

"Fall back! Annihilix!" Rosie shouted, blasting a fiery unicorn to embers. "Fall back!"

Shoving his Firebolt into his purse to free a hand, Harry Summoned another student who'd collapsed, and dragged her inside. There was a bottle-up in the store room, because people couldn't move through the secret passage very fast. Harry opened his mouth to shout at them, but his voice was gone.

The wall past the secret passage opened up: the Fiend had torn it apart. The wall was wooden; in moments, the bear had it aflame. Tracey Davis, who was queuing by the secret passage and nursing a blackened arm, raised her wand and silently blasted it with a jet of green light; it shook its head and glared at her.

[Voldemort, now would be a really good time!]

[I assume you're in Honeydukes?]

[YES!]

A flash of purple light hit the flamebear; it smashed apart like a dropped vase.

Without the monster to worry about, Harry could Extinguish the rear wall and look out. Voldemort, in a black cloak with the hood up and a silver mask, was floating twenty yards above ground. His wand was streaming red light like a flamethrower, except wherever it hit, fires went out and the Fiends froze and fell apart. He cleared some breathing room, and went around to the front, where he chased the Fiendfyre off the last stragglers. Harry followed the cleared path to the front, where the last sooty humans were watching, awed.

There was a final flash of fire, and Dumbledore appeared, clutching Fawkes. He looked around, his wand out, and zapped out a few nearby fires.

"Intrare," he said; there was a sound like shattering glass as the Anti-Apparition Jinx went down. "Exire." He shot a blue flare into the sky; moments later, half a dozen teachers Apparated in.

[Opportunism is a virtue.]

Harry looked up and saw the flash of green light. Somehow, Dumbledore must have seen it too, because he sidestepped and waved his wand; a chunk of rock shot up at Voldemort, who Disapparated.

[Worth a try.