The last few months at school went surprisingly easily, with the latest Death Eater plot handled. Remus, newly-signed mastery certificate in hand, went ahead and took over as defense professor at McGonagall's insistence. He and Kettleburn both took students for their classes down to see the basilisk corpse several times.

Kettleburn's lessons for creatures class were all about the various properties of the giant snake, and helping take samples before it fully degraded as the magic animating it faded away. Remus' (it was hard to remember to call him Professor Lupin) lessons were mostly about how one should run far, far away if they thought something like that was even in the area.

He stared really judgingly at me when he showed it to my class.

While Hogwarts wasn't exactly running out of space, McGonagall still took some trips with her NEWT classes to fix up the Chamber of Secrets into something that wasn't in danger of collapsing and possibly creating a giant sinkhole under the castle. Once Dumbledore was unparalyzed, the plan was to also tie it more firmly into the wards to prevent it being a potential back door into the school.

The twins were distraught when she also made an executive decision as acting headmistress to finally take Moody's advice and close up the rest of the secret passages out of the school. I half suspected the headmaster might reopen some of them when he awoke. After all, his plans probably often included students entering or leaving the school when no one but him was aware of it.

Was right after someone had been paralyzed and insensate for three months too soon to pick a fight with him about being a manipulative old bastard? I asked myself that question a lot while I waited for mandrake juicing day.

Fortunately, I had a lot of things to distract me (of the non-life-threatening variety). My own classes continued to be very interesting, and the sixth-year tests went on your report card but, well, I was my own guardian even if I cared. They were mostly to make sure you were on track for the NEWTs. However, the OWLs were upcoming for the fifth years, so I spent a ton of time helping my girlfriend study and/or relax.

Fine, yes, I finally admitted Mathilda was my girlfriend, fully expecting that would be the point everything would go horribly wrong.

I thought it was about to happen one night in the library in mid-May. It had turned out that Pince being absent didn't make that much of a difference, at least this close to exams. If you made too much noise, the seventh-years, fifth-years, or Hermione would make sure you understood what a mistake that was. So I was very quietly quizzing Mathilda on her defense notes at our favorite corner table when Maeve sashayed by.

"Ah, Harry," she smirked, ignoring Mathilda. Putting every ounce of vampiness she could into it and turning her aura to "fully-arouse-then-flash-freeze" she said, "I really appreciated seeing your, ahem, giant snake the other day. When do you think we can go down again and take another tour of the Chamber of Secrets?"

She'd never really let off the rumor war, but I'd been basically untouchable as the slayer of Slytherin's Monster. Maybe people still believed that I was having an affair with the "Malfoy" princess, but they didn't make a big deal about it if I wanted to deny it. So I guessed she'd decided to make a targeted insinuation in front of Mathilda.

For a while I'd been wondering how breaking me up with my girlfriend suited the inscrutable goals of the Unseelie. Then I started to realize that maybe Maeve was just awful. She was doing this purely because I wouldn't do what she wanted.

At this moment, pinned beneath the weight of her sidhe aura of impossible allure, I was having to use all my willpower not to buckle under and molest her right in the library. It left very little energy for telling her off and reassuring Mathilda.

But that didn't seem to be necessary.

Mathilda was a blur of red and gold as she was suddenly right in Maeve's face. I wasn't sure how she was even functioning under the aura, but maybe she'd worked up a tolerance over the last several months. In an extremely angry but dangerously quiet voice, she insisted, "Listen you manky, mingey muppet! Ti'n llawn cachu! Go find some more Slytherin boys to tease. I don't know what your deal is. I don't care! Dos i ffwcio dy hun y ast!"

The temperature was so cold that frost patterns started forming on nearby solid surfaces, Mathilda's breath steaming into a cloud around Maeve's head almost like she was breathing fire. The fae princess was almost as still as the basilisk victims, eyes slowly widening as if nobody had ever talked to her like that. I didn't speak Welsh, but I assumed Maeve did, and it hadn't sounded nice.

Ever so slowly, she turned to look at me, madness spinning behind those eyes, looking like she was working up to something. She lost control of the come hither aura and I could finally speak, so I interrupted whatever she was about to say, "I warned you about this before. You just attacked us. You've been attacked back. I'll consider the matter settled if you do."

She didn't exactly acknowledge it, but she didn't say what she'd been clearly winding up. Instead, the temperature gradually rose until she had mastered herself to give me one, curt nod and then walk away.

I didn't think the matter was really settled. Especially since we were off behind some shelves but not completely private, and I already heard muttering from kids that had been watching and were going to pass it on.

"'Thilda, that was awesome, and hot, and amazing, but…" I quietly started, everything I wanted to warn her about snapping behind the stupid fae immunity to giving away their secrets.

"But I just started a fight with a sidhe," she nodded, a little shell-shocked, moving around to my side of the table and collapsing into my lap, her adrenaline crashing.

"How…" I couldn't even finish the question. I hated this geas and it was going up my list of research to break.

"Oh, Luna told me a while ago. I didn't really believe her. Until now!" She pulled my arms around her, and the warm contact was especially nice in the still-frigid corner.

"You know there's nothing going on between me and Maeve right?"

"Well, 'nothing' is a strong word. There's clearly something you can't talk about." As she explained her theories, I was able to manage a nod around the prohibitions. "And I want to figure it out! I want to figure out what it is you can't tell me! But I get it. You're not friends. She's a bad fairy."

"I'm worried about you being on her list," I said.

"I am too! I don't want to fight bad faeries! I don't want there to be bad faeries! I want to finish my exams. I want to become a respected magizoologist!"

I sighed, "The more you stick around me…"

"No! You stop!" she barely managed to keep her voice intense but low, turning in my lap and looking me dead in the eyes from a couple inches away. "I knew you were dangerous! You didn't trick me! I could have walked away after the wolves. After the Death Eaters!"

Hell's bells, in barely more than a year of having known her, her life had been in danger how many times? It only took one bad wizard and one misplaced dark fire spell to do for Elaine, and Mathilda was now up against a queen of the freaking sidhe on my account. I had to…

"I said stop! I see your brain working, Harry Dresden. You spend all this effort protecting people. Who protects you? Your friends. Maybe sometimes you have to fight You-Know-Who alone. Sometimes there's a big snake! And, if I could've, I'd have been there. I'd have had your back.

"I'd have probably wet myself. But I'd have had your back!"

It was hard, having someone that close, that intense, peering directly into me. It wasn't even love. I didn't think we were there yet. It was friendship, which was even harder to deny. Somehow, I'd been putting in the investment, and other people were investing back. As an orphan that had only had one close friend, who'd ultimately betrayed me in the worst way, it was hard to understand.

It was one thing to realize you were willing to go the extra mile to protect the innocent. It was another to realize that they appreciated it.

I tried one, last, half-hearted, "I mean, a basilisk is one thing. That's just magizoology, but Maeve…"

"So what if she's some secret, powerful sidhe that drips sex and snow?" Mathilda shrugged, smirking playfully through her own, obvious anxiety about it, dropping deep into her Welsh accent. "I'll smack that barmy ferret right in her pretty gob, she keeps coming after my man."