The man who'd decided to make himself my archenemy slouched off the wall and stood to face me down from across the field of redheads. He was still wearing his dirty trenchcoat and muggle suit, which made him stand out even more amid all the robes. "Maybe your new friends would like to ask you about how your house burned down with your mentor still inside. They might even wonder, like I do, what happened to the other teenager I found out was registered as living in that house. Did you kill Elaine Mallory, too, Dresden?"

That seemed to steal my breath away, like a physical punch to the gut. I barely noticed my hand drifting into my robes for my blasting rod, but, in hindsight, Dawlish did. He was smirking and cradling a wand up his sleeve, clearly just waiting for me to take a shot. Fortunately, McGonagall was right behind me and not inclined to let this play out. "John Dawlish! If I could still take points from you, I would. Imagine, such provocation against a student on a school shopping trip."

Despite his carefully cultivated exterior as a maverick cop, I thought I saw him wilt a bit under her attention. "Just saw his trace move to the Alley, professor. He could have been pulling a runner. It's all completely legal."

"If you have nothing better to do than rush out to chaperone a student's shopping trip, then there's little I can say about that," McGonagall allowed, "but you can do that without confronting him with unsubstantiated allegations in front of a crowd. If you have more questions about your case, Hogwarts is happy to arrange additional interviews with his magical guardian present."

Maybe he hadn't actually seen the assistant headmistress behind me when he jumped in, because Dawlish seemed to take a moment trying to come up with a comeback and find nothing. Lamely, he admitted, "Fair enough." Trying to saunter away without turning his back to us, he tossed off, "See you around, Dresden."

Entertainment over, the bystanders that had been gathering continued on their way. The Weasleys had the presence of mind to wait until Dawlish was out of earshot, but probably still lurking nearby, before starting up. "Did you really kill your mentor?" asked the youngest boy, Ron.

"Headmaster Dumbledore has done his own research and declared Mr. Dresden not guilty," explained McGonagall, further increasing my appreciation of the woman.

Arthur Weasley added his two cents for the first time, "Auror Dawlish has a reputation around the Ministry. Among other sterling personal qualities, he doesn't like to let go of his first suspect despite what the evidence says." Between those two assertions, that seemed to mollify everyone, though I could tell the kids would be looking for opportunities to dig for more information later. Molly Weasley started leading us further into the alley and her husband fell back to ask me an unrelated question. "We recently got an interesting load of muggle artifacts in the Misuse office, and they have us stumped. Minerva mentioned you were raised muggle, and I was wondering if you had any inkling about the intended function of a rubber duck…"

After assuring Mr. Weasley that, indeed, rubber duckies with time-delayed charms would be an innocuous method of delivering mischief in the muggle world, we were able to engage in shopping. While it was constant chaos moving five young Weasleys from store to store, Mrs. Weasley somehow kept them more or less in orbit and on task. The professor had been right: they definitely had an eye for bargains, as one must with a family that size. Given how the parents doted on young Ginny, I realized my initial assumption of "Wizard Catholics?" was probably incorrect and they'd just wanted a daughter badly enough to keep trying.

With their help, I'd filled out the supply list and still had a few coins left over. While my practical side suggested that I should look into how to convert it into muggle cash, since I presently couldn't even take a bus out of London if I needed to, everyone would be extremely suspicious if I suggested a trip to the bank to change out my money. Instead, I laid out for a few uncommon components that didn't seem to be in the student-accessible cupboards at the school.

"Wideye potion is third year," Percy stated, after working out what I was doing from the ingredients. "Are you planning to revise for the OWLs with that or…"

I shrugged, "Not exactly, but it seemed like a useful potion to keep on hand. I'm thinking about making some girding potion, too. Do you think these doxy eggs will keep?"

While Percy was suddenly having a revelation about making potions as performance-enhancers instead of just to turn in for a grade, I felt a bump and a piece of paper being pushed into my hand. The ingredients shop was packed, but a moment later I caught a glance at a woman leaving the store. Her hair color and outfit was unfamiliar, but the amused, mad-eyed glance out of fine-boned features made it obvious who I was dealing with. She blew me a kiss as she sauntered out of the store, and was under a disillusion veil before I could see which way she went.

My overly-finicky roommate was still trying to figure out whether the doxy eggs were a good buy, so I glanced at the card that had been slipped into my hand.

Saw your run-in. The trace is a problem. Be sure to take the train. I'll have a solution for you. -L

Great, my godmother was meddling again. As if I didn't have a big enough problem with Dawlish following me, she was too. At least I knew what the auror's intentions were. Worrying about that madwoman's plans wasn't going to let me sleep easy.

In fact, the whole collection of issues finally hit me that night, after I'd managed to extricate myself from the Weasleys and get back to Hogwarts. Dawlish bringing Elaine back up broke down whatever repressing I'd been doing on Quirrell's boggart, and that, in particular, resulted in some truly outstanding nightmares. I'd given up sleep as unlikely and slipped down to the runes lab to make some more progress on focus items. I'd gotten a nice pile of leather trimmings that I thought I might be able to do something with.

I'd been working in the firelight for a couple of hours before I noticed the cat perched on the hearth. She was a skinny thing, dust-colored with golden eyes. I gave her a closed-lipped smile and nodded at the fire, "I agree that it's ridiculous that they already have to run the fireplaces and it's still August. Scotland, am I right?"

With an interested tilt of her head, the cat began stalking toward me, with a weird hesitance. At first I thought she was skittish, but it was more like she thought I was going to run than that she was planning to. It took the better part of a minute for her to cross the ten feet from the fire and leap up on my worktable. I grabbed a discarded strip of leather and started twitching it across the table like a mouse tail. Another strange look at me like she wasn't entirely sure how to play, and then she pounced on the strip and started playing with abandon.

I'd given up on getting any more work done and was just sitting on my stool petting the cat when an old, hunched man shuffled into the room. I'd seen him around over the past few weeks, but hadn't figured out what he did. "Ah! Not even classes yet and already a late night wanderer! You're supposed to be in bed, boy!"

I hadn't actually even thought about a curfew, used to setting my own schedule as long as I didn't bother anyone else. But I guess it made sense, with a bunch of kids running around without parents in a big magical castle, that you wouldn't want to try to figure out which ones were responsible enough to wander. And I didn't want to disturb my new feline friend enough to rail against unjust authority. So I just nodded and said, "Sorry, sir. Had some nightmares and they didn't tell me about a curfew."

For a moment, I saw a sneer forming and worried he was going to make an issue of it no matter how polite I'd been, but then he finally noticed me petting the cat, and that shocked him. "Never seen Mrs. Norris take to anyone else like that."

"I like cats," I acknowledged, "and she's a sweetheart." The cat gave a faint meow that sounded almost exactly like, "Yeah!" that had both me and the old man snorting in laughter.

"What's that you're working on, anyway?" he asked, looking over at my stitched-together leather pieces.

I stretched it out so he could see that it was almost vest-shaped. "Hopefully a protective jerkin, if the charms will take."

"Aye, that's a good idea. Seen plenty of kids hexed in the back around here." He thought about it for a second, clearly interested. "You an enchanter?"

I gave him the wavy-hand so-so gesture, admitting, "I'm pretty solid on making foci to channel my own magic like a wand. This seemed like a good test of the theory of whether I can make something that will work when I'm not channeling energy into it." He twitched a finger, surreptitiously feeling the leather, obviously way into the idea. Though I wasn't totally keen on befriending this strange old man, he had a nice cat, so he couldn't be all bad. "If it works out, I could try to make something similar for you?"

That got a genuine, toothy smile, and he demurred, "Only if it's no trouble. You're the first one in years I've seen do something practical. All the other young wizards that can enchant things… nothing but shenanigans." Thinking of these bad kids brought him back to the present, so he insisted, "You'd better get back to your common room. And no night-wandering once school's in session!"

"Got it," I smiled, giving Mrs. Norris a last scritch behind the ears before collecting my stuff. "Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, missus."