"Ron!"

Harry had left Hermione in the common room and sprinted up the stairs to the boys' dormitory, taking the steps two at a time. He stood panting in front of the tightly-drawn curtains of Ron's four-poster. No reply came from within.

"Ron," he begged again. "Look, I'm--" He glanced around the empty room helplessly. "I'm sorry. But...but don't you see, that was what he was trying to get you to do."

Silence.

"And...and besides, we're fifth years now, we should know better...and what did he mean about your brother? Which one? Ron, come on..." Harry reached out to pull the curtains back. He managed to move them about an inch before an invisible hand forced them closed violently, nearly ripping the fabric. Harry took an involuntary step back.

"Is...is he all right?" Harry turned to see Hermione walking up the stairs as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "Don't worry, no one's here," she added, seeing Harry's apprehensive expression.

"I...he won't talk to me," Harry muttered, rubbing at his forehead.

Hermione's lips pinched. "Ron?" she asked softly, walking past Harry. "Ron, please, talk to us."

This time the person sitting on the bed shifted a bit, as though agitated. Hermione heard it and pressed on. "You don't even have to tell us yet, if you don't want to. Come on, come out, we'll open Siri...Padfoot's letter together. Right?"

Harry jumped under Hermione's sharp gaze. "Yeah." He reached into his robes. "Yeah, Ron, I have it here...just..." Sudden cold horror made Harry feel as though a giant drill had bored straight through his insides as his fingers continued to fumble and find nothing.

"Harry?" Hermione's eyes narrowed as her friend turned sharply pale. She took a step towards him, a weight sinking into her own chest. "Do you..." she faltered.

Harry stared wildly around for a moment. "No!" he cried softly. "Oh, God...!"

The scrape of metal on metal was heard as Ron threw the hangings back in real alarm, unable to hold on to his anger. All he managed to see was Harry flying down the stairs. "What?" he demanded, "What happened?" He looked up at Hermione, who was standing and staring after Harry, both hands pressed over her mouth.

"He lost it," she said slowly, incredulously. "He lost it...!"

Ron blinked. His throat went dry. "Oh my God." He jumped out of the bed and grabbed Hermione's arm. "Bloody hell, come on!"

****

Hermione and Ron were both gasping for breath when they finally found Harry. He was bent over the railing of the foyer steps, panting, staring at the floor. The foyer was quiet: luncheon had ended and the Great Hall was empty. All the students had returned to their common rooms for a half-hour break; Hermione and Ron knew; they'd had to shove their way through the throng going in the opposite direction.

"Harry!" called Hermione.. He looked up with hollow, shocked eyes.

Ron forced himself to run all the way down to his friend, nearly knocking him over as he stumbled to a stop one stair above him. "Think, Harry, think!" he urged between gasps, earlier resentment forgotten. "Did you look everywhere you were?"

"Everywhere," Harry said miserably, his eyes fixed on the stone tiles as though he could make the letter materialize. "It was here, I'm sure...when I pulled out my wand. Shit." He ran a hand through his unruly hair, wiping away an angry tear at the same time. "Someone has it."

"The Summoning Charm," said Hermione suddenly from the top of the staircase. Both boys looked up at her in surprise. "Use the Summoning Charm," she repeated impatiently.

"I don't know where it is," said Harry helplessly.

"Just concentrate on it," snapped Hermione, "You did it with your Firebolt."

Harry took a breath and pulled out his wand, closing his eyes. He tried to visualize Sirius's envelope, the worn parchment with his scrawl of handwriting, but he kept seeing the Ministry already tracing the letter, already sending out the Dementors after his godfather...

Focus, focus, focus.

"Accio letter!" he commanded, flicking his wand.

Nothing happened.

"Accio letter!" he repeated, a high note of desperation seeping into his voice.

"Wait," he heard Hermione say. "All three of us, together. Concentrate!"

Harry waited until he heard the others draw breath. "ACCIO LETTER!"

Their raised voices, blended in unison, rang out clearly through the large foyer. But no letter came.

****

Harry Potter fought helpless anger the rest of the day. Astronomy, Charms, History, all of it passed in a blur. The last class came nothing of a surprise to anyone, as firstly Professor Binns never asked what was wrong and secondly everyone else in the room had been fighting tears of boredom themselves. But throughout the remainder of the day, Harry had to deflect the concerned inquiries of Dean Seamus, Neville Longbottom and the Weasley twins, among a few others.

Sirius's tortured eyes, his desperate pleas for mercy as the Dementors had descended on them two years ago were burned permanently into Harry's brain. He could never forgive himself if his godfather was discovered through his own damn carelessness.

"I'm such an idiot," he ground through clenched teeth as he walked with Hermione to the Gryffindor tower. Ron was serving his detention. It had been an impossibly long day. "I'm a such God damn, stupid, piece-of-shit git."

"Don't say that," Hermione hissed softly between one glare and the next at curiously staring younger students. Harry's complete apathy to the world had started strange little rumors like wildfire among the first and second years. No doubt sponsored by Colin Creevy, who still pointed Harry out to friends whenever he could.

Guarded by his friend, Harry managed to make it to the Fat Lady. "Password?"

"Celery," said Harry mechanically.

"My, dear, what's wrong?" asked the Fat Lady as she swung aside.

"Not you, too," muttered Harry as he stepped through.

"Well! Children these days, no manners at all...!"

The room was bustling and full of talk. The fire was kept to a small flame, as the nights were still fairly warm and the many bodies inside the common room were almost enough to pose the threat of overheating through crowding. Harry wearily began pushing through the crowd to the boys' dormitory.

"Oy! Harry!" A hand on his shoulder made Harry turn and look up into Fred's face--or was it George? No, there was George, coming up behind Fred. "Turning in so early?"

"Fred," said Hermione severely, "he's really...really tired..."

"I know, I know," George said, not unkindly but waving a hand impatiently. "Just hear us out, Harry, and you'll be free to go, eh?"

Hermione looked over to where a near-physical dispute had broken out among some younger students. "Hey! Hey, you two, break it up...!" She left the boys with a frustrated, apologetic glance to do her prefect's duty.

"You know our ghost problem?" whispered Fred, tilting his head to the back end of the portrait of the Fat Lady. Harry nodded, feeling interest stir.

"George and I have decided that this simply won't do. Preventing students from creeping out at night! The inhumanity!" George clutched at his heart in mock-grief. Fred grinned wickedly.

"Oh, no, what have you two done?" murmured Harry.

"Nothing you wouldn't in the blink of an eye," George scoffed, careful to keep his voice down. The group had slowly drifted into a quieter corner of the room. "All right, so listen: at the stroke of midnight a...distraction will be set off in the dungeons."

Harry blinked. "Set off...?"

"Peeves is to Jumping Jellybean Bombs..."

"...as bees are to honey," finished Fred.

For the first time all day, Harry started laughing and couldn't stop.

****

Harry waited until the breathing coming from Ron's bed had been deep and steady for several minutes.

"Lumos," whispered Harry. The end of his wand slowly brightened into a warm, soft glow. Harry hoped that the hangings and covers he was under would prevent anyone outside from seeing it.

The sheets of Harry's bed were tossed over his head to form a tent of sorts. The Marauder's Map was spread across his folded legs. Fred and George had warned them that things could go awry, so he had better put his beloved map to good use.

Ron had walked quietly in thirty minutes before midnight: an extraordinarily long detention. Harry was sure he had heard him crying softly. With more than a pang of his conscience he had refrained from sticking his head out and asking what was wrong. Harry had already decided that he had better keep Hermione and Ron out of this one: his friends, he reasoned, would be only more noise than help in searching for Sirius's letter. Of course, Hermione was wonderfully clever and Ron was his best friend...but something in Harry rebelled against the thought of any further company. He wanted to be alone.

A sudden flurry of movement exploded over the Marauder's map. The dots Argus Filch, Mrs. Norris, and Severus Snape were all three moving quickly, the former of the two racing across the school toward the dungeons.

"Yes!" hissed Harry as Peeves zoomed straight through the walls toward the commotion, as far away from the Gryffindor tower as Fred and George could have made it.

Harry threw the covers back, "Nox," and swirled the Invisibility Cloak about himself. He padded softly through the dormitory to the Weasley twins' beds and roused them from feigned sleep.

"Thank God!" whispered George as they ducked beneath the cloak, "I thought I was going to burst!"

Together they stole out of the dormitory under the cover of invisibility. They stopped in the common room in front of the exit. "Still all clear?" asked Fred.

Harry checked the map. "Yeah," he murmured. Severus Snape, Argus Filch, and Mrs. Norris were still bouncing frantically about in the dungeons, no doubt chasing the Jumping Jellybeans and, on occasion, the Peeves dot. For the first time, Harry blessed the poltergeist's knack for worsening an already bad situation.

"All right. Good luck finding your books, Harry," said George.

Harry had fed the twins a carefully concocted tale of misplacing both his Potions and Defense Against the Arts homework. The twins, realizing that these were the first two classes of Harry's day, naturally accepted this as a crisis that justified sneaking out at night for anything other than food or mischief.

"We're going to the kitchens," said Fred as they climbed through the hole in the wall and the portrait of the (thankfully) snoozing Fat Lady swung closed behind them. He looked around at the inside of the cloak. "Bloody marvellous cloak, Harry," he said wistfully.

"Thanks."

George and Fred slipped out from the cloak and began running quietly toward the stairs. "Don't get caught!" hissed Harry after them!

"Don't worry! We never do!"

Harry waited until the twins were out of sight before walking to picture that, according to the Marauder's Map, hid a secret passageway leading down into the marble staircase outside the Great Hall. To Harry's surprise and relief, the secret of the scenic landscape was relatively simple: after a few minutes of experimenting, he found that if one poked the lone apple on the tree in the background once...

To avoid accidents, Harry did away with the Invisibility Cloak and carried it over his arm as he carefully walked down a dizzyingly tall, rickety spiral staircase. The going was slow: Harry was wary of any trick steps or the like. Falling what must have been miles to the hard tiles below was not a notion that tickled his fancy. He finally reached the bottom, surprisingly without mishap. He had to search a while before catching sight of a small silver latch in one corner of the small, dark room. He lifted it, and an entire section of the wall slid away with the soft rumble of stone-on-stone. Harry winced, hurriedly donning the Invisibility Cloak.

He emerged into the foyer beyond the Great Hall, behind the marble staircase.

That's why this one never seemed to move, reflected Harry as a suit of armor travelled with the wall, sliding back into place automatically.

The school was deserted and empty. "Lumos," Harry whispered, unfolding the Marauder's Map and holding his wand to it. Fred Weasley and George Weasley were down by the kitchens. He smiled. Snape and the rest were still as busy as ever. I hope they drop dead from exhaustion, the lot of them, thought Harry sourly. Just as he was about to put the map away something odd caught his eye: Albus Dumbledore was walking through the corridors, heading toward the Rysk's classroom.

This was strange. No teacher except Snape, who practically lived in the dungeons, worked this late in their rooms. And even if any late night visits were exchanged, didn't professors go to the Headmaster's office...?

Harry shoved his glasses up his nose, brow furrowing.

****

Rysk glanced up sharply, startled, as a soft knock came at her door. "Who is it?" she asked warily.

"Me," said a warm, amused, and entirely too familiar voice.

The young witch rolled her grey eyes to the ceiling in a mixed expression of relief and annoyance. Quickly folding up the letter in her hands and shoving it into a drawer, she rose from her desk and walked to the door. She unlocked it and stepped aside to let Albus Dumbledore in.

"Working so late, Carmen?" the Headmaster inquired pleasantly as he stepped through the door, silver beard shimmering in the candlelight. "And with such poor lighting."

Rysk shrugged, backing toward a student's desk and jumping up onto it lithely. "What do you want, Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore's eyebrows rose in gentle surprise. "To inquire on how you're holding up, of course," he said, shutting the door.

"At twelve-fifteen in the morning?" demanded Rysk sarcastically, glancing at the very mundane clock hanging behind her desk.

Dumbledore followed her gaze and smiled. "Ah. You continue to favor more than Muggle clothing, I see."

"The entire damn school's been talking about it," said Rysk sourly. She eyed Dumbledore with suspicion that didn't vanish as she replied, "I'm fine. It's good to be back in touch with what's going on." If she thought the Headmaster missed the sudden edge in her voice, she was sorely mistaken. "Strange to be called 'professor', though."

"Why is that?" asked Dumbledore calmly, continuing to stand where he was as though he couldn't be more comfortable anywhere else.

Rysk laughed. It was a cold and somewhate frightening sound, although it had been meant as a dry chuckle. It was the first thing Harry heard as he pressed his ear up against the door. He jerked back, scuffing his toe against the floor. He winced, but neither Professor 'Harrison' nor Dumbledore heard the scrape.

"It's something you hear all the people from Harvard being called. Educated people."

"You, Carmen," said Dumbledore in a gentle rebuke, "are one of the most educated people I know."

"Really," said the new teacher coolly.

"Yes," replied the Headmaster, not discouraged in the least. "You are well-taught in the ways of reality and hardship. Better yet, you have taken those lessons to heart and used them to your advantage."

There was a silence. Harry realized he was holding his breath and carefully, carefully let it out in a slow sight.

"It doesn't matter. What are you here for?"

"There's no fooling you, is there?" said Dumbledore with a mixture of amusement and pride.

"What are you here for?"

"The letter, Carmen."

Harry's eyes widened and he clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. He couldn't see it, but inside the room Rysk had stood to her feet with a flash of her eyes. "Rysk," she snapped. "Or better yet, Harrison."

"As you like it," replied Dumbledore. "But the letter isn't yours."

Rysk stared hard at the old wizard for a moment before crossing the room to her desk in two strides and taking out the letter. "You never told me about this," she said in a dangerous tone, as though she were taking a snarl and drawing it out into a cold, terse statement. When Dumbledore reached for the torn envelope and its contents she pulled her hand back. "You never told me Lupin was here."

"You never asked," replied Dumbledore good-naturedly.

Rysk's eyes narrowed. "That's not funny, Dumbledore."

"It wasn't meant to be," he answered gravely. "Carmen--"

"You know damn well I've been out of contact for years!" she hissed, emphasizing the words with a flick of Sirius Black's letter. Her American accent, hard and sharp, contrasted starkly with Dumbledore's mellow speech. "I was practically the last to know about what happened at the Triwizard, for gods' sake!"

Outside, Harry's heart had jumped into his throat, beating at three times the normal speed. Rysk had the letter?

"What the hell is going on? How is Black out? Alive?"

"There's no need to swear, Carmen."

"I fucking say there is!" Rysk drew in a sharp breath, recovering her composure. "Dumbledore," she said in an unnerving, dead voice, "if he's not in Azkaban, then I'll go out and kill him myself. I did not risk my--"

"He's innocent, Carmen."

Harry's every muscle was bunched and tense. It took every ounce of self control he had not to rip open the door and tear the letter out of Rysk's hands.

There was a silence. Rysk stared at Dumbledore. "He's innocent," she repeated. She stepped backwards and reached for her desk. Her hand slapped down onto it and her arm tremored as though her legs were about to give out.

"He is. And, if you'll return the letter, I'll make sure you're brought up to date on everything concerning Lupin and the others." Dumbledore's blue eyes had ceased to twinkle behind his spectacles. He spoke gently. "You're causing one Harry Potter a great deal of worry over this."

Oh, God, thought Harry, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching the Invisibility Cloak about himself. He must have heard us this afternoon in the foyer.

"Aren't you just omniscient," she sneered, still using the desk to support her weight. Harry saw that her lips had drained of their color, even though they curled derisively.

"I make it my business to know what goes on in my school," replied Dumbledore amiably. "I'm impressed, by the way. You must have warded it against the Summoning Charm quite well. It withstood three of them combined."

Rysk had recovered. She stared at the Headmaster inscrutably before tossing the envelope to him. She must have enchanted it again, for it sliced through the air as steadily as a flying disc. Dumbledore caught the letter with deft fingers. "Thank you, Carmen." He tucked it inside his robes. "I'll see this is returned to Mr. Potter." He turned and made to quit the room, but paused at the door. "You've had no trouble with any of the other professors?"

"No." There was a strange note in her voice. "No trouble."

"Good." Harry quickly moved aside and flattened himself against the wall as the doorknob turned. "Good night, Professor Harrison," with a nod.

Rysk said nothing. Dumbledore pushed the door open and stepped through, but before he could close it, "Dumbledore."

The Headmaster looked over his shoulder. "Yes?" Harry held his breath; he was so close to Dumbledore he could reach out and touch his beard.

"Fuck you."

Harry was sure his face turned blue with the effort not to break out into hysterical, shocked laughter.

Dumbledore's eyes danced again. "Spoken like a true American," he chuckled, and closed the door as Rysk turned away to her desk, so that the last thing Harry saw was her outlandish hair.