"I-I'm fine." Sirius looked down at the floor and ran an unsteady hand through his hair. He forced a smile. "I just need a shower. And then sleep."
Remus slowly let his hand drop. "Yes," he agreed, adamantly keeping his gaze on his friend's, "Take a shower, Padfoot."
Lupin did not collapse onto the sofa after Sirius disappeared into the bathroom, despite the fact that every nerve in his body screamed for sleep. Instead he paced the length of his living room for far longer than his legs should have been able to support him. It took even longer than that for the sound of running water to come from behind the closed door. The former professor glanced down at his robes, which were dirty and coarse and uncomfortable; struck by a thought, he walked into the guest room that Sirius used. He emerged with a pile of clean robes, tested the doorknob to the bathroom and, finding it unlocked, pushed it open.
He was hit full in the face by a burst of hot air and steam. The curtain of the bath was drawn. Remus deposited the robes on the counter before the fogged mirror. He glanced at the shower; Sirius did not seem to have heard him. Lupin opened his mouth to let him know about the clean clothes, but the words died on his lips when he saw the wrinkled parchment lying on top of Black's dirty robes. He stole another furtive glance at the curtain before picking it up and seeing the handwriting that was vaguely familiar. It was an unsigned letter, but the very brevity of the message and the appearance of the mark of the Order in response to a few murmured words confirmed his suspicions. With a troubled expression, he folded it along the deep creases and left the thick air.
Lupin was asleep on the couch when Sirius staggered from the bathroom. His fresh red robes did nothing to conceal how thin he had become. He studied his friend for a moment before crossing the living room to Remus's rich oak desk, one of the few luxuries that his friend allowed himself. Black fell into the chair. His legs were still shaking, and the color in his face was but a lingering effect of the shower. Indeed, he was already becoming pale again. The Auror was, quite simply, in a state of exhaustion. Coupled with this was a festering hysteria that had been brutally suppressed for the past hour and a half. It was a small wonder that he could barely pull a parchment and quill from one of the drawers without spilling everything else inside.
Behind him, Remus jerked violently and started awake, instinctively biting on his tongue to muffle a cry. The cold sweat had not stopped forming on his temples and the last tatters of a nightmare were still fluttering across his mind when he sat up and stared at Sirius's back. He stood without making a noise and padded over the carpet to stand behind him. Black's hand trembled as he tried to write.
"No, Sirius." Sirius twisted sharply about when Lupin's hand came down to obscure the parchment. Their eyes locked. "It's not safe."
Black's mouth worked. "Y...yes it is."
"How do you know? How do you even know you can reach her?" prodded Lupin gently.
His condition impaired his judgment and loosened his tongue. "I...she sent me--" He cut off, too late.
"This?" Remus reached into his robes and produced Rysk's letter. Black's eyes widened with a sharp intake of breath, then he surged out of the chair and snatched at it. Lupin stumbled back. " 'Received your letter. Potter is fine'," he recited. "You wrote her?"
"Give me that."
"When did you write her? Never mind; that doesn't matter; you can't now."
"I have to." Black's voice was shaking, a sharp contrast to Lupin's calm monotone. "Remus, please, I have to make sure that it wasn't her."
"It was her, Sirius," he said tiredly, letting the hand holding the parchment aloft drop to his side. "It was her, and you know it."
"Then I have to make sure she's all right!"
"You can't; you don't know what's happened to her by now. She could have betrayed us to Voldemort--"
Before Lupin could blink Sirius had lunged forward, deep into his personal space. "No," he hissed, tearing the letter from Lupin's hand. "That's why I have to help her; I have to keep her!"
"Padfoot, look at yourself. Be reasonable. She was already lost when she was at Hogwarts. She'll fall, and she'll fall willingly, if it's for her own survival."
"SHUT UP!"
Black made a sudden, threatening move forward as he snarled, and a combination of nerves, exhaustion, and anger made Remus jump aside, sweeping his leg into the back of his friend's legs. Sirius fell to his knees and stayed there. There was a long silence before Lupin closed his eyes in regret and kneeled down before the other man. "Sirius. You can't help her."
Black looked up from the floor into the werewolf's eyes. "You can't stop me."
No. Remus couldn't and he knew it. He bit his lip and cocked his head, a sensation that was both a suspicion and a realization creeping over his heart. "Do you love her?"
There was no hesitation in his reply. "I hate her."
"Go to sleep, Sirius. You need to sleep."
Laura resisted the urge to look sidelong at Longbottom. The two of them were walking down Diagon Alley, allowing witches and wizards to weave between them as though unaware of each other. Ranone had left her office five minutes before Minister Fudge's secretary would take his lunch break. They had stepped into the midday throng and strolled until finding one another, careful not to make eye contact. Now they gazed straight ahead as they walked abreast, moving their lips as little as possible as they spoke.
"All I can say is that I hope your wife forged everything perfectly."
"She did. We wouldn't just give you something like a court order without--"
They were forced apart by a particularly thick stream of people. Laura lengthened her stride, making sure she was ahead of Longbottom, before stopping to look in the window of Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. The dress robe displayed there was fetching enough to make her interest genuine and pluck a string of regret (not the first or last by any means) that she didn't have enough such occasions to bother buying it. When she saw Frank's reflection pass by she straightened and walked after him. Her pace evened out as she reached and maintained a position just behind and to the right of his shoulder.
"I know," she muttered just audibly, picking up their conversation as though it had never been interrupted. "But you know he'll be checking it sixteen ways from the center."
From the corner of her eye, Laura saw the blonde head nod. "I have to turn up here," he said, very quietly. "I'll send Rosie to you tonight."
"Okay," she replied, checking her watch, still not glancing at him. A dry expression touched her lips. "Bye, Winston."
"What?"
The small restaurant where he would be meeting his wife Amanda was approaching. "Have you read 1984?"
To Laura's mild surprise, Longbottom made a show of reaching into his pocket and dropping a few Knuts and Sickles, just outside of The Warlock. The seamlessness of his performance left no doubt that he had once been an exceptional spy and Auror. "No," he murmured as he dropped to one knee and picked up the coins, the faintest hint of confusion in his voice.
Laura thought of his torture by the Dark Lord, seven sickening days long, and his trapped years of insanity at St. Mungo's.
"You should," she answered, passing him as though he didn't exist.
****
Harry tapped the butt of his pen against his lips, resisting the urge to suck on it as he would a Sugar Quill (dangerously habit-forming things). His Potions homework was laid out before his crossed legs on the bed. The question was a relatively simple one: Write a recipe for a potion that will dissolve stone. List ingredients in order and with instructions.
Easy; yes, very easy. But Harry's experiences with Snape had developed the paranoia that was telling him now that this had to be the hardest problem on the parchment. The nib of his pen had only made a hesitant mark when a knock came at his door.
His profound annoyance was effaced by surprise. Nobody ever knocked. "Uh, come in."
The door swung inwards to reveal his Aunt Petunia on the threshold. "You missed lunch," she informed him stiffly. Harry raised his eyebrows without meaning to. He wondered a moment later if he had picked that up from Snape or Rysk. He gazed at her for a moment, nonplused. He was certainly never welcomed at the table--the Dursleys only called him down (every now and then) so that they could say they didn't starve him. Which didn't matter; with the stash of food he would soon be receiving steadily from Hermione, he was hardly going to go hungry.
"All right...sorry?"
Petunia's lips pinched together, adding even further to the overall pinchedness of her face. "There's some salad left in the refrigerator if you're hungry."
"Okay," he replied, drawing out the first syllable in confusion. "Thanks."
His aunt turned her stick-thin back to him and began to go. Harry blinked after her, shifting from his position. Hard wood dug into his back through his pillow as he leaned back against it. Harry jerked upright, and called after her, impulsively, "Um...!" She looked back. Harry hesitated, then threw caution to the wind. "Did...did my mum live here? In this house? Ever?"
This time it was Petunia who was caught off-guard. A pained, veiled expression crossed her face, an expression that Harry had not expected to see, before the color fled from the thin line of her mouth, driven away by indignant anger. "What makes you think I would allow such freakishness in my own house?" she snapped.
Harry stiffened. It took every ounce of will in his body, and then some, not to begin shouting at his aunt. He slowly let out his breath and unclenched his fists. "It was only a question."
"You ask too many." She looked down her long nose at him. Harry, seized by frustration, bounded off of his bed and across the room, stopping an arm's length away.
"If you won't tell me, I can find out the other way," he threatened--no, bluffed. "They answer all of my questions."
Petunia was already shocked by his aggressiveness, but his play on the Dursley xenophobia worked like magic. Her mouth worked before snapping shut like a trap; it seemed to stay that way even as she spoke. "She did. For a short time before she..." Her face twisted. "Before you."
Thank you. You always knew how to make me feel like gum on your shoe, sneered Harry inwardly as she walked away.
He closed the door and leaned against it, thinking. There was more to Aunt Petunia's answer; there had to be something she didn't want him to know, just as they hadn't wanted him to know about the wizarding world, otherwise she would not have told him so quickly to prevent him from finding out the other way. She obviously believed that Harry could access the secrets of his own life by waving a wand or peering into a crystal ball or something equally silly and obscure. He sighed. If only.
"Heh." Salad in the refrigerator. The oddness of that exchange rivaled
his meeting with Laura Ranone this morning. He put a hand to his forehead,
fingers lingering on his scar. He wouldn't think about it now, else his head
just might explode.
Another hour of Potions homework passed. Harry grew more and more bored with every minute until he could not have finished Snape's assignment if his life depended on it. He threw his pen at the wall across the room and flopped backwards with a sigh.
"Ow!" He bounced back up and rubbed the base of his skull. Maybe that's not the best place for it, he thought, glaring at his pillow. A familiar flutter in his open window told him that Hedwig was returning. "Hey, girl," he coaxed as she flew back in.
She ignored his outstretched arm and flew to the top of her cage instead, giving Harry a look with her yellow eyes that clearly said, I'm still not talking to you.
"Well," he groused, half-serious, as he got off the bed to retrieve the pen, "You could at least have some sympathy."
"Hoo."
My owl has hurt my feelings, he thought with a sour twist of his mouth, bending on one knee and prying the loose floorboard up to throw Snape's work in with the rest of the Unspeakables. As the materials shifted, a bit of white flashed through the layers of yellowed parchment. Harry reached in and pulled Rysk's roll of papers out. He flipped through it as he straightened, absently pushing the plank back into place with his foot.
It was essentially a collection of photocopies, fascinating in that it seemed to compiled of ones from survival guides and self-defense books. There were several methods for starting a fire in the wilderness, and only one of them involved a match. (Actually, there were instructions for splitting a match into two). A list of universal distress signals, both Muggle and magical; ways of finding or producing water (including one very advanced spell that would conjure up a stream); plants that were safe to eat; how to kill an animal; how to cook an animal (and which ones could be eaten raw); and all manner of knot-tying, shelter-building trivia with pictures for everything. The next section dealt with more familiar things: how to break a window. How to force a door (if picking the lock would not work, that is). How to load and shoot a gun. Where to find drug dealers.
What made this second part most disconcerting was that more than half of its contents were written in Rysk's hand. Unbidden, the frightened face of a blonde girl flashed pale towards him from the shadows of a strange alley as a hand reached for a knife at his feet. The image faded, leaving only a heavy, dizzy feeling in his head that confused Harry for a moment as to whether or not he was still trapped in Dumbledore's pensieve.
Two brief pages devoted to magic: odd but surprisingly useful potions, their ingredients, where to find them and how to gather them; a spell for an invisible barrier; how to turn any creature large enough into a loyal mount. Harry was still amused to no end by a quick note written in next to this last one: Don't even try this on hippogriffs.
But it was the final sheaf of paper that truly disturbed Harry. The illustrations of nondescript men and women with arrows pointing to the jugular or temple or pressure points, depending on the passage accompanying them, became a shiver down his spine that he didn't quite understand. The text included how to strangle someone, how to break an arm or rib, and what part of the throat could be impaled by two or three fingers (although using a sharp edge was preferred). Harry had experimentally prodded himself in the solar plexus after reading everything for the first time. He was sick for several moments afterwards imagining what a punch or, worse yet, a stab would feel like.
Yes, there was something definitely nettling about such violence written out so coldly, or more specifically, written out so coldly for him. Holding the stapled papers in his hand and feeling their weight, Harry could not shake the feeling that Rysk was watching him even now. It was as though she had given him this information, foreseeing that he would be needing it even when he himself hadn't the faintest clue what the future held for him.
A flash of black ink as he let the hand holding the packet fall to his side. He quickly brought it up again and stared at the very back. There, in the bottom corner, was a message in the handwriting that was slowly becoming familiar, neither messy nor neat.
Run every day, Potter. You need to get used to running.
****
Harry, wrote Ron.
The redhead leaned forward on his elbows, sticking the feather of his quill in his mouth before remembering that it wasn't spun of sugar. Bloody things are addictive, he thought absently, looking out the window of his room.
He was sitting at his desk, back at the Burrow, but as of yet his father was not. It was eight o'clock, and the summer evening was still lit by the sun. Ron was worried; his dad usually returned from the Ministry at six or six-thirty, seven on late nights. He sighed. It was unbelievably good to be home, even if the tearful reunion (tearful mostly on his mother's part) had been a bit uncomfortable. Seeing Ginny scream, "MUM!" and run into their mother's arms had been a strange relief in more ways than one. But the fact that Arthur Weasley's hand on the family clock still pointed at 'Work' was depressing. What was Dad doing? Ron wanted answers. While Mum readily puzzled over who would be after Ron's life, she refused to discuss Percy.
He sighed and set his quill to parchment again.
I'm home. And I'm okay. Everyone's okay. You're not going to believe who took care of us while
He stopped. Perhaps it wouldn't come as a surprise at all to his best friend; Mundungus had said that he knew Harry. Harry always seemed in the know. Feeling his faint, ever-present resentment more sharply for a moment, Ron continued,
...while we were in hiding: Mundungus Fletcher. You know him, right? Nice chap. But he was a crying wreck when he came to bring us home. I thought he'd gone buggy. He said something about we couldn't understand what almost happened. (I'm really not supposed to tell anyone about him, but I guess it's safe to tell you). Anyway, I still don't know who's trying to kill me, or if they're still trying to, and it's driving me bloody mad. I don't know why I was ever jealous of you; having someone after your head isn't really much fun.
I've missed a lot. What do you know about Percy? Mum won't say a word and I have a feeling Dad's not coming home until I'm in bed. If I can even sleep tonight. You're testifying, right? Has the Ministry said anything to you?
"Ah!"
Ron jerked around and stared at the thin wall that separated Ginny's room from his. He went out into the hall and knocked on her door. "Gin?" No answer. "Hey, stupid, you all right?"
"Fine," came the reply a moment later. Ron frowned. Even muffled by the door, something about her voice sounded wrong. He twisted the handle and pushed.
His sister standing by her bed, bent forward as though in pain with her hand clutching the area directly beneath and between her breasts. (Her breasts? When did Ginny get breasts?) "Gin?"
"I said I'm fine!" she snapped, straightening. "Would you get out?"
Ron's eyes narrowed. Her reaction was typical, but a dissonant chord rang
somewhere within it. "Bloody Merlin" he muttered as he turned and closed
the door, "Don't have to get so snappy."