DISCLAIMER: Once again, in case any of you just now crawled out from underneath a very heavy rock, or perhaps were studying polar bears in the northernmost poles, I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER!! I AM NOT JK Rowlings, and god help us all if I was, because knowing me Harry probably would have died in the first book and I never would have sold it, and millions upon millions of people everywhere would wander the earth like a lost twin, wondering what is missing from their lives. Oh, the horror.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

YAWNING AND STRETCHING

One's own death can be an easy thing to push to the back of the mind. It doesn't need to be forced; it goes quietly, like a humiliated child. The mind can be easily fooled when it comes to matters of death. It is eager to believe anything its owner tells it. It will believe the lies it tells itself, and ignore the whisperings of the body. Like a subliminal message, though neither seen nor hear or acknowledged, the thought is there, humming always in the background: I am going to die, I am not going to die, I am doing to die, I can't really be…

Bill and Charlie were laying on their backs in a clearing behind Zeta later that evening, their heads resting in the palms of their hands. It was a neglected Quidditch field, so neglected that one wouldn't know what it was, except three hoops jutted unnaturally out of the growth at both ends. Grass had broken through imported sand, soft and green. Here and there a tree had grown.

Bill looked up at the winking stars and the nearly full moon, wreathed by the shadowed leaves of two trees. It reminded him of the backyard of the Burrow. Bill remembered the chilly evenings they would spend near the pond, a two-year-old Percy nuzzled into his side, Charlie's prepubescent voice making up stories about monsters in the forest, waiting for a gnome to wander stupidly over his chest. When a poor, idiotic thing did, Charlie would leap up and in one graceful movement send it soaring over the hedge. Then Percy would giggle and Bill would pat his head. Percy had been a sweet little baby; perhaps a bit less goofy and imaginative than your average child, but a sweetheart all the same. And Bill heard his mother on the breeze, saw her, as big as a cow with the twins, bellowing from the back door that it was Percy's bedtime.

Memories of childhood fought bravely, but the fear of death was quietly relentless. Bill had never felt so in tune with his body. Inside he could feel his heart and lungs and brain, yawning, stretching, fluffing pillows of morality, preparing for an eternal nap. Though he no longer felt the heaviness of his curse, he felt the weight of his ending life. It did not show outwardly, was not even the first thing on his mind, for something so vast and frightening was easy to tuck away and ignore.

"It's nice out," Charlie said, "Did you know that the Gamma colony got funding for an indoor swimming pool? I expect my staff will be tearing down our door tomorrow, wondering why we don't have one. I'll have to tell them, keggers or swimming pools. I know which one they'll choose," and then laughed uncomfortably.

Bill wasn't going to answer. He knew it was Charlie-speak for Bill, you're awfully quiet… are you still breathing? and besides, he was enjoying the silence. The last week had been a blur to him, fighting with Charlie, fighting with his body. Right now was peaceful and nice, or so he told himself.

Save for the hum of his fear.

His words slipped out, like a smooth and unhurried hiccup, seeming not to form in his brain, but in the back of his throat, driven forward: "Charlie I want to see Fred before I go."

The silence was thick between them, but Death was hissing apathetically in Bill's ear.

"You've got the rest of your life to see Fred," Charlie replied after a minute. It was a determined, yet desperate statement. Bill knew that beside him, Charlie was trembling with apprehension and fear, but would blame the warm night air before he would admit it.

"I want to see him before. Just is case." Bill didn't know where the words were coming from.

"Don't say that. If you say that it means you think I'll fuck up," Charlie's voice was hurt, "You think I won't be able to do it, don't you?"

"I don't think that," Bill said only half convincingly. "If everything goes right…" He faltered, sighed, and tried again. "God damn it Charles. If doesn't work it won't be any fault of yours. I don't want you to worry about me. We're doing this for Percy, and Mum and Dad and Wendy and Fred and the whole rest of the goddamn world. I don't care if I live or die."

A lie, of course, a lie.

"I'm fine," said Charlie in a strained voice. "I'm going to kill the cunt before he even knows what hit him, and you're going to be fine."

"I know," Bill whispered. He sat and coughed wetly. His hand came up just in time and met a warm, thick liquid that sprayed into his palm. He tried to wipe it away on the grass before Charlie saw, but the moon was too bright.

Charlie grabbed him by the wrist, pulling his palm close. "What is that?"

Bill looked down, then back up at Charlie, pleading silently: Let it be.

"No…" his younger brother moaned, squeezing the wrist tightly, "Tell me that is something else, Bill."

"You're hurting me, Charlie. It's blood. Let go." Bill said shamefully, feeling strangely like he had done something wrong. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" asked Charlie, releasing him and lying back down.

"Sorry for…" Bill didn't know what to say. Sorry for dying? That sounded so melodramatic, but he knew no other way to describe it. He felt like he was letting everyone down, getting sicker by the day, amidst all the planning and partying and drinking. The others- Charlie's roommates- at no personal risk, were excited for the fall of Voldemort and could speak of nothing else. Bill knew he was being silly, but he couldn't help but feel that perhaps if he were a little stronger, if he were a little more determined to live, he could fight the curse and win, and not disappoint those around him. Help Charlie in defeating Voldemort. "I don't know what for," he finished. He wiped the blood away. It stuck, dark and accusing, in the grass.

"How long?" Charlie choked. "How long have you been coughing up blood?"

"A few days."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"No reason to."

Charlie was tense. His eyes stared dead and straight forward at the black sky. His nostrils flared. His chest rose and fell sharply, then steadied again. Bill wondered when this block of communication had lodged itself between them. It was as if neither felt they should burden each other, and so were burdened instead with silence.

"We've got a little less than a week," Charlie said, turning to him, "Are you going to make it?"

Oh, what a question. Bill had no answer, from his brain or throat or elsewhere. He took the question and tucked it away in the little cranny his brain, next to his fear of death.

"Let's go back inside," he said, and, with humiliation rising like a fist in his throat, "You've got to help me up."

A tiny man named Fitzie, the same man that Remus had met weeks earlier at the gate, watched the brothers laboring back across the yard from the window-seat of his flat. It was only he and the teenaged werewolf, as he didn't count the unconscious, whiskey-logged bodies of Ian and Scott. He turned to Sean and shook his head. "Chuck's brother is in bad shape."

"Yeah," Sean muttered, his face nor voice committal, "They've been hell to live with. Charlie and Bill fight constantly and Scott and Ian are always drunk."

"We're all drunks," said Fitzie, his speech soft from Firewater, "All drunk on something, all trying to escape from something, all angry at something. All need to prove to ourselves that we can overcome something bigger than ourselves. That's why we tend to dragons. Bigger, angrier than we are, and when we subdue them, we consider it a job well done. And we think we reward ourselves for this 'job well done' with drink, when really, the drink, as well as the roar of the dragon, block out the pleas of our souls, crying out for something better." Fitzie raised his eyebrows, as if amazed with himself for such insight. He snorted, scoffing at his own musings, but his eyes were adrift, dreaming. He shrugged and took a swig of his drink. "Either that, or we do it cause it's easy. Round up pigs, toss 'em to the dragons, shovel their shit, change the hay, get drunk, do it all over again. Or hell, maybe we just like the dragons."

"You know, the reason I came to see you tonight," said Sean, moving away from the window and throwing himself over the back of the sofa, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, "Was to escape Remus' endless reflective pycho-babble."

"So?"

"So I'm getting the same from you. Can we talk about something else?"

Fitzie reared back, but recovered and smiled. "Well! Aren't we lacking social skills. Had I anyone else to talk to, you'd be out on your smooth little ass, I want you to know that. What do you want to talk about?"

"Alright, we can stay on subject," said Sean bitterly, "I miss my family. I want to go home, but that old were-hole won't let me. I'm sick of being stuck here, listening to Remus try to teach the stupid Death Curse to Charlie while his brother sleeps twenty hours a day and Scott's drunk laugh is so loud it hurts-"

"Merlin's Beard, kid, shut up!" Fitzie protested, holding up his tiny hand. "They're taking care of you. I've talked to that Remus. He's a fine man. You're lucky he's taken you under his wing. Imagine what it must be like for them, planning what they're planning while the little ungrateful brat Sean sits back, rolls his eyes and scoffs at their efforts."

Shock surely registered on Sean's face, but it drained quickly away. "I didn't ask to come here," he said stubbornly. "He dragged me."

Fitzie turned back to the window, looking out into the night, shaking his head. "You're a spoiled brat, Sean. Bet you think you're a real bad ass, don't you? I should give you something to whine about. I know that Remus would never do it."

"Ha! You? You're half my size."

Fitzie roared with laughter. "I bet when it came down to it, you'd cry like a little girl who's gotten a lolly caught in her pigtails. Let me tell you a story. Imagine starting your first year at Hogwarts being perfectly portioned, but only three foot three inches tall."

"You're not that short."

"Not anymore," Fitzie said, "I'm five foot, thank you. But goddamn three feet I was, believe me. And bright red hair and a voice to match my body. Could have broken glass. And the funniest accent you've ever heard."

"You sound like anyone else."

"You think you've got problems! Ha! Let me tell you something, Sean. My father was a ornery, sour-tempered, goldless leprechaun!"

"You're a leprechaun? You're much too big," said Sean skeptically. "And you don't sound very Irish."

"Only half, Sean. Only half. My father loved me to death, until I was ten, when I had a growth spurt. On the day I was able to look down at him, he gave me the whooping of my life and sent me off to live with my mother without another word. And if that wasn't bad enough, my mother was a French-Canadian Squib who was living in New York." Fitzie laughed uproariously at his own misfortune. Sean didn't think it was funny at all.

"And somehow I ended up a wizard. That woman beat me all over the city when I got my letter. Can you imagine? And she was a fuckin' enormous- I think I might be one fourth gorilla- and I lived there for a year before they sent me to Hogwarts, three foot tall, my high-pitched accent flattened and perverted by New York City, speaking half my words in French, two black eyes, and dressed in the ill-fitting old clothes of my father… Lord. Thank god for school robes and long periods between the trips home. My wife is an inch taller than I, and to this day I'm afraid that I'll grow again and be a divorcee."

Fitzie laughed again. Sean reflected. Maybe he was rather lucky. He'd certainly never been hit in his life, not even by his older brothers, nor had he ever had to wear any of their old clothes. Upon his first day at Hogwarts his robes and books had been brand new. Yes, he was werewolf, which was definitely no fun, but he always had his Mum and Dad and his nurse there with him. At school, he transformed in big, private room in the hospital wing. Even so, Sean was not about to admit to Fitzie that yes, perhaps, he might be a spoiled little ingrate, and so instead he remained silent.

"Yes, I think it would do you great good to have your ass kicked by a man my size." The half-leprechaun said in a vaguely challenging manner.

Sean snorted. "You know I'm a werewolf, right?"

Fitzie smiled evilly, looking him up and down. "Not right now, you aren't."

"Well, if you want to get seriously hurt," Sean replied, "go ahead, little man. Try it."

Fitzie finished his drink in one gulp and tossed the glass over his shoulder, where it shattered on the wall. He jumped to his little feet and rubbed his tiny hands together. In his smirk it was apparent that he meant business.

Sean ran.

In the apartment down the hall, Remus met Charlie at the front door. Bill was limp and unconscious in his arms.

"You should have Apparated," Remus said. He took half of Bill from his panting brother they laid him on the sofa.

"I never learned how," Charlie told him, "I mean, to take another person with me. I shouldn't have taken him outside, anyway."

"Yes, you should have. He wanted to go."

"He told me he wants see Fred."

"Then I'll take him to see Fred when I leave," said Remus, holding the scrap of robe to Bill's cough. A great black clot came up, and Bill nearly choked on it. Like a professional, Remus gently scraped it from his tongue with the cloth and disposed of it.

Charlie turned away and nearly retched. "Oh god. Voldemort is a filthy fucking liar. He's going to be dead long before Friday, isn't he?"

"Absolutely not." Remus dabbed at Bill's face with a clean rag. "In order for him to want to spill, he's got to suffer. He's suffering."

A scream rang out from down the hall, followed by maniacal laughter and a loud thud. Remus perked his ears. "That sounded like Sean."

Charlie shrugged. "Just a party. I wouldn't worry about it. Remus… What if Bill does tell? About our plans, and Harry."

Remus straightened up and narrowed his eyes. "I thought you said he didn't know anything."

"Not that I know of. Not that he's told me. But honestly, I'm starting to worry. He's got a weak spot now. He could be tempted-"

"Stop."

"Stop what? I don't want to believe it either, Remus. He's my only big brother, for Merlin's sake. I want to trust him, but we have to think about these-"

"I SAID STOP!" Remus went to him, stopping very close to his face. He stared at Charlie with frightening intensity, jabbing a finger in Charlie's chest. Charlie had never seen such a dead seriousness in someone's eyes before. It scared him and he backed away. Remus followed, poking him harder. "Don't." He said heatedly, "Don't you start questioning what your brother says. Once we start to mistrust each other, all is lost."

"But Percy-"

"This is not Percy! This is Bill. If you can't trust him then you sure as hell can't trust me! So why are you telling me this?" Remus seemed startled by his own sudden viciousness. He stepped away, turned his back to Charlie, took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. The moon is pulling."

"I understand."

Remus turned to face him again, his face flushed. "Still, the fact that you think that your brother would give away all of us to save his own life infuriates and frightens me. Do you remember the scars I showed you earlier? The gashes?"

"Of course."

"I told my friends I wanted to be alone. I told them it was because I was tired and didn't want to run around all night, but really it was because I wanted to brood over the fact that the full moon fell on my birthday. Voldemort came to me that night, minutes before I was about to transform. He brought me cake dripping with red frosting, the color of blood, sang me Happy Birthday and laughed at my pain. Sang me Happy Birthday! He told me it would never happen again if I would just agree to have the mark on my arm. Those gashes, Charlie, were my self administered punishment, because I regretted not taking him up on his offer. Bill is being very brave, Charlie. He could have told weeks ago. Do not doubt him."

Charlie was rightly ashamed, but didn't know what to do but change the subject. He could not meet Remus' piercing gaze when he said quietly, nearly under his breath, "I think that Fred probably went home. To the Burrow."

"I'll take Bill there on my way home."

"I would go myself, but-"

"-no, no… you need to stay here. You have to master the Curse." Remus smiled just slightly, "And concentrate on not getting this place shut down."

Charlie managed a crooked smile. He sat on the sofa, took Bill's head into his lap, and slept.

Some people were wondering how Sean knows the Death Curse. Waaaaaaay back in chapter 4, I established that in my little universe, because of the desperate state of the world, Dumbledore has given in and is offering Auror classes at Hogwarts, which include learning the Unforgivable Curses. Like I told Steph, I forget that not everyone knows this story like the back of their hand as I do. My apologies. Also, you should review. I said it nice and calmly :D But please, I don't want to hear anything like "funny u called this chap yawning n stretching, because that's just what it had me doing." Ha haahahaha…