Hospital stays do not provide for late sleep in the mornings: a Healer came and woke me up at eight o' clock in the morning, chirping happily that I shouldn't be sleeping my day away. I seriously considered throwing my pillow at her, but realised it would only get me more chirping and lecturing, so I sat up, wondering where the closest cup of coffee was located.

"Coffee," I rasped, sounding like a demented zombie.

"No, no, no: you can't have coffee: you've damaged your lungs," the Healers chattered, folding blankets or whatever it was Healers did when not tending to their patients.

"No, I haven't: I'm bloody fine, alright?" I snapped angrily. "But I can't bloody promise you'll be alright unless there's coffee within the next ten minutes."

Looking mildly disapproving, the Healer bustled off and returned seven minutes and thirty seconds later with a steaming cup of coffee. Just to prove that I was fine, I'd gotten up in the mean time and had strapped on the wrist-sheath, shouldered my cloak and was flipping through my books when the door opened. After inhaling the coffee, I ignored her claims that I needed to go back to bed, and headed out the door, searching for someone to point me towards Hermione.

"I believe she's down the corridor, over there. Third door on the left," a helpful Healer told me, smiling, "Go gently though; we've a lot of patients here who need their sleep."

"Thank you." I said, before walking as quickly as I could down the corridor.

My fingers trembled slightly as I prepared to knock on the door. It occurred to me that I didn't even know whether or not she was awake, and hesitated for a moment. What if I woke her up and she was hurt and got angry with me? What if she blamed me for the attacks? I shook myself, annoyed at what I had been thinking: so what if she blamed me, I could always explain what had happened. I only needed to see if she was alright before getting someone to contact Vincent and Frederic to tell them where I was.

I will not say what I'm thinking, I told myself sternly. If I did, I'd be blurting out exactly how I felt about her, and I owed myself a bit more dignity than that. Vowing not to make a fool of myself more than usual, I swallowed my panicked thoughts and knocked decisively on the door.

"Come in," someone answered from the other side.

I opened the door and stuck my head through the crack, just to make sure she knew it was me when I entered. As the door shut behind me, I tried not to stare: she was paler than I thought she'd be, but looking a lot better than she had after the Graphorn attack. With a bandage across her shoulder and a healing scratch running over her cheek, in the middle of a bed that looked much too large, she seemed so small and vulnerable. She smiled at me, and it took all of my restraint not to let all my vows fly right there.

"Oh, it's you. How are you doing?" she asked, trying to sit up straighter.

"Better than you are, it seems," I managed, sitting down uninvited in a vacant chair. "Which brings me to the next logical question: how are you feeling?"

"Just like I felt after being trampled by a Graphorn," she grimaced, "But not as painful. My shoulder hurts, and I think I inhaled some smoke, but other than that, I'm fine."

"Good." I said before I could stop myself, but then I remembered I was allowed to be polite to her now that we had our truce.

"I'm confused about something, though," she spoke up, startling me out of my thoughts.

"What's that?"

"Why did they stop?" she looked troubled. "There were only four of us, and then of them, not counting that redhead-woman, so they outnumbered us. They lit all those fires, but not the green one."

"No, they didn't," I agreed quietly, letting her ramble and wishing she'd come to a conclusion without me in it.

"They didn't light it, but you did," she said, arriving at a conclusion I didn't like at all, since it was correct. "You lit it: I saw you light it, but you didn't say anything.. Your lips didn't move. How?"

In four simple sentences, she had done exactly what I didn't want her to do. She'd realised I'd lit the fire, but also that I'd done so without saying anything. It would be increasingly difficult to get out of this one without arousing her suspicion as well as keeping the lies at a minimum: I'd grown sick of lying, and by the time I was back in school, I prepared to tell my friends about what had really been going on for over a year. Try as I might, I couldn't just blankly lie to Hermione's face, no matter how much I needed to. Opting to tell a much, much slimmed down version of the truth, I cleared my throat.

"I don't know," I said, in complete honesty. "I was just standing there, and I got so angry that something in my head snapped, and I just seemed to know what to do. Now, afterwards, I can't even remember clearly what I did."

And that was, more or less, the truth: I could remember the thin, green line of fire, and the rising flames, but I couldn't remember just how I'd conjured them up. They'd just appeared, and all I'd gotten from the experience were blistered fingers and a slight headache. Hermione stared at me with slight suspicion in the quirk of her eyebrows, but I put on a carefully arranged expression of confused innocence, something I'd become quite good at.

"You can't." it wasn't even a question, it was a statement.

"No. It's the same as with the Graphorn, I'm afraid: I can only remember getting really angry and then things just happened. I think it's a bit like the first magic you ever do," I shrugged, spinning on my amnesia-theory. "Most of the time, it's strong emotions, like anger, fear or pain that makes you preform your first bit of magic. For example, my first magic done on my own was when I fell down from a pear-tree and slashed up my ribcage from my shoulder to my hip when I was five: if I hadn't used some magic to make me fall slower, I'd have been skewered on the sharp pole I fell on instead of just injured. It might have been the same thing, only I now know how to control my magic better."

"I couldn't have put it better myself, Zabini, though I might have skipped some of the gruesome details," an amused and much familiar voice said from the doorway.

"No you wouldn't," I said, turning in my chair and wondering how Vincent had gotten here so quickly. "You would have elaborated on the gruesome details ad nauseum, until she had to vomit. And don't try to deny it."

"That was an almost scholarly explanation," he continued, stepping into the room uninvited. "Where did you learn to do that, I wonder."

"Your endlessly spewed up lectures, where else?" I grumbled. "I had information spilling out of my ears by the end of them: where's Frederic?"

"Chasing female Healers down the halls, pretending to be sick," Vincent sighed and rolled his eyes. "He will never grow up. I got an owl an hour ago, saying you were in St. Mungo's from the Headmaster, but only after I'd searched the house."

"Well, excuse me, but I didn't exactly reckon with the Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley," I snapped, getting annoyed. "I'll send them a note next time, telling them in advance not to bother, should I?"

"You should have listened when I warned you then, though you handled yourself well. Ms Granger, I hope your health will improve before term starts," Vincent said, positively cheerful for being him. "I'm going to have to borrow Zabini now, and I don't think he's coming back, so I apologise in advance. Have a nice day."

He took hold of my arm and dragged me out the room as I tried not to be too shocked at the image of Vincent Lucas, scariest professor this side of Durmstrang, wishing someone a nice day. I kept having visions of Voldemort handing out flowers and wishing it was Valentine's Day. The last thing I saw before Vincent kicked the door closed was Hermione surprised and slightly shocked expression, staring at me just wishing she could ask the questions she wanted.

"You're an idiot, anyone ever tell you that?" I asked as I tried to keep my balance, being dragged down the corridor.

"Once, but they seem to prefer titles such as bastard, scoundrel, evil git and, on one odd occasion, vagabond," he shrugged it off calmly. "What were you doing explaining yourself to Granger? I thought you wanted to keep it a secret."

"You try lying to her and see how well that goes," I protested, shaking him off. "I'm sick of keeping secrets; I'd be surprised if Millie and the others will ever talk to me again when they find out I've been lying to them for over a year."

Vincent stopped and looked at me, with his perfected blank expression. Behind his forehead, I could practically hear the little wheels clicking around faster and faster, weighing pros and cons of something he would undoubtedly tell me about in a moment. I stood there in the hallway, arms crossed and waiting.

"You're going to tell your friends." it wasn't a question.

"Yes. Millie, Draco, Pansy, Agnes and Theo, Gaspar and Cain." I counted on my fingers. "And they know to keep it a secret."

"And you know this."

"Yes. If they even consider telling anyone without my express, preferably written permission, I'm going to turn them inside out." I nodded. "And they're going to need a lot of reds and purples to make their family portraits."

"You were on the verge of telling Granger too. Would she have kept it a secret?" Vincent challenged.

"She's too honourable to tell anyone. Contrary to popular opinion of the Gryffindors, she's not stupid." I shrugged. "She can keep secrets: if she couldn't, Weasley and Potter would have sent me to an early grave right about now."

"As long as you don't shout it out from the roof-tops: you'd be too much of a target." he advised me. "Voldemort seeks out power, and if he doesn't cajole the possessors into joining him, he terminates it."

"Why don't you just say that if he finds out I'll hang?" I muttered as he started down the corridor again. "Would have been easier, taken less words too."

Frederic was found, and the head-Healer in charge of me was bullied into letting me off earlier. And so we went off back to the Lucas' mansion again, some twenty-four hours too late. I'd been given some potions by the Healers, with stern instructions to take them for the next forty-eight hours. I graciously ignored them and dumped the potions in the rubbish-bin as soon as we arrived. The Healers seemed convinced that I was a sick little boy and that I needed constant attention, but the truth was that, aside from my blistered fingers, I was fine.

I settled down on my bed in the room that had been mine for six weeks, staring at the ceiling. It was less than a week left to the start of term. My last year at Hogwarts had crept up on me through a series of pitfalls, accidents and rigorous training. I was almost seventeen, almost grown up in the eyes of the world, and I didn't have the smallest idea what I wanted to do with my life. Though holing up somewhere on Svalbard, well away from everyone else in the world seemed like a good idea.

"Zabini? Mind if I interrupt your introspective moment?" Frederic asked, appearing in the doorway, though without the distinct pop of Apparation.

"Go ahead." I told him.

"I might be coming around Hogwarts during the school-year," he started, seeming a bit hesitant – an unusual state of mind for Frederic. "Now that I know where Vince is at, I get to mock him every once in a while, and I'm going to keep track of how you're doing as well. If that's alright with you."

"It hasn't stopped you before, has it?" I asked, smiling slightly at the memory of the numerous ambushes I'd had to withstand.

"I thought I'd be a proper friend for once and ask," Frederic explained with a shrug. "A no wouldn't have stopped me, but I just figured asking would be more polite."

"It would," I said, sitting up on the bed. "Thanks for asking, and it is alright with me. I'm going to need someone who's perpetually cheerful with all those long faces and grave matters around."

"Perpetually cheerful? You sure you don't mean crazy?" he asked, grinning the same demented grin he always had.

"Depends: are you crazy?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "Because if you are, you should be submitted to St. Mungo's ward for the insane."

"I like to think of myself as moderately cured of sanity," Frederic replied, still grinning, "If that makes any sense. By the way, before I completely ignore it; my brother wonders if you want to go directly to Hogwarts with him, or take the more conventional way."

"I always promised my sister I'd ride the train with her when she started, and she's going to be in her first year this year," I said, staring at the ceiling in thought. "I think I'd like to take the train."

"I'll tell Vince then: expect me to come around sometime in December," he said, practically skipping off again, whistling as he went.

I shook my head and looked the spot he had occupied only moments before. Frederic was truly the most scrambled individual I had ever met: one moment cheerful and grinning like a cat, the next giving advice on how to execute someone with a pair of wire-framed glasses. His mind was like a fractured mirror: I could see myself in it, reflected quite clearly and still resembling myself, and it was a beautiful piece of art in the way it mirrored light, or other people's thoughts, but it was also something that was ultimately broken.

And it was not merely broken: it was scattered all over the landscape. But I felt privileged to have gotten to know him; such insanity had to be rare, and most of the time he had me in stitches, though I knew better than to tell him about it. He would most likely think I meant actual stitches and hand me needle and thread with a blank look on his face. I could hear him now, shouting downstairs for his brother, and Vincent snapping back, irritated as usual.

On the whole, the summer hadn't been too bad. Or it would have been good if it hadn't been ended with a Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley. I shuddered as the memory of that redhead-woman's twisted smile appeared in my mind. I'd seen her three times now, each time before I got in trouble or all hell went down around me, and I still had no idea who she was. Chances were that I'd be called in by the Aurors for questioning, so I might find out who she was if they recognised her, but until then, I resolved to keep her out of my mind.

Since I'd been woken up at such an unholy hour of the morning by the Healers, I was tired, and opted to take a nap to pass the time. There wasn't much time to pass, but it seemed like a good idea.

'''''''''''

Ending Notes: I apologise for the shortness of the chapter, but I didn't want to fill it with dragged on scenes, since I think I owe you more than that.