Harry Potter and the Butcher of Hogsmeade

by Yagr of Nar

Harry's schooling gets derailed. Dumbledore's manipulations cause great dissatisfaction among his allies. Lucius Malfoy goes on trial. And Snape is forced to act as a babysitter.

16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Another place in which the Prophet was not being perused that day was in Godric's Hollow. Even if Harry, Remus or Snape had wanted to subscribe to that - or any - newspaper, they were fairly certain that, one way or another, the Fidelius charm that protected the house in the Hollow would frustrate their attempts to do so. The newspaper agent would forget having spoken to anyone from Godric's Hollow, or - if he were reminded strongly enough - he would forget the address. If the address were handed to him written down, he would lose the parchment, and if the new subscription ever were to be recorded, the distributor would forget to send a copy to that particular new customer. No one was really certain that the Fidelius' protection of Godric's Hollow remained so powerfully active as it had been for over fifteen years, and no one knew whether drawing the outside world's attention back to the Hollow would destroy the last of the charm's effects... but no one living there wanted to test it, in any case. If the remnants of a years-old Fidelius could grant them a little privacy and secure them some protection, then it was too valuable an asset to risk for nothing more than a copy of Britain's favorite newspaper.

Moreover, Harry wouldn't have had the time to read the Prophet that day even if he had been given a copy. For two days in a row - the days which would have been the first class days of his new term, had he returned to Hogwarts - he had been subjected to six hours of what Remus called 'formal schooling' in addition to his ongoing studies of government, recent history and social graces. On top of all of that were his practice sessions during which he worked on the magical abilities that Remus called 'wild magic.' The magic practice was particularly grueling, and Harry found that the less he depended on tiredness and shock to call forth his 'wild magic' abilities, the more he felt as though he were groping for something that he could barely touch, and could never really grasp. He had managed to complete several of the exercises Remus and Snape had designed to help him develop his powers, but even a successful attempt usually left him tired and aching, with a persistent pounding in his head.

In the late afternoon of the day on which Cornelius Fudge's interview was published by the Daily Prophet, Harry had already completed six hours of classroom study under Remus' supervision. At the end of those six hours, Snape beckoned both Harry and Remus into one of the bedrooms, and showed them the exercise he had set up there. The task was extremely simple. All Harry had to do was levitate a stone from where it sat on the bare wooden floor and place it on top of a delicate bedside table. An average second year Hogwarts student (or even a particularly bright first year) could accomplish the feat by using magic. And what's more, that youngster's magical effort would prove quicker, and less troublesome, than simply lifting the stone and placing it where he wanted it to go. Such an estimation presumed that the student in question would have his wand, could use his voice, and would be familiar with the common Wingardium Leviosa spell. Harry, by contrast, was tasked to move the rock without using his wand. If successful in that attempt, he was to repeat the exercise, still without his wand, but this time without speaking. If that worked, he was expected to close his eyes, turn his back on the stone and table, and repeat the procedure without wand, without voice and without even looking at what he was doing. If he could accomplish that, he was to try the whole thing again from a different room, adding distance and intervening walls to the difficulties posed by blindness, muteness and wandlessness.

Harry felt his headache begin just listening to the description of the exercise.

The challenge was obvious. Beyond overcoming the difficulties of using magic without the usual tools that had been available to wizards since the beginning of recorded magical history, the real problem Harry would have to overcome was control. His first experiences with wild magic - trapping his cousin in a boa cage and blowing up his aunt - had been out of control by definition. At the time, he hadn't even realized that he had been performing spells. The instances of wild magic that had led to Snape and Remus becoming involved in developing his special abilities, and which had set him on the course to which he was now committed, had been completely undisciplined. He had been aware of casting the spells, but he had felt as if he were no more than a valve which allowed the power to flow through himself until he shut it off. There had been no question of controlling his power - he had simply been glad that he could use it at all. When the question he most wanted answered was merely whether he could access and utilize enough power to actually hurt Voldemort in a duel, setting brooms on fire and knocking a boggart through a wall were good indicators that he probably did have that kind of power. Now that it was time to start considering strategies and tactics, mere uncontrolled offensive force was not enough.

What if he lost his wand? What if he were rendered mute? Would he still be able to cast spells? His experience suggested that he could, but how could he depend on power over which he had no control? What if Voldemort had a hostage? Would Harry be able to attack the Dark Lord without injuring the innocent prisoner? What if (and this was the scenario that had been giving him nightmares for the past week) Harry had to attack Voldemort - and all his followers - together? Would Harry be able to cast enough spells, offensive and defensive, to keep himself alive while defeating the gathered Death Eaters and their leader? Even more frightening, what if Harry were to be robbed of his wand, struck dumb with a silencing spell, transported to an unfamiliar place, left in the dark, and have to face Voldemort and all of the Death Eaters, each of whom held a hostage? Such an extreme scenario seemed unlikely. It seemed foolish, even paranoid, to consider it. But deep down inside, Harry was certain that just such a scene would surround his final meeting with Voldemort. He was determined to be prepared to face anything he might meet. The exercises, painful as they were, actually helped him understand what he was doing. This particular exercise had the potential to teach him some very useful techniques. So he concentrated on the rock.

It wasn't a boulder, but it was a good sized chunk of hard stone, about twelve kilos in weight. There were no particularly sharp edges chipped into it, but its surface was rough all over, and if he failed to pick it up cleanly, Harry could send it scraping across the floor, scratching the wood. If he booted it too hard, he could send it flying through a wall. If he sent it upward too sharply, he might put it through the ceiling. And if he brought it down too heavily, he could smash the delicate table into splinters. There would be no time during the exercise at which he could relax; no direction he could take for granted. He would have to maintain control even when letting the stone settle onto the tabletop. Still, each one of this set of exercises he had successfully completed so far had improved his abilities and given him further access to the tremendous power that remained, for the most part, just out of his reach. It was important work. It might prove crucial to his survival. Harry took a deep breath and let half of it out, shaking his hands to dispell the tension in them. Remus and Snape moved quickly out of the room, and Harry began to experiment with different approaches to his problem.

First, he simply visualized the stone rising from the ground, floating through the air and settling gently on the table. He had tried this technique during most of his recent practice sessions. Since it was nearly effortless, and so far had remained completely ineffective, he had begun thinking of it as the 'Daydream Method.' He spent very little time on visualizing the exercise's completion this time around, since once again it seemed to have no effect on the real world. It certainly would have been nice, however, to be able to accomplish magic just by wishing for it.

Next, he tried searching for an emotional trigger that would activate his power. It seemed to him that in every case in which he had accomplished spontaneous magic, there had been such a trigger. When he blew up his aunt, there had been anger. When he had set free the boa and trapped Dudley behind the glass of the snake's former cage, there had been the twin motivators of his genuine sympathy for the snake, and his hatred of his cousin. When he had defended himself against the four broom riders' attack at Hogwarts, there had been real fear for his own life. But he had been angry and sympathetic and afraid many times before and since those incidents without any perceptible spontaneous magic being generated. Why had that been? Or not been? He wasn't even sure of how to phrase the question, but the fact remained: if strong emotions were all that was necessary to release wild magic, Harry should have been surrounded by spontaneous spells throughout his entire life.

Except in the case of this particular exercise. Strong emotions were simply not involved. He stared at the stone on the floor. He wasn't afraid of it. He didn't hate it. It had done nothing to make him angry. He hated to disappoint Remus, which failing this exercise would do, but that emotion didn't transfer very easily to a rock. He didn't want to give Snape any further reasons to smirk condescendingly at him, but he couldn't make himself believe it was the stone's fault that Snape was a sarcastic mocker. Harry scowled at the unmoving stone, and silently tried to project a thought at the unresponsive mineral: 'Obey me! Rise!' The rock sat there, unmoved. Harry waved his hands in tiny circles, as though trying to waft aromatic steam from a simmering soup up to his face. He clenched his teeth and tensed his belly. 'Up! Off the ground!' he thought, pressing his lips into a tight white line, all to no effect. He stared at the stone until all else faded from his vision. In Harry's view, there was the rock, in sharp focus, and the rest of the universe, a blur fading away to nothing. He stretched his neck, pulled his shoulders up, rocked his weight forward onto his toes. Nothing. In frustration, he waved his arms in broad arcs and spoke out loud. "Up!"

Harry immediately winced as the rock flew directly upward, tapped the ceiling, and fell hard onto the floor, exactly where it had been before he had moved it. He stopped moving immediately and said nothing more, searching his memory for exactly what he had felt just before the rock flew up and he winced in frustration. Frustration! That was it! He had finally frustrated himself enough that his power had broken free to try to alleviate his discomfort.

Or had it? Harry examined his feelings, his memory, and his posture. He felt which muscles were still tense, which were relaxed. He thought about it until he was pretty sure that he couldn't remember any more about how he had felt at the crucial moment during which the rock had moved. Then he tried once again. He pulled his mouth into a disappointed scowl, tensed his belly, glared at the rock in what felt like genuine frustration. He waved his arms in broad arcs once again and tried to concentrate a thought onto the chunk of stone on the floor. 'Up... Up!... UP!'

And there was something there... something elusive, slippery and subtle. Not quite a handle, not really a mood, not a definite trigger nor a specific thought, it was nonetheless something that he could just barely perceive, and if he could only reach just a little further...

"You may speak during this portion of the exercise, Mister Potter," Snape's impatient drawl sounded through the room, breaking Harry's concentration, making him suddenly furious.

Harry whirled to his left to face the door to the hallway in which Snape and Remus waited. His face a mask of rage, Harry shouted, "Shut up, you..." then twisted immediately back to his right, to see that the rock on which he had been concentrating was flying on a low trajectory toward the wall, directly opposite to the direction he had turned to face. Harry already had his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth just behind his front teeth, ready to shout 'No!' in an automatic reaction. A sudden inspiration hit him, and instead of a simple negative, he bellowed "Get Back Here!" instead.

He felt a surge of fierce pride as he saw the rock reverse course in mid-air. That feeling turned sour in an instant as he saw that the rock had bashed into the wall before he could reverse its course. It had broken a hole in the wallboard, revealing the framing wood behind, and Harry realized that the boom he had heard was not from the power of his own magic, but from the flying stone doing damage to his house. An instant later, his soured pride turned to alarm as he realized that the rock was heading straight for him, and was travelling very fast.

Harry's first impulse when he saw the stone flying for him like a cannonball was to cast a spell. He had a sudden visualization of himself, giving some command, imperiously holding up a hand, glaring at the missile with his irresistible gaze and projecting a thought onto the rock to impose his control upon it. But he had no time for a long spell or a complex movement or a thought experiment. He faced the flying stone's approach squarely and, with the absolute self confidence of a military drill instructor, he barked, "STOP!"

Harry had a very odd impression immediately after having given his order. He never once doubted that it had worked. An observer may have seen Harry's confident stance and heard his commanding voice and accepted the success of such a masterfully cast spell as a matter of course. But to Harry, the very sureness and certainty of casting a previously untried spell stood in stark contrast to his entire experience with learning magic.

Harry's previous five years of schooling could be seen as a long string of magical failures capped with a few successes. While learning any spell, every student - even the best ones - got it wrong at first. There was the wording of the spell to learn, and the proper pronunciation. The wand motion was crucial, and usually had to be learned separately. But for the spell to work, the wand motion would then have to be performed simultaneously with the speaking of the spell. Over and above those things, there was the magic itself. A muggle could wiggle a stick about and mutter 'Lumos' for years without seeing a single spark of light as a result of the effort. A wizard could call forth illumination with that spell every time he cast it, and a good wizard could achieve whatever range and intensity of light that he wished. But the wizard achieved his brilliant result not because he had twirled his wand more cleverly, or pronounced the key word more fluently. It was because he had made proper use of his magic. And so the calling forth of that energy, the directing and controlling and constraining of the tremendous power of magic, was the real lesson that every student had to learn in order to cast spells at all. So for five years, Harry had known he was a wizard, and had been learning spells. And as he undertook to learn each one, he had failed to cast it properly, practiced and made progress, enjoyed some limited success, received help from instructors, experienced greater success, forgot some elements while concentrating on others, and finally, after dozens or even scores of failures with any particular spell, he had cast it successfully. After which, he - like so many students - frequently lost the skill, whether through forgetting the correct pronunciation of the words, becoming lax or lazy with his wand, or - more crucially - losing the particular connection to his magical power that enabled him to perform that spell correctly. So Harry's experience with magic had two distinct aspects. There were spells that he had learned well and had repeated so often that he could cast them almost without a conscious thought. Lumos, Accio, Alohamora; these were all so familiar, so often repeated, that Harry felt them as part of himself. The constant use of these and other familiar spells reinforced Harry's understanding of himself as a wizard, and constantly supported his confidence in his magic. But his learning of each new spell - including all of those familiar ones, when he was first introduced to them - had been preceded by repeated failure to cast them.

So when Harry ordered the flying stone to stop... and knew immediately - felt immediately - that his attempt had been absolutely successful... the feeling was so strange, so unexpected, that it took him aback, and he stood staring at the rock, examining his feelings, wondering about magic, and his relationship to it. And that is when he finally realized that there were more strange aspects to his spell than its instant success. The stone was in mid-air, at exactly the spot it had been when the 'P!' of Harry's Stop order had exploded from his lips. But it was not hovering, like a golden snitch could hover. It was not spinning in place, as would a bludger struck simultaneously from opposite sides by two beater bats. It was not wobbling, the way one would expect from an object levitated by Wingardium Leviosa. Nor was it swaying, as though hung on a rope. It was just... there. Harry took a deep breath to call out to the men in the hallway, but stopped before he spoke, shocked at how difficult the simple act of breathing felt. He wondered if the effort of stopping the stone had really taken that much out of him. He waited to see if he would feel dizzy or faint, but feeling neither, he shrugged off the difficulty of catching his breath and said, "Remus? Professor Snape? I think you should see this." The sound of his voice was unfamiliar to his own ears. It sounded like he were speaking with a towel wrapped around his head. His voice was close, dull and muffled. He began to worry that he might have damaged his ears somehow, then thought of what that muffled voice sound reminded him of. He sounded like that when telling someone to go away as he lay in bed with his covers over his head. He laughed, and his mood lightened. But he had not yet heard any reply from his teachers out in the hallway. He called again, louder. "Remus! Professor Snape! You really ought to see what's in here!"

When he again heard no reply, Harry went to see why. He was sure he had used up a lot of his energy as he took his first steps toward the door, because it seemed hard to move, as though the air itself were resistant to his moving through it. He felt as though he were trying to walk underwater, his feet dragging, his arms unable to swing freely. Bad enough as it was to be so burdened by the mere act of walking through a small room, there was an irritating sound as he moved, as well. A sucking, slurping sound that he was sure must have come from outside the house, but which sounded as though it were being generated right behind his own ears. He shook his head to clear it, but his problem was not one of headache or confusion. In fact, despite the feeling of resistance working against his movement, he didn't feel sore nor injured, either. On the contrary, he was alert, awake, hale and healthy so far as he could tell. It was just hard to move. And the slurping sound continued as he walked.

Harry looked out into the hallway. "Remus?" he called tentatively. 'Well that's irritating,' Harry thought with rising anger. There stood Remus, calmly talking to Snape. Or... not talking, actually. Just standing there with his mouth open as though he were about to say something. Or as though he had been in the middle of saying something when he was suddenly interrupted... "Remus!" Harry shouted. Neither of the men moved at all. Harry approached Remus until he was nearly nose to nose with the man. "Remus!" Remus and Snape both stayed as motionless as the stone Harry had left in the other room. Real fear began to rise in Harry's belly. Already convinced of what had happened, he still looked around for anyone who might have broken into the house and cursed his friends. The house held no one except Harry, Remus and Snape. Harry stopped to listen. There was nothing. It wasn't merely quiet, there was no sound at all except for that which Harry himself made. If he held his breath, Harry could hear the pounding of his pulse through the veins in his ears. Everything around the entire house was absolutely silent.

Convinced that his own Stop spell was the cause of the general cessation of all activity in the surrounding area, Harry went outside. The door opened reluctantly, as though it weighed many times more than it had mere moments ago. Harry walked out to the roadway and looked along it as far as he could see. There was no traffic. There were no birds. There was no breeze. Harry wondered if an idea such as 'A few minutes ago' even had any meaning for him now. If he were the only thing moving, did time pass? He was getting used to the effort involved in breathing, and he had not begun to suffocate, so he figured that the air he did manage to force into his lungs was doing him some good. But what if he became hungry? If he ate, would the food digest? Or would he gorge on delicacies until his belly was distended and starve to death while stuffed full of good things to eat? He needed to gain some perspective on his predicament. He found a place to sit on the ground, reclining against the front porch. In that position, the sun appeared to sit just at the top of one of the trees that lined the road. Harry forced himself to look all around, and not stare at the sun, as he slowly counted to sixty ten times. When he had done that, he counted to sixty five more times. Then five more. Then he deliberately looked away from the roadside trees and waited until he could no longer stand the suspense. He checked his chosen tree top.

The sun had not moved at all.

Harry's heart sank. What could this mean for the world? Was everyone, everywhere, simply frozen? Were they aware of what had happened? Could some powerful wizard, somewhere, have proven resistant to Harry's spell? And could he, even now, be casting the magic that might dispell its effects?

Harry stood up with determination. There was one wizard who had not been affected - Harry Potter. And that wizard was going to return the world to its proper state. Drawing his wand and facing the window through which his levitate-the-stone experiment had taken place, Harry cast the familiar, reliable spell to end a spell's effects. "Finite Incantatem!"

Absolutely nothing changed. The silence remained. The birds still did not fly. The leaves failed to rustle. "Finite Incantatem," Harry said again, with less conviction than before. Once again, there was no effect. "Maybe I have to be where I was when I cast the first spell," Harry muttered to himself as he strode purposefully toward his front door. He walked through the house, feeling a shudder of horror as he passed the motionless Remus and Snape, then returned to his position directly in the flying stone's path, where he had commanded it to Stop. Steeling himself for a shock, trying to prepare himself to leap out of the way once the rock resumed its motion, Harry waved his wand. "Finite Incantatem!"

He jumped to the side, rolled as he landed on the floor, and turned to train his wand onto the dangerous missile he had leapt to avoid. The stone remained motionless, right where it had been since it had obeyed the order to Stop.

Harry stood, near to tears. He hadn't really been surprised by the failure of his first two Finite spells. They had been impulsive reactions and had probably been too far from the source point of the Stop spell to have actually been able to dispell it. But this last attempt had been well thought out, and cast with conviction. He had stood at the very spot from which he had cast the spell he wished to dispell. He had used the correct spell-dispelling magic. He had even remembered to get himself out of the way of the oncoming missile. All to no avail.

Harry stared at the motionless rock, thinking about what he could do with this opportunity if he only had a little more information. He could go kill Voldemort. It would be easy. Harry had all the time in the world - literally. He could stand there and beat the Dark Lord to death with a feather duster if he had the patience to do so. No one, not even Voldemort himself, could do anything to stop it from happening. But that is why criminals had hideouts. Harry had no idea where to find his enemy. Or where to start looking, for that matter. And assuming that Harry would age while the rest of the world waited, frozen in time, Harry could well be a dottering ancient by the time he discovered where Voldemort had hidden.

There were other things he could do. He could put Cornelius Fudge into a compromising position and place a Daily Prophet photographer in place to capture the setup on film. But there were problems with that, as well. The photographer would realize that he had been suddenly transported from wherever he had been to the very spot at which he could get a valuable photo. He would probably take the picture, but there would be a lot of suspicion cast on the way in which he was able to get it. And frankly, Harry didn't really know how to arrange a compromising position... although he did have one idea featuring Percy Weasley bent over a desk... But that wasn't any good, either. Percy himself would know that he had been set up, even if his protests initially fell on deaf ears. And despite his attitude, Percy was still a Weasley, and that family had always been able to get the truth out of Harry eventually, no matter what the situation. Besides, if Harry wasn't able to turn time back on, anything he was able to accomplish would be futile. He had to make his own spell stop working...

'Of course!' Harry congratulated himself on seeing the obvious. He concentrated on all of the effects his spell had caused, and with steel in his voice, commanded them all to "STOP!" once again. The rock remained motionless in mid-air. The silence remained profound. And Harry began to cry, tears running slowly and heavily down his cheeks.

He had no idea how long he stood there weeping, or whether 'how long' was even a meaningful question any longer. But eventually, he pulled himself together and began to think through his options. One of the most frustrating aspects of this situation was that if he were actually able to turn off the Stop spell, no one would realize what had happened. Remus and Snape would never believe that he had done all of this while they stood frozen. There had to be some way to show that the impossible had occurred. With a smile, Harry walked back outside.

He didn't want to do anything mean, hurtful or destructive. He merely wanted to be able to show some token to indicate that his story was true once he returned the world to the normal passing of time. And he would do that. The more he thought about it, the more confident he became. He had cast this spell. He was its source, and he would be its master. And if anyone didn't like that, too bad. Who else had ever stopped the entire world with a word? Harry scowled. There had been some story from the Bible about stopping the sun in the sky... or maybe that was about not being able to stop the sun in the sky... whatever. The Dursleys, for all their pretense of being socially proper denizens of Little Whinging, had never taken the local church very seriously, and Harry had never learned very much about any religion. Unless you could consider Aunt Petunia's cult of normalcy or Uncle Vernon's hatred of all things magical to be religious beliefs. Harry shrugged. If someone had stopped time in ancient days, then they must have gotten it started up again, or modern times would never have happened. If anything, a story about stopping the sun should give him more confidence than ever that he could put things right again. He strode resolutely through the yard. With great patience, he picked a huge double-armful of flowers, each with as long a stem as possible. He went back into the house and contemplated Remus and Snape.

He placed a bouquet in each of their hands. He put a flower behind each of their ears. He tried to place flowers in mid-air above their heads, but the blossoms - each of which had been completely unmoving before Harry had touched it - fell slowly through the heavy air to rest on the men's heads and shoulders. Harry decided that would be sufficient for his purposes, scattered the remaining twigs and loose petals at the men's feet, and returned to the room in which he had cast his powerful spell.

He decided to stand somewhere else than in the direct path of the missile, this time. He stood quite near to the stone, feeling that it was at that point that his spell had been concentrated, and that, while dispelling it, he should be as close as possible. He looked hard at the delicate table onto which he was supposed to have placed the rock. He pictured the stone sitting daintily on the table top, measured the distance from the rock's current position to its goal, sighted along the path the missile had taken from the broken wall to where it was now, and returned his gaze to the stone once again. He allowed his confidence to build, allowed the surety of his authority to fill his heart, allowed his determination to come to the forefront of his thoughts; and once he was completely ready, he barked out his command. "GO!"

The stone went. It did not accelerate, as any normal object must do in order to reach a great speed. It put all other quick-starting things to shame. It wasn't like a rocket, or a spring, or a jumping flea. It was absolutely motionless when Harry spoke... and then immediately, without any transition period at all, it was moving as swiftly as it had been when Harry had Stopped it to save his own life. As strange as the sudden motion was, it was even more strange to see it curve away from its cannonball-like course to fly toward the table. Harry felt a surge of exultation - which was dimmed somewhat when the stone, instead of landing daintily, smashed the table into a flying storm of splinters and sawdust. Once it had accomplished that, its momentum abandoned it, and it settled heavily to the ground, rocking noisily back and forth on the place where the delicate table had once stood.

A twin exclamation of "Eeaugh!" came from the hallway. Harry laughed out loud. He had broken a wall of his house and smashed what was likely a valuable antique table in the process, but he had made a great stride toward the kind of magic he would have to be able to use in order to accomplish his goals. He and Remus and Snape would have a lot to talk about.

Proudly, Harry strutted toward the hallway, anticipating the looks of amazement on the faces of the men there. So he was rather surprised when he walked through the doorway only to see Remus, flowers still covering his shoulders, two long stems stuck behind his ears, offering support to Snape, who was grimacing in pain, squeezing his left forearm with his right hand, unselfconsciously leaning on Lupin. "Professor Snape...?" Harry ventured. Remus shot him a warning look. Snape squeezed his eyes shut, his lips pulling back as another wave of pain shot through him.

"It is... particularly odious this time," Snape panted, half bent over, left arm cradled near his belly, right hand gripping until the knuckles turned white. "Perhaps this is meant to convey urgency. In any case, I shall have to respond as quickly as possible. What is this all over me?"

"Flowers," Remus replied with a calm that astonished Harry.

"Potter," Snape growled. "Is this your..." then he bent nearly double, his forehead near his knees, a strangled sound forced from his throat.

"Professor Snape," Remus instructed coolly, "go now. Do not delay any longer. Do not leave the house. Just go. Now."

Snape looked up with something close to panic in his eyes. "Lupin. You know that if I have been found out... I will not be able to warn you."

"Severus," Remus stated sternly, and glared directly back into the potion professor's dark eyes as Snape's face hardened in response to the use of his given name. "We have been over this. You are in agony. I know the plan. Harry and I will be safe. Go. Now."

Snape looked down at his left arm, directly at the spot which, beneath its perpetual covering of long, heavy sleeves, bore the Dark Mark. He shook his head slowly, sadly. "What sort of general summons his troops by inflicting such pain as renders them useless?" He pushed Remus away, gently. Then, with a loud report, he vanished.

Remus stood looking at Harry. There were petals in the werewolf's hair, flowers on his shoulders and long stems still stuck behind his ears. He raised an eyebrow and made a soft tutting sound as he inspected the boy. "For all that he can be a dour killjoy," Remus drawled, "Professor Snape is correct. The Death Eaters may have discovered his dual agent activities, and should they have done so, they would most likely kill him. And because of your unique relationship to their leader, they would also wish to kill you. So, we must go someplace safe."

Harry spread his hands, looking around at the surrounding structure. "Where is safer than this? Especially if we know they're coming?"

Remus smiled slyly. "Australia," he replied simply.

Harry's eyebrows shot up, his eyes opened wide, his top lip curled up until it nearly touched his nose. "Why?"

Remus thought about how much to tell the cub, and in light of the boy's recent studies - and Remus' own plan for Harry's future - the werewolf decided to be blunt. "We don't know the Death Eaters are coming. And if they are, we don't know when. That is because we don't know how long it will take Severus to break under torture. Voldemort could use veritaserum, and most likely will. But he will distrust the results of any interrogation of Severus Snape which involves Professor Snape taking his own potion. And I'm willing to bet that the only veritaserum Voldemort would ever use would be that which was brewed by Professor Snape. But Voldemort is a deeply paranoid old man, used to being hated and betrayed. He will not trust the serum to bring out all of the truth. He will be certain that the Potions Master has devised some kind of protective scheme to prevent the serum's effect upon him. He will imagine that Professor Snape had inoculated himself with the potion, becoming gradually immune to its effects. He will realize that this key servant, this potions maker that he trusted, had been serving as a spy against him for many years. He will wonder how deeply the betrayal might have gone, how deeply a string of lies could have been embedded, whether Professor Snape might be answering the interrogators from a litany memorized under hypnosis, for example. And, as you know, Voldemort is famously cruel. He would insist on torture if only to maintain his own reputation, and as a lesson to any of his followers who may be considering their own individual treacheries. But Severus Snape is surprisingly strong. He has had to be, simply to survive his life of double agency. He will confound and confuse his interrogators. He will lie to them outright for as long as he can, then he will give them misleading answers that they can misinterpret for themselves. So unless you would like to stay awake, maintaining a defensive posture for the next few days, I suggest we go somewhere that the Death Eaters will not follow us... simply because they have no way of learning of its location. Professor Snape himself does not know. So, he cannot betray that knowledge to Voldemort."

Harry glared back at Remus, unwilling to accept the conclusion that he would have to run. It had been so little time since he had rediscovered his parent's home... his home... his real home, from the happy time when his mother and father were still alive. If he abandoned it now, and the Death Eaters showed up, there would be nothing to keep them from destroying this precious link to his own past, his real family. They would probably enjoy ruining the home, for nothing more than the joy of destruction, not to mention the suffering it would cause him.

Remus watched the emotions play across Harry's face. The boy's posture, his expression... his entire attitude so epitomized The Adolescent Male In Rebellion that it nearly broke Remus' heart to see it. Here was the boy, staunchly rejecting the opinions of his stodgy elders, defiantly demanding that authority move aside so that his feelings could be expressed, his ideas could be heard, his advice followed. The werewolf smiled at the irony. If their plans bore fruit, this defiant youth would soon be the ultimate authority on the entire globe. Remus studied the boy, wondering if what he had planned could in any way be considered the right thing to do. He fervently hoped so.

Harry forced himself to relax. He had studied situations exactly like this one. Blustering was exactly what he did not want to do in this case. He needed to keep in mind two things: confidence in his own power, and the fact that both he and Remus wanted to remain safe and ultimately to defeat the Death Eaters, who may or may not be coming to ambush them there in Godric's Hollow. He decided to use a conversational technique from one of his recent lessons, knowing that such a tactic would serve a double purpose. First, it would show Remus that he had been paying attention, which would please the man. And second, it would help him work up to what he really wanted to talk about. He had a very big point to make, and simply blurting it out would not be very effective. "Remus, did you wonder how it was that you became covered in flowers?"

Remus returned a wry smile. "I presumed you had done that."

"But you thought that I cast a spell to put them there, right?" Harry had leaned forward, eyes sparkling, thrusting with his question as though wielding a weapon.

Remus nodded slowly, wondering why Harry would ask for clarification of such an obvious assumption.

Harry smirked smugly. "I thought so. You're wrong. I put each and every flower on you with my own two hands."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "And that accounts for the bouquets appearing instantly, while you were in the bedroom directing that stone to smash a table into flinders." He cocked his head, looking a question at the boy before him.

Harry drew himself up to his full height to make his pronouncement. "Remus. I'll tell you what accounts for all of that. I stopped time. For what seemed like an hour to me, nothing moved unless I touched it. Not a bird, not a leaf... not even the sun." He let that statement sink in before continuing. As he went on, he dropped the pompous orator's pose and tried to describe what the experience had actually been like. "It was weird! The air was hard to breathe, hard to move through. Things were really heavy and resistant to being moved at all. And it was so quiet! My own heartbeat became really annoying! And I was afraid I would be stuck like that... stopped in time for years and years because I couldn't turn it off at first. I tried Finite Incantatem and it did no good, and I tried casting the same spell on the spell itself, and that went nowhere, and... when I finally figured it out, I thought I had better give you and Sn... Professor Snape some token of what had happened, or you wouldn't have believed anything had happened at all. So I picked flowers, and I put them on you and in your hands and hair and all around your feet. But... Remus? I stopped time. I stopped the sun. If I could do that... how could a bunch of Death Eaters hurt us?"

Remus' eyes had lost focus. He was deep in thought. "You know, Harry," he murmured, almost more to himself than to the boy, "You may have stopped time here... even stopped the way the sun appeared, here... but... just maybe... your spell didn't go quite so far as you thought."

Harry was offended. What was the man talking about? The sun had stopped in the sky, what more did he want? "I don't think so," he said stiffly.

"You say it seemed like about an hour?" Remus' dreamy voice continued. "You know, the way I understand it, when the Dark Mark is activated as a summons to a meeting with Voldemort, it hurts a little. Then, if the summons is ignored, or if something prevents the summoned one from responding, the pain increases steadily with time. The force of the pain that hit Professor Snape was tremendous, equivalent to what would be generated by a summons ignored for an hour or more. It could be that wherever Voldemort resides is beyond the scope of your spell."

"If the sun stopped moving, that implies that the whole world was affected," Harry said sourly.

"What makes you assume that Voldemort is anywhere in this world?" Remus asked calmly.

Harry scowled, wrinkled his nose, shook his head, sneered and finally looked Remus directly in the eye and flatly stated, "No." He waited for protest, but Remus merely inclined his head, indicating that Harry should make his case before rebuttals would begin. "Where would he go? Voldemort himself may be able to survive just about anything, but he keeps Peter Pettigrew with him. And he calls meetings of the Death Eaters. What planet could they be on? No. No, I don't believe that Voldemort is the Dark Lord and Space Ghost, too."

Remus smiled gently. "There are more ways to go than up, Harry."

"Down?" Harry suggested sarcastically.

"I mean hyperdimensionally," Remus said, as casually as he might have brought up a city bus route. "Where does magic reside? We don't see it in this world except through its actions on other things. Where does it come from? One theory is that it is all around us, right beside us in a direction that we cannot travel, since we are creatures of three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Magic may be able to travel in a direction that is alien to us - neither up nor down, right nor left, back nor forward, but... oh... fnork to gzome, let's say. Voldemort could be hiding somewhere in one of those directions that - without some powerful magical assistance - we normally cannot go."

"Doesn't stand up," Harry countered, thinking furiously. "If he were 'there' - wherever 'there' is, then the Death Eaters would have to go 'there' to meet him. And if his lair were somewhere in some other dimension, then his meeting places would have to display some of the qualities of that 'direction we cannot go' in the setting in which the Death Eaters meet. And Sn... Professor Snape has been to lots of Death Eater meetings. And he's seen nothing of the kind. So I'm voting that Voldemort's hideout is right here on Earth. And that if the Death Eaters come to get us, I'll stop time and cut them all to ribbons as instantly as your flowers appeared behind your ears."

"Can you do that while you are asleep?"

Chest thrust out and head held high, Harry looked ready to take on legions of dark wizards at that very moment. "I... I can... What I can do is..." Desperately searching for a stronger, and even more aggressive claim, Harry thought of his lessons with Narcissa, especially those in which she had deliberately goaded him into anger with insults or by referring to his parents' deaths. The guiding principle she had attempted to drive into his mind was simple, and appropriately easy to recall at times of stress and conflict. As Narcissa herself had put it, 'Harry, shut up.' He did so. He considered what Remus was saying, saw the truth and logic of the werewolf's position. But there was a loophole in the man's argument, something that might allow Harry and Remus to stay there, guarding Harry's home, for a little longer. Purposefully adopting a less confrontational posture, Harry said, "I'd like to offer a compromise."

Remus smiled, but successfully kept himself from laughing. Each step of Harry's thinking had been so clearly telegraphed by his face and body that almost anyone with any experience in negotiation could have followed it from a hundred meters away. And Remus could have sworn that he could smell the differences caused by each surge of emotion through the boy. "Yes, Harry?"

"Let's stay here... back to back with our wands at the ready, if you insist, for as long as we can remain alert. When either one of us gets tired enough or bored enough to lose his edge, we'll go to... wherever it is that you want to hide us."

Remus nodded in acknowledgement of the wisdom of Harry's argument, the simple dip of his head as smooth and serious as a formal bow. He was proud of the tenacity the cub showed in the defense of his territory, and proud as well of the way in which the demanding, inflexible Potter had developed into a young man who could see both sides of an argument and compromise accordingly. "I suspect that I will tire first," Remus admitted. "Will you take my word when I tell you I can no longer keep a proper watch?" Harry nodded solemnly. "Good. Then, will you please help me get these flowers out of my hair? If our enemies do show up, I think I would look ridiculous as the hippy who fought the Death Eaters."

Harry began to pick vegetable matter off of Remus. "What's a hippy?"

Lupin looked rather embarrassed. "It's... um... a fashion thing. Mostly American, I believe. Harry? Have you ever heard of a beatnik?"

"Beetnick?" Harry repeated blankly.

Remus sighed. "Never mind. I'm older than I remember, sometimes. And I have always paid too much attention to appearance. Foolish, really, when the scent can tell me so much more about a person."

Harry shrugged, having failed to follow the last exchange at all. "There. You're clean. No more hippee. But there are stems all over the floor. I should get a broom."

"No!" Remus ordered, causing Harry to look back at him in alarm. "Don't get distracted. That's exactly the wrong thing to do, now. Let's go somewhere else. We can clean this up later. Living room or kitchen?"

Harry considered. The living room was wide, and would give them both room to maneuver if they were attacked. But the kitchen was inviting, comfortable, and somehow felt like the heart of the house. "Kitchen," he said, leading the way.

They had not sat for very long when a loud bang announced the arrival of an apparator. From the sound of it, there was only one, but Harry and Remus advanced on the location like soldiers, wands held forward, ready to spit curses. Before they had crossed half of the kitchen, the apparator came to them. It was Severus Snape, looking exhausted, and even paler than usual.

"Put those down," Snape said disdainfully, indicating Remus' and Harry's wands with a lazy gesture. "And why aren't you elsewhere?"

"Harry suggested that we remain as long as we were both sufficiently alert to respond to an attack. Given the circumstances, I agreed. Harry's stone exercise produced a very interesting side effect. We are going to have to investigate that effect very carefully."

Snape sniffed, scowling at the explanation. "Fortunately for you, the Death Eaters were occupied with other matters. Thus, you survive. But our program must accelerate. The summons I received today was urgent indeed. The Death Eaters' next major strike has been planned. It is to take place on Halloween."

-

"It's Halloween!" George shouted, staring in horror at the receiver which had just relayed the announcement from Voldemort's throne room to a small, dark room in the Weasleys' warehouse.

Draco stood staring, pale and shaken, just behind George's shoulder. "If this is a joke, Weasley..." he threatened weakly.

"No..." George said absently, not taking his attention away from the device he had designed with his twin. When they had first thought of the 'Extra-Range Extended Extensible Ear,' they had imagined siblings spying on one another's play, or at the most extreme, young lovers listening in on what their sweethearts were up to while on their own. To have the receiver spitting out the plan that would set the curses of the Death Eaters loose on all of Britain was sickeningly fascinating. Draco started to say something and George silenced him with a hiss, pointing to the mirror that was recording all of the sounds in the room so that the messages received through the Ear could be called forth, repeated and studied at leisure.

Draco grunted unhappily, but fell silent, listening for clues as to who might be in the murmuring crowd of followers being addressed by the Dark Lord. His father would have been there if he were not in jail. Draco himself would have been there if he were only a little older. He wondered how many of the people who had attended his own meeting with Voldemort were attending. No individual voices stood out from the general rumbling of agreement that was all that the followers offered during their Lord's speech. Snape would be one of those mumbling assenters. The very man who was training The Boy Who Lived to kill Voldemort was standing there, grumbling agreement with the Dark Lord's plans. He was probably being issued orders, given lists of victims to be captured or killed. And if Lucius weren't in jail... and if Draco himself were only a little older... there they would stand, father and son, listening to the Dark Lord's plan, delivered in that voice that sounded like a wood saw cutting through tin sheeting. 'And what are you doing to free my father?' Draco thought bitterly. 'If you wait until Halloween for your grand attack, my father will be convicted already - maybe even already dead. Will you even think of him? And what have you done to support my mother - what have you done for me? You let me tell my father's story to your new recruits, but what good does that do? I hope Potter does kill you. Bastard.'

Draco was so wrapped up in his bitter rage that he wasn't aware of George signalling to him until the redhead grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him out of the room. George reached back and gently closed the door. Draco was surprised to see the gleam of triumph in George's eyes. "What are you so happy about?" Draco sneered. "So we heard them. Big deal. It's all happening too soon. Halloween is... what... a month away?

"More than a month," George corrected with a smile. "It's the last day of October. But you heard what else he said." George waited for Draco to catch on. When Malfoy showed no indication of doing so, George explained, "The Revel. They're going to have a revel the day before!"

"So?"

"So we know when they're all going to be together."

"But not where."

"I think someone knows where," George said with a wink.

Draco felt cold. Snape? Draco wanted no harm to come to Severus Snape. In fact, if he were to make a list of all of the people who had not treated him like shite his entire life, he would only need two lines. One for his mother. The other for Severus Snape. If Snape were to lead enemies into the lair of the Dark Lord, there would be many problems The tactics could prove extremely tricky. Draco could barely visualize what methods Snape might employ to achieve his goals. There were far too many questions to voice. "How?" was all Draco could manage to ask.

George shrugged. "I don't know. I thought I might leave that up to the more experienced combatants involved in our little plot. Which brings up a question: Have you seen Mister Potter around your house lately? Taking speech lessons from your mother, for example?" Draco shook his head. "Bollocks," George spat in disgust. "We get all this going, set up a good place for Potter to practice his Voldemort-killing stuff, we finally hear what the Death Eaters' plan is going to be, and the bloody key players go into hiding!"

Draco made a strangled sound of shock, which he managed to turn into an almost understandable, "What?"

"Yeah," George admitted. "Harry was practicing right here at the warehouse. Then he disappeared, Snape and Lupin with him. Hope they turn up soon. Say, isn't it time to get you back to France?"

-

By the time George got back to the shop, the Fudgecicles and their entourage had left. But the excitement of their visit still animated Fred and Charlotte, who took turns relating humorous anecdotes about the entertainers to an increasingly resentful George. When Charlotte left the twins to wait on a customer, George grabbed Fred's arm and dragged him into their office.

"Damnit!" George groused as he manhandled his twin through the doorway. "I would have liked to spend a scant minute with our illustrious visitors, but instead I get Malfoy."

"It's no reason to beat me up," Fred protested. "Besides, they bought heavily, and drooled over a number of items they did not purchase, so they'll be back without a doubt. And, we made the sales goal for today - and tomorrow - on their business alone, not counting all else we sold today, or whatever Charlotte can sell to that bloke out there right now. In short, we're rolling in galleons, and from all appearances, the Fudgecicles have become our newest fans. You'll have your chance. So what, did Malfoy have anything interesting to say?"

By the time Fred had voiced his question, George had checked to see that Charlotte was dealing with the customer and then had closed the door, turning the lock as he did so. He turned to face his brother, looking grim. "Shut up. We have a problem. The only important thing Malfoy had to say was that he hasn't seen Harry. But the Ear he placed had quite a lot to tell us. Voldemort had a meeting. It sounded like there were dozens of Death Eaters there. Maybe more. Hard to tell. All they were allowed to say was 'Yes, Sir,' and they said that all together. Voldemort's planning a major attack. First strike in a real war. Sounds nasty. Lots of killing. It'll happen on Halloween. If we're not prepared, we'll be fucked."

Fred was silent for only a second or two. When he recovered from the surprise, he didn't even take the time to congratulate his brother on their first successful use of the Ear. "We haven't seen Harry... or Snape or Lupin... in, what? Weeks, now. What happened to them?"

"I don't think Voldemort has them. He didn't say anything about it, and it seems like if he'd killed them - or captured them, or even driven them away - that would be something he'd brag about. But... nothing."

"So are they still going on with their plan?"

"And if they are, will they attack before Halloween?"

"And if they do get Voldemort, what about all the Death Eaters?"

"We ought to tell someone else."

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Dumbledore?"

The twins met each other's eyes, knowing that each was thinking along the same lines. Dumbledore would wonder where they had gotten their information. He might not believe them at all. What's more, according to the Potter - Snape - Lupin alliance, Dumbledore was not really their friend. But he did lead an organization of unique individuals, all of whom were opposed to Voldemort. And he had allies, throughout Britain and via the Wizengamut, many of whom could be called on for support. And if Harry were dead... or even if he were elsewhere until after Halloween, Dumbledore might be the most powerful ally they could have on their side. Still, it was only September, and the attack wasn't supposed to happen until the end of October.

In unison, the twins said, "We'll wait."

"We'll have time," George said, feigning more confidence than he had.

"Harry might get back in time for us to plan something," Fred said wishfully.

"Let's go see how Charlotte's doing with that customer."

"Yes. Let's."

Uncertainly, with nervous tension already boiling in their guts, the twins went back out into their stable, steady, fun-filled shop, wondering whether it could possibly survive whatever would be coming on October thirty-first.

-

The very next day, Cornelius Fudge stormed into his Chief of Staff's office, waving a rolled-up copy of that morning's Daily Prophet over his head like a club. In his other hand, he held a sheaf of notes detailing the results of the latest nationwide opinion polls. His face was even more flushed than usual, and his furious expression promised trouble to anyone who got in his way. The Minister had begun shouting before he was through the doorway, and as he entered, he seemed to sweep the sound of his voice into the room before him. "Deckard! Dec... Oh. There you are. Ahem." The Minister tugged his waistcoat straight and shrugged his shoulders to settle his suit coat more comfortably onto his shoulders. He faced his Chief of Staff squarely, held the poll results out, shook them until the pages rattled and demanded, "Mister Constantine, are you aware of this?"

Deckard Constantine returned his boss' gaze calmly. He was not often seen to be ruffled or rushed, even in the face of crisis or emergency. It wasn't that he was slow, neither mentally nor physically, and he was certainly not lazy. He simply tended toward calm efficiency in everything he did. The confident, almost serene face he most often showed the world usually helped restore the Minister's equanimity in times of stress. On this morning, seeing Deckard's impassive face merely made Fudge all the more furious. The Minister was bristling, weight forward on his toes, feet working like springs, flexing his brilliant spats as he puffed out his chest to strain the gaudy green and black diamond check fabric of his waistcoat. In stark contrast to the Minister's habitually flamboyant attire, the Chief of Staff's wardrobe was invariably somber. Deckard had two modes of dress when in the office: a muggle style, which adapted the plain black business suit much more neatly than did Minister Fudge's interpretation of the fashion; and the sort of outfit which the Chief of Staff was wearing that morning, which consisted mainly of a black robe so plain it more closely resembled a priest's cassock than most wizards' formalwear. Deckard regarded the poll result sheets, which he himself had placed on the Minister's desk much earlier that morning. He took note of the newspaper, correctly anticipating what it was that the Minister found to be of concern in today's issue. Given the items in the Minister's hands and the look on the Minister's face, Deckard could predict the coming exchange in its entirety. Nevertheless, it was his job to give the Minister his best advice, whether Fudge was likely to listen to it or not. Acknowledging Fudge's question with a nod, Deckard replied, "Yes, Sir."

"Do you?" Fudge snapped back, trembling with outrage. "Then perhaps you can explain this." He snapped the newspaper open to a page squarely in the middle of the Prophet's front section, on which was printed another extensive interview with Albus Dumbledore. The accompanying photo showed the Headmaster patiently explaining something. His expression was kindly, his hands moved expressively, and his cloud of white hair was subtly backlit, giving the impression of a halo. Deckard nodded once. He had already read the article, which consisted of nothing more than unrelenting criticism of Minister Fudge. The interviewer had made no attempt to challenge any of the Headmaster's statements, and showed up in the course of the text only intermittently, asking questions which amounted to nothing more than, 'Please, do go on.' The writing was about what anyone should expect from the Prophet, whose staff, in their lust for sensationalism, pounced on conflict of this sort and did their best to inflame it. Deckard could understand his boss' anger over Dumbledore's statements, but it hardly seemed important enough to have goaded the man into such upset. "Standard Prophet fare," Constantine shrugged.

Fudge's eyes flared at Deckard's simple answer. "That's it? That's your reaction to this... this slander?"

"Libel," Constantine corrected automatically.

"Well then," Fudge raged, refusing to acknowledge the correction, "An old man who can barely manage to run a school for children - a man whom we have had to assist by providing staffing to his school over the past two years - reviles me in the newspapers... not once, but twice now, in an ongoing series of public attacks. I appear in print to set the record straight, with an interview which appeared yesterday. And then we ask the public for their opinion of the exchange. Can you tell me, Deckard Constantine, why it is that I AM LOSING THE ARGUMENT?"

The Minister's face was bright red, flecks of spittle flew from his lips and he clenched his hands tightly enough to crush both the poll results and his newspaper into crumpled wads as he shouted. Deckard considered the Minister's question carefully, automatically rejecting his first impulse, which was to point out that by and large, 'newspapers' had not been interested in running a shouting match between Dumbledore and Fudge. It was only the Prophet that had run the interviews, and only the Prophet that was already pressuring the office staff for an appointment with the Minister for another interview to allow for a further rebuttal. There were more important points to be driven home, here. Perhaps this particular political disaster would help illustrate some of the basic mistakes Fudge had been making... and, admittedly, getting away with... for years.

"The reason, as I has been brought to your attention several times - such as in your staff's monthly digest memo dated August, of two years past, and your annual vital factors summary of last year - is that you have allowed your political organization to wither."

"What? What's that? My political organization, withered?" Fudge blustered. "I have the entire Ministry working for me, Constantine!"

Constantine looked almost sorrowful as he explained, "While it is true that each Ministry worker ultimately reports to you, Sir, neither the Ministry nor any of its individual employees works for you, personally. It and they are expected to do the work of governing all of wizarding Great Britain. That does not mean they are working to keep you in your current position. Many of them have quite openly supported opposing candidates in previous elections. This November's general vote will be no different. While none of the candidates opposing you pose much of a threat to unseat you, your lack of a powerful, coordinated political support organization does set the stage for you to garner an embarrassingly low percentage of the total votes cast. I can do some things to alleviate this that are quite effective. I can arrange for posters to be hung, I can schedule your public appearances, I can write speeches and make sure that reporters are on hand when you deliver them. But I cannot do the work of a thousand young volunteers, organizing rallies or canvassing neighborhoods on your behalf. I cannot make personal appeals to every voter who may support you in order to ensure that those voters are registered, informed and at the polls on election day. I cannot, by myself, generate the kind of word of mouth endorsements that so strongly influence voter participation. You need to devote some of your time and energy to reviving the kind of political support structure that got you elected in the first place, and which kept you in office when you made your first re-election bid."

Fudge made a frustrated grimace. He could clearly recall his Chief of Staff making these noises about volunteers and grass-roots support over the past few years, but he had thought the subject had been dismissed for one very good reason. "Deckard, the wealthiest wizards in the country support me. Not only do I get their endorsements, I get their contributions. I can raise more funds in a single meeting with one old-money family than I can with an entire nationwide tour of shaking hands and kissing babies."

"And that buys you a goodly number of posters, and some advertisements in the Prophet," Constantine admitted. "But it leaves you vulnerable - especially to criticism such as that you're getting from Dumbledore today. People don't feel they know you. So, they don't automatically reject negative comments when they read them."

"Don't know me?" Fudge scoffed. "There are wizards and witches who have never voted for any Minister but me in their entire lives. There are adult wizards and witches who cannot remember any other minister than me."

"And those people know you as distant and unreachable. An institution, not a man," Deckard warned. "On the other hand, those same people remember Albus Dumbledore very well from their school days. And they maintain a constant connection to him through their children, by virtue of his running Hogwarts. And well over three quarters of Hogwarts' graduates give the Headmaster an extremely high approval rating. And as they have children of their own, those numbers go up. There's a good reason for this. When English, Irish, Welsh or Scots parents send their children to school, they want to believe that Dumbledore is the best choice to direct their childrens' education. Their hopes - and their nostalgia for their own school days - affect their judgement."

"Then, Mister Constantine, their judgement is about to be shaken," Fudge snarled. "I have been doing some research, Deckard, and I have found something in regard to Albus Dumbledore that we will be able to exploit - something which will change our citizens' high approval of the Headmaster to high disapproval."

The Chief of Staff did not groan, nor did he sigh, nor did he offer any immediate protest. A number of separate, well-practiced habits of control helped Deckard to maintain a completely neutral expression in the face of the Minister's declamation. But behind his serene exterior, Constantine was worried. When Fudge "did research," he most often did it so poorly as to gain no useful information at all, and frequently the incomplete picture he developed from his flawed study inspired him to take actions, or to make public statements, that were more damaging to himself than to his targets. But before Deckard could effectively counter the Minister's misguided attempts, he needed to know what Fudge thought he had learned. "What would that be, Sir?"

Fudge smiled, settled his weight back onto his heels and tossed the newspaper and poll results onto Constantine's desk, scattering a stack of documents detailing the particulars of the next year's proposed budget. The Minister was much more comfortable than he had been mere moments before. Now he was the one in control - the one with the plan, the one to whom Deckard had to turn for an explanation. Cornelius hated being lectured, and even though one of the main reasons he employed Constantine was that the man was knowledgeable and perceptive - within the boundaries of his own specialty, of course - the Minister was never pleased with having to stand and listen to his Chief of Staff delivering any explanations that seemed critical or disapproving of Fudge's own opinions or actions. This situation suited the Minister much better. He would give Deckard the damning information, and then tell the man to make a great speech out of it, and to bring the reporters from the Prophet here to listen to it. Feeling quite well-chuffed with his successful pursuit of the truth, Fudge grinned maliciously as he laid out the background of his findings. "You are aware, aren't you, that our aurors have been visiting Hogwarts over the past few weeks, attempting to interview members of the staff there."

"Yes, Sir," Constantine replied smoothly. "That Sepal business."

"And not just Sepal," Fudge countered, raising a finger as though scolding his Chief of Staff. "I had given specific instructions that the aurors were to interview Severus Snape, as well."

Deckard clenched his teeth, refusing to react to the potion master's name. Fudge's fixation with Snape's presence at Hogwarts was an irritant that would not go away. Snape's name came up in every staff discussion about the school, and every time, Constantine would have to explain all over again that Severus Snape had received an official pardon for his unfortunate youthful participation in the Opposition, that Severus Snape had been an exemplary citizen since receiving his pardon, working tirelessly as a Professor at Hogwarts, and that the Ministry itself depended upon Severus Snape remaining a free man - and one favorably disposed to the government - because of the sheer number of high-quality potions the Ministry purchased from the man every year. Not trusting his voice, Deckard simply nodded, waiting for Fudge to go on.

"It seems as though Professor Snape has gone missing... and that he disappeared at the exact same time that aurors were arriving to question him. Very suspicious, wouldn't you say?"

Constantine ignored the question. "Disappeared?"

Fudge fluttered his hands, dismissing the particulars of the story. "Supposedly... he was in South America - hunting for potion ingredients, so they say. He rented a canoe... or a boat, or something... and when it came time to return the vessel - no more Snape." Fudge preened triumphantly at this announcement.

"So..." Deckard ventured cautiously, "he's guilty of piracy in South America?"

"If that were only all of it!" Fudge countered. "There were at least two people with the Professor on this mystery voyage. One was a Mister Remus Lupin, who had served a term as a teacher at Hogwarts - despite the fact that he is a werewolf."

Constantine smiled indulgently at that. "Sir, a true werewolf changes involuntarily at each full moon. The stresses involved with that render them nearly unemployable. If the man were an animagus..."

"No, no, no," Fudge insisted. "His nature was discovered by the students themselves, and the man fled before he could be hunted down by the furious parents whose children had been exposed to such danger. And now, he is said to have been in the company of Professor Snape... and one other. The third companion was none other than Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. Think of it! Sending Harry Potter to South America with one teacher and a werewolf for company. And then losing him! Harry Potter is no more to be found than is Severus Snape. And it's all Dumbledore's fault. I want to make this public, loud and clear. Albus Dumbledore called a werewolf back into his service in order to send Harry Potter to South America in his company. And then he lost them! Visualize this: 'Dumbledore Loses Boy Who Lived – Harry Potter Presumed Dead.' Now, that's a headline.

Deckard Constantine remained silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, but filled with conviction. "That would not be wise, Sir."

Fudge stared at his Chief of Staff as though the man had slapped him. "What? Nonsense! Why not?"

"Because it's you saying it. I don't mean that we should keep the situation secret. Nor that we should allow Dumbledore to announce it first, putting his own interpretation on it. You could feed this information to someone else, and have them make it public - the aurors who originally uncovered the facts would be ideal. But you do not want to lionize the Boy Who Lived. The reason for that is simple. The importance of the Boy Who Lived lies in his relationship with He Who Must Not Be Named. For a long list of very good reasons, we have maintained the position for over a decade and a half that He Who Must Not Be Named was so thoroughly defeated that he was no longer a threat to the nation - and so should no longer be a concern of the government. The more important you say that Harry Potter is, the more dangerous He Who Must Not Be Named must be. The point may have been moot a short time ago. But now that He Who Must Not Be Named seems to be active once again, lionizing Harry Potter, thereby emphasizing the danger posed by He Who Must Not Be Named makes your own policies of the past years seem... wrong."

Minister Fudge laughed, stepped forward and slapped Constantine on the shoulder. "You're a good Chief of Staff, Deckard... but that attitude shows why you'll never be elected to high office. People's memories are short. They remember that, all during the years in which Death Eater activity was nearly nil, I refused to rise to being baited with all the 'Dark Lord rising' rumors that went around from time to time. And now that there's a threat again, I'll be the one to respond to it. Unfortunately, one of my most appropriate tools has been stolen from me by Albus Dumbledore. So he's the villain in this piece. And who will be the hero? Reluctantly, I will have to be the hero, Deckard. Because the hero we expected has been lost. And what better kind of hero is there than an absent one? Dead is best, but missing and presumed dead will do. I can say all the good things I want to say about the Boy Who Lived, for two good reasons: one, since he's missing, he won't be acting stupidly in the public eye to make my statements seem inappropriate. And two, since he's missing, he won't be around to take any of the spotlight away from me as I take his place as the leader of the fight against You Know Who. So I need a script to follow when the interviewer shows up later today. Paint a word picture, Deckard, and make it beautiful. Harry Potter, the Hero of... well, you know what to do. And make sure you make Dumbledore look like the traitor who destroyed our nation's best hope of defending itself. You'll see, Deckard. This will pay off handsomely when the vote is counted in November."

-

Just outside of Constantine's office was a large room containing dozens of file cabinets. And while it was true that there were several paths to a career in the Ministry, it was also true that most of those paths passed through that room, very early in every potential bureaucrat's career. Filing things away, fetching things that had been filed, then filing them back where they had been was the Ministry's equivalent to an Eastern monk's cutting wood and carrying water. As Fudge ranted at Constantine, demanding a speech to lionize - or even cannonize - the Boy Who Lived, and repeatedly insisting that the speech also drive home the story of the Minister's own illustrious political career, one of the young workers laboring over the files nudged his neighbor and whispered, "Hey, Ollie. You hear all of that?"

"Can't help but hear it," groused the slightly older and more experienced worker, also whispering so as not to attract the attention of the powerful people in the next room.

"What's he on about?" the younger man asked.

Oliver Moore gawked at his companion in disbelief. "Stanley! You don't know the story of Harry Potter?"

Stanley hissed in derision. "Go on. I know all that. It's the rest of the rant that's baffling. How long has Fudge been Minister?"

Oliver grinned wickedly. "About five years."

Stanley raised an eyebrow. "He talks like he built the bloody place."

"And sometimes, he acts like he believes it, as well," Oliver confirmed with an emphatic nod.

Stanley looked worriedly toward Constantine's office. "He's lost it, then?"

Oliver sighed and shook his head. "Just do your job. Ignore the office-holders. They're all insane. You'd have to be barking to want their worries, anyway."

The two men laughed agreeably - though very quietly. Each grabbed the files he needed and hustled off to do the real work of governing wizarding Great Britain.

-

The Fudge interview was front-page material in the Prophet the next day. Early in the morning, Hogwarts students saw the headline "Boy Who Lived Missing and Presumed Dead." There were a few snickers caused by that presumption - Gregory Goyle felt a surge of exultation at learning that Vincent Crabbe would be unable to recruit Harry Potter into the Death Eaters organization any time soon... or ever, if the Prophet's dire predictions were any indication. And, predictably, there were some students who simply didn't care.

Most of the Hogwarts student population did care, however, and they were not pleased in the least.

Ginny Weasley saw the headline by looking over Colin Creevey's shoulder as he read in the Gryffindor common room. She ran up the stairs to her room, sobbing. Hermione Granger had seen her copy of the newspaper earlier than any of the other Gryffindors, but she was determined to read all the way through the article... and then mentally edit out the most obvious exaggerations added by the Daily Prophet's editorial staff... before saying anything to anyone else. Once she had finished reading and judging what she had read, she was very worried. She tossed the newspaper aside, but before she could say anything to anyone, Colin Creevey's voice rang out through the common room. "Are we going to allow this to happen?" he shouted, gathering together everyone who had seen the story that morning - and startling all of those who had not. Hermione could see that the mood in the common room was turning ugly, and that there was sure to be some trouble soon if something weren't done about it. She rose from her favorite overstuffed chair and very quietly left through the portrait hole in search of Ron.

She hadn't seen much of Ron... she hadn't seen him at all, really... since she had last spoken to him on the train. When he had avoided her on the horseless carriage ride from the Hogwarts Express to the castle, she had simply thought she would see him in class the next day, or soon thereafter. As it turned out, she was quite surprised to find how completely different two schedules for two sixth-year Gryffindors could be. It made sense: both she and Ron had passed their O.W.L.s, and the last two years of school were intended to focus on the students' specialities. From what Hermione could tell from Ron's schedule, he really was planning on becoming an auror. Hermione herself did not know quite what she would do professionally - but from her class schedule, magical research seemed a good guess. She had the maximum allowable load of academics, and as many classes that at least touched on magical theory as she could find among Hogwarts' offerings. So she and Ron spent their entire class schedule attending separate classes.

But the kind of avoidance Ron had been practicing bordered on the obsessive. On several occasions, Hermione had seen Ron's back retreating up the stairs toward his room in the boys' section of Gryffindor Tower as she had entered the common room. When it happened once, she had thought that she had just missed him, and that she would catch him the next time they were in the common room together. But every time Hermione entered the common room when Ron was there, he was leaving by the time she got through the portrait hole. How had he known she was coming? Did he keep some kind of charm that sounded an alarm if she were approaching? Hermione wasn't certain, but she was very suspicious of the way Ron could always be travelling away from her at full speed every time she was about to encounter him.

The common room was not the only example.

Hermione had spotted Ron leaving the Great Hall just as she was coming in; had seen him turning away around a far corner as she had entered a hallway, and had seen him dashing out of the castle just as she was about to descend the stairs leading to the entrance hall. And up until today, she had been content to allow him to play his game. But today's news was too important to allow the two of them to act this way. Hermione had always known that if she really wanted to talk to Ron, all she really had to do was to get into his way as he was going to class. She walked quickly to the corridor that Ron would have to take to get to his first class, and the boy practically walked into her without noticing. He startled sharply when she called his name from less than two feet in front of him. He stopped walking and stared at her. He said nothing, keeping his face as blank as he could. Behind his unreacting mask, however, his heart pounded, he felt out of breath, and the room suddenly seemed far too hot.

Hermione had seen Ron's wooden-face pose too many times to pay it much attention at that moment. If he wanted to save himself from embarrassment, she could understand that. But she wanted his thoughts and opinions, and more importantly, Harry needed their help. "I suppose you've seen the newspaper today?"

Ron's heart sank. 'At least she didn't ask me if I'd read today's bloody assignment,' he thought. 'But wouldn't you know, if Hermione had something to ask me, it would be about whether I had read something.' "No," he said out loud, his voice dull and flat.

"It says Harry is missing, and presumed dead."

"Harry...?" Ron repeated stupidly, not following the change of subject.

"Harry Potter?" Hermione snapped, her voice filled with impatience. "Our friend? Your best friend, so you said. We haven't seen him. He got lost. He's presumed dead."

Ron was, in some distant part of his mind, quite disturbed by this news. But dominating his thoughts was the image of Hermione - filled with energy, fired with emotion. Years before, Ron had thought of Hermione as a dumpy little girl, lost in books. But the dumpiness had become curves, and her intellectualism had developed into a fiery righteousness that was pure Gryffindor. She was always most attractive when she was inspired by a cause, no matter how unappealing the actual cause may have been. Ron could see no point in 'freeing' the house elves, for example, but when Hermione gave one of her impassioned speeches on the subject, Ron had been captivated, and could only wish that some of that passion had been turned toward him. And then it had been... for a while. And then it hadn't... He realized that he was just standing there while Hermione waited for a reply. As much to buy himself time to gather his thoughts as to gain information, he asked, "What happened?"

Hermione's mouth pressed into a hard line, an expression of her impatience with Ron's slow responses. When she answered him, though, her voice had lost some of its edge - an indication that she realized that Ron was at least trying to catch up to current events. "Harry went to South America with Professor Snape to search for potion ingredients. They rented a boat, and when the time came for the boat to be returned, they didn't bring it back. Aurors have wanted to question Professor Snape about something since before term started, but they haven't been able to find him, so they think that he's still in the Amazon jungle somewhere. They think Harry's with him. And Remus Lupin, who went with them, hasn't turned up either. So Minister Fudge thinks that Harry's probably dead. Oh, and he says it's all Headmaster Dumbledore's fault, though, coming from Fudge, that's a worthless opinion."

Ron's eyes lost some of their glaze, and he dropped the blank mask from his face. Now that he had some information to consider, the painful presence of his ex-girlfriend... and the possibility that his best friend might be dead... transformed from emotional anguish to a problem to be solved. He thought a moment, then met Hermione's eyes, his own eyes filled with certainty. "None of that makes sense," he stated flatly. "Harry told us about Snape having to watch over him this summer, and he brought Remus Lupin to the Burrow with him... but even if Snape was locked on to Harry with chains, I don't believe he would go hunting for potion ingredients taking Harry along. Harry may have passed the potions classes, but he was never brilliant at it, and Snape was always giving him hell. And so far as I know, Snape and Lupin hated each other. I don't care if Dumbledore cursed the lot of them, if those three had gotten into a river boat together, they all would have been dead, and not from some outside danger - they would have killed each other. And you say that aurors wanted to question Snape - I'll bet he didn't want to be questioned. And so he disappeared. Where Harry and Lupin are is anyone's guess. But unless all three of them were feeling particularly suicidal, there's no way they went to South America to go hunting together."

Hermione nodded once, a short, hard motion. "That's what I thought. We have to see the Headmaster."

Ron started to protest, "Oh, yeah. That'll be easy..." But Hermione grabbed his hand and started toward Dumbledore's office, dragging Ron along behind her.

"Let's go," she called back over her shoulder, after Ron was already stumbling along to prevent being pulled over by Hermione's insistent dragging. Ron sighed, letting himself be led along the corridor, but he had little hope of actually getting into Dumbledore's office. For a Gryffindor, there was a strict procedure to be followed if a student wished to see the Headmaster. Ron suspected it was very similar for each of the Houses, but he knew the Gryffindor rules by heart. First, the student wishing to see Professor Dumbledore had to go to the Gryffindor Head of House, Professor McGonagall, to request an appointment. Then, Professor McGonagall would inquire as to the nature of the matter the student wished to discuss with the Headmaster. Then, she would usually take care of the problem herself, or - in the case of an unreasonable request - simply deny the student an appointment. The process was simple, but time-consuming. And it almost never led to the student being allowed to see Dumbledore. Simply presenting oneself at the Headmaster's office and attempting to walk in almost never worked. Dumbledore's office was protected by a system that demanded a password to get past the gargoyle and up the disappearing staircase. Nonetheless, it was Dumbledore's office toward which Hermione was rushing, and Ron decided to simply follow along for the moment and suggest alternatives once the Headmaster's door had proven to be locked against them. There seemed to be no stopping Hermione when she was this agitated.

When the couple arrived at the place in which the Headmaster's guardian gargoyle usually sat, they saw its place was vacant, the marble column already extended into a stairwell. Ron looked at the unexpected arrangement suspiciously, but Hermione didn't hesitate, starting up the stairs without breaking stride. When she had negotiated the stairway, she stepped into Dumbledore's office, only to find the Headmaster standing in front of his desk, smiling expectantly her way.

"Ah... Miss Granger. I was expecting you. Marshmallow bunny?" The Headmaster held out a dish containing a pile of ridiculously large, puffy white marshmallow candies in the shapes of rabbits. Each one looked large enough to be a filling dessert all by itself. Ron was tempted to take one, but Hermione said "No, thank you," quite firmly, and the Headmaster allowed the candy dish to float back to its place on his desk. He smiled at Ron. "And Mister Weasley. Welcome."

The Headmaster's slow speech and measured movements were usually very effective at disrupting the rhythm of a visitor who felt his concern should be treated as an urgent emergency. Dumbledore's kindly voice and twinkling eyes had done quite well at putting nervous students at ease, and helping to relax angry parents. Hermione had paid close attention to those techniques over the past five years, and she did not allow them to affect her. "I know you must be aware of today's news, and that Minister Fudge is blaming you for it."

Dumbledore smiled even more broadly, as his eyes twinkled brilliantly. "Ah..."

"Before you say anything," Hermione interrupted, holding up a hand, "I want you to know that, without any input on my part, the Gryffindors..." Hermione paused. Something had registered very strongly just below her conscious notice. Dumbledore had done... something. Blink? Whatever it was, the action was not in character for him at all. The Headmaster was always - no matter how vaporous or ethereal he presented himself - in complete control at all times. He usually seemed to know what was going to happen before it occurred. Even when Hermione had used the Time Turner, Dumbledore had given her advice on what she should do, as though he were aware of events that he had not yet lived through. But on this particular occasion, Hermione had actually surprised him.

Some of the legends about Merlin said that the famous wizard had lived his entire life regressing through time, remembering things in the future, uncertain of the past. The most literal readings of the story had Merlin waking up from death as a very old man and becoming progressively younger until he was stuffed back into his mother's womb as a newborn. Hermione had thought that such a life would be horrible, that the wizard would have no choice except to constantly labor to bring about the prerequisites for the things he remembered happening in the future. As a young girl, she had thought she understood the symbolism of the story, though. She believed that the tale was meant to caution everyone - not just wizards - that choices made throughout life imposed their own limits, restrictions and consequences. That the repercussions of one's own actions could make anyone feel as though life were as prescribed and limited as Merlin's own backward life.

And then she had met Dumbledore, and had wondered how he could possibly know so much about what was to come. Could he be living in reverse, like Merlin? Or had he somehow divorced himself from the strictures of time, becoming able to move back and forth at will? Either thought was chilling, and carried with it a certain amount of horror.

But she had surprised Albus Dumbledore. She had said something, approached him in such a way, as he had not expected. She met his eyes, and in a moment, the two of them shared an acknowledgement of Dumbledore's humanity, and Hermione's unpredictable creativity.

Then the moment was over, too swiftly for Ron to have recognized it. Hermione continued with her appeal. "...The Gryffindors are all very upset. They will likely riot if nothing at all is done. Some students will want nothing more than an acknowledgement that you... that the whole staff, but especially you... take this seriously. Most will want some kind of action - a search... I don't know what else. But a few - and I have heard them talking in the common room - will settle for nothing less than finding Harry dead or alive. That's why I came here. I have no doubt that you know more about all of this than Minister Fudge does. You may even know that Harry is all right, or even where he is. But unless you tell the whole school something, the Gryffindors... and who knows, maybe a lot of the other students as well... will be very dissatisfied. And that could cause the kinds of disruptions no one wants."

"Or..." Dumbledore's smile became so wide, he appeared to Ron to be truly demented. "...at least that our... finest scholars... do not want, eh?" The Headmaster's smile faded, and both his visitors thought the man looked tired. "I know some things. But I don't know enough. I do not believe Harry is dead, but I cannot assure you with any certainty that he is all right. Nor do I know where he is. If the student body demands to see concrete physical evidence of the continued existence of the Boy Who Lived, I am afraid... I shall have to disappoint them. And if they feel that they will be able to demand action on the part of this school's staff that is more properly within the purview of government... or if they believe that hooliganism will gain them positive attention, they may well be quite surprised at the attention they do receive."

Ron had thought it better to let Hermione do the talking in Dumbledore's office, but hearing this, he could not keep silent. "Sir, if you say 'government,' you're talking about the Ministry, and ultimately, Minister Fudge. I don't want to say anything bad about the whole MInistry... my Dad works for the Ministry, I know there are a lot of good people there. But... Fudge is a git." Hermione rolled her eyes, and Dumbledore stifled a chuckle, under cover of clearing his throat warningly. But Ron was unwilling to let either one believe he was only joking. "I mean it," he insisted. "Fudge put Umbridge here last year. He's denied the obvious fact that You-Know-Who is still alive for as long as I can remember. He's done a lot of ugly things that I know about, and I don't pay any attention to what the government does!" Ron blushed bright red. "I mean... maybe I should. Be a good citizen and all... But this is Fudge we're talking about. He's not going to do anything to help. He's probably glad so long as he thinks Harry's dead!"

"I think that may be a bit harsh," Dumbledore said, though his voice was sympathetic. "But I do agree with you that I doubt we will get much help from Minister Fudge regarding this particular disappearance. Mister Weasley, Miss Granger, I appreciate your coming to me about this. I will..." the Headmaster gazed off into space for a moment. "I'm not sure what I will do. Make a statement, most likely, and perhaps..." He seemed lost in thought for a short time, then met his visitors' eyes once again. "Thank you. And I believe you both have classes you are probably late for, am I right?" Ron and Hermione both nodded. "Then take these." Dumbledore produced two notes. They were excuses for tardiness, made out to the proper teachers, one for Hermione and one for Ron. They both thanked him and left the office. Once they had reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, the marble column began to rotate once again, and within seconds, the guardian gargoyle was back in place.

Hermione started toward her class, staring at the note in her hand and wondering once again how prescient the Headmaster truly was. Ron watched her as she took several steps, captivated by the graceful motion of her hips as she moved. Then he called out, moving quickly to catch up. "Hermione! Wait." She turned toward him and their eyes met. Ron forgot everything he was about to say.

Hermione raised an eyebrow in response to his silence. "Yes?" she prompted.

Ron struggled to concentrate, to force out words that would make some sense. "What's your hurry?" he managed, then realized exactly what Hermione would say, and wished that he could take his question back. Too late.

"My hurry is that I am already late to class."

"But we have these," Ron protested, holding up his note, hurrying to Hermione's side, standing close... possibly close enough that she might remember the times, not so long ago, when he had held her close to him, squeezed her tightly, run his hands over her, tasted her mouth. "Don't we need to talk?"

"Do we?" Hermione snapped, eyes flashing. "I thought you had a different opinion, these days." She glared at Ron, but he wasn't fighting with her, only looking helplessly at her, clearly in pain. She took a moment to force herself toward calm. She waited, giving Ron a stellar opportunity for one of his angry, insulting statements, or even one of his hyperbolic tirades. He said nothing, but merely stood there, waiting for her to offer another comment or walk away. She looked at him for a long moment, taking in the long, athletic body and the brilliant red hair. He wasn't handsome, but he was cute, in his own way. Strong, yet supple. A hopelessly inept kisser, but a very eager one... and he had learned what she most liked and what she most detested about kissing very swiftly. There could well be hope for him, in the right hands. He hadn't been a bad boyfriend, really. Just not a good one for her. "All right," she sighed, and saw the hope rekindle in his eyes. She would have to extinguish that swiftly. "We can talk, if you really want to. At lunch. Or after last class. In the common room, or the great hall, or out in front of the castle. No place private. It won't be that kind of 'discussion.' But we can't talk now. I have to be in class because..." Hermione laughed, knowing that Ron already knew the answer, but knowing that she had to say it out loud before he would accept it. "Because there's a class. Of mine. In session. And I'm not there. I'm interested in what we'll be doing today. And every day. We've already passed our O.W.L.s, Ron. We should be taking only those classes we're really eager to get to, really interested in. That's what I'm doing anyway. So: lunch? Or after?"

"After," Ron said, attempting to sound off-hand, knowing he sounded desperate, instead. But his ex-girlfriend smiled at him, agreed to meet him on the lawn in front of the castle, and hurried off to class, looking so appealing as she walked away. Ron sighed and looked back at the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office. "What the bloody hell did she need me for, anyway?" he muttered to himself, and slouched off to class.

-

The Daily Prophet, with its wild speculations about his disappearance and death had, once again, not reached Godric's Hollow, so - blissfully unaware of his friends' distress - Harry spent the entire day practicing magic more intensely than he had ever practiced in his entire life. No matter how he tried, how many suggestions Remus offered, or how much magical theory Snape presented to help him, Harry found that he was unable to stop time as he had done the previous day. After a dozen separate sets of attempts to recreate the previous day's temporal effects, Snape called off the experiment.

"There is more important work in which you could be engaged," he said, with obvious disappointment. "You need to concentrate on improving and controlling the powers you do possess, rather than pursuing a fluke that may never work again. But don't worry - most of your significant progress has come by accident. We must take advantage of that. In order to maximize your chance of having another unexpected incidence of superlatively powerful magic, you must use as much magic as possible, as constantly - as unceasingly - as you can. Start over with the experiment which led to your time-stoppage yesterday. Try once more to control the stone. But this time..." Snape's grin may have been meant to be encouraging, but to Harry, the potion master's lips curling over his bared teeth made the man seem more threatening than ever. "...This time, use magic for everything. Don't turn a doorknob, open the door with magic. Don't sweep up the plaster your stone knocked out of the wall, use magic to repair the damage. Don't walk... use magic to move yourself."

Harry had been steeling himself to return to the stone-control experiment, taking deep breaths, rolling his shoulders to loosen his muscles, concentrating on remembering what he had done the previous day. But at Snape's last statement, Harry stopped all of that and stared at the potions professor disbelievingly. "What?"

Snape glared at the boy impatiently. "You are a quiddich seeker, are you not?" Harry immediately agreed. "And you have been called an exemplary broom handler for at least five years, is that not correct?" Somewhat more modestly, Harry acknowledged that as well. "So you must be familiar with the precept that the broom does not fly... the wizard does."

"Maybe in theory," Harry countered, putting a Snape-like sneer into the last word. "But then, why is a Firebolt so much better than... what's in that closet?"

Snape shook his head pityingly. "Because the competition broom has been shaped by wizards who understand how magic flows from the user through the wood. Just as your wand focuses your magical energy, your broom functions to direct your flying ability. And just as you have shown us all that wands are a crutch that a wizard may cast away to perform wandless magic, so you should be able to cast off the crutch of your broomstick, and perform broomless flying."

"Oh. Um. Well." Harry stood there, unable to imagine how he might begin to fly without a broom.

"It... uh... it would be great to... you know... just fly," he stammered uncertainly. "But the first thing I do when I do fly - with a broomstick, I mean - is to call my broom up to my hand." Harry held his hand out over the bare floor and looked back up at Snape in frustration.

"And, when you draw your broom up into your grasp," Snape said slowly, as though giving simple directions to an idiot, "are you yet flying?"

Harry scowled. "Well, no."

"Then what do you do?" Snape inquired with exaggerated kindliness.

"Step over. Sit on the stick."

"And when you are aboard the shaft, do your feet still touch the Earth?"

"Um..." Harry had to consider that one for a bit. From his very first flight, he had been able to leap onto his broom and take off in a single motion. He thought of the opening of a quiddich match, when both teams were still on the ground. There was a moment when everyone was astride their brooms, but had not yet taken flight to begin the game. And sometimes, if the command to 'Kick Off' was slow in coming, both teams could be stalled with their butts on their sticks, but their feet still on the turf. "Yes...?" Harry murmured as the considered. Then, more definitely, "Yes. There is a time that... Yes. On the broom, but feet still on the ground."

"And at that moment, you are still not flying?"

Harry was puzzled at how such a simple thing could be so hard to explain. "No... that is, I'm not flying... but the broom is. I'm not holding it up, but it's not falling. It's usually pressing up against me."

"So really, there is no difference between your state at that time and the state in which you are right now."

"Maybe not," Harry admitted, still resistant to Snape's implication. "But I have a broom under me. And it's flying."

"And when you kick off from the ground?"

"The broom rises and carries me..."

"Aa!" Snape barked, index finger raised accusingly. "Before you continue that thought, tell me, Mister Potter: Can you perform an outside loop?" Harry looked puzzled. Snape sighed and explained, looking very put-upon to be detailing such a basic concept to an expert flier. "Let's say you are flying high above the quiddich pitch in a standard position - you astride your broom, moving forward. You turn downward, leaning forward to dive toward the ground, but rather than continuing to lose altitude, you keep turning, pulling your broomstick through a circle, so that you are momentarily head down beneath the broom, then rising toward your previous elevation, then back in the position from which you began your maneuver. An outside loop. Can you perform that maneuver?"

"Yes," Harry said cautiously. "Though it's a lot easier to do the other way."

"An inside loop. Yes, it would be," Snape agreed, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a wry smile. "Tell me this, then: Can you perform a barrel roll?" Harry shot Snape an irritated look, as though convinced the man were making up terms just to be difficult. Snape countered with a superior smirk. "Barrel roll. You are flying high above the pitch exactly as in our previous example. You lean hard to the side, but make the broom lean with you as you continue to fly straight forward. You continue your lean until you are momentarily upside down, then keep leaning in the same direction until you return to your upright position. A barrel roll. Can you perform that maneuver?"

Harry recognized the move from countless quiddich practices. It was a standard practice for dodging bludgers, and could even be done with no forward motion at all, though that was usually only necessary for keepers. "Sure. An Ulfnar Twist. I can do that."

"And when you perform your Ulfnar Twist, Mister Potter... where do you feel the pressure of the stick?"

Harry's eyes lost focus as he tried to remember the exact feeling of the maneuver. It was particularly difficult to put quiddich moves into words because for the past five years Harry had been coached to play the game and fly his broom with his guts and with his heart. Thinking too much hurt the team by making players hesitant and uncertain, according to every quiddich expert Harry had ever spoken with. Explaining a broom twist in terms other than 'pull - zoom - go' or some other emotionally-based coaching shorthand seemed wrong, almost as though he were trying to jinx his own performance. "I feel it in my hands, mostly. When you're twisting in the air, you direct your flight through your hands - the rate of twist, the amount of forward thrust..." he shrugged, knowing that his explanation had been inadequate.

"But you are not hanging from the broom by your hands," Snape insisted. "In fact, far from hanging off of the broom, you are sitting astride it when you are upside down just as firmly as when your head is above your heels. I have seen you perform such a 'Twist,' Mister Potter, and while doing it, you have not bent your knees in order to grasp the shaft with your calves nor hang from it by your knees. You may be holding it tightly between your thighs, but from the ground, it certainly seems as though the shaft is pressing quite consistently upon your bottom."

"But it's all so fast," Harry protested. "How can you see what's happening in a Twist or a... Loop?... when you're so far away and the move is over in a fraction of a second?"

Snape's smile of triumph showed clearly that he felt Harry had just raised the point that would prove the professor's argument. "It is the very speed of those maneuvers that confirms my hypothesis. When in an inside loop, as you observed, your bottom will be pressed hard into the shaft. But in an outside loop, or in what you call a Twist, your centripetal force should fling you away from the shaft and out into space, no matter how intricately you turned or twisted. That this does not happen is demonstrated in every quiddich match. This proves that you are not riding the shaft, the shaft is riding you."

Remus, who had been listening to the entire exchange very quietly, could no longer contain his amusement. A stifled laugh escaped his lips with a rude sounding 'pfffpt.'

Both Harry and Severus looked toward the werewolf, waiting for some further comment. He shook his head and waved away their attention.

"If you have something to add, Mister Lupin..." Snape sneered.

"No, it's nothing. Really," Remus said as he tried to hold back the chuckling that continued to shake his shoulders.

Snape's expression became a hard grimace. With enough volume to make Harry jump, he demanded, "What?"

Remus could see there was no avoiding having to explain himself. With a look of genuine admiration as well as amusement, he told Snape, "Professor, if you ever consider a career in public speaking outside of the classroom, I can guarantee you an audience of gay men who would love to hear you lecture on quiddich." Snape blinked, but otherwise held perfectly still, his face absolutely blank. Remus smiled gently. "I mean, seriously, Professor... 'no matter how hard you twist and turn, the shaft rides you...' With your dramatic voice, you could sell recordings, and I'd wager galleons against butterbeer it would get played at parties."

Harry had seen Snape so furious that spittle had flown from his mouth as he raged. The boy had also seen Snape express his anger coldly, with cutting sarcasm and hurtful insult. He had seen Snape react with impatience, with disdain and with contempt. But Harry had never seen Snape react quite like this. Could the potions professor actually be embarrassed?

Stiffly, looking very uncomfortable, Snape muttered, "Yes. Very amusing. I'll keep that in mind for when my teaching career is over. Which, considering I have not turned up for class this year, might already by the case. I suppose I shall find out after Halloween... if I should happen to survive." He fell silent, glowering at Remus.

Harry broke the uncomfortable silence. "I guess I should go practice with that stone, now."

"No!" Snape commanded. "Come outside." He started toward the door and looked back over his shoulder to see Harry standing uncertainly right where he had been. "You may walk. Come on."

Severus, Remus and Harry all walked out into the front yard. Remus strolled across the lawn, taking in the riot of fall color on the surrounding trees, and marvelled once again at the lack of traffic on such an inviting stretch of road as that which wound pleasantly past Godric's Hollow. When he looked back toward his companions, Harry was standing lightly on his toes, leaning forward slightly, knees bent, arms extended in front of him, as though he were pantomiming riding a broomstick. Snape was standing next to the boy, giving instructions. Suddenly, Snape ordered, 'Kick Off!' and with a deceptively tiny twitch of his foot, Harry was airborne.

Remus leapt into the air himself, elated. Seeing the cub breaking gravity's bonds without benefit of a broomstick beneath him was breathtaking, exhilarating. He wanted to shout out a cheer. Then the cheer died in his throat. As he landed from his excited leap, he ran toward Harry. The boy was still airborne, but clearly in trouble.

Harry had never had this much trouble when flying a broom. The first flight he had ever attempted aboard a broomstick had been under his firm control from the moment he left the ground. Now, however, he had experienced one of the classic mishaps that so frequently befell beginners. As soon as he had risen to a height of only a few feet above the ground, he had flipped over, legs pointing ridiculously skyward as his head dangled mere inches from the grass-covered lawn. He was still moving forward, and while he knew his speed was actually very slow, the proximity of his face to the ground made his progress seem nightmarishly swift. He shifted his weight, trying to heave himself back upright without any success. With annoyance, he remembered seeing some beginning flyers who had gotten into this same predicament and had tried to extricate themselves from it with the same kind of futile moves. He thought it may have seemed vaguely amusing to him back then. It was not funny at that particular moment. Fittingly, it was his long years of practice on a broom that saved him from disaster. He was flying along, struggling to reposition himself, hardly paying any attention to where he was going, when his subconscious mind screamed "TREE" insistently enough to grab his awareness. Without thinking, Harry pushed forward and away, mimicking the motions he would make to direct a broomstick. The motion would have sent him hurtling down if he had been flying upright. Instead, it turned his path upward just before he flew into a thick, old oak growing near the edge of his property. He shot upward through the tree's crown, breaking small branches and scattering its brilliantly colored leaves. He pushed forward and away again, continuing to imagine a broomstick handle in his grasp, and his loop continued into a full one hundred eighty degrees, turning him back upright and sending him flying back the way he had come.

Which is when he first fully felt the absence of a broom beneath him.

Harry could almost feel the magic streaming from him, but with no broom to direct the energy, he had no control over where the force went. He could visualize his power pouring out into the atmosphere, and knew that he had to focus that power in order to gain command of his speed and direction. And then he was spinning in three directions at once and falling fast. Harry was dimly aware that, if he had seen anyone else doing this, he would be able to tell whether the flier was performing a 'falling leaf' or a 'death spiral.' Both were recognized moves, favored by beaters who needed to escape close combat in the air while avoiding bludgers being slammed toward them. Aboard a broom, a good flier could pull out of either maneuver and continue playing. Without a broomstick to help shape his magical thrust, Harry was lost, unable to get his bearings, and afraid that any effort he made to reverse his fall would slam him into the ground more forcefully than he already was going to be slammed.

Remus had run toward Harry when the boy had flipped upside down right after takeoff, he had turned to run toward the oak tree once he saw that Harry was about to fly directly into it, he had spun around to follow Harry's flight once the boy had managed his full turn, and when Harry began to fall, Remus sprinted to a spot near to where the cub would land. He raised his wand, hoping he had enough power to stop Harry's dive. "Wingardium..." he began, and stopped in shock as Snape pulled his wand arm down.

"Don't," Snape ordered.

Remus glared at Snape, and growled, "He'll die. Let go."

Snape held Remus' arm in a surprisingly powerful grip, his long, thin fingers digging into the werewolf's flesh. "This is how he learns everything," the potions master said. "Everything," he insisted with grim intensity.

BANG!

Both men turned at the explosive sound. Remus stared at the ground. His first impression was that Harry had exploded upon striking the Earth, and he was astounded that the impact had not left a crater. But Snape was looking up, grim triumph on his face. Remus followed Snape's gaze to see Harry, nearly one hundred meters in the air, still falling. "He apparated..." Remus said, amazed.

"Or something like it. So far as I know, he has never been introduced to the accepted methods of apparation. If we could study what the boy has done, we may well discover an alternative to standard apparating - possibly even something that would allow us to appear within the warded areas of Hogwarts itself." The frustration at being unable to apply standard magical study to the phenomenon of Harry's magic was etched into Snape's face.

That, at least, Remus could understand. When the cub's wild magic had expressed itself in defensive explosions and high-powered blasts directed against images of his hated enemies, Remus had thought that it would be easy to quantify what Harry was doing in terms of standard magical measurements, and codify what he had accomplished in terms of standard magical practice. Perhaps Harry would have a new spell named after him, the Potter Blast, or the Boy Who Lived Shield, for example. But as Remus had observed Harry's magic develop, it had become increasingly clear that this was not a simple matter of a new spell - or even a new set of spells - or a mere wandless technique for casting spells. Harry was utilizing an entirely new way of accessing the basic stuff of magic itself - a method that might make standard spell-casting obsolete.

As they had worked together with the boy, Remus had not wanted to discuss some of his ideas with Snape, because he knew some of how Severus felt about pure-blooded wizard lines and the wildly varying levels of power expressed by the current wizard population. But an idea that had begun to form in Remus' mind when Harry blasted the image of Voldemort in the basement of the Malfoy Manor had taken full shape when Harry seemed to have stopped the passage of time, and the idea would not be stop nagging at him. If Harry survived (as Remus believed he would); if Harry defeated his enemies (Remus believed that neither Voldemort nor Fudge stood a chance... and that Dumbledore was vulnerable); if Harry could stand the pressure that would be brought to bear upon him (and Remus believed there was no one more likely to be able to do so than this cub); and most importantly - if Harry found a wife... a lover... Hell, if hero-worshipping women threw themselves at him, it didn't matter... if he procreated; then soon there would be a three-tiered system for categorizing human beings: muggles, obsolete wizards and Potter Mages.

Wizarding families had, for uncounted generations, taken advantage of a certain 'safety period' built in to their offspring. Wizard babies could be mistaken for muggles. Wizard children could be impressed and amazed at their parents' abilities without being able to emulate them. And wizard adolescents were still denied the privileges of certain magics, such as apparation. With an institution such as Hogwarts to help youngsters through the introduction to their magical abilities, wizarding society could carry on in its sedate, conservative fashion, making few significant changes in the way it conducted its affairs for hundreds of years at a time. Remus suspected that Potter babies would be quite different, that tantrums could lead to fireballs flying out of a crib, and that a baby's fright might cause it to form an impenetrable shield, putting the infant at risk of suffocation. Potter babies would likely have to be taught - as Potter himself was being taught now - how to do everything for themselves with magic as well as with the physical power of their bodies. Parents who had never had to live through such an infancy would likely be baffled as to how to help their children - or even how to ensure their survival. A baby placed 'safely' in a crib, unable to crawl out, might discover the power of flight, instead. And how could a parent convince a toddler that it was important to learn to walk when the child could hover effortlessly? But there would be no such babies if Harry were to smash himself to jelly on the lawn of Godric's Hollow. As he plummeted, Remus made to raise his wand once again, but Snape held his arm down, still. "Damn it, man, what are you doing?" Remus shouted. "He's falling faster than ever!"

Snape would not relent. With cold intensity, he said, "Did you notice that when he apparated, despite spinning out of control, that he sent himself directly upward in a perfectly straight line?"

Remus, fighting to free his wand arm from Snape's iron grip, did not even consider the argument. All he could hear was Snape calmly speaking while the cub descended like a meteor. "Bullshite!" He struck at Snape's face with his free hand, but Snape dodged the blow. Remus' forearm collided with Snape's shoulder, upsetting both men's balance and sending them stumbling to keep their feet, but not dislodging Snape's grip.

Snape did not return a blow in retaliation. Instead, with undiminished determination, he said "It's true, Wolf. Look. See what happened. When Harry apparated, he did not go sideways, he did not take off at an angle, he did not place himself inside a solid object - such as the ground, immediately below him. He went absolutely straight up."

BANG!

Both men looked up this time, but they had to raise their eyes even further. Over two hundred meters above the ground, Harry Potter appeared. "And see there - he's done it again!" Snape stated with satisfaction. He released Remus, who was concentrating on the tiny-looking form so far up in the air. Then both men jumped as a window exploded on the far side of their house.

Harry was aware that something had saved him from crashing - twice - but he couldn't say what it might have been. He did know that he had suffered more than enough uncontrolled tumbling, however, and despite all of Snape's theories, Harry knew only one way to regain power over his flight. He visualized the kitchen of his parents' home, reached a hand out and shouted, "Accio broom!" The spell felt right, he thought that it had worked, but he fell sickeningly for a long, tense moment before he felt the reassuring impact of wood on his palm. Gripping it desperately, he twisted the simple kitchen sweeper beneath him and immediately felt the maelstrom of magical energy all around him smooth out into a steady, driving stream. He accelerated forward, performed a deliberate twist, then willed himself to stop spinning. He quickly checked his surroundings, discovered which way was up, and how far away the ground was, and in an instant, he was flying smoothly. The broom on which he sat would never replace his firebolt, and he suspected that it might send him crashing into an obstacle if he were to attempt any truly intricate flying. But he was no longer plummeting helplessly. In that sense, this simple straw-tipped stick was more valuable than any competition broom - it had saved his life.

Harry landed gracefully and dismounted from the kitchen broom in a single smooth motion. Smiling confidently, he looked Snape directly in the eye and announced, "That was fun. Care to go with me? We could do it again."

Remus' relief was so great it seemed to pour off of him in waves as he gently cautioned, "You shouldn't do much of anything just yet. You've been spun around a fair amount - it's a wonder you're not complaining of a whiplash in your neck."

Snape made no acknowledgement of Harry's invitation, but instead very quietly asked, "Are you dizzy."

Harry laughed and began to answer. Then his brows drew together and he stood silently, concentrating. Remus stepped forward, thinking the boy was about to faint, but Harry was not suffering from vertigo. Quite the opposite, to his surprise. "No... No, I'm not dizzy. That's... weird." He jumped up and clicked his heels, then extended one arm to his side and unerringly directed his index finger onto his nose. He walked a straight line, then stood in one spot, tilted his head back until he was looking straight upward, and turned around in a small circle. He looked back at Snape suspiciously. "I'm not dizzy at all. How did you know?"

"I didn't. But it makes perfect sense, considering the way your system has been able to shrug off negative effects of late. Your improvised apparation was quite impressive, Mister Potter. Can you apparate into the house?"

"Severus!" Remus protested, his studied habit of polite address forgotten in his outrage at the suggestion.

"Wolf," Snape shot back. "The boy has just apparated twice..." The two men continued to shout at each other, neither one hearing what the other had to say.

"... outside..."

"...over one hundred meters in each case..."

"...in clear air..."

"...to save his own life..."

"...directly away from the biggest obstacle..."

"...in a perfectly straight line..."

"...the worst danger, the ground..."

Harry's voice, dull with disappointment, cut into the argument, bringing it to an abrupt end. "Moot point." Both men waited for him to explain. With a miserable shrug, eyes cast down, he did so. "I tried. I visualized the room I wanted to go to, I tried to force myself there, but nothing happened. I can't remember what I did while I was falling. To me, it was just a quick change in the colors that were spinning around me. And it happened twice. But I honestly have no clue as to what it was that happened. It was just... a lot of green spinning around, then a lot of blue spinning around, and I fell until all I could see was a bunch of green spinning around again, and then there was a lot of blue spinning around. And then I summoned the broom. But now - nothing. I tried. It didn't work." Harry looked up as he finished his statement, and glared angrily at both men. "Why don't you teach me to apparate the way you both can?" he snarled. "I'm supposed to be so damn powerful, why is it that I have to get carried whenever we go anywhere? Maybe if I knew the real way to apparate, I could improvise something from that. Because right now, I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be doing."

Snape stood proudly, his eyes cold as he let the heat of Harry's anger wash past him. "Mister Potter..." he began, in his standard classroom form, but the boy in front of him was out of patience with that sort of presentation.

"Stop it!" Harry commanded. "I'm Harry. You're Severus. He's Remus. Are we supposed to be working together to take over the world, or what? We can't even call each other by our names? It's ridiculous! We're fighting old Tom, and dorky Cornelius, and big, bad Albus. We all know each other, and have done for years, for God's sake! Harry. I'm Harry. Say it. Say it, you cold, inhibited, frustrated old man. Say my name!"

Snape looked down his nose at the boy as though Harry were a particularly unsavory bit of offal adhering to his shoe. In his driest drawl, he replied. "Mist..." But that was as far as he got.

"Aaaugh!" Harry bellowed, throwing his hands up in frustration. Between his arms, a blue glow formed, growing in intensity until Remus had to shut his eyes tightly against the glare. To the werewolf, it was like looking directly at a flash of lightning. But unlike lightning's instant flash and immediate disappearance, this bolt remained until Harry's hands were high above his head, and then leapt away from the boy to streak toward Snape, knocking the man to the ground and sizzling around his body for a long moment before crackling away into the atmosphere.

In an instant, both Harry and Remus were at Snape's side, Remus checking for a pulse, Harry afraid to do anything. Snape had been hit hard, and had clearly suffered pain from the experience, but he was breathing, and almost as soon as the others had arrived, he opened his eyes and began to move. He ignored Remus entirely, allowing the werewolf to help him sit up without acknowledging his presence at all. He looked at Harry and his mouth twitched in an expression that was not quite a sneer, but was far too humorless to be considered a smile. "One would think," he said, his voice hoarse and rough, "that after serving the Opposition for as long as I have, that I would have learned something about dealing with superlatively powerful leaders. If Voldemort says 'Dance,' the Death Eaters do their most enthusiastic steps... or they suffer the Cruciatus. When Pot..." He stopped and very deliberately cleared his throat. "When Harry says, 'Say my name,' we should all respond, 'Yes, Father.'"

Harry scowled. "That wasn't the point of it, and you know it, Professor," he said carefully, slightly emphasizing the last word.

"Oh, no," Snape agreed with saccarine innocence. "The point was that I'm a frustrated old man."

"Well?" Harry met Snape's eyes, not letting his challenge drop.

"That is none of your business, boy," Snape sneered.

"Isn't it?" Harry fumed, eyes flashing again. "I trust my life to you. I let you direct my 'experiments' and my 'practice' and I let you stand by while I nearly crash land and break my neck, and you do nothing but watch it all happen. And that's all because I trust you, and I believe in you, and I think you're the smartest, most competent wizard I've ever seen, and I think you have some idea of what you're doing and what I should be doing and what all of that will get me, and where you'll be when it does. And I think that what you have in mind is a lot like what I have in mind, and what I have in mind boils down to a lot of good happening for a lot of people, and a lot of bad being prevented forever. And if any of that is jeopardized because you're too stuffy to use my name, or because you walk around with a stick up your butt all the time, then it damn well is my business, and I'm going to make sure that you and everyone else around you knows it."

Snape held Harry's eyes with his own. He did not change his expression, he did not blink. But, oddly, Harry heard a distracting sound. A very out-of-place noise that seemed as though it should be familiar, but which was so incongruous, Harry could not believe it. It happened again. It was a human sound... a humorous sound... and it was coming from directly in front of Harry. It came back, stronger, and louder, and it lasted longer. To Harry's complete disbelief, Snape was chuckling. And then it became unmistakable. The potions professor was shaking with mirth, his shoulders twitching, his chest pumping up and down in time to his laughter. And then Snape closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and for the first time in Harry's experience, Severus Snape laughed out loud. Sitting up, supported by the werewolf he had sworn was his bitter enemy until mere months ago, having just been felled by a bolt of magical lightning, and bawled out by a boy who had been, at best, an average student in his class, Snape was laughing, long, hard peals of hilarity.

Harry worried that - as a delayed reaction to the lightning spell - Snape had gone mad. But the Professor met his gaze with a look that bespoke sanity, and in a clear, controlled voice, said, "Welcome, Mister Chief Executive." He laughed again at Harry's bewildered look, then caught his breath and said, "Mis... Harry. If ever I had tried to distill the essence of a good leader's speech to a disappointing employee at a difficult moment, it would have sounded exactly like you sounded only a moment ago. You challenged my statement with which you disagreed. You clearly outlined the salient points of our relationship. You acknowledged my work for you, and complimented those aspects of my performance that you found exemplary. Then you detailed your perception of the problems you believe I have developed, you warned of the consequences should those problems continue, then you declared your intentions, which in this case were to let everyone involved know how you feel, and finally you looked me in the eye to demand that I either accept your statements or respond to them. Bravo. Seriously, your presentation was a bit raw and, frankly, immature. A good leader almost never needs to shout, for one thing. And if you are going to swear, your choice of where to put in a 'damn' should be more shocking. Otherwise, it is more effective to leave the profanity out of your speech altogether. You will also learn that, when you have a staff of adults, all of whom will - at first - be older than you are and more experienced in government, you will have to make some allowance for individuality. Some of your finest lackeys will likely have 'sticks up their butts,' for example. If you learn to use them properly, their social stiffness should present no problem."

Harry waited until he was sure that Snape had finished speaking. Once again, he was astounded at the sheer resilience of the man. As confidently as he could, Harry stated, "My question stands. Are we working together to take over the world or not?"

Snape smiled, and some of his familiar sarcasm had obviously returned to him. "First, we are planning to remove a particularly loathsome dark wizard from our world. Then, we are going to try to gain control of the government of wizarding Great Britain. Then, through alliances and negotiation, we shall attempt to influence the rest of the magic-using world. There may well come a time when worldwide acclaim draws our little triumvirate into global prominence. But I believe that such a goal can be best achieved by focusing on each step as we take it."

Harry rose and extended a hand to Snape, who pretended not to notice it, and stood on his own. The three potential world conquerors went back to their house, Harry taking the lead. "I think I'll go back to that move-the-stone experiment," he mused.

"I believe we all might be better served if you attempted to repair the window you broke as you summoned your broom," Snape suggested.

"Right," Harry sighed. "Window first, then wall repair, then back to the stone. Full day?"

"Not if you're successful on first try," Snape pointed out.

"Right," Harry sighed again and went to fix the window.