After a while, Harry had to leave his room. Hunger and other urges forced him to. He had spent the whole afternoon inside, deaf to the pleas of Remus, Mr. Weasley, Ron, and Tonks, who had all waited up to half an hour each outside his door.

Harry was thankful there was no one watching his door when he came out. It made things easier. Maybe they'd understand that the best thing to do for him was to leave him alone?

Harry sighed as he padded down the corridor, wondering detachedly what the others thought. He didn't dread the fall-out from his rage. The idea made him a little uncomfortable, but that was it.

In the past he would have dreaded it. He would have agonised over what he was going to say, how mortifying apologising would be. He would be afraid of how Dumbledore would look at him – he would fear facing Ron, Hermione, and everyone else.

He was convinced he didn't care this time. Indeed, he had no apprehension at all. If Dumbledore or anyone had a problem with what he had done – tried to do, unfortunately – then they would have to deal with it. Dumbledore knew as well as he did that he had to kill Voldemort – so why were they deceiving themselves about it? He had to kill someone eventually.

And as for Hermione – she was the one who had to apologise. Until then, to Harry at least, it wasn't over. But their friendship most certainly was.

Besides, he had another motive for not wanting to make up with Hermione and the others. It would be easier to do what he had to do without having friends – friends to put in risk like he had last time. Friends to prevent him, to prevent him from – anyway…

So he came down to breakfast in calm indifference. He noted the reactions of the others there with equal detachment. It wasn't him who had a problem; it was them. He wasn't deluding himself about Voldermort – he knew they were in a real war.

The reactions of the others were restrained.

Mrs Weasley beamed and said how glad she was to see him there.

"You're all right, aren't you Harry?" she asked.

"Fine."

Harry, answering similar inquiries of other Order members in the room with the same monosyllable, got his breakfast and sat down to eat it.

"Hey Harry," said Tonks, in a reattempt at conversation. "Hows it going?"

"Fine."

"Settled in all right, then? Have you tried the bed in there? Be careful, it'll try to eat you."

Ron joined in from the other side of the room. "Stop bringing that up. I fixed it."

"Just like you fixed that dresser on the third floor? Ginny told me it almost bit her hand off."

The conversation continued for a little while and then trailed off.

Harry was polishing off his toast when he saw Mr Weasley rise from the other side of the room. Anticipating another dull talk-to-Harry foray, Harry stood up to go.

He went straight to his room. Something Tonks had said had triggered a suspicion in his mind. He glanced up and down the room's wall, and found a very yellow bit of canvas stretched between a broken frame. He seized it and marched it out of the room.

'I'm sorry, but you'll have to spy on someone else," he muttered at the painting, hoping someone was listening. "I don't like it when my privacy's invaded."

"Then you're not going to have a very pleasant time of it," the painting hissed back.

Glancing down, Harry saw Phineas Nigellus, Sirius' godfather, patriach of Black house, and former Hogwarts headmaster.

"Oh really – how come?"

"Nothing, nothing, forget I said anything." The dark amusement glimmering in Phineas' eyes belied the denial in his words.

"Is someone watching me?"

"Oh, no, you young fool. My eyes are merely pointing in your direction."

"I mean physically? Or are there other bugging spells? An Animagus? Is there a tracking spell on me?"

Phineas pinched his lips together.

"I can't tell you that much. But if you can't work it out you deserve it."

Harry dumped the picture in a disused bathroom, and asked Phineas to be patient.

"Oh I won't. I can visit every painting in this building."

But Harry retrieved his invisibility cloak after that and looked for the library. He knew of its existence somewhere on the top floor.

It actually took up about three quarters of the said floor, so it was not hard to discover. Harry went in, and was disappointed to find an annoying dearth of dark arts books. At first he went by titles. But after seeing a book on The Benefits of Magical Bonsai, he changed tact. He opened the book, mostly because of its incongruity in the Black ancestral home, and discovered that it was really a tract on Blood Magic. His search became more profitable after that, for all that he had to select books randomly.

He had selected a particularly promising book on curses when he heard voices approaching. Without thinking he shrouded himself completely with his Invisibility Cloak and halted. To his disapprobation, the people did not go away but came closer, and eventually entered the library.

It was Ron and Hermione. They seated themselves on leather chairs at a desk a scant metre from Harry and commenced talking. Harry, afraid to make a noise, had no choice but to wait and listen. The conversation was about him.

"I'm just so worried about Harry. Ron, is he all right? What does he think?"

Harry waited expectantly for Ron to tell her what Harry had asked him to.

"I -," (Ron uncharacteristically sighed), "it's hard, you know. He needs support but he doesn't want it from anyone. He won't be talked to."

"But what should I do?"

"There's nothing. He – he said he doesn't want to talk to you again."

Harry felt empty satisfaction.

"He's always been stubborn, pig-headed sometimes. But – Ron, he's acting differently now. I actually think he's capable of – I mean, I don't know what he's capable of."

Different? Different?

Harry wasn't sure why he was so angry at her words, why they drove into his heart. It seemed then, to him, that if she thought he had changed, then she had never known him in the first place. It was too bad –

"At least I have you Ron," Hermione said tentatively.

This drew Harry back from his thoughts immediately. What was this?

"I – I – um, er -." Ron stammered.

There was an extended silence and Harry wondered if they were kissing.

He had always known, in the back of his mind, that they would end up together, though he had never really properly considered it. Ron and Hermione. Together in another way.

Well, good for them, then. At least they had something to take their minds off things. And he'd be left alone for once.

But if it was so good, why did he feel so lonely? So wretchedly cold?

That evening, Harry managed to remove the Tracking Charm that someone had put on him while his back was turned. He had to read his Charms Textbook for about half an hour before he figured out how to do it, but he did a good job of it, transferring the Charm to one of socks instead of his person.

He looked at the Dark Arts book. It wasn't that arcane, in the end, the curses in it were just a little nastier and more effective than the usual type. Harry wondered what the Dark Arts where really about – not the killing and hurting people part, of course, not the whole Power thing – but, what was a Dark wizard? Did it have anything to do with a type of magic, or just actions?

When he stopped, it was late at night.

The lonely silence in the bedroom reminded Harry of his room at the Dursley's. He fell to wondering. What had Dumbledore meant, 'of his own accord'? Why would Harry just go off on his own when he knew Voldemort was after him? When he knew about the prophecy?

Wait – that was it. That was why Dumbledore was so anxious – yet not anxious enough to suspect some sort of death eater kidnapping. They thought he had run away. They thought that he was some kind of coward. Dumbledore believed Harry all too capable of balking in the face of the responsibility the prophecy had placed on him.

He'd probably been fearing it all summer – Harry running off into the blue, abandoning his friends… is that what Dumbledore thought he was? Were those his expectations?

Harry's intestines knotted. And those notes – every 3 days – he thought they were finally making an effort to prevent the Dursley's making his life hell – but no. The letters were simply a form of surveillance, a check-up – not just that Harry was all right, but that he hadn't fled.

Dumbledore had so little faith in Harry, who had once placed so much faith in him. There were goosebumps all over Harry's skin, and it was 2 o'clock in the morning.

He had an idea. It was part revenge, part confirmation of his suspicions about Dumbledore and the others. He'd let them think that he'd slipped out to London, that he'd run away. Once they'd been given a scare, he could just pop out of a cupboard, or the cellar, and ask them what exactly they thought he'd done. That would serve them right for not telling him, for their distrust, for treating him like an unpredictable tool.

Harry silently exited his room and crept down the stairs. Half-way down he heard a cracking noise, like a floorboard creaking somewhere. He froze. The cracking sound came again. Again he waited, but this time there were no more sounds, so he finished his descent. He strode along the hallway, careful not to disturb the portrait of Mrs Black, then pulled open the door of a cleaning closet near the front door, and stepped inside.

He shut the door and was on the brink of relaxing in, when he had second thoughts. Perhaps – was acting like this wrong? The Order, the Weasleys – they would be extremely worried. Putting them through that stress, letting them think the worst, that was a rather Slytherin thing to do. Hesitating, wondering if the motivation was good enough, he kept his hand on the doorhandle inside the cupboard.

He never had a chance to decide because voices soon disturbed his thoughts. He gave up his internal debate and listened. Perhaps it was secret Order business.

'Are you ready?'

There was a murmur of voices responding in the affirmative.

'You know what the plan is? Take Potter alive and kill as many of the others as we can.'

Harry's eyes widened, though he couldn't see a thing in the darkened cupboard. Death Eaters? Here? They sounded barely metres away, most likely – yes – on the other side of the door. Before Harry had a chance to leave the cupboard, before the seriousness of the situation had even dawned on him, the front door of Grimmauld Place creaked open.

Harry heard many feet rush past. If not for the wood of the door, he could have reached out and touched the Death Eaters streaming into the house. The Death Eaters were making an effort at stealth, but he could hear them easily. A moment later there was a crash and a loud ringing sound. One of them had triggered an Alarm Spell.

'You clumsy fool Snape,' someone hissed, but by then it was too late.

Shouting drifted down from the first storey, running feet sounded on the floorboards above. The Order had been alerted. Harry thought of going to help them, then quickly discarded this idea. He knew what the Death Eater's plan was, he did not want to be captured, and he knew that any attempt to help would be foolish and futile. There were too many Death Eaters.

So he stood in the cupboard, wincing every time he heard a Death Eater release an Unforgivable, and hoping that his friends were all right.

The sound of fighting increased, and a sense of chaos pervaded the house. There were screams, shouting, and occasional bangs and crashes as a curse missed its mark.

'Find him! He must be hiding here somewhere. He can't have gotten out so soon. Try every door. Potter is here! Find him.'

Harry gripped his wand tighter. As he heard doors open and close. Harry heard the strident voice of Mrs Black; someone had pulled back the curtains. There were footsteps, very close. Harry raised his wand. His breathing was very shallow, and it sounded impossibly loud and harsh in his ears.

Horribly, slowly, the doorknob turned. The door whipped open surprisingly fast, and for a moment all Harry was able to do was stare at the Death Eater before him. Harry pointed his wand at the man.

'If you say anything, I'll kill you,' he whispered, knowing that ultimately his threat was no use. He would be discovered.

But the Death Eater simply narrowed his eyes and watched him a second before shutting the door.

'Nothing here,' he said.

The Death Eater was Snape. Harry recognised the voice, and his black eyes had been familiar. What were the chances, he wondered, that it was Snape? What were the chances that Snape was actually on Dumbledore's side? He'd never believed it until now. He thanked his stars for his luck and waited in silence in the cupboard.

The sounds of fighting died down. The Death Eaters reassembled in the hallway.

'Potter must have escaped, like the others have. He was probably the first to go.'

The leader sounded disappointed, there was a note of desperation in his voice. Harry was not surprised; Voldemort would not be happy to hear that he had got away.

'Burn the house all the same,' he said. 'Just in case he is here.'

The Death Eaters filed out. Twenty voices chanted 'Incendio' and Harry felt suddenly a bit too warm and cosy in his cupboard.

br

nb: obviously snape is good in this fic (and in canon too. I hope. Despite all.)

In relation to out of school magic – well they're at Grimmauld Place. Not even the Ministry can detect it. I assume they can't detect magic use there either.

This story is so out of date. Sigh. It is AU, not taking account of Half Blood Prince at all.