Thank you for the reviews yesterday!

And yes, sometimes Harry is like this.

Chapter Thirteen: Securing the Tunnels

Harry relaxed when he'd read the letter once, but he couldn't quite help reading it a second time, just to make sure that everything was happening the way he'd wanted it to happen.

Dear Mr. Potter:

Given what you have told me about the attack on the London Underground, I am not inclined to discount the information. In fact, it will take relatively little to secure the tunnels from most convenient points of entrance from the wizarding world. But I would expect You-Know-Who to strike in Muggle territory itself. For persuading the goblins to take such an extra risk, your help would be extremely valuable. They feel they owe you honor, though no debt; the hanarz has been quite clear on the fact that their promise to change slowly and not inform the wizarding world at large of their freedom for some time settles that obligation. But they would at least listen, and you may be able to strike another bargain with them, to show them why they should care for Muggles at all. They expect to see you at Gringotts between the hours of eight and nine on the fourteenth of August.

Best wishes.

Griselda Marchbanks.

Harry sent back a short note, and went downstairs. He knew he was smirking. He couldn't help it. Argutus rode his shoulder, and sometimes touched his tongue to Harry's cheek, and sometimes asked what certain things they passed were and what they did. Harry told him when he thought the Omen snake could understand. It was already remarkable how much he could understand compared to two weeks ago. He even seemed to have some grasp on the nature of Harry's relationship with Draco, which was more than Harry could say about himself.

Now, he said, "You watch the pale one very often, and you smell of concern for him. Do you suspect something about him?"

Harry paused with one hand on the door of the reading room where Narcissa spent many of her evenings. "How did you know that, Argutus?" he murmured.

Argutus wound his body in a figure-eight pattern, which he'd chosen as his equivalent to a shrug after spending a whole afternoon asking about human gestures of uncertainty. "It seemed likely from the way that you look at him," he said. "And of course human scents express all kinds of information that you never think to conceal from snakes like me."

Harry nodded slowly. "I've been watching Draco because I think there's something he's not telling me," he murmured, keeping his voice low. He'd had occasion to reflect in the past few days, when he turned around and found Lucius staring at him, that there was another Parselmouth in the house. And one of the things he'd noticed from his observation was the careful, cold courtesy with which Lucius and Draco danced around each other. "But I want to figure it out on my own, and reassure him that he can tell me whatever he likes."

"Is that not true now?"

"Not yet," said Harry. "I don't think he'd believe me unless I already know what it is. This is the gift I'm giving him: showing that I know him as well as he knows me."

"Hmmm."

Harry shook his head at the snake's commentary and opened the door. Narcissa looked up at once from the letter she was writing, tense as a coiled basilisk, and then relaxed at the sight of him. "Harry," she said. "I thought—never mind. You had something that you wanted to say?"

Harry nodded. "I know that we were planning to go to Diagon Alley tomorrow anyway," he said. "Can we go a few hours earlier, though? Madam Marchbanks just sent me a letter. The southern goblins want to talk to me in Gringotts, between the hours of eight and nine."

Narcissa shook her head, and Harry's heart dipped for a moment, but then he realized it was a gesture of astonishment instead of refusal. "Only you would be able to do things like this, Harry," she said. "Yes. There are a few shops in Diagon Alley that I want to visit anyway, and I might as well do it in the cool of the morning as the heat of the afternoon."

That might be a problem, then, Harry thought, his mind working fast. If Vince is going to meet me between ten and eleven, I'll have to make sure that we stay in Diagon Alley until eleven at least.

He had not discounted the possibility that Vince's father had found out about his letter, of course. That did not matter, because Harry could handle a trap. The main thing he wanted was Vince close to him.

"I haven't been out of the Manor but a few times this summer, though," he said, and stared at the floor. "A battle, and the Ministry, and Grimmauld Place." He stared back up at her. "Can we please spend a few hours in Diagon Alley beyond that?"

Narcissa clasped one hand inside the other, a graceful gesture of worry that Harry had never seen her perform. "Is this part of the therapy that you discussed with Madam Shiverwood, Harry?" she asked.

I was supposed to do something pleasant or selfish for myself each day. It was the first time Harry had thought of the advice since he received it. But he had no intention of discarding such a useful tool as a plausible explanation.

"Well, staying in Diagon Alley a few hours longer would please me," he said. "But if you think it's too dangerous—"

Narcissa cut him off. "We can leave the moment it becomes dangerous, Harry. But the moment it becomes dangerous, do you understand?"

Harry nodded enthusiastically. It really would please him, and even though he was luring danger to him, he didn't think Narcissa would mind, because he never intended her to find out about it.

The only successful conspiracy is one that is never discovered.

Lucius put the book of medical magic down on the chair beside him, and then crossed to his shelves. Most of the books on magical creatures were well-thumbed, since Harry and Draco both used them for research, but they put them back again when they were done. They knew that Lucius would not have been pleased if they did not.

Lucius's fingers drifted from spine to spine, until he found the one that interested him the most. Within: Magical Parasites. He drew it down, tapped it with his wand, and murmured the spell that would let him find the first occurrence of the word he wanted in the book.

That turned out to be only a glancing reference, so he had to search again, and then again. The third time was the lucky try. Lucius could feel his lips parting as he read, as Within confirmed what he had read in the book on medical magic. It seemed that a certain species of insect had once been used to treat the aftereffects of curses, feeding on and destroying the dangerous Dark magic. As spells had advanced to take their place, however, the Healers had gratefully abandoned them. The procedure to implant them was really most disgusting.

There was also an interesting bit of information on what they did when they were accidentally introduced into someone healthy, which Lucius read with careful attention, and then memorized.

He put the book back, and returned to his desk to write a polite letter to the Magical Menagerie. He doubted that they would have what he wanted on hand, but he would be in Diagon Alley tomorrow, and he requested the honor of an interview with the shop owner. She could surely order it for him.

He smiled as he sent that owl off, and allowed his gaze to linger on one drawer in the desk, where he had locked the return letter from Ollivander. The wand-maker had agreed to his plan. Of course, believing that he owed his life to Lucius, he had had little choice about it. He could have resisted if he had known the truth, but Lucius had no chance of letting him find that out.

He knew the saying about successful conspiracies.

Harry entered Gringotts with more confidence than he'd felt the first time he came there, his hand resting on one pocket in his robes, but that didn't last long. A goblin he hadn't seen before, wearing a silver chain around her neck that Harry also hadn't seen before, came up and bowed to him the moment he set foot in the bank.

"Mr. Potter?" she asked. "If you will follow me now?" To most of the wizards and witches around him, Harry supposed, it would sound like the typical polite greeting. But she met his eyes defiantly, which no goblin would have done before, and she didn't offer him her name, or any courtesies once he'd nodded. She turned around and walked on, and Narcissa and Draco, who came behind Harry, found themselves engaged with two goblins who moved so smoothly to intercept them that Harry didn't realize what was happening before it was done.

Harry followed the female goblin still, allaying his own fears. It was ridiculous to think that the goblins would try to kill or harm the wizards just because they were free of their web now. It was a prejudice that Albus Dumbledore would have been proud of. He should remember that he was dealing with proud, independent, free beings now, and, moreover, ones that had suffered abuses at the hands of wizards for centuries. He would just have to live with whatever discomfort that brought him. The goblins had borne worse.

They entered the back of the bank, and here, Harry found the differences even more pronounced. The goblins who passed him had a light, brisk trot, just fast enough to get their work done without tiring them. Most of them openly wore chains of silver or bronze or gold, and sometimes a stone ornament that none of them let Harry see closely once they realized he was human. Those seemed to be pendants with seven sides. Harry had no idea what they meant.

He wondered if he would feel this out of place in Muggle London. He experienced a sudden spasm of regret that he'd never got to go. He thought it would probably be good for him.

The female goblin led him into what was recognizably a cave, rather than the meeting room he'd seen the first time. The very rock of Gringotts was transforming around them, Harry thought, as he exchanged nods with the hanarz. He wondered what it would look like when the goblins broke free of their self-imposed slow change and made the wizarding world notice them.

I hope I'm here to see it.

"Mr. Potter." The hanarz leaned forward. Strings of metal glittered and flashed on her body, woven into her clothes, and, apparently, her skin. "Tell us more details of this attack that you say is going to take place on the autumnal equinox."

Harry willingly told her every detail of the dream, including the ones that hadn't been about the attack. Perhaps the goblins would know something about the wooden circles Bellatrix had been carving, or could direct him to someone who did. And when he mentioned the tangled pattern on them, the hanarz did indeed nod wisely.

"That represents the maze of tunnels that connect our world with the London Underground," she said. "It is ancient magic, the use of wood to triumph over the stone and metal of the tunnels. It can crack them even as tree roots can crack stone. Voldemort will put one on every tunnel entrance, seeking to split any protections on them and obtain easy passage for his army."

She could suggest nothing similar for the werewolves, but Harry had already written to the three Light werewolves turned in April by Fenrir Greyback's bites, and to Hawthorn. They had promised they would try to get in contact with other werewolves, but none of them had had much contact with any packs, let alone those Greyback would speak to. Harry had written to Remus, too, but post to the Sanctuary went so slowly that he wondered if Remus would arrive before it became a non-issue. He suspected that there was little to be done about the ones who would fight in Voldemort's ranks in any case. He could not offer a cure for lycanthropy, or anything else that would interest them in him immediately. Even his ability to provide Wolfsbane Potion was limited now that he didn't have much money.

"We will help you secure the tunnels."

Harry blinked and looked up at the hanarz. "You will?" He had expected that it would take much more arguing to get her to agree, especially since Madam Marchbanks had said that the goblins didn't consider themselves in debt to him.

"We are capable of recognizing dangers to our own world," said the hanarz briskly, moving around the far side of the cave, in a path that never put her closer than about ten feet to Harry. "We still share this world with wizards, though they have done us little good—one witch and one wizard excepted." Her gaze speared Harry for a moment. "We will help you on this, though we may not on the more isolated attacks."

"That is all I can ask for," Harry responded as he followed her, wondering what exactly they would do. Surely securing all the tunnels will take longer than the hour she asked to meet with me?

"At least you are polite," said the hanarz. "And you have not deceived us." She made a sharp snap of her fingers that echoed like clicking bones and resulted in two goblins, both with stone ornaments around their necks and quivers of arrows on their backs, instantly springing up to escort them. She glanced back at once Harry. "Have you found anything that would enable you to free our northern relatives?"

Harry shook his head. Even with the Light allies he now had, he was very far from being able to convince the Light pureblood families to give up their linchpins, their ancestral homes, and as long as those linchpins stood, then the net on the northern goblins would endure.

"Pity," said the hanarz, and then led him down into the bank, yet another set of tunnels that Harry had not seen before.

The earth around them grew wilder and wilder, rougher and rougher, and Harry suspected they were getting into areas that no longer lay under Gringotts. Soon, though, he became unsure of what material actually surrounded them—soil, stone, or metal. It gleamed and flashed in the light that the silver chains on the hanarz began radiating, rather like steel. But Harry brushed against it once or twice, and found it warm, and as hard as rock. He shook his head, and decided that he wouldn't try to solve the mystery. So long as the goblins knew where they were going and would be able to prevent the attack that Voldemort planned to unleash from taking the Muggles, then Harry would rest content.

The hanarz turned around when they finally came to a door. "What you are about to see, no humans has ever seen," she said.

Harry drew in a startled breath, but she hadn't allowed him time to react. She turned away instead, and opened the door with a touch of her fingers. Harry thought he saw a chain link glimmering for a moment in her spread hand, but it was gone when he looked for it again.

The door opened.

The room beyond the door breathed. That was the only way Harry could think of to describe it. It was magic, he knew that, but it didn't feel like anything he'd ever touched, though it was as powerful as several of them—his own wandless magic, the corrupt truce-dance that Voldemort had employed in the graveyard, the Dark power of Walpurgis Night. It flowed out to welcome the goblins, though it hesitated over Harry until the hanarz shook one of the lengths of metal that Harry was now sure ran into her flesh. Then it enwrapped him, too, and it was like nothing so much as being swallowed by some enormous warm beast with no teeth.

Harry tried to grasp it, both with his own magic and with his understanding. They slipped again and again. Harry shivered—with excitement, not fear. This was magic he would never know, never learn, and that was all right. There should still be some mysteries left in the world.

The hanarz moved to stand in the center of the room. She held out her arms and turned her back to Harry and the door. One of the two goblins who had accompanied them at once hurried forward and removed the loose robes that were all she wore in the way of clothing.

That revealed her fully. Oddly, the first impression that Harry had of her, perhaps because of the dark gray of her skin, was of a dungeon. Lengths of chain were riveted to her shoulders and sewn under the skin of her back. One pair of conjoined manacles hung from the back of her right knee. Small, polished rubies winked along her spine like the eyes of rats hiding in corners. The silver chain around her neck was the only one that looked like an ornament. The rest was, Harry sensed, the ordinary armory of a working hanarz. He wondered how long it had been since the goblins had been like this, and how much longer since any human had caught a glimpse of what they could be.

He closed his eyes, humbled almost beyond belief.

He opened them quickly enough when the hanarz began to sing.

It was a song that would have done a raven proud, full of rolling, discordant noise, the clash of chains and thunder. Most of the chains on her body rose up and danced to it. The longest link, the one around her shoulders, lashed down and wrapped about her arms, drawing them behind her back and up over her head. The hanarz showed no sign of pain, even when Harry knew that one of her shoulders must be close to dislocation. She just kept singing, and the metal writhed around her and encased her.

Then she spun.

The chains duplicated themselves, perfect in every respect except that their copies weren't fastened to the hanarz. They followed her for a moment, and then sprouted more copies, and more, and more. Then they snapped outward.

Harry ducked as one of them flew at him. When he looked up, though, he could see it thinning like mist. It hit the wall and sailed right on through, vanishing. Harry stared after it, and wondered what sprouting illusions of chains would do.

"It is to secure the tunnels," the goblin standing behind him murmured, sounding a bit awed. Harry wondered if the emotion came from never having seen this himself. "She has sent the chains to the tunnels that stretch in all directions, from here to the Muggle world, and under us as well. They will lie in wait. If basilisks or any with the Dark Mark on their arms walk past them, then they will rise."

He didn't elaborate on what they would do then. He didn't have to. Harry shivered, and was glad that the southern goblins were on his side.

He suspected that Draco and Narcissa would be unhappy about his having left them in the upper bank, but, as he watched the hanarz helped back into her robe, he thought seeing this had been worth it—just like the fragile thing in his pocket, which he touched to assure himself it was still there and unbroken, was worth the risk of their scoldings.

The world is changing. I know the goblins are ready for it, but I wonder if the wizards are.

Lucius found it easy to accompany his wife and son and Harry to Diagon Alley that morning, and to slip away during the time they went to Gringotts. After all, he did not need to withdraw money from the Malfoy vaults himself, and Narcissa accepted that he did not want to spend every minute with Harry the way that she and Draco did. And it was even more natural to walk into Ollivander's, and catch the old man's eye, and wait patiently until he dismissed his latest customer. Lucius concealed a sneer as the witch walked past. Any woman who found her wand so easily was hardly formidable.

Ollivander bustled about, closing his door and hanging dark curtains over the windows. As he did so, the lamps in the shop came to life, flames contained in heavily enchanted glass shells so that they stood no chance of lighting the wands on fire. Lucius curled his lip as he stared up at the boxes of wands and wands. There was no way that Ollivander could have made them all, and that would mean that most of them were worth far less than what he charged for them.

But then, that is the way of those who sell things for a living, Lucius thought, and turned away to find the older wizard regarding him with a certain air of resignation.

"It is ready?" he asked.

"It is, yes, sir." Ollivander drew out a box from beneath the counter and put it reverently on the surface. He was slipping back into his seller's persona, as Lucius had thought might happen. "A bit of crafting it cost me, but it will fit your hand perfectly and work for the spells that—"

"That I specified, yes." Lucius did not wish Ollivander to speak their names aloud. There were, lately, rumors of Aurors using spells that let them draw out the memories of spoken words from the walls of a room. In that way, letters were much safer. Lucius did not intend to be caught.

He opened the box, and eyed the wand lying there.

It was made of ash, and Lucius knew it would have a dragon heartstring core, because he had asked for it. He lifted the wand from the box with his left hand, and felt a single thrum of deep, true magic shoot up his left arm. He smiled and graced Ollivander with a slight nod.

"It will do," he said. "Since I do not intend to pay you for it, the creation of a blank wand must be reward enough."

Ollivander bowed his head and was silent. He knew as well as Lucius that blank wands—wands created for only a single purpose, to be dropped and discarded when the task was done—were illegal, banned by the Ministry. They had no essential connection to the wizards who wielded them, not like their own wands, nor to their makers. When they were discarded, no spell could track them back to their owners, because they had never really been owners, only users.

A blank wand was perfect for what Lucius had in mind.

He slid the blank wand into his pocket and headed up the street at an easy walking pace, to find the Magical Menagerie.

The world is changing, and I will be a single small and unnoticed change in the middle of it. But I suspect I am the one that will cut the deepest.

Harry came out of Flourish and Blotts loaded down with books for the next school year. He was carrying half of them in the crook of his right arm, and half floating behind him, despite Draco's hints—due mostly, Harry was sure, to his agitation about being left behind in the bank—that that would cause people to notice him and stare at him more.

So let them stare. It's not like they're not already doing it.

Harry had felt the pressure of eyes from the moment they emerged from Gringotts. More wizards and witches were bustling about now than at the early hour of eight when they arrived, and most of them would have read the Prophet. They would be used to photographs of him, Harry thought glumly. After she'd refused his offer to conduct an interview with him, Skeeter had taken to talking about his exploits from the past year, and putting photographs of him as he was then under the grimmest details available to the public about his child abuse. She didn't do much more than that. She didn't have to. Harry had read those few of the articles he could stand to read. She was doing a much more effective job at smearing his parents and Dumbledore by her silent portrait of his survival than the gossipy articles by Melinda Honeywhistle and her ilk, which often contradicted themselves the next day.

It didn't take long for the first motherly witch to come up to him, sniffling, and exclaim over the loss of his poor hand, and want to see his left wrist, because "my sister's a Healer at St. Mungo's, and I just know that I've inherited some of her Healing skill." Harry extended it to her, but pulled it back the instant she started to draw out her wand.

"That's all right," he said politely. "I think I'd like the name of your sister instead. Can I have it?"

He let the name slide through his head. He had no intention of going to that particular Healer, but it made the witch happy to think she was doing some good, and it got rid of the chance that she would cast dangerous magic on his stump.

That was only the beginning. One pureblood Light wizard exclaimed that Harry was too young to have suffered such a degrading wound, and offered to let him know about discount prices on artificial hands. A few people wanted to "talk" to him about his abuse; those, Harry refused outright, knowing they would turn around and sell their stories to the papers. Others lingered and stared at him with pitying eyes, but hurried away when Draco stared back at them. Draco was getting twitchy, and Harry was wondering if the biggest obstacle to his plan to rescue Vince would actually be Draco's determination to bundle him off home, rather than just staying in Diagon Alley until eleven that morning.

He spent a moment watching Draco glare at the back of one witch who had actually started to come up and open her mouth, but then had burst into sobs and veered off. There was no denying that Draco had grown taller, of course—Harry had finally, finally started to follow him there, at least—but it was more than that. He held himself more nervously now than he had at the start of summer. His hand was in his pocket and clasping his wand more often.

And he hadn't mentioned his empathy very often. In fact, he hadn't at all picked up on Harry's smug excitement last night or this morning, though he'd noticed the time Harry spent alone in his room, studying maps of Diagon Alley.

Harry narrowed his eyes. The change that's taken place has something to do with his empathy, I bet.

And then the things he'd been waiting for happened, and he had no more time to think about that.

Someone moved off to the left side of him, coming from between Flourish and Blotts and the stationary shop next to it. Harry spun towards it, his magic flickering up to shove his books out of the way. He was already murmuring Protego charms under his breath, and he knew they would be ready to deflect any hexes from coming at Narcissa and Draco and the other people in the Alley. Those maps had come in handy. He knew the best angle from every shop to hang his Shield Charm wards and cage him and his attackers in a private arena.

He didn't hang any in front of himself. The whole point was to look unprepared.

A heavyset wizard with what Harry was sure must be a glamour cast on his face—he looked like Dumbledore—dashed from between the buildings, casting spells at him. Harry was already moving, though, his eyes wide open and his breath and his tension hammering in his chest and his lungs. He needed to find Vince, and he needed to make himself a target until the moment when he could safely rescue Vince and get away.

Two more people glamoured to look like Dumbledore were coming around Quality Quidditch Supplies, their wands pointing directly at him. Harry gasped, as if caught by surprise, and stopped. His magic reared up inside of him, but the ability he was unleashing wasn't something they would sense, or know how to stop.

Two hexes came at him at once, one a Body-Bind and one a Diffindo. Harry had to snort. He wondered if Voldemort wanted him captured or killed, or if the two Death Eaters were simply operating on different levels.

The snake of his magic-draining ability snapped out in front of him and swallowed the hexes. Harry was dodging, though, as if he had only escaped by pure luck. He made sure to utter a little scream, to show that he was frightened, at least supposedly. Sure enough, his two attackers pounded after him, joined a moment later by the third.

Harry listened to the screaming and scattering of the other people in the Alley, and waited until his opponents were directly in front of him.

Then he spat out the magic he'd swallowed, as a wave of pure force.

It slammed all three of them backwards, either into the walls of the nearest shops or the Shield Charms, which they bounced off of. Harry snorted and looked around once more. Vince, Vince, where is Vince?

He caught sight of a small, hooded figure standing motionless—with the kind of stillness that could only indicate a Petrificus Totalus­—in one of the alleys next to a heavily cloaked wizard. The wizard pulled back the hood that covered the small figure's face, and revealed Vince. Harry nodded.

"How does it feel, Mr. Potter," the wizard, who must be Mr. Crabbe, asked, "to know that your letter was intercepted and your plan known from the beginning?"

Harry didn't bother replying. He had anticipated that this might happen, and that meant planning ahead. His hand was already drawing the object he'd brought from his robe pocket. It had survived unbroken.

He caught Mr. Crabbe's attention with a Hotfoot spell, and sent the glass serpent whisking towards Vince, murmuring, "Portus!" to it as it tumbled.

A Portkey now, as it had always been since Draco had given it to him for his thirteenth birthday, it struck the motionless Vince, and he vanished. He would be safe behind the wards of Malfoy Manor now, Harry knew. That left him here, but that was the point. He was the one who had risked danger to himself and other people and property by luring the Death Eaters to the Alley in the first place.

It was up to him to clean it up.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. The three Death Eaters had climbed back to their feet, and Mr. Crabbe had finally managed to put out the stinging fire on his foot. Narcissa and Draco were still stuck behind the Shield Charms that made a cage of Harry's part of the Alley, though pounding frantically as they tried to get in.

Harry half-closed his eyes. Really, it was flashy, and he usually disdained to throw his wandless magic around this way. There were better uses for it.

But it would catch the Death Eaters quickly. That was the main point of this exercise.

Harry concentrated, remembering the way he had trapped Dobby in order to get some answers out of him when the house elf came to find him in second year. Blue light surged and flooded out of him, and then fell around the Death Eaters like a rain, solidifying and rising up into hard walls of azure. The first two Death Eaters glamoured as Dumbledore were caught almost at once, and Harry spent a moment building up the cages firm and tight. If they could prevent a house elf's Apparition, then they could prevent a wizard's.

When he looked sideways, however, it was to find the two other cages empty. Mr. Crabbe and the unknown Death Eater had Apparated away.

Harry breathed out in disappointment, but he was, more truly, satisfied. The only damage looked to be a few impact marks on the nearest walls, and really, any ordinary housekeeping charm could repair those. And, of course, the Death Eaters were wounded, but Harry cared about them far less than he cared about the other people in the Alley, who had either run away or were staring at him.

He lifted the Shield Charms, opening the Alley once more, and then there was an awkward moment where both Draco and Narcissa had come up to him and tried to hug him at once.

"What happened?" demanded Draco. "I saw you throw something, but I couldn't see what it was from behind the wards."

Harry maintained his innocent expression. "I had my Portkey on me," he said. "The serpent that you gave me, Draco. I thought I'd bring it just in case we did run into danger here in the Alley. And when I saw that his father was holding Vince hostage—"

"He was?" Draco sounded disappointed. "I didn't see that, either."

Harry looked inquiringly at Narcissa, who shook her head. Harry relaxed. He'd had a moment's fear that his plan would be uncovered when Mr. Crabbe talked about intercepting his letter, but with all the screaming and the muffling effects of the Shield Charms, it wasn't surprising that neither Draco nor Narcissa had heard.

"Well, he did." Harry put a petulant tone into his voice, as though he were trying to deflect lectures about not using the Portkey to save himself. "I'd written to Vince and asked to see him the other day, but I had no idea that he would be here in the person of a hostage." There. That tone of feigned innocence is perfect. "I'd just thought I could talk to him, see if he needed help. Unfortunately, his father must be reading his post, and he brought friends with him." He sighed and dropped his head. "And then his father got away. I captured two of the others, though." He gestured at the two caged Death Eaters.

"That was stupid of you, Harry," Draco said, his face pale with anger. "You should have thought that Mr. Crabbe might read Vince's post."

Narcissa agreed with him, rather loudly. Harry accepted the scolding in humble silence. He would much rather receive a scolding for being stupid than one for risking his life.

He was aware that he was still breathing hard, and not from exertion. That had been a wilder rescue than he had thought it would be, filled with wild chances. Narcissa and Draco would have guessed his plan if they'd heard Mr. Crabbe's words. Something could so easily have gone wrong, including the injury of others—at least if he hadn't been good enough at defensive magic to hang the lines of Shield Charms that caged his pursuers in with him so fast. And if Harry hadn't been prepared to use his wandless magic good and hard, then all the Death Eaters might have got away.

He found that he could hardly wait to do something like that again.

It's like flying. You tilt down, and then all you can do is survive as hard as you can.

"Let us go home."

Harry turned to find Lucius behind him. Most of the people in the Alley seemed to have recovered from their shock by now and were pressing forward, and Lucius obviously didn't want to be questioned by the public, or by the Aurors when they showed up. For once, Harry thought, they were in perfect agreement.

He concealed a bright smile as he Apparated back to the Manor with Lucius, Narcissa coming behind him with Draco at her side. There's going to be a lot of fallout from this, no doubt, but not nearly as much as there could have been. And at least Vince is safe.

And as long as they have a plausible tale on the surface—me not thinking—then they're not going to look underneath and see this as a calculated risk with my life.

Lucius shook his head in the moments before he walked up to his family and Harry and declared that the time had come to return to the Manor. He had just been coming out of the Magical Menagerie—the owner had been most obliging, and promised to order what he wanted the moment she could—when his one-time fellows attacked, and so he hadn't had a good view. Somehow, though, from the small smiles he surprised on Harry's face if nothing else, he was sure that Harry had planned this, and had it fall out just as he wanted.

In one stroke he rescues a classmate who probably appealed to him for help, appears a hero once more, and reduces his enemies by two. He plays a very risky game, but a risk achieved is a triumph worth any odds.

For the first time, Lucius thought there was a certain likeness between him and Harry Potter, and that he might like binding the boy to the family for more reasons than just his power and Draco's apparent infatuation with him. Not that he would tell the boy that, of course.

A plausible reason on the surface is worth any amount of lies.