Harry comes to a stop on the footpath outside the house.
Tom stands up from his seat on the front step. He brushes off his pants and looks at Harry, waiting.
There's a dead squirrel at his feet, gutted, artfully arranged.
Harry turns and he keeps walking down the footpath. Harry knows the boys are upset, and so they're going to try and upset Harry too. He knew this was coming. He knew something like this would happen.
It still hurts.
Tom walks up to the edge of the front lawn and watches Harry leave. The entropy coalesces from dust and walks close beside Harry in its adult human form.
Tom looks down and the squirrel is standing by his feet.
"Go inside," the squirrel says. "Harry is worried about you catching a cold." It scurries away to go bury itself because Harry isn't good with dead things.
Tom stays outside until Harry turns a corner and disappears from view. Then Tom goes inside because Harry is worried about him.
A day later, Harry wakes up, and he knows the boys are gone.
Gellert is doing fieldwork, out in the grassy hills of the Scotland coast to take samples of the ley lines here. The ground cracks and trembles, splitting open and light pours out, sickly and dim, most likely injured from a ritual thought further testing will be needed to see what exactly caused it.
Gellert will need to filter the power before he starts building the warded town, or purge the line entirely. He's running out of places to use and he doesn't want to hop countries – the paperwork would be atrocious.
Gellert raises his hands, golden runes circling his wrist, and compresses the land to bury the ley line once more. He's panting, hair sticking to his skin with sweat. The ground settles again and he drops his hands, the runes fizzling out.
"Well?" Gellert asks. "Aren't you going to applaud?"
"Harry is very worried about you," Albus says, sitting on a nearby rickety fence behind Gellert, near the trunk of supplies. Harry called him in a panic because it's been two days and he can't find his boys.
"I'd like to join you," Gellert blurts out, angry and sad and he's not going to apologise, he won't.
Harry is going to be so mad.
Albus says nothing for a long moment and then smiles sympathetically. "Come on. Harry is waiting for you to go home."
"I won't," Gellert promises.
"I can't take you in," Albus admits. "I don't want to do that to Harry."
"You barely know the man," Gellert snaps out, finally whirling around to scowl at the Dark Lord.
"I know enough."
Tom injects the potion into the axolotl's tail vein and moves it back into the expanded glass case, trusting in his wards to send the animal back to its sectioned off habitat as it's whisked away. Tom starts packing up after, glancing at the clock to see its past midnight.
"Do you have somewhere to be?" Tom complains.
The Unspeakable is leaning against the doorway, arms crossed. "Don't let me catch you again or I'll take you back to Harry."
"You're on his side?" Tom demands, turning to the Unspeakable.
"Did you expect me to be on yours?"
"I'm bringing you research, and industry contacts and funding," Tom argues. "We are business associates. Why is a friend more important than our contract?"
"Do you think I need any of that?" The Unspeakable laughs. "I'm bored, Tom. I'm so bored." They push off the doorframe. "Harry had tea with the fey queen last week and had no idea who she was. I don't even know how they met."
Tom pauses. "That was the queen?"
"Titania is hooked on treacle tart thanks to Harry. So ask me again; who do I like better?"