Loki checked his tracker. It led straight up the crest of the hill where the man had emerged. He walked carefully, keeping to the shadows, using skills he'd had little need of since Asgard. The air was buzzing, a strange, metallic sound. It sounded somehow wrong to his magic senses.

He crested the hill, raising a hand to his eyes to block out the sudden light. He was standing before some kind of encampment. Pylons rose out of the stark ground fifty meters high. They formed a circle crackling with electricity, though there was no fence between them. Within the ring were four concrete towers shining harsh electric light in all directions. In the shadow of the nearest one, Loki could make out a guard wielding a large gun. Between that, a set of squat buildings that were surrounded by- Loki blinked. Were those wards?

He kept looking; now that he knew the auroral pattern he could make out the shimmering dome, almost invisible in the pool of light from the towers. He frowned, looking between the light and the ward.

Something in him, perhaps the time he had spent among candle-flames and torches in Hogwarts, found the juxtaposition strangely dissonant. He drew his hands around himself, strengthening his warming charms against the cold, dry, wind. There was a notion, somewhere, that Midgardian technology did not work well around magic. That was why the wizards did not wear muggle watches, or use the contraptions the surrounding world had spawned.

Two soldiers on the ground crossed paths, saluting and barking out a signal. There were guns slung across their backs, strange gray vests that Loki could not see through to any traces of magic.

Loki could have flown above the pylons, if he willed, but he decided to withhold the magic, for now. Instead, he recast invisibility and crossed the grassy plain over to the space between the poles, where the hum of electricity was almost unbearably loud. Midgardian magic would certainly interfere with such devices, Loki thought. Perhaps that was what had alerted the troops, perhaps it was a ward of its own. It was surprisingly clever.

Nevertheless, he crossed it easily; he was no child, unable to control the flickers and vibrations of his magic. He passed the guards and the soldiers without a sound, and the ward admitted him without a sound. It was made to prevent exit, not entry, though its constant oscillations made it weak. The walls of the nearest building were solid concrete, no magical properties that he could divine. He cast a spell and walked through, hovering up to floor-level.

Inside the building there were more soldiers, walking up through the main corridor on patrol. Every so often they would rap on the door and the occupant would answer.

Loki followed one of them, looking through the glass windows; they were laboratories, small, white-tiled and stainless. He saw what looked like a potion brewing on the bunsen burner, magic rising off of it in coils of steam. Another held a half-dissected wand, augury feather poking out.

Then there was a room with more mechanical apparati; a lathe, a glowing forge, and several others Loki did not recognize at all. He walked through the wall to the fourth such laboratory and the light flickered suddenly on. There was a half-finished gray vest like the other soldiers wore, which he took, and a metal arm lying on the workstation, which he did not. He could see scorch marks on the walls that looked like the result of a weak incendio, though the target was impossible to make out.

Outside, he could hear the soldiers stirring.

"Who's there?" the first one asked in Russian, his voice muffled slightly behind the door.

Loki did not answer, opting to wait invisibly, tucking himself behind the lathe. A moment later, the door banged open and the soldiers let loose a hail of bullets.

"Is that the way to greet a stranger?" he asked, projecting his voice behind them.

"Koldun," one of them muttered. Sorcerer.

"We have ways of dealing with your kind, little volshebnik," the first one called out in English, pulling on the set of red goggles the door guard had worn. "Come now, back to your friends."

His gaze swiveled and locked on Loki's place. He walked sideways, trying to get around the lathe. The other one was speaking into a small device, getting help.

"You've made a mistake, I'm afraid," Loki said in Russian, keeping the machine between himself and the man. He could probably throw up a field but...

As the bullets flew towards him, he dodged, throwing himself out of the way, and flung his knife, full strength at the soldier's neck. For a moment the sound of gunshots and metal on metal echoed throughout the room, as they pinged off the machinery. Then the soldier dropped, and all he could hear were the metal casings rolling around the concrete floor and the quick breaths of the remaining soldier.

"I called the others," the soldier said, with much less bravado than the first as Loki walked up to the fallen man, hefting his gun.

"They'll be coming for you." He was trembling, the weapon in his hand unsteady.

"Yes," Loki said, "I expect so."

He pulled the trigger and the soldier dropped. Loki fell back too, not expecting the backward heave as it fired. It felt different from anything he'd used before.

He shrugged, returning it to the dead soldier. He worked quickly, reshaping the second man's clothes into wizard robes, changing his face and hair to something vaguely Malfoy-esque; conjuring a stick to put in his hands. He stepped back, surveying his work. With the bullet wounds, it looked as if the wizard had stabbed the soldier, who had managed to shoot the wizard before giving out.

He pocketed the first man's goggles, then he himself changed, copying the form of the second fallen soldier, changing his battle-garb into a perfect replica of the man's uniform, right down to the strange insignia, a grinning skull with six arms.

He was just finishing up when a second squadron approached, checking the room carefully before the leader entered.

"Soldier," she barked.

Loki saluted.

"The quartered eagle falls and perishes."

Loki racked his memory, calling up the words the soldier he was pretending to be had spoken into his pager…

"The head of the bear regrows anew," he said, somewhat nonsensically. This was going to be slightly embarrassing if he had misheard…

But the soldier nodded.

"Hail Hydra," she said, glancing down at the corpses on the floor. "What happened here?"

"A fight," Loki said meekly, going off his scant impression of the second soldier. He'd been hoping to press onwards before the reinforcements caught up with him.

"Hmm…" The other soldiers shifted nervously as the captain took out a thin, polished wand. "He's not one of the enchanted."

Enchanted? Loki thought. Did he mean the Imperius curse? Had wizards built this stronghold using muggles?

The captain was still frowning, bending down to prod Loki's dead wizard.

"Not an escapee," she said, turning back. "How did he get in here?"

"Infiltration, I expect," Loki said, edging away from the body as the captain continued to investigate. She had pulled out the empty lining of the corpse's pockets and was raising its wand, frowning.

"Captain," the soldier behind him spoke up. "We just received a report- the Winter Soldier has not checked in from patrol."

The captain paused.

"Infiltration, you say?" She turned around, holding the corpse's wand aloft as she turned back to Loki.

"Tell me, soldier," she said, looking Loki in the eye. "What kind of infiltrator is capable of dealing with our premier super-soldier but not Sergeant Dee from Capital Base?"

"Maybe he burnt out," Loki suggested, straightening up.

"Wrong answer," she said, levying bullets into his chest. The illusion flickered and disappeared and Loki skipped up the stairwell, invisible once more as alarms began to ring through the building.

Loki ducked through a sliding metal door- these didn't have wards, even though they were clearly meant to partition the building- and slipped into the wing on the left. He emerged in what seemed to be a control room- eight screens flashed on the wall, showing the dark insides of rooms flickering with blue light. A pair of guards sat behind them, eyes trained on the screen. They wore no goggles- Loki supposed they interfered with eyesight in some way.

"Alarms again," one grunted. "Better check on the enchanted."

Loki peered closer at the screens, trying to get a better view- these were the enchanted?

"Why do I always have to do it?" the other one complained. "I did it last week."

"Because you're a capital reject, Sergeant," the first one said. "You don't know pain until you spend a year with your saliva freezing into needles."

The other one rolled his eyes.

"Remember the code words on the new one, Sarge!" The first one called after him. "Wouldn't want the guy to rip your face off."

The exiting guard shot a rude gesture at the first one, and Loki followed behind at a safe distance, musing over the exchange. Code words? That wasn't the Imperius. That… sounded more like muggles keeping wizards than the other way around. Or perhaps it was more complicated than that, and a subset of muggles and wizards were controlling the rest. He and the guard entered a long hallway, and the guard turned left, away from Malfoy's tracker.

Loki turned. The doorway was open. The door, the walls, and the floor looked extra thick, as if it had a second layer to it. But that wasn't what he first noticed. He frowned, reaching out for the doorframe. There was a flickering blue light emanating from the room, a quiet sound that began to resolve itself as he stepped inside.

There was a single person in the room, stripped down to undergarments and pale flickering flesh. Arms and legs bound to their frame, proud head enmeshed in a structure that refused to let it hang low. It had been shaven. The mouth was bound with silver tape. And the eyes… Loki looked, simultaneously horrified and fascinated. Two small, metal tabs had been hooked onto the upper eyelids, and were attached, by chains, to the frame above the head. They were red, bloodshot, and yet, they moved with the flickering of the screen, adjusting every so often. If not for the eyes, Loki would have doubted that Lucius Malfoy was alive at all.

There was a voice sounding from the corner, an automated voice on a track in Russian.

podchineniya budet voznagrazhdeno.

Compliance will be rewarded.

sdaytsis

Surrender.

sdaytsis, i vy naydete smysl.

Surrender, and you will find meaning.

Loki reached out with his magic and touched the metal frame, letting it disintegrate. He caught the man before he flopped to the floor.

He shot a bolt of fire at the recorder in the back, and another at the projector for good measure. Then he shook Malfoy.

"Get up Lucius," he said. "There's work for us yet."

The man stirred slowly, looking around the room. Loki flickered into visibility. Lucius stared at him for a moment, then blinked again.

"Loki."

Loki inclined his head. "Can you walk?"

Lucius was still staring out, perhaps trying to distinguish truth from fiction. Loki wondered how long he'd been hanging like that, and whether he was going to have to fight his undersecretary now. At least the mystery of the wizards in the camp had been solved- someone, or some organization, had been gathering them up and turning them, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, despite the dictates of magical governments everywhere that existed to protect that very secret. It occurred to Loki that he'd thought such laws existed to protect muggles from wizards. He'd never thought they might be protecting wizards from muggles.

Lucius was struggling to rise up against the smooth wall. Loki conjured a walking-stick and tossed it to him, then a pair of robes. There were footsteps in the hallway- he stepped out, burying two knives in the guards from the control room.

"Where are the others?" he asked, listening for more soldiers. Sooner or later, they would realize that he wasn't trying to leave the compound, and he wasn't looking forward to what would happen when they did.

"In the cell," Lucius said, still sounding somewhat out of it. He straightened, pulling the robe onto his left arm, and stepped forward. "I think I can find it. Do you think… my wand…?"

"People first," Loki said. "Catch me up as you go along."

He began to levitate the other man down the stairs, but he shook his head, trying to walk, so Loki left it at a small hovering charm, to reduce the weight.

"How long have you been there?"

Lucius's face went blank.

"A few hours. No more."

"And what about before?" Loki asked.

The man pressed down the stairs, as quickly as he dared. Loki had rendered him invisible, but the outline of his magic still shone in his sight. There was no hiding his own spells from him.

"They found us quickly," Lucius said. "Wizards and muggles- we were poking around Moscow, but they overpowered us and brought us here. Greengrass is dead," he added.

Loki accepted this without comment.

"And the rest?" he asked.

"We were put in cells," Lucius said. "Stripped, fed. Questioned."

"Did they get anything?" Loki asked, quieting the sound around them as they crossed the stone compound to a building opposite.

"Not from me," Lucius said, the ghost of a sneer flitting across his face. "Perhaps from the others. But this is all about the stone, to them."

Loki nodded, accepting this.

"This is where they keep the wizards," Lucius said. This time they had to pass through the door, as Loki was not confident that his spell would extend to Midgardians.

Loki examined the lock on the cell door, casting a couple of short spells. Then he cast something else and across the compound, every locked cell door simultaneously clicked open.

"You search this floor. I'll take the next few," he said to Lucius, and ran.

He found a blank-eyed Zabini sitting in his cell, his eyes haunted.

"Come. You can come out now," he said.

Zabini shook his head, silent. In the corner of his cell, in a pool of sticky, drying blood, was a dead kniffler.

Longbottom was in the next cell.

"I knew you'd come," he said weakly, when Loki flickered into visibility. "I knew it."

Loki cast a spell on him and he disappeared. Zabini, also invisible beside him, didn't react. Lucius came, dragging out a tired but stoic Emmeline Vance.

"Come," he said, leading them out.

The Obliviator's office was quiet, this late in the night- or was it daytime? Loki had lost track of time between shifts.

Things had proceeded rather quickly after they'd arrived. As the most senior ranking government-official that had not gone on the trip, Bones had taken charge of the debriefing, calling the relevant healers and ministry officials, dispatching aurors to notify the families, though they seemed to be operating on a skeleton staff.

"Everything's fine here," Bones said, when she saw Loki's questioning gaze. "France stayed quiet. You look like you've been through the wringer."

Her eyes fell on Zabini, who hadn't spoken, and had barely moved since the portkey had deposited them in the Ministry Atrium.

"Since you said there was mind control, we're going to do a check," Bones said. "The Imperius is undetectable by magic, but since this was something else, we're thinking we might be able to weed it out with Legilimency, amongst other things."

"Good," Loki said.

"You can sit in on the others' interviews, assuming you're cleared."

"I?" Loki said indignantly. "I was hardly there a day."

Bones looked at him seriously.

"With all due respect, Minister; you can never overestimate the damage of mind control," she said. "Let's not repeat the mistakes of the last war."

Loki's anger rose at the condescension; he quashed it. She was right.

"Very well," he said.

Several most irritating hours later, the ministry officials filed out, looking dazed.

"Cleared," Bones said heavily, rubbing her temples. "Who's next?"

"Longbottom," Bode read off the scroll.

"Commander Longbottom," Loki said, annoyed.

"Yes, well," Bode said. "Come in."

It was a small room with peach colored walls, bland by ministry standards. Loki took a seat at the side of the room with Bones as the Obliviator gave Longbottom some Veritaserum.

"Frank Longbottom," Longbottom said, looking nervous.

"How long were you imprisoned in the Russian base?"

"Two weeks."

"And were you attached to the device pictured?" The Obliviator glanced at Loki, who summoned an illusion of the device.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Fourteen hours," Malfoy said blandly.

"And the device told you to serve an organization called Hydra?"

"I presume."

"Are you loyal to Hydra?"

"No."

"If the correct code word were spoken, would you be loyal to Hydra?"

"No."

"Are you loyal to the British Minister?"

"Yes." Vance crossed her arms, daring anyone to disagree.

"Are there any gaps in your memory from when you were taken?"

"No."

"Were you obliviated, or your mind modified in any way when you were taken, other than through this device?"

"No."

"Is Greengrass dead?" Bones asked, sharply, from the side.

"As far as I know." said Vance.

"What is your name?" Bode read, and Zabini's eyes widened as the potion's magic rose, compelling him to speak.

He opened his mouth then shut it, his magic flaring wildly, and Loki jumped up, ready for anything, as Zabini bent over, heaving.

"Stop it, stop it!" The Obliviator said. "We cannot ask him questions in this state. He needs to see a mind-healer."

Loki reached for the man, helping him up as the Obliviator summoned help. He affixed a tracking charm to the man's hand and nodded, allowing him to be taken by the mediwizard.

Bode raised his wand to Longbottom's temple with a rough smile. "Legilimens."

"Legilimens."

Lucius Malfoy leaned back, looking bored.

"Do it," Vance said. "I want to go home."

"We have been unable to determine any traces of a foreign mental influence at the current time," Bode said, looking Longbottom in the eyes. "However, that does not mean it does not exist, either through latent or undetectable means. In some such cases, it has been found that locking away of the pertinent memories may lead to a removal of the influencing factor. Therefore, we are requesting that you undergo a voluntary obliviation of your memories of the trip."

"Refusal to participate will not result in any loss of work or status," The Obliviator said, passing him the consent form. "By the Employee Rights Act of 1980, this request is purely voluntary."

Longbottom looked at Loki.

"Okay."

"No," Malfoy said, tearing the parchment.

Vance raised her eyebrows.

"Oh we have rights now?"

"Sign the form, Vance," Bones said, putting a hand to her forehead.

Vance shook her head, frowning, and signed.

"Well, that's it," Bones said, as they rode up to the atrium. They'd sent the rest of them ahead, newly cleared, and affixed with Loki's trackers.

Bode and the Obliviator had been Obliviated in turn, though it itched Loki that Bones still had her memories. Not being able to cast the charm himself, he'd had to rely on her spell, with the excuse that two minds on the problem were better than one.

Which might still be true. Greengrass was dead- they'd all attested to it under veritaserum, though no one seemed to have seen the body. The thought of a rogue metamorphmagus roaming the world made his paranoid instincts itch. Not to mention the idea that his undersecretary, or commander, or even trusted soldier had some latent Hydra enchantments.

The atrium was dark, though several people were sitting there on makeshift transfigured chairs.

"The families," Bones said, hoisting her bag. "Which, speaking of, I'd better be off. Have a niece to see about a present."

Loki stood, watching them leave- Vance, throwing her arms around her husband while her mother sniffled, Longbottom, thanking him profusely and taking the photograph back. When at last Narcissa Malfoy came, locking shaking hands with Lucius and apparated away, he stood up, feeling somewhat at loose ends.

He walked back through the ministry- the halls were dark, and even the ever-persistent chattering, the sound of Jorkins' laughter usually emanating from Malfoy's office, the scratching of quills and scritching of owls was gone. He took the elevators up, emerging in the main lobby. It was utterly empty, but for the giant golden statue and the quiet trickling of the fountain.

Outside, snow was falling in drifts. It had plainly been falling all day; cars had left sludgy tracks through the snow. Now, though, fresh flakes stuck among the impressions; the cars had stopped coming. He passed a house with a wreath on the door, comprehending the silence at last. It was that Midgardian holiday.

There would be no getting work done tonight then, no letters to Dumbledore, nothing to do but go home and review his double's memories. He looked down at the glowing network, crossed so much more densely than in that other place, resolving to go to the manor and revise his plans, but at the last moment, he turned and apparated somewhere else instead.

He stepped into the little white house, banishing the snow off his coat and boots. Remus and Harry were sitting at the table. Someone had put great effort into decorating the kitchen; Loki noticed a couple of hand-drawn scribbles along the walls. The little tree in the corner was similarly heaped with shiny material. Three chairs were set out; the table was dressed with a modest but clearly carefully prepared meal of roast-chicken and potatoes.

Loki stared.

"Thank you for coming in the end," Remus was saying, "I know it's not much-"

"Of course," he murmured, taking a seat.

Silence fell as Remus carved the chicken and Loki glanced at all the scribbles on the walls. Harry had already been given some potatoes to eat; he was picking them up with his fingers, the fork he was gripping with his other hand unnoticed.

Remus made light conversation, talking about Harry's healer appointment the week before, the snowman they had made and the sweater Mrs. Weasley had sent for the holidays. Loki listened and ate; for such modest fare, it was surprisingly good. The chicken was seasoned with Midgardian spices; he didn't know which ones but the combination was pleasing, and the potatoes and squash left him feeling fuller than he'd expected.

For dessert Remus brought out gingerbread that he and Harry had made- Loki had eyed the somewhat uneven human shaped cookies with some suspicion, but had to admit, upon sampling them, that they were very good.

Then it was Harry's bedtime, or long past, as Remus put it, which made Harry tear up until it was arranged that a story would be read.

"Why don't you do it while I wash up," Remus suggested, and Loki followed the child to a little bookshelf filled with what appeared to be small, colorful imitations of books, bearing nonsensical names like Tales of the Beedle and Bard, and Hop on Pop.

Harry walked up to the shelf and after a long and thoughtful deliberation, pulled out a bright red one with a strange creature on the cover.

"Right," Loki said, taking the book. "There shall be no literature until you are ensconced in your blankets."

He helped Harry clamber up onto the bed and sat in the big chair beside it, glancing at the illustration on the cover; a strange furry yellow creature with a hat.

"What is that supposed to be, a Mortlog?"

Harry grabbed the book at an odd angle, his hands scrabbling against the page.

"Story," he said insistently.

"Very well," Loki said, crossing his fingers that this never made it to Heimdall or, gods-forbid, Thor. He could always murder them if they started to talk, he reasoned. Thus reassured, he began to read. "I am Sam."

He looked at the next page, then flipped back, frowning.

"It's the same thing."

He turned the page. Of course.

"Sam I am."

He was beginning to wonder at the intelligence of Midgardian writers. Was the redundancy a subtle attempt at enforcing compulsion in small Midgardian children? Or perhaps the books were written by two year olds as well as read; it would certainly explain the outlandish illustrations.

"Look, Harry," he said. "Now it says that Sam I am. That Sam-I-am. That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am!"

He turned the page.

"Ah, an allusion to the title," he said. "Do you like green eggs and ham?"

Come to think of it, he was fairly sure that eggs on Midgard were yellow inside, or perhaps orange. Perhaps a color-change charm was at work.

Harry was looking at him expectantly.

"I do not like them, Sam-I-am," Loki continued. There was a droning sort of meter to the books; it was easy to fall into a rhythm. He fingered the pages, glancing at the child. The book was entirely redundant anyway; surely if he took two between his fingers instead of one… he glanced sidelong and read the page.

"Would you like them in a house?"

"No!" Harry said. "I do not like geen eggs an' ham."

"If you know all the words, why am I reading it to you?" Loki asked reasonably, and Harry fell silent.

He turned the page pointing back.

"What does this say?" he asked.

Harry fell silent.

"Would you like them…" he began, trailing off.

"He or thewe?" Harry continued. He turned the page. "No."

"I would not like them here or there," Loki continued, sighing. "I would not like them anywhere…"

At last, Harry's attention had been exhausted, along with several other of the baby books. He might have put a little of the sleep suggestion in his voice towards the end, though no witnesses could lay claim to such a thing. He tugged the blankets over the toddler, smoothing back his hair to check the scar. Behind his glamor, it was the same as it had ever been, a long, jagged mark mixed in with black residue. He smoothed the spell back on, renewing his tracking charms, and crept out of the room.

"Ah, there you are," Lupin said. "I was wondering if you'd fallen asleep in there."

He was sitting at the table nursing a cup of tea, looking tired but a little less hollow. The dishes had been put away and the floor swept. Loki walked over to the table and stood so that one hand rested on the weathered chair.

Outside the window, snow was falling from the clouds that sheathed the air, the little house from the great wide galaxies, the cold stars and the watchers and the void. There would be a reckoning soon, with France, and Russia, and with Asgard most of all. But for now, snow continued to fall outside, covering the world beyond the lacy drapes outside the warmth.

"Sit up straight," Narcissa said automatically, as Draco squirmed in his chair. There were three plates set at the table, Draco's set with the full accoutrements, minus one or two of the more dangerous knives. He pinched the fork carefully between his fingers, his face screwed up with concentration as he attempted to spear a piece of turkey on his plate.

In past years, there'd been more at this table; Narcissa's sister Bella and her husband, the other Blacks, Severus Snape, even Lucius's father. Funny how she hadn't noticed as they all began to trickle away. There were other people; friends and associates who would be at the Christmas Party the next night, but strange how oppressive the emptiness felt, without any of the people they were used to surrounding themselves with.

She shot another glance at Lucius. When she'd first seen him in the atrium, she'd wanted to cry- all his beautiful hair, gone, and his eyes- he looked like he'd looked during the worst days of the Dark Lord's regime, worse, even. She'd looked behind Lucius just then, for just a moment, and saw the minister, sitting with his legs propped on the table, passing a green fire between his fingers. He'd flashed a smile at her and for a moment, she wondered if he was quite sane.

Lucius said he'd seen things, that the man had resisted the killing curse and wielded arcane magic with ease; that he wasn't in Dumbledore's pocket and was wise to the ways people got ahead in the world, but all she could think was; what kind of person picks a fight with France and then sends my husband into Russia to be tortured?

She looked across the table, watching him cut up the turkey on his plate, cutting with mechanical efficiency. She wouldn't bet against a potion made with the three quarter inch cubes on his plate. He stabbed at them with his fork and ate. More quickly than usual? When she'd hugged him she'd thought he'd lost weight.

"Narcissa dear," Lucius said, looking up at her.

"Yes?" she said.

"Eat."

She glanced back down, cheeks flaming. Draco was looking between them curiously. Before they'd come down she'd given him a thorough dressing down warning him he must not ask Father about his hair, his appearance, or anything about the past week, and he'd been following along quite obediently, despite his evident curiosity. He was such a good boy.

The meal seemed to last forever. Narcissa put some food in her mouth, though what it was she couldn't say. Lucius ate with swift, but measured movements, and she watched, afraid that any moment he would break down, or explode.

But he did neither.

When the meal was cleared, he picked up baby Draco, kissing the top of his head, before handing him off to her to put to bed.

She did so quickly, tucking the corners before walking quickly- though not running, Malfoys always maintained their bearing- back to the bedroom.

Lucius was there, sitting on the side of the bed in the half-light of the hallway.

She walked around and sat beside him, feeling the weave of his formal robes up against the sleeves of her silk ones, brushing every time he exhaled.

He did not look at her, his gaze on a fixed point somewhere in the darkness

"Lucius," she said at last, the words coming out calm as always despite the wrenching inside her; an old memory rose to her mind of coming across a swan in the park that Bella had slashed across the side, watching the red-stained feathers rise and fall as it labored to take its breaths; she felt a bit like that swan right now, trying to breathe, but she was still as she sat beside Lucius.

He didn't say anything. She looked where he was looking- the room was too large for the light of the hallway to penetrate, just a black wooden floor and then a window to more darkness.

She put a hand on his shoulder, feeling its solidity- muscles, skin, robes- searching for hurts, but he did not react, not even to wince.

She reached up to his neck but he grabbed her hand.

"I'm fine, Narcissa," he said. "They healed me. I'm fine."

"But…" Narcissa said. But you're not fine.

"You won't even look at me," she said instead, her voice hollow.

He turned and looked at her, and she wished he hadn't. Then his gaze passed over, and he stood up, tapping his wand against his arm.

"Where are you going?" she asked, a note of alarm creeping into her voice.

"Out," he said, stepping over to the night table. His hands lingered on a paperweight, transfigured from an old mask, and for a moment Narcissa's feared… but instead he took from the closet a cowl, that when he wore it, concealed his face but for a mask of darkness, and opened the door.

Her heart sank.

"When are you returning?" she said, the coldness leaching back into her voice, and he turned his head back as if to say You don't know?

And then he was walking out the door. In the distance by the gate she could make out the other hooded figures, just two or three this time, all wearing the same dark cowls. He must've signalled them after dinner.

In the moonlight in the window, she resembled nothing so much as an marble statue, watching impassively over the black cloaked figure as it wound down the gravel path to the gate, joining the other pinpoints in the darkness.

He would be okay, she knew. He would be careful, find an innocuous little muggle house out in the middle of nowhere, another country, perhaps. She'd thought, under Loki- For a moment the grey marble of the statue's eyes changed slightly in aspect, like a trick of the light, but then it was gone. But no. He would come back and it would be okay. And she would have her husband back.

The statue turned away from the window.

The door shut.

"You don't have to talk about it," Alice said, her hand finding his beneath the sheets.

They'd been through the whole thing; dinner and presents with Neville and the baby and Augusta and the uncles, and the look on Alice's face had been enough to deter anyone's questions.

"I know what it was like, before, when people would ask…" Alice said, smoothing the blanket over the lump made by their hands. Every time they'd fought before, during the Order, they had always been together. In sync.

"It's not that…" Frank said.

They were fundamentally similar at the root of things- neither had much of a heart for violence, though over their years with the Order, they'd learned to tolerate it. But at the end of the war, Alice had left the ministry, while Frank had… floated. He'd joined the army because he was good at it, and because he believed in what Loki was doing. He wanted to give back.

He thought back to that evening, staring at a form with his signature, black letters on white parchment and complicated explanations of all he'd said and done, and-

Alice stayed silent at his side, hand entwined with his, the presence of her not-questions almost more pressing than if she'd uttered them.

Are you okay? What happened?

That was the thing. It was like a perennial itch in his mind, an open wound that he couldn't touch and couldn't help but try.

What happened?

"I don't know," Frank whispered into the darkness.

End of Part 1.