"What do you mean, you 'caught an Unspeakable'?" Harry asked.

It was hours later. Little domes of light once more latched onto the ceiling of the dank cave. Sirius had just returned with two loaves of bread and a jug of water. Stomach rumbling, Harry ate half of one of the loaves himself while Ginny devoured the other.

"I mean exactly that," said Sirius. "I watched all day yesterday and all day today, and I snagged one coming out of the entrance." There was a strange light in his grey eyes. "I have to do something, Harry. I had to find out whatever that bloke knew about what happened to us—"

"And what was it?" Harry pressed. "It just seems awfully risky, if we're meant to try not to change anything…" A thought struck him. "And I only have one of the two-way mirrors, so if you got into trouble—"

"Kidnapping seems like it could cause a few things to change," muttered Ginny, around a large bite of bread. He knew they were of the same mind just then: Sirius was taking risks against his own advice, and leaving the two of them behind as he did it.

It sounded ridiculous, even in his own head, that he was angry with Sirius not for kidnapping some Ministry of Magic bloke, but for not taking Harry along with him. And he stewed over it as he ate the rest of his bread, finishing it off without much enthusiasm. It would have been better if Sirius had thought to bring along butter.

"I know what you're thinking," Sirius said, leaning forward, and breaking almost bodily into Harry's bleak thoughts. "And you're right about the mirrors. But I know a charm that would let me reach yours."

Harry huffed out a breath. "I don't think so. Not about the mirrors. You don't know what I'm thinking."

"Yes, I do." To his utter annoyance, a brief smile flickered on Sirius's face before it properly disappeared again. "You're thinking that I'm shutting you down and keeping you in the dark—'

"Well, you are," Ginny said fairly. "You're doing it to both of us."

"I know neither of you wants to hear this," said Sirius, "but it is in your own best interests—"

"I can decide that for myself," said Harry.

"I am your godfather," said Sirius, maddeningly, "there are things—"

"What things?" Harry demanded. "You're as much in the dark about all this"—he gestured to himself, to the cave, and everything in between—"as we are. You don't have any more of a clue than we do what we're—"

"I may not know why we are here," said Sirius, "or how it was done. But Harry – Ginny – I know where we are."

"What, do you think we're stupid?" Ginny pressed. "We know where we are, it's 1977. And you're just as displaced—"

"In fact," said Sirius, "I am not. Neither of you were alive for this. I know where we are. I have been here before. I remember watching the rise of this – this darkness. I was already an adult—"

Harry scoffed. "You were seventeen."

"And I was in school when the disappearances first started happening," said Sirius. "I saw things get more and more out of hand; people were terrified to do anything… I know the climate here. It hasn't—"

"You haven't faced him like I have," Harry said fiercely. He jabbed his thumb at Ginny. "You haven't even been through what she's been through. We've got a fairly good idea at what Vol—"

Sirius held up his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm not trying to minimize what you've been through, either of you. But the situation in the 90s, after he was broken and gone for a time, his followers scattered… it is nothing like what it is like here and now. The Death Eaters let curses go into the world, and people are too terrified to do anything but shake their heads and their wands and do nothing about it."

"But—"

Sirius's voice rose. "In 1978, a new variant of dragon pox emerged – will emerge – and the Death Eaters were involved in who was allowed treatment… and who was not." His gaze flicked to the side. "People were toadying up to them in droves; you could never be sure of who to trust, who was going to spread tales of what you were saying. Harry, you can't understand—"

"But that's a bit like how it was under Umbridge," said Harry.

"And Umbridge is terrible, I'm not denying that," said Sirius. "This is worse. You can't imagine."

"I have a pretty good imagination," said Ginny.

Sirius sank back against the stone wall. His eyes closed and his mouth moved. Harry had an absurd idea that he was praying. When he finally spoke out loud, it was a deflection of subject. "Just give me one more day. The bloke I caught didn't know anything about the veil, but I was able to find out who might. If you'll give me until tomorrow, I may have worked us through all of this mess. We'll be back in our own time, and you won't have been exposed to… anything. I hadn't even thought that you could get ill…"

"But did you think of that bloke you caught?" Harry asked. "What if he spreads tales of you—"

"I'm not a moron, Harry." There was a bite of impatience in Sirius's voice now. "I obliviated him. He has no notion I was even there… he just thinks he was held a bit late. I remember how to do this."

Mollified, Harry swiped the crumbs off his robes. Annoyance still fizzled in him, but it was banking, now, leaving Harry tired. He had done very little that day, but he was already ready for bed. But there was one thing he wanted Sirius to do: minutes later, both he and Ginny had clean robes. It had been a very odd sensation, feeling Sirius's cleaning charm scrub over him. It was bristly, uncomfortable, and left him smarting a little.

"I shouldn't be gone long," Sirius promised the next morning. His face was drawn, like he had not slept well. "Stay—"

"We'll stay by the cave," said Ginny. "But this is the last time?"

"Hopefully, yes," said Sirius.

That was all he would give them, Harry knew. When he heard the crack of Apparition, he flung himself back on the untidy bed, throwing his forearm over his eyes. Perhaps Sirius would discover that traveling by veil took a lot out of a body, for Harry's exhaustion seemed bone deep. He focused on drawing in deep, even breaths. The urgency was still there, but it was smothered by Harry being forced to stay within the boundaries of this cave, unable to go anywhere, unable to help himself; he could only wait and hope that Sirius did not get caught, that everything went smoothly at the Ministry.

Lethargy seeped into his bones. It was all he could do to roll off the bed and take up a seat at the mouth of the cave when the conjured bed began to disappear bit by bit.

"Alright, Harry?" Ginny asked softly, coming to sit beside him.

"I s'pose," he muttered. "You know I just hate this. Just sitting and waiting and not able to do anything—"

"I know—"

"Honestly, I'd rather be fighting," Harry said.

"V-Voldemort is a better alternative to sitting in a cave?"

He peered at her. It wasn't mockery in her tone, but warm humor. Reluctant, he grinned. "Not really," he said. He thought back to that terrible graveyard, to the one-sided duel with Voldemort, to the fact he had only survived because their wands were twins. His parents had rescued him then. His stomach gave an uncomfortable leap. A moment later, he realized he was still staring at Ginny and looked away, out toward the grey sky and the mountains. "I mean… no, of course not, but…"

"But it's miserable to have to just stay here," she said, nodding.

She stretched out her legs. Her feet were bare, Harry noticed.

"You feel that way, too?" Harry asked.

"Yes," said Ginny. Her feet crossed at the ankles. "I've always gotten restless. It's why I used to steal my brothers' brooms when I was little. I couldn't stand just sitting around, and it was better in the sky. Mum was always wondering where I disappeared off to."

Harry chuckled. His bleak mood was a little lifted. "I feel the same way, in the sky," he began.

But he was interrupted, not by a fresh comment from Ginny, but by what sounded like a low moan coming from deeper within the cave. Puzzled, Harry looked over his shoulder. There was nothing there… had he imagined it, as he had imagined the corpse in the stream just yesterday? But Ginny had followed his gaze and was now frowning.

The moan was louder this time. Harry stood, drawing his wand.

"You hear that?"

"Of course."

Harry shuffled a little ahead of her. He licked his lips. "Maybe Voldemort decided to oblige us," he said. It was a terrible joke, but she huffed out a breathy laugh anyway. And it was a joke, for how could Voldemort be here, in this cave, without them knowing he was there until now?

And yet… something was shuffling toward them. The unmistakable sound of feet plodding on rough surface reached their ears.

When it shuffled out of the shadows, scraping against pebbles, moaning, Harry's heart leapt up into his throat. "What the f—"

Ginny's fingernails dug into his arm. "Harry! IT'S AN INFERIUS!"

It did not look entirely dissimilar to Voldemort, had Voldemort less than half his flesh left. The creature, vaguely human in form, was bald but for a few dark, straggling bits of hair that clung to a skull. There were bits of flesh left on it, sagging and a queer, whitish green in color. Harry took all this in in an instant, mouth hanging open, before Ginny was pulling him out of the cave.

"What—"

"We've got to go—"

The stench hit him then. Decay rode on the wind, filling his nostrils when he sucked in a breath. The creature – the Inferius – who looked for all the world like one of the monsters from his cousin's video games – kept walking toward them. Its jaw worked as it moaned and its teeth ground together.

"I—"

"I SAID COME ON!" Ginny shrieked at him.

Harry followed, scrambling backward. For being so small, she was very strong.

"Hold on—"

"We have to go—"

Harry pulled himself to a stop, fighting against her tugs, and bellowed: "ACCIO CLOAK!" not caring that he might be bringing the wrath of the Ministry of Magic down upon his head. He did not want to leave the Cloak in that cave, not with that Inferius with it. His charm held as well as it had in 1994, during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It sailed into his hands and then he was running with Ginny, scrambling up boulders, if they could reach the stream, maybe the Inferius could not walk through water. Zombies hated water, didn't they? If they could just—

But the corpse was back again. This time it was climbing out of the water, arms stretched outward, mouth open impossibly wide. Its moan made the back of his neck give a painful, ugly twinge. Its cobwebby eyes caught Harry's. He was hoping it would skid over the wet rocks, lose its footing – it could not be easy to walk with its flesh falling off the bones of its ankles. But it was sure-footed as a goat, coming inexorably toward them. And now its moan was joined by that from the cave.

Beside him, Ginny swore violently.

Harry shouted a hex. The Inferius's body rippled where it hit. Foul liquid spilled out of a sudden gash, but the Inferius kept coming. Again and again, he tried, but nothing slowed it down. It kept coming, one step after another. Behind them, the other Inferius came.

"How do we fight them?" Harry demanded.

"I don't know, I don't know!" she cried.

His thoughts leapt forward. They'd been well and truly cornered. None of Harry's spells did anything to stop them. There was only one thing they could do…

"Hide under here with me," ordered Harry, shaking out the invisibility cloak and settling it over both of them. If this did not work, they were dead… Harry did not want to think about what kind of death that would be. In Dudley's video games, they would take great bites out of their victims…

The second Inferius, still dripping water and thicker, foul-smelling liquid, paused. It shambled closer. Its cobwebby eyes swept from side to side, rolling a little. It drew a wheezing breath into its lungs. It let out another moan, a frustrated sound, as though it had lost sight of its quarry. Harry's stomach clenched tight, gripped in a fist, and he held his breath. Ginny was silent as he was.

Please work, you have to work, Harry was chanting inside his head. His father's cloak had never once let him down before. How could it do so now? It had not been penetrated by Death Eater, by professor, by anything…

It moaned again, shuffling off to the side, away from them.

For several minutes, it paced back and forth, losing more and more flesh as it did. Finally, when it was little more than a skeleton, it cracked its spine and headed back to the stream. It sank into the water in small increments before it lay down in the running water.

"Where's the other one?" Ginny breathed, when it had disappeared.

"I don't know," Harry whispered back. "I haven't heard it…"

Though he strained his ears, he could not hear anything but the sound of birds in the trees and the wind whistling in the trees. Had the Inferius from the cave returned from where he had come from the way the other one had?

He did not want to take the cloak off, just in case, and they maneuvered awkwardly together. The silence, instead of being a comfort, was eerie. There were no moans, no shuffles, no sloshy wet slaps of body parts slipping off a frame and falling onto the ground. But there were also no birds, no rustling in the bushes; the smaller creatures had hidden themselves. And so they, the two humans, kept themselves hidden as well.

But once they reached the narrow, hidden crevasse that was the entrance to the cave, Harry could not bring himself to go in.

"C'mon," said Harry, making a split-second decision. "We can't stay here."

"But Sirius—"

"If he can't figure out we've gone to Hogwarts…" Harry let the end of that sentence trail off. If Sirius returned to find them gone, surely Hogwarts would be the first place he looked. But in the event that he didn't… he squinted up at the grey sky. The clouds blowing in were increasingly swollen… if he wrote a message in the dirt, it could be flooded by the time Sirius returned. He'd already done magic once… He patted his robes. The mirror was a solid presence. "And I've got the mirror… thank Merlin."

"Still—"

"Got it, I'll add this." With a twist and flick of his wand, Harry carved a simple message Hogwarts into the granite. He glanced at Ginny, who did not seem perturbed that he was possibly breaking the law regarding use of underage magic.

Her shoulder lifted in a shrug. "Ministry's better than Inferi."

"Or Voldemort," Harry said, grimly. The hairs at the back of his neck were still stood up, and they tingled at this. He straightened, shuffling a few feet away from the mouth of the cave, from which the first Inferi had come. "Have you got everything? I can't think of anything I've left in there." He had his wand and his cloak. "Let's go. Can we go?"

Impatience crackled between them. "Yes, let's," she muttered, sliding past him.

They were halfway down a pile of boulders when another moan rippled through the air.

"FUCK!" Harry shouted. "Why are they—"

"KEEP MOVING!"

Out in the open, on the boulder, there was no chance of hiding under the protection of Harry's cloak. Stomach clenching, he slid further, grabbing Ginny by the upper arm when she threatened to tumble off and into the scrub below. Quick glances over his shoulder did not tell him where the Inferius was; wherever it was, it was hidden from his gaze. And its moans reverberated against the rocks — it could be coming from anywhere.

"We have to get out of here!"

"NO SHIT, HARRY!" she shrieked. "WE—"

But her voice cut off on a blood-curling shriek. A warped hand shot through the loam between boulders, gripping her by the ankle. Harry shouted a curse, leapt forward, grabbed Ginny, and pushed them both away from the boulders. The Inferius moaned. Fresh rot sprayed in the air, catching them on their cloaks. Swearing, Harry shot another curse at it as they fell. There were more moans now; their impossible moans chased them down the mountain.

Harry tried to soften their landing, but his spell did little to lessen the impact. His knee scraped against a stump, and it was all he could do not to fall and cry out with agony. Beside him, Ginny whimpered. Still caught hold of her, they propped each other up as they hobbled as fast as they could down the trail.

The Inferius behind them was slow, slower than they were, and was slipping down after them. Every three seconds, Harry glanced back at it, looking over his shoulder. The pain in his knee radiated outward with every step, burning up his thigh. Gritting his teeth, he bore onward, bolstered by the fact Ginny was continuing on, step by step, and he couldn't slow her down… Ron would never forgive him if he allowed anything to happen to her, not when they were in 1977, and her family did not know her. So he ignored the pain, the smell and taste of rotting flesh, and the surges of fear, and they moved onward.

At the bottom of the trail, Harry swung out his cloak, tucking them beneath it, and collapsed onto the closest rock.

"Fuck," he said.

"Yeah," she said. Then, viciously: "I hate 1977… why does Dumbledore allow Inferi so close to the school? To Hogsmeade?"

Harry just shook his head. Under the cloak, the smell was even worse. He bent over his knee, wincing when he saw the torn, blood-soaked fabric. Gravel and dirt surrounded the wound, which oozed blood.

"Here," said Ginny, leaning over. Not giving him a chance to protest, she tapped her wand against the side of his leg. From where she prodded him, cool numbness spread. And he saw, rather than felt, the Aguamenti charm. Two minutes later, she leaned back, allowing him to see the now-clean wound knitting itself together.

"Where'd you learn that?" Harry asked, astonished.

"Mum," she said simply. "With seven kids… I think she's had to deal with every type of wound out there. My parents were never people to go to St. Mungo's… at least not until Dad got bitten by that snake. They didn't trust it, dunno why."

Harry nodded. Now his pain was settled, the urge to keep moving toward Hogwarts built up within him once more. But first: "Are you all right? Where it grabbed you?"

Her breath huffed out and the cloak pulled tight against his shoulder.

"I can't see it," she admitted.

"Well, let me," said Harry, sliding off the rock and squatting down. There was grime and offal on her shoes, and a bit of blood around her ankle, but considering it was brown and stank worse than anything else, he did not think it was hers. Muttering the same spell she'd used, he cleaned the worst of it off of her. "I think you're good," he said, rising. "Can we go?"

The same urgency he felt was reflected in her eyes.

It was a long walk to Hogsmeade. There were no more moans, no Inferi chased them. But Harry could not help but remember how suddenly they had come, appearing from the streams and the cave and the boulders. As they walked and Harry thought, sluggishly, Ginny cleaned them of the worst of the offal. Once the scent of rot was replaced by the scent of flowers, he was able to think more clearly. Had they been guarding something? Had Voldemort placed them there? Or had they been there much longer than that? But there were no answers to the questions he had, just more questions kept developing—

"I just can't stop thinking of how they kept showing up like that… leaving and then appearing again…" All of this seemed to burst out of Ginny with the force of a volcano. "Three of them… I didn't know they were common." Her steps quickened. "And we don't know why."

"Four," said Harry, without thinking.

"Huh?" she said.

"I saw one yesterday," Harry interrupted her. "I thought it was a trick of light, or — or — anyway, it slid by in the stream."

She stopped in the middle of the wide trail. "What?" she said, shocked. "And you didn't tell me? Or Sirius?"

"I didn't know what it was!" he said, defensive. Looking back, knowing what he now knew of Inferiuses, he wished he had, even if the Inferiuses had been the ones to drive them out of their mountain exile. "I thought it was…"

"Just some corpse drifting by?" she said.

This startled a laugh out of him. And suddenly it was funny, after everything. After a moment, Ginny joined him with a reluctant little chuckle.

"Well, when you put it like that…" he said finally.

A little frustrated sound rumbled out of her, but she didn't say anything else. The trail turned into a gentle road. There, in front of them, was the stile at which he had once met Sirius so long ago in the future. His brain cramped as they awkwardly maneuvered over it. Swiping Ginny's hair out of his mouth, he looked around. The gardens were huge out here, overgrown. The cottages had unfriendly looks about them: all the doors were shut and curtains pulled over the windows. Stay away, they seemed to say. Don't notice me.

Hogsmeade itself, once they reached the outskirts of it, was much the same. Few people were out and about, most of them wizards, barely looking at each other. Harry looked up and down the streets, noting the absence of Madame Puddifoot's and the existence of a couple of shops that may have been at home on Knockturn Alley.

"No Puddifoot's," said Ginny. "I wonder where the students do their snogging."

"I didn't know they did their snogging there," Harry muttered.

It was strange, wandering through the uneven streets of Hogsmeade, a place he had known well. It was not very different from the one he had known, but just different enough to keep him disoriented: shops were painted different colors and the signs outside of them were smaller and unobtrusive. There were window displays, but the curtains were drawn behind them. It was as though the proprietors were reluctant to advertise their wares, just on the off chance that someone would come in. There were flickers and shadows: people were in there, but that was all Harry saw of them.

In the center of town was a large board: pinned onto it were official Ministry of Magic announcements. They both stopped before it, having a moment of silent accord. It was the word "Inferius" that jumped out at him, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck again.

MORE INFERIUS SIGHTINGS OUTSIDE HOGSMEADE: MANDATORY CURFEW. ALL RESIDENTS MUST BE INDOORS BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 PM AND 7 AM.

"Fat lot of good it did us," Harry muttered. The Inferiuses had shown up in broad daylight.

ONLY BUY POTIONS FROM APOTHECARIES. ST MUNGO'S QUARTERLY REPORT SHOWS A 175% INCREASE IN POISONINGS DUE TO FRAUDULENT POTIONS.

SHOULD YOU SUSPECT SOMEONE OF DEATH EATER ACTIVITY, DO NOT CONFRONT THEM. CONTACT THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT IMMEDIATELY.

There were more notices: It seemed as though there were hundreds of them cluttering the board, covering everything from what protective charms were legal to cast… Harry had not known there were entire classes of protective charms, called wards, and that some were illegal. He thought of Grimmauld Place, which the Order had made modifications to, and wondered how many of them had been illegal. There was an entire pamphlet on what to do if you came home and found a Dark Mark in the sky above your house. But despite the many hundreds of bits of advice, it all boiled down to a couple of things: trust no one, and turn to the Ministry if you're scared.

In Harry's experience, however, the Ministry of Magic was not uniformly trustworthy. Idly scratching at the scar on the back of his hand, he shuffled back, allowing Ginny to continue to read the board, while he returned his attention to the mostly empty streets behind him. Sirius had been right about one thing: it was different in 1977.

"Ready?" Ginny asked, cutting into his thoughts.

"Yeah," said Harry.

It was a shorter and more familiar walk up to Hogwarts. The trees in the forbidden forest were as tall as ever, encroaching on the winding road, thick branches hanging overhead, blocking the August sun. The shadows were deep and cool. Halfway there, they paused to drink water, each of them holding their wands over the other's mouth in turn. The cool liquid felt good on his parched throat. It had been a long day already, and it promised to be even longer. If Dumbledore was anything like how Harry remembered him to be, it would take hours to tell him everything…

"Are we doing the right thing?" he asked, abrupt, surprising even himself.

Ginny blinked at him. The cloak was off and stowed once more inside his robes. This close to Hogwarts, it felt safer. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, this is our last chance," said Harry. "Once we get to Dumbledore, he's going to want us to tell him everything. What if Sirius is right, though, and we're making a mistake, telling anyone we've – you know." It felt absurd to say 'traveled back in time', even though Harry had done it once before. "That we're not from here," he finished lamely.

"I don't think Sirius was right," said Ginny. "I think he was bitter about Dumbledore locking him up in Grimmauld Place."

"Noticed that, did you?" Harry chuckled a little, though it wasn't funny.

"Yes. And I don't fault him for it," she said, compassion laced in her tone. "But this thing… it's bigger than that."

Harry nodded. Dumbledore had kept him in the dark; there were secrets he was keeping from Harry, secrets that had a great deal of importance to Harry's own life. And it had been satisfying – gratifying, even – to in turn keep a secret from Dumbledore. But… their situation was bigger than that. Ginny was right. "He does have a point that we could change things," he said. A nameless, powerful emotion leapt in him, sending pure sensation in waves around his body. "What if he's right that telling Dumbledore will have consequences for… where we're from?"

"I trust Dumbledore," Ginny said simply. "I think he's smart enough to know what to do with what we're going to tell him."

"Well," Harry said, "if there's anyone who could…"

After another couple of mouthfuls of water, they continued on their way. It was not long before the gates appeared ahead of them. The castle itself loomed over them; the three tallest towers caught the sunlight, turning them pure silver. Harry paused for a couple of breaths, staring up at hit, hand shielding his eyes. Unlike Hogsmeade, Hogwarts was not different at all. From here, every bit of it looked the same as it would in 1996.

Once inside the gates, a part of him — one that existed outside the control of conscious thought — relaxed. Shoulders less tight, Harry strode onward, up the hill, up toward Hogwarts which was surely warded against the Inferius. This, he muttered to Ginny once the bronze gates clanked shut.

"Probably," she said. But the tightness stretching the corners of her eyes did not disappear. "And if you're talking about more than one Inferius, it's Inferi. Just… so you know." White-lipped, she looked back where they came, then onward.

"They scare you?" Harry asked, then felt stupid for asking. His breath came out in pants. "I mean — before — have you seen one?"

"No," she said, picking up speed. "Damn, I wish we had brooms. I hadn't seen one before but… I heard Mum and Dad talking once when I was little. Did you know my mum's brothers, Gideon and Fabian were in the Order?"

"I heard," said Harry. "They were killed by Death Eaters?"

She turned to him, lips pinched. "Mum said there were… Inferi involved. They didn't — didn't find much of Fabian." They walked a third of the way to the towering castle in silence. Harry kept returning his gaze behind him, scanning the grounds and the trees, still not quite convinced that they were free. But no shambling figures emerged from lake or forest.

Another fraction of him relaxed.

"I'm sorry about your uncles," offered Harry, after a lengthy silence.

She flashed him a quick little hybrid of grimace and smile. And then they were climbing up the steps and standing in front of the doors. Harry wiped his sweaty hands against his robes, took hold of the knocker and banged it against wood. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The retorts sent small creatures scurrying away in the grass. But for a long while, there was silence on the inside.

"I guess — maybe none of the professors live here over the summer," Harry said. He had never thought of where his professors lived when the students were gone for a couple months. He turned to Ginny. "We could go find Hagrid, I know he lives here—"

"Harry, listen!" hissed Ginny.

From inside came the unmistakable clack-clack-clack of footsteps. That was the only warning before the door swung open. A tall, black-haired woman stood there in pale blue robes. Despite her more youthful appearance, Harry felt a surge of relief at the familiar sight of Professor McGonagall, who was just as stern-looking as her older counterpart. The sternness faded in the next moment: surprise softened her features.

"Professor," he said, with great relief, despite the fact she would not know him. "We need to see Dumbledore. I swear it's important… can you take us to him?"

Her lips thinned and her eyebrows raised a fraction. "I am afraid that is quite impossible," she said. "I am afraid, Mister… Potter." Her arms folded. "Is this some sort of prank?"

Harry, tongue-tied, just stared at her.

"Professor, we swear it's important!" Ginny swept in front of him, saving him from having to answer. "There is something going on—"

"Isn't there always?" McGonagall asked. "But I am afraid the Headmaster is on a — a small sabbatical and will not be available until the first of September." Her gaze flicked him up and down, narrow-eyed and suspicious. "You will have to return then."

"But—"

"It has been a rather delightful, prank-free month and a half," she said, abrupt. "And I am afraid I do not have time for that to change. Good day, Mr. Potter." Then, lips twitching, she said, rather begrudgingly: "Well done with the transfiguration: truly remarkable."

Stomach sinking, Harry caught Ginny's eyes, seeing the same question he had swirling there. After all of this, Dumbledore was on a sabbatical? What were they to do now?

HPHPHPHPHPHPHP

Author's Note: As a couple of you have pointed out, yes, in canon, Regulus Black was Sirius's younger brother. For the story to work the way I want it to, I've changed some canon ages (I aged up Barty Crouch as well, and given him a younger sibling). I would say that this is a very close alternate reality to canon, but there will be some differences. Hope that doesn't bother you too much!