"You'll take my life, but I'll take yours too

You'll fire your musket, but I'll run you through

So when you're waiting for the next attack

You'd better stand, there's no turning back"
"The Trooper" – Iron Maiden

Harry didn't return to work after his day in the archives. He informed his supervisor that he was planning on taking the entirety of his holiday time, which amounted to a considerable block from the outset of his employment, and endured the terse reprimands he earned by not having shown his face in the office since he'd published his article in The Quibbler.

There was surprisingly little commentary about the content of the article, and he was left to assume that perhaps no one had really read it. The Quibbler wasn't exactly a well-respected, syndicated publication, after all. Anything it published was largely unique, but often quite batty and off-the-wall.

He'd received a few interesting and thoughtful responses from readers through the post which showed at least a little bit of support for his editorial, but beyond that it had been radio silence.

In truth it felt a bit anti-climactic. He'd anticipated some sort of immune response from The Prophet but had, in the end, only garnered an impatient and condescending mention in Dennis' most recent article. It wasn't even direct in its implication of his column, either, but alluded to it, through Dennis' words: "antiquated notions of so-called 'reasonable' allocation of responsibility, the likes of which put onus on victims of dreadful circumstance and do nothing to seek transformational change of societal substrata."

Harry had been caught between a growl and a grimace at reading that but had let it roll off his back. It was the least of any push back he might have anticipated, but the sheer snobbery of the verbiage was enough to get up his nose.

Dennis had done nothing to address Harry's concerns but had papered over the startling rise in crime by spouting off about how it was incumbent upon the wizarding public to develop deep and abiding empathy for those 'driven to transgress.' Harry had been speechless. He had no clue of how to respond but had been convicted to write down his thoughts in a separate notebook whenever he dwelt too hard on Dennis' charges. By the end of two weeks, he'd amassed a sizable thirty pages of his reflections on how and why he considered that Dennis must be wrong, but had yet to compile them into something which would pass muster for Xenophilius' rag.

Ginny had watched her husband skulking around the house with mounting concern, but it was the height of practice season, and she could manage little in the way of reassurances. The turn that the world had taken was simply too confusing.

She didn't feel she was an unkind person; she had loved Remus and Dobby and wanted the best for people of Hermione's background. If the options were to support the new laws and to, by proxy, agree with Dennis' assessments of the status quo or to be on the side of backwards and outdated sympathies... the choice seemed, on its face, easy.

So why did she have the eerie feeling that she was throwing people: her family, her values, her deeply held beliefs, under the Knight Bus?

Given such indecision, she spoke little to her husband about his beef with The Prophet, and instead nodded along when he ranted about it at the dinner table. At times it seemed his mouth moved faster than his brain, and he'd rush for his notepad, realising that he'd said something important that he'd not been able to piece together within the confines of his own head.

Harry was not normally like this... or he'd not been since Hogwarts when he would pursue leads like a hound who'd scented blood in the air. If she wasn't so concerned for him, she'd have been amused. It was like the good old days when it was enough for him to rage against how Draco Malfoy or Severus Snape (but often, both at once) simply must have been embroiled in some malevolent plot.

At the very least, Harry was able to provide Arthur and Molly with a bit of a break from babysitting duties. He kept the boys with him during the days and made a habit of taking them out into muggle London for daily excursions to the zoo, or even as far as the Little Whinging local pool. It was the most the two boys had seen of their father in their entire lives, and it was enough to warm Ginny's heart.

Harry split his time between supervising the boys and noodling over the confounding morass of fragmented information he'd amassed. His trips to the security lock box in the muggle bank had been frequent.

He would pull his photographs from their protective sleeve and stare at them, his green eyes narrowed, until it felt like Dark Marks, werewolf attacks, and small details about the cases swam in his vision morning, noon, and night.

It was going to be necessary for him to go back to the Snapes' at some point and to photograph Hermione's Dark Mark. He'd not gotten a good look at it, having been too distracted by her wellbeing to ask to look his fill at the brand she'd been trying to protect from the elements, given how fresh it was, but he was almost certain that it had to be different somehow. Perhaps it too was a cobra?

With Snape alive, he could finally compare the file to an original Dark Mark, a luxury he'd not been afforded before. He was almost ashamed that he'd not considered it as soon as he'd been alerted to the man's continued existence, but then again, with Marcus' birth, things had been a bit up in the air.

It was all so congested. Harry wasn't thinking straight, he knew. He had begun to have nightmares once more. Terrifying visions of the attacks themselves, and cloaked figures that part of him recognised as Death Eaters, but which he knew, in truth couldn't be.

It drove him to immerse himself. It beseeched him to get to the bottom of what was happening.

He was grateful not to be there when Gerald was reported missing. There was no way for him to be implicated in his disappearance, and given his own absence from work, it took at least a week of Gerald not showing his face before he, along with all of the other Aurors, were advised to keep an eye out for him. Thus far, a formalised search hadn't been initiated, but it was only a matter of time.

Hermione told him of how Gerald had met his demise. There would be nothing to find of the man.

It had slipped his mind about the other two until a morning in mid-August where a front-page article from a Wizengamot beat writer reminded him.

RESPECTED UNDERSECRETARY TO THE MINISTER, CALVIN TOMLINSON, MISSING

The halls of Blackhall are somehow lesser for the absence of Undersecretary Calvin Tomlinson. Tomlinson, 43—who keeps a residence in Bath with his wife and two daughters—was reported missing by his wife a week and a half ago. Tomlinson's work has often kept him away from his home, such that his initial disappearance wasn't immediately questioned. At this time the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is urging the public to report any possible sightings of Tomlinson who was last seen in the office of the Minister on August 6th. He is 5'9", and of middling weight. According to his wife, he has sandy blonde hair but is visibly balding at the top. At this time it is not reported that he has any identifiable tattoos or markings, but his wand on record is reported to be thirteen inches, oak, and retains a bit of bark at the handle.

According to coworkers, it was business as usual the last day he was seen, and nothing out of the ordinary occurred to indicate that Mr. Tomlinson was planning on taking an extended leave of absence. The Tomlinson family is offering a one thousand galleon reward for any information about Mr. Tomlinson's whereabouts.

A picture of Tomlinson was the largest image on the front page. He was unimpressive. Boring. He blinked up at the reader with a mulish expression that spoke of a life of bureaucratic ennui. Harry might have recognised him from the halls of the Ministry but it would be impossible to know for sure. He was a carbon copy civil servant.

Hermione and Snape wouldn't be much use in determining whether he was the same Cal that had kidnapped the witch. They'd said the man's face had melted into his mask.

Near the end of the paper, close to the obituaries and crime section, Harry noticed a second posting for a Fergus Bruce, a low-level employee in the Muggle Relations Department.

Harry traced his lips with his forefinger. It had to be them. He couldn't prove it, but it was a near certainty. The timing was too close to be coincidental.

He visited the bank again that day, poring over the photographs as he tried to wrangle James and Albus while also keeping their curious eyes from spotting what was pictured in his files. Something felt so close that he could almost taste it. Just out of reach.

In the end, he was forced to admit defeat for yet another day. He intended to ponder over the photographs, however, and given his role supervising his two young boys, decided it was prudent to take the folio with him for the weekend so that he'd not have to make additional trips to the bank. Thus, after stopping off at a kebab stand for an armful of polystyrene clam-shell containers full of marinated meat skewers and side dishes, he led the two boys home, the folio shrunken and stuffed into one pocket.

Dinner that night was a subdued affair. James and Albus were as animated as ever, and he and Ginny shared a few laughs while watching Al smear the meat over his face more often than he managed to get it in his mouth, but Harry was preoccupied with the problem at hand, and his wife knew him well enough to recognise that her husband was a thousand miles away, chomping at the bit to solve the problem.

"How much time do you have left for holiday?" She asked him as they washed up. The boys had been put to bed and it was that quiet part of the night where a husband and wife could finally find each other once more. In the past that had meant a bit of canoodling in the parlour, or a game of Exploding Snap at the kitchen table. A couple of times they'd managed to call Molly over to watch the house as the two snuck off to a muggle cinema and watched a new movie.

That night it was more important to try and figure out who the other person was once more. The kind of maintenance that one never imagines is necessary when young and in love. The hard work that is the stuff of real substance.

Harry shrugged, letting the water sluice over the plate in his hand. He'd been dreading the question. There were only precious few days of holiday time left, and the year before, after their trip to Spain, he'd promised Ginny another holiday, which ought to be coming up soon. He'd spent nearly all of that time avoiding going back in to work.

She stopped pretending that she was focused on cleaning the kitchen counters and instead canted one hip against the cabinet, crossing her arms across her chest. "Don't think I haven't noticed how long you've been out. Did they sack you?"

Harry shook his head, his hands moving mechanically to scrub bits of yogurt-based sauce off of the porcelain. "No, I'm still employed."

Ginny gave him a hard look. "Do you even want to be?"

At this, Harry nearly dropped the plate into the sink. As it was, his fumble threw sudsy water up to his elbows and soaked the sleeves of his shirt. "'Course I do—"

"No, not 'of course,'" his wife said with grim determination. "There is nothing in your actions in the past two weeks that makes it obvious to me that you still want to be at the MLE." Her voice softened a fraction. "Be honest with me."

The Auror sighed, but ultimately gave up the pretense that he was focused on the washing up. He turned to face his wife and offered up a tight smile. "I'll be back to work soon—"

"Harry."

"Well, how would it make you feel if I told you I didn't want to go back?" He questioned, growing defensive. He had a decidedly hunted look in his eye.

"Is this about Snape asking you to come out to their place—"

"It's about a lot of things."

"But it is, isn't it?"

"In part," he offered, hesitating.

He'd not told Ginny what he'd found. He didn't want to worry her. Especially when there was little that could be done. He wasn't even certain about anything yet, only that there was possibly a cause for concern.

"What would you do if you put in your notice?" Ginny asked. "I'm just trying to understand. You've wanted to be an Auror since you knew what they were, Harry. And you're not the flaky sort. If there's a reason why you're changing what you want after so many years... after being made Deputy Head? I think I'm entitled to know why."

Harry grabbed at a dishtowel and dried his hands, frowning down at them as he considered carefully what to say. It was too early. Too early to tell his wife about his suspicions regarding the MLE. Too early to say what he'd do instead.

"I don't know. Maybe I'd take some time off. James and Albus are young, they could benefit from having one of us around all the time."

"Harry Potter, if that's your way of guilting me into being at home—"

"It's not!" He argued, a bit of colour rising in his cheeks. "How could you think that was the case! I saw how tough maternity leave was on you. This has nothing to do with you—"

"It has nothing to do with James or Albus either, then. Be honest," Ginny commanded him, her tone bordering on the one which she used with her players on the Quidditch pitch.

He found he couldn't be. The best he could do was to admit, a bit sheepishly, that he was considering doing more writing.

"Oh, Harry," Ginny sighed, rubbing a hand against her brown eyes, digging the heel of her palm into the socket just a bit too hard.

"We've enough saved," Harry argued. "And we've not touched the Potter or Black accounts in years. Not since after we got married.

"Please, Gin. I need some time. Time to figure out what I want to do."

"Harry, you're almost thirty. We have two children already. Don't you think you ought to know what you want to do?"

Harry was brought up short. He drummed his fingers on the countertop at his hip, considering his answer carefully. "I thought I knew. And it was good enough—better than good enough, really—to do what I was doing for a long time. Things aren't the same as they were." He scrambled for an excuse. Something honest, but misleading.

"Gerald Rudd went missing." He hastened to say, knowing that in so far as it was true, it was also a lie of omission. He barely managed to cover his wince.

'Merlin. Please forgive me, Ginny. I'll tell you everything. As soon as I know. As soon as I can be sure...'

"Gerald..." Ginny frowned.

"He worked next to me in the bullpen." He prompted her. "You met him a few times. When you stopped by to find me for lunch."

"And what? You're worried you'll go missing next?"

He shook his head, one hand moving up to smooth through his cowlicks, catching on a few tangles as he drew his fingers from his forehead to his crown. "Not exactly. But I don't know what Gerald was involved in. I don't know if he was targeted, or if he was a part of something... something wrong."

His wife looked like she could scarcely believe him. Her brown eyes narrowed. "I don't know, Harry. Bowing out now, in that case, strikes me as a bit... cowardly."

Harry drew himself up to square off against the woman, now glaring in earnest. "It's not. You don't know—"

"Then tell me!" One freckled fist slammed down on the aged wooden tabletop, causing a salt cellar to topple.

"There's nothing to tell! Not really, not yet at least..." he trailed off. "All I have are suspicions. And I can't investigate them while I'm working at the MLE,"

"You're the Deputy Head, of course you can—"

Harry shook his head, sadly. "That's how it should be, I'll grant you. My deepest suspicion here is that we're less than... impartial, at the moment." His green eyes bored into his wife's, urging her to hear what he wasn't saying.

"That sounds downright conspiratorial," she argued, "especially in light of your article in The Quibbler."

"So did my first article in the Quibbler." He said with a self-deprecating grin. "That one wasn't wrong either."

Ginny stared at him for several long moments, evidently considering her options. Ultimately, she turned and walked to the larder, withdrawing a pudding kept in stasis that they'd been gifted by Molly earlier that week. She held it out to her husband like a peace offering, bidding him to portion it out for two.

The communal enterprise served to defuse the tension enough that husband and wife shared a tender glance with one another.

Harry had always been one for getting wild hairs up his arse about one thing or another, but he was seldom wrong entirely. There was usually some sort of granule of truth at the heart of whatever strange mess he so often found himself embroiled in. She grabbed two forks and handed one to her bespeckled husband, both of them tucking into the strawberry trifle—the existence of which was a closely guarded secret against their two bottomless pits that they called children. A conspiracy all their own.

In spite of the tough conversation they both grinned, the secret tasting all the more delicious.

"You have a year, Harry Potter," Ginny finally said between bites, "and I'll want to know what you know earlier than that, but... I won't question you taking time off to investigate for a full year."

Her husband licked a bit of whipped cream off of his thumb, where it'd splattered when he'd been serving the trifle. "And if I find that I like writing?"

"Well that would depend. Is writing what you're actually planning on doing?" She asked in challenge. Somehow if it was, it would come as a surprise. Harry wasn't exactly a wordsmith.

Harry shrugged. "I might do."

Ginny raised one orange brow at him, her lips pursed in a way that underscored her slight disbelief. "I guess we'll discuss that next August."

Her husband seemed to deflate with relief. He grabbed her empty plate from her and turned to wash it with his own. "You're the best, Gin. Tops,"

"Don't ever forget it."

They retired shortly after. The steps for putting the house at rest comforting in their familiarity.

Harry's sleep was far from easy. For an hour he thrashed, punching his pillow, tangling in the sheets until he managed to drift off into a troubled slumber.

The familiar black granite halls echoed with footsteps. Three sets. His own, and to his right, Gerald Rudd. Between them a familiar figure, its head obscured by a rough-spun canvas sack.

It appeared to be a woman, her arms bound tight behind her back. She was attired like a muggle, with loose fitting jeans and thin white trainers. She wore an unfussy pink blouse. A small woman. At least five inches shorter than his Ginny.

She must have done something terrible, he reflected as they all marched together in lock-step.

He and Gerald were bringing her before the Wizengamot, he realised then, as Gerald pushed open the door in front of them and bade them precede him through the opening. Harry escorted the woman to the chair with the chains, his role practiced enough that it felt second nature. He forced her down into the seat by pressing upon her narrow shoulders and watched as the chains snaked around her arms and legs, holding her fast.

In the crowd he saw all of the normal members of the council, but also a few faces that were oddly familiar.

There was Aethelfromm, of course. His enormous moustache twitching with impatience and his embroidered robe flowing over his portly figure. He ran a meaty hand through the tiny crop of hair that spouted from the top of his head, his red face glaring down at the woman in the chair. He always looked forbidding when attending these trials. Beside him was a nondescript man, blond, balding, a dictoquill hovering over a pad of parchment and a hungry look in his eyes. Harry thought he saw the blond man nod to Gerald, but couldn't be sure. On the other side of Aethelfromm was a familiar face. Older now, yes, but still recognisable. Dennis Creevy. He stood with a muggle notepad and pen, glowering down from the Wizengamot's box.

He was press... he oughtn't to have been sitting at the Minister's elbow...

Harry didn't have time to ponder this. He was bade to remove the hood, and as he did so hanks of matted brown curls spilled out of the fabric, obscuring a face he was sure he knew.

He reached out a hand to move one of the locks of hair away, wanting a better look—

"Auror Potter?" Aethelfromm called. "If you're quite finished?"

Harry swallowed and stepped back. "Yes, sir. Your prisoner." He agreed with a shallow bow. He walked to the side of the chamber, joining Gerald, whose face was lit with anticipatory glee.

Harry turned to his partner. "What's got you so excited then?"

"Justice." Gerald murmured.

The bespeckled wizard crossed his arms across his chest, observing the proceedings with a small frown. "Justice for what?"

"A traitor, you know? She's a traitor." Gerald nodded, his eyes intent on the huddled-up figure chained to the chair. "Worse than mud for blood, she's got mud for brains," he sneered.

"How do you mean?"

"It'll always be them versus us, Harry,"

"Who's us? Who are they?"

The gavel hit the podium and Harry was brought back to awareness of the trial. The woman was already being sentenced.

Had a case even been presented?

"Guilty!" Aethelfromm cried. Calvin Tomlinson and Dennis Creevy took up the chant beside him, echoing the word so it thundered about the chamber.

"Aurors Potter, Rudd! The convicted shall be remanded to your custody until such a time that her sentence can be carried out," Aethelfromm directed, indicating with his gavel that Harry and Gerald should take the woman into the adjoining chamber.

The chains released as Harry and Gerald each took an arm and hoisted the slight woman between them. Her hair still obscured her face. Harry looked down to where he held her, her left arm, and saw a black brand on the woman's skin, cutting through what appeared to be an old scar. An old scar that looked like it might have read 'mudblood.'

It was a Dark Mark, but it wasn't. The snake was utterly ludicrous, with bulging eyes and a lackadaisical smile. The skull had X's for eyes instead of sockets, and bulging buck-teeth. In truth it reminded the man a bit of old, goofy, black-and-white muggle cartoons.

"Shouldn't've said that shit, should you have?" Gerald hissed to her. "Shouldn't've married one of them."

She was pushed through the door of the chamber, one hooded wizard awaited her. He nodded to the two Aurors, his greeting incongruously casual in the face of the ghoulish job he was employed to perform. "Alright, Rudd? Potter?"

Gerald walked up to the executioner and clapped the man on the back. "Aye, mate. Got it all in hand?"

The masked man twirled a short fat wand in his fingers, waving it a bit playfully. "As ever," he laughed. Amazingly, the woman who had fallen to her knees between the three threw her head back and laughed along, herself. Like she was a part of the joke. She shook her matted hair out of her face, grinning up at Harry.

"I'm in good hands." She told him, echoing the words of the two men who discussed her fate like it was nothing more consequential than what their lunch order was. "Don't you worry, Harry," Hermione assured him, a smile still lingering in her eyes even as tears coursed down her cheeks. "I'll see you in a bit."

He woke from the dream with a start, and fell back asleep only with great difficulty, tossing and turning enough that it was a surprise he didn't wake Ginny.

The house was quiet through the large hours of the night, and then for the first couple small hours of the morning, the only sound being the ticking of an enchanted grandfather clock on the second floor. It chimed for one. Then for two, without anyone awakening. Then, as the clock struck three—

The walls fairly shook from the force of the blast. The foundations of the ancestral Black Family home quaked down to the stones that made up the base.

Harry was up in an instant, landing in a crouch from a roll. He took the covers with him and ended up thrashing ineffectually for a precious few moments. That was all it took for hell to break loose, though in truth it had ignited at the front door the same moment the house had shaken.

The impassioned screaming began. First, James, his cries for his parents distinct for his ability to articulate their names, then Albus, too terrified to remember to cry specifically for his Mumma or Daddy.

The shrieking of the children added a surreal dimension of unreality to the proceedings. In the wake of the presumptive explosion, and besides his children's voices, the house was still quiet.

Somehow, in all of Harry's various imaginings of how such a scenario could have played out, he'd always imagined that the house would be alive with noise. It was an eerie window into his parent's last moments. The whole house pregnant with evil possibilities.

He'd planned for a moment like this for years, even having to so far as to put Ginny through drills, practicing for every and any eventuality.

Yet he'd already lost precious minutes by tangling himself up in the counterpane. Somehow in his imaginings he'd never accounted for the fog of sleep. He'd practiced leaping from bed, but never from a dead rest.

"Harry!? HARRY?"

"Gin! The boys! Go to the boys!" Harry was now on his feet, rushing down the stairs as quickly as he could manage. Ginny had taken a portkey that whisked her away in a vortex. According to their plan it would take her into the nursery where she'd bar the door and wait for her husband. In the event of an escalation, she was meant to take a second portkey to the Burrow.

Harry's feet were uncharacteristically clumsy on the stairs, and as a consequence, his descent was too loud to pass unnoticed.

At the base of the stairs he found the front door lying in a splintered heap, the ornate knocker twisted in a macabre grimace of surprise. The coast was clear. He looked this way and that down the hall, and attempted to peer out the front, finding no one on the stoop.

It could have been nothing more than an attempt to scare them. Perhaps someone who had taken exception to his article, or even a prank.

Still, it was better to be on the safe side.

He began to move his wand in the familiar and comforting undulation which should produce a Patronus and had even gotten out the "Expecto," portion of the spell when an ice cold hand closed over his shoulder from behind.

Harry tried to twist in its grasp but found that he couldn't, at least not all the way. Even the evasive maneuvering he'd learned in muggle close quarters combat training wasn't sufficient to break the hold. It was unnaturally strong, the fingers sharp like talons, digging into the meat of his shoulder. He tried to crane his neck about but felt another hand whip out of the darkness for his throat.

He could almost see it, below his field of vision. Pale and thin. Alabaster white. Bone white. Dead bones—

His head was still parsing what he was seeing when his eyes traveled up the arm and he caught a glimpse of what it was attached to.

The figure had a head of luxuriant platinum hair. That was the most immediately recognisable feature. It was hair he'd seen before bound back in a black velvet ribbon, or spilling out of the hood of a Death Eater cowl. The face beneath was a pale imitation of its former self. Nearly fleshless, one cheek missing, and both eyes having rotted out from their sockets.

Lucius was still dressed in the uniform he'd worn the night of the Battle of Hogwarts, having been taken into custody in the immediate aftermath. (The Malfoys had been kept in Azkaban for the duration of Kingsley's tenure as Minister, and had been executed in the month's following Aethelfromm's ascent to power).

The dragonscales on his jacket and trousers shone slightly with the light pouring in from the gas lamps on the street—which were the only available sources of illumination—though the fabric portion of the uniform seemed worse for wear, the wool having worn thin over the years. Around his skeletal neck was a choke-collar identical to the one which Harry had seen on Harvey.

His mouth opened, unhinging like a snake's, and he leaned forward, releasing a foul stench in Harry's face.

The wizard's surprise had allowed the inferius to get the best of him for the moment, and the arm that had grabbed him from behind tightened once more. He heard rather than saw the inferius behind him moving to secure his wand arm, its arm snaking out for his wrist.

It wore white shirt-sleeves. The kind he'd bought every summer at Madam Malkin's. Hogwart's standard uniform.

If Lucius was before him, he could only guess who was behind.

Both sets of hands pulled, and he could very nearly feel his flesh beginning to come away. Inferi lacked their own magic, and made up for it through brute, otherworldly strength. In centuries past the magical equivalent of being drawn and quartered involved inferi pulling at a witch or wizard's four limbs until they came apart somewhere in the middle. And that was when they didn't use their mouths.

Inferi didn't so much eat a victim (given they had no need for sustenance) but they used their teeth to full effect.

Harry struck out with one foot, hearing Lucius' ribs crack as he stumbled away, and he wrenched against the forearm at his throat, managing to crack the bone and pull away the arm from the fragile elbow joint. It came away still grasping at his neck, but without a body to pull with, really just hung there and squeezed. It allowed him enough leeway to turn about and to face the inferius behind him.

Draco's face was, if possible, more ghastly than his father's. His nose was missing and he retained one, clouded silver eye. It was incapable of focusing and floated up and to the side, but his polished, perfectly straight teeth, the same that had mocked him with snide smiles and smirks for years, opened wide as he bore down against him, pulling him into a bite by the shoulder.

The Auror executed a swerve and Draco's teeth caught against his own father's arm, his teeth gnawing the brittle bone. He seemed not to be aware that he'd missed his target, at least for the moment.

Casting a blasting hex behind him, in order to throw Lucius back and away from him once more, Harry grabbed up a heavy stone urn from a side-table and attempted to brain his former nemesis about the head with it, hearing a satisfying crack when the vessel broke Draco's skull. Naturally, it wasn't enough to kill or stop an inferius, but the creatures still retained some level of prototypical reflex. It caused Draco to drop his shoulder and to bite down harder on his father's arm, whose hand released Harry's throat.

The wizard stumbled away, his back landing against the stairs. He executed a sort of backwards, scrambling crab-walk up the first flight, watching the two creatures before him with wide eyes. He had to get to the nursery—

A woman's scream rent the air, followed by another shriek of a similar pitch but which made his blood run cold. The second shriek sounded unnatural, furious.

He turned tail and resumed his way up the stairs, using his hands as well as his feet to feel his way through the darkness. Behind him Lucius and Draco followed.

"Ginny!" He called, rounding the corridor to where the nursery was. The door was off its hinges. Not having been blasted, but evidently, having been wrenched away through sheer force of will.

Everything was so dark that it took him a moment to register what he was seeing, so he quickly threw an Incendio into the hearth, the fire blazing to life and illuminating a gruesome tableau.

Another decrepit blonde head was being kept back and away from Albus' cot only through Ginny's repeated application of a beater's bat to the head. She'd placed James with Albus in the cot to better defend the two of them, and both boys were standing on the mattress, hands gripped around the slats, their eyes wide with terror as they watched their mother swing for Narcissa Malfoy's head like a champion cricketeer.

Her head cracked back but she rallied and roared at the redheaded witch. Narcissa seemed faster and more aggressive than her husband and son, and she advanced against Ginny as smoothly as a lithe cat. Luckily it was Harry who had the element of surprise.

He grabbed at a hank of the woman's still-coiffed hair and gave a hard tug, pulling her toppling back, and then punted her up to the hearth, where part of Narcissa's crushed velvet robe caught flame. The rest of her went up like a stack of dry hay, her hollow eyes black and all the more terrifying while she was on fire.

She stumbled away from the mantle, her arms swinging wildly, and as she passed the window, her own immolation spread to the curtains, and then to a tapestry of a griffin on the wall, and then the peeling wallpaper itself caught, slowly turning the whole room into a blazing inferno.

"Ginny! The other portkey! Where's the second portkey!?" Harry called over the terrified yelling coming from his two sons.

"I couldn't find it!" She yelled, then she extended an arm at the door, gesticulating toward the two other Inferi who had joined the fracas.

All three were crowded in the nursery now, Draco and Lucius blocking their ability to exit, and Narcissa advancing on the family of four, a pyre on two legs.

The fire, though begun with an Incendio, wasn't magical in nature, thus it wasn't hot enough to impede her progress or destroy her, and taking down three at once in such close quarters was a far cry from the easy dispatch Harry had managed for Harvey's cursed corpse.

"The snowglobe?" Harry demanded, his eyes trained on the three advancing dark creatures. "It was in the wardrobe!"

Harry heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him, and he cast a quick look to the side, fast enough to see James' eyes widen with alarm and his hands go to cover his mouth in terror.

"Sorry! I'm SORRY, Daddy—"

"Sorry for WHAT?!" Harry roared, firing off a blast of fire that missed. It hit the wall by the door, leaving a black scorch and igniting more of the wallpaper.

"Daddy, I'm sorrryyy," the boy wailed, his small hand tugging at his father's pajama top. "It's broke—dropped it," James moaned, his voice miserable.

Harry could scarcely turn to address this problem, and he certainly wasn't planning on taking the tiny child to task in the middle of a literal firefight with the undead. Instead, he swallowed and looked to Ginny whose eyes were wide with alarm. "Harry? What do we do now?"

Without being able to cast containment spells, anything hot enough to kill the Inferi would destroy the whole house.

With that grim thought, Harry looked at his wife, his mouth drawn in a thin line. "Take the boys," he told her, brandishing another lash of fire at the advancing wights. They recoiled from the whip-like blow, but continued their forward march, heedless of heat or pain or fear.

Ginny grabbed up one boy with each arm, balancing them precariously on each hip. She had her wand clutched in her right hand, the arm which held Albus against her side. He was smaller and it allowed her more range with her movements. "What about you?" she asked, hesitating.

"I need something," Harry hedged through gritted teeth. They had precious little room to operate now, and the room was growing so hot that all four were sweating buckets. James let out a shriek as a bit of plaster from the ceiling fell.

Without warning, a worrisome thought occurred to the Auror and he lashed out with his left hand, gripping Ginny before she could disapparate. "Gin, you can't go to the Burrow!"

"Why not?" She yelled over the din, her eyes squinting against the bright flames.

Harry shook his head. There was no time to explain. No time to tell her how he knew they'd targeted him. How the Ministry, at this point, was the obvious origin for the dispatch of the Inferi. How they could both be located through their employment contracts. "Go to Snape!" He yelled instead. "Take the boys to Snape's and I'll meet you there!"

Ginny stared at him open-mouthed for a moment before she followed his instructions, her crack of apparition punctuated by an accompanying crack of part of the room breaking up.

It was now three on one... but without having to worry about Ginny and the children, Harry was enabled to fight more ruthlessly.

"REDUCTO," he screamed, his wand pointed at the floor. The wood blasted apart and he was able to peer down into the room below. The Black Family Library...

It was on the same floor as his study where he'd left his copies of the photographs. The last copies he had.

Harry leapt down through the floor, rolling as he landed, and crashing into a bookshelf. Tomes rained down upon his head at the impact and sooner than he would have liked, the three Inferi followed in his wake, all three had now caught fire and trailed the acrid scent of burning flesh behind them, looking like pillars of soot as they limped toward him.

The fire was doing its job, but far too slowly. He lost no time and pushed to his feet, sprinting to the door and trying to lock it behind him.

He heard the door cracking from the force of their combined efforts mere seconds later, but the physical barrier helped. He managed to get to the study in the time it took for them to break through. When he looked up the staircase he saw that the fire had spread to the hall and down the corridor. A blast of heat rolled down the stairs as he passed and he had nearly staggered back at the force of the draft.

It took him longer than he would have liked to remember where he'd stashed the folio of pictures, his hands scrambled over the ornate wood of the antique desk as he pulled out drawers and shuffled through sundry documents. He felt the renewed heat before he saw them. They were now limping into the doorway, though lacking the intelligence to organise themselves, they caught at the threshold, blocking each other's way. Blocking his way. The fire crackling along the walls, over the carpet. Harry grabbed up his coat from the back of the chair to fend it off from himself as much as was possible, but paused as he did so. There was a hard lump in the pocket...

The folio.

He'd stashed it there on the way home with supper.

The wizard swept the coat around his shoulders then, with a feeling of great relief, and, in the final moments he had before Lucius' remaining arm reached out to pull him into a hellish embrace, managed to liberate a muggle lock-box from underneath the desk. It was all he managed to carry with him. The coat on his back, the folio stashed in one pocket, his wand in his right hand, and the lock-box under his left arm.

All these provisions secured, he apparated away, hoping to find his wife and children safe with the Snapes.

Grimmauld Place was left to burn to the ground, the Malfoys trapped inside.

"We hurdle bodies that lay on the ground

And the Russians fire another round

We get so near, yet so far away

We were meant to fight another day, oh, oh"
"The Trooper" (reprise) – Iron Maiden