Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter Five: The Department for the Control and Suppression of Deadly Beasts

"No."

Harry rolled his eyes. Snape stood with his back to him, brewing the purple potion he seemed to work on exclusively these days. An eyeroll had a fair chance of going unnoticed. He had expected this opposition, and that made it easy to keep his voice calm as he explained again.

"You don't have a choice in whether or not I leave," he told Snape's back. "I've already decided that I will—"

"And not spoken with the Seers about this," Snape cut in smoothly, leaning over the cauldron to scoop up a handful of powdered moonstone, which he feathered out like falling stardust. Harry watched the potion roil for a moment before it swallowed the silver flecks. He wondered what Snape was making. The potions that required moonstone were relatively rare, at least when the stone was that fine. "Do you think Vera will simply let you leave?"

"Come to that, she doesn't have that much control over me." Harry stretched his arms over his head and leaned against the doorway again. "But I spoke with you first because I knew this would be the hardest battle." He paused, but Snape still didn't look at him. Harry shrugged, and continued. "Not only do I want to leave the Sanctuary, but I think you should stay here."

Snape spun with a snap of his robes so hard that it almost knocked the cauldron from its base. Harry saw him put out a hand to rescue the tipping potion without taking his eyes from Harry. His face was sallow, his eyes so marked by sleeplessness that it was impossible to miss the gray around them in the ferocity of his expression, and he looked as though someone had been wearing him down, scraping him down, by magical torture for nights. Harry checked his pity. The last time he had asked to know what the dreams were about, Snape's magic had flared and nearly wounded him before he controlled himself.

"And why is that?" Snape's voice was low and ugly. "Do you not trust me to control myself around your enemies?"

Harry fought against the urge to lower his gaze. It wasn't visible on the surface, but he knew there was a spark of betrayal in Snape's eyes. He could not be as close to his guardian for as long as he had been, and not see it.

And he had to be honest, too. He had to show Snape that he wasn't playing guardian to an abused child any longer. He had become more of the person Snape had always wanted him to be, but Harry suspected, just as had happened when he'd been forced to go with Evan Rosier and free Durmstrang, that Snape was unlikely to see how much he had grown until he was forced to.

"I don't trust you to control yourself at all," he said quietly. "You are having temper tantrums at me. And that's in the privacy of the Sanctuary, where you know the Headmistress isn't going to walk around the corner in the next moment and reprimand you for your behavior. What's going to happen when we go back to Hogwarts? The first time someone makes a mistake in Potions? The first time you have to comfort a first-year Slytherin who misses her mum? The first time you get into a dispute with a colleague, or the first time I'm in danger? Do you think you'll be able to keep from exploding?"

Snape was breathing fast. Harry struggled not to match him, breath for breath. He had sympathy, yes, but his sympathy had sharpened with an edge of exasperation as the days passed and Snape refused to either modify his behavior or tell him what the dreams were about. Harry no longer had much faith in his ability to heal by himself. He showed no improvement after a month, only a steady decline. And the other day he had raged both when Harry asked about the dreams and when Harry ignored him.

He wants something from me that I can't give—absolute attention, and permission to just do whatever he wants. And that will be disastrous if he comes back to Hogwarts with me and can't act like an adult.

"You cannot force me to stay here," Snape said at last.

Harry kept himself from throwing his hand up, but it was a near thing. "I know that," he said. "I would never force you to stay here. I will tell you that if you come back with me, I won't let your temper tantrums—"

Snape's mouth cracked open in an ugly snarl. "They are not temper tantrums," he said. "They are relics of a suffering that you cannot comprehend—"

"Because you won't tell me!" Harry didn't mean to roar the last words, or to let his magic rattle Snape's ingredient jars on their shelves, but that was what happened. And at least it shut Snape up. He went quiet, staring at Harry as if he were a stranger.

"You won't tell me," Harry went on, when he was sure that he had control of himself. "And what I'm walking back into—I can't tell what the situation might be with the Ministry and the werewolves from this distance, and I know that I'll need to play a role when I visit the Isle of Man that doesn't include hurting them further because my guardian can't control himself. You'll ruin delicate diplomatic missions so easily, sir. You'll put people off before they can ally with me, because they'll wonder why I indulge you to the point of threatening and hurting others. I can resist you, because of the strength of my magic. But others can't."

"I cannot tell you," Snape whispered. "I have been broken in ways that you cannot understand."

"When my mind's collapsed under its own weight." Harry made his voice as skeptical as possible. "When I've mercy-killed people in war and faced the wild Dark."

"Yes."

Harry cocked his head and studied Snape more closely. "That might be true," he said. "But I still can't tell that if you won't tell me."

"I do not wish to."

Harry nodded. "Then the best thing for you is to stay here, and stew in your dreams until you do come to terms with it. When you think you have, you can rejoin me. I'll tell Headmistress McGonagall that she needs to find a new Potions professor and Head of Slytherin House for—"

"I am coming with you," Snape said, his voice like a desert wind.

"To rage and destroy my reputation?"

Snape glared at him, angry, wordless.

"You're uncontrolled," said Harry. "You're not acting like a Slytherin, you're acting like a Gryffindor. And I can't have you close to me if you do that. As I said, I have no intention of restraining your free will if you must come back with me, but I won't allow you close to me in political contexts, and I'll warn the Headmistress about you. She doesn't need to deal with upset parents wanting to know why you've injured their children because you want to indulge your temper."

"You speak as if—" And Snape pulled himself up again.

"Yes?" Harry nodded. "Go on."

"You speak as if you do not care about me." Snape turned and stalked back to his cauldron, in a perfect show of how much it had cost him to say those words. He cannot even look me in the eye in the wake of them.

"Never," Harry said. "You can think of the way I've talked to you for the past month and decide that?" He paused, but Snape did not turn around. Harry shook his head. "The simple fact of the matter is, I can divide sympathy from action now. I can care about you and know that it would be suicide for me to let you curse someone you thought was threatening me. I can understand an enemy's motivation and still oppose him. I can long to help someone, and resist the urge, because she's set herself up as my political enemy." He couldn't help the way his voice rang with wistful frustration. "Isn't that one of the lessons that you wanted me to learn, back when you thought my forgiveness and compassion might kill me?"

Snape said nothing.

"If you come back with me," said Harry quietly, "I'll exile you from my immediate surroundings unless you're thinking. And if you insist on being around me anyway, then I'll have Joseph come with us."

Snape stiffened this time, his hand freezing on the ladle with which he was slowly stirring his potion. His voice hissed like a newborn basilisk. "You would not dare."

"Yes, I would," Harry said. "He hasn't been in the outside world in a long time. He has no other guests who are especially in need of the talking he can provide. He's done all he can for Doncan, and there are others in the Sanctuary who know enough to keep caring for him. He'll come with us and be your personal Seer if I ask him. And I've already asked him," he added.

"You cannot do this to me."

"Yes, I can." Harry restrained the temptation to stalk into the room and shake some sense into Snape. "That's the point. You cannot bear for someone to cross your will, but you are trampling on the free wills of others. I am vates. I will not permit that because you are continuing on with childish grudges you ought to have won free of twenty years ago!"

Snape whispered in the wake of his words. "You think that is the only reason I am suffering? Because of the Marauders?"

"How would I know?" Harry folded his arms and stared at his back. "You haven't told me any differently, remember?"

"You ought to know it is more than that."

Harry felt disgust snap like a broken twig inside himself, and he drew his lips back from his teeth as he hissed. Snape stared at him as he said, "Like it or lump it, Snape. Those are your choices. Come with me with Joseph at your side to act as your Seer, or stay here, or go and keep away from me. That is all."

He turned and left, phoenix fire starting and sparking up his arms. He tried to quell his anger as he walked, and, most importantly, his disappointment.

What in the world does he expect from me? Two months ago he would have been angry that I was putting myself out that much for anyone, let alone for him. A month and a half ago, he scolded me against letting personal emotions take over so that I was useless in politics or battle. Why is this so different?


Snape leaned over the cauldron, his breath coming fast. Then he remembered the dangers of breathing in the fumes from this particular experimental potion, and whirled away from it with a low curse.

His thoughts ran along what Harry had said to him in a passionate tide. It is more than the Marauders, and he ought to have known that. Why can he not leave me alone to heal at my own pace? Why must he push, now of all times? I left him alone to heal at his own pace.

He had, perhaps, overindulged himself, but he had thought he would have another month in the Sanctuary to recover the broken shards and fashion them into a cold, smooth mask. By the time they went back, he had planned to be fully in control of himself again.

And now Harry had said that he was leaving today. And he had offered Snape a choice that was no choice at all.

He leaned against the wall and cursed softly under his breath, the vilest words he knew, Muggle ones from his father mingled among the names of spells that, if he spoke them aloud and if they would work at all in the Sanctuary, would summon crawling nightmares that made Crucio look tame. When that lost its charm, he whirled to face his potion again.

He should have had more time. He needed more time.

But he did not have it.

It seemed that he had done the impossible, or the Seers had done the impossible, or Harry had done the impossible, or they had all done the impossible together. They had made Harry into an imposing young man who no longer looked as if he would crack and break at the first sign of strain. It was such a far cry from the way he had appeared when he first arrived in the Sanctuary that Snape could not imagine what had prompted the change.

Then he looked out the window of his lab at the distant, twining vines and flowers and trees of the Sanctuary, and he knew.

He embraced what happened to him here. He sank his roots deep and grew. He may have thought he had two months and not one, but he seized every chance that he could to break his barriers and his training and heal.

And you have not.

Knowledge burned like ashes in his throat, at least as bitter as the day he had realized Dumbledore was not about to expel Black. He tried to tell himself it was the aftertaste of powdered moonstone.

He knew better.

When Snape faced the choice head-on, he knew there was only one way it could end. He could not stay in the Sanctuary without Harry. Being back at Hogwarts but distant from Harry was only marginally better.

He would have to accept the company of a man he hated, a man he knew was like Black whether Harry would admit it or not.

I cannot fool him, it seems. But I may be able to take him by surprise. I may be able to grow into something that will satisfy him without changing myself completely. The Seers are less pushy than Harry has become, more delicate and careful.

Snape straightened his spine with a snap. It would mean playing a long game, working against the Seer's sight of his soul as well as the dreams that attacked him with long claws nightly now. But he could do it. He had done harder things, including being a spy among the Death Eaters for a year.

Let me do this, then.


"I fear only this," said Vera. Harry had told her what he intended, and she had taken it more quietly than he had suspected would be the case, only sitting with her hands clasped in her lap and staring out the window at the sunlight that so often sheltered her. She turned back to him now, her face grave. "That you will, once again, begin to neglect your healing, because you would rather countenance the healing of those who need you."

Harry tried to remind himself to be patient. It had been his own idea to come to the Sanctuary and subject himself to the way of the Seers, after all. And he had been patient with Vera before when she said something that he thought ridiculous. I bathed in that pool in the Relaxation Room even when I knew it was doing me more harm than good.

"I will be healing at the same time as I finish other things," he said. "I did invite Joseph to come along, and he is one of the most relentlessly honest people you know; you said so yourself." And she had, when she first explained why the other Seers had chosen Joseph for Snape. "He might come along even if Professor Snape doesn't, because he has an interest in seeing the outside world again, and seeing what becomes of me. He told me that. So the Sanctuary can still keep an eye on me."

"Not as well as it could if you stayed here." Vera cocked her head at him. "You have only Acies as proof of the disasters in the outside world that you fear, so far. And Calibrid has confined Acies in sleep. Why must you hurry away? Aren't you only teaching your enemies that you will come when called, and your friends that they must depend on you to the exclusion of their own powers?"

Harry shook his head. "I think Acies is a sign. And the Opallines would need my help even if nothing else was happening."

"That means you will neglect yourself," Vera said at once.

"You don't know that." Harry frowned at her. "It's what I did in the past, but have I done it for the past month?"

"A month is not long enough to make a permanent change in your life." Vera pushed a hand though her hair, disordering it for the first time Harry could remember seeing.

"A moment was enough to change Doncan's life," Harry said harshly. And he knew he was being harsh, he knew it, and he did not care.

"Physical wounds are different from the mental ones," Vera whispered. "Your Bitter One is an example of how deeply cankered the soul can become when it goes untreated for years."

"Draco and Snape are not going to let me retreat into being the mindless shell that I was," said Harry. "I'm not going to let myself retreat into that." He rose and paced restlessly over to the window. "I appreciate that you don't want me to go, that you fear for me, that you wouldn't want to see me regress just when I've begun toddling forward. But I'm afraid that you have no say in the matter, ultimately. I wanted to explain instead of vanishing." Vanishing would have been easier. "But you cannot make the choice for me."

Vera sighed. "No, I cannot," she said. "And anyone who accepts the vates as vates knows that one cannot compel him. But I will miss you, Harry, and there is one final thing I fear, and have feared since I learned that you were helping the Bitter One and Doncan yesterday."

Harry looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"That you do not know how to lead a normal life." Vera was rising to her feet, her face ancient. "That no matter what happens, you will find yourself relentlessly addicted to the thrill of danger, the rush of pleasure. You might not be needed someday, but you will find yourself unable to retreat from the world."

Harry couldn't help the amused smile that widened his mouth, even though he knew Vera's words were sincerely meant. "I think I was aiming too high," he said lightly. "Normality and I aren't meant to inhabit the same walks of life. That's all right. I don't need to retreat from the world. I just need to live, no matter what it means."

Vera studied him one moment more. Harry faced her proudly, somewhat startled as he remembered how afraid he'd been of her the first time he'd seen her, almost two years ago now. She could see his soul, that was true, but he had nothing to be ashamed of.

She touched his hair, murmured a blessing, and passed out of the room. Harry gave a satisfied nod. Now to tell Draco.

He made sure to collect Argutus from his favorite sunbathing spot just outside the room. He planned to leave directly after his talk with Draco.


"You're sure this isn't going to be a repeat of the last year and a half, with you ignoring yourself in favor of everyone else?" Draco asked the question looking out the window, so that he stared at the waterfall below his room instead of Harry's face. Harry wondered if that was deliberate, then told himself that of course it was deliberate. What would have been more shocking would be for Draco to stare him in the eye the entire time. Draco had become more studied lately, judging his actions and expressions to a nicety. Harry suspected that his talks with Nina had helped with that, though he hadn't been present for many of them and so couldn't be sure.

"I'm sure," said Harry, and kept his voice strong and certain.

"You're certain that you can keep your goals in balance, instead of sacrificing yourself to save just one person or thing?" Draco shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. Harry couldn't wait until he learned what that meant. One of the things he was most looking forward to was becoming a student of Draco, understanding him in a way that he hadn't learned to do so far.

"I will try," said Harry. "And if I do start making an unnecessary sacrifice, I trust you to pull me up."

Draco turned around to face him then. Harry expected a smile, but there was nothing, only the deep, assessing gray gaze. Harry thought Draco was looking at him more as a comrade-in-arms at the moment than as a lover, and felt a strange thrill of pride at the thought.

"And you think that you can continue to actually heal, instead of just stay in place?" Draco flung the challenge like a spear.

Harry put his chin up. He was fighting the urge to smile. He would have, except that it seemed right he should match Draco's solemnity with his own. "I do."

Draco took a step forward and held out his hand. Harry clasped it with his own. Draco gave a little nod, as if that answered one of his own internal questions. "When do we leave?"


"Thank you for sending us by the swiftpath," Harry told Vera, as he clambered into the carriage waiting for them. Argutus was looped in shimmering coils around his shoulders and waist, and the Many snake curled tight around his neck. Harry wondered if she would be glad to get out of the peaceful air of the Sanctuary and back into places where she could attack someone else. Of course, Harry was also going back to places where he was more likely to be in danger.

"It is nothing." Vera looked as if she would like to say something else, but rallied back to the topic at hand. "I know that you wish to reach the Isle of Man quickly, and if not by the swiftpath, it would take you much longer, with the mortal distance as well as the distance through the shadows involved."

Harry nodded. He was not sure of the Sanctuary's exact location, but it had not escaped his notice that the carriage had flown east from Hogwarts, the opposite direction from Gollrish Y Thie.

Draco clambered in after him, and sat on the seat next to him, claiming his hand for his own. Harry smiled, and used his Levitation Charm to pull in their neatly packed trunks, shrunken to manageable size.

Snape was next, with Joseph just behind him. Harry studied him from beneath his eyelids as his guardian settled himself. We'll see how well this works. He caught the look of utter loathing Snape was giving Joseph without seeming to do so, and concealed a sigh. Probably not very well. But it's the best compromise I could come up with, and Joseph is stubborn.

Joseph looked directly at Harry then, and closed one eye in a slow wink. Snape looked livid, but given that he was pretending to ignore the Seer altogether, he couldn't say anything about it. He tugged a book about Potions into his lap and began reading. Joseph smiled and settled himself, murmuring what sounded like the words of an old ballad under his breath.

"Farewell to you all," said Vera, her face solemn. "Remember us, out in the mirror-world, and do not hesitate to return to the Sanctuary, where things are the opposite of distorted."

"Farewell, sister," said Joseph. Harry nodded, and felt Draco move his head in a bow beside him. Snape said nothing.

"Be prepared," Vera said, a small smile seaming her mouth then. "Our carriages usually take the slower path through the shadows because our guests need time to take in the soothing atmosphere of our home. But the swiftpath is for emergencies, and—very different." She moved backward with a sweep of her hand, and the carriage bobbled into the air. Harry tilted his head back to see the spiraling golden line it ran on, like the one that had borne them here, and was more than a little surprised that he couldn't find it.

A moment later, he figured out the difference. The swiftpath must make the carriages fly differently.

And how.

The carriage shot forward the moment they were sufficiently clear of the ground. Harry caught a blurred, bruise-purple glimpse of the various buildings of the Sanctuary, and then they were below them and the carriage was wheeling high, making tighter and tighter turns. Harry shuddered as the air in front of them turned the color of chalk.

The carriage made a sudden bound forward, and however fast they had been going, they were now going impossibly faster. Harry swore and sat back in the seat, unable to hold on to it, since Draco was firmly gripping his hand. Draco's grin, Harry noticed when he looked over at him, was more than a bit maniacal.

"Nothing like riding a Firebolt, is it?" Draco said.

Harry shook his head dazedly. On a Firebolt, he was always in control, and he could tell the broom where to go. On the swiftpath, the magic that hurtled the carriage along was in control.

They jolted then, and appeared to rise. Harry looked out their windows, but could see nothing remarkable. They were in the shadows, he supposed, as they had been when they came to the Sanctuary, but this time he could see the edges of the shadows whipping past like gray curtains. Now and then, their path flashed from above them, glowing like diamond dust. Harry felt something strike the carriage's wheels, but it only made them spin; it didn't stop them or slow them down.

"Do things live in the shadows?" he asked Joseph. Snape was apparently absorbed in his book.

"Sometimes," said Joseph. "Some of us think the ghosts of the shadow-weavers are still with us, wandering in the last product of their magic. Did they have souls?" He shrugged. "We don't know, but it makes a nice story to scare someone with the first time they take the swiftpath."

Harry opened his mouth to reply, and then the carriage fell.

Draco let out a loud whoop and grabbed his hand harder than ever. Harry heard Snape snarl out an instinctive Shielding Charm. He held still and tried to tell himself that this was just a Quidditch dive, just like anything he'd made in a game against Gryffindor.

"What was that?" he asked Joseph, when the carriage had righted itself and soared upward again.

"The swiftpath is hung on various hooks," Joseph, who didn't appear at all discomforted, said. "Strung across the sky and among the shadows, if you will. That was our being tossed to a hook that was lower than the rest."

Harry turned his head to stare out the windows, but still could see nothing but the shadows and the occasional flash of diamond from above. "It would be something, to know how to do this, myself," he said softly.

"I don't think anyone now alive knows how to do this," said Joseph pleasantly. "There's certainly no room in the Sanctuary for it. And the shadow-weavers weren't human. They were the ones who made the swiftpath as well as the rest of the shadows. You'd have to ask them." His eyes gleamed. "That would be an interesting question for a necromancer, if you wanted to approach one."

"The only necromancers I know of are with their kin," said Harry quietly, his mind reciting names. Dragonsbane. Pansy. "Dead," he added, when Joseph looked at him.

"Oh." Joseph was still, and Harry wondered again if the Sight didn't tell him about specific memories, or if he was simply too polite to use it all the time. "Battle?" he asked a moment later.

"Yes," Harry said. "Both of them." Then he turned his head and stared out the window at the shadows again, with Draco squeezing his hand reassuringly. Snape read his book, and Joseph softly sang the words to his old ballad.


The carriage came down like a dragon—and the comparison had Harry wincing as soon as he made it—over Gollrish Y Thie. Harry, surveying it anxiously from this high up, couldn't see any damage.

No, that was reserved for when they approached closely.

The home of the Opalline family straddled Snaefell, the highest mountain on the Isle of Man. Paton had told Harry that there was an illusion of solid stone over the top of it, so great that a Muggle railroad ran across it and never noticed any difference between it and the normal stone of Snaefell. Harry assumed the illusion had been removed for the benefit of guests, because he could see the skeleton of what had been a British Red-Gold dragon immediately.

The carriage swung around to the west, the direction Harry had approached from with Paton when he came here to celebrate New Year's Eve with the Opallines, and he heard Draco gasp. Harry didn't blame him. He was staring himself.

Fire had blackened the great slab of stone on which Gollrish Y Thie sat; Harry thought he could still see wisps of steam rising from it. Melted snow and equally blackened earth lay beyond that, and small pits that Harry thought might be where magical defenses had burst open, or perhaps where the dragon's claws had gripped. The corpses were gone, but that didn't surprise him. The Opallines would take care of their own first. The house itself seemed to have escaped damage. Perhaps British Red-Gold bones were resistant to its fire. No children played around its gates, though.

Though Harry hadn't thought anyone had announced their coming to the Opallines, someone was waiting for them. Harry knew him by his height and his ragged white-blond hair, not yet grown in completely from where he had cut it in mourning. He had difficulty in waiting until the carriage settled to the stone like a diving bird before he opened the door and advanced to meet him, holding out his hand.

Paton gripped his wrist and nodded to him. "Harry," he murmured.

"You knew I was coming?" Harry asked, studying the Opalline family head's face closely. It showed signs of weariness, but that wouldn't be unusual. Paton would have traveled from Italy to home in the last day, and the travel must have worn him out, to say nothing of what had happened to his blood.

"We felt your magic the moment you left the shades protecting the Sanctuary," said Paton simply. "It has grown very much greater. Did you know that?" He studied Harry with a trace of the gentle curiosity that Harry remembered. "It rings like a song or a chorus of hunting horns."

Harry blinked. "I—didn't know that." It was true that most of the last webs he'd put on his power had been released in the Sanctuary, webs of distrust and insecurity about his own magic and his right to hit other people with the strength of that magic. He hadn't realized it would make that great a difference. Possibly the magic in the Sanctuary had damped his own, or he had become used to it so gradually he didn't notice.

"It's true you positively stink of roses," Draco volunteered.

Paton chuckled, then sobered. That brought home to Harry, more than the mere sight of his face, the gravity of what had happened here.

"Thank you for coming, Harry," he said quietly. "Two dozen dead—we are reeling from the blow." He moved his hand over his face, and the glamour he usually wore faded, revealing the swirls of color that marked his Old Blood tattoos. "Calibrid is working herself into exhaustion to soothe the grief of those around her, and to forget what happened to Doncan while she put the dragon to sleep."

"I can tell her that he's still alive," said Harry. "He did want to die, but we talked, and he changed his mind."

"Did he?"

Harry met Paton's eyes calmly. He wasn't sure that Doncan would want him discussing the details of their conversation with anyone else. "Yes, he did."

Paton seemed to know when not to pry into his son's privacy. He inclined his head. "You are welcome, all of you," he said. "We can offer you food and drink. Many of my relatives who don't know what else to do have been cooking, and the food provides a good distraction for the rest of the family."

"I am a Seer," Joseph said. "If some of those most grief-stricken would consent to see me, I may be able to help."

"I have some healing potions with me, if you have wounded," said Snape.

"And I will lend my magic to do whatever I can," Harry finished.

Draco vibrated at Harry's side, but didn't add anything. Harry squeezed his hand, to let him know that he didn't go unappreciated, and looked up to see Paton nodding at them all.

"We need those and more," he said. "Beyond the dead and the survivors of the dead, we have others wounded by the dragon's fire, though none so severely as Doncan was. Healing potions—we do not have enough, and our few skilled brewers are coming from Siberia and have not yet arrived. Harry, the approach of your magic was soothing some tempers from a distance, but inside, the effect may be greater."

Harry nodded, and followed Paton inside Gollrish Y Thie. "I am sorry this happened, sir," he murmured to Paton's back. "I thought the dragon was asleep, and safe enough for me to leave."

"It was not your fault," Paton said gently, "and ours was not the only loss." He hesitated for a long moment, then continued, "I assume you have had no news since you went to the Sanctuary?"

"None at all," said Harry. "What has happened?" He was already bracing himself for a blow, anything from the Wizengamot passing a resolution to make Dark magic illegal to Philip Willoughby, one of the parents of the children he had killed, successfully bringing him to trial.

Paton sighed through his nose. "Many things, but the most urgent to your particular cause is that the Ministry has managed to form a department for the hunting of werewolves."

Harry jerked to a stop. "What?"

Paton turned and faced him, his eyes grave. "Yes. Apparently, it had been tried before, and rejected. Then Amelia Bones, who is, after all, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, approached the Heads of the other Departments within the Ministry. It seems there's an old rule that all of them, acting in concert, can overrule the Minister of Magic. Traditionally, of course, there's too much rivalry and professional jealousy among them to permit something like that to happen. But the werewolf panic is higher than we estimated, or Minister Scrimgeour has angered all of them at once."

"Or Bones promised them something," Harry murmured, remembering the panicked woman he had seen after the biting of Elder Gillyflower.

"Perhaps," said Paton. "My relatives who work in the Ministry were not able to learn the whole of it. But the Department for the Control and Suppression of Deadly Beasts has now formed. They sent out hunters a few days ago, with the full moon. Two werewolves were killed, according to the Daily Prophet."

"Did they say where?" Harry's throat felt tight enough to constrict his breathing.

"London," said Paton, as Harry had almost known he would. "A pack in London, one of the fringe ones who live close to the Muggles. The charge was that a rogue werewolf had attacked a Department hunter, and when they killed him, another leaped at them, so they killed her as well."

Harry finally managed to swallow. "And did they happen to give a name of the pack, or a name of the pack leader?"

"Loki," said Paton quietly.

Shock swept through Harry in a windstorm, though in one part of his being, the one that expected bad things to happen, he was not surprised. And then came rage like a firestorm, such that he was hard put to keep his skin from burning.

You've pushed me too far, he thought, aiming the condemnation in the direction of the Ministry. I wanted to remain poised between both of you, taking neither side, but now I have to take the werewolves'. Good luck to you in weathering this war now.