Chapter 77 ~ Hard Call

"It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." ~ Roy Disney


ECOTS


April 29th, 1997 – 5:02 a.m.

"A box."

Hermione Granger swore at him. Actually swore. Hell, had Harry not been in the sparkling fantastic mood he was in – mind-wiping his girlfriend and depositing her back at Hogwarts into the care of fucking Black had that effect – he might have snorted at how rule abiding she was.

Apparently she was a bit 'tetchy' about him coming by to say hi.

"Harry," she hissed, "did you seriously come all the way back here to ask if I had a box you could borrow?! What if you'd seen yourself?!" She let go of his sleeve, waving her wand frantically at the supply closet door. She'd just yanked him inside it, presumably to hide him from him. "You are ridiculously," casting another locking charm, followed by a silencing spell, "paranoid! You're liable to fire a killing curse and destroy your entire future at this rate!"

Harry leaned back against a bunch of cardboard boxes, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

Hermione simply hissed, casting another half dozen spells before looking even remotely satisfied.

"You know, we ever have to dig in somewhere, remind me to put you in charge of fortifications," he told, hint of a smirk forming.

She spun around, her mouth opening, then closing as if having trouble deciding what to yell at him for first.

"If you're trying to decide what to be the most pissed about," he bated, "might I suggest the mind wipe I did on Kaylens without her permission? Created a whole wall in there without getting her to sign a disclosure or consent." He made a mock tisk. "Really Hermione, I'm becoming downright Slytherin on your watch. You ought to be ashamed."

Harry couldn't be certain, as he'd never actually witnessed one, but he was fairly certain Hermione was having a stroke.

For a half second he was almost worried, then he rapidly decided that losing a few IQ points might do wonders for her ability to loosen the hell up. Ergo, he said nothing.

Hermione stared at him, her mouth flapping, the left side of her face developing a twitch.

Harry patiently waited, glancing at the mop hanging in his face. These broom closets were roomier than expected, yet that didn't mean there wasn't the risk of getting a mouthful of mop head. "Why do you think people like snogging in these things?" he instead asked, while waiting for her to regain her sensibilities. "Seems a bit disgusting, doesn't it? Like snogging in Myrtle's bathroom." He reached out and gave a fiber hanging from the mop head an experimental pull, a bit of gunk coming off on his hand. He eyed it with disgust for a moment, then held his hand up for Hermione to view. "See? Disgusting."

His best friend took a long, deep breath. "Harry, have you lost your mind?"

He considered this, as it was a fair question. "Let's hope not. There's still that whole 'Dark Lord killing' thing I have to do. I imagine coaching an insane person to get the job done might be a bit beyond the Order's current abilities." He could only imagine the fit Moody would throw if that were the case.

Once again Hermione's mouth hung open. "Harry you can't be seen just wandering around the castle asking about boxes!"

"A box," he said, holding up a single finger. "Not boxes. You're adding plurals there that don't belong."

She looked like she wanted to sputter or yell some more. She certainly had smacked him hard enough when he'd ambushed her in the corridor sixty seconds earlier. Instead she settled on closing her eyes, taking another one of those long, deep breaths that only girls seemed capable of, while silently reminding herself of why she shouldn't kill him.

Harry waited patiently, or to be more precise he tried to. Really, now that Kaylens had been mind-wiped it wasn't like he was getting laid for months. He might as well develop that personality trait now. "Hermione-"

"What could possibly be so important about a box, Harry? You don't just break into a school-"

"Technically there was no breaking."

"-sneak around in broad daylight-"

"You're the only one up wandering around at this hour anyway."

"-ambush people-"

"Technically I said good morning."

"-and ask asinine questions like Hermione can you get me a box!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I need an enchanted box to trap Riddle's soul inside of, Hermione. Right now it's out there and hitchhiking a ride on the back of some poor bastard's head. I'd hardly call that an unreasonable request."

She looked mildly horrified.

Ah, right. He hadn't filled her in on that part of the story. "Let's skip the gaping and disapproving looks for now, alright? Fast version is we played a little version of 'green spell' tag and I won. Now I need a place to store my little soul trophy in until I'm ready to kill it." He paused, then frowned. "Well technically I need to catch it first. Though you can help since I think it might be in Krum…"

It was probably a good thing that Hermione could process things faster than the average person, otherwise this conversation would have rendered her dumb and mute by now. "Catch it? Harry this is Voldemort we're talking about. Not a stray cat!"

"Well I mean…it's kind of like that. Just, you know, rabid."

Hermione's face had begun doing that half-sided twitch thing again.

"You familiar with the symptoms of stroke, Hermione? If not, you might want to look them up. Might be useful. Call it a hunch." Then he winked.

And that was when Hermione Granger punched him. Hard.

Harry was still groaning and snapping his nose back into place several minutes later when Hermione deigned to actually talk to him.

"You're being an ass, Harry."

"Oh, is phat phat I'm pheing?" he grimaced, muttering the healing charm at his nose yet again, feeling it finally work.

Cartilage snapping back into place was always a real bitch. Thudding his fist against the mop he groaned while it healed, then muttered, "Aren't girls supposed to take it as a compliment when wizards ask them to do something they can't?"

"Oh I do take it as a compliment," she assured. "Also as a sign of your reckless insanity. Do I seriously have to follow you around and police you, Harry? Are you utterly incapable of not doing inadvisable things for five minutes? First you don't obliviate me. Then you don't obliviate Kalliandra. Then you tell me freaking Voldemort is running around in spirit form and quite possibly possessing the Death Eater I'm pretending to date, and that you want me to catch him and lock him in a box for some dark wizard time out?"

"Well when you say it like that…"

"Okay Harry," she said, sounding eerily calm. "Say it so it doesn't sound like you've been confounded."

He ignored this. "So, do you think you can do it?"

"Of course I can do it, Harry. Whether or not we can actually get him out of Viktor without killing him-"

"Minor detail."

"-is another story entire..." Hermione trailed off, as if just realizing what Harry had said.

Harry shot her a smirk so smug it was a wonder she didn't slap it off him.

"Harry," she said with a tone of voice ordinarily reserved for dealing with serial killers, "we're not killing Viktor."

Harry quirked an eyebrow, as if to ask 'well why not?'

His best friend made an exasperated sound. "Harry we can't just kill Krum to get Voldemort out of him, that's assuming he's even in him."

"He is," Harry cut off any possible argument. "Mad Eye might be injured, but he said he saw Krum in the Forbidden Forest, right before he got blasted out."

As soon as Harry had come back, dropping Kalliandra and Black off at Hogwarts, he'd gone to see how Mad Eye was doing in Hagrid's Hut.

As it turned out, better. The grizzled Auror was awake, talking, and pissed off to high hell.

He'd also filled them all in on what he'd seen in the Forbidden Forest that night, when Kaylens had nearly died. Mad Eye had barreled headlong into the trees, only to see Krum, and to get blasted right back out of them. The curse had thrown him so far up into the air that he might as well have been shot out of a canon. It was a bit hard to forget the visual of a flying, one-legged, one-eyed, pissed off Auror.

And according to Mad Eye there was no way the Bulgarian Seeker had enough power to perform that type of magic. Not against him.

Which meant one thing and one thing only; Viktor Krum was possessed by Voldemort, and they had to find a way to contain him.

And Hermione was 'casually' dating the bastard.

Well fuck.

"Please tell me you're going to stop snogging him?" Harry said, face probably going through all kinds of disgusted expressions in the dark closet.

Hermione's eyes shot up, the witch leaning against some storage boxes, looking startled. "And how am I supposed to lure him into this box you're so obsessed with if I don't? You realize most of our meetings are entirely physical and-"

She kept talking, but Harry blocked out every single syllable and sound in the known universe for the next thirty seconds, on the grounds he might throw up.

"…besides Harry, I can't- I just can't stop unless Dumbledore asks me to. He wanted me to keep an eye on him."

"Call me dumb, Hermione," Harry said, sure she did exactly that quite frequently whenever he was out of ear shot, "but there's a difference between asking you to play on a low level Death Eater's emotions and asking you to make out with a resurrected Dark Lord with a forked slit for a tongue."

Now Hermione was the one who looked disgusted.

Harry wasn't amused. He grimaced darkly. "You can't keep sneaking out of the castle and going to meet him alone in Hogsmeade, 'Mione. Krum might have had a soft spot for you but Riddle hates Muggleborns. At worst, he'll torture and kill you the first chance he gets. At best? He knows you're friends with me so might use you as leverage to get to me. That might keep you alive a little longer before he puts your head on a pike in the middle of Hogsmeade. Either way, you can't see him without backup now. Not until we figure out a way to contain him."

And right now the bastard was contained in Krum.

Krum had allegedly joined the Death Eaters to see what he could do to stop them, and ever since rescuing Hermione had allegedly stayed far away from them. So long as Hermione continued to sneak out of the castle to meet him in Hogsmeade, of course.

Harry wanted to deck the bastard. Really, he couldn't help but take offense when an active Death Eater tried to infiltrate the Order through his best friend.

Fortunately for them, Hermione wasn't naïve or love struck.

Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of Hermione pretending to be smitten with Krum, but hell…the two had dated and Hermione was a girl. Even if their own snog had been the worst thing Harry had ever experienced kissing wise he figured she might appeal to some…

He shuddered. "Well?" Harry prompted, his fingers having wrapped around the mop handle like a broom somewhat impatiently.

She let out a long suffering sigh. "I'll talk to Dumbledore. I suppose you're right. If Krum really is possessed it's probably not safe…"

"Not to mention Riddle's got to be around seventy, Hermione. No offense, but he'd be a hard person to trick, even for someone as clever as you. So about that box…"

Hermione hesitated, then nodded. "I can do it. I'll have to research runic wards and see what else I can find to make it impermeable to escape, but I'm certain we can make something…."

Harry eyed her in the dark and dusty closet. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"I honestly have no idea."

Now it was his turn to swear.

There was also another small matter or three that he needed to bring up to her. The matters dealing with what was about to go down in three days' time, and he was absolutely positive she wasn't going to like any of it.

Harry leaned against the far side of the closet, folded his arms over his chest, and calmly asked, "Hermione, what do you know about Muggle tracking chips, and what are your thoughts on surgically implanting them underneath our friends' skin with or without their permission?"

She silently stared at him, as if her brain had just short circuited.

Harry offered her a conciliatory grin. It was the least he could do, given she had made the unfathomably stupid decision of becoming friends with him at twelve.

Her mouth opened, then closed, reminding him oddly of how Kaylens so often did that when stunned speechless.

Unlike Kaylens when she spoke she still sounded surprised. "Harry," she said, "did you put a tracking chip in me?"

Somehow Harry had just known he was going to get punched again.


ECOTS


April 29th, 1997 – 7:03 a.m.

Nose re-fixed, Harry Potter leaned in the doorframe of Dumbledore's office, a single finger extended upwards so that it hovered directly in front of a certain doorknocker's oversized nose.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, "I am rather afraid that I must ask you to cease antagonizing him. The remaining students have not even finished breakfast, and he has not had his morning cuppa."

Harry turned his gaze slowly to the Headmaster, whose office he had just invaded, and slowly lowered the finger that had been flipping Crusantheus off. "Morning cuppa?" he repeated. "Please tell me you're not actually giving an inanimate asshole coffee?"

The imported doorknocker – a present from Dumbledore's sheep herding and liquor peddling brother – attempted to bite Harry's finger off.

It missed.

He flicked it on the nose with a smirk so malicious it was a wonder the sorting hat didn't leap off the shelf and demand he change houses.

Dumbledore observed all of it with the air of one accustomed to such interactions. "Why of course I allow him coffee, Harry. Or tea, depending upon his mood. I so do find my office furnishings to be more obliged to pleasantries when guests and students drop in when they have been adequately caffeinated, don't you?"

The youngest House Seeker in a century did not even blink. "I don't have an office, but I'll take your word for it."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "See that you do, Harry. It is indeed advantageous to ensure that any portraits that you may, one day, accumulate are adequately dusted. It does not due to have them angered and eavesdropping upon otherwise private conversations, after all."

There was a stab deep within Harry's stomach, Harry realizing how very much he had actually missed Dumbledore and his strange method of conversing. "I'll take it under advisement, sir," he said, ignoring the scowl the brass Crusantheus was shooting him. "So? What do you think?"

Instantly the Headmaster's serene expression evaporated, the most powerful wizard of the century appearing deep in thought. "Even you must admit, Harry, that you request is rather unorthodox." He paused meaningfully. "Particularly since you refuse to explain why this is needed."

That stabbing sensation deep within Harry's stomach grew. "You were the one who said you didn't want to know about the future," he pointed out. He'd come up to visit the Headmaster after his impromptu 'chat' with Hermione. With his magic back disillusionment hadn't been that hard to pull off, and he still remembered the Headmaster's previous password, so had let himself right in to ask for his help.

The Headmaster lifted an aged hand, a small wave of his fingers causing a licorice stick to appear between his fingers. Dumbledore chewed on the end of it, looking as relaxed as one could be after having been asked to negotiate with the Black Lake's mermen, regarding procuring their assistance on a mission he would be told nothing about.

"You do realize, Harry, that accomplishing any sort of coordination with the merpeople will be somewhat trying given you do not speak mermish?"

The so-called-savior-of-the-wizarding-world snorted. "You told us at an Order meeting the merpeople were learning English, Professor. Surely there's one of them that knows enough for us to get by?"

Dumbledore merely bit off the end of the licorice stick.

In three days this version of Dumbledore would be on the island, and then the Headmaster would die. As would Mr. Weasley, and Bill, and Kingsley, and Diggles, and Professor Gai, and himself.

Harry had other plans.

"I suppose," Dumbledore finally relented, "I could arrange a meeting, on the condition," he held up a suddenly renewed licorice stick, "you fill me in after we return from the isle."

Harry's throat tightened. "Of course, sir."

The doorknocker, having ignored the conversation thus far, groaned aloud. "Oh great, another one."

Harry glanced backwards, spotting Professor Gai coming up the twisting stairwell. The man's brow creased in confusion as he laid eyes on Harry. "Why Harry, weren't you just…" The dead man walking paused, pointing a thumb over his shoulder and down the staircase, glancing first down it, and then back up, looking as if he had just seen him.

"Let me guess," Harry said dryly, "You just saw me in the Great Hall? Snagging food with Ron before running off in the opposite direction?"

"Yes." He frowned. "Exactly that."

Harry shrugged. "Ah, well that's easy. I'm a time traveler. Now not to be rude but I'm on a bit of a time crunch, so what are your thoughts on doing exactly as I say without explanation as to why?"

Professor Gai eyed him as if he'd taken one too many bludgers to the head, then glanced over at Dumbledore, as if seeking explanation.

The Headmaster looked bemused. "Harry, it seems, has gotten an early start this morning on strategizing."

"Ah." Gai's light brown gaze shifted from the Headmaster to him. "And the context for this is…"

Harry answered bluntly. "Can't tell you."

"And you can't because….?"

"Would screw up the timeline," Harry shrugged. "Cause a paradox. Stick you and everyone you've ever known and loved into an unending loop of a single day's events. Create spontaneous black holes. End the known world as we know it." He sounded far too casual. "You know, that kind of thing."

Professor Gai shifted on his feet, and in the process got just a little too close to the rabid door knocker. Crustantheus seized the opportunity to bite a chunk out of the man's robes, narrowly missing the skin.

Professor Gai did not even notice.

"You'd tell me, Harry," he cautiously started, "if you were trying to change time, wouldn't you?"

Harry couldn't help but smirk. "Nope."

The DADA Professor snorted.

Dumbledore chewed on his licorice stick.

An innocent armchair burst into flames, Fawkes having appeared on the plush seat, shaking ash off himself and making an ungodly mess.

"So far," Dumbledore said helpfully, "Harry has requested an audience with an English speaking member of the merpeople, requested to speak privately with you, and if I am not mistaken ambushed Ms. Granger on her way to an early breakfast."

"You forgot," Harry said helpfully, "visiting injured parties and harassing Madame Pomfrey."

Tres looked alarmed. "Injured? Who's injured?"

Both Harry and Dumbledore steadfastly ignored this.

Professor Gai glanced between the two of them, evidently realizing that neither intended to elaborate. The wizard finally shook his head, before commenting, "Well I think it's safe to say that this version of you is no longer my student. You look older, Harry."

"Eight months of getting your ass kicked will do that to a person," he said dryly. Harry paused, then decided to just cut right to it. "What I intend to tell you, you can't repeat Professor. I need an unbreakable vow that you won't say a word, and I need it before we get started."

A spark of interest entered Tres' eyes, and Harry fiercely remembered exactly why Tres and Amarante used to remind him so much of the Weasley twins.

Twenty minutes later and a pissed off door knocker - it was hexed silent to avoid interfering - found the vow made. Dumbledore had acted as the third party for casting the binding spell, the stipulation that everything Harry told Tres over the next half hour would not be repeated, to anyone, other than directly to this version of himself or anyone that this version of himself personally gave Tres permission to divulge it to.

Really, they couldn't exactly leave a loophole for Tres to talk to the past version of Harry-flipping-Potter about any of this, now could they? Merlin fucking knew there were enough versions of him running around the school.

Tres was still shaking out his wrist, the magic having had a bite to it, when Harry flippantly waved his wand, establishing a privacy dome around he and Tres.

Dumbledore, to the wizard's credit, set about polishing his glasses as if he had not just been shut out of a conversation in his own tower for 'his own good.'

He had to give the Headmaster credit – the wizard had a damn doctorate in keeping people in the dark and had been a master of meddling in Harry'slife for so long that it was actually strangely fucking satisfying to see that the wizard was fine with turnabout being fair play. Not only that, but the bastard was even letting Harry use his office for his dirty work.

"You're going to do something stupidly noble and necessary soon," Harry said. "You'll be severely injured at the time and by doing it you're going to save the lives of quite a few Order members, myself included. Suffice it to say it'll be obvious when the moment is, but when that time comes I need you to do something to yourself before you 'go all in.'" And by 'all in' Harry meant literally, into a churning sea that would drown the poor bastard.

Professor Gai quirked an eyebrow beneath his light brown hair. "I take it something bad happens to me on the island then?"

"More like you decide to play the fucking hero while my ass is knocked out."

"Ah." Gai grinned. "Sounds inadvisable. I like it already."

Harry snorted. "Course you would."

"Have to take amusement where you can, Harry." A strange shadow passed through the man's eyes. "Life's short you know."

"I'll keep that stellar piece of earth shattering advice in mind," he said dryly, well aware that Hermione would skewer him if she ever found out about this. She'd been pissed enough that he hadn't obliviated her; he could only imagine her reaction to him warning someone about their own death.

And she would find out.

"So," Tres said, that single word drawn out, "what is it that you need me to do, Harry? When I do this…inadvisable thing?"

"A blood and tissue cooling charm."

Tres quirked his other eyebrow. It would have been comical had they not been talking about the other man's drowning.

"On yourself."

His professor had no immediate reaction, but the wizard wasn't an idiot. He had taught them about first aid. He had taught them basic battlefield triage in class. He had to remember that whole 'a body isn't a dead body until it's warm and dead' saying. The Professor had driven that into their heads himself, it apparently a saying about cold water drownings and hypothermic injuries.

Muggles were apparently really good at bringing people back to life, so long as they were cold first.

The hair slung over Professor Gai's brow seemed to deflate. "So…" he said again, Australian accent somehow abruptly, thickly there, as if the wizard were suddenly too tired to try to mask it. "I'll be badly injured."

Harry's mouth grew strained. "Yeah…."

"And I need to cast a cooling charm on myself…"

It felt like the line of his mouth was slicing into his flesh, Harry only able to nod.

Gai pressed hollowly on, "Before I do something…noble."

Harry met his light brown gaze and said nothing; neither did Gai.

The silence within their privacy bubble was mind numbing.

Professor Gai rocked on his heels, his shoulders thunking solidly against one of Dumbledore's towering shelves. The impact disturbed a spinning trinket, which shot out bright red sparks. His breath came out in a heavy woosh, as if gravity were pressing down.

For another long moment neither wizard said anything.

Then Tres did.

"Harry, I need a favor."

Harry had to physically unclench his throat to speak. "Yeah, sure….anything."

"If this doesn't work," Tres said, something strained and raw in his voice, "make sure someone takes care of Amarante." He visibly swallowed, but otherwise remained motionless. "He and I…we've been alone since we were teens. And…we're all each other has."

They were alone.

Harry had to shove the pain in his chest away. "With due respect, Professor," he ground, "that's a load of shit." And it was. It really fucking was. Professor Gai's brow had furrowed deep, but Harry kept going. "You've got all of us. The Order. We don't exactly forget about the people we fight with. Hell," glancing fleetingly through the barrier at Dumbledore, "that's all the family some of us has got." And if Harry were honest with himself…

It was all he had.

Everyone he loved, everyone he gave the remotest damn about was in the Order. Ron, Hermione, Tonks, the Weasleys, Dumbleodre, Kaylens. Fuck, even Regulus.

The weight on Professor Gai's shoulders seemed to marginally increase, but the man managed a weak grimace.

And then, just like that, Professor Gai opened his mouth, saying, "Well, in that case, Harry, sounds like quite the party."

The man had just agreed to go willingly to his own death.

Harry stared at him, for a moment not sure what to say. When he'd first met him in, he figured he was just another idiot in a long line of piss poor DADA Professors, Lupin excluded. But now…

He'd rather like to take the timeturner back to September 1st, if only to punch himself for not grasping how fucking brave the wizard actually was.

Harry's hand flexed on open air, as if itching for a wand.

Then he managed to formulate a response, one he figured would be true no matter how it turned out. "Just wait," he promised, "for the after party." And at that…

Professor Gai's mouth twitched.


ECOTS


May 2nd, 1997 – 8:48 pm

Madame Pomfrey had 'conveniently given all parties heading to the island shots, because apparently vaccinations against tetanus were 'important.' Particularly ones that contained tracking chips, similar to the kind Muggles used in their pet dogs.

Hovering over the Atlantic, comfortably astride her Nimbus 2000, Tonks rubbed at her arm and sent Harry a scowl, which he steadfastly ignored. "I can't believe you tricked us into getting implants, Harry. That's downright-"

"Slytherin. Yeah, I know." His dark gaze slipped to her for a second. "Now stop whining. You've had that for half a year. Can't tell me it still hurts."

Tonks hissed like the rabid animal Remus assured her she was. "Phantom pains, Harry. Phantom. Pains." She made sure to say the words clearly. Annunciating was important. She even repeated them for him, on account that she was such a nice Auror.

Harry rudely missed it. The git was already looking back towards the island, a stressed look on his face.

She couldn't blame him; they were about to watch their friends die. Again.

It was why she was so hellbent on keeping the levity up. Auror rule number three thousand – humor saved lives. If you got yourself killed in the field, there'd be no time to grieve anyway. Ergo, she tended to favor keeping everyone nice and distracted from the horror of shit with good ole fashioned inappropriate jokes.

Even when it felt downright wrong.

They were hovering on brooms in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, having returned to that damnable island. It made Tonks' heart literally ache, her eyes following Harry's towards the ship where her fiancé, boss, and three friends floated, all unaware of what awaited them within mere hours.

She wanted to go scream at them, to cast a patronus message charm ordering them to all run. But she knew she couldn't, because she hadn't.

Her currently blue-green eyes flickered towards the island. Bill was there. Dead. So was Diggles. He hadn't gotten a burial. He had been lost, eaten, left somewhere within the turbid waters churning around the island's periphery. Hell, pieces of him were probably still undigested in the intestinal track of one of those undead Great Whites.

Within hours Dumbledore, Harry, Tres, Arthur Weasley, and Kingsley would all join them in that 'no pulse' club.

Tonks' throat declared mutiny and made a small, upset sound that was terribly unlike her. She tried to mask it with a cough, but no one was fooled. Especially Harry. His shoulders had stiffened the second she coughed. Living with him in the chamber had given the conniving bastard an edge.

He'd gotten to know her.

They were friends. Good friends. She was good friends with a seventeen – no…almost eighteen - year old, one who was rapidly learning to read her like a book.

The horror.

She turned the next upset sound into a pathetic growl, and Harry – the bastard – took that as his cue.

"Another thing about tracking chips," he said, words so casual they just had to be calculated, "ought to come in handy when Lupin realizes he's agreed to marry your ass and tries to run, Tonks." His lips twitched without humor. "Think of it as an insurance policy."

It took her a second.

It took her perhaps thirteen and a half seconds.

Then she made a sputtering sound, her mouth forming a shape reminiscent of a surprised guppy. "What?"

Harry's gaze flashed to hers for a brief, devil-may-care moment. "What? I thought the Main Warlock's job was to prevent the groom from running?"

It occurred to Tonks that he was right. Remus had asked Harry to be his Main Warlock at their wedding, and it was his job to keep Remus from fleeing the country and joining a cult of eunuchs.

With horror she realized that she'd asked Minerva to do the same thing, only for her.

And Minerva McGongall, in spite of those awesome legs Tonks just knew were being hidden under the woman's robes, was absolutely terrifying.

"Shite," she swore. "And I picked Minerva. She's going to kill me, Harry." The last part came out more like a pleading whine from a new pup than actual dialogue from a grown woman.

Harry snorted derisively. "Doubtful. You've been stalking Lupin for over a year. No offense Tonks, but you're hardly a flight risk."

Again she sputtered. "And he is?"

The wizard didn't bat an eye. "Yes."

From atop her broom, Tonks considered this. "I should punch you, Potter."

"Potter?"

"Punch. Potter. The alliteration seemed fitting."

He sniffed with contempt. "Hermione beat you to it, and we didn't even put a tracking chip inher." He sounded oddly disappointed.

Tonks made a mental note to probe that more later; right now she was openly gaping. "Hermione did what?"

The girl in question, one who had until now been oddly silent, finally spoke. "I take offense to getting collared without my express permission."

"But you weren't," Harry muttered, beneath his breath adding, "Instead you were an overreactive-"

"Pardon, Harry? I couldn't quite hear you?" Hermione interrupted, far too sweetly.

Tonks felt like she was sputtering a lot today. She also felt like she could sodding kiss Harry-sodding-Potter for the distraction.

She absolutely hated this.

One look at Harry told her he did too.

He still spoke as if everything were almost normal.

"Hermione," he asked, almost diplomatically, "did you want a tracking chip?" He lifted his arm to show her his forearm. "Really, all the cool kids are doing it. Would hate for you to feel left out."

Hermione made an irritated sound.

Tonks tried to not feel sick. The sun was setting, and she knew what that meant.

Soon their friends would die.

Right now, on that horrible, horrible island, they were burying Bill's body under rocks. Dumbledore was severely injured. Mundungus' remains were rotting in some undead shark's colon. Kalliandra was unconscious and being cuddled by Dean Thomas, Harry was shooting the wizard concerningly murderous looks, and Luna was sharpening spears.

And soon, very soon, Kingsley, Arthur, and Tres were going to die.

And the three of them were just hovering over the Atlantic Ocean, right alongside that same island, doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

Tonks understood. She did. If they tried to intervene on the island itself, while the horcrux and other dark magics were still at play, then they might die. They might change something that couldn't be fixed and create a time paradox. So they couldn't.

But none of that meant that Tonks liked it. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to fuck it all, to turn her broom straight for that invisible barrier where the sea went from calm to chaotic, and to fly at it for all she was worth. Sure, the broom would stop working the instant she crossed the threshold, but her momentum was bound to throw her close enough to the rocky barrier to at least give her a chance.

Everything was about to go to absolute and complete shit.

A voice that sounded suspiciously like Moody warned her to take assessment of their surroundings; so she did.

There were only three of them, hidden beneath a cloaking charm. They were being careful. They were keeping a distance from the fishing vessel where Mad Eye, Arthur, Kingsley, Fleur and Remus kept guard, looking out for Death Eaters. There was at least a thousand yards separating them from it.

Underneath them the Atlantic churned. Small whitecaps splashed salt water up to soak Tonks' toes. She'd gone barefoot since wet shoes weighed you down and made you more likely to drown. Like Kingsley had. Reddish light from the setting sun reflected off the rolling sea, Harry hovering over it with the ease of one born for the air. Hell, he wasn't even bothering to hold on to his damn broom. Instead both arms hung at his sides, a heavy air hanging upon him. He looked relaxed, yet, like a coiled rattler, prepared to spring at any moment. All Tonks had to do was look at the tense flexing of his fingers around the wand at his side to know that much.

Hermione looked far, far different.

The girl too hovered upon a broom, but she looked distinctly uncomfortable, out of her element. In fact, if Tonks was a betting witch – which she totally was, whenever Kingsley, Moody or Remus weren't looking – she'd have put money on the girl teetering sideways and toppling right off into the sea.

Hermione Granger was a terrible flier. In fact, Harry had flown with her on his broom, behind him, the entire way there. Tonks had held onto the spare broom for when they arrived.

She still was feeling fairly skeptical about whether the girl would get herself killed just trying to fly. There was a reason the three of them were hovering only a meter above the actual ocean, and that was because Hermione looked ready to teeter to the side and fall off at any moment.

Either way it was probably a good idea that Hermione's only real orders were to stay put and provide additional support if things for Harry and her went astronomically south. For now the girl stared straight ahead, pale faced, her ordinarily bushy hair having puffed out to poodle-esqe proportions with the increased humidity.

Given that the witch's hair was tied back in a ponytail that was impressive.

Next, Tonks' eyes flickered to the horizon. The island's sandy beaches and turbid waters were rapidly becoming mere silhouettes framed by that sinking ball of fire that Remus assured her was responsible for all life - she had a tendency to curse it and he thought that was bad precedence. It was a strangely beautiful picture. Hell, if she blocked out the nightmare-inducing experiences she'd had there, she could almost fool herself into thinking it looked like one of those picture perfect vacation postcards her Muggle relatives sometimes sent her.

Below them a tail flicked in the water, a merman keeping silent guard. He was the English speaker amongst them, and was acting as a scout. The two other merpeople had stayed deep, As soon as it was time to retrieve Tres, Harry or her would signal the scout, and he would get the others. With any luck, they'd get to Tres in time.

Tonks' mouth was oddly dry.

And then she tuned back in to the sounds around her. It was like hearing a radio volume being slowly turned up. Tonks hadn't been aware she'd been tuning them out.

"I still can't believe you think tracking chips are a good idea, Harry," Hermione was saying. "What if Vo-You-Know-Who found out? He could find you. The Death Eaters could-"

"Good," Harry interjected, rather callously. "Makes my job easier. Bring him to me, then I don't have to waste time waiting to kill him."

Hermione's lips snapped together in blatant disapproval. "At least tell me you're planning to get rid of them? It's been under your skin for months." Her brown eyes slipped to Harry's forearm worriedly. "That can't exactly be…hygenic."

"You were the one who suggested them in the first place," he countered.

Tonks blinked at the new piece of information.

"Besides, bit hard to remove something I didn't know was there," he continued. "Not to mention we needed these."

Harry was right; the tracking chips had been necessary. They'd speed up finding Tres' body on the bottom of the ocean floor. It'd let the merpeople Harry had somehow bribed into helping them zero in on the man. They'd also make finding where they'd taken Fleur possible. They hoped.

"Yes but-"

"You helped, Hermione," Harry muttered. "You want to back out, there's the portkey. But were going through with it."

Hermione bit down on her lip and frowned. The witch had added a magical twist to the tracking chips. She didn't know that they were going after Tres, but she did know about Fleur. So she'd charmed the things so that regardless of where the veela was taken – be it a Muggle or magical location – they'd have a way to find her. After all, magical interference at places like Hogwarts rendered Muggle devices useless, but that kind of interference required a lot of magic. The typical wizarding home didn't have enough magic to do that, and Muggle devices would work just fine in the homes of most Death Eaters.

And while the Death Eaters might think to check for magical tracking spells, the arrogant sods would never think to look for a Muggle piece of technology, let alone a puppy tracker.

Purebloods really were snobs. Tonks loved it. She also couldn't wait to rub this in her extended family's many pointed faces if it actually worked.

Watching Hermione continue to tut Tonks couldn't help but let her next thought blurt out. "I can't believe she actually came."

Hermione's head whipped around to stare at her. "I'm literally right next to you. You don't have to keep talking about me as if I'm not."

Tonks couldn't imagine why Hermione was so irritated; she'd only shared how shocked she was about eight times. She wasn't anywhere near the dozenth mark yet, and Remus had assured her it wasn't irritating until she'd repeated something a dozen times.

Then again maybe Remus had been being sarcastic. Or maybe she'd been naked. Remus had this terrible tendency of lying to appease her when she was naked. Something about using her 'feminine wiles' against him….

"Sure and all," Tonks said, shoving those terribly distracting thoughts of naked Remus to the back of her mind for the good of Merlin, country, and the integrity of Harry's neck given Death Eater attack was imminent, "but Harry actually got you to come. Here. With us time travelers. Illegally."

"Well someone responsible had to," the younger witch muttered, clinging to her broomstick with a white knuckled grip.

"You're," Tonks heard herself continue, "a Prefect."

"Well noticed," the aforementioned Prefect said, albeit a bit acidly.

"A particularly uptight one."

Now Hermione groaned, shooting Harry an exasperated look for help.

"She probably knows as many hexes as you, Tonks," Harry said, every line of his face set with grim determination. "I wouldn't piss her off."

Tonks ignored this. "How'd you do it? Coercion? Imperious? Shameless begging? Indecent photos and a well-timed Quibbler articl-"

Hermione Granger made an upset, defeated sound, and began thumping her head against her broom handle.

Harry didn't even spare her a glance. He just reached blindly out and patted his friend on the head, as if to say 'there, there, I'm sorry about the Auror's mouth.'

Tonks wondered if she should be personally offended by this.

A particularly large wave splashed her, having snuck up on her in the encroaching dark. It was cold, Tonks hissing.

And just like that everything they were about to see slammed into her like a battering ram. She felt something in her stomach clench into a tight, horrid sort of ball. Then she shot the cursed island a dark look, as if it were personally responsible for Voldemort choosing it, cursing it, booby-trapping it, and tossing a horcrux and inferi-sharks into its waters.

Really, the island itself had plenty of grounds for complaint for what had been done to it by that vile snake man. It'd probably been a peaceful little sub-tropical isle, pretty and quaint, minding its own business before Voldemort came along to set up blood traps and ruined it.

"This is an asininely stupid idea, Harry," Hermione said.

"Damn right it is." Harry Potter hovered on his broom, feet brushing the sea with each lapping wave. "Best kind, Hermione."

"We're going to get ourselves killed," the Prefect fretted.

Harry just shrugged. "So don't die."

"We should have come up with a plan. Perhaps set up stations-"

"Hermione," he said patiently, "when has anything the Order has ever done or planned worked out the way we intended?" Green eyes shot to brown, a dark eyebrow raised. "Last count our success ratio was heavily tilted in the 'everything goes to hell' direction. Besides, told you, I have a plan."

Tonks snorted at the skeptical look on Hermione's face.

"That's not particularly reassuring…" the girl muttered quietly, leaning low over her broom as if afraid of falling off.

And that was how it went until darkness fell, and when it did…

The three of them fell silent, tensely waiting for the attack they knew was coming to begin.


ECOTS


May 2nd, 1997 – 3 am

The disturbance of air alongside him was his only warning.

"Don't!" Harry lunged forward, hand snaring around a disillusioned sleeve. He then bodily grabbed Hermione and drug her and her broom the hell back. She struggled instantly, hard enough that she nearly knocked them both from their brooms, Harry cussing and pinning both her arms to her sides as he snapped, "Hermione fucking stop!"

"Harry, they're going to kill-"

"I know," he snapped, voice ragged as he stared at the fucking ambush in front of them.

Thirty seconds ago the entire night sky had lit up like a sadistic fireworks display. The fishing trawler's concealment charm had failed almost instantly, the vessel flickering into view as the Death Eaters drove it towards the turbulent barrier. The waters there were full of fun, welcoming things, like blood thirsty inferi-sharks and hurricane-force whitecaps.

In his arms Hermione went rigid. "Wha-you can't possibly-Harry-"

He just tightened his hold on her, her bushy hair sticking in his face and unpleasant as hell. Had his chest and stomach not both been simultaneously lurching, their friends dying, he might have had sympathy for Ron. His best mate had to wake up to that bushy haired mess in his face. But Harry didn't. He couldn't. Instead his jaw set so hard it physically hurt, his arms vibrating with repressed upset.

A vicious red light exploded against the hull, a loud crack cutting through the night

Hermione struggled, pleading desperately, "Harry we have to help them!"

He hated this. He was letting them die right in front of them. He was holding Hermione back from helping. Everything in him wanted to go attack, to fight, but they couldn't. They couldn't because Mr. Weasley and Kingsley's bodies had been recovered. They couldn't because they'd had funerals. They couldn't because Lupin and Moody had remembered and witnessed all of it and they couldn't change actual time. Not without causing a fucking paradox. They just couldn't.

So instead of helping the man who had taken him in and treated him as good a son, Harry sat there astride a broom and held Hermione captive as she let out a whimper.

"Harry please. They're going to die."

His voice came out hoarse. "They do."

Beneath his grip he felt her go stiff. Her breath started to come out fast and shallow. "No. No you don't mean-"

"He does," Tonks said, keeping her voice down. The disillusioned Auror was floating somewhere alongside them, the three having kept their distance to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. "And he's right. We can't help them. We're outnumbered and we can't risk changing the timeline." Her voice sounded hollow, like she was barely repressing a strangled scream.

Harry could only imagine; Lupin was on that craft.

Hermione made an upset sound, the port side of the trawler suddenly igniting, catching flame. "Harry you didn't tell me! You didn't tell me any of-"

Harry's throat tightened so hard he thought his trachea might have broke. "Call me an asshole later," he croaked. "Right now we need to be quiet." He'd warned her about what she might see, but clearly she hadn't been prepared. Then again, he conveniently hadn't told her that people she knew would die. He hadn't been sure she could stomach it, so he'd left it out.

And even with her piss poor flying skills Hermione had still gasped the instant the trawler came under attack, trying to bolt forward. As always she had wanted to help.

Judging from the vicious green spells still lighting up the night, that wouldn't have ended well for any of them.

Beneath them the ocean churned, crests of saltwater launching up to soak their legs. It was as if the entire fucking ocean was being disturbed by the fighting ahead. It was. Every spell that missed and struck the ocean surface sent water launching up into the air, throwing violent, rippling waves out in every direction around the point of impact. The intense rocking of the trawler only sent the waves higher, and Harry couldn't help but remember that Hermione wasn't the best of swimmers.

And now she was shivering violently in his arms, her legs and bare feet wet with cold ocean spray.

Green light exploded.

The mast broke, falling.

The sound was delayed. It took a second before it hit them. When it did the crack reverberated out across the black sea, and Harry felt like he was being forced to view a horrific, old movie, one where the audio was just slightly off the on-screen action. Enough to notice. Enough to piss you off. Enough to make the surrealness of it all so much worse.

A deep purple spell struck the deck, and the return volley of spells abruptly lessened. Harry didn't have to ask why.

The trawler touched that invisible barrier, where the ocean turned from normal to hurricane-esque.

It began to tilt to the side.

A wizard launched themselves off the deck, someone in tow…

"That's our cue," Tonks hissed, ordering, "Hermione, you stay put. If we're not back in five minutes portkey back and get Moody and McGonagall." Mad Eye was still recovering from injury which was why he'd stayed back, but he was still damn useful in a fight. "Harry, you're with me."

He grimaced, squeezing Hermione's arms for a half second in what he hoped was some twisted approximation of comfort, whispering, "Hermione please…stay here." And then...

Then he released her.

His best friend made a bitter, choking sound. She grabbed at him, clutching onto his arm for another second, squeezing it tight. Then her fingers slipped from his forearm, as if that had been her silent, desperate way of saying she would stay put, but she wouldn't like it.

The best Harry could do was grunt at her.

Then he took off after Tonks, following the sound of her broom cutting through the wind.

He'd worry about Hermione later.

They couldn't let Voldemort's followers know they were being followed. They couldn't get caught. Fleur might have a tracking chip in her, but that wasn't good enough. They wanted, no…needed to know where the bastards were going. If Voldemort were smart, and Harry knew that he fucking was, the Death Eaters would be using multiple safe houses, and the Order needed to find as many as possible.

You didn't exterminate an infestation by taking out only one of the colonies. No. You had to take out all of them, simultaneously, before the swarm had a chance to spread. And Death Eaters and the prejudicial hate they spouted…

They spread like wildfire.

Unfortunately Fleur was the way they were going to do that.

Harry bit back the bile, lowered his body flat against his broom and pushed forward. The wind howled as it whipped past him, the Firebolt's speed approximating something sickening. His own was broken. This very same broom had been snapped in half like a twig by that fucking gargoyle, so he'd borrowed his past self's version. He had it on good fucking authority that he wouldn't mind. Harry flew right past Tonks, keeping low to the water, the waves rippling and splashing and licking at his feet. The water droplets struck him at such speed that they physically hurt, like small rocks or grains of sand lancing against his skin.

But Harry didn't give a damn about any of that. No. The night wind flew past until he caught up, flying beneath them. He heard Tonks drop back, just as they'd planned. She'd take the rear, while he took the front.

Harry Potter shoved his hand in his pocket, a large wave darting up and forcing him to jerk to the right, changing directions to avoid it, but he sure as fuck didn't lose control. He was used to flying with one hand. His other was usually stuck out trying to catch a golden ball that was notoriously difficult to catch.

He'd send Oliver Wood a thank you note for the militant Quidditch drills later.

Harry got close. He practically held his damn breath as he flew beneath the bastards, seeing Fleur's pale hair whipping backwards, the part-veela slung limply across a Death Eater's lap. That was good. Having to carry her had slowed the entire pack down, making this one's flying clunky, awkward. The rest had to flank the bastard to protect the precious damn cargo.

He had to time this right.

The locators battered around the inside of his pocket, bashing against his knuckles. There were multiple ones. Hermione's idea. Clever as fucking always. They couldn't exactly fly up and dart-gun the bastards or hex them. They'd notice. So the locaters were something the bastard's wouldn't find right away. Something benign. Something they wouldn't realize had just been attached. Something that, even if they did find them, they'd think were the result of doing battle with the wooden ship that they'd literally just blasted into a thousand fucking pieces.

They'd probably just yank the things out with tweezers or a damn spell, and toss them on the ground of wherever it was they were. And that was good. Great even.

Because it meant the trackers would stay exactly where they wanted them.

Harry's fist clenched hard around the small splinters of wood, the things Hermione had charmed to track the bastards, and with a hard shove he threw himself forward, ahead of the pack. Harry glanced up and back, seeing the bastards in dark robes falling behind. He waited another second, then two, then-

He surged forward.

With a powerful jerk he threw his broom up, rocketing skywards, straight into their path in a reverse wonskei feint.

As he did it he dropped the splinters directly in front of where the assholes were flying.

They'd fly straight into them.

And judging from the pained shouts, they did.

Harry might have added a packet of what looked suspiciously like bird shit to the mix, splattering them in a creamy yellow-white liquid. Given the average IQ of the dark bastard's special cloak wearing lackeys, and given it was dark, they'd probably think they had just flown through a damn flock.

And Harry intended to make them think exactly that.

After all, they had to have flown through something that'd cause them a bit of pain. Getting hit with bird shit at high speed certainly would cause exactly that. Best not to arouse suspicion.

The idiots probably wouldn't even search or cleanse themselves beyond a mild scourgify. How convenient that Hermione had charmed the tracking devices against disappearing from that.

The wind shrieked in his ears now, and Harry switched direction, flying back into the night to rejoin Tonks, his backup that he hadn't needed. The Death Eaters had never even noticed their disillusioned attacker in the dark, and as Harry jerked his broom to a halt he caught sight of Fleur's silver hair disappearing into the black. The Death Eaters were gone, and so was she.

His chest felt like it'd been hollowed out with a spoon.

A whipping sound, the telltale noise of a broom slicing through the air, announced Tonks arrival. He heard more than saw her fly up alongside him, his words hollow and pathetic even to his own ears. "Think there's any chance," he grated, eyes glued to where he'd last seen Flue, "she'll forgive us?"

Tonks swallowed, voice humorless. "More likely she'll channel that quarter veela and morph into a clawed, winged fury. You know, show us what she looks like before she brushes her teeth in the morning and combs out her rats nest of hair kind of thing." She paused, a quick finite removing her disillusionment charm in time for him to see her give a mock shudder. "Veela sans beauty routine. The horror."

Disillusioned or not, Harry sent her a strange look.

"Bet she'll make fights with Kally-kins seem downright tame, Harry-kins. Better start brushing up on magical creature defense. We're going to need it. Angry little French thing might even invite her extended family over to help tear us limb from limb-"

And she continued on like that. Harry didn't have to ask why.

Tonks dealt with shit with humor, crass or not. And neither wanted to voice aloud that they hoped Fleur would be pissed at them, because if she was…

Then it meant Fleur was alive.

They had just sacrificed her for information, and Harry needed her to live.

She just…she had to.

Ice slithered down his throat at what they'd just done.

Tonks stopped talking and swallowed audibly besides him.

Harry's hand flexed on the wand he hadn't had to use.

"We should get back before the Prefect calls in reinforcements," she said.

Harry nodded stiffly. "Yeah…"

Neither sounded like their heart was in it. Neither moved from where they hovered in the sky. Neither looked away from where they'd last seen Fleur.

Neither did a damn thing until the last possible fucking moment, when they knew that if they didn't get back that Hermione would go for help.

When they got back her expression was torn, mixed between relief and anger. She shoved the portkey she'd clearly been intending to use away, stuffing it back deep inside her pocket. Brown eyes darted between them, so expressive that Harry hated himself the moment they landed on him.

"My god…" she whispered. "You really let her go…"

Harry's jaw set, and he met her gaze. "That was the plan."

"But you actually let them take her, Harry. How could you-"

He closed his eyes. "Easy." Taking a deep breath, he firmly ground, "I know where I stand Hermione. I know what's at stake. This might be our only shot to find out where he's at." He now opened his eyes, looking at her almost pleadingly, hoping, needing her to understand. "He'll keep Fleur alive to experiment on her, and once we track down all the places they go to, we'll get her back."

Hermione was no longer looking at him. Even though she had made the tracking devices, and even though he'd told her what they'd intended to do with letting them take Fleur away with them, actually participating in it went against every ingrained instinct Hermione had.

Harry went silent, allowing her to deal with her part in all of this in whatever way she needed to. At least until it was time to help Tres.


ECOTS


Eventually the sun came up. From a distance they had watched the onslaught that was operation 'attack a fucking underwater pirate ship.' Harry couldn't help but think it was a bit sadomasochist to watch his own damn death while his girlfriend wept over his body, so he didn't.

Tonks had crudely unshrunk several pairs of binoculars and handed them out.

Harry expressed his appreciation by dropping his in the ocean, earning him a patented Tonks pout. The merman he'd almost hit in the head had also given him a crude gesture. He didn't care. He didn't need to see that shit again. He'd already lived it.

Hermione, however, had taken hers like it was a viper. Then, clinging to her broom with one hand, she had carefully put it up to her face.

So far she'd been oddly silent.

Tonks hadn't cared and had proceeded to tell them how she'd charmed the occulars with night vision, because she wanted to watch the 'trio sans bookworm' play at 'sharky-teething time', with the added benefit of zeroing in on her own personal freakout on the beach.

Harry could only assume she meant when he, Ron and Kaylens had swam out to kill the remaining sharks.

Hermione had broken her stony silence at that, commenting, liberally, that this whole thing was a bit crass.

Harry wisely remained silent. He doubted Tonks would like hearing he agreed, and pissing off an Auror that could change their appearance to suit them at will was never a good idea. Particularly when that Auror was female. Particularly when it was one he technically lived with, at least for the next three damn months.

Besides, Harry knew what the hell the metamorph was doing. Tonks might mask shit with unpolished jokes of the wildly inappropriate variety, but it was to put people at ease with crappy situations. It made it easier for them to focus on something other than fear, grief, anger. In essence, it made it less likely for them to fuck up. Harry'd learned that about her. Hell, he respected it.

And that was exactly what she was doing now, only he had a sneaking suspicion that she was also trying to review events of that day to see if there was anything they'd missed in the thick of it.

Like where the fuck Dumbledore's body had wound up.

Harry's jaw set. He fucking hated this, but Tonks was right. They needed to pay attention. So Harry kept his eyes to their rear, making sure no additional Death Eaters showed up. Sure, they had erected a concealment charm around their position, but this was his damn life and given that he'd somehow pissed Merlin the fuck off without ever realizing it, he wasn't taking any chances.

Floating alongside them, Hermione grew paler by the minute. Unlike he and Tonks, she hadn't lived any of this, so witnessing it was all fucking new to her.

Judging from the sounds she was making he was positive both he and Ron would get an earful later.

"You really are a complete bitch, Tonks," he muttered.

The metamorphamagus hummed loudly to ignore him.

Hermione swore a word that had her deducting house points from herself – courtesy of Ron riding a shark – and a large explosion that was guaranteed to be Dumbledore destroying the lion's share of inferi. About a hundred and twenty seconds later she actually dropped her binoculars in her lap, clinging to her broom with shaking hands, a strangled sound coming from her.

Harry didn't have to ask why.

A cold chill slithered through him, his words flat. "Let me guess, I'm dead again, aren't I?"

Hermione made an upset sound.

Tonks simply growled, peering with rapt attention through her binoculars. "Not for long pretty boy. You're currently making out with a rather debonair, dark skinned, muscular hunk of a man who I can say from personal experience really knows how to give the full service mouth-to-mouth-"

Harry threw up a little.

Then he kicked Tonks off her damn broom, hoping the subsequent splash would go unnoticed.

It did.

Unfortunately the aforementioned Auror managed to nearly clobber the merman scout in the head – again. Had the fin-tailed bastard not had a dripping wet Tonks practically on him, the Auror clearly not wearing a bra, Harry reckoned he might have looked a bit more put out than he actually did. As it was Harry only received a mildly annoyed look.

Tonks gave the merman an apologetic wave and bobbed up and down in the water, her lack of bra shockingly evident with that motion. The merman followed his species' new favorite buoys progress with a strange sort of grin, Tonks oblivious as she asked him how he kept his hair so well combed despite the water's tangling properties.

Then a wave hit her and the witch managed to somehow lose her shirt.

Honest to fucking god working with the metamorph was like handling highly sensitive explosives.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, prayed for fucking strength to either gods or demons – really right now he wasn't fucking picky and Merlin had long since stopped listening - then made a mental note to get Lupin a rather large bottle of scotch for his wedding. He was going to need it.

Hermione made another whimpering sound.

With an irritated wave of his wand Harry summoned the sinking set of binoculars. They launched up out of the water, zooming up between Tonks and the merman – narrowly stopping her from committing pre-nuptial inter-species fidelity – and slammed wetly into his hand.

Then Harry shoved them up against his eyes, finally giving into the urge for pain and watched.

He'd meant to look for any sign of Dumbledore. The last anyone had seen of the Headmaster had been underwater, when the cryptic bastard unleashed a burst of submerged flame that had effectively blasted ninety five percent of the inferi away and into international waters. No one had seen him after that. They'd assumed the worst.

Funny thing about that, but Harry didn't. Harry was pretty damn certain Dumbledore wasn't dead. He was fairly damn certain the others had missed something. And he was fairly damn certain that blasted excuse of an airborne, incendiary familiar had something to do with it.

Not that Harry'd been conscious at the time to prove any of it.

So Harry tried to look at the ocean, while everyone else was distracted. He couldn't blame them; it was sort of his fault. He'd been the one that had been dying, that they were trying to revive after all.

Problem was the narrow and magnified field of view in the binoculars didn't exactly endear itself to easy focusing, and when the lens finally did he found himself looking straight at the rocky barrier, irises locking onto a head of soaked, deeply golden hair. Kaylens' head was so saturated from her sea-side frolicking with Great Whites that her hair should have looked brown, but it didn't.

No. Instead it was bent over him. His girlfriend was soaked, shivering, clothing clinging to her, and she was bent over his flaccid form.

Seeing himself laying there, pale and dead, his skin puckering up in places as if it'd been burnt and tried to blister, was surreal. It was like looking through an aquarium's glass, seeing something that looked just slightly off, even if you couldn't place what the fuck was off about it.

The crashing waves prevented him from hearing a damn thing, but judging from the shaking of Kaylens' shoulders she was sobbing.

Her hands were clenched in his dark hair, the witch looking as if she were whispering to him while Regulus worked.

Harry felt a squeeze deep in his chest, so deep and tight it made his jaw go numb. He idly wondered if this was what it was like to have a fucking heart attack. Probably.

He felt suddenly sick.

With an abrupt jerk he tore the binoculars away from where Kaylens sat, her legs curled beneath her as she leaned over him, begging him to not leave her. He looked anywhere else, and with a deep breath focused every neuron he could muster on the solitary task of looking for Dumbledore. "Hermione," he said, voice sounding harsh and strained even to his own ears, "look at the water between that middle barrier and the island. See if you see anything Fawkes-like."

Harry said this as if he watched himself die and be resuscitated every day. He didn't. He wasn't about to linger too long on that happy train of thought though, because really, there was something good and wholesome and deliciously fucking unhealthy about repressing shit. Really, if he managed to survive long enough to revisit this event he might as well just get PTSD tattooed across his forehead. They'd be bedfellows as intimately as he and Kaylens fucking were.

Kaylens…

Now that was a whole new fucking topic. Moody had been right. He'd been so right. She was a distraction of astronomical proportions. He'd been separated from her for barely a week and just the thought of her sent parts of him stirring that were wholly fucking inappropriate for the reconnaissance-rescue mission they were currently on.

Besides, Kaylens didn't even remember him. She didn't even know he was missing her right then. No. She was instead risking her damn life, tearing life energy out of her own literal damn heart to shove it into his, all because he'd had to go and play the fucking hero.

A deep, buried part of his mind demanded to know when fuck had become his favorite adjective, adverb, verb and fucking noun, but he ignored it. Fucking subconscious piece of shi-

"Harry."

He jerked his head away from the binoculars, glancing at Hermione. "Yeah?"

She simply pointed. "Your hands…"

He glanced at them, surprised to see that the outer, plastic casing of the binoculars had been crushed beneath them. One particularly pointed piece had impaled his palm, blood trickling freely down and dripping into the cold water below.

He hadn't even heard them crack.

"Way to chum the waters there, Harry."

Harry ignored Tonks pep talk and just gritted his teeth. "Oh. That."

Hermione opened her mouth, as if to say something, only to close it, apparently thinking better of whatever it was. She settled on gnawing on her lip worriedly, bewilderment and concern mingling in her brown eyes.

Harry steadfastly ignored this and brought the binoculars back up to continue his search. "Forget how to blink, Hermione? Or you just mentally planning my wizengamut-ordered-Llewlyn-ward-therapy application?"

Hermione let out a breath. "I just-"

"Save it," he cut her off, a bit more cruelly than intended. "You try watching Ron sob over your dead body and then we'll talk about mental trauma. Till then, leave it."

And to his surprise she did.

Neither of them ever did wind up seeing any sign of Dumbledore or Fawkes. Granted, Harry wasn't sure what he'd even expected. A burst of flames? A goose-sized bird to bob up out of the sea and paddle for shore? A floating old man carcass? A dancing rubber duck? Hell if he knew.

What he did know was that the group on the rocky outcropping was moving. Apparently he had deigned to rejoin the ranks of the living – or if not living at least those in possession of a pulse – and they were getting ready to leave.

If what he'd been told was accurate, Professor Gai was about to try to apparate away. He was about to splinch himself, severely. He was about to sacrifice himself so the rest of them could get away. He was about to die.

This time the resounding pop of apparition gone wrong he actually heard, followed by his DADA Professor's pained screams.

"Tonks," Harry half barked down at her, "stop cheating on Remus and get ready."

He heard her take out her wand, muttering the portkey charm at something he didn't quite see, muttering beneath her breath, "Appreciate another man's aesthetics just once-"

"Thrice."

She shot him a questioning look.

"Well," he pointed out, "you were the one who threatened to snog me."

"Oi!" she protested, splashing water up at him and missing. "That was for your own good! Helped you fix your hair didn't I?"

Hermione stared at them both as if they'd just lost their minds.

"Grappling practice," he supplied. "She threatened to snog me to coerce me into changing my appearance." He intentionally failed to provide details, knowing it would drive Hermione crazy to not know something. "Besides Tonks, you're forgetting Snape and your-"

A stinging hex caught him in the shin, Harry wincing. "That was a false memory, Harry. And you were the one who put it there."

Still rubbing his leg Harry plastered a smirk on his face. "True, but seem to recall I left it at snogging. It was your dirty mind that filled in the cruder details."

Tonks made a flabbergasted sound, nearly dropping her wand in the water. While she was fumbling for it a particularly large wave smashed into her, dunking her under. Harry patiently waited until her head re-emerged, blue-green hair plastered to her face, before continuing. "By my count, that's three times. So pry yourself the hell away from your finned eye candy of the week and pay attention." Eye candy meaning the merman, whose name was currently evading him given he sure as hell hadn't been able to pronounce it.

Foreign species languages were really more of Dumbledore's thing.

Tonks responded far too casually for one recently accused of adultery. "You know I'm only down here swimming because you pushed me off my broom. Violent, you are."

He snorted. "You're the one into mixed-species-bags." Lupin was bound to count as partially human, right? Lupin, the merman, himself and whatever-the-fuck-Fawkes-the-meddling-phoenix had done to him, and Snape. Granted, he wasn't entirely sure what species Snape was, but it sure as fuck wasn't huma-

"Guys," Hermione snapped, her tone of voice suggesting she'd been trying to get their attention for awhile. "I think Professor Gai is about to-"

And just like that both Harry and Tonks dropped the levity and jerked their attentions back to the island of fucking wonders.

Hermione was right. He could see his own limp body being levitated by Black. Dean was flat out carrying Kaylens and keeping her just a bit too close to his chest; Harry added that to the list of ever growing reasons Dean Thomas had to die. Luna slid up to Ron, grabbing his hand, his best friend's face crinkling as if not sure what to do with her. Tonks stood on the rocks, alone, staring out at the life raft where Moody and Lupin were bound to be floating, but at the time Harry knew Tonks hadn't known who was in it and if her fiancé was alive or not. And the others…

The others all moved as if the weight of what they'd just experienced was perhaps too much.

Professor Gai took matters into his own hands and spun lamely in a circle, his already broken leg making the movement awkward, clunky.

The man disappeared for half a second, only to snap back into existence, that same broken leg literally torn in half. A vertical slit ran from his ankle to his thigh, and even from the distance Harry could see the blood gushing out like a waterfall.

Harry'd been in battles before when time itself seemed to slow down, but this…

This wasn't one of those times.

Even above the roaring sound of the waves Harry heard his screams. Past-Tonks' head jerked towards the lame DADA Professor. Only a second had passed, but thick blood poured down onto the rocks. Neville moved to get to him, only for a wave to splash up underfoot. He slipped in the newly introduced emollient, created by that oh-so-extra-special combination of salt water, human blood and Voldemort's sadism.

And then a gaping whirlpool opened up in front of all of them, and in the howling, roaring wind that erupted outwards in every direction Harry heard it. A single word, whispered hatefully on that evil wind.

Sacrificccccce.

Even from a distance, even with all that he had seen, Harry still shuddered the instant the voice reached him. It was an assault on his ears, rattling him to the bone, and Harry-fucking-Potter shuddered.

In the distance, on that rocky barrier, Professor Tres Gai turned his wand on himself and cast something. There was no hesitation, and though Harry couldn't see it, he doubted the man had even blinked.

Tres threw himself into the swirling whirlpool, his body disappearing into the dark vortex with barely a splash.

For another second the water roiled in an angry, violent circle, then something deep within the black hole flashed.

A geyser of water exploded out, pluming into the air above it.

The whirlpool eddied, then stopped. It was like the sea itself had swallowed it whole.

Something in the air popped.

And then a shockwave burst out in every direction, the dead whirlpool the epicenter. It flashed across the surface of the heaving, turbulent sea at impossible speed. It shot out like ripples from a thrown stone, only as the shockwave burst out the waters it left behind went still.

It slammed into the invisible barrier, and the last wave fell absolutely flat, the whitecap sprinkling harmlessly to the shallow sea's blue-green surface.

Those left behind on the barrier began screaming.

Harry didn't have time to stare. He didn't have time to listen to the agonized shouting of past-Tonks as she tried to go Tres. They were officially on the clock, Hermione hitting start on a stopwatch she'd unearthed from Merlin-knew-where. With a stiff nod at her, the witch really only there for technical spell assistance and to watch the brooms, the Seeker tilted himself off his still levitating broom and toppled off it. He crashed into the sea alongside Tonks and Merman English Speaker Number One, the gillyweed he'd unearthed from his pocket already shoved in his mouth and chewed.

The gills sprouted seconds later, webbing budding between his fingers and toes, yet another reason none of them had worn shoes. Harry hovered beneath the water for an awkward moment, spotting Tonks not a meter away. The now-gilled-Auror's blue green hair fanned eerily out around her head, her heart shaped face looked strangely alien with slits. She resembled the love-child she and the merman were bound to have if they ever did get around to that adultering and breeding bit.

He mentally upgraded Lupin's wedding gift from liquor to a shotgun. He'd need it to blow the merman's bits off.

Harry was spared from further traumatizing himself with thoughts of that by a solid hand that grabbed and jerked himwith all the subtlety of a bull shark claiming a meal. He shouted and bubbles went gurgling up behind him, Harry pulled through the blue waters by two of the mermen, exactly as they had planned. Harry dubbed them Pseudo-Dolphin-Express One and Two, it accurate as they burst past where the invisible barrier had just been.

The curse on the island might be gone, but the moment they entered the previously violent waters the temperature dropped. As did visibility. Everything went dark. The clear, blue ocean waters were replaced with turbid ones. Even though the ocean surface was now still, the violently roaring waves and whirlpool had sucked sand and dirt up from the ocean floor, and it had spread evenly out, impeding visibility. It was like a brown filter had been shoved up against his eyes, the sunlight unable to penetrate. It wouldn't clear for hours, and they didn't have hours.

But that's what the merpeople were for.

His mermen guides were unaffected, having evolved to handle this sort of thing. Dead-coral and floating carcasses of fish whizzed past in a bubbling, fizzing blur, all courtesy of Dumbledore's underwater fire spell.

Above the water the others would be apparating to Remus and Moody, then portkeying back to Hogwarts to work on he and Kaylens. From what Tonks had relayed, the team had evacuated in less than two minutes.

So they only had to stay hidden for two minutes.

It might be two minutes too long for Tres.

A floating piece of flotsam erupted out of the water barely a meter in front of the trio, the decayed wood evidence of the ship that had nearly killed him months earlier. The mermen tried to dodge around it, mostly succeeding. You know, if success was counted as them avoiding it and only their human cargo's shoulder getting impaled.

It slammed into him like a splinter sent straight from hell by Salazar Slytherin himself, just after learning that Harry'd killed his favorite pet basilisk. And no that was not a euphemism.

Harry screamed, gurgling loudly, a new color erupting in the brown waters in a trail behind him. The pressure of the mermen on his right only increased, as if the sadistic bastard was concerned Harry would wrench his injured arm away in pain. Harry didn't. He did idly realize that this water was full of decayed carcass meat, and given that he was being propelled through it with force that he might as well be injecting tainted water directly into his wound with a pressurized syringe. He couldn't wait to ask Madame Pomfrey about that infection.

Ultimately he was in too much fucking pain to care.

The red trail behind them grew, and the mermen adapted to hide it from anyone lingering topside. Gills or not the water pressure physically hurt his eyes – humans weren't exactly evolved for swimming at top speeds despite Luna's ramblings about the real course of human evolution – and it got worse as both merman simultaneously threw their tails up and plunged deeper, dragging Harry with them like a dead fish strung out between them.

The water pressure built in his ears, something popping repeatedly. He didn't know if it were blood vessels in his damn brain or his rotator cuff, but something was broke. It was like the first triwizard task all over again. On steroids.

And then suddenly it all stopped.

The hands released him, and the mermen were gone.

Harry blinked, floating in the brown waters. His arm and shoulder screamed. Black spots began to dot his vision, and the dirty brown water floating around him began to blur with red. He realized that the plume of red was coming from him.

A fish skeleton, charred and black, floated past. The natation made it look as if it were still alive, actually swimming rather than bobbing in some unseen current.

Harry felt it a second later. There was a split second where he felt the ocean shift behind him, as if something large had disturbed it. A fleeing image of a Great White with its flesh peeled back from its jaw, revealing its multiple rows of horrifyingly intact teeth flashed through his mind.

The water burst around him in a hoard of fizzing bubbles. Through the churning waters scales flashed, and he had a brief, stabbing moment of panic where he questioned whether or not undead sharks had crocodile cousins.

Fortunately, judging from the body the scales dropped unceremoniously, it was just the mermen.

They jetted past, leaving their metamorphmagus passenger behind. Tonks spun in a cloud of water, disappearing amidst the disturbed sand as she slowly came to a halt, and Harry heaved a pained breath of relief.

It was the plan, after all. They'd knownif they were to find and saveTres they'd have to do it fast, and no human, gillyweed or not, could swim fast enough to do it. Based off what Madame Pomfrey had said, they only had minutes to save his brain tissue, otherwise he'd be a brain-dead vegetable with a barely functioning brain stem, just like Kaylens had been. His stomach churned and Harry shoved the memory forcefully back. But Professor Gai…

At Professor Gai's funeral creatures had shown. Centaurs and unicorns from the forest and merpeople from the Black Lake, with McGonagall eulogizing that the DADA Professor had been a great friend to them all.

It'd given Harry the idea that they might be willing to help.

And the merpeople could swim a hell of a lot faster than wizards.

Problem was, even if the mermen did find the Professor immediately, quick enough to revive him, they could hardly apparate. Sure they could portkey, but if they portkeyed onto land then they could die, portkeys didn't exactly work under water particularly well, and creatures weren't exactly inclined to help wizards if there was much of a risk involved for them. The centaurs trying to kill he and Hermione his fifth year had taught him that much.

Fortunately the solution had been simple enough: have the mermen drag he and Tonks near where Tres had gone in, have them search, find, and deliver the professor to them, and then they, as humans would portkey away with his body directly to Hagrid's hut, where Angelina would be waiting.

Madame Pomfrey, he had it on good authority, would be rather busy with keeping his own ass alive.

The merpeople would follow with their own portkeys, ones taking them directly back to the Black Lake. They'd appear over it, and drop right on in. Minimal risk to all parties involved. Minus his mother fucking shoulder, which he was pretty positive Pseudo-Dolphin-Expression Number Two had done out of spite for that first Triwizard task years ago. He had looked familiar…

Shoulder aside, Dumbledore had arranged everything.

Speaking of, his wound choose that exact second to let out a lancing, stabbing scream. Harry was positive his shoulder was the one screaming, not him, because it absolutely could not be himself. He was a battle hardened wizard, and he sure as fuck didn't scream at trivial things like oversized impalings from sadistic splinters.

To further emphasize his point, Harry clutched at his shoulder and nearly bit off his tongue. Had he been on dry land he would have collapsed. As it was he justleaned back in the water and floated.

Tonks took one look at him before the stream of cuss words expelled in a swirl of bubbles, the Auror darting to him, her wand out and sending a wave of steam billowing straight out, cutting through the water in a needle like point that impaled his shoulder exactly where the decaying wood had.

Briefly he wondered how pissed Lupin would be if he punched her just a little.

The soldering spell seared his flesh messily, Harry screaming as his flesh bubbled around it. Blood stopped pluming, a piece of blackened flesh peeling right off his body to float in front of his face, but the cauterization was effective.

Tonks jerked back and stared, wide-eyed, before smacking his one remaining good arm. Then she began making angry hand gestures as if it were his fault he had been turned into a human pincushion. She was appeared to be swearing at him, but her words came out botched and gurgled.

Harry watched a piece of his shirt float by and responded with a loud groan, air bubbling up. He'd just managed to fumble for his wand when the water around them burst in an explosion of dispelled sand and dirt and bubbles.

And just like that, floating there before them with his own stream of blood pouring out of his leg and side, was Professor Gai.

Dead.

Tonks looked as startled as he felt at how quickly the merpeople had found him. If Harry were being honest, when he'd come up with this half-cocked plan he hadn't been entirely certain Tres could be found. For all he'd known that whirlpool could have launched the professor through a wormhole into another fucking dimension. Or Rotherham. He wasn't sure which would be worse.

Tonks jerked a hand out and forcibly linked elbows with him, Harry absolutely not screaming as she tugged at his injured shoulder again. A second later she'd grabbed onto Tres, and in an impulse a rubber duck was in her hand.

Harry had half a second to think on how strange a rubber duck looked immersed this deep below the water, before there was a violent pull right behind his navel.

It was like being sucked through a tight space with a vacuum roaring in your ears.

And then Harry Potter, Tonks, and one dead body were thrown down across Hagrid's cottage floor. Harry's breath was knocked out of him with a harsh oomph, the wizard coughing hard enough to disrupt lung tissue. "Harry!" The familiar voice was unusually shrill, and he recognized it immediately.

Unsurprisingly something clattered to the ground – his, Tonks and Hermione's broomsticks – and Hermione's warm hands grabbed at him, helping him sit up. Harry weakly groaned, the muscles along his entire right side now twitching in pain and rendering that arm and frankly him rather useless for the moment. His best friend was alongside him, grabbing at his shirt and shamelessly tearing it to get at his shoulder and chest, any lingering awkwardness between them clearly gone when shit hit the fan. Had circumstances been different he might have laughed.

But they weren't. So he didn't.

Instead he made a crass damn comment about S&M that was bound to get him slapped soon as he'd stopped bleeding out all over the floor.

Hermione gave an unamused tut and gave his shirt another hard tug, jerking him roughly and finally succeeding in getting it off him. "Fuck 'Mione," he croaked, more out of pain than anything, "let me guess," wincing, "you've got a closet full of leather studded nightwear to?" Hissing a breath and trying to smack at her hand to get her to stop, his best friend dissuaded him with the use of a light stinging hex. He grunted, groaning, "Ought to warn Ron…"

This time the stinging hex she used on him wasn't so light.

Harry wisely shut up and dug his fingers into the floor. He'd apologize to Hagrid for the nail marks later. He purposely didn't look at his shoulder directly. If the concentrated look on Hermione's face or the way Tonks had sprung into action had been any testament, it was bad. So Harry concentrated on Hermione. Her hair was poofed out to comical proportions, making her look like a mad scientist. Floating above the ocean overnight could apparently do that to a witch.

She darted to her bag and got out a vial of what looked and smelled suspiciously like battery acid, despite the label antiseptic. She dumped some out and into her hand, her brown eyes darting up and eyeing him seriously. "This might hurt."

He snorted. "So now you apologize for being roug-"

Any sympathy she might have had vanished, his best friend slamming her hand over the front of his wound and smearing on the creamy concoction. The burning was instantaneous.

That scream couldn't possibly be coming from him.

When his vision returned and he got done blacking out for the second time that day, he found himself flat on the floor again. His chest appeared to be moving heavy and hard, as if he'd just outrun a pack of angry centaurs, and he vaguely heard Hermione far too politely requesting, "Fawkes, I disinfected it. Could you perhaps…?"

His groan was immediate. "Tell that arrogant chicken to keep his claws to himself," he muttered.

His familiar rewarded him by 'accidentally' knocking him upside the head with a talon, Hermione crying out, "FAWKES!", whilst Harry got well acquainted with black spots.

At least the dripping on his shoulder felt nice. It was wet, pleasantly warm, and he no longer felt like his arm was being torn off.

When things refocused he was no longer in blinding pain, and he finally heard what was going on around him. Urgent sounds, a witch's pleasant, incredibly calming voice giving out quiet instructions while Tonks swore profanities worthy of a sixteenth century sailor or an Amsterdam whore.

Harry shoved himself up, Fawkes perched on his legs and eyeing him with thinly veiled annoyance. Harry reached out a hand and absently scratched his head. "You know I appreciate you," he muttered. Fawkes scoffed skeptically, but Harry's eyes were already focused elsewhere.

They locked onto where Professor Tres Gai lay, sprawled out across Hagrid's shag carpet rug, looking very dead. His skin was disturbingly pale, almost gray-blue in places. The exception was the gaping wound on his leg, which frankly looked like what Buckbeat would have done to Malfoy if only given half a chance.

Harry's stomach lurched at the sight.

Tonks didn't look much better. The metamorphamagus knelt alongside the man they were trying to save, an assortment of vials littering the ground, holding what looked suspiciously like a needle. It struck Harry that she looked upset, her hair no longer blue-green but a deep, mousy brown that hung in tatters around her face. It dripped on the floor steadily, the length changing – shortening and lengthening subtly – as if she had lost control of it.

Angelina looked far better, the ebony skinned witch's hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her dark eyes focused and sharp, magical shackles on her ankles and a wand in her hand. She wore a look of such concentration upon her face that Harry wondered if she even noticed them, let along Hagrid, who had his umbrella's end pointed at her back.

Harry doubted it. She was too busy magically rubbing what looked like a hologram of Tres' heart, the image hovering over his body and connected by a red band of magic that was stretched taut. The heart looked raw and motionless, for all intents and purposes completely dead, nothing more than a chunk of meat that had been torn out of the torso to be poked and prodded in a last minute attempt to snare the snitch for a surprise win.

"Inject him." Angelina sounded composed, Tonks nodding and shoving the needle into his professor's arm, forcing a clear fluid into the vein.

"Get clear."

Tonks jerked away, and Angelina cast a spell at the professor's chest, the entire wizard's body jerking up and off the floor as he was shocked, looking like no more than a marionette doll whose strings were being unartfully pulled by a child.

Angelina's face contorted into something almost hideous. "Damn't." Despite the word she sounded calm as she resumed the strange hand gestures over Tres' chest, and Harry couldn't help but notice that the hologrammed muscle now appeared to be moving, twitching in a chaotic manner.

He realized that this was what it must have been like for Kaylens, when she'd been forced to watch Regulus resuscitate him. Watching, waiting, hoping their efforts could somehow fix him. His hand went unconsciously to his own chest, rubbing it, an ill sensation rising up and threatening to strangle him.

He'd died, and she'd had to watch.

Suddenly Harry felt tired, like sinking into the floor in an exhausted heap.

He didn't even know if Tres would live. Angelina might be there, the witch still a prisoner of the Order, his former teammate having been oddly agreeable when they'd asked her to please help, even if it meant obliviating her after, but would it be enough? Everything they'd just done to try to save Tres and it might not even matter.

He felt nauseous thinking about it.

"A'right there 'arry?"

Harry's eyes jerked towards the rumbling voice, finding Hagrid regarding him with a concerned look. He managed a tight nod. "Yeah, I'm good." His shoulder gave a heavy throb as if to scold him for the partial lie, Fawkes letting out an indignant sniff and sidling up alongside him.

Harry obliged, lifting his arm up to let the feathered thing. Sometimes Fawkes wasn't a total asshole.

Hermione just gnawed on her lip, her hands curled into tight, worried fists as they watched.

Tonks held onto Tres' hand as Angelina worked. "Merlin, he's like a fucking ice cube," she said, turning his hand over and over in her own as if that would somehow warm him.

"That was," Angelina responded, "the whole point of your hypothesis, wasn't it?"

"Not mine," Tonks said. "Hermione's."

Besides him Hermione released a resigned breath, as if she'd lost some of her fight. Harry reached out and took her hand with his free one, squeezing it. Then, without apologizing to anyone, well aware there wasn't anything he could do to help right then, he eased himself back onto the floor, closing his eyes as throbs of ebbing pain washed over him. At this point he couldn't tell if they were physical or not. All he knew was Fleur was gone and Professor Gai probably would be dead soon.

Scratch that. He already was dead.

Harry lay there, everyone eerily silent. Fawkes let out a trill, the sound almost mournful. Hermione's nails dug into his palm, a painful prickling of blood welling up that he ignored; he chalked it up to just another small part of the beating he'd just taken. Angelina muttered the defibrillation charm again, Tonks hissing a profanity that answered whether or not it had actually worked. Hagrid let out an oversized sniff, making sounds Harry recognized as half-giant sobs.

It reminded Harry of his third year, when they'd found him holding back sobs over Buckbeat's looming execution, and he fucking hated that.

Harry couldn't just sit there and listen to that.

"Hagrid," Harry croaked, for lack of anything else to say, "thought you weren't supposed to back for a few more weeks."

Hagrid was family, and family helped each other. Right now helping was distracting, and Hagrid was notoriously bad at dividing his attention. If Harry got him talking, he might think about something, anything else, than the fact that Professor Gai lay dead on his floor.

Harry could practically feel the half-giant's attention turn to him. "Just-just a quick stop 'ere 'arry. Had ter pick up some things…"

Harry made a low sound with his throat, as if to say 'ah, that makes sense.' At least it explained why his past self had thought Hagrid would be gone for a few more weeks.

Alongside him Hermione sucked in a breath, and Harry moved slightly, taking her fingers and forcing them to unclench so he could thread his fingers through hers. Then he patted the back of her hand, before moving back to presumably relax.

It was such a strange, natural movement.

It was almost as if they all weren't sitting around, watching their friend, professor, and fellow Order member's life hang in the balance.

It was surreal.

Hermione hissed in another one of those breaths of hers, the kind that always set he and Ron on edge because when they heard it they just knew they were about to get an earful for not finishing revisions on time or some other trite nonsense.

"Harry…Harry your hand…" She extricated her hand from his, Harry cracking an eye and spying the blood from his palm now on hers. Ah, she must have felt him bleeding.

He played it off. "Oh this?" He squinted at his hand as if he hadn't known. "That's nothing." He didn't tell her that he would have happily let her gouge his whole hand out if it'd have helped. Despite everything Hermione still had a moral compass, so she was affected worse by this shit than he was. She still had a damn soul, and he'd do damn near anything to keep it that way.

Hermione still looked startled, staring at his hand before grabbing it in frustration. He let her. "Harry, why didn't you-"

He scoffed. "Flesh wound, Hermione. Not a big deal."

She gave an upset hiss anyway and cast a healing charm, muttering about stubborn boys, emphasis on the s.

Oh, Harry almost pitied Ron when she got back up to the castle. Not only would she be hyper worried over his own near dead body and Ron's injuries from the island tryst she'd missed out on, but now he'd gone and pissed her off by being stubborn. Ron was sure to take the brunt of that. He'd send a warning note if not for that whole time paradox thing.

Tonks let out a sound.

Sounds were normal, obviously. But having spent three months in total isolation with her and Moody in that damn chamber, Harry had learned that Tonks rarely articulated what she was actually feeling. She made jokes. She squeaked. She hit things. But that whole 'use your words' lesson people were supposed to get taught in freaking primary school was one she'd either missed or flunked out on. Tonks was more inclined to make random sounds reminiscent of animals rather than to vocally express what the fuck she was actually feeling.

And she'd just made one such sound.

Harry recognized it as one of her happy sounds.

He cracked an eye and felt his heart pound just a bit harder in his chest. Hagrid had started blubbering again. Hermione had clamped a hand over her mouth, her whole form beginning to shake, and Tonks looked like Christmas had come early. "That's right you idiotic sod!" she chided the dead man. "Took you long enough. Can't wait to tell your brother on-"

Harry barely heard the rest of it, because he'd just seen Angelina sinking back onto her shackled legs, a tired but relieved look crossing her face.

The hologram heart in front of her was beating, and Harry could hear the distinct sounds of someone breathing strong and steadily.

Harry heaved a breath and closed his eyes again, telling, "Well Hermione, looks like your freeze 'em and revitalize 'em plan actually works." Pausing, he added, "What was that you were injecting in him Tonks? Phoenix tears?" They'd been clear, after all, and his pestering familiar was present…

Tonks snort was response enough.

Now they just had to keep Tres hidden with them for the next three months. Which reminded him…

"Hey Tonks, forgot to mention, I picked up a certain leaf you left behind the other day…" Tonks made a sputtering sound, and Harry cracked an eye, folding one arm smugly behind his head. "Don't worry, you can thank me later. Amato animo animato something…"

Tonks looked delighted, and had started petting Professor Gai's head as if he were some sort of treasured pet.

Hermione's eyes, however, had grown wide as saucers. "It's Amato Animo Animato Animagus!" And Harry you have to say it every day after you start brewing your potion and it has to be correct if it's going to work or all kinds of horrible things can happen! You haven't-"

Harry waited patiently while she finished her rambling tirade, the witch finally figuring out that he was watching her with a smirk.

"Harry this isn't funny! You could really get hurt!"

"Assuming," he agreed, "I did it wrong, and wasn't just saying that to get a rise out of you."

She stared at him as if in shock. Given the emotional ringer she'd been through, what with watching him and Ron nearly get killed, watching Fleur get kidnapped, Tres die and get brought back, and finding this out, she recovered impressively quick.

Her hair, however, practically deflated. Harry idly wondered if there was some type of magical connection there, and if he could ask her about it without getting slapped.

Judging from her next outburst he reckoned not.

"I cannot believe you went ahead and did this without me, Harry! I thought you were going to wait for Ron and I? What if you had gotten hurt? What if it went wrong? What if-"

"Technically," he told, exchanging a look with Tonks, who was grinning so hard it was a marvel her face hadn't fallen apart, "it was Moody's idea. And according to the Ministry's 'fit for duty' psych eval Tonk's nicked he's only minorly unhinged. Does that help any?"

The sound Hermione made was so shrill it hurt his ears for literally the next three months.


ECOTS


Three months later ~ August 1st, 1997

The knife flew past, embedding itself into the throwing board and vibrating with a decisive throng.

It narrowly missed taking off Fred's left ear. He let out a low whistle, glancing cautiously between the throwing board and Kaylens, before hooking a thumb towards the rather impressive collection of sharp objects. "You know you could impale someone with those?"

Kally shot him a withering look. "That's the idea," she snapped, stalking to the board and setting about violently tearing the knives out, one-by-one. She didn't collect them neatly in her hands; nope. Harry's girl just had to be insanely violent, so she instead tossed them over her shoulder, blindly throwing them in the general direction of where she'd just been standing.

They clattered noisily to the ground, some actually skidding across the stone monastery floor.

Fred winced as one landed blade down and actually bounced, flipping clear up onto one of the workbenches, the bubbling potion on top of that bench shaking and sloshing over the cauldron's edges. The fire that had been burning billowed up in a great ball of purple flame, popping, neon blue smoke curling up like a snake.

Kally either didn't notice or didn't care – Fred was banking on the latter – and stalked back over to the collection of knives that now littered the potions' room floor.

Jake Miller walked in, a towel still on his head, the wizard rubbing his hair dry as he stopped to stare at what their obviously insane friend was doing.

Another knife flew past, entirely missing the throwing board and clanging violently against the wall, ricocheting off and nearly embedding itself in first Fred and then Jake's heads. They both avoided this fate by ducking. Quickly. Fred made a mental note to thank Ginny for all the thrown projectiles in their youths later. Apparently it'd honed his reflexes for dealing with upset females.

Jake stood from his crouch, eyeing the towel that now had a suspiciously knife-shaped hole in it. "Take it she hasn't heard from Harry then?"

Another knife whipped past, this one also missing, striking the wall, and nearly bouncing into one of the larger cauldrons. A hasty shielding charm by Fred stopped that, and he shot Jake a look. "Does it look like she has?"

The American winced. "Say Kally," he tried, sounding every bit like he was trying to pacify a child, "how about we put the nice, sharp knives down and take them somewhere else to throw other than by the highly combustible potions? You know…at least until your aim is better."

Now it was Fred's turn to wince, the wizard mouthing 'Oh, Jake. No.'

But Jake didn't see his warning in time, winding up with a nearby book thrown at his nads for his trouble.'

And this time Kally's aim was dead on.

The wizard sunk to the ground, clutching them with a low groan while Kally stalked off, muttering to herself. Fred watched the tapestry flap behind her and grimaced. "Sorry about your hopes and dreams of future offspring there, mate."

The American just clutched onto a workbench and let out another groan. "That is not," he muttered at her retreating back, "a girl you want to keep waiting."

"On account of her violence or her 'je ne sais quoi?'"

Jake let out a third groan and flopped to his side. "Both."

Harry had apparently told Kaylens he was going away somewhere, somewhere dangerous, but that he'd be back on his birthday. The idiot had also apparently promised she'd hear from him through that two-way mirror they'd been talking through all summer.

He was now, officially, a day late, and Kally was worried.

And apparently a worried Kalliandra Kaylens was just a bit more violent than your average rabid manticore.

Valentin had been a special brand of asshole monk and suggested that she might as well take out her frustration in a productive way, be zen, and throw things, like knives. It was a useful skill. A skill, which they all had rapidly learned, that she had none of. Her aim was so bad that Fred was fairly certain a blind and drunk monk could do it better.

From the next room they heard an angry shout, both Fred and Jake wincing.

"For Harry's sake," he muttered, "I really hope he picks up his bloody mirror." In the meantime…

Fred walked over to where the knives remained littered across the floor, picked one up, and spun it in hand. "You know it occurs to me, in the interest of not getting hit by one of these, we might want to learn how to do it first then teach her how to."

From the floor, where Jake had just cast a numbing charm on his family jewels, the American gave a thumb's up.

Fred snorted and tried throwing one of the knives, shouting as his also missed, clanged against the stone, and bounced back, nearly taking out his own head.

Well shit.