Author's Note:

Before you start reading, I felt like I would be remiss if I did not take a bit of time to thank each and every one of you for your patience in sticking out the recent unexpected hiatus up to this point. I hope you find this chapter and everything that comes after it worth the wait.

Chapter 17: Allies from On High

Brynne braced herself against another involuntary urge to shiver. The space in the room between wall and wall, between floor and ceiling, amplified the whispering crackle of the fire at the hall's end, making it sound closer, larger, and warmer than it truly was. Even here, a few steps away – much too close, her aunt would probably chide her – she was having a hard time feeling its warmth. It reached at her with tentative fingers but did not seem to have the daring to grasp or fully embrace her.

"You'll singe your hair standing that close."

And there it was. Her heart sank. He had really come over all this way.

"You worry too much," she answered, feigning a smile as she whirled around. Her other side needed thawing anyway. "Besides, you should be off that foot."

"I'm off it." Rowan's tone was almost petulant, as if he knew the answer he was giving wouldn't be satisfactory. He was perched precariously between a pair of crutches he didn't seem to have completely figured out yet. As he said, though, his injured ankle, still shod, hovered a couple of inches off the ground as he balanced himself awkwardly on the crutches and his other leg.

Brynne shook her head. "You know that's not what I mean."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked Rowan. "I had to come check on you."

"I wouldn't say that you 'had' to," Brynne replied, a bit defiantly.

"You don't need to be cold about it," Rowan said, averting his eyes and looking genuinely wounded. "What's with the hard-arse act? Listen." He dropped his voice to a near whisper. "You may not know or trust some of these others, but you can trust me. I'm on your side. I told you that back in the summer. Besides…" He paused, as if to follow his silence with something impactful. Still, when it came out, his tone was cautious. "We're as good as family now, so…"

Brynne must have made a face that looked like disapproval, because Rowan immediately followed up with, "Come on, don't look at me like that. You and I both know it's only a matter of time. You yourself said you wouldn't mind once, remember?"

It wasn't that Brynne wasn't happy for her Aunt Flora; she was. Oddly enough, it was right before Rowan and his uncle had dropped out of the sky that she and Aunt Flora had been discussing how sad it was that, among the things she had given up in moving to the Orchard, one was the chance to find love. The men that came through Morgana's Orchard typically stayed a night or a fortnight - maybe a month - and then left. It did tend to be for love if and when they did settle down - but usually that was with one of the ladies in the village that were not already raising children. At first blush, Flynn wasn't much different than those others. As Flora and Brynne got to know him, though, they realized his story was less that of an escaped convict or semi-reformed scoundrel than of a roguish drifter who simply liked his freedom. His brother and parents - Rowan's father and grandparents - had all died years ago. Brynne heard Flora comment once on how sad she thought that was, to which Flynn, with one of the twinkling smiles that had no doubt sent Flora's heart aflutter, simply replied, "Having no one to please isn't the worst thing in the world."

Of course, that wasn't entirely true, Brynne knew - and she had the feeling her aunt knew as well. After all, as soon as word had reached his ears that Rowan's only other family was dead, Flynn had dropped whatever it was he was doing (apparently some business with a vampire he didn't want to get into details about) and made sure to be at King's Cross to take Rowan into his care before the poor boy was shipped off to a Muggle orphanage. The latter may have been a sight more stable, admittedly; that didn't mean that it was healthy. Although Rowan had been brought up by Muggle family, Muggles likely wouldn't have been able to understand him, let alone be able to help him find out more about the Wizarding world that was still so new to him. At worst, he would have been cut off completely, unable to live out his true identity as a wizard. And for what it was worth, Brynne had heard tell of more than one awful story about the things that could happen to a wizard child cut off from his or her own kind.

None of that had happened, though. Flynn had come; and Rowan was much, much better for it. Gone was the shy young boy Brynne had first met not long after the death of his Muggle family. Rowan was impressive in his own way; intelligent, wise beyond his years, with an understanding of the world in which he lived that far outstripped his experience with it. And a constant, unquenchable thirst to learn more. They were not dissimilar in that way. He understood her in a way that only a few others did.

"No one's come for us," Rowan remarked uncertainly. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Depends on which direction you're looking," Brynne replied nearly immediately, glancing over her shoulder at the fireplace again.

Rowan lowered his voice. "Do you think it went through?" he asked, his voice a nervous murmur.

"No way of knowing," Brynne asked. "Not unless he comes."

"Do you think he will?"

Brynne frowned. "Part of me hopes so. Part of me hopes not."

"Hopes not?" asked Rowan, confused. "Why's that?"

Brynne didn't answer him. In fact, she walked by him without a word - partly because she noticed someone else approaching her.

"Did it work?" the other girl asked, a serious grimace behind the half-moon spectacles that annoyed Brynne in a way she couldn't fully explain. She tried to brush her annoyance to the side.

"Did what work?" she asked.

Serra tilted her head in a 'don't-toy-with-me' sort of expression. "I'm not stupid, Brynne. You were trying to get a hold of McGonagall, weren't you?"

"McGonagall?" Brynne replied. "God, no."

Serra wasn't used to being wrong, and Brynne was almost ashamed to admit to herself that she got a bit of enjoyment out of seeing the other girl's expression. "Why not? It's what I would have done."

"You and McGonagall have met before, haven't you?" Brynne replied. "Honestly, I don't think either of us has the pull to call in that sort of favor. And even if I did… it just doesn't sit right with me."

"Doesn't sit right with you?" Serra sounded a little bit irritated at this response, but kept her calm.

"We shouldn't have to rely on anyone else to protect this place for us," Brynne said simply.

"Maybe we won't have to, one day," Serra said. "But for now…"

"What if no one comes next time?" Brynne raised her voice, and it began grabbing the attention of some of the others in the room. The Albertine brothers looked up. "What if no one comes this time?"

"Then we lose," Serra answered, raising her eyebrows in what Brynne thought was a maddeningly casual expression.

"That's it?" Brynne queried. "We lose."

"Listen, I don't care about getting expelled," Serra said, folding her arms. "There, I said it."

"This isn't about getting expelled," Brynne said. "This isn't even about us. This is about what we'd be leaving behind."

"You want to save Hogwarts. I get it," Serra argued. Leaning forward as if Brynne would not get her point otherwise, she questioned, "What if we can't? Even more than that – what if we shouldn't?"

A long silence followed Serra's query. Brynne simply stared at her.

"You're saying you want Hogwarts to be destroyed?" Rowan asked across the room.

"'Want' isn't the right word, maybe," Serra commented. "If something that's stood forever can't be saved, maybe that's because it's time for something else to take its place. Let's think about this for a moment. Why are we all here? Why are we all in this situation?"

Nobody answered – maybe because they couldn't settle on one, and perhaps because they knew Serra was about to try to make a point.

"We're here because," Serra said, "when we were eleven, we sat underneath an old hat in front of a room full of people, and the hat told us and everybody else around us what our dominant character traits were supposed to be and where we belonged in this society. It's been a thousand years and no one's seen the slightest thing wrong with that?"

"Can we get out of here first before we start discussing how to break the entire Sorting system?" Murphy stood and asked, with rather more snark in his tone than was typical. Serra's jaw visibly tightened.

"Of course we can. And maybe, by some miracle, we not only manage to not get expelled, but get rid of the Progenies, Godric's Guard, whoever else needs to go…" Serra answered. "Then what? We wait a few years and do it all over again? Leave it for someone else? Everything… everything… comes back down to that hat."

"So what's your play?" asked Rowan. "Find the Hat and destroy it or something?"

"Hadn't thought of that, but now that you mention it…" Serra cupped her chin.

There was a long silence after this. Most of them very obviously didn't know how to react to Serra's suggestion.

It was Richard Murphy who finally did, shaking his head and saying, "That's mad, Serra."

"Almost as mad as trying to remove a Head of House by force," Serra countered, glancing at Brynne with a knowing lift of her eyebrows.

"Acting Head of House," Brynne said insistently, glancing over her shoulder again for a moment. "Is that why you came to help us?"

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," Serra replied, smoothing down her blonde locks. "More than usual, I mean. So much thinking that it took me almost three years to arrive at what it turns out is a really simple answer. If all the problems Hogwarts has right now are a direct result of tension between the Houses… the tension exists because the Houses exist. And the Houses exist because the Sorting exists. You get rid of the Sorting… that takes care of the other problems. Tell me I'm wrong."

She looked around, as if daring someone to defy her logic.

"It's not bad logic," Murphy admitted. Then, looking away from her, he added, "It almost never is bad logic. But we can't bring that off, and you know it."

"That's the establishment in you talking," Serra replied with a bit of bite. Her body language, though, indicated that something Murphy had just said or done, had touched a nerve. She shook her head and gave Murphy a look that couldn't be mistaken for anything but pity. "That's what bothered me the most, Richard. I really thought you were better than that."

"Better?" Murphy repeated, clearly needled. "I step outside the lines when it's necessary, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be lines at all."

"You're wrong," Serra raised her voice, cutting across the end of Murphy's sentence. "In this case, that's exactly what it means."

"Serra's right," Mark Albertine chimed in. At that moment, it didn't matter that the ceiling to this hall was probably some hundred feet in the air - Murphy's eyes were trying their level best to hit it. "We've got fellow students ready to kill each other and, for what? Some colors on a bloody banner? I'm all for fixing structures that can be fixed, but I don't even know if this can be fixed, let alone whether it should."

"You're all missing the point," Brynne finally said, her voice much calmer than she felt.

"It might be a valid point," Kadric Howell observed. He had been sitting silently next to Lena, who'd had her head down and hadn't said as much as a word.

"Hogwarts is on fire," Brynne said firmly. "We can talk about ways to keep it from happening again after we put this one out."

Serra stared a hole through Brynne for a long time. Then she tore her eyes away from her.

"Well... I hope James succeeds," Serra finally said, glancing at Brynne and then Murphy.

Brynne swallowed hard. Serra hadn't realized the impact of what she had just said. Probably because she hadn't looked in his eyes, touched his hand, felt his intentions in her inmost being, even though he hadn't spoken them aloud…

It was then, oddly, that the animus and jealousy she had felt for Serra for two years and not been quite able to explain, evaporated. I won, she thought to herself, if there was anything to win to begin with.

Any other day, any other moment, the thought would have overjoyed her. Today, though, it failed to provide her even the smallest shred of comfort. After all, given the circumstances, how could it?

She simply looked down at her shoes. She'd been wearing them almost all the time recently - because this castle did not feel like home at the moment.

"I'm not sure I do," she murmured, mostly to herself. Serra heard her, though, and her expression changed.

Neither had any time to dwell on the implications of Brynne's statement, though; there was a quiet whoosh, and Brynne perceived a drastic change in the room's lighting. The color had shifted, from a warm to something cooler, brighter, almost greenish. Serra's eyes widened - she was looking in the direction of the hearth and had already seen something. Brynne turned around.

Visible despite the crackling green flames and the distance, a disembodied head floated in the fireplace.

"I thought I had left clear instructions that I was not to be contacted by anyone less than Headmaster Flitwick himse-"

Brynne kept her distance, let the head turn from side to side and take in the sight of the room.

"What in Merlin's name…" the head whispered.

Then it - he - and the flame itself, disappeared.

Silence.

"God," Rowan uttered. "That was our best -"

"Wait," Brynne interrupted and implored him, staring intently at the now-dead fireplace.

"Brynne," Serra and Murphy approached at either of Brynne's sides. Brynne found indeed that the surge of irritation that coursed through her seemingly whenever Serra spoke, no longer existed. "Was that-"

"Wait," Brynne repeated, still staring at the fireplace and its embers.

Brynne counted slowly in her head to ten… then twenty…

Then thirty…

Then forty.

It took so long that even her confidence began to flag a bit… but it happened: an eruption of emerald flames that turned the whole hall green with their flickering light. The fireplace could barely contain them, and they surely would have burned anyone standing too closely to a crisp - if these green flames were capable of burning anything.

A man strode forth from the hearth, tall and straightbacked, and into the hall. His footfalls were two or three simple taps that echoed in the hall's silence and space, but for all the gravitas with which he walked they might as well have been making the earth tremble. Other than a black cloak doubleted by the Hogwarts emblem, he appeared as normal as normal could be with a black shirt (that admittedly sported some fine golden buttons) and matching black slacks. A beard had come in on his rounded face, which joined with his expression to make him look so intimidating that no one dared approach him. Brynne bit her lip as she watched realization set in on the man's visage. It fell, and he looked around the hall again, his legs and feet with him this time as he did a full turn by steps to take everything in. Everyone could hear his ragged, uneven breaths in the silence. Finally, he spoke, a mixture of agony, nostalgia, and even reverence in his cracked, near-whisper of a sentence:

"I haven't been in here in more than twenty years."

Maybe it was in that moment that Brynne realized what she had just done. And maybe it was because things had been so close to the surface for her for so long. Either way the remark struck her in the chest, closed her throat and teared her eyes instantly. Which was awful timing, as the man was now standing in front of, and looming over, her:

"Brynne Walter."

She couldn't look at him at first - not even when he repeated her name a second time. "Brynne." Then, she felt something - a hand on her shoulder. She went to grasp it, but found that there was nothing there. It was odd… the touch had felt so real, yet so gentle…

Whatever it had been, whomever it had been, whether it had even been real or not, it redoubled her courage - gave her the nerve to look up and into the man's face. And, yes, she shed a tear or two because her eyes at this juncture could not disallow them. In a way, it was cathartic. And, in a way, it bonded them, because she knew that the man that stood before her now had worn that same desperation and fervor.

"I couldn't think of any other way, Professor," she finally said.

Professor was his official Hogwarts title, and the way she had addressed her message. But it was also the role he had put on - and admirably, at that - for peacetime, and not whom she had meant to summon.

Judging by the look in his eyes, it was not who had arrived to aid them, either.

"I know," he said solemnly, his blue eyes showing not anger, but understanding. "This room doesn't open for just anything. Now… tell me what's happened."

Albus

"It's way too quiet out here for a Sunday afternoon," remarked Roxanne as she led Albus and Rose through the halls, which appeared to not only be quiet, but deserted. Albus had been here over two years and couldn't remember ever seeing no one walking the castle in the middle of the day. Other than glimpses of a few distant ghosts (one of which he saw commenting to another about how quiet it was), he hadn't seen a single soul.

"Maybe word's gotten out about the attacks to the other Houses, too?" Albus theorized.

Gryffindor and Slytherin had probably - justifiably - been confined to their common rooms. Yet Albus had seen neither hide nor hair of a Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw for most of the afternoon. It seemed that even the teachers were missing.

"Not even Peeves," Roxanne commented. "It's a little spooky."

"Peeves not being around I'm fine with," Albus replied. Peeves was the school poltergeist - and the way Albus's father had put it, he had a nasty habit of showing up at the most inconvenient times, particularly when students were doing something to which they did not want to draw attention.

Roxanne looked over her shoulder. "You should have stayed back, Al."

"Lily might be in trouble," Albus answered. And that was the sum and total of that conversation. Roxanne hadn't even bothered trying to dissuade Rose from following. Albus couldn't blame her, either. Rose hadn't made a sound since they had left the common room, and she currently had a very frightening stare in her brown eyes.

With his mind and his eyes elsewhere, Albus didn't notice when Roxanne came to a halt in front of him. She didn't raise any sort of protest, though, when he, with a grunt of "oof-", walked directly into her back. Instead, she held her arm out in front of them. Rose noticed as well and stopped, although not without glaring at Roxanne mutinously.

"Hold it," Roxanne whispered. She turned forward again. Roxanne wasn't very tall (which was odd because both her parents and brother were) but she was still taller than Albus, who had to crane his neck around her to see what she was looking at.

Or whom.

There was a girl walking toward them, probably an older student. She was very tall and not skinny (although certainly not fat, either). In any case, she was visibly bigger than any of them, and coming at them quickly - which would have made her quite intimidating if not for the fact that she was rubbing her eyes and appeared to be crying.

"Wren!" a boy's voice shouted. "Wren, hang on a second!"

A tall boy approached out of the distant shadows at a bit of a run. He had Gryffindor accents on his robes and Albus recognized him.

"Wren, wait -"

"Geroff!" the young man had tried to put an arm around Wren's shoulder (which would have looked a bit odd, seeing as he was giving up an inch or two and a couple of stone), but she wrenched herself away from him.

"Pike!" Roxanne exclaimed. Neither of the two other Gryffindor students seemed to have noticed them; both jumped. Pike's wand was out in a flash.

"You're not supposed to be out here," he said, eyeing all of them. He was trying to sound authoritative but Albus could notice the shadow of worry in his eyes - like he had just run into someone that he had not wanted to see. "Wenster said all the Gryffindors had to stay inside their common room."

"So you know where he is?" Roxanne asked. "We need to have a talk with him."

There was a tone in Roxanne's voice that indicated (a bit alarmingly to Albus) that this 'talk' wasn't intended to be a particularly long conversation. Pike had heard it too - he cringed.

"Not you, too…" he groaned. Shaking his head, he swore at a mutter, "Dammit. That's why I tried to tell him…"

"Petrificus Totalus!"

Albus felt his hair ruffle as a blinding jet of light zoomed quickly through his vision like a camera flash. He heard a scream while his eyes were still trying to recover. When they finally did, Wren Audrey was on her back, stiff as a board, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, which had hit and bounced off the ground nastily. Albus's expression falling into one of horror, he gradually looked over his shoulder to find the source of the spell.

Rose Weasley had her wand still outstretched, wires of coily auburn hair falling over her icy gaze.

Pike was supine a few feet away, having dodged the jinx on instinct. With a groaned swear, he jumped to his feet and ran over to check on Wren. He put a hand to her face, then tapped it lightly.

"God," he whispered. Standing, he raised his voice to a shout: "She's out cold - what the hell's wrong with you?!"

"Rose!" Roxanne tried to scold, but Rose was not listening.

Albus barely got between her and Pike as she stretched her wand out past his head and snapped, "You son of a bitch!"

"Rose, stop it," Albus begged her, trying to push her back. He was angry at himself - he should have reacted faster, he thought. Or better yet, he should have dragged her back into the common room and not allowed her to follow Roxanne at all.

"We're going to ask you this once, Isaac," Roxanne said. They were just well enough acquainted to be on a first name basis, as they had a mutual friend in Tommy Jordan and sat together at lunch once upon a time. But Roxanne's tone was grim; she did not sound like she was speaking to an old friend at all. "If you know where Wenster took Hugo, tell us."

Pike grimaced and didn't meet Roxanne's eye. "...No."

"No?" Rose repeated.

"We're not a part of Godric's Guard anymore," Pike announced, in a tone that clearly said he was intending to get to this piece of information had anybody stopped long enough to listen. "That puts Cora in enough danger to begin with-"

"You're an idiot," Rose snarled. "If anything's happened to Hugo, Wenster's going to be the least of Coraline's problems."

Pike's mouth set into a firm line. "Don't you threaten my sister."

"You're standing between me and my brother," Rose countered in an eerily calm voice. "So, it's fair play. An eye for an eye."

Rose elbowed Albus out of the way and stepped in front of him.

"I get that you're upset," Pike replied, trying to defuse her.

"Yet you're not helping," Rose answered.

"I did my bit," Pike bit back.

"Really? And what was that?" Rose queried, snapping each word like a whip.

"I was supposed to be guarding Professor Wenster's office, in case someone came for the students he had taken," Pike explained. "Someone came. I let them go by."

"Oh," Roxanne said. "How nice of you."

"Hold on," Albus caught something in Pike's wording that didn't sit right. "You said… 'students'? More than one? Who else does Wenster have up there?"

Pike looked away for a moment, as if ashamed, and didn't speak. This tested Rose's already frayed patience.

"Stop effing with us and talk," she demanded.

After a few more moments, Pike did talk - but when he did, his voice and eyes were directed right at Albus.

"Your brother was the one Wenster really wanted," he said. "...So he grabbed the only other person that could bring James Potter out of hiding."

James

"Potter."

"Potter."

The voice calling him sounded distant and airy, like an echo without the original sound. It was barely audible, in fact, over the high-pitched ringing assaulting his ears. When he finally managed to open his impossibly heavy eyes, every light was much too bright.

"Potter!"

Slap.

He blacked out again for a split-second - or maybe several minutes. His sense of time was completely off. But the one thing of which he was painfully conscious was a fresh burning sensation on one of his cheeks, to go along with the ringing in his ears and the dull throb in his skull.

His eyes almost focused.

"Potter," the voice repeated. "How many fingers?"

James squinted and tried to count the blurry, shifting digits.

"Five… no, seven… six? Three. It's three."

"Three," the voice's bearer withdrew his hand, walked over to the other side of whatever room they were in, and sat. It must not have been too large a room because he didn't walk far at all. "You know, my dad dabbles in alchemy in his spare time. He's got a lot of spare time. Doesn't need to work - and even if he did, I doubt there's a place in Britain that'd hire him… he says three's the second most magically powerful number behind seven."

James sighed weakly, looking upward. He wasn't in the mood to make small talk with this person. In fact, he would be punching this person in the face repeatedly if he could only lift his arms and get there.

"A triple life debt," the person - a boy or young man by the sound of the voice James could finally hear more clearly - mused. "That's not easily cleared, you know… My dad knows."

"You think he'd be proud of you?" James finally managed to choke out.

"'You'll always be questioned if you appear to do the right thing.' That's what he told me once. 'That's the curse of carrying this name on.'"

"That's your excuse?" James almost had to smile - and might have even tried it if his face didn't currently feel like one massive bruise. He looked up into the light, found it much too bright, and squinted. "You're a real bastard, Malfoy."

"And everyone knows it," Malfoy's voice answered. "Now, get up. We're almost there."

James felt a hand gripping around his bicep, yanking him upward to his feet. His leaden legs managed to halfway cooperate as Malfoy 'helped' him into an unsteady lean against the nearby wall. Malfoy's pale face was stiff, inscrutable. The flickering lights (although James wasn't sure if it was the lights going in and out or his own consciousness at this point) threw into relief a nasty-looking swell of indigo under Malfoy's left eye. Ironically, James didn't remember dealing that out. Maybe he'd gotten it in the fight on the seventh floor and James had just never seen it properly.

His thoughts turned to the Come and Go Room.

I'm sorry, he thought, hoping somehow that thought would reach her. Maybe, he hoped against hope, they could still find a way to stay in touch somehow. Then again, maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe, the sad thought crossed his mind, it was never going to from the beginning…

He felt something jar underneath him, which caused his knees to buckle.

"Do you hate me for going about it like this?" Malfoy asked.

It took a second for the word to reach his lips, but James finally croaked: "Yes."

"Good," Malfoy answered. "Potter. Look me in the eye."

James's head was bowed with pain, but he did.

The other boy swallowed. "This is for my father."

His gray eyes stared at James, into him, almost through him… then they darted away for the slightest moment.

Something clicked into place in James's brain…

"SLIMY GIT!" he snapped. Ignoring his aching body, James lunged forward, his hands scrabbling for Malfoy's throat. Malfoy grabbed at his wrists but James was bigger and stronger, and pinned him to the far wall. Malfoy's face was reddening in the struggle, twisted with effort and fury…

James crumpled almost instantly, pain starting roughly where his legs met and coursing through his limbs. His hands went to the offending area by instinct, and as he slumped to the floor, he could see Malfoy lowering the knee that had struck him.

"NO!" a screech broke the fog of agony. Hearing the voice, James reacted on instinct and started to rise again, but found two wands pointed directly down at his forehead.

"DON'T MOVE!" Malfoy snarled, a hint of desperation in his gray eyes as they trembled and then darted in another direction again. Through his teeth and quieter this time, he repeated, "Don't - bloody - move."

"JAMES!" the screechy, panicked voice yelled again. "JAMES!"

"Shut the...what?" another boy's voice started to snap and then uttered questioningly. "You?!"

"Malfoy?" another voice shouted. "What the hell are you doing there?"

James felt Malfoy's hand on the scruff of his robes. Based on the voices and his current situation, he knew he was hopelessly outnumbered, much less disarmed. He didn't attempt to resist.

With a show of what must have looked like considerable strength to any witnesses, Malfoy yanked James by his robes and pitched. James left the ground for a second, hit it again, and rolled, redoubling his pain on several of the bruises on his body. He failed to hold back a swear as he landed yet again on his shoulder, which had been dodgy for most of this hellish afternoon…

"Wenster's not here." James heard the voice of Eamonn Temple. "Hate to break it to you, but he's the one you're going to have to answer to."

"And he's even less forgiving than we are," Stephan Vaisey's voice joined in.

"You think I need forgiveness from you?" Malfoy asked, and then chuckled. "Wenster and I will talk later, but you… you crossed a line, 'friend'."

"I'm not your 'friend," Vaisey snapped.

"Good," Malfoy replied. "Because you're a shit friend… which I tried to tell Lena about a dozen times."

"What's she got to do with this?" Vaisey asked.

"James!" James heard the voice again, calmer this time. He sat up and looked over his shoulder. From the chair she was tied to, Lily's eyes were staring at him. Even from this distance, something looked… off about them. Something he couldn't put his finger on. Hugo was tied in another chair next to her, silently looking on.

"I'm fine," he managed to choke out, hoping it would assuage her terror. It didn't, of course. In fact, she looked even more terrified.

"'Fine'? You don't have a right to be 'fine.'" James only figured out why Lily looked so terrified when he felt a hand pull him up by the hair. Hilariously, it was at this juncture that he thought he perhaps should have listened to his mother and let her trim it back in the summer. The brief moment of levity passed in brutal fashion, however. He was yanked around right into what he was reasonably sure had been a fist.

On the ground for what felt like the hundredth time, his vision doubled as he heard his sister yell his name again.

"Temple!" James heard Malfoy shout. "Knock it off."

"I thought that's what I was doing." Temple had himself a chortle at James's expense. "The git was smiling, so I knocked it off."

"Funny," Malfoy replied, his voice completely deadpan. "But in all seriousness, they're going to need Potter to talk - which he can't do properly if he has fat lips and no teeth."

"He also can't properly hex anyone if he has fat lips and no teeth," Temple said. "That occur to you?"

"Of course it did, you idiot. That's why I took his wand," Malfoy answered immediately, his voice now impossibly deadpan. James almost had to laugh despite himself; but he knew this would only invite another punch, so he held it in.

James righted himself to a kneel just in time for Temple to crouch right in front of him.

"You're screwed, Potter," he sneered. "Hope you know that. You and your band of nobodies."

Completely unprompted, Malfoy said pointedly, "Give him what he wants, Potter. Trust me, it's better that way."

James looked around Temple's shoulder at Malfoy, whose gray eyes narrowed into a near-squint for only a moment.

James turned his eyes back to Temple, who was now smirking. "Let me guess - 'I'll never tell you anything! I'll die first!'"

James shook his head. "Not first."

"What was that?" Temple asked, turning his ear toward James scornfully.

"Not first," James repeated. "Second, maybe third. But at least second."

Temple scoffed. "I don't think you understand how this works, Potter."

"Sure, I do," James answered. "I refuse to give up my friends, then Wenster puts together his kangaroo court and has me chucked out. I get how this works for me. I don't think you understand how it works for you."

Temple stayed silent.

"I don't need Hogwarts," James said nonchalantly. "Half my family are national heroes. Tutors around Britain will be lining up for the chance to teach a Potter. So I'll have my education all taken care of. You know what else I'll have? Time. Lots and lots and lots of time to figure out new ways to make the lot of you answer for this. You especially."

"You won't be able to touch me here at Hogwarts," Temple replied.

"Don't count on that," replied James. "I've got a big family, a fair number of friends. All of them will be here when I'm gone. And even if they're not…. you're, what, a sixth year? You can't stay here at Hogwarts forever, Temple. You're going to have to graduate and move to the outside world eventually - and this isn't about Godric's Guard or Gryffindor or Slytherin when it comes to you. This isn't even about Hogwarts. You threatened my sister. And even if this entire castle burns to the ground tomorrow, that doesn't go away. Knowing that... knowing I'll be somewhere out there waiting for you, knowing I could be anywhere, from the other side of the Isles to right behind you - that's what you're going to have to live with. For as long as I let you, anyway."

Temple's grip on his wand flagged for a second.

"I'm a wizard," he still chuckled, attempting to feign confidence. "I'll manage."

James clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Yeah, that's exactly why you won't. I've got family in the highest levels of the Ministry. If what you did to Lily, Hugo, and I gets to them, you really think they can't and won't find you? You're not safe at Hogwarts. You're not safe in London. You're not safe anywhere in Britain."

"Trust me, you don't want to keep talking," Malfoy chimed in. "You Potters really are privileged berks, aren't you?"

Temple actually scoffed. "That's rich coming from you, rich boy."

"There's a reason my family has always been well-off," Malfoy said, walking to Temple's side. "We're good businessmen."

"Good businessmen?" Vaisey snarled from some distance away. "That's what you call it?"

"Means different things to different people," Malfoy conceded. "But the way I was taught… you never let something go for less than what it's worth. Or, to put it another way, you never let anyone get away with robbing you."

Malfoy gazed coldly down at James before turning his back.

"You balance debts as soon as you can," he went on, stepping forward. "Collect what's owed to you and pay back who you owe - if you have to owe anyone at all."

"Everyone knows that," Vaisey replied dismissively.

"If you knew that, then why'd you do it?" Malfoy started over toward Vaisey.

"Don't blame me for that," Vaisey said. "She should've stayed out of the way."

"You don't get it, do you?" Malfoy barked. Then, he took a breath, and lowered his voice. James started watching him walk toward him. "No, of course not. Someone like you would never understand."

"What are you trying to say?" Vaisey snarled from across the room.

"I'm saying there's nothing a Malfoy wouldn't do for family," Malfoy answered. He made somewhat of a showy swish of his cloak. "Trust me."

James looked up.

"We may have a reputation for being slimy, underhanded, call it whatever you like… but we will go to any lengths to protect our own. That's the main reason we've survived this long. It's the reason I'm even here."

Scorpius Malfoy once again turned his back on James Potter, pulling his cloak aside a second time and exposing one of the pockets on his slacks. James saw two long, wooden objects hanging from the it, and saw the pale hand visibly brush one of the wooden lengths before switching to grasp the other.

"It's also one of the many things James Potter and I have in common."

James darted forward, pulling one wand from Scorpius's pocket as Scorpius drew the other. He leveled his wand at Stephan Vaisey with no wasted motion, and when the two shouted their incantations, they did so almost as one singular voice: "EVERTE STATUM!"

Vaisey was still drawing when the force of the twin jinxes caught him flush, throwing him backward and into a bookshelf with crushing impact before he slumped against it. One of the shelves gave way on one end, sending large books teetering at a dangerous angle before they finally spilled forth from the bookcase, dropping with heavy thuds around Vaisey's prone body. One especially thick tome came down very close to his head, but he regained his senses at that moment, rolled out of immediate danger, and came up firing wildly: "Diffindo!"

"AARGH!" James felt tremendous pain in his lower leg as a cuff of his trousers was sliced open, taking a chunk of ankle flesh with it. He staggered, trying to put weight on the ankle but now finding himself unable to do so. When he looked up, Scorpius had already Disarmed Vaisey, so James took his opportunity. "BRACHIUM-"

"STOP!"

James and Scorpius whirled around.

Eamonn Temple was breathing heavily, his eyes glittering madly as one of his hands gripped his wand, pointing it at the face of the young girl struggling against his other arm.

James's blood ran cold.

"Stop. You leave him alone," Temple snarled through his teeth.

James shook his head, barely able to control his rage. "Let her go."

"You did this, Potter, not me," Temple said. Then, raising his voice, he shouted, "Vaisey! Get to the lift now!"

James heard the sound of uneven, scrambling footsteps behind him, but ignored it. Lily was still struggling against Temple's grip, but with no wand and at roughly half the sixth year's size, it was fruitless at best. Worse, she was starting to panic, her face contorting as her voice and coherence abandoned her: "Help… help me…"

James twitched.

"Think, Potter," Temple advised him. "Don't be stupid."

"You haven't been listening," James said, watching Temple walk and drag Lily past Temple and Scorpius. "I told you…"

"Then I'm dead already and don't have a goddamn thing to lose, do I?!" Temple snapped. "So you'd best not do anything rash, right?"

But James knew, as he watched Temple turn, then back into the lift with a tearful Lily as a meat shield, he could do nothing to pry her from the Prefect's grasp without putting Lily herself at risk of harm. What was almost harder to watch was Hugo's reaction, struggling against the chair he was tried to, toppling over, crawling on his knees and face, all the while trying to scream for Lily, even though his sealed mouth made such a thing impossible.

James stood still in shocked silence, surveying some of the damage around the room. Meanwhile, Scorpius, who seemed to be the only person with his wits about him, ducked into James's blind spot as he about trying to free Hugo.

"Finite Incantatem," Scorpius's voice whispered, almost as if unsure if it would work.

It definitely did.

"LILY!" Hugo shouted at the top of his lungs once his mouth was free to do so. "LILY!"

"Diffindo," Scorpius went on, untying Hugo from the chair. Then there was a loud thud and a storm of swearing, and it was this that snapped James back to his senses. When he whirled around, Hugo was mounted on Scorpius, throwing furious rights and lefts. Scorpius had been caught by surprise and unable - or perhaps disinclined - to defend himself, eating most to all of the punches. By the time James was able to scramble over (remembering again the awful gash on his ankle) and pull Hugo off Scorpius, the latter's lip and nose were both blossoming blood. Worse still, though, was the look in Scorpius's eyes - a faraway, gray stare. Not a loss of physical consciousness, but rather a loss of something far, far more important. James knew, by that look, that Scorpius would no longer be willing or able to aid him.

James let go of Hugo after shoving him away somewhat, and turned toward the lift, limping in its direction alone. Blood was pounding in his ears and flames were jumping into his throat. Now he knew for sure that the afternoon's business was going to end with him in an Azkaban cell.

And the thing that terrified him, yet spurred him on, was this: he knew that he would never again be able to look at himself in a mirror if it played out any differently.