Harry sat on one of the cozy armchairs in a common room corner while he waited from the last of the seniors to clear the room, and for Fred and George Weasley to sneak down from, presumably, their own dormitory.

It was an easy wait, staring into the fire and only looking up as dark shadows passed before or behind him: sixth and seventh years, mainly, on the way to bed.

The room darkened. Every now and then a lamp in a corner flickered and blew out, as either students did so themselves or the castle gave notice that it was time to empty the common room. The fire burned lower. Voices halted, paused, conversations went silent. Mouths yawned. Shadows grew, and all the while Harry sat there in the dark and looked at the flames and breathed quietly.

It was nice to be in no rush at all.

Things got a little awkward around about 11, as two unfortunate seniors – sixth or seventh years, Harry didn't want to know – quickly fell under the impression that they were alone in the common room and removed rather more of their clothing that Harry had ever had any interest in seeing.

He froze, horrified. The noises kept on.

A crescendoing series of muffled groans and gasping pants had Harry feeling overheated and blushing hot red all the way up to his ears until things appeared to climax with a pair of shuddering sighs and intimate giggles.

Time passed far too slowly.

Where were the twins when you needed them? A dragon-shaped firework would go a long way right now, Harry hoped desperately.

Awkward beyond belief, Harry stared fixedly the crackling fireplace as fabric rustled and voices whispered. He didn't even dare rearrange himself on armchair he was sitting on in case he accidentally looked too far right and saw things that could never be unseen. Instead, he forced himself to sit still and frozen until the floorboards creaked and he was finally left alone in the room around twenty past eleven.

He could exhale. Muscles softened, and he flapped his hands hoping to cool his face rapidly, the better to destroy all evidence that any such moment had existed.

How odd, Harry thought, finally having the room to himself. He'd never really paid much attention to the bedtimes or schedules of the other students in his House, but Fred and George obviously had, considering that they knew exactly when to meet in the common room to avoid being seen.

According to the clock over the main fireplace, Fred and George Weasley snuck down the dorm staircase and into the common room at precisely twenty-nine past eleven.

They did not have Harry's convenient Invisibility Cloak, and were clearly not trying to hide their presence too much, considering the whispering and footsteps that travelled easily to Harry's ears.

"Is he here already, George?" a disembodied voice whispered, its silhouette mostly hidden by the blurred lines of the Disillusionment Charm.

"Not sure yet. Anybody else down here?"

"Gimme a mo."

Harry sat quietly, watching to twins step a little closer to his corner before he broke his silence. He was growing a vicious headache, the bloody colours in his vision were almost impossible to ignore know that he was at – inside – Hogwarts herself, and it was taking incredible mental control to blink them away. There was a little twist in his mind that could keep the swirl of colours dim enough to see through, costing only half his focus and that burgeoning headache that would get old too fast.

Well. See through was perhaps not quite the right phrase, but Harry could still hear Mr Weasley's warning from the very first time he learnt the Occuluseo spell – "medi-witches can't do much for blindness caused by magic itself". He tried to keep the magic colours faded. Dim enough to simply add to the images he would see with normal eyesight, rather than blossom out into the brilliant array of colours and patterns that would burn if he let his concentration go for a moment.

He had the horrible feeling that he was slowly developing mage sight – inside Hogwarts Castle, the most magical building in Britain – and the only blessing he could find was that it was currently growing slowly.

As such, even as dim as his tentatively-identified-mage-sight would go right now, Harry found it very easy to see Fred and George sneak over towards him under the cover of a charm.

They checked couches and armchairs as they went. Lee Jordan, somewhat to Harry's surprise, was with them, equally Disillusioned.

"Just old Poindexter asleep in his usual spot," George finally whispered over to his companions. "He's out like a light and will probably sleep until three again. You know the drill."

Harry hadn't seen the older boy curled up on an armchair well away from his spot, but he didn't suppose that it had mattered this time. The bloke had most definitely been asleep well before the couple had started having their moment, otherwise he surely would have made a desperate break for distance when they started undressing.

He stood up himself and carefully tugged the Cloak hood back of his head. It was only a moment before first George, then Lee and Fred caught sight of his face.

"Cor blimey!" gasped George.

"Great Godric!"

"Merlin's pants!" Lee also exclaimed.

Harry stifled a snort. "Believe it or not, I wasn't trying to surprise you. It's just that there was a couple – if you know who normally gets it on in the common room at night, don't tell me! I most certainly don't want to know! – and by the time I realised what was going on it was too late to make a subtle escape."

All three older boys snorted. "Ah," one of the twins managed, cancelling his Disillusionment charm with a flick of his wand. "They got you too, I see. They got together at the end of last year, and the three of us are really hoping that they don't last much longer. And I say that with all due respect."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'll second that. Merlin, that was awkward."

Chuckles travelled around the room and Harry immediately decided not to talk more on the subject. "So. What's the plan? And I see you brought Lee, not that I have any problem with that, but…were we expecting him? No offense."

"None taken."

George continued talking to Harry while Lee and Fred came up to him and stalked around his disembodied head curiously. "Well, Freddie and I talked about it over the holidays and the general idea is, we're going into business with him as our third, you know. Or fourth, if we count you in. We figured that all four part-owners of our enterprise should have a proper meeting."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? At a midnight meeting over an illegal potion? Without warning me?"

Fred shrugged. "What else would suit us more? But yeah, we kind of got so excited about your investment and our experiments that it just slipped our brains that you and Lee hadn't…done your thing, yet. Besides, if you hadn't realised that we were working with Lee then you didn't deserve to get a warning, we figured."

"It's not like we were hiding it or anything."

"I…fair enough."

"So," Fred stopped prowling and reached out to poke at Harry's body that might still be invisible but was definitely still tangible according to that jab in the ribs. "How are you keeping yourself invisible? Is this some kind of spellwork that you also haven't told us about?"

Harry twitched as Fred got him just between two rib bones. "Oi! Nah, this is actually an heirloom of my dad. One of the only things I got from him, actually. If you were a bit smaller, I could try and fit us all underneath the Invisibility Cloak, but a fourth-year and three sixth-years is a bit much, I think."

Lee gave a low whistle that sounded rather eerie in the mostly-dark and empty common room.

"For real?! Those things are rare, Potter! I've never even seen one before!"

Harry flapped invisible arms and the boys felt the air whoosh around their ankles.

Harry grinned at the assorted ooohs and aaahhs.

"We may have to schedule another productive exchange," one of the twins grinned. "But for now, let us head off to our more secure location and speak there."

It was positively nostalgic to be creeping through Hogwarts corridors at night with friends.

After a brief fuss of, "But we're all invisible, so how will we all know how to follow the others?" "At least I'm not deaf yet!" and finally, "Look, I'm the most invisible so how about you lead the way," Harry and his companions clambered out of the Fat Lady's portrait hole and pattered down the cold, stone corridors towards the Astronomy Tower.

The sensation was odd, innocent and enjoyable without the ever-frequent worry of impending societal doom, even as Fred led the way boldly, and George and Lee hushed each other with frequent hisses every time they turned a corner and Mrs Norris failed to appear.

The four pairs of footsteps were relatively silent as they crept along the dark corridors, all the wall sconces extinguished for the night.

Even as their robes whispered as they walked, so too did the portraits on the wall. Painted knights snored, ladies' fabrics rustled as they tossed and muttered in their sleep.

The occasional painting was empty and bereft of portraiture: some figures had obviously wandered off to visit friends or enemies, and their landscapes remained still and silent in the dark night.

The only light that illuminated the long stone corridors crept in through narrow windows, moonshine palely caressing the floor.

Heavy wooden doors stood closed and compelling even as Harry and his friends pattered passed.

"Don't know if you know about this one," George muttered as Fred stepped straight into a solid wall on the seventh floor. "It's only pretending to be a wall. We found it in our fourth year."

Harry did, in fact, know about this particular shortcut that took them from the seventh floor West Wing and down to the fifth floor, somehow only needing twelve stairs. He'd added it to his Marauder's Map, mark II, some months ago with Luna.

He made no comment.

They popped out the other end, emerging from behind the sleeping form of Timothy the Timid, and hastened towards the Grand Staircase landing.

Here, the paintings along the wall were much grander – larger frames decorated the higher walls, embossed with gold and curlicues and all kinds of ostentatious decoration.

The sleeping figures were grander too; they wore silks and velvets instead of cotton and linen, and were draped elegantly in bejewelled rings and necklaces that somehow seemed to catch the light even though they were simply oil on canvas or wood.

Beneath each portrait were tiny labels in gold or copper or bronze: Lady Demelza Dagwood was an elderly witch with a wide satin skirt covered in embroidered roses and vines. Sir Cyril Stenius slept upright and astride on a marble tiger, his admiral's costume flapping softly as the enchanted statue paced and paced in circles never minding his presence. Wycliff the Weird was snoozing over his six-foot lyre, the two pigs and three squirrels at his feet wriggling while they, too, slept.

But the Gryffindors paced past them quickly, until the lords and ladies became royalty, and the wands became staffs of old, and muggle court dress of over three hundred years passed by Harry's eyes and then seemed to stop advancing as, presumably, the wizarding world split from the muggles and the descendants of kings and queens once more diminished into scholars and inventors and crafters of renown.

By the time Harry followed Fred, George and Lee into the Astronomy Tower stairwell, the castle walls were mostly blank stone again, intermittently decorated only by stern columns or wall sconces or the occasional small landscape.

The climbing of the tower went much quicker when entered from the fifth floor, so it wasn't long until the foursome passed the winter observatory – where the ceiling, charmed like that of the Great Hall, allowed for night sky viewing even in storms and snow – and they continued up the stairs until they exited half a floor before the tower tip, where summer Astronomy lessons were held on the flat stone root surrounded by battlements.

Harry vividly remembered watching Umbridge attack Hagrid and McGonagall from his Astronomy exam at that very site – one of the more memorable of occasions – but today he was far more interested in the little sideways protrusion that grew out of the tall tower like a mushroom.

Hogwarts architecture positively celebrated these mushroom-like little tower rooms, or bartizans, as Fred of all people had informed Harry. But this one was rather special.

It sat over eleven floors up in the air, above every part of Hogwarts castle except the summer Astronomy space: the top battlements, and as such had always been relatively safe from attacking forces and therefore defensive architecture.

It was mostly roofed, as in: the solid limestone went up to the ceiling and heavy hardwood beams supported a dark wood rooftop. But where other rooms in Hogwarts castle had arrow slits or retrofitted renaissance-style lattice windows and huge baroque bay ones and arches in the Romanesque style, this small space had stone columns supporting the ceiling and nothing else. There was no glass in place, leaving this tiny six-foot room open to the elements. It was thus – and this was the reason that they had chosen this room for their purposes – available for lightning reception over the summer holidays.

"Aren't we going to the top?" Le asked, not realising that his destination had been hidden behind a Fidelius. "What are we here for?" The boy paused on the narrow landing while George stripped off his Disillusionment charm and strode into the tiny balcony-like space alone. Harry took off the hood of his Cloak too.

From where he stood, he could see the tiny golden cauldron that George stepped around, but Lee gave a tiny little gasp when George promptly disappeared from sight from his perspective.

"Ah."

"Right."

"About that, River o' mine." Fred also popped back into sight with a flick of his wand. "The consummate question. Our lad Harry's put something verrry special under a Fidelius for us. You weren't around to be in on the Secret. I—" Fred coughed, then paused and coughed some more. Under Harry's concerned sight and Lee's disbelieving one, he rasped and rasped, bent over, until finally he caught his breath and huffed, "—I don't seem to be able to say any more about it."

"You're joking."

Fred grinned palely, his freckles in stare relief even in the gloom of the night, and raised his right hand to rub his throat cautiously. "I don't want to push too far, actually. That hurt, damn you Potter. But...er…on this rarest of occasions I am giving you the honest truth. Blame the kid."

Lee stood in the doorway, gazing between Fred and Harry, while George seemed busy with his wand just outside.

"A Fidelius. For reals?"

Shuffling where he stood, Harry found himself scratching the back of his neck. "Er, well…yes, actually. I can't tell you more about it. But, ah, it's something I managed last year while I was overworking myself – you might remember."

Lee narrowed his eyes. "Indeed. Well, how does this work? What's the first step?"

To the surprise of both Lee and Harry, Fred's face settled into something a little more serious than usual and he held up one finger. "Actually, Georgie and I need a three-minute conversation with young Harrikins here in private, if you don't mind. He's setting up the privacy spells now…Harry, if you'd give us a minute?"

Lee's eyes darted between them again, the whites of his eyes bright against his face. "I…alright then. Have at it."

"Er, should I…?"

"Not yet, Harrikins. Give us a mo." Then Fred beckoned Harry across the doorway and into the little bartisan. "Harry, Harry…you don't mind, do you?"

He followed obediently, but did remember to leave a parting shot of: "Oh, Lee. Close your eyes and try to count to, I dunno, seven hundred and thirty-six, won't you? There's a chance you might forget about us and head back to the common room if we're in here too long."

Lee's eyes flashed pale as they caught the moonlight suddenly. "Oooh. Righto then. I'll, uh, just start that now then, shall I?"

Once inside the little room, Harry heard George's voice as well. "Come on in, kiddo. This won't take long."

Harry swallowed, his reservations from the train ride once more rising in his mind. "Hey…guys. What's this about? It's not fair to Lee to just leave him hanging, don't you think? Uh…"

"All good, Harry," George smiled, but there was a little shadow on his forehead where his eyebrows were creased, and Harry wasn't reassured.

"Look…You said you'd keep this quick right? Guys?"

Very carefully, Fred stepped over to George, on the other side of the balcony – in the windiest bit – and both took a good look at each other and then…switched their wands to their off hands?

"Hey, what's going on?"

Harry watched the red-heads bump shoulders, the weight of the silence bringing a burst of adrenaline to Harry's bloodstream and the tiniest of trembles to his hands. Thank Merlin Crow had brought his wand to him as soon as he made it up to Hogwarts. He felt the reassuring weight of it in his leather arm holster, and found himself finding his balance, keeping his wand arm ready to grab and cast.

The twins blinked. Then, slowly, George sat on the cold, hard stone and leaned back against the wall, moving sluggishly all the while.

"Look. Harry. We don't mean to be nosy or anything. You're like a brother to us now. Great teammate, good friend – you've done some pretty cool things for Ron and Percy, don't you know, so we really don't want to stick our noses in where they doesn't belong."

Fred echoed, "Yeah…you're practically one of us now, you've got our backs against the force of nature that is our mother and when our business plans are revealed you're going to go down in flames with us – just a warning."

"Yeah, that too," George agreed absently. "But look, kid. It's because we're that close to you that Freddie and I have been talking. If you tell us to back off…well, then we'll trust you and back off. That's the least we can do for our benefactor and friend."

"And brother, like we said."

Harry licked his lips and edged a little closer to the door. "O…kay? So. Where's this going?"

"Look." George leant forward, elbows on knees, and paused as Harry's wand arm twitched. "Ah, sorry about that. Sit down, Freddie. I – blimey, it's cold. Look, Harry, we don't have much time. I'm sorry if this is awkward but we figure we need to have this conversation before the potion blows everything else away."

"Uh huh?"

"Are you…okay?"

His mind whirled: war, timelines, secrets, goblets of fire, Dark Lords, Horcruxes, the need to break into Gringotts again all flowed through Harry's mind. But what specifically were the twins asking about? Harry waited for the rest of it but nothing seemed to be coming. "…Yeah?"

"Ah. With your…when you're not at Hogwarts. Fred and I have known you pretty well since your first year, and you've never come back from the school holidays so tanned and relaxed as you did this time."

"You drive yourself weirdly hard for a kid. Very early mornings. Very ambitious for good grades. And you're desperately learning knowledge well above your age grade. For someone who doesn't live with Fred and me, you've managed to find yourself an abnormal amount of knowledge about where you can use magic, and how you can – you know – use wands in the Alley, for example. How much staying at the Leaky Cauldron costs. Some other comments you let drop here and there."

The Dursleys? Harry hadn't thought of them in months! He felt a ringing in his ears and a sudden lack of balance as he figured out what the twins were trying to ask him. He relaxed his wand arm: no need to raise his wand for this conversation, and he brushed his hair off his face in relief at the topic; the twins kept going.

"No normal student even knows muggle repellers and notice-me-nots," the other twin added. "Let alone wandless. Even if it is to open his very exciting birthday presents. You have to be really familiar with spells to manage that, even if it took you three goes. Almost like you use those spells really frequently, we figured. Around muggles, in fact. Like…those you live with. And no one is supposed to be capable of casting the Fidelius at your age – we looked through Ministry archives and asked Percy. It's technically impossible."

"And we can read between the lines in your letters too, kid."

"Oh."

George fiddled with the cuff of one of his sleeves, moonlight casting odd-shaped shadows on his face. "Look. It's going to be really awkward if we're overstepping or anything, but…well, we noticed and wanted to talk to you personally before we made a big fuss or anything. If we're wrong, we're wrong – but you can't pull the wool over our eyes, Potter, because we're not stupid, and we're your friends."

"What's going on with your homelife, kiddo?"

It took more than three minutes to relieve their concern, and Lee was pacing up and down the tiny landing space when George, the Secret Keeper, went back to pick their absent friend up.

When Lee joined then in the room, eyes wide and wondering, Fred was still grilling Harry over his answers.

"A trunk, you say. Under the stairs."

Harry shrugged. "There's tons of space now I've bought the thing – I can show you later if you'd like, I obviously bring it to school with me – and it saved me any confrontation which might have made it all worse."

"And you eat…where?"

Harry shrugged again, genuinely nonplussed. "Where ever I want, really. There's this really nice place at the other end of Hogsmeade – actually, we met at Alfredo's for our first secret meeting, remember? I go there tonnes. Tom at the Leaky knows me and that I want to stay incognito. Florean Fortescue's a really nice guy, and once I found my way to Carkitt Market I've done really well for myself."

"But the trunk?"

"Oh, do stand up," Harry reached over to yank Fred to his feet. "I've found my way to Sirius' old house now, actually, so I only have to live in my tr– ahem, at home with the muggles, two or so weeks a year. All the rest of my holidays I'm…hidden somewhere private, which I'm afraid I can't reveal."

Fred allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and brushed his clothes off, but wasn't quite willing to let Harry off yet. "Your godfather doesn't live in England, Harry. He's stuck in Germany until the Minister gets his head extracted from up his arse."

"Well…he does have a house-elf still there," Harry explained, "and between my cat and Crow and him I'm rarely ever alone."

Fred and George shared a long silent look, which Harry wished he could get a read on. Lee, on the other hand, had finished walking around the golden cauldron and was waiting impatiently for the conversation to end. Harry was too.

"Look," George finally said. "We said we'd take your word for it, so if you're all good, we'll leave it at that for now. Just…we retain the right to worry, yeah?"

All of a sudden, Harry felt the remaining small, cold knot of worry in his chest relax with a sudden burst of warmth. What lovely guys; how genuinely sweet of them. If he hadn't travelled back in time, they'd be having a very different conversation right now.

Merlin but he'd protect them properly this time.

The wind swept past his eyes and burned a little, which was no doubt why Harry found himself blinking rapidly and fighting back sniffs.

He felt his throat clog up with emotion, actually, and busied himself flattening out his robes before the main event of the night.

"Well," said George a few minutes later, the solemnity from before morphing into a very different excitement in his face.

All four Gryffindors stood over the small golden cauldron, in the middle of which rested four tiny crystal phials. Like those poached egg cups that the Dursleys used for their breakfasts sometimes, when Dudley wasn't on a diet, Harry's mind absurdly suggested. He twitched the thought away.

Over the cauldron balanced a simple wooden strut with holes perfectly shaped for four skinny little phials, and the deep red potion with each was absurdly still and calm despite the boiling cauldron.

"We're about ready for the final step, boys. Just a check: have you all done all your incantations as the transformation requires?"

Three heads nodded. An assortment of mumbles in agreement.

"Oh good. Me too. And are we sure that the potion is adequately prepared, oh brother-mine?"

Fred grinned, his hands rubbing together nervously as he looked towards the cauldron. "Mmm? Oh yeah…we used the Welsh derivation – it's a funny story actually, Harry. The Welsh are commonly overlooked by English, Irish, Scottish wizards, did you know? I mean, have you ever seen a Welsh student at Hogwarts? There's a bit of a…" he whispered it theatrically, "divide. But…er. Ahem. Yes. We've hit all the checkpoints."

George continued. "Have you got the charm ready, Harry? You're our best spell-caster. Been practising?"

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "Both my house elf and my godfather think I've got the atmospheric effects just right, and you don't really get more reliable feedback than that. Not that they know why I've been practising, of course."

"You've got the cups, Lee?"

The bigger boy leaned over to pull a few things out of a bag at his feet, that Harry hadn't noticed previously.

"One English holly cup, Potter, two Scottish dogwoods for you guys, and an English walnut wood for me. They're all untouched by magic," Lee nodded. "They're a bit rough-hewn, but that's because I got them made by squibs rather than crafts-wizards – to be doubly safe on the 'untouched by magic' thing. I didn't even store them shrunken or anything. They've been silk-wrapped and unused all this time."

The other three boys reached out and collected their tiny, wood-carved cups, making vaguely impressed but indistinct sounds.

"Then, Freddie, are you ready to take down the wards?"

Fred readied his wand. "Any time."

"And you've got your wands," George's voice finally changed. "It's about to turn midnight. Everyone? Raise 'em up."

Four wands slipped out of pockets and a bag and, in Harry's case, his arm holster. Four pairs of eyes looked at each other brightly.

George had pulled a pocket watch from somewhere, and had his eye on it as he spoke. "Alright, Harry, Fred. You need to start casting at around the same time. I'll count down the seconds: forty seconds to midnight…thirty seconds…twenty…."

Anticipating the end of his spellwork, the culmination of his charm, Harry moved.

It had been a while since he'd focussed so much on a spell that used the basics of will, wand and word all together again, but casting with all three was most stable and he really didn't want to screw this up…

– He spared a bare instant to reflect on how these days he seemed to be moving on from silent casting to wandless casting, and wasn't that something to be proud of, second timeline or not? –

But getting the animagus transformation right was important, and so Harry worked hard to sink into the occlumency trance, to feel the magic swelling and rippling outwards and beyond him smooth as silk, and as his concentration moved away from blunting the lights in his vision and towards his spellcasting instead, Harry saw the storm-ward form.

At his nod, Fred dropped the isolation ward – it wasn't really a ward, not by its arithmancy, but the charm worked just as well for this – Harry snapped the new charm up in its place. The air pressure dropped, and Harry's eyesight could somehow pick up the purple swirls and glimmering silver-blue of tiny rainclouds forming and surging and separating.

Mist formed, under the strict control of his tiniest wand twitches, and cool air drifted outward from his charm boundary in a swirl of breezy chill.

Then the tiny clouds under his control reformed and grew larger and darker, and, under Harry's precise control, the tiniest, most infinitesimal lightning sparks formed under his wand-tip.

The spell was originally simple, but casting it this intensely had Harry form beads of sweat of his brow that were whipped away by the Hogwarts air currents.

He found himself biting his lip, sharp enough to taste blood, as he kept the spell going like a thread piercing the eye of a needle. So accurate; so precise.

Then something in his vision or his inner well of magic changed – he couldn't say what – and Harry knew it was the right moment.

Under his magic-seeing-eyes, the potion somehow seemed deeper, like layers of shadows or reflections all the way down. The moonlight caught the surface just right. It was redder than ruby-red, more brilliant than blood-red. It glistened, but its sparkles weren't moonlight but crimson. It was like an extra layer of scent appeared, richer and more compelling than before.

Fred and George and Lee were in the peripheral of Harry's vision as he brought his wand down decisively, dissipating the miniature storm instantaneously and returning the potion to peak potency, as it had been under the original thunderstorm those few weeks ago.

Somehow, he knew it was midnight.

"Now," Harry muttered.

And in order of age, each boy took his own phial of potion, clearly labelled – they wouldn't let any mistakes sneak in now – and poured them into each rough-hewn cup.

"Amato Animo Animato Animagus," taking care to pronounce each syllable exactly as he should, Harry muttered slowly, his wand once more pointing at his heart.

Something seemed to tingle.

Harry drank.

Whatever Fred, George and Lee were doing was completely pushed from his mind.

Previously, he'd wondered what the animagus potion would taste like. He'd had long enough to think about it, as he repeated the incantation over wandpoint on the daily, but it was nothing like what he'd thought.

The potion was bright red, intensely red, even in the dark of the Scottish nighttime, and so Harry had entertained thoughts that it might taste like fire and ash, or blood, or any other number of intense and hot sensations.

It tasted…subtle.

As soon as the liquid spilt on his tongue, Harry swallowed. Getting it down would eliminate the last possibility that something would go wrong, of course.

But the first sensation he noticed was that the potion wasn't hot, despite having sprung just now from a boiling potion.

Nor was it warm. In fact, as Harry felt his lips close around the last dregs of the holly cup, he could call it tepid at best. He couldn't quite put on name on the taste, something wild, something fresh, and Harry found to his astonishment that the potion was all gone, leaving no remnants or lingering tastes in his mouth.

He hurried to sit – they should have been sitting for this from the beginning – and Harry shuffled on the stone to try and get comfy before whatever was going to happen started happening.

He knew what was coming; he'd read about the heartbeat and the heat and pain…

And it came.

Doubling over where he sat, Harry clutched his fists tight to his chest and hoped his wand had fallen somewhere safe. The crushing pressure in his ribcage made it hard to even gasp, and Harry choked with the need to breathe in, breathe out…

Then, like a hammer on a gong, Harry felt the second heartbeat begin.

His eyes closed.

What little breath he had remaining was forced out of him as he collapsed, sprawling on the floor, unable to control his muscles. An arrhythmic beat began deep inside him, pulsing tenuously, getting stronger and faster…

His own heartbeat was thrumming with the adrenaline, throbbing like it was trying to escape a pursuit, but the second heartbeat was catching up, growing louder, stronger, faster...

The pain worsened, Harry felt his face kiss the floor, his glasses popping off as he groaned aloud in agony…

He felt like he was too small for both heartbeats, both lives. Like they would tear him apart any moment, like the space inside him was too small.

He was prey and predator, adrenaline surging, the heartbeats sped up, fluttering in panic and urgency…

His heart was in his throat…

Then the two heartbeats joined. His third rebirth, Harry barely caught the thought as it slid past his mind: first the death curse, then the naming, now this.

Then there was just pain. His muscles screamed. He was being pushed further than he could go. The very last of his self-control snapped – his occlumency failed for the first time in forever – and dazzling light burned white-hot as his muscles gave up under their own onslaught.

His eyes were awash with the brilliant colours of mage sight, chaotically cycling. Intensely bold lights dazzled his mind's eye, in more colours and hues than he could think to name.

Then it went black.