By the time Harry managed to drag Fred's really heavy weight through apparition and land, thigh-high into three feet of Hogsmeade snow, he was running out of energy.

"Ugh," Harry groaned as he and Fred snapped into being in a dark alley behind Honeyduke's. There was a moderate snow eruption as their legs popped into being where snow had previously existed.

He was already mostly bent double, but the sudden tiny blizzard around him caused Harry to freeze in shock. The snow settled around them in a sullen kind of fashion.

Harry coughed, head weaving a little in the floating powder. "Gonna need t'do better planning if we ever do that again."

"Bollocks to you," his taller friend added, uncurling his cold, wet body from where it was wrapped around Harry's torso. "I'm never doing that again. Any of it."

Harry snorted.

The sound almost covered the odd tinkling noise of water dripping off them, halfway turning to ice when it hit the snowpile in which they stood.

"You dunked us in the North Sea!" Fred continued, shaking his hair off like a dog, wet droplets coming at Harry out of the darkness. "In midwinter!" He paused. "Where are we now, anyway? Can I do magic again?"

"I've never side-alonged anyone all the way from the North Sea before. It was safer than coming in on a broomstick, eighty feet in the air!" Harry also reached up to wipe his dripping forehead then gestured with his chin. "That's the back of Honeyduke's, hence the lights and whatnot. Hang on a mo."

There was a sudden kind of silence while Harry's ears went on strike, and the world spun around him in the soundless void. Muscles taught, Harry reached out to grab Fred's right wrist. "Hang on, I said. We can't get into the passage the usual way."

"Eh?"

"Ah," his hearing came back. "I want to try a thing."

"Eh?"

But with Fred's arm clasped firmly in Harry's own, he tuned the rest of the world out to focus on his eyesight. His twice damned, thrice blessed mage-sight.

Around Harry, aside from snow and darkness and the occasional gas-light casting flickering light and dim shadows, the magic of Hogsmeade was a comforting shine.

Yellow and blue charms on the back door and windows of Honeydukes flickered cheekily in his vision, framing the weaknesses in the wards and hanging like glowing gossamer over the walls and roof.

The only visible lamp, back by the main road, danced merrily in its glass globe and also cast magelight into the surrounding air. Pinks and oranges caught Harry's eye, clinging to the whole post but casting a particularly strong halo around the glass and dancing fire.

Everlasting flame, maybe. Wind protection. Goodness knows what other enchantments were keeping it lit despite the weather of winter highlands.

The shining, multicolour light beads made Harry feel a little like he was standing in a fairytale, but after a moment of disorientation, it was the ground beneath his feet that drew his attention.

Snow and shadows. Lots of piles of pure white snow banks.

Harry blinked, eyes fixed.

The coloured glow of Honeyduke's wards reached down from the walls and into the ground, into its basements, the shelving down there glowing faint bronzes and olive-greens.

He blinked and forced the image into focus. Work dammit.

The distant sound of Fred's voice failed to pierce through Harry's attention as he oriented himself, saw where the secret passage would be…There was the faintest of fading silver light where the entrance to the tunnel was hidden behind boxes…

Destination, determination, deliberation and all.

"One more jump," Harry spoke loudly, and Fred startled, "Wha—?"

Then they were squeezed through a tube, and Harry's stomach rebelled, roiling. He fought the feeling down, as his magic flexed and flinched. Something in his chest clenched uncomfortably.

And they were in pitch black darkness and inside the tunnel that would take them into Hogwarts.

Fred squawked. Harry took three sudden steps to the left.

"Oh, go on with you," Harry sighed. "You should be fine here. We made it."

He let the tension that had been holding him upright relax, and a sudden weight accosted his body. Distant ringing accosted his ears and Harry felt the whole world spin on its axis around him now that failure was practically impossible.

"What was that?" He'd missed Fred's question.

"Made it where, Crowley?"

"This is the. Um. Tunnel. Magic's fine now. Er, can you take over from here, do you think?"

With a short mutter, wandlight blossomed at the end of Fred's wand to reveal two very bedraggled Gryffindors, water positively cascading out of their woollen robes and into a puddle below them. For the first time in hours they could see each other clearly.

Two very pale faces loomed out of the darkness: Fred's freckles were in stark relief against his face; Harry's eyes glowed above deep, dark circles beneath his eyes, although it was hard to tell through his growing shivers.

"Hey. Hey…Harry?"

More pressingly, there was a new and unusual pressure that wasn't in Harry's chest although it felt like it should have been. It was the constriction pressure of the Vow on his magic, and it hadn't settled into him yet. Harry didn't like the sensation.

Fred swore. "Damn it, kiddo. You're not in good shape at all! Come on, lemme at it…" His wandlight faded before he conjured up a small purple flame and shoved it towards Harry's trembling hands. He felt his fingers curl to cup the warmth automatically. "Here. Hold this."

In the now flickering mauve light, Fred snapped his wand off into more familiar movements, and Harry felt his muscles sag now that he could stand there and leave the rest to someone else. Within seconds, he felt his robes lighten as the liquid was siphoned out, and failed miserably to suppress a full-body shiver when the icy drips down his back and neck suddenly reversed course. Then they, too, drained off Harry and pooled, surging, at the end of Fred's wand.

"Evanesco," Frank muttered, vanishing the water, before repeating the spell on himself. Then followed a handful of familiar spells that Harry saw bloom in the flickering darkness and let wash over him much like he'd watched the aurora borealis surge, not so many linear hours ago.

"Exaresco, focillo…er…hang on." He kept on talking, but the words became noise.

Harry let Fred's voice fade away as he stood in the darkness, warm air steaming past his ears, and stared with a fixed gaze at the cheerful, dancing flames in his palms.

In the corner of his eye, Fred muttered to himself for a bit before casting a few more spells at Harry, and more light washed over him: a blushing rose pink, some kind of orange, and a sky-blue light that seemed to cling to parts of Harry's body – a lot of his joints, his eyes, his right hand and wrist where the Vow-bond had burned.

Harry inhaled the stale tunnel air, feeling the cold in his bones deepen and the shivers in his limbs and shoulders grow.

"Hang on a mo," a voice told him and Fred's face was abruptly in front of him, flickering purple in the light.

There was no one place in the body that stored magic, Harry knew, and so it was with strange detachment that he felt his whole body – and not quite his body, either – writhe uncomfortably against new and uncomfortably intrusive limits.

It was hard to focus on everything when he was this tired, and his own magic was tied down. Harry found his mouth drop open to let him breathe in shallow, panting gasps and felt more than saw Fred frown at the sound.

Harry paused and stood there momentarily, letting still air expand his lungs and the coolness run over his tongue.

Then he felt his face cupped in wool, woollen gloves, and his cheeks were patted, softly at first. With growing intensity.

Pat. Pat. Slap.

Cheeks stinging, Harry blinked. Eyes refocused.

Fred was right there. And he was holding Harry's elbow.

"You should have imperviused yourself too, you numbnut," Fred scolded while his wandlight lit the way for the two wizards to sneak back towards Hogwarts. "I think you're going shocky. Again. You're just lucky I'm a bloody Weasley Twin."

"S'why I chose you," Harry mumbled, the ghost of a smile on his lips even as his hands still trembled with remembered cold. He held the purple flame up, so it could warm his chest too. A thought occurred. "One of the reasons."

"Yeah, yeah," Fred pacified him half-heartedly. Then he paused to rearrange himself: left hand on Harry's left elbow this time, his right hand on Harry's back to urge him forward. "If you had thought out your plan so well, you should have imperviused you too, so don't you go bragging to me about your logic."

Harry stumbled a little as the passageway began to angle up.

"Yeah, well. I was running a bit low by that time. Needed to save m'magic to side-along you back. 'Sides, the cold kept me going."

Fred paused, turned to stare at him. Harry ran into his outstretched foot.

"Harry, m'lad. You were that low? You're running on bloody fumes, kid! If your reserves were that far gone–"

"Needed to get us back safe."

Fred tsked. "Why're you pushing yourself so damn hard?!"

He twitched. "Well, as I said before...or maybe we could do this later?"

Fred hrmphed, but started to lead Harry up the passageway again anyway. "Fair enough, but I'm getting it out of you later, or my name's not Forge."

Harry half-snickered. "Your name's not Forge."

Fred cursed. "Force of habit. My point stands."

Harry shivered again glad of the heat of Fred's hand to help warm his body, and Fred started them moving again with a small push.

They walked on, Harry's fond thoughts of bed and sleep keeping his feet moving, even as his mind turned the night's events over and over, hoping he'd done it alright.

The Vow, of course, was what it all came down to.

They'd been unbelievably lucky that neither Bellatrix's neighbours nor Dementor guards had been close enough, or alert enough, to question the events of the night.

Fred had some kind of idea that Harry's Crowley patronus, even hidden as it had been by the Invisibility Cloak, had had just enough presence to deter the guards and relax the prisoners. That was why no hooded figures had climbed those last stairs for forty minutes, and why the bodies of Rodolphus and Rabastan had seemed to relax in their sleep, sleeping without dreams for the first time in probably years.

The effect would have been subconscious and all, but Harry figured it was as good a theory as any as to how the Vow had gone ahead without interruptions despite the lack of Felix Felicis.

The promissory note that Bellatrix had written for him was tucked safely away inside Harry's coin pouch, which was itself secure within his mokeskin.

I, Bellatrix Lestrange née Black, do hereby give the bearer of this letter, one Harry Potter, permission for one and only one visit into the Lestrange Family Vault at Gringotts, vault number 720, no later than the date of the First of January, 1995.

In exchange for the completion of his Vow or his death, whichever comes first, the bearer of this letter may retrieve from the vault for his personal use galleons up to the value of two hundred, or however much he may carry in his bare arms, whichever is the lesser. The bearer retains permission only to touch the gold within the vault, nothing else, and to retrieve from the vault coins only.

The bearer of his letter has agreed to follow these terms on pain of death, and should he break his promise, shall be in prolonged and incapacitating pain until his demise.

In the event of this, leave the body in the vault as a warning to thieves.

Bellatrix Belvina Lestrange

The whole agreement had almost gone off the rails when the dark witch had found out Harry's name, of course.

There had been disbelief. There had been disgust. There had been suspicion.

There had also been insults.

So. Many. Insults.

Harry was almost positive that even Fred Weasley had added some new words to his vocabulary, and at his age and with his abilities, that was rather a surprising thing.

Then – and this was the reason that Harry was starting to wonder about some higher power or Mother Magic or whatever – within a surprisingly short time, mad Bellatrix Lestrange had somehow come to her own conclusions and laughed and laughed and laughed, before agreeing to the Vow.

Harry's hand twitched at the memory.

It had not been pleasant to touch her skin – cold, clammy and sticky with sweat and salt as it had been. It had been even less pleasant to feel her bony fingers clasp tight around his wand and wrist, tugging him off balance just a bit, just to mess with him, her yellow teeth laughing at his discomfort.

Harry felt the lingering pressure of her nails against his pulse, and shivered.

"Steps," Fred's voice said, and they began to climb.

Slow shivers started travelling up Harry's spine again as they climbed, shortly after he'd broken out in a sweat at the exertion.

Fred, having had to slow down to his speed, swore again – he'd been doing that a lot tonight, Harry realised – and cast something on Harry – yellow – that made it easier for him to push Harry up the stairs, almost lifting him at times.

"Come on, Crowley," Fred told him, voice low and calm when Harry failed to register the tugging to his left. "It's a corner. Come on, mate."

Bellatrix had spoken the Vow.

"Do you, Harry Potter, promise to work towards the Dark Lord's return and resurrection, aiming for his total and complete resurrection to the best of your ability?"

"I do," Harry had promised.

To his surprise, the magics that bound him to the Vow were visible even to Fred, as a tongue of red-gold fire had sprung up around their clasped hands and cut into his skin and his magic when it settled.

He had hissed. Bellatrix had, there was no better word for it, crooned. And then she had licked her lips and smiled at him in such a way that he would have recoiled in disgust if they were not literally bound together at the time.

"Come on, mate. Little bit more to go."

"Hm?"

"Just a little bit further, yeah?"

"Hmm."

"Do you agree to work with any and all witches or wizards who are similarly dedicated to this goal, regardless of your personal enmities and feelings?"

Wormtail, Harry had scowled. Then for the second time, he had uttered, "I do," and a second flame of red had spun out from the bonding wand or the wand of the bonder and sank, red-hot and sizzling, into his skin.

"Do you Vow to withhold nothing of yourself, neither blood, nor flesh, nor magic, for the betterment of the Dark Lord's return up to and including its final moments?"

For the third and final time, there was a sizzle as the flame of Vow burned itself into Harry's skin and magic, and he forced out a pained, "I do."

"Done, done, and thrice done!" Bellatrix had cackled, and then she had laughed until her lungs shook with coughs and her shrill giggles became wracked coughs.

"Give me the note," Harry had demanded.

"Come on, Crowley. Pause here, yeah? You can do that for me?"

"Hmm."

There was a wobble. An aching absence of warmth, and then the sound of something graunching and Fred was propelling him forward again.

"Ah yesssss," she had purred. "The 'note.'"

"I Vowed," he had warned.

And then with no reluctance at all, proving that Bellatrix Lestrange merely took every advantage to mess with people, she had thrust the parchment back through the bars, with quill, and waved goodbye like a little girl, and giggled and giggled.

They'd left immediately, the sound echoing behind them as they did so.

"Crowley," Fred's voice came through the haze. "Get me your Invisibility Cloak, alright?"

"Hm?"

"Your Cloak. From your pouch."

"Hmm." Harry fumbled for it obediently and handed it over. The pressure inside him was all off-balance. He probably wasn't supposed to stress himself after a Vow as he had.

"Turn back into Crowley for me, alright?" Fred's voice instructed. "I'll carry you back. It'll be faster if I take the direct route."

Harry paused, thought for a moment before the meaning of the words registered, and then sank into his feathery self with a twisting thought. The magic inside him felt pressure but nothing more. Nothing 'hurt', per se.

Crowley started to tilt left where he stood on the cool stone floor, wings dragging.

Then, so suddenly that Crowley would have croaked a protest if he'd had the energy, invisible hands scooped him up, and with a rhythmic rocking motion, Crowley was carried back to his nest.

Crowley was prodded awake sometime later, by a cruel finger and two huge, sadistic heads.

"Come on, kid," one of the heads said. "Wakey, wakey. We gotta check you out."

More prodding.

"C'mon, Crowley," the other head told him firmly. "Georgie's gonna run some diagnostics."

Crowley scolded them, beak chattering, before trying to tuck his head back beneath his wing.

Poke, poke.

"Wake up kiddo. Switch back, will you?"

"We can't let you sleep till we know you're okay."

"Come on…I'll tell Crookshanks on you."

Crowley jerked awake, feathers puffed out in defence and confused aggression. Slowly, the thought percolated through his mind that he really needed to be Harry.

He sighed.

Feathers fell away, leaving skin and hair behind as his human body unfolded around him. The room was warm now, except for the lingering chill in his bones and his memory of Azkaban and cold wind and winter snow. As such, Harry dozed where he lay, letting spell light after spell light wash over him while Fred and George muttered overhead.

Finally, George patted Harry awake again.

"You're bloody exhausted is what you are, Potter, and you've pushed yourself harder after a Vow than you should have but you'll be alright.

"Mmmm," Harry agreed, nuzzling his head into the bedcovers that appeared to be below him.

"Fred's fine," the voice continued – oh, that was good; something inside Harry relaxed a bit – and Lee's been reading through your copy of the Vow and whatnot. He thinks that it'll do what it needs to, and shouldn't kill you if you're careful."

The wandlight above him was bright enough to hurt Harry's eyes, and with the last reassurance that he needed, his body decided that there was no more reason to stay awake.

"Sleep in my bed tonight," Fred's voice sounded from some distance away. "No need to move. George will wake up at a reasonable time and Turn the two of us back and get you into your own dorm later. You don't need to worry about anything for a couple of days."

"Rest up, buddy," he mostly heard Lee tell him. "You did great today.

"You can relax now. It's all worked out."

It was okay? No Crookshanks?

Muscles softened further as the last, unknown stressors fell away. The bed was soft.

Light faded. The room was warm. The scent of fireworks was familiar, as were the voices up above him. He'd done well. He'd really done well.

Harry slept.