Harriet hauled herself out of the chimney, coughing and trying not to crash back down it head-first and smash her own skull in. A brisk breeze blew over the roof top - a nice change from the scorching heat she certainly hadn't been enjoying on Privet Drive, except for the fact that it made her swallow a new cloud of soot.

When I find out who nabbed me, she thought, I'm going to punch them in the bollocks.

She had to lean against the chimney stack and hack. Wiping at her glasses only made them worse. There wasn't a clean patch on her dress to clean them off.

At least she was out of that room, though. Now she just had to figure out how to get down.

. . . before the person who'd shouted down below found out where she'd gone.

The yell echoed up the chimney; bangs wafted up from the room below. The window rattled open.

"-out of the room? You said you took her wand!" A man's unfamiliar voice, Bristol accent.

"I did fucking take it! It's right here!" Also a bloke: Welsh accent. She didn't recognize him either.

"Well then how the bloody hell did she get out?"

Okay, so Harriet could be fairly sure they were stupid: the covering on the chimney had been-

"Look! The board over the chimney-" said Wales.

"You stupid tit!" said Bristol.

Harriet was at the edge of the roof on the side opposite the window, inching down the tiles to keep from falling off or telling them where she was. Tall hedges boxed in the garden, but beyond it were only overgrown fields; no one nearby to signal. Not could she see a way down on handy drainpipes or climbing ivy. What business did a house left to rack and ruin like this one have not sporting any bloody climbing ivy?

From the room below came thumps and shouts. "She's got to be on the roof, you fucking twat, get up there and grab her!"

So being quiet wasn't very necessary anymore.

She scrambled back to the roof peak and slid down the other side, scraping her sore feet. She jammed her heels into the gutter so as not to go flying off, then straightened and peered over the edge, to the garden below.

Crack!

She yanked a muscle in her neck whirling around: one of the blokes was teetering on the roof peak, trying to get his balance after Apparating up. Seeing her, he straightened, pointing his wand, then slipping as he overbalanced.

"Stop right-ah! Shit!"

It would have to do.

Harriet flipped two fingers at him and jumped.

Her stomach tried to stay on the roof as she plummeted through the air. The reflecting pool was coming up fast and hard.

She shut her eyes and hit it with enough force to punch all the air out of her body.

Winded, she knifed through the algae-clogged water, banging her knees and her foot on the slippery bottom. She clawed to the surface, coughing and sputtering,

"Fuck!" shouted Wales from the roof. "Fink, she's fucking jumped!"

Spitting out brackish water, she hauled herself out of the pool and pelted toward the only gap in the hedge she could see through her filthy glasses. Another crack! behind her meant Fink or Bristol or whoever-the-hell he was had come down to the ground.

She hurtled through the overgrown hedge and plowed straight into a third body.

The third body wasn't sturdy, she found out when she took it straight down with her. Claw-like hands dug into her shoulders, and she flung out her fist to punch whatever she could.

"Potter!" hissed a voice that froze her like an Impedimenta.

Her heart tight with dread, she pushed her filthy fringe out of her eyes and looked over the tops of her glasses.

Snape's gaunt face glared at her from only inches away.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he'd said, without mercy or pity, in the Confessor's Garden, in the dead of winter, only hours after they'd both, separately, gone to face Voldemort and somehow survived it.

She was frozen; she couldn't seem to move. It was like -

It was like when she'd moved toward Dobby's headstone until it had filled her vision, only she hadn't been moving then - like her legs had melded to the frozen earth, and Snape was all she could see - Snape, the planes of his face biting sharp, his voice crushing as he told her:

"He went to Godric's Hollow that night, on Hallowe'en, killed your father at the front door, and then proceeded upstairs and told your mother to step aside. And when she wouldn't - she begged him not to, but you hear that when the Dementors get near you - he killed her and turned his wand on you. You know this part. Because she refused to give you up, she saved your life. But for her, you'd be as dead as either of your parents - because of what I told him."

Snape pushed at her shoulder. His hand was like ice but it scalded.

She scrambled up, only to swear and tumble back down when her ankle folded in protest. She scraped her knee again, dammit.

"Your glasses," said Snape, his voice sounding like it, too, had been Stunned, dragged up a chimney, and fallen two stories into a reflecting pool.

She squinted over her frames; even this close, he looked like an Impressionist painting, swathes of paler paint and whorls of black. He was holding his hand out toward her.

Somewhere close by that felt faraway, muffled explosions and shouting filtered through the muddle in her head.

"You can't possibly see through them," he said when she stared at his hand. Maybe it was just the blur, but she thought it shook a little.

Yeah. The blur.

Reaching up - her hand was definitely shaking, the way it hadn't been when she'd woken up on the dusty floor or realized she'd need to jump off the roof - she tugged her glasses off and handed them over.

The wind rustled the trees overhead. The yelling behind the hedge had faded. She squinted over her shoulder, though all she could see now were greenish-brown blurs.

"Here," Snape said.

He'd cleaned her lenses, even repaired the scratches. Once she hooked them back on, she could see the pitted deck beneath them, cracked and choked with weeds; the tall, reaching trees; and Snape's haggard face. Always sallow, his skin now had a greyish undertone that made him look like a plague sufferer, and his cheekbones could've been used to cut marble.

"How'd you-did someone come with you?" she asked, trying to keep her disgusting fringe out of her eyes. It stank like algae, like the rest of her.

"Your illustrious godfather."

Snape pointed his wand at her ankle; a brief, searing clench of fiery ice squeezed it like a vice, and then the pain was gone. She flexed her foot, trying to ignore the throbbing ache in her knees.

She stood, dropping her head to hide her wince, brushing uselessly at her filthy skirt.

"Where else are you injured?" Snape asked. His voice was cold, clinical, like a particularly unfriendly doctor's.

"I'm fine," she said, lifting her chin and trying to be as cold as he was.

He didn't look impressed. His sneer didn't even need to work to get into position.

"Very well," he said. "Suffer, if that's what you prefer."

Except then he winced. A muscle flexed in his jaw, and he pressed his fingers against his temple.

Harriet's determination to keep her heart as hard and cold as his wavered. "Are you-"

"Holly-berry!"

Sirius came crashing around the overgrown hedge, ragged-haired and wild-eyed.

"Thank fucking Merlin," he said, grabbing her up in a hug. "What the bloody hell, you look like a swamp demon." He released her from the hug but held her at arm's length. "Did you jump in that fucking pool?"

"I had to get off the roof somehow," she said, trying to be glib.

"The ROOF?" said Sirius and Snape together. Then they glared at each other.

"Glad to see you two getting along," she said, looking between them. "How'd you find me?"

"That can wait," Snape said. His wand looked long and deadly in his hand. "What did you do with them, Black?"

"Tied them up and gagged them." Sirius jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Come have a look."

Harriet (trying not to limp) followed Sirius; Snape trailed them, and unless Harriet was off the mark, he was hiding a limp too.

"Voila," said Sirius, waving a hand at the reflecting pool.

Sirius had tied Bristol and Wales to the dried-up fountain in the center of the pool upside-down. They were out cold - and their mouths had been crammed with water-lilies.

"Nice work, don't you think," said Sirius, smiling. It was not a nice smile.

"For once, not contemptible," said Snape.

Sirius opened and shut his mouth, like he couldn't believe it. Harriet couldn't, either. They traded incredulous looks. Snape ignored them. He looked like a stiff breeze would push him into the pool, though his face - or rather, his expression - showed no hint of it. It was like he'd forgot, or didn't care.

"Did they identify themselves?" he asked, his black eyes calculating.

Harriet shook her head. "The other one called that guy 'Fink'"-she pointed at Bristol-"but that's all I heard. I got out of the house as soon as I woke up in it."

"Atta girl," said Sirius, draping his arm over her shoulders. His face was casual but his body was tense against her arm.

"Well, then," said Snape, raising his wand. "We should awaken them and. . . begin introductions."

"Not a totally shit idea," Sirius said.

Harriet supposed she was glad to know that, if she had to get kidnapped, at least she'd always have the normalcy of Snape and Sirius taking potshots at each other.

"It's done," he'd told himself. "It had to be done."

He'd been prepared for her to say "I hate you" - to scream at him - to hit him with a curse. "I wish you'd died instead of them."

He'd been on the live-wire end of her temper, the witness of her rage. He'd evaded, with little to no success, her attempts to know him better, to dig out what knowledge lay in his past. He had wondered, longed to know, how to break her of wanting to know more from him, once and for all.

In the end, he feared he'd always known. He feared it because it meant he had held back, for fear of wanting the attention ongoing.

He feared that he'd known, somewhere in the corners of his heart, that he'd wanted it all along.

Because when it was gone, when she turned away as if glancing through a cloud of mist rising from the frozen earth on a dawn winter's morning, he knew.

As ever, what he feared meant nothing. Fear never stopped anything. His fears always came to pass.

This time was no better or worse. You could not measure life or death for utter moral failure.

He always failed.

His only success lay in having the courage to have told her, and in earning her indifference.

Severus kept himself in a state of partial disconnect, the way he did when attending the Dark Lord. He didn't think too hard about working with Black (he'd fuck it up if he did) or about the Harriet not hiding her limp very well at all. He was a good spy because he could do what needed to be done while not thinking about it as he was doing it. For the present, there was the job. Later, he could feel as he would about it. Detachment. Compartmentalization.

Occlumency.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was the way Black had clearly noticed Harriet pretending she wasn't injured and hadn't said anything about it. She wanted to hide it and Black was letting her. There was an unexpected delicacy to it.

None of the other adults in Harriet's life would see it that way, but they weren't here.

He and Black dragged the unknown wizards into the house. Storm clouds outside threw even darker gloom over the dusty floors and the peeling walls. The place was long abandoned, but Severus knew it.

"This belonged to the Rosiers. They aren't Rosiers," he added when Black squawked and dropped his trussed-up charge on his head. "The Rosiers are all dead."

"Huh." Black waved his wand to roll the one Harriet had called Wales onto his back. "But whoever they are, they knew the house was empty."

"Clearly."

"Did you know?" For once, Black seemed interested only in information, not in being a suspicious prick.

"I hadn't given it a single thought."

"Well, maybe there's-Holly-berry, what are you doing?"

She looked up from where she'd bent over Fink, trying to root through his pockets. She pushed her glasses up with a filthy hand. "One of them's got my wand."

"Accio Harriet's wand," said Black, and put up his hand as it flew out of Fink's breast pocket. Her wand restored, he turned to Severus, smiling. "Shall we, Sniv?"

Harriet frowned at Black, who didn't notice.

Severus pointed his wand at Fink. "Rennervate."

Fink and Wales stirred, then coughed as they realized their gullets were stuffed with leaves. They tried to spit them out, but Black had been zealous.

"Good afternoon," Severus said, in a voice that clearly said it would only be good for some people.

He had the satisfaction of watching them both freeze. Their eyes widened as they took him in, and bugged out when they saw Black. Severus had to admit he was in fine escaped convict mode, unshaven and unkempt - nowhere near the skeletal madman from two winters ago, but a reputation for being a homicidal maniac worked wonders.

"Isn't this pleasant," said Black, smiling down at them.

Fink started shaking his head, while Wales spat out more leaves.

"Fuck you, by the way, for kidnapping me," Harriet said. Severus had thought, once, that she'd soon rival Minerva in her glaring power, and he hadn't been wrong.

"Yeah," said Black, "we want to know why you did that."

"And who the bloody hell are you, anyway?" Harriet said.

"Also a good question," Black said.

Severus was still feeling like he had a screwdriver jammed between his eyes, so he found a dusty chair with the seat sagging through, fortified it with a few Transfigurations spells, and took a seat. He'd let the Black and Potter dogfather-and-child duo handle this, while he rested for a bit.

"Guess we could clear their mouths," said Black. "If we wanted them to talk."

But he just folded his arms and watched Wales struggle, with mild amusement. Severus genuinely could not tell if it was put on or not.

"Y-you're-" Wales had finally got enough leaves out to be able to talk, though he still had some stuck in his teeth. "S-sirius Black-"

"No, I'm Alice fucking Cooper," said Black, rolling his eyes.

"Neither of them seem too bright," Harriet said, as if she felt insulted that she'd been successfully kidnapped by a pair like this. "So he's Fink, and who the hell are you?"

"Not telling," said Wales, darting a frightened look at Black.

"I've got you tied up on the floor," Black said, giving Harriet a can-you-believe-this-tit look. "It kind of doesn't fucking matter if I know your name. But we're curious."

The tit considered his position. "Nottle," he said sullenly, at last.

"Fink and Nottle," Black said flatly.

"Are you for real?" Harriet asked.

"Look," said Nottle, "we just wanted to know if-" His voice dropped. "If You-Know-Who really was-you know."

"No," Harriet said slowly. "I don't."

"We been hearing rumors. That he's-back. They said you fought him. We just-wanted to know."

"You could've just sent me a note in the post," Harriet said with an edge of dark sarcasm.

"Yeah," said Black. "That'd been a much better idea."

He stepped forward and placed his boot heel very deliberately on Nottle's cheek, pressing his face against the floor. Harriet's attention darted to Severus, then back to Black, and she twisted her wand in her hands.

"You kidnapped my goddaughter," Black said, kneeling down slowly; beneath his heel, Nottle whimpered. Fink hadn't bothered trying to spit out the leaves. He was keeping his mouth shut, as it were. "Tell me why I shouldn't make you regret that."

Nottle whimpered. "I do regret it," he said desperately.

"Funny guy." Black rocked his heel forward; Nottle yelped. "Not in the mood for funny."

"Sorry," Nottle whimpered. "Sorry."

"Disgusting," Severus said softly.

Harriet turned her impressive glare on him, then said, "Sirius, let up."

Black stood - putting his weight on Nottle's face before he removed his foot.

"See?" The look in his eyes was no longer amused, mild or otherwise. "She's a good kid. Even thinks pieces of shit like you should be protected."

"We're sorry," Nottle gasped. "We won't do it again. We swear."

Fink lay next to him, just staring at the ceiling. Perhaps he thought they were going to be disposed of.

Black shut him up with a single look of contempt. He turned to Severus, who looked back with no change of expression, but with a feeling of cool surprise.

"Think they're telling the truth?" Black asked.

"There's more than one way to find out." Severus stood, letting his sleeve fall back to free his wand.

Nottle didn't look reassured, only confused. "Here," he said, "you're Severus Snape, aren't you?"

"He's the real Alice Cooper," said Black.

"Thank you, Black, for the introduction."

Severus knelt on the dusty floor next to Nottle, who tried to scoot away, only to freeze when Severus gripped his chin. A few Dark spells for ascertaining truth leafed through his mind, but he could do without the extra pain. The combination of the Vow and his last Dark spell were enough now.

Squeezing Nottle's jaw, he dug his wand into the idiot's chin, making him grunt and tip his head back against the floor, trying to get away. His eyes were round and fearful. Severus did not have to turn and look at the scrapes on Harriet's bare feet and shoulders or remember her desperate charge through the hedge to think this man's fear was not enough.

"Leglimens," he hissed, and knifed into the stream.

Harriet watched Snape bend over Nottle and stick his wand beneath his chin and do - nothing. Or maybe something? He'd hissed, and now he was tense and still, like a raven hunched up against the cold, and Nottle was rigid on the floor.

Sirius stood next to her, arms folded and wand out, watching them. She felt prickly all over and inside, too.

I should put a stop to it, she thought, they'd listen to me. (Would they? But they had so far. They had with Wormtail in the forest, two winters ago.) But what if these blokes are dangerous? (They didn't seem dangerous, or at least, only dangerous in the way that fucking stupid people were dangerous.) Sirius and Snape aren't just doing this because they might be dangerous, they're doing it to hurt them for hurting me. (It felt nice, and horrible, and all the more horrible because it felt even the tiniest bit nice.)

"Is it hurting him?" she asked Sirius.

Sirius slanted a look at her, tossing his head a bit to flick a piece of hair out of his eye. She could see strands of silver in the black, lone gleaming threads, probably only enough to count on one hand. But they were there, now. Had he had them before he went off with Remus, and Remus came back with a scar?

"Hope so," he said. "You're limping, Holly-berry."

She gripped her wand. "That was from jumping off the roof. The pool wasn't that deep."

"That doesn't make it better, kiddo."

Snape sat back and stood, his robes - dirty now, from the dust - wafting about him as he turned. His eyes were glittering, though he still looked like he'd tried to shake hands with a steamroller. Harriet wanted to ask him if that had been Dark magic, but she also didn't want to talk to him.

"They're telling the truth," said Snape. "After a fashion."

"What's that?" Sirius asked, a tone in his voice that made Nottle shrink away from him.

"It wasn't their idea," Snape said. "But whoever put them up to it was cleverer than these two dregs of human intelligence - they don't know who it was. They simply received the offer."

"Let me guess," Sirius said with disgust, and rubbed his fingers together like he was asking for money.

"And I'm going to guess they weren't the only ones the order went out to," said Snape, his eyes narrowed as he watched Nottle cower on the floor. Fink hadn't moved from staring up at the ceiling. "We can only hope they weren't followed."

"So we should be getting out of here," Sirius said.

"Once the final business is taken care of," said Snape, "yes."

"You're not going to kill them," Harriet said, unable to help it. Nottle choked.

"Just wipe their memories, Holly-berry," said Sirius, though the look on his face lacked any hint of reassurance.

"Removing all memory of the request should suffice," Snape said. "Even if their contact reaches out again, they will merely know that we have found out, and I don't think that a bad thing."

"Then let's get to work," Sirius said.

For Severus, the months following his confession had been long, endless, bleak. But there was work to be done, and if a part of him froze after shattering that tentative truce between himself and Harriet, another part of him. . . woke up. For the first time in fourteen years.

Because he had always known it would come back to this. Lily's death was never meant to be the end.

He'd always known it would end for him only when he, himself, died.

Each day he wondered, 'Will this day be the end of it?'

And he did not know whether he wanted the answer to be 'yes' or 'not yet.'

The crushing pressure of Apparition released her, and Harriet opened her eyes. She and Sirius were standing in a dark copse of trees on cool grass. It felt good against her sore, scraped-up feet.

Sirius smiled at her, squeezed her shoulder, and then transformed into Padfoot. Nudging her hand with his snout, he trotted out of the trees and she followed.

Into an unfamiliar city square. The sky was purple overhead, studded with a few lonely stars and the silhouettes of television aerials. Identical row houses rose overhead, boxing them in. Down the block, a streetlamp shone feebly in the gloom.

"We're not going back to Privet Drive?" she said with relief.

Sirius whuffed and nudged her hand again. She supposed that meant she should wait for Snape, because she didn't know where to go, and Sirius seemed content to sit and wag his tail.

A moment later, Snape slipped out of the trees. He was still wearing his robes. Harriet looked around the square, but nobody was there to stare and point at them. She was pretty sure that if anyone had been out there, they'd have called the cops. With Snape looking like Dracula and Harriet like a swamp demon, nobody would believe them innocent of anything.

"Read this and memorize it," Snape said, handing her a slip of paper.

Harriet read the loopy handwriting: "The Order of the Phoenix is quartered at Number 12, Grimmauld Place."

A moment later, the paper fizzled into ash - and the building in front of her expanded.

Another house grew out of the brick in front of them, shoving the houses Eleven and Thirteen to either side. Steps unrolled from the front door, which had no knob, only a knocker in the shape of a cobra. Its eyes were hollow pits, like they had once held jewels or something, but lost them.

"In," Snape said, pointing up the newly appeared steps. "And keep quiet in the foyer - making too much noise gets us a nasty surprise."

Harriet wanted to ask, except this would involve talking to him. She hadn't yet worked out a way to ask him questions without talking to him.

She followed him silently into the house, Padfoot crowding at her hip.

It was dark in there and smelled about as bad as she did. Greenish light filtered down from ugly lamps, making her feel like she was at the bottom of the reflecting pool again. It was a normal enough setting for Snape, but it was odd seeing Sirius in that creepy lighting. Having transformed back, he now looked as gaunt as Snape, whose black hair hung around his sharp cheekbones in greasy chunks.

"Where are we?" she whispered, peering around. Of the two condemned houses she'd been to in the past few hours, this one would win first place.

Sirius put a finger against his lips and jerked his head to the left in a clear follow me gesture.

Harriet did, down the cramped hall and a set of stairs to a dingy underground lair that she thought might be a dining room and kitchen. At least, there was a table, a hearth, and a lingering smell of burnt potatoes mixed with old cooking lard.

"You hungry?" Sirius asked in a normal voice once the door was shut. "Or - shit, I'm the worst host - you want the bath first?"

"I'd rather eat," Harriet said honestly, trying to look like she wasn't keeping an eye on Snape, who'd followed them down and folded himself into a chair at the table.

"I can do a mean beans on toast," Sirius said.

"Black," Snape said suddenly. "Did you tell Lupin?"

"Tell him wh- oh." Sirius swore, then pulled out his wand. "He's gonna fucking kill me," he said resignedly.

At a wave of his wand, a massive, shaggy dog that looked just like Padfoot burst into life in a glitter of blue-white stars. It tossed its head and wagged its tail, pacing restlessly through the air.

"Remus," he said to it, "we've found Holly-berry - we're back at the Dark Tower."

His Patronus went bounding off through the wall, disappearing in a shower of starlight sparks, and taking the light with it. Sirius used his wand to raise the fire in the hearth, but this only had the effect of lengthening the shadows.

"Remus is here?" Harriet asked.

"Well, he's staying here - right now he's out with Tonks. Looking for you. We. . . sort of forgot to tell him we'd found you." Sirius scratched his nose with his wand. "Definitely gonna kill me. Time for my last meal, then." He grinned at Harriet. "No, you sit, Holly-berry - those who've been nabbed off the street and locked up by a pair of knob-ends don't have to help in the kitchen."

"Maybe after all that, I just don't want to be poisoned," Harriet said, but she pulled out one of the mismatched chairs on the other end of the table from Snape. It was entirely because she wanted to be as far from him as possible, and not because she thought this might be a good place to watch him without looking like she was.

"Cheeky brat," Sirius said with clear pride.

He disappeared into the kitchen, and a few moments later was banging around and cursing at a can opener. Harriet outwardly pretended she was alone at the table, hiding her sneaking looks behind her dirty fringe. This time, she hid them better than she'd hid her limp. Of course, it helped that Snape had his eyes shut. He was resting his head against the back of his chair.

To be honest, she was surprised he wasn't dead. Every time she'd seen him alive since February, when Voldemort had come back - in class, in the Great Hall, around a corner down the hall - something in her had fluttered with surprise.

And . . . relief-

The door to the underground lair swung open with the kind of ominous creak she'd previously thought had been patented by the Hogwarts' dungeon. She looked up, expecting to see Remus, but the doorway was empty.

Then a croaking voice wafted up from the floorboards:

"There's the half-blood bastard, what would my poor mistress think, the house of her ancestors defiled with the scions of Muggles and blood-traitors-"

"How fortunate, then," Snape said, opening his eyes with a look of resigned contempt for the floor, "that she has you to insult her undesirable houseguests in her absence."

Harriet leaned around the table and saw the oldest, wrinkliest, meanest-looking house-elf she'd ever laid eyes on. He gave her a watery look of loathing on par with Snape's.

"What is this?" the house-elf muttered. "Who does this one belong to? Another half-blood brat to besmirch the house of my mistress-"

"You'll be the one getting besmirched, if you don't watch out," Sirius said darkly, emerging from the kitchen. He slid a plate in front of Harriet. "There you go - four basic food groups: burnt, scorched, beans, and fruit."

Harriet tried to keep a straight face. "It's supposed to be baked beans on toast, not burnt beans. Was this bacon?" she asked, pointing at the strip of blackened something-or-other skulking next to the toast.

"That's the scorched," said Sirius. He turned to plonk a plate down in front of Snape, who stared at it as if Sirius was serving him a dead snake. Of course, that was the safe and normal reaction to Sirius' cooking.

"What am I to do with this?" Snape asked.

"Snort it, for all I care," Sirius said, kicking out a chair and dropping into it.

"Ah," said Snape, as if he'd been wandering lost in a dark jungle and had suddenly come out into the light. "It's poisoned, then."

"No more than Sirius' cooking ever is," Harriet said, before remembering that she wasn't speaking to him. She picked up one of the orange slices Sirius had cut up and bit into it to stop her from saying anything else.

"I'd sue for slander," said Sirius, "but I don't think you can, if it's true. Plus I've got that whole escaped convict thing going on - shame to draw attention to myself now. Are you still here?" he snapped.

Harriet was confused, before she heard the muttering down by the baseboard: "Kreacher is cleaning."

"Well, go clean somewhere else," Sirius said, aggressively folding his burnt bean toast around his scorched bacon.

"Kreacher does as Master bids," said the house-elf - Kreacher - in a tone that he might also have advised Sirius to go and boil his head. He lurched off, shoulders hunched. The kitchen door snapped shut behind him with a pointed creak.

"Master?" Harriet said.

Sirius scowled. When he hunched his shoulders, he looked a lot like Kreacher. "Happens when you're the only bloody one left. You get the mouldering pile of cursed shit and the malevolent house-elf-"

Something upstairs went bang, making Harriet jump - and someone started screaming.

"And not forgetting your dear, departed old mother's screaming portrait." Sirius toasted the air with his toast.

"Have you tried a flame-thrower?" Snape said. To Harriet's astonishment, he'd practically cleaned his plate: all that was left was a few straggling beans that he was cleaning up with his leftover crust.

"That's next on the list. We've tried everything else." Sirius pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet. "If you've got a Dark curse that'll take her off, don't hold back."

Thankfully, the screaming had stopped; as Sirius turned toward the kitchen door, it swung open again.

"Good evening, Sirius," Remus said in a mild way that made Sirius cringe. "Harriet, my dear. I'm so glad to hear you're all right."

"Moony," Sirius said, a bit desperately, putting his hands up as if to calm down a raging hippogriff.

"That nothing happened to-" Remus stopped, his mouth open slightly as he took in Harriet's appearance.

Harriet took advantage of his shock to give him a hug. Over his shoulder, she saw an unfamiliar woman standing behind him, beaming at her.

"Dear Merlin," Remus said, recovering with a little shake. "Sirius, did you cook?"

"Oh, ha, ha," said Sirius. "Moony-"

"Ha!" said the new woman, sliding out from behind Remus. "I thought that was you." She beamed even brighter at Harriet, holding out her hand. "I ran into you - for once not literally - last year, at the Quidditch World Cup. Was getting water at the pump, and you were behind me - I swear I'm not a crazy stalker," she said, shaking Harriet's hand vigorously up and down, "I recognized Remus, that's all - seen him once before that, even. I'm Tonks."

"Nice to meet you," Harriet said, perplexed but not displeased. Then Tonks' hair did something quite odd: it went from a normal dark brown to a magenta, in a wave from the roots to the tips. "Whoa."

"Oh, sorry." Tonks sheepishly seized a handful of her own hair, as if that would fix it. "Happens sometimes when I'm not paying attention."

"You're just showing off," Sirius said, sounding rather proud of her for that. "Tonks is my cousin," he added for Harriet's benefit. "She's just joined the Order - well, back in March, but she was a kid the first time, which makes her a new recruit."

"Sirius, that is a terrible introduction," Remus said, while Tonks clearly struggled not to laugh.

"Order," Harriet said slowly, remembering the paper Snape had given her on the street. "Order of the Phoenix? What is that, anyway?"

"Secret society." Sirius gestured around. "We're all members. This mouldering old dump is our headquarters."

"We'll give you a real answer once you've cleaned up," said Remus. "Here - we brought your things from Privet Drive." He rummaged in the pocket of his tattered trousers and pulled out her trunk, pocket-sized for traveling convenience. "Tonks can show you where the bathroom is, if she'd be so kind."

"Happy to," Tonks said genially, picking the trunk off his palm. "I'll enlarge this for you upstairs - no point in hauling it around if we don't have to. And we'll go up carefully," she added, her voice dropping to a whisper as she pried open the kitchen door. "We'll see if I can not trip on the way up - fifteenth time's a charm, don't you think?"

"Trip?" Harriet whispered back. She wished she had something more intelligent to say, but she was rather completely lost as to what was going on - with this broken-down house, its resentful elf, the strange screaming in the empty foyer, the Order of the Phoenix - even Sirius and Snape, sort-of working together. Sirius had fed Snape and he'd still been upright at the table and not looking any worse than the simply-awful he'd been all along.

"There's a troll's leg umbrella stand in the entryway, I always trip over it - 'course, I could trip over thin air, I'm dead clumsy. Hang on, let me watch my feet. . ."

Tonks led Harriet up a couple of floors, past closed doors with doorknobs shaped like the heads of manticores and hippogriffs, to a bedroom that looked a little more lived-in than the rest of the place: as if it had had someone staying in it less than fifty years ago.

"I stay in here when I sleep over," Tonks said, using her wand to open a door to an en suite bathroom. "Oh, while I'm thinking about it - don't touch the doorknobs, they're cursed. Have to be opened with a wand. I know," she said, grimacing in sympathy with Harriet's stare. "The Blacks weren't the jolly, hugs-all-around sort, I can bloody well tell you that."

"So this is Sirius' house?" Harriet asked, staring around. The wallpaper wavered like seaweed caught in an ocean current. It was a little hypnotic, a bit dizzying. She tried to imagine Sirius growing up here and felt something in her chest knot. And she'd thought Privet Drive was bad.

"Yeah." Tonks pointed her wand at the wallpaper and froze the pattern. "It's not supposed to do that - just gone a bit wonky over time. The whole house has got architectural dementia, if you ask me."

With another wave of her wand, she popped Harriet's trunk back to normal size. "There you go - have a bath and put on something that's not - whatever happened to that poor dress."

"Thanks," Harriet said. "I really - what's that?"

"Oh, hell," Tonks said, as sounds of screaming echoed through the house. "What set her off? The boys almost never-"

Harriet was distracted hearing Snape, Sirius and Remus called 'the boys', but she followed Tonks back into the hall and craned over the banister.

"Well, I'll be blowed," said Tonks.

"Thank you for letting me know you'd found her," Lupin said, turning to Black, who groaned.

"It was an accident, Moony," he said pleadingly.

"Oh, of course," said Lupin. He sounded quite understanding. Severus almost pitied Black - maybe in a hundred years or so, he'd manage it. "You had a lot going on at the moment."

Black writhed. Lupin, apparently feeling that he'd got his claws in good enough for now, turned to Severus.

"Was she hurt?"

"Apart from some light injuries she sustained escaping from her captors, she was well enough." Severus didn't think it was well enough, but that was why he'd left Fink and Nottle a couple of surprises - nothing too debilitating. Just some crippling arthritic pains they'd suffer whenever Harriet Potter's name came up. It was a handy little associative spell he'd become rather fond of over the years.

"So it was kidnapping." Lupin pulled out a chair and sank into it, looking even more grim than he always did now, with that scar. "I was faintly hoping she'd just run off to London to see Hermione, and the Vow was just. . . reacting to potentialities."

"They were paid off." Black dropped into the chair beside him. "Sort of - an offer went out. Which means more scumbags could come looking for her. So it's good she's staying here."

Severus heard the 'Dumbledore can try and sent her back to Privet Drive over my cooling corpse' in his tone.

"The Headmaster should see the sense in keeping her here," Severus said. "She only needs the blood protection of calling her relatives' house nominally 'home' - clearly, it's no kind of barrier to danger itself."

"Only to Voldemort," said Lupin absently, making Severus wince. Lupin either took that as a sign of concern or pretended to. "Should we call Pomfrey, Severus? You look-"

"She can't do a damn thing for this." He leaned forward. "We need to track down who put up the offer."

"They wanted to know if Voldemort's really back," Black said, while Lupin frowned and Severus winced again and swore at them both in his head. "So whoever it is, it can't be one of his crowd."

"But whoever they are, they're unprincipled enough to pay off petty criminals to get the information," Lupin said thoughtfully.

"Without wanting anyone to know who's doing the asking," Severus said. "That suggests they've some standing within the community."

"And the bribe supports that," Black added, an ugly shadow in his voice. "You don't entice shits like those two with promises of small change."

"No," Lupin agreed. "So they're - what now?" he asked, looking up at the ceiling, beyond which Mrs. Black's portrait had started screaming. Again.

"Tonks must've tripped," Black said, with what Severus felt was remarkable bloody tolerance.

"Perhaps not. Unless she's developed six different sets of feet, I think you've got company," Severus said.

Black and Lupin shared matching looks of alarm; a moment later, Black was out of his chair and hieing through the door. Lupin followed, and Severus, pausing only to curse as his back muscles gave him a kick in the spine, brought up the rear.

The hall upstairs, they found upon reaching it, was crowded with redheads.

The curtain that covered Walburga Black's alcove swung over her twisted face, shutting her out and up, and silence draped across the foyer. Ronald and Ginevra Weasley took their hands off their ears; the terrible twins looked disappointed that order had been (somewhat) restored; Mrs. Weasley looked like she'd been recovering from a nasty shock only to be struck by a second - the appearance of the escaped convict, Sirius Black.

Lowering his wand, which he'd used to close the curtain, Dumbledore smiled at his rather stunned audience.

"Terribly sorry for springing this on you, Sirius," he said, placing a comforting hand on Mrs. Weasley's shoulder. "But I've brought you some houseguests."

a/n: damn, would you look at that first chapter reception? my dear readers, treasure of the internet and keepers of my heart - i'm amazed and humbled that you're still here and excited. this one's for you. ︎ ︎ ︎

fink and nottle come from p.g. wodehouse.

i hope that wherever you are, you are safe and with people who care about you. ︎