Harry flung the cloak over himself, hit his body with a Featherlight Charm, and then walked up the stairs. A small part of his brain marveled at their arrogance in not having somebody on guard downstairs, but as he reached the top, something felt wrong. So before easing open the door, he knelt on the stairs, and then reached for the handle and pushed the door open slightly.

Then he realized it wasn't arrogance at all.

The handle ripped from Harry's hand and the door flung itself open. He dropped down as six curses sizzled over his head, thankful that they didn't see him through his robe. He saw them, however, and also saw a large dog crate in the middle of the wide-open room, with Charlie crammed inside.

A trap. They somehow knew that Dobby had come, and also knew his target. And this was the result: Charlie became bait to lure Harry upstairs. But they still didn't know about his Invisibility Cloak. It was almost Funny how a single piece of clothe could be the difference between winning and losing a battle.

Harry didn't move, a faint plan forming in his head. All eight Death Eaters were standing in the room in various places, their wands trained on the doorway. Then, with a start, he realized that two of them hadn't shot curses at him. Were they defensive only? Or maybe they were waiting to see what would happen and act on follow-up. Either way, that meant they had a depth to their plans. It didn't make them inner-circle Death Eaters, but they sure as anything weren't new recruits, either.

After a short conversation in a clipped language that Harry didn't recognize, one of the Death Eaters approached the door. Harry until he stood directly in front of him, then slipped his wand under his robe.

"Imperious." The spell, cast almost silently, took the Death Eater in the chest. Harry seized control and ordered him to tell the others that no one was there, but the man didn't move.

What the hell? Why wasn't he . . . He doesn't understand! In a moment of near panic, Harry pushed his own will into the man. The rush that came from such domination blocked any ill feelings he had before about taking control of someone. This was like nothing else!

The man turned around under Harry's command, shrugged, and stepped back to the left. Conversation started again, and as soon as their attention was off the one he controlled, raised the man's arm by will power alone, and hit the guy next to him with the Killing Curse. He connected with two others before being chopped down, literally. But it was all ready too late for the rest of them.

Harry shot through the door and flung his cloak off, his wand ablaze with a sickly yellow spell that took the far left Death Eater in the eye. The Piercing Curse entered at an upward trajectory and exploded out the back of his head, flinging bits of grey-matter and bone against the back wall. But before the curse even connected, Harry's wand was trained on the next one. This time the color was green, and the curse very well known.

Then Harry dove, sensing spells coming his way, and landed at the feet of the nearest one. A quick punch to the knee dropped the Death Eater and Harry used him as a human shield, letting him take a bright orange curse in the back. Whatever it was, the man went limp.

Harry reached around the body now leaning on him and hit the last Death Eater with a series of three Stunners tracing low right to upper left. The last one connected and the man went down hard.

Harry dropped his human shield and took aim, finishing off the last Death Eater. Then he knelt at the cage. "Charlie, you okay?"

No answer.

Harry hit him with a Rennervate Spell. "Charlie? Speak to me!"

"Who—Harry? Is that you?"

"Yeah, let's get you the hell out of here."

He fumbled with the gate, but finally got it open and was helping Charlie out when the back door opened. He looked up to see two, three, five, seven more Death Eaters walking in. He could've taken a few of them, but not everyone, and now he had Charlie with him as well. Damn! "Come on, down the hall." Harry whispered, thankful for the pass-through in the wall that allowed him to see the back door. It gave him just enough of a head start.

Charlie snagged a couple of wands off the floor, and they raced through the hall into the far bedroom. Harry shut the door, locked it, then dropped a Locking and a Silencing Charm on it, and then knocked out the window about the same time he heard yelling from the front room.

"Can you climb through?" He asked.

"'Bout as well as you stumbling out of a Floo." Charlie pulled himself up and leaned over the windowsill, then let his body flop to the ground below.

It wasn't graceful by any stretch, but after a few weeks of captivity, Harry was surprised he could even do that. At least the comment put Harry at ease that someone else had been Polyjuiced to look like him.

A pounding on the door brought Harry back to the moment and he dove through the open window as well. Charlie was staggering toward a shed in the back yard.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

But Charlie kept going, waving his arm as if to say, come on! He pushed the door to the shed open about the same time that Harry got there, and also about the same time that Death Eaters poured out of the back door. More cracks of Apparation told him that another five or six Death Eaters had joined them as well.

So maybe this was Death Eater central? It wasn't exactly the best time for Harry to find out. "We gotta go, now! He whispered.

"I know," Charlie answered, and then thrust something into his hands.

Harry grabbed it on reflex, and only then realized what it was. Zeus's Lightning! was written along the side of the broom.

Charlie waved a wand at the broom, then gave the wand a disgusted look and tossed it aside, and did it again with the second wand. "That's better."

The charm looked strange, almost as if he was cancelling something. Charlie did it again to second broom he took off a shelf. "Ever fly a broom without a speed governor?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"Then be careful."

"I will," Harry said. "Let's get out of here. Head toward the Forbidden Forest. I'll go first." Harry pushed past him, then took a step and jumped on.

Fast was not the proper word for an ungoverned Zeus's Lightning. Harry ripped out of the shed and hand to turn hard before plastering himself against the house fifteen yards away. He pulled hard left and split the Death Eaters who were frozen in surprise by the streaking broom and wizard. But he was moving so fast that He couldn't even hit them with a spell on the way out like he was planning.

Then he looked back and saw Charlie shooting out into the night, and looped around to join him. They turned south and ate up the distance between Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest.

"How did you know about the brooms?"

"I caught a glance of them being stored one morning when they had me upstairs."

"Good to see you're still strong enough to fly one."

"Barely," Charlie answered. "Good to see you're still alive."

Barely," Harry answered as well.

A spell streaked between them and cut off their conversation, as well as the top of a tree just a few feet under them. Harry glanced back to find five Death Eaters on brooms. All of them pacing Harry and Charlie without any problems. Was he the only one that didn't know about the speed-governors?

He and Charlie pulled to the right and leaned over their brooms to put some more distance between them and the Death Eaters.

"What did they do, murder a Quidditch team for these?" Harry asked no one in particular.

"The Cannons, three months ago."

He ignored the answer. "Keep going, I'm going to peel back and start picking them off.

"No—"

"You don't have your normal wand, do you want to trust that one in a fight?"

Another two curses screeched by them, and exploded in the trees below. Harry dug a finger into his ear and worked his jaw. That was the same spell Sirius hit him with all those months ago. Damn, was it ever different in real life.

"After the last few weeks, you bet your arse I do," Charlie answered.

Harry met his gaze and there was no question that Charlie would stay and fight. He nodded. "Split left and right, then draw them head-on."

Charlie nodded, and Harry pulled hard on his broom and was almost thrown completely off it, but he cinched his knees against the wood and shot through the night air. Risking a glance back, he noticed four Death Eaters following him at the same time the treetop to his left was sheared off by a curse.

He yanked his broom to the right and pushed the nosed down, diving into the forest. More trees to both sides were lit with curses