A/N: I warn you that there is nothing good about this chapter. Every character hits a low point in his or her struggle for the actualisation I believe the end of every story should bring, and this chapter brings to the surface many of the issues you brought up with me about Harry being too polished or perfect. In the back of my mind, I was always baffled by this, but then I realised that it shouldn't surprise me—I just haven't brought his issues to the surface. Yet.

Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me. I own nothing but the characters of Jackson Templeton and Crin Dalmeiier, and they're not even in this story. Well, maybe not.

Chapter Eight: Agate Shatter

He knew something was wrong when he rolled over, and she wasn't there.

Over the past week or so, he had slowly become accustomed to the feeling of sharing a bed. It was so much more intimate than he had imagined; Ginny, he discovered, liked to sleep against things: pillows, stuffed monstrosities, the wall, him. It was nice, but always a bit disorienting to wake up and find out that she had her back pushed into his side. Her hair usually tangled around his arm, she usually had an arm and at least a leg flung over him, making it very difficult to slip away from her and get to his early morning practices. Over the duration of the week, he had come to love that feeling of being half-smothered.

So when his nightmare let him free near four a.m., he was startled to feel a cool draft on his skin, and to see no sight of Ginny in the bed. Quickly, he rolled to his feet and reached for a sweatshirt to put over his old England Quidditch T-shirt. Throwing that on, he emerged from his room into the main room of the Hutch. To his relief, Ginny was seated in the middle of the couch, her back to him. She didn't look up when he came up, but just the tension in her shoulders told him that she knew he was there.

He stopped beside the couch and stared at the mess of paperwork that Ginny had created across every available surface. She had a quill in one hand and was running the soft part through her other hand. She wasn't looking at any of the paperwork, but at her own arm, perhaps counting her freckles.

"Hey," he said softly. "Can't sleep?"

"He's not in Boston." A strained ghost of a smile took over her face for a second. It was gone before too long. "I couldn't sleep."

"I can see that. What are you working on, exactly?" He needed time to think, to piece together why she would believe that Dermot was back in England when he was so clearly terrorising Boston and Tara Staples. And then he needed to build a defence against it, and against his own doubts. There was no way Dermot was taking Ginny from him: ever since that night in the Shrieking Shack, Ginny had become a fixture in his life. He liked having somebody to depend on, and selfishly thought it was wonderful that the person he leaned against didn't have somebody else and would therefore have to lean against him.

"Ron and Hermione's wedding." She leaned forward and shuffled papers around, pulling out a random cream-coloured piece of parchment and thrusting that at him. "Consider that your official invitation. Since you're the best man and I'm the maid-of-honour, we get the sample invitations."

It looked like almost every wedding invitation that he had received by owl over the years, most of them belonging to famous Quidditch stars. It appeared as though Ginny was pulling out all the stops for the wedding. Harry set the invitation aside, making a note to frame it somewhere Ron and Hermione couldn't see. "So the date's official, then?"

"I'm owling everybody with instructions in a few weeks and getting it into gear," Ginny confirmed, moving paperwork around. She let out a prolonged sigh and pushed her fingers into her hair, rocking her body forward with her eyes shut. Harry tentatively put a hand on her shoulder and she looked over at him, something akin to annoyance in her look. "Aren't you going to even ask why I know Dermot is here?"

He winced. "I was trying to figure that out on my own, actually."

"It's okay to ask for help, you know."

"I know that. Old habits die hard." Deciding it was safe, he shifted and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. It hadn't taken him long to learn that girls like Ginny liked that sort of tactile affection, but with everybody else, it had always unnerved him. Ginny seemed to understand that; she was usually the one that reached for his hand, or gave him a hug. He was still hesitant, but the problem was slowly disappearing. Now, he rested his chin against the top of her head. "Ginny, he's in Boston. That woman was murdered with his MO down to the same brand of spraypaint he used to leave his message on the wall."

"I won't deny that he was there, but he's not there anymore." A tightly coiled wire in Ginny seemed to snap, and she sagged against him. "He was there because he knew Tara's sister lived there. He knows us too well, Harry. He knew that was the one thing that would make her leave me. Her family is more important to her than anything else."

"There's nothing to say he's not still there," Harry pointed out, keeping his grip tight. "Yes, Tara's there with him, but she has Euan there looking out—"

"Dermot's in England, Harry."

There was such a finality in her voice that he tensed and immediately twisted to face her. Urgency made the earlier panic rise threateningly to the surface. He wasn't a foolish man; he liked to think that since Voldemort's fall, he had opened his eyes considerably. He saw enough to know that his excuse for protecting her was so flimsy that Dermot could reach in and snatch her away at any second. Had she seen him? Had he sent another note? Was that why she was so certain about this? "How do you know that?"

"Harry—you're cutting off circulation in my arm."

"Sorry." He relaxed his grip a fraction.

"Dermot only struck in Boston to get Tara to go there. And now she's not here with me. It worked."

Usually, he could follow her logic, but holding back the panic was making it hard to think. He shook his head at her, trying to clear it. "I'm confused, Gin. What worked?"

"By striking in Boston, he scared Tara back there, and now he's either on his way back here or already here. He knows I don't have Tara to lean against anymore, and that's what he wanted all along." Ginny's voice shrank to a miserable whisper, and Harry rubbed his free hand along her back. "I don't like this. It feels like he's moving in on me, and I can't do a thing to stop it."

She had put his entire scan of emotion into words so effortlessly. Harry swallowed and kept rubbing her back, the fact that it was four a.m. suddenly sharp in his mind. Carefully, he sneaked a look at Ginny's pale face, confirming that she hadn't slept. The black circles around her eyes just looked harsh in the gloomy half-light. "Look," he said, trying as hard to keep his voice reasonable and calm for her sake, "Ron assigned me as your bodyguard with good reason. You're his favourite sister. Do you really think he'd trust your safety to somebody who couldn't do the job?" Warily, she shook her head, and he saw the first glistening of tears start in her eyes. "This isn't something to lose sleep over, Gin. I'm going to protect you. He won't touch you or Tara or anybody. Do you believe me?"

There was a long stretch of silence before she finally whispered, "I believe you."

"Good. C'mon—we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Let's get some sleep before we wake Neville." He'd heard stirring from the other room, but knew from years of sharing a room with the fellow that Neville could sleep like the dead. Ginny, however, didn't know that. She allowed herself to be led back to the bedroom and climbed into the bed, curling up with her back to him. Harry way awake for a long time after she drifted off, worrying about the very same things that he had told her not to.


"Say, Amy, why do you have that bloke hanging around you all the time?" Tracy Harrows wanted to know as Ginny handed out the itinerary forms to each of the Typhoon members.

Ginny glanced over her shoulder to where Terrence Holicrest was leaning against a locker, apparently ignoring the rest of the locker room to indulge himself in The Daily Prophet. Every few seconds or so, however, she saw his dark eyes flick around the room, double-checking to make sure that there wasn't any danger nearby. Harry had asked him to fill in as a bouncer-like bodyguard, which had sweet of him, but still a bit hard to explain.

"He's my assistant," she lied smoothly, handing one of the sheets to Melinda. "I've been lobbying for one for a few weeks now. He's the answer to my calls."

"I didn't realise that assistants were so big," Stacy remarked.

Ginny had to agree. Terrence was bigger than either Tad Gideon or Frank Greeley, and his forearms had to be as thick as Ginny was altogether. To top that, he had the darkest skin she had ever seen, giving him the appearance of a tame blackbear. Ginny could see why he hit it off so well with Euan: Terry was laid-back and informal, with a sense of humour that struck at the most random of moments.

"Terry's one of a kind." Ginny left it at that and began shuffling through her armful of paperwork, searching for the waivers that the three Chasers would need to sign in order to participate in the American Quidditch Open. "He scares people off who want to bug me. I like him."

"What's Harry think?" Stacy asked slyly.

"Harry's grateful that I'm no longer killing myself to get all the work done."

Well, at least that much was true. Fred and George were coming by the Hutch later that day, to discuss a few product endorsements with Harry and to bring along their work for Ron and Hermione's wedding. It made Ginny suspicious that they would take such an avid interest in the wedding, but she was tired that she was willing to let bygones be bygones, as the term went. She figured some of it was at least Fred working off his own nerves, for his own Autumn wedding was rapidly approaching. The American Quidditch Open would take place in the last two weeks of August, a kick-off for the American Quidditch season that always started a fortnight before the British one. Since the Typhoon weren't allowed in to the British Quidditch League yet, they were spending a year playing scrimmages and doing promotional events, Ginny's forte.

"Oh, yay," Stacy deadpanned as Ginny handed each a sheaf of parchment. "More paperwork to sign."

"This is the standard 'you get hurt in our stadium, you can't sue us,' deal, right?" her twin asked, flipping through her own stack.

"Pretty much. They've got a clause about not suing the government, since we'll be one of the foreign teams, but besides that, it's pretty much a carbon copy of the forms you all had to sign when you played for the Harpies."

"And how I don't miss them," Tracy muttered just as Ginny had turned away to head back to Terrence.

This statement made the redhead stop in her tracks and turn to stare at the Chaser. "What? You didn't like playing for the Harpies?"

Melinda glanced up from where she was putting her initials on the required lines of the second form. "Oh, none of us did."

"Why not?" She'd heard rumours about the Harpies, how they weren't exactly a team that got along behind the scenes, but that was all she had chalked it up to be. But if Stacy, Tracy, and Mel, three of the most personable people she knew, hadn't liked it, the rumours truly had some evidence to back them up as facts.

"We weren't human. We were players." Tracy shrugged as though that explanation summed it all up.

"What my twin means to say is that they trained us as though we didn't have personalities, so whenever we did something creative on the pitch, it was…well, we got yelled at afterwards." Stacy shrugged as well and handed Ginny back a stack of completed forms. "Here, Bear seems to realise that creativity's our best ploy and fully expects us to use it. He's a good captain. He makes the Davenports more bearable."

Ginny remembered the wager that was going on about Tracy and Bear, and wondered if they were setting up the wrong twin with the lanky Keeper. She made a note to bring it up with Mel, who was eyeing both twins with a thoughtful look in her eye, took the parchments from Tracy and Mel, and headed over to the men's side of the locker room. They were all seated on the benches in jeans and T-shirts, their feet bare as they joked and planned for the next few games. "Hey, guys. Paperwork!"

The four groaned. "More paperwork?" Tad groused, taking the stack Ginny held out. "What's this, us selling our souls to the devil?"

"Tad, we're star Quidditch players. We did that a long time ago. Remember that contract? I had mine framed." Frank's grin was quick, but he still wrinkled his nose at his own stack. "Have the birds already filled this all out?"

"Yes, and they were going faster than you."

That, of course, immediately started a race between the four men to see who could get the paperwork done the fastest. Bear finished first, shoving the handful triumphantly at Ginny, with Harry, Tad, and then Frank all close behind. They joked and mock-punched Bear's arm as he ran a joking victory lap around the benches. "Sorry," Ginny told them, shuffling the paperwork about in her arms. "The birds were faster than you after all. Better luck next time, guys."

She left to a chorus of groans.

"That was almost mean of you," Terrence observed as the pair of them left the locker room.

"It got the work done." Ginny shrugged and shuffled most of the papers into her second briefcase, the one she usually carried around the stadium. "They just needed to be motivated. And then humbled. So I just gave them a hand."

"Very kind of you." They made a left into the main office complex, automatically heading towards the stairs where Ginny's small office was located. Terrence took the briefcase away from her. "I wasn't aware that I was going to be your secretary when I received this job," he remarked as he took a seat in his own office, which was right next to Ginny's. "Two people called this morning looking for you, and I fed them both cockamamie stories about how you're out having the time of your life picking on the men of the Nottingham Typhoon. Especially the one with the bad hair."

"I happen to like his hair, thanks," Ginny replied tartly, raising her eyebrow. "Any chance you remember who called?"

"Bloke with brown hair. Said he owned an apothecary. And a spacy chick. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Er…I think it was Loony Lovegood, but I haven't seen her since my third year, so I can't be sure."

This brought a rather feline smirk to Ginny's face as she contemplated the empty grate that had held her friends' heads earlier that morning. "Neville and Luna on the same day? Interesting."

"Right. Well, they said they both got your message about tea this morning, and called to confirm they're going to be there." Terrence smiled at her smirk, his eyes gleaming with his own amusement. "Something tells me that this isn't just tea you're setting up."

"Why would you say that? Okay, c'mon, we've got to get this paperwork priority owled by four, and then I need to schedule appointments with merchandising, Bear's agent, and need to owl the woman in charge of security for Tropicana Stadium."

Terrence laughed a bit as he leaned forward and began searching through the documents. "Tropicana Stadium?"

"Yeah—it's some kind of Muggle orange juice brand. The stadium's in Florida, where we'll be playing in the Quidditch Open." She wrote down a note to get all of the uniforms checked over—they had to switch to mostly grey robes before the match so that they wouldn't be too similar to the American National Quidditch Team, which wore the bold red, white, and blue as though they owned it. "You managed to make appropriate excuses so you'll be there for the Open, right?"

"Right. With Euan in America, I don't have much to do. No love life at the moment." Terrence laughed and rubbed his thigh, relaxing a bit as he did so. "What do you want me to do? Owl people or the paperwork?"

"Paperwork. I'll deal with the owls personally." She had to get a message to Hermione, who had looked strangely wan while they were packing up boxes. Something was going on there, and it was puzzling Ginny that Hermione hadn't even acknowledge the need to perhaps share whatever it was on her shoulders. Had she and Ron had a fight? It certainly didn't look like it from Ron, but these things could be very, very deceptive.

She sighed to herself and set about to doing her work. For the next couple of hours, she and Terrence were quiet as each worked on the assigned task, determined to get the job done before the day finished. They heard the team approaching before they saw them, seven voices crowding to be heard, laughing and jesting with each other as they neared. She heard Frank's deep laughter after Tad's joke, the nearly-identical chiming in of both Stacy and Tracy, and then giggles as the punch-line was delivered. Seconds later, the majority of the team tumbled through the door, following Harry.

"Lunch time!" Tad announced to the pair in their offices. "We let Tracy pick the place, so it's French again, but Harry's promised to pay for us—right, Potter?"

"Lost a bet," Harry muttered under his breath, moving close to her as she stood.

"I don't know if Harry could afford me." Ginny leaned around him (he had his hands resting on her waist), and smirked at the rest of the team's amusement. "I bet Bear could, though. He probably made a lot with the Arrows."

Bear scratched the back of his neck and pretended to look sheepish. "I did save them from a tight spot or two. All for you, though, Pretty-Miss-Mason. All for you."

Harry immediately whipped around and growled at him, making the others laugh. "Hey, back off my woman!" He ruined the impression of a caveman by bursting into small spasms of laughter. "Although I don't know if I should keep her if she's only willing to go for the first thing with deeper pockets."

Ginny smacked his shoulder, trying to hold back her laughter as the others immediately chimed in with several sexual innuendoes about that remark. By the time the rest of them and Terrence took off for the restaurant, the topic had changed several times, and had delved into much dirtier details. Harry stayed behind a minute to help Ginny with the last of the paperwork, and she handed over seven of the sheets. "A release," she said in a soft voice, "for the Tunnel. I slipped it in with the rest of the paperwork, wrote it off as a clause."

He raised his eyebrows. "Nice." The papers disappeared into his back pocket. "So, you planning to leave me for Bear now, is that it?"

She heard the joking pretence of the words, but more importantly the underlying hesitation and restrained anger. The focus in his look was mild, but she had practically grown up with him for six years. She knew when something was boiling under his skin, had seen his eyes get that distant cast so many times over the years that it didn't surprise her when the feeling of being sixteen and helpless under that gaze nearly overwhelmed her.

Testing the waters, she shrugged. "Don't see why I would."

"You said it yourself. He has deeper pockets than me."

That technically wasn't true; Ginny had been given a glance at Bear's account in light of their recent investigations. However, that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that something unpleasant was building up in Harry, and for the first time, she could see the resemblance to the boy she'd left in England over five years before. The polish Hermione had slaved to smother the original Harry with was finally gone. "Actually," she pointed out, keeping her voice even and a bit detached, "you said that. I just said I thought Bear could afford me."

"Does it matter who said it?"

"Kind of, if you're using it to make a point. Is something wrong?"

"Is that how it is?"

This question brought a chilly draft into the room with it. Slowly, Ginny turned away from the paperwork and looked at him, her head tilted to the side. "How what is, Harry?" Now, she found, it was harder to keep her voice calm. "What are you not-so-subtly trying to imply?"

"Deep pockets? Is that it? That's what usually draws people to me—my wealth, my fame, my whole bloody history!"

"Oh, sure, that must be it." Her voice was nearing subzero temperatures now; she pinned him with her coldest gaze. Her sarcasm at that moment could bite through metal. "That's exactly how it is, Harry. I'm after your bank account and your Quidditch Career. Because, you know, it makes all the difference and I don't even know you at all."

She'd jarred him. He hesitated the slightest bit, doubt flickering where there had been anger building before. With a pang, she realised that she'd unwittingly said his greatest fear aloud. So many things she'd wondered about him in the past few weeks suddenly made sense: his previous unwillingness to date anybody more than casually, his close circle of friends, his apparent lack of interest in anything besides Quidditch. It made one wonder if he'd ever truly admitted it to himself. She'd been down that road: coming to realise self-delusion was never a pretty thing. Of course, with her it had been deadly, with him it was just…another step closer to whatever he was looking for.

"It could," he said suddenly, interrupting her train of thought.

She gave him a pained look. "Then you're not as bright as I thought."

A muscle to the left side of his jaw worked as he struggled with this. "Am too."

"Harry, I refuse to get into an 'are not, am too' fight with you. It's juvenile, for one thing, and annoying for another—"

"So I'm juvenile now, is that it?"

Why, Ginny wondered, wanting to rub her forehead with her hand and resisting, did men have to be so stubbornly complex? She was going on about three hours of sleep, and it looked like Harry was just picking a fight. She sighed at him and rolled her eyes. "When you're ready to grow up and stop biting my head off, you can talk to me again."

And then she Disapparated. In her annoyance, the pop! was louder than usual.


It was a grim day indeed when Ron Weasley strode into Tony's Pub with the expression he had worn on several occasions, most of them dire and better left to the nightmares. His sleeves were rolled up, his wand was out, and the back of his neck was bright, boiling red. Harry knew he was in trouble the instant the door swung open, but he hadn't had enough time to prepare himself for just how much trouble.

Now, he wondered if it might be a good idea to run. And maybe hide. Or just plain old change his name and dye his hair blond.

Ron crossed the pub in three longish strides, nodded curtly to Tony and Jack, and grabbed Harry by the shoulder of his robes, fisting the material in a tight clutch. "Potter. Outside. Now." His voice was rather close to what Molly Weasley might sound like as a young man looking after his sister. Harry shook off the offending hand and stood up on his own, following behind Ron as the redhead stalked from the pub. His entire body felt stiff, but that might have been from the mystery drink Jack had finally pawned off on him several minutes before.

They stopped in the alley beside the pub, a place that Harry had visited many times before. Ron waited until they were out of view of the street and immediately rounded on him. "Merlin, Potter, I've put up with a lot from you over the years, but it's never been about my sister before! Just what the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

Harry immediately tensed for a fight, although he and Ron hadn't come to blows in a long time, if ever. Right now, his blood rang funnily between his ears and he had a bit of a hard time focusing on his friend's face. "It was a stupid mistake on my part, and not much of your bloody business."

"Well, you made it my business when you stopped following your bleeding orders!"

Whatever he was expecting Ron to say, it wasn't that. Harry actually rocked back on his heels in surprise and nearly dropped his jaw. However, self-preservation caught hold at the last moment and he kept his trap firmly closed. His jaw worked as he struggled to understand the situation. "What do you mean, stopped following orders? I thought this was about the stupid little tiff—"

"Stupid little tiff? Harry, you left Ginny completely without a bodyguard! She showed up at the Burrow alone twenty minutes ago, saying that you've been missing all afternoon! And here I come to find out you've spent them in a bloody pub?!"

It hit Harry then, that he was in for a lot of trouble. He'd seen the glint in Ron's eye upon entering the pub, but he'd figured that it was nothing more than an older brother looking out for a sister. Whatever it was that was in his system had caused him to miss it: the set of Ron's jaw could only be about one thing. He had done something to endanger another Tunnel member, and now it was time for the Seeker to hit the stands, as the term went around the social circuits.

"I couldn't exactly help it! She just left!"

"Did you bother to even look for her?"

"Of course, I bothered! I spent six bloody hours searching for her until Terrence finally deigned to tell me that she was all right!" Harry shoved a hand through his hair and jerked into a two pace stride, turning back and forth around in the alley almost fast enough to make his friend dizzy. "I even owled Tara over in America—a letter that I imagine she's getting right about now, and one I'm sure will put loads of relief in her heart. I tell you one thing, I'm firing Terrence first chance I see him. Bloody wanker can't even—"

"What!"

"Exactly! I owled the bloody idiot three times to ask where Ginny was, and he doesn't—" Harry stopped abruptly at the panicked look on Ron's face and seriously considering punching his friend to bring him out of the daze. "What? What is it?"

"Terrence—get to the Burrow!" Without bothering to explain, Ron disappeared. Harry stood there, rocking a bit on his feet at the explosive shockwaves Ron's Disapparation had left. When it finally hit him just what was scaring Ron, he swore viciously and did the same.


The dustbin on the left was shifting a bit more than its twin. Luna Lovegood frowned and removed her wand from its holster, wishing that her pencil wasn't still stuck in the knee of the reporter from Brazil. He'd been nice, but a little too…what was the word? Her father had used it often. Oh, yes, effusive. He'd been too effusive, and after he hadn't listened to Luna when she had told him—quite politely, actually—that she had no interest in people with mouths as big as his. So she had to sacrifice her pencil into his knee to make sure that he didn't hurt her. He might have been a bit sloshed. Some of the reporters in the camp had been drinking over breakfast.

The problem was that the pencil she'd staked him with had been her best one—it had written with faint letters, perfect for capturing the whimsical nature of her thoughts. Now she had only pens. Quills, she had learned years before, were messy, messy things, staining one's fingers and acting as a sign to let everybody know that you were a reporter. With pens, there were no stains, and people tended to be honest when you asked them questions.

It took a particularly large jump from the dustbin a few feet in front of Luna to bring her out of her contemplation of writing utensils. She tensed and poked tentatively at it with her wand, but all that did was make it wobble a bit. Obviously, the rhodondin inside was very light.

Her father had wholeheartedly believed in the existence of rhodondins, a fairy crossling that wasn't so bad when it was just a rubbish scavenger. However, some of the wilder rhodondins were known to sneak into houses at night and purposely cause mischief—eating spare keys, socks, gnawing on random lessonwork and adding cause to the tales of "my dog ate my lessonwork." Linus Lovegood had been trying to prove their existence for years, and Luna had carried on his life's work. Once she opened up that lid and performed the freezing spell, she would have finally settled another of his unresolved missions.

The thought made her feel a bit warm with happiness as, one hand on her wand, she reached forward with her left hand and grasped the lid of the dustbin. Taking a deep breath, she yanked it up.

And was promptly attacked by sharp claws and flying fur.

She let out a startled shriek and managed one good swing with the dustbin lid, catching the attacking beast squarely on the jaw and sending it flying. It landed on four paws and hissed malevolently at her, furious that she'd ruined its dinner. Dismayed and bleeding now, Luna could only stare as the tomcat turned and stalked away.

Light flooded the alley behind her; the shop beside her had turned on its porch light to see what the noise was. Luna heard the footsteps cross from the stoop to around the corner, but she didn't move from her dejected position, watching the cat's hindquarters disappear into the gloom. Night was descending over Diagon Alley, and it looked like her quest had just hit yet another brick wall. This might be funny if it wasn't the, what, seventh time?

"What's all this racket?" demanded a voice behind her.

Luna didn't turn. "Research gone wrong." Sighing, she decided to face whatever was coming to her, and stuck her hands into her pockets. She turned slowly. "Unfortunately. I was looking for a rhodondin—Neville? Neville Longbottom?"

She couldn't tell if it was him clearly—he was standing with his back to the light and it threw his front into shadow. But she remembered that goofy, floppy haircut and the slope of his shoulders as he stood, and this man was about the right height. And he jumped at his name. Then he moved forward, the shadows shifting a bit so that she could see part of his face. "Luna?"

She liked her name, especially when he said it. "Hi."

He looked at her for a long moment, his face almost unreadable. He looked confused, but she couldn't tell beyond that. "Luna? Lovegood?"

Hadn't she just acknowledged that? "Yes…"

He paused, and then crossed his arms, and then touched his chin with his thumb and his forefinger, as though he couldn't quite remember her. She just waited for him to finish thinking. She always liked finishing her thoughts, so she always waited politely until others were done. "Sorry, I'm just a little—well, I don't know. Luna, what the bloody blazes are you doing in an alley in London and why are you in this particular alley? And have you been messing around in my dustbins?"

"Oh. That." She looked down at the lid in her hand, somewhat dazedly. "Well, the good news is you don't have any rhodondins in your dustbins."

"Don't have any—" Neville broke off and sighed, rubbed his hand through his hair. Luna got the distinct impression that he was not talking to her anymore, and wondered if she should stop listening. "Right. Something about dustbins—Hermione mentioned it, and it completely slipped my mind. What are—wait a minute." He moved a bit closer and Luna, about to turn and replace the lid, froze. "Are you bleeding?"

She didn't see the point of lying, and the scratches were starting to hurt now that he had brought them up. "The cat didn't like me. I think I startled it."

His confusion turned into a frown. "The cat hated your neck the way it was, that's for sure. Look, come inside—I have a salve for that, and it'd be nice to catch up with you, since you're here and all."

Inside turned out to be the interior of The Third Green Thumb, Neville's apothecary and greenhouses. Hermione had written about it in many of her novel-length letters, describing the place to be rather cramped and a plant-lover's absolute dream. Neville's affection for all things growing showed in his decorations—paintings of different magical herbs and plants crowded the spaces on the wall where there weren't any shelves. He'd painted all of the shelves, which were about shoulder-height and made from thick, sturdy wood, a dark green to complement the forest nature around the shop. The shop, which they passed through to get to the greenhouses in the back, smelled of fresh herbs—the sharp tang of dragon's breath arguing with the smoky sent of dried rosemary. As an apothecary, the shop had to sell other types of ingredients, but anything non-herbal was stored in an adjoining room and managed by one of Neville's associates.

Neville's office, Luna discovered as she followed him, was crammed into the small space between the greenhouses and the shop, and doubled as extra storage space. Neville instructed her to sit in the only chair, an old creaky number, while he rummaged through filing cabinets that coughed pathetically when he opened it. "Needs new furniture, the whole ruddy place does," he muttered under his breath, sticking his arm up to his shoulder deep into the drawer and rooting around. His hand emerged clutching onto a first aid kit, and he opened that while Luna hazily studied his office, from the stacked paperwork on the desk to the random equipment that was shoved into hasty storage. The walls were barren and concrete, only a calendar pinned to them. There was a small icebox shoved into the corner, the front smothered in magnets and photographs, most of them waving at the pair.

"So, exactly why were you upsetting cats in my alley just now?" Neville asked conversationally as he perched on a precarious-looking stack of topsoil bags to get a better look at her neck and jaw.

"I was looking for a rhodondin. They're normally in dustbins outside of apothecaries, you know," Luna told him matter-of-factly.

"Were you." He didn't say it like a question, so she didn't answer. He looked down to rummage through the first aid kit, so she took a moment to study him and figure out what had changed in the five years she had been gone from Great Britain.

Well, he looked older, that much was obvious. He'd had baby-fat at Hogwarts that made him look soft and sort of puffy, but that had trimmed down into a moderately-sized man. His features were more boxy than they'd been years before, and he had a very faint scar on one cheek, nothing more than a small line. She frowned at the sight of a few grey hairs mixed in with the chestnut colour.

"So," he said, looking up and at her, "what exactly is a rhodondin?"

As she explained about the rhodondin's love for socks and spare keys, Neville dabbed a type of salve on the scratches and rubbed away the excess with a cloth. It itched, but she didn't want to scratch it for fear of messing up his careful work. "I believe a family of them has been hopping from one city to the next," she finished, "and I've finally tracked them back to London. They started out in Fez—I lost them for a couple of weeks back in January, but now I'm on the right track. I was so sure they were hiding in that dustbin."

"Maybe you'll have better luck next time," Neville said distantly, wiping salve off of his finger with the rag. Luna got the distinct impression he wasn't listening to her, but focusing on his work. That is, until he surprised her with, "So how do you know it's the same family as the one you were tracking in Fez?"

"They're not rumoured to be tenacious, but these ones in particular don't give up, so that's why I know have the right ones," Luna told him as though it should be completely obvious. "That, and these ones usually like green dustbins over other types."

Instead of answering, Neville stood and returned the first aid kit to the drawer. "You can scratch that," he said, nodding at Luna's neck. "It must itch. That salve is irritating at first, but the feeling will go away in a couple of minutes. After that, the cuts should just close up. Hopefully, that cat that attacked you had relatively clean claws."

Luna gratefully lifted a hand and scratched the side of her neck. "Do you own this place?" she asked curiously, swivelling her head around to investigate.

Neville nodded and returned to his seat on the topsoil. "I came into some money when Uncle Alphie died of 'mysterious causes.' So I bought this place—Harry helped out a bit, and a lot of the Weasleys came and helped me clean it up, paint the shelves. Would you like a tour?"

"I'd like that very much, thank you."


Magical travelling methods had never been Harry Potter's forte, and he was paying for it now.

The Apparation seemed to take longer than ever, even though it usually occurred within the blink of an eye—Harry left the alley beside Tony's and thought as hard as he could about Ginny's room in the Burrow, even though she'd probably kill him for Apparating directly in. However, he didn't care.

He landed outside of her room, outside of the house, even. He didn't even manage to land within half a kilometre—water splashed up his jeans all the way to his thighs and he let out a shout to discover that he was standing in the fishing pond adjacent to the Quidditch field, nearly a kilometre away from the Burrow. Panic mingled with the annoyance, causing him to growl as he sloshed his way from the middle of the pond, up the muddy shore, and then took off in a sprint towards the house.

He didn't see it coming.

A fist sprang seemingly out of nowhere and caught him in a hard right cross, nearly shattering his jaw and throwing him solidly to the ground. All of the wind rushed out of him, and his shout came out as a wheeze.

"I was almost worried you weren't going to come, Potter," an oily voice muttered from the darkness in front of him. In an instant, Harry's insides froze. "You know, it's a wonder I even leave her with you. You obviously can't protect her. It took you how many hours to figure out that I was masquerading as your pretty boy Terrence?"

Slightly dazed, Harry scrambled to his feet. His heart was pounding against the back of his neck, crushing his uvula. It was one thing to panic at Tony's and think that Ginny had unwittingly been following her stalker around all day, but it was another to face a dark shadow in front of him. The fear that something had happened to Ginny, that this type of danger could strike so close to a place that was sacred to all of the Weasleys nearly crushed him in its reticence.

"Dermot," he said, all moisture gone from his mouth.

"I'm surprised you remembered my name, Potter. Takes a lot of thought capacity and I, for one, didn't think you had it in you."

Now that some of the initial pain from his jaw had dwindled to a slow burn, he could make out more of a man in the shadow in his path. He had a few centimetres on Dermot, centimetres that would be valuable if it came down to a physical fight. As he had witness firsthand, Dermot's punch was a force to be reckoned with. Harry reached for his wand, only to discover it missing.

"Looking for something?" Dermot asked. Light flashed off to his side, and he held up Harry's wand, point glowing from a simple Lumos spell. "Dear little Potter has lost his wand. How shall he ever come out to play today?"

"Where is she?" Harry growled, tightening his hands into fists. "What have you done with her?"

"I haven't done a thing." The light from the Lumos spell created a halo around Dermot, throwing everything but the very centre of his eyes into sharp relief. Under the light, his eyes appeared swollen and vicious, and hatred sent physical sparks across Harry's vision as he glared into them, daring the man to come closer. "You clearly misunderstand me, Potter. Ah, ah, don't move—" For Harry's feet had inched forward across path almost on their own. "Stay put like the nice little boy you are."

Dermot had sharper lines across his face than Harry's, some wrinkles and others stress-marks. Ginny had mentioned that he was older before, but it had never crossed Harry's mind. The man was built like a warrior—a barrel-chest dominated a build that was slowly becoming stocky with age—but Harry figured he had at least agility over the man. "What have you done with her?!" he growled again.

"I told you already."

"Like I'm supposed to believe you?!"

"Who's got the wand here, little boy?"

Dermot's voice, that nasally Irish accent, was making the blood rush strangely past Harry's ears, as though securing the young man into a vacuum where nothing existed but his foe and himself. Over Dermot's shoulder, Harry could see the lights of the Burrow, but it wasn't registering. This was the man that had tried to kill Ginny, had made two years of her life comparable to Hell, and now he was standing in front of Harry, just out of arm's reach.

What happened next could only be known as messy. Something that had been roiling in the deepest depth of Harry's darkness snapped with an almost audible noise, and Harry threw himself forward from a dead stop. Dermot dodged to the side, but not quickly enough to avoid being clipped in the right side. In a haphazard tumble, they fell, fists flying with blind abandon. Harry landed twisted about on his side and quickly rolled, catching more than he liked of Dermot's punches. He drove his fist into the other man's chin and somehow ended up on his feet, thinking of nothing but getting Dermot farther away from the house and where Ginny might be.

"You can't protect her enough, Potter," Dermot taunted, throwing up an arm to stop a punch. Besides his words, the night was left to their grunts.

The night was alive with the sound of bodies scuffling, grunts occasionally heard when each fighter scored a hit. Harry, who had learned everything he knew from a few old teammates, had been taught to fight dirty, and so did, swiping at Dermot's eyes, pummelling his fists as hard as he could into Dermot's midsection. A lucky elbow/swipe sent the wand, still lit, tumbling off of the path. All that Harry could see of his opponent were flashes that moved through the forest of shadows, so the only thing he could do was guess where Dermot might be from one moment to the next, and send a fist or a foot in that direction.

He didn't see the knife.

A foreign hiss, a flash of silver in the low wandlight, the only warning he had. By some small measure of luck, Dermot only managed to scratch his elbow, missing the slot between his ribs by precious centimetres. Harry shouted and blindly kicked out, catching Dermot just at the wrist and sending the stalker backwards in surprise. Another kick forced Dermot back yet again. His boot caught on something; with his own grunt of surprise, Dermot landed on his back, sprawled across the path.

The knife clattered to the ground as Harry threw himself on top of Dermot, fists already thudding as hard as they could against the other man's torso. He didn't know what he was doing; all he knew was that he just couldn't seem to stop himself, and that Dermot deserved every hit and that much more, even though the man was whimpering…and people were shouting his name…and that bloody Irish accent was pleading and outright crying…for mercy…

"Harry!"

Bruising hands on his shoulders shoved him off and carried him away from where he had been beating Dermot to a bloody mass. Swearing, Harry fought them as hard as he could, but other hands joined them and became a swarm around him, tugging him away from Dermot and towards safety. The air was lit with whispers of "Lumos!" and Harry's frantic swearing as he continued to fight off his captors. He wasn't even aware of who it was around him, only that they knew him and yet were still trying to keep him away from the creature that had hurt Ginny.

"Calm down," somebody was muttering in his ear.

"Oh no."

Footsteps had come down the path from the Burrow; with two words whispered from Ginny, the scene froze. Harry stopped struggling and hung there limply, and Dermot looked up from where he was fighting off the hands of two Weasleys. Ginny herself was rooted right beside a bend in the path, an expression of shock captured on her face. She was staring past Harry to Dermot.

"Hi, Ginny," he said simply, and disappeared.

A/N Part Two: If you're confused, that's my fault. However, stick around for the next chapter--it'll be fun, I promise.