~I still don't own any of the characters owned by anyone else.

Percy Weasley was far from a coward but he wasn't feeling very brave as he stalked through the dark alleys of London's underbelly. He nervously checked his wand holster for at least the fifth time that hour. He wasn't exactly happy to find himself in the dark alleys of London at the best of times. He normally wouldn't have considered personally acting on an anonymous tip about a dark wizard's location but these were not the best of times. With the firing of Fudge his own position was in question. He figured that if he could pull off the capture of a dark wizard then he could use that to gain some influence, influence that he could use to help the order as well as solidify his own position. He still wasn't sure that working with the order was the safest thing but if it helped his family, he would take the risk.

The problem as Percy saw it with raiding a dark wizard's home was that typically the dark wizards weren't afraid of using dangerous or lethal curses on anyone that came calling. Which was why he had invited Auror Dawlish for backup. While he would have loved having someone more trustworthy, it was the best he could do on short notice. Anyone else was either too busy preparing for the holidays, too untrustworthy or too likely to steal the credit if things went well.

Percy Weasley briefly glanced at Auror Dawlish, he was despite his misgivings happy to have some backup on this unofficial raid. He looked down again at the small piece of parchment clutched in his hand. He looked up from the parchment to glance at the dirty address on the old building in front of him. He had found the scrap of parchment waiting for him on his desk that morning. The parchment had an address written in a crisp angular hand along with a hastily scrawled 'Dark wizard's hideout' written below it in a different hand. "This looks to be the place."

Dawlish nodded, walked over to the door, raised his wand in one hand and used his free hand to pound on the door. He wasn't sure what he was expecting but having the door swing open to reveal a dark room filled with the unmistakable sound of weeping wasn't what he was expecting. "Lumos."

Percy twitched as Auror Dawlish's light spell revealed a wreck of a human chained to the wall.

Dawlish gasped as his spell revealed the words "Peter Pettigrew" written in blood above the wrecked man.

Even with the words staring him in the face, Percy could barely recognize the wizard as Pettigrew from some old photographs of the order. That wasn't too surprising considering the dirty state of the man's clothes, the fact that his face was turned toward the ground and cast into shadow and the fact that the man chained to the wall was supposed to be fifteen years dead. He forced the bile back into his stomach as he realized that the man only had chains on three of his limbs the bloody stump that used to be the man's arm was nailed to the wall with an old fashioned railroad spike.

Dawlish quickly stepped inside the room and proceeded to search for any remaining dark wizards. After a brief look around the rest of the ramshackle shack that passed for a home in these parts Dawlish walked back to stand in front of Peter Pettigrew. "You're supposed to be dead."

Peter Pettigrew was barely able to raise his head as he croaked out, "I want to die, please kill me."

Percy turned slightly green as he found himself staring at the bloody holes where the man's eyes should have been. It looked like they had been ripped out of the man's eye sockets recently.

"Don't let the demon come back. He said he was out of practice but just for me he would do his best. Said I was special. I don't want to be special anymore."

Dawlish glanced over at Percy before looking back to Peter, "What happened to you?"

Peter Pettigrew laughed darkly, "Broken."

Percy thought the man's laughter held more than a touch of insanity to it.

Peter chuckled darkly, "I killed them all, all my friends betrayed. Sold to Voldemort like rats in a cage. Can't turn into a rat anymore. She cut my tail and stole my luck, down the rabbit hole I go. Can't see, can't use magic, can't die anymore. Please kill me before the man with the knives comes back. Don't want to see, but the visions still come, even after the nice man ripped my eyes out like I asked. Had to beg and plead for them to vanish. They didn't take the visions with them though. They should have. I want them to stop, please kill me, make the visions stop."

Percy watched as Pettigrew slumped over reduced once again to whimpering. "This complicates matters. Someone obviously left him here for us to find."

Dawlish nodded, "Question is who?"

Percy shrugged, "We take him in, turn him over and wash our hands of this madness."

Spike chuckled as he heard the telltale cracks of wizards apparating. He was relieved that he hadn't asked Illyria to come for this mission. Fred wouldn't have enjoyed the torture and Illyria wouldn't have enjoyed hiding in so undignified a spot as under the floorboards. He figured he would leave that part of the mission out of the reports. Though he figured he would leave a lot out of the reports for this mission. The only thing Spike regretted was that he wasn't going to be able see the shocked faces of the wizards when Peter vanished right out from under their noses. He just hoped that the three hour portkey he had jammed up the guys ass gave the ministry enough time to officially question him. After all this mission wasn't all about having fun, the main goal was to get Sirius proven innocent.

Spike carefully slid the board out of the way before carefully making his way out of the shack. Even if the leaders of the wizarding world were a bunch of idiots he still wanted to make sure he was long gone by the time they sent more wizards to investigate.

Gabrielle sat curled up with her face pressed against the window trying to tune out her siblings' conversations. She watched as the station vanished around the corner as the train sped away from Hogsmeade. She was pulled from her musing by a rather stinky foot being waved in her face.

Rose grinned as Gabrielle absently batted her foot away. "Oh come on, you can't spend all your time looking out the window." She put her foot back on the floor.

"I was just thinking."

"What about?"

"A couple of different things really. Mostly I'm looking forward to seeing mom again."

Trista was slightly nervous about spending the holidays with her friends but as her parents didn't want her for the holidays, due to the full moon falling on Christmas day, it beat staying at the school alone. To be fair they were trying to visit with a number of their extended family that not only lived out of the area but that didn't know about werewolves or magic. Trista tried not to blame them for not wanting her with them.

Lenora smiled at Trista, "Don't worry everyone will love you."

"I'm not going to be a bother am I?"

Leo smiled, "Nah, it will be nice to be able to hang out a bit. Plus we can practice riding our broomsticks."

"I don't have one."

Lillian shrugged, "We have enough extras that it shouldn't be a big deal to find you one."

William sighed, "I envy you guys. I'm stuck going back to the Burrow for the few days before Christmas. Grandma will probably give me a number of chores to do."

Rose grinned, "Sucks to be you."

William shook his head, "I'm just hoping I can stay with uncle George and Fred rather than at the Burrow. At least there I just have to help make things explode."

Lenora curled up and used her sister as a pillow. "Wake me when it's time to change clothes."

Lillian leaned her head against the seat cushions, "Sure, I might try to snag some sleep as well."

Gabrielle adjusted her sunglasses, "You know some times I think not needing that much sleep is a curse."

Rose chuckled, "Stop complaining and drift."

"Fine."

Trista had assumed that she was too nervous to sleep but found herself nodding off after a few minutes of quiet. The next thing she knew she was being gently shaken away. "Huh?"

Gabrielle grinned as the blurry eyed Trista blinked up at her. "Wakey wakey, you should get changed into your muggle clothes."

Trista nodded briefly before simply pulling off her Hogwarts' robe revealing her muggle clothes underneath.

Rose chuckled at the slight look of disappointment on Gabrielle's face.

Willow smiled as she watched the Hogwarts' train pull into the station. She was just glad that she didn't have to brave the crowds on the way out as well. The plan was to portkey to the cemetery in Godric's Hallow and from there walk to the house. She smiled as she spotted the mass of children coming her way. She smiled as Gabrielle ran up and grabbed a hold of her. She returned her daughter's hug tightly. "Miss me?"

"Of course mom. So what's the plan?"

Willow pulled a long piece of knotted string from her bag. "Well first we wait for Harry and the rest to get here then we all grab a hold of the string and travel via portkey to near the family's new home. Just grab a hold and away you'll go. I wonder what's taking the rest of them so long?"

Gabrielle shrugged, "Probably just the gang saying goodbye to Ron and William. They're heading to the Burrow via slide along apparation."

Willow grinned as she noticed Harry, Ginny, Neville, Hermione and surprisingly Luna walking over. "I heard Molly was trying to steal Ginny for the holidays as well."

Ginny scowled, "There is no way I'm going to be mom's slave for the holidays."

Hermione chuckled, "It's not that bad."

"I don't see you volunteering."

"I well, I have my own preparations to make if I want things to go smoothly for the clan dinner. Besides this is the first Christmas we get to spend with my folks."

Willow glanced at Luna, "It's good that you could come Luna, you too Trista."

Luna smiled, "Thank you, Daddy is off at a conference anyways."

Trista nodded nervously, "Thank you for having me."

Willow nodded as she made sure everyone had a hand holding onto the string before activating it.