A/N: Gah! I am so terribly sorry! This chapter ran away from me. I thought I was close to finishing it in August, but then it doubled in size. I actually have 2,000 plus more words written that I wanted to add in this chapter, but it was just never ending, so I picked a stopping point and now I have the beginning of the next chapter. Okay, anyway, I'm sorry for taking so long, and you have much gratitude for staying with me!

6:15 P.M.

A cloud of patronuses whirled around Harry like a tornado as he strode through the maze of cubicles, all echoing messages that ran together until he couldn't understand a word.

"Sir, you really are supposed to stay in your office," Sofia told him for the third time, fluttering nervously at his elbow. "A code orange has been issued, and according to protocol –"

"If someone were after me, they'd have come here, not halfway across the bloody city," Harry snapped, scanning the chaos of the main floor for someone to pull aside. "Freely!" he shouted, hoping his head of emergency task forces was in earshot like he almost always seemed to be. Almost at once, a wiry, gray-haired man appeared at his side.

"What's Finch-Fletchly say?" Freely asked without preamble. Justin Finch-Fletchly was the captain of MLE's Hit Wizards, and Harry had just finished cobbling together something of a plan with him. They had nothing prepared for something like this, no drill to go over at annual assemblies, nothing but snap decision-making skills and luck. But, as Justin had pointed out with a wry grin, Harry had done his best work 'winging it'.

"His scouts just got back," he told Freely now. "He's sending in the first team as we speak, but it's packed. And there're fires halfway up Diagon. Some people were saying fiendfyre. There're stampedes; the wards stop apparition in and out of Diagon Alley and The Leaky Cauldron, and until a minute ago, MLE manning the exit didn't know about the fire and wasn't letting anyone go 'cause of witness procedures." Don't think about George and the shop. Don't think about Ginny and Vic at the Prophet, Dominique at Quality Quidditch, Bill at the bank, Neville and Hannah at the pub. Don't think. "They've got Magical Catastrophes on that. Finch-Fletchly's lot're going in the back, down by the Charingcross entrance to Knockturn Alley –"

"There is no Charingcross entrance," Freely interrupted.

"There is now. We don't know where exactly the blast came from, but it knocked out a whole storefront. Give them a couple minutes to start clearing the area then send your emergency-response team – tell them to hang back and let the Department of Magical Catastrophes do their job. We're on scene for back-up and investigation purposes. When they've cleared everyone out, then it'll be our turn."

Freely gave a sharp nod and disappeared almost at the exact same moment Percy Weasley emerged out of nowhere.

"Harry –"

"Good, where's Kingsley? I need to speak with him," Harry said briskly, not breaking stride as he headed across the floor, back toward the briefing room where half of the higher officers had been corralled.

"I can't tell you where the Minister is. We're in code orange," Percy told him.

Harry gave a growl of frustration and dug a scroll out of his pocket. He tapped it with his wand and shoved it into Percy's hands. "If you're going to keep the Minister hostage, give him this. Whatever he writes, I'll see and vice versa."

Percy looked affronted, but he took the scroll anyway. He glanced at Sofia, then leaned in and said in a low voice, letting his anxiety show for the first time, "Harry, they were saying Diagon Alley. Do you know –?"

Harry met his eyes and gave a single shake of his head. Percy nodded, swallowed, and nodded again. "Right. I'll just be… getting this off." And he hurried away.

"Is there anything I can do, sir?" Sofia asked softly once he'd gone.

"Yes," Harry told her, the commanding note falling out of his voice like a lead weight. "See if you can track down my godson. He was supposed to be in Knockturn Alley until six."

…

Percy tried to ignore the fear and dread twisting in his stomach and tightening his chest. It had been so long absent that he had forgotten how to push it aside, but now it once again filled its familiar grooves. And now he could feel it brushing against the scars where last time all that tension had erupted in grief.

Nothing's happened yet, he reminded himself, pushed out a long breath, and hurried out into the corridor when the lift doors opened. He suddenly became aware of the scroll clutched in his fist and tried to smooth out the creases he'd crushed into it as he went.

The great, polished oak door to the Minister's office loomed at the end of the corridor, two tough security wizards standing on either side as if made of stone. But Percy turned halfway down the corridor. The Minister's secure location for a code orange was supposedly somewhere in the Department of Mysteries, but Percy was one of the few people who knew better. He ducked into a broom closet, and pushed his way through the buckets and mops to the small antechamber hidden behind them. He'd just raised a fist to bang on the back wall when it slid open.

He blinked, his fist still raised, as he came face-to-face with his wife. For a moment they stared at each other, then Percy blurted out, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm a council member, now," she reminded him somewhat stiffly, straightening her wire-rimmed spectacles. "Representative for foreign relations and reported to by several departments. I need to be informed." Her grey eyes held him steadily, expression impassive.

"Right. Of course," he said finally, his tone starched. He lifted the scroll. "I've an important message to deliver…. To the Minister."

She nodded, and stepped aside to permit him entry. He thought he saw her mouth open as he brushed past and half-expected some update on the girls, an inquiry about when he'd be home, even a comment about leaving the kettle on. But she left without a word.

6:17:15

"Lupin!"

Crammed like a sardine into the tent with two other Emergency Response Team units, Teddy couldn't really turn to see who was calling to him. He tried to crane his neck, but the tent was dim and there were too many shifting bodies. He turned back to the front, focusing on the sliver of daylight at the mouth of the tent where a few officers were flitting in and out. Like most of the ERTs around him, he tried to catch a glimpse of the wreckage awaiting them, but all they could see was smoke and the side of a dirty building.

"Lupin!" This time the voice was right in his ear and a hand landed on his shoulder. "What the ruddy hell are you doing here? Your unit's on the south half."

Teddy turned to see William Davis, a giant of a man with thick, muscular arms and black curls that hid the missing tips of his ears, which he claimed to have lost in a duel, but Teddy knew better. He was one of the medi-wizards from St. Mungo's that the Auror department's Emergency Response units frequently paired up with and he'd taken Teddy under his wing during the healing portion of his ERT training. An automatic grin tugged at Teddy's lips just seeing him.

"Vic and my godmother work up there," he explained, his gut twisting a little at the words. They're fine. They weren't in the alley. "And half the Weasleys work on the North half, plus Neville at the pub. Knockturn was the only place Connel could put me that I didn't run the risk of being distracted by personal situations."

"Bet she loved sticking you right in the heart of it all."

Teddy smiled wryly. "She all but threatened to pull my physical clearance if I came back with so much as a nasty bruise. Says I'm too much of a green boy."

Davis clapped him on the back. "Good thing they stuck me with unit five this time so I can babysit. It's still pretty hazardous out there."

"Have you been?" Teddy asked, nearly cricking his neck to look around at Davis.

"For a minute. I helped put up the tent while your boys took care of the Muggle side of things. Lucky it's a warehouse on the other side and it didn't blast right into the street. It's not pretty out there, Teddy boy, let me tell you."

"I was supposed to be out there on patrol today," Teddy confided, ignoring another twist of his stomach. "Arros covered for me so I could get my paperwork done. His shift finished at six."

Davis let out a low whistle. "Lucky break. For both of you."

"Yeah," Teddy agreed. "Yeah, it was."

6:17:30

It was very dark. Victoire could feel the press of rubble all around her, and knew that it was only the strength of the dented metal lift keeping her from being crushed like a bug. She didn't have her wand; somehow, in the sickening, light-dark tumble inside the lift cage it had been knocked out of her hand and must have fallen through the bars. The lift was on its side. Rough stone jabbed at her through the bars below and the bars above had caved in so that she couldn't stand up at all.

Victoire didn't know what had happened. She remembered the light breaking like dawn above her head. Then there'd been a torrent of noise and everything started shaking violently, and the next thing she knew, the lift was tumbling end-over-end with her inside it being thrown about like laundry in a drier. She'd hit her head twice before her aunt Gabby's voice came back to her from all those dance lessons years ago: tuck and roll. So she'd curled up into a ball and gotten her arms around her head and waited for it all to stop.

And when it did, it was dark and she was wandless and buried. But she was alive and still in one piece, and someone would find her. If she just kept shouting, someone would find her. Right?

6:18:01

The rush of sand sounded like waves crashing on the shore. If Ron closed his eyes and held his breath, he could almost imagine he was on the beach near Shell Cottage, that the baking heat came from a fierce summer sun, and this whole thing was just his imagination run wild.

"Mr. Weasley? They've got the fire almost out. You said to let you know."

Damn the ERT's militaristic sense of hierarchies. He wasn't even in uniform – there was blood caking half his face – and they still felt the compulsive need to report to him. Well, he supposed he had asked. About the fire, at least. He opened his eyes. Lines of people in some uniform or another stood in the streets bringing down wave after wave of sand on top of the smoldering buildings, finally suffocating the flames.

"Right. You got people to go in and survey the wreckage?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tell them I'll be joining them."

"What? But, Mr. Weasley, you aren't –"

"I'm the second-in-command of the damn department. I'll do what I bloody well like."

At that moment, a ghostly shape detached itself from the slowly clearing smoke, and Ron wheeled, heart hammering as he tried to make out what it was. A brilliant silver horse cantered to a halt beside him, tossing its mane as it eyed the ERT leader behind him.

"Go," Ron barked impatiently when the man could do nothing but stare. "Go figure out a way to get into the Prophet building."

The man closed his mouth sharply and hurried away. Only then did his sister's voice start up. "Still in Hollyhead. Match ran late. Be back soon."

It felt like he might collapse with the relief those words occasioned. Of course it was short-lived. He'd sent out nearly a dozen Patronuses. To Harry, of course, although he doubted Harry would even see it. To each of his children and James telling them where he was and to come find him now. To his sister. To George. To Bill. To Victoire. To Fleur. To Neville. Where were they? Were they okay? Did they need a team sent for them? Ginny's was the only response he'd gotten.

She was safe. The match must've run late and she was safe. As he raised his wand to send a message back – not quite knowing what to tell her – he looked over at the Prophet office. Half of it had fallen in. Two or three ERT members in their bright blue robes were on brooms, already pulling people out of the second story. It was taking three at a time to raise the great slabs of stone that had peeled away, even with hover charms. And each time they shifted them a foot or two, it started an avalanche of rubble. Was it too much to ask that Victoire had left early?

"Sir?" The ERT leader was back, this time holding out a dragon-hide vest like a peace offering. "I – you know it's extremely dangerous going in there, yeah? Any number of curses or jinxes might have sprung up when merchandise ignited or mixed, there could still be security charms enacted – the structure could collapse."

"That's why these things are shield charmed to Mars and back, isn't it?" he asked, pulling the vest on and doing up the laces with an efficiency that showed his long relationship with the equipment.

"Ministry of Magic Safety Grade, sir, yes."

"Right," Ron muttered, rolling his eyes, and he started applying his own shield charms.

"We've only got one trained curse-breaker, Craig Hodgekins, so you'd better stick close to him. We're doing a quick sweep; casualties or – or survivors. That's all we're looking for right now." He added survivors as if out of courtesy.

"You're in luck," Ron told him, slapping his wand grimly against his thy as they came up to the edge of the burnt building that had once been Cry O' the Raven. "That's all I'm interested in, too."

6:20:21

Teddy jerked upright as the tent flap snapped open. Half the waiting unit fell silent as the officers exchanged low murmurs. Then one – a higher-up from Magical Catastrophes, Teddy thought – wheeled around to face them standing in their tight rows.

"Okay, listen up and listen good. We're starting to canvas the area for casualties and survivors. This process usually falls under the jurisdiction of our department, but the massive amounts of unstable dark magic and the sheer size of the area means we need extra hands. That's what you are, got it? When the area's cleared and we start containing curses and you lot open an official investigation, then we answer to you, but until then, you're going to do as we tell you or you're going to lose your license, no ifs, ands, or buts, and this is your only warning. This is an extremely volatile situation and we really should only be sending in trained cruse-breakers, but of course they don't have the healing training.

"Right, we've got the fires out and the streets cleared enough for mobility, but the situation is still pretty hairy, so be vigilant and cautious, whatever you do. One wrong move and we could be scraping you off the ceiling.

"The buildings are marked, you'll be assigned an area, stick to it. We're looking for people and that's it. Not evidence, not burn patterns, not curse diagnostics. We want survivors and casualties. There're emergency transport marques from St. Mungo's on stand-by and there's a taped-off area for casualties. Stay with your partner, stick to your area, don't do anything stupid."

Teddy looked over at Davis as the units started to shuffle forward.

"Well, Teddy-boy, it's you and me, just like old times. You ready for this?"

"Not in the slightest," Teddy told him.

Davis nodded. "Me neither. Let's go."

6:20:25

Louis had only staggered a few steps up the street before a rushing group had him half turned around. He whipped his head back and forth, looking for someone in uniform, anyone he could bring back with him. He saw them everywhere, burying fires under torrents of sand, helping bedraggled and shocked-looking people to newly-conjured hospital tables. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to call out to them, to stop someone passing by, but somehow no words came out.

"Nika!'Elp me! 'Elp me wiz 'er!" But her hair was singed off on one side and her face… her face….

Louis swayed on the spot. Panic had never filled him like this, crushing his lungs, disorienting him. There were people all around. Why didn't they know? Why couldn't they hear his fear drowning everything out?

My sister, help her! I need help! But he couldn't hear anything coming out of his mouth. My sister… my sister… Help! HELP!

"Easy, son." Louis looked up. Someone in blue robes had a firm hand on his shoulder. He couldn't make out their face. "Where is she?"

Louis gaped, grasping for words.

"Your sister?" the man said, a little impatient now. "You said she needs help. Here, look, I've got a healing license from the NHA." There was some fumbling in a pocket and something thin and plastic slid into Louis's numb fingers. "What if you show me where she is?"

Louis managed to point in the direction of Quality Quidditch before he found a fistful of the man's robes and started dragging him as fast as he could back to Dominique.

6:20:32

Neville stopped feeling bad about using the impediment jinx after the third person slammed him to the ground trying to get to the Leakey Cauldron. The crowd was not quite as thick or frantic as it had been before, but Neville was going against the current, fighting his way up the alley along the narrow walkway left between the makeshift healing stations being set up in the street. Another loud explosion had sent more smoke pluming in to the hazy air from the direction of Knockturn Alley, more noise than anything else, but people were terrified there were more explosives hidden elsewhere in Diagon Alley and not afraid to blast people out of their way to get to an apparition point. Especially idiots who were going the wrong way.

A solid wall of smoke and a crowd of the more reckless onlookers seemed to cut the winding street in half at the mouth of Knockturn Alley. Neville had hoped, prayed to find Hannah before he reached that wall. She must have been on her way back. She must have been. He scanned the crowd, searching for her bright, golden stream of hair, for Miranda's little dark mane. Miranda couldn't have gotten far, he told himself. He had checked every nook and cranny he could get to around the first few shops, hoping she'd found a place to hide like she was so adept at doing when she knew she'd done something wrong. But in the chaos and the crowds, he hadn't spotted her.

Just as his path started to clear, Neville found himself being shunted sideways yet again, this time from behind. A half-dozen blue-robed ERT members were streaming past him, talking into their wands. Neville caught a few fragments about a building collapsing, ERTs and Healers being inside. It wasn't over yet, he thought numbly, watching other blue-robed responders dousing fires in sand, pulling prone figures from smashed windows, restraining hysterical on-lookers with full body-binds and shock blankets. The dominoes had only started to fall.

6:22:09

"…could use the court rooms –"

"– not appropriate –"

"Just for special purposes…"

"…need warrants from MLE…"

" – have to ram it through?"

Harry was only half-listening to the conversations spinning a mile a minute around him. The long mahogany table was laid out with maps of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, maps of London, lists of property owners, a hundred other documents that needed alterations or overviews or signatures to get an investigation going as soon as possible, before they missed their very small window to cover an incredibly vast amount of evidence.

But as the seconds ticked by, as they waited for an update, for clearance to move in on the area, for some small estimate on the damages, his nerves jumped higher and higher. One eye was locked on the door even as he pretended to peruse the maps where red splotches were spreading like blooming flowers wherever fires were being reported. So when Sofia stuck her head in, he was out of his chair in an instant, muttering instructions to Freely to hold court while he stepped out.

"Did you get a hold of him?" Harry asked the second he'd slipped out of the briefing room to join her. A stream of patronuses still circled in the hallway, kept at bay by security charms so they wouldn't be bombarded in the briefing room.

The look on Sofia's face made Harry's insides turn to ice. "He hadn't signed the book, sir," she told him quietly, eyes wide and apologetic. "And the evening shift is accounted for. Said he was running late – Sir? Sir!"

Without a word, Harry had turned on his heel and strode off between the cubicles. He was going to check the book himself. To find someone working the floo connection and demand to know what the latest reports were. To get the ERT coordinator and see if Teddy had checked in there, simply been distracted from signing in when his shift ended. Because that must be all it was. That had to be it. He'd told him a hundred times, hadn't he? Check in when you leave, check in when you get back, first thing. But it went as unheeded as orders to clean up his bedroom or suggestions to get started on his holiday work ever had when Teddy was a kid. So that was all this was. But he had to make sure.

He'd only made it halfway across the warren of cubicles when a particularly determined steer patronus rammed its way through the cyclone and stopped him cold.

"First casualties reported. There's one of ours."

6:22:54

It was like stepping into an inferno, like being back in the Egyptian desert. Sand mixed with soot drifted like snow, even after they had Vanished most of it. The shop was completely unrecognizable. Ron waded carefully through the debris, his heart thundering in his throat. Much of the ceiling had fallen in, which made it easier to see, but difficult to maneuver the charred beams buried in the piles of sand. Every few seconds he had to pause to cast a revealer spell and make sure he wasn't about to step into any kind of residual magic.

He swept a pile of sand aside and toed a few scorched things. As he moved the tip of his wand over them, ghostly images of what they had once been hovered in the air: several amulets, a small trestle table, a broken window pane. Ron checked for curses again and shuffled cautiously forward. Nothing had ever been quite this painful for quite this long. Everything he saw sent nausea and terror jolting through him for what it might be.

There was more burnt timber in the next section. A shattered bowl. A Rememberall. Ron almost dropped his wand. An image of the little glass ball spun innocently before him, exactly like the one his son habitually carried in his pocket. What would a Rememberall be doing in a shop like this? It had to belong to a customer….

"Over here, we've got something." Ron spun as he had every other time someone had said something like that, feeling as if he'd be sick.

"That's the real deal," one of the other crew members said grimly as she joined the first.

"What is it?" Ron asked, forgetting about curses or unstable magic as he crossed to them in three long strides. His voice had risen almost to a squeak to fit through his throat.

"We've got human remains," the woman told him.

Distantly, Ron heard footsteps near the door and someone say, "Mr. Weasley?" But the woman had knelt down and was doing something with black linen he couldn't see.

"Who?" he croaked, afraid to come any closer, afraid that one of the Magical Catastrophe blokes would shift and he'd see something – recognize something – that would bring him gasping to all fours.

"Mr. Weasley? There's –"

"We can't ID them without a wand," Hodgekins the curse-breaker told him. Ron already knew that. He hadn't really been asking them.

"Female, approximately 157 centimeters," the woman reported and a quill and notepad appeared in front of the other man and recorded it.

Lily couldn't be much taller than that….

"Could be the shopkeeper," the man muttered.

"We should keep looking," said Hodgekins.

"Mr. Weasley –"

And this time Ron turned because he knew he didn't want to be in here anymore, knew he couldn't look at another thing in this shop. If they'd been here… if – but he couldn't even think about it. I don't want you in there, he'd said not an hour before. Fine. Whatever. It echoed on a loop through his head.Not them, not them, please Merlin, not them.

The ERT leader from before was waiting for him in the blackened doorway.

"There's someone wants to talk to you," he said, falling into stride with Ron as he all but bolted from the ruined building. "Says he's your son."

Ron would have turned on the man then and there, grabbed him by the collar and demanded to know why he hadn't fucking said so, but that was when he saw them. Both of them. Sitting on the curb across the street, their vivid red hair standing out like beacons. And he couldn't say anything at all. Lily was murmuring something in Hugo's ear and he was staring around at all the destruction with huge brown eyes and all Ron knew was that he was moving toward them as fast as he could go.

6:23:21

"Nice and easy, now, lad. We just need to check you over for injuries and get a statement, okay? Just tell us what you, and we can let you go on down to the pub."

"Scorp?" Rose said in his ear, plucking at his sleeve. She looked like she was on fire with her wild red hair and sooty face, but she wasn't. The junk shop hadn't caught fire. But he could see the long row of collapsed and burnt-out buildings that stretched on down the street to what seemed like eternity, could see all the burnt and mangled people being pulled out of them, some not moving at all.

"Go on, and we can get out of here," Rose prompted.

Scorpius swallowed hard and took a faltering step forward. The ERT bloke grabbed his wrist and felt his pulse. Scorpius wondered if he could hear his heart drumming in his ears or noticed the sweat soaking through his shirt. His hand drifted toward his left pocket, but he pulled it back, hoping the ERT, now running his wand over Scurpius's temples, hadn't seen. They couldn't search him, right? You needed warrants to search people, didn't you?

"Looks like he's alright," the man checking Scorpius over announced, and stepped back. "Probably just in shock."

Scorpius realized he was talking to Rose, and then that Rose had taken his elbow and was guiding him toward a waiting MLE official. On the way, she picked up a yellow blanket and draped it over his shoulders. At once, warmth ran down his arms to the tips of his fingers, and he felt his pulse slowing a little. Calming charm, he thought distantly.

"Name?" the MLE officer asked, snapping a picture of him with a giant camera that churned out purple smoke as it printed the shot. Scorpius caught sight of himself looking like a dear in the spotlight or whatever that phrase was that Rose's mum used.

"Scorpius Malfoy," Rose said because he hadn't answered yet.

He saw the MLE official's eyebrows draw together, instantly becoming more interested.

"That your name, boy?" he demanded.

"Yes," Scorpius croaked. He cleared his throat. Stop acting suspicious, a voice very much like his father's snapped in his head. "Yes, I'm Scorpius Malfoy."

"And what exactly happened here today, Mr. Malfoy?" the man asked, and Scorpius felt like his eyes were piercing his temples.

"I d-dunno," he stammered.

"You don't, huh?"

Rose was scowling at the burly officer. "Criminal records aren't hereditary."

"Let your friend do the talking, Ms. Weasley. You've already had your turn."

Scorpius cleared his throat again, trying to remember what Rose had told them. "We… we were looking at quills and stuff before it happened. There was this noise – like standing under a waterfall or something – and everything came crashing down. We hit the floor, and the shelf behind us fell over us and stopped glass and everything else from hitting us, and that's – that's all I know."

"What about before you entered the shop. Where were you then?"

Scorpius gulped. Rose, however, stepped forward looking fierce. "We're minors. You can't question us without our parents or a legal representative present or authorization from the head of the investigation – which you can't open until emergency protocol has been followed and you can start investigating."

The man looked extremely irritated now. "Planning on following your mother into the court system?"

"I just read a lot," she told him, tossing her smoking hair over her shoulder.

"Alright, we're done with you then. For now," he added, flicking his eyes back to Scorpius.

"Thanks, Mr. Mullen," Rose said in a voice that was far too sweet. She grabbed Scorpius's elbow again and started hauling him toward the door. "And I'll make sure to pass along your regards to my parents. And my uncle, too."

And they left Mullen with his face suddenly drained of color.

6:23:45

"Who?" Harry demanded the minute he reached the desk. "Who is it?"

"We can't know for sure," Mary Morgan, information coordinator, said, but there was something in her eyes when she looked at him that made him think she had a guess. "They haven't found a wand. Someone will need to ID him."

"But who are they saying?"

She touched his elbow, and that was when he knew for sure what she was going to tell him. "They're saying it's Teddy."

6:23:46

Victoire eased herself down between the spikey chunks of rock jabbing between the bars of the lift. Her head was spinning, and lights were popping in front of her eyes. She should be doing… something, she thought dimly. What was it again? But the air was so warm and tight around her. She could just… sleep. Just put her head down for a minute. Then she'd remember what she needed to do. Yes, that would do the trick….

6:25:51

The corridors in St. Mungo's had never seemed so long and cold. Harry's footsteps echoed like heartbeats as he followed a Healer and one of the ERT leaders down to the morgue.

"There's a lot of damage," the Healer warned, pausing outside the double doors. "Even with reconstruction."

"You don't have to be the one to ID him," the ERT leader told Harry again. "I can do it. Someone else can do it."

But Harry just shook his head and pushed the door open. He'd put him there, he'd put him there….

Dark stone floor, walls, counters, black cabinets, the smell of noxious potions waiting to fulfill their grim purposes. The small room seemed to spin around him as he approached the table at its center. He couldn't breathe. The Healer went around to the other side.

"Are you ready, Mr. Potter?"

He would never be ready.

"Yes."

The Healer rolled back the sheet.

Harry stared at the bleached face for a full ten seconds, taking in the charred Auror Office insignia on the chest, the griffon talon melted to the color bone in the pool of its silver chain, all of this between the caved-in skull, the seared flesh. He turned away to brace himself against the wall.

"Sir?" the Healer asked tentatively.

Harry barely heard. What the hell have you got around your neck? Teddy grinned, flipping the talon around its chain. It's cool, isn't it?

"It's him," the ERT trainer said quietly. "He wore that talon, I recognize it. Had to chew him out for forgetting to take it off during drills. Safety hazard." His voice was gravely.

Harry sucked in a breath that seared his lungs. "No, it's not," he gasped, turning around.

The ERT leader made to put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Potter –"

"It's not Teddy," Harry insisted. He pushed the consoling hand away and crossed back to the table, staring down hard at the charred and blistered face. The healer looked uncertainly at the ERT leader.

"It has to be him," the man said as gently as he could. "He's the only one not accounted for. He didn't sign out of his patrol shift, he didn't report to my unit for ERT deployment. Male, approximately 182 centimeters, between the ages of 22 and 25, with identifying clothing. We didn't have anyone else in the area when the explosion went off. Who else could it be?"

"Travis Arros," Harry said quietly, suddenly. There was so much damage, he was hardly recognizable, but Harry was starting to understand what must have happened. "He and Teddy and a bunch of their mates from school went to the Isle of White last summer and they all came back with those talons. He must have taken Teddy's shift."

The ERT leader was looking at him with a mixture of pity and sympathy. Harry could tell they didn't believe him.

"What about the physical features? Around the damage, can you match anything?" the Healer asked. "We can't ID people based on jewelry."

"Lupin was a metamorphmargus," The ERT leader told him. "He frequently changed his features for work. Helped keep him anonymous on patrols. Not many people would be able to recognize physical features, even… even without all of this." He swallowed and looked away from the table.

"It's Travis," Harry said with unwavering certainty. Teddy had probably neglected his papers again, and Arros, being the decent kid he'd always been, would have taken his shift. A sudden rush of memories swept over him of a laughing, dark-haired boy sitting at his kitchen table, crashing on the living room rug, being persuaded by Teddy to go for Auror training….

"Look, I know you don't want it to be Teddy –"

"I'd know if it was my kid!" Harry burst out. He was breathing rather hard. "I've known him since he was a week old. I've known Travis Arros since he was twelve. That is Travis." Saying it was like a kick to the stomach. When Harry looked back at the table, he wanted to stagger backward and crumple to the floor. When Teddy found out…. But Teddy was still around to be told. He was still here to shout and throw things and shed tears, and that knowledge expanded in Harry's chest and made him light-headed.

"It's not my kid," he murmured, mostly to hear the words again, and this time they seemed to believe him.

6:27:12

The ceiling groaned as Teddy eased the door back against the wall. It was the third building they'd tried and the first they'd managed to find a passable entrance.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, loud and clear," Davis's voice came through his wand, slightly warped as if through the Muggle walkie-talkie he'd had as a kid. "What's it look like?"

Teddy waded into the rubble, sweeping his wand light through the gloom. "Grim as hell."

"No shit. Anybody in there?"

"It got hit pretty bad. Can't even tell where the counter used to be. Gah – why does everyone down Knockturn think all those creepy artifacts have decorative flair? There're skulls and old, withered hands everywhere."

"You sure they're part of the decor?"

"If they weren't, they wouldn't be so clean."

"Right, I'm gonna be sick now."

"Merlin, you're a Healer, Davis, get it together – hang on, I found something."

Teddy had reached the back of what had been the front room. A charred sneaker poked out from under a pile of splintered wood, chunks of plaster, and a few broken fragments of the stone wall.

"What've we got?' Davis's voice came urgently.

"Hang on, I gotta dig 'em out. Reducto!"

The debris crumbled to dust, and without some of the larger pieces for support, the walls seemed to quake. Teddy glanced nervously at the fractured ceiling above him.

"Looks like two, here," he narrated, kneeling down, all business. He waved his wand over the first prone figure, lying flat on his back. A blue light glowed faintly over his chest, indicating that he was still alive. "An old guy, might be the proprietor, Male, over a hundred, head trauma, bad burns, respiratory distress; he's got a pulse, but it's weak. I'm sending him out to you."

Teddy conjured a stretcher under the old man, bound him tightly to it with straps, and sent it rushing out the smashed front door.

"Got him," Davis confirmed, and there was static as he set to work examining the patient for himself. "Give me a status on the second one."

Teddy shuffled around on his heels and pointed his wand at the other person. "We've got a blue light. This one's just a kid; facedown, so I'll have to flip him. Male, mid-teens – fuck!"

"What?" Davis asked frantically.

Teddy gave a small, slightly hysterical laugh of relief. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd caught a flash of orange and thought wildly of more flames, but it was only the kid's sweatshirt, a violent shade of orange. "Nothing, never mind, I was seeing things. We've got more nasty burns and some bad head trauma here. There's a lot of blood; he probably got tossed in the explosion. Shit, shrapnel in his side. He isn't breathing very..."

Teddy's voice faded.

"Teddy?" Davis prodded anxiously. "What's going on in there? Did you flip him?"

Davis had faded into background noise. A keychain on the kid's belt loop had caught Teddy's eye. It was a silver arrowhead inscribed with the Appleby team logo. Seven miniature signatures had been engraved around the date of the league final for last summer. Teddy had been at that game. They'd gone just before school started again, and afterwards, Ginny had gotten the team to autograph a keychain as a fifteenth birthday gift for Al.

The world seemed to tunnel. Two feet away, a pair of round glasses was bent in half, their lenses glittering dust.

"Teddy? Dammit, answer me! I'm coming in there, hang on."

Teddy wasn't sure when the horrified cry had ripped itself out of his throat, if it was before or after he'd flipped the kid over and it was Al's bone-white face under the burns and soot. And suddenly their seemed to be a lot more blood pooling darkly on the flagstone, the angle of Al's arm a lot more nauseating. All the healing spells Teddy had been going through methodically, like a grocery list in his head as he ticked off the injuries, had gone up in smoke. He struggled to recall one that would slow the bleeding and had to try three times before it had any effect at all.

"Teddy?"

Davis was crouching next to him.

Next… next check respiration. But when Teddy bent to tip Al's chin back, he caught sight of the faint scars still etched along the bottom of his jaw from the time he'd fallen off his broom in Andromeda's thistle patch.

"Here," Davis pushed Teddy out of the way.

With swift, sure movements, he sliced through the Chudley Cannons sweatshirt Ron had given Albus for Christmas. He worked his fingers up Al's bare chest, found the pulse in his neck. He moved his wand back and forth, murmuring under his breath spells Teddy should have known. It seemed to take a very long time, longer than it should have, all the while the dark pool beneath Al creeping further and further along the stones.

"He wasn't supposed to be here," Teddy half-whimpered. "We aren't allowed down Knockturn Alley. He's not… he…."

"Look, I know it looks bad, but he's still got a pulse, still managing to breath, and you and I know those things get people a long way," Davis said. Teddy dimly registered that he was using the sort of voice they were trained to use with victims in shock. "We'll get him to St. Mungo's –"

Davis made to conjure a stretcher, but before he could, Teddy had gathered Al up in his arms.

"Teddy –"

"I'm getting him out of here."

"But –"

"Don't touch him!" Teddy yelled wildly, pulling Al away as Davis reached for him. "I'm getting him out!"

Teddy had already staggered to his feet, and Davis had no choice but to help him navigate the rubble until they reached the street.

A/N: And there you have it! Once again, my sincerest apologies for the wait, but school swallowed me. College and work and people… I can only really write during fall break, winter break, spring break, and the season of summer. This chapter is largely a product of fall break. I'm afraid it will be December or January before I can update again most likely. I am sorry and implore your patience! Reviews always encourage me to sit down at the keyboard and write!