The next morning, Devlin wanders down to breakfast in his pajamas, something that has become routine after his transformation, and sits down silently. Alexandra got up early to make his favorite breakfast and Remus gives him a warm smile over his coffee. Harry waits for his son to look at him. He wants to see his green eyes.

"Morning," the boy says softly, still staring at the table.

"Good morning, Devy!" Emma says enthusiastically. She bounces in her seat.

The boy just sighs and buries his head in his arms, which wasn't uncommon this day of the month, either.

"How are you feeling?" Harry asks, unable to remain patient any longer.

Finally, Devlin looks up at him and there are his green eyes. After his transformation, they are always pure green. As if the wolf, having gotten his day, slinks back to rest.

"I'm alright. Tired." Harry nods.

"Ah, do you, erm, remember yesterday?"

Green eyes move sluggishly back to him.

"Yes."

"Falling off your broom and stuff?"

"Yes."

"Erm, growling at us, too?"

"Yes."

"And-"

"I remember everything, Dad. Just like he's gonna remember this."

"Oh, alright. I was just wondering." Harry smiles brightly. Devlin, he swears, rolls his eyes.

"Of course you were. Just like Snape had to ask all those bloody questions."

"Ooooh, mum, Devlin said a bad word!" Emma is pointing her finger at Devlin, who just stares at her tiredly.

"Yes well, we'll let Devlin slip this time Emma. He's very sick and very tired."

"Oh, alright mummy."

OoOoOoO

Every morning, Harry Potter waits impatiently for Devlin to climb down the stairs, to sit down at the table, and to glance in his direction. Every day, he wonders if those eyes will ever be all amber again. It has become a pattern now. Sometimes Harry thinks he could tell you how many days are left until the full moon by how much green is left in Devlin's eyes. Yet there is always green.

Months pass uninterrupted this way.

Devlin seems more certain of their love for him than ever. He never asks about the letter or the journal. He smiles and laughs with Emma. He has befriended the staff at the bakery, just like when he was little.

And then one night this normalcy (oh how his Aunt would cringe at Harry's use of this word) shatters abruptly. Harry and Alex are re-warding the house, something they do every month or so, picking a new set of wards to redo (because they never, ever take them all down). They vanish all traces of magic in the hallways and bedrooms, in order to redo them. It is that moment, when everything seems to be going according to plan, when they hear the scream.

Harry knows it is Devlin's and he rushes to his door. At first it sounds like the boy when he is having a seizure, but then he realizes it is different. It isn't the sound of pain; it is the sound of torture. Like the scream of that little Bowman boy, as he'd coward in the corner near his father's body. Like pure fear.

He reaches for the knob, but the very touch of it burns his hand. Obviously, they'd taken down a silencing charm in their re-warding. Alexandra is next to him in an instant.

For one moment, the screams stop. Harry and Alex look at each other. Both know it isn't a good sign.

"No, help him! Help him!" Devlin cries out, obviously sobbing.

Harry withdraws his wand and curses the door and it slams open, off its hinges. Zee looks up from his place curled against the boy.

"It can't be that unusual if he's not reacting…" Alexandra whispers, reaching out to Devlin.

"Get away from me! Get away!" The boy is scrambling into the corner of his bed, still clearly dreaming. "Get away!"

"Devlin?" The dog is looking at them, his head half cocked.

His eyes snap open. They are feverish and pure amber. Harry's breath catches in his throat.

"Get away from me! Get him away! Let him go!" Those amber eyes may be open, but they aren't staring at Harry or Alex.

"Devlin, you're dreaming."

"Please, save him!"

And now the boy is clawing at himself, red lines appearing down the length of his arms. When he reaches for his face, Alex grabs him.

"No," she says, very softly. He cowers back.

"Please, save him. Get him away from me…please…"

Harry isn't sure what to do. The boy is awake, yet obviously he isn't. He's speaking to them as if they are part of his dream.

"Devy?" Harry spins around to see Emma in her nightgown. For a moment Devlin's eyes, or perhaps the wolf's eyes, focus on her. He whimpers.

"Go away, Emma. Run! Run!"

"Devy?" She's crying, clearly not understanding what is going on.

"Get her away from me! Get away Emma! I'll hurt you! Please don't let me hurt her!"

"I won't let you hurt her," Harry says firmly, stepping into his line of sight.

"You shouldn't be here. No one should be here. Get away. I'll hurt you."

Alexandra is the first one to understand.

"Devlin, you're a little boy. Look, you have hands!" She holds his hands in front of his face, using them to pat his face. "You're a boy, not a wolf."

The amber eyes look up and seem to at last focus completely. Yet, there is no green. His shoulders slump.

"I had a night-mover."

"A what?" Harry asks.

"Something you see at night, but isn't there, that makes you move. Like chasing something." Harry blinks a couple times, than realizes that, to the wolf, a dream must be altogether different. Like Zee, flat on his side, running wildly in his sleep.

"It's not real," Alexandra says softly.

"It's real. Just not happening anymore," the boy (or wolf), says softly. He breathes deeply, slumping against the headboard.

"What was it about?" Emma asks, coming all the way into the room.

"Can't tell you," he breathes.

"You can tell me, Devlin. I tell you my nightmares."

And perhaps it is her innocence or her age or something altogether different, but Devlin actually leans forward, towards her.

"You think I can keep you safe," he says sorrowfully, each word like it's being dragged from his gut. "If only you knew that I can't keep anyone safe."

"You kept me safe-"

But Devlin has scampered forward to the edge of his bed, to mere inches from Emma's face, and he is breathing heavily. He looks at her brokenly.

"Hush," he says gently. Emma nods slowly and a look of resoluteness passing across her face. Harry reminds himself to ask Emma about this later.

"You can still tell me," she whispers, while her parents stand silently, hoping she will succeed where they are sure they will fail.

"Yeah, I could tell you. I could tell you all about it, and then you could come whimpering and crying back to me for months on end from nightmares I gave you."

Emma shrinks back a little.

"You're being mean, Devy," she says.

"I'm being truthful."

Before she can start crying, Alex puts her hands onto Emma's shoulders and whispers words to her as she leads her out of the room. 'Devlin must be very scared right now, Emma. Let him talk to Daddy.' Devlin growls lowly at their departure.

"I'm not scared," he seethes.

"Emma doesn't need to know it isn't her Devlin," Harry says, matter of factly.

Devlin's amber eyes come back to him and he sighs.

"No, I suppose not. She's only a child."

"It's no where near your time," Harry points out, gently.

"It was, in my boys dream!" He says defensively.

"Who where you trying to save?"

"I don't know. I don't remember it well."

"Another werewolf?"

"Perhaps. I can't be sure."

"You're being evasive."

"Really? You caught onto that? I'm impressed."

"Stop being rude."

The nine year old glares up at him.

"Stop speaking to me about things neither one of wants to remember, then."

"No."

Another glare.

"I want you to calm down."

"Why ever would you want that?"

"Because the sooner you calm down, the sooner I can talk to the boy who actually had the nightmare."

Something in the wolf seems to be hurt by this notion.

"He might be the one who had the nightmare, sir, but I am the one who did it."

"Did what?"

He opens his mouth, but then suddenly stops.

"How clever. I'm quicker than that, though."

"I know. Would you like some hot coco?"

"Don't you want to save that for my boy?"

"It sounds like I misunderstood – you're both upset right now." Something softens in those amber eyes. Harry wonders how long the wolf has had to be the strongest force in Devlin. Has had to protect him.

Severus said this was highly unusual. That something had happened to Devlin's brain to take down the separation between Devlin and his wolf. 'The only reason they don't compete constantly is probably simply that the werewolf would prefer the company of it's own kind and avoids being the dominant force'.

While Harry thought Severus might be onto something, Harry thinks he isn't quite right. Harry remembers the look of complete horror and fear and protectiveness that had overtaken Remus the first time, after he'd bitten Devlin, that the boy had scraped his knee and there had been blood.

Remus' eyes had gone almost-all amber and he had practically pushed Alexandra away from the boy, so he could see him and hold him. And every time Devlin would let out a whimper, Remus would twitch.

"If you told me, I could help," he says softly, as he leads them down the hallway.

"No one can help me," his child whispers, amber eyes wet with tears. Briefly Harry wonders how much Severus would pay him for these tears. Harry would pay him a million Gallions to make them disappear. "I have done horrible things."

"You are a child who was kidnapped by a monster. He made you do things. I understand. I won't think you're horrible. You had no choice."

"He doesn't see it that way," his child says, looking at his feet as Harry pours milk into two mugs.

"Devlin, you mean?"

"Yes."

"How does he see it?"

"As something we should have prevented or stopped."

"Like Maria Watson?"

"Yes."

"But something got in your way of preventing or stopping this?"

Now those tears are falling, one after another, quicker and quicker. From between his lips comes a whimper that Harry would have thought came from Zee, except that the boy was right there and Zee wasn't in the kitchen at all.

"I got in the way. Me." And his lip quivers. "He doesn't understand really, how little I can control, because we've always had that potion."

And suddenly, even though the boy hasn't come out and said it directly, Harry realizes what he must mean. Voldemort had skipped a dose of Wolfsbane on purpose. For a purpose.

"He thinks that if we tried hard enough, I'd be able to stop, but I can't. I couldn't stop. I couldn't think. Not thinking made me so dizzy."

The boy twitches. Harry's glad he hasn't handed the boy the hot coco yet.

"My boy doesn't want me to tell you. He's mad at me."

"You can help me, help him," Harry whispers, leaning down so that they're eye to eye. "He can stop having nightmares about it. Stop being hurt by it."

"Like the Maria girl?"

"Yes, like her."

"But you can't fix this."

"Maybe not…but we can help him see that it was something done to you, not that you had a choice about."

His child breathes heavily before him, his chest rising and falling and his teeth clattering as the sobs escape him. Harry draws him against his body and holds him there. He slumps against him.

"I bit a boy," he chokes. "They put him in there. They wanted me to bite him."

"Why?" Harry tries desperately to keep his voice even.

"We never knew," he says, sobbing in earnest. "Until he saw the paper."

"What about the paper?"

His teeth are clattering and he stalls several times as he tries to talk.

"Every wolf has a pack," he says bracingly, as if he has to force each word through his throat. "And each pack smells a certain way. It's how we know we belong..."

…and Remus would have been able to tell him if the boy didn't smell like his pack...

Harry drew in a stabilizing breath. Devlin biting the boy had been what had made it foolproof, because it had even fooled Remus. It had been another check on the chart: werewolf.

"This isn't something you have to be ashamed about, or afraid about. This is something Voldemort forced you to do. This is not something you chose to do."

"I know." But it is those amber eyes looking up at him and Harry wishes it were those green. He wishes Devlin knew, too.

Harry guides him over to a chair and lifts him onto it. He slides the hot coco in front of his space.

"Am I really mad?" His son asks, wiping away the tears. "Sometimes I think something is very wrong with me, to be able to sit down at a table with a human, but then I look at my hands, and I'm one too."

Harry swallows.

"Severus suspects there is a magical division in the brain between the werewolf and the human and that you withstanding Crucio broke down your 'separation'. He thinks that your shared magic knew that in order to survive, you had to be one, because separately you were both broken."

"Then why am I sometimes just me?"

"Severus says it is no longer a magical separation. He believes that sometimes you or sometimes Devlin 'block' the other out. Like Occlumency preformed within your brain. You each share memories after all."

"If that were true, then Devlin could have saved that boy."

"It's possible that all of the seizures have since made the 'oneness' worse."

"So if I were the wolf and that boy was here now, now Devlin might be able to save him?"

"Yeah, maybe. That's what Severus thinks, anyways."

"Severus does a lot of thinking…"

Harry laughs.

"Did you know, that my boy knows something about that man?" He is smiling now, a small twisted small that makes Harry wonder what Devlin knows about Severus Snape.

"Oh?"

"Mmmm, he once fancied a…what does he call them, a girl who didn't know she was a witch."

"A muggle born?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know Severus ever fancied anyone, to be honest."

"The dark man's people say he has a thing for red heads or 'a red head'."

"Is that so?" Harry murmured, sipping his coco. He really had little interest in Snape's 'type' but if this was what his son was willing to share about his time with Voldemort right now, he'd damn well listen. He wouldn't have Devlin, or the wolf, ever thinking he didn't want to hear about his time with Voldemort.

"And green eyes." His son is observing him with a small smile, as if waiting for his response. It is a look his mother wears, when she is waiting for him to figure something out. Harry finally takes a sip of coco, which had been frozen at his lips.

"Green eyes, you say?"

"Mmmhmmm," the boy says, that smile still clinging to his lips.

"You're not going to make me guess are you?" He asks, setting the cup down and leaning forward, even though he thinks the answer is going to make him feel nauseous.

"It would be more fun," he points out, taking a gulp of coco.

"Not for me."

"That's probably true."

"So will you just tell me?"

"No. I'll get in trouble."

"With who?" His voice goes up a bit at the end. Now he's thinking about the possibility and it is making every single nerve of his taunt with uncertainty and anxiety.

"With my boy, of course. I just wondered if you knew, was all."

Harry thinks that the wolf is what had given his sweet little three year old his sneaky, mischievous, taunting side.

OoOoO

The next morning, Harry waits impatiently at the table for his green-eyed son, but he never comes.

"Devlin says he's not hungry," Emma reports, when Harry asks her if she's seen Devlin.

"Did he seem sick?"

"Mmm, no. Grumpy I think." She puts another piece of bacon into her mouth.

"I'll go talk to him."

But there is a hand on his shoulder. It's Alexandra.

"Harry, I think he probably is trying to avoid you. He's not going to react well to you coming into his room. Just let him be. He'll come down, even if it's after Sirius and Remus get here."

"You mean after I'm gone?"

"Oh, you're right, you would be then, wouldn't you?" She smiles a bit, and leans over and kisses him. "Now get to work."

Grumbling, he gets up and heads towards the floo.

Sitting on the stairs as he passes, is his son, his green eyes sullen and hurt.

"Hi, Devlin," he says, trying to smile comfortingly.

"I don't want to talk to you," he whispers, an edge of sharp hurt, squeezing Harry's heart.

"Alright. I'm off to work. Mum has breakfast for you. I love you." Those green eyes, those pure, green eyes, looks away from him. Harry takes his leave, sighing heavily.

oOoOo

"Hey, sweetie."

Devlin sits down at the table.

"Devlin?"

"Mmm?"

"Sirius and Remus will be over today."

"I know. I heard."

"Alright. It's Emma's school's reopening. So I'm going to take her to school once Sirius gets here."

"Alright." He spares Emma a glance. She is biting her lip. He sighs and dredges up the energy to lean close to her. "It'll be alright, Emma," he whispers to her, trying to sound comforting.

"I know," she says, but her voice is small, uncertain and fearful. She really doesn't know.

"You know it will be alright. Remember?"

Her hand comes up to her neck and she rubs at it absently.

"I remember," she says, sounding a bit more confident.

"Good."

He goes back to staring at his food, not sure if he can stomach any of the breakfast.

Upcoming:

"See, that's why we're different. I couldn't have ever 'told' it to save me. There were plenty of times that Dudley caught me, or Aunt Petunia gave me hideous clothes, or someone called my parent's good-for-nothing-drunks, but I didn't always disapperate, or change the clothing, or blow the nay-sayers up like a balloon."

"Did you ever blow someone up like a balloon?" He asks incredulously.

"Oh yeah, I did!" He smiles sheepishly. "Don't tell your mum I told you that, though. She'll think I'm feeding you inappropriate ideas."