He felt like he was falling, air pressing around him until his chest ached. He should breathe, but his lungs had simply stopped working. A shiver ran up his spine and for a moment he felt a thrill of fear that he would start shaking all over again, but in the next moment he remembered that didn't happen anymore - the double dose of potion would prevent another episode for at least the next six hours. He could still taste the foulness of the potion in his tightening throat - no better than the vomit that had occupied it beforehand.

The paper shook in his hands as his body shook from lack of air. Sometimes, when he was startled and full of that feeling of unknowing, he liked to feel anything else in it's extreme. If he were home he would have found someone to duel.

His magic whipped around him, forcing his lungs open in self-defense of itself. Sometimes he felt his magic had more of a desire for life than he himself did, but since his magic was an extension of himself, some part of him must agree with it. He always supposed it was that part that kept him alive, because there was plenty of other parts that had just wanted to give in.

It must have also been that part of him that had made him try to run away at all - that part that had been certain Harry Potter would find him if he did. That part that the other parts of him had ridiculed and called foolish for believing that at all. But that part had been right all along.

It hadn't been Dubhán himself who had failed, but Voldemort who had made sure his plan wouldn't work. Even so, Potter had found him. Found him without the muggles memories. Found him despite Voldemort's efforts.

He folded the paper along it's crease lines, frowning in puzzlement at the triangular shape it had made.

Airplane,his mind whispered, like it sometimes did when faced with things Voldemort would never have found it necessary for him to know. A paper airplane.

He held it between his fingers, so that the T shape from behind was visible and then threw it into the air. The charm that had once been spread across the paper was long gone and it simply arced in the air and fell to the floor. He rose from the bed to fetch the paper, feeling a need to keep it safe just as the man had kept it all these years.

He tucked the paper airplane into his cloak pocket, next to the picture of Emma and he that he had concealed as a plain dogeared paper with the note 'fear is for lesser beings than I' written over and over again - a thing Dubhán felt certain he could explain to Grandfather.

"Devlin?" He turned around on his heel, but it was only the man. He stood in the doorway, a sad sort of smile on his face with his hands tucked in his pockets. His eyes flickered over to the box still on the bed. "Did you rest?"

"No," he said. The sharpness remained, but the harshness was gone from his voice. The man frowned.

"Why not?" There was concern and fear and worry and - Dubhán couldn't identify all of the emotions that seemed to be permanently housed in Harry Potter's eyes.

He wanted to say something witty. Something Potter would remember like Dubhán would always remember that proof, but he couldn't think of what that something would be. So he simply shrugged.

Potter frowned again.

"Dinner will be ready soon," he said quietly - like he thought any volume at all would cause Dubhán to begin shaking again.

"Alright," he said and cringed at the complete lack of that something that he had been trying to put into his words.

The man - Potter - Harry...shifted by the door awkwardly. Dubhán fiddled with the clasp of his cloak, still slung over the back of the chair.

"Sir?" He tried not to cringe at the word that seemed so far from what Potter was. Dubhán wasn't ready to call him Potter or Harry aloud.

"Yes?"

"Do you think, after dinner perhaps, we could have a word?"

He glanced up to observe Potter's reaction.

"Sure. About what?"

"I'm not completely sure, sir." Which was a lie, but he wasn't completely ready to commit to his desire to tell the man not all of his papers had been dead ends, so he wouldn't tell the man his intentions ahead.

"Yeah, you can help me with a couple chores after dinner, alright?"

He would take what he could get, so he nodded. Besides, if the man was busy, it might make it a little easier to speak with him than if his attention, like right now, was unnervingly undivided.

"Would you like me to take the box away?" Potter asked, motioning with his head to the box on the bed.

"No," Dubhán said quickly - too quickly, because Potter's brow was arching in surprise. "I'm not done with it..." The man had said he could keep the box!

"No problem," Potter said, sounding reassuring. Dubhán nodded. "Lets get some dinner, alright?"

Dinner, itself, was an awkward affair. The lady hadn't cooked it, to begin with. Emma ate it with excitement and called it 'Chinese food', but Dubhán simply eyed it skeptically.

"It's not poisoned," the man said, with some level of humor. "It's just Muggle food. Try it - if you don't like it I'll make you a sandwich."

Try food muggles had cooked? Grandfather would scoff at the idea. No, he would probably curse someone who had even suggested he ingest something a filthy muggle had put their hands on. Suddenly Dubhán didn't have much of an appetite, thinking of what Grandfather was like angry.

"I'm not hungry," he said softly, pushing the plate away from him. "I just...I think I'll be sick," he said.

What did you think those filthy muggles could do, Dubhán?

He stood from the table and spun on his feet, racing for the bathroom. Potter was right behind him and without much thought he left the door open. There was, of course, nothing left in his stomach from the last time, but that didn't keep his body from dry-heaving.

Potter was at the sink, wetting a towel again. He kneeled down beside him, wiping at his forehead and neck.

"You're worried about something," he said softly. Dubhán cringed away from him.

"Don't touch me," he said. "It just makes it worse."

Potter seemed to respect that, without too much hurt entering his eyes, but Dubhán didn't have much time to consider him before he felt like he'd be sick again.

"How about a potion?"

Dubhán shook his head.

"Not supposed to take potions for this," he said, each word said quickly between heaves. "It interferes with the seizure draught," he added, so the man was certain to understand.

Potter frowned and worried his bottom lip for a moment.

"Well then, there's nothing to it except to tell me what's bothering you."

He looked at him incredulously - firstly at his seeming-certainty that he would tell, secondly because it seemed obvious to him that he was in a less than good position to spill secrets.

"Calm down, Devlin," he said softly, imploring him to listen. He reached out to touch him, his gaze connected with his, pleading him to trust him. Dubhán held his tongue and Potter brushed his hand through his hair. All the nerves on his skull which he didn't think he had burst to life and he shivered with something in between pleasure and surprise. "You've got to calm down."

His hands were on him now, pulling him away from the toilet. Dubhán nearly said the words he could tell Potter was pleading him not to: don't touch me, but he bit down on his tongue.

"Shh, no one here cares and I promise I won't tell - even under torture." Potter used wandless magic to close the door and then he found himself leaning against Potter, with Potter's arms around him. He could hear the thump-thump-thump of Potter's heart. He sat frozen for a minute, trying to will himself to struggle but feeling a creeping calm overtake him that made it hard to will himself to do anything.

"When you were small and you got scared, you'd always get sick. You're mum could never get to you to calm down - you weren't like Emma who would melt at the sound of a lullaby. The only thing that calmed you down was magic. I used to show you tricks and you used to try to copy them."

"I know," Dubhán said, although the vague recollections felt like they had happened a million years ago to an entirely different boy from some different world.

"Do you think you could help me with those chores, now?" He asked, his chin in the nape of Dubhán's neck, his voice right by his ear. He nodded. Potter helped him up and then stood himself.

"You'll need your cloak," he said and smiled at Dubhán's confusion. "I'll meet you in the kitchen, alright?"

So he went to retrieve his dragon-hide cloak and then went down to the kitchen. Emma was questioning Potter and she caught his presence mid-sentence about something being 'unfair'.

"You can help me another time, Emma," Potter said, and he motioned for him to follow him outside.

Was this a trick? A test? Or was Potter really this foolish?

Dubhán had no intention of escaping, but surely Potter didn't know that. Nevertheless, Dubhán followed him onto the back deck without uttering his thoughts aloud.

"We have to go to the shed," he said, pointing to a small building set near the back of the yard. Dubhán couldn't think of what someone would want in such a dingy looking shed, but he chose to keep these thoughts to himself, as well.

"Alright," he said instead. They crossed the yard in silence, Dubhán's thoughts compacting and expanding in his mind - making a mess.

Finally, they reached the door and Potter pulled it open. Inside it was bigger than it appeared - much bigger. It was dimly lit and so warm that had Dubhán's cloak not had regulating charms on it, he would have been pulling it off in a hurry. The left right wall was lined with clear bins and as he stepped forward he realized that whatever was in them was talking.

Food. Feeding. The man with the stick.

The odd comments continued from the boxes as Potter took off his leather jacket and hung it on a hook by the door, all the while watching him intently.

"Still think you can help me?" He asked.

"What do you want me to help you with?" He asked, but the confusion only made Potter smirk. "What have you got in there?" He asked, pointing to the boxes. Was it lost souls? Shrunken prisoners? What was speaking?

"Why do you ask?" He said, grinning. Dubhán swallowed past his drying throat. Perhaps Potter wasn't as good as everyone else seemed to think...

"Because...they're talking...whatever they are..."

"And he was afraid to have you around Nagini," Potter said, with forced casualty. "They're only snakes. Here, I'll show you my favorite."

But Dubhán didn't move to follow him across the room. He was frozen with amazement for a moment. Snakes? He could understand them?

Potter brought a small one over to him. It was jewel blue with bright yellow eyes. "It is almost as rare as a Basilisk," Potter said. It slithered between his fingers silently, then suddenly it seemed to sense his presence, it's small tongue flickering in and out rapidly.

"I smell a child," it hissed, looking directly at him. "Does he speak?"

"Speak to her, Devlin," Harry said, managing to force himself to speak English.

Dubhán looked up at him, lost in a sense of bewilderment.

"Just stare at her while you speak - you won't be able to help yourself right now."

So he did.

"Hello," but instead of hearing hissing he just heard himself, and frowned. It clearly hadn't worked. Potter was laughing.

"I forgot to tell you that it would sound just like English," the man said. "I didn't even know I was speaking it until the whole of Hogwarts saw me and told me!"

Somehow Dubhán had expected Harry Potter to hate that he could speak to snakes (and how Harry could, Dubhán wasn't quite sure), but instead the man seemed to be undisturbed by his Slytherin qualities. Dubhán still half-expected that the man was playing a trick on him. If he couldn't tell he was speaking Parseltongue, then how would he ever know Potter wasn't just fooling him?

"Hello, speaking child," the snake said, rising it's head into the air, it's tail curling around Potter's fingers. Dubhán looked at Potter.

"He is feeling like a hatchling," Potter said, and Dubhán wanted to be furious. But then Potter was swallowing and shaking himself and saying: "There is no word for 'shy' or 'uncertain' in Parseltongue that she will understand."

"My doing?"

Dubhán had never liked people talking about him as if he weren't there.

"I am merely-" but when he wanted to say 'surprised' it came as "startled" instead. "I did not know I could speak snake," he added. The little blue snake flicked it's tongue in and out, in and out.

"You smell like you can," it said, "the man does not. He smells like just a man."

Parseltongue had a smell? He looked at Potter, but he shrugged. Dubhán was reminded of what Grandfather had once told him about snakes - that they would find him and talk to him.

"So you are calling him smelly?" Potter asked, laughing at the end.

"Yess," the snake said, but she seemed to have taken the question literally and didn't seem to catch onto the humor at all. "He's more a speaker than you."

Potter nodded, but a doubt had reentered his eyes that Dubhán had seen there before but been unable to quantify the purpose.

"I will be feeding in a moment," he said to the snake as he turned around to put her back.

"So, still want to help me?" Potter asked, his eyes on him, speaking English.

"Yes, and talk," he said, but his eyes had been wandering and he decided that he must have been speaking Parseltongue from the slight tip of Harry's head.

"You have to make sure you're looking at a person if there are snakes around and you want to speak English. I can only speak Parseltongue when I can see a snake, in fact."

"Is that true for everyone?" He asked, frowning. Potter shrugged, seeming to dismiss the question, but then he turned around before sticking his hand into an opaque bin and answered.

"No, it's not. I suspect it's because as the snake said - I am less a speaker. Voldemort can speak it mostly freely. His mothers side of the family hardly spoke English at all, from what I have been told."

He pulled a mouse out by it's tail and deposited in the furthest bin.

"Think you can grab one? Talk to the snake before you put it in, some are venomous but they won't bite you if you talk to them."

Inside of the opaque bin (which he suspected wasn't clear so the snakes couldn't see in) were dozens of mice. The box was under wizard-space spells, enlarging it despite it's true physical dimensions. He reached in, caught one as Harry had by the tail, and then transferred it to a more firm grip between his hands. It scurried and scratched against his skin.

He chose to feed it to yellow and black snake, that was slithering in anticipation by the side of it's glass.

"I'm going to feed you, don't bite me."

The snake paused in it's endless slithering long enough to flick it's tongue out at him.

"Why would I bite you? I cannot swallow a giant. Give me the tiny mouse."

So Dubhán put the mouse into the container. He was about to move when Potter came up behind him and made a quick X on the cage with his wand, probably to signify it had been fed.

"The bigger they are, the more they seem to get things - like sarcasm. Albert - I only name the ones that say funny things to me - likes to be especially sarcastic." There was a smile on Potter's face. "I'll do the marks for you if you just tell me which you've fed."

They went to the mouse cage together, but after Dubhán had fed another snake he made sure to mark the cage with his finger. It looked just the same as Potter's mark, but was gold instead of Potter's blue.

Potter went automatically over to the cage he had just left to mark it, only to physically halt in front of the cage, looking bewildered.

"So, ah, what did you want to talk about?" He asked, seeming to shake away his surprise.

Dubhán felt nervousness flutter in his stomach and he almost shrugged and denied his request, but something in him felt compelled. Don't think, don't feel - just do what has to be done.

"About those papers," he said, trying to sound casual as they caught mice together again. Potter happened to catch two and passed one along to him. He knew that curiosity must be biting at Potter's stomach - or perhaps just dread, Dubhán couldn't be sure, but he admired the man's determination to play along with his casualness as they parted ways to feed the mice to another two snakes.

"What interested you about them?" Potter asked, as they headed to the mice again.

Dubhán waited until they had parted ways again to answer.

"He told me you forgot, but those papers...they prove you didn't." Potter seemed to have no answer - or at least no comment he wished to share - so Dubhán pushed ahead. "They were important to you," he said, letting the statement hang in the air between them as the question it really was.

"Very important. They were my hope that one day I would find you."

"But you would let me keep them-"

"I would do anything for you to see that we did not abandon you, Devlin."

Dubhán knew Potter had meant well with his interruption, but somehow the words seemed harder to say when they weren't buried in the middle of a sentence. He fidgeted.

Potter looked down at his watch.

"Lets go inside. Emma will be in bed now - Alex will be reading her a story."

Dubhán wasn't sure what he felt about that, but if he protested he was afraid he'd lose more of this courage, so he simply followed Potter out of the shed. Potter laid his leather jacket across the table and motioned for Dubhán to sit down.

"I've been treating you like a child," Potter said, as he rummaged through the 'refrigerator'. "You're mum says it's a mistake. So if you want to have a conversation, we'll have one like I would with a friend."

He slid a cold glass bottle across the table to him, keeping one in his own hands as he seated himself across from him. Dubhán turned the bottle of 'Butter Beer'. He'd had one before, once or twice at the Malfoy Manor or Bella's house. It was the pretend grown-up drink that he was always offered while Grandfather sipped whisky and Malfoy drank Rum.

"Want some help?" Potter asked, after he's swallowed a sip. Dubhán shook his head and uncorked the bottle. It was cold with a smooth flavor going down. "So, what about the papers?"

He avoided Potter's gaze as he reached into his cloak pocket, trying to keep his eye on the man's hands rather than his face. He drew out the folded piece of paper, still in the form of a paper airplane, and smoothed it out on the table top.

When he chanced a glance up at Potter's face it was to be met with confusion and fear and a bit of dread.

"What did you do when you got this report?" He asked, passing the paper across the table. Potter stared at it for a long moment, his eyes flittering across the words a couple times.

"I did what I did for every report - I went to investigate. In this case I went to the bakery and talked to the young lady and she said the same thing as the police - that there had been a boy, but that when they called they hadn't said dark hair and eyes, but blonde with blue eyes and that after the police came, the boys father showed up, searching door to door for him. I forget how the boy had been split from his father. There is another folder in the box with my investigations," Potter tapped the top of the page where he had scrawled a set of number. "I linked them through codes."

"You investigated every one of them?" Dubhán asked, thinking back to the box full of the papers. He took another sip of the drink to distract himself from the way his chest was feeling especially constricted.

Potter nodded.

"Were you just wondering about what I did with them?" He asked, eying him - measuring his success or failure to do what Dubhán had wanted.

"No," Dubhán said, more softly than he thought he had said the word to the man before. "No, I wanted..." he turned away, frowning.

"I'd never been under Imperio before," he said instead, as he turned back to the man, careful to avoid his direct gaze. "He warned me - he always did before he did something like that, but it was the first time, so I didn't know and I kept begging those men not to let him take me. I told them he wasn't my father and they stepped in front of me, but they're just muggles and muggles can't do a thing against our magic. He silenced them and held them still and then he told me not to make it difficult. He made them forget all about me, I thought. Then he turned to me and I thought...I thought maybe he'd make me forget all about it too, one way or another, but he didn't. He made me walk to him and everything was light and good and I was happy - until I wasn't, but by then I knew I couldn't change that I had failed."

He felt breathless and when he drew in air it hurt, making his whole body shudder. Potter was frozen across from him. His was face pale and unbelieving, his hands trembling on his butter beer, while his eyes grew darker with something Dubhán couldn't identify but knew he wished weren't there.

"That was you," Potter said, tapping the paper as if to clarify they really were talking about the same thing. Dubhán nodded, trying to push himself to watch Potter's reactions. He let the butter beer go and now had his head in his hands. His fingers had pushed aside his fringe, making the scar that made him so famous visible. Dubhán had never really seen it before and found himself facinated for a moment.

"You tried to escape?" He let his eyes trail back down to the entirety of Potter's face, finding that the man's eyes were wet with unshed tears, his hands clenched into fists atop the table, and his jaw tight.

"I did escape," he said, because it was a distinction he felt was important. He hadn't failed entirely. "But then he found me."

Potter was fingering the paper, eyes glued to the words.

"You were there. I- I should have known this one was real..."

Dubhán frowned and felt a little bit of anger bloom in his chest. He had pushed himself - made him do something that felt especially unnatural for him and reached out to Potter believing that he would get an entirely different reaction than he was. He had wanted Potter to be happy, but instead he seemed to have made the man more depressed than before.

"How...how did you escape?" He asked, after emptying his bottle.

Dubhán smirked.

"You and he would both like to know - and maybe he already does, but I'm not going to actually say it out loud - it is my secret."

Potter frowned at his comment - or perhaps his expression - but didn't press him.

"We're all entitled to our secrets," Potter said, and there was such a poignancy about his words that Dubhán wondered what secrets Potter kept from the world.

"I agree," he said adamantly, thinking of all of his.

It was as he said this that they both heard the creak at the top of the stairs and then, moments later, the lady was standing in the doorway.

"Emma is asleep," she said, dressed in a white gown, her red locks tucked away in a braid. "Now it is your turn, Devlin."

He wasn't sure where he would have gone with the man afterwards - probably into the realm of emotions and since he had no experience in that area and it made him so uncomfortable, he chose not to argue with the lady. She had just given him a wonderful escape - something Dubhán had learned never to throw away.

"Alright," he said and picked up his bottle to drown the rest. Maybe it would stop the nightmares - Geoffrey said sometimes that was how he stopped a bad dream. He eyed the paper and then pulled it gently away from the man, unwilling to give it up, even as he saw the man's desire to keep it as well. But Dubhán did not offer and the man did not object.

He climbed the stairs by himself, found his room, removed his shoes, changed into a pair of hideously bright sleep clothes and lay in bed. He was sleep in moments.

Downstairs, Harry eyed Alexandra leaning in the doorframe as she eyed the path their son had just taken up the stairs. He got up to put the bottles in the trash when he noticed a stray piece of Emma's drawing paper on the floor. Zee would eat it during the night (he had a thing for parchment) so he picked it up now. Except it wasn't one of Emma's papers. It was far too old and dogeared and it had a much more elegant script covering it. Fear is for lesser beings than I.

"I'm going to bed, Harry," she said and he knew the day had been too much for her, or she would have noticed and asked after what was in his hands.

"Sure baby - I'll be up in a couple minutes."

She was already turning around when she called him a liar, but there was affection and bemusement in her voice so he merely smiled at her back. When he heard their door open (she would leave it open until he came in), he turned back to the paper.

He might have just put the paper aside for Devlin to get in the morning (no matter how much he wanted to burn the words on it), but Hermione had drilled in his head to always test things like this, so he did. Ink swirled, compacting and expanding until it formed the picture that had sat for years on Devlin's bedside table.

He felt his breath hitch in his throat. Suddenly he knew and it was with this knowing filling him that he threw powder into the floo and shouted for Sirius. The man came running into the living room in just his boxers, eyes wild and alert.

"What's wrong? Whose hurt? Do you need me? I'll be right there-"

"I need to talk to the Death Eater," Harry said, his voice a breath of surprise and awe with a deadly edge that Sirius did not miss. He stepped aside to let Harry enter.

"What's he done, Harry? What did Devlin tell you?"

"This isn't about something Devlin told me," he said, "I just need to talk to him. I suspect he lied about a small detail..."

Sirius growled but let Harry by. Harry was well aware the two didn't get along.

The Death Eater was sitting up in his barebones room at his desk. The observation orb that would let another Order member watch him from afar while Sirius slept, hovered in the center of his room. Harry tapped it with his wand and the magical light emanating from it vanished. The Death Eater turned around more fully at the action, arching his brow.

"Did you want to speak to me privately, Mr. Potter?" There was a dash of fear in his amber brown eyes.

"Yes, in fact I did." The fear increased.

"What about, if I may ask?"

"About a photograph of a boy that was found in your robes," he said, his voice deadly as he sat himself on the immaculately made bed. His wand was drawn, laying in his lap casually. The werewolf had noticed, he was sure.

"What about the photograph of the boy?"

"You said that another Death Eater had taken it," he said, fiddling with his wand.

"Yes, I do believe I did. But if we are going to throw around quotes perhaps it would be wisest to review the interrogation in a pensieve."

"No, I don't think that will be necessary."

The werewolf swallowed.

"Tell me who you took it from."

"I told you I couldn't quite recall," he said delicately. "It was years ago."

"You said it was a Death Eater - but you lied, didn't you?"

"It was years ago," he said again, "I can't quite recall. There are many pictures of the boy." The Death Eater's eyes narrowed at his clear surprise. "Perhaps Voldemort himself took that picture to document the bruise and handed it to me and I forgot," he offered, trying to appease him with another lie.

"We both know that isn't true," He said, trying to inject just a tiny bit of kindness into his tired voice. "We both know who put it there."

"Then why are you here, in the middle of the night, asking me?"

"Because I have to know."

"Well then, I am sure to disappoint you, Mr. Potter - since I cannot be certain myself. All I know is that I hung my robes up after the Dark Lord took me off of active duty and have only worn them briefly through the years. The night you caught me was the first time I had worn them outside of a Death Eater camp. I was as surprised to find it there as yourself."

He turned away from the werewolf to look at the picture in his hands, still dusted with Devlin's magic.

"You feel you can be certain?" Asked the Death Eater, his voice oddly tight. Downstairs he could hear voices - most likely whoever had the responsibility of watching Geoffrey had come when the orb had been turned off.

"Yes," he said, rubbing his thumb across the picture.

"He tried to escape once," Geoffrey said, his voice oddly soft and tight. Harry looked up at him, searching his face as if he might be able to see the memory through them, but he had never been any good at Legilimency. "When the Dark Lord dragged him back...it was one of the only times I feared for the boys life."

"Had you been tied to the boy magically at the time?"

The Death Eater swallowed visibly, averting his gaze - which was all the answer Harry had needed.

"I knew," the Death Eater said, looking at his hands. Harry could hear the footfalls climbing the stairs and wanted to shake the answer out of the Death Eater before they were interrupted. "I told the Dark Lord - doing anything else would be suicide - for both the boy and I."

Harry frowned and now the Death Eater had heard the stairs too, for he looked up, more energized than before.

"I can only tell when the boy's body gives him away - if he were capable of controlling his emotions, I wouldn't be able to tell. I had to tell the Dark Lord he had escaped even though I hadn't felt anything, because if he had known - if he had suspected the boy were as capable as he is...I was afraid he would see him less as a novel toy and more as competition."

"But you said he was dependent-"

"The boy is but-"

"Open this door!" It was Hermione, following procedure like the Know-it-all girl he had always known. He stood to comply, sending a longing look back at Geoffrey. It was times likes these that Harry thought of going rouge, because once you "worked with" a group, information that was better kept private became everyones business. No one needed to know about Devlin but Harry and Alexandra - but if he questioned Geoffrey like he were supposed too, Dumbledore, at the very least, would know as well. So he'd have to settle for the information piece-meal. In the years since Devlin's birth, he had found that he wasn't as lacking in patience as he had been as a teenager.

"We'll continue at another time - you will keep this matter...private."

The werewolf gave a nod and Harry opened the door, accepting the round of identification spells that rammed into his chest without warning. Hermione always followed the safety procedures to the T.

"What are you doing here, Harry?" She asked, a much more kind expression passing over her face. Sirius was behind her, grumbling about him 'knowing his godson without damn spells.'

"I needed to see how Geoffrey was. Devlin was worried."

Hermione frowned, but something in his face must have told her not to press his lie - just as something in her face would have done the same to him. It was at times like this that Harry knew he needed this group - needed people who could read him like a book but not judge him by what they saw.

"Alright. Well, he's obviously alright. Next time you can just floo call us and we'd tell you."

He gave a curt nod and walked past her to the stairs.

At home the door to their bedroom was open and when he peaked in, Alexandra was asleep, a halo of red hair spread out on her pillow. He moved on, finding Emma sleeping soundly in her bed, as he had expected. He inched toward Devlin's room. The door was closed and locked. Harry stood there for a moment, feeling a need to check on the boy, but also afraid that if he broke through the child's locking charm, he'd break the tiny bit of trust he had gained today. He snuck away from the door and back to Alexandra.

"Where did you go, Harry?" She asked, pulling herself against his body.

"Too perceptive, hmm?" He asked, kissing her silky hair and breathing in her scent.

"Our wards are too good, more like," she kissed his cheek and he smiled in that dizzy sort of way that her kisses always made him.

"I went to visit Sirius."

She yawned loudly, laying her head on his chest.

"The Death Eater, you mean," she murmured into his chest.

"Yeah, maybe."

"You're a horrible liar, Harry," she chided, her voice entirely too sleepy.

"I know," he said, running a hand through her hair and smiling.

"Did you get what you wanted?"

"Yes."

"You'll tell me in the morning then. I won't remember it properly right now." It wasn't a suggestion Harry knew and he drifted off to sleep trying to figure out how to tell her that he was certain it was Devlin that had planted the photo in Geoffrey's cloak.

UPCOMING:

Sometimes he thought Potter chose to live at Godric's Hallow just to show off his wife's ability with wards. It was her magic woven into every space around the building, like a thick woolen blanket. No amount of wards would change the fact that Voldemort already knew where the house was.