He found himself thinking about the boy at the most inopportune moments, like right now while the man looked at him, wondering about his next action with clear apprehension.

He was twirling his wand, just like he had the first night he had seen the boy. The boy had looked up at him, like this Auror, but unlike this man, the boys eyes had met his own.

He frowned at the pale beaten man before him. Bennington, his Death Eater's had said. He was of little importance in Voldemort's opinion - he held no true information and was especially weak for one of Potter's stock. He suspected, in fact, that he was meant merely as a distraction designed by his followers in the hope that making the man scream would improve his mood.

He flicked his wand. The Auror screamed.

The boy never screamed.

"Avada Kedavra," he said firmly, already bored. Everything was dull and boring. Every unchallenging thing brought his mind back to the boy. The boy who wouldn't scream. The boy with that something in his eyes that he had seen in his own eyes as a boy. The boy that looked just like him. The boy that followed in his wake, ever eager but not always enthralled by him. The one boy Voldemort sought to impress.

The Auror fell forward - dead. How boring. He called Nagini forward with an idle hiss and watched as she ate her dinner with no true interest.

He was thinking about the boy as he dismissed his men. Thinking about the boy as he wandered slowly to his tent. If it weren't for the boy he would be living at a manor. It had been the boy for whom he had created this place - to hide him.

Voldemort scowled and in a rash, thoughtless moment, pulled his cloak around him and swirled into nothingness.

Sometimes he thought Potter had chosen to live at Godric's Hallow just to show off. Potter and her magic were woven into every space around the building, like a thick woolen blanket. After all, the house might be well hidden, but Voldemort already knew where it was.

He could still picture how inside the door was the hallway, leading to the kitchen on one side and the living room to the other. He could still picture the layout of the upstairs hallway and the nursery.

He stared into the false image of the house, showing only a cozy house with a few lights lit and a perfectly maintained front lawn. There was a dog house out front.

I have a dog, his name is Zee.

The boys childish voice - how grating - came floating unbidden into his mind.

He gives me kisses.

'I do not care about the dog you once had, child.'

He stares at the second window on the left of the second floor.

We went in through the boys window, my Lord. It was unwarded.

Which window, Malfoy?

The second window from the left, my Lord.

Was the boy there now? Was he sleeping or was he tossing and turning against the nightmares that boiled in his sleep?

Sometimes when the boy had a nightmare Voldemort would sit there and watch him. It was the only time the boy screamed. Sometimes he would feel a small twitch catch at the edges of his lips and find himself smiling at just the idea that the boy could scream - that he had made him even if it had to be like this. The nightmares and the seizures were his mark upon the boys mind - proof that he had changed him. His. Other times he would wake the boy before he could scream, dose him with a potion, and leave him.

He reached out with one long finger and brushed the wards.

For the briefest moment he could see past the wards. His eyes flickered to the upstairs window and he felt his lips pulling back in a smile. There was the boy, staring at him with startle that he could read even this far away. Voldemort wondered what he was thinking. What had Potter told the boy about him? What had the boy told Potter about him?

The boy himself looked well, but Voldemort knew he couldn't tell from this far away. Was he well? Had he had an episode yet? Voldemort could not imagine the boy hadn't. He had tried for years to instill a calm in the boy - an ability to pull his emotions under his control. Unfortunately, the boy often wore his base emotions openly - especially stress. It was the one way the boy was not like him. He had been a natural at Occlumency, but something had always blocked the boys ability to control his own mind.

He should be Disapperating away before Potter came rushing out, but he couldn't look away. He had found himself inconveniently stuck thinking of the boy again. This inconvenient thinking had all begun with the boy, he thought caustically. War was lived in the present and he had always prided himself on living now, not in what was or might have been.

Then he had heard the boy speak - not stiffly while his wand was pointed at him - but afterwards. The cadence and flow of his words, along with the tip of his head and curve of his lips, had brought back his past. This boy, who looked just like him. Who spoke just as brilliantly. Just like him, except there was something fundamentally different about him that Voldemort had never been able to pinpoint. It was this aspect that kept him intrigued with the boy. This idea that he could have been more. That this boy was more. The only thing he could think of was the Muggles - they had taken something from him and the lack of them in the boys life, had allowed the boy to keep this elusive something.

"You are still my little dark one, Dubhán," he said and then he was gone in a whirl of vapor.

oOoOoOo

Potter woke with a start. Alexandra was already awake beside him. They looked across the bed at each other and rose with a single mind.

Alexandra went to Emma's room. Harry went to Devlin's. He felt like he was reliving a nightmare as his feet carried him away from his wife and down the hall.

"Clear," he heard Alexandra whisper, her body still halfway in Emma's room. She would remain there until he also claimed Devlin's room was clear.

It was locked, but he broke through the locks without a second thought. He hoped to find the boy asleep in his own bed, but instead he found him awake as well, staring out his window.

"Clear," Harry said automatically, because he knew Alexandra wouldn't be able to breathe until he did.

Devlin turned at the word, although Harry suspected he knew he was there the moment he undid the lock.

"Clear?" He asked, his eyes wide and flickering longingly towards his window once more.

Harry didn't know what to say. His scar was still throbbing dully, undeniable evidence about who had just disrupted the wards around his house. Alexandra wouldn't yet know that bit of information and his head throbbed behind his scar at the mere notion of telling her.

"The wards were disturbed," he said evenly, regarding the boy.

"I know," he said, one hand still on the windowpane. "It was Grandfather. I saw him...he left me here."

His voice was soft and child-like and so full of an uncertainty and want which Harry couldn't wrap his head around. Harry watched as his eyes flickered to the window again, his hand still resting against the glass.

"You saw him?" He asked, his own heart pitter-pattering feebly behind his ribcage.

Devlin looked at him again, green eyes filled with that longing and gut-wrenching hopelessness that in any other circumstance Harry felt he would know how to deal with. But these emotions froze him, because he knew at who they were directed.

"Yes, right there. He looked at me," his eyes flickered again, his hand raising from the glass just enough for a finger to curl out and point at a specific spot that Harry had little desire to see. "But he left me."

Part of Harry, a very large part, wanted to tell the boy that Voldemort had left him because the monster didn't really care about him and besides, he was safer here - but another part (smaller but more reasonable), held him back and demanded he take a calming breath instead.

"I wish it could all be different for you, Devlin," he said softly. "I wish he wasn't what he is. I wish - I wish he was just a normal wizard and we could...invite him over to dinner and to your birthdays and..." He trailed off, because there in front of him was a shadow and standing behind him was Alexandra in her night shirt (one of his own), looking to him the perfect image of the girl that had come home with their three year old son after learning the truth about her father.

Devlin was looking at her too, eyes intense upon her wide quickly-watering eyes. Harry knew she did not do well with these things. The realm of all-consuming emotions was where he, and not she, was most comfortable. Harry never felt whole unless he was feeling a multitude of things at once.

"You can't make me hate him. You don't know him like I do."

Of course Harry didn't want to make him hate the monster - he wished the child would hate him all by himself as he had every right to do.

Kidnap victims come to depend upon their captor and begin to identify with them. It will not surprise me if your son defends the actions of his captors - even the fact that they kept him or hurt him.

Harry swallowed thickly, trying to let the Mind Healer's words seep into his consciousness.

"We will never tell you how to feel, Devlin," Alex said, shifting again in the hallway. Her eyes were wet and tired and Harry wished that she would let the whole world go and stop working nightshifts just long enough to breathe. But neither of them ever stopped working, because they were trying to change the world and there wasn't time for sleep. Harry couldn't remember the last time he had slept all night.

It was in moments like this that Harry was especially aware of how much more difficult it was to balance being a fighter and a parent. If he didn't have Emma and Devlin he would be out there covered in dirt and grime sleeping in tents and rushing for the battle with Voldemort, all-consumed with any possibility of triumph. But he wasn't alone and he was needed in a much different way than he had ever been needed in his life. There had been a moment, when he began dating Alexandra, that he had felt that tug of being needed, but then he would look at her next to him and know that they were both in this to the death - both as needing and needless all at once - and the moment would pass.

Devlin had changed everything so suddenly.

And then he had been taken and that had changed everything so suddenly as well, in an entirely different way. Life had become different for the year following his kidnapping and believed death. Alex and he had delved into 'work' once more, feeling again that they were in it until death - if their child could just die then the balance had shifted. It hadn't been as important to see Emma begin drawing, talking, running - as it had with Devlin. Each moment had been tempered with the idea that if they didn't work hard enough she would just be gone and it was more important to keep her alive than to experience every moment with her.

Then they had woken from that nightmare and realized that life had fallen out of balance entirely and they weren't just fighters but still parents. Just when Harry had thought he was managing to pull himself away from the elusive (and 'crazy') idea that he would ever have Devlin back, he had found the picture of the boy in the Death Eater's pocket. Once more, Devlin had changed everything so suddenly.

He shook himself. Alexandra was regarding him intently, worried about his silence.

He moved forward without any words - not because he thought it the best idea but rather because he couldn't think of any words to use. He touched Devlin's shoulder and felt a mini explosion of happiness when the boy didn't immediately say 'Don't touch me, I didn't say you could'.

"We want you to be yourself - always. We don't care what you think about him. We don't care what he thinks about us. We want you to make your own opinions from the evidence you see around you."

There was a hardness in Devlin's eyes that Harry felt had little to do with just him - because if it did, wouldn't he have opened his mouth and demanded Harry not touch him?

"Everyone is bad," he said slowly and firmly, that coldness overtaking his face and making Harry's heart pitter-patter some more at the almost exact copy Devlin made of the young Tom Riddle Albus had once shown him, years before Devlin's birth.

"No," Harry said. He had expected this - expected Devlin to feel like there was no one he could truly trust left in the world. But while he was shaking his head, so was Devlin.

"Everyone is bad. Death Eater's kill people. Auror's kill people. I bet you've killed people."

There was a blankness that didn't belong in any child's eyes, but especially not while conversing about death. Harry felt a chill run up his spine.

"You don't really mean what you say. He used to tell me to pay attention to everything, too."

Harry felt that all-consuming emotional state enveloping - feeling too many things to identify them individually.

"You're right," Alex said, stepping into the doorway of the room. "About the Death Eater's and the Auror's - and Harry and I. We're at war. It isn't always like this - with death everywhere. But the hurt remains the same. Everyone hurts."

"So what is so bad about him?"

Harry looked away. This was the part that Alexandra, and not he, was most comfortable with. This was her realm - of logic and reason and action and reaction. He watched as she walked to his desk and pulled out the chair and seated herself down - just like she had at the safe house. Her wand was on her lap and she fiddled with it there. Harry remembered a time she had once twirled it between her fingers - before they had dated. She had stopped after Harry had pointed out (in a moment of attempted-showoff) that Voldemort did the same thing. Looking back it always made him want to disappear, but there had been something about Alex that had always stopped him being able to think properly and made him say especially stupid things.

"Good people do what they must to protect themselves and their world. Voldemort hurts people who are of no harm to him or his world."

"You mean muggles," he said.

"That's one group of people that I meant, yes. Do you...understand what Harry and I...see?"

Devlin's eyes flickered to the window for a moment. Some of the blankness had crept away and Harry felt like he could breathe again.

"There's a lot I understand," he said slowly, looking to the window again. "But then there are things I just don't want to understand." He looked at them both for a moment. "I'm tired. You can leave - I won't do anything foolish."

Harry didn't want to leave. It was Alexandra who nodded, assured him they were there if he needed, and physically dragged him out of the room.

It was only after they were gone that he moved away from the window.

OoOoO

"Hello," he said. He thought it was the first time he had actually greeted the man in the morning. He had taken the time to change into clothing and take a shower. He thought he looked half-way decent dressed in another one of the button down shirts and trousers (the last left and he wondered when the dirty clothing would be clean again). He hadn't found the brush the man had lent him the last time, and didn't feel right using the pink one in the bathroom that he was sure was Emma's so his hair fell into his eyes in wet strands that felt strange. Still, it was better groomed than the mans at this hour of the day.

"Good morning, Devlin," Harry said softly, smiling and flipping a pancake. He looked tired. The girl look too chipper in comparison. The lady wasn't anywhere to be seen.

"Where..." and he was caught by the fact that he hadn't really put a name to her yet. "Where is Alex?"

That was what the man often called her. It didn't seem to phase him overly much, although Emma was looking at him oddly now over the rim of her chocolate milk.

"She's in the study, working."

He nodded, coming to sit across from the girl.

"Eggs?" Harry asked, as he slide a plate in front of him and prepared to tip half the eggs he had been cooking onto his plate.

"No, thank you, sir. I don't like them." Harry pulled back, a perplexed frown joining a mildly crumpled brow.

"But you have eaten them almost every morning here," he said, and as if to emphasize the perplexity he was feeling, his brow crumpled some more.

"I'll eat them again today, if you like," he offered, in what he hoped was as perfectly polite and uncaring as he felt. He would eat them - he had no intentions of starting a battle over something as foolish as eggs. Harry shook his head a tiny bit.

"No, no," he said, seeming to understand. Dubhán wasn't sure what he had suddenly understood, but he shrugged as if to affirm the man. "What do you like?"

"Toast," he said quietly. "With strawberry jam."

"And?"

He tilted his head at the odd question.

"Just toast."

"That isn't enough for a growing boy," Harry said, with an almost flat tone.

"I like ham too."

Before Dubhán knew it there was ham and toast on his plate.

"We've only got raspberry jam, you want it anyway?"

"Alright," he said, because it was such a small thing. He thought he might actually like watching the man move through the kitchen, cooking without a wand. He'd never seen many people 'cook' breakfast because he was often served breakfast alone in the kitchen attached to his tent, but once in a while he would sneak out when Voldemort had clearly already left himself, and wander down to the common kitchen and eat with Geoffrey - more often lunch or dinner. At the camp all the food was prepared magically - which was a show in itself. At camp there were no houselfs either - because they were a security risk. Here it was a much more subdued show, but somehow just as impressive. Harry managed to cook all the food at once, without burning a thing. After he was done, he settled down at the table with them.

"So - anyone have anything to say this morning?"

Emma gave a small hop in her chair and a grin spread rapidly over her face, but she never got to tell Harry what had made her look so. An owl was tapping it's beak on the window behind Harry. Harry rose to get the bird.

"It's a Hogwarts bird," he said as the thing flew in and landed next to Emma. She fed it a scrap of her bacon as Potter unhooked the envelope attached to it's leg. He seemed to give a sigh of relief as he read the missive.

"Severus says he'll meet up with us again, Devlin," Potter said - as if this was supposed to be as relieving to him as it seemed to be to Harry. "He gave us some possible times. I'll talk to Mum about them."

He magicked the missive to a metal board on the wall. Dubhán tried not to show his dread and kept eating.

OoOoOoO

Alexandra was pouring over some manuscript or another - written in Goblin, that's as far as his knowledge carried him. Emma was playing with a baby doll that acted like a real infant; right now it was cooing quietly while Emma sang to it softly, but if it started wailing Harry would tap it with his wand for the girl and "restart" it, because otherwise it wouldn't stop. Apparently she had lost it's bottle at school one day. The toy made Dubhán's lips curl in distain - who would want to play with something that only gave you a headache? But he looked away, because it was Harry he was most interested in.

He found the man regarding him intently, ignoring the papers in his own lap. Dubhán uncurled himself, marked the page in Magical Signatures: Unlocked and wandered slowly to the man. He had a question on his mind. Since the question did not contain any of the words Alexandra usually looked aghast when he said the in front of the girl (fuck, bloody hell, dead, death, killed, murdered, tortured, beaten, Crucio and Imperius - were the ones he had catalogued so far), he felt he wouldn't be reprimanded for asking it openly. But still, he felt that cautiousness in his gut, because this was a second-guessing sort of question and he had learned in his years with Voldemort that people did not usually appreciate them.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Devlin?"

"Why is Draco Malfoy free if he kidnapped me?"

Yes, I am evil. Yes, I just HAD to stop it here! :D :D

UPCOMING:

Severus Snape was like most Death Eater's (once a Death Eater always a Death Eater - the mark proved it). They all tried to be like Grandfather - cold and distant - but they all failed on some level or another. If one watched them closely enough, one could see the emotions flicker across their faces or eyes - gone in the next blink of one's eyes.

PLEASE REVIEW! THANKS!