A/N: Sorry for the delay. I have the next couple chapters already written. There's a small lull in the dramatics of the story – but not for long. I hope I ended this angsty enough for everyone. :)

Harry did find him, unfortunately it was at the same moment that he was speaking with the student in charge of the dueling club. Edward Taylor was, at that very moment, asking if he would be coming to the meeting tomorrow - he had heard from a third year Ravenclaw that Devlin had told him, while they were studying in the Library, that Devlin was going home for a visit.

"I won't be there," he said, trying to be as firm and clear as he politely could; Edward was one of those people that always felt that no was just an invitation to persuade - as good natured as only a Gryffindor's persuasion could be.

"Couldn't your dad wait until tomorrow afternoon to pick you up? Or bring you back for the meeting?"

"I am sure he could," Devlin said, pulling at the straps of his knapsack and twisting his mouth with distaste, "and I am sure he would, but he's not allowed to bring me back, Edward."

Edward frowned, as clueless and out of the Slytherin gossip as only an upper-year Gryffindor would be - removed by houses, classes, and interests.

"I'm a werewolf, Edward."

His eyebrows shot up, and the whites of his eyes showed as he looked sideways - thinking.

"You don't think I could get the Headmaster to write you a special favor, do you?"

"No," Devlin said, "seeing as I get the sense my attendance is a special favor, in and of itself."

"That's unfortunate," the older boy mumbled. Devlin was not sure if he was referring to Devlin's condition, enrollment challenges, or inability to find a loophole for his attendance at the meeting.

Devlin hummed, hoping Edward had been referring to either of the last options.

"When will you be back?"

"Thursday or Friday, depending."

"Depending on what? Can you convince your dad to bring-"

"Depending on whether I'm still retching," he cut in, dryly.

"Sure, of course. Okay, I'll talk to the Headmaster."

"About what?" He asked, confused. Had Edward not been listening? It was at that moment that he spotted his father, heading toward them.

"I'll see if we can move the date to Friday. You're likely to be back, by then?"

Devlin blinked, taken aback.

"Why?"

Edward had seemed oblivious before, but Devlin realized he had simply been struggling on how to handle what he felt was awkward, and his mechanism was to gloss over it as if were insubstantial.

"You're part of the team now, Devlin," he said, looking him in the eye. "We all saw you earn that spot! If some snooty governing board won't let you attend during our meeting day, I'll just change the date. We're a team, and a team looks out for each other."

Devlin wasn't sure what to say, and Harry had clearly overheard - he had his own look of bewilderment on his face, as though he were in a trance, behind Edward.

Devlin was now the one unsure what mechanism to use in the awkward silence; thankfully Edward seemed to understand and simply clapped him on the shoulder and said he'd see him Friday. He left behind Devlin, instead of turning around and seeing Harry.

Harry and he stared at each other for a moment, each knowing the other had overhead something Devlin considered private. Harry shoved his hands into his pockets and slouched his shoulders; a look of submission and sheepishness.

Harry crossed the distance, smiling at him.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello," Devlin said; covering himself in formality. "Professor Snape said you would be here today."

"You didn't know?"

"I guess I wasn't thinking of it. I don't exactly have the date circled and labeled on my calendar."

Harry chuckled and they started to walk toward the edge of the campus after Harry asked if Devlin had everything he needed and Devlin nodded.

"So, what team was that boy talking about?"

Of course, Harry did not wear submission or sheepishness for very long, and curiosity took the better of him. Devlin stared at him for a moment; blankly.

"Dueling Club," he said. Harry's eyebrows shot up.

"You joined Dueling Club? Did your mum sign the paperwork?"

"No," Devlin said. "Headmaster Dumbledore informed me I did not require a parent signature to merely join the club."

Harry's brow furrowed.

"You asked Dumbledore?"

"Dumbledore told me. I think he thought it would be good for me - I get bored in class."

"Is it?"

"Is it what?"

They were near the gate, now.

"Is it good for you?"

Devlin tugged at his knapsack straps again.

"I suppose."

"Are you good at it?" Harry looked side-long at him, and Devlin was struck by how different they looked wearing the expression.

"Apparently," Devlin said, not sure how much he wanted to talk to his dad about his dueling abilities. Devlin had expected to see worry on Harry's face, but instead Harry had one eyebrow arched and a smirk on his face. Devlin blinked, surprised. "Edward says I have a flare for strategy and thinking on my feet."

"That sounds like you," Harry said. Devlin chose not to mention he had been accepted onto the team.

OoOoOoO

Emma and Alexandra were baking a cake when they came through the floo. Zee peeked around the kitchen door, huffed in welcome, and turned around again, preoccupied by the mere idea of crumbs.

"Don't look!" Emma shouted from inside. Harry laughed.

"Come on, I might have some dueling books you could borrow!"

They went into his study and Harry began scanning his bookcase while Devlin made himself comfortable in one of his leather chairs. Going from Hogwarts to home was always a strange experience.

"What kind of things are they doing? How are you faring against the other first or second years?"

"There are no second years," he said, delicately. Harry looked over his shoulder, frowning. "The Headmaster made an exception for me. Usually you have to be a third year."

Harry's brow arched.

"Okay, how do you fare against the third years?"

With Voldemort Devlin would have been boastful, but he wasn't sure where this fit with Harry. Somehow he knew his enjoyment of dueling was not entirely innocent; the sense of power and triumph made him feel better than imperious.

He shrugged.

"Well enough, I suppose."

Harry tipped his head.

"Oh, that sounds convincing. Come on Devlin - we both know your spell work is at least equal to the end of third year curriculum. Even if I didn't know that, Hermione has been telling me you're at least two grades ahead since you were ten. Hermione knows these sorts of things. I'm betting they're still tripping over their own feet - I would have been! Do they let you try against the fourth years?"

Devlin's brow drew down, once more surprised at how easily Harry cut through his maneuvers. He looked at his hands for a moment, then back up at Harry.

"I got beaten by a sixth year. By then, I'd already earned a spot on the team."

He'd been tired by then, too.

Harry's expression was blank for a moment.

"This might be cooler than me making Quiddich team in first year…" He sunk into his chair, smirking. "Wait until Sirius hears. We have to think of a tactful way to tell your mum - she'll worry."

He was waving a dismissive hand, his eyes alight with what Devlin imagined was pride.

"I earned a spot, but I'm not going to take it, Dad."

"What? Why?" He was leaning forward in his chair, confused and upset.

"It is the competition team, and you have to travel with the team."

It took a moment, and then realization seemed to penetrate the pride. Harry sunk against his chair, sighing.

"I can see how that would be problematic…but maybe we could work something out. Let's talk to your mum, and when I bring you back, we can stop at Dumbledore's office. Maybe you could compete with the team only when they were hosting duels, or something like that."

Devlin had dismissed the idea of joining the team before he had even decided to participate in the competition. He had participated simply because it had been a way to go against the upper years, since they had only been allowing him to duel third and fourth years during practice sessions. When he had earned the spot he had taken the permission slip, smiled, and then thrown it away.

Harry was smiling that smile that was just for him, that unfathomable love alighting his green eyes. Harry was ready to argue for him, once more. Even though Devlin was even farther from the little boy he had lost so long ago.

Guilt tore at his guts in the face of such entire devotion.

OoOoOoO

They had invited people over for dinner. Hermione, Ron and Sirius greeted him when Emma finally allowed him into the kitchen. Perhaps they had been there the whole time - Harry had kept him busy with dueling books in his study.

"We didn't get to sing you Happy Birthday," Sirius said by way of welcome. His eyes were crinkled with cheer.

"I guess there's no avoiding this yearly humiliation, is there?"

Sirius barked with laughter - he was one of the few people that genuinely found Devlin's dark sense of humor funny. Hermione laughed the way intelligent people do when they recognize the irony of someone's words. Ron was too busy looking at the cake. Emma came and engulfed him in a hug, while Alexandra smiled and Harry beamed.

"It was my idea," Emma said, proudly.

"Of course it was. You love torturing me."

She probably did not understand the alternative to the word, and she had grown up with his twisted definition so that she merely grinned and nodded. Whenever she looked at him that way he always felt nearly normal.

Someone handed him a knife so as to cut the cake, but he did not need a knife, and he waved the proffered one aside.

"I have a better idea," he said, slyly. He approached the cake with a drawn wand. The cutting hex was typically chaotic, but he concentrated on precision, and a few swipes of his wand later, the cake was cut into beautiful pieces. Sirius cheered, and therefore Devlin floated him the first, and biggest, piece.

"With control like that, maybe you'll be a healer," Hermione said, as he handed her a piece. The comment had been casual, but it stayed in Devlin's mind for awhile. The idea that someone would look at him, at his magic, and think he could heal instead of hurt, seemed foreign and curious. The idea tangled itself in his head and made him think of Leonard Easlick; he had not thought of the healer since before Voldemort took him that year.

His experience with Leonard had been as a small child near the brink of death. At the time Leonard had seemed almost like a ghost - standing above his bedside whenever he woke, trickling potions down his throat and urging him to swallow. Really he had been so much more, because a ghost could not have saved him. Without Leonard the sharpness would not have been strong enough to bring him back from the nothingness.

And so he lingered by her as she finished saying something to Ronald, and he looked at her, and he asked her what she had meant. She seemed surprised at his curiosity.

"You really have a remarkable ability to focus and regulate your magic. You used the traditional cutting hex meant for dueling and yet - you sliced a cake. It's the sort of control that would make you a terrific healer."

"Healer's don't cut people," he said, matter-of-factly. She furrowed her brow.

"Of course they do. In surgery, for instance." She pursed her lips the way she always did when she was trying to figure out a way to explain something to him. "If a Death Eater got wounded in battle, wouldn't Voldemort have a healer attend to them?"

"Yes," he said. He usually resorted to using one-word answers where his grandfather was concerned. "If he had one. Usually, there were no healers except the ones that saw me."

Hermione frowned.

"He would bring in healers for you?"

"Yes. And then kill them or wipe their memory, I suppose. But they never cut me - that seems very strange."

"You never needed surgery," she said. "Healer's don't cut you unless they need to repair something inside of you. Potions do a lot, and so do spells - but sometimes we need to see what we're repairing with spells, or remove something."

The only reference points he had for anything resembling her words were wounds; pooling blood, gasping breathes, gurgles and blood-filled-mouths. Healers like Leonard had a way of turning terrifying and brutal experiences into something clinical and organized - with their soft voices and easy movements Devlin could only imagine they would turn something like cutting someone open into something routine and systematic. Though he did not doubt himself and his assessment, he had a hard time picturing it.

"Even muggle doctors are quite proficient at surgery," Hermione said. Devlin's eyes slid back onto her face, his neck tipping up with curiosity.

"Muggles can cut someone open without killing them?"

"Muggles aren't as bad as he says, Devlin," Hermione said, with that concern she always had when she was faced by discrimination, real or imagined.

Devlin waved a dismissive hand.

"Of course not; they're not bad, they're just rather…useless. The Dark Lord doesn't appreciate anything without a use. He doesn't see a puzzle for its grooves and connections, just simply as the whole. I can put puzzles together without thinking too - but you miss things if you don't try to do it like a normal person."

Like the unfathomable love in Harry's eyes, or the shadowed truth in Severus' eyes, or the intelligence pooling innocently in Emma, or the strength in Maria's confrontation when he came back to school. These were all things he would have missed if he had only been looking at the whole image rather than the grooves and connections. It did not mean he necessarily understood - only that he recognized. He wondered, if Voldemort had grown up terrified by a foe worse than Muggles; been forced to analyze everything said, done, or felt that maybe he would have grown able to see the grooves and connections, too. Instead his terror had been blunt and unchallenged and his freedom from it quick and painless as he learned he was a wizard. Voldemort wished to know what he would have been like if he weren't raised by Muggles, but in doing so, he had actually put Devlin up against something far worse.

He knew Hermione would have pressed him more - tried to get him to change his words, at the very least, but Sirius came over asking about when they were opening presents.

It was not as though he had called them worthless, just useless. The word turned itself around in his head. Perhaps it wasn't quite accurate to say they were useless, which implied, without a conditioner, that they had no use what-so-ever. He was sure they were useful to themselves, but against a wizard their usefulness vanished. Even two muggles with guns had been unable to save him from being taken by Voldemort all those years ago. Unable to aid in his escape. Unable to help him even though he had begged them. Even though they had wanted to help. They weren't bad just…he wouldn't trust one with his life.

They had him sit at the head of the table - in the seat where Harry usually sat - and handed him wrapped boxes one-by-one. Hermione gave him several books on legimency, potions, and werewolves. A modern book she said, when he unwrapped the one about werewolves. Ronald gave him a bag of candy - large enough to share with his classmates. Harry and Alexandra gave him a new wool cloak, and winter clothes (they had, after all, already given him their present earlier in the month). Sirius had gotten him a huge box of joke products from George's shop.

"This is from Remus and Geoffrey," he added, as he slid one more box across the table. Harry's eyes snapped to Sirius, but Alexandra laid a hand on his hand and whispered "I knew" into his ear, reassuring him. Devlin reached toward the box. He had really never gotten a present from Geoffrey before, nor seen him recently.

It was a necklace; dark metal in the symbol of infinity wrapped around two amber stones. Harry looked confused, Sirius smiled, and Devlin - he knew exactly what it meant.

He stared at it for a long moment, wishing it had not been the last present handed out. Then he picked it up, and put it on. It hung hidden beneath his shirt, near the spot the crazy werewolf had dug his nails into in Hogsmeade. The slight weight of it pressed against him, feeling foreign.

"Devlin joined the Dueling Club," Harry said, and Devlin recognized the rescue - he had seen Devlin's discomfort.

There were words of interest and congratulations.

"James and I used to love the Dueling Club," Sirius said wistfully. "Have you learned any new moves?"

"Not really," he said. Then recalled the way Andrew often rambled when he was recanting a story. He wondered if he could mimic him. "But when you join you have to duel Edward - he's the head of the club - to show him that you'll be able to hold your own. Everyone is taller than me there and at least two years older. He called me squish of a thing, but we fought and he called it off midway through our duel because he said it was clear I could hold my own."

He raised his chin the way Andrew would have, grinning.

"Was that the boy talking to you when I found you at Hogwarts?" Harry asked. He was smiling with delight, and Devlin bet he had pulled it off. Alexandra even seemed more happy than nervous.

"Yeah, that was Edward."

"He seemed to like you a lot."

Devlin shrugged.

"I suppose. He's nice enough."

OoOoOoOoO

"At Hogsmeade, did you capture any werewolves?"

Harry looked up from his paperwork, startled. Emma had just gone to bed; he looked around the room, lit softly by the fireplace, as though to reassure himself she was not bearing witness to something so un-innocent. It was in glances such as this, tiny and fleeting moments as they were, that Devlin wondered how different a boy he would have been if Voldemort had not spoiled his boyishness. Harry seemed to fight with every ounce of himself he had to keep Emma a child.

"Why, Devlin?" The question was so calm. Devlin pondered that Harry just kept getting better at dealing with his jolting to-the-point nature while Devlin became less and less adapt at dealing with his patience. Terror made him smarter and more careful; quicker to consider than to act out. But he was no longer terrified of Harry. Here, most of all, he was like a normal boy - perhaps not in his knowledge but in his reactions.

Still Devlin did not shift, fidget, or hesitate; he had spent the better part of the evening deciding to ask Harry.

"I think there was one there. Did you capture him?"

Harry put down the papers, giving him his full attention. His Killing-Curse green eyes found Devlin's darker ones.

"Were you working with him?" Harry had a way of asking the worst of someone and making it not about judgment. Devlin wondered if this sensibility and perception of understanding was what made Harry such a good leader. He wondered what it would be like, being interrogated by Harry Potter.

"I wasn't working with anyone," he said; with an edge that was not so much for Harry as it was for having been placed in such situation completely alone. "Does he work for Grandfather?"

Harry rubbed his palms on his thighs, looking hesitant.

"I guess you would have to tell me who he was, before I could be sure I knew who you were talking about, Devlin. There are werewolves on both sides, after all."

"I can't imagine you working with this one," he said. He knew why Harry did not just answer, but he did not appreciate the man's attempts to persuade information out of him. Still, he needed to know. He needed to know if the werewolf's claim had been true; that someone so foul could be connected to his blood. Could dirty him like that. Harry wouldn't understand, but blood meant things to werewolves differently than it meant things to Wizards. Werewolves did not judge each other based on magical purity, but on their own actions. The possibility of being connected to someone so foul made his gut churn. "Your men attacked him - so you must know he was there."

Harry's eyes widened and he snapped forward in his seat, body rigid and angled toward Devlin.

"Greyback?"

Devlin knew the Aurors had called the werewolf by some name, but the blood had been pounding too harshly in his ears for him to have heard. So he shrugged, dissatisfied with himself. When he had told Voldemort, upon his demand about his injury, he had not disclosed much information to Devlin and used a different name. Fenrir - which was a Norse name and wolf myth, so it was hard to tell it if it was the werewolf's real name, chosen name, or just something Voldemort called him.

"I don't think so," Devlin said, hesitating. Did he disclose the name Voldemort had used? It might be the only way to ensure Harry was giving him accurate information. He licked his lips. "Voldemort called him Fenrir."

Harry's body did not relax; the muscles taunt in his shoulders, his hand twitching toward his wand.

"Fenrir Greyback," Harry said slowly, voice full of loathing. So Harry called him by his last name and Voldemort by his first. "He has aligned himself with Voldemort. If you were not working with him, how do you know he was in Hogsmeade, Devlin?"

"Did he make Remus?"

Harry sucked in his breath.

"Yes," he said, haltingly - knowing Devlin was less likely to answer him without the information. "How did you know he was there, Devlin?"

"He found me," he said simply, "attacked me. Thought I was some stupid little boy running in the wrong direction."

"What did he do?" Harry's voice was rough with anger and worry - each battling for dominance.

"What does he do, normally?"

"If he did what he normally does, you wouldn't be alive, Devlin. What did he do?"

"He found me. Attacked me. Thought I was just a little boy. The sharpness saved me - made him realize I was already a werewolf and not just a little boy. I told him he couldn't make me his, and he smelled me, and he said I already was his, because he had bitten Remus."

"He can tell that?"

"Unfortunately yes," he groaned, rubbing his face. "And so can others, if they know him. How disgusting."

"Why is that…disgusting?"

"He's insane. Out of control. Even a wolf should have more control. A wolf should know when it's teeth are flat!"

And a person shouldn't know when it's teeth are sharp, his sharpness barked with humor. Perhaps his bad blood spread to us.