A/N Jack Vadar, thank you for your review. I hope you got my reply. :)

For anyone eagerly awaiting the time at which this story diverges into Cannon Sounds, you'll be happy to know I think we're getting close! You might notice the beginnings of it happening in this chapter. ;-)

He dreams of the nothingness broken around him - fragmented grey light pooling around fissures in the floor of the abyss. He is still and his wolf is still, and they are both settled on their haunches, staring at each other. He sees himself in flashes and he sees the wolf in others, and their thoughts, while separate, echo around them.

He moves and the wolf moves, and they realize slowly they are circling each other as the ground crunches beneath them with the sound of a broken mirror. The wolf's eyes are amber, and his are pure green. He growls and Devlin yells and they both bare their teeth. Their necks lower and they look up at another, heads slightly tilted. Devlin could stand - could be taller - but he does not.

Their hearts pound. Enmity flows like something foul through them - foreign and yet easy. Their lungs hang onto air, because they are frightened. Their muscles are tight - ready to fight or to flee.

But there is nothing here. No place to run.

They lunge at the same time - the brokenness of the floor shifting beneath their steps and spreading more grey light into the abyss. They collide and for a moment that stale air is gone and they are gasping - scrambling to their feet. Flat teeth and five fingers, sharp claws and sharper teeth. They lunge again. His hands close around the wolf's snout, and the wolf's claws tear into his chest. And there is blood - blood on him and blood on the wolf and they howl with the sensation that they share.

Suddenly he is on his feet as though someone simply plucked him up and placed him there, and cloudy shadows swirl in front of him. His hand is stretched out in the path his arm has forced. The wolf is beside him. And he says the words - says the words that make the green magic - and the shadow, that he knows is really himself, at the other end of his wand is dead and the wolf is fleeing from him.

His wand clatters to the ground. The floor shakes. He is running - faster, faster, faster because he must find the wolf.

He finds him at the farthest corner of the abyss, his eyes amber-with-green-specks.

'I've been waiting,' the sharpness says, and Devlin trembles on his boyish legs as he stumbles forward. He lunges - all arms and legs and five fingers, desperate to be near to the tiny bit of green hidden in his sharpness.

His sharpness always saves him, but sometimes, it can't save all of him.

oOoOoOo

He woke with a freezing slowness. Usually the transition from sleep to wakefulness afforded him a moment of drowsy peace, but this time he was acutely aware of each terror from his dream. In the early dawn, body still raw from transformation, he was momentarily whole.

It was this wholeness that drove him up onto his feet. That had him fumbling for his robe and stumbling out the door.

The hall was dark and the room darker.

"Dad."

Harry was as easy to wake as he had been the last time Devlin had tried. Killing Curse eyes shot open, and this time Devlin did not wish he was dead; he wished he did not know that emerald was also the color of death.

"I've got it, baby," he whispered to his mum; just as he had the last time Devlin had come to wake him up - years ago. Alex turned and closed her eyes again, and Harry rose from the bed to meet Devlin in the hallway. He was, once more, only wearing muggle lounge pants - Devlin looked at Harry's scars from the edge of his vision as he leaned against the wall, pressing his cheek against the cool plaster.

"Did you just transform? It must be dawn." Harry said by way of greeting. Devlin could only imagine how horrible he looked. Best not to dwell on such conscious thoughts, when he wanted the wholeness of his dream to last. He tried to breathe slowly - as close to sleep as he could muster - hoping it would prolong the feeling.

"I lied to you." The words were a wash of air with barely any emotion except exhaustion attached.

Harry leaned against the hallway wall, yawning while he nodded for Devlin to continue.

"I lied to you," he had to say it twice, just to make the courage swell enough. He clung to the green flecks in his sharpness, knowing it would evaporate soon. "And I think I need help."

Harry's eyes snapped into focus.

"With what, Devlin?" Of course he would be most motivated by Devlin needing help instead of Devlin's lie.

"He did bring me to a house, but he also brought me back to the camp."

Harry's eyes widened; his features paling. Something about his expression spoke innately to Devlin, and he did not speak. Harry leaned across the hall and took his hand, steering him down the hallway and stairs, and into his study. He cast silencing spells and then he turned to him with a resolve that seemed nothing less than determined.

"Tell me."

Most of Devlin wanted to forget, and some of him wanted never to speak of it again, while other parts were torn between humiliation and guilt. None of those parts answered Harry.

It was the fleck of green in his sharpness' eyes that answered Harry. The little piece of himself he had saved.

"I did it." The words were like lead on his tongue; they came slowly and with great effort. Harry stared at him; his killing curse green eyes full of all those emotions Devlin could never understand, along with those he did - fear, worry, anger, among others. Harry always had a war in his eyes, and yet Devlin thought that his heart was always precisely clear.

In a moment of wholeness, Devlin wished he knew what that felt like. Wished he knew what it felt like to feel the good things so easily. He felt like everyone else' world must be full of color and vibrancy and contrast. His was built of layers of grey which he struggled to decode. He dreamed in color though - in his mind where everything made sense - but when color made it into his reality it was something remarkable - something to be kept at all costs. Like Maria. Like Emma.

Harry made him see color sometimes, too - but Devlin could not keep Harry.

That was why it was always safer to tell Harry instead of Alexandra.

That was why he needed Harry's understanding above anyone else.

"I know you must have found him. I knew it when you asked me in Dumbledore's office. I told you - I told you, when I was in that bathtub that it didn't matter what I hadn't done because I did not want to die and when he asked me, I would do anything. I told you. And you said even if I was a man and you were a man and we met on the battlefield, you still wouldn't hate me. So I'm telling you I did it. Damian said I could. He said I was clever and a smart boy and he knew I would know what to do."

His body crumbled beneath him the way it had wanted too when he had killed Damian. Whatever had held him up, like tethers digging into his shoulders and neck and bones that day had been holding him up for weeks since; taunt and bruising. He was on the floor, clinging to his kneecaps.

Harry loomed over him, but only for a moment.

"He was already dying. They always are. Always, always, always. Just like William's father - he was laughing when I met him. He knew my name, just like Damian. I did it. It felt like it would kill me too. But my sharpness saved me. He always saves me, except sometimes he can't save all of me," he gasped for air. Harry pulled him into his lap - he was beginning to fit illy in the curl of Harry's body as he grew. Less like a little boy and more like an adult.

"What do you mean, Devlin?"

"The sharpness couldn't save me, just part of me, because I still had to be there to do the I've done something - I must have done something because he can't give it back and it hurts. I dream about it sometimes - the missing part. I look for it and sometimes in my dreams I almost find it. Sometimes I find it by dreaming of when I still had it, and sometimes I find it by dreaming of my wolf. I need it back. I really really need it back, Dad."

He was pleading.

Harry clung to him tighter.

"I'll call the Mind Healer - maybe talking to her would be good. We will figure this out, Devlin."

He nodded against Harry, his whole body lax with something almost like defeat - but less sore than that. His fingers found Harry's hand, and he idly began to twirl the ring that had been there for as long as he knew.

"Do you have missing pieces, too?"

"Yes," Harry said - reluctant and cautiously.

"Do they get better?" Somehow, having said it aloud, it was easier to accept what he had known all along was probably the truth; that the hollowness would never completely leave.

"Yes and no," he said, combing a hand through Devlin's hair. "They don't go away. They're like a chasm inside of you - but over time you fill the space with other things until you can walk across without falling in."

"Like a velvet covered knife," Devlin said, softly.

"Like a what?"

"Like a velvet covered knife. It's something he used to say to me, when I was little."

Harry did not try to correct the wrongs of his childhood with words that would do little, he simply kissed the back of his head.

"We'll pour concrete in yours," he said.

"What is concrete?"

For some reason, Harry burst out laughing.

OoOoOoOoO

"Step carefully." Arden had a cautious, hardened look on his face that told Harry immediately more than he wanted to know. He stepped off the slate-covered steps, flanked on either side by snow-covered flowerbeds and into the front hall. Arden followed him.

There was blood - chaotically smeared onto the walls and floors. Just seeing it, Harry knew part of the story. The victims had been wounded and chased. From the varying heights and sizes of the smearing, he'd guess there were at least two victims.

The coat rack had been blown to the ground - severed in half. The same cutting hex must have caught a down-jacket, and the feathers clung to every sticky trail.

"He's in the study," Arden said quietly. "Do you want to go there first, or to the other two?"

"Two?" There was no shock, only something like detached curiosity as he catalogued the facts and tried to build the story from the rubble left behind.

"Yes, the wife is in the kitchen. A muggle, it would appear. The boy is upstairs - ten years old. They have a twelve year old, at Hogwarts."

A child survivor. Harry took a deep breath. Steeled himself. Tried not to hear the echo in his head: an orphan.

"Why do we think the wife was a muggle?"

"There's no wand, she's not registered in our system, and she's holding a knife. We haven't found a second wand."

She could have been left wandless…but it was more likely she was a muggle.

He paused by the door to see her laying on the floor - blood pooling around her. Doubtless her desperation for defense, picking up a knife, had turned against her.

"The boy?"

"Killing Curse," Arden said, and Harry felt relief rush like warm fire through his body. "He does not appear to have been tortured. We think he surprised them. He's just around the corner upstairs."

Harry would see him last.

"Show me Thatcher," Harry said, allowing Arden to go first. Alexandra had said he was a kind, determined, slightly awkward man. He spoke more languages then Alexandra and his wards were impeccable.

They were not just in the same department at the Ministry, but more often than not, Alexandra had said Thatcher was on the same cases as her. It had been Alexandra who had begged Harry to send someone to his house. 'Not coming into work isn't normal for him, he's very routine.'

Once more, he felt Voldemort was sending him a message.

Thatcher was slumped in a chair in a manner that told Harry he had been bound to it. He was a mess - torture marks clear and fresh. Usually Death Eater torture was relatively invisible - crucio seemed terribly satisfying to the lot of them. The fact that Thatcher had been harmed like this made Harry believe they had wanted some specific information from him.

The bookcases around the room were disheveled - perhaps the perpetrators had thought they would find what they wanted in one of them.

"He was killed last," Arden told him. "We think they came in, found the wife and him and killed her immediately. We're pretty sure the boy must have surprised someone - because it's odd they wouldn't have used him against Thatcher."

Yes - perhaps it had been an inexperienced Death Eater who had killed the child.

"Show me the boy."

He was upstairs, just around the corner. Perhaps he had peeked around the stairs and been seen, or perhaps someone had come upstairs and he had tried to run. Either way, he had been killed from behind. He had wide blue eyes and sandy blond hair. He was wearing a Quiddich shirt - Harry had bought one just like it for Devlin last Christmas, so perhaps it was a hand-me-down from the boy at Hogwarts. He looked only a little younger than Devlin. The idea that Devlin had done this to someone else - that someone as small as this child had killed someone with the Killing Curse - hit Harry hard. If Devlin had been here, would he have killed this boy?

Harry already knew the answer - yes. Because Devlin would have known the alternative death for the child - tortured for his father's benefit in the hopes the older man would crack.

Had this Death Eater protected him, or just not known better?

"Make sure you have someone grab the clothing from the oldest boy's room - and anything else you think he may want. Likely they'll send him to some family for a few weeks while they sort this out. I don't want him to need to ask or think about it."

"Sure, Harry," Arden said.

OoOoOoO

The first thing he did when he came home was look for Devlin. It was at times like this that he had to remind himself that Devlin was alive, and the best way to do that was to look at him.

His head was bent over a parchment at the kitchen table. In the magical lighting his hair was almost black, his skin a pale cream. He had his mother's thoughtful expression; so easily confused with dissatisfaction. Beside him, a textbook was levitating at the perfect reading angle, and a bit of paper had been magically manipulated to lay where he must have left off before looking away. Such tricks might seem small, but Harry knew that each instance of wandless magic taxed his concentration. Devlin was only a boy; he did not know the correct charms or incantations. A correctly cast incantation allowed a wizard to spend minimal concentration after it was cast - or in the case of complex charm work, none at all - it was merely linked to ones core magic. What Devlin lacked in knowledge he very clearly made up for with power, intelligence, persistence, and focus.

Harry came over and sat across from him, staring at the tip of his nose as he studied. He marveled; at the rise and fall of his chest, at the pink flush to his skin, at his eyes moving. He was alive; not blue, cold, and grey.

Sometimes, Harry still needed to remind himself of that. That he hadn't lost Devlin.

"You smell like a dead body," Devlin said randomly, with such a factual and casual tone that it took Harry a moment to register the context of the statement. Harry 'hmmm'd' in acknowledgement, still lost in the hazy magnificent knowledge that Devlin was alive. "What does he want, then?"

"I don't know."

Devlin's eyes glanced at his textbook and then back to his parchment. Talking about Voldemort was so common to him, that he wasn't even distracted.

A year ago Harry would have tried to dissuade Devlin's curiosity, but a lot had changed in a year. Voldemort had proven to Harry that Harry could not keep Devlin safe, even at Hogwarts. He had shown Harry that, rather than hide Devlin away, he was willing to risk his life. Harry had not known he could be as terrified as he had been when he had seen Devlin with his wand in the air, summoning Voldemort's Dark Mark while surrounded by full-fledged war. It had been like finding his body, or so they had thought, laid out on the Ministry floor; blue, cold, and bruised.

Devlin had been right, and Harry should have listened.

"Why are you staring at me?" Devlin said, eyes still examining his textbook, while he absently scrawled notes in the margins.

"Sometimes, I just have to remind myself you're alive."

Devlin looked up.

"Did they kill a child?"

Devlin had his mother's ability to piece together the world and say things so utterly logical that sometimes he sounded cold. Like Alexandra, Devlin had to know the how, why, where, and what of a situation before he processed the emotional component.

"Yes, they did." Harry tried to be honest, no matter how painful it was. Devlin was trying to be honest with him - God, even a year ago it would have taken him months to have told him about Damian, if he had told him at all. He deserved to be treated like the person who had survived all that he had. He deserved the credit.

"Oh. How?" He had put his quill down and settled his hands on the table, elbows splayed out and fingers interlocked. His green eyes were on Harry. The book was still floating, the paper still marking his spot, his quill hovering just a centimeter above the table to stop it from pooling onto the wood.

"Killing Curse," Harry said, watching him. Reminding himself that Devlin was pink, flushed, and alive.

He didn't flinch. Harry had been worried even the mention of the curse would make him pained and remind him of their conversation the night before. It certainly reminded Harry of the conversation. It made him dizzy as he relived gaining access to the camp - hearing one of his men calling that there was a body and being so sure it would be Devlin's.

"That's good, at least," he said. He sounded like the relieved voice of Arden. Harry hated that he knew death enough to know that the moment of actual death was not the worst. It was how one got there.

"What are you writing about?"

"I'm writing two Transfiguration essays. One for while I was gone and one for this week," he said.

"Oh," Harry said. "Didn't they excuse you from the work you missed?"

"I'd rather not be excused. I can do it, so why wouldn't I?"

Harry shook his head, reassuring Devlin he really didn't have much stake in whatever he chose. He wanted to ask so many things in that moment, but he didn't, because right then what he needed most was to simply know that Devlin was alive.

OoOoOoOoO

Alexandra was in the kitchen making dinner. Harry was in the living room, making Emma's animal figurines come alive without his wand. Emma was trying her own hand at magic - puffs and pulses that lacked enough focus to do anything more than make the animals tumble or be thrown aside.

"You have your wand, right?" He already knew Harry must have - he did not go anywhere without it - but that unreasonable, illogical, fear borrowed holes into his lungs and made it hard to stop himself. Harry looked up a him. He knew Harry saw his fear for what it was, but also knew, from the tilt of Harry's head, that he did not (could not) know it's origins.

"Of course, Devlin. Do you need something?"

Which was a ridiculous question, because Devlin could do for himself magically anything he needed. Anything. 'Even kill,' his wolf said, not as respectably as one might think a werewolf would be of a kill.

He shook his head, perhaps too fervently. Dishes were clinking in the sink. His stomach clenched. He tried to turn around, but James Potter's body lay in his minds-eye in the hallway. Harry was still watching him when he turned quickly back.

"Devlin?"

"Hmm?" Don't think. Don't feel.

There is nothing to be done, his wolf finished. He had noticed, since his wolf had saved that part of him, it was more reluctant to take the burden from him. Perhaps he already was - protecting that bit of Devlin. Perhaps Devlin owned nothing more of value. Perhaps Devlin was all the normal werewolf and the bad boy, and the wolf was all the good wolf and normal boy.

He felt nauseas just at the idea. Worthless, Draco Malfoy whispered in his head. Something not worth enough, his own voice said - tiny and young.

"Devlin?" Harry was close to him now and Devlin could see it in his eyes - see he thought this was all because he had killed that man and told Harry and now - now he was letting it all go. Like he were some kind of normal boy. Because a normal boy would have been more upset by murdering than by witnessing a murder. He wasn't often sure of how things compared, but he was pretty sure of this. "Devlin?"

SPEAK, his wolf growled, loud enough to overthrow his other thoughts.

"Yes?" It sounded like a croak. Emma was peering at him with curiosity and concern and he hated that she could ever be concerned about him - he was supposed to be strong for her.

"What's wrong?"

He tried to shake his head. Harry just looked at him, hard - not with cruelty but with knowledge.

"I just…I just…I needed to know you had your wand," he said.

"Is there a reason I need my wand right now, Devlin?"

"You always need your wand!" He said, eyes flashing. "You know it and I know it, and I was just bloody checking!"

Harry withdrew his wand in a flash - Devlin flinched - but he just held it between them.

"I have it," he said. "I always have my wand, Devlin."

He should nod.

"He didn't, you know," he said instead. That was the thing about secrets. It was always easiest to keep them all inside. Once you let one out, more had a tendency to try to escape.

"Who didn't?" Harry asked - so gently. He had eyes only for Devlin. All his. Emma was there and Harry didn't seem to care.

"James Potter," Devlin said - a mere whisper blown into the stillness of the room.

"Did Voldemort tell you that, Devlin?" Harry asked - his voice crumbling. He wasn't really questioning how Devlin had come about the information - instead he was just asking Devlin to confirm. Probably so he could say something that would be meant to help Devlin.

"He attacked him - like a muggle. Threw himself forward. Hands and fists and everything he had." Harry's eyes were narrowing with realization. "He fell in the hallway and he stepped over him and up the stairs. And how do two people not have their wands? She didn't either. She didn't. Didn't didn't didn't-"

"No, she didn't," Harry finally said, with great effort. He reached out to touch him and pulled him into a hug. "She didn't. He didn't. But they still saved me."

"You saved yourself!" It seemed important to say.

"No," Harry said. "My mum and my dad saved me, Devlin. They sacrificed themselves for me. It was that old magic - love - that saved me."

Harry held him at arms length to look at him. The noise had drawn Alexandra into the room, and she was on the sofa with Emma - holding her.

"Love?" He asked, incredulously, but on the verge of understanding. Of course it would be love. It would be what he lacked. That was why Harry could fill his chasms with concrete and Devlin would just keep crumbling. Because Devlin didn't love, so it stood to reason he couldn't even save himself.

Harry nodded; he couldn't possibly know what Devlin was thinking.

"Will your love save me?" He asked. Harry tipped his head. "I don't think I have enough to save myself. You always have so much. Will yours save me?"

"Devlin-"

"I try so hard. So hard. I really do. I try to be a regular boy. I try to understand everything on your face and in your eyes. I try. I try to see the world like you - full of so much feeling that all the feelings have a war in your eyes. I try so hard to feel and it's so difficult. There is never enough in me to have a war. I think that means there isn't enough in me to save myself. I tried with him. I tried so hard to understand everything on his face, how he saw his world - and I did that, because I saw it the same! He didn't have enough love either to save himself. But he didn't have y-"

"I'll always save you," Harry said - that war in his eyes, that smile that was always just for Devlin. "I will always save you Devlin - until you are strong enough to save yourself. One day, you will be strong enough to save yourself. I promise."