A/N: No Jane or Maura in this chapter, sorry team. Somebody remind me why I decided this story needed a plot? And as a side note, to all my fellow New Zealanders and Australian cousins on ANZAC Day: Lest we forget.

MAY 24th, 2013. 6.18pm
Simmonswood, Liverpool

'Thanks for coming,' Paddy said gruffly, opening his door to the old familiar face of Kevin Brennan.

Brennan merely nodded. 'Expecting anyone else?'

'Maybe Flannigan. Don't know if the owl found him. Don't know if he wants to be found.'

'And yeh think we can trust young Daniel?' Kevin made his way into the house and eased himself into a chair at Paddy's long oak dining table. He looked dog-tired; years of being in hiding without a gang to watch his back had taken their toll. He retrieved a flask from the depths of a greasy great coat and took a swig.

'Haven't got much of a choice,' Paddy crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. 'You look like shit, Kev.'

'Yeh look like a decent chunk of turd yehself,' Kevin shot back.

The old friends eyeballed each other for several seconds before cracking mutual grins.

'It's bloody good to see you, Brennan,' Paddy made his way over to Kevin to give him a handshake and a clap on the back. 'You hungry? I've got a dragon steak the size of Ireland with your name on it.'

'Starving,' Kevin nodded, and Paddy brought over two plates, each holding an enormous slab of raw, bloody dragon flesh. 'Cook it how you like it,' Paddy fished his wand from his robes and began flaming his portion of meat rare.

It had been ten days since Paddy's owl had been thrust out into the morning, two of the most important deliveries of its career clasped in its beak. The owl had not yet returned, though a tawny bird he didn't recognise had arrived four days ago with a note that read simply: Friday –KB in an untidy scrawl. And here he was.

'Feck, Pad, this is just what I needed,' Kevin shovelled the meat into his mouth, practically still blue. 'Tell me there's more and that I don't have to share it with fecking Flannigan.'

'I know you think he's a lazy shite, but-'

'No buts about it,' Kevin spoke with his mouth full. 'I don't think he is. I know he is. And yeh know it too, Pad. Lazy's one of his better qualities. Why'd yeh ask him to come? Yeh said in yeh note yeh's in a bit of trouble. We'd do fine by ourselves.'

'He might come in handy,' Paddy said quietly. 'I'm not singing his praises either, Kev. But I'm in deep shite.' He put his fork down momentarily to massage his temples with his thumb and middle finger. 'I've got the backbone of a plan, but I need to flesh it out. Things might get messy.'

'Messy I can do,' Kevin retrieved his flask once again, draining its contents. 'Got anything to drink?'

Paddy grunted in affirmation, getting up from the table to retrieve two bottles of dark beer. 'Simison Steaming Stout,' he read off the label. 'That'll do you alright?'

'Aye,' Kevin took the bottle Paddy offered him and immediately popped off the cap. Smoke came rushing out, for several seconds giving the illusion that Kevin was lost in a cloud of cigar residue. 'Appreciate it,' he coughed, kicking his legs up onto the table and raising the bottle to his lips.

'Make yourself at home,' Paddy commented, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement.

It was about three in the morning when Paddy and Kevin were both ripped from their slumber by an offending CRACK! The noise was disconcertingly close, and Paddy was up and out of bed in an instant, his wand at the ready. He and Kevin had both gotten drunk at the dining table, and taken turns recounting heroic tales of their glory days, retiring to their respective chambers just after midnight. Paddy darted along the hallway, still feeling a little drunk, a shield charm at the ready. Kevin was several seconds behind him, and Paddy paused to wait for him at the doorway to the dining room. It had been years, over a decade in fact, since he and Kevin had worked together on any kind of mission. But their teamwork was so deeply ingrained it came as naturally as riding a broomstick. One second of eye contact, accompanied by the subtlest of nods, and the two men burst simultaneously into the next room.

'Protego duo!' Paddy shouted, at the same time Kevin fired 'Immobulus!' out of his own wand. One man on attack, one man on defence. The man standing in the dining room didn't stand a chance.

'Incendio!' Paddy directed his wand at the candlesticks sitting in his chandelier, instantly bathing the room in flickering light.

The two men saw immediately that the intruder meant them no harm: it was Danny Boy Flannigan.

'Jaysus, Flannigan, what time do yeh call this?' Kevin reversed the spell and frowned at the man who had come to turn their duo into a trio. 'Didn't yeh mother ever tell yeh it's rude to apparate right into the middle of a fecking house?'

Danny ignored him, instead looking at Paddy. 'You asked me to come, and I came. Brought your bird, too; she's bloody exhausted,' he opened his robe to reveal an owl nestled against his chest. 'And the same goes for me. Got somewhere for me to kip?'

'Ah, feck yeh,' Kevin cursed, turning to retreat back to his bedroom. 'See you in the morning, Paddy.'

'I appreciate you helping me out, Danny,' Paddy said quietly, putting a hand on the man's shoulder and directing him to an empty bedroom. 'Catch a few winks. I've got a story for you in the morning.'

'Maura's what?' Kevin's mouth dropped open the next day as Paddy explained the situation. 'I heard yeh say "alive". Did yeh say "alive"?'

'My daughter is alive,' Paddy repeated, having stopped his pacing briefly. 'Hope doesn't know, and my father doesn't know. But that mongrel bastard Charles Hoyt does.'

'Charles Hoyt?' Flannigan sought confirmation. 'That crazy serial killer? Isn't he a few twigs short of a broomstick?'

'He's not stupid,' Paddy shook his head. 'He's just fucked in the head. Royally fucked. But if you read the papers you'll know he's in custody. The Ministry caught up with him over a week and a half ago.'

'When's he being sentenced?' Kevin asked. 'Any chance he'll be sent to Nurmengard?'

'Five days. And no,' Paddy shook his head. 'I've looked into it. Nurmengard's full to bursting with Death Eaters and neo Nazis. Our Ministry's been paying Germany to keep British prisoners there, and the more dangerous a prisoner is, the more expensive they are. I'm betting Hoyt'll be worth a fair few galleons to the German Ministry, but Britain's still broke from repairing the Dark Lord's damage. He'll be sent to Azkaban.'

'And put up in maximum security with our old gang,' Kevin groaned. 'Feck it, why did they think we were affiliates of Voldemort? We were just taking advantage of a situation.'

'Because in a battle of good and evil, you have to pick a side. And if you don't pick a side, you get allocated one. There wasn't a hope in hell we were getting categorised as the good guys.'

'Your old man's going to be pissed when he finds out!' Flannigan stated the obvious.

'Cheers for that insight,' Kevin sneered.

'Fuck you, Brennan.'

'Feck yehself, Danny Boy.'

'Shut it!' Paddy commanded. 'Yes, my old man's going to be pissed. I landed almost our whole crew in Azkaban because I was distracted by Maura. When he finds out, he's going to want her dead out of pure spite. Hope, too, because he'll think she's been in on it. I can't let that happen.'

'They don't get out for ages yet,' Flannigan knitted his eyebrows together. 'What's the rush?'

'Tommy gets out on September 2nd,' Paddy muttered. 'And Maura's coming back to the UK with her adoptive parents at the end of June.'

'This September?' Flannigan's eyes widened. 'Oh, shit. Paddy, what're you going to do?'

The same wheels were turning in Kevin's head that had turned in Paddy's over a week earlier. 'Yeh've got to get her into Hogwarts,' he looked up at his old friend. 'Both of them: Maura and Hope. It's the safest place in Britain after Gringotts. If Cavanaugh's still Headmaster, there's no way Tommy's even getting onto the grounds let alone into the castle.'

'Wait,' Flannigan slowed them, still not having caught up. 'You think O'Rourke's going to try and kill them?'

'Of course he'll try and kill them, yeh useless feck,' Kevin spat. 'Doyle Senior can hold a fecking long grudge, and Tommy's on par with yeh when it comes to thinking for himself.'

'There are others,' Paddy interrupted before they could start bickering again. 'Who know I have a daughter, and I want their memories wiped.'

'How many others?'

'Three more. There were ten, but I've got to most of them. These last few are hiding bloody well.'

'How'd they find out?' Flannigan wondered out loud.

'I got rip roaring drunk and let slip,' Paddy eyeballed him, daring him to make an unfavourable comment.

'Who are they, and how do we find them?' Kevin asked, prepared to leave immediately.

'Julius Rookwood. Annis Black. And a goblin I've only ever seen once. My only lead is that he has a fresh demiguise pelt. And those things are rare.'

'How is this going to help?' Flannigan spoke up. 'It's not going to change the outcome.'

'Wiping memories won't change the outcome, since we can't get to Hoyt,' Paddy agreed. 'This is just a bit of damage control. I want to limit the spread of this information as much as I can, to stop it getting back to Maura.'

'I know a goblin who owes me a favour,' Kevin stood up. 'Field trip, boys?'

Paddy stooped to pull on his boots, and Flannigan pulled on a grimy cloak. They each took a hold of one of Kevin's biceps, and disapparated with a sharp CRACK!

It took them six days to track down the last three witnesses to Paddy's drunken confession. Four of those days were spent tailing Julius Rookwood, who, it seemed, never stayed in one place longer than half a day. The goblin who owed Kevin a favour knew of the goblin they sought, and they had found him easily. Kevin had taken the invisibility cloak that had been woven from the hair of the demiguise pelt. It wouldn't last forever, as once the hair began to break down and turn opaque, the invisible properties would disappear. Even so, invisibility, however temporary, was nothing to be sniffed at. The rift between Brennan and Flannigan had only worsened on the last day, when they located Annis Black's cave, and Kevin transfigured Danny into a child without his permission to lure the hag out. Paddy had wiped whatever memory she had of Maura, but it was not strong enough to make her forget children were one of her favourite meals. The trio had had to sprint, and only managed to grab onto one another in the nick of time to disapparate. And that was how they came to be in a crumpled, sweaty, heaving heap on the floor of Paddy's living room.

'Get the feck off me,' Kevin snarled at Flannigan, who was still in his child form, trying to take stock of his limbs.

Paddy picked himself off the floor with a heavy sigh. He'd forgotten how accustomed he'd grown to the comforts of home. Being on the road for six days had been something of a rude awakening. His owl had recovered nicely while he'd been gone, and now he sent her to find a copy of yesterday's Prophet. Charles Hoyt would now be in prison, and he needed all the details he could scrounge.

'I'm starving, Paddy,' Flannigan, having returned to his normal state, eyeballed him the moment he returned to the living room. 'Have you got stuff for a curry? I could really go a curry right now.'

'Then you're on dinner,' Paddy informed him. 'Kitchen's all yours. I'm going to take a shower. And nobody sleeps tonight until we put a plan on paper.'

'So we need Maura and Hope inside Hogwarts before the 2nd of September, when Tommy gets out of prison,' Kevin began to summarise the facts. 'The Hogwarts Express leaves Kings Cross on the 1st of September, so if Maura gets on the train, she won't be in danger.'

'I don't like the "if",' Paddy shook his head. 'She's going to need an escort to get her from her home to the station and on the train. I'd like someone to ride with her all the way to Hogwarts too, if I can manage it. I'll pay Constance a visit when she arrives.'

'Where's she going to be living?' Flannigan asked.

'My sources in Boston tell me they've been looking at properties in Windsor. They haven't decided on one yet.'

'And what about Hope?' Kevin queried. 'I don't have a single fecking idea how yeh plan to get her locked away in a castle.'

'Hope's a Healer at St. Mungo's. If I ask her to, she'll take up a position in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.'

Flannigan was confused. 'Have they not got a Healer already?'

'They do,' Paddy inclined his head. 'Pike. We need to get him out and make him disappear. Maybe forge a resignation.'

'Kill him?'

'Not in his office. But it may very well come to that…' Paddy stood up and started pacing. 'This is what I know about Pike. He has no surviving family, and has remained at Hogwarts for the entirety of his summer holiday ever year since he first took up the post. He's anti-social and doesn't keep close company. The majority of his patients find him lacking in empathy, and feel uncomfortable around him. If a resignation turns up on Sean Cavanaugh's desk, nobody will bother to refute it. His wand's core is dragon heartstring, and he got it from Ollivander's when he was eleven.'

'Back up the broomstick, Pad,' Kevin's brow was scrunched in thought. 'This whole plan is riding on the assumption that O'Rourke's not going to be able to get into Hogwarts to kill Maura and Hope.'

'He's not getting in, Kev. Hogwarts is sealed up like a drum.'

'Yeah, I know,' Kevin leaned back in his chair. 'So how the hell are you getting in?'

Paddy stopped pacing, and took several seconds to look both Brennan and Flannigan in the eye. 'I know a way,' he said quietly.

DECEMBER 7th, 1997. 3.04pm
Hope and Paddy's Cave, Hogsmeade

'How's Dumbledore's Army going?' Paddy asked Hope quietly. 'Learning anything new?'

'A lot of defensive spells,' Hope nodded. They were sitting in a rare patch of pale sunshine, Paddy enveloping her with warmth as she reclined back against him. 'It just… it feels so strange, you know? When Harry started this club, he was training us, and on some level, it was kind of nice, to think that we were learning to fight the dark arts for Dumbledore. Like, we were Dumbledore's Army. But now... Dumbledore's gone. He's dead, and Harry hasn't come back to school. Neither have Ron or Hermione. I can't believe she's missing her last year of school; she's the most intelligent teenager I know.'

'There are bigger things at stake right now than education,' Paddy kissed Hope's hair and gave her hands a gentle squeeze. 'How bad's school?'

'It's awful,' she sighed. 'Snape's Headmaster, and the Carrows have appointed themselves Deputy Heads. They're teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts and Muggle Studies of all things. They're teaching the unforgivable curses, and spreading lies that Muggles are less intelligent than common farm animals… It's so awful, Paddy. I'm so glad you're here.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' he assured her. 'Has the DA come up with anything really useful to help the resistance yet? You're working with the Order, aren't you?'

She nodded. 'They've been a bit lost since Dumbledore, but… they're strong. And… Paddy, I've been thinking. I want to build a secret tunnel, that starts at the Hospital Wing, and comes out somewhere close to St. Mungo's. There's havoc being wreaked inside the castle. The Death Eaters in there are giving out cruciatus curses as punishments, and breathing down Madam Pomfrey's neck at every opportunity. She's a nervous wreck, and so are all the students. We're always out of hospital beds, and always low on supplies. A few people were saying last week that You Know Who is probably going to try and take Hogwarts soon. That there'll be a big battle. And I just… I think it would be a good idea to have a tunnel, where we can sneak supplies in, or sneak students out. I've spoken to a few of the Order members about it, and they think it's a good idea. It's just going to cost so much, and nobody's got the gold. They said they could only contract people they trusted completely, and almost all those people are living double lives. Nobody knows they're working for the resistance, and so if they take sick leave or something to get off their regular jobs, we'd have to compensate them. The manpower would be massive. And then we'd still have to buy supplies…' she tipped her head back in exasperation. 'It's just a nightmare.'

Paddy was quiet for a long time. 'You want to be a Healer still, baby?'

'Mmhmm,' she nodded.

'I really admire that you want to help with medical aid even before you're qualified. Before you've even graduated.'

Hope smiled, though it was a smile tinged with sadness. 'Unfortunately, wanting and doing are two very different things.'

Paddy rested his chin on her shoulder. 'I have some money…'

'The Tunnel of Hope?' Flannigan repeated. 'What the hell is the Tunnel of Hope?'

'An underground passage that once led from the vicinity of St. Mungo's straight to the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts,' Paddy replied.

'That's over 400 miles,' Kevin calculated. Even he was sceptical.

'It was used in the months before the Dark Lord fell,' Paddy explained calmly. 'There were two matching portals that cut out almost all of the middle ground. You have to take the first part of the Hogwarts end on foot, but once you've cleared the grounds, any kind of magic will work. The portals were removed shortly after at the command of Minerva McGonagall when she became Headmistress, but I know of a viable entryway not far from the castle that was overlooked.'

'We're getting into Hogwarts,' Kevin said quietly to himself, as though he couldn't quite believe it. 'Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.'

JUNE 5th, 2013. 9.30pm
The Tunnel of Hope, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

'Are you ready, Flannigan?' Paddy checked. He could hear the man's teeth chattering with nerves.

'Remind me again why I have to be the one to duel him?'

'Because Pike's wand has a dragon heartstring core. My wand and Kev's wand also have dragon heartstring cores. Yours is unicorn hair. I don't know how many heartstring cores can actually come from the same dragon, but I'm not risking any kind of priori incantatem shit happening. And you're hardly going to be duelling him.'

'Okay,' Flannigan nodded reluctantly.

'All you have to do is hit him with a decent stunning spell, alright? We'll take him back to Liverpool, and I'll use an imperius curse to get him to write a resignation.'

'And then what?'

'Don't worry about that right now.'

The three of them made their way through the tunnel. It was dark and dank and full of awful creatures that got quite excited about the prospect of new meat. Several times they had to blast through minor cave ins, and Paddy could feel his skin crawling with every step. It took them over an hour to get beneath the Hospital Wing. Clearing away debris and carnivorous insects the entire way meant things were slow going, but a clear path was essential for a timely escape.

'You're going to come out through the floor of a small supply room,' Paddy whispered, pointing at a short flight of roughly hewn stairs. 'There are two big, hollow stones at the top. They're not heavy. Pike will probably be in his office, on the other side of the hospital. Be quick, be quiet, leave no traces. Got it?'

Danny took a big breath. His hands were shaking. 'Got it.'

Paddy and Kevin watched as he navigated the stairs, and removed the stones that hadn't been touched since 1998. Unfortunately for him, the grating noise that resulted from their lack of use did not escape Pike's ears, even on the other side of the Hospital Wing. Pike was sitting in his office reading a Healing journal, relishing the deathly quiet atmosphere around him. Summer holidays were the best part of the year, when there weren't students wanting medical attention from him. Flannigan's removal of the stones might as well have been a toddler banging a wooden spoon against a kitchen cauldron.

Pike cursed himself for having lost his wand again. This was the third time this month, and he almost wished just one student was around, so he could place the blame on someone. He hated having to use his late father's. It had a unicorn hair core, and while it had been very consistent for his father, it seemed to be too strongly attached to him, even in death, to work for Pike. It produced shoddy magic when he tried to use it, and his throwing it on the floor in a series of several tantrums had only served to make it melancholy. Nevertheless, a wand with poor performance was better than no wand at all, and he collected it from the windowsill to use against whatever was making that noise.

Pike didn't even consider that the source might be another wizard. He thought, perhaps, a fire crab, having heard a rumour that Hagrid had had several imported from Fiji. And so, he was taken completely by surprise when the hunched form of Danny Flannigan emerged with uncertainty from the supply room.

'Oh, shit!' Danny looked up to see Pike already standing at the ready. 'Stupefy duo!' he thrust his wand out.

'Episkey!' Pike shouted at around the same time, the healing spell for minor injuries being the first thing that came into his head.

The two spells hit each other, erupting into an orange-red light, and the most statistically unlikely thing happened: priori incantatem. The one thing Paddy was seeking to avoid by sending Flannigan.

'What the fuuuuuccckkk?' Danny started to shout as his wand began vibrating. 'Paddy! Kevin!'

The two men clambered up and out of the cavity, and entered the hospital wing to find Flannigan connected to Pike by a beam of light. They were encased in a dome, and nothing could be done until the connection was severed.

'Break it, Danny,' Paddy said urgently, at a complete loss as to how this had possibly happened. 'Break it now!'

'I can't!' Flannigan was panicking. 'I can't stop it!'

Danny "Boy" Flannigan, it turns out, was every bit as unskilled as Kevin Brennan believed. Even Pike, using a wand that refused to pledge allegiance to him, had a stronger will than the man attacking him. Flannigan's wand began to perform its most recent spells, in reverse order. This exact situation had happened to Harry Potter and the Dark Lord, and Flannigan had never thought in his wildest dreams that it would happen to him. He spent most of his days wandering the woods, practicing cruciatus curses on the creatures he passed. As Pike's wand forced the magic out of Flannigan's, cruciatus curses began to pour out in quick succession. He had performed hundreds in the last few weeks alone, and his wand could not handle it. After no more than six or seven seconds, a dull crack was heard. The connection broke, and the dome disappeared. Flannigan looked down at his wand, split open to reveal a charred and gently smoking core.

'Paddy…?' he looked helplessly to the leader for instructions, but Kevin had already moved into action.

'Avada kedavra!' he shot the killing curse directly into Pike's chest, and the Healer fell to the ground instantly. 'Let's get the feck out of here,' he took one of Pike's arms, and began to drag the man towards the tunnel.

'What do we do? What do we do?' Flannigan whimpered, standing in the tunnel, almost in tears. 'What do I do? I've killed my wand!'

'Take Pike's,' Paddy flung the instrument at him. 'It might work well for you, considering it's a bloody brother. Fuck!'

'I don't feel comfortable transporting a dead body back to Liverpool, Pad,' Kevin looked at his friend seriously. 'A dead body and a stunned body are two completely different things.'

'He's not coming back to Liverpool,' Paddy shook his head. 'There's new magic that lets the Ministry trace the movement of corpses.'

'How many people are living in the castle right now?'

'I don't know,' Paddy began pacing again. 'I don't think too many, but I don't want to stick around long enough to find out.'

'Then help me wrap him in this,' Kevin pulled the invisibility cloak he'd taken from the goblin out of his pocket. 'It won't last forever, but it'll buy us some time. Put an anchor charm on him, and we'll toss him in the Black Lake.'

Paddy grunted. It wasn't his favourite option, but he was out of ideas. 'Good to have you on board, Kev.'

The next fifteen minutes included a burdened run across a blackened Hogwarts lawn. Pike's body was invisible, but they had to hope like hell nobody was looking out of a castle window. Paddy levitated Pike out to the middle of the Lake, and let him drop with a splash. His corpse was freshly charmed to resemble lead, and the deceased Healer sank steadily to the bottom. He came to rest with a dull thud, giving no visual proof to any creature nearby that he existed. It would be another four months before his body would be discovered by the colony of Merpeople and tossed ashore. Paddy's plan had not gone at all as expected, but when it came to the bigger picture, Pike had fulfilled his role… swimmingly.