The hearth opened up into a small, basement-type space, empty, but for a simple stone pedestal in its centre. Atop it, in a wooden box—ajar, to show its contents, because Tom probably doubted anyone else would ever make it down to see it—sat the Gaunt family ring.

The resurrection stone, too, as they were one and the same.

It was surreal.

He knew the Elder wand intimately, of course. In his youth he'd coveted it, but after Ariana's death it had been the one he least wanted for fear that he might not be able to trust himself with it. It was fitting, in a way, that it was the one he'd managed to claim, and only after he'd stopped seeking it, out of necessity—to get it away from Gellert. And, then, yes, he'd kept it to protect it from anyone else who might seek to use it for ill. Not a day went by where it didn't sit heavy in its hand or his pocket because of its history, and because of his own with the Hallows and with Gellert, but he did trust himself with it now, though it had taken years to get to that point.

The cloak was known to him too, and he'd possessed it for a time, though it had never been his, had never belonged to him the way it did to the Potter family, and was not especially useful; his Disillusionment charms—especially when cast by the Elder wand—made an invisibility cloak rather redundant in his hands.

The ring, though… the ring was the one that appealed to him even now, all these years on. He'd heard the cautionary tales, knew that the dead recalled by it were not truly alive again, but that did not lessen his interest. Certainly if he could bring back the dead he would, but a close second in his mind would be to simply speak with them. There was news he wanted to share, answers he wanted to give, thanks he wanted to pass on, and above all, apologies he needed to make.

And the thing that could make that all possible was right there, right in front of him.

The ring's band was gold and a little tarnished, and the stone was black, plain but for the symbol of the Hallows, which was etched into its face.

It was a simple thing, but also not at all.

With this, he and Harry would, between them, have all three Hallows. Albus had long ago given up on that ever happening at all, would have actively turned down the opportunity had it been presented to him, but the opportunity he could see now was not for him, not at all.

Harry was a horcrux. And unless he, Albus, and Quirinus could devise a solution to that, some way to remove it, Albus feared that Harry would have to die. He was exploring what help Lily's protection might play in it all, but blood magic was old and obscure and Harry and Voldemort's connection was unique. There was no guarantee it would help him this time at all.

But this… if Harry were to become the Master of Death, could that be enough? Enough to spare him from death, enough to help him survive the removal of a horcrux?

The ring glinted at him in the dim light and Albus reached for it.

There was a soft thump and then a hoarse, "Dumbledore?"

Sirius had dropped down to join him, and though he'd not spoken overly loudly, his voice seemed very sudden and loud to Albus, who froze, fingers less than an inch from the ring.

"Are you all right?" Sirius continued, adjusting his arm's position with a wince; it was still wrapped in a sleeve of gently flowing water.

"Yes," Albus heard himself say. "Yes, I was just…" He took a deep breath to clear his head, then flicked his wand. The box holding the ring snapped shut, and locked for good measure, then floated off the podium and into his hand.

"Right," Sirius said, frowning at him for a moment. Then, he turned to look up at Nymphadora's boot, which had appeared on the top rung: "Don't bother, we're coming back up."

"That was quick," Nymphadora said, sounding both surprised and relieved.

Her boot disappeared, and then her arm dropped through the opening instead. Albus didn't understand until Sirius took it with his good arm, allowing her to help him back up the ladder. Albus climbed up after him.

"It's in there?" Nymphadora asked, nodding at the box in Albus' hand.

"Yeah," Sirius said. He kicked the opening shut, and it settled back into the hearth as flawlessly as if it was not there at all. He held his left hand out to Albus. "We've still got a fang at home, I think, from the locket—"

"No," Albus said, tucking the box under his arm. "We cannot destroy it just yet."

"What do you mean?" Nymphadora asked. Sirius didn't say anything at all, but his expression darkened. "Wasn't that the whole point of—"

"Yes," Sirius said sharply. "It was."

"I believe the urgency was more to prevent it from being moved, or tucked away behind even more difficult protections. Now that it is in our possession, however, we have a little time."

"For what?" Sirius asked. He did not look happy, but he was also looking rather unwell; where he wasn't burned he was pale and clammy looking and his breathing was a little too deep and even, like each one was very deliberately controlled.

"I wish to study the ring first, to see if we can find a way to destroy the horcrux inside it that does not destroy the ring itself. Slytherin's locket could not be helped, and the diary held no value to anyone but Tom, but this… This is one of the Hallows—the resurrection stone. We cannot trust it to function properly while it houses a piece of Voldemort's soul, but if we could remove that piece without disrupting the stone's other qualities…"

"And if you can't?" Sirius asked. He moved to make some gesture with his hands, but hissed and aborted partway through. "Horcruxes," he said through clenched teeth. "—don't respond well to being studied—"

"It will be destroyed," Albus assured him. "I have as much desire as you do to see Voldemort made mortal again, and will not let curiosity get in the way of that. Right now, though, there is at least one other horcrux still out there, which means we have the time."

"You think this is that important?" Nymphadora asked.

"I do," Albus said. And so would the pair of you, if you knew why… Albus suspected that the ring being in Harry's possession—horcrux or not—would be enough to grant him the title Master of Death if he also had the Elder wand… it was then just a matter of whether that would do them any good at all, whether it could allow Harry to survive the removal of his own horcrux, or whether the title was purely metaphorical. If that was not a viable option, then at the very least, they could use the ring to experiment with ways to destroy or remove a horcrux without destroying its container, in the hope that the same could be applied to Harry.

But Albus could not say any of that to Sirius, or to Nymphadora. He was not even sure yet whether he would say anything to Harry; false hope—if that was what it turned out to be—would be even more cruel, in Albus' opinion, than their current predicament.

"Where are you planning to keep it?" Sirius asked.

"At Hogwarts—"

"With a whole heap of kids, and within reach of Umbridge?" Sirius asked, arching an eyebrow.

"I shall secure it where it cannot be accessed by any of the students or staff… accidentally or otherwise," Albus said. "But I shall make sure you and certain others are aware of its whereabouts and any protections around it, just in case. Will that satisfy you?"

Barely, if the look on Sirius' face was anything to go by, but he didn't give voice to any further protests.

Nymphadora glanced between them.

"All right," she said. "If that's sorted, we should go—I've got to get ready for work, you—" She looked pointedly but concernedly at Sirius, who'd just swayed a little on his feet. "—need a Healer, and you—' Her eyes flicked to Albus. "—need to figure out a good hiding place for that." She nodded at the box in Albus' hands.

"Indeed," Albus said, and pressed gently on the breast pocket of his robes to check Fawkes was still there and comfortable. He gestured for the others to proceed him out of the shack. "Sirius, I think you should come with me so Poppy can have a look at you." Sirius tipped up the shoulder of his good arm as he walked, which Albus took to mean he did not object. "Nymphadora, if you can let Remus know we are alive and were successful, when you return to Headquarters…?" Nymphadora nodded, holding the shack's door open for Sirius. "Excellent. I shall be in touch with him later, once we have visited the Hospital Wing, so he knows when to expect Sirius." She nodded again.

When they reached the dirt road beside the house, Nymphadora hugged Sirius tightly around the middle—taking care to avoid his arm—and he hugged her back one-handed.

"We're okay," he said, more gently than Albus had been expecting. "You're okay, I'm—mostly—okay, Dumbledore's fine… Everyone's okay."

"I don't know that I want to think about how that would have gone if you hadn't been there," she said, swallowing as she released Sirius to look at Albus. Her hair—a bright bubblegum pink—wavered for a moment before returning almost forcibly to pink again. "Thanks."

Albus inclined his head and then jumped as she disappeared with a surprisingly loud CRACK; clearly she'd been more shaken than she'd let on.

"She'll be all right," Sirius said, frowning at the place where she'd just been. Albus wasn't sure if he was talking to himself, or to Albus.

"I'm sure she will," Albus said. He looked back through the overgrown garden at the Gaunt shack, and thought it looked remarkably undisturbed for what had taken place there in the last little while, though its appearance would not hold up under any sort of scrutiny, should the Dark Lord stop by. Still, there was little to be done about that, and they had what they'd come for. He turned back to Sirius.

"Which method of transportation are you least opposed to in your current state?" he asked. "I'm afraid Fawkes is in no state to offer his services, but I can Side-Along you, or I can make a portkey—"

"I've got a feeling neither are going to be much fun, so let's go with what's quickest," Sirius said, grimacing, and reached out to take Albus' arm.

"Very well," Albus said, and spun on the spot, pulling Sirius with him.

"I should have expected this, I suppose," Madam Pomfrey said, more to herself, Harry thought, than to him. Then, in a low voice, she said, "I don't suppose there's any point in me telling you my patient needs treatment and rest, not visitors?"

"No," Harry said, and she sighed and stepped back to allow him into the Hospital Wing. All but two beds were empty. One held a younger Ravenclaw Harry didn't know—they looked like they'd had a nasty potions accident—and the other held Warrington from Slytherin, who must have come from Quidditch training; he was still in his flying gear, and had a bruised, bloodied face, probably from a run-in with a bludger.

"Where—?"

"Come on, then, Potter," Madam Pomfrey said briskly. She flicked her wand at the occupied beds, and the curtains drew around them, obscuring them from view… and obscuring their views, Harry supposed. "I've got an Anti-Ache in my office if your wrist's giving you grief."

When they reached her office door she cast several spells to unlock it, then opened it the smallest possible amount and ushered him inside. She followed him in and shut the door firmly behind her.

Harry hadn't spent enough time in Madam Pomfrey's office to know whether the bed behind her desk—the one Padfoot currently occupied—was a normal fixture or purely there for Padfoot's benefit. He was propped up on pillows rather than lying down, and awake… sort of; his eyes were lidded and there was a light, cloying quality to his scent—beneath the smell of mould and ash—that made Harry think he was on some fairly strong pain potions. Rather than bandages or salves, his right arm was wrapped in a sleeve of water. Since his clothes and hair were singed and the rest of him bore little burns, Harry could only assume there was another burn—a worse one—under the water, though the gentle ripples meant it was hard to see what was actually under there.

"I've given him something for the pain," Madam Pomfrey said, voice hushed, and Padfoot blinked slowly at the sound of her voice. "But I've not been able to have a proper look at the rest yet—I have other patients, and I don't want to draw attention to him being here." Warrington was a member of the Inquisitorial Squad, and while it had never been an issue for Madam Pomfrey to treat non-students before, Harry suspected Umbridge would have objections to it now. Clearly Madam Pomfrey did too, else she wouldn't have Padfoot tucked away in her office.

Madam Pomfrey went to poke through a cabinet on the other side of the room, then offered Harry a pot of burn-salve.

"Here," she said. "You can deal with the minor ones while I deal with them…" She slipped out of the room again, and Harry could hear her talking: "You're welcome, Potter, now off to dinner with you; I've got other patients who need my attention…" This was followed shortly after by the sound of the large Hospital Wing doors opening, and closing; presumably she was staging Harry's departure.

"'Lo," Padfoot said, and Harry crossed the room to go and stand beside his bed. "Got m' mes'ge, obvi'sly?"

"Yeah," Harry said. A very untidily written—now that Harry had seen him, he assumed left-handed—message had come through on the parchment just as Harry and the others were sitting down to dinner. He'd come up here at once. "What happened? Are you all right? Where's Dora? Where's Dumbledore?"

"Both fine," Padfoot said, waving his good hand. He reached clumsily for Harry, who offered Padfoot his hand; Padfoot took it and squeezed. "We got it."

"You did?" Harry asked. "What was it? Where is it?"

"Mmmhmm," Padfoot said. He blinked slowly. "Ring. And with Dumbl'ore." He frowned. "Didn' want to d'stroy 't, though. Gonna have to talk t' him 'bout that." His head lolled back onto the pillows and he glanced down at his arm. "Later though."

"Yeah," Harry said; Padfoot didn't look like he was in a state to be doing much of anything right now. He pulled Madam Pomfrey's chair over and braced the pot of salve against his chest with his left forearm so that he could unscrew it. A pleasant herbal smell wafted out and he set it on his knee. "I take it it's bad, if she had to give you something this—" He nodded at Padfoot. "—strong."

"'M perfec'ly lucid, thank you," Padfoot slurred, frowning. "Just…" He fell into a considering sort of silence, and apparently failed to find the right word or excuse. He shifted—gingerly, despite the pain potions—and then sighed. "Thought I was gonna lose 't. Arm," he said. Harry swallowed, and without really meaning to, curled his fingers over his stump. "Might still. Dunno. Wasn' good."

"What happened?" Harry croaked.

"Fien'fyre," Padfoot said, and Harry stilled. Even through the haze of pain potions he must have noticed or smelled Harry's morbid curiosity and desperation to know what had happened, because he smiled rather crookedly. "T'was at 's uncle's place."

Slowly, dazedly, Padfoot began to recount the afternoon's events. It should have taken some of the drama out of it, slurred and halting as it was, but to Harry, it made it all the more haunting. He could picture it—he'd seen the Gaunt shack in the memories Dumbledore had given him—and he'd seen Fiendfyre, too, knew how hot it burned, knew how excruciating it was when it made contact… He pressed a hand to his chest, and felt the waxy, slightly lumpy scar through his robes.

"'N then it was just… dark," Padfoot said. "'N cold." He shivered, though Madam Pomfrey's office was perfectly warm, and, like Harry, Padfoot was usually fairly resistant to the cold. "D'you rem'ber the cave? How we couldn't make water?" Harry nodded. "It was that… but air. Couldn't conj're, couldn't transfigure, couldn't ev'n take the air still in me and make more…"

"How'd you get out, then?"

"Didn't," Padfoot said. "Dumbl'ore did something. Glad he was with us."

So was Harry, having heard what he just had.

"And you said he didn't want to destroy it—"

"No." Padfoot frowned again. So did Harry.

"Right," Madam Pomfrey said, letting herself back into the office. "That's them dealt with, so let's see what we can do for you, Black…" She paused and frowned at the tub of open salve sitting on Harry's knee, forgotten.

"Sorry," Harry said. He'd been so caught up in hearing what had happened, he'd not put any on Padfoot at all. "Do you want—"

"I want you out of the way," she said, but not unkindly. Harry stood and moved, pulling the chair with him so she could approach the bed properly. "But if you could fetch my kit…" She waved a hand at her desk, and Harry gathered it up as best he could—it was surprisingly heavy—and set it on the chair beside her. Her wand was twisting in complicated shapes through the air—diagnostic charms, Harry suspected, though they weren't familiar ones to him.

"What are you looking for?" he asked; she still hadn't removed the water around his arm.

"Often in healing we look for where the problem is, so that we can fix it," she said, mouth twisting at whatever she could see. "Right now, though, I'm trying to work out what's not affected so that I know what I might be able to salvage."

"That bad?" Padfoot asked.

Madam Pomfrey pressed her lips together and turned to search through her kit. She withdrew a bulbous bottle filled with what looked like water but probably wasn't, and two tiny bottles, one of which also looked like it contained water, and one of which contained what looked like ink.

"Are you ready?" she asked Padfoot, who grimaced and nodded. She flicked her wand and the water sleeve vanished. Padfoot sucked a breath in through his teeth, head tipping back toward the ceiling, though he otherwise remained still.

Harry's stomach turned.

Both sides of Padfoot's forearm were a mess of blackened holes, each about the diameter of one of Harry's fingers and deep enough that Harry thought he could see bone—both white bone and blackened bone, depending on where he looked—within them. The skin around each was red and shiny, cracked in places and blistered in others. His hand was pale—almost bluish—but everything above his elbow looked—to Harry's untrained eye—fairly undamaged.

Madam Pomfrey bent closer to look, but made no move to touch, with either her hand, her wand, or any spells.

Padfoot was staring too, with a mix of horror and fascination.

"You're not going to faint or be sick, are you?" Madam Pomfrey asked Harry, who shook his head.

"After everything he's seen?" Padfoot asked, with a strained sort of amusement.

"This time he's seeing it on someone else and not himself," she said. "It's different." She gave Harry a piercing look, then, when he didn't immediately keel over, nodded her satisfaction. "Though it's a nice change to not be working on you." Though her voice was serious, there was something fond in her scent. She reached for the tiny black bottle. When she uncapped it, there was a brush attached to the lid—it looked a lot like one of Aunt Petunia's nail polish bottles. Very carefully, Madam Pomfrey painted a thin line all the way around Padfoot's arm, just above his elbow, and then around the tips of each of his fingers and thumb.

"The clear one, Potter," she said, still holding the brush. "The small one." Harry passed it to her, and she unstoppered it one-handed, then dipped the brush in, swirling it around. Its contents turned a soft turquoise colour and she passed it to Padfoot. "Drink."

"What does that do?" Harry asked. Padfoot, it seemed, was less curious, and just tipped it back.

"Numbs everything between the bands," she said, just as Padfoot made an odd face that seemed to suggest it was working. "And he's going to need it." She passed her bottles back to Harry, then gestured for the larger one. He gave it to her, but she didn't immediately open it. Instead, she reached out and tapped the back of Padfoot's hand with her finger. "Anything?"

"No," he said.

Next Madam Pomfrey tapped his wrist, then a tiny patch of reddened but otherwise undamaged skin on his forearm, apparently checking the effectiveness of her work. She made a satisfied sound, not needing confirmation from Padfoot this time; clearly she'd assumed—and Harry thought she was probably right to—that he'd have reacted if he had any feeling there at all.

She conjured a pan beneath Padfoot's arm, then unstoppered the third bottle and poured it over his burns. Harry was entirely unprepared for them to hiss and steam, as if they still contained heat, and clearly so was Padfoot, who flinched and would have pulled away, had Madam Pomfrey not had a firm grip on his wrist.

"What—?"

"It's a cleanser," she said, "to try to remove some of the dark magic responsible for these, but against something like Fiendfyre…" She shook her head and traced her wand through the air again in the same pattern as she'd used when she said she was looking at what she could salvage. Her mouth turned down.

"Could Bill help?" Harry asked. "Bill Weasley, I mean. Fiendfyre's a curse, so if he could break the curse, then maybe—"

"There's no active curse here, Potter," she said. "It's not even a cursed injury, necessarily, just one inflicted by a curse. That leaves marks, a lot of the time, no matter what we do to them."

"But you healed mine," Harry said, lifting a hand to his chest.

"The Headmaster's phoenix healed yours," Madam Pomfrey corrected. Padfoot didn't smell surprised, which Harry assumed meant he'd already known, but it was news to Harry; it had already been tended to when he awoke, and he'd not really thought about how it had happened. "And even then, only so much…"

"But you can still heal it, right?" Harry asked. Madam Pomfrey, in his experience, could heal just about anything.

As she worked on Padfoot, though, it became increasingly clear that that would not be the case here; Harry lost count of the salves and lotions she applied, and the potions she made Padfoot drink, or else poured over his arm, but none seemed to help much at all. Padfoot—not quite at her level, but still decent at healing himself—made a few suggestions about potion combinations or spells they could try, but those didn't yield results either.

That's not to say it didn't get better at all; the blistering did heal and the cracked skin wove back together—Madam Pomfrey hypothesised that, as they had likely been caused by the heat of and proximity to Fiendfyre, rather than the Fiendfyre itself, they were not necessarily curse-inflicted. Even so, a lot of Padfoot's skin remained waxy, and twisted, too pink in places, and too white in others.

The blackened holes where the Fiendfyre had latched on stopped weeping, which Harry supposed was something, but didn't heal any more than that; they remained there, dark and ugly, like spots of tarnish on silver, or wormholes on an apple.

After a while, Madam Pomfrey set her bottles aside and drew her wand.

"Don't bother," Padfoot said. Enough time had passed that he wasn't slurring quite so much. "It's going to look how it's going to look, and—"

"I'm less worried about aesthetics than I am about functionality," Madam Pomfrey said grimly. "There's damage beneath the surface, to the bone—I think I might be able to vanish and regrow that—" Harry, who knew a bit about regrowing arm bones, grimaced, and Padfoot did not look particularly enthused by the idea either. "—but also damage to everything else." She pressed her finger to the back of Padfoot's hand, then removed it. Where it had been was a pale oval, and his skin did not recover its colour anywhere near as quickly as it should have. "Disrupted blood flow, for one, and try to make a fist." Padfoot's eyebrow twitched up, and then both drew together in a bewildered way that became increasingly frustrated and worried; Harry knew that expression, not because he'd ever seen it, but because he'd felt it on his own face every time he tried to do something with the hand he no longer had:

Padfoot's fingers curled, but only about halfway as far as they should have. He reached over with his good hand and folded them over completely, but the moment he released them, they unfurled again.

"I've been too busy trying not to move it at all to check mobility," Padfoot murmured. He was suddenly more upset by his injury than he had been so far—his right hand was his wand hand—though Harry could only tell that from his scent; his expression was only mildly troubled. "Fixable, do you think? Where is it—flexor?"

Madam Pomfrey made a thoughtful noise, and set about moving, curling, and uncurling Padfoot's fingers herself, while the two of them had a conversation using lots of large, anatomical terms Harry had no hope of following. In fact, he was quite sure they'd both forgotten he was there at all, until Madam Pomfrey turned to him, quite abruptly, and said it was time for him to go.

"But—"

"You've seen him—enough of him to know that he's going to be all right." A 'mostly' seemed to hang in the air between the three of them. "He's got a long and uncomfortable night ahead of him—" She pulled a bottle of Skele-Gro from her kit, even as she spoke, and Harry's nose wrinkled even as Padfoot curled his lip. "—and honestly, the most helpful thing you can do for any of us right now, is to go and catch the last few minutes of dinner, and be seen somewhere more recently than you were last seen here."

"I—" But Harry couldn't even argue with that, because she was right that eventually, someone would come looking for him, and if Padfoot was found here… "Yeah. Yeah, all right." And she was right; he'd seen Padfoot now, heard what had happened. Honestly, she'd already let him stay for a lot longer than he'd expected. He looked at Padfoot. "You'll be okay?"

"I'm in good hands," he said, smiling. His scent was still a bit upset, though oddly anxious and stifled now, too, as if he wasn't going let himself be properly upset until Madam Pomfrey had done all she could and they knew whether he'd recover his movement or not. Harry could understand that. "I probably won't see you before I go home—"

"Yeah, don't," Harry said, and thought of Umbridge and the Inquisitorial Squad. "It's not worth it."

"—but maybe at your next match—" Gryffindor were playing Ravenclaw on the first weekend in November, which also happened to be Padfoot's birthday; that was only two weeks away, and Harry was sure they could find some way to get him—and Dora, or anyone else who came with him—up into the Room afterward without Umbridge being any wiser. "—or in Hogsmeade in December." There'd be another Order meeting between now and then, too, though as far as Harry knew, a date had not yet been set. "Or," Padfoot continued, "failing that, there's the Christmas break—"

"Can't come soon enough," Harry muttered. There wasn't a good way to hug Padfoot properly without jostling his arm—numb though it still was—and getting in Madam Pomfrey's way, so Harry settled for going to stand by his head and giving him a careful, one-armed hug around his neck and shoulders. Padfoot patted his arm.

"Thanks," he said to Madam Pomfrey.

"I've learned my lesson about keeping Blacks and Potters apart," she said briskly, but her scent was fond, and Padfoot grinned at her, then at Harry. "Now, off with you."

It didn't take anywhere near as long as Ron had expected for Umbirdge to seek them out. She approached them at the end of dinner—which meant it had only about an hour and a half since Malfoy spoke with her and basically offered Ron up for questions about Eihwaz—and came to stand behind Malfoy and Hermione, and across from Ron and Ginny, who'd joined them when Harry left.

"Hem hem," she said, though they were all already well aware of her; Ron and Malfoy for obvious reasons, and Ginny and Hermione because they just didn't like her, and were probably expecting questions about Harry, who still hadn't returned from the Hospital Wing…

Ron hoped that was a good thing, that him having been gone for so long meant he'd been able to see Sirius, and that they were talking about the horcrux they'd hopefully secured, and not that he'd been gone so long because something had gone wrong.

Harry could be the reason for her coming over, he supposed, but he doubted it.

"Yes?" Malfoy asked, without even turning to look at her. Umbridge's smile never wavered, but Ron was fairly sure she didn't like that. "Did you need something, High Inquisitor?"

"Yes," she said. Her smile widened into something smugly triumphant, and it was enough to make Ron feel a chill, even though he and Malfoy had talked about this, had planned for what would happen:

She would pull Ron aside and she would question him, but he would refuse to answer. She could take whatever house points she wanted—if they even had any left to lose—and make whatever threats she wanted, and he'd still refuse. The hope was that she would then move on to Veritaserum, which Ron would take, while Malfoy—who'd make whatever excuse he needed to to get away from Harry, Hermione, and anyone else in the vicinity—would get himself as close as possible—probably under the cloak—and Occlude for Ron.

They'd practiced a few times in over the last few days, once everyone else was asleep, using Veritaserum Malfoy had nicked from Snape—or been given by him, Ron didn't know the details—and they were fairly sure Malfoy could do it. Ron would then lie and give her nothing of importance, nothing incriminating, but also nothing that contradicted what Malfoy had already told her. Regardless of whether she did or didn't resort to Veritaserum, though, Ron would return to Harry, Hermione and the others and say Umbridge was onto them and that they needed to do something about it, and then they could tackle it from there—they could bind themselves to the contract, or update the contract, or, if it really came to it, disband the group.

Whatever it took to keep them all safe.

"Yes," Umbridge said again. "As a matter of fact, I do." Ron didn't stand, but he readied himself to, because any moment now she was going to say his name, ask him to go with her. He caught Malfoy's eye, and felt a slight pressure in his head; Malfoy could get in without Ron feeling it—he had before—but he did it as a courtesy to let Ron know he was there.

Ready? Malfoy murmured.

Yeah, Ron thought, knowing he would hear it. You?

Yes, Malfoy said.

"I'd like a word," Umbridge continued. "Miss Granger—" Ron's heart stopped, and cold panic seized him. Malfoy looked at Umbridge, expression incredulous, and Ginny gave Umbridge an angry, mistrustful look. "—my office, please."

Hermione looked surprised and a little shrewd—probably trying to figure out what this was about—but stood without a word.

"I'll see you all later," she said, pursing her lips as she followed Umbridge away.

Ron looked at Malfoy, eyes wide.