Chapter Sixty-Three: Magia Delenda Est

Seventeen Years Ago…

The late April sun shone brightly on the rough grey and sandy stone of St. Cedd's College, Cambridge, and on the vibrant green lawn which stretched across between the cloistered walkways either side of North Quad. Two university dons, a study in contrasts, strolled along the diagonal pathway which bisected it. A fussy little man with a scruffy beard, somewhat wild grey hair and red cheeks was talking agitatedly to a taller, poised figure.

"Well, my dear Reg," the taller man shook his head with an air of resignation, as if the older, diminutive fellow's distraction was nothing unusual to him. "If you're that worried about what's written in this book, and you can't take it back yourself, why don't you just call up a friend there and ask him to come and fetch it?" He had a calm, reassuring, richly timbre of voice which, paired with his almost leonine mane of tightly curled dark hair, gave him a patrician feel.

"Yes- yes, perhaps I'll do that- if I don't forget of course," Reg shook his head then stopped, as if afraid something might fall out. "I get so forgetful these days, you see. Memory like a… oh, dear me, what is it I've got a memory like…?"

"Go back to your study," the tall man said, calmingly, laying a hand on Reg's shoulder. "Have a cup of tea. I'll talk to the porters about getting that cow moved out of your kitchen. You just relax and take it easy for a couple of hours, hm?"

"You're right of course- and, I say, I suppose there's no difficulty about milk, at least, is there?" Reg added hopefully, and wandered off, meandering through a small crowd of chattering students as they erupted from a nearby staircase. The tall don nodded gravely to a number of his own students amidst the horde and settled himself against the wall to sort through his own pile of books.

The group of students picked their way across the quad, laughing and joking, as, over by the archway leading past the Porters' Lodge and out into the street, the don watched a rather extraordinary figure limping and lurching into the college. The newcomer's face was a mass of scars, and as he swung himself along, with every other step a wooden leg with a foot like an eagle's claw struck a heavy blow on the cobbled path. His dark, beady eyes swept over the students as they approached him, and, as far as could be told, his ugly face set a little harder.

He strode out toward them, pointing a scarred hand with most of a finger outstretched toward the group, who regarded him with open curiosity. His clothes were another unusual sight. Academic robes on the streets of Cambridge attracted no great attention, but this man's robe seemed to be of some strange, thick, almost horny leather material, and the heavy lapels of his coat joined to the deep cowl of a thrown-back hood behind his head.

"You," the battered man gestured to a short, rather fat adolescent on the fringes of the group. The youth looked at him with a certain swaggering arrogance as his gaze took in the older man's bizarre appearance.

"You," the scarred figure repeated, "Would be Alastair Milner, yes?"

"Aloysius Milner," the young man corrected, drawing himself up unimpressively and more than a bit haughtily. "And if you're what I think you are you're doing the worst job of blending in I've ever seen in my life," he added, bumptiously. "He sticks out more like a sore thumb than you do, Xeno," he added cockily to a taller, smug looking boy in the middle of the group, whose long blonde hair and pastel-striped clothes were not especially successfully offset by either his silver cape or the mystical medallion he wore dangling amid his carefully cultivated chest hair.

"I don't think Aurors should be coming in here without going through the proper University Police," 'Xeno' remarked airily.

"What's an Aurorer?" a girl in bandanas and flares wanted to know.

"It's a secret," 'Xeno' pressed his finger to his lips and grinned at her outrageously.

"Aye, it is," the scar-faced older man snapped. "And there's words for people that blab about secrets. Two words, and the less nasty of 'em is idiot. Who might you be, then?"

"Sidney Xenophilius Lovegood," Xeno slurred his own name slightly, and bowed mockingly. "And I don't talk to pigs," he added, laughing at what he clearly thought was immensely funny.

"Xeno just sees things that aren't there," Aloysius put in, mockingly. "Like his own manners, apparently."

"Or gets stoned and starts telling people he's a magician," one of the other girls put in, seizing Xeno in a rather inappropriate way.

"Xeno sees the world differently to other people," Xeno himself attested, holding his nose in the air rather vainly.

"Well, Xeno can just piss off, can't he?" the battle scarred man said abruptly.

"Well, really-"

"Get out of here, the lot of you," he snapped. "My name's Captain Alastor Moody. If that means anything to you, then clear off- and if it doesn't-" he glowered at the giggling flared girl, "Be glad of it and take yourself off somewhere else before you find out. Not you-" he thrust out a hand and abruptly stopped Aloysius, who had started to sidle away. "I need to talk to you."

The fat student's face paled slightly.

The atmosphere in the quad seemed to change quite suddenly. Xeno's nose and mouth gave a peculiar sort of twitch, as if finding his superior smirk a little uncomfortable, and he and Aloysius exchanged a nervous- almost sick look.

"I'll stay with Al-" Xeno started, but Moody rounded on him.

"No, you won't," he said firmly. He saw Xeno's eyes start to drift toward his friend, and gripped the caped youngster's arm firmly, until Xeno's eyes snapped back to rest on Moody's own pair of malevolent-looking dark orbs. Defeated, Xeno seemed to sink back, and after a quick call to his friend to catch up later, scurried away, the rest of the group in his wake.

Captain Moody turned, pivoting on his wooden foot, to face a nervous looking Aloysius.

"Sit down, lad," he gestured curtly toward a wrought iron bench to one side of the path across the Quad. The plump teenager stared at him.

"Och, listen, will ye," the student began, lapsing into a broad Scottish brogue, "If you're after wantin' my heid over that wee business with the bicycle and the traffic cone and the policewoman's underwear on the top of King's College Chapel, ah can assure you sincerely, not a dram o' misused magic was involved. T'was but the normal student hi-jinks, as t'were," he protested, the Scottish drifting somewhere over the Irish sea.

"No, boy, it's not about that." Moody sighed, again gesturing to the bench. "Sit down."

Al Milner gave him another nervous look, much as he had shared with Xeno before the other boy had departed, and dropped heavily onto the bench. His somewhat florid face had turned a clammy shade of grey.. It was clear enough from his expression that, no matter what he might have said, he had seized rather desperately upon the hope that the prank in question was the reason for the Auror's visit.

Moody sighed, and settled himself, with some difficulty, into the bench beside the youth, his wooden leg sticking out awkwardly across the cobbled path.

"Nice place this," he remarked, looking round at the Quad. "Reminds me of Hogwarts a bit, doesn't it you?"

"Well, Hogwarts and the Muggle Universities do share some common antecedents," Aloysius told him, in a somewhat distracted tone- "Of course, the Muggle authorities today have very little idea of-" he stopped, and shook his somewhat large and heavy head, like a dog shaking off water. "What's happened?" he asked, abruptly.

Moody sighed.

"All right, lad." He somewhat clumsily made to rest a hand on Aloysius' shoulder, drew a heavy breath, and spoke. "There's no easy way to–"

"Mam and dad?" the voice had changed again- a faintly Welsh lilt to West Country vowels overlaying the more cultured Oxford tones- perhaps Aloysius Milner's own natural voice. It cracked as he said it, and caught at Moody's wrist, his eyes growing wide.

"Last night in Bristol- Catchmere Street, there was a-" Moody hesitated, as the student's head jerked up slightly, and his breath caught, at Moody's words, "An altercation. Bunch of Muggle kids taking a shortcut home from the cinema- well, they weren't to know it was a Wizarding street, and they were drunk enough that they just ignored the Muggle repelling charms. Anyway, they were friends of your sister, Luna, and seems she recognised them, realised they were in danger, went out to try to turn them back, to get out of it quick- but not before a gang of You-Know-Who's thugs showed up."

Aloysius went white. He seemed to be trying to speak, but no words would come. Moody went on quickly, tersely. No good to come from letting the kid jump to one conclusion after another while he dithered about.

"It escalated. Badly. The leader- piece of absolute shit called Lucky Malfoy decided it'd be funny to offer to let the Muggles go- if your sister would be 'friendly' with him." He laid a callused hand across the young man's shoulders. "Your Mum and Dad had seen things had got dangerous by then- came out of the house and overheard that. Well, they didn't stand for it. Spells were thrown. Somehow or other they got your sister back inside the house-"

"What happened?"

Aloysius Milner was staring at the green college lawn, his eyes pale discs, almost circular, wide with terror, and Moody could feel him beginning to shake.

"I'm sorry, lad," he breathed sadly. "Happen I should have told this first but there's no right way- there was a fire-"

"No… oh no… no…" the boy's voice was tiny, a wandering whisper in the air.

"It… was quick, at least. Wendfire." Moody told him, wondering if it would in any way ease the boy's horror- if he were even capable of understanding it. "I'm sorry, lad," he repeated himself grimly. "They couldn't get out. There just wasn't time. Alarms went up- we turned up - Aurors, I mean- then and Malfoy and the Death Eaters reckoned they'd best make themselves scarce, though I did make sure they left most of Geoffrey Wilkes behind them," he added. Sometimes knowing there'd been a measure of revenge helped people a bit. Sometimes not. You could never tell.

Aloysius screamed. There were no words, just a savage, tortured wail of horror and despair that sounded to Moody for all the world as if the teenager were trying to scream out his own soul and cry it away from all the hurt.

Across the quadrangle, the don who had watched Moody arrive, a tall, dark skinned man in red-lined black academic robes that looked more like than unlike those of a wizard turned sharply, carelessly setting down his stack of books on a box hedge and walking briskly toward them.

"Dr. Reaver," he introduced himself quickly, holding out a hand, "I'm Al's tutor- and you're an Auror, I perceive," he added, in a still lower tone of his deep voice.

Aloysius Milner was shaking, his head in his hands, mumbled and incoherent snatches of speech coming to his lips. Reaver looked down at him, and Moody saw a deep compassion in his eyes, though it was a compassion which was somehow suffused with something bitter and wild.

"Is it- the worst news, then?" Dr. Reaver asked the Auror quietly.

"Aye. Aye, I'm afraid so. The whole lot of'em." Moody looked soberly at the university don, who sighed.

"His little sister was fifteen," Reaver's brow furrowed in pain. "I wish I could say he was the first this year- or even this term, Captain. It's getting worse and worse, isn't it?"

"I don't see much light," Moody grunted. Milner raised his head suddenly, his face ravaged, but his eyes almost uncomprehending. Then, without warning, his face crumpled, and his head fell forward as once again his eyes filled with a fresh wave of tears.

"And no end in sight." Reaver said in a way which made it somehow clear that it wasn't a question. He looked down at Aloysius thoughtfully for a moment. "Eighteen years old and - you've just orphaned him in a few words- no, I know it's not you that did it-" he held up a soothing hand, "But.. I... think it's best if you leave him to me, now, Captain." The tall man glanced up at Moody's interjection, meeting his eye. "I know him - and I have been where he is," the don added bitterly. "Nothing can really help except time- but at least I've been through learning how to spend it."

Captain Moody gave him an uncertain look.

"Please-" Dr. Reaver laid a hand on Aloysius' shoulder. "These young people are my responsibility, Captain. You've done your part." He held the Auror's gaze for a long moment.

Finally, Moody grunted, and heaved himself to his feet.

"W-wait-" Aloysius Milner, not looking up, tried and failed to grasp the battered man's arm.

"Who was there?" he asked, in a broken voice.

Moody frowned.

"The Death Eaters- who killed my …" Aloysius whimpered, unable to say the most awful words. "Who were they?"

"Lad, it's not-"

"I want to know. I went to school with- with some of- them-"

"Older than you," Moody sighed, relenting. "Lucius Malfoy I said- Thorfinn Rowle- his brother Edward- two knuckleheads called Crabbe and Goyle, a vicious bastard Evan Rosier- I'll track that one down, I promise you that," he added.

"Not- Allerton? Allerton wasn't there? Didn't-" Aloysius asked, an insistent tone in his shattered, trembling voice.

"You know a bit then-" Captain Moody retorted with a look of considerable surprise. Allerton was hardly a name associated with the usual front rank of the Death Eaters.

"Allerton-" the boy pressed, and his head fell forward again, weakly coughing to himself.

"Nay, lad." Moody again laid a hand on the student's quaking shoulder. "That one doesn't go out murderin' and Muggle-baiting. Allerton works direct with You-Know-Who."

Aloysius did not reply. With a faint sigh, Moody turned to Dr. Reaver, who was looking at them with a speculative cast to his sympathetic features.

"Take care of him, Professor," he asked, grimly. "Ministry will be in touch, they'll see him right, once he's had time to digest this a bit."

Slowly, and with more than one sorrowful backward glance, Moody left the college, the sun still shining cheerfully upon the ancient place of learning.

Dr. Reaver knelt down beside the bench and looked sorrowfully at Aloysius Milner.

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "Listen- Al- I'm really sorry- but- this might help."

"What might help?" Aloysius demanded, his movements spasmodic, frantic, as he violently shook his head. "I - I don't know what to do-"

"Nothing can bring them back, Al. I'm sorry- but- we can beat this thing. We can fight back. We can make their deaths count for something and stop this happening again, and again, and again. We just have to be brave. Help me, Al." Reaver took the student's hand, his eyes burning fiercely. "Do you know how many times I've stood here these past few years, seeing - this- seeing kids like you going through this? Nothing- nothing is worth paying this kind of price for, is it? Is it really?"

Aloysius Milner looked up at him, confusion showing for a moment through his grief, and Reaver nodded. "You and me," he spoke quietly to his bereaved student, "We could put an end to this. Trust me. Please?"

Alastor Moody breathed a heavy sigh as he stepped out of the college into the street, narrowly avoiding being run down by some curly haired fool with a long scarf riding a bicycle along the pavement at great speed. What he had had to do today was one of the least pleasant parts of the job- and these days it was a duty he found himself needing to undertake more and more.

"Blasted Death Eaters," he snarled under his breath, and scowled horribly as he looked up and down the street, wondering where he could find a quiet side street to take himself in order to Apparate back to London. He'd probably forget the plump little kid's name in a day or so- there were so many, had been so many, would be so many more, he realised grimly, before all this was finally over, one way or another.

He wondered how the day was going to get worse. Then the raucous blast of a horn sounded loud, and a noisy black motorbike and sidecar, huge and chromed in various places, lurched across the road from in front of a psychedelic Volkswagen camper van, more rust than paint, narrowly avoided an oncoming lorry, and mounted the pavement in front of him.

The motorcyclist pulled off his helmet and shook out a long mane of dark hair, grinning recklessly at him. There were two people in the sidecar alongside him- another dark haired man with a slightly more sensible demeanour which perhaps only came from his thick-framed spectacles, and a fairly significantly pregnant red haired young woman with piercingly intent green eyes.

"Well, well, well," the motorcyclist smirked. "If it isn't Peg-Leg Moody himself."

"What are you doin' here?" Moody snapped curtly. "I'm here on serious business, Black, you little-"

"It is indeed, Serious, Black," the young man in the sidecar remarked, before the girl elbowed him in the ribs. Across the road, the camper van was manoeuvring itself somewhat more sedately into a parking space.

"And drive better than that when you've got an expectant mother aboard," Moody added with a growl.

"Oh, ye of little faith," Black hung his head with mock penitence and grinned impudently. "Like you don't think I'd put every anti-collision charm and protective counter-jinx I could find on this horse?" he slapped the hot metal side of the sidecar familiarly. "My future godchild's very important to me," he protested, taking in Captain Moody's sceptical look.

"Future godchild- you?" the bespectacled man in the sidecar with the woman raised his eyebrows. "I'm not sure I wouldn't sooner give the job to the in-laws!" he teased Black with a sly grin.

"And you ought to know better too, James Potter," Moody accosted him, offering a hand to the aforementioned's wife as she tried to lever herself out of the sidecar. "Lily," he added, "What do you think you're doing, riding in that contraption anyway, in your condition?" Moody demanded. "Did it not occur to you that you'd be safer in young Lupin's van?" He nodded brusquely over to the other side of the road.

Black gave a derisive snort.

"I'll have you know my Brough has far better structural integrity than the Spamcan," he huffed, patting the motorbike lovingly.

"The worrying thing is, he's probably right," Lily Potter confided in the Captain with a wry grin, as they observed the van in question. "Half the time on the trip down from Godric's it felt like next time the engine failed the easiest thing would be to put our feet down through the floorboards and start walking."

"Yeah," James nodded. "You ever been in a Volkswagen camper van when the engine stalls at four thousand feet?"

Moody denied that he had, in a surly tone. It was not the sort of question most people were generally asked in the first place.

Having parked the attested Spamcan, two somewhat scruffy, almost feral looking young men, one tall and thin, the other short and round, crossed the road to join the group.

"Oh, it's the whole ruddy gang of you, is it?" Captain Moody looked disgusted. "Listen- I won't say no to help in a fight when I need it, you know I won't- but there are some things," he glanced back at the College gates- "Some things that it's still the professionals that have to face doing. I'm not kidding, I don't appreciate-"

"Dumbledore sent us, Alastor," the young woman had managed, with some difficulty, and considerable help from the bespectacled young man on whom she'd been seated, to get herself out of the sidecar in a fairly unwieldy manner, and was straightening the unseasonably summery maternity dress she wore beneath a bulky leather jacket. "He thinks he's got a lead on the other business from our inside man- and he doesn't want the Ministry involved in it."

"Oh, so he sends- sends-" Moody cast about for an epithet, and cast a jerky hand motion in the direction of Black- "Scooby-Doo and his gang to make a nuisance of themselves while I'm after telling some poor kid his whole family got blasted to hell by that scum Malfoy, does he?"

James' face fell, and he shot a bleak look at his young wife as, hands clasped and wedding rings touching, he stepped out of the sidecar to join her.

"I'm sorry, Alastor," he said, somberly, his face contrite. "We didn't know."

"Aye, well, you know now-" Moody snapped, then shook his head curtly. What was the point? It wasn't as if it were these five kids' faults- and he knew well enough they were trying their hardest to help, in their own way. "Never mind. So, Dumbledore wants us to step things up a gear, does he?"

"We're close, he thinks," James Potter nodded, soberly. "Don't know if all this is going to be worth it- but- every way we can stick a spoke in that bastard son of an earthworm's wheel, the better."

"I won't argue with that," Moody grunted.

"It's going to be no joke getting in and out of Tintagel when we pull this," James admitted, pushing his hand back through his untidy hair. "Even Pete almost got caught, just trying to scout round. He had to lie low for most of a month before he got back to us."

"Yeah, we thought he was a goner for sure," Black clapped an arm around the smaller man's shoulders, eliciting a nervous grin. "I'd just started looking for a decent replacement hamster," he added, teasingly, "when the heat finally dropped enough for him to de-rat and show up at the Hollow again. Still, let's hope it'll make it all the easier this time around."

"If we can trust this 'inside man' of Dumbledore's," Pete lamented, a touch resentfully. "I'd feel a lot happier if I knew who we were putting our faith in." He gave James a searching look.

"Hey, don't ask me," James spread his hands defensively. "You want to get secrets out of Dumbledore, you'd need a better crowbar than any I've got. It'll pan out though," he grinned broadly. "It always does, somehow. Just relax, take things as they come."

Moody turned to him, an angry remonstrance on his lips, which died into an ugly, suspicious glare as he caught the deliberately mocking glint in James' eyes.

"Ignore him, Captain," the slender, scruffy man identified as Lupin, owner of the disreputable van, advised Moody. "He's not quite as stupid as he seems."

Lily regarded her husband dubiously while resting a hand on her abdomen, feeling the movements of their unborn child.

"I don't think," she remarked fondly, "That would even be possible."

"Ohh, get you, Evans," James retorted with mock outrage.

Moody looked thoughtful.

"Funny thing though," he added, reflectively. "I don't trust coincidences. That kid mentioned Allerton just now, too."

Seventeen Years Later…

That selfsame child as had been mumbled to himself and turned over in his sleep. He never had cause to know that he had, at so tender an age, been so close- the width of a wide pavement, a set of iron railing, a green sward of lawn, and the front wall of St Cedds' College, from the same man whose deeds and motives troubled his sleep now, yet still, Harry's sleep was troubled that night, and late coming to him. As he turned, one hand escaped the bedclothes and caught, without waking, at his bedside table, joggling his wand on its stand and falling back. As it did so, his fingertips brushed against the curious jagged excrescence of quartz-like mineral the centaurs had sent to him. In his sleep, Harry frowned. Pinpricks of light- faint, more like the reflected glint of light- perhaps no more than the starlight- seemed to flow for a moment through the confused internal crystal patterns.

He was walking. A soft and springy carpet of pine-needles formed a path beneath his feet, and all about him the woods were silent. The air was fresh, cool with the scent of spring, yet no birds sang, and flavoured with the faint tang of distant wood smoke.

In a clearing ringed with gorse and heather, standing in tall bracken, someone was waiting for him.

He smiled, the cares seeming to slip from his face as he dreamed, and all tranquil, he settled back, his hand falling from the table and laying upon the coverlet, as the lights within the crystal faded, and the beginnings of a whispered dream faded with them.

There was a sly and cheeky smile, a sidelong grin out from beneath a waterfall of hair shining coppery in the sunlight, and a voice with a curious sing-song quality to it and a timbre like a fine violin murmured to him as they faded away.

"Not yet… not yet."

"NOT yet- no, I don't care," Ginny was saying emphatically as Ron arrived at the breakfast table on Monday morning, more than a little surprised to find Harry and Ginny ahead of him, sitting opposite Hermione. "You are not duelling Mad-Eye this week, or next," she added, to her boyfriend, with a knowing grin.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but Ginny put her hand over it. "I don't have the faintest idea what it is you've got planned for Valentine's Day and I don't want to, not until- well, until it happens, anyway-" she added hurriedly, seeing him make another effort to speak, "But I do know whatever it is wouldn't be improved by you spending the day in the hospital wing with various bits cursed off." She stuck out her tongue at her boyfriend cheekily.

Harry pulled a face at her.

"Morning, Ron," he nodded, across the table.

"Morning," Ron replied. "What's up; first DA mutiny? I don't know why you put up with her," he added, grinning rudely at his sister.

"Well, the perks are rather nice," Harry rejoined drily, offering Ginny a glass of grapefruit juice.

"Cheers," she accepted, with a grin.

They had made good progress on the Comet the previous day, though Harry doubted whether they would have done clearing small offcuts of twig and bark out of the crannies and crevices of Helena's Nest this side of the summer holidays. At a suggestion from Madam Hooch, they had opted to largely reconstruct the Comet's tail binding, carefully following the radial spiral pattern shown in Harry's broomstick care kit. It was slow work, and though after most of Sunday the broom was beginning to look considerably more 'broom' than 'stick' again, he suspected it would take most of the next Sunday and perhaps much of the Sunday after to complete the repairs. That would then leave one week for the new charms to bed in before Ginny would be needing the broom to fly in their next match against either Ravenclaw or Slytherin, depending on the outcome of their own matches over the course of those weeks.

"Just a difference of opinion, I believe," Hermione murmured, shifting along the bench a little to make room for Ron beside her- although, Harry noted with slight amusement, not so much that Ron did not end up rather close. "Harry ventured the suggestion that on Thursday, at the DA meeting, after we've done you-know-what, you-know-where," she clarified, with a quick glance around at the crowded table, "He should try to fight Professor- oh, you know who I mean- Moody."

"Harry- if you're that desperate to get away from her," Ron indicated Ginny with a motion of one hand, "I'm sure Fred and George could smuggle you out of the country to go live with Charlie or something."

Ginny mouthed something distinctly obscene across the table at him.

"I just thought it would be good practice- and- well," Harry tried to find the appropriate way to put it, "I suppose- if I'm asking the Association as a whole to face him, in a sense, I thought that I ought to-"

"Yes dear, pull the other one, it's got bells on," Ginny remarked sweetly. "All perfectly true, but I know you, Harry James Potter, you can't rest if there's something impossible you've not thrown yourself at head first yet," she winked.

"Can you?" Harry replied pointedly, giving her a challenging smile.

"Of course not," Ginny shrugged primly. "But I've a better sense of timing, and this one you can take on after we've had Valentine's Day together. One challenge at a time, Harry," she added. "You might have other hurdles to get over first," she added, through eyelashes which were lowered in a manner Harry felt was altogether too effectively suggestive to be permitted at the breakfast table, under the strictures of the Geneva Convention.

"All right," he surrendered cheerfully enough. "Though on one condition- you don't talk me out of duelling Moody this week so that you can- I know you too, Virginia Molly Weasley," he added, "And I want you in one piece too, for that matter."

"I faithfully promise to avoid getting myself blasted to bits between now and Valentine's Day," Ginny told him solemnly.

"I should think so too," Harry retorted, and, feeling that he owed her something for the weaponised eyelashes, added, in a lower tone, "Or I might have to reserve the right to check."

"Not in public, you'll embarrass Neville," Ron interrupted loudly, and threw a piece of toast at Harry.

"Why me?" Neville, only half listening, objected.

"Just- anyone, really," Ron tried to cover himself.

"Good grief, after London I'd have thought I'd be the least likely to feel embarrassed anymore about anything to do with Ginny being-" Neville carefully halted his sentence, feeling in retrospect perhaps that it had begun before he had really properly assessed where it was going, and in what company. Apparently feeling it to be incomplete, he then added "Er…" as a creatively unorthodox means of punctuation.

"Oh, do go on?" Hermione asked politely. "May I conjure you a shovel, to dig faster?"

Ginny had covered her face with the palm of one hand. Harry surveyed her for a moment, and then gravely nodded to Neville in a manner of congratulations.

"Moody did point something useful out, though," Hermione noted, after a moment, "On a more serious note, apart from disarmament and basic stunners, most of what we do does rather aim at overkill."

"I'm trying to teach people to fight opponents a lot bigger, nastier, and more experienced than them," Harry pointed out. "The biggest weakness most of the Death Eaters we've fought seem to have got is that a lot of them spent about fifteen years either locked up in Azkaban, or doing their hardest to pretend they were never Dark Wizards in the first place, wouldn't hurt a fly, and let themselves get out of practice. Keeping them off balance all the time seems like the best way to keep us alive." He reflected. "Still, it's a good point." He gave the three of them a speculative look. "Where we started this from- last summer- well, we agreed- fight or kill if we had to- but only if we have to. Maybe we should at least work on the non-lethal options a bit more. Not just for us, but for everyone else." He considered. "Ok," he added, after a moment's further introspection and several mouthfuls of porridge, "How about we split them up into teams of four- testing restraining and immobilisation spells. Mad-Eye's caught more Death Eaters than anyone else- he ought to be able to give us some decent hints."

"Why four?" Ginny, who had found that a slice of toast and marmalade, and one of Harry's boiled eggs, had rather repaired her composure, wanted to know.

"Watch my back, remember?" Harry smiled. "Not much good me petrifying a Death Eater if his best mate comes along and unpetrifies him behind my back when I'm trying to move on to the next person."

"So, there's that inverted shield Milner taught us last term..." Hermione mused.

"All the body binds," Ron put in.

"What about transfiguration?" Ginny asked.

Harry considered it.

"Better not. Not till I've got a better idea how we fix it if it goes wrong, anyway," he added. "Right now there's only about a half dozen people who can really do it safely, and didn't you say you only could if someone else had left some kind of echo behind?"

She nodded in agreement.

"Fair point. I haven't the faintest idea how I'd teach anyone else how to do that, either," Ginny admitted. "I mean, with Malfoy- joking aside, it was like what Moody- I mean, Crouch- did, left a kind of..." she grasped for the words, "A kind of ferret pattern next to him? I suppose I might be able to put that on someone else...but I'm a bit scared that if I tried, then when it wore off, they'd transform back into Malfoy, not themselves." She regarded her brother with a deliberately speculative look.

"Ginny, shut up," Hermione hissed, urgently.

"I'm not really going to-" the younger girl protested, and then, catching the import of Hermione's frantic glance, turned round. "Oh, Hermione, he's miles away," she motioned vaguely toward Milner, at the teachers' high table, who appeared to be more preoccupied in shaking out the last of a box of cereal in search of the small plastic toy, than in any especially nefarious pursuit.

"Constant Vigilance!" Ron roared, prompting a silent but withering stare from Professor McGonagall. Milner now appeared to be examining Snape's cereal bowl with dark suspicion.

"Even so, I don't think it's something we should be talking about quite so publicly," Hermione muttered, looking about herself, somewhat ill-at-ease. "It's not just Milner, is it? I mean- I'd rather not start encouraging any second or third years to start messing around with human transfiguration before they're ready, either."

"No, I suppose not," Ginny nodded, shifting restlessly and then, catching herself, sitting on her hands and sharing an understanding glance with Harry at her side.

"I have this vision," Harry admitted to them in response to Hermione's words, "Of us sitting in the middle of a great big pile of ferrets and teapots, and me having to go call McGonagall and Dumbledore to get them turned back into DA members- the right DA members, he added, after a moment, "And then of Dumbledore sucking in his breath over his teeth like a plumber and saying "Ohh, that'll cost you, Harry."

Hermione giggled helplessly and clasped Ron's arm.

"I've changed my mind," she added, "It's worth it, let's do it."

"You're supposed to be the responsible one," Ron protested, in a slightly panicked tone. "Honestly, I don't know what's got into you lately…"

"You, you stupid git," she added, and then made a slightly strangled noise. "I didn't mean-"

Harry, carefully keeping a straight face, turned to Ginny and murmured blandly,

"I think we've just been outdone."

"I promise you," Hermione groaned, "I didn't mean anything-"

"Oh, I know that," Harry assured her. "Doesn't mean we're going to let you forget it any time soon though."

His friend sighed with resigned exasperation.

"How long, roughly?" she asked.

"I think, probably, until Harry's and my first niece is born," Ginny cut in. "That would be about fair, wouldn't it, Hermione?"

"Yes, once again, Ginny, in fact, shut up," Hermione grimaced at her, though with a half-chuckle behind her words. Then, as she looked up at a sudden noise overhead, her face grew sombre, nervous, and she found Ron's hand and gripped it suddenly.

The owls of Hogwarts swept overhead in a flurry of feathers and a bevy of hoots. Harry, as always, half-rose, scanning the birds until he sighted his own Hedwig, soaring across the hall and swooping down to him.

"Well, here it comes," he said, in a serious voice, his earlier mirth swept aside. He had known this was coming- they all had, and it was not Hedwig to whom he was referring. He held up one arm for her to settle upon his wrist, stroking her gently and lowering her to the tabletop, releasing the rolled-up Daily Prophet from the leather thongs which bound it to Hedwig's leg, and smoothing it out on the tabletop, holding down one corner with Ron's jar of marmalade.

Wordlessly, the five of them- he, Ginny, Hermione, Ron, and Neville, peered at the front page.

SHOCKING U-TURN AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC!

HYBRID AND HALF-BREED REGISTRATION ACT SUSPENDED

PENDING GOVERNMENT ENQUIRY!

FAILURE TO REGISTER DECRIMINALISED WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

ACTING MINISTER FOR MAGIC, DELORES JANE UMBRIDGE, SPEAKS…

Monday 3rd February, 1997

Delores Umbridge has announced the immediate suspension of the controversial Hybrid and Half-Breed Registration Act, signed into magical law last month as part of a package of measures which the Ministry of Magic described as "essential to public safety in our ongoing fight against the forces of terrorism."

In a move which sources close to the Minister have described as a shocking and sudden policy swerve, Ms. Umbridge this morning addressed reporters in the Ministry's Jade Gallery.

Framing her announcement within a context of her new administration's commitment to always modernise and improve, the Acting Minister said that whilst she was very proud of the hard work of Ministry staff and wizarding civil servants up and down the country, and that she continued to wholeheartedly endorse the objectives of the Act, it was "undeniably" clear to her, in light of concerns raised by "a number of constituents", that fundamental difficulties in the minutiae of how the Act has been implemented and enforced had given rise to what the AM described as "an unacceptable level of injustice" which must be, in her words, rectified, before the Act can be allowed to proceed.

It is important to note that the Registration Act has not been, as one junior source in the Ministry described it, "scrapped". The full legislation remains on the statute books - for now. However, what has happened is a step which many opposed to the Act will hail as an important and significant first step towards its eventual repeal.

Head of Emergency Bureaucracy Philemus Santonine, one of the most senior aides to Delores Umbridge, spoke to the press immediately after the announcement and said...

"Merlin's beard, we actually…" Ron breathed. "I mean, I think, we actually pulled it off…"

Harry paused in his reading and looked around at his friends at the breakfast table. He felt the strangest sense of a victory- but a victory which in a way could not be celebrated. He cleared his throat, as if to speak, but found himself unsure of what to say. There was a sense of palpable relief- both that, thus far, nothing unforeseen had gone wrong, and that the horrible dead claw which had seemed to have been pressing ever heavier over their world itself, and their friends in it- he shot a glance at the teacher's table, and caught sight of Hagrid, for a moment visibly happier than he had been for weeks as he spoke urgently with Professor McGonagall- had now in part been forced to relent.

"It looks like a full enquiry- Ron, that's your father leading it-" Hermione exclaimed- "It's … it's like she's just completely caved in…" She shook her head, eyes flickering wildly across the newsprint.

Harry returned his attention to the newspaper, glancing thoughtfully further down the article.

"A trusted and long-standing employee associated with the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office is tipped to lead the enquiry," he picked out, looking back up at them, in response to Hermione's remark.

All around them, the bustle of breakfast had resumed largely unabated among a student body to a majority fairly unconcerned with the activities of distant politicians, except where those activities directly impinged upon themselves. It was a strange, isolated feeling that seemed to make each of them feel a little uncomfortable.

"What's this bit?" Neville pointed at a boxed article in smaller print, part way down the page.

What does this mean for Hybrids and Half-Breeds, and other Non-Human Sentients?

Analysis by our assistant political editor, Penelope Clearwater.

What the AM announced this morning curiously amounts to nothing, and everything, for the half-breed members of the community- as well as for naturalised members of the non-human species, such as those Centaurs living openly in wizarding communities or institutions, free Elves, and other smaller minority groups such as the Aviatrices - Harpies and others- and Selkie communities.

It does mean that- for now, the legal compulsion to register, which had led to such protests we had seen on the streets of London, Hogsmeade, and Throgmorten is in abeyance, and that the additional coercive measures which had been mooted publicly by some of the AM's more militant staff, such as John Dawlish and Persephone Wallis, both of whom had advocated the fast track of measures such as mandatory or even forced magically binding paths and blood contracts to compel registration and attendance among particularly problematic groups, such as the werewolf community, has been removed. No one is now required to attend the Ministry registration premises this week or until the situation changes, and any and all outstanding appointments are effectively null and void.

This will rightly be seen as a victory- albeit a surprising and unexpected one, by the many campaigners against the Registration Act, such as Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock and Headmaster of Hogwarts, or Remus John Lupin, who was last week fined twenty Galleons for refusal to give proper account of his employment or residential address, or Ariadne Magoriansson, Advocate-Extremis of the Celestial Association of Centaurs, UK, but it is important to recall that, noteworthy as these developments are, and as much as they seem to represent a bewildering and drastic policy shift on the part of the august offices of the Ministry, it does, nevertheless, for the time leave those unfortunates whose status is covered by the auspices of the Act in a form of legal limbo. Applications for employment or for state benefits, for example, will be heavily complicated by a legal framework which currently still requests and requires proof of registration, but whilst registration is currently unavailable and impossible-

"I hadn't thought of that," Hermione frowned angrily.

"Well, it's only till the whole thing gets thrown out properly," Ron tried to reassure her. "There's no way dad'll let that stand in law- he might even give them a kick to sort it out sooner."

"Yes, but Ron, these things can take years," she scowled. "It's pure bureaucratic spite on Umbridge's part-"

"Might also be a mistake. It's a great big Ministry cock-up, right after she more or less picked an open fight with Madam Bones at the trial," he replied. "I reckon we should stick out of it for the time being- we got what we asked for, and things are moving the right way-" he glanced at Harry and Ginny. "I'm not going to argue with Dumbledore, but unless he says different, I'd say let's keep out of it for now unless things really come off the rails."

"I think I agree," Harry mused quietly, his brow furrowed. "Especially if she's testing us. She obviously thought she couldn't get away with ignoring me- and she's followed pretty much the exact letter of what I asked her for. To me that looks like she's expecting us to find some way to retaliate over this, and she's planned something if we do. So, let's sit quietly and watch what happens. If the rest of the government itself can sort that out, then we can see how she tries to stop them."

He steepled his fingers over the table and slowly let his head drop forward on to them.

It was a victory- not an unqualified and perfect victory- but he hadn't expected that, and perhaps more to the point he was uncomfortably aware that, given the means he'd employed, he didn't deserve that- but it was a victory nevertheless- but at what price?

Ginny reached over to Hedwig, who seemed a little nonplussed by her master's lack of enthusiasm for the news she had brought, and ruffled the feathers on the bird's head affectionately, eliciting a soft clicking of the owl's beak as she half-closed her golden eyes happily.

"It's all right Hedwig," she smiled, "Thank you for the good news."

"I'm not sure you should really praise the medium for the outcome of the message," Luna settled in between Ron and Neville opposite and helped herself to Gryffindor grapefruit juice. "Considering the pavlovian response you engender the motivation for an ontological perspective wherein the medium of reporting possesses the agency to influence by conscious choice the deterministic collapse of the quantum waveform." She looked grave. "Thank you, Harry," she added, as the boy offered her the toast rack. Seriously again, she looked back to Ginny. "That could potentially be an undesirable habit of causation to encourage."

"Luna..." Hermione winced. "Cosmological metaphysics doesn't work that way."

Luna looked back at her, her large eyes unblinking in a way that reminded Harry rather irresistibly of Hedwig herself.

"Can you prove that logically?" she asked sweetly.

Hermione half opened her mouth, then closed it, and glared at the Ravenclaw witch for a long moment.

"Give me about thirty years and a lot of black coffee," she said, in a dangerously level tone.

Luna beamed.

Ron frowned and looked at Harry and Ginny.

"By a process of elimination," he said, heavily, "Trying to work out if I haven't the faintest idea what they're rabbiting on about because it's brilliant, it's totally loony, or if it's just because they're girls, did either of you have a clue what they're on about?"

His sister and her boyfriend shook their heads gravely. Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Hang on- how's that work?"

"Ginny speaks girl, and you both speak nutter," Ron clarified. "Must be genius, then."

Hermione looked incredulous.

"... Speaks… girl…?" she echoed, with vague tones of despair. "Please tell me he's not putting that in the same category as Parseltongue… and French, for that matter?" she asked the table at large.

"It seems like nobody minds about the suggestion we're both lunatics," Ginny remarked quietly to Harry, as he shook himself free of contemplation, finished his glass of pumpkin juice and checked his bag for his Potions books.

"Right, I'd better get moving," Neville remarked, as, up at the high table, he saw Professor Sprout rising to her feet. "I'll let you lot figure out what you're going to turn me into next by yourselves... don't ask," he added, seeing Dean's curious look.

"Thought you had a free?" Ron asked, curiously, while Neville checked his belongings for the third time.

"Yeah, but," He gave Harry a quick, proud grin. "Professor Sprout's got me working as a classroom assistant, with the first and second years. So much of Herbology's practical, especially on the NEWT course, that it seemed like the best way to do it, only it means I'm doubling up on the timetable a bit..."

"That's brilliant, Neville," Harry grinned. "Wow, Assistant Professor of Herbology?"

"Of course not - it's not even like you and the DA," Neville protested, with an embarrassed smile, clearly quite liking the title for all that.

"What, you mean, it's actually legal," Hermione observed, self-deprecatingly, "Rather than just something we went ahead and did anyway and Dumbledore decided to adopt to try to annoy Umbridge?"

"I mean I'm not setting lesson plans or anything- just doing a lot of pruning and planting up, and giving some of the younger kids a hand with the tools when they're in class," the Not Assistant Professor explained. "But it's a great bit of work experience, and I'm kind of seeing why you get such a kick out of teaching," he added, to Harry, more thoughtfully. "Got my own keys to the greenhouse defence wards-" he twirled a brass keyring ostentatiously, "And Snape had to come to me the other day to ask for some more Nebulous Harlequin root for his stores," the young man added, with a certain satisfaction. "Luckily that growth accelerator compound - the one Ron used on that tomato plant-" he mumbled quietly- "Did the trick. He was expecting it in three months, I gave it to him yesterday afternoon. Well, left the barrowful of it on his desk."

"Isn't that the one that really stinks?" Ron asked.

"Is it?" Neville responded, casually, before heading off in the direction of the greenhouses. "Oh well."

"Somehow I don't see Snape making me Assistant Potions Professor any time soon," Harry grumbled ruefully to Ginny as he, in turn, got up from the bench. He grimaced as a thought struck him. "And I hope he's found Neville's little surprise before he walks into the classroom with me and the Slytherins today, or else I just know who's going to end up getting the blame for that one," he added, with a vague sigh.

"Oh, how he does love to moan about Potions," Ginny remarked to Hermione with a somewhat teasing grin aimed at her boyfriend as she did so.

"Honestly Harry," Hermione concurred, "Some days I think you'd be disappointed if Snape didn't give you anything to complain about."

"Then I'll probably live a life free from disappointment," the young man, feeling somewhat maligned, murmured as he swung his bag on to his shoulder and took the opportunity to offer Ginny a kiss goodbye whilst more or less concealed from the teaching staff's steely gaze.

"Oh, cheer up," Blaise slouched across to join them through the general scrimmage of departure. "You've got me back to keep you out of trouble now, what more do you want?"

Harry turned a slightly dubious eye to her.

"I want him back in one piece by morning break," Ginny instructed the Slytherin girl lightly. "And don't let him brood," she added, as a parting shot, as the tides of schoolchildren drawn across the hall by the irresistible gravitational pull of education swept them apart.

Harry said nothing, smiling quietly to himself as he allowed himself to be led away. He was, he realised, deeply grateful to his friends for their banter and more than occasional forays into the bizarre. Though it was the outcome he had hoped and fought for, he knew in a certain specialised sense he had been dreading this particular morning's news headline almost- if not quite- as much as he had feared some of the alternatives. Success brought home to him- to all of them, he suspected, from the certain look about their eyes- something further of the enormity of what they had done. They had crossed a line - in good cause and with little real choice, yet however justified, it was a line which remained crossed, a responsibility which Harry knew could never entirely be shrugged away.

"I think they're mostly more embarrassed than anything." Blaise chewed her lip thoughtfully, answering his question, speaking in a slightly hushed tone as the two of them descended into the dungeons. "I mean, Pansy carries on like it's pretty much my fault I didn't just die quietly without causing any fuss that would cause trouble for her precious Draco, but otherwise-" she paused as a pair of Slytherin seventh years strode past them- "Otherwise he made a scene, and he made the House look bad in public- pretty much as public as you could get it in the end."

"How about you? I mean, I only have to put up with them twice a week," Harry frowned- "And we'd better get a shift on, I am not in the mood for Snape doing the usual "Ah, Mr Potter, I see fame and celebrity is no substitute for the time sponsored by Accurist routine this morning"- but are they being all right with you?"

"Same old, same old," Blaise grimaced, as the two of them approached the Potions classroom and their five remaining classmates regarded them balefully.

"Oh, got yourself a new girlfriend then, Potter?" Richard George muttered in a half-hearted sort of way. "Or isn't the bitchy carrot enough for you by herself?" This elicited a sort of faint, vaguely rusty jeer from Archidæmus Bradshaw and Millicent Bulstrode, and a braying, unsettled wheeze from Pansy Parkinson. Theodore Nott appeared to be doing his level best to assume that he had not heard, and shot Blaise a vaguely sympathetic look.

Harry breathed slowly, and looked implacably at the rest of his classmates.

"Oh, not going to defend little ratface's honour- what's the matter Potter, she not putting out any more?" Millicent leered, then made a sort of indrawn grunting laugh that sounded unsettlingly like an oink.

Blaise ground her teeth.

"Why don't you shut up?" she asked, suddenly.

"Why don't you make me- "

"If you hadn't sold Draco out to that scar headed freak last Autumn none of this would have happened!" Pansy came out with it all of an angry rush, jabbing an accusing finger at Harry while she harangued Blaise. "I read what they said in the Prophet- about you and her- that little ginger cow acting all holier than thou when she's the one that opened the Chamber of Secrets in the first place- and him- speaking Parseltongue in court- and look what happened to Draco-"

"If you read the damn paper you ought to know Potter did everything he could to try to save the little ferret-"

"Oh well, we know who's side you're on, Zabini-"

"Always said she was beating for the wrong-yiii!" Richard's voice rose up sharply as a notched and rusty knife from the stores cupboard that had seen decidedly better days danced in the air in front of his face. "Oh, come on Zabini, no need to get all-" he blustered nervously.

"Finite incantatem," Snape's voice rattled from behind them coldly, and Blaise's levitated knife dropped to the floor like a stone. "I expect my House to set a better example," the Potions Master almost growled, regarding them balefully, "And in light of recent events I will certainly not tolerate fighting between Slytherin students- and as for you-" he turned toward Blaise, holding up his hand and letting the corroded implement fly up into it- then the Potions Master's eyes flickered to his right. "What are you smirking about, Potter?" he demanded. "Five points from Gryffindor-"

"Ten, surely," Harry interjected, a sudden dangerous surge of wild anger rising in him. It was not anger at the Slytherins and their remarks, nor, precisely, anger at Snape either. Rather, it was more that their actions had reminded him in a strange and altogether unsettling way of a Draco Malfoy shaped gap in what had been the fabric of his world for some considerable time- a sharp and painful reminder of his own failure, and the fate Draco was suffering as a result. "I mean, Legilmancy-" Harry went on, and looked hard into Snape's face as he did so.

Go on. Wild, poorly controlled emotion. Legilmancy. I've practically left the door open. Take a look. I dare you.

"You must have heard," he went on, "What I was thinking about total congenital idiocy and how on Earth anyone thinks I could possibly be insulted by anything said by someone so moronic that they think it's a blinding revelation that my girlfriend's got ginger hair." He raised his eyebrows slightly. "I'm sorry, Professor."

Snape's brow furrowed dangerously- but then a queer, coldly gloating gleam passed across his eyes for a moment, and his head turned away. "Zabini, do not let me catch you threatening another student with school equipment again," he finished, coldly, motioning sharply for the rest of the class to stand aside as he unlocked the dungeon. "Inside."

Harry glanced at Blaise, surprised, as the small group, with ill-feeling on several sides, made their way into the classroom and settled at their desks, Pansy, ostentatiously and looking venomously at Harry and Blaise as she did so, sitting next to an empty seat.

Harry sighed inwardly. It would still be a lie to suggest that Slytherin hostility really meant much to him any more, but it was painfully clear that he was not going to be allowed to forget his failure to save Malfoy any time soon. Worse still, in a sense, was that of the group, only Blaise and Snape himself, both of whose feelings were understandably very conflicted on the subject for very different reasons, even understood that it was a failure, for which Harry still felt a clinging and bitter sense of guilt. For Pansy and the others, they saw an enemy who had finally triumphed and driven Draco Malfoy away- and blamed him for a victory which he certainly did not feel. Had it been a vindictive impulse, that had made him try to tempt Snape to read his mind- or just- yes, he realised. He looked up at Snape, not really expecting a shred of sympathy, but simply for a moment hoping to share a moment's understanding of the truth of things- but Snape's eyes were cold and flat, as he observed his class, and then spoke in a flat, malevolent tone.

"So… Love Potions."

Harry blinked, his earlier confused tangle of thoughts drifting quite out of his mind.. Somebody giggled.

"Sorry?" Bradshaw coughed.

"I cannot think that your hearing has somehow been defective during my absence, Bradshaw," Snape almost hissed, his black eyes sliding slowly and flatly over the class. "Love Potions. Elixirs which capture the passions, ensnare the heart, and bind the soul."

Harry began to vaguely wonder at what point on the journey down from the Great Hall he had accidentally taken a wrong turn into an incorrect universe.

"You are all… at least… sixteen year old students, and well on your way to being fully qualified practitioners in the art of Potion making," Professor Snape's cold voice reached across the classroom. "This is not a field for inappropriate merriment, Bulstrode, and close your mouth, Potter, I am not your dentist." He stalked across to the blackboard and inscribed a page reference on it, before turning sharply back to face the class. "Or perhaps you would care to explain why you find this field of the alchemical arts so deeply… amusing. Well?" The final word came like a lance, and his eyes turned inevitably toward Harry.

"It's just not exactly what I expect from- well, from you, to be honest, Professor-" Harry managed, candidly. To his shock, a thin smile flickered for just a moment at Snape's lips- but only for a moment.

"Perhaps not. But then perhaps that is indicative of your own lamentable lack of vision and understanding," Snape's tone grew harsher as he spoke. "Pink hearts? Fluffy bunnies? Ribbons and saccharine cards and kissing in the Charms classroom stationary cupboard?" Harry's eyes were watering, and he could hear Blaise almost choking with suppressed mirth next to him. Fluffy bunnies was somehow precisely nowhere on the list of phrases his mind could associate with having been said by Severus Snape.

Snape's wand whipped out from his robes and struck the front row of desks with a sharp crack, and a sickly, sour aroma filled the air. "A love potion ensnares the will. It captures freedom, thought, desire, and twists them mercilessly. It is more insidious and more powerful than the Imperius curse, and crueller than Cruciatus," Snape's eyes bore into his students as they slowly turned, taking in each and every one of them. "The power of love is a… curious thing," the teacher whispered, and nodded toward the white-faced Pansy, sitting alone, for a moment. "How it can hurt- how it can burn. Magic which can seize that most fundamental and animal of drives and direct it- force it down a new path and violate the most intimate principles and beliefs of the afflicted mind is no laughing matter, any of you- and hold this in your thoughts. For any one person in this room who thinks otherwise, who, being taught how to harness this power, does so lightly, irresponsibly, for selfish passion and without respect or heed for the one so intimately ensnared- to abuse these potions is to deserve my uttermost contempt."

Once again, Snape's gaze slowly ranged over his silent students, his eyes blazing, and Harry, for all that he had done and faced, once again felt something terrible and savage in the intensity of that stare. Then, Professor Snape spoke again, his voice cold and briskly business-like. "The potion, as those of you who have absorbed the preparatory reading will be aware, takes a number of weeks to brew, so you will begin by reading the directions on page two-hundred-and-thirty of your textbooks. Be mindful that if you are unable to commence the practical work correctly by the close of this lesson it will be impossible to complete the potion in time, and you will fail this portion of the course, that is all- begin."

Andries van Lutyens had spent eighteen hours in the company of Meneer Antonin Dolohov, shipping agent for Walpurgis International Freight, and he was sure it was about twenty-four hours too long. Somehow the man seemed able to suck all the meagre warmth out of a cabin as soon as he stepped into it, and the crew quarters aboard the Princess Alexa were cramped enough that even the short-handed fifteen strong crew were hard-pressed to avoid Dolohov's company.

In truth, Captain van Lutyens found it aggravating in the first place that the company had insisted on loading an entirely superfluous landsman aboard with their cargo in Flushing. Aggravating and insulting, as if they did not trust him and his crew to not make off with all sixteen of Walpurgis International Freight's steel shipping containers to parts unknown. Yet, for all that, the shipping agent he knew could not be entirely held responsible for the bad attitude of his company- who were, after all, paying good rates, so van Lutyens would have been wholly prepared to treat Dolohov with civility, if irritation, if the man had not been so thoroughly and wilfully unpleasant- arrogant and rude to the crew if they spoke to him, and if they did not, simply regarding them with a bleak and unbroken stare as if they were some specimen beneath the glass on a microscope slide.

For all that, the crossing from Flushing to Lowestoft would only have taken them a little over the one day, and one more cold fish in a whole sea of them would have made little difference in the long term- until Dolohov had strode into the wheelhouse without knocking, a little over half way across, well into the night watch, closed the door behind him, and, burning, deep set eyes fixed on van Lutyens, said his peace.

"I am sorry, meneer Dolohov, but I do not think you understand–"

"I understand perfectly, Captain. You are on course for Lowestoft docks. You will now change that course."

"Meneer, you and your company have paid for us to transport sixteen containers-"

"We have paid good money, I believe," Dolohov's moustache seemed to bristle.

"But you do not own this boat, meneer Dolohov, and neither does Walpurgis International Freight- and our course is chartered for Lowestoft-"

"You have enough fuel to reach our new destination. I have checked the tanks personally."

"The fuel tanks are off-limits to passengers!" Furious now, van Lutyens sharply gestured for his second mate, Arabella De Vries, to take the helm before he rounded on his unwelcome guest. "I'll be speaking to your head office about this you…. Interfering penny-pincher… and get off my bridge before I take you off it myself!"

"Dear me, that would be most unwise," Dolohov seemed entirely unintimidated by van Lutyens anger- indeed, if anything, for the first time his heavy, swarthy features showed a flicker of warmth and amusement. "You will divert your course north along the English coast and down into the Wash- there-" he produced a short wooden pointer from within his dark, high-collared suit and pointed it at the chart, at a small port. "My associates have been forced to alter their plans. You will unload our cargo there."

"If I have any more trouble with you I will unload your damnblasted cargo in the sea, meneer Dolohov," Andries van Lutyens snapped. "What do you think I should tell the owners of the other twenty containers on this boat, who are waiting for their cargo in Lowestoft, hey?" He grabbed Dolohov's arm roughly. Things seemed to happen very quickly then. Dolohov jabbed him hard in the centre of the chest with the wooden pointer, moving it in a queer, sharp, jagged pattern as he did. Pinkish-red sparks seemed to flash before van Lutyens eyes, and he felt suddenly nauseous, cold and hot at the same time, and as if a great fist was clenching inside his ribcage. His vision was going black, and he pitched back on to the deck.

De Vries shouted something and ran to him, but Dolohov jabbed at the empty air and said something that sounded more like Italian- or maybe Latin, than Dutch or his own Russian. There was another explosion of red lights in van Lutyens vision as he clutched numbly at the agony in his throbbing chest, and he heard Arabella shriek with sudden pain. He tried to move, as Dolohov said something else he didn't catch, and then strong hands were on him, hauling him roughly to his feet.

"Arabella- you are all right?" he asked, surprised despite himself. De Vries' face showed no sign of the cry he'd heard her voice a moment ago- it showed no signs of anything, like a sleepwalker.

"You are… not a good subject, Captain van Lutyens." Dolohov had walked over to the chart and was examining it. He turned to face the stricken captain again, with one raised eyebrow. "You have an extremely strong mind I think. That is not always a fortunate thing." His hand raised the wooden rod again. What was it he said? Abracadabra? Why were the lights turning green?

Andries van Lutyens never troubled himself to answer these last questions. There was not time. At least, he was buried at sea.

"Mm, don't you misbehave too much," Ginny tickled him impishly. "We've still got classes to get back to after lunch, remember."

The weather had taken a slight turn for the warmer after last Saturday's storm, and they had been able to spend their lunch break in Helena's Nest without warming charms. The intention had been to make a little further progress on the remodelling of Ginny's broomstick. Their progress today was a little difficult to quantify, but an honest and impartial assessment would probably put it at around the figure of one twig.

"You're more than welcome to keep Snape," Harry responded with feeling, adjusting his embrace to be a little less likely to outrage their inner Molly as he did so, and told her about his morning's experience. "I'm not sure that I don't prefer straightforward unpleasant to him being downright weird."

"I don't have a face like a rat, do I?" Ginny asked, grimacing a little.

"No you certainly don't," Harry assured her, with feeling, "And we know where that one comes from-" he stopped and shook his head, smiling oddly. "Sorry-"

"My ego's not that fragile," the girl grinned at him as they sat together on one of the Nest's benches, "And I quite like 'bitchy carrot", I might have to claim it for my own."

"No," Harry smiled, fondly and kissed her again, "I mean, it's just so strange sometimes- it's like we're living our lives at two different speeds. A world where we're meant to care about house points and some peabrains from Slytherin trying to set themselves up as the new Draco Malfoy, while all the time here we are, fighting this war."

"Well, you wanted it," Ginny reminded him. "Isn't that world- where we get to be sixteen and play Quidditch-"

"And snog in the outbuildings during breaktime," Harry suggested with a sly grin.

"Excellent idea, Mr Potter, twenty points to Gryffindor," Ginny giggled, before they spent a few minutes taking that suggestion to heart.

"Isn't that the world we want to live in?" she belatedly finished the enquiry some few minutes later.

"How do you think you can get away with awarding house points, anyway?" Harry teased her, in a different tack.

"Future Head Boy's girlfriend's privilege?"

"I wonder if I can appoint prefects… I mean, if I would be able to, next year."

"You wouldn't- Harry, Fred and George would be so terribly disappointed in me," Ginny regarded him with sententious solemnity and laid her hand over her heart, closing her eyes gravely. Then one of them opened and peeked at him, "And nine out of ten on skilful subject changing, Mr Potter," she added, digging him in the ribs.

"Ouch- I had a good teacher, remember," Harry protested- "And all right- yes, you're right. I want to keep this- Quidditch, Hogwarts, having fun- it's the life I wanted- as far as I can I still want to live it- it's just with all that's happened lately, well- somehow the other feels more like it's the real world and this is a happy sort of dream sometimes," he frowned.

"Which world am I in?" Ginny cocked her head to one side and considered him, testingly.

"Both of them." Harry looked intently at her. "And neither of them. Gin–" he started.

"I know- Harry, believe me, I get it," she pursed her lips and met his gaze unflinchingly. "We all do it. I mean- Percy," Ginny reflected. "It still aches- sometimes it's more than I can bear- but - and I know Ron feels the same- we push it away, we hold it away from ourselves and only sometimes let it out- because this- this life means so much to us- and that's what he would have wanted. Dear old Weatherby," she gave a faint half-laugh, and blinked away tears. "All this isn't a dream. It's the life that we're fighting for- the life that we're living the other life for."

"I know, but…" Harry lightly struck one fist against his knee as they sat there. "Sometimes it just gets to me that- every day we spend living that life, being ourselves- he's still out there, getting stronger- and-"

"And I upset you, didn't I, this morning?" Ginny touched his cheek. "Telling you not to fight Moody- because-"

"Because I want that perfect Valentine's Day with you more than anything," Harry held her fiercely, speaking directly now, "But we both know that I'm going to have to duel Moody sooner or later- I'm going to have to train with him- as hard as I possibly can- and I can't put it off too long- and no, you didn't upset me Jinx, just reminded me-" he reassured her gently, not taking his eyes from hers, "But it's not me fighting Moody that scared you, is it?"

Ginny made a faint sound of mock exasperation.

"Fat lot of good it is trying to hide anything from you some days," she lightly punched his arm. "Of course it isn't. Just- if it comes to that- to you picking another fight with Little Tommy- remember I'm with you. We all are. To the end- either way."

"Well, there goes one plan," Harry remarked wryly. "I'd been thinking that standing right in front of Little Tommy then saying "Ginny, stay at home, it's too dangerous", and then ducking really, really fast was my best idea for getting shot of Riddle yet."

She considered this.

"I'm not really sure that 'dodging out of the way and getting your girlfriend to beat up the Dark Lord' was really likely the 'power the Dark Lord knows not' that Trelawney was quacking on about, to be honest, but, I'll give it a go," Ginny hugged him. "It's not just fighting him though, is it?" she reflected sombrely. "I mean, you've beaten him- several times now- you know you can do it, it's more about, well…" she considered.

"Please show your working?" Harry suggested drily. "Having something that vaguely resembles a plan and knowing how to kick him where it hurts rather than just screaming and throwing everything at him all at once in the desperate hope something works- but yeah. I can beat him in a fight, sort of, but he can also beat me, pretty easily, and right now he's got way more chances than I have." He looked thoughtfully at her, and reached out to clasp her fingers for comfort. "I've got to get good enough at this to be able to hurt him, fast enough before I give him too many chances against me. Basic Quidditch tactics."

"What we really need," Ginny drew her features together and said in a very calm tone, "Is to know how to kill him." She looked at him, her face unreadable, her hand clasped in his, then spoke quickly, seeing something in the shadows in his eyes. "Harry - I know this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves- all right, a lot ahead of ourselves, but - if - when - if - after- I'll be here for you, all right. I promise. Always."

"Thanks, Ginny." He held her hand and her gaze for a long time, then abruptly shook his head to clear his thoughts. "You're right," he added in a less introspective tone, "We're definitely getting ahead of ourselves - first, Milner, then Valentine's Day, and then…" he added, by way of a promise, but Ginny pulled a face at him. "What?" Harry protested.

"We don't put 'A date with a bitchy carrot' on the same list of problems as 'Dark Wizards I have to stomp on," Ginny harrumphed teasingly.

"No, that's fair enough," Harry apologised gravely, then added, after a moment, " I can't really say Milner's dark, exactly, more just sort of peculiar." He glanced at his watch while slyly regarding his sputtering girlfriend over the top of it. "Though I'd better not be late for Theory with him this afternoon, or-" he considered. "You had Dark Arts with him again this morning, didn't you- how was he?"

"Same as usual really- or what passes for usual, anyway," Ginny shrugged. "Theory of basic memory charms, which got more theoretical than I could keep up with at times, to be honest."

"I think my lot pretty much missed them out last year when dearest Delores was giving us the benefits of her educational brilliance," Harry admitted. "Hermione and Ron said Professor Flitwick's covered it in Advanced Charms too, but breaking them and blocking them's more Defence stuff."

"Well, perhaps Luna and I could show you at the DA," Ginny suggested brightly. " just the practical, I mean-"

"Seriously, I might take you up on that," Harry smiled as he reluctantly lifted her back into her own seat and gathered his belongings for the afternoon, "Never mind what Hermione might say about you trying out new spells inside my head again."

"New spells? " Ginny narrowed her eyes, reflecting mischievously on his previous remark. "Depends how much you think you remember about what we got up to this lunchtime, Potter," she gave him a wicked smile and slipped sideways out of his arms, grabbing her school bag as she went and sidling out of the doorway to Helena's Nest.

He caught up with her just before they slipped back into the school, and Ginny found that Harry was quite willing to stop tickling her once she had assured him she was only joking, for the third time.

She was even almost entirely sure that Harry would have done so anyway, even if Professor Sprout had not been passing the other way at the time with another wheelbarrow of growth acceleration fertiliser, and had not compared them to a pair of adolescent mandrakes as she had done so.

"So..." Professor Milner's eyes drifted over his Advanced Magical Theory class that afternoon. Harry looked at him somewhat balefully. He was aware it would be less than wise to arouse the Dark Arts teacher's suspicions, and yet it was difficult not to be drawn into speculation of Milner's peculiarly changed demeanour. After the Daily Prophet's report at breakfast, and then Snape's frankly bizarre behaviour in Potions, the young man was aware his own nerves were feeling somewhat frayed, to say the least. He found himself longing for Helena's Nest, to sit quietly with Ginny in his arms and- for a little while at least, to forget plans, schemes, wars and treachery.

For his part, Milner too seemed wary. Already, several times the man had caught Harry's eyes, and his normally perpetually mocking, gleeful manner seemed to cloud over with a darker manner, an air almost of hostility. Harry felt strangely hurt by it, a response he swiftly dismissed as ridiculous, given his own plans and suspicions of Milner, and yet still asked himself darkly what this change in Milner's attitude since his return from London might betoken.

"Leylines!" Milner announced loudly, striding across the flagstones atop the Astronomy Tower - more than one of his students had protested the continued outdoor setting of the Theory class, despite the February temperatures, and Harry had noted that temperatures which felt positively balmy nestled in a secret little folly with one's better half were considerably less enchanting when experienced atop the windy summit of a stone tower high above the rest of the school.

"Leylines," Professor Milner repeated, chalking the word quickly and scrappily across the board and turned back to the class. "One of the more perpetually misunderstood, and indeed misattributed, phenomena of the magical environment." He clasped his hands behind his back and scrutinised the class in a way which made him resemble a somewhat portly bird of prey, eyes glinting either side of his large and hawkish nose.

"An interesting, if trivial quirk," the teacher observed, "And I know my students know painfully well how much I like my interesting but trivial quirks," he added, shooting a side long grin at Hermione's resigned expression, "Regarding leylines, is that you will find that the mage born and muggleborn among you will naturally tend to misunderstand them in almost precisely the opposite way. Why so, Miss Granger?" He spun on his heels, pointing at her with both his little fingers, drawing out the vowel of 'miss' as long as he could, as if announcing a game show host on some daytime television show.

Hermione drew herself up slightly, a certain confidence in her manner suggesting the question had not been entirely unexpected.

"The natural tendency for someone educated first in the Muggle sciences," she replied, "Is always going to be to equate the elemental leyfield to the forces known to science; to gravity, to magnetism, to weak nuclear interaction, and to..."

"The other one, precisely, Miss Granger," Milner nodded, settling on the corner of his desk. "And why is this principally incorrect?"

"The arcanistic mechanics governing leylines," Hermione responded, "In so far as they are understood, do not follow the inverse cube law."

"From which we may extrapolate...?" Milner rubbed thoughtfully at his top lip.

Harry watched. He had dimly recalled enough of the textbook to have a vague grasp of what they were talking about, but little more. Perhaps of more interest to him was Milner himself, the thaumaturgist's fascination with the subject written plain on his face.

Hermione looked a little lost.

"Well- nothing certain without more information-" she asserted. "Obviously there's some other factor at work- forces which we can't yet directly measure at all, but which have some measurable and variable effect upon the frequency and amplitude of pulses in the field?"

"Precisely, Miss Granger," Milner grinned. "Or, rather," his face fell slightly, "Precisely imprecisely? There are many schools of philosophy which argue that the greatest wisdom of all is the acknowledgment of supreme ignorance, after all."

"My NEWTs are in the bag then," Harry muttered.

"All right then, Mr Potter," Professor Milner rounded on him, and Harry tensed, half-reaching for his wand. Milner wagged a finger at him reprovingly, and then gave Harry an oddly penetrating look, a strange, sad but almost whimsical ironic half-smile.

"That's the thing about unknown quantities, Harry. When you don't entirely know what it is you're dealing with, sometimes the very forces which seem to be binding you together can be what rips you apart." As Harry returned his look, the Professor's tone shifted, and swiftly, he spoke again.

"How would you conduct a test of ley field intensity?"

"Well, I suppose- if they change from place to place, then I'd... " he thought, frantically assessing it in his head. Milner sat back against his desk, watching Harry calmly, unhurriedly.

"Ok." Harry nodded. Part of him very much wanted to look to Hermione for reassurance, for some unspoken suggestion or confirmation of his thoughts- but he was conscious, in Milner's very mildness, of an unspoken challenge- not the abrasiveness of Snape- but rather more the sort of challenge he would have received from Remus Lupin. It was a challenge he was oddly loath to refuse. "Ok. So… there are things we don't know- nobody knows yet- but there are things we do know. Different places have different leylines at different distances… they're stronger at different times of day, and different phases of the moon-" he silently thanked Remus for wandering into his thoughts just then, as the association gave him more of a feel for just what he was constructing. It was so much like the tangle of events he had been forced to live through, in a way.

"So, you don't do one test. You do- well, a dozen- as many as you can, in places as similar as you can, to try to average out the variations that you can't measure, to give you a better chance of making sense of the ones you can- and you repeat it- probably through all the phases of the moon, and then probably for a couple of months as well, in case something went wrong."

The teacher was still watching him carefully, patiently. Harry was struck by how- at ease Milner seemed.

Whatever else he is, he really is a teacher, the young man realised. This- understanding, passing that on- the science of magic- it's at the heart of him.

"What you actually test-" he went on, hesitating a moment, trying to recollect from the books he had actually read, but, he suspected, with rather less attention than either Hermione or several of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and Slytherins in the classroom. "Any charm or hex with a clear, measurable result. A warming charm on a thermometer, maybe- cast it across the axis of the leyline and record the results?"

"Not bad at all," Milner smiled, pleasantly. "You should probably specify a control experiment in a ley-neutral area, but, add that in and it'd make a workable test." He nodded. "Ten points to Gryffindor- call it ten point seven five for the hell of it," he added, with a slight chuckle. "The important thing in any test is always to be asking the right questions. Never forget," and he raised his head to the rest of the class, "A good question always leads to an answer- but, just as crucially, any half decent answer is never really anything more than just a part of the next question."

"And my next question is, DA meeting tonight, isn't it?" Aloysius Milner leant forward over the game three nights later, regarding his opponent with shrewd eyes, glittering in the firelight of his office.

"In two hours or so, uncle," she smiled, and carefully made her move. "After dinner. Mr Moody is going to be there. It's rather peculiar to see him, when he taught us all through our third year but it wasn't him. Have you met him?"

"... A couple of times," Milner murmured, sipping his tea slowly and considering the state of play. "Once just recently. I dinna think he remembered me. Bit of an odd fish, you might say."

"I probably wouldn't."

"No, but you might," he offered her a placatory sort of smile. "You're no' overly happy with me, are ye, lassie?"

"They are my friends," Luna set down her game piece and folded her arms. "They believe very much in what they are doing. I think my mother would have liked them."

"Aye, she took a likin' to my friends too, cariad," the Professor nodded, and regarded the girl in the other armchair thoughtfully, then moved forward, reaching across the coffee table to make his next move. "Play you for it," he suggested. Luna Lovegood frowned at him.

"That doesn't seem very ethical somehow, does it? To make a moral choice on the strength of the outcome of a game of skill and chance?" she made a quick, impulsive move that looked to Milner likely to end in almost certain disaster, but which somehow narrowly avoided it.

"Mebbe, but it might be a salve for both our consciences, do you no' think? To leave things to chance-" he narrowed his eyes, leaning forward and making his move with slow and elaborate caution.

"Oh, speaking of conscience, are you going out to dinner tonight?" Luna asked him sweetly, wearing her vaguest expression.

"You shouldn't talk when someone else is making a move, Miss Lovegood," he chided her. "And yes, especially after young Mr Potter's been chatting up Grotbags down in the big smoke. Cannae waste a good opportunity while your lot are busy playing soldiers, now can I?"

"It would be fair, I suppose," Luna made another move, "For me to point out that even if I let you examine my memories, I have no idea what they actually talked about that night."

"Not really my concern," Milner shook his large head. He frowned at the state of the game. It was in a perilously balanced place, where one ill-judged move could cast the whole thing down in ruins. He sighed. "Honestly, Luna, I am sorry. Nobody could be happier than me that you've got friends here. You know–"

"I love you too, Uncle Aloysius," Luna reached out and lightly patted his hand. She waited until he had begun to make one further meticulously chosen move in the game before adding, "I just don't happen to like you very much at the moment, but I have been studying friendship, I am sure that will pass in time."

Milner's hand moved, and on the gaming table, a plastic donkey kicked out viciously on spring-loaded legs, sending small items of moulded plastic skittering across the table and on to the floor. The Professor uttered certain oaths which, whilst not especially magical, he was reasonably sure Sidney Xenophilius Lovegood would prefer were not used lightly in the presence of his daughter.

"Well played, Luna," he remarked in an ironic tone. "Enjoy tonight's meeting, won't you?"

"Moody's going to get the hump with you lot," Seamus remarked with a slight tone of disbelief. "I'd have thought you'd have been itching to try duelling him,"

"Something's come up," Harry admitted, "We might be back, anyway. It depends how things go. If not- Neville's in charge, if you and Lavender wouldn't mind backing him up?"

"I hope you've told him about it," Neville interjected, abandoning his efforts to peer under the sofa and getting to his feet.

Harry nodded.

"Like I said, if all goes well, the four of us should be back after dinner and ready to face Mad-Eye. If not- we'd talked about a couple of things to start on, ask him if he'd mind starting with the body binds, would you?"

"Well, I think these sort of nights usually start with Petrificus Totalis and go on from there, from what I remember," Neville observed drily, and favoured a slightly awkward looking Hermione with a pleasant smile. "Yeah, sure, I'll tell him," he nodded to Harry. "And good luck with whatever you're not telling us you're doing this time."

"Map." Harry looked round, a little surprised. Parvati Patil unpinned the Marauder's Map from the Common Room door as she said it, rolled it up, and passed it to Ginny. She, Dean, and Lavender were watching them with knowing smiles.

"No, we haven't the faintest idea what you're up to this time," Seamus grinned. "Good luck though, all right?" and, with a slightly worried looking Neville following them, the other four Gryffindor sixth-years went to dinner.

Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione looked at each other.

"Well, that's a good start," Ron sighed.

"I suppose we have been a bit obvious over the years," Harry admitted ruefully.

"Anyway, it's a good thing we didn't leave the Map behind," Ginny noted. "I'd totally forgotten we left it up there after the victory party. It'll be handy to keep an eye on where Milner actually is, while we're doing this."

"It's not a hundred percent foolproof," Hermione said warningly. "Pettigrew got around it last term, remember."

"I'm not likely to forget," Harry agreed, with feeling. Given that that particular bit of obfuscation had ended with him face to face with Voldemort, fighting for his and Ginny's lives, he suspected it was not an oversight that would ever readily slip his mind.

"And Milner understood how he'd done it," Hermione added. "If he wanted to, there's every chance he could replicate the same trick."

"Agreed." Harry pursed his lips thoughtfully, as he unrolled the map and consulted it. There was Aloysius Milner, still pottering around his office. If, of course, he never left it, then their expedition would be extremely short and frustrating- and the question of his faith in Luna Lovegood would become even more difficult.

"So, what do we do?" Ron asked.

"We hedge our bets. One of us follows him," Harry answered, after brief deliberation. "It's probably not a bad idea anyway. We're looking at this as a chance to have a look round his office, but at the same time, knowing what he's up to, wherever he's going-"

"If he goes at all," Hermione, somewhat less trusting of Luna Lovegood than Harry himself was, put in.

"That too," the boy concurred grimly. "I'm backing her here, and I'm standing by that- but - if by any chance I'm wrong-"

"Or if Milner's playing Luna along with the rest of us," Ginny followed Harry's train of thought.

"Then let's not get tricked into giving him free rein to do whatever he likes while we all chase a red herring round his office."

"Quiet!" Hermione put out a restraining arm, pressing them back into the shadows. They had moved briskly through the castle with no particular stealth until they had reached this crossroads. One advantage of being fifth and sixth years that they had all rather keenly felt as they grew older was that unlike so much in their younger days, teachers, even Professor Snape, were unlikely to simply challenge them and demand to know where they were going and why, unless it were after lights out or their manner especially suspicious. OWL and NEWT students were assumed to have enough legitimate reasons to travel around their school that even Mr Filch generally assumed they knew where they were going and had a good reason for doing so. Now, though, the four students froze, as Professor Milner emerged from the office door at the far end of the corridor. He halted, jingling his keys in his hand for a moment, then quickly looked up and down the hall in an almost furtive manner, before turning and locking the door. In his other hand, he carried the redwood case of the Thaumometer Core. Again, looking quickly this way and that, he hurried down the corridor. Harry and the others shrank back as he passed, and it seemed almost inevitable that he should see them, lurking in the shadows, until one of the third-years, less privileged than his elders in that regard, came hurrying across the hallway just ahead.

"Oh, good evening, Professor," the boy faltered, clearly himself out for some reason he hadn't particularly wanted to share with the teaching staff, and endeavouring to conceal a rather dog-eared book behind his back.

Milner gave him a distracted wave. "Evening… Mr Small, is it?"

"Smales, sir."

"Aye, aye, very good," Milner waved him off, and, as the boy moved on, paused, watching him carefully, his large, watery eyes intent, until Smales had moved out of sight. Then, with a shrug, the teacher turned quickly and moved on.

Ron let out a slow breath.

"That was a bit close."

"Mm." Harry frowned, looking after the vanished Professor. "He definitely didn't want anyone seeing what he was up to, did he?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Definitely not."

"I think I should follow him and see what he was up to, don't you?" the young man remarked, shooting a half smile in Ginny's direction.

"I think you're almost obliged under contract," Ginny agreed in a whisper, with the other half of the smile. "Want some company?"

"Hmm… no," Harry said thoughtfully, then apologised politely, laying his hand gently over hers and meeting her eyes. "Not this time. I doubt I'm going to end up fighting him- and all year, it's seemed to be you and me he's particularly interested in, for one reason or another. If this is some sort of trap- and we haven't fallen into a trap for a couple of months, let's face it, we're about due, let's not let him have us both in it in one go, shall we?"

"Oh, do I get to heroically come to your rescue?" Ginny asked, brightly, in acquiescence.

"I'll drape myself half-naked over your arms if you like." Harry teased her.

"Oh, promises promises…" the red haired girl murmured.

Ron coughed meaningfully.

"I'm going to follow him." Harry drew his wand quickly, and twirled it in the general direction of Gryffindor Tower, muttering a half-spoken summoning charm as he did so. "I know he might only be sneaking to the kitchens to get a snack from Dobby- if he starts heading back, I'll contact you on one of your Galleons- but while he's away, you three take that look round, all right? This is going to be our best chance- but, at the same time, if by any chance this is a trap, then I'd like to cover the angle of finding out what he might be up to while we're pinned down searching his office, too."

Hermione nodded quickly in response as a tumbling ball of cloth billowed through the air into Harry's arms. He took hold of it and began to shake out the Invisibility Cloak.

"Nice summoning charm," Ginny noted, appreciatively. "You had that ready on your windowsill again, didn't you?"

"Useful stuff, magic," Harry nodded, "I thought someone might get a bit too suspicious if they saw me carrying it with you lot through the corridors," he shrugged it around his shoulders and started quietly down the corridor Milner had just taken, straightening the cloak as he did so.

"Someone should start a school for it, or something," the girl concurred, with a grin, as Harry pulled up the hood of his cloak and vanished altogether from view.

"Right," Hermione drew her own wand and led them quickly back up the hallway to Milner's office door. "Keep watch, would you?" she asked Ginny and Ron, as she applied her wand-tip to the lock. The lock released itself with a series of clicks on her third unlocking spell.

"Come to Hogwarts," Hermione murmured, with a roll of her eyes. "Learn the arcane and mystic art of Advanced Burglary. Dumbledore should put that in the prospectus."

"I just wonder why the hell none of our teachers ever figure out that if they want something locked- don't teach us the unlocking spell for every lock spell they know," Ron rejoined as Hermione opened the door and the three of them quickly slipped in.

It did not take Harry long to catch up with the stolid Dark Arts teacher. Milner was still moving in that queer, furtive manner, often pausing to look back over his shoulder, or down side passages, but no small part of Harry's magical education over the last five and a half years had consisted of both Basic and Advanced Sneaking Around Corridors, and he had long since learned to move almost silently when under his cloak.

Professor Milner descended the stairs to the Entrance Hall, pausing for a long time to listen to the noises of students in distant, disparate parts of the castle. Harry froze motionless, a few steps above him, barely breathing, until, collecting himself, the stout professor nodded to himself and moved off- not into the Great Hall or down to the dungeons, but instead to the great oak front doors. He opened them barely wide enough to allow himself out, then pulled them quickly shut behind him, far too soon for Harry to follow. Instead, the youth hurried to the window by the doors, scrambling up on a bench to peer through the mullioned and leaded glass panes. Milner stood outside in the night, regarding the door for a moment, then turned quickly to his left, drawing his wand and conjuring a faint light as he did so, the next moment shielding it from the castle with his hand as he hurried on his way. Harry heard his feet on gravel for a moment, then nothing. He waited a long minute, measured out by the sonorous tick of the hall clock, then quickly moved to the door himself, unlatching it and stepping through, even as Milner had done.

"Right then," Hermione looked around the little L-shaped office. "We'd better be quick- and not too untidy," she added, looking especially at Ron. "We don't know how long we've got for this, and even if Harry gives us enough time to get out again without being caught, if Milner realises we've been poking around in here, we're not likely to get a second chance at it." She illuminated the ceiling lantern with a flick of her wand. "I'll take the books-" she regarded the long rows of bookshelves, slightly daunted, "See if I can find anything- Ginny, you see if you can- well, sense any Dark artefacts- anything that stands out- then give me a hand, if there's nothing else?"

"And what do I do?" Ron asked, "Just stand here and look pretty?" He had spread the Marauders' Map out on the table in the middle of the room, and glanced at it, noting Harry and Milner, both heading toward the Entrance Hall of the school, before looking back up at Hermione.

"Well, one out of two isn't all that bad," Hermione rejoined. "No, you check the desk, see what you can find in his papers."

Ron nodded, and turned to the desk, quickly going through the papers resting on the top sheet of blotting paper, while Hermione, her eyes narrowed, began hastily scanning over the bookshelves, and Ginny, eyes closed, turned her head this way and that, her face intent.

"Just people's homework, so far," Ron noted, with disgust, glancing over one of the scrolls of paper. "Ok, even I know that, what year is Cormac McLaggen in, anyway?"

"Seventh," Hermione put in, a little irritably, tugging a slim volume from the shelves. "He's a year above us- hmm, this might be- no, this is just from the school library again," she thrust it back with an aggravated grunt. "Ideally we need something he's written, I don't believe what he told Madam Pince for a moment, of course he'd have his own copies of his own books; he's a Cambridge don, for goodness sake. He took those out so we wouldn't be able to read them." She surveyed the shelves. "He certainly isn't a librarian; there's no order to this lot at all. Cookery books, quantum mechanics, the Dark Arts, the Joy of Fishing… honestly, if ever there was a portrait of a disorganised mind…"

"I can't find anything," Ginny glared accusingly at the straining bookshelves.

"Here's something, anyway," in the little alcove of the room where Milner kept his desk, Ron reached carefully behind the desk and produced a small framed photograph which had started to slip behind it.

"Luna?" Hermione glanced at it from a distance, and bit her lip thoughtfully as she half turned back to the bookshelves. There was a quicker way- if she could just remember the spell for it…

"No," Ron mused thoughtfully. "I think this has got to be the supremely dodgy lost love. She looks a lot like Luna though." He held up the photograph as Ginny approached, curious to see the woman about whom they had heard so much darkly hinted. "Take a look- Florence the Death Eater."

Ginny examined the photograph as Hermione experimentally waved her wand across the shelves.

"Search function catalogue charm," the older girl noted shortly. "I had detention in the library once, with Madam Pince."

"You, in detention?" Ron needled. Hermione pulled a face at him.

"It does happen, Ronald. Must be the company I keep."

"I think I can believe it about the company she kept as well," Ginny noted, looking at the picture in the frame. The young woman who sat, almost huddled in the image had a strange, hunted, harried look to her. She was like Luna, and yet unalike. Paler, her hair not so much silver-blonde as almost colourless, her complexion like alabaster, though marred on both cheeks by the scars of what must have been rather more serious teenage acne than Madam Pomfrey would normally have allowed to go unchecked, and eyes of a light, faint grey, with a little of the bulging protuberance that Ginny and the others recognised from her daughter, but lidded and brooding. There was a sullen pout to her lips, and her features were gaunt and haggard, her eyes red-rimmed. In the image, she seemed to move compulsively, yet purposelessly; a twitch of the shoulder, then a quick flick of the hand to rub at an itch on the nose, a slow blink and an almost shuddering indrawn breath. Florence Lovegood looked like a woman who had not been easy in her mind for many years.

As Ginny looked up, tearing her gaze away from the portrait's haunted face with some discomfort and unease, dancing golden letters were coalescing over the bookshelves from Hermione's cataloguing spell. The older girl moved back and forth along the rows, counting off, quickly cross-referencing.

"Can you check for anything by these two?" Ron made a gesture that took in Florence's portrait and Milner's desk.

"That's what I'm trying to do… let me see," Hermione frowned. "Aloysius Milner and Florence Lovegood- he was her head of department, so they'd have his name first in most places…"

"Hm. It says 'Florence Allerton' here," Ron was reading a label on the back of the picture. "Must be her maiden name."

Hermione raised an index finger, her eyes brightening, "Which she might well have had things published under-" she remarked, twitching her wand slightly, and the lettering on one shelf brightened perceptibly.

"Yes," Hermione gave a triumphant almost hiss, hurrying across the room. "Well done, Ron; here we are- no wonder I couldn't find it in the library catalogue…. .M PhD… Aloysius Milner, I assume, no full name given- and M.A - "Rehabilitating the Omega"," she pulled that one from the shelf, tracing her finger over the black cover, and the golden Greek letter which was the only form of colour illustration, before tucking it under her arm and moving on to the next title… ""The Ethics of Oppression" … "Arcanus Moderna"... I've read some of that," she gave a frustrated little sigh.

"Any good?" Ron was applying a series of unlocking charms to Milner's desk drawers.

"Well, it doesn't have full colour illustrations of carnivorous water nymphs in the nude, if that's what you mean by a good book," Hermione replied snippily, then looked around, "Ginny, do concentrate, we need to get through this."

"Hm?" Ginny looked up from her perusal of the walls. "This room doesn't make sense."

"We're in Hogwarts." Hermione, feeling that to be sufficient explanation in and of itself, opened "Rehabilitating the Omega" and leafed through it. "At least we might find out a bit more about the Cult of Omega- and whether Milner really was part of it."

"Who publishes this stuff, anyway?" the boy wondered, while his sister walked to the door.

"Academic texts; well, the Magical imprint of Cambridge University Press, I suppose. They'll probably publish anything," Hermione, the daughter of two Oxford graduates, noted a little scathingly, before looking up again. "Ginny, where are you going?"

"Back in a minute," Ginny remarked, distractedly, slipping out into the corridor.

"Oh- honestly," Hermione glared at the absconding redhead's brother. "She's worse than Harry sometimes-" she sighed and turned back to the shelves. "Oh, here we are, this might be something- "Arcanus Projekta"; the Moderna references it a couple of times, but it was out of print, and the school library didn't have a copy… now, if I can do a Protean Charm to make a surface copy of any of these that we want to take away for a longer look through... ohh" she looked interested. "This one's not by Florence, anyway- might have been before she came on the scene," she glanced at the publication date. "Hm. Professor Z. Reaver- again- and .M B.A.- Milner's mentor, do you suppose?"

Ron had lifted a bundle of scrolls wrapped in an ancient sheaf of newspaper from the drawer. He glanced cursorily at the newspaper and then began unwrapping it, as a door opened close by in the corridor. Both froze for a moment, and started stealthily over toward the Marauders' Map. They heard the door close again, and then Ginny quickly rejoined them in Milner's office.

"Where have you been?"

"Hunting clues," Ginny remarked, looking rather pleased with herself. "You know, this is the sort of thing I used to make up stories to myself about doing with you lot, when I was younger."

"That explains a lot," Hermione remarked a little acerbically, earning a stuck-out tongue from the now allegedly more mature Weasley witch. "What clue did you find in the corridor, then?" Hermione relented, and Ginny shot her a quick grin.

"Well, look at this room. It's like a L shape-" she nodded to the left hand corner furthest from the door, around which Ron peered from the recess where Milner kept his desk. "Next door's perfectly square," Ginny nodded to her left. "I just checked- and your catalogue spell is doing nothing to the books on this shelf," she added suddenly, spinning round with perhaps needless melodrama to point accusingly with her wand at one of the shelves on the left hand wall- "because they're not real books, and there's something behind this wall."

"Well, it might be just a chimney, or a passage for the House Elves-" Hermione hesitated.

"Who found and opened the Chamber of Secrets?" Ginny chirped in a teasing sort of way, and swirled her wand across the shelf as she cast the words of a revelation charm. "Besides, there's something enchanted behind there." She frowned. "I don't think it's dark, exactly, but there's definitely some kind of…" she flapped a hand wordlessly to finish the sentence, as one section of the bookshelf in front of her seemed to shimmer, fading to bare wood. As the lines and textures of books and the depth of shelf increasingly came to resemble an optical illusion, or a trick of the light on the wood grain, so in turn, an old knot hole on one side started to look more and more like a doorknob.

"Well done," Hermione beamed, forgetting her earlier scepticism as Ginny gave a half-mocking little bow, and opened the hidden cupboard door.

The foul stench which issued forth surprised them all.

Ron scrambled past the desk and joined them, pinching his nose with one hand, eyes watering, as he looked into the cupboard with the two girls.

"What in the name of bloody hell–"

Harry knelt close to the ground, passing his wand over the grass. Behind him, the welcoming lights of Hogwarts' entrance hall shone out into the night. A wind was beginning to whip up, though in this little grassy space he was sheltered by the towering edifice of the school rearing up into the gloom, studded with pin-prick windows of golden light. There was no moon. Ahead and to his left, a bluff of grey rock stood out amid the trees, the dark cleft in it like a hole in the world marking the passage down to the school boathouse. It was to this passageway that the trail of Milner's footsteps, picked out by the charm from Harry's wand, was leading. Stealthily, once there was no more doubt, he sheathed his wand once more, and slipped into the passage, not wishing to risk a light, feeling his way along slowly in the darkness.

As the rock curved, he became aware of a distant silvery wand light ahead of him, and although it was still too faint to usefully pick his way by, proceeded with more confidence, knowing that at least the Professor was stationary and not at this point hurrying back up to bump into him. He trusted his hearing well enough to slip one hand out from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and trace his path along the rock wall by his fingertips as a guide.

Slowly, he followed the gentle curve of the passageway downward, feeling for the old familiar steps with his feet, until he came close to the doorway into the cavernous Hogwarts boathouse. The wandlight was stronger here, and he could hear the Professor, talking to himself in assorted voices.

"Surely we mun have laid hands on all ye little scaly scallywags now, ye ken?" Milner asked himself loudly, as Harry paused on the threshold. Professor Milner was standing on the middle of the three wooden jetties which stretched out into the water, facing out into the lake. His illuminated wand, he was swishing through the air in front of him, while in his other hand, he held the Thaumometer Core, active, the thick and iridescent patterns of the school behind him, a few sluggish, dim clouds of faintly active matter displaying from the lake ahead. He was glancing between the two as if comparing information.

"Well, it doesnae' look exactly as if that's the truth, does it, laddie- and don't call me Shirley," he told himself, before flexing his wand arm with a slight grunt. There was a distant splash out in the night, and Milner tensed visibly, setting down the core and holding his hands, apart but cupped, like a chaser waiting to receive a passed Quaffle. As Harry watched, recognising what Milner had cast as a summoning charm but at a loss as to what the Professor might be summoning out of the lake, Milner suddenly rose on his feet, reaching up as something long and gleaming came spinning, shedding a spray of water as it did so, out of the dark toward him. He fumbled the catch, seizing the large fish by the head and receiving the tail heavily across his face as he did so, making him fall backwards, narrowly miss the edge of the jetty, and sit heavily on the creaking old boards. Harry Potter started forward slightly, thinking the Professor was going to fall in, before stopping where he was, watching with amusement as Aloysius Milner made a disgusted face and began to examine the dead fish he had procured in so unusual a fashion.

"Codswallop," Milner muttered to himself, wiping his mouth with a tissue. "Still… aye…" he ran his wand over the creature's fins, before, fumbling with some difficulty with his arms full of fish, changing over to the Thaumometer Core. "That's better… aye, fading, but still there. And enough to pin the blame bang to rights with yours truly, I have no doubt," he added, with a certain grimness in his voice. He held the fish up, and peered into its eyes.

"Awfully sorry about this, old chap," Milner murmured apologetically to the cadaverous cod, "but you're a wee bit too big a catch for me to be lugging back through the castle. Ye olde git Filch has been whining enough as it is." His eyes flashed suddenly, and he threw the fish with vehemence unexpected in a thrower of fish into one corner, before levelling his wand at it.

"Incendio!"

Harry watched in silence as the dead fish was consumed by the jet of flame from Milner's wand. The Professor's antics had been entertaining, certainly- but all too mindful of Milner's own nature, playing the fool as they had long reflected, he looked grimly past the absurdity the man engendered. One, all too obvious conclusion loomed in his thoughts, as he watched Professor Milner turn back to survey the lake once more.

Aloysius Milner's office cupboard was, other than the smell, and the lengths to which he had gone to conceal it, not especially remarkable in most respects. Wallpaper several epochs of decorating behind the room outside. Exercise books, cardboard boxes, an old suit hung on the back of the door, a somewhat incongruous Muggle board game of some sort involving an excitable donkey, and a broken table. The usual collection of assorted junk which inhabits such places, always stowed away in the expectation that it will inevitably be of use at some point in the near future, and gradually drifting to the back of the cupboard to form increasingly intimate relationships with fluff and the occasional spider, as over time, 'near future' undergoes an exponentially infinite regression. The source of the offending odour, however, remained close to the front of the cupboard, in the form of a large, open cardboard box, damp and soggy as if the Professor had taken no particular care over packing it, which was currently half full of dead fish. Indeed, there was no doubt whatsoever as to their intimations of mortality. Change and decay all around could be seen- and more pertinently, smelled.

"Why the hell…?"

"Well, obviously he put them in the enchanted cupboard so his office wouldn't stink of them," Ginny answered- or, at the least, replied.

Ron rolled his eyes. "You spend too much time with Luna," he commented. "Is there anything special about them?"

"Well, the smell's bordering on unique," his sister retorted, "But not as far as I can tell- no…" she frowned. "There is. There's some sort of charm on them." She reached out for one of the fish, cringing slightly.

"Wait," Hermione told her, catching her arm. "Try not to touch them if you don't have to. Do be a little more cautious, Ginny." She hefted the book she still held in her hands. "Look at this. He's a historian- maybe a thaumaturgist as well. You grew up in an oldblood family; ever heard of a 'Z. Reaver'?"

"I don't think so," Ginny was still half drawn toward the fish, but, at Hermione's continued hard stare, settled for passing her wand over them. "The trouble is, I can only really properly get a feel for the ones at the top," she explained, "There's a sort of charm on most of them, but it's fading; past its sell-by-date."

"Much like the fish." Hermione flicked open the book and glanced at the inner flyleaf. She gave a slight chuckle and directed a vaguely malicious glance at Ron. "Oh, yes," she noted, "Well, I can tell you one thing about our Mr. Reaver - he was gorgeous."

"Oh really?" Ginny glanced at the picture with a slight raise of her brows and an interested grin, both girls ignoring a disgruntled mutter from Ron, who turned back to Milner's desk in disgust.

The older of the two men in the picture, standing next to what was clearly a younger Milner, was tall, well-muscled, with a chiselled, almost leonine face and skin the colour of dark oak. It was a proud, confident face, and yet also, Ginny felt, somehow an arrogant one.

Ron had returned to looking through Milner's stacks of student homework, to judge from his remark, "Oh, Ginny, this is one of yours. You can tell by all the red inked 'Ding-dong, show your working' comments in the margin."

"Oh, very funny-"

"Well, it is yours, anyway," the boy defended himself. "Anyway," he added, a little grumpily, to Hermione, as if echoing Ginny's own private conclusions, "You probably wouldn't like him if you got to know him."

"Are you actually jealous, Ron Weasley?" Hermione laughed. "For heaven's sake, it's just a photograph, and the book's almost as old as you are. He's probably ancient by now, and anyway-"

"No, you really wouldn't like him if you got to know him," Ron interrupted, in an altogether different tone, one which made both girls turn to face him. He had smoothed out the piece of newspaper which had wrapped the bundle of essays, and was looking at it on the desk. There was a wizarding photograph on the front page, now stuttering and intermittently freezing with the fading of the newsprint over years of time. As he held it up, Ginny saw a man- tall, dark skinned, in chains. His head was bowed, his eyes strangely shadowed, mere dark hollows under his thick brows, and about him as he stood, the hooded shapes of Dementors.

Ron read, in a grim tone.

"Professor Zachary Reaver, forty-two. Sentenced yesterday - whenever that was-" he interjected- "To life in Azkaban, for the murder of…" he swore unprintably and, for a moment, dropped the article. "Oh hell. Oh no. Damn it."

"Ron, what is it?"

Ron looked at Hermione miserably as he answered her. "Umbridge wasn't lying- and Milner- and Luna- they were lying to us all the time- about the most important-" he stopped, and looked jerkily back to the ancient newspaper article. "Sentenced yesterday," he read on, "To life in Azkaban for the murder of Florence Allerton-Lovegood, of Ottery ." He looked at the discarded photograph of the unhappy woman. "She didn't die in an accident at all. He- Milner's friend there- killed her. I never heard about a murder - and they lived just the other side of the hill from us- I guess we were too young or something back then- but… " Ron collected his thoughts, looking accusingly up at them. "Why the hell would Luna lie to us about that?"

"Why?" Ginny blurted out, looking down at the news article in confusion.

"Why would Luna lie about it, or why would he do it?" Hermione shook her head. "Ron- I know it's a bit topsy-turvy for me to be defending Luna to you, but she might not have known. Just like your mum and dad didn't tell you- you and Ginny would have been, what, nine and ten at the time?" She laid a calming hand on her boyfriend's arm. "When her mother died, we know how much it affected her. Maybe nobody ever told her the truth- that it might have just been too much for her."

"Maybe," Ron nodded. "Maybe," he repeated, "Thing is, we don't know, do we? But you're not telling me Milner didn't know. I know he's a teacher, but I think we have to guess he knows how to read."

"No, I'm not saying that," Hermione agreed grimly. "Does it say anything about what Reaver did- and why?"

"Nothing really," Ron said. "Not that Milner kept, anyway." He looked down at the paper again. "Just this- when Reaver was in court, all he would say was 'Magia Delenda Est'." He looked at Hermione for enlightenment.

"That doesn't sound like a spell…" she looked doubtful, and as if chasing the tail of a memory.

Ginny, feeling vaguely at sea, turned back to the cupboard. While still deeply unpleasant, the fishy smell had at least become omnipresent enough to be overlooked. She remembered Mrs. Black's portraits after her spell last Autumn, and cheered herself with the thought. She did rather want to trust Luna. Her friend had suffered a lot, and Ginny was sure in her heart that that friendship was genuine- but, at the same time, what, she wondered, might Luna have been led into by Milner?

"This one's yours as well," Ron observed, a certain frayed suspicion in his tone, as he continued looking through the scrolls of schoolwork which had been bound in the incriminating newspaper. "Ginny- these are all your homework." He looked up at her, alarmed. Hermione, her brow furrowed, was looking hastily through "Arcanus Projekta". "What's he so interested in you for, anyway?"

"Probably this spellweaver business again," Ginny replied, feeling a certain embarrassment at the thought. She wasn't sure whether it was the irritation at being asked to explain a talent that she could in no way account for or explain, or the awkwardness of being so singled out, that bothered her. Still, as she thought she'd once said to Harry on the Quidditch pitch, if you've got it, flaunt it, she told herself, once more bringing her wand to bear upon the box of evil smelling fish. In a sudden decision, with Hermione distracted, Ginny reached out and grasped one of them- her skin crawling and recoiling from the cold, soft, oily feel of it- but there was something else- a flicker of magic- a sense of being pulled that was distinctly familiar-

"Hermione-" Ron's voice again, followed by a long breath and an effort, mixed in success, to keep his words steady. "Magia Delenda Est- what does it do?"

"It's not a spell, it's a sort of, well, pun. Slogan." Hermione had set down "Arcanus Projekta" and was flourishing "Rehabilitating the Omega", her features drawn and her eyes dark with worry." I think it's a sort of motto of the Cult of Omega. They were against magic- against sorcery- on a cultural level- they objected to wizarding arrogance, remember, the whole idea that the problems of Muggles were not our concern. It's a deliberate misquotation of a rather famous piece of Roman rhetoric."

She flicked rapidly through the book once more, then stopped, close to the end, reading with mounting concern.

"He quotes Professor Reaver, here, at the end…" Hermione breathed.

"Magic is our addiction, our corruption..." a bit strong, though, recollecting Mr. Weasley's words of caution to her in the Ministry she had to admit, there was a certain unpalatable truth there. She read on. "... The poisoned canker at the heart of our society. What separates the supercilious contempt we bear for the blind Muggles in our midst from the same callousness against which Wendelin railed - or from the sickening facility with which her legacy has been reinterpreted, mocked, and turned against her message? Or yet still from a Grindelwald, or from our recent foe, He Who Must Not Yet Be Named? Just four short years-" she glanced quickly at the publication date of Milner and Florence's opus, then back to the text, "- since once again one rose among us who stood by the ancient maxim that 'Magic is Might and Right'."

She swallowed, fighting a rising sense of sickness and dread at the increasingly frenetic tone, and read on, as she reached the conclusion.

"In truth nothing separates us from them but a matter of degree. The degree to which power corrupts. Magic is our poison - the invisible rot which corrupts our souls with its promise of power, and surely the rise and fall of Voldemort - I will not apologise for writing the name, for I have already lost everything to him - prove that any claim we make to have bettered ourselves, to have mastered the corruption of power is a lie- an empty base canard of self-justification, a convenient excuse to do nothing, to sit back and continue to enjoy the ripe fruits of our own addiction, our passive complicity in the inexorable rise of the next Dark Lord, and the next after him?"

She read on, then stopped with a sudden chill at the paragraph's final words.

"It worsens with each generation. We may only rid ourselves of our own complicity with evil if we are willing to be supremely courageous - to sacrifice all and cut off the problem at its source."

Its source? The sources of new magic? Her eyes flicked to Ginny, widening with sudden fright, and then back to the final three words, the valediction of the book which followed on from Milner and Florence's quotation of their mentor- and Florence's murderer.

"Magia delenda est."

"Meaning?" Ron's voice was tight in his throat.

Ginny seized another fish, and another, delving deeper into the pile, heedless now of the vile, stinking tide of oily, soft, necrotic flesh through which she plunged her arms. She was sure she recognised the feel of the spell around them- she had felt it- she had experienced it-

"Hermione," Ron pressed her more insistently, "What does it mean?"

"Ron- why is it so urgent?" she spoke with a dread sense of understanding creeping over her, before his next words confirmed her darkest fears.

"Because he's written it over nearly all Ginny's essays!" Ron held one up, his voice growing sharper. "What's he want with her?"

"Oh no…" Hermione looked quickly at the other young woman, but Ginny scarcely noticed now, though she heard her older friend striving to speak calmly. "It's a paraphrase of 'Carthago Delenda Est'- which is in itself an abbreviation- the translation of the full version is… idiomatically- "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed."" She went on, explaining, both to Ron and perhaps to herself. "It's a doctrine of total war- no mercy, that you give no quarter- that you absolutely obliterate your opponent for your own safety- as an ultimate deterrent to all others who might threaten you."

"Hermione, he's written it right next to Ginny's name!"

"Ginny, come away from there," Hermione turned quickly to the younger girl, but Ginny too had reached a revelation.

"They're Portkeys- old- burned out- but it's the Portus charm- the one Ron was working on- like the one we rode to London- fish portkeys- it was him, Hermione-" she held a rancid fish in her hand triumphantly as she drew it out of the box. "He must have been trying to hide them- put them up here till the charm wore off - must have charmed them last year, set them for the lake here, then sent them out to sea somehow to catch it- but it was Milner- he brought the Amoeba Vendetta!"

"Hang on- he can't be- Tonks checked everyone-" Ron shook his head, "Every Unspeakable- everyone on the staff- she checked their magical signature to try to trace who made that Portkey she found-"

"With what, Ron?" Hermione seized his arm breathlessly.

"I dunno- some sort of Thaumometer I suppose-"

"But don't you remember? Milner's Thaumometer is years more advanced and precise than anything the Ministry's got- Umbridge admitted that the first time she saw the Core-" she groaned. "How could we have been so stupid- he could study it close enough to disguise it- he's about the only person who could- Ginny's right- it was always him."

"Then let go of it!" Ron stood up, face pale and eyes wide with fear, pointing at the fish in Ginny's hand.

Ginny, startled, looked from her brother to Hermione in confusion.

"Ginny- it is about you being a spellweaver - or whatever you want to call it-," Hermione said urgently, as Ron reached out for his sister. "Reaver was in this Cult of Omega- Milner's in it- they don't want to encourage new magic- they want to stamp it out because the way they see it, the more it goes on, the more Dark Lords will rise- this is a trap - Reaver murdered Luna's mum- and I think Milner's trying to kill you- oh my god, we've walked right into it- Ginny, we've got to get you out of here-"

They never knew exactly what happened. Perhaps Ginny simply inadvertently touched the triggering area of the charm about the fish in her hand, having previously missed it. Perhaps the excitement of discovery, and the thrill of fear at their words, somehow made her own magical field spike in response, and the discharge of accidental magic was sufficient to vivify the withered charm on the old fish. Perhaps it was simply bad luck. However it might be, even as Ginny turned, making to throw her catch from her hand, back into the cupboard behind her- to Ron and Hermione's horrified eyes it was as if space twisted in, sucking Ginny Weasley into a sudden vanishing point, withdrawing impossibly into folded space, before the solid geometry of the office snapped back into place- and Ginny was gone.

As Harry watched, in the dim wandlight of the boathouse, Milner stared into the vortex in the Core. Suddenly, a crimson light flared, out ahead of them, somewhere as if under the surface of the lake. Milner cursed- a four letter excursion into Anglo Saxon, turning and sweeping the churning Core in an arc from the castle behind them, up through the rock, and down once more to the lake, as Harry moved closer, craning his neck to try to make out what the Professor was looking at- and then, as Milner looked again out at the dark lake, one name, spoken in shock and anger, fearful anger, as angry as Harry had ever heard him, even on the night that Draco Malfoy had attacked Luna Lovegood, months ago last Autumn.

"Ginny Weasley."

Harry stared. What did he mean? That Ginny was- out there? On the lake? But how could she be? From the castle to the lake? He looked at the water, dark now save for the glittering reflections of the moonlight, uncomprehending- but was snapped back to reality as Milner, in front of him, with a flat and deadly look on his face, drew his wand.

"Oh no. I won't allow that. Not while I'm still here," the Professor grated, his eyes blazing with fury and outrage, and swung the wand straight out toward where the light had gleamed on the lake.

Ginny tumbled through the swirling void, her grip on the foul fish tightening painfully as she clung to it, whirled away through space. The breath seemed to be forced out of her and spots danced before her eyes- then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped- the fish whipped slitheringly out of her hand, at the same moment as something seemed to strike her hard and bitingly cold, all over, from every direction, at once. She opened her mouth in shock at the impact, and found herself choking. Her ears filled with a muffled, senseless roar, and all direction seemed meaningless. She flailed, her limbs suddenly heavy as she fought to move them through icy water, and something more, thick, horrible, grasping fronds seemed to cling and wrap around her arms and legs.

Her eyes snapped open, recoiling from the cold which pervaded everything around her- but there was nothing but thick, opaque blackness. She kicked out frantically, but met nothing solid. She tried to swallow, but found herself already choking on the water flooding her sinuses and flowing down into her lungs. There was no light in any direction. Again, she fought, struggling, feeling herself sinking deeper- but the roaring was inside her head now, and something like a furious, helpless, gnashing, burning feeling was spreading through her brain, seeming to press her downward, and with it, too, spread what seemed a helpless, final darkness.