"I am so very clever! And when I'm in love with how clever I am, my common sense goes right out the window." -Tim Drake, Robin (1993) #101

Tim had sent out a pair of letters a week ago—one to Dick and one to Constantine—warning them that their letters were being watched. Constantine's was in code, though, so Tim wasn't terribly worried about their letters getting intercepted, as they played them off as a kind of game between friends, harmless fun, really. Tim hadn't heard yet of a spell that could decode messages, but he still warned Constantine to be careful about what they said on paper to one another, just to be safe—well, safer.

To Dick, he'd sent a mostly-innocuous letter that just so happened to use the phrase 'I have a cough,' which meant 'I'm/We're being listened to/watched' in Bat-speak. They had lots of little phrases like this in the family, things that wouldn't sound out-of-place during a kidnapping or in casual conversation. The expectation was that Dick would tell the rest of the family and hold back. For about a week, they actually did. However, to his dismay (and secretly, to his relief), his family continued to pester him with letters. Constantine was as slow with his responses as ever, which Tim couldn't fault, as the man was currently deeper undercover than Tim, and his last letter had been a confirmation of what Tim had already been suspecting.

"Hee fears D," it had said. 'D' for Dumbledore, whom Tim had sent word to Constantine was not currently a threat and with whom he (and the JLA, by extension) had a temporary alliance.

So, now, as Tim sat in the common room, Cordelia finally having worn herself out and called it a night, he read through Dick's most recent letter, soaking in the words and letting them settle inside his heart, somewhere he could return to when he was feeling low. Listening to someone he knew always calmed Tim down like that, especially when that person was his older brother. So, despite the fact that their mail had the potential to be confiscated and read by Umbridge, Tim found himself one again enjoying the company and comfort it brought him and longing to see his family again.

It had started to snow earlier that afternoon, meaning that, by curfew, most of the students were already in their dorms under a mountain of blankets, calling it a night. Not Tim, though. He wanted to go outside and watch the snow fall from the rooftop, like he'd done in Gotham a thousand times before on patrol.

Now, this was a terrible plan for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was cold outside, and there was a strong wind blowing the snow around, meaning the wind chill would be significant. Secondly, this was snow. Snow had a nasty habit of recording everything that happened on top of it, including walking, running, and grappling. And finally, if he tried to open the window in his dorm, everyone would immediately awaken from the sudden drop in temperature. In short, climbing architecture would have best been put off for another day.

But, the thing was…Tim wanted to do it. And when he wanted to do something, his mind did a pretty good job of rationalizing things in his favor: he had great snow gear, he would be fine; the wind was blowing the snow around so much that his tracks would be covered, and it would obscure visibility of him from afar; and he didn't have to use the window in his dorm, he knew his way around the castle and could easily think of five windows that would do the trick.

So, feeling extremely confident in his decision, Tim silently slipped into his warmest clothes—his black bodysuit—and the rest of his gear. He was only a couple harnesses short of being in full vigilante attire. He bid Alfred a quiet farewell before heading out.

There were a ton of unused, empty classrooms in the Charms corridor, so Tim made for one of those, noiselessly drifting down the hallways, not waking a single portrait. In no time at all, he had found his way into a classroom and swung open a window. A rush of cold, snowy air blasted him right in the face, making him shiver, but Tim quickly got over that. He lifted his left arm and activated his gauntlet-computer. He may have been convincing himself that he wouldn't be caught tonight, but that didn't mean that Tim was just going to go and make himself an easy target. He navigated through the settings before finding the environmental adjustments.

He looked down at his uniform, grabbing the hem of his cape to check if everything had changed, which was thankfully the case. His pitch-black uniform was now white as linen with slightly greyed portions here and there to spice things up. At the same time, his lenses dimmed, and the heating system began to activate itself.

Basically, 'arctic mode' was working just as it should.

Despite the snow, he managed to secure his grappling gun and successfully climb up to the parapet, where he tucked his grappling gun away and leaned against a battlement.

Oh yeah, this was totally worth it.

The snow was falling in thick, fluffy clusters over the Forbidden Forest, covering it in a blanket of frost. The rest of the grounds was just as pristine. The Quidditch Pitch had been taken over by the snow, the greenhouses stood their ground against the weather, and there was smoke coming from a hut in the distance.

And there was light coming from that hut, too. The hut with which Tim had not seen anyone interact since the beginning of the school year. The uninhabited hut.

Correction, the once-presumed uninhabited hut. The lights in the windows were flickering, meaning that someone was in there, moving about. Then, the front door started opening, so Tim naturally focused his lenses in, trying to see who was there. From this angle, he could only see that there was a large shadow blocking the light from getting out. The door swung open, revealing a giant of a man filling most of the frame. He was talking to…no one? He was talking to the air in front of him, even turning his head, like this invisible figure was walking into his hut.

Tim would have thought it some sort of delusion if he had not seen snow appearing on the floorboards in clumps, like it was coming off of someone's shoes. The door closed before Tim could get a good look at anything, but he didn't need to. The snow around the door had also been disturbed, and although Tim couldn't tell what type of prints his invisible suspect had left, it was clear from a couple more obviously messy spots that they had come from the castle. When he looked back at the hut, the windows had been covered. Tim resolved then and there to wait until either occupant left the hut or until the thin sliver of light coming from a crack in the door was extinguished. There was no real motive behind this decision save for genuine curiosity. Perhaps he was just feeling nostalgic for a good old-fashioned stakeout.

It was a good half hour before there were any changes to the scenery, during which the winds had died down enough that the messy tracks left by the hut-owner's guest were still visible. But it wasn't any activity from the hut that caught his attention; actually, he had caught sight of a visible entity making their way down towards the hut, a known entity, short and stout and currently Tim's least favorite person on the school grounds.

The presumed owner of the hut let Umbridge in without a fuss; well, it would be more accurate to say that Umbridge let herself in. Barely ten minutes later, she exited the place, bustling back towards the castle at a hurried pace like she had seen something rather nasty inside the hut. Tim didn't pay her too much mind, though, since, by the way the mysterious figure turned around as they closed the door, he could assume that the person's guest was still present. This was confirmed when he saw a shadow through the thin curtains that was far too small to be the beast of a man that had been at the door. So, they were invisible, but not all the time.

To further prove Tim's invisible-guest theory, the door opened again, though it did not appear that anyone went in or left. The only sign that someone had left was the way the person in the hut waited a full ten seconds before closing his door.

This was Tim's chance to find out the identity of this invisible figure. All he would have to do is go hide in the Entrance Hall and wait for the person to return to the castle. Given the way they had carelessly left their tracks on the way to the hut, Tim knew that all he would really have to do was follow the snowy tracks they would inevitably leave on the castle floors until they led him to his mysterious person.

He quickly grappled back down and swung through the classroom window. Then (after changing his uniform back to black), he raced down the stairs and slipped into the Entrance Hall silently, descending the large marble staircase and hiding himself behind one of the many braziers just as the front doors creaked open.

"Okay, looks like it's safe to go in," Harry whispered to Hermione and Ron as he scanned the Marauder's Map. "Can't see Filch or Mrs. Norris anywhere near the Entrance Hall, and it—wait, what?"

He pulled the map closer to his face, squinting at the miniscule letters.

"What is it, Harry?" asked Hermione nervously, looking over his shoulder.

"Look at this." Harry pointed at a sedentary ink dot near the grand staircase, labelled 'Timothy Drake-Wayne.' "What's Tim doing here?"

Ron snatched the map unceremoniously out of Harry's grasp. "Tim? Where?" Hermione leaned over and pointed out the mark. "No way. What's he up to?"

"I'm not sure," Harry muttered, having basically asked the same questions literally seconds earlier than his friend. "He's just standing there."

"Think we should wait until he leaves?" asked Ron.

"I suppose so," said Hermione, rubbing her gloved hands together. "He's sure to notice if the doors suddenly open of their own accord out of the blue."

"How long d'you reckon he's planning on staying there?"

Hermione didn't have an answer for that. Twenty minutes later, the answer seemed to be 'all night,' judging by the way the boy hadn't moved an inch (either in the map's scaled-down or in real-life measurements).

"Hermione," Ron said, blowing on his hands to warm them up marginally, "if we don't go in soon, my fingers are gonna fall off."

Hermione sighed but nodded. "You're right. We can't wait out here all night. Harry?" She and Ron both turned to Harry to make the final call, as he was the one with the map. He took one, long look at the tiny dot and sighed, grabbing one of the door's massive brass handles and giving it a hard tug.

"Let's head back in. Maybe he fell asleep there or something."

With a low moan, the towering oak door opened, and the three of them slipped inside the crack, making sure they were a safe distance away when the door slid shut. Harry had gotten his Invisibility Cloak stuck in between the doors before, and it was not a pleasant situation in which to find oneself. As Hermione vanished the snow off of their boots, he looked over at where Tim supposedly was, though a tall, stone brazier blocked his view.

"Where is he?" Ron breathed, barely more than a whisper.

"I dunno," Harry whispered back, making the executive decision to go over and check it out. Both Ron and Hermione followed him without argument; if Harry knew either of them, they were just as curious as he was as to what Tim was doing so far from Ravenclaw Tower past curfew.

They weren't leaving tracks. In fact, this person was moving very quietly, so much so that Tim couldn't even tell if they had reached the staircase yet until he heard the faint sound of paper—no, parchment—crinkling against itself. Tim immediately pressed himself against the base of the brazier and hugged it as he slid around so that he would be opposite the source of this new sound and, hopefully, his invisible opponent.

The more they rounded the brazier, the more Tim seemed to shift in the opposite direction.

He knows we're here, Harry realized with a shock. The only other person who had ever been able to see through his Invisibility Cloak had been Mad-Eye Moody.

And…Tim?

Harry was about to take another step when Hermione tapped him and Ron on the shoulders and shook her head, holding her hands up in front of her.

"Wait," she mouthed to them, and Harry and Ron instantly obeyed. When Hermione had a plan, it was usually a good idea to follow it. She raised a single finger and pressed it to her lip before pointing back to the brazier.

Wait and be quiet. Harry could do that.

After a whole five minutes during which Tim hadn't heard a single noise, he realized that his opponent must have already left. Other than that singular parchment noise, he hadn't heard another sound, meaning that they had to have been exceedingly stealthy, much like himself.

Slowly, cautiously, he poked his head around the column, waiting with a hand on his wand to see if anyone reacted to his presence. And even if anyone was still watching him, they had made no movement to interact with him. If they were planning on exposing Tim, they would have done it a while ago.

Well, that was disappointing, Tim thought, fully rounding the brazier so that he could look for some visual evidence as to where his mystery man had gone.

Then, he heard a muffled "What the hell?" and, without hesitation, he spun around on his heel and pointed his wand at the empty air from which the noise had originated.

"Show yourself!" he hissed, crouching down into a combative stance.

Hermione let out a loud gasp (something she had been doing a lot of, lately) and flinched, stumbling back a step and tripping over the hem of the Invisibility Cloak. Ron had to grab a fistful of fabric so that she didn't completely reveal themselves to this caped figure in front of them—Tim. Harry wasn't sure he would have believed it if he wasn't holding the Marauder's Map right now. The way he was shrouded in darkness make Harry feel sick. It was far too much like looking into the eyes of a Death Eater for his comfort. His trepidation only grew as Tim began to approach them.

"Show yourself," he whispered in a hoarse voice, "or I'll do it for you." He was closing the distance between them fast. Harry looked at Hermione, who was covering her mouth with her hands, eyes wide, and then at Ron, who was already reaching for his own wand.

Harry shoved the Marauder's Map into his back pocket, dropping his Wand-Lighting Charm and whispering a hurried, "Mischief managed!" Then, before he could change his mind, he threw off the Invisibility Cloak.

"Tim, wait, it's just us!" Harry quickly said, pocketing his wand and holding both hands in the air in a universal sign of surrender. The lenses on Tim's weird mask widened, and he lowered his wand an inch. He opened his mouth a couple times, like he was deciding on what to say.

He landed on a confused, "Tim?" and tilted his head slightly.

"What the bloody hell are you wearing, mate?" Ron blurted out, apparently not able to hold it in any longer.

Tim. Tim. Harry had called him 'Tim.'

His heart began to race. How does he know it's me? How would a stranger act around them? Would it be weirder to not know who Harry was? How am I supposed to explain myself without revealing who I am? If I pretend to not know them too much, then they might think that I'm an intruder. But if I act too familiar with them, they'll start to piece things together.

"Why were you looking for me?" he ended up saying instead of answering Ron's question.

"Why were you sitting by the stairs for half an hour?" Ron countered.

Wait, how did he know how long Tim had been sitting there for? What did they know that Tim didn't?

This is bad. This is bad. Get away, leave, hide, escape, abort. Abort. Abort!

Hermione took a deep, shaky breath. "Okay, okay, let's all calm down," she said, grabbing Ron's shoulder with an iron grip.

"Tim," she started, and the man's brows furrowed again when she addressed him like that, "it looks like you're trying to stay anonymous. I get it, okay?"

Tim didn't look like he thought she got it.

"Look, if we promise not to tell anyone about this, will you answer our questions?"

Tim paused for a moment before shaking his head. "N-no. Just—just forget you ever saw this, okay?"

Bad tactic, really bad tactic. The worst way to try and get someone to forget about a situation was to ask them to forget about it. Tim was clearly having trouble thinking straight.

"Tim, we know it's you," Hermione said. "You don't have to hide from us."

Yes, I do! Of course I do! If this gets out, it'll compromise my entire mission!

"Why not?" he countered. "You already seem to have a pretty good idea of who it is you think I am."

"I—well—" she stammered, wringing her hands together. "That—okay, Tim, yes, we know it's you because—" she glanced down to her right and then straight at Tim, "because we have a map of the school that tells us where everyone is!" she blurted out.

Ron's jaw dropped. "Hermione!" he gasped, looking at her incredulously.

She rolled her eyes and leaned over to Harry. "Harry, give me the map!" she whispered urgently.

"Why?" Harry asked back angrily. The Marauder's Map was one of the few advantages that they still had in their favor. For her to just reveal it like that…!

"It's called trust-building," she whispered back. Of course, since it was Hermione, Harry handed her the folded-up parchment anyways. Maybe he didn't trust Tim, but he trusted Hermione and Ron with his life.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she said, tapping the parchment with the tip of her wand and bringing its secrets to light. She took a moment to search the map before holding it out in front of her, facing Tim.

"See, there's me—" she explained, pointing herself out with her wand "—there's Ron, and there's Harry. And there—" she pointed a little ways down "—is you—Timothy Drake-Wayne."

Tim looked down at his wand and then at the map. Then, to Harry's surprise, he tucked his wand away and walked up to them, leaning in to look over the map.

"Well, I'll be damned…" he muttered to himself, shaking his head. "God, I'm so gonna regret this…" He straightened up and crossed his arms.

"You got me." He ran a gloved hand through his black hair. "Yeah, I'm Tim, and, yeah, I was waiting for you all to come back in from your trip outside."

"How did you know we'd been outside?" Harry asked, putting the map away.

"I—" Tim sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I saw you when I was—when I was on the roof…" Harry was not aware that there was even a way to access the roofs, and he was the one with the map full of secret passages.

"You were—how the—why—why the bloody hell were you on the roof?" sputtered Ron.

Tim sighed again. "I—I watched to watch the snow fall, okay?"

"From…the roof…" Hermione said slowly.

"Technically, it was a parapet, but yes," said Tim, a little shortly. "Anyways, my turn—what's the deal with the sheet you're carrying that made all of you invisible?"

Harry looked down at the ground where the Invisibility Cloak lay, both silvery and perfectly transparent. "Oh, I have an Invisibility Cloak," he explained, squatting down and picking it up off the floor. "We all huddled underneath it." He tucked it under his arm, uncomfortable with how intently Tim was staring at it, like he wanted to tear it apart to see how it ticked.

"And are you gonna explain to us what the hell you're wearing?" asked Ron, gesturing to Tim's whole getup.

"It's tactical gear," Tim immediately responded. "It helps when I want to sneak around unnoticed." On the contrary, Harry felt like it was the most noticeable thing in the room right now. Normal wizards didn't cover up their faces like they were expecting to run into a masquerade ball by accident, and they definitely didn't use clunky belts to store all of their stuff.

Hermione looked very intrigued at his outfit, studying him up and down in a way that would have made Harry uncomfortable had he been the one being examined.

"Where did you get it?" she asked.

"I made it myself."

"What for?"

Tim frowned. "For sneaking around…?" he said, like he himself was unsure of the question.

"But what else?" she continued. "You don't expect me to believe that that utility belt helps you be stealthier."

Tim's eyes widened. "Well, it's—I—" He looked down at his belt and then back at the three of them. "Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "Can we, I dunno, talk about this tomorrow? If we keep asking each other questions, we'll be here all night."

Hermione nodded, and Harry was also inclined to agree. More and more questions kept springing to his head the more time he spent with Tim.

"Tomorrow after lunch?" she suggested.

Tim hesitated. "…tomorrow after lunch…" he finally agreed, hanging his head low.

On his way back to Ravenclaw Tower, Tim took a brief detour to the Room of Requirement, or, more specifically, 'a room where no one will hear me.' The moment the doors closed behind him, he grabbed a throw pillow off of the ground and screamed into it as loud as he could.

"GODDAMNIT! FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED? OH MY GOD! WHAT THE FUCK?"

Tim really was the worst covert operative in the history of covert operatives. He really was. What other undercover agent realized that there was someone invisible nearby and thought, "Gee, I'd just love to try and follow them, wouldn't that just be swell!"? What other undercover agent wouldn't run away at that point?

For that matter, what other agent would have the gall to climb roofs at night just because he missed home? What other agent would stumble into a secret organization and basically reveal his entire mission to a group of strangers? Who?

He yanked his mask off, the spirit gum leaving his skin feeling raw after being removed so unceremoniously, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes so that if he hypothetically felt like crying, it wouldn't happen.

"I'm so fucking stupid," he whispered, digging his nails into his forehead. "Jesus, I was taught by the World's Greatest Detective, why am I such an idiot?"

He was Tim Drake-Wayne, the kid who had deduced Batman's identity when he was nine, something no detective in the GCPD had been able to accomplish. He was Tim Drake-Wayne, the one who had known that Bruce Wayne was alive when everyone else thought him dead. He was Tim Drake-Wayne, the man who had destroyed every League of Assassins base while he was being blackmailed to work for them.

Where had that Tim Drake-Wayne gone? Who was this pathetic replacement who had taken his place?

You're lonely, called a faraway voice from the recesses of Tim's mind. You've never been away from everyone and everything you know for so long.

That's no excuse, he told himself. I chose this mission. I chose to be alone. The fact that I can't even handle that…it's pathetic, really.

Don't be so hard on yourself. You've accomplished so much.

I bet Bruce would have solved this case already.

Stop comparing yourself to him. That isn't fair.

It doesn't have to be fair. Life's not fair.

Stop it. Remember what Dick always says when—

"DICK'S NOT HERE!" Tim yelled, his voice cracking. "He's not here…" he added in barely more than a whisper. "No one is…"

No one is…

Tim: aww a letter from Dick! I'll keep this so that I'll have something to look back at when I'm sad.
Tim, 0.2 seconds later: *depressed, the letter completely forgotten*