Harry saw neither Pansy nor Elric/Sirius for more than three days. No one he spoke with had seen the latter at any point.

Eventually on the morning of Ron's birthday, he approached McGonagall after breakfast as she stood to leave the Great Hall.

"What is it, Potter? I think you're well aware that Monday mornings is my NEWT class." The lioness frowned at him.

"I'm sorry, Professor. I just wondered if you'd seen Elric?"

"Elric?"

Harry sighed, wondering if he had imagined Sirius' presence just for a moment. He cleared his throat. "Padfoot? Possibly the only person I ever imagined might be brave enough to call you 'Minnie'?"

McGonagall sighed and popped her wand into her hand. With a twitch, she rolled her eyes and drew him to one side. "Your visitor – Mr. Presbyter – was allowed to visit the school to see you as a one-off. The… persona that he has constructed with the aid of Mr. Lupin and others – including several members of the staff here. It's just complex enough to hopefully allow him to live a relatively normal life until the traitor", she said the word through gritted teeth, "can be caught and bought to justice."

Harry found himself frowning. "So…"

McGonagall rolled her eyes. "Yes, Potter. Mr. Presbyter might be able to be out and about in the real world for a while, as we – him included – continue to pursue that traitorous filth across the whole world. Believe me when I say this: there are people hunting Peter Pettigrew with every technique known to wizard kind."

The steel in the lioness' voice was surprising, but not as much as Harry being told that there were people – McGonagall included – at Hogwarts actively working to free Sirius and bring Pettigrew to justice.

"What's going on out there, Professor?" He asked, hoping that might be one of the rare moments he could get past her iron defences.

She glared at him over her spectacles, her mouth the characteristic thin line. "Not now Potter, I'm afraid you'll have to content yourself with the knowledge that people are working diligently to ensure that justice is done. I'm afraid I have to go."

"But…"

"Isn't that Miss Parkinson?" McGonagall asked, causing him to turn his head so fast he cricked his neck.

Pansy wasn't there, and when he turned back to the Lioness, she was gone.

More impressed than annoyed, Harry stared slack jawed at the spot she had departed for a few seconds before returning to the Gryffindor table where Ron was opening a present from Luna who sat next to him, beaming.

It took three more days for Pansy to be released from her Isolation. Three more days in which Harry tried repeatedly to glean any information whatsoever from the teachers, even going as far as to send a letter through Hedwig to Sirius asking for information and about where he had disappeared to this time. Even Hagrid who normally had the loosest of tongues on any top-secret matter was stony-faced.

On Thursday morning, still aching from receiving a thorough kicking from the duelling club found him with Neville and Hermione in the Library. One minute they were reviewing the complexities of minimising hexomonurgic flux in extended complex conjurations and the next, he felt her enter the enormous, dusty space.

His heart kicked into a higher gear as something he didn't have a name for connected with her and she him. He stood fast enough to knock his chair back into the aisle and ran at full speed toward the entrance hall.

Then she was there, seeming to stand out, silhouetted against the rest of the world.

Their embrace was painful and their kiss fierce, but this time there was something different. This time he felt the golden light start in a way he hadn't been aware of before. There was a vague memory of it feeling different during his exhausted, burned-out night in the hospital wing. This time he saw the light but turned it inward. It filled him and reached down into the strange, iridescent deepest part of him that before had only been an idea, a shadowy source for his magic.

He buried his face in her hair, filling himself with the cool, bright smell of her. When they pulled apart, her eyes were bright, shining like lamps.

"Can you see that?" she asked, drawing a ragged, shuddering breath.

He looked around, noticing that every surface, every shaft of thin winter sunlight was edged with a shimmering halo of light. He nodded, turning back to her. "I've seen it before, something new since I was burned-out. You can see the…" he tailed off, unable to put it into words.

"It's like I can see the auras of all the enchantments in the place." She said, her voice steady again as her fingers slid into his. "How is it happening?"

Harry shrugged, turning to kiss her again and blushing when a group of Hufflepuffs wolf-whistled at them. "We'll just have to look into it, I guess."

Viktor Krum returned to Hogwarts the following day at breakfast. Escorted by Headmaster Karkaroff and Professor McGonagall to greeting of equal parts boos, cheers and pensive silence.

Harry and Pansy were eating with Luna and Ron at the Ravenclaw table; Pansy was speaking with Amina al-Din from the advanced transfiguration club about their ongoing experimentation with making steel.

Conversation ceased as Krum crossed the room toward Harry who stiffened in his chair, causing Pansy to put a hand on his arm. "It's okay." She said.

The closer Krum came, the louder the chatter became and the tauter Harry grew. He felt his magic rising and the tendons in his neck strained as the shark approached. He was breathing hard, the speed increasing against his will.

A pain shot through his chest as for a moment he was back in the water.

"No!" Pansy hissed, clamping her hand over Harry's forearm that wore his wandgrip.

He turned to look at her and there must have been something on his face that made her pause.

"Harry?" She asked, her eyes wide.

His stomach was tense and cold, his breath came in rapid, deep gulps.

Somewhere a long way away, Ron asked him something but Harry's head couldn't turn. There was sweat on his brow and palms and he could feel every muscle in his body was taut like a wire.

"Take it easy Harry, everything's okay." Pansy said, squeezing his hand.

Whatever was happening to him, her words were far away, like echoes from deep underwater: black water filled with merfolk and sharks.

Luna made a distant sound somewhere between an exclamation and a scream and there was a scrabbling sound somewhere, and the breaking of glass. Then Ron was there in front of him, his hand on Harry's shoulder.

"Harry are you okay mate?" he asked.

Harry was dully aware that the question had been asked, but all he was aware of was the booming of his heart in his ears and the ice in his veins.

Pansy touched his face in her way and he came back to himself a little. "Not Krum, not here yet." He managed to say, his voice hollow in his own ears.

"Okay come on, let's get out of here. Get his arm, Pans." Ron said, taking Harry's free hand and raising him to his feet before turning to Pansy. "Get him out of here, take him to the Greenhouse or somewhere. I'll talk to him." He said, turning to Krum and striding toward him.

Still breathing too fast, Harry was led quickly thought the hall and out into the cold air. He staggered and accidentally pulled Pansy aside so he could lean against the huge columns that held the portcullis.

She put her hands on his chest. "Just breathe, slow down, just breathe. It's okay."

The world started to come back to him as he closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing, on the sensation of her hands on his chest.

The memory of her face at the ball filled his mind for a moment, the bright light that surrounded and filled them whenever they were together.

His breath started to ease. He realised that his hands were shaking. After an amount of time somewhere between five seconds and five minutes, he was able to rest his head back against the stone of the castle, subtly aware of the deep, nigh-impregnable solidity of the place.

He opened his eyes, seeing the world swim for a moment, magical fields and eddies of energy weaving through and confusing information sent to his brain from his eyes. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose then put the heels of his palms against his eyes for a few seconds.

When he opened them again, the world was normal. Pansy was staring at him, an expression of confusion and fear on her beautiful face.

"Thank you." He said.

"What was that?" She asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I saw Krum coming toward us and it was like I was back in the water, like he was the… s- the shark."

Her face went hard, her brow furrowing and he thought for a moment he saw sparks in her eyes and running along her hair. "I'll kill him."

Harry shook his head. "It wasn't his fault."

"Like that's an excuse." She spat bitterly.

Then Luna and George were there, asking about him and trying to be comforting. Luna started to say something about orange wrackspurts and how she had watched him start to panic.

"You should see Ron, he's gone a bit mental," said George, leaning on the wall beside him. "McGonagall docked him ten points for basically calling Krum a cunt in front of the whole school. I imagine she'll be out here in a minute. Fred said he'd deal with it so I could come out here."

Both Luna and Pansy were entertainingly amused by the consistently foul-mouthed twin's language.

"I think you should talk to Pomphrey, Harry." Pansy said, cuddling up to him to share his warmth.

When Harry shook his head Luna, frowning, touched her nose with her finger. "You know, I think he'd be better off talking to Professor Moody."

"Moody?" George asked.

Luna nodded emphatically, "Yes, he is full of the orange ones, but way fewer since he went away to that healer."

"What're you actually on about, Luna?" George asked, not unkindly.

Luna frowned in consternation, like the subject wasn't a new thing.

The others stared at her, waiting for her to talk but Pansy interrupted, touching his face again, the care returning. "Come on, let's see if Moody's around."

Harry took her offered hand and stood off the wall, feeling exhausted and more than ready to be lead.