(III) - 'The Empress'

"We went out, somewhere just down the main street," he said as he pried a cactus free from its pot and transferred it to a larger one. "And she ordered tea. I thought coffee was the default; I might have even said coffee, when I asked. You have tea when you visit someone, but coffee when you go out." After packing some extra soil around the base, he took his wand and touched the tip of it to the cactus, making the soil pulse a little momentarily. There was dirt on the handle of his wand; some of it had rubbed off from his soily hands, but most was just osmosed from being in the greenhouse during repotting.

"That's what I like about her. Like a lot." Neville slid the finished cactus to the side, enjoying the grinding ceramic sound and enjoying even more that nobody was there to object to it, and grabbed a fresh empty pot. "I guess that's what they call 'down-to-earth'? I never really did understand that completely." He considered for a second the parallel of the phrase and his hands scooping more soil into the pot, and continued to speak.

"We talked. For a few hours - it was getting dark outside when we left. We..." He stopped because he couldn't remember what it was they had talked about during that time. He could recall facts, stale and lifeless things that detailed their conversation, but it was nowhere near enough to fill up that space of time. The rest was filled with vital memories: the fuzzy sunlight distorting through the windows, a hand that kept absently pushing back rogue strands of hair, a brilliant smile that spread from mouth to cheeks and roped the eyes in for good measure. These were living thoughts, vibrant but also impossible to catch. Neville knew that if he tried to put them into words, he would be constantly feeling like he was missing an important detail.

He also felt like he was no longer alone in greenhouse, and he was correct.

Ginny stood at the end of one of the long benches, her arms folded beneath her breasts, a wry smile on her face. That smile was making Neville very aware of a few things, like that throughout the day he may have run a hand through his hair once or twice and gotten dirt in it, or that the shirt he was wearing didn't have any sleeves.

"It's not unusual to talk to plants," he said after a moment. "There's been a number of studies showing they can respond positively to being spoken to." At this Ginny just raised an eyebrow, that cocky little smile still in place. It makes her look like Harry when she does that, he thought very clearly.

"These cactuses need a lot of extra care. I Apparated to bring them back, and I don't think it agreed with them. They're from Australia, the needles produce a sap that's good for-"

"Neville, do I have to ask you outright, or are you pretending I didn't hear what you were talking about?"

With anyone else Neville might have suspected some exasperation, but he could tell that little smile of Ginny's had crept into her words. He shrugged, and picked up the tray of cactuses - it was heavier than he expected - and carried it down to Ginny's end of the bench, where the sun was especially bright. She was watching him, waiting for details, and as he set the tray down he watched her back for a moment. He hadn't seen Ginny for some months, and in that time she had swelled beneath her robes, bringing into his head a number of inappropriate descriptions like ripe and full and heavy.

He sat at the bench and she followed, only breaking her gaze with him to ease down onto the stool. "Hannah Abbott," he told her.

"I remember Hannah. She picked up how to Shield really quickly."

"Mmm, that's her." Neville rested his hands one on top of the other on the bench. He hadn't remembered that immediately, but Ginny bringing it up made him recall the prismatic flash of a hex being absorbed in a Shield Charm, and that all-encompassing smile.

"So, how did you meet? Get back in touch, I guess I should say."

"She's been working at the Three Broomsticks for a little while; I made it a habit of going there for lunch while I've been here." He scanned Ginny's face, and it was clear she was waiting for him to continue. "We got to talking."

"And?"

"And, that's all there is." He stood back up, planning to tend to one of the creepers growing up the lattice he could see from across the bench.

"That sounds evasive." He looked back at her, and while her arms were back to being folded, her smug smile had reemerged too.

"I asked her." He took one of the free scouting shoots from the creeper and hooked it into the framework. "And she knew what I was going to say, and agreed before I finished." Neville thought Ginny might have some comment at this, but as he turned to face her she was only smiling; it was a big smile that, in the greenhouse light, lived up to words like beaming and radiant. He felt the smile spreading to his own face, and Ginny laughed a little, her hand moving to cover her mouth.

"It's nice in here, isn't it?" she said, indicating around the greenhouse as she effortlessly shifted the subject.

"It is. A little dirty today, though," Neville replied, moving on to the next creeper.

"Dirty is alright. The rest of the school feels like it's been abandoned. I didn't even see any of the ghosts."

"Oh, them," Neville said. "They're all doing something in the dungeons. The Fat Friar asked me if I wanted to attend - swears he could smell one of the flowers I was keeping, wanted to repay me."

"Ghost flowers?" Ginny asked, skeptical, and Neville shook his head.

"No, some terrible-smelling thing that grows in swamps. I thought it might be something useful if I could dry the flowers out, but it smelled so awful when it bloomed that we couldn't keep it around. Greenhouse three had to be aired out; and I got an invitation to a ghost party - a disaster all around."

"How did you manage avoiding that? Ghosts get pretty single-minded."

Done with the creepers, Neville went to collect another tray of plants. These sat on the opposite side of the greenhouse, and he gave Ginny a smile as he walked past her. "I'm very busy, aren't I? I've got a lot of work to do to prepare before the students come in. Lessons to plan, greenhouses to clean, northern rock ferns to grow." He indicated to the tray of plants with a tip of his head.

"Mm, there's usually students here. That would make a difference," Ginny noted. "What's a northern rock fern? I don't remember ever doing those."

"They're actually incredibly boring, most of the time," Neville admitted as he took the tiny ferns out from the tray, one by one, and sat them along the length of the bench. "But they change into different colours if they're fed a couple of common potion reagents. They also can live on relatively little water and sunlight, I thought they'd make an interesting project for the first-years."

Ginny smirked (but there might have been something else there with it; a kind of knowing, or pride - if a smirk could have pride) and said, "You have to fill me in on a secret."

"What's that?"

"The other professors, do they live here when school is out too?"

Neville laughed as he sat back down with her. "It's easy to stay and hard to stay away. I think I've seen everyone at least once this summer. Some more than others."

"Who?"

"Minerva, a lot." That felt foreign still in his mouth, but less so than 'Headmistress McGonagall'. "I think she misses having an actual class to teach, but she'd never say anything like that. Firenze, too - he said he was going up north somewhere but he hasn't skipped his afternoon walk around the grounds that I've seen. Oh, and Professor Binns. I don't think he stops teaching, to be honest - just keeps lecturing to an empty classroom."

Ginny laughed and he joined her. He could see her dropping her eyes as if to imagine the ghostly professor nattering to an empty classroom, and it made him laugh harder: it was pretty easy to imagine.

When they were still again, Ginny asked with a breath, "So how does it feel? Being the youngest professor Hogwarts has ever seen."

"I'm not the youngest ever, I think. But I am up there. Down there. Whichever would be right."

Ginny paused for a moment - a long enough moment for Neville to notice the gap in conversation. When she spoke again her tone was different, but he couldn't have said how.

"Are you worried? Nervous, at all."

"About what? Teaching?" She nodded affirmation.

"Not really..." It wasn't a thing he'd had to think of. "I was practically a professor last year anyway, the way Professor Sprout had me apprentice. And it's not like, I don't know, it’s test or anything, where I think I'll forget everything halfway through. I know what I'm doing."

Ginny was looking down at the bench as he spoke, but as he finished she raised her eyes back up to meet his. Neville thought she could have been looking at her stomach, too, but dismissed this thought quickly.

"I suppose you're right," she said, standing. "And best of luck." The beaming and radiance were back in her face, and Neville wondered for a moment if they'd ever actually been gone.

"I'll need it," he said.

She quickly reassured him with, "No you won't." Ginny then planted her hands in the small of her back and stretched, craning her neck as she did so. When she looked back at Neville, she seemed to have remembered something momentarily forgotten.

"Those... what are they, rock ferns? Do you have any to spare?"

"A couple," he answered. He had checked the roster of new students three times and had made neat little stacks of empty pots with the exact number, then after a moment of consideration added two for any potential mistakes (one for each class), another for the student that would inevitably get jostled or sweep their arm a little too wide and crack the pot on the floor, yet another for a potential miscounting on the roster, an extra three in case of mites or aphids or some other pest, and then half a dozen more for anything he hadn't thought of right away.

"Could I have one? It's for Harry - he needs a plant in his office, but he's so bad at keeping them alive."

Neville thought for a moment. "These should be fine indoors. Are you Flooing out, or Apparating from Hogsmeade?"

"Flooing. I'm not really supposed to Apparate much, so…" She glanced down for a moment.

"Ah," Neville replied, feeling dense. He stepped past Ginny and picked up one of the potted rock ferns. "Flooing should be fine," he said, handing her the pot. "Just brush the dust off when you get back."

(I) - 'The Magician'

Harry's eyes had a second to adjust to the darkness inside the little store, enough to catch the back of Ollivander's head disappearing out the back. It was perhaps unfair to call it a store; there were just deep leather chairs huddled around a tiny table and the desk Ollivander had been standing behind. The rest of the interior was cut off from view by a heavy black curtain. Like his old wand store, it gave a feeling of being crowded in,; it was like the walls were standing a little closer together in order not let the light in. Unlike his old wand store, however, there were no wands. It was like he knew when everyone was going to come in and what it was they wanted - and Harry realised (coupled with the tiny plaque outside that read 'Ollivander's and, beneath it in a script of almost the same size, 'By Appointment Only') that he probably did.

"Sit," came Ollivander's voice from the back. "The chairs are there to be sat in."

He emerged from behind the curtain, looking ancient and full of wisdom that might not all be completely benign. He was carrying something long and wooden, and for a moment Harry thought it might have been a cane, but he dismissed that idea quickly as Ollivander was not only not carrying it like a cane, he also seemed far too spry and full of motion to possibly need it. He sat opposite Harry, laid the not-cane on the tiny table, and made a vague gesture towards the back room, summoning an ornate tea set to the table that landed with a rattle.

"How do you take yours?" he asked Harry, without even bothering to look up at him through his wiry eyebrows.

"With sugar," he answered.

Ollivander came back with, "'Course you do." His response was neat as clipping a tennis ball back over a net.

An awkward silence followed, broken only by the clink of china and the rattle of a teaspoon. Harry watched Ollivander's hands dart around the self-pouring kettle, looking not so much like he was serving tea but rather playing the tea set like an exotic instrument.

"So." Ollivander leveled Harry with his eyes as he pushed a cup across the table. "You got the message."

He had. A much younger man, who had been working at Ollivander's Diagon Alley store, had cryptically informed Harry that he couldn't sell him anything here, and had indicated a neat stack of business cards sitting on the front desk. The card had printed on it an address and a time, both in the same neat golden letters.

"He's a fine salesman, my apprentice, but has all the wand craft skill God gave to goats." For a moment Harry was lost, until he remembered the young man who must be the apprentice. "Thankfully he doesn't need it."

"Shouldn't a wand maker know a little about making wands?" Harry asked, half-expecting some kind of rebuke from Ollivander. It didn't come, but Ollivander managed to look surprised all the same.

"There's no wand lore taught in school any more, is there?" he asked, and Harry shook his head. "Thought not, it's mostly lost its point to everyone but wand makers - and this includes their idiot apprentices." He paused for a moment, closing his eyes, and Harry guessed he was searching for the right place to start explaining. When Ollivander's eyes opened, he could see they were dancing, alive like a pagan bonfire.

"Wands are simple things to make. The magic's focused on the harmony between the wood and the core, you follow? There's only so many common combinations of wood and core for only so many different types of people in the world. A wand is quick to attune and quick to replace; it's just convenient, you see. It's the reason legends about wands are so few and far between - there's Rasputin, Merlin of course, you've got the Elder Wand myth, and the Brother Wands - but that's about where it ends. Don't even need the fingers on one hand to count them all."

When Ollivander spoke, Harry felt a lump rise up in his throat as Ollivander so casually mentioned two legendary wands that had both once been in his possession, and he noted how little Ollivander seemed to credit that he himself had crafted the Brother Wands. "A wand's got no power of its own, most of the time. It's like a lever - just a stick until someone wants to put a bit of force on it."

Ollivander paused here to take a sip of his tea, and resumed speaking with the cup still level with his face. "But this," he said, not making any overt moments - save maybe his wild eyes - but still managing to indicate the not-cane, "is something different. It used to be all over Europe that wizards favoured the staff. Could be it's still taught about in some places, too, but on the British Isles staves haven't been popular for over a thousand years."

"Why is that?" Harry asked, and hurriedly took a sip of his own tea so Ollivander wouldn't think him rude. It carried an indistinct taste that reminded Harry of forests - misty ones with the moon overhead.

"No demand, mostly. Your average wizard, he doesn't want to waste time understanding his wand. He wants it to be his right away, and for it to do what he wants. A wand is essentially blank before it gains a master, you see, but a staff is not like that. There's no core to a staff, Harry, so all the magical focus must come from the material it's made from - ancient trees, dragon bones, that sort of thing." It was here that Ollivander looked Harry directly in the eyes, and what he said next sent a quick chill across the back of Harry's neck for reasons he couldn't explain.

"It makes all staves unique. They all have their own minds, own will - and unlike wands, every staff has its own legend."

Harry's own education on legends was lacking somewhat in both wizard and Muggle tales, but there was one he knew of quite well: Pandora's Box. This was something Hermione had said in passing at some point, which confused Ron, and that in turn had perplexed Hermione, who claimed it was a common saying and implied that Ron was just dense for not knowing it. Harry had then brought up he didn't know what it meant either, which had made Hermione momentarily grouchy, and had the boys wondering for days who exactly was this Pandora and what she was doing with a box. Through the week they had continued to make up what may have been inside the mythic box, each thing more outrageous than the last, and with each idea then they had laughed like loons. Not in front of Hermione, of course – broaching the subject with her, even with complete seriousness, was somewhat touchy at first and then not worth the effort later, and it eventually faded out of their minds in the way that foolish jokes of the moment do. Years later, Harry's instructor at the Auror Academy had opened up the year explaining the myth; she had meant it to contrast them, the would-be Aurors, to the evils of the world that escaped from the box. However, all Harry could think was, It all makes sense now. Mentioning Pandora's Box to Hermione would be like opening Pandora's Box.

It was now he was reminded again of that particular story. Had there been some figure in it, some mischievous demon of some kind, that wanted Pandora to open the box? Harry couldn't remember for sure, but if there was, he surely would have looked the way Ollivander did right now.

"Mr. Ollivander... I couldn't accept this, it's-"

"Harry," Ollivander interjected, "while the entire wizarding world owes you a tremendous debt, I am among the few that still owes one to you personally." He contemplated his teacup for a moment, drumming his spindly fingers on the table and letting Harry absorb this statement. Harry gave no reply, and when Ollivander looked back up, the fervour was out of his eyes.

"About the wand you've got now," he said, "it would be oak and unicorn hair core, yes?"

"It is," Harry replied, trying to sound even but thinking, no, it's not completely out of his eyes. He just managed to push it down a little.

"How did I know that?"

"You know the Ministry wandmaker?" Harry had imagined this to be a joke, but it didn't manage to leave his mouth sounding like one, nor did it seem as if Ollivander took it as such.

"I don't," he said, and took a long sip of tea, and asked Harry with eyebrows raised: "Do you?"

"I can't say I do. Most people in the Department use the standard - that's the oak with unicorn hair - so there's not much call to ask to have wands made custom. Usually they're just replaced. Wands get broken on the job – it's not common, but it happens – so there's reason to have available spares ready, in case of... you know, emergencies." Harry felt he had lost conviction somewhere towards the end; possibly it was because he had the feeling he wasn't presenting an argument but further helping whatever point Ollivander was making.

"Being an Auror takes a certain kind of person – one that wants to help the good people of the world and hurt the bad ones, to be broad. Oak and unicorn hair creates the resonance for that mindset. It makes a wand that's very strong in the areas of structured magic – enchantments, wards, a fair few group spells – but nearly useless at anything else. Can't brew a potion, it's a bad instrument for Legilimency, and be damned if you can get a decent charm out of it."

"It's encouraged to go wandless with charms," said Harry, thinking about how hard it had been to master the Big Three without a wand – performing the charms in drill as their instructor had barked at them commands of Shield! Stun! Disarm! – and Ollivander just waved his hand in a casual well-there-you-go gesture.

"I can't just give up my wand..." Harry protested feebly, and Ollivander cut him off with another wave of his hand.

"I wouldn't ask you to do that. Wouldn't suggest you should, either – a staff has a rather severe learning curve, and I'm sure there's a lot even you couldn't manage wandless." He picked up the staff from the table, while Harry tried to decipher if the last remark was a compliment and - if it was – whether it was intentional.

"What I am asking," he concluded, extending the staff to Harry, "is that you just try."

Harry, thinking of Pandora's Box, took the staff. When Ollivander let his end go, Harry felt a strong sense of déjà vu, feeling eleven years old and like he was selecting (being selected by?) his first wand and, at the same time, feeling very unlike that. His wand had sought him out like it recognised him; in the staff he felt a similar recognition, an awareness in it of him, but he also felt power thrumming through it – enough, perhaps, to buck him off like a wild horse if he wasn't careful.

"I will try," he said, thinking a little in unformed thoughts that he felt the same way about the staff as he still did about Ollivander – he was unsure if he liked either of them or not.

(IX) - 'The Hermit'

Draco sighed. It felt like he was pulling out breath from somewhere deeper than his lungs - some cavernous hollow that extended all the way down to his boots, perhaps - and it made the girl behind the bar glance at him again. He noticed and didn't care. If she had some suggestions to make him, he had a roll of Galleons to say the contrary. That was how these things worked, wasn't it?

He stared at his tiny glass, past it, and past the bar and into nowhere. Well, that was how it worked now.

He was contemplating other ridiculous things to spend ridiculous amounts of money on, having already established to himself that paintings were right out. The moving ones were tedious and mouthy, and the non-moving ones were tedious and boring. As far as Draco could see, the purpose of paintings was to fill up blank walls, and one shouldn't have such a stupidly huge manor with that many blank walls to fill up in the first place.

Birds were out also, on the grounds that they were only marginally more useful than paintings. Draco gripped his glass and shifted it back and forth idly and muttered, "Maybe I'll eat those fucking peacocks." He tapped the glass on the bar twice, hard, and the sound was loud enough to get the attention of whoever else was here as well as the bargirl. Draco noted how he also didn't care about their attention right now. The girl poured him out another shot, and whatever she may or may not have been about to say was stifled in her throat when she looked at his face. They had an arrangement now.

Could you even spend ridiculous amounts of money on alcohol? Not quickly, Draco assumed. Not the way he was thinking of. He drank, of course; wine here, brandy there, that sort of thing­. But now he was in the mindset of a drinker, seeking out spirits that would clang around in his head like the angry and primal ghosts they shared a name with. He would get numb the same way one might get numb from breaking a bone to forget about a headache. This was his mission.

He liked the sound of that. Smiling, he threw back the shot. Mission - it made what he was doing sound noble.

---------------------------

He had seen the stairs and wanted to take a moment and right himself. The night had become cool, which was a blessing; and the railing held firm despite looking likesomething flimsy that would be prone to swaying - that too was a blessing. The stairs suddenly looked very inviting, very solid, and Draco performed a somehow graceful maneuver where he held the rail and spun-swung himself into a sitting position. The only thing that spoiled the effect was the bottle held in his other hand smashing and spilling its meager contents down the stairs.

Good riddance, he thought. Carrying the bottle had become a burden.

He had his wand somewhere, he was sure of it, but searching through his pockets produced nothing. He had it in his mind to shout ‘Accio wand!’ and demand the stupid thing into his hands, but then realised how foolish it would be and grimaced. Well, maybe he could stay here, then. The step was comfortable and the railing on it was solid. Yes, he could just stay here until the sun wanted to show itself or his neck wanted to support his mercury-filled head properly, whichever came first. Lord Malfoy, Master of the Stairs With the Solid Railing.

In assessing his lordship, he hadn't noticed the woman approaching him until it was obvious she was headed for him and not just about to pass on by. Draco thought for a second she would perhaps tell him these were her stairs and that he wasn't welcome on them. To that he felt he could have responded with a tongue-lashing that had been brewing in him all day; one that started with ‘Do you know who I am?’ and possibly ended with a lecture about who was or wasn't fit to sit on whose stairs.

Instead she held something out to him. It was long and pointy. It was his wand. He took it from her and flicked his hand once in a sharp gesture, but nothing happened. Flicked it again, and still nothing. Flicked a third time, and while there was a bellow of laughter from a group further up the street that were also heading home, Draco had probably done nothing to cause it.

"What are you doing?" Draco's samaritan asked, calm and unconcerned, as if she was instead asking the time of day.

"Calling the Knight Bus," he said, and his teeth felt like wood and his lips like dumb rubber. "Move or it'll knock you down."

"You have to be on a wider street than this," she informed him in the same it's-a-nice-day-today tone, "or it won't appear directly. The best you could hope for here is that it pops in at the end of the street down there and notices you, but that's not very likely if you stay in the dark.

"Besides," she finished, "you don't summon the Knight Bus with your wand."

Draco looked up to give her a withering glare, but he suspected it fell short because his face felt uncooperative, and it really was too dark to see anything properly. He couldn't pick out any features on his helpful new friend save for her long pale hair. Draco jammed his wand into his pocket and went to signal the Knight Bus, but felt his wrist catch in his new friend's hand. He stared up at her, dumbstruck and unsure how to proceed.

"I know something faster," she said, and was there a smile in her voice now? Before Draco had time to analyse what she had just said, she added, "Hold tight."

A question formed in his mouth; the What sat right on his tongue. Before it could come out, the jostling angry winds of Apparating rushed in on Draco. He shut his mouth, closed his eyes, and held tight to his helpful new friend's wrist.

--------------------------

He landed in a chair in some tiny apartment with no lights on. The chair was deep and felt like it was made of cushions. Devil with the stairs, he thought, this chair is a much better kingdom, and what he knew to be a very uncharacteristic smile bloomed on his face. It was, thankfully, unnoticed in the dark.

There was some movement in the tiny apartment, and then came light. The movement came from the wrong direction for Draco to get a better look at the mystery lady, but the light was enough for him to see the walls covered with frames with pieces of paper in them. Some of the frames were quite small and contained fragments, while others housed multiple pages and took up almost entire walls. Draco was still wondering what these could be while the apartment's owner(?) came from behind and sat opposite him, setting two glasses on the low table between them. One was the clear ambery-orange of strong alcohol, and it was this glass that Draco reached for, but the woman intercepted him.

"This is for me. The other's yours. We'll both drink quick and be equal." As she spoke, Draco got his first proper look at her. Although he hadn't seen her in years, he recognised her immediately, his memory doing that eerie shuffle to put this newer face onto images of the past.

"What's in the other one, Lovegood? It looks like stew."

"We don't have to be formal here," Luna Lovegood said. "Unless you would prefer to be Malfoy instead of Draco tonight."

Draco sighed. "I'd rather be Draco," he admitted, giving very little thought to his reply.

"It's mostly wheat with some grasses and vegetable juice." Draco tried to look bewildered at this non-sequitur, and he thought he did a pretty decent job of it. Luna indicated towards the table. "In the glass."

Draco picked it up to inspect the contents. "You have wheat, grasses, and vegetable juice handy, for moments like this?"

"It's good to be prepared," she replied, and Draco couldn't tell if she was being cryptic or not. Luna tapped her glass to his and said, "Bottoms up."

"Cheers," he agreed reluctantly, and drained his glass. It tasted like drinking a haybale. Almost immediately he felt his sinuses clear, which was an odd sensation, as they hadn't (as far as he knew) been blocked in any way. The clearing rushed through his head, and he felt capable of many things again – standing up and staying stable, for instance, or making his tongue tell the difference between l's and p's.

Draco set the glass back on the low table and saw Luna was watching him. Her glass was similarly empty.

"I'm going to stand up and kiss you now," she said, "And then I plan to take you by the hand and lead you to my bedroom." She left a pause not quite long enough for Draco to wonder if there had been anything other than wheat, grass, and vegetables in what he just drank. "Do you think you're prepared?"

"Prepared as I'm going to be," he came back with, and realised that, however sober the rest of him was, the little sensible, worrisome part of him he'd set out to numb up was still drunk and stumbling and barely able to speak to him.

And that suited him just fine.

--------------------------

It wasn't the kind of heated animal fornication that ended with sweaty bodies and clothes strewn about in need of repairing. It wasn't the dispassionate intercourse of two people coming together to forget the problems they had. It wasn't the awkward joining of first-time lovers or the comfortable love making of long-time friends.

It was sex, and it was good.

"Do you feel the need to sleep?" Luna asked. Draco shifted so he was closer to sitting than lying down. They had not been embracing, though they lay beside each other, and both had barely enough time to catch their breath. Draco thought again about how little time was wasted with his companion.

"Not especially," he replied.

"Perhaps we could talk." She was making no effort to move, despite the fact they were both on top of the bedcovers (said covers therefore doing quite badly at their job). Draco looked down at her and raised his brows.

"What about?"

"Did you lose something today?"

He realised – not for the first time tonight – that he would have to spend more time in Luna's company to predict these sudden changes in topic. "Lose...?"

"And is that why you were looking to be lost yourself? Two things that are lost, they might meet up and travel together." Her tone was serene but he could feel the seriousness at the core of it – or maybe that was just his perception being reflected back, as it felt like the world had suddenly turned serious. He gave no reply, and looked at one of the walls. There were more framed... letters? Book pages? What were those things?

"My father publishes a newspaper," Luna said. Draco glanced at her, but she wasn't looking at him; she too was looking at the wall, possibly even at the same framed whatever he had been staring at. "And in it are the things that he believes. They were things I believed, too, because they were true to my father. But there was a day when it was too hard to believe them all. We fought. And, I think, we lost each other a little."

Draco was unsure where this was going. He knew about Xeno Lovegood – it was hard not to know about him and a handful of his eccentricities – and could easily imagine the hogwash he printed could even become unbelievable to his own daughter. His mind kept wanting to try to connect the present with the last time he had seen Luna, and it was making him uneasy.

"I went out into the world and I looked for the truth. I wrote some articles for other papers and then started my own, just like he did when he was a young man. But it only deals in truth. We talk still, but it's not the same as it was because of what was lost. He thinks I resent his ideas, and that I think he's silly for holding on to them." Now Luna looked at Draco, and her voice wavered a little from serenity.

"I don't. He believes in wonderful things, and I found wonderful things when I went out looking for the truth. And I know that if I keep looking, and if I find something that he believes in, that will be the thing that was lost."

Draco blinked. He had planned to mull on this for a while, possibly in silence, but found himself asking, "Where were you looking, when you looked for the truth?"

"The truth is everywhere," she replied. "But I started in Sweden." Luna tilted her head a little, and Draco could have almost predicted the topic shift this time, if the clock had not been working its way steadily through the small hours.

"The Swedish word for 'dragon' is the same word for 'kite'," she stated.

Draco was about to ask what this had to do with anything and stopped himself. No, there was something there. He might have the logic of it...

"So they can be the same. A dragon can be a kite, but still be a dragon," Luna concluded.

Yes, he did.

"In Sweden," he said, feeling wry.

"Yes."

"We're not in Sweden."

"Sweden," she said, "is like the truth: it can be everywhere."

(VII) - 'The Chariot'

Harry shut the door behind him and all his senses were overwhelmed. There was commotion in the living room – not a commotion, but just the general sort of hecticness that too many Weasleys in the same place generated – on top of the sounds (and smells) of dinner which were making their way from the kitchen, rounded out by something short rushing at Harry to hug him.

"Uncle Harry!"

"Nephew Teddy!" Harry responded, throwing back his tone, and Teddy grinned in the way only a child can when they are old enough to understand a secret joke but still young enough not to develop any sense of irony about it.

"What's that?" Teddy asked, pointing at the staff Harry set carefully against the coat rack.

"Well, when you get to be an old man, like myself, you need to have a cane just to get around the place." He held an arm at the small of his back and pantomimed a hobbling shuffle, aware by now that his wife was definitely watching him and probably rolling her eyes. Teddy naturally found this uproariously funny, and then dashed off to announce to the rest of the household that Uncle Harry was here; he ran past Arthur and Hermione (standing at opposite ends of the dining table) and into the kitchen.

"So all family members should just have access to-" Mr. Weasley was saying.

"Some family members, for the purposes of good-will and information exchange," Hermione cut him off with. Harry was familiar with the way this was going to turn out, and he made a detour to the couch next to Ginny's chair.

Ginny had put aside her knitting – which wasn't surprising, since both she and Harry knew she had no talent for it – but was still holding on to a ball of yarn, and used that to gesture towards the staff. "So where did that come from, old man?"

"I'll tell you later," he said. "When it's quiet." He saw Percy emerge from the kitchen with an stack of plates, saw him about to ask his father something, and then saw him think the better of it and instead distributed the plates as quietly as possible.

"I don't know if 'exchange' is the right word."

"Gathering, then. Liaising." Hermione had been talking extensively with her hands, but now placed them on the back of one of the chairs. "The Ministry needs to do this, it's been in the dark for a century."

Ginny nudged Harry a little. "Wasn't Ron meant to be coming with you?" she asked.

"He might be late," Harry said after a moment's pause. "Work stuff." If Ginny was dissatisfied with this vague answer, she didn't let it show.

In truth, Harry wasn't sure how vague he should or shouldn't be, as Ron was currently on assignment with the Unspeakables. The department's name was quite literal – details about an Unspeakable's projects, their chain of command, and sometimes even their very name could not be spoken unless in the company of another Unspeakable. On the occasion the Unspeakable Department needed outside assistance – which was frequent but not regular, Harry had noted – the wizard assigned to them would stop in the middle of sentences, seemingly completely at random, and develop a puzzled (or frustrated) look as to why they were forbidden to finish their train of thought. The official solution to this within the Ministry was to discourage talk about colluding with the Unspeakables. The unofficial solution – among the Aurors at least – was a little more inventive: a rough set of code words that were muddy enough in meaning to evade whatever magical censors shrouded the Unspeakable's work.

It had begun with the word Scottish – Scottish work, doing a Scottish job, put on the Scottish project, after Macbeth's alternate title – and snowballed from there. Unspeakable projects were 'toil and trouble.' Individual Unspeakables were 'Hecates' and outside members, in turn, 'MacDuffs'. 'Great Birnam Wood' was a widespread curse in the Auror Department, starting as a vaguely serious phrase meaning 'situation critical' and evolving into a joke shorthand for 'everything is going to hell around here'. There was even a phrase to describe that you were being censored by the Unspeakable Division's self-protection enchantments: 'to see a dagger before one's self'.

The sharpness in Arthur's voice brought Harry out of his woolgathering. "Hermione. You know I agree with you on this, but you can't go proposing sweeping changes to one of the pillars of our legal system..." Here Hermione sighed audibly. "...And expect to be taken seriously."

"They're not so drastic," she started before Arthur had finished his point. "Most of the targeted laws aren't enforced anyway. It's more symbolic, a step to change the culture towards Muggle integration, because right now the culture's about as hostile as it could get."

Exasperation crossed Arthur's face at the word hostile. "Oh come on, it's not-"

"It's not?" Hermione shot back, arms raised. Percy was making his exit, and made a point of touching George on the arm as he emerged from the kitchen with bread, making sure he understood what he was walking into. George, understanding perfectly, dropped the basket of bread in the centre of the table and took a seat. "Legally I'm almost guilty of high treason because of the amount of 'breach-worthy magical knowledge' I've told my parents."

Ginny cocked her head a little, indicating they should both go to the table. Harry raised his eyebrows, but Ginny brushed off any question he might have had with a wave of her hand and started to lift herself out of her chair. It was unlike Hermione or Mr. Weasley to keep arguing while everyone else was eating, he supposed, so maybe they would wrap up soon.

"You're looking at this like the letter of the law is absolute, and it is not. If any members of the council knew more than half a dozen of those violations were enforceable, I'm a doxy's mother." Mr. Weasley's tone was rising, and he had started to use his finger to punctuate his sentences.

"It isn't about whether the laws are enforceable," Hermione retorted as Teddy dashed past her from the kitchen. Harry absently sidestepped him as he came barreling past, and he recognized this as the first wave of a general exodus from the kitchen. Percy was setting places and Molly hovered in the doorway, looking like she was trying to settle on the right tone to use to tell her husband and daughter-in-law to be quiet, and that there's food on the table. All this was lost on Hermione. "It's case in point showing that anti-Muggle sentiment and isolationism is still on the books, and can still be used to dodge any notion of a proper reform."

"We have the Statute of Secrecy for a reason-"

"We had it for a reason. It's been almost completely irrelevant for the last fifty years."

The silence was suddenly very heavy. Arthur and Hermione stared each other down across the table. Harry and Ginny exchanged a glance. This was the core of all ideological conflicts between the two. Although not every debate they had brought it up – often because doing so turned the debates rapidly sour.

Hermione's position was one of general dislike for the Statute's existing wording and the centuries of legal baggage it brought with it. Just recently she had described it as 'the bloated carcass of archaic laws' before the International Confederation of Wizards while lobbying to instate a revised version she had drafted. That line had circled highly among the political sections of the wizard papers. To her, the Statute of Secrecy was a product of an age when the phrase 'pure-blood' had a meaning, and wizard children being born to two Muggle parents was an occurrence that was only foretold in the stars and in hazy seer's visions rather than commonplace enough to include nearly one in four wizard children educated in the British Isles.

To Arthur this slash-and-burn standpoint bordered on heresy. To speak to Muggle experts of the sciences across all fields and understand their substitutes for magic was one of his dreams. He had the capacity to do so, if he wasn't above the use of a couple of memory charms. But did he ever? Could he? No – because he believed strongly in the benefits of wizard society remaining hidden as it was. The Salem Witch Trials might not have claimed any actual witches, but they were the result of too many wizards being a little too public, and the paranoia fostered centuries ago against the occult in the New World still existed (in some form) today. Europe, at least in Muggle eyes, still had its mystic spots, places where castles still stood, folklore was still believed, and druids might still gathered around cairn circles. The Statute of Secrecy was the document that ensured that the Tri-Wizard Schools were not decimated and turned into something akin to the Salem Witches Institute.

And all the tension that had built dissipated just as quickly with a knock at the door. Teddy, upon whom all the mounting friction around the table had been lost (and who, unconcerned with both arguments and the food, had been watching out the kitchen window to see the visitor arrive), opened up the door.

"Who are you?" Teddy asked, old enough to not be afraid of strangers but not old enough to always remember to offer them some mark of respect.

"I'm Darcy," replied the woman, "and I work for the Ministry." She had long hair that was neatly tied back and shaded somewhere between a salt-and-pepper speckle and solid grey. Upon her long and slender nose (that matched the rest of her figure) sat a pair of thin and sensible glasses.

"Is there a Mister Potter here tonight?" she asked Teddy, although she had to have been aware of everyone else in the house watching her, and could have easily looked among them and picked out Harry herself.

"Harry's Mister Potter," Teddy replied, and he turned away from her, possibly to call for him with a 'There's someone to see you,' when he found Harry already approaching.

"This won't take a moment of your time, Harry," Darcy said, speaking to whole room despite looking only at him. "And you can get back to your family dinner. You don't object to me borrowing him like this, do you?" she asked everyone else. Something about this jagged at Harry's ear, some odd tone of false politeness. It reminded him a little of his Aunt Petunia when she was being civil to guests.

"No, it's alright," he said, feeling a little foolish and a little curious. He turned and let everyone know it was okay to start without him, and wondered if he was being put on the same Scottish assignment with Ron as he shut the door behind him after ruffling Teddy's hair. Darcy waited for him on the path to the Burrow's front door, a leather folder beneath one arm.

"We haven't been formally introduced," she said, and shifted the folder so she could offer her hand. "Darcy McIntyre, Ministry Research and Development."

"Harry Potter," he responded in turn, shaking her hand. "I guess you know who I am."

She smiled without showing much humour or irony. "Are we able to go somewhere else for a moment? Your office, your apartment? I have a bit of a presentation with me, you see." She indicated towards her folder.

"What's this about?" he asked. "Am I being transferred, or-"

"No, it's nothing like that," she said.

The thought came into Harry's mind, clear and strong, I was being foolish before. She's just nervous, that's all.

"It's about some research I've been doing, and it concerns you."

"How?"

She indicated the folder again. "It's all in here. Your apartment? It won't take long, I promise."

Harry's curiosity, which often lay asleep for very long spells, had finally awoken. Harry took Darcy's forearm, told her to hold tight, and Disapparated.

(X) - 'The Wheel of Fortune'

"Where to begin," Darcy mused. Harry sat in the centre of his couch, suppressing his slight unease at the unfamiliarity of the situation. He had offered Darcy a cup of tea upon arriving in the apartment and she had refused – logical, since she was insisting on keeping their meeting short – but that had denied him the pretext of pouring himself a cup, so he had nothing in front of him to occupy his hands with. He made them lay still on his knees while he watched Darcy sort through her papers.

"As I said, I work in Research and Development for the Ministry. Specifically, in the creation of potions. In the summer of 1979, I was in contract with the Ministry, although I still considered myself a freelance developer."

"Like George," Harry said automatically. He knew George had sold a number of prototype devices to the Ministry that had made him a large sum of money. George had approached Harry and made it clear to him he planned to donate the money to the Auror Department. Harry had been very close to asking him what prompted him to do so when he saw that the humour that was almost ever-present in George's face was missing that day, and he stopped himself. In the documentation for that particular donation (although George never knew it), it was recorded as coming from 'George (and Fred) Weasley'.

"George Weasley," she replied, her eyes looking off to some far-off corner of the roof in thought, "owner and proprietor of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, whom I believe still has three months on his development contract with the Ministry with the option to renew. Yes, something much like that.

"I developed a potion," she said, picking up her previous train of thought, "that bestows incredible and unlikely good fortune on the user. I believe you have had some experience with the Felix Felicis potion, in..." She looked through her papers. "…1996. Potions Master of Hogwarts Horace Slughorn applies for and is granted issue to brew a one-tenth dose for demonstration purposes to his NEWTs level students. From an interview with him, he disclosed that you were the winner of the potion in a contest he held within that class. Correct?"

"It is," Harry said. The feeling of an outsider telling parts of his life back to him was slightly unreal.

"What was it you used the potion for?" Darcy asked. Her tone shifted in a way that Harry was unable to place.

"I didn't, really," Harry replied almost at once. "Most of it went to my friends."

"Hm." She paused. "I hadn't expected that." Harry was about to ask why, but she quickly moved on. "We can talk about it later. In 1979, Felix Felicis was in the final stages of testing. Five subjects, all of whom have regular exposure to hazardous situations, were given regular supply of the potion and asked to report back on its effects. This..." She separated some papers from her stack, held together with a paperclip, and placed them on the coffee table in front of Harry. "...is the reports from two of the subjects, released from confidentiality after a period of twenty years following their deaths."

Harry had planned to glance though the papers, when he saw a name, printed in neat little letters, at the head of the form on the first page: Lily Potter.

"My mother was one of the subjects?" he asked.

"Your father, also. James Potter's documentation is in the second half." Harry skimmed through the pages while Darcy continued to talk, but he didn't take in any of what he was reading beside the odd phrase, meaningless outside of context. "They were not Ministry employees, which is a tad unusual but not unheard of. There's a letter of recommendation within the file that praises your mother's ability to evaluate the potion quite vehemently."

Harry looked up at her, and she told him, "It's the last attached page." Harry jumped to the final page and started to read through the letter, then skimmed past the dry official tone that most communication to the Ministry had, and finally skipped straight to the signature at the end. He was unprepared for the name scratched down by a hurried hand; he felt a strange sense of being transported to a point far back in the past, similar to the vision he'd experienced in Tom Riddle's diary. The letter had been written by Severus Snape.

Darcy, meanwhile, continued with the recount of her timeline. "There's four months of statements and evaluations of Felix Felicis there from the Potters, from August of 1979 to November. The trial was meant to have lasted half a year. As far as official records of the trials go, a month's worth of the potion is unaccounted for in the possession of the Potters, and the final month's dosage was never delivered."

"How come?" Harry asked, but he thought he knew the answer.

"During the year of 1980, the Ministry had other concerns beyond completing results of potion trials, even for one that might be incredibly important in the months to come. Even though the trials were technically incomplete, the Ministry approved Felix Felicis for use, with the explicit instructions it was to be used sparingly and within the wizard's better judgement. What Lily and James Potter did with their sample batch was unimportant, compared to getting enough of the potion ready in time for what seemed like an inevitable civil war." Her voice rose a little on the last, like she didn't quite believe this statement fully.

"Against the Death Eaters, you mean," Harry said. "Against Tom Riddle."

"Yes, that," she agreed, seeming as if she wanted to gloss over the subject of the Dark Lord. "There were those in the Ministry that felt it was dangerous to have the potion available at all – what if too much of it went to rogues within the Ministry, could the Death Eaters reverse-engineer the recipe - the typical worry that came with the paranoia at that time. It was still distributed, but that's the unimportant part."

"So what's the important part?" asked Harry, his mind still stuck on Snape's signature.

"The missing test batch. It was during this time James and Lily Potter disappear from all official records – aren't even on the map, so to speak – and only reappear on October 31st, 1981, following the night at Godric's Hollow. I have some statements I'd like to read you, if you don't mind." Harry gestured for her to continue, and she sorted through her papers again. When she read from them, her voice was in the monotone of someone reading aloud, yet it held a strange conviction to it.

"'I was never Chosen, is the biggest misconception. I think I'm pretty ordinary, honestly. Ordinary and lucky.' You said this in an interview with The Truth, an independent publication produced by a Luna Lovegood, in the fourth issue, published in April of 2002. From the Daily Prophet in 1998, following the defeat of Tom Riddle, multiple eyewitness accounts have you seemingly returning from the dead. The article proclaims you as the 'luckiest wizard alive'. From a character interview I conducted in February of this year with a Zacharias Smith, former student of Hogwarts and former member of Dumbledore's Army, 'He said himself it was luck the Dark Lord didn't kill him. Not skill. Luck.' He was referring to an incident-"

"I know what he was referring to," Harry said, cutting her off, "But I don't see what-"

"My theory is, Harry, that your mother used one or both of the remaining doses of Felix Felicis at some point during the period of October of 1979 and July of 1980, and the effects of the potion have remained with her child through his life."

Harry searched for the words to refute this and couldn't find them. It had a compelling logic to it – how many times had he been in the right place at the right time? How many things that could have gone wrong, and left him injured or dead or worse, had not? The Tri-Wizard Tournament... passing the defences guarding the Philosopher's Stone... Draco accidentally mastering the Elder Wand... just how blessed had his whole life been?

Darcy sat in one of the chairs that faced the couch, tucked her papers into the leather folder, and took her glasses off and held them in one hand. "Do you know why Felix Felicis is a restricted substance, Harry?" she asked.

"Overdoses are dangerous," he said by rote, remembering how Professor Slughorn had described the potion. "Too much of it makes you reckless."

"That's an adequate answer, but not an entirely complete one. Prolonged use of the potion can induce recklessness and poor judgement, yes, but it's also more likely to attract bad luck to the user. The potion tries to maintain some manner of equilibrium by bringing about misfortunes to be avoided with the good luck it grants. It's like being cursed. There were many cases of it after Felix Felicis was approved in 1980, but it was never viewed as a serious flaw in the potion since the nature of the problem was self-correcting."

"Self-correcting? You mean the good luck and bad luck would just... run out eventually?"

"In a manner of speaking," Darcy said, and she would not meet Harry's eyes. "The good luck would run out, anyway. All the wizards that overdosed on the potion died in incredibly unlucky circumstances. After that, the Ministry's limitations on the use of the potion were taken quite seriously." She put her glasses back on, and her expression was unreadable when she spoke again. "So what would it be like, to be in that overdosed state?"

"Like the world was trying to kill you, but you'd just manage to escape every time," Harry said. "It would be like..." He trailed off as he realised he was describing a large portion of his own life. Darcy looked at him like she could read his mind.

"I have another theory," she said after a moment's pause, "and it relates to the possibility that this state can be overcome if a catalyst of some epic proportion is introduced. Theoretically, if this catalyst fails to kill one who has overdosed on Felix Felicis, they may be free of the negative side-effects."

"You're talking about Voldemort," Harry said, and she nodded curtly.

"I would like to try some tests on you; some that were used in the testing phase of the potion and a couple that are of my own design. I'm unsure of the relationship between the overdose state and the catalyst, or even if there is one at all. It could be that you still have the potential for uncommon luck with you, and that it's lying dormant, or it could have faded completely after overcoming a sufficiently dangerous and persistent threat. It could even be that the catalyst is something caused by the overdose itself." This last statement sounded slightly ominous to Harry, and Darcy added after a brief pause of consideration, "But this part of the theory isn't terribly likely. I would like to administer these tests as soon as possible. Do you have anything pressing happening tomorrow evening?"

Harry replied that he did not, and they arranged to meet here after he was through with work the following day. Harry Apparated back to the Burrow into a much calmer atmosphere than it had been in when he left, and while that went a long way to relax him, it couldn't completely shake from his mind the idea that Severus Snape might have tried to protect his mother with the Felix Felicis potion, and that this one action may have guided his whole life.

(0) - 'The Fool'

Ron was about to give up on the mass of papers strew about on his desk as a bad job and take a break for lunch to clear his head a little when the note flew onto his desk. He very briefly considered ignoring it and leaving the office anyway, but decided he could be optimistic about things. It might say, 'Big break, go to the 9th floor.' Or maybe it would read, 'Have a lead, meet by the phone,' - that would be acceptable. Or even, 'Target acquired, return to normal duty.' He could be optimistic, sure.

He unfolded the paper airplane and read it. 'Eliott is on his way, don't go anywhere.'

"Shite," he exhaled, and balled up the note. Eliott was a fine person but his sense of timing was horrible. Whenever he needed to speak with him, it was at the worst possible times – during meals, in the middle of the night, and, without fail, whenever Ron had settled into a fine groove of working. He wondered if it was something all Unspeakables were capable of, or if it was just the unique gift of his contact.

When Eliott came into Ron's office, he found Ron leaning back in his chair, hands folded in his lap and deliberately twiddling his thumbs. He was a stocky man of about thirty, with intense eyes, short bristly hair, and a neat goatee. To Ron, he gave the impression of knowing dozens of little secrets and shortcuts about his line of work (whatever it was), but would only be willing to divulge them one at a time.

"Weasley," he said with a dip of his head. Ron didn't return the greeting, but did unclasp his hands. He thought he would have found it hard to return it, not knowing Eliott's last name – or his first, for that matter. All the Unspeakables went by generic code names when on assignment.

"We might have a break on our subject," he said, laying some paperwork on Ron's desk.

"Brilliant," Ron said, his mood instantly brightening. He looked at the sheet of paper – it was a table, with circles drawn hastily around several of the entries – and forgot about taking a break for lunch. "What have we got?"

Eliott circled around the desk to stand beside Ron. "I ran the lists by my potions man again, and he picked something out of them we might have missed the first time. He's a good doublethinker, that one."

"A good what?" Ron asked. Eliott waved his hand to indicate it wasn't important, and continued with the table drawn on the paper.

"So our rogue, they use their different codenames to stock up on the components for a list of every class-A potion. Huge security threat when they disappear, right? We're supposed to go right to the Aurors and start a manhunt for a dangerous nutter with a grudge against the Ministry. But think about this – why would you need three different kinds of highly unstable explosive potions, when each one needs to be transported in a different way?"

Ron caught the meaning almost immediately and scanned the list. "Or why you would need Veritaserum when you can make the Puppeteer Draught... You think our rouge isn't going to use any of this stuff?"

"Bullseye," Eliott said, and tapped the paper for emphasis. "It's to throw us off. I thought maybe their plan was they were going to use just one of the class-As, and I asked if there was more of any one of the potions, and there's not, but there is a whole bunch of this." He pointed to the circled ingredients on the list of potion recipes that had come from the personal notes of the Unspeakable gone rogue – within each circle were two words.

"Crushed adventurine? What's that even restricted for? It's not in the class-As, surely." Ron's potions knowledge was not exactly comprehensive, but in the past couple of days he had become intimately familiar with a specific class of them: the class-A restricted potions. These were the most dangerous potions wizards were capable of brewing, encompassing of an array of malicious and deadly effects, and the sale of their key ingredients was closely monitored by the Ministry of Magic.

"It's not, it's in the Cs. You need a license if you're going to stock it by the pound, but that's nothing more than a formality. Usually junk-merchants put it in their good fortune amulets, but there is one potion it's based on – Felix Felicis."

This was a potion Ron had heard of. "Liquid luck? So our rogue isn't going to blow up half of London, they just want to, what... win big in some goblin gambling den?"

"How well do you think you'd do trying to catch someone with a solid year's supply of excellent luck?" Eliott asked. This Ron considered. He had a brief image of trying to run down a ghost, being unable to bind them, stunning spells drifting right through them.

"But," Eliott said, his tone full of a cheery false chipperness, "I have here a list of all the potion merchants registered to sell pure adventurine, crushed or no." He flipped over the first page, the one with the lists of ingredients. On the second page was what seemed like an endless list of names and addresses.

Ron looked up at Eliott. "This is still looking for a needle in a haystack, you know."

"Maybe," Eliott said, "But at least now we're looking for the needle instead of some straw."

--------------------------

While this was happening, Harry was in his own office. It sat beside Ron's. Both had two windows that looked out over London, as did the other seven in their department. Harry had spent his first couple of months here trying to figure out which windows really faced outwards (into the ground) and which faced inwards (to another office), but had eventually given up, since the views from each window changed from time to time. He did still occasionally wonder exactly what shade of purple his uncle's face would have become and how many lines would have appeared in his forehead, if he knew his nephew had his own corner office with a view of St. Paul's Cathedral before his twenty-fifth birthday.

Well, a corner office of sorts, anyway.

He was going over the reports for his last batch of assignments – they had a tendency to build up, as Harry put off the reports on small jobs until they absolutely had to be written up – when a note landed in the rock fern that now sat on his desk. Usually the paper planes could be counted on to touch down neatly in his inbox, but the plant was a new addition to his office and whatever magic ran the internal message network hadn't learned to deal with this particular obstacle yet. Give it a couple more crashes, Harry thought. It might have even learned by the end of the day.

'Draco Malfoy to see you,' the note read. Harry barely had enough time to register how out of place that name was when the actual Draco Malfoy entered his office, followed by the department receptionist.

"You can't just go in there," she was lecturing. Draco was paying her no notice. "There's a protocol to be followed, Mister Malfoy, and-"

"It's alright, Astoria," Harry said, looking at Draco, who was currently well dressed but poorly groomed. Something about his robes looked out of place – perhaps it was the way they had been tailored to crop the sleeves short. "I've got time to see someone."

Astoria looked from Harry to Draco and back to Harry, and exited with a barely audible, "Harrumph." If Draco had noticed, Harry couldn't see him reacting. For a very long moment after the door was closed, he didn't react at all. Harry had a brief thought that there might be some form of pride keeping him silent, so he spoke first.

"What brings you to the Ministry, Malfoy?" he asked. He tried to keep his tone neutral, but wasn't sure how good a job of it he did. The image he had in his head - the one of Ron threatening him with something if they died saving Draco while the Room of Requirement burned around them - was very strong in his mind.

"Business." He paused, and then clarified: "My father's business. He was making regular donations to the Ministry. I want to know what they were."

Harry thought on this very briefly. As he did, his office seemed very silent. "I'm sure I'd love to tell you all about them," he began, "but the exact nature of the donations could only be viewed by the executor of the Malfoy Estate. And-"

"I am the executor of the Malfoy Estate." He had obviously read something in Harry's face he didn't like, because he scowled and said, "And spare me any condolences. I've heard enough of them today." Harry then realised what it was about his robes: they were the kind worn to formal events – balls, weddings, official functions.

Funerals.

"What do you want this for, anyway?" he asked. "And why ask me? Doesn't... didn't your father have-"

"If I tell you," Draco said abruptly, and then left a long pause before he spoke again, "you cannot repeat it anywhere else."

Harry saw the seriousness with which Draco was possessed. "I won't, Draco."

Draco's explanation came in a much lower voice, as if he expected that someone might be lurking nearby, eavesdropping. "We're leaking money. My father sold a number of his holdings and was looking to sell off the rest. He kept ploughing gold into the Ministry, and he refused to listen to anything I had to say on the subject, and it did no good."

"What did?"

Another long pause. "The Malfoy name is tainted," Draco said at last. "We were branded with the blood loyalists even though my father was trying to get out – you know, towards the end – and no matter how much gold he threw around to show what side he was on, nobody who matters in the Ministry is buying it. Then from the other side, the actual loyalists – what little there are left – know he was deserting and actively shut him out at every turn. Since the fall, the Malfoys have been pariahs on both sides."

"Is it such a problem for you? You're not your father – you don't even have the Mark."

Draco's eyes went bright. "I know I don't have the Mark. Nobody does. No Dark Lord, no Dark Mark." He scowled again, and then added as an afterthought, "Idiot."

The room was in silence once more, until Draco broke it. "But this is where you can help me. If you made mention of the money I was giving to the Ministry, and if it went to the right places, if the right people knew." Harry was about to raise some objection, on the grounds that he had very little knowledge and even less skill of the kind of politicking Draco was talking about, when Draco spoke again. "Of course, this information wouldn't be free, you understand. I'd have to give you something in return." Draco had an expression on his face that suggested conspiracy. Skulduggery. It made him look much more confident than he had moments before.

"What kind of information?"

"Things I remember. Which wizards had the Mark, for example." He paused again, but this time Harry didn't think it was because he was searching for the right words. "And which ones didn't want to forget about it ever existing, like my father did."

Harry's eyes went wide. The continuing existence of a small cadre of loyalists – to blood purity, to the Death Eaters, and to Voldemort – had been a bugbear of the Ministry for years. Most of them had been put to trial following the fall. The slightly more careful but still mostly thuggish supporters – the ones that had been in Voldemort's cause not because they believed in some higher ideal of preserving wizard blood but only saw an excuse to curse some Muggles – had made mistakes and been caught, but all the Aurors knew a number of blood loyalists remained. Many were suspected on holding Dark Artefacts. Some were accused of attacks on Muggles and Muggle-borns. Mostly there was never enough evidence for either for a formal trial. But with insider information, with a solid witness...

"So you see," Draco said, "why how I plan to donate to the Ministry has to be kept in confidence."

Harry took his meaning clearly. "I'll get you the donation paperwork," he said, and went for his wand, when he remembered it wasn't with him today, but sitting on a dresser in his apartment, and he found the staff propped by his desk instead.

"Accio," he commanded, thinking about the rolls of blank parchment in the shelves behind him, thinking about making one leap from the shelf and land on his desk. A roll of parchment did leap from the shelf, but jumped so violently it skimmed off the top of the desk, ploughed into the ceramic pot the northern rock fern sat in, and flew through the air until it connected with Harry's office door with a loud thud. Pot shards, soil, and rock fern fronds spilled all over Harry's desk, handily ruining a solid two hours of paperwork.

Draco stared blankly at the chaos and the mess and then burst out laughing. The laughter was so strong he had to place a hand on Harry's desk to steady himself. He was waving his other hand in the air, signalling that he was trying to catch his breath for something in between gales.

"You don't understand... a staff... a staff! Merlin's beard, Potter... oh, I haven't slept in days..."

--------------------------

Harry crossed the lobby and glanced out one of the big windows, seeing how low the sun was by the light outside. Nobody else was around. Of course nobody else was around, they would have gone home hours ago. He had gotten his desk clean and the paperwork rewritten, but it had taken the rest of the day and then some. He had made a vow that he'd have his wand with him tomorrow. Just in case.

He was thinking about Draco, about his slightly hysterical laughter. Had he ever seen Draco laugh, while they were in school? He couldn't remember if he had. Sneering plenty, yes, but a sneer wasn't the same as-

"Harry! Hey, Harry!"

Harry stopped, his hand inches from the Floo Powder. Ron was calling him from across the lobby. He took his foot out of the fireplace, and waited for him to catch up.

"Missed you at dinner last night," Harry said. "You're still on that Scottish job, yeah?"

Ron nodded, which was all the confirmation Harry had expected. "Hermione tells me there was some woman asking for you last night," he said, going to scoop up some of the Floo Powder.

"Darcy something," Harry said, "From R and D. She has this theory she was asking me about, about Felix Felicis and my... Ron?"

Ron had gone a pale shade. The handful of Floo Powder he had held was spilled on the marble lobby floor. "Darcy what?" he asked in a queer flat tone.

"Ron, what's-"

"Darcy what?" he repeated, and there was urgency and something else (Panic, Harry thought, It's panic) in his voice.

"Mac-something... McIntyre," he said, and could feel the panic starting to spread, "Why does it-"

"Because she's...!" Ron started, and the words died in his mouth. He tried again, failed again, swore, and hit his fist against his leg. Harry was about to ask a third time, when Ron grabbed his shoulders, and said in a voice that was bordering on shouting, "Great Birnam Wood, Harry! The forest is moving!"

(XII) - 'The Hanged Man'

Harry Apparated outside his doorstep and hesitated. He could feel his blood pumping. He could hear it beating as it rushed around in his ears. He had to get that under control. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and placed his hand on the doorknob.

Ron would be rounding up whoever was left in the department and putting out a general alert for the Aurors to gather at the Ministry. Procedure for assembling and briefing a team in an emergency situation was to take no more than two minutes. Add to that the time to fetch the remaining Aurors in the Ministry and it would be three minutes, approximately. The team would then move, covertly, to around Harry's apartment. The time to allow for that would pass four minutes, definitely. The site then needed to be secured – no hostile elements in this case but a moderate probability of Muggle witnesses. That would put the time between four and five minutes. Approximately.

Then a containment perimeter had to be established, preventing Apparition, the activation of Portkeys, et cetera. Harry's block of flats was a small space but it was tall. That would add time. Maybe three minutes for a full team. But he was unsure if Ron could get a full team, and wasn't certain Ron would wait until he had one, so that further increased the time. Call it upwards of five minutes.

So he had to keep calm for around seven to ten minutes, approximately – a huge margin. He had to keep calm even though he was going into his apartment completely blind – all he knew about the situation was that Darcy was part of the Hecate's case that Ron had been assigned to, and that Darcy was potentially dangerous. If he had the chance, he'd make sure to get his wand. In the meantime, he grimaced as he thought, the staff would have to do.

He turned the doorknob. Zero minutes passed.

"Hello, I'm home," he called, opening the door and stepping into the apartment in a single smooth movement. His eyes swept the room within sight. Ginny sat in the chair she had claimed as her own, her knitting project in her lap. She had a smile on her face. There was nobody else in the room he could see. The leather folder lay on an arm of the couch.

"You're late," she admonished him, "Mrs. McIntyre arrived before you did."

"That's the Ministry for you," he said. Keep your voice even, he thought. "Has she been here long?"

"Five minutes or so." Ginny looked back down at her knitting needles and started to weave them together slowly. "She said she was going to explain some of the, what were they called, probability anomaly tests, over a pot."

One minute passed. Harry wondered if he had time to duck into the bedroom and covertly grab his wand when Darcy emerged from the kitchen with his kettle and a pair of cups. "I don't know how good this will be, because I so rarely make tea myself, but – hello Harry – I suppose it's like riding a bicycle, isn't it? Do you want a cup, Harry?"

"I'd love one," he said, and sat in the other chair. Darcy disappeared back into the kitchen, and Harry turned his thoughts briefly to his wand again, and then to the staff that was still in his hand. He wasn't quite ready to set it anywhere, even if it was within arm's reach. Holding it made it visible, but on second thought that made it a conversation piece, didn't it? It should be as visible as possible.

He tightened his grip around the staff as Darcy came with a third cup, set it on the coffee table, and began pouring tea. Two minutes passed.

"Are staves back in fashion, or are you trying to bring them back?" Darcy asked with a note of humour in her voice. Harry smiled back, thankful he had something to do with his face so that the relief wouldn't show clearly.

"It's an Ollivander custom," Ginny said with a smirk. She had thought Harry's retelling of the meeting with Ollivander slightly absurd, and had insisted he was going funny in the head in his old age, and this came through clearly when she spoke.

Darcy either missed this or chose to ignore it. "I thought he had retired," she asked Harry.

"Moved on to other projects, I guess," he said. "He has a new store, although you'd never know it was his."

"When my mother was in school, there was a course in the staff." Darcy sat on the couch, and looked from Harry to Ginny, holding her teacup. "She said it was an excuse for the students to blow holes in rocks out by the groundskeeper's hut."

Ginny snorted laughter at this, and Harry joined her in what he hoped was not a weak smile. Three minutes passed. Or was it more like four? Harry glanced about the room quickly, and his eye fell on the magical clock that sat in the corner. It was a replica of the clock at the Burrow; a gift he and Ginny had received for their wedding, and they had been fascinated to see a third hand on it grow longer over the past months. It still didn't have a name on it. Harry couldn't read where the hands on the clock were, and didn't think Darcy could either, but she might if she had some reason to look in its direction.

Harry shifted his gaze away from it, thinking very clearly, Why can't wizards have normal clocks?

Ginny folded her knitting needles together, set her project aside, and reached for her teacup. Darcy was saying something, but Harry didn't hear her. He was having a very strong instinctual feeling, an intuition welling up from his training as an Auror, and he was acting on it without thinking.

"Ginny," he said in a flat, commanding voice. "Don't drink the tea."

Ginny froze. So did Darcy. Harry, continuing on instinct, lowered his staff so it was aimed in Darcy's direction. "Talk," he said.

Darcy placed her teacup on the coffee table, and said in a calm (on the surface, at least) voice, "I can't."

She's an Unspeakable, Harry's intuition screamed. She's an Unspeakable, she's turned rogue and Ron's on her case.

"Try." His voice remained flat but he could feel his heartbeat again.

"I'm not Darcy McIntyre. There isn't a Darcy McIntyre, it was a potioneer team that did the work, but the rest of the story of the development is still true. I didn't lie about studying the potion's side effects, or my theory about it."

Harry seized on her wording. "What was a lie?"

"The mortality rate of those who overdose. One survived." Her voice was slow, like she was choosing her words very carefully.

"That's you." She didn't contradict him, so Harry made the assumption this was true but obscured by the Unspeakable censor.

"I have a theory," Harry said. "You believe your theory about the catalyst. If you can manage something incredibly dangerous and reckless, the overdose symptoms disappear. I have a theory that your idea of dangerous and reckless was to try to give my son the same luck curse I've got to try and engineer another catastrophe on the scale of Voldemort's takeover, just to save yourself from the Felix Felicis overdose."

"Couldn't you say it worked out for the good, in the end?" Darcy asked. "If you didn't have the prolonged luck that first crippled and then killed the Dark Lord, how would he have died?"

Time slowed for Harry. In the heavy silence that followed, he was able to consider Darcy's question, weigh the prospect of continuing the debate to stall for more time, and also be staggered at the surreality of arguing the benefits and drawbacks of turning his child into a magnet for danger and bad fortune.

Several things then happened in rapid succession. Darcy's hand jerked. Time sped back up for Harry and the whole world came into a perfect focus that came only with rushing adrenaline. Darcy pulled her wand from inside her robes. A mighty fireball erupted from Harry's staff. Darcy dove to the side. Harry's chair fell backwards from the force of the spell. Darcy aimed a spell that flew high above Harry's head and cracked a picture-frame hanging on the wall. Ginny, who had remained silent through the whole tense exchange, tossed her cup of tea at Darcy. Hot tea splashed across Darcy's face, and she dropped her wand and held her hands to her face. Half a dozen loud pops went off in the apartment, and a team of Aurors, led by Ron, Apparated into Harry and Ginny's living room. Half a dozen wands were aimed at Darcy. The couch continued to burn. Ginny fetched for her wand, and doused the fire. Smoke settled on the ceiling of the apartment, and a very long silence followed.

--------------------------

Harry, Ron, and Ginny sat around the table at Ron and Hermione's apartment. It was late, but none of them felt very tired just yet. After Darcy had been turned over to the Unspeakables, there had been very little for them to do – the Unspeakable Department had their own internal prosecution system, Ron had said – and none of them wanted to remain in the apartment that needed to be aired. They had spoken very little, but had managed to pool their knowledge about what had just happened. There was a stillness among them; not shock, exactly, but possibly a close relative.

"How much of this do you think you'll be able to talk about?" Harry asked Ron, "You know, now that you're not working with the Unspeakables."

"They said the details fade after a week," he replied, twisting his empty bottle of Butterbeer in his hand. "But they were so sodding vague about everything. I wonder if you'll remember more than I do, since you figured out a lot of it on your own."

"That would happen anyway," Ginny said, but her heart wasn't in teasing her brother.

Ron stood up from the table. "I'm getting another beer," he announced. "Want one, Harry?"

"I want one," said Ginny.

"Nice one." Ron opened the fridge and took out two bottles.

"Mum drank when she had you," she said with such a serious tone that Harry couldn't help a short bark of laughter. Ron tried to look disapproving, but he couldn't make his smile vanish. Ginny was smiling, too.

"So, are you lucky?" Ginny half-asked, half-wondered.

"I don't know," said Harry. "Setting our couch on fire, was that lucky?"

"I could get copies of all that paperwork from Eliott, maybe," Ron said. "Maybe the tests were in there, you could find out for yourself."

Harry shook his head. "I don't think so," he said, and drank from his bottle.

--------------------------

Later that night, when Harry and Ginny lay in bed together, Harry could sense something from his wife – could sense her smiling in the dark, in a way that only couples of many years would recognise and understand. "Hm?" he asked of her, although she hadn't said anything.

"You think we're having a son," she said. For a second he couldn't understand how she had arrived at this idea, and then he did. He had said it. Not child, but son.

"It was just a thing I said," he explained," I don't know..."

"You think we're having a son," Ginny repeated.

"I guess I do," Harry said after a moment of thought.

"You think we're having a son," she said for the third time, like this would make his thoughts into reality, and drifted off to sleep.



09-02-10