The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301

Part III - Chapter Thirty-Nine

Harry had the oddest feeling that the previous seventeen years had never been. There he was, sitting in the largest lecture hall in the Compound, listening to Daniels give his speech on cooperation, chains of command, and the uselessness of heroes just the same as the very first day he'd ever been there. He'd heard the speech several times thereafter as Daniels gave a version of it at each of the training sessions new recruits must endure. This one was version three, the one he gave to recruits who were in for their last intensive session of their first year.

The rest of the recruits listened attentively. They were a bright group, he'd been told, though he'd had little to do with any of them as he'd spent much of the year out of the office teaching at Hogwarts and chasing after Hayden and the remaining Death Eaters. There were a good forty of them and Harry knew that Bentley had wanted more. For good reason, too, as he had learned that the drop out rate for Security officers was quite high. Out of his own group, only half a dozen still remained, many of the others having moved on to civilian jobs when the stress became too great.

He also knew that this group of recruits had a higher percentage of former Army and police officers than most years. He supposed that Bentley had been recruiting the best from their ranks, probably to the annoyance of their heads, because they were already halfway trained to begin with and because they were already accustomed to the discipline of the service. He had noticed though, that each brought their own preconceptions to the Job. The army men often focused on physical defense and combat and were likely to be concerned with weapons, particularly guns and bombs. The police were not so different, but were more likely to focus on investigation and on preventive raids.

Daniels had moved on to showing his shock tape - the one that reminded them all why they were there. Harry recalled vividly the one they had showed on his very first day; it showed Voldemort's attack on the Royal family, an event Harry had seen through Voldemort's eyes, through the link between them.

He returned his attention to the screen and wished he hadn't. The tape they were showing was from the incident with the school children several months back. Almost, he could smell the stink that guns left after they'd been fired and the scent of human flesh and blood that accompanied the gunfire. He slid out of his seat in the direction of the door hoping that no one would notice. A vain hope, as Daniels immediately demanded, "Where are you going, Potter?"

"The bathroom," Harry replied. "Too much coffee this morning," he added, as though the scene on the screen had nothing to do with it.

"You'll miss the orientation video," Daniels said. "I was about to go over the placement of the officers, and our strategy for dealing with the event."

"I was there the first time around," Harry responded. He hoped his demeanor had stayed calm, indifferent. "I remember it quite perfectly," he added.

There was a faint mutter and someone said in a whisper, "Lost his nerve, they say. That's why he's here."

Something about the whisper cut at him in a way he couldn't recall since he had been in his fifth year, after seeing Cedric die and Voldemort rise human again and carrying Harry's own blood in his veins.

"It's nothing to do with nerve," Harry said coldly. "Only we'd be as monstrous as those we fight if we could sit and watch ourselves at it as if what was up there was just a movie."

"How are we supposed to figure out what went wrong if we don't look at it?" Daniels asked. "We made a few mistakes in that time…"

"Yeah," Harry answered. "But I didn't make any mistakes when I pulled the trigger that shot a man's head off." He stared at Daniels and said with deliberate control, "I won't make any mistakes the next time I have to shoot someone to stop him killing a child either. I just don't have to like looking at it again after."

He was glad then that Daniels didn't make an issue of it, just nodded his head at the door and said, "See me after, Harry."

Harry didn't miss the whispers that came then: "battle fatigue, I bet" … "he's got authority problems, I heard" … "yeah, but could you pull off a shot like that under those conditions"… He was sure there was more and hoped without any belief it was likely that none of them had seen the interview with the American reporter the day before. If he was lucky, most of them had been too busy with other things to have bothered watching the news that day.

After, Harry cut Daniels off before he could begin. "I know. I'll be a good boy from here on out." He grimaced a bit and said dismally, "Not a very good start, calling attention to myself, I guess."

"No," Daniels answered. "But that wasn't what I wanted to say. I forgot you were one of the snipers that day." He regarded Harry closely, his bright blue eyes were sharp and understanding beneath their bushy brows. "Are you all right, was what I wanted to know? I got the report from the medics that they don't want you participating in physical defense until you've got clearance from them."

Harry shrugged and would have said nothing, but he liked Daniels a lot and having worked with him for seventeen years considered him a friend. "I'm fine, really. I had a concussion, you know, a few weeks ago, and they reckon I should wait a few more days to let it heal properly."

"Why not get one of your friends to - erm, wave his wand?" Daniels asked. He glanced about and said the last extra softly.

Harry grinned lightly and said, "I would - only it would look a bit odd after it's already known if I showed up with it miraculously healed."

"Well, you should have done something to keep yourself out of this mess," Daniels said with exasperation. "It's a right waste having you down here for six weeks for re-training when you should be out there bringing that bastard in."

"That's what I told Bentley," Harry said. He answered the first accusation wryly, "And I'm not perfect you know. I didn't know I'd end up having to get on airplane with so little time before boarding and no time after landing to report in without losing the target."

"Well, next time, wave your wand, or pull out your crystal ball. We thought you'd been killed or something."

"I'm generally very discreet when I do that," Harry answered quite seriously.

"In front of a hundred reporters and the Prince in an American hotel?" Daniels said. "I wouldn't call that discreet."

Harry sighed and said, "I really don't go looking for trouble, it just seems to find me."

Most of the first week was anything but trouble. Aside from the daily calls from Hayden - which now arrived at two in the morning or three or four, and on his mobile - Harry was really quite bored. He could have taught most of the classes himself, except for the technical forensic classes on things like fingerprints and such. But he kept his promise to Daniels and stayed quiet unless called on and he avoided socializing with the rest of the recruits. It would only be a few weeks, he told himself, and then he would return to his own assignment. Or if Bentley wasn't satisfied with his reliability, who knew, to some other assignment to the Prime Minister's liking. He knew he would go, too, as he was not about to become more famous for being the wizard that blew the Statute of Secrecy forever and brought back the unpleasant custom of witch trials and anti-magic laws than he had been for defeating Lord Voldemort.

On the fifth morning, Harry sat in the cafeteria nursing a cup of coffee and trying to figure out why Hayden had missed his now nightly call. He'd had little sleep and what sleep he'd had was filled with odd rather ominous dreams. At the start of the dream, he had thought he was back in the Battle for Hogwarts staring into the faces of Voldemort's army. Dark wizards marched, rank on rank, and beside them were other armored soldiers and strange creatures of the night. He had found himself lost in the chaos of battle and the armored soldiers had not been goblins as he was expecting, but tall Saxons swinging axes, and the wizards had been armed with enchanted swords. An entire battalion of Inferi appeared, their eyes blank and soulless. More horrifying had been their appearance: many of them seemed to be almost skeletal; their charred skin clung to their bony frames like the last remnants of meat clinging to a burnt roast, or hung off in parchment-like sheets, floating hideously in the wind like the tulle drifting behind a dancer except the stage was in the house of the dead. He thought he would be swallowed up, and he lifted his own sword in defiance. Behind him, a thunder in a charcoal mist, came the drumming of horses carrying armored warriors whose faces were full of desperation.

He swallowed the bitter coffee and wondered whether Bentley was right. Was he really cracking up, losing his nerve? He berated himself for allowing Hayden to get to him. Yet he could not entirely suppress the clenching anxiety that seized him at the thought of Ginny or one of the children in Hayden's hands again. If they were hurt or died, he reckoned it would be his fault. There must have been a time, he thought, when he could have retired. There must have been a time when he could have safely told the Prime Minister and the Minister of Magic and all of them that he was chucking it. Yet he had not. Inevitably, he had to face it, that his "saving people thing" as Hermione had called it, might have led him astray once more. These bitter thoughts so consumed him that when one of the other recruits addressed him, he growled at her in a most disagreeable and hostile voice, "What?"

The woman, whose name, Harry thought, was Joan, held out a sheaf of papers and said, "Have you looked at these yet?"

Harry looked at the sheaf of papers, which he supposed must be the batch of e-mails they'd been given to look at for their small group case investigation class, and wished he could shred the papers and toss them in a fire. His irritation had shown, for the man who accompanied her gave Harry a look of deep disgust and said, "Never mind Joanie. Can't you see he's as washed up as they say he is."

"Shut up, George," she snapped. She leveled a stern look at him that reminded him instantly of Hermione when she was out to rearrange the world and said, "He's in our group and we'll be marked down if he doesn't at least do something to participate. We're supposed to work together." She ignored George's muttered remark that Harry was there because he had failed to do just that and demanded, "Well, have you?"

Harry stared at her, not because she was the first person to attempt to penetrate his self-imposed gloom and isolation, but because her face, fierce and determined, was exactly the face of one of the warriors in his dream just hours before.

"You don't ride horses, do you?" Harry blurted out. Immediately, he was embarrassed at having asked such a silly question. That was often the way of dreams, that bits of your present reality mixed in with the past, with anxieties, and in some strange fashion, on occasion, with wisps of possible futures that never came to be.

She stared at him in astonishment and seemed likely to take offense. "You've been reading my file, haven't you? What did you do, look us all up or something?"

"Of course, I haven't," Harry snapped. "What makes you think I'm the least bit interested in you or those e-mails or anything to do with this benighted place?"

"How did you know I ride then?" she asked angrily.

"Never mind," George said. "Let him stew if that's what he wants. We don't have to take his insults. We're not here to be his therapists or save him from cracking up, if that's what he's determined to do."

Harry glared at him, prepared to loathe him as the embodiment of every one in the Service who was keeping Harry from doing what he knew needed doing immediately: going after Hayden personally. However, as he recorded the man's features, his sandy brown hair, light blue eyes and Roman nose, he realized that George had been one of the faces in his dream as well. Immediately, he felt ridiculous. Perhaps he was mental and Bentley and the rest of them were right. His barely contained anger rose up and he growled back, "Believe it or not you do have to take my insults. If I'm on your team, you have to work with me even if you think I'm washed up. If I'm on your team, you keep me in the loop and you do your best to keep me from cracking up if you think I might be, because that's what being on a team means. That's the whole point of the exercise, not what those bloody e-mails actually mean, because they probably mean nothing."

"Well, that was my point," Joan retorted. "You're on our team and you haven't done anything in five days to contribute. We have our group in ten minutes and we can't come up with anything. So I'm asking you, have you looked at these?"

Harry sighed and held out a hand for the papers. Nothing like being caught in your own words, he thought. He was reminded again of Hermione, and he muttered, "Not really."

He shoved his uneaten breakfast aside and flipped through the papers. He had actually seen some of them before. They had been part of a huge group of businesses they had been monitoring for contacts with any of Hayden's core fronts, but they'd been eliminated early on.

"I have actually seen some of these before," he said, looking up just in time to catch George's look of disdain. Joan, he thought, must be much cleverer, or much less inclined to credit gossip, because she asked, "Not here? On a real assignment? Where?"

"These are recent," George said. "I thought you were out of the country, out of contact when these were tracked."

Harry lifted and eyebrow and said, "I was. I meant I recognize the name of one of the targets. It's one we eliminated already. I told you, that's why you have them. They don't normally give you things in training that they think have any really significance."

"But we're supposed to figure out what they could mean," Joan pointed out.

Harry nodded.

That's right," Harry agreed. "We never have enough people to do this kind of work. That's why they give this stuff to trainees; you never know when some link was missed just because it wasn't seen by the right people."

He skimmed through the rest of the e-mails with particular attention to the ones that were new to him. The first group had been from a caterer which supplied coffee, tea, and snack foods to businesses. The new group came from an electronics company called Triple A Electronics. Triple A, Harry recalled with interest, was a known front for the Alliance. It had a legitimate computer an electronics supply business, but it was also a front for arms distribution and for immigrant employment. They had suspected for sometime, but still lacked proof, that Hayden used numerous apparently legitimate businesses to bring in workers from other Commonwealth and EU countries, workers who were actually Alliance sympathizers or agents.

The latest two e-mails were from Triple A to Cambridge Distributors, the food service, requesting their standard delivery to be made on the following Monday. It was probably a perfectly innocent order of tea supplies, but for some reason, Harry could not help recalling another perfectly innocent seeing e-mail that had led to their discovery that Hayden was connected with the Death Eaters and that he was taking over the territory carved out by Voldemort in the years after his re-birth and rise back to power.

"Well?" George asked.

"I dunno yet," Harry replied. He dumped his congealing breakfast in the trash and led the others to the student lounge. He logged onto one of the computers in the carrels there and opened up the folders that held all the information Ashley had compiled so painstakingly for him.

"Triple A's director," he said, "is Terence Jones. Officially, it imports and exports electronics."

"That's not from our class files," Joan objected.

"Of course not," Harry answered. "Those are my files from the Alliance investigation." He thought for a moment that it would be best to leave it alone. Any connection between Cambridge and Triple A had already been eliminated. On the other hand, Jones was the former MP who had run the hotel in York; he was high up in Hayden's organization; and he had been the one who had made the exchange with Allawi for which the Las Vegas riots had been the cover. Anything that might even peripherally involve Jones was worth a second look and maybe even a third. He printed all the related e-mails he could find and then pulled out his mobile to make a call to Dudley's wife.

"Ashley Smyth-Dursley, please," Harry said to the bank's receptionist.

"Ms. Smyth-Dursley is in a meeting, sir. Can I take your name and number and have her call you back?"

"No," Harry said impatiently. "Tell Ashley its Harry Potter and I need to speak to her now."

The receptionist huffed, as he always did, and put Harry on hold while he went to inform Ashley of the call. Harry ignored Joan and George's curious looks and cut to the point as soon as Ashley said hello.

"Can you get me as much information as possible about Cambridge Distributors?" Harry asked. "It's got a delivery scheduled to Triple A Electronics and I want to know if it's got any remote connections to Hayden or any of his other companies."

"You're not thinking of buying it, are you?" Ashley asked severely. "I've told you before, I won't invest your money into Hayden's failing businesses. But I can make some other recommendations if you want."

Harry started to shake his head. Every time he called Ashley for a bit of information, she wanted to sell him something, just as her father had. Of course, her instincts were quite sound and between Mr. Smyth and Ashley, he had a rather larger fortune than he had originally, and that was saying something. As though the words had come from somewhere outside himself, though, Harry found himself asking, "What about horses?"

Ashley perked up instantly and asked, "What kind? Thoroughbreds, I suppose. Flat racers are in vogue, and they make a great return long term as you can get great fees for breeding if you buy a real winner."

"Fast is good," Harry said vaguely, "but they need to be big, really sturdy, you know."

"Jumpers?" Ashley asked. "A good Grand National champ is a serious investment."

"How about a couple of dozen?" Harry asked. He had images in his head of horses lined up in a row, charging down a sloping hillside, of foals kicking up their heels in a pasture, like a unicorn foal he had seen once, its golden hooves glinting in the sun.

"They don't have to be pure-breds," he added in response to her audible intake of breath. "They can be shipped to the property in Godric's Hollow, and you'll have to hire someone to manage them."

"I don't know," Ashley said. "I'd have to sell something else."

"Well, get rid of the oil and gas stocks," Harry said with exasperation.

"They're a good investment," Ashley objected.

"Just do it," Harry insisted. "Horses are more fun."

"You must be mad," Joan commented as Harry hung up on Ashley. "Do you have any idea how much good jumpers cost? Were you really going to buy horses? And what have they to do with our investigation? Security Services employees don't make investments on business time."

"That was my banker," Harry said shortly. "She doesn't work for the Services, just for me."

George started to object, but Harry cut him short. "She has clearance to do certain financial investigations, so there's no breach of secrecy."

"And where does the money come from?" George asked. "It's not like you get paid that much, even after a few years experience."

"Seventeen years," Harry said coldly, annoyed all over again that he was stuck in training with these new recruits for something he'd had no control over. He closed up the link to his files and stalked down the hall to the class where their small group was being held. It was even more annoying that the instructor was Hawkins, who'd been in training with Harry and who was something of a friend of his.

"So what do we say about these e-mails?" Joan asked again. She eyed him beadily, and Harry was reminded once again of Hermione, except that Hermione would have been three steps ahead of everyone and would have had a complete plan of action ready.

"That's a good question," Hawkins observed as he entered the room. He looked much as he had seventeen years ago, except that his dark blond hair had threads of silver here and there and fine lines showed at the corners of his eyes.

"Ask Harry," George commented. "He says he's seen them outside of class."

Hawk looked at Harry questioningly and Harry shrugged.

"Well?" Hawk asked. "You decided to wake up and quit sulking over Bentley's unjust punishment?"

Harry glared at him, but not too strongly. After all, Hawk had admitted the punishment was unjust. He put aside his annoyance, however, and said calmly, "What we could do about them is intercept Monday's delivery. All we'd need is a fairly large van and some fake papers. If the delivery is clean, we send it on to Triple A and say nothing. If it's not, well, then we get everyone in from Cambridge and interrogate them."

"We haven't got the manpower for that kind of an operation right now," Hawk replied.

"Course we have," Harry retorted. "Right here in this room."

"Don't you ever quit?" Hawk said. "Bentley's already mad at you for trailing Hayden all the way to America. He'll fire you if you take a bunch of recruits and try to pull off an operation like that without permission."

"Who said it would be without permission?" Harry answered. "You would go with us. And it's not like they're totally new to all this. They've already had almost a full year's experience and this is their last major training intensive. Why not bring them in on an active operation? Especially if we don't have the manpower for it otherwise? And why give my group that assignment if you didn't want me to put things together or come up with an avenue of investigation?"

The other four recruits gawped at Harry. The two who had missed his discussion with Joan and George looked totally puzzled and not a little alarmed. Joan and George looked surprised and then unusually pleased.

"We could do it," George said immediately. "I've participated in a similar operation for the drugs team already." "Triple A is a known terrorist front," Hawk objected. "You could get killed. I'm not having my class be put in direct danger in training."

"We were first responders when we were in our first training class," Harry reminded Hawk. "They've got loads more experience than we did when Daniels sent us into that church."

"I remember," Hawk replied. "I also remember," he added acidly, "that you nearly got yourself blown up because you deviated from orders."

"You weren't complaining after," Harry said coolly.

Hawk flushed, as he searched Harry's eyes with his keen amber stare. "I'll put your suggestion before Daniels. But even if he says it's okay, you don't go, Harry, unless the medics give you clearance. You still haven't been cleared for ordinary defense practice, much less for an active operation. And there's the problem of you being recognized."

"I won't be," Harry said. "Nobody watches the news, you know. And if it makes you feel better, I'll dye my hair blond for the operation."

Harry avoided the others' curious stares, and left the class as soon as Hawk finished giving the follow up assignment. But as he left, he could not help hearing Hawk's explanation that Harry'd had a concussion when one of them asked about Harry's exclusion from defense practice.

"You don't suppose that's why he's so touchy and depressed?" Joan asked.

Harry hurried away then, not wanting to hear the answer. If there was one thing he hated, it was people thinking he was unstable or a show-off or somehow abnormal.

He would have liked to skive off the afternoon's shooting practice, but he felt it more prudent to attend despite his dislike of guns. Somehow, he didn't think Hawk or anybody would be persuaded of his fitness if he continued to skip half the practices and classes they had. He made the effort to bury his resentment and kept his mouth closed for the entire class. When Worthington instructed them to shoot, he shot. When he was directed to pair off with another recruit and work in tandem in a moving course, he made sure to stay in sync with the other man, a stocky former Army man named Owen White. At the end of the exercise, White and Harry were given the top scores for speed and accuracy, and White gave Harry the first friendly smile since the re-training course had begun.

Harry followed the rest of the recruits back into the front reception area. Everyone was milling about waiting for the day's mail to be distributed. The mail usually arrived several days after it should have as it had to be routed first through headquarters at Thames Street before being sent on to the compound. This served two purposes: first, the mail would be run through metal detectors to be sure no explosives or other weapons got through; it also served to ensure that the location of the Compound remained secret.

Several of the men were moaning about their gas bills and Joan, who had hung back while the others pushed ahead to grab their letters, commented to Harry, "You should have kept your stock. From the sound of them, the dividends are probably going up."

Harry glanced at her in surprise as her voice was quite pleasant and her attitude was nowhere near so confrontational as it had been that morning. Thinking it would be worth it to have at least one other person who wasn't convinced he was mental or washed up, Harry smiled at her quite nicely and said, "I'd rather have the horses."

"Do you ride?" she asked curiously.

"A little," Harry replied. In fact, he'd ridden a horse only twice. Once in the Opening Day ceremonies, and once when he had used Dumbledore's watch to go back to the Battle of Camlann. They were not any harder to ride than a thestral or a hippogriff, so although he knew his desire to purchase the horses was a really odd whimsey, the thought still entertained him and he decided not to call Ashley and cancel the purchase after all.





Harry wasn't expecting much mail himself as he had been keeping in contact with Ginny through his two way mirror. She was dividing her time between Hogwarts, home and Grimmauld Place, but spending most of her time at the latter as she was keeping track of what the members of the Order of Phoenix were doing. Harry spoke to her nightly, but so far she had had no good news to tell him. Although he'd been tracking Hayden's movements by identifying the places where each of the phones were located from which Hayden had called him, he had been unable to do so quickly enough to find out where Hayden was actually staying. Undoubtedly, Hayden was Apparating to wherever the call was made. Harry supposed that he must be making the call, staying on usually only five or six seconds - just long enough for a single, but vicious threat - and then disapparating before the call could be traced. It was very frustrating. The one ting Harry was sure of was that Hayden was making his way back toward England and that he intended to slip back in through magical means so as to avoid Muggle customs. And although the Ministry of Magic had ways of identifying where underage magic had been done, or even where magic had been done where it rarely was, it did not normally have the ability to identify the wizard or witch who had done the spell. As Harry had found out in his second year when he had been accused of doing magic that Dobby the house-elf had actually done.

The only piece of mail Harry had was, in fact, his gas bill. He opened it and on seeing that the amount he'd been charged was nearly double the usual, he muttered, "That's extortion, that is."

Joan looked at him with amusement and said, "Well, maybe you should change your mind about those stocks."

"Perhaps I'll simply give up using gas and electricity," Harry retorted. In truth, his irritation over the bill had more to do with the fact that he had to use Muggle electricity at all rather than with its cost. He turned away and would have left except that the reception clerk called him back.

"Oy, Potter! You've got a package here, too."

Harry could not imagine who would be sending him a package at the Compound. He set the box on the desk and saw that it was addressed from Ginny. The clerk peered at it curiously and said sarcastically, "Did your Mum send you a care package? I hope you'll be sharing the biscuits, then."

From behind him, one of the other recruits said clearly, "He looks like he ought to be at home having biscuits and milk after school instead of training for Security Services, doesn't he?"

Someone else, maybe George, agreed, "He doesn't look old enough to have worked here for seventeen years, does he?"

"Ah, no way. He'd have had to be in his nappies when he started to have worked here that long," came the answer.

Feeling not a little narked, Harry said rather more loudly than necessary, "My wife makes great biscuits." It was also on account of his annoyance that he paid less attention than usual to the look of the box and to the style of writing which noted the sender as Ginny Potter, Otter Saint Catchpole, and he started to pull at the flaps of the box with some vigor. The box was wrapped in ordinary brown paper and was a good deal heavier than a box full of biscuits would be. Vaguely, he hoped that it actually contained some meat pies and pasties like the kind Mrs. Weasley had sent some summers when he was still living at the Dursleys.

Joan leaned over to take a look at the contents and Harry was about to offer to share a biscuit with her when he heard a quiet, cold voice. "Blood… tasty…blood."

Harry looked around for the author of the voice. "What did you say?" he asked Joan.

"I didn't say anything," she answered.

"I heard someone speak," Harry insisted.

She looked at him as though she were revising her opinion of him once more. People who heard voices others didn't were suspect in any world. The thought, which echoed back in time to another, when Hermione had told him almost the same thing, gave him just enough warning to shove Joan away and to shout, "Get back!" to the clerk.

People stopped and turned to stare at him and Joan muttered in offense and then screamed, for out of the torn flap of the box sprang a hooded head with its jaws opened wide to strike. Harry leaned back out of the way just in time to avoid the snake's venomed teeth. Instinctively, he hissed at it. "Down! Now!"

The snake turned its wicked eyes on him and swayed as though it would strike again in defiance of Harry's command, but when Harry repeated it, it slumped down obediently. He fancied he could see a spark of rebellion in the snake's ruby eyes and he shot out a hand to grasp it from behind by the neck and jaws so that it could not open its mouth to strike again. "That's a hell of present from your wife," White said. "Divorce papers would be a bit more sensible, but maybe not so economical."

A few people laughed, but they ceased immediately when Harry snarled, "Obviously, it's not from my wife. They just put her name on it to get it through the security screening."

"Well, who'd be crazy enough to send you a poisonous snake, anyway?" George asked. He had hurried back to the scene and was trying to put an arm around Joan. She shrugged him off and took a hesitant step toward Harry again and asked, "Is there anything else in there?"

With a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, Harry prodded the flap of the carton open. Inside, a round ball of fur lay stiff and still, its eyes open and fixed in death. He closed his eyes and could not tell which feeling was greater: the fury that the innocent creature, his own cat, was dead; or the relief that it wasn't a piece of his wife or one of the children.

"What kind of a game is this?" Daniels demanded. His parade ground voice was cold and quiet, but it carried across the room anyway.

"No game," Harry answered tightly. "Someone's killed my cat and sent me the body for a present."

Daniels looked at the snake Harry was clenching and at the dead cat in the box. "They must have caught the cat," Harry explained, "and stuck it in the box with the snake, who bit it, of course, as that's what snakes do."

"Is that a cobra?" Daniels asked in disbelief. When Harry nodded, he said, "Someone get a gun. We'd better kill the thing before it bites someone else." He looked at Harry questioningly, no doubt trying to figure out how Harry had managed to capture the snake without being bit. "You weren't bit?" he asked.

Harry shook his head and sighed. "Never mind about the gun," he responded. "I'll get rid of it."

"It'll be better to just shoot it," Daniels said.

"It'd be too easy to miss," Harry said calmly. "Snakes move much faster than most humans, you know."

"Well, why don't you just charm it," one of the recruits said sarcastically. "A great wizard like you ought to be able to do that easily enough." A snort of laughter, quickly cut off at Daniels' glare told Harry that more people knew of the accusations against him than he had thought. Daniels, however, was made of sterner stuff than he would have thought.

"That's an excellent idea," he said. "Can you?"

"This isn't a show," Harry said, goaded beyond his normal self-control.

"I know that," Daniels answered. "That's why I suggested it. Unless you think it's safer to shoot it, then?"

Feeling that things were spinning further out of control than they had before, Harry shook his head and released the snake. It reared up again and he could hear the single collective intake of air and feel the instant in which every other person there froze. Not taking the time to worry, he hissed at the snake again, "Stay!" as he drew his wand and banished the snake to an empty cage in the zoo.

"Oh, my …" Joan said. "Was that …? Did you just …?"

He had no time to reply, for as he stuck his wand back in his waistband, his mobile rang. He knew who it must be, and thought he ought to ignore it, but somehow, the fury that ran hot through his veins impelled him to answer.

"Next time," Hayden said, "it'll be your wife. I know where she is. I know where they all are. I know where you are and I will get you."

"No," Harry spat. "Next time, I'll get you."

"Who was that?" Daniels exclaimed.

"Hayden," Harry answered. "Who else?"

"How can he have your mobile number?" Daniels asked, looking shocked. "How could he know you were here?" "It's obvious," Harry said wearily. "He's got people in the Service. Moles, that have worked for him for years. Remember Norway," he added, when Daniels looked as though he'd deny it.

He picked up the box with the dead cat, identifying it now as Sasha, Sirius' old Russian blue, and walked back outside to bury it in the cool green shade of the woods. Two dozen eyes followed him out, staring at him with varying degrees of wonder and hostility.

When Bones arrived at the Compound on Saturday morning, Daniels was in a rare state of barely suppressed anger and anxiety. He seized Bones' arm and dragged him toward the dormitories.

"Have you heard from Harry since yesterday?" he asked.

"No," Bones replied. He stopped and asked wearily, "What's he done now?"

"He's done a runner," Daniels said quietly. "Not that I blame him altogether all things considered, but it isn't good for discipline. Not with all these first years here."

"What things?" Bones asked carefully. He was well aware that Harry's behavior had been more mercurial than usual since his return from America, but he had put that down to the effects of the head injury and to frustration at being sent down to the Compound for re-training.

"You haven't heard then?" Daniels asked. Seeing Bones' expression, Daniels quickly related the incident with the snake and then added, "We know he went to his room at curfew time same as everyone else. But I wanted to talk to him, so I knocked not long after and he wasn't there. His motorbike is still parked in the lot here, and none of the other vehicles are missing, but he's gone. In a bit of a funk, maybe, after what happened. But still..."

Bones sighed. He was torn between fury that Daniels had encouraged Harry to deal with the snake by magical means in front of recruits who had only heard rumors of Harry's talents and nothing more. Now, a dozen more people knew for sure that Harry was a wizard. A dozen more Muggles knew that wizards really existed. He wondered if Minister Macmillan knew and if the Ministry had had anything to do with Harry's disappearance.

"Did you check his room to see if he had left a message?" Bones asked.

Daniels shook his head. "Look," he said, "it's not too hard to figure out. Hayden sent him a very personal message. Then he calls Harry up on his mobile, and who knows how he got through the security protocols, and he threatens his family. And it seems Hayden's been calling him and threatening him every day for the past week."

"He didn't report that," Bones said with exasperation. Bentley was going to go really mad on Harry, he thought. and it wasn't that Bentley had no sympathy for Harry. Harry was probably his favorite officer in the Service. But even Harry had to follow the rules, and Bentley was going to reach his limit for disobedience eventually. But maybe, he thought, Harry knew that and no longer cared.

"Which room is his?" Bones asked. He strode down the corridor, ignoring the interested stares of the recruits. He turned the handle on the room Daniels pointed at only to find that the door was locked.

"I thought you said you checked his room last night?" Bones said. He turned the knob again, but it still would not yield.

"It wasn't locked last night," Daniels huffed. "I didn't lock it when we went looking later either." With a shrug of puzzlement, Daniels knocked on the door. When no answer came, he knocked again, although from the sharp sound of the rap, he must have been growing angrier by the moment.

A soft whirring sound came from the other side of the door, and then, shockingly, because they had been so sure no one was there, Harry's voice came. "Hang on," he said, sounding rather grumpy.

The door opened a crack and Harry stuck out his head. His hair was more untidy than usual and his green eyes had a look about them that was remote, bright and bird-like, almost inhuman, such as Bones had not seen in some time.

"Where have you been?" Daniels spluttered. "You were out without permission last night, Potter."

Harry stepped back and opened the door, but did not bother to answer. He was dressed for the day in an elderly pair of jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days. His feet were still bare and his black Dragonhide boots stood neatly lined up at the foot of the bed. The early morning light shone on a glowing object, a golden feather resting on the floor. Bones picked up the feather in wonder. He could feel the tingle and warmth of powerful magic and he knew in an instant how Harry had managed to leave the Compound and return without anyone catching him at it.

"Where did you go?" Bones asked. "And don't bother telling me you were here the whole time," he added, waving the feather at Harry. "I know you left, and without permission."

Harry turned back to face them. His expression was quite calm, inscrutable almost and Bones was surprised at how mild and normal his voice was.

"I don't need permission to leave to see to my family's safety," he said simply. "And if I did, Bentley's already given it."

"Bentley?" Daniels mouthed. "In the first place," he started to say, but Harry cut him off.

"I went and made sure that my wife has moved to a safe house," Harry said coolly. "And I made sure that my children are secure and that they will be properly protected when they finish school in a few weeks and go to stay with my wife. Then," he continued, "I had a talk with Bentley about the situation, and he agrees that things are different, and I don't have to waste my time pretending to know nothing and taking classes I can teach."

"And when was this?" Bones asked. "And why don't I know this?"

"About six o'clock this morning," Harry answered.

Bones frowned at him and a new anxiety rose. "You haven't given up sleeping again, have you? How many nights have you been out? Were you searching for Hayden without permission?"

"No," Harry said calmly. "I haven't been out of here all week until last night, and I did sleep for an hour this morning, until you woke me, anyway."

He reached out and gently took the golden feather away from Bones. "You never know when one of these might come in handy," he commented.

Harry sat on the bed and pulled on his socks and boots. Bones noticed with amusement that the socks were green with golden snitches fluttering at the ankles. He turned his attention to the contents of the room, however, when Daniels said sharply, "What's all this stuff and where has your computer gone?"

The standard computer which normally graced every trainee's desk was quite gone. Instead, several exotic looking devices made of silver rested on the laminate surface of the desk and on the wall hung an aged mirror in which shadowy reflections faded into a dark distance. When Bones looked closer, his own reflection did not appear. He raised an eyebrow in inquiry at Harry, wishing, as usual, that the younger man would try just a little to behave more circumspectly around the Muggles, even those Muggles who knew what he was.

"Those are my dark detectors," Harry answered, "and that's a foe glass." He smiled grimly and added, "I borrowed them from Moody. He keeps warning me I'm too trusting."

"Dark detectors?" Daniels asked, sounding almost affronted.

Harry nodded. "They give warning if any dark magic is being used near here. I thought we ought to beef up security here as well after what happened yesterday."

"The only reason that got through was it wasn't a weapon," Daniels replied stiffly.

"They got through because the metal and bomb detectors didn't pick them up," Harry answered impatiently. "Next time, it could be something worse, and the bomb detectors still won't pick it up."

Daniels looked a bit green as he tried to contemplate what that something worse might be.

"Look," Harry said, taking out his wand. He tapped one of the silver devices and a blue-green light projected on the wall. He tapped it again and a picture was cast on the wall very like the picture from a projector, only this was incredibly more detailed. The picture swept across the grounds of the Compound, revealing every movement, every person. Outside in the woods where they often did surveillance training, a squirrel could be seen darting up a tree. An ant crawled not far from its tiny paws, and a bright flash of brown marked the passage of a sparrow. "I've added a few protections here," Harry went on matter-of-factly. "No one will get in now who doesn't belong."

"Exactly what?" Bones asked.

"Oh," Harry said airily, "the entire Compound is now unplottable. And I've laid anti-disapparition jinxes. No one will get in or out unless they're safe."

"And what about the regular personnel and trainees?" Bones asked, meaning, of course, the Muggles.

"Anyone who has given a genuine oath to serve will be able to enter," Harry replied. He gave a quick glance at the foe glass and then strode back out of the room, holding the door courteously for Daniels and Bones as they went out. The blue-green light continued its scanning of the Compound, illuminating every blade of grass, every brick, every stone and everything in its path. Bones could not help wondering what would happen if an intruder should find his way in despite the added protections. Something rather unpleasant he thought, and something too obviously magical. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that the Ministry of Magic let Harry get away with things that no one else ever would.

At eight o'clock sharp, Harry showed up for defense practice for the first time since the training session had begun. Worthington glared at him and said, "I don't have a medical clearance for you yet, Potter."

Harry simply lifted an eyebrow and said, "I was cleared this morning by the medics at Thames Street." Instead of sitting on the bench and waiting for his name to be called for practice though, he strode forward to the table where Worthington kept his notes and entered marks on the trainees' performance in the computer terminal that rested there.

"If you'll check your mail," Harry continued, "you'll see that Bentley has assigned me to provide additional defense instruction in an area which none of this lot have any training."

Worthington bristled a bit at the implication there was any area of defense he had neglected. The other trainees, who had filed in shortly after Harry, were looking at him with varying degrees of suspicion, scorn, curiosity and surprise. Only those who, Bones presumed, had been in the reception area the previous day and who had actually seen him vanish the snake were watching with anticipation or even fear. Worthington gave an abrupt nod and his defensiveness gave way to anticipation as well. It could not be possible, Bones thought, that Harry would actually teach them magic. There was no way they could learn it and the Ministry would never approve it.

"Every one of you," Harry said, "now has reasonably decent skills in armed and unarmed combat. Some of you may be better than more experienced officers at those skills already. And those skills will be sufficient when you are dealing with your average terrorist, who uses bombs or guns or other standard weapons for their attacks. They will not be sufficient if you are attacked by certain group of the members of the Anglo Aryan Alliance."

"Just because you've got some personal thing going with its head doesn't mean the rest of us have," someone said from the rear.

"Lord Burlington didn't have anything personal going with Eric Hayden," Harry answered sharply. "And he was killed when he might have lived. Hayden attacked the Prince with a sword, and the Prince ought to have been able to defend himself. He would easily have defended himself and Lord Burlington would not have been killed if he'd had the right kind of weapon."

"Now, wait a minute," Daniels objected. "They weren't Security Services officers. They were civilians without any training."

"They may have been civilians," Harry replied, "but they had more training in using the kind of weapon Hayden used than most of us have. He and several of his allies used swords and none of you here have any training in using a sword."

"So what? Swords went out of use years ago because guns are better."

Harry turned to look at the trainee who had spoken. "I'm afraid, George, that's only if the guns work," Harry said gently. "The fact is that the American security agent there had a gun and it didn't work. The Prince and Lord Burlington both had perfectly good swords and they didn't work either. So, just in case you get called to deal with an incident involving the Alliance, Bentley has asked me to give you sufficient training in sword fighting to allow you to defend yourselves and have a fighting chance of surviving that kind of attack."

"You're going to teach us - magic?" White asked. His tone expressed disbelief bordering on hilarity.

"No," Harry replied much more calmly than Bones would have. He had felt the heat rise unexpectedly at the implied slur on wizards and all things magic.

"Unfortunately, not one of you here has any magic talent and you'll never learn to use it."

The group gawped at him again, as if Harry having put it into words, that there was magic, and that they were forever at its mercy, had changed their entire way of thinking in an instant.

"What I'm going to teach you," Harry went on, "is how to defend yourself in the event a wizard does draw a sword on you, and you will have, each of you, a sword that at least won't break in your hands when you do have to fight."

He drew his wand and every eye there followed it as Harry gave it a very tiny flick. A collective sigh went up when out of thin air a rack of swords appeared, shining, silver, and deadly. Harry drew the first one out of the rack. It was sheathed in cool blue leather tooled with silver. He drew the sword itself from its sheath and on the sheath was engraved the first trainee's name. "Joan Archer," Harry called out.

The tall young woman stood but did not immediately go forward. After a moment, though, she moved almost eagerly to reach out for the sword. Harry did not hand it over, however. He took her hand and placed on the hilt and said, "You may have it on one condition. You will affirm the oath of service you gave when you signed on and promise to use this only in the defense of yourselves and others and for the defense of Britain."

The woman's bright blue eyes ignited and she said simply, "I do. I will."

Harry slid the sword back in its sheath and handed it to her. He proceeded to do the same with each of the other trainees and after each had received his own sword and given the affirmation, there was no longer any tinge of hostility in the room, only excitement and awe. Bones started when Harry called his name and he found himself nearly unable to give the affirmation when he saw the sword that Harry drew out for him: it was engraved with his name, Edgar Allan Bones, just as the others were. But the hilt was decorated with sapphires and on the blade of the sword, one could see the raised impression of a feather just beneath the surface of the silver. He spoke the affirmation and when he drew the sword from the sheath, he could feel humming there the tingle of magic just waiting to be drawn on.

"Where did you get these?" Bones asked softly. "And how? You didn't even think of this until last night."

"I made them," Harry replied. "It took more than a week to do it even with Dumbledore's help."

"I thought you said you hadn't been turning time again," Bones hissed softly.

"I said I hadn't given up sleeping," Harry said even more softly. "Dumbledore agreed it was necessary."

In the next days, Harry stole as much time from Worthington as he possibly could. Some inner demon drove him. Perhaps it was the result of the strange dreams that haunted him, dreams which might well be recollections of either of the two real battles he had fought in. Perhaps it came from a more rational fear, the image of the Prince's sword sliced clean in two and Hayden's sword being driven into Burlington's heart while Harry looked on, too slow and too hampered by his own attackers to prevent the murder.

He had raised the plan for intercepting the Cambridge Distributors shipment again and he had had to accept Hawkins' rejection of the plan. It was necessary, though he chafed at it, to demonstrate his willingness to abide by the chain of command. Daily though, he wore the chain with more and more difficulty. For Hayden continued to leave him messages, each more horrible than the last.

The security measures had worked for the moment. Harry left the Compound every night, a crimson-gold flash in the dark, and looked in on his children at Hogwarts just to be sure they were well. He felt at those times as though he had joined the ranks of the Castle's ghosts, for he flew in and out, a silent apparition, without a word to anyone.

Nightly, Harry ended his rounds at Grimmauld Place, slipping into the bed beside Ginny to reassure himself that she was whole and real. There he would sleep what few hours he could and find the strength to go on. And in the small hours of dawn, he returned to the Compound and considered when would be the right time to go after Hayden directly, himself alone.

The temptation to do so was nearly unbearable. He could not, would not, allow himself to respond to Hayden any further. He kept the mobile only for the record it gave him of Hayden's movements and out of fear that if he removed this outlet for the madman's rage, the consequence would surely be somebody's death.





Burdened by that same inner demon that assured him some great horror awaited, Harry also took to attending the conferences at Thames Street again. Bentley would look at him each day and wait for Harry to add something new to the meeting. Harry could see it in his dark eyes, the tense expectation that some new thing had occurred, something to appall even the most jaded of men. An old friend, he thought, the companion Anxiety, which sat upon one's shoulder and whispered in one's ear, churning the stomach, making shadows out of the brightest light - he had made its acquaintance that summer after Voldemort had risen, when it had accompanied him on every trip to rummage in the dustbins for old newspapers and pricked him on to lie in the dirt behind the hydrangea bushes to just to listen for the anticipated deed.

In sympathy for Bentley's worries, Harry put aside his last lingering resentment and persuaded the Head to move his offices down to the caverns and tunnels of the underground command post. The place had originally been carved out as part of the civil air raid system during World War II and had been expanded during the mad years of the Cold War. The air there had a peculiarly odorless quality, as it was continuously recycled and re-oxygenated and no fresh air from above ever seeped in. Despite this almost hospital-like aura, the place reminded Harry ineluctably of the tunnels and caverns below Gringotts, down which wizards whizzed in pursuit of their goblin guarded gold. Harry wouldn't have minded a dragon or two either, little ones maybe, just to keep things lively and warm.

On the third Saturday in June, however, Harry took the day and visited his property in Godric's Hollow. He rarely went there, though the house was old and larger than the one he had bought in Otter St. Catchpole. It had extensive pastures and he knew, thought he often deliberately forgot it, that he received money in ground rent from every other resident of the village, the only other tangible legacy of his connection to Godric Gryffindor he had beside the Sword.

On that afternoon, his interest was not in the house or the village. It was all for the rolling grassy pastures on which a veritable herd of horses frolicked.

Ashley, it seemed, had sold his energy shares for a good deal more than anyone would have expected only a few months ago. She had taken every bit of the resultant earnings and had done as Harry had asked. There were horses of all colors, black, grey, chestnut, and white. There were tall stallions and dainty mares. And there were quite a few ponies kicking up their heels in sudden little bursts of play. Ashley had also hired the trainer and several assistants. In fact, she had bought an entire stable, one of the largest in Britain and one of the few that trained both flat racers and jumpers. From his vantage point, Harry saw, as if in a dream, seven of the horses take off in an impromptu race. They thundered across the green field, their varied coats gleaming like jewels in the bright sun. The white light of the sun seemed to break up as it struck through a cloud, and in one misty lavender shaft, Harry thought he could see the racing horses charging in a line … racing … not around a track for the glory of the cup … racing, galloping full tilt at a mass of men charging to meet them. He shook his head to clear his vision and thought vaguely that Dumbledore might be right after all about not turning back time so often. For a moment, he had felt oddly dislocated, as though he stood at once in two different moments and in two different places, only in both he watched the creatures racing.

He returned to Grimmauld Place and spent the rest of the day there with Ginny. For just one afternoon and one night, the world would live without him. For just one day, he would turn off his mobile, skip defense practice, and just say in. He did not even mind when Ginny scolded him about the circles under his eyes and made him drink a goblet full of Revitalizing potion. And when she eyed him suspiciously on account of his being so cooperative, he simply yawned in an exceptionally pathetic manner and persuaded her that an early night would be a good thing for once.

For several more days, Harry went to the Compound only for a few hours, just long enough to continue sword training before taking his motorbike and setting back out for London. He would wait until he had cleared the Compound's perimeter and until he had gone well past his own added security - an invisible magic shield through which no one but himself could apparate - before switching the bike into flight mode. The bike was quite reliable and did not have any of the peculiar instability of Mr. Weasley's old Ford Anglia. Harry quite enjoyed his brief flights through the damp cottony summer clouds, flights made more misty and dream-like by his having to turn himself and his vehicle invisible.

At Thames Street, Harry obsessively checked every communication intercepted that remotely connected to the Alliance or Hayden. Nothing of great interest appeared and Harry would have thought that Hayden had lost interest in badgering him personally were it not that Hayden continued to send messages on a daily basis. It was certain that Hayden had a mole in the Service, for in addition to making threats on Harry's voice mail, Hayden had somehow gotten Harry's e-mail address. It ought to have been easy to trace him, except that just as with the phone messages the mail came daily from a different server and a different address; but each was signed by Hayden as Eric Rex.

On the last Thursday in June, Harry received a call from Ashley. It was not about the horses, his investments, or any of the financial tracking she had been doing on the Alliance.

"You've got to come, Harry, please," she cried. He had gone, of course, for what else could he do, though it was to the one place he'd thought never to set foot in again: Number Four Privet Drive.

It was not the first time Inspector Griffiths of the Surrey Police had visited Number Four Privet Drive. He had been there over seventeen years ago when a local boy had accused the Dursleys' son of taking part in the robbery in a local electronics shop. The Dursleys' son had been a big bruiser, always spoiling for trouble and with a reputation for bullying the younger kids in the neighborhood. On the occasion when Griffiths had gone to Number Four, Dudley had been exonerated of any participation in the crime by his cousin, another kid with a questionable reputation. Since then, however, Dudley Dursley had straightened himself out. After his father had been killed in a bizarre shooting by an escaped inmate of a mental prison, Dudley had taken over the family business, married the bank president's daughter and kept his bullying to the right side of the law so far as Griffiths knew.

The first thing Griffiths noticed about Number four when he entered was the smell. The last time, the house had been spotless, almost too clean, and the only smell had been the faint scent of cleaner and furniture polish. This time was different. Almost as soon as one entered the house, the odor made itself known in an assault on the senses. Quite frankly, the place stank, and that alone was a warning bell if you knew what the owner was like.

Griffiths made his way cautiously down the hall and into the lounge, which unfortunately, was where the strongest odor made itself manifest. Occupying an extraordinary amount of the space in the room was Dudley Dursley. He was sprawled across the floor, face down and unmoving. The coffee table was tipped over and the sofa had been shoved from its mathematical perpendicular placement to the fireplace. Numerous small china objects were now in fragments on the carpeted floor and scattered about the furniture. The broken head of a shepherdess perched all alone on the floor beside Dudley, a delicate counterpoint to the large, meaty hand that lay lax beside it.

Griffiths might be forgiven for failing to check on the victim's condition immediately, for his attention was drawn to the writing on the wall.

"Just remember, Potter," the message read, "you're to blame."

Next to the message was the triple A sign of the Anglo Aryan Alliance, a bona fide terrorist group. Obscenely, the message was composed out of some kind of excrement, probably dog or horse judging by the odor. He stared at the message in astonishment, for he was quite sure that the person it was meant for, the Dursleys' nephew Harry Potter, had not stepped foot in Little Whinging since his Uncle Vernon Dursley had died. Griffiths had wondered a time or two what had happened to the boy. He had been a skinny, scruffy looking kid, seemingly scared of his own shadow, or more likely scared of police authority if the gossip about him was true. But Griffiths had wondered about the gossip, especially as the times he had met the boy, he had gotten the impression that there was more to him than the rest of the neighborhood imagined. He wondered, too, how hard it would be to trace Potter given his long absence from the area.

There was no sign of Petunia Dursley, the actual occupant of the house and the place seemed eerily quiet in view of the recent violence that had occurred. Griffiths turned when the rest of the crime team arrived and called out for them to be careful when they entered. He watched carefully as the forensics team began their examination, and was surprised along with everyone else when the medic exclaimed that the victim was alive, though he'd taken a serious blow to the head and had a nasty looking knife wound to boot. He was hoping that the Security Services team, whom he had notified the instant he had seen the Alliance symbol on the wall, would take their time arriving at the scene. Griffiths was rather protective of his territory, and he did not relish having an investigation taken from him on the grounds that there might be some kind of terror connection. He was inclined, himself, to think that the crime was a copycat. This was not typical of the kind of things the Alliance did as they were more prone to bombings and murders. And they usually branded their victims with their symbol rather than leaving messages in shite on the wall.

Much sooner than he would have expected, a black government car pulled up and the men from Security Services arrived. One was tall and had silvery blond hair with just a thread of grey here and there. His cool silver eyes surveyed the scene without reaction. Apparently this kind of crime scene was nowhere near shocking enough to disturb the man's professional cool. Griffiths could not help the resentment building in him at the man's superior suit and what he imagined was his superior air. His companion wore an even better suit, perfectly tailored in charcoal with a linen shirt so snowy it hurt the eyes and a silk tie in a dark green that set off its owner's incredibly green eyes. The one with the green eyes was not so hardened as his companion, for an angry fire lit them as they assessed the scene. Griffiths could tell, however, by the things the gaze lit on and by the narrowing of the green eyes at the message on the wall that this was a man who missed very little.

As if he felt Griffiths gaze, he turned and asked coolly, "How badly is Dudley hurt?"

Griffiths stared in surprise and then recognition. The green eyes and the untidy jet black hair belonged to the very man he'd been thinking of moments ago, the nephew, the orphan who had lived with the Dursleys and had been predicted to come to a bad end, Harry Potter.

The blond officer extended his hand and said, "Edgar Bones, with the Anti-terror Task Force, and this is --"

"Harry Potter," Griffiths cut in. "You do work fast," he added, "Bringing in the target that quick."

"Harry is one of us," Bones said coolly. "Security Services to be precise."

"Really?" Griffiths said. He turned to the green eyed man doubtfully and said, "You are the Harry Potter that used to live here, the victim's cousin?"

"Yeah," Potter replied. The bright green eyes focused sharply on Griffiths for the first time and Griffiths was surprised at how hard it was to sustain that gaze. "I remember you," Potter said after a moment. "Griffiths, isn't it? You were the one that came to arrest Dudley that time."

Griffiths nodded. "So you did decide to become a copper after all," he said. Then it clicked, where he'd heard about Potter recently. "Wait a minute, now. You're not the one they've been having stories about on the news lately?"

Potter grimaced as though he could taste the stuff that decorated the wall so repulsively. "Yeah," he said again. He turned away and scanned the scene again. The medics were bringing the victim out on a stretcher that was way to short for his huge body. The two men were bowed under the weight of him and they nearly dropped him when he suddenly thrashed about and mumbled incoherently.

Potter moved quickly to lay a hand on the thrashing man and said, "Dudley, stop!"

The huge man ceased thrashing and small, beady blue eyes popped open to stare in fear at the speaker. His large chest heaved up and down and it seemed the man would pass out again without speaking as the blue eyes flickered and rolled.

"What happened?" Potter asked urgently. Griffiths stared at first in surprise at the sharpness of his tone. Then he recalled that the two cousins had seemed to be at odds, Dudley having blamed the other one for everything that had gone on when he wasn't complaining about his old gang of thugs having accused him falsely.

"Piers and Gordon," Dudley answered. "Came at me with a knife. They were here, in the house, when I came in."

Potter frowned and glanced at the obscene message on the wall, the one that was meant for him, but instead of remarking on it, he asked, "Where's Aunt Petunia? Is she all right?"

"Dunno," Dudley said. "She wasn't here when I came in. Just them. They were in here, slopping up the walls, and when I told'em to stop, they jumped me." Despite his distress, Dursley's blue eyes looked furious and mean. "I got 'em good, you know, except one of 'em stuck me with the knife from behind and I hit my head when I fell. "It's all your fault, you know," he added. "You bringing in Ashley into your …" He cut off then at a gesture from Potter.

Potter turned back to Griffiths and asked, "Have you seen them around, then, those two? You must have known when they were released from Gaol, and when they showed back up here in Little Whinging."

"We kept track of them," Griffiths said coolly. "But not good enough track of you, it seems, if this is what we can expect now."

Potter ignored that and asked, "Did you know they have connections with the Alliance, then? Piers and Gordon, I mean."

"No," Griffiths answered after a moment. He found himself unwillingly impressed with Potter's calm in the face of the message on the wall. "But maybe," he added tentatively, "they only joined up after seeing you on the telly. Maybe they thought they'd like to get back at you after all these years. Maybe it's got nothing to do with the Alliance at all."

"Maybe," Potter said tensely, "and maybe they're just the opening act. They fit the profile of Alliance recruits. Low intelligence, followers, disaffected, with criminal inclinations and a hatred of anyone outside their class."

Griffiths studied the man's face and wondered how it was that the years seemed to have affected Potter so little. He had grown perhaps an inch or two more since Griffiths had last seen him, but he remained slim as a youth and his face was quite unlined. Griffiths would not have thought much about it, but the contrast between him and his cousin made it more startling than it might otherwise have been. For even in prime condition, Dudley Dursley looked like the man of thirty-five he was. His blond hair had begun to fade to grey and his pink face had lost the fine bloom of youth.

The expression in Potter's eyes, however, was another matter. "Did you search the house for my aunt?" he asked.

"She's not here," Griffiths responded.

"Her car is," Potter said softly. He tipped his head to the side as though he were listening for some sound the rest of them could not hear, then he drew a slim wooden stick from his waist band and moved swiftly to the foot of the stairs.

"Harry!" the other officer said sharply. "I don't think -"

"It is necessary," Potter replied hotly. "It could be a trap."

"I thought that was a joke," Griffiths said, "all those rumors about magic. Sensationalism," he said. "An act. You had a magic act when you were a kid," he went on, "cards, tricks with cards."

Potter walked up the stairs, his tread as light and silent as a cat's. At the top of the landing, he looked down again, and then proceeded swiftly on through the upstairs. Still without replying, he ran down the stairs and continued through the kitchen to the basement. When he returned to the lounge, having discovered as Griffiths had, that Petunia Dursley was nowhere to be found, he stood still, poised, as though readying himself for something difficult and frightening. Again the other officer, Bones, began to remonstrate, and again, Potter ignored him. He tucked the wooden stick back into his belt and stood staring at the stairs as though it was the faded wallpaper there that held the message for him. He reached out and tugged at a small catch that could easily go unnoticed. A door in the wall opened out to reveal a small cupboard in the well of the stairs and there, in the cupboard, lying rigid on an elderly mattress, with a thin, moth-eaten blanket pulled over face was Petunia Dursley.

Griffith cursed quietly, thinking that he had a murder after all. Potter gently pulled back the blanket and said in a voice that held no emotion at all, "You can come out, now, Aunt Petunia, they're gone."

At first Griffiths thought that Potter had lost it completely and that he was talking to a dead woman. At last, though, the woman sat up. Her thin mouth pulled back to reveal her horsey teeth and her pinched face took on an expression of disgust as she stood and walked past her nephew and took in the ruin of her house. The disgust deepened as she swung back and said to Potter, "It is all your fault, everything. Marge was right. I should have left you at an orphanage. You were nothing but trouble, always."

She walked out of the house without even glancing at her grown son, who was still lying on the stretcher looking quite dazed. Potter watched her go quite expressionlessly, and then looked down at his elegant hands as though they belonged to someone else. After a moment, he glanced inside the cupboard and shrugged. He began to close the door on the dusty, cob-webby space, but then he stopped to reach in and pull out a small object before he let the door swing shut all the way. The small sound made as he slid home the bolt came as a shock, a strange quiet, ghost of a shriek. Griffiths noted curiously that the object was a toy, a chipped wooden figure of a knight mounted on a horse. A tiny brown spider rode on the knight's shoulder and a small silken strand of its web floated from the horse.

"I think we're done here," Potter said. He followed his aunt out of the house and responded to his aunt's sour question about the toy in his hand, "It's mine. One of Dudley's leftovers I used to play with."

"There's a spider on it," Petunia Dursley said shrilly. "There are spiders in that cupboard."

"Yes, I know," Potter answered softly. "There always were."

He watched the spider crawl from the knight's shoulder to his hand without flinching and then went to deposit it on one of the purple-blue hydrangeas that bloomed by the front of the house. Almost absently, he pocketed the toy and watched the medics carry his cousin out of the house.

"I'm sorry, Dudley," he said to his cousin, "but you realize you'll have to let me set up a safe house for you and Ashley and your Mum."

"A safe house?" Dursley asked muzzily.

"Where Hayden can't get at you," Potter explained.

"But what about my business, and Ashley can't just take off from the bank. And Brittany Rose - she'll have to get there after school." The piggy blue eyes strayed to his mother's sour face and the huge man faltered there.

"We'll take care of the business and the bank," Potter said firmly. "They're worthless to you if you're dead," he added baldly. "And I can't go after Hayden if I don't know you're all safe."





The night was well advanced by the time Harry got his Aunt Petunia and Ashley settled in at Grimmauld Place. Aunt Petunia had been nearly unmanageable when she faced the prospect of living in a wizard house that was home to Harry's wife and presently housed a number of Harry's wizard relatives as well. (He had insisted that Ron and Hermione and Arthur and Molly stay there.) Molly had wanted to leave when she found out that Petunia would be staying there as she had never gotten over the extreme annoyance she had incurred while trying to guard Petunia in Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts. It had been Ginny who had gotten Aunt Petunia to behave. She had taken out her wand and threatened quite coldly to turn her into a bat. She had added quite indifferently that she could care less whether an international terrorist killed Petunia in any case, because, after all, Ginny knew perfectly well that Aunt Petunia had always hated Harry and she had no clue why Harry even cared what happened to her.

After that, Harry had had to appeal to Hermione to smooth things over, only to find that Hermione was only marginally less sympathetic than Ginny had been. "It serves her right," Hermione said later. "It's only her own nastiness come back to haunt her."

"No one deserves to be terrorized," Harry said wearily. "Not even her. Especially not her on my account," he added. "Not when I'm alive only because she took me in." He shook his head and closed himself in his room seeking some small measure of privacy and quietude. But no matter how safe Grimmauld Place was, he knew quite well that he could not stay there forever. Hayden would see to it. It would not be long, Harry reckoned, before Hayden found another victim, another way send the message that Harry would never again be at peace until Hayden was locked up for good.

He dragged himself back to the Compound the next day and was quite sorry before long that he had. The day began well enough. Practice went smoothly and Harry was pleased at the pace of his trainees' progress. He had managed to escape Bones' attempt to talk about Aunt Petunia by insisting that Bones needed practice as well. Bones had thrown himself into practice with an energy that was usually lacking in his sword practice. Perhaps it was sheer annoyance, but he came quite close to disarming Harry, and Harry had to force himself to concentrate extra hard in order to finish the bout without humiliating himself. That, of course, earned him a lecture of a different kind.

"You do know you can't keep using a time turner forever," Bones had said softly. "You're losing concentration because your tired. Sooner or later you'll make a mistake that you'll truly regret. Or get yourself killed."

"I'm fine," Harry insisted. "I make sure I sleep."

"That doesn't make up for the fact that your mind is tired," Bones replied. "You're in too many places at once and it's draining you."

Harry had not chance to reply for a loud alarm interrupted them. At first, he could not figure out what the alarm was. It was not the fire alarm or any of the Compound's standard security drills. He realized after a moment that it was, in fact, an intruder alarm from his own magical security systems. Careless of the fact that quite a few trainees were watching, he drew his wand and uttered the connection spell that would allow him to view the intruder. Caught in the magic web that had sprung up on the man's apparition was Lucius Malfoy. Harry cursed and strode out to the front of the Compound to face his old enemy.

A web of golden light caged the Death Eater giving his white hair the appearance of having returned to its youthful color. That Malfoy was alone did not make Harry doubt the man's ability to do severe damage should he be freed. He approached cautiously and found his ability to wall up his emotions slipping.

"Let me out," Malfoy demanded.

"So you can try to murder me again?" Harry asked coolly.

"I came to warn you," Malfoy rasped.

Harry leveled his wand, but did not release the older man. All the long years of humiliations and worse flashed by. How many times had the older man threatened him, tried actively to kill him? How much of all the horrors done had been done by this man, who was now at Harry's mercy?

"What warning can you possibly give me that I should listen to? What can you tell me that I don't already know? And why should I believe anything you say?"

"I have nothing left to gain," Malfoy answered bitterly, "and only my life left to lose."

"Life always has some value," Harry replied.

"Not to me," Malfoy answered. "Not to me."

The two stared at each other oblivious to their audience. Then, as though the thought sprang directly from the last, Malfoy asked, "How is he?"

Harry did not pretend to misunderstand the question, though the tenor of it surprised him. "He's all right," he responded warily. "But don't think I'll tell you where he is or where he's going."

"I didn't think you would," the older man said. "I only wanted ... well, never mind that. What matters only is that Hayden be stopped."

Harry studied Lucius Malfoy as though he were a difficult puzzle, a terrible riddle whose answer would only unlock a greater trouble to come.

"Why," he asked, "do you want to stop him now, when you have used him, helped him, cooperated with him, when his aims are the same as yours?"

"They never were," Malfoy said, "not truly. Oh, yes," he continued, "I did think I could use him. And he does have some ideas that made me think I could work with him. I was the more deceived," he added bitterly. "He will destroy our world altogether; he will make a mockery of wizardry. His purification will result in extinction for us in the end."

"It's a bit late for you to figure that out," Harry said coldly.

"You don't understand," Malfoy said with sudden desperation. "He plans on using Muggle weapons. He gathers a Muggle army. He cares for nothing but his kingship and he intends to wipe out all wizards except for himself and a few others so there will be none to resist him when he takes power."

"Sounds just like Voldemort," Harry said cynically. "Same plan, different tactics."

"No!" Malfoy insisted. "The Dark Lord intended to preserve the wizard world. His dealings with the Muggles were only a side issue. He would never have used Muggle weapons like these."

"I still don't see what you want from me," Harry said. "Or is this just a ploy? You gain my momentary sympathy and then kill me the moment I turn my back?"

"I will not kill you," Malfoy said wearily. "I owe you the life of my son, though you do not believe it. I have never sought to kill you, you know, since you took him from his hiding place the night you prevented the Dark Lord's final return."

Unwillingly, Harry found himself believing that much. It was a strange thing, he thought, that even one so hardened and evil as Lucius Malfoy could have so loved his wife that he still believed she had been true to him and that her last child was his.

"I still don't see why you came," Harry said, "or what you really want."

"I told you," Malfoy said, "to warn you. You were ever a proud and foolish boy, just like your father. You can put me in prison, if you like, until the time comes that Hayden makes his move. If you can't stop him, I want to be there, in the end. I want a piece of him." His lined face twisted and the ruined beauty was more poignant in its diminishment as he added, "Hayden would kill my only remaining son. I want him dead for it. I want my son to live even if he never acknowledges me."

Harry found himself speechless and moved to pity finally when the old man whispered, "He has Narcissa's eyes. It is all that is left of her on this earth."

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