Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous
  • Previous
  • Next

Author Notes:

Some scary images, and sad ones, but we have a moment here to breathe and collect ourselves, as well as amass a few last pieces of information we will need before the Final Battle is upon us. Please enjoy!

Brian Li sat silently beside his own bed, cradling the delicate hand of the witch who lay upon it, her breathing soft and slow. He couldn't remember ever being so angry or so shaken before, not even when a sympathetic-eyed Healer had confirmed his suspicions about the "dog" which had sunk its fangs into his arm on a moonlit night some years earlier.

But that was all about me. I was the only one who was going to be affected, so long as I took the right precautions.

Now, it's about someone I love.

Someone I wanted to protect, and didn't.

"Corona," he said quietly. "I know you're awake."

Corona's muscles tensed. Brian tightened his grip enough to keep her from pulling away, and after one or two tugs she sighed and relaxed. "Who did I kill?" she whispered, a tear welling up from the corner of her right eye. "Why am I still alive?"

"You haven't killed anyone, and you're alive because of Danger." Brian watched the tear begin its downward journey along Corona's face. "She must have been able to see that you weren't yourself. That you were being controlled. Under the Imperius." He wished he could spit, but not all the spitting in the world would rid his mouth of this foul taste. "Cast by your sister Elladora, after we fought the giants last summer."

"I tried to fight." A second tear joined the first as Corona spoke, in small, breathy sentences. "I tried so hard. But the curse was so strong when it was on me. I could only do little things."

"Like what?"

"It made me brew a poison. In Aletha's workroom." Corona tensed again, and her fingers clutched at Brian's. "I couldn't stop it, but I left out one drop of the worst ingredient. And then it made me go upstairs and attack Danger. I couldn't stop that either, but I could move slowly, be clumsy, strike at her arm instead of her heart. I was hoping and praying she would see, she would understand, she would kill me before…" Her words shuddered to a halt. "I hurt her. I know I hurt her. And the poison was meant to kill her, to kill Aletha and Meghan, to break the Pack to pieces and send the Pride out of control—"

"It didn't happen like that." Brian found a clean handkerchief in one of his pockets and laid it across Corona's other hand. "Aletha and Meghan are perfectly fine, and yes, you hurt Danger, but you didn't kill her. There may still be some way to save her."

"Not with that poison." Corona rolled onto her side, facing away from Brian, though he maintained his hold on her fingers. "Not once it's in her blood. It may not have killed her right away, but no Healer in this world can make her well again now. And it's my fault."

"Is it, now?" Brian surprised himself by achieving a tolerable facsimile of the withering tone his mother had used on him when she'd had enough of his despairing attitude towards his lycanthropy. "Your fault you trusted your sister, and she betrayed you? Your fault you couldn't completely throw off one of the strongest curses known to magic? I wasn't aware I was going to be married to Superwitch."

"You can't still mean that." Corona tried again to pull away. "I was being controlled all the time we were out there together, nothing I said can possibly be true—"

"No, you weren't." Brian held on more firmly than before. "Aletha examined you after she'd finished Healing you, and she says the variant of the Imperius that was used on you was almost entirely dormant. It was only active for very brief periods, and only when you were alone. So nothing that happened while you and I were together could possibly have been affected by it. But." He grimaced, and let the expression bleed into his tone of voice. "That doesn't stop me from feeling that I should have seen or known something. That I should have somehow seen the future, and kept this from happening. Kept you from being used, from being violated, like this. So if you can forgive me—"

"I forgive you?" Corona rolled back over and sat up, staring at him. "What could there possibly be to forgive? None of this was your fault!"

Slowly, Brian nodded, and watched the corollary dawn in Corona's eyes.

"If you want me to go away, I will," he said when the shock had faded from her face enough that he thought she might be able to hear him. "But I mean exactly what I'm saying. If you want me to go. Not if you think I ought to go, or that you're somehow unworthy of me because your sister abused your love for her and forced you into actions you would never have taken willingly. You fought back against that coercion, and because you did, two of our friends are still alive who wouldn't have been otherwise. Three, if you count yourself. Which I do."

Still holding her hand tightly, he leaned forward a little. "I love you, Corona," he said quietly. "Please, don't leave me now."


Aletha sat on the floor in Remus and Danger's bedroom, wrestling with a conundrum.

Remus… Her throat tightened even to think the words, but she mentally scowled it open again and continued. Remus is dead. He died by the Killing Curse, and he had only been dead a few moments when Sirius brought him to me, so his body is undamaged. She glanced up at the bed, where that body lay, under her best Stasis Spell to ensure it remained undamaged. And if things had turned out differently with Danger, I would want to restart his heart and his breathing, to keep from overstraining their physical bond while we studied how to break it without harming her. As it is…

"As it is, I should still do that same thing." She blinked into her Healing-sight, as she had already ten times or more, and studied with a soft hiss the slow ravages of the poison through Danger's body. "There's no point in stressing her system more than need be. She's unconscious, so she isn't suffering, and there may be nothing else I can do for her, but I can do that."

But I wonder if I shouldn't do something else first.

Beside Aletha on the floor lay the folder of clippings she had once showed the Lupins, the culmination of her researches on possible ways to restore the fertility of a werewolf. The potions she had discovered, though they would be effective, had so many poisonous compounds involved that the only way to administer them safely would be on a body which was shut down, which could have tiny portions of its circulation artificially stimulated for the potions to take effect.

That is to say, a body which is dead.

And I happen to have one of those on hand at the moment.

The only question is, should I? When I have no way to get his consent or Danger's? Hermione is their legal next of kin, and empowered to make these decisions now that she's seventeen, so I should probably ask her, but just the simple fact of losing them is going to send that logical mind of hers out of orbit for a while…

Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the wall, thinking of Remus, of Remus and Hermione, of his startled pleasure when she'd added his name to hers as a birthday present, of his disbelieving joy when he'd been confirmed as her guardian under magical law.

He thought for so long that he would be the last Lupin. That after he was gone, no one would ever say his name again. That because of what he was, he could never give anything to the future.

Aletha blinked out of her half-trance, her mind made up.

This is exactly the sort of gift he would want to be remembered for giving.

And I think Hermione will agree with me on that.

Scooping up her notes and getting to her feet, she Disapparated.

She had potions to brew, and not much time to brew them in.


Sirius leaned against one of the walls in the drawing room, staring at his family tapestry without truly seeing it. His mind was busy circling around the fate he'd heard outlined in Corona's shaky voice through his monitoring spell, the fate he and his Pack had dodged so narrowly it made him shiver to think about it.

Moony dead, Danger dead, Letha and Pearl dead trying to help them. Yeah, I think that would have stolen what's left of my sanity pretty effectively, and what was left of the Pride would've come shooting off the rails right after me. I can see us now, charging out of here hell-bent on vengeance, and the Death Eaters snickering up their sleeves and setting ambush points around Malfoy Manor, knowing all they'd have to do is wait…

Thinking of that spacious mansion drew Sirius's eyes automatically to the area of the tapestry where his family crossed with the house so named.

Or where we—used to? He frowned, striding across the room to get a better look. What the hell happened to this thing? It wasn't like this yesterday, or even an hour or two ago—

Training clamped down around him, controlling his drop to the floor, as he stared at the golden words ornamenting the cloth. Narcissa's name gleamed in its proper place, as it had since Aletha's restoration work the year before, but beneath it, where the brief span of Draco's life had previously been recorded, a new entry now shone.

Reynard D. Beauvoi
Born 1980
Twin-bonded 1994
Blood-adopted, married 1997

"Well, then." Unable to stop his grin from spreading, Sirius laid his fingers gently against the name. "Even wild-arse guesses sometimes come off, now don't they?"


"How did Fox keep anyone from noticing he wasn't a werewolf?" Neville asked Luna, tapping the side of his nose. "I know Malfoy used to be in charge of the werewolves who looked up to the Death Eaters, after Greyback died."

"I'm such a nargle-brain." Luna laughed. "Imagine me forgetting to tell you that! He used some of the potion he and Hermione helped develop for Corona. The one that makes an ordinary human smell like a werewolf to other werewolves, or Animagi. And when we started running low, he tweaked the recipe a little and gave it to Professor Snape to brew, pretending it was part of a larger project he needed done. Just like the burning potion."

"What did you use that for?" Meghan frowned. "It wouldn't be very safe in a potion piece, because if it dripped it might set you on fire instead of the person you're aiming at…"

"Which is why we put it in grenades, and carried those instead." Luna cupped her hands, as though holding the thin balls of conjured glass she'd named. "When we needed to appear or disappear as Amanda and Dafydd, and we wanted to startle people into looking away, we just threw one on the floor. It smashed and flared up—thank you," she added as Harry conjured a burst of flame above her hands, "and everyone was so surprised by the fire that they never noticed us dodging into secret passages, or Echo Apparating us away. And yes, before you ask." She smiled a little. "She did know who we were."

"That explains so much." Ginny glanced towards the door of the house-elves' room. "It never made sense to me that Malfoy could have used what was left of Dobby's bond to force Echo to work for him, when Dobby was freed so long ago. Especially when that also meant breaking through the Fidelius. But if Echo wanted to be there, if she sneaked out of here under her own power instead of being dragged away, then it all makes sense."

"Explains why Tonks could free her, too." Ron cupped one hand around his opposite wrist loosely. "It shouldn't have worked, not if Malfoy'd had any kind of actual bond going on, but he didn't. Because he was dead." He grinned. "I'm not going to get tired of saying that. Lucius Malfoy is dead."

"And Fox isn't." Harry got to his feet. "Is it safe to see that for ourselves, Luna? We won't spook him or anything?"

"No, they're sleeping. Dreaming together." Luna drew her wand and swirled it towards what appeared to be an empty stretch of space in one corner of the kitchen. "I don't think they'll mind."

The air in that corner of the kitchen rippled, as if it were distorted with heat-haze or smoke instead of the Privacy Spell which Hermione had erected, then expertly concealed, while the rest of the Pride was distracted. When the ripples cleared, a pair of human figures lay side by side on the stone floor, cuddled together, hands clasped and eyes closed.

"Ohhh!" Meghan pointed, the fingers of her other hand going up to cover her mouth. "Look at them! The bond, the blood-bond, it worked all the way this time! Neenie's a little bit paler, her skin, her hair, and Fox—" She wrinkled her nose. "Ew," she said, glaring at the long, light-brown waves which haloed her brother's head. "He does not look good with his hair like that."

"It was the one part of his disguise Bellatrix's Reversing Curse didn't affect." Luna started to aim her wand, but Harry held up his hand to stop her and flicked his wrist instead. Fire flared around the twins' sleeping forms, then died down to reveal Fox's hair trimmed back to a becoming two-inch clip. Luna smiled her thanks before going on. "He took a separate potion to grow it long, before he took the Aging Potion to change the rest of his appearance. And because I stopped Bellatrix's spell from taking full effect, it only reversed the last magical thing that was done to him, instead of everything about him, which was what she intended." Her eyes darkened momentarily, shining ever so slightly green. "It would have killed him. Horribly."

"Why would she have cursed him, though?" asked Ginny, sliding her hand into Harry's. "Didn't she still think he was Lucius?"

Luna shook her head. "She realized who he truly was when Mr. Moony died," she said. "Fox could hold up through an awful lot of things, but not through that. He screamed."

"Who wouldn't?" Ron hunched his shoulders briefly, as though warding off a blow. "Having your dad get killed right in front of you—right in your arms, even—you'd have to be pretty well superhuman not to react to that." He held up a finger. "And speaking of dads, I think mine should probably know about some of this. What with that whole Minister thing he's got going on."

"I'll go with you." Ginny squeezed Harry's hand once, then released it. "How did you want to get there?"

"I was thinking the Red Roads to the Pepper Pot, and then the Vanishing Cabinet through to Sanctuary."

"Sounds good to me."

"And you'll probably want to see your dad too, won't you?" said Neville to Luna as Ron and Ginny disappeared through the swinging door. "Let's go upstairs and I'll send Mum a Patronus, so she can take us past the Fidelius."

"That would be lovely." Luna opened her arms to hug first Meghan, then Harry, before leading the way out of the kitchen, Neville already drawing his wand. "We've been writing letters back and forth most of this time, Daddy and I," her voice floated back, "but we haven't seen each other since June, and I'm sure he'll want to run some tests on my ring…"

Harry exhaled a long sigh as his Pridemates' footsteps faded. "Hey," he said to Meghan, beckoning her closer. "How're you hanging in?"

"All right." Meghan tucked herself under his arm. "Just as long as I think about Fox and Luna being alive harder than I do about Moony and Danger being…" Her breath hitched. "Why did it have to happen now?" she whispered. "Why, when we ought to be so happy, when we're finally a whole Pride again, did we have to lose part of the Pack?"

"I don't know." Harry looked from Fox to Neenie, his eye tracing the newly-minted similarity in their features, not so much as to make them appear magical copies of one another or confuse those who had known them before, but enough that no one meeting them for the first time would ever doubt their identity as twins. "But I meant what I said before, Pearl. I am sick to death of His Evil Snakiness thinking he can have things all his own way, and I'm not taking this one lying down. Danger's still alive, and Luna wouldn't have said what she did if there weren't something we could do to keep her that way. And as long as Danger's alive, we've got a link to Moony. So we're not giving up yet, you got that?"

"Yes, sir." Meghan's attempt at a jaunty tone was slightly spoiled by the sniffle in the middle, but the smile on her face as she looked up at Harry was real, if a trifle watery. "I'm going to go find Dadfoot and Mama Letha—do you realize they still don't know Fox is alive?"

"It's only been…" Harry checked his watch. "Twenty minutes or so that we've known. But I take your point. We probably should have told them before. Still, now we've got the whole story straight, and we can answer any questions they'll have. Off you go, then."

Tugging one of his sister's braids in his usual farewell gesture, Harry watched her small form hurry up the stairs before returning his regard to his twin siblings. "Not the way I wanted to welcome you home, or find out who Alex's Heir was," he said softly to Fox. "Moony's been killed, Danger's poisoned—"

He broke off as a memory from the summer just past popped into his mind.

"So, now you know it exists, but you're to open it under only one of two conditions." The voice was Danger's, the surroundings the War Room, and Moony stood by with a box in his hands, filled with the light of dancing flames. "Either once you've made definite contact with Alexander Slytherin's Heir, or if both of us are dead or dying…"

"Dumbledore's letter." Harry glanced up at the ceiling, as if he could see through it to the main floor of Headquarters. "The one protected by Gubraithian fire, that only Moony or Danger or I could get to. Now I guess it's just me."

And as much as I hate it, both conditions apply.

He took the stairs two at a time, pausing only long enough in the corridor above to lay an Imperturbable Charm on the War Room's door, then close and lock it behind himself. If Dumbledore had made such elaborate precautions to keep his letter from being read by anyone else, the information inside was undoubtedly important.

Now here's hoping it's comprehensible!

Opening the desk drawer he remembered Moony closing those few months before, Harry extracted the box and flipped it open. The fire inside shone as brightly as he remembered, and twined eagerly around his hand as he reached for the thick parchment envelope.

Sort of like getting my Hogwarts letter all over again. Only then, I knew what I was getting into, or at least I thought I did. With this, I haven't got a clue…

When the letter rested safely in his lap, Harry shut the box and set it aside, then closed his eyes, seeking after a moment of focus, the same focus he'd learned to channel when he transformed into Wolf or Apparated to a new place. When his breathing had calmed and his heart beat steadily, he picked up the envelope, slid his finger underneath the flap, and lifted it free.

Here we go.

Inside, the expected letter had been wrapped around what looked like a page torn out of a book, which Harry set aside with a brief grimace for what Hermione was likely to say about the abuse of the written word. Unfolding the letter, he found the beginning and started to read.

My dear Harry,

I can start this letter in no other way than with an apology. For all that I have done, or left undone, which has harmed you or your Pack in the years we have spent as companions, I am most deeply and truly sorry. I only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me when all is known.

Some of my mistakes, my wrongful actions, my foolish failures to act, you know of already. Others you may have learned since my passing. But to one particular lie I have committed myself more deeply than any other, in the name of keeping our mutual enemy blind to the truth long enough that he can be defeated.

You, as the agent of that defeat, must now learn that same truth…


Several minutes later, Harry was starting to smile as he flattened the folded-up page under his hand, then fitted it against the torn place in one of the books out of the stack hidden safely in the Pride's den. "Luna was right," he said, running his finger along the peaks and valleys of torn paper, which matched exactly. "That page wasn't missing by accident."

But we had to be focused then, focused on training the DA and running the year and finding Voldemort's Horcruxes. If we'd learned something as big and amazing as this, Hermione, and very likely some of the rest of us, would have been distracted trying to figure out every last detail about it, and missed some of the details in the work we were supposed to be doing. And how long would we have been able to resist talking about it, especially to the people most closely involved?

"But now." Harry drew his wand along the path his finger had already traced, watching the fibers mend themselves with the slightest of magical sparkles. "Now we can know about it, because now we need to know about it."

Or do we? He closed the book, frowning. There's no guarantee it's going to work. And it might be the sort of thing where most of us shouldn't know too much. Like the way Fox had to believe he'd die in order to live.

The thought of further deceiving Pack and Pride left a sour slick across his tongue, but as angry as he'd been at first when he realized what Dumbledore had concealed for so long, Harry found he couldn't fault the older wizard's logic.

He couldn't even be sure one of these things had happened, and the other one wasn't really his to tell. And yes, he lied about it later on, but I can see why he did, and I'm not all that mad about it, even. A tiny laugh escaped him. I might have been, a couple years ago, but now I'm just so happy for what else it has to mean—

"Right." His mood deflating, Harry carefully closed the book, then returned the letter to its place in the box of fire. "What else it has to mean. What it means for us, and what we've got to do next—what I've got to do next—"

But I've got some guidance now. Getting to his feet, he Apparated back to the den room above, setting the book on the hidden shelf once more. Some thoughts and reminders about where to start, and what I might need. The rest of it's going to be up to me.

Save the Pack, save the world…pretty much doing what I always have. What I was born for.

Harry arched his back, then dropped into a fighting crouch.

Snakeface, you are going DOWN.


Aletha nearly dropped the beaker from which she was pouring at the knock on her workroom door, and saved it only with a last-minute grab by her other hand. "Come in," she called, lacing her tone with the musical sweetness she reserved for people who had annoyed her thoroughly enough that she didn't choose to make it apparent.

"Sorry," said Sirius from behind her, as the door clicked first open, then shut. "I know what it means when the door's closed, but I think you'll want to hear this."

"Want to hear what?" Aletha turned to face her husband, and found a smile tugging at her lips in response to the light in his eyes. "Something good, I take it."

"Best news in the world." Sirius flicked his finger against the top cauldron in a stack to make it ring. "Far's we're concerned, anyway. Voldemort's probably not too thrilled, given how stupid it's going to make him look when it gets out."

"Things which discomfit Voldemort are definitely welcome here." Aletha set down the beaker on her workbench, near the site of the hole Corona's poison had eaten in it, which she'd repaired earlier. "Especially now. So what is it?"

"Remember that wild-arse guess of mine, a while back, about what it could mean when Lucius called Tonks his cousin, not his niece?" Sirius moved the handle of the cauldron back and forth, its hinges creaking in time with his words. "The one I wouldn't explain? Mostly because I didn't want to get people's hopes up. It seemed like a million to one chance."

"Yes, I remember." Aletha set her hands on her hips. "And if you don't get on with telling me this instant, Sirius Valentine Black—" She stopped, a sudden suspicion blooming in the back of her mind. "Wait. You can't mean—"

"He's changed his name," Sirius interrupted. "Probably to beat out any spells searching for him that way. But if you can think of anybody else born seventeen years ago to my cousin Narcissa who'd be likely to call himself 'Reynard'…"

"Reynard." Aletha pressed a hand to her mouth, not sure whether she was fighting tears or laughter. "The trickster, the jokester, from old French folktales, who always wins out somehow. The cunning little fox. Oh, Sirius!"

"Yeah." Sirius pulled her into his arms and held her tight, his own breath catching suspiciously every so often. "He's baaaack."


"We should probably wake up at some point," said Hermione reluctantly, glancing in the direction the twins used to signify a return to reality. "Everybody else is going to want a turn hugging you, you know."

"Yeah." Fox's mouth twisted to one side. "Everybody else."

"What's wrong?" Hermione sat up, facing him. "Was it something I said?"

"Not exactly." Fox sighed. "It's just…Neenie, I don't know how much good I'm going to be anymore. At, well, life. Getting out the door every day, going off and doing whatever, dealing with other people. Especially dealing with other people. Not you," he added hastily. "And not Pack or Pride, I don't think. I can't be sure yet, but the idea of them doesn't panic me. But even people from the DA or the Order, when I try and imagine seeing them again, talking to them…" He shook his head hard, in a motion that would have set Snow Fox's ears flapping. "It gives me the horrors. Which makes no sense, I know. These are my friends, my colleagues, they're not going to hurt me—"

"But the people you've had to call friends and colleagues, for the last half a year or so, they would." Hermione held out her hand, and Fox wrapped his own around it. "If they had ever found out who you really were, they would have had no mercy. Or even if they hadn't known you were you, but they thought taking Lucius down would help them rise up, they would have stabbed you in the back without a second thought. And you knew that, so you could never let your guard down, not for an instant."

"So even now that I'm home, I don't want to let it down with anyone I can't be this kind of certain about." Fox twined his pendant chain around his other hand. "Have I mentioned lately how creepy it is that you understand me better than I understand me?"

"No, my lord." Hermione batted her eyelashes and reverted to her Bellatrix voice. "Not lately."

"And that is even creepier." Fox gave a brief, heartfelt shudder. "Did you really have to scare me like that?"

"I wanted you to hold still long enough that I could get you with this." Hermione displayed her dagger. "It has the twinning potion in it, so that if you really were you, I could do exactly what I did. But if you really weren't you, if you were Lucius trying to trick us…"

"Then you would have cut him with silver, and done what I did, back in June." Fox nodded. "Great minds think alike. Or desperate minds, in my case. All right, waking time it is. Was there anything in particular you wanted to do?"

"One thing for myself. I don't know if you'll want to come." Neenie squeezed his hand and released it. "I need to go see Moony and Danger."

"Yeah." Fox sucked in air through his teeth. "Not yet on that one. I'll need to, and soon, but I can't just yet. Probably find a couple other people somewhere in the house, though, last time I looked we had plenty to go around…"


Descending the stairs from the Pride's den, Harry looked down to find his godfather waiting for him in the main hallway. "You know already?" Padfoot asked quietly, swinging his pendants between two fingers.

"About Fox? Yeah." Harry vaulted over the banister to land beside Padfoot. "How do you?"

"Tapestry." Padfoot chuckled. "Damn thing's smarter than I am. You seen him?"

"Seen, yes, talked to, not yet. He was asleep. Dreaming with Hermione, which is probably the best thing for him." Harry leaned back against the side of the staircase. "You hear about Luna?"

"No, what about Luna? Unless you mean he married her, that I do know. Tapestry again."

Harry grinned. "She's Alex's Heir. Amanda's amulet went to her."

"Merlin's typewriter." Padfoot snorted. "Talk about keeping it in the family."

Distracted, Harry frowned. "How would Merlin have a typewriter? They weren't invented for another thousand years or so."

"Bah." Padfoot waved a dismissive hand. "History and all that rubbish."

"Dare you to say that in front of Professor Jones."

"Hestia? No thank you. I like all my body parts exactly where they are. And you're not allowed to tell her I said it either," Padfoot added before Harry could say anything. "Or rather, if you do, I'll deny every word of it." He stopped. "How did we get here again?"

"By way of Merlin's typewriter, I think." Harry sighed, some of his banter-born silliness ebbing away. "I'm so glad to have them back, but it doesn't change what else happened today," he said quietly. "It doesn't change that Moony's dead, and Danger's dying. And that's because I had to go somewhere and get something, and Voldemort found out about it, and Moony found out about that and went straight to Malfoy Manor to distract him." He glanced over at Padfoot, seeing only the flat calm of an Auror in his godfather's eyes. "I really did have to. It was our only chance, and it was a thing we had to have if we're going to beat him."

"I believe you." Padfoot nodded. "And I don't blame you. Are you blaming yourself?"

"Pretty much." Harry ran his fingers along the wood of the wall, finding the spot where the door to the cupboard under the stairs would have been, if number twelve, Grimmauld Place, had boasted such a thing. "Does it ever stop hurting that people died because of something you did?"

"Do you want the nice answer, or the truth?"

"Truth, please."

"Then, no." Padfoot's hand rested for a second on Harry's arm. "No, it never stops hurting. But you figure out how to live with it, eventually."

"About what I figured." Harry turned to look at his godfather directly. "Thanks. For everything."

"No worries." Padfoot nodded to him, then crossed the hall towards the War Room. Harry waited until the door shut behind him before taking the stairs down to the kitchen.

The brown-haired boy sitting in front of the fire looked around as Harry entered. "My name is Reynard Beauvoi," he announced, getting to his feet, "and this is my house." He paused, as though thinking. "Well. Some of it, anyway." Haughtily, he drew himself up to his full height. "Who're you?"

Stifling a grin as his mind shot to a favorite den-night story, Harry tucked his hands into his pockets. "My name's Harry Potter," he said politely. "Nice to meet you."

Fox's stone-gray eyes widened. "You're Harry Potter?"

"Have been all my life."

"Scar and all?"

Harry freed one hand and flipped back his fringe to display it.

"Cool." Fox nodded approvingly. "You're pretty famous, you know."

"Yeah, I keep hearing that. Something about being a warrior and fighting evil, once I'm grown up." Harry pulled his watch from his pocket and checked the face. "Would you look at that. Could be any day now." Sliding the watch away again, he looked up. "I'm going to need help, though," he said quietly. "You in?"

"Well," Fox drawled. "If I have to."

"Sounds good." Harry held out his hand. "Shake on it?"

Fox met the hand with his own, and quick as thinking their grips changed, one, two, three, in the boy-cubs' shake they'd invented more years ago than Harry really wanted to remember…

Maybe I shouldn't have thought about that.

"Damn it," he managed before his voice started shaking, and hauled his brother into the tightest hug of their lives. "God damn it, Fox, don't you ever do that to me again!"

"Same goes, hero-boy." Fox punched him lightly in the middle of the back. "No dying day after tomorrow, you got that?"

"I'll see what I can do—wait, how'd you know about that?" Harry pulled back to look at Fox. "We didn't get that prophecy until after you left the first time."

"See the shiny thing?" Fox held up his left hand, pointing out the ring adorning his finger. "Think about what the shiny thing means."

"Oh, right." Harry paused. "Hang on a tick. Has she been spying on us the entire time you've been gone?"

Fox shrugged. "Everybody needs a hobby."


Upstairs, the Lupins' bedroom door creaked once, and Meghan tiptoed in. Why she was being so quiet, she didn't know. It wasn't like Moony or Danger was going to hear her…

Because it makes me feel normal, she decided, drawing her dagger. It makes me feel like I still need to sneak, the way I would if everything were still all right.

Maybe, once I finish here, it still can be.

Danger's free hand, the one which wasn't tucked against Moony's, lay palm-up on the duvet, the slightly tanned skin of her forearm exposed. Meghan angled the dagger's blade so that its point would find a good-sized blood vessel, to better deliver the payload she intended to all portions of her godmother's body.

Phoenix tears, she thought clearly, recalling how Fawkes had perched on the end of the white tomb at Hogwarts, how the pearly drops had fallen from his eyes into the goblin-wrought silver and vanished. Phoenix tears have healing properties, and Danger needs healing badly.

She brought the dagger down with just enough force to penetrate skin, as she'd practiced on dummies at DA meetings many times.

Dagger and hand passed through Danger's flesh as though she were already a ghost, and stabbed instead into the cloth below.

"What?" Meghan yanked her hand back, staring at the dagger. "No. No!"

Again she tried, and again metal and flesh failed to connect. A little sob tore out of her as she shook her head furiously, denying the intolerable situation, and tried again—again—again—

"Meghan! Meghan!" Hands around her, arms restraining her, a voice calling her name. She stumbled backwards from the bed, trying to fight her captor, but her eyes were blurred with tears and her legs refused to support her any longer.

"I wanted to help her," she sobbed, pressing her face against the familiar shoulder, accepting the hug as her dagger clattered to the floor. "I just wanted to help her!"

"I know, Pearl." A hand stroked along her braids, and a kiss was pressed to the top of her forehead. "I know you did."

Meghan hiccupped once, and scowled at how stupid it made her sound. "I don't want her to die," she said in what she'd intended to be a firm and angry tone, but which came out weak and wobbly and sounding far younger than her years. "Oh, Neenie, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know." Neenie, too, sounded young and scared, and Meghan couldn't be sure if that made her feel worse or better.

But I don't want to feel any worse than I already do. She cuddled in close, and felt Neenie drawing them both backwards to the huge, overstuffed armchair in the corner of the room. So I'm going to say it's better. Only a little tiny itty-bitty bit better, because the only way it would really be better is if this weren't happening, but since it is happening, at least I'm not the only one who's feeling lost and confused.

"Do you realize how lucky we are?" Neenie asked, her voice vibrating through Meghan's bones despite its quiet pitch. "We still have Padfoot and Letha, and we have each other. So many people don't have any of that when someone they love…dies." She had to force the word out, and Meghan hissed softly at it. "And I want to hate myself for saying that, because it doesn't help. I want it to help, and I know someday it will help, but today? Today it doesn't help at all." She tightened her hug around Meghan. "Except that it does help, some, to have you here with me."

"Thanks." Meghan settled herself more comfortably next to her big sister, and rested her face against Neenie's robes, letting them soak up the tears that remained on her face. "You too."

A little while later, or possibly a long while, the door creaked again, bringing both sisters' heads around. Letha stepped into the room, carrying a basket filled with bottles, and nodded in satisfaction when she saw them. "Just the ladies I need to see," she said, and set aside her potions to accommodate them both in one broad hug. "There now, I've got you. I'm right here." She kissed Meghan on the top of the head, and Hermione on the side, running her fingers down a strand of brown hair (not quite as brown, nor nearly as bushy, as it had been a few hours ago) when she was done. "And what might this be?"

"Oh." Hermione disengaged, smiling shyly, and laid a finger on the newly minted twin-scar on her left cheek. "I suppose you didn't know—"

"No, Sirius told me our favorite troublemaker's come home. I just hadn't expected you two to get down to business quite so fast, but then you've seldom done anything else." Letha beckoned both the Pack's daughters to take a seat. "And speaking of business, Hermione, I'm sorry to bring this up to you right now, but I need you to make a decision…"

Meghan listened silently to her mother's explanation of what she wanted to do, and what would be involved, letting her sister squeeze her hand as hard as necessary, though once or twice it hurt. When Letha finished, Hermione frowned. "I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand. Why do you want to do this now? When Moony's already…" She swallowed against the completion of the sentence.

"To see if it can be done, and if it will work." Letha held out her hand, and after a moment Hermione laid her own in it. "Because if it does, then it can be tried in the living. In those werewolves who want born children of their own, and are willing to take the chance of having their body's functions stopped for a short period to undergo this treatment."

"It won't hurt him," Hermione murmured, almost to herself. "Nothing can hurt him now. And it would make him so happy, to know he could give that gift to other people like him. People who've been hurt terribly, body and soul, but are fighting back against it, and deserve the chance to have as much of a normal life as they can." She lifted her head and met Letha's eyes. "Yes. Do it."

"Gladly." Letha bent forward to hug Hermione once more, then hefted her basket of potions. "It's a surprisingly quick process, for all the prep work it entails. I should be done in just a few minutes, if you want to stay and help, Pearl. And Neenie, you can stay if you like, or go on down to your den room, Harry left a note on the door asking anyone who saw it to send the Pride that way whenever they finished what they were doing…"


Harry and Fox's shared snickerfit, though revived several times through accidental eye contact, wound to a close at last, and the Pack's sons caught their breath sitting side by side in front of the kitchen fire, Harry calling out bits of it to twine around them and keep them warm.

"I've missed that." Fox brushed his hand through the living flame. "I've missed a lot of things. All the everyday little stuff that you never even think about, until suddenly it's gone. And I thought I never would have it again, that I'd get found out as a spy and killed on the spot, or that you'd kill me in battle for being who you thought I was, or that I'd have to run and hide after the war because both sides were hunting me down…"

"Hey." Harry cleared his throat, bringing Fox's attention towards him. "Didn't happen. Any of it."

"Almost wish it had." Fox leaned forward against his knees, his shoulders rising defensively. "Instead of what did."

"Yeah, about that." Harry tried to keep his tone casual, but couldn't do anything about the nerves bleeding into his scent. "Dumbledore left me a letter, to open if anything like this ever did happen." He chose his words carefully, watching his brother for reactions. "There could be something going on here we didn't know about. He wasn't sure, and he told me not to make any promises either. But there's a possibility…"

"Of what?" Fox's little exhalation could have been either laughter or pain. "Of someone who's dying suddenly getting healed? Of the bloody Killing Curse not working right?"

Harry shrugged. "It happened once."

Fox leveled a glare at him, but dropped his eyes after a few seconds. "I don't know if I want to hear this," he said. "Giving up hope's so much easier." This time the breathy sound was definitely a laugh. "But then, we're the Pack. When did we ever do easy?" Raking back his hair with his fingers, he met Harry's gaze again. "What do you need from me?"

"You have to answer a question. Out loud right now, in writing later. That'll be the binding one." Harry sat up straighter, holding his eyes on Fox's. "What would you do, and what would you give, to win this war and keep the Pack together?"

After a moment's intense thought, Fox nodded slowly. "I would do," he said with deliberation, "anything that's right. And I would give anything that's rightfully mine."

"And that is why I started this with you." Harry pointed at his brother. "And one of the reasons we've missed you so much around here. Most of the rest of us would have to fumble and stumble around for that kind of language, or we'd forget about it and get ourselves into some stupid bard's tale contract where we have to wait for what we want until lions fly or something like that. You just…" He snapped his fingers. "Like that."

"Well, I am the Consort of Slytherin, you know." Fox pulled out his pendants and displayed the first one. "See? Says so right there. Snake for Slytherin, and B for Beauvoi."

Harry groaned a little. "They've been planning something like this all along, haven't they?" he asked, glancing upwards to indicate which 'they' was meant. "Sneaky bastards that they are."

"This is not news." Fox stroked a finger across the serpentine B. "Do you think Padfoot and Letha would forgive me if I didn't go and see them tonight?" he asked quietly. "I'm a little raw on the parent front yet."

"I think they'll want you to do what you need to do. And if that's holing up with just the Pride for now, that'll be fine." Harry nodded. "I can ask them for you in a little bit, since I need to talk to them anyway."

"How come? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"Well, without repeating myself too much for later with the Pride, it's got to do with another couple lines in the same prophecy that gave us Halloween." Harry held out his hand to the fire, and streamers of it rose up in different colors, twisting themselves into the shapes of familiar animals. "Go unto those whose Oath you swore/ And bargain well to win the war…"


Opening the door of the Pride's den nearly an hour later, Ginny sighed in pleasure. Across the room, a brown-furred fox, patching into white here and there along his flanks, was playfully chasing a half-grown doe back and forth, nipping at her legs when he got close enough.

"That's good to see," Ron said behind her. "But don't tell him I said so," he added hastily.

"Don't worry, I won't." Ginny elbowed her brother in the gut to hear him oof, then dropped down into Lynx's form and joined the game, bowling Snow Fox over with her first leap and washing his face for him until Captain the demiguise dragged her off by a hind leg. When she squirmed free of his grasp and turned to wash him within an inch of his life as well, he'd gone invisible—

Which is not the same thing as unsmellable!

Gleefully, she pounced on the monkey-like form she could scent several feet away, holding him down and washing him visible, a pastime in which Neenie the cat came bounding over to join, while Pearl galloped around them with gusto. Snow Fox grumbled from a short distance away, but made no move to rescue his erstwhile defender, which gave Lynx a moment of pause. Why wouldn't he—

The answer hit her squarely in the side, bowling her over in her turn.

Mine, Wolf panted into her face, pinning her down with his paws. Mine, mine, mine.

Only until I find something better, Lynx hissed back, and nipped at one of the paws, startling Wolf into pulling it back and allowing her to squirm herself free. And until then, you are also mine!

She dove onto Wolf, sending the two of them rolling through the furball which was the other four mammalian members of the Pride. Ron and Luna, she noted with a flick of eyes to one side, appeared to be laying bets on the outcomes of the various wrestling matches.

Feathers are great for flying, but not so good for silliness like this…

Harry's transformation back to human, once everyone had worked their edginess off, called a tacit halt to the roughhousing, and the Pride settled into their usual places for den. Ron and Neville took a moment each to shake Fox's hand and clap him on the back, while Ginny, after a quick scent-check to be sure he was up to it, demanded and got her usual hug. "We've missed you," she murmured close to his ear. "I can't tell you how much."

"Probably about as much as I missed all of you." Fox leaned against her briefly, then squeezed once and released her. "Put together."

"Yours put together, or ours?"

"Both. Or neither. Doesn't matter, I'm back." Fox sat down, his movements careful and precise, which Ginny identified after a few moments of thought as his way of keeping off whatever emotional troubles might still remain to be weathered. "We going to start den here or what?"

"If you insist." Ginny cleared her throat. "Be welcome, all, to this den-night," she said, grinning towards Fox and Luna. "We are Pride now. Pride together."

"Pride forever," came the response, more enthusiastic than it had been in the months just past.

Also louder. Ginny resisted the urge to rub her ears. But that could just be because we're all here again…

"Business before stories?" Neville asked Harry, and got a nod. "Ready when you are, then."

"All right." Harry pulled a Sickle out of, apparently, thin air, and began to work it back and forth along his fingers. "Professor Dumbledore wrote me a letter, before he died," he said after the coin had made two full circuits. "I wasn't supposed to open it until…well, until now. Until the things that've just happened, happened. So I did, and some of what's in it, I can't tell you yet. But I can give you the general outline." He looked up. "It told me how I can get the last things I'll need to beat him. To beat Voldemort. To win this war, and stop him for good."

"How can we help?" asked Luna into the silence.

"It's pretty simple." Harry winked towards his brother. "Fox and I talked it over already. What you need to do is write down for me—not right this second, tomorrow morning should do fine—write down for me what you'd do, and what you'd give up, to win the war."

Hermione started to bristle, then stopped, touching Ron's hand before he could open his mouth. "You wouldn't ask that unless you needed to," she said. "It's not that you doubt us, or think we'd hold back, but the question and the answer are part of the magic, aren't they? Part of the ritual, the giving and the taking."

"Yes. Exactly." Harry nodded. "But like I said, we can do all that tomorrow, and Fox'll help you put it down right on parchment so it doesn't cause more trouble than it needs to. I just needed to get it out there so you'd know about it. Tonight we've got another little project." He made the Sickle vanish, and instead drew his wand, sketching a symbol on the air, triangle, circle, line. "We need to find the Deathly Hallows."

"Wasn't that supposed to be this big long quest?" asked Meghan doubtfully. "That you had to do for years and years and go all over the world for?"

"It used to be. But Dumbledore said they were all a lot closer than we knew, and we just had to think about ourselves." Harry gestured to his sisters, then his brother. "The Pack-cubs, specifically, and the way we became that. Whatever that means."

"It's not too hard." Luna tilted her head, looking at each of them in turn. "Don't you see, you all came to your Pack a different way. Hermione was left to Mrs. Danger to take care of, and Harry, you were stolen out of your cupboard, and my Fox was given by his blood mother, and Meghan was born in the Pack. Four cubs, four different ways."

"Only three Hallows, though." Neville shrugged. "Born's probably the odd one out there. Hard to see how it would apply to a wand or a cloak or a stone."

"We'll get back to it," said Ron hastily, though Ginny suspected her brother would have been just as happy to permanently table the subject of childbirth and other related issues. "So, one of the Hallows was left behind, inherited, sort of. Another one stolen somehow, and then the last one given. Inherited's pretty easy—that's got to be your Cloak, Harry. Came down to you from your dad."

"No question there." Harry highlighted the triangle on his glowing diagram. "So one down, two to go. The Resurrection Stone, and the Elder Wand. Dumbledore said the Stone, in particular, was very close to my heart, and had been since the day I gave my heart away…"

Ginny sighed and pulled out her pendants. "Harry," she said, detaching the small cage of gold wire which hung from her chain. "Catch."

"What—" Harry caught, looked, and groaned. "You're kidding. You are kidding me."

"How come?" Fox craned his neck to see, as Harry extracted his own pendant chain from his robes. "What are those things?"

"The wedding presents Dumbledore gave us. All this talk about how the stone was for solidity, the circle was for completion, the triangle so we didn't collapse on each other—he was snowing us!" Harry unlatched the two cages and dumped out their contents onto his palm. "All so we wouldn't see that if you put the two pieces together, you'd get that!" He pointed to the symbol hovering in the air.

"So you've been hauling the Resurrection Stone around this entire time?" Ron shook his head, as Harry highlighted the circle to match the triangle. "All it needs now is for the Elder Wand to be somewhere really ridiculous. Up on the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts, maybe."

"What did Professor Dumbledore have to say about the Wand, Harry?" Hermione had her eyes half-shut, as though she were trying to bring a recalcitrant memory to mind. "Did he tell us where we could start?"

"With him." Harry conjured a box and set the two halves of the Resurrection Stone inside it, then leaned back to tuck it onto the hidden shelf with the Horcrux books. "He said he'd been carrying it, using it, ever since he took it off Grindelwald way back when."

"And wizards are almost always buried with their wands." Neville began to smile. "So all we'll need to do is go to Sanctuary and slip out onto the grounds when no one's looking. It's dark now—we could be back within an hour, easily—"

"We may not need to." Fox's quiet words brought all eyes to him. His hands were tightly clasped in his lap, as though he were thinking back over a moment which pained or frustrated him, but his words were calm and clear. "Harry, Neenie, do you remember when we said goodbye back in June? When I was checking through my pockets for something to hold the fire enchantment, and came up with a second wand I didn't recognize?"

"Yes," said Hermione slowly, as Harry nodded. "Why?"

"You wouldn't have known it, you got there too late, but I caught Professor Dumbledore with a spell—the other me, that is, the little me under all the enchantments." Fox circled a hand impatiently. "Whatever. It was a Disarmer. And because I hit him from behind, it worked. I got his wand away from him. Stole it, you might say."

"And then you were its Master, because you took it when he didn't want you to!" Meghan was quivering with excitement. "I remember that! And then when you met Hermione down under the castle, and Harry came up behind you—"

"Disarmed me of my wand, personally, but that means the Mastery passes again." Fox nodded, looking around at the Pride, his own smile starting to spread. "And that's what the second wand was, the one I gave you, Harry. It was Dumbledore's. The Elder Wand. So wherever you've been keeping it, that's where it is." He paused, frowning. "I hope you did keep it."

"No, I threw away what I thought was the last thing I'd ever have from you," Harry retorted. "Yes, I kept it!"

"In your sock drawer," Ginny murmured.

"Who asked you?" demanded Harry, over the laughter of the rest of the Pride.

And this is why we're going to win. Ginny blew a kiss to her husband, and Harry relented enough to blow one back to her. Because as long as we can laugh, as long as we can find the fun and the joy in our lives, we can't be entirely broken.

I just hope we don't have to find out how badly broken we can be…

  • Previous
  • Next

Author Notes:

For anyone wondering where Danger or Remus may be at the present time, remember what Remus told Voldemort: that Danger was with people who needed her, just as she'd always been, and that he would join her there. If you can't figure it out, there'll be more on it next chapter, I promise!

Ah yes, next chapter. There will be a section in it which I foresee possibly starting some political and/or ethical discussions. I would appreciate it if you would, O readers, please keep any such discussions polite and considerate of others who may not share your views. I would also ask you to remember that this is a story, a work of imaginative fiction, and I am defining terms and concepts in the ways which will best serve my ends as your storyteller. Thank you.

Pop over to Facebook (facebook.com/annebwalsh.page) or my website (annebwalsh.com) to keep informed on what I'm up to, and I shall see you next week with Chapter 59, "The Bargain", in which Harry fulfills a prophecy and discovers some of the secrets of the Founders!