Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous
  • Previous
  • Next

Author Notes:

Slightly creepy images, but definite squee and aww. Enjoy.

"Do you realize how lucky we are?" asked Aletha, reclining in her chair with tea in hand.

"How so?" Remus inquired from his spot on the hearth, which would have been distinctly uncomfortable for almost anyone else in the world, since the first week of October had brought a series of chilly days to Hogwarts and the house-elves had lit a correspondingly large blaze in the kitchen fireplace. "Still having each other, despite all the odds against it?"

"There's that. But I was thinking of where we are, and how we're situated. Also despite all the odds." Aletha reached out a foot to nudge Sirius, who obligingly passed over the small plate of pastries from which he'd been snacking. "Thank you. What I mean is, His Evil Darkness holds the Ministry, two of his favorite blood bigots have Inquisitorial powers at Hogwarts, a reign of terror is supposed to be spreading over the land—"

"And here we sit in the castle kitchens with the house-elves pampering us outrageously," Danger finished, running a handful of flames down her hair in lieu of a comb. "As if everything were perfectly normal."

"Exactly." Aletha took a sip of her tea. "Though even for wizards and witches, 'perfectly normal' is a stretch when you're sitting there doing that."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you want some?" Danger held out a chunk of her fire, looking impossibly innocent, in the style of Meghan when she had been sent to distract the Pack-adults from the misdeeds of the older cubs. The imitation was so perfect that neither Sirius nor Aletha could help laughing, and several of the house-elves glanced over tolerantly at the humans by the fire before returning to their work.

"I thought we'd decided a long time ago," said Sirius when he'd caught his breath, reclaiming the plate of pastries. "This is normal, or as close as we're going to get." His eyes darkened. "A lot closer than some right now. I wish we could get a bit more about Tonks out of whoever's inside the Death Eaters—and who is it, anyway, Moony?" he demanded irritably. "I'd think you could at least tell me!"

"What makes you think I know it myself?" Remus wove a finger around the fire that licked happily at his sleeves, and it swirled upwards into the form of an owl. "I get letters from an anonymous correspondent, written by DictaQuill, I'd imagine. They never use the same owl twice, and usually I don't even see the bird. It must have instructions to leave the letter on my desk when I'm not around."

"That doesn't seem safe." Aletha set her teacup aside, frowning. "How do they know their letters are getting to the right person?"

"Because." Danger grinned. "Anyone else who got them would think they were the biggest bunch of nonsense ever written. And as far as the actual wording of the letters goes, they'd be right. But do you remember how we used to write invisible ink messages in lemon juice when we were little, Letha?"

"Of course!" Aletha laughed out loud. "How could I forget?" Then she sobered, looking intently at Remus and Danger. "But then, they know," she said slowly. "Whoever they are, they know about you."

"What am I missing here?" Sirius frowned. "Lemon juice, invisible ink—"

"It's a Muggle trick, the sort of thing you do for fun when you're little." Danger wrote with her finger in midair, flames following her every movement. "If you write a message on paper with lemon juice, it disappears when it dries, but heating up the paper turns the juice brown and makes the message appear. And the only way to get the real message out of those nonsense letters we get from our anonymous correspondent is to set the parchment on fire, and watch it appear and disappear almost at the same time."

"Huh." Sirius tore his chosen pastry in half. "Wouldn't have thought most of the Death Eaters had the brains to think of that, or knew that much about Muggles—only that's not what's got you worried, is it, Letha?" he finished, setting both halves of the pastry aside. "Because for somebody to know they could send a message like that to us and it'd be safe…"

"They'd have to know what Remus and I can do." Danger flattened her hand and watched the flames swarm around it. "And we haven't exactly told the world, have we?"

"No." Remus brushed his finger across her palm. "But we have told Severus Snape."

"You think it's him?" Sirius shredded a bit of pastry between his fingers. "I would have thought he'd stick with the messenger-Patronus. Though I suppose if he's got more to tell you than one of them can say, a letter'd be the wisest idea. But then why all the secrecy? We know about him. I can see him taking precautions on his end, but why on ours?" He grimaced before the words were fully out of his mouth. "Unless we've got another damn spy in among us."

"Or what if Severus recruited a spy of his own, someone on the Death Eaters' side who secretly sympathizes with us, and told them just enough that they could send you messages?" asked Aletha, watching the firelight play across Remus's face. "He wouldn't necessarily need to have explained about the fire powers. Possibly he claimed that you use some kind of charm, maybe a variant on a Flame-Freezer, to reveal what's written there?"

"That would make sense." Remus spoke in the absent tone Aletha had come to associate with his attention being turned mainly inward, and Danger's eyes, though half-lidded, were swirling slowly with color. "It would explain…almost everything." He and Danger exhaled in unison and looked up, signaling the end of the colloquy for now.

"And the things it doesn't, don't need explanations," Danger took over the thread of the conversation, shaking her head to disperse the flames which had crept into her hair. "At least, not yet. Not until the war is over and you pick the first spot where we'll pitch those tents, Sirius."

"How come I have to pick?"

"It was your idea, wasn't it?"

Sirius grumbled under his breath. "Why'd you have to fall for a girl who makes sense all the bloody time?" he asked Remus.

"Same reason you did." Remus nodded to Aletha, who blew him a kiss. "Because they're the ones worth having. Now, if I'm not mistaken, some of us have essays to mark…"


Charlie Weasley sat at the same window where he'd once looked out over a world temporarily barred to him, due to his ferocious hexing of his twin brothers when they wouldn't stop teasing him about his "girlfriend". Smoothing out the slip of parchment inscribed in Remus Lupin's handwriting which had become crumpled in his grasp, he read for probably the thousandth time the words which had allowed him to take a full breath for the first time in days.

Tonks is alive and as safe as possible. She may be able to escape but will have to wait until the time is right. Do not attempt rescue without talking to us as this could endanger our people on the inside.

Shutting his eyes, Charlie rubbed his thumb against his wedding ring, wishing it were enchanted like the pendants Ginny and Ron wore. "Stay safe, love," he whispered, and found himself half-laughing through the words at their utter futility. The witch he'd married had based her entire life on defying danger. "Don't take stupid chances," he amended. "But if you get a good one…"


"It was just a stupid chance," said Tonks ruefully, sitting in the rocking chair with Annette dozing in her arms. "Some dirt that was looser than I thought it was going to be. And all for nothing, anyway, that box I saw them carrying was empty."

"Better empty than that it had someone in it." Echo continued folding clean diapers, her tiny hands moving briskly along the white cloth. "Then you would have been captured, and you wouldn't have been able to help them."

"Can't argue with that." Tonks looked down at the little face nestled against the crook of her arm and sighed. "You're awfully cute," she said. "I wish I could keep you. But I don't think it works with babies like it does with dogs, where you just bring them home and feed them and they're yours…"

"She doesn't have anybody else," said Echo quietly, her head bent over her work. "Except for me, and I don't count."

"Now just hold on a second!" Tonks caught herself just in time to keep from shouting it, and Annette's face still began to wrinkle up in preparation for a wail of protest. Quickly, Tonks went back to rocking, and made sure the little girl was well and deeply drowsing before she returned to her point. "Who said you don't count? I'm pretty sure she would have died if it weren't for you, and that counts for plenty."

"I didn't mean that." Echo looked up and smiled, a truer smile than Tonks had seen on the young house-elf in the five days they'd shared this chamber, unwilling guests of the Death Eaters. "He hasn't tried to make me think like that, like a 'proper' house-elf, not as long as I don't talk back to him." For a moment, the smile trembled. "He would, if I stayed here. If I always had to do what he wants, and never say anything. And if I didn't have my friends." Now the smile was replaced by a deepening of color which Tonks thought might betoken a house-elf blush. "Some of them are very brave, and that helps me be brave. But what I meant was, she's a human, Annette is, and she needs humans to grow up with. And I'm…" She shrugged. "Not."

"Are any of your friends?" Tonks continued rocking, despite Annette's limp weight against her arm. The motion, she'd found, soothed her as well as the baby, taking her mind off where she was and what might happen to her at any time. "Human, I mean. There've got to be some people around here who aren't actual Death Eaters, who just got caught up or dragged along or what have you."

"Some of them are, but it's too dangerous for them to take care of a baby." Echo spun her fingers at the diapers, sending them lofting across the room to the changing table. "They have to be ready all the time, ready to be even more perfect Death Eaters than the real ones, or ready to run and hide and stay out of the way of the ones who might see them doing anything else."

"All of which you'd think I'd have realized for myself." Tonks shook her head in mock-chagrin. "Fine Auror I am. But then, kicking down the doors is usually more our style than hiding behind them and listening. And speaking of which…" She slowed the chair to a stop and looked at Echo. "You're supposed to bring me things I need to do the work you brought me here to do, within reason," she said as calmly as she could manage. "Yes?"

Echo tucked her arm across her chest, canting her head to peer sidelong at Tonks. "Yes, Mistress," she whispered in a perfect imitation of some of the shyer house-elves at Hogwarts. "Yes, I am supposed to be doing that."

"Lighten it up before I laugh," Tonks mumbled without moving her lips, then raised her voice again. "All right. The work I'm supposed to be doing is taking care of this little girl. Right?"

"Yes, Mistress," Echo repeated, dropping some of her postural tricks so that she now resembled the more cheerful of the Hogwarts elves. "That is being right."

"Perfect." Tonks leaned back in the chair and smiled. "If I'm going to take care of her the best way I know how, especially in a house full of Death Eaters, I'm going to need a weapon. Getting me my wand back probably wouldn't qualify as 'within reason', but I bet you can find me something that will, can't you?"

Echo's blue eyes lit with glee. "Yes, Mistress," she said with a decided little curtsey, and vanished with a quiet snap.

"And there's the Echo we all know and love," Tonks murmured, half to the sleeping Annette, half to herself. "Now I just need to hope being married to Charlie is enough to counteract whatever Malfoy's got on her so I can free her and she can get us all out of here…"


"Wizardspace," said Hermione, opening her eyes. The Pride was sitting in a circle on the floor of their denning room at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, keeping quiet so that Hermione could have a chance to examine the memories of the hiding place for the final Horcrux and the tests her Pridemates had run on the mysterious shield around it.

"Wizardspace," Harry repeated. "You're sure?"

"Just about." Hermione nodded. "We can check with Percy and everyone who did the Red Roads if you like, they'd have more experience than I do, but all the diagnostic spells I could see you doing are pointing towards its being wizardspace."

"But wizardspace just makes things larger on the inside than the outside." Meghan's brow furrowed. "It has to have a thing to work on. Doesn't it?"

"Usually." Hermione cupped her hands as if holding a ball. "But this is the other half of the spell from the one we usually see. Most often, when we want wizardspace, we reach out into some other world where the space isn't being used and borrow a little piece of it, to connect to the thing we want to make larger on the inside. Whoever did this spell—and probably it was Voldemort himself, I don't think he'd have trusted anyone else with a secret this big—reached out into this world for his space that wasn't being used."

"But it would still need a thing to work on, like Meghan said, wouldn't it?" Ginny was running her pendant chain through her fingers, pausing to stroke the gold-wire cage with the engraved black stone which Dumbledore had given her and Harry as wedding gifts. "A doorway."

"And that's the problem." Neville's hand closed into a fist and tightened until his knuckles showed white. "That doorway could be anywhere. Hell, it could be anything. And there's no way in or out of a wizardspaced area other than the doorway, unless the person who cast the spell is good enough to make one on the spot. So we're further back than we were."

"Maybe not." Ron's voice was absent, but the rest of the Pride nonetheless turned to look at him. He was sitting with his eyes closed and his fingers working together, hooking across and releasing one at a time.

"Maybe not, why?" Harry prompted after several seconds of silence.

"Hmm?" Ron's eyes popped open. "Oh. That. Well, there has to be some kind of link between the place we found and the doorway into it, or otherwise the spell wouldn't work. Usually we can't see that link, because it's into a whole 'nother world, but with both pieces in this world, couldn't we find it and follow it?"

Harry looked suspiciously from Ron to Hermione and back again. "Did you do something to him?" he asked his sister.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Smiling smugly, Hermione removed Ron's pendant chain from around her neck and handed it back to her fiancé, who leaned over to kiss her cheek. "When do you think it will be safe to go back and start tracing that link?"


Severus Snape turned around from bottling his latest potion and discovered he was not alone.

"Mistress Amanda, I presume," he said, sketching the slightest of bows towards the slender red-haired figure standing beside the window of his workroom. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"You are imperturbable." Green eyes sparkled with amusement. "I hadn't quite believed what I was told, but I see now it was nothing but the truth."

"Truth is always to be valued." Severus glanced at the window. "Would you mind opening that? I would do it myself, but I have the feeling that you might not appreciate my reaching for my wand."

"I have no reason to mistrust you," said the young witch gravely, drawing her own wand and using it to undo the simple Locking Charm Severus had placed over the window, then tugging the window itself open with her long-fingered hands. "But your caution is appreciated. I have come for two purposes. First, to speak words to you, and second, to ask you a question. Which shall I do first?"

Severus shrugged one shoulder. "In whichever order you please."

"Very well." The witch half-closed her eyes and began, in slow and sonorous tones, to speak.

"When the serpent's child a consort brings home
"And the lion's son shall fall,
"By this shall ye know that the hour has come
"For the greatest triumph of all;
"And if some who are sworn have gone into the night,
"Their cause may falter and fail,
"But if twelve stand strong in the circle of light,
"The darkness cannot prevail."

Words, she said. Severus indulged himself in a brief glare of fury, since the green eyes had closed fully at some point during the hateful recitation. Words to predict the failure of all I have ever truly wanted, and the triumph of those I would give my life to destroy. Or—could it be—

Pushing aside hatred, hope, and speculation with equal force, he composed his face to neutrality as the witch called Amanda opened her eyes to gaze at him again. "You will make sure those who should hear my words, do," she said with surety. "Now, my question." A smile flickered on her lips before her serenity returned. "I will ask it three times, and three times only, and if you do not give me an answer, it will never be asked again. From whom could you accept a command to forgive yourself for the wrongs you have done?"

For an instant, everything froze. Severus could have counted the motes of dust hanging in the air, the flame-colored hairs on his companion's head, the bits of white fluff dotting the dark fabric of her robes—

With a wrench, he pulled himself back to normality. "By what right," he demanded hoarsely, "do you ask that question?"

"By the right of one who speaks as she must, for she cannot be silent." Amanda bowed her head, as if her words were a ritual. "For the second time, I ask. From whom would such a command be acceptable to you?"

A single harsh laugh broke from Severus. "You see into the future," he said, circling a hand to indicate the words already spoken, which seemed still to hang on the air like portents of things to come. "Would you have me believe you cannot see the past with equal ease? Why ask me this, when it can never be?"

"Many things are possible, in such times as we live in." The witch smiled slightly. "And I ask you this question for the third and final time, not because I need to hear the answer, but because you do. Who, Severus Snape, could command you to forgive yourself for your sins, and be obeyed?"

Severus turned away from the figure too much like, and too much unlike, the one now dominating his thoughts. Gripping the edge of his workbench, he battled bitterly against the storm inside him, until he thought he could speak with some vestige of calm.

"If anyone had that right," he said finally, "it would be…" His throat attempted to close in grief, but he forced it back for long enough to speak the name. "Lily."

"So it is spoken, and so it is intended," murmured the silvery voice behind him. "And so let it be done."

When Severus was able to look around again, his visitor was gone.


Bellatrix Lestrange stood just inside the doorway of a small, dusty room in Malfoy Manor, looking at the long-gone evidences of what it once had been. Bench-like seats in neat rows facing the front, three steps up to a narrow dais, a rectangular space for a table in its center and a speaker's podium to one side…

"Where once there were two," she breathed, "now let there be one."

"Dreaming your dusty dreams, Widow Lestrange?" asked a cool voice from the shadows on the dais, which rippled once and brought forth the slim figure of a young wizard, looking down on Bella with disdain. "Praising the unknown hand which gave you that title, so that you can bear one you like better?"

"So it's you." Bella sidled a step or two, squinting at the stranger in his antique robes. "Your picture doesn't do you justice."

"I'd say I'm flattered, my lady, but I know too much about you." Dafydd Beauvoi leaned against the podium, seemingly at his ease, but his eyes were hard and his muscles never relaxed. "So your precious Master has finally decided to reward your faithfulness as you believe it deserves."

"My Master is obeying the words of a prophecy," said Bella stiffly. "Assuring his triumph, and the final downfall of those foolish enough to stand in his way."

"Because that worked so well the last time he tried it." Dafydd shook his head, a faint smile curving his lips. "Still, if he thinks taking you as his consort—purely ceremonial, I have no doubt—will bring him success in his endeavors, who am I to stand in his way? Only hear this, Bellatrix Black Lestrange." Between one second and the next, the young lounger was replaced by the cold-eyed warrior, and Bella took an involuntary step back, fumbling for her wand. "This house once sheltered those Heirs of the Serpent who used their gifts in the service of wisdom and of life. If you think, in this place, to join your hand and your wand with that Heir of the Serpent who instead seeks folly and death—"

"Yes, what?" Bella thrust the words into the conversation as her hand closed on her wand's grip. "What will you do to me, revenant? Haunt me and whisper empty words in my ear? Try to frighten me to death?"

"Frighten you to death." Dafydd repeated the words musingly, as though he found some strange amusement in them. "No indeed, serpent's lady. Your death I do not desire, nor would I work towards it. Wars are ugly when kin slay kin. And yet." The smile which spread across his face now was anything but faint. "Should you wed your Dark Lord under this roof, under no other roof will you ever rest your head again, and what he seeks, you shall have." He bowed fluidly. "Much good may it do you both."

His slender fingers flicked out, and a pillar of flame erupted at his feet, blinding Bella for a critical instant. When the orange and purple afterimages had cleared from her vision, he was gone. She growled under her breath, then shook off the mood with a laugh.

"Was that meant to be a threat?" she wondered aloud. "What my Master seeks, I shall have—a threat?"

Turning in circles, she threw her head back to the ceiling, cackling gleefully. "Immortality!" she cried, spreading her arms as wide as they would go.

The word echoed back from the vaults and pillars, only to be drowned by her ever-increasing laughter.


With a whizzing sound followed by a solid thock, the block of wood hanging on the wall developed a green-stoned dagger in its center. Echo jumped up and down and clapped her hands, and Annette, in her cradle, gurgled in what Tonks chose to believe was approval. "Not too shabby, is it?" she asked, as Echo called the dagger back with a wave of her hand. "I've tried to keep in practice. You never know when a Muggle weapon might be useful. Though…" She weighed the dagger on her palm as Echo passed it to her. "This one isn't exactly Muggle, is it."

Echo shook her head. "I stole it from him," she said, her lips pulling back in an expression which hit somewhere between sneer and hiss. "Master Draco would have wanted you to have it. It ought to be used for good things." Her voice began to tremble. "Not bad ones. Not like—"

"Hey, now." Tonks went to one knee and gathered Echo into a gentle hug. "None of that. It's going to be okay, remember?"

"Well now, let's see here," wheezed a rough voice from the other side of the room.

Tonks spun as Annette began to wail. The baby was thrashing back and forth, perilously close to dislodging herself from the grasp of a squat, lumpen witch who was peering at her like a piece of meat. "Not bad lungs," she said critically. "Decent color. Probably healthy. Can't be certain of the blood, of course, but she'll do for supporting stock—"

She broke off with a yelp as several inches of goblin-wrought silver buried itself in her upper arm. Echo flung out her hands, magically catching a howling Annette three inches from the floor, and Tonks blinked for the first time since she had realized they weren't alone.

"That," she said shakily, "was a little too close."

"Yes." Echo scurried across the room to cuddle the shrieking baby into something resembling calm (surreptitiously bestowing a kick on the crumpled and unconscious witch beside her), then pulled off one of Annette's tiny socks and levitated it over to Tonks. "I think we should try it, Mistress Tonks. I think we should try it now."

"With you all the way." Tonks pulled her cousin's dagger free of the strange witch's shoulder, wiped it on the rough black cloak, and dropped it into her pocket. "Right then. Echo, this is for you…"


Charlie got to his feet with a sigh. Sitting here in his room at the Burrow and brooding himself to pieces wouldn't bring Tonks back to him any faster.

I'll go back to our flat and have a shower—security's decent there, and it's loads more private than here or Headquarters—and then I'll head over there and see if I can't get hold of Percy or Remus to talk about going in after her. There's got to be some way of doing it that won't tell the Death Munchers who gave us the information. He snorted a laugh as a thought occurred to him. Borrow that golden egg Harry got at the Triwizard Tournament, maybe, toss it onto the roof at Malfoy Manor, and bring in a flight of Common Welsh Greens to tear the house apart fighting over who gets it…

Still chuckling under his breath, he Disapparated, feeling first his parents' wards, then his own and Tonks's, brush his skin as he made the journey between his two homes. Fully materialized, he yawned once to pop his ears, shook his head to ensure everything was still attached, and was reaching for the clasp of his robes when the sound of splashing water, along with a noise which could loosely be called singing, caught his attention.

The hell? Dropping his hand to his wand instead, Charlie started towards the flat's tiny bathroom, moving at the pace he used to ensure sleeping dragons stayed that way. Who breaks into a flat to have a shower? And the wards didn't feel any different than usual… weird. Either I'm losing my touch, or whoever this is, they are excellent. Good thing I've got the drop on them…

The bathroom door was sitting on the latch. Cautiously, Charlie eased it open, sizing up the figure behind the translucent shower curtain. Witch, not wizard. Decent size for a witch, but still. Naked, so no wand, and she probably won't think to do more than scream—this shouldn't be too hard—

"Freeze!" he yelled, yanking the curtain back.

The witch in his shower did indeed scream, and accompanied the noise with a well-aimed gut punch, pulled at the last possible second, but still hard enough to send Charlie staggering back a pace and into the wall. His thoughts raced as his lungs struggled for air.

She's here—but she can't be here—it's got to be some kind of trick—

"What the hell was that for?" Tonks yelled back, shutting off the water and glaring at him, her hair flushing from the white of shock to a red as vibrant as Charlie's own. "Can't a witch get a shower in her own damn flat around here?"

Charlie managed to suck in a breath. "What happened to 'Hi, honey, I'm home'?" he wheezed, before he stumbled forward and grabbed hold of her as tightly as he could. Since she was clinging to him just that hard, it wasn't too difficult.

"You're alive," he mumbled, hoping she would mistake the catches in his voice for getting his breath back rather than what they actually were. "You're here."

"I'm wet," Tonks pointed out, but Charlie shook his head.

"Don't care," he declared, and scooped her into his arms. "Merlin's boxer briefs, you're home, you're safe—" He stopped halfway out of the bathroom as yet another unexpected sound caught his ear. "What's that?" he said carefully.

"What's it sound like?" Tonks countered.

"It sounds like a baby." Charlie set his wife on her feet. "This is going to be a long story, isn't it?"

"Not that long." Tonks raked her hair into its usual pink spikes, then grimaced as she looked down at herself. "Would you mind—"

"What—oh, right, right." Charlie Summoned a towel from the rack, and Tonks quickly rubbed herself dry and pulled on a fresh set of robes from the closet nearby. The crying in the other room had calmed to the occasional fretful wail, the sort of sound Charlie remembered from his childhood as Ginny not quite willing to settle down yet, and Tonks darted out of the room and returned a moment later with the source of the noise in her arms.

"She followed me home," she said, enlarging her eyes and batting impossibly long eyelashes at Charlie. "Can we keep her?"

"Knock that off." Charlie came to Tonks's side, looking down at the brown-haired bundle she was holding. Big blue eyes gazed solemnly back at him, seeming to size him up as a potential source of cuddles. "Who is she?"

"I don't know exactly." Tonks rocked gently on the balls of her feet, a move so familiar to Charlie's eye from his mother that it twisted his brain into knots to see his wife doing it. "She was there, at Malfoy Manor, hidden away. Echo said her parents died the day she was born, and one of our spies got hold of her and gave her to Echo to take care of—oh, Echo's here too, I was able to free her from Malfoy and she Apparated us out," she added, and Charlie turned his head to smile at the little house-elf who was waving at him from the doorway. "Go tell your parents you're okay, love, we're good here for a while."

"Yes, Miss." Echo disappeared with a little pop, and Charlie shook his head again, trying to get his thoughts to settle into any kind of coherent order.

"What's her name?" was the first thing out of his mouth when they did. "The baby, I mean."

"Annette Selene." Tonks sat down on the edge of the bed, and Charlie joined her there, letting his arm slide around her waist. "Echo never said who her parents were, if she even knows it herself, so I haven't got the faintest idea what her surname is…"

"Sure you do." Charlie waited until Tonks lifted her head to look at him, then grinned. "What's wrong with 'Weasley'?"

The light that kindled behind his wife's eyes told Charlie his impulse hadn't been wrong. "You mean it?" she asked, but her arms were already tightening around Annette as though denying the child to anyone who might want to snatch her away. "We don't know anything about her, or where she comes from…"

"Same place all babies come from. The gnomes brought her." Charlie chuckled at Tonks's groan. "What, your mum never told you that?"

"My mum was a Healer. She thought I needed to know the exact biology of it, in every last detail, the very first time I asked that question." Tonks winced as a flush of mortification stained her cheeks. "Cured me of asking her things for the next three years, that did. But Charlie." She met his eyes squarely. "You're really sure about this?"

"Finders keepers, right?" Charlie stroked a finger across Annette's cheek, irrationally thrilled when she turned her head towards his hand. "You found her. We're keeping her."

"Yeah, but…" Tonks had the look of a woman bringing up a point against her will. "What's your mum going to say?"

"My mum?" Chuckling under his breath, Charlie scooted back on the bed, tugging Tonks with him. "You mean the person who started asking how soon she could expect her first grandchild at our wedding reception?"

"Right." Tonks laughed. "Almost forgot about that."

"And this isn't just a grandchild." Charlie held out his arms, and after an instant's hesitation, Tonks laid the baby in them. "This is a granddaughter. Add that to you and Echo being back safely? Mum's going to be over the moon."

Looking down at the precious life in his arms, Charlie felt again the sensation of soaring that he'd first experienced on a certain day at Hogwarts, when he'd looked across neat rows of conjured theater chairs to see a perfect duplicate of himself already in his seat, and realized that the woman he loved was ready to love him back again.

"Annette Selene Weasley," he said under his breath, and bent down to kiss his daughter's soft cap of hair. "Welcome home, baby."


"All right, everyone, gather 'round," said Remus in his best professorial tones, ushering his Advanced Defense students to the railing of the balcony overlooking the entrance hall. "In just a moment, we will see an excellent illustration of the fact that Dark potions are not to be taken lightly." He smirked at Aletha, who rolled her eyes at him. "Pun intended."

"Am-y-cus!" The plaintive voice rang out over the entrance hall, and Amycus Carrow, who had taken a single furtive step out of the Great Hall's doors, groaned in disgust. "Am-y-cus, where are you—Amycus!"

Alecto Carrow emerged from the stairway to the dungeons, beaming so widely the sides of her mouth seemed to be in danger of cracking open. "I found you!" she caroled, and pounced on her brother, hugging him tightly. "Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!"

"Gerroff me!" Amycus grunted, trying to shove Alecto's hands away. Alecto only cackled and hung on tighter.

"As you can see, Miss Carrow is suffering from the effects of the Imprimatus Potion," Remus continued gravely as his students scribbled briskly on hovering scrolls or muttered to DictaQuills, glancing up every now and then to get a better look at the little drama taking place below. "It has stripped her of her human powers of reasoning and implanted in her an unshakeable devotion to the first person she saw upon awakening from the potion trance, namely, her brother."

"Gerroff me!" Amycus finally managed to dislodge Alecto's grip, and quickly Stuck her to the floor before she could grab him again. "And stay there!"

"But…" Alecto's eyes filled with tears as her brother stamped across the entrance hall and vanished through one of the doors. "But…Amycus…"

Aletha leaned over the railing and waved her wand, creating a shower of silvery dust around Alecto, who gasped in awe as it cascaded about her. "Ooh," she crooned, snatching at bits of dust. "Shiny."

"The effects of the potion are, sadly, quite permanent," Remus concluded. "And when one considers that the Imprimatus is not in fact classed as Dark magic, that it inhabits the gray area between Light and Dark, where a wise wizard walks cautiously if at all…" He shook his head, then glanced around at the sound of the bell. "Homework, two and a half feet on another potion classed as neither Light nor Dark, and under which conditions, if any, you would consider it suitable for use," he said quickly. "Professor Black can help you with your research if necessary. Class dismissed." As the students scattered, he held out his hand to Aletha. "Going my way?"

"Does your wife know you pick up strange women like this?" Aletha inquired, and grinned at his rude noise. "Can you take us both, Kady?"

"Yes, Mistress Letha," said Remus's left leg, and the corridor blurred around them and reformed into the Defense teacher's quarters, where Danger looked up from a scroll and Sirius from his typewriter to wave hello. "There you are being!" chirped the house-elf, sliding out from under Remus's robes, where she had claimed the right to ride while he was teaching. "I is coming back in an hour, Master Remus?"

"Two hours," Remus corrected. "That demonstration was for both my higher-level classes, so I don't have the one that meets just before lunch."

Kady nodded and vanished, and Remus sat down beside Danger, claiming his welcome-home kiss, as Aletha found a seat for herself on the other side of Sirius's table. "What's got you so interested, love?" he asked.

"A bet we've got going." Danger nodded at Sirius. "What we found the most unusual about what happened to Tonks, and what it might mean."

"And you're betting on…which of you we agree with?" Aletha hazarded. "I'm a bit hazy on why Dobby and Winky weren't off to Malfoy Manor to tear Lucius into shreds the instant Echo got back."

"Ha!" Danger pumped her fist in the air. "One for my side! But I have the answer right here, as it happens." She fluttered the scroll in her hand. "Hermione asked Dobby about that this morning, and she liked the answer so much she sat right down and wrote it to me." Flattening the parchment, she began to read.

"Dobby reminded me that house-elves can sometimes sense things about their families, like what kind of babies will be born, or when and how some members of the family might die. Echo was enough of Lucius's house-elf, before Tonks took over and freed her, to know that much about him, and she says that not only is his time to die very soon, but he will die in terrible pain and helpless anger, betrayed by his own treachery, and knowing that his death serves a cause he hates and hastens the downfall of his beloved Master. Dobby and Winky don't think they could do any better than that, so they aren't going to bother."

"Damn," said Sirius, almost reverently. "House-elves are poetic little buggers when you let them go, aren't they?"

"Some of that may have been Kitten," Remus pointed out. "All right, Sirius, what was yours? Not what Lucius called her right at that last second?"

"Matter of fact, it was." Sirius grinned. "Should have known you'd catch that, Moony. 'Little cousin', when she's not his cousin—well, she is, but only very tenuously, same way all the purebloods are each other's cousins, and by marriage she's his niece. That's a lot closer of a relationship, and it's what he should have called her. Only he didn't." He shook his head. "Not sure what to think about that one."

"Give them the rundown," said Danger, setting her letter aside. "We were talking about it earlier," she explained to Remus and Aletha. "He's got three theories, but he won't tell me one of them."

"Because it's not a theory." Sirius waved a hand at her. "It's a wild-ass guess that flies in the face of a whole bunch of things we already know. I'm sorry I even mentioned it. But whichever of the other two's right," he went on, widening his focus to include his other listeners, "it gives us a whole new level of hard if we come up against Lucius on the battlefield. We've got to catch him alive."

"Why?" asked Aletha, leaning back in her chair and clasping her hands across her knee. "Well, apart from the obvious aspect that I certainly wouldn't want to interfere with that lovely fate Echo mapped out for us."

"Because either he's totally lost it and can't even remember his own family tree, in which case we might have a fair chance of disentangling Luna from him because he wouldn't be able to fight us off, or he's playing a double game and he's the most dangerous thing out there, not barring Voldemort." Sirius tapped his fingers against his knees, his usual mannerism of concentration as he herded his words into line. "Think about it. What he wants, what all the purebloods want, is magical supremacy. Wizards and witches on top, Muggles and the rest of the thinking world on bottom, and that's the way it stays. Right?"

"Pureblood wizards and witches on top," Remus corrected. "Otherwise right."

"But that's the point." Sirius leaned forward, his eyes intense. "The blood purity stuff's a load of hogwash. It's stupid. The purebloods are inbreeding themselves out of existence, and I think Lucius knows that now. I think, honestly, he's known it for years, or why'd he bond Draco and Neenie way back when? And if he's finally caught onto that—if he's willing to dump the blood purity idea and declare everyone who has magic equal to everyone else, but automatically superior to everyone who doesn't—it would explain his calling Tonks 'cousin', placing her on a level footing with him, claiming her as part of a larger magical family…"

"He'd get a lot of the people who're undecided right now with an idea like that," said Remus. "People who like the idea of taking control and running things to suit themselves, but who have a few too many Muggles in their family trees to be safe in the Death Eaters' world. And if he could find some way to convince Muggleborns not only that this new world is where they belong, but that they should scorn the families they've left behind, even lord it over them because of that accident of birth…"

"Merlin's wand." Aletha exhaled slowly. "And the worst part is, kids of an age to start Hogwarts would be prime for that sort of ideology. I know I was desperate to be taken seriously when I was eleven. Give them a few years of that, and a free rein with magic at home to back it up—" She shook her head. "I'm with you. If Malfoy's worked that out, he's just become our biggest threat."

"But why do we need him alive, then?" Danger asked. "I'd think it would be wiser just to kill him. The movement ought to die with him."

"Would it?" Remus gazed into the fire. "If he's got enough brains to work all this out, wouldn't he also have enough to start recruiting some of the other Death Eaters to his own cause? Especially after a scare like he's already had, with Draco. He doesn't believe he's immortal anymore, so he'll have set up failsafes, in case he dies before the work is finished." He looked back at Sirius. "Is that what you were thinking?"

"Almost to the letter." Sirius grinned. "Nice to know I wasn't totally off base."

"No, I think you're right on. And I think you've officially scared me." Remus sighed. "All right. The word goes out as soon as I can spare a minute to get to Headquarters. Lucius Malfoy to be taken alive if at all possible."

"What is your third theory, though?" asked Danger curiously. "Or wild-ass guess, whatever you want to call it."

"Would you do me a favor and forget I ever mentioned that?" Sirius groaned at Danger's firmly shaken head. "Merlin, these witches! Fine, all right, I'll tell you, but not today. You want to go through with that camping trip after we get the war over with, right? I'll tell you my wild-ass guess the day we pitch that first tent. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Danger wafted a kiss across the room on a tiny blossom of fire to brush against Sirius's cheek. "And now for something completely different. What are we doing for lunch?"

  • Previous
  • Next

Author Notes:

And there we are.

Ladies and gentlemen, take a deep breath and hold onto your hats. Chapter 54, "There All Along", takes place on the twenty-ninth of October, story-time. And if you recall from chapters past, the Final Battle, in the Dangerverse, is slated to happen on Halloween…

Yes, that's right. We are headed into the biggest, the baddest, the most climactic of climaxes, and I do not intend to stop. Well, except for the ten days or so when I'll be out of the country. And the occasional break for things like, y'know, work and sleep and food. And possibly a few days of suspense while I leave you on hideous cliffhangers…

But all joking aside, we are about to enter the final stage of the Dangerverse. I have been thinking about the scenes which are coming up, many of them, quite literally for years. Some of you may be thrilled and overjoyed by them, while others may not enjoy them quite so much. But as my mother used to tell me, "If the food's spicy enough to have any taste at all, somebody's not going to like it."

In other words, if you don't like what I do with this ending…well, it isn't that I don't care what you think, O readers, but this is my story and I'm writing it primarily to please myself. It may, in places, be too angsty for you, or not angsty enough. It may seem far-fetched or filled with painful realism. All I can say is, I speak as I must, for I cannot be silent.

Don't forget to check me out in my various online homes (annebwalsh dot com, facebook dot com slash annebwalsh dot page, and at-sign AnneBWalsh on Twitter), don't forget to review, and I'll see you all next time as we begin the run-up to the Final Battle!)