*
PART 1: Today I Clean, Tomorrow I Bake...
Harry wished he could drum up even a little enthusiasm for his Transfiguration homework. But there had been something in McGonagall’s eyes when she assigned it that had made most of them realize that it was an impossible assignment – and that that was exactly why they were being given it.
Realizations like that didn’t tend to inspire him.
Harry pointed his wand in the general direction of the table and said, half-heartedly, “Aurum transformare.”
“Come on now, Harry,” Ron said, slightly disapproving. “You’ll never get it like that.” Since the two boys lost the ability to hold a study-session that didn’t turn into a massive grope-fest, Ron had started doing his schoolwork with Hermione, and some of her scholarly zeal had obviously rubbed off on him. Ron pushed up his sleeves, pointed his wand precisely at the pile of straw on the table, and proclaimed, “Aurum transformare!”
With a “whoosh,” the straw transformed itself into...well, it was still straw, but at least now it was gold-colored straw, glimmering cheerfully in the firelight.
“Ron!” Harry exclaimed. “That’s wonderful.” He rewarded Ron with a kiss and prepared to cast the spell himself.
And would have, too, if not for the growl.
Very, very, slowly, Harry and Ron turned toward the sound. Coming towards them from the fireplace was one of the ugliest small creatures they’d seen since coming to Hogwarts. It was about two feet tall and basically man-shaped, with a scrunched, leathery face behind a draggling gray beard. Its costume was vaguely Alpine, and it was advancing rapidly towards them and muttering things that, while not in any language Harry was familiar with, he figured were not endearments.
Harry threw a protective arm across Ron’s chest and backed them up a step. “Ron?” he whispered. “What in blazes is that?”
Ron shook his head. “Blast! McGonagall warned us about these. It’s a...a...oh, why can’t I think of it? There’s a countercurse; I know she taught it.”
“Think faster!” Harry hissed. The imp was almost on top of them, reaching long, bony fingers towards the golden straw, but its bright, beady eyes were fixed on the two boys. They would have to slip around it to get to the door – and the odds on that were nothing a betting man would take – and the table at their backs prevented their escape up the stairs.
“If only I could think of what it’s called,” Ron moaned. “The countercurse is to do with its name, and its name is to do with a Muggle fairy tale...something about straw and gold and—“
“Rumplestiltskin?”
Ron’s eyes brightened. “That’s the one! Thank heavens you were raised by Muggles, Harry!”
Thinking with a wry and hasty grin that this was probably the only time he’d be grateful for the Dursleys, Harry raised his wand and hoped like hell that this would work. “Rumplestiltskin! Rumplestiltskin! Rumplestiltskin!”
The imp stopped advancing. Harry and Ron held their breath.
And then the creature started spinning. Its face turned redder than the hair of any Weasely, it snarled and shrieked and cursed, and it spun, faster and faster until it was nothing more than a whirling blur in the middle of the common room.
Harry edged forward, trying to position himself between Ron and the imp. “Ron,” he said, green eyes wide with panic, “I think it’s going to—“
And then it did.
Harry and Ron were flung backwards by the force of the explosion. Ron threw himself over Harry, protecting him from a rain of furniture and imp-bits. They lay dazed for a long moment. “Well,” Ron said finally, “that was disgusting.”
The sound of rapid footsteps roused him at once. “Ron! What happened?” It was Ginny.
“Hey, Ginny,” he said weakly, rolling over to look up at her. “Harry and I were – we had this homework, you see…” He was too stupefied to say much more.
The person who had come in behind Ginny had plenty more to say. “Had a run-in with a Rumplestiltskin imp, I see.” Hermione leaned down, but, rather than give Ron a hand up, she picked a strand of golden straw out of his hair. “Excellent work on the transfiguration. But, we learned the wards. Why didn’t you set them?”
Ron blushed, looking at Harry. “I was about to, and then I got, ahem, a bit distracted.”
Hermione frowned at Ron’s “distraction.” “Yes, well. You should get this cleaned up.”
“Of course. Right away.” Ron cleared his throat and raised his wand-hand.
“Oh, Ron!” Ginny moaned. “Your wand—“
He looked at his hand. His wand had been snapped in half and was hanging together by a single narrow strip of wood, the upper half flopping dejectedly against the lower. And this wasn’t just any wand – it was the one his parents had bought with their Daily Prophet prize money to replace the one destroyed by the Whomping Willow. “Oh, dear.”
“What will Mum and Dad say?” Ginny demanded.
“They’ll say,” said Hermione, picking her way across the common room floor, careful to avoid any pieces-of-imp, “that it’s a lucky thing he and Harry weren’t killed.”
They looked back to Harry, and it was at this point that Ron realized the black-haired wizard had had surprisingly little to say since the creature exploded. “Harry? Harry, are you all right?”
Harry shook his head, his eyes behind his glasses (still indestructible thanks to the spell Hermione put on them during that rainy Quidditch game long past) looking rather hazy. “My...my leg feels a bit funny.”
Ron looked at Harry’s leg and swallowed a queasy feeling in his stomach. “That would be because the table fell on it.”
Raising his head, Harry peered at the nearly impossible direction his leg was now pointing in. “Ah-ha,” he said quietly. And then he passed out.
He came to once, briefly, as Madam Pomfrey (muttering something rather dark about “Minerva and her dangerous tricks”) had Dean and Seamus load Harry onto a stretcher. He looked at Ron, confusion playing across his pale face. “Ron? Did you say something about your wand?”
*
PART 2: Furry
Having once had all the bones in his arm regrown overnight, one broken leg was nothing to Harry. Madam Pomfrey had him healed in no time but refused to release him from the hopsital wing, and now he was bored, bored, bored.
Ron’s injuries were practically nonexistent, but he faked being more wounded to remain close to Harry. But the second time Madam Pomfrey and her eagle eyes caught the red-haired wizard sneaking into Harry’s bed, she banished him. Neville and Hermione stopped by to visit, as well as Ginny and the Creevey brothers, but for the most part, Harry had been on his own for nearly six hours, and if something interesting didn’t happen soon, he was going to go mad.
When the door opened and Harry caught a glimpse of the look on Dumbledore’s face, he reminded himself to stop wishing for interesting things to happen. “Hello, Harry,” the headmaster said kindly. “How are you feeling?”
There was something in Dumbledore’s voice that made Harry distinctly uncomfortable, something a little too solicitous and worried. Still, he put on a brave face. “I’m fine, sir. A bit bored, but that’ll be all right once Madam Pomfrey says I can leave.”
The headmaster nodded and looked around the room. “I would’ve expected to find Mr Weasely here.”
“He was,” Harry said, unable to keep from blushing, “but he, ah...Madam Pomfrey kicked him out. Repeatedly.”
Chuckling in understanding, Dumbledore pulled a chair up beside Harry’s bed and sat in it slowly. Fumbling around in the deep pockets of his midnight blue robe for a moment, he came up with a handful of round yellow candies. “Care for a lemon drop?”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Harry, accepting one. He popped it into his mouth, and then tried not to make too terrible a face when he discovered it to be thoroughly coated in pocket fuzz.
“Professor McGonagall tells me you had considerable success with the homework.”
Harry shrugged. “Ron did. I never got a chance to try it, what with that ugly little exploding thing showing up in the common room.”
“Hm, yes, nasty creatures, Rumplestiltskin imps.” Dumbledore nodded. “But I have no doubt that you would have had equal success in the endeavor. Your mother was extremely fond of that spell.” They both sat a moment in melancholy silence. “Now then, Harry,” said Dumbledore, his eyes hardening slightly, “I’ve had a letter today.” He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a small square of folded parchment, which he passed across to Harry. The young wizard stared in shock, wondering if he was really expected to read Albus Dumbledore’s private correspondence. “Go on,” the headmaster urged him. “It’s to do with you.”
His hands shaking minutely, Harry unfolded the parchment. When he recognized the graceful, slanting script, something inside of him started to knock most unpleasantly. The furry candy felt like a lead weight on his tongue.
“Dear Professor Dumbledore,
“I hope this letter finds you safe and well. The gods know there are few enough places where the darkness is not growing nearly too thick to see through, and it always does me good to think of you at Hogwarts, a place where there is still light.
“I am writing in regards to Harry. I know we had hoped that his aide would not be necessary until he had completed his training, but a situation has arisen in which he would be of great help to us. If the situation stood other than as it does, I would come myself to talk with him; however, the circumstances of my last departure from Hogwarts, as well as the identity of my traveling companion, make such a visit unadvisable. And so I would ask, if Harry is amenable, for him to meet me at the usual place in three days’ time.
“Please impress upon Harry two things. Firstly, meeting with me in no way obligates him to accompany me. Secondly, and more importantly, even meeting with me may put him in some danger, and that agreeing to aide us will endanger him even further. I say this not to scare him, but to ensure that he fully understands what he may be facing before he comes.
“Thank you again, sir, for everything.
“I remain, yours,
“Remus Lupin.”
Harry refolded the parchment and held it out to Dumbledore, who took it without comment. Harry stared at his hands. “He’s a bit, er, vague there, isn’t he?”
“He has to be. The nature of Professor Lupin’s work is highly secretive, as are the identities of those with whom he works. Even I don’t know the comings and goings of every member of the Order. We are much safer that way. To be more specific in this letter might have endangered them.”
Harry swallowed. Sometimes, despite the nights when screaming pain in his forehead kept him awake until sunrise, despite Voldemort having tried to kill him half a dozen times, it was easy, here in the shelter of Hogwarts, to underestimate the severity of the battle being waged in outside their walls. Remus’s letter, and Dumbledore’s grave response to it, brought the truth back home to Harry with a sickening thud. “Where is ‘the usual place’?” he asked as calmly as he could manage.
Frowning, Dumbledore slipped the letter back into his pocket. “I would rather not say, unless you decide to meet him.” The wizard’s frown deepened, and he sat back in his chair, turning a lemon drop between his fingers. “Let me ask you, first of all: will your leg be healed in three days?”
“It’s practically healed now,” Harry scoffed. “I could already be out of here, if Madam Pomfrey would let me.” He swallowed nervously – Dumbledore, he knew, had great respect for Poppy Pomfrey, and criticizing her was never a good idea in the headmaster’s presence.
However, Dumbledore merely nodded. “She worries about you, Harry – as do we all.” His blue eyes snapped back into focus on Harry’s face. “Lupin’s absolutely right about one thing: whatever he has in mind is bound to be dangerous. I would be remiss if I did not say that your life might, once again, be put in jeopardy. However, I doubt that Remus would summons you unless he considered it to be of vital importance.”
Harry considered. The conversation was not engendering feelings of assurance or a desire to accept the proposed meeting. Still, he was committed to nothing, right? Remus had said so, and the headmaster had said it again. And it had been far too long since he saw his old professor or his “traveling companion.” He smiled at the phrase, and he knew his decision had been made. Danger or no, if Remus and Sirius thought there was something that Harry could do, then Harry was determined to do it, if he could. “I will meet with him, Professor,” he said.
Dumbledore’s face and eyes at once grew three times more somber than they had been before. He placed his hands over Harry’s and intoned, “It is well, Harry Potter.” Harry shuddered, the almost ritualistic tone of the other man’s words chilling him through. Dumbledore removed his hands, and his voice returned to more like normal. “You will meet Remus Lupin at the Leaky Cauldron in three days’ time.”
“The Leaky Cauldron? Forgive me, sir, but that doesn’t seem like a…a good hiding place.”
Dumbledore smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Sometimes, Harry, the best place to hide is right out in the open, and sometimes the best way to hide is to pretend you aren’t doing it at all.” He pushed himself to his feet and looked down at Harry. “Get some rest; you’ll need that leg healed if you’re to go on a journey.”
A journey? Could it be that the headmaster already knew what Remus was going to ask of him? Well, getting into it now was going to get Harry nowhere, so he smiled and nodded. “I will, sir.”
“Then I will expect you in my office in three days’ time, and from there, you will travel by Floo Powder to Diagon Alley.” Harry must’ve made a face, because Dumbledore laughed sympathetically. “I know it isn’t your favorite method of transportation, but it’s the one that will draw the least attention to you.” The headmaster held his hand out to Harry. “Fare ye well, Harry Potter.”
Again, the strange formality, but this time with an air of blessing as well. Harry shook Dumbledore’s hand, and the other wizard slipped out of the hopsital wing.
Still, before too long, Harry was smiling again as an idea began to take shape in his mind. If he was going to Diagon Alley to meet Professor Lupin…yes, that could work. He was still smiling as he drifted off to sleep, to dream of exploding imps and shadowy meetings.
*
PART 3: Abuse of Chocolate
Remus was only partial to one kind of Muggle sweet, and that was more for the therapeutic value than the taste. He enjoyed the taste well enough – the chocolate was of fairly good quality, and sometimes the faint hint of orange was exactly what was called for. But the real reason Remus enjoyed them so much was that the proper way to eat one was to whack it really hard against the counter several times.
Still, he may have whacked this one a few too many times before strong hands closed around his, stilling his wrist. “Moony! Moony! I think you’ve won.”
Sirius released his hands, and Remus weakly banged the chocolate orange against the countertop one more time in a half-hearted show of rebellion. “It’s cathartic,” he protested.
His mouth half quirked up, Sirius peeled back a corner of the foil wrapping to reveal the network of cracks that now ran across the surface of the chocolate ball. “It’s ruined.”
“It tastes the same.” Remus pinched several of the larger chunks between his fingers and popped them into his mouth. “And oh, how I wish it were Voldemort’s head.”
“I know you do.” Sirius ran his hand in slow circles around Remus’s back, trying to soothe him. And to think people believed Sirius was the volatile half of the couple. “We all do. But taking it out on the chocolate—“
“I don’t know if Harry will come, Paddy.” Remus slumped against the counter, picking at the foil wrapper with his thumbnail. “What’s worse, I don’t know if I want him to.”
“We need him, Moony.”
“Do we?” Remus’s head snapped up, his amber eyes blazing. “Do we need him enough to risk his life? Over this?”
Sirius’s own eyes flashed back. He was, perhaps, the only wizard living who was totally without fear of Remus Lupin. “’This,’ as you so dismissingly call it, is one of the greatest tactical advantages the Order has been in the position to obtain since this accursed war began. It’s worth anything we have to give to attain it.”
“Not Harry’s life, Sirius!” Remus stalked over to the window and looked out over his garden. During the growing season, one look at the deceptively chaotic profusion of plants he planted and tended soothed him to a point where he could think and speak rationally again. But now it was late fall, and the tangle of weeds, the vines and stalks of dead annuals, and the occasional solitary perennial that stood, battered but defiant, against the onslaught of winter, served only to remind him of the desolation that had already been wrought among them and the further catastrophes which were certain to befall. “Not his life.”
“Harry is an adult now, Remus. He can make the decision for himself.”
“He’s not an adult, Sirius; for the gods’ sake don’t be a fool. He’s sixteen. Still a child. He spent the first eleven years of his life with Muggles and the last six at Hogwarts. He’s sheltered, little idea what’s going on out here, for all Voldemort’s been attacking him. If he agrees to accompany us – he’s no idea what he’s in for.”
“It’s sweet of you to want to protect him, my love, truly, but—“
“I don’t think we’re going to be successful,” Remus blurted.
Sirius froze. “What?”
“It’s not going to work this time. Too much has changed. Whatever the four of us had the first time that allowed us such success – gods, how arrogant we must’ve been. Or too stupid to realize it never should’ve worked. Whatever it was, we can’t reproduce it. We’re not the same people – any of us. We’ll fail. And we’ll die.”
“Remus, you can’t believe that—“
“I do believe it, Sirius. Or rather, I dread it, more than I’ve dreaded anything since the day you were locked into Azkaban and I feared I’d never see you again. And losing Harry…oh, Sirius, it’ll be too much like losing James, and I can’t bear to go through that again.”
Far later than he should have, Sirius saw the trembling fear beneath Remus’s anger. “Oh, Moony,” he sighed, catching Remus up in his arms. “I can’t tell you it’ll be all right. I can’t say that for sure. But it’s what we must do. There’s no way around it.”
Remus sniffled quietly in Sirius’s embrace. “I fear for us all, Padfoot. We’ve been through so much; when will we have earned the right to be left in peace?”
For a moment, Sirius’s grip on Remus tightened, and his pale blue eyes burned with cold fire. “When Voldemort is dead, and his followers dead, and the war at an end. Then we will be left alone.”
“Good, then.” Remus forced cheer into his voice. “It’s good to have goals.”
As Remus extricated himself from Sirius’s arms, a fluttering against the windowpane drew their attention. A small brown owl flitted excitedly outside the window, barely staying still long enough to be identifiable.
“I think I know that owl,” said Sirius, striding over to the window. “It’s the one I gave to Ron Weasely. What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know, but for Merlin’s sake let him in; he’s making me seasick twittering around out there.”
Sirius opened the window, and the owl buzzed inside, circling joyfully around the rafters. Swooping down, it dropped a letter in the hands of a startled and slightly woozy Remus before settling on Sirius’s shoulder and nipping affectionately – and forcefully – at his ear. “Hey!” Sirius protested uselessly. “Ow. Cut it out.”
Remus raised an eyebrow, bemused, as he opened the letter. “Where on Earth did you find that creature?”
“He found me, actually. It wasn’t long after Buckbeak and I escaped Hogwarts. He was flying around the Forbidden Forest; I think someone had abandoned him there.” He swatted at the owl, who seemed to take that as a sign of affection.
“I can’t imagine why,” Remus said dryly. He looked at the letter. “It’s from Harry.”
Sirius went still so fast that even the tiny owl knew something was afoot. “Read it,” he said, his voice strangled.
“Dear Professor and Snuffles,
“Sorry to send Pigwidgeon; Professor Dumbledore’s borrowed Hedwig. Give Pig a biscuit or something; he should calm down for a minute or two.
“Anyway, just wanted to drop a line to say hello. I realized I hadn’t written in a while; too busy studying for finals. I swear, Snape hates me more every term, and the rest of the professors have decided that their best contribution to the war effort is to make sure we learn everything there is to know before we graduate. I’ve never had so much homework; even Professor Sprout’s laying it on bloody thick. I’ll be lucky if I don’t collapse from exhaustion before the end of the year.
“And the assignments have gone all weird, too. Last week, Professor McGonagall made us perform the Aurum transformare, and Ron and I had a run-in with a Rumplestiltskin imp. Ron’s wand snapped right in half, and the table fell on my leg. I was in the hospital wing for a whole day; Madam Pomfrey’s only just let me out. But the leg’s good as new, and Ron and I should be running around causing trouble again before curfew tonight. That is, if that’s a thing he still does. He’s been doing a lot of studying with Hermione lately, and they’re starting to gang up on me to study more and wreak havoc less. Where’s the fun in that?
“We flattened Hufflepuff at Quidditch last week. I rather feel sorry for them sometimes; the fact that they’re such gracious losers makes me feel like a right bastard for trouncing them so solidly, but I never feel bad enough to go even a little bit easy on them.
“I think that’s about it. I hear you’ll be traveling again soon; maybe I’ll run into you at some point.
“Harry.”
Remus sighed and refolded the letter. “He’s coming, then.”
Sirius took the parchment from his hand and waved away the frenetic Pig. As Harry had said, the biscuit Sirius gave him had kept him quiet for two minutes and no more, and now he was back to zooming around the cottage as though he owned it. “Where do you see that?”
“I see it in the fact that he bothered to write at all. And, ‘maybe I’ll run into you at some point’? I doubt he could’ve been more obvious.”
“Be gentle on him, Moony. He’s not used to coded communications.”
“He should learn, if he’s coming with us.” Picking up a quill, Remus stared at Harry’s letter for a moment. He ripped off the written part and on the parchement that remained scribbled, “Harry: Snuffles and I would be happy to see you on our travels, but of course the choice is entirely up to you.”
“Subtle,” Sirius remarked.
“Sod off. And stop reading over my shoulder.” Grinning, he picked up the quill again and added, “Got to go, Snuffles is begging to be let outside, and it’s rather pathetic.”
“The hell I am. Sirius Black doesn’t beg!”
“I told you not to read over my shoulder.” Remus folded the parchment and held it up to Pig. “Ready to go back, then, Pigwidgeon?”
Pig hooted ecstatically and nipped at Remus’s finger as the wizard tried to tie the letter to his leg. The missive finally in place, Pig took one more swoop at each of the men and then raced though the window and out of sight.
Remus smiled and shook his head. “That was the most obnoxious owl I’ve ever encountered.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sirius countered. “What was the name of that one Arabella was always so fond of...Arcturus?”
“No, that one was stupid – but at least he was calm.”
The two men stared at each other. “He’s coming,” Sirius said.
“It looks that way, yes.”
“I...I’m sorry, Moony.”
Remus knew that Harry’s decision was one of the best things that had happened for the Order in quite some time. That knowledge changed nothing. Remus’s head dropped for a moment, then he raised it again and looked Sirius in the eye. “So am I.”
*