Two Out of Time

Tuxedo Kamen

Rating: PG13
Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 4
Published: 05/10/2003
Last Updated: 23/02/2004
Status: in_progress

A Mega Man X/Harry Potter crossover. Defeating Harry has proven time and time again to be something Voldemort isn't capable of. But he can banish him to a place ... that isn't a place at all. When he finally escapes, what new world will await him?

Chapters

1. Forced Removal

2. Brave New World

3. Orientation

4. Prelude to the FIre

5. Subsistence, Love, and Loathing, Part 1

6. Subsistence, Love, and Loathing, Part 2

1. Forced Removal

A/N: In order for some elements of this tale to make work, one must remove from canon Zero's nonsensical, unexplained hibernation at the end of Mega Man X6. Likewise, the entire plot of Mega Man Zero must be considered elseworlds. Unfortunately, I do not own Mega Man X, Harry Potter, or any related characters. Thanks to Amber from Portkey.org for beta-reading. All feedback, including constructive criticism, is welcome. Let me know what you think. Thank you.

August 29, 1995

1537 Zulu

Granger Residence

Unbelievable. The word kept running through her mind, even as she carefully laid her copy of Hogwarts, A History on top of her newly acquired Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5. She was doing her best to keep her face free of the glare that begged to be allowed to erupt across her features. If she hadn't been so distracted, she without a doubt would have put the older book on the bottom of the stack. It was bigger and far more worn, and putting it there would have made the entire pile more stable. But she had far more pressing matters to worry with than making sure she stuck to her normal packing routine. She rose from her crouched position next to the foot of her bed and turned to face her mother. “You're not serious, are you, mum? Please tell me this doesn't have anything to do with my teeth. He had nothing to do with me taking the opportunity to straighten them.”

Lucy Granger was a woman of average height, light, creamy complexion, and long, straight, raven-black hair. Her blue eyes were soft and warm, though at the moment they were tinged with concern. “Hermione, dear, it's not about your teeth. Your father and I certainly would have preferred you gave braces time to work, but under the circumstances,” and Hermione was surprised to see a rare look of mischief flash across her mother's face, “I probably would have done the exact same thing. And no, you are not to tell your father I said that. And we both know it's not Harry's fault. It's that horrible Draco boy that starts every one of these little incidents – I still don't understand why he hasn't been expelled yet,” she spat righteously, scowling, “after all the things you've told us he's done and said to you, and it sounds like he's only getting worse. Surely his father can't be that well connected, whether he sits on the Board of Governors or not. He's a real role model, that one. I was half hoping Arthur Weasley would manage to pop him one that day in the bookstore during your second year.”

Hermione just scowled, not really sure what she was supposed to say. Thinking of Draco Malfoy was doing nothing to improve her less-than-good mood. As for his father ... well, she still hadn't managed to tell her parents Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater – and she was sure he was. Harry believed it, and that was good enough for her. No, there was no way she was telling either of them that her personal tormentor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had a murderous Dark wizard for a father. Especially considering the nature of her current conversation. “Draco's family is too influential,” she said finally. “His father's a noted philanthropist. No one's going to do anything to upset him, or his money.” She blinked. She hadn't realized her voice could sound that bitter.

Lucy shook her head. “Sometimes, I think you're a bit too smart, Hermione.”

Hermione smiled, showing a perfectly straight row of evenly sized teeth. But she wouldn't be thrown off. “Mum, you're trying to change the subject. If it's not about the teeth, then what is it? Why don't you want me around Harry anymore? You just sprang it on me out of the blue earlier, and I'm confused. What did he do that's upset you?” Part of her knew what her mother was most likely to be thinking, but she didn't want to believe it, because there really wasn't any way for her to completely disprove the notion. And she hated that more than she cared to admit.

Her mother shifted uncomfortably, but when she spoke again, her resolve was unmistakable. “He hasn't done anything, dear. From everything you've ever told us, and what little of him we've seen ourselves, we're sure he's a wonderful boy. But,” Here it comes, she thought, “your father and I are worried that you might be getting too attached to him.”

Hermione felt her face heating up, just slightly. “Attached? I ... I don't like Harry like that,” she said quickly.

For the moment, Lucy thought wryly. “That's not what I meant, dear. It's just that, well, everything you've told us ... this Voldemort is obsessed with ... killing him. And,” her tone sharpened a little, if only for a moment, “Scott and I have the distinct impression there are certain things you haven't told us. But we've never pressed you to fill in any oddly missing details. We trust you. If there was something we needed to know, we trust you would tell us.”

Hermione nodded slowly. There were, indeed, a number of things she kept from her parents. Not a lot, of course; simply a few details she felt it better they not get the opportunity to worry about. Like the fact that I was nearly lost my soul to a horde of dementors trying to help a convicted murderer escape from the Ministry of Magic at the end of my third year. Certainly not my idea of the perfect first kiss. Just a few little details ... She suppressed a shiver at the memory of being surrounded by the horrible, eyeless creatures, Harry urging her to attempt a spell she had no experience in performing even as their cold, draining influence began robbing her of consciousness and will. Her last sight before blacking out was of them closing in on she and Harry, the dark-haired Seeker still standing erect, doing his best to fight them off. And it looked to her like he was losing. She would never admit it, but in that instant, she welcomed the cool darkness that overtook her.

But her mother was speaking again. She gladly let her attention snap back to the present. “But what we do know is that Harry is in a great deal of danger ... and so is anyone around him, from the sound of it.” She began to speak faster, not at all liking the way Hermione's eyes had widened. Then again, it didn't surprise her that much either. “The professors and staff at your school are obviously confident they can keep all of you out of any trouble ... after all, if they weren't, they wouldn't be letting all the students come back, would they? But you're our daughter, and our only responsibility is you, not Harry, or Ron, or anyone else. That's why ... that's why I have to ask you not to expose yourself to any,” she had to choose her words carefully here, she knew, “undue risk.”

Hermione took a deep breath through her nose. Blasting her mother was the absolute worst thing she could do right now, tempting as it was. “Go on,” she said calmly, hoping her voice didn't sound too strained.

“Your father and don't want you to stop being Harry's friend. We just think it would be better if you didn't spend so much time around he and Ron. You're making yourself a target, dear. I know it sounds cliched, but the more you're around him, the more anyone looking for a way to hurt him is going to look at you. Professor Dumbledore will be doing his best to protect the three of you, but you and Ron will always be more accessible, because you're not Harry. Dumbledore may be a great wizard, but he's only human, and even he only has limited resources. It would be better for you – it would certainly make your father and I feel better – if you distanced yourself from him. You don't have to cut off your relationship, just tone it down a little.”

All thoughts of not loosing it with her mother evaporated. “What? 'Just tone it down a little?' That's ... that's absurd!” She felt her face burning, and her fists were shaking, but she didn't care. Part of her had expected this. She couldn't find any real surprise, but there was suddenly plenty of righteous indignation at her disposal. “So, what? I'm just supposed to carry a watch around with me? 'Sorry Harry, I've spent my daily allowed twenty minutes around you ... see you tomorrow.' That's not right, mum. Not at all.”

Lucy frowned. She should have known it wasn't going to be so easy. “Hermione, this isn't something your father and I decided on lightly. We put a lot of thought into it, and we concluded it would be easier for you this way. He can still be your friend. You have other friends, like Neville Longbottom and Dean Thomas – you've mentioned them before – and you don't hang around them all the time, but you still have a good relationship with them.”

Her voice was louder than she intended when she spoke again, and some part of Hermione was glad her father wasn't home. “Neville and Dean are just my friends, mother. They're not my best friends. I won't let my relationship with Harry suffer because I'm afraid of what may or may not happen in the future.”

Lucy blinked, momentarily forgetting her displeasure at that fact that Hermione was almost yelling at her. Maybe I didn't hear right. “What did you say?” she asked softly.

Hermione winced slightly. I can't believe I let that slip out. Idiot! “I said ... I said I won't let my relationship with Harry suffer because you're afraid of what may or may not happen.”

Lucy smirked. “I'm not your grandmother, Hermione. My hearing is still pretty good. You said 'I.'”

“Yeah,” she sighed, and all her anger seemed to disappear. “Yeah, I did. It's just ... all of it ... it's not fair. Of course I'm afraid. I mean, an insane maniac wants to kill him, and every year it seems like his attempts work a little better. I think ... I think we almost lost him last year. He wouldn't talk about all of it, but the look in his eyes in the hospital wing ... ” she shuddered. “For an instant, the light in his eyes was just ... just gone.” In truth, it reminded her of the hollow look Sirius' eyes sometimes held, but she didn't dare mention that. As far as her mother was concerned Sirius Black was simply a fugitive that stayed far, far away from Hogwarts for fear of capture. By the same token, Hermione had a horribly difficult time remembering Harry's godfather's name, though she often mentioned that he was a very nice, private individual and didn't like to be the subject of undue attention. “He doesn't deserve any of it, and I'm not going to make it worse.”

Now, Lucy was slightly confused. “Worse?”

“How do you think he would feel if he found out my parents didn't want me around him because they thought his mere presence made me unsafe? He's already got ... way too much to worry about. I'm sure he'd understand your argument, and he'd probably agree with it, but I won't do it. Nearly everyone at school's obsessed with the fact that he's the 'great Harry Potter.' They let it determine the way they treat him, and he doesn't say much, but it's obvious he hates it. They love to celebrate his successes, but they're just as eager to use him as a scapegoat whenever the opportunity arises. I've never been one of those people, and I think he appreciates the fact that I've never let who he is determine how I think of him. Everything I think about him, I think as a result of what he's shown himself to be. If I cut him off like you want me to, he would figure out why, even if I didn't tell him. I'd be betraying him. And I'll never do that. Not for anything. He trusts me too much.”

For a few seconds, Lucy didn't speak. She was torn between displeasure at the fact that Hermione simply wasn't going along with her and immense pride in her daughter's loyalty to her friends. She had never been one to go against her parents' wishes, unless she felt like she had a very, very good reason. It didn't take very long for the latter to win out, and she smiled resignedly. “I'm not going to make you do anything, dear,” she said finally, “and I can't say I'm disappointed in you, either. Harry's very lucky to have a friend like you, you know.” She sighed heavily, and Hermione noticed for the first time the deeply worried look in her mother's eyes. As much as she hated to see it, her course was set, and she wasn't going to yield to fear, be it hers or anyone else's. “Just promise me one thing.”

Hermione nodded. “Anything, mum.”

“Just be careful, dear. I know Dumbledore and the rest will be doing their best to protect all of you from ... whatever might come, but ... just be careful.”

Hermione smiled and nodded. “I will.” When Harry Potter's involved, it's a given. Then she added, almost without thinking about it, “Everything will be fine.” With that, she threw a copy of Conquering Acrophobia into her trunk and slammed it shut.

“Harry!” And before he knew what was happening, Ron was enveloping The Boy Who Lived in a quick bear hug. Harry steadied himself as air rushed back into his lungs, and looked around the compartment he had just entered. Ron was the only one there, though he easily spotted a small ginger bundle curled up under one of the seats that could only be Crookshanks. He spotted something that looked suspiciously like a purple rubber chicken, and knew George and Fred had to be somewhere on the train. Ron was speaking again, and he sounded profoundly relieved. “We thought you weren't going to make it, mate. The train ... well, the train is moving! Where were you? Ginny was worried something had happened to you ... well, we all were, but she was the only one willing to bug us all by admitting it. Hermione looked ready to strangle her for a full minute.”

Harry grinned reassuringly before dropping into an empty seat. He put Hedwig's cage next to his feet. He couldn't be sure, but it looked like the owl was glaring at the redhead. Apparently, she didn't like it when people attempted to crush her master. In spite of his worries about Voldemort, one thought went through his head. It's good to be back. “Nothing so serious. The radiator on my uncle's car busted on the way to King's Cross. I thought about discretely using the repair charm on it, but I don't think Fudge would be so kind as to bail me out this time. So we had to wait for the tow truck.” He frowned sharply, recalling Uncle Vernon's latest screaming rant. He had to play the Sirius card yet again, and he was left wondering how much longer that was going to work. “But I'm here now.”

Ron nodded and sat across from him, readjusting the tarp over Pigwidgeon's cage and tugging on his robes in an attempt to hide his ankles. Amazingly, the tiny owl seemed to be sleeping. Ron couldn't help what came out of his mouth next. “What's a radiator?”

Harry smirked lightly. Some things just didn't change. “It's a metal box that holds water in the front of the car and keeps everything from overheating.” Ron nodded, apparently satisfied. Crookshanks had just jumped in his lap and curled up, and he scratched him behind the ears. “Ron, where is everybody?”

“Looking for you, mate. Hermione seemed insistent on it once the train started moving. I think she was hoping you'd locked yourself in one of the restrooms or something. We all thought it was a grand idea, especially since she was a lot less likely to murder Ginny if she had something to do. She left the room muttering something about your aunt and uncle, with Fred, George, and Ginny in tow. I think it's good that we didn't hear exactly what it was.”

Harry nodded, newly annoyed with Vernon and Petunia's latest maniac antics. He brushed the thought aside as best he could and grinned devilishly. “What about you? Why aren't you looking for me?” he asked teasingly.

Ron's cheeks suddenly went quite well with his hair. “I ... uh ... I was told to stay here so you would know where we were. That, and we didn't want to leave our stuff unguarded. It'd be just our luck to have Draco and his thick-skulled minions come along and hex everything. I'm sure they'll be back in a minute.” Harry nodded. “Say, did your birthday present work out alright? I wasn't sure if it would fit.”

Harry brightened. “Yeah, it was great. I would have sent you a thank you note, but Dudley got a BB gun. I'm a little weary of letting her out around the house now unless it's an absolute emergency.”

Ron blinked. “Bee-Bee Gun? It shoots bees?” He looked highly affronted.

Harry chuckled. “No, it shoots little metal balls. Good for killing birds,” he finished darkly. Absentmindedly, he rubbed at the bruise on his hand. Doesn't feel too good to a human, either.

Ron frowned. “You've got a lovely cousin, Harry.”

“Don't I?” He fished around in the pocket of the black jeans Sirius had sent him, relishing in the fact that he was wearing pants that actually fit. His shirt was still one of Dudley's baggy old ones, but he didn't mind. It was summer ... and it was hot. His hand came back out holding a silver watch with a brown leather wristband and a black face. It's resembled the clock in the Weasleys' house that kept track of the redheaded clan. It only had one arm, labeled “Ron.” It currently pointed to a small running man, the symbol equivalent of “Traveling.” “I haven't had an opportunity to add any more hands,” he said as he put it around his wrist, “but I brought the instructions. Apparently I have to get someone's permission before the watch will track them.” He attempted to latch the straps, but it was obvious they were far too big, even with the peg through the last hole.

Ron scowled. “I thought you said it fit!” He sounded embarrassed. “I knew this would happen. I had to pick it up second hand,” he grumbled, adding quickly, “but I made sure it was in perfect working order before I bought it.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, it will, soon enough. It came with instructions for a fitting spell, but I couldn't do it at the Dursleys'. Like I said, the whole Ministry thing.” He withdrew his wand from his pocket, along with a small piece of white parchment, smoothing the later out on his lap next to Crookshanks and beginning to read.

A few minutes later, he and Ron were admiring the perfectly resized watch. “So,” Ron was saying, “what else did you get?”

“Let's see ... Snuffles sent me these pants, Hagrid sent me some of his homemade treacle fudge ... you know, it's actually edible if you warm it up a little ... and have forty minutes to spend chewing each piece. There were the meat pies from your mum and dad.” He smiled at the memory. “And Hermione –”

“Is coming,” Ron said quickly. Harry turned around and peered at the door. Sure enough, a bushy brown mass of hair was rapidly approaching with a girl attached to it. Harry smiled.

A few seconds later, Hermione was bursting into the room in a huff. Like Ron, she was already in her robes. The remaining Weasley males were close behind her, looking at Harry with identical relieved expressions. No, he thought after a moment, that's not right. They're looking at me like I'm a ten foot tall solid gold statue of Merlin. Ginny was standing behind the three of them, smiling.

“We looked everywhere,” she said dejectedly. “He's not on the – Harry!”

And then, he was being hugged again. But he was ready this time, and he managed to keep a good bit more air in his lungs than he had when Ron descended on him. She unlatched herself from him almost instantly, and he pretended not to notice her cheeks were slightly pink. “Hi,” he said.

“Harry ... how did you ... where have you been? I thought you missed the train.” She sat down next to him, and Crookshanks abruptly abandoned Harry and scampered into her lap.

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “I ... sort of ... did.”

Hermione blinked, and Fred and George were looking very interested now. “Then how,” she asked, not bothering to mask her confusion, “did you get here? And where have you been?”

Harry frowned. “I'd rather not discuss it. Let's just say it involved a busted radiator, my Firebolt, a levitation charm, and one very angry porter at the rear of the train.” He sighed. “If Professor Snape hears about it, I'll probably be pickling newt brains every night for a month.” Apparently, this didn't bother him very much; he was smiling again. “But I figured since we're allowed to use magic on the train, using it in the general vicinity wouldn't be that bad.”

Hermione looked like she wanted to press the issue, but she was too happy to see him on the train to really want to dwell on it. Before she could say anything, however, Fred and George were upon them, clapping Harry on the shoulders. “You chased the train down?” Fred asked, grinning like an idiot.

“They'll be talking about this for years, once it gets out,” George broke in, wearing an identical expression, “No one's ever chased down the Express. Once you decide you want to talk about it, you've got to tell us how you did it!”

“Well,” Harry said, “the train isn't going that fast yet ...” There was silence for a moment, and everyone just stared at him. Then Ginny started to giggle, Ron picked it up, then George, and before long the entire compartment was roaring with laughter. Everyone except for Harry. He wasn't that worried about Snape's wrath ... but McGonagall's – that was another matter entirely. It didn't help that he actually valued her opinion of him. He shrugged it off; there wasn't much he could do about it at the moment.

Hermione was smiling at him, and there was more than a hint of resigned exasperation on her face. “Well, at least your horrid aunt and uncle didn't have you locked up in a broom closet again.”

“They don't do that anymore,” Harry said mischievously. “They don't want my godfather to show up and eat them.”

Hermione seemed to have a thought, and suddenly went very pale. “Harry! If you were at your aunt and uncle's all summer, what about your supplies?”

“It's alright,” Ron said mysteriously.

“Yeah,” Harry added. “A few weeks ago, when Uncle Vernon was at work and Aunt Petunia was out with Dudley – you know, he's so big now, they have to get clothes specially made for him, diet's not working at all – Ron's dad showed up in our living room again. Said something about Dumbledore having them under watch so he'd know when they were out of the house. Apparently, he passed the information on to Mr. Weasley so someone could take me to get my supplies.” Harry wanted to add that he thought the Hogwarts headmaster was doing this because he was nervous and wanted to know where Harry and his relatives were at all times, but thought better of it. “After we cleaned up the living room and I managed to pry your father away from all the plugs, we were off. He had me back before everybody else got home, and I let Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia bask in the false belief that they had prevented me from properly preparing for school. It made them happier, in a perverse sort of way.”

“So that's where he went,” Ginny said brightly, “he said he had to run some errands for the Ministry, but wouldn't say what.”

“Wierd. Why wouldn't he say he was with me?”

“Simple,” George said, grinning.

“Yeah,” Fred finished, wearing an identical expression, as usual, “Mum's still miffed that Dumbledore wouldn't let you come see us this summer. She's not angry with you at all, but the whole thing's a bit of a sore subject with her. Dad probably didn't want to aggravate her ... again.”

Hermione nodded, looking very pleased. Before she could say anything, though, Ron was suddenly standing up, heading for the door. “I'll be right back. There's something the two of you have to see.” And he was out of the room.

Fred caught Harry's eye and winked at him, tugging on his own robes. Harry smirked lightly, nodding in understanding. He had left the twins the previous year with one-thousand galleons for their joke shop, with the only stipulation being that they use some of the money to buy Ron some decent dress robes. Apparently, they had already taken care of it.

“What is it?” Hermione asked, sounding slightly annoyed. She didn't like being left out of the joke.

“I'll explain later, Hermione,” Harry said quickly. “Look, he's coming back. That didn't take very long,” Harry mused as Ron came back in the room holding a reddish-orange bundle under one arm.

“Nope,” he said, unfurling the fiery silk. It was indeed a new set of dress robes, and Harry had to admit that it looked very nice indeed. It seemed perfectly matched to his hair, and Harry figured that was probably the intention. Fred and George caught the approving look in his eyes and tried to hide their grins. “My trunk is only two compartments down. What do you think?”

“Dashing,” Harry offered. “If James Bond were a wizard, he'd surely dress in something like that.”

Hermione giggled shortly at everyone else's blank looks and offered her own, less flamboyant complements. It was obvious she and Harry were the only people in the room who had any idea what the reference meant.

Ron looked confused. “Who's James Bond?” Yes, very obvious, indeed.

And so it was that the remaining Weasleys at Hogwarts School, Harry Potter, and Hermione Granger found themselves traveling together along the Hogwarts Express' railway. After a solid twenty minutes of pestering, Fred and George had coerced Harry into recounting the epic story of his arrival on the train. Yet this was, in truth, a bad idea, as he initially suspected. For even now, Hermione was looking at him as though he were completely insane, and had attempted to do something truly stupid, like Apparate onto a plane moving at supersonic speeds. And she was right, he knew, but he wished she wouldn't look at him like that. Only one course of action was available to him. Flattery. “So,” he said, putting on his best please-stop-glaring-at-me smile and attempting to change the subject, “thanks for the broom strap.”

She held her glare just long enough to make sure he entertained no illusions about being able to distract her so easily, then beamed at him. “I was worried you didn't get it ... you didn't send anything back. Not that was sitting around waiting on thank you note or anything ...” And she wasn't. At least not for the purpose of being thanked. It had made her slightly nervous when he didn't send anything back, and that feeling had only intensified when he didn't show up on the train. She hadn't mentioned any of this to her parents.

Harry held up a hand to stop her rambles. “No, I got it just fine. But I didn't want to risk Hedwig trying to send a note, and the post owl left before I could put one on his leg. Dudley's aim is getting better.” He sighed. “Sorry.”

Hermione frowned deeply. “Dudley's aim? They've armed him now?”

Harry nodded. “BB gun.”

Hermione was furious now. “Are they insane? He could have tried to put your eyes out!”

Ron chuckled. “What about Dudley's eyes, Hermione?”

She was trembling with fury now, but before she could say anything, Ginny mumbled, “She looks like mum does when she talks about Harry's relatives.” Hermione suddenly looked very self-conscious and tried to calm herself.

“Yeah, well, you haven't seen them, Ginny,” Fred said darkly. “They're nutters, the whole lot of them.”

Harry wished he knew a spell that he could use to sink through the seat bottom. Watching his friends bash his sorry relatives, as much as he agreed with everything they said, was somehow highly embarrassing. “You guys want to see it? I need to change, and it's in my trunk with my Firebolt.” There were nods all around. “I'll be right back, then.” And he was out of the room.

When he returned fifteen minutes later (his trunk was on the caboose of the train, and his compartment was somewhere in the middle), he was wearing his full Hogwarts uniform, with a notable edition. A dark red dragon hide strap was slung over one of his shoulders and across his chest and ran the length of his torso. His Firebolt, bristles up, was threaded through a loop in the back. Ron flashed him a thumbs-up and motioned with his hands for him to turn around so they could see the back.

“Well,” George said jokingly, “if all else fails, we know you could probably pull off a job as a fashion model. Nice sashay, Harry.” Ron and Fred abruptly punched both of his arms, hard.

“Very nice,” Hermione said, beaming at him again. “But you've got it twisted in the back. Turn around ... there we go.” She stepped back from him, sitting back down.

Harry remained standing, peering out the compartment's window, suddenly deep in thought. “What do you think it'll be like this year?” he asked no one in particular, as an endless wall of clear blue sky passed outside. They were up on the side a small mountain or hill now, he couldn't be sure which. In four trips, he had never managed to memorize the landmarks that lined the path to Hogwarts. Whether that was because of some spell working to keep the location a secret or simply due to the fact that he always had more interesting things to think about, he didn't know. He found himself wondering where Sirius was now, and farther off, in the back of his mind, what Professor Snape would act like now that his position as spy for Dumbledore was seemingly taken up once more. He felt a flash of sympathy run through him, and he couldn't help it – it surprised him. “I mean ... now that Voldemort's back.” Everyone in the room but him flinched in some form of another, but they all seemed to have given up trying to stop him from saying the name. “Even if everybody doesn't believe it, it'll have to change things.”

“Enough people believe it,” Ron muttered. “Fudge may be in a dream world, but from what dad says, there's a number of people at the Ministry that are doing their best to get ready for anything behind his back. For instance, I heard him telling Bill one of his friends in the HMRAC Recruiting Office is preparing a proposal to increase enlistment bonuses and benefit. I'm sure you can guess the motivating factor there.”

Harry blinked. “HMRAC?” He looked at Hermione, and the curious look on her face made him feel slightly better.

“Her Majesty's Royal Auror Corps,” George supplied helpfully.

“Yeah. Bill was thinking about joining before he went off to work for Gringrotts. The Auror Special Operations people were trying to recruit him. Mum nearly had a heart attack.” Apparently, Ron found this amusing; he finished his sentence with a chuckle.

Ron suddenly had a dreamy look in his eyes.

“Wipe that dumb look off your face, Weasley. The Aurors don't admit your class of idiot.” Everyone turned in their seats, and Harry spun on his feet, resisting the urge to draw his wand from his pocket. He knew that voice – they all did. Draco. He was standing placidly at the far end of the compartment, leaning in the doorway. Harry was left wondering how someone who didn't know how to Apparate was so good at constantly sneaking up on them. In the end, he blamed the train's background noise. Still, he thought, something's different.

He saw Hermione and Ron tense. Fred, George, and Ginny were trying to glare the Slytherin into non-existence. “What do you want, Malfoy?” And the dance began.

And then he realized what it was that was abnormal. There was Malfoy, and only Malfoy – Crabbe and Goyle were nowhere to be seen. That's new, he thought dryly, maybe they got tired of him. Yeah, and maybe Fudge will be at Hogwarts to coordinate Voldemort's defeat with Dumbledore.

“Want, Potter?” He shrugged, his cold, drawling voice washing over all of them. “I assure you, neither you, the mudblood, nor your fanboys have anything I want. Just checking to see if you had indeed managed to get on the train. I heard one of the porters ranting about a 'maniac on a Firebolt' chasing the Express. Sounded like you. Maybe, if you're lucky, Colin Creevey got a picture of it. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Potter? Little bit of extra notoriety.”

Harry saw Ron reddening, his mouth beginning to move. He held up a hand to stave off whatever scathing response his friend was planning. Draco was focusing his jeers on him alone, for the most part, and that was rare. Harry intended to keep it that way. “I don't know why you can't seem to understand it, Draco,” Harry began coolly, “but I'm not a glory hound.” It was then that Harry noticed it – Draco was shifting on his feet, just slightly. He'd been doing it since he appeared in the doorway, actually, but it was so subtle it was nearly impossible to see. Harry was confused now. Draco was nervous about something. Maybe he's missing Crabbe and Goyle ... “And as you can see,” he added in a final sort of tone, “I am indeed on the train.” He looked at Ginny. She was watching the two of them with a look he couldn't quite identify. George and Fred were watching silently, though Harry could tell they were ready and eager to assist him in dealing with Malfoy should the need arise. Fred already had his hand in his robes, no doubt clutching his wand.

Draco smirked. “So you are, Potter. Well,” he said, “I'll be going, then. I've got better things to do then watch the six of you stare at me. Enjoy the ride,” he said briskly. And he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him.

Harry stood there for a second, then turned and resumed his place next to Hermione. Crookshanks purred in her lap, lost in some feline dream. “Did anyone else think that was a bit ... odd?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Not that I'm complaining or anything – he was almost nice, by Draco standards.”

“Definitely creepy,” Hermione said softly. “He didn't even insult me ... well, directly, at any rate.” Everyone looked curiously at her. “Don't look at me like that. He didn't, did he? He seemed a little ...”

“Distracted?” Harry offered. “Nervous, maybe?” She nodded. “And where were Crabbe and Goyle?”

“Bizarre,” Ron muttered. It was then that he heard the light tapping noise, almost inaudible against the hum of the train. “Hey ... does anyone else hear –” but he didn't get a chance to finish the question. For at that moment, there was a loud popping noise, and they were not alone.

The man was no taller than Harry, with pasty, unhealthy looking skin, beady, watery eyes, and a distinct lack of hair. What little was growing out of his ratlike head was colorless and limp. Deep in Harry's brain, a synapse fired. The solid silver hand on the new arrival's right arm confirmed his suspicions, and he was standing up before his mind really caught up with the information presented it, reaching for his wand. “Wormtail!”

Harry was raising his wand then, even as Hermione and Ron rose to their feet behind him. He heard a girl gasp, but it might have just as easily been Ginny. Somewhere behind him and to his side, Hedwig was hooting angrily, rattling her cage. His mouth was moving, trying to get out the Stunning Spell. He would think it was odd, later, how clear his mind was in that one instant. There was surprise, but there had been no shock. It didn't even occur to him to wonder how Peter had appeared in the room without Apparating. He'd locked eyes with Pettigrew, seen the glint of malice there, and knew he had to act. And he had to do it quick – he knew that too. Any moment, his subconscious was telling him, his emotions were sure to catch up with his instincts, and he would begin to feel real fear, real confusion, and perhaps panic. Even now, some half-formed thought was beginning to bounce around the depths of his mind, demanding to know how a Dark wizard had managed to sneak onto the Hogwarts Express, asserting that something was dreadfully wrong.

But it was all for naught. Somehow, Wormtail had managed to out-draw him, and was even now zeroing in on Harry's chest, whispering, “Crucio!”

“You bastard!” Ron screamed, fumbling with his own wand – his hands were slick with cold sweat, and it kept catching on he edge of his over sized, second-hand robes.

Harry felt himself crumpling to the ground, eyes watering with pain, every inch of his body on fire. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brown, bushy mass as a small hand reached under his arm, trying to keep him from toppling completely. He thought he heard her calling his name, but he couldn't think clearly enough to be sure. Hermione. Can't let her stand there trying to hold me up. “Move,” he managed to force the words past his lips, “go ... help ... get ... help.”

“No,” he heard her voice, small, shaky, but determined. It was getting easier to make sounds out now. “No. George has already gone for Professor McGonagall.” He felt the pain subsiding, and he began to steady himself as Hermione's wand appeared in his field of vision, aimed at Pettigrew's torso, “Stupefy!” But in the next instant Wormtail reverted back to his rat form, scampering across the room. The red bolt of magic flew through the air – but there was no longer a Death Eater standing there to take the hit, and it slammed through a window. The glass shattered. Behind them, Ron swore. Fred had been preparing to launch a Conjunctivitus Curse at this madman who had suddenly appeared in his compartment and used an Unforgivable Curse on one of his friends, and was caught totally off guard when Pettigrew reappeared next to him, smashing the back of his silver hand against the side of his red-haired skull. There was a wet crunching sound, and the oldest Weasley in the room fell to the floor, moaning lightly. “Oh, God ... oh, my God ...” Hermione whispered, and Harry saw her wand start to tremble, just as Ron appeared in his field of vision, making for his brother. Harry couldn't know this was the best thing his friend felt he could do, as he couldn't think of a single spell he knew that would be useful against a fully trained Dark wizard.

The pain was nothing more than a murmur now, and Harry shook himself free of Hermione, but otherwise didn't move. She was safely behind him, for the most part, and that was fine with him. The fear was beginning to creep slowly through his body now, but he ignored it as best he could. This is wrong, he thought wildly, something's not right. Not right at all. Wormtail hadn't spoken to them once, indeed, his face was almost blank. And since when has Wormtail ever been this ... this good? The Wormtail he knew was a coward, afraid to so much as look at Lord Voldemort's face. He certainly wasn't anything like the Death Eater commando who had been in the compartment with them for the last thirty seconds. Not that Harry had any time to really think about it. Wormtail was turning his back on them now, pointing his wand at something else.

Hermione saw it first and nearly screamed, the remaining color draining from her face. “Ginny!” Harry followed her gaze, and felt a chill run down his spine.

Ginny Weasley had not stirred at all since Pettigrew appeared, and as to why, it was obvious to anyone who cared to look. Her skin was white as sheet. Indeed, pure terror seemed etched onto her face, and she wasn't moving. But that was soon to change.

Wormtail's voice was clear and calm. “Reducto!” An instant later the compartment shook violently, and Harry landed hard on his knees, throwing his arms out in an attempt to regain his balance. It didn't help in the least when Hermione fell on top of him. The impact forced him to his stomach. “Sorry,” she mumbled quickly, scrambling to get off. Any other time their position might have been embarrassing, but at the moment, Harry didn't have time for hormones either. One of her knees hit something he really wished she could have managed to avoid, and he let out a high-pitched squeak. Yes, it would be a good long time before anything remotely hormone related managed to enter the equation again.

Once she was finally off him (it seemed to take a very long time to Harry, but only a few seconds had passed), he looked up, and sincerely wished he hadn't. Fred was still on the ground, half-awake, but that wasn't what he was looking at. A large piece of the wall facing the edge of the mountain path was simply gone, a great, gaping hole in its place. Ginny Weasley was nowhere to be seen.

For one horrible instant, he was sure she had been pushed through the gash in the wall, and he imagined her limp body rolling down the mountain, a sick feeling welling up in the pit of his stomach. Next to him, he heard a retching sound – Hermione had arrived at the same conclusion. He felt the spark of anger and rose to his feet, grabbing his friend's wrist and pulling her up with him. It was Cedric Diggory all over again. He didn't know where George was, or why no one was busting through the sliding door to help them, but Pettigrew was playing to kill them all, it seemed, and it was just like before – no matter what, he was going to do his best to fight. If he died, it would be on his feet, like his father. He wouldn't give Voldemort or any of his ilk the satisfaction of letting them see the fear fighting to control him. “You alright?” he asked Hermione quickly. His voice was much smaller than he was hoping it would be.

“Y-Yeah. Harry,” she pointed once more at the missing wall, “look!”

Harry saw Ron near the edge, bending over. At first he thought, with a tinge of utter and complete sadness, that he was looking for his sister. Then he saw one of his friend's hands. It was clasped around something. A wrist, Harry thought, elation momentarily canceling out everything else, he's got her wrist. She held on long enough for Ron to get to her! Thank God. Even now, the red-head was struggling to lift his sister back into the compartment, but he was at a horribly difficult angle and wasn't having an easy time of it. He turned his attention back to Wormtail. “He's leaving Ron and Ginny alone.” Because they can't get away. “Got any ideas?” The Death Eater was between Harry, Hermione, and Ron and Ginny. He knew he couldn't risk another Stunning Spell. There was nothing to keep his enemy from pulling a repeat performance. If the spell hit the fifth year Weasley – well, that was something he wasn't willing to risk. “Stupefying is out,” he said quickly, nodding at Ron.

Hermione nodded in understanding, then almost smiled, her eyes lighting up. She had an idea. She stepped around Harry, standing at his side. Her wand was pointing at Wormtail's feet. If she missed, the spell would harmlessly knock a chunk of the flooring loose. “Petrificus To –”

But Wormtail had a much shorter word in mind. “Silencio!” The golden beam struck Hermione's throat. Her mouth continued to move, but it was futile – not so much as a squeak escaped her lips. Her eyes widened in panic. She'd been muted. Before Harry could react, the Death Eater was pointing his wand at the space between their heads. The Boy Who Lived locked eyes with Ron then, seeing the pained, utterly helpless look in his eyes. He was still straining every muscle in his body in an attempt to keep Ginny from falling to her death. He had been unable to get any significant leverage, and hadn't been able to raise her up in the least. “Relego ex tempo te!”

A wave of soft blue light, three feet wide and three feet thick, sprang forth from his wand with a soft hissing sound. Harry's eyes very nearly bulged in their sockets. He had no idea what this particular spell was supposed to do, he had never heard it before, but he knew anything that came from Wormtail's wand simply couldn't be good. It wasn't Avada Kedavra, and he was thankful for that, but he was perfectly aware it would wash over he and Hermione in a matter of seconds. Me and Hermione. He jerked his head around to look at her. She had lowered her wand, her face a mask of confusion, and more than that, fear.

All at once, Harry knew what he had to do. Voldemort's quarrel was with him alone, as far as he was concerned. Ron and Hermione were his friends, and often managed to get caught in the crossfire through no fault of their own. He didn't know what was about to happen, but he would be damned if Hermione was made to suffer for her relationship with him. If he had to face whatever was coming alone, so be it.

And so he lunged, reflexes and muscles refined by three years of Quiddich games and practices coming to bear for one purpose – pushing Hermione Granger far, far away from him and the encroaching wave of Dark magic. As for getting himself out of the way, he entertained no illusions about his own agility – it was either him or her, and that was a startlingly easy choice to make.

Harry felt the palms of his hands pushing against Hermione's shoulders – they were shaking underneath her robes. His momentum carried them sideways; they were falling. Good, Harry had time to think, if she's on her back, it'll shoot right over her. Another little voice made sure to add, And it'll slam right into you, hero. When had his subconscious gotten so cynical? They continued to fall.

Yet, for the second time that day, Harry's body failed him, and he simply wasn't fast enough. Hermione's back was still six inches from the ground when the wave crashed over them – it caught both of them, totally and completely.

An instant later, Harry was surprised to find that he wasn't dead. He and Hermione were suspended in midair now, about two feet off the ground. He was still above her with his hands clamped down on her shoulders. And apparently, he wasn't the only one who couldn't so much as blink. Her eyes were the only thing she seemed to have any control over. They were flying around wildly, finally settling on him. It was fortunate the blue haze around him was distorting his vision; he couldn't make out the tears sliding down her cheeks. And – well, he really didn't know how to think of this new sensation, but it felt as though he was somehow becoming less ... substantial. That was the best way he could describe it.

Wormtail calmly turned his back on them again, shooting two bright blue strands of light at the sliding compartment doors. Harry couldn't hear the incantation – it was either being whispered, or there was none – but had a pretty good suspicion he was looking at a room sealing charm. God, he's not done with us yet.

“Ah. Harry, so good to see you again.” He spoke to them directly for the first time since his arrival, and if Harry could have done a double take, he would have. The man attacking them may have looked like Peter Pettigrew, but there was no way this was the same coward who had been afraid to look Voldemort in the eyes mere months ago. His voice was filled with confidence, calm, self-assured. His motions were precise and purposeful. Harry had no choice but to wait and see what he did next. He didn't have to wait long. “My master's orders were very specific, Harry. You, quite simply, aren't going to be arriving at Hogwarts this year. Or any year, for that matter. Now, he instructed me not to permanently harm any of your friends. I'll admit, I botched it up a little there.” For a brief moment, a bit of the old cowardice flashed in his eyes. “But honestly, lad, after your last performance, I expected you to put up more of a fight. And as for the obnoxious little mudblood you've attached yourself to, I doubt he'll loose too much sleep over her – ow! Damned cat!”

Crookshanks had managed to recover from being thrown across the room when Pettigrew blasted the wall, and had just dug his front claws deep into one of the wizard's legs, determined to aid his Hermione and her friend. Wormtail reached down and angrily ripped the cat from his body, careful to hold him at arm's length, and threw him at Hermione. The moment the blue energy washed over him, he was immobilized, hanging there with the two young humans in what looked like some bizarre display of modern art.

“Little beast,” Wormtail began again. “By now you've probably began to feel the effects of the spell. My master created it especially for your disposal. It's a pity you cannot talk. I would so be interested to hear what it's like to slowly cease to exist. Apparently, despite the fact that you're no longer protected by your idiot mother's sacrifice,” Harry's eyes blazed at this, but that was all he could do, “he did not consider the Killing Curse the best way to deal with you. But I do not dare question the wisdom of Lord Voldmort. My work here is done. Goodbye, Harry, Hermione ... the rest of you.” He Apparated.

Minerva McGonagall's voice was shrill when she pointed her wand at the sealed compartment door. George stood next to her, rubbing his shoulder, his wand drawn. Rushing the door had proven less than effective. “Alohamora!” Nothing happened. Blast it!

“Professor?” George muttered worriedly. The compartment was completely silent now. “What's wrong? Why won't it –”

“It's been sealed, Mr. Weasley,” she said urgently. “A formidable charm. Raise your wand. The Reductor Curse – blast the point where it meets the walls. Now!”

“Reducto!” Their voices joined perfectly, and twin bolts of magic flew from their wands. They found their marks, blasting the walls around the door into pieces. The door itself fell forward, and for the first time they had a clear view of the compartment and its occupants – or what was left of them.

Minerva paled. “Oh ... oh, God ...”

The room was in total disarray. In her cage, Hedwig was hooting sadly. Ron was crouched up on the floor against the remaining wall, as as far away from the breach as possible. Ginny – or some small, red-haired mass of robes that most likely contained Ginny – was wrapped up in his arms, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. Fred was up again, though he was significantly paler and looked very dazed. The side of his head Wormtail hit was swollen; small rivulets of blood were flowing from his temple. When he saw George he started trying to get up, but Minerva was by him instantly, holding him down with strength that defied her age. He looked at her numbly. “Too late,” he whispered. “I wasn't fast enough. They're gone ...”

Minerva looked at the hole in the wall, saw the world flying by. A look of horrified comprehension dawned on her face. “You ... you mean they –”

“No,” Ron said quietly, his voice hallow, lifeless. “It was Wormtail ... Peter Pettigrew. He ... he ...” his voice broke then, and he couldn't stop the sobs that escaped him. “I couldn't help them. I had to keep Ginny from falling. He killed ... he killed them both.” He pointed at something behind the Transfiguration teacher, and she turned around, beholding the spot where Harry and Hermione made their stand. She felt her knees go weak.

Everything the blue energy had touched was charred and blackened, but there was no smoke, no smoldering flames. The only thing on the floor was a single, black pair of glasses. For a while, no one spoke. Then Minerva turned to George, who had begun to walk shakily towards his siblings. “George,” she began, in a voice that wasn't entirely under her control, “stay ... with them. I'm going to ... get Poppy to come for your brother. Someone must owl ... must owl Dumbledore. He must be told that Mr. Potter and Miss Granger are ... gone,” by the time she finished her voice had taken on a defeated tone. George, apparently with great effort, nodded at her and stood by the ruined entryway. She exited quickly. Had anyone been bothering to look, they would have seen the tears pouring silently down her face.

2. Brave New World

A/N: See chapter one for full notes. As usual, I own nothing. All feedback is appreciated. Enjoy.

July 4, 2153.

2200 Zulu

Tokyo, Japan

The last thing Harry remembered was watching Ron finally manage to pull Ginny up. It was exceedingly hard to focus on them – or anything else – by that point, but he saw his friend tighten his grip on his sister, then throw himself backwards as he pulled up. They tumbled, and Ron landed hard on his back, with Ginny sprawled out on top of him. Ginny was trying to climb off him then, but Harry’s vision was deteriorating rapidly at that point, as though someone was dragging him deeper and deeper into a rather dirty lake. Then he felt very cold, and everything went black. And after that, there was nothing.

Until now. Somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind, deep in the part that was struggling to wake up, he knew someone was shaking him. Someone with small hands was pushing hard on one of his shoulders. But he didn’t want to wake up. His body hurt and sleep seemed very appealing. Harry … a voice whispered, somewhere very far away., Harry … wake up … you need to get up. It was odd. His subconscious had never sounded so worried before, or been so persistent. Wake up Harry. I need you to wake up for me. Please. Now that certainly wasn’t right. One of two things was going on here. Never in his entire life had any of the instinctual little voices in his brain told him “I need you” to do anything. Either he was developing split personality syndrome, and some new entity sharing his head with him was trying to gird him into action, or there was someone speaking to him. But it was so hard to tell. It was so easy to just stay asleep, and not worry about anything.

No, he thought finally, I do need to get up. Something’s wrong. The worried voice was getting louder, and his increasingly alert mind recognized it. Hermione’s here. She needs me to wake up. Hermione. Suddenly, he remembered exactly what was going on. Wormtail’s attack came flooding back to him in vivid detail. All of it – the way the Cruciatus Curse felt as it worked its way through his body, the horrible sound Wormtail’s hand made when it cracked Fred’s skull, the look on Ron’s face when he realized he wouldn’t be able to help either of his friends without condemning his sister to a very painful death, the blue energy that enclosed he and Hermione – it was all there. His last conscious thoughts before blacking out had been of the crying girl beneath him. He had tried his hardest to save her from whatever Dark magic Voldemort had prepared for him.

He heard her voice now, and knew, with that special, sickening sort of certainty, that he had failed. Yet they were both still alive … somewhere, and that meant there was only one thing to do. Shoving away any remaining impulse to sleep, he forced his eyes open, preparing himself to deal with whatever was waiting for him.

It was bright, and the light hurt his eyes. The sky was blue, and he couldn’t make out any significant cloud coverage. But then again, it was hard for him to make out anything. There were dark shapes rising high into the sky on either side of him, and he figured he was in an alley. Nothing he saw had any sort of definition. It was all blurred, meshing together into a completely useless jumble of color and shape. He realized he had lost his glasses. That was odd, really. He couldn’t remember them falling off, but figured they must have done so after he blacked out. He started to sit up, but a new object abruptly came into his scope of vision, and he stopped to study it. It was a creamy alabaster colored thing (in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that it was a pretty color), with bushy brown fuzzy stuff around it. That’s all he could make out without his glasses. He couldn’t see the relieved smile that flashed across the amorphous blob’s face. Some part of his brain must have still been resisting the call to arms, because it took him a full second to realize he was looking at Hermione. “Hi,” he said softly, squinting at her in a futile attempt to make out her features. He began to try to sit up and felt her hands on his shoulders, steadying him. “What happened? Where are we?” The back of his head was stinging, and when he brushed the spot with his fingers, they came away covered in a sticky red liquid. Blood, he thought, frowning sardonically, great. “Hermione?” He was becoming concerned by her lack of response when the shape abruptly moved towards him and caught him in a tight hug. He felt something warm and wet fall on his neck. Tears.

“I couldn’t get you to wake up,” she said finally. Harry could tell from her voice that she had indeed been crying. It was hoarse, and he began to wonder how long he had been unconscious. She released him, careful to stay in his field of vision, and started speaking very fast. “I’ve been trying since I woke up here, but all you did was mumble. I almost used the Ennervate Spell, but according to everything I’ve read, it’s only supposed to be used to reverse induced sleep, and any other usage can have complications, especially if the sleeping person has a head injury, and even then should only be attempted by a trained mediwizard. I wasn’t sure what to do,” she finished, eyeing his bloodied fingers worriedly.

“It’s alright,” he said calmly, subtly sliding his bloodied hand beneath the folds of his robes, “I’m awake now, and it’s just a small cut. At least the Silencing Charm he put on you seems to have worn off. It must not have been very powerful.” And my head is the least of our problems right now, at any rate. Wormtail said something about ceasing to exist. Yet we’re still … somewhere. Maybe something went wrong. Maybe he screwed up and just Apparated us somewhere. We need to find out. He leaned against one of the alley walls, feeling his broomstick pressing against his back. At least I haven’t lost that. It might prove useful. He knew Hermione thought they were very much alone, otherwise she wouldn’t have mentioned magical things for fear of being overheard by Muggles. “Any idea where the two of us are?” Something warm and soft crawled into his lap and almost growled, and he looked down, able to make out a ginger colored blob. He almost grinned. “Excuse me,” he said, rubbing Crookshanks’ back, “the three of us.” The cat’s presence was reassuring, but he frowned just the same, remembering that Hedwig was still on the Hogwarts Express. He couldn’t explain it, but in that instant he knew that Hogwarts and all his friends were impossibly far away, and he felt a chill go down his spine.

“No,” Hermione said miserably. “None at all. I haven’t left the alley yet. I … I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

Harry nodded, then started running his hands along the ground. “I need to find my glasses,” he said. “They must’ve fallen off when we got here. It looks like I hit my head when we landed, assuming we were floating when we showed up. Probably knocked them loose.”

He couldn’t see Hermione’s frown deepen. “Harry,” she said slowly, almost guiltily, “I’ve already searched the alley. When I couldn’t wake you up, I looked around. They’re not here. I found our wands, though. But watch where you put your hands. I almost stepped on something I think was a used glass syringe.” She cringed.

Harry slumped against the wall and rubbed his temples. His head hurt. At least my scar isn’t burning. “Well, that’s just great,” he said sarcastically, before he could stop himself. He looked at her. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. Thanks for finding my wand.”

Hermione smiled, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. She felt better now that he was awake. She was still confused and anxious, but being able to talk with Harry was very reassuring. She reached into her pocket and pulled out Harry’s wand, putting it in his hand. He pocketed it, half-grinning. “We need to find out where we are,” she said abruptly.

Harry nodded. “Any ideas at all?”

She sighed. “Like I said, I didn’t leave the alley, but …” she trailed off, shifting enough for Harry to notice.

“But what?” Harry urged gently.

“It’s really odd,” she said finally. “Nothing looks right. I’ve never seen architecture like this. It’s all ultramodern, or something. And from what I can see from here, there are no power lines, or phone lines, or anything like that. And about five minutes ago, I saw someone blast by the entry to the alley on a motorcycle,” she paused, and when she continued she spoke in the tone of someone who didn’t completely believe what they were saying. “It was a floating motorcycle Harry. Vehicles don’t hover. Muggle technology isn’t that far along.”

At least, it wasn’t in 1995, Harry thought suddenly. He began to fear that he had been thinking about Wormtail’s proposed non-existence far too literally. His mind was forming a hypothesis he didn’t like at all. If he was right, Voldemort had done something infinitely worse than killing them. “Hermione,” he said quietly, “I don’t think where we are is that important right now.”

Hermione blinked incredulously. “Harry, what could be more important than finding out where we are?”

He felt a half-awed, half-sick feeling welling up in the pit of his stomach. “When. When is more important.” He held his wrist out to her, gesturing at his watch. “Press the button, and it’ll switch to time display. It’s got a charm on it so it sets itself to local time automatically.”

She looked at the watch face, confused. “Harry, what kind of watch is this? It’s got pictures along the edge, but no hands.” This looks familiar … where have I seen it before? Ordinarily, she probably wouldn’t have had any trouble remembering, but at the moment, her mind was less than completely clear.

Harry swallowed hard. Ron’s hand is gone. Any lingering doubts he had (namely, the last of his Muggle rationality asserting that such things as what he was considering were completely impossible) died at that point. According to the directions, hands only disappear on their own when the person they’re associated with dies. Ron’s … gone. “Hermione,” he whispered, blinking furiously at the tears trying to form in his eyes, “please press the button.”

Something in Harry’s tone sent a chill through Hermione’s body, and the look in his eyes didn’t make her feel much better either. Unlike Harry, her Muggle rationality and personal belief that there was a logical explanation for everything (even magic was logical, in its own way) prevented her from piecing the puzzle together. At least they were, before she pressed the button. She stared blankly at it for a few moments. “That’s not possible,” she finally managed. “No …”

The watch face had changed dramatically when Hermione pressed the button. Gone were the intricate little symbols. It looked almost like a digital watch now, with a black face and white lettering that seemed painted on. It showed the time and full date, including the year. For a moment, she couldn’t speak.

Harry broke the silence. “What’s the date, Hermione?” he urged softly.

“I don’t believe it,” she said after a brief pause. “It can’t be true. It says it’s the Fourth of July … and the year is 2153.”

“Does it look broken at all?” Harry asked, his voice hollow.

“…No.”

Harry put his head in his hands. “Oh, God. I guess … I guess that explains the bike.” He slumped against the wall.

“Harry?” He looked up, suddenly very much annoyed that he couldn’t see her face. “What are we going to do?” He didn’t need to be able to see to pick up the faint tone of desperation in her voice – the beginnings of panic.

He wondered why he wasn’t feeling any panic. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been awake as long as she, and was still too shocked to really stop and think about just how wrong this whole situation was. Or maybe it was the fact that Hermione wasn’t dealing with it very well at all, and his brain knew at least one of them needed to be thinking clearly right now. “At least,” he found himself saying, “we’re not dead.” Hermione might have nodded then, he couldn’t be sure. He put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“How?”

I don’t know yet. “Are you hurt?” he asked. It suddenly seemed like very important information.

She shook her head. How can he be so calm right now? She couldn’t come up with an answer, but it was infectious just the same, and she felt herself relaxing. As long as Harry wasn’t (openly) scared, she wasn’t going to be either. That was reasonable, right? “No, not really. My face is kind of sore. Maybe I hit it when I fell. I’m not sure how long it took me to wake up.”

Harry would have very much liked to examine Hermione’s face, but without his glasses there was no possibility of that happening, unless he got his face so close to hers that their lips would practically be touching. That seemed like a bad idea. “Okay. What do you have with you? I’ve got my wand, my broom, and the pocketknife Sirius gave me. Everything else is … was in my trunk.”

She frowned. “All I’ve got is my wand. So you don’t have any money either? That’s not good. Not that we could have spent it anywhere around here. This is distinctly Muggle territory.”

“We could have pawned the coins,” he said darkly, “but there’s no point in worrying about it now. First thing’s first: we need to figure out where we are. Maybe we can find some wizards or witches – I mean, if there are any on the street they’ll recognize our clothes, won’t they?” Okay, Harry, that’s a totally stupid plan. Just wander around blindly and hope a wizard sees you? “I’m sorry, Hermione, but I don’t know what else to do.”

“No, Harry, that’s a fine plan,” she said, brightening. “We’ll find a public library. It’ll be safe there, we’ll be able to find out where we are, and we can look at the history books for free and get some idea of how much the world’s changed. We need to know what’s going on. And we can ask someone there about getting your glasses replaced. I’ve read about goodwill organizations that give away free glasses and things like that. I don’t know what you have to do to qualify, but we’ll worry about that later.”

Harry blinked at her, and for the first time since Wormtail attacked, he grinned. Leave it to Hermione to come up with a plan involving a library. “Hermione,” he asked, suddenly remembering that they had no idea where they were, “how are we supposed to find the library?”

Hermione frowned again, standing up. “We’ll just have to ask someone, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “Try to pick out someone who looks especially friendly.”

Hermione looked at her friend, concentrating on his eyes. They weren’t blank, but they weren’t really looking at her, either, like he wasn’t bothering to try and focus on anything. “Harry, just how blind are you without your glasses?”

“I can make out the tip of my nose … and that’s about it.”

Hermione sighed and set down next to him. “Oh, dear. This is going to be difficult.”

“Well,” Harry said, “we don’t have to worry about it for a minute. I just realized something.” He tapped the Gryffindor House badge on his robes. “I don’t think we need to worry about not using magic. I mean, we shouldn’t just flaunt it in front of the Muggles, but if we need it, we shouldn’t hesitate. If it attracts any Ministry of Magic officials working here, well … that would be good. We wouldn’t have to try to find them.”

Hermione nodded hesitantly. She didn’t really like the idea of using magic outside of Hogwarts, even under these circumstances, but Harry had a point. “What about Dark wizards? If any of them are lurking around …” she trailed off nervously. “Not that I consider myself a pushover,” she added after a moment, “but I’d rather not have to face them alone. And you’re …”

“Useless at the moment?” Harry knew what Hermione was getting at. One-hundred-and-fifty-seven years were a long time, and if the wizarding world assumed both of them were killed on the Express, all but the oldest of Dark wizards and witches would likely fail to recognize him as Harry Potter. And they probably wouldn’t recognize Hermione either, but he suddenly remembered running into Malfoy after a band of Death Eaters showed up at the World Cup. “If you think they can’t spot a Mudblood, stay where you are.” If there were Dark wizards around they might decide they wanted to indulge in a bit of tormenting, and she was right, he wouldn’t be much help without his eyes. He refused to think of them as Death Eaters – Voldemort would have either been defeated by now or taken over. The existence of what was apparently a free Muggle city ruled out the latter. He should be dead by now, no matter what, Harry thought suddenly. Dumbledore said the Sorcerer’s Stone was destroyed, and the only known makers left only had enough time to “get their affairs in order.” They must be gone by now, too. Voldemort couldn’t have become immortal. Dumbledore and Voldemort made it sound like the Elixir of Life was the only way. It wasn’t really any kind of empirical, fact based conclusion, but it made him feel better, so he went with it. “I’ll tell you what. Given our situation, being a little optimistic and assuming we won’t run into any maniacs wouldn’t hurt. But just the same, let’s not make it any easier for them. Use the Severing Charm on your Gryffindor badge and mine and pocket them. We can take off the robes and carry them around with us, but they’re the most conspicuous part of our uniforms. We don’t need to draw any extra attention to ourselves yet.” We’ll need them if it gets cold at night, he thought darkly.

She nodded. She could see the faint anxiety in his eyes now. They were a lot easier to read without the glare from his glasses. She had the feeling he was trying to sound more confident than he felt, and bizarrely, that made her feel a little bit better. She knew Harry well enough to know that if he was trying to keep it together, for whatever the reason, he would be able to. She performed the Severing Charm on both sets of robes perfectly, and it was impossible to tell that anything had ever been sewn to the black fabric. The colorful patches disappeared in her pocket, and Harry started to stand up, taking off his robes in the process. Hermione had already removed hers, and was folding them carefully. She was wearing a pair of pale khakis underneath. After he was on his feet, he came to a startling realization. Well, technically, the epiphany came when he tripped over his own feet and cracked his chin against the pavement. He was totally uncoordinated with out his glasses – he wasn’t going anywhere. “Ow…”

“Harry, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess my subconscious was jealous of the bruise over your eye and decided I need one of my own.”

Hermione started to reach down to help him up, but hesitated for a moment. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to touch him, but she was suddenly nervous. I don’t have time to be stupid. It’s not like I haven’t held his hand before. She put her arm out and smiled. “Give me your hand. I’ll try to keep you from running into anything else.” They started out of the alley, Hermione leading the way with Harry holding their robes under his right arm. I never realized how rough his hands were. And they were. Most wizards had calloused fingertips around the point where they gripped their wands, but Harry’s hand was uniformly toughened. It must be all the broom flying. Either that, a dark little voice sounded, or the Dursleys never let him wear gloves when they make him wash the dishes after they gorge themselves.

She realized suddenly that that would never be a problem for her friend again. Overhead, a helicopter passed so silently neither of them noticed.

A few miles away, at a relatively small compound in Tokyo’s industrial district, very odd things were happening. Or, at least that’s what Harry and Hermione would have thought, if they were around to observe. It was actually a rather routine type of event, if not completely unwelcome and highly unfortunate. This particular compound was comprised of a parking garage, a fifty story whitewashed building with a number of black, completely opaque windows on any given side, and a grassy knoll scattered with picnic tables and park benches. There was a large sign planted in the ground that read, in bold letters, “Dyntatech Systems.” All of this was enclosed by a simple fifty-foot high concrete barrier lined at the top with a strand of new, mint condition barbed wire that glittered brightly in the sun. It had one gate – two thick slabs of a reinforced, armored adamantine alloy that the federal government of the United States of America spent billions of dollars to have developed. This high-grade armor was in fact at the core of every barrier wall. Nothing short of heavy anti-tank weaponry would have been able to breach it. This is probably why the mercenaries raiding the building had decided to completely bypass the gates and the walls. They simply didn’t feel it was in keeping with the stealth philosophy to drive a heavily armored tank down a freeway. But it didn’t matter. Their employers had a much more subtle way to get them in and out of the compound. It wasn’t something they completely understood, but they were not being paid to understand, so none of them gave it much thought.

No one had come to work yet. Things didn’t really get rolling at Dynatech Systems until 7:30 in the morning, so it was practically deserted. But if anyone had been roaming around the grounds and happened to look up, they would have gotten quite a shock. Hanging between a pair of windows about thirty stories up on the south wall, apparently by nothing more than his fingers, was a man a little over five feet tall. Most of his body was covered in distinctive two-toned set of blue metallic body armor, with the major exception being his white gloved hands. His black hair was hidden by a helmet of similar coloration with a large red gem embedded in the spot directly over the middle of his forehead. On either side, perfectly parallel to his ears, was a light blue ring-like piece of molding, with a special red polycarbonate material designed to allow for sound to pass through without being muffled adhered to the inside of the donut and covering his ears. His eyes were a brilliant emerald green.

Okay, X thought, digging his fingers deeper into the side of the building in an effort to avoid being blown off his precarious perch, this could be going a lot better. He went over the last fifteen minutes in his head, trying to figure out where he had screwed up. The Hunters had been notified, by means of silent alarm, of a Maverick break-in in progress at Dynatech Systems, which supposedly sold advanced microprocessors and other components used to assemble supercomputers. At first, X and his comrades had been a bit confused by the fact that this was being reported to them as a Code One Emergency Event – examples of which included attacks on military research and development sites housing sensitive or highly dangerous materials and attacks on the governing bodies of any nation within the Maverick Hunters’ jurisdiction, which encompassed every country in the world that was currently a member of the United Nations. The obvious question: what was so dangerous about a break in at a tech firm’s corporate office that it warranted a Code One?

The answer came from a representative of Ryu Tomoe, the Japanese Minister of Defense. Even as the men and women on call in the Maverick Hunter Command and Control Building were receiving the initial reports from the automated security system, another set of computers at the Ministry was getting the same information. The people that monitored these terminals knew that Dynatech Systems was nothing more than a front for a weapons development facility operated by the Japanese government. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that at the moment, that facility was home to a few dozen gallons of a new kind of liquefied nerve toxin that made VX look like Clinique Gentle Moisturizing Mist. When news of what was going on at Dynatech Systems went public, there would be tremendous uproar, and the bulk of the UN Security Council would be breathing down Japan’s neck. But none of that would really matter if the nerve toxin was successfully stolen. So, within five minutes of the alarm, Ryu Tomoe gave the proper authorization, and the call to Maverick Hunter Headquarters that would explain exactly what was going on went out.

The computers connected to Dynatech’s surveillance systems indicated that there were fifteen people involved in the infiltration, but that was all the Hunters knew. The satellite link-up was terminated shortly after the information was received. This was another oddity – why would someone break into a facility and then disable the alarm system? It was usually far more prudent to do it the other way around, especially when striking in small numbers. But it didn’t matter to the Hunters. Given the situation, the only thing that actually was important was stopping them. Righteous indignation, anger, shock – that could wait for later. They needed to act quickly and decisively, so they sent X.

According to the surveillance satellites, all fifteen perpetrators were loitering on the roof of the building, apparently waiting for something, so that’s where X materialized. His sudden appearance startled all of them for about two seconds, so he took that opportunity to study the scene. He was standing in the middle of the roof, and his targets were standing in a circle around the edges. Unfortunately they all had their weapons – a variety of automatic rifles and built in arm cannons – activated and ready. X didn’t really mind, he’d beamed into the area with his own weapon systems activated and waiting. His right forearm was gone, replaced with a large cylindrical cannon capable of producing super-heated, deadly plasma. The blue gaseous substance was brimming at the edges of the weapon. He was ready. They were all humanoids, of various heights and builds, but they had one thing in common – they were all wearing the same solid black body armor. These people weren’t simply Mavericks. They were mercenaries, and by the look of their equipment, they were very well funded. He didn’t see anything that looked refrigerated storage containers and assumed that the nerve agent was still somewhere inside the building. That was good. He wouldn’t have to worry about not blowing it up. By the end of second two, he was ready to go to work. He sprang forward then, not bothering with the standard order to disarm and surrender. If they had managed to secure the canisters, they had already killed the fifty Japanese Army officers standing watch in the underground portion of the facility. When he realized this, he felt a great pang of sadness – fifty people had lost their lives before anyone knew anything was wrong. As far as he was concerned, the battle had already begun, and he never attempted to negotiate in the middle of a firefight.

The first mercenary he slammed into had reacted too slowly, and X dug his elbow into the pit of her abdomen, doubling her over. He brought his cannon up, level with her head, and fired off a ball of plasma approximately the same size as his torso. By the time she fell to the ground, now and forever unmoving, he had already rolled to the left and come up in a crouching position, very much aware of the dozens of high-caliber slugs passing over his head. He looked at the closest of the fourteen people now closing on him – the one currently bringing his rifle around in an attempt to turn him into Swiss cheese. He sprang up at the last second, somersaulting over the man’s head as his rifle filled the roof with scores of pockmarks. X landed behind him and fired a second blue burst into the back of his knees. They buckled, and he fell. X’s cannon wasn’t brimming with energy anymore. He would need to recharge it before he could fire such large shots again, but for the moment, that wasn’t his intention. He quickly pressed it against the back of his opponent’s neck – the only place on his body that wasn’t covered in some sort of protective armor – and fired three rapid bursts of non-charged plasma: baseball sized balls of golden, destructive energy. It was enough, and in less than one minute, fifteen had become thirteen.

The mercenaries became more careful, and the skirmish continued for several minutes. Eventually, thirteen became five. X was dancing out of the way of some maniac’s built in rapid fire plasma cannon when it happened. The tactical scanner system built into his brain flared to life, and the soft red and blue tones of his internal Heads Up Display informed him that a human had just appeared behind him … out of thin air. He spun around on his feet, more out of reflex than anything else, and sure enough, there was a human man in thick black robes of some kind. X couldn’t see his face – it was hooded. For an instant, his concentration faltered. It was one instant too long. The hooded man pointed a hand at X – a hand that was holding a long, black stick of some kind. By the time X registered this, some sort of invisible force was pushing hard against his chest, throwing him off his feet. Within seconds he was over the edge of the building. Gravity took over at that point, and he was falling.

His training kicked in then, and he snapped out of his confusion induced stupor in time to sink his fingers into the side of the building before he was turned one hundred and twenty-four pounds of blue turf goop. His legs were dangling beneath them, the blue armor on one of them stained with a dark red liquid. One of the mercenaries had managed to nail the edge of his hip. At the moment, he was still hanging there, trying to figure out how a human had instantaneously appeared on the roof and knocked him over the edge by pointing a stick at him. The speaker built into the left side of his helmet chirped once. Incoming communication signal. He gave the mental command that would put his communication system in active mode, and a familiar feminine voice flooded his ears. He smiled thinly. She sounded just as he expected her to – calm and professional, if not slightly urgent. But he knew her better than most people, better than she probably wanted him to, and didn’t miss the hint of anxiety in her voice. “X! Are you alright? I lost your transponder signal for a few seconds. When it came back on line, you were hanging on the side of the building. You’re showing minor damage to your right thigh.”

“I’m fine, Alia.” When he spoke, his voice was soft and gentle, but it held an urgent edge. “But I’m not completely sure what just happened. One second, I’m in the middle of a firefight with five heavily armed, half-terrified mercenaries,” And it sure took them long enough to get terrified … they were all very professional … which means they were highly expensive, “and the next, a human just … appears behind me, waves a stick at me, and some sort of energy field that doesn’t clearly register on my tactical scanners is pushing me off the roof. I managed to get over my shock in time to get a grip on the wall.”

“A human just … appeared?” He could hear the total confusion she was trying desperately to mask. “Did he teleport in? Humans can’t teleport …”

“No,” X said softly and quickly. Technically, he didn’t have time for this conversation – the nerve agent and the mercenaries were still here, somewhere. But both of them needed to understand exactly what was going on – and since that technically wasn’t possible, considering X had no idea how he’d come to be in his current predicament, at the very least both of them needed to be in possession of all known facts about the situation.

No one had bothered looking over the edge. They must have assumed I’m dead. Cocky. Maybe they’re not as professional as I thought. “My radar didn’t pick up any incoming teleporter signals. There was this strange popping noise coming from the stick. Actually,” he paused, his eyes alight with realization, “I didn’t have time to think about it at the time, but I’m pretty sure that my radar system overloaded for about five milliseconds right when he appeared. My communicator winked out too – primary and auxiliary transceivers. Like you might expect it to do when exposed to a lot of ionizing radiation.” He looked up, mentally ordering his visual system into active thermograph mode and activating the zoom function built into his eyes. He had hoped he would be able to look through the walls, floors, and roof of the building and check the status of the five people still on the roof. It worked, but only partially. The walls and floors were just too thick, built with a lot more reinforced steel and concrete than was normal – he got as far as the forty-eighth floor, but no further. Much to his chagrin, the cold storage tanks he was trying to secure – which should have been vivid blue cylinders in thermograph mode – were nowhere to be seen. Which made sense, really. They would be as close to the roof as possible. Various bodies were littered here and there on each floor, all showing up in various shades of blue. From what he could see, they were Japanese Army officers who attempted to pursue the mercenaries. He frowned, deeply. “Alia,” he began again, “I need you to pull up satellite images of this compound. I need to know what the people on the roof are doing. Before my abrupt departure, they were all standing around, waiting for something. Location of the nerve agent is still unknown. I’m going back up. Let me know what’s waiting for me.”

Alia’s voice was missing the anxiety he’d picked up earlier, and that made him feel better. “Understood. Working on it. I’ll have satellite uplink in forty-five seconds. We’re in luck. One of the Oracle’s Eye Geosynchronous Orbiters just happens to be right above you right now. And people say there’s not some divine force at work in the universe constantly watching our backs.”

X grinned for an instant. “I know that’s not true. I’m talking to one of them.” Before she could say anything, he added, “I’m going in. I’ll leave the line open.” His right leg, which had been dangling limply beneath him up until this point, snapped up so fast an unaided human eye would have seen it as nothing more than a blue blur and slammed into the black window next to it. The bulletproof, earthquake-resistant six inch slab of glass yielded instantly to the several tons of force he was capable of putting through his leg, and its remains either flew into the building or floated down to earth, the smallest pieces glittering like black snow. For an instant, X allowed himself to be glad that no one was on the ground waiting be showered by the black fragmented glass of death. Then he swung his torso around, loosened his hands, and rolled onto the thirtieth floor of Dynatech Systems, activated the buster cannons on both his arms, and made for the emergency stairwell. By his estimates, it would take him approximately a minute and a half to dash his way to the roof if he really hauled it. Time was the critical factor here, so that’s exactly what he planned to do.

Exactly forty-five seconds later, the voice was in his ear again. “ You’ve still got five on the roof – two with busters, three with assault rifles. They’re gathered around the helipad. No sign of anything that looks like the nerve agent canisters, and I’ve got pretty good resolution – I’m looking at it from fifty feet up.”

X nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. “Understood. I’ll find them. They’re not on the roof, so they’ve got to be inside somewhere. After I neutralize the five people still on the roof, we can bring in a search team.”

One minute later (Stupid slippery steps!) X was standing in front of the small set of stairs that would take him to the roof. His arms were hanging at his side, both of them in buster mode, brimming with blue energy. No one had blasted through the door and tried to kill him yet, and that told them none of them had their tactical radar systems activated. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was beginning to think he had seriously over-estimated their training. Either that or they were specifically chosen for this mission because they were incompetent. Someone wanted them disposed of. It made sense, but like several other pieces of information currently blowing in the breeze, for the moment it was irrelevant. He activated his thermal optics. Indeed, everyone still standing was gathered around the helipad. Helicopters. Suddenly, things were starting to make a lot more sense. They hadn’t needed to teleport through the scrambling fields … they just jumped down off a helicopter, and now they were waiting to be picked up. That’s why they hadn’t disabled the security systems immediately – they had to actually get into the building to do it. When their flying vehicle arrived, they would likely produce the nerve agent canisters and be off. “Alia,” he whispered, “monitor the airspace for an incoming vehicle – it’s probably going to be a helicopter or a high altitude hovercraft of some sort. If you pick one up, let me know.”

“You think they’re flying out? That would certainly explain a few things, though I’d love to know how they expect to approach unnoticed. I’ll go to a wider angle view of the area …” There was a brief pause. “Be careful, X.”

“Always.” Then he kicked the door off its hinges and ran onto the roof, busters raised and ready.

They all turned at the sound in time to see the metal door sliding across the roof with X close behind it. Shock and surprise took over their faces, and for an instant, none of them moved. X brought his left arm up and fired twice at a short, stocky man with gleaming black eyes. He reacted fast enough to duck the first ball of energy, but X was anticipating that. The blue armored Commander lowered his arm, and the second crashed into one of the mercenary’s feet. He stumbled in an attempt to regain his balance, grunting angrily. His leg was bleeding profusely below the knee – dark reddish, nearly black liquid. He tried to move, and it abruptly gave way. When he fell, his rifle skidded across the roof, eventually falling over the side.

X became aware of a high-pitched noise behind him. He knew it well – it was the sound of a charging buster. He didn’t move, waiting for it to discharge. When it did, he leapt into the air. He heard a gruff scream and realized it had smashed into the man he’d just hobbled. A moment later, there was a light thudding sound, and the mercenary behind him didn’t make any attempt to get up. Four. He twisted his body around in midair, coming down facing his opponent. This one was female, a bit over six feet tall, thin, with blue eyes and blonde hair cascading out of the back of her combat helmet. X made a point not to focus on her face – she looked too much like someone he knew. She still had her buster – which was much smaller than X’s – pointed at him, though there was no sign of charged plasma within its bowels. The look on her face was one of horrible realization. She could only charge one shot at a time, and her opponent still had one fully charged weapon, which he was now pointing at her abdomen. She started shifting her weight to her left side, preparing to lunge out of the way.

X saw this, and followed her course with his arm. If he let her complete the roll, she would have time to recharge her weapon, and he could already hear the sound of rifle bolts being thrown behind him. They would be firing long before he was able to move out of the way, so he didn’t even try. He fired another pair of plasma spheres, watching them slam into her abdomen, eating away at the lightest part of her body armor. A moment later, she was screaming, and X could see dark blood seeping from her belly. He realized the protective plating there was thinner than he had anticipated, most likely built with an emphasis on speed. Without pausing he activated his tactical scanner – represented by a bright blue targeting reticule – and pointed it at her. Normally, he would have gotten a readout on what she was capable of: estimated speed, strength, type of weapon and maneuvering systems, armor grade – but instead small, capitalized red lettering flashed across his HUD: Warning … subject’s generator is severely damaged. Overload imminent. In a few moments, she would disappear in a small ball of nuclear fire. Three.

The Blue Bomber turned on his heels just in time to see a pair of men pointing rifles at his head. They were already squeezing the triggers. If he did nothing, in less than a second he would be dead. He didn’t move, mentally giving the order that would activate his Nova Strike System. Behind him, there was a flash and a horrible booming noise, and the girl was no more. Then the bullets flew.

None of them hit their mark. He was now incased in a sphere of white concussive energy that dissolved the armor piercing rounds on contact. The two of them didn’t have time to think about this, because X’s dash thrusters – the miniature propulsion rockets built into his boots as part of his armor’s Emergency Acceleration System – chose that moment to fire, sending him blasting forward and lifting him off the ground. His busters came to life again, firing an unending stream of dense, white-blue plasma spheroids at the riflemen. Charging time was no longer an issue – in Nova Strike mode, his weapon systems drained power directly from his reactor, as opposed to collecting ambient microscopic particles from the atmosphere and converting them into something usable. It was for this reason that the attack only lasted several seconds and could only be used on a limited basis in normal circumstances. If he overdid it, his reactor efficiency would fall to dangerously low levels.

But in the few, fleeting seconds that X’s busters sang, plenty of damage was done. The roof around the two mercenaries bubbled and dissolved, and their weapons – and the hands that were holding them – liquefied. Their mouths were open, and the Hunter figured they were screaming, but he couldn’t hear anything besides white noise. X lowered his arms slightly, watching as half a dozen white, deadly spheres slammed into either man’s stomach. Two more explosions filled his eyes, both surprisingly quiet, no louder than a car backfiring. One.

X was flying about eight feet above the roof when the Nova Strike System commenced its auto-shutdown sequence. His busters stopped firing just before his dash boots deactivated, and he curled into a ball in an effort to gain some control over his descent. He landed hard in a one kneed crouch, his systems working to shake off the effects of the energy drain. He hated having to use the Nova Strike, it always made him feel disoriented for a few seconds while his generator stabilized itself. He called up his system status. Generator’s at eighty-eight percent efficiency. Good enough.

He got up slowly, his eyes locked on the lone mercenary about fifty feet away from him. He looked terrified and didn’t even bother raising his arm cannon. X kept his arms limp at his side. This one wasn’t going to try to attack him; he was just too scared. “Surrender,” he said softly, “and you won’t be harmed.”

The man, a five foot tall, skinny sort of fellow with black eyebrows and brown eyes, did as he was told. His buster deactivated, a black gloved hand reappeared on his right arm and for the moment, X actually thought he was going to surrender peacefully. “Alright,” he continued, “Where are the canisters?”

“Not here,” the mercenary said. His voice was higher than it seemed like it should have been, and slightly wobbly. His eyes darted back and forth, looking at the ruined remains of his friends.

“I know that,” X said, his voice perfectly calm. “They’re not on the roof. Where are they?” Before the mercenary could answer, a number of simultaneous popping noises filled his ears, and the roof shook slightly. Just as before, his communications and tracking equipment failed, but this time the effect lasted for several seconds. When it resolved, his eyes widened, and had he been the type of person to swear wantonly, he would have let loose with something really improper. Instead, he simply whispered, “Oh, crap.” He completely forgot about the mercenary in front of him, and turned back towards the helipad. It wasn’t vacant anymore. There was now an empty idling Rolls-Royce BA4 Personal Jet Helicopter on the roof, surrounded by ten black-robed, cloaked figures hanging on to various pieces of its chassis. Already knowing what it would show him, he activated his thermograph. All human signatures. For several seconds, his mind simply stalled.

Then there was another succession of pops, and they all simply disappeared; simply winked out of existence, leaving the helicopter, X, and the mercenary alone on the roof. X’s mind, forsaking its complete confusion, abruptly snapped back into gear. He started to turn around, realizing he’d left himself wide open, but it was too late. He felt something being slapped against his tailbone, and new he’d screwed up.

He would have screamed when the electric shock flashed through is body, but his mouth, along with every other piece of his anatomy, was no longer under his conscious control. He mentally kicked himself – he’d managed to drop his guard long enough to have his nervous system frozen. He fell forward limply, his face slamming into the concrete. At least I couldn’t feel that. Alia was talking into his ear again, and he vaguely wondered if she still had an overhead view of the scene. She probably did, and he hated that. But there was only one thing to do. The device on his back was a handheld thing – it felt like it was about the size of a golf ball. Which meant it likely would only carry enough power to keep him down for about forty-five seconds. Enough time to get the canisters from wherever they’re hidden and fly off. He started trying to wiggle his fingers. Nothing. And I’m not dead yet. Good for me. He must figure I won’t attack him after he has the stuff. Not. He activated his tracking radar again. Mercenary number five was on the other side of the roof, digging around the inside of something. He tried to remember what was over there. Then it hit him. Air-conditioner unit the size of a small office. Air-conditioning unit containing industrial super-coolant. The nerve agent canisters are filled with the same kind of super-coolant. That means they show up the same shade of blue as the inside of the unit on thermograph – making them invisible if they’re placed inside the unit. They’ve been on the roof the whole time. I got played. Nicely. Damn it! Then again, it’s not like this is completely normal, what with the disappearing humans and all. This is turning into a bad day. One of his fingers twitched. He would have full movement back in a few more seconds, and then he’d have figure out how to fix this. He wasn’t really worried, just angry with himself. He hadn’t lost yet, and he didn’t intend to. His artificial muscles completely unlocked as the last of the shock cycled out of his systems. Here we go. He blinked – Alia was still trying to get him to answer. “I’m up, Alia. It was just a temporary stunner.”

There was a soft sigh of relief. “What just happened? I was watching and, quite frankly, I don’t get it.”

X frowned. Me neither. “I’ll try to ask our backstabbing friend in just a second. Stand by.”

He got to his feet in time to see his target closing the door of the helicopter. He hadn’t bothered to deactivate his thermal optics, so he could see inside the vehicle pretty well. The formally terrified mercenary (who, X suspected, hadn’t really been terrified at all) was in the pilot’s seat, trying to get it in the air before X had time to chase him down. He saw them on the floorboard, lashed down – two three foot long cylinders, both a bright, vivid blue. Bingo. No, you are not leaving this roof without me. X fired his dash thrusters. With his boots roaring he flew forward, his body nothing more than a blue blur racing across the roof. Another few seconds, and he was standing alongside the helicopter door. He sank his fingers into it and ripped it off in a swift, fluid motion, tossing it over the side of the building. He stepped into the helicopter. He wanted to blast the controls out, but he couldn’t risk causing a major explosion and detonating the nerve agent. “Stop. Now.”

The mercenary scrambled to his feet, glaring at X. He didn’t activate his weapon either. He wasn’t going to risk blowing his prize up after going through so much trouble to get it. He reached backwards with his left arm, unclipping something from the small of his back. X had a pretty good idea what it was and got ready for the wide sweeping motion that would next. The energy dagger in the mercenary’s hand was a small black thing with a silver ring on one end. At the moment, that emitter was alight with a four inch long purple plasma blade. X crouched at the last minute, and the only thing that got sliced was the air where his neck had been a second before.

“Thanks,” X said briskly, “but I would like to remain attached to my head for the time being.” He brought his hands together and straightened his knees, slamming his entwined fists into the side of the mercenary’s jaw. He felt it crack. But he paid for it – he saw the dagger coming back up, but couldn’t move fast enough to keep it from slicing into his left armpit. He screamed, suddenly no longer able to feel or move his arm. Lovely. Just great.

“Give up? No one can best Armando. I can’t believe you actually thought I was going to surrender. Unlike my friends, I’m not afraid of a name, X.”

Well, at least I have a name to work with now. X reached forward with his good arm, two fingers extended. A few seconds later he pulled them away, leaving Armando roaring in pain and outrage. The mercenary stumbled away from him, covering his right eye socket with his hand. “Never.” X opened his hand, and something that looked very much like an eyeball with wires leading off it fell on to the ground. He flattened his palm and brought the side of it against Armando’s left wrist. Something inside snapped, his hand opened, and the knife fell to the ground. It passed right by X’s left hand, but since he couldn’t move that particular appendage, he had no choice but to let it fall to the ground. It clattered around on the floor – and rolled right on out the door.

X kicked high, catching Armando’s head and snapping it back. “If all I had going for me was reputation,” he said darkly, “I’d have died a long time ago.” He followed with a quick spin kick to the right temple, and Armando crashed against the wall, momentarily dazed. X wasted no time in sending his fist through the mercenary’s throat. When he pulled it away it was sticky and black. Armando gazed blankly up at him. He was dead. “Alia,” X said softly, “I’ve secured the helicopter and the roof.”

“Wonderful. Your transponder says your left shoulder is damaged. How bad is it?”

X grimaced. “My left arm is totally useless. Neural relays are likely severed. But at least it doesn’t hurt. I can’t get any more specific than that. According to my damage control system, it’s no longer attached.” He felt something warm and wet slide down the inside of his armor and realized he was losing a fair amount of circulatory fluid. Normally, his damage control system would have closed off the veins, but it wasn’t functioning anywhere near his left arm anymore. I need to get out of here before I bleed to death.

He could almost hear her frown when she spoke again. “Lifesaver will be waiting for you when you get back.” There was a pause. “What’s the integrity of the canisters?”

X leaned over the pilot’s controls, deactivating the engines. His gaze moved to the back of the vehicle. “I’m checking them out now.” He set his vision back to normal mode and knelt between the two of them.

They were identical, and both looked undamaged. Each was made of some kind of black polymer he couldn’t easily identify, and looked more like a giant opaque gel-cap than anything else. Probably made of something specifically engineered not to absorb heat – looks kind of like the heat shielding on space vehicles. At least it’s intact. I can’t believe how flammable they said this stuff is. There weren’t any windows built into the storage canisters, but each had a small, twelve inch display set into the top with an array of controls beneath it. He pressed the one marked “view” and the screen came to life, showing him a low-light picture of the storage compartment inside. His eyes widened, his face paled, and for a long time, he didn’t move.

Finally, Alia’s voice sounded in his ear again. “X, what’s going on?”

All of it, even the jiffy-pop humans, made perfect sense now. He still had no idea how they came and went, but implementation was irrelevant. They could come and go as they pleased, and that was the point. He was very good at spotting patterns. Everything that had happened on the roof, all the dead people inside the building, the helicopter, the seemingly sloppy way the mercenaries handled the alarm – all of it came together.

Some of the cloaked humans had appeared inside the building before the mercenaries even arrived, and disappeared with the nerve agent canisters, leaving the decoys he was looking at right now. That probably happened in a matter of minutes. Then the mercenaries had shown up and gone about trying to steal the fakes in a far more conventional way. They hadn’t beamed in – the cloaked people had simply materialized them inside the scrambling field. Whether or not they knew they were going for the decoys, he didn’t know. But it wasn’t important. They had broken into the subterranean research and development facility, killed anyone who stood against them (though, given the earlier presence of the cloaked people, some of the soldiers and engineers would likely already have been dead at that point) and made off with the fake canisters. Then they went to the roof, hid their loot in the air conditioning unit, and waited for the helicopter to show up that would get them out. That’s when X showed up, very likely right on schedule.

X took them out, just as whoever had planned this whole fiasco intended for him to. It added believability to the illusion, after all. If he had been capable of it, he was sure he would have been violently sick by now. But he wasn’t, so he simply stood there, carrying the argument to its logical conclusion. Then he’d secured the decoys, and here he was. The only thing that was really out of place was one of the hooded men showing up to knock him off the building. It broke the pattern. He realized it was quite possible that someone screwed up, and that wasn’t supposed to have happened.

But why? What was the point? Nothing had to happen after the theft of the authentic canisters. He could only come up with one reason. Someone wanted him to be standing in the helicopter at this very moment, contemplating this very chain of events. Someone wanted him to know that, not only had he been beaten, but that he hadn’t had a chance to begin with. He got the message loud and clear.

That’s why both the canisters beneath him were completely empty, except for a small piece of paper in one of them, taped down so the camera could easily read what it said:

I know what you’re asking yourself, X: “Hey? Where’s the cream filling?” I could tell you, but what would be the fun in that? Have a nice day.

“See anything yet?” Harry and Hermione had gone at least five miles north, moving towards the densest part of the skyline. Crookshanks was walking between the two of them. Hermione figured the central branch of the public library system had to be downtown. Harry hadn’t said anything yet, but he was beginning to wonder if there even was a public library system in whatever country they were in. If there wasn’t, that would sort of ruin her entire plan, and that’s why he kept his mouth shut. As long as she felt she had some control over the situation, she was less likely to panic.

“No … nothing. I was hoping there would be some signs or something, but honestly, this whole place seems a little disorganized and … dirty.”

Harry nodded. He couldn’t see, but he could tell he wasn’t in the cleanest of places. He wasn’t sure what he’d stepped in about half a mile back, but it definitely wasn’t water. Hermione had apologized profusely for not helping him avoid it, but she never would say what it was. Maybe she doesn’t know. That thought didn’t make him feel any better. He felt her hand loosen in his, and abruptly remembered they had been holding on to each other for the last hour. It was funny. In the mere presence of girls like Cho, he had always been supremely uncomfortable. The thought of actually holding hands with one of them seemed totally nonsensical … he associated it with such unlikely events as Snape pulling him aside one day after class to discuss the joy of Quiddich. Hermione was slowing down, and for all the good it did him, he turned to look at her. He couldn’t make out her face, but she was looking at the ground, and he realized her shoulders were rising and falling, just barely. “Hermione, are you alright?”

She turned to look at him, and the blurry thing he knew was her face was slightly pinker than it normally was. “What? Oh, I’m fine. Just getting a little winded, I guess.”

Harry nodded, his unhidden eyes betraying concern. “Maybe we should find somewhere to rest for a bit.” His feet were sore. The more he thought about it, the more the idea of a break sounded good, despite their situation. “What’s that over there? It looks like it has tables and chairs in front of it.” I think those are tables and chairs. Either that, or some sort of sculpture.

“Harry,” she replied crisply, “we don’t have time to just sit around. We have no idea what’s going on around us. The sooner we find out –”

“You can’t do any kind of research at the library if you pass out before we get there. We don’t even know where we’re going yet. The only good directions we’ve managed to get in the last hour were ‘go somewhere downtown.’ We’ll just stop for a few minutes, I promise. I think that’s a restaurant. Maybe we can get some free water. Besides, it’ll be a good place to ask for better directions.”

She nodded reluctantly, and began to lead him across the street. She knew he was right. They did need better directions. But she didn’t really want to stop. Stopping meant not having the tasks of finding the library or guiding Harry around to worry about. When that happened, her mind would inevitably begin to think about the full implications of their situation. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet.

Once they were across, she got a better look at the restaurant. “It’s a sushi bar.” She paused for a moment, reading something. “Oh, my,” she said finally, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Harry could feel her hand quiver slightly. “What’s wrong, Hermione?”

“Most of it’s in Japanese, but there’s an English bit. It says it’s been ‘rated the Best Sushi Establishment in the city by Tokyo Dining Magazine.’ Tokyo. We’re … we’re in Japan, Harry.”

Harry stumbled, and the fact that he couldn’t see where he was going didn’t have a thing to do with it. You’ve got to be kidding me. And I actually thought this couldn’t get any worse. “Well, at least now we know where we are,” he managed. He could feel Hermione glaring at him. “I don’t suppose you know anything about the Japanese Ministry of Magic?” he whispered.

Hermione shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I only know that they have one, and their controls are much looser than Great Britain’s.”

“Controls?”

“Their Use of Underage Magic Law is much less restrictive. Anyone with at least three years of magical education is allowed to use magic, so long as they don’t attempt any spells they weren’t taught in school.” Hermione’s tone made it clear she didn’t think this was anything close to a good policy.

Harry frowned. “There goes that part of the plan.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“We’re fourth years. We’ve had more than three years of training. Unless we cause some sort of major uproar, they’re likely to ignore us.” He sighed. “The only way I know to cause a major uproar is to attack something or flaunt our powers in front of Muggles. The first choice is out.”

“And causing an incident with Muggles wouldn’t really be the best way to draw attention to ourselves, would it?” Hermione was frowning now, too.

Harry smirked darkly. “Uncle Vernon always said first impressions were the key to credibility … so no, I don’t think that would be good. They’re going to have enough trouble swallowing our story as it is.” He blinked. “Did I just quote Uncle Vernon?”

Hermione giggled for the first time since she had woken up in the alley. “I’m afraid so. Does this mean you actually listen to what he tells you? I thought you said he was a maniacal idiot.”

Harry shrugged. “He is. But when Uncle Vernon talks, you can’t help but listen. Every once in a while, you might hear something almost useful.” Harry was close enough to the tables and chairs that he could make their shapes out now. They were silver, and metal, with two chairs to a table.

“Looks more like something you’d expect to see outside a French bistro,” Hermione mused. “Hmm … escargot.”

Harry’s stomach made a tiny rumbling sound. He blushed. “Sorry.”

Hermione grinned, for some reason glad that he couldn’t see her doing it. “Are you hungry, Harry?”

“Just a bit.”

Hermione nodded. “I am too.” She wasn’t grinning anymore. “What are we going to do? We can’t eat without money. We won’t be able to get hotel rooms or anything like that, either. And we’ll need more clothes …” She suddenly paled. “Harry, what if you have to pay to get in the library?”

Harry squeezed her hand without thinking about it. “Relax. We’ll be fine.”

Hermione wheeled on him, her face now inches away from his, looking him square in his barely-seeing eyes. What she saw there surprised her, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying shrilly, “How can you say that? We’re stuck in the 22nd century with no idea what’s happened in the last one hundred and fifty eight years, no money, no possessions besides what we’re carrying and … and,” her voice faltered, “no families. They’ll all be long dead by now …” She finally put a stop to her outburst, looking worriedly into her best friend’s eyes. His voice was, for the most part, clear, calm, and controlled … it sounded just like she thought Harry was supposed to sound. But his eyes told a different story. She was peering into them now, and she could see traces of the anxiety, the sadness and the worry that were fighting to control him. Surprisingly, there was no fear. She didn’t get it. Whenever he talked, he made it sound like he wasn’t worried at all, He sounded like he knew everything was going to be alright. Then a thought struck her, and she wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. He couldn’t be trying to act so nonchalant for me, could he? “Harry,” she said, after what was in her opinion a short, very uncomfortable silence, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you, it’s just … just … ” she couldn’t really find a suitable short description for what she was feeling right now.

Harry frowned, putting his hands on what he hoped were her shoulders. He wondered why she and Ron were always so good at reading him when they bothered to look him in the face. Admittedly, Hermione was better at it, but that was beside the point. At any rate, he thought, she’s on to me. That didn’t take as long as I’d hoped it would. “Hermione,” he said quietly, “I’m just as worried and confused as you are right now. But I can’t let that cloud my judgment.” They were standing next to a table now, and he pulled one of the chairs out, motioning for her to sit in it. When she did, he surprised her by helping her scoot it back where it belonged. He sat across from her, his frown deepening. “I don’t know what to do, Hermione. Not really. I mean, I’d like to hope that Hogwarts is still there, after all, it’s been around for more than a thousand years, right? But I don’t know how we’re going to get there. It’s on the other side of the world. I’d like to say I could fly us there … but even I know my limits. I have no idea what we’re going to do, or where or how we’re going to sleep or eat. But I do know that if we’re going to figure anything out, we’ve got to keep our emotions in check. It would be so easy to get bogged down in fear and sorrow. But we can’t do that. We’re doomed if we do. The most important resource we have at our disposal now is our wits. When I said everything will be fine, I meant it – whatever it takes, we’re going to figure this out and get help.” Whatever it takes, Hermione, I’ll make sure you’re fine. I will accept nothing less. After all, I got you in to this. He shook his head slightly. He’d been down this particular thought path before. It had occurred to him once how much simpler – and safer – his friends’ lives would have been if it weren’t for the simple fact that they were his friends. It was perfectly logical, really. But maybe he was selfish … he simply never allowed himself to really consider it because Hermione and Ron were his family. He couldn’t bear the thought of giving them up, not after the wretched, lonely first decade of his life. He had always done his best to look out for them – to try and keep them insulated from Voldemort’s wrath – but that never really worked like he’d hoped, and today, it hadn’t worked at all. He’d failed her, and she was going to have to suffer for it …

“Harry?” She was looking at him worriedly. “Are you alright? You kind of zoned out.”

Harry’s mind snapped back into focus. “Sorry, Hermione. I just … never mind. I’m fine.”

“Sorry I yelled at you. I sort of …”

“Snapped?” She blushed, looking embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it.” He sighed. “Let’s just try to get through today, alright?”

Hermione nodded, smiling at him in the vain hope he would be able to see it. “Deal.”

Hermione sipped her water, gratefully feeling it slide down her throat. Harry had been right. She was nearly exhausted. In the back of her mind, she was vaguely annoyed that the only symptom Harry seemed to be showing of his recent hike through the city was a barely glistening brow. I can’t be that out of shape, can I? She was deep in thought. “We need to get you some glasses,” she said finally. “Before we worry about going to the library. You won’t be able to help me if you can’t see past your nose.”

“I know,” Harry mumbled, “but where and how are we going to get me any glasses? And more importantly,” he suddenly spat, “how are we going to pay that bill the waitress just smacked down on the table?” The same cranky old waitress who’s been treating us like crap since she figured out we weren’t going to order food. The same waitress that said water is free and didn’t really speak English very well. Oh boy. We’ve been had.

Hermione sputtered, picking up the bill. “This is absurd! We’ve been charged one and a half zenni – What happened to yen? – for each drink. We owe sixteen and a half of them, whatever they are.”

Harry blinked and found himself staring at his glass as though it were filled with Essence of Dudley. “Oh … crap.”

“Problem, young man?” Both of them looked up, vaguely alarmed to be staring at a smirking teenager who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He had dark eyes and long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was white, with dark eyes and a rich complexion, and that part of Hermione’s brain that was connected with identifying cute boys (indeed, the part she used the least) bluntly informed her that this was, in fact, a very handsome boy. He was wearing cargo shorts and a tie-died shirt. “You both have the look of someone who’s just realized they don’t have enough money to pay the check.”

Harry wished he could see this person’s face. He looked like he had long silver hair, and sounded about seventeen. The tone of his voice was friendly, though he couldn’t help thinking it sounded slightly too much so. Still, he thought, one of us should answer him. Why’s Hermione just staring at him? He felt Crookshanks leaving his lap and heading towards Hermione, and he could have sworn the cat was growling. Harry forced a smile. “That’s about right, I’m afraid. I think we’ve fallen victim to a tourist trap. We got charged for the ‘free water.’”

The man chuckled, genuinely amused. Suckers. “Bummer. How much did they get you for?” He sat on a table next to theirs. “My name’s Dynamo, by the way.” He put out a large hand.

Harry shook it. “Harry. Harry Potter. This is my friend Hermione Granger. I’m afraid they got us for about sixteen zenni.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said, her voice slightly higher than it was supposed to be. This, for some reason he couldn’t place, bothered Harry very much. It was like they were talking to a young Gilderoy Lockhart.

Dynamo nodded sagely. “So, you’re from Great Britain? I couldn’t help but notice the accents. Scotland?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you staying far from here? Maybe you could talk the waitress into letting you go back to your hotel room and get the money.”

Hermione snapped out of her trance-like state (much to Harry’s relief). She was looking at Dynamo now, clearly trying to figure out how to answer that kind of question. Harry knew from experience that she wasn’t at all comfortable with lying directly to anyone. And whatever they came up with, it would have to be a total and complete fabrication. He decided to handle it with the best excuse he could think of – the truth. “We’re not tourists,” he said quietly.

Hermione turned to look at him, her eyes asking the obvious question. What are we then? What are you going to tell him? She knew she wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was, but stayed silent.

“Oh?” Dynamo actually looked confused now. Harry was surprised to discover he liked hearing the slightly bewildered tone in the other boy’s voice.

“We’re,” Harry let some of his discomfort surface on his face, for effect, “between residences right now.”

Dynamo blinked, then nodded slowly in understanding. Homeless kids. He tried his best not to smile. This might be fun. “Oh.” He tried a small frown, hoping it looked authentic. “I see. So, you have no money, then?”

Hermione blinked at Harry. How did he come up with that so fast? Then something occurred to her, and her heart sank a little lower in her chest. He hadn’t come up with anything. He was telling the truth, save a few unimportant details.

“No,” Harry muttered. “None.” At least he’s not about to call the cops or anything.

Dynamo nodded again, noticing for the first time the dried blood in the hair on the back of the boy’s head. “Did you get in a fight or something?”

“Yes,” Hermione said quickly, before she could stop herself. “We …”

“Got jumped,” Harry cut in, smiling reassuringly at Hermione. She had run out of lie mid-sentence. Any other time, Harry might have thought it was funny. “They got the better of me and took our money … and my glasses. I can’t see a blasted thing,” he spat, giving voice to his frustration. He saw Hermione wince. She wasn’t used to hearing him sound at all nasty. That brief period when he’d been plotting to attack Sirius Black didn’t count … he was arguably acting very irrational.

“That sucks, man.” Dynamo brightened. Lots of fun. “Tell you what – I’ll settle your bill for you and take the two of you to Doctor Cossack. He’s an ophthalmologist who does pro bono examinations for one of the homeless shelters. He’ll get you fixed up.”

Hermione couldn’t believe their luck, and it showed clearly on her face. “You’re serious?”

“Of course. He’s not very far from here.”

“That would be great,” Harry said, smiling at the silver-haired boy.

In Hermione’sHemione’s lap, Crookshanks shifted uneasily, but her owner was too happy with their turn of fortune to notice.

3. Orientation

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4. Prelude to the FIre

Author’s Notes: See previous chapter notes for complete details. This fic should be considered an AU. I still own nothing. In response to my reviews from Cheddercheesepie2000, I wanted to make a couple things clear. Zulu is a military slang word meaning GMT. If it’s 1200 zulu, it’s 12:00 GMT. In the summer months (until the last week of October) the UK is GMT+1, after which it switches back to GMT. Japan is GMT+9. Hogwarts is in Scotland, not England. Also, Mega Man X indeed takes place in the 22nd century. It is Mega Man Legends that takes place in the 2700s. That’s all for now. Again, thanks to Amber for beta-reading. Enjoy.

September 1, 1995

2000 Zulu (2100 Local Time)

Hogsmeade Station

Minerva McGonagall wasn’t the type of person to easily admit to loosing control of a situation. It wasn’t in her nature to show weakness or uncertainty. She had learned during the first uprising of Voldemort that to entertain either trait could be deadly. As the gouged and somber Hogwarts Express rolled into Hogsmeade station, however, there was no part of her remotely reluctant to admit that she had failed. She and Poppy Pomfrey had been the only two staff members on the train, and it wasn’t the doctor’s responsibility to keep everyone, especially Harry Potter, safe. It had been the first time in many years she had ridden with the students, as opposed to arriving early so that she could be in place in time for the Sorting, but she had to admit that she had been pleased with the thought of it. Though she would never allow herself to show it, she greatly enjoyed being amongst the students, watching them in their natural, non-stressed state. She suddenly thought of Malfoy, and her eyes narrowed. Well, most of them, at any rate.

As she watched the frightened and confused students filing off the train, she did her best to look at their current situation logically, but it was difficult. First years filed past her, seen but not watched, making their way to Hagrid. The huge groundskeeper was nervously ushering them on to the small fleet of boats, obviously anxious to get them to the castle. His crossbow was in plain sight on his belt. He was making badly veiled attempts to look through the droves of older students, and she had no doubts as to who the half-giant was searching for. A pang of guilt shot through her. He doesn’t know. He wouldn’t be nearly so composed if he did. And she wouldn’t be either, just as soon as she could lock herself away in her quarters, free from the gaze of those who would be alarmed to see anything but their controlled and calm Transfigurations teacher. It had taken a supreme effort of will to pull herself together after she left George and his siblings, but she had done it by the time she made it to the train’s miniature owlery, though she would never be sure how. She knew Dumbledore would have gotten her letter several hours ago and there was no doubt in her mind that he would already have a plan of some sort in place. She watched Hagrid lift a first year girl who was limping slightly into one of the boats. When’s he planning to tell them? Surely not after the Sorting. But she understood the rationale for keeping Hagrid in the dark – for now, at least. She knew his sentimentality and temper quite well, and no student needed to see either right now. Every student that passed her was in deep conversation, trying to figure out exactly what had happened on the train. Someone would have to tell them something, soon. No, even that wasn’t right. It would have to be tonight. To stall was to invite panic and mass confusion. The news that Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were missing and probably dead was spreading fast, but with no solid facts to back it up. It was a miracle, really, that she and Poppy managed to keep pure pandemonium from breaking out during the journey.

It had been a simple matter to instruct all the prefects and the Head Boy and Girl to ensure that order was maintained. They patrolled the train, making sure no one attempted to leave their compartment unless it was an absolute emergency. Gryffindor was, of course, short one prefect and the other was preoccupied, but all things considered, things went pretty well. Poppy, cursing furiously enough to make Minerva truly fear for Fred Weasley’s survival, charmed him onto a stretcher and moved him to the front of the train, where she could work on him in a calmer environment. The remaining Weasleys were taken to the staff’s compartment, where they could be insulated from the prying questions of their peers. When the train arrived, they were all unloaded and escorted to Poppy’s before anyone else was allowed to disembark. Indeed, Hagrid hadn’t even arrived at that point, obviously delayed by Dumbledore. And perhaps that was for the better. Last time she had seen Ginny Weasley, the girl had yet to compose herself, and her brothers weren’t much better off…

It still amazed her that almost no one besides those involved in the incident even seemed to be considering there might have been a Death Eater on the train – yes, this was all a tragic accident of some sort, if the prevailing rumor was to be believed. (How there could be a prevailing rumor this soon, she didn’t know.) After all, accepting the return of skilled and purposeful agents of Voldemort meant acknowledging the return of the Dark Lord himself, and she doubted, despite the Headmaster’s words the previous year, that there were many people who were truly ready to do that. But she was one of them. She trusted Albus Dumbledore, would follow him to hell itself if necessary. And thanks to the actions of one man on this, the first day of September, it just might be soon enough.

Peter Pettigew. For Minerva McGonagall, the name evoked a mixture of burning anger (she would never admit to hatred of any man) and as of two years ago, shame. Up until Harry Potter’s third year she had always believed with absolute certainty that Sirius Black, in a penultimate act of betrayal, had given Voldemort the Potters’ location and murdered poor, innocent, naïve Peter, along with a number of defenseless Muggles. It was so easy to condemn him – Peter’s rouse had been that complete, that believable. But she had been wrong – they all had – and an innocent man spent the prime of his life in Azkaban. Harry Potter was robbed of his godfather. Once Minerva learned the truth, she knew shame like she’d never felt before, along with a fair amount of guilt and all those other emotions that haunt the misdirected innocent. Peter, the cowardly, sniveling bastard, became the focus of all the fury and loathing she’d once reserved for the other, more capable former Marauder. For a precious little while, it seemed as if things were on the road to becoming the way they should be.

But Wormtail – it really was a far more fitting name for him, Minerva thought dourly – once again showed his true colors to the Wizarding world. He robbed them all of hope, and stole two innocent children’s lives. He was a wretched man, and she suddenly found herself hoping he would soon burn in the fiery pits of hell. She quickly pushed the thought out of her mind … vengeance was not a proper motivator for a member of the Order. She silently left the platform and entered a small office not far from the tracks. She would floo to Dumbledore’s office. There was much work to be done before any of them could sleep.

Assuming any of them would be able to.

Failure.

All things considered, it really wasn’t something Albus Dumbledore felt like he was good at. Oh, he knew better than to buy into the impression people had of him as omnipotent uber-wizard, but he was of the opinion that there was no such thing as the unsalvageable situation. Or, at least he had been, until Marvin the owl came bursting through his window. Then, it had begun.

He had known something was very wrong the minute he saw the large, gold-breasted bird. Minerva would have only sent him something from the train if she had a real problem, something she couldn’t handle on her own. His first thought was Voldemort, of course, but the optimist in him surged forth and told him not to jump to any extreme conclusions.

And so, with an air of practiced calm, the Headmaster of Hogwarts sat up in the chair behind his ancient desk, and pulled a small roll of parchment from Marvin’s leg. Whatever the message was, it was short. The owl hooted, pleased, and didn’t even wait for a treat before blasting back out the window, likely intending to return to the Express. It occurred to Dumbledore that Marvin must be an exceptionally fit owl. He unfolded the letter, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and steeling himself, began to read.

Albus,

Our worst fear has come to pass. The train has been attacked by a man Ronald Weasley identified as Peter Pettigrew. A battle of some sort ensued – I cannot yet say exactly what happened. The only witnesses are all currently in extreme distress, so details have been few and slow in coming. I do know that Pettigrew somehow entered into a compartment containing Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, and the Weasleys. He sealed himself inside. By the time I arrived he had escaped, but not before doing severe damage to the Express and badly wounding Fred Weasley. His purpose, apparently, was to attempt to assassinate Mr. Potter. Harry fought back with the aid of Miss Granger.

Albus, they’ve been murdered.

Minerva

Dumbledore’sDumbledore’sDumblefore’s hands were shaking so badly by the time he finished the short letter that he could barely make out Minerva’s signature. For thirty full seconds, his mind seemed to stall. He couldn’t form a single useful thought. In the back of his mind, he knew what this meant. He didn’t want to believe it – it didn’t make sense. If the prophecy was to be believed, only Tom could kill Harry. He had always believed that meant one of them would slay the other in combat, but had he been too literal? After all, Pettigrew was Voldemort’s servant, but any plan or method to murder Harry would have come from and been organized by Voldemort himself. But either way, Harry was gone. He had failed, not only as Headmaster of Hogwarts and leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He had failed James and Lily.

He locked his door then, and cried. Not because he now wondered just how they were supposed to truly and completely defeat Tom Riddle, though the thought was already assembling in his quick mind. Nor did he weep for the foolishness of the Ministry of Magic, which arguably contributed to this tragedy through its own collective ignorance of the truth. Indeed, from a purely emotionless, logical point of view, things were now horribly bleak for magical people everywhere. Their champion had been robbed from them before the war even began.

But Albus Dumbledore was very well attuned to his emotions, and had no problem displaying them when it was appropriate (and sometimes when it wasn’t). All those things were indeed unfortunate and damning, but they weren’t the issues filling his mind and heart at that moment. He wept for two innocent children he had failed to protect, for two parents robbed of their daughter on a madman’s whim, an aunt and uncle who would never have the opportunity to reconcile their relationship with their nephew, and a pack of siblings forced to watch their best friends murdered before their eyes. It was always the victims, never the circumstances, that [the] affected him the most.

After several minutes, he sighed deeply, willing the tears to stop flowing, for now. There was no bringing back the dead, as he had told Sirius mere months before. Sirius. The mere thought of him sent a chill down Dumbledore’s spine. He would have to be told. As much as Dumbledore hated to admit it, Black was the closest thing Harry had to a real, caring father. The trick would be keeping him from storming off in a rage and getting himself Demented. He would have to be … forceful … in his reminders that the Ministry had yet to clear him. And besides, I doubt we’ll need to worry about Fudge sending Dementors after anyone soon enough. For the time being, there was work to be done. He wouldn’t tell the staff yet, not until he had more complete information, and that meant waiting for Minerva to arrive. He hoped she was keeping things as calm and orderly as possible, and then scolded himself for even thinking she might not be. There was no stopping a determined Minerva McGonagall. He knew that. It was this little bit of knowledge that allowed him to safely assume that she had been forcefully prevented from entering the battle before Pettigrew was good and finished. Overwhelming Harry and Hermione, as clever and powerful as they both were, was nothing close to being able to take on an incensed McGonagall.

It occurred to him that she would be thinking her own, more modest version of those same thoughts, and coming to a similar conclusion. He would have to make sure she wasn’t being too hard on herself. But that would have to wait until the train got to Hogsmeade. Right now he had work to do. The pupils on the Hogwarts Express would be confused and frightened, looking for answers. And he would give them some, just as soon as he and his staff had sorted out their current situation. Severus has volunteered to conduct the Sorting tonight, but I will need to speak with him beforehand, to get any information he might have. I wonder, could Tom suspect his true allegiance? Is that why he didn’t know about any of this? Or did he simply want to keep them in the dark so that he could surprise and astound them with his power? Did he mean to intimidate them into continued loyalty? It didn’t really matter, he knew. The point was that Harry and Hermione were dead. His mind kept trying to wander, to skirt around the issue, but he couldn’t allow that. There needed to be no more mistakes today.

“Very well,” he said finally. Fawkes turned in his perch to look at his master, immediately alarmed by his change in mood. The benign twinkle in his eyes was gone. Every wrinkle in his face looked deeper than it had mere moments before. Dumbledore turned to him, and managed a thin smile. “It would seem I have failed, old friend. I fear this is a blow we may never completely recover from, but we must try nonetheless.” He would need to consider this evening’s events, and what to tell the staff in the interim before he spoke to Minerva. He drew a piece of parchment from a drawer and began to write. His script was sweeping and smooth, completely masking the turmoil of his mind.

Minerva has just informed me through Marvin that there has been a Death Eater attack on the train. The perpetrator escaped, but not before inflicting a number of casualties. I do not have full details at this time, so I will not attempt to speculate on what exactly has happened. I will be meeting with her immediately after her arrival in Hogsmeade. As soon as that meeting is adjourned, I will request your presence in my office. We will have much to discuss. I trust that the prefects and Head Boy and Girl will be able to oversee the conclusion of the feast in your absence.

The students will have to be informed – I look for them to be in great disarray upon their arrival. Professor Snape will conduct the Sorting Ceremony as previously planned.

The feast will be held after The Sorting. This should give us at least an hour or two to discuss today’s events and plan our next course of action. We will make the necessary announcements after the children are done eating. We will adjust this schedule if and as necessary.

Though I hate to quantify the value of one person’s life compared to another’s, I will leave you with this: Last year’s tragedy was simply a prelude. Today, it has begun.

Albus Dumbledore

He carefully folded parchment into a simple glider, and tapped it with his wand, whispering a simple duplicating spell. When he was done, he was looking at a number of neatly lined up little paper airplanes, one for each teacher, Sir Nicolas, Argus Filch, and Dobby, the house elf. Oh, some of them aren’t going to like him being there, he thought lazily. But it was necessary, just as it was necessary to have a representative of the local ghosts present. He would not have rumors flooding the school, and that meant informing the humans as well as the elves and those that had yet to completely sever their ties with the earth.

The Order of the Phoenix. They would have to be informed as soon as possible. This changed everything. But that meant telling Harry’s godfather before all the details were known. He preferred to tell Sirius alone, especially considering most of his staff still considered the man a fugitive mass-murderer. Telling him in complete privacy meant getting him away from his current place of residence. He would have to bring the shape-shifter to Hogwarts before the train arrived. He looked at a small clock on his desk – he still had several hours. He waved his wand over the fleet of gliders and watched them zoom out a nearby window. He rose quickly, seizing a pouch of Floo powder and heading for his fireplace, ignoring the curious inquiries of the portrait-people. Within minutes, he would be in London.

“Hogwarts Castle, Office of the Headmaster.” Minerva closed her eyes as she was spun through the Floo Network. This was never one of her favorite activities, and as weak as her stomach already was – well, she was almost happy when she found herself standing in Dumbledore’s office. The portraits in the room seemed to be muttering amongst themselves, but stopped abruptly once she was on her feet. Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, hands folded serenely in his lap. Once she made eye contact with him, it took all her willpower not to break out in tears again. She had seen him look stressed before, had been close enough to him in the last war to see him terribly saddened, but never once, in all the decades she had known him, had she ever been able to see even a trace of defeat in his eyes. She had the strangest urge to suddenly turn around, throw some powder into the fire, and order it to take her somewhere very far away, but she stood her ground. “Hello, Albus.” When had her voice gotten so hoarse? Damn.

“Minerva,” he whispered, and the Deputy Headmistress had to strain to hear him. Not a good sign. When he spoke again, he had regained some control over his voice. “Please sit down.”

She moved to the front of his desk, and took a seat in a dragon hide chair. It was soft, and she let herself relax into it, suddenly feeling very tired. “Oh, Albus … it was horrible …”

“Did they suffer?”

The tone was low, the voice hoarse enough to rival her own. Dumbledore hadn’t moved. Minerva started. Who said that? She turned towards the sound and, looking behind her, realized for the first time they weren’t alone in the room. Standing near a window, hidden in shadow, was Sirius Black. He stepped forward.

For the second time that day, a piece of her heart shattered. Sirius had been a gaunt man ever since his escape from Azkaban. The place had turned his skin sallow and robbed the youth from his face. But she had been pleased to see, despite his harsh living conditions during the past year, some of what was taken from him returning. The mark of Azkaban would forever be upon him, but he had learned how to smile again (and not just when he was about to attempt to kill a traitorous Marauder). He didn’t do it very often – the truth was, he hated the restrictions on his movements and activity his fugitive status required. But every once in a while, if you caught him at just the right moment, his eyes would twinkle; a faint afterimage of his stolen life. Looking at him now, she wondered if this was the face Harry had seen in the Shrieking Shack. He looked ready to kill in cold blood, lapse into tears, and go on a bloody rampage all at once. But he exerted remarkable self control, and as he walked towards the seat Dumbledore indicated, Minerva could make out tear tracts running down his hollowed cheeks. He deserved an answer. The one she had for him, as far as she was concerned, was far from adequate.

“I … don’t know, Sirius. George Weasley burst into my compartment, yelling about a madman who appeared in his compartment and cast an Unforgivable on Mr. Potter, the Torturing Curse. I followed him back at once, and found the door sealed. By the time I got in,” she reached into her robes, and laid Harry’s glasses on the headmaster’s desk a moment later with a shaking hand, “this was all that was left. Ron Weasley was the only one coherent enough to tell me anything, and all I got out of him was that they were … murdered … in the compartment. There was a large hole in one of the walls. At first, I thought Pettigrew had thrown them from the train, but it was apparently made in an attempt to throw Ginny to her death. That prevented Ron from joining the battle, as he had to keep her from falling, but he saw everything.” She wanted to crawl under something and die – how was it that she could be so clinical? Had the first war with the Dark Lord really hardened her that much?

“I’m going to kill the bastard.” No anger. No tremulous sorrow. Just a statement of fact. His expression remained serene. In that one instant, she was more afraid of Sirius Black than she had been when she thought he was Voldemort’s closest lieutenant.

She waited for Dumbledore to rebuke him, to scold him against brash action, but when his response came, she was less than soothed. “Be patient, Sirius. His time will come.” She was shocked, and turned her head to look at the ancient wizard. She finally saw the fury blazing behind his eyes.

I’m in a room full of people out for blood. This would be a problem if I wasn’t one of them, she thought darkly. Sirius broke her train of thought when he spoke again.

“This is my fault.” All eyes turned to look at Sirius. Dumbledore started to interrupt him, but he was cut off. “James and Lily died because I trusted Peter … the rat’s still alive because I let Harry, in all his glorious moral correctness, talk me out of killing him. God, I should have struck him down. Now he’s … killed Harry.” Fresh tears started to flow, and his voice wavered, but he continued on. “And Hermione … poor girl. I know she would have stayed right next to Harry till the end. I can see it as clearly as if I’d been there. He would have ordered her to run, because he’s too damned noble, then she would have refused, and stayed right there with him to get slaughtered. And I’m the reason that bastard was even there. I made it possible for Voldemort to kill Harry and take Hermione from her parents … God …”

“None of this is your fault, Sirius,” Dumbledore said quietly.

The man known to some as Padfoot actually smiled. It was thin and sardonic, but it was there. “Fault and responsibility are two different things, Professor.”

Minerva frowned. Well, technically, the scowl that was already on her face deepened by a few orders of magnitude. This conversation was going somewhere it really didn’t need to be. “There are things we must consider before tonight’s staff meeting. For example, when and how to inform Hermione’s parents and Harry’s –”

“Swine,” Sirius grumbled. Minerva managed to only look slightly surprised at the interruption.

Dumbledore looked indulgingly at the fugitive. “Sirius, I realize Harry’s treatment at the Dursleys’ has been less … than what I hoped it would be. But, nevertheless, they are his family, he is – was – their nephew. No good man would wish for the murder of his own relatives.”

Some of the anger had left Sirius’ face, but the despondency that flooded his features then wasn’t that much better to look at it. “I sincerely hope you are right, but I fear you overestimate them, Dumbledore.”

The ancient wizard steepled his fingers. The thought had crossed his mind, but he chose to push it back as being completely foolish. No guardians could truly hate their own blood, could they? And here was Sirius Black, a man who he had learned to trust again, clever if quick to anger, throwing it back in his face. “We shall see soon enough,” he said finally. “But before we can deal with any of that, we must know exactly what happened in that compartment. We need to speak with a witness.”
“Who have we got to choose from?”

“Ron or Ginny,” Minerva said shortly. “Fred is in no shape to talk right now. Poppy said whatever hit him badly fractured his skull. She isn’t sure how much of the attack he’ll remember. George won’t leave his side.”

Dumbledore nodded. His eyes hadn’t twinkled in their usual way since he received Minerva’s letter, but now they got just a little bit darker. “Who, then, would you recommend we talk to?”

“Miss Weasley is in no shape to talk right now, Albus. She’s been given a dreamless sleep potion, and Poppy expects her to be out until sometime late tomorrow.”

“Well,” Sirius whispered, “that simplifies that decision.”

“Indeed.” Dumbledore got to his feet. “If the two of you would excuse me for a moment, I shall attempt to pry him free of Poppy’s grasp.”

Sirius smiled that eerie sardonic smile again. Minerva was really beginning to hate it when he did that. “Need some backup?”

Once Dumbledore was out of the room, Minerva found herself alone with a silent, now brooding Sirius. She suddenly found herself admiring the man for not giving into the mixture of pain and rage so obviously surging within him. Still, she knew it would only be so long before he lost control again. She didn’t want to be around when that happened. “Sirius,” she began suddenly, feeling the instinctive need to speak, “I cannot begin to understand the anguish you’re feeling right now, and I’m not going try to get you to absolve yourself of all responsibility here – that’s obviously not something you are willing to do right now. But please, be careful. We cannot afford to lose anyone else, not now.”

“I have no intention of dying,” Sirius intoned, face serene. Before Minerva could take comfort in his words, he added, “I won’t leave this planet until I’ve made that traitorous rat pay for his crimes.”

“Then you’re only interested in living for revenge, Sirius?”

The sardonic smile. How she wished he would stop that. “What have I got left? My duty as godfather? That’s done with, unless you count my obligation to see Harry’s killer dealt with. And really, though I will forever trust in Dumbledore and his decisions, playing bed and breakfast host for the Order of the Phoenix isn’t something I really just love, as I’m sure you realize. If that damned picture starts up again when I get home, I think I’ll just blast the wall out. I’m not in the mood to have her rejoicing over my godson’s death at all hours. And Hermione, she’ll be just thrilled about that too. So, yes, I want revenge. But I’ll settle for justice.”

Minerva produced a genuine smile, her first in hours. “I’m glad to see that, despite everything that’s happened in your life, you still understand the difference.”

“The line gets ever finer,” he hissed back.

The older witch nodded. “As long as you can still see it, that’s all that matters.”

For several minutes, neither of them said anything. When Sirius turned to her again, his eyes were moist. “You know, it just occurred to me that I won’t even be able to go to his funeral. I’m still Sirius Black, man of doom. At the very best, I would be able to sneak onto the grounds as Padfoot, but it just occurred to me that Fudge is still in charge – the paranoid fool. He’s likely to have the Aurors start throwing detransformation wards up everywhere, especially where there will be innocent, defenseless children: Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Harry and Hermione’s funerals … not a bad idea, really, but damned inconvenient.” He trailed off, and Minerva suddenly found herself feeling a great deal of pity for the man. Try as she might, she couldn’t find a single logical flaw in his theory.

“Perhaps we’ll get lucky.”

“Oh, yes, and Fudge will soon appear in this office asking for forgiveness and brandishing make-up crumpets.”

Minerva couldn’t stifle a dark giggle at the proffered mental image. “I admire Dumbledore for that,” she said after a pause.

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“So easily resisting the urge to hex the man into a stylish wooden chair.”

The bark-like laugh filled her ears. That was better. “He’d certainly be more useful that way.”

“Indeed.”

“Ron and his siblings will want to write their parents tonight,” Sirius said suddenly, as though the idea had just occurred to him. “I doubt they’ll want to wait until the Order’s been informed. Though I’m not sure it would be good for the majority of them to hear the news the first time from Gryffindor’s surviving prefect.”

“And they shall not. I’m assuming Dumbledore plans to break the news to them tonight, when he … escorts you back to the manor. We will probably wait and inform their parents and … guardians tomorrow morning, though I cannot say for certain what Albus will want to do.” She blanched, not catching herself until well after it was too late. Bracing herself, she waited for the small explosion that would come at the mention of his “captivity,” as he sometimes called it. Sirius caught the expression, and somehow produced a smirk. “Don’t worry. Right now, fuming about my living arrangements is the farthest thing from my mind.” He cast a glance at the door. “Do you think he’ll be alright? You know him much better than I do.”

Albus. Not even I know what goes on inside his head. “I don’t know. This is going to be harder on him than either of us can imagine.” She drew in a calming breath. “But he will survive. We all will.” Sirius nodded solemnly. It was, all things considered, the most reassuring answer he could hope to get.

A moment later, the door swung open, and to both Gryffindors’ surprise, three people entered. Dumbledore, with his flowing silver beard and half-moon glasses, was the most prominent of the trio. His expression was largely unchanged from when they had seen him last, though unless Minerva was very much mistaken, she saw a hint of annoyance in his eyes. She chanced a look at Sirius, his raised eyebrows and slightly alarmed expression seemingly indicated that he had noticed the same thing.

She held that opinion for a half second, until a synapse fired and she recognized the unannounced new arrival as Poppy Pomfrey. She was gaping open mouthed at Sirius, apparently lost for words. Surprise, fear, and confusion all flashed across her face in rapid succession. Sirius began to tense, but relaxed a little when he realized her hands were flexing nervously. He looked at Dumbledore – who was currently holding a wand that was not his own – and breathed a sigh of relief. Being attacked by the matron right now might have led to him doing very bad things. Another half second passed, and then the mediwitch was shouting.

“Sirius Black! What? How? What do you have to do with this?” The accusation in her tone couldn’t have been clearer.

All of the calm and self-control he had been working so hard to maintain shattered. He had his wand in his pocket, and for an instant, he felt an almost irresistible urge to rip it out and curse her into the next room. But he stayed his hand. He was better than that. He had to be better than that. Still, that didn’t do much to dispel the anger building in him. He could feel his nails biting into his palms, and somewhere in the back of his mind a little voice suggested he let up before he made himself bleed. He rose, and turned to face Poppy. His fists fell to his sides, clenched. “What exactly are you accusing me of, madam?”

“You … you –” Poppy was slipping into a fury now. “You betrayed them. You might as well have killed them yourself!”

Minerva flashed an almost-alarmed look at Dumbledore. Why the hell didn’t he tell her about Sirius before they got here? The question answered itself almost before she had completed the thought. Poppy would have exploded either way, and it was better that she do it in the magically sound-proofed Headmaster’s office. They’d been back in the room for maybe fifty seconds, and things were spiraling out of control. The older wizard looked calm, if not highly annoyed, and cleared his throat to speak.

But someone else beat him to it. “Stop it.” And for once in his life, everything else was abandoned, and all attention settled on Ron Weasley. He looked nothing like the happy young man that had embraced Harry mere hours before. He was pallid; most of his face stood out in stark contrast to his hair and swollen, red eyes. He had discarded his robes at some point, and was wearing khaki slacks (some of his Muggle clothes) that looked slightly too small and a white shirt. His expression was somewhat dazed, though it was obvious he was perfectly aware of everything going on around him. And right now, he realized suddenly, everyone was waiting for him to speak. He spoke softly, but there was an unmistakable edge to his voice that no one really liked. At the moment, he sounded too much like Padfoot. He fixed the matron with an emotionless glare. “Sirius would never hurt Harry or Hermione. And he had nothing to do with it. I know. I was there.”

“The boy is correct, Poppy,” Dumbledore said softly. He spoke quickly now, anxious to get through the bare minimum of explanations so Ron could be allowed to speak. “Sirius is Harry’s godfather. He was wrongly accused of betraying James and Lily, and he hasn’t [has he] committed any crime. I unfortunately, have simply not been able to gather enough irrefutable evidence to prove that yet. Peter Pettigrew … is most certainly not dead. It is he who betrayed us, so many years ago. It is he who murdered all of those innocents with a single curse, and it is he who attacked the Hogwarts Express today. Sirius would no more hurt Harry than you would willingly neglect one of your patients. He is just as attached to Hermione. And I must ask you – what is your opinion of me, if you think I would allow a mass murderer to lounge in my office while I wandered about the school?”

And just like that, the woman deflated. Ron’s expression suddenly changed to one of alarm. The mediwitch seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Even Sirius’ fury-charged face softened. “You would not lie to me, Headmaster?” The voice was pleading.

Dumbledore’s eyes regained a glimmer of their normal twinkle. In their chairs, Minerva and Sirius smiled, though the latter’s expression was highly muted. “Never, Poppy.”

Poppy Pomfrey’s gaze shifted to Sirius, and their eyes met. The former Marauder found himself looking into searching pools of surprise, muted pleasure, and far too much shame to leave him comfortable. “Then,” she whispered, “you’ve always been … been …”

“Innocent,” Sirius finished the sentence for her, his voice gentle.

This time, she seemed to really be about to fall over, but Dumbledore somehow managed to get her to a chair. “Oh, my God.”

It always amazed Sirius how easily Dumbledore could convince most people (excepting Fudge, who didn’t seem to have a fully developed brain) of the truth simply by means of the calm, rational manner in which he conducted himself. He knew it had more to do with the extraordinary level of trust most people placed in the man. It was really quite amazing, and any other time he would have allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of yet another small-scale vindication.

But not now.

“I will give you the full details at a more opportune time,” Dumbledore said after a quiet pause, “but now is not the most appropriate time. We have … other matters … to discuss.”

But Sirius suddenly had what he felt was a very urgent question. His eyes roamed over the youngest Weasley male, looking for any sign of serious injury. All he found was a wrapped up wrist. “Why did you come with Ron, Madam Pomfrey?” His tone turned dark, his eyes narrowing. “How badly did the rat injure him?”

Poppy blinked. Now there was something close to what she thought Black was supposed to act like. But despite the venom in his voice, she could find no trace of pure malevolence. She had seen enough in Voldemort’s last war to understand the source of his anger. But to see such intensity – she averted her eyes, determined to answer his question. “He is, I suppose, the least injured of them all, but I prefer to keep an eye on him right now, seeing as …” she trailed off. She needed a way to say this gently.

Once again, Ron stole all attention. “She’s trying to say she’s very surprised I haven’t lapsed into shock like Ginny yet, and wants to be on hand in case I do.” His voice was acid. Minerva took in a breath, and Sirius narrowed his eyes.

This isn’t good, he thought darkly. Dumbledore didn’t react, but everyone in the room knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. After a few moments, the nastiness evaporated from his face. Sirius knew it couldn’t have gone very far.

“Ah,” Dumbledore sighed. “An accurate assessment, Ron, no doubt. Please sit down. I trust you know why I have brought you here. I was reluctant to discuss it in the Hospital Wing for fear of aggravating your siblings.” The prefect took a seat next to Sirius as Poppy settled in next to Minerva. The fugitive put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. Neither made any attempt to break the contact.

Ron’s tone was low now; drained. It was obvious the full impact of today’s events had yet to hit him. He wore the look of a man in a surreal dream world, waiting to get out. It wouldn’t be long before he realized there was no escape. “I understand. You need me to tell you about … what happened to them.”

“We need to know as much as we can,” Dumbledore said gently, “but I would only have you speak now if you feel up to the task.”

Ronald Weasley, Gryffindor prefect and best friend of Harry Potter, considered. There was a part of him that was still convinced none of this was really happening. This was, of course, all some horrible nightmare. He would wake up soon, safe in his own bed, his mother shaking him gently by the shoulder. It would be time to get dressed and head for King’s Cross. And he would go, and Harry and Hermione would be there, safe and whole, smiling and waiting for him. And they would be happy.

No, you idiot, that’s your fantasy world. Get out of there. Harry and Hermione are dead, remember? You watched them die. And this is certainly not a dream, otherwise you wouldn’t have pulled every muscle in your forearm. And Ginny’s not even that heavy. They’re dead. You failed. What now? Now, Dumbledore needed his help.

“After we’re done, can I owl my parents?” Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted his mother and father.

“Yes, of course,” Minerva said gently. It was the first time she had spoken directly to the boy since he entered the room.

“Then let’s get this over with,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath, and began.

“By … by the time I got Ginny back up, they were almost gone. I could see though them both; they were fainter than ghosts. I could have sworn … Harry, he was looking at me. I couldn’t see Hermione’s face. Then there was a bright flash … and they were … were …” he trailed off, damning himself as he did his best to force back the tears brimming in his eyes. There wasn’t much of a point to it, he knew. McGonagall and Sirius were weeping openly, Pomfrey [Pompfrey] was a blithering mess, and Dumbledore – he preferred not to think of or look at Dumbledore right now. The transformation was slow; it took place over the course of his recount of events, but Ron understood now. This man sitting behind the desk, this was the man the Dark Lord feared. He did, however, wonder why a man who could look so angry, so unutterably powerful, couldn’t have defeated the monster years ago.

“I believe Professor McGonagall found you shortly afterward,” he said darkly.

God, when has he ever sounded so angry? Did Harry see him like this last year? Indeed, for the Headmaster, sorrow had given way for a while to a burning fury. “Yes, sir. She told George to stay with us, then she went to … owl you. Then she came back with Madam Pomfrey. She put Fred on a stretcher and took us to the front of the train. She decided to sedate Ginny, she wouldn’t calm down … and that was it.”

All was silent. Dumbledore nodded. “Thank you for talking to us, Ron. I know it has been very difficult for you to relive all this so soon. You have shown remarkable bravery today, whether you yourself think that to be the truth.”

Ron certainly didn’t believe that was the truth. “But I failed. I couldn’t do anything besides watch Harry and Hermione die.”

“I do believe,” Dumbledore said evenly, “you prevented your sister from falling to her death.”

Ron blinked, feeling better in spite of himself. Damn it. He has mind powers. “Better than nothing doesn’t feel right, Professor.”

“Indeed, my boy. And it shouldn’t. The three of you fought a battle today, and Harry and Hermione fell. But through your actions, you prevented the death of another. We must never dwell on those we were not able to save, Ron. Despite all our effort and goodwill, there are some situations in which there can be no completely happy outcome. Be that as it may, we must always do our best to protect those we can. Do you understand?”

Ron nodded, wiping a few stray tears from his cheeks. “I do.” He was silent for a few moments. It was obvious to everyone around him that he was trying to collect himself. “Professor?”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t need me anymore … I think would like to go back to the Hospital Wing now.” He didn’t say it, but it was quite obvious he wanted to get back to George, Fred, and Ginny. He felt horrible leaving George by himself to sit alone with his two unconscious siblings. It was not lost on him that only one of them was likely to wake up any time soon.

Dumbledore smiled kindly at the boy. “Of course. Though I must ask that you and George attempt to eat something; you’re missing dinner.” He couldn’t bring himself to use the word “feast” right now. “In fact, I believe I will have something sent up to both of you, if you don’t mind.”

Even if he had a problem with that, now was not the time to mention it. “Thank you, Professor.”

“You are welcome, young man. If you need anything from me, anything at all, please let me know.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Exhaustion rolled off the youngest conscious Weasley in waves. Poppy, tears still running silently down her face, seemed suddenly energized.

“Come, young man. You need to rest now.” She took his arm and began leading him out of the room. He was almost to the door, when he suddenly stopped. He turned back around, and addressed them all with a calm, quiet voice. “You’ll get him, right? Pettigrew? For what he did?”

“There will be no escape for him,” Sirius growled before anyone else had the chance to speak. “Not this time. I promise.” Ron seemed placated, and left the room with Poppy. Once again, Sirius, Albus, and Minerva were alone. No one spoke.

Sirius hung his head. “Damn it.”

“I don’t understand,” Minerva muttered, ignoring Sirius, “why Pettigrew just didn’t use the Killing Curse. I’ve never heard of the incantation Ron mentioned.”

“Perhaps he felt there was a chance Harry would survive the curse again,” Dumbledore said quietly. “And as for the incantation … no one can deny Voldemort his brilliance,” he finished sadly.

“You’ve heard of it, then?” Minerva thought it was strange, how calm and clinical each of them was being. It’ll wear off soon, she thought. Best to get through this while we can still think.

Dumbledore nodded gravely. “The Time Banishment Curse. Truly powerful Dark magic; a spell with no countercurse. Pettigrew would have had to practice intensely for weeks to learn the weak form of it he used against Harry and Hermione.”

Sirius looked severely nonplussed. “That was a weak form? What the hell is that curse supposed to do, then? Besides incinerate people?” He had turned slightly green.

Dumbledore’s voice was suddenly hollow. “It doesn’t incinerate people, Sirius. It doesn’t kill its victims, not in the literal sense, though they are forever lost to us.” That got a pair of confused faces, both suddenly looking just a bit more hopeful than they had before. Albus cursed himself for his choice of words. “It removes them from time. Whoever or whatever is struck by will cease to exist. And that, unfortunately, is the best way I can explain it. The stronger form of the curse allows for more specific targeting, like the Stunning Spell, or the Killing Curse itself. It is also instant in its effects. Most wizards cannot aim such a powerful weapon effectively and hope to actually cast it at the same time, so they settle for using the blue wave Ron Weasley described. In that form, it effects whatever it may happen to hit.”

Sirius’ face was a study in abject horror. “You mean … they’re still alive somewhere, suffering in some timeless hell for all eternity?”

“They are not suffering, Sirius.” Minerva gasped, but Dumbledore didn’t give her time to speak. “One cannot exist outside of time,” he said quickly. “Without time, there can be no awareness. The moment that you are born, the moment you cease to exist – it all melds together into a horrible nothingness. They are not suffering. They are not aware of their situation, or of any thought at all. They have simply … ceased.”

“Is there any possibility of bringing them back?” Minerva asked, suddenly hopeful.

Dumbledore sighed again, shaking his head. “That is why victims of time banishment are considered dead, Minerva. It is impossible to rescue someone from a place without dimension, and the sea of time has none. Wizards have been trying for a millennia [millinia] to create a countercurse, but none has been devised.” A wretched finality filled consumed his voice. “Harry Potter and Hermione Granger are dead. It must be kept that simple if, for nothing else, the sake of the people who love them. Do you understand?”

It occurred to Albus Dumbledore then that at some point he couldn’t determine, his life had become a succession of frightened, heartbroken people nodding grimly at him as he forced reality upon them, with the occasional battle or happy memory woven in between. He was tired.

“Now, we must get Sirius back to London. I will return, then it will be time to summon the staff.”

The Hospital Wing was quiet, but complete silence was not to be had. In Ron Weasley’s very biased opinion that was unfortunate … total quiet would have suited him quite well. It was very late now, he knew, even though he didn’t care to go in search of a clock. His watch was somewhere in a pile of soiled robes. It had been ages since Dobby, looking confused and worried, had brought him and George more food than two reasonably normal teenage boys could ever hope to eat. The elf looked strained. Ron remembered the little magical man bursting in, supporting no less than seven separate dishes with a Hover Charm. Madam Pomfrey had been seeing to Fred at the time. He greeted the Weasley prefect warmly, even going so far as a tight, quick hug around the abdomen. He said that he was glad to see “Harry Potter’s friend,” then, ignoring the pained look that flashed across the human’s face (or maybe he didn’t ignore it … sometimes it was impossible to be completely sure with clever elves like Dobby), swept his gaze across all the beds in the room. Ron had no doubt who he was looking for; no doubt that he wouldn’t find them. Eventually, he had turned back to Ron, and their eyes met. Understanding flashed wordlessly between them. Dobby suddenly nodded solemnly then, quickly turning his back to the boy. He remembered his words clearly. They were laced with quiet sobs. “It is true, then. Harry Potter is gone. Harry Potter’s other best friend is gone.” Silence. Dobby stiffened, and without looking back, said flatly, emotionlessly, “I is supposed to see Dumbledore now. Friend of Harry Potter’s and his brother should eat.” And he left.

He and George had eaten, more out of reflex than anything else. Indeed, Ron couldn’t recall actually being hungry. They had talked very little – Ron was quite reluctant to go over everything again so soon, and George was in too much shock to press matters. The older Weasley had stared at his twin and Ron set his eyes on Ginny, both of them trying to rouse their siblings by effort of will. Ron knew better – after all, Poppy Pomfrey had told him herself that his sister would be out for a minimum of eighteen hours, and Fred, well … Fred wasn’t dead, at any rate – but the alternative was more talking. Talking was bad.

It had eventually been decided that Ron would write their parents, seeing as he was the one who was actually present for the entire fiasco. So, hours after the older Weasley had fallen asleep watching over his fallen siblings and long after Madam Pomfrey had retired for the evening, Ron Weasley was still up, trying to decide how best to word his letter. Time was of the essence. He knew Dumbledore would be spreading the word around to his allies soon, his parents included. Somehow, he just couldn’t let them find out like that. He wasn’t sure he could make it through the epistle if he tried to explain every detail – his mind simply locked up when he considered doing that. Writing everything down would be admitting it actually happened; casting off the vestiges of denial. He didn’t want to do that. Right now, he was somewhere in the middle region of grief, somewhere after shock but before complete acceptance. It felt a lot like walking on air. Everything seemed brighter, louder, more noticeable than it should have. Unreality.

It’d be easier to explain it to them if they were here, in the room with me. But how could I get them here without telling them everything? He knew they would have to come anyway, considering more than half their children were hurt in some sort or another, one of them possibly suffering from some sort of permanent injury. He knew the mediwitch well enough to know she wasn’t being completely honest with them about Fred. He grimaced, imagining his mother’s reaction to that news. So, the trick was getting the two of them to Hogwarts without completely alarming them. Then the solution occurred to him. It was so simple, so obvious – any other time he might have laughed at himself.

He wanted his parents. He would ask for them. It was completely abnormal for a student to write home requesting his parents to come to the school. It would raise their curiosity enough without necessarily alarming them, as long as he kept the details to a minimum. He dipped the quill Madam Pomfrey had given him into the ink bottle on the table at the foot of his bed, and began to write.

Mum and Dad,

Hi. There’s been a Death Eater attack on the train. I suspect Dumbledore will be telling you both about it shortly, but I wanted to be the first you heard it from. Fred and Ginny are in the Hospital Wing. We’d all like you to come to Hogwarts as soon as possible. They might be in there a little while. Can you come tonight?

Ron

Good. Could have done without the damned tearstains, he dashed furiously at his eyes with his free hand. How dare they betray him when he was trying to appear calm and urgent. The letter was simple enough to make them wonder, short and abrupt enough to make them worry just enough to want to comply with his request as soon as possible. He felt bad for playing them against their emotions like this, but it would be much easier, in the long run. He folded the letter carefully and rose silently. Pigwidgeon would be waiting for him in the owlery. He sent up a silent plea to whoever was watching to keep Filch out of his way. Not that he would be stopped. At that moment, he had no problems with the thought of stupefying the man.

He was halfway down the first hallway when the hair on the back of his neck prickled. He turned around and beheld the slender form of Sirius Black. The fugitive was regarding him carefully. “Owlery?” he asked, after a short silence. Ron kept walking, but beckoned the man to follow him. “Not in the mood for Filch?” There was the barest hint of humor in his voice. Ron latched onto it.

“Not really. Knowing him, he’d try to have me expelled. Again.”

“He’s not good at much else. I hope that little slip of parchment isn’t all you’re planning on sending your mother,” he said suddenly.

Ron looked down, cheeks suddenly burning with something very close to shame. It was funny … he wasn’t that attached to Sirius, not like Harry had been, or even Hermione, for that matter, but he valued the man’s opinion. He wasn’t like a teacher … more like an older cousin of sorts. He’d discussed it with Hermione once – there was something about the man that made you want him to respect you. “It’s not like that,” he said finally, passing the small parchment to the Marauder, “I couldn’t tell them in a letter. I mean, it’s not just Harry and Hermione – Madam Pomfrey’s lying about Fred. I know it. Something’s very wrong with him. She’s too worried. George knows it too. He’s a wreck. And Ginny … you know, Pomfrey and McGonagall had to pry her off me? She was hysterical. Hell, Sirius – they had to sedate my sister.”

Sirius sighed, laying a calming hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was more awkward than he would have liked – before long, Ron would be taller than him. “I know.” Blessed are the departed, forever spared the pain of the living. He unfolded the parchment, reading silently. After a moment, he handed it back to Ron. “That will do nicely. A bit underhanded of you, considering what you’re going to drop on them, but I understand your reasoning. After all, you’ve got be able to talk when they get here.”

Ron nodded. “How are you doing it?”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Staying so … composed.”

The man known as Padfoot sighed heavily. “The knowledge, my boy, that very soon I will be alone in a place where no one will be able to see me. Azkaban is patience, Ron. Let’s get that letter off.”

“Think Dumbledore will be upset by my approach?”

A bark of a laugh filled his ears. “You think he didn’t anticipate exactly what you were going to do?”

A grin. How Sirius liked seeing that. “How does he do that, anyway?”

Sirius felt an impish impulse invade his raddled brain. “Magic.”

The sun shined brightly in Severus Snape’s eyes. He felt them watering, but was quite sure the light had nothing to do with it, and he couldn’t blame it completely on lack of sleep, much to his own fury. Somewhere deep in hell, he thought bitterly, an especially hot fire is waiting for me. He tugged at the black jeans he was wearing. He felt absurd, but knew his robes would have earned him more attention than necessary from the good people of Privet Drive. This was it. “Dumbledore?”

The older wizard, clad in blue jeans and a white Oxford shirt, nodded. Normal as his clothing was, the effect was ruined by his magnificent hair. “Are you ready, Severus?”

“Does it matter?”

Dumbledore frowned. “No. Let us go, then.”

“It is time, then. I assume you know why I have asked the four of you here. I will not inform two families that their children have been ripped away from them by owl. A great war is coming, and many will die, but our humanity must survive. This morning I will need volunteers to carry out our final obligations to Harry and Hermione. I trust the four of you more than any other people I have ever met. I am asking that you assist me in this grim endeavor.

Hagrid, I will first ask you to go to the Hospital Wing. Do not intrude on the Weasleys more than you need to, but see to it that they have everything they need.”

“Yes, Headmaster.”

“I shouldn’t be here, Minerva.” Miles away from the Albus and the Potions Master of Hogwarts School, Sirius tugged at his tight t-shirt and black jeans, unused to feeling so … confined. But truly, his qualms with his current clothier (the Muggle Studies professor had been kind enough to “fit them out,” as she called it) had very little to do with his current discomfort. “I don’t belong here.”

Minerva, wearing a simple black dress, looked sympathetically at the man she still thought of as young boy. But then again, she was getting up in years … everyone was starting to be a young boy, or girl, as the case sometimes proved to be. Then her eyes met those haunted, tired orbs, and she scolded herself. Sirius Black was a boy no more. “You understand why Dumbledore didn’t want you speaking to Harry’s aunt and uncle?”

Sirius smiled sadly. “Because if I’m right about how they’ll react, I would deserve to be in Azkaban by the end of the day?”

Minerva shook her head. “Close enough.” She stopped at a house their records indicated belonged to the Grangers. “This is it.”

“Severus, you and I will travel to Surrey. We will inform the Dursleys of the murder of their nephew, and offer to assist them with funeral arrangements.” His eyes darkened. “We will not mention Harry’s vast wealth. I have reason to believe knowledge of its existence … might adversely effect their priorities.”

Severus Snape smirked, a dry chuckle escaping his lips. “Truly, Dumbledore, it’s amazing how you constantly manage to sidestep those filthy Muggles’ lack of …” his smirk turned into a sneer, “any redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

“Careful, Snape,” Black muttered. “Keep it up, and you might find me agreeing with you.”

“A true tragedy indeed, Black.”

Dumbledore seemed to ignore them both, though for an instant, his eyes twinkled with something close to amusement. “Minerva, take Sirius and travel to the Granger residence. I assume you know what to do?” Two sets of nods. “Sirius, I am taking a great risk sending you out into the public, but I think Lucy and Scott will benefit from talking to a relative of Harry’s. Be careful.”

“You have my word I won’t be killed or Demented until I’ve put Pettigrew in his grave.”

“Well … on that note, let us go to work.” Dumbledore rose from his chair. It was time.

The woman’s toe caught on the side of the coffee table, and she nearly tripped. She managed to right herself quickly though, a scowl flashing across her face. “Damn it. That hurt!”

Scott Granger narrowed his chocolate eyes at his wife and ran a hand through his short, brown hair. “Lucy, are you alright? You don’t look like you slept too well.”

The woman sighed, adjusting the straps on her yellow sundress. Not exactly the most professional looking clothing she owned, but she would be covering it up with a lab coat soon enough. “No … I guess I didn’t. I kept having these strange dreams.”

Scott was fiddling with his tie, now. It was a red and gold one Hermione had gotten him. The thing never wanted to stay knotted, it seemed. He raised an eyebrow. “You too? What about?” Not about the kids … that’d be too freakish.

“Hermione.”

Whoever’s up there, thank you for not listening. “Me, too. What was yours about?”

“I can’t remember all of it.” She sighed. “I remember it was dark, and I was terrified. It was raining. Hermione was holding Harry’s hand, telling me not to worry, that she had to go away with him, and we would never see her again. Harry didn’t say anything. He just stood there and grinned at us. Then he wrapped an arm around my baby and started leading her away. It was … just unnerving.”

Her husband frowned. “That’s … that’s really lovely, dear.”

Lucy stuck her tongue out. “I thought so. How about you?”

“There were[?] gerbils. I hate gerbils.”

Lucy giggled. “I’m not even going to ask.”

Scott grinned. “Well, good lady, like I said, you’ve outdone me.”

“Do I get a prize?” Scott leaned over slightly on the couch and pecked her cheek. “I thought I was supposed to be getting those for free anyway. You know, I was thinking about it this morning, how much do we actually know about Harry? I mean, we see him what, five minutes a year? Same thing with this … oh, what’s his name … Ron Weasley. The two closest friends our daughter has, and we’ve never spent more than fifteen minutes at a time around either of them.”

“There was that whole … ahem … incident at the book store in Hermione’s second year,” Scott suggested quietly.

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “Oh, yes,” she hissed, “let’s bring that up. Lucius Malfoy calls both of us and our daughter glorified dirt, and ends up in a fist fight with Arthur Weasley as a result. How did that teach us anything new about Harry or Ron?”

Scott floundered, regretting bringing the whole thing up in the first place. “It … uh … uh … at least they weren’t the ones that attacked the bastard,” he finished quickly. It was obviously time to change the subject. He smirked. “And while we don’t know that much about Ron, I think Harry’s the one we should be focusing on.” The smirked turned into what could only be classified as an evil grin. His wife returned it in force.

“You think she likes him, too?”

“It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it? Well, to everyone but the two of them, at any rate. And I imagine that Weasley boy’s in denial too. I saw one of the letters he wrote to her. He’s got it bad. The sad thing is I don’t think she even realizes it. She’s too busy gushing over Harry.” He grinned. “Unless it’s suddenly become normal behavior for one’s daughter to fill her letters home with information about the boy’s latest exploits and her involvement therein.”

“The ones she feels aren’t alarming enough to make us order her onto the first train back to King’s Cross, you mean.”

He nodded. “Exactly. To be young again.”

Lucy was suddenly assaulting him with a pillow. “We aren’t that old yet, Scott. I don’t know about you, but I intend on turning thirty-six several more times.”

“Noted,” her husband answered, quickly scooting out of range. He glanced at his watch. They would need to be at work in about forty minutes. He sighed, his face suddenly dark. “I wished she had agreed to be a little more careful this time around.”

“I know. I do too. But you have to admit we were a little … broad with our suggestions. And she made a very good point.”

“I know she did, but she’s our responsibility, not Harry. It’s not fair. I just … it’s just … well, all you and I have ever wanted was a normal, healthy daughter. I remember when we found out she was … magical. I was scared then, but not of her. It was wonderful, amazing and unbelievable, but I couldn’t help think of all the people that would hate her if they knew what she was, all the people that would want to keep her in a padded room so they could perform experiments on her. It was very sobering.”

“You’ve seen too many bad movies, Scott,” Lucy said flatly.

“Tell me you didn’t have the exact same thoughts.”

“You know I’d be lying if I did,” she said thinly.

“Exactly. But I figured, you know, there have been wizards and witches around for thousands of years, and no one thinks they’re real, so it couldn’t be that dangerous. Of course, then she had to go and hook up with the miracle child. That boy has nearly gotten her killed every single year for the last four years. And don’t say the third year was uneventful. She’s hiding something about the end of it, and you know it. As smart as she is, she’s not a very good liar.”

Nodding. “I know.” Just then, the doorbell rang. She raised an eyebrow. “Expecting someone?”

He shook his head. “You?” She swayed her hair from side to side. “That’s odd. I wonder who it is. I’ll get it.” Scott rose, smoothing out his khaki slacks. He wasn’t even at work yet and they were already wrinkling. Sometimes he wondered why he even tried. When he got to the door, he threw it open. The people waiting for him couldn’t have been more of a surprise. He didn’t recognize either of them, but they struck him as being somehow out of place, like they didn’t belong there.

Indeed, the man kept darting his eyes around, almost like he was expecting someone to jump out from behind a bush and attack him. He had thick black hair that stopped somewhere between his shoulder blades and hung languidly over his forehead. His skin, more than a little unhealthy looking, would have caught Scott’s attention, if it hadn’t been for the dark eyes that were set in the man’s skull. Somehow, just looking at them made him feel uncomfortable.

The woman was shorter, with black hair tied back in what looked to be a very painful bun. She was an older woman with dark, beady eyes set behind a pair of small, square spectacles. He wasn’t sure why, but in the instant before he greeted them, the hairs on the back of neck sprang to attention. It was then that he noted the wooden stick protruding from one of the man’s pockets. Unconsciously, he stiffened. “Hello? May I help you?”

Minerva cleared her throat, suddenly feeling a tremendous urge to hex Sirius through a wall for talking her into speaking first. “Yes, we are looking for Scott and Lucy Granger,” she said crisply. “Do we have the right house?” There was a note of urgency and nervousness in her voice that Scott didn’t like. At all.

“You do,” he said briskly. “I’m Scott Granger. And you are …”

“Oh!” Minerva couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to introduce herself. Get it together, McGonagall … you’ve done this too many times before to be having trouble now. “How rude of me. My name is Minerva McGonagall,” she said, offering a hand, “I’m the Deputy –”

“Headmistress of Hogwarts School,” Scott said abruptly, eyes wide. “I’ve seen your signature on Hermione’s school letters.” Something was very wrong here. Every parental instinct he had was on high alert. On reflex, he took her hand, shaking it lightly. He turned to Sirius, suddenly wondering if he hadn’t seen the man’s face on one of Hermione’s Daily Prophets … it was an old one …

Sirius seized his hand (which was still outstretched, much to the dentist’s surprise) and shook it vigorously. He was a bit more prepared than Minerva. “Hello, Mr. Granger. I’m Magnus Grim, but please, call me Padfoot. Everyone else does. I work with Minerva.” And I’ll be much more likely to realize you’re speaking to me that way. “May we come in? We really need to talk to you.”

Scott’s voice had suddenly deserted him. All that was left was a dry, hoarse thing. “This … this is about Hermione, isn’t it? Something’s happened to her.” The woman he knew as Minerva McGonagall nodded gravely.

“It is urgent,” she said softly, “that we speak to you and your wife.”

“Come in,” was the only response he could manage.

When the three of them made it back to the sitting room, Lucy Granger sat up sharply. Her husband was wearing an almost alarmed expression. He gestured haphazardly at a pair of chairs next to a glass coffee table. “Sit down, please,” he said quietly. “This is my wife Lucy. Lucy, this is Professor McGonagall and Magnus Grim. They’ve come from Hogwarts.” He fell onto the couch next to her.

Lucy looked from the older woman to the slightly unhealthy looking man and back again, focusing on their eyes. Her mother had always said the quickest way to ascertain how serious a piece of news happened to be was to watch the eyes of the messenger. She felt panic rising in her heart, and bile rising through her chest. “What’s going on? What’s happened to Hermione?” she demanded after a moment of charged silence. Her voice was suddenly full of steel. It was brittle, but it was there nonetheless.

“Your daughter has no doubt told you of the recent resurgence of the Dark Lord?” Minerva asked finally, breaking the silence again.

“Yes,” Scott said flatly, dreading where his subconscious knew this was going. His wife was clutching his hand so tightly he was sure he would feel things snapping very soon. “We’ve heard of him. What has he done?”

“There was an attack on the Hogwarts Express. A very dangerous Death Eater managed to get aboard.”

“The Death Eater was after Harry Potter.” Sirius jumped in when Minerva stalled. He was doing his best to keep his voice even and face expressionless, but he wasn’t sure how well it was working. “There was a fight in a compartment containing Harry, Hermione, and the Weasley children.”

Lucy was tearing up now, and Sirius was lamenting his lack of subtlety. For someone who had been a covert agent once, he was surprisingly lacking. “Harry and your daughter,” he began again, softly, “were forced to defend themselves after the other occupants of the compartment were knocked unconscious.” He paused, letting this sink in. He traded a glance with Minerva and awaited the inevitable question.

“How … how badly … what happened to my baby?” Lucy’s voice was small now, nearly broken. Sirius knew that within seconds, it would be gone entirely. He felt a sudden wave of anger at Dumbledore for asking him to do this, then a quiet sadness overtook him – if he hadn’t been asked, he would have volunteered, and he knew it. Still, he couldn’t help the nausea welling up in his chest.

He and Scott locked eyes, and Sirius knew he wouldn’t be able to mask the truth. It only took five seconds (Sirius knew, for he counted them as he waited) for the synapses in the dentist’s brain to fire. His eyes widened and he the hand his wife was holding began to shake. The truth was his. Sirius was glad. He didn’t think he could say the rest of it, not with them staring like that, boring into him with pleading eyes. Luckily for all involved, Minerva McGonagall had reclaimed her voice.

“The attacker sealed the compartment doors. They could not escape. Our witness, Ron Weasley, told us that they fought with great courage.” The parents were shaking now, Lucy was sobbing openly. They understood in all likelihood, but Minerva pressed on. It was her duty to finish. “But … but … before we could penetrate the compartment,” she paused for a second – this was it, “both of them were killed. Your daughter is gone. I’m so sorry.”

Time wasn’t supposed to stop. Sirius Black knew this. As far as he knew, there weren’t even spells that could do it. Yet, as he sat there, watching the pair of dentists, he knew that had to be what was happening. Minerva’s voice was still fading from the air, and no one was moving. He knew, in the back of his mind, that only one second had passed, but it felt like an eternity. It was the void between the before, when everything was happy and right, and the now, when the world as it was known was torn asunder. He knew; he’d crossed the line the first time in 1981, when his own life had been brutally ruined.

Second two. Time returned to its normal pace. “No!” Lucy screamed, tears flying from her eyes as her head snapped up to look at them. “No! You have to be lying … she can’t be dead!” Scott just stared, as though his mind had yet to realize exactly what was going on.

“I assure you,” Sirius said quietly, “we would not play such a cruel prank. We are not lying. We would have been here sooner, but it’s taken all night to figure out exactly what happened. We didn’t want to come to you with half-complete information.” Okay, so that’s a bit untrue. We knew pretty quick once we talked to Ron. Figuring out how to handle it was another matter entirely. Hell, it still is another matter. The woman didn’t say anything else as another wave of sobs seized her. She leaned into her husband.

“Oh, God.” Scott’s voice was barely above a whisper. His eyes were brimming with tears, but they had yet to flow in earnest. Neither Minerva nor Sirius showed it, but they were both surprised. They had figured it would be the father who was the louder, more irrational of the two. But then again, what did they really know about Hermione’s parents? At any rate, the man was still in shock, suffering from that lovely unrealism the animagus himself knew so well. That much was obvious. It occurred to the shape-shifter that that would make him easier to talk to, and he scolded himself. “They … she was … murdered?” Sirius nodded. Then, there was silence. Minerva and Sirius traded glances, each wondering who would speak next. They knew it wouldn’t be either of them.

“When can we see her … her body? She’s at that school of yours somewhere, right?” Lucy asked. “We’ll need to bring her home so we can … bury her.” Sirius blanched.

Minerva sounded strained when she spoke again. “I am afraid that will not be possible, Lucy.”

“Well, why the hell not?” the other woman burst, anger in her rapidly reddening eyes, “What do we have to do, fill out some sort of paperwork or something before you’ll let us see her?”

Minerva sighed. She usually didn’t let these things get so out of hand, but she had to admit that right now, she wasn’t at her best. The deaths of Harry and Hermione had hit her harder than she wanted to admit. No, that wasn’t really the truth. Their passing had effected her more than her position permitted her to admit. She envied Sirius for his ability to burst with emotion without seeming deranged. If she dared show her inner turmoil to anyone but Albus, they’d look at her like she’d grown a third head. “We would never prevent you from seeing the remains of your daughter, Mrs. Granger.”

The younger woman blinked. “I don’t underst – oh God.” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “There’s nothing left, is there? Oh, my God. Those bastards!”

“It’s not so gruesome as that,” Sirius said softly, praying that what Dumbledore had told him the night before was true. “They didn’t suffer. There aren’t any remains because at the moment of their deaths, their bodies ceased to exist.” He was careful to leave out the part about Harry and Ron making eye contact while he was in the blue energy bubble. That would mean their daughter was still alive when she was being torn apart molecule by molecule, and quite possibly was in a lot of pain. If there was one outright lie he was willing to tell these people, it was this: Hermione Granger felt no pain.

“And you got this … Death Eater. The man that killed Hermione and Harry?” Scott was pale now; tears were streaking down his face. It wouldn’t take much more to put him in a similar state as his wife.

“We will,” Sirius said reassuringly, and no one in the room missed the flash of anger in his eyes, or the resolve in his voice. “I promise the both of you, I’ll get him.” Minerva glared at him. Now was not the time to show his vengeful side, but there was little to be done about it now.

“The day before she left, I told her to stay away from him.” It seemed Hermione’s mother was talking more to herself than anyone else now. “I told her it was dangerous to be so close to someone a maniac wanted dead. But she wouldn’t listen. She said she wouldn’t betray his trust like that. That she was his friend, and she wouldn’t give that up because she was afraid. I … I gave in. I just told her to be careful, and we sent her off.”

“You couldn’t have changed anything, Lucy,” Sirius whispered. “Pettigrew sealed the doors. She couldn’t have left if she wanted to.”

“Still,” she responded stubbornly, “I’m her mother, I should have been able to make her stay away from him, where it was safe.”

Minerva watched Sirius interestedly. She had not expected him to take the lead the way he had. Whether he was naturally so eager to interact with grieving people, or was simply seizing the opportunity to interact with people who weren’t members of the Order without them screaming in terror, she had to admit that it was a relief. He was doing a good job, and she was tired. “I doubt,” Sirius said finally, after a moment of contemplation, “you could have kept her away from him for any significant length of time if you’d gotten on the train with her.”

“You sound like you’re quite familiar with our daughter’s behavior, Mister … uh … Padfoot.” That tone was a bit too harsh for the Marauder’s liking. He would have to do something about it.

Sirius put on his most winning smile (which, quite honestly, he thought looked much more winning before Azkaban yellowed his teeth, but it was still worth a try). “Just Padfoot, please. And yes, I met your daughter a few times. When I was visiting Harry.” Minerva flashed him a warning look, but he ignored it. They could swear them to secrecy on everything important before they left. If Minerva was really worried, she could cast a Memory Charm. “I don’t know if she ever mentioned me, but I am Harry’s godfather.” He was unable to keep his voice perfectly level when he said it – he could have sworn.

“Oh.” Scott suddenly looked quite taken aback. Lucy was looking at the fugitive intently, new tears flowing down her cheeks. There was something close to sympathy in her eyes. Then she said, voice full of a new, morbid understanding, “You’ll get him, then?”

Sirius’ voice was ice. “Indeed.”

“There are,” Minerva said, as though the woman had not indirectly expressed her desire for revenge, “other things we need to discuss.”

The clock ticked on.

5. Subsistence, Love, and Loathing, Part 1

A/N: See the first chapter for full notes. Feedback, including constructive critiques, is welcome and appreciated. Please enjoy. Thanks again to VirtualFaerie/MalfoyMyFerret for beta-reading. Note: This chapter is divided in half because of PK's length requirements.

Well, that certainly could have gone better. Leaning back in his chair, Commander Signas sighed. He looked around his office. Bare, linen colored walls caught and reflected light from the ceiling illumination pods, chasing all shadows from the room. Someday, I've got to get around to hanging some pictures in here. It looks like I'm just borrowing the room -- not a good image for a base commander. As soon as we resolve this problem, I've got to take some time to redecorate. If not for the window to his immediate left that looked out over the compound's grassy main plaza, he would have felt like he was locked up in an impenetrable capsule, sealed away from the world. Ha. That would certainly be nice.

As much as he hated to admit it, despite the golden pips on his shoulder, he wasn't a soldier. Sure, he went through ten weeks of basic procedural and combat training, but so had every other rookie who joined the Hunters in the last two and a half decades. He was quite comfortable with the automatic pistols at his hips, too. But he didn't have a scrap of real field experience. He wasn't even a diplomat. He was just a really good theoretical tactician, appointed by the UN Hunter Oversight Committee because its members thought he would be someone easy to influence.

But Signas was a smart man -- that's why he sat in the big chair, as far as the Maverick fearing public was concerned -- and he wasn't one to be easily had. He knew the paper-pushers meant him to be a puppet, but he was well aware of what strengths he did bring to the job. He made up for what he considered his command failings -- inexperience, lack of fieldwork, inapproachability -- by acknowledging that there were Hunters that had more experience than him, and asking them to stand at his side: Commanders X and Zero. With the two of them at his side along with Lieutenant Commander Alia, perhaps the most brilliant of the lot of them, he had enough backup to do his job while keeping the politicos at bay. But the arrangement had its problems.

X, Alia, and Zero all knew their place: they were only advisors. X and Zero, who had both served as Hunter Grand Commander at least once during their careers, loathed his position anyway. All final decisions rested with the big man in the titanium hat. Still, all three of them were used to having their say. Such discussions usually occurred in private, giving Signas the opportunity to get the input he needed while maintaining the strong public image that allowed the Hunters to keep a high degree of autonomy. But losing control of any of his senior staff during a teleconference, especially in such a grave situation, was unacceptable. Alia, Douglas and Lifesaver had kept their indignation and anger to a proper minimum. But X and Zero ... he shook his head.

X's reaction wasn't really unexpected. From everything Signas heard and witnessed, he usually had amazing self-control when it came to dealing with even the most smarmy of diplomats. But he was just a man, and he had his buttons, just like everyone else. The possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used against innocent people was a big red one. Today, someone everybody assumed to be Dynamo went and smashed it as hard as he possibly could. And to make matters worse, not only were the weapons loose, but the only reason they were in play was because the humans had circumvented a number of their own laws to build them.

Signas spent a great deal of time studying history and recent events. He knew about every recorded attempt by Maverick reploids to kill massive amounts of humans with unconventional weapons. He knew how many had been stopped, and how many had, unfortunately, succeeded despite the best efforts of humanity's guardians. The numbers weren't exactly one-sided: three out of four times, the nuclear bomb was disarmed, the nerve gas was neutralized before it flooded the city, and the hostages were rescued before anyone got too trigger happy. But it was the remaining twenty-five percent of incidents that accounted for the deaths of billions over the last quarter century.

But X -- the oldest of them all -- had been there for all of it. He watched the nuclear bombs explode, saw the masses of people struck down by chemical weapons laying dead and dying as helpless doctors looked on, walked in the carcass that was all that remained of Paris mere hours after the world's first and only working cobalt devices ravaged the city. For Signas, all but the most recent of such incidents were just unfortunate history book entries; horrible examples of what could happen if they screwed up. For the Commander of the Seventeenth Unit, they were vivid memories that he would never, could never forget.

X had been furious when he found out about the Ragnarok Protocol, Signas knew. He no doubt felt like history was repeating itself and wondered if he and his friends would be able to win the day, or if he was about to watch thousands, possibly millions, die a horrible, excruciatingly painful death once again.

Signas was, to be completely honest, impressed with the man for keeping his anger in check well enough to carry on a coherent conversation with Aya Misumi. His fury was plainly obvious to everybody, but he got his point across without slipping into a rage, and in the end he even managed to make the woman on the viewscreen feel so out of sorts that she started volunteering information they weren't even supposed to have. Breach in decorum or not, it's nice to have a legend around to intimidate the hell out of your superiors. It would have taken forever to pry the information out of her if X hadn't snapped.

On the other hand, he could find no such redeeming factors to justify Zero's outburst. Scratch that. The man was raging for five solid minutes. Now, Zero wasn't X, and no one expected him to be. He shared many of the same experiences, but for whatever reason internalized them differently. Everybody knew he was quicker to anger, but his best rages, the kind that terrified everybody but those that knew him best, were usually reserved for the field of battle. Which left Signas wondering why they had gotten a fairly powerful blast of one. He felt like he was missing something. Zero's mood had been getting worse for the past couple weeks, and he couldn't figure out why. Signas found this profoundly annoying, because he knew there were really far more important things he should be worrying about, like the neurotoxin they were supposed to be finding.

A chime cut into his thoughts, and he turned a curious eye to the door. "Come in."

The two chrome panels slid into the wall, revealing none other than Commander Mega Man X. Still in full armor, he wore an expression that was two parts dour and one part cowed. "Signas," he said after a silent instant, his dulcet, thoughtful (and here was a surprise) almost anxious tones bouncing off the empty walls, "do you have a minute?"

The bigger man shrugged. "Not really." He grinned gamely. "Sit down, please." X took a seat in one of the luxurious black leather office chairs casually slung around the room. Signas watched him carefully, expecting to see him shift a little and then relax into the seat. He did indeed fidget until he seemed more comfortable, but the relaxation never came. He reminded Signas of a spring wound too tight. Yeah, he thought sardonically, figures he'd find his way to my office. "All our standard procedures for a Code White possible mass casualty event are in place. I've also instructed our undercover operatives already in the field to contact their informants for information about Dynamo, and I've got the Intelligence Department monitoring communication channels he's been known to use. But so far, nothing's shown up. I'll be sending more agents out as soon as they're briefed. On the chance missiles will be used as the delivery mechanism, we've got the global missile shield on active standby, but I really hope it doesn't come to that. Those lasers are designed to shoot down solid-state warheads, like nukes. They're more likely to aerosolize the stuff than destroy it. Then again, we've only been at it for forty minutes. I assume you've put your unit on combat alert?" The question was rhetorical. At least half of X's unit was always on combat alert, whether they were supposed to be or not.

X nodded. "Everybody's ready to roll. I've told them we have a Code White and given them a quick overview of what we learned in the meeting and my spectacularly sub-par performance at the research facility -- the parts that are most pertinent to our mission, at any rate -- but I've left the details for the briefing in about," it took him a fraction of a second to check his internal chronometer, "thirty minutes. I didn't go into every little detail, like we will at the briefing, but," a frown quirked his lips, "I went ahead and told Stacy and Brent that we have no treatment for them if they're exposed. They asked me outright, and there wasn't any way I was going to lie to them." He shook his head. "Beth looked sick. I still donÕt think she's gotten used to just how vulnerable humans are compared to us. But I'm getting off the point. I wanted to apologize."

Signas couldn't help it: one of his eyebrows shot straight up. An apology was the last thing he had expected from X. Sure, the Blue Bomber had a few harsh words for their contact at the UN, but unlike his blonde brother in arms, he hadn't blown completely off his rocker. "For what?"

A sigh escaped X's lips, and when he spoke, he made it sound as though he thought it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I lost my temper. I know that put you in a difficult position. My behavior will probably hurt you with UNHOC if word spreads. And trust me, it will. We've discussed how important it is for us to present a united front when dealing with them, and I all but hogged the stage and nearly pulled command authority out from under you. I was way out of line, and I'm sorry."

Signas said nothing for a moment, and when he finally did speak, his voice was level, unperturbed. "X, you know you weren't the only person at that table that was ticked off at the whole bunch of those bureaucrats. Sure, you let our friendly representative have it, but you didn't yell and scream while you were at it. You were lucid and logical about the whole thing, and no one disagreed with a word you said, least of all myself. And you probably won't like to hear this, but it's the truth: you scared her into giving us a great deal of extra information that will probably be quite helpful. Since I'm the one who decides what the boundaries are, I'm perfectly comfortable saying that you didn't overstep your authority. At no point did you say anything that really undermined my command. I didn't stop you because I didn't want to, not because I thought I couldn't. So even though I don't need it, apology accepted. But to be perfectly honest, I'm a little jealous."

It was X's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Oh?" Signas noted that he looked a little more relaxed now.

The Grand Commander grinned mightily. "You can have no idea how much I wish it could have been me doing the blasting. Watching you work was very ... satisfying. And just a bit scary, to be perfectly honest. But it would be indecorous for the Grand Commander of the Maverick Hunters to be anything but completely civil even in the face of the utmost stupidity and idiocy." The smile dancing across X's lips got closer to his eyes than any that lit his face since he entered the room, but it didn't go all the way. Signas knew it probably wouldn't until their current crisis was over. Well, except maybe for one person, perhaps. But she's not here.

"And people wonder why I always wiggled my way out of your job when it came my way."

Signas chuckled. "Yes, it is a profound mystery. After all, we all know how much you enjoy being responsible for a few thousand people and filling out so many forms that, were they still done on paper, would have resulted in the complete eradication of every tree on the planet in about five minutes." He suddenly grew serious again. "You want to know who I'm really concerned about, X?"

X's smile faded into a thin line. "Zero."

Signas nodded gravely, wondering not for the first time if the blonde commando wasn't the real reason X was sitting in his office. "I don't think I've ever seen him act so ... volatile during a briefing. I understood that he was angry -- we're all angry about this -- but he was just so ... so full of rage."

X bowed his head. "That sounds about right." He folded his arms, suddenly deep in thought. He stared through Signas, watching some bitter memory unfold before his mind's eye. The younger man found himself reminded once again exactly how much older X was than him; at the moment, he looked positively ancient. "I knew this was coming. I was going to be ready for it this time. I always tell myself I'm going to be ready for it. But I never know exactly when it's going to start. It looks like the dam broke this morning. He'll only get worse before he gets better." The voice synthesizer in his neck pushed an exasperated sigh through his breathless throat. "Dynamo couldn't have picked a worse time to pull this stunt."

Signas felt like a complete idiot. He quite simply had no idea what X was talking about. The Azure Hunter, for his part, looked to be waiting for his superior to piece together the clues. X is making it sound like some sort of recurring event. Yearly, perhaps? He quickly tried to think of any serious incidents that occurred on or around early July. The end of the Repliforce War was on July thirty-first, but that's weeks from now. And we won that one, what could be -- oh, damn. I can't believe I forgot about her. What's wrong with me? A calm internal voice reminded him he'd been around less than three years and it wasn't his job to keep track of his subordinates' personal demons. But another one chimed in shortly after and just a little firmer, reminding him that Zero was supposed to be his friend, too.

He looked back at X. Like most people, he didn't know all the details of the incident -- only X and Zero knew the whole story -- but he knew the name. "Iris."

X's nod was quick, and if Signas wasn't mistaken, more than a little pleased. "And the Colonel, but yeah, she's the important one here. It's going to be a long few weeks."

You're definitely a master of understatement, X. "Indeed. Unfortunately, time marches on, and we haven't the luxury of letting grief run its course uninterrupted."

The purely sardonic smirk rolling across X's face failed to reach his eyes. "Do we ever?"

Oh boy.

Harry knew he was openly gaping, but he really couldn't do much about it at the moment. His body and brain had gotten horribly mixed up, ran around like headless chickens for a few seconds, then crashed into each other with a mighty boom. The fox-man blinked his blue eyes patiently, waiting for some sort of response to his greeting. Harry managed to retake control of his senses and steal a glance at Hermione. Her eyes were wide, but the look on her face was far more like total shock than terror, with a splash of honest curiosity for flavor. He needed to say or do something, he knew. Bolting for the door seemed kind of appealing.

Hermione's mother taught her not to stare at a very young age. It was rude, insulting, and -- not that this was the key factor, by any means -- unladylike. For the most part, she always complied with that edict, taking it not so much as a command but as a good practice for living: there really was so much more to a person than appearance. After all, Harry, a small, nerdy guy by even the most forgiving of Muggle and Wizard standards was as brave, bold, and compassionate as the noblest Prince Charming. And in the Wizarding world (The 20th Century Wizarding World, her brain reminded her with a painful jolt), he enjoyed status as a jock. So yes, she was perfectly willing to look beyond the physical when meeting new people.

But even so, all she could do in those first few instants of contact was burn a hole into the animaloid with her eyes. Harry was right: she wasn't afraid. After all, her mind would remind her when her rattled and wounded rationality managed to reassert itself, no one else in here is acting like anything is out of the ordinary. And he looks pretty friendly ... I think. On a subconscious level, she realized that six-foot-tall fox-beings were normal in the 22nd Century. How or why, she had no earthly idea. It suddenly occurred to her that the seconds were ticking by, and neither of them were speaking. Harry looked about ready to overload, but she thought little of it, considering the resourcefulness and refusal to panic he demonstrated in the past few hours. He was entitled to a lapse of brain function. Nothing got around his awful timing, though.

She cleared her throat quickly, and prayed that her voice didn't come out sounding like a frightened mouse squeak. "Hello, sir. Sorry about the ... um ... silence. You startled us a bit." Not bad ... could have done without the clueless pauses. I should definitely leave the impromptu fibbing up to Harry.

The Boy Who Lived, for his part, finally found his tongue. It was funny. He'd seen (and fought) a full grown mountain troll, dragons, and all sorts of other creatures. A man-fox in normal clothes and wearing a library volunteer nametag really wasn't that horrible. Lord Voldemort was frightening. This ... this was just weird: strange enough to make keeping a straight face incredibly difficult, surreal enough to keep his mind from failing completely. "Yeah. Terribly sorry about that, Mister ..."

The animaloid grinned self-consciously, scratching the back of his furry head. "No need to apologize. My fault entirely for sneaking up so quietly on the two of you. You looked like you were in a deep conversation; I hated to interrupt. The name's Todd, by the way. Pleased to meet both of you." If Harry and Hermione had been used to reading non-human facial expressions (and the general fact that such things existed at all), they would have picked up on the knowing look he wore. They completely missed it, undoubtedly saving the two of them several minutes of fierce blushing.

Todd, Harry thought wryly, his mind having accepted the situation at face value and moved on -- he came here for explanations of such weird things, anyway -- of course. Because you would expect all the fox people to have such unassuming names. Perhaps all the mole people are all named Bob. He blinked; his thoughts rarely sounded so much like Ron Weasley. He didn't think he entirely liked the sensation. Shaking thoughts of his dead friend from his mind, Harry put out a hand. Todd's grip was firm, his skin felt human. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter. And this is my friend, Hermione Granger."

"A pleasure to meet you, sir." Hermione congratulated herself on such a flawless, confident delivery, and put out her own hand.

Todd took it and grinned, giving them an excellent view of his sharp teeth. "Well, like I always tell my friends, the library's one of the best places to meet new people. Oh, and I won't have any of that 'sir' stuff. I'm only five; I'm not ready to be an old fart yet. Check back in ten years or so. Anyway, Francine tells me you two haven't been here before. Care for the guided tour?"

Five years old? But ... but ... blast it. Harry mentally gathered up all the remaining preconceptions he had ever had about pretty much everything, collected them into a little ball, and banished them from his brain.

Hermione's eyes lit up. Human or not, this guy was offering to give her a guided tour of the Library of the Future. Bliss. "That would be wonderful, sir," she caught herself, "err ... Todd."

The young reploid grinned. "Sir Todd? Now that could be interesting." He pointed towards the library entrance. "Let's start at the main receptionist's desk. Feel free to ask me any questions you might think of. This is only the third time I've done one of these, so I might leave something out. This way."

Harry rose and picked up the robes at his feet, tucking them once more under his arm. If Todd thought this was odd, he held his tongue. After all, if the sight of a polished broom on a very expensive looking leather strap failed to draw a comment, it was highly likely nothing else would. Harry could feel the comforting weight of his Firebolt against his shoulder, and smiled a little. It occurred to him that leaving the stuff underneath the dumpster with Crookshanks might have been a good idea -- assuming, of course, that the cat didn't get bored and shred their robes. And did he really want to leave his broom just lying on a street corner?

Todd walked with Harry and Hermione on either side of him, running over the details of the tour route in his mind. "So," he said as they neared the desk, "Here's how it works around here." The tour was on. Hermione immediately gave the reploid her undivided attention, and Harry too listened carefully. "It's actually pretty simple. This is, as I'm sure you know, the south branch of the Tokyo public library system. The first floor is outfitted with information terminals, both arranged in this foyer and in a number of private research rooms. Those'll get you access to current and archived periodicals, journal databases, and more reference and encyclopaedic material than you could ever read. On the second through fourth floors, we have actual, paper books, with special collections on the remaining floors. Our collection of works in digital form is much larger. If you find something you like in the catalogue, just grab a reading pad from the front desk and punch in its ID number. We also have some interesting exhibits in the basement, one on the evolution of nuclear fusion reactors, and the other a collection of sculptures by Pierre Lombard, on loan from the Toronto Museum of Art. But let's start off with the basics. Come this way, and I'll show you how to get around on the computers and the catalogue browser ..."

Hermione and Harry traded pleased looks. If everything went according to plan, by the time they left the library they might actually have some idea what was going on around them. A pleasant thought, indeed.

Dynamo stared at what was left of his vodka with lime, and downed the remains in one quick gulp. The Red Letter might have been one of the cheapest gentleman's clubs in a five mile radius (the dingy, flaking yellow walls and absolutely nasty rouge carpet did nothing if not affirm that notion), but their bartender knew how to stock good liquor. The fire that raced down his throat was refreshing despite his immunity to inebriation. The five humans sitting with him were another story entirely: the mercenary thought it was a bit early in the day to be completely hammered, and wondered idly if any of them would even be able to walk by the time they finally decided to leave. It would certainly be entertaining. But not the most interesting thing, for sure. He watched an average-height, blue-eyed reploid girl head towards a pole-table of early arrivals, men in cheap suits catching an early lunch. She wore nothing more than a few well-placed strips of something shiny and red. What it was, exactly, he had no idea, and didn't really care. She reminded him of a present wrapped by someone in too much of a hurry to do it right, but still careful to hide the most important details of the package. Not the most interesting thing at all. He grinned, slamming his glass down on the dark oak bar and calling for another.

Tom the bartender, a middle-aged, balding, stocky man with twinkling brown eyes and horn-rims appeared from the stock-room, smiling at Dynamo, seemingly oblivious to the nakedness around him. "Straight again, D?" Sure, all the thugs and lowlifes that hung out at the Red Letter knew who and what Dynamo was, and even though none of them cared, yelling out the name of one of the most wanted terrorists in the world in a public place simply wasnÕt done. As for the clueless guys who didn't know enough to recognize Public Enemy Number Two by sight, there was no need to start a panic.

"Yeah," Dynamo replied absentmindedly. He pulled up his internal chronometer, and frowned slightly.

Tom suddenly didn't look too happy, either. He didn't like it when one of his best customers was in a bad mood. "S'matter D? Wanna try another brand?"

"What? Oh, no, this is excellent, Tom, as usual. An associate of mine was supposed to meet me here at half past the hour and, well, look at the clock. As much as I enjoy your company, buddy, now's really not the best time for me to be out and about." X and that lapdog Signas have probably called out the search parties by now.

"Ah," Tom said knowingly, "so you've got another project goin', hmm? Anything interesting?"

Dynamo's lip quirked up. "You don't really want me answer that, do you?"

Tom chuckled. "Nah. Just tryin' to be polite."

Despite their long friendship, Tom Shell was a mystery to Dynamo. He remained the only real human friend the platinum-haired mercenary had who wasn't a weapons dealer, drug smuggler, pimp, or otherwise so far outside the law that he would be arrested on sight. Indeed, Tom enjoyed a legal occupation. On top of that, he didn't have a bit of a problem with Dynamo's work. The mercenary had given up trying to figure him out months ago, and written him off as a cheery, friendly guy who served good drinks and happened to be completely and totally insane. I wonder what X would think if he knew there were guys like Tom out there. It'd probably just get his boxers in even more of knot. "Well then, I'll tell you this: this one's a real heavy deal. Certainly not the biggest I've done, but definitely heavy."

The human grinned, revealing a row of startlingly white teeth that couldn't, as far as Dynamo was concerned, possibly be real. "Sounds like you'll be comin' into a heap-load of cash, then. Any special plans?"
Dynamo smirked. "I'm sure I can think of something, buddy." He threw another glance at the door. Damn it, where the hell is this guy?

One of the day-shift drunkards, this one with way too much of slur for mid-morning, called for Tom from the other end of the bar. "Excuse me, D. Duty calls, and all that." Dynamo nodded, making a mental note to come up with a better nickname for himself.

The Red Letter's heavy iron door opened, letting in the sounds of the outside world for about five seconds before the newcomer was inside. He was tall, his clothes tight against his spare frame. Coal-black slacks and a matching silk shirt forced all attention to his pale-skinned head. Grey eyes at the peak of a long, sloping nose swept over the room with the utmost contempt, finally locking on the mercenary. Dynamo smiled, trying not to stare too intently at the black attachŽ case at his side. It's about damn time. He rose and crossed the foyer, offering a hand. "Good to see you again. I was a little worried you weren't going to show."

The man crossed his arms. "I never miss an appointment," he drawled lazily. "Though I'll admit, I donÕt usually do business in such ... low-key establishments."

Dynamo inwardly groaned, glad Tom wasn't around to hear that one. Maybe it was a cheap topless bar, but it was his, and he was a fiercely proud lunatic. "Well," he said coolly, "like I said before, what I do may be flagrant, but getting away with it requires a bit of discretion. You wanted to talk in a safe place of my choosing. This is it. No one will bother us here, and no one cares to listen. As long as we get this done before the Hunter Vice Squad comes in here looking for me, we're golden. And the sooner we get our business wrapped up, the quicker you can get back to your castle in the sky, or bog, or wherever the hell it is."

"Very well," the human said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. "I assume you've picked out a location offering a little more privacy."

"Of course. Follow me." Jerk off. Dynamo told Tom he was moving to a booth and wanted a pair of glasses of his best vodka, waited for their drinks, then led him through a half-empty maze of tables, noting with some satisfaction that his high-minded associate, despite his snide protests, was stealing more than a few glances at the less-than-clothed members of the staff. Not that the look of contempt ever left his face, but he could have stared at the floor. He finally arrived at the booth he was looking for. It was nestled in a small alcove, out of the line of sight of most of the rest of the Red Letter. And it was his booth, with a couple of custom accessories. Dynamo flipped a switch under the table, and the electronic sound-baffles lining the alcove entrance came online. They were free to talk.

"So," Dynamo began congenially, "you wanted to see me. Did something go wrong with the package?" Because, if it didn't, I'd kind of like to get paid...

"Not at all. My master is looking forward to making use of its contents. You've helped us come closer to putting an end to a long and costly struggle." And for the first time since his arrival, the newcomer sounded genuinely pleased. "The package, as you call it, was easily retrieved by my master's agents, and did in fact contain the toxin. The decoys you prepared were left in their place for your associates. I must admit, I was a bit surprised by your cruelty in your handling of them." He casually sipped his drink.

It didn't sound to Dynamo like his associate particularly minded the idea of cruel behavior, but found the circumstances interesting. "Oh?"

"Indeed. Were they really so useless that you felt it necessary to have them violently eliminated? I have some experience in these matters, and I've found that it's usually best to dispose of those who can't pull their weight quickly and absolutely."

"We've discussed this before, haven't we? The only way our little ruse was going to look authentic was if there was really someone there for X to kill. And trust me, he's smart enough to tell when his opponents are acting. He's called my bluff one too many times. If the people I sent to face him had known they were part of a decoy operation, there's no way X wouldn't have picked up on it. As for them all being useless, they all showed promise. They probably could have been great, given a few more years of practice."

The human sounded honestly intrigued. "If they had such potential, why have them killed?"

Dynamo did his best to keep a straight face. "I need people that can be good," Dynamo said flatly. "I'm only interested in working with one person that's got the potential for greatness, and you're looking at him."

The human sneered lightly. "I see."

"Now, as for the whole suffering thing, that tells me you really don't know a damn thing about what X is capable of. I know him, and I know none of them were still alive by the time their heads hit the ground."

"This makes you feel better about arranging their execution?" Another sip of vodka.

Dynamo shrugged. "Who said I felt bad about it?" He paused. "But if you don't mind, as long as we're on the subject I have to ask: if you're as concerned about being discreet as you say you are, why were you so willing to have your men flout their talents while X was watching? Come to think of it, if there was a satellite in range, his girlfriend was probably watching too. I'd be willing to bet the entire command staff knows about it by now."

The man waved his hand dismissively. "It doesn't really matter. As you said, most of them likely know the facts of the encounter, but not a single one of them knows what they mean. Very few Muggles are allowed to be as informed as you, Dynamo. You are fortunate my master does not see fit to Obliviate you now that our dealings are complete. And knowledge without wisdom, as any sufficiently preachy moron will tell you, is completely useless. Even now, they're probably sitting around a table trying to figure out what new technology you've got your hands on, what kind of weapons masquerade so effectively as sticks of wood. Just another layer of mystery; one that doesn't have a thing to do with the problem they should be trying to solve, but is far too interesting to ignore. They'll be nothing if not confused, and trust me, my master will see to it they stay that way. As for the lot of them even considering the truth, I'm sure you remember how difficult it was for you to accept the reality of magic," he finished, smirking knowingly.

Dynamo's smile evaporated into a thin line. "Well, what can I say? It was a pain in the ass admitting there was a whole part of the world I didn't know a thing about, but," he gestured at the briefcase, "I think it's been worth the blow to my ego."

The human's grin was feral. "I'm glad you feel that way. It's made doing business with you quite easy. Speaking of which," he lifted the briefcase onto the table, turning it to face the mercenary. Enjoy your prize, fool. There are far more precious things in the world; like power -- something you shall never have.

Finally, the fun part. Dynamo's fingers pried eagerly at the latches. He opened the case just enough for the dim lighting to catch the golden seals on the bound stacks of money inside. He snapped the case shut quickly. "Shiny."

"A total of 575,000 zenni, as we agreed upon."

Dynamo whistled. I don't believe it. Ether these guys are the greatest idiots to ever walk the earth, or they're the most well funded terrorists in recent history. Second biggest take I've ever gotten for one job, and I didn't even have to lift a finger. I wonder what I'd get if I actually did something. "Excellent."

"I believe our business here is concluded, then. My master may wish to make use of your services again in the near future, perhaps in a more direct capacity."

"Anytime. You know how to reach me."

"That we do." He drained the last half of his glass and got up.

Dynamo followed suit, once again offering his hand. "It's been a pleasure working with you, Mr. Malfoy."

The human nodded haughtily, his hands disappearing into his pockets. "I suspect we're going to be doing a good deal more business in the future. Such strict formality is likely to become tedious. For the sake of convenience, you may call me Draco."

Hermione rubbed her temples. She felt a nice headache coming on, and it had nothing to do with their now-departed tour guide's perennially chipper voice.

"Something wrong?" Harry asked from the console next to her.

"I'm beginning to think this wasn't such a good idea." She stared at the empty query screen on her own terminal, and frowned. "I'm not sure this is the best way to go about this."

Harry raised an eyebrow. They were only five minutes into their research, and Hermione was already expressing doubts? That wasn't normal. "What do you mean?"

Hermione scooted her chair away from the lush plant that dominated their secluded corner of the computer center and turned to look at him. "I don't know. I mean, we've got, what, an hour and a half before we need to leave? There's no way we can find out everything we need to know in ninety minutes. We probably couldn't get all the information we need in ten visits. Honestly Harry, we're talking about 150 years of completely new material here, not one of you and Ron's cram sessions before exams." Her eyes widened. It was the first time she mentioned Ron since their arrival in the 22nd century. She felt a familiar, cold force pulling down on every muscle of her face. She swatted at her dampening eyes.

Harry put what he hoped was a calming hand on her shoulder. "It'll be alright, Hermione." That was his new mantra, it seemed. Hermione was a genius, as far as he was concerned, but he had learned something for a fact in the last few hours he had only vaguely suspected before: she was at her absolute best when she had some degree of control over a situation. She didn't need to be in complete command; she just needed one good, solid handhold. Right now, she had nothing that tenable, and the stress was starting to show. "You're right. We can't just sit here and hope to absorb every single thing that's happened in the last century and a half. We probably don't need to. Think about it this way. How many times today have you seen something you were totally unprepared for and couldn't explain?"

"More than once," she grumbled.

"And how many times," Harry prodded gently, "have you simply seen something new and interesting but not exactly earth-shattering?"

"Since we've gotten here? Dozens." The Boy-Who-Lived was pleased to note the tinge of wonder in his friend's tired voice.

"So," Harry continued calmly (later, when he had time to think about it, he would be amazed at how logical he could be when he absolutely had to), "There's dozens of things we'd both love to have explained. But there's surely a much smaller set of information we absolutely have to have if we're going to be able to function here, isn't there?"

Hermione's eyes lit up, and a full grin -- perfect teeth and all -- lit her face. "I guess when you put it that way, it's not quite so daunting."

"That's the spirit." Harry found a grin of his own. Handhold. "So, any ideas? Right off the top of your head, what's something we absolutely can't afford not to know?"

"Let's see," she mused, "A brief overview of major historical events from the last 150 years is vital. With any luck, we'll be able to find a timeline of some sort. Don't give me that look, there's timelines for everything. We also need to know about how the government of Japan functions in terms of law enforcement, and even the most rudimentary grasp of international politics would be nice. Understanding the new money system would be useful, too. We don't want to end up getting scammed again. We know there's some sort of military organization out there called the Maverick Hunters. They seem to be pretty important, and their existence is common knowledge. Who are they? What do they 'hunt,' and why? I don't know, but doesn't a military organization with that kind of name seem a bit ominous? One of them is named Commander X, and looks to have quite a reputation around here, and I'm sure it has to do with something besides his odd name. I'm betting it would seem pretty bizarre if we didn't know who he was. And there's always the question of when foxes began to walk on two legs. Oh! And don't forget communications technology. They might not even use telephones anymore -- we didn't see what that nurse called the shelter with -- and we need to know."

"Excellent. And I've got a few ideas of my own. I'm interested in what kind of travel they've got. We're eventually going to have to figure out how to get back to the UK. But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Yeah. We've got plenty to get started with, and we'll probably think of more. Alright, then," she chirped brightly, "What do you want to start with?"

"Let's get the boring stuff out the way. How about money?"

Hermione smirked lightly. "Money's boring?"

"Reading about it is. Then again, I'm not the one who's committed every line of Hogwarts, a History to memory."

She giggled. "I know. Believe me, I know." She turned to her console. "Let's see ... zenni." She typed the word in, pressed submit, and was greeted almost instantly with a list of results. "Wow. That was fast, wasn't it?" She scanned the list. "Here's an encyclopedia entry."

"Hit it."

Hermione began to read aloud. "Says here it replaced yen after the monetary collapse of 2005. That doesn't sound too good, does it? Carefully controlled to stay competitive in value to the US dollar. It's available in electronic form, like the kind we have here, and cash made out of synthetic paper. Synthetic?" She grinned. "About time."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Well, before we got here, I sort of expected all the trees to be gone by the 22nd Century. It's nice to know we'll get our act together at some point." She looked back at the screen, pleased with herself. "There's plenty more here about current exchange value and printing history, but that's not important. I just wanted to know what happened to the yen. Well, that was easy, wasn't it?"

"Extremely." Of course, we weren't demanding much that time. "What next?"

"While we're doing simple things, how about current world population? It's not exactly crucial, but it's one of those things that would be really interesting."

Yeah," Harry said, "and we'd probably look really weird if it came up in conversation and we were off by a couple billion." He looked at his own console, beckoning him to input something. He started typing. After a couple minutes of sifting, he found the number. He stared blankly at it. "That can't be right."

"What?" Hermione pulled her head away from a query on modern communication technology that returned about 50000 results. Apparently, nothing much had changed about searching electronic documents in the last century and a half.

"What was the population in 1995? Somewhere around six million, right? I remember a teacher telling us that when I was really little. The memory sandwiched in between a couple of delightful run-ins with Dudley's gang."

"Six billion ... yeah, that sounds about right."

"Well ... this is just bizarre, then."

"What, Harry?" Spit it out, already.

"Listen to this: 'Global population, as of 2150: four-point-five billion.'"

"What?!" She kept her voice to a low sort of hiss, but got a few disturbed looks just the same. "That's impossible, unless there was some sort of plague or something."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "It gets weirder. This page lists several figures, in fifty year intervals. 'Record setting global population, as of 2100: seven-point-five billion. How do three billion people die in two and a half decades?" Even before the words left his mouth, Harry felt a chill run down his spine. Something in this ultramodern world was off.

"I don't like this, Harry. Something isn't right. Either there was a pandemic, or ..." she trailed off, looking suddenly horrified. "Or their deaths didn't have a thing to do with remotely natural causes."

Harry thought of the little talking trashcan, the five-year-old fox creature, and the picture hanging on the wall of what could only be a famous military commander. "I vote for war. Something critical changed while we were in limbo, and whatever it was, somebody didn't like it."

Hermione looked sick. "Everything was far too perfect looking. I think I fooled myself into thinking we'd landed in an utopia, or at least something that was a bit better than society circa 1995."

"Of course you did," Harry said reasonably, "so did I. I think we were probably both too thrilled that we didn't land in the middle of a Muggle labor-camp, even if we weren't really willing to admit we were thinking about the possibility, to consider that something genuinely terrible could be going on here."

After a long pause, Hermione spoke. Her voice dripped with anxiety. "I think we need to reorder our priorities. If you're right, we need to know what happened, and more importantly, if it's still going on. Harry, we could be sitting in the middle of World War III and not even know it."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Now who's being disturbing?"

The brown haired girl sagged in her seat, putting her mouth. "I want ..." Her voice was muffled; Harry knew she said more, but couldn't make out the rest.

"Hermione?" Blast it! I've done it again. I've got to watch what comes out of my mouth.

She took a deep breath. "I'm okay. I just got caught up in some bad thoughts; I'm rid of them now." She took in another lungful. Time to get it together, Hermione. Come on. I just need to last a few more hours, then I can sleep. "Alright," she said finally, and Harry tried not to grin. There was the authority, the in-control Hermione he had been trying to find for the last several hours.

And why not? He thought wryly. We're in a library. "Ideas, then?" He was sure there would be a few, at least.

"A few. Anything that could catalyze the deaths of three billion people in twenty-six years has to be dramatic; something new maybe, or at the very least, having a high-impact on society. I have one word for you: Todd. Whatever he is, it's something relatively new. Dramatic goes without saying."

"So," Harry prodded, "what is he? I doubt we can go up and ask him. Aside from being rude, I'd be willing to bet we're the only two people on this planet that don't know. Too bad we can't search this thing for him." That'd just be too easy, wouldn't it?

Hermione rested her chin in her hand. "Genetic engineering's always a possibility," she said quietly, more to herself than anyone else.

"What, like in the Island of Doctor Moreau? Is that even possible?"

Hermione made a mental note to find out how Harry knew about the Brando movie. It must have been some sort of torture implemented by the Dursleys. "It was theoretically possible in 1995 to make cows produce milk with spider's silk in it. I'm not willing to say it couldn't be done. But I doubt that's where our answer is. I think we're overlooking the obvious. "

She had him on the hook now. "Enlighten me."

"The trashcan."

Now, everybody knew tugging the line just to aggravate the fish was considered cruelty. "What about it?"

"In 1995, it would have been bleeding edge robotics technology. Now it's probably nothing more than a tinker toy, as far as the science of it is concerned. It's the absolute pipe dreams of the 20th century we need to look at. It's those all-but-fictitious things that'll be bleeding edge now. I know those paranoid dolts that pass themselves off as your family never let much literature into their house, but surely you're familiar with one of the most common components of the scifi genre."

She was on a roll now. Harry knew she would be thundering if she wasn't in a library. Part of him wished they were outside; it would be fun to listen to her go. But the other, larger section of his consciousness managed to get the point. If talking, walking trashcans were child's play, only one thing could be state of the art. He felt the color draining from his face, all at once excited at the possibilities and horrified by the implications. "You can't be serious. There's no way."

"Harry," she whispered, "you're a wizard. I'm a witch. We don't have the right to dismiss anything as too fanciful. Harry ... I'm almost sure Todd was an android. It's the only logical explanation."

"Well ..." Harry struggled for a way to refute this -- the suspension of disbelief had to stop somewhere. He came up with nothing. "You realize what you're suggesting, don't you? If you're right, three billion people have died in a war over robots. Or," and here was the really horrible possibility, "against them."

Hermione swallowed, color having long since abandoned her own cheeks. "I guess we should stop talking and see if I'm right then, don't you think?"

Harry nodded. "Do you want to be right?"

No hesitation. "I don't know, Harry."

She turned to her console, slender fingers flying. "Robotics, history of."

After finding a promising looking document, they began to read.

"New York Times Editorial Archive: A Summarization of Conflicts Related to the 22st Century Robotics Revolution.'"

6. Subsistence, Love, and Loathing, Part 2

Signas calmly surveyed the auditorium from behind his podium, checking his internal chronometer. "Almost time to start. Is everybody ready?"

X nodded from his right. "Yeah."

"The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out there looking for that silver-haired bastard." Zero, standing at his commander's other broad shoulder, folded his arms across his chest and frowned.

"You'll both get your chance," Alia's voice rang from their helmet speakers. X looked at Signas, who was busy conversing with Douglas. Apparently, that last line was for their ears only. She was back in the control room, watching the presentation room on the main viewer. "Just remember not to let your feelings about Dynamo get in the way. He'll be expecting that."

"Don't worry," X whispered, "he's outsmarted us one too many times. He's got to be stopped, and we can't do that if we're dead. We'll be careful."

"I hope you didn't think that would sound completely reassuring."

"Sorry."

"It's alright. I'm serious, though. If it comes down to just the two of you and him, be careful." X recognized the faint click that meant Alia had terminated her link with Zero. "Especially you." He heard the click again, and assumed everyone could hear her now.

The room continued to fill. The massive 7th Air Calvary filed in and took up a full four rows. "Excellent," Lifesaver muttered. "Pretty soon they'll all be here, and Douglas and I will be able to tell them just how screwed they are."

Douglas cut in nervously, "Boss, I've got some bad news. I've had a chance to look over that new data they sent us, and humans aren't the only ones vulnerable to it."

Signas balked, but recovered quickly. It wouldn't do to look completely clueless in front of every single Hunter on active duty. "Two questions, Lieutenant: just what exactly does that mean, and why am I just hearing about it now?"

Yow. Rank calling. I deserved that. Douglas shifted, glaring at Lifesaver. You so owe me, he mouthed. "I found it buried in the technical documents they sent us about five minutes before I got here."

Lifesaver apparently decided it was impolite to let his friend get glared to death without offering a little assistance. "Don't blame him, Signas. We didn't find it because it was almost completely hidden. I checked the list of indications and effects they sent almost immediately after the conference was over. I didn't find anything that looked like it affected us. It just wasn't there."

"But?" Zero asked. "Come on guys, we're gonna start to look pretty weird when the place fills up and we're having a private meeting."

Douglas took over. "I didn't worry too much about corrosiveness, since their documents didn't mention it as a serious problem and, idiot I am, I believed them. I wanted to check out the exact level of resistance, though, to try to get an idea of what kind of wear and tear my engineers and I would be dealing with, so I looked at the ingredients in question myself. At first, I didn't believe what I was seeing, but I checked it with our resident CMO, and he confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, the Stupid Scientist Brigade only tested for human skin and Titanium-X body armor corrosion."

"What else is there?" Alia asked. This time, everybody heard her.

"Not much," Lifesaver grumbled, "if you don't mind having your face melt off in ten seconds flat." X and Zero stood slack-jawed.

Signas' fists clenched, but he kept his face placid. "Explain. Now." No one seemed to care what their audience was thinking anymore.

Douglas frowned. "I don't know how they did it without realizing it, but they managed to build in a nice side-effect: this stuff will dissolve synthetic skin, and the semi-organics our eyes and other soft tissues are made out of faster than it'll eat human flesh. Get caught in a cloud of it unprotected, and you're all but finished."

"Shit." Everybody looked dumbly at Zero. "Well, what did you expect me to say? This sucks."

"No kidding." X looked out at their growing audience. Five, maybe ten more minutes, and they'll be expecting us to say something. "This is just great. How could they overlook something like this?"

Lifesaver looked at the seething Blue Bomber. "Try not to overheat."

"Well," Alia's musing voice flowed into her friends' speakers, "they meant this to be a weapon for use against humans, right? I'm sure the vast majority of testing time and simulations went into seeing how it would behave in the intended operational theater. I doubt they had enough incentive to spend vast amounts of time and money doing extensive testing on something they didn't expect to ever have a major chance of happening."

"Makes sense," X agreed, "after all, these are the same people who didn't bother to develop an antitoxin concurrently with their doomsday weapon. I still can't get over how that could have been greenlit."

Zero laughed darkly. "Haven't we already decided they're all complete nimrods? As for the lack of proper testing, if money was an issue, you know they weren't gonna spend it on us. We're 'just reploids.'" Everyone nodded grimly.

"You're probably right," Alia conceded, "but I wasn't going to say it."

Great, X thought grimly, now we're in even more of a mess. As if the situation wasn't horrible enough.

Signas seemed to have quashed his anger a bit. "This isn't your fault," he said finally. "At least you found it when you did. Ideas?"

"Yeah, don't be around when this stuff goes airborne," Lifesaver said. "Douglas came up with a pretty good stopgap solution, actually. Not anywhere near perfect, but I think it's the best we're going to get."

The engineer nodded. "It's a simple solution, and like he said, it's not perfect, but I really think it's our best option considering our time window. In fact, we got lucky: it's already partially implemented. Standard reploid combat armor is sealed up to the neck, so the only place we really need to be concerned about for most of people is the head. Now, here's where we get really lucky: the retractable face-plates built into standard reploid battle helmets for underwater operations are made of high grade plexi."

Alia was still listening. "You said standard combat helmets. Not everyone uses those. There's also a significant amount of people who don't use the standard airtight armor. What about them?"

X nodded, remembering his second in command. Lieutenant Commander Quinn didn't wear standard armor because he was built with a heavy-gauge defensive exoskeleton, and a lot of his body was exposed as a result.

Douglas' face fell. "That's where it falls apart. To be honest, the people fitted with non-standard, custom armor usually can't fit into the regular stuff, and if they can, it requires custom parts be manufactured. Protective solutions for them would have to be built on a case-by-case basis. I can protect the majority of our forces, but right now, I don't have anything to fit him, or several dozen other people, and it'll take weeks to get that many custom jobs measured, filed, and built. Either we send a lot of people out unprotected or barely protected, or we keep a vast number of our forces at home under lock and key. I'm sorry."

"Alia, are you still listening?" Signas was eerily calm. X and Zero traded quick impressed glances.

"Yes, sir. I'm here. I'm still listening, and I'm not liking what I'm hearing. This presents a whole new level of risk. I assume you want the number of troops with non-standard armor configurations?" The members of the command staff exchanged looks. Douglas mouthed, freaky.

Zero nudged X. "You've fallen in love with a telepath," he whispered. "You realize that, right?"

"Not now, Zero. Not now." X turned his attention back to Signas. He had to use the l-word. X did his best to force the blush from his face. He knew he wasn't entirely successful. Lifesaver and Douglas were looking interestedly at him. I must remember to hurt Zero when this is all over. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

The Grand Commander smiled thinly at their exchange. "That would be most useful, Alia."

"Give me a second." A moment later, she was speaking again, her soft, urgent voice filling their ears. "This isn't good. Not at all. I'm staring at the percentage of non-standards, and combining this number with the one I gave you for humans and undercover operatives who can't wear anything at all just makes the picture look worse: according to my calculations, we're still looking at a total of fifty-one percent of active Hunters who will be unprotected in the event of exposure, as opposed to my original estimate of twenty-five percent. Again, it looks like it's spread unevenly across various units."

Zero whistled. "Damn. Any more bad news?"

"Well," Lifesaver ventured, "I don't know why anyone hasn't made the point that those forty-nine percent that we can theoretically protect are only safe so long as their armor remains airtight. If they're seriously breached while the agent's in the air around them, it won't matter what they're wearing. I've been trying to convince UHNOC to authorize funding for reploid-compatable hazmat armor for years, but situations like this are so few and far between they haven't been able to justify the expense. As for suggesting this is just all a contingency plan, just in case we donÕt intercept the stuff before its used, while that may be true, we've got to look at the difficulty of the task in front of us. It's going to be a close one. We're just as likely to pull it off as end up watching on a viewer when the news channels start running footage of an attack. Damn it."

"Zero," Douglas groaned, "you should really learn when to shut up, you know that? Now look what you've started."

X wasn't really paying attention to the whispering match. "Thanks, Alia." He turned to Signas, "Well, it's your call. What's the word?"

Silence reigned.

Signas looked at his command staff, thought of their missing member sitting in command and control, likely twiddling her bangs nervously and wishing she wasn't stuck overseeing a bunch of technicians. He looked out at the now fully assembled body of Hunters waiting for their leaders to say something, then he looked at X. This is it, isn't it? The snap decisions that effect whether or not hundreds of people under your command are likely to live or die. This is why you hated my job. Well, right now, I don't like it much either. He turned back to his staff, the decision made. Not that I can ever say that.

"The situation," he began quietly, "has not changed since this morning's conference. The only thing that is different now is the magnitude of Hunters possibility affected. We've gone from twenty--five percent to all. Actually, this only validates my decision. I cannot justify sending some Hunters into action while sidelining others because the threat to them is increased. This policy, while at first seeming kind, would be nonsensical. Those that were in the field would be in danger because their numbers would be abnormally small and several components of our forces would in fact be ineffectual. This would increase the likelihood of casualties in those who did see action. And most importantly, crippling ourselves now would mean severely reducing our chances of successfully intercepting the toxin, which as Lifesaver pointed out, are already less-than-good.

"Therefore, I am about to announce that, despite the risks, all active duty Hunters will be placed on full standby, in accordance with standard Condition Red and Code White protocols." He fell silent, waiting for a reaction.

"Understood." No emotion, not that anyone expected any. Alia had her orders, and she agreed with them. In her mind, there would be no need to mince words.

X nodded solemnly. "As unfortunate as it is, you're right: we can't cripple ourselves."

"Yeah," Zero added, "there's no way we can win if we destroy our capability from the inside out."

Douglas nodded. "I'm behind you one-hundred percent."

"Me too," Lifesaver, "but if this does turn into a bloodbath, I'm afraid it'll be worse than anything we've seen in years. Let's hope the Fates are with us on this one."

"Let us hope, indeed." Signas looked out at his assembled army; defenders of humanity and innocent reploids everywhere. They were all volunteers, arguably the most highly trained soldiers in the world. He was about to start them on what could easily become a suicide mission. Angels and ministers of grace, defend us. He checked his internal chronometer, and decided the thing had to be busted. There's no way this entire exchange only took ten minutes. "Lifesaver, I'm going to introduce you before we get to the meat of the briefing. I want you to briefly summarize the climate of increased risk. Don't go into too much detail -- I want to save that for later -- but let them know that no one's safe around this stuff. I don't want to panic them, but I want them to know immediately, so they have plenty of time to get used to the idea and it doesn't look like we're springing it on them at the tail end." Douglas shifted uncomfortably; he knew there was a jab at him nestled somewhere in that comment. "When you're done, mention that we'll go over the relevant safety information before we dismiss them." Everyone nodded in agreement. "Alia, any last minute input?"

"No, sir. Good luck, guys."

"Let's get started, then."

X watched his commanding officer began to speak. Well, here we go. The legendary Commander of the 17th Unit sent up a silent prayer, then turned his attention back to the briefing.

Harry leaned back in his seat, the strength suddenly gone from his body. He managed only one word. "Whoa."

Hermione's voice reeked of stunned amazement. "Yeah. Whoa."

"I guess," Harry managed, strength returning to his vocal cords, "that explains the massive population decline."

"Among other things." She ran her fingers through her hair, surprised at how oily it felt. "Unbelievable. This is absolutely unbelievable, Harry. When I said we should think about science fiction, I had no idea the truth would be so ... so ... outlandish. I mean, I've read a dozen novels about this sort of thing. Campy novels. Everyone liked to write about it ... I don't think anyone ever thought it would actually happen, except Asimov. I didn't either, come to think of it. But really, I think the world could have come up with a more subtle way to prove me wrong."

Harry had no idea who Asimov was, and thanks to the bastions of paranoia that were his aunt and uncle, his exposure to science fiction literature, decent or otherwise, was practically nil. I don't know how this day could get any more surreal. He raised an eyebrow at Hermione. "You didn't? Why not?"

"I don't know," she said simply. "The whole idea of sentient androids," she stopped herself when Harry's eyes bugged out of their sockets a bit. "Sentient. It means, at its simplest, being able to think and understand one's place in the world. Sentient things can think 'I am' and mean it. It's what separates humans from every other animal. And reploids too, I guess." Reploids. Even the word itself was mind-blowing. And as much as she was loathe to admit it, given the information about the awesome violence caused by the proliferation of androids and the Maverick movement, the word and all its implications were exciting.

Harry grinned. "Thanks. Go on with what you were going to say, please."

Hermione looked lost in thought for a second. "I wonder why Ron always thought my ability to pull word definitions out the air was annoying." She blinked. Bloody -- I didn't mean to say that out loud.

Harry's expression didnÕt change, but Hermione didn't miss the sadness that flashed across his eyes. "Nonsense. He thought it was cool, too. For whatever reason, though, he hated having to admit it." There was an uncomfortable pause. "Go on, then."

"Well," she began, "I guess I just thought of the whole idea of sentient androids," Harry grinned and gave a thumbs up, and she giggled, "as a sci-fi clichŽ. It's been done so many times on books and TV, and the stories are always so much alike, I just got desensitized to it. The artificial intelligence research of the twentieth century really didn't have anything to do with creating a working artificial person. I thought of that kind of research as real, I guess; it was plausible. All the stuff in the science fiction books, that was just fantasy. Thought provoking and enjoyable, but nowhere close to ever being real." She stopped again, and giggled at some private joke. "You know what the problem is with being right almost all of the time, Harry?"

Harry shook his head.

"When you are incorrect," she said, "you aren't just off by a little bit, you're all but completely off the track."

Harry smiled. "I think I get your point. But if you were right all the time, life wouldn't be nearly so interesting, would it?" He looked at the set of documents open on the terminals in front of them. "And if nothing else, this is certainly very interesting."

"I can hardly believe it. Someone actually did it; Doctor Light created a child of the human mind. He must have been an absolute genius."

Harry nodded. "I'm thinking that's a major understatement." His tone grew more serious. "Maybe it's a good thing he wasn't around when X was activated, though. Everything he feared came to pass. One power mad man, thought of as a prodigy by his fellows, declared himself and his followers superior and tried to take over everything. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

Hermione knew Harry was thinking of Voldemort, and was forced to agree. "Scarily so. But I think Doctor Light would be proud. I understand why Commander X's picture is on the wall. The way this stuff reads, if it weren't for him ..." she trailed off, searching her mind for a euphemism.

Harry didn't give her time. "We would have found ourselves in a world where humans were nothing but slaves, if they were still around at all. Pleasant thought." Well ... that sounded great, Harry. What the hell's wrong with me? The cold, cynical little voice he had discovered earlier in the day chimed in. You're wearing down. How much longer do you expect to keep up this detached, panic-free state-of-mind? You shouldn't be surprised that you're starting to crack. You may have escaped one inferno, Harry, but you've landed in another one that just might be hotter. Harry blinked. It occurred to him in a flash that this was an infinitely worse place to be, and not just because of the circumstances of their arrival and current situation.

When Voldemort was the enemy and he and Hermione were at Hogwarts, they were part of the fight. They certainly weren't at the front lines, but they were in a position to know what was going on and make relevant contributions when possible. Now -- now they were stuck just wandering around without a clue about what was going on, hoping an intractable enemy that they knew almost nothing about wouldn't decide it was time to rain death down on the city. According to the files they dug up, it tended to happen with alarming frequency. They were almost completely helpless, and Harry suddenly found himself hating that. He was beginning to feel more and more like what he really was: a confused kid with no home, only the shakiest of plans, and no real power to effect the world around him.

But I can't admit that. Not now. I've set myself up to be the strong one, the one with the plan. I've made the commitment, now I've got to play the role.

At length, Hermione nodded. Harry wasn't the only one doing a good job of tamping down all traces of doubt and worry. She looked calm and interested, like she always did when she was researching something in the library. "You're right, of course. It's a horrible situation. They've been doing their best to protect everyone for twenty-seven years, and still, three billion people have died. But Harry, we can't just look at it like that. You can't just focus on the worst of it. If we do, we'll be overrun by our own emotions. And yes, I know I'm one to talk. I'm horrified by what we've found here ... Harry, we've been spending the last hour reading about a group of people trying to systematically eradicate humanity. It's terrifying!

"I'll be honest: I ... I'm scared." Harry listened and watched her closely. She really did sound like she was fighting a battle with her own fear, and her eyes now danced with a mixture of sadness and shock. "But ... I can't believe I'm saying this, we have to remember that what we've read isn't just about the bad things. If we let the actions of a horrible few taint our whole picture of the world we're in, we'll be missing out on all the wonderful things we have a chance to see; the people we could meet that couldn't even exist in the 20th century. We're in a horrible situation. If we do lose sight of the good things, what's left?"

"Not much," Harry conceded.

"Exactly." She sighed. "Saying all that doesn't make it any easier to digest, does it? I think ... I think we just made everything official: we're stuck here, and here is a dramatically different place than where we belong. We were never supposed to be here, Harry. We were thrown out of time and ended up in a world so different than the one we know that it might as well be alien. It's ... exceedingly difficult to focus on the positive."

Harry suddenly felt the need to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. When he did, he could feel it shaking under his palm. "You're not the only one who's afraid," he whispered. "But I still know we'll be alright."

She blinked her moistening eyes. Wonderful. I've worked myself into another crying fit. "You really think so? And swear to me you're not just saying it because you think I'm about to collapse into a blubbering wreck."

"I know so," Harry said, banishing every bit of doubt in his mind. He realized, deep down, that he really did believe it, with every fiber of his being. If he didn't, nothing could have kept him going. "We've both got our wands and our wits, and now we know more about the world around us than we did when we got here. We might not have time to answer every question we have, but we're infinitely better off than we were at 10:30. We'll figure out how to get back to Hogwarts. It'll just take some time."

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Finally, Hermione sat bolt upright and spun in her chair to look at Harry. "Time. What time is it, Harry?"

The Boy-Who-Lived paled. The appointment. I almost completely forgot. He glanced at his watch. "We need to leave. Now."

"How much time do we have?"

Harry got up and collected their things. "Our bus will be here in exactly one minute."

Hermione was instantly at his side. "Well then. Run."

Harry couldn't figure out quite how they did it, but the proof was irrefutable. He looked over Hermione's mass of hair and saw buildings passing by. How the two of them had managed to get to the bus stop in time, he would never know.

Hermione was busy fussing over Crookshanks. "We're sorry we left you under that nasty dumpster for so long. You must have been so uncomfortable."

Personally, Harry thought Crookshanks looked quite happy when they yanked him out from under the dumpster. He certainly seemed to be enjoying the large rat he had eviscerated. For his part, Harry found the image quite satisfying ... at least until Crookshanks had decided to be generous and drop the bloody rat carcass on his shoes. At that moment, his appetite abruptly abandoned him, and it was still missing.

He reached over and stroked the animal behind the ears. I'll bet you're still hungry, though. He still wasn't sure the shelter they were going to even allowed animals, but he knew Hermione was probably thinking the same thing, so he had no intention of bringing it up. We'll deal with that problem if and when we have to. Too bad I don't still have my invisibility cloak. I could just wrap him up and sneak him in.

"Harry," Hermione ventured, having finally convinced herself Crookshanks was still in perfect condition, "what are we going to do next? After we check in at the shelter, I mean?"

Harry scratched the back of his head -- and frowned sharply when his nails raked over a rather deep scratch. Ouch! "I'm not sure, actually. I figure we should try to get something to eat again. We never really got a chance at the library, and we really shouldn't go too much longer without food. We should probably try to get some rest, too. "

"Yeah, I'm finally starting to feel like I could eat something. Actually, I don't think I've felt this hungry in a long time."

Harry nodded. Excellent. "I know what you mean."

Hermione suddenly began discreetly looking around the bus. "I wonder if there are any of them on here with us," she whispered.

Harry cottoned on almost immediately. "I'm not sure. I doubt it, not if most of them can do that teleporting thing."

"Still," she mused, "we wouldn't know, would we? Unless they were like Todd, we'd have no idea." She paused. "Amazing, isn't it?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah." But frightening, too. Harry was almost certain that if he had not met Todd before he and Hermione discovered the existence of reploids, it would be that second feeling that colored his perception of the whole lot of them. But he knew that would make him a kind of racist. He glanced at his closest friend, reminding himself of all the times Malfoy had called her a Mudblood to her face; how much it hurt her even if she never gave Draco the satisfaction of seeing anything but her own contempt and disgust. She even tried to keep it from he and Ron, if she could help it. No matter what, he would never let himself become a racist.

Hermione yawned. "I could definitely use a nap."

She turned her head to look out the window, and Harry caught her reflection in the glass. She looked absolutely exhausted. Never.

Harry stared out the window again, and waited.

Harry was so deep in thought he almost didn't notice it when the bus stopped moving. "Well," Hermione said, breaking into his thoughts, "I guess this is it."

The wizard looked out the window. The building was huge. Emblazoned on the side, in clean white letters in English and Japanese, were the words "Juuban Women and Children's Shelter." Well, that's subtle, he thought suddenly, they might as well have put up a neon sign. He smiled reassuringly at his companion. "You ready?"

She shrugged, but got up just the same. "Let's get out of here before the bus starts moving again. I don't want to have to drive by the glue factory again."

A few moments later, they were standing in front of the wide double doors, neither of which bothered to open automatically. Harry put his free hand on the cool wood.

Hermione cradled Crookshanks tighter, and the cat purred at his nervous owner. Harry pushed.

The reception area reminded Harry of a hospital, right down to the furniture. The lights were that weird kind that managed to illuminate everything and simultaneously drain almost all color from the room. The comatose tope on the walls didn't really help that much. At least the receptionist's desk was a splash of color -- then again, olive green had never been one of his favorites.

Not that either Harry or Hermione cared even the slightest bit whether or not the place was going to win any interior decorating awards.

Harry took the lead, slowly walking towards the desk. The woman working there was immediately everything he had expected: she looked in her late forties, with blue eyes and curled brown hair. She wore jeans and a black shirt emblazoned with the name of the shelter, and smiled at them.

She couldn't speak, though: she looked to be stuck on the phone with someone performing a rather long monologue. She nodded, making an affirmative sound at whatever the phone-voice was saying, and looked the two of them over. Picking up a pen, she jotted down a note on a piece of paper and showed it to them. One moment, please. On phone with incredibly obnoxious boy who thinks he's a man. Cute kitty, dear. Harry and Hermione looked at each other and grinned.

Finally, it looked like she was going to get to speak. "Yes," she said finally, "I understand that. But it isn't our fault the payment got there late -- it was submitted on time. Look, you admit it's there. You said it'll be processed by the end of the week, anyway. You'll get your money. I'm going to ask you one more time: please donÕt cut off the electricity. As many people who live here -- even if we didn't have it for twelve hours, it would be a disaster." She listened for a moment, a look of triumph spreading across her face. "Yes, you go talk to your supervisor and call me back. No, thank you." She hung up the phone. "Twit." She turned her attention back to Harry and Hermione. "Sorry about that, dears. The fun never stops, as they say. I'm Mrs. Dawson. What can I do for you?"

"We have an appointment to see about rooming here, ma'am," Hermione said simply.

She smiled kindly. "Oh, of course! I sort of figured, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions. What are your names, honey?"

She reminds me of Grandma. Only younger. The thought was comforting and sobering all at once. "I'm Hermione Granger," she replied confidently, "and this is Harry Potter."

Harry nodded. "Good afternoon, ma'am."

"Pleasure to meet you. Give me just a second, let me pull you up on my screen here." Mrs. Dawson stepped over to a terminal, the most modern thing in the entire room, and began to type. She read the display for a moment. "Oh! It looks like we've been expecting you. And you got here with time to spare. Wonderful! How're your new glasses, Harry?"

"Excellent, ma'am."

Such a well behaved pair, the matron thought, and so clean looking. Don't know why that boy's carrying a broom, though. That's a bit weird. Maybe he's been working as a street sweeper, or something. It's not like he could fly on it or anything. "Now," she said, picking up a black tablet, "I've got to get you registered. It only takes a few minutes. Why don't we go over here and sit on one of the couches? If anyone comes in the door, they can ring the bell, otherwise, we shouldn't be disturbed. Unless that loon manages to get his supervisor to call, but that's beside the point. Would either of you like something to drink?"

Hermione spoke first. "Water would be splendid, ma'am. It's a little warm out there."

"That sounds good."

"It is a bit warm, isn't it? You're in luck: I won't even have to run to the kitchen." She knelt down and pulled open a door under her desk, producing two bottles.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Dawson," Hermione ventured as they walked towards the couches. Harry glanced at The World's Most Anti-Social Cat (and given the nature of cats, that was saying something) and figured he had a pretty good idea why.

"Yes, dear?"

"My cat -- his name is Crookshanks -- he won't be a problem, will he? I mean, can he stay here?" She wasn't happy with the way her voice was fluttering, but there was a sizable part of her that absolutely abhorred the idea of losing him. Something that was almost desperation tainted her voice.

Oh. Well, I should have seen this coming, shouldn't I? I hope I don't have to say no. "Well, now, let's see. Where did you get him, dear?" Probably a stray. If he hasn't had his shots, he'll have to go. Look at that smashed face. Poor thing looks like a hover-cycle hit him.

Hermione seemed to realize where this was going. She took a deep breath. "My ... my ..." Suddenly, Harry's hand was in hers, squeezing gently. She steadied herself. "My parents gave him to me ... years ago, for my birthday. We bought him at a pet store. He's had all his shots, and he's very healthy. But," she decided she might as well be as honest as possible, "I haven't been able to renew his registration since it ... expired."

"Oh." Well, Amy, that was a brilliant move. I'll have to work on being even less subtle. Oh, dear; I've really trampled it up this time. "Well, Hermione -- such a pretty name, by the way -- I'll take your word for it. You don't seem like you would lie to me. We let our guests keep pets here, as long as they're not sick. Now, you'll have to be careful, though. You said he wasn't registered. Do you mean he doesn't have an identification implant anymore?" That's a bit unusual. Those don't 'expire.'

"Yes, ma'am," Hermione said quickly, trying desperately to think up some sort of reasonable way to get out of the hole she was digging, "He got in a little accident -- it was damaged, and I had to have it removed. I don't have enough money to get it replaced yet." She crossed her fingers in her pocket. I hope I just made some sort of sense. At least I sounded like I believed it. Harry must be rubbing off on me.

Fair enough. "Oh, well, that's certainly unfortunate. Like I said, we don't mind healthy pets here, but you'll want to be careful. I'm sure you know that if he gets out alone a drone from animal control is likely to pick him up."

Drone?! What in blazes is that supposed to mean? "Oh, yes, I'll be careful with him," she said smoothly. Looks like I pulled it off. "We've already had a few close calls. I'm not going to let that happen again anytime soon."

"Well, then," Amy smiled, "I'll get him a litter box later. We keep a couple of extras around."

"Thank you, ma'am." Hermione grinned.

Crookshanks was pleased. Apparently, this old one was smarter than he thought. If she was going to try to separate him from his Hermione -- well, she had another thing coming. And it was likely to be quite painful. He looked at his front paws, and retracted his claws. Maybe another time.

"Of course, dearie. Now, we'd better get to work on these forms. Now, are either of you seventeen?"

Harry shook his head. "Not quite yet."

She nodded, and tapped the tablet with a stylus. "Well, neither of you are going to have a national identification number, then. But judging by your accents, I'd say the two of you aren't from around here, are you?"

"No, Mrs. Dawson," Harry responded, "we're from England."

"Well, you're certainly a long way from home, then, aren't you?"

Harry nodded solemnly. "A very long way, I'm afraid. As for how we got here ... it's a long story. It doesn't look like we'll be able to get back anytime soon, unfortunately." Hermione shot him a dark look. Oops. Should have phrased that differently.

Well, so much for them being in any of our databases here, the older woman thought. "Let me enter in a little preliminary data," she said. She began to work with the stylus again, all the while thinking hard about her newest arrivals.

Amy had worked at the Juuban shelter for nearly fifteen years, and she enjoyed her job. It wasn't always pleasant, and the shelter was only open because something was drastically wrong with the world, but she loved helping people, especially children. She had dedicated her life to the task, going at it with all the vigor she could muster.

In the last three decades, she had taken care of a great many children, every one of them different. Looking at the two before her now, though, she had the feeling she was looking at an especially unique pair. Their eyes gave away the amazing amount of stress they were under and a deep sadness that convinced her they weren't runaways -- she recognized that look all too well. Their loved ones had been taken from them, and somehow they ended up on the streets. But there was something else. There was a courage lurking there, beaten down but still standing. Well, whoever you are, kids, I'd be willing to bet you've both had some pretty interesting lives.

She began leading them through questions over the most basic of information: full name, age, medical history, and all those other vital statistics she needed for her files. The two of them did reasonably well, as far as they were concerned -- they only ended up having to fake about half of their answers. Among the more audacious of fabrications were, by necessity their dates of birth and the fates of their parents (Hermione managed to keep a straight face while claiming they were "taken from them" several years ago, letting the woman assume what she pleased). Eventually, it came time for Harry to finish his story.

"After we lost them," Harry finished quietly, "we didn't have anyone. We were on our own. It's been years since then, but we've stuck together. Somehow, we ended up moving around a lot. Without getting into unnecessary details, we eventually ended up stuck in Japan. We've been here ever since, moving around as necessary." He wiped tears from his from eyes. Real tears. Everything he had said, in some way or another, was completely true. He looked at Hermione. She had her eyes closed and her hands over her mouth.

Amy was stunned. If what they told her was even a fraction of the truth (and she believed it to be more than that, even if they were hiding certain information), they were braver, cleverer, and closer friends than she had ever imagined. Some parts of their story were almost comically outlandish -- the idea that they could have migrated from Surrey to Japan, for example. But she had seen a great many children that were absolute experts at lying, and the two in front of her were simply not. She believed them. "Well," she finally said, "it sounds like the two of you have been through a lot together."

"We certainly have," Harry said quietly. "I don't think I could have done it without Hermione. She always keeps me from getting in too much a fuss when we get stuck in bad situations."

Hermione blushed, and playfully swatted him on the arm. "Hush, you. You're a lot more capable than you believe."

Amy smiled brightly. Most importantly, as far as she was concerned, they were both relatively happy. At least most of the time, she thought darkly. That stress in their eyes has to come to the fore every once in a while. "Well, now that we've got all your paperwork done, I'm happy to say that you're officially registered here. Now, and I'm not trying to suggest anything, I promise, I assume the two of you are used to sleeping in the same place."

Harry blinked in confusion. Hermione's mind was moving at warp speed. Based on the story we told her, we usually would. Not together, but in the same room, if possible. We've painted ourselves as really, really close. Not that much of a stretch, really. She was perfectly comfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same room as Harry, assuming of course they had separate beds and she could change in private. Besides, it's not like he would ever try anything. The idea of Harry making a move on anything was almost giggle-inducing.

"Alright, then," Amy said, and both of them failed to catch the impish look in her eyes. "Now, normally we don't allow unrelated girls and boys to share rooms. But it sounds like the both of you are used to doing that." Harry's eyes bulged.

Oh my God, we did suggest that. Bloody hell. He looked at Hermione, expecting her to be suitably scandalized. Much to his surprise, she looked totally at ease. What in blazes?

"Yes, ma'am," Hermione said calmly, "we share sleeping quarters all the time. As long as there's more than one place to lay down and somewhere private to change, of course. But it's nice, I think, not having to sleep alone, or in the company of some complete stranger, especially as much as we move around."

Harry's brain continued to stall. He expected smoke to begin bellowing from his ears at any moment. Amy nodded. "I understand completely, dearie. You two are also two of the most respectful and mature young people I've met in a long time. Given that and the uniqueness of your situation, I'm going to do something I don't do very often, but you can't make a big deal out of it. I'm going to give you a room with two twin beds, like a double at a hotel. But there's a condition, and I don't think you'll have any problems complying with it. Under absolutely no circumstances is there to be any canoodling. Do you understand?"

Hermione nodded eagerly, despite her blush. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much."

Harry nodded dumbly, his own skin the color of the Gryffindor flag. "Yes ... yes, there will be none of that." What just happened here?

"No problem, dears. Just don't make too much of a fuss about it around the other children." She got up. "Now come along, dears. Doctor Thompkins will want to give you both a full once-over, and then we'll need to get you some food. The two of you look positively famished."

The phone rang.

"Oh," Amy hissed. "Just a minute. It better not be those idiots at the power company again."

Alia ducked just in time; she could feel the coolness of X's boot as it brushed against her scalp. Crap! He's really going at it this time. And the look on his face! He looks so relaxed. The voice of her subconscious cut in. You're getting distracted. Watch out! X's foot abruptly made contact with her abdomen. She doubled over with a yelp and found herself looking down his buster. It was charging. No!

X lowered his arm cannon, and smiled. " Excellent. You've got to remember, though: never stop moving. You're going to be, unfortunately, slower and weaker than almost anyone you fight. You were designed that way. You read incredibly well, though. But you've got to remember to keep your distance, and never stop moving until you're ready to attack. But you did great. Four minutes that time."

Alia straightened up, deactivating her own buster. Don't know why I even bother with the thing. I only got two shots off, and managed to miss both times. I don't know how he puts up with me. "You do realize I'm still dead, technically."

X nodded. "Yeah, but look at it this way. You held me off for four minutes. When we started this, you couldn't last more than thirty seconds. And I was holding back then even more than I am now."

Alia grinned. "You're amazing, you know that?"

X raised an eyebrow. "What?"

She tapped his helmet playfully. "There's no way you should have been able to make that sound like a compliment."

The Blue Bomber shrugged. "Sorry ... I think. But it's true. You've really improved."

She smiled. "Thanks." There was a pause, and she suddenly looked uncertain. "Do you ever stop to think about how weird this is? I mean, we're dating now, and you spend an hour a day teaching me to beat you up. Is this unhealthy?"

He nodded. "I think about it a lot, actually. I know why its worth doing, but I'll be totally honest: I'm glad it was your idea."

Alia walked to the cabinets next to the door of the white-walled training room and scooped up her headset. She put it on, but didn't activate it. "Oh? Why?"

"I don't think I was ready to admit that it was necessary," he said with a frown. "Everything you said when you asked me to start training you -- none of it was new to me. I'd thought about all of it before, but there was no way I was ready to say it. I wanted our relationship to be as normal as possible, and I wasn't ready to talk about the complications. I knew we needed to, but I just ... didn't want to ruin the illusion or normalcy, I guess."

Alia didn't like the uncertainty in his voice. For one thing, she didn't like the idea that she had anything to do with putting it there. For another, there was the whole matter of her not picking up on it six months ago. No one person should be allowed to be so secretive. "Why not?"

I can't believe we're having this conversation now, of all times. Oh, well. There's no time like the present, as long as something doesn't blow up while we're talking. "It's a bit of a long story, actually. Are you sure you want to hear me act depressed?"

"I wouldn't call it acting depressed. The things we do ... most of it's not pleasant, but we do it anyway. Like you tell the newbies, Hunters do what we do because it has to be done. I think talking about this kind of unpleasant stuff is a required part of being more than friends. The only relationships that don't have their serious moments are in the heads of little girls. That makes it something you and I have to do, doesn't it?"

X smiled thinly. "When you put it that way ... it still sounds like the most enjoyable thing since income tax forms. You're right, though." The smile flickered and died. "I'll be perfectly honest, Alia. You're the first person I've really dated in almost fifteen years, and the first person I've had a serious relationship with in almost twenty."

Alia's mouth was moving, but she couldn't manage to get any sound to come out. What? Why? "I'm not sure I understand. Why wouldn't you date for so long?"

X chuckled. "Oh, I tried. Well, it's not like I was out trying to gather a harem -- despite Zero's advice -- but I was interested in meeting people."

Okay. Now we're standing in a training room, in the middle of a Condition White, talking about his love life before we met. My life is so normal. Nevertheless, "Go on. Why didn't it go well?"

"I didn't have much time to even think about it for the first few months of my life. By the time I actually got the chance, the first Uprising was in full swing, and the next thing I knew, I was a Hunter Lieutenant. I still don't know how I ended up starting with that rank. I mean, there were only ten of us that were rated for field duty. But that's beside the point. By the time I actually had time to sit down and even think about meeting someone, just before the Third Uprising, I was," his voice deepened, and he did his best to sound like a monster truck rally announcer, "Commander Mega Man X, man of action."

He shook his head. "I think that was the problem. Whether I liked it or not, I was a media popstar. That intimidated a lot of very nice people, and I ended up attracting a horde of people who were just interested in dating a celebrity. Almost none of them cared a thing about dating me. Those few that did," his face darkened, "didn't work out. As much as they might have liked me, as much as I liked them: they were afraid of me, I think. Getting close to me ... getting close to me means my enemies are your enemies. No one really wanted that kind of complication, and I can't say I really blame them. After a while, I just sort of ... forgot about it. Does that sound pathetic?"

Alia clenched her jaw so tightly it almost hurt. How could anyone ... ? But he's so ... Damned sycophants! How dare they try to use him like that. As for the others ... they'll never know what they gave up on. She blinked. Which is good for me, I guess. I mean, if he'd been dating when we met ... whoa. "That doesn't make you pathetic at all, X. Emotional injuries are a lot tougher to bounce back from than the physical kind you're so used to. As for the added risk: I don't know about those other women, but I am a Hunter. I may not be a field operative, but I've already embraced the rules of the game. I'm not afraid of sharing your enemies with you," she smiled at him, "because that means I get to share everything else, too. And it is worth it. Even with all the risks and after the promise we should have never had to make each other, it's worth it."

X grinned, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I think so too. Now that we've gotten though all that, there's something else I think I should tell you, as long as we're talking about this kind of stuff." He looked suddenly serious.

Alia blinked. "What?" What now?

"I think it's vitally important you know," he intoned, before losing it and breaking into a maniac grin, "I love you. There's no one I'd rather spend my life with, past, present, or future."

Alia smiled widely, dimples plainly visible, and promptly elbowed him in the gut. She grabbed him by the shoulders, leaned forward, and finally managed to nail him with something, albeit not inactive plasma. When they finally separated, she was pleased to see that X was blushing. If she hadn't been crimson herself, she might have considered gloating. "I love you, too."

They stood that way for a long time, the sharp, experienced emerald eyes of the reluctant champion gazing into soft, brilliant sapphires of the seasoned spotter. The younger reploid wished they could have stayed like that forever, but they were in the middle of a crisis, and she didn't have that luxury. One of the unpleasant things beckons. Finally, she spoke. "I wanted to ask you -- are you feeling better? You seemed frustrated this morning, after the meeting. More than usual. Is everything alright?"

X raised an eyebrow, but he didn't look upset. "Was it that obvious?"

She shook her head. "I think everyone else was a bit too preoccupied with Zero's performance. I know you were angry," I felt the chills go down my spine to prove it, "but I couldn't shake the feeling there was something else bothering you." And sense you're usually so damned hard to read, I can't help but think you wanted me to figure it out.

X nodded. "There is." He sighed. "After this morning, I got a wicked case of dŽjˆ vu."

Alia's eyebrow shot up. "Oh? I'm assuming this wasn't the pleasant kind."

"You've been hanging around me too long. You're getting really good with vicious understatements." He leaned against one of the white walls and seemed to lose a battle with his mouth. It broke into a full frown. "I know you're familiar with the Paris incident."

She nodded, watching her boyfriend's skin slowly turn green. She felt her own stomach knot. "I read about it when I was in school. Not that it said much. Most of the details prior to the detonation are classified. Once I got here, I got clearance to look them up, but I never have."

"Why would you? They aren't pleasant. But the thing that got me this morning: Paris never should have been destroyed. It was one mistake after another on our part, and the situation was just like this one. The only thing that was different was the source: Sigma's scientists came up with the design on their own. We wouldn't have found out about it before the detonation if he hadn't announced it. He dared us to find his bombs. He knew we wouldn't be able to. He'd planted so many decoys and too much bad information ...

"Intelligence narrowed the list down to several possible locations for detonation -- not that we had any idea where in those cities the bombs might be, or even how many there were. So, we went to work. I personally found decoys in Dallas, Toronto, and London. London. I was so close. Eventually, we'd checked everywhere we wanted to check. Nothing. Later, we found out most of the information we'd used to try to track them down was planted months in advance. The second night after his announcement, Sigma apparently decided we'd been shown just how powerless we were without the proper intelligence, and he called us up and pressed the button. Paris went up in flames while we watched."

X's fists were clenched now, but Alia couldn't tell if he was furious or on the verge of tears. Neither possibility was very appealing. "Now it's happening again. Dynamo's gotten away with stealing a weapon capable of killing millions. We have no idea how he did it, where he is, or who his employer is. No one's going to say it in a briefing, Alia, but there's only two ways this can be resolved. Either Dynamo's slipped up and left us some sort of clue we haven't found yet, or ..." He shut his eyes tightly.

She nodded, suddenly pale. "Or." I hadn't even thought about that. Of course, I wasn't there. I wasn't even born yet.

X sighed. "Alia, I'm afraid. As the situation stands, our probability of success is terrifyingly low. Without intelligence, we're paralyzed. Last time, we didn't get lucky." He chuckled darkly. "But don't tell anyone. I pretty sure I'm not allowed to be afraid." Bitterness tinged his voice.

Damn it. He's right. Either Dynamo slips up, or we lose. And he's seen us lose this one before. This must be awful for him. She moved so she was looking him straight in the eye, wrapping her arms around his waist. She soon felt his arms encircle her abdomen. "But you won't give up, will you?"

"Of course not, but that doesn't make this any easier."

"Maybe not, but remember this: I don't give a damn about what people think you're supposed to act like. If you're afraid, that's fine. I fell in love with you, not your image." She paused. "And besides, at least I'm not alone this way. I'm terrified, and I like being able to admit it. As much as I'd love for you to tell me everything's going to turn out fine, I'm glad you didn't. We couldn't have a relationship if you tried to shield me from everything that goes on in your head. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah. It does. I'll always do my best to be honest with you. Promise."

"Cool. Now come on. We've got places to be. If we don't show up on time, they'll pick on us again."

X grinned, in spite of himself. "I swear, I'll get Zero for that. I didn't need a horde of rookies giving me the wink and that smarmy clicky sound for two weeks."

"Ha," Alia giggled, "at least you didn't have to deal with Beth. If she ever retires, she can make a living writing torrid romance novels. Let's get going ... happy pants." She smiled, turned on her heels, and left the room. A fit of giggles could be heard in the distance.

X blinked twice, and then followed after her. Thank God it wasn't Zero.

Harry frowned and looked at his watch. 3:00. How much longer is this going to take? She's been in there almost forty-five minutes. He was done with me in thirty. He looked around the small waiting room. The white floors were spotless; the lights just a little too bright. Definitely just like a hospital. And I do just love hospitals. Shifting in his seat, he looked at Crookshanks, currently curled up at his feet and staring fixedly at the examination room's closed door. "If she doesn't come out in five minutes, I'll let you attack." The cat didn't move, but seemed to relax. Harry found himself wondering if his furred friend actually knew how to count. Probably. He shook his head. Well, I am the bigger, stronger one. I should be able to stop him if he decides to try to eat the fellow. Maybe.

Fortunately for all involved, and the staff physician's vision and reproductive capacities especially, the exam door hissed open abruptly. A disgruntled Hermione walked out, frowning and rubbing her arm. Crookshanks shot from his place by Harry's feet -- once again making The Boy Who Lived feel like yesterday's squeaky toy. "Well," she snarled, "that was pleasant."

Harry's eyebrows furled. "Are you alright, Hermione? You look ... disgruntled. Really, really, disgruntled. You didn't like Doctor Neal? I thought he was perfectly reasonable." Then, quieter, "he totally bought into the I'm-a-streetsweeper business. I think I'll make that my standard cover story."

Good idea, Harry. And you think you aren't clever. "Oh," Hermione hissed, positively fuming, "he's a wonderfully friendly man, and I liked him very much. His blood drawing techniques, on the other hand, were awful. Apparently, I have 'rolling veins.' It took him twenty minutes. Honestly!" She held up her arm. The bruise on the inside of her elbow made Harry wince.

"Hermione? You might want to calm down. You're turning red." He grinned. He hadn't seen her this flustered in years. He knew exactly when, too: the memory was quite vivid. The grin faded some. Thinking about that meant thinking about Ron. Thinking about anything that happened less than six hours ago meant thinking about Ron. Thinking about Ron -- or any of his long dead friends ---- was not conducive to maintaining self-control. "So, what do you want to do now?"

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but her stomach beat her to it. A deep rumbling sound filled the air, and she blushed. "Oh, my. Excuse me."

Harry smirked. "Well, then. I think that settles it. Good thing, too. Now that I actually have time to stop and think about it, I'm starving." He began to move towards the main hall, then stopped, a slightly embarrassed expression on his face. "Hermione?"

Her smirk rivaled his own. "You have no idea where the cafeteria is, do you? Weren't you supposed to ask the doctor?"

He scratched the back of his head, suddenly very interested in her shoes. "I ... um ... got distracted. I'm not very used to being around needles. And no, the needles of the future didn't help my anxiety any. I refuse to relax when glowing, humming gun-like devices are about to pierce my skin. Why don't we just," he looked in the direction they had come, "go ask the receptionist? I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

"That won't be necessary, guys." The two of them jumped about two feet off the ground, and Harry resolved to never be snuck up on, ever again. It wasn't so much an ego thing, but even his heart had its limits. He turned around just before Hermione, who was busy trying to corral Crookshanks before he tried to attack, and beheld the newcomer. He found himself looking into a handsome young face replete with shining eyes and neatly coiffed black hair. He thought the jeans and shirt the boy wore looked clean, if not a little aged. They reminded him off the things Petunia would sometimes send to the charities when she felt she needed to "act philanthropic." This only happened every three years or so, and seemed to require a bizarre alignment of the planets and concurrent lunar eclipse. "I'm Lee," he chirped. "I take it the Sultan of Saline is done with you?"

Harry put out a hand, smiling. Anyone who thought saying "Sultan of Saline" was cool couldn't be all that much of a threat. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter."

"Hermione Granger. Pleasure to meet you." She hugged Crookshanks closer to her chest, trying to calm him.

Lee nodded. "I take it everything went well? Amy sent me to check on you. She said you'd probably be ready for some food. The doc can be very ... thorough. I know this from experience."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "You say that like itÕs a bad thing."

He almost frowned, but his heart obviously wasn't in it. "I have one word for you, kid. Iodine."

Hermione grimaced. "Ouch." Harry threw in a sympathetic nod. Because of Dudley, he was well familiar with such instruments of pain.

"But," Lee blurted, "that's neither here nor there. You two must be starving by now, I'm sure. After we're done eating, I'll show you around. We've got a bit of a maze on our hands, but hey, it's better than nothing."

"We have no complaints, I assure you," Harry said. "Do you work here?"

The older boy shrugged, face neutral. "Sort of. I've been around long enough that I know how things work. I help out where I can."

"Ah." Harry glanced at Hermione. The look on her face told him she was thinking the same thing: time to change the subject. Now.

Luckily, Lee did it for them. He looked at Hermione, and leaned towards Harry. "Nice cat," he whispered.

"Not really," Harry shot back. Hermione was, thankfully, too busy taking in her surroundings to notice them. "He likes you, though."

"You think?"

Harry smirked. "He hasn't tried to gouge your eyes out yet, so yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Lee's eyes widened, and he looked at the furry animal currently purring Hermione's arms. "Ah. So he's one of those cats. Thanks for the warning."

Harry nodded slightly. "Anytime."

Harry took a bite from his second chipped beef sandwich, idly wondering how ravenous he looked to Lee and Hermione. Well, maybe just Lee. Hermione's eating uncharacteristically ... Ron--like. The bushy haired girl's head was currently lost in a sandwich approximately the size of Gryffindor tower.

Lee finally couldn't stand it anymore. Amy had ordered him to try and find out more about the mysterious pair, so he did his best -- a seemingly inconsequential question here and there, plenty of observation -- and these two were really starting to worry him. "Guys, don't take offense, but when was the last time you two got to eat real food?"

Hermione looked at him from over her giant pile of barbequed meat. "Too long," she said, and it was obvious to Lee that he wasn't going to get anything more out of either of them on the subject.

Odd. What have they got to hide?

Harry swept his eyes over the room, desperate to find something -- anything -- to talk about. He knew perfectly well that Lee was likely under orders to get more information out of them, and really, he didn't blame Amy for being concerned, but he needed time to go over a suitable alibi with Hermione. They had almost been completely tripped up one too many times in the last several hours.

His eyes fell on a photo hung on the far wall. Not only was it a perfect distraction, he was honestly thunderstruck. "Hermione, check out the picture on the wall behind you. "

"What?" She turned around, and her eyes widened. "Wow."

There, on the far wall, was a picture of Amy. She was much younger -- she looked barely as old as Hermione -- and she was sitting up in what looked like a hospital bed. But the thing that caught Harry's attention was the man standing beside her: Commander Mega Man X, replete in every piece of his blue armor save his helmet. They were both smiling at the camera. It struck Hermione again just how much he looked like Harry, and she was surprised to find the thought more than a little unsettling.

Lee traced their gaze, wondering just what was so interesting. When he realized what they were looking at, he grinned. "I guess you would have found out eventually. Amy's good friends with the Blue Bomber."

Hermione sighed inwardly. Personally, she thought it was totally foul the way the media gave Commanders X and Zero such names. It was a seriously inappropriate glamorization of violence, as far as she was concerned. Part of her was very curious to find out how they felt about it. But the question she found tumbling out of her mouth was much different. "How did they meet?"

Lee shifted uncomfortably. He knew Amy well enough to know she wouldn't mind them finding out, but didn't feel comfortable giving them every detail. That was her right, not his. He cleared his throat, and went forward with a highly edited version. "When she was about your age, she was badly injured in a Maverick attack. X saved her life and made sure she got to a hospital. Her parents were out of the country at the time, so he checked in on her for a few hours a day for the next week, until they could get back." He shrugged. "By the time they got back from the US, Amy had managed to bond with the big guy."

Harry gulped. "Not the best way to make friends."

Lee smirked. "I see you enjoy understatements."

Hermione raised an eyebrow, seemingly oblivious to the banter. "He kept her company for a week? That's an awfully considerate thing to do. It's not ... not ..." she trailed off, looking for a word that wouldn't sound too offensive.

"Not something a battle-hardened soldier like X would do?" Lee was grinning again. "X is a study in contradiction. He's capable of -- well, you know what he's capable of, I'm sure -- but he's one of the coolest guys I know. Mind you, I don't know him nearly as well as Amy, but anybody who's willing to dress up in a padded suit and costume and play Santa for four-dozen kids has to be pretty easy going."

"He did that?" Harry was intrigued. It went against the Rambo-like fa�ade most of the library files pegged him with. Well, he thought sardonically, it's nice to know the media has maintained its integrity over the last century and half.

"Yeah, and he loved it. They'd probably name the place after him if he'd let them. He does all sorts of favors for Amy. If she had him wrapped any tighter around her finger, they'd be dating." He paled slightly. "And don't you dare tell her I said that. The last person who even suggested it in her presence ended up cleaning all the toilets. For a month."

Harry smirked. "Noted."

"I'm not surprised," Hermione said. The two of them turned to look at her. "What? Everybody knows you should never cross the constantly-nice ones."

Lee smirked. "If you've already got that down, there's not much I can teach you about living here."

"And this marks the end of our tour," Lee proclaimed, bursting through a set of double doors. " I present for your approval Dormitory Quad Four."

Harry thought it looked a lot like the Gryffindor common room, only with white paint instead of centuries old stone. There were plenty of windows (which Harry thought was odd, as he hadn't noticed nearly that many from outside), and the black carpet was relatively clean. The furniture looks like it should be in a doctor's waiting room. "Lee, where is everybody? I know there's no way we have the whole place to ourselves."

"They're around, I'm sure. Some of the younger ones will be taking naps about now. As for the others, I think they're playing dodgeball in the gym. I'd be down there with them, but I pulled my back the other day. Apparently, despite what my ego thinks, I do not have anything approaching reploid strength." He tossed Harry a keycard. "You guys are in four. I need to run a few more errands for Amy. If you need anything, call extension 1111 on your room phone. Otherwise, I'll see you at dinner." He turned on his heel and skipped out of the room.

Harry whistled, the sound echoing through the empty room. "Well," he said finally, "here we are, I guess."

Hermione glanced around, face blank. "Yeah. Here we are." She stroked her cat.

Harry glanced at her, trying to discern some sort of emotion on her face. Anything. He found his inability to do so very unsettling. What just happened? Who turned the lights off in there? "Hermione? Are you all right? You look a bit," blank, he thought dourly, "distracted."

Hermione started, and the corners of her mouth twitched, trying for a smile. When did you get so observant, Harry? She turned to look at him, a quiet voice that sounded a lot like her mother's whispering insults in the back of her mind. You've never been that good at hiding your emotions or lying, dear. You should leave that sort of thing to Harry. "I'm fine. I just drifted off for a second." Crookshanks writhed in her arms, and she let him jump to the ground. "I was thinking -- I guess -- I guess this home now, isn't it?" She frowned, silently cursing her voice for having the audacity to quake when she needed it most.

Harry found his hand moving of its own will, and a few seconds later, he was squeezing her shoulder. "No, it's not home. We're just staying here for a while." I don't know if you'll think that's better or worse, but it's all I can tell you.

Hermione smiled thinly. "Yeah. I guess you're right." She paused, watching Crookshanks curl up in front of one of the windows. "I guess we should go check out our room, then."

As they were walking, Hermione turned to Harry. "I'd say we handled ourselves rather well with Mrs. Dawson, wouldn't you?"

He smirked. "If you mean we did a good job of pulling a plausible story out of the air, then yes, I must agree."

She nodded, then frowned suddenly. "Though, to be perfectly honest, I was a bit upset with part of your performance."

He raised an eyebrow and gave a frown of his own. "Oh? What did I do?"

"Well," Hermione sighed, "it's not really that important ..."

Harry could tell this was something that was bothering her, and that wouldn't do at all. "Hermione, if I did something that bothered you, you should tell me so I don't do it again. I ... don't like bothering you."

She nodded reluctantly. "Alright, then. It's just that, you know, when she pressed upon us the importance of not doing anything ... inappropriate ... your reaction was very, um, stark. I was just wondering if the thought of, you know, canoodling with me is that disturbing." She looked away from him.

Harry nearly walked into the side of a chair. He could feel his face reddening, but couldn't seem to get his tongue to cooperate. He heard what sounded very much like sniffling. "Hermione, I -- that is to say -- I never meant to -- you're very pretty and all -- no one would be disturbed at the idea -- I just wouldn't presume to overstep the boundaries of our relationship, or imply that I wanted to do so --" He suddenly stopped massacring the English language, his ears finally getting some more useful information to his brain. What he had first thought was crying sounded more and more like giggling. Mad giggling. She turned to look at him, blinked once, and burst into hysterical laughter.

Harry realized he'd been had. At least no one saw it. He looked at Crookshanks, who swished his tail, seeming oddly pleased. Oh, bloody hell.