Even though the wind had stopped whistling and the gray clouds hung like heavy sentinels over the silence outside, the little Potter house shone brightly with activity. James, Albus, and little Lily had spent the better part of the afternoon creating a veritable fortress of blankets and pillows in the living room, all in preparation for their father's return that night.

"Now, remember to stay quiet while you wait, alright?" said Ginny as she helped Lily set up a makeshift bed on top of the blankets covering the floor. "I'll need to sleep, and I don't think your father will appreciate being welcomed home by a bunch of sudden loud noises."

"We're not loud," said James, hastily shoving a Filibuster Firework into his pocket. Ginny shot him a dry look.

"Hand it over," she said. James reluctantly deposited the firework into her outstretched hand. "You know these aren't allowed in the house, James."

"I just wanted to give Dad a grand entrance! Is that too much to ask?" He widened his eyes. "After all that he's done for us?"

His earnest disposition would have fooled anyone else, but after ten years of dealing with his sugar-coated manipulation, Ginny wasn't fazed.

"Yes, it is too much to ask. I don't want your father to come home from a very dangerous raid only to die immediately of a heart attack. Remember last Christmas?"

James sighed. "Uncle Percy was fine, Mum, and he only fainted for ten seconds. If he can survive that, Dad can. 'Cause he's Dad and he can survive anything."

Ginny shook her head fondly. "Well, if not for your dad's sake, then do it for mine. I'd prefer to get some sleep after spending all day wrangling you lot." She ruffled James' hair and kissed his head. He pulled away and grimaced, grumbling something about being almost eleven years old and way too old to be treated like a baby.

Ginny turned towards Albus and Lily, who had just finished setting up the chess set. "Are you two ready?"

"Yes!" said Albus, beaming. "We've got beds, snacks, Exploding Snap and chess, all of Lily's books with the moving pictures, and Octavius!"

Octavius was the name of a little wooden owl given to Lily by her Uncle George. The owls had been a Wheezes product specifically designed to help students with exam revision (hence the choice of animal). If their user began to fall asleep, the owls flapped their wings, made incessant hooting noises, and, in especially tricky cases, pecked at the shoulders and head of the user until they woke up. Lily had seen the rows of little owls while visiting the shop one day and got so excited by their cuteness that George gave her one on the spot. As much as Albus and James bemoaned the owl's existence (Lily had used Octavius a few too many times to exact revenge on her brothers), they had to admit that he would come in handy for this particular endeavor. Harry didn't usually arrive home from missions until the middle of the night, long after the kids had fallen asleep. Albus wanted to make sure that this time, they were all awake to greet him.

Normally, Ginny would have told the kids to let their father rest and greet him in the morning. After overnight missions, Harry was usually so exhausted that he could do little more than press a kiss to each little forehead before collapsing into bed next to Ginny, only to be woken at an ungodly hour by a stampede of little feet jumping on top of him in greeting. Not that he minded that part, of course. But Harry had been away for nineteen entire days, his longest mission since James was a baby, and Ginny knew her husband would probably be more excited to see the kids first this time than simply fall into bed in exhaustion. It had been too long for all of them, Harry included.

xxx

The sun had almost completely set by the time Ginny finally went to bed, leaving after a particularly dramatic retelling of The Fountain of Fair Fortune from James that had Albus and Lily entranced. It had started to rain outside, but the kids were content to stay awake by themselves, huddled under the blankets with The Tales of Beedle the Bard and chocolate raided from Harry's secret kitchen stash.

Lily fell asleep approximately two hours into the stakeout. Octavius tried to wake her up, but James decided that that sort of punishment for sleeping shouldn't be inflicted on any of them, much less a seven-year old, and deactivated the magic owl. Albus, resolutely determined to stay awake until midnight, spent the next few hours pinching himself, eating chocolate, setting off his Exploding Snap cards, and playing chess with James, until the increasingly irritable eldest brother decided that being the first to greet their father wasn't worth his sanity and promptly fell asleep at 11:00.

Albus watched the hands of the clock slowly creep toward midnight with clicks that intermingled perfectly with his siblings' deep breathing. Despite his careful precautions, he found himself struggling more and more to keep his eyes open. But Dad will wake us up anyway, he thought. We're completely blocking the path from the fireplace. Maybe he'll step on James and that'll serve him right for ignoring my plan. Sighing contentedly at the thought of seeing his father soon, Albus let his eyes close one more time.

xxx

About two hours later, Ginny felt something shaking her shoulder. She slowly allowed her eyes to open and turned around to see her middle child watching her, his green eyes wide with fright.

"Al, what's wrong?" she said, immediately sitting up and reaching to pull him into her arms.

"I-I fell asleep," he stuttered, looking down at his hands as if that were something shameful. "And I woke up and the clock said 1:45. But Dad's not here! I thought he might be hiding, so I checked all the rooms and closets but I couldn't find him anywhere, and he's not in here either!" As he spoke, Ginny rocked him back and forth, smoothing the slightly sweaty hair off of his forehead in gentle, calming strokes.

"He's just running a little late, Albie, that's all," she said. "He'll probably be here in the morning." Albus snuggled closer as Ginny placed a kiss on top of his head.

But as she comforted her son, Ginny felt a knot of uneasiness tugging at the pit of her stomach. It wasn't like Harry to come home late from missions, especially not one this long.

Everything's going to be fine, she thought. He probably had extra paperwork to fill out. Yeah, that's it. Paperwork. Just paperwork.

Albus was just about to fall back asleep when they heard a sharp tap at the window. A large tawny owl gazed at them with fierce yellow eyes as its beak continued to unrelentingly rap on the glass. Gently resting Albus's head on the pillow and tucking the blankets around him, Ginny got up to retrieve the letter tied to the owl's leg. It nipped at her fingers until she opened the letter, drawing blood that blossomed across the crisp parchment and illuminated a word that didn't normally appear on Ministry letters sent to Ginny: Urgent.

The knot in her stomach tightened as she shakily unfurled the parchment. The message was short, but the words were enough to make Ginny's heart drop. She stood completely still, watching the window as the owl flew off into the darkness, a million thoughts and memories and questions racing through her mind, as though they had been waiting just beneath the surface of her consciousness for this one letter to bring them all flooding back.

"Mummy?" whispered Albus. "Mummy, what does it say?"

Ginny's mind flew back to the bedroom, and she turned around to her son's anxious face. She managed to put on a smile as she bent to kiss his forehead, making sure that the letter was out of his sight.

"Nothing you need to worry about, love," she said. "But you need to get to sleep. Do you want to go back downstairs with Jamie and Lily?"

"No," he murmured. "I want to stay here with you."

xxx

Ginny didn't sleep for the rest of the night. Her mind oscillated between a million different thoughts and memories and worst-case-scenarios, each one more terrifying than the last. She considered going to the Ministry right then and there, but every time she moved, Albus grabbed her in his sleep, as if he could sense that she might leave him, too. All she could think of were those three simple words in that too-neat handwriting across too-crisp, ordinary parchment that had somehow changed her entire future:

We regret to inform you that Head Auror Harry Potter has recently been classified as Missing in Action.