A/N: Here we are! Another chapter! I'm rather rushed to get this up right now, sorry about that, but I didn't want to wait any longer. Thank you all for waiting patiently. I'm learning and experimenting with this whole mystery thing as we go, so we'll see how it turns out. Hope you enjoy it!

6:27:35

"Wake up, you bloody moron!"

Someone was slapping his face. James batted their hand away irritably. "Five more minutes," he mumbled. Somewhere over his head – or what was left of his head because he was fairly sure from the blinding pain that his skull was now in several pieces – he thought he heard a sob. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged upright in a none-to-gentle grip.

"Ouuuch," James complained. He blinked foggily, waiting for the blur of shapes and colors to come into focus. "What the hell did you do to me, Bennit?" A lazy, half-conscious smile floated across his face. "It better have been world-rocking material for these side-effects."

She smacked him again. "The fucking place just blew up!"

Things were starting to rush back to him, his senses coming back into focus.

"Wholly shit!" James yelped, staring wide-eyed around the demolished room. Piles of kindling that had once been tables littered the room; gas lamps that used to swing from rusted chains in the ceiling were now cracked and half-melted on the floor; the windows were all smashed, and bits of the counter had been blown clear across the room.

"I've been told I'm earth-shattering, but was it really that good?" It was like the blow to the head had disconnected his brain from his mouth. What the fuck was his problem? The place had exploded. It just didn't seem real.

"Shut the fuck up before I knock you out again!" Bennit snapped. But it wasn't her usual dragon-snarl. Her voice was high and squeaky and she looked like she might be sick.

"What the effing hell happened?" James groaned, putting a hand to his head. Something hot and sticky was trickling down his chin.

"I don't know," Bennit said shrilly – and not very helpfully, either, James noted.

"We were talking," James mumbled, reeling the memories in like fishing line and hoping an explanation was snagged at the other end. "Something went boom… the sky started falling – you should be smashed like a bug!" he said suddenly, looking up at Bennit as the memory of glinting bronze flashed behind his eyes. "You would be, too," he started to smirk, "if it weren't for me. I saved your life."

"You acted like an idiotic Gryffindor chauvinist," she corrected bitingly.

"Well, obviously it was idiotic, as it was your life I was saving," James rolled his eyes. "I nearly got myself killed, doing it, too. Fuck, this hurts. Dunno what I was thinking. If I hadn't tackled you under the counter, you'd be…." He trailed off as both of their eyes found the place Bennit had been standing, arguing with him. A smoldering candelabra sat in a crater in the floorboards. No wonder she was so shaken up.

"I have to find my aunt," Bennit announced, standing abruptly.

"Fred," James said suddenly, another cog clicking into place. He snapped his head around, scanning the room frantically. He shot up too fast, and the world tilted dangerously. Bennit tried to shove him back to the floor with a barked command of "Stay!" but James impatiently brushed her aside. "Fred? Mate, where are you?"

"He was by the door," she said, taking a few steps in that direction before stopping short.

"Freddy!" James shouted, staggering toward the piles of debris, of heavy stones and thick beams and smashed tables and chairs that had all been blasted across the room into a near-barricade. "He's got to be – help me!" he shot over his shoulder, stooping and trying to heave a chunk of wall off the side of the heap. His head throbbed and nausea rolled in his stomach.

"James," Bennit said, stepping closer.

James's vision was blurring. His throat was closing tight. It was my stupid idea to come here. "Answer me, mate, come on," he gasped, succeeding in dislodging a table leg. "I can't find you if you don't Polo my Marco."

"James," Bennit said again, standing beside him now, and he realized it was the second time she'd used his first name. Her dark green eyes were huge, and she wouldn't look at the heap of immovable debris. He couldn't breathe. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

And then a tabletop shifted two feet to their right. Spluttering coughing came, muffled, from underneath it. A second later, the tabletop was shoved forward and someone rolled out of the gap behind it.

"Freddy-boy!" James whooped, almost hysterical as he threw himself at his cousin.

"You called?" Fred gasped as James pounded on his shoulder.

"You little twit! Don't do that to me!"

And if Fred noticed the wetness on his cheeks, he never said a word.

6:28:03

As soon as the little plastic potions cup left his lips, the Healer ushered George out of the way, already moving on to the next smoke-inhalation victim. The queue stretched out in a straggling line past several shops, many people being supported by one or two comrades.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Angelina asked worriedly, stretching out a hand to take his elbow as soon as he was away from the Healer.

"Yes, Ange, I'm fine," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. It didn't stop her from looking him over critically for the tenth time.

"I just don't understand how you made it out of there without a scratch," Bill grumbled. He was spreading a thick, yellowish paste on burns he'd collected on his shoulder and forearm just from coming in after George.

"Lucky, I suppose," George muttered, taking Roxanne, who was looking at him with wide, anxious eyes, into his arms.

Bill shook his head. Then he glanced up the street in the direction of Quality Quidditch. "Fleur and the kids… I should go find them, make sure they're alright."

George nodded. "I should go find Ron and tell him we're alright. And – and look for Fred…." He cleared his throat. "Ange, you ought to take the girls and try to get out of here. Go to Mum and Dad's, I'm sure they're going mad right about now."

Angelina shook her head stubbornly. "We're not going anywhere without you and Fred."

"Ange." George cut her a look, nodding toward Roxanne and Lucy with their singed, smoky robes and pale faces. A silent battle passed between them, and, in an anomaly, Angelina backed down first.

"Alright, I'll take the girls to your mum. But if you aren't there with our son in half an hour, I'll be back here, MLE officials be damned," she added threateningly.

George and Bill enfolded each of them into tight embraces before Angelina, with one final look over her shoulder, joined the swarms of people staggering toward the Leaky Cauldron, a hand on each of the girls' backs.

6:30:25

The destruction was like a whirlpool sucking Neville in. He stood, jostled by the crowd pressing against the barricade at the mouth of Knockturn Alley, staring at the smoky, blackened, seemingly-endless tunnel, people being pulled out of buildings, laid out on stretchers, a few covered in black sheets. He meant to be looking for his wife and daughter, but the magnitude of the destruction staggered him.

"Not pretty, is it?" a voice said right beside him, and only then did Neville realize that George had found him again, this time with Bill at his side.

"What are you doing back down here?" George asked, turning his back on the Alley, hands in his pockets. His robes were burned through in several places and so covered in soot, it was impossible to tell that they'd once been magenta.

Shaken out of his reverie, the urgency seeped back into Neville's muscles and he turned in a circle, back to scanning the crowd. "Hannah – Miranda – they weren't at the pub. Have you –?"

He caught his breath, looking hopefully, desperately at them, but they both shook their heads solemnly.

"We're looking for Ron," Bill started to say, squinting past him to the other half of Diagon Alley, trying to make out the Prophet building. But a loud, chest-rending scream cut off the rest of his thought.

The three of them whipped around instinctively, Bill drawing his wand. For a moment they searched the milling crowd, following the sound of those frantic, unintelligible shrieks, and then they caught sight of the pair grappling at the edge of the barricade and began to run.

A teenage boy was on top of a shrieking, viciously struggling girl, pinning her to the cobblestones. He had a hand underneath her around her middle, binding her arms to her sides, and a knee pressed into her back. Three feet away, Bill recognized the platinum hair, shining spectrally in the haze, and by the yell at his shoulder, guessed that George had seen the girl's wild mane of red curls.

Together, Bill and Neville wrenched Scorpius Malfoy away from Rose, yanking him roughly to his feet as George lifted Rose by the elbows, an arm going protectively around her waist.

"What the hell were you doing?" George snarled toward Scorpius, half-turning as if to shield Rose from his gaze. But Bill noticed something that stilled his desire to slam the Malfoy kid against the brick wall beside them and curse him into a jelly: Scorpius seemed completely unfazed by their assault, like he hadn't even noticed it. His pale, shell-shocked gaze was not fixed on Rose, but over the barricades at a particular charred, half-collapsed storefront. George was trying to calm Rose down, but she twisted and writhed in his grip, screaming incoherently.

"You can't, you can't, Rose!" Scorpius shouted, and it was half a sob.

Things started snapping together in Bill's head, and a taste like copper filled his mouth as he let Scorpius go, striding forward to take Rose's shoulders in a hard grip, spinning her around so that she had to look at him.

"Where's Al?" he demanded, shaking her a little to get a response. He ignored George's protests, Neville's bewildered questions as he put a simultaneously restrictive and protective arm across Scorpius's chest. Bill focused hard on his niece, praying for a different answer. "Where is Albus? The truth this time, Rose!"

Her eyes were wild and tears clung like glass beads to her lashes, threatening to fall and shatter. Silently, she turned her head, and Bill followed her gaze in time to see two blue-robed ERT wizards emerging from the half-collapsed building, one carrying a prone figure.

Ice spread out from Bill's stomach. He heard George's shocked cry, Neville release his breath as if he'd been kicked in the gut. Teddy's turquoise hair made him instantly recognizable, and if Bill hadn't seen the look on his face as he laid the kid out on a stretcher, he wouldn't have believed it was his nephew.

Teddy knelt beside the stretcher as the other EMT wizard bent over it, wand working furiously. Their lips were moving, but Bill couldn't make out what they were saying. Smoke and dust and people rushed back and forth in the fifty yards between them. Teddy's face was crumpling. There was a flash of bright light and the kid on the stretcher jerked, his head lolling back.

Rose choked out a shrieking sob, her knees buckling. His face was painted scarlet with blood, dark angry burns blossoming up his cheeks, and it was Al. They could see now that it was Al.

There was another flash of light, and Al jerked again. Teddy had stood, looking half-dazed, and took a blind swing at the other man's jaw. With a swift wave of his wand, the other man knocked him back a few feet, and Teddy staggered and fell. The healer fastened Al to the stretcher with straps, then looked down at Teddy and touched his shoulder before hurrying down Knockturn Alley and out of sight with the stretcher gliding beside him.

6:33:15

James, Fred, and Madeline Bennit huddled close together as they made their way up the alley, shunted by ministry officials and healers and dodging stretchers that came zooming around the bends at top speed. James tried not to look at any of the people. They had passed a roped off area where Bennit said a poisons vender had once set up shop. Now it held stretchers covered in ominous black sheets and a grim-faced witch standing guard. It had reminded James of a twisted mockery of a shepherdess and her flock and he had turned away with the urge to be sick.

Fred was staring, slack-jawed, at the ruins of the street they'd passed through less than an hour earlier. Bennit kept pointing to things and telling them what they were, who owned them, who frequented them. James wished they'd both shut up and keep their heads down like he was doing. After this next bend, they'd be able to see Diagon Alley, to see exactly how far the damage had spread, to find Ron and George and his mum and everyone else who was probably freaking out because the two of them were MIA. They'd get out of here and in half an hour, maybe less, they'd all be huddled around a wireless at Gran's, listening to the news reports and drinking whatever hot beverages Gran kept thrusting into their hands. If he just kept his head down, that's where he already was.

"Oi, out of the way!" someone bellowed.

James looked up. A big EMT wizard was charging down the street directly toward them, pulling a stretcher at his side. Fred pulled James sideways, out of the way, and the two of them stumbled a step or two. James managed to stop them from falling on their arses by grabbing a lamp post and found himself staring into the narrow gap in the buildings he and Fred had hid in earlier. He felt as though he'd stepped off a cliff. Beside him, Fred scrambled backward, cursing in an unusually high-pitched voice.

A bright violet cloak was spread out like a picnic blanket, singed and sooty. A dark stain was spreading across it, seeping out from underneath. James caught sight of a tangled mane of hair, fingernails painted bright red barely poking out from its edge before he spun around. The world seemed to keep spinning even when he stopped. Fred was bent over with his hands on his knees. Bennit, however, had flagged down a couple EMT wizards and was calmly pointing toward the gap.

One of the men slipped into the gap, the other herded James and Fred toward Bennit, but James craned his neck around to watch, struck with some horrified inability to look away. A healer had conjured a black sheet, and the soft flutter it made as it drifted down over the girl drowned out all other noise.

"What did you say your name was again?" the EMT was asking Bennit.

"Madeline Bennit," she said cautiously, eyes suddenly suspicious, wary.

"Any relation to Otis Bennit?"

"He's my uncle. Why?"

He didn't say anything but, almost reflexively, glanced across the street. There was a huddle of healers and stretchers there, and on one, James thought he saw a man with a scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard. A little girl with pigtails was on the one beside him.

Madeline's scream brought him back to himself. She took off full tilt across the shattered cobblestones. A blue-robed official caught her five feet from the knot of stretchers, and she twisted and yowled in his grip like a deranged cat.

"Bennit…" James panted, scrabbling to find words, breath, something to offer her as he and Fred caught up.

"Get the FUCK out of here!" she screamed, whirling on them with a mad expression. "Just… go." Her voice tapered off and cracked at the end.

James watched the healers start to move the stretchers down the street like a little fleet of ships, Madeline trailing them, pulled along in their wake. Her face was white and blank, her movements almost like a marionette's. Fred tugged at his elbow. Wordlessly, they turned and resumed wending their way up the street.

"Do… do you think they're going to be okay?" James asked hoarsely. But that wasn't what he was really asking. He was asking if Fred thought they were alive.

"I hope so," Fred murmured, looking over his shoulder at the place Bennit had vanished.

6:33:50

She had not quite slipped into unconsciousness when the light appeared, a halo of gold swimming above her head. Don't go into the light, Victoire thought and wanted to giggle if she were less scared for her life. She tried to roll away from the light, but there was a crunch of gravel and it doubled in size. Dust fell on her face. A shadow moved across her heavenly beacon and a gruff voice called for someone to come and help him. And that was when the air started to reach her.

Victoire gasped, choking on the cool, fresh oxygen washing over her.

"Blimey! Rick, Rick! There's someone under 'ere!"

More shadows as Victoire coughed and gasped. She tried to sit up, but the bent metal got in her way. Then there was wandlight in her eyes, a hand at the side of her neck.

"Please stay still, Miss, until we can assess your injuries," someone instructed.

Victoire tried to tell them she was fine, thank you, except for the headache, but it came out as more of a garbled sound than actual words.

"Probable concussion, but her vitals are good, nothing internal." The wandlight vanished and Victoire blinked in the sudden dimness. Then strong arms were pulling her up, up, and out into the light, into the rubble.

She took a deep breath, her head starting to clear. She was alright. She was being led through piles of brick and cobblestone and other debris, sat down on a curb next to Lisa the receptionist. It wasn't until she looked up and saw the gap like a missing tooth between the burned-out buildings that it hit her: the Prophet office had collapsed, three stories falling in. Falling on top of the Warehouse where she was supposed to be. Where Chris and the rest still were.

6:35:23

"Where the ruddy hell have you been?" Sofia demanded, the moment Harry came barreling around the corner of the cubicles. Any other day hearing her utter a sentence like that would have stopped him in his tracks, but nothing could shock him right now. "They've been looking for you for ten minutes!"

"I know, I know," Harry said impatiently. "What's happened?" He paused with a hand on the briefing room door, turning to Sofia to tell him what he needed to know rather than a pack of agitated higher officers.

"There's a problem with evacuation," she said.

"I thought they started getting people out ages ago!" Harry erupted. "The fires –"

"They did," Sofia talked calmly over him. "They took names and information as people were going through the floo to contact them later – it's what they're still doing. But it's taking too long. There've been four requests to clear the area at high speed. We need a place to move the evacuates so we can get their information after they're out of there."

"How many people are still down there?" Harry asked, mind already working furiously.

"Hundreds, sir," Sofia said solemnly.

"Okay." Harry nodded, took a breath. "Okay, tell them I'm working on a place. We can't let them go without names unless we absolutely have to; witnesses are our best chance for leads right now. One of those hundreds must have seen something."

Almost before Sofia could nod, he had turned and darted off in the opposite direction, the idea unfolding as he went.

6:35:30

Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out. The world was moving around him, but Teddy blocked it all out, squeezing his eyes shut and jamming his palms against his ears. Breathe in. It always looks worse than it is. Breathe out. It's always worse than you say it is. Breathe in. Over a hundred people must have been in buildings just like this, but only five deaths have been reported. Breathe out. So far. Was Travis patrolling the front stretch or the back stretch? He didn't know. Did Vic say she was on the lamp post story in Liverpool today or yesterday? He didn't know. Did Ginny have a story due today or not? He didn't know.

"… have to get up, now. It's going to be alright. We'll go to St. Mungo's…." Someone was murmuring to him, low and soothing. He gasped in a shuddering breath, choking on it. This was panic, the small part of his brain that was still rational told him. This was how panic worked. You had to keep it out because once it got in, in spread like wildfire, feeding on everything, paralyzing you.

Firm hands were on his shoulders, thumbs rubbing soothing circles against his skin. The voice kept on going, saying the same thing he thought, but he wasn't listening. He was pulling Al into his arms again, feeling his head smack into his chest this time, watching his arm swing at a bad angle. Listen to Davis, listen to Davis, use a stretcher, brace his spinal cord, but it was too late. Breathe in, breathe out, don't think.

Footsteps echoed against the buildings, coming closer, pounding the cobblestones he knelt on. Other voices, right beside his head.

"Is he okay?"

"What's the matter with him?"

Someone shouted from farther off.

"Dad!" And footsteps sprinting away.

The hands left his shoulders, the person in front of him shifting. "James –"

Teddy's head jerked up, his eyes flying open. Bill was the one crouching in front of him, and next to him knelt James.

"What happened?" James asked apprehensively, eyeing the scarlet soaking Teddy's robes, still on his hands.

"James, something's happened –"

"Where have you been?" Teddy demanded, and Bill broke off, looking between the two of them.

James leaned back, eyes going wide with surprise. Teddy was breathing hard. There was blood around James's mouth, dripping down his chin. He was covered in dust. His footsteps had come from down the alley. We're not allowed down Knockturn Alley. There was blood dripping down his chin.

"Just – just –" James gestured over his shoulder toward the ruined buildings.

"What's the matter with you?" Teddy nearly shouted, voice cracking. James backed up a step, looking a little scared, but all Teddy saw was the scarlet on his lips, scarlet pooling on cracked stone, scarlet staining his own robes. The rush of relief to see James moving and talking right in front of him came out angry because it might have been so much worse. Both of them, both of them down here.

"What, is your sister here, too? Where is she?"

"I don't – I don't know," James faltered as Teddy started to reach for him, to hug him or shake him, he didn't know. He couldn't take another one, couldn't take it.

But Bill stepped swiftly between them, and Teddy turned away, taking a deep breath.

"James," he heard Bill begin gravely, and made himself listen calmly, coolly, as the story spooled out.

6:37:12

"The basement, has it been evacuated? Where are the people from the basement of The Prophet office?" Victoire asked every ERT member she saw, but they barely paused to shake their heads at her, if that. One or two tried to shunt her back to the curbside where the small crowd of rescued victims was being collected, but she ducked around them and kept searching.

"What does he look like, your friend?" Lily asked, craning her neck. She and Hugo each clung to one of Victoire's hands to keep from being separated in the crowd. Ron had been pulled away to deal with something related to detainment of witnesses.

"He's blond and rather shaggy," Victoire told Lily, a watery laugh catching in her throat.

"I'm sure we'll find him," Lily said and squeezed Victoire's fingers reassuringly.

"Yeah," Victoire agreed for her cousins' benefit. She wrapped her arm around Lily's shoulders and kissed the side of her bright red head. "I'm sure we will."

Lily and Hugo impressed her. They were fourteen, had no idea where their families were, and had been out in the street when the explosion went off, but they were not huddled under shock blankets whimpering and sobbing. They were not mutely allowing themselves to be pulled and pushed around like pieces of luggage. They didn't even seem to be on the edge of hysteria like Victoire felt she might be. Lily was trying to comfort her, and Hugo, despite staring wide-eyed at everything and gripping her fingers so hard they were going numb, was holing it together better than half the adults huddled along the curb.

Victoire found an edge to the crowd and skirted along it, getting as close to the collapsed building as she could. She could see ERTs digging through the rubble now, tunneling under slabs of cement and brick. Victoire scanned for people being pulled out, for familiar faces in the pressing crowd, but there didn't seem to be any.

"Hue?" Lily asked softly, reaching around Victoire to touch Hugo's shoulder.

Victoire looked down. Hugo had turned around and was staring at the burned-out shell of the little shop that had been tucked beside the Prophet office. He looked a little gray as he said, "Do you think she got out? Madam Casey?"

"Of course." Lily smiled, but Victoire could see through it. "She was psychic, after all. She was probably far away before any of this happened." But her voice was strangled at the end.

Victoire gently turned them both away from the burnt-out shop. Hugo sniffed, and she pulled him against her side.

6:38:33

Ron pushed a hand through his hair, leaving it streaked with soot. "What's Harry say about it?" he asked tensely.

"Mr. Potter signed the order to evacuate to a secure facility, as far as I've heard, but nothing else. We haven't gotten a location from the office, haven't gotten anything, actually, in at least fifteen minutes."

"Can we put something up quickly? A huge tent in a field or something? Just to hold them all until we can open an investigation. We don't have time to get names and contacts at the floos, it's too slow."

"Maybe… we could probably bypass the red tape under the circumstances, but even if we put up a tent and found a staff to do it, it would take at least an hour just to get the floo connection."

Ron turned in a slow circle examining the street, slowing his breath so his heart didn't pound in his ears. "What's the likelihood of a third explosion?"

The Auror he was talking to bit her lip, looking down at her parchment. "Honestly? We have no idea. Without knowing if the intent was primarily vandalism, directed at a specific target, or with the goal of massacre in general, we can't say anything is likely or unlikely. What I do know is that we still have over two hundred civilians bottlenecking at the two floo stations available to us, not to mention the injured still waiting for transports to St. Mungo's and the Emergency Response Units crawling all over the place. This is a perfect trap, and if the goal is massacre, it would be extremely logical to have planted multiple explosives at staggered times and moving with the flow of people."

Ron pressed his lips together. "You're good, Coil. And I'm unbelievably relieved that you turned out an Auror and not a terrorist."

"It's nothing that isn't obvious," Coil said modestly. "Honestly, I'm surprised the Alleys haven't been targeted before. Loads of people swarming a tight space packed with volatile magic and only a few, single-file exits? It's a mass-murderer's dream."

"Well, lucky for us most of our mass murderers have been picky about who they take out," Ron muttered. "So, the point is, we need to start evacuating now. It would be ideal to move everyone to a secure location so we can get as many names as possible, but if we can't, we can't. If there's a chance this place could blow at any minute, we need to clear it as fast as possible. There's no guarantee the guilty party was in the alley when it blew, anyway. In fact, they're probably long gone by now anyway."

"Are you giving an official order?" Coil asked, eyes sharp.

Ron sucked in a deep breath. He'd tried contacting Harry, but the office would be in chaos right now. By the time the message reached him and the decision got back to them, it could be too late. He was the highest ranking officer on the scene; the judgment was his. "Yes. It's an official order. We'll have to work with what we've already collected. Start the high-speed evacuation."

6:39:45

Someone had hit fast forward. Everything seemed to be moving at double speed as uniformed Ministry officials flooded up and down the street, ushering groups of people newly pulled from buildings toward the Leaky Cauldron end of the alley at almost a run.

"All medical assistance will be provided at St. Mungo's!" someone was shouting again and again. "Those in need of first aid should report to the atrium, all seriously injured victims are to be sent immediately to a departing marque. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to administer healing procedures on sight."

"What's going on?" Lily asked, buffeted back a step by a charging group of Magical Catastrophe workers.

"Something must have happened," Victoire had barely finished saying when Ron burst out of the crowd.

"Come on, we need to move," he told them urgently, taking Hugo by the wrist and starting to pull him along with the bustling crowd.

"What's going on?" Lily repeated.

"We're evacuating," Ron explained.

"But –" Victoire began, looking over her shoulder at the collapsed Prophet office.

"We haven't got time," Ron told her urgently, putting a hand on her back to hurry her along. "Your dad sent me a patronus saying they're just up there at the barrier. We'll take the back way out instead of waiting in line at the floos, they'll let us through if I'm with you."

Hugo had thought most people had already deserted this half of the alley, clamoring to get out at the pub. But they were piling out of buildings all the way down the twisting street, rising from their hiding places like bees being flooded out. It was almost like the stampede he and Lily had been swept up in when the explosion had first gone off. But this time he had his father to keep him standing.

"Calmly, calmly!" ERT leaders were shouting, trying to wrangle the exodus into a semblance of control, but there was too much panic.

Someone had fallen. Hugo could see the crowd swerving around a huddled figure, arms over its head. It reminded him of a turtle cowering in the middle of the motorway, drawn into its shell as if that could prevent a tire from smushing it flat. As they stumbled past, all clinging to one another to stay together, His father broke ranks and stooped to scoop up the tiny, chelonian figure. It screeched and thrashed as he lifted it from the swell of people, and Hugo realized it was a little girl fighting ferociously against her rescuer, her tangled hair over her face making her look feral.

"It's alright, it's okay, you're safe now. It's me, it's Ron. You remember me, don't you?" Ron was shouting in her ear to be heard over the clamor. It took all his strength not to drop her as she writhed, sobbing. He pushed her hair out of her face and Hugo recognized her: Neville's youngest daughter, Miranda. What was she doing all the way down here by herself?

Miranda finally seemed to realize who had plucked her from the stampede or else that it was useless to resist. She stopped thrashing and hung limply in Ron's arms, still sobbing hard enough to break a rib. The noise she was making didn't sound human, and Hugo wondered with a cold feeling how long she had been out here alone.

6:40:03

The roll of parchment was as thick as Harry's arm and as wide as the table and rattled the lamps overhead when he dropped it on top of the mess of documents plastering the scuffed mahogany. The room had been cleared out save for Freely, Sofia, and Coil, whom Harry had called back to the office after her last report. An enormous map of the alleys unrolled itself down the table, numbers flashing around the edges and symbols crowding every building.

"Did the message about sending people to the Ministry atrium go through?" Harry was asking Sofia over his shoulder.

"We've already started emergency evacuation," Coil told him again, and Harry tried not to be angry at the reminder. Ron, Coil, and Freely were the best of the best and he often trusted their judgment more than his own. If Ron and Coil had made the call, they must have had good reason, but all the same, he couldn't think about the giant slash they'd rent through their already-insubstantial stock of evidence.

"I know that, but if the message goes through quickly, we can still get whoever's left on record," Harry explained. "The atrium's shut down and the floos are ready."

"It's been sent out," Sofia assured him and he shot her a look of gratitude before turning back to the map.

"We need to ascertain if there are any more explosives in the area," Freely said, diving straight into it. "We don't know if we're looking for actual bombs, cursed items, or just hanging magic, curses cast in a room or an alley, invisible to the naked eye." He frowned at the map of dozens of little shops crammed all together. "And the clock is ticking."

6:40:16

"I've told Ron to meet us here," Bill said as he rejoined the group. There were eight of them standing in a deserted section of ripped-up cobblestone, people rushing around their island, but it seemed like much less beneath the somber quiet that had settled over them. Rose had swallowed her sobs and now stood, tear-streaked, under George's arm. Beside her, Scorpius stared, blank-eyed, at the crumbling apothecary across from them. One hand was balled in a fist in his pocket, and Bill guessed it was around the handle of his wand. He wondered how much they'd scared him, pulling him roughly away from Rose and hurling accusations like they had. He'd always been edgy around them.

"I should be looking for Hannah and Miranda…" Neville murmured quietly, but the echoey look in his eyes as he surveyed the street said he had no idea where to start, was afraid to keep looking.

With a guilty pang, Bill thought of his own wife and children. Why wasn't he frantically searching for them? Well, he had been until he'd seen his little brother charging into a burning building, until he'd heard his niece screaming bloody murder, until he's found his soon-to-be-son-in-law losing it in the middle of the street. When Ron showed up and told them what the hell was going on, he would start again.

"They're missing?" Teddy was asking in a hollow voice.

Neville nodded jerkily. "Hannah was delivering something to that apothecary," he said, staring across the street like Scorpius.

"Teddy?" Bill asked, wheeling as Teddy walked past him without a word. But he only went a few steps, touching a blue-robed witch on the shoulder. They exchanged a few low words, then Teddy turned and beckoned Neville over. Bill couldn't hear what they said, but Neville's lips were white as he followed the woman away. Teddy returned to them without a word of explanation.

6:41:36

"We haven't got time to canvas the entire area," Harry said, his frustration contained in the hard rush of the words, eyes flying over the long, winding alleys.

"What's the most strategic location for a third explosive?" Coil asked.

"Depends on motive," Freely grunted.

"For now, we have to assume the motive is massacre," Harry said, planting his hands on either side of the table. Every second they wasted going back and forth, turning one corner to find five more paths was another grain through the hourglass. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "There's an explosion in Knockturn Alley. What happens next?"

"People stampede for the exit," Freely provided. "The one exit; the Leaky Cauldron. Hundreds of people bottlenecked there with no way to get out."

"Yes, but not all of them," Harry murmured. "There are two kinds of people: the ones who run from destruction and the ones who run toward it."

"People – our people – rush in to help the wounded," Coil breathed. "And people gather round to gawp. The curious, the bold, the altruistic, people looking for their friends and family in the wreckage."

"So the mouth of Knockturn Alley and the Leaky Cauldron are our main targets," Freely summed up. "The places where population is densest. But there are four stories of rooms in the Leaky Cauldron, packed cellars, six different buildings bordering the mouth of the alley – we still could be looking for anything."

"But whatever we're looking for will have a timer on it," Harry said quietly, his eyes far away with realization. "Tempus Reveleo. Object, hanging magic, potion, whatever, it will have a timer and we can find a timing spell."

6:43:05

Aurors, Hit Wizards, Magical Catastrophe streamed into the packed front room of the Leaky Cauldron, pushing people out of their way and overturning tables and chairs. The lines to the Floo were shunted sideways and people staggered against the counter, complaining and ducking as paintings went flying, floorboards were pulled up, the counter was ransacked. Boots thundered up the stairs and the locks were blasted off the cellar doors.

"What's going on?" Lucy squeaked.

"It's alright," Angelina said soothingly, placing a hand on each girl's shoulder. "Eleven more people and we'll be out of here."

6:43:23

"There they are!" Lily cried, suddenly wrenching herself free of Victoire's grip and launching across the sudden gap in the crowd at a group of familiar faces knotted at the edge of the barricade. Uncle Bill, Uncle George and Fred, Rose and Scorpius and her brothers were all there and a weight she hadn't even known she'd been ignoring soared from her chest.

"Vicky!" Bill had gathered Victoire in his arms as if she were the breath of life itself, pressing his lips to her forehead.

"I'm alright, Daddy, I'm just fine," she promised him, stretching up on her toes to kiss his cheek. She patted his hand, then, very gently, she pulled away, eyes swiveling to Teddy.

"What the hell happened to you lot?" Ron asked, but he sounded frightened as he eyed the burns and scorch marks all over George and Bill's robes.

"We're fine, Angelina and the girls are on their way to Mum and Dad's. We're all fine," but George's voice wasn't his own as he said it.

"Out of the way!" someone ordered, and blue-robed ERTs streamed in suddenly from all sides, sweeping their group into the middle of the alley.

"You lot need to leave, now," someone told them, giving Ron and George a rough shove as they passed.

"What's going on?" Fred asked, thinking he needed a t-shirt with the question printed on it.

"Emergency evacuation," Ron explained, snapping back into Auror mode. "We do need to get out of here. They've made an apparition point at the back of Knockturn, we can go out that way." He started shepherding them along.

"Teddy, what's happened? Why aren't you with the other ERTs? Are you alright?" Victoire asked, twisting around in Teddy's iron grip. A crash from one of the buildings behind them made them all duck, and Teddy pulled her against his chest. He breath was short and quick and his robes were stained from shoulder to waist with scarlet.

"Three, four, five, hang on, we're missing someone," Ron said, hoisting Miranda higher in his arms. He frowned, half-turning as he scanned the alley. "Where's Al?"

6:45:17

"Nothing," a breathless ERT leader gasped as soon as he appeared on the apparition point in the Auror office. "We turned over every building where the alleys meet and the Leaky Cauldron. Nothing has a timer on it that we could find."

"Then look again," Freely barked. "Don't pillage the bloody places, you'll miss something. Search, for Merlin's sake, slowly, systematically. We don't have time to waste rushing."

When the man had disappeared again he turned to Harry. "If anything with a timing spell's in the room, the revealer spell should show it, buried or not," he said.

"I know," Harry nodded. "Maybe there were only the two. Maybe the second one wasn't supposed to go off right away. Maybe they didn't think to stagger it at all."

"If there is another one, whoever planted it wouldn't wait too long to set it off," said Coil, eyebrows pulled together as she squinted at her watch. "The area'll be cleared out soon and their chances of diffusion go up the longer they wait."

"It should be in one of those seven buildings," Freely was muttering, examining a copy of the map he'd scrawled on his palm. "Anywhere else is too remote to be a secondary target."

"Unless they're not in a building," Coil said suddenly, and Harry's eyes widened as they met hers, as he realized.

"The trenches," he told the woman working the floo even as he sent jets of silver flying out of the tip of his wand. "Knockturn Alley has tunnels under the street connecting certain stores, passages for black market salesmen left over from before the war, even. They're boarded up, but one of ours can find the entrances, we check them regularly. They go all along the street. Sweep. Them. Out."

6:48:14

"What do you mean?" Lily asked uncomprehendingly, looking from Rose's tear-streaked face to her brother's clenched jaw. "What do you mean he's hurt?" She'd just seen him. She'd seen James and Rose and Scorpius as they'd come up the street. Surely he'd been there too. He was always there between Rose and Scorpius or at James's shoulder. Always.

…

"Move carefully," the ERT leaders echoed again and again. Blue-robed witches and wizards swept their wandlight back and forth across the dusty, cobwebby passage, scrutinizing each stone before they put their foot down, sharp, shallow breaths echoing in the gloom.

…

"It's my fault," Bill was saying to Ron, who looked as if a wrecking ball had just smashed into his stomach. "I spotted Rose and Scorpius coming out of Borgin and Burke's earlier. They told me Al wasn't with them, but of course he was, I should have known." He was almost babbling. The news had paralyzed them in the middle of the street.

…

"Tempus Reveleo… Tempus Reveleo…" the incantation came from dozens of mouths, a low chant in time to the steady sweeping of wandlight. And then something pulsed blue.

…

"We need to keep moving," Ron muttered, turning from Bill and urging them back into motion.

Lily was still fighting the impulse to look around, sure she could pull Al from some hidden corner of the group as she always did. Her brain felt numb again, like it had when everything blew apart.

…

"We found something!"… "We found something!" The news was repeated along the tunnels.

"What do we do with it?" someone asked, kneeling beside the small leather pouch that lay so innocently in a puddle of green liquid.

"Take it apart, stop it from going off!" someone else said frantically, backing away down the tunnel.

"How?"

…

A commotion had risen down the street. George and James both started to turn around, but Ron shoved them forward, breaking into a run. They rounded the last turn to where the tents and marquees had been set up as a temporary base. They were deserted now, though. The queue of stretchers waiting to be taken to St. Mungo's was gone. Only a few sheet-covered stretchers remained, hurriedly being loaded.

"Bill!" Ron snapped, yanking his brother's elbow as he slowed.

Almost against his will, James's eyes sought the stretcher covered in a violet cloak. Polished red finger nails still poked out of the top. He turned violently away. They were almost there, almost to the gaping opening in the Muggle warehouse where they could disapparate.

…

Yells rolled down the tunnel as the pouch pulsed like an ember. The ERTs crowded around it scrambled back frantically.

"How do we diffuse it if we don't know what's in the bloody thing?"

Someone waved their wand and a glowing fifteen appeared above the pouch. It changed to a fourteen.

"Fourteen seconds? Fourteen seconds?"

"Start evacuating the tunnels! Get as many people out as possible!"

A handful of ERT members crowded around the pouch as if protecting it from the flurry of exodus on all sides.

"We can't diffuse it; anything we try might set it off."

Twelve seconds.

"Then what are we supposed to do? Shove it through a wormhole?"

Eleven seconds.

"You're the Ravenclaw; think of something!"

"Can we apparate down here? We're technically outside the limits of the alley."

Nine seconds.

"What are you going to do? Get yourself blown up in the middle of nowhere?"

Eight seconds.

"Well it's better than getting us all blown up, here, isn't it?"

Seven seconds.

…

"St. Mungo's?" George asked, taking Rose's elbow as they tumbled into the warehouse.

Ron nodded breathlessly, grabbing Hugo around the chest.

…

"No, Alec, wait! A vacuum!"

Four seconds.

"What?"

"A vacuum! If there's no air molecules, the explosion can't go anywhere!"

Two seconds.

…

James grabbed Lily's shoulder as Victoire took Scorpius's hand. Ron had already disappeared with a crack.

...

Five voices cried an incantation as a one flashed in the air above them.

The leather pouch flared bright, then collapsed in on itself without a noise, crumbling to ash.

A cracked, disbelieving laugh bubbled out of Alec's mouth. Then they were all whooping and cheering and hugging each other.

"It's gone!" The shout spiraled up the tunnel to the surface as several cracks echoed around the empty Muggle warehouse.

A/N: And there you have it. I feel a bit winded. The last part was written in quite a rush. I may be going back and editing this slightly. Anyway, I wanted to give this to you before I go back to school tomorrow. Wasn't sure I'd make it. This was a particularly difficult chapter to balance out as plot things are just sort of happening as they happen and the timelines were very tangled. Hopefully we'll be moving out of this tight timeline soon. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to update again. Not until March at the very earliest because that's when my spring break is, but I may be having medical things done over spring break which could make writing impossible. It may well be May or June unfortunately. This story will be slow-going, but it will continue to get updated. Check my profile for news between updates.

As always, your support and wonderful, wonderful readership is gratefully received! This story has stretched my writing and story-telling abilities in all sorts of new directions and gotten me quite up close and personal with the characters. It's great fun but hard work and your feedback is a wonderful payoff.

Love you all!