Rated for language, violence, and mild sexual references.

Disclaimer: If you recognize any names, terms, or concepts, that's because they are not mine.

CHAPTER 11 – Suspense and Solace

Harry fiercely examined the short, terse note wishing Andromeda and Teddy well. His own handwriting, his own signature. Similar word choice and grammar. Shoddily wrapped package delivered by a small female Merlin falcon. Harry would have thought it from himself, too. Except that it wasn't.

Nothing had ever prepared Harry for the unmitigated terror gripping his heart. Not the war, or the Basilisk, or werewolf-Remus, or facing Voldemort time and again. Even walking to his own death paled in comparison.

The fear was drowning him, choking him, filling his lungs and bubbling up out of the center of his being and spilling out across the floor and into the air around him. It was roiling in his belly, noxious and debilitating. And as it ate at him, it grew and billowed and then it mutated, and became something terrible. Rage as Harry had never known suffused him entirely, black and choking and caustic, mimicking the turbulent shadows that flickered across his vision. This wretched, lowly, fetid scum was threatening his godson. And Harry would not stand for it. He would find them, hunt them down, rend them limb from limb, he would-

"Harry, please. Say something," Andromeda begged, the terror in her voice slicing through the cloud of his rage, diamond-sharp and clear. She held herself stiffly, her shoulders set, even as her voice and lips trembled. Harry had to take several deep, slow breaths before he was able to think and speak clearly.

"I want you to take Teddy and move into Grimmauld Place. As long as I'm alive, no one can enter without my express permission. You'll be safe there."

She took a deep breath and nodded. "Thank you, we'll move right in. Will you help pack?"

"Of course, just let me send a letter off to Ron." He could rely on Ron and Hermione to put out the word that all of Harry's friends could be in danger now, while Harry was busy securing Teddy and Andromeda.

Between two fully trained wizards, it took less than four hours to pack up and transfer all of their essentials, valuables, and a good amount of comfort items, too – albeit with nothing in the way of organization. As they worked, Harry told Andromeda about the attack in the game shop and the chase across Europe, ending in Poland, only leaving out details of the Elder Wand. Andromeda, unfortunately, was unable to provide any leads. The entirety of her displeasure was conveyed with a pair of white lips, pressed thin with severity. She was rather like McGonagall in that respect.

They finished it all with Teddy still remaining asleep, which Harry was rather proud of, until he learned that Kreacher had cast a silencing ward around the toddler's room while he kept guard.

"Well, that's done," Harry murmured, standing in the Ancestral Black kitchen and bouncing a sleepy and fussy Teddy on his hip.

"Thank you for helping, dear," Andromeda said tiredly as she sipped at a cup of tea. Harry shook his head.

"No, this was my problem, and you two got involved. That's not to say I wouldn't have helped if it wasn't my problem, I just, um–" Andromeda chuckled softly, interrupting him.

"I know, Harry."

They were quiet for a long time, just sitting, listening to the first birds of the morning wake and begin to sing. It felt too normal. The tranquility was surreal, and the dissonance of it compared to the earlier panic was stark and disquieting. Harry could not tramp down on a shiver, and clutched Teddy closer to himself. The sleeping toddler was like a furnace.

Ron and Hermione stepped through the Floo shortly after dawn, faces drawn and grim.

"Mum's sent over biscuits," Ron grunted, dropping the basket on the table. It was promptly forgotten as Harry ushered the pair into a dusty, unused lounge upstairs, where he'd quarantined the package Teddy had received, while Andromeda took the toddler to his room.

Together, they crouched over the shirt and letter, muttering obscure counter-curses and detection spells under their collective breath.

"I'm not even finding physical evidence of sender even having touched it," Harry muttered hours later, performing a tricky little three-quarter twist with his wand to cast a Droman's Indicator charm on the toddler-sized blue t-shirt.

"Nothing here, mate," Ron agreed, watching the pale pink glow from his Anti-Anchor Alarm fade from the letter. "'Mione?"

The witch gave a short grunt of acknowledgement, not even bothering to glance up from the dusty tome she'd buried her nose in. Harry squinted at the title – half the letters had worn away with time, but the remaining words had rather too many 'e's tacked on the ends for it to have been written in the last several centuries. He decided to leave her to it.

"Here, Kreacher's made breakfast," Andromeda announced as she stepped into the room with several plates of steaming food levitating in front of her. "And he's watching Teddy now. Have you found anything?"

Hermione grunted out a negative, still ensconced in her book, and Harry shook his head defeatedly. Beside him, Ron let out a beleaguered moan.

"Pretty sure we've tried every spell we've got, by now. Twice," he said. "I'd offer to take it back to the Ministry analysts, but I don't think they'd be as thorough as we've been, and they'd take a full week to do it."

"Don't bother," Hermione said, finally putting down the massive tome to dig a fork into a pile of scrambled eggs. "We've exhausted every possibility I know of," she finished grudgingly.

"So it's not dangerous?" Andromeda asked hopefully, the lines of tension in her shoulders relaxing as she slumped, relieved, into a dusty green armchair.

"Well, not as such. Of course, it's dangerous that someone sent it in the first place, but as far as we can tell, it's only meant to scare us."

"Effective, that," Ron said around a mouthful of egg-and-bacon sandwich.

"How much have you–"

"Oh!" Andromeda exclaimed, straightening again. "Teddy's awake, I'll see you in a bit…" she murmured, striding out of the room, an alarm spell having made her aware of the toddler whining in the other room. Harry nodded and waved.

"How much have you told the rest of the family?" he continued.

"Well, only as much as we knew at the time," Hermione said. "Just that an enemy of yours sent a threatening package to Teddy, and that they should be careful from now on. Maybe put up some additional wards, and have the postal service screen their mail."

"I sent a report to the Ministry too, Harry, hope you don't mind. Just that someone threatened your godson," Ron added.

"That's fine, I was going to let Kingsley know anyway," he shrugged, knocking back the dregs of his pumpkin juice.

"Everyone's going to expect an explanation for these precautions, Harry. We told them we'd let them know once we learned more, but, well, we haven't learned much more. How much do you want to tell them?"

"Nothing about the Wand, of course," Harry said quietly, glancing back at the door to make sure Andromeda hadn't returned yet. "But I'll have to let them know that someone is after me, won't I? It should be fine if we just say that I was attacked by some remnant Death Eaters, let them make whatever assumptions they want about that."

Ron and Hermione agreed solemnly. Harry couldn't help but wonder if they ever felt resentful at having to keep his secrets from their friends and family. He wasn't brave enough to ask.

He threw the shirt into the fireplace, and together, silently, they watched it burn.

The pair left shortly after that, promising to pass on the details of the threat to the rest of the family, and Harry spent the next few hours with Andromeda and Teddy, helping them settle into the house and playing with his godson. When it came time to leave, Harry tried to linger, hoping that if he dawdled enough he'd miss his portkey and have an excuse to stay longer, but Andromeda hustled him out the door, seeing through his ploy quite clearly.

"We'll be fine here, Harry. We're safe. And we'll see you again in a couple weeks," she admonished.

So Harry grumbled a bit, gave Teddy a tremendous hug that had the toddler squirming fussily, and conceded, Apparating into the Magical Departures wing of Heathrow International Airport.

Despite having left London in the afternoon, the time zone difference placed Harry back in Yokohama in the middle of the night. Having brought no luggage, he was free to Apparate directly home after arriving in Japan. He popped into existence in his apartment and immediately froze, breath catching in his lungs.

Someone had been here.

His carefully constructed wards had been expertly dismantled, he realized as he cautiously crept through each room, a wand in each fist, unable to detect the faint tingle of energy dancing across the fine hairs on the back of his neck, or the scent of ozone and charcoal associated with his magic which indicated that his wards were active. He scanned voraciously, combing through every nook and cranny. In his panicked desperation, he barely noticed the shadows that habitually flickered in the corners of his eyes as they solidified and darkened and spread across his vision. But he certainly noticed the effects.

He gasped as the apartment drained of color, yet every detail became starkly visible and sharp and clear in a way that nearly overwhelmed him. He could identify the individual fibers twisted together to form the weaves of his carpet, and the dust motes clinging to the surface of the door down the hall glimmered like specks of sand. But it was not the detail that amazed him so.

Faint lines and blurs of luminescence tracked across the apartment, a procession of cold, silver afterimages of Em and what looked like a spider and two flies imprinted in the air and walls, tracking their way through his apartment in a series of imprints of hours worth of their movements and activities. The thin coating of Deathly Shadow across his eyes had made the very essence of life visible to him, wherever it had existed for some indeterminate time in the past.

Harry stood in awe for a moment, stunned by the development, and overwhelmed by the implications. This is…too bloody much. Dear Merlin, can nothing ever go as planned? What is this, and why now? What triggered it, and how can I stop it and make it start again? He didn't even want to consider possible consequences.

He rubbed at his eyes a bit, then opened them again and saw that the apartment was still stained in shades of gray and glow. He looked to the windowsill, where Em was regally perched, a vibrant beacon of silver energy. The blobby afterimages trailing behind her and twisting all over the room gradually faded towards the tail of the procession – Harry assumed the amount of fading correlated to how long it had been since she had left the glowing imprint.

His eyes flicked down beside her where, almost hidden by the falcon's glow, a smaller, fainter trail of light seemed to be drawn in and consumed by some small dark vacuum. Closer inspection showed him a dead fly at the center of the darkness. So life emits light, and death sucks it in? The observation pressed into his mind just before the implications of what he was seeing hit: there was no imprint of another person in his apartment.

He rushed to the front door and ripped it open, but saw only the hours-old glowing reflections of Bakura, Ryou, Malik, and the neighbors across from him traversing the hall and disappearing around the corner towards the elevators. The array of imprints – the way most of them only passed in one direction, either leaving or returning but rarely both – implied that the images only remained for less than a day, which was not particularly helpful in determining a timeframe for his wards' collapse. Whoever had attacked his apartment had done so shortly after he left, and their imprint had already faded past his apparent ability to detect.

He would have to test this new skill more thoroughly, he thought, once he wasn't near to panicking. He turned back into his apartment to examine it more closely, now that he could not be sure whether or not someone had actually entered.

But there was nothing more. Not a thing out of place, not an indent in the carpet, not a piece of hair or dead skin that hadn't been there before – his revealing spells would have noticed. So someone had not, in fact, entered his apartment; they had simply stood out in the hall or perhaps levitated outside his window and removed all of his defenses. But why? What was the point? If they were skilled enough to remove his wards – approved by Bill Weasley! – then they were certainly skilled enough to slip through them and booby-trap his home. But they hadn't.

It was a warning, then, a scare tactic, just like with the shirt sent to Teddy. Whoever was after him, after the Elder Wand, wanted him to know that nothing of his was safe. Well, they'd certainly left an impression. If it was war they were after, Harry was happy to oblige.

Harry took a deep breath and slumped onto the couch to think, hands clasped against his mouth and eyes burning as the strange shadows melted away and returned his vision to normal. He batted away the distracting physical sensation with the skill of one who's had to contend with considerably more pain under considerably tenser situations. He easily cordoned off thoughts of this strange new brand of shadow magic until he was at liberty to explore it further, and turned the entirety of his thoughts instead to this newest dilemma.

It barely crossed his mind to consider how the perpetrator had known he would be gone for a few days, allowing them to attack his home without repercussion. It was common sense that Harry would attend the memorial ceremony on May 2nd, and frankly, Harry would have been a little offended if his attacker hadn't looked so closely into him as to not know that. He was a little concerned about how they knew where he lived, but he wasn't particularly surprised about that, either. They knew where he worked, after all, and in a city as busy as Domino, it would be very difficult to notice a tail as he walked back home from the shop one day.

Next, all known movements against him. The carelessness of that first crude attack was sharply at odds with the discreetness of the events in Poland, the threat to Teddy, and the dismantling of his wards. A test, then? Blatant in an attempt to gauge him in some way, though whether for his battle prowess or for his treatment of prisoners or for his reaction to the attack, Harry could not say. Whatever it was, he knew he had likely passed, given the care his opponent was taking now. That care also implied a certain level of innate cautiousness; whoever they were, they were not underestimating him. (He hoped they were not overestimating him).

That cautious wisdom was further evidence of their intelligence. He was still awaiting the results of Hermione's investigation, but he knew there couldn't be that many rune masters, as he knew that other masteries took at least a decade of intense study to achieve. The person was obviously resourceful, as well, and had sufficient underworld contacts to have been able to contract a set of hidden Death Eaters, so Harry might have to prepare for more opposition than a single enemy. This wasn't a recent revelation, however; he'd understood this last point ever since he had, in fact, been attacked by multiple enemies, and had already discussed it with Hermione and Ron.

Then the very fact that 'Runie' was pursuing a near-mythical item like the Elder Wand implied an obsessive, ambitious, and power-hungry nature. Killing Leather Jacket added 'cutthroat' and possibly 'desperate' to the list, based on the level of control behind their actions. He wished he knew why Leather Jacket had been murdered, whether it was to cover the killer's tracks, or because they had noticed Harry and Bakura's approach and been forced to make a quick getaway, or simply out of callous disregard for human life. Such reasoning would tell him whether psychopathy or sociopathy were on the menu as well.

But more than anything, this enemy was unafraid of collateral damage; Harry's friends and family were at risk as well. And on that note, it was far past time to check on his neighbors.

He opened the door to move into the hall when a faint mark caught his attention, something he had not noticed in his earlier distraction. There, on the depth of the door, carved in miniature within the grain of the wood, were thirteen small marks, arranged in three triangular clusters of four, each cluster a corner of a larger triangle surrounding a final mark, the whole arrangement the size of his pinkie nail.

Well-versed in Ancient Runes he was not, but even he could recognize an array of archaic symbols. Further proof, then, that this latest infraction was the work of a rune master, likely the same one who had killed Leather Jacket in Lublin. Hopefully the same one who had been in Lublin – Harry dreaded the thought of having to deal with more than one such formidable adversary.

Harry growled deep in his throat, fury building again at the physical evidence of sabotage, and stormed out into the hallway, stepping to the side and pounding on Ryou and Bakura's door. Bakura yanked the door open violently a minute later, a ferocious scowl twisting his face, which faded into a grave, intent look upon seeing Harry's own expression.

"Are you two okay?" Harry demanded unceremoniously. Bakura frowned in confusion.

"What–? Nothing's happened, no," he responded. He started to ask more, but Harry cut him off, pushing into the apartment and sparing a terse nod for Ryou, who had just stumbled out of his bedroom, confused and owl-eyed.

"Someone dismantled all of my protective wards. Nothing was touched or taken or left behind. It was just a warning. You didn't notice anything?" They both shook their heads in the negative. "Damn. Well, I have news anyway. D'you mind if I sit?" he asked, gesturing sharply, agitatedly, at the sofa. Ryou bit his lip and nodded, moving into the kitchen to make tea. Bakura dropped down beside Harry, shirtless and with his arms splayed across the back of the sofa, but Harry was too distracted to appreciate the view.

"Your English friends had something to offer?" Bakura asked. Harry nodded, accepting a mug from Ryou and telling them everything that had happened in the last few days, from Hermione's brilliance to the horrible scare with Teddy to coming home and finding his apartment rendered unsafe. He neglected to mention the way the wisps of darkness had spread over his eyes and showed him the glowing imprints of life, instead implying that a spell had offered him the same insight.

"It seems as though we're dealing with someone who has put a lot of effort into studying you and any weaknesses," Ryou murmured, eyes downcast and looking disturbed. Harry just nodded tiredly. The pale-haired man continued. "But that doesn't explain the attack in the shop. It just seems so crude, compared to what else they've done…"

"Yeah, I've already thought of that," Harry said tiredly, and told them everything he'd gathered about the perpetrator's personality, which was far less than he was used to working with – there were just too many unknowns. "There's not much more I can infer until I get more information."

Ryou frowned. "If the attack was a test, then don't you think they could have been watching? They might know about monsters and shadow magic now. It's not exactly classified, but for someone so dangerous to learn about it seems…"

"No," Bakura said shortly. "If they were watching, there would have been no reason for that fool to run back to Poland to report."

Harry nodded. "Right. That's one less thing to worry about, at least." Only about a hundred more on the list, now. He dragged a frustrated hand through his hair and slumped back against the couch.

"Shit. Sorry to wake you up over this, 's not like there's anything we can do about it."

"Don't be stupid," Bakura growled, at the same time as Ryou shook his head.

"No, Harry-san, I'm glad you did. This is important. I'm sorry to hear that your godson has been put in danger, too," the gentler half said, shooting a brief glare at his counterpart.

"Mm, me too." He frowned up at the ceiling, a stress headache building in his temples. He pressed his fingers to the spots, and jumped when he felt fingers brush his hair. He jerked his head to stare at Bakura, who was very blatantly not looking at him, or the way his hand was pressed against the back of Harry's neck, the calloused palm and fingers warm and strong and steady. Harry cleared his throat and shifted to press his shoulder and thigh more closely to Bakura's.

Across the room, Ryou failed to hide a smile behind his mug. He looked young and boyish and innocent with his doe brown eyes lit up and his cheeks straining to keep his smile contained. Harry couldn't help feeling his own sheepish grin bubble up in response. "Why don't you stay here for the night, Harry-san? We can call up a few monsters to keep watch until you get your wards back up."

"It's a good idea," Bakura asserted before Harry could refuse. He grumbled out a token protest, but nodded, and let his grin turn grateful.

"Thanks, I appreciate it," he said. Ryou smiled more broadly, coming around to collect his empty mug and to pat him gently on the shoulder.

"It's no problem. You don't mind the couch, do you? I'll get some blankets."

"It's fine, Ryou. Go back to bed," Bakura muttered. Ryou's friendly grin became the slightest bit predatory, and the similarity between the two not-cousins had never been more blatant.

"As you say, Voice," he murmured slyly. Bakura scowled and made an impatient shooing motion, and Ryou finally acquiesced, laughing softly as he retreated down the corridor to his bedroom. Harry watched, intrigued by this playful side to the normally soft and reserved young man. It was uncanny.

"Voice?" he inquired, turning back to the other man.

"Old nickname," Bakura said shortly, stretching a bit and letting his arm fall more completely across Harry's shoulders. "…You can guess why I sent him away."

Harry swallowed nervously and thought about responding flirtatiously, but decided he was too tired and stressed for games. "Yeah, I do," he said, his shoulders tensing a bit, but allowing himself to press more fully into the couch, and against the man beside him. "But. Um. I don't really think I'm up for another serious conversation, right now. I don't think I'm up for anything besides sleep, to be honest."

"Understandable. I merely thought it past time we acknowledged this," Bakura shrugged, pale eyes darting to all the places their bodies were touching, before moving back up to bore into Harry's. The man was utterly unembarrassed by the admission of attraction, and Harry found it incredibly refreshing.

"Right, so, um. This is us acknowledging it, I guess? And…promising to talk more about it later?" Harry grinned crookedly, tentatively. Bakura returned the grin, though his was noticeably sharper, and nodded. The arm around Harry's shoulder tightened and drew him closer to the other man, and Bakura leaned forward to press their foreheads together and to drag his lips over the corner of Harry's mouth firmly.

Harry sighed into the near kiss, feeling more relieved than anything else, and turned his head to press their mouths more fully together. The tension melted from his body as he leaned against Bakura and breathed him in, breathed in the scent of tea and musk and clean linen. Bakura's kiss was slow and deep, and it filled him with a warmth that spread from his belly out to his limbs, made him feel comfortable and calm.

The lack of expectation was incredibly soothing. It felt like a kiss from someone with whom he had already been intimate, someone he had kissed a hundred times before, fulfilling and familiar. It didn't last long, however; Bakura pulled away far too soon with a sharp nip to Harry's lower lip.

"I'll leave you to sleep, then," he rasped. He stood and withdrew his arm, letting his fingers comb through Harry's hair on the way.

Harry silently mourned the loss of warmth as he watched the taller man pull his deck of cards out of his pajama pocket. Harry thought about snickering, but realized he couldn't really judge, not when he kept a wand under his pillow and another stuffed into the pocket of his own pajama pants when he slept, as well. Bakura shuffled through the deck shortly, before drawing a pair of cards and flicking them almost lazily.

Purplish shadows converged from all corners of the room and swirled together in front of the man, and from their depths stepped an eerie blue female fiend carrying a broken doll, and the same large white monster that Bakura had summoned during their hunt some time ago, which he had since learned was called Diabound.

"Stay here with him. Guard the door, make sure nothing and no one enters," he ordered Diabound. The monster gave no indication of having heard him, but obligingly relocated to the wall beside the door and faded into invisibility. Harry thought about being uncomfortable with the silent vigil, but decided he was too giddy from Bakura's kiss for it.

Said man tossed him a blanket and a rakish grin. "Sleep well, wizard," he called quietly, and promptly disappeared down the hall with Dark Necrofear following behind him. Harry offered the same, and let his goofy grin burst out as soon as the man was out of sight. He fell back onto the couch and pulled the blanket around him, wondering if he would be able to fall asleep tonight with so many turbulent emotions swirling around inside his mind. Terror and rage, panic and frustration, giddiness and guilty arousal, all warring for dominance.

Oh well, he thought exhaustedly. At least everyone's safe.

AN: Guys. Guys~ I am officially a college graduate as of four days ago with a major degree in biochemistry and a minor in soil science! Have a chapter and share in my infinite joy.

Unfortunately, despite my newfound free time, the next chapter will probably be a long time coming, as well – I've got a vacation planned, as well as considerable planning for how I want the next phase of this story to go. I'll do my best to keep any progress or changes posted on my profile.

Also, if anyone was unaware, in the Japanese versions of the anime and manga, Ryou initially refers to Bakura as 'the voice,' hence the nickname.

As always, I hope you enjoyed it, and please point out any mistakes or suggestions!