Chapter Four

A/N: The good news is, I got Placebo, which is inspiration in CD form. The bad news is, I got God of War, which is distracting. :3 We'll see how it goes.

--

Ron Weasley had a somewhat vague nightmare and woke up with a feeling of foreboding and no real memory behind impressionistic ideas of why he felt that way. It was an unnerving way to wake up, but since the end of fifth year, when Sirius had died, he'd gotten used to it, so he swallowed it down, swung his legs out of his bed, and almost ran into Pig, who was bouncing around his room so fast he was leaving a feather trail. One hand threading through the red bed-head that insisted it was his hair as if he needed to hold his head on his neck, he caught Pig right out of the air and shook him, once, sending the note he was carrying fluttering to the floor. He let the little feathered Snitch go and bent over to pick it up, ignoring his owl's shriek and erratic flying.

"Herm's reply," he mumbled, more to himself than to Pig, and put it on the desk while he got dressed and took a quick shower. The hot water was run out- Fred and George had come home and already taken their shower, and so had Ginny; in a house where there had once been nine people and only one bathroom, Ron was the only one who had never learned how to wake up early- and he didn't remember the spell to keep the water warm, so he took a fast, cold shower, brushed out his hair, and got dressed. Locking the door to his room behind him, he started to unfold the letter, which was apparently rather long-winded and had to be folded very small so as to be small enough for Pig to carry.

"Ron? Come down for breakfast!"

"In a minute, Mum!" This was important- but he really couldn't share it with the rest of the family at the moment. He sat down at his desk, took a deep breath, and read the letter.

"Ron-

You want to drop out of school. Yes, I remember, Ron, but don't you think (there was a part crossed out here) we'd be safer in school, we can still fight with Harry, we can work something out with McGonnagal. This is our future, you know, and don't say that we don't have a future if we don't do this because that's just morbid. I... (another crossed out part) ...don't know. (The whole parchment was splotchy with tears. This was getting more and more regular with Hermione's letters, which wasn't all that surprising given the sheer amount of muggle villages being wiped out by Voldemort's forces. As she's told him the letter before last, people she'd known had died, old friends before she'd started going to Hogwarts.) Have you even heard from Harry this summer? I'm worried about him- I haven't gotten a single piece of mail from him since the end of school. Did he move out of his Aunt's house? The protection was gone when he turned eighteen, wasn't it? What if... (these two words were crossed out, too, but they were legible through the scribbles, and Hermione kept on going as if she'd never written them.) Oh God Ron, did he even send something to Ginny yet? I know they broke up, but you would think he'd at least write to her, just to tell her he's alright, and why do you think he hasn't? Listen, Ron, do you remember the spell that lets people talk through fireplaces? I did some research and I'm going to try to talk to you later. I... I can't write everything down right now. Can you be in your living room tonight at one-thirty in the morning? Try to be alone. Give Pig a treat for me- I'm afraid I might have been a little hard on him when he came here. At least Crookshanks doesn't try to eat him.

Love, Hermione"

"Ron! The bacon's cold!"

"Give me a second!" Ron ferreted a little piece of parchment from his desk, wrote three words (one-thirty's fine), signed it, and gave it to Pig. "Take that to Herm. We're out of treats, but we'll get some later." With that promise and a little whistle- marred by the parchment- the owl took off like a fuzzy softball pitched at the sun.

--

Hedwig landed on the windowsill of Motel Thirteen and tapped on the glass with her beak. When a gnarly little man flung open the window, she flashed the name on the letter she held at him and settled down while he checked the roster. "Remus Lupin's in room number twelve, on the east side," he said, gesturing vaguely with one ugly, swollen-knuckled hand. Hedwig trilled her thanks and took off, gliding around the shabby-looking building until she spotted the correct window and coasted down onto the sill. Lupin immediately recognized her and, dropping the book he was reading, jogged over to throw open his window. "Didn't anyone tell Harry to use a less obvious owl," he muttered, more to Hedwig than to himself, and let the owl settle on his pillow while he unfolded the letter. It was a short paragraph written on a large parchment, wasteful as always.

"Dear Professor Lupin-

A bit of a situation's come up, and I need your help in something. Is there any way to be registered as an Animagus in three weeks? If not, I need you to help me become an unregistered Animagus- it's kind of important, and kind of an emergency. Don't send your reply by Hedwig; I want to talk to you in person about this. Can you talk to me through the fireplace at Number 12, Grimmauld Place at a quarter after two- in the morning, I have company and I don't want them to intrude.

Regards, Harry"

Lupin sighed, ferreted around in a drawer for a suitable quill, crossed out a couple sentences from Harry's original text, flipped the letter over, and wrote on the back.

"Harry- Stop using Hedwig, don't put where you are in your letters, and please, try to be careful. I'll be there- but I have to tell you now that the stupid things your father, Sirius and I did were permissible because the world was a lot safer back then. You're doing something stupid during a dangerous time and you're the last person who should be doing it. Regards, Lupin"

He gave the letter to Hedwig, told her to be careful, and let her back out the window.

--

At one-thirty three- Hermione's watch read one-thirty- a rather disheveled head appeared in the glowing embers in the fireplace in The Burrow. She looked around, fervent, until she finally caught sight of Ron, dozing on the couch. "Ron! Wake up!"

He snapped awake and almost flew over to the hearth. "Sorry, Herm! ...Is something wrong?" She certainly looked uncomfortable.

"This feels strange," she said- well, it didn't exactly feel any different, but being a severed head was certainly a new perspective, and she wasn't sure she liked it. Her boyfriend needed a shave. She also noted with some fascination that his nosehairs were the same flaming red as the hair on his head. "Listen, Ron, we have to hurry- we have a gas fireplace-"

"What's a gas-"

"So I'm in my neighbor's home, and they don't know I'm-"

"You broke into your neighbor's house?"

"This is important, Ron! If they come down here and see me with my head stuck in their fire, they might come to some unpleasant conclusions." He had that uncomprehending look on his face that told her that he didn't really understand anyone not jumping to the conclusion that if someone's head is in a fire, they're talking to someone through floo spells. (This one didn't require Floo powder, which Hermione would be hard-pressed to get anyway, but it was the same basic idea.) "A muggle would die doing this, Ron."

"Oh! Of course." He still didn't look quite clear but it was the best she was going to get.

"It doesn't matter," she muttered. "Listen, Ron- Harry would be safer at school. They can protect us- all three of us."

Ron shook his head; he'd thought his way through all the arguments he could imagine Hermione coming up with. "Not without Dumbledore there." The head in the fireplace swallowed hard.

For a second, she looked away, and Ron sighed, feeling a little put-off by his girlfriend's blatant grief. But then she was back to the old Hermione; she shook her head indignantly and stared up at him from the ashes. "Safer than we would be going after You Know Who."

Ron sighed and tried to meet Hermione's eyes. It wasn't easy, and not just because Hermione was traditionally difficult to look in the eye. She had let herself go these past few weeks since the end of the school year, and Ron couldn't tell why. Her hair was hanging down like a nest of dead things, and there were ballooning purple bags under her eyes. The latter usually meant she had been staying up late nights, doing research to fix some problem, but she'd always been careful with her hair. "You know," he told her, "it would be easiest with him gone. No one's safe right now."

"I believe it," she said, smiling bravely. "They're already getting closer. They attacked some muggles a neighborhood over."

"They've been over there?" Ron's eyes were like dinner plates and they looked like they would fall out if he didn't let his sockets relax back around them. Some-people-Hermione-knew dying meant one thing, Hermione in danger was an entirely new thing altogether.

On the other hand, weren't they all in danger?

"Yeah," was the quiet response, and Hermione swallowed hard. "This is real, Ron- people are dying, people I know are dying. This isn't a game."

Ron stared at her for a second, boggled, then looked away, closing his eyes hard against the red glow around her face. When he looked back at her, he had a look that she'd only ever seen on his face twice before- once, when he stepped up to sacrifice himself in giant chess their first year of school, and once, right before playing Quidditch the year before. "Yeah, well, we're not kids anymore."

"Are you going to make love to the fireplace?" Ron spun around on the floor; Hermione craned her neck up to look.

"George!"

"Actually, Fred, but who's keeping track?" The other redhead looked over his brother's shoulder into the fire. "Oh, hi, Hermione."

"Hi Fred," was the terse answer, and she visibly fidgeted. "Oh. I think they woke up. Listen, Ron-"

"Just think about it." It was clear that his mind was already made up.

"Alright," she replied, somewhat breathlessly, and then was gone. Fred snorted, more at the look on Ron's face than anything else.

--

At a quarter to two, Harry Potter walked into the sitting room with a book on Animagus to entertain himself and a cup of tea balanced on top. He'd left Remus's reply on the coffee table, along with the first few crumpled drafts of the letter he'd sent to him. They weren't there anymore. Two letters were lying face-down on the couch; Draco Malfoy was spread out on the couch, lying on his back, holding the last over his face and guiltlessly reading it.

Mouth opening and then closing with indignation, Harry finally managed to sputter, "What are you doing, Malfoy?"

"Please, Potter," was the smooth response. "I'm reading."

He dropped book and tea- the book tumbled but the mug, wizarded against falling, floated in the air- and stormed over to snatch the letter from Malfoy's hands. The two corners the blonde was clutching ripped off, but most of the letter came with Harry. He crumpled it and stuck it in his pocket, then snatched up the other two, too. "These are my letters, Malfoy."

"I was wondering why you signed your name."

"Then leave them alone!"

One blonde eyebrow quirked ironically- a telltale sign that Malfoy was about to say something indescribably annoying. "I wanted to know what went through the mind of the Great Harry Potter." He smirked at the answering expression and effortlessly continued. "You want to become an animagus- a stag, one letter said, just like daddy? Why would you tell that to Lupin?"

It turned out he didn't tell that to Lupin, but doubtlessly his old Professor would make the assumption. "What I tell Professor Lupin in my own letters is my own damn business, Malfoy."

"Not the letters that have my name in them," was the almost self-righteous reply.

"Yes, the letters that have your name in them." Harry circled around to stand in front of the relaxed ferret, arms crossed over his chest. "If you haven't noticed, my life has you in it, and if I'm going to get you out of it, then-"

"I'm sorry. Am I interrupting?" Both Harry and Draco jumped, then glared in tandem as if to cover up to each other that they'd been startled at all. As Harry moved out of his position obscuring Draco from the fireplace, Professor Lupin's head looked rather surprised to learn who he was talking to, but didn't seem overly fazed. "I guess I'm a couple minutes early. If you need more time to finish this..."

"We're fine, Professor," Harry growled, glaring blackly at Malfoy, who was still obviously recovering. "He was just leaving."

"As a matter of fact, I was. Good to see you again, though, Professor Lupin. You look well." The last was a blatant lie; the purpling bags under Lupin's eyes shone violet in the firelight. But Malfoy, as if he couldn't feel Harry's or Lupin's glares, swung off the couch and sauntered out of the room, taking his time and cutting into the time the other two had for conversation, apparently intentionally.

Once it was clear he was gone- and, by the footsteps going upstairs, not listening in by the doorway, either- Lupin cleared his throat, coughing a little as he inhaled a bit of stray ash. "So, Harry..."

"Yes, I know he's a Death Eater, and that he killed Dumbledore, and I'm an idiot for trusting him and I should have just let him die."

"I was actually going to comment as to your hosting skills lacking, but that brings me to my second topic. Just what is he doing here?"

Harry sighed and crouched down beside the fireplace. "I found him on my doorstep. He'd tried to kill himself."

Lupin frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. "Well, there's a coincidence. Happy that he just happened to show up on your doorstep, of all places."

"Do you believe in Fate?"

The werewolf closed his eyes for a long second. "No. I believe in conspiracy."

That turned the conversation a little bit sour; what an unpleasant thing to think on. "Well, I believe in Fate."

Lupin might have shrugged; Harry couldn't see his shoulders. "Well, it doesn't matter. Just be careful. I assume he has something to do with the fact that you want to become an animagus."

Well, that much was Malfoy's business, really- about as much Malfoy's business as Harry's mail was his business. "He had a little playtime with Fenrir Greyback," he responded dryly, ignoring Lupin's wince. "I assume it went sour. He turned into a werewolf right after I took care of the poison he'd given himself."

Lupin frowned, but this time it looked almost light-hearted. "And you want to become his animagus companion, and bridge the generation gap. How unexpectedly kitsch of you, Harry." And then the frown split down the middle and became a full-fledged grin that Harry couldn't stop himself from returning.

"Well," the werewolf continued wistfully, "I wish I could tell you about Wolfsbane, but I never did learn to make it. It's not like Snape offered to teach it to me."

Something new occurred to Harry. "Pardon, Professor, but... what have you been doing, every month, if you don't have Wolfsbane?"

Lupin coughed. "Mostly," he admitted, "just locking myself in a room and waiting it out. You know, when muggles used to get that foam-at-the-mouth disease, ah, rabies, they'd chain themselves to trees so they wouldn't bite their families. I get better every month, though." His smile grew somewhat wry. "Tonks keeps asking to be locked in there with me. She... doesn't quite understand, I don't think."

"How is Tonks?" The last time Harry checked, they looked like they were about to get married. Now, Lupin looked more like he would have ripped his own hair out, if his hair and his hands weren't in separate hearths at the moment. "I haven't heard from either of you for some time."

"That's because we're being watched, Harry," Lupin said, sounding tired. "Which brings us to this: next time you want to send me a message, borrow someone else's owl. Hedwig is too recognizable." He was clearly avoiding the subject, but Harry decided against calling him out on it.

"Alright, professor."

"Now. You wanted to know about the animagus." The tone switched from 'concerned patriarch' back to teacher, and he said almost ironically, "This is a complicated topic, Harry. You might want to take notes."