'Where is he?'

            Harry shook his head again. 'I don't want you going around seeing him. If he can't get his fat head around this, then—'

            'Harry—'

            'Draco…please. Let me sort it out. He's my godfather.'

            'Will you?'

            Harry sighed. 'Yeah. Just not now.'

            He kissed the crown of Harry's head. 'It'll be all right in the end.'

            'I hope so.'

            After a while, Harry shifted so that he could wrap one arm around Draco.

            '…It wasn't even a really big kiss, right? I mean, for it not to matter…'

            'No, it wasn't.'

            'Okay.'

            Something about the mood of the following silence told Draco that somehow it still wasn't. He raised his head and, watching Harry carefully, leaned forward and brushed their lips together. He held the kiss for just a few seconds before settling back again.

            'It was like that?'

            'No. He was barely touching me. And however small the thing was, it meant less.'

            Harry finally relaxed. 'That's good to know.'

            They remained there, wrapped up in each other and the darkness until the moon had passed by the mirror, and its last reflected rays had faded into the night.

~~~*~~~

            That was the longest time Harry and Draco were able to spend together for the next two weeks.

With the O.W.L.s looming on the far side of the holidays, normal school workloads increased beyond the wildest dreams of Hermione Granger, and the worst nightmares of every other fifth year at Hogwarts. Snape, followed by a few other teachers, developed a nasty habit of springing preparatory examinations in their classes. A similar pattern was emerging among the seventh years, who would soon be facing their N.E.W.T.s. Between them, the two years virtually monopolised the library.

Since the declaration of war, Dumbledore's office had become the unofficial focus of student activity; every night, as Draco made his way from the Great Hall back to his room, he encountered children en route to finding out more about the Order of the Phoenix. They usually went in small groups, often arguing over whether or not they were making the right decision up to the moment when they reached the gargoyle and realised they didn't know the password. Dumbledore must have made it a habit to appear before they gave up trying to get in, however—each time McGonagall sent out a note for the next lesson in the Great Arts, the number of students who turned up swelled. Draco found he could always pick them out of a crowd the morning afterwards: they were the ones who wandered around looking like zombies and took to using their breakfast plates as pillows.

            As quickly as the Order of the Phoenix was drawing in young blood, Kenneth Melchior was appointing Aurors. It became all too common for students, many of whom hadn't even known they had relatives connected with the Ministry, to receive letters from their parents telling of how an uncle or aunt was suddenly called into action, and not to expect word from them for a while. Draco could spot those students, too. They either spent a lot of time alone or became the centre of a gaggle of friends and hangers-on eager to know the details of the war—which was ridiculous, given the fact that most of what the Aurors were doing was secret.

They looked perpetually poised to fight or flee, and the more attention they attracted, the closer they came to doing one or the other.

Even Dumbledore's announcement one morning that classes would be cancelled on the final day of term to make way for a match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to decide the Quidditch Cup did little to relieve the tension building up within the school. The most frightening part of all was how, little by little, the whole situation became normal.

The next meeting of the Order was not announced: it didn't need to be. The word slipped from an overheard conversation between teachers no longer mindful of keeping secrets, and within a few days it had run around the school, leaping from mouth to ear and, sometimes, eye to eye. Nevertheless, when Draco stepped out of his room that night, he somehow expected the journey to Dumbledore's office to be as solitary as ever.

To begin with, he only spotted a few other students around. The first he passed was a Ravenclaw, followed by a Slytherin whom he didn't know, but who nodded as he went by, and a trio of Hufflepuffs. As he walked on, the groups appeared more frequently, and little by little they grew larger, as pairs and trios recognised each other from across the corridors and merged together. Some ignored Draco; a few smiled and called out to him, and though he smiled back, he turned away from the naïve keenness in their eyes. They seemed to regard all of this as some sort of adventure; they didn't yet fully understand what joining the Order entailed. A few months ago nor had he, and by now he had the blood of a man on his hands.

So brooding, he turned a corner, and there was the Gryffindor entourage. There were the Weasleys, with Longbottom apparently stuck to Ginny; Hermione was somewhere in the front alongside Finnigan and Thomas; and a boy Draco now knew from the midnight sessions as Colin Creevey brought up the rear. In the middle of them all, a dark head of hair that refused to sit neatly bobbed, turning this way and that to keep up with a quiet, earnest discussion that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the anticipation Draco had seen from the other cliques.

Suddenly feeling awkward, Draco slowed, keeping a distance and letting others pass by in front of him, watching as some of them attached themselves to the Gryffindors. The dark head twisted about to greet the newcomers, and then a pair of brilliant green eyes found his, and Harry smiled. Draco's heartbeat quickened, and so must his feet have; within a few strides he was on the edges of the little crowd, near enough to hear what was going on and pretend that he was one of them, even though he was still too far from Harry to reach him. The group thinned out when they reached the gargoyle and gave the password, and for a second Draco felt warm fingers reach back and twine around his own. Then someone moved between the two of them again, and the connection was lost as they were swept upstairs on a tidal swell of human bodies.

As usual, most of the teaching staff were already inside the Headmaster's office, as well as one or two of the external members. Fawkes watched the flood of entering students from atop one of Dumbledore's cabinets, and Draco thought he heard the bird give a croon that sounded suspiciously like laughter as people jostled one another, trying to locate their friends and squeeze themselves into enough of a space to breathe freely. Dumbledore watched with a small smile from behind his desk.

They waited several more minutes for stragglers to arrive, whether through the door or via Floo. Lupin appeared in the middle of the fireplace and stepped into the room; Draco saw that he was accompanied by a black dog. He looked again at the eager young faces around him, and wondered how many of them still didn't know about Sirius Black.

The dog pricked its ears toward Harry and padded a few steps toward him, but Harry saw and wriggled away through the crowd. Lupin gave a low whistle and the dog turned back with a whine and a lowered tail.

Melchior was the last to arrive; he appeared amidst the flames just as Dumbledore was beginning to speak, and edged his way into the room with a curt apology. Dumbledore simply smiled and said, 'Congratulations on your appointment, Kenneth. I daresay they are keeping you busy at the Ministry.'

'Thank you, Dumbledore.' Draco wondered whether the man even tried to keep the smugness from his voice. 'Of course, things are very busy at the moment. I was really quite lucky to get away at all.'

He turned then, to gaze appraisingly at the others in the room as if he'd just realised they were there. 'My word,' he murmured, ignoring a squeak from Fawkes on high; 'You've been rather busy yourself, haven't you…?'

'Hardly,' the Headmaster said cheerfully. 'Whether or not they join the Order is entirely the students' choice. They come to my door; I merely open it for them.' His expression abruptly turned serious. 'And when they step inside, I make sure they are well aware of the choice they are making. What news have we?'

'Largely rumour, I'm afraid. There have been sightings around the country, but generally the entire Death Eater cohort seems to be lying very low. I'm deploying Aurors to investigate wherever there is a reported sighting, and also to areas that Voldemort has targeted before. We know that he wants Azkaban, but the giants are already guarding the piece of coastline that gives access to the island; I don't believe that there's any reason to waste manpower there.' Melchior sighed, and for the first time since Draco had met him, the air of smug superiority faltered long enough to give a hint of how tired he really was. 'It's not enough. We cannot predict where he will strike first, and there are so few Aurors able to move into action immediately. It's been too long. So many of them need to be re-trained…'

Moody's brusque voice issued from somewhere out of Draco's range of vision: 'It's a start. Won't take long to teach them to fight again. You don't forget too much of anything like that.'

Draco was sure he heard someone behind him snigger and mutter, 'Constant vigilance!' He gritted his teeth in irritation.

'Even so…' Melchior was saying, '…I'm beginning to be quite thankful that certain younger members defended their right to fight Voldemort at the last meeting. Once you have finished teaching them the Great Arts, Dumbledore…'

The entire teaching staff moved as one to object. The phoenix on the cabinet screeched over the noise, almost falling from his perch as he flapped his wings frantically.

'Fawkes,' Dumbledore said sharply, and somehow managed to silence the whole room with that word alone. He beckoned, and the phoenix swooped forward to settle upon his shoulder.

Dumbledore stroked the bird's feathers lovingly and said, apparently to no one in particular, 'I'm sorry. It's near his burning time; he always becomes agitated in the days beforehand.' He transferred his gaze back to Melchior. 'I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of the extra tuition, Kenneth. The aim is to give the children the skills to defend themselves, should they ever need to. If a student wishes to become an Auror when they are of age, and after they have passed the required examinations, the training will certainly stand them in good stead. However, I am sure that it is the intention of no one here to raise an underage army.'

There was a brief, heavy silence before Melchior nodded in concession. 'Of course. I beg your pardon.'

A hand rose hesitantly into the air ahead and to the right of Draco. The body it was attached to was largely obscured by those around it, but as the person began to speak, he identified it as Dean Thomas.

'I just wanted to say…on that note, sir…' having gained the room's attention, Thomas didn't seem to know what to do with it. Dumbledore only nodded encouragingly, though, and he ploughed on. 'Um…the training. It's really good that you're doing it and all, but…a few of us have been talking, and we wondered whether you could change some things. Like, when it's held. I know it's difficult to find a good time when we can all be there, but I have to tell you, staying up that late isn't going to do much to help us pass exams. Even mock ones,' he added darkly, and there were one or two mutters of agreement. 'And it's difficult, too, to keep track of where we're at when new people keep turning up and having to be taught things the rest of us learned weeks ago. I'm pretty sure it's difficult for the teachers to be taking this on with their jobs as well. I couldn't do it.'