Harry slowed his pace to a stroll as he drew near. He still had no idea what he was doing here, or what he was going to say if anyone should question him. 

Many of the windows were brightly lit. The front door stood open behind a screen. On the lawn, four children were playing an energetic form of croquet that seemed primarily to consist of whacking the painted balls with more mayhem than aim. All of them were young, the oldest perhaps seven. A playpen had been erected under a spreading tree, and a fat-bottomed toddler sat within, chewing on a stuffed bear. Each and every one of the children had curly yellow hair, snub noses, freckles, and overbites. 

A woman, very obviously their mother, appeared on the stoop. A linen kerchief was tied over her hair, and she wore an apron over a maternity smock. "Almost supper time," she announced. "Let's put away the toys and wash up, shall we?"

A chorus of protests came from the croquet-playing quartet, as they begged for "just five more minutes."

Thinking that this was almost what the Weasley family might have been like several years ago, Harry smiled. It wasn't without a touch of regret, because seeing any happy family reminded him that he'd never had a chance to know his own. He would never know what it was like to have brothers or sisters, a loving mother calling him in for suppertime, a father to take him aside for man-to-man talks. 

He picked up his pace. It had been dumb to come here. What had he been expecting, anyway? To talk to Jane? What was he going to do, walk up to the door and knock and ask if she was in? The vicar would recognize him straightaway, and demand an answer from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia as to why their disreputable nephew had the nerve to come 'round to his house. 

It was just that he was so starved for wizard company. He hated being cut off from the world in which he truly belonged. Even though it was only for a few weeks, he found it increasingly unbearable. Especially now. 

Mrs. Kirkallen rounded up her children and herded them inside, lugging the toddler on her hip. Harry watched them go, rather wistfully, then turned the corner that would take him alongside the parsonage. It would have been quicker to take a shortcut through the greenbelt and the cemetery, but a graveyard – any graveyard – was the last place he wanted to be. 

A sudden raised voice stopped him in his tracks. 

"I told you, I didn't do anything wrong!"

Jane. He was sure of it. 

He'd been passing the high fence that bordered the backyard, and the gaps between the planks showed him narrow slices of the rear of the house. The back door burst open, and Jane stormed out. She had changed into jeans and a rose-colored blouse, and looked both furious and on the verge of tears. 

The vicar was close on her heels, face flushed, eyes snapping with angry sparks. 

"I wasn't finished talking to you, young lady. How dare you turn your back on me when I'm speaking to you!"

"Yelling at me, more like," Jane retorted. She had tied her hair back in a ponytail. Her white cardigan was on but unbuttoned, flaring out to either side of her like wings as she spun toward the vicar. "I told you, he didn't want to walk me all the way home."

"You must have done something, said something, offended him somehow. And I won't stand for that sort of behavior. It was very good of the Dursleys to invite you over. Fine way to repay their courtesy! What did you say to their son?"

"Nothing!"

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that a well-bred young man like that would leave you to walk home on your own?"

"It's the truth."

Harry, who knew that Dudley rarely liked to walk anyplace that didn't have either a food source or someone to beat up as the destination, could certainly believe it. He suspected that Uncle Vernon's ten-pound note had not gone toward ice creams, either. 

"I'm warning you, Jane," the vicar said. "The rest of us happen to like it here. A beautiful house in a nice neighborhood, good schools, a prosperous congregation … I won't have you stirring up trouble."

"How many times do I have to say it? I didn't!"

"You'll be lucky if the Dursleys ever invite you back. Or anyone else, for that matter, once word of your rudeness gets about."

"Who said I wanted to go to tea there in the first place?"

"This isn't about what you want!" he spat. "As long as you're living under my roof, you will conduct yourself like a decent young lady. We've been over this and over this, Jane, and somehow it never seems to get through to you. When you receive an invitation, you accept it politely and you be a proper guest. We agreed when we moved here that there would be no more of your standoffishness. No more hiding away in your room with those … those books!"

"I need to –"

"You need to listen to me and mind me!" He thrust a finger in her face. "It's getting harder and harder to tolerate your willfulness. If this is the sort of thing they teach you at that school, maybe I was wrong to ever let you go in the first place. Maybe I shouldn't send you back."

Jane had gone pale. Harry, meanwhile, had forgotten all about passing by and was pressed to the fence as if glued there, his eye up against one of the cracks in the boards. 

"I won't leave Hogwarts," she said in a hollow whisper. "I won't."

"You will if I say you will," he said. "Never forget that in the eyes of the law, at least, I am still your father. I only agreed to let you go because –"

"Because it would get me away from your new wife and her litter," Jane said.

The vicar's hand went up, poised to slap her face. Harry had hold of his wand without remembering when he'd grabbed it. But Jane never budged, and the blow never fell. 

"I let you go to that school because your mother had wanted you to," Vicar Kirkallen said, lowering his hand. "Because I thought it would help you get yourself under control. And, yes, perhaps part of it was to help keep peace in the rest of the family."

"They're no family of mine. She hates me, and you know it. She can hardly sleep at night when I'm around holidays, thinking that I'm going to hex you all in your beds or turn her brats into toads or something."

"That's quite enough, Jane. I won't be spoken to in this manner." He seemed to be struggling manfully to keep from shouting, or from raising that hand again. "We've been most tolerant of your peculiarities."

The look she gave him was bitter and venomous.

"I don't think you understand my position. I am a vicar, a man of the cloth. Do you have any idea of the damage it would do my reputation to have it found out I've got a witch living under my roof?"

"Who says I want to live under your roof? I can handle myself. I'll be fine on my own."

"Jane, don't be a fool. You're fifteen years old. You're still my responsibility, whether either of us likes it or not. The last thing I'm about to do is turn you loose on the streets."

"I suppose that would damage your reputation, too," she said. 

"All I ask is that you try to behave in an appropriate manner," he said. "I hardly think that's so unreasonable of me."

Her shoulders slumped. "Will you tell me one thing?"

"What's that?"

"Why did you keep me after she died?"

"How can you even ask? What was I going to do, send you to an orphanage? That would hardly look good, now, would it?"

"Oh," Jane said. "Oh, yes, of course, how stupid of me. It's all about your reputation. That's why you married her, isn't it? Because it might look bad if you broke the engagement without telling anyone why. And you couldn't tell anyone why, could you? Because that would look bad, too."

"Jane," the vicar said warningly. 

She held up her hands. "All right. But I don't want to be sent around to any more tea parties."

"It's your duty. We need to try to fit into this community, to make friends, to get along with people."

"They aren't my kind of people."

"We can be thankful for that," the vicar said. "You'd do well to associate with fine upstanding citizens like the Dursleys. Well, perhaps not that nephew of theirs –"

At this, Jane uttered a short laugh.

"Do you find something amusing, Jane?" The vicar's eyes narrowed. "You had best not be thinking about that Potter boy. From what I've heard, he's been an endless trial to his poor aunt and uncle."

"Don't let it worry you," Jane said. "I'm sure I'm the last person Harry Potter would be interested in."

Harry, still glued to the fence, blinked in surprise at the bitter self-loathing he heard in her tone. 

The vicar sighed. "Jane, I do only want what's best for you. What's best for all of us. And I know that when a girl gets to be a certain age, she might find herself drawn to the wrong sort of boys. Rebels, troublemakers, criminals and the like. It always ends badly, and those girls soon come to realize that they're far better off with respectable boys, the ones who might not be daring and dangerous and good-looking, but who will be solid, dependable, and trustworthy."

It was hard to say which bemused Harry more, hearing himself inadvertently described as "daring, dangerous and good-looking," or hearing Dudley described as the trustworthy, respectable type. At this very moment, Dudley and his gang were probably smoking, shoplifting, getting an adult to buy them beer, beating up on younger kids, or any combination thereof. 

"Can we please be done talking about this?" Jane pleaded. "It's nothing like that at all. Dudley Dursley … he just didn't like me, all right? He didn't want to walk me all the way back here. Why is that such a catastrophe? It doesn't have anything to do with his cousin, or with anything I said."

The back door opened, and Mrs. Kirkallen peeked out, blonde curls in a halo around her freckled face. "Gerald? Supper is on the table. I need you to carve the roast." 

"I'll be right there," he said.

"Jane?" There was a definite lack of fondness in Mrs. Kirkallen's tone as she addressed the girl. "Are you joining us for supper?"

"I'm not hungry."

A small, relieved smile dimpled Mrs. Kirkallen's chipmunk cheeks. "Well, all right, then." She retreated, and closed the door. 

"I wish you'd try harder," the vicar said.

"It's not just me …" Jane trailed off, and looked at the ground, shaking her head. 

She stood like that while the vicar went back into the house. Then, when the door had shut firmly behind him, she blew out a frustrated exhalation of breath. 

"Two more years," she said to herself. "Just two more years, I'll be of age, I can get out of here."

That was a sentiment with which Harry could absolutely sympathize. It was only one more year for him, until by the standards of the wizarding community, he'd be an adult, able to take the test to get his Apparating license. His worst unspoken dread was that even after he was seventeen, Dumbledore would still try to insist that Harry return annually to Privet Drive. 

Jane spared one final glance at the house, then shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans and headed for a gate in the backyard fence. It creaked, and she disappeared through it, into the greenbelt on the other side of the property. 

Harry debated inwardly, then went after her. It was a crazy idea, reckless, impetuous. But what was he supposed to do? Ignore what had just happened? Forget what he'd just heard? 

Had Hermione been here, she probably would have sniffed and gone on about his "saving-people thing." And, truth be told, he had been ready to intervene if it looked like the vicar really had been about to slap Jane. He couldn't stand around and watch a girl get hit. No true Gryffindor could, in good conscience. 

The greenbelt was not very thick. Nor was it very dense. The trees were widely spaced, with paths curving and winding among the lower ground-covering bushes. As woods went, it was not about to put the Forbidden Forest out of business anytime soon. 

But, with the sun having fully set, and the leading edge of a fat silvery moon just beginning to rise, it was fairly gloomy under the leafy canopy. He could see a steady gleam ahead. It was the unmistakable glow of a wand-light. 

Harry picked his way, trying to be quiet as his feet crunched and rustled on twigs and underbrush. He didn't bring out his own wand and light it, but used the glow ahead of him to find his way down a slope, and into a clearing. A little brook bubbled through this clearing, chuckling over a bed of rocks. He saw the fleet shadow of a cat dart past, a hint of eerie eyes reflecting at him and then gone. 

One of the trees was stout, gnarled, and old. Someone had built a wooden platform in the fork of its lowest branches, built it many years ago judging by the weather-worn boards and the rusty heads of the nails. Other boards had been nailed to the tree trunk to form a crude ladder, these rungs now askew or broken in long splintery cracks. 

The wand light was coming from up there. Harry could see a dangling pair of jeans-clad legs and sneakered feet on the far side of the platform. 

He tiptoed over to the tree and pulled on one of the board rungs, testing it. The board wiggled but held, so Harry started the climb. He was halfway up when one of the rusty nails pulled free with a squalling noise, and the rung fell away beneath his right foot. 

A muffled curse popped out of his mouth. He caught at a branch to stop himself plunging all the way back to earth. Flakes of bark sifted down into his hair. The bough groaned and swayed. 

"Who's there?"

Jane Kirkallen stuck her head over the edge of the platform, ponytail hanging down over one shoulder. She had doused the wand light, but there was enough ambient moonlight from the just-risen full moon to let her recognize Harry, and she gasped. 

"Hi," Harry said, very aware of the undignified nature of his pose. "Don't suppose you've got any iced pumpkin juice up there?"

Her throat worked as she swallowed, and when she tried to reply, only a choked stammer came out. 

"Guess that's a no," Harry said. He hauled his right foot to the next ladder rung. "That's a shame. I miss pumpkin juice over the summer, don't you?"

She scrambled backward. Her chest was hitching, and her mouth opened and closed a few times. 

Harry raked bark chips out of his hair and offered what he hoped was a disarming grin.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in a breathless rush. 

"I found your wand in your cardigan pocket this afternoon at tea. I wanted to talk to you."

"You … you followed me?"

"Saw you leaving the parsonage," Harry said, not wanting to tell her that he'd overheard her argument with the vicar. "Can I come up?"

"You really shouldn't be here," she said. "Or I shouldn't."

"Yeah. But I am." He boosted himself up onto the platform. "You didn't know I lived with the Dursleys, did you?"

"No. When you walked in … I knew who you were, of course – who doesn't? – but I never expected … they're your family?"

"If you can call it that. Aunt Petunia was my mother's sister."

Silence spun out between them. Harry, now that he was here, didn't really know what to say. "So, um … you'll be starting fifth year?"

She nodded. "I hear it's rough, what with preparing for the O.W.L.s."

"Yeah, no kidding. I never had so much homework."

He wanted to talk about real things. Things that mattered. Not empty school-stuff. He wanted to ask her what she thought about Voldemort and the imprisoned Death Eaters, what she reckoned had ever happened to Dolores Umbridge, where she stood in the war that the Order seemed to believe was coming.

Beside him, shooting him sideways glances, Jane seemed really nervous. 

Not that this was anything new to Harry. In his second year, people had thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, going around petrifying his enemies. In his third year, his habit of passing out when dementors came near had led people to think he was touched in the head. In his fifth year, everyone had thought he was an attention-seeking lunatic. He had been vindicated on every account, but he was getting dismayingly accustomed to being regarded with that wary caution. 

"I'm not a nutter," he said to Jane. 

"I didn't say you were."

"Yeah, but you were thinking it."

"No, I wasn't. I know you're not crazy." Her smile was hard-edged, almost cynical. "Though, after everything you've been through, you should be."

"Thanks."

"Anybody else probably would have cracked."

"I just did what I had to do," he said. 

"And a good thing you did," she said. "It was really brave. Coming out with it like that, telling the world the truth about You-Know-Who and his followers. Now we know who they are. Death Eaters. You saw them. You heard their names."

"That's right," Harry said, hearing something in her tone that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle. "Most of them are in Azkaban." For now, he thought but didn't say, and wondered if Jane would say it for him. 

She didn't. "A lot of their children go to Hogwarts."

"Sure," Harry said, thinking of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. And some other boy, too … Nott, his name was. "But what's it to you?" 

"Death Eaters killed my mother."

"Oh. Hey, sorry, I didn't know."

"Nobody does. It wasn't like they used Avada Kedavra on her, but they killed her, all the same."

"That's why you live with your dad?" Harry asked. "I bet it's pretty hard, him being not only a Muggle but a vicar."

"My mother gave up wizarding life to marry him," Jane said. "She was from an old family, purebloods for hundreds of years. She was the last one, and she threw it all away because she fell in love with a Muggle. I don't know if that was romantic or just plain stupid."

"Could be either," Harry said after pondering it. He looked down at the brook, rippling silver in the moonlight, and saw the shadow of the cat again. It was a shaggy calico that resembled Mrs. Figg's cat Aristotle. "She must have loved him a lot."

"For all the good it did her. I guess he was different then. Before."

"When she was still alive, you mean?"

"Too many of us – kids, I mean, who weren't old enough to remember what it was like – don't know what those people are capable of," she said, ignoring his question. "What they're really capable of. Just how evil they can truly be. That's why I think it's great that you were teaching people how to defend themselves. They still won't know, not until they're right in the middle of it, but at least they'll have some idea what to do."

"You know about the D.A.?"

"I heard some other girls talking about it," Jane said. "Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood. They were in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and didn't know I was there. That's how I found out about your big secret meeting at the Hog's Head."

"Some secret meeting," Harry said dryly. "So secret that everybody knew about it. But why didn't you come? It sounds like you were interested."

She laughed. "I was at that meeting."

"You were?" Harry cast his mind back over the meetings, over the list that Hermione had made everyone sign. "I … I don't remember …"

"Well, I wasn't in the Hog's Head. I was listening at the window."

"You should have come in."

Her laughter turned to a sigh. "I didn't think I'd be welcome."

"What? Why not?"

There was a sudden sharp snap, like a whipcrack. Harry knew that noise, the sound of someone Apparating or Disapparating. 

A shapeless pile of rags appeared below the treehouse, wafting up a mixed odor of onions and stale beer. The rags parted, and bloodshot eyes squinted up out of a scraggle-bearded, grimy face. 

"'Ere 'e is! Up the tree, ain't 'e?"

"Mundungus?" 

Before Harry could even begin to react, he heard another whipcrack, and another. These both came from behind him on the platform. He heard the solid clump of wood on wood, and a strong hand closed on the collar of his shirt. He was yanked backward and upright, emitting a startled bleat. 

"What in hell d'you think you're doing, boy?" growled the unmistakable gravel voice of Mad-Eye Moody in Harry's ear. 

Across from him, Tonks had appeared, looking like she was on her way to a rave with a starched spray of pure silver hair, a leather jacket covered with zippers, knee-high boots, fishnet tights, and a plaid vinyl miniskirt. She pointed her wand at the shocked Jane Kirkallen, whose own hand was frozen inches from the pocket of her cardigan. 

"Don't do it, girly," Tonks advised. 

"Toldja I'd find him," Mundungus Fletcher crowed from the base of the tree. "Had to make up for that little slip-up of mine last year, didn't I? And here he is."

"Fine, Dung, great, now shut it," Tonks said.

"Hey!" Harry struggled. "What's going on?"

Moody gave him a shake that rattled his teeth in his head. "Time you learned to keep your wand in your pants, son!"

"You told me not to!" Harry protested, now thoroughly confused. "You told me wizards could lose their buttocks that way."

"As for what's going on," said Tonks, "that's what we'd like to know, but you can explain later. Come on, Mad-Eye. Let's get him home before Molly gets her knickers in any worse a knot, or his auntie has a heart attack."

"What? Home? You mean Privet Drive? Mrs. Weasley is there? With Aunt Petunia?"

"Harry, who are these --?" Jane began.

"That's enough out of you, missy!" roared Moody, his oversized electric-blue eye rolling wildly in its socket to glare at Jane. 

"She didn't do anything!" Harry said. "We were just –"

"Explain later," Tonks repeated, and stuck two fingers in her mouth to emit a piercing whistle. A broomstick with no one on it descended of its own accord to hover at the edge of the platform. "On you go, Harry."

"But – but I –"

"On you go."

"As for you," Moody said to Jane, who flinched back from that ferocious blue eye, "I'd suggest you get yourself home and count yourself lucky we're letting you."

"Hey!" Harry twisted away from Moody's grasp. "Don't talk to her like that!"

"Harry, get on," Tonks ordered. 

"You'd better go," Jane said.

"Yes, he'd better!" Moody's eye whirled from her to Harry to her again. "I think you've done enough damage for one night, missy!"

"She hasn't done any damage," Harry argued. 

"Buttocks on the broom, Harry, or you really might lose one," Tonks said, lifting her wand. "We don't have time for this."

It crossed his mind to defy them further, to make them force him. A wrathful indignation had welled up inside him. He was still being watched, still being monitored, and had they bothered to let him know? Keeping track of his every move – that had been Mrs. Figgs' cat Aristotle, he was sure of it now – and busting in on him like this when he hadn't done anything wrong … Dumbledore was behind this, Dumbledore, who evidently still thought that Harry couldn't look after himself. 

But he knew full well that if he pushed them, they would force him. Better to go with at least some of his dignity intact. 

"Sorry about this," he said to Jane, as he swung his leg over the broom handle. 

"You two Apparate and I'll escort him back," Tonks said, getting on behind Harry. 

It was disconcerting; he had ridden double and even triple on a hippogriff but never ridden two on a broom before. Tonks was crowded close against his back. He could feel her fishnet-clad knees digging into his legs. She had a firm grip on his belt, either to hold on or to make sure he didn't try to get away. 

The broom rose in a sudden smooth acceleration. It was no Firebolt, just Tonks' old Comet Two-Sixty, but it was the first time Harry had been on a broom in weeks. Despite his indignation and confusion, he relished the soaring sensation. 

They sped up through the canopy, shedding a shower of leaves in their wake. Harry glanced back to see first Mundungus Fletcher and then Mad-Eye Moody Disapparate, leaving a bewildered Jane alone at the tree. 

"Can you tell me what the bloody hell is going on?" he shouted above the rush of the wind. 

"Simple," Tonks said. "Ron Weasley got your letter. Asked his sister who Jane Kirkallen was, right at the supper table. Ginny Weasley wanted to know why. He said your aunt and uncle were having her over for tea. Ginny asked how come the Dursleys were having a Slytherin girl over for tea, and Molly Weasley hit the ceiling."

Harry felt like he'd just taken a Bludger to the gut. "A … a what?"

"A Slytherin girl," Tonks said. "So Molly was off in a flash to check on you, and what should she find but that you weren't at home? She called in the Order, sure that you'd been lured, tricked, trapped and disemboweled by now, and we came looking for you."

"Jane … is in … Slytherin?" 

But of course she was. He could place her, now. Her dark ponytail and watchful eyes, at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall. Not one of Pansy Parkinson's crowd, but always there, on the fringes. Never saying much. Listening. Taking it all in. 

No wonder she'd said she wouldn't have been welcome at that D.A. meeting! If a Slytherin, any Slytherin, had poked a head in, the entire crowd would have been up in arms, or else so terrified of being found out by Dolores Umbridge that they never would have agreed to Hermione's plan.

"But she said her mother was killed by Death Eaters," Harry said, as they flew over Magnolia Crescent toward Privet Drive. "How can she be a Slytherin?"

Tonks didn't answer, and dull heat washed into Harry's face. 

"She lied to me?"

"Harry, look, I don't know, all right?" But she sounded evasive.

"You think I was suckered. That's what Hermione's going to say, too, isn't it? That Harry-the-Hero went and ran into some damsel in distress, and of course he had to break both legs rushing to save the damn day."

"I didn't say anything like that," Tonks said. 

"And you'll probably say that Jane staged the whole thing. That she knew I was Dudley's cousin when she set up this tea date, and made sure to leave her wand in her sweater pocket so I'd find it. Because once I knew she was a witch, I'd have to follow her and talk to her, right? And then she could give me her big sob story, and I'd just eat it up. What then? She'd Stun me, and turn me over to Voldemort's supporters?"

Tonks winced. He couldn't see it, as she was behind him, but he felt it in the way her fingers clenched on his sides, and heard it in her hissing intake of breath. "Harry, cool down."

"You know, Tonks, I'm not an idiot, okay? And I'm getting sick of having everybody treat me like I'm a baby. I don't need a nursemaid, I don't need bodyguards. I can handle myself."

"No argument from me."

"No argument from you, but you barge in on me like that?"

"We just want to keep you safe, Harry."

"Yeah. Right. Terrific. Keep me safe, keep me in the dark. Why not just lock me up in the damned Department of Mysteries? Oh, but wait! That place isn't safe either, is it? How about some vault at Gringotts? Nope, that's no good; they can break in there, too. Hogwarts? Sure, why not Hogwarts, just because three or four different people have damn near killed me there, too … or maybe, here's a thought, how about this … you could all just for God's sake trust me for a change!"

The broom went into a steep dive, cutting off his tirade. The next thing he knew, they were hovering beside his open bedroom window. Hedwig was there on her perch, preening and doing her best to look lofty and above all the chaos downstairs. 

And raging it was … by the sounds of it, Uncle Vernon was close to blowing his top as he tried to order Moody, Mundungus, and Mrs. Weasley out of his house. Aunt Petunia was shrilly wailing about what the neighbors would think. And Mrs. Weasley was scolding them both about not caring one whit for Harry's well-being. 

"Look, Harry," Tonks said as they dismounted and clambered through the window. "Nobody thinks you're a baby, all right? You've proved yourself over and over again."

"Save it, Tonks," he snapped. He felt bad immediately, but it was out. 

Tonks just shrugged. "Okay."

Her casual acceptance of his anger stung him. He wanted to apologize. But he was too annoyed to bother, and stormed downstairs almost looking forward to the fight he knew he was about to have. 

**

Continued in Chapter Four: Chaos and Complications.