"—better care of him!" Molly Weasley cried. "That you could be his own flesh and blood, and live with him for all these years, and not know what a special, important boy he is –"

"—don't know who you think you are coming into my home and criticizing how I handle my family!" Aunt Petunia retorted, her face so red it looked like she might burst into flames at any second. "And if those wild orangutans of yours are any example, I hardly see how you're in any position to –"

"—been through so much, and a little kindness from his own kin shouldn't be too much to –"

"—expect you to know anything about decent people –"

"—did you call my children?"

"—wanted to take him in the first place, and how's he repaid us, the ungrateful –"

They were both so loud that they could barely hear each other. All things considered, that was probably for the best. 

Uncle Vernon was blustering, acting like he knew he should intervene but didn't dare get between them for fear of having them both turn their female wrath squarely upon him. 

Mad-Eye Moody's eye revolved as Harry came in, as if it had been tracking his progress through the house. He nodded in brusque satisfaction. 

Mundungus Fletcher seemed to be taking advantage of the distraction to rummage through a sideboard, though when he went to pocket something, Tonks strode hastily to him – managing to stumble over only a single footstool on the way – and smacked the back of his hand smartly with her wand. 

Mrs. Weasley saw Harry and broke off her tirade, rushing across the room to sweep him into a hug. She smelled of baking, of apples and cinnamon and crumbly golden crust. No sooner had she hugged him than she held him at arm's length and gave him a shake. 

"Harry, dear … oh, Harry, what were you thinking?"

"What have you told them?" he asked urgently, as it flashed into his mind that if Mrs. Weasley had mentioned Jane's name, this would go from bad to disastrous. 

"Thank goodness you're all right," she said, patting him all over like she was checking for playground injuries on a little boy. "He is all right, isn't he, Tonks?"

"Fine and dandy," Tonks said. 

"Here, now," sputtered Uncle Vernon. "I demand to know …" he glanced hastily at Moody. "Ahem … er … I should like to know what all this is about."

"What this is all about is that we're taking Harry with us," Mrs. Weasley said. "Right now, tonight, someplace where he can be safe."

"What have you done?" Aunt Petunia nearly shrieked, rounding on him. "What is it this time? What have you brought on us? Where's Dudley? What have you done with Dudley?"

"Nothing," Harry said.

"A likely story," Uncle Vernon said. "You've come for the boy, fine. Good. Take him and go."

"Oh, it's always that, isn't it?" Aunt Petunia huffed. "You people come in here whenever you please, disrupt my home and our lives … you take him away, you bring him back, and we've no say in any of it, have we? When we want him to go, it's 'remember your promise, Petunia!' bellowing out of that awful fiery letter, but when you want to come and fetch him, without a word of explanation, we're just to sit back and say nothing?"

"What do you care?" Harry asked. "You want me to go. You never wanted me here in the first place, and believe me, I'd rather live anywhere else. What promise did you make, anyway? What did Dumbledore tell you? What could he hold over you that was enough to make you take me in?"

Moody turned toward Aunt Petunia. His voice was low and had a quality to it like stones grinding together. "Do you really want an explanation? I'd be happy to give you one." 

The red drained from her face, leaving chalk-white. But she was not entirely cowed, even though Uncle Vernon was shaking his head at her and waving his hands in palms-out gestures of negation. 

"I think I have a right to know if my family is in danger," Aunt Petunia said. "If my son is in danger."

"You can stand there and say that," gasped Mrs. Weasley. "After you let that –"

"Molly," Tonks muttered warningly. 

"Your boy's in no danger he hasn't brought on himself," Moody said, after sending his eye spinning in a complete rotation. "'Course, that leaves him a lot of leeway, the porky little thug."

"Now, sir, just you –" began Uncle Vernon. His words cut off as he found himself looking cross-eyed at the tip of Moody's wand, which was leveled half an inch from the end of his nose. "That is … I mean to say …"

"Harry, dear, let's get your things. I'll help you pack." Mrs. Weasley hustled him out of the room and back upstairs. 

"You didn't tell them about Jane, did you?" Harry asked once they were out of earshot. 

"Good heavens, Harry, I hope you're not sticking up for that girl."

"Mrs. Weasley, I think … I think everybody's overreacting." 

He might have been able to vent his anger at Tonks, but he couldn't bring himself to yell at Ron's mum. Mrs. Weasley had always been so nice to him, and had given him his first and only glimpses of motherly affection. He knew that she earnestly cared about him, and considered him almost like one of her many sons. Last summer, when she'd been confronting a boggart, the shape-changing specter had even assumed the form of dead Harry while taunting Mrs. Weasley with all of her worst fears. 

"I'm so glad we got here in time. Harry, you must learn to be more careful."

"I am careful!"

"I know you are, dear, but none of us would ever forgive ourselves if anything happened to you."

"Nothing did."

"That aunt of yours should be more choosy as to who she invites to tea." Mrs. Weasley surveyed Harry's room, then waved her wand at the closet. Clothes began to float through the air toward his trunk, neatly folding themselves as they went.

"She didn't know," Harry said, hardly believing he was defending Aunt Petunia. "Neither did I."

"Don't you find it even a little suspicious that of all the people who could have come to tea, it would be a witch? A Slytherin witch?"

"Wait a minute," Harry said. "I couldn't have been in danger, could I? That spell, the one Dumbledore goes on about all the time, is supposed to protect me, right?"

"You-Know-Who certainly couldn't have come to tea, if that's what you're saying," Mrs. Weasley said, as Harry's schoolbooks followed his clothes into the trunk. "You're safe from him as long as you're here. From him. While you're here. If that girl had led you out someplace where the Death-Eaters could have gotten to you …"

"I didn't even leave with Jane. Dudley left with Jane."

"But you followed. You went to her. It could have been a trap."

"Everybody's been listening too much to Professor Moody," Harry grumbled. "I'm all right, you know. She might be okay."

Mrs. Weasley smiled at him, a sort of "oh, you poor naïve boy" smile. "All we knew, Harry dear, was that you'd had a Slytherin in your house, and then that you'd gone out. We had to assume the worst. These are dark times."

"You mean that every time I even talk to someone who might be suspicious, you're all going to come charging in here like the cavalry?"

"We won't need to," she said, and chucked him fondly under the chin. "Because you'll be home and safe with us."

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but what if I don't want to go?"

She looked shocked. Then hurt. "Oh. Oh, my. I'm so sorry, Harry dear. I thought you liked visiting us. We …"

"I didn't mean it that way," he said. "I just … I … never mind. But aren't we going to Grimmauld Place?"

Her hurt look vanished, to be replaced by something strange that he couldn't quite read. "No, dear. The Burrow."

"Is that headquarters for the Order now? What happened to Sirius' house? Did Narcissa Malfoy take it over?"

"I'll let Remus Lupin tell you about that," she said. "It's … well, dear, it's complicated. Now, you're all packed. Do you have the Portkey that Ron sent you? Use that, carry Hedwig, and I'll see to it that your trunk gets there."

"What about the Dursleys?"

"Moody and Tonks can handle them."

"Did you tell them about Jane?"

"Harry, dear, I do hope you're not trying to protect that girl."

"But did you?"

"No. Statutes of Secrecy, you know."

"You mean, you can't tell Muggles that someone is a wizard?"

"That's right. Only the Department of Muggle Relations can do that. Well, and it's permissible when it's just talk among relatives, something like that. So, you could tell them."

"No, thanks," Harry said.

Downstairs, it had gotten quiet again, and now Harry could hear the clunk of Moody's foot coming down the hall toward his room. He also heard a bang and a tinkle of glass, as Tonks bumped into one of the framed photos of Dudley and knocked it off the wall. 

"Stupid of me," Tonks said, rubbing her shoulder as she came in. "I was expecting he'd call out and warn me, or move to another portrait if I got too close."

"I sent Fletcher on ahead," Moody said, his eye spinning to take in Harry's room. "The Muggles are hushed up for now. Ready to go, son?"

"I suppose."

"Wotcher, Harry, don't get too excited or you'll pop a blood vessel," Tonks said. "Didn't forget the Firebolt, did you? No? Excellent."

"So we're not going to Grimmauld Place?" Harry asked. "Has the Order vacated it?"

"Who told you that?" Moody peered at him. 

"No one. I guessed. With Sirius … gone and all. Unless it went to Tonks?" he added hopefully, glancing over at her where she stood poised in the window with her Comet in her hand. 

Tonks shook her head. "Not me, Harry. My mother was disowned long before I was even born. There's no way I'd inherit so much as a Knut from the Black fortune."

"Who, then? What's going to happen to the house?"

"It's complicated," Moody said, echoing what Mrs. Weasley had told Harry just a few minutes before. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"You first, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said. "Use the Portkey. Alastor and I will be right behind you. And Tonks will be along once she's checked in at the Ministry."

He felt like there was more he should ask, and press them for answers, but this wasn't the best time or place. Grudgingly, he cradled Hedwig's cage in one arm and then opened the wooden box Ron had sent him. He touched the Portkey. 

There was a sudden hard tug in the vicinity of his midsection, as if he'd been snared by a giant hook and yanked violently forward. His feet flailed in a turbulent nothingness. Before his senses had time to even try and adjust, he was thrust abruptly back into reality with a jolt. Hedwig's cage swung crazily at the end of his arm. 

He was outside the Burrow, and the shape of the house rose against the starry night sky like a teetering wooden gantry. The smells of long grass, wildflowers, and Mrs. Weasley's cooking wafted around him. Many of the windows were aglow, and the moment after Harry hit the ground, the front door slammed open and out rushed Mr. Weasley, with Ron and Ginny hot on his heels. 

"Harry!" Mr. Weasley caught him as he staggered for balance, and handed Hedwig's cage to Ginny. "Got you, steady now, there we are. Molly's just on her way, according to the clock –"

With a sharp pop, Mrs. Weasley appeared and smoothed her fluffy red-orange curls. Harry's trunk dropped out of thin air and landed beside her. 

Another pop heralded the arrival of Moody, who scowled around at what, to him, must have been the appalling lack of defenses. No stone walls, no wrought-iron fences, no moat, no crocodiles, no sparkling magical wards. Just the Burrow, with gnomes running amok in the back garden. The Burrow, seeming strangely empty even from outside, because Fred and George were gone. 

For a moment, no one said anything. Ron shuffled his feet and threw Harry a tentative, awkward grin. Ginny's look was frank and unapologetic. 

Mrs. Weasley clapped her hands briskly. Moody whirled at the loud sound, wand in hand, and was probably an eyeblink from jinxing somebody before he realized that the loud sound had not been an enemy Apparating into their midst. 

"Well!" she said. "Who's hungry?"

"Starved," Mr. Weasley said. 

"Where's Mundungus got to?" Mrs. Weasley's nose wrinkled. She hadn't liked having Mundungus Fletcher as a guest even in someone else's home, let alone her own. 

"Sent him to report to Dumbledore," Mr. Weasley replied. 

"Where's Lupin?" Harry asked. 

"Off," Ron said, and jerked his chin skyward. "Full moon."

"Right."

As if to underscore the point, a far-away mournful howl drifted to them on the wind. 

"I'll get this inside," Mr. Weasley said, pointing his wand at Harry's trunk. 

"You … um … you can room with me, if you want," Ron said. "Or there's plenty of space, if you'd rather be by yourself. We've got a couple of empty bedrooms."

Harry looked at Ron. Their last few days of school had been tense, with all of them who'd gone to the Ministry of Magic that horrible night needing time to recover from their injuries and try to wrap their minds around everything they'd seen, and done. Harry, most of all, hadn't wanted to spend time with anybody. He had been too busy grieving for Sirius, and blaming himself for what had happened. For nearly getting his friends killed as well as his godfather. 

It had been better for a little while. On the train, mostly, when the D.A. had taken care of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. But once Harry had gotten back to Privet Drive, with nothing to do but brood and think and remember and regret, he'd noticed his letters getting shorter, and more time passing before he sent each new missive. 

Now, standing here looking at Ron – lanky, freckled Ron, with his red hair and his long, horsy face – Harry wasn't sure how he felt or what he wanted. He could tell what Ron wanted, though. A wistful hope was shining in Ron's eyes, the hope that things could be back to normal now. 

Easy for him to think. Ron had come through it all right, once he'd gotten over his encounter with that creepy green brain-thing. Ron hadn't lost the closest person he had to family. Ron hadn't led that expedition. 

Nothing could ever be back to normal. Harry didn't even know what normal was. Not his life, that was for sure. 
But he relented. "Your room, if you don't mind," he said. 

Ron's grin returned. "Great!" 

Ginny followed them, still lugging Hedwig's cage. Ron's room was near the top of the house, its walls covered with posters of the Chudley Cannons, Ron's favorite Quidditch team. Ron's books were piled on his desk. His broom, a Cleansweep that had carried Gryffindor to victory last year, hung on hooks above the bed. 

Pigwidgeon let out a delighted hooting trill and zoomed in complex figure-8's around their heads. Hedwig clicked her beak and ruffled her feathers, and if Harry could have read her mind, he guessed she'd be wondering what she had done to deserve this. 

"Push off already," Ron said, taking Hedwig's cage from Ginny and setting it on a table by the window.

"You can't keep shoving me around, Ronald," Ginny said, jutting her chin at him defiantly. "It's only the two of us, now, so no more of that baby-sister-gets-left-out rubbish. I'm Harry's friend, too. Aren't I?" she added, glancing at Harry. 

"Yeah, of course," he said. "Besides, I wanted to talk to you."

"So there," Ginny said to Ron. 

"What do you know about Jane?" Harry asked. 

"What's there to know?" Ron countered. "She's Slytherin, isn't she?"

"I wasn't asking you."

"She's in my year," Ginny said, sitting on the braided rag rug on the floor at the foot of Ron's bed and folding her legs beneath herself in some strange contorted pose. "As Slytherins go, I guess she's not that bad."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked. 

"Well, there's Devonna Stormdark, whose family is just as aristocratic and snobby a bunch of purebloods as the Malfoys. And Tiberius Flint … you remember Marcus Flint, I bet, don't you Harry."

Harry did, and not fondly either. "Slytherin captain. I think he was held back a year, wasn't he?"

"See, most of them are what I'd call typical Slytherins. Torra Todd, Nadine Zellis, Mordred Montressor –"

"With a name like Mordred, what do you expect?" Ron said. 

"They're all horrible," Ginny continued. "Cheating on exams, bullying people, causing trouble. Jane Kirkallen isn't that bad. Comparatively, I mean. She's quiet. Hangs back. Isn't ever right there in the thick of things, but, Harry, she's still always there to watch. Soaking it up like a sponge. There's something in her eyes. And she gets this weird little smile … it'd make your skin crawl."

"That doesn't sound like the Jane I met. Besides, what is a vicar's daughter doing in Slytherin?" Harry wondered aloud. 

"Forget that," Ron said. "What was a Slytherin doing at your aunt and uncle's house? D'you reckon she really was spying on you, or trying to lure you out where they could get at you?"

"Don't know," Harry said. "It's not like I had a chance to ask her many questions before your mum and Tonks and Moody charged in like they were storming the beach at Normandy."

"They were only trying to help," Ginny said stiffly.

"Yeah. You should have seen Mum," Ron said, his eyes widening at the recollection. "Dad wasn't even home from work yet, and she just snatched up her wand, shouted at us to not dare move, and off she went."

"What about Moody and Tonks?" Harry asked. "Where were they? Are they staying here?"

"Nah," Ron said. "They’ve got some new headquarters, and Mum won't even tell us where it is. Not after what happened. She said that was a plain case of us knowing more than was good for us and nearly getting ourselves killed because of it. Not even Lupin could argue with her, though I don't think he tried very hard."

"They drop by a lot to visit, though," Ginny said. 

"And Lupin?"

They looked at each other. 

"That's … complicated," Ginny finally said, when Ron showed no signs of speaking up. 

"Damn it!" Harry slammed his fist on the floor. Hedwig twitched and rustled. Pig, who had come to roost perched on the windowsill, sprang into the air again in a twittering flurry of feathers. "I keep getting that. It's complicated. What's complicated? I ask about Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and no one will tell me because it's complicated. I ask about Lupin, it's complicated. I'm not going to be left out!"

"Take it easy, Harry," Ron said. "What Ginny means is that we don't know, either. All they tell us is that same thing: it's complicated."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Your guess is as good as ours," Ginny said. "McGonnagall's been by, though."

"What about Snape?" Harry asked. 

Ron made a face. "No, and a good thing, too. Imagine, Snape in our own house. I'd never sleep well again."

"And Dumbledore?"

"A few times," Ginny said, and both she and Ron had wary, treading-on-thin-ice looks. "He … he asks about you."

"Does he." Harry said it flatly, not a question. 

"Yeah," Ron said. "Have we heard from you, how are you doing, any more strange dreams, scar been hurting –"

Ginny socked him in the side. "Ron!"

"What?"

"So," Harry said. "That figures, doesn't it? I thought as much."

"What?" Ron said again. "Hey, Harry, come on. Don't get like that."

"Like what?"

"Like … like you're mad at Dumbledore. He only –"

"Ron," Harry said, raising a hand with the palm out like a traffic cop, "if you tell me that Dumbledore 'only wants to help,' or 'only wants what is best' for me, I'm going to black your eye for you, so help me."

Ron, absolutely thunderstruck, was silent and goggle-eyed. 

"But Harry –" Ginny tried bravely.

"You, too, Ginny. Girl or no girl."

"Okay, Harry," she said.

"And what have you been telling Dumbledore about me?" Harry asked, one eyebrow raised. 

"Nothing," Ron said. "Couldn't, could we? You haven't been telling us anything to start with."

"Maybe there's a reason for that, d'you think? Maybe because I knew that anything I told you would go straight to Dumbledore. You couldn't wait to run and tattle."

"Harry!" Ginny shot to her feet. "That's not fair!"

"Isn't it? The way you ran and tattled to your mother about Jane?"

"I did no such thing! Ron asked me at the dinner table, and Mum happened to be there."

"What are you so mad at us for?" Ron asked, also on his feet. "We thought we were helping, all right?"

"I'm sick of people keeping me in the dark and calling it 'helping' me," Harry said. He was up, too, and didn't remember rising, but he was shaking in fury. "All I am to Dumbledore anymore is his … his … Voldemort alarm. He doesn't care about me. Only about my scar, and my dreams, and what they can tell him about what Voldemort's up to. I'm surprised he even wanted me to learn Occlumency. It'd lose him his advance warning system. That's probably the real reason he had Snape teach me. He would have known that Snape and I couldn't get along and I wouldn't learn anything, but it'd look like Dumbledore was doing something about it. When really, he was just making sure the pathway stayed open."

"That's about enough, Harry!" Ron shouted. "You can't talk about Dumbledore that way!"

"I can talk about him any way I like. And why not? It's not as if I can talk to him anymore, and he doesn't need to talk to me when he's got his network of little spies who'll run right to him the minute I say anything about a weird dream, or a twinge in my scar."

A sudden sharp, cracking pain exploded across his face. At first, as he reeled back and sat down heavily on Ron's bed, he thought that it was his scar, that even as he'd been talking about it, his scar had unleashed a burst of Voldemort's violent energy. But when his head stopped spinning, he realized it was his cheek, not his forehead, that hurt. It stung like fire, and when he caught a glimpse of himself in Ron's mirror, he saw a vivid scarlet handprint standing out against his skin. 

"You … you slapped me," he said to Ginny, utterly astounded. 

"You deserved it. You've had it coming for a while now." She stood over him with her fists on her hips and her red hair tumbling around her face. Her eyes were bright, and her lips were pulled back from small, even white teeth in a clenched-jaw snarl. 

She looked … scary. Beautiful and scary. 

"I –" he said.

"We know you're angry. We know you're upset at the way you think people have been treating you. But, damn it, Harry, there's too much going on for you to be … to be pulling this sort of temperamental wounded-hero shit."

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron gaping at his sister. Harry was gaping, too. He reckoned that if Fred or George had ever seen her like this, they wouldn't have pulled half so many of their pranks on their little sister. The look in her eye might have daunted a dragon. 

Harry had no idea what might have come out of his mouth next. He was saved, not quite literally, by the bell. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed bedtime. 

"So," Ginny said. 

"Yeah?" Harry ventured. 

"Are you done?"

"Cor, I would be," Ron breathed. 

"I'm done," Harry said. 

"Good." She turned and marched from the room, sweeping her hair from her face with the backs of her hands. 
The door slammed shut in her wake, leaving Harry to look at Ron, the both of them with jaws hanging. 

"I think I liked her better when she was too shy to talk to me," Harry said. 

Ron snorted laughter. "You can say that again. Some birthday, eh?"

They got ready for bed. Harry didn't think sleep would come easily to him, but he felt exhausted, his emotions having been yanked in so many directions that evening that they were all stretched out and rubbery. He dropped off almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and nothing, not even Ron's snores, woke him before the morning sunlight came streaming through the shutters. 

"Boys!" Mrs. Weasley's call drifted up the stairs. "Boys, breakfast!"

They went down to the kitchen, which, like the rest of the Burrow, seemed echoingly empty with so few Weasleys to fill it. Even Moody had departed, so it was only Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. As if to compensate for the extra chairs, an amazing abundance of food heaped the table. 

It was almost as generous a spread as the traditional welcoming feast held at the start of each Hogwarts year. Except for the large wooden bowl of dead ferrets sitting at the end of the table. They hadn't been cooked or even skinned. Limp heads, tails, and little cunning ferret feet dangled over the rim of the bowl. 

"Oh, for pity's sake!" cried Mrs. Weasley. "Ginny, dear, would you take those out to Buckbeak?"

"Buckbeak's here?" Harry rose almost as soon as he'd sat down. "Where?"

The last he'd seen Buckbeak, the hippogriff had been staying at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, in the suite of rooms that had once belonged to Sirius Black's mother. He hadn't even thought to wonder about Buckbeak's fate. 

"Out back," Ron said. "Here, Mum, we'll do it. I'll show you, Harry."

Taking the bowl of dead ferrets, Ron led the way into the Burrow's back yard. A trio of cackling gnomes erupted from beneath the rickety porch and scampered for cover in the overgrown garden. A shed had been put up between two gnarled trees, and as Harry and Ron crossed the uneven, tufted lawn, a stately shape emerged into a small fenced paddock. 

Morning light gleamed on Buckbeak's steely-grey coat and feathers, and turned the wicked beak and sharp talons into gilded blades. A steady golden gaze pinned them. Ron gulped, and bowed forward over the bowl. Harry bowed as well, deeply. 

Buckbeak made a sound somewhere between a whinny and a croon, and slowly, majestically lowered his head. One taloned foreleg scratched at the earth. Harry saw that there was a collar around Buckbeak's neck, and a chain connected it to a ringbolt set into the top of a stout oak post. 

"Hi, Buckbeak," he said, his heart sinking a little with sorrow for the proud creature brought so low. 

There had been less freedom for Buckbeak than there had for Sirius in the two years since the pair of them had escaped death – or worse – at Hogwarts. 

For a while, the two fugitives had been able to get away from England. Harry had never been sure exactly where, but Sirius' messages had been delivered by birds with fabulous plumage instead of owls. He had imagined the two of them relaxing on some warm beach, Sirius eating fruit plucked from the jungle and drinking coconut milk straight from the shell while Buckbeak waded in clear turquoise rippling waves to snatch fish from the shallows of a tropical lagoon. 

But then, because of Harry and his troublesome scar, Sirius had come back. He'd brought Buckbeak with him, and they had lived in the Black family mansion. Prisoners there as much as Sirius had been in Azkaban. 

He approached Buckbeak, taking a ferret from the bowl. The hippogriff regarded this offering, then nipped it sharply with his beak. Buckbeak tossed the ferret into the air, caught it, and worked it down his gullet in a series of convulsive jerks, swallowing it whole. The chain jangled. The noise of it hurt Harry's heart as much as his ears, and he undid the collar. Buckbeak shook all over, and preened at his feathers where they'd been flattened down. 

"Hey," Ron said, holding up a pure white ferret. "Remember Malfoy?"

Despite his dark mood, Harry snickered. The man they'd thought was Mad-Eye Moody had once transformed Harry's nemesis Draco Malfoy into an albino ferret, and bounced him through the halls of Hogwarts before Professor McGonnagall had intervened. 

There was something vaguely satisfying about seeing Buckbeak devour that ferret. It became more ghoulish as Ron named each of the subsequent corpses. "Crabbe … Goyle …this one can be Pansy Parkinson, the cow, Hermione would approve …"

"Ron …" Harry said, feeling slightly sick. He hadn't eaten more than a bite of toast before coming out here, and now even that was starting to seem like a mistake. 

"And Snape!" Ron said with malicious glee, holding up a ferret with a lank black pelt and a particularly long, pointy nose. 

As he was about to toss that one, Buckbeak suddenly lost all interest in the ferrets. The hippogriff's head snapped around, eyes keen and alert, feathers bristling. 

Harry instinctively reached for his wand. A moment later, he heard the crunching, stumbling footsteps of someone blundering through the brush and tall grass. He heard a low, pained groan. Then the heavy thud of someone falling. 

"What was that?" Ron's face had gone curd-white, his freckles standing out like chicken pox. 

"I don't know." Harry moved cautiously in the direction from which the sounds had come. He could hear harsh, labored breathing. "What's back there?"

Ron set down the nearly empty bowl and got out his own wand. "Nothing much, just hills and meadow."

They crept closer, out of sight of the Burrow now except for its highest peaked roof and crazily tilting chimneys. Harry pushed brambly branches out of the way, wincing as thorns sliced into the heel of his hand. 

He looked down into a gully, and his breath lodged in his throat. Beside him, Ron sucked in a strangled gasp. 

Two men were in the gully. One, dressed all in black and holding a silver-edged axe aloft, was Macnair, former executioner for the Department of the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. His eyes were alight with a murderous passion. 

The other, in ragged grey-brown robes that hung in tatters around his pale, thin, wasted body, was Remus Lupin. 

**
Continued in Chapter Five: Wolfsbane and Moonflower.