Lupin raised his head. His prematurely greying hair was tangled, matted with sweat. Coarse stubble darkened his gaunt cheeks. He was filthy, his hands and fingernails caked with grime. As he struggled to rise, perhaps not wanting to die cowering at his enemy's feet, Harry saw a hideous diagonal gash crossing his chest. Blood seeped from it in a sluggish flow, and there was an ivory gleam that might have been exposed ribs shining through. 

Other cuts, scrapes, and bruises marred Lupin's skin but they seemed to be healing even as Harry looked on. The diagonal gash was not closing. 

Silver. The axe's edge was real silver, not merely steel polished to a silvery sheen. It was caked with something gummy and dark green, as if Macnair had been using it to hew through the underbrush in his pursuit of his prey.

"Stupefy!" Harry shouted.

"Expelliarmus!" Ron shouted beside him. 

A red blast shot from the end of Harry's wand and struck Macnair in the belly and doubled him over. At the same instant, the executioner's axe leaped from his hands. It whickered in a deadly cartwheel … up … up … and then began to fall.

"Lupin!" Harry cried, seeing that the axe's trajectory would bring it down right where Lupin was kneeling. 

He charged through the thorns, not caring that they tore at his clothes and flesh. He threw himself full against Lupin, and though Lupin was a grown man and Harry a gangly sixteen, the tackle bowled Lupin over as if he weighed no more than a box kite. 

They rolled through the grass just as the axe came down – whunk! – and its blade cleaved through the cuff of Harry's pants and buried itself four inches deep in the ground. 

"Stupefy!" Another red blast, this one from Ron's wand, made Macnair reel backward and collapse. 

"Huh … Harry?"

"It's all right, Professor." Harry yanked off his own shirt, folded it, and pressed the makeshift pad to Lupin's chest to stop the flow of blood. 

The title made Lupin smile wanly. "I haven't been a professor for some time now, you know," he said. 

"How'd you run across him?" Ron asked, approaching the motionless Macnair with the sort of tense caution Harry had seen people use in scary movies, when they just knew in their guts that the monster or villain was only shamming, and would spring up in renewed attack any second. 

Macnair, though, didn't look to be shamming. His eyes were half-open and glazed, staring up at the bright blue morning sky. He was nearly as scrawny and unkempt as was Lupin, the pair of them looking like they were shipwreck survivors. There was a wand thrust through his belt, and Harry took it and snapped it over his knee like a stick of kindling wood. 

"He's been in hiding. Slipped away somehow when the other Death Eaters were captured in the Department of Mysteries," Lupin said, hissing as he waved Harry away, lifted the wadded-up shirt, and examined the bloody gash across his chest. "It's unhinged him."

"I doubt he was all that tightly hinged to begin with," Ron said.

"Pettigrew told them all about you, didn't he?" Harry asked, feeling an intense surge of dislike for the man who had been his father's friend, his parents' betrayer, and Ron's longtime pet. 

"He could have found out from Peter, yes," Lupin said. He refolded the pad and used the largest scrap of his robes to bind it across the wound. "Or from any number of other sources. My secret is hardly a secret anymore. Ask Rita Skeeter."

"But how'd he find you here?" Ron wanted to know. "Close to my home?"

"That, I don't know. It was no chance encounter, though, I can tell you that much."

"No, it wouldn't be," Harry said, looking at the axe. "This is real silver. He was hunting for you."

Wearily, Lupin nodded. "Perhaps on his own, perhaps on Voldemort's orders. And he found me."

"Don't suppose you bit him?" Ron asked, almost hopefully.

Lupin went ashen, appalled. "You don't know what you're saying, Ron. If I had, think of the implications. Not only would I have at long last committed the one unforgivable sin that, as a werewolf, I have thus far avoided. But to deliver that kind of power – for it is a power, even as it is a curse – to someone like Macnair?"

"What do we do with him, then?" Harry asked. "Turn him over to the Aurors?"

"Too right," Ron said. "And the sooner the better. Though I reckon the Ministry will just stick him in Azkaban with the others, and you know sooner or later, they're going to escape."

"You don't sound as though you have much faith in the Ministry, Ron," Lupin observed. 

He got laboriously to his feet, seemingly not caring at all that he was next to naked, and went to Macnair to divest the stunned Death Eater of his voluminous black cloak. The cloak was dirty, torn, and smelly, but it was in far better condition than the rags of Lupin's robe. 

"Should I have?" Ron scoffed. "After everything Cornelius Fudge has done? He may have Percy eating out of his hand, but not me. A lot of this could have been prevented if he wasn't such a coward, that one."

"How badly are you hurt?" Harry asked, noting the way Lupin's hands shook as he fastened the cloak. "Do you need to go to St. Mungo's?"

At the mention of the hospital, Lupin shook his head. "It's not a bad cut, not deep. I'll mend. What I could use is food, and rest."

"Shall I go and fetch my dad?" Ron asked. "And maybe Moody's back, or Tonks."

"Let's secure him first," Lupin said. 

They conjured ropes to bind Macnair, and then used a levitation spell to float his body along after them. It was eerily reminiscent of a night a few years ago, when Snape had gotten much the same treatment after being knocked unconscious in the Shrieking Shack. Macnair drifted along like a large man-shaped helium balloon, head lolling. Ron guided him, while Harry helped Lupin.

"I'm fine, really," Lupin said, but a different truth was in his pallor, and in the way the makeshift bandage was soaked through with blood that wouldn't clot.

"Here." Harry hooked Lupin's arm over his shoulders, and Lupin protested no further. 

"It's good to see you, Harry," he said as they picked their way carefully through the thorns and back toward the Burrow. "I didn't know if you'd come or not."

"I didn't have much choice," Harry said sourly. Realizing that Lupin would not have heard, being away from the others on the night of the full moon, he related the story of Dudley's tea date, and Jane, and the sudden interruption by Tonks and Moody. 

Lupin frowned. "I'm sorry they did that. It perhaps could have been handled better, but you know how on-edge everyone's been."

"I just don't think she meant me any harm," Harry said. "And even if she did, I can take care of myself. I don't need Aurors popping in whenever a Slytherin so much as talks to me."

Behind him, Ron mumbled, and Harry glanced back over his shoulder. 

"What, Ron?"

"Nothing."

"Jane Kirkallen," Lupin mused. "Dark-haired girl? A year behind you two?"

"That's her," Harry said. 

"I remember her from my lessons. She turned in a very good essay on counter-curses, and asked quite a few questions about Death Eaters."

"She told me that Death Eaters killed her mother," Harry said. "But Tonks thinks it might have been an act."

"'Course it was," Ron said. "She's Slytherin, isn't she? Trying to get you to trust her, and then, wham!"

"You don't know that. You don't know her!"

"Neither do you," Ron shot back. "Tell him, Professor."

Lupin took a long, shuddery gasp of air. "Can we stop for a moment, Harry? Thank you. I … I need to … catch my breath."

Harry lowered him onto a rock, and Lupin hunched forward over his knees, head down. Harry and Ron exchanged a worried look that went far past their disagreement about Jane. 

"You go on ahead, Ron," Harry said. "Bring help. I'll keep an eye on them."

Ron nodded, and set off at a trot. The Burrow was within sight now, and the vivid red hair of Mrs. Weasley and Ginny could be seen in the back yard, where they appeared to be hanging out the wash. 

Lupin's hand found Harry's and gripped it with a strength that was, under the circumstances, surprising. "Harry … I am neither your father nor your godfather, and I do not wish to presume to give advice out of turn …"

"Why not? Everyone else does."

"That's precisely why not."

"You've never turned me wrong before," Harry said. "You've always been honest with me."

"Have I? Eventually, I suppose. I've never lied to you, if that's what you mean, but, Harry, I wasn't always immediately forthcoming with the truth."

"Sure. I understand that." He tried to sound light, but it was hard with a fine patter of blood-drops now falling from the sodden bandage to stain the ground between Lupin's feet. "Why would you come right out and tell me all your secrets?"

"There are too many people keeping things from you," Lupin said. "Not out of malice, don't get that idea. They want to protect you, spare you from pain."

"I'm not a child," Harry said, his temper beginning to flare. 

"I know. Believe me, I know. You left childhood behind a long time ago." Lupin coughed, and it was a deep, wet cough that expelled a mist of red from his lips. 

"You did lie to me. You said it wasn't that bad!"

"I was lying to myself, I think," Lupin said. "But it is not fatal. I promise you that. I will be all right once I've had some time to heal. In the meanwhile, Harry, there are some things you should know. Things that the others won't tell you, either because they feel it isn't their place, or because, with the best of intentions, they don't want to add to your already considerable burdens."

"What things?"

"It's complicated, so you'll have to bear with me –"

"This has to do with Sirius, doesn't it? Every time I've asked anyone about him, or about his house, they tell me it's complicated."

"Sirius left everything to you."

"He … he what?"

"In his will, which he updated not three weeks before … well, before … he named you his heir. The house at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, the Black family fortune, all of it. He was the last, and in the absence of any children of his own, Sirius left it to you."

Harry sat numbly, thinking of the brooding hallways and dark rooms of the Black mansion. Of Kreacher, the insane old house elf whose ancestors' heads had been mounted on plaques on the wall. Of the portrait of Sirius' mother, that vile-tempered harridan. Of the elaborate tapestry depicting the Black family tree. 

"But I'm not blood kin," he said at last. "It … shouldn't it go to a relative? I mean, I wouldn't want to see it go to Narcissa Malfoy, or Bellatrix Lestrange, but … but what about Tonks? It should be hers. I don't need a fortune. My parents left me plenty."

"I haven't told you the complicated part yet, Harry," Lupin said. 

That was when, with a roar that was more bestial than human, Macnair revived and burst out of his bonds. He was in such a frenzy that his eyes rolled and foamy spit bubbled at the corners of his mouth. 

For a moment Harry thought that Lupin must have bitten him after all, and that this was the werewolf affliction taking hold. Then he saw that Macnair's sleeve had ridden up. On the fleshy inside of his left forearm, the Dark Mark pulsed red-black-red-black-red, burning like a brand. 

"Ahhh! It burns! My Lord, have mercy!" screamed Macnair. The broken bits of rope fell away from him like a shed cocoon. "I will! I will finish it now!"

They had left the axe behind, and broken his wand, but none of them had thought to search him for other weapons. A knife glittered wickedly in his hand. He threw. 

Lupin shoved Harry aside. The blade spun between them and stuck, quivering, in the bole of a tree. But Macnair was far from finished. He drew a second knife from a sheath in the top of his high black boot, and this knife was no throwing dagger. It was nearly a bayonet, long and straight and razor-sharp. 

Macnair charged, slashing and stabbing with the furious rage of a berserker. The tip tore through the black cloak that Lupin now wore, and bit deep into Lupin's shoulder. Fresh blood poured out. 

"No!" Harry jabbed with his wand. "Expelliarmus!"

The knife jumped from Macnair's grasp. Undeterred, the crazed executioner drove his fist into Lupin's face. Lupin's head rocked back, and then he sank to his knees. Macnair turned toward Harry. 

"Thissss," he said, drawing it out into a hiss, "will be an unexpected pleasure!"

He was amazingly fast, and before Harry could stun him, had rushed up and swung his arm and placed the livid red-black weal of the Dark Mark full against Harry's cheek. A blast of fiery agony slammed through Harry's head, as if someone had set off dynamite inside his skull. 

Harry was flat on his back without knowing how he got there, aware only that he hurt all over and each breath was like inhaling slivers of glass. He saw Macnair towering over him, holding a wand – Harry's own wand. Nearby, Lupin struggled to rise, but would be too late to help. 

"Avada –" began Macnair. 

A screech shattered the morning into jagged shards. A flapping shadow descended on Macnair in a storm of feathers, talons and hooves. 

It was Buckbeak, in a berserker fury of his own. The hippogriff screeched again. His head darted forward, beak snapping. Macnair flung up a defensive hand, and both he and Harry stared in disbelief as the sharp edges of the beak scissored off every finger but the thumb. 

Buckbeak reared up, pawed the air, and came down hard. His talons raked Macnair from collarbones to belt, opening him in long parallel slashes. Blood flew everywhere in a crimson spray. 

Macnair uttered a choked, gargling cry. He dropped Harry's wand and tottered backward, groping with one good and one ruined hand to try and hold in the bulging, glistening organs. 

Tossing his head now, almost prancing, Buckbeak executed a graceful pirouette. The bird-legs came down, the mismatched body pivoted on them, and the powerful equine rear legs pistoned out in a terrific kick that caught Macnair dead center and sent him flying. 

The Death Eater hit the ground with an awful splat. His good hand rose, clutched feebly at nothing, and then fell limp at his side. 

Slowly, not quite able to believe what he'd just witnessed, Harry got up. His head pounded with a cyclic, throbbing ache not in time with his heartbeat. His stomach churned and his throat hitched and he locked his jaws against throwing up. 

Buckbeak snorted and flipped his horse's tail. He looked at Harry, great golden eyes both regal and serene, and inclined his body in a bow. 

Unsteadily, Harry returned the bow. He lost his balance, and would have fallen had Buckbeak not moved swiftly up to him. Harry leaned against the hippogriff's warm, downy side. Buckbeak made a low twittering noise and bumped Harry affectionately with his head. 

"Are … are you hurt?" Lupin asked. 

"I don't think so," Harry said after a pause in which he evaluated the pounding in his head and decided it was diminishing. His cheek stung, and he felt it, afraid he'd find the Dark Mark imprinted there like some sort of weird tattoo, but the skin seemed ordinary. "What about you?"

Lupin shrugged the cloak off his shoulder, and showed Harry that the knife wound, not having been caused by a silver weapon, was already closed into a fading pink line. "Macnair?"

"Dead," Harry said. There was no doubt in his mind. Macnair was gutted like a fish. "Buckbeak killed him."

Just then, a stampede of Weasleys arrived on the scene. Mrs. Weasley took one look at the gory extent of what had happened, uttered a high-pitched cry, and fainted. Ron and Ginny turned green. Mr. Weasley held onto his composure, and moments later, the distinctive whipcrack noise heralded Moody's appearance. 

Harry was only too glad to let them take over. He was worried about Lupin. The exertion had opened his wound more, and the blood was flowing fast. 

"Not to fret," Moody said, crouching beside the stricken werewolf. "I've sent Tonks for help. There's a healer down to St. Mungo's that we've recruited. Nothing like a trial by fire."

"He's very good," Mr. Weasley added. "Fixed me right up last year, do you remember?"

"Dad," Ron said, "it's not that quack who wanted to use Muggle remedies, is it?"

Ginny had recovered enough to attempt to calm Buckbeak, and Harry and Ron helped her get Mrs. Weasley draped over the hippogriff's back. 

"What about Macnair?" Harry asked. "We shouldn't just leave him there."

"I'll keep an eye on him," Moody said. "What's left of him, that is."

The rest of them made an awkward procession back to the house, with Harry and Mr. Weasley practically carrying Lupin slung between them, Ginny leading the way holding Buckbeak's collar, and Ron bringing up the rear with his wand out and his eyes as round and paranoid as Moody's own. 

"Poor Molly," panted Mr. Weasley. "She's never been much of a one for the sight of blood. I don't mind telling you, of everything the boys invented, those Nosebleed Nougats of theirs almost put her right over the edge."

Luckily, the Burrow wasn't far. Harry and Mr. Weasley lowered Lupin into a large wooden chair in the kitchen. Lupin slumped back, his upper teeth – which seemed longer and sharper than normal, Harry observed with some unease – digging into his lower lip. 

"I wonder, Arthur," Lupin said in a thin, strained voice, "whether Molly might have any essence of moonflower in the cupboard?"

"Um … not sure," Mr. Weasley said. 

"She does, Dad," Ginny said promptly. "I know right where it's kept."

"What's essence of moonflower?" Harry asked as Ginny dashed off. 

"Among other things," Lupin said, "it's good for countering extract of wolfsbane."

"Wolfsbane!" Ron cried. "You mean there was wolfsbane extract on that axe? But … but that's poison to a werewolf!"

Lupin's grin was a toothy, humorless rictus. "Well, he was trying to kill me, Ron."

Ginny returned with a small brown bottle. The label was bordered in drawings of flowers and vines around a silhouette of a witch stirring a cauldron. It read: Hecate Hyacinth's Essence of Moonflower. "Here it is, Professor Lupin."

"Again with … the professor thing," Lupin said. "Thank you, Ginny."

He reached for the bottle, but his hands were still so weak and shaky that Ginny instinctively held it back. 

"Maybe I should do it?" she asked. 

Nodding, Lupin opened the cloak and peeled away the wet red rag of bandage. The gash across his chest was not as gruesome-looking in the homey kitchen light of the Weasley house as it had been in stark sunshine, but it was somehow all the worse for the homey setting. 

Ron swallowed thickly. "Think I'll … see … uh … how Moody's doing."

Harry moved forward, meaning to help. But Ginny, with nerves of pure steel, gestured him back. She uncorked the bottle. Harry got a whiff of something that smelled like rainwater and a cool forest night. 

Lupin inhaled deeply. As his chest rose, the lips of the wound parted. Now Harry could see places where the blood was mixed with streaks of some mossy dark-green substance. Extract of wolfsbane. In smaller, diluted doses, and combined with other ingredients, wolfsbane would go into the potion that Snape brewed for Lupin to keep him from fully succumbing to the savagery of the werewolf. As it was, raw, it would kill him. 

"Steady now, Ginny, there's a girl," Mr. Weasley said nervously. 

Ginny squeezed up a quantity of liquid into a glass dropper, and, with a cool aplomb that Harry envied, applied it directly into the wound. The essence of moonflower was thick and syrupy, silvery-blue. Wherever it contacted the dark green of the wolfsbane, the two reacted in a seething fizz of white bubbles. Lupin gritted his teeth and bore down hard on Harry's hand. 

"You didn't mention the wolfsbane before," Harry said accusingly. "You said you'd be fine!"

"And … and I shall."

"I don't want to lose you, too! First my parents, then Sirius –"

"Harry, Harry. You'll always have friends in the Order, and, dare I say, in this household –"

"Absolutely," Ron and Mr. Weasley said together.

"—but I promise you, I have no intention of leaving." Lupin's color was already much improved, though he was still too pale, paler than usual. 

Tonks arrived, wearing a St. Mungo's candystriper's uniform, her hair in bouncy ink-black curls and her face all apple-cheeked, fresh, and innocent. She had a Healer with her. Harry recognized him as Augustus Pye, the very one who had gotten together with Mr. Weasley to experiment with Muggle "stitches" when Mr. Weasley had been bitten by Voldemort's snake. 

"Can't leave you alone for a minute, can we, Remus?" Tonks chucked Lupin under the chin. Her tone was carefree and teasing, but there was something else, a deeper concern, in her eyes. 

Ginny peered closely at Tonks, then turned away to re-cork the essence of moonflower, with a small, secretive smile playing about her mouth. It was that sly, knowing look that girls got, but this time, Harry thought he might have an idea of what it meant. 

"Unlike some people, Nymphadora, I don't go looking for trouble," Lupin said. 

"I'll let you get away with calling me Nymphadora this time because you're hurt," Tonks said. "This time. Next time, Remus, we're going to have words."

"I'll look forward to it. Nymphadora."

"That's enough," Pye said. "Let me have a look at my patient, will you?"

"No Muggle rubbish," Mrs. Weasley said warningly. 

With his forefinger, Pye made an X over his heart. "I swear it. Now, what's been done? Ah, an axe wound. Wolfsbane? Treated with moonflower essence, yes, good, very good."

"Will he be all right?" Ginny asked. 

"I should think so, but I could use some room."

Mrs. Weasley took this as a hint to shoo the rest of them out. Harry, Ginny and Ron went into the backyard, where they found Buckbeak with his beak contentedly buried in the bowl of dead ferrets.

"Good thing you unchained him," Ron said. "Probably saved your life, and Lupin's, too."

"But he did kill that man," Ginny said. 

"Poetic justice," Harry said. "Macnair was itching to behead Buckbeak years ago, when Malfoy brought that trumped-up 'dangerous creature' charge against him."

"Ironic, isn't it?" Ron mused. "Now that he is a dangerous creature and all. What I wonder is how we're going to smooth this one over. Having a rogue Death Eater killed on our property isn't going to look so good."

"Why not?" Harry asked. "Aren't they all wanted by the Ministry, anyway?"

"Well, yeah," Ron said. "But so's Buckbeak, remember. And there's those in the Ministry who are no fans of werewolves, either."

"Who's going to tell the Ministry?" shrugged Ginny. "Moody doesn't necessarily have to report it."

They sat in a row on one of the splintery old picnic tables behind the Burrow, swinging their feet and watching Buckbeak work his way through the dead ferrets. It occurred to Harry that he and Ron hadn't gotten much in the way of breakfast, but the combination of Buckbeak's indelicate eating habits and the memory of Macnair's grisly death did not do much for his appetite. 

He changed the subject. "So, hey, how long has this been going on with Lupin and Tonks?"

Ron looked blank. "What?"

Ginny giggled. "We don't know for certain that there is anything going on," she said. "Oh, Tonks fancies him like mad, I'd bet anything on it. And I'm pretty sure he fancies her, too. But you know Lupin. He's not about to say so."

"Lupin and Tonks?" Ron's forehead furrowed as he raised his eyebrows dubiously. "What gives you that idea?"

"I thought it was obvious," Harry said. "Why wouldn't Lupin say so?"

For all that she was a year younger, Ginny rolled her eyes in worldly-wise exasperation. "She's half his age, for starters. And he's got no money, no job, no prospects. And, lest we forget, the man is a werewolf."

"So?" Harry glimpsed what she was driving at, but was feeling a trifle belligerent.

"So," Ginny said, "those are all some fairly strong reasons why he can't have a girlfriend."

"Lupin and Tonks?" Ron said again. "Tonks … and Lupin?"

"I don't think she minds he's a werewolf," Harry said. 

"Not as a friend, no," Ginny said. "But it'd be different if they were …" A rosy blush pinked her cheeks. "You know … intimate."

"What do you mean?" Harry squinted at her. "You don't mean …"

Rubbing her temples, Ginny muttered, "Where is Hermione when you need her? Look, Harry … you know about werewolves. You know it's a contagious condition."

"He's not going to bite her, Ginny."

"No … but … well, it's in the saliva, isn't it?"

Now Harry and Ron both looked blank. 

Ginny rubbed her temples harder. "Sixteen, and you still don't know anything about kissing?"

"I know about kissing," Harry said, nettled. Not much, it was true; his experiences with Cho Chang had been limited. 

"Me, too," Ron said defiantly, as if daring Ginny to contradict him. "Lots."

"I'm not talking about peck-on-the-cheek kissing," she said. "I'm talking about real kissing. With open mouths and all."

"Oh!" Harry said as the light suddenly dawned. He elbowed Ron. "Like Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies at the Yule Ball, remember?"

Ron scowled. "I remember, all right. They were like Siamese twins joined at the tongue."

"Exactly!" Ginny cried, slapping her leg. "That's what I'm talking about."

"Huh?" Harry and Ron said together.

She blew out a frustrated puff of air. "Think about it. If Lupin kissed anyone like that, him being a werewolf and all, and the curse of the werewolf is carried in the saliva …"

"Gross," Ron said. "Besides, Fleur Delacour was from Beauxbatons, and part veela. Real people don't kiss like that."

Ginny groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "You don't know anything, do you, Ron? Yes, real people do. Mum and Dad do."

"Gross!" Ron repeated, louder this time, and drew away from Ginny in nose-wrinkling disgust. "They do not! They're our parents. They wouldn't do anything like that."

"How d'you think they got to be parents?" Harry said. "With seven kids, I suspect they're pretty good at it by now."

Ron's jaw fell. "Harry!"

"Sorry." But his lips twitched, and when he saw Ginny cover her mouth to hide an impish smile, he couldn't hold back a snicker. 

"Oh, fine, go on and laugh," Ron said huffily. "It's just revolting, is what it is."

"Anyway, I see what Ginny's saying," Harry said. As he said it, he did see, and his mirth abruptly died. "Wait … you mean, Lupin can't ever …"

"It wouldn't be safe," Ginny said. "You know how he is about not wanting to infect anyone else, even an enemy. Think what it'd do to him if it was someone he really cared about."

"That's awful," Harry said. "He's … he's always going to be alone, then."

"But hang on," Ron said. "Isn't it just during the full moon he'd have to worry?"

"I wish it was that easy," Ginny said. "The full moon is just when he transforms. The rest of the time, even when he's in human form, he's still a werewolf. It's still in his blood."

"It isn't fair," Harry said. "He's a good man."

"I know," Ginny said. "I'm not trying to say mean things about him. You asked why I didn't think he could ever tell Tonks how he feels, and I answered you. The rest of it might not matter so much, but the werewolf thing …"

None of them said anything for a while. They just sat, each lost in his or her own thoughts. The sun climbed higher and the day grew warmer. Yet even as they did, Harry found himself sinking into a lower and colder mood. 

He was sad for Lupin, and that sadness spread into a melancholy for Sirius … and for himself. 

Were they all three doomed to live their lives without real love, and to die alone? 

Sirius had spent twelve years in the waking nightmare that was Azkaban, and had only barely begun to reach out to those around him when death had snatched him ruthlessly away.

There was nothing as damning as the curse of the werewolf or a prison conviction hanging over Harry's head, but didn't he carry a curse of his own? A curse that did not so much endanger him as put everyone around him, everyone he cared for, in danger? 

Like Sirius, he couldn't dare let himself get too close to anyone. Like Lupin, his very presence was potentially dangerous to his friends. 

The sun climbed higher and hotter still, but from where Harry sat, the day was dark indeed. 

**
Continued in Chapter Six: A Day at Diagon Alley.