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    After Harry’s name came out of the Goblet, he wrote a letter to his father and asked for help for the first time in all his tumultuous four years of Hogwarts. 

    He wrote it tucked away behind the heavy four-poster curtains on his bed, with only a Lumos charm for light. It was hard to ask for help without saying too much. Harry didn’t want to say anything about how scared he felt. That would only worry his dad, and then he’d look like a kid who couldn’t handle himself. Harry knew he could handle himself. He’d stopped Quirrell from getting at the Philosopher’s Stone, and stopped the memory fragment of Tom Riddle from letting the basilisk run wild around Hogwarts. He’d saved his godfather only last year, sort of. 

    But he’d been scared all of those times, too, honestly. He just didn’t want his dad to know it. It had taken so much convincing to persuade his parents to let him go to Hogwarts, to be away from home for ten months out of twelve, completely unreachable except by letter. They hadn’t even been able to come when Harry was hurt, the first two years; they had all waited until the year ended properly and then showered Harry in aggressive mothering when he came home. After Quirrell Harry had barely been able to leave the house without his mum or dad or his older brother William immediately jumping up to go with him.

    Harry didn’t know if his dad would be able to come. But Ron wasn’t speaking to him, and Hermione might as well have been thousands of years away in the girls’ dormitory. He didn’t know who else to ask for help.

    And he was honestly very scared of the Tournament, because he hadn’t put his name in, and he didn’t know why or how the Goblet had chosen him.

    Harry only realized that walking up to Dumbledore’s office in the middle of the night with his invisibility cloak might be a bad idea when he was already halfway there.

    Harry paused in the middle of the hallway. He was already out of his dorms, but Dumbledore didn’t need to know that he used the cloak to wander around after dark. But maybe Dumbledore would be alright with it, since he knew about Harry’s whole...family situation. It had been a strange day. Maybe that would make it okay. Or the headmaster sympathetic, at least.

    ...Harry didn’t know the password to Dumbledore’s office, either.

    “Lemon Drops,” Harry tried when he found the gargoyle that guarded the stairs. It didn’t budge. “Fizzing Whizzbees. Er, Acid Pops?”

    Nothing. Harry sighed. It had been a dumb idea, anyway. He could just send his own letter with Hedwig. But as he turned away, he heard the rumbling of stone.

    Dumbledore was still awake, and dressed in a robelike dressing gown. “Ah, Harry,” he said. “I thought it might be you.”

    “You did? Sir,” Harry added.

    “Indeed. I suppose you, too, have been thinking over the mystery of your selection for the Tournament?”

    “...Yes, sir.”

    “Mm. I am afraid I have no answers for you at this moment, though I would like at least one. Have you come to any conclusions, may I ask?”

    “Er, no, sir. I know it’s late, but I wanted...” Harry shuffled. “Well, I suppose I came up with an idea to help?”

    “What was that?”

    “I was going to write to my dad.”

    Dumbledore nodded. “It is entirely possible that he has some insight, granted by the advent of magical knowledge, that we lack—or that he knows nothing of the Goblet or the Tournament.”

    Harry swallowed. He hadn’t considered either of those things. He really just wanted his dad. It wasn’t like Sirius could come back to Hogwarts and help. “I was thinking that, well, he’s got some experience fighting Darke magic, and he might be able to help figure out what happened. If it involved the Darke.”

    Dumbledore looked at him curiously as he spoke. Harry knew it was because he’d said Darke like he did. He couldn’t help it. After growing up with his parents, the family he had been rescued by after the Dursleys abandoned him, he’d learned certain ways of saying things. He had only recently figured out how to stop himself from saying magic like Magyk. It had especially infuriated Hermione that she couldn’t figure out exactly how Harry was saying it differently, only that everybody could tell that he was.

    “That would be alright, wouldn’t it?” Harry rushed to say. “For him to come here?”

    “It would be unorthodox, certainly. And the Ministry would be involved. But then, they are already involved in overseeing the Tournament, are they not? I certainly would not turn away a set of fresh eyes on this mystery.”

    Harry relaxed as Dumbledore gave him approval. “Thank you,” he said, heartfelt.

    “But perhaps next time you might wait until morning to come seek my permission. If Filch were to come upon you as you, I have no doubt, return promptly to your dormitory and go to bed, he would be well within his right to issue a detention.”

    Harry shuffled his feet. “Right, professor. Sorry.”

    “It’s perfectly alright, as a first offense.” Dumbledore sounded amused. He doubtlessly knew that it was not anywhere near Harry’s first offense, or his last. 

    “And...”

    “Yes?”

    “What about my friends, sir?” Harry asked tentatively. “If my dad’s going to be here.”

    “You wonder if certain truths might not out themselves?”

    “Yes.”

    “I never saw the point in the Ministry’s urge to keep you silent on the facts of where you spend your summer months. Mr. Crouch may disagree, but it is the Minister who ultimately made that ruling, and I shall speak to him and have him see the wisdom in letting you be freer with your words.” Dumbledore looked at Harry over the edge of his glasses. “Of course, you still ought to be careful, and wait until I have had word from the Minister. You have experienced no small amount of notoriety already in your years at Hogwarts, and I think you understand that this —as well as the Tournament—will bring fresh attention.”

    It already had. “I know,” Harry said. “But I ought to have told Ron and Hermione years ago. Mrs. Weasley thinks I live in a cult.”

    “She means well, I am sure.” Dumbledore waved an arm. “For now, your bed is calling to you. Goodnight, Harry.”

    “Goodnight, professor.”

    Hermione was thrilled at even the hint of new information. “Can’t you tell me anything now?” She asked as she and Harry walked along the misty edge of the lake. “I’ve been in suspense for years.”

    “I would have told you if I could!” Harry protested. “Besides, Dumbledore said I ought to wait until the Minister says it’s alright, but he probably will. I mean, it’s Dumbledore asking him.”

    “I still think it’s absurd that the Minister ever got to decide what you told people about your private family life.”

    “It’s a special scenario, I told you. Besides, you know about my mum and dad, and William, and all my aunts and uncles.” Even if Harry hadn’t been able to say many details about those relatives, or what they did for a living, which was its own special kind of infuriating. 

    “And he says your father will be allowed to come and help figure out who put your name in the Goblet?”

    “Essentially, yeah.”

    “What does your father do that’s so significant that they’ll let him help?”

    “He’s really good at Magyk. Most of my family on my dad’s side is. And, well, he knows a lot about how Darke Magyk works.”

    “Harry!” Hermione gasped in surprise. 

    “He’s not a Darke wizard,” Harry said defensively. “But before I was born the...my home had to, uh, deal with a lot of Darke Magyk . Nobody ever tells me about it, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard a lot of rumors and stuff like that. All the...important wizards have to know a little about how the Darke works so that they can reverse it if they ever need to.”

    Hermione accepted his explanation, though she was still frowning a little. “That seems dangerous.”

    “They’re all professional wizards. They know what they’re doing. Out of all the stories I’ve heard, I never heard of any of them turning to the Darke.”

    “I suppose I don’t know enough about dark magic to argue. Maybe we’ll learn this year. Professor Moody is supposed to have spent years fighting dark wizards.” For once, Hermione didn’t sound very excited about learning something. The idea of Darke (well, dark) magic must put a damper on even her thirst. 

    “I wonder why they haven’t asked him to help with the Goblet,” Harry mused.

    “Oh, they probably have, and Dumbledore just didn’t say anything about it to you,” Hermione said knowledgeably. “I expect all the professors are probably working on it, except maybe Madame Maxine and Karkaroff.”

    That was probably it. It sounded reasonable. 

    “Do you think I should send a letter to Sirius?” Harry asked, something he hadn’t felt comfortable bringing up to Dumbledore. “He probably ought to know, right?” 

    Hermione bit her lip. “I’m not sure,” she said. “He’d want to come help, and that would be really dangerous for him.”

    “They’re probably writing about the Tournament in the Daily Prophet. What if he finds out anyway?”

    “You have a point.” Hermione stopped walking. “I don’t know, Harry. I think it’s too dangerous, but everywhere is dangerous for Sirius so long as the Ministry still thinks he’s an escaped criminal.”

    “Everywhere in England,” Harry muttered. Suddenly, he gasped, an idea striking him. 

    “What?” Hermione demanded.

    “How could I not have thought of it before?” Harry smacked himself in the forehead. “I should have sent Sirius to where I stay! There’s no way they would ever find him there.”

    “Why not?”

    Harry had to restrain himself. “I’ll tell you as soon as I can,” he promised, already thinking of the letter he was going to write to Sirius.

    The date for his dad’s arrival was set; he would meet with Harry in Hogsmeade on a non-student weekend, where a conversation could easily be held without too much notice. Hedwig gave Harry a short note from Dumbledore indicating as much, as well as permission from the Minister to explain things to his friends and the Weasleys—so long as they could keep a secret. Harry’s smile dimmed as he read the bit about the Weasleys. Ron still wasn’t speaking to him.

    His letter to Sirius still hadn’t been answered, but Harry planned to bring it up to his dad as soon as possible. Dumbledore had said the trip was arranged so that Harry had time to speak to him privately, before he got invovled in the business of investigating the Goblet. By the time the promised weekend arrived, Harry was practically vibrating with excitement. 

    Hermione was, too. Permission slips in hand, they practically raced past Filch once he let them go and went down the long road into Hogsmeade. 

    The promised meeting point was out by the Shrieking Shack, so they could all be sure they weren’t interrupted or eavesdropped on. Hermione slowed as they got further down the road.

    “Harry, hold on,” she said, tugging on Harry’s sleeve as she fell back. There was a tall figure in a dark cloak on the path ahead, and it must have looked like an ominous stranger to Hermione. But Harry knew exactly who it was. He recognized the cloak. 

    Simon Heap pushed back his hood as Harry ran up, and caught Harry in his arms before the teenager could protest at being treated like a child. But it was a brief hug, at least.

    “Why do you keep getting into trouble?” Simon asked as he let Harry go. Harry shrugged.

    “I don’t do it on purpose,” he said. 

    “I would hope not. And who is this?”

    “This is my friend Hermione, I’ve told you about her.” Harry looked back at Hermione, who had awkwardly approached a little closer. She seemed wary of Simon, and he seemed to notice, because he smiled and said,

    “I promise I’m not as scary as I look. Harry will tell you I don’t bite.”

    “What happened to your eye?” Hermione burst out. Simon wince-smiled, his eyelid catching awkwardly on his wounded eye as it often did. Behind his eyelid was, instead of a normal eye, an unmoving ball of lapis lazuli stone.

    “A Magykal accident, that’s all,” Simon said. “I did a Blind Transport with a scratch on my face.” Sure enough, the lapis extended past the outside corner of his eye, a slash no bigger than a tiny scratch. 

    “A blind—?”

    “It doesn’t matter,” Harry cut in hastily. “You got my letter, Dad, right?”

    “I did.” Simon sobered quickly. “As well as one from Dumbledore explaining things further. I know we have a little while to talk, but then I’m due up at the castle, apparently, to do what I can.”

    “Do you think you can help?” Hermione asked curiously. “I mean, the Goblet is a tremendously old magical artifact. It was invented centuries ago, and I think all record of the original work done on it was lost. Maybe only Dumbledore could figure out how it was enchanted in the first place.” 

    “I can at least try,” Simon said, shrugging. “I know a little bit more than Magyk, probably some things the staff here won’t think to try or don’t know themselves.”

    Hermione looked with surprise at Harry, as if checking whether Simon’s claim was to be believed. He nodded back at her.

    “Sit down,” Simon told the two of them, settling onto a nearby stone wall himself. He was looking at Harry with concern. “Besides the Goblet, are you alright? You haven’t been hurt?”

    Harry looked at the ground. “Ron won’t speak to me,” he muttered. “He thinks I put my own name in.”

    Simon’s mouth twisted. “But that’s the first thing you can think of?” He pressed.

    “Yes! I know you think Hogwarts is always dangerous, but Quirrell and the Basilisk— those were crazy events, they’re not common. And they’re both gone, anyway, so there’s nobody left that wants to do anything to me.”

    “In Hogwarts,” Simon muttered darkly. When Harry had first come to Hogwarts, Dumbledore had given both his parents a thorough rundown on Voldemort and his old followers and what had happened to all of them. Harry hadn’t been present for that conversation, but he knew that both his parents mistrusted almost everywhere in Britain besides King’s Cross and Hogwarts itself. 

    “But wait,” Hermione cut in herself. “What makes you think there might be someone out there who wants to hurt Harry? And how could you know magic that the professors wouldn’t know? Hogwarts has one of the largest libraries in the world.”

    “And I’m sure it’s very up to date,” Simon says. “But it only holds books that have already been written.”

    Hermione blinked. “Well...yes?”

    Harry sighed. “You should sit down,” he said. “I promised I’d explain and I will, as much as I can, but it’s all really weird. If I didn’t live it myself I probably wouldn’t believe anybody who told it to me.”

    Hermione sat on the wall a little ways away from Simon, crossing her arms and frowning. “Go ahead, then. I’ll listen.”

    “Should I start?” Simon asked. “You were too little to remember most of it.”

    “Alright.”

    Simon turned a little to face Hermione. “It all begins with the Ancient Ways,” he told her. Hermione listened attentively. “I doubt you know about them already. They’re a series of tunnels carved through the world, leading Magykally from one place to another. One of them, in fact, leads to your King’s Cross station.”

    “How?”

    “I have no idea. It’s my younger brother Sam who knows how the Ways work. And it was him who found Harry, when he was abandoned there.”

    “She knows that part,” Harry said quickly. He didn’t want to hear about the Dursleys at all, and Hermione had been there when he tersely answered Mrs. Weasley’s curious questions. 

Simon accepted the interruption and continued.

    “So, Sam wanted to make sure Harry was alright, and he ended up growing up with us. We only realized the truth of the issue when his Hogwarts letter made it to us. It was the first letter we’d ever received from this side of the Way, though we had made efforts to learn more about Harry.”

    “But what about the other side of the Way?” Hermione asked. “Where exactly do you come from?” 

    “That’s the curious part. The Way we found Harry at the end of is the only one of the Ways that goes through Time as well as space.”

    Hermione gaped, then stared at Harry. “You mean to say that you grew up in a completely different time!”

    “That’s why I was alright with your Time-Turner last year,” Harry explained, relieved to finally be able to tell her. Hermione had demanded to know why he was so comfortable with the idea of time-traveling. 

    “But when? Where?”

    “I’m...” Harry hesitated. It was a large number of years to name. “I’m not really sure. Where—I mean, when I grew up is so far in the future that there’s not a lot that’s recognizable.”

    Hermione stopped. “You mean,” she said uncertainly, “No Hogwarts?”

    “More like...no England.”

    “That can’t be right!”

    “He doesn’t mean the country isn’t there anymore,” Simon reassured her. “Names might have changed. Power certainly shifted across the years. Sam thinks the King’s Cross Way, where it ends up, might actually be within a few hundred miles of where our Castle is.”

    “Castle?”

    “It’s the name of the town I grew up in,” Harry explained. “It used to be just a castle, but everybody called the town that got built around it the same thing, so now the whole place is just...the Castle.”

    “So...” Hermione looked like she was reeling, a bit. “Your father isn’t better than the professors...he just knows magic that hasn’t been invented yet?”

    “I know Magyk,” said Simon. “That’s close enough.”

    “Magic,” Hermione said. “Magic. Ugh! Why can’t I say it like you do?”

    Harry shrugged. “Maybe for the same reason I’m alright at learning the kind of magic Hogwarts teaches, but rubbish at Magyk at home,” he said. “It’s different. Maybe you can only talk about Magyk right if you know how to practice it.”

    “Couldn’t you teach me?” But Hermione drooped as soon as she asked. “Wait, you’ve got to be born into it. If your magic is different, I suppose it wouldn’t work for me.”

    Simon laughed. “I forgot that’s how Magyk works in this century,” he said. “Born into it. What rubbish.”

    Hermione gaped again. “You mean to say that your magic doesn’t work like that? But that’s impossible!”

    “Dumbledore thinks,” Harry said, “that something really big must have happened between now and the future where my family is from. Magic and Magyk are so different...I mean, maybe it’s something that evolves over time.”

    “And now I’ll finally get a chance to study it,” said Simon, sounding pleased with himself. “That’s the one silver lining to this whole situation.”

    Hermione looked uncertain. “How can you even be here?” She asked Simon. “Aren’t you worried about changing the past?”

    “This past is too long ago for me, and my future too far ahead of you, for anything to make much of a difference,” was all Simon gave in reply. “How do you think Harry got to go here?”

    “But it’s time...”

    “My dad knows all about Time,” Harry promised her. “Once, two of my uncles got trapped five hundred years ago. From my Time, not yours.”

    Hermione frowned at him. “Isn’t the time it is right now also your time?”

    Harry hesitated. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose so.”

    Hermione asked him again on the way back up too school, after they finished talking to Simon. Harry managed to tell him about Sirius, and Simon promised to try and get in touch with Harry’s godfather if he showed up. He’d spent ages being grimly grumpy about Rita Skeeter before Harry could pry him off the subject, and Harry was relieved not to walk up to the castle with Simon in tow, still grumbling about it. 

    “Which time is really yours?” Was the way she asked it. “I mean, if you go to school in one year and live the rest of your life in another, that’s got to be confusing.”

    “It is.” Harry was relieved beyond words to finally be able to discuss it. “I mean, mum and dad and William are back home all the time, and I grew up there. But Hogwarts is here. And, well, you. And Ron,” Harry added grudgingly, “when he’s not being a prat.”

    “But you’re not going to be at school forever,” Hermione said, and then flushed when Harry gave her a curious look. “Well—neither of us are, right? Next year we’ll be taking our OWLs, and then three years from now we’ll have graduated, and...and we’ve got to do something with our lives after that, I suppose. I haven’t really thought about it.”

    “No,” said Harry. “Nor have I.” He had a sinking feeling that he knew where Hermione was going.

    “So, after we graduate...will you just keep going back and forth?”

    Harry opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never had to think about it.” Now that he did, he didn’t think he liked the question very much.

    Simon was a shadow flitting around the school in the days leading up to the first task. Even Harry didn’t see him very much, only occasionally spotting him passing down a hallway, wearing an eyepatch that made him only slightly less noticeable. Harry resisted the urge to wave. Dumbledore hadn’t announced Simon in any official capacity, and Harry wasn’t sure how many people knew Simon was his dad. 

    After Hagrid’s warning about the first task, though, Harry went straight to find him. He fumbled the Marauder’s Map out of its safe spot in his trunk and frantically paged through it, eyes roving as he tried to spot the set of footprints labeled SIMON HEAP in strange, spidery writing. Not in the halls—not in the dungeons—but the Astronomy Tower!

    Simon must have heard him coming all the way from the bottom of the stairs, because he’d already opened the door for a panting Harry and was standing there, looking down at him. “What’s wrong?” He asked, either very perceptive or ready at any moment for something to go wrong.

    “Dragons,” Harry panted. “The first task is dragons.”

    Simon went white. “I’m getting your uncle,” he gritted out.

    Harry had a sinking feeling that Simon might have yelled at Dumbledore about the dragons (he’d seen both pairs of feet facing each other in Dumbledore’s office, on the map) before Simon promptly disappeared for the next few days. His disappearance caused more of a stir than his appearance among the students, who had gradually become aware of him. Harry discovered, in short order, that most of the Houses were under the impression Simon was some kind of roving teacher’s assistant constantly skiving his work, and that the female students in particular liked him.

    It was a discovery he made a good effort to forget.

    “I’m just saying,” began Angelina again, in the middle of conversation with the older students as they exited the Quidditch pitch. 

    “Please,” Harry said, desperate not to hear whatever she was going to say next, “do not tell me whatever opinions you have about what my dad looks like.”

    Angelina and everyone else did various versions of a double-take. “Your dad? Merlin, Harry, you could’ve said something.”

    “Yeah,” said Fred, “Everyone’s been wondering about him for weeks.”

    “He’s only been here for a week and a half,” Harry said.

    “That counts as weeks,” George said, Fred nodding along with him. 

    “Why is your dad here?” Oliver asked, finally interceding once his blush from Angelina’s comments had faded. 

    “Dumbledore thought he might be able to figure out how my name got in the Goblet,” Harry said, a little shamefaced. In front of the upperclassmen, he didn’t want to come across like he was trying to get out of the Tournament. All the other Gryffindors—well, except Ron—had been so thrilled to have a champion from their House. 

    “Yeah, he would be a bit worried about that,” Fred said. “Still, do your best and make us proud in the First Task, even if you may lose—”

    “Leave him alone, Fred,” said Katie Bell, who was beginning to look seriously embarrassed. Harry thought it would do both him and her a favor if they forgot a conversation had ever happened about Simon. 

    The team split up from there to the changing rooms, and Harry hastily escaped to walk back up to the castle by himself, in case anyone else tried to question him about Simon. If Fred and George asked, he’d tell them, but it wouldn’t feel right, them knowing before Ron did.

    “Potter,” called a sharp voice as he crossed the threshold, and Harry almost tripped over his broom before he realized it was just Professor Moody, lurking in a corner. The old man grinned like a grimace at him. Only one eye was pointed in Harry’s direction. “Constant vigilance, boy. Never know when it’ll be me or someone else lurking about.”

    “I didn’t expect to run into you,” Harry said truthfully as his heartrate calmed down. 

    “Never expect anything—always expect the worst.” Moody’s leg thumped as he approached Harry. “Getting a bit of practice in, I see. For the First Task?”

    “Oh, uh.” Harry looked down at his broom. “For Quidditch, actually.”

    “Any good at it?” 

    “Some,” Harry allowed himself. 

    “Good. Good.” Moody’s prosthetic eye swiveled around and bored into Harry like Moody was using it to read his mind. “Always remember what advantages you’ve got over everyone else,” said Moody after a moment. “No use dwelling on what they’ve got that you don’t.” And with that mysterious advice he stumped off. 

    What a weird guy.

    Still, Harry did think about it on his way back up to Gryffindor Tower. He could fly pretty well, but probably not better than a dragon. But surely the dragons wouldn’t be allowed to go wherever they wanted, so close to Hogwarts? They might fly around and damage the castle. Then again, they’d brought dragons here in the first place, and it was only the first task. 

    But if he could bring his broom with him to the Task...well, it would put him on more equal footing with a dragon. A little bit. All he needed to do was learn how to breathe fire before the task was held, Harry thought sarcastically to himself, and he’d be as good as gold.

    Cedric was a good flyer, too.

    Simon was only gone for three days before returning—with company. Harry didn’t know how, but whether it was with the Ministry’s permission or without, Simon had convinced Harry’s uncle Septimus to come.

    Uncle Septimus, in his green robes with his purple Senior Apprentice ribbons on the sleeves, caused a lot more of a stir than Simon alone had. Harry was lucky they hadn’t walked into the Great Hall in the middle of lunch. At least Uncle Septimus agreed to talk outside, instead of standing in the middle of the entryway and attracting attention.

    “I don’t really know what advice I can offer,” he said, as they walked in no particular direction around the grounds. “You’re not being given a dragon egg and asked to foster it. There’s no books in the Manuscriptorium with advice on fighting dragons. You’re just—not supposed to.”

    “Septimus,” Simon said in a low voice. There was no warning in it, just a faint pointednesss.

    “That said,” Uncle Septimus sighed, “I do know dragons better than most people you could ask. Do you know anything about the species they’ve brought for this task?”

    “Uh, no.” Class would be a lot more interesting if they learned about the differences between species of dragon, or particularly, the best way to escape each kind. “They’re each a different kind of dragon,” Harry said, recalling what he’d seen. “I don’t know if we’ve got to go against each kind, or if we’ll be split up somehow. I don’t think they’d put the champions from each school in teams. Except maybe me and Cedric.” But he doubted they would be allowed to work together. The Hufflepuffs would throw a fit at Cedric being asked to share even more than he already was.

    “Let’s assume they’re not going to ask seventeen-year-olds to fight dragons,” Simon said in tones of thiny veiled patience which did not hide the unsaid ‘much less a fourteen-year-old’. 

    “In that case,” Uncle Septimus said, “I can share as much as seems useful.”

    But Uncle Septimus’ experience mostly revolved around the proper care and feeding of dragons, and Harry didn’t think that knowing how to get a dragon to let you cut its foreclaws was going to be very useful. As they came back towards the Castle, where Simon and now Uncle Septimus would be staying, he drifted away behind the pair, meaning to get his Firebolt and practice flying, when he noticed Simon give a not-so-gentle yank to Uncle Septimus’ purple ribbons and say in a low voice, “Speaking of dragons.”

    “I’ve had this conversation with Marcia about seventy times in the last year alone,” said Uncle Septimus, “and I won’t have it with you, too.”

    “You can’t be a Senior Apprentice for the rest of your life.”

    “Marcia likes being ExtraOrdinary Wizard,” Uncle Septimus protested. “She loves being in charge. What am I going to do, force her to retire? She’s not anywhere close to being too old for the job. I’m fine as Apprentice.”

    “And your dragons don’t fit in the Castle anymore,” said Simon. “What are you going to do, retire like Dad did and spend the rest of your life raising those three like children?”

    “The Ormlet is still basically a child—”

    “That’s not my point, Septimus.”

    “Says the man Apprenticed to a Master who can’t die, and will never consider retirement,” Uncle Septimus retorted. Harry raised his eyebrows, then hastily lowered them in case one of the two remembered he was there and realized he was listening. He’d heard an awful lot of rumors about the Master Alchemist, Marcellus Pye, but nobody had ever confirmed to his face that they were true. He shouldn’t have stayed at Hogwarts during winter break, his first year, when they were trying to find out about the Philosopher’s Stone. 

    “If you wanted your Alchemie Apprenticeship back, you only have to ask Marcellus.”

    Uncle Septimus sighed noisily. “Don’t joke about me taking your Apprenticeships,” he said, and Simon winced very faintly. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to believe that I’m happy as I am. Marcia would never have taken over from Alther so young if he hadn’t been shot.”

    “Alright, you don’t have to bring Alther into it.” They had arrived back at the school’s huge double doors. Simon clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Go take a break from worrying.” In the same breath, he added, “You know where to find me if you need to?”

    “Yes, dad.”

    “Okay, good.” Simon managed to ruffle his hair before Harry left. “Don’t get into any trouble.”

    Like he could get into any more than he was already in.

    No one had tried to take his broom away when Harry brought it with him to the First Task, though Fleur from Beauxbatons raised her eyebrows at it. Harry couldn’t tell if she was being haughty, or impressed that he had a Firebolt. Dumbledore had only smiled faintly; he and the other two headmasters were present, to offer encouragement to the Champions, probably. Cedric, who had been surprisingly polite compared to the other Hufflepuffs when Harry had shared the tidbit about dragons, looked too pale to say anything to anyone, much less Harry.

    Once they had drawn their dragons, Harry sat with his number four, staring down at the miniature Horntail in his hands. This wasn’t being asked to fight a dragon, not technically, but his dad’s words rang in his ears. Simon wasn’t going to be happy. 

    When the cheers and screams had risen and faded three times, Harry stood up, and went to the entrance to the arena.

    There was a flash of green from the staff box when he warily poked his head out, waiting to be called. For a moment Harry panicked and mistook Uncle Septimus for Rita Skeeter, but there he was, sitting solidly next to Simon (who appeared to be wringing his black robe between both hands). The sight was reassurring. If the dragon somehow went rogue and started attacking people, Uncle Septimus would be there. Well, and Simon, but Simon wasn’t the dragon expert.

    His name was called. Harry stepped out, and straddled his broom.

    “Aw,” said Uncle Septimus, when he glimpsed the animate model Horntail, “that reminds me of Spit Fyre when he was a baby.” Thinking of the conversation he’d overheard, Harry gave the little model to his uncle. Better to let someone have it who already spent lots of time keeping their stuff from being set on fire.

    The flood of frenzied, cheering Gryffindors swept Harry off to celebrate the moment the Champions were free to go, and in all the chaos of that evening and Ron speaking to him again, and realizing his friend had still tried to help even when they weren’t talking, Harry didn’t even think about his dad or uncle until Hedwig tapped on the window of Gryffindor Tower with a note from Simon.

    Harry—don’t go off out of your dorm in the middle of the night, but Septimus is heading home. I think he stayed mostly to talk to the dragon-keepers in this Time. One turned out to be a Weasley, he said, and they seem to have hit it off. He says goodbye and that if family are allowed at the other Tasks we’ve only got to pass on the message. —love Dad

    Harry grinned faintly. His mum would have a conniption if she’d seen the dragons. He didn’t know what her opinion would be of whatever the remaining tasks were, but the image that leaped to mind was of her threatening Barty Crouch with a stew knife. In some ways he thought Mrs. Weasley was a lot like her.

    Weasley. Damn. There was one thing he’d forgotten. Harry went over and tugged the curtains of Ron’s four-poster open. “Er,” he said, “there’s some things I need to tell you.”

    Ron sat up as Harry clambered in and drew the curtains shut again. “What about?”

    “Since my dad’s here to observe things,” Harry said, “Dumbledore got permission from the Minister to tell people about where I’m from.”

    Ron scrambled further upright. “Really?”

    “Yeah. Hermione and I already talked about it, she came with me to meet dad when he got here.” Harry wanted to take back the words; he didn’t want to remind Ron of when they weren’t speaking. But Ron took it in stride.

    “So what’s going on? Why was this all a Ministry secret in the first place?”

    “Ron...I’m from a different Time.”

    Ron stared at him. “Huh?”

    Harry began to explain what he and Simon had already told Hermione. Ron’s jaw dropped steadily lower until Harry got to the part about theorizing that King’s Cross might be nearby but not being sure because there wasn’t a country called England anymore, when he finally burst out, “But what about the train? What about Hogwarts?”

    “We don’t have trains,” Harry said. “And I don’t think Hogwarts is around anymore. The after-school Magyk classes and Apprenticeships do fine for most people.”

    “No Hogwarts.” Ron was supporting his chin in his hands, weighed down by disbelief.

    “I said Magyk was different then. Er, will be.”

    “Have you ever tried looking?” Ron asked hopefully.

    “Well, no,” Harry said. But considering the specter of a Hogwarts, abandoned thousands of years ago, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the old castle if it still existed. Magyk just wasn’t the same as English magic. He would want to see the castle as it was now, a school full of light and occupation, but he didn’t think most people would be willing to send their children away for so long. His mum and dad barely stood it. 

    “I think my uncle Sam has,” Harry said, trying to let Ron down gently. “He’s the one who worked out where he thought King’s Cross might be. I think if he ever found something like that, he would have told me.”

    “How can you be so normal about this?”

    Taken aback, Harry said, “It is normal. The Ministry was just...I don’t know, upset that there’s this strange thing going on with Time they can’t do anything about.” 

    “Is this why Hermione’s always thought you dress weird?”

    “Probably.” Hermione had insisted, though she let off eventually, that Harry dressed strangely in a way that was distinct from how she considered all the wizard-born wizards and witches to dress strangely. Harry had never seen anything wrong with his clothes, and Ron had backed him up. “But you told me once that you did think I dressed weird.”

    Ron shrugged. “They look homemade, that’s all.”

    “...My clothes are homemade. Are yours not?”

    “Uh, no? My mum buys them in Diagon Alley.”

    “Oh. I figured you made them with magic, here.”

    “Mum could,” Ron said, “but she doesn’t need to. Why are yours homemade?”

    Harry shrugged. “That’s just what people do. It’s not like my mum makes the thread and the fabric herself, she doesn’t have time for that, but if she doesn’t make them how else are they going to fit? Tailors are expensive.”

    “Don’t you have secondhand shops?” Ron asked. 

    “Not really. Well, probably in the Ramblings,” Harry amended, “but any secondhand stuff I get is hand-me-downs from William. Or my uncles, sometimes. My dad’s mum is really sentimental and apparently she’s kept loads of their old stuff.”

    Ron pulled a sympathetic face. “But you’re saying your mum makes all your stuff by hand?”

    “William makes his own,” Harry said. Around fifteen, William had gotten tired of Lucy’s sense of what was fashionable, and fortunately Harry had started inheriting those hand-me-downs by now. Then. Whatever tense was appropriate. “And we all fix our own stuff if there’s holes or anything. That’s why I know how to darn my own socks.” Dean Thomas had walked in on him doing it once, and for a while Harry had been the unofficial repairman of the Gryffindor Tower boy’s dorm for their year, until he got tired of it.

    “Or on our birthdays sometimes we get new things,” Harry added. Ron nodded understandingly. “I mean, it’s all new, but stuff from a shop.” His nicer robes, which he’d brought when he saw dress robes on the list for fourth year, were one such gift. His whole family and even Uncle Septimus’ Master, Marcia, had chipped in for a memorable fourteenth birthday. It was seven plus seven, after all. 

    If only some of the luck from two sevens had actually worked.

    “What are the Ramblings, anyway?” Ron asked.

    “Oh, it’s where my dad grew up.” How to explain the Ramblings? “It’s like an apartment building,” Harry said, who had once had apartment buildings explained to him and Ron by Hermione when she was making fun of the Muggle Studies students, “except a little more unique...”

    It wasn’t long before they found out what the dress robes were required for: part of the Tournament involved holding a ball. When Harry found out that Champions were required to have dates, he went to complain to Simon. 

    “A date’s not so bad,” Simon laughed.

    Harry slumped over the table, a careful distance away (Simon had set up what looked like a miniature Alchemie lab in the dungeons, in an unused classroom, and Harry didn’t want to put his face on any chemicals). “It is bad,” he said. “I’ll have to ask someone.”

    “Still, not so bad. You out-flew a dragon already.”

    Harry turned his head to the side to watch as Simon carefully dropped amber fluid through a pipette into a larger jar of clear blue. “What are you doing?”

    “Seeing if I can recreate the Headache-Be-Gone I take at home,” Simon answered readily. “Professor Snape has been helping me experiment with ingredients; obviously the stuff from our Time isn’t exactly the same.”

    Harry pulled a face at Snape’s name, but said nothing. The Magykal accident that had turned Simon’s eye to stone had once only affected the iris, so his mum said, but had slowly spread through the whole eye and partly eaten away at the optic nerve. It had been stopped, but the transformation couldn’t be reversed—lapis lazuli was too full of latent Magyk for any spell, even one of Uncle Septimus’, to do much good. The stone eye sometimes gave Simon ferocious headaches, and the pain could keep him bedridden for days unless he took Magykal medicine. 

    “Dad,” Harry said.

    “Mm-hm.”

    “How did you and mum meet?”

    Simon stopped dead still, which was not a reaction Harry had expected. His expression was not quite soft with emotion. It was as if instead of recalling a pleasant memory, Harry had struck a nerve. “We met at a dance class,” Simon said.

    Harry sat up. “Dance class?”

    “There was a typo in the advertisement,” Simon said matter-of-factly. He was being very straightforward and neutral. “I thought it was a Trance class. I was only a kid, so when I showed up and realized, I was too embarrassed to admit I’d been wrong. And your mum was there, too.”

    “And...then?”

    Simon shook his head and went back to his Alchemie. Or, his Physik, if he was making medicine. “I doubt you’ll have to deal with anything as complicated as all that,” he said, which made Harry make an immediate mental note to ask William what that was about. “Besides, you’ve told people you liked them before. What about Avery?”

    Harry immediately went beet red. “That doesn’t count!”

    “I thought you really liked them?”

    “I was six!”

    “Ah, those were the days,” Simon said nostalgically. Harry contemplated either throwing something or suffocating himself so he didn’t have to listen to any more. Both Simon and his mum could go on for hours unless stopped. Harry quickly said,

    “Anyway, I still don’t know what the egg from the first task is for, either.”

    “Does it do anything?” Simon asked in interest. This was the first they had discussed it.

    “It just screams at me when I open it.”

    “You can open it?”

    “Yeah.”

    “And it screams at you,” Simon said thoughtfully. “Hm. What does that make you think?”

    Harry sighed. Simon was in Teacher Mode. His dad should have been a teacher, if he wasn't busy learning Alchemie. “Probably that there’s something I’m getting wrong about what I think it does,” he said.

    “What do you think it does?”

    “Break my eardrums.”

    Simon snorted a laugh. “I would hope that’s not what it’s for,” he said, setting the now-crystalline purple substance in the flask above a small burner. “What else?”

    Harry complied, trying to think. “Maybe the screaming is supposed to do something other than be painful to listen to?” he suggested. “Like there’s some other noise hidden in it I have to figure out.”

    “Hm,” Simon said again. “Does this Time have any noise-related Charms—er, spells, that you’ve learned?”

    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s something the seventh-years learn,” Harry said gloomily.

    “Don’t give up so fast. Just because you’re fourteen doesn’t mean you’re not smart, or Magykally capable.” Simon always gave him a Look when he thought Harry wasn’t trying at school. Ever since his first summer home and his tales about Hermione he tended to get regular pointed letters from his dad. “The tales I could tell you of what your uncles got up to at fourteen...”

    “Unless it involved screaming artificial dragon eggs, I don’t think I need to hear it,” Harry said. “But thanks for trying.”

    “Well, come back in a few days and tell me what you’ve been trying. Even getting it wrong will eliminate some possibilities.” 

    Harry slumped down again. “It feels like I have to do everything all at once,” he said. “The Yule Ball, and the egg, and I’ve got homework, and we found Winky in the kitchens—”

    “Winky? That house elf from the World Cup?” Simon was even more distasteful of house elves than Hermione. He said it reminded him too much of how Darke wizards treated their servants. “What’s she doing here?”

    “Hogwarts has lots of house elves, apparently.”

    Simon put down his silver stirring rod. “Excuse me?”  

    “In the kitchens, and it seems like doing the cleaning.”

    “Harry, will you take it very personally if I tell you that I really don’t mind knowing this Time eventually ends?”

    “No,” Harry said honestly, but the idea of this Time ending twinged at his heart. He decided to ignore that. Nothing was ending anytime soon. “If you’ll promise not to start some kind of revolution that ends up being the reason it ends.”

    “I promise nothing,” Simon muttered darkly. “Except that I’ll help if you get stuck on this egg thing, because I’m here to help you.”

    Harry was away for so much of the year that his mum and dad really went over the top with the affection whenever they were around him. “Yeah, sure,” he muttered, but a warm feeling stayed in his chest for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

    After the second task, and the Gillyweed having kept Harry in one piece despite his long stint underwater, Simon redoubled his efforts to figure out the mystery of the Goblet. Harry saw him less often in the halls, and once or twice when he did he’d forgotten his eyepatch, leading to more whispers. 

    The knowledge seemed to have spread that Simon was Harry’s dad, but aside from Malfoy briefly trying to use it as ammunition for mockery, nobody made much of it. This was fine by Harry, because Rita Skeeter was doing her absolute best to make him sick to death of any attention whatsoever, even positive attention. Harry wished for the Third Task to come faster. He had no idea what he was doing, but he was starting to want the whole Tournament to just be over. 

    The only time it felt like he was able to really relax was when he, Ron, and Hermione escaped somewhere private for a bit to talk. Though, inevitably, one of them would ask a question about his Time. Especially Hermione. And especially about Magyk.

    “Look,” Harry told her eventually, “do you just want a Charm to practice with? That will teach you more about Magyk than anything I remember from after-school classes from six years ago.”

    “Do you have one?” Hermione immediately asked.

    “Probably somewhere.” Lucy always scolded him at home for forgetting things in his pockets, and there were a couple he’d thought might be useful scattered about in his trunk. Harry, already sitting on the floor, scooted over to his trunk and came up with the UnSeen Charm he’d gotten as a tenth birthday present. “Here, try this one.”

    Hermione held the little chip of onyx like it was solid gold. “How does it work?”

    “It’s a Charm. It’s got the Charm Chant written on it,” Harry pointed out. Hermione squinted at the miniscule writing. “You have to say it while holding the Charm. The idea is to eventually get good enough that you don’t need the Charm anymore, but I never got that far with anything.”

    “You mean all the magic in that Time is wandless?” Hermione asked, gobsmacked. “That’s incredible!”

    Harry couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you know what people in the Castle say to me when I tell them about magic in this Time?” he recalled out loud. “They say, ‘wow, one Charm for every spell you could want? That must make it so complicated! How do they ever get by? How do the kids figure anything out? That’s incredible!’”

    Hermione rolled her eyes, but she seemed amused. Ron just shrugged, saying, “It makes sense to me.”

“I like wands better, anyway,” Harry admitted. “I could never get the hang of Charms. They only work for me half the time. But some people just aren’t that good at Magyk. Like some people are better at ice-skating than others.”

    “I’ll try to get this memorized as soon as possible,” Hermione promised.

    “You can keep it if you want. I have the Invisibility cloak, so I’ve never really used that one.”

    “Oh, Un seen,” Ron said in understanding. “It’s an invisibility spell! Does it work as well as the cloak?”

    “It’s supposed to be pretty good for a basic UnSeen, ” Harry said. “There are a lot of kinds. My dad told me this is what my uncles used when they were my age. Oh, and if two people use the same UnSeen , they can still see each other, so it’s good to share the Charm if more than one person needs to, well, be UnSeen.”

    “Good to know,” Ron said, still looking with interest over Hermione’s shoulder. 

    A knock on the door made Hermione close her hands around the Charm like it was something inappropriate she didn’t want to be caught with. Percy Weasley poked his head in.

    “Harry, your father’s at the portrait hole, he wants to talk to you about something.”

    “Okay,” Harry said, puzzled at Simon’s abrupt appearance. Ron and Hermione exchanged glances. But he got to his feet and followed Percy (Percy liked to lead younger students around when he’d been sent for them).

    When he came through the door, Simon immediately said, before the Fat Lady had even properly closed, “I’m going back home to get reinforcements.”

    “Oh. Okay.” Evidently studying the Goblet wasn’t going well. Harry was less worried about making it out of the Tournament now that he’d successfully finished two tasks, but obviously his dad wasn’t so at peace with his going through the third. “Is everything okay?”

    “I need an extra pair of Magykal eyes,” Simon grumbled. He saw Harry watching closely, and his expression softened. “It’s going to be fine, Harry, it’s just...not going the way I expected it to. Dumbledore and I have been working hard.”

    “I can always just do the third task,” Harry suggested.

    Simon barely restrained a frown. “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said, “but someone tricked the Goblet into accepting your name, and then picking you, and we still don’t know the reason why. I doubt it’s to throw you a surprise party, and I’m not going to stand around and wait to find out.” He reached out and squeezed Harry’s shoulder, reassurringly solid in his presence. “We’re going to get you home without any incidents this year.”

    Harry just nodded. 

    “I should also warn you,” Simon said, “that whatever happens, Dumbledore’s said that family members will be allowed to visit the Champions for the third task.”

    Harry brightened. “So you’re bringing mum and William?”

    “I hope I won’t need to. But they’ll probably insist, task or no task. We’ll see,” Simon promised. “Focus on school. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

    “Okay. ‘Bye.” Harry lingered on the landing as Simon strode down the broad staircase, black robe billowing behind him. He caught flashes of thin thread-of-gold in the torchlight, Alchemic symbols decorating his dad’s Apprentice robe. 

    There would be someone, in some Time, who could figure out what was going on. Harry just had to wait for Simon to figure out who. 

    Simon brought Lucy and William back with him, along with Uncle Septimus again. 

    The professors’ quarters were attached to the main classrooms, or dorms if they were head of house, and the one in an unused classroom was where Simon had been staying for the past months, so the other three piled in with him. Harry’s first impression on opening the door was of a room packed with blond hair and green robes, so of course brown-haired Lucy was the first to descend on him.

    “Harry!” His mum hugged him tightly and only retreated to kiss his cheek and examine him with an exacting eye. “You look tired. Haven’t you been sleeping enough?”

    “I’m fine, mum.” 

    “You’re not at all fine,” Lucy declared. There was a bit of the wildness in her eyes that she ususally got when he came home for the summer and she unleased ten months’ worth of protective mothering all at once. “Si’s told us all about these dreadful tasks. How could they do this?”

    “Their Magyk’s bound them to it,” Simon said, with the gentle tone of someone who had explained this several times already.

    “I don’t give a penny’s worth for their Magyk,” Lucy sniffed. She gave Harry another backbreaking hug. Harry endured it for her sake. When she let him go, William, who had crept up on the side, gave him a light brotherly punch in the arm.

    “Was the dragon cool, though?” William asked. “Uncle Septimus’ model looked cool.”

    “Spit Fyre’s still the best,” Harry said loyally, catching a faint grin from Uncle Septimus on the other side of the room. “Why are you wearing green, anyway? An Apprenticeship?”

    William rolled his eyes at the bad joke. His green coat wasn’t anything like an Apprentice wizard’s green robes. “For your information, green looks good on me, unlike you.”

    “Red and gold are my House colors, I’ve got to wear them.”

    “Excuses, excuses.” 

    “Harry,” Simon interjected, “Septimus and I are going to take a look at the Goblet. Why don’t you show mum and William around the school?”

    Harry flushed. Nobody was in class, which meant anybody could be in the hallway to witness him giving a tour to his mum. A fourteen-year-old could only bear so much.

    “That sounds lovely,” Lucy declared, which sealed his fate. 

    Harry sped through the unofficial tour as fast as was reasonably possible, but did end up having dinner with his family, instead of in the Great Hall, once it was done. Some food had been brought up to the unofficial hotel room, probably by house-elves, and they sat around on whatever could serve as a chair and ate off trays. Lucy was impressed by the brass goblets bearing the Hogwarts crest, and wondered aloud at how house-elves worked that they could get all the little details so clean. Simon muttered something about leaving a note so they could talk to the house elves and weren’t just attended constantly by invisible servants. 

    When Lucy asked how their endeavors with the Goblet had gone, Simon and Uncle Septimus exchanged looks, and then Harry and William were tastefully kicked out of the room. Obviously, as soon as the door was shut, both brothers immediately hunkered down and pressed their ears to the thick wooden door.

    “It’s some old, impenetrable Magyk ,” Uncle Septimus was saying. “Normally that’s my specialty, but this is hundreds of years old—so, for us, thousands of years old. We’re just not prepared to deal with Magyk like this.”

    “You’re saying there’s nothing to be done?” Lucy said, in distress.

    “Dumbledore’s doing his best to catch us up to speed on this Time’s Magyk and how it works,” said Simon. “He’s a skilled wizard, more so than most in this Time, but we’re trying to gain a mastery in a matter of weeks. I’ve been trying my best.”

    “Si, please. You must know something.”

    “I know how the Goblet was tricked into taking his name,” said Simon. Harry and William exchanged glances; William questioning, Harry shaking his head back. Simon hadn’t told him that. “Dumbledore called it a Confundus Charm . Essentially, the Goblet is so Magykally complex that some Charms work on it like they would a person. It was confused into thinking Harry was over the age limit, and confused into picking two Champions from this school.”

    “But how do we get him out?” Lucy wailed. “Someone put his name in for some kind of nefarious reason, we can’t just let it happen!”

    “Understanding why and undoing it are two different things,” said Uncle Septimus, attempting to be soothing. “The surest way would be to destroy the Goblet, and hope that undoes all its Magyk , but there’s no guarantee it would do anything for the kids that have already been picked.” He hesitated, then said, “When I went on the Queste ...well, if a previous ExtraOrdinary Wizard had destroyed the Questing Stones, it would have stopped me from going, but it wouldn’t have done anything for the past Apprentices who drew one. Does that make sense, as a metaphor?”

    “I want to hear what you’re going to do about it, Septimus Heap, not metaphors.” Harry could hear his mum crossing her arms stubbornly. He rolled his eyes at William, in their usual commiseration when Lucy was being overbearing, but William at nineteen was serious enough that he wasn’t even looking back. He was frowning, ear pressed tightly to the door.

    “We’re working on figuring out who did it,” Simon said. This was also news to Harry, sort of. William raised his eyebrows. “It would be a powerful wizard who could confuse an ancient Magykal Goblet, so there’s only so many options. It has to be an adult, for a start.”

    “So one of the staff members,” Uncle Septimus agreed, making Harry’s eyebrows shoot up too, “or one of the visiting headmasters of these other two schools.”

    “I don’t like Snape,” Simon pronounced. “Or that northern man, Karkaroff. And come to think of it, not Moody either”

    “Why not?” Lucy pounced on the options at once.

    “They all have a kind of Darknesse lingering around them. The kind that comes from exposure to Darke Magyk. I’ve been trying to befriend Snape over potions and Alchemie, to see if I can figure out what he’s been doing, but I haven’t been able to figure it out.” Simon sighed, while outside the door, Harry and William gaped at each other. “I can’t tell if the three of them are doing something together, or doing something very similar separately. Moody quite viciously dislikes both of them, from what I can gather, and Karkaroff’s tried to talk to Snape privately once or twice, but Snape hates being near him.” 

    “How powerful a Darknesse?” Uncle Septimus asked.

    “It wasn’t noticeable when I encountered Snape before, but I felt it at once when I got here this year, and it’s only gotten stronger,” said Simon. “It’s comparable to...at the beginning of the year it wasn’t much worse than a small Tracker ball, but now it’s like being around one of the Port Coven Witches. You can tell they’ve been practicing some kind of Darke Magyk, and recently.”

    Lucy made a strangled noise. “I’m not having him back here next year, Simon,” she said. “I mean it this time.” Harry’s heart did something funny in his chest. This time?

    “I don’t want Harry around Darke Magyk any more than you do. If there’s a Darke sorcerer here and Dumbledore doesn’t do something about it, I’ll buy a year’s worth of textbooks and teach him at home myself.” Simon’s grim determination was even worse than Lucy’s stubborn declaration. Simon was supposed to be the reasonable parent. Harry reached for the doorknob.

    William grabbed his arm and towed him away down the stairs. Harry tried to wriggle out, but his brother just put him in a headlock and pulled him into the hallway.

    “What was that for?” Harry hissed, when William let him go. “You heard what they were saying! They’re going to force me to stay home!”

    “You don’t need to barge in there and give both of us up as eavesdroppers,” William retorted. “And were you not listening to the part about Darke wizards? Why would you want to stay?!”

    “My friends are here!”

    “Only because you’re never home for long enough to make friends there,” William said. The accusation went through Harry like a Jelly-Legs Jinx. “Look, I understand it’s a big deal, but no one’s dragging you home right this instant. Mum and dad are trying to keep you safe! Why does that make you mad?”

    “You don’t understand.” Hogwarts was important to him. He had a mum and dad, but he’d had another pair first, and he didn’t have anything of theirs except Hogwarts.

    “You’re right, I don’t understand,” William said. “How can I? I never see you anymore.” 

    Harry was rapidly losing control of the conversation. “I write you all the time.”

    “That’s not the same thing. Before you left for school we were friends. Now you spend all your time here, and you come home and talk about Hogwarts, and you leave earlier than you have to so you can hang out with your friends in this Time. You couldn’t even come to my Apprentice dinner. It feels like you’re getting ready to stay here forever.”

    Harry swallowed thickly. “You’re Apprenticed?” 

    “At the tailor’s.” William ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to argue with you,” he said wretchedly. “But there’s Darke wizards around, and—aren’t you worried about yourself?”

    “I don’t know,” Harry said. He had always survived before. Sometimes narrowly. It kept working out. He had friends that could help; Hogwarts always held something that could give him an edge over whatever threat he was facing. But now it held whatever was threatening him.

Of course he was frightened. But he knew what he was capable of, too. With Simon and Uncle Septimus there, what could really happen to him?

    Harry and Cedric’s body hit the ground hard. The Triwizard Cup tumbled out of his hand and rolled in the grass without a noise.

    The band launched into a triumphant round as cheers echoed through the stands. Harry heard it as if from underwater. Cedric’s body was already cold. Nausea made him retch, breath stuttering, but nothing came up.

    Voices were being raised. Close by. Someone tumbled down next to Harry and tried to pull him away. His voice tore out of him without meaning to; he clutched at Cedric’s shirt. He’d promised to bring him back. 

    “Harry!” The voice came stronger, arms wrapping around him.

    Dad.

    Somewhere close by, Lucy screamed.

    The band had stopped playing. Harry couldn’t see anything beyond the black tent of Simon’s Alchemie robes draped over him. He was still lying on the ground. Shaking, he tried to push himself up, Simon’s arm close over his shoulders, and his injured arm collapsed under him. Someone wailed Cedric’s name.

    Simon held him close, pulling Harry onto his lap, and his hand settled lightly onto Harry’s arm. Harry heard the murmur of a Magykal chant. The steady words didn’t match Simon’s pale stress-lined face. 

    Lucy tore aside Simon’s robes and reached for Harry. “Baby, are you hurt? What happened?” The words reached Harry through a fog. His heart was still pounding in his ears. Other voices were raising louder. Someone was sobbing without restraint. He was shaking too badly to speak. 

    “Potter.” Mad-Eye Moody’s shadow fell over the three of them. He sounded as if he was going to say something else but there was only silence. Lucy bent closer over Harry, as if shielding him. Harry caught a glimpse of Moody’s face. Both eyes were fixed on his bloody arm with a microscopic intensity. 

    Simon’s chanting got faster, still steady under his breath as he chased the pain out of Harry’s knife-cut arm. Moody’s shadow turned as he left. 

    Simon seamlessly turned from one incantation to the next. The hair on Harry’s neck stood on end, first as his dad spoke the backwards Reverse Incantation of Darke Magyk , and then again from the lightning ThunderFlash that left his hand and sent Moody sprawling to the ground.

    “Si!” Lucy cried. There were more screams, more noise, and over it Simon raised his arm and pointed with dreadful accuracy. 

    “Dumbledore,” he called, “him.”

    The information pried out of Moody’s imposter and that which Harry struggled to retell, from a bed in the Hospital Wing, matched each other all too well. Lucy shockingly left his bedside, but it was only to yell at Dumbledore.

    “—trusted you for years, despite every accident, despite every time you promised us he’d be safe and he wasn’t!” She had been going on for several minutes now. Nobody had been able to get a word in edgewise, and Dumbledore hadn’t even tried. Simon was still sitting next to Harry, holding his hand, not even trying to stop her. William was hunched over in a seat on the other side of the bed, staring sightlessly at the floor. “Now it turns out after Quirrell you still trust every wizard who walks through these doors and tells you to trust them! My husband told you one of the teachers at this school had done this, was planning to hurt my son, and you still couldn’t stop it!”

    Lucy was so out of breath from screaming that there was enough of a silence, while she refilled her lungs, for Dumbledore to speak. “You are right,” he said. “As headmaster of this school it is my duty to ensure the wellbeing of each student, and I have failed. I can only assure you that I care for Harry as much as you do, and that I feel this failure keenly.”

    “THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU TRY HARDER TO STOP IT? Whose idea was this stupid Tournament, anyway?!”

    Simon got up, over the sounds of someone out of Harry’s sight trying very hard to quietly back out of the room. “Luce,” he said, so late to interrupt that it was clear he wasn’t at all interested in trying to stop her, “maybe later, privately. Harry needs some quiet rest.”

    When they thought he was asleep, Harry heard Lucy crying. “Oh, Si,” she sobbed, “ Voldemort. What are we going to dooooo?”

    “We’re not going to let anything happen to him,” Simon promised in a low voice. He sounded an awful lot like the kind of person who could create a ThunderFlash as easy as breathing. “I know what to do about the Darke.”

    Lucy was not consoled so easily. Neither was Harry.

    Ron and Hermione were allowed to visit him. Lucy had taken him out of the Hospital Wing the following morning and was keeping him ensconced in their borrowed quarters. Harry didn’t know what else to do but let her. He felt numb or sick most of the time, or both at once.

    “For some reason my parents are here,” Ron told him. “Percy got called up to Dumbledore’s office to talk to them.”

    “They’re probably not the only parents coming,” Hermione said quietly. “Some people’s have taken them home already.” There was a week still left in the school year, but that didn’t feel like it mattered anymore.

    Ron said Lavender Brown had written home asking to leave early. Hermione said half of Hufflepuff had refused to go to the point of barricading themselves in the dorms. They wanted to say goodbye to Cedric as a House, and Professor Sprout was arranging some kind of ceremony to happen as Mr. Diggory left to bring him home. They quickly changed the subject after that. 

    Lucy hovered nearby, fiddling with the beds (already neatly made) and the dirty dishes (stacked and ready for the house-elf, Dina, to come and retrieve them). Dina’s on-schedule appearance, an hour after she’d brought lunch earlier, was a welcome interruption.

    “Dina will be taking these now,” she chirped, hopping up onto a stool to take the tray off the little round table. It seemed too heavy for her house-elf stature, but she always insisted it weighed nothing. 

    “Yes—thank you,” Lucy said, not too distracted to be polite.

    “And Dina is wondering about what Mister Heap said...?”

    “Oh, yes, that,” Lucy said, making Hermione frown in interest. “If Winky would like to go, yes, I’m sure she’d do much better in the Castle.”

    Dina beamed and vanished with a crack of Apparition, taking the dishes with her.

    “You’re taking a house-elf home with you?” Hermione said suspiciously.

    “It was Si’s—Simon’s idea,” Lucy said. “He’s been talking to the house-elves who bring up food and clean up and such, and he asked about Winky because Harry told us about her, and she’s not doing well at all, poor thing. Our Castle Wizards know about treating Magykal creatures, I’m sure she’ll recover much better there than here.”

    “That’s very nice,” said Hermione, who had clearly been expecting a different answer. Harry didn’t have the energy to be offended by that. There was an awkward silence as no one knew what to say next. Normally this time of year they would be planning something for the summer, promising to write to each other, wondering if they might be able to meet up. Harry had been entertaining ideas of inviting them to the Castle, now that they knew. 

    It turned out he was not the only one.

    “I’m sending you four to stay with Harry for the summer,” said Mrs. Weasley, when she came down to speak to Ron.

    Ron’s jaw dropped. “What?”

    “I don’t want any arguments. Your father and I have already talked it over with Dumbledore.”

    “What, all of us?” Ginny asked in the background—the Weasleys had gathered all the children they currently had at Hogwarts, except Percy—but Ron interrupted, raising his voice.

    “What do you mean, the four of us? For the whole summer? Why?”

    Mrs. Weasley’s gaze went to Harry for the barest instant. “I don’t know what’s going to happen this summer,” she said tightly, “but I don’t want you anywhere near it. And I mean all four of you who are still here—you, Ginny, and the twins.”

    “What about Percy?” Fred immediately challenged. “Why’s he getting out of it?”

    “He is not ‘getting out’ of anything!”

    “What your mother means,” Mr. Weasley said, sounding more tired, “is that Percy is of age and technically an adult now. He’s informed us that he has a job starting after graduation and plans to move into his own apartment. We can’t force him to go, or Bill or Charlie.”

    “But you can force us?” demanded Ginny. 

    “This isn’t a punishment, love.” Mr. Weasley was wringing his hat in his hands. It seemed to do something to the younger Weasleys, that he was so clearly upset about what he was telling them. “But having you in a Wizarding community here...you don’t know what it was like, the last time Voldemort was...present.”

    Mrs. Weasley gave a sudden sniff that spoke of emotion that her restraint was beginning to fail against. Mr. Weasley put a comforting hand on her arm. Fred and George exchanged meaningful looks.

    Hermione was looking from person to person, too, as each spoke. “You think it’s going to be dangerous now that he’s back?” She questioned the pair of parents.

    “We...hope not,” said Mr. Weasley slowly, “but hope is less reassurring than knowing that you’ll be somewhere you can’t be found. Er, I don’t mean to misspeak, Hermione, you’ll still be here in England, I suppose.”

    “But wouldn’t Muggle England be just as unsafe?”

    “I don’t know.” Mr. Weasley looked uncertain, that was for sure. 

    “I need to write my parents,” Hermione said, and rushed out of the room. Simon cleared his throat as she left.

    “I assume Dumbledore explained everything to you,” he said to the Weasley parents, but turning his attention to Harry, asked, “Who am I about to have to explain Time and the Ancient Ways to?”

    “Me,” Fred and George said simultaneously, raising their hands with interest. 

    Ginny scowled, and raised hers too. “No one tells me anything.”

    The unusual group boarded the Hogwarts express, after leaving Dumbledore’s solemn end-of-year announcement, with a plan.

    The Weasley parents, still present, were traveling with the group as far as King’s Cross, to see the travelers off. Simon, Lucy, William, and Harry were now the leaders of a small expedition, charged with guiding four extra teenagers through the Ways and safely to the Castle, which Uncle Septimus had already departed to. There they would spend the summer as guests of Harry’s grandparents and Aunt Jenna, who could easily spare the space in the old Palace. Theoretically, or maybe hopefully, everyone would pass the summer without having to think about Darke wizards.

    Hermione threw a wrench in these plans immediately by asking them to wait once they disembarked at King's Cross, going off to the side to row with her parents, then returning and announcing she was coming with them.

    Mrs. Weasley immediately went over to talk to the Grangers. After a moment of hesitation, Lucy followed. Simon just shrugged.

    “It’s not like Aunt Jenna’s hard done by for space,” he said, and set about making sure everybody’s trunk got properly shrunk. Harry and Hermione held on to Hedwig and Crookshanks, in their carriers, and Ginny kept Pigwidgeon, but everything else was best kept small and tucked away. Sometimes, Simon warned them lightly, a person needed to be able to move fast in the Ways.

    This did not seem to reassure the Weasleys, who had returned just in time to catch the comment. “These Ways aren’t dangerous, are they?” Mrs. Weasley asked, a little fretfully.

    “We send Harry through them every year,” Simon said, by way of answer. He was mostly focusing on Shrinking Fred’s trunk properly. Fred seemed a little nervous about some of the things that were in it. When he finished, he continued, “Some of them are dangerous, but we won’t be going through those. The worst we’ll get is an unpleasant ghost, or the Wild Way Wind.”

    “What happens in the Wild Way Wind?” Hermione demanded at once.

    “We all back out and try again later,” Simon said. He could be a little short when he was doing Magyk.

    “The Wind takes you somewhere random, instead of to wherever’s usually at the end of the Way,” William said, after a pause where he glanced at Harry to see if his more knowledgeable brother would answer first. “But when we came through a few weeks ago Uncle Sam said it was off near the Heart of the Ways and wouldn’t bother us.”

    “Let’s hope it still is.” Simon cast a glance at Lucy, who was still talking to the Grangers, then moved on to from Ginny’s to Hermione’s trunk. “And let’s wait for your mum to finish before we go anywhere.”

    “What exactly happens in these Ways?” Ginny asked, a little nervously. Pigwidgeon was fluttering about, impatient to be out of his cage.

    “It’s not bad at all,” Simon reassured her as he stood up from her Shrunken trunk, and probably her parents by proxy. “What happens in a Way is you’ll walk through an archway, and a few feet in, you’ll go through the Vanishing Point, which is usually hidden by mist. That’s where you’ll switch from the place you come from to the Magykal passage, and then eventually you come out of the Vanishing Point on the other side. We’ll be going through...” he hesitated, mentally counting up.

    “Five Hubs,” Harry said.

    “Hubs?” Mr. Weasley asked.

    “A Hub is a place with more than one Way to go out of,” Simon said. “The rest are blind Ways that only go to one place. The Way that comes here is blind, and so is the one we’ll eventually exit in the Castle. But Harry’s right, we’ll pass through five Hubs on the way there. Which reminds me, you each need to keep a coin ready.”

    “What? Why?” Fred and George asked, near simultaneously. Simon was already rummaging in his pocket.

    “We’ll be passing through the Temple with the Priest, and if he notices travelers coming through he asks for a gift. A coin will do, per person. Here, Harry.” Simon put a silver penny in Harry’s hand, and then handed them out to everyone else, Weasleys included, even though Mrs. Weasley had reached for her pocket. 

    “Oh, we can—” Mr. Weasley began, a little flustered.

    “If I weren’t paying the Priest, I’d be paying the Bridge toll,” Simon interrupted, holding up a hand. He handed a coin to Lucy as she returned. “Besides, maybe the Priest will be asleep and they can keep it to spend on a keepsake from another Time. Hermione, go say goodbye to your parents properly.”

    Hermione went, with a troubled, stubborn look on her face. The Weasleys all submitted to tight hugs; Lucy put her hands on Harry’s shoulders. 

    “We’ll make sure your Hogwarts letters are sent to the box here,” Mr. Weasley reassurred the group as they got ready to leave. There was a little mailbox set up outside the King’s Cross Way, which was how Harry usually got his summer correspondence. There was a ripple of movement as people picked up animal carriers and tucked Shrunken trunks and bags into their pockets. 

    “Don’t be rude guests,” Mrs. Weasley said hurriedly. “Mind your manners—and don’t go running around doing magic just because the Trace is hard to follow up on there—”

    “Mum, we’ll be fine,” George said, with unusual honesty and seriousness. 

    “We promise to only blow up one toilet,” Fred added, to even things out. He still looked jittery.

    “I was going to ask for a favor,” Simon said to the Weasleys, before Mrs. Weasley could be put even more on edge. “This big a group is a bit noticeable...I don’t want any strangers following us into the Way.”

    “Oh, allow me,” Mr. Weasley said. “I know an excellent minor disillusionment perfect for avoiding notice in crowds.”

    Thus enchanted, the Weasleys and the Grangers stood and watched until all of them had left the fractional platform, and were amidst the Muggles and the non-magical trains. Simon led them through the crowd, past the shops and advertisements that only Hermione understood, until they reached a little-used side hallway that led off to a storage closet with a rusted-shut doorknob and cobwebs in the corner. 

    Simon turned to face the wall next to it, and then looked around, recounting the group. “They said they’d be—”

    He was interrupted by a house-elvish crack of teleportation. “We are here!” chirped Dina. Next to her, Winky was leaning on her arm, eyes heavy-lidded. 

    “Good timing,” Simon told her. “When we get to the Castle, I’ll show you to where you can take Winky, and we’ll see that she gets some proper care.” As Dina’s eyes shone with gratitude, Simon pointed out to the rest of the group where someone had made small marks near the floor in chalk, showing the confines of the Hidden archway.

    “So keep within those marks and you won’t bump anything going through,” he finished. “Harry, will you lead? You know the Ways home better than I do.”

    Harry nodded. Simon watched him closely for a moment, examining his expression, then accepted it.

    “First-timers hold hands,” Lucy told the group. Fred and George immediately linked up with each other, and there was some embarrassed shuffling from the rest as they figured out an acceptable order. “It can be a little disorienting, going through for the first time, and I don’t want anyone getting lost.” Lucy herself took Harry’s hand, even though she had been through the Ways several times. When she squeezed, Harry managed to squeeze back. Simon was busy warning the house-elves to keep close to him in case of trouble.

    “Lead on,” Simon said, and Harry stepped into the Ancient Way.

Chapter Text

    The Vanishing Point consumed them in white mist. Behind them, and the way ahead, remained shrouded in it, but the mist faded to transparency around their group. The walls were perfectly smooth, and no torch hung from them, but the winding Ways could hardly be considered dark. The gold-flecked blue of the walls, solid lapis lazuli, glowed with a faint golden, Magykal power.

    Behind him Harry heard the rustle of the group following behind, and the patter of many shoes and socked house-elf feet. 

    They emerged from the other side of the Vanishing Point into a chilly, northerly summer. The archway that belonged to this Hub was one of twelve in a huge three-quarter circle around an enclosed harbor. Abandoned ships creaked on ancient moorings, and those too old to keep their shape lay in collapsed wooden piles on the beach or under the clear grey water. The archways were set along a curved stone quay, and the sand brushed up against the edge of the stone. The crescent sliver of a beach got smaller every year as the waves brushed the sand out to sea. 

    As they waited to make sure everyone was completely out of the old Way before they progressed into new ones, Harry looked up at the wall enclosing the harbor. On the seaward side it was made up of many arches, ones supporting what looked like rows upon rows of aqueducts rather than more Magykal arches. He inhaled slowly, and received the salt sting of his own Time. Something finned briefly brushed the surface of the water, beyond the one huge arch tall enough to allow small ships in and out, then vanished. 

    “All good,” called Fred from the rear. “All of us are through, I mean. Boy, this place is dismal.”

    “Where is this?” Hermione asked, looking around. “These ships look so old. I mean, no one uses ships with sails anymore.”

    “I suppose they’ve gone back to them since your Time,” said William. “Welcome to ours.”

    “Already?” Ginny visibly startled.

    William shrugged. “The connection between here and King’s Cross is the only one that goes through Time. Congratulations,” he added with a grin. “You’re Time travelers.”

    Harry stepped into the next Way.

    A warmer breeze stirred them as they came into what Harry called the Sunken Hub, where the arches led to a deep pool of still water. This one was fresh, wth algae floating in green clusters and flickers of frogs and water snakes below the surface. Round stepping-stones led to the large flat rock in the center, where they could change direction and head to another arch in the circle. Shallow dips were worn into their centers from years upon years of feet pressing down on them.

After his growth spurt last year, Harry didn’t have any trouble striding from one stone to the next. Behind him he heard Simon checking that the spaces between them weren’t too wide for the house-elves. Someone in the line dipped a hand into the water, sending ripples across the pool that splashed in miniature against the rock under Harry’s feet. There was less talking after William’s revelation.

    A sharp turn led them down another line of stepping-stones and into the third Way. Harry stepped across the mosaic-tiled floor of the little shadowed temple as silently as a mouse, but the noise of so many people alerted the priest. They each forked over their coin (the house elves chose this moment to go Magykally unnoticed, however their magic worked). Once he realized everyone had a gift the priest was all smiles, nodding and chatting vaguely at them in his own language. Hermione offered a nervous ‘thank you’, Simon a confident one. The Weasleys collectively mumbled something along those lines. The priest watched them go into the next Way with a wave. 

    They emerged into the Maze, and a chilly silence fell over the group. Harry stopped; he’d forgotten to take his map out ahead of time. Lucy’s hand got a little tighter on his shoulder.

    “What’s going on?” Ron asked, the Weasleys squishing together in the narrow entryway of the Maze. There was a forced casualness to his voice. Harry knew the Maze held some lingering pockets of Darke magic, but it didn’t take Magyk to put Ron on guard. Just looking at the ten-foot-high walls of burnt brick crowding in on all sides could make anyone nervous.

    “Just remembering the way,” Harry said. He unfolded the map and smoothed it flat. He knew the pattern of turns. Oskar Sarn, who had once been through the Maze with a Magykal PathFinder Charm , had memorized the turns that lead to the Far Hub, and he passed on one of his many copies of the list to Harry. 

    Harry went each way once a year, reverse and rightways. He kept a ball of Magykal yarn from Lucy (enchanted by Simon) in case he got lost. But it helped to know he had instructions.

    The line of people unclumped as Harry moved forward, unraveling the yarn behind him out of habit in case he lost track and needed to retrace his footsteps. First it was a right, then a left, then straight on around a curve as they wound deeper into the Maze. Two more rights and then (Harry let out a breath) they could start heading away from the middle again, straggling towards the right-hand wall and the Way that led to safety. The Maze was always empty aside from him, but it never failed to make his heart pound.

    When he saw the archway ahead of him, Harry’s chest relaxed. He started walking a little faster, speaking the yarn’s Word of Recall , and the string jumped along the ground as it wound itself back up in his hand.

    They clumped together again as everyone hurried into the mist of the Vanishing Point. Harry strained his eyes ahead until he saw the yellow glint of the only lantern that hung inside the Ways; as it came into view, he saw the familiar door, and the sign hanging on its back.

    Welcome, Friend, to the Far Hub said Oskar Sarn’s neat handwriting. Please knock and we will open the door.

    Harry knocked.

    There was no noise from the other side, no hint of a person stirring, until the bolt slid back and the door opened. Dan Moon, on the other side, winced at the hearty squeak of the hinges. “I need to get those oiled,” he muttered, and his face creased in well-worn smile lines. “Ah, Harry! June twenty-second already?”

    Harry nodded wordlessly. Dan Moon, one of the leaders of the PathFinder village and former owner of the PathFinder itself, stepped aside to let him through, but raised his eyebrows at the group that followed him.

    “We’re having some friends of Harry’s from school to stay this summer,” Simon explained. He and Dan had become something like friends ever since Harry started traveling back and forth every year; it was usually Dan who stayed up on the Hub sentinel position on June the twenty-second, watching to make sure Harry came through safely. “I would’ve had Septimus warn you, but it was all a bit last-minute...”

    Dan waved his concerns aside. “As long as everyone got through the Ways safely. I’ll get the Castle door for you; it’s late and you’ll be wanting your own beds around now.” He moved to Way VII and unbolted the door, pulling it open as well. “Could one of you lock that one behind you?”

    Someone must have obliged; the bolt sounded as it was shot home. The welcoming mist of the Vanishing Point enveloped them, and the Way seemed shorter than usual before it deposited them onto a narrow but steady wooden walkway, gently sloping down towards the path on the outside of the Castle walls. Harry heard the lapping of the Moat against its banks, and the noise of crickets and leaves from the Forest on the other side, and smelled the smoky damp air that had wrapped around him since he was a child. Overhead the sky was filled to bursting with familiar stars. He relaxed so much he almost stumbled.

    “Watch the edge,” Simon warned the back of the line. If someone came out too fast they would go straight into the Moat. Harry was already going down the walkway, Lucy right behind him, down where it ended right next to Uncle Rupert’s boathouse and met the road of Snake Slipway.

    Simon stopped the two of them at the bottom. “I have to get Winky to the Wizard Tower, and see if Dr. Draa can do anything for her,” he said. The house elves were no longer Magykally unnoticeable, but Dina was lurking somewhat behind the edge of Simon’s cloak, still supporting Winky. Even in starlight alone—it was a waning crescent moon—the golden pyramid at the top of the Wizard Tower glinted faintly over the top of the Castle’s Wall. “You all go ahead to the Palace without me.”

    “Alright, Si.” Lucy kissed him farewell, and Simon set off, both house-elves in tow. Harry was beginning to feel the long day of travel, even if most of it had been sitting down on a train, and he wished they could go straight home. But Lucy clapped her hands, turning to their visitors. “Alright, we’re nearly there, so stay with me and we’ll get you all settled soon enough. William, you know how to UnShrink their trunks, don’t you? Come along with us.”

    The group trudged along Snake Slipway, the tall narrow houses closing ranks around them as they retreated from the Moat edge like soldiers forming a protective gauntlet. 

    “Hey,” Ginny said, speedwalking to catch up with Harry and William at the front, “why’s your grandparents’ house called the Palace?” She stumbled when Lucy stopped dead, sending the whole group stuttering to a halt.

    “Oh dear,” Lucy said. “We forgot to explain Aunt Jenna.”

    “Aunt Jenna?” Hermione asked.

    William ran a hand over his face. “I’ll do it. Let’s keep walking.”

    So they kept walking, and Harry avoided looking at his friends’ increasingly incredulous faces as William explained how Aunt Jenna was also adopted, but it turned out Jenna’s first mum had been the last Queen of the Castle, and Jenna had not so much been ‘mysteriously abandoned’ as ‘hastily rescued from the coup d’etat that killed her mother, the previous ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and her, nearly’. 

    When the coup had been undone a few decades ago, Jenna had moved back into the Palace, since she was the rightful heir. Grandma and Grandpa Heap had gone with her, because she was still only a kid then, and they all still lived there.

    “And no,” William finished, “everyone assumes this, but royalty doesn’t apply to anyone in the family except Jenna. We’re just regular Heaps. It was Jenna’s first mum who was royal, not my Grandmum.”

    William talked fast. As he finished they came around to the inward side of the Wall, and the Palace came into sight in the south. Torches lit the road leading along to it; the torch-lighter was still making his way up from that direction, igniting the night’s torches after making sure they were secure in their brackets. He gave a professional nod to the group as he passed by before returning to his work.

    The dome of the Palace was nearly invisible in the night, but its tall, solid walls and stately grandeur were easy to make out. As they approached, the ghost of Sir Hereward straightened to attention outside the door. The torchlight flickered over the carving of a dragon-headed boat over the lintel.

    “Hark! Good evening, all,” said Sir Hereward. “A motely crew this night to be sure. Welcome home, Harry.”

    “Thanks,” Harry mumured automatically. Sir Hereward frowned, and glanced at Lucy, who just shook her head.

    “Well, sleep soundly this night, and eat well first,” said Sir Hereward. He Caused the door to open, a trick he had perfected down to a science; it moved slowly and grandly, rather than just slamming open. “I believe the Queen is waiting up in the dining room.”

    “And that’s...” Lucy hesitated.

    “Down the Long Walk into the north wing, past the portrait of Hengist the Unready, and to the left,” Sir Hereward supplied.

    “Oh, thanks.”

    Aunt Jenna didn’t like using candles to light the entire Palace when so few of the rooms were occupied, but the necessary parts of the Long Walk were always lit. There was essentially a candle-and-torch path leading south to the dining room, which was really the Palace’s huge feast hall, often reserved for visiting dignitaries (not that the Castle got many of those). The fire in the large hearth was small and low—summer was already heating up in the Castle—and the Heap grandparents were ensconced in comfortable chairs nearby. Aunt Jenna, the light of the candles on the table glinting off her golden circlet, was writing a letter, and looked up at their entrance.

    “Harry! Oh, gosh,” as the rest filed in behind him. Lucy rushed to explain, as Grandma Sarah came to give Harry a suffocating hug. Uncle Septimus had probably told everyone about everything already.

    At least that meant Harry didn’t have to.

    Aunt Jenna always stayed up at the Palace to receive Harry with a meal after he got home for the summer; Grandma Sarah bemoaned that the Hogwarts Express didn’t serve proper meals, so after breakfast that morning a good dinner, even if it was rather late, was normally a long-awaited prospect. Whatever family was around would come and welcome him back, and true to form, as Cook started bringing the food out, people trickled in. 

    Simon reappeared, along with Uncle Septimus, and even Marcia came with them, purple ExtraOrdinary Wizard robes fluttering. Uncles Edd and Erik, the twins, came down without their blue Ordinary Wizard robes, prepared instead for another summer camping in the Marram Marshes (Harry saw well-tended wolverine skins poking out of their backpacks). Uncle Sam and his boyfriend Marwick, who led the campsite every year, met them at the Palace doors after having been away all winter and spring, and for a while the Long Walk outside was filled with a lot of jovial catching-up.

    Even Uncle Nicko and his wife Snorri, who seemed to brace herself for Grandma Sarah’s mother-in-law-ing as she walked in, came by; Nicko usually managed to show up on the summer tide from the Port. 

    As usual, No-Good Uncle Jo-Jo didn’t manage to drop by, but just six of the seven Heap siblings (from their generation; Grandpa Silas had six brothers too) was enough to make anywhere feel crowded. The room was full of movement as everyone tried to figure out who was sitting where, and introduced themselves to the Weasleys and Hermione, and caught up with everyone else.

    On a good day, a day-long train trip followed by forty minutes through the Ways was enough to exhaust even before being put in a room with both parents and nine or ten well-meaning older relatives. Harry picked at his food and didn’t look up often from his plate.

    His uncles kept the converstion going, though it felt a little more artificial than previous years, like they were trying to make up for Harry not speaking without drawing attention to him. Marwick was allowed to go on for ages about the Marram Marshes, and their plans for the summer, and Grandpa Silas kept interrupting everyone to ask Harry’s friends about Hogwarts and magic, and if they had ever played a game of Counter-Feet, and if not would they like to, he was arranging a tournament for this summer...

    Aunt Jenna eventually issued a Queenly declaration that everybody needed to finish dessert and go to their rooms for the night or they were all going to regret it in the morning (except for Grandma Sarah, who had retreated to her bed an hour previously). “And we’ve got to sort out who’s sleeping where,” she said. “Edd, Erik, is it possible you could spend the night in the Wizard Tower instead of here?” Usually, the twins and Sam and Marwick set off for the Marshes from the Palace landing stage, and spent the night after Harry’s welcome-back dinner.

    “Oh, they can bunk with us, if we need to free up a room,” said Uncle Sam. “We can draw straws for who gets the floor and who gets the bed.”

    “Oh, no, I’m not letting you cut straws for this again,” Uncle Edd threatened. 

    “ Then,” Aunt Jenna interrupted pointedly, “would you please show our guests to where they can spend the night? And perhaps help bring their things up the stairs.” William had already UnShrunk their trunks, and they were left in an untidy pile in the Long Walk by the main stairway.

    When Lucy moved Harry towards the door, in the Long Walk, Ron said, “Aren’t you staying here?”

    “Our home is down in Snake Slipway,” Simon told them. The Hogwarts five had paused nervously when they realized Harry was leaving in a different direction. “It’s not far, and you’re welcome to come by any time you like.” 

    This didn’t look like it reassurred them. Harry didn’t say anything.

    It was almost funny that Harry didn’t have a single nightmare about the graveyard until he was safe at home.

    He barely left his room for four days. He couldn’t bear to make himself go out. People wouldn’t understand. Or worse, they’d know, and treat him differently. At night he would wake up with fear pulsing through him and then have to throw off William and Lucy, always barging in to try and calm him down when he just wanted to be left alone and not think about it anymore.

    Simon only tried to talk to him during the day.

    “We just want to take care of you, Harry,” Simon said. “We’re your parents. Please don’t push us away when we’re trying to help.”

    Harry didn’t say anything. He was hidden under his blankets, refusing to acknowledge his dad’s presence. 

    “You need to talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me or mum if you don’t want it to be.”

    “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    “You can’t stay in your room forever,” Simon pleaded. 

    “You don’t want me to leave,” Harry blurted out. “I heard you. You don’t want me to go back.” 

    Simon was quiet for a moment. “Harry,” he said gently, “there’s a Darke sorcerer running around there now.”

    “You can’t just stop me from going back! My first parents are from there, I can’t just never go back and forget about it. I won’t! I like it there.”

    “Is this about that Time, or just Hogwarts?”

    Harry curled up tighter. “...Hogwarts.”

    “Do you want to go back to Hogwarts?”

    Harry crumbled. “I don’t know!”

    Simon just held him, without saying anything else, as Harry cried. It was embarrassing. Harry wouldn’t have left his dad’s side for anything. Simon was as solid as a rock. 

    “I’m not going to lock you in the house to keep you away from that Time,” Simon said, “even though I know if you wanted to, you could get back there no matter what I think. We don’t have to talk about going back to Hogwarts or not going back right now. It’s only the beginning of the summer. I want you to have fun like you normally do—and I want you to talk to someone about this,” Simon added, pulling away just far enough to look down at Harry. “If you keep these strong feelings secret inside you, they’ll just fester. Trust me. I’ve made bad decisions before that could’ve been avoided if I just shouted at my parents for a bit. I would much rather get shouted at by you than see you hurt.”

    Harry nodded, still choked up. Simon handed him a handkerchief to scrub at his face. 

    “Go be with your friends,” Simon said. “That’s my advice. I think they might be just as scared as you, and right now they’re alone in a new Time.” Harry slumped a little, realizing how thoroughly he’d forgotten about them. “It’ll be good for all of you.”

    “Okay.” Harry’s voice was scratchy with hoarseness. He could do this. Maybe. He hung out with his friends all the time. All he had to do was be around them and explain how his home worked. They could walk all over the Castle and then maybe he’d be too tired at night to dream.

    Hermione and the Weasleys were so relieved to see them Harry felt even worse about hiding in his room for days.

    “I can’t even remember all the names of the people I’ve been introduced to,” Fred said.

    “This Palace is a maze,” George enthused.

    “We’re put up each in our own room,” Ron said. “The whole room, just for me.”

    “I think your Grandmum doesn’t like me,” Hermione fretted. 

    The last one was the easiest thing to respond to. “Why not?” Grandma Sarah wasn’t much of a person to dislike people. 

    “I don’t know! She just acts a bit weird.”

    “It was because of breakfast that first morning,” said Ginny. “We were all at the table and she said something about wizards, and Hermione pointed out that there were wizards and witches, and she got all weird about it.”

    “Oh, that’s all,” Harry said. “I should have warned you, Witches are something else here. I’ll go tell her.”

    “What do you mean, something else?” The group trailed after him, Hermione in the lead. Grandma Sarah was in the gardens, like usual, her fostered duck Galen toddling around in the lettuce beds.

    “Grandma Sarah?” Harry picked his way through the narrow paths. His grandma fairly beamed to see him. “I forgot to warn you, about witches from Hogwarts. Remember, after my first year when I was explaining how it’s divided by gender there? So everyone learns the same magic but boys are wizards and girls are witches?”

    “Oh dear,” Grandma Sarah said, clearly remembering the same thing Ginny had brought up. “I clean forgot. I’m sorry, girls, my first thought when I hear ‘Witch’ is of the Wendron coven, and that nasty bunch aren’t very nice to have as guests.”

    “That’s alright,” Hermione said hesitantly.

    “You’ve got a coven?” Ginny asked, clearly enthralled.

    “‘We’ do not,” Grandma Sarah huffed. “The Wendrons live out in the Forest, and if I hear about any of you going in there unattended, you’ll be sure your parents will find out.”

    “Okaygrandmathankyou,” Harry said quickly, pulling the group away again.

    “I want to hear more about the coven,” Ginny protested as they trailed back into the Long Walk.

    “You really don’t,” Harry told her. “Witch Magyk is a lot closer to the Darke than what our Wizards learn here. The Wendron coven live outside the Wall in the Forest for a reason.”

    “So witch magic is a completely different kind?” Hermione asked. “Where does that leave girls here?”

    “As Wizards, usually,” Harry said. “I mean, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard is a woman, Marcia. Um, the dark-haired lady in the purple who was at dinner the other night.”

    Hermione tugged nervously at the ends of her hair. “Can’t we just explain everything in one go?” She asked, pleading. “I don’t understand anything about this time, and I keep finding out things I think I understand are wrong.”

    “Hey, don’t worry so much about it,” Fred said. Sometimes Harry forgot the twins were two years older, but Fred was acting almost like he had to be the adult in the group. “It’s okay to be wrong about stuff.”

    Hermione screwed up her face. Harry could sense an impending lecture on how wrong Fred was, and how she needed to know everything, right now.

    “Why don’t we go see my Uncle Septimus?” Harry asked in a rush. “He’s the ExtraOrdinary apprentice, so you’ll get to see the Wizard Tower, and maybe he’ll let you see the Pyramid Library. Usually you only get to go in there if you’re the ExtraOrdinary or her apprentice.”

    That brightened Hermione’s mood. “That’s the big tower up there?” She pointed to where the alabaster tower was visible at the end of Wizard Way, through one of the windows in the Long Walk, its gold pyramid cap glinting brightly with Magyk and sunlight both.

    “Yeah, that’s the Pyramid Library at the top.” Harry led the way, though it wasn’t difficult to figure out how to get to the Wizard Tower from the Palace. Wizard Way led straight from one to the other. Soon the hush of people seeing the Tower up close for the first time fell over the group as they passed under the lapis lazuli-lined archway. Harry paused, letting them linger; the first sight of such a Magykal place was well known to strike a kind of awe, almost fear, into those seeing it. 

    It only took a moment to recover. Harry whispered the password to the double doors, as was custom, and they swung open, admitting the six of them to the Wizard Tower’s entry chamber. The walls flickered with Magykal images of past Wizards—at the moment it was showing some of Harry’s previous entrances, alongside shenanigans of various Heaps, Wizards or otherwise. Letters glimmered across the floor, almost like figures drawn in sand: WELCOME HOGWARTS STUDENTS TO THE WIZARD TOWER!

    “How does it...?” Ron wondered, staring down at the floor.

    “It’s the Wizard Tower,” Harry explained simply, taking a few steps up onto the silver spiral staircase at the center of the room. The rest of them would need space to jump on. “Also, the stairs move.”

    “Oh, like Hogwarts,” Ginny said. They all went to catch up with Harry. “Why aren’t you walking?”

    “Well, not like Hogwarts,” Harry said. “I mean the steps move. Twenty-first floor, please, moderate speed.”

    The stairs began to move. Ron stumbled and elbowed Harry accidentally as the staircase spun around its central post, sedately, carrying them all up towards the top floor and the ExtraOrdinary apartments. Harry pointed out the interesting floors as they passed by.

    “That’s Uncle Edd and Uncle Erik’s floor, they’re Ordinary Wizards now...oh, Ordinaries are the ones in blue robes, the Apprentices will be in green, and the ExtraOrdinary wears purple. Oh, that’s the Hospital Wing of the Tower, that’s where you go if you’re hurt or got in a Magykal accident. Dad’s here a lot, he’s learning how to be a chirurgeon.”

    “A what,” Hermione said blankly.

    “Someone who knows how to fix people’s injuries without Magyk? So if there’s something stuck inside your wound, he knows how to get it out and can stitch you back up.” Harry once needed stitches when he was eight, and Marcellus Pye had administered them. That was around when Simon had asked to start learning that part of a Physik’s trade.

    “Oh, a surgeon.”

    “Why not use magic if you can, though?” George asked, leaning around Ginny to talk and then hastily leaning back as they passed another floor.

    “Most people don’t know the spells you’d need, I suppose,” Harry said. Using Magyk to replicate a chirurgeon’s work was complicated and messy, as far as he knew. Bodies could be very complicated. Simon had come home with a lot of anatomy charts and, before Lucy made him get rid of it, a complete plaster skeleton. “And here’s us.” The stairs came to a halt at the twenty-first floor landing, a small wooden square with a purple-painted door looming over it. A stone carving of the ExtraOrdinary’s Magykal amulet decorated the keystone of the lintel.

    Harry paused before knocking; he heard what sounded like voices having an argument inside. But the door realized it was him and whisked open with a cheery bell noise the doors in the Wizard Tower had recently been Enchanted with. It was meant to be a calmer alternative to people banging on the door for attention; Marcia Overstrand, ExtraOrdinary Wizard, did not find it calming.

    “What?! Oh, Harry.” Her purple robes settled around her as Marcia swiftly, and not too subtly, switched tracks from ‘irritating guest’ to ‘person I like’. “Septimus is upstairs. Don’t touch anything,” she said severely, and Fred quickly withdrew his hand from the little table of Fragile-Fairy Pots just inside the door. 

    Uncle Septimus was much nicer. He seemed relieved to see Harry, and let them up into the Pyramid Library without a single protest, though he did hang around to make sure they didn’t get into any of the more dangerous Magykal books. “Just tell me if you see any paper beetles,” he said. “They’re a terror to the books in here and it’s nigh impossible to get the writing back, even with Magyk. ” He gestured to a small jar sitting on top of a desk, half full with squashed beetles from previous victories. Ron looked in the jar with disgusted intrigue.

    Hermione clearly wanted a look at the books, but got distracted talking to Uncle Septimus about the Castle’s history. He was willing to talk, though he skated around the coup, even though Harry knew he’d probably lived through at least part of it. Hermione was mostly interested in how Wizards worked in the Castle, and those were easy questions to answer, given that Septimus had been living in the Tower and interacting with its inhabitants for over a decade.

    “It sounds like you do a lot of the same stuff as the Ordinary Wizards,” said Ginny, who was lingering nearby, as Uncle Septimus went over some of his Senior Apprentice duties. “So what do you do after you graduate, then? Just the same stuff but more?”

    Uncle Septimus sighed heavily. “Wouldn’t everyone like to know,” he grumbled, and quickly changed the topic by recommending Hermione a book. Harry glanced towards the trapdoor that led back down to the ExtraOrdinary apartments, wondering if that was what he and Marcia had been arguing about.