Mr. Crawford showed up on the morning after they had received Dumbledore's messages announcing his imminent arrival.

Dr. Lecter and Clarice were inspecting the courtyard and grounds behind Offhand Manor, making sure all the video cameras were functional, well hidden and protected from attacks magical and mundane. The various security systems, always of the best Muggle items available, had already been upgraded considerably, and augmented with magical protections, since Harry had taken up residence.

Thus it was that Lecter, Clarice and Harry were wearing devices that vibrated against their respective skins whenever anyone came within 15 feet of the grounds.

Harry happened to be in his room when he felt his vibrating alarm go off. He ran to get his Invisibility Cloak; he had a feeling he would need it. By the time he was downstairs, the doorbell had started ringing, and Lecter and Clarice were at the door monitor.

Lecter nodded approvingly when he saw Harry with the cloak. "Put it on and go into the corner by the bookcase. Don't take it off until I or Clarice give the word. Clarice and I will be conspicuously unarmed, on the off-chance that this might help convince Crawford of our benignity. Vibra-page Dumbledore immediately and be ready to use the Disarming Spell."

Harry did as he was bid, and settled into position by the bookcase, hand on his wand, as Clarice hit the intercom button. "Hello, Mr. Crawford," she said with a calm that Harry wondered if she really felt. "Professor Dumbledore told us to expect you."

There was a cynical laugh on the other end. "So he did. So he did. Open up, Starling. We've got a lot to talk about."

The door lock made a snick as the lock was turned off.

With Dr. Lecter standing close, Clarice stood back to open the door. A sad smile crossed her face when she saw Crawford reach for his wand; as she and Lecter had figured, Jack was in no mood to be reasonable.

Even as she spread out her arms and opened hands in a gesture of reassurance and peace, Crawford, pointing the wand directly at her, yelled "STUPEFY!"

That was enough for Harry, hiding and invisible on the other side of the bookcase. He immediately hit Dumbledore's speed dial number a second time on the pager and wished with all his might that the headmaster was available.

Lecter caught Clarice as she slumped to the floor, but Crawford roughly snatched her out of his hands and backhanded the doctor onto the couch, sending him sprawling and temporarily helpless.

"I've waited years to do this, you murdering son of a bitch," Crawford gritted loudly through clenched teeth. Again he raised his wand high.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" he shouted.

A green rush of death issued from Crawford's wand, found and enveloped Dr. Lecter -- and promptly dissipated into nothingness, leaving Lecter unharmed.

Crawford was so shocked he dropped his wand.

In the meantime, Harry, who had been silently berating himself for not anticipating Crawford's willingness to use the worst of the Unforgivable Curses, stepped forward from his hiding place and put a Stunning Charm of his own on Crawford. Crawford slumped to the floor.

Harry dragged Crawford over next to the sofa and picked up Crawford's wand, sticking it in his sleeve. Then he turned his attention elsewhere.

"Are you all right, Doctor?", cried Harry, helping Lecter to his feet. "That spell should have killed you!"

"Quite all right, Harry," said the doctor, shooting his cuffs. "I had actually anticipated both his spell and its failure to affect me."

Harry stared at him. "You knew that the Killing Curse wouldn't hurt you?"

Lecter smiled. "I didn't know that for sure, but I was secure enough in my belief to risk appearing totally unarmed before Crawford." He indicated Clarice's prostrate form with a slight motion of his sleek head. "But let's do something for Clarice first, before I tell you about why I did what I did."

"Oh -- right," Harry said. He turned to Clarice, pointed his wand, and said "Ennervate!"

Clarice slowly began to stir.

"Urrrgggh," she said, shaking her head groggily as she raised herself up to a sitting position. "So this is what it feels like to be Stunned. I feel like I just drank six Alabama Slammers and threw them all up." She looked over at Crawford's unconscious form. "Looks like it worked out just as you thought it would, darling."

"Indeed it did," Dr. Lecter replied. He helped her over to the couch, placing her next to Crawford. "Everything went exactly to plan. Harry, not knowing the depth of Crawford's emnity towards me, was not anticipating that Jack would attempt something as vile as the Avada Kedavra, and so was not prepared to stop Crawford. Crawford, for his part, was all-too-ready to kill me, but not to kill you. And I now have confirmation of something that I have suspected about myself for some weeks now."

"Which is?" asked Harry.

"That he is that great rarity among humans," said a voice behind them. "He is an Anti-Magus."

Professor Dumbledore had arrived at last.

=======

The five of them were sitting in the study, drinks at their elbows, talking animatedly.

Crawford had been released from the Stunning Charm, and his wand restored to him, but Harry was keeping an eye on him nevertheless. However, it seemed as if all the fight had gone out of Crawford; the anger was replaced by a sense of puzzlement.

"Why didn't you kill me when you had the chance, Lecter?", he asked, sipping at his bourbon-and-branch.

"Because I don't operate that way any more, Jack," Lecter replied. He took a sip of his Lillet before continuing. "That's why Clarice and I were conspicuously unarmed when you arrived. Harry was in hiding, but his main role, though he didn't realize it at the time, was to observe what was happening and to summon Dumbledore -- and to curb you when you got out of hand."

"'Curb' is right," Jack said, smiling ruefully. "Haven't been hit by a Stunning Charm like that in ages." He looked over at Harry. "And to think you're barely fifteen. I can see why Voldemort fears you." He turned back over to Lecter. "Which reminds me: Why aren't you on Voldemort's side?"

Lecter made a face. "Jack, you're letting your emotions run away with you again. I can't believe that the head and founder of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit can be this relentlessly obtuse."

Clarice chimed in. "Jack, remember what you liked to tell your students? 'Assume' makes an ass out of you and me." She smiled broadly, the fire in the study's fireplace making her eyes shine like sapphires and her teeth like pearls. "Boy, you have no idea how long I've waited to have the chance to use that line back at you." She turned to smile at the doctor. "But I'm forgetting myself. Please continue, Doctor."

Hannibal Lecter, convicted murderer, cannibal and genius, graciously nodded towards his lady love before turning back to Crawford. "Think, Jack. Even at my worst, what were my limits? What were the things I did not do?"

Crawford's lined, thin face, aged before its time by sorrow and frustration, lost some of its knife-edge bitterness for a moment as he pondered the doctor's query. "You didn't molest your victims, and you didn't usually torture them."

Lecter's eyes gleamed redly as he held Crawford in his gaze. "What else?"

It took Crawford a while to answer the doctor. "You wound up singling out those people who some might consider to have deserved death: child molesters, corrupt businessmen, the world's low lifes."

"And?"

"You went out of your way to avoid harming those people --" Jack resolutely avoided looking at Clarice, but everyone in the room knew to whom he referred "-- who you saw as having good qualities, such as honor, taste and intelligence."

Lecter nodded. "Precisely. And what do we know about Voldemort?"

Crawford was silent for a time. He knew what he was going to say. So did Lecter. So did everyone else in the room.

It hurt Crawford like hell, but it was the truth.

"Voldemort seeks out the very persons you despised," he said, in a choking voice. "He does not value honor and competence -- or if he does, only in the breach. He needs to bolster his own ego by surrounding himself with idiots and scum, persons to whom he can feel superior in every way. In fact, he behaves the same way Stalin did: whenever any of his inner circle gets to be too smart or too independent or too competent, he liquidates them."

There was another deep silence in the room.

"Well done, Mr. Crawford," said Dumbledore, speaking for the first time since his arrival. "It's very hard to face one's preconceptions head-on, even with the weight of evidence at one's disposal. Whatever Dr. Lecter did in his past life, he was not the villain that Voldemort was, and is."

Clarice broke in again. "Look at the evidence, Jack. Has Dr. Lecter killed anyone since he and I hooked up? No, or else you'd know about it. Has he done good things, for both the mundane and wizarding worlds, since his escape? Yes, as the Daily Prophet clippings you have are showing you. I know it's tough for you to accept, Jack," she said, leaning forward in her chair, "but he really has changed, and for the better."

Crawford looked around the room, his gaze lighting onto various persons in turn. "Pardon me for not being quite ready to believe that," he said, in a growl that made Harry think for a minute of Mad-Eye Moody, "but I promise I won't try to kill him any more, unless he screws up and I catch him at it."

Dr. Lecter's face broke into a broad smile. "That will do, Jack. That will do."