The next day was the start of the new term, and the start of the fifth year for Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Word of the deaths of so many students, most of them Slytherins, had spread like wildfire among the houses. A pall hung over the school; there was virtually no horseplay, no cheerfulness, no happiness of any sort. All most of the students could do, even the ones who actively hated Malfoy and Parkinson and the other dead Death-Eaters-in-training, was concentrate on getting from class to class without breaking down in tears.

The Three Musketeers did not by any means share every class. Hermione was loading up on advanced Astronomy and Arithmancy courses, while Ron and Harry both decided to take Muggle Studies, and even managed to drop their Divination class; it was an easy class to fake one's way to a good mark in, but both Harry and Ron had had quite enough of Madam Trelawney to last them several lifetimes.

But one of the classes the three friends all shared was, of course, Potions.

They were all intensely curious to see Professor Snape again, something they discussed in whispers as they made their way down the dungeon stairs to his classroom. What would he be like -- especially now that he had revealed himself to the three of them to be a Death Eater, albeit an allegedly-former one? What was the job he had performed for Dumbledore, the night of the third task? What had Dr. Reader done over the summer to make him more amenable where Harry was concerned?

Most importantly: How would he handle the loss of so many members of his own house?

The students, most of them Gryffindors, filed silently into the classroom. There was an unspoken agreement that seemed to have been reached between the Gryffindors and the surviving Slytherins; the usual strict seatings-by-house were abandoned, in favor of a looser style that made the gaping holes in the class far less obvious.

A soft, rhythmic wooden tapping could be heard in the hallway. The students, now all seated by their cauldrons, turned around and craned their heads for a look.

Professor Snape, leaning heavily on a cane, slowly entered the classroom.

His face had a few extra lines, and not from aging. He did not frown; he did not smile. His face was, aside from the occasional grimace of pain as he walked, was devoid of expression.

Looking neither left nor right, he made his way to the front of the classroom, walking past the desks and cauldrons as if they weren't there. No one dared move, much less speak.

He faced the class, his hand on the cane with a white-knuckled grip. His black eyes slowly moved over his students, as if he were reckoning who was missing.

"And so, it begins," he said in a voice just barely above a whisper. "Before we commence with the first class of this term, there are a few things which you all will need to hear.

"You all will have heard about what happened last night. Some of you, in fact," and here his eyes rested upon Harry, Ron and Hermione for the briefest of moments, "were involved in defending your fellow students against the attack directed at the train. You could not know the fate that the Dark Lord had decreed for those of your classmates who were so unfortunate as to have been born into the wrong families. I wish to emphasize two things to you.

"First, for those of you who helped subdue those of your fellows who were part of the assault on the train: Do not blame yourselves for their deaths. You did not kill them; Voldemort did."

There was a ripple of dread that went round the room at the mention of the Dark Lord's name, but Snape appeared not to have heard it. He continued, in a voice that dripped scorn:

"Secondly, you all will be hearing much talk from the parents of your dead classmates about how shocked, shocked they are that their sons and daughters would have been supporters of the Dark Lord. Do not believe them. They are merely trying to divert suspicion away from themselves, when they were themselves the ones who in the first place pushed their own children into Voldemort's service."

Harry's eyes widened, and he shot quick glances at Ron and Hermione, who looked just as surprised as Harry was himself. Snape was, not to put too fine a point on it, publicly accusing several prominent witches and wizards, including Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, of being Death Eaters!

He must be convinced that the surviving Slytherins are trustworthy, Harry surmised, and his cover among the Death Eaters must have been blown for good last night. And he must reckon that Lucius Malfoy's power to harm him has dwindled to next to nothing. There's no other way I can imagine Snape talking like this. If ever I wanted proof that he's on our side, he's just given it to me.

"Are there any questions about this before I take up today's lesson?" Snape asked, relaxing his grip on his cane as he allowed himself to fall heavily into a chair he had just conjured; evidently his injury was too painful to allow him to stand for prolonged periods of time.

The room was silent.

"So be it," Snape said softly from his chair, his thin mouth curled into a somewhat-less bitter version of his customary sneer. "On with the lesson, then."

===================

MI5 and MI6's official headquarters are fairly prominent London buildings, the former being the stately Thames House on Millbank and the latter being a formidable modern building across the river at Vauxhall Cross. But their shared London liason office with the Department of Mysteries of the Ministry of Magic is another story, at least from the outside.

Jack Crawford stepped out of the cab in front of a building that looked to be exactly what it was, a fairly typical, albeit particularly well-done, conversion of a turn-of-the-century industrial building into efficiently modern office space.

He entered the large arched glass-and-brass double doors, found the brass-trimmed elevators, and punched "7". The elevator carried him up to the 7th floor, which according to the ground-floor building directory was entirely taken up by a British-American dot-com firm, Cyberspace Ltd.

Once at the seventh floor, Crawford was confronted by a dingy-looking door with a tatty notebook-paper sign on it that read "Back on Monday" in scrawled laundry marker ink, in the casual manner befitting the ponytailed Muggle dot-com set. Crawford smiled thinly to himself. If it had actually been Monday, the sign would have read "Back tomorrow;" the guardian camouflage enchantment the Ministry used was a heuristic one, and one of the better ones around.

"Buttercup 328," he said, and the door swung open and vanished.

Jack Crawford found himself in the midst of a hive of quiet activity. He was in the exact center of a huge circular room, with private offices, conference rooms and a cafeteria on its rim surrounding and facing into the enormous open middle area, which was filled with desks at which a dozen wizards and witches were sitting.

Muggle and wizard artifacts were cheek-by-jowl everywhere. State-of-the-art wireless encrypted T1 terminals were being used by robed wizards and witches with quills tucked behind their ears. Great glowing computer display screens were being projected in the air by magical means. Owls delivered tea trays and inter-office messages to persons in perfect Muggle bank-manager disguise, persons who were obviously as comfortable in Muggle attire as was Jack Crawford himself. One of these persons, a tall strapping blond man who looked as if his nose had once been crushed by either a Bludger or an opposing tackle's helmet, came into the middle of the circular room to greet Jack.

"Jack Crawford, I presume?" said the blond man, holding out his hand for what Crawford hoped wouldn't be too strong a handshake. "Ned Peverel, Department of Mysteries. Welcome to our humble abode. We finally got it spiffed up last month."

Jack spared a moment to glance around openly. "Nice place," he commented. "How'd you get Major to cough up the dough?"

"He didn't. Marcus Reader did. Fabulous man, Reader," beamed Peverel, "the best Muggle I've ever met. First-rate mind; would have given even Dumbledore a run for his money in the wizarding department, if he'd been born with any magical ability at all. He heard from Arthur Weasley about our troubles with the Muggle Chancellor of the Exchequer, and decided to step in with a million pounds' worth of free gift."

"You don't say," replied an astonished Crawford.

"I do say. Plus, he's matey with the landlord, so he was able to get us a substantially lowered rental rate. I'm glad he's on our team."

"I'll be dipped," was all Crawford could think of in response, as he followed Peverel into a private office.

Peverel's office was a somewhat less cluttered version of the main floor, a mixture of magical and Muggle items. Ministry of Magic and British Secret Service credentials decorated the wall behind his desk. A bronze statuette of Pallas Athena shared space with a minibar on a credenza, and an messaging-owl perch stood near the large window that made up a good portion of the office's outer wall. Peverel waved Jack into a large Scandinavian-looking leather chair while he used his wand to rummage around in the minibar.

"What's your poison, Jack? I've got Old Number Seven here, if you like."

"I'll take bourbon-and-branch, if you have any," said Jack, settling into the sinfully comfy leather chair.

Peverel shot him a discerning look. "Ah, a man after my own heart," he said, as he, without using his hands, poured a splash of cool spring water into a levitating tumbler, then fetched out some Leestown Eagle Rare and let a few fingers of it mingle with the water. "So how goes the hunt for the Blake-Smiths' killers?", he asked, sending the drink floating in the air to Crawford, who picked it up matter-of-factly.

Crawford made a face. "Well, it depends. If by that you mean 'Do you have a clue which of the Death Eaters did the deed, I'd have to say 'Hell, no.' If what you mean is 'Do you think we can make them all pay for it?', I'd have to say 'Hell, yes.' And if what you mean is ' Do we have a good cover story that will satisfy both the next of kin and the Muggle authorities, then I'd have to say 'We've got a pretty good one worked up right now, and with a coat of paint or two it might even work.'"

"I thought so," said Peverel, who had just fixed himself a drink identical to his guest's, and using the same method. "So you've interviewed Harry Potter, then?" he said, settling behind his desk, a filled tumbler floating into his hand. "Anything more to go on, since the twin attacks?"

"Not yet. He was awake when the attacks took place, and his connection to Voldemort usually is strongest in his sleep. Reader's coached him in memory techniques, so we've been able to pull up some clean visuals of the interior of the cave where Voldemort's denned -- no outside pictures, though. We did get good visuals of various Death Eaters, especially one of a fellow who Voldemort calls 'Wormtail', who's apparently an unlicensed Animagus. He can turn into a rat."

Peverel's eyebrows lifted a hair's breadth. "'Wormtail'. I should know that name."

"That's because of the Marauder's Map, the magical surveillance map Harry Potter was tricked into giving to the fake Mad-Eye Moody last year. You probably remember hearing about it from the debriefing papers. It was created by four Hogwarts students in the early 1970s as a way to monitor the comings and goings of various teachers, as well as showing all the ways in and out of the castle."

Peverel whistled, impressed. "Now I remember. How did Harry Potter get hold of the thing?"

"Fred and George Weasley gave it to him; they'd managed to sneak it out of the caretaker's cabinet some years back, after it had been confiscated." Crawford leaned forward, his face intent, his eyes fixed on Peverel's. "The map, by the way, is signed with the nicknames of its creators: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs."

Ned Peverel's blue eyes widened. "Merlin's brass balls," he swore in an undertone. "So you think this Wormtail of the map is the same as the Wormtail hanging around Voldemort?"

Crawford's eyes crinkled in sardonic amusement. "Not think. It turns out that all four of the Marauders have been identified. 'Moony' himself stepped forward and identified himself as Remus Lupin, a lycanthrope and former Hogwarts teacher, and he was able to identify the others. The nicknames have to do with the fact that Lupin's three Hogwarts friends all became unlicensed Animagi, as a means of safely watching over him during his wolf period."

The skin on Peverel's neck tingled in foreboding. "Unbelieveable. Who are they?"

"'Prongs' was none other than James Potter, Harry Potter's father. He took the form of a stag when he transformed. 'Padfoot' is Sirius Black, who turns into a big black dog."

"And Wormtail? The one who turns into a rat?"

Crawford's smile was a masterpiece of hard-bitten cynicality. "The allegedly-martyred Peter Pettigrew."