There was a hard frost on the ground outside the carriage house, and he could see his breath as ice in the air. He didn't know how long he'd been sleeping with neither fur nor blankets, but his skin had a disturbingly numb feeling to it. He had a vague recollection of transforming back, but he'd been worn out and had just curled up for what should have been a few minutes. It had still been dark then. It was quite light now.

He checked himself very carefully for injuries (nothing; thank heaven for the Wolfsbane and good luck), then did a warming charm while he pulled on his clothes. Next month, he'd put a warming charm on whatever place he found before he transformed. Sleeping naked in the winter was not a game for a man approaching forty. He briefly considered Apparating to the alley near Number 12, Grimmauld Place, but decided that would be a bad habit to get into and Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron instead, to catch a bus home.

He arrived to a cacophony.

Mrs. Black was screaming, but Sirius was paying no attention to her, because Kreacher was standing on the stairs, some bit of tattered old lace clasped to his chest, weeping.

"Give it here!" Sirius demanded. "I didn't tell you to go through the cartons upstairs, and I definitely didn't tell you that you could keep clothes."

"I am a good elf," Kreacher protested. "Took it from storage, like cleaning. Master knows that Kreacher didn't steal, and Master didn't give Kreacher clothes. Kreacher just picks them up to take care of them, like always."

"I didn't tell you take care of Mistress's clothes. I was going to go through them tomorrow--"

"Master was going to destroy them! Master was going to destroy Mistress's wedding robes!" Kreacher sat down on a step and tugged the robes closer to himself, crying into them so genuinely that Remus actually felt sorry for him. "Everything, everything, everything..." he wailed, banging his head against the railing with each repetition. "Master spoils everything..."

"Oh, will you STOP IT?"

Remus touched Sirius's shoulder.

Sirius jumped. "Oh. You're back."

Remus didn't feel like shouting. He didn't really feel like being in the middle of an argument. He pointed at the portrait. "Your mother," he said.

Sirius nodded and grabbed one of the curtains. Remus grabbed the other, and they silenced her after a moment of struggle, leaving only Kreacher's wracking sobs. Remus leaned on the newel post. "Kreacher," he said, "if you give me the robes, I'll see to it that Master doesn't destroy them."

"Hey!"

Remus held up a hand.

"Filthy, unnatural hands on Mistress's robes..." Kreacher sniffed, backing up the stairs. "Mistress would not allow it!"

"Fine," Sirius said, raising his wand. "I'll incinerate them from here."

Kreacher leapt over the railing--Remus hadn't thought the elf could move that quickly--and insinuated himself between Remus and the wall. He looked around Remus's knee. "The werewolf said you wouldn't."

"Not that it's any of his business"--Sirius gave Remus a reproachful look--"but he also said that you had to give them to him."

"I won't hurt them," Remus said. "I'm too tired to do much damage."

Kreacher looked up at him, eyes full of hate, and resentfully handed him the crumpled ball of fabric. As soon as it was in Remus's hands, the elf flew across the hall, buried his head in his arms against the curtains that hid Mrs. Black's portrait, and began to weep again, begging Mistress to forgive him for being faithless and allowing unclean hands to touch her things.

Remus sighed and looked at Sirius. "They're wedding robes," he said. "They're not going to hurt anything."

Sirius made a curt gesture with his hand and went toward Buckbeak's room, where the hippogriff had already made short order of Mrs. Black's everyday clothes, her linens, and most of her furniture. Remus took the wedding robes to a bureau on the second floor landing and put them carefully away, Charming the drawer against Kreacher's intrusions (he wasn't entirely sure how fluid house elf enslavement was, and didn't want to take the chance of accidentally freeing him). Then he went to bed and slept until shortly after noon.

Sirius was in the front room when he got up, reading a stack of magazines that someone had brought for him. They were fanned around him on the sofa, the pictures smiling and waving up at random corners of the ceiling.

"Sorry about that business earlier," he said when Remus came in. "I'd already had the same argument with Kreacher once last night. I suppose I was a bit short."

"I put the robes in the bureau," Remus said.

"What did you promise him I wouldn't incinerate them for?"

"Why did you want to?"

The door opened, and Mrs. Black's portrait started screaming. Sirius pointed over his shoulder toward the doorway and raised an eyebrow as if to say, Do you really need to ask? He got up and went to the entrance hall, and a few seconds later the screaming stopped. When he came back in, Dora was with him. Her hair was blue today, though in its usual spiky style. Remus wondered if that was a cut that she'd actually physically had done, the style it relaxed into when she was entirely unmorphed. He'd never thought to ask.

"Wotcher, Remus," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than usual. A bit tired."

"And very nostalgic," Sirius muttered bitterly, and related the tale of the wedding robes.

Dora shrugged. "If you don't want them, I'll add them to my collection. I have four Muggle-style wedding gowns, but nothing wizarding-style. No robes at Oxfam."

Sirius shook his head. "I don't think so. Mum would probably have them Cursed to strangle any half-blood who tried to put them on."

"I can break a Curse, Sirius."

"Fine. Take them if you want them. I--"

From somewhere above the mantelpiece, someone said, "Ahem."

They all looked up.

Phineas Nigellus was leaning idly against the frame of a painting of Tintagel. His painted hair bounced a bit in the wind from the stormy sea. "Not to interrupt matters of such great import," he said, "but Dumbledore wishes to speak to Lupin."

"Does he want me to come up to Hogwarts?" Remus asked.

"No. Too long. He is on his way to Hogsmeade as we speak, and asks that you Apparate here"--he pointed to the picture--"to the wizarding section, of course"--he raised an eyebrow, as though he'd expected Remus to head off to the Muggle tourist area--"and speak to him face to face."

"What's this about, Grayfur?" Sirius asked.

"As I have told you on countless occasions, if you are incapable of 'Great-Great-Grandfather,' you may call me 'Greatfather,' and if you are incapable of that, you may use my name. You may not refer to me as 'Grayfur.'"

Tonks grinned. "So, what's it about, Grayfur?"

Phineas gave a long-suffering sigh and shook his head. "I imagine if you were meant to be told, the instruction would not have been to have Lupin Apparate to a different location." With that, he walked out of the frame.

"Dumbledore knows it was a full moon last night," Dora grumbled.

"Yes, he does," Remus said. "And I imagine that whatever he needs to discuss is important enough to ask me to meet him anyway."

He expected to have to dance around a promise to tell them whatever Dumbledore said, but they both seemed to accept that he wouldn't make such a promise, and only expressed a hope that he would be able to tell them later. He bundled up against the ocean wind.

There was no one in the square, so he slipped into the blind alley to Apparate (safer going than coming in), and came out on a secluded part of the rocky Cornish coast. Like Diagon Alley, it was a wizarding place carved into the middle of a relatively busy Muggle area. Unlike Diagon Alley, hardly any wizards or witches came here. It was nothing more than an historical site, and not even one that was closely watched by someone aiming to earn a galleon in the tourist trade. When Remus arrived, he was alone except for a mossy statue of Merlin, long strafed by the wind and saltwater. A wooden bench overlooked the sea, and he went to sit down on it.

His parents had brought him here as a child--he remembered his father, who had been obsessed with learning wizard history, lamenting the lack of visitors--even before he'd been bitten. He wondered why Dumbledore had chosen the spot.

"I apologize for calling you so soon after the full moon."

Remus looked over his shoulder.

Dumbledore was standing behind him, leaning on a staff and looking eerily like the statue behind him. He came around the bench and sat down beside Remus, looking thoughtfully out over the sea. "I used to come here often," he said, "and seeing the painting at Sirius's home reminded me that I wanted to come here again. It's a good place for gathering one's thoughts, and one is rarely interrupted by eager young wizards seeking to understand the history of magical Britain."

"What's happened?" Remus asked.

"Nothing yet." Dumbledore frowned. "Severus Snape has been made aware of certain movements in Lord Voldemort's circle. A build-up for some kind of action. He's been unable to ascertain what it is, but there is certainly a plan in motion."

"Does it have to do with the prophecy?"

"I'm not sure. It seems a logical assumption. If it is about the prophecy, then Harry is in a great deal of danger when he leaves Hogwarts. But it may not be that at all. And Harry is having a rather bad year at school--I'd rather not trap him there over the holidays if it can be avoided at all."

"I'll talk to Molly and Arthur about shoring up the security at the Burrow while he's there. And he'll come to Grimmauld Place on Christmas Day to stay with Sirius for the rest of the holidays."

"A good plan. It may not be Harry after all. It may be..." He shook his head. "I hope to have more information in time, but several tongues have fallen silent recently. Lord Voldemort is becoming more vigilant with his underlings."

Remus nodded. "I see."

"There is another matter."

"What is it?"

Dumbledore took a deep breath. "Last night, no fewer than four werewolves were spotted loose. I'm sure Nymphadora Tonks will be able to tell you something about it when you see her--she was called in for extra duty to help."

"Loose...?" Remus's heart sped up. "I was in--"

Dumbledore shook his head. "No, you are not in any way suspect. Even the Ministry is well aware that you were in the safe house network."

Remus considered this piece of information, and what Dumbledore meant by bringing it up. Four loose werewolves under the full moon, roaming about...

"Was anyone bitten?"

"We haven't heard anything yet."

Remus closed his eyes. "Voldemort," he guessed. "He's approached the werewolves. Promised them a bit more freedom."

"I wondered if you had heard anything."

"No. I haven't spoken to another werewolf in nearly a year, and that was only briefly."

"I think it would be wise to renew your acquaintance," Dumbledore said.

A gust of wind burrowed through the layers of Remus's clothing, and he shuddered. Of course. "What about my assignment at Smeltings?"

"It still needs to be done. And I presume that if Smeltings is anything like Hogwarts, your headmaster would be less than pleased with a mid-year resignation." He smiled. "I haven't asked anyone else to leave a job, Remus. I'm not going to ask you to do so. Tell me... what do you make of young Mr. Dursley?"

Remus briefly related the events of the year, and his concerns about the Curse that was operating on Joe Levinson (Andromeda had apparently reported on what she'd seen, so it wasn't entirely new to Dumbledore).

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "Yes... That's something I'll leave in your hands. Obviously, we need to find a way to reverse it and discover who's responsible. But for the moment, I need you to follow up this business with the werewolves."

"Is there some reason you didn't want to discuss it in front of Sirius?"

"I'll leave it to your judgment whether or not to tell him. But I have reason to believe that if Voldemort is indeed trying to contact werewolves, he will be doing it through the only one of his loyal servants who has long experience with one."

"Peter."

Dumbledore nodded. "Keep your eyes open."

Remus remained at the seaside for a long time after Dumbledore left, trying to form some plan of action. With the exception of the safe house network, which had been established by the Ministry during one of its rare fits of compassion and was still under Ministry control, there really wasn't any kind of structure among werewolves. The other werewolves Remus had encountered had all been either chance meetings or newly bitten werewolves that he'd spoken to at St. Mungo's. The rare ones who had crossed his path since Umbridge's legislation had gone through had been uniformly hostile, blaming him for the new restrictions.

He sighed. A handful of them transformed in an underground room at St. Mungo's (with a window cut high above to let them see the moon). He supposed that would be as good a starting place as any. He'd try this afternoon, see if anyone was still there. If not, he would have to transform there in January. St. Mungo's transformations involved heavy iron chains; he didn't relish the idea.

Once, not long after leaving Hogwarts, he had spoken with Elizabeth Phelan--the werewolf who had first infected him--about "the werewolf community." It had begun with serious speculation about organizing for political purposes, but had quickly degenerated into bitter nonsense. Elizabeth had suggested that they could have a full-moon beauty shop, for those hard to reach snarls in the fur. Remus though wolf-pubs would be a fine idea, where lycanthropes could get drunk together and brag about the size of their bite radii. "We could carry our registration scrolls with us," he proposed. "Just so we could prove it." Elizabeth's husband had found them nearly doubled over laughing at the notion when he'd gotten home from work, and had asked if crescent moon madness was the latest symptom.

Looking back, nothing they'd said had been particularly funny, but the concept of a "werewolf community" was laughable, and he supposed that was what had really gotten them going. Remus and Elizabeth had been odd in their propensity to keep in touch; most werewolves did not harbor fond feelings for one another. After all, the one thing every werewolf in the world had in common was that he or she had, at one point, been attacked by a werewolf. It tended to produce a strained cordiality of shared knowledge on good days, and outright suspicion and loathing on the bad ones.

He Apparated to St. Mungo's. It was a longshot to find any werewolves here this late in the afternoon--let alone werewolves who had been exposed to strange people offering them grand new freedoms--and it didn't pay out. The underground transformation ward was empty. The apprentice Healer who had drawn this duty--it shifted from one to another--gave him a suspicious look, but didn't say anything.

He went back to Grimmauld Place. Dora was still there; she had Mrs. Black's wedding robes and was holding them against herself in front of a mirror in the dining room, which informed her that the robes were far above the station of a half-blood with ridiculous hair. He could see her reflection, her face thoughtful above the graceful spill of old lace. She'd cinched the waist with a silvery cord, and was using some a mild Sticking Charm to make the arms move with her.

Remus stood in the doorway for what seemed like a long time, then cleared his throat.

She jumped, turning around and clasping at the robes and blushing deeply. Her elbow caught a chair, which clattered over into the sideboard, and she thrust the robes onto the table to right it.

"Remus," she said, her voice fairly small and tight. "I didn't know you were back."

"Where's Sirius?"

"Upstairs with Buckbeak." She gingerly picked up the robes and began to fold them. Her hands seemed to be shaking. She gave Remus a quick, nervous smile and shrugged. "They're the first family thing I've owned. I mean from the Blacks. I have lots of things from Granny Tonks, but most of them are new. They didn't have much before the sixties. Auntie's wedding robes belonged to her mother. Who was also my grandfather's mother. My great-grandmother. And I think maybe they're even older."

"It's possible."

"It doesn't make sense. I never cared much about that sort of thing. It's the Black family. I don't even like them. But I keep thinking, 'My great-grandmother wore these and now they're mine.' It's a bit disturbing. I mean, why should I care? It's not like she ever would have talked to me if she'd met me."

Remus, who had his Muggle grandfather's pocket watch (gold-plated and worthless in any real sense) and a comb that his mother had worn in her hair in his Gringotts vault, just shrugged. "There's nothing at all rational about it. I need to talk to you. Sirius as well, but you first."

Her blush faded, and she sat down. "Dumbledore told you about the werewolves last night."

"Were you planning to?"

"Yes. I wasn't in any rush, but yes. Eventually."

"Didn't you think it would concern me?"

"No. You were in a carriage house way up in Scotland. These idiots were running about in Kent."

Remus sat down. "That's not exactly a sparsely populated area."

"They weren't in any of the towns," Dora said, running her fingers through her hair. "We caught three of them between Biddenden and Cranbrook--"

Biddenden, he thought. Something about it was trying to trip a memory. But it didn't matter. "Dora, that's--"

"I know, all right? We had to modify five memories, and the Muggle-Worthy Excuse committee put a story out about wild wolves escaping a zoo so that people would be careful. It's a mess. But it's not one that you're involved in."

"I don't understand why you wouldn't tell me..."

"They're going to Azkaban," she said quietly. "They're going to Azkaban and I helped send them there. All because they transformed too close to the towns and something went wrong. The new werewolf laws... I'm sorry. I hate it."

"I see." Remus rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Dora, do you really think that it's particularly easy for three werewolves to accidentally transform together in the open in the midst of a posh neighborhood?"

Understanding dawned. "You think it was deliberate?"

"I do. So does Dumbledore. And if it was, then Azkaban is exactly where they belong."

Remus sent Kreacher upstairs to get Sirius, then relayed Dumbledore's suspicions about Voldemort to both of them. Dora told Sirius about the previous night's arrests (skipping her concerns about sending them to Azkaban, or even mentioning that she had done so), and filled in more details for Remus. The three they'd found together had been in a pitched pack fight with one another and she didn't think they'd had time to do any damage, but the fourth had been slinking around people's gardens, and had smugly refused to discuss what she'd been doing there when she'd transformed back this morning.

"Biddenden," Sirius mused. "Why does Biddenden sound familiar?"

"It's not very far away," Remus suggested, quite suddenly remembering why it had rung a distant bell in his own mind and wanting Sirius off the topic.

"No, that's not--" His eyes flared. "Peter," he said. "It's something about Peter. He used to talk about Biddenden."

Remus considered lying, but didn't. He nodded. "Do you remember that his father was unfaithful?"

"How could I forget the whinging about that?"

"The mistress lived in Biddenden."

Sirius closed his eyes. "The mistress who mysteriously disappeared. That I remember. We should have known then. If Peter hadn't been hiding anything, he'd have been crowing over it instead of acting like he was grieving."

"Dumbledore wants me to go in and find out what's happening. Get as close as I can."

Sirius and Dora exploded at this, sounding very much like Mrs. Black's portrait. Remus let it wash over him. Sirius seemed largely concerned with what he planned to do with Peter; Dora was anxious about the silver hand that Harry had observed Voldemort giving him. It might have gone on indefinitely, but thankfully, the doorbell rang--awakening Mrs. Black with her endless, distracting diatribe--and Dung dropped asking permission to hide several bits of contraband. By the time he had finished, the subject had strayed, and Remus refused to allow either of them to bring it back.

Sirius's opinion did not seem to have changed on Monday. He believed not only that Peter posed a particular danger to Remus, but that it was unthinkable that Remus should go after Peter alone. Peter, in Sirius's opinion, was his. The thought that Remus might see him and not kill him, despite Harry's guarantee that he'd be killed if he transformed that night, appeared to be disturbing him as well.

After work, he went to Dora's flat, meaning to discuss the subject of Peter's silver hand with her, hoping to put her mind more at ease, and get whatever information she had been able to pick up about the spell. It was possible that the hand wasn't even real silver; many spells produced a silver-like appearance. Of course, if he got close enough to Peter to have any sort of metal hand actually punch through his flesh, he suspected that its silver content would be least of his problems. Muggles rather liked the notion of killing a werewolf with a silver bullet, and it would certainly be the safest way to do it--even a shot to a limb would cause an extreme reaction for a transformed werewolf, so it didn't require much precision--but a knife, a bullet, or a metal hand exploding the heart would do the job quite efficiently as well. But he opted not to point this out to Dora. She knew it intellectually and it would eventually occur to her that Peter was as much a danger to anyone else as he was to Remus--no one was like to survive a close-up attack by someone punching into his or her chest--but he needed her to calm down, not start worrying more.

Remus reached her door and fished in his pocket for the key she'd given him last week ("You're out of school before I'm out of work half the time; if you're going to mark papers here, you'll need it"). The door across from hers opened and one of Dora's neighbors slipped out, an elderly lady with an empty mesh bag in her hand. She smiled with relief when she saw Remus, though he had no idea who she was or why she would be happy to see him. "I'm glad you're back," she said. "I don't know who the young lady was that you and your wife had house-sitting this weekend, but her friends were making a great deal of noise on Saturday night, thudding some great heavy thing up the stairs after dark. I thought they were burglars. You might want to speak to her."

Remus blinked. "Er... she's my wife's niece. Well, cousin, I suppose. I'll talk to her. About her friends."

The neighbor wandered down the narrow stairs toward the street, and Remus opened the door, turning on the overhead light. He didn't need to wonder what Dora's friends had been carrying up; the desk was directly across from him, his papers stacked neatly on it, his old cloak folded over the back of the chair, the Smeltings textbooks he'd left here lined up between bookends on the top. A small electric lamp was set off to one side.

He went over to it. Dora had slid two of the photographs Sirius had taken under the glass on top, and set out a leather-bound desk set, with about a dozen pens, a pair of scissors, and a letter opener in a cup at the corner of the blotter. She'd put plain paper, lined paper, and his Smeltings letterhead in the drawers. His eyeglasses were folded in front of the textbooks (he'd forgotten leaving them here, and had to Conjure a new pair on the way in to work this morning). She'd put a little yellow note against the books, her dark, unexpectedly even handwriting saying, "Look! A workspace that's not the kitchen table! Mad idea, isn't it? Love, Dora."

Remus sat down, a curious itch behind his eyes, and peeled the note off. There was a wastepaper basket beside the desk, in front of the small table where Dora had the telephone and a few Muggle pictures she had of her Granny Tonks and her father. The telephone cord fell against the edge of the desk and slipped underneath it to the jack in the wall.

Feeling dazed for no reason he could place, he set down his briefcase and started to pull out the day's work. Dudley Dursley, shockingly, had turned in his essay. He had also been well behaved and polite in class, and appeared to be clean and wearing clean clothes. The essay was neat and free of any obvious errors, another shock. He didn't quite make a fourth shock--it was still a pedestrian paper in which absolutely no thought on the subject was evident. But it was a major improvement, and Remus noted it both in the mark and in his comments before moving on to the tests he'd given his first form class.

After awhile, Granny the cat bestirred herself from her afternoon nap to wind around his feet a few times and beg to be picked up (she was no longer up to just jumping). Remus scratched her head for a few minutes, then let her wander over to her favorite armchair, where she promptly fell asleep again. By the time he'd been working for an hour, the strange daze had worn off, and he'd switched the harsh overhead light for the small desk lamp. When Dora came home at seven and turned the overhead back on, its brightness took him by surprise.

"I wasn't sure you'd still be here," she said. "Places to go, Death Eaters to hunt single-handedly and all that."

He rolled his eyes. "Dora, you go after Dark Wizards alone, too."

"I'm an Auror. It's my job."

"And I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix."

She sighed and let her hair relax out of a madly curly style she'd chosen for the day. "All right. Yes, I know. But I'll worry."

"And I'll be careful."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Do you like the desk?" she asked. "I had my friends over on Saturday to bring it up."

"The woman across the hall mentioned that they were a bit loud."

"Her? She thinks I'm too loud if I take a shower too late at night." Dora sat down on the sofa and curled her legs under her. "Do you like it?"

"It's... very nice," Remus said, his earlier discomfort with it returning. "It's quite a lot, really. How much do I owe you?"

"For a piece of furniture in my flat, bought to keep my kitchen table clear?"

"Dora, honestly. This is expensive. And you've put a lot on it."

"It's second hand," she said. "And I was looking at it and it looked a bit empty, so I decorated it. And my mates from Hogwarts brought it up here, so it's not as though I had to hire someone."

"Your friends from Hogwarts?"

"Well, I couldn't move it up here by magic and I couldn't move it up here the Muggle way by myself..."

"What on Earth did you tell them?"

"That I'm having a mad love affair with a Muggle," she said. "It's quite the scandal. They know I was lying, but they have no idea whatsoever what the truth is."

"Did you tell them about Voldemort, and Harry?"

She looked at her hands. "No. I've been feeling guilty about that, too. I should. Really. They're just so happy. And Maddie's pregnant!" Dora blushed. "I mean, she's... happy," she said again. "It didn't seem fair to bring You-Know-Who into it. But I should have told them. I was going to tell Sanjiv, but we got talking, and then the next thing I knew, he was leaving, and then Kingsley called me in to work for the night." She shook her head. "I'll talk to him later. I should have before. He'll want to be in this. Daffy and Maddie as well."

Remus had heard the names before--many, many times--but he'd never met any of Dora's school friends, so he couldn't advance an opinion. It occurred to him that none of the younger Order members had brought in their school friends. Where were all of the people who had idolized Bill Weasley? Or Charlie's teammates? When Remus had left Hogwarts, the group he'd been in had largely stayed together, and he suspected that Harry's would do the same. But Dora's generation seemed scattered and unfocused as a group, a few of them apparently acting as guardians so that the rest would be able to continue their pleasant drift through young adulthood. It was quite alien.

Dora got up and went to the kitchen. "Do you want something to eat? I was going to watch Coronation Street. You could stay."

Remus glanced down at his pile of work, and saw that he only had two test papers left. "No. I have business. Trying to--"

"Werewolf business."

"Yes, werewolf business. And if I didn't, I'd be going home to make sure that Sirius is all right."

She nodded. "Right. I should go over there. I will go over there. I just need to eat first."

"You seem very tired."

"I spent most of the day writing reports. I hate that. And I talked to that last werewolf, the one who was slinking around in the gardens."

"What did she say?"

"Not bloody much. She definitely gives the impression that it was deliberate, though."

Remus quickly checked the last ten answers on the last paper, then turned around. "Did you check her forearm?"

"No Dark Artwork. Yet."

"Did she say anything about... anything?"

Dora thought about it, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. No clues. She did say that the garden belonged to a former boss who'd sacked her when she was bitten. We're looking for him, but he seems to have been out of town."

"Vengeance. It fits." Remus put his papers in his briefcase and closed it. "Will you take this back to Grimmauld Place when you go?" he asked.

She nodded. "Where will you go?"

"I know a few names. I'll see what I can find out."

He left a few minutes later, and started following a list he'd made of werewolves whose whereabouts he knew. Two of them turned out to have moved since he'd last heard of them, with no forwarding addresses; the third had never left her parents' home, and while she was more than willing to talk, her mother was too busy berating Remus for being careless and costing other werewolves their livelihood for her to get a word in edgewise. "Mothers," she said at the door with an embarrassed shrug.

Remus, whose mother would have swallowed nails before treating a guest so rudely, just nodded.

Tuesday and Wednesday went the same way, with different people on his list. Thursday, he had to oversee a history club meeting, and was surprised by a visit from Dudley Dursley--still quite put-together--informing him that the psychologist had declared him fit to return to the boxing team. This had been announced as though Remus had done everything in his power to stop it. By the time he left Smeltings, it was late and he was tired, and he had no energy to track down hostile strangers. He Apparated back to London. While he was waiting for a bus across town, he saw a small, chubby little boy tugging at his mother's fur coat while she ignored him to read a magazine. He thought nothing of it at the time (except that she was a cruel woman), but the image kept coming back to him as the evening went on.

When he got back to Grimmauld Place, Kingsley, Dung, Mad-Eye, and Emmeline were sitting around the table with Sirius, all leaning forward and talking very intensely. Sirius beckoned him over.

"We've got a theory here," he said. "I don't like the sound of it."

Remus sat down. "What is it?"

"The Hogwarts Express," Kingsley said. "It runs for the holidays, of course. And if Harry is going to the Weasleys'..."

"...and if Voldemort is planning something big," Emmeline added.

Kingsley didn't actually say anything, just spread his arms as if to say, There you have it.

Mad-Eye took over. "What we've got to do is make sure that Harry's not where he's expected to be. Get him off that train. And don't let him travel alone."

"And the rest of the students?" Emmeline asked. "What about them? Is it perfectly all right for You-Know-Who to attack them as long as Harry's off the train?"

"He'll have people watching in Hogsmeade," Mad-Eye said. "He'll know if Harry's not there."

They wrangled with the question for several hours, finally opting to find some way of getting Harry back on the last day of term that would include the presence of an Auror, having him in such a presence during any forays out of the Burrow or Grimmauld Place, and then getting him back to Hogwarts in an unexpected way. They all--Sirius included--looked to Remus to approve the plan, and he did so, though something was tickling at the back of his mind, both about whatever Voldemort's plan was, and about his search for Peter. The image of the woman and her chubby son kept coming to him.

He was nearly asleep when it hit him. He'd noticed them and paid attention to them because he'd seen the dynamic before. When Peter Pettigrew had been a boy, he'd often seemed to be James and Sirius's shadow, almost physically clinging to one or the other of them and seeking attention. Sometimes, it had even been Remus. And Remus remembered thinking how easy it was to make Peter happy--just give him the attention he wanted. It had seemed very strange to him, until he'd visited Peter over the holidays, and watched him following his mother around, trying to get her attention and failing miserably.

He didn't know where Peter was.

But Mrs. Pettigrew was less than four miles from where he was lying.

Remus wondered if she'd had any visitors recently.