CONTENT: Harry/Ron slash

RATING: NC17

CLASSIFICATION: AU

WARNING(S): Religious fundamentalists should pass this story by.

SUMMARY: Ron and Harry join forces to do some friends a favour, and Ron learns the truth.

DISCLAIMER: The Harry Potter series and all the characters associated with it are the property solely of J. K. Rowling, her agents and publishers.  No infringement of any rights is intended from the creation of this story.  Nor is any money being made from it.  This story is written solely for the entertainment of the author and her friends; please do not redistribute without permission.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I'm not sure who to acknowledge here as it's hard to find a reference to this show anywhere, but Gnashes the pterodactyl is borrowed from an old British children's TV puppet-show called Oscar the Rabbit.  And I'd like to thank Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code for inspiring all the wordy exposition in this instalment of the saga.

NOTES: This is the seventh story in my Checkmate series, following (in reading order): Checkmate, Keeper's Snitch, Natural Magic, Earthy Pleasures, The Kissing Bough and Handyman.  They should be read in that order.  In the beginning I didn't have any idea what was going on in this universe, and it stayed that way for quite a while; now I have ideas but I will be utterly up front and say that as far as I'm concerned plot very much gives way to relationship in this series.  This really is all about the Harry/Ron and what they get up to together, hence the higher ratings for this series.  There's also a strong pagan overtone to this - I'm not sure how that happened, but it seems to work so I'm running with it.  And finally: for anyone who was wondering what happened to Hermione in this series, you'll get an answer now.

Comments would be welcome, as always.

The Tree Of Life

by Mad Martha

Part 1

Considering that really his everyday life was oh-so-boring, it seemed to Ron that he managed to pack more than his fair share of weirdness into it.  So much so, in fact, that he had come to realise that the true weirdness was just how mundane the odd stuff could seem while it was happening.

Take his job at the twins' shop in Diagon Alley.  Who would have thought that working in a joke shop would not only be boring (someone had to sweep the floors, after all, and Ron was that someone) but annoying beyond measure?  Admittedly Ron himself had never had any trouble envisaging the annoying part - growing up with the twins made this aspect more than plausible - but he hadn't given much thought to how the customers would factor into that.  He had assumed, as did many people not involved in the sharp end of the retail business, that the customers would come into the shop, select the goods they wanted, pay and then leave.  On the rare occasion that this actually happened, Ron was tempted to kiss them and give them a discount.  The rest of the time he simmered furiously behind his best cool Slytherin face while he answered rude and asinine questions, chased random products around the shop floor that had been released by unsupervised children, mopped up spills and nursed the inevitable injuries that could result from handling some of the products.

Mostly he tolerated it all.  But only days after he returned to the shop following his mixed Christmas celebrations (the good part spent with Harry and the not-so-good part spent with his family), he fell out with the twins and found himself out of a job.  This was not entirely unexpected; in fact, Ron had been expecting to fall out with the twins and be fired from the first day he put on his Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes apron.  What he hadn't expected was such difficulty in finding another job, and when he did find another job he certainly hadn't expected it to be fixing broken sex toys and other dubious equipment at a notorious gay nightclub.

And that naturally led to the discovery that perversion was remarkably banal up close, especially when one didn't share any of the kinks on offer.  Ron spent less than four weeks expanding his mind and wearying his world view while he mended dildoes and rescued both staff and clients from defective chastity-belts.  Then his world tilted on its axis once more with the eruption of his feisty little grandmother into the delinquent portals of the Pink Kneazle Wizards' Club, and once more he was out of a job.

At least on this occasion it was no fault of his own and the management had no complaints whatsoever about him.  Ron wasn't sure just what sort of position their reference would get him, but it was probably better than nothing.

It did leave him wondering what was going to happen to him now, as he trailed Lillian Prewett up a lamp-lit Diagon Alley.

"You're coming home with me," she told him out of the blue, just as though she'd read his mind.  Given her former profession, Ron couldn't be entirely sure that she hadn't.

"And do what?" he asked, unable to keep a touch of scepticism out of his voice.  He was more than a little annoyed with her.  Getting him sacked was taking grandparental privilege a little far, fond though he was of her.

She sniffed.  "That manager tells me you've been mending things."

"I told you that."

"Then you can come and mend things for me, can't you?  And you can help me in my garden.  I've been thinking for a while now that I need a strapping grandson about the place to dig the borders and do the pruning."  Before he could counter this, she added, "And it'll do you the world of good to be out from under your mother's roof for a while."

"I don't think Mum'll agree with you," he muttered.

"You let me worry about that!"

Ron was silent for a while, considering this.  He suspected his mother would be more than a little aggravated by the interference, but he couldn't see what he had to lose by going along with his grandmother.  He didn't mind sorting out her garden for her if that was what she wanted; it wasn't as though he had anything better to do with himself now that he was unemployed, and perhaps in the meantime a better selection of jobs would come up in the Prophet.

"You have your whole future in front of you," she continued, still in the rather tart give-me-no-nonsense tone she'd been using since she arrived at the Club's back door.  "It seems to me that your parents haven't been keeping as sharp an eye on it as they should lately, so you'll come and stay with me for a while and let me take care of it."

 Ron eyed her with instinctive wariness.  He rather thought that looking after his future - no matter how dreary and menial it might be - was his business.

"I can look after myself you know, Gran."

The look she gave him was withering, even in the artificial light of the street-lamps.

~~~

Ron had been told that his grandmother had 'retired' as a professional seer and clairvoyant when he was a little boy, and snatches of conversation overheard over the years had yielded the further information that she'd had some sort of falling out with at least one other seer that had led to her retreat from professional prognostication.

The truth of this story remained a mystery.  His grandmother wouldn't talk about it other than to assure him that she got along "very well indeed, thank you, with all the people who matter", which to a Slytherin like Ron left a lot of room for interpretation.  While working in her overgrown cottage garden he came to the conclusion that she probably had fallen out with someone important.  For all that she was a sweet little old lady whom he liked very much, in his estimation only an idiot could fail to notice the toughness and determination that lay underneath her fluffy, birdlike appearance.  He wondered who had fallen foul of the infamous Prewett temper and what sort of injuries they'd dragged away from the encounter.  The idea made him grin to himself sometimes.

If she had retired, it was only from doing readings and so on for paying customers.  She had a room set aside for her divinatory work and spent a great deal of time in there; and while he was curious to know what she was doing, Ron was uneasy enough around any kind of divination that he didn't try very hard to find out.  He made himself useful around the cottage and steered clear of her study.

The rest of the family seemed to regard the old lady's appropriation of Ron with some mild consternation.  No one actually tried to make him go home, but his mother Floo-called on his first evening at the cottage with stern and slightly anxious instructions to him to call home every couple of days, and rather bizarrely his Uncle Gideon turned up the next day, shuffling nervously under his mother's beady-eyed welcome and cornering Ron in the herb patch to ask if everything was all right.  Hard upon this came an owl from the twins, demanding to know if he'd become a pansy-arsed tea-leaf reader and predicting that he'd soon be begging them for his job back.  Another arrived from Bill, sounding rather more amused than everyone else, also asking if his little brother had decided to make a living from reading crystal balls.  This might have annoyed Ron had it not been for one particular line: Everyone seems to think that Gran has abducted you and no one listens when I tell them you probably didn't mind, but what I don't get is why anyone's surprised that you'd chuck a job with the twins for just about anything else!  More helpfully, he finished with: When you're ready to look for another job, let me know - I can put you in touch with people.

Ron mentioned this to his grandmother, but when she vetoed the idea on the grounds that the ether is shifting! he didn't argue with her.  He was content to tend her garden, do her shopping, mend the tiles in her bathroom, and help serve tea to her dotty friends, at least for the time being.  He was living there for nothing, after all.

It was only at night, when he was lying awake in the chintzy guest bedroom, that he succumbed to a kind of melancholy; and if that melancholy had a name, it would be Harry.

~~~

January was already frosting, hailing and blustering itself out by the time Ron arrived at the little cottage and February blew its way in within a week.  The night of the first of February - Imbolc, according to the traditions of the wizard Wicca - was a particularly exciting one, attended by storms and high winds that took more than a couple of tiles off the cottage roof.  Typically, the following morning was damp but calm and full of ridiculously brilliant sunshine, so Ron put on an old cloak, borrowed a broom from the garden shed and went up on the roof to repair the damage before they ran out of buckets to catch the leaks.  Halfway through the morning he heard the chime of the Floo, but when his grandmother didn't summon him he carried on with what he was doing.

Perhaps an hour later he finished the job and flew back down to the ground.  He put the broom and tools back in the shed and went indoors, hanging his cloak on a hook by the kitchen door and going over to the range to fill the kettle and hang it over the fire.  He wondered if his grandmother had guests and if he should make up a tea tray.  In the end he took his boots off, which were damp and smeared with moss, and padded through the cottage in his socks to see what was going on.

Unusually, the voices were coming from the little conservatory beyond the study, although her usual divinatory aids were set out on the table in the middle of the room.  Ron paused uncertainly, wondering if he should interrupt.  Then he noticed a large tray on the table and froze.

Lillian Prewett didn't make much use of the more common divinatory tools such as crystal balls; she preferred a deep square tray filled with sand in which she placed a number of rune-counters that would move and make patterns in the sand for her to read.  Ron didn't pretend to understand how it worked, but he recognised one of the patterns in it only too well.  Most of the wooden counters were lined up along the sides of the tray in various configurations, while two of them lay in the middle having drawn a complete design in the sand; a small-scale reproduction of the birthmark that covered Ron's back from his shoulders to his waist.

Just seeing the pattern there made the real mark on his back itch, especially as Ron himself had never seen his birthmark completely - only partial reflections in mirrors which he usually made a point of avoiding if he could.

Until now, despite Harry describing it to him, he hadn't really believed that it looked like a bird.  But it did - a bird with outstretched wings and a long fanned tail - and so much so that he was stunned.  Now he understood why Maevi of the Running Hare Coven had told him that it couldn't possibly have been made by accident; if the image in the sand tray was accurate, then it didn't look like something natural at all but more like a tattoo.

The conservatory door clicked open, making him jump and whip around to look.

"There you are!"  His grandmother bustled out, all busy impatience like his mother on laundry day.  "Get your things!"

"What?" Ron asked blankly.  He looked past her and his eyes widened when a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

James Potter rested one shoulder against the doorpost and returned his gaze with a blandly neutral look.

"Yes, yes, all of your things!" Lillian Prewett fussed.  "Where are your boots?  Your cloak?  You don't have all day, you know!"

"All day for what, Gran?"

"You're coming with me," James clarified, "and we've got a way to go, so we ought to get started."

"I am?  We have?"  Ron eyed him warily.

"Well, not if you don't want to."  James shrugged.  "It's up to you.  But I think Harry'll be disappointed if you don't."

"You didn't think you were going to stay here for the rest of your days, did you?" his grandmother put in.  She gave an exasperated cluck.  "Don't be silly, dear!  There are much more important things for you to do with your life.  Even a Muggle could look after my garden!"

Not a remark calculated to raise his self-esteem, but she didn't give him time to absorb it.

"Hurry along!  Get your things!  You can take that broom from the shed, the one under the oilskin cover.  It's your Uncle Fabian's, but he can buy himself another one."

Ron thought that his Uncle Fabian might have something to say about that when he found out, but that wasn't his problem.  He was in the spare room and gathering up his things before he knew it, and he was hunting around for his spare robe before it suddenly dawned on him that he was going to see Harry again sooner than he hoped for.

But where was Harry?  And what was he doing?

~~~

James was close-mouthed on these points, though.  He was happy to talk about just about anything else, and with relentless good humour spouted Quidditch scores and political gossip like a columnist for the Daily Prophet until Ron was ready to beg him to shut up, but any hint of where his son and friends were remained firmly off-topic.

He had plenty of time to talk.  From Lillian Prewett's cottage he side-along Apparated Ron to a disused stairwell at the nearest railway station, where he bought tickets for them both to a northern town that Ron had never heard of.  Not that knowing the town would have helped him much, because they disembarked several stops before their supposed destination and Apparated to another town, emerging behind the toilet block at a bus station and catching a bus to yet another place that Ron had never heard of.

"Why didn't we stay on the bus?" he asked finally, when they escaped their fellow travellers at a motorway services stop after an hour or so.

James was rummaging for something in a pocket of his robe.  "Did you see that bloke in the green jacket on the train?  Sitting opposite us?"

Ron frowned.  "Yeah, I think so."

"And did you see the bloke with the blue baseball cap at the station when we got off the train?"

"Er ... no, I wasn't looking."

"You're going to have to learn to look," James said matter-of-factly.  "It was the same bloke.  He was at the bus station too, but we dodged him there."

Ron felt a nasty crawling sensation up his spine.  "Are we being followed?"

"Son, I'm always being followed."  James found what he was looking for; a small piece of stone carved into the shape of a rat, which he held carefully in a handkerchief between his fingers.  "Portkey," he said unnecessarily, and he checked his watch.  "We've got about a minute."

Now that he was aware that they were being followed, this was the longest sixty seconds Ron had experienced.  James, he realised, wasn't precisely nervous, but he was very alert and watchful, which made the wait a jumpy experience.

Then the portkey activated and they were swept away by it ...

... to land, with a thump, in a small woodland glade next to a building that looked as though it had been plucked out of a book of fairytales and carelessly dropped there. 

James wrapped up the portkey and shoved it back into his pocket.  Then he looked around and whistled a seemingly idle series of notes.  There were four startlingly loud pops and Harry and the others appeared a few feet away.

Harry let out a crow of delight and jumped on Ron.

"There's no time for that," James warned him sharply.  He turned to the others.  "Where is he?"

"Not here," Sirius Black replied dryly.  "Looks like he hasn't been here for a week or so."

"Great!" James said, exasperated.  "Well, in that case we need to move on."

"Were you followed?" Remus Lupin asked.

"Yeah.  I think we lost him at Pottle-on-Sea, but let's not take any chances.  Harry, where's Hedwig?"

Harry peeled himself off Ron's shoulder and put two fingers in his mouth, whistling sharply.  There was a rustle in the trees above them and a Snowy Owl swooped down to land on his outstretched arm.

"Anyone got a bit of parchment?" James asked, and he accepted a scrap of paper and a quill from Peter Pettigrew.  "Thanks."  He rested it on his friend's back as he scratched out a note.

"Where are we?" Ron asked Harry.

"I'll tell you when we've moved on," Harry replied, smiling at him.

"Where are we going?"

Harry's smiled broadened into a grin.  "Tell you when we get there!"

"Great.  Whose place is that?" he asked, gesturing to the little stone tower.

"Tell you that when we get there too."

"Okay ..."

James finished his note, waved it in the air to dry the ink, then rolled it up and sealed it with a tap of his wand.  He put it in a small pouch attached to Hedwig's leg.  "To Bill Weasley, Hedwig.  Don't let anyone else have it!"

She bobbed her head twice and took off.

Ron stared at James.  "Why are you writing to my brother?"

"I'll tell you that when we get where we're going," James said briskly, but not unkindly.

Ron was getting rather fed up of this answer.  He shot Harry a frustrated look, but his friend shrugged.

"There are many difficult questions in our job," Remus said unexpectedly.  "At least you'll be getting answers to yours eventually.  That's not always the case for us."

From their expressions Ron realised this was the best he was going to get for the time being.  He subsided, not entirely gracefully.

"Okay, let's move on," James said to the others.  He looked at Peter.  "Wormtail?"

"I've told Sirius and Remus," the shorter man said.  "They're going to take Harry and Ron.  I'll take you."

"Take my arm," Remus said, coming to stand next to Ron.  "I'm going to side-along Apparate you …"

~~~

The answers to Ron's many questions were not quick in coming.  They didn't travel together to their destination and it was early evening before he and Remus rejoined the others.  Remus was at least a less annoying travel companion than James, however.  He still talked quite a lot, in a way that Ron now realised was designed to avoid opportunities for yet more questions, but he asked about Ron's recent activities and chatted to him about the general aggravation of working in retail and the more specific aggravation of working for one's relatives - apparently he had experienced both himself in the past.  Ron found it easier to relax around him, although he wasn't sure why, especially as he knew the man was a werewolf.

He opted not to say anything about his adventures at the Pink Kneazle Wizards' Club, though.  He was still a bit sensitive about his forced departure from his job there and he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to discuss it with anyone but Harry anyway.  Remus appeared to be more sensitive than his friends and didn't push at any of Ron's evasions.

They stopped in a vast Muggle market somewhere to buy a late lunch from a booth - crêpes filled with baked beans and topped with cheese, served in brightly printed cardboard cones with little wooden forks.  As they perched on the edge of a raised planter at the side of the street to eat them, Ron reflected on how horrified his mother would be if she knew; she thought all Muggle food was suspect and eating in the street was a no-no for all her children.  But the crêpes were hot and tasty and he enjoyed watching the activity in the market, which was very different from anything he'd seen in the magical world.  It reminded him a little of the trip the people from the Running Hare Coven had made to Totnes over Yule, although the market here was much bigger.

When they were finished, Remus bought provisions from a couple of the stalls - vegetables, bread, a smoked ham and a few other things - and stowed half of them in his backpack and half in Ron's satchel.  They weren't exactly travelling light; each of them had a broom in a waxed canvas carrying bag slung across his back, Ron had his old school book-bag stuffed with a change of clothing, extra underwear and a wash-kit, and Remus had what looked like all of that in his backpack plus some kind of sleeping bag or bedroll besides.

"Have we got much further to go?" he asked at one point.

"Here and there," Remus replied cryptically. 

Apparently he meant this literally, for they dodged about catching buses and trains in much the same way that James had done that morning.  Alerted to the possibility of being followed, Ron was now on the lookout but didn't see anyone who seemed to be shadowing them.  It was just after four o'clock and the light was going when Remus finally pulled Ron into the doorway of a disused department store and produced another portkey.  Two minutes later they landed on an old farm track bordered by high hedges that led around the side of a hill.  At the other end of the track was a derelict farmhouse.  It had no roof and only three of the external walls were still standing but Sirius and Harry were already there, setting up camp.

~~~

Peter and James arrived while Harry and Ron were erecting the three Muggle-style two-man tents within the walls of the old farmhouse.  Meanwhile Remus and Sirius had created a small hearth in a sheltered spot and were making dinner.

"Any trouble?" Remus asked.

"None," Peter said.  "You two?"

"Not even a tail.  Makes a nice change."

"Well?" Sirius demanded of James as he handed them mugs of tea.  "What happened?"

James cast a wary look at where Harry and Ron were wrestling with tent-poles and canvas, but neither of them was paying attention or was close enough to overhear.

"Bit of a convoluted story," he said.  "Bill Weasley - remember him from school?  Red-headed firstie, blue eyes, freckles?  Well, he's working for Dumbledore too.  That's not important at the moment.  By pure chance Bill happened to Floo-call his mother one day and she was blowing her cauldron lid because she said his grandmother had abducted young Ron.  Bill thought that sounded a bit odd, so he called Granny Prewett himself to see what was up."

"Lillian Prewett abducted her own grandson?" Remus said, astonished.  "What in Merlin's name - ?"

"That's not the good part," James interrupted.  "Give me a chance, okay?  It turns out that Ron was working for his twin brothers and got into row with them one day, so they sacked him.  He finds a new job, and a week or two later his grandmother has a vision of some kind that scares the daylights out of her.  She goes looking for Ron, gives the manager of the place he's working for a lecture he'll never forget, and takes the lad home with her."

"What are you leaving out?" Sirius asked, puzzled.

The corner of James's mouth puckered a little.  "The name of the place he was working for," he said, and he took a cautious sip of his tea.

Sirius began to grin.  "Go on then."

"The Pink Kneazle Wizards' Club."

Sirius inhaled a mouthful of tea and began to choke.  Remus thumped his back, trying not to laugh.

"What was he doing there?" Peter demanded.  "Isn't that illegal for a lad his age?"

"He wasn't stripping.  He was doing routine maintenance work for them, although what exactly a place like that calls 'routine maintenance' I wouldn't like to guess."  James began to grin himself.  "Granny was livid when she told me, all ruffled feathers and outraged dignity that one of her favourite chicks was working in a place of ill repute."

"I get that she wouldn't like it," Remus said, "but if he wasn't - er - servicing the clients, then what exactly was the problem?  Surely she wouldn't have a vision about that?"

"Well, she didn't," James said, and his grin faded into an irritated frown.  "That's the annoying part.  She wouldn't tell me what the vision was about, all she would say was that if the lad had stayed there another day he would have got himself into very serious trouble, because he was about to make a bad decision."

"Marvellous."

"Reckon he'll tell us about it?" Sirius asked, when he'd recovered from his coughing fit.

"You're a funny man, Padfoot," James retorted.  "I'm not going to be the one to ask him, that's for sure.  Anyway ... Bill contacted Dumbledore about him and Dumbledore contacted us.  End of story."

"For the time being at least," Peter said.  "Did the old lady say anything about his birthmark?"

"A little.  She wasn't keen to say much, but I get the impression that's more out of habit than anything else."  James took a swallow of his tea.  "She said the symbol is definitely a phoenix and it's a symbol air and fire power."  The corner of his mouth twitched again.  "She was itching to know all about Harry - we had a bit of a stand-off about that."  He shrugged.  "What goes around comes around.  She wasn't prepared to give me much about Ron, so I didn't see why I should tell her about Harry.  She's the seer, let her find it out for herself."

"Good answer," Peter approved.  "She of all people should realise we can't tell just anyone these things."

"Seems like the row with old Trelawney put the wind up her, though," James said.  "She lives like a recluse these days."

"Cassandra Trelawney may have been a gifted seer, but if you read between the lines of what Dumbledore says, she was a gigantic pain the backside as a person," Sirius remarked.  "The fight was supposed to be epic."

"Well, let's leave it for now," Remus said quickly, seeing Ron and Harry approaching.  "How are you two getting on with the tents?

"They're up," Harry said, looking exasperated.  "Anyone's guess if they'll stay up, but Ron knows a couple of new anchoring charms so they might be okay."

If the four men wondered what Ron had been doing to learn anchoring charms, they wisely managed to keep the thought to themselves.

Supper was bread and soup, the latter made from a packet of dried vegetables and noodles but flavoured with chunks of the smoked ham Remus had bought.  Sirius had erected some Aversion Charms to block the wind and divert attention from them, so they all sat on their empty packs as close to the fire as they dared while they ate.  It wasn't particularly warm but it was quiet enough to talk comfortably.  When they were all done, the few scraps were brushed into the fire and Peter ran a quick Scourgify! over the dishes.

"Right," James said quietly, "we all need to get some sleep, so let's make this quick."  He pointed to Ron.  "You must have about a hundred questions, so I'm going to be as upfront with you as I can.  You've got to understand that we can't answer everything straightaway.  There's no time right now, it's too much information, and in any case some of it you need to hear from someone else.  I can tell you some of it though.  So - ask your questions but if I say I can't tell you, it's not because I'm trying to hide anything, okay?"  Looking a bit surprised at this, Ron nodded.  "Good.  Ask."

"Where are we?"

"No idea.  Pete?"

"It's not really important," Peter replied.  "We're safe here for the night and in the morning we'll be moving on."

"Why do you need to be safe?" Ron asked at once.

"Because there are people in powerful positions who want to know where we are and what we're doing," Remus said.  "They think they know what we're doing and they'd like to stop it."

"So what are you doing?"

"That's possibly the most complicated question you could ask," Sirius remarked, amused.

"Give it a shot," Remus said more peaceably.

"What do you know about the last war?" James asked Ron.

Ron's expression became interestingly smooth and uncommunicative at this question.  "Not much, just some stuff Dad's said about Death Eaters.  They're all in Azkaban now, aren't they?"

The four men exchanged sour smiles, and even Harry looked rather chagrined.

"If only!" Sirius said shortly.

"Hopefully most of them are," James said more diplomatically, "but let's just say that there are a few people we know were Death Eaters who got away with it.  People who would probably surprise you if I told you who they are.  But never mind that.  Did your father tell you anything about their leader?"

Ron shook his head.  "No … I just assumed he got locked up with the rest.  No one ever talks about it much.  I got the impression that it sort of … happened really quickly and the Aurors dealt with it."

"Funny how many people would rather believe that," Peter commented.

"Well, the truth is a bit different to what the majority of witches and wizards would tell you," James told Ron, "and no harm to your father, but he's either fooling himself or he just doesn't want you to know the truth.  I expect it's the latter.  He's a Ministry man, isn't he?  He has to know a fair bit more than the general populace do.  Anyway, never mind that.  The Death Eaters were around for a lot longer than you think, they were already making trouble when we were all at school - "

"And that was just their political wing," Sirius interjected.  There was no humour in his eyes as he said it.

"Agreed.  The party politics were dirty, but that was nothing compared to what they were doing underground to try to sway public opinion."

"The Death Eaters were terrorists," Harry said to Ron.  "That's what my Muggle granddad calls them, and I reckon it's about right.  They'd torture and kill people - mostly Muggleborns and their families - to scare everyone else into doing what they wanted."

"That's the plain man's name for them," Peter added.  He fished in his pocket as he spoke and pulled out the little bag holding his casting bones, busying himself undoing the knot at the neck of it.  "If you want the fancy term the Aurors use, they were pureblood supremacists.  Still are, some of them." 

"Which isn't to say that their leader was necessarily of the same viewpoint - opinions vary on that - but he certainly made use of their prejudices to angle for their support and get what he wanted," Remus continued.

"So who is he?" Ron asked.

"We don't say his name in open air," James said at once, giving him a warning look.  "It should be safe - it probably is safe - but at one time his name was jinxed, and given the work we do we don't take the risk.  It's safe enough within warded walls, but we never say it where the wind could carry it to the wrong quarters."

"We employ the euphemisms the rest of the populace used during the war," Sirius said, curling his lip, "we call him You Know Who or He Who Must Not Be Named."

"Okay."  Ron hugged his knees, thinking about this for a moment or two.  "So what do you do that's so secret?"

James relaxed just a little inside.  He didn't want to linger on the subject of the Death Eaters' leader for now.  "One of the things the Death Eaters did while they were gaining power was to use the channels of magic that crisscross the land," he explained, "what the Muggles sometimes call 'ley-lines'.  Basically, from what we know of them they distribute magic evenly across the world, preventing a dangerous build up."  He hesitated.  "This is my particular field of study.  I'm not sure how to explain it to someone who has no background in the field, but … you know that the planet is surrounded by different sorts of energy fields, yes?  One of the strongest ones is magnetism."

"Yeah … yeah, I heard that."

"Well, there are also several magical fields.  The biggest one runs through the air, but it's also the weakest.  There's another in the water, which means that all water - even land-locked seas and oases in a desert and droplets in the air and the water trapped in the cells of your body - all that water is connected together by the magic in it.  And then there's the magical field in the earth, which is the strongest form of magic there is.

"Then you've got things like the ley-lines, and this is where a lot of what we think we know is really just very plausible theories.  For one thing, although we know that the ley-lines exist and can be … influenced … we're not sure exactly what the extent of them is and what the full extent of their purpose is.  We're pretty sure they form a proper network that's possibly in some sort of pattern, but we can't always follow them and so far no one has ever succeeded in creating a proper map of them.  We can only map small sections."

James grew more animated as he talked.  "There are so many possibilities, so many areas to study.  My father studied ley-lines for most of his life and he was convinced that the network extends far beyond the ley-lines that run through the ground.  He had a theory that there were more lines, finer and less powerful, less easily detected, that flowed through water and air, and that all of these lines linked together - "

"Ease up, Prongs," Remus said, amused.  "That's a lot of information to dump on the lad in one sitting, and not what he asked either."

"But it's interesting!" Ron blurted out, and both James and Harry beamed at him.

"And we all need to sleep tonight," Sirius warned, although the corner of his mouth was twitching too.  "Advanced Geomagical Theory can wait for another time, James - cut to the chase!"

"Er, yes, of course," James said, a little abashed.  "All right … ley-lines.  So basically the Death Eaters messed with the ley-lines - we'll talk about what they did and why some other time - and afterwards we discovered that in the places where they'd been the local magic was …"

"Polluted," Peter supplied quietly, although he didn't look up from the patterns he was casting with the stones in the light of the fire.

"Thank you, yes - polluted.  Dark magic taints everything it touches, of course, but this was different because the ley-lines were either no longer functioning properly or they were carrying the tainted magic across the land and polluting other places too."

"So basically what we do is find the polluted spots and cleanse them," Remus put in.  "That's a very truncated explanation, but essentially it."

Ron frowned.  "Why do you have to do it in secret?  Why would anyone have a problem with that?"

"Because, as James explained, the whole science of ley-lines is theoretical at best," Sirius said.  "It used to be just one of hundreds of fields of study conducted by the Department of Mysteries, and because it was labelled a 'magical theory' the last couple of unimaginative Ministers and their administrations decided the tainting of the ley-lines couldn't be proven and therefore was not a risk to the general populace.  In other words, they didn't believe it and wouldn't waste money putting it right.  And that's only half the story.  There are other repercussions of the war, such as the Death Eaters who got away, that should have been looked into and weren't.  Everyone focussed on the ones who were caught - particularly You Know Who himself - and stopped caring about all the little loose ends.  Only some of them weren't little or even particularly loose."

"The Department of Mysteries was always a bit controversial in the eyes of the public," Peter said quietly.  "That's mostly because very few people knew exactly what work was done there, and those who did were bound never to speak of it.  But at the end of the war, during the fight to contain He Who Must Not Be Named, the Department - the physical department within the Ministry building - was the centre of the action and in the process it was significantly damaged."

"Most people will tell you it was blown up,"  Remus said.  "That's not true.  But in the process of containing You Know Who, the structure became unsafe and the decision was taken to seal it up.  No one has been inside since, despite repeated attempts by … people in various high places … to persuade the Minister to authorise a properly qualified team to go in and assess the damage.  The last Minister, Millicent Bagnold, was a bit more sensible - she refused to let anyone in directly after it was sealed, but agreed to reassess the position after a couple of years.  But in the meantime she fell ill and had to step down, and we got the current buffoon, Cornelius Fudge, who refuses point blank to allow anything or anyone to touch it.  In fact, he went further - he said that the Department had always been a huge drain on the Ministry's finances - "

"It wasn't," James said.  "It was largely funded by outside investors."

" - with very few if any visible returns for the taxpayer and that under the circumstances it was no longer needed and should be shut down."

"Thus killing off literally hundreds of years' worth of valuable studies into the very nature of magic and the magical race," Peter concluded, "not to mention dishonouring the memory of the dozens of Unspeakables and Aurors who lost their lives during the confrontation with He Who Must Not Be Named.  Their bodies were never recovered and their families were never given so much as a sliver of an explanation for their disappearance - in fact, in most cases the families were refused the basic financial assistance and pensions they were entitled to on the grounds that there was no evidence that they were actually dead."

"Which is a disgrace to put it mildly," Sirius said curtly, "when you consider that several people I could name were given widows' pensions despite their dearly beloveds being known Death Eaters."

There was a long silence.  Then Ron gave James a speculative look. 

"So how did you come to be doing this clean-up work, then?"

James looked up at him and his mouth went awry for a moment.  Dealing with this boy was going to be a challenge.  "Son," he said kindly, "shouldn't that be obvious?"

Harry shot his father an irritated glance and turned to his friend.  "They were the only Unspeakables who got out of the Department after You Know Who was dealt with," he explained.  "Them and my mum and a couple of other people."

Ron considered this.  "And what happened to him?" he asked.

"That's something I don't want to talk about here," James said.  "But you will need to know about it, so I promise you that you'll be told soon.  All right?"

~~~

Ron and Harry shared a tent that night. 

Ron hadn't come equipped with a bedroll, but a quick engorgement charm enlarged Harry's bedding enough for the two of them, so they spread the groundsheet, laid out a double layer of blankets on top of it and climbed under Harry's thick, unzipped sleeping bag.  A discreet warming charm on the tent ensured they were comfortable; a silencing charm made sure they could talk without an audience.

"All the same, we need to be a bit careful about how much magic we use while we're out in the open," Harry said.  "We put up wards just before you and Remus arrived, but since this is a temporary camp they're pretty low-key."

"Why are you camping anyway?" Ron wanted to know.  "It's a bit bloody wet and chilly at this time of year!"

"We weren't supposed to be camping out at all tonight," Harry explained, as he kneaded his pillow - actually a t-shirt stuffed with other clothing - into a better shape.  "And not like this - usually we use wizard tents if we have to camp, but you saw what happened when we got to the Folly.  He wasn't there like he was supposed to be.  So tonight we're roughing it."

"Who was supposed to be there though?"

"Dumbledore," Harry said simply.  He pushed the pillow into place and flopped out on it next to Ron.  "Look, don't think about it too much for now.  Dad wasn't pulling a fast one, you know - he means it, as soon as we get a chance we'll tell you everything.  Today didn't go as planned, that's all."

"Hm."  Ron tried to settle himself.  He wasn't cold, but there was no denying that this was far from the most comfortable of beds, although they'd made sure there was nothing sharp or knobbly on the ground before they laid the groundsheet.

"What have you been doing since Yule anyway?" Harry asked.  "I thought you might have written to me at the coven.  They would have passed it on to Mum and she would have sent it to me, you know."

That hadn't occurred to Ron.  "Didn't seem to be much point," he muttered.  "Not like there was a lot to tell."  Except being sacked by the twins, hired by a sex club and abducted by his loopy old grandmother to clip her hedges.  But right now he didn't want to talk about all that, even to Harry.  He was tired, anxious and bewildered to discover that for the first time in a long while he was close to Harry and didn't want to grab him.  All he really wanted to do was tuck himself into the warmth of his friend's body and sleep.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked him quietly.  "You're not … angry with me or anything, are you?"

Ron blinked.  "Why would I be angry with you?"

"For not being around and not coming to get you sooner, maybe."

"Well, I'm not.  I'm just … really tired."  He made an extra effort.  "Some funny stuff did happen, I s'pose, but I'd just rather tell you later, okay?  When I'm not knackered."

"Okay."

Harry settled himself on his side under the sleeping bag and Ron wriggled until he was pressed against his back.  He breathed in Harry's familiar smell of strange herbs, sweat and male musk with relief and let his eyes drift shut.

"I'm glad you're here," Harry said in a very subdued tone just as he was on the cusp of sleep.

"Me too," Ron mumbled.  "Missed you."

Some of the tension went out of Harry's shoulders.  "Missed you too."

End Part 1