The Haumiaroa Magical Society for the Conservation of Indigenous Wildlife

The moon was full and the sky was clear, its perfect net of unfamiliar stars obstructed only by the crowns of ancient trees. Harry flew in a lazy, swerving line just above the forest's canopy. Between the strange constellations and the endless, glittering web of streams that shone through where the foliage was thinnest, he had hardly stopped to look ahead -- he hadn't the faintest idea in which direction he was going. It didn't matter. He had nowhere to be; Muggle hotels, unaccustomed to the conveniences of Portkey travel, were not open for checking-in at four in the morning, and so he had nothing to do for the next three hours but survey the forest to the east. It was spectacular, although the endless, flat expanse of dimly lit green was disorienting.

That was to be expected, though -- losing twelve hours in under five minutes was pretty disorienting, too, as was the sudden transition from north to south, from spring to fall. He pulled his broom up into a quick, celebratory loop around one of the taller protruding trees, and grinned into the cool wind. This was what he had wanted, this undeniable distance from everything he knew; the minute he'd decided to get the hell out of England, he'd spun the nearest globe around to find the land mass closest to the exact opposite side of the world. New Zealand it had been, and he hadn't wasted a minute in making arrangements. He'd decided not to travel by airline because of the cost and the unbearable-sounding flight times, but the rest of his vacation, he'd decided, would be spent as far away from other wizards and witches as possible. Three months of not being recognized would be paradise.

The trees fell into a small valley below him, and he swooped lower, picking up speed as he pierced the canopy and sank to the surface of the broadening river. He reached down to skim the water with his fingers. His reflection was broken and distorted, almost not there at all, just a dark, elongated shape that might have been anyone --

He swerved just in time to miss a boulder that split the split the stream in two. The tail of his broom clipped a low-hanging branch and spun him towards the opposite bank, a dark wall of trees. His wand was in his hand before he had time to suck in a breath -- he leapt off of the wild broom and pulled his left arm over his face, clenching his eyes shut.

"Mollio!"

Leaves scattered and twigs snapped. There was a deep whoomp, and Harry collided with the thick cushion of air, bounced once, and drifted through it to the forest floor.

_He pushed himself to his feet and shrugged his shoulders, stretched his legs -- nothing sprained -- before straightening his glasses and peering into the newly silent darkness, searching out his broom. There it was, lodged between two mossy branches covered with spidery-looking plants, intact as far as he could tell. He started forward and immediately collapsed to the ground again, tripping over something large and soft. He scrambled to his feet and aimed his wand as the thing he'd fallen over groaned and began to stir. He swallowed. If he'd hit a person ...

"Lumos."

A large, gray dog was hauling itself onto unsteady legs, its head hanging low, ears back and tail motionless. Harry let out a rush of breath in relief even as a little pinch of guilt tightened his chest. "Sorry," he whispered. The dog looked all right, though. It shook its head, took a clumsy step sideways, dropped something heavy from its mouth, and raised its muzzle, squinting into the light of Harry's wand.

"You've lost your dinner," Harry said, inching towards it. It was dazed, and he supposed it must have been domesticated, because it had a collar and looked very much like a Weimaraner, surely not native -- probably no danger to him. "Come on -- you're all right." He imagined himself turning up on some poor elderly gentleman's doorstep, trying to explain how he had killed his beloved pet, while inside, a little ring of red-faced, sobbing grandchildren demanded the return of their lost dog. Off on the right foot, as usual.

Something rustled on the ground. Harry turned his light on it with a snap of his wrist -- at first he could hardly distinguish it from the ground cover. A brown, furry lump that might have been moss if it hadn't been clawing at the earth with one feeble, three-clawed foot was lifting its long, thin beak out of the leaves. He'd seen tons of pictures of kiwi birds on all the brochures he'd read through, but they were meant to be much larger -- this one he could easily have held in both his hands, while he was pretty sure the ones he'd seen had been about the size of chickens. It must have been young, he guessed -- a chick. There was a wet patch, dark and matted, near where its wing should have been if it had been a proper bird, glinting red. The old man and his squalling brats were replaced at once in Harry's mind by Hedwig's limp body lying at the bottom of her cage.

The dog had noticed, too, that its prey had escaped. It cocked its head and bared its teeth, the muscles in its neck tensing for a lunge.

Harry was faster. In an instant he was standing over the bird, feet planted on either side of it. He waved his lit wand in the dog's face. "Go on -- off with you."

_The dog stared at him, confused. Harry stepped closer, swiping his wand at it again. It took a step backwards and turned with its tail between its legs to trot off into the forest.

"Go pick on someone your own size," Harry muttered. He tucked his wand away and bent down to scoop up the trembling bird. It huddled down against the palms of his hands, its claws digging a bit too deeply into his skin -- terrified, poor thing. He held it out into a bright stripe of moonlight a bit closer to the bank of the stream, inspecting the wound. It didn't seem to be bleeding very freely, and he slid the bird gently into one hand to try to peel away the damp feathers so that he could see whether it was a scratch, or a gash, or something deeper. The bird had the same idea, apparently -- it prodded at its side with its slender beak. "Hurts, I bet," Harry said, nudging its beak away. The bird turned its face up to him, its small, black eyes fixing on his. "But don't touch it, I'll have to -- ouch!"

A line of pain flared up across his palm as the bird struggled in his hand, clawing at him and wriggling between his fingers in an attempt to free itself. Harry tried to tighten his hands around it, but it was thrashing too wildly and he knew that if he squeezed it the wrong way he would surely only make things worse -- the bird kicked at his hand again, ripping through the skin of his thumb, and he dropped it, clenching his fingers in his shirt with a curse to sop up the blood. The bird tumbled to the ground and made a dash for the riverbank. But its strange, hopping gait was uneven, and it stopped no more than six feet away, its little breast heaving. Harry could see it was in pain.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, taking a cautious step forward and feeling more than a little silly for talking to an animal -- especially one that had just tried to maul him. "It's all right. I'll get you fixed up, okay?"

The bird swiveled its head from side to side as though searching for some escape, but it stood where it was as Harry approached. It shied away and shut its eyes when he bent down very slowly to take it in his hands again, but it didn't struggle.

Harry carried it to where his bag had landed, a few feet away from his broom. There was far more room inside than there should have been, and after rooting through his clothes, camping gear and Quidditch things and his disorganized box of brochures he pulled out his towel. "Here," he said. "It's just for a little while. Just ... keep still." He wound it in loose folds around the bird, leaving plenty of space for its head to poke out, and then lowered it into the bag. The bird had apparently resigned itself to its fate; it didn't resist. Harry zipped the bag and let out a breath.

The forest had returned to its usual song of scattered noises, quite recovered from the shock of his crash. Birds called out in the dark as Harry made a clumsy attempt to heal the wounds in his wand hand, and as the flesh stitched up he wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Did birds have families? Well, obviously they did, but did they care? Would he be leaving some distraught band of kiwis desperately hunting for their lost brother or sister? He didn't know the first thing about healing animals. He didn't know that he wasn't just making things worse. You were supposed to leave nature to its course, after all ...

But if it hadn't been for him, the bird would have been dead already, gobbled up by some lost hunting dog. That must have meant something. He put it out of his mind, shouldered his bag, and mounted his broom. The first thing was to get to his hotel. They wouldn't be open for checking in, but ... perhaps he could pound on the door. He shot up into the sky -- a little wobbly with his sore palms, but steady enough -- and hovered just over the tops of the trees.

He drew his wand, cast a Disillusionment charm over himself and his broom, and scanned the horizon for some landmark he could use to get his bearings. "Oriente," he murmured. His broom shuddered and turned to the east, and he sped off towards Kerikeri, where there was a bed waiting for him.

Between following lighted roads and shuffling with the map he'd brought, Harry found his hotel within the hour and after only four or five wrong turns. He landed on its wide, sloping lawn, stopping beside a picnic table tucked under a sprawling tree to lift the Disillusionment charm and push his broom down into his luggage. The bird's eyes were open, but it seemed subdued; it hardly looked at him when he adjusted the towel, and its breathing was slow and jerky. Harry bit his lip.

It was about half-past five in the morning, now. The hotel, a low wooden building set back in a lush group of trees, was dark save for the light posts out front and a dim glow in the lobby's windows. The main door was locked. Harry set his bag on the front step and knocked -- gently, at first.

There was no answer. But he couldn't keep flying around with a wounded bird sliding about in his bag; he needed to get it inside for a proper inspection, needed privacy to work at healing it. He knocked again, and kept knocking until his fist was numb from slamming against the door.

A light came on towards the back of the lobby, and a moment later a middle-aged woman in a tightly-wrapped dressing gown opened the door, still straightening her hair. She was half asleep, and stared at him as though she was trying to remember what to say.

"Sorry," Harry said, bending down to pick up his bag. "I know it's early, but I've just got in and I don't --"

"Oh, no, it's all right," she cut in at once. She gave him a sleepy smile and turned to the high wooden desk that sat beside the door, leaving the way clear for him. "Come in, come in, they send the flights in at the most ridiculous times, nothing open at all ... What's your name, dear?"

"James Evans," he said, tugging at the leaves of the silk plant beside the desk lamp. Hermione had asked him what the point of doctoring up false papers could be if he was going to use a name that wouldn't fool anyone, but he'd thought it sounded good enough at the time. After all, it wasn't as though anyone was going to come looking for him here, and it was a common name. Now he was a little nervous, as always seemed to happen when the moment came to lie to someone's face. But the woman only nodded, marked him down in a book, and went to sort through a bunch of keys.

"Well, good luck -- your room's clean, and we can just -- oh!" She clutched the key to her chest. Her eyes, wide with shock, had fallen to the level of his waist, and Harry looked down as his stomach seemed to sink to the floor, half expecting to see the kiwi sticking its head out --

His bag was closed, but his shirt was covered in his own dried blood from the cuts on his hands. His face burned, and he raised his bag to hold it against his middle. "Oh, that's just -- um -- nose bleed," he murmured stupidly.

"But are you all right?" She hardly seemed convinced.

"Yes, it just -- it happens to me on planes, that's all, I'm fine now." He didn't know if nosebleeds were something that happened on planes, never having been on one, but it seemed more or less likely.

She frowned, but turned to the hall. "Well, come with me -- we'll set you up, and you give me that and I'll take it to the laundry. You're certain you don't need to see anyone? Maybe just some ice?"

"No," Harry said, following with his shoulders slumped. The last thing he had wanted to do was make a scene. "No, I'm fine, really. Thanks. I just need some rest, that's all."

She unlocked a door for him and showed him in, flicking on the light to reveal a large bed, a little kitchen tucked off to the side, a writing desk and a glass door that slid out onto what he supposed was a patio, though it was too dark outside to see. "Of course you do -- now go on and change, and bring me your shirt. I'll have it for you by lunchtime."

Harry slipped into the bathroom, bringing the bag along with him. He unzipped it and lifted the bird and its towel out into the tub -- the bird was still awake, it seemed, but wasn't moving. Harry doubted that was normal behavior. Hedwig would never have consented to being wrapped in a towel and carted around in someone's luggage. He tore off his shirt and hauled on another before stepping out and handing over the soiled clothes to the innkeeper with an embarrassed cough. She took it with a motherly sort of look in his direction, set the key on the desk, and left. Harry sighed and shut himself in the bathroom again. Yeah, really low profile. Fantastic. He regarded the boy in the mirror a little hopelessly. When were people going to stop giving him motherly looks? He was nineteen years old.

The bird made a rasping sort of squeak. Harry turned and knelt on the tile floor, reaching into the tub to unwind the towel, pleased to see there was only a small, darkened patch of blood on the inside -- the bleeding had stopped. The bird shook out its feathers with an awkward hop. It seemed to have decided he was nothing to fear, after all; it looked up at him without cowering back, only swiveling its head every few seconds to take him all in. Harry gave it a wary smile. His hand was still smarting a little, and he'd learned in Hagrid's classes that it was a good idea not to assume wild animals were friendly if you wanted to keep all of your fingers.

"Here we go." He lifted the stiff, matted feathers away from the wound with his thumb. So far so good; the bird twitched, but didn't walk away. It seemed awfully tame -- but perhaps it was just dazed. The wound was a ragged, dark gash just under the tiny, fleshy protrusion that Harry supposed was what passed for a wing. It had indeed stopped bleeding, but it was dirty and open to the air.

With a wave of relief he decided that this was something he could fix. He might get clawed to death in the process, of course. "You're not going to like this," he murmured, drawing out his wand and nudging the tip against the bloody feathers. The bird began to fidget, and Harry held it in place with his other hand. "Scourgify." A swirling rush of soap bubbles, far too large, enveloped the bird, which instantly began running from one end of the tub to the other, shaking its head and flinging soap everywhere. Harry winced. "Hold on -- wait -- Aguamenti!" A moment later the bird was cowering in the corner, drenched and trembling but quite clean. Harry hated the way it kept lifting its foot on its injured side, as though it wanted to tend to its own wound but simply couldn't reach.

Its foot flew all the way up, though, claws at the ready, when Harry leaned over the edge of the tub to try to grab it again. He froze. "I have to look at it," he said. "Will you just let me -- oh, no you don't." He jerked his hand back just in time to avoid another rip across his knuckles. He brought his wand to bear again, trying to tamp down the rising guilt. He was only trying to help. "Petrificus Totalus."

The bird went rigid, one leg in the air. It would have toppled over had Harry not caught it on its way down. "Sorry," he murmured. Hermione's misadventure with Polyjuice Potion and cat hair was foremost in his mind as he began inspecting the clean wound, sitting cross-legged with the bird in his lap. Some spells weren't meant to be used with animals, and he had no way of knowing which -- no way of knowing if he would do something that left the bird worse off than when he'd found it. What if the body bind made it stop breathing, or caused it pain? It seemed unharmed -- its eyes were flashing murder, but they were at least moving -- but there was really no telling what would happen. He pointed his wand at the bright pink slash in the bird's flesh, whispered Episkey, and held his breath.

The wound knitted up, and Harry slumped back against the wall. With a growing smile, he fluffed up the towel in the bathtub, set the bird in the center, and released it. He had thought it might like to nest, but it immediately started pacing the length of the tub again, its little body alive with fury. Harry had to remind himself that birds weren't grateful creatures -- Hedwig never had been. It probably hadn't even realized he was the reason for its recovery. More than likely it would have enjoyed clawing his eyes out, if it could flutter over the lip of the tub. He decided to let it be for a while, to see if it would calm down. He shut off the bathroom light, dragged his bag out into the main room, and closed the door most of the way to give it some quiet.

It was still dark outside. When he cupped his hands over the glass sliding door, he could see his small deck with a wooden railing and a couple of chairs. It looked out over a hedge, and beyond that everything was black. He drew the curtains, switched on the bedside lamp, and lifted his bag onto the mattress to begin unpacking. His clothes he dropped onto the shelving along the wall, his sandals and his hiking boots made a pile by the bedside table, the shoebox full of brochures -- well, the shoebox that had been full of brochures before they'd all toppled out -- went onto the floor, to be slowly refilled as he dug around in the corners of the bag. He'd brought Muggle and magical brochures, maps and guides -- just in case. They were rumpled now, and fell into their box in no particular order, but all the same they stirred up some of the excitement he had lost hold of when his broom had gone careening to the ground. He could stay here as long as he liked, he could go anywhere at all, and he had no one to answer to. In the first hours of his journey the threat of loneliness seemed too far away to matter very much, although he knew it would find him at some point. As much as he was craving solitude now, as much as he wanted to run from anyone who knew him even to speak to, he knew it wouldn't last. __Knowing that he could go home when he needed to was a new luxury, and one he treasured despite the swarm of well-wishers, journalists and other meddlers that seemed to surround him no matter what he did. Having a place that was his was the only reason he could run like he was running now. And even if he would have preferred to have a friend to run with, he could do without -- they would be there when he returned. That much he knew by now.__

He shoved the box underneath his bed. The clicking of claws had stopped, and the bathroom was silent. Harry went to poke his head in, curling his hand in front of the tip of his wand as he muttered "Lumos." The bird needed its rest, he was sure, and if it had finally calmed down enough to sit still, he didn't want to disturb it.__

He peered into the tub and suffered a brief stab of panic. There was nothing but his towel, crumpled and shoved up in one corner, soaking up the soapy remains of the bird's forced bath. _

The towel moved. Harry's heart settled back into its usual place, and his shoulders sagged. It was only hiding -- probably still frightened out of its wits, poor thing. Well, if it wanted close quarters ... Harry went to his bed, emptied the box of brochures into a hopeless pile on the carpet, and grabbed a dry towel out of the bathroom to fold into its corner. It could sit under the bed; it was dark, warm, and confined, and Harry wouldn't have to worry about a soaked and vengeful kiwi trotting around his room. Better to appease it as much as possible, in fact. He dug a pack of raisins and a bruised apple out of his bag, chopped them up into pieces in the kitchen, and dropped them into the box as well. It was nothing special -- a little sticky, rather dented and quite cramped -- but it would be safe. For both of them.

He set the box down on the threshold to the bathroom, and reached down very slowly to lift the crumpled towel out of the bathtub with both hands. Levitating the bird, he felt, might just alarm it even further. He felt it begin to stir, and dropped it into the box as though his hands had been burnt. He carried the whole thing over to the bed, holding it out at arm's length and muttering nervous reassurances all the while, lifted the bed skirt, and slid it under.

There was a slow, confused scrabbling noise, definitely claws against cardboard -- and then silence. For several minutes Harry sat on the corner of the bed, listening.

Nothing.

Although his heart was racing, Harry realized he was rather tired -- probably the end of the adrenaline rush from spinning himself off his broom into a thicket. Perhaps they'd both be in a better state of mind after a bit of a nap. After fiddling with the clock at the side of the bed, he lay down -- very carefully, with hardly any noise at all -- and closed his eyes. Though he couldn't see it, he could feel the room, the town and the forest standing all around him, strange and far away from anything he'd ever known. It felt very, very quiet. He smiled.

+ + +

Draco stood on shaky, tired legs, blinking sleep out of his eyes. There was a thick, sweet smell filling the air around him -- it was familiar, but the name escaped him. He liked the way it made him feel: warm and full, comfortable, safe. He couldn't remember when he had smelled it last. It must have been a long time ago. There had been something on the floor, too, that he remembered, something he had seen just before being banished to this cobwebbed corner under the bed; a splash of color on a piece of glossy paper had made him feel uneasy. But that's all it had been -- color. His eyes weren't very good, not as good as they used to be. It was frustrating. He couldn't see things and couldn't think of why he needed to see them, though he knew it was important. There were so many things that he was so close to knowing, and yet -- he never reached them. He scratched at the seam of the towel, worrying it to threads.

He did know Harry Potter. He knew him like he knew a few other things -- things he remembered perfectly, things that stood like columns supporting the empty shell of something, things that allowed him some safety even while he was lost in this place. He also knew that Potter should never have made him feel safe or glad. But he was a piece of the past and of home, like the smell of that unnamed fruit.

The bed creaked above him. Draco backed further into the corner, giving his head a nervous toss and pulling the towel more firmly over himself fold by fold. He crouched and waited.

Everything moved. It became impossible to think for a moment, to put names to things or to remember how to do anything but keep still and be ready to slash and run. Then, light -- and Potter's face eclipsing it, a misshapen corona of black hair and the protruding corners of his glasses. The towel was gone, his burrow destroyed, but instead of the biting need to flee, a quiet relief settled over him, like the weight of the ground. He didn't move as Potter's hand came down to wrap him in the towel again, too tightly. A finger prodded his aching side, recalling freezing water and the taste of soap and heart-hammering anger -- and Draco sunk his claws into the towel, seeking the skin beneath.

Potter took the warning. Draco found himself in the box again, watching in frustration as Potter shoved the towel into the opposite corner. He didn't want to dig again, to go back to sleep. It felt like time to be out, time to be running.

"Bloody alarm," Potter muttered, still gazing down at him, his elbow leaning on the corner of the box. "There's my day, gone. What about you, hm? Probably bored to death."

Draco hopped. He was tired, he wasn't hungry, and there was no reason he should have to be trapped here.

"If I take you out, will I get you back in again?"

Draco loved the human sound of the words like he loved the smell of -- raisins, he thought with a thrill. He knew that trying to mimic them was hopeless, but there was some satisfaction in just making noise.

Potter grinned and reached in for him again, kicking up a spark of indignation. What the hell are you grinning about, anyway? He looked awful and drawn, and there was a long, sharp crease in his shirt right down the front. Draco let himself be lifted out but then immediately leaped from Potter's hands, chirping happily at Potter's sharp intake of breath. He ran along the floor to where the soft ground dropped into something hard and slick that clicked under his feet. It smelled like soap, bread, and salt, because it was -- it was the room where -- well, he knew what it was, anyhow.

He looked over his shoulder. Potter was standing back on the -- on the carpet, wearing an expression of mingled amusement and concern. Draco decided to ignore him. There were things and smells he hadn't experienced in too long, all sorts of not-quite-memories that drew his thoughts to the empty places in his mind where the right words had once been. He spent a long time staring into the glossy silver surface of some sort of door, cocking his head at the blurry little brown bird that was him, but wasn't real.

Then he trotted back towards the bed, his thoughts swimming with all of those colorful papers lying in a pile on the floor -- and stopped. Potter was seated on the edge of the mattress, and across his lap was a long, thin branch. It widened into a bundle of twigs at one end, where Potter was clipping at it with a smudged pair of scissors.

Broom. Draco ran forward, slowing with a stab of pleasure when Potter drew his feet up warily away from the floor. He wanted to see it, to be close to it. He could almost, almost remember what it did, but he knew that he liked it very much. He stopped just before the bed skirt, and stared up at Potter.

"Can I help you?" Potter's worried smile wavered a little.

Draco hopped again, trying to grab at the bedding with his foot. Arm was a word he'd never forgotten, and to have a pair of those again ...

But Potter would do for now. Draco allowed him to deposit him on the bed and ran at once around to where the twig clippings lay in a pile on the blankets. He pushed the tip of his beak into the tail of the broom and breathed in, instantly surrounded by an overwhelmingly thick cloud of oil, polish and speed. He remembered loving it -- loving fear the way he never did when it was a dog chasing him or when thunder smashed through the forest.

"It's a broom," Potter explained, cheerful if not particularly helpful. "For flying -- but you never have, have you."

Have so. Draco climbed onto the handle. And I'm good at it -- that's what I'm good at. He inched along the length of it, wobbling a little as he went.

"I bet you'd like it. It's probably still in you somewhere, isn't it. You've got wings. They were there for a reason, once."

Draco was barely listening. There was something wrong about this broom. It was Potter's, and Potter's broom had been ...a Firebolt, and this was something else.

This was more than he'd remembered in ages. His mind felt as though it were picking up speed with every passing minute. Potter was helping him somehow, maybe just by being here and talking.

"Let's go," Potter said. "Let's go for a fly. You can't sit in a box all night any more than I can, and you'll fit in my pocket, I think ... jacket pocket, maybe." He looked Draco over, sizing him up. "We might as well do something."

He didn't think he'd ever been happier to agree with Potter. He wasn't sure how to show it, so he just looked up at him, not blinking, not doing anything. The violent, beating sound of the wind singing past and over his ears was swelling up inside him. He wanted to fly, he didn't want to spend another minute in that stupid box, and if he had to get on a broom with Potter to feel that, then -- then maybe it was worth it.

Not ten minutes later, he was fighting off a sick, squirming feeling in his stomach, thrilled in spite of his queasiness at the familiar feeling of acceleration. He was flying -- in Potter's jacket pocket, yes, but he was, and the rise and fall, the dip and swoop and banking swerve were almost all the same. He shut his eyes and coaxed his claws to release the pocket's shabby cotton lining, and it was the closest thing he had felt in ages to sitting a broom himself. He couldn't let this opportunity pass all in darkness, though. It wouldn't be so hard to look out for a minute, and he could at least slip his head out without much danger. Potter probably wouldn't even know.

He worked at the pocket's flap with his claws until he saw a sliver of light coming in at the seam, wedged his beak out through the opening, and began widening it by working his head through as well. He closed his eyes against the wind until he had found the perfect angle, where the gusting night pushed his feathers straight back away from his eyes, and then he looked --

And gave a start, pulling back into the pocket. There was nothing there. But that was impossible -- he stuck his head out again, looking more carefully, and this time saw the fine line, the almost imperceptible difference in texture, between the forest below and the forest-colored sleeve to his side, the forest-colored broom handle and, looking up, Potter's starry, darkened face. A spell, then. Of course, they couldn't just go flying around anywhere where Muggles could see them. Draco lifted his face, blinking through the wind, and looked out to the horizon.

He didn't have very far to look. There was a shimmering, translucent barrier less than a mile away, stretching from below the trees to well over a hundred feet above them. They were rushing at it with alarming speed. Draco's heart was beating so fast that his ribs felt like they were vibrating.

No. Not there.

He'd spent ages trying to get away from what was behind that wall, had dug for days under that quiet, threatening reddish light to find a way out. Like with so much else, he could only remember feelings and flashes, but he knew unequivocally that it was bad. Why wasn't Potter stopping? Didn't he see it? Draco dug his claws into the jacket's lining and felt them pierce the fabric and dig into Potter's shirt, scratching at his skin. Stop!

"Ouch!" Potter glanced down in surprise. "It's all right -- hey, no, you're going to fall --" He slowed and took one hand off the broom handle to shove Draco back into his pocket, but Draco was already diving back in of his own accord. He was sure they were about to smash into a solid wall.

The broom shuddered and lurched. Potter shouted as they began a steep dive towards the ground. What a miserable way to die, Draco thought, oddly calm. In Harry Potter's pocket -- at least no one will know it's me --

But he wasn't doomed just yet, it seemed; the descent was jerky and entirely too fast, but when he felt the final impact he could tell Potter was running, careening across the forest floor in a desperate attempt not to fall flat on his face. It half worked. There was one final totter, a crunching sound like twigs muffled under leaves, and then nothing but Potter's pounding heart and his deafening, rapid breathing.

Voices called from the distance almost immediately, young and excited with local accents. "It sounded too big -- can't have been one of ours ..."

He knew those voices. He hunkered down against Potter's heaving side and waited, frozen. They were still invisible, he hoped -- maybe Potter would be smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

"Definitely too big -- look, here's a branch twisted off -- there's nothing flying around here that ought to be that heavy -- Reparo."

Potter gasped and stiffened.

No, Draco thought, curling into himself. Shut up, shut up, don't you dare ...

"Whatever it is, it can't be in good shape, coming through the canopy at that speed. Broken wing, at least. Are either of the albatrosses missing?"

"We've only got two, Liz would've noticed ... they couldn't bring down something like this, anyway ..."

Potter murmured a spell. All of the footsteps stopped.

"I'm sorry," he said, stepping off of his broom as Draco's entire body tensed with the unbearable longing to curse him. "My broom's malfunctioned, and I fell through the trees. They're ..." He drifted into an awkward pause. "They'll be -- all right?"

Silence.

"Is that the new Nimbus?" one of the newcomers asked.

"Um." Potter tried to slip his wand back into his pocket but, thankfully, thought better of it. "Yeah. Listen -- I'm not from here, and I'm not exactly sure --"

"Well, you've just crash-landed in the primary reserve of the Haumiaroa Magical Society for the Conservation of Indigenous Wildlife," the broom enthusiast said with an unmistakable note of pride, and Draco suddenly remembered thick leather gloves and awful brown caps. "It might have been the wards that brought you down, I guess, although they're only meant to affect our residents, so to speak. I don't know that anyone's ever tried to take a broom through them."

"Maybe," Potter said, sounding entirely too thoughtful for Draco's liking. "Your residents are animals, then? Like -- birds, and such?"

"Exactly. Poor sods would be wandering out to their doom and all of that if we didn't keep the walls up. We don't regulate what comes in, and most animals seem to find the wards pretty off-putting anyway, so we don't have a lot of non-residents trespassing. And all the people know it's a damn serious offense to take anything out that belongs to us, so no poachers either."

Potter's hand, which had been about to slip into Draco's pocket again, stopped short. "Really. And ... Muggles too, you mean? Do they know you're here?"

"Well, they can't see the place at all, so it's not much of a problem, really ... Do you want a lift out to the exit? We can't really let you walk around in here, not part of the habitat, you know. There's a gap in the wards if we go through the employee's gate; it would be a shame to put that masterpiece of yours through any additional stress. The gift shop's closed this late, or I'd tell you to pop in."

"That'd be great, thanks."

Draco hardly dared to breathe as Potter clambered up onto something and they started floating a slow, winding path away from the site of their crash.

"I've seen your picture," said the other native voice, the one that had kept largely silent. "You're Harry Potter."

Oh, marvelous. Draco discovered that kiwis could not, in fact, roll their eyes to his satisfaction. Now we'll be staying for dinner.

Potter was quiet for too long. Then his voice was curt, tired. "Yep."

"No!" The more animated of the pair laughed. "I didn't know you were coming out here -- you're a little famous, you know, that stuff was all over the news for the longest time."

"I expect so."

"Well, we're about to switch shifts, you've got to come out, there are loads of people who'll want to meet you ..."

Draco endured more petting of Harry Potter's ego than he thought possible before they finally came to a halt. He was a little surprised to hear Potter bring it abruptly to a close.

"Actually, I'm really tired," Potter said, climbing to the ground without making much attempt at sounding friendly. "The time difference, and all. I haven't been here long."

"Oh, sure -- right -- well ... you know where to find us, don't you? Here, take a brochure -- the shop's closed, like I said, but you can read up a little."

"Thanks -- oh. I've got one, actually. I must have picked it up in the travel shop."

Then there was no sound but the crunching of leaves and gravel and the occasional call of a bird. Soon the wind drowned away even those as they lifted into the air once again, and Draco was very glad to leave them behind.

+ + +

Harry kicked the door shut to his hotel room, dropped his bag and went straight to the bed, heavy with frustration. How stupid could he have been, thinking he could just up and have a fly and no one would know -- but no, it hadn't been his fault. He'd come so very, very far, and there was no way he could have known he'd run into anyone like that. He had to laugh, although there was no humor to it. In the middle of a forest on the absolute opposite side of the world, he would run smack into a pair of wizards who knew his name. It wasn't fair.

He pushed his hand into his pocket to try to dislodge the kiwi that had stubbornly refused to leave his jacket ever since they had returned to solid ground. He supposed he couldn't blame it for sulking, really. He had probably terrified it -- it wasn't meant to fly, he'd just been an idiot -- and if he hadn't been afraid of getting in trouble, it could have been home tonight, better than home. It could have been safe, where it belonged. What had he been thinking, anyway? What were two ... two zookeepers going to do to him, whether he had an illegal bird or not?

It didn't matter. He stripped his jacket off, careful not to disturb his angry guest, and rested it in the box beside the bed. At least it could climb out and have a little food, if it wanted. Then he went straight to the writing desk, pulled off a sheet of stationery, and addressed a letter to Ron. He could go find someplace to loan him an owl in the morning; there was no reason not to make use of every magical convenience, now. Some pub near the Society reserve was probably already hearing all about his impromptu visit.

"Why's it so bloody exciting, anyway?" he muttered, trying to think of how to phrase his note. He couldn't be too vague, or Ron -- well, Hermione, then Ron -- would be alarmed, but he didn't feel much like telling them he'd crash-landed and managed to show off his scar. "If I wanted people telling me who I am I'd have just stayed home ..."

The bird had started pacing around in the box; it was pecking, sharp and rhythmic, against the cardboard. Harry kicked at one leg of the desk, keeping time with it. They both had reason to be frustrated. The poor thing was stuck here with him when it could have been home, and he -

"I'm not going home," he growled, glaring at the address on the page before him as though it had made a particularly offensive suggestion.

Well, where the hell are you going?

He turned to the window, gazing out into the darkened grounds. He couldn't stay here. He would be too jumpy, he would feel constantly ridiculous -- it wasn't as though anyone was out to hurt him, but he just wanted to be alone, and being rude to everyone who recognized him would leave him as on edge and angry and guilty as it had in England.

The bird climbed up on his jacket, and hopped off the edge of the box onto the carpet. It stuck its beak into the pile of brochures and began poking about.

That wasn't a bad idea, actually.

Harry made himself a cup of tea with the supplies in the kitchen, scooped up about half of his travel literature, and slid open the glass door that led onto the deck. He sat in one of the painted wooden chairs, setting the books and papers carefully on the railing. The Society's logo caught his eye, and he pulled the topmost pamphlet into his lap. Maybe it would have something about what to do should one legally encounter a distressed kiwi. A drop-box would have been convenient. He stopped over the Keeping Kiwis Safe section, illustrated with a picture of a smiling witch holding onto a fully-grown and irate-looking kiwi by its large, wicked-looking feet.

The introduction of stoats, dogs and other non-indigenous animals has rendered the kiwi's natural habitat hostile in many regions. Well, clearly. Other factors in the steady decline in population have been increasing tourism and development. Smuggling has never been widespread, as kiwis are aggressive and make very poor pets - yes, no kidding there - but a few birds have been found as far away as Canada and the United Kingdom, often having been released into the wild by unprepared owners. These smuggled birds are repatriated after spending a week's quarantine with the Society, during which time they undergo specially tailored memory charms to minimize trauma, and receive any treatment or nutrition necessary to ensure a successful release. The Society also promotes public education regarding threats to the kiwi's habitat, works in conjunction with other local organizations to spay and neuter domestic animals, and develops strategies to utilize wards and other magical shields in ways that do not disrupt the fragile ecosystems of our precious forests. You too can help preserve our national treasures by sending in the donation form on the back page of ...

No drop box, then. But Harry was more or less confident that he'd done a decent job of treating and nourishing his charge, in any case -- dropping it back into the wild might not have been ideal, but he could do it near the reserve, maybe even on it. They'd said themselves there was nothing keeping anyone out. ... And then perhaps he'd send in a donation.

But that could wait. He had a decision to make. He took another sip of his tea and reached down into the box to pull out a brochure at random. Egypt came up first, and was immediately dropped to the deck on the other side of his chair -- too close to home, and, if the Weasleys' family photos were any indication, pretty much crawling with magical tourists. Next was Mexico, which looked a little more on the mark, but -- well, he thought he might like a break from forests, really. He'd had nothing but trouble in them so far. He dropped it into the no pile and brought up Switzerland, which must have been put in by mistake. Way too close. Off it went -- and up came a muted gurgling sound and a papery shuffling.

Harry leaned over the arm of his chair. At first all he saw was the sharp white and green contrast of some set of Swiss cliffs -- but then the bird waddled out from under the fold, and began fussing about with the rejected brochures. Harry smiled.

"Did you know you make a very poor pet?" he asked, dropping another brochure -- Barbados, too much beach -- into what he supposed was now nesting material. The bird ignored him, dragging the papers into a circle. "But it's not your fault." Harry waved the Conservation brochure in the air. "It says here you're just aggressive."

The bird cocked its head at him, and gave Barbados a violent shake. The brochure flopped open.

Harry opened up a brochure covered with pictures of colorful tapestries and brown, rugged-looking slopes. "You'd have to have a name to be a pet, wouldn't you," he said, starting to read about Cuzco, Peru. "You remind me of a dog I used to know, actually. His name was Ripper." Except he hadn't liked Ripper, and for some reason the thought of leaving the bird behind filled him with regret. But -- this was its home, and it wasn't a pet. It had that whole Society to look after it here, to make sure it never ran afoul of another dog again. He couldn't hope to take care of it half as well as they could.

He would have to do the right thing tomorrow night, he decided with a sinking heart, gazing with deepening interest at the stark ruins of Sacsayhuaman, however you said that. It was too bad. He was going to miss the little monster.

+ + +

Old socks, broom handle polish and soap slowly gave way to the full smell of earth, and the bag began to list in growing arcs with Potter's more labored steps. They had left the roadside and mounted the trail into the forest. Draco buried his beak in the folds of the towel, trying to wrap himself away from the wilderness -- that smell meant digging burrows and hiding under the ground, safe, secure, comforted, but still somehow wrong. He didn't like digging and he didn't care for dirt, and he had to remember that. It was very important. Listening to another human had brought him so much closer to himself than he had been in ages, trying to read had opened up vast expanses of his mind that had been somehow closed and that might sink away again if he were left out here with nothing to do but survive. He had started to put sounds to letters again, something he hadn't even realized he had forgotten how to do.

He couldn't stay here. He didn't want to stay with Potter, either, or knew he shouldn't want to. Hatred and resentment loomed in his past, easy to remember and to feel. He imagined Potter's face and thought I hate you, but there was no leaping in his chest to tell him he was right. All he felt was an embarrassed shadow of the old fury, indignation at most, and tempered into nothing by relief and exhaustion. Maybe it was just this stupid bird's brain getting in the way, too small to form something like hatred, but in any case it simply wasn't there. And surely he could be allowed to stop hating Harry Potter now? All of that was over. The world was completely changed. He just wanted to stop, to go home, and Potter was the one who could take him there. Draco might have been able to wander his way into town, to find other humans on his own, but he hadn't the first clue where to find anyone but Muggles. Why shouldn't he stick with the first wizard he'd found?

Anyway, whatever Potter had done in the past, now it seemed they were on the same page. Potter was hiding. And Draco knew, though he couldn't remember why, that he was hiding too -- he must have been, to have taken this shape. Why else would they have left his family, wherever they might have been? However he had come here, he wanted to hide. He wanted it to end, like Potter did. He couldn't remember what was waiting for him at home that he so desperately wanted to avoid, but he knew it was there the same way he knew when a dog or a human was approaching, by the changes in the earth that he could feel in his bones.

Potter stopped. Clothing rustled beneath Draco as the bag settled to the ground, and a moment later the zipper opened and the dark weave of the forest canopy loomed overhead. He dug his claws into the towel. Potter wasn't going to dump him out here in the middle of nowhere, not without a fight.

But when Potter crouched down beside the bag to scoop him out of it and Draco caught his own reflection in one of his smudged lenses, the urge to draw blood subsided. This wasn't what he looked like, wasn't what he was. He was a wizard. Just because he couldn't remember the last time he'd acted like one didn't mean he couldn't, didn't mean that wasn't what he was supposed to do.

"Here we are then," Potter said, slipping his hands beneath Draco's feet and lifting him out into the open air. He was smiling, but there was no enthusiasm in his voice. "Home. Ready?" For about the hundredth time, he tried to run his fingers down Draco's back; this time, Draco let him get away with it. He was too busy to object. There was something he knew that would help him, if he could only remember.

What was it? The words don't get lost streamed through his mind in a woman's voice and he tried to follow them. Don't get lost. There was a spell for that. Wandless, because in this form he couldn't hope to use one; non-verbal, because of course he couldn't form words, not even when he could remember them; and very, very important, so important that he had repeated it silently until he had forgotten any meaning the words themselves might have had and had just rendered it a series of meaningless sounds. What was it?

Potter set him on the ground. "Well ... good luck," he said. He stood, and scratched nervously at the back of his neck.

Draco couldn't remember. He turned and ran for the bag again, clawing up the side. Potter couldn't leave him here.

"Hey! No, look -- I can't take you with me, I -- you don't even like me anyway --"

Draco was climbing up the sagging fabric when Potter grabbed him. He struggled. As Potter pulled him free of the bag Draco thrashed from side to side in his hand, craning his neck to see whether if he just scratched hard enough he could fall down into it -- and he saw it again, the Society's logo, that gold and green. His mother's face seemed to appear before him, and a sudden feeling of home. He remembered.

Comitor conligatus.

The easy relief that washed through him was followed immediately by a clean, cold jolt, like a sudden splash of water. He didn't know how long it had been since he had done magic, but it must have been ages. Even this spell's unpleasant effects made him want to jump up and down and shout.

He wondered if Potter had felt any of it. On the ground again, Draco looked up at him. Potter looked wary, but whether that was because he had sensed something magical or because he thought Draco was going to try to rip his hand open again he didn't know.

"Stay." Potter snatched up his bag and took a step back.

Draco stood motionless, except that he cocked his head. Why the hell was Potter bothering to talk to him, anyway? Not that he wasn't grateful, of course. Not that he didn't miss it.

"Um ... right. Good." He cleared his throat, and, after a long hesitation filled with the tantalizing sounds of earthworms tunneling not three inches under the ground, he gave a little wave. "Bye, then."

He left. But even when Potter was gone, Draco still felt as though he were standing beside him, still saw that green and gold symbol as clearly as if it had been right in front of him. And he waited. He shifted impatiently from foot to foot, resisting the urge to lunge into the ground, trying to remind himself that earthworms were disgusting and no self-respecting wizard would eat them. He waited until he had begun to doubt himself and his spell and started to wonder whether he shouldn't take cover in case some hungry animal wandered by. He waited even after he had finally taken refuge in the hollow beneath the roots of a crooked tree, clinging to hope even after the sun had risen, when he knew he wouldn't be able to hold his eyes open for another minute.

And then the tight, pressing, hot feeling came over him, like he was about to be very ill, and the roots and the ground disappeared into a violent, rushing grey. It went on for too long, far too long -- it was like being dragged at the end of a rope, skipping across the bruising ground. The last thing he sensed before everything went dark was a light, clean cold and the faint and volatile scent of eucalyptus trees.

+ + +

The slanting streets of Cuzco were wild in a way that made Harry lose a little of the tension that had been seizing in his ribs since he had decided to leave Kerikeri. There were all sorts of people, crowding the pavements or brazenly occupying the middle of the street; there were tourists in jeans, locals (or perhaps simply a different breed of tourist) wearing brightly striped and stiff-looking wraps, the occasional man in a suit, working people, yet more tourists stopping, oblivious to foot traffic, to stare at something hanging in a window that they had never seen. More than half the words he heard as he passed everyone by were words that he couldn't understand and had never heard before. (The witch at the Portkey office had assured him that he wouldn't need very much Spanish to find his way around, but all the same Harry intended to try to speak to as few people as possible.) He was reminded strongly of his first visit to Diagon Alley.

It was nearly five in the afternoon, and the sun was low and warm over the diving ridge of hills visible to the north. Well, it looked warm, anyhow. It was actually quite chilly, and Harry was tempted to stop and pull a jumper out of his bag, but he was pretty sure all of the warm clothes were on the bottom. It would look suspicious to be dumping half his belongings out of a small duffel. He would survive. He ducked into what was clearly a tourists' bookshop for a little warmth and a better guide than the one he had brought. After leafing through it on a bench in an open plaza for a few minutes, casting regretful looks at the birds hopping expectantly around his feet and splitting his attention between a rather grand church and a group of rowdy young men all wearing the same T-shirt and speaking something that sounded a bit like Troll, he thought he had better start finding a hotel. He hardly knew whether he was tired or not. He had left Kerikeri before lunch, and seemed to have arrived in Cuzco just before dinner, but, unless he was very much mistaken, it was yesterday's dinner. He liked the feeling of not knowing where or when he was, of being someplace too different even to comprehend, but he would also have liked to know when he was supposed to eat.

He chose his hotel largely based on the fact that it shared the name of a street he had just passed by, and he was sure he wouldn't get lost. Fortunately, they had a room; he gave them his alias and waited for about thirty minutes in the open, busy lobby before being shown up the airy staircase. The dark wooden banisters and muted carpeting were pleasantly rustic.

He was pleased to see he had a balcony, again -- and even if it was rather too low to stand out on without attracting attention, it was nice to be able to throw open the door to let in the breeze. It was growing steadily colder, but since he had arrived he had felt as though he couldn't get a full breath, and although the room was far from stuffy he wanted to air it out. He hoped he would get used to the altitude before bedtime. He didn't really want to sleep shoved up under the blankets.

He set his bag on the single bed, laid his new book on the little desk that was pressed up between the foot of the bed and the balcony windows, and opened his bag to unpack again. He jumped back.

There, huddled on top of his folded-up socks, looking a bit rumpled but otherwise tranquil, was the kiwi. It raised its head to him and blinked a few times before taking an unsteady step forward and collapsing into the mouth of one of his trainers.

"How ...?"

Excellent, he thought, his mind spinning. Now you've smuggled an endangered bird halfway round the world. But how had he even managed it? He was fairly certain he'd left it inside the reserve's wards, but even if he'd been off on that, he knew he'd closed his bag up after he'd left the bird out in the forest. There were no holes in it; there was no way anything could have snuck in. Maybe it was a different bird? But that was ridiculous -- they were rare, it wasn't like every forest, road and hotel room were lousy with kiwis trying to hop into luggage.

He reached down to lift the bird out of his shoe, but stopped when it raised its foot in warning.

"Definitely still Ripper, then, aren't you." Harry pulled out the desk chair and sat facing the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. How the hell was he going to send it back? He'd just arrived; he didn't want to leave. He didn't want to explain to anyone, either, that he has just accidentally stolen an animal he had no business having at all. He really should have been very put out.

But ... he wasn't. Not really. He was a little glad to see the thing again, actually, and as it climbed slowly to the edge of his bag and hopped onto the bed, he allowed himself a small smile. He didn't mind having it along. He was going to be in a lot of trouble, and he didn't know how he would take care of it or where he was going to put it, but it was nice to have something to talk to. He'd missed having a faithfully ornery pet around, after Hedwig.

A kiwi wasn't an owl; he knew that. It was probably wrong to keep it in a box when it had whole forests waiting for it back home. But it would only be for a little while. Surely he could be trusted to take care of it for that long. He stood, fished out the box, dumped the brochures on the floor again (he really would have to find a bag for those) and dropped his towel inside before setting it all on the floor.

"Nothing to be done for it now," he said, not sure why he was feigning resignation. "You'll have to stay a little while. I'm not going back to New Zealand just because you managed to hitch a ride."

At that, the bird loped across the bedspread, climbed down the side -- leaving plenty of pulled threads in its wake -- and landed neatly inside its box. Harry expected it was just hoping for raisins, but he would take it for a good omen anyway.

"Right -- you just ... rest up a while, then." He grinned, digging into his bag for his toiletries. "I'm off for a shower."

He was practically whistling as he slipped into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar after realizing that the fan wasn't working. The gaudily flowered shower curtain left dark, shadowy splotches all over the wall and the tub; they faded in the growing steam and disappeared entirely when he removed his glasses and set them on the sink.

It was while he was washing his hair that he realized he was absolutely famished. Standing in the dim warmth with nothing to distract him seemed to have pulled his body a little more into line with itself. He rushed through the shower, shutting off the tap and shaking out his hair before pushing the curtain away to find a towel.

He snatched it back almost immediately. He couldn't be quite sure without his glasses, but he was almost sure that that dark blotch on the floor had been --

Harry groped for his glasses on the sink, shoved them on, and peered around the curtain. The bird had indeed decided to join him, and was sitting on the bathmat gazing up at him with what Harry thought was -- he was just imagining things, of course -- an innocent expression.

"Um." Why exactly was he clinging so tightly to the shower curtain? It was just a bird. But then, he'd never have let Hedwig see him naked either, not in a hundred years. It occurred to him for the first time to wonder if the kiwi was a boy or a girl. He had no idea how he was supposed to tell. Anyway, it was a chick, wasn't it, and it hardly seemed appropriate -_

Oh, get a hold of yourself.

"Hello," he said, grabbing a towel with a stupid, sheepish smile and wrapping it around his waist behind the curtain. Only then did he step out onto the mat, careful not to drip on his visitor. "You've learned to get out, have you? Marvelous."

It looked docile enough at the moment, so he leaned down to scoop it up and set it beside the sink. It sat there looking perfectly content as he brushed his teeth, made a perfunctory pass over his face with a razor, and combed through his hair. Perhaps it liked the steam, he thought. It was colder here than the bird was probably used to. Harry dropped the towel long enough to dress again, pulling on the same jeans he'd worn all day. He tugged his shirt over his head and reached over to lift the bird again, but it had other ideas -- it ran up his arm. Harry cried out, mostly in surprise, although he knew he'd felt his skin breaking, and jumped before standing very still. The bird settled on his shoulder.

Harry wiped a clean path across the foggy mirror with his towel. The bird's reflection gazed back at him. Harry turned his head very carefully to face it directly. He wasn't sure he liked the thought of having it so close to his throat.

The bird pushed its beak into his wet hair. It sniffed about for a few moments, tickling his scalp. Harry tilted his head away from it; it followed, nudging a few more locks out of place.

"What's got you so friendly, anyway?" Not that he was complaining. Having his hair mussed was better than having his hands ripped to shreds.

The bird consented to be lowered into the box again while Harry called up dinner -- with a side of fruit instead of chips, alas, but he was going to have to feed his new companion something -- and waited for the room service to arrive. He liked the windows open after all, he thought. The smell was very clean, very light; and without the reflecting glass in the way, he could see the hills that he knew were covered with those reddish, shedding trees. A large white statue of a man with his arms outstretched was just visible against the newly fallen darkness.

When he had his sandwich and his beer (local, judging by the name, and really not bad) he arranged himself on the bed with his new guidebook and laid a few pieces of melon out on his napkin. The bird nibbled happily at it for quite some time as Harry read about the Sacred Valley -- it looked as though there were rather a lot of llamas -- and wondered what his chances were of booking a spot on the trail on such short notice. He hadn't been able to do any of the hiking he'd wanted to in New Zealand. But then, camping for that long, and in such close quarters with others, would be a little tricky with an illicit pet. There was plenty to see around here, anyway, without hiking or taking the train out to Machu Picchu -- tons of ruins and such that made for good day trips. He wouldn't mind sitting back and being a tourist for a while. It sounded relaxing.

Harry set his plate away on the night table when he had eaten his fill, and pulled a blanket over his slouching shoulders. After a few more minutes and a couple more pages (he was branching out from Cuzco now, and looking with longing at the warmer, white beaches that lay south of Lima) the bird left its half-eaten fruit and pattered over to his knee. It clambered up onto his thigh and jumped off to settle beside his hip, puffing itself up a bit in the cavity between his leg and the blanket.

Poor thing, Harry thought, glancing with a slight tug of guilt at the open window. But by the time he had resolved to close it, the bird's eyes were shut, and it seemed better not to disturb it by getting up.

+ + +

Harry woke to the sound of shouting and beating drums. He sat up, gasping at the stiffness in his back, and craned his neck to see over the balcony and into the street. The sky was a deep, clear blue and the faces of the buildings across the road were painted a harsh white and baking red in the morning sun. Harry cursed.

He had fallen asleep with his glasses on -- jeans too, and there was a napkin with drying bits on melon on it on the other side of the bed. He leapt up and yanked the blanket off. He'd fallen asleep with the bird beside him -- he must have crushed it -- but no, it wasn't there at all. He turned with a growing weight of dread to the open balcony door, and ran out to look over the railing. You idiot, do you think it's just going to be waiting for you to find it?

There was no bird that he could see. A parade was clattering down the street, heavily ornamented and bristling with large banners that he could not read.

Fuck. He was going to have to ask around, he thought as he rounded the bed to find his shoes. There would only be one kiwi on the loose, and so odds of finding it might be quite high, unless one of the local dogs got it, or it was hit by a car or a bicycle. Stop it. Once again, he'd failed spectacularly at laying low. They might not know he was Harry Potter, but was it that much better to be knows as --

He stopped. His shoes were covered in glossy shreds that had once been brochures. There were bits of paper everywhere; it looked like not a single one of his guides had been spared. And positioned in the center of it all, made out of irregular, torn-up strips positioned in an uneven line, were six clumsily constructed letters:

HALP ME

The bird sat just behind them, gazing at him with an eager upward tilt of its beak.

Harry stared. After a moment, he went down on his knees.

They were undeniably letters. They were words. The bird shifted from foot to foot, clearly agitated.

"You need me," Harry began very slowly, wondering whether he was completely out of his mind, "to help you?"

The bird jumped.

So. Either he was going mad, or he had stumbled upon a preternaturally intelligent kiwi ... Wait a minute. "You must have been at the Society reserve -- did they teach you to write?" he asked. They were wizards, after all, and who knew what sort of experiments they were doing. It made ... well, it made a little sense that they would teach endangered animals to read. Right? It was a sort of survival skill. He watched with growing excitement as the bird repositioned its strips of paper.

NO

It seemed to be considering adding something, but must have decided against it; it stood back and turned its face up to him again.

"Oh." He frowned. "Well ..." Better start with a broader sort of question, he supposed. "You're not a regular kiwi, though."

The bird tapped furiously with its beak at the NO, squeaking quietly.

"All right. What are you? Can you tell me?"

The bird lowered its head, pecking at the carpet as though preoccupied. Harry sat back on his heels. Perhaps it was some creature he had never heard of -- some magical beast that simply didn't exist in his part of the world, and that he had never learned to recognize. Wizards in New Zealand might not know how to tell the difference between a knarl and a hedgehog, just as he didn't know the difference between a kiwi and ... this.

The letters formed slowly, as though the bird had little confidence in its accuracy. After several minutes, it stepped warily back from its work.

ANAMEGAS

Anameg...? Animagus. "You're a wizard," Harry breathed.

The bird hopped, and hopped again, and gave a little spin.

"What's your name?" Harry asked, leaning forward with an eager, hot feeling in his chest. He could hardly believe it. He had stumbled upon an Animagus, but ... why had he never transformed? Harry straightened as a bolt of guilt struck through him. He had taken the bird -- this wizard -- without looking to see if perhaps he had been leaving behind a wand. Had he trapped it?

The bird -- he really needed a name now -- looked down at the carpet again. After a long hesitation, it shuffled its letters and formed another NO.

"I ... don't understand." But he was beginning to worry. He couldn't help but think of Scabbers. Why wouldn't this wizard want to tell him his name? What did he have to hide? Perhaps Harry was only being paranoid -- which made him think of Moody, which made him even more leery. Harry had met a lot of things, a lot of people who weren't what they seemed. "Well -- why haven't you transformed?

Another cautious NO.

Harry sat cross-legged, resting his chin in his hands and fighting down the rising suspicion. He didn't want to feel this way about something he had come to like, didn't even really know how he felt about learning it -- he -- was a person. He couldn't remember everything he had said in front of the bird. He had wandered out of the shower right in front of him, fallen asleep with him, about killed them both in a broom crash ... "Have you ever been on the Society reserve?" he asked, that page from the brochure leaping to his mind. "I mean, before we landed there the other night. Do you know what that is? Let me find the ... well, you've ripped it up. But it was the wildlife sanctuary, the Howaranga or something -"

The bird hopped, though not very enthusiastically.

"All right. How did you get out?"

NO again.

Harry smiled a little, beginning to feel relieved. "You don't remember, do you."

NO.

"They Obliviated you. When they were taking care of you, they wiped your memory. They must have found you someplace you weren't supposed to be -- of course they would have, you're not a bird -- and they took you on and ... well, they were trying to help, I suppose."

The bird stared at him. After a few seconds his head turned sharply to the ground. Perhaps, Harry thought, he was remembering, or trying. He let him think without interrupting.

After a few silent minutes, the bird crept up to him, a great deal of suspicion in its posture as it stalked across the carpet, and nosed at his hand.

It took Harry a few seconds to understand. "Do you know where your wand is?" Another negative response. "If I gave you mine -- could you transform? Do you remember how?"

It was more frustrating than ever to see those small black eyes and not know what was going on behind them. The bird cocked its head as though it hadn't understood, and Harry pulled out his wand to show him, laying it on the floor between them. He held his breath as the bird clutched it with one foot and rolled it gently from side to side.

Nothing happened.

It was too much to expect, of course. But Harry knew there was much more to learn than what he had so far, and if he couldn't uncover the answer himself after he had turned over every stone he could think of, he would find someone who could. He wished, as he often did, that he could speak to Sirius.

+ + +

The answer had come to him hours ago. Draco sat waiting, now, pressed against the side of Potter's pillow in the dark. He was quite sure Potter was fast asleep, but he couldn't risk being wrong. He'd already waited too long to fix whatever mistake it was that he had made -- he didn't want to have to live like this any longer.

The journey to ... wherever they were now was what had first set him in the right direction. The Familiar's Link was more than a physical bond, and Draco knew that. He had known it since he had first performed it with his mother. Don't get lost, she had said. He still couldn't remember how he had. Worst of all, he wasn't sure he had ever known where she had gone. They had been in trouble, all three of them, running away from whatever it was that Potter had wrought against him -- the details were so infuriatingly unclear -- and he had succeeded in hiding himself, perhaps too well. He didn't know how the Link had been severed the first time, but if he had his brain back instead of this useless tiny thing between his ears ...

Well. He would, soon enough. That one essential spell had given him access to a part of his memory that had been buried before, and although it had taken a great deal of frantic digging and pushing through irrelevant facts like so much thick mud, he had eventually cleared his way to the piece of magic that he most needed. He had remembered the words, the long series of spells that would twist him back into his own body, and he had remembered the way it felt to channel magic through him. There had still been a piece missing, so he'd been afraid to try it.

Potter's wand had done it at last, though. Feeling it under his foot had been the spark he needed to illuminate everything long enough that he could comprehend it as one complete system. There were words to be chanted silently and magic to be manipulated without any real wand-waving, and they all had to be done at the same time, in the proper order, and in close enough proximity to that all-important magical core that he could get enough momentum to propel himself into his real body. It took an incredible amount of energy.

He could have done it the moment he'd touched the wand, but -- for the same reason he hadn't told Potter his name, though he could have spelled it out eventually -- he had held back. He might not know much, but he knew Potter wasn't going to be keen on helping him. He'd become accustomed to knowing that things were without knowing why; it came naturally to him. He didn't feel a very strong need to ask questions.

Potter, unfortunately, did not share that virtue. The hours they'd spent in what passed for conversation between them had nearly worn him out. He had been so relieved when Potter finally realized they weren't making any progress and suggested they have a bit of a walk around town that he had almost forgotten to feel bad about the disappointment etched into his face.

He didn't know why he'd felt way, but he had. The fact was that Potter was running from something and didn't want to go home, and that Draco was hiding from something and couldn't go home. He knew it was for the same reason, or because of the same thing, even if he didn't know why, and that was enough. Maybe it was that birds couldn't feel the difference between friends and allies and those similarly situated, but in the very small world of things he felt he could comprehend, Potter fit squarely into the good side. So long as he didn't know Draco was Draco, he was a caretaker and more. Being close to him had filled a need that felt achingly human.

But the desire to be himself was stronger than anything. And so even though it would deprive him of the one person he had found to help him along his way, he hopped onto the night table, grasped Potter's wand in one foot, and let himself fall into the box where the towel was crumpled up into a high, soft mound. He threw the wand over the side, climbed up the towel, leaped to the floor, and dragged the wand into the bathroom.

It felt like a very long time before he had cleared his mind enough to begin the incantations.

Vicissitudo magna mutationibus parvulis, and over and over until finally he felt it catch and he could move on to the rest of the spell. Prosilio me mergo me. And so on, and so on. Sum. He might have been screaming the words in his head for hours. He was sure he would be hoarse when he changed, just from the way his throat was working.

It happened suddenly when it happened, like someone had run straight into him and he had lurched to a stop and fallen to the ground in a jumble of limbs. He stood and heard his spine cracking into place, felt his legs cramp and then relax into themselves, and nearly groaned aloud in pleasure as he stretched his arms out to the fingertips, pulling at every muscle, thrilling at the weight of the wand in his hand and how well it fit. He grinned at the ceiling, baring his teeth. Yes.

And then ... Merlin, but he was hungry. What had Potter been feeding him? Rubbish, nothing but rubbish. Fruit. Raisins, he remembered, with the barest shadow of remorse. He would fix that first thing, as soon as he was out of here. It was the middle of the night, but he could find somewhere to steal from if he had to. He was almost certainly too far away from home to Apparate, but that was all right, he would find a way to write to Mother and they would settle something together. He couldn't remember where she was just now, but that was what owls were for.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out into the bedroom, wand at the ready. Potter was still asleep, and so he turned to the closet and pried the door open with as little noise as possible. The jeans wouldn't be an exact fit, but they would do for getting on with. He sorted through them looking for a pair without holes.

"Malfoy?"

Draco spun on his heel, clutching the towel to his side. Potter stood beside the bed, looking lost without his wand, straightening his glasses. His face was almost blank with shock, but the corners of his eyes were quickly tightening in ... disappointment, Draco thought. Potter's mouth opened and closed stupidly.

"Thanks for the wand," Draco said, trying to sound malicious and falling rather short. "You can go back to bed. I'm going home."

Potter was silent long enough that Draco turned back to the closet to pick out a shirt. If he wasn't even going to argue --

"How are you going to get home?"

It wasn't the question Draco had been hoping for. He cast an irritated look over his shoulder and tugged out a T-shirt that looked reasonably clean. "I'm a wizard, thank you very much. Don't you have anything with sleeves?"

"Yeah, you are. How long have you known?" Potter stepped forward, too close, and Draco turned to point the wand at him. He had seen Potter angry plenty of times, and there was something off about this. There was something else underneath it.

"Known that I'm a wizard? Oh, let's see -- since I was around five, I guess. Get back." His voice was heavy with vitriol, but he didn't feel it. Stupid bird brain. It was coming back to him now in larger and faster waves. He always came over a little sluggish right after the change.

"That you're you -- why didn't you tell me? You idiot, I could have helped you the day I found you! What the hell were you thinking?"

"Oh, yes. Saint Potter wouldn't dream of doing anything but speeding the needy on to their --"

"You are so -- incredibly stupid --"

"Shut up, Potter. At least I don't go crashing my broom into trees just so people will notice I've arrived."

Potter glared, and something flashed in his eyes. "No," he said, slowly and a little cruel. "I guess if I looked as fucking precious as you did, I wouldn't go around advertising it either. Is there a reason you're so small? I mean, you could at least have managed ... I don't know, a bunny rabbit or something --"

"Shut up, Potter," Draco snarled. His face was burning, but hopefully it was too dark to see. It really wasn't fair. He was trying to formulate a retort about great ugly shaggy dogs when Potter lunged for his wand. Draco spun away from the closet out of Potter's reach and aimed at him again. They glared at one another, tense and still.

"I could have taken you home," Potter began again, his voice strangely pleading. "I would have."

"Well, I didn't want to go home," Draco snapped. "Anyway, I didn't know how -- those miserable idiots at the Society made sure of that, and if you were stupid enough to cart around some animal that tried to rip your guts out every time you touched it, then it was no skin off my back, was it? But now I really must be going," he lied, beginning to wonder what he would do -- or find -- at home if he even managed to get there. "I've got people waiting for me, you know." He busied himself with picking out a jacket.

"You should have registered." Potter was smiling when Draco turned on him, a smug but almost kind expression that rubbed him entirely the wrong way. "If you had just been registered, those miserable idiots at the Society would never have picked you up."

"Whatever you say, James," Draco muttered. The nerve, telling him to put his name out in public when Potter was traveling on the thinnest alias he had ever heard.

Potter nodded. "I get it. I do -- I don't want people coming after me, either; we've both had enough of that, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to keep away -- I'm not going back for another couple of months, not if I can help it. But you can't be stupid about it. Where would you have been if no one had found you? Are you even writing to your family?"

Draco's heart made a little leap. Staying away for another couple of months sounded like just the thing, especially when he thought about his family. He should have been brave enough to want to go home to help them, to stand with them, but he wasn't. It made him feel a bit nauseous with guilt, but ... not so much that he couldn't handle it, honestly. He wasn't ready to go home. "It's none of your business," was all he said.

"Seeing as you'd be dead if I hadn't pulled that dog off of you, I think it might be, actually."

"Fuck off, Potter. I'm not your pet."

Potter raised his eyebrows. "I don't know, you didn't seem to feel that way the other night. Getting a bit comfortable, weren't you?"

The thought of Potter wearing nothing but steam was enough to make Draco smirk. "I don't like to waste my opportunities. That's all."

For some reason, that seemed to push Potter over the edge. His face reddened and his eyes grew dark. He advanced a step, heedless of the wand nearly poking into his ribs. "Get out of my room, then," he growled, making another unsuccessful grab for his wand. "Get the hell out and find your own way home. You're not my problem."

"I'd rather stay."

Potter stared at him, glaring all the more intensely, as though he were trying to see through a brick wall. "-- What?"

"They'll be all right without me for a little while. And the climate at home can't be that much friendlier than when I left -- no, Potter, for once I think you've got about the right idea, although I can't say I think much of how you've executed it." He glanced around the tiny hotel room and sniffed. "But -- yes, I think I'd rather stay a while."

"You can't stay with me, Malfoy. I won't let you."

"Won't you? I've got your wand." He twirled it between his fingers.

Potter's mouth tightened. "Not for long."

"And then what? When you take it back, I'll just starve, shall I? You wouldn't let me --"

"Oh, just watch --"

"And you can't stop me, anyway. How do you think I followed you here? I know how to go where you go, Potter." He was surprised to hear himself say it, and just as surprised to realize that he would, too. Potter was the only anchor he had. He wasn't going to let him slip away.

The look on Potter's face -- the sudden, soft and careful flatness of his eyes -- made Draco think that perhaps he had made himself a little too clear. It was a frustration he was learning to recognize very quickly, the feeling of doing something before you quite understood what it was.

Draco chafed under the silence for a few seconds, and then moved to the balcony door, leaning against the frame and looking out onto the silvered street. There was no one outside.

When he turned to the room again, Potter was beside him, hand outstretched, palm up.

"You can stay," Potter said, ridiculously stern. "I can't make you leave town. But you have to give my wand back."

"If you'll share."

"And you can't watch me in the shower anymore."

Draco sneered, but it was half a smile at least. "Don't flatter yourself, Potter."

"And you'd --"

"Should I be writing this down?" Draco drawled, trying to conceal the irritation in his voice. Potter had been all too happy to have him not twenty-four hours ago.

"Do you think it'd be any help? You spell like Goyle."

Draco kissed him, because he had said Shut up, Potter one too many times this evening. Potter's mouth was slow and awkward against his, at first, too shocked, probably, to be really willing. But he sank into it a moment later, tentative and halting, but warm. Before long Draco's back was pressed against the glass, his shoulders leaping from the cold. He realized with a stab of exasperation that he could do nothing with his hands unless he gave up Potter's wand or the towel. He wouldn't do either voluntarily.

Potter broke away, just far enough to look Draco in the eye. He was biting his lower lip and his eyes were narrowed in something between skepticism and hesitation. Draco read it as though it had been printed on his forehead. This is really weird.

"I know what you're thinking," Draco growled. "Stop it."

Potter's voice was dry. "I'm trying. Believe me."

Draco needed his arms back. He could always fight Potter for the wand later, and he'd really had quite enough of towels.

+ + +

It was almost two months exactly before things changed. Two months of being too close together, of sharing beds and bathrooms and meals that sometimes ended with Malfoy purring against his throat and sometimes with shouting matches that might have ended very differently had they both had wands. That was the worst part, really -- sharing a wand was the source of more complaint from Malfoy than Harry had ever heard from one person in his entire life, including Dudley. And he didn't blame him, of course, but it was his wand. He had expected that to be the reason that Malfoy finally got fed up and decided it was time to return to England.

Instead, it was lying on a beach near Punta Hermosa, watching the waves come in. He lay on his stomach beside Harry, his hand stretched over Harry's chest and resting at his collarbone, as it so often liked to do. His lips were pressed against Harry's throat and he had just finished speculating as to how much sand had worked its way into the sandwiches they had brought for lunch, which Harry had -- as always -- not wrapped to Malfoy's exacting standards of cleanliness.

"I want to go home," Malfoy said, digging his fingernails into Harry's shoulder.

"We are not going home." Harry tugged his hand away and thrust it back at him. "Go have a swim. You've got enough sand on you that it doesn't matter anyway -- you'll eat it one way or another."

"No. I mean -- home. I want to go back." Malfoy's nose pressed into Harry's hair just above his ear, and Harry shivered under his warm exhalation.

"You can go back," he said, not for the first time, turning his face to him and lifting his sunglasses onto his forehead. "Anytime you like. You know that."

"Don't be stupid," Malfoy scoffed, propping himself up on his elbows and slithering up to the bag of food they'd brought along. "You're coming, too."



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