Chapter Seven.

In which there is a stunning betrayal.

We spent the rest of the day traveling—Flooing, Portkeying, discretely Apparating and, yes, walking, though I did promise no more extended descriptions. There isn't much to describe, anyway, as Weasley wasn't exactly open to conversation. Except for ordering me around, he didn't say much of anything until we got to a restaurant in Philedelphia, very late in the evening.

"I've contacted O'Guin," he announced upon his return from the gent's, where he had spelled his beard off and his hair to a normal length. He'd apparently decided to use this trip to demonstrate his vaunted skill in concealment and disguise, and I was forced to admit his self-assessment hadn't been far off; he'd managed to startle me breathless three times in four cities, and an hour previous in Washington he'd come out of a back alley looking like a smaller, rather gingery version of Rubeus Hagrid. It was a relief to see he'd rejoined the world of the groomed.

"And what does Mr. O'Guin have to say?"

"He's going to meet us in Newark tomorrow morning." Weasley leaned back in his seat and rubbed his chin, which was looking a bit raw. "He's bringing an escort, so we don't have to worry about getting into headquarters."

"Wonderful," I said. "I'll get to enter my captivity in style."

"I keep telling you, you're not a prisoner."

"Semantics, Weasley. Just because it's for my own good doesn't make it any more palatable."

He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it and shook his head. "Let's get some sleep."

We spent in a rather seedy and grim-looking inn on the other side of town. I lay awake for several hours and considered running away, but as Weasley had already said, there was nowhere to run to. I tried to look on the bright side and couldn't find one. It is a sign of how much I was dreading my impending detention that I fantasized briefly about remaining on the run with Weasley indefinitely, though without all the swearing and stubbornness, and somewhat less clothing as well.

This is the closest thing I can provide to ominous foreshadowing. I'm terribly sorry if you were expecting better.

Weasley woke me up at a truly ungodly hour, and I was a bit disappointed to see that he was already dressed. "Come on. We're supposed to meet O'Guin at nine o'clock."

I located my watch and examined it. "Fuck you," I said.

"We's got some walking to do once we get to Newark."

"Fuck you twice."

I dressed, and we Flooed to a wizard pub in Newark. I was surprised when Weasley lead the way onto the Muggle street. "How exactly are we getting to your headquarters again?" I asked him.

"O'Guin didn't say. Probably bringing cars, though." He was consulting a closely-written piece of parchment, and occasionally peering at street signs as we passed them.

"So where are we meeting them?"

"Er...said a warehouse. I guess that's where they're parking the cars."

The warehouse turned out to be a miserably drab place surrounded by more weeds than pavement. Weasley spelled open the fence, which was festooned with signs like CONDEMNED and NO TRESPASSING and, for some reason, BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD. As we crossed the lot, I was concentrating more on how early we were and Weasley's abject cruelty in waking me up than the exact nature of my surrounding; therefore, when we stepped into the cool of the warehouse, it took me a moment to figure out why Weasley had stopped short, causing me to bump rather hard into his back.

This was why: while the building had looked like a decrepit old warehouse on the outside, on the inside it looked like a decrepit old abandoned warehouse. It was completely empty except for a few stacks of moldering wooden pallets and some Muggle machine so covered in rust it would probably collapse in a stiff wind. A broken light fixture had fallen to the floor; on the far wall, a short flight of stairs ran up to a dark, vacant doorway. Rubbish, dust and some fairly impressive cobwebs had collected in the corners, and the only motion was a stray cat trotting away with a dead pigeon in its mouth.

"No cars," I said. In my defense, I was rather surprised.

Weasley cleared his throat and looked around. "We're a bit early, you know. Maybe we should, er, wait outside—"

A man's voice seemed to come out of nowhere. "You're not early."

I, of course, nearly jumped out of my skin, but Weasley's shoulders sagged with relief. "Agent O'Guin! Good to see you."

O'Guin turned out to be a very forgettable fellow: he was middle-aged, average height and average build, with medium brown hair, brown eyes, and an eminently uninteresting face. He came out from behind the rusty machine and approachedus ; Weasley rushed to meet him, and I followed a step behind. Here, allegedly, was my intimate ICW contact, and if I had half-hoped that seeing him would somehow stir up my memory of why Dies was after me, I was disappointed. O'Guin smiled as we met near the center of the building and shook Weasley's hand. "Glad to see you myself, Weasley," he said. "No one saw you come in, did they?"

"No, I haven't seen any tails since St. Louis." Weasley looked around again. "Where's the escort?"

"Not here."

Weasley blinked. "You mean they were held up?"

"I mean I didn't call them." O'Guin turned to me. "Mr. Malfoy. A pleasure to see you again."

He offered me his hand and I shook it. "I wish the feeling were mutual."

O'Guin smiled faintly. "Oh, good, then I did Obliviate you right. I wasn't sure."

It took me several moments to realize the full ramifications of this statement, during which time O'Guin never let go of my hand. Weasley, thank God, reacted somewhat faster. I was still hung up on the words I and Obliviate when I heard him shout "Expelliarmus!"

The ensuing duel was one of the fastest and most furious I have ever seen, and it raised my estimation of Weasley significantly, even though he lost. O'Guin blocked the Disarming spell rapidly at the same time that he spun me with the hand he was holding and twisted my right arm painfully behind my back. The next few seconds were a flurry of incantations and colored streaks of light; it ended with Weasley sprawled out on the concrete floor with—I gulped—blood streaming down his face, and no wand in sight.

"Really sorry about this, Weasley" O'Guin said calmly. "If I'd realized you would survive this long I would've picked another agent." I squirmed, stomped on his foot and broke away; I made it about two steps before a single flick of his wand had me levitating a good ten feet above the cement floor. "Bad boy. No cookie."

Weasley pushed himself up on his elbows and wiped his face. "How long have you been working for Dies?" he asked bitterly.

O'Guin snorted. "Arnold Dies is an idiot, haven't you noticed? I keep telling him exactly where you were and he can't manage to kill you."

"So who are you working for?"

"Ain't tellin'." O'Guin suddenly dropped me to the floor, and the impact knocked the wind out of me. "Dies is just itching for the chance to see Mr. Malfoy in person, and Agent Linnet's already reported on how you assaulted her in Kansas City, so I think we'd better wrap things up."

"Linnet what?"

"It's amazing what you can get people to say with one good Confundus charm." O'Guin turned his wand on Weasley. "You know the punishment for a rogue agent...Avada—"

Wait. Let me set the scene here. O'Guin is standing more or less in the center of the warehouse floor. I am laying flat on my stomach at his feet, scarcely able to breathe, much less move, and with my own wand pinned underneath me. Weasley is laying about ten feet away, doing nothing but bleeding and looking terrified. His wand got lost somewhere in the scuffle and I don't believe he was capable of sitting up, never mind running. He is, quite clearly, going to be killed.

In such a situation, a wizard does what he must. In my case, this involved biting O'Guin, hard, on the ankle.

"—KedAAAHHH CHRIST!"

I've seen miscast spells before, and some of their astonishing results, but never before had I witnessed such a powerful spell gone so horribly wrong. O'Guin was so badly startled that his arm flew upwards and pointed to the ceiling. A shimmering column of green light exploded from his wand. Every wizard who lived through Voldemort's return knows the color of the Killing Curse, and this wasn't it—it was a pale green, a yellowish-green, and it blew a hole through the roof a dozen feet wide.

O'Guin kicked me in the face, and I felt a terrible, agonizing crack—but he was stumbling backwards and trying to ward off great chunks of flaming debris that were falling around us. I pushed myself up and drew my wand, casting from my knees. "Stupefy!"

"Protego! Locomotor mortis!"

But I was already moving, and the thickening smoke and falling debris were obscuring everything—O'Guin missed by a fraction of an inch, and then I dove behind a stack of pallets. Then something inside the building gave a deafening metallic groan, and I dared squint up at the burning ceiling just in time to see another light fixture come crashing down. The rusted metal rafters were beginning to bow ominously, as if the whole roof were about to fall in—

O'Guin, alarmingly, laughed out loud. "Dies will be very disappointed, Mr. Malfoy," he called. "Have a nice life."

And then, he said two of my least-favorite words on the planet: "Aparare Obstato!"

I threw myself out from behind the pallets just in time to see the door through which we'd come in slam shut. O'Guin was gone, good; O'Guin was likely guarding the only known exit, bad. Anti-Apparation charm: worse. I looked around, and noticed Weasley crawling towards the far wall—he wasn't dead! "Weasley! What do we do now?" I demanded, running towards him.

"Don't—fucking—know," he panted. "Wand—"

Something in the ceiling must've given way, because a shower of burning debris came down on our heads; I tried to cast some kind of shielding charm, but another light fixture burst right through it and nearly took Weasley's foot off. "Accio Weasley's wand!" I shouted, and it flew at me, slightly scorched. I pressed it into Weasley's hand. "Now what?"

He shook his head. "Has to be another exit—"

I looked wildly around; there was the door we'd come in through, yes, and a large metal door on the same wall, but that was where O'Guin was—the vacant door on the far wall caught my attention. "Over there?"

Weasley turned around achingly slowly. "...maybe..."

I looked around. Weasley could hardly move. The door was all the way across the vast warehouse floor. The roof shrieked again and more lights fell; the whole thing was now consumed in flames.

"You," I told Weasley, "are going to owe me for this. A lot."

"What—"

"Corporum leviosa." Weasley floated off the floor, squawking—see how he liked it—and I grabbed hold of his arm. Then I ran.

That sprint across the warehouse ranks among the worst ten-second periods in my life. Weasley was clinging to me and groaning, bits of the roof were crashing around me, there was smoke in my eyes and my lungs and any minute I expected to be crushed to death. I made it , though, up the stairs and through the empty door, into the pitch-black room beyond. I rather think I deserve some sort of award.

I was coughing uncontrollably—too much smoke—so it was Weasley who lit his wand and pointed it around the room. It was full of dusty, broken-down furniture, some dented metal lockers, a few cardboard boxes and absolutely no doors.

"Fuck," I managed to say.

The roof collapsed.

I threw myself to the floor and covered my head; Weasley flicked his wand and blocked the doorway with a table. There was a terrible cacophony for a moment, then eerie silence, except for the roar of the flames outside. Smoke was seeping around the edges of the table, but otherwise we were more or less safe in the tiny room. And also a little trapped.

"Malfoy?" Weasley croaked after a few moments of silence recuperation. "Can I stop floating now?"

I ended the charm, and he thumped to the floor with a pained gasp. Whoops. "We're trapped," I said.

"I know." A long pause. "O'Guin sold us out."

"I know."

I put my face in my hands, trying to sort everything out. After a few minutes, Weasley said, "We're screwed."

"Thoroughly."

"If O'Guin's got the S.J.F. convinced I'm a traitor—" With seemingly Herculean effort, Weasley sat up, mostly. "Jesus, Malfoy, I don't even have a fucking passport."

I had the insane urge to laugh. "Yes, because that's certainly the worst possible thing that could happen to you, getting caught without your fucking passport—"

"Shut the fuck up."

I probed my face where O'Guin had kicked me; if it wasn't broken, it was close to it, and my eye was starting to swell shut. Bastard. "So what now? Shall we just sit and roast?"

Weasley was silent and thoughtful for a long time, staring at the dust and smoke swirling in the wandlight. Eventually he said, softly, "New York is impossible now."

"Gee, do you think?"

"We'll have to try another way..."

"Way to what?"

He stared at me. "Contact the Confederation."

"Weasley, who just tried to kill us?"

"O'Guin is a rogue," Weasley said. "I have to warn someone about him."

"So what shall we do?"

He paused significantly for a moment. "I've got plenty of friends back in Britain."

"How do you expect to get them here?" I asked, folding my arms.

"Come on, Malfoy," he said, almost pleadingly, "don't tell me you don't want to go home—"

"I think you know very little about what I want," I snapped.

Weasley looked like he wanted to argue, but seeing as he couldn't even stand up straight, he let it pass. "Fine. I still think we should leave the country."

"Presuming we can leave this little rat-hole."

"Presuming I live that long..."

I looked up sharply, and lit my own wand; Weasley was looking slightly greenish now, actually, and he was probing his own abdomen with stiff fingers. "You're—are you—what?"

"No, I'm not dying, don't freak out." He shifted and winced a bit. "I don't think there's internal damage, at least."

"I wasn't 'freaking out'." It occurred me that we weren't getting anywhere if Weasley couldn't move. "Do you need a bandage?"

"A bit more than a bandage, I'd say." He wiped more blood out of his face. "You lost your bag out there."

"So did you."

"I wasn't accusing—just come here." He conjured a thick stack of bandages. "And try not to puke, okay?"

Warily, I crossed the room and knelt next to him. He had been wearing a dark shirt, but at close range I could see large wet spots on it—I swallowed hard. "What, er, what exactly do you need me to do? Besides not vomit?"

Weasley spelled his shirt into his lap and I stuffed my fist into my mouth. I didn't even recognize whatever curse O'Guin had used, but it had cut several long gouges into Weasley's chest and back that were bleeding rather profusely, in addition to an assortment of small burns and blisters from the fire. "Are you going to puke?" Weasley asked.

I shook my head.

He handed me the bandages. "Just wrap me up for now. Once we get out of here we can dress them properly."

I nodded, took a few deep breaths and regretted it; I could smell all that blood and it made me gag. It took a moment to unclench my fingers enough to start rolling strips of linen around Weasley's torso without actually looking at it. The blood soaked through them almost immediately, it got on my fingers—the only thing that kept me from fleeing the area screaming was the knowledge that Weasley would never let me live it down, presuming he lived at all.

I tried to concentrate our next step instead...well, the step after next, technically. The truth was, I wanted very much to go home—just, as I've stated before, on terms that do not involve the threat of imprisonment or major bodily harm. And while escape from major bodily harm was an awfully tempting pretext for sneaking back into Britain, I still couldn't risk it. And I wouldn't let it cloud my judgement. Not even a little bit. If we were leaving the country, we were going to go to fucking Australia.

Of course, we weren't going anywhere if the entire Confederation was looking for Weasley's head. Not by normal means, at least. "Weasley," I said when the blood had stopped soaking through the bandages, "can we agree that your Ess Whatever friends are no longer on our side?"

He looked at me askance. "I'm actually astonished they haven't hunted us down yet, all things considered."

"Then can we agree that you and I are, for all intents and purposes, fugitives?"

"Yes..."

"And," I said, "can we also agree that I my exit from South Africa was nothing short of miraculous?" He raised one eyebrow. "Well, very amazing, at least?"

"I'll give you amazing."

He looked like he was wearing some sort of odd white tube-top by that point; I clumsily tied the bandage off. "In that case, we need to go to Alabama."

He stared at me. "Alabama?"

"Some friends of mine live there," I said, which was true, and all that Weasley needed to know. "They helped me get out of South Africa and they can help us get...wherever."

Weasley looked skeptical, but he nodded. "Hanged for an egg, hanged for a dragon."

"Exactly."

Weasley braced himself against the wall and managed to stand up, with much cringing and grunting. When he didn't fall over, I relaxed. "That just leaves one question, though."

"Which is...?"

"How the hell do we get out of here?"

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