"Good afternoon, Mr. Underhill."

"Afternoon Douglas."

"Afternoon, Mr. Underhill."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tampworth."

"Good afternoon, sir."

It seemed every person who passed Mr. Underhill along the way through the Auror Training Center greeted Mr. Underhill as they went. James stared at Mr. Underhill's ankles, refusing to look up, his face hot. Sirius's boots thunked as he followed, and Frank  was near to silent behind him. Underhill led the way through the halls to his office, waved the three boys into the room, looked about the corridor, then pulled shut the door behind him, setting a charm on the door to lock it.

"Sit," Underhill said gruffly, and with a flick of his wand three chairs appeared before his desk. The boys sank into them and Mr. Underhill went 'round behind his seat and removed his jacket and hat, hanging them up on a coat rack by the door. He turned and sat down with a sigh and leaned back heavily into his seat.

Silence fell over them.

James shifted uncomfortably.

Finally Frank opened his mouth to speak and Underhill raised a palm to stop him. "No," Mr. Underhill said, shaking his head. "You do not talk. I talk."

Frank nodded.

The silence drew on again.

"You bloody should start then, shouldn't you?" Sirius burst out.

James hissed, "For the love of Merlin, be quiet Sirius."

Silence again.

Mr. Underhill steepled his fingers in front of his face and leaned forward, studying them a moment. Finally he lowered his hands, reached into his pocket and lay down the counterfeit warrant on the desk and pushed it toward them. "Imagine my surprise," he said, "When I receive an urgent owl from Mr. Ironhelm at Gringott's informing me that they had been given a warrant, signed by me, whose authenticity they were questioning. The owl indicated that they had two rather nervous acting aurors that had arrived, only one whose identification had been seen. This, combined with evidence of magical tampering with the inking of the warrant had led Mr. Ironhelm to request a formal confirmation of the investigation.

"And so," Mr. Underhill continued, "There I was in Bath, on an outing with my children, when I am whisked away to Gringott's to recommend a course of action. I arrive to find Mr. Ironhelm has possession of a document which I did, indeed, sign and upon inspection of it, I discover it is the warrant issued in one case I had worked earlier this year, involving the search of a castle owned by a suspected Death Eater, or victim of the Imperius at very least, Ned Veigler!

"Now I said to myself - where was this document last seen? When was it last mentioned to me? And I realized that it was here, in this very room, as my assistant was organizing my past case files. This very case being one he was quite impassioned by, whose disappearance from my files was overlooked for prosperity's sake, but was apparently merely a ploy to collect documents to tamper with."

James shook his head, "No, that's not --"

"Quiet, Mr. Potter, I have not finished talking."

"Yes, sir."

Underhill plucked the parchment from the desk. "Now I had precisely two options. I could ignore the allegations and allow Gringott's to keep the blundering fools who had devised such a plan - and let me tell you now, those goblins would most certainly have left you in that vault indefinitely - or, I could assume responsibility for whatever rubbish you were up to, and take you into my own custody."

"We really appreciate that you chose the latter, sir," Frank said.

Underhill glowered at him, eyes traveling from Frank to Sirius to James. "Now that my neck is on the line for your foolish actions today, I wish to know what it is I've inadvertently become involved in."

James could feel Sirius and Frank looking at him to answer. Underhill's eyes shifted to James, too, and he felt hear rise up into his cheeks.

"Well?" Underhill pressed.

James looked up at the department head and he said, "Sir, it's extremely secret, what we were doing, and I'm not privy to revealing it."

"Let me make this clear, Potter, if I do not get the answers I want, I will not be able to protect you from Barty Crouch and his team. This offense is a one way ticket to a cell in Azkaban. The time you spent in the vault today is nothing compared to the horrors that would await you on that lonely island."

James thought about this, and finally countered, "Then I need your word that what we tell you does not leave this meeting, that is stays between us, and you shall not tell anyone else."

Underhill considered, then replied, "Unless I am obligated under my oath to the Ministry to divulge the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement,
I wouldm't dream of it."

James said, "It has got to be something binding, something you can't go back on, no matter what. Otherwise..." he steeled himself, "Well, otherwise, I reckon Azkaban would be worth protecting our secrets."

Sirius's eyes widened as he stared at his boots.

Underhill's hand twitched in surprise. He nodded, then opened the top drawer of the desk and removed a small piece of parchment. Dipping his pheasant quill into a small ink pot, he hovered over the page. "Your proposed terms, Mr. Potter?"

James thought how to best word it, to keep it airtight. "You won't repeat the things we are to say to anyone. You are not to discuss this situation with anyone else but myself, Sirius, or Frank. We do not name names of our sources, and you do not ask. I will omit some details to protect others and their identities, but I'll tell you as clear a version as I can."

"And if the terms are violated?" Underhill asked.

"The moment even a partial breech is made, you'll be bound by a tongue tied charm, which only I can undo at my discretion."

Underhill nodded. He wrote the conditions down, looked the form over, then pushed it across the desk for James to look at. He read it, then passed it to Sirius and Frank to check for loopholes. When they'd finished reading and handed it back to James he turned to Underhill, "Acceptable."

"Alright." Underhill tapped the parchment with his wand. "Contractus," he said and the parchment seemed to glow. He dipped his quill again and very clearly signed the bottom.

James took the quill when Underhill offered it, dipped the ink, and scrawled his name beside Underhill's.

"There we have it," Underhill said. He duplicated the contract and handed one to James, rolling the other and sealing it with a bit of dark blue wax, which he pressed with his mark, and put into his desk. "Official, binding."

James nodded.

"Now," Underhill reclined once more in his chair. "Tell me what I have now become an accomplice of."

"Oh my gods, this makes me so nervous." Lily's voice pinched with anxiety that night, laying in James's bed in the flat in East London. She was clutching onto him, feeling as though she could not pull him near enough. The story about their adventure into Gringott's and the entrapment inside Vault 711 had positively terrified her. The thought of losing James had made her ache all over and she melted into him now, wishing to combine their very atoms to keep from ever being separated.

"I omitted quite a lot, really," James said. "I left Regulus's part completely out of the story." He paused. "And Snape's as well."

Lily nodded. She felt a grateful quiver deep in her heart for that. James had an opportunity to turn Snape over with no more sacrifice than honesty and he had resisted. Lily didn't know why she gave a damn if Severus was safe or not, but she did. Some part of her could still only see the forgotten boy at Spinner's End, crying because of his parents. She would always be a friend to that boy - even if the man that boy had become was something altogether different. Somewhere inside, that boy still lived she knew, and perhaps one day he would emerge.

"Thank you for leaving Severus out of it," Lily murmured.

James grunted.

Lily snuggled closer to him, laying a kiss against his bare shoulder, her cheek leaning on his bicep, which was warm and comforting. She stared up at the stubble on his chin and thought about how grown up James Potter had become, and she smiled, loving him with all of her might.

His hand squeezed her hip, where it rested after wrapping around her, and he leaned his head down to kiss the top of her head, keeping his nose there.

"Was it terrible, being locked in the vault like that?" Lily asked.

James breathed her in and said, "We stayed strong."

"Did you?" Lily asked.

"Mhm," James said. "We were working on a plan to break out when the goblins came with Underhill. Nearly had it worked out, too. Would've been out in a jiffy."

"Right," Lily murmured. "And Sirius didn't lose his head?"

"Not a smidge."

"And you're lying to me?"

"Through my teeth."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Lily laughed and traced a heart on James's chest with her fingertip. "How mental did Sirius really go, though?"

"Positively barking mad," James replied.

"And Frank?"

"Froze up like he'd been put under the petrificus totalus."

"What about you, my brave, handsome, wonderful fiance? What did you do?"

James grinned. "I thought of you."

"Thought of me?"

"It always works to get me out of a bind. I think of you and the next thing you know, there's a miracle happening, keeping me from dying. I reckon you're my good luck charm."

Lily let this sink in for a moment, and an old sinking feeling from years past, when she believed herself to be a jinx that caused all of the rubbish things that happened to James Potter, rose up in her. She closed her eyes and held onto him, praying he was right and she was wrong.

"Prongs completely lost his head, but I very calmly told him - oi, Prongs, just calm down, mate, and we'll get ourselves out pronto!" Sirius said, laying across Remus in their own bedroom down the hall.

"Yeah? Kept your cool, did you?" Remus smirked.

"Like always." Sirius ran his hands over Remus's chest, past ripples of pink scars and up into his hair. He grinned up at Remus, then started planting kisses across his chest and down his belly.

Remus closed his eyes. "Not a bit - a bit dramatic?" He was losing his own mind as Sirius's administrations went lower.

"When have I ever been dramatic, my moonbeam?" Sirius asked, and he ducked under the covers, disappearing.

"Do you want the list in full or abridged?"

Sirius's voice was muffled, "Hush, Moony. I'm trying to concentrate down here..."

Remus gasped.