Jasper came barreling into the backroom so fast that he nearly ran right into Meg, who was rolling two kegs of ice cream toward the front. "Jazz?" she asked. It was clear he was really upset by the look on his face and the way he started pacing the second he was beyond the door.

He turned, cursed, and punched a large bag of ice cream salt so hard that she heard his knuckles make a cracking sound. She jumped in surprise at the outburst. "Jasper, what in the world --"

"Did you see Oliver Kent's face?"

"Who?"

"Who? He was in Gryffindor, Meg - a few years behind, sure, but --"

"Jazz, you know what I was going through at Hogwarts, I didn't pay attention to the ickle firsties!"

"That kid - the one with the terrific shiner on his fucking cheek bone."

Meg shook her head, "No... What happened? What's the matter?"

"He told me he got hit by a ball," Jasper shook his head, "And I didn't really believe in that anyway, but then - then I go over there and one of his friends is asking about it and he's gone and told them a whole different story and -- bleeding hell. I knew there was something janky about that Jennings woman, I knew there was and --"

"Jazz, full sentences."

"I - she's hurt him, Meg, and she's running an orphanage, or a home, or - bloody hell." He punched the salt again and his fingers definitely cracked that time and Meg hurried over and grabbed his forearm before he could do it again

"Stop that, you're going to fracture your hand."

Jasper had angry tears in his eyes when he looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I'm really upset."

"I can see that." She paused. "Why?"

"Because that poor kid - Meg, he's --"

"But why really?"

Jasper stared into her eyes, "My dad. Residual anger. Projecting."

"Okay, so deep breath."

Jasper took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Now. Calmly."

"He didn't trip on stairs or get whacked by a baseball, Meg. I used those same excuses when I was his age and trying to hide bruises. Me and my brothers... we all did."

"I'm so sorry, Jazz."

"I mean we got out of it. My Dad - died - and mum cleaned up and we all did alright, I mean, mostly..." he thought of Edgar, and how far he, Jasper, had fallen in the months after Edgar's death. So far that his mother had told him about the AA meetings she had gone to, about the program there, and although she couldn't personally be his sponsor, she met him up with someone who could, and Jasper's life had changed. "But I had family to support me when I was in the thick of it... and Oliver..." Jasper shook his head.

Meg sighed. "Are you sure that's what is happening?"

"I'd lay my life on it, Meg."

"Alright... then, besides punching rock salt, what are you going to do about it?"

Jasper looked helplessly at her.

"Helloooo? Anyone workin' today?" called an impatient customer from the counter.

"Coming!!" Meg cried. She looked at Jasper. "I'll get that. You think on that answer." And she ducked away.

Jasper sighed and leaned forward, his forehead against the salt bags, and stared down at his hand. His knuckles were cut up and he closed his eyes, blocking them out.

He had made loads of excuses like the ones Oliver Kent had made.

"Lily?"

"Jasper! Hi," Lily's voice carried through the telephone, lifting with excitement at the sound of his voice. "Are you coming over? I've been ready for ages but I think I wrote the time down wrong. I had down you were coming 'round at 10 but -"

"I can't come, Lily, I'm very sorry."

It was when they first started to see one another, before they'd gone back to Hogwarts from Summer holiday, and he was supposed to take her to the cinema. But that morning, 'round four, he'd woken up to hear his father coming home, cursing and swearing even in the driveway. His mother had cried herself to sleep the night before after he'd shattered loads of little glass trinkets that had once belonged to Jasper's grandmother while his mum screamed for his dad to stop breaking them. His father had shattered every last one and then pushed her down and screamed at her to clean it up, telling her she wasn't to love anything more than she loved him. Jasper couldn't just ignore his dad's arrival and let his mum go through it again, he couldn't. So he'd gone downstairs and met his father at the door.

Jasper had called Lily Evans from the hospital waiting room, where he'd gotten his arm in a cast because his mum didn't know how to get to St. Mungo's.

A tinny voice paged for a doctor then over head and it was so loud Jasper knew Lily had heard it.

"Are you alright, Jasper? What's going on?"

"Yeah, I'll be alright in a jiffy, Evans. Had a - a quidditch spill."

"Quidditch? You play at home? Aren't your brothers muggles?"

"I was playing with Harry - Harry Warbeck... and Alabaster Jackson. Bit of pickup in Harry's backyard. Blimey - you ever been round his place? It's huge!" He paused, feeling supremely guilty for lying to Lily Evans, of all people. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall beside the payphone. "Anyway, I just got out and I realized the time and wanted to let you know I can't make it."

He had to make a mental note to send Harry and Al an owl later, let them know what he'd told Lily. But what would he tell Harry and Al about the break to explain why he'd had to lie to Lily about it? Jasper felt his mind swimming already with the confusion of the lie.

"Can I come see you?" Lily asked. "We don't have to go to the cinema. I have loads of films on tape, we could watch one at home. Your family can join us! I have some your little brothers might enjoy."

"No, I'm sorry. I - I'm honestly exhausted. I've got painkillers. I'll honestly fall asleep the second I get home."

"Alright... Well, I suppose a raincheck then."

"Yeah."

They said goodbye and when she hung up Jasper slammed the phone down into its cradle a good four or five times so that the ringer jangled in protest and he sank into the chair in the waiting room and covered his face with his good hand, his broken one laying in its cast across his legs.

There had been countless missed days at school before he went to Hogwarts, too, including once when he had a shiner like Oliver's and been sent to the hospital wing at his muggle school, where he'd said he had walked into a door. The oldest lie in the book for abuse, it turned out, and there was an inquiry, which his mum handled. Later, when his father found out, he had roared, "I'll bloody give them something to inquire about!" and Jasper been thrashed about so badly that he was dizzy for hours and reckoned, looking back, he'd had a touch of a concussion.

Jasper couldn't stand the idea of someone else being hurt like he had been as a child, and he couldn't look the other way.

He shrugged off the Fortescue's striped vest and hung it up on the hook by the door, along with the cap, and ducked out behind Meg. "Be right back," he said. He looked over to find the D.W.O. had vacated their table, and he stepped out into the sunlight of Diagon Alley, glancing about in search of them, hoping he might find them.

Find.

Damn Sirius Black, he thought.

"Alright. I'll go in, since I'm the one with the money, and I know what we need best. Plus you lot are way smarter and make better back ups." Wally's voice was low, leaning close to Oliver and Dexter. "Then when I get out we'll get out real potions stuff and each get an extra jar and we'll be ready for Operation Lights Out next term."

Dexter nodded.

"I mean, you're just buying potions supplies," Oliver said. "How bad could it go?"

"Ohhh don't say that," Dexter said, turning on Oliver. "Blimey, don't you say that. That's jinxing it, that is."

Wally laughed, "No such thing as jinxing in that regard, Dex. Remember? That's what Professor Inglebee said last term!"

"Lot of good that did Professor Inglebee, thought!" Dexter said.

"What happened to Professor Inglebee?" asked Oliver.

"He was killed! Just this week! By a giant!"

"And that's another Dark Arts Professor for the history books," Wally darkly. "You'd think people would just stop applying for the job by now - accepting your imminent death is pretty much a part of the job description by this point."

Dexter laughed.

They all paused, they had arrived at the mouth of Knockturn Alley.

"Huh." Wally said.

"What?" Oliver asked.

"Anyone ever notice that Knockturn Alley sounds like nocturnal - as in, what they're called when creatures live in the dark?"

All three of them paused.

"Whoaaaaa," Dexter whispered.

Oliver shivered.

"Spooky," Wally said with a crooked grin.

Dexter said, "Okay but imagine if it was like there was a bloke named Lee right and Lee is Nocturnal so his nickname is Nocturnal Lee and he lives on Knockturn Alley so it's like his mailing address is Nocturnal Lee Knockturn Alley and everyone gets really confused by it, thinking he's saying the same thing twice and owls just get lost all the time and it serves him right since he's a prat that's into dark magic so much he lives on Knockturn Alley."

Oliver and Wally exchanged glances and Wally said, "Alright but who is writing him letters and addressing them Nocturnal Lee?"

"Well anybody that calls him that, of course."

"Well why don't they just go to his house instead if the owls aren't patching through?"

"Because they don't want to go down Knockturn Alley."

"So they could meet him at Fortescue's or something."

"He's nocturnal, he doesn't go to Fortescue's except late at night in the winter when it's dark, of course."

"So how do they know him?"

Dexter stared at Wally. "Bloody hell you're asking too many questions."

"Is he a werewolf or something?"

"Why would he be a werewolf?" Oliver interjected.

"Aren't they nocturnal?" Wally asked, but without waiting for the answer, he looked to Dexter, "Is Lee a werewolf?"

"I don't know! Why are you asking me?" Dexter replied.

"You're the one that brought him up!" Wally said.

"Well bloody let him go, then," Dexter said.

"Alright, let's go!" Wally cried and he dove for the stairs.

Dexter looked at Wally, "Blimey, he's terrible at staying focused."

"I mean, coming up with Nocturnal Lee wasn't exactly staying on task," Oliver said with a shrug.

They set off down the narrow, crooked stone steps into the crevice of the buildings that framed Knockturn Alley and came out onto the miserable, low-lit little gap between Madam Malkin's and Flourish & Blotts. The space was barely wide enough for two of them to walk side-by-side, so they moved in single file with Wally at the front. The place was awful and Oliver ducked away from a Hag that cackled beside a big display of jars of blinking eyeballs - how they were blinking without eyelids, Oliver couldn't ever say, but they were creepy as hell because they followed him as he walked and he gasped and dashed after Wally and Dexter.

Without thinking about it too much, he grabbed onto Wally's hand.

Wally squeezed his fingers.

Oliver looked down at their touch, then back up at Wally in surprise.

"Here... here we are." Wally pointed to a grime-covered window with stacks of tarnished copper cauldrons out front. "Wish me luck!"

They were just about to part ways when the door to the shop opened and out came Severus Snape. Honestly, it was precisely the sort of thing they'd been thinking of when they started talking about needing back-up to go to the shop and all three of them reacted simultaneously by drawing their wands.

Severus Snape came to a stop two steps from the door, facing them at wandpoint, and clutching his sack of purchases. His eyes travelled from one to the next of them, lingering longest on Wally. "What are you three doing down here?" he asked coldly. "Not playing around with things you ought not to be again, are you? Getting into unnecessary trouble?"

"Not that you'd help us if we were!" Wally said.

"Yeah," Dexter said, "Keep your big nose out of it."

Oliver said nothing. He didn't know why the other two had inordinate amount of hatred for Severus Snape, other than the fact that Sirius Black did. But Oliver had always had the feeling that although Snape certainly deserved what he got from Black, he hadn't ever done anything particularly terrible to the seagulls - at least not that Oliver could remember. Wally always insisted there was something that must've happened that they'd just all collectively forgotten. "Perhaps," Wally said once when they'd been talking about it, "Perhaps he confunded all of us about whatever it is and that's why we've forgotten it so thoroughly!" Dexter had happily accepted this explanation, but it left something lacking in Oliver's eyes. Between Wally's own animosity for unknown reasons, though, and Sirius Black's egging it on during the months he'd been the D.W.O.'s honorary member during their third year, the dislike for Severus Snape ran deep in the D.W. portions of the D.W.O.

Snape stared them down for several long seconds, then he glanced back at the shop and turned to them. "A trio of mudbloods like you don't want to be going into a shop like that - you'll be sorry for it." He stepped around them and Wally pivoted on his heel to keep his wand trained on Snape as he passed.

But then something very peculiar happened.

Snape stopped next to Oliver and stared at him for a long moment in concern, his face twisting funny. Then as he stood there, staring, suddenly his eyes flashed with something like rage and he hissed, "What is that on your face?"

"He fell on some stairs, what is it to you, you great bat?" Wally snapped.

"Yeah, leave Ollie alone or we'll give you one to match!" Dexter said.

But Oliver's eyes met Severus's and somehow he just knew that Severus knew - it was even clearer on Severus Snape's face than it had been on Jasper Odair's or Archie Grant's, and Severus looked like a storm cloud billowing threatening in response to it.

His voice was very low. "If she does it again, use your magic. You are allowed to defend yourself."

Oliver nodded timidly.

Snape turned and walked away, his robes billowing about him as all that strange old hag's eyeballs followed him passing by and up the crooked stairs, back out to Diagon Alley.

Oliver shivered.

"What's he on about?" Dexter demanded.

"I - I dunno," Oliver stammered, shaking his head. But Wally was looking at him with concern now, too, and Oliver flushed. "Just go on and get the stuff already, unless you're turning coward on us!" Oliver said, waving at the store.

Dexter said, "Yeah, Wally!"

Even though Wally turned and went into the shop then, Oliver got the feeling Wally wasn't about to forget the incident and his stomach turned thinking of the ride home from Diagon Alley and what Wally might have to say to him then.

Severus Snape emerged onto Diagon Alley. It was busy again now that the rain had cleared up a bit, and he turned toward Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, shoving his bag of ingredients into his pocket. He wasn't even halfway to the shop when he heard Jasper Odair's thoughts, though, and paused, looking about until he spotted him, just coming out of Quality Quidditch, looking for the boys.

Severus took a deep breath, and pushed his way through the bustling crowd toward Jasper Odair. Severus stepped up to Jasper, blocking his way and Jasper raised an eyebrow. "Hello Severus," he said coldly.

"Odair," Severus said by way of a greeting. He paused, "They are in Knockturn Alley."

"Excuse me?"

"Oliver Kent," Severus Snape explained.

Jasper narrowed his eyes. "What the bloody hell would they be doing down there?"

"Buying an assortment of ingredients for pranks," Severus answered, "Because using the dark arts to bully others and call it a joke is a long standing tradition at Hogwarts." He paused, then added, "The mark on the boy's face? The bruise? He's being abused. Yes - by the Jennings woman."

Jasper paled and searched Severus's face. "You're a legilimens."

Severus shrugged, "Do something about it, or I will find a way to get my... friends... to do something about it... and I'm afraid it would end up a lot messier if they were involved."

Jasper shivered. He could feel the pain shooting up his arm from his knuckles where he'd punched the ice cream salt.

Severus studied Jasper a moment, then turned and swept away without another word.