Summer in England should have been steeped in a lazy golden glow.
Now, however, the air was filled with a tension stretched to its limit.
Quidditch World Cup banners snapped in Diagon Alley, their brilliant colors unable to conceal the stringent security beneath.
Black-robed Aurors cut silently through the streets and alleys like moving shadows.
Their wands were no longer hidden in their sleeves but gripped tightly in their hands, the cold gleam at their tips the season's only frost.
Every pair of sharp eyes searched silently, scrutinizing every passing face without overlooking the slightest irregularity.
With unprecedented determination, the Ministry of Magic had turned all of Britain into an impenetrable net.
And in some forgotten corner of that vast net, inside a dilapidated farmhouse in a remote village, two figures clung to life amid rotting shadows.
Wormtail, Peter Pettigrew, cowered in a corner like a rat whose spine had been crushed underfoot.
He dared not light a lamp.
The only light came from the thing wrapped in rags in the middle of the room.
The thing was writhing.
Faint light seeped through gaps in the cloth, shifting in color.
At times it was a venomous scarlet, at others a sickly green of jealousy, and at still others a bright orange of fury.
That light came from words branded into a withered body.
Each word seemed alive, crawling and twisting painfully across his skin as the emotions of the being inside the bundle fluctuated.
"Water..."
A hoarse, faint voice, yet one carrying a note of command, squeezed out of the bundle.
Wormtail jolted and scrambled to pick up a bowl of cold water he had prepared long before.
His hands shook so badly that more than half the water spilled, splashing the filthy floor.
"Useless."
The voice remained weak, but