Best Laid Plans of Boys and Butterflies

Andrew listened to a clock chiming somewhere in the castle. It was just striking eleven. Most of the other Gryffindors in the same bedroom with him were in their beds and asleep. Classes came early in the morning. Andrew was silent and focused. He'd taken his backpack, and he'd dropped a change of clothes in it, along with the same rope he'd had at ilvermorny (although he wasn't sure why he'd kept it), a small jar of dried crickets he'd "borrowed" from the potions lab--for food for Frog, and a few pieces of fruit in case he got hungry. He had a handful of galleons in his trunk, and he put those in his pocket, along with his wand. He had a wee bit of duct tape that he'd taken from Michael's basement, and he decided to wear the roll of tape on his wrist to be out of his way.

He felt caged. It made him feel trapped, stuck, hopeless. He had butterflies in his stomach that were nigh onto the size of dementors. It took him right back to how he'd felt as a little boy when his father had made life so bloody difficult. The days of going without food were indelible in Andrew's memory. He couldn't and wouldn't live like that ever again. Never. He needed to know that since the grownups were doing a really sucky job of taking responsibility, he could still take care of himself. He needed to know he hadn't gone entirely soft in the years he'd actually had a home and a family. He had always been a bit of a loner since, and he got along far better with the amphibians he could hold a conversation with--especially Frog. Tree frogs who were well cared for could live 20 years with a muggle and longer with a wizard. He'd had the little green tree frog since he was 8. Frog was in his pocket and Andrew had told him to hush. He didn't need Frog's croaking to give him away.

He dressed quickly in jeans, a t shirt, a hoodie, and his good sneakers. Climbing at night needed good shoes with good tread left on them.

He had to try to get out. He needed to know that, if the school were invaded again, he could make it out. He needed to know no one would ever take him anywhere he didn't want to be. He needed to know he wasn't helpless, and he needed to know that he could prove to Michael that all those lessons about breaking, entering, climbing, escaping--all of it--were not for naught. Worse yet, he needed to know that whatever he did, Michael wasn't going to be standing at the other end, with that look he got--the sarcastic eye rolling when he disagreed with Andrew's choices. Robert had the same look--only worse. Disappointing either one of them was not an option. This had to work the first try.

He thought he knew the school well. He had hung onto every myth of mischief and mayhem he could listen to, trying to find out where the secret entrances and exits were. He had listened carefully to the students' stories of the holes in the castle's security.

The two best options for him seemed to be: A.) the one eyed witch passage to Honeydukes, followed by slipping out the back door of the candy store and over to Michael's. Going home to Robert was definitely not the best option. Hell, Robert would just bring him back. And Robert Lupin angry? That had all kinds of bad juju all over it. Or--option B.) simply walking off the grounds into the Forbidden Forest. Nobody was crazy enough to go there after dark--not unless they really had a reason. Andrew figured having a mission was as good a reason as any. Plus, it was highly unlikely that Michael would be just randomly hanging around in the forest.

So, all he had to do was to slip out of the castle, across the grounds, through the forest and he was home free. He could at least prove he had one way out. He hadn't thought about getting back in, but how hard could it be? If he got out through the forest, then surely all he had to do was turn around and go back, right? Made perfect sense to him.

He wasn't concerned about the forest either. How hard could that be? He was fast at climbing trees. He was positive he could climb before any thingamajig out there ate him. Or at least before it ate too much of him.

He slipped out of the Gryffindor tower, and saw the fat lady getting upset with just seeing him out of bed with his backpack. She opened her mouth to sound an alarm, and Andrew slapped a piece of duct tape across the painting, across her mouth. She looked at him in wide eyed surprise and in anger at him. Michael's tales of taping Walburga's mouth shut had always amused Andrew immensely, so it seemed like a perfect solution for the moment.

He fled, lightfooted, down the stairs and outside. He didn't draw his wand because he didn't want to tip anyone off by using magic. He ran, in the dark, across the grounds. Something took a swipe at him, struck him and knocked him flat on his butt. He looked up and caught just a shadow of something immense and fast coming towards him for another strike. He rolled out of the way and realized it was that bloody stupid tree that had an attitude. He felt something warm on his cheek and when he wiped his hand across it, he realized the dumb tree had left bleeding scratches on his face. Great. Why not bring breadcrumbs and get it overwith? Leaving a blood trail was just about as idiotic. Amateur, he berated himself. For a moment, he thought about shooting a fireball at the tree, but then he decided that would defeat his whole getting-away-in-secret business.

"You're a bloody stupid tree, you know that?" he got up to his feet and hurled an insult at the tree instead. "I will set you on fire next time, so watch who you're after." As if the tree could hear him or give a fig about it. He checked to make sure that Frog was okay. Then he re-shouldered his pack, and drew his wand. He'd need it in the forest on order to not trip over some tree root or something in the dark.

"And who really runs straight for a whomping willow anyway?" he heard Frog croak to him. Frog had a point. A real catburglar would have at least been able to not run smack into a whomping willow--seriously.

"Get down," Andrew told Frog. He wanted Frog deep in his shirt pocket so that the whatevers that lived in the forest didn't swipe Frog and eat him. "We're almost there."

"Andrew."

The word came just after a crack that announced Keiran's apparition. Surely the boy knew who it was. No one else could get around the grounds so quickly, and that sound was particularly distinctive according to witches and wizards.

He had been sitting in his quarters with the kids, going over what he would be teaching the second years the next day while they played with the dog. He still wasn't sure why he had been stuck with all of the animals, but the children loved it, and he had promised Millie that he'd look after things while she sorted herself out. In some ways, he felt it was unfair because he, too, had things to work out.

But he also understood that the whole disaster of a marriage had gone downhill because she thought he'd done wrong. Others vehemently disagreed with him, but he wouldn't listen to them.

At any rate, the fresh and increased wards on the grounds had been designed to alert him if something went wrong. When he felt the air around him change, he lit the floo and Avery was there within minutes. As a former guest lecturer and Keiran's long-time best friend, she had agreed to leave her daughter Sophie with her mum, and after patching things up, Avery was grateful to have someone to watch her now that Robin was gone and Keiran was often too busy with his own life and his own kids.

And thus, Keiran was standing there casually, watching Andrew talk to himself or to something he couldn't see, half waiting for the Gryffindor to turn around.

"You do know who I have to talk to about this, don't you?" He added, almost apologetically but more in warning. "It's too late for this, wouldn't you say? I think you need to tell me what, exactly, you're up to."

They weren't far into the term at all, but after years of teaching and of corralling his massive pseudo-family, he had managed to hone his 'I'm-not-angry-I'm-just-disappointed' expression and tone, now directing that very thing towards Andrew. "Perhaps if you tell me what's going on, we can handle this ourselves rather than passing it on," he offered carefully. He wouldn't outright promise not to contact Robert or Michael, but if it was something he could handle himself, that might be - he felt - the best way to control the situation.

Out of the darkness was a wand crack and someone sharply calling his name.

"Shi..." he began, his heart pounding in his chest. He spun around and saw the tall form of the headmaster in front of him. He quickly edited the cuss word and the rant for scaring him that was about to roll entirely too freely off his tongue. "Sugar." That was his best attempt at a save. Great. And this guy had probably seen him having a conversation with his frog. Fabulous.

"Me?" he asked nervously. "What am I up to? I was just out walking my...." He stopped himself short, forced to think a moment. I was out doing what? Walking my what? My frog? That's the best I've got? Seriously? Okay, that was an epic fail just looking for an opportunity to send him to the Hogwarts dungeons until he was as ancient as his headmaster. "Never mind," he said, hastily waving the unsalvageable remark away. "You wouldn't get it. Frog finds fresh flies," he said, improvising a reason why he was out with the frog. Wait. You really just offered that one up? You attempt to make him think you're just casually walking your frog at 11 at night, and now you try to save it with a tongue twister? What's that all about?

"I wasn't doing anything wrong," he said, mustering himself up to take a stand. The Gryffindor in him still had some pride left even after he had made a downright humiliating chain of failures out of this. This gigantic faux pas was an insult to everything Michael had ever taught him, and on top of that, it was against everything Robert believed in. Splendid. Nevertheless, Andrew was fully prepared to leap under the proverbial bus to make his little makeshift family necessary of his shielding them.

"Look," he said, dropping any further attempts to come up with another illogical lie. The fact was that he just genuinely sucked at lying. He'd never been good at it. The truth was one of the few things Andrew ever did well, but since Hayes had asked, Andrew decided he might as well answer the question."You won't get it. No offense, but I don't think you can get it. You don't know anything about me, so I don't see how you can get any piece of it. I wasn't breaking the rules. Not exactly. But since you asked, I have a bit of an issue with lying, unaccountable adults who think they know so bloody much. I've had a lifetime of it, and I'm sick of it. It wasn't my idea to come back here, you know, but I did it because Robert asked me. For being adults, you lot around here have some really messed up stuff, and that's your business but its not gonna be mine. I just need to know that the next time you grownups, or whoever really is responsible, does something else asinine, that I have a backup plan to take care of myself. I wasn't breaking anyone in. I need to see if I can get out the next time some other haywire business happens here. I can take care of myself. I've done it before, and I can do it again. I'd rather do that than to repeat this summer ever again.

"After all, isn't that what this..." he gestured to the castle and the school grounds. "all of this..is for? To teach us how to survive someone else's cockamamie ideas for harming kids, families, or whatever else they consider expendable? I don't trust you lot anymore. If you all can't get it right, then I need a backup plan that has some small chance of working.

"And this one would have worked if you didn't have a tree that needs a bloody attitude adjustment." He angrily took another swipe at his bleeding cheek, this time with the cuff of his hoodie.

Most students would have sat there looking as depressing as a wet weekend, knowing they were in trouble. Keiran knew that to be true, thanks to his years as Head of Slytherin, and even when he was merely a professor of Transfiguration. Students who hadn't done their homework always seemed horribly distraught once he leveled a disappointed frown upon them. He had been told, of course, that he could be quite intimidating for young students, so he was only partially surprised when Andrew looked like he wanted to jump right out of his skin just to escape.

Keiran's eyebrow lifted sharply at the word Andrew chose to start with. Sugar and Spice, was it? Fantastic.

He understood the boy's argument that he just 'wouldn't get it.' Kids always thought that adults - especially their parents - had no idea what they were on about. He was patently uninterested in hearing what Kelly, Liam and Darcie came up with once they were old enough to be affronted. They didn't understand, though, did they?

Really, he had quite a lot he wanted to say about it, but Keiran knew better than to try and interrupt when he was this upset. It was a wiser path to let him get that all out before he spoke up to placate and redirect.

"That tree's quite effective, wouldn't you say?" He offered, glancing towards it. "Been here a long time. As have I. On and off, sure, but you may not realize that while kids and grownups are, of course, very different... Well, I've got a heck of a lot more experience at being a kid than you do," Keiran said, tilting his chin downwards to try and hold Andrew's attention and to maintain eye contact. "I did it longer than you have. I spent seven years here. I studied under a master of my subject and then came back to teach. I actually started my own school for a time, though that's a bit of a secret, so let's not go about making a big deal of it," he cracked a smile.

"I went into the absolute depths of Eastern Europe, nearly died because my wand snapped and I had absolutely nothing to my name in the midst of a Russian winter. I nearly drowned in the lake on these very grounds. But I'm back anyway."

He took a small step forward. "The train situation didn't happen on these grounds, lad. Hogwarts is the safest place in the world. I wouldn't keep my children here with me if I thought otherwise. After what happened, our wards have - somehow - been all the more increased. Honestly, don't even ask me how; I'm amazed, myself."

His shoulders lifted in a shrug and he studied the Gryffindor. "Are you bleeding?" He asked finally, taken aback. Keiran's hand reached for his wand, offering gently that he could fix it if Andrew wanted him to.

"You don't have to like it here," he clarified with a slight sigh. "We can't make you. But I can tell you that nothing could possibly get in after everything that happened this summer. There's no way. If you do get to a point where you feel it's an emergency, I can promise that you can come to my office and I'll get you to where you need to be. That sound fair?"

The tree. Frog had been smarter than Andrew had been.

"Frog said I was stupid for not using a Lumos spell out here," Andrew said. "He was right. Not enough stars tonight to see by." The headmaster was right about one thing, at least, maybe more. Andrew hadn't had much time to be a kid. He'd been too busy surviving. What play time he'd had was either in climbing trees or playing with Frog.

"Being a kid is overrated," Andrew said dismissively of the headmaster's comments about being more skilled at being a kid than Andrew had been. No doubt the headmaster was absolutely correct, but perhaps not for the reason the headmaster thought.

"I'm glad I'm almost done with it. You had your mentor, and I have mine--but he's not here. Ever been mountain climbing? Its a good thing. Clears your head. Makes you think. Every little movement tests your mettle to see what you're made of. Screw it up, and you die. I've gotten good enough to not die, at least. Probably the closest thing to play time I've really ever had. Not whining, not making excuses. Just saying.

"My dad was an evil, selfish man. Never knew my mom. What I remember of my dad was my needing to steal so I could eat while my dad was drunk with a pub wench someplace. Once in awhile one of the 'upstairs girls,' as my dad called them, would feel sorry for me and buy me a meal, but that wasn't a regular thing. One of them taught me to read. I learned what I did learn either from the 'upstairs girls' or by doing. After he died, I got caught trying to grift an auror for a couple galleons for a few pieces of fruit--bad choice on my part, but I was a kid. I was ten. Never pick an auror as a mark.

"I've never asked to have a family. I've got Frog, so I'm good. Not complaining about my guardians, though. They're good people, but its all backwards. My dad was an ass, and he got treated like he was a saint. My guardian is a good guy, and he gets treated like he's Voldemort Incarnate. It's weird--but he's got my back, and I know that. All that crap you hear about him? Its not true. He just doesn't give a rats behind what the papers say about him. I know I'm always safe with him, and I know I could have anything I wanted. I just don't want anything.

"All I really care about is that I know where my food and Frog's food is coming from, and that I know if I have a place to sleep or if I need to come up with it all for myself. Makes me sound like a hardass, I know, but if you did that business in Russia, you know then what priorities matter and what you can do without. All the rest of it is just a bunch of extras.

"What does bug me, though, is that I buggared this up. My mentor would expect more of me, and it means something to me to not disappoint him. I should have been able to do it. The only thing that I can figure messed me up is that you've changed the wards. Should have figured that out. I knew he was working on something--not that he'd tell me what it was. But--if the wards are different, then I can give you a pretty good idea who might have done it. Might help you to know who's most likely behind some of the re-design you had...."

The little green tree frog in his pocket made some irritated little peeping sounds and seemed to be fidgeting. "He's irked. He says I'm dripping on him, and he's going to start calling me foul names if I don't let you stop my 'leaking,' as he calls it." He sighed. "Alright--you win. For now, anyway. On one condition." He hesitated before he finished. "Can I have a meeting with my mentor?"

It bothered him far more that he might disappoint his mentor than it ever occurred to him that his guardian would be disappointed. Robert, he expected, would be parental about it and be disappointed and tell him so. Andrew knew his relationship with Robert would hold. Michael, though, was different. He needed to know that this bungled up attempt hadn't ruined his relationship with Michael. That mattered.

Keiran frowned slightly at the comment about a frog, not fully understanding. But it was Andrew's turn to give some backstory, so the Headmaster just waited, listening carefully as he was expected to. When a reaction was called for, even if only as Keiran perceived it to be, a slight hum or nod of understanding escaped him.

He understood the bad father thing. Not because he had had one, or been around one. No, no. Keiran Hayes knew that in his world, in his little circle, his little bubble... he was the bad father. Or he had been, for the first year and a half of his eldest children's lives. A hit of guilt made him almost drift out of the moment, but he had to stay attentive. Andrew had tried to escape via the Forbidden Forest, and that was certainly not an ideal way to start his record as Headmaster.

In truth, he was determined to stay there as long as he could. He was determined to make the history books that mentioned him only include positives. Perhaps a couple of hiccups, but no murders, no werewolf break-ins, and absolutely no children disappearing. Forest-bound or otherwise.

He smiled, though, at the suggestion that Michael had been involved, turning his head to keep from laughing under his breath. He didn't know how much Andrew knew about his mentor's social life, but he was very, very off.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, lad. I know exactly who put up those wards. And let's just say that Tremaine isn't their biggest fan after this summer."

He sent Andrew a look that suggested they were sharing a joke, but lifted his chin at Andrew's semi-agreement, pleased with the outcome despite the reason it happened. His eyebrows pulled together, though, making him look a bit younger than he really was when Andrew's pocket made a noise and the boy went on to tell him what the... whatever it was, was trying to say. Perhaps he would ask about that later.

"Of course," he said, the first word almost covered up as he cleared his throat and tried to speak at the same time. It didn't serve to make him feel very authoritative, but it gave him the time he needed to re-position his features into something more authoritative. "It's awful late, though. Why don't you let me write to him and see if we can't organize a time? And for now, he added pointedly, stepping back with his right foot so he turned himself sideways though he still looked at Andrew. "You should probably get back inside."

The hand farthest away from the Gryffindor lifted, gesturing towards the castle now that Andrew had the space to pass by him.

Oh, so that's how it was, was it? He was seeing some insight into his headmaster, and he wasn't sure he liked it entirely. He cast a rhetorical smile at the man's attempt at humor, but he was feeling anything except amusement.  Did he think Andrew really was that clueless? Well, best to leave it that way, Andrew decided. What the headmaster didn't know would work well for Andrew.

The way it sounded to Andrew, the man who had told him that the wards had been increased, who had also said he had no idea how it happened, now appeared to be walking that remark back to assert utter confidence in who had put up the wards, to take a dig at Michael. So that was where the headmaster's loyalties lay, did they? How very Slytherin of him. That was fine with Andrew, but it didn't mean that Andrew felt anymore endeared to a man who would take a jab at Andrew's cobbled-together family. Cobbled together as it was, Andrew knew their loyalties were solid. Hayes, maybe not so much.

Andrew didn't reply as the headmaster made a gesture to round him up and return him to the castle. Well, there was little other choice, was there? It could have gone worse, he supposed.

What it ended up to, though, was that Andrew really was trapped here. Aside from going to his apprenticeship or to Hogsmeade on weekends, he was truly trapped. That made him feel helpless. Fabulous. He hadn't felt trapped until after Ilvermony. That had changed everything for Andrew.

"I don't expect you to like or understand me or my family," Andrew said. "Just so you know. Much as you might not want them in your social circle, I'm rather fond of them. Seeing as though we're a bloody big lot of Gryffindors, I would guess you wouldn't be surprised by that, though." He didn't intend his remark to be sarcasm, but rather, merely an acknowledgement of the differences that appeared to lay between him and Hayes.

He walked past the headmaster and headed back towards the castle, taking another swipe across his cheek with the cuff of his hoodie. The headmaster didn't have to write to Michael, didn't have to allow him here. Andrew knew that. He intended to send an owl of his own because he owed more to Michael than that. He owed something to Robert too.

This had made a larger turning point for him, though. He was deciding quickly that he wasn't ashamed of his family or what they did. He was more determined to stand for them or with them. He didn't really have the same devotion to the Ministry that the Lupins did. Not yet, anyway. He did, however, have more of a devotion to them, who they were, and what they stood for. It appeared it was going to put him at odds with others.  Oh well. He'd never been a social animal anyway. So be it. Michael seemed to not be bothered by it. Andrew apparently was going to have to learn how Michael did it.

He was paying little attention to the walk itself as he went back to the castle.  He was already thinking about the content of the letters that he felt he needed to write yet tonight.

He didn't know if his discussion with the headmaster was over or not. That was not his decision. That was the headmaster's choice. Either way was fine with him.