On Monday morning, Roger stayed in bed.

When his alarm clock went off, he burrowed deeper into the shadowy warm nest he'd created under the duvet and curled up with his head under the pillow, waiting for the shrill beeping to stop.

"Roger?" Steve called quietly from the landing an indeterminate amount of time later, knocking lightly. "You alive in there?"

Roger grunted and cracked open an eye, peering warily at the door through the gap between duvet and sheets. The door slid open and he could just see the outline of Steve looming across the room. In his cave, Steve probably couldn't see a lot, which meant he'd have to make his way across the parts-littered floor to check on him. That or...

He ducked hastily back under cover as Steve flicked the light on, blinking dots from his eyes. He groaned.

"Hey kid, what's up?"

Without ceremony, his duvet was pried from his numb fingers and peeled back. Steve looked him up and down.

"'m fine," Roger mumbled, or tried to.

"You've got it bad," Steve said, and picked him up as though he were a mere child. "No wonder the Agency have you listed as high risk."

We moved in at 7.30am on New Year's day, following a tip-off obtained the previous evening from a inebriated young man who claimed to know more than he should about the incident under investigation.

In the end, it wasn't a surprise. Mrs Smith were I are almost on first name terms by then, and we rung the doorbell without any expectation of trouble. A little bluster, perhaps, but as a family they have never caused any real fuss. Young Adam wasn't in the immediate vicinity of the door - I have always wondered whether he will attempt to run at some point - but was summoned without further ado and marched outside.

I felt a certain amount of concern at the number of younger siblings Adam seems to have, but it would be unfair to damn them by association. They will stand on their own merits, just as the rest of us do.

The neighbours were watching. The neighbours always seem to be, wherever we go, however low-key a visit we are making. It seems to be a characteristic of the breed.

In all, it was far preferable to the awkward scene at young Tom Mowbray's house, even though it was he who had spoken too much.

Voldemort was not displeased. The three children - for children they were, for all their poise - showed on the whole remarkable composure given the lack of warning they had been given.

Abraxas's boy was developing into something of a peacock, and that was a tendency that would have to be quashed and fast, if Voldemort was to ever get real work out of him and not just the politicking that Abraxas favoured. His white-blond hair was impeccably groomed, shimmering in the dim light of the library. Voldemort liked the library: the looming darkness suited his mood.

The Prince boy, whatever he was called, was an unfortunate contrast. Dark and surly and not well-favoured in the looks department. In truth, had it not been for the rumours of his skill and power, Voldemort would have been tempted to cross the half-blood from his list and let Claudius Prince deal with his own problems. It would do the old tyrant good. Voldemort still hadn't forgotten his first experience with the prefects of Slytherin house.

And the Black boy, for all his well-spoken persuasion, was and looked obscenely young for Voldemort to even be contemplating recruiting him. The young had an unfortunate tendency to gossip and to crack under questioning, and Black didn't seem to have the inner toughness that Prince had, or the trained veneer of Malfoy.

At least there was a next generation. For a while, looking at Abraxas and Cygnus's habits, he'd been very concerned for the continuation of Slytherin House.

Tomorrow, the echoing corridors will no longer echo silence. Hundreds of girls will flood down them, shouts ringing out over the underlying thrum of chatter. Posters on the wall, fixed up fresh for the new term, stapled in exact rows, exactly straight, will be knocked and battered, little tears appearing in the edges as it's twisted skew.

Tomorrow, the lawns outside, presently covered in a thin blanket of near untouched snow will be swamped with children leaping into snowball fights and snowman building, packed onto the small patch of grass. Fortunate perhaps that they will only have a short time before they are summoned inside to lessons, leaving behind footsteps upon footsteps and patches of green among the white.

Tomorrow, brains will be truly stretched again for the first time in a fortnight, as teachers attempt to resurrect the knowledge implanted during the previous term. The blackboards will be freshly cleaned and freshly stocked with chalk, and will consequently squeak even worse than normal. Many a longing eye will be cast out the window at the wintery gardens and the completely untouched staff lawn.

Tomorrow, term begins. Tomorrow, they are all back. Tomorrow is a a new beginning.

Today is the end of the holidays.

When you close your eyes by the river, you can almost pretend you're at the sea.

There's a tang of salt in the air as the tide comes in, and the screams of the gulls that swarm along the banks, poaching bread from the passers by.

At low tide, it's mud that you smell. An overwhelming smell, a damp smell, of things gone by that now lie submerged and forgotten. At high tide, you can hear the lap of water against the concrete banks, as though you stood atop a harbour wall with the sea stretching out before you.

In the winter, the wind whips down the tow path, cutting into bare cheeks and hands as though you stood on a sea wall with all the North Sea as a run up. In the summer, there is the sun on your face and the shouting of children behind you, and you can imagine yourself standing above a beach.

And yet it is not the sea, however much you wish it. Confined to the city, you must walk along the bank of this narrow river and pretend it is greater, that you could not walk right across at low tide, your feed squelching deep into the river mud.

Henry's old room was exactly as he left it. The desk under the window, the trousers slung over the back of the chair and the posters tacked up on the wall. Even the boy was the same, the ten year old lying on the bed with VR goggles over his eyes. The boy with the same hair, the same face, the same eyegrow that grew at an odd angle for no apparent reason.

The boy who was completely unaware of Henry standing in the doorway, parents hovering anxiously behind him.

Henry closed the door without a word, straightened his jacket with a flick honed over years of surprise inspections and returned his uniform hat to his head.

"I see," he said. "Thank you for your time."

From the boy's age, they hadn't wasted any time. He'd heard that Fleet offered clones to replace the children they enlisted in the service but he'd never dreamed his parents would have replaced him so fast, not when he'd clung to the mere memory of them through five years in training.

One last look around the suddenly small house and he left without looking back, touching his hat politely as he passed a pensioner in the street. There was nothing for him here.

My old room was gone. Amongst the ivy that had crept over the remains of the walls, venturing in and out the piles of rubble that had once been a floor, I could see few remnants of the child who had lived there: the chair which I had imagined to be a rocket, a couple of toy cars, so rusted as to be almost unrecognisable.

There was a bramble thicket where my bed had once been.

They all had warned me, back at base. Even the captain had taken a moment to come and speak to me, to speak haltingly of his first return to his childhood home, but I had not been dissuaded.

I almost wished they had succeeded.

I had expected ageing, had expected them to have moved on with their lives, had even expected someone else to be living there. That suspicion might have been better than this wasteland of ruins and painful absence. In space, nothing changed but the technology. It was their way of telling us that it was our home, that we were needed and valued. It was easy to forget the years planetside passing you by, that the captain had been born two centuries before me and hadn't even learned Standard until he was a Lieutenant.

I’ve been to nine planets in twelve years and it’s starting to show. I scarcely notice the local honour guard lining the way from the shuttle to the reception party. Honour guard and prison guard, if things go badly.

This particular encounter is going to be an unpleasant one. I can see it in the stiffness of the President's back, in the glaring absence of superfluous flunkies.

My voice doesn't crack now. I'm no longer a child doing a statesman's job.

"Honoured sir, on behalf of the Galactic Council, I must inform you that according to the Accords of 5078, this star system is now under the authority of the planetary state of New Olid. You are subsequently required to submit cooperate with officials who will arrive shortly. Any disputes and appeals may be directed to the Council according to the Regulations as drawn up in 4756."

The President's face is getting redder and redder. His bodyguard's fingers are going white around his rifle, though he hasn't so much as twitched.

"If you would sign both copies of the relevant document," I say, withdrawing the paper documents from my jacket, "Matters can proceed without further incident."

He makes no move to take them. I sigh and step back into a less exposed position. My aide is sending a message to the waiting invasion force as we speak. Unfortunate that they're a few months behind us but another spell in a holding cell would give me a chance to catch up on my reading.

There are advantages to having a name that can start an intergalactic incident.