Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
A/N: This first bit is for faithful reader Heidi Ho ~ I know you didn't like what Hermione was doing. Neither did I, but this is why! Sorry. *grins*. Thanks for sticking with it.
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 19
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Time dragged without them. Hermione sat just inside the mouth of the cave, unconsciously choosing the same spot that Harry had earlier that morning. She immersed herself in the book, and was able to pay attention for whole words at a time.
Whole words.
Hermione Granger, bookworm. She'd been wise enough almost seven years ago to tell him, "Books! And Cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery - oh Harry - be careful!" Clever as that at twelve, why then had she wasted so much time? And how could she have forgotten the most important thing? If she loved him - and she knew she did, hopelessly now - how was she ever going to let go enough to let him do what he needed? She knew she shouldn't have bargained with him, knew that he thought he was being restrained and cautious for her sake. But she'd only just got the feel of him; enough to realize that the hold he had on her heart ran deeper than she could have imagined. The thought of life without him had been incomprehensible at the start of this but she understood it well enough now. It was… unbearable.
She gave up her attempt at making sense of the words in front of her and rested her head in her hands.
Luna came and sat beside her, humming.
Hermione had never really warmed up to Luna. She knew Harry liked her, was aware that there was far more to her than met the eye after the Department of Mysteries, but really. They were so very different; Hermione grounded and practical and sensible, Luna with her nose in the Quibbler and her head in the clouds.
"Harry has the biggest heart, doesn't he?" Luna said dreamily, making a pattern in pebbles between them. "I wonder if it's because he's had to feel so much so young."
Then again, maybe Luna was just really perceptive and misunderstood.
Hermione felt the proper girl thing to do would be to respond with something like, "Ron certainly seems to fancy you," or "Ron really is brave, isn't he?" Luna, however, hardly seemed the type to observe social proprieties and Hermione didn't think she was talking about Harry's heart in an attempt to make Hermione reveal something else more personal about him the way Lavender might have.
"I think you're right. He does, and that's exactly why," she said slowly. It felt strangely good to say aloud. She and Ron had always talked about Harry, but never the way she needed to now. "I shouldn't have done that. Forced him take Ron, I mean. I just keep feeling like things are happening so fast now that the tiniest mistake could change everything. There's so much we still need to figure out and there isn't enough time to do it, and I'm afraid he's going to get reckless and…
"Maybe he needs to get reckless," Luna said. "He doesn't have much else to fall back on, does he? Without Dumbledore actually around, I mean."
Hermione recognized the uncomfortable truth in that; she knew Harry felt the same.
"He'd be just as dead if he was careful for you, you know. Even if he lived. His whole life has been leading to this; he needs to believe he gave it everything. He wouldn't be Harry after otherwise. You'd still have him to hold on to, but everything that makes him what he is would die." Luna continued.
Hermione's eyes widened. It was still Luna speaking, but not. Her voice, yes, but those were not her own words, Hermione was sure of it. Her eyes were unfocused, her body perfectly still. Her hands had ceased playing with the pebbles, their pattern complete. Hermione saw they spelled out a word, a name.
LILY
Hermione realized she wasn't breathing and sucked in a mighty gasp of air. She didn't believe in this sort of thing; she liked her magic explained. Quantifiable, repeatable; theory tested and written neatly down. Spells, hexes, curses and counter curses were all manipulations of magic force, graspable and understood. This was beyond the woolliness of divination, well beyond her comfort level.
"He knows how you feel for him," Luna continued. "He has always been able to love others, but for the first time he understands what it is to be loved by someone else. Someone… alive to him. It's a burden as well as a gift after all, it changes everything. For the better, but it changes still. I would have died a thousand times and still chosen to have him. He would die a thousand deaths for you, but I think he wants to live now. He hopes. I can help him with the burden of evil he carries within, Hermione, but only you could make him chose life."
"I…" Hermione opened and shut her mouth helplessly. "Luna?"
Luna's body remained perfectly still. She gazed at her Hermione and blinked, as if at a very bright light. To Hermione's knowledge Luna's eyes had never been quite that focused before, that intent.
"I am what you believe, Hermione. But you have to believe for us to speak, or I will have to go. Luna would never wish to frighten or anger you," not-Luna said.
Okay. All right. There was no logical reason, no printed magical explanation for Harry anywhere, either. He shouldn't have survived that killing curse, shouldn't be able to resist Imperious, shouldn't have been able to call up the patronus that saved Sirius third year; yet Dumbledore, a learned wizard if there aver was one, had accepted it all. Harry shouldn't be able to do most of the things he was doing now; the wandless magic, the odd sort of hybrid legillimency, the thestral transformation - yet she'd seen it with her own eyes, knew it to be true. Wandering around in Voldemort's mind…. If she accepted all of that, why couldn't this be real? Lily was his mother, after all.
"Lily?" Hermione asked softly, hesitantly, half-hoping Luna would look at her in askance or laugh.
"Yes," Luna's mouth said simply. "Hullo, Hermione Granger. I'm very pleased to meet you. More than you can imagine."
"How… no, never mind. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't something… well…" Hermione struggled.
"Important. Yes. But I'm so glad to have this chance to know you for a bit. I've missed so much of him, you see." Luna's body reached out gently, and laid her hand over Hermione's.
The pain in that voice was shattering; Hermione, an only child and never before in any conscious way maternal about even the far-off thought of children felt for a moment the exquisite loss of a child, even though it was the mother who had died, the child who lived. The emptiness where the warm, trusting little body had been, the silence even the most fretful cry would joyfully fill. The thought of all of that overwhelming love lost, wasted while Harry had curled in upon himself in the Dursley's cupboard under the stairs struck her like a blow, and she felt tears of despair form in her own eyes.
"I'm so sorry," was all she could manage to choke out, overwhelmed by the rawness of the emotion surging through her.
"You feel it." Lily said knowingly through Luna's lips. "And if you do you will understand why all this is happening. Voldemort has wronged more than James and I, or Harry. He has violated the very nature of magic with what he has done and there is always a cost for that. No one of us can ever be more than that, usurp that force. It falls on Harry as the last of his victims then to be the one to stop him now."
"He's trying," Hermione whispered. "He's found or destroyed all but one of the horcruxes. He's looking for the last one now. He has to take on this one and one more we found but kept."
Luna's eyes brimmed then as well. "My poor boy," she said softly. "Little lamb. This should never have been his life."
"Do you know it all, then?" Hermione asked. "Have you… do you see… us? Where you are?" She felt awkward intruding, but incredibly curious. She sensed Lily's remembrance of Harry as the small boy he had been when Dumbledore delivered him to Privet Drive, and wondered what she made of the man he was becoming.
"No," Lily said gravely. Luna's voice had never sounded like this before, Hermione was certain. "What sort of next life would that be? Who could watch the joy and pain of life and not be able to touch and guide the ones they love? No, I've been called back again, just for a bit. I have one small role left to play in this that I have always known would come. I will be glad when it is finally done. He will be with me, or he will be with you. Either way, I know now that he will be loved and safe at last, and for that I will be eternally grateful. I've dreaded this. I have no wish for him to die, but to have him again… I miss him so. I've missed so much!"
Lily's eyes burned through Luna's pale ones, and the anguish in her awoke instincts in Hermione she had never known were there. She thought of the gift he had given her the night before, that moment so entwined that she had felt through his skin, seen herself the way he did. She wished she had a pensieve, she could think of so many moments in Harry's life since she had met him that she would love Lily to see.
She laid her hand over Luna's on her arm and thought of Harry, of all he'd been saying lately. Listening for things, following instincts... She thought of every happy moment he'd had since she'd known him, few enough but all the more powerful because of it. All the times she had been so proud of him, proud to know him and be his friend. The more she searched the more memories she found, like flipping through the pages of a photo album. Harry on his broom, doing what he loved best. Hogwarts would be familiar to Lily; she thought of him in the Great Hall, sleepy in the morning, in class, avoiding potions. In the Common Room, reading, so intent and then stretching and grinning and playing with Crookshanks on her lap. The image of him on the day of her birthday, appearing in the kitchen door to greet her…. She halted abruptly, remembering what came after, and raised her eyes.
Luna's were a million miles away but rapt; she felt almost certain that Lily had seen what she wanted.
"Thank you, Hermione," she said softly. "Thank you for that. Where you stopped, was that… not long ago?"
Hermione wondered if there had been something in Harry's eyes then that she had not known enough to see. She had seen want in him since, learned to know that look well; it gave her the shivers thinking of it.
"Yes. Not too long."
They stared at each other for a long moment.
"Thank you," Lily said again through Luna's lips.
"What have you come back to do?" Hermione asked.
"It was to be my choice," she said, Luna's eyes magnified by tears. "My gift, for all that we have been through. There are two roads from here. Both lead to Voldemort's undoing; Harry himself has brought that to pass. One leads Harry to me, the other leaves him in this world. I must be honest with you, there are costs to him, and so to you, either way. I can not ensure he will survive unscathed. I had thought to set him on the road toward myself and James and Sirius and Dumbledore; that he had been through so much here already that he had earned, deserved, peace. Now I see that I can not, you have shown me that. All I can do for all that you have given me is to tell you this; he will live now. Believe this, hold strong to it. It is up to you what that will mean."
Hermione's heart leaped. She heard the warning in those words, knew by now the depth and breadth of what they could contain. Was it selfish to want him if it meant holding him to a life that could make the alternative a release? Could she really make that worth it all?
She knew she herself would die trying if only she could.
"Thank you," she whispered. "You won't regret it, I promise. He will have a full life in whatever time he has, I promise you."
Luna's voice was low and urgent, hurried now. "He will not come back safely from that school. There will be…. something, it could be almost anything at any time, I know not what… something will present an opportunity for you to help him. You will wish to, strongly, unthinkingly, I'm sure. You must not. Luna may do the thing, if possible, or Ron may. You must not, no matter how much better you think you can handle the situation for him. Do not leave him. As long as you heed this advice, the path forward will be hard, but he will live, somehow."
Hermione felt herself concentrating fiercely, committing every word and nuance of the telling to memory. There was no timeturner now, no chance to do it over. She had to get it right.
"Voldemort is an evil man," Lily continued through Luna once more. "But he is just a man in the end, and Dumbledore has shown Harry where his weakness lies. Do not despair, and you will both do not just the wizarding world, but humankind a great service. Nothing is ever forgotten. You have my blessing, Hermione. Good bye."
Goodbye…? "No!" begged Hermione. "Wait, I have to ask… wait!"
But she knew. Luna was Luna again. Not confused or frightened but calmly accepting that something had happened, probably just from the way Hermione's eyes were boring into her.
"Did I say something?" she asked. "I had the strangest little day dream just then. I was in a beautiful, sunny, grassy meadow, and there was this really friendly black dog and a tame stag…
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Ron had used a disillusionment charm on himself almost as soon as Harry had taken off from the cave. Harry would be visible to those who could see thestrals, but Ron reckoned he should remain invisible no matter what. Durmstrang seemed to him to likely be the kind of place where thestrals might easily be seen by most of the population and go basically unnoticed, but still… That was hardly a good sign in his book.
It was quiet different flying on Harry than it had been going to the Department of Mysteries two years before. Then he had never come across more than a written description of a thestral (and he hadn't paid much attention to it at that.) He had been distinctly uncomfortable being born through the air by something he couldn't see, and being unable to adjust to its movements meant he had never for a moment relaxed on its back. Now he could actually watch Harry's great wings flapping; could see as well as feel the muscles in his withers pumping and pulling to keep them aloft. It felt bizarre to hold on to the long, tangled mane; he kept envisioning his friends messy hair entwined beneath his fingers. Friends should probably not fly friends. Unless it was an emergency, of course.
The snow was softer somehow, but no less dense or thickly falling. Perhaps it was the height at which they flew? Ron observed with interest as they passed over rocky outcroppings, a lake similar in size to the one beside Hogwarts, its waters a cold, sluggish bluey green in color and another smaller one with water so dark and deep it appeared almost black. Not anything you'd want to fall in, at any rate. He tightened his grip on Harry's mane, squeezing tighter with his knees, and heard Harry sneeze-snort in commiseration. Dense forests heavily populated with evergreens encompassed the whole. As they cleared the top of one particularly dark band of trees Ron felt Harry shift beneath him and change direction. Through the snow ahead he could just make out a hulking shadow and the glimmer of lights against it slightly north of their bearing. Windows in stone walls.
Durmstrang, when they came upon it, was considerably smaller than Hogwarts, just four stories tall. It was a forbidding structure, austere and secretive in its appearance. If Ron had not had an idea of where they were there was little that would have given it away as a school. He could feel the magic of the place, however; it roiled and shimmered above it like heat except that it was quite the opposite; chilling in fact. He knew if he could feel it, it must be pummeling Harry.
Harry banked into a lazy circle, high and well short of the building. If anyone were to notice, he should appear nothing more than a hungry thestral scanning the edge of the woods for prey. Ron got a thestrals' eye view of the school as he did, scanning the layout of the building and scoping doors and escape routes. After a suitable interval Harry flew along the perimeter of the surrounding forest and Ron was able to do the same to the rest of the building. On the far side there was a Quidditch pitch spelled to stay free of falling snow and what appeared to be most of the student body was being put through the paces of an early morning workout; sit ups, push ups and running around the edge of the pitch seemed to be the order of the day.
Ron was never more sure Hogwarts was the Wizard school for him. The thought of McGonagall rousting them all for pre-breakfast exercise was really and truly off-putting.
Harry circled back slowly, losing himself in the forest for a bit and then landed on the far side of the pitch behind the stands that surrounded it. Ron slipped from his back and kept watch as he changed shape, then both ducked into the shadowy shelter of the risers.
"No matter how many times I see it, it'll still be brilliant Harry," he whispered admiringly. Harry grinned, but Ron could see his face was pale and tired.
"What do you reckon?" Harry asked softly, nodding toward the building.
"Oh, it's Durmstrang all right. Look at the leaders of the drills. Probably prefects, or whatever they call them here. They get to stay nice and toasty in their uniforms," Ron told him. The same uniform Krum had worn to Hogwarts for the Tri Wizard tournament. He wasn't likely to forget that anytime soon. The other students wore drab gray track suits.
"Technically, that means we should leave now and go get Hermione and Luna and head back to Hogwarts," Harry said slowly.
"Yup," Ron replied.
Harry's eyes closed; the struggle was easily apparent on his face. "Okay," he said at last, beginning to turn back toward the woods. "Let's…"
He didn't finish, and Ron laughed aloud. "Hell, Harry, you didn't even make it to…"
The reason Harry hadn't made it through the sentence became painfully obvious once Ron turned around as well; he was staring down the length of a pointed wand.
"Good morning," said its owner in perfect, if accented, English. "Or not, for you. Expelliarmus."
Their still-sheathed wands flew into his outstretched hand. He appeared familiar, but in the sense of reminding Ron of someone, rather than actually being someone he simply couldn't place. Older than Bill, but not by too much. Dark hair, only just lighter than Harry's, and at least as tall as Ron. He had a face that might have been handsome if not for the malevolence of its expression and eyes as black and fathomless as Snape's.
An Incarcerous followed. Thick ropes tied fast their hands behind their backs.
"And now you will walk. Quietly. Or I will do this."
A muttered spell and a flick of his wand later and Ron felt a strip of liquid fire erupt across his back. He cursed and stumbled forward, away, and heard Harry's barely stifled hiss beside him.
"Proceed. Silently. Eyes on the ground," they were instructed again.
Ron reckoned there was nothing for it but to go along and hope for a better chance to overpower their captor and retrieve their wands closer to the school; they were heading back beyond it anyway. He could see Harry's eyes roving desperately, looking for an escape route. He tried to catch his attention and barely shook his head, hoping to indicate that they would have to play along to make a safe break. Harry nodded almost imperceptibly but Ron watched in alarm as he bit back a scream as the lashing spell came down across his best friends' shoulder. He winced in sympathy. This guy clearly meant business. Not good.
"Eyes on the ground!"
They were marched through the Quidditch pitch, to the evident interest of the students and the delight of the prefects.
"Look what Professor Ratsel has caught himself! A couple of little lost Hogwarts!" a voice chortled.
Ron could only see feet passing with his eyes on the ground. Krum's fellow Tri Wizard hopefuls should have all graduated by now; he wouldn't have recognized any of them anyway, he guessed. He could hear the students muttering amongst themselves as they moved by.
"Potter…" "It's Potter…" "Harry Potter…" made its way through the ranks around them.
There was a sudden movement beyond his range of vision and he saw Harry go down to his knees and buckle over without his hands to save him as a student at least as large as Crabbe and certainly as stupid shoved him and aimed a vicious kick at his midsection. Ron heard the air forced from his lungs with a gasp.
"That was my brother you sent to Azkaban with that Slytherin girl, and my cousin with him!"
Ron only just managed to stop himself from either stepping on Harry or falling over him as their captor flicked his wand first at the Durmstrang student - who had been moving on to Ron and was instead flung bodily back into the ranks of his class - and then at Harry, who was jerked to his feet like a puppet on strings. He swayed, panting, clearly trying to re-inflate his lungs.
"You will keep your petty grievances to yourselves!" their captor rapped out to the surrounding students. "The Dark Lord arrives tomorrow. He and he alone shall decide the fate of Dumbledore's chosen one. You will be lucky enough to watch and be able to say that you were there when our Lord brought Potter to heel, and finished him as Dumbledore was finished before him!"
He prodded Harry with his wand and Ron watched him stumble forward through the now silent ranks toward the school then followed after. Clearly the student body as a whole must now be nothing but Voldemort supporters. Effing brilliant. They would never be able to escape before entering the school building with those odds. Harry's initial panic was starting to seem like a perfectly viable option. Ron took a deep breath, eyes glued to the ground. Think! Keep thinking! Somehow, for some reason, he felt it was going to be his job to get them both out of this.
They were prodded in through heavy black walnut doors that slammed shut with an air of finality once they were inside, taking the snowblown brightness with it. Durmstrang was quite obviously old, if not as ancient as Hogwarts. It lacked what had always seemed to Ron to be Hogwarts worn, broken-in comfort, its sense of history in the endless ebb and flow of students through it. This building was cold, faintly sinister and yet austere; there was little to give away the nature of what went on within.
Ron thought they would be taken to the equivalent of Dumbledore's office, to be shown off to whoever had taken Karkaroff's place after he had fled following the Tri Wizard tournament; it seemed only logical that this Professor Ratsel would want to show off his catch. There might still be a chance to escape there. If there was a Floo-networked fireplace in this hell-hole; that would likely be the place.
Alas, unless the Head of the Durmstrang Institute was quite Slytherin in his leanings - not an entirely impossible option, mind you - they were headed somewhere infinitely less escape-likely.
Durmstrang, it turned out, possessed dungeons. Not Draco Malfoy style silk-sheeted opulent rooms-without-windows, either. Cold stone and metal-barred chambers that stunk of fear. Who in their right bloody mind sent their kids of somewhere with actual working dungeons?
Duh, Ron, he chided himself. Same ones that thought Voldemort had an excellent national health policy. Kill the spare!
Filch would wet himself.
Ron found himself pushed across the main room into a cell-like enclosure with a barred door. The incarcerous spell was ended as he crossed the threshold. His wave of panic when the metal door closed behind him was nothing on the sight that greeted him when he turned around to grasp the bars with his freed hands. Harry was thrust against the wall opposite, his incarcerous removed and his limbs splayed and securely chained. Clearly they were a bit more concerned about Harry escaping than they were Ron. Not that he was complaining, mind you, but that was probably the real reason he felt he was going to have to be the one with the plan this time round. Harry looked like he was about to be otherwise occupied.
They needed to get out of there, fast.
Ratsel disappeared briefly and when he returned moved directly to Harry and fastened something around his neck. It appeared to Ron to be a heavy cord with some kind of medallion or charm on it; all he knew is that when it settled around his friends' throat and touched his skin Harry let out an unearthly sound, too raw and agonized even to qualify as a scream.
Ratsel's eyes glinted as he turned to Ron. "It opposes his magic, this little charm. Blocks it quite thoroughly. The more powerful the wizard, the more potent the backlash. He appears quite as strong as he was rumored to be."
The sound had stopped; Harry was too preoccupied with throwing himself against the chains and straining to try and climb the wall behind him, anything to break the contact of the charm against his skin.
"A pity for him, really," Ratsel continued. "He would have been better off were it truly a deception, like so much else of Dumbledore's supposed Wizardry."
"Harry's never been known for his restraint," Ron said, hearing the wobble in his voice and squeezing the bars hard to steady himself. "He'll fight that thing until something breaks, even if it's him. If you plan on making a gift of him to Vol.... the Dark Lord, you might want to reconsider."
Ratsel moved closer to Ron's door, his boots clicking ominously against the stone. "You must be his friend from Hogwarts, then. Westley."
"Er, Weasley, actually." Ron told him. Like it matters, Ron! The anxiety that Harry's struggle evoked in him made it a fight not to scream himself. He wanted to rage and curse at the man before him, to hex him into tiny little pieces. The urge to reach through the bars and grab his neck and squeeze, ram his head against the metal again and again… until what? Even if he could somehow, he wouldn't be free of his cell, would be no closer to freeing Harry from his torment. "I've known him since he was eleven, trust me on this. If you want anything left for the Dark Lord, and I've heard he wants Harry alive, you're going to want to ramp it back a bit."
The man seemed to Ron for a moment uncertain; his mind raced to find something, anything to convince him.
"It's Snape's fault, or course. D'you know Severus? Plays both sides, that one. He taught Harry a bit about the scar connection, Harry's known for awhile that if he hurts himself the Dark Lord feels it all as well, and Harry doesn't much care what he does as long as it gets to the Dark Lord too. A bit strange that way, Harry. They were at each other a few days ago; I heard your Lord was so sick he had to travel by Muggle car because he couldn't apparate. You might want to check that this isn't pissing him off, too."
Wow. That was a whopper, Ron. Best hope that sodding Voldemort gets a headache right quick now!
Ratsel's eyes flickered and his wand followed them. Ron found his head suddenly through the bars which were tightening considerably around his neck.
"How do you know of this?" he asked harshly, his fingers grabbing hold of Ron's hair and pulling his head sharply upright. The bars seemed to be bending, molding themselves tighter still.
"Snape taught him how - so he can do it just for the hell of it or to distract the Dark Lord when something important is happening. The erm, Order needed the Dark Lord's attention elsewhere that day. Worked, didn't it? But I… I won't tell you any more than that!"
Holy crap am I full of it. This must be how naturally it comes to the twins, then. Though giving Snape up feels awfully good, I must say.
Harry had already worn the skin around his restraints raw; Ron could see a dark stain of blood seeping down one arm. His movements hadn't slowed in all this time, if anything they grew more frantic.
Come on, rat face! Give him a break!
Ratsel seemed to come to a decision, and flicked his wand in Harry's direction. The cord of the spelled medallion remained around his neck but the charm itself hovered in the air inches above Harry's chest. The relief was immediate; his body sagged against the wall, held upright only by the chains.
Ron felt as if a corresponding weight was lifted on his end. Of course, the bars closing around his neck were something of a problem now…
His oxygen deprived brain became aware of the sudden presence of another figure in the room, claiming Ratsel's attention. The choking sensation began to recede.
It was a student, Durmstrangs' equivalent to Head Boy by the look of the extra insignias encrusting his uniform. His eyes took in Harry's still form and Ron's gasping head protruding from the cell door with a lip-curl of disdain.
"We have searched thoroughly, Professor. They were alone. We have contacted Madam Lestrange as you requested, and she awaits you by the…usual method, in your office."
"Thank you, Fraktor. You are to lock the door behind you, and no one is to be admitted without my personal approval. No one but myself is to approach Potter under any circumstances."
"Yes, Professor."
"Our Lord's reign will be renewed absolute upon that boy's death, but it must be at our Lord's own hands. You are responsible for seeing not only that he does not escape, but that he remains alive. If he gives sign of doing anything to damage himself, stop him and notify me immediately."
"Yes, Professor Ratsel. And the other?"
"Sings like a canary," said Ratsel with a sneer. "I doubt you'll have any problems with him."
The door slammed shut behind the two. The sound of multiple locks clicking and grinding into place made Ron feel faint. They were well and truly effed now.
He noticed Harry didn't bat an eyelash. He was still hanging against his restraints but his eyes were open and fixed intently upon the medallion hovering around his neck.
He was used to the sound of locks, after all.
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Little bit of a cliffie there, sort of. *Grins* On the plus side, lots more of this bit written, so I hope not to leave you waiting as long for the next part. (Like a week is that long. I'm sweating it out for you guys, you know!) Lots of swashbuckling wand waving, flying spells and action!Harry and battleblazing!Ron. Hermione and Luna will return to kick some WANKER bum. "Guest appearances" abound. And no, I haven't forgotten Draco or the locket - they'll be making an appearance shortly as well. We're not facing the final battle or anything here - just a warm up. Nothing better than a good comfort shag after, too. *grins even wider* Dan's "I'm legal now!" MTV comments are…inspiring me.
Thanks for reading and reviewing - I love your comments.
~ Lynney
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