Harry Potter and the Nexus of Magic

guardian

Rating: PG13
Genres: Romance, Action & Adventure
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 24/07/2005
Last Updated: 12/09/2005
Status: in_progress

Post-HBP to the end. Delves deeply into Harry's messed up mind. The first chapters deal with Harry's training and his mentality - chapter 8 contains a bizarre dream, so read it as such. Hope you like my story. New: got the next one out, finally!

Chapters

1. Prologue

2. Return to No.4

3. The New Neighbor

4. Are you mad, Granger?!

5. Confessions of shared madness

6. The Beginning of

7. Your deepest fears

8. A day off...right (revised)

9. Harry Potter: A New Hope (extended A/N in the end)

10. The secrets you keep

11. Everything is fair

12. The Locket, part I - Busy birthday

1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Just something I found in the backyard of a castle in England. Thought I’d type it in and post it here…Nah. This is just a figment of my imagination. HP, however sad the thought makes me after reading HBP, belongs to JKR.

A/N: My first try at fanfic. If anyone is interested in doing beta-reading for me, let me know. I’d like your opinions in reviews if I should continue or keep my fingers away from the keyboard from now on. Story will be my take on what would happen after HPB. It will certainly have some humor, romance, angst and action with a few zombies (infernus) thrown in for good measure. And all who understand who the characters are in the prologue can give themselves a cookie and a pat on the back ;) Also, at the moment I’m not sure what the final rating for the story will be so don’t ask.

BTW, after uploading I noticed the formatting had removed my separation borders from the story. Bloody html, going to revise and upload again.

Prologue - Amor vincit omnia

Four will create, one will almost destroy

that which was created with his evil ploy.

When the truth is revealed, two will fight.

One kills the other, sealing his fate.

Those actions will echo to distant time

‘Til their heirs will meet – and one shall die.

And though one’s power sets him above,

The other will win, because he has love.

The four just stood there for a moment – tired mentally and physically after what they had just done – and felt completely ecstatic. They had done what they had dreamed of, planned...and finally, created. The creation was looking exactly like the drawings they had made together and with two of the four friends being absolute perfectionists – not to mention that each and every one of them was a considered a genius by their contemporaries - it wasn’t really a wonder.

“Sleazy, I think You made Your part a bit too perfect!” one of the four, a man looking not a day older than 25 years, told to the other man standing next to him.

The speaker was tall, handsome, and if the people of that time would have known the expression – just plain sexy to every female that laid eyes on him. He had long light-blond hair that was tied together with a piece of thin rope, clean face without beard or moustache, blue sparkling eyes and he was wearing simple but well-fitting red clothes on his muscular body. It wasn’t the sort of muscles one has trained to impress the ladies or make others say “damn!” but the sort that tell you that this person is used to physical activity and could outrun a Greek legionnaire if he had to. The clothes weren’t like the ones the current “high society” fancied, but still had a classy feel about them. His voice was pleasant, clear and cheerful.

“What about making one of them ‘lean’ a bit, just to give it some...you know...personality?” The young man continued with a grin, winking to his two female companions.

“Why on earth would you like to do that...is it for some other reason or to cover the total lack of yours? And please stop calling me that.” The other man came right back with a quick response, raising an eyebrow as he looked at the younger man.

The older of the two men seemed to be about 50 or so years old and was wearing robes, so he could easily be taken for a highly placed official or a priest. The robes were black with occasional green and silver here and there. Also, he was wearing sandals unlike the other one, who preferred boots. He was very much the opposite of the other one in almost everything – one was muscular, other thin; one with a clean face, the other with a long black beard; one looked like someone who lived outdoors, the other like he had never set his foot outside his dusty study room and so on. His voice was even, slightly sibilant and with the feel of superiority in it. Only the ease with which the jokes flew from their lips was the same.

“Hey!” they younger man exclaimed in offended voice. “I got lots of personality! It’s inherited, you know, but there’s lots of it!”

“I’m not sure it got passed on to you by your parents. Considering the fact that I knew them quite well, are you sure you’re indeed their child and not a bastard?” The older man was quick-witted with his returns and usually aimed for a quick kill.

“I…uhh…” the young man was at a loss for words for a moment, trying to come up with a quick retort of his own. He cast a quick pleading look towards the other two who were again trying hard not to laugh out loud over the two friends jokes. “Touché,” he mumbled when the time set for a response by a mutual agreement long time ago ran out.

Both men looked expectantly at the third member of the group who was still busy trying to calm down. The young lady was shorter than either man, but slightly taller than the other woman. She had long raven-black hair and wore an elegant dress and shoes of same color with touch of blue here and there. She too looked young – around 25 – and was quite beautiful. If you’d put all the men on the ice of the north pole and then asked them to look into her deep, mysterious green eyes and at her beautiful, smiling lips…well, let’s say that global warming would have occurred quite a few centuries earlier than expected. She was physically charming, but she also possessed the personality that would have made a dragon curl at her feet and look at her with puppy-eyed admiring stare. And by the gods, was she smart…they all were considered to be geniuses, but the other three all admitted she had the sharpest mind of them all. Noticing the looks now all the others were giving her, she spoke in a musical voice that would have made anyone looking for someone to play an angel in a Christmas play cry from happiness.

“Three hundred and seventy six to four hundred and ten.” She looked at the younger man and said, “Sorry, but you’re slipping behind.” She then winked at him and gave him a look that clearly said “You might be loosing, but I still love you”.

The last of the four, an older lady wearing a brown-and-yellow dress, spoke to the older man in a motherly voice that was a bit shaky from holding back the laughter. You could tell from a mile away that she had a warm temperament of someone used to see the best in every person.

“Now that we have established his lineage,” he nodded towards the younger man, “what about his suggestion? I have to admit it, it sounds interesting.”

“No. Not with this. This shall be exactly as planned.” The older man said in a serious voice allowing no compromise. “If he’s so much into the ‘leaning’ stuff, he can do it at his manor in…Pisa, wasn’t it? I’m sorry dear lady, I know you want everyone to feel good and every idea to find acceptance, but this” and he nodded towards what they had just created “will be just as we planned – perfect.”

“That’s fine,” the younger man spoke up, “and thanks for the idea, by the way! I’ll be sure to come up with something suitably extravagant next time I’ll visit my place in Pisa!”

“You sure you can do it alone? Why not ask your lady to help you? You might just push it over instead of making it ‘lean’ without her help!” the old wizard joked, looking at the two younger people of the four.

“Hey! Not fair hitting the one on the ground already!” the young man said indignantly.

“I don’t hit them, I use them as rugs.” The older came back with a quick reply.

“What?” the other asked, sure he was missing something.

“Three hundred and seventy six to four hundred and eleven,” the raven-haired beauty remarked. “But enough of this…I personally would like to take a nice hot shower after what we’ve been just through, and then proceed to the last, most important part of our creation.”

The younger man hugged the woman close and kissed her. “I totally agree with the shower, but please,” she gave her another kiss ”do tell me, what exactly do you mean with the ‘most important part’?”

“Students, of course, my dear!” She kissed him back, “Students…” and gazed fondly at the creation the four had just finished – a huge castle with many straight and tall towers that was to become the best school for witchcraft and wizardry, ever.

“Oh, that!” the young man exclaimed. “Well, you all will be glad to know that I already have my first lesson planned!”

“What!? Really!?” the older man looked rather surprised. “What’s it going to be then?” he asked, giving the other man a suspicious stare.

“Can’t you guess? I thought you were my best friend!” he told in a loud voice, trying very hard to sound wounded and offended. “I thought we had an almost telepathic understanding with each-other!”

“Well, I’m a fairly good Legilimens, would that count?” the older one never missed a beat, throwing the ball right back to the other. That finally made the two women laugh out loud and announced a break in the game…till the next dawn.

“Awww, Sleazy, there’s a cruel and nasty side in you I’ve never noticed before,” the younger man muttered under his breath as the four friends walked forward to have a closer look at their creation.

The older man looked back at him then and asked, “So, what’s the lesson about, anyway? Ladies? Ladies and charms? Or ladies and transfiguration? No-no-no! I know! Ladies and the defense against the dark arts of modesty!”

The ladies and the older man were again laughing at the best ‘offended’ expression to date the younger man had managed to conjure.

“While your idea, my esteemed colleague, certainly holds a lot of appeal, I must inform you that you’re mistaken. My first lessons will be about something entirely different!” he also to his pride managed to give an indignant sniff, then pulled an old pointy hat from one of his pockets. “Please observe!”

The other three were now focused on their companion, wondering what was coming next. The younger man turned the hat upside down and with a theatrical move, stuck his hand inside it. When the hand was halfway in, there was suddenly a sharp click that made the three onlookers jump. The hand was quickly withdrawn, and it now had a mousetrap attached to it. The public burst into laughter while the owner of the hand got rid of the nasty contraption.

“Sorry, that never happened before!” he said in an embarrassed voice. “Give me a moment.” He turned the hat over and started shaking it. Out of it fell…three mice (“Oh, right, those bloody rodents!” the young man muttered loudly enough to be heard over the laughter and gave the discarded mousetrap a good kick), a cat (who ran after the mice), a broom, a grandfather clock and a sword. The young man have the hat a half-hearted last shake, then turned to the others who were on the verge of tears and doubling over from the laughter.

“I’m terribly sorry, but it seems like I’m out of rabbits,” he said in an apologizing tone.

“All right! Enough! That was well worth at least ten points, I admit it!” the older wizard managed to say through the gasps for breath. “Now lets finally go INSIDE the bloody thing. And by the way…I think I just had a rather brilliant idea based on our scorekeeping. I think you’re going to love this one…”

“Good!” the younger man exclaimed and was about to put his hand on his friends shoulder when something moving in one of the older man’s robes pockets caught his eye. “Holy! Sleazy! Not another of your usual pets, please!” He sounded a bit appalled.

“Oh no! Absolutely not! This is something quite different altogether! I just need to come up with a suitable use for it…” The older man replied, his gaze glassy as if he was exploring the possible versions of the future and the part his latest, most unique pet, would have in it. Maybe it could even ‘take care’ of his young friends extremely annoying feathered pet, because so far all his plots to remove the bothersome creature had been unsuccessful, the old man was privately musing.

“You and your ‘suitable uses’!” the young man sighed. “I bet you could find a ‘suitable use’ even for this!” He held out his old hat he had just used for the performance.

“My young friend, you have no idea!” his friend answered with a wicked grin.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Several years later the two youngest of the original four friends were having a very different conversation in one of the private study rooms set aside for the creators, hidden from the rest of the school. Hidden so well, in fact, that even the ghost, who could just drift through the walls, had no idea of its existence. The castle had attracted a fair share of them and had even managed to produce a few of its own – which was exactly the topic of the discussion between the two finding place in one late evening. The still quite young-looking man was pacing angrily around the study, the young woman sitting in a chair by the fireplace and looking at the man with worried eyes.

“I can’t believe he would – could – do something like this!” the young man said angrily. “When he left, babbling about his pureblood mania, I thought he was going to take it slow for a time, calm down and …” A pained expression flashed across his face and he could almost feel the tears of loss, anger and extreme disappointment that would come any moment now. “That bastard! When I find him, I’m going to blow him to pieces!” he added in a deep growl, sounding like a lion about to jump and pounce on his unsuspecting victim.

“Don’t be stupid!” the woman shouted. “Yes, you have the most experience among us in fighting monsters, others like us and…stuff!” she yelled at him, on the verge of crying, too. “But he KNOWS you so well! Your ability to use wandless magic, your most effective spells, maneuvers AND your weaknesses – he KNOWS them all!” She looked at him, so afraid that if he went to battle their former friend, she was never going to see him again, hear his voice again, feel his lips…

“Well, I KNOW him well, too, and that is going to be the end of him,” the young man answered, stopping before the chair, crouching down, taking the woman’s hands into his and bringing them to his lips. “You know those kids were more than just students for me – they were friends, almost family. That’s why we call the students in our care a ‘House’. And that’s why I’m going to kill that snake-loving cold-blooded bastard. If I don’t, then who?” he asked with a smile, drawing a short laugh from the woman and a smile.

“You take your bloody titles way too seriously, mister ‘Lionheart’, or was it the ‘Last Protector’? And what about the ‘Dragonrider’ last year?” the woman asked with an involuntary smile.

“A little bit of both, and a whole lot more, including – according to a rather passionate dark-haired beauty – ‘Mister Love-“ he never managed to finish saying it before the woman drew his head down for a passionate kiss, then pushed him back a step and glared at him.

“I swear that if you are ever going to tell anyone what I called you during my moment of…”

“Passion, love, lust, ecstasy?” the young man was there to help her find the correct words.

“Weakness,” the woman finished in a furious, low tone, “I’m going to curse your handsome ass into oblivion!”

“Love you too, dear…” the man answered and gave her another kiss that took her breath away. “But still, I can’t let the matter go. I can’t even tell you what all I felt when I missed two students in my class today and then found one of them floating around in the dungeons…as a ghost.” He finished in a whisper. “If Patrick hadn’t found the courage and strength to…”he swallowed hard, ”remain behind, we never would’ve found out.”

“Did you even think about what he told us?” There was a note of fear in her voice. “If it’s true he invented an unstoppable killing curse…” she shuddered at the thought, “then any battle with him will prove to be short, fatal and quickly over! I can’t see the point in throwing away your life when there’s no chance of winning!” she pleaded with him.

“That’s where you’re mistaken, my love. It’s not throwing away my life that I’m famous for, it’s winning against all odds. I’m sure something will happen that will give me an edge over th- AH BUGGER!” he suddenly screamed and fell on the floor.

The lady jumped up with a desperate scream, quickly looking around for the source of the attack…but there was nothing. He carefully stepped to the man and looked at him.

“Love, are you all right?” she asked. She saw him open his blue eyes and give her a wink, then he groaned something.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Really hate divination…” came the reply in a weak voice. She couldn’t help but laugh at that. She knew he got occasional ‘visions’ – prophecies, if you’d like, but they usually didn’t happen when you needed them. Heck, he could be hanging a hundred meters above the ground, begging for one that would tell you to count to ten, then let go because there will be a friendly hippogriff flying past at exactly that moment, and get…absolutely nothing. And then there are the ones you DO get, mostly about the time you try to enjoy the company of a certain raven-haired beauty, in private and butt-naked. They both agreed that those were their least favorites.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Amor vincit omnia…” – love conquers all – like most ‘educated’ people of the time, she knew Latin quite well. Or if you asked him, she knew Latin well enough to edit Cesar’s speeches to fix the grammatical errors.

“Uhh…You’re supposed to snog him to death?”

“Ahh, thank you, that was exactly the mental image I was looking for my entire life!” he called back, still lying on the floor. ”But no, that wasn’t it.” He stood up and shook his head to clear it. “That reminds me something…” he muttered.

And with a snap of his fingers he disappeared.

“What?!” she looked shocked. She had a good reason, too. They all had agreed that there will be an enchantment preventing anyone from apparating inside the school and so it was done. “Bastard,” she muttered. “Never had any respect for rules – man-made, magical or otherwise. Wonder where he went?”

She quickly left the private chambers and hurried to the office the young man had always used. She entered the room, looking for him, but it was empty, save for the young man’s pet, his ‘second great love’ as he called it. She went to his desk to see if there’s a note or something…anything. And there was. On a piece of parchment, written in his hasty handwriting was what she assumed to be the prophecy. It was indeed – in the rhymed, mystical nonsense style they all seemed to come.

“Four will…” she quickly scanned the first sentence. The first piece fell into place in her mind. It was indeed about them. She cast a quick glance at the pet – a beautiful and rare bird. The bird was…”One kills…” crying.

There have been many philosophical discussions about the subject of breaking hearts. Most of them are about if there is a sound when a heart is instantly broken into million pieces and if it can be heard. The true answer is – there is, and it can be. It’s rather like a whisper and sounds like…

“No!”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The dark dungeon he had dug in the swamp was his new home, study and stronghold. Additionally, it provided him with many, many spies that most intruders wouldn’t even notice, wouldn’t expect, wouldn’t watch out for until it was too late. After all, snakes were the natural inhabitants of swamps.

It wasn’t really a surprise when his spies informed him of a young man making his way towards his stronghold. He had expected it the moment he saw the white, transparent form of a ghost appearing above one of his victims… No, he reminded himself. Not victims – test subjects. They should have been honored. They were the first to be on the receiving end of his latest invention – the unstoppable killing curse, the years-long product of his research, his greatest achievement and mightiest weapon. It took just two words to render even the mightiest opponent to his basic components – flesh and blood lacking a soul.

“So the arrogant fool thinks his luck will protect him against the curse?” The old man laughed aloud, a high-pitched laugh that would have sent a cold shudder through any warm-blooded creature. “Kill him!” he ordered his spies.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The young man storming through the dark stronghold was paying close attention to his surroundings. There was plenty of evidence of the dark nature of it’s inhabitants – stuffed creatures in one room, jars of various ‘stuff’ that made him feel sick in another and a dead house elf in the third.

“Poor buggers… Told ‘em to grow a backbone and hex his ass off, but ‘No, master! We are good elves! We cannot disobey our master!’,” the young invader muttered.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

He had to admit - he was surprised that the young man had gone down so quickly. He hadn’t even managed to get to his inner sanctum to confront him directly. What a miserable last performance from the ‘great hero’ of the common folk. He used to be so jovial, so full of life. And now – he was just dead. At his feet.

“Well-well!” he gloated at the body. ”No more jokes? No more laughs? Not even a single punch-line?”

The body suddenly rolled to his feet and putting all the strength of the momentum into an uppercut that lifted the other out of his sandals.

“How’s that for a punch-line?” the young man, quite alive, asked the older one in an icy tone. The older man was lying on his back quite a distance from his sandals he noticed with a satisfaction. With any luck he’d broken the bastards jaw, making him unable to utter another curse. Then, suddenly, the body disappeared. “Oh well, I knew it wouldn’t be over that easy…” he muttered. In fact, he knew it would not be easy at all. He knew exactly how this was going to end. Badly. ‘Badly’ sucks, he thought.

He instinctively sidestepped a curse that drilled a neat smoking hole in the wall where he had just been standing and shot off one of his own. He wasn’t really aiming at him – he knew he wouldn’t hit, he was just putting on a good show. ‘Still, it’s a nice, cozy blaze’ he admitted, watching his fireball consume the bastards books, research notes and who knows what other precious belongings. ‘If I’m going down hard, might as well enjoy myself!’

Through all the cursing, jinxing, counterspelling and dispelling the two managed to hold another battle – one they had started a long time ago. It was a battle of wills and wits, and this, they knew, was the last scene of it. It was a battle each wanted to win more desperately than the battle of spells for the spells were merely the physical manifestations of their wills. It was a battle where winner takes all. It was a battle with no price for the second place.

“So, come to avenge your pathetic little mudbloods?” the older man asked as he shot off his first spell.

“I told you that this ‘pureblood’ mania of yours will be the end of you,” his opponent answered, sidestepping the curse and throwing off a spell of his own. “Just didn’t expect it to me who will be finishing you off.”

With rage born from watching his precious books and research notes, not to mention research equipment worth a dragons hoard, burning to ashes he screamed another spell at the arrogant fool. “You think you can defeat me?! I have an unstoppable curse that will kill you in a heartbeat!”

“Well, why not use it then?” he asked calmly, changing the giant black snake flying at his face to a flock of butterflies.

“I’d rather have your death long, painful and full of suffering!” the older one replied. It was a cold, cruel and arrogant voice his opponent noticed. He wondered if it had always been such and he never noticed. He DID notice another curse flying his way and decided it was best not to stand in its way.

“Oh no! Please! Not another one of your lectures!” the young man laughed at his face, suddenly apparating in front of his enemy and threw another punch at his face. That long, crooked nose of his was a rather inviting target. And it made a nice crunching sound as his fist connected with it. ‘A rather good one,’ he thought. ‘Worth at least another ten points if I do say so myself’.

“Fine,” the older man said in a cold voice and apparated to a safe distance. “You want it quick, I’ll give you quick…for old times sake.” He pointed at the young man.

“Ah, good! I hate long goodbyes!” the young man managed to reply before the final curse was uttered. The end was near. It was his time.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” the old man screamed and there was a green explosion of light.

The young man gently slid to the ground. His face was still smiling. He had won.

“The fool,” the old man sighed, watching at the smile. “Didn’t even realize he had already lost.” And then…

There was a sudden ‘crack’ and a young raven-haired woman appeared next to the dead man. Without even thinking the old man screamed out the curse again. ‘Good,’ he thought with satisfaction, ‘no loose ends.’ And suddenly he was very much afraid, for she was smiling, and the smile was telling him exactly what he himself had said just a moment ago. And then his masterpiece – the unstoppable curse – rebounded and his soul was torn from his body and cast into a dark place.

With tears replacing the smile she looked at the young man and saw his smile. It displayed mischief, courage, strength – and above all else – love.

The End….

…of the Prologue.

2. Return to No.4

Disclaimer: You’ll just have to go and read the one at the start of the Prologue. It’s just a click away!

A/N: This is a quite short one, giving you another taste of my writing style. If you don’t like my cooking, let me know, ok?

Return to No. 4

Harry Potter was not happy with his current situation. He was sitting on the back seat of Dursleys car, rolling towards his next – and thank the heavens – last stay at Privet Drive with his relatives. He would rather be somewhere else – at the Burrow with the Weasleys, staying with Hermione at her parents’ house or even in Sirius’s old house with Kreatcher. But it seemed that the Fates weren’t kind to him and respecting his late Headmaster’s wish, he was once again forced to spend some time with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and idiot-of-a-cousin Dudley.

Harry wished that Ron and Hermione could have followed their original plan and stayed with him. Their presence would have made the last stay at Dursleys tolerable, even enjoyable maybe, considering they both were now considered to be of age according to the wizarding laws and could have turned the Dursleys into vermin had they dared to even look at them the wrong way. But Ron was really needed at the Burrow to help prepare for Bill and Fleur’s wedding and Hermione wanted to spend some time with her parents and gather any books that she had left at home that could be useful before leaving them for who knew how long. That meant that the only other being he cared about in the car currently was Hedwig.

‘At least it’ll be all over when I turn seventeen at the end of the month. I’ll be free to do what I want – or what I have to, actually. I’ll be with my best friends,’ Harry thought. Dumbledore had told him that the protective wards around his relatives’ house would collapse when he turns seventeen, but he should stay there until then. Out of respect for his memory Harry had decided to do exactly so even when he desired with all his heart to blow up the house along with his relatives and take off to somewhere else. Harry doubted he would be able to resist the temptation to do just that if not for the fact that thanks to the two-way mirrors he could talk to Hermione any time he wanted and now that she had passed the apparition test she could visit him whenever she wanted.

The idea of Hermione apparating into his room every day of his stay at Privet Drive was certainly appealing to the young wizard. They needed to discuss their options, make plans and discover a way to bring down the darkest and most powerful wizard now alive. Dumbledore’s death had certainly tipped the scales in favor of the dark forces. Finding and destroying the Horcruxes was in itself a seemingly impossible task if his last venture to find one was any evidence of what to expect. Killing Voldermort seemed to be impossible squared by thousand.

Taking a look out the car window he saw that they were already arriving at no. 4 Privet Drive. When the car stopped on the driveway and Harry stepped out he noticed the truck and activity at the house next to Dursley’s. It looked like a lot of furniture was carried inside.

“Are the Langleys redecorating or something?” he asked uncle Vernon when he pulled his trunk out of the car.

“No,” Vernon growled, taking a look at the movers. “They moved and sold the house. Good riddance too, I say. Hear the new owner is some rich American. But that’s none of your business,” he said, giving Harry a look filled with disgust. “I expect you to be gone from my house the moment the clock strikes midnight and you’ll be of age. Finally you’ll be out of our lives and we don’t have to see another of you freaks for the rest of our lives.”

“Agreed. And considering that I’m the only thing keeping the wards up around your house that keep the dementors, dark muggle-hating wizards and such out, I’ll be happy too.” Noticing Vernons face going white at the mention of dementors, Harry added, “And speaking of dementors, I hear they are breeding – however that would happen I have no idea. They’ve been to the neighborhood one already, maybe they’ll visit again.” Vernon had gone totally white now and his moustache was twitching. He was glancing around nervously as if expecting an attack any moment now.

“I hear Voldemort managed to recruit some giants too,” Harry continued tormenting the fat muggle. “Eighteen feet tall monsters who really enjoy eating humans.” Vernon turned on the spot and ran inside the house. ‘Mischief managed,’ thought Harry and started dragging his trunk and Hedwig’s cage to his room.

Finally in his small room, he shut and barricaded the door and dropped the trunk and cage on the floor. He gave the room a mock salute and said in an imitation of a crisp military tone: “Privet Drive no. 4, smallest bedroom on second floor, prisoner Harry Potter reporting to endure the last part of his punishment, sir!”

He dropped down on the bed without taking off his clothes and fell asleep.

3. The New Neighbor

Disclaimer: I’d like it if JKR would give the copyrights to all things HP to Goldy, Lynney, wetback, KateJ. (sorry ppl, I can’t put everyone’s names in here) or heck, even to me, but I don’t think its going to happen. Oh, well at least there’s Portkey.org. We’re free here!

A/N: If you think giving Harry some fighting skills is a bad idea You really wont like what I’m going to do to him later in the story *evil grin* This chapter sets up a scene in a later chapter.

The New Neighbor

Harry woke up early next morning, drenched in cold sweat, heart beating madly against his ribs and his brain wrapped in foggy feeling of terror. From the familiar feeling he understood that he’d just had a rather remarkable nightmare, but try as he might, he couldn’t remember a single thing. That didn’t make him feel better about it. He’d rather remember what the nightmare was about so he could at least try to understand what was tormenting him now. ‘Fear of the unknown,’ he thought. When Voldemort came back from the dead and killed Cedric, he had some first-class nightmares too, but he had remembered those. He remembered almost every nightmare he had ever had. ‘So why not this one?’

He brought his hand up to his forehead and touched his scar. It was feeling normal – no burning, no prickling, no anything. It was almost a year now from the last time he had felt anything from his scar – last time being Voldemort possessing him. That had felt worse than a Cruciatus, pain so strong that death had seemed like a blessing. But he didn’t die that day. Instead he had somehow driven Voldemort out and evidently the bastard had now no desire to get in his head again. ‘Is he really afraid of me? Did it hurt Him so much he keeps out of my mind and blocks me out of his own with Occlumency even if He could spy on me through the connection, find out my plans, my location? It would be really easy for him to get rid of me that way – just possess me and jump out the window. No more Harry Potter, no more threat to his power. So why is he not even trying? What the hell are you up to, you bastard?’

He got up and unblocked the door, then opened the window to let in some fresh air. He took some clean clothes from his school trunk that he had left unpacked last evening and dragged himself to the bathroom. He peeled off the sweat-soaked clothes and stepped into the shower. Though he usually liked to take a hot shower in the morning today he opted for the cold treatment hoping it would help to clear the fog from his brain. The cold water gave his system a small shock at first, covering him with a freezing sensation from head to toes, small shivers running all over him. Then he started to like the feeling. It indeed helped to clear his head, washing the terror of the night down the drain with the sweat and shower gel. Harry rubbed himself clean and jumped out of the shower, feeling invigorated and energized. The problem, as he saw it, was that it was still rather early, the sun barely having risen above the horizon.

‘Too early to use the mirror and try to talk to Hermione. She’s still asleep for sure, having probably spent half the night abusing some poor book that had caught her attention. There’s not really anyone around anymore she could suggest informing about my new nightmare …Sirius – gone, Dumbledore – dead. There wasn’t anyone else around I trusted with such things besides those two. Except Ron and Hermione, but I’m not going to ruin their last chance at having some peace of mind before we go looking for what’s left of Tom’s soul.’

He walked downstairs and out the backdoor to enjoy some peace and quiet in the garden himself before the Dursleys wake up and start to make his life as miserable as they could. He stood there – eyes closed and took a deep breath of the cool morning air. He must have stood there for a minute or so before he started to notice some strange noises that the cool morning breeze was carrying to his ears. The closest thing to the ‘swishes’ and ‘wooshes’ he heard was probably a broomstick going at high speed. He popped his eyes open and took a look around.

He wasn’t the only one who was up and about early this morning. The new owner of Privet Drive No. 3 was in his backyard clad in a white martial arts gi and twirling a 2 meters long wooden pole with astonishing speed. Harry found himself mesmerized by the flowing movements of the young dark-haired man as the almost dance-like performance continued. Thrusts, twirls, blocks, sweeps, leaps and rolls were performed with grace and speed Harry didn’t think a human was capable of. He felt a small stitch of jealousy, wanting to possess the same speed and strength and fighting perfection. The dance went on and on until Harry, standing there, fascinated, lost the track of time.

“BOY!” Uncle Vernon’s voice suddenly roared into his ear making him jump with shock. “ I DON’T FEED YOUR LAZY ARSE FOR GAZING AROUND! GET INSIDE AND START PREPARING THE BREAKFAST!” Harry saw Vernon Dursley stand next to him, fists up and face the color of a ripe tomato. Somehow the Elephant Man had managed to sneak up to him. Vernon Dursley took his breakfast very seriously and if it wasn’t waiting for him when he came downstairs in the morning, he usually got very angry. At Harry, naturally.

“As I’ll be leaving your house after the month is over, I think it’s high time you learned how to cook your own breakfast, uncle Vernon!” Harry bit back angrily. “I’m done slaving for you lot!” He was feeling rather defiant after the cold shower and the show next-doors had got his adrenaline up a notch, too.

“GET IN THE KITCHEN NOW, BOY, OR I’LL LOCK YOU UP FOR THE MONTH WITH NO FOOD!” Vernon screamed, almost foaming at the mouth now, his moustache glistening with spit.

“Sorry, uncle, but now that my friends are just a pop away, that threat isn’t very….well, intimidating – now is it?” Harry turned around and started marching away, deciding to go for a walk in the park or something…anything away from his uncle.

He had taken two steps at the most when he was spun around and two beefy, fat hands camped around his throat. Harry found Vernon’s face not an inch from his own, bloodshot eyes staring into his with maniacal gleam. With the strength of a madman Vernon was strangling him, holding him up on his toes, unable to do anything. Harry felt paralyzed by the crazed stare, like a rabbit looking at the headlights coming screaming at him knowing the doom they carried but unable to move a muscle. Vernon’s squeeze was cutting off his breath. This time, Harry’s brain wondered for a moment, the electric jolt that had released him from Vernon’s grasp last year wasn’t happening. He even wondered, if Vernon would have noticed it. It was precious oxygen wasted on thought process the body could not afford. Harry’s ears started buzzing and vision began to go fuzzy from lack of oxygen. ‘Well, I did wonder which one of them would kill me first, Vernon or Voldemort. Now I know…”

“I’ll show you intimidating, you freak,” he heared Vernon hiss as if through a long tunnel. “I’ll teach you how to…”

Whatever else Vernon intended to teach him was not revealed, however. There was a sharp CRACK!!! and Harry instantly felt the hands around his throat fall away. Harry fell down on his hands and knees, grasping for breath and swallowing hard. After a moment his vision seemed to return and he looked around. Vernon was lying on the lawn out cold, a small bluish circle the size of a coin on his left temple.

‘Great! What have I done now? More underage wizardry? Wonder if this qualifies as self defense…’ He then noticed something else – a 2 meters long pole lying n the grass next to Vernon’s unconscious body. With mouth open from the surprise, he looked towards house No.3. The young man was walking towards the 1,5 meter tall hedge separating the two properties and jumped over it without any visible effort.

“Sorry about that, neighbor,” the man said to Harry, nodding towards Vernon. “Lost the grip on my staff for a moment. Terribly sorry.” Harry looked into his blue eyes with amazement and he could have sworn the blue eyes gave him a wink that was too quick to consciously register. “You OK, kid? Let me give you a hand.”

He grasped the offered hand by the wrist and was pulled to his feet. The other man’s grasp on his own hand felt strange. Like it was exactly as strong as it needed to be – he got the feeling that the owner of the hand knew exactly how much strength one needs to apply to help another to his feet, pull the arm out of the socket, or even break it if need be.

“Thanks!” Harry managed to croak through his sore throat. He slid his arm from the man’s wrist into a firm handshake. “I’m Harry, Harry Potter. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“My pleasure, kid.” The young man replied, looking with his clear blue eyes straight into Harry’s green ones. Harry had suddenly a feeling like he was facing Snape again and about to get his head lobotomized by Legilimency. Nothing like that happened, however. “Call me Bruce,” the new neighbor said and gave Harry a reassuring smile. Bruce slid his foot beneath the staff, kicked it into air and deftly caught it. “Well I’ll better get back to my own turf now before I get shot for trespassing. Stay safe!” He walked back to the hedge and jumped over it again.

Harry suddenly did something he never would have believed he possessed the courage to do. “Hey Bruce!” he called out. He walked to the hedge and looked at Bruce, feeling a bit nervous. “I’m stuck with my uncle and aunt for the month. You might have gathered that they don’t really like me much and it would be really nice if I had an excuse to spend as little time with them as I could.”

The young man smiled at Harry, guessing already what the kid was going to ask him. “So what’s on your mind, Harry?”

“Well, I wanted to ask you if you’d be willing to teach me how to fight - you know - self defense.”

“And why would you want to learn how to fight?” The man’s face was very serious now. “Teaching martial arts is something that I will not do without a good reason. Martial arts, like many skills, can be used either for good…or for something else. A teacher is responsible for teaching his student, but also for how the student uses the skills he is taught. Tell me – why should I teach you?”

Harry rubbed his neck that was still a bit red and bruised and looked Bruce straight in the eyes as he said: “Well, the main reason is that my life might depend on it, as you no doubt saw and heard just a minute ago. I’d rather not have it repeated again when there’s no-one around to save me – I cant be that lucky all the time.

Bruce nodded at this. “Definitely a good reason. And what’s the other reason?”

“Well,” Harry grinned, “what you did there with the staff – it just looked wicked cool!”

“Well, I guess that’s a good reason too!” Bruce laughed. “OK, I’ll train you, but I’ll tell you right away that a month won’t be enough to teach you everything. You’ll have to choose what you want to focus on – like learning how to fight with a sword, staff or unarmed, or maybe learn how to pin down and throw your enemies. Everything has its advantages, but I’d like you to make the choices as you know best what you could be facing in the future. Think of it and let me know tomorrow morning at the same time here – I’ll be waiting for you.”

Harry took a quick look at his watch and saw that it was already late enough to contact Hermione with the mirror without the fear of retribution for waking her. “Right, see you around, Bruce!” He ran through the kitchen and up the stairs to his room, closing and barricading the door again. He jumped to his trunk and pulled out the old mirror. He sat down on the bed and looked in the mirror.

“Hermione Granger!” he said clearly.

A/N: Before you even go there, NO, BRUCE’S PARENTS WERE NOT KILLED BY A THUG IN A DARK ALLEY! This is not THAT kind of a story, sorry to disappoint you. Go read C.Cowboy’s stories, they’ll make you feel better, I promise!

4. Are you mad, Granger?!

Disclaimer: I was unsuccessful in my try to obtain the copyrights to HP. That means it still belongs to JKR.

A/N: Somewhere I got totally screwed up on what’s canon and what’s fanfic so I suddenly found out that I’ve given Hermione one of the mirrors with nothing on it in HBP (if there was and I’m just not able to find it, let me know, but I’m 99,9% certain it was only a fic). Nutter. Someone out there wrote such an excellent piece of fic that my brain is now totally locked on it as official-HP.

Anyway, the next chapter - a funny, flirty, angry tiny chappy (lot’s of y’s here, the sign of quality – just like Goldy, Lynney…ok, you probably got it that I’m obsessed with those 2 writers already)! Hope you like it! And if you do, review! And I hope I won’t have to change the rating because honestly I have no idea if this chappy still fits PG13.

Are you mad, Granger?!

Harry was glad that he had managed to do at least one thing right before he got carted off to Dursleys. Before leaving the train he had summoned Kreatcher and ordered him to go to No.12 Grimmauld Place and get him the second two-way mirror of the pair. He had quickly scribbled a note and when Kreatcher had promptly returned slipped them both into Hermione’s schoolbag. Hermione and Ron were at that moment out in the hallway investigating the strange explosions they all had just heard. Silently thanking Fred and George for the Decoy Detonators, Harry managed to pull his plan off undetected. He felt it wouldn’t be a good idea to give the mirror to Hermione with Ron sitting there – it might have provoked a discussion about why he was giving the mirror to her and not to him Harry really didn’t want to get into. He cast a Reparo on his own broken mirror that was still lying at the bottom of his school trunk like a reminder of his broken link to Sirius.

So now he was sitting on his bed and gazing expectantly at the small mirror, waiting for Hermione’s face to appear in it.

“Harry!” he heard Hermione’s happy voice almost instantly after calling her name. The surface of he mirror turned pitch black for half a second and then changed to…

‘HOLY MERLIN!’ Harry’s eyes almost popped out and his heart slammed hard against his Adams apple. He quickly shut his eyes closed and started muttering ‘Keepittogetherkeepittogetherniceknickersargh!keepittogether.’

“Harry? Harry! Are you OK?” he heard her concerned voice. He risked taking a peek at the mirror with one eye. Seeing Hermione’s worried face looking at him from the mirror he opened both eyes and smiled at her, still feeling a bit dizzy. The young witch smiled back at him. Harry concentrated hard on keeping his eyes on her face and not taking in the rest of the beautiful girl in a short white summer dress sitting cross-legged on her own bed.

“I’m fine!” he managed to squeak in a high voice that last came through his lips at about the time he was eleven years old, he thought. “I have a request for you though. Next time please don’t accept the call until you’ve raised the mirror to your face, Hermione, and please, definitely don’t call out my name when it’s still resting in your lap. I rather like my eyes where they are at the moment.”

Hermione blinked once, then seemed to realize what exactly Harry was telling her. Harry had never seen anyone go so red so quickly. That went even beyond ‘Weasley red’. She seemed to be swaying for a moment and Harry wondered if she was going to pass out from embarrassment.

“Whoa! Calm down, girl! It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. I’m smarter than that. I know I’d be dead if I did!” Harry had no idea what he should be telling her so he was just blabbering whatever came to his mouth.

“That’s right Harry and you better believe it!” Hermione’s red face was threatening him, the gaze of her narrowed eyes locked into his. “You tell anyone and you can forget about calling yourself The Boy Who Lived!”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence between them when neither one of them could think of what to say next. Then Hermione’s voice came through the mirror again.

“Er, so, why did you call, anyway? I doubt it was just for the free show.”

“Oh, yeah!” Harry remembered, glad for the change in topic. “I was wondering what you were up to and wanted to ask you a few things.” He mentally revised the list of questions he wanted to ask her. “First, I wanted to ask you what you know about the Fidelius Charm – remember that one? We heard professor Flitwick explain a bit about it in Three Broomsticks during our third year. I’m especially interested in what happens after the Secret Keeper dies. Will that break the charm? Do we have to recast it on No.12 to keep it hidden?”

Hermione’s brows furrowed, forming her ‘study mode’ expression. She took a quick glance to her left. ‘Probably a bookcase with all her magic books. Or if I’m looking at her through a mirror, is it actually at her right side? Arrrgh! Brain, get a grip and focus!’ Harry thought.

“Yes, I remember the Fidelius Charm – I looked it up the moment I got back to the library after we overheard that conversation, but I’ll check it up just to be sure. Anyway, I remember that it was terribly complicated – I’m not sure we could recast it.”

“Says the girl who could brew the Polyjuice Potion before her second year was even half through!? You’re kidding, right?” Harry asked, disbelief visible on his face. “Hermione, I thoroughly agree with Hagrid in one thing – they HAVEN’T invented a spell yet that you couldn’t cast!” Seeing that she was about to object, he added in a bit angry tone: “And if you just opened your mouth to tell me it’s not true I’ll apparate over to your house and try to curse you. I know it’s suicidal but at least it would make you consider it. If you can take out the Chosen One, then what’s casting a bloody charm next to that, right?”

Hermione gave him a shy smile. “Right, Harry…Thanks.”

“No problem!” He gave her a wide smile in return. He leaned his head back, resting it against the wall and closing his eyes. ”Now, the second…” he started but was interrupted.

“Harry?” Did he hear concern and a bit of anger in her voice? ‘Not good!’ He popped his eyes open again and looked in the mirror. Hermione’s face was taunt and her eyes were two narrow slits focused somewhere below his chin. Her dark brown eyes slowly moved back to his face and locked into his own green eyes. “What happened to your neck?”

‘Crap! Bad idea to let her see that! Wonder if Dursleys will be still alive tomorrow…’ Harry was truly amazed at how his brain managed to shift to processing useless crap whenever he really needed a quick answer to get out of trouble with Hermione.

“I’m waiting, Harry. And don’t even think about lying to me!” she hissed. Damn, she could be scary when she wanted to. Harry could not move his eyes away from hers.

“Fine…I had a bit of an argument with uncle Vernon, nothing too serious.” He blinked. ‘Shit!’

“I told you not to lie to me, Harry…” Hermione’s low voice growled through the mirror.

‘She sounds really angry now…I think I should jump out the window before the house goes up in flames…’ Suddenly Hermione’s face disappeared from the mirror and it again reflected his own somewhat pale face back at him. ‘Shit!’

There was a sharp someone-just-apparated-into-your-room CRACK jolting Harry up from his bed. He found himself face to face ‘Well, forehead to chin, actually – damn I’ve grown taller than her!’ with a young, brown-haired and mighty angry witch.

“That’s it, Harry! Your stay here is officially over! Pack up now - you’re coming to my place for the moment until you decide where you want to go next!” Without waiting for him to start moving, she wiped her wand across the room and yelled “Pack!” The few items he had managed to unpack flew back into his trunk, and taking a quick look inside he noticed the items he had thrown around inside before were all neatly folded or placed. There suddenly seemed to be a lot more space than usually. Next moment the trunk was shrunk to the size of a matchbox and stuffed into his pocket.

“C’mon! Hold on to me, I’ll apparate us out of this hellhole!” Hermione told him.

“Wait, Hedwig! I need to let her out!” He let the white owl out of the cage and opened the window for her. “I’m staying with Hermione for a while, girl, you can find me there. You have time off if you want some – fly around, eat some mice, do the things owls do…OK, hop out now, Hermione’s gonna blow her casket any moment now!”

When Hedwig was gone he turned quickly around and jumped towards Hermione, reaching for her outstretched arm. She already had a look of deep concentration on her face, meaning she was going any moment now – with or without him. His hand was an inch away from hers when suddenly he managed to stumble into a low chair, catching it’s sharp corner right below his left kneecap. Unbelievable pain shot through his leg, he was off-balance and waiving his arms frantically when it hit him that he had missed Hermione’s arm. With desperate effort he threw his body forward and his hand shot towards her, grabbing hold of her.

CRACK!!!

He didn’t like apparition – almost as much as he didn’t like traveling by floo powder. Mainly because his landings didn’t turn out quite well. When he got squeezed out the other side of the rubber tube ‘Well, that’s how it feels to me’, he felt like he was knocking something over, falling and then landing on something soft. When everything stopped moving he dared to take a look around.

Harry’s brain started to process the information coming in from the eyes – it took a bit more than a second to process all of it. ‘I’m in a girl’s room, that’s quite clean – a lot cleaner than mine, anyway. There are bookcases along the walls, a chair and a desk near the window and a bed that I’m currently lying on. Actually, I’m lying more on Hermione , who is lying on her back, than on the bed – must be her I collided with and knocked over. Now let’s see… She’s lying beneath me with her short dress having fallen over her hips, exposing her white underwear again. Her left leg is squeezed between my legs al the way up to my xxxx, which is getting harder every second now, by the way. I’m half-lying over her, my left arm supporting my upper body over hers. And by the way, my right hand is still squeezing her right breast where it grabbed it just before we apparated. She has a disbelieving, stunned and surprised look on her face. I’m probably going to die now.’ Harry pulled back his hand as if burned and jumped off the bed.

“HOLY SHIT!” He yelled in shock. He had just grabbed a very intimate part of a young beautiful girl without her prior permission and expected the Hammer of Retribution to slam down on him any moment now. ‘If there’s a God, please strike me down with lightning now before she gets me!’ Nothing. ‘Crap!’

“Well, Harry…” Hermione started to talk calmly, looking into his eyes, one eyebrow cocked. “So far today you have managed to get a look at my underwear, knock me down on my bed, let me know in no uncertain terms that you find me desirable and grabbed by breast. Please tell me now what else you got planned for today. Maybe I should just strip off my clothes and throw myself at you, hmm?” she suggested.

‘Wouldn’t mind if you did! SHUT UP, BRAIN!!!’ Realizing that he still had a pulse and was miraculously, but apparently not in danger of loosing it just now, Harry decided to apologize before it’s too late. “I’m sorry, Hermione. That was a rather poor payback for your rescue. I’m truly sorry if I hurt you and you have every right to hex my ass off right now.” He hung his head in sign of regret.

“Harry! I would never do that!” he heard Hermione exclaim. His head snapped up to look at her wide eyes.

“You wouldn’t?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course not!” her eyes narrowed into dark slits again and a wide, wicked smile spread across her face. “I’m a woman, Harry! I take my revenge sweet and slow!”

‘Aww, screw this! Where’s the door to Hell when you need it?’

Suddenly there was a knock on the window. Hermione jumped off the bed and turned to the window, giving Harry a good look at her lower body from behind before her dress fell down to cover it again. She stepped to the window and pulled away the yellow curtains revealing a brown owl sitting on a window still, carrying an official-looking envelope. She opened the window and stretched ut her hand to take the envelope, but the bird jumped in through the window and flew towards Harry, dropping the envelope in his hands. It tried to fly out the window again, but suddenly Hermione slammed the window shut. “Wait,” she commanded the owl.

Harry was holding the envelope, not sure what to do next. It was addressed to him, allright, but he had no idea what business the Ministry’s Misuse of Magic Department would have with him this time. Catching Hermione’s gaze he shrugged, sat down on the bed and ripped the envelope open. Hermione sat down next to him and read the letter he pulled out with him. It wasn’t fan-mail, he realized after a few lines.

Dear Mr. Potter

This is a letter to inform you that approximately at approximately at 10:15 today a Packing Charm was performed in your house at Privet Drive No.4, Little Whinging with three Muggles present in the house. As you are still underage, this is a serious breach of the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Wizardry as you no doubt are aware by now. As you have received a previous warning concerning the same offence you are invited to a disciplinary hearing for the repeated offences on 30. July 9:00. Should the charges be successfully pursued you will be expelled from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and your wand will be confiscated by Ministry of Magic officials.

With best wishes,

Mafalda Hopkirk

Department of Misuse of Magic,

Ministry of Magic

When he had finished reading the letter he could only shake his head in disbelief. “What the fuck is going on, Hermione? I’d laugh but the joke is getting old. Don’t they have anything more important to do at the Ministry than try to get me? I mean, is it a new requirement for the Minister of Magic candidates now – must hate Harry Potter?” He looked at Hermione’s face, wondering how she would react.

Hermione was looking at the letter with disbelief and pure rage reflected on her face. She stood up and snatched the letter out of Harry’s grasp, marched to the desk and sat down. She yanked open the top drawer and pulled out an inkpot, a quill and a piece of parchment, laid the Ministry’s letter in front of her and started scribbling furiously. Harry sat on the bed patiently for a while, but then the curiosity got the best of him and he stepped behind her chair to take a look over her shoulder at her writing.

Dear Madam Hopkirk

In reply to your letter to Harry James Potter concerning the alleged use of magic outside the school of Hogwarts let me inform you that it was not Mr. Potter who cast the charm, but me. Naturally, having confused the spell cast by a house elf in that same house a few years ago with underage wizardry I can’t expect you to detect and comprehend the difference – it would be to expect too much of you.

Now I understand that it might be a bit much to ask you to understand the following, but I’m sure you’ll do your best – however pathetic the result might be. When Mr. Potter was accused of performing underage wizardry last time and tried before the full Wizengamot, former Chief Warlock Albus Dumbledore testified on Mr. Potter’s behalf that it indeed was a house elf that performed the Hovering Charm which resulted in Mr. Potter receiving the first warning. The testimony went unchallenged and thus is to be considered proven by the Wizengamot. This also means that the warning Mr. Potter received is legally void. Thus, Mr. Potter in the legal sense has never received a warning about performing underage wizardry. I’m sure such fine legal technicalities are hard to comprehend for the Department of Misuse of Magic officials.

And last but not least, I’d like to warn you, that any further unjust accusations made against Mr. Potter would force me to bring your lack of competence and repeated wrongful accusation against Mr. Potter to the attention of Wizengamot and the public.

With best wishes and hope that in the future you will pay more attention to such small details as Wizengamot rules,

Hermione Granger

After signing the letter Hermione folded it, gave it to the Ministry owl and opened the window. “Get lost,” she growled at the owl. Harry had to admit that he had never seen an owl fly that fast before. Hermione closed the window and turned towards Harry, who stared at her with an expression of pure shock on his face. Harry’s mind was calculating the odds of him either having a really bizarre dream or him being somehow transported to an alternate universe. In the light of the last few minutes, both versions seemed very likely.

“What’s wrong, Harry?” Hermione asked him after a few moments of silence.

“What’s…What’s wrong?! ARE YOU MAD, GRANGER?!”

5. Confessions of shared madness

Disclaimer: HP belongs to JKR bla-bla-bla

A/N: OK, once I had my idea of why would Hermione act so…hermy in HBP, I started writing, and whoa – I just kept going! Hope you all find this an acceptable explanation. Viva la H/HR!

Confessions of a shared madness

Harry didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t anything new, of course, but this time his mind was really having a bit of a shock. Hermione Granger, his best friend, had just sent a letter to the Ministry of Magic telling them to get off his case and threatened to make sure they lost their jobs if they didn’t take her warning seriously. She had also let them know that if that happened, she would also let the whole wizarding world know. Judging from the letters both Hermione and Hagrid had received after Rita Skeeter’s articles, it wasn’t a good thing to be unpopular in the wizarding world. ‘Considering I’m currently the Chosen One of the wizarding world, it would probably put them in the same popularity category as Voldemort but without the fear he creates. They’d probably wish they were dead before the first day was over if it ever happened.’

He was looking at Hermione, who had gone very still after his last words. He thought he saw deep hurt and pain in her eyes for a moment before she collapsed on the bed and curled up in a ball. He saw tears flowing from her eyes before she buried her face in a pillow, trying to muffle the sobs that were wrecking her whole body. Even her hair seemed to go limp.

Harry felt like someone had stabbed his heart with a blunt knife and was now twisting it every which way and his brain felt like on fire. ‘Oh great! Now what the fuck did I manage to screw up? That should I do! THINK! Well, I’ve been in a similar situation before, hope this helps.’

He gently sat down next to her and pulled her limp body against his into a comforting hug and let her head rest against his chest over his heart. He though if she would push him away, hit him and yell in his face. Her hands went around him instantly in a crushing return hug that definitely brought back memories of a certain welcome-hug from a few years ago. She continued sobbing and crying against his chest, her tears wetting the front of his shirt. Somehow it felt to Harry like there was a hole, a mortal wound to his heart in his chest and he was instead bleeding all over the place.

After some time – Harry had no idea how long it had been – she seemed to be calming down. The sobs came less frequent and the wound and pain in his own chest seemed to be subsiding. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head softly and started to whisper apologies.

“I’msosorryHermionepleaseforgivemepleasedonteverletmehurtyoulikethatagain…” and on and on he went until he was sure the tears had stopped. He slowly started to remove his hands from around her but her hands suddenly squeezed him like trying to break him in two. He quickly put his own hands back around her and found that he was allowed to breathe again. Her breathing over time changed from short gasps to deep breaths.

“It’s ok, Harry,” her voice sounded from the vicinity of his chest. “It’s not really about you calling me mad.” She hiccupped. Harry gave a chuckle, it was the cutest sound he had ever heard, he thought. “I…I just…I really think I’m going mad.” She sounded almost normal saying it, but Harry had sensed just a bit of fear in it.

“What gives you that idea, Hermione?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “Did someone insult you?”

“Please, Harry! I can take insults just fine.” She paused for a moment. Harry noticed that she still hadn’t moved away from him, was still holding him as close as she could. “Do you remember our second year in Hogwarts, Harry?” she asked.

“Of course I do – all that with the Malfoys, Dobby tying to save me, the Chamber, Diary and what not. Kinda hard to forget, isn’t it? Why did you ask?”

She shifted in his arms but still refused to let go of him, instead sitting on her legs to make herself more comfortable without moving away from him.

“Do you remember the first time you heard the basilisk? Right before we found Mrs. Norris?” He let out a “Mhmhh” for her to continue. “And do you remember what you asked us after Dumbledore questioned you?”

Harry thought back, replaying the events in his mind. He saw the worried faces of the younger Hermione and Ron and concentrated on their voices.

“I asked you if I should have told them I heard a voice neither of you could…and you told me no and that even in the wizarding world hearing voices was not considered a good sign.”

“Exactly, Harry! That’s exactly it! I wish you would have remembered your school lessons as well as random bits of our conversations, honestly!” she exclaimed in a happy-sad-exasperated voice.

“So you’re saying…” Harry edged her on.

“That I’m hearing voices, yes.” She seemed to tighten up, as if afraid of what he would say next.

“Umm, have you noticed…er…like a specific person, or anyone, being around you at the time? Like, well, Crookshanks, maybe?”

She snorted at he though and felt the spot on his chest where her face was against it move, probably forming a smile.

“No, it’s definitely not something a half-kneazle would think, or any other animal for that matter. And it’s a person’s voice,” she told.

“A person’s voice? You mean a human’s?” Hermione’s head nodded against his chest. “Someone we know?” After a small pause – a nod. “Who?”

She went even more tense. After almost a minute, she told him. Of course, Harry’s ears felt it was a suitable moment to be uncooperative, so he missed it.

“Who?” he repeated the question, now ready to hear her.

“Yes! You! I keep hearing Harry “Bloody” Potter’s voice in my head!” she shouted in annoyed voice. “Go on! Have a laugh!” He felt her starting to move away from him. “Told you I was mad,” she muttered.

For a moment Harry’s mind went totally blank. This was so unexpected that his brain decided to take a ‘time out’ and try to carefully consider the situation. Luckily that meant his body was now in charge. The moment she had dropped her hands from him and started to pull away he squeezed her against him and crushed her in the tightest hug they had shared to date. He really wanted to kiss her for some reason, but reminded himself that at least theoretically she was with Ron and it would really be pushing his luck considering all the things he had already done to her today. Her arms snapping in place around him and holding on with all her might made him feel like he was engulfed in the Ultimate Comforting Hug In The Frikkin Known Universe. Thankfully his brain kept its silence and for a change didn’t try to number all the different body parts currently squashed against him. After a minute or so the brain congratulated the body on a ‘job well done’ and took control again.

Harry felt his body relax and he fell down on the bed, head conveniently hitting the pillow. Hermione, still stuck to him, found herself lying on top of him. She took a look at his face, trying to guess what the Boy Wonder was up to now, but there was only the impression of deep relaxation and happiness in there – no ulterior motives, as far as she could tell.

“So you’re ok with me being mad?” she asked, peering into his emerald-green eyes. He smiled at her and his eyes started to twinkle. ‘How very dumbledorish,’ she thought.

“I don’t think you’re mad, Hermione. I’m curious, though. What did Harry “Bloody” Potter tell to you when you heard him? And for how long have you heard it?”

“Well,” she started. ”The first time was…at the start of last school year on the train, I guess. I was sitting with the others and suddenly I start hearing your voice – I’m in trouble, help me! Over and over. First I thought you were using your Invisibility cloak to prank me, but no-one else seemed to hear it. I wrote it down to stress and anxiety and ignored it, eventually. And then you didn’t come back. And you weren’t there at the carriages. And then you were there, blood everywhere…” she shuddered at the memory and stopped.

“Shhh, it’s ok,” Harry whispered. “Go on…”

Hermione swallowed the clump in her throat and continued. “The next time I remember was at the Quiddich tryouts. I was sitting there and watching you all and couldn’t help but notice how scared Ron looked. I mean he was actually looking green in his face! And then there was your voice again, telling me how much you would like Ron to keep the position on the team and how miserable you would be if you would have to choose someone else who might perform better because you’re so bloody noble and all and how miserable you’ be if Ron failed, because you like Quiddich so much and someone like McLaggen would totally ruin it for you. And the next thing I know, Ron’s on the team and McLaggen is bouncing around the castle like a pinball bullet, thoroughly Confounded – by me of all people! When have I ever before jinxed someone to give you or Ron an advantage before?! I was so ashamed of my actions and then you, of course, had to corner me about it. I never felt so bad in my life before. I swore I’d never follow another suggestion from that voice again.”

“Ok, I’d just note that you were right – McLaggen would have totally killed any fun I was having with Quiddich. Hell, considering how the only game where he was part of the team went he would have not only killed the fun, but me too!” Harry gently rubbed his hand across her back in a circle through the light summer dress. Hermione’s eyes went fuzzy and Harry swore he heard her purring. ‘She spends too much time with Crookshanks,’ he thought. After a few circles he stopped. He thought he caught a glimpse of disappointment on her face for a moment before she continued talking.

“Then there was that thing with Malfoy. Through the year whenever you started talking about him being a Death Eater and up to something your voice in the head chimed in and asked me to believe you. And I kept repeating Sirius’s words in my head over and over – the world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters. It got so incredibly annoying over the year that sometimes I just wanted to scream my head off. And then, at the end of the year I got the slap in my face when…when Dumbledore was killed. Because I didn’t trust you. Because I chose not to help you find out what Malfoy was up to. We could have put a stop to his plan had we found out about the closets in the Room of Requirements but no – little miss know-it-all decided she knew best! Sometimes I feel like it was my fault Dumbledore was killed!” tears started to fall from her eyes again and Harry pulled her close again, whispering soothing words until she calmed down again.

“Another time was when you found me in that classroom after Ron was snogging Lavender. I thought he did that just to hurt me and I was so angry! How could anyone kiss someone just to make another person miserable? Then you and I had a talk and I calmed down a bit but then he showed up. Harry, I have never felt such anger and hate towards another person before! I felt like he was even worse than Skeeter or even…even Voldemort!” she swallowed again. “And then the voice suggested setting the flock of birds on him, and I did it! I just did it!” She took a look at Harry, who seemed to be deeply in thought, his brows arching together, worry and concern on his face

“Tell me Hermione,” he started slowly. “What would have happened had the voice not suggested using that particular spell? What would you have done?”

Hermione was puzzled over the strange question, but when she started to think about it and remembered just how furious and angry she had been, her face reflected the feeling of horror and disgust, her eyes went wide.

“Oh my God!” she whispered. “Harry, I think I could have…would have used the Cruciatus on him had the voice not suggested the Oppugno at that moment! I can’t believe this! What kind of a horrible person am I?”

“Shhh, there’s nothing horrible about you. You did not use the Unforgivable curse, only thought about using it. I…” Harry closed his eyes. “I used the Crucio on Lestrange after she killed Sirius. Didn’t work though. Like she so generously explained, righteous anger won’t cause much pain – you have to mean it. It only knocked her down on her ass for a moment. So it’s me who’s horrible. And I tried to Crucio Snape repeatedly while he and Malfoy were running off but he was too quick for me – he beat me down every time I tried. You’re not a monster, Hermione, you’re an angel. I’m the monster in this story…”

After a second of complete silence during which Harry thought that he could never again look into her eyes without seeing disgust reflected in them he received such a slap on his cheek that he thought his head was going to pop off. His cheek was like on fire and he was seeing the entire Milky Way swirling before his eyes. His eyes popped open and found a very angry Hermione again glaring into his eyes with unmatched fury. She was sitting on top of him, straddling him, arms crossed on her chest, hair wild and almost electrified.

“I swear it, Harry, you ever say something like that again I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat!” Hermione growled dangerously. Yes, it’s considered an Unforgivable curse, but to tell you the truth everyone following Voldemort deserves to be Cruciod out of their minds! You know what they have done and what they will continue to do before they are finally defeated! THEY.DESERVE.IT!!! I would have used the Crucio on one of my closest friends, however, and your voice stopped me! Now what you have to say?” she finished.

“Er, first, you really hit hard? And that I’m sorry?” Harry raised his eyebrows.

Hermione’s anger seemed to dissipate in a blink and was replaced by a smile. She let herself fall on top of her and pressed her cheek against Harry’s flaming one. It surprised Harry just how soothing the cool, soft touch felt. “I’m sorry, too, Harry…but I’ll make you realize you’re not a bad person – by any means necessary,” she murmured into his ear.

“Thanks, I guess. And there’s something I need to tell you, too. I too have been hearing a voice in my head.”

Hermione looked shocked. “You have?! Really? Whose voice is it?” She blushed suddenly. “Sorry! You don’t have to tell me!”

“Hey, it’s OK. I want to tell you, anyway, especially because it’s your voice.” He tried to read her face when she heard that, but there were just too many of them.

“Wow! Really? You’re not just making this up, are you?” She took a deep breath. “Wow!”

“Yeah, wow…” Harry said.

“Do you know what it means, Harry? Why are we hearing each-others voices in our heads?” Hermione asked Harry.

“You’re asking me? When have I ever been the one to figure those things out? At least now I can sit back and relax until you figure this thing out. Actually, I stopped hearing the voice some time after the Department of Mysteries. I wish I could still hear it. At first I thought it was my conscience trying to get through to me, but it still lets me know of it’s existence, so I think it might be something totally different now…I’ll leave it for you to figure out.” He smiled at her again.

“Umm…What did the voice tell you?” Hermione tried to pretend indifference – poorly.

“Well, mostly not to break school rules – God I didn’t know there were so many of them, I’ll tell you that! And a few things besides that, but I really need to wrack my brain to remember what it was.”

“Now that we have all that out of our systems, could I get some ice? I think I’ll have a bruise tomorrow otherwise and I really don’t want to tell Bruce I got my ass kicked by a girl,” he said with a grin.

“Oh! Of course, I’ll be right back!” She jumped off the bed and ran to the door looking flustered, then froze with her hand on the knob. “Bruce? Who’s that?”

“My new neighbor! He bought the No.3 Privet Drive house. He’s really something - you should see him! When Vernon was strangling me this morning he knocked him out cold without Vernon even realizing what was coming! You should have seen it! He promised to teach me martial arts too!” Harry explained, almost jumping on the bed from excitement.

“Boys!” Hermione grinned when she opened the door.

“Hermione! Wait!” Harry whispered. “What if your parents come into your room?”

“Don’t worry, Harry!” she laughed at his expression. “I have them well trained, plus they have been warned!” She winked at him and pointed to a plaque hanging from the door.

WICKED WITCH INSIDE!

ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL!

A/N: I’ll go ahead and assume you got to this point by reading all that was written above. One or two things I feel I need to make very clear – Harry and Hermione are not in love with each-other yet, or they don’t realize it even if they are. The hugging etc. going on in this chapter is to show you that they have become the closest friends to each other – nothing erotic there at the moment (if there were, this story would not still be PG13). If they had to choose who’s the closest friend between the other and Ron, they’d choose the other without thinking. Ron is definitely still quite behind those 2 in the emotional development. H/Hr feel they can tell anything to each-other now, nothing is too personal or too secret.

6. The Beginning of

The beginning of…

Disclaimer: As opposed to some people’s beliefs, miracles don’t happen. I still don’t have the HP copyrights. Or maybe they just don’t happen to me?

A/N: OK, I thought I’d get more done by today, but hadn’t lot of time. So this chapter isn’t as long as planned. At least now my 2-week long vacation has started and I’ll have all the time I need. I really need to get those plot bunnies out of my head – they just keep thumping around in there and drive me mad. Anyone know of a way to get rid of them that doesn’t involve writing or lethal measures? I thought not… After this chapter I see the story going much darker for a while…until Hermione’s birthday! Oh I wish I just could instantly transfer my ideas to docs, typing takes so bloody long!

Hermione had just left the room when the doorbell rang. Harry heard her call “S’ OK, Mum, Dad! I’ll get it!” After a few moments Hermione opened the door and came back in, followed by Tonks of all people.

“Tonks! What’re you doing here?” Harry asked the young Auror.

“Was sent here to fetch you two miscreants!” Tonks chuckled with an amused grin on her face.

“What? Why? What did we do now? Is this about the letter to the Ministry?” Harry asked in a worried tone. He wouldn’t forgive himself if Hermione got into trouble with the Ministry because of him.

“No, this is not about the letter, though I must admit, it did cause quite a bit of excitement in the office! Never seen Ol’ Ruffy so put out before – congratulations to both of you!” Tonks was smiling at the youngsters.

“So why are you here? What else has happened?” Harry was still puzzled.

“Ah, so it must have been your doing then, Hermione? Nice work!” Tonks stepped forward to shake Hermione’s hand.

“What are you talking about, Tonks?” Hermione seemed as clueless as Harry, but suddenly understanding blossomed on her face and her eyes went wide. “Oh no! I really shouldn’t have done that!” She pulled her dress up from her left side and pulled her wand out from where it was strapped to her body by the elastic band of her underwear – her wand was pulsing with a blue color, acting as some kind of alarm, Harry assumed. Harry felt his other cheek go up in flames, too. ‘Wow, you just keep learning interesting things about her today, don’t you?”

Tonks started to laugh out loud at that. “Girl, you have no idea! Now lets get back fast, or you might miss the sight! Nice idea, by the way, with the wand. Mind if I use it on Remus sometimes?” She grabbed both of their hands. “Ready?” she asked, and when she received the affirmative nods, apparated them away.

They reappeared in the No.4 Privet Drive, downstairs. Harry suddenly found himself surrounded by almost all the Order members and who he was sure – quite a few Aurors. He got worried for a moment again for Hermione, but then noticed that everyone was either grinning widely or outright laughing.

“Come on, now!” Tonks started to drag them upstairs, all the people letting them pass and then suddenly started to applaud to them. Harry had no idea what was going on until he got to the upper floor and found a truly remarkable sight waiting for him.

First, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody was hanging upside down like from an invisible rope before the door to his room, surrounded by people while Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin were pushing him forward and back, making him swing between the two accompanied by the chant of “Constant vigilance, Mad-Eye! Constant vigilance!” Moody himself was purple in face – from anger, embarrassment or just from hanging upside down for a while, Harry didn’t know.

“How about reversing your spell, Granger?” Moody growled when he noticed them. Harry could hear Hermione swallowing hard and then performing a really complex figure with her wand. Moody was slowly turned around and lowered to the ground. Accompanied by loud groans of disappointment the crowd started to thin. The disapparation cracks sounded like someone had let one of Weasley Wizarding Wheezes fireworks loose in the house until it was just Harry, Hermione and Moody left in the house. Last one to go was Lupin who told them that now that he had seen Moody paid back for all his “Constant Vigilance” lessons, he could die a happy man.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I thought I’d get one of the Dursleys in this after what they did to Harry.” Hermione apologized. Moody’s normal eye shifted to the bruise on Harry’s neck for a moment.

“Nothing wrong with that idea, Granger. But next time you might want to make the trigger to the spell a bit more specific. I don’t feel like forgetting the same thing twice,” Mad-Eye said. “That’s why I’m here actually – thought the bastards needed a bit of a reminder why its bad business to ignore a wizards warning. You got the house all to yourself until your birthday, Potter. Just don’t forget to feed the mice.”

“The…what?” Harry was dumbfounded. Then Moody pointed to a small glass box in which 2 rather fat and one skinny rat were huddled together in one corner. “You mean…Are these…Dursleys?” he stuttered.

“Thought I’ll give you your birthday present early, Potter. Don’t forget to keep an eye on them – the charm lasts until midnight of your birthday. I’m sure you can take it from there!” Moody cackled his mad laughter and started thumping down the stairs. “One more thing before I leave you, Potter. I’m taking it you’re about to go after a lot of dark wizards soon.” That was said as a statement. “There’s one thing I have to remind you – if you ever use an Unforgivable curse, I’ll come after you and lock you up in Azkaban myself.” Harry had the feeling that Moody’s magical eye was looking at him through his skull. “I’ve gone against many a dark wizard without ever resorting to them and I sure as hell hope the boy Dumbledore had such high regard for will be able to, too.” After a short pause to let his words sink in, Moody told: ”Might make an exception for Voldemort, though. That dark bastard really irks me.” And with a thunderous crack Mad-Eye Moody disappeared.

“Wow,” Harry said after a while. “Mad-Eye sure takes his grand exits seriously.” He looked around to see what Hermione was up to and found her crouched next to the box, gazing at it with a thoughtful expression.

“What’re you thinking?” He asked her.

“About using Serpensortia…” Hermione mumbled, gaze fixed on the rats who seemed rather terrorized.

“What? What’s gone into you, girl?” Harry asked and pulled her up to face him. “Your mean streak is really showing itself today.”

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed. “I think all the anger at them for doing all those horrible things to you over the years is finally starting to boil over. I don’t know how you manage it to live with them every summer.”

“One day at a time, Hermione,” Harry whispered to her while pulling her into another hug. “One day at a time. Hey! At least now I don’t have to worry about being killed in my sleep!”

“Not funny, Harry!” was accompanied by a punch to his shoulder that made it go totally numb.

“Oww!” Harry rubbed the shoulder. “Do they give special lessons to girls in school on how to hurt boys or what?”

“Yes, and I was the best in the class as usual,” Hermione teased him. “Now would the new Lord of the house offer me some lunch?”

“Sure! Let’s go downstairs and see what I can put together. I wish Hedwig was still here so we could send word to your parents…” Harry started, but stopped when Hermione gave him an incredulous look.

“Harry, really, sometimes I get the impression your mind is working backwards!” Hermione told in exasperated tone and pointed towards the telephone. “Do you have anything against me giving them a call?”

“Oh! Er, go ahead, I’ll…er, go to the kitchen.” Harry really felt dumb as a doorknob at that moment. ‘How the hell do I come up with such blunders?” he wondered.

After the lunch they made general plans for the rest of the month, deciding that Hermione was going to do some serious spell studying during the day and do research on Horcruxes and their possible locations while Harry would concentrate on his training with Bruce every day and then take lessons from Hermione. Harry realized that he was going to have a tough month ahead of him with both the physical challenges posed by whatever Bruce was going to put him through and then having to learn new spells with Hermione, but he decided he needed to do this if he was going to have a snowballs chance in Hell of defeating Voldemort. When they returned to Harry’s room they saw Hedwig perched atop her cage. Harry immediately sent her to Gringotts with a letter clearing Hermione for any transactions she might need money for. When she started arguing against giving her full access to his inheritance he pointed out that she knew much more about books than he ever would and those books will be used to in a way save his life anyway – that seemed to shut her up and accept it.

The day finally came to an end and Harry prepared to go to sleep early because of his first lesson tomorrow. She started to say goodbye to Hermione, but she insisted that she’d stay at least until he fell asleep. Harry wondered briefly if she had somehow realized that he had a nightmare the previous night, but couldn’t think of anything that would have let her on to it. So he just asked her. Hermione told him that after so many years she had guessed by the shadows under his eyes and the weary look on his face when he thought she wasn’t looking. Harry got out of his clothes and climbed into his bed while Hermione sat on his desk to watch over him until he fell asleep.

‘Like having my own guardian-angel,’ Harry thought before the dreams claimed him.

The next morning Harry woke up to find his face full of bushy brown hair. He enjoyed the feel of the silky strands on his face for a moment before considering what exactly it meant. His eyes shot open to find Hermione snuggled up against him and his arms around her. ‘Going home after I fell asleep, huh? You really cant trust women!’ Yet there was an entirely new feeling in his chest now – like someone had lit a candle in a cold and dark room and it was pushing the darkness away.

“Ron would say that you’re mental if he ever found out what you did tonight, girl,” Harry whispered to himself. “But I think your mind is a beautiful puzzle waiting to be unlocked.” He didn’t notice the smile spreading across her face as he quietly slipped out of the bed, gently pulled the thin blanket over her, grabbed his clothes and sneaked out of the room for a quick breakfast before his first training. He felt rested and ready to learn whatever Bruce could teach him. He quickly started to think on what he would need to learn as Bruce had reminded him that one month was quite a short time and there was no way to teach him everything. In the previous day the excitement and Hermione’s companionship had made him forget it but now he was considering his choices carefully. He needed something he could use in the middle of spellcasting, to give him an edge over ordinary wizards. He doubted many wizards knew just how deadly a trained “muggle dueling” expert could be. He grinned at the name Professor McGonagall had used.

When the time came he stepped outside and found Bruce already waiting for him at the hedge, holding a cup of tea.

“Morning, Harry. You’re right on time,” Bruce greeted him.

“Morning, Bruce!” Harry grinned in excitement. “So, what are we going to do?”

“OK, first, I want you to…” Bruce crouched behind the hedge for a second and then threw a red brick to Harry in a wide arc for an easy catch. “…smash this brick with your head.”

“You WHAT!” Harry asked, his jaw dropping to the ground and eyes going wide in disbelief.

“Hah! Had you there!” Bruce laughed. “Ok, for real, drop the stone and jump over the hedge – we’re going to train inside the house. Softer landing in there.”

Harry, red in the face for having fallen for the prank, took a running jump over the hedge and followed Bruce to his house. When he stepped inside, his jaw took a dive again. The interior of the house had been changed totally from what Harry presumed it had been to look like a traditional Japanese house complete with sliding doors and paper walls. It felt like a perfect setting for learning martial arts – there was some special kind of spirituality or something that Harry really couldn’t identify, but something that in his mind was instantly connected with martial arts.

They entered a large training room with padded floor and several racks of weapons on every wall. Against one wall was what Harry thought to be a small oriental shrine with a small rack for a single weapon – a Japanese sword, katana. The weapon was sheathed in a blue and black scabbard and the same colors were on the hilt. The blade’s guard was an artwork in itself, a silvery metal disk with strange engravings.

“Ah, I see you found my most prized treasure!” Bruce’s voice suddenly brought Harry back to the here and now. He looked up to see Bruce standing next to him. “According to a legend, this nearly five hundred years old blade belonged to a brave samurai who was sent out to fight some evil in a long-forgotten corner of the land. On his way there he met a woman surrounded by bandits. The samurai, naturally, went to save her and killed all the bandits. The woman thanked her and promised to return the favor. The samurai wanted to object, of course, but the woman suddenly disappeared. So the samurai continued on his way and finally came to the place where according to the local peasants evil spirits came out at night and killed anyone they could, devouring their souls.”

Bruce took a break to take a sip from his cup. Harry had to admit that Bruce was a decent storyteller. The current story certainly wasn’t boring and somehow Harry felt drawn to it.

“So,” Bruce continued, “on his first night there the samurai stood guard over the village, and sure enough, the evil spirits came. Though the samurai was very brave, the sight of the evil spirits seemed to freeze the blood in his veins and sap the strength from his bones. The spirits descended on him and would have devoured his own spirit, but suddenly the woman he had helped on his journey appeared! The woman seemed to give off an aura of incredible power and with only her words drove away the evil spirits. The samurai was awed by her powers and asked who she was. The woman answered that she was a mighty sorceress and that she was called The Eagle. The sorceress then took the samurai’s sword and enchanted it so it would protect its wielder from the effects of the evil spirits and engraved symbols of power on the guard. With the enchanted blade the samurai destroyed all the remaining evil spirits and earned the thanks of the local people and the respect of his peers. The sorceress, however, disappeared and was never again seen in those lands.”

They stood for a minute marveling at the sword and wondering if the legend held any truth in it. Bruce drained the last of his tea and stepped outside the room to return with a bundle of white clothes that he threw to Harry.

“Ok, Harry, you can put your training clothes on in the next room, lets get started!” After Harry got changed into his new martial arts kimono he went back to the training room and stood face to face with Bruce.

“Have you decided what you would like to learn, then?” Bruce asked him.

“I have,” Harry answered immediately. “I’d like to learn how to disarm, hold and throw the opponents – you probably know what I’m talking about – and if we have time, how to fight with a sword.”

“Ok, a bit of ju-jitsu and aikido, then,” Bruce nodded. “We can do that. Now what kind of sword did you have in mind?”

“Umm…” Harry gazed around the room, looking for something resembling the sword he had managed to pull out of a certain hat in his second year at Hogwarts. He found the matching blade in one of the racks and pointed it out. “Like that one over there – with straight two-sided blade.”

“Interesting,” Bruce mused. “Usually nowadays the popular choice is the katana – few people are interested in learning how to use any other type of swords.” He thought a bit and told then, “I’d like to start with two weeks of unarmed combat training, then add the sword to the mix. By that time I believe your reflexes will be sharp enough to avoid any serious damage.” He winked at Harry, then walked to the center of the room and motioned for Harry to come stand opposite him. When Harry got there, he bowed to him and Harry mirrored it. “Now I think that for the first lesson I’m going to teach you how to…fall.”

“Really?” Harry asked, his eyebrows going up. “You think I need to learn how to do that?”

“Oh, Harry! You’ll be amazed at just how many things you’ll need to learn about falling!” Bruce answered with a wicked grin.

After an hour and a half Harry was lying face-down on the training rooms padded floor, plastered to it like a wet sock. He had the feeling that someone will have to use an especially potent solution to scrape him off the floor. His body was aching all over and he was covered with sweat from head to toe – even his kimono was soaking wet and clinging to his body. He felt like he’d have to lie there for an hour or two before he would have enough strength to just get up.

“Feeling tired, Harry?”

“Mhmhhh.” Affirmative.

“Wan something against it?”

“Mhmhhh.” Hopeful.

Suddenly a bucketful of freezing cold water was dumped on him. The next moment Harry was on his feet, shivering from the cold and the shock and adrenaline pumping through his veins.

“What do you know, it worked!” Bruce laughed. “Let’s revise the lesson and then we’ll call it a day.”

The revising involved falling forward, backward, sideways, over obstacles, going into a roll from being thrown and pushed and every other possible way of falling. Bruce had shown him how to fall without sustaining any injuries from all the possible ways, then let Harry attack him any way he liked. After Bruce felt it was time to finish the lesson Harry dragged himself back to No.4 without even daring to think about trying to jump over the hedge. He managed to make it inside and to the shower, line of abandoned clothes marking his trail from the front door. He cleaned himself up and wrapped a towel around his waist and made his way to his room, thinking to take a nap before Hermione’s arrival to start teaching him new spells. ‘At least I can now outperform Crookshanks when it comes to soft landings,’ Harry mused, as he entered the room. And found himself face to face with Hermione.

“Hermione! You’re early!” Harry noticed her eyes running up and down over his body. “And could you please stop staring at me? I’m practically butt-naked here!”

“Well, it’s not really why I’m staring at you, Harry,” she grinned at him. “Just glad I caught you like you are. Perfect. Now come and lie down on the bed on your stomach.”

“What?” Harry thought he was missing something important. Hermione took his hand and guided him down on the bed. When Harry was lying on the bed, she took a small bottle from the desk and poured a bit of the liquid in her palm. She then started rubbing it all over his back and shoulders and arms and neck. The exotic smell of the oil hit Harry’s nostrils and he immediately felt more relaxed.

“Ahhh…A massage…Good…Mmmmm” Harry moaned. When Hermione had rubbed the oil all over him she suddenly jumped on the bed and stepped on Harry’s shoulders, then started shifting her weight from one foot to the other and so on. An incredible feeling of mixed pain and pleasure shot through Harry, making him moan and groan throughout the treatment that made Hermione’s body tingle in all the wron places. When she finally stepped off him he felt better and more relaxed than he ever had before. “Where did you learn to do that, ‘Mione?” came a dazed voice from the bed. She was sure he hadn’t even realized what he had called her.

“Well, my parents might be dentists, but that’s not the only thing they know about medicine,” she told him.

“Ok, next time you see them, tell them I love you…er, them,” told the voice from the bed, and the next moment he was already asleep.

“I will…Don’t worry, I will,” she whispered to him as she kissed him on the cheek and silently slipped out of the room.

Harry was granted three hours of rest before she woke him and started their study session. With Hermione’s presence masking his underage wizardry they could break the Reasonable Restriction That Noone Gave a Damn About with impunity. Hermione had already prepared long lists of spells she thought they needed to learn – one containing various offensive and defensive spells for the battles against the Death Eaters and the other with spells against various creatures and beings Voldemort might employ, like giants. She had even put down a few spells against dragons, but it was very unlikely they would need to use them. Also they were so complex that they would drive any sane person who tried to cast them, well, insane.

When the day ended and Harry had climbed into his bed again, he looked at Hermione who had taken up her post on the desk again.

“You’re not going home, are you?” he asked her. She smiled at him and shook her head slightly. He grumbled and threw back the light blanket, indicating to her to climb next to him. She looked at him, surprised for a moment, then kicked off her shoes and pulled her dress over her head. Only wearing her bra and knickers she slipped in next to him and snuggle up close to him. When his arms came around her she gave a content sigh.

“You know, a guy could get used to this,” he whispered to her before falling asleep.

“Yeah,” she replied. “A girl could, too.” She smiled. She had smiled a lot in the last two days, she thought before falling to sleep.

7. Your deepest fears

A/N: Ok, this, I think, will be the darkest, angstiest chapter ever. I mean, I’ll make a bet you think I’m nuts at some point in the chapter. But I’d like you to continue, For I have found the proof (IMHO, naturally), That here never was a H/G. This, of course, would suggest there’s something else. I offer my own ramblings in this chapter. Please have a bucket ready for the waterworks or vomit – I think it’s going to be one of them one way or another. And please DO let me tell if you never want to see me post another chapter, ever. Yeah, It’s gonna be that dark in this chapter. I promise that when I post the next 2 chapters, they’ll be all about humor and romance and flowers – it’ll blow your socks off (assuming noone tells me to forget about writing H/Hr fic because of this chapter).

Disclaimer: HP belongs to JKR yadda-yadda-yadda…

Your deepest fears

The next morning Harry woke up to find the bed empty. That made him worry a bit. Then he smelled the smoke of something burning – that made him worry a lot. Had the Death Eaters found the house despite the wards? Had they set it on fire? Had they gotten Hermione?

“HERMIONE!!!” he yelled, panicked. He stormed out of the room without bothering to put more clothes on. You don’t start dressing when you wake up in the morning and think the house is on fire.

“Down in the kitchen, Harry!” he heard her voice.

‘Thank God! At least she’s still alive!’ Harry thought as he jumped over the railing of the stairs. Then he heard her curse profoundly. ‘What? She’s never cursed before! This is serious! AND I HAD TO FORGET MY WAND, DAMN IDIOT!!!’ Harry stormed into the kitchen, determined to go out swinging, and found…

Hermione, in front of the oven, cursing like a sailor who had just learned his port leave had been cancelled. There was a frying pan over the fire and on it Harry saw…something. And that something was burned into an unrecognizable mess. Hermione was trying to adjust the fire, mix the stuff on the pan and wave off the stench at the same time. Her hair was clinging to her and beads of sweat were running from her forehead.

“Whoa, whoa, WHOA! What are you doing, girl!” Harry yelled. He waved his hand, trying to get rid of the smell, wishing for the mess on the frying pan to disappear. Hermione must have used the Evanesco spell at the same time, because the next moment the burned goo was gone and the air seemed to approach breathable levels again. Hermione remained standing at the oven with her back to Harry and crossed her arms over her chest. Harry took hold of her waist and lifted her away from the oven, then turned off the fire.

“Well, so much for my brilliant idea of making you breakfast, Harry,” Hermione said in an angry tone. “Who would have thought my cooking skills matched my skills in Potions!” She threw the cooking utensils into the sink with a clang.

“There’s nothing wrong with your Potions skills, Hermione.”

“Hah! Says the new teachers pet!” she gave him an angry glare.

“Well, Slughorn was loads better than Snape. For once I could actually concentrate on my potions instead of doing all I could not to just grab my cauldron and whack Snape on his greasy head with it,” he grinned. “When I was preparing the potions I approached it like cooking, you know. It really made it a lot easier for me. Did you know that in all the years when I was made to cook for the Dursleys they never once complained about the food? They always complained about my hair, my clothes – which was funny actually because they used to be Dudley’s, and everything else that had the remotest connection to me, but never about the food.”

“You know, I wondered why I had such trouble with the potions last year,” Hermione said after a pause. “I mean, I blamed Snape’s old book for your better results but that never stopped me from brewing the correct potion before, now did it? I wondered why despite following the instructions from the book to the letter I still couldn’t get them right – and it had to be my fault, right? Many others had learned from those same books and managed to brew the correct potions, but somehow I couldn’t…and you could.” She seemed to be in deep thought for a while before continuing. “I thought it was only because of that damn book before but now I’m not so sure about it anymore. Slughorn told us so many times how talented your Mum had been, maybe you did inherit her skills?”

“Well, not according to what Snape said,” Harry told in a bitter tone. “Besides, it was you who got an O in Potions OWL. I only got an E, remember?”

“Harry, you managed to get an E despite Snape, and that’s saying something. Anyone else would have gone mental long before our fifth year from the treatment Snape gave you,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “I always wanted you to do as well as me, just never, well…better, I guess,” she finished slightly embarrassed.

“Maybe you’re right,” Harry consented. “However, now that we are on the subject of OWLs,” he looked her in the eye.” How come you got an E in your Defense OWL?”

Hermione’s face went red and she looked away from his gaze.

“Oh, that,” she mumbled. “It was that bloody Boggart again!”

“What?!” Harry exclaimed in surprise. “Not McGonagall again, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t Professor McGonagall. It was someone else…” Hermione seemed reluctant to continue on the topic.

“Come on, Hermione! You got to tell me! What if we meet one when we’re out there hunting Tommy’s soul and run into a boggart? C’mon, tell me! Maybe it will help…” Harry pushed her on.

“Ok,” she mumbled. “It was…” It sounded like she had coughed at the end. Twice.

“Say again?”

“I said it was Cho Chang!” Hermione’s cheeks flamed up.

“Cho?” Harry asked, stunned. “Why are you afraid of her? What did she say?”

Hermione looked very uncomfortable and began twisting her hands. Seeing no way out of it she took a deep breath and said: “She told me you two were back together – a couple, you know, and that you thought I was ugly and you didn’t have any feelings towards me. Any feelings at all. That you only pretended to be my friend so I would help you with your homework. That I had no real friends.” A single tear formed in the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. How much she’d like to do it, she couldn’t lift her eyes to look at his expression. “I must have stood there listening to her ramblings for a few minutes at least before I could think again and banish it.”

“Hermione!” Harry said in a hollow voice. “Surely you didn’t believe a word of that bullshit?”

“I…I don’t know, Harry!” she sobbed, more tears falling from her eyes now. “It WAS my deepest fear, you understand? I couldn’t help but wonder if it was true! And then when we met at Burrow, I felt like something was missing between us – something that had always been there, but I didn’t understand what, and I still don’t know what it is! And then you used that bloody book! I though that if you could use a book to get an unfair advantage over other students, then maybe…maybe it WAS true? And then when you faked slipping Ron Felix Felicius before the match – I was almost convinced it was true! That you didn’t care!” She seemed to be on the verge of collapsing and Harry quickly stepped to her and crushed her in a hug. Hermione started to cry on his shoulder uncontrollably.

“I swear to God I’ll punch her lights out should I ever see her again!” Harry snarled. “And that bloody Boggart’s, too!” He heard Hermione snort through the tears. He leaned back a bit and lifted her chin gently so she was looking directly at him. “I would do everything I can to erase that memory from your mind, Hermione,” he said softly.

“You would?” she blinked through the tears.

“Even better,” Harry answered her. “I will.” And he leaned his head forward, looking into her eyes, and kissed her on the lips.

He had kissed Cho – which he had described as wet and would now probably make him throw up if he thought too hard about it. Then he had kissed Ginny – it had been an act of impulse and need. But kissing Hermione…It felt so bloody good and right – the only word to describe the feeling of her soft lips meeting his described in his mind everything she did or was. Perfect. Just bloody perfect. Like flying on a broom, kissing her felt like something he could do perfectly without trying – without conscious thought. He wished Time would take some ‘time off’ so the kiss could go on forever. Their lips were brushing against each other and their mouths parted to let their tongues get tangled up in a dance that sent electricity through their bodies. And then it grew passionate – six years of a girl and boy knowing each other as best friends was transformed in a deep kiss that was no more a mere tingling electricity but the flame of a dragon’s breath. All-consuming. Unfortunately, it consumed air, too.

When the two parted their lips for some desperately needed air there was no regret for what had happened, nor would there ever be. Harry was content to just breathe for a moment. Hermione still looked like she could fall over any moment, but for completely different reasons than before.

“Wow!” she let out with her breath.

“I take the bad memory has been banished forever?” Harry asked her.

“Harry! After a mind-blowing kiss like that I need to be put in the same ward with Lockheart in St.Mungo’s!” Hermione replied with a dazed look on her face. “I think it totally wiped out everything else in there!”

“With Lockheart, eh?” Harry feigned jealousy and disappointment. “I knew you still had a crush on him!” he pouted. That finally made her laugh.

“Oh, you’re impossible, Harry!” She dried her eyes and looked around. Suddenly her eyes popped wide. “Harry! Your training! You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry!”

“OH SHIT!” Harry yelled when he looked at the time. Seems Time hadn’t been cooperative and moved on while they were lip-locked. He sprinted up to his room, pulled his clothes on and ran out of the house. He was relieved to see Bruce still waiting at the hedge.

“Ah, see you decided to continue after yesterdays lesson. Very brave of you,” Bruce grinned. “No sore spots from yesterday?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I think I would be stiff and aching all over but turns out a girl I know is an excellent masseuse,” Harry grinned back.

“Excellent! I hope she’s available tonight, because you’re definitely need a massage after today,” Bruce informed him when they walked into the training room.

“So what’re you going to teach me today?”

“First I’ll check out your falling skills the hard way, then we proceed to disarming techniques. When your hands get too numb I’ll show you a few exercises to improve your strength and reaction time. Let’s get started.”

Harry found that he got the knack of falling, at least, very fast. Bruce threw him hard and fast, but he managed to correctly react to all but one of Bruce’s attacks. Bruce had faked a punch to his face and Harry had prepared himself accordingly, but Bruce suddenly crouched down and grabbing his ankles, pulled his legs from beneath him. The fall blasted the air out of his lungs and he hit his head hard on the padding. It took him a while to clear the spots swimming before his eyes and continue with the training. Bruce consoled him saying that this technique always worked the first time it was used on someone. Determined not to get suckered twice in a day Harry paid careful attention to Bruce’s teachings for the rest of the lesson.

When they progressed to disarming techniques Harry knew right away that these would be of tremendous help against opponents even with a wand if he got close enough. They used a wooden knife imitation during training and it was close enough to a wand in Harry’s mind. Of the many different techniques Bruce showed him two became instantly his favourites. The first one involved using your hands to slap the opponents weapon out of his hand – one hand hitting the inside of the wrist on the hand holding the weapon, with the other hand slapping the armed hand just below the knuckles. As Bruce explained it, it would force the hand open and send the weapon flying out of reach. When Harry asked for a demonstration Bruce slapped Harry’s hand so expertly that it felt numb for a good two minutes and sent the wooden knife soaring through the paper wall of the training room. Bruce mentioned that as it needed both hands it was especially effective when performed unexpectedly, like raising your hands like in surrender, then suddenly slapping the opponents weapon away. The second technique was a slightly circular kick to the back of the weapon hand. It knocked the weapon away from the defender, or in case the defender was very luck or very skilled – like Bruce – it was possible to hit the hand in a specific spot that would cause it to open and send the weapon flying. After Harry had mastered both of them the walls of the training room were in serious need for some repair. When Harry asked why hitting a certain spot would have a more effective result Bruce told him of pressure points – specific points on a human body that when pressed – or hit – would cause a strong reaction or sharp pain. Harry asked for a more specific demonstration.

“Ok, Harry, now pay very careful attention to what I’m going to show you. This will be of much use to you in your life when you get older,” Bruce was grinning again. Then he suddenly punched Harry in the shoulder. Sharp pain shot through his arm, leaving it numb after it’s passing. “Now by some freaky mistake of nature every female of our species seems to have an intimate knowledge of this particular pressure point and the skill to nail it without failure. After countless generations of suffering, luckily for us a subtle counter-technique was invented. You just need to twitch your shoulder just a millimetre for the hit to miss and by faking the pain they’ll never know the difference! This way they feel their need of revenge – or whatever caused them to hit you in the first place – satisfied without you feeling any of the pain.”

“Thanks a lot, Bruce,” Harry managed, rubbing his sore shoulder. Bruce continued with the training after a while.

When the training ended Harry suddenly remembered his conversation with Hermione. Without knowing how or why he was suddenly asking Bruce some strange questions.

“Er, Bruce? Do you know of any ways to help a person deal with their fears?” Harry asked timidly.

“What kind of fears are we talking about, Harry?” Bruce asked, looking Harry straight in the eyes. Harry got the feeling he had sometimes with Dumbledore before – like someone was taking an x-ray of his brain.

“All kinds of fears…Wall to wall, deepest fears and full-blown nightmares.” Harry felt very self-conscious asking those questions, but if he could help Hermione deal with her fears, he’d do anything. It was certainly worth asking a few embarrassing questions.

“There are, Harry,” Bruce nodded after a while. “Some are simple meditation techniques…Others, the most effective but dangerous ones, are quite tricky.”

“Dangerous ones?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” his teacher said. “The Orient like the Western world, was quite a violent place in past times. Wars happened, and other things that caused violence more horrible than a human mind can take. To help those minds, a technique was invented – by inhaling the smoke of special herbs the mind was put in a trance where it is confronted with its deepest fears. The mind has to understand and recognize them to heal.”

“Ok, I get it so far. What’s the dangerous part?”

“It is possible that when confronted with the fears, the mind can snap – break,” Bruce told in a deadly serious voice. “In other words, you’d go barking mad.” Bruce shook his head as if to chase away unpleasant thoughts. “Human mind is a fragile thing and our knowledge of its workings is still quite limited. Many things can damage it – fear and pain being the most common.”

“Yeah,” Harry swallowed hard, remembering the spell damage ward in St.Mungo. The Longbottoms. Driven mad by pain.

“In my years working for the DA I have seen it happen a few times – the minds breaking under pressure,” Bruce was saying, Harry noticed suddenly.

“The WHAT?” Harry sure was surprised to hear this. ‘How the hell could Bruce be connected to the DA? What the hell was he talking about? Had Hermione gone international with the DA behind my back?’ were some of the thoughts jumbling through his mind.

“The DA? District attorney – the public prosecutor, you know?” Bruce explained.

“OH!” ‘OK, that made sense…’ Harry thought to himself. “Er, Bruce, would you be able to teach me how to do it?”

“Why, Harry? You seem sane enough. Why risk your sanity?”

“I’ve been through a lot,” Harry decided to give Bruce a good enough answer while avoiding the truth – that he wanted to be able to help Hermione should her fears overcome her. He planned to go through it himself, anyway before even thinking about suggesting it to her. “My parents were killed by a maniac when I was one year old.” He lifted his hair away from the scar. “The bastard carved this on my forehead. Then one of my friends was killed in front of me. I had nightmares for months. And then my godfather, the best friend of my parents and my only link to them, was also killed in front of me. Guess what – almost less than a week ago the headmaster of my school got murdered by one of the teachers. Bingo! You’re right! Right in front of my eyes, again!” Harry hadn’t planned to get sarcastic or angry or…whatever he was feeling. Harry looked at Bruce. He was scared for a moment at what he saw in his eyes – like endless, terrible rage directed at the whole world for letting something like that happen to anyone. Then Bruce blinked and Harry was left wondering if he was imagining things.

“All right, Harry, I’ll help you,” He heard Bruce tell him. “It will take some time, however, before I get the necessary components. I have gone through this myself once, so I know you’ll be in for a rough ride, just so you know.”

“Thanks, Bruce,” Harry said quietly. “Can I ask you…why did you use it?” Bruce was considering it hard – to tell him or not – Harry understood. Finally he nodded.

“I’ll tell you. It’ll be very – emotional, I think, so we better get prepared for it. Come with me.” Harry followed Bruce through the house to what must have been the kitchen. He pulled out a bottle of strong alcohol and two glasses. “I might get in trouble for offering you a drink as you’re probably not yet 18, but I sure as hell cant go through this story sober. So whenever you feel like you need a drink…” Bruce poured the liquid into both glasses.

“First of all, I’m not really a Muggle as you might have thought, Harry,” Bruce dropped the hammer. Harry was just speechless. “I know you’re a wizard – I have seen your wand. I’m not a wizard myself, though – and not a Squib either.” Bruce took one of the glasses and drank it. “I got enough magic in me to be a wizard, but I gave up magic.”

“What?” Harry couldn’t help but ask. “Why?” He didn’t understand why someone would give up magic. It was the best thing that had happened to him – when he found out he was a wizard.

“Because of the way I learned about magic.” Bruce was pouring himself another drink. Pain was beginning to show through his expression of calm.

“What happened, Bruce?”

“What do you know about how magic is performed before the kids with magical talent are thought how to consciously use it?”

Harry thought for a minute. He himself had used magic on several times before being told he was a wizard, be realized. He remembered the times strange things had happened when he tried to escape Dudley and his gang, when Aunt Petunia had cut his hair and so on. He also remembered Neville’s comment about his uncle or someone had tried to scare him to make him perform magic – finally succeeding when he accidentally dropped Neville out of the window.

“It happens when the kid is very scared, or angry I guess,” he said.

“Exactly, Harry. When the kid is scared or angry. When I was about eleven, something happened that made me very scared and angry – and on that day Hell wrote my name in its Guest book.” Bruce emptied his glass for the second time before continuing. “Some kids have remarkable talent for cruelty. They learn to enjoy the pain they cause. There was one like that in the school I attended at the time. He was the big bullying kid who everyone was afraid of – me included. And one day he came after me. I tried to defend myself, but he was bigger, stronger, and meaner. He beat me up badly. I got scared…and I got angry. And I wished to hurt him the worst way possible. And the kids head just snapped back – all the way back.”

Harry’s shaking hand found the other glass and somehow managed to get it to his lips without spilling it all over. He drained it all in one go. The burning sensation was a momentary distraction his mind needed at that moment rather badly. Bruce filled the glasses and they both drained them again.

“Then those strange looking guys showed up, but there was nothing they could do. The kid was dead. Lesson number one – magic cant bring back the dead.” Pain and bitterness were now clear on his face. “So there I was – an eleven year old kid who found out that magic existed by napping another kids neck. They tried to remove the memory of it from my mind. Nothing worked. It was stuck in there,” he knocked his finger on his head. “So I heard of this technique and as I was almost mental by that time, anyway, I though what the heck, its worth a try.”

“Did it help?” Harry asked in a shaky voice.

“I can’t tell you what will happen during the trance, Harry. It’s different for everyone. But I can say that it helped.” Bruce drained his glass again but didn’t pour it full again. “The memory is still there and it still hurts as hell, but I’m able to live with it. I didn’t take the step into the wizarding world but I know of its existence – after all, nothing could make me forget. But I decided to dedicate myself to help others make this world a bit better – I’ve worked with the DAs and different law enforcement agencies all over the world. Bad things still happen and I try to help if I can.”

“You helped me, Bruce,” Harry said. “I’m on a quest of some sorts to make this world a better place, too, and you’ve given me a better chance at succeeding at it.”

Bruce looked up from his empty glass. Seeing honesty in his green eyes he nodded to him.

“Thanks, Harry. I think it’s time for you to get home now. And try to avoid any loud noises in the morning,” he grinned.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The next day arrived bringing both to Harry and Hermione invitations to Bill and Fleur’s wedding. The date had been set – 30th of July. As Ron’s letter that came with the invitations explained – the male Weasleys, meaning the overwhelming majority, had suggested the date so they could have a non-stop two-day party. First, the wedding – and then Harry’s birthday. Ron also apologized for not being able to be with them at the house because he was really busy at the Burrow until the wedding. Harry and Hermione wondered a lot about what was going on there that required Ron’s help. Otherwise they continued their routine – for Harry that meant training with Bruce until afternoon and then studying spells with Hermione. His training with Bruce was going remarkably well – even Bruce was impressed. After two weeks of unarmed training they had finally proceeded to start training with the sword. It really meant that in the beginning they were using two wooden poles of the same length as the swords to avoid cutting each other to pieces. Harry’s reflexes had improved a great deal and now with daily training and not being forced to feed on Dursleys leftovers was beginning to grow some muscles. Somehow that seemed to make Hermione happier than Harry himself. His spellwork, however, left him disappointed. He learned the spells quickly enough, but for some reason he still had trouble casting them without saying the incantations. He felt like there was a mental block on his abilities to use magic.

One day in the third week of his training Bruce informed him that he’d get the necessary components for the trance technique for the coming weekend. He suggested to use the trance on Saturday and to make plans for a relaxing Sunday with his friends. Hermione suggested taking a day off on Sunday and having a movies night at her parent’s house with Ron. They owled Ron and he promised he’d be there.

Harry’s swordsmanship had improved alarmingly fast. When he told him about his second year and the basilisk, Bruce had been impressed. Harry and Bruce became good friends – probably because they both could relate to each others suffering in a way few people could, or because they were a couple of good guys, or probably because they were just meant to become good friends – who ever knows why these things happen?

Suddenly Saturday was there and Harry found himself sitting cross-legged in Bruce’s training room. Bruce had brought in a low table, a candle and a small metal bowl with thin long legs filled with herbs. Bruce placed the low table in front of Harry, the candle on the table and the bowl over it so the candle would heat it when it was lit.

“Ok, Harry, this is it,” Bruce said. “Hope to see you sane and healed on the other side. I only have one more thing to say before we begin – keep your eye on the candle and don’t blink, and everything you’ll hear will be the truth.” With that Bruce lit the candle and left the room, sliding the door closed after him.

Harry gazed into the flickering flame doing his best not to blink. ‘Just how long should I keep it up?’ he wondered, inhaling the bitter scent of the herbs. ‘Bitter memories, bitter scent,’ he thought, keeping his eyes on the candle. Suddenly the flame seemed to go dark. He blinked.

‘Crap, this is not good,’ Harry thought when all light suddenly disappeared. He couldn’t see a thing, even his own hand in front of his face. He slowly reached for the candle, thinking it had gone out, but there was nothing in front of him besides the empty floor. ‘Do I have to find my way out of darkness? Very deep!’ he chuckled to himself. He had never been afraid of darkness as far as he could tell.

He started walking towards where he assumed the door was in the dark room, one hand stretched ahead. He counted his steps. ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10…Ok, I didn’t think I was taking so small steps – must be the effect of the darkness. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17...This is getting ridiculous! Where’s the goddamn door! I can’t be walking in circles!’ He started running. After running for what he felt like 10 minutes he came to a stop. Nothing but darkness surrounded him.

“Hello?! Anybody here!?” he called.

“There sure is, Harry,” came a sudden hiss in a voice he couldn’t recognise.

“Who’s there?!” Harry shouted.

“Don’t you remember, Harry? It’s your fear.” The hissing was getting on his nerves.

“Where are you!” he shouted again.

“We’re before you!” a hiss came in front of him – he jumped a step back.

“We’re behind you!” a second hiss came from behind him – he turned around quickly but it was only darkness.

“We’re all around you!” came a whole chorus of hissing sounds seemingly from everywhere at once.

Seriously spooked now, Harry tried to remember what he was supposed to do. ‘The mind has to recognize them to heal,’ he suddenly heard Bruce’s words in his head. ‘Of course! My deepest fears! I have to recognise them,’ Harry thought.

“Ok, my deepest fear is Voldemort!” he said out loudly.

Instead of the darkness lifting or something similarly epic, he somehow got the feeling that the darkness was gloating over him.

“My deepest fear is Voldemort!” the hissing mocked him. “You really have no idea, Harry, do you? We think you’ll stay with us for a long time, Harry…until you break, snap, go barking MAD!!!” the last word was like a thunderclap.

Harry was beginning to panic for real now. Bruce had told him what happened to people who had failed. He really didn’t want to share a room with Lockheart.

‘Ok, think, Harry, think! You can do this! Hermione’s not the only one who can solve the puzzles, just look at how you got past the sphinx in the maze at the Tri-Wizard Tournament!’ Harry tried to bolster himself. ‘Now think! How would you recognize your deepest fear? Think!’ And the answer was dead easy, of course. ‘A boggart! A boggart takes the shape of what you fear most! My boggart takes the shape of a dementor!’ Harry suddenly felt rather pleased with himself.

“Fine! My deepest fear is a dementor!” he shouted out triumphantly.

“Wrong again, Harry!” the darkness hissed, the voice full of wicked pleasure. The darkness seemed to deepen even more with every false answer he gave. “Wrong AGAIN!!!” Now he felt like someone had stuck his head in a cannon and then fired the bloody thing.

‘What!? It can’t be! A boggart DOES take the shape of what a person fears most! IT’S A BLOODY DEMENTOR FOR ME!!!’ Harry was shouting inside his own head.

“Why?” a voice suddenly asked. It wasn’t the hiss he associated with the darkness. It was something familiar, something he should have recognized, he thought, but couldn’t.

“Why what?” he asked, surprised by another voice besides the hissing, but there was no reply. ‘Ok, lets think some more, Harry! Why? Why what? Why a dementor? That’s it! Why is my boggart a bloody dementor?! Lupin said that dementors feed on happy memories, and that because of my boggart is taking the shape of a dementor – the thing I fear most is fear itself? Ok, this is nonsense…I feel like I’m going in circles here. Dementors suck away happy memories – let’s continue from there…I’m afraid of loosing my happy memories? Great going, Harry! Continue like this and we’ll be out of here by the next millennium! Besides, I don’t have many happy memories to begin with…only a couple of happy memories about my friends. Friends? Ok, I’m thinking about the same things over and over – fear, friends, memories, Voldemort…Fear, friends, memories, Voldemort, fear, friends, memories, Voldemort…Shit, this isn’t helping!’ he thought in growing frustration.

‘What the hell am I supposed to do?! I can’t help my friends while I’m locked up in my own bloody head, moaning about what my greatest fear is! Fuck, I probably couldn’t even help them if I wasn’t locked up in my own fucking head! What the hell would I do if I was out there?!’ Harry was getting angrier as his thoughts turned to the events of last year. ‘I thought I was good at DADA, I even got a bloody Outstanding OWL in it, but what was it worth? NOT A DAMN THING! I was lying up there on the luggage rack with my wand at ready when Malfoy jumped up and petrified me. Petrified me! Petrificus totalus! It’s a fucking two-word incantation shouted at me, and I’m just lying there and getting hit with it, when a simple Protego would have been all I needed! I was there when Cedric got killed! I was there when Sirius got killed! I WAS THERE WHEN ALBUS FUCKING DUMBLEDORE WAS KILLED AND COULDN’T DO SHIT ABOUT IT!!! JUST HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KILL VOLDEMORT IF I COULDN’T SAVE ANY OF THEM!’ he was now raging in his own mind, living through the pain and suffering of his last years. ‘WHERE WAS THAT DAMN POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS FUCKING NOT WHEN I NEEDED IT MOST?!! DIDN’T DUMBLEDORE HINT THAT IT WAS LOVE?!! WASN’T I FOR FUCK’S SAKE IN LOVE WITH GINNY?!!’ he roared.

“Were you?” the quiet voice asked again.

That shut him up. ‘Were I?’ the question shocked him to the core. ‘Of course I was, how couldn’t I be? Didn’t I notice her smell in Amortentia?’

Suddenly again, words surfaced from his own mind in Professor Slughorn’s voice. ‘Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room…’

Harry’s jaw hit the lowest floor of Hell. It must have. ‘How the fuck did I become so stupid? I thought I caught Ginny’s perfume in Amortentia, and it being the “love potion”, I assumed I was in love with her? SNAPE WAS FUCKING RIGHT!!! I’M A GODDAMN IDIOT WHO DOESN’T KNOW A THING ABOUT POTION-MAKING!!! I’M A GODDAMN IDIOT WHO DOESN’T KNOW A THING ABOUT ANYTHING, LEAST OF ALL ABOUT LOVE!!! HOW COULD I IF THE MOMENT I SMELL A GIRLS SCENT IN A LOVE POTION, I SUDDENLY THINK IM IN LOVE WITH HER!!!’ Harry felt like a heavy load had been lifted from his heart despite his conclusion that he was already barking mad. ‘Well, nothing to loose now’ he thought. ‘Might as well find out what else have I screwed up…’

‘I wasn’t in love with Ginny. Check. So who was I in love with? What is love? What would Hermione say? Probably that my mind is broken enough as it is already and to stop talking to myself,’ he sighed. Then he blinked. ‘My mind is broken enough already…That’s why I’m in this trance…So the real question is…what happened to my mind? What broke it?’

Now it was her voice that surfaced from his mind. ‘I…I don’t know, Harry! It WAS my deepest fear, you understand? I couldn’t help but wonder if it was true! And then when we met at Burrow, I felt like something was missing between us – something that had always been there, but I didn’t understand what, and I still don’t know what it is!’

Harry realized this was the crucial clue. Something had been missing between them when the year had started. That meant that the damage had been done before that.

‘So what was it? Umbridge driving me mad? Sirius falling through the Veil? U-No-Poo possessing me? It could be any of them…’

And then he heard his own panicked voice, begging…

‘Don’t let her be dead, don’t let her be dead, its my fault if she’s dead…’

There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. To feel it in one moment – and feel like it’s been ripped away from you the next is enough to kill anyone, not just break their minds. Human mind is a fragile thing – it is easily broken, but not completely without it’s defences. If something threatens it, it will protect itself. Should a feeling as powerful as love be suddenly ripped from it, it would block it off completely until the threat has passed. But what if the mind has already been damaged? It will heal…slowly but surely. It might take about as long as a year.

“I was afraid I had lost her forever and I’m afraid I might loose her again, for real and forever,” he said.

8. A day off...right (revised)

A day off…right (revised, some typos hunted down and removed, too)

Disclaimer: If I somehow obtain the copyrights to HP, I’ll make sure to let you know.

A/N: So, Chapter 8 has arrived! Starts with a bit of romance and then it’s humor all the way. Next Chapter will be also mostly romance, humor and adventure thrown in the mix. When you read the romance part, please say “Awww!” (as wow, fantastic! Not aww, I cant believe this crap!) and when it’s humor, please laugh! Reviews would make me happy. I know, I had a look at the Mirror of Erised! I also saw this story in the Recommended section, but I dare not hope! Enjoy the story, ignore the typos!

Harry blinked his eyes in the sudden brightness that dazzled him after the trip to the darkest corner of his own mind. He noticed that the candle had burned out and there was now nothing but ash in the small bowl in front of him. He stood up slowly and stretched to banish the stiffness from his limbs after the long trance. He walked out of the training room to the kitchen where Bruce was waiting for him.

Bruce looked in his eyes again – the sharp look seeming to connect right with his brain to evaluate his mental state. After just a moment an easy smile formed his face.

“So…” Bruce said, egging him on and gesturing for him to sit opposite him.

“It helped. A lot,” Harry smiled. “I probably never would have realized what was going on in my mind otherwise. Thanks, Bruce – for everything.”

“Don’t thank me just yet, Harry,” Bruce grinned. “Your training is not over yet. Besides, I must tell you that now when you have realized your fears it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll just disappear. If my own experience is of any indication, you’ll probably have a few nightmares the few next nights. That’s why I wanted you to take time off. Realizing your fears is one thing – letting your mind getting used to them so they don’t affect your life so much anymore – that takes a bit more time.”

“Fortunately my fears are something I can hopefully prevent from ever becoming true,” Harry nodded his understanding. He just had to make sure to take out the Horcruxes, Voldemort and his Death Eaters while trying to keep Hermione as safe as possible at the same time.

“I wish you the best luck with that, Harry. See you next Monday.”

“You bet!” Harry grinned. “No way I’m going to miss that fun! See you then!” With that, Harry went back to the house next-door where – he hoped – a pretty young witch was waiting for him.

He found her in the living room, going through the pile of new books she had purchased with his funding. Looking at her, Harry felt a new kind of warmth in his chest. The morning he had woken up next to her for the first time he had felt like a candle was lit in his chest. Now he felt like there was a happy little arsonist with a flamethrower having the live of his time in there. He felt his legs carry him towards her. He left his hands pull her close. He felt his lips against hers – warm and passionate. The song of a phoenix was roaring in his head and a herd of centaurs running in his chest. Overall, it was the best feeling – ever.

“Wow again,” she said when they finally parted, eyes still closed like she was savoring the taste of his lips. She looked a bit surprised, a bit flushed and very, very pleased. “What was that for?”

She opened her eyes and looked into his and what she saw took her breath away…again. She had seen the whole range of emotions in those eyes to this day – lifeless from loss, dull from disappointment, alive from happiness, twinkling from mischief and even electrified from rage. Now those eyes seemed totally different from all that she had seen – they were like on fire. His gaze seemed to ignite a fire of her own inside her, made her understand that her greatest fear had been just that – an irrational fear without any cause. She could see it in his eyes just how much in love he was with her. She felt that she wouldn’t be able to look in those fiery eyes much longer.

Harry felt that he wouldn’t be able to look into her eyes much longer, either. You can look at the flame of a candle, or a torch, or a fireplace as long as you want. You can’t look into the sun for long however much you want to. Sooner or later you close your eyes. When you see the sun’s fiery blaze flaring in a girls eyes, you close your eyes and kiss her.

This time they found it impossible to break contact. They were unbreakably together – like the sun seems to be composed of many tongues of flame but is still just a single ball of blazing fire. However, standing upright seemed to become a problem. They started tumbling towards his room, on the way there becoming painfully aware just how many useless objects were there in the house and that somehow their only purpose seemed to be standing on their way. They got to his room and fell on the bed together with their lips still together – hell, their tongues still twisting around each other, thankful for the extra energy they could now spare from being on their feet. That energy was desperately needed somewhere else at that moment.

When the kiss eventually ended – due to lack of energy, they were somewhat surprised to find themselves still wearing their clothes. They thought that in a passionate kiss like that they would have ripped them right off each other, or they would just be burned off by the heat of their bodies. They remained lying on the bed to recover their strength. After a minute or two they felt enough energy return to form coherent words.

“So,” Hermione started. “I still want to know what was it for.” She turned her head to look at his face. She knew, but she needed to hear him say it, anyway.

“For loving me back,” he said with a smile.

“Harry, I thank you for explaining to me what I feel, but I would like you to say it clearly.”

“You asked what it was for. You posed the question wrong, Hermione,” Harry answered, a grin on his face.

“Fine!” Hermione rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop grinning, herself. “Do you love me? More than a friend?” She looked into his eyes again.

“I love you. More than anything.” He returned her intense gaze.

“Harry?” she said in a low, husky voice.

“Hmm?” Harry suddenly noticed just how dark her brown eyes had gone.

“Wanna shag?”

The next moment Harry was sneezing blood through his nose all over the bed.

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The rest of Saturday had passed and finally it was Sunday. That meant they would be meeting Ron soon. Hermione had left early to make sure that her parents had left the house on their short vacation before she allowed Harry to apparate back there. When he asked her why she was reluctant to let him meet with her parents she had mumbled something about the need to keep him all to herself for a while. That, she said, meant not allowing her parent to monopolize his company to get to know her new boyfriend better.

They had barely apparated to the Granger’s living room when they heard a crack of apparation outside and Ron’s loud voice calling out.

“Oy! Anyone home? Herms? Harry?” They saw a familiar red-haired head peering through the windows.

“Ron!” Hermione called, opening the front door. When the tall boy appeared in the doorway, she proceeded to scolding him. ”Never heard of a doorbell before, have you, Ron?”

Harry stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Don’t think he has, love…He’s been to Privet Drive twice so far – first time through the window, the second through a closed fireplace!” He smiled to Ron. “How’s the summer so far, mate?”

“Fine, just fine,” Ron replied, looking thoughtfully at his arms around her and the expressions on their faces. “Love, huh? Think we have some things to discuss, the three of us, before we get to the food, moves…”

“Movies, Ron!” Hermione butted in with a correction.

“More food, more movies et cetera and so on,” Ron finished. “May I come in now?”

“Wow, someone has taught Ron manners,” Harry whispered to Hermione when Ron passed them.

“I heard that!” the redhead told him and rolled his eyes.

“You did?” Harry asked in an incredulous tone. “By Merlin! Anyone else would have been deaf long ago from all the yelling you two have done! Actually, for a while there I thought that was the reason you could carry on with it for so long!”

That earned him a punch to the shoulder, but as he had noticed it coming at the last moment, he managed to successfully neutralize it from having its full intended effect – though he didn’t show it, of course. He was sure that Hermione could come up with a new, even more painful form of punishment.

“So where can we crash for a nice little chat?” Ron asked.

“Um, let’s go upstairs to my room,” Hermione told them and led them there. As Ron made to sit down on her bed she pushed him away at the last moment, making him fall down to the floor on his bum. “Sorry, Ron, but only my boyfriend is allowed on it. Why don’t you grab a chair?” she told him. Seeing him go red on his face and starting to choke, she had to add: “Don’t be stupid, Ron! We’re not having sex yet!”

‘Well, not because I haven’t tried,’ she added in her mind. She had to feed Harry the counterpart to the Nosebleed Nougat on Saturday to finally stop him bleeding all over the bed. ‘It’s really a cruel joke of Nature that men start to bleed from the nose when they are facing the chance of having real sex for the first time in their lives,’ she thought again. Well, anyway, she had warned him that the threat to bleed to death wouldn’t save him from having sex with her the next time. She had decided to give him some time to get used to the idea, though.

When Ron had finally sat down in the chair and Harry next to her on the bed, a bit of a nervous silence descended on the room. Finally, Harry cleared his throat and decided that if he wouldn’t start, they’d probably spend the rest of their natural lives sitting there and staring at each other.

“Well, er, Ron, When I got back to the Dursleys at the start of the summer, I had a disagreement with uncle Vernon. When Hermione found out she dragged me out of there and, er, so it started, I guess. Then Moody transfigured the Dursleys into mice – remember Malfoy in fourth year? Well, apparently Crouch Jr. was impersonating Moody rather accurately. So we – me and Hermione – had the house all to ourselves and, khmm, sometime after that I realized that I was totally in love with her.” Harry was rather red in his face when he finally finished the brief summary of his summer activities. Ron was looking thoughtfully at him, which was rather unnerving, Harry thought. He would have expected an explosion or something similar, but Ron seemed to take it rather well.

“So it’s true that you and Ginny stopped seeing each other after the funeral – not that you had the opportunity, anyway?” Ron asked him, looking straight in his eyes. Harry realized that depending on his answer the expected explosion might still come real.

“Yes, we stopped seeing each other, Ron,” he sighed. “And as his older brother, I think I own you an apology.” When Ron gave him a confused stare he continued. “You see, I think what I felt for her wasn’t actually love. Remember our first potions lesson? We were sitting around a cauldron full of Amortentia and when I breathed in the fumes coming from it, I thought I recognized something in it – a smell I knew. So a bit after that when we met Ginny, I realized it was her perfume. I thought I was in love with her since that moment…only I wasn’t.”

“Wait…You thought you were in love with her but you were not? That doesn’t make any sense, mate. If you think you are in love, how come you’re not?” Ron asked him.

“The fumes must have addled my brains, Ron. I heard what Slughorn was telling us about the potion, but it never registered until…later. When I sniffed the potion I though I was smelling the scent of the person I was in love with – I just jumped on the “Stupid Train” and enjoyed the ride.” Harry shook his head in disappointment over his own actions.

“Er, what do you mean with you thought you smelled the person you were in love with, Harry? Isn’t that what the love potion does?” Ron asked another question.

“No, mate. Slughorn said to us when I was getting high on the fumes that it doesn’t create love – it’s impossible to manufacture. It creates obsession, infatuation – that kind of feelings,” Harry explained.

A look of understanding, shock and horror formed on Ron’s face.

“MERLIN!” he shouted, not quite muffling a small gasp from Hermione. “He did say that!” Ron slapped his hands on his head and rubbed his temples as if suffering from a horrible headache. “Mate, any room on that “Stupid Train” for one more?”

“Make that two more,” Hermione’s weak voice came from next to him.

“Huh?” was all Harry could come up with. He looked at Ron, but he seemed to be equally confused. “What do you mean?”

“I ‘gulp’ thought too the exactly same thing,” she said, looking at them. “That makes all three of us, I think.”

“So, er, who did you two think you were in love with?” Harry asked.

“Em, Herms,” Ron told first, his face now matching his hair.

“And me – Ron. Though I want to clarify that I didn’t think I was in love with him – it was more like the need to control him, possess him was increased hundredfold. We used to argue a lot before we got hit with the stuff – afterwards we just argued…more and louder.”

“But doesn’t the potion have a certain duration when it’s effects work? I remember Fred and George saying the potions in their shop lasted for 24 hours.” Harry wondered.

“The potion can be altered so that it’s duration is different – and this is about the potion when you drink it. Inhaling the fumes like we did…I think we were lucky that’s all what happened,” Hermione explained.

“Ok, last question from me,” Harry took a deep breath. “Ron, when we took you to the Hospital Wing after you were poisoned, you were unconscious. And, er, you called after Hermione, I think. How would you explain this?”

“Well,” Ron seemed to consider the question. “I think that if I would have been in a battle, it would have been your name. But for the aftermath, I’d prefer Herms help. It’s either her or someone who can show me a Healers certification, because after that Lockheart and your bones stuff I’m not letting anyone else near my injuries. Besides, I think it would have been highly, em, ‘misleading’ and probably have irrevocably damaged my reputation as the ladies man had I called after you,” Ron finished with a wide grin. “And while we’re still on the subject of your love life – I had a chat with Ginny when we got home. I don’t know if she’d like you to know that, but I’ll tell you anyway.” Ron leaned back in the chair.

“When I learned you two had broken off, I asked her why. She told you that she had felt good in your company, but there were things that would have prevented you two ever really getting together. She knew that you would always trust Hermione more than anyone, for one thing, and we three had gone through so much together that it would be impossible for someone else to understand us like we understand each other. You and her had only being possessed by Voldemort and being good at Quiddich going for you.” Ron held a small pause. “She also said that she was glad that you and she got together for a time. Whatever she might have told others, she never had gotten over her crush on you – that’s why she was going through her boyfriends like that. But when you eventually did get together…she liked it, but she felt like it wasn’t meant to be – that’s what she said, anyway,” Ron finished.

“So how is she now?” Harry asked Ron.

“Oh, she’s loads better! Actually it seems like after getting over her crush on you her hexing abilities really went up – and they were already good enough to begin with! The rest of us Weasley men really feel like we should hate you for that, as it’s we who usually get hexed now. But don’t worry, mate!” Ron grinned at him again. “Were smart enough not to want end up between her and Hermione for hexing you!”

“Well that’s good to know!” Harry laughed. “Ok, seems that we’ve exhausted all the topics concerning my love-life. As you seem to be taking the fact that me and Hermione are together way better than I thought you would, I can only assume you found someone else – so who is she?”

“Well, she’s blond…” Ron started.

“Is she?” Harry asked right away. “Ron, I think I’m starting to see a patters here – Fleur, Lavender and now this new girl. Really attracted to blondes, aren’t you?”

“Shut up, mate. Ok, she’s blond, she’s a genius bordering on madness, like I like to think – kinda like Dumbledore I guess, she’s a very good listener and she’s the best Quiddith commentator Hogwarts had since Lee Jordan left – plus she’s loads funnier!”

“Hmm, who might that be? Any ideas, Hermione?” Harry asked her, brow furrowed in a thoughtful expression.

“Can’t say that I have, Harry. You know I pay more attention to Quiddich players than Quiddich commentators,” she smiled at him.

“Oh, very funny, very funny indeed. So what do you think about it – me and Luna getting together?” Ron asked them.

“I think it’s fantastic, Ron,” Harry said right away. “Care to explain how you two got together?”

“I’d like to hear about that, too, Ron,” Hermione said immediately.

“It happened thanks to my Dad, actually. Funny how that went... See, he got the Ministry to try out this Muggle program called “Neighborhood Catch”...”

“Neighborhood Watch,” Hermione corrected him again.

“Yeah, that – I take it you both know what that means, then. So you probably don’t know that, but Luna actually lives near our home…” Ron tried to continue, but was now interrupted by Harry.

“I think Cedric Diggory’s father mentioned it when we met to portkey to the World Cup, Ron.”

“Please, you two wanna tell this one yourselves? I could just sit back and enjoy myself for a while, you know, while you tell me my story,” Ron said sarcastically. “Ok, so Dad got this Watch program, and as the Lovegoods live near us, it fell to me to check on their house from time to time. Well the very first time I popped in at their place Luna and I started talking and we just talked until the rest of my family suddenly apparated there. Seems we kinda lost track of time and they thought we might have been attacked or something. So when we got that sorted out I had to leave, of course, but went back every evening from that day on. We really liked each other and it got more serious over time. And now we’re together. Really makes me sad that I’m not going back to Hogwarts this year so I could be with her, but she hasn’t actually decided yet if she wants to go back or not. She told me that without Dumbledore she doubted there was anything worth her time there.”

Harry was feeling very much the same way. Without Dumbledore Hogwarts was just a castle to him.

“So now what we do?” He asked.

“Let’s enjoy our day off,” Ron said. “I need to get back to that madhouse tomorrow so I wanna enjoy today as much as I can.”

“What have you been up to, anyway, Ron?” Hermione asked him. “You and wedding planning – they just don’t seem to go together.”

“Ah, I’m not really part of the wedding plan – unless they wanna use me as a bouncer,” Ron told them as he stood up and stretched. They noticed that he had grown a bit taller again, but somehow also seemed a bit more muscular. “When I got back home I told Bill, Charlie, Fred and George right away that I wont be going back to Hogwarts next year. I didn’t tell them anything specific, but they’re not stupid. They understood that I was going with you to do something dangerous – on the level that might get the Weasleys mentioned in the history book, they said. And they told me that if I were going to do that, at least they would do their best to prepare me for it. Remember the small Quiddich pitch near the Burrow? It’s gone. They built an arena over it and started to train me from that day on. I felt like a bloody gladiator every day. But I’ve learned a lot, too.” He laughed. “Thy said that if I was going to be known for doing something epic in the future then they at least were going to be mentioned as the ones who taught me everything I knew!”

“Good!” Harry said. “I’ve been training too. Maybe we should book the arena for a day sometime and see what we’ve learned!”

“You’re on, mate! Now…is there any food in the house or do I have to eat Crookshanks?” He quickly dodged the pillow.

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Later that day the four of them – Crookshanks and his three human servants – were sitting on the living room couch and watching the movies. Though the red-haired one seemed to be a much closer relative to him down the evolutionary path, Crookshanks found that he liked the other two much more – so he let them pet him. The sounds coming from a strange, flashing box were kind of fascinating to the half-kneazle, but seemed that his human servants were really loving it –especially the red- and black-haired ones. After the sounds and flashing ended, the two above-mentioned servants seemed to be begging the third – his favorite servant, as she was usually the one to bring him food – for something. Then the flashing and sounds returned. He felt tired after a while and fell asleep. When he woke up, the flashing and sounds were still there, but somehow rather louder. Maybe because they were not coming from that strange box but from the room itself? He decided to go find a quieter place for a nap.

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‘What.An.Idiot.’ Each word was accompanied by a thud of a head hitting the table. Hermione Granger was sitting in the kitchen of her parents house and contemplating the life universe and everything. Though those three words she had thought were usually aimed at one or both of the two boys she had grown up with during the last six years, right now most of her ire was directed against herself. She also had the worst headache of her life. She had tried soothing tea. She had tried aspirin. She was now considering the benefits of stupefying herself. A Loud crash from the living room sent another wave of pain through her temples.

‘Why? <thup> Why? <thum> Why? <thump> Why did the Dark Lord and the Chosen One have to use the Grangers living room as the battleground for their last confrontation?’ she asked herself.

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The Dark Lord and the Chosen one stood face to face – the embodiments of good and evil in this universe. Their fate had been sealed from the first day they met and they both knew it. Still, it is the nature of darkness to lure, to offer power, to blind.

“Join me, Chosen One, and together we shall rule this pitiful world!” the Dark Lord was trying to seduce the young hero.

“I’ll never join you, Darth Bilius!” the young hero relied defiantly, raising his glowing lightsaber in a ready position. The Dark Lord raised his own, and attacked.

Ok, so maybe these were not really lightsabers but instead two padded wooden poles enchanted to buzz and glow with neon lights – red and blue, respectively, but the Dark Lord and the Chosen One sure used them like ones. In other words, they were causing much damage to the property around them.

The Dark Lord thought that the best defense was a good offense – he planned to rush his opponent and take him out as fast as possible. He attacked in a flurry, the lightsaber a blur in his hands. But somehow the Chosen One seemed able to block each and every last of his blows. He took a step back.

“Impressive. Most impressive.” He was thinking hard on what to do next.

“Ah, thank you, my Lord! Your high praise means much to me!” the Chosen One bowed to him, then pressed his own attack.

The Dark Lord had excellent reflexes – something to do with what used to be called great Keeper skills. Still he suddenly discovered that he was no match to the Chosen one, who’s attacks seemed to come from al directions at once, hitting him quicker than he could block them. He was starting to feel desperate. Luckily the arrogant young punk held his attacks after a while.

“Say, Darth, where did you learn to use your saber like that? Retirement Home For Ex-Dark Lords?” the Chosen one was grinning at him.

‘That’s it! That punk is going down!’ the Dark Lord thought to himself. ‘If I cant beat him with skills, I beat him with cunning!’ He was careful not to smile and give his plan away.

He attacked the Chosen One suddenly, but as the hero blocked his attacks and started to respond with his own, he timed it carefully – and dropped his saber after what seemed to be a particularly powerful blow. When the point of the blue saber started to hover near his nose, he quickly dropped to his knees and started begging.

“Please! Please! Please have mercy!” he yelled.

“I’d like to, Bilius, but you hurt my girlfriend with your actions. I need to punish you. Nope, down with the head it is!” The Chosen One started to raise his saber.

“Please! I have a new girlfriend! I have five brothers – one of them an idiot – and a younger sister! I have an old ghoul and a garden full of gnomes! Please don’t kill me!” he put on his best dramatic act. He wished the entire universe could see his brilliant acting abilities. Well, he’d have to kill all the bastards later for seeing him humiliated, too, but that would be a bonus.

“Ok, Bilius,” the Chosen One sighed. “I guess I can see where all the darkness is coming from. I forgive you. Here,” he stretched out his hand to help the other man to his feet. Suddenly the Dark Lord snatched up his saber and whacked at the offered hand hard.

“ARGHH!!!” the Chosen One yelled, rubbing at his wrist. “You bastard!”

“What can I say, mate,” the Dark Lord replied as he got to his feet, grinning. “I’m evil!”

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Hermione raised her head as the two boys entered the kitchen. Harry was rubbing his wrist and Ron seemed to have trouble moving without wincing.

“So how did it go?” she showed some polite interest.

“Well,” Ron ‘ex-Dark-Lord-Darth-Bilius’ Weasley replied. “Harry lost his arm from wrist down. I’m minced meat, so I shouldn’t be talking to you. Or move. Ouch!” He was finding out the price of being evil. “That one hit was priceless, though, you should’ve seen his face!”

“I hope you were careful, though. What were those crashes I heard?” She stood up and walked towards the door leading to the living room. “For your sake I hope you didn’t break any…” She stood at the door, gazing at the destruction within with her mouth hanging open. She wondered if even ten pairs of Weasley twins could have caused so much damage in such a short time. To tell the long story short – there wasn’t anything in the room that had survived the battle unscratched.

She turned to the so-called embodiments of light and darkness, who suddenly felt that there was a power way beyond them, and it was mighty pissed at them at that moment.

“I want that room fixed in ten seconds or heads will roll!” Hermione yelled in her best imitation of Mrs. Weasley. She got a demonstration of the quickest spellcasting she’d ever seen in her life in return. After that Ron said a hasty goodbye and disapparated home.

“Harry, I got something for your nightmares upstairs, follow me,” Hermione told him and sprinted up the stairs. Harry followed him at a slower pace and found her at the door to her room. She pressed a small vial into his hands, kissed him on the cheek, wished him goodnight and slammed the door in his face. Harry was surprised to find himself left in the hallway with an equally surprised Crookshanks.

“I think she’s still a bit angry – what you say?”

He made his way back downstairs, drank the potion and dropped down on the couch he himself had repaired only a few moments ago. He suddenly felt something drop on his stomach. He peeled open one of his heavy eyelids to find a ginger, big ugly half-kneazle getting comfortable on his stomach.

“Gerroffme, Garfield!” he mumbled, before he fell asleep.

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A/N: This small bit was removed from the story as suggested by some reviewers, who said that it was killing the building up of suspense. The reviewer is always right, so I gut it, but for those who liked it or didn’t get a chance to read it yet, here it is. It was placed right after the scene with Hermione in the kitchen before the duel.

Now, the most common thought going through the readers heads as they made it to this point in our story was a rather unsophisticated ‘HUH?’ It was followed in no specific order by ‘What the Hell?’; ‘What’s going on here?’; “Last confrontation? They haven’t even found the Horcruxes yet! Did guardian even read the bloody book?!’, ‘What the heck is she doing sipping tea in the kitchen when there’s a battle going on?’ and a lone ‘Screw you, guys, I’m going home!’ by a lone R/Hr shipper who had accidentally found the site.

Now, are you interested in finding out what’s really going on?

/Overwhelming YES!!!!! from the readers is assumed/

Ok, kids! Find out next year when this story continues!

PS: there’s no point reading any further!

OK, you’re smarter than me. Here’s what’s really happening…

9. Harry Potter: A New Hope (extended A/N in the end)

Disclaimer: I don’t really need to put one here. Honestly, by the time JKR’s and GL’s lawyers find this piece, argue about who gets to sue me for what parts and for how much, I’ll be pushing up the daisies for a long time already! Nah…Actually I’ve made so much money on both HP and SW merchandise over the years that this one is for free – enjoy it, kids!

A/N: Ok, this plot bunny has been bugging me since the time I read JKR’s response to comments that the stories of HP and Star Wars were quite similar in many aspects (can’t find where it was now, but I’m certain I’ve read it). JKR laughed it off. That made me think that: a) she’s either never seen the movies, or b) she has no clue anymore what she’s writing about. This isn’t flame towards her, I’m just wondering out loud.

Btw, hope the formatting won’t screw up the starting crawl…

Don’t hate me, hate the typos!

at the same time in a dream very, very close...

Harry Potter: A New Hope

I was a dark time for every peace-loving

being in the galaxy. After Lord Voldemort

had all but destroyed the Order of the Phoenix,

no-one able to oppose him was left. Voldemort,

through his ruthless Death Eaters, held the galaxy

by the throat with an iron fist with the dreaded

Darth Severus, Lord Voldemort’s right hand,

carrying out the most important missions and

most severe punishments.

But unknown to the Dark Lord, a new hope had

been born on the outskirts of the known space

in the form of a child – now a young man. Living

with his aunt and uncle, young Harry Potter had

no idea what the past, future and fate had in store for him...

‘Great! Just bloody great!’ the young woman was raging inside her little cell aboard the Death Star. ‘Well, Granger, this just topped the list of your great ideas, big time!’

Hermione Granger, or rather, herself as the incarnation of Princess Mione, was quite angry with herself – again. The reason was pretty much the same as before, too, but now with the added realization that it was never a good idea to go visit a boy in his dream world. Of course, the idea of using a magical potion to put Harry in a deep, enchanted sleep and then take the second potion herself had seemed like another of her brilliant ideas at the time.

‘I mean, that’s what the Dreamer and the Watcher potions were intended for – to help understand what goes on in another persons head. How should I have known this would happen?’ she asked the universe at large.

There had, naturally, been a warning about it in the Moste Potente Potions book. If one would read carefully through the ancient gibberish, it would go something like... ‘But one must be careful with the Watcher – for should the one who has taken the Dreamer think of that person, he would be drawn and trapped in whatever form the dreamer currently envisions him in.’ ‘Or her, as it happens to be,’ Hermione thought bitterly. She gave a sigh of frustration and decided to do what she could. At the moment that seemed to be limited to checking out her cell and checking out...herself. She was pleased to see that she herself looked exactly like she was in the normal world – nothing out of shape or, thank Merlin, enlarged. Harry seemed to like her just fine like she was. The clothes were a bit of a problem, though.

‘When the Hell did Leia ever wear anything so...revealing? Wait, right – Jabba’s palace. Crap. This looks like nothing more than a stylish silk bra, knickers and a cloak! Am I expected to appear in front of others like this? People will think I’m either the princess of Persia 3 or a model from the Victoria sector!’ she wondered. ‘Well, at least I’m a princess!’ she thought happily. ‘One fantasy down, several thousand more to go!’ Then, ‘A princess who’s home world is about to be blown into a thousand pieces...CRAP! I mean, make up your mind, already, Harry! What is this going to be? A normal dream, a nightmare or a sexual fantasy?!’

Without receiving any replies she decided to just sit down for a while, maybe take a nap and wait for a young man who’s ‘a bit short to be an imperial stormtrooper’ to rescue her. Unfortunately at that moment the cell door hissed open and a tall man in dark clothes accompanied by two Death Eaters walked in. Hermione looked with fear and surprise at the tall man – his black robes and swirling cloak, pale face and dark, greasy hair. ‘SNAPE?! Shouldn’t he be out torturing some poor people somewhere, or Harry, for that matter? What the hell is he doing here? It’s supposed to be his nightmare, not mine!’ She got the right answer immediately after thinking of the scene in the movie. ‘Oh, goodie! I get to be tortured by Darth Snape! Seems that we’re following the script to a degree here,’ she had time to think, before the man opened his mouth.

“And now, Your Highness, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base...Legilimens!”

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In the remotest corner of the dream a young man was gazing longingly at the twin sunset of Tatooine, imagining what a life full of adventure and excitement would be like. Being forced to endure this monotonous life of a Tatooine moisture farmer was about as fascinating as watching the paint dry – on planet Tatooine that had two suns one never knew it was going to dry up or just vaporize from the heat.

The ground started to vibrate slightly and he heard the distant rumble of some gargantuan vehicle roaming across the desert towards them. ‘Finally, the junk dealers showed up at last,’ he though. He pushed away his dreams and went to fetch his uncle. He returned shortly with a fat, mustached man and together they watched the gigantic machine roll to their desert home and come to a stop.

“I want you to keep your eyes on our droids that are roaming around, boy,” the fat older man ordered the other. “Every time those bloody goblins show up one of them just seems to disappear without a trace. Let’s get the new droids quickly so they can wheel off our property ASAP!” he continued, as they approached the “Grim Goods” as the local farmers had christened the rusting transport that acted as both a stronghold and a shop for the goblins.

“Doesn’t seem like we got much of a choice this time,” the young said.

“Harry! HARRY!” he heard a woman yell for him. He ran to the edge of the small crater that housed the small desert dwelling and leaned forward to peer over the edge. He saw his aunt stand in the middle of the small courtyard.

“What is it, aunt Petunia?” he called.

“Harry, tell your uncle, when he buys the translator to make sure it speaks mermese!”

“Ok, I’ll remind him!” he called back. ‘Mermese? On a desert planet? Crazy old bat,” he thought to himself when he joined his uncle. The droid lineup wasn’t usually something to get excited about, but sometimes there were quite a few interesting finds among the usual junk. Like today, for example. Luke was about as surprised as his uncle when they found what seemed to be a young girl – about 16 years old – among the droids. She was about 5’4 tall with tanned skin, red long hair and bright blue eyes. By human standards, that meant she was quite an eye-candy. She was wearing a tight fitting flight-suit that didn’t quite conceal her beautiful…”curves”.

“What’s this? Have the goblins taken to slave-trading now? What’re you doing with those freaks, girl?” uncle Vernon demanded.

“You’re mistaken, good sir – I’m not a human, but a high-tech cybernetic being – a human replica, if you like. That still qualifies me as a droid, sir. I’m GN-NE, or Ginny as some organic species find it more comfortable to pronounce,” the – Harry found it hard to think about her as a droid – being said in a melodic, totally human voice that fit her perfectly.

“So what programming do you have?” Vernon asked suspiciously, gazing at the droid-replica-girl.

“I’m programmed with a wide range of skills, sir, and can learn anything that is needed. My primary function is understanding humans and their psychology,” GN-NE recited quickly.

“I don’t need a shrink!” Vernon scoffed and was about to move on. ‘Well, that’s what you think,’ Harry thought bitterly for a moment before GN-NE continued.

“Of course, sir. But I’m also a very capable bodyguard, should the situation call for it – defensive abilities are another of my strongest abilities, as are my linguistic skills. I can understand and speak approximately six million different languages.”

“Can you speak mermese?” Vernon seemed interested for the first time.

“Of course, sir, it’s like a second language to me!” Ginny, as Harry now thought of her, replied instantly.

“Good.” He turned to the goblin leader. “We’ll take this one – now we only need a utility droid, preferably ‘house-elf’ class. Got any?”

“Excuse me, sir,” Ginny interrupted. “If I may make a suggestion – that droid over there is in excellent condition. I have worked with him for a long time,” she pointed at a short, round droid with a domed head. “He’s D0-BE, or Dobby if you like.” Meanwhile the little droid started to emit beeps and whistles in an excited tone.

“What’s he saying?” Harry asked.

“Well, sir,” Ginny replied in a thoughtful tone. “His current behavior can be described with one word – brownnosing.”

“Oh.”

“Ok, we’re done here! Luke, take those two to the garage. I want them cleaned up before dinner!” Vernon gave him an order.

Cursing his uncle under his breath, he led the two new additions to the farms work-force to a small underground garage. The garage held all the necessary equipment to keep the droids in working condition in Tatooine’s harsh environment – tools, spare parts, workbenches and even an oil bath. The small hangar in here also held a landspeeder and a currently in less than working condition small civilian aircraft.

“Ok, let’s get you two cleaned up!” Suddenly he found himself before a dilemma. Though Ginny was an artificial being, she still looked every bit like a human girl. That made the current situation rather complicated. Luckily for him Ginny noticed his hesitation and correctly deducted the cause for it.

“Don’t worry, sir, I’m perfectly capable of maintaining myself. I’ll take care of myself later – let me help you go over Dobby for now,” she said with an easy smile.

“Er, thanks,” Harry managed. He turned to D0-BE – Dobby and started to check the little droid out. “Seems like you guys have seen a lot of action.”

“With all we’ve been through, sometimes I’m amazed we’re in as good a condition as we are, what with the Rebellion and all,” Ginny sighed.

“You know about the Rebellion against the Empire?” Harry’s interest in the two droids had peaked instantly.

“Yes, sir. That’s how we came to be here, if you take my meaning, sir.”

Harry had found a piece of something stuck in Dobby’s datacard reader. He reached for one of the tools and started to dig it out.

“Well, my little friend, seems you got something jammed in there real good…” Harry used his weight to get the stubborn piece out of there – the piece suddenly came free and…

A small holographic image of the most beautiful girl Harry had ever seen appeared in front of him. A cloak that only left her face revealed covered her but it was enough to start his head spinning. The blue hologram didn’t show what color her eyes, hair or skin were but Harry was certain he’d love them the moment he saw them. His heart was pulling him towards the image like a capital-ship grade tractor beam. Then…

“Help me, Albus Dumbledore, you’re my only hope!” the small image said in a voice that knocked Harry’s breath away. It sounded so familiar, so beautiful, so desperate.

“Who is she?” he whispered. “She’s beautiful!”

“I believe she was a passenger aboard the ship we left as the imperials boarded it. I suppose she’s been captured by now,” Ginny said.

“Is there more to this?” Harry asked.

Dobby warbled out a long series of beeps.

“Hmm, he says that it’s a part of a longer message to one Albus Dumbledore, a resident of these parts,” Ginny translated.

“Albus Dumbledore?” Harry asked. “Haven’t heard of him before, but there’s a Brian Dumbledore – an old hermit who lives alone near the outskirts of the desert not that far from here. Maybe he knows of this Albus Dumbledore?”

Harry gazed longingly at the small figure repeating the phrase over and over. Somehow the fact that this beautiful stranger was calling someone else and not him her last hope made him feel very sad.

“Dobby, could you play the entire message for me?” he asked the small droid.

“I’m sorry, sir, but he says that he’s been given a direct order to only show the full recording to this Albus Dumbledore. Droids of ‘house-elf’ model are known for their unwavering loyalty when carrying out such orders – I’m afraid he might self-destruct if he would be unable to fulfill those orders or forced to reveal the message to anyone but the intended receiver. I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Ginny said.

“So if I would like to see the rest of it, it would have to happen in the presence of this Albus character?” Harry asked.

“Quite correct, sir. That would be well within the mission parameters.”

“All right, then!” Harry said determinedly after a moment of consideration. “Tomorrow at first light we ride out. I hope Brian can help us in some way.” Adventure had come to Tatooine and he wasn’t about to let his one chance slip through his fingers.

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Harry found himself lying on the ground and the face of an old man not far from his own, looking at him with concern. He blinked the fuzziness away and took another look at the stranger.

“Brian? Brian Dumbledore?” he asked. “Boy am I glad to see you!”

“The desert is not a place to be traveled lightly, Harry – with all the angry centaurs running around,” the old man reminded him in a kind voice. “Now tell me, young Harry – what brings you to this place?”

“You, actually, and this droid here,” he said, pointing to D0-BE, who had managed to survive the encounter with the centaurs unharmed. “He says he has a message to an Albus Dumbledore. Do you know of him?”

“Albus Dumbledore? Oh,yes! He’s me! But I haven’t heard that name in a long, long time. We better get away from here – the centaurs are easy to scare off, but they usually return soon, and in bigger numbers.”

Dobby started to squeal about something excitedly, bouncing around on his short legs.

“Right! Ginny!” Harry exclaimed. He ran down to the speeder where he had last seen the young – at least in appearance – girl.

He did not need to worry, though. When they got to the landspeeder they found her there unharmed – even more, there were quite a few unconscious or even probably dead centaurs lying on the ground.

“Harry, sir!” she called out to him the moment she saw him. “Are you unharmed?”

“Yes, I’m fine! I was more worried about you – are you ok?” Harry asked.

“I remain fully functional and unharmed, yes,” she nodded. “Can I assume our business in these parts is concluded?” she pointed towards old Brian walking towards them.

“Yes, soon. We’ve been invited to his house for a chat – it’s not safe out here, like we could see for ourselves.”

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After a few moments, quite a few surprising facts were revealed to Harry that would change his life as he knew it forever. Tatooine might have been indeed one of the planets farthest planets from the bright center of the universe, but fate has a long reach indeed and none can escape it’s grasp.

“My mum and dad were not killed by the Emperor!” Harry said. “They died in a speeder accident!”

“That’s what your aunt and uncle told you. The truth is that both of your parents were very powerful wizards and part of the Order of the Phoenix. They believed in and fought for what was right – not what was easy. When Voldemort started his crusade for power they chose to oppose him. They managed to foil many of his plans, but eventually a student of mine – Darth Severus – betrayed them and thus in a way, killed them. The rest of the Order was destroyed quickly after that so no-one with power was left to oppose Voldemort’s rise as the Emperor.” Brian sighed, breathing out the old, bitter memories of friends long lost. “Only a few wizards remain, but their powers are not nearly enough to stop the Emperor.”

“So there is no hope? The galaxy is doomed to suffer the evil of Voldemort and sooner or later even the Rebellion will be crushed?” Harry asked. “I can’t believe this!”

“There is one hope, Harry,” Brian continued rather hesitantly. “A prophecy was made a long time ago about a Chosen One – a being with such unimaginable power that when his powers were revealed, he would become a nexus of magic himself. It is foretold that the Chosen One will bring balance back to the magic and overthrow the rule of the Dark Side.”

“What is a nexus of magic?” Harry asked him.

“Magic is like a field of energy that surrounds us and flows through us. Wizards have learned to control this energy – to shape it and make it do their bidding. Like this…” Brian waved his hand and said “Wingardium Leviosa!” To Harry’s surprise a holocube from the table rose up in the air and remained floating there. “Powerful wizards do not even need to say the more simple incantations out loud – they can get the desired results by simply concentrating on them.” The cube slowly drifted back to the table and landed in its previous resting place.

“A nexus is usually a place that is very strong in magic – it flows more easily there and is more easily accessible. The Chosen One from the prophecy, however, is a living being. A being around whom the magic swirls, in who’s veins it runs, who’s will it fulfills. With magic as with all powers if two equally strong powers come to bear against each other – like in a wizards duel, for example – they would cancel each other out. There’s no other power even close to the one the Chosen One commands.”

“Who is this Chosen One, then, and why hasn’t he blasted Voldemort’s arse off his throne, Brian? What is he waiting for?”

“Who knows? Maybe his next life? This is how these things happen, Harry. Being the Chosen One is like being in love – you just know you are. Bones to balls.” Brian got up. “Which reminds me, I have something for you – your fathers lightsaber. An elegant weapon from a more civilized time - before the Empire.”

“Anyway, I believe someone had an urgent message for me?” Brian gave Dobby a questioning look.

Dobby’s holoprojector lit up and the image of the beautiful girl who had stolen Harry’s heart the first moment he saw her appeared on the small table before them.

“Headmaster Dumbledore,” she spoke. “Years ago you led the Order of the Phoenix against the growing darkness that was to become the Empire. Now I ask you to help us, the Rebellion, fight against it. I regret that I am unable to present this request in person, because my ship has fallen under attack and I’m afraid my mission to bring you to Hogwarts has failed. I have placed information vital to the Rebellion inside this droid. My friends in Hogwarts will know how to retrieve it. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Albus Dumbledore, you’re my only hope!” And with that, the message dissolved into a burst of static and disappeared. Albus leaned back and seemed to be deeply in though.

“You must come to Hogwarts with me if you want to become a wizard, Harry,” he said after a moment.

“What? I can’t go off with you! I can just imagine the look of ecstasy on my uncle’s face when I tell him that!”

“I cant do this alone, Harry. I’m becoming too old for this. She needs your help!”

Harry felt like his heart was being ripped apart. Part of it wanted to just grab the old man and the droids, find the nearest spaceworthy ship and blast off towards Hogwarts to help that mysterious girl. The other part was afraid of the consequences if he did.

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‘Funny how things turn out,’ Harry thought while sipping his drink in the Mos Eisley cantina. ‘Yesterday I was a moisture farmer yearning for excitement and adventure, desperate to get off this sandball – and today I have all that and it’s not what I thought it would be. And now I’m a wizard in training, I’ve been introduced to this 8 foot tall feline humanoid – Crookshanks and are waiting for the captain of the “Hogwarts Express” – supposedly one of the fastest ships around. Funny…that’s the word.’

A young man about his own age, but obviously much more experienced, slipped into the seat on the other side of the table.

“I’m Solo. Ron Solo.”

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Time seemed to be set on the “fast-forward” setting. Just a moment ago they had met Ron and Crookshanks in landing bay 9 ¾ and been shot at by the imperial Death Eaters, the next moment outracing imperial battle cruisers, the one after that Harry was training with Albus and now they were all hiding in the hidden cargo compartments aboard the Hogwarts Express and being pulled inside a battle station the size of a moon.

“Here’s where the fun begins…” Harry heard Ron’s whisper, as the ship settled down in one of the many hangar bays.

Fun. Harry had learned a lot about fun. Mainly that it was having a drink in another star system whenever someone mentioned it.

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Harry couldn’t believe his luck. He was here. And she was just behind this door. And he was about to open the door and see her in the flesh for the first time. And he was going to rescue her and they were going to live happily ever after – or however long the story goes. Ron was having a half-arsed conversation with someone over the prison block comm system, doing a fine job in confusing whoever had the misfortune of being on the other side and buying them some extra time. Harry figured they had caused a bit of a disturbance once they had opened fire in the front room and they didn’t have long before some unwanted company arrived. He took a deep breath and pushed the button to open the door, then stepped inside. The sight of her almost made his heart stop.

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The slight breeze from the opening door had awakened her. For a moment she lied still on the hard surface of the cell’s bed, then slowly opened her eyes.

‘There you are at last!’ she thought with a wide inward smile she was careful not to show on her face. ‘Took you long enough!’ He seemed to be totally petrified on the spot by the sight of her. ‘Well, Mr. Potter, let’s see how you like the fruits of your own fantasy!’ she shifted slightly so the soft cloak that she had wrapped around herself to keep her warm slid off revealing about 85 percent of her skin. She nearly laughed out loud when the short figure almost dropped the futuristic rifle it was carrying.

“Aren’t you a bit short for a Death Eater?” she asked, arching one eyebrow, just like the real thing.

“Oh, this…” Harry pulled his helmet off. “I’m Harry Potter, I’m here to rescue you!”

“You’re what?”

“Here to rescue you! I got your ‘house-elf’ with me! I’m here with Albus Dumbledore!”

“Albus? He’s here?!” ‘That’s a surprise,’ she thought. ‘Seems we have some changes in the script here…At least I’m not locked in a girls lavatory – now that would have been a major distraction from the heroic feel. What did he mean with ‘my house-elf’? Anyway, if Professor Dumbledore is in this dream, I can’t wait to see him again! He might only be a dream figure, but I’m certain he can still give us some useful advice!’

They ran out of the cell and nearly collided with Ron and Crookshanks. The hallway was thick with smoke and blaster fire.

“Can’t get back that way! And there’s no other way out of this that I know of!” Ron yelled to be heard above the whine of blasters and explosions.

“What the Hell do we do, then?” Harry yelled back.

“What?! You stormed the detention block of a battle station the size n a moon with no get-away plan?” Hermione thought she should yell at someone, too.

“The plan was to let the old man deactivate the beam trapping our ship and take off, not to go running around rescuing damsels in distress!” Ron shouted back at her.

“Well, look who’s the damsel in distress now!” she shot back. “Guess I have to rescue you now!” She grabbed Harry’s rifle and blasted a small grate next to Ron.

“What the hell?!” Ron screamed at her.

‘Great, can’t get along with him even in a dream,’ Hermione thought. ‘Funny how Harry always tries to stop us, but even he seems to realize there’s no changing that.’

“Well, someone has to save our skins! Into the chute, fly boys!” she shouted and dived into the tunnel. After a long slide she was thrown into the infamous trash compactor. She got up, looked herself over for any injuries and promptly drew the cloak around her. ‘Shit! Just amazing how transparent a wet fabric goes!’ After a moment three others fell into the pit, splashing her with more water.

“Now let’s get out of here before we’re drowned or squeezed into a pancake – and don’t even think about shooting the door! It’s magnetically sealed!” she warned Ron.

“I wasn’t going to…” Ron started indignantly, but was cut off by a knowing “Yeah, right,” from her.

Suddenly the world turned into a blur and Hermione found herself along with Harry on a small ledge overlooking a big chasm. The doorway was now unreachably on the other side with the bridge controls destroyed.

‘What happened?’ she wondered? ‘Dream flickering from scene to scene? That must be it…but why to this scene?’ Then it dawned to her. ‘That’s where she kissed him for the first time! And on the cheek, like I did on that day in King’s Cross. There are just too many similarities here…’ Harry, meanwhile, had pulled a length of rope with a grappling hook attached to it from his belt. He threw it at one of the mechanical contraptions hanging above them and managed to catch it in his first try. ‘Must be hero’s luck,’ Hermione smiled.

“Hold on tightly!” Harry told her. She put her hands around his neck and kissed him on his cheek. Harry looked at her surprisedly.

“For luck!” was all she said.

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They had managed to slip back into the hangar bay housing the Hogwarts Express undetected and found Ron and Crookshanks waiting for them. Suddenly the squad of Death Eaters guarding it turned and ran to one of the hallways in the far corner of the hangar, facing away from them. They took the chance immediately.

Almost instantly after entering the hangar Harry saw what had diverted the Death Eaters attention. It was Albus facing down the most notorious villain in the galaxy after the Emperor himself – Darth Severus. Their swords – the blue and red blades of energy – were currently held at the ready, each holding their attacks for the moment.

Albus glanced towards the hangar bay and saw that the younger ones had almost made it to the ship. He smiled – his work was done. The next moment he abandoned his defensive position and the ruby-red blade of Darth Severus terminated the life of the greatest white wizards ever to live.

“NO!!!” Harry yelled in denial and disbelief. He hadn’t ever before seen anyone else killed so callously, without any thought of showing mercy. The shock of it made his body and soul go numb.

The Death Eaters had heard his anguished cry and turned around – the next moment deadly bolts of energy were flying all around them but none hitting, luckily. Harry started to return the fire, angrily picking off one Death Eater after the other.

“Come on, Harry! Come on!” he heard Mione’s voice through the blaster fire. “It’s too late for him! We have to go!”

He knew that, of course, but the rage and anger inside him demanded that he kill each and every enemy in the vicinity before he left.

‘Run, Harry, run!’ he suddenly heard her clear voice much closer – like coming from a headset.

He turned immediately and ran up the boarding ramp of the Express.

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She found him in the main area of the ship, sitting behind the holotable – leaning on it, actually. The expression of grief on his face put a spike right through her own heart. She put the blanket she had found over his shoulders.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” Harry said, his eyes locked on the table.

“There was nothing you could have done, Harry,” she reminded him quietly, holding him comfortingly.

Suddenly Ron burst into the scene.

“Come, mate, we aren’t out of this yet,” he said and ran to the gun turrets.

Harry immediately followed him, glad for the interruption. Grief was something he’d handle later – he’d get more of his revenge now.

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When he entered the cockpit of the Express after a short skirmish with the Imperial starfighters she found the Princess leaving it.

“Your friend in quite a mercenary. Wonder if he really cares about anything – or anybody,” she told him when they came face-to-face in the narrow doorway.

“I care!” Harry told her. Hermione left quickly so he wouldn’t see the smile on her face. She silently sneaked back to the doorway to overhear the conversation between the two. It was one thing to hear it from the TV or see it in the movie and totally another to be right in the middle of it and being the subject of the discussion.

“So, what do you think of her?” Harry asked while sitting down in the pilots seat.

“I try not to,” Ron scoffed.

“Good!” Harry let slip before he could stop himself.

A smile spread across Ron’s face.

“Still, she got a lot of spirit. What do you think – can a princess and a guy like me…”

“No!” Harry said immediately. He bit his tongue right after that, hoping it would help in the future.

‘Hah!’ The subject of this particular conversation thought, hearing those remarks from her hiding place. “Sorry, Ron, but that ship has already sailed! Tough luck, Solo!”

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“As you can see from this, the battle station is nearly impervious to a large scale attack. However, we have detected a weakness. If a small fighter unit can slip into this crack between sectors R/Hr and H/G and fire a pair of proton torpedoes up this tunnel into the reactor core, it would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the station,” the strategical officer finished the briefing.

“This is suicide,” Ron whispered to Harry. “You heard it – it’s practically impenetrable! These people are delusional!”

“I’m not abandoning them – or her, Ron. If all you care about is yourself, mate, then I wish you good luck!” Harry told him angrily.

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Harry was crawling through the blizzard, numb from the freezing cold. Finally the exhaustion dropped him. Suddenly a glowing blue shape materialized before him. Someone he knew.

“Sirius?” Harry managed to whisper.

“Yes, Harry,” the image of his dead godfather answered in a voice straight from beyond the grave – low and moaning. “It is I, Harry.”

“Sirius! Sirius, I’m so sorry you had to die because...” Harry started in a teary voice.

“Oh for Gods sake, shut up already, Harry!” Sirius suddenly exclaimed in his usual voice. “Ah crap, there goes my act! Seriously, though, Harry, if you don’t stop moaning about how you’re responsible for everyone’s – including my own – death, I just might come back from the great beyond to kick your ass myself!”

“What?” Harry was dumbfounded.

“Let. It. Go! Comprende?” Sirius arched an eyebrow. “Anyway, I’m here to tell you to go to the planet Burrow. There a former teacher of mine called Flitwick will teach you in the ways of magic. So long and thanks for all the fish!” Sirius waved him.

“No! Sirius, wait!” Harry’s head dropped to the snow.

The blue ghost of a former Marauder gazed at him til the area around them grew fuzzy. He lifted his gaze from the spot where Harry had been just a moment before and peered into the fog surrounding him.

“So what do you think of this so far, Hermione?” he asked suddenly.

“What?” came a surprised voice from the swirling mess.

“Come out, don’t be shy. It’s just me, Sirius,” he said.

After a moment Hermione appeared in front of him.

“Is it really you? But how?” Hermione seemed surprised beyond belief.

“Yep, me. And almost the same way as you – I’m sort of interested in finding out what’s going on in my poor, clueless godsons messed up head just as much as you.”

“But, you cant have used a Watcher potion! You’re dead! DEAD!” she yelled.

“I’m aware of that, thank you for reminding, though,” he grinned at her. “I’m here because I promised to his parents that I’d watch over him. Some promises can have funny side effects, as I found out when you fed him the Dreamer.” He let out a bark of his trademark laugh. “We once did the same thing to James so me and Remus could see what was going on in his head. Never once could look Lily straight in the eye after that!”

“But what is going on here, Sirius, do you know? We just seem to flicker through the scenes of the movie we watched earlier tonight. Sometimes I see things through his eyes and feel what he feels – just like the description in the book about the Watcher says it should be. But sometimes I’m in other places – doing the things or experiencing moments that the corresponding character in the movie did. Why is that?”

“Ah,” Sirius started to explain. “When you’re out of the picture, the potion works properly. When, however, he thinks about you – imagines you in a place or a situation, then that is where you end up.” He scratched his head. “Funny how James seemed to think me and Remus’ll end up in hell all the time. He had a vivid imagination of that place, too.” He peered through the surrounding fog. “You’d better go now – old Flitwick is about to introduce him to his greatest fear. It’s something you should see. I’ll see you in a couple of flics…”

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

“That place…it feels cold,” Harry said.

“The dark side is strong in there. In there you must go!” the diminutive being told him, sitting on a fallen tree trunk.

“What will I find there?” Harry asked.

“Only a boggart…AH FIDDLESTICKS! OBLIVIATE! Only what you bring with you…” the old teacher managed to correct the situation.

Harry slowly entered the dark cave beneath the gnarled and twisted tree. It was barely bright enough to see where he was going, but not much beyond that. He took a few steps deeper inside. He saw someone already in there. That someone seemed to be resting against the cave wall.

“Hello? Who’s there?” he called out. When no answer came back he started moving forward carefully.

The person was clad in a dark robe that obscured any features. The hood of the cloak resting over her shoulders was pulled up to cover the face. The person wasn’t moving. Harry stepped next to him or her, crouched down and gently shook the shoulder closest to him. The body suddenly fell sideways, the head coming to a rest in his lap. The hood fell away to reveal a mess of brown hair. Harry brushed the hair out of the face. He suddenly felt his hands becoming wet and sticky – horrified, he realized they were covered with blood.

“No!” Harry felt his heart skip several beats and constrict in a most painful manner. “No, Mione, NO!!!” His scream made the cave walls tremble.

The next moment the vision was gone – he was crouching in the cave alone, his hands visibly clean. He swallowed hard and needed several minutes to compose himself before he climbed out of the cave.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

“Can you tell me, teacher, what fuels our powers?” Harry asked the little but powerful wizard.

“Usually wizards get the best results when they are calm, their minds tranquil, Harry,” Flitwick explained. “This is considered to be the best and correct way of how to use magic. The dark wizards, however, fuel their magic with emotions – anger, rage – that kind of things. That is what fuels the most powerful, deadly magic spells that are created to kill another person. “That’s why the white wizards had such a hard time opposing the darkness that now rules the universe.”

“Would it be possible to use the good emotions – like love – to do that?” Harry wondered,

“Theoretically, yes,” Flitwick nodded. “Never been done before, though. Kinda hard to manage that, I suppose, when staring down someone who tries to kill you.” He continued after a moment, “Well, Harry. Seems that I have thought you everything I can.”

“So I’m a wizard now?” Harry asked excitedly.

“No, my boy, not yet. You have to face Darth Severus and Voldemort before you become one,” Flitwick shook his head.

“Ok!”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Harry Potter, the Chosen One, was facing Darth Severus in the Death Star throne room – behind them in a high-backed chair sat Lord Voldemort himself, goading them on.

“Yes, yes…Release your hate, your anger! It’s the only way to win this battle, young Potter!”

Harry raised his blue lightsaber in a ready position. Severus was looking at him with utter disgust on his face.

“However feeble your skills are, we could use you still, Potter. Kneel before us and join us if you want to live.”

“Me? Join you? Now there’s a thought,” Harry spat.

“No?” Severus arched an eyebrow. “Then maybe someone else will…someone you care about? How. About. The princess?”

“She’ll never join you! You’ll never get your hands on her!” Harry shouted.

“Really?”

The doors hissed open behind Harry. For a moment he thought the two dark wizards had got reinforcements.

“Harry?” a voice that spoke directly from his heart…

Like in a moment that was stretched out like a piece of elastic band, Harry turned his head to look behind him. There stood Mione in her white clothes, looking at him. Her eyes showed fear and concern for him.

“I think you’re right, Potter. We can’t have a Mudblood join us, now can we?” Darth Severus’s voice sounded in his hears. A blast of blue lightning shot past him. It hit Mione straight in the chest and threw her back against the steel wall. She slid down slowly, leaving a trail of blood on the wall.

Harry felt the universe pull back – and then hit him with everything it had.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Hermione felt sharp pain in the back of her head as she was thrown against the wall. The next moment she found herself floating above the room next to Sirius.

“You ok, Hermione?” He asked, looking intently down at the room.

“I think so…” She said. “What just happened? What is this, Sirius?” She looked at Harry’s godfather.

“A possible future,” Sirius said gravely.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Darth Severus looked at the young man in front of him. Something in him had changed, he knew that – he just wasn’t sure what. Suddenly the weapon in Harry’s hand caught his attention. It was pulsing – not like it was about to malfunction…not at all. Suddenly it seemed to shift several tones a second and suddenly stopped at the ruby-red that matched his own blade. The next move came so fast it wasn’t humanly possible.

Darth Severus’s head fell down some endless pit while his body collapsed in front of Harry.

“Good! Excellent! Now kneel before me and take the place that is rightfully yours!” Lord Voldemort’s high-pitched laughter echoed through the room.

Harry looked up, his eyes meeting the Emperor’s. The foremost dark wizard became suddenly very afraid of the young man before him. He was afraid to look in those eyes. They were burning with the green flame of a lit lightsaber – the color of the killing curse.

“Why don’t you step outside for a moment and give me time to consider it?” Harry’s impassionate voice said. He raised his hand and suddenly the entire section of the viewing platform – the chair, the controls and the Dark Lord were blown out into the freezing cold of space. The shielding panels slammed down the next moment to protect the room from the vacuum of space.

“That’s a ‘no’ in case you were wondering.”

Harry walked back to the body of the person he had loved from the first moment he saw her – it had felt like several years had passed since. The saber fell to the floor with a clunk when he discarded the weapon and sat down next to her. She pulled her into his arms. He felt tears starting to run down his eyes.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

“What is this, Sirius? What is happening to him?” Hermione asked through the tears.

“Love turned into grief channeled through anger,” Sirius answered. “He never grieved for the one’s he loved or the ones he felt responsible for – and considering the fact that he’s the only one who can stop Voldemort, Harry thinks each and every one of those Voldemort kills before he’s stopped is his responsibility.”

“But…He has grieved – hasn’t he? How could he not?”

“You were there, Hermione. You saw it. It started with Cedric and the nightmares he had after that. I believe you remember clearly how angry he was when he arrived at the headquarters. Then when I got killed and…” he motioned down at the scene below them. “You got hurt in the Ministry – he just dug a deeper hole in his heart to bury those emotions and heaped others on it to cover them. As you saw, it will end badly. After the Ministry incident he nearly pulverized Albus’s office. And when Albus himself was killed he took off after the killer himself, doing everything he could to bring him down.”

“But he talked about those things!” Hermione tried.

“He gave reports about them, yes. Did he ever sit down with anyone to say just how sorry he felt or how bad he felt about it? No, he did not,” Sirius answered the question himself.

“What can be done, Sirius?” she whispered.

“Hermione – I just died, they didn’t make me omni-sentient!” Sirius rolled his eyes. “But I’d suggest you work with him to let go of his anger and pain. It should lead to a much more acceptable future and unlock his powers much earlier.”

“Unlock his powers?” Hermione blinked. “You mean these powers he has here aren’t just his fantasy? He really has them?”

Sirius nodded. “Ouch. I don’t like the look of this,” he said suddenly, looking down at Harry.

Hermione looked down quickly and saw Harry sitting where he had been with Mione’s body in his lap, picking up his weapon. She watched confusedly until Harry pressed the top of the weapon under his own chin.

“Someone...anyone – SIRIUS, DO SOMETHING!” she yelled in panic.

‘Why does it always have to be me?’ Sirius thought, annoyed, and then suddenly pushed her.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Harry almost pressed the activation button of the weapon when a warm hand suddenly caressed his cheek. The hand slid down quickly and pried the weapon from his weak fingers and threw it away from him. He opened his eyes and found her beautiful brown eyes – full with life and tears – staring into his.

“I will never leave you, Harry,” she whispered to him. “I never have and never will. Next time, please check for my pulse before you do something silly, ok?” she said with a smirk.

Harry burst into tears and laughter, feeling relief and happiness creep back into his body. He felt like he was a phoenix on the burning day – flaring into flames and ashes one moment and being reborn to a new, wonderful life in the next. He waved his hand over her head and all the blood vanished from her hair.

“What do you say that we leave this place before Ron blows it up along with us?” He grinned at her.

“He always had a lousy sense of timing,” she grinned back at him.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The doors to the Great Hall opened and the two heroes accompanied by Crookshanks stepped through it. All the rebels who could were attending the awards ceremony – wanting to witness the historical moment when the men who had almost single-handedly brought down the Empire were going to be honored by their leaders. Many thought that it should really be the other way around, but they kept their silence. The heroes walked down the aisle to the small platform in the other end of the Hall where the leaders of the Rebellion, and princess Mione among them, were waiting for them.

They reached the platform and walked up the steps, remaining at attention a few steps from the rebel leadership. Ron stepped forward first, and the princess placed the Medal of Honor around his neck. With a wide smile on his face Ron stepped back next to Harry.

Then Harry stepped forward, looking into Mione’s sparkling eyes. After receiving his medal, he was expected to step back and salute the gathered rebels – but hat wasn’t what Harry had in mind! Instead, he stepped forward and swept the princess off her feet into a passionate kiss. Hermione felt the surroundings fade into a blur as Harry’s lips connected with hers, his tongue gently teasing them open and getting entangled with her own most sharp and agile tongue. He suddenly felt his hands roaming downward from where they were around his waist as the heat from the kiss seemed to spread all over them.

“WHAT?! Here? Now? IN FRONT OF THE CROWD?!” her panicked voice whimpered in her head. And unfortunately before the impulse carrying the thought that ‘it’s only a dream – to hell with it, enjoy yourself!’ could make it through the confused crowd of impulses another one carrying the ‘Finite incantatem!’ slipped to the front.

Hermione jumped up from her bed, pulse racing and her face flushed from the recent experience. She tore the door to her room open and stormed down the stairs where Harry was still enjoying a quite stimulating dream.

“HARRY!!!” she yelled at once.

Harry jumped a meter into the air and looked around wildly before his eyes settled on her.

“What?” he asked, blinking.

‘Gonna tell him that you were snooping around his dreams and really liked the way his hands felt like, but would like to keep such activities a little more private, are you?’ a voice grinned in her head. ‘Ah, crap! I need an excuse, quick!’ Hermione thought desperately.

“Meow!”

“Um, where’s Crookshanks?” she managed.

Harry blinked. He tried to focus on where the sound came from. Then he looked up.

Poor Crookshanks was hanging from the small chandelier above them.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

A/N:

The chapter is over, but I’ll put this bit of explanation in here just in case you thought I’m totally mental now.

Dreams are usually a mess of jumbled scenes influenced by what's happened during the day (if there were any significant happenings). Dreams are random - they don’t come with a table on content in the front and an index in the end - they are quite confusing.

Now Harry's dream - I chose this way to drive home hte point that Harry never grieved over the death of those characters close to him. He just channels those feelings into anger and rage.

1. His parents - he's too young to remember. Not much else to say.

2. Cedric - when he is killed in front of him Harry just feels very sick. Then there is this adrenaline-boosted action against Voldemort and he gets back. The moment he does - he goes numb. This is the time he should be comforted, explained that it's ok to feel bad - whatever. Instead he's forced to witness the confession of B.Crouch Jr. and then go through what has happened with Dumbledore. There I believe is one of the big mistakes Albus made. Sirius wants to go with Harry to the Hospital wing, but Albus says they have to do it now - Harry has to understand to heal. Very correct, but he goes totally the wrong way about it. After that Harry ends up in the Hospital wing where he hears Fudge blow him off, thinking him crazy. And we have the result in book 5 in angry!Harry, who after being forced to spend a month with Dursleys is having nightmares about Cedrics death every night. He never dealt with all that grief inside him.

2.Sirius - someone who he loves so much that it forces Voldemort out of him during possession, dies. What does he do? Enter angry!Harry who runs off after the killer. And the beginning of book 6? Well, apparently after destroying half of Dumbledores office, he went home and thought 'What the heck, that's enough grieving. I'll be ok now."

3. Dumbledore - again right in pops the angry!Harry who takes off after the killer in anger. I can only hope that he found some closure in the funeral.

In my fic luckily Hermione and Sirius were able to intervene. What's going to Hapen to Harry in book 7 - i have no idea, but he should be a right mental case the way JKR has written him.

A/N for fun: now that you’ve been through the terrifying experience of chapter 8, following is a section that the author thought prudent to remove from the main text as it is so horrible to some minds as to outrank Vogon’s poetry – yes, the third worst piece of literature in the galaxy! Here we go! Your sanity is at risk, but remember – don’t panic!

"Albus never told you what happened to your father?" Darth Severus asked the battered young man.

"He told me enough!" Harry yelled through tears. "He told me you betrayed them!"

"No, Harry...I AM YOUR FATHER!"

"NOOO!!!"

"Search your feelings, son. You know it's true. It's all this grease I've been smearing on my hair to try and keep it down that's confusing you." Darth Severus explained...

I’m sad to inform you that 3 beta-readers and 5 editors were lost in the process of bringing this bit to you!

10. The secrets you keep

Disclaimer: I’m too old for this shit!

A/N: OK, the P.L.O.T. moves on a bit in this chapter and when I get the next chapter containing the wedding and Harry’s birthday out next, it’ll get serious (as in Death Eaters and such stuff. Also a bit of what happened in last chapter is explained – if you skipped it for some reason (like thinking I had mistakenly put a HP/SW story up instead of next chapter) I’d suggest you go and read it. IMHO it’s not just really funny, but important things about Harry are revealed (and I don’t mean here that he and Luke could change places with anyone being the wiser). All the weirdness should be explained in the chapter itself, but if you still doubt my sanity, go read the A/N at the end and my answers to some of the reviews for last chapter. Author out!

The secrets you keep

“So what’s so bloody important that requires Crookshanks presence 5 o’clock in the morning?” Harry was trying to hold a conversation and coax an angry half-kneazle down from the chandelier at the same time.

“I, um, missed him?” Hermione offered.

“You know, that makes me jealous enough to leave him up there,” Harry huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I missed you too,” she smiled at him. “Feel better now?”

“Well, that depends on if you missed me more than him,” he jerked his head towards Crookshanks.

“Yes – much, much more than him. Would you now please get him down?”

Harry grumbled something unintelligible and reached up again from where he was standing on the couch. When his hands reached Crookshanks the half-kneazle hissed at him angrily and took a swipe at him with his claws.

“Ow! Hell!” Harry yelped, withdrawing his hands quickly. One of them now had long scratches visible on it with a few drops of blood seeping through the skin. “That’s it, Crookshanks! Get down, NOW!” Harry snapped.

Crookshanks seemed to give Harry the cat/kneazle equivalent of a shocked stare, then jumped down obediently to land softly on the couch and ran out of the living room.

“Yeah, no good deed goes unpunished,” Harry grumbled, nursing his itching hand. “My collection of scars just keeps growing with every year.” He dropped down on the couch himself and sat there.

“Don’t worry, Harry.” Hermione told him as she got comfortably on the couch with him – her feet dangling over one edge and her head in his lap. “As he’s my cat I feel it’s my solemn duty to properly reward you.”

“Oh,” Harry grinned. “I do like the sound of that.”

“But not now, Harry,” she said, closing her eyes.

“So now that you made sure both Crookshanks and I are still here you’re going back to sleep?” Harry asked her.

“No,” Hermione yawned. “I believe I had my share of dreams for tonight. You?”

“Same, I guess,” He told her. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember anything from the dream, but the feeling right now ranks somewhat above the one I had after that nightmare the first day back – and significantly lower than the feeling of waking up next to you, just so you know. Whatever that potion did, I guess it helped.”

“Harry…I need to tell you something,” she said, twisting her fingers. “It was actually one of two companion potions that I made. They are called the Dreamer and the Watcher – I found them in Moste Potente Potions.”

“You did? Well, for something out of that book it tasted surprisingly good.”

“Let me continue, please? The Dreamer works like a sleeping potion, but it let’s the person who drinks the Watcher potion to enter and see the dream the other person has. It means that I sneaked around in your mind without asking you first,” she finished.

“You did?” Harry asked. “Hope you didn’t see anything I should be highly embarrassed about.”

“No, not really. But I saw some things that made me realize a few things about you. Like how you deal with death and grief, for example,” she said quietly.

“What’s there to realize?” Harry asked her. “Don’t I deal with it like everybody else does?”

“No, love.” Hermione looked up from where her head was resting. “You seem to channel your grief into rage and anger, and that is not right. When you grieve you feel the loss of a loved one – but you turn the absence of love into something quite different. It makes it easier to deal with in short-term, but it will just hurt you more in the long run.” She raised one hand and caressed his cheek. “The people you lost – you haven’t let them go. Like you believe that they are lost to you forever. But remember what Professor Dumbledore told you after you defeated Quirrel and Voldemort in the first year? Death is but the next great adventure – and I believe it. It didn’t help that you lost your parents so early in life and were forced to grow up with the Dursleys – those creatures didn’t teach you anything worth knowing. When Cedric was killed in front of you – I remember how angry you were when we met you at the headquarters. A month had passed and you were still suffering from it.”

“Yeah, had a good running streak of nightmares the whole month before it, but they went away,” Harry interrupted.

“Why do you think they went away, Harry?”

“Er,” Harry thought hard. “Would I be wrong if I assumed it was because of getting back to you and Sirius?”

“No, I was thinking the same thing, Harry…But then you lost Sirius. And it was sad that not only did he die, but he disappeared through that damned veil so there was no funeral, or even a memorial service to honor him – and it’s exactly those things that help people deal with their grief.”

“I’d say you’re right, but that wouldn’t be telling anything you already didn’t know, now would it? So let me just tell you that I really like smart girls who understand me so well – and there only seems to be one of them around.” He kissed her on the lips softly. “I’d love to hold a small memorial or something to remember Sirius – I don’t know if the Order ever held one. If they did, they didn’t see fit to invite me. But that’s not that I need right now…”

“What I really need right now is a cup of hot steaming coffee,” he replied, rubbing his hands over his face to get the blood going. Suddenly the smell of fresh, hot coffee filled his nostrils. He lowered his hands and saw, indeed, two cups of the steaming stuff on the small table in front of them. “Hey! Nice service in here, thanks!” He reached for one of the cups, noticing his own name on it.

“Er, Harry, that wasn’t me – and unless I acquired a house elf or two without my knowledge, it was you who conjured them.” She was watching the cup with her own name suspiciously.

“Really?” Harry said, arching an eyebrow. “Well, it tastes great. Must’ve been Kreacher, then...or Dobby, more likely, as it obviously lacks poison.” His face went sour suddenly and he sighed.

“What?” Hermione asked with concern.

“Mentioning Kreatcher made me think of Sirius’s old house. It would have been a great place to go after I turn seventeen and it has loads of space – even a library – we could have used it as our base.”

“And what’s stopping us now?” Hermione raised an eyebrow.

“With Dumbledore – and thus, the Fidelius charm – gone, I dont fancy stepping through the door and in front of a “welcome home, Harry!” killing curse. Snape must’ve told them all about the place now, I figure.”

“Ah! This may make you feel better then, Harry,” she started with a grin. “Remember you asked me to check up the Fidelius charm when you called me through the mirror?”

“Oh, I will definitely remember that one for the rest of my life, Mione!” Harry grinned from ear to ear.

“Ha ha!” Hermione said in annoyed tone, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I did check it up. I was just waiting for you to ask about it. What I found out was most interesting. It seems that the Fidelius charm has a sorts of fail-safe built in it.” She sat up and reached for the cup of coffee.

“Oh, come on! No dramatic pauses please Mione! The suspense is killing me!” Harry said in a mocking voice.

After giving him a warning stare for interrupting her, she continued with her report. “Should the Secret Keeper die then yes, normally the spell would end and the protection would be lifted. However, it is possible for the Secret Keeper to name a successor that would become he new Secret Keeper when the previous one dies. When the Secret Keeper dies the secret he protects is transferred into his successors head. It kind of makes sense for such a powerful charm to have a way to keep the protection up – if all it took to end the protection was to kill the Secret Keeper the Fidelius charm wouldn’t be half as useful as it is.”

“Well I figure killing Dumbledore wouldn’t have been easy at all if he wasn’t so weakened by that potion,” Harry said in a pained voice. He still partly blamed himself for feeding it to Dumbledore, especially because it had all been in vain – the mysterious R.A.B. had beaten them to the Horcrux. The rest – most – of the blame he laid on Snape, of course.

“You’re right, it wouldn’t have. But still I think he took the measures to pass on the secret to someone else should anything happen to him.”

“So how exactly does it work – passing the secret to someone else?” Harry asked her, looking her in the eye.

“Well, the books said that in order to pass the secret, the Secret Keeper and the successor must share a bond,” she said what she remembered from the books.

“Bond? What bond?” Harry asked.

“A bond of trust. The Keeper must trust the successor first,” Hermione said.

“First? There’s more to it?”

“Yes – now let me continue, please, or I shall put you in detention. Now if the Keeper trusts the successor, then the next step would be to reinforce it, make it a magical bond.”

“How’d you do that?” Harry interrupted again.

“Detention, tonight, Mr. Potter, and if you interrupt me once more I’ll…” she tried to think of a suitable punishment.

“Kiss me right away and not wait for the so-called ‘detention’?” Harry asked smugly. “I assure you it’s a one-hundred percent sure way to shut me up!”

“Grrr….” Hermione growled. “Reinforcing the bond – in other words, the successor must fulfill a promise he made to the Secret Keeper.” She looked at him with a serious expression. “And it has to be something important. Things like “I promise not to sneak into the kitchen tonight” wont cut it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m certain that cuts the circle of possible candidates to at least three-digit numbers considering how important Dumbledore was and how many people he must have known during his long life,” Harry said sarcastically. “Wonder which one of them might have the keys to my house now.”

“No, Harry, I don’t think so. I owled Professor McGonagall and Moody who were Professor Dumbledore’s closest friends and associates for a long time. They told me that Albus almost never asked anyone to make a promise to him. Even with the Order members – he asked or ordered but never made them promise something that would count for the Fidelius charms requirement,” Hermione told him.

“So you think Dumbledore left the secret to a successor…any ideas who it might be, then?”

“As it happens, yes – I have one.” Her eyes caught his. “I think it’s you.”

“What?!” Harry hadn’t expected that. “Me? Why me? How’d you figure that?”

“It’s called ‘logic’, Harry. It wouldn’t hurt you to use it sometimes,” she smiled at him teasingly. “Why I think it’s you? Easy – Dumbledore trusted and respected you immensely. And I believe you’ve made a promise or two to him over the years that you were able to keep. And last but not least - as you said just now, it is your house now. No-one else I can think of would qualify as the successor.”

Harry was trying to think of a flaw in her reasoning. He might as well have tried to find a way to prove two plus two was sixteen. She was right, of course – Dumbledore had trusted him – he hadn’t told him every secret he knew, but the trust was there, no doubt about it. From the first year at Hogwarts Dumbledore had stood by and let Harry and his friends do what needed to be done – ready to intervene if necessary, but otherwise letting them act freely.

Then there was the promise…Harry wondered which one from over the years would have been sufficient to act as the reinforcement to their bond of trust. The last one, he figured. He gave his word to do what Dumbledore told him to do – no matter what. To feed him the potion and not to stop as it happened to be in the end. He suspected no one else had before and now never would be in a similar position - forced to keep a promise in such a way. And it was his house now so the idea that the protection of he secret should be transferred to him sounded very…right.

“Ok, let’s assume it’s me. So how would it happen – the transfer of the secret? I mean I don’t feel any different than before,” he said at last.

“You’re not supposed to. If it’s been transferred to your mind all you have to do is to imagine it to see it. The books describe it like an imaginary list with all the names of the people who know of the secret – to whom the Secret Keeper has revealed it, that is.”

Harry suddenly saw quite clearly a piece of yellow parchment before his eyes with many names written with green ink on it. Then the list rolled up into a scroll and a small jeweled metal box snapped shut around it with a click like the turning of a lock. The next moment the image was gone, leaving him blinking.

“You were right, Mione. It’s in my head now – the secret.”

“It is? Really? What does it feel like?” she asked, peering into his eyes as if trying to see the mental image of the list reflected in his eyes.

“It doesn’t ‘feel’, it ‘is’, Mione,” Harry said. “Great, now at least we know that I’m the new Secret Keeper. Is there anything I can do to the list? Like cut out Snape’s name?” he asked.

“No, that’s not possible I’m afraid,” Hermione answered. “You have two options according to the spells description – to either keep the list and add new names to it when needed or to wipe it totally clean – start anew.”

Harry instantly knew what he would need to do. He closed his eyes and recalled the image of the list in his mind. When the box appeared, opened and spit out the scroll with the names he concentrated harder. One by one the names disappeared as if the paper was soaking in the ink – like Riddle’s diary, he thought. When the parchment was clean, he let it be boxed again.

“Mione, the new base of our trio will be at Grimmauld place, Number 12, London. Mi casa es su casa,” he grinned. He heard an imaginary quill scribbling her name on the parchment inside his head.

“Harry, I’ve been there…” Hermione started to say but stopped suddenly. “You wiped it?” she asked.

Harry nodded with a serious expression on his face.

“But why? The Order needs it as their headquarter!”

“The Order is not important, Mione,” Harry said. She noticed that he had started to call her with the name from his dream. “It’s what we three will do that matters. Dumbledore would have agreed with me. He only told me about the Horcruxes and allowed me to tell you two – the Order was never in on this information. We need a place where we wont be disturbed, so at least for a while only the three of us will have access to it. I don’t need any distractions like Mrs. Weasley or even Remus watching over our shoulders the whole time. And the Order doesn’t need a headquarter to function if it’s still functioning at all. Dumbledore is gone and even Fawkes has left. I think it’s really dark times for the Order at the moment.”

“The Order will survive, I’m sure,” Hermione told him. “It actually pre-dates Dumbledore and the war against Voldemort, did you know?” Seeing his expression she said: “So you didn’t. And you’re right – Fawkes left. But the phoenix will return and choose a new leader for the Order.”

“What? What do you mean with that?” Harry was puzzled.

“I checked it up when I found out that I was a witch and all the things like unicorns and phoenixes and dragons were real. See, as phoenixes don’t really die but are reborn on their burning day they can live a very long life. So unlike other magical beings that wizards take in as pets with phoenixes it’s actually the other way around – here the wizard is the pet and the phoenix usually chooses his next one when the previous dies.”

“Now what I have been able to find out – when it’s ‘pet’ dies, the phoenix disappears until his next burning day. When he is reborn on that day his previous name is abandoned and he searches out a new wizard to become his keeper. I looked through the records on phoenixes and their masters the Ministry had and discovered something – a surprising number of them were considered to be the greatest white wizards of their time and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were all also the headmasters of the Order.”

Harry thought that Professor Dumbledore was probably greatly amused that Fawkes would consider him his ‘pet’.

“Well then, when we hear that someone has acquired a phoenix we’ll let him or her know where the headquarter of the Order used to be,” he told Hermione. “Wonder who it will be, though.”

There’s a thing to be said about cosmic jokes. They are usually played on people least expecting the. And they are usually triggered when people say something. A good example would be the jokes that have been classified as the Famous Last Words. If anyone would have told Harry that one day a vortex of flames would burst out of his coffee cup, leaving a pile of ash and a baby phoenix in it, he would have laughed at it. But somehow people never laugh at the cosmic jokes. Or at least those they happen to don’t.

Harry was staring dumbfounded at the little baby-phoenix in his cup who was enjoying himself immensely and gawking cutely at his face. He felt Hermione stand up next to him and peer into the cup. She looked at him, then.

“Harry?” she asked.

Harry lifted his eyes to meet hers.

“What are you thinking now?” she asked next.

“I’m thinking…” Harry started slowly, “that Hedwig is not going to like this one bit.”

“Why?”

“Elementary, Watson. How would you like a new roommate who would go up in flames ever month or so?” Harry grinned now that the initial shock seemed to have passed.

“Oh, right.”

“Now I’ll leave baby-Albus here with you while I go get my butt kicked by Bruce again and I’ll see you later, then!” Harry said. The tiny bird chirped happily at the mention of his new name.

“Wait, you’re going? But what about – Albus? You’re naming him Albus?” she asked.

“Yes, Mione. And I’m sure neither one of them would object. See you later!” he told before popping out.

11. Everything is fair

A/N: Before you continue with the next chapter I thought I should remind you all the four R’s – Read, Rate, Review and Recommend! Also, as we know squat about the wizardry version of the wedding ceremony, I used up my authors license points to put some things in it *grin*. As the chapter was getting almost as long as the dream one, Harry’s birthday is not in it…exactly.

Disclaimer: Not mine. If you don’t know who’s then you probably shouldn’t be here.

Everything is fair...

The week before the “big days” – Bill and Fleur’s wedding and his own birthday – was quite tiring for poor Harry. First - as this was their last week of training, Bruce started to train him with a real sword instead of the wooden imitations they had been using so far. It took a while for Harry to get over the fear of being cut to pieces or skewering Bruce accidentally during those lessons, but the fear also worked the other way – there’s nothing like a bit of healthy fear to help keep you away from the opponents sword like Bruce told him. Harry was becoming quite the swordsman – Bruce praised his ability to keep the sword moving, going from an attack to a block and attack again without pause. ‘No point in stopping in the middle of a fight and presenting your opponent with a stationary target,’ like Bruce said. ‘A true master is never where the blow lands’ was another bit of useful advice Harry learned through numerous small cuts and scratches that he still had a long way to go before he could consider himself one. ‘Like Bruce, for example,’ he thought. ‘I might as well try to cut a ghost and have more success.’

Second - there was now little Albus in his life. And though Hermione gladly took care of the tiny phoenix during his training hours Harry understood that Albus was now under his care, like Hedwig – his responsibility. He wondered if the first headmaster of the Order of the Phoenix had chosen the magical bird as their symbol and pet just so to remind himself and anyone coming after him just how much love and care it requires to nurture something into as beautiful and magnificent a creature as a fully grown phoenix – a lesson that could be very well transferred to the rest of the world. The fact that the process was repeated four times per year – once every season – would guarantee that the lessons would not be forgotten. There were many first moments that Harry enjoyed immensely – the first feather Albus got, the first note of the phoenix song he managed and the first time he had appeared to his side from another room through the magical flames the phoenixes created. Then, of course, the first time Albus nearly choked on his phoenix treats almost made Harry flip out from panic before he could help the little phoenix.

And third - almost as the week was over, Harry realized that he still had to buy a wedding present for the couple. He dragged Hermione with him to Diagon Alley and straight to Gringotts where they took a ride to his vault. It was his first time there since Sirius died and left him the Black family fortune so he was a bit surprised by all the treasure now stuffed inside the vault – it actually made it quite hard to enter the room. When Hermione scolded him for walking on his gold so carelessly he pointed out that being stepped on by the Chosen One would probably increase its value hundredfold or so. He quickly took some gold and led Hermione back before she could throw herself at him and beg him to buy her a library or two. Not that he wouldn’t, but he figured that now was not the best time for it.

Finding the right wedding gift proved to be quite difficult. Harry was looking for something that would say “you know just by looking at it that this is from Harry Potter.” From him – not The Boy Who Lived or The Chosen One. After going through almost every shop in Diagon Alley that was still open he began to feel tired and desperate. Nothing seemed to fit his requirements. In the end he felt frustrated enough to step into the Quality Quiddich Supplies shop.

Harry wandered aimlessly through the shop looking at the brooms, broomkits, robes and other things in there. He loved flying and Quiddich but he doubted he would find an appropriate wedding gift in here. When he had made a complete circle inside the shop he turned around to walk out and try his luck in another shop.

“Hey! Watch out!” Harry suddenly heard a shout. “Don’t let it escape!”

Following an instinct Harry turned in a crouch and slashed his hand through the air in front of him. He felt something round and metallic hit his hand and a soft beating against his fingers. Surprised, he looked at it. A golden snitch was gleaming in his fist, its wings fluttering against his hand.

“Ah, thank you, young man!” Harry heard the shopkeeper making his way towards him. “I say - that was the most spectacular catch I’ve ever seen!” When Harry looked up from the small golden ball he saw realization dawn on the shopkeeper’s face. “Oh my! Mister Potter! I should have guessed!” The man was beaming at him. “Thank you, again! That one here is a particularly elusive little bugger that’s been giving me more trouble than it’s worth, to tell you the truth. Now, is there anything I could offer you, Mr. Potter?”

Harry blinked from the sudden idea that popped up in his mind. He gave a wide grin to the shopkeeper as he held out his hand with the struggling Snitch.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take this ‘little bugger’ off your hands.”

One minute later Harry stepped out of the shop with a smile and a box with the now-dormant Snitch in his pocket. It wasn’t quite what he had imagined – yet. ‘Nothing a few charms won’t fix, though,’ he thought. He went to Flourish and Blotts to collect Hermione and ended up buying one of the rare books in there for her – it was a choice between either that or leaving her in there until she was finished. Considering the size of the thing – that made him think it was meant to be used by people the same size of Hagrid – he thought buying it was the wise man’s choice.

Getting back to the Privet Drive he left Hermione in her state of bliss pouring through her new book and went upstairs to put the finishing touches on his gift to Bill and Fleur. When it was ready he felt rather proud of himself and wished his arms would bend the other way for a moment so he could give himself a pat on the back. He wrapped up the present and left it in his closet to wait for the wedding day. He spent the rest of the day learning the spells Hermione had left him with – she herself was still stuck to her new book. Harry wondered if he would have to use a crowbar to separate the two when it was time for dinner. Luckily he was able to convince her to abandon the book for a short while and even receive a short kiss from her before she returned to it. Harry suddenly felt profound empathy and understanding towards the people who liked to burn books.

The day before the wedding made him a bit sad, actually. It was his last day of training with Bruce. Bruce, of course, made it memorable with teaching him a few really funny things one could do to an opponent. Then it got even more memorable when Bruce decided to put his skills to a real test – he was going to duel with Harry and not hold back much. Harry winced when Bruce went and didn’t take another sword like his own but drew the Eagle Blade from its scabbard. He had the feeling that if needed, that sword could cut through anything – including his own sword and anything still connected to it. Like his arm, for example.

Bruce took a quick step towards him and made a lightning-fast cut that left Harry with a considerably shorter haircut than a moment before. Harry had managed to duck under the blade just in time. Realizing that Bruce was indeed holding back only slightly Harry put everything he had in the fight. It was either that or seeing his ears follow his hair, he understood. He dodged, slashed, parried and sidestepped in a whirl of steel, using everything he had learned and using his quickness and reflexes as best as he could. He let his head go empty, remembering Bruce’s comment about too many thoughts in a fight making it heavy and thus – one that easily came off. In a fight as quick as the one he had right now it was instincts and reaction time that decided the winner, not who could come up with the best plan. The fight was a blur of near hits and misses that went on and on until Bruce jumped back out of Harry’s reach and signaled the end of the fight. Harry dropped in a crouch, his hands on his knees to support himself. He was soaked with sweat and felt like falling over right then and there. He wondered how he had been able to keep fighting for as long as he did, not noticing the fatigue until he finished. ‘Bloody adrenaline,’ he thought.

“That was very good, Harry. I couldn’t hit you a single time and I did try – not one-hundred-percent, but quite hard indeed.” Bruce smiled proudly at his young student.

“Yeah,” Harry gasped, his breath still coming rather hard. “I could tell.”

“I’m glad your sword held up as long as it did,” Bruce mad a comment. “A bit more and it would have gone to pieces I’m afraid.”

Harry looked at his sparring sword and gasped in surprise. It had deep notches all over it, resembling a one-handed saw more than a sword. One blow landing in a notch would have meant him holding a much shorter version of it – not a good thing in an intense fight. He looked at the Eagle Blade – not a scratch on its shining surface. He remembered managing a few rather strong blows that had connected with the sword.

“I don’t think there’s much that can harm this blade – not that I’ve tried,” Bruce explained. “Maybe there’s some truth in that legend after all?”

“Yeah, there might. Those evil spirits sounded a lot like dementors,” Harry said.

“What? There are really soul-sucking spirits out there?” Bruce was surprised.

“Sure are,” Harry replied in a dark tone. “Seen some of them real up, close and personal.” He shuddered. “They’re not the nicest of beings to be around. The fact that they work for Voldemort now doesn’t make them any better.”

“Well…” Bruce seemed thoughtful. “Maybe then you should take the sword with you to find out if the legend is really true.”

“What? Me? Take the Eagle Sword?” Harry was left gaping at Bruce. “But…it must have cost you a fortune! I can’t just accept a priceless, ancient sword like that! Besides, I already have an old, fancy sword waiting for me somewhere…” It had been his intention to go back to Hogwarts and ‘loan’ the Gryffindor sword for a while.

“It might be priceless, Harry, but I never value anything above a friends life. If you can put it to a good use – take it. It would be not hard at all to adjust to it after your training,” Bruce insisted.

“I don’t think it would be smart running around with two ancient swords, Bruce,” Harry was adamant.

“Oh, well…” Bruce sighed. “Then someone you know, perhaps? A good friend of yours?”

The thought of Ron in Quidditch robes chasing after a bunch of dementors on his broom, yelling and swinging the samurai sword above his head made Harry laugh so hard he had tears in his eyes.

“Well, I might. But I’m afraid he’ll be as much a danger to himself as for the dementors,” he said through tears.

“Then you could teach him how to use it properly and with responsibility,” Bruce said.

“Ron and responsibility don’t really go in the same sentence, Bruce!” Harry laughed again. “But yes, the idea is good actually. If I can give one of my friends another weapon against the dementors – especially as he didn’t quite manage to learn the spell that drives them away…”

“It’s settled, then,” Bruce said with a smile. “Your birthday is the day after tomorrow, right?” Harry nodded. “I’ll send it to you then. Gives me time to say goodbye to it.”

Bruce stepped close to Harry and shook his hand.

“I’m glad I met you, Harry, and I wish you luck with your quest.”

“I’m glad I met you, too, Bruce. Hope we meet again in the future.” With that Harry turned and left his latest teacher and friend.

Back in # 4 he found Hermione still reading the book. Harry shook his head in amazement. He decided to tease her a bit about it.

“Hey, Mione. Interesting book?” He asked.

“Mhmhh,” she replied as expected.

“Got the answer to life, universe and everything in it?”

“Mhmhh.”

“Like the new haircut Bruce gave me with his sword?”

“Mhmhh,” was again the answer.

“Hey, Voldemort is at the door, would you go and let him in?”

“Mhmhh,” was still the only thing he got from her.

“Wanna shag?” he tried in desperation.

“Mhmhh,” she answered without a change of tone or looking up to him.

‘Well, that’s just sad,’ Harry thought disappointedly. ‘Its fine to love books, but she’s positively obsessed with that one!’ He sighed and went upstairs to take a shower.

After putting on some clean clothes he went downstairs again and was happy to see that Hermione had at last finished reading the book. He used the opportunity to steal some passionate kisses from her.

“Taking a break?” He asked her after a while.

“No, I’m done, actually,” she smiled.

Harry looked at the book. It seemed as large as before. If he would start reading it he would probably finish it sometime next year. Shaking his head slightly in amazement he turned back to Hermione.

“Sorry, love, but we don’t have time to go back and get you another one for light reading.”

“Well it would have been lovely but I agree – we don’t have time for that,” she said, pressing her lips against his and demanding another kiss from him. “That book was worth every Galleon you paid for it. I know the spells in it will be of great use to us!”

“Yeah, I could see how enamored by it you were – you even missed the offer to have sex with me,” Harry grinned.

“What!? I did? Damn! Well, let’s add the reward for buying me the book to the growing list of things to thank you for – eventually we’ll get to it!” Hermione gave him a seductive smile and a burning kiss.

“So, what do we do now? I’m done with the spell list you had for me.”

“Nothing, then. I guess we have the evening off before tomorrow’s wedding. I just know it’s going to be one of those days to remember for the rest of our lives.” She waved her wand at the electric fireplace and made it vanish, then did the same to the boarded-up section of the fireplace and cast an enchantment on it that started a cozy fire in it. They threw a few pillows on the floor before it and laid down on them.

“You did find a present for them, right?” she gave him a questioning look.

“Yes, I did find something. I think they’ll love it,” Harry said, getting comfortable next to her.

“Hey!” Hermione said suddenly. “What happened to your hair? It looks like someone tried to give you a haircut with a sword!” she grinned at him.

“Funny you should say that…” Harry started to tell her about his day. “But don’t worry, It’ll be back to its usual length by tomorrow morning or I’ll eat my sword,” he finished after a while.

“What sword?” Hermione asked in confusion.

“Actually it’s ‘which one of them’ now, Mione – I’ll tell you about that later.” He turned towards her. “How about right now we work off some of your debt to me?”

The next day before noon Harry was pacing around on the ground floor waiting for Hermione. He hadn’t seen much of her since breakfast when she had gone up to start preparing for the wedding. Harry shook his head in a typically manly fashion, not understanding why it took her so long. But he admitted that the result was well worth the time he had spent waiting for her when she came down in her new dress that she had bought on their visit to Diagon Alley. In his mind he thought that the bride could appear naked before them if she wanted but even that would not be enough to tear his eyes away from Hermione. He held her and kissed her, apparating to the Burrow at the same time – the sensation that came with the apparition squeezing them even tighter against each other.

“Wow!” Hermione’s eyes were fluttering. “You, Mr. Potter, definitely get some brilliant ideas from time to time!”

They saw many familiar faces there – all the Weasleys, naturally; friends and teachers from school; people Bill and Fleur worked with in Gringotts and some Ministry workers who were friends with the Weasleys or lived in the neighborhood – Lovegoods and Diggorys among others.

“Ah, Mr.Potter, Miss Granger!” they heard a familiar voice behind them. They turned around and saw Professor McGonagall walking towards them.

“Professor?” Harry blurted out. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“And why is that, Mr. Potter? May I remind you that as the Head of Gryffindor House I’ve been responsible for a whole generation of Weasleys for seven years each of them spent in Hogwarts? Molly often owled me asking how I managed to remain sane through that and having other students and teaching classes besides watching over her children!” the old Professor smiled. “Besides, I had to bring something from Hogwarts to Mr. Jordan.” Harry noticed Lee Jordan talking with the twins Fred and George.

“You think they’re up to something?” he asked.

“Who? Fred and George Weasley?” Professor McGonagal asked. “I highly doubt that – I heard Molly warn them that she would personally snap their wands in two if anything ‘funny’ happened today.” Harry nodded his head in understanding – he and Ron didn’t exactly have a clean record, either.

He pulled the small box with his wedding gift from hs pocket and gave it to Hermione.

“Mione, would you please take it to the other ones? There’s something I’d like to ask Professor McGonagall.”

“About what?” Hermione asked, wanting to know what it was that he didn’t feel comfortable asking in her presence.

“About transfiguration, of course - I’ll tell you later,” he said, noticing the surprised look on both of the women’s faces. When Hermione had left them he turned towards his transfiguration teacher.

“So what do you want to ask me that cant wait until the next school year, Mr. Potter?” McGonagall asked him with a raised eyebrow.

“I’d like to know the benefits of becoming an animagus, professor,” Harry said. “I mean – you’re one of the best witches at transfiguration…so why go through the trouble of becoming an animagus when you could just transfigure yourself into any animal form, not only the one that comes from being an animagus?”

“Well, Mr. Potter, as the lesson about animagi happened in you third year after your first Divination lesson I’ll forgive you the lack of attention you showed at that moment. As it happens, there was an article about the subject in the last issue of ‘Modern Transfiguration’. However, compared to an essay on the subject one of my third-year students once wrote, it was complete rubbish.” She looked around quickly, then with a swift flick of her wand summoned a scroll from thin air. She handed it to Harry. “Now no-one will ever learn of this, am I understood, Mr. Potter? Can’t really go around handing out my best students homework like this. I just wish all my other students were as attentive and focused as her.” The pointed look she gave him left no doubt in his mind whom exactly she meant with “all the other students”. Noticing Hermione return to them he quickly stuffed the scroll in his pocket.

“Was there anything else, Mr. Potter?” McGonagall asked him.

“Actually there is,” Harry’s voice turned serious. He took a deep breath. “I wont come back to Hogwarts this year.”

“What?!” Professor McGonagall looked very shocked. “Why?”

“It has to do with what I was doing with Professor Dumbledore that night. I’m sorry but I can’t tell you what it is. It’s important – very important. He wouldn’t even tell the Order what it was. I have to finish this before I can come back to finish my education in Hogwarts.”

“Well, at least Miss Granger…” McGonagall started.

“…Will be going with him, yes, Professor,” Hermione cut in, a look of determionation on her face. Professor McGonagall looked at her for a long time.

“You will, wont you?” the old teacher sighed. “Well, that leaves me with a problem, then.”

“I don’t see any problem,” Harry said defiantly.

“No?” the new Headmistress of Hogwarts asked. “Well, then maybe you, Mr. Potter, can tell me who I should appoint as Head Boy and Girl in your absence?”

“Oh…” was all Harry managed to say. He looked at Hermione who was wearing the same surprised expression as he. “Well, I’d suggest keeping them for the next year when we’ll hopefully be back.” He scratched his head. “You’re right – I can’t think of anyone to suggest from our year as Head Students, either. Maybe Neville as Head Boy if he’s coming back this year. I believe you’ve noticed how he has changed. He’s not the clumsy boy he used to be. He’ll probably also be the best in his class in DADA now that the three of us are gone.”

“The three of you? You mean Mr. Weasley…”

“…will go with those two wherever it is they’re going to, correct,” Ron’s voice came from behind the professor. “Seems like you’ll be loosing a lot this year, professor,” Ron smiled at McGonagall. “Two prefects – one of them supposed to become a Head Girl, too, if the rumors are true. Then both your Head Student candidates, and then the Gryffindor Quidditch captain and Seeker plus the Keeper. And besides that you’ll have to find new teachers for DADA and Transfigurations and a new Head for the Gryffindor House. To be honest – if anyone would offer me the Headmasters job this year I would have refused. You’ll have a difficult first year in the office, I’m afraid,” he finished.

“Yes, Mr. Weasley, quite correct,” McGonagall sighed again. “I do hope to see you three back in Hogwarts when you’re able to continue there – please let me know immediately. And if there’s anything else I could do for you, just ask.”

“I will, but not now, Professor,” Harry said. “Seems like its time to go and find our seats – the ceremony is about to begin.”

They got to their seats and a minute later when everyone had settled down, the wedding ceremony began. Harry had to admit that though there were similarities between the muggle and wizard versions of it, he liked the wizardry version of the wedding ceremony much more. Not that he had been to any muggle weddings, but he had seen a few of them in TV and those always seemed to end in tears. ‘Well, Mrs. Weasley is crying, but that’s to be expected, I guess.’

Bill looked still absolutely cool despite his scars – like a pirate on a looting trip out for booze and women. ‘Well, he got his woman all right…’ Harry grinned as Fleur walked to the groom. Seemed like Fleur had changed a lot – not so much the French airy girl anymore but a young and capable woman who already made some hard choices in her life. It made her look more human and less veela – something that made Harry feel even better about his wedding gift to the two. It was out for all to see that the two were going into marriage because of love, not some magical spell or effect of Fleur’s blood.

Harry prepared himself for a long and boring ceremony filled with long speeches. ‘Why bother with an hour-long ceremony,’ he thought, ‘while all it really took was two questions and two answers?’ Half-way through it he noticed Ron’s head start to jerk gently – sure sign of his diminishing awareness of his surroundings. Harry thought it wouldn’t do to have his best mate start to snore in the middle of a wedding so he elbowed him to wake him up. When Ron’s head came up and gave him a thankful nod, he turned his attention back to the front. He started to feel his own consciousness slipping soon. ‘Come on! I mean, is this guy related to Professor Binns or something?” he wondered.

Suddenly from next to him Hermione gave a sudden gasp and sat straight as a board – her eyes wide.

‘What?!’ Harry thought. “She either had a major revelation about something or someone just pinched her in a very inappropriate place.”

He turned in his seat to take a look at who was sitting behind them and came face to face with Mad-Eye Moody’s electric-blue eye and wicked grin.

‘Oh God please make it a revelation!’ Harry begged and turned to the front again, shuddering.

Thankfully, the ceremony wasn’t that long. When the bride and groom had said their ‘yes’ and became husband and wife everyone stood up and applauded the young couple. Harry stepped in line with Hermione to congratulate the newlywed couple. They were right behind Ron and Luna so he heard Bill tease his youngest brother about finally finding himself a new blond girl.

“’Arry! ‘Ermione!” he heard Fleur’s excited voice and noticed that Ron and Luna had moved on. He received the usual hug and kisses from her and a firm handshake from Bill.

“Fleur, you look beautiful as always. Bill – you look worse, but cooler than ever!” Harry grinned at them.

“Yeah, that’s what the twins have been telling me, Harry,” Bill grinned back at him. “I’m sorry I won’t be at your birthday tomorrow, though.”

“Oh, I figured you two would be…busy after today,” Harry said, making the young couple go very red.

“Well, Harry, today isn’t over yet,” Bill told him. “I wish you luck in what’s about to happen, though – both of us do. And we figure that based on your previous experience you have a good chance of winning!”

“Winning what?” Harry asked in confusion, but before he got an answer Hermione pulled him away.

“Come on, Harry. There are other people behind us anxiously waiting to congratulate them!” Hermione told him. He let her pull himself away but only because he wanted to ask her something.

“So what was it that made you jump during the ceremony?” he asked.

“What did you think?” Hermione returned the question.

“Er, I’d rather not say,” Harry felt heat rise to his face. Hermione just shook her head.

“It was something the minister said, actually – about the bonds between the married couple. A bond of hearts and minds.”

“So…” Harry thought it was the usual stuff people talked about at wedding ceremonies.

“So that’s exactly what I think happened to us! We formed a bond between us!” Hermione seemed very excited. “Unfortunately it’s not a bond of minds – we do not seem to hear each-others thoughts and I’m afraid the connection to Voldemort that you have would not allow another like it to be formed.”

Harry felt his hate towards Voldemort grow even more. He felt cheated out of something truly amazing at the moment – another thing Voldemort had taken from him.

“So what we have is a bond of…” he let her finish the sentence.

“Hearts – I think, yes,” she said. “We seem to hear what the others heart is saying to us.” She looked at him in a way that made the voice in his heart telling him she loved him redundant. “Its not only conscience, voice of reason or something else – its all that and much, much more.”

“Have you heard of anything like this before?” Harry asked.

“No,” she smiled. “If anyone has, they kept it to themselves.”

“I think that’s a smart thing to do,” he smiled back at her.

Suddenly a magically amplified voice boomed over the chatter surrounding them.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Wizards and witches! May I have your attention, please!” Lee Jordan’s voice echoed through the crowd. Everyone turned to see Lee stand in front of what used to be the Weasleys small Quiddich pitch and now resembled a miniature Roman Colosseum.

“Before we proceed to sampling the wedding cake and the magnificent food Molly Weasley has prepared for us we have something else to take care of, first!” Lee announced. “Namely – a battle! And not just any battle, but one where the winner is awarded with a kiss from any – and I do mean any – lady or gentleman present! If they refuse they go home hungry!”

“This is crazy!” Hermione huffed next to him. “It’s a wedding, for Merlin’s sake!”

“Well, Mione, you can watch from the sidelines, then, because I’ll be down on the field!” Harry grinned at her. “And don’t even think about leaving before it’s over!” he added.

“Oh, is that a challenge, Mr. Potter?” she raised an eyebrow.

“No, not really. You know how I feel about little girls and battles,” Harry replied in a nonchalant voice.

Hermione gave him a withering glare and stormed off towards where Lee was guiding people either towards the seats or the arena. Harry followed her quickly. He also saw Ron enter the arena but without Luna.

When everyone was either down on the arena or seated above it Lee Jordan’s magnified voice came from the tribunes.

“Before we start I’d like to tell you the rules, oh brave warriors! No magical objects like Shield Hats or the like are allowed! Any non-harmful spell or charm is allowed! Anything that harms the mind or body is not! So use your imagination! Also, initially forming groups of no more than three is allowed until the last group or person is standing! If it’s a group, they will fight each-other one on one until we have a winner! If it’s a single person – well, that’s it, then! Form your groups now!”

Harry could swear that both Ron and Hermione apparated next to him, leaving quite a few people disappointed. When everyone had found the people they wanted to group with, Lee continued.

“Now the objective here is to eventually stun your opponents! Once stunned, it’s not allowed to revive them or this battle will never end! Our referees will move them to the sidelines and revive them there so they can enjoy the rest of the show! And here they are!” Lee shouted when four people entered the arena and closed the gate behind them. “Let’s all give an applause to Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin and Kingsley Shacklebolt!” When the applause died down Lee started to count down from ten.

Harry took a quick look around trying to see who had grouped with whom and which group posed the biggest threat. He was glad to have both Ron and Hermione with him. This would be a good test to their abilities of quick thinking and cooperation. He saw that Ginny had teamed up with Fred and George and decided that if anyone could take his own team out it would be them. Fred and George were professional pranksters and Ginny had always shown talent for hexing people.

Before Lee said ‘one’, however, he held a pause to make an announcement.

“Now pay attention, everyone! According to Fred and George Weasley like they told me – watch out for Ickle Ronniekins! He’s become quite a wizard thanks to them by now!”

Fred and George looked mortified. Lee might have turned everyone else’s attention to Ron, but it also meant that Ron would come after them first. The thought didn’t sit well with either one of them.

“Lee! We’ll thank you later for that!” they yelled together towards Lee Jordan who just shrugged and shouted ‘ONE!’ into the magical megaphone.

The arena was filled with discharged magic when at once more than a dozen spells were fired off. Harry had a shielding charm around them instantly that reflected every spell that hit it. He dropped it immediately so the three of them could counter-attack. His first spell burst Ginny’s shield like a soap bubble and his second transfigured the sleeves of her dress twice their original length so that they fell over her wand and prevented her from casting anything for a moment.

Next to him Ron used a variation of Locomotor Mortis to bind Fred’s left and George’s right leg together then used Levicorpus on both of them. Behind him Hermione was busy hexing the blazes out of anyone trying to sneak up to them.

Harry turned his attention back to Ginny who had returned her sleeves to their original length and was now eyeing Harry in contemplation. She gave him an evil grin suddenly and shot off two spells amazingly fast. The first was her famous Bat-Bogey Hex aimed at him and the second was a stunner. Harry used the vanishing spell to get rid of the hex and decided to dodge the stunner when he suddenly realized that Ginny hadn’t aimed the stunner at him – it was aimed at Hermione’s back! Harry panicked, realizing that he didn’t have time to block the spell so he just – stepped in front of it.

Harry had expected to be blown off his feet and drop down unconscious but the only thing he felt was a faint tingling as the spell hit him. He looked surprised at his chest where the spell had hit him, then at equally surprised Ginny. He shrugged it off and cast a stunner of his own at her. Ginny was a split-second too slow and with the twins still hanging upside down she went down with the stunner.

At the sidelines Moody, Tonks, Remus and Kingsley were looking hard at the battle.

“Are you sure that Harry isn’t using any shielding items, Mad-Eye?” Tonks asked the retired auror.

“Of course I am,” Moody snarled. “Didn’t you see how it just dissipated? It wasn’t reflected like from a shielding item. Besides, I see nothing on him that’s not allowed to be there besides Grangers lipstick.”

Tonks looked at Remus in surprise. They both grinned and turned back to the battle.

Now that Harry had taken out Ginny and Ron had finished toying with the twins they turned their attention to the rest of the arena. There weren’t many people left on their feet. It looked like Hermione had taken out a whole group on her own while they were busy with Fred, George and Ginny. After a moment the only one standing besides the three of them was Charlie Weasley who had fought the battle all by himself. It looked like the job of taking care of dragons had done a good job of making him able to notice what was going on around him at any time. He had always been quick – he used to be the Gryffindor Quiddich captain and a legendary player like Harry – working with dragons had only made him quicker. The job also meant one had to be a powerful wizard to be able to stun the beasts when they got angry – like Harry had seen him do in his fourth year.

Charlie turned to face them after taking down his last opponent and shot a string of curses at them. It took all three of them to barely deflect them. Charlie changed his tactics immediately and concentrated on one of them only – Hermione. He had noticed that somehow she had seemed the slowest of the three when countering the curses. He shot off his best string of curses so fast that he felt if he was going any faster his wand might snap.

Harry stepped in front of Hermione the moment he saw Charlie’s wand point at her. He felt the wand in his hand warm up from the spells he tried to squeeze off through it – like they were being pushed through a bottleneck. ‘Finite! Finite-finite-expelliarmus-finite-accio-incarcerous!’ he thought in a moment, his wand moving in a blur from one movement to the other without pause.

“Grrr, I can’t watch this!” Mad-Eye Moody growled and turned away from the arena.

“What? Don’t tell me you’re going soft in your old age, Mad-Eye!” Tonks teased him.

“I said I can’t watch, not that I don’t want to.” He pulled out his magical eye with a sickening plup. “Potter was blinding me,” he said as he turned back to the arena.

“What do you mean – blinding you?” Tonks asked in confusion.

“I mean his magical aura was getting too bright for my eye. Like staring at the bloody sun...” Moody explained.

Tonks, Remus and Kingsley exchanged shocked stares and turned as one back to the action on the arena.

Harry stared amazedly at the wand in his other had he had managed to Accio from the air when his Expelliarmus had disarmed Charlie. He looked at Charlie, who was now wrapped from head to toe with a sturdy rope making him look like a fresh mummy.

“That was brilliant, mate!” Ron slapped him on the back. “Now I believe there was something in the rules about stunning the opponent?” Ron aimed his wand at Charlie and sent a stunner at him. The next moment the ropes around Charlie disappeared and he floated to the group of aurors, ex-aurors and ex-DADA professors where he was revived. He deftly caught his wand when Harry threw it to him and gave a ‘thumbs-up’ in return.

“And it looks like the Golden Trio wiped the floor with anyone brave enough to stand against them! And what an amazing showdown between Harry Potter and Charlie Weasley!” Lee shouted. “In a moment its time for the Trio to sort out who’s the top dog among them – so lets see who goes against whom first!”

Lee drew his wand in the air, writing the names of the trio in burning letters. He then waved his wand and made the names twirl. After a moment they stopped and Harry and Ron were linked by flaming lines.

“So its Potter against Weasley – Ronald Bilius Weasley - if you were wondering which one! So Hermione, please join the referees for a moment and give the two young gents some space! Don’t worry, I’m sure they both will be fine without your guidance!” he added to the cheering of the crowd.

Harry and Ron walked to the centre of the arena and faced each other. They assumed the fighting stance and waited for Lee’s command to start.

“So, how are you feeling, Ron?” Harry asked.

“Pretty confident, mate!” Ron smiled at him. “You know – I’ve been learning the whole month like my life depended on it!” he finished with a confident smirk.

“Ron, I’ve been learning for the month like everyone’s life depended on it – plus I had the smartest with around here to teach me,” Harry replied, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, right,” Ron gulped.

“Now that Harry has managed to seemingly un-nerve Ron, let the battle begin!” Lee yelled from his seat. Harry raised his wand immediately.

“So – are you feeling lucky, punk?” he asked. He could clearly hear Hermione’s amused snort from the sidelines.

“Not really, no.” Ron shrugged. “Got any Felix Felicis left?”

“Can’t say that I do, Ickle Ronniekins.”

“Oh well, let’s settle this the old-fashioned way, then, my poor love-addicted friend!” Ron twitched his wand at him and cast a spell non-verbally. Luckily the spell had a visible effect that Harry was quite familiar with – he easily sidestepped the red stunner.

“Love-addicted? Ron – I believe your Mum would do something like this if she heard you say something like that!” When he said ‘this’ Harry cast his own non-verbal spell. The next moment Ron was spitting soap bubbles out of his mouth.

“Cute,” Ron remarked after he got the stuff out of his mouth. “Almost as cute as this!”

There was a loud bang and suddenly Harry felt like he was shrinking. After a moment the feeling stopped, but everything seemed really out of proportions for him. He looked down on himself and mewed in surprise – Ron had transfigured him into a cute little black-furred and green-eyed kitten! For Ron that was a really remarkable feat – he wasn’t the genius like Hermione in the subject of human transfiguration. Though his new form felt strangely comfortable he understood that in his current form his chances of winning the duel were quite non-existent. Not really knowing how to reverse the effect he just concentrated hard on his human form – or his best guess at what it had been. Suddenly he saw his own human form as if through another persons eyes – Hermione’s, he realized. With a pop he had his hands and feet and everything else back as it used to be. He threw a quick wink towards Hermione before turning his attention back to hexing Ron.

“Ok, I’m getting hungry here, mate. Let’s wrap this up!” He jerked his wand up and Ron’s sleeves suddenly grew longer and tied themselves into a knot – making it impossible for him to cast spells. Ron tried a severing charm quickly, but before he was finished Harry knocked him over with Impedimenta. Ron rolled to his back and threw Expelliarmus back at him suddenly, knocking his wand out of his hands and several feet away from him.

“HA!” Ron yelled victoriously. Harry winced, looking at where his wand lay on the ground. Ron would easily get him before he got even half-way to it. So he raised his hands instead.

“Guess you have a slight advantage now, mate,” he commented. Ron was walking towards him with a wide grin on his face.

“I guess I do!” he gloated, stopping a few steps from him. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick!”

As Ron raised his wand and started to say the incantation out loud Harry exploded from his spot. Somewhere at the same time with Ron’s “Stupe-“ he reached him, ducked under his arm and grabbing it and sliding under Ron’s arm, twisted it hard. The last part of “-oooy!” from Ron as he was soaring through the air wasn’t exactly the correct ending of the incantation – but hey, it worked! – and Ron’s own stunner hit him from his wand that was now pointed at his stomach.

The audience erupted in a deafening applause the moment after what they just saw sank in.

“AND POTTER CATCHES WEASLEY TOTALLY OFF-GUARD! WHAT AN AMAZING MOVE BY POTTER!” Lee was yelling in excitement. “So that’s one down one to go! Let’s see how Potter does against Hermione Granger – the brightest witch alive according to many of her Hogwarts teachers!”

When Hermione walked to the centre of the arena with a wide grin on her face Harry felt like running the other way as fast as he could. He doubted he could fool her like he had fooled Ron – she certainly wouldn’t let him close enough to disarm her.

“So, Harry…I think the time is ripe for some payback for that little side-along apparition accident you had at the beginning of the month, don’t you think?” she eyed him like an especially delicious piece of pumpkin pie she was about to eat.

“Eek! Yeah, you might be right about that, Mione!” he squeaked.

“So what do you say we get started then? I thought you were hungry?” she asked, twirling her wand between her fingers. When Harry nodded she slashed her wand at him quickly. Harry threw a quick ‘Protego’…

‘Suckered!’ he realized a moment later. ‘She had already started – by severing his belt and using the levitation charm to keep his pants up! That’s what she was doing by twirling her wand! When I used ‘Protego’ I severed the spell!’ Harry concluded as his pants dropped in front of the audience. He felt all the blood in his body rush to his face. He dived sideways out of the stunner’s path, muttering ‘Reparo’ at the same time. He quickly pulled his pants up again.

‘Expelliarmus!’ he shot at her the moment he got to his feet. He was surprised to see her wand go flying in a wide arc. Hermione was – too.

“And a quick move by Potter after his rather embarrassing start leaves Hermione Granger without her wand! What will she do now? Will she pull off something similar like Potter in his previous fight?” Lee’s commentary broke Hermione’s surprise.

“Em, I’d rather not stun you, Mione. So…could you just, like, surrender, maybe?” Harry asked.

“Never surrender, never give up, Harry!” Hermione told him while walking towards him.

“Er, Mione?” Harry was not sure what to do next. To be honest – he had no desire to stun her.

“Well, Harry, if you can’t do it…I guess I have to do this myself!”

Hermione suddenly jumped him and pressed her lips against his, pulling him into a deep kiss. Harry felt like someone had just unplugged his brain – he felt dizzy kissing her in that beautiful dress under the warm sun. The rest of the world silently faded away until she pulled back with a victorious smirk. Harry noticed that he still had his wand.

“AND THE WINNER IS HERMIONE GRANGER!!!” Lee roared from his position.

“What?” Harry was dumbfounded. “WHAT?! I’m not stunned!” he yelled.

“Sorry, Harry, but you were!” Lee’s voice came back. “The referees are voting on the uncommon tactics used by Granger –“ Harry turned around to see the four Order members huddled together and after a while all four nodded towards Lee. “And its an unanimous vote! HERMIONE GRANGER WINS! CONGRATULATIONS! Er, do you want to have another kiss from him, Hermione?” Lee finished.

“Yes, I’d like that very much, Lee – thank you!” she yelled back.

‘Well, maybe it’s not so bad to loose sometimes,’ Harry thought as Hermione pressed her lips against his again.

The rest of the wedding passed in a haze filled with delicious food – Harry tasted everything with pumpkin in it – dancing and other such activities. Finally, when it was beginning to get dark, the newlywed couple disapparated off on their honeymoon. The guests left soon after that.

Near midnight in an undisclosed location Bill and Fleur Weasley were opening the last of their wedding presents. Fleur picked up the last, small box.

“Who is it from?” Bill asked her.

“There’s no card, love, but I think I know…” she smiled at her husband.

“Open it!” Bill encouraged her.

Fleur unwrapped the box and opened it. Inside laid a small golden ball and a card.

“Is that a Snitch?” Bill asked, peering over her shoulder. He pulled out the small golden ball while Fleur was examining the card. A small stick-figure seemed to wave to her from it. A chat bubble formed above its head and words appeared in it.

“I zwear dat I’m up to no good?” Fleur read.

The moment she finished the Snitch unfurled its wings and bolted out of Bill’s grasp. With a yell Bill jumped up and started running after the ‘little bugger’, as he cursed it. Fleur laughed hard at the scene of half-naked Bill running around the room after the little golden ball. She looked back at the card. The stick-figure gave her a deep bow and two new words appeared above it.

“Mizchief managed!” Fleur said. The Snitch flew across the room and settled easily in her palm. She turned the ‘little bugger’ around and found the engraved words on its surface. She showed it to Bill.

‘Others seek what you have found – congratulations!’ followed by a small lightning-bolt shaped symbol.

Bill looked at the clock in their room – it was showing exactly midnight.

“Happy birthday, Harry,” he said.

“Happy birthday, Harry!” Fleur repeated.

In a small bedroom in Privet Drive number 4 a young, beautiful witch was whispering the same words to a young sleeping wizard.

“Happy birthday, Harry,” and kissed him gently before falling asleep next to him.

A/N:

It told you to remember the four R’s! Read, Rate, Review and Recommend! *throws a wrench*

12. The Locket, part I - Busy birthday

Disclaimer: HP does not belong to me. Happy?

A/N: Almost a month since last chapter went live, huh? Sorry about the long wait – seems august wasn't the most productive month.

The Locket, part I - Busy birthday

Harry opened his eyes. His room was dark so he figured it must be either very late or very early. His sleepiness however was gone. He eased out of Hermione’s embrace and sat on the edge of his bed. The alarm clock showed that it was only a few minutes after midnight. Thinking he should take a short stroll through the house to find his wayward sleepiness so he picked up his wand and quietly slipped out of the room. He decided to start from the bathroom and work his way through the house to the kitchen.

Suddenly Harry realized something rather important – it was a few minutes AFTER midnight! So he was now seventeen years old and could knock himself out using magic without ever again getting in trouble because of it – well unless he performed it in front of muggles. Grinning widely he lifted his wand and whispered ‘Lumos’. Nothing Professor Flitwick had taught him suggested that whispering the charm would lessen the intensity of the light given by the spell but Harry was pleased to notice that was the case. He did not want to wake Hermione by suddenly dowsing the entire house in bright light.

He was in the kitchen a while later thinking to make a few sandwiches and some tea while he waited for his wayward sleepiness to get back from wherever it had wandered to. He was standing before the fridge when he remembered to mentally kick himself and just conjured the food and drink. He took them to the living room thinking maybe to read a spellbook and revise some of the more difficult spells. The ones that would work against the giants and dragons were especially mind-boggling and draining. Harry remembered how he had learned the Expecto Patronum charm – the incantation was easy, but finding the right memory and focusing on the happy feeling had been tough work even with only a boggart. The first time he had really managed to conjure a Patronus had been during the Quiddich game against Ravenclaw. ‘And the whole school had seen it. Luckily only a quarter of them were Slytherin with Death Eater parents,’ he thought. ‘Lupin really needs to think of a better question when he next tries to find out if the person before him is really me or a fake,’ Harry remembered the incident before his fifth year and the meeting with his “advance guard”. ‘Really…What form does my Patronus take? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together could’ve deducted it was a stag.”

He looked at the worn spines of the books they had had for years and the ones Hermione had recently bought, wondering where to start. Turning around to place the platter and cup on the table he saw that it was already mostly occupied by the gigantic tome he had bought for Hermione. He set the food on the free corner of the table and sat down on the couch, waved the electrical lights on, pulled the heavy book off the table into his lap and opened it.

The first page held only two lines written in Latin. The first one was in black ink, written in an even, neat handwriting and translated into English as ‘Knowledge is power’ signed by R.R. The second line was in bright red ink scrawled hastily beneath the first one and said ‘So is love. G.G.’ It looked like the original author had made a serious effort in trying to remove the addition – unsuccessfully. Apparently the page had been replaced several times but the comment in red ink seemed to have reappeared every time. Harry grinned thinking this G.G. must’ve been someone like Fred and George or the Marauders – talented and misguided. He flipped the page and started reading the book that was full of the elegant handwriting in black ink.

After a few minutes of reading he had to admit that the book put McGonagall’s NEWT level transfiguration classes to shame in its complexity. ‘No wonder Mione loved it.’ He had understood about the half of those lessons but it seemed like he and the author of the book were using the same language but having a different opinion on the meaning of the words. He was starting to feel funny from trying to beat the words into meaningful sentences in his mind. ‘Maybe it just takes someone smarter to understand it – like Mione,’ he thought grumpily. He thought of giving up on the book but found it hard to put down the book. Not physically because of tiredness – it felt like his eyes were glued to the pages and his mind was dead set on continuing reading until he was finished. Starting to fear that the book may have been jinxed Harry tried to think of a way to break the curse without harming the book. He was certain that Hermione would nail his skin to the wall should he harm it.

Something weird was happening to his eyes – it felt like his pupils were being torn wider and able to take in the whole page at once, then both of the pages that were open before him. The book turned to the next page on its own and again Harry’s eyes took in every detail before him at once in a single glance. The book picked up the pace and pages started to flip in an increasing pace - filling Harry’s mind with information it wasn’t really able to comprehend at that moment. He felt like paralyzed, his eyes a magical version of Colin Creevey’s camera taking a snapshot of the pages before him. His mind felt like bursting from the knowledge that was forced in it – a bit more and it would shut down completely. Harry was surprised when suddenly the flapping of pages stopped. After a moment he understood that he was now staring at the last pages of the book – which were empty. He tried to close the book but the compelling feeling was still there. Suddenly a small square appeared on one of the pages and got steadily larger. In a moment Harry recognized the small window as an entrance to a memory – it looked exactly as in Riddle’s diary. He tried to keep his head away from it but was pulled towards it with more strength than he could oppose.

Harry blinked the spots from his eyes. He was standing in a small study room filled with bookshelves, a desk, chairs and a fireplace. The furniture and texture of the walls made him somehow think of Hogwarts. He had no idea where or when he was. Then he heard a scribbling sound and noticed a tall black-haired woman sitting behind the desk, writing something on a parchment. Harry tried to walk towards her but found himself unable to move. From where he was standing he could only get a glimpse of what the woman wrote on the parchment – and her hand. He decided that it belonged to a younger woman, only slightly older than Fleur or Tonks. Harry recognized the handwriting. Unless he was mistaken he had half his brain filled with it.

‘So she must be the one who wrote the book,’ Harry reasoned. He leaned closer to read the parchment. He was only able to see a small part of it, but what he could read was…unexpected.

…so I’m sure the child and his own children will inherit His power. He was the strongest among us magically. His raw power constantly amazed us – the things he could do…He didn’t even need a wand. He said He used His love for all life, the world and…as his source of power.

But what about the mother? Unfortunately knowledge, her greatest strength, cannot be passed on simply by blood – and things could happen that would make the child an orphan, leave him without love or capable teachers. If the prophesy is to be fulfilled love will be the deciding factor in giving him the power but as He himself told me many times power without guidance could do more harm than good. So she decided to leave her knowledge as a gift and a weapon in the battle that is sure to come. She hopes it makes its way to the one who needs it most through the ages. They say that learning is a painful process – they have no idea…

Love – that he must find on his own. And only true love will give him strength – feelings brought on by the Amortentia for example would only weaken ones magical abilities. I have noticed how the emotions affect the wizards powers – strong feelings making them stronger, absence of them weakening them to the point of loosing the ability to do magic at all.

The woman continued writing but Harry felt being pulled away through the small window and back to the living room where he belonged. He felt a sharp pain in his head once then fell unconscious on the floor. He didn’t know how long he had been out of it when he opened his eyes briefly. He must have lost his glasses because everything seemed like a white blur to him. He thought that he heard a faint phoenix song coming from his bedroom. He got on his shaking legs and staggered upstairs into the bed before he felt his consciousness slip away again.

:-:-:

Harry felt someone shaking him. The strange dream he thought he had about a book, a raven-haired woman and a letter faded into a blur as he opened his eyes. He squeezed them shut immediately because of the bright light that was blinding him.

“Harry! Wake up already!” Hermione’s annoyed voice cut through the fog in his brain.

“’s too bright!” Harry mumbled. “D’you mind closing the curtains? The sun’s shining right in my eye!”

“Stop fooling around and get up! The sun rises from the other side of the house, remember? Your window faces the west! I’ll be late as it is!” Hermione continued to shake him.

“Late for what?” Harry asked, digging his face in the pillow.

“I’m going to my parents’ house to say goodbye to them before we leave for Grimmauld Place, I told you that! And you need to get up, eat and get Ron!” She pulled the blanket off him. With an annoyed growl he waved his hand and conjured a new one.

“Well, you brought this on you yourself, Harry!” Hermione said in an evil tone.

‘Uh-oh!’ Harry had time to think.

“Aguamenti!” Hermione shouted – just for his benefit so he’d know what was coming, Harry was sure. She’d gotten better at non-verbal spellcasting than any person had the right to be in his opinion.

Harry rolled to his left and right off the bed – avoiding getting wet but earning a few bruises and becoming entangled in the blanket. So he thought there’s no harm in doing a bit more rolling around and he rolled himself under the bed. The next moment the bed floated up in the air revealing a smirking Hermione with her wand pointed at him.

“Isn’t it nice to not only get the breakfast but also the shower in your bed, Harry?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Oh, this is bad, real bad,’ Harry thought when her wand started to trace the spell-pattern for Aguamenti again.

When the jet of water burst out of Hermione’s wand time seemed to slow down for Harry. He forgot the need to use his wand, he forgot he was wrapped up in a conjured blanket and most importantly – he forgot it was a bad idea to mess with his girlfriend when she’s in a playful mood. The moment the water started to fly through the air towards him he vanished the blanket. When the water was about to hit him he raised his hand and mentally shouted the first thing that came to his mind. Too bad it wasn’t Evanesco – the vanishing charm that would have, well, vanished the water. It was Depulso which sent the stream of water right back at Hermione, soaking her from head to toes.

Hermione stood still in shock, thoroughly wet and stared daggers at him. Harry stood up, walked to her, wiped the water from her face and pushed away the wet strands of hair.

“Now tell me Mione – you didn’t use cold water, did you?” he asked in a casual tone. Hermione glared at him then threw her head to the side making her hair whip around and slap him in the face.

“Well, that’s one way to lash out at someone, then,” Harry commented with a grin on his face. “God, this stuff is freezing!” The drops of water running down his back made him shiver. “I think I need to warm up a bit! Come here!” He pulled her into a deep kiss that got him wet all over from contact with her but because of the intense heat in his chest he didn’t really notice or mind it.

“Now did you mention breakfast in bed?” he asked after releasing her lips.

“You can have it wherever you like but you better be here with Ron when I get back!” Hermione smiled at him and with a pop was gone from his arms.

“Should’ve used the Anti-Disapparation jinx,” Harry muttered before picking up his wand from the bedside table and lowering the bed to its original height. He cast a drying charm on it then contemplated conjuring a plate of sandwiches and juice. Thinking that he’ll probably be offered breakfast at the Burrow anyway Harry just got dressed and disapparated away.

After a while Harry caught Ron’s eye and jerked his head slightly towards the other end of the table where Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were sitting. Ron nodded in return and his face hardened with resolve.

“Mum, Dad – I need to tell you something,” Ron said.

“Yes, Ron? What is it?” Mrs. Weasley asked.

“Me, Harry and Hermione won’t go back to Hogwarts this year.” Everyone fell silent immediately – even the ghoul up in the attic seemed to quiet down and listen. “We’ll be doing something else this year.”

After a moment of total silence the twins jumped up from their seats.

“Bravo! Bravo!” They went to clap both Ron and Harry on their backs. “We’re finally starting to see the family resemblance in you, Ron! Well done! And Harry, we never doubted you!”

“What?” Mrs. Weasley snapped in a tight tone that sent a chill through the room like a dementor attack. “What are you talking about, Ron? Not going back to Hogwarts?”

“No, I’m not,” Ron stated calmly.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Mrs. Weasley shouted. “It’s your NEWT year! You’ll be learning things that will help you survive until this situation with You-Know-Who is resolved! You think we’ll let you go off who knows where?!”

Harry winced as Mrs. Weasley started to yell. He noticed that Ron started to go a bit red in the face from the effort of trying not to yell back at his mother.

“Letting me? I think I’ll have to remind you that since I’m of age now you can’t tell me what to do – right, Dad?” Mr. Weasley nodded. “And I’m not asking your permission. I’m letting you know,” Ron answered in a forcedly civil tone.

The rest of the family looked from one very short member to the other rather tall one, not daring to interrupt. Ron’s brothers had suspected something like that would happen and they would have really appreciated it if Ron had told them beforehand so they could clear out of the room first before he told it to Mrs. Weasley.

“As long as you live under our roof you’ll bloody well do what we tell you, Ronald Weasley!” Mrs. Weasley roared at Ron.

Ron looked at his mother in silence for a moment before standing up. He turned to Harry who was trying to make himself as small as possible.

“Harry. Would you please come upstairs with me and help me pack?” Ron asked.

“Sure, Ron,” Harry said in a quiet voice. He got up to follow Ron.

“And where will you go, Ron?” Mrs. Weasley asked in a much calmer tone – Harry couldn’t tell if it was natural or forced. “What will you do?”

“We will go to Sirius’s old house,” Harry answered the first question. “You know how well protected it is and I’m sure we can add a few of our own soon.”

“But…But Snape KNOWS of it, Harry!” Mrs. Weasley sounded like he was explaining something to a five-year old. “You’ll be dead the moment you set foot in that house!”

“No.” Harry shook his head. “He DID know of it. Not anymore.”

The Weasleys were looking at each other confusedly. Suddenly Charlie’s face lit up in understanding.

“Dumbledore had a successor! There’s a new Secret Keeper, then?” he exclaimed. Harry nodded.

“Yes, there’s a new Secret Keeper and he thought it best to start a new list of people he trusts.”

“Who is it, do you know? How do you know you can trust him?” Mrs. Weasley was suspicious. “We trusted Snape and look what happened…”

“Like Dumbledore the new Secret Keeper is also the new Headmaster of the Order of the Phoenix,” Harry told them. “I trust him,” he added, grinning.

“The new Headmaster?” all the Weasleys, Ron included, asked at once. “Have you seen him? Who is it?”

“Yes, I see him occasionally,” Harry gave them a wide grin. “Like when I’m passing a mirror.” He concentrated on the warm feeling in his chest that had been there since the day he had kissed Hermione and sent a mental call for Albus. In a heartbeat the small phoenix appeared on the kitchen table in a blazing vortex of flames. Albus shrugged off the thin coat of ash covering him and after taking a look around immediately attacked the closest plate with sausages. The Weasleys stared at Albus, then at Harry, and then at Albus again. Harry wished he had a pair of omniocculars right then – the look on their faces must’ve been priceless.

“You?” Ron asked him.

“Yep! Want to be my second – er, actually third in command? Sorry but Hermione’s going to be my second.” ‘Well actually I’m sure I’ll be doing what she tells me, not the other way around,’ he thought to himself.

“I think I’d like that, yes! You need someone with brains among the top three!” Ron beamed back at him. Fred and George started to choke on their drinks.

“The Order is not a children’s club!” Mrs. Weasley snapped angrily. “Just what do you think the three of you can do?”

“What the three of us can do?” Ron asked in incredulous tone. “Mum, do I have to remind you what Sirius once told you? We three have already done more than many of the older wizards have managed to do in their entire lives! If it takes three kids to take care of Voldemort then so be it!” Everyone jumped at the name. Harry was equally surprised – this was the first time Ron had said it. He suspected Ron was too angry to even notice it. “Besides, Harry has been chosen as the Headmaster. Unless I heard it wrong there’s nothing you can do about that – other than step out of the Order.”

“Taking care of…” Mrs. Weasley seemed to be on the verge of fainting. “Why you? Why Hermione? Why Harry?”

“Why Harry? Because he IS the bloody Chosen One if you haven’t got it already!” Ron slammed his fist on the table, making Albus bounce up in the air. Luckily Harry’s Seeker reflexes helped him catch the phoenix instantly. Next to him Ron closed his eyes and took a deep breath. No-one had said anything after his explosion – they were just staring at Ron, Harry or little Albus is silence.

“I shouldn’t have said that, sorry, mate. It’s your secret to reveal, not mine,” Ron turned to Harry.

“Its OK,” Harry shrugged. “I figure by now everyone at least suspects as much. Otherwise Scrimgeour wouldn’t have bothered to try and make me the Ministry’s new poster boy. Is that still one of their plans or have they gone back to the He’s-Scarred-and-Mental plan?” he asked Mr. Weasley.

“As long as Scrimgeour has Fudge as his adviser I’m not really privy to their ideas concerning you, Harry,” Mr. Weasley replied, setting his food aside. “Best advice I can give you comes from Moody – constant vigilance! I’ll let you know if I hear anything… I’ll ask Tonks and Kingsley – maybe they know of something I don’t. As aurors they’re closer to Scrimgeour than I. Rufus has a soft spot for his former Division workers.” He took off his glasses to wipe them clean. “Should I tell them it’s a personal favor or Order business?”

“Its both – what concerns me has direct impact on the Order and the fight against Voldemort,” Harry decided. “And I’d like to know everything the Ministry knows or suspects about what Voldemort and his followers are up to. If Kingsley and Tonks have any information I need it.”

“When will you hold a meeting, Harry? Last year you weren’t in the Order so you don’t even know everyone in it. You should hold a meeting soon to get to know everyone.”

“I will, Mr. Weasley – probably in September. It will give my new friend here time to grow up a bit and gain strength for all the delivery work he needs to do.” Harry picked up Albus who had gorged himself on the sausages and looked a bit groggy. “I think we need to talk about your eating habits, friend. Now hop back home, I’ll be right there.” Albus gave him a short warble and flamed off. Harry brushed the ash off his hand against his jeans. ‘Hope he got the address right. Afraid it’ll be a bit of a mess if he turns up somewhere in France or like that,’ Harry thought to himself.

“Hey Harry! Don’t forget to let me and George know when you start recruiting new Order members!” Fred said. “Some thought we were too young to join a while ago and last year Dumbledore was too busy doing who-knows-what to recruit new people. And the Weasley Wizarding Wheezes products are at your disposal, naturally. Actually that reminds me of something… Wait here!” With a crack the twins disapparated and apparated back in less than a minute. George gave Harry a small wrapped-up present.

“Here you go, Harry! Happy Birthday! No-no-no!” he shouted when Harry started to unwrap it. “Its actually something for all the three of you so open it when you, Ron and Hermione are together. You’ll like it – or it also has a ‘money-back-guarantee’!”

Harry nodded his understanding and went with Ron upstairs to help him pack. Judging by the buzz of voices behind them the rest of the Weasleys started a discussion about what they had just heard.

Ron threw his school trunk open and started throwing items, schoolbooks and clothes in it. There wasn’t much to pack so he was finished pretty quickly. He took a last look around the room with a bit of nostalgia on his face, sighed and dragged the trunk out of his room and down the stairs with Harry following him. Ron set the trunk down next to the door and turned to say goodbye to his family. With serious and sad faces the rest of the Weasleys hugged the two boys and wished them good luck – Mrs. Weasley with eyes red from holding back tears Ginny red in face from the effort of trying not to either kiss or kill them.

“Wait! Harry, you forgot to tell us the address to the Headquarters!” Mrs. Weasley shouted in alarm.

“No, I haven’t,” Harry simply said. “See you all in September.”

Harry whispered to Ron the Privet Drive address as their first destination and disapparated from the Burrow. Ron waved to his family and with a crack was gone, too. Mrs. Weasley collapsed in her chair at the table and the tears started to run freely, at last.

With two bangs like shots from a double-barreled shotgun Harry and Ron appeared in Privet Drive Number 4’s living room.

“We need to learn how to do this silently like Dumbledore,” Harry winced. “Otherwise we’ll have the muggles calling the police and reporting gunshots every time we do this near them.” Ron nodded in agreement.

“Where’s Hermione? And when do we go to Grimmauld Place?” Ron asked.

“She said she’s going to say goodbye to her parents while I got you here. She should be back any moment now then we pack everything and leave this place for good,” Harry told him.

They gathered everything that belonged to Harry and stuffed it in his trunk – clothes, books, items and artifacts Harry had obtained in his years at Hogwarts. When they were dragging it downstairs to put it next to Ron’s trunk they heard a crack and Hermione’s voice announcing that she’s back. After a moment she appeared out of the living room, dragging her own trunk after her.

“So how did it go at your place?” Harry asked her.

“As expected, I guess,” Hermione answered. “Mum was really sad…” She turned red in face, “…and Dad reminded me that he wanted me to wait at least until I’m eighteen.”

“Well, Your birthday is only a month and a half away – I don’t blame you if you want to stay with your parents til that time,” Harry told her. Hermione turned even more red.

“Er, that’s not what he meant, Harry…” She found it hard to make eye contact with either of the boys, so she concentrated on looking at her shoes.

Harry looked puzzled for a moment before realization dawned on his face, making him go red in face, too.

“Oh!” Harry managed.

Ron looked from one to the other in confusion, then he got it too.

“Oh! Oh God! This is something I DON’T want to hear!” He stormed off towards the kitchen. “You’ll find me here when you’re finished ‘talking’!” he yelled back at them.

“Er,” Harry cleared his throat. “I think I got everything packed, but you should check just in case I missed something.”

“I’ll be done in a minute, Harry. I’ll meet you both in the kitchen.”

It took her more than a minute, of course, but Harry was smarter than to point it out and thankfully Ron’s mouth was stuffed with food – not that it had stopped him before, though. When she sat down next to Harry at the kitchen table Harry pulled out the present Fred and George had given him.

“What’s that, Harry?” Hermione asked.

“Just a present from Fred and George. They told me to open it in your and Ron’s presence.”

“Is that wise?” Hermione looked suspiciously at the box. “Have you checked it for explosives or the like?”

Harry grinned at her. He opened the box and found three golden bracelets with a thin metal tube attached to each. He pulled out a parchment with what he supposed was instructions.

‘Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’

Happy Birthday, Harry! We’re proud to present to you the only set of Shielding bracelets in existence! They go on your wrist with the metal tube under your arm – it functions as a wand holder for when you don’t need it and keeps it from accidentally breaking and other accidents. We're sure Ron will appreciate it! The wand will easily slide into your grasp when you need it from there and back when you don’t. We made three of those – for each of you. You’ll find your names on the inside of the bracelets.

Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’ŽŽ’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’Ž’

“They are geniuses!” Harry shook his head. He turned over the bracelets to check out the names engraved on each of them. The names were charmed too, he noticed. Each one periodically shifted from the name to something…different. “Hermione” to “Mind”, “Harry” to “Heart” and “Ron” to “Ass”. Ron shook his head and put his bracelet on to avoid looking at the inscription any longer. The moment he slapped it around his wrist it lost its golden shine and turned into a coppery red with “I’m a jerk” written in glowing letters on it.

“Gits. I think they didn’t like the Levicorpus yesterday,” Ron shook his head. He pulled out his wand and tapped the bracelet twice, returning it instantly to its golden form. “Let’s see what they did to your bracelets,” Ron turned towards Harry and Hermione who were now holding their bracelets with a bit hesitant looks. They put them on but unlike Ron’s bracelet theirs didn’t seem inclined to insult their owners.

“Well, that was a disappointment,” Ron commented. “Those must be the only things they ever created that aren’t enchanted to prank the users.”

“I’m sure they’re just afraid of what Hermione would do to them if they played a prank on her,” Harry said. Meanwhile Hermione slid her wand into the metal tube where it remained securely until she made a small flick with her wrist – the wand immediately shot into her hand, ready for use.

“That’s a really amazing thing they’ve invented,” she agreed with Harry’s earlier remark. “And its good they don’t make more of those – in the wrong hands they could be pretty dangerous.”

“Ok, are we done here?” Harry took a look around. Besides the box with three rats in it nothing in the house suggested he had ever lived there now – all his possessions were packed in his trunk. With a twinge of amusement he wondered what will happen to the Dursley’s lawn, hedge and garden now that he wont be there taking care of it anymore and imagined his fat uncle and cousin trying to do it. He picked an old newspaper from the living room, tapped it with his wand and muttered ‘Portus’. The newspaper glowed briefly, indicating the spell had worked.

“You know that’s illegal, right?” Ron asked him in a matter-of-factly voice.

“Do we care?” Harry asked back.

“Nah. Not really.” Ron shrugged and touched a pit of the newspaper with one hand, holding on to his trunk with the other. When Hermione did the same Harry gripped the handle of his trunk tighter.

“OK, here we go. One, two, three…”

After the familiar navel-jerking feeling they found themselves in the dark foyer of Grimmauld Place Number 12. The dark house looked as unwelcoming and cold as ever. Harry doubted anyone had been there since the time of Dumbledore’s death – anyone human, at least. Who knows what had made its way inside since then – they really hadn’t even finished cleaning the house before Sirius died and Harry doubted anyone had the time or will since then.

He raised his wand and flicked on the lights. Someone seemed to object to that rather loudly.

“Half-breeds! Mudbloods! Blood-traitors!” The portrait of Mrs. Black screamed with a crazed expression that made Harry wonder if she had been painted that way or was that just her usual expression. “Get out of my house! Out! Out!”

Getting thoroughly sick of the old hag and feeling a stab of pain in his heart because of the memories of a miserable Sirius in this house Harry raised his wand, pointed it at the portrait and concentrated very hard on one single thought.

‘INCENDIO!’

The searing tongue of flame shot out from the tip of his wand and hit the portrait dead center. It burst into flames instantly, the roar of flames and shrieks of its inhabitant deafening them for a moment and then falling apart, the ashes drifting slowly to the floor.

“Anyone else has anything to add?” Harry turned to the others portraits with apparently saner occupants, because they all remained very quiet. Harry waved his wand at the ashes and the rather obvious scorch-mark, making them disappear. He turned back to his two companions. Ron’s face was expressing amusement, Hermione’s understanding.

“I think we should find for each of us a separate room then gather in the study room we once cleaned for a bit of planning,” Harry told them. “We check out the house after that to see what we have, what we need and what we need to get rid of.”

They spread out to search the house for usable rooms, leaving their trunks on the ground floor. Harry encouraged them to use as much light as possible and blast everything that tried to object. The old dark house was probably much brighter now than it had been in several decades. Harry noticed all kind of creatures and beings scatter and bolt for any remaining shadows through his stroll through the house. He decided that what he saw was harmless enough to let it remain until they found the time to deal with it.

He opened a random door and was quite surprised to find a suitable room behind it. Though he didn’t see any personal items the layout of the furniture suggested it had belonged to a boy. It was big enough – about four times the size of his previous room at Privet Drive, he figured. He walked in to check out the room. He lay down on the bed and felt something hard pressing against his back. He threw back the old blanket and found a small silvery badge in bad need for some cleaning.

‘What do you know? Dung must’ve missed this.’

He could barely make out the letters engraved on it, but the first one seemed to be R. and the last one B.

‘So this must’ve belonged to Sirius’s little brother,’ Harry thought. ‘Regulus Black was a prefect, then. Seems like Dumbledore just couldn’t help it but appoint future Death Eaters as prefects. Hope Malfoy gets the same as he did.’

He pocketed the badge and got comfortable on the bed again. He hadn’t planned on taking a nap but the bed was damn comfortable and he was quite full and a bit tired after his breakfast at the Burrow. He was awakened by a knock on the still open door. He lifted his head and saw Hermione stand in the doorway.

“So you’re going to choose this one or are you going to sleep in every bed before you decide?” she teased him.

“Well “this one” feels nice, but its lacking something,” Harry answered her.

“And what’s that?” Hermione asked.

“You!” Harry’s wand shot from its place in the metal tube into his hand and he immediately cast ‘Mobilicorpus’ on her making her fly through the air and fall down on the bed next to him. He pressed her down with his body weight when she tried to stand up. “So what do you think?” he grinned at her.

“Yes, if you ignore the idiot trying to hold you down it would probably be very comfortable indeed!” she told him, rolling her eyes. “I should look for a room that comes without one of those!”

“What, beds?”

“No! Idiots!” Hermione poked him in the ribs. “Now get off me!”

They got on their feet together. Harry took a last look around the room before making a decision.

“Yeah, I think I'll take this one. I suggest you take a look at the one next to it!” he winked at her.

“Why? Did you like that one too?” Hermione asked.

“No, I have no idea what it looks like,” Harry grinned. “But if you do, we could add a secret door between the two rooms!”

Hermione gave an amused sniff walking out the door.

A few minutes later they were sitting in the study room and making plans.

“Right,” Harry started. “So we know that there are a number of objects out there with pieces of Voldemort's soul in them. Salazar Slytherin's locket being one of them.” He placed the fake locket he always carried around with him on the table along with the note.

“That particular piece of soul would have been sent to whichever Hell awaits him but for the fact that someone beat us to it. This R.A.B – we need to figure out who he was.”

“Was?” Ron asked. “You sure he's dead, then?”

“Pretty certain, yes,” Harry nodded. “If he would be alive he would have been out there trying to destroy other Horcruxes. But Dumbledore seemed rather convinced that no-one else knew about them – no-one alive, that is.” Harry started to run his thumb over the small metal object in his pocket. “I need you to take a closer look at that note and tell me what yo think about it.”

Hermione took the note and started studying it. After a few minutes she put the piece of paper down.

“Its not much to go on but we can definitely make a few assumptions based on it.”

“Go on,” Ron said, leaning back in his chair.

“There are a few things. First, this person has left us his initials – R.A.B. Second, he addressed this to Voldemort – the note says “To the Dark Lord””.

“But only his Death Eaters call him that,” Harry interrupted suddenly, remembering saying that same thing to Snape once.

“Exactly,” Hermione said. “So we can conclude that this R.A.B was a Death Eater once but either before or after discovering the Horcruxes got a death-mark on his head and most likely is now dead. However it leaves the fate of Slytherin's locket a mystery,” she added. “Did he manage to destroy it before he died or not? If not, where is it now?”

“Well, if it's still around I pray to God its not in Gringotts,” Ron said. “Bill told me about what kid of security measures they got in there when he taught me spells.” He shuddered at the memory.

“Let’s hope its somewhere more accessible,” Harry nodded absentmindedly, still running his thumb over the Hogwarts prefect badge he had picked up earlier. He suddenly felt light-headed and his vision started to fill with the bright white fog again. Only this time it was more...concentrated? 'What the heck?' he thought. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. When he opened his eyes again his vision was back to normal.

“The problem is there were no published Death Eater yearbooks around last time I checked so how the heck are we going to find out who this R.A.B. was? What are we supposed to do? Should we capture us a Death Eater and interrogate him?” Ron wondered.

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “Maybe we could ask Moody – he was auror back then and in the Order. Maybe he knows something.” He sighed, looking at the Black family tree hanging on the wall, or rather at the scorch-mark where Sirius’s name should have been.

‘I wish Sirius was still here…He might have heard something in Azkaban,’ he thought. His eyes drifted to the name next to the scorch-mark.

Harry froze when from the depths of his memory surfaced the scene with Sirius where he was showing Harry that same tapestry. He remembered Sirius telling him about his parents’ agreement with Voldemort’s pureblood ideology, how his brother had taken after them and gotten involved with Death Eaters – even joining them. And when he found out what Voldemort was really all about he had wanted out. He remembered Sirius telling him that with Voldemort “out” meant “carried out - feet first”. He pulled his slightly shaking hand out of his pocket and looked at the badge he had found. He moved his thumb so only the first letters of the names were visible on it – R and B.

“It can’t be that easy,” he whispered. “No way…”

“What are you talking about, Harry?” Hermione asked him. Noticing that Harry had suddenly gone sickly white in his face she added in a concerned voice: “You OK, Harry?”

“You don’t look good, mate,” Ron agreed. “Maybe you should lie down for a moment?”

Instead of answering Harry jumped to his feet, kicking his chair back and bolted out of the room. He remembered now a certain heavy locket they had found in that same study room and that Sirius had thrown away – a locket he had seen again later in Dumbledore’s pensive when they visited Mr. Ogden’s memory! ‘How come I didn’t recognize it then and there?’ Harry was mentally beating himself up. He pushed the thoughts about it away, deciding to grieve over his mistakes that had possibly led to Dumbledore’s death later – when they had found and destroyed the damn thing.

‘Sirius threw it away, but it’s possible Kreacher picked it up and hid it in his den,’ he thought as he ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. He ripped the door to Kreachers cupboard open and started to rummage through the things in there. He went through the stuff in less than a minute finding a lot of things that might have had great sentimental value to a Black, but to his horror not finding a single piece that had any monetary value at all. Harry swallowed the bitter lump rising in his throat and ran back up the stairs to the study room.

“What? Couldn’t find the bathroom?” Ron grinned at him when he got back.

Without paying any attention to his two friends Harry ran straight to the desk and started ripping out drawers.

“Don’t tell me - we’ve ran out of paper?” Ron asked him a moment later, joining him at the desk.

“Shush, Ron!” a very annoyed Harry replied. When he couldn’t find anything in the drawers he proceeded to pulling open all the cabinet doors. ‘Damn! Nothing!’ he thought, growing more desperate and horrified with every empty drawer and shelf. And he felt anger rising in him, too. Finally he reached the final cabinet and pulled it open. ‘Empty!’

“Why, Mrs. Figg? Why?” Harry moaned.

Ron and Hermione shared a confused look, neither having an explanation for Harry’s sudden unexplained behavior.

“Why what?” Ron blurted out the question.

With a roar Harry suddenly ripped the small cabinet off the wall and threw it against the opposite wall where it shattered into a pile of firewood.

“WHY DIDN’T SHE MURDER MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER!” he yelled.

“Dung?” Ron asked. “What does this have to do with Dung?”

Harry pulled the prefect badge out of his pocket and showed it to them, then covered the name again so that only the first letters were visible.

“Oh no!” Hermione squeaked when she understood, the feeling of terror Harry had felt before now showing on her face.

Ron stared at the badge for a moment before his eyes popped wide open.

“Dung, you idiot!” he groaned. “What have you done!”

Harry was pacing the room, waves of anger rolling off him and somehow making the objects he had thrown on the floor during his hasty search bounce and tremble.

“We gotta find him! And fast!” he growled, the sound making the hair on the neck of his two companions stand up. It was like being locked in a small room with a very angry lion – and without a wand, at that.

“How are we supposed to find him?” Hermione groaned, twisting her hands nervously. “He’s a sneak and very good at hiding, isn’t he? Didn’t even Dumbledore have trouble finding him? And after what you did to him in Hogsmeade I don’t think he’s really anxious to meet and shake hands with you.”

Harry stopped in his tracks and kicked his brain into overdrive trying to come up with a plan. He smiled when one popped up in his head almost instantly.

“It’s quite easy, actually,” he grinned in a sort of murderous way.

“Easy?” Ron eyed him like he had grown an extra head.

“Easy,” Harry nodded. “Remember why he was in the Order to begin with?”

“Because he had connections?” Hermione offered a guess. “Because he knew all the other sneaks, being one himself?”

“Right,” Harry grinned. “And we’re going to use those connections to get to him.”

Five minutes later they were standing in the study room again, dressed in dark hooded cloaks for some sneak hunting. Harry took hold of their hands and apparated them all to the Diagon Alley.

“So where do we go from here?” Ron asked.

“I want you to go to your brothers’ shop, we’ll come there in about fifteen minutes, too. Ask them if they still do business with Dung and if they do, how do they contact him,” Harry instructed him. “I’ll go with Mione to look for street merchants like the one we spotted selling fake talismans last year. Some of them should know where to find Dung. I hope your Dad hasn’t done too good of a job rounding them up.”

“Don’t worry,” Ron grinned. “Dad says they’re like gnomes – throw one away and two come back.” He gave them a nod and took off towards the Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.

“So what do we do?” Hermione asked him, eying the almost empty street nervously.

“We split up and wander the streets looking for sneaks, Mione. Just try to stay away from Knockturn Alley, OK?” He gave her a kiss. “And if by a chance you happen to run into Dung, please, do hex him!” He turned around and with a pop was gone.

Harry apparated right to the Knockturn Alley. ‘If there are any shady deals going on this is where they happen,’ he thought. He wandered the narrow street, peering through the dark and dusty shop windows. He wasn’t holding his hand but he sure as hell was ready to call it to his hand any moment he might need it.

He noticed one shady character selling something half-way through the street. Pulling his cloak tighter around him he walked towards the man. When he got closer he saw that the man was selling small things that looked like time-turners.

“’ere, young man!” the man whispered to him. “Would you be interested in a personal time-turner? Only one hundred Galleons apiece! Very useful in these troubled times!”

“Pray tell me what use would I have for a collection of transfigured garbage?” Harry did his best impression of a “Malfoy sneer”.

The vendor went bug-eyed, gaping at him with open mouth.

“I-I-I..I’m terribly sorry, young sir! I had no idea! I swear I’m gonna punish the bastard who sold ‘em to me!” He glanced left and right nervously. “Er, how did young sir know, if I may ask?”

“You think I’m an idiot?” Harry pulled an insulted expression. “Where would someone like you would get his hands on time turners? Hah! Next you’ll be selling me the finest fifteenth-century goblin-made silverware! I think my Galleons would be better spent in a place like Borgin and Burke’s.” He turned to walk away, hoping the man had swallowed the bait, the hook and the entire line with it.

“’Ere, young sir! I just might know the right man to see about that for a price!” Harry wanted to jump around and dance from happiness.

‘Thank Merlin for idiots like that!’ he thought, arranging his face into a doubtful expression and turning back to the man with fake time turners. He thought that since last year he had gotten rather good at…manipulating people, thinking back to the day he had manipulated Hermione into thinking he had spiked Ron’s drink.

“And who might that “right man” be?” he asked.

“A business associate of mine,” the man grinned, showing his teeth that rather reminded Harry of a chessboard. “He had a bit o’ luck recently and inherited some rather exquisite silverware. If ye be interested, for a price I could give you information on how to get in touch with him!”

‘I think that’s all I needed to know,” Harry thought to himself, feeling his anger rising again. ‘Inherited, huh? We’ll see about that.’

“So yer interested, then?” the man took Harry’s narrowed eyes as an expression of interest and not anger. “I think for the price of ACK!”

The last part was caused by Harry’s hand that had suddenly closed around his throat and closed off all airflow to his lungs. Harry stepped forward quickly, pressing the man against the wall and banging his head against it once. The man clawed helplessly at the hand around his throat but it felt more like steel than flesh. He thought how strange it was that a wiry teenager could render him helpless so easily.

“Now I want to hear where Dung is hiding or it’s AK for you, comprende?” Harry hissed into his ear.

“You can’t!” the man managed to gag. “You’ll end up in Azkaban!”

Harry flashed a small silvery object in front of his eyes. The man could barely make out it’s shape.

“See this? Special permission from the Ministry to the Chosen One. Basically allows me to AK as many people as I want if at the end of the day Voldemort is one of them. A so-called license to kill, if you want,” Harry whispered. “So what’s it gonna be- my way or the AK?”

“I’ll tell ya! I’ll tell ya!” the man tried to say as loudly as he could with his limited air supply and constricted vocal cords.

“Smart. You must’ve been a Ravenclaw,” Harry loosened his hold a bit.

A few minutes later he was in the twins joke shop, beaming at his friends when he told them that he knew where Mundungus was hiding.

“Blimey! How’d you get that information, Harry?” Ron was amazed. “Fred and George just told me how hard it usually is to get in touch with Dung.”

“Oh, well…Used a bit of my intimidation skills.”

“Huh?” Ron looked at him doubtfully. “No offense, mate, but you’re just a seventeen year old kid. What the hell did you do to scare that information out of someone? Or are you a Legilimens?”

“I’d love to discuss this, Ron, but right now we have to go nab Dung before he disappears. So this is what I want you two to do…”

When Mundungus Fletcher heard the “costumer” sequence knocked against his door he smiled widely. Business was rather good lately with what he had gotten from the former Headquarter of the Order. His conscience wasn’t giving him too much of a hard time over it – Sirius had never cared about the stuff and the boy was certainly rich enough not to miss a few things, he thought. He would probably soon forget all about it and the rather embarrassing episode in Hogsmeade.

Dung opened the door to allow a tall costumer in dark cloak in. He wasn’t really surprised or suspicious about the cloak – most people when doing shady deals liked to keep their identity a secret. He closed the door and went to stand on the other side of the metal table that served as his counter.

“So what can I get you, sir?” he asked in a jovial tone.

“A birthday present would be nice…” the tall costumer replied in a somewhat familiar voice. Dung’s sneak sense started tingling. You won’t stay in business as a sneak for long without developing the sneak sense - or the sense to cut and run in other words.

“If you got me a certain golden locket that can’t be opened I’d be very happy,” the visitor continued. Then he raised his hands and pulled back the hood. Dung’s heart gave a painful jolt when he recognized one Harry Potter. “And if you’d throw in everything else you stole from Sirius’ house – which now happens to belong to me – I’d be positively ecstatic.”

The boy’s voice sent shivers racing along his non-existent spine and Dung did what he was good at – getting away. He did a quick half-turn and there was a loud bang – and Dung reappeared, plastered against the left wall of the room.

“That’s the Anti-Disapparating Jinx if you’re wondering what happened,” Harry explained in a cold tone.

Dung shoved a hand in his pocket and grasped a certain coin in there. With a jerk he started to move, only to find himself knocked against the opposite wall.

“Ah, that must be the Portkey Blocker we set around the house,” Harry mentioned. “And I really wouldn’t try Floo powder if I were you,” Harry added when Dung’s eyes shifted to the fireplace at the far wall. “Or run through the door, for that matter. There are some people out there and none of them are very happy with you at the moment.”

“What do you want then, Harry?” Dung asked him, feeling rather embarrassed about being cornered by a seventeen-year old.

“The first thing I told you!” Harry shouted, slamming his fist down on the metal table. “I want the stuff you nicked from Headquarter back, especially the golden locket!”

Dung swallowed hard and started to sweat when he noticed a new dent on his table where Harry had hit it. It was a rather thick metal table, he remembered.

“Allright, you’ll get the stuff back!” he said. “Sheesh! I didn’t know you were so emotionally attached to the stuff!”

“Good. Now would be a good time, if you please,” Harry seemed to calm down. He opened the door to let two more figures in dark cloaks enter the room. They threw back their hoods after closing the door and Mundungus recognized Harry’s two friends – Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

“Hey, Ron!” Dung merrily greeted the young Weasley, thinking that with the twin’s brother here Potter would be less intimidating. So he was a bit shaken when he noticed Ron giving him a glare like a hungry tiger trying to decide if he was edible enough to pounce on and eat. “Er, good to see you, Hermione!” he nervously turned to Hermione. He wished rather soon that he hadn’t when Hermione started to vent her anger on him for stealing Harry’s stuff. He genuinely wished he’d rather be with Molly Weasley than with the three kids – because those kids were seriously creeping him out.

“The stuff, Dung,” Harry reminded him when Hermione paused to take a breath. “The locket.”

“Uh, right, the stuff is all here,” Mundungus said, pointing at a large trunk next to the table. Dung blanched white suddenly. “The bloody locket!”

“What?” All three kids turned to him at once.

“What about it, Dung?” Harry’s eyes were boring into his skull.

“I, er, I think I sold it,” Dung stammered.

Harry seemed to lose his balance for a moment. With a single glance at him Hermione retrieved her wand and conjured a chair and pressed Harry sitting in it. Harry felt rather light-headed – the room started to spin a bit and seemed full of the swirling white fog again.

“Sold it?” he gasped. “To whom?”

“He said he needed a birthday present for his mother, well, and it looked rather fitting,” Dung stalled for time, hoping for divine intervention.

“TO WHOM, DUNG!” Harry roared, getting up suddenly.

“T-t-t-t-to Draco Malfoy!” Dung gasped.

You could actually hear the neutrons zoom around the atoms in the silence that followed. The three kids looked at him with expressions like he was Lord Voldemort himself standing in front of them.

“To Malfoy?” Harry asked, feeling the taste of bile rising in his throat. “You sold it to Malfoy?”

“Yes, he needed a birthday present for his mother, but we couldn’t get it open so he…” Dung stopped, realizing he was just digging a deeper grave for himself.

“So he what?” Harry pressed on. He already felt that it could only get worse. He wasn’t disappointed.

“So he said he would take it to Borgin and Burke’s to get it fixed,” Dung finished.

A/N: I hope you liked what you read! And I hope the book doesn't sound too much like a “deus ex machina”. I might have filled Harry’s head with some strange stuff, but...you'll see.