Brink of a Nightmare

Chapter One

The Creaky Stair

Mrs. Number Six peered through the runner beans and scowled. That boy was out again, loitering about and looking for trouble, no doubt. Many a time, she'd asked her neighbor, Petunia Dursley, what she hoped to accomplish by letting such a foul and hopeless creature reside within her home, but each time, Mrs. Dursley had flushed to the roots of her wispy blonde hair and bustled away with a cry of “More tea? Biscuits, perhaps?”

It was all very suspicious, if you asked Mrs. Number Six, who could vividly recall the day the little tramp had been found…

November 1, 1981 dawned clear and crisp over the identical houses of Privet Drive. Frost nipped the blades of the evenly-mown grass, but frost was not the only remnant of the night that had passed.

The door to Number Four Privet Drive swung open and a cacophony of bawls and yells spilled into the street, disrupting the stillness of the morning. A single tawny owl alit from his perch on the rain gutter and soared away into the receding darkness.

A woman's voice issued from the foyer, though the child's incessant screaming nearly drowned her out. “Quiet down, Diddy-Dinkums. Mummy will be right back. Mummy won't be but a moment, Duddy.” The woman emerged from the house backside first, still plying with her wailing toddler. “See, Mummy will be right-VERNON!”

All up and down what had moments ago been a quiet suburban street, bathrobe-clad residents were throwing open their doors and stepping out into the morning chill.

A robust, red-faced man with a walrus-mustache appeared in the door way of the fourth house, his sausage-like fingers still tugging at the zipper of his too-small trousers. He roundly rebuked the now-silent woman, and the neighbors (now puttering about in their gardens or loitering by their mailboxes) listened closely, each hoping for an earful of salacious gossip.

“Petunia - what is the meaning of this?! Calling a man out of his bed in the wee hours of the morning! All I ask from you is a warm breakfast and a clean house-”

But the man stopped shouting abruptly as well.

“Inside,” he rasped, so quietly that so quietly that nosy Mrs. Number Six could barely make out his words.

Dazedly, wordlessly, the woman called Petunia bent low over the front stoop and lifted a squirming bundle of blankets into her arms. Then, with as much dignity as she could muster, she stepped over the threshold and into the tidy house that until so recently had been just as box-shaped and boring as any of the others that lined the sunlit lane.

Ten long years the boy had lived amongst them, watching them through the slats in the white picket fence, scrambling nimbly into the branches of the Dursley's apple tree, puttering over the garden, mowing the lawn, fetching the mail, walking to school all by himself while the other children stared and pointed at him. He was an unapologetically unusual child, and so it was no surprise to any of the neighbors when Mr. Dursley announced that the boy would be off to St. Brutus', starting the fall after his eleventh birthday. Most of them slept more soundly in their beds knowing that he was out of their midst. It was crazy, Mrs. Number Six knew, to feel so callously towards a child so young, but he had a troubling aura about him and though the thought of drill sergeants caning young children disturbed her, she wasn't at all sorry to see him go.

And now he was back, pacing back and forth in the Dursley's backyard with his hands clasped behind his back.

“He's plotting something,” she whispered to her husband as he passed through the kitchen on his way to the bathroom.

He peered around her out the window. “Looks like a normal enough lad to me,” he grunted, shrugging his massive shoulders as he lumbered away, but Mrs. Number Six remained fixated on the boy.

She didn't like him. She didn't like him one bit.

* * * * * *

Midnight.

The next door neighbors' kitchen light switched off as the grandfather clock in the hall chimed the hour.

Twelve...eleven…

The three members of the Dursley family were sleeping soundly, but a tall, rather lanky sixteen-year-old boy was not. Harry Potter paced around Number Four, Privet Drive, very much awake.

ten…….nine…

The shock of the past few weeks had worn off slightly and the gravity of his situation was beginning to sink in. Tonight, Harry Potter was a man on a mission.

eight…seven…

Where? Harry wondered urgently, as a he crept through the parlor. He kicked the oversized sofa, rooted through the drawers of the pigeon-holed writing desk, and overturned a few photographs of his cousin Dudley just for good measure. He was remembering the night nearly two years ago when an owl had flitted through the Dursley's kitchen window and deposited a Howler on the pristine countertop - a letter to Aunt Petunia from Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of his age and the former Headmaster at Harry's magical boarding school. Harry recalled the terrible voice, reverberating off the white-washed walls --

Remember my last!

This, Harry supposed, meant that there had been previous letters. Tonight, with the Dursleys slumbering peacefully upstairs, Harry was determined to find those letters.

…six…five…

For the umpteenth time, Harry asked himself where Aunt Petunia would have put something she wanted to keep hidden? With this in mind, he opened the cabinet of cleaning supplies (for no one but Petunia ever visited there), hoping to find a crumpled letter hidden amongst the dryer sheets or a even flask of dragon's blood alongside the bottles of ammonia.

Nothing.

Harry was beginning to think that if Petunia had ever carried on a correspondence with the late Albus Dumbledore, the evidence had long since been destroyed.

….four…three…

Upstairs, Uncle Vernon stopped snoring abruptly and dead silence engulfed the house. Harry made one last round through the parlor but to no avail. Ceding defeat, Harry started up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

-Creak!

Harry's heart gave an almighty lurch and he leapt up three stairs at once, his heart pounding madly.

Just the creaky stair, it's just the creaky stair, he told himself, chanting the words like a mantra.

…two…

Harry clambered to his feet and turned back towards the stair…what if?

…one….

With the last stroke, he hopped down to the landing and slowly pried the stair open, reveling in his own brilliance. A shaft of moonlight danced across the contents of the stair: dog-eared letters addressed in slanting scripts, newspaper clippings, faded photographs. Harry pulled out a wad of letters and sat them on the step beside him, turning his attention to the pictures instead. Here two girls - one blonde and bony, the other willowy and redheaded - posed at the beach. There, again, the two sisters sat on a front porch, eating ice cream. Lily and Petunia Evans. Harry's fingertips caressed the image of his youthful mother and he felt his eyes burn with tears.

Reluctantly, he put the photographs aside and reached for the letters, turning them over slowly in his hands. The letter at the bottom of the stack was older and more careworn than the rest.

Miss Petunia Evans

The Parlor

485 Somerset Blvd.

Bristol, England

It looked suspiciously like a Hogwarts letter, but he assured himself that it could not be so. Harry slid the letter out of its filigreed envelope --

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Armando Dippet

(Order of Merlin, Second Class)

Dear Miss Evans,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry -

In his excitement, Harry hadn't noticed the footfalls on the stairs. Now Uncle Vernon thundered towards him, building momentum with each heavy footfall --

“INSOLENT BOY! What do you think you're doing, rummaging about our house?!” Vernon roared, swinging a candlestick at Harry.

Harry dodged the candlestick, but Vernon's next assault knocked the letters out of Harry's hands. They cascaded to the ground and Vernon dived for one.

“PETUNIA!”

Petunia stood frozen at the top of the stairs, watching the scene with unguarded horror.

Vernon's eyes were watering and his face was purpling; he waved the letter back and forth rather feebly.

“Oh, Vernon! I never - I swore I'd -” Petunia was on the verge of tears.

“No, no! I've thrown out my back!” Vernon lay on the floor like a beached whale, oblivious to Petunia's terrified protestations.

Petunia sunk to her knees, as weak with relief as a Death Row prisoner who'd received a last minute reprieve.

Harry hastily gathered up the letters and tried to catch Petunia's eye as she lugged Vernon back up the stairs.

* * * * *

Half-an-hour later, Petunia emerged, her hands reeking of Aspercreme. “Shhh!” she hissed at him, “your uncle's sleeping.” When she saw the look of angry determination on Harry's face, however, she silenced immediately and veered off towards the kitchen.

“Aunt Petunia?” Harry chased after her, shoving the stack of letters into her hands.

Petunia took them, trembling from head to toe. “How did you find these?” she asked weakly.

Harry shrugged. “Does it matter?”

She shook her head slowly and sank into a chair.

“You owe it to me,” Harry said fiercely, “You owe it to her! Tell me you didn't hate her!” As if to prove his point, he thrust the faded beach photo before her eyes; Petunia's shoulders slumped forward under the weight of decades of suppressed grief.

“What happened between you?” Harry demanded.

Petunia stared blankly at the wall opposite her, seeing past the façade of domestic perfection she had nurtured for so long. When she finally spoke, her voice was raw and emotionless, “When I was a little girl, just eleven years old, I received a letter from a faraway place…an invitation to attend a school of witchcraft and wizardry.” For once, she said the words without vehemence, without feeling of any kind. “I was embarrassed - what would my parents think? What could I do? I hid the letter -- I never wrote back. I tried to forget what had happened…” she spoke in a rush of words, not daring to feel emotion behind what she was saying. Harry was reminded strongly of Barty Crouch when under the effects of Veritaserum. “And then the unthinkable happened. Lily. Lily got a letter to…to…that school. She said yes, and when I thought our parents would be livid…they were not…Thrilled!” A bite edged into her voice, profaning her words. “They were thrilled! Delighted! Overjoyed! Lily, a witch. It was Lily this and Lily that. It could have been me, had I accepted. Or maybe it couldn't have been. Lily was always the favorite. Ever the charming one and I! Ever the overgrown weed cowering in her shadow.”

Harry watched her numbly.

“And, as if her going off to that dump wasn't enough, she was always bringing home her freaky friends.” Petunia shuddered. “Then, one day, she came home with this awful boy. Awful. Don't remember his name…not your father, in any case…greasy-haired, not handsome at all. Lily could have had anyone…why this ugly bloke?” To his surprise, Harry detected a note of indignation in Petunia's voice. “…Snap? Snope?” she groped in the recesses of her memory for the name of the offending young man.

“Snape?” Harry offered, his heart sinking.

“Snape. Severius Snape - that's the name,” Petunia looked distracted. “Brought him home one summer, and that James Potter the next. They got married soon after…Didn't hear from her for months. Then she was back. Vernon never would have allowed it, but Dumbledore fashioned some sort of conference on drills for him to attend. He couldn't refuse. So, just out-of-the-blue, Lily was back. Back in my life.

“Said James was off on some mission, but she couldn't fool me that easily. I knew James Potter was unemployed, never did an honest day's work in his life. They must have had marital problems; she showed up with the baby and was quite distraught besides. She must've stayed about a month. That baby was perfectly behaved too, never fussed, never said a mumbling word.”

She's speaking about me as though I'm not even here! Harry reflected, listening to his aunt's ramblings with detached curiosity.

“She had all kinds of visitors too. Weird folks. Then she went away with that Potter boy again. That was the last time I saw her,” Petunia pondered aloud. “She sent me all kinds of letters that next year, but I sent them back unread. I was furious with her for going back to that world, to them. She could have had anything, Lily, but she went back and I could never forgive her for that. Twice she left me, but I never thought…it's too terrible to say…” Petunia hastily dabbed her moist eyes on the collar of her housedress. “…that Voldermord came and blew them all to smithereens and we got landed with…with Harry…with you…I only visited her grave once…that's all I could risk…what with Vernon and two baby boys in the house…”

Harry obligingly fetched her a handkerchief and Petunia sobbed noisily into it.

“Where is she buried?” he asked haltingly.

“In-in Godric's Hollow…just outside of -” she blew her nose “-Holyhead.”

Harry stood up and smoothed his robes. His senses felt sharpened somehow; the gleaming whiteness of the kitchen blinded his itching eyes, and the sound of his own footfalls as he moved to embrace Petunia echoed loudly in his ears.

“Harry…be careful…”

There was nothing else to be said. Harry hurried upstairs to retrieve his wand, broomstick, and Invisibility Cloak. As he made to leave, his eyes swept over the unkempt room. Spellbooks and dirty socks littered the floor and Hedwig's empty cage sat atop the wardrobe, illuminated by the orangey light of a single streetlamp. Harry nudged aside his school trunk, the better to lean against the wall, and there he stood, tracing his fingers over five columns of notches in the wall. A rush of bittersweet emotions overcame him. Don't you remember when you used to count down the days until you could return to the Wizarding World?

>>>> Please review! I do love my reviewers to death! If you think you recognize this chapter from elsewhere, you're right on! I'm doing major rewrites on my original Year Seven. I missed a lot of important scenes that I want a chance to write in.

<3 Herminia

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Chapter Two: The Sorriest and Most Decrepit House of Potter

HERMIONE

“Sweet dreams,” her father had said, warmth and blissful ignorance in his every syllable.

“We love you, dearest,” her mother had said, pausing by her daughter's doorway, before shuffling away in her old house slippers. We love you, but we don't understand you.

Hermione Granger tossed and turned fitfully in her sleep. A balmy summer breeze filtered through the open window, tousling her wild brown hair and masking the sound of someone crawling in through that very window.

“Hermione?”

She rolled over, pulling her blankets up to her chin.

“Hermione? Hermione, wake up!”

Her eyes fluttered open and she glimpsed a face looming above her in the darkness. She made to cry out in terror but the figure waved a wand through the air, “Silencio!”

“H-Harry?” she fumbled for her wand in the dark and the tip lit of its own accord, casting the room into sharp relief. “Oh, Harry - you gave me such a fright! What on earth are you doing here? Not that I'm not glad to see you,” she added hastily.

He apologized, looking truly sorry, and sat down on the edge of her bed. Hermione ran her fingers through her ratted brown hair, ruing the bedraggled state he'd found her in. Harry, however, wasn't looking at her.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Aunt Petunia. She's just told me everything.”

Hermione sat bolt upright. “Everything?” she asked, doubtfully. Aunt Petunia was a Muggle, one with a decidedly limited world view that - as far as Hermione knew - did not include anything of importance to Harry and his quest.

“About Mum and Dad,” he said. “Where they lived, how to get there, where they're - buried.”

His lip trembled endearingly at the last word and she reached out to brush a stray lock of black hair from his face, the only comforting gesture she could allow herself to provide.

“Hermione - I need to see it. That's where it all begins, isn't it?” Harry looked at her earnestly and she nodded stoically.

“I'm coming with you,” she said. She crawled out of bed and tried to rake a comb through her tangled hair but it was a lost cause. “An extra set of eyes won't hurt—”

“Do you think that's all you are to me?” he asked, with searching eyes and a soft smile. He reached out to catch her hand as she slipped past him, but only brushed the hem of her flimsy nightgown.

“Of course not,” she replied, though at her worst moments, she was not so confident in his need for her. “Will you give me a moment, Harry?”

“I'll be outside,” he said and climbed back over the sill and lowered himself to the ground below.

Inside the house, Hermione Granger tugged off her nightgown, donned a t-shirt and jeans, yanked on a pair of boots that were sturdy and practical if not stylish, and hurriedly penned a note to her parents. Her quill paused over the bottom of the parchment. What else to say? You may never see me again? Look out for yourselves? In the end, she opted to play towards their ignorance, reassuring herself that it would be in their best interests to stay uninformed.

Don't worry about me, she wrote. Your loving daughter,

Hermione.

There, she thought, folding the letter and placing it on her pillow. Without a backward glance, Hermione Granger picked up her wand, swung one leg over the window sill, and dropped lightly into the garden patch below where Harry stood with his Firebolt in hand.

* * * * *

Two hours later, Harry guided the Firebolt earthwards and dismounted with smooth expertise.

“Alright?” he asked, looking back at her as she staggered away from the broomstick and sank mercifully to the ground. She was tempted to kiss the dirt but settled for a simple vow never to fly again.

“Yes,” she fibbed, and though Harry's eyebrows arched in disbelief, he did not question the lie.

“Do you need help?” Worry creased his brow as she stumbled to her feet with all the grace and composure of a day drunk.

“I—no. I'm fine, honestly, Harry,” she insisted, steadying herself against a tree until she thought she'd mostly regained her sense of balance. “Well, are you coming?” she called back to him with a weak laugh as she took a few shaky steps up the path.

He caught her up and they ambled on down the winding country lane in silence. The sky glowed pinkish-gray above them, heralding the imminent arrival of the new day.

Harry kept craning his neck for a glimpse inside the houses they passed. Lights flickered on in the kitchens and small silhouettes walked back and forth carrying breakfast plates, ties, and freshly-ironed shirts.

Gradually, the houses became fewer and farther between and Hermione knew they were drawing closer. Harry stopped abruptly at her side and gestured wordlessly towards a gap in the trees. Before Hermione could reach out to stop him, he strode off through the dense thicket towards the half-hidden ruins of a small cottage. He climbed nimbly over a crumbled stone wall and looked about.

“This is it,” he said with a painful finality.

Hermione scaled a pile of debris and joined him in the middle of the ruins. It felt like hallowed ground. “Harry,” she began, not at all sure what words of comfort she could offer to ease his pain. “Harry—”

“Ah! There you are!”

Harry tensed and Hermione's wand flew to her wand as a plump, middle-aged woman in a magenta pantsuit plodded towards them. “You must be the Wattisons!” She stuck out a hand for Harry to shake. “I am Wendoline Johnstone, your realtor.”

Harry and Hermione exchanged startled glances.

“Nice place, isn't it?” she asked conversationally. “Needs a bit of fixing up, of course, but with a little TLC, the possibilities are endless!”

“We weren't—” Harry began, but Wendoline Johnstone wasn't interested in hearing what he had to say.

“All the young couples are interested in fixer-uppers nowadays.” She tittered, studying the pair of them closely. Hermione felt her face flush pink.

“No,” Harry said, more firmly this time. “We're not interested in buying. We're just looking around.”

The realtor looked highly affronted. “Excuse me? Why on God's green earth would you call me here so early in the morning if you were just going to `look around'?!” she sputtered, losing all of her professional aplomb.

“We didn't call you here!” Hermione exclaimed.

Wendoline Johnstone sat down on the stone wall and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Always the same,” she said moodily, lighting one and jabbing it between her highly-glossed lips. “No one wants the place - and who can blame them after such terrible goings-on. Why, it must have been fifteen, twenty years ago now…fishy business if you ask me. Family gone. House destroyed. Weird people everywhere. Weird. You know the type.”

She eyed Harry and Hermione beadily; Hermione was torn between nodding knowingly and running for it before they were found out.

“So, young couple, eh? Newlyweds?”

“No,” said Harry, looking at Hermione in bewilderment.

“Well, you'd make a lovely pair,” the realtor replied, oblivious to the embarrassment she had caused. With a final sigh and hopeless glance at the skeleton of a house, she said, “Well, if you aren't the Wattisons, then you'd best be going. I expect they'll be here any moment and I'm not authorized to show the property to anyone without an appointment. City Council doesn't want too many people tramping around and I can't say I blame them.”

Harry and Hermione didn't need telling twice. They bade the disgruntled, chain-smoking realtor good-bye and set off through the dense thicket.

* * * * *

HARRY

“Where to now?” Hermione wondered aloud.

Harry did not answer her directly, but strode onward, as a dog likening to a familiar scent. He rounded the wooded hill and found an old cemetery nestled on the other side of the embankment. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed hard. Hermione's small hand slid into his own, bracing him, and together they wended their way through the graveyard.

A drizzling rain began to fall as they walked, tall granite angels looming above them, crumbling stone monuments on each side. The silence was eerie - ethereal, even - for the rain deadened all other sounds.

Harry led the way, his eyes peeled for the Potters' graves, and at long last, he found them, nestled in an overgrown niche. Ivy blanketed the face of the massive gravestone and weeds sprouted from a cranny in the rock. The wide limbs of a gnarled peach tree sheltered them from the rain and littered the ground with rotting fruit. Overcome, Harry knelt down and ran his fingers over the headstone, carefully tracing his parents' names.

James Potter

November 6, 1959 - October 31, 1981

Lily Evans Potter

May 17, 1960 - October 31, 1981

The inscription was so simple, so nondescript, giving no mention of what they had lived for or how they had died. Carefully, Harry cleared away the tangled weeds and rotten peaches. His parents' graves should not look like this, so unkempt, so forgotten. Squatting on the mound of earth that was his parents' grave, Harry felt the loss doubly hard.

“Do you want a moment alone with them?” Hermione asked, her voice barely discernable above the steady rain.

He shook his head. “Stay,” he croaked, and so she knelt beside him - allowed him to fold into her embrace.

“I didn't think it would be so hard,” he murmured, his throat raw. “It isn't as though I ever really knew them—”

“But they gave you so much,” Hermione whispered back, “—their bravery and compassion, Harry. You've heard Sirius and Lupin say it a thousand times—”

“They gave me their lives. Rita Skeeter asked me once, what my parents would think of me, but I'll never know.”

“They'd be proud of what you've become, Harry,” said Hermione soothingly. “They'd be—”

But whatever James and Lily would be, Harry did not find out, for the stillness of the graveyard had been broken by the dull, uneven thud of heavy footsteps. Harry leapt to his feet and pulled out his wand, staring down its tip as the stooped figure of a sere old man stepped out of the mist. Hermione gasped and her wand already drawn, but the old man did not flinch.

“I'm not worth the trouble of finishing me off,” he said with a harsh laugh.

“Who are you?” Harry demanded.

“You could call me an old friend,” he said, lowering his hood.

For a moment, Harry could have sworn that the man was Albus Dumbledore himself, but he couldn't reconcile the man's filthiness and vulgarity with the polished, collected Dumbledore he'd come to know so well.

“You're the bartender, down at the Hog's Head!” Hermione breathed, her eyes round in fear and surprise.

“Very good,” the man said, a misshapen smile softening his weathered features. “Aberforth Dumbledore,” he said, reaching out to shake Harry's hand, “barkeep, Order of the Phoenix member, and sole survivor of the House of Dumbledore - owing to one long-dead Dark wizard and one unfortunate turn of events.”

“Harry Potter,” Harry said woodenly, still not quite trusting the old man. Something about him unsettled Harry, though he couldn't say why.

“I know who you are, of course. My brother spoke very highly of you, young man,” Aberforth said, his eyes twinkling fondly in a way that was so reminiscent of the late Albus Dumbledore that Harry was finally put at ease. “And you, m'lady,” he said, taking Hermione's hand and bowing as deeply as his bad back would permit, “must be Miss Granger.”

Hermione was clearly astounded, “How do you—”

“—do? Very well, thank you for asking, child. Or perhaps you were meaning to ask, how do I know of you?” He patted her hand. “Albus loved to come `round the pub and spoke of his students at great length. With your quick draw and excellent mental recall, you could be no other.” He smiled more broadly. “It is good that you are here, Mr. Potter. Three days - three days - I've been standing sentry here, waiting for your arrival. And now, we can commence.”

“Commence?”

“That is to say, I can tell you what little I know, if you have time to listen to a barmy, rheumatic old codger, that is. No objections? Then, I'll press on—you've probably come looking for answers, Mr. Potter, and answers I cannot give. What happened to James and Lily Potter was senseless. A tragedy, there's no denying it. But there's always some sense in the senseless, or so I've been told by those who should know.” He laughed coarsely. “Whatever else happened that night matters little in the grand scheme of things, but your mother died in your place, Mr. Potter, and in so doing, she hoodwinked He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named - something not many a witch or wizard could hope to accomplish! But you've heard all this before and I've little more to add that's not been said before…”

“That night…” Harry said, remembering Wendoline Johnstone's comments about the strangeness of the place and the frenzy surrounding the attack, “How did it happen? How did it all unfold?”

Aberforth looked somberly down at the Potters' graves. “Much has been said about that night, about who was there and who stayed away,” he said, nodding to himself. “One who was - Severus Snape.”

“Snape?” Harry bristled.

“Someone had to see it all,” Aberforth said with a nonchalant shrug. “Someone had to see it all; someone had to tell my brother that the Dark Mark had vanished. For all his pretensions, my brother was far from omniscient. Besides, Snape had his own reasons to be there...had quite a vested interest in James and Lily, he did.”

“He hated my parents,” Harry spat.

“It's not in my place to make excuses for him. Snape was a young man who made a young man's mistake—”

“And Dumbledore made an old man's mistake in trusting him!” Harry said, shocked by his own audacity.

Aberforth brushed Harry's comment away. “Like I've said, it's not in my place to say. I cannot say what compelled my brother to trust him. I can only tell you what I know, what I have remembered these long years. You want to know about the night it happened? I will tell you what little I can.”

Harry ducked his head, gazing earnestly at the granite headstone.

“Your father died to save you and your mother, Mr. Potter. He died a warrior's death and your mother, a savior's. Right after, of course, there were witches and wizards everywhere. The Ministry had to set up some sort of barricade, just to keep people out. Couldn't have Muggle noticing things. They're not as thick as we think, Muggles. Caught on fairly quick, what with the house in shambles. The Ministry told them a gas main exploded.” He chuckled sadly to himself. “Lots of gas mains exploding in those days.

“But that night was different. The flames—” he mused, and Harry could almost see them reflect in his luminescent eyes - “spouted twenty - nay, thirty - feet in the air. Strange colors too. I've never seen anything like it. No gas main ever…but that's beside the point. We were lucky, Mr. Potter, that Frank Longbottom was one of the first on the scene. Plunged right in, he did. He was a good man, Longbottom -- one of the best Aurors the Ministry ever had. Not that that counted for much,” Aberforth added gravely. “He and his wife ended up worse than dead. Found themselves ambushed one dark night exactly five months later… Didn't stand a chance. A fair few Death Eaters were still running amok in those days and so much was still up in the air concerning He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but it should never have happened in the first place. They should have had back-up. That's how we came to lose two more of our number. Three, truth be told, for we never saw hide or hair of Caradoc Dearborn again after he failed Frank and Alice that night.

“Bad times. Bad luck. It's always been bad luck for the Order, for the Potters, but you'll be different, young man. The world's counting on you now. It doesn't do to pretend otherwise.”

Harry paled slightly; Hermione trembled at his side.

“I don't reckon I'd fancy laying my life on the line for a sorry lot of magical ingrates, myself,” Aberforth observed, “but you're made of stronger stuff, Mr. Potter. It's in your blood.

And since the hour grows ever later and my back ever stiffer, I will leave you both with this -- my brother's faith in you was absolute and what he had to offer you was infinite. I, as you can well see, am of a weaker, humbler sort, but if you ever have need of me, you know where to find me.” Once again, he bowed to them, and with a final warning not to linger long, he Disapparated.

Harry turned slowly to Hermione, who was carefully averting her red-rimmed eyes. This was what she hadn't wanted to consider - the end.

“You can't stand to think about it, can you?” he asked softly.

“Harry, please, don't start.”

“You don't have to put yourself in harm's way. It's my burden to bear, and I don't think I could bear it if I was responsible for your de—”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said, recouping some of her composure. “Of course I'm coming with you,” and without another word, she clamped his hand firmly in her own and Apparated them to the lump of earth called Stoatshead Hill.

* * * *

If you read the “old” one, this chapter is still pretty darn similar. The real changes kick up in Chapter Three and after a point, the old chapters are no longer edited and improved upon but are just thrown out altogether. I'm really excited about the rewrites - hope you're enjoying them as well! Thanks for reviewing - it means a lot!

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Chapter Three: Bedlam at the Burrow

HARRY
“HARRY! HERMIONE!” came the delighted scream from the far end of the winding lane that halved the village of Ottery St. Catchpole. Ginny Weasley was pelting towards them, red hair streaming out behind her like a banner.

“Oh, we weren't expecting you for hours!” she squealed, sailing unexpectedly into Harry's arms.

“We—er—weren't you?” he stammered when she had released him.

She laughed giddily, “I can't believe you're actually here! It's too good to be true! Mum went ahead and sent for your trunks, of course, just to be ready when you came, but we've all been just beside ourselves with worry--”

“We were only incommunicado for twelve hours!” Harry exclaimed.

“—over the wedding, of course. Absolutely haywire. Mum's gone bonkers,” Ginny threw up her hands and laughed. “The Delacours—after Phlegm, we thought we were ready for anything, but wait'll you see…” She seized Harry's hand and looped her free arm through Hermione's and led the way back to the Burrow, chatting merrily all the way. Harry, still on edge after their visit to Godric's Hollow, was at once irritated with her for breaking the silence and grateful for her talkativeness as it meant all he had to do was smile and nod occasionally.

As the threesome rounded the final bend in the road, the Burrow came into full view. By the look of it, every nook and cranny had been scrubbed to perfection (or at least, as close to perfection as such a crowded household was liable to be) and standing in the doorway with his back to the road was Harry's best mate, Ronald Weasley. He turned around at the sound of their footsteps on the stone pathway and gazed at Harry and Hermione in disbelief, as though he could hardly register what his eyes were seeing. Then, with a broad smile and a rising blush beneath his smattering of freckles, he loped across the lawn to greet them, catching Hermione in a one-armed hug and clapping Harry on the back.

“Good to see you, good to see you,” he repeated over and over as though reassuring himself that they were indeed there, safe and whole. Finally, he pulled away, a wide grin plastered on his face that was replaced moments later by the same lobotomized gape that accompanied the presence of -

“Ooooh! You are `ere! You `ave come!” crooned Fleur Delacour, sweeping into sight and peppering Harry with kisses. “So `andsome, `Arry!” she said with an airy laugh. “Gabrielle! `Arry Potter is `ere!”

The now twelve-year-old Gabrielle appeared in the doorway. She was Fleur in miniature, Harry noted, all blue eyes and silken hair, poise and polish.

Harry greeted her with a warm smile, and directed his next question to Fleur, “How's Bill?”

“'E eez doing as well as can be expected,” she said with a radiant smile. “Ze scars `ave faded a leetle. Come, `Arry, come see for yourself.”

With Ginny clasping one arm and Gabrielle tugging on the other, Harry was half-led, half-dragged into the house.

A quick tour revealed the Burrow to be much changed. The old Wellington boots and been bundled away and the discarded cauldrons were brimming with flowers. Inside, the clutter had been cleared and the house was festooned with baubles and bouquets. Ron led Harry up to the attic to see the family ghoul - decked in tinsel and looking absolutely livid.

“Bloody brilliant, eh?” Ron asked, craning his long neck to get a better glimpse of the ghoul. “So, where'd you and Hermione come from? We weren't expecting you lot until tomorrow.”

“Uh, nowhere. Just - just thought Hermione and I could make the journey together,” he finished feebly. Though the memory of his visit to Godric's Hollow was still raw and painful, Harry wasn't quite sure why he was keeping it from Ron.

Ron obviously sensed that something was afoot, but before he could ask any more questions, the ghoul hurled a chunk of metal piping in his direction. Ron dodged it and fled down the rickety staircase, and Harry, grateful for the distraction, hurried after him.

* * * * *

Downstairs, the kitchen was bustling with activity. Mrs. Weasley was standing over the stove stirring a large pot of stewed turnips, steam condensing on her flushed face. When she spotted Harry, she shrieked and tossed the ladle aside in her haste to reach him.

“Harry, oh Harry!” she sobbed, enveloping him in a rib-crushing embrace. “We've been so worried!”

“Lay off him, Mum,” Fred said, prying Mrs. Weasley off of Harry. Harry stepped back, massaging his aching sides.

“Yeah, Mum, he's just been at Privet Drive…don't reckon he's done anything too dangerous yet!” George cuffed Harry around the back the head.

“I know, I know,” Molly dabbed her eyes, only to burst into tears again as Hermione entered.

“Meezus Weasley?” A coldly imperious voice interrupted them.

Mrs. Weasley grimaced and grudgingly turned to face a tall, blonde woman who was surveying the crowded kitchen with great distaste.

“You must be `Arry Potter,” she said coolly, extending a bejeweled hand to Harry. He shook it, but had an odd feeling that he ought to have kissed her hand instead.

“Meezus Weasley, as I waz saying, how do we expect to `ave ze wedding `ere of all places? No room for ze guests!”

“Everything will be fine, I assure you - stop that, Fred!” - Fred spat out a mouthful of hot soup he'd been sampling - “Of course we'll have enough room for everyone.”

Madame Delacour turned on her heel and left the room without a further word. Harry could make out the sound of her high heels chinking on the uneven floorboards.

Mrs. Weasley returned to the stove, where she spent several moments beheading radishes into the boiling kettle. “That woman!” she hissed, “Thinks she owns the place - bossing me around in my own home! If it wasn't for Bill, why, I'd have the lot of them thrown out!”

Harry could scarcely recall the last time he had seen Mrs. Weasley this angry, though he thought she might have come close when she discovered that Fred and George had restarted Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes right under her nose.

The rest of the Weasley clan was looking worse for the wear as well. Charlie, back from dragon-taming in Romania, looked ready to breathe fire himself. The usually good-natured Arthur Weasley was sitting in a raggedy armchair in the corner, tapping his foot impatiently while a stately gentleman, who could only be Fleur's father, paged slowly through Mr. Weasley's copy of The Daily Prophet.

Fred confided in Harry that Monsieur Delacour had called Arthur Weasley's obsession with plugs “stupide.” “He's been in a right funk ever since,” Fred added seriously.

“It's been terrible,” George agreed. “Or should I say `terri-abba-lay?'”

“That's not French!” Hermione exclaimed, though her brown eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Close enough,” George replied, scuffing the toe of his dragon-skin boot on the ground. “Fleur's very - well, she's very nice—”

“Not to mention nice-looking—” Fred chipped in.

“-That too,” George said with a smirk. “But I could do without her family.”

Meanwhile Ginny amused everyone by miming Madame Delacour's heavy French accent - “Een France, we would `ave none of zis!” she said in mock outrage when Mrs. Weasley ordered her to shell a cauldron full of sweet peas.

As far as Harry could tell, any animosity the Weasleys had felt towards Fleur had been redirected at the reviled Madame and Monsieur Delacour.

* * * * *

The atmosphere was taut with anticipation as night descended on the Burrow. The Delacour and Weasley clans seemed to have reached an unspoken truce and both sides were making concerted efforts at friendliness. Over the dinner hour, Mrs. Weasley had very kindly asked Madame Delacour to pass the sugar and cream and Madame Delacour had reciprocated by accepting a plateful of English home cooking without so much as a grimace. Monsieur Delacour had complimented Mr. Weasley on a handsome set of two-way radios, and, by the time dinner was over and the families had congregated in the den, Mr. Weasley was positively beaming.

Not wanting to stretch the terms of the `ceasefire,' the Delacours had retired to bed early, followed by Mrs. Weasley, Ginny, and Hermione who all expressed a desire for what Ron had termed “beauty rest.”

Harry was sitting on the floor in Ron's room, paging absentmindedly through a book on defensive magic when Fred and George arrived.

“Hiya, Harry. Remember a few years back you gave Fred and I a thousand galleons and said that someday soon we'd need the laughs? Well, we've got our joke shop and it's high time we paid up.” George's eyes glinted dangerously.

“We thought you might want to brush up on your dueling skills, before the big to-do,” Fred said, hands tucked up behind his back. “On a personal note, George and I put a lot of thought into this, Harry—”

“I should be worried, shouldn't I?” he said with a laugh, swallowing the familiar lump of fear that had risen in the back of his throat at the mention of The End.

Fred grinned. “When it came right down to it, it was either going to be trick wands or a round of You-No-Poo products - our treat, of course. In the end, though, we decided there are far too many people and far too few bathrooms in this house for that sort of jape—”

“That and we wanted to save a tablet or two to drop in Percy's breakfast porridge—should he choose to show his slimy face,” George finished, to a collective cry of “Hear, hear!”

“First we square off, straight-backed and proud, and ready ourselves for the fight to the death that awaits us,” Fred said, in a very grave sort of way. He tossed a trick wand Harry's way and handed one over to his twin. “And, alas, none left over for ickle Ronniekins.”

“Fred, you've got another! Hand it over,” Ron demanded, leaping up on his bed and brandishing a Chudley Cannon's pillow at his brothers.

“Clever, Ron,” George said, “but not clever enough!” He threw aside the trick wand (Ron made a mad dive for it) and pulled out his real wand. One quick wave and the room was brimming with pillows - pink and lacy pillows, gilt-trimmed pillows, rolled-up pillows with streaming tassels, and still others that bore an uncanny resemblance to Madame Delacour's small fluffy dog.

Fred let out a giddy whoop and aimed a wallop at Ron, who recoiled in surprise. He retaliated with a bold swipe at George, who went down, taking Harry with him. Ron seized the moment to sock Harry full in the stomach with a pillow that felt like it had been stuffed with wet sand rather than goosefeathers and Harry collapsed back onto Ron's Chudley Cannon bedspread, momentarily winded. Feathers floated through the air like falling leaves -

“Bad luck, Harry!” Fred roared, deluging Harry with an armload of horrible, mildewy Victorian cushions. Lights burst in front of Harry's eyes and his glasses were knocked askew.

Thus it came to pass that Harry - vision blurred and head spinning - swung a frilly pink pillow at Fred. A sharp “Ha!” of laughter escaped his breathless lungs and the only thought in his mind was how good it was to be alive and sixteen years of age. He could see its trajectory, how perfectly it would glance off Fred's right ear, but at the last possible moment, it sailed out of his hands. They all watched, as if in slow motion, as the pillow soared across the room … and beamed Percy Weasley clear in the face. For a moment, they stood frozen, all eyes on Percy, but then Percy regained his senses and stormed away.

“It's just Perce,” George said, stumbling to the doorway to see which direction the wayward Weasley had gone. “He's used to that sort of thing.”

“He deserved it,” Fred muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “'Bout time he showed up, the git. He probably knows we'd never forgive him if he didn't show his smarmy face at Bill's wedding.”

George stepped back inside and with a wave of his wand, the pillows vanished and the room righted itself. “And to think, we offered to arrange the bachelor party, but our own brother turned us down,” George said with a falsely melancholic sigh. “Goodnight, Ron, Harry.”

Laughing to himself, Harry drew the curtains and collapsed onto his narrow cot. “They're really something else, Fred and George,” he said, looking over at Ron.

Ron was sitting up in bed, still goggling at the space where Percy had stood with a look of unreserved, inexplicable happiness on his face. “Percy's back,” he said simply. “Fred and George'll lay off me now that they've got their favorite laughingstock back, I reckon. We knew he'd come back eventually, didn't we? Once a Weasley, always a Weasley - that's what Dad says.”

* * * * *

“You look like you've broken your nose,” Hermione said over breakfast the next morning.

Ron picked up his spoon and studied his reflection in the back of it. “It's not that bad,” he said defensively, prodding at his nose, which had been reduced to a red, swollen mass. “Besides, Fred and George look worse.”

And indeed they did. George came downstairs sporting an impressive bruise blossoming yellow and purple along his jaw; Fred wore his black eye like a badge of honor.

“Were you lot boxing with the house ghoul?” Hermione asked, torn between concern and amusement. She leaned across the table and plucked Harry's glasses up off the bridge of his nose. With a tap of her wand, the frames unbent themselves at once and she handed them back.

“Pillow fight,” George said with a lopsided grin.

“You look a menace. All of you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Granger,” George said genially.

“Ah, well I thought the black of my eye would accent my dress robes nicely. The look was so overwhelmingly—”

But whatever the look was, they didn't hear, for Ginny chose that moment to come storming into the room, her flowing red hair already set in elegant waves in preparation for the wedding.

“Can I just kill them already?” she groaned, flopping artlessly into the chair nearest Harry. The previous evening's “truce” had collapsed under the pressure of wedding day preparations.

“Not before high tea,” Hermione replied smoothly. “Pull yourself together. You'll have to learn to put up with them sooner or later. These are your future sister-in-law's family members, after all.”

“Don't remind me,” Ron groused, joining in.

“Ever since she came here, it's been `oooh, zis eez so much better in France' this and `'ow quaint zeez British customs are' that.”

“And yesterday, Madame Delacour told Mum she wouldn't feed `zis `orrible food' to her dog.”

“That hairy little mop—” Ginny sniffed.

“I'd mop the floor with it if she wasn't so bloody fond of the thing—”

“I'd mop the floor with it because she's so bloody fond of it—” Fred said darkly.

“I mean, how dare she?”

“We - we can poke fun at her cooking, because we're her family—we have to love her—”

Harry found himself thinking - not for the first time - that he would very much dread being on the outside of the Weasley's tight-knit circle, for when riled up they were quite a formidable force to reckon with.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

The rest of the morning passed in a raucous blur. Arthur Weasley had recruited Harry to see to the droves of guests pouring into the Burrow, which meant that Harry spent much of his time shuttling the new arrivals to the upper levels of the Burrow where there was still some sitting room. On his tenth trip up the rickety staircase, he overheard Ron and Ginny arguing heatedly. Unable to help himself, he stopped outside the door to listen -

“Well, Auntie Muriel just sent an owl to say she won't be coming,” Ginny was saying, “so if you want to get any kissing in on your brother's wedding day, it'll have to be Hermione!”

“I don't want to rush things,” Ron said nervously. The floorboards creaked as he paced back and forth.

“Ronald Weasley, you are impossibly obtuse. If you don't - I mean to say, I'm warning you, Ron - if you don't, she'll get the wrong idea about things! You don't have time! We don't have time—”

Harry felt the color drain from his face. He knew he shouldn't be listening, but he couldn't seem to tear himself away.

“You do like Hermione, don't you?” Ginny sounded flustered.

“'Course I do,” Ron said shortly.

“So tell her, and don't forget to seal it with a kiss,” Ginny said. “Now if you don't mind, I must be getting ready.”

Knowing he had only a split second before Ron would emerge from the room, Harry barreled down the stairwell, nearly trampling Arthur Weasley, who was standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Harry! Finished, are you?” Mr. Weasley began. “Are you quite alright? You look upset—”

“I'm fine, Mr. Weasley,” Harry said, cutting her off. “Look, someone's just arrived.”

“Why, it's Bagman, by the look of it! Ludo!” Mr. Weasley clapped him on the back, “Haven't seen you around in awhile! How're things?”

“Fine, just fine,” Ludo Bagman flashed a smile at the rest of the wedding party, though he balked somewhat at the furious expressions on Fred and George's faces. Clearly, they had not forgotten Bagman's shady dealings at the Quidditch World Cup.

“Anything to eat, Mr. Bagman?” Mrs. Weasley asked politely, gesturing at a platter of tea biscuits.

“No, no, Molly - I couldn't possibly. Just stopping by, want to offer my congratulations -” Bagman bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, peering over the redheaded Weasleys and blond-tressed Delacours, for a glimpse of Fleur Delacour. Harry remembered Bagman's fondness for Fleur from the Triwizard Tournament.

“If you're looking for Fleur, she's upstairs with Gabrielle,” Harry said blithely.

“Aha!” Bagman nodded and bounded up the stairs with ill-disguised enthusiasm. Harry, feigning the same lighthearted enthusiasm, followed. He couldn't quite dispel the sick feeling that had settled in the pit of his stomach at the plan he'd overheard.

* * * * *

HERMIONE

An ear-splitting shriek echoed from the Burrow and Hermione, who had been magicking fairy lights into place in the garden paddock, pelted up the stairs to see Gabrielle and the bride-to-be locked in fierce combat. Madame Delacour stood frozen in the doorway, unable to intercede.

“Gabrielle, no!” Fleur screamed as Gabrielle seized a fistful of Fleur's long silky hair. Hermione and Ginny scrambled to break up the fight. Even as Ginny dragged Gabrielle away, the little girl was still struggling and gnashing her teeth.

Fleur sank onto the bed sobbing fitfully. “I don't know what `as gotten into `er,” she exclaimed tearfully.

“Ze is jealous, mon cherie,” Madame Delacour wrapped her arms around her eldest daughter.

Hermione bent down and scooped the beautiful gold-and-diamond tiara off the floor.

“Great Auntie Muriel's,” Ginny observed as she reentered the room. Her face was scratched and her hair mused from tussling with Fleur's little sister. “I don't think Auntie Muriel was too keen to part with this - even just for one evening.” Ginny winked and placed the tiara atop her own red hair. For Hermione's amusement, she struck a few poses in front of the mirror and admired the effect of gold glinting upon red.

“So,” she said conversationally, though the look in her eyes indicated something other than innocent curiosity, “did you and Harry have a good time yesterday?”

“Hardly,” Hermione replied honestly. “We went to Godric's Hollow early in the morning to see his parents' graves. It tore me up to see him so downhearted.”

“And did he mention me at all?” Ginny queried.

“We didn't really talk about much of anything, truth be told!” Hermione said, aiming to allay Ginny's unfounded concerns. She felt as though she ought to apologize for having spent time alone with Harry, but quickly dismissed the notion as ludicrous. Ginny Weasley wasn't - Ginny Weasley couldn't be - jealous of Hermione Granger.

*I just want to make it absolutely clear that I do not think French people are snobs. I do, however, think that the Delacours are.

**Thanks for reading and reviewing!

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You may recognize the part where Harry and Hermione dance from my one-shot fan fic of the same name…

Chapter Four

Something Borrowed

HARRY

As twilight descended upon the village of Ottery St. Catchpole, the Weasley and Delacour families and a handful of friends, filed into the backyard. They sat, chatting amicably, as they waited for the ceremony to begin.

Five stories up, Fred and George -- the self-proclaimed Men of Honor -- were leaning out the fifth story window, showering the guests with petals treated with “a dusting of a daydream charm, with a smidgen of an elixir to induce euphoria thrown in for good measure,” while Ron and Harry struggled to keep from laughing.

“This should make things interesting,” George said, by way of explanation. He grinned guiltily.

“And this is only stage one,” Fred added. “If we spike the drinks—”

Someone rapped on the door. “May we come in? Are you decent?”

Fred swore and ducked out of sight behind the curtains as George hurriedly hid the rest of the evidence. “I think they caught us! It's all in good fun, but try explaining that to Mum…”

“Or Angelina…she wouldn't approve of this particular jape…women,” George added with a sly grin. “Go on, Ron, tell them it's okay to come in. Fred and I can't honestly say we're ever `decent' in the true sense of the word -- least of all when we're preparing to pull off the wedding heist of the century.”

“It's okay!” Ron yelled.

Harry looked up from fumbling with his necktie as Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks entered.

“Wotcher, Harry.”

“Harry, I was wondering if we—” Lupin indicated Tonks and himself, “—could have a word before the wedding gets underway?”

“Erm, sure,” Harry replied, tugging off his badly-knotted tie and tossing it aside.

“Perhaps a walk would clear the senses,” Lupin said; Harry couldn't help but notice how scripted this all sounded.

“A little fresh air never hurt anyone,” Tonks chipped in with a smile. “I hear the forest is lovely this time of year.”

They walked in silence for awhile, quickly leaving the wedding party behind. As the three slipped into the shadowy forest, the opening notes of a wedding march struck up.

“Harry, there's no point in putting this off any longer. Dumbledore's passing necessitates that a new Secretkeeper be found for Grimmauld Place,” Lupin said, clenching his hands together convulsively.

“I'll do it,” Harry said swiftly.

“No. No, that's the last thing we want. It's too dangerous—”

“Too dangerous!” Harry spluttered, taken aback. “How could being Secretkeeper put me in any more danger than I already am in?!”

Lupin's brow furrowed in concern. “That's not funny, Harry.”

“Too close to reality, I suppose,” Harry retorted, unable to keep bitterness from edging into his voice.

Tonks gave an impatient “tuh!” and said, “What we need is someone they won't expect. Someone who could pass under their radar, so to speak. Someone like…well, me.”

“You?”

She smiled. “I don't see why not.”

Harry gaped at her; Lupin stood aside, looking grave.

“Would you rather Ron or Hermione?” she asked brazenly.

“No,” Harry said stoically. He felt a great weight settling in the pit of his stomach. How could he ask anyone to fill the dangerous position of Secretkeeper, when it was liable to cost them their lives?

“So it's decided, then.”

“Why not - why not - someone else? Someone - I dunno - older?”

“Harry, Nymphadora is here. She is willing to take up this burden,” Lupin said woodenly.

“I know, Professor, but I don't understand—”

“Time is of the essence, Harry. Besides, no one would suspect Nymphadora,” he said in that same hollow voice; Harry suspected that it pained Lupin greatly to offer her up for such a dangerous post. “With her aunts - Narcissa and Bellatrix - being who they are, why would the Death Eaters think to suspect Nymphadora? In their minds, she comes from good Wizarding stock, on her mother's side, at least. She is as good as family. No one would think of her.”

Tonks smiled bracingly. “If we hurry, we can seal the enchantment before the wedding is over - before anyone misses us. Do you trust me, Harry?”

He nodded stiffly, impressed by her courage and overwhelmed by the difficult times looming ahead for all of them.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

HERMIONE

“And so, it is my pleasure to present to you - Mr. and Mrs. Bill Weasley!”

The five-piece ensemble struck up a merry number and Hermione rose alongside the rest of the crowd to applaud the newlyweds, but even amidst the ruckus, she was scanning the crowd for some sign of Harry. It simply wasn't like him to skive off the wedding - not when he'd been looking forward to it as the one bright spot on a horizon that had never looked darker…but Ron had reassured her that he was fine. Hermione swallowed hard and wished she could believe him.

At long last, a pair of aged warlocks parted and she spied Harry, lurking beside the punch. In her haste to reach him she was intercepted -

“Ron, just a minute—” she said, trying vainly to slip past him.

“Please, Hermione, just - just stand still—” he said.

And then he did the unthinkable.

He kissed her.

He - Ronald Weasley - had slung an arm around her waist, tipped her back, and kissed her full on the mouth. It was a hard fact to get her mind around.

For the briefest moment, they were suspended there, in a parody of a lovers' stance, until Hermione's teetering high heels gave way and they crashed to the ground in a tangle of taffeta.

“AHOY!” came the telltale cry, heralding the imminent arrival of Fred, George, and a vat of butterbeer, which they wasted no time in dumping over the heads of the embarrassed “couple.” Drenched from head-to-toe, Hermione Granger gathered up the little dignity she could muster and fled to the Burrow, leaving Ron to contend with his troublesome brothers.

Feeling very tired and not particularly amorous, she slipped out of her shoes and poured a half-cup of butterbeer out of the heel. She sighed and made a tricky wave with her wand, so that the water was siphoned out of the fold of her dress. She didn't have the patience to do damage control on her hair, which had been brought down from its elegant chignon by the torrents of butterbeer. She readjusted the wreath of laurels atop her curls and smoothed out her silky green gown.

She sighed brokenly. Poor, poor Ron.

He had no idea.

She leaned against the weathered door frame, trying to collect her thoughts. After months, her hard work was finally beginning to pay off. Shouldn't I feel like I've accomplished something? she wondered dispiritedly. You see, Hermione Granger had just seen Phase One through to its logical completion. The First Kiss.

Had she felt anything at all?

She buried her face in her hands. The First Kiss had been lost in the aftershocks.

Had it been so mediocre? So unremarkable?

Coolly methodical was what it had been. She knew that much to be true.

* * * * *

HARRY

Long before the confetti had settled and the spirits run dry, the Weasley-Delacour wedding was written off as a roaring success. The bride was inexpressibly beautiful, the groom handsome beneath his mask of scars, the host family gracious far beyond their modest means, and the visitors quaintly foreign in their ways.

Fred and George went through the receiving line four times each, making increasingly outlandish statements in honeyed, well-wishing tones and finally culminating with “Lord Voldemort sends his compliments,” to which the blushing bride said “'ow lovely,” and the flush-faced Molly Weasley “how sweet of you to say so,” and the groom “it's about time!” And so it continued down the line until a highly affronted Madame Delacour caught onto their little joke and cuffed them over the heads with her parasol.

Harry Potter laughed half-heartedly before the gravity of his impossible quest sank back in, reaffirming itself in his very being. In the awkward silence left by his stifled guffaw, his eyes roamed over the crowd, taking in Mad-Eye Moody, who was nursing a drink from his hipflask, and a buoyant-spirited Monsieur Delacour (who proclaimed, with a sweeping bow, that “Young Monsieur Weasley” was the “second happiest man in the world”), and the swarming mass of revelers.

“Looking for Ginny?” The twins had appeared on either side of him, massaging their aching temples but looking just as keen on wreaking havoc as ever.

“No—no. Really,” he added, taking in the disbelieving looks on their faces.

“Ah—I see. You're not looking for Ginny.” Fred winked and nudged Harry in the ribs.

“Fred and I aren't looking for trouble either,” George interjected.

“She's right over there, mate. She's posing for pictures with the rest of the wedding party.”

“Erm, okay. Thanks, George - er, Fred.”

He veered off in her direction before Fred could say another word, but swung a sharp right angle once he'd passed the punchbowl and found himself face-to-face with Hermione Granger. She was standing in the doorway looking very pretty, with brown curls tumbling down her shoulders and an endearingly melancholy look about her.

“Will you dance with me?” he sputtered, not quite sure what had made him say it. His mind darted to Fred and George's prank, but he knew that whatever had made him say that was anything but manufactured. Daydream charms and euphoric elixirs had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

She smiled - a sliver of a smile but a smile nonetheless - and he felt the craziest sensation of indescribable gratefulness, for that smile and that tender look in her eyes.

“Strange year, wasn't it?” he said, taking her hand and guiding her onto the improvised dance floor as the goblin orchestra struck up a soulful number.

“I want to apologize, Harry, for everything I did - or, didn't - do last year,” she said softly, staring down at their gracefully entwining feet, going through the movements of a stately sarabande. “I should have trusted you. You deserved better.” Her eyes drifted reluctantly to Ginny, who chose that particular moment to readjust the straps of her glittering confection of bridesmaid's dress and cast a simpering smile in Harry's direction.

Hermione's cheeks flushed, embarrassed for the both of them, and she stepped back, letting her arms fall limply to her sides.

“We shouldn't be doing this. Dancing,” she said flatly, as though there was any question of what they were doing with their arms around each other, swaying slowly in the middle of the Weasley's garden paddock.

“Hermione—why?” But he felt it too…the creeping notion that he was - that they were - cheating. He quickly dismissed the notion as nonsense. “Hermione—it's a wedding. People dance. Ginny understands.”

“Does she?” Hermione murmured, and Harry found himself wondering the same thing as Hermione allowed him to pull her back into an andante triple time. Could Ginny Weasley ever grasp at the truths Harry himself was only beginning to uncover?

“She knows we'll always be - friends,” he said haltingly.

“Yes, how could I forget?” She forged a brave smile that didn't quite reach her downcast eyes and he knew instinctively that he had said exactly the wrong thing. He'd never exactly been smooth-talking, least of all around pretty girls. Hermione is a pretty girl. He seized on this tangent -

“You're beautiful,” Harry said swiftly. Too forward. “I mean, tonight,” he amended. “You look beautiful tonight - always.”

Her fingers scrunched up against the nape of his neck in unspoken gratitude as they revolved slowly on the spot. Each lilting step carried them farther and farther away from the celebratory fray until the singing and strains of a half-dozen minute violins faded to naught but a whisper in the leaves. He thought guiltily about Ginny and Ron and famous Weasley tempers and tried -- somewhat feebly -- to reassure himself that they weren't doing anything objectionable. Just dancing. Hadn't he caught a glimpse of Nymphadora Tonks and Charlie Weasley, dancing close with Remus Lupin off to the side and not minding one bit?

It's over, Ginny and me, he told himself firmly and calling Ron's words to mind, he thought, I'm a free agent. And it's Hermione. Just Hermione. Buck-toothed, bushy-haired, insufferableknowitallHermione.

It was fine logic…except for the fact that she was no longer buck-toothed, and that he found nothing whatsoever repulsive about her uncontrollable mane of hair and that he had never found her know-it-all-ness insufferable and that she was on the verge of becoming so much more. It all made sense in a way that raging hormones and mindless snogging never could…

“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, thinking that he ought to get himself a foaming tankard of firewhiskey to have on hand as an excuse in case they were caught. Drinking was, after all, permissible. Forgivable. Something they could laugh away over the hard months to come. Dancing with your best friend's wished-for girl was not.

Before Hermione could answer, a coldly amused voice interrupted them --

“Warm weather we're having, don't you agree?”

Ginny Weasley was leaning against one of the ancient apple trees, fanning herself with a wedding program and wearing a poisonous smile.

Hermione leapt back as though struck by a current of electricity. Before Ginny had a chance to elaborate - and before Harry had a chance to ask her to stay - she had shied away into the shadows once more.

“Now where were we?”

“I was just asking you to dance,” Harry said, mechanically. But even as Ginny Weasley stole back his attention and promenaded him back to the rest of the merrymakers and the overflowing fountains of second-rate gin, he knew something else was beginning.

* * * * * * *

Hermione Granger perched in the windowsill of Ron's fifth-story bedroom, drawing her knees to her chest and trying not to pay too much mind to the squelching, slopping something housed in the weedy aquarium at her side. It required Herculean effort to keep from crying as peals of laughter and strains of music filtered up from the garden below.

She'd loved Harry since their fourth year and had denied her affections since the advent of her sixth. She'd almost died, after all, she thought defensively, hugging her knees. Love and stubborn devotion had all but carried her to an early grave.

And so she did what she had always done in times of trouble; she'd devised (and implemented) a plan during those sweltering summer months after her fifth year. I was sixteen years old. I nearly died, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Most importantly, she had failed Harry - had failed him when he needed her most. It was only natural that she should shy from his side and seek another path.

In short, it was a plan that was easier to plot than to carry out, for she'd never been a good actress, particularly not when emotions were concerned, but it all depended on this, on her being able to distance herself. She loved him enough to let him go, at least in theory.

Love was easier to shoo away when one held the object of one's affections at arm's length, or so she'd found…but at the end of their sixth year, distance had almost got them killed.

An ironic laugh escaped her lips.

Falling in love with Harry had been downright illogical and irrational, not to mention dangerous, foolhardy, and completely…unavoidable. Falling for Ron, on the other hand, was a methodical process -- a gradual immersion until attaining him became her obsession. He was safe and predictable - in short, he was not liable to run off and get himself killed.

Being Ronald Weasley's girlfriend - if that was indeed what she was now - meant holding her breath every time the Slytherins flew the Quaffle down to his end of the Pitch, rooting for the Chudley Cannons when she'd rather just curl up with a book, and putting up with the antics of his five brothers, but all those petty concerns paled when compared to the inevitable stressors that would come with being Harry's girl.

From her vantage point, she could just make out the silhouettes of the partygoers: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley slow-dancing to a Celestina Warbeck ditty, Monsieur Delacour polishing off one final flute of champagne, Madame Delacour rocking her white Bichon Friese as though it were an infant whilst Gabrielle sat languidly by her side, and Ron - poor, poor Ron - still wringing butterbeer out of his old moth-eaten dress robes. Fred and George fired off a volley of fireworks, casting the world into sharp relief and Ginny Weasley - ever the opportunist - seized the moment to throw her arms around Harry's neck and plant a haphazard kiss on his forehead. Unless it was a trick of the light, he seemed to pull away from her, slightly.

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You're imagining things.

And with a final sigh of resignation, she slipped out of her dress robes and into a nightgown and settled into bed, hoping that she could feign sleep when Ginny returned. Tonight, she knew she wouldn't be able to bear to hear tell of Ginny's glee - not when it came at such a painful price.

* * * * *

*sniffles* Poor Herm-own-ninny.

* * * * *

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When Tonks asks “Are you decent?” she means, “Are you dressed?” Just thought I should clear that up for those of you who aren't familiar with that phrase.

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Chapter Five

Here and There

HERMIONE

The Burrow was still sleeping off the aftereffects of the wedding bash the next morning when Hermione Granger crawled out of bed and made her way down the dew-slicked lawn to the rickety old pier. She perched neatly on the very end, letting her bare feet dangle in the murky water, keen to relish the early morning cool while it lasted. Ordinarily, she would regard such time spent without a book as wasted, but she desperately needed time to mull things over, away from the cast-off shoes and dresses that littered the bedroom she shared with Ginny.

Something's beginning, she thought. With the wedding in the past, the hunt for the Horcruxes could begin. We might never be back here again, she realized with a pang. What if we never go back to Hogwarts? What if I never see my parents again? And, what if this is the last summer we have altogether like this?... by which she meant, `what if this is the last summer with Harry?'

The boards creaked under the weight of another, jarring her from her lonely wonderings. She knew without looking that it was Harry come to check on her.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” she said, fixing her gaze on a clump of lilypads so that she wouldn't have to meet his eyes.

“Sorry about last night. Ginny was completely out-of-line—”

“Don't apologize for her,” Hermione sniffed. “She had every right to be upset.”

“She's not my girlfriend anymore,” he said, sitting down beside her and kicking off his raggedy tennis shoes.

“She still loves you,” Hermione said, needing desperately to clear the air. “In her own way, she does, Harry.”

“I know.”

“And?” she prompted, tentatively.

“And…I don't know.”

“Will you get back together?”

“She wants to,” he said dully.

“And you, Harry? What do you want?” she asked, a note of resignation in her voice.

“You're still the only one who ever asks what I want from life, Hermione.”

She smiled inwardly and leaned back against the moorings, feeling slightly happier than the circumstances dictated. So many things went unsaid between them but somehow, on a gloriously imperfect morning such as this, it didn't seem to matter. Gradually, the fog began to lift, though a gauzy haze lingered on the horizon and Hermione knew that their moment was fleeting.

* * * * *

“Shall we put on a pot of coffee?”

They had passed a peaceful hour by the pond, but once the sun had breached the horizon, the temperature had skyrocketed from “warm” to “unbearable” and they had retreated to the cool indoors to wait for the others to awaken.

“Better make it a vat of coffee,” Harry said dryly. “I think we may be the only two in the house who didn't overindulge.”

“Ah, the joy of merrymaking will soon be replaced by the agony of penance,” she remarked, striding over to the stove and striking up bluebell flames beneath a kettle.

“Pancakes would be good,” Harry said, sidestepping her on his way to the pantry for flour and sugar. “Uncle Vernon had his share of intemperance,” he said, by way of explanation, “and pancakes always seemed to work for him.”

“I've never had much luck with kitchen spells,” Hermione said good-naturedly, taking down one of Mrs. Weasley's thick cookbooks. “But I reckon one can't go wrong with 500 Magical Meals in Five Minutes.”

“If you married Ron, your mother-in-law wouldn't be impressed. She'd send you to cooking classes,” he said, but instead of laughing at his little joke, he frowned.

“Well, nothing's certain,” she said, waving her wand so that batter began to stir itself. “If Voldemort and his minions are all they're cracked up to be, we might not live to see our wedding days.”

“You'll make it. You and Ron both. I'll make sure of it,” he vowed, their eyes locking for the briefest moment. She was spared the burden of countering him, however, by the opportune arrival of a rumpled and weary Ron.

“Coffee, pancakes? Both?” Harry asked, springing into action as Hermione did the same so that they collided halfway between the kitchen table and the stove.

“Unh,” Ron mumbled.

“Both,” Hermione deciphered, flipping a stack of pancakes onto a plate as Harry poured him a brimming mug of coffee.

“There are you. It's good for what ails you, Ron,” Harry said. “Hermione's doing, not mine.”

“Thnh.”

“Funny, I don't remember Ron getting anywhere near the spiked punch,” Hermione said, hurriedly preparing two more plates of pancakes as the twins lumbered into sight.

“We made the completely unfunny error—” Fred muttered.

“—of spiking both,” George finished.

“I see,” she said reprovingly. “So Ginny—”

“Out like a rock.”

“And Gabrielle?”

“Merely sleeping in,” George said, rousing a little as he drained his second cup of coffee. “We did have the common courtesy to make sure she stayed as far away from it as humanly possible. We did a roaring trade on our Wizards' Wheezes products though. Ought to hit up the wedding circuit more often.”

Harry caught Hermione's eye and stifled a laugh at Fred and George's predicament; Ron snored into his breakfast.

It was another hour before Ginny made an appearance, looking over-rouged and unkempt. The elder Weasleys and the Delacour clan followed; Arthur Weasley kept muttering “never again” under his breath as he permitted Hermione to serve him coffee. A bleary-eyed Mrs. Weasley kept casting cagey glances at the three remaining Delacours and moving her lips around the words of her mantra “social tact is making your company feel at home, even though you wish they were.”

By the middle of the week, however, the Delacours had departed and all of the weekend's transgressions were long forgotten; Ginny and Hermione had fallen back into an uneasy truce over who-knew-what; Ron had mostly forgiven Fred and George for having tampered with the drinks but was still too embarrassed to so much as look at Hermione after the disastrous kiss, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were still none the wiser about any of the Burrow's more sordid affairs.

* * * * *

HARRY

Harry awoke on the morning of July thirty-first to find the Burrow once again decked in paper chains and sprays of summer blooms. After a breakfast of buttery croissants and warm butterbeer (“room temperature with all the fizz gone out, just the way you like it,” Ron had proclaimed jovially), he began sorting through a mound of presents.

Arthur Weasley's eyes widened with anxiety as smoke began to seep through the seams of one of the packages as Harry undid the wrappings. “It's alright, Mr. Weasley,” Harry said, removing a strange apparatus that he immediately recognized as one of the whirring, silvery instruments that had once belonged to the late Headmaster.

Hagrid had sent a tin of rock cakes and a pair of dragonhide gloves, which made Harry worry what he might find upon returning to the school. Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback was still too fresh in his memory. Curiously, Lupin's present contained a slab of Honeyduke's chocolate and a booklet of tickets for the Knight Bus (labeled “just in case.”)

As he lifted the lid from Ron's present, a fast-moving Golden Snitch fluttered out. “Nicked it from a Chudley Cannons game,” Ron said, smiling approvingly as Harry reached up instinctively and caught it with the swift reflexes born of a Quidditch Seeker. Hermione's present was a thick balaclava, knitted from unicorn hair (“It will never tear, and it has remarkable curative properties.”). Ginny wrapped her arms possessively around Harry's shoulders and made a show of kissing him on the cheek as he unwrapped her gift of a bottle of Wizardwear cologne from Gladrag's and a rub-on Hippogriff tattoo. The package from Fred and George contained a large silvery Shield Cloak and a box of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder with an apology note scrawled across it.

Finally, from Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, came a pair of eyeglasses - which were, by all appearances, exact replicas of the pair Harry already owned.

“Shatterproof, see?” Arthur Weasley said brightly, rapping the frames against the wooden tabletop. “Those Muggles,” his eyes misted over fondly. “Outstripped once again by mere Muggle technology. Half the wizards alive today wouldn't have the common sense to develop something like this.” Mrs. Weasley clucked her tongue disapprovingly as she re-entered the room, carrying a seven-tier birthday cake, the layers of which were balanced almost as precariously as the stories of the Burrow itself.

“Sing, sing!” Mrs. Weasley said, clapping her hands together eagerly. The Weasleys and Hermione broke into a raucous rendition of “Happy Birthday to you,” with Fred and George singing slowly and mournfully, Ginny bright and cheerfully, and Ron bold and enthusiastically. Only Hermione, sitting across the table from him, sang with any reservation whatsoever. Clearly, something was troubling her. He could see the flickering lights of seventeen candles mirrored in her eyes.

“--happy birthday, dear Harry! Happy birthday to you!”

He drew a deep breath and blew out the candles in a single breath.

He should have wished for peace, or pardon, or prosperity; instead, he wished for love.

* * * * *

Dusk found Harry, Hermione, Lupin, Tonks, and the Weasleys lazing in the garden, having just polished off another of Mrs. Weasley's delicious home-cooked meals.

“Hermione, would you be a dear and help us clean up? I think we're about through for the evening,” Mrs. Weasley said, gathering up an armload of empty plates and silverware. “Ginny, you too.”

“Can't we leave it for tomorrow?” the youngest Weasley groused, scooting closer to Harry and nuzzling her head against his chest.

“And let the gnomes muck around on my good china all night? I think not. Up you get.”

“I'll help, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry offered, pulling away from Ginny's unwelcome embrace.

“No, no, not you, Harry, dear. Ginny—”

“Mrs. Weasley, I'm sure we can manage on our own,” Hermione said swiftly, magicking up a stack of teacups and starting for the house. Reluctantly, Harry sank back down onto the bench and Ginny reclaimed him once more.

“Did you like the peppermint humbugs, Harry?” she asked, reclining against him and gazing up at the starry sky.

“It wasn't bad,” he said. He didn't say that he found her proximity unnerving.

“I told Mum I thought you'd like it.”

“Er, thanks. That was thoughtful,” he said dispiritedly.

From inside the house, Harry heard a shrill scream and a crash of shattering porcelain. He broke away from Ginny at once and jogged to the doorway. Mrs. Weasley was standing by the window clutching her heart, while Hermione kneeled on the floor over the broken china, holding a letter in her shaking hands.

“What happened?” he asked, dropping to his knees beside her, unmindful of the shards pricking his skin.

“It's terrible,” she whispered. She wiped away her tears and read from what Harry now realized was a clipping from The Evening Prophet:

This evening, Azkaban suffered major break-out, the second mass escape within the last two years.

The island fortress, thought to be insecure since the departure of the Azkaban guards, was once considered inescapable. Barely four years ago, one Sirius Black, accused of murdering a street-full of Muggles and Peter Pettigrew escaped. (The Daily Prophet would like to note, for purposes of clarification only, that Black was posthumously found innocent on all counts.)

The Ministry of Magic declined to comment -

Hermione's voice trembled as she read about the crimes the escapees were accused of - Muggle torture, murder, and acts of outright terrorism. Harry busied his hands picking up pieces of shattered cups and saucers, but worked so absentmindedly that he didn't even notice when Arthur Weasley came inside and swept the broken china away with a flick of his wand.

Outside, he could hear the jovial conversations shifting to utterances of terror as the news spread. Ron ran inside, a frantic expression on his freckled face, and announced that the Order would be convening at “headquarters” immediately and that Lupin and Tonks had just Disapparated.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley exchanged solemn glances and made to depart themselves. Harry, however, did not heed their goodbyes. Only one thought coursed through his mind - he needed to get out.

I'll just slip out, he reasoned. No one will notice for hours, what with all this mayhem, and by then I'll be far away. Harry left Hermione in Ron's care and hurtled up the stairs to fetch his wand and Invisibility Cloak.

Within moments, he was ready to leave. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window as he barreled back down the stairs, taking in his flushed face, tousled hair, and the look of furious determination in his eyes. I'm a danger to all of them if I stay here.

“HARRY!”

Lost in his thoughts, he had stumbled straight into Ginny. She was standing in the stairwell still wearing one of the birthday hats and a frown.

“I'll be back in a bit, Ginny,” he said as casually as possible, trying to sidestep her.

“Don't be a fool, Harry! I know what you're up to,” she positioned herself squarely in front of him, and at that moment, she reminded him strongly of Mrs. Weasley. “Running away again? Being noble again?”

“Ginny…”

“Don't `Ginny' me!” she said, positively fuming.

“You don't understand!”

“What isn't to understand, Harry?!”

“Look - I'm not like everyone else. I'm a danger to you! Anywhere I go becomes a - a target!”

Ginny glowered at him, “Don't be stupid. We want you here.”

Harry sighed heavily and slumped against the wall. “I can't stay here. And what do you mean, `being noble again'?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean!” And Harry was pretty sure that he did know. “Why can't we see each other anymore, Harry? We danced at the wedding, Harry. Don't tell me you didn't feel it too.”

“I told you in June, if Voldemort finds out, you're doomed.”

“And as I told you in June - what if I don't care?”

“Ginny - listen to me - date Dean, date someone safe.”

“Do you want me to date Dean?” Ginny demanded.

“I want you to date someone safe. I just - I just want you to be happy.”

“If you want me to be happy, then it's all settled,” she pronounced. She strode boldly to his side, hooked her arm through his, and marched him forcefully back to the kitchen, where the bad news was still breaking.

* * * * * *

“Apparation tests in Hogsmeade, Thursday after next,” Arthur Weasley said, sorting through the morning mail on the seventh of August.

Harry perked up a bit. Ron, on the other hand, turned a sickly shade of puce and abruptly shoved his plate of pancakes aside.

“Come on, Ron,” said Hermione soothingly. It was the first time she'd said anything to him directly in days; he'd been avoiding her since the kiss - not that she could blame him. She'd inadvertently fought off his advances, fled the scene, and then been spotted dancing with his best mate…the prognosis wasn't good. “You'll do fine. You would have passed last time, if it hadn't been for that pesky eyebrow.”

Ginny snickered and Hermione shot her a withering look.

“Ah, what I wouldn't have given to have seen that,” Ginny whispered in an undertone. Harry laughed softly, imagining a single red eyebrow floating in the air in front of the Three Broomsticks.

“Now Ronald, Apparation tests are nothing to be worried about,” Mrs. Weasley pushed his plate back towards him.

“I remember the day of my test,” Mr. Weasley smiled reminiscently. “Frightfully cold and windy, it was. Second week of February -”

“When will Bill and Fleur be back?” Hermione asked hastily, trying to change the subject to something that wouldn't make Ron blanch.

“Week after next,” Mrs. Weasley said, a shadow passing over her face. “I wish they were honeymooning a bit closer to home, just in case, you know…”

“Come on, Molly - they're kids! Besides, Egypt is as safe as Dover these days.”

“Yeah,” Ron interjected, “at least there aren't droves of Azkaban escapees in Egypt, at least, not any we know of-” Mrs. Weasley silenced him with a glare.

If Mr. Weasley had intended to console his wife with this proclamation, he failed miserably. She edged nervously over to the Weasley family clock and noted that all the hands were still pointing towards Mortal Peril. Wearily, she turned back to the rest of the Weasley family, and Harry and Hermione, pretending that the conversation about Bill and Fleur's travel plans had never taken place. “Just as well,” she said diffidently. “We might be able to give Diagon Alley a miss, and pick up your school things in Hogsmeade instead.”

* * * * *

Later in the afternoon, Harry and Ron were practicing their Quidditch skills for an audience comprised of Ginny and Luna Lovegood (who had wandered over quite accidentally and had found their antics to her interest), when a troubled Hermione arrived. She perched uneasily on the bottommost limb of one of the gnarled old trees and watched them with a frown on her face.

Wanting to know what was bothering her so, Harry purposefully missed the Quaffle when Ron tossed it in his direction and when Ron dived to fetch it from the boggy undergrowth, Harry pronounced himself “exhausted” and touched down on the ground.

“Harry, you will be going back to school, won't you?” she asked.

“Dunno,” Harry said evenly. The matter had been weighing heavily on his mind since Dumbledore's funeral, but he did not want to discuss with Hermione. Not now, anyway, not with Ginny and Luna so close at hand.

“Because I think you ought to consider it, Harry,” she said, speaking very fast as if to get it all said before Harry or Ron could cut her off. “I know it won't be easy, but you need somewhere to call `home' not matter what you do--”

“Let him be, Hermione,” said Ron, tugging off his sweaty shoes and socks and flexing his bare toes in the cool grass.

“—even if you don't go to classes—”

“Even if I don't go to classes?” Harry repeated, somewhat incredulously. “You really are desperate, aren't you?”

Hermione wrung her hands anxiously. “I am, Harry, I really am. I hope you'll think about it, before you just say you won't go. You'll need a base, Harry, no matter what you chose to do next year, and McGonagall will understand. I - I took the liberty of writing to her a few days and she said, if you wanted to come back - I mean to say, given the circumstances, she agrees it would be a good idea--”

Her eyes were brimming with tears and it was this uncharacteristic display of emotion from his normally cool and collected friend more than anything that made Harry relent.

“I'll go,” he said, as Ginny smirked in approval, undoubtedly noting the various possibilities his return to Hogwarts presented, but his decision had naught to do with her. “We'll all go back, I promise, Hermione.”

* * * * *

On Tuesday morning, four owls arrived bearing letters stamped with the Hogwarts crest. Harry's owl deposited a thick envelope on his bed and when he upended the letter, a heavy metal badge clinked to the floor.

“Quidditch Captain again!” Ron said enviously, trying in vain to pry his Hogwarts letter free from his owl's clenched beak.

“Take it,” Harry said indifferently, chucking the badge to Ron.

“But Harry, mate, I can't take this!”

“Go ahead, I don't want it.”

“Harry—” Ron's voice trailed off. He turned the badge over in his hand, feeling the cool metal against his skin. “Blimey, Harry…”

From across the room came a deafening shriek - Ginny's. Hermione was standing dazedly, with her Hogwarts letter in one hand and a gleaming golden Head Girl's badge in the other. Harry knew, as he watched her gazing at the badge with a mixture of sadness and uncertainty that it was the realization of a dream - a dream that had come true too late. Slowly, she came to her senses and shoved the badge into her pocket, forbidding the others to speak of it.

With the promise of the Quidditch Captainship, Ron's spirits improved significantly over the coming days. Their upcoming Apparation tests no longer seemed to faze him. He spent endless hours recounting his limited history as Gryffindor's Keeper and daydreaming aloud about the Quidditch Cup.

“It'll be ours again this year, Harry. Mark my words…” He gazed off into space, an absent smile lingering on his face.

Harry was happy to see Ron basking in the limelight for once, but Hermione reacted negatively towards his newfound glory, as though she thought that he too should downplay his accomplishments as she had.

“I think I'll have Romilda Vane on the team this year,” Ron proclaimed on Thursday morning.

“That tart who gave you a Love Potion last year?” Hermione asked acidly; Ginny cringed.

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

Harry could immediately tell that “Yeah, sure, why not?” was not a good answer.

Hermione bristled. “I thought you'd grown up, Ronald Weasley! But unfortunately, I was wrong.”

“Had to happen sometime,” he jibed.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Hermione sprang to her feet and Crookshanks leapt from her arms with a hiss.

Ron looked bewildered. “Wrong,” he mumbled uneasily. “You had to be wrong sometime—”

Hermione's eyes narrowed to cat-like slits and she stormed from the room, muttering what sounded like hexes under her breath.

“Man, if looks could kill…” Ron muttered. “She's barking mad.”

Ginny cast Ron a disparaging look before getting up and exiting the room.

“All I said was I'd let Romilda Vane on the Quidditch team any day. What's that matter to her? She knows I don't like Romilda - not like that, anyway. She's not bad-looking, though.”

“Talking like that is only going to make it worse, Ron.”

“Should I go look for Hermione?”

“If you want to take your Apparation test without the hassle of having to Apparate all your limbs along with you, sure, go find her.”

“Girls,” Ron said bemusedly, clearly remembering the canary incident all too clearly. He swung his legs up over the arm of the wingback chair and promptly drifted off to sleep.

* * * * *

“Boys! Ginny! Hermione!” Mrs. Weasley hollered up the stairs. “Time to go!”

Ron and Harry barreled down the stairs, Ron looking pale and nauseous once more. Ginny and Hermione were already waiting in the kitchen, having neglected their black witches' robes in favor of sandals and Muggle sundresses.

“Oh!” Mrs. Weasley said fretfully. “We're going to be late - if only you lot could Apparate already!” She ushered them over to the fireplace and tossed a handful of Floo Powder into the flames. “The grate at Scrivenshafts is open. You first, Ron, hurry up now!” Ron stepped into the flames - their green hue complimenting his green-about-the-gills complexion. “Scrivenshafts,” he muttered, and disappeared with a whoosh.

“Ginny - Harry, you next!”

Into the fire they went, as Mrs. Weasley and Hermione Disapparated; Floo Powder was a valuable commodity during wartime, or so he'd been told.

Harry toppled out of the fireplace and crashed into Ron, who promptly vomited the remnants of his breakfast all over the floor of Scrivenshafts. Without a moment's hesitation, Ginny reached into her pocket and pulled out the orange end of a Puking Pastille. Ron swallowed it and slumped back against the wall, still looking very whey-faced.

Hermione sauntered in looking very smug. “Alright, Ronald?” she simpered, but she turned away without waiting for a reply. “Come on, Harry. The Apparation Testing Center is this way - Ronald doesn't need to know the way, seeing as he's already been there,” she added frostily.

She guided him down High Street. Behind them, Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were coaxing Ron along. “Remember dear,” Harry heard Mrs. Weasley say, “Determination, desertation, destination.”

“Mum!” said Ron weakly, “Not `desertation”! Deliberation!”

“That's right, dear.” She patted his arm consolingly.

A tiny wisp of a man whom Harry recognized as Wilkie Twycross pattered out into the street as they approached and quickly escorted them into the Testing Center. He told them repeatedly how pleased he was that they had arrived unscathed. Evidently, few young witches and wizards wanted to risk taking their Apparation tests in the midst of a war.

“Why don't you three mosey around? It'll give the boys a chance to prepare for the test in peace,” Twycross suggested, but Mrs. Weasley fixed him with such a mutinous glare that he relented and allowed her to keep watch while Harry rehearsed the motions of Apparation and Ron tried to keep from vomiting.

“Go on ahead, girls. Stick together. Don't wander too far—take these lists, for your schoolbooks and things and pick up extras for the boys. I know money's tight, be frugal—” Mrs. Weasley sent a volley of unwanted advice after Hermione and Ginny as they hastened out the door and into the sunbathed streets of Hogsmeade.

* * * * * *

HERMIONE

The picturesque village looked worn-out and forlorn, the storefront displays depleted by wartime and the crowds thinned by rampant paranoia. Where three hundred owls had once stood at the ready in the Post Office, now only two dozen lined the shelves, looking peaky and underfed. The tiny bookstore nestled between Dervish and Banges and the closed Zonko's Joke Shop stocked a despairingly limited supply of books, but Hermione and Ginny managed to find what they needed - three copies of Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration and one Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century (she was the only one continuing with History of Magic) and a copy of He Flew Like a Madman by Kennilworthy Whisp that she thought she might give to Ron for his birthday. Hermione snatched a few Dark Arts books from the shelves and shoved them across the counter to the nervous-looking clerk.

“Forty sickles,” he squeaked, his eyes widening as he took in the sinister titles.

We just need to know what we're up against, Hermione wanted to reassure him, but before she could speak any words of comfort, he had hustled them out into the street and dead-bolted the door.

At the Apothecary, Hermione tossed an assortment of herbs and a head of Chinese Chomping Cabbage (all of which were selling at a premium) into their shopping bag, hoping they could make do with what was leftover from the previous school year. After coughing up a further thirty-seven Sickles, Hermione's moneybag was considerably lighter. Mindful of the need to keep money always on hand, she was ready to put an end to their little shopping expedition when Ginny grabbed Hermione by the arm and pulled her across the cobbled lane.

“We still have time for Gladrags,” the younger girl exclaimed, with a gleeful expression on her face. “I'm in desperate need of new dress robes and Fred and George set a little money aside for me.”

“How about these?” Hermione asked, plucking at the sleeve of a gauzy gingham sundress.

“No, no. That would never do,” Ginny whirled around. “Something grander.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Something for a victory ball. Merlin knows once Harry's done the good deed, there will be balls galore.”

“Yes,” said Hermione vaguely, watching Ginny glide from one rack of dresses to the next. A terrible realization was dawning on her: Ginny doesn't understand - and Harry hasn't bothered to tell her! She ran her hand over a gown made of crimson silk. It wasn't that she hadn't dreamt of a glorious day with no more Voldemort herself, but at least her daydreams were tempered by bitter reality.

“So, erm, how long do you think it'll be until this, erm, victory?”

Ginny, who was sizing up one of the gowns in the mirror, smiled at Hermione's reflection. “It's one battle, isn't it? I think I'll try this one on - and this.” And, plucking two gowns off the rack, Ginny Weasley sequestered herself in the changing booth.

“I wish I could believe so readily.”

“Don't you have any faith in him, Hermione?” Ginny asked, accusingly.

“Of course I do, but Gin, be honest with me—you don't really believe it'll be over just like that, d'you?”

“Stop being such a worrywart, Hermione,” Ginny said. “Alright, I'm coming out. How do I look?”

The drape swept aside and Ginny stepped out, draped in buttermilk-yellow taffeta.

“Simply sublime, no?” Ginny tendered, twirling around in a graceful pirouette and admiring the effect in the mirror.

“Yes,” Hermione murmured distractedly, her eyes drifting away to the window. Ron and Harry were galloping across the street, Ron waving a crisp Apparation certificate above his head like a battle flag. Ron threw open the door, leading the triumphant charge through the shop to where the girls stood waiting.

“I passed! I passed!” Ron whooped. Harry was a little more subdued in his celebrations, though his face glowed with happiness. Ginny, still wearing the magnificent gown, hugged Harry, laughing cheerfully.

“Hermione?” Ron said hopefully, turning away from Harry and Ginny.

Hermione forced a smile.

“I'm really sorry, Hermione.”

At this, she laughed and the tension between them was broken - at least for the moment. “Are you even sure what you're apologizing for, Ron?”

He shook his head cautiously, half-expecting her to explode in his face again, but she did not. Instead, she permitted him to sling an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close so that their feet weaved together as they walked out of the shop. Harry shuffled uncomfortably on the front stoop and Hermione could feel his eyes on them as they all waited for Ginny to pay for her gown so that they could be off.

“There's nothing wrong with the dress, Mum,” Ginny said tetchily, emerging from Gladrags with her new dress draped over her arm, “Fred and George bought Ron dress robes and you that lovely hat. If they want something nice for me, I don't see why you'd want to put your foot down.”

“Step lively!” Mrs. Weasley said, clutching her tatty purse to her side and tossing suspicious glances over her shoulder at the few passers-by. “What they think they're doing in Hogsmeade on a day like this - Merlin only knows—” she muttered darkly. With a final accusatory glare, she hooked her arm through Ginny's and muttered, “The sooner we leave this place behind, the better.”

In the split second before they Disapparated, Hermione Granger glanced over Harry and Ginny, and Ron, and thought that she couldn't agree more.

* * * * *

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Chapter Six

Onboard the Hogwarts Express

HERMIONE

Hermione rolled over in her sleep and promptly toppled out of bed in a tangle of bedsheets and freshly-laundered robes.

“Good morning,” Ginny said, with a giggle at Hermione's predicament, though she quickly set aside the bundle of robes she was holding to help Hermione to her feet. “'Bout time you woke up. I've been up for hours, of course, thanks to your cat.” She cast a sidelong glare at Crookshanks, who was curled up in the windowsill, purring contentedly. “He was trying to dispense with Arnold again. He's a right menace, Crookshanks. Arnold hasn't done a thing wrong.”

Like owner, like pet, Hermione thought wryly. “Why didn't you boot Crookshanks out and go back to sleep?”

“It's September first, Hermione. The first day of school.”

“The first day of school?” she repeated drowsily; it took a minute for the information to register, before - “— Ginny! Why on earth - why didn't you wake me up? How am I ever to get ready in time?!”

“Honestly, Hermione. I thought that much was obvious. You simply don't need as much time to get ready as I do. There's your hair, for one thing. You can just roll out of bed - as you've done just now - and - well, you see, don't you? I don't mean to offend—”

Hermione knew that there was no time to argue the point. “I don't know what's gotten into you lately. I don't know what I'm supposed to have done—” Ginny opened her mouth to speak, but Hermione snapped, “Never mind. Whatever it is, I don't care to hear it.”

She tossed a bundle of robes and a handful of eagle feather quills into her trunk atop the stack of NEWT books. All in all, Hermione Granger was glad their summer sojourn at the Burrow was drawing to a close. Though to an outsider, the past days and weeks would seem a haze of lazy afternoons spent by the lake and evenings best spent dining and reclining in the outdoors, Hermione saw their time there differently. She saw the good times, punctuated by snippets of bad news and (Harry suspected) misinformation, dispatched every hour on the hour over the WWN; she felt strained by her friendship with Ginny, her courtship of Ron, and her - well - her whatever-it-was with Harry. As she threw the one last pair of kneesocks into her trunk, the call came from Mrs. Weasley for them to embark for King's Cross, and as she dragged her trunk over the rickety floorboards and out into the brilliant late summer sun, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever be back.

* * * * *

“Hurry - nearly there - you first, Ginny - walk straight at the—”

“Ma!” Ron cried out in exasperation, as his sister disappeared through the barrier between platforms nine and ten, “We're seventh years, there's no need to boss us around!” He turned sharply on his heel and marched through the barrier without a backward glance. Mrs. Weasley clucked nervously and scurried after him, grabbing hold of Harry and Hermione's arms as she walked so that they disappeared through the barrier together.

“She's just worried, Ron!” Hermione snapped, catching up with Ron several minutes later as he hefted his trunk onto the train. “Can't you just give her this bit of consolation?”

“She doesn't think we can look after ourselves! I mean, it's hard enough going back as it is without all her…drama,” he said testily.

In the end, though, his tender heart won out over his hot head, and he permitted Mrs. Weasley to hug and kiss him farewell. “And a kiss from Auntie Muriel, too!” she exclaimed throatily, planting a kiss on his forehead. “She's been ever so concerned and sends you all her best!” She clutched her daughter for a long moment and when they parted, fat tears that she had been struggling to hold at bay were streaming down Mrs. Weasley's face.

“I'll be fine, dears, don't worry about your poor old mother,” she sobbed, waving a sodden handkerchief at them as they scampered aboard the train. She stood brokenly before them, starting blankly at the train for a moment before retreating back through the barrier. As she disappeared, Luna Lovegood and a man who could only be her father appeared, looking as though they'd found themselves at the train station quite by accident. The similarities between father and daughter were striking and Hermione couldn't help but smile.

Harry and Ginny led the way down the corridor.

“Nice that we don't have to sidestep the usual convoy of snot-faced little first-years,” Ginny said with bright sarcasm. “I'm glad I never was one.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and laughed. “Will you lot save me a place to sit? I'm not sure if I'll be busy the whole train ride or not…”

“Here's an empty compartment,” Harry called, sliding open the door and wheeling his trunk inside, Neville Longbottom trailing along behind.

“And, blimey, here's another, in case the first one doesn't suit us,” Ron said, a look of concern passing over his face.

“And another,” came Luna's dreamy voice. “Hogwarts doesn't seem like a very popular travel destination this year. Daddy says—”

“D'you reckon much of anyone will be coming back at all?” Neville murmured, looking shiftily up and down the largely deserted corridor.

The train whistle sounded shrilly - as though vainly summoning the students who wouldn't be returning - and Crookshanks clawed his way out of his wicker basket and took off down the train, Hermione hot on his heels.

By the time she returned, with the distressed cat wriggling in her arms, Zacharias Smith had arrived, bringing discord with him. He seems to be setting himself up to usurp Malfoy's position as Supreme Git, Hermione thought grimly. Harry had turned a cold shoulder towards the bothersome Hufflepuff, Neville was engrossed in searching for his toad (who had predictably gone missing in the luggage) and Luna had disappeared behind a copy of The Quibbler, but Ron and Ginny had squared off against him. Hermione saw Ginny's hand twitch towards her wand, a sure warning sign.

“He's not worth it, Ginny,” Hermione said coolly. “Smith, out.”

“Hermione!” Ginny wailed as Smith stalked away, throwing a disgruntled look over his shoulder, “If you won't let me jinx him, can't you at least give him detention?”

“Don't be silly, term hasn't even started yet.”

“You're Head Girl, Hermione. You can get away with assigning whatever punishments you like. If I were you, I'd make Smith disembowel horned toads in the dungeons with Snape—” She stopped short, eyes wide as saucers. “—with Slughorn, then. With Slughorn.”

It was too late to take it back. Ron's face fell and Harry's eyes blazed with fresh anger as he glared determinedly out the window. Hermione winced. She hated seeing Harry so torn between revulsion and despair.

“Take Crookshanks, will you, Harry?” she asked softly, lowering the skittish cat into his lap. He nodded, not looking at her.

“Hermione Granger! What a pleasure to see you!” Ernie Macmillan appeared at her side and, before she had fully registered the gleaming Head Boy's badge pinned to the front of his robes, he had seized her hand and was shaking it pompously.

“Nice to meet you too, Ernie,” she said, tongue in cheek.

“Yes, yes. Knew you'd be Head Girl, of course, and I must say, I quite approve of the administration's choices this year. Reopening the school was a bold move to be sure, but isn't it fortunate for the two of us? Naturally, I've been hoping to be chosen for years.” Ernie beamed at her and she smiled edgily at him. As they began to patrol the corridors, it became painfully obvious that they wouldn't be presiding over very many students this year…

Ernie, undeterred by her silence, used the uninterrupted airtime to regale her with tales of his summer internship at the Ministry of Magic.

“—Rufus Scrimgeour, you know, the Minister, said I'd make a stellar Minister myself one day. It's good to be connected, start things off on the right foot. Of course, once Professor Slughorn learns about my summer activities, I'm certain he'll be pleased. Quite the bloke, Slughorn—”

Summer activities, Hermione shook her head and smiled inwardly, thinking that Ernie's internship had most likely involved filing unimportant documents and fetching coffee for the higher-ups. At the same time, however, she wished that her own life was so blasé. As it was, she had no time or energy to look into her post-Hogwarts options.

“—it's very hands-on at the Ministry now, and I must say, their approach seems to be working. Not about to let another war rage on for decades, the Ministry. I do think Scrimgeour is certainly going about the right course in these difficult times—”

“Do you?” she asked sharply.

“Well, obviously, it's no walk in the park, this, but if the Minister receives full support in everything he undertakes, we'll be in the clear in no time at all.”

“And did the Minister mention Harry at all, in these grand schemes he's concocted?”

“Harry Potter is the talk of the Ministry!” Ernie said, nodding curtly. “Of course, Scrimgeour remains convinced that he'll come around eventually, sooner rather than later. It's his duty, or so the Prophet says—”

“The Minister doesn't care what happens to Harry, does he? It's his duty, is it? To save all our sorry skins?” Hermione demanded, fighting back the bitter diatribe she longed to throw at Ernie, Scrimgeour, anyone who thought of Harry Potter in such callous terms.

“No - I didn't mean - don't take this the wrong way, Hermione, but it's Harry's life or all of our lives. Be honest, which would you choose?”

“I daresay you've forgotten just who it is you're speaking to,” she snapped, and without a further word, she stormed away, leaving a bewildered Ernie Macmillan cowering in her wake.

* * * * *

HARRY

“What a bunch of sorry mingers. Romilda Vane will be a sight for sore eyes after this lot,”* Ron muttered as his eyes fell upon a gaggle of fifth-year girls. “I always hoped we could transfer to Beauxbatons and this might just be the year…”

“Don't be so vulgar, Ron,” Hermione rejoined, gathering up Crookshanks in her arms. “Just be glad there's anyone here at all.”

“I didn't lump you among them, if you didn't notice—”

Harry heaved a sigh of resignation and adjusted his course so that a handful of fourth-years could come between him and his best friends. He'd always hated it when they fought, but lately, it had been irritating him more than usual. Once the swarm of students reached the Great Hall, Harry chose to sit beside Neville, Dean Thomas, and Seamus Finnigan, preferring their talk of Quidditch and West Ham United to Ron and Hermione's infighting, but even without their incessant bickering echoing in his ears, it was difficult to enjoy the feast - the first conducted without Albus Dumbledore. After the Sorting Ceremony, McGonagall stood up to say a few words, but was so overcome with emotion that she sank back into her seat and buried her face in her tartan handkerchief.

To cover the awkwardness of the moment, the feast magically materialized before their eyes. Dean and Seamus immediately began cramming their mouths full of Welsh rarebit and Yorkshire pudding, but Neville took his time, picking morosely at his dinner with a rather doleful look on his round face.

“Had a good summer, Neville?” Harry asked, feeling that the dour look on his friend's face was probably answer enough.

“Not bad. I was only thinking of Mum and Dad. We went to visit them day before last, you know, and Gran's right,” he said stoutly, recouping a bit of his usual cheerfulness, “I ought to be proud of them.”

Harry felt a twinge of sorrow for the boy sitting beside him. When Neville seemed to have nothing else to say, Harry let the conversation drop, turning his attention to the other Gryffindors. Ginny was regaling the Muggleborn Creevey brothers with news of the latest attacks; Colin and Dennis were hanging on her every word, but Harry found their morbid fascination over it all tiresome. His gaze drifted down the table to where Hermione was sitting, looking strangely subdued. Twice, Harry tried (and failed) to catch her eye; even a loud belch from Ron - who had broken off their argument in favor of enjoying the magnificent feast - failed to draw any response.

The chattering voices echoed strangely in the Great Hall; at moments, the entire Hall seemed to lapse into silence. Harry could never remember it looking so empty…so deflated. It had been a long summer, marked by deaths and disappearances. Lavender Brown sat farther down the table, flirting half-heartedly with Ritchie Coote, while Parvati Patil sat beside her, looking supremely bored.

Harry chanced a glance at the Slytherin table, where large gaps separated the few students who had returned. Blaise Zabini sat alone, as strikingly handsome as ever, and Pansy Parkinson, surrounded by a gaggle of dark-haired girls, was eyeing him hopefully. The four other Slytherin boys in their year were nowhere to be seen. Harry's mind drifted to Draco Malfoy, and a bitter taste filled his mouth. The last time he'd seen Malfoy, he was being half-pulled across the Hogwarts grounds, urged along by Snape. Harry gritted his teeth. Wherever Malfoy and the murderer were now, they were gaining ground, and he, Harry, was wasting time.

Slughorn sat at the Staff table, chatting amiably with a stone-faced Argus Filch as he downed tankard after tankard of pumpkin juice spiked with mulled mead. Slughorn alone appeared unaware of the gloomy atmosphere in the Great Hall. By the end of the meal, he was gesticulating with such jollity and gusto that even the good-natured Madam Sprout was casting him dirty looks.

After what felt like hours, the prefects and new Head Boy and Girl rose from their seats and ambled up and down the aisles rounding up the dwindling number of first years for their first tour of the castle. With Hermione otherwise occupied and Ron off chatting to Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot at the Ravenclaw table, Harry slipped out of the Great Hall unchecked and set off for the Gryffindor Common room alone. Only when he reached the Fat Lady did he realize that he did not know the password, but the Fat Lady gave him a sympathetic smile and swung open regardless.

Harry looked around the Common Room. The last time he'd seen it, it had been teeming with tearful students, the armchairs and poufs occupied by sobbing girls and stony-faced boys. Now it stood empty. He approached the merrily crackling fire and paused to stare into its depths. He felt an unwarranted pang of longing. Sirius should be here. How many times had his godfather sat in front of this fire or visited Harry through it, when Harry needed his guidance most? It was all so mangled and confused in his mind. Sirius, Dumbledore…and the more distant ache that he always associated with the early loss of his parents. He felt a chill pass through him, despite the heat radiating from the fire in the grate. And I'll be next, he thought. There's no other way.

He could hear Ginny's voice carrying down the corridor on the other side of the portrait hole. As though taking a cue, Harry Potter hastened up to the boys' dormitories and flopped onto the old four-poster bed. When the others arrived, he would feign sleep, and when true sleep would evade him as it so often did these days, he would retreat to the Common room, to pace that well-worn rug before the Gryffindor fire.

* * * * *

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I've got a one-shot (Ron-centric!) over here: http://fanfiction.portkey.org/index.php?act=read&storyid=5920

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*My best friend, who's spent some time in Britain, tells me that a “minger” is an unattractive girl, but if he's having me on, please let me know what it really means! *laughs* I wouldn't put it past him.

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I just wanted to drop in and wish you all a very Happy Easter!

In the second order of business, I just wanted to say that Lena really surprised me by starting a fanlisting for this fic! I couldn't be more flattered. If you can take a moment to sign in, that'd be great as well

http://www.becauseofus.com/fl/sarahff/

The next chapter will be up on Monday or Tuesday! I'm sorry for the delay; it's been a busy week for me, as I've been extremely busy with church-related stuff. My schedule frees up again for a few days starting tomorrow afternoon, so I'll finish out the next chapter and post it for y'all.

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Hope this makes up for the author's note post the other day that got some of your hopes up ;)! Hope you all had a lovely Easter!

Chapter Seven

Mixed Messages

HERMIONE

“It's good to be back, isn't it?” Seamus Finnigan said over breakfast in the Great Hall the next morning. “Me Mam didn't want me to come back - she put her foot down, of course, and I'll admit I was a mite nervous myself, but I'm of age and there wasn't a thing she could do to stop me from returning.” He took a humungous bite of pancake. “Yes, it's certainly good to be back, `specially since the house-elves are still cooking enough food for the usual 300. Nowhere beats Hogwarts for eats so long as they're around.”

For the most part, however, the students looked more nervous than elated. Neville Longbottom looked far too queasy to do any more than pick at his breakfast, and Ginny was compensating for her nerves by chattering loudly about Gryffindor's Quidditch prospects, now that Katie Bell had left and Harry resigned.

“What classes will they even offer this year?” Vicky Frobisher asked, taking Hermione completely by surprise. She'd been so focused on getting Harry back to Hogwarts that she'd almost lost sight of what the school would be like once they got there.

“There's no D.A.D.A. professor, or so I've heard,” said Demelza Robins. “Not that that should come as any surprise - they haven't had a very good track record, have they?”

Ron and Dean Thomas laughed halfheartedly.

“First Quirrell - everyone knows what an absolute stuttering nutter he was…Lockhart - a model dental specimen and walking joke rolled into one…Lupin—”

“—well, let's just say that didn't work out, eh?” Ron interjected quickly.

She shot Ron a laudatory glance. Nice save, Ron.

“And ol' Mad-Eye Moody. Never quite knew what became of him, did we?”

“Nah. Crazy old coot he was, though. I'll never forget the way that spider croaked it, the way it just bit the dust—”

Hermione shuddered and busied herself preparing jam and toast, only to find that she had no appetite at all.

The conversation had just shifted to Umbridge when McGonagall came down the aisle, handing out schedules. Her manner was once again brisk and unflappable, her breakdown the previous evening long brushed aside.

“Your schedule, Mr. Finnigan,” she said crisply. “I laud you for returning. Believe me when I say that your mother pulled out all the stops to keep you from coming. I must have received a dozen owls from her begging me to deny you admission…

“As for you, Mr. Sloper, I realize you intended to take NEWT Potions, but after your OWL results came in, I think it would be wise to reconsider. Slughorn is a bit more lenient than Sn—than his predecessor, but even he won't allow anyone with a `P' to proceed with his class - no, I'm sorry. There will be no negotiating - take it up with Professor Slughorn himself if you must, but don't expect a sudden change of heart.

“The same goes for you, Miss Frobisher - yes, I know you've had longstanding aspirations in that field - but a `D' is a `D.' Unfortunate, I know, but you did manage to scrape together an `E' in Charms, so even for one of your modest abilities, all those extra hours in Charms Club did pay off in the end. Perhaps if you refocused on that—

“MacDonald, Natalie? Yes, here you are. Continuing with Arithmancy, I see. Professor Vector took it upon herself to let me know how well you were progressing in class.”

“And Miss Granger - I wish to extend my sincere congratulations to you on your appointment as Head Girl. I couldn't think of a worthier candidate and I am certain you'll do us proud. Now you very well know that it entails certain responsibilities above and beyond those expected of prefects - patrolling corridors, ensuring the sanctity of the wards protecting the school - but given your prodigious skill in all things magical, I do not see any of this as being too strenuous for you.” She handed Hermione her schedule with a rare smile .

Ron tugged the schedule out of her hands before she'd had a chance to look it over properly. “Blimey, Hermione. It's our last year - there's no need to take all these tough classes—”

“Mr. Weasley, kindly give Miss Granger her schedule back,” said McGonagall sharply. “Now, rumor has it, you have attained the Gryffindor team captaincy in Mr. Potter's place. You will schedule tryouts for this weekend. Madam Hooch informed me that she is available to supervise anytime this coming weekend. The first match will be Saturday the thirteenth and mind you, have the team ready, Weasley. After last year's triumph, I expect more of the same.”

“Yes, ma'am,” murmured Ron, his ears burning red. As McGonagall strode away, he pushed his breakfast aside, now looking a great deal queasier than Neville. “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”

Reassure him, a voice commanded in the back of her head. A girlfriend wouldn't just sit there, letting him fret over whether he's good enough to lead Gryffindor to another victory or not!

“You'll be fine, Ron,” she said, too briskly. “They've all seen how well you can play, when you're on form.”

“And what about the rest of the time?” he mumbled.

Before she could think of anything remotely comforting to say, Harry - still rumpled from sleep - had arrived and wedged his way in between them to sit.

“Good morning,” Hermione said, mustering as much cheer as she could.

“'Morning.”

“Had a good night's rest?” she asked, though she thought the dark circles under his eyes were answer enough.

He laughed dryly.

“Harry, mate! Didn't think we'd have you back this year,” said Terry Boot, clapping Harry on the shoulder, “what with, well, everything!”

Hermione cringed. This is what you call bad timing.

“Yeah, I didn't think I would be either,” Harry replied, trying and failing to look happy about being back at Hogwarts.

Thankfully, Boot didn't catch on; he merely smiled and said “See you in Herbology class” to Ron and Hermione.

“I don't think you'll regret coming back,” Hermione said lamely, “not in the long run.”

Harry shrugged. “We'll see, I suppose.”

“I think it was good of him to come back,” said a voice at Hermione's shoulder - Ginny Weasley had arrived for breakfast. “Don't you have a class to get to, Hermione?” she asked pointedly.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Hermione replied coolly.

“Yes, she does. Cheerio, darlings,” Ron said, in a sarcastically cheerful voice. “Come on,” he hissed to Hermione, who still hadn't budged an inch. He steered her out of the Great Hall and across the grounds towards Greenhouse Seven, where the N.E.W.T. Herbology class was convening. “What's the matter with you two? You and Ginny have always got on so well.”

“It's nothing, Ron - nothing but petty, that is.”

“Ah, so this would go in the book about `mad things girls do' that you have yet to publish?”

“Precisely.”

* * * * *

The first lesson of the year started out on a bad foot, with Professor Sprout telling off Ron and Hermione for being tardy and assigning them to partner Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass. When Ron muttered, rather too loudly, that being within ten feet of Pansy Parkinson under any circumstances constituted `cruel and unusual punishment,' he was booted from the class and told not to return until he'd apologized to the nasty Slytherin girl.

We'll never see him N.E.W.T. Herbology again, Hermione thought sadly as Professor Sprout introduced the day's lesson.

“Panax Quinquefolium Memorius,” she said, indicating the thriving patch of leafy green plants, sporting bulging red berries, that ran the length of the greenhouse, “more commonly known as Ginseng Memorius. As you can plainly see, they are cleverly disguised as common - or, as we say, mundane - Muggle ginseng. Muggles - bless them - are on the right track with some of their little herbal remedies, but the Ministry keeps careful tabs on the true Ginseng Memorius plants. Occasionally, Muggles do stumble across the real thing, of course, which inevitably spawns a revival in the use of herbs - but never mind that.

“When ingested, Ginseng Memorius can aid in the recovery of `lost' or buried memories. It is also the staple food of Scotland's dwindling Jabberknoll population. Unfortunately, it is a very rare plant and is tricky to cultivate as well, but the Ministry of Magic has a high opinion of your skills in this subject and has entrusted us with this little colony. Miss Parkinson!”

Pansy - who had been chatting animatedly with Daphne - clammed up immediately, a foul grimace arranging itself on her pug-like face.

“If you are no prepared to approach this task with utmost dedication, I must ask you to leave now,” Professor Sprout snapped. Once she was satisfied with Pansy Parkinson's skulking silence, she instructed them to snip back the leaves of their plants.

“But why, ma'am?” Ernie Macmillan interjected.

“The leaves must be cut back six times, Mr. Macmillan,” Professor Sprout said. “Only in their seventh incarnation do they gain their curative properties.”

The class seemed satisfied with this explanation and quickly went about their task lopping off the leaves. Silver shears flashed in the sunlight that filtered down through the glass-paned ceiling. Amidst the flurry of activity, the Slytherin girls resumed their conversation.

“Have you heard from dearest Draco lately?”

Hermione's snort of laughter at hearing Malfoy referred to as “Draco Dearest” was thankfully covered up by the hubbub of activity in the greenhouse.

Pansy sniffed melodramatically, “I thought that maybe after his father got out of Azkaban, Draco would bother to write me a letter or pay me a visit…” Sniff! “Was that too much to ask?”

“Not at all,” Daphne simpered, patting Pansy consolingly on the shoulder. “If you don't mind my asking, where are the Malfoys? I asked my father before I left for Hogwarts, but he hadn't heard a word. Lucius and Narcissa are old family friends, so I would think we'd know something of their whereabouts—”

Hermione leaned closer to listen.

“I - don't - know!” Pansy was now on the verge of tears - a first for the crass Slytherin, Hermione was certain. “Ever since that terrible day in June, it's as though Draco has just disappeared! Some say Professor Sn—”

“Ow!” Blood spurted from Hermione's hand, spilling over the shorn ginseng leaves. She had been so intent on listening in on Pansy and Daphne's conversation that she'd neglected to look out for herself.

“Eavesdropping, Mudblood?” Pansy spat venomously, her tears replaced by vehement anger. “One of these days, you'll pay, Granger,” she hissed, her voice dropping as Professor Sprout bustled over.

“Longbottom, take Miss Granger to the Hospital wing, pronto! Macmillan! Brocklehurst! Do something about these plants!”

* * * * *

HARRY

Having given Ginny the slip, Harry Potter spent the morning roaming the castle. He was not quite sure what he hoped to accomplish in doing so. No sudden insights came to him as he passed the rusting suits of armor and the portraits, which whispered about him behind their painted hands. After a time, Ron joined him and the two friends walked along in silence, hands buried in their pockets and heads bowed.

“H-Harry Potter?”

He looked down to see a little wisp of a girl bobbing along in their wake, scroll of parchment in hand.

“I'm supposed to give you this,” she whispered, her face flushing brilliantly red. “The Headmistress wishes to see you straightaway.”

“Er, thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.” The little girl remained, gawping up at his scar.

“Can we help you?” Ron asked, as politely as possible.

She blushed redder still and mumbled, “Mayhabyourautograph?”

“Ah, go for it, Harry!” Ron chortled.

“If only I'd known you were into younger women,” said a dreamy voice at Harry's elbow - Luna Lovegood had arrived, looking as wildly out-of-place as always. It was Ron's turn to blush.

Harry hurriedly handed the girl a signed scrap of parchment and after bidding Ron and Luna farewell (something about Ron's red ears and blissfully vacant expression told Harry that he didn't want to linger), he set off for the Transfiguration corridor before realizing that McGonagall would most likely be set up in Dumbledore's old office. He set off for the seventh floor corridor. For a time, Sir Cadogan sprinted alongside him, proffering his one-dimensional hand for Harry to shake, but by the time he reached the sly gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster's quarters, he was alone once more.

“Sherbet lemon?” he tried. The gargoyle gazed back impassively. “Er, didn't think so.”

He unrolled the scroll, somewhat absentmindedly, and was relieved to see the password printed there.

“Melancholia,” he said, more confidently this time. The gargoyle leapt nimbly aside and Harry ascended the slowly-spiraling staircase, coming to a halt at the griffon door.

“Headmistress?” he called, peeking through a crack in the door.

“Ah, Mr. Potter. Do come in, have a seat.” She sat regally behind the claw-footed desk.

A quick glance around told Harry that the office had changed drastically since Albus Dumbledore's days as Headmaster. The chintz armchairs Dumbledore liked so well had been upholstered in tartan and a tin of Ginger Newts sat on the desk where a collection of lemon drops and licorice wands had once sat. The once-whirring and spinning silver instruments stood stoically in a row, now silent and still. Harry's eyes darted along the row of portraits: a short, red-faced wizard winked at him and sidled out of his frame. Albus Dumbledore's portrait, framed in golden gilt, was empty.

McGonagall followed Harry's gaze. “Headmaster Dumbledore has other matters to attend to,” she said evenly, though her hands twisted together convulsively. “I would like a few words with you, Mr. Potter, before the term gets underway.”

Harry sat up stiffly, knowing what was coming. She would ask him about the last night of Albus Dumbledore's life and about the task Dumbledore had set to him, as she had asked at the end of the previous school year. She would ask and he would tell her neither.

“There is no need to look at me like that, Potter,” McGonagall said briskly, correctly interpreting his silence. “I will not ask you again, but know that I am here, if ever you need someone to call upon. On a slightly happier note, I am pleased that you decided to return for your final year.”

“Hermione thought it would be a good idea if I did,” Harry said, somewhat clumsily.

“I quite concur, although I have heard tell that you do not intend to attend class?”

“That's correct.”

“Yet - and it may be in your best interests to humor an old woman on this count - it would be wise to drop in on a few classes, would it not?”

He shrugged listlessly.

She observed him sternly over the frames of her square spectacles. “Two weeks from Friday, I do expect you in attendance for my lesson on partial human Transfiguration, Mr. Potter. No, that is not throwaway advice. You will be present and when other particularly worthwhile educational opportunities present themselves, I expect you to partake of those as well.” McGonagall paused, on the pretense of straightening a pile of papers on her desk, then said, in a slightly gentler voice, “Rumor has it you have relinquished the Gryffindor team captaincy?”

Harry nodded.

McGonagall studied him critically, “Severus always used to rub it in -” She stopped abruptly, looking quite wrong-footed. “Perhaps it's for the best. There are more important things these days.”

She turned her back on him and stared out the window at the distant Quidditch Pitch.

“Is that all, Professor?”

She rummaged in the pocket of her robe and drew out a tartan handkerchief; she unfurled it and waved it before her face with a shaking hand, and Harry understood himself to be dismissed.

* * * * *

“Are you feeling any better, Hermione?” Neville asked, sitting down beside her where she was working on her homework.

Harry looked up in concern. “Better? Why shouldn't she be feeling just fine? What happened?”

“It's nothing,” Hermione said, carefully tucking her bandaged hand back into the sleeve of her robes.

“That's nothing?” Harry demanded. “Judging by all those bandages, your arm could be off!”

“It's just a scratch. I just made a stupid mistake.”

“She was bleeding pretty badly,” Neville said honestly; Hermione shot him a sharp look. “It's the truth!” he replied defensively. “I took her to see Madam Pomfrey, but—” He gestured helplessly at Hermione's heavy bandages.

“Kiss it and make it feel all better, Potter!” a randy fifth year jeered. Harry's ears reddened; Hermione rolled her eyes.

“You should take better care of yourself,” he said swiftly, looking away. “So, how was class?”

“Apart from the flesh wound, you mean?” Hermione asked, her brown eyes now sparkling with laughter.

“Yes, passing over that.”

“Not bad. We're tending to Ginseng Memorius plants, which are a bit - well—boring,” Hermione said, just as Neville dubbed them “fascinating.”

“They're dead useful when it comes to retrieving memories though,” she finished.

“Yeah, if only they improved memory in general,” Neville said glumly. “I forgot to jump the trick step again today. Had to wait for Professor Sinistra to come along to pull me out. That seems to be my First Day Back tradition...”

* * * * *

HERMIONE

The second day of classes brought N.E.W.T. Transfiguration with McGonagall and Potions with Slughorn. The Angel's Trumpet Draught they were supposed to be preparing kept scorching holes in the bottom of their cauldrons and Ron and Anthony Goldstein ended up as the second and third Seventh years to visit the Hospital Wing for treatment after Lisa Turpin's cauldron exploded and splattered them from head to toe in the toxic potion. So it was that Hermione spent the evening at Ron's bedside, smearing paste over his burns and reading to him from Harry's copy of Quidditch Through the Ages because he had adamantly refused to have anything schoolwork-related foisted upon him while he was recuperating.

On Thursday, just as Hermione was beginning to wonder if the week could possibly get any worse, Professor McGonagall announced that, as no suitable Defense Against the Dark Arts professor could be found, the class would be canceled until further notice.

“What are they playing at?” Seamus yelped.

“That's an outrage,” Ron muttered darkly. He'd been removed from the Hospital the day before, but was still taking it easy, propped up with pillows in his favorite armchair beside the Gryffindor fire. “Just when we needed the class most…”

“Even Snape was better than having no DADA professor at all!” Neville said morosely.

“Harry,” Parvati said reasonably, “you don't think it'd be plausible to reform the D. A., do you? I've never learned as much defensive magic before or since.”

“I'm not sure I can wing it,” Harry said, looking startled by Parvati's request. “I just don't have that kind of time anymore.”

Hermione found herself thinking against her will, he may not have much time here with us at all…

“You don't look too busy, mate! I mean, what's this you've got?” Seamus snatched the book out of Harry's hands. “See this, Self-Defensive Spellwork! This could be the D. A. material right here!”

“No, I don't think you understand—” Harry was rapidly becoming anxious and fidgety.

“Harry, if you could just—”

“I can't!”

“You're not the only one fighting this war, Harry,” Parvati reminded him, while Lavender gazed hopefully at Ron from behind her best friend's back, unfazed by the serious discussion at hand.

“Look, if I could do it, I would!” Harry said loudly, his voice rising over the other Gryffindors' protests. It seemed that half the Common room had risen up to join the debate. For a moment, he stood before them, agitated and on edge, and Hermione saw how they all looked up to him as their leader, certain that he'd come through for them yet again. The next, he had strode across the room and disappeared into the shadowy stairwell, leaving the Gryffindors stunned into a self-righteous silence.

**It's just a flesh wound! (Sorry, I've always got Monty Python on the brain.)

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Also known as the chapter I spent a week not writing, because it just wasn't flowing well at all. I think I eventually bent it into manageable shape… The part with Aberforth just refused to work and I finally decided I couldn't spend any more time procrastinating so I sat down and wrote it, and I hate it with a passion.

Chapter Eight

Dumbledore's Men

HARRY

Hermione and Ron hadn't come up after him, perhaps sensing that he needed his space, and he had fallen asleep with images of his classmates' affronted faces seared into his mind.

The following morning, Neville, Dean, and Seamus gave him his space, silently standing by as he readied himself for another day - and it's sure to be another frustrating day, he thought. Even after the others had trooped off to breakfast, Ron remained behind.

“Alright, mate?” he asked.

“Never better,” Harry said testily.

“Look, they mean well—”

“They don't have any right to ask that of me! Can't they see I've got enough on my plate?”

“That's the trouble, isn't it? They've got no idea and unless you'd care to enlighten them all, it's got to stay that way.”

“I know,” Harry said roughly, knowing he had no reason to be so tetchy towards Ron, who had done nothing wrong and just about everything right, to be frank.

“Look, if you don't want to go down to breakfast, I'll bring you something up,” Ron offered.

“Nah. I'll just start researching a little earlier today. The library should be nice and empty this time of day; no one goes to the library at seven in the morning.”

“Well, unless you're Hermione,” Ron amended, sounding greatly amused. “You might catch Hermione there this time of day, but she's just odd like that.”

“Yeah,” said Harry fondly. “Yeah, she is.”

* * * * * *

As the warm, summer-like days of early September faded, Harry's efforts at researching potential Horcruxes had yet to come to fruition and he was growing more and more restless with every passing day. Even the distraction of Quidditch tryouts failed to jolt him from his languorous state. In the first two weeks of school, he had fallen into a routine of sorts: waking late in the morning and eating breakfast only after the crowd in the Great Hall had thinned out, retreating to the library once classes went into session, only to remerge when Ron and Hermione were guaranteed to be in the Common room.

In the evenings, Ron and Hermione were invariably bogged down with homework, everything from essays about anti-Muggle security to scrolls of parchment detailing the antics of the common Irish banshee. Ron lamented the loss of his leisure time and spent inordinate amounts of time staring out at the Quidditch Pitch (when he wasn't practicing for the upcoming Match, that is) and humming the tune to “Weasley is our King” under his breath. Hermione spent every spare moment researching alongside Harry, but still they had found precious little. Harry was not sure what his expectations about coming back to Hogwarts had been, but with Ron and Hermione normally off attending class without him and with his days being wiled away in the Restricted Section, he felt that his time was not amounting to much. True, Hogwarts was the only place that had ever felt like “home” to him, but day-by-day, it was becoming more like a gilded cage that a place of refuge.

Over the week leading up to the first Quidditch Match, only a few moments stood out from the humdrum of daily life, and the most memorable of these moments took place during the dinner hour on the night before the game -

In a scene that had grown familiar over the years, Errol - in the course of making a delivery -- made a spectacular crash landing in the middle of the Gryffindor table, spattering the students within a twenty-foot radius with bits of mashed potato and corned beef.

“Might be time to invest in a new bird,” Ginny said grimly, hurriedly untying the heavy parcel from Errol's leg so that Hermione could tend to him.

“What do you suppose it is?” Harry asked, seeing that the parcel was addressed to the three of them.

“Three guesses, Ron,” said Ginny with a sideways grin.

“Yeah, I know,” Ron said, lifting the lid off the box while Hermione attempted to revive Errol. “When Mum's nervous she knits. It's kind of sad, really. But, you know, as along as she hasn't knitted me a woolen jock strap or anything, I think we'll be alright.”

His jaw dropped.

“She didn't!” Harry roared with laughter.

“What the bloody hell is this?” Ron demanded of no one in particular, unfolding a vibrant-hued, button-up suit.

“It's a jumpsuit,” Hermione said, looking up from Errol.

“A—what?”

“A jumpsuit. Yes, I'm sure it is. Muggles wear them, to sporting events and such.”

“A knitted maroon jumpsuit? She's lost her marbles if she thinks I'm wearing that.”

“I suppose the good thing about being Captain is that you can throw anyone off the team if they laugh at your clothes!”

Ron scowled. “First manky, lace-ridden dress robes - now this,” he said. “What does she want? For me to be the laughingstock of the entire school?”

“Just be glad Smith isn't around to rub it in your face,” Ginny said with a laugh, as she began distributing socks, sweaters, and brightly-colored afghans* to Harry and Hermione.

It went without saying, of course, that Ron would not wear his new jumpsuit to the Match the next day. After seeing Ron through a skimpy breakfast and trying to downplay his anxieties about his qualifications as Quidditch Captain, Harry passed him off to his teammates and let them escort him down to the locker rooms.

“Just make sure he doesn't think too much about it,” he told Ginny before she'd departed, “and he'll be fine. Come to think of it, this would probably be a good time to tell him any really shocking news you might have on hand. Like, if you'd taken a sudden liking to Draco Malfoy or something, this would be the time to let him know - that might take his mind off things—”

She laughed harshly. “The day I fall in love with Draco Malfoy is the day Blast-Ended Skrewts fly!”

Hermione met Harry on his way down to the Pitch. She had pinned a red Gryffindor rosette in her hair, but gone were the red-and-gold scarves and mittens and any sense of team spirit she might once have possessed. Harry was amused -- though not altogether surprised -- to see that she had a book clamped under her arm.

“Hermione—you can't bring a book to a Quidditch match!” Harry spluttered, acting as if by doing so she was committing an act of high treason.

“I don't care much for Quidditch,” she said coolly.

“You used to.”

“Things have changed, Harry,” by which she meant `the team roster has changed,' though she did not say it.

As they passed Hagrid's hut, Harry felt a sudden urge to go and visit his oldest friend. “Do you mind, Hermione? I feel like I ought to go see Hagrid, just to see how he's doing since - you know.”

“Go on, Harry,” she said, and then added, with a sardonic smile, “I'll cheer on the team for you.”

“You do that.”

Hermione cheering for a Quidditch Match seemed about as likely as Ginny falling in love with Draco. Harry just wasn't apt to be that lucky.

Five minutes later, Harry was standing on the front stoop of Hagrid's hut, pounding on the door. “Hagrid? Open up, Hagrid! I know you're in there!”

The door creaked open on its hinges and Fang bounded out to greet Harry, slobbering his face and barking excitedly.

“Down, Fang,” Harry said sternly, sidestepping the massive boarhound to fully examine the hut.

Badly damaged by fire at the end of the last school year, it had only been patchily repaired. The roof had been re-thatched and the overlarge wooden door restored to its original position, but the hut still bore scars from the devastating blaze. Scorch marks grazed the walls and the scrubbed wooden table had lost two of its massive chairs - reduced to pile of cinders and ash that Hagrid had not even bothered to sweep away.

“Where's Hagrid, Fang?” Harry asked urgently, fearing the worst. “With Grawp?”

Fang whined piteously, scratching at the back door.

“He's not—” Harry stopped short, threw open the door, and followed Fang out into the garden. He felt downright idiotic, standing in the middle of a pumpkin patch, vying for information from a dog. The dog that had ever talked back was Sirius, he remembered with a dull pang of sorrow.

Fang leapt the fence and trotted down the lane towards Hogsmeade, Harry hurrying along behind him. The great boarhound finally let up once they'd reached The Hog's Head and flopped down on the front stoop as though he visited the grimy pub everyday.

“Attaboy, Fang,” Harry whispered as he stepped over the boarhound and into the pub. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. A gigantic man thrice as wide as an ordinary person sat slumped over the bar, his wiry hair wilder than ever. As Harry tiptoed nearer, he could smell that the man reeked of stale spirits.

“Hagrid?”

“He's not in any condition to talk you - or anyone else for that matter,” said a gravelly voice; Aberforth Dumbledore had limped into sight, dusting off a bottle of wine. “Vintage 1872,” he said, unscrewing the cap so that a hiss of air escaped. “A good year - for grapes, that is.” He laughed coarsely. “Not such a good year for Wizardkind, 1872. Not unless you were that sort.”

“I don't understand—” Harry said, reluctantly accepting the glass Aberforth slid across the counter to him.

“You will see in time.” Aberforth drew a lengthy sip from his drink and lit a cigar. “That year, 1872, marked the first of many wars for our world, Mr. Potter. You could say it fell in the middle of the worst kind of century… after centuries of persecution at the hands of the Muggles, we were taking back our communities, our lives, our lands… but peace and renewed prosperity bring troubles of their own... I'm speaking, of course, about fear. Fear that Muggleborns would upset the fragile balance we'd wrought, fear that Muggleborns would reinstate the old order where we lived in fear of our Salems, our burning days. Never forget, he who wields fear holds the reins of power. It is just the same with every great villain and many a good-intentioned leader. In my time, Grindelwald was that villain and the Knights of Walpurgis, his henchmen.

“His popularity was easy to understand. He promised the Wizarding folk something that no one else could provide -- safety, security, seclusion - but at too high a price.

“They call it the `lust of the eye,' Mr. Potter, the human desire to destroy. Always - always, you must keep watch on those around you. War is a sickness, Mr. Potter, and when you've lived as long as I have, you see how it infects. We were at our worst in 1872,” he said, damping his cigar on the tabletop and brushing away the hot ashes with his bare palm. “I was ten,” he said simply, “my sister Arabella, nine, Albus, six. The members of the Ancient and Most Eccentric House of Dumbledore had a reputation for being dyed-in-the-wool supporters of the Muggleborn population. It was all too easy to vilify us, when the Wizarding World stumbled upon hard times again and, well, it was only to be expected that we'd get our comeuppance.”

“Your family was targeted?” Harry stammered, suddenly feeling a little less alone in the world.

Aberforth struck a match and lit a second cigar, which he crammed between his blackened teeth and gnawed on for a moment before speaking. “Didn't you ever wonder what spurred my brother on to greatness?”

Harry looked up, taken aback. Never in six years under Albus Dumbledore's careful tutelage had he considered the fount from which his mentor's boundless energy and limitless dedication sprang.

“One doesn't come upon such ambitions lightly. No, 1872 brought terrible tidings for our family. My sister and I suffered and I suffered terribly at the hands of the Knights of Walpurgis. Before they were through with us, we were rendered worse than Squibs, you see?” He shook back the sleeves of his robes and held out his weathered, knobbly hands. “My parents paid with their lives. For Albus, though, it was worse still.”

“Did they torture him as well?” Harry interjected, a knot forming in the base of his throat.

“No, no. You of all people should know that there are things far worse than physical pain,” Aberforth said impatiently, dispensing with his second cigar and pulling out a fresh one, rolling and unrolling the stained paper in his weathered hands. “Albus was so young… they only scoffed at him when he stood up to them. Always said the human being can bear scorn and derision, but not indifference, Albus said.

“Funny how a single moment can shape a life, eh, Mr. Potter?” He jerked his head towards Harry's scar and Harry unconsciously flattened his fringe over it. “From that day onward, he was driven to excel in all he attempted - to avenge. But bitter he was not. There is a difference between vengeance borne of love and that bred by hate. My brother was not the first to seek vengeance on behalf of those he'd loved best and lost, nor was he the last. Severus Snape, for instance—”

Harry stiffened and glowered at the half-empty bottle of wine perched on the bar between them.

Aberforth Dumbledore chuckled and shook his head. “I should have expected this, this dislike, this misunderstanding—”

“It's not a misunderstanding,” Harry said, fighting to keep his voice level. “If you'd been there - if you'd seen what I saw—”

“But did he act out of hate or of reverence? On whose orders?”

Harry's jaw clenched in mute fury. He was not about to sit here and be lectured.

“Fine, fine. Don't mind me, then, Mr. Potter. I'm merely an old fool who's had too much to drink, but heed me or discount me, Severus Snape was not the last to go back on vows made to the Dark Lord, when the lives of those he cared for were laid on the line. Another young man, a contemporary of your father's, would trod the same pathway - would throw away everything for what was right. Perhaps we can entertain the possibility that Snape has done the same. It is amazing, Mr. Potter, what people won't do for love. What the damned won't recant.

“…but do I still have your ear, Mr. Potter? I fear I have rambled and gone off my point. We have learned much since 1872. After this first of many wars, we stepped back and took a good, hard look at ourselves. And it wasn't a pretty sight. War does ugly things.

“You hear that, do you?” Aberforth Dumbledore asked pointedly, gesturing towards a grandfather clock jammed into the corner and covered with scratches and cobwebs.

Tick - tock - tick - tock. Steady as a heartbeat.

“Tick-by-tock. Second-by-second. Minute-by-minute. That is how you live in times of war. That is how you fight back fear. Tick-by-tock. Sometimes fear wins. I've seen grown men vomiting into a ditch, not for drunkenness - well, for that too, perhaps - but for fear. Sure, you'll see them crouched over a seedy bar -” - he spread his weathered hands wide to indicate the Hogs' Head's grime-encrusted counter - “boasting of bravery and the glory of war, but glory is a drunkard's lie and a martyr's misguided consolation. It's true, war makes for efficient killers. Primes us that way, war does. Ruins us that way. Don't be an efficient killer, Mr. Potter.”

“I'm not sure I have many illusions left,” Harry said, the words sounding strangely poetic as they slipped off his tongue; the wine was making him slightly lightheaded.

“'Course you haven't many illusions left. For one so young, you have seen much, and my brother admired you for your courage and strength of character. Because my brother admired you, I admire you, Mr. Potter. My brother did not bestow his trust lightly, or wrongly, I would say. Perhaps you can see beyond the past and consider what I've told you here tonight—”

At that moment, Aberforth and Harry had both jerked around to see two dark outlines pausing outside the door of the dank pub. Twilight had long since descended on the little village and it was impossible to see whether the passersby were friends or foe by the feeble light of the moon.

“Could be anyone,” Aberforth said, his ancient brow furrowed in concern as he hurriedly cleared away their glasses and ushered Harry out the back door and into the alley with but a curt nod of farewell.

* * * * *

By the time Harry returned from Hogsmeade, the Match was over and a wild after-party was underway in the Common room. He sought out Hermione in the quietest corner, where she was (predictably) curled up with a book.

“How was the Match?”

“Excellent,” Hermione said, smiling broadly. “I daresay I finished the first 447 pages, which leaves only 578 to go.”

Harry laughed heartily; he'd expected no less a response from her.

“How did Ron do?”

“Oh, he did reasonably well,” Hermione said with a shrug. “He let a few in, got caught up in Luna Lovegood's commentary, I expect.”

“Amusing, that girl.”

“Yes,” said Hermione absently. “I always thought she had a bit of a thing for Ron…”

“Yes'm?”

Ron had escaped the throng and plopped down in a chair beside Harry.

“How'd it go, Captain?” Harry asked.

“To be honest, Slytherin didn't stand a chance. I hate to say it, but their talent left with Malfoy.” Ron pulled a distasteful face, as several other students around him did moments later when he began tugging off his sweaty socks and shin guards.

“Urgh, Ron, get thee to the showers,” Hermione cried out, burying her nose in the binding of Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions.

“I'm going, I'm going,” he said, and quit the room to much applause from his victory-heady Housemates.

And there was much applause because the chapter was DONE!

Next one will be better. I promise. I just haven't had a lot of time to turn out quality work lately, what with getting ready for finals and finishing up massive term papers, and trying to consolidate all the stuff I've accumulated since I moved in here.

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For superbeffie. Feel better soon :(

This chapter didn't change much at all from the old version but the next several will be much more H/Hr-centric and will be considerably different from Le Olde Version.

Chapter Nine

Unraveling R.A.B.

HARRY

One afternoon, Ron and Hermione returned from Transfiguration bickering fiercely. This would have been nothing out of the ordinary, if it wasn't for Ron's unusual appearance. Since Harry had last seen him, his fingers had sprouted two-inch talons and his nose had turned strangely beaky.

“It was a simple spell, Ronald!” Hermione said scathingly, her already-bushy hair sticking out sideways, lending her a somewhat crazed look. “It isn't McGonagall's fault that you're not up to N.E.W.T. level!”

“Just because you're so perfect—” Ron stopped speaking at the sight of Harry's amused expression. “Hello, Harry,” he said stiffly, stuffing his clawed hands into his pockets to hide them from view.

“Ronald Weasley! Don't you think you ought to apologize to Professor McGonagall, for storming out of her class like that?!”

“Hermione,” Ron sighed, exhaustedly, “are you going to help me get rid of these talons or not?”

Hermione harrumphed indignantly, but quickly set about looking up the counterspell, which she located within moments. “Manicuris,” she said, almost lazily and Ron's fingernails shortened instantaneously.

After a gruff murmur of thanks, a very red-faced Ron turned to Harry. “What's got your wand in a knot?” Ron asked, plopping down on the hearthrug, kicking off his tattered trainers and pulling out a deck of Exploding Snap cards.

“Just thinking,” Harry said. “Something Aberforth Dumbledore said the night of the Match keeps bothering me…”

“What's that?”

“Something about some turncoat, someone on the Dark Lord's side who changed his stripes—”

“Well, of course anything about Snape's going to get under your skin, Harry!” exclaimed Ron, jumping to conclusions as usual. “And after what the skulking, lying b****** did, how couldn't it?”

“It's not that,” Harry said, fighting once again to keep his hatred of Snape from surging over. “He was referring to someone other than Snape… someone else who had made a mistake and had recanted it, somehow.”

“I don't think you need to be obsessing over what that old codger said, Harry. He seemed half-senile when we met him. He's probably just on about some old bar patron or another,” Hermione said without looking up from her Transfiguration essay. She sounded nothing short of exasperated and Harry had the distinct impression that she did not believe what she was saying, but was only seeking to allay his fears. “You really ought to be trying to figure out what to do about the other Horcruxes. I mean, have you even looked into the locket yet?”

Struck by a sudden remembrance, Harry rummaged around in the pocket of his robes until his hand brushed against a crumpled scrap of paper. He'd almost forgotten about it - the note that had come inside the imposter locket.

“R.A.B.” He chanted the initials like a mantra, waiting for a sudden burst of inspiration. “R.A.B. - we don't know anyone by those initials.”

Hermione rattled off a list of names at breakneck speed - “Rosalind Antigone Bungs, Rupert Axebanger Brookstanton - but they'd never do!”

Suddenly, something clicked in Harry's brain - “REGULUS!”

“'Scuse me?” Ron looked up from his teetering card tower.

“Regulus Black - Sirius' brother!”

“But of course! How could we have forgotten?”

“But--” Ron looked bemused. “—but Harry, Regulus Black is dead - Sirius said so.”

Hermione rolled her eyes impatiently and snatched the crumpled note from Harry's hands. “But the letter-writer is dead too, Ron! See here? `I know I will be dead long before you read this'!”

Harry's mind was racing. How long ago had Regulus Black penned this note? Hadn't Sirius said he died some sixteen years ago?

“Harry!” Hermione cried excitedly, causing Ron's card tower to explode. “D'you remember the locket we found while we were de-doxying the parlor? The one Kreacher kept trying to sneak off with—”

“—and when he had a go at it, we couldn't get it open!”

“Has it really been destroyed then?” Hermione asked eagerly.

Ron emerged from behind the cloud of smoke, coughing. “You don't suppose Grimmauld Place could be home to any more Horcruxes, do you?” he asked hopefully, clearly feeling left out of the conversation.

Harry's heart sank, remembering a certain light-fingered thief who'd had the run of the Black family home for nearly a year before being chucked into Azkaban. Thanks to Mundungus Fletcher's pilfering, the locket could be anywhere. “If it was, it won't be anymore!”

“Mundungus,” Hermione said darkly, seeming to read his thoughts. “But we could always ask Kreacher, he should know, shouldn't he?”

“Oh, right,” said Harry dully. He generally preferred to have as little contact with the house elf as possible. “Kreacher?”

The house elf appeared with a pop and spun dizzily on the spot. “Master called Kreacher? Master ignores Kreacher for months and then expects Kreacher to cater to his every beck and will?”

“Kreacher, I need you to tell me about Regulus Black.”

“Kreacher does not speak of his former Master to blood-traitors and Mudbloods,” he said spitefully.

Harry narrowly resisted the temptation to strangle Kreacher; “Fine. Do you remember the locket - the one you kept trying to hide from us two summers ago?”

Kreacher pursed his lips.

“Kreacher!” Harry said warningly.

“Kreacher cannot say. Kreacher has nothing from his Master and Mistress' house anymore.” He wiped his moist eyes on the hem of his filthy loincloth.

Harry cursed the elf under his breath. “That was loads of help,” he muttered sarcastically. For once, Hermione didn't leap to Kreacher's defense. The elf stood before them, absentmindedly plucking hairs out of his overlarge ears.

“That leaves us with only one option,” Harry looked seriously from Ron to Hermione.

Hermione nodded stoically, but Ron looked clueless, as usual.

“I'm going to go back to Grimmauld Place. Tonight.”

Ron did a double-take and Kreacher flung himself to the ground at Harry's feet.

“Kreacher beseeches Master--”

“You can come,” Harry said roughly, “but only if you help me.”

Kreacher nodded frantically, “Kreacher will oblige Master's every--”

“That will do.” Harry turned to Ron and Hermione. “You two don't have to come - I reckon I can do this alone.”

Hermione bit her lip.

“Don't look like that, Hermione,” said Harry bracingly. “I'll be fine. Grimmauld Place is Unplottable, remember? Even they won't be able to find me there.”

Hermione nodded reluctantly, seemingly tottering on the edge of flinging herself into his arms, as she had so many years before when Harry had been on the verge of doing something equally dangerous and daring.

“We'll come to see you off,” Ron said, wrapping a comforting arm around Hermione's shoulders - one that she did not shrug off, as was her custom.

“Shall I fetch Ginny?” Hermione asked hesitantly.

“No, I'd rather not bother her with this,” Harry replied, evading the questioning look Ron shot him.

“You're sure, mate?”

“Quite.”

“You've got everything you need, then?”

“Invisibility Cloak, check. Wand, check… Kreacher…check,” he added, eyeing the elf with great distaste. Together, the foursome set off for the edge of the grounds.

“Don't reckon they have enchantments to keep you from getting out, d'you?” Harry asked, studying the heavily chained gates.

“Leg up?” Ron asked, bending over so that Harry could climb onto his back.

Harry scrambled nimbly over the fence and toppled to the grass on the other side. Kreacher slipped through the bars to join him.

“Harry, Harry,” Hermione murmured, bracing herself as she tried to put up a brave front for his sake.

“Don't worry about me,” Harry reassured Hermione, reaching through the bars to take her hands.

“It'll be alright, Harry,” Ron said, though he was very pale behind his mask of freckles.

Harry forged a smile as Ron pried Hermione away from the fence and, with a final backward glance, he started down the winding road to Hogsmeade. Seizing Kreacher's hand in his, he visualized himself landing on the grubby doorstep of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

* * * * *

Harry's feet slammed into the ground and he staggered sideways. He shook his head violently before opening his eyes, to find that he and Kreacher were standing on the stoop of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. For a split second, Harry wondered how they would gain entrance to the dwelling, but then Kreacher seized the handle and the door groaned open at once.

A thick layer of dust lay upon the floor, muffling the sound of their footsteps. Harry's heart clenched painfully, his thoughts with Sirius, who had spent his last days in this musty house that he so despised.

Kreacher ran one wrinkled finger along the dusty banister and pulled a face. “What would Mistress say?” he moaned. “Mistress' house gone to dust and dirt!”

Harry led the way into the drawing room and was greeted by a scene of total destruction. The tapestry detailing the lineage of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had been cut and shredded. The cabinets, once brimming with Dark objects looked as though they had been emptied of all but their cobwebs. Even the windows stood bare, stripped of their mildewy velvet draperies. As much as Harry hated Grimmauld Place and all it stood for, he hated Mundungus Fletcher even more for having destroyed it.

Kreacher seemed stunned into silence by the sight of his former home. He kneeled on the grimy floor and buried his face in his loincloth.

“The locket,” Harry whispered, remembering his mission. He clambered through the rubble to the cabinets and rooted frantically through the cobwebs, broken glass, and bits of porcelain.

“No!” he cried and darted to the kitchen. He dug furiously through Kreacher's den, but found nothing but filthy blankets and a framed portrait of Bellatrix Lestrange propped against the wall. Harry dashed the picture to the ground and dug his heel into Bellatrix's leering face. “NO!”

He hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Within moments, he reached the room Sirius had shared with Buckb--Witherwings; the floor was still littered with gnawed chicken bones and shed feathers.

Something glinted amongst the feathers - it was the mirror. Harry scooped it up and cried out in agony. It was too much to bear; he sprinted down the hall and burst into the musty bedroom he's once shared with Ron. There he sank to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

“Troubled, are we?” asked a nasally voice.

Harry jerked his head up and saw Phineas Nigellus watching from his portrait.

“It's not easy, being alive,” Phineas Nigellus observed. “The pain is acute and the journey hard. I may have been a bit too hard on you two years ago, Mr. Potter. You've been dealt a tough lot in life. My great-grandson was very proud of you, son. Thought you had mettle, he did.”

Harry expected a snide remark, but Phineas Nigellus merely sighed.

“Dumbledore, gone,” he shook his head slowly. “Hard to imagine a Hogwarts without Dumbledore. What we'll do now…”

Harry turned away, his grief morphing into agitation. The last things he needed to hear now were the disjointed ramblings of a dead man - unless -

“Sir?”

Phineas Nigellus stopped scratching his canvas nose and looked down at Harry in mild surprise.

“Sir - you haven't heard from Sirius, have you?”

Phineas Nigellus' face fell. “No,” he said heavily. “I cannot. I am but a portrait, a mere caricature of my former self. I cannot converse with my great-grandson from beyond the grave.”

Harry scolded himself for getting his hopes up; Sirius was forever lost to him.

“But maybe I can be of some assistance still,” Phineas Nigellus said in his nasally voice. “It seems to me that, before you located that mirror of your godfather's, you were looking for something else? Or tearing the house apart, more like.” He winked at Harry.

“I was, but you just said you can't--”

“I said I cannot converse with your godfather, but I am fully capable of seeing all that goes on within this house.”

“There was a locket…but Mundungus Fletcher's gone and sold it…”

To Harry's great surprise, Phineas Nigellus scoffed. “I'd like to see him try! That locket - the only mark of the true nobility of the Black family spirit, mind you - is safe and sound.”

“You know where it is, sir?”

“Indeed. Follow me,” and Phineas Nigellus slipped sideways from his portrait.

Harry pocketed the mirror and hurried out of the room. He spied Phineas Nigellus waiting for him in a portrait further down the hall.

“Down these stairs,” Phineas Nigellus said. “I'll be waiting for you in the portrait of The Fates.”

They continued on in this way until they reached a small, dank room Harry had never set foot in before.

“Here, sir?” he queried. “We last saw the locket in the drawing room.”

Phineas Nigellus wagged his finger warningly. “Youth nowadays, never trusting the wisdom of their elders!” He gestured at a run-down desk in the corner. “There you will find what you seek.”

Harry pulled open one of the drawers and found a handful of bloodstained needles. Momentarily, he wondered if this was Phineas Nigellus' idea of a joke, but in the second drawer, he found the locket, swaddled in a filthy handkerchief.

Phineas Nigellus smiled knowingly and faded out of his portrait before Harry had a chance to thank him.

* * * * * *

Harry finally located Kreacher in the Entrance Hall, tearfully scrubbing the slashed portrait of his mistress.

“Who did this?” Harry asked incredulously. He did not miss Mrs. Black's screams in the slightest, but it seemed an unnecessarily violent gesture to destroy her portrait.

Kreacher let out a fresh wail and crumpled to the ground. He banged his fists upon the floor, sending waves of dust rippling across the hall.

“Kreacher!” Harry cried in alarm, and the elf stopped flailing immediately. Harry reached down and pulled the breathless elf to his feet. “Kreacher, I need you to tell me everything you know about Regulus Black and this locket.” Harry swung the locket before Kreacher's eyes like a pendulum.

Kreacher took the locket delicately and sat down on the stair beside Harry. He rubbed the filigreed Slytherin `S' with his gnarled fingers.

“Kreacher?” Harry repeated and the elf seemed to regain himself. “What do you know about this locket?”

Kreacher rocked back and forth, clutching the locket to his bare chest. “Kreacher must tell Master what he wants to hear, Kreacher has no choice.” Instead of sounding vengeful - as was customary for Kreacher - he sounded downtrodden, and when he continued, his voice was uncharacteristically low and grave.

“Master is gone away a long time,” Kreacher began slowly, “but he comes home late one night. Says for Kreacher to come so Kreacher came. Man came with Master and Kreacher-”

“A man? Who?”

Kreacher hunched his shoulders defensively. “Kreacher does not know his name. Man told Master never to say his name.”

“What did he look like?”

“Large,” Kreacher said simply, and Harry could milk no other details about the mystery man from him. Kreacher continued disjointedly, “Man and Young Master Regulus went to a cave by great waters. Man took blood from Master, smeared it on the wall.” Kreacher flinched, as though imagining Regulus Black's “pure” blood being spilt again in his mind.

“Master got into a boat,” Kreacher said. “Master and Kreacher paddled out to the island and Master got out. Kreacher went back to shore for the Man.”

“How is it that you could go with him, Kreacher?” Harry interrupted.

“The Dark Lord does not care for house elf magic,” Kreacher muttered bitterly.

Kreacher mentioned the strange basin, with the potion clear as glass within it. “Man tested the potion, made another. Master had to drink the potion.” Kreacher trembled. “Screamed and screamed, Master did. Master begged Kreacher to kill him and Kreacher tried sir, Kreacher tried. House elves must do as their Masters wish. Maybe if the blood traitor son had asked Kreacher to kill him…” Kreacher's face brightened momentarily.

Harry aimed a kick at Kreacher's wrinkly head and the elf scuttled down the stairs and hid himself behind an ancient wardrobe. He did not stop speaking however.

“Master screamed for water, Kreacher had to draw water from the lake -”

Harry remembered the horrific scene in the cave - bodies arcing up and out of the water, a cold slimy hand on his wrist. He shuddered involuntarily.

“…the Man left. Kreacher brought Master home all by himself. Master and his locket. Mistress was most aggrieved - her favorite son, her favorite son. Master was so weak. Then they came,” he said and buried his wrinkled face in his knobbly hands.

“They? Who are `they'?” Harry shook Kreacher's shoulders.

“They-they! The old allies turned on Master, killed my Master,” Kreacher said in a hollow voice.

“The Death Eaters?”

Kreacher sobbed afresh. “Dragged my Master away, killed my Master.”

“What happened then?”

“Left! Left!” he howled.

“They didn't want the locket?”

Kreacher shook his head vigorously. “Kreacher hid it. Hid it in the drawing room.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, no - but my poor Mistress!”

“What about your Mistress? Did they hurt her?”

“No, no,” he moaned again. “Traitor-son gone, Regulus dead. Mistress died soon! Too much, too much!”

Kreacher bawled uncontrollably and Harry knew their interview was over. In the course of a few days, Harry now knew, Kreacher's entire world had crumbled down around him. First with his young Master's death, then with the passing of his beloved Mistress.

“Come on, Kreacher,” he said.

For the first time, he felt sympathy for the aged house elf. He guided Kreacher out of the house and into the street. After hours of breathing the rank air inside, Harry gratefully inhaled the fresh breezes. Then, with the locket bundled in his pocket and Kreacher at his side, he turned towards the eastern horizon. The sun was just coming up. Hogsmeade, he thought and squinted his eyes shut. The world spun around him and when his feet touched the ground again, he was standing on the corner between The Hog's Head and Scrivenshaft's.

* * * * *

As Harry set off down High Street, he glimpsed the hem of a black cloak whipping around the corner into the alley beside the Hog's Head.

Curious, Harry followed. A boy with sleek white-blond hair jaunted down the alley.

“Malfoy?” Harry asked incredulously.

Draco Malfoy wheeled around, drawing his wand. “Potter,” he hissed.

Harry looked Malfoy up and down; he was paler and bonier than Harry remembered him, and even as Harry watched, a nervous twitch began in Malfoy's sunken cheek. The last time he'd seen Malfoy, Dumbledore had offered Malfoy a chance for redemption. Moreover, Harry felt that - had the Death Eaters not burst in - Malfoy might have accepted.

“It's not too late for you, Malfoy,” Harry said, though his hand closed around his pocketed wand.

“As if, Potter,” Malfoy spat. “I happen to know for a fact that it's too late for you,” he added scornfully.

“Kill me, then!” Harry burst out savagely. “That's what he wants, isn't it?”

Malfoy glowered at him, but did not raise his wand.

“You are no killer.” Harry said smoothly. “Come back to Hogwarts, Malfoy. Dumbledore would've given you a second chance.”

“Dumbledore's dead!” Malfoy sputtered, flinching as he said the name. “No one in Hogwarts would have me now.”

“Have it your way, then,” Harry replied evenly. He turned his back on Malfoy and walked swiftly back up the road to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

If any of you are on LJ, my username over there is herminia also, so feel free to friend me!

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Chapter Ten

Seen and Overheard

HERMIONE

8:02 PM, Tuesday, September 16, 1997.

Hermione sighed heavily and reapplied herself to her Potions essay on Fatiguing Infusions, thinking privately that 36 hours spent agonizing over the fate of one's best friend was the surest way to bring about fatigue.

8:04 PM.

She hated time for the terrible way it has of snailing by when one is desperately waiting for something to happen, but she hated being helpless most of all. If Harry had come to any trouble along the way home, she had no way of knowing.

8:08 PM.

She glared at the clock and plunged the tip of her quill back in the ink well before scribbling away on her essay at a furious pace. If she could only keep busy, the time would pass more quickly.

8:11 PM.

Nineteen more minutes and she would head out to check the wards protecting the school…

8:15 PM.

Beside her, Ron had given up on his essay and was attempting to levitate his jar of ink -- which hurtled earthwards a mere minute later and smashed in an explosion of ink and glass shards.

8:19 PM.

Scourgify, or so it transpired, can only go so far in cleaning splattered ink off of robes. Hermione made a mental note to try napalm; she was only half-kidding.

8:23 PM.

Her quill etched out the words: An infusion of wormwood added after precisely seven clockwise stirs will do the trick…

8:25 PM.

If one is too ham-fisted with the wormwood, the resulting potion will put the sleeper into a deep and sometimes irreversible sleep…

8:27 PM.

Hermione hastily rolled up the scroll and slipped it into her bookbag.

“Hermione,” Ron said plaintively and Hermione had a good idea of what was coming next… “Smart, brilliant, we're-all-unworthy Hermione, can I maybe - possibly - please copy off of your essay?”

Hermione sighed and handed over the scroll. “Don't get used to this sort of special treatment,” she said sternly. “I'd refuse to let you see it if I didn't think the ensuing argument would make me late for my Head Girl duties.”

“Do you want company?” he asked automatically. “I'd feel better if I knew you weren't out there all alone.”

“And I'd feel better if Harry was back safe with us,” she said, casting an apprehensive glance out the Common room window and over the twilit grounds. “I'll be fine, but thank you,” she called over her shoulder as she slipped through the portrait hole.

Sundown on the Hogwarts grounds was unlike anything else Hermione could imagine. With the sky was a brilliant fresco of garish shades of orange and rich golden-yellows above her, Hermione threw back her head and strode purposefully down the sloping lawns to the front gates.

Just as she was setting the wards, sealing off Hogwarts from the rest of the world for another Harry-less night, she caught sight of two shapes - one tall and lanky and the other short and crippled - loping down the path from Hogsmeade towards her. Her heart clenched in fear and she retreated into the shadows, wondering frantically which spell to cast to defend herself.

“Hermione!”

It was Harry! Her knees nearly gave way in relief as she hastened to undo the Locking and Security enchantments. She threw the gate open and Harry closed the distance between them at a run, catching her in his arms. The force with which he swept her off her feet left her momentarily lightheaded. “Yes!” she cried, ecstatic at his safe return, awash in relief that he was safe in her arms - or rather that she was safe in his - and that she could feel his heart pounding madly and see the warmth rising in his cheeks. “Was it there? Did you find--?” she asked, once he'd set her down on solid ground once more.

“Look, something unexpected's happened. I'll tell you once we get back to Ron. We don't know who could be listening out here. Come, Kreacher,” he called to the house elf, who muttered foully under his breath as he hobbled along in their wake.

After dispatching Kreacher to his fellows in the kitchen, Harry unexpectedly grabbed Hermione's hand and they sprinted up the seven flights of stairs together. Red-faced and breathless, they stumbled through the portrait hole as Ron vaulted over the back of the sofa to greet them.

“Oi, Harry! Did you get it, mate?”

Harry nodded tersely, suddenly preoccupied, as though he had remembered the terrible gravity of his mission.

“I saw Malfoy,” he said at long last.

“Malfoy? Here?!”

“No, in Hogsmeade—”

“Probably with his Death Eaters cronies,” Ron said, balling his hands into fists.

“No, alone,” Harry said, causing both Ron and Hermione to look up at him in surprise.

“Did anything happen?” she asked, struck by the realization that the shadowy figure that had run down the lane towards her could just as easily have been an armed and dangerous Malfoy as a road-weary Harry.

Harry shook his head and Ron swore loudly. “You ought to have hexed him into next week,” he muttered mutinously, “filthy traitorous scum—”

“He was acting strangely,” Harry said, dropping into an armchair and noticing, for the first time, how exhausted he was.

“Hmmm…” said Ron mockingly, “I wonder who he was trying to poison this time.”

“I asked him to come back to Hogwarts.”

“YOU WHAT?!”

“I did…” he said, frowning slightly as he reminded them about Dumbledore's offer of amnesty, made to Malfoy atop the Astronomy Tower. “I think he might have accepted, if the Death Eaters hadn't come. And, inviting him back to school -- that's what Dumbledore would've done.”

“Harry, Dumbledore's dead because he put his trust in lying filth like Snape and Malfoy! He tried to kill us all, if you've forgotten!” Ron burst out angrily.

Harry leaned forward and peered into the fire, now burning low in its grate.

“The Malfoys have been in the news again lately,” Hermione said, remembering the conversation she'd overheard between Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass.

“Yeah, since Lucius Malfoy escaped from Azbakan, he's probably been torturing Muggles left and right!” Ron exclaimed, casting a worried look at Hermione.

“No, Ron, he's not,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “He's on the lam.”

“Of course he is! He's got the entire Ministry after him!” Ron said heatedly, clearly eager to engage in an argument about the blatant evilness of the Malfoy clan.

Hermione waited impatiently until Ron had finished his bitter diatribe before continuing. “Well, yes and no, Ron. He's also running from the Death Eaters. Voldemort isn't too pleased with him, see?”

Harry nodded, a look of dawning realization on his face. “Of course not - not after the destruction of the diary and the fiasco at the Ministry!”

“Exactly, Harry,” she said earnestly. “He's probably lucky he was captured and thrown into Azkaban! It bought him a year's stay of execution.”

“So where does that leave good old Draco and his mother?” Harry asked keenly.

“No one knows where they've been - not even that cow, Pansy Parkinson,” Hermione said in hushed tones, “so it's really quite something that you've seen him in Hogsmeade, Harry.”

“The night Dumbledore - the night, you know—” he began awkwardly, “he said that he could hide Malfoy and his mother…and everyone would think they'd been killed…no one would suspect a thing…”

“But Dumbledore's dead,” Ron said, looking dumbstruck.

“And who else would have the gall - not too mention the means - to hide the Malfoys, but the Order?”

“Oh, I reckon they're rich enough to pay someone off, to save their own greasy hides,” Ron said seriously.

“That's true,” Harry said with a heavy shrug. “It might not be our side that's hiding him.”

Try as she might, Hermione could not think of a single good reason why the Order of the Phoenix would expend their limited energy and manpower safeguarding the lives of their sworn enemies. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, Harry raised a hand to silence her.

“Ginny's listening. Later—” he mouthed urgently, as she made her way in their direction, “we'll discuss this later.”

* * * * *

HERMIONE

Come morning, Hermione found Harry fast asleep in his favorite armchair beside the Gryffindor fire. She curled up with her Charms book beside him, watching as he slept fitfully, drowsing and stirring, murmuring incomprehensibly all the while. Waves of gratitude swept over Hermione; Harry had returned safely, but she couldn't help but fear that he wouldn't always be so lucky. Finally tearing her eyes away from Harry, she refocused on the Charms lesson before her, waving her wand and mouthing the incantations so as not to wake Harry.

Around mid-morning, Ron joined them and crouched on the floor beside the fireplace, lazily prodding the smoldering logs with his wand so that the flames flashed blue and purple in the grate.

At around noon, a Fanged Frisbee zoomed past Hermione's head and landed in the violet fire, sending colorful embers sailing into Ron's red hair. As he noisily cursed the third year responsible for the Fanged Frisbee, Harry awoke with a start.

“What happened?” Harry asked sleepily, as Ron returned to his seat, spluttering angrily. His hair was singed and standing on end and the expression on his face was murderous.

“Stupid - third - years - what - the -” Ron fumed, unable to string together a complete sentence.

Hermione bit her lip to keep herself from laughing and when she trusted herself to speak once more, she turned seriously to Harry. “How did it go, Harry? Other than meeting Draco…?”

“Not now,” he said warningly, gesturing at a gaggle of fourth year girls who were watching him with interest from a table beside the window. Then, evidently tired of the stares and giggles, Harry left the Common Room without another word.

As the portrait hole closed behind Harry, a very rotund owl swooped through the open window, scaring the wits out of the fourth years and causing Ron to duck in anticipation of another Fanged Frisbee.

The owl landed on the arm of Hermione's chair and promptly dropped a scroll in her lap. It flew away without awaiting her response, leaving a strong smell of cigar smoke lingering in the air.

“What do you reckon?” Ron wondered aloud, as Hermione unrolled the scroll and read -

Dear Miss Granger,

Hopefully you will favor me with your presence at the next meeting of the Slug Club, Sunday, 28 September. `Hors d'oeuvres will be served promptly at eight, followed by a bit of a shindig at nine and thirty, with a special guest slated to be in attendance! I'm angling for more `intimate' gatherings this year, just yourself and a few other rising stars. Naturally, Mr. Potter would be a welcome addition to any gathering, should you like to bring a date. Traditional Wizarding Attire is a must. - ___

Horace Slughorn

P.S. Don't bother bringing Rupert.

“I don't believe it!” she exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Honestly, to imagine that something so fickle can carry on in times like these!”

Ron reached for the note but Hermione snatched it away; if he got wind of Slughorn's throwaway remarks, he would be crushed.

“What?”

“It's nothing, Ron. It's just an invitation to another round of Slug Club meetings.” Hermione crumpled up the invitation and lobbed it into the fire.

“Hermione! Maybe I would have liked to have gone!” Ron said, now scraping the charred remnants of the invite out of the grate. “A spot of prestige would be nice now and then. I thought that now that Dad's, you know, risen in the ranks of the Ministry a bit—well, I hoped I might get an invite.”

“The Slug Club is a joke. You honestly want to be cooped up with some barmy old coot, eating crystallized pineapple and talking about nogtails and top-secret Ministry memos for hours on end?”

“Wouldn't mind,” he said coldly, “if it would mean a break from your sniping.”

“I didn't ask for this! I'd just as soon not have an invite!” Hermione snapped, hackles raised, ready to fight.

“That's your problem, isn't it, Hermione? You don't appreciate what you've got!” Ron bellowed.

“You--!” But exactly what Ron was, she didn't say. Unable to bear standing there, staring at the defiant expression on Ron's face any longer, she stalked up the winding staircase and collapsed on her bed, too exhausted for tears.

Ron's right, you know, a small voice whispered snidely. You don't appreciate what you've got… you don't appreciate him…

She punched her pillow furiously, willing herself to cry - to rid herself of the clashing emotions coursing through her mind - but she had shed all her tears the previous year, and though her eyes itched dryly, none came. She crawled out of bed and walked noiselessly to the window. Leaden clouds clotted the mid-afternoon sky, promising rain, but even as she watched, a fissure opened in the clouds' ranks and a feeble shaft of sunlight shone through.

* * * * *

Hermione bade her time carefully, waiting until she was fairly certain that Ron would have retired for the evening before descending from the girls' dormitories. To her dismay, however, Ron Weasley was still very much awake, sitting and chatting with Harry over a game of Gobstones. Reluctantly, Hermione wended her way through a throng of fifth years - all with their noses buried in thick OWL workbooks - to join Harry and Ron.

“Where have you been all day?” Harry asked as Hermione took a seat as far away from Ron as possible.

“Just mulling some things over,” she said, keen to change the subject. “So, apart from running into Draco in Hogsmeade, how did it go?”

“Not bad,” Harry said truthfully. “I managed it, with a bit of help from Phineas Nigellus and Kreacher.” Harry recounted the events of the last twenty four hours in haste, and finished by patting the pocketed locket significantly.

“Let's see it, then!” said Ron, thrusting out a hand for the locket.

“Not now!” Harry hissed; the Common room was still full of chattering students. “Wait `til everyone's gone up to bed.”

Ron sulked back against the mantel, running his fingers gingerly through his scorched hair and determinedly not looking at Hermione.

“So Kreacher went with them…” Hermione mused, “…but who could the other man have been?”

Harry shrugged his shoulders, “Someone good at potions.”

“Snape?” Hermione wondered aloud.

Ron snorted, glaring at her. “Snape?! - how can you even say that after what he did!”

Hermione fell silent.

“Too bad it wasn't your mum, Harry,” Ron said, after an awkward pause. “Slughorn was always going on and on about how good she was in Potions -”

“Slughorn!” Harry exclaimed.

“But Harry, remember when you were trying to extract that memory from Slughorn? He was afraid to give you a memory about Voldemort…I can't imagine him actually doing anything -”

But Harry wasn't about to be put off so easily, “He could have done.”

“Did Kreacher actually say anything about this man?” Hermione asked.

“Kreacher just said he was `large' - right Harry? - so, of course it's Slughorn! He's certainly no pixy!” Ron looked thoroughly convinced.

“I don't know, Ron. I just don't know,” said Hermione, shaking her head slowly. “Something just doesn't fit. How was Kreacher doing, by the way?”

“Don't start, Hermione,” said Harry warningly.

“He helped you, didn't he?” she demanded.

“Never mind Kreacher.” Harry flopped back in his armchair, waiting as their fellow Gryffindors gradually filtered out of the Common Room and up to their dormitories, until finally Harry, Ron and Hermione were the only ones remaining.

“Hand it over,” said Ron and Harry fumbled obligingly for the locket and passed it over to Ron.

“Be careful!” Hermione was examining the locket suspiciously.

“Come on, Hermione - it's harmless!” Harry said in annoyance, but Hermione wasn't convinced.

Then, to Hermione's horror, Ron slipped the locket over his head. He lurched forward at once, clutching his throat and gasping for air.

“RON!” Harry scrambled to his friend's side, but Ron had already collapsed back into his chair, shaking with maniacal laughter.

“That's not funny, Ron!” Harry snapped crossly, settling back into his armchair.

Hermione's heart had careened to a stop when Ron began to choke and gasp, and now it thumped painfully somewhere in the region of her Adam's apple.

Ron was still chortling and made no attempt to contain himself. “You - two - the - looks - on - your - faces!” he gasped between spurts of laughter.

“It wasn't funny, Ron,” Harry repeated firmly and swiped the locket away from Ron. “Ignore him,” he instructed Hermione. “We ought to go and see Slughorn.”

“I don't know, Harry. Even if he did have something to do with it, you're not going to force anything out of him without another bottle of Felix Felicis -”

“That's it - Felix Felicis!” Harry leapt to his feet, running his hands furiously through his unruly black hair. “Remember what Slughorn told us?”

Hermione gasped - “He said he'd taken the potion twice - two perfect days!”

“Exactly!” A gleeful guffaw escaped Harry's lungs. “If he helped destroy part of Voldemort's soul - I mean, how much luckier can you get?!”

Ron, startled into silence, stared back and forth between the twosome - now talking and gesturing wildly.

Hermione's doubts had evaporated. “Harry's right, Ron. We need to go see Slughorn, it's worth a try!”

“When though? The time has to be right - we haven't any more Felix Felicis lying around!”

“Well, there is a Slug Club social coming up…” Hermione offered, recalling the invitation that had instigated her latest spat with Ron. “It's only a week away,” she added helpfully, careful to avoid both Ron and Harry's questioning gazes.

“I suppose it can wait that long.”

The next two chapters are TEH SWEETNESS. Totally H/Hr. *Squees*

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A Good Old-Fashioned Affair

HERMIONE

A traditional wizard's ball! Hermione Granger would have balked at the idea if there wasn't so much hinging on it. As it was, she reluctantly slipped on a belted black gown she'd borrowed from Ginny's trunk. In Parvati's words, the style screamed 1862 and the entire ensemble reeked of mothballs, but that was nothing a little spellwork couldn't fix, she thought, sighing in gloomy resignation.

Sensible girl though she was (and that was far more sensible than Ginny Weasley, who actually believed in such things), she had still entertained notions of Harry Potter kissing her hand and promenading her around a ball full of glamorously accoutered (not to mention grateful) witches and warlocks. It was always a Victory Ball, in her dreams, one that heralded the end of Lord Voldemort's reign of terror over Harry's life (and hers, by default). But of all those vainglorious fantasies, none had involved her wearing a get-up quite like this.

Hermione Granger was not a vain girl, but honestly.

“The black offsets your oh-so-pale skin nicely,” Lavender simpered; as Hermione had learned over the years, every compliment from Lavender was but an insult in disguise. “Oh, go on - put on the hat. If you can't tame that mop of wild hair, you might as well hide it.”

“Here, take these as well,” Parvati said, lobbing a pair of pinstriped stockings Hermione's way.

“Are you trying to make me look like an utter fool?” Hermione asked, frowning as she tugged on the dreadful stockings.

“We're trying to make you look traditional, Hermione,” Parvati corrected airily. “But I won't say it isn't fun. Ten minutes to eight,” she added, checking her wristwatch, “off with you. Harry'll be waiting.”

“Wait! Before you go, don't forget to ask Loony Lovegood if you can borrow those earrings of hers!” Lavender positively shrieked with laughter. “What were they again? Kohlrabis?”

“Radishes,” Hermione said darkly, and - taking one final appraising glance of herself in the mirror - she strode out of the room with Lavender's laughter ringing in her ears.

* * * * *

HARRY

“For the hundredth time, Ron, I wish you could go too, but this is the way it has to be! Your sulking around isn't doing anyone any good!” Harry was standing in front of the mirror in the boys' dormitories, carefully straightening the collar and smoothing the cuffs of his dress robes. “How do I look? Passable?”

“Fine,” Ron said in a deadened sort of way. “I still don't see why you couldn't take Ginny instead.”

“Ginny's not in the Slug Club anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since Slughorn caught her cheating on a Truthfulness Tonic,” Harry replied. “What time is it?”

“Nearly eight.”

“Best be off then, unless fashionably late would be better?”

“Nah, better go,” Ron said grudgingly. “It'll look suspicious if you arrive too late, and besides, you know Hermione's thoughts on punctuality.”

“Wouldn't it look equally suspicious if we're there too early? I suppose it's a no-win situation, isn't it?” He was babbling to fill the air and soothe his nerves, painfully aware of the fact that it wasn't just the prospect of trying to wheedle information out of Slughorn that was making him uneasy…

“It's certainly a no-win situation for me,” Ron said blandly. He flopped back on his bedspread and made a show of reading his Potions book to cover the awkward moment when Harry - having given his dress robes a final once-over - strode from the room to fetch his “date.”

* * * * *

“You look beautiful,” Harry said, as soon as he and Hermione had escaped the noisy Common room and Seamus and Dean's whoops and catcalls.

Hermione blushed slightly, which - in Harry's opinion - only served to make her look all the lovelier. “I doubt it,” she said disbelievingly. “These robes aren't mine, they're Ginny's, and they're a bit broad in the shoulder and patchy, but there weren't many choices, and the socks are—well—hideous—” Laughing, she lifted the hem of her dress so that Harry could see several inches of her green-and-purple-striped ankles.

He laughed as well and felt his anxiety dissipate. Merlin, it was good to laugh. “The socks are a little much -- I'll give you that! But still, you look lovely. I'm glad you're my date, if I can call you that.” He cricked an eyebrow at her, gauging her reaction. She smiled and permitted him to take her hand.

“Pity Ginny couldn't join us,” said Hermione suddenly, releasing his hand as swiftly as though she'd been burned.

“Yeah, er, Ron too,” he replied, not meaning it at all. “Here we are.” Harry opened the door for Hermione and they stepped into Slughorn's oversized office. Harry's immediate impression was that he had stepped into a jungle. Green baubles dangled from the ceiling and emerald tapestries covered every square inch of wall space. Slughorn, literally camouflaged in a heavily embroidered green velvet suit appeared out of nowhere, sipping a flute of mulled mead and spouting cigar smoke like some oversized smokestack.

“Ah, Miss Granger! And you've brought Mr. Potter along too, an admirable choice,” Slughorn clapped Harry on the back, slopping mulled mead down the front of his own smoking jacket and cummerbund. “Roderick's a nice fellow, of course, and I'm not eugenicist! No, far from it - but I always do like to see a nice young couple get together—”

“You'll have to excuse the décor, I'm afraid!” Slughorn added, smiling broadly at the befuddled expression on Harry's face. “One can't blame an old Slytherin for bandying his House colors about, no? Well, come, come, Harry! No need to hesitate! There are some old friends of mine you simply must meet!”

For the next half-an-hour, Slughorn dragged them from one cluster of famous guests to another. Harry met the presiding President of the All-English Gobstones team Roland Kegg, Muggle expert Blenheim Stalk, and a bright purple warlock called Derwent Shimpling, who - as Slughorn told them behind the poor man's back - had never recovered from a comedy stunt involving a Venomous Tentacula.

“Ah, Odil, my dear friend! The man of the hour! Or the other man of the hour, shall we say, Mr. Potter? For wherever the Chosen One goes, all the others fade from the spotlight!” Slughorn's pudgy elbow jabbed Harry hard in the ribs; Harry wasn't sure if he ought to smile or apologize to the man Slughorn was introducing them to.

“Odil is splendid, Harry, simply splendid,” Slughorn said ebulliently, once again ignorant of any discomfort he might have caused. “Odil, meet Harry Potter. Harry - Odil Oliphant!”

“How do you do?” Harry asked politely, preoccupied with the man's strange appearance; Odil Oliphant was a skeletally thin man dressed all in white who stood sipping champagne through pursed and painted lips.

The man bowed theatrically to Harry and made a great show of kissing Hermione's hand.

“Monsieur Oliphant is a mime,” Slughorn said, by way of explanation. “And it's probably a good thing he's not in a career where verbal discourse is a must, if I may be so blunt. He only understands French…may not even understand that. It only has to sound like French, to be honest. Comprende, Odil? Comprende?”

Odil nodded dreamily, twiddling his thumbs and watching Hermione with ill-disguised interest.

“See, doesn't know the difference, sill chap. Odil Oliphant is what Muggles call a `magician' besides. He escapes from locked trunks and whatnot - all without magic! Why, Oliphant could be a Squib for all I know, but he makes better use of his talents than any ordinary wizard! Ah, and there's Barnabas Cuffe! Editor of The Daily Prophet, wouldn't you know? You'll have to excuse me, Harry, Miss Granger. Pardon, Odil.”

Slughorn bustled away through the crowd to greet Cuffe and one of The Prophet photographers Harry recognized from the Weighing of the Wands ceremony three years previously.

“Well, that was awkward,” Hermione said with a laugh, though she was clearly unsettled by Slughorn's boisterousness and Oliphant's hungry gaze.

“And if we don't move, it's about to get a lot worse,” Harry replied, gesturing towards Slughorn, who was pointing eagerly at Harry and Hermione as he spook to Cuffe.

“Not in the mood for an exclusive interview?” Hermione asked with a smirk.

“You know, I don't think I am.” Harry shoot an apprehensive glance at the photographer - now setting up his tripod in the far corner of the room and watching Pansy Parkinson dancing with Blaise Zabini. “It couldn't hurt to dance a little,” he said awkwardly. “We could at least look like we're here for pleasure, not business.”

Hermione smiled her assent and grasped his hands. “It's already a great deal more pleasurable than the last Slug Club function, with McLaggen…”

“I still can't believe you did that,” Harry replied, battling amusement over her choice of a date.

“Ron had Lavender, I had McLaggen,” she said simply. “And besides, I'd like to think that my tastes have evolved.”

“Uh oh, he's coming this way,” Harry said, steering Hermione away from the prowling cameraman.

“Camera shy, Potter?”

Zacharias Smith was slouched against the wall, watching Harry and Hermione dance with great distaste.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked incredulously, for Smith, unlike Harry and Hermione, had neither fame nor brains to catch Slughorn's eye.

“Funny you should mention that, Potter,” Smith drawled, helping himself to a cherry syrup and soda from the buffet table and slurping it noisily before he answered. “Some things have `come to light' about my family lineage.”

“Oh? You've got a famous Quidditch-playing ogre for an uncle, then?”

“Founder's blood, Potter,” Smith corrected. “With Helga Hufflepuff's blood coursing through my veins, I don't need an unsightly scar on my forehead to join Slughorn's little club.”

“Ignore him,” Hermione said loftily, pivoting gracefully on the spot so that Harry's back was to Smith. Harry was about to say something about Smith the Supreme Git but as his eyes met hers, he quite forgot what he had wanted to say.

As the dancing portion of the evening began to wind down, the ensemble in the corner struck up a familiar tune, a shoddily-done cover for the Weird Sisters.

Dance your final dance,

This is your final chance,

To hold the one you love,

You know you've waited long enough -

Left, behind, left, spin - Hermione twirled under his arm, curly hair and black gown alike fanning out around her -

Mesmerized, he wasn't thinking properly. Whatever it was intoxicated him more thoroughly than any wine of fine spirits. He was as a drunkard, acting out the motions of normalcy while the room spun around him.

Right, behind, right, whisk -

Weave to the left, whisk to the right -

So believe that magic works,

Don't be afraid, I'll be in hurt,

Don't let this magic die,

The answer's there - just look in her eyes—

And then it struck him.

He liked - he loved - for this was love if anything was - Hermione. How hadn't he seen it before? He wondered vaguely how long it had been there, waiting to be discovered.

And make, your final move,
Don't be scared; she wants you to,
Yeah, it's hard, you must be brave
Don't let this moment slip away

Ball-heel, ball-toe -

Presently, he was forced to consider whether there had been anything “wrong” with Ginny and Cho at all. Was it simply the fact that they weren't Hermione? It was a damnable conclusion to reach, for the last time he'd checked Hermione Granger was very much attached to one Ronald Weasley…or was she? It was hard to say these days. They'd barely spoken a word to each other since the birthday debacle the previous week…

As though through a haze, he saw her watching him, smiling, eyes sparkling. He forced himself to look away. Hermione is Hermione, he reminded himself. Hermione is your best friend. Nothing more. It wasn't working. As far as matters of the heart were concerned, Hermione was untouchable. There were the guys and there were girls - dateable ones - and there was Hermione, on a pedestal all her own and he couldn't—mustn't—upset that balance. Hermione is Ron's girl, the only thing Ron's ever had, really. You won't take that away from him. You won't.

So dance, your final dance,
`Cause this is, your final chance—

All too quickly, the dance was over, the five-piece orchestra was disbanding: slipping violins and violas back into their cases, lugging away the overlarge cello with strings plated in pure gold.

“Harry?”

She was smiling at him in an odd sort of way, as though she'd been reading his thoughts. “Shall we sit for awhile?” Hermione gestured towards three rows of green chintz armchairs, all facing a small lit stage.

“Ron would get quite a kick out of this,” Hermione observed, as they watched Oliphant undo a series of sturdy locks without magic.

Ron. The cincher. One of the two people Harry had blissfully blanked from his mind for the past hour-and-a-half. All of a sudden, he felt embarrassed, color creeping into his cheeks. He tried to focus on Odil Oliphant (now freeing himself from a magical “jail” with theatrical flair), but the frequent eruptions of laughter from his fellow partygoers kept distracting him. And she was much too close, much too distracting. Hermione turned around in her seat to watch Slughorn pour himself another foaming tankard of mead as he bade farewell to Barnabas Cuffe and the photographer.

“This is our chance,” Hermione whispered urgently and Harry turned towards her blindly, wondering stupidly if she was thinking what he was thinking.

She wasn't.

She nodded at Slughorn and seized Harry's hand, guiding him through the throngs of dewy-eyed revelers to the place where Slughorn stood.

“Professor?”

“Oho, Harry Potter and Miss Granger! Not leaving, I hope?” He was clearly drunk.We might get lucky after all, Harry thought smugly, as he watched Slughorn drain the rest of his mead.

“No, not yet, sir. Hermione and I just wanted to commend you on cobbling together such an enjoyable event.” Flattery. Careful flattery, he told himself.

“You're quite welcome, Harry. It's been my pleasure.” He patted his plump stomach and belched loudly. “Dear me, perhaps I've had a bit too much to drink tonight.” He winked at Harry and Hermione.

“Professor, there's just one more thing that would make this occasion all the more worthwhile for Hermione and I…” Harry pointedly locked his green eyes with Slughorn's pouchy gray ones.

“So like Lily, you are.” Slughorn murmured distractedly, unable to look away from Harry's blazing green eyes. “For you and Miss Granger, anything.”

“It's nothing much,” Harry said, carefully weighing each syllable. “We were wondering if you could tell us anything about Regulus Black?”

Slughorn tittered nervously. “Regulus Black? Yes, yes, of course…had him in my House, not his brother though. Like I said last year, I'd have liked to have had the set.” He began rummaging through the stores of liquor, rattling the bottles together with unnecessary gusto.

“Is that all, Professor?” Harry asked politely.

Slughorn dabbed his sweating forehead with the sleeve of his smoking jacket. He gulped and nodded. “Must have drunk a bit too much tonight—”

“Well, if you can't say anything else about Regulus Black, perhaps you can tell us something about this.” Harry reached into the pocket of his dress robes and pulled out the locket. He swung it before Slughorn's eyes, and the older man watched its course, mesmerized.

“Professor?” Hermione ventured.

Slughorn turned away abruptly. “No! Nothing!”

”Professor, please,” Harry said, trying to scale down the conversation. He was losing control. Look into my eyes, Lily's eyes. “How did you--”

“I know nothing!”

“We know you were involved, Professor--”

“It is destroyed - isn't that good enough?!”

“We need more information, sir.”

“TIME FOR BED! OFF YOU GO!” he shouted over Harry and Hermione's heads to the dancing and dozing students.

“But Professor!”

“NO MORE!” Slughorn shunted Harry and Hermione out the door. “OUT! OUT!”

“Well, that was a pleasant little chat,” Hermione said conversationally, as a stream of students sprinted from the room.

Harry slumped against the wall; he was sorely tempted to reenter, pin Slughorn to the floor and pour a vial of Veritaserum down his throat. “Why won't he tell us? What can it hurt now? Voldemort's back in the open - anyone who knew Dumbledore or knows me is a target anyway!”

“Don't say that.”

“Why not? It's the truth, isn't it?”

Hermione bit her lip. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many condolences she longed to offer. “Nothing too bad has happened to us yet… I mean, Ginny was taken down into the Chamber of Secrets…and Ron almost got poisoned - kudos to you, by the way, saving his life…”

“And Ron's dad was attacked by a giant venomous snake…and you…that Death Eater Dolohov tried to kill you!”

“Nearly succeeded, too,” Hermione admitted.

“See what happens to the people I love?” Harry demanded. He gave Slughorn's now-closed office door a final sharp kick and, when that elicited no response, he and Hermione set off for the distant Gryffindor Common room in silence.

* * * * *

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