Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Nothing worth suing about. Put down the pen, nice and slow.
Leaving Privet Drive
Chapter 3 of 3
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They'd set out from the Weasley's that evening shortly before midnight and floo-ed to Mrs. Figg's house; Mr. Weasley, Bill, Tonks, Ron and Harry. The plan was simply to retrieve his stuff. The adults had allowed Harry along to make sure they got all of it since he'd steadily maintained he was never going back, and Ron because he said Harry wasn't going anywhere near those vicious snot bags without him along as well. Mrs. Weasley had used an ear tweaking charm on him and told him to watch his language, but uttered not another word against his going after that. Harry was grateful for his company. He got the feeling that they were all behind him this time and their solidarity had helped convince Dumbledore that further argument was useless. Tonks had tried to go during the day disguised as an utterly normal looking muggle (less of a stretch than usual thanks to her currently muted appearance) but Petunia had apparently taken on a suspicious look once his name had passed her lips and announced Harry Potter no longed lived there and she might try one of the local prisons, Wandsworth, perhaps.
The irony wasn't lost on Tonks, and she'd insisted on joining them as well.
Mrs. Figg greeted them cheerfully and gave Harry a rather enormous and deeply embarrassing hug that hurt like nobody's business afterward. Thankfully she seemed to take his eyes watering with the pain in his side for emotion.
"Not that I haven't enjoyed it, dear, not a bad home for the kitties all these years, but I'll be glad to be off now. They were awful to you, those people, and I never liked to watch it. It was wretched; always making sure you never really enjoyed yourself here, knowing they wouldn't send you back if you did. I wouldn't have done it for anyone but Dumbledore and I'm won't be sad to see the back of them. Off to the country we are, nice little cottage with a field full of mousies next to it. Mr. Tibbles'll be in his element, and all his lady friends with him."
He managed to choke out something about being very happy for all of them, by now feeling if not remotely close to tears at least fairly bad that she'd lived for almost fifteen years in a neighborhood she'd never actually liked just to watch over him. It was an awful thought. He remembered how utterly floored he'd been to learn she was a squib and a plant of Dumbledore's after he'd saved Dudley from the Dementors the summer before.
He'd thought they'd be right off then, but they hung around Mrs. Figg's kitchen, seemingly waiting for someone or something.
"What're we waiting for?" Harry whispered to Bill.
"Lupin," Bill said back in quite a normal voice, his eyes on Tonks. "He wants to help out, same as the rest of us. He's hated having to get you out of there before himself; it'll be nice for him to see you shut of them."
Tonks brightened before Harry's eyes. Visibly. Her expression remained the same, perhaps even a shade quieter, but everything else seemed almost to shimmer. Her skin glowed; her hair took on the most interesting highlights.
"Oh hell," she said after a moment, noticing them staring at her, even Mrs. Figg. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"
Bill nodded, grinning. If Harry wasn't imagining things, Ron's dad just blushed.
"That's right, lets all play tease the Metamorphmagus," she said, and sighed gustily.
"He really is coming, any minute now," Bill told her. "And you should just tell him…"
"I have! He knows! He just has to get over the stupid idea that he's bad for me and being a werewolf is like the curse of death for his friends. I know he's lost so many, but it wasn't like it was his fault.."
Tonks was talking about Lupin. Tonks liked Lupin. Rather more than liked Lupin, obviously. Where the hell had Harry been once again? Why was he suddenly noticing this all this stuff? Sirius had fallen through the veil and taken life as Harry knew it with him; nothing was familiar anymore, even his friends.
He glanced sideways at Ron, who met his gaze with a shrug.
There was a clatter from the hearth in the next room, and Lupin himself appeared in the doorway with his familiar, ragged smile. Tonks gleamed at him, and the smile grew ever so slightly, and deepened.
"Well, Harry," he said, "ready to leave home for good, are you?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
They moved quietly across the dark pavements to #4, familiar and foreboding both to Harry. It had been a constant in his life; a constant pain in his arse and elsewhere, but a constant none the less. To understand he was leaving it forever both thrilled and frightened him a bit. He had a sense of snowballing change, carrying him too fast toward a fate he didn't yet understand how to meet.
A whispered Alohamora from Remus took care of Vernon's costly and elaborate locks. They entered, closing the door after them once inside.
'My trunk should be under the stairs," Harry told them softly. "There are just a few text books and Hedwig's cage up there." He pointed to the floor above.
Bill unlocked the cupboard door and Ron scooted ahead of Harry to help him lever the trunk free. "Not you, mate," he whispered. "Take it easy this time, yeah?"
And so he watched his best friend, unable to fit through the door, drop to his knees to guide the corner of his school trunk through to the hall. From that angle he could see Ron's eyes taking in the whole of his earliest memories. It had not been an unhappy room for Harry; only the notion that he was different and his relatives felt the need to hide him had bothered him at first; the space itself had seemed cozy, private and secure to a young boy. He might not have liked the sound of the latch, but it shut the others out when it shut him in, and then he was safe. It was only as he grew older it truly became a prison.
He realized suddenly just how accepting a child he had been. All of his instincts had been to get along, get by, cause the least fuss, draw the least attention.
Was he naturally that passive? Or had Dumbledore somehow charmed him as an infant to withstand it all, and it was the charm that was somehow breaking down inside him now? Because something inside him was surely going to pieces.
Once the trunk was removed the little cupboard was almost empty; all that remained was the lumpy mattress that had served for his bed those years ago, his one holey blanket still neatly folded at the foot. Suddenly Harry couldn't bear the evidence of it; he wanted the cupboard to be nothing but a cupboard again, reveal no clue it was ever anything else. He turned to Bill. "Can I borrow your wand?" he whispered. "So they don't know it's me? Just for a moment. One spell."
"Have at it," Bill told him softly, handing it over.
"Evanesco."
The blanket and mattress disappeared, leaving nothing but a faint cloud of dust to settle on the almost empty floor. Almost empty, because one small object remained.
It was a child's bedraggled stuffed dragon with disintegrating velvet wings, flattened somewhat by the weight of the mattress upon it for some thirteen years and no more than 15 centimeters from tip to tail.
Ron picked it up gingerly and blew on it, raising a plume of dust like smoke from its nose.
"Forgot something, mate," he said.
"I never had a toy," Harry heard himself respond, but something in him recognized that dragon. Preverbal flashes of memory assaulted him, jumbled images that included bits of it; the snout against his pillow, stuffing the tail between the bars of his cot. He could remember just how the wing felt between his fingers, soft and thick and… chewy.
He saw Dudley, a terrorizing toddler Dudley, yank it from his grasp, heard or imagined his own howl that surely must have followed. What came after was unclear, not an actual memory so much as something pieced together from remembered emotions. Harry knew Petunia would have defended Dudley's right to take it from him, could imagine her response.
Stop that noise this instant, you nasty little boy. Diddy doesn't want that filthy thing, do you Diddy? Diddy's got lots of lovely soft toys. Look, lovey, here's your hippo. We'll just put that horrid thing away until you stop that crying. Did you hear me? Stop it at once!
It wasn't real, he knew it wasn't, but his mind could fill in the blanks all too easily. What was real was the blurry vision of Petunia slamming the cupboard door, only this time he was on the outside, beating his small hands on the door to get it, to get in. It hadn't been his room yet, and Vernon had probably thumped the mattress down on top of the dragon later without ever noticing it when they'd moved him in there after he outgrew his cot.
He'd never known it was there. Time had passed and with its comfort beyond his ability to reach he had given up and forgotten it entirely. He reached for it now and took it from Ron's hand, examining it more closely. It had been handmade; imperfect, quirky and clearly a work of love, its happy expression having nothing to do with a real dragon's fierceness and everything to do with coaxing a smile from the one it had been made for. Him.
"Thanks," he told Ron. "Forgotten all about her." Because it had been a she to him, he knew it had. She had even had a name but it was just beyond his grasp, lost in the depths of his own mind, and there was no one left to remind him. He stuffed her into the back pocket of his jeans as if she was no more than a mislaid pair of socks, but inside of him whatever was cracking stilled.
He turned to hand the wand back to Bill to find his Uncle, glowering, at the foot of the stairs. Tonks and Lupin's wands were already out and leveled at his chest.
"What is the meaning of this?" Vernon ground out furiously. His eyes had the same slightly manic, pushed-too-far glaze they'd had the night Harry left and the reminder was unpleasant to say the least. The pair of short, curved goatish horns still sprouting from either side of his head probably accounted for at least some of it. Bill was good. He bet none of them had left the house since he had.
"We've come to get my stuff," Harry told him, careful to meet his piggy little eyes head on. "I'm leaving."
"And not a moment too soon! How dare you sneak in here in the middle of the night, allow these freak friends of yours in our house…"
"Here, now," started Mr. Weasley equally furiously, and it was the first time Harry had seen a flash of temper to truly match his wife's in mild Arthur Weasley. "Don't you speak to him like that. You're bloody lucky he's not pressing charges. He could still, you know. That's assault with batteries and child, er, misuse at the very least. We know how your laws work even if you haven't got a clue about ours!"
"Watch your tongue," Remus added in a low growl. "And don't make a single move anywhere near the boy."
"We tried to come in the middle of the day; and in your sort of kit too. But your wife told us to check the prisons for him. It's you that ought to be in prison, beating a child not allowed to defend himself…" Tonks spat at him.
"He's not a child! He's not even human! He's a bloody freak and a nuisance, he's been an imposition on us for too many years now…"
"So sorry about the imposition of cooking your food and scrubbing your floors all those years, Uncle Vernon. How rude of me. And mowing your lawn, trimming your hedges, cleaning out your bloody gutters. How ever did you stand it?" Harry asked him grimly. "Best of luck getting that ruddy great whale you call a son to do it now."
"You shut up! We kept you safe from that Lord Voldythingy. Petunia explained it to me after the dementoids. Without us you'd be dead by now, not like that would be any great loss to anyone!" Vernon shouted, and Petunia and Dudley appeared around the corner at the top of the stairs as his voice raised dangerously close to neighbor-alerting levels, huddled together.
"You keep saying it as though it's just me he wants," Harry shouted back, unable to stop himself any longer. He felt Ron's hand land on his shoulder, but it was steadying rather than stopping him, and he raged on. "He only wants to kill me because I'm supposed to be able to kill him too. He wants to kill you just because you exist. And you think you protected me?"
Harry laughed, though it felt more like choking. "That blood bond protected you too. You broke it yourself when you attacked me, and now you're the one who's helpless. Voldemort may come after me, but at least I stand a chance against him. He can come after you any time he wants once I walk out that door and what will you do? Yell at him? Go ahead. Try hitting him. There's no underage magic laws at work on him, he'll point his "thingie" at you and you'll be dead before you take the second step. So how does it feel to be the helpless one for a change, Uncle Vernon? How does it feel to be hated just for being what you are?"
Vernon's face slowly drained of color and his eyes rose to the top of the stairs. "Is that right, Petunia? If the boy leaves, is it… are we… can that …"
"I don't know," she sobbed. "I don't understand it, I never really have. Dumbledore just said that it was something Lily did to protect him, I don't know how it works."
Bill leveled his wand at Harry's trunk and shrunk it to pocket size.
"Boys, go up and get anything Harry needs from the room upstairs. Quickly now," Mr. Weasley told them. Remus and Tonks kept their wands leveled on Vernon as Harry and Ron went round him, probably quite needlessly as he was now pale as a ghost and trembling. Petunia and Dudley drew back fearfully as they passed.
Harry found his textbooks and completed essays had been destroyed, the pages ripped out and shredded around the room like feathers, the covers partially burned in the metal rubbish bin. Dudley, most likely. His few things were all broken, ripped or smashed beyond repair, including Hedwig's cage. Even his parents' picture, Dudley's own Aunt, for all he never knew her. Nothing was left worth taking; he turned to see Ron's stunned expression, surveying the damage, and shook his head. Harry picked up the pieces of his parents' ruined photograph and they turned without a word to head back downstairs.
As they passed his Aunt and cousin to descend the stairs again, Petunia reached out and grasped Harry's wrist, her bony fingers surprisingly strong.
"Don't do this, Harry. She wouldn't have wanted it, your mother. It won't happen again."
Harry tried to pull free of her but she clung tightly.
"How do you know she wouldn't?" he said angrily. "I don't reckon she would have wanted you to take me in and then treat me like you did, either. And who's going to stop him? You never lifted a finger to before."
He shook his arm again but failed to displace her grip and it was starting to hurt, his fingers numbing from the raw terror of her grasp. "You knew," he accused her. "Vernon didn't understand but you knew all along. You knew about Dementors and Azkaban and Sirius being my godfather and you never said a word to me. You never gave me a single good word about your own sister to hold on to, never even told me the truth about the way my parents died. You pretended nothing was ever going to happen and I didn't need to know. Well, just keep pretending. Maybe you'll be fine."
Ron raised his wand at her and growled "get off him, then" in a voice unlike Harry any had ever heard him use before.
Dudley flailed at the close proximity of the wand and shoved Ron away, hard. He stumbled into Harry, the force of it prizing his arm from his Aunt's desperate hold. Harry managed to hang on to him and they caught each other precariously at the top step. He grabbed hold of Ron's wand hand, pushing it down and muttering urgently 'it's not worth it, Ron; you don't want to end up expelled over him," but Bill had already loosed a spell from the bottom of the stairs. Dudley was briefly bathed in a warm orange glow.
"What was that?" Petunia shrieked, and Dudley began to circle around himself like a dog chasing its own tail. "Mummy! Mummy! What did they do to me this time?"
"What was that, Bill?" asked Ron interestedly as they carefully descended the stairs, skirting Vernon once more.
"D'nno," said Bill with a grin and loud enough so Dudley could hear him. "Something the Egyptians used to use on cat mummies. I memorized it one summer while we trying to break the curse on a necklace for Gringotts; I spent the whole day cleaning sand out of the hieroglyphs for it in the tomb. I sort of memorized it by accident. Could be anything, really."
Harry reckoned he was pulling Dudley's leg, but with Bill you never knew, and who cared? With any luck Dudley would spend the rest of his life trying to research what it was to get it lifted. How perfect.
"We'll be leaving now," Remus said, locking eyes with Harry, who nodded.
"You can't!" Vernon said, trembling with apparent rage; only now with his friends securely around him and knowing he wasn't returning Harry could see it more clearly for the frightened bluster it had always been.
"Watch me," he said, and walked to the front door and opened it. Ron and his Dad followed and passed through without a backward glance as Harry held it open. Bill grinned and waved his goodbye. Tonks and Lupin remained with their wands leveled, taking no chances, and indicated he should go before them.
"The words you want to worry about," Harry told his Uncle seriously, "Are Avada and Kedavra. If you hear the first one duck and say your prayers to whoever might still listen to you, because by the time you hear the second one, you're dead. It's only ever not worked once, and you don't want one of these either," he said, lifting his fringe to reveal the scar. "Remember that then. It's my payment for what you think I owe you. Oh, and you might want to move or something. Don't worry about a forwarding address. It was… well it hasn't really been nice, has it? So I guess it's just goodbye."
"You'll be back," Vernon told his departing back. "You mark my words; you'll be begging to sleep in that cupboard when your lot see you're nothing but a boy with a scar. Where will you be then? You can all wipe each other out with your bloody war for all we care."
"You'll know if we have," said Lupin, holding the door for Tonks. "When there's no more magic left in this world, even your kind will know. Good evening."
They proceeded in silence up the darkened road toward Mrs. Figg's floo. Harry halfway expected something huge and dynamic to happen; for number 4 to explode in flames or shimmer out of existence or be over run by Death Eaters. It remained dark and prim, perfectly respectable, irreproachable, really.
The neighbors would never know.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Harry woke the next morning in Ron's room again, but the two awakenings could not have been more different. He was still stiff but the pain had dulled considerably and he was no longer disorientated at all. His first thought was that he would never again make Vernon and Dudley Dursley breakfast. His second was that it was his birthday, and that first thought just might have been his best present ever.
They had reported to Dumbledore by way of the fire when they returned last night and he had counseled Harry to tell no one of the change and think of it as simply visiting his friends before returning to school just a little earlier than planned. "For all they have wronged you," the Headmaster had told him, "They are defenseless now. It will not take long, I think, for fate to catch them up if they do not acknowledge that all they refused to believe in is true. You know how deep your connection to Riddle runs. Don't give him reason to believe anything has changed and the time you buy them may mean their lives."
Dumbledore had refused to discuss what might happen next summer with him, and Harry reckoned his reasoning was two-fold. If the option for the following year was pleasant and he looked forward to it, there was every reason to believe Voldemort would pick up on it, and even if he didn't, there was also always the chance Harry wouldn't survive long enough to need a shelter next summer, pleasant or not.
Still, for the moment at least he was finally sixteen, not of age yet as a wizard, but, after a fashion, free. It was with considerably more optimism that Harry dragged himself from his bed and went to face the Weasley's picky mirror. He wondered if reminding it that today was his birthday would buy him any slack.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The weeks before school passed in a completely different sort of blur for Harry.
The busy comings and goings of the Burrow helped keep his mind distracted from the events that had so haunted him alone at Privet Drive. There wasn't a night Harry didn't lie down to feel the empty place in his heart that the comforting presence of Sirius in the world had once filled, but during the day time he could mostly keep the thought at bay. It was healing as well to be with Ron and Hermione and Luna, and even Ginny; to be able to see and hear and feel their recovered health and well-being after all that had befallen them at the Department of Mysteries. It eased his conscience a bit. He'd made a mistake he hoped he'd never make again, and their very continued presence around him was a constant reminder.
He still suffered nightmares, both his own and others that reminded him that Voldemort knew he could reach Harry despite his best efforts at the mystery that was Occlumency. He couldn't quite grasp what Snape had been trying to teach him even though he continued to practice on his own, and he feared his abruptly severed lessons might leave him a failure at that particular magical skill forever. He often found himself wondering if that wasn't in fact Snape's actual intent.
Still, it was far easier to wake up to Ron's weary shaking (he'd taken to putting silencing charms on himself each night, but his thrashing around still sometimes woke his friend in the tiny room) or, one particularly memorable afternoon when he'd fallen asleep and dreamed outside in the Weasley's magical hammock (no trees required!) to Hermione's anxious eyes.
The dream cruciatus he'd been sweating out in a net at Voldemort's feet had almost seemed worth it to be awakened by her attempts to soothe him. He'd realized the hammock had been the net in his dream as soon as she'd tried to help him extricate himself from it; her helpfulness had landed him flat on his back on the ground below with one trainer still tangled thought the mesh above him.
The anxious, self-reproachful look that came over her face as he thumped abruptly to the ground had been enough to push him over the edge into laughter. Laughing turned out to be a really useful emotional escape valve, because he'd surprised himself with the rawness of his urge to pull her down on top of him and snog her senseless once he landed. Hermione! To his greatly mixed delight and dismay she'd flopped down beside him and given in to laughter of her own.
What was happening to him? Why was he suddenly so aware of her when nothing had really…. Well, come to think of it, everything had changed, hadn't it? He thought back to his revelatory image of her in the shade the day Ginny had been teasing him. Was he having some kind of usual sixteen year old hormonal flare and all would go back to normal if he ignored it, or did he really have feelings beyond friendship for one of his best friends? He'd always talked to Hermione about the weird things that happened to him; it felt strange not to be able to go to her now.
They lay peacefully in companionable silence after their laughter gave way, sunk in the too-tall grass and watching clouds drift lazily across the summer sky. Harry's trainer was still stuck in the hammock above, but it wasn't twisted or anything and he left it there, swinging gently. The Dursley's would have been outraged by the condition of the Weasley's yard, but Harry was very comfortable with it. He doubted witches and wizards were any different from muggles, really. There must be good and bad ones, neat ones and sloppy ones, uptight and laid back types. Lacking family he had no idea what he might have been, but growing up Dursley seemed to have pushed him firmly toward the Weasley end of things. He wondered what his own nature really was.
He could hear the faint chatter of gnomes from somewhere behind them and Crookshanks stalked stealthily past, whiskers twitching. No matter how the rest of them fared, Crookshanks was having a brilliant summer.
"All prepared for start of term then?" he asked. It seemed best at the moment to stay on familiar ground where he could trust his own behavior. "You seem to have finished most of the books by now."
"I'm not entirely happy with my conclusion for Professor McGonagall's transfiguration essay, the one on using liquids to simulate solid objects. Did you go with texture or displacement as your primary focus?" she responded.
He let his head flop sideways and grinned sheepishly.
"Please tell me you've at least started it…"
"I did start it. I read the assignment and I even tried it out. I can do the tea to a book one, but the pages were all stuck together. Water is even trickier though; I keep forgetting you need to do something about the glass as well."
"Well, that's something I suppose," she grumbled. "Ron hasn't even started his."
"It's harder to get motivated here, there's always something interesting to do. I did mine back at the Dursley's," he admitted. "That was one of the few to survive Dudley."
"That might have been the only good thing about them, then."
He snorted at that, feeling too content and lazy to dispute her. There was nothing good about them; he'd had to sneak the books up there to avoid having to do a summers worth of homework on the train ride back to school. It'd be such a shame not to have time for his biennial bout of train wide insults with Malfoy.
"This is nice," Hermione said suddenly, "just you and me for a change. I love the Weasley's too, but sometimes there's so much going on at once I just can't take it all in. It's exhausting. I think it comes from being an only child. Do you ever feel that?" Her serious brown eyes were watching him, waiting for his answer. He wondered when her eyelashes had multiplied and grown so long.
"Sometimes. I don't mind it, really, it's nice compared to what I knew, but I can see where it would get on anyone's nerves eventually. It's good that they've got all this space outdoors to get away from each other when they need a break."
Hermione rolled over onto her stomach, supporting herself on her elbows so that she was looking down on him. "What are you going to do this year, Harry? Now that everyone knows he's back? Has Dumbledore said anything? Is there a plan?"
Dumbledore in truth had said little about any plans for Harry. He did know that he was being pulled from the regular DADA class for extra instruction in wand work and "self defense" but other than that no one had mentioned anything to him.
"Not that I know of anyway, but then I never get to know anything. That's the worst part. I'd feel better if I had any idea of what was coming next, even if there wasn't really anything I could do to stop it happening."
Hermione nodded sympathetically; Harry could see she had thought of the issue before herself. Just knowing that she and Ron were thinking the same thoughts and wondering the same questions even though in theory it was not their fate to have to do so warmed Harry; he felt so much less alone.
Looking up at her caused her hair to take on a nimbus effect, a halo lit by the sun dancing through the leaves behind her. He closed his eyes against the brightness and wished almost to the point of aching that she would touch him now the way Ginny had, that she would suddenly see him the way he had begun to see her.
"Mum says dinner's ready," came a voice from behind his head, and Harry stiffened, recognizing Ginny, as if by merely thinking of her he had called her into being.
He sat up to attempt to extricate his foot but the position pulled on the sore spot he'd never gotten around to doing anything about and the sudden, sharp bite of it in his side made spots dance before his eyes. He fell back and closed his them, mumbling his thanks for the summons. "Be there in a minute."
He heard Ginny make a stifled sound that could have been anything from a sob to a snicker and then head back toward the house. He felt Hermione's fingers working around his ankle and his foot fell free of the hammock.
"Thanks," he told her.
"Harry, are you sure you're alright? You haven't seemed quite yourself… I mean, I know you don't get over being attacked in a day or anything, that's the problem with magic, isn't it? We can make things look all better, but there isn't always a spell to clean up the rest."
He opened his eyes again to find hers fixed unblinkingly on him, puzzling him out. "I'd say it was missing Sirius, but much as that hurts it shouldn't be making you actually flinch," she said thoughtfully.
Much as it could be a pain, having someone know you that well was a reassurance also. Harry'd seen how Mrs. Weasley knew each of her sons for all their differences; none of them could truly sneak a thing past her for long despite the different ways they went about trying to do so.
It was a comfort somehow. Having another person being so attuned to you made you real. It proved you existed, grounded and anchored you when you might have drifted off into any kind of self-deception, unnoticed. He'd always known on some sort of level within himself that he liked being bossed about by Hermione because he needed it; he had greater patience with it than Ron because no one else had ever bothered about him enough to do it for him. For the first time he saw it less as being picked apart or told what to do as… loved. You had to care about someone to invest that much of yourself in their inner workings. Much as he cared for Ron, his voice had never spoke up for Harry's conscience. They were friends and they lived and let live comfortably within those boundaries.
If Hermione loved him that way, was it even possible for her to think of him in the other way he'd begun to hope she might? Could she still see him as someone touchable? Snogable? Or did that mean she only felt responsible for him? Why was it such a mine field suddenly?
"I'm okay," he told her, although part of him wanted to show her the place that hurt and ask for her help. The other part was desperately afraid that it would be just one more thing to pity him over, and all of a sudden he wanted so more from her than that. "Really."
"Good," she after a moment, her face unreadable. And then she abruptly threw herself at him in the kind of hug she hadn't employed since third year, fierce, bone-bending and unmistakably Hermione. It was too sudden to tense himself against the assault of it, but as her weight came against him he felt instead of the expected pain a quicker stab and shift, as if something nagging and out of place had moved back where it belonged. He could still feel it, but it was the duller ache of something that would heal instead.
"Please don't let us change," Hermione said stormily into his neck. "I always want to be your friend, whatever it brings."
"You've got it," he told her, letting himself draw her close. She felt wonderful, warm and sweet with the smell of grass in her hair, and he was lost. Even if she never felt any more for him than that, he knew with certainty he was lucky with what he had. "You always will be. No matter what."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
There was, as far as Harry could tell, no overt sign of increased activity on Voldemort's part. From what he could glean from an occasional comment between Mr. and Mrs. Weasley or Bill when he came by the members of the Order were busy with pre-emptive moves; closing ranks and circling the thestrals, so to speak.
Because of the general busyness of the adults and the chafing assessment that increased risk making it impossible to go without them, the trip to Diagon Alley for school supplies finally took place the day before they were set to leave for Kings Cross. "About bloody time," Ron said when they were informed the night before. "We could have easily gone ourselves, but no…"
Mrs. Weasley herded them into the floo for the twins shop bright and early after breakfast and sent them stumbling out into the sunshine of Diagon Alley, blinking, almost as soon as they got there.
"Go on, go on!" She urged them before her, "You'll have plenty of time to visit with the twins and play with that nonsense once you've got your books and things."
"Doesn't like to think that Fred and George left before NEWTs for a joke shop," Ron explained as they walked ahead. "They've done well though. Won't tell anyone where the money to get it all started came from, but they must have more than paid it back by now, whoever it was. Likely Bill, I expect."
"Good investment for him," Harry agreed, mentally tallying his own list for the day to keep from grinning.
The trip was made to Gringotts for funds, but took twice as long as usual with the new security measures in place. They were checked and double checked for polyjuice and the presence of an imperius curse before they could ride down to the vaults. Back out on the streets and ready to shop the changed spirit of the Alley struck them once more; people hurried from shop to shop glancing worriedly around them as they went and window shoppers were few and far between. Many shop owners only unlocked their doors if you rang the bell first and a few had security measures almost as strict as Gringotts.
"Well that's taken the fun right out of it," grumbled Ron, and Harry had to agree. He felt he was getting particular scrutiny and the response was mixed. A few people shook his hand and assured him they'd always believed him, several others moved away from him as if he'd caught some visibly contagious disease.
They worked their way steadily down through their lists, and this years' traditional sighting of the Malfoys took place at Flourish and Blotts once more, thankfully without Gilderoy Lockhart looking on this time. Malfoy Sr. secured at least for the moment in Azkaban, it was Narcissa who was buying Draco his books; although as Ron pointed out, from the back it was sort of hard to tell the difference.
Harry had laughed at that, and Draco spun around, glare already in place.
'Yuck,' thought Harry. 'He recognized me by my laugh. That's just not right.'
"Potter," Malfoy sneered.
"Malfoy," Harry acknowledged him. "Made your way down from the luggage rack I see."
He said it softly enough; Malfoy's Mum was nearby conversing earnestly with Pansy Parkinson's while Pansy sneaked a copy of Hideous Hexes: Show Them You Really Meant It under her Herbology text, her dark eyes glittering at Harry's when they caught him watching.
Great. Just what the world needed; Pansy, fully primed.
Malfoy had, to Harry's surprise, grown somewhat this summer as well. Or perhaps it was just the difference since having left him hexed spineless on the train at the end of term. What ever it was, he looked different somehow. His hair was longer though no less immaculate; still he seemed to be deliberately trying to hide behind the fall of it, a ridiculous notion because who else had hair like that? Harry would have sworn the scornful icy blue eyes were spooked and that Malfoy himself was just about ready to jump out of his own skin. Interesting.
Ron came up to get his back, and Draco's sneer deepened. "And if it isn't the Weasel."
"Mind your cauldron this time Ginny," Ron said, eyeing him distrustfully. Harry actually looked back to see what she was carrying. She had a pile of books in her hands and an expression that Harry had never seen before on her face. There was a trickle of fascinated fear there, but something else as well, something he'd seen in her eyes when she looked at him lately too. Double yuck. How could she possibly share expressions for him and Malfoy?
Hermione suddenly caught his eye from halfway up the stairs to the second floor and motioned to him to follow her. He wasn't sure if she had something to show him or she was just trying to keep him out of trouble, but he nodded and began to move away anyway.
"Still obeying the mudblood's every whim," Malfoy noted, but Harry only looked pointedly at Pansy, then Hermione and back at Draco, his message given in the international language of boys everywhere, wizard or muggle, and his meaning clear. Better mine then yours!
Draco lunged, but Harry was ready and swung round the banister onto the bottom step of the stairs, well clear but not fast enough to seem like he was running. Ron followed him apparently leisurely, but swinging well wide, his hand closed over the end of his wand protruding from his pocket. Draco took a grim interest in a stack of discounted Quidditch books near where they would have to return, as if they had been his only goal all along. Narcissa chattered nervously on to Pansy's mother, apparently unaware of it all. Mrs. Weasley was having a moment to herself in the amongst the memoirs.
Harry tracked Hermione to the third aisle from the end on the second floor, in the history section. Just the smell of the books there made him want to yawn, and he wondered what she wanted to show him. Ron seemed to agree.
"It's like just reading the names of the books makes me want to sleep," he observed. "How could all this stuff be so dead boring?"
"Dead boring to you, maybe," Hermione scolded him. "But this is… oh never mind. You wouldn't listen anyway. Try this instead." And she quietly pushed the stepstool at the end of the aisle back and crouched down to peel back the edge of the worn and dusty carpet beneath her feet.
There was a sizeable crack between two floor boards beneath the carpet. So sizeable Harry started to wonder about the structural integrity if the whole building. Still, i was probably all stuck together with magic somehow, so what was the big deal? He was at a loss what Hermione was showing him.
"What's directly under history?" she whispered.
"More history?" whispered Ron back with a grin. "They dig it all up, don't they?"
Harry tried to envision the layout of the lower floor and failed.
She pointed and motioned them to look. Taking a quick peek around to make sure no one was observing them they dropped to their knees and pressed their eyes to the floorboards.
The top of two heads came into view, black and blond. Draco had evidently left his post at the bottom of the stairs and was perusing the shelves, and Pansy was attempting to distract him.
Flourish and Blotts did not have a Dark Arts section; Harry wondered what Malfoy might be finding so fascinating on the shelves below. He was definitely looking for something; his fingers running nimbly along the spines and every so often taking out a book to thumb through it. Pansy prattled on as he did, mentioning the names of several other Slytherins in their year and the one ahead of them.
"Did you hear?" she said suddenly. "Adrian Pucey's died. He was on a… jaunt, with Flint and some older ones. Up in the mountains. It was unsuccessful."
"No," said Malfoy.
Though he showed no sign of particular interest Harry got the feeling he was listening intently.
"He tried to explain why," Pansy said with a shudder. "I heard his own brother finished him off after; he was beyond saving. A puddle."
"Idiot." Malfoy blanched visibly at the puddle part. Harry remembered his own brief experience under Voldemort's cruciatus, when he felt like his bones themselves were melting.
"Has even one of those been successful yet?" Malfoy asked, still intent on the shelves.
Pansy looked thoughtful. "I don't think so, or they would have stopped, wouldn't they. Good thing school's starting or it could have been you next, and Crabbe and Goyle with you."
"And you and Bulstrode, he's hardly a chauvinist when it comes to fodder for his doomed ideas," Malfoy sneered. "He's got other plans for me. He wants me at Hogwarts this year especially. I'm alright."
"Is that why you're suddenly browsing the Herbology section?" Pansy sneered back, stung. "Not content to be Snape's pet any more? What's Sprout know that could possibly get anyone anywhere?"
Harry glanced across the crack and saw Hermione's lip curl at that; it was such a Slytherin thing to say. Knowledge was useful only if it advanced one's options in the game.
"That's for me to know," Malfoy told her, "and you to find out. Now off you go. I need to make sure of what I'm looking for before we leave, can't find it at Hogwarts even in Snape's stuff. If this works there might not have to be anymore of those… jaunts, for any of us. Tell my Mum I'll meet her in Slug and Jiggers next if she's ready to go on."
"Alright," Pansy agreed reluctantly. "Find a good poison for Potter while you're at it. Something slow acting and painful with a built in muffling charm so we don't have to hear about it while it does him in. Oh and leave him unmarked; he might belong in grotty Gryffindor but he's come up rather nicely over the summer. He'd do a lovely open coffin." She kissed him then, a lingering open-mouthed affair out of sight of their parents. Harry saw Malfoy's eyes stray to the shelf in the middle of it.
Ron had pulled back from the floorboards at the kiss, repulsed, and cracked heads with Hermione with an audible thump and a hastily bit back 'bloody hell!' Harry stilled himself, afraid Malfoy'd look up but saw he was instead staring intently not at the shelf in front of him but the one just across the aisle. Ginny was there, replacing a book back on the shelf. She looked up and noticed Malfoy's eyes on her, and froze like a trapped rabbit. Just as Harry was about to pound down the stairs to defend her, teasing pest or not, she seemed to come to herself and finished shoving the book into its place before hurrying away.
Harry wasn't sure whether to be chuffed or disgusted by Pansy's comment; Ron was holding his head but trying desperately not to laugh. Hermione seemed thoroughly unamused.
"It's going to be an interesting year," she told them both.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The trip to King's Cross was its usual Weasley chaos; Harry and Hermione had both learned from previous years to get their things ready ahead of time and stay well out of the way. Even with just Ron and Ginny going this year there seemed to be twice as many left out items or last minute repairs. Bill and Tonks were to escort them along with Mrs. Weasley; Mr. Weasley was once more working overtime at the still defensive Ministry.
Bill had managed to borrow a car, so the trip itself was not bad at all and achieved in record time with only a single obliviation of a muggle police office. (Tonks seemed a bit put out about the paperwork involved; Bill just grinned widely and kept quiet.) There were quite a lot of very official looking wizards patrolling the parameters of the Hogwart's Express platform, and if the student boarding was as crowded and rowdy as always the parents on the platform seemed unusually subdued.
Mrs. Weasley fussed anxiously as they loaded their trunks and found their places. Hermione and Ron said their goodbyes and went ahead to the prefects carriage. Harry took a last look round the platform, remembering Sirius' gamboling across it the previous year. Mrs. Weasley's face suddenly softened as though she recognized what he saw, and he found himself enveloped in a tearful hug.
"You keep safe," she told him fiercely. "Be careful. Stay out of trouble. Listen to Dumbledore. Oh and Harry, enjoy yourself, dear. Do try."
A tall order if there ever was one. He hugged her tentatively back instead of just allowing it, and thanked her for his safe August haven, and then the train was moving and she was shouting instructions to Ginny. Harry moved on toward the back of the train searching for a friendly face.
It was like Diagon Alley all over again; he was hailed by some who claimed to have always believed him while others physically shrunk back as if his taint was catching. Some of the younger student's eyes grew wide when they saw him, and fingers pointed. He was enormously relieved to find an empty carriage at the end of the train and to hoist up his trunk and settle down in it. Luna arrived shortly thereafter and he helped her with her trunk; she gifted him with a vague smile and set to her magazine without another word. Neville showed up several moments later, still clutching Trevor with one hand and his cactus - far more of a familiar to Neville in Harry's eyes than Trevor had ever been - in the other. He too had grown over the summer, both taller and less hesitant, and Harry was certain that the events at the Department of Mysteries that he had found so devastating had been galvanizing instead for Neville.
Perhaps Neville was the one after all. Except now, with all that Harry had been through and all he knew, he would not wish that role on his worst enemy, little alone someone as decent and likable as Neville Longbottom. If Dumbledore told him he could walk away now and let Neville take over, would he?
The answer was no, and he knew it. Whether it was to avenge those loved and lost or simply a saving people thing about those he still had, he didn't know. Harry reckoned there was something inside him, something about the magic that had protected him from that first deadly spell that would not let him stop now.
He was ready for another year at Hogwarts.
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A/N: And that's that - the next chapter to this would be Chapter 1 of Here With Me. I think that stands alone without this, but I always said I'd get this up and now it is, updated and all. Hope you enjoyed it. ~Lindsay