Unofficial Portkey Archive

Wherein a plot is hatched, Harry and Dumbledore have a serious chat; Harry and Hermione have a light-hearted chat that turns serious; Hermione swots; the pair meet with Dumbledore in the Headmaster's private quarters; magical science is discussed; Hermione guesses Dumbledore's secrets; Harry gets a business update; Luna gets even; there's an incident during Quidditch practice, and Voldemort plots.

Thanks to betas Mark Gardiner, Shane, Mathiasgranger.

Disclaimer: I neither own nor claim any other rights in the characters and other concepts created by J.K. Rowling. I make no money, nor do I seek any commercial advantage from this work. As such it constitutes "fair use" as defined in 17 U.S.C. §107.

Chapter 55 - Lightspeed Times Itself

Ginny's session had gone rather well. She had successfully brewed Invigoration Draught, a Babbling Beverage, and even Lotsa Laughter Lotion, a rather ticklish concoction. But below the surface, tension remained. Draco had struck a nerve - drawing a reflexive reaction greater than even Ginny herself had suspected.

Had she really settled? If so, did she care? If she did care, what good would it do now that Harry was with the one girl at Hogwarts who, Ginny had to admit, was as extraordinary in her way as Harry was in his? If Ginny wanted a chance, would it be ethical? Did she even care about ethics?

That last question stopped Ginny cold almost as soon as she had returned to her dormitory after the prior session. But that was then; this was now. Her ethical concerns began fading as soon as her next tutoring session began.

As per usual, Draco boasted of his prowess at Potions, but Ginny had to admit that his skill did back up his braggadocio. By itself that was a problem - it caused Ginny's mind to wander … to wander down the dangerous path of powerful, advanced potions that might just change her life.

Still, it amounted to little more than a naughty daydream. Draco had stayed mute on that subject, and the session was drawing to a close. Realistically, only enough time remained for one more potion.

Ginny certainly would not be the first to broach such a painful and forbidden topic.

But last time…. Last time, Draco raised the subject at the tail end of the session, when it was too late to do anything about it.

Part of her wished for the Slytherin just to keep his big, sarcastic, overbearing mouth shut. Her enduring crush on Harry Potter was one sleeping dragon that did not need tickling.

But another part of her, which waxed as the session progressed, almost begged him to bring it up. Unless he did, Ginny had no idea what she might do about it.

Finally, temptation came a-calling on little blond-haired and grey-eyed feet … or some such.

"Anyway," Draco drawled, "we've only time to brew one more potion. I'll let you select."

She couldn't resist tickling that dragon. "I - I think - I think I'd like to brew a love potion," Ginny declared, mentally cursing her hesitancy.

Draco looked at her with all the casualness of a crocodile eyeing a herd of zebra. "A love potion? That's not even taught here - you don't need it for class. How about Felix Felicis? That often has the same result…."

Ginny cut him off. "I'm looking for love, not luck."

Draco gave her an odd look. Then, leaning in and leering at her, he asked. "So, Reds, I suppose you did think about what I said the last time … about the Great Git?"

"What's brewing a love potion got to do with that?" Ginny protested, but not vehemently.

"You certainly don't need it for that Mister Ordinary M. Normal you're seeing now," Draco scathingly assessed her current boyfriend.

Ginny retorted. "Neville's nice, and sweet, and reliable, and…."

"…and so bloody boring you could scream," Draco finished the thought for her. Suddenly, things were going better than he could have hoped.

Ginny took another tack. "Neville's safe. I don't have the papers dragging my name through the mud. I don't need to hide anything from him."

"Hah!" Draco snorted.

"Well it's true," Ginny squealed.

"That's a lie, and you know it," Draco called her out.

"No it's not. I can tell Neville anything," Ginny persisted.

"Except you don't - not that I'm tutoring you in Potions - nor that you still have the hots for bloody Potter," Draco ticked off.

"How would you know?" Ginny shot back.

"Think, will you?" Draco sneered down his nose. "Because neither your hotheaded buffoon of a brother, nor the uber-Gryffindor git of your dreams has come after me. Nor, for that matter, has Potter's Mudblooded harridan tried cursing you into the next century."

"I'd like to see her try," Ginny spat with a scowl.

"Don't make me laugh," Draco chuckled sardonically. "She smacked me but good once, and nearly hexed me in front of my own lawyer at the Ministry over the summer. If you don't think she's territorial about the Great Git, you're fooling yourself."

"I took you out, too, remember?" Ginny replied with her own chuckle. "I'm sure you haven't forgotten…. But who cares why I want it. Will you show me how?"

"Two answers," Draco answered, keeping the prize just out of her reach. "No, and Hell no. You can't do it. You're not that good yet - if ever. You can't even brew that rubbish that your brothers sell…."

"Their love potions work," Ginny objected strenuously. "I've seen the results."

"Yeah, and so has everybody else," Draco shook his head in disgust. "Their crap is as obvious as the day is long. Even the best Love Potions, like Amortentia, give themselves away with effects of one sort or another. Think about it. Suppose it worked, and Potter threw the Mudblood over for you. You can bet your bottom Galleon she'd investigate. And one thing nobody can deny, that bitch is damn clever. Hell, even if she let him go, the bloody press would be all over it. Once the Great Git found out he'd been love potioned, where would you be? And where would I be? Everybody knows you're not so hot at Potions. That's why you're here after all. They'd want my head on a platter, and I'm not chancing that."

"So you won't help me?" Ginny pouted as Draco finished his rant.

"I didn't say that," he danced back within range. "I told you before that seeing Potter sullying himself - and the Black fortune I should have had - with a Mudblood isn't what…. Well, I'd rather see him with a Pureblood like you. But I'm not taking any chances unless I know you have one."

Ginny scowled and drew herself up to her full 1.6 metre height. "Just what's that supposed to mean," she snarled.

"No knickers all in a twist, Reds, please," Draco snorted. "I don't want anything from you, so don't get your hopes up. It's just … a love potion doesn't work - at least not well - unless it has something to work with. Bottom line, he has to want you, and frankly I don't know that he does."

"Of course he wants me," Ginny snarled. "Hell, I could even make you want me if I gave a damn about that."

"Don't flatter yourself," Draco deflected her last jab, dancing out of range again. "I eat with these hands. You know bloody well he's shagging the Mudblood…."

She shot Draco a dirty look and tossed her ruddy locks haughtily to one side. "And how would you know that, oh all-knowing one?"

Draco glared back. "Hell, if even I know she applied for the Silver and Gold charm, as a Prefect you have to know. No way she'd do that for anybody but him."

Draco was right, and Ginny knew it. Her chest deflated; her eyes lowered; and she scuffed the floor with her foot. "So now what?"

Seeing Ginny wounded, Draco moved in for the kill. "Something much more basic - so basic even you can do it."

The light reignited in Ginny's eyes. "What?"

"Start with Lust Powder."

"Lust Powder?" Ginny questioningly echoed.

"That's what I said," Draco confirmed, "and something to tell if you're getting a rise out of the Great Git. If Lust Powder doesn't work as a primer, you might as well forget about Love Potion."

"What's this `something' you mentioned?" Ginny honed in, ignoring the rest.

Draco pulled a small, golden choker necklace from an inner pocket of his robes. "This little godsend has a charm that detects lust."

"And why do you just happen to have that?" Ginny asked, backing away. She already had more experience with Malfoy souvenirs than she ever wanted. She was the last person in the world to say, "Never look a gift Thestral in the mouth" - at least if the gift had a Malfoy origin.

"Been in the family for years," Draco responded shortly. "My father taught me the charm. It's how I know what girls I can get. Dead handy, that…."

Ginny snickered at the looks of it. "Why Draco, I never knew you had such a feminine side."

Draco responded with an unpleasant sneer. "This version was for you. It's Transfigurable into just about any type of jewelry I want, which is how it passed Filch and his stupid Security Sensors."

"So why don't you wear it for a while?" Ginny challenged.

Malfoy made a show of being surprised. "Umm … sure," he haltingly agreed, "but not looking like this. Now listen closely." Draco pointed his wand at the choker. "Think about what you want it to look like, and say, `Mutatis mutandi'." Whilst incanting, he slowly spiraled his wand around the entire choker. Its outlines grew hazy and it morphed into a heavy silver chain with a green serpentine pendant.

"There - that's more like it." Draco made a show of slipping that on inside his robes. He knew it could do nothing to him.

"So how does this Lust Powder work?" Ginny asked, finally convinced of Draco's bona fides.

"It's not that hard to make," Draco explained, "but for obvious reasons it's not in the Hogwarts curriculum, so we won't actually make it here." With a flourish, he pulled out a piece of parchment, pointed his wand at it, muttered something, and held it out to her. "Here's a list…."

"Why can't we make it here?" Ginny challenged.

"Read the ruddy list will you?" Draco shot back. "It's not particularly hard, but you need a swab of … well, let's just say you can't get it from your armpit…."

"Oh…." Ginny went both bright pink and silent.

"It's water soluble," Draco continued, rattling off facts of interest. "The optimal dose on a normal-sized wizard like the Git is about two grams. The powder starts working about fifteen seconds after ingestion, but the less ingested, the longer it takes. A single dose lasts for about fifteen minutes - after that, you're on your own. Again, the less consumed the longer before it takes effect. It's rather a blunt instrument, I'll warn you, but dead effective. Just make sure you're in the vicinity, the closer the better, when he's under the influence, and that you're wearing this…"

He retrieved the charmed necklace from inside his robes and placed it gently on the table in front of Ginny.

"…If you've had success, believe me, you'll know."

"And how am I supposed to do all that?" Ginny asked.

"I only tutor Potions," Draco replied with a sly wink. "The rest is up to you."

"And if it works?" Ginny asked again.

"Should you get him primed, we'll go from there," was all Draco would say.

* * * *

Harry's meeting with Dumbledore had been quite revealing. First he learnt how Caractacus Burke - whom Harry had seen (but refrained from revealing) meeting Malfoy in Hogsmeade - had all but stolen the Slytherin locket from Voldemort's impecunious mother. Burke had paid the desperate woman all of ten Galleons for it. A Founder's relic like that was surely worth hundreds, if not thousands.

But even that information paled into insignificance compared to the snippet from the Headmaster's own memory. Harry and Dumbledore entered the Headmaster's Pensieve and watched Dumbledore's recollection of meeting the young Tom Riddle for the first time.

In some ways Harry was surprisingly like the young Voldemort. Neither knew their parents. Both grew up unloved. Neither understood he was magical until being invited to matriculate at Hogwarts. Harry had learnt he was a wizard from Hagrid. Riddle found out from the Headmaster himself - albeit before Dumbledore had attained that position.

What should have been an auspicious meeting was not. Even before appreciating that what he was doing was magic, Riddle had been misusing it - stealing things, threatening other children, hurting both people and animals.

Still, Dumbledore had acted to remove the boy from the grimly drab, or perhaps drably grim, surroundings of the only home the young Tom Riddle had ever known.

It was not easy feeling sorry for someone who had been out to kill you your entire life, but Harry almost accomplished that feat - the operative term being "almost."

After exiting the Pensieve, they discussed Voldemort's childhood. How Riddle was very powerful for a wild talent. How Riddle was obsessed with not being ordinary - that being quite unlike Harry, who often craved the anonymity of ordinariness. How Riddle was a loner, friendless and quite content that way. Harry, by contrast, had almost immediately left his friendless days behind upon entering Hogwarts, and had not looked back.

"…And Mister Potter, you did observe, did you not, that even then Mister Riddle enjoyed keeping trophies."

"Trophies, sir?" Harry replied, because he had not made the connexion at all.

"Yes, trophies," Dumbledore explained patiently. "Tom Riddle, even then, collected things that reminded him of his power over others. To this day, I am afraid that he has not ceased of that habit."

"You mean like he wanted the prophecy when he tricked us into going to the Ministry?" Harry asked. The prophecy was the one thing (besides Harry's death) that there could be no doubt Voldemort wanted.

"The prophecy was but a hoped-for means to an end. The trophies the adult Tom Riddle collects are ends in themselves…," Dumbledore responded in his usual magisterial voice. But then he paused. "Actually, that is mistaken," the Headmaster admitted. "The trophies are a means to an end as well - a far greater end indeed."

"You know, I wouldn't feel as thick if you wouldn't assume I know everything you're talking about," Harry commented sharply. "I'm not Hermione, after all."

"I am talking about Horcruxes, Mister Potter," Dumbledore stated with a finality that stopped the boy cold.

Dumbledore had mentioned these before, but then he had pleaded lack of information. "What about them, then?" Harry demanded.

No longer.

"I have conducted sufficient research that it is now time to begin acquainting you with them," Dumbledore told Harry. "I promised I would. Now, I shall begin redeeming that promise."

"Thank you, sir," Harry said, more respectfully. For once Dumbledore was offering him information rather than forcing him to pry it out.

"You see, a Horcrux is a very evil thing. It is a piece of a soul, but a piece that has been torn asunder by the vilest act of which man is capable - the deliberate taking of another's life, in short, cold-blooded murder." Dumbledore began.

"I know Voldemort likes to kill. I've seen that," Harry observed, "but why would he want to rip his own soul into pieces?"

"Fundamentally, because he is a coward," the Headmaster answered, looking as grave as Harry could remember. "The sundering of the soul has one very beneficial effect, from the perspective of someone, such as Tom, who fears death above all else - in that such a splitting of the soul prevents the remainder from dying whilst any piece of it remains alive."

"How can the soul remain alive if separated from the body?" Harry asked. "Surely you don't believe that rubbish about immortal souls that my relatives spouted every Sunday when they'd take a break from ordering me about … or worse."

"I certainly do not entertain such `rubbish,' as you call it," Dumbledore replied. "There is nothing immortal about Horcruxes. You should know, for I believe that you have already destroyed three of them."

"I-I-I have?" Harry stammered. "How? How many does he have left?"

"One question at a time, please, Mister Potter," Dumbledore held up his good hand. It was rare these days for the Headmaster to be able to reduce this boy to incoherence, and he secretly relished the moment. "I shall address the answerable one first. I believe that the first Horcrux Tom created, whilst still in school, was hidden a certain diary that you encountered in your Second Year. From your account, you dispatched it with a venom-laced Basilisk fang."

"That was a bit of Voldemort?" Harry asked. "I thought it was some sort of magically enhanced memory."

"I, too, so thought at the time - only I cannot plead the excuse of not knowing any better," the Headmaster admitted. "So I confess to being the source of that misinformation. Only more recently have I realised that Tom's diary fit into a larger, more sinister pattern. I believe that it contained an activated Horcrux."

"What do you mean, `activated'?" Harry asked, following in Dumbledore's mental footsteps.

"Horcruxes can, and typically are, kept in a form of stasis, when placed within inanimate objects, or if injured in some way," the Headmaster patiently revealed. "But from every description of the Horcrux in the diary, it was in a most active state. Someone, or something, must have activated it. Those details are as yet beyond me."

"Bloody Lucius Malfoy, I'd wager," Harry muttered. "You said there were two others…."

"Undoubtedly more than two," Dumbledore corrected. "But two that we know of … I believe that you destroyed them simultaneously when you first exercised the full force of your Fifth Element powers several weeks ago."

"What?!" Harry became visibly agitated. "You don't mean to say that Hermione….?"

Dumbledore drew back. He had not meant, nor intended to mean, Harry's girlfriend. The Headmaster knew such a misimpression was the quickest way to a reprise of the event just mentioned.

"Not at all, Mister Potter," Dumbledore hastened to answer. "I refer to me - and to you."

That revelation stopped Harry in mid-angst. "Me and you?" he asked, his nose crinkled in curiosity and doubt.

"Yes, Mister Potter," Dumbledore reiterated. "As I previously informed you, the ring that I had acquired - a Salazar Slytherin artifact - contained another of Tom's Horcruxes. It was dormant, but the power of your light magic destroyed it, leaving nothing behind save residual evil that damaged my hand. And…."

"What about me?" Harry demanded, an uncertain look on his face.

"I believe that you, personally, were the repository of another of Tom's Horcruxes, an active one; and that in the same explosion, it was destroyed - or rather that you destroyed it. I cannot say exactly how it was destroyed, because I have scarcely more comprehension of your Fifth Element powers than do you. But everything seems to fit…."

"What fits?" Harry bluntly pursued the topic.

Dumbledore sighed. "Here is what I currently believe…. Tom plainly intended to murder you that night, almost fifteen years ago. As I said, Horcruxes come into being courtesy of the soul-searing act of murder. My supposition - and it remains little more than speculation and coincidence - is that Tom had a prepared a Horcrux in anticipation of your death."

"But I didn't die," Harry pointed out; briefly breaking the train of the Headmaster's story.

"Indeed not," Dumbledore agreed. "And instead it was Tom who was practically destroyed. Obviously, the anticipatory Horcrux had not yet been inactivated for storage in whatever vessel he had intended. His destruction somehow freed it, and the soul fragment, following a soul's natural affinity for something living, passed into you."

"How?" Harry asked. "The murder he had planned … it didn't happen."

As that question escaped Harry's lips, a pained expression spread across the Headmaster's face. Harry knew the answer - even before Dumbledore gave it.

"You forget," the older man said, his aged eyes misting with sadness. "Other murders occurred that evening. More than enough evil was afoot that night to call that Horcrux into being."

Harry could hardly believe he had been so stupid - and in front of Dumbledore no less. Having no desire to revisit that moment, he simply asked, "I understand; is there anything more I need to know … like how many of these are there?"

"That, I am afraid, I do not know - and it is of critical importance," Dumbledore told the boy.

"Why?"

"Until we - for you will have all the assistance I can muster - can destroy these Horcruxes, you cannot fulfill the prophecy," the Headmaster revealed. "As I said, Tom cannot be killed as long as his soul fragments remain. We must destroy them first, all of them, but unless we know how many exist, we cannot know when it is safe … no, that is not the right word … when it would be possible to send you up against what remains of Tom Riddle."

"How can we possibly know?" Harry asked. "Voldemort probably hasn't told anyone - at least not anyone who'd tell us."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore answered. "But perhaps not. Like all magic, Horcrux making must be learned. They do not spring into existence full-blown like Athena from the head of Zeus. If we can reach Tom's teacher, we may be able to solve that mystery."

"We?" Harry responded skeptically. "Why am I worth anything in figuring that out? Anybody who taught Voldemort would be way older than I am - if still alive at all."

"Do not be so quick to denigrate your own worth, Mister Potter," the Headmaster cautioned. "Your worth, monetary and otherwise, is quite substantial. I have a solid hypothesis as to our probable target - and you are better situated than I to make the necessary inroads."

"I'm … I'm afraid I don't understand - again," Harry protested less loudly.

"Nor should you," Dumbledore reassured. "Let me tell you why I decided to coax Professor Slughorn out of retirement - and how I convinced him."

With that, Dumbledore explained how, fifty years ago, Horace Slughorn was already an inveterate networker. Like Harry at present, his "prize catch" back then had been Tom Riddle. Riddle, however, had little use for connections or wheel-greasing. He did, however, value knowledge, and Slughorn had that in abundance. Slughorn, then around sixty, was already Head of Slytherin House. When a Seventh Year, Riddle convinced the older man to provide him private lessons in a variety of advanced topics, which Slughorn was only too pleased to do.

In his own youth, Slughorn had been fascinated by the Dark Arts and had engaged in rather extensive (and somewhat dodgy) studies. He had a stint as a graduate intern at Durmstrang (which then catered even more overtly to Dark Arts than now), and in Elsinore, where he completed an apprenticeship under Lisen Broh - a wizard who later went Dark and became Grindelwald's right hand man.

Harry's discovery (although unsuspected at the time) of a Horcrux in Riddle's Hogwarts-era diary strongly suggested to Dumbledore that the future Lord Voldemort learnt quite a bit about Horcruxes before graduating. The Headmaster believed that Slughorn was the only person on the Hogwarts staff with the background to impart such knowledge to Riddle.

Dumbledore could not get a straight answer from the once and again Potions professor about what transpired during those private training sessions in Riddle's final year. Slughorn developed an exaggerated (or perhaps justified) fear of Death Eaters during the first war. He resigned abruptly from the Hogwarts staff following the 1980-81 academic year - creating an opening for Snape - and thereafter kept a very low profile. Even with his relatively minor exposure to Slughorn, Harry had to agree that such behavior was uncharacteristic; against everything he knew of the Professor's nature.

Another unsolved Slughorn mystery was why he ever left Hogwarts. Their last communication, prior to the Headmaster's determined pursuit of the man earlier this year for the open Potions position (apparently Slughorn even Transfigured himself into a piece of furniture in an unsuccessful attempt to dodge Dumbledore), had been around Christmas of 1981. Slughorn left a brief note apologising for unspecified "errors in judgment" and declaring his retirement from public life. Dumbledore's follow-up notes had gone unanswered.

Christmas 1981, of course, was shortly after the murder of Harry's parents. Slughorn had greatly admired Lily Potter, and had predicted great things for Harry's mother.

Slughorn evidently expected great things from Harry as well. Dumbledore had shamelessly (by his own admission) used the prospect of teaching and getting to know Harry to inveigle the reclusive former professor from retirement.

"Horace, after all, is first and foremost a Potions master," Dumbledore reminded Harry. "He responds exceedingly well to both flattery and bribery. Whilst you are not well versed in the former, I believe you recently acquired something that could be put to quite good use in the latter category…."

Harry bridled at the suggestion that he bribe Slughorn for information that he felt the professor should provide for nothing. "Like what?" he grumbled.

"A rare and valuable Potions ingredient," Dumbledore replied evenly. "The other day, in the Chamber, the goblins gave you naturally crystallised Basilisk venom. That is worth more than its weight in gold - quite a bit more, actually. I do not know when any was last at Hogwarts; certainly not during my tenure as Headmaster. It is so rare, even the Room of Requirement cannot replicate it."

Harry relaxed. Properly or not, he had an "easy come, easy go" attitude toward that bizarre and entirely unintended substance. Somehow a bribe seemed less of a bribe where the currency was something so exotic. He agreed that, one way or another, he would convince the Slughorn to tell him exactly what the old man had taught Voldemort about Horcruxes.

The last subject of the meeting, however, was the antithesis of "easy come, easy go."

"There's one other thing," Harry broached. Dumbledore winced. Harry had clearly learned to save his most problematic requests for last. "I'd like to see Professor Lupin. I've been told that he was hurt whilst on Order business, but not much more."

A relatively straightforward, if impossible, request - the Headmaster relaxed. "I am truly sorry, but that is simply not possible at this time. You are correct in that Remus was badly hurt. He had an encounter with Mister Pettigrew…."

"You mean Wormtail beat Remus in a duel?" Harry interrupted to scoff. "That hardly seems possible. From what I've seen, he's a rather poor excuse for a wizard."

"True enough," Dumbledore went on, "but this poor excuse for a wizard also has a silver hand, and silver is quite poisonous to werewolves, whether or not in a transformed state. Remus was struck repeatedly about the face with it. He was temporarily blinded."

"Then I have to see him," Harry reiterated.

"I cannot allow it, for his safety. It would risk a breach of security when Remus is powerless to defend himself," Dumbledore refused. "Mister Potter, think for a moment. St. Mungo's does not treat werewolves - certainly not long term. We have arranged for him to receive the best of care - I am sure you remember Parry - at an undisclosed location safe from attack by Death Eaters who would finish what Pettigrew started. You are well aware of the security entailed in moving you about the countryside. Be warned that, as best he can, Voldemort continues watching you. I do not wish to risk a possible breach by virtue of the attention you attract."

"So now I'm too important to move about freely, anymore?" Harry grumbled.

"In a word, yes," Dumbledore confirmed, looking down through his half-moon glasses. "I trust that, after all you have experienced, no further explication is required."

"So I can't see him, then?" Harry mumbled in a defeated tone of voice.

"That is not what I said," Dumbledore corrected. "His recovery proceeds apace. When Remus is well enough - and not a moment before, or after - I will arrange for the two of you to meet here, at Hogwarts. I do not know when might be, but it is a matter of weeks, not months."

* * * *

One of a great many things Harry loved about Hermione is that she knew so much about … well; to him it seemed like everything. Just get her started, and she would prattle on seemingly forever, as long as he provided her with minimal encouragement.

That he knew how to do.

He loved to listen to her, and occasionally he even learnt something useful.

Harry was listening to more of Hermione's idle chatter by the lake during an all-too-rare free period on what promised to be the last truly pleasant day of the rapidly ebbing Scottish autumn.

They both shed their heavy outer robes to take advantage of the warn sunlight. Harry wore a white school uniform shirt, open at the collar. Hermione had on another of her T-shirts - this one reading, "Insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

Using their balled-up robes in lieu of a Cushioning Charm, Hermione leaned against a low dry-stone dike that extended from the rear of the greenhouse closest to the lake. Once, it marked a boundary for some outdoor garden. The garden having long fallen into disuse, the old dike now served as a backdrop for enjoying the lake's spectacular reflections of the surrounding mountains.

Harry sprawled on the grass with his head in Hermione's lap. Her hands mussed his already untamed hair. Harry was telling her about one of his lesser irons in the fire.

"…so I'd just finished explaining everything to Neville when you saw us down here. Neville's got the run of the greenhouses now. The Twins told me that any bigoted remark or action directed at Jazzy triggers their prank. Sure, it's not as good as Malfoy being chased by a Hippogriff in heat before the entire Sixth Year class, but right now I needed this…."

"But what does the prank do, Harry?" Hermione persisted.

"Well, I'm … umm … not really sure," Harry confessed. "The Twins didn't exactly say, except that it wouldn't last more than twenty-four hours - and it wouldn't cause permanent injury."

"Harry, you were supposed to tell them what to do, not the other way `round." Hermione pouted.

"Sorry, but something needed to be done, and my creative juices just weren't flowing," Harry offered in his own defence.

She looked at him - tense and defensive - and concluded that, whatever was in store for those nasty Slytherins, they had brought it on themselves. Besides, the Twins, whilst inveterate pranksters, were not malevolent…. Not often, anyway.

"Come here, you," she dropped the subject with a laugh. "And let's see what I can do to get those juices flowing again."

A little snogging later, the two lay side by side on the grass. Harry noticed her T-shirt. It gave him an idea for setting Hermione off on another of her flights of factuality.

"Umm … Hermione," he began, "during the summer, when you were attacked at your father's surgery, you wore a T-shirt with some sort of … I don't know what you'd call it … a bunch of numbers and stuff on it…."

Hermione's brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of Harry's rather vague description.

"…It said, what part of that mess didn't you understand. I didn't understand any of it - obviously," Harry continued.

A familiar look of comprehension came to her eyes. "Oh, that!" Hermione exclaimed. "That shirt had on it a set Navier-Stokes equations for fluid dynamics … using cylindrical coordinates. Basically they're used to calculate the movement of fluids, whether in liquid or gaseous form…. Dead useful they can be - to Muggles, anyway - for wind tunnels, weather modeling, magnetohydrodynamics, even cosmology…."

And so on and so on. Harry was treated to her lengthy exposition on the significance of what to him had been a bunch of incomprehensible numbers and symbols.

He loved it.

When Hermione started running out of steam, Harry had a pretty good idea how to wind her up again. "Wow, that sounds like it must be a really important equation - no surprise there."

"More useful than important, I'd say," Hermione responded. "It's just a dynamic equation, which is why it looks so complicated. Actually the more profound equations are considerably simpler, and thus wouldn't provide the visual effect necessary for that kind of T-shirt - intended as something of an insult, actually."

"So, what's the most important equation of them all?" Harry asked. It was precisely the type of open-ended question guaranteed to serve a springboard to send Hermione into another orgy of explication.

"The most important?" Hermione asked, briefly taken aback. "Well, I confess that I've never really considered them in that way - trying to rank them…. There are several candidates I suppose. The universal gravitational equation would be one of them. The cosmological constant would be another. Then there's the Drake Equation, but that's really less of an equation than a parade of speculative variables. The most important of all? I suppose that would have to be the relativistic one that calculates the energy equivalent of mass…."

"What's that mean?" Harry replied lazily.

"It's very elegant and simple, really," Hermione began, "but it states a profound truth, entirely unsuspected previously, about the interconvertability of mass and … and…." Suddenly she stopped, her mouth hung open, gaping. A faraway look was in her eyes.

Just as her silence led Harry to roll over for a look at her, she exclaimed, "Oh, by Merlin, it can't be…!" In an instant Hermione leapt to her feet and looked towards the Castle. "I've got to check this out!" she declared firmly.

Hermione's jumping up left Harry lying on the grass. He was moving much more slowly than his fiancée. "Check what out?" Harry asked. It was a genuine question.

"I have to go to the library," Hermione responded in a clipped voice. "There's something I need to check into, and it can't wait, I'm afraid." With that, she took off practically running towards Hogwarts.

"What?" Harry called after her.

"I'll let you know when I've a better idea," she yelled over her shoulder. "That won't be too long, I promise."

Then she was gone.

Harry knew better than to try to stop her. In her rush, she left her outer robes behind. Collecting them from the grass, Harry followed Hermione's path, albeit in much more measured fashion.

Throughout his Arithmancy for Poets class, the thought of what Hermione might be doing distracted Harry. Thus, he lost an easy chance for five house points when he confused Fibonacci numbers with Mersenne primes.

He hoped to see Hermione at lunch, but she was nowhere to be found. He supposed she required more research time, since she left only a half hour in advance of her own class.

Then - too late for him to do anything - Parvati had asked Harry where Hermione had been during her Muggle Studies seminar.

Hermione skipping Muggle Studies was one thing. It was something else entirely when Hermione to skived off Defence Against the Dark Arts after lunch. That was core curriculum. Ron thought so too. The two boys maintained a whispered conversation throughout the class, so that Professor Shacklebolt docked them both five points for not paying attention.

It could have been worse, but Harry was so far advanced in DADA that even whilst distracted he could perform any spell he might have to demonstrate.

He was suffering through the second hour of his Hermione-less double period of Defence when the big break came.

"…So the secret of casting an effective Shield Charm is proper anticipation of the type of magic that you're likely to be confronted with…."

Someone made hesitant-sounding knock on the door.

"…You may enter," Professor Shacklebolt addressed whoever was at the door. "It's not cursed."

The oaken classroom door creaked open and a very timorous-looking student entered. It was Barton Schell, a fourth-year Ravenclaw whom Harry knew only by sight - because Luna had once pointed him out as someone in her House "who had not been very mean" to her.

"State your business," Shak demanded, annoyed that anyone so junior should be interrupting one of his N.E.W.T.-level courses.

"Umm … I have this note for Harry Potter, sir," Schell responded, whilst pulling out a parchment roll encircled by one of Headmaster Dumbledore's distinctive purple and green ribbons.

"Is it from the Headmaster?" Shak asked.

"Yes, sir," Schell answered.

"Then you may approach," Shak allowed. Pointing to Harry, he added, "He's front and centre, here."

"Umm … sir, I was told it was private," Schell informed the formidable professor, whilst not budging from his place in the classroom doorway.

"Very well," Shak said, with a visible scowl. With a wave of his hand, he sent Harry away. "Out with you, then, Mister Potter. Perhaps it's for the best. You've seemed distracted the entire time. If you don't make it back, the homework assignment is the chapter on Mirror Charms - and three feet of parchment on the most effective ways of employing them."

Harry knew the answer to that one - but what he knew, he could not say.

With his classmates' homework-related groans sounding in his ears, Harry left the room with Barton Schell in tow.

"Well … here, umm … Mister Potter," Schell droned as he handed over the scroll, "and thanks for teaching the Defence Association, I'm really learning a lot from … er … your girlfriend. I'll just be off now…."

"You don't have to leave," Harry called after him.

"Yes, I do," Schell replied over his shoulder whilst speeding away. "Dumbledore said private, and from the look in his eye, he meant it."

The boy was gone as Harry removed the ribbon. To his surprise, the parchment was blank. That surprise lasted but a moment - until the Headmaster's familiar, if disembodied, voice began spilling out.

"Mister Potter, Miss Granger is in my office, having just provided the barest outline of a theory of considerable import. I would ask that you join us posthaste, but would you also be so good as to bring the Muggle electricity book that I assigned you over the summer. By the way, I am partial to Magictose Mist these days."

Whatever Hermione had discovered was important enough that she took it straight to Dumbledore - despite their mutual misgivings about the Headmaster's occasionally dubious machinations - before even telling Harry about it.

And Dumbledore considered that same whatever to be of sufficient import to pull Harry out of class.

Harry took off towards Gryffindor tower at a dead run. With everyone's classes in session, he encountered nobody telling him to slow down. Breathing heavily, he reached his dormitory room.

As he flung open his trunk, it occurred to Harry that he had not looked through more than the uppermost layer since escaping from the Death Eaters. Beyond that, he did not even know who had packed it - although someone plainly had.

Thus, he had no idea where in the trunk to find the requested book, or even if it had been packed at all.

"Dammit, where are you?" Harry muttered as he flung things right and left. "I wish there was a damn unpacking charm…."

"What the Hell is this doing here?"

"This" was the Toshiba laptop the Dursleys had given him as a belated birthday present. Harry had never had a chance to use it.

"Probably ruined now," he said with a frown, "with all the magic about."

Gently he laid it aside. Underneath he found a box tied up with string. It bore a fancy gold and red label reading "Hoyo de Monterrey de José Gener Habana." Taped to the box was a note written in what Harry recognised as his Aunt Petunia's handwriting. Obviously, his relatives had done at least some of the packing following his kidnapping.

Although the unexpected parcel was intriguing, it did not hold Harry's attention. After shoving that box aside, he finally saw what he sought, with pale green letters on a yellowish glossy background - "Electricity: Principles and Applications."

Harry grabbed the book, whirled around, and started for the door. His first step, however, kicked the Toshiba. He stumbled, and nearly flopped headlong into Neville's bedchamber.

"Pack," Harry commanded irritatedly, and everything cast about jumped up and flew back inside his trunk. A few seconds of clatter ended with the trunk lid closing with a satisfying thud.

Just as Harry was about to sprint off again, his Valkyrie - neatly stowed behind his trunk - caught his eye. Two could play at that game….

Harry arrived at Dumbledore's guardian gargoyle almost ready to laugh out loud. That look on Filch's face had been priceless when Harry had yelled, "Tell it to Dumbledore!" as he had zoomed past the cantankerous caretaker.

"Magictose Mist."

The gargoyle stepped aside, and Harry flew up the stairs. He lurched to a stop outside the Headmaster's tower office, and hopped off the Valkyrie.

Needing only a couple of seconds to compose himself, he knocked on the door.

"Do come in, Mister Potter," he heard Dumbledore invite him in.

Opening the door, Harry saw the Headmaster seated behind his sprawling wooden desk, scratching away with a quill.

"You may check the broom by the door, Mister Potter" the seemingly imperturbable Headmaster directed, not even looking up.

Harry did as asked, and at the same time spotted Hermione.

Ensconced in a squashy chintz armchair, she rose once Harry was announced and made her way towards him. Her initial appreciative smile (doubtless remembering her own in-castle Valkyrie ride) almost immediately gave way, as lines of concern and excitement competed for prominence. For a moment Harry thought she would fling herself at him.

At the last instant, Hermione seemed to recall where they were. She contented herself with grabbing Harry's free hand (the one not holding the electricity book) and pulling him towards Dumbledore's desk.

"Oh, Harry, I had this thought when we were chatting by the lake," she went on. "Our discussion led me to think of something that might be key to understanding your nature. It's just that the Fifth…."

"Miss Granger, please," Dumbledore cut her off as he stood up. "Need I remind you again, not here. This is too sensitive."

"What's too sensitive?" Harry remarked sarcastically. "We did discuss the prophecy here." Ever since Hermione had run off several hours previous, some big secret existed that he was not privy too - and he was tired of being left in the dark.

Hermione squeezed Harry's hand as a sign for him to be quiet. Her eyes darted to Dumbledore. "The balcony again?" she asked cautiously.

The Headmaster's eyes flicked around the room. He nodded his head as if making a decision, and took a step backwards.

"No," he answered, "this way." He made a sweeping motion with his left arm at the wall behind him. The wall contained a door - dark polished oak with a rounded top that peaked in Gothic style. Despite all his trips to this office, Harry had never before seen it.

As Dumbledore led the way, the two students heard the portraits murmuring about something "remarkable" or "unheard-of." The door closed by itself when they had all passed through. A soft yellowish glow outlined the door and then expanded, rapidly rippling across the semicircular walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

Harry's and Hermione's eyes followed the golden ripple's passage around the room. When they looked back, the door had vanished.

"Welcome to the Headmaster's private chambers," Dumbledore intoned. "As far as I know, you are the first students ever to have crossed that threshold. However, Miss Granger's theory is too sensitive to be discussed even before my predecessors, and the balcony, I am afraid, is too exposed to the elements."

Through Dumbledore's window casements with their diamond-shaped leaded glass pattern, Harry could see that the weather was changing. The morning's sun dappled warmth had vanished. Dreary gray clouds had begun their advance whilst Harry was in the Great Hall. They now emptied their contents on the countryside.

In marked contrast to the weather, the Headmaster's quarters were comfortable - and eccentric. Dominating the large room was a massive Italian Renaissance-style four-poster with a featherbed divan and off-white muslin bedclothes partially hidden by an intricately woven wine-coloured duvet. Dumbledore's four-poster lacked the usual canopy and drapes. Instead the cornice seemed to be serving as a clothesline. It was draped with all manner of socks.

A large rosewood armoire stood against the wall opposite the windows. Atop it bubbled two rocket-shaped lava lamps almost a metre tall, one with turquoise wax moving through deep azure oil, the other featuring a bright yellow wax pulsing in crimson fluid (the Headmaster being a Gryffindor). Serious illumination came, not from those lamps, but from a wrought-iron and rock-crystal chandelier containing at least two hundred lit candles. The chandelier's variously coloured crystals - aquamarines, amethysts, citrines, topazes, rose quartzes and colourless - had no discernable pattern. It floated, seemingly unattached to anything, high up amongst the exposed Tudor-style rafters.

The remaining walls were chockablock with knick-knack shelves and pocked with sconces. The Sword of Godric Gryffindor was mounted high on one wall, along with other archaic weapons. The sconces were filled with all manner of trinkets, from cobalt-blue glass bottles, to Hopi Kachina dolls, to the Sorting Hat (which had been moved from Dumbledore's outer office).

Not a single wizard portrait graced the curved walls of this chamber. The only wall pictures were a couple of fluorescent, black velvet paintings - one of a Saguaro cactus, and the other of some dogs playing billiards. What wall space remained was filled with various banners and posters, including a red and black socialist realist image of Che Guevara smacked in the face by a coconut cream pie, and art deco posters of various European wizard resorts (including, they both noted, Monte Carlo).

A wet bar featuring a marble-topped soda and ice cream fountain took up one corner of the room. Across from it, in the other corner, was a spindle-legged writing desk strewn with parchment and quills.

The desk also bore the only images of actual people anywhere in the Headmaster's living quarters. There were two - both Muggle daguerreotypes. One depicted a woman in a long, light coloured dress with bobbed hair and soft, fetching features. The other, parts of which seemed oddly out of focus, was of a blond teenager, barely older than Harry, with unruly shoulder-length hair and dark eyes, both wild and intense.

Dumbledore sat on the bed, deep in thought. Then, suddenly aware of the two students standing nearby, he apologised with a start. "Oh, so sorry, allow me." With a wave of his hand, two squashy armchairs appeared, with fabric matching the Headmaster's bedding.

For a moment, the silence seemed oppressive.

"Umm … who is the lady?" Harry asked, not knowing what else to say.

Dumbledore sighed, and for a moment looked even older than usual. "That, Mister Potter, was my wife, Muriel."

"She's pretty," he commented.

"She was, indeed," the Headmaster responded, "and much, much more…."

"Her picture doesn't move," Harry regarded the picture, rather than Dumbledore, who was starting to show signs of discomfort. "Was she a Muggle?"

"Hardly," came the reply. "That photograph was from before the invention of wizard photography. Back then, techniques of magical impregnation were limited to pigments, and photography was thought a poor Muggle imitation."

"And who was the boy?" Harry inquired of the second photograph. "Was that your son that you mentioned…?"

"No … and enough of that," Dumbledore rather forcibly ended that conversation. "Miss Granger, would you care to present your hypothesis?"

Hermione stood up, her anxiety plainly visible. She started to say something, bit her lower lip, and started again.

"Umm … Headmaster, would it be possible to trouble you for a blackboard and some chalk?" she requested.

"Why certainly, Miss Granger," Dumbledore agreed immediately. He waved his good hand, and the chair Hermione had used began pulsating. Within seconds it morphed into a wood-framed, free-standing chalkboard with a usable surface something less than a metre high and two broad. A tray at the base held an eraser and chalk in various colours and sizes.

Hermione selected a plain white piece and faced Harry.

"You see, Harry, the basic question has always been what is the Fifth Element … what are you?" As she spoke, she wrote "5E" on the board. "Now the other four ancient elements are, of course earth, water, air, and fire…." She added these words to the board's far left-hand side whilst reciting them. "They correspond roughly to the four recognised states of matter - solid, liquid, gas, and plasma."

"That much, I've been told before," Harry accepted, wondering where Hermione was going.

"I know, since I've told you that myself," she concurred. "Now, each of these four elements, or states, has its own associated elemental magic," she plowed ahead. "Indeed, you've been training yourself in these various types of elemental magic."

Harry nodded.

"I've thought, and so has the Headmaster," Hermione glanced at Dumbledore, "that whatever the Fifth Element is, it would be the equivalent of another state of matter. At one point, I thought that Bose-Einstein condensate might be it. So I was very interested when you attempted to freeze that helium balloon not too long ago. I wondered if you could create the condensate. You didn't…."

"So, at that point you ruled out the Bose-Einstein whatever?" Harry asked.

"I have … but then wasn't when I came to that conclusion," Hermione replied. "The other possibility, which Headmaster Dumbledore suggested, was quark-gluon plasma. That had the advantage of being highly energetic - but unfortunately so energetic that nobody can really study it, not even the Muggles. Whatever properties quark-gluon plasma might have are basically theoretical. Also, unlike Bose-Einstein, it has never been connected to magic."

"So the question remains, what's the relationship between the Fifth Element elemental powers that you seem to possess, so far largely uncontrolled, and the magic of the ordinary wizard…."

When she said "magic," Hermione wrote the letter "m" on the board. The board then read:

5E m

"We know it's very powerful, whatever it is," Hermione continued. "So to express the Fifth Element question mathematically, we have to divide your power by an unknown constant. Those are usually expressed algebraically with a k…."

She made more clacks as her chalk on the board. Hermione turned the existing symbols into an equation.

5E = m
k

She looked at the board and frowned. "This will just confuse things," she grumbled. "That five is looks like part of the equation, instead of part of the variable…."

She moved to the board and erased the five. "Just think of your Fifth Element power as the `E'," Hermione told him.

"Whatever you say," Harry replied. He still had no idea where this was going.

"From observation we know that the unknown constant, k, has to be quite a large, but how much we had no idea - until my Eureka moment earlier today…." Hermione paused, looking intently at the piece of chalk she rolled in the palm of her hand.

After a bit, Harry filled the silence. "So what does this equation mean, then?"

Hermione gave a weak smile and went on. "Well, using the multiplicative property of equality, we don't change anything by multiplying both sides by the unknown k. All that does is move the unknown to the other side, thus isolating the value of your Fifth Element magic on one side of the equality."

Hermione made a few more marks and erasures, so that the board now read:

E = mk

"My epiphany has to do with the value of k," Hermione explained. "I realised that I'd been barking up the wrong tree, conceptually, by viewing the Fifth Element as some exotic state of matter. Matter routinely converts into something else, and that conversion factor is both well known and quite large…."

With that, Hermione erased the k and replaced it with what she had concluded the conversion factor had to be.

E = mc²

"That's it, I think," she began summing up. "Just as matter converts into energy, so does ordinary magic convert to the Fifth Element. Your `E' is simply the ordinary wizard's `m' times the conversion factor. It's very large, because `c' represents the speed of light."

"That's bloody big, alright," Harry agreed. "It's the fastest thing there is. If I remember from primary, nothing can go faster."

"That's correct, Harry," Hermione told him, "and Einstein proved that too. I've spent the last several hours trying to sort all this out. Fortunately, the Library has some Muggle books, and I've been able to teach myself enough rudimentary relativity to figure out what's probably going on…."

Finally Harry cut over her. He had a simple question that he needed answered. "How many times more powerful is this Fifth Element business … I guess the `E' means me … than an ordinary wizard's magic?"

The Headmaster, silent until now and content to let Hermione explain her theory - intervened. "It is a very, very large number Mister Potter."

"Well, what's the speed of light, then?" Harry asked.

"A shade under three hundred thousand kilometres a second," Hermione told him.

"That is big," Harry said, feeling rather stunned. "So you're telling me, if I could ever control this Fifth Element thing, I could be three hundred thousand times more powerful than an ordinary wizard?"

"No, I'm not, Harry," Hermione responded, still looking uncomfortable.

Harry relaxed a bit and sighed. "Bloody glad to hear that," he said. "That kind of power … well, it's really too much to be allowed."

"Mister Potter … Harry … I had Miss Granger explain this to me whilst we waited for you, and I do not think you understand," Dumbledore stepped in. "That's a square there." The Headmaster had his wand out, pointed at the chalkboard. The superscripted 2 glowed bright red.

"That's a two," Harry said flatly.

"It's a square," corrected Hermione.

"I know what a square is," Harry replied. "It's got four sides and all. That's a two."

"Did you learn how to square numbers in primary school?" Hermione asked.

The question surprised Harry, and he responded with a blank look. "If I did, I don't think I remember," he admitted. "I haven't had maths since fifth year in primary. That was ages ago, and wasn't exactly my top subject. That's why you have to help me so much with my Arithmancy for Poets homework."

"A square is a number multiplied times itself," Hermione told him.

"Lightspeed times itself," came a hoarse cackle from above - causing Harry and Hermione (but not Dumbledore) to whirl about in surprise.

"What the…?"

"I knew somebody'd finally get it," the Sorting Hat rasped.

"Get what?" Hermione asked.

"Milk."

"What?" Harry and Hermione asked at the same time.

"Humour, like youth, is lost on the young," the Hat groused. "Too soon old and too late smart…."

Dumbledore chuckled, whilst the pair of students stared at the Hat with almost identically perplexed expressions.

"What?"

"It's the reference in my annual song, of course" the Hat retorted sharply. "You, young lady, had more smarts stuffed in your head than anyone I'd encountered in many a year. Surely you knew…."

"Sorry to disappoint, but I missed the Sorting this year," Hermione told the Hat.

"Oh, blast," the Hat groused. "Potter, I knew you weren't there - and neither was the Headmaster. So much for being so bloody clever … humph." The Sorting hat's rent rip of a mouth disappeared, and it slipped back into dormancy.

"Oh, great, now I've offended the Hat," Hermione groaned.

"That is truly of no consequence," Dumbledore reassured. "Now, if you please, the conversion factor Miss Granger referenced…."

Harry thought a bit. "Oh, Merlin," he gasped. "How big is that, then?"

"It depends on what units," Hermione qualified her answer, "but in metric, it's a bit less than ninety milliards."

Harry sank deeply into the conjured armchair. "I can't even comprehend that," he said. "I can't even count that high."

"It's theoretical, of course," Hermione prattled, "and nothing's close to one hundred percent efficient…. You're almost entirely untrained, and nowhere near your potential - one to maybe five percent efficiency, at most. In Muggle science, such power is attained only by annihilation of matter and antimatter. And Voldemort's no ordinary…."

"And I believe that, in magical terms, the Fifth Element works as does matter and its opposite - only in terms of dark matter yielding dark energy," Dumbledore interrupted. He was standing now. "Miss Granger, you are truly brilliant."

"I am?" she shrilled, not at all expecting (or feeling worthy of) the Headmaster's effusive compliment.

"Indeed," Dumbledore answered, then turned to the boy and addressed him familiarly. "Harry, remember what we discussed the other night - how I believed you harboured a Horcrux due to your affinity with Voldemort and your Parselmouth ability, but somehow that changed?"

"Like I'd ever forget that," Harry responded almost sarcastically.

"Tell me again, exactly what transpired in the moments before the explosion in the valley?" Dumbledore requested.

"I was in your mind," Hermione prompted.

"That's right," Harry agreed. "Hermione had just found me. I was surrounded by Death Eaters, but shielded from their curses. Then Voldemort was in my mind too. He figured out Hermione was there and wanted to hurt her. I tried to force him out…."

"Did you try very strenuously?" Dumbledore asked.

Harry looked askance at the Headmaster. "What do you think?" he spat. "It was Hermione he was after. She'd just come for me, like…. I tried harder than I'd probably tried to do anything in my life!"

"Precisely!" the Headmaster declared. A look of triumph was in his eyes, as at the end of Fourth Year, when Dumbledore realised that the blood magic behind Voldemort's return contained a fatal, prophecy-confirming flaw. "At that moment, you called upon the annihilative power of the Fifth Element. Indeed, you forced Voldemort from your mind. You destroyed - utterly - the Horcrux that you had been carrying since your first encounter. That has to be why your affinity no longer exists…."

"And why I'm no longer a Parselmouth?" Harry cut in.

"Correct. That explains why you are no longer a Parselmouth," Dumbledore echoed.

"What! You're no longer a Parselmouth?" Hermione asked, sounding shocked. "You never told me that, Harry Potter!"

"Er … sorry Hermione," Harry stammered. "It's just…. Well, with everything else that's been going on…. I just … umm … forgot…."

Hermione had her hands on her hips and her jaw jutting. "I thought you'd promised to tell me everything," she began.

Even Dumbledore stayed silent as Hermione lit into Harry.

"I did, and I meant it," Harry protested. "I just don't remember what `everything' is, that's all."

"You're very lucky, Harry, that I love you," Hermione admonished sternly.

"I know. I tell myself that every day," Harry acknowledged.

Harry extended his hand and Hermione took it. How could she remain angry at him after a remark like that?

A few moments of somewhat awkward silence passed before Dumbledore sought to move things along. "Your book, Mister Potter. I requested you to bring it."

Harry picked up the Muggle tome, previously lying forgotten in his chair.

"You will recall that I suggested you read the first, I believe, eight chapters over last summer."

"I know," Harry shrugged. "And I did. They were interesting and all, but I can't recall anything that would have helped understand this." He gestured to the Hermione's equation still on the blackboard.

"In my ignorance, I directed you to the wrong material," the Headmaster admitted. "I wanted you to become acquainted with the physics of ordinary magic, which I believe functions quite in the manner of Muggle electricity."

"And I think you were right," Hermione concurred. "The Muggle central nervous system generates electrical impulses to function. Magic operates similarly, except that, instead of normal electricity, magical impulses are charmonium mediated."

"But as far as the Fifth Element is concerned," Dumbledore moved the discussion forward, "I erred in limiting you to the general material on electricity. The exercise would have been much more useful had I included the later chapters - about nuclear power and beyond that, nuclear fusion."

"I-I … I suppose that's right," Hermione reluctantly concurred. "But before we go down that road, can we do anything to be sure?"

Dumbledore ruminated on that question, staring blankly through the windows at the misty rain. "I believe so," he finally determined. "It will take some doing - and some assistance from my contacts in the Auror Corps. But the more ponder it, the more I believe that something confirmatory can be done."

* * * *

Dumbledore left the room first. Harry dawdled, still coming to terms with the nature of the awesome power of the Fifth Element. `Lightspeed times itself….'

He turned, ready to grab Hermione's hand and depart. To his surprise, Hermione was no longer beside him. Once she Vanished the blackboard, she had gravitated towards the Headmaster's desk. Now she examined one of his daguerreotypes. Harry meandered over, curious, only to see her emit a muffled squeak and drop the picture frame. It clattered onto the desk.

"What's wr…?" he began, only to be cut off by the Headmaster himself.

"I trust you two are not becoming too comfortable. I realise my quarters are quite pleasant, but I would hate to keep you from your other obligations." Harry could almost hear the wink in the old man's voice.

Hermione's voice shook as she answered. "N-no, Professor. We were just leaving."

Harry shot her a quizzical glance as they re-entered the Headmaster's office. She offered no reply except a quick head shake and a whispered, "Later, Harry."

Dumbledore smiled as they let themselves out, but Harry was too preoccupied with collecting his broom and Hermione's odd behavior really to notice.

Once they had descended the staircase and exited past the gargoyle, he turned to her. "What happened at the end, there? You had me worried."

She flashed a genuine smile. "It's nothing serious, Harry. One of the pictures seemed familiar. I was just giving it a second look." She paused, and her smile faltered. "It's strange though … I don't understand…."

Harry's arms embraced her protectively. "What is it?" Anything that Hermione could not understand; he doubted he could know better, but talking it out probably did no harm.

"Don't get upset, Harry," she began tensely, "but the picture, that boy, on Dumbledore's desk…. I'm fairly certain it's Grindelwald. And I don't know why."

"WHAT?" Harry's voice rose unintentionally in surprise. At the startled glances of several passing Second Years, he lowered his voice and continued, "I mean, how could that be? Dumbledore defeated him in 1945 - why keep a picture of him? Are you're sure?"

Harry's final question was little more than grasping at straws. Hermione was rarely wrong. Moreover, she rarely voiced an opinion, especially one so controversial, without being either virtually certain, or else very firm in her beliefs.

"Well, I'm not completely sure," Hermione allowed. "I'd have to check in the library first, for one thing…."

Harry was decisive. "Well, let's do it together. We've no classes right now, so let me ditch this broom, and I'll meet you in the library."

* * * *

Numbly, Harry stared at the stack Hermione had pulled from the shelves and piled hastily atop the table before them. "A Wizarding History of Empire-Building? Dark Mages of the Twentieth Century? Nurmengard: The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Grindelwald? Hermione, where do you find these things?"

"I did some extra research when I first came across the subject a couple of years ago - Bathilda Bagshot's work is hopelessly vague, I don't know why…. But A History of Magic is still probably the best place for you to start. Here." She shoved the book at Harry whilst herself opening up Grindelwald: The Early Years. "I believe the section on Grindelwald's empire begins on page 1347…."

Harry started reading where instructed and was shocked at what he found. He poured over the pages, his horror slowly growing. The man had thrown his political opponents into "re-education" camps! How could Dumbledore possibly justify the picture on his desk? Of course, that only mattered if the picture was actually Grindelwald….

That slim hope was dashed when Hermione announced, "Here it is! Exactly the picture I remembered. A portrait of Grindelwald as a young man." Pushing the stack aside to make room, she laid the book on the table with a slight thump. They both leaned forward.

The boy - no, man - depicted in the book was clearly the same as the picture on Dumbledore's desk, albeit slightly older. The two photographs shared the same intense dark eyes, same shoulder length light-coloured hair.

"So it's definitely him, then?" Harry asked. "Grindelwald."

"Yes." Hermione looked disappointed by the confirmation, as though she, too, had hoped to be proven wrong.

"So Dumbledore once knew Grindelwald…." Harry began.

"And - oh, Harry…." Hermione choked out a sob. "That isn't even the worst part…." Opening another book, she flipped through it, seeking a specific page. Slightly calmed, she read aloud, "One of Grindelwald's earliest victims, and indeed one of the few British victims in the mainly Continental war, was the young wife of the very wizard later to defeat him in a duel: Albus Dumbledore…."

"Indeed," spoke a solemn voice behind them, making both Harry and Hermione jump. "It was entirely my fault…."

How long Dumbledore had been observing them, neither knew. At this moment, he seemed older and more tired than Harry had ever seen him.

"Professor Dumbledore!" Hermione squeaked. "We … we didn't expect to see you here."

"Nor I you." the Headmaster replied, with barely a trace of his usual humour. Sparing a cursory glance over Harry`s shoulder towards the portrait of a fourteenth-century Hogwarts headmaster hanging on the adjacent wall, he added, "Though the fuss in the library did feed my curiosity."

Not happy with having their privacy disturbed, Harry asked directly, "Professor, why is a picture of Grindelwald on your desk?" His anger was smouldering. Dumbledore had made a show lately of being open with him, but was the old man reverting to his prior, secretive ways?

Hermione jumped in. "What Harry means, Professor, is that he's - we're both surprised that you'd have a picture of him given, well … everything…."

Ignoring these direct questions, at least temporarily, Dumbledore had one of his own. "I assume you deduced this, Miss Granger?" They both nodded. "Do you mind if I ask what sparked your interest in this topic?"

Hermione looked nervous and puzzled, but she answered, "Well, you see Professor, I was reading ahead in A History of Magic, back in Third Year…. I was actually trying to learn about Voldemort's first rise to power, and about Sirius, but I couldn't help but read what she'd written about Grindelwald. Ms. Bagshot was so vague and brief that I decided to read more, to figure out what she wasn't saying. That's how I learned about all this…."

To both Harry and Hermione's surprise, the Headmaster let out a soft chuckle. "I had always wondered when Bathilda's discomfort with the history of her great-nephew would come back to haunt me…. Frankly, I am rather surprised it took so long."

Harry and Hermione shared a glance. Great-nephew? This time, Harry cut in. "Sir, do you mean that Bathilda Bagshot and Grindelwald were related?"

"Are related, Mister Potter. As both still live, the past tense is unnecessary," confirmed Dumbledore, who, temporarily at least, seemed to regain some of his twinkle. He turned to Hermione. "Miss Granger, what do know you of Gel-, I mean Grindelwald's youth?"

"Only that he was expelled from Durmstrang during his Fifth Year, for reasons that are debated. After that, he drops off the record for many years," she replied. "Pardon me, Professor, but where are you going with this?"

"Given the number of illegal and otherwise … illicit activities I know he engaged in, I hardly find that surprising." Dumbledore paused before continuing. "During those years, it is frequently stated that he `traveled.' However he spent the latter part of those years, during the first few months, he stayed in Godric's Hollow - with Bathilda Bagshot's family, to be precise. We met through her."

Dumbledore paused. Both Harry and Hermione regarded him expectantly. "You wish the full story, I suppose?"

`You think this is a good idea?' Harry Legilimenced to Hermione.

`It's the only way we'll ever understand. We might as well try,' she likewise responded.

When they nodded, Dumbledore sighed. "It is a long story … difficult…. I will not deny it to you, but you must allow an old man his comforts." With a wave of his wand, he conjured another chintz armchair, and settled into it. After another pause, he commenced.

"For you to understand this story fully, I must begin with my family. I assume you both know of my brother?" When they nodded, he continued, "I had a sister as well … Ariana … younger than both of us. Very few know of this. She never attended Hogwarts…."

The Headmaster then related a sorrowful family tale - how one afternoon he had failed to watch his sister. She had wandered and been attacked by Muggle boys, probably for performing wild magic. Dumbledore's father, in a towering rage, found the attackers and used the Cruciatus on them and their families. That transgression saw him sentenced to Azkaban, where he died. Ariana never recovered, and her uncontrollable magical outbursts eventually killed their mum….

As Harry winced over the final revelation, all too reminiscent of his own control issues, Hermione had to ask, "Your sister … it's tragic. But does this relate to Grindelwald?"

"I am getting there, Miss Granger, I assure you," Dumbledore said wearily. "After my father was sentenced to Azkaban, Mother fled to Godric's Hollow with the remains of her once-happy family. Bathilda Bagshot lived nearby, and through her, I met Gellert Grindelwald…."

Dumbledore's craggy face relaxed as he paused and stared into the distance - as if seeing through the intervening decades.

"I had just graduated from Hogwarts with some degree of academic achievement. Mum had just died. I grudgingly fulfilled my obligations as the eldest, but was loath to surrender my bright future to the care of a half-mad sister. I would gladly have fobbed that off on poor Aberforth."

"At same time, Gel-, Grindelwald had been expelled from Durmstrang, and was living with Bathilda in Godric's Hollow. She appreciated my predicament, and hoped that someone close to my age might better console me. She had no idea just what she started…."

Again, that stare…. A sad trace of smile….

Hermione watched carefully.

"We spent every waking moment together, Gellert and I. He dreamed and schemed about a new Wizarding age. Repeal of the Statute. Wizard dominion over Muggles. And I supported him. Personally, he spoke of safety, perhaps treatment, for my sister…. I believed that only his vision could prevent Ariana's fate from happening to others. This lasted two months - before the whole house of cards came crashing down."

No smile. Not anymore. But … something….

"I had never seen Gellert's cruelty until … then. That is not to say I was ignorant. I knew of it on some level - he had been expelled from Durmstrang, after all. But the subject was avoided. Our remarkable summer was coming to an end. Aberforth, who had cared for Ariana during my neglect, was to return to Hogwarts in a few days. I could no longer evade my responsibility for her."

"As that day approached, Gellert mentioned my quandry with increasing frequency. He most likely intended this as a warning that our planning stage could not last forever, but I took it as an insult to my ability. I scoffed and informed him that I would be more than ready…. Ah … promises easily made and even more easily forgotten and broken…."

There it was. That - something - again….

Hermione wondered.

Dumbledore resumed. He sounded very tired, now, and sad.

"Not long after one such brush-off, Aberforth overheard us planning a tour of Europe, to begin our quest. He burst in, charging me with neglecting Ariana and breaking familial vows I could scarcely remember. I accused him of eavesdropping on things he could not possibly fathom. These recriminations escalated into a full-fledged argument. In a fury, Aberforth attacked Gellert."

"Gellert had always been quick to anger, but this was beyond anything I had experienced. He cursed my brother - the Cruciatus Curse. I stood by useless, not certain whom to defend. When Gellert stopped, Aberforth staggered to his feet, and pretended he was beaten. After a few seconds, he pulled his wand, and a full duel began…."

Would the Headmaster be able to finish the tale without breaking down?

"Everyone's shouting roused Ariana. She wandered into the room. Finally, I threw myself into the mix, firing defensive spells everywhere, all the while begging Gellert not to inflict his anger on my family."

"After seconds, maybe minutes - the timing remains uncertain - of flying spells, all this magic was too much for Ariana. A bright flash and a loud bang interrupted us. When the smoke cleared, my sister lay dead on the floor. Whether a spell hit her, or if her own magic caused it was never clear. Gellert fled before her body was even cool, leaving me and my brother to deal with the aftermath."

"Aberforth never forgave me, and thus we remain estranged. But I blamed myself even more. I tried to forget everything … to pretend that summer never happened. After a year of mourning, I married Muriel. She was Muggle-born, and a year behind me at school. She knew nothing of my sister…. Or any of the rest…."

At this point, the elderly man ducked his head. Instead of crying, though, he hoarsely whispered. "I did not love her."

"Professor?" Hermione asked, hesitantly rising, ready to offer comfort, but uncertain as to how. "What's wrong? What do you mean?"

Dumbledore paused for a few seconds, composing himself. "Marrying her, it provided family, some replacement for what I had lost. But more, it was my final a repudiation of those months - it forsook Gellert."

"Because she was a Muggle-born?" Harry asked.

"No … Gellert never campaigned against Muggle-borns. That idea is purely Voldemort's fabrication. Gellert believed in wizarding supremacy, but never discriminated against magic based on birth."

"Well, then what?" Harry was growing impatient with the circumlocutions - Dumbledore's hesitancy and his dodging major points.

"I am getting there, Mister Potter," responded Dumbledore, now seeming nervous as well as grief stricken. "My marriage was not a rejection of Gellert's views. It rejected Gellert personally. I loved him…."

"Are you saying … that you're … gay?" Hermione gently, almost timidly, asked.

He seemed to relax at her friendly tone. "I suppose that would be the current lingo. Of course, no non-pejorative term existed when I was young. The closest was probably `invert,' and even that was rarely spoken. Such love dared not speak its name."

"I can imagine!" Hermione jumped in, and the original purpose of the conversation was lost in a flurry of discussion concerning historical views of homosexuality. Harry let this latest Hermione fact-fest wash over him, marveling again at the breadth of her knowledge. He knew next to nothing about the topic, aside from typical disparaging remarks about "pansies," "ponces," and "poofters," courtesy of Uncle Vernon and Dudley - and (he thought shamefully) some of his classmates … even occasionally his own locker room jibes….

He tuned back in just in time to hear "…and that's just the Muggles! I imagine it must have been harder for you; with the Wizarding world so conservative in general…."

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "Indeed it was."

Harry cut across, trying to return the others to the story's main thread. "I believe you told us you had married, Professor Dumbledore?"

"Ah, yes, the promised explanation," the older man wheezed. "As I said, I married Muriel and tried to forget those two months altogether. I was moderately happy, and I loved her as much as I was able. Newly unburdened, I began my rise to prominence. News of me slowly reached the Continent, including news of my wife, and our new son."

"Of course, this news reached Gellert. He was quick to anger, as mentioned, and also quite jealous. During our summer together, he had been jealous of my simple friendship with Elphias. You can barely imagine his rage upon learning about my wife."

Harry felt Hermione, beside him, shiver almost imperceptibly.

"Whilst in Lorraine, visiting family, Muriel was abducted by Grindelwald sympathisers. They delivered her up, and he executed her personally. Some official explanation was offered, now long forgotten. During our final duel, he admitted he killed her solely because she was my wife. Thus, I killed her by marrying her, and to what end…?"

Dumbledore broke off, choking back sobs. Harry reached over and patted his arm awkwardly; crying headmasters being even worse than crying girls, he decided.

Given a few minutes pause, Dumbledore recovered enough to continue.

"Fortunately, my son had stayed with me in England. Whether Gellert would have sought to harm him, had nothing more happened, I shall never know."

Hesitantly, as if afraid any interruption might end the conversation, Hermione asked "What … what was your son's name, Professor?"

"Percival, after my father. In all honesty, I had hoped for a daughter, to name in memory of Ariana. Percival hated Grindelwald for his mother's death, and grew to despise me for not avenging it. Over my protestations, once he was of age, he joined one of the volunteer brigades going to the Continent to fight Grindelwald's then burgeoning empire. There was, of course, no organized Ministry response to Gellert's aggression. It contented itself with his decision to leave Britain alone."

"Perhaps Ministry support would have saved Percival and his doomed companions, or perhaps it would just have led to more deaths. Most of the deaths again lie at my doorstep. I delayed facing Gellert for far too long. His atrocities were known in Britain for years. Yet I still hesitated."

"What was it? Did I fear his powers? Was I afraid I would lack the will to fight him? Was I pretending that all this did not flow from those utopian dreams we shared? Whatever the reason, I did not pursue him when I should have."

Hastily, Harry reminded, "You did fight him though, Headmaster? You faced him. And you won."

"Indeed," Dumbledore responded. "Year later, when I could dither no longer, I traveled to Nurmengard. Whatever my fears, they were invalid. If anything, he could not bear to face me."

"What do you mean, sir?" Hermione asked.

"The battle was by no means easy. We were well matched magically, as in our youth. And whilst I was still young by Wizarding standards, I was not as spry as before. At one point, several hours in, he could have finished me. But when he saw me stumble, he faltered. Perhaps he could not bring himself to kill me. As a consequence of that unwillingness, I prevailed."

"I know how that feels," Harry sympathised, recalling his own duel with Hermione. "Sir … do you think you won because Grindelwald still loved you too much to end it?"

"I question calling it `love'," Dumbledore sighed. "But his residual feelings for me most assuredly saved my life, and because his defeat toppled his regime, the lives of many others. Then my love for him spared his life. The International Confederation of Wizards were prepared to execute him forthwith. Only my impassioned arguments for mercy convinced them to commute his sentence to life imprisonment in Nurmengard."

"That's beautiful…." Hermione murmured softly. "But I'm still not sure, Professor, why you keep his picture on your desk."

"The simplest explanation would be that I keep his picture for the same reason I keep Muriel's. But more than that, I retain it as a reminder of all that can come of love, both good and bad. Love can lead us to ignore that which matters most, but it is also the root of all mercy. That is the one thing Tom Riddle never has known and never will."

Harry cut in. "And that's why he must never succeed."

"I admire your sentiment, Harry," replied Dumbledore, the twinkle back in his eye. "But there is more to it. That is why Tom can never succeed. And that is why I have such hope for you, and for all of our futures."

* * * *

Harry strode briskly through the uncrowded corridor, the broad stone walls echoing his footsteps. He was going to the library to get a head start on his Charms homework - four rolls of parchment on how and why charms cast on plants differed from charms cast on animals. In keeping with his upper-year classes' more holistic approach towards magic, the assignment was jointly assigned with both Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.

He was making the best of Hermione's afternoon meeting with Madam Pomfrey concerning her Healing research - and then wanting to squeeze in some violin practice. Harry reckoned he could have a couple of undisturbed study hours before having to report to the Pitch for Quidditch practice. He and Ron (especially Ron) were driving the team harder. Their first match, against Slytherin, loomed ever larger in everyone's consciousness.

Until recently the idea that swotting without Hermione could be more productive than with her would have been absurd. But now that they were a couple, her close presence, especially when they had privacy, was extremely distracting. Her increased amenability to distraction hardly helped matters.

Regardless of distractions, Hermione always seemed able complete her assignments. He ribbed her about using a Time-Turner - but she denied it, and he believed her.

Harry noticed the sound of a second pair of footsteps, behind him but gaining. He was poised to turn about when a familiar voice called out, "Harry, if you've a moment, could I have a word?"

Harry pulled up short. "Of course, Dennis," he agreed. "No problem at all - what's on your mind?"

Now in his third year, Dennis Creevey was no longer the scrawny, near midget he had been as an ickle firstie. He had found his calling and knew whom to thank for that.

"I thought you'd like to know that it's really gonna happen," Dennis said, excitedly bouncing on his heels.

Harry had too many things happening simultaneously in his life. Put on the spot, he was at a loss. "Umm … that's great, Dennis…. When?"

"According to Blackie Howe, the assembly plant should be up and running in about two weeks," Dennis answered happily. "I'm so grateful that you agreed to stake us."

Harry could barely believe it. A housemate younger than he was actually starting a business (regardless of the financing) large enough to need its own factory…. That was so far out of Harry's league, he scarcely knew what to say.

"Where's this factory?" Harry asked.

"Where everybody opens new plants," Dennis told his backer. "In China … a place called Shenzhen. We found plenty of wizards around there willing and able to build these systems. Before, it was hopeless. We were so far behind our orders that we'd never have caught up."

Harry regarded Dennis quizzically. "You mean there's really a wizard market for something I thought most would call a `Muggle trick?'"

"We thought the same thing, so we were caught by surprise," Dennis explained. "More wizards than you'd think are curious about this Internet business. Arthur Weasley ordered one, of course. A lot of Ravenclaws believe these gadgets will help them with their studies. We've also had institutional customers. Professor McGonagall ordered one for Hogwarts. Remus Lupin bought two, but won't say who for - just that you'd want me to sell them…."

Harry knew immediately. The Order was going high tech.

"Just be careful in selling to Slytherins," Harry quipped.

"No problems there," Dennis returned. "That's the real `Muggle Tricks' crowd. We haven't made a single sale to a Snake, and that's one demographic I can do without."

"Sounds great," Harry praised. "Constant vigilance, you know." He chanced one more question before moving along to the library - trying to sound like the attentive investor he was not. "So how much profit do you make on those things?"

"When it was just Colin and me, about five hundred Galleons worth of parts could make a machine we could easily sell for five thousand Galleons, but that didn't count our own labour," Dennis calculated. "Now, we'll be paying the Chinese wizards and shipping costs via Industrial Floo - but we'll save loads on parts. All told, we expect net costs of around two thousand Galleons a unit, but we'll sell a lot more, so I'd say we'll probably clear a hundred thousand Galleons profit, on sales of maybe thirty-five units a year. That amortises the plant in three years. Then we can repay your principal balance; or pay dividends if you'd rather stay an investor…."

At that point Harry decided he'd heard enough. "Well that's brilliant, but I've got to go a-swotting for a while before Quidditch practice."

* * * *

Elsewhere in the Castle, someone was hard at work finishing a rather disagreeable task. She had promised, so she would carry on until obtaining proper confirmation.

And confirmation was coming. On her last Hogsmeade visit, she spent a substantial fraction of her fairly tight funds buying a Pocket Pensieve. It was altogether more private and more flexible than the full-sized Pensieve originally offered for this task.

Privacy and flexibility were essential for this type of sleuthing. Luna Lovegood had been on the case for almost two weeks. Shower stalls and vanities were her primary theatres of operations - because Luna did not play Quidditch like her quarry, Cho Chang.

Pornography was altogether beneath witches. Luna was appalled at the thought that Cho would do something like that, with anyone. That she was cheating on Ron in the process made her blood positively boil.

Anyone who tolerated the nickname "Looney" with equanimity was slow to anger. Luna did not ordinarily get mad - she got even.

Luna had another advantage. She knew more about Muggle matters than even Hermione Granger might suspect. She learnt from her late father, who had willingly embraced Muggle ways to avoid dependence on a Ministry he considered untrustworthy.

So Xenophilius Lovegood had known what the Internet could do. He taught Luna. Now Luna put her skills to good use.

Hermione sought Luna's assistance primarily because she was in Ravenclaw. She provided scandalous material, which more than justified her suspicions that Cho had a lurid secret pursuit - unknown to her unsuspecting boyfriend. Hermione's printouts included universal resource locators.

In the middle of the night, Luna used the Ravenclaw D.A. central station, both to confirm Hermione's information and to assess the scope of the problem for herself.

Luna immediately concluded that that woman had no business being with Ronald Weasley.

All she had to do was prove it.

Finally, she thought she had that proof. She had managed a "coincidental" encounter with Cho in the Ravenclaw showers that morning. Thinking quickly, Luna dropped her slippery bar of soap and immediately stepped on it, producing a spectacular pratfall.

Looking like a klutz in front of a catty girl like Cho would be too much for some, but Luna was incapable of embarrassment.

Heedless of her nakedness, Cho rushed to assist Luna. Faking a twisted ankle, Luna managed an eyeful of various tattoos that did, or did not, festoon those parts of Cho's body that good little boys never got to see.

Now, several hours later, Luna could confirm the truth of Hermione's suspicions - notions that initially seemed bizarre even to one who had grown up around the Quibbler.

With the Pocket Pensieve, Luna cross-checked her memories against Hermione's Internet pictures. The round, intricate tattoo below Cho's navel, that her bikini panties just about bisected, was real. Luna had observed it (or parts of it) four times during her undercover assignment.

Everything else was temporary - and Cho's temporary tattoos changed every time she left the Castle for those weekend off-campus Sinic Magical Studies classes. That is, if she really attended such classes at all, an ever more doubtful proposition.

Luna had tried verifying that as well. By lucky accident, also during the Hogsmeade trip, Luna noticed that some of the Twins' Category 1 fireworks were from Macau, and carried Chinese writing. That evening, in the Common Room, with artificial insouciance, Luna had approached Cho and asked the older girl to translate the "directions." The result was laughable for somebody supposedly studying the language intensively.

"This one," Luna muttered, as she selected the single best visual memory of Cho's permanent tattoo and added it to the Pocket Pensieve. She would show it to Hermione as soon as possible.

And how to do that?

Luna concluded that Hermione would undoubtedly be watching the Gryffindor Quidditch practice - because Harry would be there. Come to think of it, Cho would likely be there, too; for similar reasons, if a different boyfriend.

Luna's eyes flashed dangerously.

The nerve of her to do this to poor Ronald. Somehow, she would get her comeuppance.

As Luna descended the tower staircase to the Ravenclaw common room, she detoured to the Seventh Years' lodgings. It was deserted.

Scowling at the mere thought of Cho, Luna left a calling card under the older girl's pillow.

"That will teach her," Luna hissed.

Then she made her way to the Quidditch Pitch.

* * * *

Ron Weasley was dead tired. Despite temperatures barely into the teens, he felt sweat stinging his left eye as, breathing hard, he readied for the next assault. Flicking matted, stringy hair out of his face, he grimly assumed his accustomed position just in front of the middle goal mouth.

Practice had been surprisingly good, leading to Ron's immediate predicament. The Chasers were altogether exceeding expectations, demonstrating their ability to put the Quaffle by him with uncomfortable frequency.

Ginny, of course was spectacular. Everybody knew that, especially her.

Ron sighed whilst watching Ginny give her fellow Chasers a pep talk before their next run. It was a pain being Quidditch Captain with an uppity sister on the team. She constantly did things that almost, but not quite, usurped his authority - like those bloody headbands she conjured. Even Harry agreed to wear one, leaving him the last hold out.

But then, unlike that berk McLaggen, at least Ginny never complained about serving as team water girl…. Even after Dobby left.

Ginny's classmate, Demelza Robbins, was rapidly proving to be a topnotch find. And Dean Thomas … well, nobody could ask for more from a last-minute substitute.

Here they came again, with Ginny on point as usual. Even letting the Beaters have at them without opposition hardly slowed this bunch down.

Of course, that also meant that the Beaters….

Just as Ron girded for another scoring attempt, the Chasers scattered, their formation ruined by a pair of crimson-tinted streaks. As Demelza spun out of the way, she dropped the Quaffle.

Ron grinned. Harry and Jazzy were at it again. Harry was teaching the untamable Third Year the Wronski Feint and similar power diving moves. After reminding them of her spectacular tryout accident, Ron had agreed on the theory that "what does not kill you makes you stronger."

That must have been their twentieth dive in the last half hour. Harry had to be getting pretty tired.

McLaggen gave Ron a shout.

Oops! Not good to let ones mind go walkabout on the Pitch. Ginny regrouped the chasers, and here they came again. Something about that look in his sister's eye … Ron always played hunches….

Thomas to Robbins to Weasley…. The other two Chasers criss-crossed in front of Ginny, hiding her, and the Quaffle, from view. Ginny was on him in an instant, but Ron had not allowed the others to distract him from his onrushing sister. Suddenly she soared straight up….

Despite all his preparation, Ron was almost knocked off his broom as Ginny barrel-rolled barely over his head - her streaming robes slapping his face and almost blinding him with his own unruly hair.

Goal!

As Ginny tilted her broom skywards, she had simply dropped her cargo into Dean's waiting hands. Entirely unopposed, he tossed Daisy Pennifold's finest invention through the unguarded left hoop.

"Maybe if you'd wear a Gryffindor headband, you could see what you were doing," Ginny taunted as she flew around the back of the goalposts. McLaggen, hovering nearby on his broom waiting impatiently for some playing time, roared with laughter.

Ron had not fully recovered when Harry swooped through the scoring area, upside down this time, with Jazzy hot on his broomtail. Ron expected another feint until he heard Harry yell, "Game!" In his raised right hand, the Snitch's wings were fluttering.

That was enough for Ron. He blew his magically enhanced captain's whistle (ordered by owl post from Quality Quidditch Supplies the day he learnt of his captaincy, and only recently received), and shouted, "McLaggen, get in here!"

Ron flew to the team bench. He blew the whistle twice more - the agreed-upon signal for a captain's conference with Harry.

Quickly dismounting, Ron dropped to the damp, grassy ground. The air was cold enough to cloud Ron's breath in front of his face. "Accio Ron's water bottle."

A two-litre bottle, red plastic with a black top (both charmed unbreakable) flew into his hand. The bottle - with his initials "RBW" engraved with what looked like real gold - had been Dobby's going-away present to the Gryffindor co-captains.

Ron was pleased that his DADA practice with wandless magic was paying dividends.

He had just begun sucking on the built-in self-Scourgifying straw when Harry landed with soft thud in the grass behind him. Ron summoned Harry's bottle - identical except for the monogram - and tossed it to his best mate.

Ron had been spot on in his call. Harry needed the break, too. "Thanks, mate," the other Gryffindor co-captain panted before gratefully pulling on his straw.

"So what do you think?" Harry asked. "Will we kick Slytherin's arse or what?"

"Oh, Hell yeah!" Ron chortled as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, the bottle dutifully hovering before him in midair. "We'll absolutely flatten them. Moose is already whingeing how their Seeker's pants with Malfoy out. He's hoping to get by on their Chaser's strength - all Seventh Years, you know - but I'll put this group up against anyone."

"Including you," Harry teased, a grin on his face. "Ginny has your number right now."

"Nah," Ron joshed back. "I was just knackered - and from the looks of things, so were you."

"Too right," Harry admitted. "You don't think Montague's having you on, do you?" Awaiting Ron's answer, he slurped another big slug of Ginny's special mix of water and Invigoration Draught.

"Wouldn't put it past him," Ron allowed. "But I've had Seamus spying on their practices - that's why he switched to Hermione's D.A. class, not so he could be with all the girls, although I'm sure the bloke doesn't mind that…. Anyway, Seamus reports that the Snakes are a really bad job this year, save their Chasers. Your idea to even up everyone's brooms took away their last advantage."

"Good," pronounced Harry. "Then, if we lead by one-fifty, I'm gonna put her in," he said, referring to Jazzy.

"In a real game?" Ron challenged. "So soon?"

"Sure," replied Harry coolly. "If she catches the Snitch - great. The girl needs to get her game experience right away. With everything going on, I can't guarantee I'll always be available."

"Oh," grunted Ron, disappointment on his face. "Oi, speaking of girls, there's your fan club."

Ron was referring to Hermione, just been joined by Luna. Happily, Harry waved to his fiancée, typically with homework spread around her. From her apparel, she must have cast a Warming Charm over her immediate vicinity.

Engrossed in a conversation with Luna, she failed to notice him. `Hello, Hermione,' Harry Legilimenced, just as his straw started drawing air….

A shrill screech behind Harry shattered the moment, followed almost instantaneously by the nasty thud of iron impacting flesh.

Harry whirled around just in time to see Ginny wobbling on her broom, a Bludger falling away. She spun once, her hands released the Firebolt, and she also fell away.

Reacting before thinking, Harry leapt on his broom and pelted towards her. Behind him, if he had been listening, Harry would have heard Ron shout, "Arresto Momentum."

It felt almost like when Hermione's Valkyrie had been sabotaged. Time seemed to slow down. Everything was very quiet; everything looked crystal clear. He seemed to be flying through some mental tunnel.

Harry focused solely on Ginny's falling form. Since she weighed much more than a Snitch, he had to time this catch just right…. He was close…. Power dive….

Whomp!

He flew into her, and the impact nearly jolted Harry off his broom. With the power dive - and Ron's spell slowing Ginny's descent - he overcompensated and the skewed forces spun him around crazily. But he somewhat clumsily collected her whilst managing to pull his Firebolt from its dive with his legs alone.

Then he sensed it.

Something large and scaly burst to life within him. His chest hitched tightly - as if barely holding the thing - underneath his robes, his trousers went tighter still. All Harry's blood seemed to exit his brain, and he operated entirely on base instinct.

He wanted her.

He wanted to take that arm wrapped tightly around her right thigh, move it upwards, and rip off her knickers - right then and there. Unbidden images came to mind … he and Ginny clenched sweatily in the Gryffindor Quidditch captain's office, a red and gold swath of cloth tied tightly about the locked doorknob.

On autopilot, Harry swooped to a perfect landing on the pitch. Seemingly of its own accord, Ginny's long hair wrapped itself around his neck and shoulders, further bewitching him. Her lips looked so inviting. Her red and gold Gryffindor headband had slipped down her neck, inviting an explore of what lay beneath. Within, the beast was roaring….

All about Harry, everything still seemed unnaturally quiet. In the background - a long way off - he could hear people shouting.

Then, from somewhere deep inside, Harry heard - almost felt - something else … a voice, sort of … telling him, `No, I don't think so….'

Before Harry knew it, a strong arm gripped his shoulder. More hands pulled at Ginny's semi-conscious form, hoisting her away from him.

A moment earlier and Harry might have fought back. But this voice was advising - `Stupid thing to do, actually.' Harry hesitated, uncertain. He felt Ron shake him and recognised his best mate's voice, "Whoa, Harry, great save there! You all right? You look a mite peaky."

"You'd be pale, too…."

"Don't worry, Potter, I've got her now," Cormac McLaggen grunted as he hauled Ginny away. Harry felt her hair sliding off his neck. The beast made a last, feeble protest, but Harry was too tired and shocked at everything to protest.

"Merlin, Harry, you were magnificent, as usual." Harry turned and came face to face with Hermione. She looked at him with something approaching amazement etched on her face. "Your saving people thing is marvelous to behold. Here - you're still worked up from the effort. Let's get you some more water … oops, you finished this off … and get you settled."

Tenderly, she led Harry, still shaking with excitement, to the Gryffindor bench and sat him firmly down. Taking her accustomed place beside him, Hermione had Harry pulled over sideways in less than a minute. His head was in her lap as she tenderly ran her fingers through his very sweaty hair. Over and over, she whispered for him to relax.

"I guess that's enough," Ron declared. "Practice is over."

Turning to Hermione, Ron made his first friendly comment in weeks, "Is there anything I can do for either of you?"

"Just save some dinner," Hermione replied softly. "I think he's fallen asleep."

Harry woke up after dark - his head still in Hermione's lap. Her arms encircled him in a warm, protective human necklace. The monster had vanished as quickly as it came. Hermione's soft touch was all he felt on his chest.

He reached up and gently grasped her hands in his. "Hermione…." he croaked. "You're … you're wonderful, you know that?"

"If you say so, Harry," she cooed at him. "But you saved the day - always where you're needed, you are."

Harry sighed. Looking into her face, he wondered how he could ever - even for an instant - have entertained the crazy idea of betraying her trust. Just thinking about the incident made him quite randy. "I think I need something else right about now," he said in a low, soft voice he used only with her. "We need someplace private, very private, right away."

Being Gryffindor co-captain had its benefits….

* * * *

"Dolohov!" the Dark Lord snapped. "Have you compiled the list of potential Muggle targets?"

"Yes, Master," the Death Eater confirmed. He stepped forward, dropped to his knees, and kissed the hem of Lord Voldemort's robes.

"Very well," hissed the Dark Lord as he clutched the proffered parchment in his long, pale fingers. "Now go, and chart the best attack routes."

"Vaisey!" came his next summons. "Have you photographed the base and its environs?"

This Death Eater repeated his predecessor's show of subservience. "Yes, Master. I have both daytime and night shots, as ordered."

"Good. You shall be rewarded once the operation proceeds as planned," Lord Voldemort promised. "Prepare a second set for Ludo, then."

"As you wish, it shall be done," the group's most skilled photographer promised as he took his leave.

"Bagman!" the Dark Lord barked. "You shall take the set to our allies. Gather whatever operational thoughts and suggestions they might have, and return to me."

"Consider it done," the turncoat Department Head promised.

"Greyback!" Lord Voldemort demanded.

The werewolf stepped forwards and prostrated himself in front of his Alpha. He knew better than even to touch his master's robes. "Your orders, Master?"

"You will pay Caractacus a little visit," the Dark Lord instructed. "He is supposedly making urgent repairs to something I own. I am beginning to doubt his alacrity. Do him no harm …, but remind him of his erstwhile partner's fate."

"With pleasure," growled the lycanth.

The Master gave one final command. "Lucius, come with me…."

* * * *

Author's notes: "Mr. Normal" is from Tommy - "We're Not Gonna Take It." "M." stands for "medium"

"Head on a platter" is Biblical, referring to the death of St. John the Baptist

"Mutadis mutandi" is Latin for "making necessary changes"

Activated Horcruxes are important

"Athena from the head of Zeus" is Greek mythology. Zeus swallowed Metis, who was pregnant with Athena. Athena developed and caused Zeus such pain that he had his head split with an axe, releasing Athena, full grown

Lisen Broh was introduced in Ch.11; it is an anagram of Niels Bohr

Lupin will return

Arthur C. Clark said "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Hermione's T-shirt slogan reverses that

"Dry-stone dyke" is Scottish for a low stone wall

Navier-Stokes is a real equation, triply integrated, thus looking extremely complex. It is accurately described

Cylindrical coordinates are real. When used with Navier-Stokes, the result is truly impressive

The Drake equation estimates the prevalence of advanced extraterrestrials

Fibonacci numbers start with zero, one, and then adding the prior two for the next. Their mystical connotations were prominently featured in the DaVinci Code

Mersenne primes are in formula 2^x-1, where the result is prime

Barton Schell is a combined name of Philadelphia lawyers who co-founded a firm

Harry already knows about effective Mirror Charms

"What he knew, he could not say" plays on a Beatles line from "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window"

An "ose" suffix denotes a sugar; "magictose" is magical sugar

The Dursleys sent the laptop to Hogwarts

"Hoyo de Monterrey de José Gener Habana" is a brand of Cuban cigar

Harry repeats Hermione's Ch. 34 Valkyrie ride through Hogwarts

In canon Dumbledore likes socks

Dumbledore has very eclectic tastes

My father collects blue glass bottles; my daughter likes Kachina dolls

Black velvet paintings with fluorescent colors are incredibly tacky

Che Guevara hit by a pie is a National Lampoon magazine cover

Bose-Einstein and quark-gluon are both unusual states of matter; quark-gluon was mentioned in Ch. 36

Unknown constants are often expressed as "k", and unknown variables, as "x"

The multiplication property of equality is used properly

This idea of the Fifth Element originally prompted me to write this fic

Lightspeed times itself - c² was in the hat's song in Ch. 34

The hat makes a "got milk" joke

The "too soon old" line is a Pennsylvania Dutch saying; I don't know where "youth is lost on the young" comes from

300,000 x 300,000 = 90,000,000,000; a milliard means "billion" in the USA

My daughter wrote the first draft of the Grindeldore scenes

"Portrait … as a young man," is from James Joyce

Gay Dumbledore is canon, I suppose

"Invert" is accurately used

"Love … not speak its name," from Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde

Percival's brigade recalls the Spanish Civil War Abraham Lincoln Brigades

Shenzhen is a special Chinese economic zone just north of Hong Kong

Firecrackers are Category 1 fireworks in Britain; most come from China

"Not kill you … makes stronger" - from Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols

Pennifold invented the modern Quaffle

This voice had helped Harry before

70

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.ch51 Padfoot's legacy.doc 10/23/2011

-->