Going On

I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with Scholastic or anybody else who makes money off of Harry Potter. I do this only for the love of story-telling, not for profit. Yeah, I know this isn't Off Balance. I hope you like it anyway.

Warning #1: At the beginning of this story, Harry is in a very strong H/G mindset.

Warning #2: There will be mentions of various kinds of R/Hr pairings throughout.

Reassurance #1: Harry and Hermione will eventually get together.

With that out of the way, please do enjoy.


Chapter 1: The Boy in the Tower, Part 1

December 31, 1944

“Tom?” The soft rapping of knuckles against the old wooden door made it creak open slightly. Taking the dim flicker of light coming from inside the room as an unspoken invitation, Dumbledore let himself in, his long blue robes almost brushing against the cold grey cobblestones as he walked. Tom Marvolo Riddle sat at his writing desk, scribbling intently on a piece of parchment. He did not look up as Dumbledore entered the room. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Riddle’s head shot up suddenly, his eyes wide. “Professor Dumbledore,” he replied in startled recognition. “I…I wasn’t expecting you.” When his Transfiguration professor frowned, Tom continued, “So soon. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

The frown deepened. “It’s nearly midnight.” Dumbledore crossed the room to stand by Riddle’s side. “I would have arrived here sooner, but a pair of sixth-year Hufflepuffs thought it would be amusing to transfigure themselves into an elderly man with a scythe and an overly large infant.” Dumbledore thought the matter over with a playful twinkle in his eye. “I suppose it was, at that.”

Tom Riddle quickly removed all of the parchment from his desk and stashed it in a nearby drawer. “I was just finishing up my Charms assignment from yesterday. I have everything ready for you now, sir.”

Dumbledore let out a sigh. “Tom, are you certain that you wouldn’t rather have a student bring you your assignments? There’s a Gryffindor in your year who’s taking all of the same classes you are, you know.” Dumbledore lowered his voice. “She’s said to be quite pretty. I’ve heard her ask about you many times. Her name is…”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir,” Riddle interrupted haughtily, “I would prefer that you continue to bring me my class assignments.”

Dumbledore gave the young man a sad look. “I don’t know how much longer I can do that, Tom. I know how isolated you’ve been from the things that are happening in the wizarding world, but…the war against Grindelwald is getting worse. Much worse. I may be called upon to…Well, to leave the castle for extended periods of time.”

Tom Riddle simply nodded. “I’ll have to make other arrangements then.” An idea struck him suddenly. “Perhaps Headmaster Dippet himself could…”

“Headmaster Dippet is quite busy,” Dumbledore answered him solemnly. “Is there some reason that you do not want another student to enter this tower?”

“Of course not, sir,” Riddle answered instantly.

Dumbledore’s blue eyes met Riddle’s for a fleeting moment. “Very well,” the elder wizard went on. “I have your assignments here. I am requiring all of my seventh-year students to hand in two feet on the primary steps needed to become an animagus by next Wednesday. Professor Flitwick will be giving an exam in two days time on the last three chapters of The Autobiography of Germanicus Smythee. Also, I’m told you can skip the notes from Professor Binns’ class, as they’re exactly the same as yesterday. It seems that he bored everyone to sleep with his lecture on the wizarding world’s role in the Hundred Years’ War and had to go over everything that he covered in the previous class all over again.”

Tom Marvolo Riddle’s face remained impassive. “Is this everything, sir?”

“No.” Riddle looked startled again, and began to scowl at Dumbledore, a suspicious glare set in his eye. “It’s New Year’s Eve, Tom. Every student in the castle is celebrating but you. Since you did not participate in the festivities surrounding Halloween or Christmas, I was hoping that you might join us.”

“Is participation mandatory, sir?” Tom Riddle asked coldly.

Dumbledore’s face tightened. “Of course not.”

Riddle removed a blank piece of parchment from the drawer and began writing on it. “Then I choose to remain here. I have quite a lot of work to do.”

“Alright,” Dumbledore conceded, turning away from him to stand in front of the door. “You may do as you wish. I would like to point out, however, that I was once chosen to live here too. Yet I still took the time to get out once in a while and enjoy myself. You are never a prisoner in this tower, unless you choose to make yourself one. Remember that.” Riddle did not react as Dumbledore opened the door to exit. “Oh and Tom? One other thing.” Tom Marvolo Riddle looked up at Professor Dumbledore with only mild interest. “Happy birthday.”

***

Harry, Ron and Hermione each withdrew their heads from the pensieve in turn, looking a little dazed as they did so. Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts’ new Headmistress, gave them all a fond look before returning to her usual prim demeanor. She was sitting behind her new desk in her new office, looking as though she would just as soon have never been given them. “I’m afraid that that was the last memory Albus left for you.”

Harry couldn’t help but look surprised. “Are you sure? Couldn’t he have hidden some of them, to make sure that they didn’t fall into the wrong hands?”

McGonagall’s lips formed a thin line. “I’m certain that you’ve now seen all of them. Albus wanted you to have as many of his memories as he thought might prove useful to you.”

“More like ‘prove boring to you’,” Ron said with a yawn and stretch. “I could use a good kip right about now.”

Hermione glared at him scathingly. “No one made you come along, you know.” She turned away from Ron to look proudly back at the pensieve. “I found it fascinating.”

“I just wish that there had been something solid to go on,” Harry moaned, sitting down in a nearby armchair in defeat. “An object that meant something to Riddle or a location where he might have hidden one or…” He stopped himself abruptly, unwilling to say more about the horcruxes in front of McGonagall.

“Maybe we missed something,” Hermione thought aloud. “We could watch some of them again, just to be sure.”

A pained looked crossed Ron’s face. “Can we at least skip the ones where he’s having breakfast? Dumbledore was a great wizard and everything, but watching him eat porridge and toast is right boring.”

Hermione frowned. “Professor, I don’t think I recognized the tower where Tom Riddle was staying in the last memory. Is it somewhere on Hogwarts’ grounds?”

One of the Headmistress’ eyebrows rose. “I don’t think I quite understand what you’re asking me, Miss Granger,” McGonagall replied tersely.

“It would have been in his seventh year at Hogwarts,” Hermione casually informed her. “Apparently Dumbledore used to visit him there to give him his school assignments.”

McGonagall’s face now conveyed shock. “Albus left you a memory of that?!? But he’s strictly forbidden from ever…” She stopped herself and chuckled bitterly. “Well, I suppose there’s no way they could punish him for it now.”

Harry, who had been staring off into space, clearly lost in his own thoughts, leaned forward and turned his attention to the Headmistress. “What exactly was Dumbledore showing us, Professor?”

Minerva McGonagall remained silent for a moment. She seemed to be coming to a decision. “The Board of Governors could remove me for telling you this. You must swear that you won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Ron answered for them, his previously disinterested expression having vanished in a heartbeat. “We swear.” Harry and Hermione both nodded quickly in agreement.

“Centuries ago,” McGonagall began, “when the muggles of England and France were at war, Beauxbatons sent Hogwarts a gift. A peace offering, if you will. It was a divination tower.”

Harry smirked. “Didn’t Hogwarts already have one of those?”

“It did,” McGonagall answered him quickly, “but not like this one. It took the most gifted witches and wizards on the continent several decades to build it. The tower was designed to give anyone who stayed inside it visions of their own future. Something of a sneak peek of what’s to come.” The Headmistress folded her hands in her lap. “Naturally, it was one of the most sought after items in the magical world.”

Hermione looked skeptical. “If the tower was so valuable, why didn’t Beauxbatons keep it for themselves? Why would they send it to England?”

“Wizarding France was eager to keep English witches and wizards out of the war,” McGonagall explained patiently. “England had quite the august reputation. Many of the people in power in wizarding England at that time had been taught by the founders of Hogwarts themselves, and Merlin wasn’t far from anyone’s mind.”

“Don’t mind her, Professor,” Ron advised jokingly. “She’s just grouchy because none of this is in Hogwarts: a History.” Hermione made a sour face at him before turning her rapt attention back to the Headmistress.

“No,” McGonagall replied, shaking her head slowly, “it isn’t. Nor will it ever be. It is one of Hogwarts’ best kept secrets.” She stood quickly and began walking toward the large window near the corner of the room. “The tower is invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by any charm or curse known to wizardkind. Everyone who knows about it is strictly forbidden to speak of it to those who don’t.”

“Does this tower have a name?” Hermione asked curiously.

McGonagall turned around to face her. “For a time, it was known as the Seers’ Tower. However, about twenty-five years ago, American muggles built a structure with an incredibly similar name.”

Ron looked puzzled. “What would muggles need with a Seers’ Tower?” Neither Harry nor Hermione bothered to answer his question.

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat and continued speaking. “Its original name of ‘la tour de France’ was abandoned for similar reasons. Some have called it the Oracular Tower. Others have given it the more fearsome name ‘Tower of Nightmares’.”

“Why would they call it the ‘Tower of Nightmares’?” Harry inquired quizzically.

McGonagall shot Harry a pointed look. “The future is not always a wondrous thing to behold, Mr. Potter. Dreams are often shattered, love can be lost, and things hoped for can become things that will never be.”

“Or you might end up married to someone ugly,” Ron threw in. When Hermione gave him a cross look, he simply shrugged his shoulders. “What? That’s given me nightmares before.”

“May we see the Tower, Professor?” Hermione asked, temporarily ignoring her irritation with Ron.

“I can show you where it is,” McGonagall answered her honestly, “but I cannot take you inside of it. Only the tower itself chooses who may enter.”

“How does it do that?” Harry asked.

“On the cornerstone, at the base of the tower, is a rather lengthy list of names. They are the names of everyone who has stayed in the tower over the last six centuries. But,” the Headmistress explained, “the names were not etched there after their stay, but before. No one quite knows how they come to be there and there does not seem to be a pattern behind who the tower chooses, save that it always names seventh-year students who are exceptionally gifted.”

“Wait a moment,” Harry interjected. “If nobody can enter the tower except those who were chosen, why did Dumbledore ask Riddle if he wouldn’t rather have a student bring him his assignments? Wouldn’t that be impossible?”

Hermione gave Harry a look that said she was surprised that he had been paying that much attention in the pensieve. “I was just about to ask that same question.”

McGonagall returned to her seat and removed her eyeglasses. “In what might pass for compassion, the tower does allow each resident one visitor. An emissary, you might say. Primarily that person’s job is to bring the student in the tower their daily homework and lecture notes. It also usually falls on the emissary to keep the tower’s lone resident sane. The dearth of human contact can do strange things to a person’s mind.” Her expression turned suddenly grim. “More than one of the tower’s inhabitants have gone mad. And, of course, you know how You-Know-Who turned out.”

“But Dumbledore turned out alright,” Harry countered defensively.

McGonagall considered that for a moment. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” Her demeanor brightened somewhat. “In any event, no one was chosen to enter the tower after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

Harry could almost see the wheels in Hermione’s mind turn. “So…no one’s even been inside the tower since Voldemort left Hogwarts?” Both Ron and Professor McGonagall flinched at the use of the dark wizard’s name.

“Yes, that’s correct,” McGonagall answered with a nod, although she seemed oblivious as to where Hermione was going with this.

Harry, however, had picked up on it instantly. “Would it have been possible for him to leave something behind? To have hidden something inside the tower?”

The Headmistress shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose it’s possible.”

Ron scratched his chin. “So if You-Know-Who was up there all alone…and nobody’s been in the tower for over fifty years…it would have been the perfect place for him to hide a hor…” He stopped himself just before he inadvertently blurted out the word ‘horcrux’. Harry and Hermione both fixed him with their best angry glares.

Within seconds, there was one more such glare headed in his direction. “Mr. Weasley,” Headmistress McGonagall fumed, “I will thank you not to use that sort of language in my presence while you are still a student at this school.” She stood to smooth the creases from her robes, a stern look set on her face. “You may rest assured, however, that whatever pursuits You-Know-Who may have undertaken during his stay in that tower, the opposite sex was not one of them.”

Harry, Hermione and Ron shared a knowing look with each other. Over the summer, they had searched all of the places where Voldemort might logically have hidden his horcruxes. The orphanage where he had spent his formative years, the Riddle House and even the old shack in Little Hangleton that Marvolo and Merope Gaunt once called home. They had found three of the remaining horcruxes in each place and one, Slytherin’s locket, among the belongings of the thieving Mundungus Fletcher. All of them had now been destroyed. If Voldemort had indeed made seven horcruxes, only one remained. Its location had been a mystery that, up until now, the three of them had been completely unable to solve. This Oracular Tower was as likely an answer as any.

Harry spoke for the group when he asked, “Headmistress McGonagall, would you mind taking us to the tower?”

***

Within moments, the three of them were following a reluctant Minerva McGonagall as she led the way to the old divination tower. According to McGonagall, it lay just beyond the Quidditch pitch, near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. As Ron and Hermione argued over the morality of using one’s knowledge of the future to place wagers on Quidditch matches, Harry’s mind wandered freely. A part of him longed to know his future; to find out if he would survive the final battle with Voldemort, and if he did, how he had done it. That same part of him was also rather curious about whether he might end up married to a certain redhead who had been his girlfriend of late.

‘Ginny.’ Her name conjured images of flowers and sunshine, Quidditch matches and laughter, the joy of snogging and the promise of snogging to come. Even though he had technically broken things off with her at Dumbledore’s funeral, he had already asked her to come with him on their next trip to Hogsmeade (which would be heavily chaperoned, in light of the events of last year). He hadn’t called it a date, but he couldn’t help but hope that it might be.

As Ron and Hermione’s argument became heated, Harry jogged briskly to join Headmistress McGonagall. “Headmistress,” he began politely, “what exactly will we see when we arrive at the tower?”

“Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley and yourself will see nothing,” McGonagall informed him briskly. “I will see one of the most gorgeous pieces of Gothic architecture ever built by wizardkind.”

“Oh,” Harry replied, unable to completely conceal the disappointment from his voice. “Well, you are the Headmistress of the school. I guess it would make sense for there to be some way you could see it.”

“Indeed,” she agreed instantly. “However, I have been able to see the Oracular Tower since I was a girl of eighteen.” Harry’s eyes widened in surprise. “I was chosen to replace Albus as You-Know-Who’s emissary.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “It seems as though that’s how I’ve spent my entire life. Replacing Albus. And I fear I’ve never done an adequate job.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know that anyone really could. But you seem to have done as well as anyone might have.”

“Do not flatter me, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall warned him. “It won’t get you anywhere.” Despite her firm tone, Harry could swear he saw the hint of a smile forming on her lips. “There it is,” she announced, pointing at a spot a few hundred meters off that was not far from Hagrid’s hut. “In the distance, just in front of those particularly tall…”

“I see it,” Harry interrupted her in astonishment. The stone tower rose three hundred meters in the air where it was crowned by a spire of alabaster. “I must have walked this path a dozen times and I’ve never…” He shook his head in befuddlement. “How is this possible?”

The Headmistress seemed lost in her own thoughts. “That’s what Albus used to call it, you know. ‘The Tower of Possibilities’.” After Harry stared at her for a moment, she seemed to regain her faculties. “Mr. Potter,” McGonagall instructed firmly, “go on ahead and examine the cornerstone carefully. Tell me what you see.”

Harry sprinted across the remaining distance, only to crouch before the base of the tower. Finding the cornerstone with the list of names, he began reading them in order, until he found the very bottom. “‘Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Tom Marvolo Riddle’.” As his fingers ran along the surface of the stone, they brushed away dirt, revealing another name below Riddle’s. “‘Harry James Potter’.”

Not particularly surprising, was it? Anyway, to be continued in the next chapter.

ITL

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I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with Scholastic or anybody else who makes money off of Harry Potter. If I were, I'd make more money and there would be much less chance of OBHWF becoming a reality. Speaking of the Big Happy Weasley family, big time apologies for how much this chapter seems to shill for them. Everything will become Harmonian in time. Also, there's a shout out to Ahn Na Blue's "Here at the End" in here somewhere.


Chapter 2: The Emissary

Harry Potter traced his index finger over his own name, etched in the cornerstone of the tower along with the names of all the others who had lived here over the last few centuries. “Does this mean what I think it does?”

Headmistress McGonagall nodded her head solemnly. “I’m afraid so. The tower has chosen you, Potter.”

Harry was instantly reminded of his fourth year, when his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire, forcing him to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, despite the fact that he hadn’t entered himself in the contest. “This isn’t fair. I didn’t ask for this.”

“No one ever asks to reside here. The tower names who it chooses to,” McGonagall explained, seemingly indignant over the whole situation. “You’re under no obligation to stay here, however. Magical or otherwise.”

Harry looked up at her in curiosity. “Has anyone here,” he gestured toward the list of names, “ever refused to live inside the tower?”

“No,” the Headmistress answered honestly. “The temptation of knowing one’s own future is a great one. There aren’t many who could walk away from that and fewer still who could do so at the age of seventeen.”

“Harry,” Hermione exclaimed from behind him. She and Ron had jogged over to where he now crouched, looks of concern on both of their faces. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Harry grumbled as he stared up at the tower.

“The only thing that’s obvious,” Ron said, “is that you’re sitting on the ground, staring at nothing and looking like someone just stole your girlfriend and…” Realization hit Ron suddenly. “Oh.”

“You can see the tower, can’t you?” Hermione asked, her voice filled with anxiety. “Which means that…”

“I’ve been chosen,” Harry finished for her. “My name’s there on the cornerstone, right below Voldemort’s and Dumbledore’s.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?” Ron tried as he put on a nervous half-smile. “I mean, now you can get in and see if You-Know-Who left, er, something behind.” When he had been about to say the word ‘horcrux’ again, Hermione had shot him with a scathing glare. “Besides, who wouldn’t want to know the future?” His eyes widened. “Maybe I’ll become a professional Quidditch player.”

Hermione snorted derisively. “That’s if the tower even really shows the future. I have a hard time believing that any magical object can truly see things that haven’t happened yet.” She then turned her attention briefly to Ron. “And I seriously doubt that you’ll be a professional Quidditch player.”

Headmistress McGonagall spoke up quickly. “Every student who has lived here has claimed to have experienced detailed visions depicting their lives after they left Hogwarts, Dumbledore among them. I was skeptical at first, too, Miss Granger, but the facts remain what they are. You would be wise to consider them.”

Ron looked victorious. “Yeah, Hermione. Why don’t you listen to someone else for a change?”

“Me?” Hermione yelled back incredulously. “You’re the one who never listens! Not in class, not to Harry and certainly not to me.”

“Oy,” Ron replied with a roll of his eyes. “How could I not listen to you? You scream so loudly that everyone on Hogwarts grounds can hear you! There’s probably centaurs in the forest thinking, ‘Will that bird ever shut her gob?’”

Harry rose suddenly and began to walk towards the Forbidden Forest himself, as if to find out. “Why don’t you two just snog and get it over with?” he muttered angrily under his breath.

Harry had very little patience left when it came to his best friends’ incessant bickering. He had heard enough of it over their summer together to last him a lifetime. Something had changed between them at Dumbledore’s funeral and somehow he was sure that each had finally discovered how the other felt, but they seemed reluctant to take that final step and become a couple. ‘Why don’t they just get together?’ Harry asked himself bitterly. ‘Everyone’s been waiting for them to for ages.’

As Harry wandered to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, lost in his own thoughts, he did not hear Hermione come up behind him. “Harry,” she called out to him in a pleading voice. “Please don’t go away angry. I’m sorry that I yelled at Ron, but…well, you know how we get around each other.” She approached him slowly. “Are you mad?”

“No,” Harry answered her with a pout. Hermione gave him an intensely skeptical look. “Alright, maybe a little. I just wish that you two could lay off of each other once in a while. Especially when we’re looking for the horcruxes. Remember the time that we were trying to steal Hufflepuff’s cup and you nearly had a duel with Ron over whether he had fancied Susan Bones in fifth year?”

Hermione looked chagrined. “How could I forget?” Harry turned around to face her as she put on her most apologetic expression. “Although, in my defense, boys can be completely clueless as to who they fancy.”

“Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who’s even focused on what we’re doing,” Harry groused grumpily. “You know, if you two didn’t want to come along, you didn’t have to. This isn’t your fight.”

“Oh Harry, of course it is,” Hermione said. “All three of us are in this together.” She put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry if we’ve made you feel differently.”

Harry couldn’t help but smile at her sincerity. The two of them began walking together in the general direction of the Quidditch pitch. “Apology accepted, but on one condition.”

Hermione smiled herself and quirked an eyebrow in curiosity. “And what would that condition be, pray tell?”

Harry was now all business. “Do your thing on the tower. Find out if there’s really a horcrux in there.”

“I wish you’d stop calling it ‘my thing’,” Hermione told him, looking only slightly annoyed. “It’s just a spell. Anyone can do it.”

“I haven’t been able to,” Harry reminded her, “and neither has Ron.”

The spell they were referring to was a dark magic detection spell used by people who searched old tombs for a living, usually either creepy necromancer types or fun-loving adventure seekers like Bill Weasley. Naturally, it was the latter who had provided the three of them with the spell. Only Hermione had proven adept at using it, however.

“That’s because neither of you tried very hard after you saw that I could do it,” Hermione countered knowingly. “If you want my opinion, you were both just trying to make me feel better.”

Harry frowned in confusion. “Make you feel better? How do you mean?”

Hermione gave him her patented ‘Oh, come on,’ look. “There aren’t any books on horcruxes, Harry. I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful to you this past summer.”

“That’s complete rubbish,” Harry assured her. “We couldn’t have done any of it without you. Honestly.”

Hermione blushed at his words. “Thank you, Harry. That means a lot to me.” Without truly realizing it, they had rejoined Headmistress McGonagall and Ron, who appeared to be discussing Gryffindor’s chances of keeping the Quidditch cup this year.

“Ravenclaw and Slytherin are both down Seekers, now that Cho’s graduated and Malfoy’s well…you know…” Ron’s sentence trailed off awkwardly. “Hey look, Harry’s back!”

“Mr. Potter,” Headmistress McGonagall began, her tone mildly reproving, “I do not begrudge you the right to take your time in making this decision, but I also do not know what the tower will do if it’s kept waiting. Perhaps you should make up your mind quickly.”

Harry and Hermione shared a look that said they were on exactly the same page. “I think I’d like to take a look inside the tower first. If you wouldn’t mind showing me around, that is.”

***

After ascending an unfortunate number of steps, Headmistress McGonagall and Harry Potter stood before an old oak door with a rusty handle. Harry looked back down the steps with contempt. “Were people’s feet really that small in the Middle Ages?” he asked.

McGonagall gave the steps below an equally unpleasant glance. “Somehow I doubt it.” She then looked at him very seriously. “Perhaps you should enter first, Potter. You are the one who the tower has invited, after all.”

Harry tried his best not to seem nervous, but it didn’t seem to be working all that well. “OK,” he said, swallowing quickly and trying to shake the idea that Voldemort had somehow left a trap for him inside. “Here goes nothing.” With a purposefully steady hand, he tugged gently on the door handle.

The large door opened with a slow groan, eventually allowing Harry access to a smallish room (it was maybe about three or four times the size of the cupboard under the stairs where he had spent much of his childhood) laden with layers of cobwebs and dust. As Harry lit his wand to examine the contents of the room more closely, he found a simple cot resting in one corner of the room, a table with one leg shorter than the rest sitting beside it and a large window overlooking Hogwarts grounds just above both of them. Mold, dirt and dust covered everything. “I see Voldemort wasn’t much for housekeeping,” he observed.

McGonagall did not smile. “This room does not fill me with happy memories, Potter. Your jokes are likely to be wasted on me.”

Cautiously, Harry sat down on the bed. It groaned even louder than the door had under his negligible weight. “Is the cot as old as the tower?” Harry asked, deliberately keeping the sarcasm out of his voice.

“I’m told Albus had it replaced while he was here,” the Headmistress answered him. “Something about a spring hitting him in a disadvantageous location.”

Harry rose slightly to look out the grimy window. Hermione stood at the bottom of the tower and was giving him the ‘OK’ sign. Harry grinned back down at her widely, despite the fact that she could not see him. That was her signal that there was a horcrux in here somewhere, and it wouldn’t exactly be hard to find in this tiny room. “Do you mind if I look around a bit?” he asked McGonagall.

“Not at all,” she replied simply. “I’m neither stupid nor blind, Potter. I know that you and your friends think that You-Know-Who left something up here and I also know that none of you feel comfortable telling me what that might be.”

Harry was taken aback. “I…I never thought you were…”

McGonagall waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not offended. I just thought you should know that I knew.” Her expression remained prim, but her eyes twinkled with mild amusement. “However, if the object you’re looking for is larger than an old crust of bread, you’re not likely to find it in here.”

Harry frowned. “Where else should I be looking?”

The Headmistress gestured to a door behind her. “The closet, of course.”

With little hesitation, Harry moved deftly around his former Transfiguration teacher and opened the closet door. This time it was Harry who let out an enormous groan. “I don’t believe this,” he exclaimed.

The ‘closet’ was every bit as large as the Great Hall and was filled from top to bottom with shelves which were in turn filled with every magical and non-magical item you could imagine. There were candles and candle holders, thousands of quills and old ink pots, reams upon reams of parchment and more books than even Hermione could read in a lifetime. Since there was no room inside the tower for such an enormous closet, Harry could only assume that the same magic which made the Room of Requirement possible was at work here.

“I’m afraid the tower has become a repository for unwanted items over the years,” McGonagall noted somewhat ruefully. “Books preparing students for vocations that they’ll never undertake. Love letters from suitors who they know will jilt them. Precious objects that they know will be lost at some future point anyway. ‘Going on’ has a way of putting things in perspective.”

“What do you mean by ‘going on’?” Harry asked.

“It’s a euphemism,” the Headmistress informed him, “for experiencing the visions.”

Harry looked a little shaken. “That makes it sound like death.”

“Knowing everything that happens in your life is a little bit like death, too, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Potter?” McGonagall asked rhetorically.

Harry sighed. As the three of them had searched for the horcruxes this summer, he had discovered that whenever he got close to one, his scar tingled slightly. Before long, he had also found out that when a horcrux touched his scar, it burned like mad. This had allowed the three of them to develop something of a routine in their search: Hermione would use the dark magical object detection spell; Harry would search through whatever items might fit the bill, waiting for his scar to tingle; Ron would make some thoughtless remark that Hermione would scold him for; and then finally Harry would find the horcrux, using his scar as a sort of Geiger counter for evil magic.

Clearly, if that method was going to work here, it would take time. More time than just the few hours he could reasonably ask Headmistress McGonagall to stay up here with him. “Headmistress,” Harry began with an air of reluctance, “I believe I’ve made my decision.”

“I’m aware of that, Potter,” McGonagall retorted wryly, “and it seems the tower is, too.” As Harry looked out from the closet, he saw that all of his belongings had been moved from the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory to this room, as if it had known all along what would happen. ‘Maybe it did,’ Harry thought to himself. “With your personal belongings here, the only thing we truly have to concern ourselves with is your emissary. You will have to choose someone to visit you here each day and bring you your school assignments. Have you given the matter any thought?”

Harry nearly laughed at her question. How could he have, when only a moment ago he’d had no idea he would be staying here? “Does this mean that I won’t be able to leave the tower?” Harry asked anxiously.

“You’re free to leave at any time,” Headmistress McGonagall reminded him. “Most of your predecessors have not done so regularly, however, as they feel their prolonged departure from the tower weakens their magical connection with it upon their return. The visions become fewer and less vivid.” A winsome look passed over her face. “Albus himself never missed a Hogsmeade visit or a holiday feast. But he, too, stayed in the tower most of the time.”

“I don’t care about the visions,” Harry told her half-heartedly. In fact, he was beginning to see the appeal of knowing the future. ‘What if I can find out how I defeat Voldemort?’ he thought to himself. Only a moment later, a darker thought came to mind. ‘What if I find out how Voldemort defeats me?’

“Of course,” McGonagall acknowledged with a humoring nod, “but I would imagine you’ll have your hands full, searching for your mysterious item.”

Harry couldn’t disagree with her on that point. He would need an emissary. It was tempting to choose Ginny, who he longed to see again. She was not in his year, however, so that would make little practical sense. There was nobody better than Ron at cheering him up, but he cringed at copying the redhead’s notes, or lack thereof. That only left one logical candidate. “Hermione. If she’s willing, I’d like for her to be my emissary.”

McGonagall’s expression brightened. “A wise choice.” When Harry gave her a questioning look, she elaborated. “Miss Granger is studious and hard-working. I’m sure she’ll do a fine job of getting you your assignments.” Harry could swear he saw the hint of a smile forming on her lips. “There will have to be a ceremony where the two of you are bound magically. I’ll arrange for it to take place as soon as possible.”

***

Unsurprisingly to both McGonagall and Harry, Hermione agreed to the task. In fact, she seemed practically giddy about it. The expression on her face reminded Harry of when she had thought the two of them would be prefects together, back in fifth year. “I’ll pay even closer attention in class, just so you won’t miss anything,” she gushed.

This time it was Ron’s turn to snort. “The only way you could pay closer attention in class is if your eyeballs were literally glued to the teacher.”

Hermione ignored him. “I can even sneak you food from the kitchens if you want. I’m sure Dobby would be willing to help me. Oh Harry, this is going to be so much fun!”

Harry wasn’t entirely certain of this himself, but he could hardly deny the necessity of finding the last horcrux or the allure of seeing into the future. He had only a little trouble mirroring Hermione’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, it will be.”

Ron shook his head. “Better you than me, mate. I’d go spare if I only had Hermione to keep me company.”

This time, Hermione did not ignore him. “I’m sure you’d much rather spend your time with an air-headed bimbo like Lavender Brown,” she said cattily.

“Lavender’s not a bimbo,” Ron refuted her. “She may not be that smart and she may be extremely easy to snog, but that doesn’t make her a bimbo.”

“Actually, Ron,” Harry pointed out, “I’m fairly sure that it does.” Before Ron could say anything else, Harry took Hermione gently by the arm. “Come on. We told McGonagall we’d meet her in her office in ten minutes.”

Hermione fumed about Ron for a few minutes as Harry listened politely. Soon they were standing in front of the entrance to the Headmistress’ office. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Harry asked her sincerely. “You can back out now if you want.”

Hermione looked up at him proudly. “Are you kidding? I’m honored that you asked me to do this for you, Harry. Chocolate frog cards,” she said in a louder voice. The stair leading up to the Headmistress’ office began to open up slowly. Harry followed Hermione up the stairs and in only a moment the two of them were standing in front of the Headmistress.

McGonagall gave them both a pleased look as they entered. “There you two are. Stand directly in front of my desk, if you would.” They did so without question. “Mr. Potter, would you be so kind as to take Miss Granger’s left hand in your right one?” Without any awkwardness, Harry reached out and took Hermione’s hand in his.

“It’s almost like we’re getting married, isn’t it?” Harry joked. Hermione only blushed deeply in reply.

“Now take your wands and place the tip over the other’s heart,” the Headmistress instructed them.

“I suppose this makes it a wandpoint wedding,” Hermione said with a laugh in her voice.

McGonagall was nonplussed. “Repeat after me. I swear that I will respect and honor the position of emissary so long as I remain a resident of the Oracular Tower, and I also vow that I will not take advantage of my special accommodations in order to partake in activities which are expressly forbidden by school rules.” Both Harry and Hermione repeated what she had said verbatim.

Hermione looked at Headmistress McGonagall curiously. “Did Voldemort and Dumbledore have to take this vow, too?”

The Headmistress shook her head. “Albus didn’t. And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named didn’t have to at first, either. It wasn’t until I was named as his replacement emissary that we had to swear such an oath.”

Harry looked puzzled. “Why was that?”

Hermione seemed to know the answer. “Because Dumbledore was his teacher.”

McGonagall shook her head. “No, Miss Granger. It’s because they weren’t of the opposite gender.” A look of realization and a blush of embarrassment came over both Harry and Hermione at the same time. “You may escort Mr. Potter to the tower if you like, Miss Granger. You’ll be able to see it now, of course.” She looked up at Hermione expectantly. “I trust this will not make you neglect your duties as Head Girl.”

Hermione’s demeanor sobered immediately. “Of course not, Headmistress.”

“Very good,” McGonagall replied dismissively. “Good luck to you both. You’ll need it.”

“What was that all about?” Harry asked Hermione as they exited. “Did she think that we…that we’re…you know…”

“I don’t think so,” Hermione answered him, although her eyes didn’t meet his own. “It must be standard procedure whenever two people of the opposite sex are involved.”

“Maybe so,” Harry conceded, but was not entirely convinced. There had been something in the way McGonagall was looking at them…

“If you’re worried about staying in the tower, you shouldn’t be,” Hermione assured him. “You’ll find the last horcrux in no time.”

“Why would I be worried?” Harry asked her. In fact, he was a little worried, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“Well, a few people have gone mad up there,” Hermione pointed out, “and Voldemort lived there, so who knows what he may have left behind, besides the horcrux that is…” Harry’s expression became ashen. ‘There’s why I should be worried,’ he thought to himself. “Oh dear. I’m not doing a very good job of making you feel better, am I?”

“Not really,” Harry said with a nervous laugh. “‘O’ for effort, though.”

They chatted amicably for a few minutes as they made their way to the Quidditch pitch. Finally, Hermione’s expression turned serious. “Harry,” she began slowly. “Would you do something for me?”

“What?” Harry asked reflexively.

Hermione was chewing on her lower lip, clearly nervous over what she was about to say. “When you get to the future, look me up.”

Harry smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe that a magical object could see things that hadn’t happened yet.”

“I still have my doubts,” Hermione admitted. “But I do know this: if anything like that has ever happened in that tower, it will happen to you.” Harry couldn’t disagree with that. “Here we are,” she said, pointing to the tower above them. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. He didn’t know how he had gotten so caught up in talking with Hermione that he had completely missed the large piece of Gothic architecture in front of him. “Would you like me to take you up there and show you around?” he asked her.

Hermione shook her head. “I still have rounds to do. Tomorrow, though, I wouldn’t mind taking the grand tour.”

“Tomorrow it is,” Harry said happily. “I’ll see you then.” As he began to walk up the ridiculously short steps, Hermione called out to him.

“Harry?” He looked back at her and suddenly wished that she were coming with him. “Don’t forget.”

His green eyes shone brightly in the twilight as he smiled. “I won’t. I promise.”

No cliffhanger this time. The next chapter should feature Harry's first vision of the future. I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading!

ITL

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I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with Scholastic or anybody else who makes money off of Harry Potter. Although, if I had a time turner...

Chapter 3: I Gotta Wear Shades

“And here we have the bedroom,” Harry announced with a sweeping gesture of his arm. Since this was Hermione’s first time up in the tower, Harry felt it was only fair to give her ‘the grand tour’, as she’d called it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t that much to show.

Hermione humored him, however. “Is it? I didn’t even notice when I came in,” she remarked without sarcasm in her voice. A grotty old mattress on a half-rotten wooden frame lie on one end of the room while Hedwig’s cage sat in the opposite corner. Harry’s trunk and a small, uneven table resting near the bed were the only other items worth looking at. Practically everything in the room was adorned with both the Gryffindor colors and several thick layers of dust. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

“This tower could definitely use some house elves,” Harry assessed. Hermione glared at him by way of reply. “Working for pay, of course,” he amended tactfully.

“There isn’t much up here, is there?” Hermione questioned rhetorically. “I suppose I expected more.”

Harry held his index finger in the air, gesturing for her to wait. “You haven’t seen the closet yet.”

“The closet?” Hermione scoffed. “What could possibly be interesting about…” Harry opened the closet door, revealing a great number of old, abandoned objects. “Holy cricket!”

“This is where I’ve been looking for the horcrux,” Harry explained as he stepped inside, dodging cobwebs and moving aside a stack of books on how to make wands so that Hermione could follow him. “I haven’t had any luck so far, though. The best lead I had was this candle holder.” Harry held up the cylindrical bronze object for Hermione to see. “When I held it close to my forehead, it made my scar burn like mad.”

One of Hermione’s eyebrows rose. “But it wasn’t a horcrux?”

Harry shook his head sadly. “No. It still had a lit candle inside.” Hermione tried her best not to laugh, but failed. “It really wasn’t that funny, Hermione. I have a scar on my forehead now.” Hermione gave him a pointed look. “Well, alright, another scar on my forehead. The point is that it really hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione apologized quickly, although the amused expression had not completely disappeared from her face. “Have you searched over very many of these things?”

“Several dozen or so,” Harry guessed. “It could take me months to go through everything here. I reckon about twenty-five or thirty a day is a good start.”

“So many old books are here,” Hermione noted approvingly. “I’ll bet a lot of them are rare, as well. Harry, do you think…?” She then shook her head. “Never mind.” She stepped out of the closet and kept the door open for Harry. “Come on. I need to give you your homework assignments.”

With a barely suppressed groan, Harry followed his best friend into the other room, sat down on his bed and, as Hermione crouched by his side, listened to her detail his assignments and explain her class notes. After she had spoken for awhile, something inside her robes made a little chirping noise. “My time’s almost up, Harry. I meant to ask you earlier: are you still planning on going to Hogsmeade this weekend?”

“Yeah,” he replied, only to add, “with Ginny,” a moment later. “You ought to take Ron, too. We could double date. It might be fun.”

Hermione’s face looked as though she had eaten something sour. “I doubt very much that ‘a double date’ would be anyone’s idea of fun. Yours and Ginny’s least of all.”

Harry thought about that for a moment. Ron still wasn’t that thrilled that Harry was interested in his little sister and if he tried to play the protective older brother, Harry knew how Ginny would react. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Still, you deserve to have a little fun. We certainly didn’t get to have any this summer.”

Hermione seemed to be remembering something and a faint smile crossed her lips. “I don’t know about that. Parts of it were fun.”

Harry put a smug look on his face, as if she had just proven his point. “You see? Now can’t you have just as good a time with Ron on a trip to Hogsmeade as you had while we were hunting for horcruxes?”

Hermione looked like she might quibble with that for a moment, then nodded, a somewhat defeated look registering on her face. “I suppose it might be worth a try.”

Harry grinned widely and Hermione smiled back at him with ease. If only he could get Ron and Hermione to spend some time alone together, he was sure that they would resolve their differences, snog and live happily ever after. As if Hermione were reading his mind, she asked, “Have you, um, had any visions of the future yet?”

“No,” Harry admitted with a disheartened sigh. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected it to happen immediately, but…well, I have to admit I’m a little anxious to find out what my future’s like.” In his mind’s eye, he pictured a large home filled with red haired children, all destined to be seekers like their mum and dad, with a supportive and beaming Ginny standing right by his side.

“Maybe it won’t happen at all,” Hermione pointed out with a frown. “I know what Professor McGonagall said, Harry, but I still think divination, whether it’s done by a tower or a fraud like Trelawney, is a crapshoot at best and a dangerous pipe dream at worst.” She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a thin, blue vial. “Now, show me your scar.”

“My scar?” Harry asked in surprise. “What? Why?”

“I’ve brought you some essence of murtlap,” Hermione explained as she poured some out on her hand, “and since there aren’t any mirrors up here, I thought it would be best if I applied it for you.” Harry nodded, removed his glasses and closed his eyes. One of Hermione’s hands pushed back his bangs as the other one rubbed the substance onto the scar. “Does that feel alright?”

Harry had to admit that it did. “It feels brilliant,” he declared. Once she had rubbed the murtlap into his skin, Harry opened his eyes to see that Hermione was blushing bright red. The quarter moon shone dimly through the window and the only real light in the tower was from the still-glowing candlestick holder that had caused the burn in the first place.

“I…I should really go,” Hermione stammered as she fumbled for the door handle. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She departed with great haste, leaving Harry alone and confused. ‘What was that about?’ With a shrug, he decided that sometimes girls were inscrutable. Just as he was lying back on his bed to sleep, he remembered that he had left the candle burning in the candlestick holder. Since he had painfully discovered that this particular candle would burn forever if you didn’t blow it out, he rose from his bed to extinguish the flame.

Harry picked the candlestick holder up and held it in front of his face. As soon as the breath left his lungs, however, it formed a cold vapor, as though he were outdoors in cold weather. Within the space of a moment, Harry realized that he was outdoors in cold weather. The candlestick holder wasn’t in his hands anymore, but his wand was drawn. It was still night (or perhaps early dusk) although he was no longer in the oracular tower at Hogwarts. In fact, he was standing in a dark alley. Instead of the muggle clothes he had been wearing, he was decked out in official-looking robes. Harry looked down at himself more carefully. ‘Auror’s robes.’

‘This must be a vision of my future,’ Harry thought to himself. ‘I’m in the future.’ A thousand things shot through his mind at once. He had to find Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Neville and McGonagall and Lupin and Hagrid and dozens of other people that he knew and find out if they were alright. Was he married? Did he have children? What about Ron and Hermione? Were they happy together?

And what of Harry himself? Obviously he was still alive, so he must have survived the final battle with Voldemort. How had he done it? He would have to find the answers to all of these things and quickly. Who knew how long it would be before the vision would end?

His thoughts were interrupted suddenly by the appearance of something all too familiar in the sky. Harry’s stomach turned as he caught sight of the luminescent green skull and snake symbol grinning wickedly down at him. ‘Voldemort’s not beaten,’ he thought grimly. ‘It was stupid of me to think that he would be.’

“H…Harry,” he heard a weak voice call out to him. It only took a moment for him to recognize it as Ron’s. His best mate was lying at the far end of the alleyway, a pool of blood growing larger beneath him. “Help me. Please… help me.”

“Ron!” Harry cried out. As he rushed toward his injured friend (who he noticed was also wearing Auror’s robes) a jet of green light flew past his head. “Death Eaters,” he whispered softly in surprise.

‘Of course there are Death Eaters here,’ he chided himself. ‘That’s why there’s a Dark Mark overhead. Now, just remember your Auror training and… wait a mo. I didn’t actually go through Auror training. I guess I’ll just have to do what I usually do. Play it by ear.’ As another unforgivable curse whizzed past him, Harry deftly rolled behind a crate to take cover.

‘Alright. I’m hiding. Not the best long-term plan, maybe, but for now it’ll have to do.’ It did at least give him time to take stock of his situation. There were two Death Eaters approaching rapidly, firing deadly spells at him all the while. He had no clue what he was doing here, who was here with him (other than a gravely injured Ron) or how many more Death Eaters there might be lurking about. However, he did know that Ron likely needed medical attention and soon. He couldn’t afford to waste time.

‘So…they outnumber me, they know more spells than I do and they don’t care whether Ron lives or dies. That’s their advantage over me. What advantage do I have over them?’ After considering the matter a moment, he arrived at the answer. ‘Their expectations. They’re looking to fight the Harry Potter that’s a trained Auror and who does things by the book. Well, I don’t even know what the book says.’

Using the reductor curse many times in rapid succession, Harry knocked a few bricks loose from the wall in front of him and then levitated them until they were lined up in a row. “Turbo levitatis,” he said aloud. The bricks promptly began to swirl around each other like a miniature cyclone. Harry then sent the flying bricks in the direction of the nearest Death Eater, who managed to avoid some of them with a quickly produced shielding charm, but ended up getting hit in the face by the larger fragments nonetheless. With a small moan, he collapsed in a heap.

‘There’s one down.’ As Harry considered how he was going to deal with the other one, a glint of light appeared in the corner of his eye. A large shard of glass that looked like it might have come from a broken mirror lay not far from him, wedged beneath one of the crates. Taking care not to cut his hand on the glass, he removed the shard and tossed it in the air. “Stupefy.” The stunner glanced off of the reflective glass and bounced back in the direction of the Death Eater.

Harry did not bother to conceal his disappointment as the spell missed by a few centimeters. He was not about to give up, however. He tossed the piece of glass into the air once again. “Stupefy.” Again, the stunner narrowly failed to hit its target.

The Death Eater, in the meantime, was using the reductor curse to demolish the crates Harry was hiding behind. This heightened Harry’s sense of urgency. “Stupefy,” he tried a third time as he watched the piece of mirror go flying through the air. The spell was deflected harmlessly by a shielding charm.

After trying a fourth time with similar luck (although he actually thought he might be getting better at this), Harry watched in horror as the crate behind him shattered into pieces, leaving his position completely exposed. Swiftly, he tossed the looking glass into the air one last time, diving to the ground as he aimed his wand at its temporary target. “Petrificus totalus.”

The Death Eater, having perhaps grown overconfident that he had bested his opponent, had no time even to cast a shielding charm. His entire body stiffened, leaving him frozen in place. With a great thud, his petrified form fell to the pavement.

Warily, Harry stood and began to approach Ron, his senses suddenly more acute as his heart pounded loudly in his ears, courtesy of the adrenaline rushing through his veins. “Ron?” Harry tried in a low voice. “Are you alright?”

“Harry,” Ron said, his voice strained. “Is…is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Harry assured him. His best mate was pale, shaking and covered in blood, but Harry could not see a wound. As he searched for one, he said soothingly, “Listen to me. You’re going to be alright. I’m going to go get help.” ‘As soon as I figure out where help might be’, he thought to himself.

“Harry,” Ron rasped as he motioned for Harry to come closer, “there’s something I need…to tell you. It’s important.”

A lump rose in Harry’s throat as he looked down at Ron, so badly hurt and obviously needing to get something off his chest. “Of course, Ron. You can tell me whatever you want.”

Ron attempted to sit up slightly. “That stripper that I saw last night…Bambi…” Harry frowned. Did this have to do with a case they were working on? “She…she was worth all of the quid that I stuffed down her knickers.”

“What?” Harry asked, confusion written all over his face. Behind him, a loud buzzing noise filled the alley as night suddenly turned into day. Harry spun around with his wand drawn as about a dozen people approached. None of them were wearing Death Eater garb, however, and Harry thought he recognized Kingsley Shacklebolt standing near the front. The others gathered around him were young, probably in their early twenties, and wore star-struck expressions.

“Well done, gentlemen, as usual,” Kingsley called out to Harry and Ron. To Harry’s surprise, Ron rose quickly from the alley floor, casting a quick ‘scourgify’ on himself to make the blood disappear. A few moments later, the Death Eaters he’d taken down rose as well, albeit more slowly. Kingsley shook Harry’s hand and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I know how much you hate these training exhibitions, but they’re good for morale.”

“Training exhibitions?” Harry repeated. Had everything he’d seen been for show?

Ron slapped him on the back as the two of them stood before a group of gawking youngsters. “Way to go, mate,” he told Harry under his breath. “You really sold that one.”

Harry was still hopelessly confused, but decided to smile and nod politely. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Trainees,” Kingsley called out in an authoritative voice, immediately silencing all chatter. “This concludes today’s demonstration. However, if you have any questions for Mr. Weasley or Mr. Potter, I’m sure they’d be happy to answer them.”

‘Speak for yourself,’ Harry thought, but said nothing as a nervous young man with blonde hair who reminded him a bit of Neville raised his hand. “Mr. Potter, sir, can you tell us what spell you used to defeat Lord V…Voldemort?”

As everyone stared at him, Harry was both thrilled and embarrassed at the same time. Thrilled that Voldemort had been beaten and that he had done it; embarrassed, because he could not answer the boy’s question. He did not want to look like a fool in front of so many people, although appearing foolish was a small price to pay to learn the secret of defeating Voldemort.

Harry’s silence on the matter did not appear to surprise anyone, however, and eventually Kingsley Shacklebolt cleared his throat and stepped in. “Mr. Heath, you were instructed specifically not to ask Mr. Potter that question. You will see me after basic instruction.” The blonde boy looked dejected. “Fall into line. We’ll be heading back to the classroom in five.” Kingsley stood in front of Harry as the group of young Auror hopefuls lined up single file. “Sorry about that, Harry. You know how these kids are. Hero worshippers, the lot of them.”

“Of course,” Harry agreed with a forced smile. “I get it all the time.” ‘Or at least I think I do.’

As Kingsley moved to stand at the front of the line, Ron let out a short laugh from behind him. “Just remember, Harry: next time you get to be the Death Eater victim and I get to be the brave heroic idol of millions.”

Now Harry’s smile was more genuine than forced. “I don’t think it works that way, Ron.” He put his arm around Ron’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

Ron looked confused. “We’re partners. You see me every day,” he reminded Harry as though he were a child.

“Well, yeah, of course,” Harry hedged, fumbling for what to say next, “but I…seeing you in that alley like that, it just reminded me of…of the war. Of how things were before I defeated Voldemort.”

Now Ron’s face became more sympathetic. “You’re having the flashbacks again, aren’t you?”

Harry was unlikely to get a better opening than that. “Yeah, I am. The flashbacks. That’s it. Brilliant, Ron.” A thought occurred to him. “Except…they’re not really flashbacks.”

Ron frowned. “They’re flashbacks, but they’re not flashbacks?”

Harry grimaced. He would have to do better than that if he was going to get any answers out of Ron. “Not exactly. See, some of the things I’ve been seeing didn’t really happen. Things about me defeating Lord Voldemort in particular. Now it’s hard to tell what really happened from what I’m imagining.”

This piece of news didn’t seem to make Ron very happy. “Dunno why you’d want to remember what happened back then. I try to forget it every day.” As Harry pondered that for a moment, Ron’s expression suddenly became brighter. “Could we maybe discuss this over a hot meal? Pretending to be a Death Eater victim always makes me hungry.”

Harry nodded and let Ron lead the way. It was good to know that some things, at least, hadn’t changed.

***
As Ron ate his food ravenously, Harry stared down at a tray full of traditional English food unenthusiastically. ‘Can I eat in a vision? Would I get nourishment from it? Who could I ask about these things?’ He considered the matter for only a moment before finally taking a bite of his Yorkshire pudding. For cafeteria food, it wasn’t half-bad. ‘I wonder if they have treacle tart, too.’

“So…did you want to talk about Voldemort?” Ron asked between and during bites of roast.

“Er, yeah,” Harry answered, surprised slightly by the fact that Ron was now saying Voldemort’s name. ‘I’ll bet everyone does now.’ “I was just wondering if you remembered anything about the final battle.”

Ron looked like he would sooner be discussing an upcoming root canal. “Some of it. More than I’d like, to tell you the truth. What do you want to know?”

Harry decided not to waste any more time. “How did I do it?” When Ron looked confused, he elaborated. “How did I defeat Voldemort?”

Ron’s face was blank for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders casually. “I dunno.”

Harry was flabbergasted. “What do you mean, you don’t know?!” he exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of several Aurors eating around him.

“Just what I said,” Ron informed him as he dug into the mashed potatoes. “You never told me and I never asked. To be honest with you, I was so thrilled that he was dead, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you’d bored him to death by reading him passages of Hogwarts: a History.”

“But…” Harry protested weakly, not knowing quite what to say. “Somebody had to have seen me do it, right?”

Ron shook his head slowly. “Not that I know of. You were pretty adamant about going off on your own to off him after Luna died.”

Harry’s eyes widened in shock. “Luna died?”

“How can you not remember that?” Ron asked, a twinge of anger entering his voice for the first time. “Voldemort killed her himself. I’ve never seen you like that, mate, before or since. It was like something inside you snapped. You apparated close to Voldemort, probably through about a dozen anti-apparition wards, and then side-alonged him somewhere far away. I dunno where, but when you came back with what was left of him there was snow in your hair. And, just in case you’ve forgotten that, too, it was May.”

This information hit Harry hard, harder than he would have anticipated. Sure, he liked Luna well enough, but he wouldn’t have expected this enormous sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though he’d just lost a relative. A relative he really liked, that is, and not one of the Dursleys. For some reason, the first question that popped into his mind after finding out what had happened to Luna was, “How’s Hermione?” He had found it curious that Ron had not mentioned her thus far and was suddenly concerned for her well-being.

Ron, despite going through varying degrees of discomfort throughout their conversation, had remained unperturbed until this moment. However, at the mention of Hermione’s name, he cringed and ducked under the table. “Bloody hell, Harry. She’s not here, is she?”

“I don’t see her,” Harry reported dutifully, although his brow furrowed in confusion. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“You know how I am about my ex-girlfriends,” Ron informed him, his tone slightly embarrassed as he rose from his hiding place. “I don’t go anyplace where I’ve seen them ever again. In fact, I don’t go anyplace where you tell me you’ve seen them ever again.” Ron thought about this for a moment. “Well, except for that time you told me you saw Lavender in the Quidditch supply store. A bloke’s got to keep his priorities straight.”

“Ex-girlfriend?” Harry asked in disbelief. “You mean, you and Hermione aren’t….I mean, I thought you and she would…you’re not married?”

Ron snorted derisively. “Me and Hermione? Married? You’re joking, right?” When it became clear to him that Harry wasn’t, he continued. “We barely even spoke to each other while we were dating. Unless you want to count yelling as speaking. It was a disaster, mate, from beginning to end.” Ron eyed Harry suspiciously. “You haven’t seen her lately, have you?”

Harry got the distinct feeling that he would be answering honestly when he said, “No.” The sinking feeling inside of him now seemed to be pulling at his heart as he asked, “So, Hermione and you and I, the three of us, we’re not friends anymore, like we used to be at Hogwarts?”

“Friends grow apart sometimes,” Ron answered unapologetically. “You know, Harry, if you’re having this much trouble keeping your memories in line you should probably go back to that counselor you were seeing for awhile. Therapy might do you some good.”

Harry was no longer listening to what Ron was saying. He was too busy thinking about Hermione. Hermione, his best and most loyal friend, who had stood by him through everything. The thought of her being excluded from his life after all that they had gone through together was almost too much to bear. Then he remembered something Hermione had told him to do. “When you get to the future, look me up.” He would have to do just that. Perhaps he could even find time to mend the friendship between the three of them.

Harry’s brain began tuning Ron back in just as he was saying, “and I know Ginny’s been on you about that, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea.”

“Ginny,” Harry exclaimed softly. In his malaise over Hermione, he had nearly forgotten about her. Glancing down at his ring finger, he saw that there was no wedding band there. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened between the two of them. “Have you, um, heard from her lately?” he tried, trying not to sound too much like he had no idea what was going on.

“Yeah, actually, I have,” Ron answered him as he withdrew a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his robes. “She wanted me to remind you to pick up your wedding ring at the jewelers. It looks like they were finally able to get all of the pygmy puff vomit out of the settings.”

“That’s…that’s great,” Harry replied enthusiastically. So he and Ginny were married. At least something was working out for him in the future. Suddenly, he became anxious to go see her. “You should really come over some time,” he offered. ‘Like tonight. So you can show me where I live,’ he added to himself.

Ron rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so. The last time I came over there I got a tea cup thrown at me.” As he turned his attention back to the food in front of him, he grumbled, “You two fight more than Hermione and I ever did.”

“We…we fight?” Harry asked incredulously. After all, he and Ginny had never fought before. “What about?”

Ron dropped his fork and heaved a sigh. “I dunno, Harry. Last time I was there you were fighting about having kids. You wanted them and she didn’t. Seems like the sort of thing you two would have worked out before you got married, but I guess not.” He rose from the table and picked up his now empty tray. “Unless you need my help with the latest break in the Dolohov case, I think I’m going to go back to my desk and catch up on some paperwork.” Ron winced. “Of all the things I hate about being an Auror, the paperwork’s the worst. Give me dark wizards any day.” Harry stared at him for a moment, searching for something to say. “They brought in some French bloke who’s been working for Dolohov. You told me about it, remember?” Ron gave him a longsuffering look. “Look, Harry, I know how much the final battle buggered you up, but this is really getting out of hand. Seriously, go talk to somebody.”

As Ron walked away, Harry thought about everything he had said. He did desperately need to talk to someone: someone who could tell him why he was no longer on speaking terms with Hermione and someone who could explain what was going on between him and his wife. First and foremost, however, he needed to find someone who could tell him what had happened to Voldemort. If that wasn’t someone who had been on his side during the final battle, perhaps a Death Eater would fit the bill.

Harry rose to follow Ron in hopes of finding his desk. If he was going to question this ‘French bloke’ who was working for Dolohov, he didn’t want to go in unprepared. He wanted to know everything he could about him.

More about Ginny, Hermione and the French bloke will be in the next chapter. Hope you enjoyed this one!

ITL

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I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with Scholastic or anybody else who makes money off of Harry Potter. Although, if there's any way I could become an advanced screener, for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", I wouldn't turn it down.

Sorry this chapter was so late. Thank you so much for all of your support thus far. Portkeyers rock!

Chapter 4: The Frenchman, the Herbologist and My One True Love

“Jean Paul Gerard.” Harry was holding a manila folder in his hand and scanning the information contained therein quickly as he walked toward the interrogation room. “Graduated from Beauxbatons in 1996, with honors. Was picked up for suspected Death Eater activity in England in 1997, extradited to France on an earlier charge of kidnapping, released due to insufficient evidence…” Harry skipped ahead a bit, trying to find out what this French guy had been doing during the Final Battle. “Here we are. Escaped prosecution for war crimes because his presence could not be accounted for on VV Day.” Harry had learned that ‘VV Day’ stood for Victory over Voldemort Day and that it had taken place on May 19, 1998.

‘Maybe there’s a reason I was sent here, to this time,’ Harry thought to himself. ‘Maybe this Gerard guy knows how Voldemort was defeated.’

Ron looked very bored. “I know all of this already, you know. I’m the one who assembled the profiles on the Dolohov ring.”

“Oh,” Harry replied with an apologetic wince. Perhaps that explained why the parchment had mustard stains all over it.

Ron gave Harry a look of genuine concern. “Are you sure you’re up to this, mate? This French bloke is supposed to be Dolohov’s number two guy. Minister Tofty will have our wands if we don’t shut the whole operation down within the week, not to mention all of the innocent people these Death Eaters could kill in the meanwhile. We have to break him.” Ron thought that over for a moment. “Not literally, though. Our healers have been running a bit low on Skel-E-Gro lately.”

This gave Harry pause. It was one thing to fend off a Death Eater when your life depended on it. It was quite another to interrogate one when others lives’ hung in the balance. Questioning a suspect was something that was likely handled during Auror training, but Harry had no memory of that. Still, if he was ever going to get answers from someone, now would be the perfect time. “I’m sure.”

Ron still looked doubtful, but said nothing. “I’ll be right outside, watching everything. If it looks like you need help, I’ll be there before you know it.” His head suddenly turned sharply at the sound of a girl’s voice. “It looks like that hot blonde number from procurement’s come back around. Maybe I’ll head over there first and say hello.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “But after that, you’ll be right outside, watching everything?”

“Huh?” Ron asked reflexively. “Oh yeah, sure, mate. Whatever you say.” Ron then disappeared around the corner, possibly never to be seen again.

Harry swore under his breath. He supposed he would just have to do this alone. Taking a deep breath, he turned the door’s handle and entered the interrogation room. It was empty, save for a solitary figure obscured by shadow in one corner, reading a newspaper and sitting in an armchair. Harry knew, however, that the room was being monitored at all times, both by magical means and with electronic recording devices.

“Your English wizard newspapers are pathetic,” Gerard informed him disdainfully through a very thick French accent. “The Daily Prophet merely spouts whatever lies your Ministry tells it to. The Quibbler prints only fantastic tales about creatures which do not exist. And The Alchemist newsmagazine is far too dry, boring and Anglocentric to fully engage a continent-wide readership.” Jean Paul Gerard threw today’s edition of the Daily Prophet on the floor and stepped on it. “Now Le Monde du le Sorcier, there’s a newspaper you can sink your teeth into.”

Now that the paper and the darkness were no longer hiding his features, Harry could see that Gerard had short dark hair, a thin mustache and a broad Roman nose, which was turned up haughtily in the air. He appeared to be in his early twenties and in a very foul mood. Harry was not inclined to improve it. “I’m sorry you don’t approve of your reading material. Perhaps we could bring you a French newspaper tomorrow morning.” Gerard looked intrigued by the idea. “Of course, if you don’t cooperate, it’s possible that it will be carrying your obituary.”

The young French dark wizard laughed mockingly. “Monsieur Potter, I can tell that you are not very experienced at making threats, so I will let that one pass without comment.” His fingers twitched slightly while he talked, as though they were used to holding a cigarette. Or perhaps he simply wanted his wand back. “What is it that you want from me?”

“Information,” Harry said quickly, trying to keep as much authority in his voice as possible. “I want you to tell me everything about Dolohov’s operation and about your association with the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort, including places and times and names and dates. In fact, let’s start with where you were on May the 19th, 1998.” Harry hoped he had said that smoothly enough to where it wouldn’t sound suspicious to anyone.

“What a terribly unoriginal approach,” Gerard complained. He shifted in his chair slightly, bringing his chin to rest on his open palm, his elbow propped up slightly by the chair’s arm. “You played Quidditch at Hogwarts, non? You were a seeker?” Not seeing the harm in revealing that fact, Harry nodded. “I was the same also at Beauxbatons. Quidditch is an easy game for us seekers, is it not? We know exactly what to do. Chase the little flying golden ball around until either we catch it or our adversary does.” He stretched out in the chair, crossing his legs lazily. “In life, however, it is a much harder thing to be a seeker. There is no little golden ball to follow around. Most people do not even know what they are looking for, yet they are addicted to the chase all the same.”

Jean Paul Gerard held a fisted hand in the air and then opened it, releasing a golden snitch into the air. Before Harry could react, Gerard snatched it back again, closing and opening his hand quickly. As though by magic, the snitch was gone. “What is it that you seek, Monsieur Potter?”

Perhaps mesmerized by Gerard’s antics, or simply deciding that honesty was the best policy, Harry said, “I want to know how I won. I want to know how I defeated Lord Voldemort.” Jean Paul Gerard gave him only a humoring smile. “If you could tell me anything: his vulnerabilities, a spell that would weaken him…I’m sure I could arrange for some sort of immunity.”

“You are going about this entirely the wrong way,” the French Death Eater told him chidingly. “You search for Voldemort’s Achilles heel, when the key to victory lies inside the Trojan horse.” At that moment, three burly Aurors entered the room. One stood next to Harry while the other two moved to either side of Gerard. “Also, it would be a grave mistake to ignore Orestes’ wife,” he continued in a whisper. “But perhaps you know that already.”

“That’s enough,” snapped the Auror who, if his more ornately decorated robes were any indication, was the senior officer of the three. “Mr. Potter, you’ve overstepped your authority in this interrogation by offering Gerard a deal. You can explain yourself to the Head of the MLE in the morning. Right now you’re going home. Without pay, this time.” He glared at the Frenchman with undisguised hatred in his eyes. “We’re taking over the interrogation and the case.”

“But Monsieur Potter has broken me,” Jean Paul Gerard informed the three of them in an exaggerated, pitiful voice. “I am ready to make a full confession.” This surprised every British wizard in the room. “My superior intellect was no match for his strong arm tactics and English tenacity. I will tell you everything I know.”

“Uh…well…hmm…” The highly ranked Auror hemmed and hawed, unsure of how to proceed. “Well, Mister Potter, in light of these circumstances…I think some measure of leniency would be in order…perhaps we were a bit too hasty…”

Sensing an opportunity, Harry shook his head. “No, I think you’re right. I should take the rest of the day off.” Off the bewildered looks of the other three Aurors, he explained, “I need to pay a visit to an old friend. Maybe more than one.” He slapped his hand on the lead Auror’s shoulder. “Would you mind filling the paperwork out for me? I understand it’s a pain.”

Exiting the room, Harry saw one such old friend rubbing his jaw. “What happened in there?” Ron asked. “I could hear Lead Auror Craggish clucking like a chicken all the way from out in the hall.”

“I got Gerard to talk,” Harry told him casually. ‘I still haven’t the slightest clue how I did it, though,’ he added, but only to himself. It was too bad that the French wizard hadn’t been more forthcoming with information about Voldemort’s defeat. Perhaps it was a bum lead anyway. “What happened to you?”

Ron withdrew his hand to reveal a rather large bruise on his jaw. “Turns out the blond bird from procurement is married. Did you know that?”

“I had no idea,” Harry answered honestly, but with a knowing smirk. “I’m taking the rest of the day off, mate, but there was one last thing I wanted to ask you.” Ron’s expression brightened. “Other than me, you and Luna, who else was there right before I went off with Voldemort?”

The brightness dimmed. “Well, just around where we were,” Ron began with a pained grimace at the memory, “there was Ginny…Neville…and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

After a moment’s confusion, Harry figured out who Ron was talking about. ‘Hermione.’ He dared not say her name aloud for fear of Ron’s reaction. “What’s Neville doing with himself these days?”

“Still pushing up daisies, I’d expect,” Ron answered with a solemn face. Harry’s heart sank. Neville had died, too? “They are his best seller, you know.”

“What?” Harry asked in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

“Up daisies,” Ron explained as though Harry had some sort of severe learning disability. “The fastest growing daisies in the magical world. Neville sells them at his shop.” When Harry still looked confused, he continued. “It’s a magical plant shop. That means that he sells…”

“Magical plants,” Harry finished for him impatiently. “Yeah, I get it.”

“I think some time off would do you a world of good, mate,” Ron said with a reassuring grin. “Get some rest this time, alright? And whatever you do, don’t go back to you-know-where.” Harry did not know where ‘you-know-where’ was but unless it was Neville’s plant shop, his and Ginny’s home in Ottery St. Catchpole or wherever Hermione was keeping herself these days, he had absolutely no intention of doing so.

***

Neville’s shop was almost criminally easy to find, given that it was in the middle of Diagon Alley, with a large sign in the window made from bioluminescent vines which spelled out “Neville’s Plant Shop.” You could therefore imagine Harry’s embarrassment after he had asked no less than five people for directions on how to get there. After giving a sheepish bow to one such gentleman, he opened wide the door, only to be quickly enfolded by kudzu vines as strong as steel cords. They cradled him gingerly however, and, well remembering the incident with the Devil’s snare in first year, he decided not to fight the plant as it held him.

The vines slithered along, entwining with each other until they spelled out a message. “Hello and welcome, Harry Potter.”

“Hello to you, too,” Harry greeted the plant cordially. “I’m here to see Neville Longbottom.”

The kudzu vines quickly disentangled themselves from his limbs and stretched out to form a cordoned off path which led straight to Neville. “Thanks,” he called back to the kudzu. Upon realizing that he had just spoken to a plant, his face turned red.

“I talk to them, too, you know,” Neville informed him. A genuine smile lit up his face, which was now somewhat slimmer than it had been while he was at school, as was the rest of his body. He was sitting behind a desk, jotting something down on a notepad. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Talking to plants is a time-honored tradition among herbologists. Even muggles figured out the benefits of it after a while.” He gave a nod toward the vines that had greeted Harry near the door. “I see you’ve met my Know You Kudzu.”

Harry chuckled lightly. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“It’s a guard plant,” Neville explained. “The Know You Kudzu isn’t supposed to let anyone in unless it recognizes them. I only move it near the door when I’m getting ready to close the shop.”

“Oh,” Harry replied, disappointment clearly visible on his face. “If this is a bad time, I can come back.”

“Don’t be silly, Harry,” Neville assured him. “My shop’s always open for friends. What can I do for you?” A thought struck him suddenly. “I hope you don’t mind that your two dozen Forget-Me-Nevers aren’t ready yet. It’s just that you usually don’t want them until closer to the end of October.”

Harry shook his head. “No, that’s fine. That’s not why I’m here.” Harry steeled his courage. He hated to lie to Neville, but this was for the greater good. “We’ve captured a dark wizard who’s making certain…claims… about the day Voldemort was killed.”

Neville frowned. “What kind of claims?”

“Crazy rubbish,” Harry replied dismissively. “That Voldemort didn’t really die that day. That he found a way to come back. The usual Death Eater line of codswallop. Only this bloke’s got some credibility. Nobody knows where he was on VV Day, so there’s no one who can refute what he’s saying.”

Neville’s eyes narrowed. “It should have all ended when he died. Everything should have been over.” He then shook his head quickly. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve taken it the hardest of anyone.” Neville slapped his knees, stood and walked over to where Harry was standing. “What do you need me to do?”

Harry sighed. “If this berk goes to the press, the story will be all over the newspapers. The Daily Prophet, the Quibbler, the Alchemist, Le Monde de la Sore Sea Cow, all of them will run with it.” He leaned closer to Neville. “Do you think maybe you could come forward with your version of what happened during the battle? Anything you could say would be helpful.” ‘To me,’ Harry added to himself.

Neville’s eyes did not meet Harry’s as he said, “VV Day’s kind of a blur to me, Harry. I remember killing Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna dying…” He pressed his fingers against his forehead, as though attempting to stave off a headache. “So many people died that day. All of those green jets of light, flying everywhere. The memory of it keeps me up at night sometimes.”

Harry suddenly felt very guilty for coming here. “I…I didn’t know.”

Neville gave him a small, brave smile. “I’m sure you’ve put yourself through worse, knowing you.” Harry nodded, but he was no longer looking at Neville. He was looking at a photograph of Neville in dress robes and Susan Bones in a wedding dress that was sitting on Neville’s desk. “Luna’s death hit me pretty hard. We were good friends, but I never expected... It was like a part of me was gone. I didn’t fancy her or anything, but I think I might have loved her.” A wistful expression crossed Neville’s face, but it soon vanished. “Still, with a ninety percent casualty rate, I guess we were lucky that even the five of us got out of there alive.”

Harry’s eyes widened in shock. “Ninety percent?”

“The Order of the Phoenix and almost the entire Auror corps were wiped out on that day.” Neville shook his head at the memory. “I try not to think about it very often.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Harry advised, his voice now sounding a little numb. Why had the victory been so costly? He had to find out. He simply couldn’t allow all of those people to die.

Looking at Neville, however, Harry decided that the young herbologist had suffered enough. “I don’t think we’re going to need your statement after all, Neville. Thanks for everything, though.”

Neville looked like he knew Harry was coddling him and might protest, but ultimately decided against it. “Any time, Harry.”

“There was one more thing I wanted to ask you before I leave,” Harry added as he rose to shake Neville’s hand. “Do you have any idea how I might get in touch with Hermione?”

“I think I have her address around here somewhere.” Neville beckoned him over to a shelf full of books on plant food. “It’s really a shame that the three of you aren’t friends anymore. I see Hermione at Flourish and Blott’s sometimes, you know. She always seems so sad.” Neville looked at Harry hopefully as he handed him a slip of paper. “Please tell me this means you’re going to pay her a visit.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed with a quick smile, “I reckon I am.”

***

First, however, Harry decided to head home. His own personnel file had given him his physical address, so he knew it was somewhere in Ottery St. Catchpole. The only trick now was to find out where it was without looking like he didn’t know where he lived (which, of course, he didn’t). As he stumbled around in the twilight, he had time to ruminate on what had happened since he found himself in this vision.

The first thing that struck him was the vision itself. ‘Nobody told me I’d be able to walk around and talk to people in the future. I thought I would just be watching things happen, like it was some sort of television program.’ Given the choice between the two, Harry had to admit that he would have preferred this way of seeing what was to come. ‘This makes it easier to have my questions answered.’

Unfortunately for Harry, not many of his questions had been answered so far. Perhaps talking to Ginny and Hermione would prove more informative. ‘Well, I usually learn things from talking to Hermione anyway, don’t I? If all I get out of Ginny’s a good snog, then I won’t be too disappointed.’

He stopped for a moment as he neared an old, decrepit looking house that Harry did not remember being there. At first, he wondered if it might not be his own, but then recognized it as Lovegood Manor, which he had seen once while taking a walk outside the Burrow. This hardly even looked like the same house. ‘It’s fallen into complete disrepair,’ Harry noted with sorrow. He wondered if perhaps Luna’s father was still living there, the loss of both his wife and his daughter in such a short time making him despondent.

Again, Harry felt that strange sinking feeling at the thought of Luna’s death. ‘Neville described it pretty well, actually,’ he thought to himself. ‘It’s like a part of me is gone.’

Within only a few hundred meters of Lovegood Manor stood a simple cottage which resembled the Burrow somewhat in its appearance, but seemed to be newly built. All around the house was a large, open grassy field, perfect for Quidditch practice. ‘This has to be my house,’ Harry guessed with a wide smile. ‘At last.’

As Harry approached the quaint cottage, he couldn’t help but admire how perfect it was for the two of them. Small, intimate, out of the way yet close to where Ginny’s parents lived…it was the ideal home. He could practically imagine the roaring fire keeping the place warm on a chilly autumn night, Ginny’s bright smile keeping the house fun and happy, and perhaps even children, some day…

Harry opened the door and stepped inside, only to have his jaw drop. Through the wonders of magic, the interior expanded once he entered to reveal opulent wonders. The house had multiple stories connected by a marble staircase, expensive-looking Oriental rugs running the length of the floors, crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, golden statues lining the walls and many other things that Harry would never have imagined owning. It was impressive, but it didn’t quite feel like the home he’d always wanted. Perhaps he had been obliged to make a few concessions to Ginny on what their home would be like.

‘Oh well,’ Harry thought. ‘When I see Ginny, I’m sure it will all be worth it.’ He looked around the first floor briefly, searching for his wife. “Ginny?” he called out. “Are you here?”

Looking through the house quickly became a tedious chore. After a few minutes, Harry got the bright idea of doing a ‘find me’ spell he’d learned from Hermione the previous summer. The spell led him straight to Ginny, who was sitting on a long leather couch on the second floor, sipping a glass of wine and closely examining the latest copy of The Alchemist. “The house elves didn’t make you any dinner before they left. I guess they finally decided you weren’t ever going to come home.” At last, she did look at him, her eyes filled with pain and anger. “That’s a little funny, don’t you think? Our house elves figured it out before I did.”

“But I’m home now,” Harry pointed out contritely.

“I flooed Ron,” Ginny replied coldly. “He said you left work hours ago.”

“I…I went to see Neville,” Harry replied, fully aware that his surprise at being treated this way by Ginny was coming off as nervous guilt. “At his plant shop. Floo him and ask him if you don’t believe me.”

Ginny laughed bitterly. “Oh, I believe you. It’s always someone like Neville, isn’t it? Someone who survived VV Day. You spend hours talking to Kingsley Shacklebolt or Hagrid or Padma Patil or Tonks but you won’t even spend ten minutes talking to me! Well I survived, too, Harry and I’m your wife! Have you forgotten that?”

“No,” Harry replied defensively. “Of course not. Look, whatever we’ve fought about in the past, it doesn’t matter now. I’m here to make it right.”

“You can’t,” Ginny told him firmly. “You can’t just give me that boyish smile and kiss me and say that you’ll make this up to me. I won’t let you do that to me anymore.”

Harry thought frantically back to what Ron had said about why they fought. “Is…is this about you not wanting to have any children?”

Ginny laughed again, although now it looked like she was fighting back tears. “No, Harry, dear. I won that one. You gave it to me the hard way, but I won.” She leaned in closer to him. “You see, it’s kind of hard for a couple to have children when they don’t even sleep in the same bed anymore.”

“This…” Harry began, his mind reeling. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why would we be sleeping in separate beds? What’s going on here?”

“I’m leaving you,” Ginny said, her tone matter-of-fact. “Mum says I can stay at the Burrow for as long as I’d like. I would rather you not visit me there. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble not seeing me, as you’ve had plenty of practice over the last few months.”

“Ginny, wait,” Harry called after her, but she had already begun to walk down the stairs. “Please. This came out of nowhere. At least give me a second chance to make things better.”

“You’ve had plenty of chances already,” Ginny told him tersely. “And if you think this came out of nowhere, then you really haven’t been paying attention.” Only seconds after Ginny walked out the door, she stuck her head back in. “Oh, and I won’t be paying the house elves this week. That was your stupid idea in the first place, so it should come out of your salary.”

As Harry stood there, dumbfounded and in shock, his only thought was, ‘It wasn’t my idea in the first place. It was Hermione’s.’ As he thought of her, he decided that perhaps it was finally time to see his best friend. He felt the strangely urgent need to see her face, to hear her voice. If he couldn’t make things right with Ginny, maybe he could with Hermione.

***

According to Neville, Hermione Granger was now working at the War Memorial Center, which stood where Ministry headquarters used to be before Voldemort transformed it into a hole in the ground. She was a grief counselor, helping people cope with the emotional aftereffects of the war. Harry just knew that she would be great at it.

Hermione’s flat was only a few blocks away from her workplace and within only a few minutes of apparating where the Ministry of Magic had once stood, Harry stood in front of her door. Silently, he searched for the right words to say. ‘Hello, Hermione,’ Harry tried in his head. ‘Nice to see you again. Sorry I’ve stayed friends with Ron and not you all these years.’ That didn’t sound very convincing to him and he doubted it would to Hermione, either.

Just as he raised his hand to knock on her door, it opened to reveal Hermione herself. She looked quite pretty, if Harry did say so himself, with her normally bushy hair tied back into a ponytail and a very alluring look of surprise on her face. “Harry,” she said softly, her brow furrowing as her eyes met his. “What are you doing here?”

‘That’s Hermione for you. Always cutting right to the chase.’ “I…I just…I wanted to…I know I haven’t seen you for awhile but I needed to…. This isn’t coming out right at all.”

Hermione gave him a warm, playful smile. “Harry, you saw me yesterday. Stop acting so silly and come in. I’m making dinner.” As Harry entered her flat, he began sizing it up immediately. The living room had an appropriate amount of furniture, some Muggle electronic devices (including a television) and shelves upon shelves of books. The room was softly lit and warm against the autumn chill outside. Harry sat down on her couch and began to let himself relax for the first time since coming to the future. “Of course, it was just going to be dinner for one. I hope you’re not very hungry.”

“No, not very,” Harry lied as his stomach grumbled in protest. He couldn’t help wondering what Hermione had meant when she’d said he had seen her yesterday. Had Harry already begun to mend fences with Hermione?

“Well, I hope you’ll still be hungry for dessert,” she called out with an affectionate laugh in her voice.

Harry rose from her couch and stood in the doorway of her kitchen, watching her stir something in a pot which smelled heavenly. “And just what are we having for dessert?”

Hermione dropped the spoon she had been stirring the pot with on a spoon rest and sashayed over to him. “Why, what we usually have, of course.” And then she did the last thing he would have expected. She kissed him.

Quite a twist, eh? Bet you didn't see that one coming. Alright, so maybe you did. Anyway, repercussions and revelations to follow.

ITL

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I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with anybody who has become rich because of a young British wizard with a scar on his forehead. I'm also not a member of The Cardigans, I'm just a fan.

This chapter is later than I would have liked, but it's because I'm trying to get "Off Balance" finished before "Deathly Hallows" comes out. Please be patient. Also, enjoy this chapter!

Chapter 5: Been It

In retrospect, Harry found it a bit odd that he’d never before imagined what it would be like to kiss Hermione Granger. She was a girl, after all, and a rather attractive one, at that. They had spent loads of time together and she was even prone to grabbing his arm or giving him a hug from time to time. Yet he had never once thought about kissing her.

‘Clearly that was a mistake,’ Harry thought to himself. After the initial shock made his jaw drop (and his mouth open), he had been even more surprised to find Hermione’s tongue exploring his mouth as though it had already done so a thousand times. Perhaps the most shocking thing of all, however, was just how pleasurable the kiss itself was. ‘Is this what snogging’s supposed to be like?’ Harry wondered to himself. ‘Bloody hell. No wonder I ditched Ginny for Hermione.’

That thought was enough to make him pull away, although luckily for him Hermione seemed to want to stop at the same time. Too stunned to say anything, Harry simply stared into Hermione’s eyes, perhaps waiting for her to explain things to him, as she usually did. “You’re not Harry.”

If any more shock could be registered in Harry’s expression, he didn’t know how. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re not Harry,” Hermione repeated, this time withdrawing her wand and pointing it at him. “The real Harry doesn’t kiss like a hormone-crazed sixteen-year-old boy. So if you’d like to tell me who it is that I actually just snogged…”

“Seventeen, actually,” Harry corrected her without thinking. “I just had my birthday a few weeks ago. Look, I really am Harry. It’s just…I’m not the Harry you know. I’m from the past.”

Hermione’s eyes widened as she began to figure things out. “You’re having a vision, aren’t you? In the Oracular Tower.” Her entire demeanor had changed quickly, as she went from seductive girlfriend to suspicious and peeved witch in the space of less than a few seconds. Now the expression on her face seemed to be changing again, to one of shame. “You must think I’ve become a terrible person.”

“No,” Harry replied, hoping to reassure her. In fact, he had barely even had time to process what was happening here. “No, I don’t think that at all. If anything, I’m the one who’s become a terrible person. I’m married to someone else.”

Hermione shook her head, denying Harry the luxury of absolving her from her guilt. “I’ve known you were married all along, Harry. You even invited me to your wedding. I didn’t go, though. It’s just as well; I would have cried uncontrollably through the whole thing.”

“You’re….you’re in love with me, then?” Harry asked in a bewildered voice. Hermione could only nod in reply. “For how long?”

Hermione laughed then, although there were unshed tears in her eyes. “I don’t know, really. I was such a mess back at Hogwarts. It probably wasn’t a good idea for an emotionally fragile young girl who’d never had any friends to suddenly have two best friends who were boys.” Her eyes locked on his and shone with sincerity. “It feels like I’ve been in love with you forever, though.”

Harry sat back down on Hermione’s couch, practically unable to stand. “And we’ve been having an…you know, one of those things you read about…”

“An affair,” Hermione confirmed unhappily. “Yes. I know it’s hard for you to accept, but…you should know…both of us fought it for the longest time. We never meant to hurt anyone.”

Harry thought back to the look of pain on Ginny’s face as she’d left him only an hour or so before. “I think we did, though.” Harry looked up at her, desperate for more answers. “How did it start?”

Hermione bit her bottom lip as she considered the best way to explain everything. “Maybe I should show you.” She walked away from him for a moment and then returned with a small box. “Do you think you could see something in a pensieve during a vision?”

Harry shrugged. “I dunno. It’s worth a shot, though.” As Hermione raised her wand to her temple, Harry looked worried. “This isn’t going to be us…doing anything, is it?” As mixed up as he was about all of this, Harry was quite sure that he wasn’t ready to see Hermione and himself in flagrante.

“No,” Hermione answered simply as she put the memory into the pensieve using her wand. “Come on. I’ll explain what’s going on once we’re inside.”

***

Harry found himself standing right next to Hermione in Diagon Alley on a windy spring day. “This was where we met for the first time after Ron and I broke up,” Hermione gestured to the store in front of them. “Flourish and Blott’s. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year.” Harry caught a glimpse of an older version of himself, looking distracted and wandering along aimlessly. Hermione, meanwhile, was walking up an aisle carrying an armload of books and not looking where she was going. It seemed inevitable that they would crash into each other, but Harry dodged just in time, his reflexes seemingly as sharp as ever.

“Do you need any help with those, miss?” Harry asked politely, although his expression changed markedly once he saw that it was Hermione’s face hidden behind a stack of books.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind…” Hermione froze as well, her eyes now fixed on Harry’s. “Harry.”

“Hello, Hermione,” he heard himself say in a very shy voice. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You too,” Hermione agreed vapidly. “How’s Ginny?”

“Fine,” Harry informed her, although he was not looking her in the eye. “She’s fine.”

“You were lying to me,” Hermione told Harry in a whisper as the two of them watched their pensieve counterparts. “I could always tell, you know.”

“This is a bit awkward, isn’t it?” ‘memory Harry’ asked with a laugh.

“A little,” Hermione agreed with a polite laugh of her own. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have all of these books in my arms.”

“Oh, right,” Harry chided himself. “The books. Here, let me.” Harry took several of the large reference books and placed them on a nearby table. “Some gentleman I am.”

Now that the books were out of the way, Harry could plainly see that she was beaming at him. “You’re a perfect gentleman, Harry. As always.” She then winced apologetically, deciding to face the tension between them head on. “I’m sorry that I haven’t kept in touch.”

Harry looked relieved that she had broached the subject first. “It’s as much my fault as yours, really. You don’t have to apologize.”

“But you’ve been busy with your new wife, your new house, your new job…” Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’re not exactly hard to keep tabs on, you know. The Daily Prophet won’t shut up about you.”

Harry smiled at that. “Unfortunately for me, that’s true. But I should never be too busy for you.” Hermione’s eyes darted away from his as ‘memory Harry’ continued, “Just because things didn’t work out between you and Ron doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

Hermione looked up at him then, as though that piece of information had startled her. “It doesn’t?”

“Of course not,” Harry replied with a frown. “We should get together sometime and have lunch. Or coffee or something. Ron doesn’t have to know.”

Hermione looked pained. “He’s still mad at me, isn’t he?”

“I think ‘afraid of you’ might be the proper term,” Harry informed her with a grimace. “He won’t even say your name anymore.”

Hermione looked down at her shoes. “I never meant for things to get so complicated between us.”

Harry nodded and took Hermione’s hand, giving it a friendly squeeze. “I know.” Their eyes met and a soft smile formed on both of their lips. “How about meeting tomorrow for lunch? I’m afraid I’m running late for an appointment today.”

“I can’t,” Hermione replied apologetically. “I’m swamped at work. This is the only day I’ve had off for weeks now.”

“Sometime in the next few weeks, then,” Harry promised vaguely and with an air of sadness about him. Hermione nodded, seeming equally disappointed. “It was good to see you again, Hermione.”

“You, too,” Hermione said softly as she turned back around to gather her books together.

“It was all my fault, you see,” Hermione told Harry as they watched their pensieve selves walk away from each other. “It would have been nothing more than a casual reunion between two old friends destined to go their separate ways again if I hadn’t done this.”

“Harry, wait!” Hermione called after him. Harry stopped dead in his tracks as Hermione ran to where he was, forsaking her books and taking his hands in her own. “This is what all sorts of old friends who don’t really want to see each other again do, isn’t it?”

Harry nodded, grinning widely at Hermione’s perceptiveness. “I had almost the exact same conversation with Seamus Finnigan just the other week.” Whatever emotional barriers had existed between them now visibly began to break. “And believe me, Hermione, you mean a lot more to me than Seamus Finnigan.”

“Let’s not do this, then,” Hermione said enthusiastically as she entwined her fingers with Harry’s. “I don’t care how busy things get at work, I’ll make time to see you tomorrow.”

“I, erm, don’t really have an appointment,” Harry admitted sheepishly.

“I know,” Hermione told him with a warm smile. “You want to get some coffee? I sometimes visit a little café not far from here that would be the perfect place for us to catch up. The owner’s a friend, so I’m sure she’d be willing to give us some privacy.”

Harry’s smile mirrored her own. “I’d like that.”

“We had several more meetings like that,” Hermione continued as the two of them pulled their heads from the pensieve. “Lunches in private. Dinner for two at a secluded restaurant. Having to keep things secret from Ron and Ginny made it all the more exciting. Then, as one of our little meetings was winding down, you kissed me.”

“I kissed you,” Harry repeated, as if the concept were completely foreign to him.

“Yes,” Hermione insisted tersely. “You apologized profusely and swore that it would never happen again…but it did, only a few weeks later. That’s when we agreed that we couldn’t see each other anymore.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief. “Obviously that didn’t take.”

“A few months went by,” Hermione explained. “Four months, actually. Four painful, grueling, agonizing months where I didn’t see you at all. It was during those same four months that I figured out I was in love with you.

“Then…well, I already have the pensieve out. Maybe I should show you that memory as well.”

Once the two of them put their heads inside the pensieve, Harry found himself inside a slightly different flat that was still distinctly Hermione’s. “This was my first flat. It was about a week after my twentieth birthday. I remember because I had just received a belated birthday gift from my cousin Clarence in the post.” Hermione smiled wistfully. “I’ve relived this day so many times I feel like I must be boring you. But this is all new to you, isn’t it?” Harry nodded, fearing that if he spoke he would somehow make things worse; that this entire experience would seem real, rather than as utterly fantastic as it did to him now. “It was raining pretty heavily outside.” Hermione pointed to her past self as she approached the door. “I go to the door to see if Crookshanks wants in. But when I open it…”

“Harry,” ‘memory Hermione’ exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here? We’re not supposed to…” Harry was dripping wet from the rain outside and did not appear to be in a very good mood. “Come in.”

Harry still said nothing as he entered Hermione’s flat. “You must be freezing. Here, give me your coat.” She removed Harry’s soaked jacket and hung it on a nearby coat rack. Hermione then bade Harry take a seat and sat down next to him. “Is something wrong, Harry?”

“You mean other than everything?” Harry asked bitterly as he threw his face into his open hands, wiping the rain from his skin slowly. “I can’t do this anymore, Hermione. I can’t live a lie.”

Hermione’s voice became soft; so soft that Harry could barely hear it. “It’s been hard for me too, Harry. I missed you so much when we were best friends, but then…just when we were on the verge of becoming more…”

Harry shook his head dismissively. “It’s not only that, Hermione. I’ve been researching the final battle and there are things that...something isn’t right.”

Hermione looked stung. “Oh.” Despite the misunderstanding, Hermione appeared determined to remain supportive and put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I know what a big event it was in your life, Harry, but Voldemort’s dead. He’s gone. You killed him. Does it really matter how?”

“Yes,” Harry exclaimed forcefully. “It matters. For seven years, Voldemort made my life hell and then, after hundreds of good people die in a battle to stop him, I miraculously make him explode without a spell or an incantation or a weapon or even a thought. I need to know how I did that. I need to know before I do it again.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You won’t do it again. We’ve gone over this before. It was probably pent up magic born of righteous anger. Just like when you blew up your Aunt Marge before third year.”

“Aunt Marge was a muggle, Hermione,” Harry countered emphatically. “Voldemort was one of the most powerful wizards who ever lived. I hardly think it’s the same.” Harry then seemed to make a conscious effort to lower his voice. “Look, I didn’t come here to argue. I came here to tell you that I’ve discovered something. I can’t give you all the details right now, but…if I’m right, then my marriage to Ginny was based on a lie.”

This captured the attention of both ‘memory Hermione’ and Harry. “What?!” they exclaimed in unison.

“I…I know what this must sound like, but you’ve got to believe me,” Harry implored, his eyes pleading with her. “I think I’ve been in love with you all along.”

Hermione’s eyes began to tear up. “Oh, Harry,” she cried out as she threw her arms around him. “I love you, too. So much.”

The memory ended abruptly then and Harry and Hermione soon found themselves back in the present (or the future, depending on your perspective). “Why did the memory end there?” Harry demanded of Hermione.

Hermione smirked. “You’re the one who didn’t want to see us doing anything. I’m afraid we began doing things pretty quickly after what you just saw.”

Harry’s face turned very red. “Oh.” He recovered quickly, however. “So I really have been obsessed with the final battle, then?” Harry asked inquisitively. “I thought it might have been just a cover for my meetings with you.”

“Sometimes it has been,” Hermione answered him coyly. “Most of the time, though, you really have been conducting your own investigation into what happened that day.”

Harry’s eyebrows rose hopefully. “Did I find out anything?”

Hermione shook her head. “Nothing that you’ve told me. You haven’t left Ginny, though, so I’m guessing that the idea of your marriage being based on a lie was a lie itself.”

Harry quirked one eyebrow. “I thought you could tell if I was lying to you.”

Hermione shrugged far too casually for Harry’s taste. “I don’t know anymore, Harry. Before the affair, I could read you like a book. But now…everything’s different between us. ”

Harry began pacing the floor of Hermione’s flat nervously. “I need to get back. I have to change things.”

Hermione looked thoughtful. “Have you considered that maybe this happened for a reason?”

He shook his head violently, unwilling to believe that. “No. None of these things have to happen. I can figure out how to defeat Voldemort without all of those people dying, I can get back to the tower…” Harry realized something suddenly. “Wait. The horcrux in the tower. What was it?”

Hermione looked puzzled. “The horcrux in the tower? What are you talking about? There was never any…”

In an instant, Hermione Granger no longer stood before him, nor was he inside a flat in London. Instead, he was once again staring at the candle holder and sitting on an old mattress in the Oracular Tower at Hogwarts. Feeling both completely confused and thoroughly exhausted, almost as if his body had been drained of all its energy, Harry fell back onto the bed and slept deeply.

***

The next day Harry spent busying himself cleaning his little room in the Oracular Tower, searching for the horcrux in the unyielding vastness that was the tower’s closet and trying desperately not to think about Hermione. What it felt like to hold her, to kiss her, to…But no. He couldn’t let himself go there. Ron and Hermione were practically a couple, just as he and Ginny were. That was how things were supposed to be. Having feelings for Hermione was the one thing that would wreck that future; the one thing that would make all of his dreams impossible. Harry came to a decision quickly. He would simply put the possibility of having a romantic relationship with Hermione out of his mind.

‘Yeah,’ Harry thought to himself, ‘and all I have to do to end the war is simply defeat Voldemort. I don’t really think there’s anything simple about my relationship with Hermione.’

Another decision came much more easily. In his current state of confusion, Harry knew that it wouldn’t be fair to Ginny to take her out on a date to Hogsmeade. Summoning Hedwig from her cage (and a fair bit of courage, as Ginny Weasley could cast one mean bat bogey hex), Harry scratched off a quick note on a piece of parchment, explaining to his ex-girlfriend that she had to remain his ex for just a little while longer.

Once night had fallen, Harry couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than stare at the ceiling as he waited for Hermione to visit him. What would he say to her? ‘Well, Hermione, it seems that in the future we’re having an affair. Also, your future self seems to think that you have more than friendly feelings for me. Care to comment?’

He couldn’t do that. Hermione didn’t deserve to be treated that way; she hadn’t yet decided to have a relationship with a married man and, if Harry had his way, she never would. He would bear whatever guilt remained from their would-be relationship by himself. Still, Harry couldn’t help but feel that things were bound to change between the two of them and most likely not for the better. Perhaps if he could end Hermione’s confusion and finally get her to go out on a real date with Ron, things could work out between the three of them. Their friendship would be saved.

Hermione practically slammed the door open as she entered the tower, clearly out of breath and just as clearly in a very foul mood. “There’s a heartbroken girl who’s been crying her eyes out in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory all day. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Harry shook his head slightly. “I didn’t expect her to take it so hard. She was fine when we broke things off at Dumbledore’s funeral.” He looked her over with a small smile as she glared at him in silence. “Oh and hello to you, too.”

“I hardly think that she was really ‘fine’ then and she’s definitely not ‘fine’ now,” Hermione fumed. “You had a vision, didn’t you? You saw something about how your relationship with Ginny was going to go and you decided to break it off before that could happen.”

Harry’s eyes met Hermione’s, both of them fixed with unapologetically bold glares. “If you must know, that’s exactly what happened. Although I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal over it.”

“I’m making a big deal because I expected better of you,” Hermione chided him. “Ginny doesn’t know where you are, what you’re doing, or what she’s done to deserve being brushed off this way. Which, of course, is nothing. It’s cruel and unfair to hold Ginny responsible for something that hasn’t happened yet.”

“You don’t know what I saw,” Harry reminded Hermione sharply. For whatever reason, this discussion was making him very uncomfortable. “Believe me, Ginny and I are better off apart right now.”

Hermione looked incredulous. “Don’t do this, Harry. Don’t start pushing people away just because of what you see up here. Whatever kind of nightmarish future you saw in your vision, it won’t get any better by holding the people who care about you at arm’s length.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “My relationship with Ginny is none of your business, Hermione.” He felt like throwing things or yelling at Hermione for turning him into an emotional train wreck. He restrained himself from doing either thing, however, if only barely.

Harry would have had to have been blind not to notice the pained look on Hermione’s face. “Fine,” she retorted coldly. “Although I don’t see why you’re treating me so…” A thought seemed to occur to her suddenly. “You looked me up in the future, didn’t you?” Their eyes met again and Hermione could see that it was true. “You found me and we weren’t friends anymore. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Harry confessed with a half-truth. “We weren’t friends.” ‘We were lovers,’ he failed to add.

Hermione’s eyes found the floor and she began to blink rapidly. “Oh. Well…I suppose that sort of thing happens sometimes when people get older.” Clumsily, she deposited a few rolls of parchment at the foot of his bed. “Here’s your homework,” she said without looking at him. “I really don’t feel very well, Harry. I think it would be best if I went to the Hospital Wing. I wouldn’t want you to catch anything.”

Harry did not believe this for even a second, as it was perhaps even easier for Harry to tell when Hermione was lying than vice versa. “Are you, erm, going with Ron to Hogsmeade?” he asked as she opened the door.

Without turning around, she answered. “I hadn’t thought much about it.” Hermione paused silently, presumably considering the matter. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

Harry said nothing as Hermione exited, but was left with an odd empty feeling as she departed. He could not pinpoint the exact cause of it, but knew it must have something to do with Hermione. As he began examining her notes, Harry reassured himself that he was doing the right thing. ‘It’s for the sake of our friendship, after all,’ he thought. ‘I’m sure Hermione will thank me someday.’ Absently, he wondered how long he would have to wait for that day to arrive.

No cliffhanger this time. All reviews are appreciated. I'm hoping I will not have to pause or neglect "Going On" in my quasi-maniacal effort to finish "Off Balance" on time. If I do, I'll post an Author's Note telling you so, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. Thanks for reading!

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This chapter is really, really late. I hope you like it anyway.

Chapter 6: A Hogsmeade Stakeout

Harry Potter could not remember a time when he had been so miserable on a Hogsmeade weekend. Oh, of course, there was the time in third year when he hadn’t been allowed to go to Hogsmeade because Vernon Dursley was a first class berk, but once he had actually been allowed to go the experience had, on the whole, been a pleasant one. Until today. Not only was Ginny avoiding him, but he had to endure an extremely awkward ‘date’ between Ron and Hermione. The latter was noticeably frosty to both boys and the former was clueless as to why. It was the worst Hogsmeade date he had yet witnessed and that included his disastrous outing with Cho at Madam Puddifoot’s. Still, Harry remained resolute: his best friends would become a couple.

‘Ron and Hermione belong together.’ This had become something of a mantra inside Harry’s head as he wandered about the shops of Hogsmeade, barely managing to feign interest in Honeydukes chocolate and the latest racing broom. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense. Ron was jealous that Hermione went to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum. Hermione was jealous that Ron went around the castle snogging Lavender so much last year. They bicker all the time. How could they not be meant for each other?’

“Hermione’s a really bad kisser, you know,” Ron declared out of nowhere, causing Harry to choke on his cup of hot cocoa and nearly burn his nostrils in the process. The two boys were standing outside in the crisp fall air, waiting for Hermione to finish up inside the book store. This was seldom a task for the faint of heart.

Harry could only stare at Ron, gape mouthed. It was things like this that were making him doubt his mantra. He told himself that this doubt had absolutely nothing to do with his future affair with Hermione that, of course, was now never going to happen. ‘I won’t let it happen. Ron and Hermione belong together,’ Harry reminded himself. It would just take some more subtle prodding on his part before it all came together. “What do you mean by that, Ron?” Harry asked, his irritation with his best mate perfectly obvious.

Ron rubbed the back of his neck and looked very uncomfortable. “Well, don’t get me wrong, Hermione’s a smart girl. It’s not like she missed my lips and hit my nose or anything, it’s just…when we tried it, there was no spark. No magic. I just didn’t feel anything.”

Harry took a moment to consider what the best response to that would be. He doubted that ‘You’re nutters! Hermione’s the best kisser I’ve ever had,’ would help his cause any. “Why are you telling me this, Ron?”

“Well,” Ron replied defensively, “that day when you found your name on the tower, you did ask me why I didn’t just snog her and get it over with. That’s why. Hermione is a right terrible kisser.”

Harry had to bite his tongue to keep himself from defending Hermione’s kissing ability. “Maybe she’ll get better over time,” he suggested.

Ron shook his head. “So what? I’m supposed to help her out with some snogging practice? No thanks, mate. If Viktor Krum couldn’t teach her better than that, she’s probably a hopeless cause.” Ron’s eyes wandered as a trio of female sixth year Hufflepuffs walked by them. “Besides, there’s plenty of other girls at Hogwarts who can get the job done and I’m not just talking about Lavender, either. I’ve had enough embarrassing gifts and cutesy nicknames to last me a while.”

Harry very nearly growled in frustration. “You don’t go with a girl like Hermione just so you can have someone to snog, Ron. She’s special. If you’re going to have a relationship with her…”

“Who said anything about having a relationship with her?” Ron asked incredulously. “I’m just getting used to seeing her as something other than a bookworm.” Ron stared at the entrance to the bookstore, glanced at his watch and then looked back at Harry. “She is something other than a bookworm, right?”

“Yes,” Harry replied through clenched teeth. “She’s a kind, compassionate girl who’s very pretty and very smart. Girls like that are hard to find.”

Ron gave Harry a very odd look. “If you really feel that way, mate, why don’t you ask her out yourself?”

Harry turned his head to one side and stared blankly at his best mate. “Get serious, Ron.”

“I am serious,” Ron said with a small laugh. “If you really feel that way about her, you should start dating her.”

“You…you’re just…” Harry stammered, his cheeks flushed and his demeanor flustered. “You’re missing the point.”

Ron threw up his hands in defeat. “Well, what is the point, then?”

“The point is that some people are just right for each other,” Harry answered him forcefully. “They’re meant to be. So why fight it?”

Ron raised an eyebrow. “Like you and my sister, you mean?” Harry’s mouth opened to reply but nothing came out of it. “Look, Harry, what happens between Hermione and me has to be up to us, not you.” One of the sixth-year Hufflepuff girls turned and winked at Ron. “Besides, I’m not quite sure that I’m ready to ‘settle down’ yet, if you know what I mean. There are still a lot of fish in the lake.”

“Actually, there’s just the giant squid,” Harry replied in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Ron now wore a look of puzzlement on his face. “Then what does the giant squid eat?”

As Harry pondered that, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas approached them. “Oi, Weasley, Potter,” Seamus called out. “Have you heard? Ravenclaw’s got a new Seeker.”

“Really?” Harry and Ron asked in unison. Romance might not be a subject that the two boys had an easy time discussing, but Quidditch was another matter entirely.

“Yeah,” Dean Thomas confirmed with a nod of his head. “Goldstein posted his roster for the first match this morning, even though it’s not for another month and a half. Those Ravenclaws must like to start training early.”

“So spill it already,” Ron urged them on impatiently. “Who’d they get?”

Seamus barely suppressed a snicker as Dean doubled over with laughter. “Looney Lovegood.”

Ron looked stunned. “Loo…Luna? Luna Lovegood? She knows how to play Quidditch?”

“Who cares, mate,” Dean said between howls of laughter. “With Looney flying all around the Quidditch pitch looking for snorkle-backed randlemerks or something, we’re bound to win our first match against Ravenclaw and with a really impressive score, too.”

Ron’s face reddened noticeably and he could only manage a squeaked “Mmmhmm” as a response.

“Harry always catches the snitch anyway,” Seamus remarked with a casual shrug. “Well, when he’s on the team, at least. And now that Snape’s not here anymore, there’s no way you’ll be kicked off.”

Harry winced inwardly but said nothing. Thinking of Snape not being here meant thinking of the reason that he wasn’t, which in turn meant thinking of Dumbledore’s murder. An image filled his mind suddenly: a thousand jets of green light causing a thousand deaths, including dozens of his friends and loved ones. How could he be expected to concentrate on Quidditch when there were so many other, more important things he needed to focus on?

“You’re sure it said ‘Luna Lovegood’,” Ron inquired dazedly. “Maybe it was supposed to say something else, like, erm, ‘Tuna Lovegood’.”

Seamus snorted derisively. “‘Tuna Lovegood?!’ What’s that? A fish in the lake?”

Dean shook his head. “There aren’t any fish in the lake. There’s only the giant squid.”

“Really?” Seamus asked as he scratched his chin. “Then what does the squid do for food?”

“I think he gets take out,” Harry said as he pinched the bridge of his nose to ease the tension that was building there. “Does anyone care that I’m not going to be on the Quidditch team this year?”

From the shocked look on the three boys’ faces, it seemed that all of them cared. “What do you mean, you’re not going to be on the Quidditch team?” Ron whined. “You’re the Captain!”

“Not anymore,” Harry declared forcefully. “I’ll give Ron the badge when we get back to the castle.”

“You can’t quit the team, Harry,” Seamus insisted. “Who’ll be Seeker?”

Harry gave the three seventh year Gryffindors a shrug of indifference. “It’s up to Ron now, of course, but Ginny would seem to be the logical choice. She’s every bit as good as I am.”

“No, she isn’t,” all three boys said in unison.

Harry fixed them with a scathing glare. “Sorry, mate,” Ron elaborated sheepishly. “I know she’s my sister and your girlfriend, sort of, so this is kind of awkward, but…how can I say this…you’re better than her.”

“Much better,” Seamus confirmed.

“She is a good snog, though,” Dean pointed out.

Harry couldn’t argue with that, but shook his head anyway. “The team won the Quidditch cup the last two years with Ginny as Seeker. I’m sure she’ll do fine.”

“Not as good as you would, though,” Ron grumbled.

“I have other things I need to be doing now, Ron,” Harry said. “Once I find the…” He gave Seamus and Dean a furtive glance. “…inner strength to defeat Lord Voldemort, then maybe I can start concentrating on Quidditch again. Until then, you’ll have to settle for Ginny.”

Ron nodded in acquiescence, although he was clearly still unhappy about his best mate’s decision. “I guess.” His eyes widened and his chest puffed out a little. “I’m glad you made me Quidditch captain, though.”

“Saves you from having to pass a try out again, eh?” Seamus asked jokingly as he gave Ron a manly slap on the back. “C’mon. Justin Finch-Fletchley’s got a case of firewhiskey stashed out near the Shrieking Shack. We can discuss team strategy on the way over.”

As Ron looked ready to say ‘yes’, Harry yanked him by the arm, pulling him out of earshot of Seamus and Dean. “Have you forgotten that you’re on a date with Hermione?”

“Why not? She seems to have forgotten about it,” Ron reminded him. “Besides, if I’m on a date with Hermione, why are you along?”

“I…I was here to…” Harry hemmed. He didn’t want to say that he was pushing them together, although that was clearly the case. “Chaperone,” he finished lamely.

“Right,” Ron said with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. “I’ll be at the Shrieking Shack.”

Harry frowned deeply as Ron began to walk away from him. “She made canaries attack you the last time you did this to her, you know. I’m just giving you fair warning.”

“Thanks for that,” Ron called back, his tone completely unconcerned. Seamus and Dean flanked him as the three began walking off in the direction of the Shrieking Shack.

“Now, what’s our plan for the match against Ravenclaw?” Dean asked.

Ron looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, I’d say the biggest problem is going to be Luna. Sure, she seems completely barmy, but that’s just part of her charm…er, guile.” As Ron continued talking about Luna Lovegood until the three of them were out of earshot, Harry seethed.

“Wonderful,” Harry muttered to himself. “Just marvelous.” ‘Ron’s gone off to get pissed, Hermione’s going to be furious and I’m no closer to getting them together than I was before,’ he thought angrily. ‘This isn’t going at all like I planned. Why doesn’t Ron care what Hermione thinks of him? Why doesn’t Hermione do more to make Ron interested in her? And what am I going to say to…?’

“Hermione,” Harry called out as he saw her exit the book store, her shopping bag spilling over with thick tomes. “Over here.”

Without smiling, Hermione acknowledged Harry and made her way slowly to where he was standing. “Where’s Ron?” she asked immediately.

“He had to go buy some quills,” Harry tried. Hermione tilted her head to one side and glared at him. “Er, I mean parchment.” Her head did not move, nor did her eyes blink. Harry sighed. “He went to go get drunk with Seamus and Dean.” As Hermione’s face reddened and she began to quiver angrily, Harry bravely offered her a cup of steaming hot liquid. “Cocoa?”

“Thank you,” Hermione said as she took the hot cocoa from him and set her large bag of books on the ground. “Tell me, Harry, do you know anything about conjuring falcons?”

“Not really,” Harry responded in confusion. “Why?”

Hermione seemed to be considering something. “I was just thinking of conjuring something bigger than canaries this time, scarier…like maybe falcons or eagles. Ooh, what about hippogriffs?”

“He means well,” Harry said in Ron’s defense. Hermione shot him another skeptical look. “At least I think he does. And he really cares about you.”

The two of them had begun walking away from Hogsmeade village as they drank their hot cocoa, although they were paying very little attention to anything going on around them. “He has some funny ways of showing it.”

“Guys aren’t usually very good at that sort of thing,” Harry tried to explain. “Showing their feelings, I mean.”

“But you are,” Hermione pointed out.

“What? No I’m not,” Harry protested in surprise. “I’m rubbish at it, just like every other bloke. Why would you say that?”

“You waited for me outside for nearly an hour even when my ‘date’ didn’t,” Hermione told him in a soft voice. “You had hot cocoa waiting for me when I came out, even if you did have to use several warming charms on it. You’re even carrying my books. You didn’t offer; you just did it.”

Harry blushed. “Well, I have to get back into your good graces somehow, don’t I?” When Hermione averted her eyes at that remark, Harry felt the need to say more. “Look, about us not being friends in the future…I didn’t tell you the whole story…”

“We can change it, right?” Hermione asked hopefully. “We can change what happens. It never has to be that way between us. Not if we don’t let it.”

“O…of course we can,” Harry stammered. He had been prepared to tell Hermione about their future affair, but was more than happy to postpone that particular revelation for another day. “Hermione, I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Not ever. You know that, right?”

“I do now,” Hermione replied, the beginnings of a smile forming on her face. “I never should have gotten so angry with you for breaking things off with Ginny. It wasn’t any of my business.”

“Of course it was,” Harry assured her. “You’re my best friend. What goes on in my life will always be your business. I was just being a git.”

“It’s understandable, really,” Hermione reasoned, “given how new these visions are to you. I should have been able to see that.”

Harry smiled at her playfully. “D’you think we can forgive each other?”

“I think so,” Hermione replied after pretending to take the time to think it over. “On three, ready? One, two, three.”

“I’m sorry,” they said in unison. “Apology accepted,” they both said only a moment later.

Hermione heaved a melodramatic sigh. “I’m glad that’s over with.”

“Me, too,” Harry said as a feeling of genuine relief washed over him. He hated fighting with Hermione; it made him feel worse than anything. However, after it was over, their friendship always seemed to be the stronger for it. Boldly, Harry took this opportunity to ask her something that had always bothered him. “Why don’t your fights with Ron ever end this well?”

“Because Ron’s not enough of a gentleman to apologize. You are.” Hermione appeared to give no more thought to her answer, but Harry did. He suspected that she reacted more strongly to Ron’s mistakes because of her deeper feelings for him. However, he did not think he could get Hermione to realize that, at least not today. Perhaps, given time, she would see it for herself.

***
The Monday after Hogsmeade was a particularly disappointing day for Harry. He had been thrilled to discover a discarded journal of Voldemort’s, but found that it was only filled with actual homework assignments, along with little doodles in the margins that said things like ‘I am Lord Drovelmot’ and ‘How about Lord Ordemvolt?’ Needless to say, it did not pass the horcrux test, nor did anything else that Harry tried that day.

Taking the time to have a small lunch, Harry sat down on his bed…only to quickly find himself inside a Muggle automobile, sitting in the passenger seat. Thankfully, he appeared to be eating lunch in his vision as well, as a thermos full of soup sat in his lap. ‘At least I won’t miss a meal.’

Sitting beside him was Hermione Granger. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of jeans that were actually quite flattering to her figure. ‘Not that I’m noticing that now or anything. I mean, I noticed it before, but it didn’t mean anything then. It’s different now, though. Because…well, it just is. It shouldn’t be, but it is.’ Harry chanced a look at her as she ate a salad from a small, plastic bowl and gave her a shy smile. ‘Bloody hell, why do I still want to kiss her?’

“Harry,” Hermione said sweetly, addressing him for the first time in this vision. “Would you mind being a dear and getting us some coffee?” They were parked near the waterfront of what appeared to be a major Muggle city, although it was one Harry had never been to before. “It looks like it’s going to be another long night.”

“We’re…we’re spending the night together,” Harry stammered nervously. “You and me? Together? Us?”

“Yes Harry,” Hermione replied as if she were addressing a five-year-old. “That’s what a stakeout is. Two Aurors wait around for something to happen for hours on end until something actually does. Now would you mind getting us some coffee?”

“Sure,” Harry squeaked, relishing the opportunity to get out of the vehicle and find out more about what was going on. The idea of spending an entire night with Hermione alone in a muggle automobile both thrilled and terrified him, although he wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Hermione and I must be Auror partners.’ As Harry spotted the nearest coffee vendor, there was a bit of a spring in his step. He had changed the future. ‘Now the only thing I have to do is find out exactly how I’ve changed it.’

I'm hoping I can get another chapter out before "Deathly Hallows". Maybe yes, maybe no. I have a feeling I'll be sticking around after anyhow, but I do hope you good people will stick with me. Thanks for reading!

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I am not J.K. Rowling or Scholastic or Warner Brothers or anybody with anything to do with anything important. I'm just me.

This chapter is even later than the last one. There may only be about five or six chapters left in this story. Here's hoping you enjoy them!

Also, this chapter has a very mild spoiler for "Deathly Hallows" (it's about Dumbledore's past). Consider yourself warned.

Chapter 7: Your Touch on My Cheek

Harry had never been to a Stargalleons before, but apparently in the here and now they were the wizarding world’s premier vendor of gourmet coffee. Or so their sign would lead you to believe. So far, all that Harry noticed was different about the place was that they used twelve different spells to make each cup. Judging from their prices, he guessed that they charged their patrons per spell.

After a quick check of his pockets, Harry discovered that he had just enough galleons for two nonfat cinnamon lattes with disappearing, reappearing foam. According to a sign which yammered incessantly about the coffee, this was Stargalleons’ most popular drink. In a hushed tone, he placed his order and then waited for the witches and wizards standing behind the counter to work their magic.

There weren’t very many people in the coffee shop, but Harry could still feel the eyes of others on him. Although he was not terribly experienced at being an Auror, he was quite sure that a stakeout didn’t involve drawing a great deal of attention to yourself. Stealthily, he attempted to hide behind a newspaper, which he grabbed from a rack in front of the counter.

Harry started as he examined the Daily Prophet’s front page, as it seemingly bore his picture. “Local Stargalleons Patron Fails to Pay for Newspaper” the headline blared. The caption underneath his picture read, “Hypocrite pays three galleons for cup of coffee, refuses to part with two sickles for today’s up-to-the-minute news, weather and sports.”

Grudgingly, Harry placed a pair of sickles on the counter, nonplussed by the wizard paper’s gimmick. “I’d like to buy a newspaper too, please.”

Toting his and Hermione’s coffee back to their muggle automobile, Harry took the time to examine the newspaper, which now bore the actual news of the day on its front page, nonsensical as it seemed to be. “Critz Grits: ‘Brits Gits’, Fitz Sits.” The article went on to explain that the French Premiere du Sorcier, Guillaume Prospero Critz, had boycotted a planned emergency summit between himself and England’s Minister for Magic, Postumus FitzHugh. Apparently, tensions between the two countries had been high for quite a while. The Prophet predicted that there would be a war between the two nations by spring. Today’s date was September 30, 2006.

Harry opened the passenger door of the nondescript sedan and handed Hermione her coffee with a frown. “What’s this rubbish about war with France?”

Hermione snorted. “The Prophet’s been on about that ever since FitzHugh became Minister for Magic.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “France and England haven’t been at war for nearly two hundred years. I hardly think that’s going to change just because two old wizards were schoolboy rivals at Beauxbatons.” Hermione peered over Harry’s shoulder to examine the paper. “What does it say about Neville and Luna’s engagement?”

“I, er, didn’t see anything about it,” Harry covered quickly, as admitting he didn’t know they were engaged would make Hermione far too suspicious.

“That’s because you were only looking at the front page,” Hermione replied reprovingly as she removed the newspaper from Harry’s hands and quickly found the Society page. “Here it is. ‘Auror pair to wed’.” Hermione pointed to a photograph of a grown-up Neville and Luna, who were both smiling widely. “It’s kind of sweet to think about, isn’t it? They’ve gone through so much heartbreak and now they’ve found happiness with each other.”

Harry couldn’t help thinking of what Neville had said to him in his last vision of the future. “Luna’s death hit me pretty hard. We were good friends, but I never expected... It was like a part of me was gone. I didn’t fancy her or anything, but I think I might have loved her.”

Now, years later, they were getting married. Was Neville wrong about his own feelings? Or had they simply changed over time? And why couldn’t he take his eyes off of Hermione as he was thinking about all of this?

Hermione looked up at Harry only to catch him staring at her. “It kind of makes you wish…”

If such a thing were possible, Harry was now examining her face even more closely. “What?”

Hermione shook her head quickly, as if to rid herself of a silly notion. “Nothing. I’m just happy for them.” Harry suddenly realized that he had no idea what his relationship with Hermione was here, nor how things stood between her and Ron, nor what role Ginny had in his own life. Feeling a sudden lurch in his stomach at the uncertainty of it all, he decided to change the subject.

Harry nodded toward the three-story townhouse they were, by all appearances, staking out. “Have you seen anything yet?”

“No,” Hermione answered with a pout. “I really don’t understand what he’s playing at. Gerard’s never this quiet. He usually does something by now to thumb his nose at us.” Her face broke out in a scowl. “I have a bad feeling about this, Harry.”

“Gerard?” Harry repeated, the name striking him as familiar. That was the name of the French bloke that had been working for Antonin Dolohov the last time he had visited the future. “You mean Jean Paul Gerard?”

“Of course I mean Jean Paul Gerard,” Hermione said in an exasperated tone. “What other Gerard is there?”

“I dunno,” Harry replied with an overly casual shrug. “I think the Tornadoes had a Beater named Gerard once. He only lasted a year, though, because he kept hitting Bludgers at his own teammates.”

Hermione gave him a thin, wry smile. “Yes, I suppose that would have cut his Quidditch career short, wouldn’t it?” She heaved a sigh and shot the townhouse a glare of boredom. “I just wish something would happen. Something that would give us a reason to go in there.”

Harry decided to play dumb, an act that was very easy for him to pull off. “Like what, exactly?”

“Anything,” Hermione exclaimed. “A suspicious package. Someone using an Unforgiveable. A known muggler waltzing in and demanding his cut of the latest shipment.”

Harry gave her a querulous frown. “Did you just say ‘muggler’?”

Hermione looked mildly sheepish. “I know it’s not their official name, but…well, it fits, doesn’t it? Besides, muggle contraband smugglers is a bit of a mouthful.” Hermione’s eyes darted back to the townhouse only a split second before Harry’s did the same. “I think I see someone.”

“Who is it?” Harry asked as he squinted, using the excuse of his poor eyesight to pretend as though he couldn’t see what was going on in front of him.

“It looks like one of his henchmen,” Hermione replied as she placed her hand over her forehead to block the harsh light from the rising sun. “Garrote, maybe. And there’s Lucien. This could be the deal we’ve been waiting for. Let’s go.” As Harry opened his door, Hermione shot him with a scathing glare. “And for Pete’s sake, Harry, this time don’t touch anything before the MLE gets there. You wouldn’t want Gerard’s lawyers to say that we tampered with the evidence again.” Hermione gave the back seat a quick glance. “Do you have the polyjuice in your knapsack?”

“I think so,” Harry replied uncertainly. Luckily for him, the bag contained a little more than a liter of the foul-smelling potion, which he quickly removed and presented to Hermione. “Tired of your own face, are you?” ‘Because I’m not,’ Harry added to himself.

“Not really,” Hermione answered him in a very soft voice. “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of this scar, though.” Here she ran her index finger along her jaw line, tracing a long thin scar that was now barely visible.

“Oh,” Harry cried out with an involuntary gasp as his hand reached out to touch the scar. “I’m an idiot, Hermione. I almost forgot about….I mean, I should never have said anything…”

“Don’t worry about it, Harry,” Hermione assured him as her eyes fluttered closed. “I know what you meant to say.” Her lips quirked ever so slightly, forming the barest hint of a smile. His hand lingered on her face longer than it should have, caressing her skin lovingly. “You must learn to stop blaming yourself for it every time you see it. Of course, if you’d like to get revenge on Gerard, I’m not about to…” She opened her eyes suddenly and found Harry’s lips hovering perilously close to her own. With deliberate haste, she turned her head away from him.

“Harry, please don’t,” Hermione said, her voice now revealing a vulnerability that he had not heard before. “Not now. I’m really trying to make things work with Ron this time.”

Harry retreated from her slowly, unable to explain to her (or himself) what he had just done. “I…I’m sorry, Hermione. I dunno what I was thinking.”

Hermione looked him over sadly. “It’s perfectly obvious what you were thinking, Harry.” She turned away from him to open her car door. “Now come on. We have a muggle contraband deal to stop.”

“Alright,” Harry conceded. As though he were moving about in a fog, Harry removed himself from the car and tried his best to concentrate on the task at hand. Was Gerard still working for Dolohov now? What exactly was a muggle contraband smuggler? And what did Hermione mean when she said she was trying to make things work with Ron ‘this time’?

‘Stop it,’ Harry scolded himself. ‘You can’t think about that now.’ There was a dark wizard he needed to fight and many years’ worth of future events he needed to learn about. His new, confusing feelings for Hermione would simply have to take the back seat.

As Harry’s mind wandered to what he and Hermione might do in that back seat, he heard her say, “Oh, how silly of me.” Harry watched as she opened the driver’s door and re-entered the sedan. “I nearly forgot the…”

The next thing Harry knew, his ears were ringing, he could taste blood in his mouth and he was lying flat on the pavement, his head feeling as though it had been hit by a million Bludgers. Despite all of this, he rose to his feet quickly, a profound sense of urgency filling him. “Hermione,” he called out weakly, his voice sounding hollow in his ears. Through thick smoke, Harry could see that the car they had been using was now in pieces. A fire blazed through the wreckage, devouring everything mercilessly. The heat made him flinch reflexively, and his unsteady legs sent him reeling back down the alley where he had found himself only moments earlier. “Hermione!”

“She is dead, Monsieur Potter.” Harry turned in the direction of the voice, only to find a familiar-looking Frenchman standing behind him with a pompous grin on his face. “I do not mean to be crass, but I did not think you would want to see her like she is now. It is not a very pretty sight.”

“You,” Harry growled furiously. “You killed her!”

Jean Paul Gerard shrugged lightly. “If it is any consolation, I was trying to kill you. She merely got in the way.” As Harry began to look around for his wand, Gerard’s heavily accented voice called out, “Expelliarmus!”

As Harry fell to the ground with a great thud, a traitorous moan escaped his lips. He was in a nearly unbearable amount of pain, but he had no intention of letting this haughty French wanker know it. In contrast to Harry’s disheveled appearance, Jean Paul Gerard’s robes had no wrinkles or creases, his wavy dark brown hair was perfectly coiffed and his face, dominated as it was by his large Roman nose, was completely free from dirt and soot. The French wizard stood over him menacingly, his wand pointed directly at Harry’s chest. “You loved her, didn’t you?” Harry merely stared back at him defiantly, his jaw clenched and his eyes burning with hatred. “You loved her, but you never were brave enough to take her from the Weasley boy.”

“What do you know about it?” Harry spat back, his voice choking slightly with emotion. “You don’t know a damned thing about me!”

Jean Paul Gerard chuckled condescendingly. “Monsieur Potter, I know everything about you. More even than you know about yourself.” He raised his wand high in the air suddenly. “Mobilicorpus!”

Harry now floated in midair, his body turned upside down. His glasses fell from his face and shattered once they hit the cobblestones of the alleyway. “I could kill you now,” Gerard taunted him, “and you wouldn’t even care, would you? Because I killed her first.”

Harry was now aware of a dull, sinking feeling that seemed to be spreading from his heart down to his navel, making his insides feel as though they were filled with molten lead. ‘Gerard’s right,’ Harry acknowledged morosely. ‘I don’t care what happens to me anymore.’ “Would you give anything to get her back?” he asked curiously. “Would you die for her?”

“Yes,” Harry answered him in a very small voice. “I’d give anything. Do whatever you want to me, but…” Without warning, Harry’s body fell once again on the uneven stone surface of the alleyway.

Jean Paul Gerard let out a derisive snort. “There is nothing quite so pathetic as an Englishman in love.” The dark wizard began to retreat into the shadows behind him, his form no longer clearly visible to Harry. “Your love clings to life on the other side of the street. Go to her. Claim her, if you are a brave enough man. But do not forget what has happened here today.”

It took every ounce of strength in Harry’s body (and likely a great deal of adrenaline), but he rose to a standing position. He then ran faster than he ever had, his legs stumbling slightly as he crossed the debris strewn street. “Hermione!” Harry cried out in a voice both hoarse and mournful. He could see her lying there, badly burned, helpless and shaking. Healers began to swarm around her.

“You can’t see her right now, Mr. Potter,” a male healer informed him in a snappish tone as he held Harry back. Between the smoke and his blurred vision, it was hard for him to see much of anything and he was desperate to know if Hermione was going to be alright. “You have serious injuries of your own that need to be dealt with.”

“But…” Harry sputtered in protest, “but is she…how is she…”

“She’ll be fine,” the more soothing voice of a female healer assured him. “Her boyfriend is with her.”

Those words both comforted Harry and made his heart shatter. Even without his glasses, it was obvious that the reddish blur standing over Hermione’s fallen form was Ron. ‘Her boyfriend is with her.’ Ron was Hermione’s boyfriend. Harry had been telling himself that that was what he wanted. Now he wasn’t sure of that anymore. ‘Does that mean that I want to be her boyfriend?’

As though that thought had catapulted him back into the past, Harry Potter once again found himself in the Oracular Tower. Alone and with glasses intact, he felt relieved that his vision of the future was not yet reality and that, with any luck at all, it never would be. But he still longed to see Hermione. ‘I have to know if she’s alright,’ Harry reassured himself. ‘Even though none of it actually happened, even though none of it was real, I’m still worried about her.’ Trying to explain away his strong feelings of dread and loss, Harry thought to himself, ‘Of course I’m worried about her. She’s my best friend. Just like Ron.’

There was only one problem with this argument, however. He had never kissed Ron. And Harry had the feeling that if he ever did kiss Ron, he wouldn’t want to kiss him again as badly as Harry had wanted to kiss Hermione. ‘Or at least I hope I wouldn’t.’

Harry was terribly confused by all of this. He wanted to blame the visions, the tower, his seclusion or the fact that he was on the outs with Ginny. ‘Alright then,’ some logical part of his brain that sounded a great deal like Hermione responded, ‘suppose you went back to Gryffindor Tower tomorrow, resumed your classes and never once saw another vision of the future. Would that change things? Could you go back to dating Ginny and never give a second thought to what you’ve seen here? What you’ve felt?’

The answer came quickly and with a sigh. ‘No.’ It was not quite so simple.

Harry reached into his trunk and pulled out a red rubber ball. He had tried to teach Hedwig to fetch it over the summer, with no success. “You’re just another girl who confuses me, aren’t you, Hedwig?” Harry asked as he began bouncing the ball against one of the tower’s walls and then catching it before it could hit anything. “I buy you a nice red ball to play with but you don’t want it. It stays in my trunk, gathering dust.

“The ball represents everything you’ve ever wanted. It looks good and bright and happy. It’s bouncy and it’s red. You can have fun with it. But that’s all it’s good for, isn’t it? Just a bit of fun.” Harry caught the ball one last time and returned it to his trunk. “Eventually, you want to spend your time doing something more meaningful.”

Hedwig hooted, as if in reply. “No, I don’t think I was just talking about the ball, either.” His owl then began to dance around its cage, restlessly stirring and making tittering sounds. “D’you want out?” he asked her. Harry looked down at his owl and smiled ruefully. “Yeah, I reckon I do, too. Hold on and I’ll send you off with another letter to take to Ginny.” Whatever he was feeling now for Hermione, his feelings for Ginny had retreated quickly, drowned in a tidal wave of emotion that was both more powerful and a good deal scarier. Harry decided that it was time to end things with Ginny Weasley, this time for good.

‘I understand why fighting Voldemort is complicated,’ Harry groused to himself as he put quill to parchment, ‘but I don’t know why having a girlfriend has to be complicated, too. Why can’t a bloke just have a girl he gets along with as a snogging partner?’

‘Because that kind of a relationship is shallow and superficial,’ the Hermione-like voice inside him pointed out. ‘A strong, lasting relationship is based on more than just attraction. It’s complicated, but it’s worthwhile. Just like fighting Voldemort.’

Harry nodded, as if in silent agreement with the voice. Tying his letter to Ginny around Hedwig’s leg, he sent his owl off into the sky, watching her take flight with a sense of finality. What he had with Ginny was now over.

Which led him to the question of the hour: was something with Hermione going to start? Harry couldn’t help being a little pessimistic. ‘Probably not. She and Ron are bound to get together sooner or later. Everyone’s seen it coming a mile away. Sure, they’re being right stubborn about it, but…’

‘It’s going to happen,’ Harry reiterated. ‘It happened in both of my visions. There’s no stopping it. It’s inevitable.’

The words of the French dark wizard who had nearly killed him in the future echoed in his mind. “You love her, don’t you?”

“So what if I do?” Harry demanded aloud of nobody in particular. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t be with her, so it doesn’t….doesn’t matter.” He sank down on his bed, his voice now barely above a whisper as he said, “It can’t matter.”

***

The horcrux hunt that afternoon had been sidetracked by the discovery of a rather unusual photo album, if that’s what you could call it. The book contained pictures of everyone who had ever called the Oracular Tower home. The first few pages were blank, but as Harry flipped through the book he found sketches of the Tower’s earliest residents, which eventually gave way to photographs of the nineteenth-century witches and wizards who had stayed here. Harry brushed his index finger over a picture of a young Albus Dumbledore, standing next to his brother Aberforth and a blonde girl he didn’t recognize. The next page contained a blank slot (where Tom Riddle’s photo presumably would have been) and a picture of himself, Ron and Hermione when they were in first year. He did not know how the tower had acquired the photo, but then again there were many things about it which remained mysterious.

Harry waited anxiously for Hermione to arrive, attempting an air of nonchalance by lying back on his bed and folding his hands behind his head, watching the sun go down. The next thing he was aware of was someone gently shaking him awake. “Harry,” Hermione said softly and with a look of mild amusement on her face. “Harry, wake up.”

Harry stirred and then stretched, suppressing a yawn with some difficulty as he sat up on the cot. “You’re not getting bored up here, are you? It doesn’t seem like there’s much for you to do up here, except for homework and occasionally writing letters to your girlfriend, telling her you’re breaking up with her.”

Harry took his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Hermione, I don’t want to start this again.”

“I’m not mad,” Hermione assured him as she looked out the window of the tower. “It’s just…this makes three times that you’ve broken up with Ginny, Harry. There’s only so much a girl can take before she gets a complex.”

“You’re right,” Harry agreed instantly, eager to put the subject of Ginny behind them. “I’m a terrible cad.” Harry rose from the bed and stood beside her, bringing his hand to rest on her shoulder. “Are you alright, Hermione?”

“What? You mean after my disastrous date with Ron?” Hermione asked with a laugh. “I’m fine, Harry. How about you? Are you…?” But as she turned to face him, his hand reached out to touch her face, his thumb running down the length of her cheek until it reached her jaw line, tilting her head upwards. Without a word, he lowered his head to kiss her, his lips capturing hers effortlessly. The kiss was utterly blissful, even eclipsing the wonderful kiss he’d shared with her in his first vision of the future. Rather than feeling like a welcome distraction, as snogging Ginny had, kissing Hermione was a revelation, as though something that had begun long ago had finally reached completion.

As the kiss ended, Harry stared after Hermione with a longing gaze. Hermione, however, slapped Harry hard in the face. “How dare you!” she exclaimed, her eyes welling up with tears and her voice filled with confusion and anger. “How dare you do that to me!”

“What?” Harry replied in confusion. “You mean kiss you? Hermione, I don’t understand…”

“You can’t do this to me, Harry,” Hermione told him in no uncertain terms. “You can’t push me at Ron one minute and kiss me the next. You’re going to have to make up your mind.” As he watched her storm out of the tower, he knew she was right. Ironically, the first thing he wanted to do was turn to Hermione for advice, but he could not. He would have to figure this out all on his own.

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“I have come here to finish something that should have ended a long time ago,” Dumbledore declared grimly. (Quote from Chapter 12 of "Going On".)

Well, it's been abandoned, paused and probably largely forgotten about, but after two years, "Going On" is back. If you're just discovering this story for the first time, welcome and enjoy! If, on the other hand, you're someone who was reading this story two years ago when it was being semi-regularly updated, I offer my sincere apologies for the wait and the equally sincere promise that this story will be finished this time, most likely by the beginning of October. Shortly thereafter, I plan to unveil "Unchain My Heart", which would have been my entry for the Elder Wand competition had something actually gone as planned in my life for once.

All and all, it's good to be back on Portkey and I certainly hope you enjoy the second half of this story. Thanks so much for reading!

Chapter 8: The Worms Go In, the Worms Go Out

Despite the fact that there were thousands of objects housed inside the Oracular Tower’s ridiculously enormous closet, none of them were exactly what Harry was looking for. There were no long-stemmed roses, no boxes of chocolates, no tickets to the latest Weird Sisters concert. The only jewelry he’d found was an old brooch that released a noxious gas when touched, which Harry decided would make a right terrible gift, particularly since it had literally knocked him out the first time he picked it up. ‘I need something that says “I’m sorry for being such a prat,” but there’s just nothing like that up here.’

Harry Potter had been mentally kicking himself ever since his spontaneous decision to kiss Hermione. Of course, he had kissed her before in one of his visions of the future and had almost kissed her again in another vision, but this was a different matter altogether. This was reality. ‘Why did I think it would be a good idea? I mean, just because I’m attracted to her and she’s a great kisser and we seem to keep having a fling in the future and OK, so maybe I’m more than just attracted to her…’

Harry groaned. None of this internal agony was helping him find something for Hermione. Much as he would love to get her something other than what was in here, he wouldn’t have time to send Hedwig anywhere and get anything back before tonight and the only other way he had to contact the outside world was Hermione herself, which seemed to defeat the point. Thus, he was limited to a room full of items discarded by previous seventh year students who had lived in the tower, some of them hundreds of years old. ‘So, while Hermione might find an interactive Hogwarts calendar of the year 1594 interesting, I doubt it would go well with a sincere apology.’

What made Harry so desperate to find a good gift for Hermione was the simple fact that he had absolutely no clue what he was going to say to her. ‘Sorry I kissed you’? Not only did that sound terribly rude and insulting, but it was also untrue. He wasn’t sorry he had kissed Hermione, but he was sorry he had kissed her in that way, without telling her just what he was beginning to realize she meant to him and so soon after pushing her to date Ron.

‘But if I tell her all that, I’ll have to talk about my feelings and I’m rubbish at that.’ So the solution was obvious. He needed a gift. ‘The perfect gift.’ But what? And then it hit him, almost literally.

With a loud thud, a thick, dusty book fell from one of the higher shelves, making a distinct cracking noise as it hit the cobblestone floor. However, it had also come very close to making a distinct cracking noise as it hit Harry’s skull and only his still sharp Quidditch reflexes saved him from a major head injury. ‘It’s a good thing, too,’ Harry thought to himself wryly. ‘I’d hate to have to tell Hermione I was nearly done in by a book. She might insist on carting them all out of here for my own protection. At which point she would start reading them, although it would probably take her months to go through all of…’

Harry Potter smacked himself on the forehead, his palm hitting his lightning bolt scar as he did so. “I’m an idiot!” he exclaimed aloud. ‘Books.’ Hermione loved to read. How could he have forgotten that, even for a moment? There had to be dozens of rare books in here; books that even Hogwarts’ library wouldn’t have on hand. Hermione had even commented on that herself when he had first shown her around. The only thing to be done now was to determine which ones were rare (after he had, of course, also determined that the book was not one of Voldemort’s horcruxes, as there was no need for a repeat of the incident in second year with Tom Riddle’s diary).

“Is someone out there?” a muffled voice called out, seemingly from the floor. Harry crouched down in an attempt to discover the source of the voice. “Release me at once!” It was coming from inside the large book, which Harry could now see was entitled Greatest Beheadings of the Seventeenth Century. ‘Somehow I don’t think that’s one of the books I’ll be giving to Hermione.’ As he doubted he could get the hefty tome off of the floor without a levitation spell, he fell to a crouch and began leafing through its pages, searching for whoever, or whatever, was speaking.

After only a few moments, he discovered a thoroughly flattened hat crammed in between two grisly fold-out illustrations. It somewhat resembled the Sorting Hat, save for its blue-green colour. “Well,” it began indignantly, “it’s about time! I must have spent a century trapped inside that miserable old monstrosity!” It then paused, as if waiting for Harry to say something. “Ahem. You will be richly rewarded for your assistance, of course.” Harry shot the hat a puzzled look and it continued, “You do know who I am, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry admitted, his expression sheepish. “I don’t.”

Heaving a dramatic sigh, the hat began a speech that it had no doubt given many times before. “I am one of two magical hats created by the accomplished hatter Engelwyd Merthmarch. One was given to Hogwarts, the other to Beauxbatons, and the former became what you know as the ‘sorting hat’. I, of course, am the greater of the two.” When Harry still looked befuddled, the hat went on imperiously, “I am the Conjuring Hat. With me on his head, any wizard of accomplishment will be able to conjure whatever suits his fancy, so long as he can picture it in his mind. Or, if you would prefer, I can bring forth anything you say, even if you’ve never laid eyes on it before.”

Harry blinked rapidly and then examined the hat as though for the first time. “You mean…you can make anything?”

The Conjuring Hat sniffed haughtily. “Within reason, of course. I cannot create another sun or bring someone back from the dead. However, if your request is a sensible one…”

“It is,” Harry said with a relieved smile. “Or at least it will be. Do you mind if I…?” He made a gesture mimicking putting the hat on his head.

The hat thought the matter over for a moment. “I could stand a good cleaning first, but if you’re really in such a terrific hurry, I suppose I wouldn’t mind.”

A small cloud of dust formed around Harry’s head just as he donned the Conjuring Hat, but at the moment he couldn’t care less. He would now be able to bring forth anything he could imagine. The perfect present for Hermione was only a thought away. It was just a matter of deciding what it would be.

But somehow, as Harry pondered the matter, all of the things he had thought of before seemed unsatisfactory. ‘I don’t reckon Hermione would go in much for roses, chocolate or jewelry. And why did I think she’d want tickets to a Weird Sisters concert?’ “If I could make a small suggestion,” the Conjuring Hat interjected impatiently, “your idea of assembling the various rare books scattered about the room seemed the most intelligent. It at least gives the impression that you gave some thought as to what she actually likes.”

Although Harry did not appreciate the hat’s tone, he had to admit it had a point. “Of course I do,” the Conjuring Hat retorted huffily. “Now go on. Ask me to conjure something. I want to be sure I haven’t lost my touch.”

Harry scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Is there anything you could conjure that would sort through these books, find only the rare ones, and stack them all in that corner?”

“Naturally!” the hat replied, its voice booming. “The Bemis Rare, Odd or Out of the Ordinary Book Sorter!” Before Harry could attempt to repeat what the hat had just bellowed, a sparkling yellow glow filled the room with light for only an instant. Left in its wake was a device that looked rather like the medieval equivalent of a paper shredder. Etched into the side were the device’s initials, B.R.O.O.O.B.S. “Now simply say ‘liber brooobus’ and wave your wand in something of a downward motion…”

As Harry complied, all the books in the room flew from the shelves, formed a line in the air and fed themselves into the magical book sorter. The machine would make a slight rumbling noise as each one went through and then either send the book flying back to its original place on the shelf or throw it into a stack in the corner, just as he had requested. Watching all of this with a mixture of awe and amusement, a question suddenly popped into Harry’s brain.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the Conjuring Hat informed him smugly. “How does a hat as powerful and charming as I am end up trapped inside of a book?” The hat’s voice suddenly turned sour. “I’m afraid the last student who lived here didn’t take it too well when I refused to accompany him outside the tower.” As the last resident of the tower had been Voldemort, this didn’t surprise Harry very much. “If you ask me, I think the power I gave him went to his head.”

‘You can say that again,’ Harry thought. “Why would I?” the hat demanded testily. Harry would have to remember that the hat could read his thoughts and guard them more carefully. Perhaps it would be a good chance to practice occlumency once again. The Conjuring Hat scoffed at this notion. “I’ve read the thoughts of occlumens more accomplished than you, lad. To me, your mind is like an open book.”

As though that had been its cue, the rumbling of the book sorter promptly came to a halt, leaving a slight ringing in Harry’s ears. His eyes meanwhile shot to the corner where he had asked it to stack the rare books…and what a stack it had become, stretching almost to the closet’s very high ceiling. “There must be hundreds of books there. And those are just the rare ones?” Harry demanded incredulously. “Is there any way that…?”

“I’m afraid you’re on your own from here on out,” the Conjuring Hat told him. “Best of luck to you, though.”

“Great,” Harry muttered under his breath as he gave the pile of books a reproachful look. “Why did I have to go and fall for a gigantic bookworm?”

Once he spoke those words, sparks flew from his wand and once again the room filled with yellow light. As Harry looked on in horror, a strange-looking creature began to form. It was about five meters long, had slimy pinkish skin and a sucker mouth that seemed to bear three large fangs along its rim. If Harry hadn’t known any better, he would have sworn that it was… “A gigantic bookworm,” he repeated aloud, his voice incredulous.

“Right,” the Conjuring Hat said, a sense of urgency bordering on panic entering its voice. “Entirely my fault, that. So sorry. Sometimes I do get a bit carried away…”

As the worm slithered its way around the room, leaving a trail of pink ooze in its wake, Harry whispered to the hat, “Is there some spell that will get rid of this thing?”

“Aren’t you a seventh year student at an accredited wizarding school,” the Conjuring Hat asked him caustically. “I exist to conjure, not to teach you spells.”

“Fine,” Harry replied tersely, but with determination in his voice. It would take some time, but eventually he could find the right spell to banish this giant worm. After all, it appeared to be relatively harmless.

Harry Potter walked to the huge stack of books and began to carefully remove a few from the middle in hopes of discovering such a spell when he was interrupted by a rather loud roar. The worm turned suddenly and began wriggling its way toward him, smashing shelves along the way and using its sucker mouth to devour some of the books that fell from them, as though it were ripened fruit falling from a tree. “It eats books,” Harry pointed out in disgust.

“Naturally,” the Conjuring Hat remarked. “It is a bookworm, after all. And here you are, trying to take away some of its food.”

Harry winced as he looked guiltily down at his arms, which were now full of books. The giant bookworm was within a dozen meters of him. “What will it do to me?” he asked the Conjuring Hat.

“Well, you’re not a book, so it won’t eat you,” the hat told him with a sigh. “But I would imagine that the creature has its own defense mechanisms.” As soon as the hat said this, a pink glob of goo shot from the worm and hit Harry square in the chest. It then seemed to come alive and pin him to the wall, making him immobile. “Like that, for instance.”

Luckily, Harry could still see and his wand hand was not trapped against the wall. After trying a number of spells in an attempt to remove the slimy goo, or at least shrink or freeze it, he realized the substance must somehow be immune to magic, much like dragon’s hide. He could only hope that the same would not be true of the worm itself. “Stupefy,” he called out as he waved his wand in the direction of the approaching bookworm. “Reducto,” he tried again, but neither spell had any effect. “Sectumsempra,” he tried in desperation. Feeling hopeless, Harry could only watch as the worm’s enormous body scraped against the wall, retrieving the bit of slime it had used to capture him.

The good news was that Harry was no longer pinned against the wall. The bad news was that he was now covered in a much thicker coat of worm slime, which kept him rather uncomfortably attached to the side of the worm. As he caught a glimpse of himself in a nearby mirror, he could see that the Conjuring Hat was still on his head, for all the good that it did him. “Perhaps it was a good thing you didn’t take the time to clean me after all,” it said. “I’ll certainly need a good rinsing off after this little misadventure.”

Harry watched in frustration as the giant bookworm began to devour the pile of rare books he had so carefully arranged to have set aside for Hermione. “Isn’t there anything I can do to stop this thing?!” he demanded of the hat, who seemed rather blasé about being glued to an overgrown worm.

“Try the spell ‘meus vermis evanesca’,” a voice suggested. In his current state, Harry could not tell who or what had spoken, but felt it was worth a try. “Meus vermis evanesca,” he repeated, doing his best to flick his wand in the direction of the worm’s body. As the spell hit the bookworm, it began to shrivel slowly until eventually it dissipated in another flash of golden light.

Harry Potter’s relief was palpable. With the bookworm gone, he could now move about freely and use his wand as he pleased. Harry wasted no time in performing a number of cleaning charms on his hair and clothes until all of the worm goo was gone. After the Conjuring Hat loudly cleared its nonexistent throat, he cast a quick “Scourgify” on it as well. Since it had been the Hat’s fault that the worm had been conjured in the first place, Harry wasn’t entirely certain that it deserved the favor. ‘Then again, it did give me the spell that got rid of the bloody thing.’

“Oh, that wasn’t me,” the now sparklingly clean Conjuring Hat told him as Harry removed it from his head. “That was the mirror.”

Harry’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What mirror?”

“Just there, on the far wall.” The Conjuring Hat managed to point in the mirror’s direction by bending itself slightly towards it. “It’s a novelty item one of the boys who lived here picked up several centuries ago.”

“I’m hardly a novelty item,” Harry heard his own voice answer back indignantly. Scanning the shelves near where the hat had indicated, he quickly discovered a dust-laden hand mirror which bore his own reflection. The reflection appeared to be speaking for itself, however. “It took more spells to make me than it did to make you.”

The Conjuring Hat laughed contemptuously. “If that were true, it would only be because the addle-pated wizard who created you made so many mistakes in the process.”

Harry stood on one of the tables to pick the mirror up and then held it before his own face, examining it carefully. “What sort of mirror are you, anyway?”

“I’m a Front View Mirror,” the mirror answered matter-of-factly. “Just look into me once and I can look into your future.”

“Just what this tower needs,” Harry muttered to himself. “Something else that can predict the future.”

“I know everything you’ll know, only five minutes beforehand,” the mirror continued to explain as though Harry had not spoken. “That’s how I was able to inform you of the spell that banished that large bookworm. You would have found it for yourself in only a few seconds, when a book called Bertrand’s Guide to Banishing Beasties fell from one of the higher shelves.” In only a second or two, the book in question did indeed fall from the shelf, landing very near where the worm had once been devouring a pile of rare books. “See?”

Harry gave the mirror a thoughtful look. “I think I’m beginning to.” He then lowered himself to the floor, taking the Front View Mirror along with him. “Could you help me sort something out?”

The Conjuring Hat chortled. “If you’re looking for help with sorting something, perhaps you should try my inferior Hogwarts counterpart.” As he was growing increasingly tired of its antics, Harry performed a silencing charm on the hat, causing it to spin around angrily.

“You want help in sorting out your love life, don’t you?” the mirror asked. When Harry nodded, it continued, “You have strong feelings for the girl who serves as your emissary, but you’re not sure just what they mean or where they came from.”

“That’s it exactly,” Harry replied enthusiastically. “I can’t help wondering if…if…”

“If what you’ve seen here is influencing what you’re feeling now,” the mirror finished for him. “If what you’re feeling is truly real.”

Harry looked into the mirror curiously. “How is it that you know how to say things about my feelings that I can’t?”

His own image in the mirror shrugged. “You would have figured out how to say all of those things in a few minutes. I just saved you the time.”

“D’you think I could use you when I talk to Hermione?” Harry asked. “It would really make things a lot simpler.”

The face in the mirror scowled back at him. “I don’t think she’d like that very much. And besides, simpler isn’t always better.”

“Things used to be simple,” Harry grumbled, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I dunno how it all got out of control so fast. Over the summer, Ron and Hermione nearly drove me bananas with their constant bickering and all I wanted was for them to get together already. Everyone had been waiting for them to for ages.”

“Really?” the mirror asked skeptically. “So you talked to other people about this and they saw the same romance brewing between the two of them that you did?”

Harry gave the Front View Mirror an appraising look. “If you can really see five minutes into the future, then you have to know the answer to that question.”

“Oh, I do,” the mirror said with a hint of a gloat in its voice. “I just enjoy hearing you say it.”

Harry exhaled deeply. “No, I didn’t talk to anyone else about it. But they’re my best friends. I know them better than anyone. The way they were going at each other, they were bound to get together sooner or later.” Memories of his visions and one completely disastrous failed Ron-Hermione date at Hogsmeade flashed suddenly through his mind. “Or so I thought, anyway.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” the Front View Mirror asked, making his own voice sound somewhat prissy as it did so. “I think your feelings are real and that the visions you’ve been having only brought them to the surface. I think your expectation that Ron and Hermione would get together forced you to think of her as off limits and now that you see how things really stand, you’re a little bit scared because this is all so new to you.” The mirror paused to let this sink in a bit. “Also, I think you’re almost due for another vision.”

Harry tilted his head to one side and gave the mirror a strange look. “What are you…?”

***

Immediately it was dark and quiet and there was a bit of a chill in the air that made him shiver. Harry’s glasses were covered with droplets of water and the grass on which he stood was very wet, making him guess that it had been raining only a short time ago. He had something heavy in his hands, but could not see what it was through his wet, foggy glasses. It was something with a wooden handle…

Harry Potter cried out in pain as a stinging hex hit him in the back, making him fall to his knees on the soggy ground. “You’ll not be allowed to loaf around with me watching you, Potter,” the familiar voice of Draco Malfoy sneered from behind him. “Now get digging.”

‘Digging?’ Harry thought to himself, puzzled. ‘What am I supposed to be digging for Draco Malfoy?’ But at least that did explain why he had a shovel in his hand.

As Harry rose slowly to his feet, an older man’s voice cried out pleadingly, “Master Malfoy, sir, we would never have gone easy on a traitor like ‘im. You know that.” His voice then became barely more than a whisper. “Please don’t tell your father…”

“What I tell my father depends on what happens now that I’m here, doesn’t it?” Draco interrupted him snidely. “If you ask me, the quality of the work being done out here has been on the decline lately.” Harry took the opportunity Malfoy’s rant afforded him to wipe his glasses clean and take in his surroundings. He could see Hogwarts castle in the distance, but it seemed much farther off than it should be. There were other people milling around him, mostly doing drudge work. Just a few hundred meters away from him was the Oracular Tower, which stood closer to him now than Hogwarts itself. This meant that he was on the other side of it, which in turn meant…

“Bloody hell,” Harry exclaimed softly as he returned his glasses to their rightful place on his face. “Someone’s cut down the Forbidden Forest. But what am I doing…?” An incredibly intense wave of pain wracked his body as it once again fell to the rain-soaked ground. Although Harry had experienced the Cruciatus Curse before, enduring it never got any easier.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to speak, Potter,” Draco said with a murderous glare. “You’re my prisoner now and you will remain so until the Dark Lord calls for you in the morning. That means you do what I say when I say, without any cheek.”

Harry attempted to quickly swallow the fear that he felt upon learning that in this version of his future, he was Voldemort’s captive. He would not let Malfoy get the better of him. “This isn’t over, Malfoy,” he declared with completely feigned confidence. “Voldemort hasn’t killed me yet and I still have a few tricks up my…”

“Crucio!” Draco exclaimed and Harry once again felt the cruel agony of the Cruciatus Curse surging through him. “You have nothing left,” Malfoy spat. “Nothing! No Dumbledore, no Order of the Phoenix, no friends…” He barked a harsh laugh. “Face facts, Potter. Your side lost and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

“No…friends…?” Harry repeated weakly. Despite the pain, he was suddenly seized with curiosity about what had happened to those he cared about in this version of the future. “What do you…?”

“Playing dumb now, are we?” Draco demanded with a smirk. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember what happened to all of your little traitor friends?” When Harry only stared back at him blankly, Malfoy shot him an evil smile. “Perhaps all the Unforgiveables we’ve been using on you have made you forgetful. I’d be more than happy to give your memory a jog.” The smile disappeared as he made a slight upward motion with his wand. “On your feet, Potter. It’s time to take a little walk.”

Harry stood slowly and then began moving in the direction Malfoy indicated, much as he would have rather tried to fight or run. However, seeing as he was apparently out a wand and his legs could barely manage to walk after two rounds with the Cruciatus Curse, his options were fairly limited. “To your right, you’ll see the graves of Hogwarts’ greatest pair of nobodies, Neville Longbottom and Looney Lovegood.” Harry’s heart sank. He felt just as he had when he saw the abandoned Lovegood house in his first vision, as though a sudden emptiness had begun to form where his insides should be. “Tell me, Potter, do you think they followed you because they were stupid, crazy or because they simply had nothing better to do with their pathetic lives?”

“I’ve often asked myself that same question about Crabbe and Goyle,” Harry shot back defiantly.

A figure in Death Eater’s robes standing next to Draco lowered his wand at Harry and began to aim another Cruciatus his way when Malfoy waved him off. “Don’t. I have a feeling this is making him suffer more than any curse of pain ever could.” Draco nodded his head slightly and continued, “To your left is the final resting place of the two youngest Weasley spawn.” Harry’s lip trembled slightly as he read the names of Ron and Ginny on the headstones. If it were possible, Harry felt even worse than before, as his entire body began to quiver involuntarily. “You should be grateful, Potter. At least we gave them decent markers. That’s more than their impoverished blood traitor parents could have managed.” Harry’s hands balled themselves into fists. He ached to strike Draco Malfoy but knew it would do more harm than good.

“And finally we have the true prize of the collection, your mudblood girlfriend, Hermione Granger.” As Draco shone a light on the grave, Harry felt an overwhelming sense of loss, beyond anything he had experienced before. It was as though his heart had been torn out and shredded, leaving him only an empty shell. “I have to hand it to the filthy slag, she gave us quite a fight. It was only when she knew that we were either going to kill her or you that she finally gave in.” Malfoy grinned evilly. “Of course, if she had truly been as bright as everyone said she was she would have known we were going to kill you both eventually.”

In a blind rage, Harry launched himself at Draco Malfoy, his fists flailing away at his old Slytherin rival’s prone form. For a moment, none of the Death Eaters surrounding them did anything, perhaps too stunned to act (or perhaps more than willing to see the haughty Draco taken down a peg or two). Eventually, though, one of them pointed his wand in Harry’s direction and levitated him off of the ground, allowing Malfoy a respite. Draco was now covered in mud and sported several nasty bruises and cuts on his face. “Should I kill him now, Monsieur Malfoy?” the dark wizard holding Harry aloft asked, his tone utterly indifferent.

Despite the look of wounded pride on his face, Draco managed to shake his head no. “The Dark Lord would skin us alive if we deprived him of the honor of killing Harry Potter.” Malfoy approached Harry, his teeth gritted in anger. “You will be executed tomorrow morning in front of the entire wizarding world. That is the only thing keeping you alive tonight. You’d do well to remember that.

“Gerard,” Draco called out to the Death Eater with his wand trained on Harry’s levitating form, “teach Potter a lesson in manners. Just don’t kill him or leave him unrecognizable. And if he can’t be persuaded to dig his own grave, put him under the Imperius Curse.” The Death Eater nodded. “I have to get myself cleaned up for tomorrow. The son of the Minister of Magic has to look his best for such a special occasion.”

As Draco Malfoy departed, a hot tear slid down Harry’s face. Voldemort had won and all of his friends were dead. How had this nightmare world come about? What had changed between his last vision and now? And how could he change it back once he returned to the present?

“You are being quite selfish in wasting your tears now, Monsieur Potter,” ‘Gerard’ advised him sardonically. “I’m sure the entire wizarding public would love to see them tomorrow, just before the Dark Lord murders you.” Before Harry could retort, the Death Eater ended the spell keeping him in the air, allowing him to fall to the ground in a heap.

As Harry struggled to pull himself up from the muddy ground in spite of the tremendous amount of pain that he was in, he realized that he knew exactly who was speaking. “You’re Jean Paul Gerard, aren’t you?”

The other wizard let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I should have known you were far too clever to be fooled by this silly mask.” Casually, he removed the Death Eater mask and tossed it away, revealing the now-familiar brown hair and Roman nose of the French dark wizard who had appeared in his previous two visions of the future. “Your intellect is truly staggering.”

Harry had no idea who this bloke was or why he kept showing up in his visions of the future, but right now there was nobody else who could tell him anything useful. “What happened here?” Harry asked the Frenchman. “How did Voldemort win?”

Jean Paul Gerard exhaled slowly. “I will answer your question using simple logic that even a half-wit Englishman should be able to follow. When you were attempting to defeat the Dark Lord, what method did you use? What tactics did you employ?” When Harry did not answer, he continued in exasperation, “Did you not attempt to destroy the very things which made him powerful? Which made him so difficult to be killed?”

“Yeah,” Harry admitted, his brow furrowed in confusion. “But I don’t see what that has to do with…”

“Can you not see that by killing those you cared about he has done the same to you,” Gerard pointed out almost angrily. “The war between you was over the moment the last one of them died.”

“I…” Harry stammered as he tried to puzzle through what Gerard was saying. “I don’t think I understand…”

Gerard grinned widely. “You will, Monsieur Potter. You will.”

***

Because the Oracular Tower was so very high and had so very many steps, Harry could watch Hermione walk up the stairs in the twilight for about ten minutes before her arrival at the top. What remained of the rare books he had gathered for her after the incident with the enormous bookworm sat next to his bed, bundled and ready to be given as a gift. Harry had mulled the words he wanted to say to her over and over again in his head, but none seemed to adequately express his feelings. ‘I only wish I knew exactly what to say to her, what to do…’

Complicating everything was his latest vision, which made him chide himself for taking his eyes off of the ultimate goal of staying in this tower, which was to discover the last of Voldemort’s horcruxes hidden somewhere here and destroy it. Once he had prepared everything for Hermione, he had ransacked the items in the tower’s huge closet, searching at three times his normal pace, looking for any trace of Lord Voldemort’s soul. Disappointingly, he had found nothing.

Harry had also given some thought to what Gerard had said in his latest vision: that killing his friends would more easily allow Voldemort to defeat him. He wondered if perhaps it wouldn’t be better for now to push them away, to leave Ron and Hermione out of the horcrux hunt and keep them out of danger. Harry had quickly dismissed the notion, however. ‘Part of what’s made Voldemort’s horcruxes so vulnerable is that he hid them, keeping them far away from himself in hopes of protecting them.’ If his friendships were truly part of what made him strong enough to defeat Lord Voldemort, he knew that this was not the time to be burning bridges. And he would have to start by making things right with Hermione.

“Hello, Harry,” Hermione greeted him simply as she finally ascended the tower’s staircase. Once she had caught her breath, she handed him several reams of parchment. “We can go over your homework assignments in a moment, but I really think we should talk first.”

“Of course,” Harry agreed enthusiastically. “Have a seat.” Harry had thought it would make for a more friendly atmosphere if Hermione had somewhere to sit other than his bed, so when he found an old upholstered chair inside the closet that guessed your weight as you sat down on it, he had cast a silencing charm on it and moved it out here. “I, erm, got you something.” As she sat down (thankfully without comment from the chair), he handed her the bundle of books. “Those are all of the rare books up here, except for the ones on dark magic. I didn’t reckon you’d want those.”

Hermione gave the books a glance, a pleased expression briefly overcoming the look of concern she had worn on her face ever since she had arrived. “Thank you, Harry. These are wonderful.” Her serious face returned quickly. “But as nice as this was, it doesn’t really change anything. There’s still something we need to discuss.”

Harry gripped the edge of his mattress tightly as he sat on his bed. “Hermione, I can explain everything…”

Hermione put her hand on his knee, silencing him. “You’ve changed so much since you’ve been living in this tower. You broke up with Ginny, tried to set Ronald and me up on a date and then you kissed me. Harry, I…I think you may be going a bit mad.”

“I’m not going mad,” Harry replied with a dismissive laugh. “I’ll admit it was a mistake to set you and Ron up on that date at Hogsmeade, but Hermione, if you had only seen the things that I’ve seen, you’d know exactly why I’ve done all this.”

“I can’t exactly do that, can I?” Hermione asked rhetorically, her tone now somewhat icy. “You’re the only one who can see these visions.”

“Are you…are you jealous that the tower picked me and not you?” Harry asked incredulously.

“Of course not,” Hermione answered him firmly. “But people don’t like to have their emotions toyed with, Harry. Just because you can see how things might turn out in a few years, doesn’t mean that any of the rest of us are ready for you to start changing things around because of what you see. To us, nothing has changed…except for you.”

Deeply frustrated, Harry determined to come clean about his feelings for her and exactly what it was in the visions that had made him realize those feelings. “You remember when I told you that we weren’t friends in the future, after my first vision? Well, that was only partially true. I was married to Ginny but the two of us were having an affair.” Hermione’s eyes widened in shock but she said nothing. “In my second vision we had obviously been romantically involved but you said you were trying to make things work with Ron ‘this time’. And, in my last vision, I saw your grave and…Hermione, it nearly killed me. I couldn’t take it.” He reached for her hand and held it gently. “I want to be with you, Hermione. The things that I’ve seen in the visions don’t really matter, it’s the feelings that they’ve made me realize I have for you. I…I don’t know how you feel about me, exactly, but if the visions are any indication…”

Abruptly, Hermione pulled her hand away from his own. As she looked up at him, her expression had changed entirely to one of bitter sadness and tears welled behind her eyes. “What am I supposed to do with that, Harry?” she asked him pointedly. “Because I have no idea. Maybe you should just go ahead and tell me. Haven’t you seen this played out already in one of your visions?”

“No!” Harry exclaimed defensively. “I don’t understand what you’re on about! I’m just trying to tell you how I feel…”

“Put yourself in my shoes,” Hermione said, her tone now decidedly less barbed. “What if I was the one staying in this tower and you were my emissary to the outside world? And what if after a few weeks I told you I wanted to date you? What would you think?”

Harry pondered that for a moment. “I…I’d think…” Harry would still have blissfully been dating Ginny and would have fully expected Ron and Hermione to get together, with no idea of what the future held in store for them. “I’d think you were barmy.”

“My point exactly,” Hermione said, her tone softening noticeably. “If you really want to know how I feel, Harry, I…I’ve wanted to be more than your friend for quite a while.” Harry couldn’t keep an elated grin from his face, although he managed to suppress it quickly. “It would be very easy for me to accept what you say at face value and agree to become your girlfriend.” Abruptly, she rose from her chair, causing it to blurt out, “Seven stone, eight pounds.”

Hermione gave the chair a brief look of disdain and then continued, “But I just can’t trust that what you think you’re feeling right now is how you really feel. I’m sorry.”

Harry did his very best not to look crestfallen, but figured he was probably doing poorly at it. “You don’t trust me, then? Is that it?”

Hermione gently put her hand over his. “I’ll always trust you, Harry. I’m just not sure you’re quite yourself right now.”

Harry could barely pay attention as Hermione went over his homework assignments, handed him the food she had snuck out of the kitchens and bid him goodbye. Before she left, however, an idea struck him. “Hermione, could you do something for me?”

Her eyes looked him over carefully. “What’s that?”

“There’s this French wizard who keeps popping up in my visions,” Harry explained. “I want to know more about him. He should be going to Beauxbatons now. His name’s Jean Paul Gerard.”

“‘Jean Paul Gerard,’” Hermione repeated, her brow furrowed in thought. “Alright, I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said with a genuinely appreciative grin. “You’re the best.”

Hermione smiled back at him. “I’m glad you still think so.”

Before I have to dodge rotten tomatoes and heads of cabbage, I would like to assure my reading audience that there will be plenty of H/Hr goodness in the succeeding chapters. Updates will come every two weeks, so the next chapter will be up on Friday the 7th of August. Thanks again for giving me a second chance. Long live Portkey!

ITL

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I am not J.K. Rowling, I do not make money off of Harry Potter and nobody who does make their living from Harry Potter would recognize me if they passed me on the street. In short, I'm nobody, who are you?

Chapter 9: The Tower He Knows Not

Harry Potter awoke to the sound of the shower running, which was very strange considering that he was the only one who lived in the Oracular Tower. It was also odd because there wasn’t really any running water in the tower, either; just a portable loo that some thoughtful previous resident had left behind. (It contained a bath, a sink and a toilet and could be easily shrunk to fit inside of a briefcase. Harry had given the entire apparatus a thorough scrubbing once he remembered that Voldemort had to have used it, too.)

Harry’s confusion disappeared, however briefly, once he realized that he was no longer inside the Oracular Tower. In fact, it now appeared that he was in someone else’s home, sleeping in their bedroom and in their bed, all the while only dressed in pyjama bottoms (which were presumably also theirs). Three possible explanations sprang to Harry’s mind: that he was having a very vivid dream, that he had woken up in the middle of a vision of the future or that something even less plausible than either of those two options had happened.

After a quick check of his surroundings, Harry discovered his glasses and his wand were lying on the dresser next to the bed. He retrieved them both quickly and, as the person using the shower turned it off, trained his wand on the bathroom door adjoining the bedroom, waiting to see who would emerge from it. While it wasn’t likely that this was a trap, Harry decided he couldn’t be too careful. ‘I can just see it now. Voldemort emerges from the shower and attacks me in my pyjamas. I’d never hear the end of it.’

After a few minutes of waiting, a figure emerged from the bathroom amid a cloud of steam. Happily, rather than Voldemort, the figure in question was a bathrobe-clad Hermione. She appeared to be in her late twenties, but the leap forward in age didn’t keep Harry’s heart from pounding wildly at the sight of her. “You weren’t practicing that ‘make-a-window’ spell on the bathroom door again, were you?” When he didn’t answer her right away, she continued, “Honestly, Harry, I haven’t the faintest idea why you keep doing that. It’s not as though you haven’t seen me naked before.”

“I haven’t,” Harry repeated dazedly. “I mean, I have. Obviously I have.” He quickly lowered his arm and pointed his wand somewhere other than at the door. Meanwhile, Hermione crossed the room, sat down on the bed and began drying her hair with her wand and a towel. ‘This is obviously her bedroom, too. This is our bedroom.’ “Erm, is there any chance I could see you naked now?”

“Nice try, Potter,” Hermione said with a playful smile, “but I am not going to show up for your birthday party looking freshly shagged. I so rarely get the chance to make myself beautiful anymore.”

“That’s got to be the easiest job in the world,” Harry said, without even thinking about it. “You’re always beautiful.”

Hermione got up from the bed, walked over to him and kissed him chastely on the lips. “Thank you, Harry. That’s sweet.” As he started to put his arms around her, she pushed his hands away. “But seriously, nothing’s going to happen until after we get back from the Burrow. I need to get ready.”

“Right,” Harry replied, trying to glean as much information about what was going on from Hermione as possible. “I guess I should get ready too… for my birthday party…at the Burrow.” ‘At least I know what day it is,’ Harry thought to himself.

“You might check on Hal and Catherine. See if they’re dressed yet.” When Harry only looked back at her blankly, she elaborated, “You know, our children. The little people who’ve been living in our house all these years.”

“Right. The children,” Harry replied a little numbly. There had been no children in any of his other visions of the future. For a moment, he wondered what they might look like; whether they more closely resembled Hermione or him or if any of them looked like his parents. “I’ll just go see them now.”

Hermione’s arm grabbed his lightly, keeping him from leaving the room. “Harry, you’re not having those dreams again, are you?”

Harry frowned in confusion. “What dreams?”

“The ones where you’re back at Hogwarts seeing ‘visions of the future’ out of some invisible tower,” Hermione explained, a patient and sympathetic expression on her face. “Harry, you know none of that ever happened, right?”

“O…of course I do,” Harry stammered in surprise, unwilling to challenge Hermione at this point, but very curious as to what she was getting at.

“It was just Voldemort, playing mind games with you,” Hermione continued as she began rummaging through her closet for an outfit to wear. When he said nothing in reply, her eyes met his again. “But now he’s dead, Harry. It’s over. You won. We all did.”

“I don’t understand…” Harry began uncertainly, but was unable to say more before a voice behind him shrieked, “Boo!”

Startled, Harry spun around quickly, only to realize that the person who had interrupted him was a boy of around three or four with tousled brown hair. “Did I scare you, Daddy?” he managed to say between mischievous giggles. “Did I? Did I really?”

“You did,” Harry told him, a stupid grin now plastered on his face. ‘I have a son!’ “You were really scary!”

Hal grinned widely, his arms swaying at his side. “I’m going to be a Death Eater when I grow up.”

“What!?” Harry exclaimed.

Hermione sighed. “Hal, for the last time, you are not going to be a Death Eater when you grow up. There aren’t even any more Death Eaters. They’re all in Azkaban.”

Hal puffed out his chest. “I escape from Azkaban, just like Uncle Sirius!”

As Hal began to explain in garbled detail how he would do this, Hermione leaned in over Harry’s shoulder. “You haven’t been encouraging them to play Aurors and Death Eaters again, have you?”

Before Harry could give a clueless answer to that question, a girl of around six appeared behind Hal. “Avady kedavry! You’re dead, Death Eater!”

Hermione shook her head slowly. “Never mind. Just get them ready for the party. We’ll talk later about…well, about lots of things.”

Harry walked out in the hallway and scooped up both children. Catherine was about a head taller than Hal and had shoulder-length bushy black hair. “Nuh uh,” Hal protested. “I’m not dead. The avady kedavry bounced off me.”

“Avady kedavrys don’t bounce off!” Catherine informed her brother, her angry face a perfect miniature of Hermione’s. “Tell him, Daddy!”

“The avady kedavry bounced off Daddy,” Hal argued back as he looked up at Harry pleadingly. “Tell her, Daddy!”

Harry put the children down in what looked very much like the living room. “Daddy says it’s time to stop talking about avady kedavrys and start getting ready for his birthday party.” Harry belatedly realized that he would likely be expected to dress the children, despite having no clue where their clothes were kept or even where their rooms were. Luckily for him, with little more than a murmur of complaint, the children marched off toward their respective rooms. Once Catherine opened her door, Harry called out timidly, “Do you, erm, need any help getting ready?”

Catherine rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Daddy, the house elves can do it. That’s what Mummy pays them for.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Harry decided he could safely take the time to look around his house for clues as to what had gone on in his life over the last ten years or so. He found several framed photos: one of Hermione and him on their wedding day, the proud parents holding newborn baby Catherine and then baby Hal and one of Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore and him that he didn’t recall being taken. ‘I think I would have remembered Dumbledore holding up rabbit ears behind Ron’s head.’

“What do you think, Harry?” Hermione asked him, forcing him to look up from the photograph. She was wearing an elegant strapless blue gown that accentuated what was a truly gorgeous figure, if Harry did think so himself.

“You look wonderful,” Harry told her, a bit awed by the entire situation. It was now beginning to sink in that he and Hermione were together and happy for the first time in one of his visions of the future, without any interference from Ron or Ginny. Idly, he wondered how they had ended up (and who they had ended up with).

Hermione quickly answered one of his questions as she looked down at herself with a frown. “You don’t think Ginny Longbottom will wear blue, do you? I’d hate to show up to your party in nearly the same outfit as your ex-girlfriend.” Before Harry could answer, she looked at him sharply, her eyes widening. “Harry James Potter! You’re not ready yourself!”

“What?” Harry asked her in mock indignation. “You mean I can’t just go in this?”

Hermione gawked at him. “Do you really want to show up shirtless and in bare feet, wearing only a pair of pyjamas?”

Harry made a show of thinking this over. “Now there’s an idea to liven up the party. My entrance would be completely unforgettable.”

“There will be reporters there from The Daily Prophet,” Hermione reminded him, “so unless you want pictures of your ‘completely unforgettable’ moment splashed across the front page of the morning paper…”

“Alright,” Harry said with a laugh as he threw his hands up in defeat. “You win. I’ll get dressed.”

“There are new dress robes waiting for you in the closet,” Hermione called after him as he began walking back to their bedroom, “and please don’t just wear your pyjamas under them.”

After about fifteen minutes of rummaging through his room in an attempt to discover where he kept his knickers and socks, Harry emerged looking somewhat respectable in a set of emerald green dress robes. “You look very handsome, Harry,” Hermione assessed with a pleased grin and a twinkle in her eye. Hal and Catherine now stood next to her, dressed quite nicely (although neither seemed particularly happy with that fact).

“Thank you,” Harry replied with an earnest smile of his own. “Is everyone ready to go?”

Catherine crossed her arms in a sulk. “Why can’t we just have your birthday party here? Why do we have to go to that awful Burrow place?”

Harry gave Catherine a curious look. “You don’t like the Burrow?”

Hal jumped up suddenly. “I like the Burrow!”

Catherine scowled at him. “You would.”

“I made Uncle Ron promise that he wouldn’t tease you anymore,” Hermione assured her daughter in a soothing tone of voice. “Besides, don’t you want to see Selene?”

“Yes,” Catherine admitted grudgingly, her face still contorted into a childish pout.

“And there will be plenty of birthday cake for both of you,” she reminded them. Harry smiled as he watched Hermione cheer up their daughter with ease.

“Cake! Cake!” Hal exclaimed excitedly.

“Alright,” Catherine said, her glum expression now replaced with one of acceptance. “Let’s go.”

***

The Burrow had not changed much over the years, although Harry had never seen it crowded with so many people before, not even during his brief appearance at Bill and Fleur’s wedding over the summer. He would hardly have guessed that his birthday would merit such a gathering, no matter how famous he was in the here and now. As he was temporarily blinded by a photographer’s flash bulb, Harry silently cursed himself for not asking Hermione why there would be reporters here. He could not ask her now as she was off chasing down a rambunctious Hal (who was, in turn, chasing a very frazzled-looking garden gnome) on the other side of the back yard. Harry’s curiosity was piqued, however. ‘There’s something more going on here than meets the eye.’

“Harry!” a familiar voice called out through the dull roar of mostly unfamiliar ones. It was Ron, who was already sporting a widow’s peak and a beer gut. He threw his arm around Harry and began leading him through the massive crowd with ease. “How does it feel to hit the big three oh?”

“Surprising, actually,” Harry answered him honestly. “It seems like only yesterday I was seventeen.”

“Time sure flies, eh?” Ron asked him rhetorically, giving him a slap on the back for good measure. “Wait ‘til you see what I got you for your birthday. Nothing else quite like it in the world, really. It’s amazing some of the things the missus can get her hands on.”

Deciding that there would be no better time to find out exactly who Ron had married, Harry asked, “Did your wife come with you? I haven’t seen her around.”

Ron chuckled. “Oh, you know her. She’s probably talking someone’s ear off about her latest expedition.”

“Yes,” Harry responded awkwardly. “I certainly do…know her. Of course. Silly to think that I wouldn’t.”

“Are you alright, mate?” Ron asked, a look of concern etched on his face. “You know, with what today is and everything?”

“It’s my birthday,” Harry answered him with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be alright?”

“Well, it’s not just your birthday, is it?” Ron remarked with an arched eyebrow. “It’s the anniversary of the day Voldemort kicked the bucket for good, with no horcruxes, fake pet rats or stuttering Hogwarts professors left to bring him back.” For Harry, a light dawned. ‘So that’s why there’s so much media attention here.’ “It’s hard to look back at those days sometimes, especially considering how good things are now.”

“Say Ron,” Harry began, as a mischievously clever thought occurred to him, “would you mind saying a few words at the party about Voldemort’s defeat? Just what you remember about it, you know. Nothing too elaborate.”

Ron laughed aloud and slapped Harry on the back again. “You’re not getting out of your ‘traditional Victory Day remarks’ that easily, Harry. The spotlight’s entirely on you.” As Harry remained silent in mute terror over the prospect of making a statement to the press and his gathered friends and family that he was completely unprepared for, Ron continued to speak. “After all, nobody cares what I’d have to say on the subject. I mean, who am I, anyway? Just plain old Ron Weasley. It’s not like I defeated Voldemort or anything, right?”

Despite not knowing how he had defeated Voldemort, Harry felt fairly safe in reassuring his friend. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Ron. Really.”

Ron smiled warmly back at him. “Thanks, mate,” he said as he waved to someone else passing by on the other side of the yard, “but seriously, you’re on your own with the speech. Sorry.” Harry’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Don’t know why you’d want me giving a speech for you, really. Remember the mess I made of the best man’s toast at your wedding?”

“I believe Harry more than made up for that at our wedding,” a woman’s voice interjected, “when he read that poem you wrote me during your last year at Hogwarts.” As the woman who was seemingly Ron’s wife joined him, Harry gave her a quick once over. She was quite pretty, petite and blonde and was giving Ron a look of adoration he’d never seen a girl give Ron before. Clearly, Ron’s luck with women had changed. But who was the new Mrs. Weasley?

Ron blushed slightly at the memory of his poem. “Oh yeah. How did that go, anyway?”

“I really think that you are cute,” the blonde recited from memory. “Even with a gurdyroot. I hold you in total awe, you’re the best in Ravenclaw.”

“Those were the good lines of it, yeah,” Ron admitted as his ears turned red. “I seem to remember trying to rhyme ‘thestral’ with ‘special’…”

As Harry belatedly realized that Ron must have married Luna Lovegood, he threw in, “Between that and the singing valentine your sister sent me in second year, I think the Weasleys are better off staying away from poetry.”

“I’d say you’re right, Harry,” Ron replied, “except for Percy, of course. Wouldn’t want to disappoint his millions of readers.” When Harry frowned in confusion, Ron continued, “I know he’s a git, but his Recollections of Things to Come really has some good poems in it. You should read it.”

“The love sonnets are particularly well done,” Luna gushed. “Although of course they’re nothing compared to Sonnets from the Portuguese Bearsnouted Thicklesnip by Elizabeth Bearsnout Browning.”

“Oh, of course not,” Harry conceded with a nod of his head as Ron gave him an appreciative wink. “You have to respect the classics, you know.”

Just then, Hermione approached, dragging a squirming Hal behind her. His hands were caked in mud and there was a small gob of cotton candy in the corner of his mouth. “There you are, Harry. They’re just about ready to cut the cake.”

Dutifully, Harry followed his wife and son to where the Weasleys had set up a series of banquet tables and chairs on their lawn. As Ron and Luna walked beside him, the former whispered in his ear, “You’ve lost your birthday, haven’t you?”

Harry shot her a puzzled look. “Lost it? How do you mean?”

“You can’t keep it with your family and friends anymore,” Luna said sadly. “You have to share it with the entire wizarding world, so that it’s not just yours anymore.”

Harry nodded slightly in agreement. “I suppose you’re right.”

“At least Stubby Boardman made it, though,” Luna remarked casually. “He’s skipped out the last few years.”

“The lead singer of the Hob Goblins?” Harry asked her in utter confusion. “Why would he be here for my birthday?”

“She doesn’t really mean Stubby Boardman, Harry,” Ron explained with a sly smile. “She’s talking about Sirius Black.”

“Sirius?” Harry repeated in shock. “But he died…years ago, in the Department of Mysteries…” When neither Ron, Luna or Hermione said anything, he stammered on, “You…you were all there. You saw it!”

Unexpectedly, it was Hal who next spoke. “Uncle Sirius was faking so he could fool Moldievoldiemort.” As if to emphasize his point, Hal fell to the ground and pretended to be dead.

“Hal, get up off of the grass before you get your clothes dirty,” Hermione snapped. To Ron and Luna, she added, “Never mind Harry. He’s been having those dreams again.”

“Oh,” Ron and Luna said together and then gave Harry a sympathetic but pitying look. Meanwhile, Harry’s attention was focused solely on finding Sirius in the crowd. ‘Could he really be alive? And if he was, why wouldn’t I have known about it? Why wouldn’t anyone have said anything about it in my other visions of the future? How did he survive falling through the veil?’

Just as those questions and a thousand others began to run through his brain, Harry caught sight of Sirius standing next to Arthur Weasley at the head of the table. His hair had gotten grayer and his face had more wrinkles, but he was still immediately recognizable. Harry had to resist the urge to run toward him; to make sure that it really was him, alive and well again. He had already managed to convince Hermione, Ron and Luna that he was practically nutters and he had no desire to be carted off to the Closed Ward of St. Mungo’s in a little white coat, not even in a vision of the future.

“Catherine! Selene!” Hermione called out in the seasoned authoritative voice of a mother of two. “Stop pestering your Uncle Bill and get over here!” Harry watched his daughter and a little blonde haired girl very close to her age depart cheerfully from Bill Weasley, whose long hair had now been partially braided. Everyone in attendance began to gather expectantly around an impressively large and well-frosted birthday cake.

As Harry approached the table, pleasant birthday wishes came from a chorus of voices that included Hagrid, Charlie Weasley, Arabella Figg and Minerva McGonagall. He politely thanked them, shook their hands and slowly made his way to where Arthur Weasley and Sirius Black were. He stood in front of his godfather in silent disbelief, unsure of what to say.

“Happy birthday, Harry,” Sirius said jovially as he grabbed his hand and gave it a firm shake.

“You too,” Harry said stupidly. He continued to hold on to his godfather’s hand even after Sirius had stopped shaking it.

“It isn’t my birthday, Harry,” Sirius pointed out. “Don’t you remember? We celebrated my twenty-ninth back in May.” He gave Arthur Weasley a knowing wink. “Incredible that I have a godson who’s older than I am, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“Indeed,” Arthur answered with a chuckle, before turning to address Harry. “Harry, it has been a wonderful treat to watch you grow into the man you are today. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you were my own son.”

“Hear, hear,” Sirius echoed as he gave Harry a slap on the back. Harry suddenly felt himself becoming uncomfortably warm.

“Now, as I’m sure you’ve heard enough of this mushy treacle,” Fred Weasley declared boisterously, “it’s time for the birthday boy to cut the first piece of cake.”

“And then give it to us, of course,” George added.

“Leave Harry alone, you two,” Molly Weasley chided her twin sons as she handed Harry a large knife. “Go on, Harry, cut the cake.”

Just as he began to sink the knife into the multi-layered birthday cake, a popping noise rang in Harry’s ear. “Look who’s here,” Arthur Weasley called out, his tone entirely welcoming. “And just in time to have a piece of cake.”

Harry looked up to see the familiar half-moon shaped glasses, crooked nose and long white beard of Albus Dumbledore as he shook hands with Arthur Weasley. “Sorry I’m late, Minister. It seems Hogwarts’ new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher has been unexpectedly transfigured into a large rodent. However, I’ve been assured this is a condition that will clear up by the fall.”

As Harry’s jaw dropped in shock, the knife fell from his hand and made a soft thud in the summer grass. Hermione groaned audibly as Molly Weasley stooped to pick it up. “I’ll just do a quick cleaning charm on this for you, dear.”

Her eyes flashing dangerously, Hermione grabbed Harry and pulled him aside, out of earshot from everyone else. “Sirius and Dumbledore are alive, Harry. You can’t just keep flipping out every time you see them in public!”

“I watched them die!” Harry exclaimed in his own defense. “I don’t understand…”

“They had to make you believe that they were dead or the plan wouldn’t have worked,” Hermione explained in an exasperated tone, as though she had gone over this very thing with Harry a hundred times before. “It had to seem real to you.”

Harry shook his head in utter befuddlement. “What plan? Hermione, I…I don’t know if I can…”

“I know this is hard for you, Harry,” Hermione tried again, this time with much more patience and empathy in her voice. “Especially with the dreams you’ve been seeing lately. But please just try and accept that they are alive and enjoy your birthday. You’re surrounded by people who care about you very much, Harry. Try and think about that.”

“Alright,” Harry agreed with a sigh and an acquiescent nod. Both of them rejoined the party, Harry cut the cake and took a seat between Arthur Weasley (who, in this future, was apparently the Minister of Magic) and Hermione, who took hold of his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

As all of the other guests sat down to eat their cake, Dumbledore stood and addressed the crowd. “Everyone, if I may, I’d like to offer a toast to Harry Potter.” As he held his glass of punch aloft, all around him followed suit. “To a wonderful thirtieth birthday and many, many more afterwards. More than anyone else, Harry, we have you to thank for the world we live in today. A world where Voldemort is a distant unhappy memory and where everyone you love is safe and happy. The best of all possible worlds.”

There were cheers of assent from those around him, but Harry was no longer paying attention. His gaze was focused entirely on Dumbledore’s right hand. It was now no longer shriveled, but seemed completely restored and healthy. ‘I don’t care what Hermione said. Even if Dumbledore faked his death,’ Harry reasoned, ‘he wouldn’t have bothered with pretending to have a ruined hand.’

“Speech!” one of the Weasleys cried out suddenly. Soon the cry was taken up by nearly everyone at the party. Clearly it was time for what Ron had called his ‘traditional Victory Day remarks’. With a sense of purpose, Harry rose to stand in front of the crowd. Photographers took their place around him, each hoping to get a better angle on the shot than their rivals.

No longer nervous about making this speech, Harry was absolutely certain of what he wanted to say. “This isn’t real,” he declared in a soft voice.

“Harry,” Hermione began pleadingly as she grabbed his arm. “Don’t do this. You’ll make a fool…”

“This isn’t real!!” Harry said again, this time loud enough for everyone to hear. “Sirius Black died in the Department of Mysteries when I was fifteen!” Sirius shifted uncomfortably in his seat as everyone else around him wore expressions either of embarrassment or confusion. “Snape murdered Dumbledore!”

“I can explain everything to you, Harry,” Dumbledore tried in a very calm voice, his right hand reaching out to him. “Just sit down and we can have a nice, amiable chat…”

Harry pushed Dumbledore away. “No. I won’t be lied to. Not anymore.”

“But this was the life you wanted, wasn’t it?” Hermione asked him pointedly. “A future where we’re married and have a family? Where everyone you love is alive and well?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry replied, shaking his head as he did so. “Not if none of it is…”

***

“…real.” Harry Potter’s eyes opened wide and he gasped for air, as if he were just waking up from a bad dream. ‘Or from a good dream that turned into a nightmare only when you realized that it was just a dream.’

Harry got up from his bed, poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice from a self-cooling vial that Hermione had brought him and began to ponder what had just happened. Was what he had seen a dream? ‘That would make the most sense, I suppose,’ Harry thought to himself. On the other hand, he had never before had a dream that was quite so vivid and it had seemed entirely like a vision of the future throughout, until the moment when he realized that it couldn’t possibly be a real one.

Harry spent the day doing his homework assignments and searching for the last remaining horcrux, his latest ‘vision’, if that was indeed what it had been, never far from his mind. ‘Will I see false visions of the future while I’m here, too? Is that why some of the students who’ve lived here before have gone mad?’ This immediately made Harry think of what Hermione had said to him the night before. Was he now going mad, too?

He shook his head slowly. ‘No. I can still tell what’s real from what’s not.’ Harry had to admit, however, that the combination of spending his days alone, the now-maybe-not-always-accurate visions and the infuriatingly long and tedious search for Voldemort’s seventh horcrux was taking a toll on his mental health. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating well and had recently discovered he’d lost weight, courtesy of the chair he had removed from the closet that spoke your weight aloud as you sat on it.

Harry heaved a sigh as he looked around the ludicrously gigantic closet, which now appeared as though the Hogwarts Express had recently run through it. ‘I must have looked over almost everything in here by now. If Hermione hadn’t performed that dark magic detection spell on the tower, I’d just write the whole thing off as a false lead.’

“Your emissary is nearly all the way up the stairs,” the Front View Mirror informed him, his own face smirking back at him in the mirror. “You’re in for a very interesting discussion, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looked at the mirror with a dubious frown etched on his face. “Interesting how?”

“You’ll see,” the mirror said smugly. “I would hate to spoil the surprise.”

“Fine,” Harry said as he swiped the mirror from the shelf, “but you’re coming with me.” Perhaps knowing already that this was what would happen, the mirror said nothing.

Harry walked to the bedroom, placed another, stronger silencing charm on the weighing chair, put the mirror down on the table next to his bed and then sat down on it (the bed, not the mirror or the table). Hermione entered the tower soon after, looking weary and out of breath. “Walking up all of those steps really is quite the workout.” She then handed Harry a large plate covered with a tin lid. “I brought you some food from the kitchens. Dobby made it up for you himself.” It was so heavy that Harry nearly dropped the plate as he took it from Hermione. “I think he may have gone a bit overboard.”

Harry smiled warmly at her. “Maybe just a bit.” As his stomach growled ravenously, he added, “Thank you.”

“Before I give you your homework,” Hermione said as she withdrew several rolls of parchment from her knapsack, “I wanted to tell you what I’d found out about that French wizard you had me look up.”

Harry had nearly forgotten that he had asked Hermione to search for information on Jean Paul Gerard, who had made a guest appearance in all of his visions up until today. “I appreciate it, Hermione, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. Gerard wasn’t in my last vision at all and besides, I’m not sure the visions mean as much as I thought they did before.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at that but refrained from commenting. “Maybe it’s just as well. There isn’t any Jean Paul Gerard enrolled at Beauxbatons.” When Harry shot her a quizzical look, she continued, “I’ve checked records going back a hundred years, Harry. He’s just not there. In fact, there’s no Jean Paul Gerard listed at any wizarding school in the world.”

“Wow,” Harry exclaimed softly, his tone reverent. “You did all that research in one day? I’m impressed.”

“You’d be surprised what Hogwarts’ Head Girl has access to,” Hermione told him with a shy smile.

Harry quickly became lost in his own thoughts. If there was no wizard named Jean Paul Gerard, how could he have seen him in visions of the future? Was the French wizard just a figment of his imagination? “So you didn’t find anything about Gerard at all, then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Hermione said as she withdrew a large book from her bag, opened it and turned it around to face Harry. “I did find one reference to a Jean Paul Gerard. As a matter of fact, he’s in your homework.”

“My homework?” Harry asked with a frown. “How do you mean?”

“Jean Paul Gerard was the real name of a Medieval French dark wizard who called himself Lord Montverde.” Hermione smoothed down the page of the History of Magic textbook as she spoke. “He was brutal, Harry. It’s said that he hunted down and murdered his own family so that he couldn’t be blackmailed by his enemies. He was finally killed by his own men when he was a general during the wizarding Hundred Years’ War.” Harry’s face went deathly pale. “Of course, this can’t be the Gerard you’ve been seeing. It’s probably a pseudonym your French wizard is using to…”

“Is there a picture?” Harry interrupted her as the gears in his mind slowly began to turn. “A painting or an etching or something that shows what he looked like?”

Hermione shot him a brief, curious glance and then answered, “I think so.” She then flipped over a few pages to reveal a lifelike engraving of Lord Montverde.

Harry stared intently at the image, as if mesmerized. It was the exact likeness of the wizard he had seen in his visions. “It’s him.”

“Him? You’re saying this is the same wizard you saw?” Hermione asked in confusion. When Harry only nodded in reply, she continued, “That’s not possible, Harry. It says here that he was killed nearly six hundred years ago. Even if he hadn’t been, wizards simply don’t live that long. Well, except for Nicholas Flamel…” She stopped as Harry began softly laughing, perhaps afraid for his sanity. “Harry?”

“You’ve been right all along, Hermione,” Harry told her, feeling truly cheerful for the first time in days. “This tower doesn’t give people visions of the future.”

“What?!” Hermione replied sharply. “How can that be? You told me you’ve seen them.”

“What did we know about the tower before I decided to stay here?” Harry asked Hermione, his tone excited. He was rather unaccustomed to having figured something out before she did.

“That it was sent from Beauxbatons to Hogwarts during the Hundred Years’ War,” Hermione began. “Supposedly it could predict the future. Also, we knew that one of Voldemort’s horcruxes was up here, somewhere…”

“We knew that a horcrux was here,” Harry said insistently. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one of Voldemort’s.”

“So…you think the horcrux is Lord Montverde’s?” Hermione asked him slowly.

“Don’t you see, Hermione?” Harry asked her rhetorically. “It isn’t the tower making people see things and predicting their future, it’s Gerard’s horcrux. It must take over the senses of the person who lives in the tower, the way Riddle’s diary possessed Ginny in second year.”

“If that’s true, Harry,” Hermione began urgently, her eyes widening as she grabbed his arm, “we need to get out of here. Now.”

Just as Harry picked his wand up from the table and appeared ready to follow Hermione out of the tower, he heard a soft voice whisper, “Stay, but send her away.”

“Did you just hear that?” Harry asked Hermione.

Hermione shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Send her away or she dies,” the voice told Harry menacingly. He now recognized it as Jean Paul Gerard’s. As if to emphasize his point, an unseen force began hurling objects around the room. The Front View Mirror flew from his bedside table and shattered against the door.

“What’s going on?” Hermione asked Harry, confusion and worry plainly apparent on her face.

“I think Gerard wants to talk to me,” Harry explained, speaking in a slightly louder tone than usual so as to drown out the sounds of things crashing and breaking all around them. “Alone.”

Hermione shook her head. “Harry, I’m not about to leave you here with him…”

Hedwig squawked and flapped her wings as her cage was tossed to and fro between the walls of the tower. “I don’t think we have much choice, Hermione.” When she still seemed reluctant, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Go on. I’ll be down to talk to you and Ron as soon as it’s over.”

With one last longing look at Harry, Hermione departed. As soon as she left the room, the chaos that had enveloped it ended and a figure appeared, wearing dark blue dress robes with the Beauxbatons crest emblazoned on them. A haughty smile formed under his distinctive Roman nose. “I am pleased, Monsieur Potter, that I finally have your undivided attention.”

Yes, it's the dreaded cliffhanger. Mwahaha. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! See you in two weeks for Chapter 10.

ITL

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I didn't write the Harry Potter books nor did I publish them, distribute them or adapt them into films. Life's very unfair that way.

Chapter 10: He’s Already Got One, You See

Harry Potter pointed his wand in the general direction of Jean Paul Gerard’s nonmaterial form, attempting to size up his new opponent. There seemed no point in attacking him, given what he had proven he could do mere moments ago (not to mention that, in all likelihood, any spell Harry cast would pass through Gerard ineffectually). “What do you want with me?” he asked curiously, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You know,” Gerard began with a slight, disdainful laugh, “I really thought you would have figured it out before now. It took Tom Riddle only three ‘visions’ to guess the truth of this tower. Albus knew after the first one.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Harry fired back glibly. “This tower never was able to predict the future, was it? It was all just a trap; a madhouse for the best Hogwarts students. A modern day Trojan Horse.”

“The so-called seers and prophets of my day were no more credible than they are in your own,” the French wizard’s voice declared dismissively. “They truly believed that they had built something that could see into the future. Who was I to tell them differently?” He smiled coyly. “Besides, it made the perfect place to hide a horcrux.”

Two things occurred to Harry that hadn’t before. The first was that if there was a horcrux of Jean Paul Gerard’s here there had to be a seven-hundred-plus-year-old French dark wizard out there somewhere. The second was that he now had no earthly idea where Voldemort’s seventh horcrux might be. “I’ll find it, you know,” Harry told Gerard with confidence. “I’ll find it and destroy it. I’ve already done in five of Voldemort’s.”

Gerard’s tongue clucked disapprovingly. “I suspect you will have more trouble finding mine than you’ve had with discovering Riddle’s. This tower is a very large place and besides, your scar will no longer be able to help you.”

“How do you mean?” Harry asked in confusion.

“Think on it for a moment, Monsieur Potter. Why does your scar burn when it makes contact with a horcrux?” Gerard queried smugly.

“I dunno, really,” Harry replied, a little taken aback by the question and perhaps equally stunned that he had never before given the matter any thought. “My scar’s always hurt around Voldemort, though. Maybe it’s because his magic made both the horcruxes and the scar.”

“A good guess,” the wizard once known as Lord Montverde conceded. “But no. You need not trouble yourself frantically looking elsewhere for Riddle’s last horcrux. It is here, in this tower, and has been ever since you set foot in it.”

Harry’s heartbeat accelerated as he kept his wand trained on Gerard’s image. “What…what are you saying, exactly?”

“You are the seventh horcrux, Monsieur Potter,” Jean Paul Gerard said with a wide, wily smile. “You have been so from the moment Riddle tried to kill you as a baby.”

Harry’s throat tightened and it seemed he could no longer stand, collapsing weakly into the chair next to his bed. It felt as though a great weight had suddenly fallen onto his shoulders, even as the chair announced that he was still only a hair below ten stone. “It can’t be,” he protested weakly. “You’re wrong. How could you possibly even know…”

“I can see inside your mind,” Gerard informed him. “It is an unusual place, filled with things which should be obvious to you, but which remain obscure.”

Harry didn’t particularly feel like acknowledging the insult. “You’re trying to trick me into doing something stupid, aren’t you? Like offing myself or something.”

“If I wanted you dead, your body would already lie at the foot of this tower, broken and lifeless,” Gerard sniffed. “I have other plans for our remaining time together.”

“We don’t have any ‘remaining time together’,” Harry said with a small laugh of surprise and anger. “If you think I’m going to stay up here now that I know what you’re doing to me…”

The French wizard looked amused. “Do tell, Monsieur Potter. What is it that you think I’ve been doing to you?”

“You’re trying to drive me insane,” Harry said angrily, “just as you’ve done with every other Hogwarts student that’s lived here.”

Gerard let out a long sigh. “Have I not shown you who it is that you truly care for? Without me, would you not still hold onto the tragic notion that Ginny Weasley is the perfect girl for you?” Harry’s ensuing silence was all the answer he needed. “Love has done far more to bring the witches and wizards who’ve lived here to the brink of madness than I could ever hope to.”

“Rubbish,” Harry replied in disgust. “Do you really expect me to believe that you’re not responsible for all the witches and wizards who’ve gone spare up here?!”

“I take great pride in each and every English wizard I’ve driven mad,” Lord Montverde said, a perverse smile of satisfaction plastered across his face. “However, all I have ever done is show them what is buried in the recesses of their minds or what desires lie just beneath the surface of their hearts. Some have simply been unprepared for what is there.”

“You’re insane yourself,” Harry assessed, his voice low. “I can’t stand looking at your damned smug face anymore. I’m leaving.”

Just as Harry reached the door and prepared to descend the stairway, he was drawn back into the room, as though the hand of an invisible giant had grabbed him and pulled him in. “Our conversation is not yet over, Monsieur Potter. I ask for your indulgence; I am not used to making bargains with English wizards.”

“You want to bargain with me?” Harry asked in disbelief.

“I have done more to make Tom Marvolo Riddle the wizard he is today than anyone outside of his miserable excuse for parents,” Gerard explained. “I showed him spells, I taught him strategy, but most importantly I let him see who he truly was. The pieces were all there when he arrived, but it was I who put them together.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Is this supposed to impress me?”

Jean Paul Gerard shrugged. “Do you want to defeat him or don’t you? I know all of his weaknesses and strengths as well as your own.” Gerard paused for a moment to give Harry a quick once over, as though he were making certain that something was still there. “There is a power inside of you that Riddle could not possibly comprehend; a magic so strong he could not stand against it. Learning to control it would take time, however, and a great deal of training.”

Harry remained skeptical, but had to admit that his curiosity was piqued. “What power? What are you talking about?”

“Teaching you about this power, what it is and how you might use it, is my part of the bargain,” Gerard replied with a thin, wry smile. “As for your part…let us say that I once had an arrangement with Albus Dumbledore and now that he is dead I wish to renegotiate the terms of the deal with you.”

“You made a deal with Dumbledore?” Harry asked incredulously, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

“Mais oui,” Montverde answered with a slight bow. “What say you, Monsieur Potter? Do we have a bargain?”

Harry shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand. If you helped Tom Riddle become Lord Voldemort, why would you want to help me defeat him?”

“Is it not obvious?” Gerard asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I want you and ‘Lord Voldemort’ to be evenly matched. I want your factions to battle each other until your hands are drenched with blood. In short, Monsieur Potter, I want to watch England burn.”

Harry’s blood felt as though it were about to boil. “You want my answer?” he asked in what was nearly a growl. “Here it is. Go to hell.”

“You haven’t the power to make me go anywhere, Potter,” Gerard retorted casually. “I, on the other hand…”

***

Harry found himself dropped rather roughly back into the boys’ dormitory of Gryffindor Tower, his body landing flat on the mattress of his four post bed. Thankfully, his glasses, wand and extremities all appeared to be unbroken and in their proper place. Hedwig hooted loudly in her cage, which now sat on the floor next to the bed, in what was no doubt a combination of surprise, outrage and complete disbelief. Harry felt pretty much the same way.

“Bloody hell, Harry,” Ron exclaimed from the bed across from his own. His best mate appeared to have been reading a Quidditch magazine while pretending to study for their upcoming Transfiguration test, as the image of a Chudley Cannons beater smiled up at him over a copy of Hermione’s notes from the latest lecture. “You apparated on Hogwarts grounds, didn’t you?” he asked, somewhat impressed, but mostly horrified. “They’ll have to add a chapter on you to Hogwarts: a History.”

Harry managed to suppress a groan and a very pressing urge to simply forget about everything for now and get a decent night’s sleep. “I didn’t apparate here, Ron.”

Ron frowned. “So…you found a portkey that takes you to the boys’ dormitory?” When Harry remained silent for a moment, his eyes widened. “You didn’t find a portkey to the girls’ dorm, too, did you?” Harry shot him with a glare. “Right, of course not. If you had, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t take a portkey, either,” Harry told him as he sat up in bed, his voice low and weary. Ron’s frown only deepened, so he added, “Believe me, Ron, I’ll explain everything, but first we need to find Hermione.”

Ron now looked terribly confused. “I thought she was with you. Isn’t this normally when she goes up to…” Here he paused, as Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan and a number of other seventh year Gryffindor boys had gathered around, attracted by the commotion. “Erm, you-know-where and gives you your you-know-what.” As some of the boys snickered, Ron looked clueless. “What? What’d I say?”

Harry shook his head, choosing to ignore his classmates’ pubescent giggling. “She should be back inside the castle by now.” As he rose from his four post bed, he shot it a curious look. “Is it alright if I leave my things here? Nobody else has been sleeping here or anything, have they?”

“Nah,” Seamus answered him. “But Neville was storing some of his plant stuff under your bed. I guess he’ll have to move it someplace else, eh?”

“Wait,” Ron interjected softly. “Where is Neville? He was standing here just a moment ago…”

A slow groan emanating from underneath Harry’s bed gave Ron his answer. Harry’s trunk had landed squarely on Neville’s head, giving him several nasty bruises and a large red welt on his forehead. “Hospital…wing…” was all he managed to say before blacking out.

***

With only a small amount of effort, Harry and Ron managed to transport Neville safely to the hospital wing. They ran into Hermione in the Gryffindor common room and, once she was properly assured that Harry was none the worse for wear, she insisted on coming along, too. All three of them shared worried looks along the way, their obvious concern for their friend etched on their faces.

Madame Pomfrey appeared none too happy about Harry’s sketchy explanation of what exactly had happened to Neville, but, perhaps knowing that there was something mysteriously unusual going on in Harry’s life this year (as if there wasn’t every year), she let it pass without comment. “I’ll have to examine him to determine the extent of his injuries. That means the three of you will have to be elsewhere. I strongly recommend that you return to your dormitories, but you may wait outside if you like.”

Without comment or discussion, the trio removed themselves from the hospital wing and stood just outside it, waiting for news on Neville. Once Hermione made sure that there was no one around to hear them, she and Ron looked at Harry expectantly. “So tell us already, Harry,” Ron said eagerly. “What happened up there?”

Harry took a few minutes to tell both Ron and Hermione about his confrontation with Jean Paul Gerard’s horcrux and to explain that the visions he’d been seeing weren’t real. He did not see the need to mention how the visions made him realize he had feelings for Hermione that went beyond friendship and Harry did not yet know how to tell them what Gerard had said about Voldemort’s last horcrux. Still, they got the gist of the story.

“About this power Gerard says you have,” Hermione began skeptically. “You say he wouldn’t tell you what it was unless you agreed to have him teach you how to use it?” Harry nodded in reply.

“He’s obviously lying, Hermione,” Ron said dismissively. “If Harry had some unknown power that could defeat You-Know-Who, Dumbledore would have told him. Right, Harry?”

“I would have thought so, up until today,” Harry replied moodily. Even if Gerard had been lying about everything, Dumbledore must have known that the Oracular Tower was a hoax. Why hadn’t he left some kind of warning for Harry? For that matter, why hadn’t he destroyed Gerard’s horcrux himself?

Hermione took a step toward Harry and put her hand on his shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

Harry gave her a half-hearted smile. “I guess I’m just not sure what to do now.” Mere hours ago, he was quite certain that he was on the right track in his search for Voldemort’s horcruxes and also held out hope that one of his visions of the future might show him how to defeat the dark wizard. Now nothing was certain; his only lead on the horcruxes was, rather depressingly, that he himself was the last one. He had no idea whether or not this was true or what to do about it if it was. What would he have to do to himself to remove the horcrux? Would he have to die in order for Voldemort to be defeated, once and for all?

“I think it’s obvious what you should do,” Ron told him, chasing away Harry’s increasingly morbid thoughts with his confident tone. “You have to go back to the tower and destroy the horcrux.”

Hermione’s bushy hair bobbed slightly as she shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Ron.”

“What do you mean it’s not a good idea?” Ron asked incredulously. “You’re not really saying he should just leave it up there, are you?”

“Not forever, of course,” Hermione responded defensively. “But there’s still so much we don’t know for certain. If we knew exactly where the horcrux was or how to destroy it…”

“The essence of basilisk venom Harry bought at Knockturn Alley worked on the others,” Ron pointed out huffily. “Well, we did sometimes throw in a few reductor curses for good measure…”

“We don’t have much of it left,” Hermione pointed out with a look of resignation, “and besides, those were Voldemort’s horcruxes.”

Ron’s shoulders gave a small shrug. “So? What’s the difference? They’re both pieces of the soul of a dark wizard with a poncy French name.”

Hermione now looked exasperated. “So, not only is it much more important that we destroy Lord Voldemort’s horcruxes than Lord Montverde’s, but there’s every reason to believe that the one in the tower is more powerful than any we’ve seen before.”

Ron looked at Hermione as though she had just done a back flip. “How do you reckon?”

“Voldemort split his soul into seven pieces, Ron,” Hermione reminded him, her voice filled more with horror over the subject matter than anything else. “Think about that. Even though he’s a powerful wizard, each horcrux is just a very small part of himself. So far as we know, Montverde only created one horcrux. It’s hundreds of years older than Voldemort’s and, if Harry being dumped in the Gryffindor boys’ dorm is any indication, I suspect that it’s tied itself into the magic of the tower somehow.”

“Hermione’s right, Ron,” Harry chimed in helpfully. He had been content to let Hermione and Ron discuss the matter among themselves until now, as what they were saying mirrored his own sometimes conflicting thoughts as to what was going on. “If you had seen what Gerard did in the tower tonight before Hermione left…”

“Fine,” Ron conceded with a sigh, “the French wizard’s horcrux is more powerful than You-Know-Who’s. Doesn’t that make it even more dangerous to just leave it be? It’s on Hogwarts’ grounds, for pity’s sake.”

“But the only thing it’s ever done is pick seventh-year students to come and live in the tower,” Hermione countered, “and it’s already chosen Harry for this year. Before that, it hadn’t named anyone since Tom Riddle…” Her voice trailed off and her brow furrowed in thought. “Harry, how many names would you say are on the cornerstone of the tower?”

“Dozens easy,” Harry estimated quickly. “Probably close to a hundred.”

“Almost a hundred young wizards and witches,” Hermione reasoned aloud, “in nearly six hundred years. That’s one every six or seven years or so…and yet only Harry and Voldemort have been chosen since Dumbledore. Does that strike anyone else as odd?”

“Is there anything about this situation that isn’t odd?” Ron asked with a roll of his eyes.

It was then that Madame Pomfrey emerged from the Hospital Wing, a grim but relieved expression on her face. “How is he?” Harry asked with genuine concern.

“Mister Longbottom has sustained no permanent physical damage,” the healer informed them all briskly, “and he should be perfectly fine after a few days’ rest.”

“May we see him?” Hermione asked.

Poppy Pomfrey shook her head. “Not tonight. In the morning, perhaps, if you can get here before your classes start, I will allow visitors. I’m afraid he’s in no condition to see anyone right now.” Madame Pomfrey looked at the three of them sternly. “I must now insist that you return to your dormitories… although if you are planning on making your rounds, Miss Granger, I can of course make an exception in your case.”

Once Hermione assured Madame Pomfrey that she had already performed her Head Girl duties for tonight, she, Harry and Ron made their way back to the Gryffindor Common Room. “It’s weird,” Ron remarked as they walked through the portrait hole, “but I really feel like I need to get revenge on this Gerard bloke for hurting Neville. I know it’s completely nutters; I mean, I couldn’t even see the tower to get into it…”

Harry fully expected Hermione to chide Ron for this, but instead she appeared thoughtful. “If you’re crazy, Ron, then I guess I am, too. I feel more or less the same way.”

“That makes three of us,” Harry added. He glanced quickly around the room, making sure that it was entirely empty and that all of the other Gryffindors had already gone off to bed. Once it became obvious that they had, he added, “I’m not about to let Jean Paul Gerard get away with everything he’s done.” Ron looked triumphant. “Hermione’s right, though. We have more important things to deal with now.”

Ron’s brief victorious glow was gone from his face and in its place was a disappointed pout. “What could be more important than destroying a horcrux? I thought that’s what we were supposed to be doing anyhow.”

“We’re supposed to be destroying Voldemort’s horcruxes,” Hermione corrected him sharply. “Harry has to concentrate on defeating him. We’ve no idea what he’s planning next…”

“But Gerard has to be out there somewhere, doesn’t he?” Ron asked Harry, although it didn’t seem as though he really wanted an answer. “If he’s made a horcrux, he has to be alive and well, wherever he is. And, according to what Hermione said, he was a really dangerous wizard in his day.”

“Wherever he is,” Hermione repeated with emphasis, “he isn’t nearly the immediate threat that Voldemort is.”

“How do you know?” Ron demanded. “He could be working with You-Know-Who right now. If Gerard really did teach him all that dark magic stuff, maybe he tracked him down somehow…”

Hermione was now very close to losing her temper. “Did it ever occur to you that we now have no idea where Voldemort’s seventh horcrux is? Don’t you think that finding it might be a tad more important than doing in a wizard who nobody has seen or heard from in hundreds of years?”

“Well then, why not destroy the horcrux we know the location of, rather than go off hunting for one we don’t?” Ron asked hotly. Both of them seemed headed for a rather loud and lengthy row.

Harry wasn’t about to let that happen. “Actually,” he interjected, causing Ron and Hermione to whip their heads around to face him, “I’ve got a pretty good idea where the seventh horcrux is.”

“What?” Hermione asked with a confused frown. “How?”

“Gerard told me,” he answered her numbly. “He told me what and where it is.”

“What is it, then?” Ron asked curiously, every last hint of anger now gone from his voice.

“It’s me,” Harry answered, his voice breaking a little. “I’m the last horcrux.”

Hermione gasped and began to blink back tears, while Ron laughed in disbelief. “You can’t be a horcrux, Harry. I mean, think about it. You’re the one who’s been fighting him all these years, the one who he couldn’t kill, even as a baby…”

“I got some of his powers that night, too, didn’t I?” Harry snapped, his eyes betraying all of his anger and fear, even as his voice remained low and even. “And I’ve never really heard a good explanation as to why, have you?”

“Harry…” Hermione attempted to soothe him in a gentle, breathy voice, but he was having none of it.

“It would explain a lot of things,” he continued conversationally, although his tone was razor sharp. “Like why my scar burns when he’s around or how I can speak parseltongue when nobody else should be able to.”

“So what does this mean?” Ron asked, deciding that to mock the concept of Harry as a horcrux any further would be a truly bad idea. “For the horcrux hunt? For us?”

“As far as I’m concerned, the horcrux hunt is over,” Harry proclaimed flatly. Neither Hermione nor Ron protested. “Six of them have been destroyed and the last one…is in me. The only thing left is to figure out what to do about that.”

“Harry,” Hermione began again, her voice as soft and tender as he had ever heard it, “you’re not thinking of…you wouldn’t ever think of…?”

She didn’t need to finish the thought as he shook his head ‘no’. “I’m not going to kill myself, Hermione. I’m done playing everyone else’s games by their rules. We’re going to find a way to get rid of the horcrux inside me and then…then we’re going to take the war to him.”

Harry and Hermione both fell silent for a moment, letting the moment wash over them. Ron, however, couldn’t stand the silence. “So what do we do now? More research?” The fact that Ron, who normally felt the same way about research as he did about losing a Quidditch match, had broached the subject proved to Harry that he was now taking it seriously.

“Probably, yeah,” Harry replied with a nod of his head. “I have a feeling Dumbledore knew more about all of this than we thought. If you guys are willing, I’d like to go over the memories he left us again. Just to see if there’s something we missed.”

Hermione and Ron both agreed instantly. “Of course, mate,” Ron added. “Whatever you need.”

“Right now,” Harry told him as his eyes closed involuntarily, “I think I’d just like a moment alone…and then a good night’s sleep.”

Neither of his best friends said anything else as he took a moment simply to clear his mind of all thoughts and listen to the rhythm of his own breathing, his eyes still tightly closed. He was sorely tempted to stay here in the common room for the night, but decided it would be a bad idea. There would be enough gossip and rumor about where he had been and why he was back as it was. ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell Headmistress McGonagall that I’ll be attending classes again in the morning…’

When he opened his eyes again, he was startled to see Hermione standing there in front of him. Ron had apparently already headed off to bed, as they were now completely alone. “I’m sorry for disturbing you, Harry, and this may be a completely terrible time to do this, but I think I have to. There’s something I need to know.” When Harry nodded, she inhaled sharply. “Even though the visions weren’t real, they had to have come from somewhere, didn’t they? Gerard could read your mind…”

“That’s right,” Harry acknowledged. “He said something like ‘my mind is a terrible place where obvious things remain obscure.’”

Hermione gave him a very curious look. “Really? What else did he say?”

Harry was beginning to realize what Hermione was driving at. With a playful smirk, he replied, “Oh, nothing much. Just that he only showed people in the tower ‘what desires lie beneath ze surface of zere hearts’,” he said, duplicating Jean Paul Gerard’s accent somewhat poorly, “and there was something about how he had shown me who I truly care for.” He gave her a look that was at once tender and full of desire. “I couldn’t argue with him on that one.”

Hermione could not meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said as she shook her head sadly. Tears she had barely held back mere minutes ago once again appeared in her eyes. “I should have believed you. I…I’m such an idiot.”

Harry gave her a comforting smile. “If that’s true, you’ve got a lot of people around here fooled.” Hermione managed to smile back weakly. “D’you want to know what I think? I think you were smart to doubt my feelings.”

Hermione looked completely bewildered. “You do?”

“You were playing it safe,” Harry told her, his tone reassuring. “You had some very good reasons to believe that I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Hermione shook her head rapidly, unwilling to allow Harry to let her off the hook this easily. “I still should have trusted you.”

“Do you…?” Harry began uncertainly. Gathering up just a bit more of that much ballyhooed Gryffindor courage, he continued, “Did you mean it when you said that you’ve wanted to be more than friends with me for a while?”

“Of course I did,” Hermione admitted instantly.

Harry had a hard time not looking jubilant and couldn’t keep a smile from his face. “Hermione, listen to me. Any other girl who felt the way you do about me would have flung herself into my arms when I said I wanted to be with her. But you didn’t. You did the right thing for both of us, just like you always do. It’s what makes you such an incredible person and a great friend.”

Hermione looked up at him then, tentative and teary-eyed. “Why do I still feel so awful, then?”

Harry gently wiped the beginnings of a tear from her eye. “I reckon it’s because we haven’t decided whether or not we should be more than friends yet.”

Hermione’s eyes gleamed happily the way they always did when she knew the answer to a question that everyone else thought was difficult. “I’d like to think that we’ve always been more than friends.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry agreed, “of course we have. But now there’d be kissing. And eventually other things, assuming the kissing goes well.”

Hermione’s hands entwined themselves around Harry’s neck, sending an involuntary shiver down his spine. “Are you sure that’s really what you want?”

“Without a doubt,” Harry answered her sincerely. “But what about you?” His eyes widened in horror as an awful thought occurred to him. What if she didn’t want him any more now that she knew he was one of Voldemort’s horcruxes? “I…I guess I’d understand if you changed your mind, considering…”

“Honestly, Harry,” she interrupted him forcefully, “you know that I haven’t. It doesn’t matter to me what he put inside of you all of those years ago. What matters is what’s there now; the kind, loving heart that you chose to have.” Hermione pulled him down a little bit so that their lips were within easy reach of each other. “Now stop being silly and kiss me.”

Never one to disregard an order from the Head Girl, Harry obliged. His heart swelled and his head swam blissfully as he lost himself in the kiss. They were both so engrossed in what they were doing that neither noticed Ginny Weasley watching everything from the stairs leading up to the girls’ dormitory. By the time they came up for air, she was gone.

They said nothing to each other once the kiss ended, but words weren’t important now anyway. Harry ran his thumb delicately over Hermione’s cheek in a caress and they shared a knowing, joyful smile. Although Harry could no longer expect to know exactly what the future had in store for him, it now looked a whole lot brighter.

Now see? Didn't the romance come much faster than you thought it would? Good things come to those who wait, you know.

There will be more romance (and comedy and drama and action and pretty much every other genre you can think of) ahead! The next chapter will be up in two weeks. Thanks for reading!

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I am not J.K. Rowling, I didn't create Harry Potter and I'm not doing this for money, as would be obvious if you could see my bank account.

Chapter 11: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Weeks passed. Harry resumed his daily class schedule and, although Professor Slughorn had been unusually curious as to what he had been up to while away from class, most of his teachers had been very gracious and understanding. Neville had recovered nicely from having a trunk fall on him, although he now sported a prominent scar on his forehead (a situation not wholly unfamiliar to Harry and with which he could fully sympathize).

Meanwhile, Harry’s relationship with Hermione was turning out to be nothing short of wondrous, as each day was filled not only with the highly enjoyable experiences and discoveries that normally come with a new relationship but also a fresh appreciation of what had been there before. Every heartfelt conversation, every shared meaningful glance and caring touch meant so much more now. Harry Potter was the first to admit that he had not exactly done a brilliant job choosing his last two girlfriends, but it seemed that in his case the third time was the charm. Perhaps part of that charm was that no one yet knew they were a couple except for Ron, who they felt an obligation to let in on their little secret. He had been short with them for a few days after finding out, but now seemed more or less fine with it. Given their conversation at Hogsmeade, Harry suspected that his best mate wasn’t terribly surprised by the news.

In between class work and romantic dalliances, there was research, lively discussion on what to do next, a fair bit of brooding on Harry’s part about being a horcrux and an exhaustively thorough examination of the pensieves Dumbledore had left for them. They had been through them so many times that Headmistress McGonagall had grown weary of supervising the process and allowed them to take the memories to the Room of Requirement, so that they could view them whenever they liked. They were growing to like it less and less each time, however.

“Wait for it,” Ron narrated in a hushed voice as he, Harry and Hermione stared at the image of Dumbledore sitting in a chair, a bowl of porridge, a plate with a small slice of toast and the Daily Prophet spread out before him. “This is the best part right here. He lifts the spoon into his mouth and then… Here it comes…”

As Albus Dumbledore took a bite of his porridge, some of it trickled down into his long white beard. Deciding to do something about that quickly, he reached up with his arm and… “Oh!” Ron cried out with an enthusiastic fist pump. “And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Albus Dumbledore, greatest wizard of our time, wiping porridge out of his beard with his sleeve.”

Hermione shook her head disgustedly. “There’s a napkin sitting right there under his plate of toast. What was he thinking?”

“He was probably thinking that there wouldn’t be three teenagers watching this memory over and over again after he was dead,” Harry muttered. When Hermione and Ron both turned to look at him, he heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry I’ve made you go through these pensieves so many times. There’s obviously nothing here.”

All three of them fell silent for a moment as Ron and Hermione gave each other a furtive glance. On the one hand, neither of them wanted to watch Dumbledore eat breakfast again. On the other, they knew how important it was that Harry not lose hope. Hermione felt very strongly about this and so it was she who spoke up. “Well, erm, we don’t know that for certain, Harry. There are things we haven’t checked yet…”

“Like what?” Harry asked gloomily. “We’ve looked through all the books on the shelves, we’ve read that morning’s Daily Prophet dozens of times…we’ve even started looking for patterns in the wallpaper. Face it, this is getting us nowhere; it’s a dead end. Just like the tower was. Just like everything we’ve come across since we destroyed Ravenclaw’s reading lamp.”

Hermione now looked to Ron for support. “Hermione’s right, mate. I mean, um, that is, well…it doesn’t make sense, does it? Why would Dumbledore even leave us memories of him having breakfast in the first place, if it didn’t mean something?”

Harry buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know, Ron. I don’t know why Dumbledore did anything that he did. I don’t know why he trusted Snape, I don’t know why he didn’t destroy Jean Paul Gerard’s horcrux, I don’t know why he didn’t tell me what this power is that I have that can defeat Voldemort…”

An idea seemed to strike Ron suddenly. “Hey, maybe if he had told you what the power is, you wouldn’t be able to use it.”

Harry and Hermione both shot Ron with a scathing glare. “What good does that do me, Ron?” Harry asked testily. “What am I supposed to do, walk up to Voldemort and try things out on him? See if a good tickling charm does the trick?”

“It was just a thought,” Ron added in a very small voice. For a moment, the sound of Dumbledore chewing toast was the only thing audible in the pensieve.

“Harry,” Hermione began, cutting through the silence with a voice that was at once soft and strong, “you know we’ll support you no matter what choice you make. If you want to go through these memories again a thousand times or return them to Headmistress McGonagall the minute we pull our heads out, we’re behind you one hundred percent.” She reached for his hand and held it tightly. “Just don’t lose faith in yourself. We haven’t.”

“She’s right, Harry,” Ron added, visibly grateful for Hermione’s way with words. “We’ll stick with this for as long as you want to.” Ron’s eyes widened suddenly and he quickly stole a glance at an old brass pocket watch he had hidden in his robes. “Blimey, it’s nearly eleven! I have to get ready for the Quidditch match…”

Hermione gave him a slight frown, but Harry looked at his best mate with an appreciative smile. “Go on, Ron. We can handle things from here.”

Ron’s face broke out into a wide grin. “Thanks, mate.” Just as he appeared ready to exit the pensieve, he turned back around to face Harry. “You know, if you’ve changed your mind about playing seeker for us, I could put a good word in for you with the captain of the team.”

As Harry shook his head ‘no’, Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re the captain of the Quidditch team, Ronald.”

“I know,” Ron replied with a proud chuckle. “I just like hearing someone else say it.” He then turned his attention again to Harry. “Well, if you change your mind, just show up in uniform by game time. Ginny probably won’t like it much, but she’ll get over it.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Ron,” Harry told him, his tone bittersweet. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, mate,” Ron said with a wave of his hand. “There’ll be other matches. Well anyhow, I guess I should go. Much as I hate to leave you guys alone in here…” Ron’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait a mo. You two aren’t going to start snogging once I’m gone, are you?”

“Honestly!” Hermione retorted indignantly. “The implication that we can’t control our hormones while searching for clues in a pensieve that Dumbledore left for us is completely and utterly…”

Ron held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Alright, alright. I was only joking. See you both later.” Ron promptly withdrew his head from the pensieve and disappeared. His head popped back in a moment later as he added, “Come watch the match if you finish up early.”

“We will,” Harry assured him. With that, he disappeared again.

It had now fallen almost entirely silent in the pensieve, the rustle caused by Dumbledore turning the page of his newspaper seeming only to add to the tension that filled the room upon Ron’s departure. “So…” Harry said as he began to stretch lazily.

“So…” Hermione responded somewhat awkwardly, her face looking his over with a mixture of scrutiny and recognition, as though she were trying to solve her favorite mystery again for the hundredth time.

“Have you been thinking about what it would be like to make out in a pensieve?” Harry asked her casually.

“Ever since Ron suggested it,” Hermione admitted. Within seconds, Harry had wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips firmly to her own, his eyes closing in contentment. One hand had a firm grasp on the back of her head, his fingers weaving gingerly into her bushy hair, while the other roamed about her back, marveling at how wonderful she was to hold, to touch…

“Hermione,” Harry began mischievously as they both stopped for a moment to catch their breath, “have you ever wondered what it would be like to snog on the Headmaster’s desk?”

Hermione gave him a stern look. “Harry, we can’t.”

As though that were an invitation to proceed, Harry attempted to maneuver them onto the desk for a bit of forbidden foreplay…only to fall to the floor painfully as their bodies passed through the intangible piece of furniture.

“Ow,” Hermione complained as she sat up, the top of her head passing through the bottom of the desk as she turned to look at her boyfriend. “I meant that literally. We’re in a pensieve. We can’t touch anything, remember?”

“I do now,” Harry responded with a groan. “Sorry about that. I don’t reckon I can think straight when I’m kissing you.”

Hermione gave him a warm smile. “That’s alright. You keep kissing me like that and I’ll gladly do the thinking for both of us.” As though to prove her own point, she began to kiss him again, gently and tenderly this time. Eventually, however, they both got tired of sitting on the floor, or the bottom of the pensieve, or whatever it was that was holding them in place here.

Harry rose first and then gallantly helped Hermione into a standing position, their bodies seemingly cut in half by the Headmaster’s desk. Dumbledore appeared to retrieve the last morsel of toast from somewhere around Hermione’s navel and Harry suddenly realized that this memory was about to come to an end. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason to keep watching these, Hermione. As much as I would have liked to have thought there was something hidden here for us to find, it doesn’t look like there is.” He gave Dumbledore one last questioning look. “There’s so much I don’t know about his life, about why he did the things he did…about why he kept so much from me. I guess I was hoping to find all of the answers in just a few little memories, but Dumbledore didn’t give them to me. Even in death, he chose to leave me in the dark.”

Harry looked scornfully down at the Daily Prophet. “He was rotten at the crossword puzzle, too. He thought the lead singer of the Weird Sisters was named ‘Minerva’.”

Hermione scanned the crossword curiously. “That’s strange. For the capital of Canada, he put down ‘Riddle’.”

Harry and Hermione shared a look. Could this be the message they had been searching for? “I thought we already looked at the crossword,” Harry said.

“Ron checked the crossword,” Hermione reminded him, “while we were looking over the bookshelves. He said everything looked fine to him.”

“And we believed him?” Harry demanded incredulously.

“You may recall that that was the day we skived off early because I promised you we’d have some ‘alone time’ in the Charms classroom during my rounds,” Hermione reminded him with a blush.

“Ruddy hormones,” Harry complained under his breath. “So…this could be it. This could be exactly what we’re looking for.”

“I think so,” Hermione agreed quickly as she examined what Dumbledore had written in the Daily Prophet’s crossword puzzle. “Most of these answers are right, but just a few of them, the easier ones it seems like, look like clues…”

Before she could finish that thought, the memory ended and they were back in the Room of Requirement. Harry cursed under his breath. “We’ll have to go through the whole thing all over again.”

“It’s alright, Harry,” Hermione said, her beaming smile a welcome sight. “I think we’ve finally found the reason Dumbledore left us these memories.”

Armed with quill and notebook this time, Harry and Hermione again plunged headlong into the pensieve and watched Dumbledore eat his breakfast. Harry wished fervently that there was some sort of muggle remote control device that would allow him to fast forward and pause his old Headmaster’s memory. Eventually, they returned to the moment when Dumbledore opened the paper to the already completed crossword puzzle. Working at her usual feverish pace, Hermione jotted down the wrong answers she found there much more quickly than Harry could ever have hoped to. As they returned to the Room of Requirement, Harry asked, “Did you get them all down?”

“I think so,” Hermione answered him warily. “Although I’m not completely sure they’re in the right order. ‘Riddle’, ‘links’, ‘Minerva’, ‘Gerard’, ‘swords’, ‘memories,’ ‘riddles’, ‘remember’, ‘diary’.”

Harry scratched his head bemusedly as he heard Hermione read the message Dumbledore had left them. “Is there an order you could put them in where that would make even the tiniest bit of sense?”

Hermione gave the list another long glance, likely mentally rearranging the words time and again as she did so. “I doubt it. There aren’t enough verbs to give it any proper structure.”

Harry threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Perfect. After weeks of looking, we finally find what Dumbledore put in his memories for us to find…only it’s completely meaningless gibberish.”

“It has to mean something,” Hermione countered emphatically. Her brow furrowed and she began to chew on her bottom lip, a clear sign of deep thought. “Didn’t Dumbledore do the crossword in the other memory where he’s having breakfast?”

“I think so,” Harry replied with a small nod of his head. “But hold on, does that mean that…?”

***

Harry did his best to stifle a yawn as he watched Dumbledore read the Daily Prophet between bites of his blueberry scone. “Please tell me you’re getting all of this, Hermione.”

Hermione nodded. “It’s just like the puzzle in the other memory. Most of what he’s filled in is right, but there are just enough answers that are clearly wrong to establish a sort of pattern…” Her quill moved swiftly along the parchment as she spoke. “There. That should be all of them.”

Harry gazed at her intently, his expectations high. “What does it say?”

Hermione cleared her throat and began listing them. “‘Defeat’, ‘core’, ‘trust’, ‘defeat’, ‘Critz’, ‘hidden’, ‘remember’, ‘diary’, ‘riddles’.”

At that moment, it was all Harry could do not to tear his hair out. “That…that doesn’t mean anything either.” His teeth clenched and his hands balled themselves into fists in frustration. “Why would he do this? Why leave us these jumbled words and then…?”

“Wait,” Hermione interrupted him softly, her eyes darting between the two lists of words she had made. “I think these are a series of two and three word messages cut in half, to make sure that no one else could stumble on them by accident.”

Harry craned his neck over her shoulder to get a look at the two lists of words. “How do you mean?”

“Well,” Hermione explained patiently, “when you read them together side by side, the message says, ‘Defeat Riddle. Core links. Trust Minerva. Defeat Gerard. Critz swords. Hidden memories. Remember Riddle’s diary. Remember Riddle’s diary.’”

Harry stared at the words written on the page for a moment, his eyes blinking slowly as he began to realize what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. “He’s telling me how to beat both of them, isn’t he? Voldemort and Gerard.”

Hermione turned her head slightly to watch Harry’s eyes widen with wonder. “I think so.”

As the memory ended and they were drawn back to the here and now, Harry gave Hermione such a look of pure adulation and excitement that she was stunned into silence, although her wide celebratory smile looked very much like his own. “We’ve found it, Hermione. And you…you’re the one who figured it out, the one who made it all possible. I could kiss you!”

Hermione’s cheeks went beet red. “It wasn’t just me, Harry. You were the one who noticed the crossword in the first place, remember? Although…” she continued coyly, “I wouldn’t exactly say ‘no’ to the kiss…”

Harry proceeded to snog her breathless. By the time the kiss was finished, the Room of Requirement had provided them with a red leather love seat, some mood music (in the form of a violin being played only by a pair of animated gloves) and a full container of Madame Peckaway’s Lemon-Flavoured Lip Balm. It was a really good kiss.

Neither of them moved from the other’s arms, as they were both anxious to remain in the moment for as long as possible. Eventually, however, thoughts of Dumbledore’s message returned to both of their minds. “What do you reckon ‘core links’ are?” Harry asked as he slowly planted kisses along her neck.

Hermione shook her head slightly, although she seemed somewhat distracted. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

“‘Trust Minerva’ must mean McGonagall,” Harry mused aloud as he gently massaged Hermione’s shoulder blades. “Maybe she knows what the core links are. She’s probably at the Quidditch match right now. It’d be the perfect opportunity to go and talk to her.”

“Mmm, it would, wouldn’t it?” Hermione agreed with the hint of a moan, her tone decidedly half-hearted. “Or we could just stay here for a little while longer.” As Harry finally broke from their embrace and gave her an inquisitive look, she seemed to come to her senses again. “I suppose that would be rather selfish of us. Come on then, Harry. We have a Quidditch match to go to.”

As they wound their way through the now largely empty old castle, Harry had the rest of the contents of Dumbledore’s cryptic crossword answers on his mind. “I don’t suppose you know what Critz swords are, do you?”

Hermione thought it over for a moment. “Maybe they’re swords that were owned by Guillaume Prospero Critz.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Harry replied as he racked his brain trying to think of where he’d heard it before. “Who was he?”

“He was a seventeenth century French dark wizard hunter,” Hermione answered him matter-of-factly, “who famously defeated the great Scottish necromancer Postumus FitzHugh. We studied him in History of Magic last year.”

“No, that’s not where I’ve heard of him before,” Harry replied as he shook his head dismissively. “He was in one of my visions of the future! Him and FitzHugh both. They were the leaders of the wizarding governments of France and England.”

Hermione looked slightly exasperated. “Am I the only one who pays attention to Professor Binns in History of Magic class?”

“Probably,” Harry answered her with an affectionate smile. “Then there’s the ‘hidden memories’ and remembering Riddle’s diary.”

“Twice,” Hermione threw in as they neared the Quidditch pitch. “I certainly hope that talking to the Headmistress clears up a lot of this confusion, because otherwise I’m not sure how to interpret…” The rest of her words were drowned out by the roar coming from the Gryffindor section of the crowd.

“Dean Thomas scores again,” a fifth year Slytherin named Charon Moon’s voice boomed boisterously through the stadium. “That makes it 190-30, Gryffindor. Ravenclaw’s Keeper looks a mite drowsy up there… but their seeker seems to have finally wandered back to the Quidditch pitch after flying aimlessly over the lake for the last ten minutes. Perhaps Luna Lovegood is finally taking this game seriously.”

Harry did a double take as he watched Luna fly high above the Quidditch pitch, her arms and legs folded around the bottom side of her broom and her head resting easily against its bristles, looking as though she were taking a nap. “Then again, perhaps not,” Moon continued.

Meanwhile, Ginny Weasley was chasing the extremely elusive snitch from one end of the pitch to the other, a look of complete frustration evident on her face even from this distance. One of Ravenclaw’s chasers, who Harry did not immediately recognize, had the Quaffle and attempted to shoot it through the center hoop. Ron blocked the shot easily.

As Harry and Hermione neared the top of the stands where the Headmistress stood next to Deputy Headmaster Flitwick and Hagrid, a great many things began happening on the Quidditch pitch all at once. “Ginny Weasley’s closing in on the snitch,” Moon related breathlessly. “But what’s this? Luna Lovegood has fallen from her broom. Gryffindor’s Keeper has gone into a dive…looks like he’s going after her!” Indeed, Ron, who was flying faster than Harry had ever seen him go, was speeding on his broom toward a falling Luna. “Goldstein takes advantage of the open goal and…scores! Ron Weasley has caught Luna Lovegood! AND LUNA LOVEGOOD HAS CAUGHT THE SNITCH!! IT’S….IT’S…A TIE!!!”

“A tie?!” the unmistakably chirpy voice of a first year Gryffindor cried out in dismay. “That’s like kissing your sister.”

Harry and Hermione had completely forgotten about speaking with the Headmistress, their attention entirely focused on Luna and Ron, who had not yet released the rookie Ravenclaw seeker from his arms. Gryffindor’s seeker, on the other hand, was moving rather quickly in their direction. “What does Ginny think she’s doing?!” Harry exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” Hermione replied grimly. “But I doubt she’s going to give him a kiss.”

By the time Harry and Hermione had reached the three of them, Ginny and Ron were so angry that the words they were yelling at each other could barely be understood. Luna meanwhile continued to lie leisurely in the arms of the boy who had saved her, her hands joined together behind his neck. “Did you want me to just let her fall, then?” Ron asked his sister, his expression furious.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Ginny replied hotly. “Of course I didn’t. But McGonagall would never have let that happen…”

Ron shook his head. “You don’t know that! Nobody lifted a finger to save her, except for me…”

“You didn’t have to ‘lift a finger’ and you certainly didn’t have to fly after her yourself!” Ginny spat. “You could have used your wand, you know. Or did you forget you were a wizard?!” When Ron had no answer to that, she continued, “Of all the stupid, immature…”

“Alright,” Hermione interrupted in an attempt to play peacemaker, “I think there’s been enough immaturity on display here already. Now let’s just calm down and discuss this like rational…”

“You’d like me to calm down, wouldn’t you?” Ginny screamed at Hermione, her wrath turning instantly away from Ron. “You’re afraid of what I’ll say. But I think it’s about time that everyone knows what you did.”

“What I did?” Hermione asked, a stunned expression on her face. “Ginny, what are you talking about?”

“I trusted you!!” Ginny wailed. She now appeared very near tears. “I thought you were my friend, I thought you were helping me, but all this time…all this time you’ve only wanted Harry for yourself!”

“Our personal lives are really none of your business, Ginny,” Hermione informed her crisply, cutting Harry off just as he was about to step in and defend his girlfriend’s honour. “If you’re going to insist on acting like a child, I suggest you do it somewhere else. Everyone at Hogwarts can see this little temper tantrum of yours out here.”

Ginny scoffed. “That’s the worst thing in the world to you, isn’t it? ‘Acting like a child.’ You’ve acted like an adult ever since you were eleven years old, but that’s all it’s ever been: an act. Inside, you’re a scared little girl who has to know more than anybody else because she’s afraid that if she doesn’t, all the people she cares about will leave her behind. Well, one day they will, Hermione. School doesn’t last forever.”
Hermione had not flinched at her words, but she remained silent afterward, her arms crossed defiantly. Harry’s jaw had dropped sometime during his ex-girlfriend’s tirade and he too was rendered speechless. “You’re wrong, Ginny,” Ron spoke up angrily, “and you should really stop spouting off this kind of rubbish about people who care about you.”

“Fine,” Ginny muttered as she began to walk away. “Everyone take her side. See if I care.”

Harry draped his arm around Hermione’s shoulder and gave her a gentle, supportive squeeze. “You know she’s wrong, don’t you? About all of it.”

Hermione gave him a simple nod but her gaze followed Ginny as she walked back to the castle. “Yeah, I know.”

Without warning, Ginny spun around and pointed her wand at Hermione, muttering an incantation that nobody else around could hear. Before any of them could react, a hex shot from the end of Ginny’s wand darted toward Hermione…only to rebound when it drew close to her, reverse course and strike Ginny herself. Within seconds, greenish globs of goo flew from her nose, their slimy, translucent wings flapping in her face. Somehow, she had been done in by her own bat bogey hex.

“That was brilliant, Hermione,” Ron congratulated her with an awed expression. “How’d you do that?”

Hermione could only stare at a bewildered Ginny with an astonished look of her own. “I didn’t do anything, Ron.” She shared a concerned look with Harry. “I haven’t the faintest idea what just happened.”

***

“Someone will explain to me what just happened,” Headmistress Minerva McGonagall pronounced authoritatively, peering down through her glasses at the students surrounding her, “or we will all stay right here, in my office, until classes resume on Monday. Consider it a prolonged detention if you like.”

Sitting around the Headmistress’ desk were Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood and Ginny Weasley. Ron looked decidedly embarrassed about the whole incident, while Luna alternated between staring adoringly at Ron and curling loose strands of her blonde hair with her wand, occasionally sending magic sparks flying to the top of her head. Harry and Hermione shared a look that clearly said that although they had wanted a word in private with McGonagall, this wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. As for Ginny… “I don’t even know why I’m here,” she pouted, her face still sporting evidence of the bat bogey hex, despite the work of several cleaning charms. “I was the victim, after all…”

“Miss Weasley,” McGonagall began, her expression longsuffering, “you provoked an altercation with Gryffindor’s Quidditch captain in full view of the entire school, you attempted to hex the Head Girl and I have reason to believe that you slipped a diluted sleeping draught into the Ravenclaw Keeper’s oatmeal this morning. You should feel very fortunate that I have not already assigned you detention and deducted house points.” Turning her head back to face Luna and Ron, she said with a sigh, “Now, let’s start from the beginning. Miss Lovegood falls from her broom, presumably because she had first fallen asleep…”

“Oh, I wasn’t sleeping, Headmistress,” Luna explained with a daffy smile on her face. “I was harmonizing my magical core with the snitch’s. It requires a great deal of concentration, which is why my eyes were closed. I read about it in Bludgers Were Billywigs: the Secret History of Quidditch.”

The Headmistress gave her a humoring nod. “Yes, I’m quite sure that you did. Let’s move on to what happened next. At this point Mr. Weasley decides, quite chivalrously, I might add, that rather than save Miss Lovegood with a spell he will catch her in midair.”

“I know it was stupid and it cost us the match,” Ron said apologetically. “But I…I just couldn’t watch her fall.”

“I haven’t brought you here to punish you for failing to win a game of Quidditch, Mr. Weasley,” McGonagall assured him, although she had seemed less than pleased at the game’s outcome. “I only wish to determine exactly what caused Miss Weasley’s hex to rebound from Miss Granger and strike Miss Weasley herself, without Miss Granger even lifting her wand in her own defense.”

“With all due respect, Headmistress,” Hermione interjected, “I don’t think any of us know what caused it. I certainly don’t.”

“Probably some protective jinx she dreamed up,” Ginny muttered, still sulking over the entire situation. “Hermione’s brilliant with jinxes.”

“Headmistress,” Harry began hesitantly, “d’you know what ‘core links’ are?” He was not certain that this was the proper time to bring up the matter, but as they seemed to be getting nowhere with this discussion, it was perhaps as good a time as any.

Minerva McGonagall tilted her head forward and gave Harry a probing glare. “Mr. Potter, are you suggesting that there is a core link between Miss Granger and yourself?”

Harry shrugged. “Well, considering that I have absolutely no clue what a core link is, I’m going to say ‘no’, at least for now.” When the Headmistress’ glare turned quizzical, he explained. “We found a message from Dumbledore in the pensieves he left for us.”

“You did?!” McGonagall and Ron exclaimed at the same time. “What was it?” the Headmistress continued. Once they had related what they had found there, their former Transfiguration teacher looked thoughtful. “If Albus told you to trust me, I can only assume he meant with everything you know, including what you’ve been looking for these past few months. Do you feel comfortable discussing this in front of everyone present or shall I send the sixth years outside?”

Harry’s eyes lingered more on Ginny than on Luna before he answered her, but ultimately he decided to shake his head ‘no’. “They can stay. I suppose everyone will know about it eventually.” He then proceeded to explain his quest for Voldemort’s horcruxes, revealing how all but one had been destroyed, how he was fairly certain that he was the seventh and last one and finally that the Oracular Tower was not in fact able to predict the future but was instead haunted by the horcrux of a demented old French wizard.

As Harry spoke, Ginny seemed to now be more interested in finding out what he had been up to while away from her over the last few months than in continuing to sulk, Luna appeared to be giving an oblivious Ron a manicure with her wand and Headmistress McGonagall’s face had gone almost entirely ashen. “Seven horcruxes,” she repeated in horror. “The very idea of splitting one’s own soul into that many pieces… I simply can’t believe it.” She rose to a standing position and looked out the window of her office, her eyes fixating on some distant point on the horizon. “As a seventh year at Hogwarts, I was fascinated by him. Many of the girls in my year were. Everyone knew how powerful he was, but if any of us had suspected…if we had even begun to suspect…” The Headmistress looked as though she might be sick.

“I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, Headmistress,” Hermione said sympathetically, “but if you could tell us something about these core links, what they are or how they might help Harry, it could very well allow him to defeat Voldemort once and for all.”

“Your point is well-taken, Miss Granger,” McGonagall agreed, her posture stiffening as she turned back around to face them all. “A ‘core link’ is formed between two magical individuals, usually a married wizard and witch, whose magical cores have been in close proximity to one another for many years. Their cores grow around each other, as it were, rather like two trees sometimes do. One partner gets a piece of the other’s magical core and vice versa. Together, their magic is amplified exponentially.”

Hermione frowned. “Why haven’t we read anything about this before?”

“It is an extraordinarily rare occurrence in the wizarding world,” Headmistress McGonagall explained dutifully, “perhaps even rarer than the creation of a horcrux. The wizards and witches who do end up with a core link have no control over the process and usually refrain from speaking about it to others unless they are pressed to do so. It is considered bragging.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said with confusion evident in his tone. “Did Dumbledore want me to make a core link with someone?”

“That is rather a puzzle, isn’t it?” McGonagall replied as she heaved a sigh. “How could Albus expect such a young wizard, even one as accomplished as you, to create a core link in time for it to help you defeat You-Know-Who?”

“And not just one core link, either,” Ron added, which drew a look of surprise from everyone else in the room except Luna. “Well, the message did say ‘core links’, didn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” the Headmistress agreed instantly. Just then, a light bulb seemed to go off above her head. “Yes, of course,” she said again, this time in a much happier tone of voice. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

“See what before?” Ginny asked aloud, although everyone was thinking it.

“Mister Potter,” McGonagall addressed Harry authoritatively, “please stand in that corner. Oh and put your wand away. Miss Granger, if you would, stand in front of my desk.” Once they had arranged themselves accordingly the Headmistress continued, “Now Miss Granger, I would like you to try and attack Mr. Potter.” When both Harry and Hermione looked at her like she had gone round the bend, she added, “Nothing overly harmful, of course. I certainly don’t recommend you use a ‘bat bogey hex’,” here she paused to shoot Ginny a look of disdain, “but there are any number of relatively harmless spells you can try. May I suggest a good tickling charm?”

Hermione nodded, although she seemed uncomfortable with the entire situation. “Rictusempra.” The charm reversed course before it even reached Harry and rebounded onto Hermione.

Within seconds, McGonagall had cast a ‘finite incantatem’, ending Hermione’s torment at the hands of the perpetual tickling charm. “Headmistress, what just…?” she began to inquire.

McGonagall interrupted her brusquely. “Have a seat, Miss Granger. Miss Weasley, if you would be so kind as to repeat precisely what our Head Girl just did.” When Ginny did not move right away, she added, “Allow me to rephrase. Miss Weasley, if you would prefer not to spend a month’s detention with Professor Hagrid and myself, setting up new protective wards around the Forbidden Forest…”

At once, Ginny stood in front of the Headmistress’ desk, her wand pointed in Harry’s direction. “Rictusempra.” Just as before, the tickling charm only returned to afflict its caster, leaving Harry unscathed.

“Fascinating,” was McGonagall’s only assessment of what was happening. After repeating the experiment with Ron (who attempted an ‘expelliarmus’ on Harry only to watch in horror as his own wand flew across the room) and Luna (who went with the jelly legs jinx and actually seemed to enjoy the results when her own legs began to wobble), the Headmistress decided to make the attempt herself.

“Petrificus totalus.” A look of shock was frozen onto Harry’s face as McGonagall’s spell actually succeeded in petrifying him. She only allowed the expression to stay there for a moment, however, releasing him with a quickly spoken ‘finite incantatem’.

“I don’t understand, Headmistress,” Hermione said, the barest hint of a complaint in her voice. “Why would Harry be able to reverse our spells but not yours?”

“Mister Potter is not consciously blocking the spells. Isn’t that right, Potter?” Harry nodded shakily as McGonagall once again sat down behind her desk. “The reason your spells can’t effect Potter is simple: over the years, he has formed core links with everyone else in this room. Wizards and witches bound by a core link are incapable of directly harming each other with their spells.”

All five teenagers were dumbstruck by her words. After what seemed like an eternity, it was Harry who finally broke the silence. “How is that possible? You’ve just told us it takes nearly a lifetime to form a core link with someone.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, it would,” McGonagall explained patiently. “But your life has been fraught with circumstances that are rather extraordinary, wouldn’t you say, Potter? I can only speculate as to the exact cause, but I suspect it has something to do with the horcrux inside you.”

“The horcrux?” Ron asked confusedly, scratching his head with his now neatly polished fingernails. “How do you mean?”

McGonagall gave Harry a look that was almost motherly. “Ever since Harry Potter was a child, he has had two magical forces warring within him: a torn fragment of a dark wizard’s soul on the one hand and the blood protection his mother died to give him on the other. A horcrux is a very evil thing; I would imagine it would be nearly impossible to destroy one that’s inside a living creature without killing the host.

“When powerful magic is stored inside a young witch or wizard, it tends to seep out unexpectedly. How many of you had ‘premature magical incidents’ occur before you even got your wands?” From the looks on the five teens’ faces, it was clear that all of them had. “Core links and horcruxes are antithetical entities, completely opposite each other in every way, almost like matter and anti-matter. It is difficult for me to believe they could co-exist peacefully for long. Over time, one will destroy the other.

The Headmistress’ expression now reminded Harry very much of one Dumbledore used to have, one of pride mixed with expectant hope. “It is my belief, Potter, that the same magic that saved you from You-Know-Who the night your parents were murdered has forever linked your magic to those you have grown up with, those you care the most about, so that these ‘core links’ will be able to destroy the horcrux inside of you.”

“Then why haven’t they already?” Harry asked with frustration clearly apparent in his voice. “If I’ve made four of these core links and there’s only one horcrux…”

“It is not simply a matter of numbers,” McGonagall replied sagely. “Core links only reach their full power when you learn how to use them properly. Given time and the proper guidance, I’m quite certain they will overcome the final shred of You-Know-Who’s soul.”

A small, bitter laugh escaped Harry’s lips. “Then Gerard was telling the truth. I really do have a power that can defeat Voldemort; a power that he could have shown me how to use.”

“At a very high price, I’m sure,” Hermione countered warily. “Headmistress, I don’t think I quite understand what this has to do with how I avoided Ginny’s bat bogey hex.”

“I’m glad that’s all you’re confused about,” Ron muttered. “I’m still hung up on Harry having a bit of my magic in him and me having a bit of his magic somewhere inside me. Is my patronus going to be half Jack Russell terrier and half stag now?”

“I hardly think that’s likely,” McGonagall answered him without the slightest trace of humour, “although if you wish to attempt to conjure one and put your mind at ease, I would have no objection, so long as you don’t do it in my office. As to your question, Miss Granger, I can only offer you an educated guess. Since it seems as though Mr. Potter has managed to make four core links, it is reasonable to assume that they are not equal and that some are stronger than others. Given recent,” here she discreetly cleared her throat, “developments, I would imagine that your core link with him is the most powerful.”

Luna nudged Harry slightly with her elbow and gave him a sly wink. “Looks like your magical core’s been harmonized, too.”

Ginny’s teeth clenched in anger. “Are you telling me that my hex backfired because Harry likes Hermione better than me?!”

McGonagall almost looked smug as she answered, “I suppose you could choose to see it that way.” Before Ginny could say anything more or attempt to hex anyone else, she continued, “It appears as though we’ve adequately explained the seemingly inexplicable events that transpired earlier on the Quidditch pitch. Everyone except for Mr. Potter is dismissed.”

Harry watched his friends depart the Headmistress’ office as though he were looking at them for the first time. Ever since Dumbledore had shared the contents of Trelawney’s prophecy with him in fifth year, he had assumed it would be he alone who would have to defeat Lord Voldemort. Now, courtesy of the message his old Headmaster had left for him, he knew that in order to accomplish this feat there would have to be others standing with him. The idea thrilled and terrified him all at once.

Idly, he wondered how and when the core links had been formed. ‘Sometime in fifth year for Luna, I’m sure.’ He thought back fondly to some of the conversations they’d had that had helped him get through that tumultuous year. ‘It could have happened any time since first year for Ron and Hermione.’ As for Ginny, it seemed probable that he had formed a core link with her when she was near death in the Chamber of Secrets. It made Harry wonder whether his fleeting feelings for her that had so consumed him last year had anything to do with the core link between them. Maybe he would never know for sure.

Yet it seemed to Harry as though something, or someone, was missing from the equation. Was it possible that he had formed a core link with someone else? “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to stay behind,” McGonagall said softly, interrupting his inner musings. “Or perhaps not. I’m sure you have a great deal on your mind. However, I felt honour bound to offer my services to yourself and your four friends…”

“Five friends,” Harry corrected her suddenly, his voice now very soft. He was thinking of how he, Ron and Hermione had felt when Neville Longbottom had ended up in the hospital wing weeks earlier. Certainly, Harry felt a deep abiding sympathy for him that sprang from what had happened to his parents when he was only a child and the knowledge that it could just as easily have been his somewhat clumsy, pureblood friend who ended up as the Boy-Who-Lived. “I…I think I have a core link with Neville, too.”

“Five friends, then,” McGonagall amended with a curt nod, “the opportunity to learn how to use your core links under my tutelage. Although I am by no means an expert on the subject, I believe I am at least as qualified to instruct you as the horcrux of a centuries-old French mass murderer.” Harry winced inwardly but remained silent. “Which brings me rather nicely to my next point. I will not tolerate a horcrux remaining on Hogwarts grounds. You may recall that the last time one of those monstrous things was inside the castle, things went rather badly.”

“How could I forget?” Harry asked rhetorically, his mind wandering back to his second year at Hogwarts, when he ended up fighting a basilisk and Tom Riddle’s diary in the Chamber of Secrets. “Wait a mo. Riddle’s diary… Dumbledore wanted me to remember Riddle’s diary.” One of McGonagall’s eyebrows rose curiously. “Of course! That’s where the hidden memories are. In the Chamber of Secrets!”

“Are you certain?” the Headmistress asked him, her tone dubious. “How could Albus have even gained entrance…?”

“He had the ring, last year,” Harry explained frantically. “Marvolo Gaunt’s ring, one of Voldemort’s horcruxes. Maybe before he destroyed it he used it to open the Chamber just like Ginny used Riddle’s diary to talk to the basilisk…”

“Slow down, Potter,” McGonagall said with a kind but cautious expression on her face. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your enthusiasm for the task ahead. I just need to know that when the time comes I can count on you to destroy Lord Montverde’s horcrux.”

“You have my word,” Harry agreed instantly, “and I’d be honoured to have you teach me about the core links. But right now, I need to find out what Dumbledore thought was so important that he hid it in a place where only I could get to it.” With any luck at all, whatever it was would be worth everything they had gone through to discover it.

This was a pretty long chapter (for "Going On" anyway), so there will be more about the core links in Chapter 13. Thank you for reading!

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Chapter 12: The Boy in the Tower, Part 2

September 1, 1919

Were it not for his half-moon shaped glasses and crooked nose, Albus Dumbledore would have been completely unrecognizable. His hair was a deep auburn, his beard was short and well groomed and the robes he wore more closely resembled Ron’s Yule Ball dress robes than anything Harry had ever seen a respectable adult wear. Even his wand seemed different somehow. Harry, Ron and Hermione watched this much younger version of their old Headmaster as he approached the Oracular Tower, his sprightly gait quickly carrying him to the bottom of the tower’s lengthy staircase.

Rather than ascending the stairs, however, Dumbledore chose to walk slowly around the tower as though he were searching for something. After counting off a dozen paces to the right of the steps, he tapped his wand against the brick exterior of the tower four times in a zigzag pattern. As soon as he had done so, brick folded against brick to create an entryway to a large room shrouded in darkness. A soft breeze wafted inside and a cloud of dust flew out, making the Transfiguration professor shield his eyes. Whatever was in there hadn’t seen the light of day for a long time.

Dumbledore lit his wand and peered inside. Magical instruments filled the room, some of them softly glowing and humming, others ticking methodically like a metronome. In the corner farthest from the opening a barely luminescent orb displayed the faces of various young witches and wizards, but the images moved too quickly for any one visage to stand out. In the center of the room sat a plush chair that looked as though it could have passed for a throne in days of yore.

If it was a throne, however, the king who sat on it had seemingly been dead for a while. Wrinkly, leprous skin stretched tightly across the skeletal frame resting in the chair, its ribcage prominent through its ragged, moth eaten clothes and its long yellowed fingernails looking more like the talons of a large bird of prey. When its eyes opened, all three teenagers started in surprise, although Dumbledore did not react. “Albus,” the corpse-like figure greeted him with a smile that was equal parts scary and gross. “How good to see you again.”

“I wish I could say the same, Jean Paul,” Dumbledore replied with obvious disgust, a disgust that Harry shared. This was Jean Paul Gerard? “The years have not been kind to you.”

“I have endured over six hundred of them,” the emaciated form of Jean Paul Gerard retorted with a short, wheezing laugh. “Some have been kinder than others.” His eyes rose to meet Dumbledore’s, perhaps finally adjusting to the light. “I always knew it would be you who would find me, you know. You were the brightest of my pupils.”

“I was never your pupil,” Dumbledore retorted gruffly. “Discovering the whereabouts of someone who went missing centuries ago took quite some time. I spent the entire summer in France, mostly at Beauxbatons, searching through your own history and that of your contemporaries. I found it rather suspicious that the wizard who supposedly murdered you had a sister who worked on this tower. He later married your only surviving daughter.”

“A match I would have opposed, had I been there to see it,” Gerard confessed as he shook his frail head. “They were all wrong for each other, always bickering about issues of complete insignificance…”

“Given your history, I’m sure you would have murdered them both at the wedding reception.” Dumbledore gave the room surrounding them a quick once over. “So this is where you’ve spent the last five hundred odd years. Magically confined inside the very same tower where you left your horcrux to fool generations of English wizards and witches into thinking they were seeing their own future. It is almost a fitting punishment. I would have been content to leave you here to suffer, were it not for your continued inclination to make others suffer along with you.” Dumbledore fixed the wizard who was once Lord Montverde with an icy glare. “Tell me, have you happened to take notice of Thaddeus Crouch?”

“The seventh-year Hufflepuff that Professor Slughorn is always going on about? Yes, I watch him sometimes,” the ancient French wizard answered, gesturing indifferently toward the glowing orb in the corner. “To be honest with you, no Hogwarts student has really piqued my interest since you graduated. You have set the bar far too high. I simply haven’t been able to bring myself to invite anyone else up here.”

Dumbledore shook his head slowly. “It ends now, Jean Paul. There will be no more students driven to madness within the confines of this tower.”

Gerard gave Dumbledore a wide smile, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth. “You have come to kill me, then?”

“I have come here to finish something that should have ended a long time ago,” Dumbledore declared grimly.

“You will fail,” Gerard replied, his bony right arm now brandishing a shriveled dusty stick that might have at one time resembled a wand. “You forget, Albus, that I was the most powerful wizard of my generation. I was never beaten in combat, not even by entire armies of Englishmen such as yourself. You will soon be bowing low to me…”

“Expelliarmus,” Dumbledore interrupted him casually. Gerard’s wand flew across the room and his body fell from the chair, perhaps as much from shock as from the force of the disarming spell. “Your days of power and glory are long over, Gerard. Now you are nothing more than a relic of a forgotten era. You are a dead man clinging to life only by the piece of your soul that you tore from yourself and placed in this tower.” Jean Paul Gerard now looked up at Albus Dumbledore with fear in his eyes. “Well, I know where it is. Very soon, there will be nothing at all keeping you alive.”

“You are lying,” Gerard squeaked feebly. “If you knew the location of the horcrux, why confront me first? Why not merely destroy it?”

“I suppose,” Dumbledore explained with a mildly amused half-grin, “I wanted you to experience what it was really like to know your own future.” As Gerard’s gaunt frame trembled, Dumbledore withdrew a long broadsword from a scabbard hidden inside the folds of his robes. “Are you familiar with Guillaume Prospero Critz?”

“Bien sur,” Gerard answered, fear making him slip back into his native French. “Il était le magicien français du dix-septième siècle qui a défait le grand necromancer écossais Postumus FitzHugh.”

Dumbledore’s eyes never left the blade in his hand. “Legend has it that Critz made two swords that were magically connected to each other. After the larger of the two spilled the blood of a dark wizard, the smaller could slice through any magical object that wizard had made like a hot knife through butter.” With his wand hand, he pulled the golden handle of the smaller sword from its own scabbard just enough to show Gerard that it was in his possession. “I imagine it would do a splendid job of destroying a horcrux and, quite luckily for me, I was able to purchase both weapons while in France this summer.”

Anger briefly replaced fear on Gerard’s sunken face and he sprang into a crouch, pointing an accusing finger at Dumbledore. “Impossible. You have stolen them. Why would any self-respecting French wizard give such a valuable national treasure to an English pig?”

“You may not be aware of this, Jean Paul,” Dumbledore answered him with a chill in his voice, “but a war just ended in Europe. France and Great Britain were allies.”

“We may find common cause from time to time to war against Turks or Huns,” Gerard spat, “but inside the heart of every Frenchman is the burning desire to see England laid waste.”

“Times have changed,” Dumbledore told him calmly, cleaning the large sword in his hand with a rag as he spoke. “The wizarding world no longer involves itself in the affairs of muggle nations and, as such, witches and wizards from different countries no longer see each other as enemies. Given the great cost of this last conflict, I think even the muggle world may have finally seen the folly of war.”

Without warning, Dumbledore plunged his sword into Jean Paul Gerard’s chest, running the blade through him and then forcing the sword’s tip into the wall, pinning the centuries-old French dark wizard in place. Gerard looked down at the gaping hole in his chest and then back up at Dumbledore, first in utter disbelief and then with defiant fury. “You may kill me, Albus, but you cannot change the nature of the human heart. There will always be war in it, just as there is love and sorrow and every other thing born of passion.” The expression on the ancient wizard’s face was both grotesque and hostile. “I may not be able to see the future, but I predict that there will be another war and that when it comes England will invade France once again. It is all they know to do.”

Dumbledore’s face was completely impassive. “I strongly suspect that I will live to see you proven wrong and that you will not.” He now held his wand in one hand and the smaller of the two Critz swords in the other. “Goodbye, Jean Paul.”

“No, wait,” Gerard began, his voice pleading. “You don’t understand. I help these children…these young witches and wizards…see what’s in their hearts. I let them see the paths their lives could take. Many have gone on to undisputed greatness…” As Dumbledore prepared to exit the secret entrance he had found and close it back again with his wand, the French wizard tried one last, desperate gamble. “I could have warned you about Grindelwald.”

Dumbledore froze. He pivoted and glared down at Gerard, his usually jovial eyes now stormy. “What did you just say?”

“I could have warned you about Gellert Grindelwald, had I known…” he rasped by way of explanation. “Had you known him when you lived in the tower, I could have told you he was up to no good…”

“How could you possibly know about Gellert Grindelwald?” Dumbledore asked him, his voice quaking slightly.

“Not from you, of course,” Gerard told him confidently. “You are a brilliant occlumens. But people in the castle…they talk…”

One of Dumbledore’s red eyebrows rose slightly. “Do they? What do they say?”

“It is not important,” Jean Paul Gerard said with a dismissive, strangled laugh. “What is important is that I can teach your best students how to avoid such people…how to stay away from bad influences…”

“Like you yourself, for instance?” Dumbledore asked rhetorically. “You are truly the most wretched creature I have ever laid eyes on. You are a living corpse skewered on a sword and yet you beg pathetically for your life to be spared.” Dumbledore returned the smaller of the two swords to its sheath. “Very well. If you truly wish to live like this, I will allow you to do so. But if I see one more student’s name on the cornerstone of this tower…”

“You will not,” Gerard assured him. “Oh, merci, Dumbledore, merci. You are a great man.” Hogwarts’ Transfiguration professor said nothing else as he left the room. “Wait. You are not going to leave me here like this, are you?” the French wizard called after him, his eyes darting down to the sword through his chest. “Not like this…”

***

Twenty-five years later

September 1, 1944

The Albus Dumbledore that now approached the tower housing both the sexcentenarian French dark wizard Jean Paul Gerard and the horcrux that kept him alive was a markedly different figure than the not-yet-forty-year-old wizard they had seen in the previous memory. His hair was a blend of gray and white and his face was drawn and grim. Cold rain soaked his long beard until he tapped it once with his wand and muttered a simple incantation, making it instantly dry. As he reached the tower, Dumbledore heaved a long sigh. Whatever he was now seeking to accomplish, it did not appear to be a pleasant task.

With little difficulty, Dumbledore once again found the place along the base of the tower where the secret entryway was located and tapped his wand against the bricks in the same manner as before. Although his face bore a twinge of regret, he stepped into the newly revealed room without hesitation. His eyes darted immediately to Jean Paul Gerard, who was still pinned to the wall by the sword that had been thrust through his chest a quarter century earlier. “I was right,” Gerard’s dry, cracking voice informed him.

“About what?” Dumbledore replied simply.

‘Lord Montverde’ attempted a smile, but it came across more as a wince. “There was another war. English soldiers have invaded France. Even now they are there, marching across my beloved country and taking pieces of it by force.”

“A distorted version of the truth,” Dumbledore assessed with a small smile of his own, “but it is truth nonetheless. Very well, you were right about that.”

“Why are you here?” Gerard asked suspiciously. “Yours is the last name on the cornerstone. I have asked no other students to stay with me in this tower…”

“I am here to change that,” Dumbledore said boldly, although his eyes betrayed a deep sadness. “There is a student that I would like for you to invite to live here in the Oracular Tower this year.”

“Tom Marvolo Riddle.” The younger British wizard gave his much, much older French counterpart an odd, questioning look. “Some of these devices,” he explained, gesturing to the various magical objects about the room, “still respond to the sound of my voice. I am not without eyes and ears inside the castle. I am familiar with Riddle and with the incident last year involving the death of the muggleborn Ravenclaw girl. He received an award for special services to the school from Headmaster Dippet for exposing the perpetrator.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore confirmed, seemingly distracted by his own thoughts. “The Headmaster has made him Head Boy this year, despite my objections.”

“You suspect that Riddle is responsible for the girl’s death,” Gerard speculated, “and that he framed the third year Gryffindor boy…but you have no proof.”

“It is not proof of his guilt that concerns me now,” Dumbledore admitted, tugging gently on his beard in thought. “Whatever his role in the incident last year, I believe Tom Riddle to be a troubled wizard on a very dark and dangerous path. He must be shown the consequences that await him if he continues to follow it.”

“You fear him,” Gerard stated, a wry grin making his thin blue lips more prominent.

Dumbledore shook his head. “I fear for him.” The Hogwarts professor’s eyes narrowed as he turned to face the Medieval French wizard he had very nearly killed twenty-five years before. “Will you do it, Jean Paul?”

“Why should I?” Lord Montverde demanded imperiously. “It is because of you that I have lived in such terrible pain these last few years, completely deprived of proper company… What could possibly motivate me to help you?”

“I still have the companion sword to the one that’s currently jutting from your chest,” Dumbledore pointed out nonchalantly. “I could finish you off quite easily.”

Jean Paul Gerard clucked his tongue in disdain. “No, no, no, Albus, you are going about this the wrong way. You must first offer me an enticement to do as you ask and then threaten me with something terrible. I believe you English call it the ‘carrot and stick’ approach, no?”

“Killing you now was the carrot,” Dumbledore informed him, his face expressionless. “I only assumed you would be ready for death after a quarter century of misery and isolation. Yet you still cling to what little is left of your life.”

“What else can I do?” Gerard asked rhetorically. “Death is final. It is the end of everything. I cannot welcome it.” The Frenchman’s gruesome face looked thoughtful for a moment. “Although I would not mind this sword being removed…”

“Very well,” Dumbledore said with a heavy sigh. “If you convince Tom that his future will be an unpleasant one if he remains on his current path, I might be persuaded to make your stay here somewhat more comfortable.” Before Gerard could reply to that, Dumbledore continued, “However, if I do not see Riddle’s name on the cornerstone within a week, I will end your truly pathetic excuse for a life without a moment’s thought. Is that understood?”

“It is a lousy bargain,” Gerard seethed, his yellow greenish teeth gritted together to make his face a macabre mask of unbridled hatred, “but it seems I have little choice in the matter. I accept.”

Dumbledore gave Gerard the barest of nods and turned to leave the tower. Before he did, he added, “Oh and Jean Paul? Tom Riddle is the last student’s name I want to see on this tower.”

“For how long?” Lord Montverde asked scathingly. “Power is an intoxicant and there are few powers greater than the ability to shape the life of a promising child. It may take a generation or two, but you will come begging to me again to bring another student up here.”

A melancholy expression filled Dumbledore’s face. “I wish I could say that you were wrong.” Without another word, the entrance closed behind him.

***

Harry, Ron and Hermione each withdrew their heads from the pensieve in turn, looking a little dazed as they did so. Hermione seemed to come out of what they had all come to know as ‘pensieve stupor’ first and gave Harry a look that was both morally supportive and intellectually curious. “Are you sure this is everything Dumbledore left for you in the Chamber of Secrets?”

“Yeah,” Harry confirmed with a slow nod of his head. “Two pensieves, one horcrux-destroying sword and a bit of parchment that disintegrated as soon as I read it.”

“What did it say?” Ron asked with an inquiring frown.

“‘Be what I could not. Do what I would not. End it.’” Harry withdrew the smaller of the two Critz swords from its sheath and gave Ron and Hermione a look of steely determination. At that moment, both Harry’s girlfriend and his best mate looked as though they’d rather go skinny dipping with Snape than trade places with Jean Paul Gerard. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Harry Potter strode purposefully out of the Room of Requirement, the sword in one hand and his wand in the other. Hermione and Ron followed closely behind as everyone else walking through the castle made way for them. Once they neared the main exit, Hermione grabbed Harry’s arm and he turned around to face her. “Are you sure you don’t want us to go with you?”

“Considering the shape he’s in, I think I can take Gerard on my own,” Harry reassured her with a confident smile. “The hard part’s going to be getting him to tell me what he made into a horcrux.”

“Too bad Dumbledore didn’t actually say what the horcrux was in the memories he left us,” Ron grumbled.

“Maybe he never really knew,” Harry speculated. “He could have just been bluffing Gerard.”

“I guess,” Ron conceded with a shrug. “It’s just as well that you’re not bringing us along, though. It was hard enough looking at that shriveled up old French bloke in the pensieve. I don’t really want to imagine what he smells like. I’d probably vomit.”

While Harry’s face turned a bit green, Hermione looked thoughtful. “There is a spell I could teach you that would keep you from smelling him. Of course, it would physically remove your nose…”

Harry shot Hermione a grateful grin. “I don’t think so, but thank you anyway.” He gave her a short, soft kiss on her nose and then held her close to him for a moment. “You’re always finding ways to help me, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think I could stop if I wanted to,” Hermione replied earnestly. “I couldn’t stand to lose you, Harry. You mean so much to me. You always have.”

Harry felt duly inspired to share a truly passionate kiss with Hermione at that moment, despite Ron’s protests. “Great,” the redhead said with a weary sigh. “Just when I thought I wasn’t going to have to see something that would make me throw up...”

The happy couple blissfully ignored Ron and only separated after several minutes of high quality snogging. “Be careful, Harry,” Hermione said afterward, her brow furrowed with worry.

Harry shrugged off her concern. “He’s a seven-hundred-year-old wizard who looks his age, doesn’t have a wand and has a sword sticking through his chest. How hard could it be to finish him off?”

***

Trying his best to remember exactly what Dumbledore had done to reach the secret entrance, Harry Potter trudged around the Oracular Tower rather aimlessly, unsure of exactly how far his old Headmaster had walked from the steps. ‘Was it seventeen paces or eighteen? And just how much shorter are my legs than Dumbledore’s?’ Eventually, after tapping his wand against five or six different stretches of the brick exterior, an entryway appeared. After only a moment’s pause, Harry took a deep breath and stepped into the hidden room. “Lumos.”

The light of Harry’s wand barely penetrated what was now an oppressive darkness that made the room seem far different and much more ominous than what he had seen in the pensieves. Jean Paul Gerard’s discoloured, skeletal form was only barely visible in the near corner, the light from Harry’s wand softly gleaming off of the sword that had held him in place now for three quarters of a century. “Ah, Young Monsieur Potter. I see you have found the final memories Albus left for you at last.”

Harry’s already foul mood darkened. “How do you know I didn’t figure it out on my own?”

Gerard chuckled weakly. “Call it a lucky guess.” As Harry attempted to move closer to the ancient French wizard, an extremely repugnant odor filled his nostrils. Idly, he wondered how difficult Hermione’s spell to remove his nose would have been to pull off. For now, he would just have to keep his distance. “Have you given any further thought to my offer?”

“I’m not here to make a deal with you, Gerard,” Harry stated flatly. “I’m here to finish things, once and for all.”

“I have heard that sentiment expressed before, and by a much more powerful wizard than you,” Gerard taunted him in a bored tone of voice. “So you’re saying there is no possibility that you will allow me to teach you about the core links?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Harry replied through clenched teeth. There was a dangerous edge to his voice now, as he was growing very tired of not being taken seriously. “Now are you going to tell me what you’ve made into a horcrux or am I going to have to…”

“Headmistress McGonagall is truly inadequate to teach you anything on the subject, you know,” Lord Montverde interrupted him casually. “She has never even witnessed the power of one core link, let alone the half dozen or so you’ve managed to form. I, on the other hand, have fought and killed many happy couples who managed over the years to…”

His anger now overruling his olfactory sense, Harry closed the distance between Gerard and himself and pointed the sword none too subtly in the direction of the dark wizard’s throat. “Now you listen to me, you sick, twisted bugger. Maybe you’re used to pulling the strings up there,” Harry indicated the top of the tower above them with his wand,

“making people believe you’re showing them their future, but down here you’re just a dried up old man with a sword through his chest who stinks to high heaven!” Harry moved his lit wand closer to Gerard’s face to see if the message was getting through to him. “Up there you told me I didn’t have the power to kill you. Well now I do. So you had better start treating me like the wizard who…controls…”

As the light revealed Jean Paul Gerard’s form in full, Harry became aware of a strangely familiar hat that was sitting on his head. “Your anger is misplaced, Monsieur Potter. I have done nothing to you to make you hate me so. It is Dumbledore with whom you have a quarrel, but he is dead.” Harry backed away from Gerard slowly, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Haven’t you been wondering if Dumbledore forced me to invite you here, just as he did Riddle? Don’t you want to know whether he’s still ‘pulling your strings’, as you say, even after death?”

Harry ignored him. “The hat…I know I’ve seen it before…”

“Or maybe you prefer to have someone else tell you where to go and what to do,” Gerard mused coyly. “Perhaps you are angry with Dumbledore because he left you all alone in the world. You long for guidance but you cannot bear to accept it from one such as I…”

“That’s the Conjuring Hat!” Harry exclaimed in recognition as he saw the hat adjust itself slightly on the French wizard’s head. “How did you…?”

Lord Montverde grinned wickedly. “The chapeau and I are old friends from Beauxbatons. I suppose it was rather rude of me not to thank you for letting it out. Albus had it closed up in that book for over a hundred years!” As Harry remembered exactly what the hat was capable of, he began slowly backing away from Gerard. “We have had so much catching up to do… But I must apologize for interrupting you, Monsieur Potter. All these years of solitude have made me forget my manners. You were saying something before about determining which one of us has more power. Perhaps I could settle the matter with a little demonstration.”

“Incendio,” Harry called out suddenly, flicking his wand in the direction of the hat. Before the spell could set the Conjuring Hat aflame, however, a magical shield appeared and deflected it.

“A marvelous thing to behold, is it not?” Gerard asked giddily. “It can generate a shielding charm without my saying a word. I only have to think it to make it so.” Harry began to quickly and quietly back out of the room, unwilling to turn and run only because he wanted to keep an eye on both the wizard and the hat as he made his escape. “You may run from me, Monsieur Potter, but you cannot run from what the hat can conjure. Now…what shall I send after you?” Outside the tower, Harry desperately racked his brain trying to remember what Dumbledore had done to close the entrance. “How about dementors? As I recall, you never much cared for them…” At the Frenchman’s words, a swarm of dementors flew out of the tower and began swooping about around the grounds without reason or rhyme, as though they were completely disoriented.

“Come on,” Harry said to himself as he began tapping the wall around the entrance with his wand. “One tap here, one tap there…something has to make it close…”

“I think a small army of inferi would be a nice accoutrement,” Gerard added offhandedly. Slowly, a great number of the walking dead began filing dazedly from the room. Much to Harry’s relief, they were ignoring him for now, just as the dementors were.

“And, of course, the piece de resistance…the Hungarian Horntail!” Within seconds, the most fearsome looking dragon Harry had ever seen appeared just outside the tower. It began beating its wings to keep itself aloft, but it too seem confused as to what it was doing here. Near total panic, Harry kept frantically tapping his wand against the entrance and, after several agonizingly long moments, watched as it finally closed in front of him, fortunately keeping Gerard and the Conjuring Hat trapped inside.

Unfortunately, there was still the matter of the dementors, the inferi and the rather angry-looking dragon to be dealt with, as the creatures were obviously no longer ignoring him. The walking dead were ambling toward Harry rather slowly and the dementors suddenly seemed to realize that he was the only soul around for quite some distance. Puffs of flame exited the Horntail’s snout as it exhaled sharply, its razor-sharp teeth displayed frighteningly as it roared. The beast then began to descend rather rapidly in Harry’s direction. ‘Alright, Harry. You can do this. Just take on one obstacle at a time.’

With only a small amount of difficulty, he closed his eyes and thought of the kiss he and Hermione had shared only a few moments earlier. “Expecto patronum!” Harry’s stag patronus promptly emerged from the end of his wand and charged off in the direction of the dragon, leaping to meet it head on just as it flew near the ground. Its misty form passed through the dragon’s eyes, causing it to heave a monstrous bellow of anger and confusion and once again take to the air. The patronus, meanwhile, had already moved on to the dementors, which it soon dispersed one by one. Harry then sent it to accomplish one final task and turned his attention to the inferi that were beginning to encircle him.

Perhaps already somewhat accustomed to the smell and appearance of decaying flesh from his confrontation with Gerard, Harry was not as repulsed by the mob of reanimated corpses currently coming at him as he might have been under ordinary circumstances. ‘Of course, under ordinary circumstances I probably wouldn’t have a bunch of inferi out to kill me. Or a dragon, for that matter.’ Truthfully, Harry was more worried about the Hungarian Horntail than the army of the undead, who he could probably drive off with a few good fire charms.

Suddenly, a simple but potentially effective plan began to take shape in Harry’s mind. The inferi did not appear to be in a great hurry to murder him and the now furious-looking dragon had seemingly regrouped. The Horntail flew once around the Oracular Tower and then dove straight toward Harry. If this was going to work, his timing would have to be perfect.

‘Wait,’ Harry told himself as sweat beaded on his forehead. A few of the living dead were now less than two meters from him and the entire swarm of rotting bodies were bunched together around him, preparing to strike en masse. ‘Wait just a few more seconds.’ As the dragon abruptly stopped its dive, it pulled up several dozen meters above the ground, likely so that Harry could not attempt any more wizardly mischief. A stream of flame shot from its mouth as it passed overhead, rushing like a river of fire in Harry’s direction. Just as he began to feel the heat of the flame on his face and as the putrescent arm of an inferi reached out to grab his own, he pointed his wand in the direction of the dragon’s fire. “Protego!”

The shielding charm worked just in time, as the magical barrier kept the stream of flame from touching even the outer folds of his Hogwarts robes, even as all around him inferi were engulfed in the fire. It went exactly as he had planned, although he had not anticipated how much worse the smell would be. Roasted inferi, dragon’s breath and the smell of burnt grass combined for an unforgettably horrible odor. ‘I really wish I had taken Hermione up on her offer to teach me that nose-removal spell. Although I suppose I’d have to figure out another way to keep my glasses on my face. Maybe a good sticking charm…’

The frustrated roar of the Horntail above him brought him back to earth again quickly. He had hoped to hide in the cloud of smoke rising from the scorched ground and burning bodies for a few more minutes, but it seemed as though the cold autumn wind had other ideas. Harry, on the other hand, had precious few. He was now all out of clever ploys and it was just him and the dragon. Frankly, he liked the dragon’s chances.

Apparently so did the dragon. The Hungarian Horntail landed on its feet very near where Harry stood, seemingly prepared to finish him off. Harry quickly applied a disillusionment charm to himself in an attempt to sneak away. ‘Maybe it’s not the most heroic thing to do,’ Harry thought to himself. ‘But this isn’t the Triwizard Tournament. I don’t want anything the dragon’s guarding. I just want to survive.’

Once again, sense of smell got in the way. Even through the smoke and ashes (or perhaps especially through them, considering how used to their scent the dragon would have to be) the Horntail was able to sniff him out. ‘Well, so much for cowardice,’ Harry thought resignedly. ‘It’s not really my style anyhow.’ The moment Harry became visible again he fired a stunner right at the dragon’s snout, making it recoil slightly and allowing him the opportunity to put his superior agility to good use, as he darted around the dragon in an attempt to put the sword in his hand to equally good use. Once he was at the dragon’s side, he began hacking away at its scales with the blade, although it wasn’t having much effect.

That is unless you count the fact that it made the dragon even angrier than before. Its massive, horned tail swished and knocked Harry into the air. Before he knew exactly what had happened, he found himself holding onto the dragon’s tail for dear life as it began flying at a very high speed above and around Hogwarts. The sword that had been in his hand was now a distant memory, and although he had managed to hold onto his wand, he really needed both hands where they were right now.

The Hungarian Horntail made repeated hairpin turns in the air and was moving its tail around quite a lot, leading Harry to believe that it didn’t much like having him along for the ride. The feeling was mutual, actually, but the only alternative available right now, letting go and falling to his death, wasn’t very appealing. As his now bloody fingers began to lose their grip on the dragon’s very sharp horns, however, it seemed as though it was an extraordinarily likely alternative. ‘I can’t…hold on…’ His hands, now numb and slippery with blood, slowly fell away. Harry Potter tumbled from the dragon, a dismayed scream of protest leaving his throat as he began to fall to earth.

He didn’t fall for long, however. With a colossal thud and squawk, Harry landed on something else flying below him, although it took him a moment to recognize what exactly had spared his life. Once he came to his senses, it was obvious who had saved him. “Buckbeak,” Harry exclaimed aloud. “Or I guess it’s Witherwings now. Which one do you prefer?” The hippogriff shot him a disapproving glare. “Right. I don’t suppose it matters that much right now. Take us down. Let’s find Hagrid.” If the hippogriff was here, that meant his patronus had reached Hagrid’s hut. With any luck at all, the Care of Magical Creatures professor would have something on hand that would incapacitate the Horntail.

Buckbeak brought Harry back to the exact same spot he had left, a place easily identifiable by the patch of scorched earth the dragon had left in its wake. Rubeus Hagrid stood there waiting for him, looking both bewildered and relieved. There was no time for pleasantries or explanations, however, as the Hungarian Horntail was in hot pursuit. Once the dragon drew near, Hagrid pulled out a small burlap sack and began tossing handfuls of a sparkling dust in the creature’s direction. “You’ve tired yerself out, haven’t ya? Time for a little nap, i’n’it?” As the dragon inhaled the substance, his eyes began to droop. “Go ta sleep now. There’s a nice dragon.” In an instant the Hungarian Horntail crashed to earth, fast asleep.

“How long will he be out?” Harry asked through ragged breaths.

Hagrid scratched his scruffy beard thoughtfully. “A few hours, at least.” The half-giant offered him some bandages and ointment and then gave Harry a questioning look. “So Harry…are ya goin’ to tell me how a Hungarian Horntail ended up on school grounds?”

“A dark wizard conjured one,” Harry answered him honestly as he began wrapping his bleeding hands with gauze strips. “What he’s doing here is a very long story, but I’m the one who has to defeat him.”

“A wizard tha’ can conjure a dragon’s nobody to be taken lightly,” Hagrid cautioned him as he fed the hippogriff a dead rodent. “Are ya sure you can handle this on yer own, Harry?”

“No, I’m not,” Harry admitted. Spotting where he had dropped the sword Guillaume Prospero Critz had made centuries ago, he picked it up and held it in his newly bandaged right hand. “I think I’m going to need reinforcements.”


The reinforcements, the core links, the defeat of Jean Paul Gerard and the road ahead for our hero, all in the next (and last) chapter of Going On in two weeks. Here's hoping you enjoy!

InsaneTrollLogic

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I am not J.K. Rowling, I don't look like J.K. Rowling, my name isn't even remotely similar to hers and I don't make money from the stories I write. Which is probably a good thing, because I wouldn't make much.

Big, big, big time huge apologies for the lateness of this chapter. I suck. Really. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving (and Halloween and Arbor Day and about a dozen other holidays that fell between the posting of Chapters 12 and 13). Here's hoping you enjoy the finale!

Chapter 13: With a Little Help from My Friends

“Once there was a tower at Hogwarts that stood far higher than any other, but distinctly apart from the rest. This was a magical tower, you see; a gift given long ago by another nation eager to avoid war. It could only be seen by those who had been invited: exceptional students in their seventh year that had their names magically etched on the tower’s cornerstone. Once inside, the students could see visions of how their future might unfold, but the picture wasn’t always a pleasant one. Some even called it the ‘Tower of Nightmares’, but only the last few who lived there knew just how fitting the name was.”

***

“So…let me get this straight,” Ron began, having only now heard of Harry’s failed attempt to vanquish Jean Paul Gerard. “You were beaten by a hat.”

“I wasn’t ‘beaten’,” Harry replied testily, although he had to ignore the pain in his bandaged hands in order to say so convincingly. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but you’re badly hurt,” Hermione pointed out. “I still think you should see Madame Pomfrey about your hands. I know Hagrid means well, but he’s not exactly a trained healer and the conditions in his hut aren’t always sanitary.”

“But it was a hat, right?” Ron asked with a confused frown. “As in something you wear on your head? Like a bowler or a bonnet or a beanie?”

“My hands are fine, Hermione,” Harry assured her. “Right now I’m more worried about Gerard. He has to know I’m coming back for him and that I’ll be better prepared this time. He might try something desperate; conjure something horrible...”

“Using the hat, of course,” Ron added in a chipper voice. When Harry shot him a glare, he held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “What? That’s what makes him so powerful, isn’t it?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about the Conjuring Hat before?” Hermione asked Harry curiously. “You said you recognized it, so you must have seen it somewhere while you were in the tower.”

“I didn’t think it was important,” Harry answered her. “I guess I was wrong.” He paused in thought for a moment, as Ron and Hermione both looked at him expectantly. “I won’t make that mistake again. I know what has to be done now.”

Ron scratched his head. “What’s that, mate?”

Harry turned around and began to lead the way back inside the castle. “We have to destroy the tower.”

***

“For ever since the tower was built, it had played host to an unwanted guest: a dark wizard known as Jean Paul Gerard or as Lord Montverde to those who once feared him. A piece of this wicked soul was torn out and placed in the tower and it delighted in filling the heads of those who lived there with great and terrible lies. Many promising young lives came to ruin there, although there were souls who emerged from it unscathed.”

***

“What do you mean ‘we have to destroy the tower’?” Ron demanded as both he and Hermione dutifully followed after Harry. “Like it or not, mate, it’s a part of Hogwarts. We can’t just go round blowing up pieces of the school we don’t like. Otherwise the Slytherins would have done away with the Gryffindor dorms a long time ago. Or the other way around maybe…”

“Not to mention that we’d be breaking several hundred school rules,” Hermione pointed out, her anger and surprise hidden poorly behind a forced expression of neutrality. “Harry, I know how much you want this to be over, but it doesn’t seem as though you’re thinking clearly.”

“You don’t need to worry about us breaking any school rules, Hermione,” Harry assured her with a small, confident grin.

“Really?” she replied instantly as one of her eyebrows shot up, “Why would that be, pray tell?”

“Because I’m going to get this plan approved by Headmistress McGonagall,” Harry answered her matter-of-factly.

The three friends walked together in silence for a moment, as both Ron and Hermione were dumbfounded. Finally, it was Ron who spoke. “This is a joke, right? You’re playing a prank on me to get me back for blowing the match against Ravenclaw. That’s it, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not really going to walk into the Headmistress’ office and tell her that you’re going to destroy part of the school?”

“Of course not, Ron,” Harry responded with a small laugh. Just as Ron and Hermione appeared ready to breathe a collective sigh of relief, he added, “I’m going to ask her permission to destroy part of the school.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Brilliant idea, mate. I’m sure McGonagall will be surprised she didn’t come up with it herself. I think I’ll just be elsewhere in the meantime, yeah?”

“Good thinking,” Harry replied enthusiastically. “See if you can find Luna, Neville and your sister and meet me outside the castle in about half an hour. Oh and you and Ginny will need your racing brooms.”

Ron nodded and scampered off, although he gave Harry and Hermione a look that said he thought they were both rather mad. As they neared the Headmistress’ office, Hermione’s expression betrayed her own deep uncertainty. “I trust that you know what you’re doing.”

“Good,” Harry answered, his somber tone carrying just a hint of wavering resolve. “Someone should, anyway.”

***

“In a twist of fate, the dark wizard Montverde found himself caught inside his own well-oiled trap, a prisoner in the tower he had sent to England to drive generations of that country’s best witches and wizards to utter madness. Between the horcrux of Jean Paul Gerard and what remained of the Medieval villain himself, they harnessed the magic of the tower and used it for their own evil purposes. The original intent of those who created the tower was thus perverted, with no thought given as to what that might bring about in time.”

***

Hermione Granger had anticipated the worst. Disappointment. Outrage. The loss of her Head Girl badge, although that was quite a silly thing to be worried about at a time like this. Instead, all the Headmistress had said was, “Are you certain you can do it, Potter?”

And all he’d said in reply had been, “No. But I’m certainly going to try.”

With no more discussion of the matter than that, Headmistress McGonagall had signed off on Harry’s plan, such as it was. Hermione wasn’t positive that she would have done the same had the shoe been on the other foot, although in the end she likely would have acquiesced. Harry could be quite persuasive at times, particularly when you were madly in love with him.

Hermione sighed. Although their relationship had deepened in the last few weeks, the duty of being Harry’s constant voice of reason hadn’t exactly gone away. However, there was now a need to go about it more delicately. “Why are you doing this, Harry?” she asked him, her eyes searching his own as they walked together down one of Hogwarts’ ever-changing staircases.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Harry replied, irritatingly answering her question with a rhetorical question of his own. “There’s a dark wizard out there who can conjure anything he wants at a moment’s notice. The horcrux that’s keeping him alive, if you can even call what he has a life, is somewhere inside the tower and we don’t know where it is or how to find it. Destroying the tower is the only way we can be sure…”

“I’m well aware of what you said to Headmistress McGonagall,” Hermione interrupted him, her voice perhaps sounding a bit frostier than she had intended. “But I’m quite sure there’s something else on your mind. Some other reason that you’re doing this…”

“It’s unfinished business, Hermione,” Harry answered her. “Can’t we just leave it at that?”

“It’s not your unfinished business, though, is it?” Hermione asked probingly.

Harry stopped abruptly and let out a long sigh. “No, it isn’t. It never has been.” His hands reached for hers and held them gently. Hermione relished the feel of his fingertips pressed against her own. “When Dumbledore died, he left me a vault full of galleons, several hours’ worth of his most cryptically helpful memories and the not insignificant responsibility of ending the lives of two dark wizards.” He smiled at Hermione wryly. “Honestly, I think I would have preferred to have been left out of his will altogether.”

“I know a part of you must really feel that way,” Hermione told him softly, “but I also know that there’s another part of you that wants to see them defeated. That wants to see evil lose and justice prevail.” Hermione’s eyes shone with pride. “Nobody becomes a hero because they’re forced to, Harry. If you want to know my opinion, I think you’re doing this because you need to, not out of obligation and certainly not for fortune and fame as you have plenty of both, but because it’s just…well…right.” As Harry turned his eyes away from her own, she added, “Right?”

“I reckon so,” Harry replied with a nod, his voice slightly hesitant. “I just keep thinking…if I got my bum royally kicked by the withered-up remains of Jean-Paul Gerard, how the hell am I ever going to defeat Voldemort?”

Hermione gave him a reassuring smile. “If it means anything at all, I have complete faith in you…and so did Dumbledore. Don’t you see? He trusted you. That’s why he left everything in your hands.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Hermione, but my hands are bloody and wrapped in gauze,” Harry muttered with a mirthless chuckle.

“And I’m still holding onto them, aren’t I?” Hermione asked him, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze as if to remind him of that fact. “You don’t have to go charging off on your own, Harry. I don’t think anyone ever expected you to do this alone.”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Harry replied as his eyes found Hermione’s again and she could have sworn she detected the barest hint of vulnerability and longing in them. “I couldn’t do any of it without you.”

“You’ll never have to,” she told him. Hermione stood on the tips of her toes and planted a chaste kiss on his lips. “You’ll always have me by your side.”

Had Hermione still questioned whether Harry truly loved her, the look he gave her at that moment would have erased every doubt. “Do you really mean that?”

Hermione felt a twinge of sorrow at his uncertainty, but repressed it easily. “Of course I do.”

A victorious grin spread over Harry’s face as he reached the bottom of the stairs and began to lead the way out of the castle. “Great. I was worried for a minute that you wouldn’t go for what I’ve got planned, but now that I know I’ll always have you by my side…”

Hermione felt a knot begin to form in her stomach. “What do you mean?”

Harry flashed her a smile that at any other time would have made her heart melt. “We’re going to have to fly.”

***

“Every magical thing ever devised has had a purpose; a reason to exist. In this respect, the Oracular Tower is no different than a wand or a remembrall. It is quite different, however, when you consider how much magical power the structure was intended to house: power enough to give hundreds of students without the gift of the sight or prophecy the ability to see their own future. Magic that strong cannot be held at bay forever, not even by one such as Jean Paul Gerard.”

***

“It’s not as though I’m opposed to it in principle,” Hermione explained in as calm and rational a voice as she could manage. “Obviously, witches and wizards who can make objects float should be able to do more or less the same thing to themselves, it’s just…”

Harry managed to erase the victorious grin from his face as he attempted to soothe Hermione’s jangled nerves. Other than the occasional pick-up game of Quidditch at the Burrow, his girlfriend was not much accustomed to flying. “You’ll only be flying with me on Buckbeak, er, Witherwings. It’s just like in third year when we saved Sirius.”

“Yes, of course,” Hermione agreed with a nod of her head, although her nervousness was still apparent. “Just like in third year.”

Harry swiftly put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. “Except we weren’t dating in third year, were we?” He planted a soft but firm kiss on her lips and watched happiness replace anxiety on her face. “Seems a shame, doesn’t it? Holding onto each other for our very lives, relishing the warmth of each other’s bodies and all of it only platonic.”

“I don’t know if all of it was platonic,” Hermione said with a sly smile as she kissed him back. “I think there were subtle hints even then that there would be something more between us.”

“Really?” Harry replied, his eyebrows rising in mock confusion. “I must have been rather clueless not to pick up on them sooner.”

Hermione thought that over for a moment. “Better late than never.” She then gave him a kiss that could in no way be considered platonic.

Moments later, Harry and Hermione came up for air and found themselves surrounded by Ron, Luna, Ginny and Neville. “If you had told me you were bringing me here to watch them snog, I would have told you where you could shove this broomstick,” Ginny said bitterly as her elbow nudged Ron’s arm none too gently.

Still holding Hermione’s gaze, Harry replied softly, “We’ve gone through a lot these last few years.” He turned around slightly so that he could address all five of them. “All of us. Our friendship has had its rough patches,” his eyes lingered briefly on Ron and Ginny, “and we may not always see things the same way,” he gave Luna a small smile as he looked in her direction, “but we’ve always been there for each other when it counted, haven’t we?

“There’s a bond between us, linking us together. Dumbledore thought it was a form of magic… core links. He thought that together the six of us could defeat Voldemort. I’m not really sure about that myself. But I’d like to be. I guess you could say I want to try us out. Give the ‘core links’ a test run.

“By now, all of you know about Gerard and the horcrux in the tower. Tonight I’m going to try to destroy it, but I need all of you with me.” Harry suddenly looked uncertain. “I…I dunno if we’d be as powerful if one of you sat it out. I have to admit I don’t know much about this yet…”

“I found a wonderful book on the subject,” Luna interjected enthusiastically. “Cor, You’ve Formed a Core Link by Herb Coriander. I’d be happy to loan it to you.”

Harry gave Luna a nod of gratitude and then continued, “I reckon what I’m saying is…are all of you in?”

Ron, Hermione and Luna agreed rather quickly. Ginny took a moment to pout and then nodded sharply. Neville merely scratched his head. “I’m sorry, Harry, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

***

“A band of souls brought together in common purpose is a very powerful thing in the world of magic, more so even than in the world of muggles. It is difficult to say what it was that truly bonded together those who brought down the Oracular Tower. Some say it was a type of ‘core link’, a form of the magic that traditionally occurs only between old and powerful married witches and wizards. Whatever the explanation, none can doubt their determination, their bravery or their willingness to sacrifice for the common good.”

***

As he led the way to Hagrid’s hut, Harry felt like a complete idiot. ‘How could I have forgotten to tell Neville about the tower? And Jean Paul Gerard? And the core links?’ Hermione, Ginny and Luna were more than happy to fill Neville in on the details, but still… ‘I can’t believe I forgot. I’d kick my own bum right now if I could.’

Just as Harry was imagining how a wizard might perform a spell that would allow him to temporarily remove his own leg and use it to kick his own behind, Ron tapped him on the shoulder. “Er, Harry? D’you have a minute?”

Harry had seldom seen Ron with such a serious expression on his face. Curiosity drove him to answer, “Of course, Ron. What’s on your mind?”

“It’s, erm, about these core links that McGonagall seems to think we have,” Ron began nervously. “You know how she said that they normally only form between husbands and wives, right?” Harry nodded. “Do you think that that was the reason you dated Ginny?”

“I really don’t know, Ron,” Harry answered him with a shrug. “I reckon it’s possible.”

“But now you’re going out with Hermione, right?” Ron asked, looking slight wary.

“Yes,” Harry replied, enunciating the word slowly and looking at Ron as though he were quite daft. “What exactly are you getting at?”

“‘S nothing, really,” Ron assured him as he scratched the back of his neck anxiously. “It’s just…you have a core link with Ginny and you dated her and you also have a core link with Hermione and now you’re seeing her…”

Harry watched Ron’s eyes as they wandered away from Harry and onto the blonde Ravenclaw walking behind them who was currently holding her nose and trying to explain to Neville what Jean Paul Gerard smelled like. “You’re worried I’m going to start dating Luna, aren’t you?”

Ron’s ears turned very red. “I wouldn’t say ‘worried’, exactly…”

“Well you don’t have to,” Harry confided in him with a smile. “I don’t see myself going after any other witches for a long, long time. I’m very happy with Hermione.” He shot Ron a sly look. “So, you and Luna…”

A moonstruck expression filled Ron’s face. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

Both boys turned to look at Luna Lovegood just as the three girls were finishing up explaining the events of the past few days to Neville. “And that,” Luna declared, “is how Harry Potter was defeated by a hat.”

“I wasn’t defeated,” Harry retorted through clenched teeth. Before he could say anything more, however, he realized that the six of them had reached Hagrid’s hut and that the half-giant himself was standing only a few meters ahead with a dead ferret in one hand and a slab of rotten meat in the other.

“Good to see ya again, ‘arry,” Hagrid called out with a friendly smile. “I managed ta round up a thestral for ya.” As Harry drew closer to him, Hagrid whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with ya? I ‘ave more o’ that dragon sleeping powder sitting around, you know. Sometimes it works on Fang when e’s havin’ a rough night...”

“Thanks, Hagrid, but no,” Harry answered him with a grin of genuine gratitude. “I think this is something the six of us need to do on our own.” On that note, he turned to Neville and asked, “Are you coming with us?”

“Of course,” Neville agreed instantly, although an expression of uncertainty remained on his face. “Although I’m still not sure what you want me to do…”

“Neville, you’ll be with Luna on the thestral,” Harry told him in an authoritative voice. “Ron and Ginny will be riding on their brooms and Hermione will be flying with me on Witherwings.” While Harry spoke, Luna sat sidesaddle on the thestral and watched as Hagrid fed the beast the bloody meat in his hand. The others were listening intently, however. “Once we’re airborne and flying in formation around the tower, try every destructive spell you know.” After the proper formalities, Harry mounted the hippogriff and helped Hermione to follow suit. “We’re going to bring the Oracular Tower down on Jean Paul Gerard’s moldy, moth-eaten ears.”

“What if this doesn’t work?” Hermione whispered in his ear just as the six of them prepared to take off.

“Then we’re back to square one,” Harry answered her grimly. Somehow, though, from somewhere deep inside of him, he had a feeling that this time the battle would go his way.

***

“It began with a brash and foolhardy plan to destroy the Oracular Tower with little more than common schoolyard spellwork. While nobility of spirit ultimately overcame the operation’s shortcomings, there were certain complications which became apparent almost immediately.”

***

Having blasted a hole clean through the top of the tower, Harry was astonished to see the resulting airborne brick and mortar suddenly reverse course and return to its former location. The Oracular Tower looked pristine and undamaged. Harry resisted the urge to curse aloud. “This isn’t going to work,” he called to Hermione over the howling wind around them. “The tower must have built-in magical defenses.”

Various instruments of death then began to fly from the top of the tower. Seemingly coming from nowhere, battle axes, broadswords and flaming arrows shot out at the six young witches and wizards. Ron maneuvered his broom so that he was now flying alongside Harry and Hermione, his hair slightly singed from an arrow that was a mite too close for comfort. “Built-in defenses, eh? What gave you the first clue?”

“We’re going to have to regroup,” Harry conceded glumly. “Get out of here and figure out another way to…”

Just at that moment something flew from the tower and struck Harry in the head. And everything went dark.

***

When Harry awoke he was lying at the foot of the Oracular Tower, although it was now shrouded in a dense blackness, giving it a distinctly ethereal appearance. Standing over him was a somewhat familiar face. “You’ve arrived at last,” the young, auburn-haired wizard greeted him with a friendly smile. “I was beginning to worry.”

Harry must have looked terribly confused, because he certainly felt that way. “Where am I?” An awful thought occurred to him. “I’m not…dead, am I?” It would be completely unfair, surviving death at the hands of Voldemort as a baby and then escaping from his clutches again and again upon his return to the magical world, only to die in a fall from a hippogriff.

“No,” the teenage wizard replied, shaking his head slowly. “I should say not. You are only dreaming now. Or perhaps I should ask you to see it as one last vision from the tower.”

“You’re Dumbledore, aren’t you?” Harry asked dazedly. The younger version of his schoolboy mentor nodded. “I saw the picture of you in that photo album in the tower. The one with you and your family…”

“A distant memory long ago forgotten, Harry,” Dumbledore told him with a forlorn look in his eyes. “Discarded and laid to rest here, along with so many others.” His hand gestured toward the Oracular Tower, which looked as though it had been freshly painted jet black.

“You said this was a vision from the tower,” Harry reasoned aloud, trying to work through everything going on around him at his own pace. “What kind of a future is this?”

“No future at all,” Dumbledore answered with a quirky half-smile. “This is the way things stand right now. Tell me, what do you see happening above you?”

In contrast to the darkness of the tower, the sun seemed exceptionally bright. Harry shielded his eyes and looked up to the sky, his jaw nearly dropping in surprise. “It’s Hermione and Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna. They’re still fighting the tower…and they’re winning.” Indeed, the tower was now falling apart all around him, although the base of it remained intact and covered in darkness. “They’re winning without me.”

“They’re winning because of you,” Dumbledore corrected him. “Are you still so completely unaware of the magic that binds you to them?”

One of Harry’s eyebrows rose. “You mean the core links?”

Dumbledore’s smile widened. “You may call it that if you like. In fact it is love, pure and simple. You will find no greater force in the magical world than that.”

Harry frowned. “But I thought it was supposed to be the core links that would defeat Voldemort?”

“You will defeat Voldemort, Harry,” Dumbledore assured him with a twinkle in his eye. “The method is little more than incidental.”

“Easy for you to say,” Harry muttered to himself. Before he could say more, however, he noticed that only the darkened bottom portion of the tower still stood. His friends had thoroughly destroyed the rest of the tower but now it seemed as though their collective magic had fallen short of demolishing it all. “What’s going on?”

“Have you ever considered how the tower must feel?” Dumbledore asked him, seemingly changing the subject. “Built to do such a wonderful, noble thing and then subjected to the whims of a deranged madman?”

If Harry were being honest, he would have admitted that he never considered that the tower could feel anything, but it seemed rather rude to point that out. “Er, I suppose I haven’t.”

“The tower wants to be destroyed, Harry,” Dumbledore told him flatly. “It tires of its magic being perverted again and again over countless generations. I wasn’t strong enough to do the job, but you are. You are the one who must end it.”

Harry’s frustration with the situation finally boiled over to the surface. “But I haven’t the foggiest idea how to do that! I tried confronting him with that stupid sword you left me…”

“But you didn’t decipher the entire message I left for you, now did you?” Dumbledore queried pointedly.

“Of course we did!” Harry exclaimed, tossing his hands in the air. “‘Defeat Riddle,’” he began to recite from memory. “‘Core links. Trust Minerva. Defeat Gerard. Critz swords. Hidden memories. Remember Riddle’s diary.’”

“I believe I told you to remember Riddle’s diary twice,” Dumbledore pointed out somewhat smugly.

“Yeah, but I never understood what you meant by…” Harry stopped speaking as the wheels began to slowly turn in his brain. “You were telling me something about Gerard’s horcrux, weren’t you? About where it is or what it’s like or something?”

“Or something, yes,” Dumbledore acknowledged with a nod.

“OK, Riddle’s diary.” Harry went over everything he could remember about the diary in his mind. ‘It was a horcrux. It possessed Ginny. She tried to flush it down the toilet. Words could appear in the diary without anyone writing anything on the page…’

“The cornerstone,” he said aloud in realization. “That’s it, isn’t it? The tower’s cornerstone is a horcrux!”

“You’ve done well,” the red-haired, freckle-faced version of Dumbledore told him with a proud grin. “Now you must use that ‘stupid sword’ I left you and finish the task at hand.”

“Wait,” Harry called after him as he began to depart. He felt the tug of reality in the back of his mind, drawing him back to where he needed to go, but he couldn’t resist a parting word with his old mentor and friend. Call it unfinished business. “Are you really Dumbledore? Or are you just some figment of my imagination?”

“When we die, we leave only pieces of ourselves behind,” Dumbledore responded sagely. “Pleasant memories and small fragments of wisdom, if we’re fortunate. Bitterness and resentment, if we are not. I am what remains of me inside you.”

That didn’t really answer his question, but Harry decided to ask another anyhow. “Why did you trust me? To defeat Montverde and Voldemort?”

Dumbledore shrugged. “What choice did I have? My time was at an end and yours were the only shoulders I saw capable of taking over this burden.” As the vision began to dissipate, Dumbledore waved to him and Harry could not help but stare at his now-intact right hand. “Goodbye, my young friend. I wish you a wonderful journey, although I can scarcely imagine that you’re capable of partaking in any other kind.”

***

Harry’s eyes blinked open slowly. He felt like he had been run over by the Knight Bus several times and then dropped off at King’s Cross so that the Hogwarts Express could have a go, too. “He’s coming to,” Ron declared jubilantly to everyone, although he tugged gently on Hermione’s arm to make sure she knew her boyfriend was conscious. “You gave us a pretty big scare there, Harry.”

Harry managed to raise himself up on one elbow and then support the upper portion of his body with both of them. “You destroyed the tower.”

Hermione grimaced. “Not all of it. For some reason, the base of the tower is still able to repel all of our best destructive spells.”

Harry nodded, although it seemed to take more effort than it used to. “The cornerstone is Gerard’s horcrux.” When both Hermione and Ron frowned at that, he elaborated. “‘Remember Riddle’s diary’. That was Dumbledore’s way of telling us what Lord Montverde made into a horcrux.” Slowly, cautiously (and somewhat laboriously) Harry drew the remaining sword of Guillaume Prospero Critz from its scabbard at his side.

Ron’s frown didn’t go away. “And you figured all of this out while you were unconscious?”

“Not exactly,” Harry explained without really explaining. “I’ll explain later.” Before Jean Paul Gerard could do anything else, conjure any terrible beast or foul-smelling army, Harry marched up to the cornerstone and jammed the sword through the stone. It went in just like Dumbledore had said it would all of those years ago…like a hot knife through butter.

With a violent roar, the entrance to Gerard’s secret room within the tower flew open, revealing the decaying form of the Medieval French wizard. “It’s over,” Harry told him defiantly. “We won.” He was not only thinking of his friends standing around him, but about all of the students who had been tricked into spending a year of their lives here, searching in vain for a future that was only an illusion; a wicked, terrible lie.

As his breathing became ragged and a blackish ooze seeped from his pierced chest, Jean Paul Gerard laughed softly. “You have lost, Monsieur Potter. All of you. England will burn.” After a moment, his frail chest finally sagged around the blade although his eyes failed to close, almost as if they refused to concede defeat.

“Maybe,” Harry answered the man who was no longer there. “But at least we’ll be here to see what it looks like after the fire goes out.”

“And to pick up the pieces,” Hermione said softly and intertwined her hand with Harry’s.

“Ahem,” the Conjuring Hat interjected, its tone deliberately diplomatic. “I do hope you’re not going to hold me responsible for anything Montverde did. I am only a magical tool, after all. Hardly any more or less responsible than a wand would be, if you think about it.” When none of the teenagers standing around said anything, the hat began to nonchalantly bounce off of Jean Paul Gerard’s head. “Yes, well, in that case…”

Harry leveled his wand at the hat. “Incendio!”

***

“And that,” Hermione finished with a smirk, “is how Harry Potter got revenge on the hat that defeated him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to put that in Hogwarts: a History,” Harry protested, as a hint of horror entered his voice. “And besides, I wasn’t defeated.”

“Of course not, dear,” Hermione said in a terribly insincere voice. They had been married for barely more than two years, but in some ways it felt like longer (since they had known each other practically their entire lives). Although in other, more intimate ways, they were still a bit like newlyweds. “You were the wizard who finished off Voldemort, after all. Couldn’t have wizarding posterity believing that you had so much trouble with a magical fashion accessory, could we?”

“I dunno,” Harry admitted with a winsome smile. “After that incident with that tie Fred and George gave me on our wedding day, I think everybody in Britain knows fashion accessories are my one weakness.”

Hermione chuckled lightly. “It’s a good thing Voldemort never figured that out. Otherwise he might have sent a pair of clogs after you. Or, perish the thought, a bulky sweater.”

Harry couldn’t help but laugh at that as he drew his wife into his arms. “So, Mrs. Potter, just how are you going to end Hogwarts: a History’s new entry on the Oracular Tower?”

“Hmm,” Hermione replied playfully. “I was thinking…after Harry Potter vanquished the evil tower and the even more evil wizard who lived inside it, he then proceeded to take his girlfriend inside the castle and snog her silly.” Harry gave her an intensely skeptical look. “What? It has to be historically accurate.”

“I suppose you’re right about that,” Harry said as he kissed her gently on the lips. “What do you say to a historical re-enactment?”

“I’d say that sounds wonderful,” Hermione admitted. As they began to walk away from the tower, her curiosity got the better of her. “Harry, do you ever wish you had really been able to see the future when you were up in that tower?”

Harry Potter thought it over for only the briefest of moments. “Not for a second.” He gave his wife a wide, beaming smile. “I have the woman I want beside me and every obstacle I’ve been struggling against since boyhood out of my way. Knowing what’s ahead would spoil half the fun. Now I just want to be able to enjoy the journey.”

And, of course, they did.

My sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. I hope you liked "Going On" but even if you didn't, I urge, beg and implore you to check out "Unchain My Heart", which will appear (hopefully) on Portkey New Year's Day, 2010. Thanks for all the love and support! Long live Portkey!

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