As I told another reviewer, I am taking scenes from both the films and the books and mixing them with my own ideas. Needless to say I find that while the books are superior, parts of the movies do add to the dramatic suspense and tension of a given scene, and the line of events is somewhat more clearly laid out. I hope it to be a rather healthy mix of the two.
/ - / - / - /
Harry and company stood in a gathered circle for several moments, each blinking in random succession at the man named Bartemis as he walked back and forth between the lot of them, as if he were about to explode at any moment. Finally he turned away, seeming to look off in the distance, while the rest of the aurors took stock of the scene. Harry leaned over towards Arthur, whispering as he spoke.
"Why does he seem out of sorts sir?" Harry asked, and Arthur placed a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head as he did so.
"Ask me again when we get back to the Burrow Harry," he quietly said, earning a nod back from said wizard. Harry turned his head back only to have it come face to face with Bartemis, his older face staring intently at him with a scowl seeming to have been permanently etched onto his face. Harry could see the sweat beaming down off the angry man and a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Just as suddenly as he had rounded on him, Bartemis turned away from Harry.
"WINKY!" he cried out, and there was a soft pop down towards the ground. Everyone looked down to see a small, shriveled creature near the ground, shaking like a leaf caught in winter's chill.
"Y-yes Master Crouch...sir...." the elf managed to squeak out, only to get a swift boot to the gut and be sent flying several meters away. Hermione screamed in righteous indignation, but Harry managed to hold her back to some degree.
"You've failed me for the last time....ELF!" Bartemis shouted, pulling his glove off of his right hand. "And I'll see to it that you never fail me...AGAIN!" With that he violently threw down the glove at Winky....watching in anger as it landed straight on the elf.
"NO MASTER! NOT CLOTHES! PLEASE MASTER DON'T SEND WINKY AWAY!" But Bartemis would hear none of it. In a flash, he was gone. Several of the aurors followed suit, but two of them remained behind, tending to a final detail. Hermione at this point broke free of Harry and ran over to where Winky was laying on the ground, cradling the glove given to her by Bartemis, and crying her little eyes out.
"There there now....it's alright little one," she said repeatedly, trying to comfort the house elf. Hermione let her use the sleeve of her jacket as a handkerchief, all the while staring up at Mr. Weasley with anger in her eyes. "How can anyone be so callous to a creature! It's absolutely barbaric!"
"Come on Hermione....it's just a house elf," Ron off-handedly said, earning him a sharp glare from Hermione. He quickly shrinked back. "I mean, yeah....that was pretty brutal and all but....I've seen worse from other masters."
"No one has the right to treat another creature like that," Harry said resolutely, a far-off look in his eyes. "I don't care if it is the natural order of things, that doesn't make it right Ron."
"Exactly my point," Hermione chimed in, glancing down at Winky with concern on her face. Winky sniffed a few times, before looking up at Hermione.
"Thank you misses," she said in broken speech, "Misses is too kind to bad house elf like Winky...." she paused a moment before tearing up again.
"Look at it this way," Hermione said, trying to be as positive as she could, "You never have to work for that horrible man again."
That was certainly the wrong thing to say, as almost immediately Winky exploded into tears once more, and snapped her fingers to disappear to Merlin knew where. Hermione stared at the empty space, and shook her head. "Honestly, the way some people are...."
"I'm afraid the younger Mr. Weasley is right Miss....a lot of house elves are treated worse." Hermione looked up quickly and saw a towering black man standing over her. She quickly stood up and backed away to give him space, as the rest of the group joined her near the tall man. "Sorry if I startled you," he said in a soft yet commanding voice, "My name is Kingsley Shacklebolt, Auror 2nd Class. And my counter part over there is...."
There was a loud thump as a young woman with bubblegum pink hair tripped over a fallen tentpole off in the distance. Kingsley grumbled and shook his head. "...Nymphadora Tonks, Auror 5th Class." The young woman tried to shake things off as best she could, idly running her hand through her hair and leaving slightly green highlights where her fingers were. Harry's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
"What the heck just happened with her hair?" he asked, and Tonks smiled as she drew nearer, fluffing up her hair slightly in the process.
"I'm a metamorphamagus," she proudly announced. She stood next to Kingsley, her smile never breaking. She squinted her eyes and stared at Harry for a long while. After a few seconds she snapped her fingers and her smile grew broader. "Merlin's beard! You're Harry Potter!" Harry, for his part, merely sighed a bit internally at the recognition, but still offered the best face he could.
"Leave the boy alone Tonks," Kingsley stated, moving between her and Harry slightly, "He gets enough of that without you adding to it." He gestured with his wand and a pad of paper and a muggle ballpoint pen appeared in his hands. "I'm going to need to take a statement from all of you, particularly you two." He pointed between Harry and Hermione.
After giving their statements separately, Kingsley wrote a few more things down on his pad of paper. Harry motioned skyward and asked, "Would you mind explaining what exactly that was?" Kingsley cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing, allowing Tonks to answer.
"It was the Dark Mark...You-Know-Who's Mark. And those people tonight were his followers, Death Eaters. There were always rumors of attacks but, never anything solid until tonight." Kingsley cleared his throat, and Tonks looked back at him. "Right then....we should be going. It was nice to meet you Harry....Hermione. Arthur, always a pleasure." Arthur nodded his head and the two Aurors quickly vanished with a pop.
"Well," Arthur said, dusting himself off slightly, "We should get back to the portkey. Amos and Cedric have already gone home."
"That man they captured..." Harry said to Arthur as they turned away, "His name was Barty Crouch....was he..."
"Yes Harry," Arthur interrupted, "He was Bartemis son. But that isn't the peculiar thing. The peculiar thing is that he was supposed to have died in Azkaban 13 years ago."
/ - / - / - /
The Hogwarts Express moved along the tracks at its normal rate of speed, going forward without seemingly a care in the world. In various compartments and corners of the various cars of the train, friends reacquainted themselves after a long summer separated by time and distance. Prefects new and old got their duties for the year. The snack trolley slowly made it's way up and down the train, providing sweets for the children of various types.
In one compartment however, there was little joy and little mirth. Harry, Hermione & Ron were seated together, away from the rest of the students. The twins were currently in a cabin with Lee Jordan and the rest of the Quidditch team, while Ginny had gone away with Neville to hunt down Trevor....again. Ron was frantically trying to finish homework for his newest class....to no one's surprise....while Hermione simply sat reading the Daily Prophet and Harry stared out the window, silently rubbing his forehead. Hermione glanced up from her paper, worry clear on her face.
"Harry....is it your scar again?" Harry nodded, causing Hermione to bite her bottom lip. "I thought you said the dream had gone away."
"It did," Harry said quietly, "But my scar has still been hurting ever since the world cup."
"What dream stopped and why is your scar hurting again?" Ron quickly asked, jumping into the conversation cannonball style. Hermione simply rolled her eyes while Harry turned and looked at Ron.
"I dreamt that I was watching Voldemort kill someone. I don't know who, and I don't know why. And ever since the dream stopped my scar has been throbbing." Ron nodded and turned back to his book.
"Why don't you just take a headache potion, that always works." Hermione breathed out an honestly while Harry just turned back towards the window. After a few more minutes of reading (or at least attempting to,) Ron closed his book dramatically and went to help Ginny and Neville track down the toad.
Hermione closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Sometimes Ron could be such a chore, she told herself. He was still as loyal as any friend could be, however, and that had to account for something. What was not lost on her was the somewhat longing stares that Ron could fall into on brief occasions when he thought she didn't notice. It chilled her to no end if those stares meant what she thought they meant.
Opening her eyes, she was taken aback by seeing Harry, peacefully and calmly staring out the window. The summer had certainly done nothing to help her own quest to quash her budding romantic feelings for her best friend. In her rush to "help Harry" despite her more logical judgement, she had caused those feelings to deepen considerably, and her caring for Harry seemed to grow even more than last year.
Even more troublesome was that tiny little voice of light peeking through the clouds of logic that permeated every corner of her conscious mind. This little peek into her greatest of dreams and desires consistently told her that maybe Harry felt some modicum of the affection that she had for him. She quickly quashed that line of thought and where it might lead should it ever be followed everytime it reared it's beautifully ugly head, reminding herself that, no matter how much socially that had changed, she was still Plain Old Hermione Jane, the bucktoothed, bushy-haired bookworm. In all honesty, her logical side tried to compromise with her heart, saying Ron was probably the best she could hope for. Harry Potter could remain a friend, but nothing more, nothing less.
In truth, Harry Potter was at war with himself. Not because of the incident at the World Cup, or because of the dreams he had been having, or even the throbbing in his skull, though it certainly didn't help matters any.
No, the problem was very much centered around his best friend, Hermione Granger.
Somewhere over the course of the summer, the light in which Hermione shone now differed somewhat. It was the little things that he hadn't noticed before, perhaps the things about a person that one could only notice if you lived with that person for a length of time. It was the way she bit her bottom lip when she was deep in thought. The way the sparkles in her eyes could light up a room that was still gripped in the last vestiges of night. The way the water highlighted the curvature of her body......
Harry stopped right there, clearing his throat which had suddenly become very dry. His mind was wandering to such areas of physical attraction far more than he was used to lately, and more than that he found himself thinking about Hermione in practically every waking moment he wasn't focused on something else. Whenever his mind had a spare thought to itself, it floated back to that section of his brain that Hermione Granger had invaded and set up permanent residence.
He couldn't describe these feelings, they were completely foreign to him. It was a kind of happiness, that much he could suss out. But it was the type of happiness that he just wanted to grab and wrap himself around in like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night. He had no name for this feeling, other than "happy."
'Affection?' he told himself. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was a kind of brotherly affection that he had no experience with. Then he thought to himself that those feelings were more reserved for people like Ron, the twins, and Ginny. They were more familial in nature, he thought. These feelings were more like what he had held for Cho Chang for a brief amount of time last year.
Fancy?
He could admit to himself he had something of a crush on Cho, given her beauty. On more than one occasion he had had dreams about Cho....dreams of a more intimate nature. But then whenever those dreams had come in the past, they might have been about anyone else. Katie & Angelina foremost, Lavender to some degree, even Parvati. Hermione had appeared once or twice, though she was beginning to frequent them more recently, should he ever have those dreams again, it seemed anyway. So...if he fancied Hermione....which was certainly in the realm of possibility....the question was, was it just that? Or was it something more? Was it....
Love?
Everytime he tried to associate that word with Hermione Granger, his face became increasingly flushed and his breathing a bit more labored. Alternatively, Harry would simply ignore these feelings, attempting to quell them out. If it was love, he didn't want to reveal that to Hermione, lest he risk everything he already knew for certain he had with her.
"Harry, is there something else?"
"Huh...what," Harry shook himself from thinking, and blushed a bit as he realized he had been staring at Hermione.
"Is there anything else, you zoned out there for a minute." Hermione cocked her head to the side slightly, and Harry shook his head.
"No....just thinking about Sirius. I sent Hedwig with a note to him and I'm hoping she doesn't get caught and lead the Ministry to Sirius." It wasn't a complete lie, he had sent Hedwig along to Sirius, wherever he might be, but it wasn't exactly a complete truth either.
"I'm sure she'll make it in good enough order," Hermione said with a smile, turning back to her paper. Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief, and turned back to the Scottish landscape, ignoring the fact that the pain in his scar had lessened somewhat.
/ - / - / - /
Harry and his classmates finished with a opening feast of Hogwarts and were about to tuck in for the evening. There were large murmurs about the crowd, as everyone started to get restless to move back to the common rooms to catch up on sleep for the next day. The ringing sound of a fork against a goblet silenced everyone in time, and they all turned to see Professor Dumbledore standing at the head table, his eyes twinkling madly as he did so.
"Before we tuck in for the evening I have a few start of term announcements," he bellowed out to the captivated audience. "First years will take notice that there is not to be any magic performed in the hallways between classes. Secondly, as a reminder to all students, the dark forest is strictly forbidden to all students who are not accompanied by a professor and on official school business." Harry raised an eyebrow at the addendum to the usual start of term notification.
"Finally, I would like to announce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. We are pleased to have retired master Auror Alastor Moody on our staff! Presently Mr. Moody is preoccupied, but he should arrive here in the morning." Dumbledore's tone took on a rather serious expression, and Harry idly wondered what was about to be said.
"And lastly to all students....though this may come as a surprise to many of you....for reasons that shall be announced later, and in the interest of school unity, the House Cup competition as well as the Quidditch season for this year, have been canceled.
The uproar swept through the Great Hall, as dozens of students yelled in protest. Dumbledore stood through it all, allowing the fervor to reach its crescendo, before raising his hands and silencing the majority of the hecklers. "I realize this comes as a bit of a disappointment to many of you, but rest assured it is for a good reason. Hogwarts has been chosen to play host to a legendary event that hasn't happened in over three generations." Harry could almost hear the gears in Hermione's brain shift into movement at being presented with this latest puzzle. "And though points will not be awarded and deducted this year as per usual custom, detentions will still be given for rule breaking. Now, we all have a big day tomorrow, so I think it best be appropriate that we all turn in. Prefects will lead first years to their dormitories. Good night." With another wave of his hand, the students began to disperse towards the common rooms.
"Quidditch being canceled is absolute bollocks!" Ron yelled as they walked into the common room, earning a resounding agreement from everyone else. "I don't care what sort of fancy competition they have!"
"I'm sure Dumbledore has his reasons," Hermione replied, though her face was a bit more downtrodden than most would have expected it to be. "Regardless Ron, the pitch is still there for pickup games on the weekend. I'm sure you can schedule things with Professor McGonagall." Ron scoffed off as he made his way up the stairs towards his bed and towards one of his more favorite pastimes, sleep. Harry merely stared into the fire, an emotionless mask.
"Harry..." Hermione asked, placing her hand on his shoulder.
"Just a feeling," he mechanically replied, "Like something's about to happen."
Hermione smiled at him and offered some words of comfort, patting him on the back in the process. Through it all, Ron Weasley stared at the pair of them, a scowl looming at the edge of his face.
A/N: We'll get to Moody, Snape & Ron's first idea at what he's gotten himself into with Ancient Runes class (remember he said he'd drop divination because Harry was) in the next chapter. The length is short, I know, but it was quicker out this time so that's why.