And here is the third of the day that I promised you. Some of my ff.net readers were rather enthusiastic about this one. Hope you will be as well.
Harry Potter and the Knowledge of a Mother
By Pearl Drop Angel
Chapter 12: Foreboding
Strange things kept on happening in Riddle home. Strangely clothed people had been going in and out for the past two years or so, unusual displays of eerie light, the disappearance of the caretaker…the villagers were scared. Which was exactly why they simply stayed clear of the property and acted as though nothing out of the usual was happening at all.
And He Who Must Not Be Named rather liked it that way. Those stupid Muggles were so worried about their own self preservation they didn't even have the courage to come see what destruction this home would bring, so that when it would strike, it would fall upon them like a thunder shower, and all they warning the would have would be the big black clouds forming quickly on the horizon. Even the forces of order didn't dare step near the house, the fact that nobody had openly reported any unusual activity as their excuse.
The time for their breach was near, though Wormtail, his snivelling servant, didn't seem to agree. The coward.
"They have eyes everywhere," he sniffed, rubbing his hands together nervously, his silver one gleaming a cold white in light of the fireplace.
Stupid mouse. "We shan't be seen," the voice that spoke was cold, hissing, smooth, and the purest form of evil, coming from a hooded figure, standing before the fire, a gigantic snake huddled at its feel.
It wasn't enough reassurance for the balding, short, plump man. There were people there who wanted nothing but his head. "How?"
"I have thought of it," was the elusive answer.
"But what of Malfoy?" The pale man asked. Lucius Malfoy had been quite a source of worry in the past couple of years. The Ministry was watching him far too closely.
"He has eluded questioning thrice. He will last till the attack," another bewildering answer, but it was all he would give.
Still, the nervous man wasn't satisfied. "What of his son?" That had been a true source of worry to their entire line. "He's been teetering."
"He's of little use now." Was he though? Could he be of use to their targets?
"How will we breach?" The man snivelled again.
"We are nearly ready for the attack." That wasn't an answer, but it made Wormtail swallow in an in vane attempt at clearing a lump of fear out of his throat.
°*°
"Harry, what's wrong?"
Harry took his eyes off of Cicciobello, who was having a grand time telling the Great Hall of how Snape's first kiss had to spit on the floor all the amount of saliva he'd left in her mouth, and turned his attention to Hermione, who had issued the question. It was better not to worry her. "Huh?" He tried to sound nonchalant. "Nothing."
"Don't lie to me," she commended annoyed. "You've been edgy for months."
What was the point of hiding anything from her? "I've been…having…feelings…" he ventured.
Ron perked up at this enough to ask, with his mouth full of stuffed chicken, "Like?" Harry's tone wasn't really leading him into believing that Harry was about to confess his undying love to their best friend, so it must have been something else worthy of almost as much interest.
"My scar…" not a good beginning, "it crawls…all the time."
"Oh!" Ron mumbled, his mouth gaping open, letting the chicken tumble out.
"Now it's humming," Harry added.
"That doesn't sound good," Ron replied, his mouth now devoid of food.
"It isn't," Harry's reply was quick and clear.
"Did you tell Dumbledore?" Hermione asked worried.
"Yes," this time the answer was slow, thoughtful, and almost unwilling, as though he didn't wish to tell them.
"What did he say?" A pox on cleverly curious women!
"They're…preparing an attack," he mumbled, almost inaudibly, yet they both heard clearly enough.
"What?" Ron's high pitched squeal made the entire table's eardrums ring from abuse.
"Oh, honestly Ron!" Hermione huffed. "It was obvious! Otherwise, why the Duel Training?"
"Because it should always be good to know how to defend yourself," he replied quickly. That's what the teacher had been telling everyone, anyhow.
"Especially when war's about to start," Hermione's open answer was almost brutal for Ron. He practically felt a physical blow.
"But they don't have enough followers yet!" Ron was certain of this. His father's ties in the Ministry were still strong.
"No, they don't," a swell of hope bubbled within the redhead, "but they have enough to make a complete breach of the school. Once they do that, and the get Dumbledore out of the way, recruiting more people will be so easy for them they'd have an army in less than a month," the bubble of hope burst before it was even born.
Harry agreed with her. "Yeah, and they'll attack soon."
Ron swallowed. "How soon?"
"Easter at the latest," he answered. "It's a good thing we manage to finish our transfiguration so soon."
"What do you mean?" The redhead was lost.
"Don't you get it?" Hermione asked exasperated. "We trained so we could survey Hogwarts!"
"You mean, watch guard?" Ron asked confused.
"Yes. I'm sure they've thought of a way to breach, tough they haven't gone through it yet. Hogwarts has a lot of wards and charms protecting it. To breach they'd need a lot of people. It's not easy getting such a crowd around here without drawing attention to it. They have to be patient, and when the time comes, they'll be quiet," Hermione explained. "If we keep watch we have time to warn the castle, and organize a defence."
"Dumbledore didn't tell me anything, but I'm sure he's got something planned already," Harry put in.
"Oh," Ron didn't seem to be cheered by this in the least.
°*°
Turning over on the blanket covering the Astronomy Tower's cold floor that they were laying on, Krista draped her arm over Ron's unusually stiff form. Something was bothering him badly. Sometime around lunch he began seriously worrying about something, but he didn't seem to want to tell her. Maybe it was something important. Harry and Hermione had seemed very worried lately, and very edgy as well. Maybe they'd told him what they knew. Dragging her body up along his so that they were at eye level she asked. "What's bothering you?"
He seemed surprised that she noticed his state of mind. He shouldn't have been. Krista had been observing him and his friends for so long that she could guess what they were feeling with just a simple glance. "Nothing," he tried to sound truthful.
"Is it something with…You-Know-Who?" She asked, her eyebrows raised with worry.
His own shot up in surprise. "How'd you know?"
She shrugged. "I noticed Harry's been touching his scar a lot," she replied matter of factly. "Every time that happened you usually all ended up in the hospital wing," she told him with a small laugh.
He chuckled, too, but sobered very quickly. Too quickly for Ron. "Don't tell anybody," he didn't sound menacing. He sounded truly worried. Something big was bound to happen soon. The three of them looked like they were afraid it would all fall on them within moments, and they weren't sure whether or not they could keep it from crushing them.
She wasn't upset that he asked her that. She knew he did only to be absolutely certain that the news wouldn't spread past the two of them, and the other couple. "I won't," she reassured him, "but are you okay with it?"
Ron didn't answer right away. "I'm scared," that much was obvious, "but I don't risk too much," and it was true. In fact, he could almost be considered an outsider to all this compared to his friends. Like always. "I don't risk like Harry," he finished.
A mask of confusion crossed her face. "What do you mean?"
"Soon…maybe too soon, Harry's going to have to face him," Ron was truly worried for his friend.
Krista held him even more tightly to her body. "Don't worry," she reassured him, "Hermione will make him live," she sounded like she knew the deepest secret of the world, yet, for the life of her, Ron knew she wasn't going to tell him.
It didn't matter.
She'd never been wrong before. He trusted her to be right this time as well.
°*°
Ginny was worried. Malfoy had been acting stranger than usual. She'd been watching him at the Slytherin table for the past few days, more than she usually did. He ate by himself. Little by little he'd alienated himself from the members of his house, including Crabbe and Goyle, and now that his mates were starting to notice it, they were getting angry. She could see them all conspiring against him, only a few seats down from his own.
He was completely aware of it, of course, yet he chose not to acknowledge it, which irritated the rest of the Slytherins even further.
He was avoiding her, too.
For quite the duration of the week, he never spoke to her, he didn't write to her, he didn't even look like he knew she existed. And it hurt. Had she done something wrong? Something to upset him? Well, if that was the case, she wanted to know what it was. She wasn't going to let him alienate her without a good reason.
The second she saw him stand up and leave the Hall, she shot out of there like a bat out of hell, hot on his heels. Thankfully, the halls were deserted.
He was waiting for her around a corner.
"If you want to follow someone you should try to be less obvious," it wasn't one of his sharp taunts. He actually sounded resigned.
"Why have you been avoiding me?" She was upset with him. One day they were confidants, the next they were strangers. She didn't want it to be like that.
"Because," he said the word as though it were the solution to every inquisition the world would ever see.
Not enough for her. "Because," she probed him on.
"Because when I'm around you I feel like everything that we worked for in the last years is worthless," he replied. She'd never heard him so depressed. So full of self-loathing. And who was we?
She was confused, and a little scared at what that might have meant. "What do you mean, Draco?" The use of his first name seemed to depress him even more.
"If you knew that someone important to you," he began, stepping closer to her, "was about to do something that you used to want, that you helped to get, but that now you think is wrong…" should he continue? "What would you do?"
She was a little intimidated by the desperation of his voice, and the anguish that she'd never thought she'd see on his face. "Depends," she replied breathlessly.
"On what?"
"On how important that person is for me, and how wrong I think that act might be," her response was quick, and he guessed it came from the knowledge of what her twin brothers used to pull on people. He suspected quite a few times that they planned dangerous pranks and she spoke them out of them. "And on how much I love that person," she added.
"I don't love that person," he told her quickly. "But I can't defy him either."
He was scared. "I can't tell you what to do, Draco," she whispered, understanding that he was asking her just that, "and either way, you are going to regret the choice you make," how did she know that? "I can only tell you to choose the one that you'll regret the least. If you do that, maybe one day you'll be happy with your choice."
Now all he had to choose was the lesser of the two evils.
Easier said than done.
°*°
When Ron came back from the Astronomy tower he saw Harry, thrashing in the midst of a nightmare. They'd been frequent lately. It probably had to do with his scar twitching. As he laid down on his bed, he wondered what could possibly be haunting his dreams, but sleep claimed him almost instantly.
Harry kept on twitching though, and it was getting worse. He didn't know how it started, all he knew was that he was in the middle of it.
A battle field. No, the Hogwarts courtyard! The castle was at his back, the entrance only a few yards away from him. A storm was forming quickly. Too quickly, it moved so fast over them that it looked like those documentaries where they displayed the growth of a flower in fast forwarded motion. Just like the flower's petals, dark, dangerous black clouds formed atop their heads, quicker than his breath.
He welcomed it, though. He knew it was benevolent toward him.
Bodies were falling at his feet. Some were friends, others were enemies. He was calling out spells, waving his wand, but he didn't know what charms he was using. He couldn't even hear his own voice.
There were students, Death Eaters, Giants.
Teacher defending their pupils, children and teenagers defending bothers, sisters, lovers, friends.
It was a true battle.
And then he heard a laugh.
An all familiar laugh that he wished he would never hear again ringing, carried by the rain, rather than being dampened by it.
He was holding her. Voldemort was holding her. He was holding Hermione.
He was laughing, taunting Harry's hurt and stupefied expression at seeing Hermione's frightened face begging him for help, Voldemort holding his wand against her throat. She would never be able to dodge the spell, and he would never reach her on time. He was too far away.
She was barely able to speak the words. "Harry, the lightning! The lightning, Harry!" and then Voldemort's voice was the only one filling the courtyard, filling it with the sounds of the killing curse, green light, and then nothing but black.
Harry woke up in a cold sweat, his teeth hurt from all the clenching of his jaws, his nails had drawn blood from his palms, yet he ignored that pain. All he felt was his heart beating and echoing in his ears, his ragged breathing, making him feel like he'd truly lived the battle, and not only dreamt it, Hermione's scream as the green light erupted from Voldemort's wand.
Hermione's terrified expression haunted him for the rest of the night.
To be continued.