A Cadmean Victory

By: DarknessEnthroned

Fandom: harry potter

Summary: In the aftermath of a peaceful summer comes the Goblet of Fire and the chance of a quiet year to improve himself, but Harry Potter and the Quiet Revision Year was never going to last. A more mature, darker Harry, bearing the effects of 11 years of virtual solitude. GoF AU. There will be romance... eventually. And now, the remastered version is coming to my website!

Status: Completed

Fic type: Books/Harry Potter

Pairings/Main char.: Harry P., Fleur D.

Published: 2015-08-14

Last updated: 2020-10-15

Words count: 520,746

Chapters count: 104

Converted using www.FF2EBOOK.com
Date: 2021-12-09

1. From the Ashes

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The obligatory warning for those of fickle faith in fanfiction:

Single quotes are still perfectly legitimate, if I've not changed my mind in all these years, I'm not going to now! Flaming because of them will get you a reply. An unkind one. Fair warning!

Most of the fic warning comes here. There is a certain level of immersion required at the beginning of this fic. It doesn't technically just continue on from canon third year like every other GoF divergence fic on the site, this is a bit of an AU/divergence hybrid. In other words, that AU in the summary is there for a reason, but I didn't want to write out an almost identical version of canon for his first three years just for a little bit of character development that's all kept inside Harry's head.

For the purpose of explaining this key difference - Harry wasn't inexplicably resilient to the Dursley's treatment of him, but rather developed into a very introspective, internalised individual, as I believe you would if your only real company for your entire life was yourself. So while the events of canon happened without change, and Harry's canon-like surface personality is real, beneath it lies the incredibly introverted product of his upbringing and it has very slightly affected all his relationships. That's really the only change that justifies the AU marker and all I have to say. You can read and judge for yourselves!

For those re-reading or just starting, as of 24/09/20 and my sudden return to this site:

You will find a remastered and hopefully much improved version on my Patr£0n (sorry, you know how this site is with posting web addresses and so on) called theblankcanvas. My profile has an altered version of the link that will take you there! It's free, but anyone who wants to see my original work and doesn't mind paying a very small amount a month to help support my work and building my page into the ambitious community and more I hope it can be, then I'd greatly appreciate it. Still, fanfiction is free, c'est gratuit. You'll also eventually find A Taste of Ismenian Water there, similarly remastered, my original work, and, if everyone's keen, the long-dreaded sequel to A Cadmean Victory!

In addition to written works, there's also now an audiobook of A Cadmean Victory, which will be released in similar way to the remaster, albeit on Spotify and Apple Podcast. FFnet isn't fond of links, and these are complex ones, so it's best to briefly divert via my website or join the discord to find it! The audiobook does contain a short exclusive prequel chapter for those who'd enjoy a glimpse of what happens before fourth year!

There's also my discord and website!

discord . gg / r3ujM4t8JA

alltheblankcanvas . com

And, finally, if you're a fan of Harry/Fleur, then this discord server's where to go for more!

discord . gg / q63UUxD

Chapter 1

'Harry.'

The delighted, if still slightly strident, tone of the female third of the golden trio cut straight through the rather pleasant absence of thought he had been enjoying.

'Hermione,' he smiled. She hadn't changed over the summer at all.

Harry had heard, overheard technically, since his piggish cousin had been talking to his lackey Piers Polkiss, that girls suddenly turned into beautiful women in their teens. It had sounded rather like Dudley expected it to happen overnight like some odd, human caterpillar. There was little doubt in Harry's mind that his understanding was based off an extremely limited experience of girls and one too many adult magazines.

Hermione certainly did not conform to Dudley's theory of female puberty. Her hair was every bit as unmanageable and bushy as before, rather like his own if he was honest, and all the sort of personifying flaws his moronic cousin had assured his equally stupid friend would vanish - from her worried lip to her slightly disproportionate teeth - still existed. She would not be Hermione without them, just as Ron would not be himself without freckles and Harry could not be Harry without his glasses.

'How has your summer been? Have you started studying? What are your classes? Have you dropped divination yet?' Harry blinked. A summer at the Dursley's hadn't prepared him for the sudden burst of attention. For all their disgust at anything abnormal his aunt and uncle had been quite content to simply ignore him of late. It was a vast improvement from previous summers and the eleven years beforehand, but he had grown used to being his only source of counsel as the months had passed.

'It was okay actually,' he admitted, trying to keep track of the other questions streaming at him.

Perhaps I've spent a little too long in my own company, he decided.

Being the focus of attention had never been particularly attractive to him, especially when he was younger. Over a decade of being ignored had left him withdrawn and resigned to the permanence of the distance, until a letter had come that offered hope of something more. Harry had leapt at the chance, but his newfound fame had left him as unnoticeable has he had been in the normal world. Only a handful of people had grown close enough to be trusted with his innermost thoughts, amongst them he had done his best to be open, and for a time he had forgotten that he had once been nobody at all.

This summer had reminded him, no matter how much of his time he had spent studying in an attempt to forget.

'And your classes? Divination?' Hermione pressed insistently. Harry tried not to physically retreat from the onslaught of attention.

'Runes, arithmancy and yes, I dropped divination.' She gave him a questioning glance. 'Trelawny was starting to run out of original predictions for my death,' he shrugged in explanation. He didn't mention his interest and summer study of wards; that would have started Hermione off on a tirade.

'You can't take fourth year runes or arithmancy without knowing the third year course,' Hermione explained with an all too familiar mix of concern and condescension. 'You'll have to study to catch up or join the third years. You should have studied in the summer,' she stressed. He had to suppress a laugh at the horror with which she contemplated being in a class with the year below.

'I'm sure I'll find a way,' Harry answered casually. Most of the time he had spent on his own - all three months of it - had been devoted to those very subjects, as well as the magic that he should have already known. Having caught up and even surpassed the level of knowledge he was supposed to have Harry was quite shocked he had ever been able to perform half the magic he had. The fact that he had had to learn a basic definition of casting magic itself was proof enough that he was nowhere as great a wizard as Dobby professed. It did not matter how much of his magic he poured into a spell if his focus and intent were lacking.

'Where are the Weasleys?' Hermione asked again after a moment.

'Attempting to pack, I think,' Harry answered sharing a knowing glance with his friend.

'Ron,' she sighed.

'Harrikins.' The enthusiastic cry of one - seemingly nobody could really tell which - of the twins came from the stairs of the Burrow behind him and then the entire family was around him chattering excitedly.

It was quite loud and everyone suddenly felt quite close. Harry shifted uncomfortably.

'Is everyone here?' Mrs Weasley bustled around, pausing only to attempt to convey some semblance of some tidings on a bleary-eyed dishevelled Ron. 'Honestly, Ronald,' she sighed in passing, 'Percy was ready before you and he's not even interested in Quidditch.'

There was a murmur about the divine crouch and some passing reference to the slipping standards of cauldron bottoms from the twins behind him, but the sudden, disorientating whirl of motion and noise only seemed to end when they were seated again.

Magical transport was certainly one of Harry's least favourite forms of travel, ranking second only to the unpleasant taxi service provided by his uncle. Thankfully such occasions were few and far between as the nauseous feeling caused by the portkey was only beginning to fade now he was sitting still.

To one side of him he had the twins and Ron locked in argument and the other belonged to Hermione and Ginny the latter of whom was trying to explain the rules of the sport to the muggleborn girl.

'Bulgaria will win,' Ron confidently declared as Harry leant in to at least appear to be joining in one of the conversations around. 'Krum is brilliant.'

'We disagree Ronnikins. Far be it from us to dispute the talent of the mighty Krum -'

'-but our money is on the Irish.'

'Technically, George, our money is on the Irish and Krum,' the other twin, presumably Fred, corrected.

'Very true, George, very true. Ireland to win, but Krum to catch the snitch.' Apparently they were both George today and Harry briefly wondered if they even considered one of the names as their own at all, or just used both.

'I still think Bulgaria will win it,' Ron argued stubbornly. 'Krum will get the snitch long before the Irish can score that many points.'

'Stop fighting,' Ginny hissed across the front of them all, 'the teams are coming out.'

She spoke in front of me.

Harry blinked. Evidently her crush had faded at least a little. He smiled for the first time since touching the portkey. It had been unbearably awkward spending time near Ginny when his very presence seemed to cut off all higher brain function.

The Bulgarians had the sort of cheerleaders Harry was used to seeing in the American high school drama shows Dudley gawped at in his room when he thought his parents weren't watching. Those cheerleaders hadn't moved with the ethereal grace of these ones. They didn't have silver hair that made you want to run your hands through it, lips so obviously soft, eyes so lustrous and bright, or curves quite so perfect.

He peered closer, entranced, and was suddenly gripped the fervent desire to seize their attention, to do something, anything, that would attract their eyes to him.

But I hate attention, a little voice in the back of his head reminded him.

It would be nice for them all to respect you, though. The voice's second statement sounded uncomfortably like Tom Riddle and the charming, intelligent innocence he had portrayed so perfectly in his diary.

Harry's desire to be seen vanished abruptly.

A glance around him showed that the majority of the wizards around him were still enthralled by whatever that sensation had been. He leant back into his seat, suddenly rather tired, and waited for the actual match to begin.

The Quidditch World Cup final commenced in a blur of motion that, without their previously purchased omnioculars, would be completely lost to them.

Harry really rather preferred playing quidditch to watching it. Above the game as seeker he was set apart from everyone, free to drift, move and act as he willed, but this was still spectacle enough to get his blood racing.

The crowd roared and something caught him on the cheekbone. The jerk of his head from the blow knocked his glasses from his nose.

The omnioculars were lost into the rows below.

Peering under the chair he caught a glimpse of reflected light from his much abused lenses. It was too far for him to reach sitting down. As swiftly and unobtrusively as possible he summoned them back to his hand with his wand. They were, inevitably, scratched, so he repaired them with a wordless tap of his finger. The mending charm was the first and only spell he had managed to cast both wandlessly and silently; he had been forced to learn to do so after falling asleep reading in bed and rolling over his glasses. It had taken him almost two days.

Slipping his wand back into his sleeve rather than standing to return it to the pocket of his jeans he replaced his glasses and shot a wary glance at Hermione. If there was one person he didn't need to see him performing silent spell craft it was her. Her admiration and pride would last only as long as it took her to realise that she couldn't yet perform them. Harry imagined that his friend would disappear into the library for weeks to correct things and he would prefer to be able to spend time with both her and Ron. It was unbalanced without both of them there.

Fortunately both Hermione and Ginny were busy fixing something with disgusted glares and so hadn't noticed his unexplained prowess.

A brief glance showed the victim of their distaste as the referee who had, rather embarrassingly for him, stopped to dance in front of the Bulgarian cheerleaders.

He's a terrible dancer.

Harry laughed quietly to himself at the poor wizards antics. When he realised what he had done, mid-game no less, he would be mortified.

'They're veela,' Hermione whispered to him. 'I haven't really read about them, but I did come across a reference in a potions books about amortentia.'

'Isn't that a love potion?' He asked amusedly, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

Hermione flushed scarlet and Ginny, who had been listening from the far side of her looked away, flushing as red as her hair. 'Harry, be serious,' the bushy-haired witch hissed angrily. 'Veela have the ability to charm most men. They look like very attractive women, but they're not completely human.'

Harry threw another, longer glance in the direction of the Bulgarian team's cheerleaders and was again struck by the same compulsion as before, but, unlike last time, he ignored its suggestion immediately.

'Interesting,' he remarked. 'I'm still curious why you were reading about amortentia, though.'

The scarlet returned to her cheeks and Hermione huffed, turning her back to him to speak to Ginny instead. She seemed quite upset over something so small, but Harry knew better than to press her on the issue.

He leant back in his seat again, allowing the lights and noise of the crowd to drift away as he focused on the mind-clearing techniques that were supposed to help him focus his intent for magic. Without the aid of the omnioculars he could only make out blurs and the drifting figures of the seekers.

His concentration was broken a moment later by a massive roar from the crowd and he had to clap an arm to his face to prevent an ecstatic Ron from clipping his glasses once again.

The reason for the noise soon became clear. Viktor Krum, Bulgaria's prodigiously young seeker had caught the snitch. His strong jaw and brows were set in a determined frown as he hung, one hand raised above his head, over the stadium.

Harry fancied he could just make out the twitching wings of the snitch within his grasp, but the seeker himself seemed rather unimpressed with the ending of the game.

The scoreboard explained why. Despite the points earned for his catch, Bulgaria had still lost.

The veela cheerleaders had not seemed to realise as they danced victoriously, drawing the attention of many wizards in the stadium, and it was only when the booming voice of Ludo Bagman announced the result that they stopped to look up at the score.

Their reaction was instantaneous and shocking. Feathers sprouted along the arms of many, their eyes grew dark and wide, lips and chins elongating into cruel beaks.

Not completely human at all.

Despite their new, dangerous appearance they somehow still retained their grip on the men near them and Harry couldn't deny that they were still attractive. It was something he found slightly disturbing, feathers and beaks really should not call to him in such a way.

'Time to head back to the tent, Arthur,' Mrs Weasley suggested. Her husband nodded, one eye still on the veela, half-enraptured, half-concerned about the conjured, blue flames in the hands of the more irate of the former cheerleaders.

There were a lot of steps down, the stadium was steep and high, and Harry was sure he hadn't walked up any where near as many on the way. He voiced as much to Hermione who turned, the glint of knowledge in her eye.

'It's a very clever space manipulation spell,' she enthused. 'You put your feet on a step and the space is stretched upwards so you actually go up much farther than you think. It's like a tiny magical escalator for each step really.'

'Means an awful lot of different sets of steps for different levels though,' Ron added grumpily. His attitude had deteriorated rapidly after the twins prediction of the result proved true, but he was right. There were almost ten times as many sets of stairs as he would have expected.

'It's brilliant, Ron,' Hermione began again, looking to be moving straight into her lecturing tone. Sure enough within moments she was explaining the runes and arithmetic principles behind the idea. Harry did, quite surprisingly, understand most of what she was saying, so it was with some relief that he could tune her out and leave Ron to weather the barrage of her intellect.

The tent was far more comfortable than he had expected. In the brief visit he remembered between separating from Cedric Diggory and his father and making their way to the top box he had only glimpsed the interior. Most of the journey had been spent trying to ignore the sickness caused by the portkey travel and Ron's incessant complaining about the perfect student that was Cedric Diggory. Cedric had seemed perfectly agreeable to Harry. The well known Hufflepuff was kind, intelligent and modest. His only flaw seemed to be proud parents, something Harry could hardly begrudge anyone as an orphan.

Well, maybe Malfoy, he decided. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy really had very little to be proud of in his opinion.

More interesting than the surprising comfort, or the increasingly frustrated attempts of Hermione to explain her references to Doctor Who as down to the same sort of spacial manipulation they had used on the tent, was the abundance of gold galleons that the twins seemed to be in possession of.

'Look at all this, Harrikins,' they grinned. 'Bagman bet against our prediction, gave us good odds too.'

'It ought to be enough now, Fred,' the twin wearing the jumper emblazoned with the letter F crowed triumphantly.

'Indeed it should, George,' his twin replied hurriedly shovelling armfuls into their trunks. 'Best get it out of sight before mum comes and sees we've been gambling, though.'

They both knelt down and started scooping the pile away. Harry snorted, and moved in the direction of his bed. It was still loud, fireworks were constantly exploding above the tents as the Irish celebrations began and he begun to grown uncomfortable with it again.

Harry passed a still arguing Ron and Hermione, Ginny had vanished into the girls' side of the tent and Mr and Mrs Weasley were quietly talking by the entrance. The three elder Weasleys had all vanished. Bill and Charlie, who he had yet to exchange more than a greeting with, had disappeared off to join the party and Percy had taken to trailing after Mr Crouch, his boss, like an adoring puppy. Percy seemed unaware that not only did Crouch not know his name, but most of their one-sided conversation was about the missing official, Bertha Jorkins. Mr Crouch did not seem overly upset she had vanished.

The part of the tent that he would be sharing with Ron was blessedly dark and far quieter than the rest. Settling himself down on the cot designated his he waved his wand over his clothes, transfiguring them into something more comfortable to sleep in. This was the sort of magic that Harry had come to appreciate of late. The everyday spells and enchantments that made everything so much easier even if they weren't as spectacular as a corporeal patronus or the more dramatic applications of conjuring and transfiguration seen in wizards' duels.

It was early for him to be sleeping, normally he would stay up into the early hours of the morning reading, but all the noise and action around him had inexplicably tired him out and there was nothing he wanted more than to sink into blissful sleep.

Something shook at his arm and he stirred, instantly alert in unfamiliar scenery. 'Harry,' Mr Weasley hissed. 'We need to leave now. Get Ron and Hermione and get out of the camp. Stay together.'

It took a long moment for the seriousness of the situation to sink in, but he nodded, rubbing at his eyes and fumbling for his glasses on the table next to him and his wand.

Ron was by the entrance of the tent with Hermione. They both looked slightly pale as they peered out into the camp through the door.

'Come on, Harry,' Hermione whispered urgently tugging at his arm. He frowned at her, pulling his arm away long enough to re-transfigure his clothing, annoyed at her closeness. The sound of screams from close by in the camp quickly made him forget about Hermione's grip on his arm and they fled from the tent towards the woods through the chaotic crowd.

There was smoke in the air from the burning tents in the camps' centre. It drifted, thick and choking over them and Harry had to duck beneath it to breath and see. People were running all around him in every direction, screaming, shouting and crying.

Flashes of light cast eerie shadows against the veil of smoke and the dull echo of explosions rang over the roar of the flames. Somewhere in the chaos Hermione had lost her grip on his arm, but he could still hear her shouting at them to run to the trees he could glimpse across the next few lines of tents.

Something hit him hard in the side of the head and with a flash of white light everything vanished.

Harry's face was warm. Too warm. It was uncomfortable and he immediately tried to shift away from the heat. A wet, sticky something adhered his cheek to his shoulder, but it broke when he flinched back from the heat.

His glasses were still on his face. Harry was so surprised he could see he almost didn't notice the flames that were engulfing the line of tents no more than a few metres from him. He scrambled to his feet. Ron and Hermione were gone, but he hoped they had made it to the trees and were safe.

What caused this?

He doubted the fire had started naturally. It seemed unlikely in a camp full of magic users that a simple fire could cause so much damage and, being himself, he imagined there was probably a more sinister reason. This time, he hoped, it had nothing to do with either Voldemort or dementors. He had had enough of them for a lifetime.

Maybe a dragon, he decided. That would be preferable and explain the fires. Dragons were dangerous, but he reckoned he could distract a dragon easily enough and from what he knew they were only really dangerous when guarding their eggs. Harry had absolutely no intention of trying to steal a dragon's egg. He wasn't Hagrid.

It was horribly, unsettlingly quiet as he walked through the ruined camp. The fires had mostly died, but the ash and embers were still warm through the soles of his shoes and the charred remnants of furniture or worse crunched beneath his heels no matter how hard he tried to be silent.

There were shapes under the ashes and Harry tried very hard to ignore those that were vaguely humanesque. The fire had already passed over this part of the camp, anyone lying under the ash would be dead and uncovering them would only serve to give him worse nightmares.

There was a blinding flash of light and something hissed viciously over his head as he reflexively ducked.

Twisting about and slipping his wand from his sleeve he had just enough to throw himself out the way of two more sickly purple curses. He rolled in the ash, catching a glimpse of a thin, almost skeletal wizard, draped in black robes.

'Lacero,' the robed wizard hissed viciously and another purple curse flew at him. Instinctively Harry summoned one of the awful looking shapes out from under the ash into the path of the curse.

'I must remain unseen and behave,' the wizard muttered monotonously, seemingly to himself, but his wand snapped up to unleash another trio of curses that tore through Harry's makeshift shield and grazed his left arm.

'Expelliarmus,' Harry tried one of the few spells he knew that were useful for duelling. It ricocheted harmlessly of some kind of shield into the smoke.

'Stay unseen,' the wizard repeated more loudly, but in the same detached tone. His wand had trembled and his free hand came up to press against his temples so hard his knuckles turned white. 'No,' the voice of his attacker shifted suddenly, growing cruel again, 'the Dark Lord will reward me beyond all others.'

'Expelliarmus,' he repeated, hoping to catch him off guard. His opponent laughed with more than a hint of madness as the disarming spell failed again.

'Crucio,' he cried delightedly, releasing the crimson spell gleefully.

'I'm free,' he exulted as the curse tore past Harry's hair. 'When I take you to the Dark Lord I will be his most trusted servant, loftier than Lucius, greater than Goyle, better than Bellatrix,' his laughter warbled disturbingly.

He is utterly insane, Harry realised.

A second torture curse narrowly missed him, but the third caught him on the arm and he collapsed into the hot embers curling up around the pain.

'I am his most loyal follower,' the mad wizard laughed through a deranged grin. He raised his wand again, its tip glowing with sinister magic.

Desperately Harry slashed his wand at the Death Eater. His only desire to stop this madman from harming him again.

The ash swirled against the wind.

For a moment the laughing face of the mad wizard was unobscured, then a vast, ebony serpent lunged from the ash cloud, its fangs closing around the Death Eater's chest with a sickening crunch. The snake crushed the wizard into the ground beside one of the few lingering fires and vanished in an explosion of hot smoke.

The mad wizard didn't move.

Harry hesitantly approached, his wand outstretched and shaking.

The Death Eater's chest and robes were a ruin and Harry had to look away to avoid being sick. He gagged twice before stepping back and pressing his hand to his mouth. The ribcage of the wizard was shattered inwards on itself, bright, gleaming, points of bone poked sharply from the mess of black tatters and red something that the ash serpent had left behind.

Harry cast a desperate look around him hoping to glimpse another person in the smoke. A wizard or witch who would step up alongside him and reassure him by saying the snake was their spell.

Nobody stepped from the smoke.

He slumped down in the ashes facing away from the body, shaking but unsurprised nobody had come. The summoned ash serpent had looked far too familiar to be the product of any mind but his own.

After all, I'm likely the only person to see a basilisk since Tom Riddle and Moaning Myrtle. Tom Riddle would not have saved his life and the very idea of the emotional, weeping ghost casting such a spell was ridiculous.

Harry began to laugh. It came out unsettlingly high-pitched and wavered as his body trembled.

The fire beside the body burnt through something important and popped loudly. Startled, Harry's head snapped round instinctively to see the remains of the tent collapse across the body, shrouding it from sight.

There was nobody else around. No one had heard their duel and he dared not roam any further across the camp. He was cold and shaking too much to stand, even though he knew he should try and find Ron, Hermione and the Weasleys.

The ash was soft, and warm in an almost comforting way, so he wrapped his arms around his knees and hunched into himself.

I think I'll just stay here for a bit.

2. A Chance for Glory

Disclaimer: I do not, of course, own J K Rowling's Harry Potter or anything here except my own original ideas.

Chapter 2

He was lying on his back with something warm and soft beneath him, his glasses were nearby, yet he could still see perfectly. That he could somehow see without his glasses wasn't really the most concerning thing because standing in front of him was Hermione.

She was brewing something in a vast black cauldron, stirring it cheerfully while her hair shifted between bright, sleek silver and its more normal bushy brown.

That's very strange.

'What're you making?' he managed to ask eventually. The hair changing was probably the product of his bad vision. He certainly hoped that when he put on his glasses it would stop.

His friend looked up at him and he recoiled in horror. Hermione's eyes had grown to almost twice their size and beneath the huge, black orbs a cruel, hooked beak protruded. Even his eyesight wasn't bad enough to convince him what he was seeing wasn't really there.

'Amortentia,' she replied dreamily.

Harry tried to edge away as she came closer and Hermione frowned, her brows descending and her vast, dark eyes narrowing angrily. She patted him gently on the head as he struggled.

'It's for you,' she told him happily,' drink up.' Hermione proffered him a ladleful of bright, silver liquid that steamed and shimmered. It looked almost drinkable until he caught sight of twisting, slithering, silver serpents within it.

'I don't want to,' he told her.

'It's for your own good Harry,' she assured him, raising the ladle to his lips.

'No,' he spluttered, turning his face away and sending the liquid snakes squirming all down his chest.

'You should've drunk it,' Hermione screeched, lunging for him. Feathers exploded over her body and her beak gaped towards his head, stretching in a soundless shriek.

Just as the curved tip of her beak was about to reach him there was a flash of green light and Harry flinched upright in his bed with a gasp.

It took him a long minute of mind-clearing exercises to regain his even breathing.

'Mr Potter,' the familiar, stern voice of Madam Pomfrey greeted him, 'you're awake.'

'I hope so,' Harry replied.

Weird, veela-Hermione dream, he shuddered. The memory of that dream was going straight into the too disturbing to think about category of his mind.

Madam Pomfrey gave him an odd look. 'You're in the school hospital wing,' she began, 'term hasn't actually started, but it was so close it was decided you'd be better off here than at St Mungo's.'

'What happened?' he asked. 'I remember falling asleep in the ashes of the camp at the World Cup, but that's it.'

'You were found by one of the Bulgarian team's cheerleaders after the chaos was over by all accounts. She, of course, recognised you and brought you to the nearest hospital point where you were found by the Weasley family and Miss Granger, then you were brought here.'

'Are they all okay?'

'Miss Granger and the Weasley family were all quite worried, but otherwise fine. You however, Mr Potter, have somehow exhausted your magical core and in recovery you have set a new record for your lengthiest stay in my hospital wing. I daresay it is the first time that a student has manage that before term has begun.'

'That's good,' Harry replied, relieved that the Weasleys and Hermione were fine.

'It's not good, Mr Potter. Honestly, you seem to almost die at the end of every year, you'd think you might have learnt some caution by now.' Madam Pomfrey fixed him with a disapproving look.

'It's the start of the year,' Harry replied flippantly, 'I wasn't expecting anything for months.'

'Be that as it may, Mr Potter, you are awake, and once I have made sure you are fine you may return to Gryffindor Tower.' The strict nurse placed the tip of her wand against his forehead, tutting when Harry flinched slightly.

'Everything seems fine,' she nodded. 'Off with you, and don't let me see you back in this bed for at least a few months.'

He was only too eager to depart, absentmindedly transfiguring his hospital robes into a set of school robes. He imagined the clothes he had originally been wearing were now ruined.

'You're alive,' Ron greeted him midway across the Great Hall.

'Yes, Ron,' Hermione responded, 'that's a great way to say hello to your friend who was in a coma because he used too much magic.'

'I don't mind.' Harry laughed at the outraged expression on her face and walked with them on the back towards the common room.

'So what happened, mate?' Ron, it seemed, had waited as long as he could before the question burst out.

'I'm not actually sure,' Harry started carefully, unwilling to mention the ash basilisk. 'It was chaotic, one moment I was running with you guys, and the next I was waking up in the hospital wing.'

'The healer at the World Cup said you had put too much strain on your magical core, Harry,' Hermione explained skeptically. 'That means you tried to push so much magic into a spell that it forced everything out of your body.'

'I don't remember casting a spell like that,' Harry shrugged. It was the truth of sorts, whatever he had done had been all intent and power. There had been no incantation at all. 'So what actually happened to cause all that?'

'They haven't told you yet,' Ron gaped.

'Harry only just woke up, Ron,' Hermione sighed. 'How could he know?'

'Oh,' Ron looked slightly mollified. 'It was Death Eaters, they attacked the site, only you can't tell anyone I said that because we heard it listening to Percy and Dad talking before work. Apparently they attacked the muggles near the site and anyone nearby. It's been chaos at the Ministry since then and Dad reckons something's up because Percy's boss, Mr Crouch, has supposedly resigned.'

'That's not what they said,' Hermione cut in, frowning, 'Mr Crouch is supposed to be resigning later in the year. Something is happening that he's organised before he can retire easily. He's unofficially resigned.'

'Same thing, Hermione,' Ron objected.

'It's not the same thing really, and it means that whatever he's doing must be really important to allow him to continue on.' Harry understood what Hermione meant, even if he wasn't sure Ron did.

'There are loads of rumours flying around the Ministry and Bill says that he heard one of the auror captains talking about Barty Crouch's son being found dead in the campsite.' Harry gave him a questioning look. It might explain why Mr Crouch had resigned, but Ron made it sound like a great deal more than that.

'He was a Death Eater, Harry,' Hermione explained. 'Ron never explains anything properly. He was supposed to have died in Azkaban ages ago.'

A horrible chill settled down Harry's spine. The mad, dark wizard he had unleashed the ash basilisk on suddenly seemed very prominent in his mind. 'What else happened?'

At least he deserved it, a small voice pointed out. Harry had technically killed before, Professor Quirrell had died quite literally by his hands, but he'd been too young to really understand what he had done then. That was not the case now. He'd done something so wrong it made him feel slightly sick, despite the nature of his victim.

'Not much,' Hermione answered. 'We were all so worried about you. Mrs Weasley went around every healing point trying to find you.'

'Yeah,' Ron added, 'and then some gorgeous Bulgarian girl came out of the camp carrying you in her arms. It might have been worth being injured just to be in her arms.' His eyes went slightly hazy at the memory until Hermione elbowed him in the stomach.

'It's not funny, Ron. That was a veela, they're not just pretty faces you know.'

'They're gorgeous, though,' Harry noted absentmindedly, only to receive Hermione's elbow himself.

'So, when does term start?' It seemed unwise to continue their current conversation. He either might give something away about the wizard he'd killed, or be on the receiving end of Hermione's elbows, which he realised, rubbing his ribs, were rather sharp.

'Today, Harry,' she told him.

'Where is everyone, then?'

'It's only ten, mate' Ron added helpfully, 'still another hour or so before anyone arrives. You need to speak to Dumbledore about what happened. He asked us to tell you when you were awake.'

'I need to change as well,' Harry reminded them.

'You're in school robes.' Hermione looked at him oddly.

'I transfigured my hospital gown,' he explained. 'I don't know how long it will last.'

'That's quite advanced transfiguration, Harry,' Hermione beamed at him. 'I only read about doing that last year.'

'Headmaster first, then,' he decided and detoured towards the gargoyle.

'Sugar quills,' Hermione commanded the gargoyle and they made their way up to Dumbledore's office.

'Ah, Harry,' the old headmaster smiled after he opened the door. 'Come and have a seat. Are you feeling better?'

'Much better, sir.'

'I was beginning to fear you might not wake up in time for the school year and end up missing classes,' the headmaster nodded. The portraits around him appeared to be largely uninterested in their conversation, but Fawkes was peering at him curiously.

I'm sure Snape would've been gutted if I'd missed potions, Harry thought, trying hard to keep a smile from his face.

'Do you remember what happened?' Dumbledore asked hesitantly. 'I don't want you to feel I'm forcing you to think about anything unpleasant, some quite atrocious things were done to the muggle owners of the site.'

'Actually I don't remember much at all, sir,' Harry admitted. 'We tried to run out of the camp into the woods, but something hit me and I blacked out. As you know I was found afterwards and brought here.'

The old headmaster ran a hand through his famous, silver beard. 'At least you don't remember anything terrible then,' he smiled. 'You're too young to have to live with such things.'

'Professor Dumbledore?' Harry began carefully. 'Is it true about Barty Crouch's son? I heard he was found in the camp.'

'Unfortunately it does seem to be the case, though I recommend you keep this information to yourselves. It could cause great panic if everyone suddenly starts to think Azkaban can't keep hold of its prisoners.'

'We will, professor,' Hermione answered enthusiastically.

'You had best go and prepare for the welcoming feast, Harry,' Professor Dumbledore suggested gently, eyes twinkling. 'Those transfigured robes, while impressive, may not last for the whole meal.'

'I was going to, sir.'

'Very well then. Try and stay out of trouble this year, Harry. There will be unfamiliar faces around us soon.'

'Of course there will unfamiliar faces,' Ron blurted the moment the gargoyle closed. 'The first years will be here, they come every year.'

'I doubt he means the first years, Ron,' Hermione laughed. 'It's probably something to do with whatever Mr Crouch was organising. He mentioned being at Hogwarts to Percy at the World Cup.'

The Gryffindor common room was empty when they arrived, but somebody had pinned the schedules of the students to the board for each dormitory. Someone whom both Harry and Ron thought deserved a good hexing since the moment Hermione had seen them she had instantly flown into a rant about Ron's options. Care of Magical Creatures and Divination were apparently easy options and not what should he be taking if he wanted to do well after his OWLs.

Harry had managed to quietly change while Hermione was berating Ron, but he was not subtle enough to remove his schedule without her noticing. Her gaze snapped to him in a birdlike motion uncomfortably similar to his dream and she all but tugged the paper from him to read it herself.

He frowned. It was all very well to be interested, but there were boundaries that should be respected. Harry would never snatch anything out of hands if she hadn't already decided to let him read it.

'Fourth year Ancient Runes and Arithmancy,' Hermione read aloud. 'How did you get into the classes without doing the third year exams?' That seemed her only exception to his schedule for which Harry was quite grateful.

'Why did you take those?' Ron asked, horrorstruck. 'Divination and Magical Creatures are easy OWLs. You've gone and done a Hermione, mate.'

'If by that you mean he's made an intelligent decision about his future then you are quite right, Ron.' It looked like she wanted to say a great deal more, but instead she waved Harry's schedule at him. 'You might be really far behind in your electives, Harry,' she warned. 'It's good you want to try, but I don't know if you'll able to manage everything.'

'I'm sure,' Harry replied, doing his best to conceal his annoyance, 'that I'll be fine.'

He would be more than fine. Ancient Runes was easy enough until it came to the longer essays. He had had to improve his handwriting considerably over the summer so that the difference between some of the more similar glyphs was clearer, but using them and knowing their meanings was simple enough. Arithmancy wasn't too tricky either; it was merely maths applied to magic. He had chosen them because they were useful and because neither subject would require foot after foot of essays every week.

Harry had always been quite a visual minded person, something that applied well to practical subjects, but not to essay related ones. The History of Magic, by far his least favourite, had well demonstrated that fact.

'If you say so.' Hermione seemed unconvinced and Harry took a deep breath when she wasn't watching to calm down. For all of his friend's intelligence she was often quite stubbornly narrow-minded. In three years here she had always been top at nearly everything, outstripping both he and Ron, but when it came to actually using magic Hermione's only advantage lay in her knowing more than they did beforehand. Harry was fairly confident that should they try and perform the same spell without prior practice his would be just as good.

Hermione was going to get a surprise when she discovered that he now knew almost as much theory as her. He had to concede that she would still know far more about many other things; Harry would not be rivalling her in History of Magic, or any subject with a final grade composed of more than a couple of essays. He was fairly confident that he could at least equal her in potions, their electives, charms and transfiguration. Harry thought the latter, now his strongest subject, was the most likely one in which he might surpass his intelligent friend. Transfiguration spells lent themselves well to the visually minded.

'The welcoming feast starts soon. We should go down and join everyone,' Ron suggested. He was glancing between the two of them slightly nervously and had evidently picked up on Harry's irritation a lot better than Hermione had.

'Yeah,' Harry agreed, slipping his wand into his sleeve, 'let's go.'

All of a sudden it was loud again. There were students everywhere, many of whom, despite an extra couple of inches gained over the summer, were still taller than he was.

They took the nearest seats amongst those in their year, joining Neville and Seamus. Ron slipped in alongside him and gazed down at the empty sparkling plate with some consternation.

'Food soon, Ron.' He comforted him with pat on the shoulder as the first years nervously entered.

The sorting hat, looking as every bit as underwhelming as it did every year, sat on the chair at the front. No doubt it would soon start singing.

'Do you think it makes up a new song every year,' he whispered to Ron as it launched into verse.

'Dunno, mate, but my brothers say they've never heard the same one twice.'

'That's probably a good indicator it does, your brothers must've covered the last decade or so here, and it does have all year to write them.'

'When it's not delivering swords to you,' Ron replied with a grin.

'It's a good thing it does deliver swords,' Harry responded. 'What happens if there's another giant snake in Hogwarts and Neville needs to kill it? He can't be expected to go get the sword himself now can he.'

The two of them laughed until Hermione hissed at them to be quiet.

As the sorting drew to a close and the first years anxiously squeezed on to the ends of the tables, Dumbledore rose to speak. Harry cocked his head curiously. If something was going to happen at Hogwarts this year now was when it would be mentioned.

'A few announcements before we all get too distracted by our impending food to forget them. Firstly, I would like to welcome Professor Moody to our teaching staff. He will be taking over the role of Defence Against the Dark Arts. Secondly, I must remind members of all years that the Forbidden Forest is so named for a reason and, lastly, this year, after centuries, a great sporting event will be making its return. This means, unfortunately, that there will be no quidditch.' A murmur of barely concealed horror rose from the hall at this announcement. Harry was sure there had been less reaction when Quirrell had declared the arrival of a troll in his first year.

'The Triwizard Tournament will be held at Hogwarts come October,' the headmaster continued unabated. 'A chance, for those who enter, to earn eternal glory as school champion.'

'So that's what's happening,' Ron said excitedly. 'I'm definitely putting my name in. Eternal glory,' he finished with a longing sigh.

'Professor Moody looks none to impressed about it,' Hermione remarked.

She was right. The new teacher's gash of a mouth was downturned, twisting the scar-scattered face above into quite a forbidding frown.

'He looks like he's been through the wars,' Harry noted quietly.

'He has,' Ron enthused. 'That's Mad-Eye Moody, that is. Dad says he was one of the greatest aurors back in the war against You-Know-Who, but that he's sort of lost it recently.'

'His eye is a bit creepy,' Neville added hesitantly.

'It's supposed to be magic,' Ron agreed, giving it a nervous look himself. 'Don't know what it actually does, though.'

Harry helped himself to bread, despite Hermione's insistence that he should eat more. He had admittedly just awoken from a coma of sorts, but he wasn't particularly hungry. If anything he felt slightly sick. It was the sort of unsettled feeling he got every year from the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for one reason or another.

'You need to eat more than just bread, Harry,' Hermione pressed, attempting to add food of every kind to his plate when he wasn't guarding it.

'Ron's eaten enough for all three of us,' he defended, deflecting a serving of potatoes onto Ron's plate. The red-head happily speared and devoured one of the vegetables without a second thought.

'Just because Ron eats enough food for a small country doesn't mean you should starve yourself to compensate,' she huffed.

'I'm doing it out of protest,' Harry tried. 'The food is all made house elves and that's practically slavery, Hermione. I can't exploit their efforts in good conscience.'

Hermione looked horrified and dropped her fork as if it had bitten her.

'You've done it now, Harry,' Ron muttered. 'We'll be hearing about this for the rest of the year.'

'Should've taken the potatoes,' Seamus agreed. 'Who knows where this will lead?'

'Did you hear about the World Cup?' The Irish wizard continued after a few forkfuls.

'Yeah,' Ron griped, 'Ireland won, congratulations.'

'Not that,' Seamus grinned. 'Well a little bit that, but I meant the attacks.'

'We were there,' Hermione broke in. She had, it seemed, recovered from the shock of learning about the house elves enough to begin eating again.

'Harry was in a coma until this morning,' Ron added, 'he got carried out of the camp by one of those beautiful, Bulgarian cheerleaders.' All of the nearby guys turned to give him slightly awed and jealous looks, even Neville.

'You learn that your friend was in a coma and the first thing you do is imagine the cheerleaders.' Hermione shook her head in disbelief. 'I'm going to the library.'

She stalked off leaving her plate half full.

'Wasteful that is,' Ron commented, helping himself to Hermione's plate.

'Imagine what the house elves would think,' Seamus chuckled.

'What was the cheerleader like?' Dean asked, sliding in where Hermione had been.

'Don't remember,' Harry shrugged, 'I was in a coma.'

'I saw them during the game,' Ron embellished, 'they were gorgeous.'

'Hermione said they were veela, apparently they can charm men.' Harry felt he should at least try to defend her viewpoint.

'Anyone that looks like that is going to charm me. Until they grow all this feathers at least.'

'Feathers?' Seamus shot Ron a look of disbelief.

'When they got angry at the end of the match they grew feathers and beaks and started throwing fireballs around. They didn't like that Bulgaria lost,' the red-head explained.

'Is that what started all the fires then?' Neville asked.

'Nah, that was Death Eaters, or people dressed like them,' Ron replied. 'Dad says there was no Dark Mark like they used back in the war, so it might not have been real Death Eaters, just sympathisers.'

'Ministry didn't catch anyone, though,' Neville piped up. 'Gran was furious that they all got away with it. She spent an hour muttering to herself about how useless Fudge is.'

'It doesn't exactly inspire confidence,' Seamus nodded. 'Still, the Irish won, and that's what counts.'

Harry smiled and tried not to remember the ebony basilisk he had conjured from the ash and the dead Death-Eater who he suspected must have been Barty Crouch Junior. He was trying his hardest to forget that, and, when he couldn't, to remind himself that he had only defended himself and killed a wizard who had already been sentenced to worse.

'Let's head back to the common room,' Dean proposed. 'I've got to unpack everything still, but I'm fairly sure I've brought the new exploding snap cards to replace the ones that Lavender lost. Anyone fancy a round or two?'

There was a murmur of mutual consent and the group of them rose to return to Gryffindor Tower.

'Harry,' three familiar voices rang out. He stopped, allowing the others past him to the stairs up to the dormitory.

'Angelina, Alicia, Katie,' he smiled at them each in turn. They looked quite put out.

'Can you believe they've cancelled quidditch,' Katie fumed. 'This was going to be a really important year for us. We needed to start to add new faces to the squad, like a keeper.'

'At least you've got the Triwizard tournament,' Harry placated. 'Eternal glory comes a close second to quidditch, but at a pinch…'

Alicia and Angelina laughed, but Katie continued to fume.

'Are you not going to enter?' Angelina asked. 'I am.'

'No,' Harry declared. 'I'm going for a nice quiet year. No snakes, no dogs, no dementors and hopefully no more trips to Madam Pomfrey either.'

'Fair enough,' Alicia agreed. 'Hogwarts' champion will be from the upper years anyway. We know more than you cute little fourth years.' Harry dodged the attempted pat on the cheek.

'Where do the other two champions come from?' he asked, suddenly curious.

'From Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, they're magical schools in Europe. Some of their students will probably come here to support their champions when we compete.'

'Well good luck, Angelina. I promised the guys I'd play exploding snap with them.'

'Bye, Harry,' they called as he turned away.

Snap didn't last long. Exploding snap games never really did and, despite their attempts to build a pyramid of cards out of both Dean's new pack and the old one that Lavender had rediscovered over the summer, everyone inevitably drifted away.

It left Harry on his own, behind the curtains of his bed, to think. This year had started almost identically to the last three, with the exception of the flying car incident, and for a while he had forgotten his conviction. He had remembered it now. This year might have started the same, but it would be different.

I'll be better, he vowed.

Peter Pettigrew, the one who had betrayed his parents, condemned his godfather to over a decade in Azkaban, and served Voldemort had escaped because he wasn't good enough. He had been the only one with a wand and he'd let the rat get away. It would not happen again. He would bury himself in books if that was what it took.

All summer he had tried to improve himself, to learn everything he should have already known and more. Hermione would not have let Pettigrew get away.

It hadn't been enough.

Harry had advanced far farther than he expected in every area, even potions, but he had still nearly died at the World Cup and had it not been for his inexplicable and terrifying basilisk conjuring he would be.

I have to do better still.

He could test his improvement against his classmates in most areas. As long as he was equal to Hermione that would be acceptable. Harry knew he would never be able to compare with her essay writing skills or general knowledge, but practically casting magic at her level or higher should not be beyond him.

Harry did need to learn how to fight. The disarming spell was useful, but it was also the only combat curse he had. Harry knew you could use transfiguration and conjuration in a duel, but he needed to practice, to learn and to grow before he could consciously do anything remotely useful.

He would be better and by the end of the year. If he ran into Pettigrew again, the little rat wouldn't know what hit him.

AN: Please review, all constructive feedback is more than appreciated.

3. A Fire Shall Be Woken

Disclaimer: Sadly I still don't own anything.

I should probably warn anyone reading that I plan to add a bit more to my characters than just dragging an identical set of personality traits straight from the real series. In other words some characters may seem a little different, but I promise meaningful reasons, not just unprovoked verbal assaults on innocent fiction.

Chapter 3

'Welcome back to potions.' Snape's drawl was the only thing really capable of penetrating the gloom of the dungeons and Harry repressed the urge to sigh. No doubt the insufferable professor would be continuing his best efforts to make this class the worst it possibly could be for him.

'This,' Snape continued, 'is the year before OWLs and thus the year in which those who truly have the talent for potions begin to separate themselves from those too lazy to apply themselves to such a delicate art.' Harry didn't need to look up to know that the eyes of his professor were fixed on him.

Where does he get his impression of me from?

Harry had barely set foot in the castle before Snape was trying to make his life miserable. Presumably the man just had severe personal issues. Harry couldn't imagine all the time in the dark or the constant exposure to toxic ingredients was good for anyone's health, mental or otherwise.

'The instructions are on the board,' Snape flourished his wand over dramatically to dispel the illusion there. 'Begin,' he sneered.

Harry sighed and reached for his new, more expensive, silver-plated knife. He had learned over the summer that buying potions equipment of inert metals of high quality was every bit as important as cleaning them properly afterwards. He suspected many of his poorer efforts were due to leaving early in disgust with Snape rather than staying to clean. His new set of materials would find themselves looked after far more carefully.

Ron was slaving over his cauldron on the closest bench with all the delicacy of a confounded troll. His neatly diced toad liver had gone in misshapen chunks and Harry was fairly sure he had added almost twice as much sneezewort as necessary.

It might be a good idea to finish before that explodes, he decided.

Leeches were the key to this potion. They tended to either be too quick to dissolve or too slow, and the size and shape in which they were added had to be next to perfect. They were also very easily contaminated by anything they touched. This was something that Malfoy, in all his pure-blooded perfection had seemed to grasp, as he was attempting to cut his in mid air while poor Pansy Parkinson held them and flinched away from the ornately engraved knife he wielded. Harry had heard somewhere that the two were eventually supposed to be engaged as many pure-blooded families arranged and thought Malfoy might have been a little more concerned about his future fiancé's looks if not her well being.

Harry grinned at Malfoy's ridiculous efforts and returned to his own potion. He had two knives and the older would work as a makeshift chopping board. Carefully he sliced his leeches, trying his best to avoid letting any of the slimy creature touch the desk, or anything else, before adding them.

To his delight the potion gradually changed colour, slowly shifting towards the described shimmering turquoise. Taking a sneak peak at Hermione's as he carefully prepared a vial he fancied that he had done just as well as she had. Her's was a little closer to the exact shade of turquoise yes, but he fancied his had had more of a shimmer to it.

Stoppering his flask and noting with some glee that he was the first to finish, something that would definitely annoy Snape, he made his way to the front of the class.

Professor Snape gave only a dismissive sneer as he placed his vial in the rack, but Harry was certain he could feel his eyes tracking him on his way back to his desk.

When he turned around, however, he found Snape had moved on to lurk ominously over Neville's attempts. Hovering over Neville was something Snape seemed to enjoy and the poor boy immediately cracked under his teacher's oppressive scrutiny. The potion went from a passable deep blue to a shade of yellow so sickly and bright it attracted the attention of most of the class.

'Longbottom,' Snape tutted. 'It was going passably well, but your utterly inescapable ineptitude has proven itself... again.' He swept back past Harry to his gloom shrouded desk, passing an oddly curious eye over his attempt to leave his cauldron immaculately clean.

Hermione finished next, then Malfoy and soon most of the class were making some half-hearted attempt to clean their cauldrons while Neville desperately tried to rescue whatever concoction he had produced this time.

It was a sort of bright, lime green when he eventually gave up, better, admittedly, than yellow, but nowhere close to the required turquoise. The colour reminded him of the scales of the basilisk still lying in the Chamber of Secrets and he was suddenly struck by the desire to go and see it. Partially out of curiosity because he couldn't remember what it had looked like after all the adrenaline and venom, but mostly because he wanted to compare it to how he remembered the serpent he had summoned from the ash.

Most of the potions on Snape's rack of vials for submission were some sort of blue-green variant, but only a handful came close to his own. Hermione's, Malfoy's and Greengrass' to name a few. He took a little bit of pride in such an improvement from so little effort over the summer. It wouldn't help him with the essays, however.

'If that is everyone you may leave,' Snape drawled from a particularly dark corner. Somehow he had crossed the classroom without anyone noticing and Harry wondered if he didn't sneak along the line of heavy, black curtains beneath his cloak when nobody was paying attention. He suppressed a snort of humour at the image.

'I won't bother assessing your work, Longbottom, don't worry.'

Harry winced as he made his way towards the door, he'd come away relatively unscathed from Snape, but Neville seemed to have taken his place instead.

'Potter, remain behind if you'd be so kind.'

I knew it was too good to be true.

Snape was looming over the rack of vials when he turned back.

'What do you think this is, Potter?' he sneered.

'My inevitably ungradeable attempt at potions making,' he tried, unable to fully quell the humour of before.

'This,' Snape gave him a surprisingly neutral stare, 'is a passable attempt. Not the standard I expect from students looking to continue after OWLs, but close enough that I might begin to hope of keeping the school's most prominent celebrity a little longer.'

That sounded almost like a backhanded compliment.

'Thank you, sir,' he responded uncertainly.

'My teaching has nothing to do with your improvement, Potter,' Snape snapped. 'You finally deciding to apply what I've been fruitlessly filling your head with is promising, but no less than the wizarding world demands from someone of your elated stature. Do not slip back into your previous levels of mediocrity.'

'I'll try my best, sir,' Harry replied, eager to be on his way to Transfiguration. Professor Mcgonagall was unsympathetic to late students and Snape was never going to provide him with a excusing note.

'See that you do.' His potions professor disappeared into his office in an unnecessary if impressive swirl of cloak and robes.

Right.

Professor Mcgonagall had given him a somewhat disapproving glance when he slipped onto the back row of desks a few moments after the lesson had started, but she hadn't said anything or deducted points. It was possible that she knew he had just come from potions.

A cage of rather innocent looking guinea fowl clucked from atop her desk. The birds didn't look anywhere near alarmed enough for whatever was about to happen to them.

'Today, we will be transfiguring guinea fowl into guinea pigs.' Their stern professor flicked her wand and the cages floated across to deposit themselves in front of each student. 'This type of transformation is as complex as any we will attempt this year.'

The level of clucking swiftly escalated as the class fell to a comical level of desperate wand waving. Harry eyed his bird curiously. He had on occasion wondered exactly where the creatures they transfigured in this class came from.

Probably the kitchens in this case, he decided.

His guinea fowl did look surprisingly plump, but, out of a desire to not eat whatever Neville created, he would be avoiding poultry for the next few meals.

'Very good, Miss Granger, take ten points,' Professor Mcgonagall's voice rang out.

Ten points seemed slightly generous since Hermione's guinea pig did still have the occasional feather and its feet seemed to have retained a slightly birdlike, taloned aspect to them. Hermione didn't seem to care though and glowed with pride.

Nobody else in the rest of the class had come anywhere close, though Seamus had somehow managed to change his fowls feathers green and Ron's had plucked itself. Ron was probably considering lunch from the look of things.

'Harry,' Hermione nudged him, 'aren't you even going to try? It's not that hard you know.'

Time to put my summer of study to use.

Slipping his wand from his sleeve Harry tapped the guinea fowl on the head, earning himself a sharp, annoyed cluck from the bird.

'That's not the proper wand action, Harry,' Hermione began exasperatedly, but whatever else she had been going to say was lost as his bird changed into a perfect guinea pig.

Harry shot her a beatific smile.

'But that was your first try,' Hermione stuttered. 'It took me almost five.'

'Five,' Harry pulled a shocked expression, 'it's not that hard you know.'

See how she likes it. You shouldn't rub your success in others' faces.

Hermione huffed and turned away to watch Ron whose guinea fowl was beginning to look more and more like it had been roasted. It was making Harry quite hungry, but he was sure it would restore Hermione's confidence in her abilities. Nobody else in the class had really improved.

'Well done, Mr Potter.' Harry jumped as Professor Mcgonagall appeared over his shoulder. 'Twenty points to Gryffindor for a perfect species-switch transfiguration. I daresay you might have inherited your father's talent for my subject as well as his tendency to overlook the rules.'

Hermione looked distinctly put out with his reward and he hid his smile. She couldn't be the best all the time.

'I can't believe you did that on your first try, Harry,' she congratulated him after a moment. 'That's really lucky. If only Ron was as fortunate as you.'

Lucky. Is she really incapable of accepting that someone might have done better than her? Harry decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. In three years he had never demonstrated any of his unfulfilled potential, so to suddenly exceed expectations might well come across as a stroke of luck.

A loud bang from the row behind drew the attention of most of the class. Neville's increasingly frustrated attempts had lead to him knocking his guinea fowl cage off the desk with his arm, spilling Seamus bottle of water.

'Mr Longbottom,' their transfiguration professor lamented, 'focus on the outcome you desire, don't just wave your wand like a baby's rattle.'

The spilt water was streaming towards Hermione's bag, which was no doubt full of books and notes.

A disaster in the making.

He vanished the encroaching liquid before it could ruin his friend's things and Hermione, who had been scrambling to retrieve anything from the water's path gave a loud sigh of relief.

'Thank you, professor,' she exclaimed loudly.

'Pardon me, Miss Granger,' Professor Mcgonagall responded from her desk, her wand rather unhelpfully placed out of reach for her to claim the credit for his timely intervention.

'Nothing, professor,' Hermione said confusedly, catching sight of her wand. 'Vanishing is an advanced fifth year spell,' she muttered to herself as she carefully rummaged through her bag to ensure nothing was damaged. 'I can't do a vanishing spell yet. If I could I would use it on Ron's stupid quidditch posters.'

Harry laughed and turned away, returning his wand to his sleeve again. What Hermione didn't know wouldn't vex her, or, more likely, drive her to the library for a week to research vanishing charms.

He spent the remainder of the class watching Neville, his face screwed up with concentration, trying to remove his guinea pigs remaining feathers and Ron, whose guinea fowl's appearance grew more and more food-like as lunch approached. Hermione meanwhile had taken to jabbing her wand frustratedly at small pieces of parchment and snapping the incantation for the vanishing spell under her breath. She had managed to make the edges of the torn fragment fade a little as they packed away to leave, but her lack of success reassured Harry that he was still well on his way to reaching the level he needed to be.

There was no poultry at lunch, something for which Harry was quite relieved for and Ron seemed distinctly disheartened by. No doubt his red-haired friend had spent most of their transfiguration imagining how his guinea fowl would taste rather how it would become a guinea pig.

'What did Snape want?' Neville asked him between bites of a precariously made sandwich.

'Told me my work was finally passable and that I shouldn't slide back into mediocrity,' Harry replied, as several slices of radish escaped Neville's lunch and made a bid for freedom across the table. They only rolled as far as Ron who gratefully accepted the contribution to his meal.

'That was awfully nice of him,' Ron sniggered. 'Did he deduct points to compensate as well?'

'No. He didn't take any points off me today actually.'

'Odd, normally at least ten are gone in our first potions lesson, maybe he was happy about something and forgot.' Seamus had a point. Harry invariably cost his house at least ten points every potions session, though he felt more of the blame lay with Snape than with him.

'What would Snape be happy about?' Ron asked incredulously through a mouthful of cold beef.

'He's probably anticipating failing all our OWL exams,' Neville cut in gloomily. 'My gran will kill me if I don't get at least 6 OWLs like my father.'

'It's two years away, Nev,' Ron exclaimed. 'Harry has to go through two near-death experiences first, you've got a huge edge.' The table laughed with the exception of Hermione who was still trying to vanish her piece of parchment with a single-minded determination Harry had rarely seen even from her.

'I've had my one for this year, thanks,' Harry interceded.

'It doesn't count, mate,' Ron countered. 'The Bulgarian cheerleader cancels it out.' The guys nodded in agreement.

'She wasn't that gorgeous, Ron,' Harry defended. 'And all she did was carry me while I was unconscious. Hardly anything to be proud of.'

'She was a veela, Harry,' Dean said. 'Those legends about the sirens in the Odyssey are supposed to be based on veela. You've outdone Ulysses.' That brought blank looks from those raised in the magical world.

'It's a really famous story,' Dean exclaimed. 'How could you have not heard of it? Harry, Hermione, back me up, everyone knows about the Iliad and the Odyssey.'

Hermione didn't stir from her attempts at vanishing and Harry was beginning to feel rather guilty.

I suppose I should come clean.

He leaned over Hermione's shoulder to tap his wand against the small fragment of parchment and watched with a small smile as it immediately faded from existence. Hermione whirled around like a viper.

'How did you do that?' she hissed. 'I've been trying since transfiguration.'

'It's not too tricky, you just have to visualise what you want to happen and really focus when you perform the spell.' He shrugged rather helplessly. 'It's like all magic really, but it affects transfiguration more.' She looked scandalised by his casual description and reached for another piece of parchment.

Harry caught her hand. 'It's an advanced OWL year spell, Hermione, plenty of time to practise later. Can't have you starving, and someone needs to help Dean and I defend the Odyssey.'

'The Odyssey,' she responded blankly.

'See,' Ron crowed. 'Hermione doesn't know about it and that means virtually nobody does.'

His friend went rather pink, but shook her head. 'I know about the Odyssey, Ron, it's one of the most famous stories ever written and it's over two thousand years old, but I have no idea why you're all talking about it.'

'Dean said there are veela in it,' Seamus explained rather bravely.

'Are attractive, part-human women all you people think about it,' his friend retorted testily, the flush fading to a more indignant expression. 'I assume he was referring to the sirens that Ulysses encounters.' Harry nodded. 'He's probably right,' she acquiesced after a moment, 'but you can't still be thinking about the Bulgarian cheerleaders, their charm only works when you're looking at them.'

'They were goddesses,' Ron defended, adopting a rather dreamy expression, before bursting into laughter at the reactions of both Hermione and the passing group of Gryffindor girls.

The guys began whisper about the beauty of veela as Ron explained and related the actions of the referee at the World Cup. As much as Harry wanted to join in the discussion his memory of the event revolved all too closely around his close encounter with that Death Eater.

'How did you get so good at transfiguration,' Hermione asked him in a surprisingly humble tone.

'I spent the summer reading up on all the theory,' Harry explained. 'I never bothered before as I'd just picture what I wanted to happen and with a bit of practice I'd get the hang of it. I did it for all our subjects, but I'd imagine transfiguration will be one of my best now since it's quite intent based and very visual. My dad was supposed to be really good at it.'

'Oh,' Hermione nodded, seeming to accept his honest answer. 'I didn't know he was so good at transfiguration.'

'He and his friends were animagi during their mid-school years, Hermione,' Harry laughed. 'Even basic human transfiguration isn't covered until our last two years, let alone full animagus transformations.'

'I guess that does make sense.' Hermione seemed to be struggling with something. 'It's good you've started studying seriously,' she added. She didn't seem completely pleased with it, a touch too bitter to be just impressed.

'Time for charms,' Ron sighed, throwing one forlorn glance back into the Great Hall.

Charms was still in Flitwick's well lit room beside the central tower and thus only a short walk away. It was one of the more useful subjects, but Harry hadn't spent particularly long reading up on it over the summer in comparison to the other subjects and wasn't actually sure what material they would be covering.

'Repairing, summoning and banishing charms,' Flitwick squeaked quite excitedly from his perch at the front of the class when they had all entered and settled down. Harry blinked. Hermione was going to be angry with him again. He knew both of the first two, learning the first to help him with his glasses over the summer and then reading about the second in sufficient detail to perform it at the World Cup.

'We'll be starting with the mending charm and moving on to the others after christmas,' the tiny professor explained, waving his wand to reveal his year plan on the board.

'A theory lesson,' Ron groaned quietly from beside him. Even Hermione seemed a little let down. She was already capable of performing this charm. It was her use of it to fix his glasses that had initially inspired him to learn it, but at least she wasn't going to get bitter about his improvement as she had done in transfiguration.

The soft scratching of quills soon filled the room as the class resigned themselves to only taking notes. Harry flicked a little further through the textbook to the banishing charm, noting with a touch of amusement that Hermione had already done so.

The banishing charm was really only the reverse of the summon charm and after a cursory glance through the chapters on its specifics and a cheerful skipping of the history of the charm Harry decided to quietly try it himself.

Withholding as much of his magic as possible he whispered the incantation and aimed it at the ink pot of Zacharias Smith, a rather pretentious Hufflepuff. A soft ripple of air crossed the class and the ink pot gently slid across the desk to the far side, spilling ink across Zacharias' notes.

Smiling, Harry returned his wand to his sleeve just as the Hufflepuff student look around indignantly. Charms wasn't going to be too much of a stretch for him this year as long as there were only a few essays.

The spilt ink had spattered a familiar, poisonous green across the parchment Zacharias was waving angrily in the direction of Professor Flitwick. It wasn't too far from Ancient Runes to the first floor girls' bathroom. He could sneak out and satisfy his desire to see Slytherin's serpent on the way to class tomorrow morning after breakfast.

Hermione perked up through the lesson, clearly glad to be back into the rhythm of taking notes and was even happy enough to let him borrow them tomorrow when he asked after class. Harry didn't really need the notes for the charm itself, but Flitwick's first homework of the year, six inches on the applicability of the mending charm, could be easily summarised from his friend's overzealous note collection.

'Did you flick any further through the book?' she questioned him eagerly on their way back to the common room.

'Not really,' he admitted, 'nothing more than a skim through the summoning and banishing charm. I was curious, but they both looked quite useful.'

'They do,' Hermione agreed, seeming glad of having someone to discuss more advanced topics with all of a sudden. She seemed to have gotten over her surprise at his improvement and come to terms her newfound competition. 'Summoning is one of the most useful charms, it will save everyone so much time at the library.'

'Madam Pince will murder you if she catches you summoning books, Hermione,' Harry grinned.

'What she doesn't know won't upset her,' Hermione gestured vaguely, 'it doesn't hurt the books, so it's fine.' She bounced animatedly along the corridor, alongside him as a puzzled Ron trailed behind them.

'Harry,' she began as they reached the portrait-covered entrance to their common room. 'In return for lending my notes for essays would you give me some pointers for casting the spells themselves?'

'Of course,' he agreed readily. 'You don't really need them, but if you want.'

'I understand all the theory, of course, but my spells never work first time. I thought it might be worth trying how you visualise them.'

'It's just a good way of focusing the intent that has to accompany your magic,' Harry explained. 'I've some mind-clearing exercises that are supposed to help your focus. I can teach you those.'

'That's a good idea,' Hermione enthused. 'Ron needs those. All he does is think about how long is left until the next meal.'

Ron threw her a mutinous look, but didn't actually deny her accusation. His friend couldn't really argue with it after his attempt to transfigure his guinea fowl into something resembling lunch earlier.

'I'm going to the library,' Hermione decided. 'I want to get the essay out of the way before all the other professors give their first homework as well. Come on Ron.' She skipped out through the portrait, trailed by a rather crestfallen Ron who had probably been looking forward to relaxing by the fire.

They had left him alone in the common room so he pulled a chair up close to the fire with the intention of waiting for the others to come back down from the dormitories. Staring into the fire reminded him of the camp at the World Cup and, unable to resist his curiosity, he retrieved his wand.

Picturing the serpent he had conjured from the ash he slashed his wand violently at the fire. Nothing happened.

Never one to give up straight away, Harry imagined the basilisk forming from fire instead and repeated the wand action.

The head of the flaming basilisk lunged at him from the fireplace, fangs agape, and he threw himself backwards out of his chair.

It flared out of existence the moment he looked away from the fire and he pushed himself back to his feet, swearing under his breath and brushing at his singed robes.

Standing his chair back up he firmly replaced his wand up his sleeve to avoid temptation, but he couldn't ignore the shiver of excitement he felt. He had done it again, with fire no less. Harry couldn't wait to try conjuring it again in the Chamber of Secrets.

AN: Please read and review. A heartfelt thanks to those who already have.

4. The Secrets of the Chamber

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I think things will probably have to speed up soon. As much as fun as writing about every lesson is, I fear the overall plot would stagnate terribly, but review and tell me if you disagree.

Chapter 4

'Open,' Harry commanded, staring expectantly at the snake engraved tap.

'It doesn't work if you don't speak to snakes,' Myrtle giggled, drifting unusually far from the safety of her cubicle.

'I can speak to snakes,' Harry defended.

'Well you were only speaking English. I never did say thank you for killing the monster down there,' Myrtle smiled shyly. 'You're my hero Harry.'

'Er, thanks Myrtle.' He tried not to edge away from the ghost as she drifted uncomfortably close. He didn't like anyone getting too close to him. There was something that felt wrong about it, whether they were dead or alive.

Picturing a snake in his head, a particular fire-conjured one, Harry tried again. 'Open,' he repeated. The tap shuddered and the sinks split apart to reveal the entrance.

'That's more like it,' Myrtle cheered. It was the first time Harry had really seen her so happy and the expression was actually quite flattering.

'It sounds the same to me,' Harry confessed. 'I can't tell if I'm speaking parseltongue on my own.'

'That was definitely parseltongue,' Myrtle answered, still cheerful. 'It sounded just like before,' her face fell, 'when he came.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised. 'I didn't mean to remind you.'

'That's ok, Harry. You weren't the one responsible. I blame that Olive Hornby more than him anyway.' Myrtle's face became a picture of loathing at the mention of the nemesis of her school days.

He stepped towards the pipe, giving the slimy inside a rather disgusted look. Harry had forgotten about the condition of the pipe. It hadn't exactly mattered last time he had come down here.

'There are steps, you know.' Myrtle hovered over the entrance, peering down into the pipe. 'The red-haired girl who spoke in his voice would make steps.'

Harry cast a sceptical glance down the pipe. It didn't really look like steps would even fit, but it was worth a try.

'Stairs,' he hissed, presumably in parseltongue, as the pipe twisted away to reveal a rather dusty, dark staircase.

Harry followed the small set of footsteps down through the dust. They were probably Ginny's. The idea of little, shy Ginny wandering down here towards a basilisk under the influence of Tom Riddle was worse than disturbing and Harry was more glad than ever he had driven that fang through the diary.

The stairs led to a door that was identical to the second one he had encountered on his last visit. It opened at his hissed command and he set foot inside the Chamber of Secrets for a second time.

Somehow the stairs led to exactly the same entrance as the pipe, something Harry put down to magic. If Salazar Slytherin was capable of creating a basilisk, hatching it, keeping it, and building a chamber for it, he could easily manage a little space manipulation.

Bones crunched beneath his feet as his strode forwards far more confidently than he had done last time. The giant snake skin still sprawled across the floor, but it's green gleam and faded to a dull white. Beyond it, though, the body of the basilisk lay untarnished. It's bright, poisonous green scales were every bit as iridescent as they had been before.

Harry could barely take his eyes off it.

How did I manage to survive that monster, let alone kill it?

It was even bigger than he remembered. Sixty feet had been the guess of a terrified child. Harry estimated it at more like seventy or eighty. Its fangs were the length of his forearm and about as wide at their base.

King of serpents indeed.

It was identical to the two snakes he had conjured, albeit much larger than both.

Tracing his fingertips along its scaly hide he walked along its length, marvelling at the creature he had slain. He almost regretted killing it. His inner Hagrid showing itself briefly before he remembered exactly what the serpent was here for and ruthlessly suppressed it.

The rest of the chamber was as he had left it from the serpent effigies along the walls to the ink stain where the memory of Tom Riddle had met its well deserved end. He gave the dark blotch an ugly glare. For all his brilliance and his charm there had been something about Tom Riddle that had been just as inhuman as the basilisk he set on his fellow students.

Stepping past the ink stain he moved to stand before the giant bust at the end of the chamber. The features did not seem particularly evil, or even remarkable in any way. Had he come across the likeness in a less spectacular manner Harry might not have looked twice.

Running his eyes over the vast likeness of Salazar Slytherin he tried to remember what exactly Tom Riddle had said to summon the serpent.

'Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four.'

The mouth of the huge bust opened with stony scraping and for a brief moment Harry feared he might have just released a second basilisk and be forced to repeat his feat, but nothing slithered from the mouth of the founder.

There was a very long silence as Harry stared at the statue, trying to decide what to do, then, from within in came a distinctly unimpressed voice. 'What a ridiculous way to open the door, it responds to virtually any command in parseltongue, you know.'

It took a moment for Harry to get over the shock at hearing another voice in the chamber. He firmly reminded himself that whoever it was it could not be Tom Riddle, since not only had he been stabbed by a basilisk fang but whoever was speaking was ridiculing the open phrase he had used.

'And no,' the mysterious voice continued rather petulantly, 'I won't speak to you.' Harry did a rather sharp double take.

That can't possibly be the voice of Salazar Slytherin.

Whomever it was, childish Salazar Slytherin or not, there was no way Harry could resist going to look. He did rather wish there wasn't a small lake in the way, though.

'Bridge,' he ordered, half-heartedly. He had been rather resigned himself to getting wet and so was pleasantly surprised when a rather old, stone bridge rose from the pool.

It was a carven likeness of a serpent's tongue, extending as if from the mouth of Slytherin himself.

Hesitantly he put one foot on the forked tip of the tongue.

'Oh, by all means come in,' the voice started up again sarcastically. 'I'd like another visitor, my only other company has been that insane reptile and a vengeful child with delusions of grandeur.'

Pride wasn't Harry's strongest trait, but he'd had quite enough of being mocked by the stupid voice. He strode swiftly across the tongue-bridge and through into the inside of Slytherin's mouth.

It was a study. Actually it quite reminded him of the headmaster's office, with shelves of books, odd magical instruments and a carved marble basin rather like the one he had often glimpsed in Dumbledore's cabinet.

'Just stand there and gawp, that's exactly what the other one did.' Harry whirled round to stare at the clearly ancient portrait that hung above the door. It held a rather young, formidable looking wizard, dressed in green and silver robes with a snake of some sort wrapped around his shoulders, just below where his ebony hair hung to.

'Well you look sane,' the portrait mused, 'but the last one did as well and look how that turned out.'

'Who, exactly, are you?' Harry inquired. He was rather less polite than he would have been, but he felt somewhat justified after the paintings comments, Salazar Slytherin or not.

'Portraits are named,' the dark-haired wizard sighed. 'I always hated children.'

'Salazar Slytherin,' Harry read aloud. Then, more curiously, 'if you hate children, why found a school?'

'It wasn't safe for magical children to just learn their craft all over the place. Don't you know anything about the burnings?' The sarcasm had disappeared at the mention of burnings to be replaced with deep disgust.

'Witch burning?' Harry queried.

'Sort of. The muggles couldn't actually burn witches and wizards, but they got a fair few of our children after they were seen performing accidental magic. Burning children alive,' the portraits eyes filled with fury, 'and they called us demons. Hogwarts was a haven for magical children. They were taught how to control and even hide themselves for their own safety.'

'You don't leave a basilisk that eats children in a school,' Harry exclaimed.

'She was meant to sleep until the school was under attack,' Slytherin snapped. 'A basilisk is very hard to kill, especially for those without magic. Had anyone ever tried to get to the children here she would have protected them with her life. It worked perfectly until my last visitor twisted my commands to his own ends.'

'Tom Riddle,' Harry muttered.

'Yes. Basilisks are renowned not only for their power, but their loyalty too. She devoted herself to her creator and my command to protect the children from the outside world. Tom Riddle,' Slytherin spat, 'corrupted my creation and set her on children who had come from the outside world to learn here.'

'It's good thing she's dead, then,' Harry said quietly, feeling a little sorry for the serpent.

'Dead?' Slytherin remarked. 'Who managed to kill her?'

'I did,' Harry sighed, doubting the portrait would believe him.

'You are my heir, I suppose,' the ancient portrait mused, 'you would be powerful.'

'I am not your heir,' Harry declared firmly. He had had one year of that nonsense already.

'You speak parseltongue,' Slytherin told him very slowly, as if addressing an idiot. 'It is an ability I created and is tied to myself. Only my direct descendants can speak it, and as I have no desire to ever see Tom Riddle again that makes you my heir.'

'Sorry,' Harry mumbled, embarrassed. 'The school all thought that in my second year when the basilisk was attacking students. They blamed me.'

'You can't really blame them,' Slytherin replied evenly. 'You do speak parseltongue. I assume you're in my house?'

'Gryffindor, actually.'

'Gryffindor,' the portrait exploded. 'What is my descendant, my heir, doing in the house of that reckless, moronic, immature excuse for a wizard? The whole reason I had to build this chamber was because that child of a man couldn't resist his urge to sabotage my work, and all Helga would do is laugh.'

Harry's sceptical face caught the attention of the irate wizard and sparks flew from the painted wand, startling the snake around his neck. It hissed indignantly and took cover within Slytherin's robes.

'Did you think he was noble, brave hero?' Slytherin shook his head in exasperation. 'That wizard never matured beyond the age of eighteen. He was an exceptional transfigurer, quite brilliant and creative too, but cursed with a child's sense of humour. Most of the things he did around this school were actually done by Rowena and I after the idiot injured himself trying to enchant things in overly complicated ways.'

'I'm quite good at transfiguration,' Harry offered as an explanation of his sorting. 'The hat did suggest Slytherin too, but I chose Gryffindor.'

'Why would you do that?' Slytherin burst out. 'Who would want to live in a tower when they could have a view out into the Black Lake?' He calmed down fairly quickly with only a few more murmurs about childish Godric and the snake deemed it safe to return to hanging around his neck.

'I'm Harry Potter,' he introduced himself, realising he still hadn't and almost extending his hand to the picture.

'Salazar Slytherin, and I can't shake it but I appreciate your manners.' It struck Harry then a considerable amount of time might have passed and he should probably go and have breakfast or make his way too class.

'I think I have to go to class now,' he told the ancient painting.

'How old are you?' it asked, ignoring his statement completely.

'Fourteen.'

'Your eyes are older,' Slytherin responded after a moment. 'You are my heir, return here whenever you like. My library and study are yours provided you're tidy and not as childish as Godric.'

'Thank you,' Harry answered earnestly as he left. He wasn't overawed by the revelation that he really was the Heir of Slytherin, but if he wanted to improve himself this would certainly be a huge help.

The forked tongue styled bridge descended back into the pool once he crossed it and Harry made his way back towards the stairs, throwing a regretful look at the pool. He had quite wanted to try conjuring a water basilisk, but he was almost certainly late for Ancient Runes as it was.

Striding swiftly across the school in the direction of his new class he caught sight of Hermione just leaving the Great Hall after breakfast and realised it wasn't quite as late as he had feared. Hurrying after her down the corridor towards the classroom for Ancient Runes he narrowly avoided sending Malfoy sprawling. The arrogant Slytherin was sent scrambling for his bag amongst the feet of the students traversing the corridor. Harry would've stopped to laugh, but he'd rather not be late for his first class, especially after switching into it on his own.

Bathsheda Babbling, the current professor, was fortunately doing her best to live up to her name in the corridor outside the class amongst a gaggle of seventh years and Harry slipped past her to join Hermione in the front row. He would have preferred to sit a little further back, but he'd have had to spend the journey distracting his friend to accomplish that.

'Welcome back to Ancient Runes,' their professor gushed immediately upon entering. 'Happily everyone survived from third year and we even have an additional student,' she gestured at Harry, 'who needs no introduction.'

There was a rustle as all the students turned to look at him, his scar, and then back to their bubbly professor.

'I trust you've all brought your copies of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms,' Professor Babbling said sweetly. 'As this is the first lesson I'll allow you to recap anything you feel you need to or just get started on the material for this year while I chat with Harry and start planning our year together in detail.'

'Harry,' she smiled cheerfully, 'mind joining me in my office.'

'Of course not, professor.' Harry abandoned his already finished book and followed the professor through into her office.

It was a small, cramped room the walls of which had been repeatedly covered and recovered in parchment. Harry assumed Professor Babbling used it to work on as there were runes and notes scrawled all across the parchment draped walls in different coloured inks.

'My office is my playground,' the professor explained with cheery wave at the walls. 'So why did you decide to switch to my class?'

'I find runes quite interesting,' Harry replied earnestly, 'specifically their applications in wards and, if I'm being completely honest, Professor Trelawney was a bit too fond of predicting my death.'

'How horrible,' Professor Babbling remarked. 'I'm glad you have a genuine interest in the subject, this is a small group and we tend to move quite fast, so anyone not on board gets left behind.' She was staring a particular set of runes emblazoned on the wall beside Harry's head. It was uncomfortable, but preferable to having his scar ogled.

'Back to class then,' she smiled. 'I won't pass your concerns about Professor Trelawney on, between the two of us, I've never really had time for a subject as imprecise and vague as divination.'

Hermione spent the whole session lost in the book, gazing into its pages in a manner amusingly reminiscent of her least favourite divination teacher. Harry meanwhile quietly flicked through the pages of his own copy, eager for the day to end so he could return to the Chamber of Secrets again. Enduring Salazar Slytherin's mouthy portrait was hardly a concession in return for what he might be able to learn there.

'What did Professor Babbling want?' Hermione asked when the lesson came to an end.

'She just wanted to know why I switched to Ancient Runes and to warn me about how fast the class will move.'

'We do go fast,' Hermione agreed, 'but if you're already ahead in transfiguration then you'll be able to redistribute your time and keep up.' She shot him a smile that seemed almost proud. 'Why did you switch?'

'I told you. I got a bit tired to being told how I was going to die every lesson.' It wasn't like Hermione was going to object to him leaving divination. She had quite literally walked out of their lessons.

'It's Arithmancy now,' she said, beginning to rummage through her bag. 'I've got the notes from last year. I thought you might like them if you wanted to go over what we did or anything.'

Harry accepted them with a grateful smile. He didn't need them and would much prefer her notes from Ancient Runes, which would be very useful, but it would save him buying the books if ever forgot anything.

Septima Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, reminded Harry very much of his maths teacher from muggle school. She had the same air of neat, logical action and he could imagine her stopping to think through every option of a choice before actually deciding.

It was actually quite a disappointing start. Harry had been expecting to see everything he'd read about over the summer, but it seemed that most of the subject he wanted to see was only vaguely mentioned until after OWLs. Advanced Arithmancy was the class he really wanted to take, so he settled in his seat and watched Hermione happily work her way through the exercises.

'Why aren't you working?' she asked, when she eventually looked up to see him doodling on the edge office parchment.

'This isn't the form of Arithmancy I'm particularly interested in,' he admitted. 'I read a lot in the summer, but everything I want to learn isn't covered until after OWLs.'

'Advanced Arithmancy is supposed to one of the hardest classes,' Hermione responded rather dubiously. 'Are you sure?'

'Of course. This is just the basics behind the theory to any passable enchanting or warding. After OWLs they cover all the complex, interesting stuff. Two-dimensional equations are useless to describe magical patterns when any magic we fold into planes for warding or enchanting will be done in reality, an obviously three-dimensional construct.'

Hermione paused and seemed to be going over what he had said in her head. Harry took a great deal of pride in saying something that had forced her to think for so long. Not many of their teachers often managed such a thing.

'I guess that does make sense,' she agreed, 'but you'll still need to know this.'

'I already know enough to get by until Professor Vector sets more complex assignments,' he answered. Harry leant across to fill in the answers to the very last and only incomplete question on her parchment. 'See, easy.'

Hermione shot him an angry look and scribbled out his answer to work it out herself. Harry returned to his doodling.

He had just finished adding scales to the head of his Arithmancy basilisk when class came to an end.

Hermione had eaten her lunch rather sullenly next to him, but he wasn't sure if she was angry with his sudden ability in Arithmancy or because he'd written on her work. She always hated it when anyone wrote anything on her notes. It was well known that the easiest way to annoy Hermione Granger was to get ink on her notes or, worse, on an actual essay. Harry suspected the latter, he wasn't any better than she was at what they were currently studying, just a little ahead.

Ron was equally subdued and still quite bleary eyed.

'Divination was absolute hell without you, mate,' he mumbled. 'I had to partner with Lavender. She was so enthusiastic. It was no fun at all.'

'What's your horoscope?' Harry asked dryly.

'Well I'm not going to die, so it beats whatever yours would have been. Lavender mentioned something to do with fire and veela, but I think she was talking to Parvati about the World Cup.'

'You slept through the whole thing didn't you,' Harry concluded sympathetically.

'It's so warm and stuffy,' Ron complained. 'I don't know how anyone stays awake.'

'It's history of magic next,' Neville interceded, 'no need to for anyone to stir themselves. Even my gran says that the subject is a waste of time while Binns is still teaching it.'

'You know they say that his body is actually still in his office from where he died and that he just kept teaching as a ghost,' Seamus told them cheerfully.

'Aren't ghosts meant to have a reason to linger?' Ron asked Hermione.

'Maybe he hadn't finished marking essays,' Seamus sniggered, when Hermione didn't respond.

'How does he mark our essays?' Dean wondered aloud. 'He can't exactly touch them, can he?'

'Maybe that's why he never notices we don't hand anything in,' Ron grinned.

True to its usual standard History of Magic was lectured to a class that was largely asleep. Harry was sure in the few times he had glanced up from his book on advanced transfiguration that Binns had been addressing the class from within the wall. He shook his head. Having a ghost for a teacher was a terrible idea.

Even Hermione wasn't really paying attention. She had opted to use the time to get started on the essay Binns had set rather than listen to his voice echo out from the wall about goblin tunnel skirmishes.

Harry couldn't blame her one bit. He only looked up from the passage in his book about human transfiguration to nudge Ron whenever he started to snore too loudly.

The theory of the book, A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration, was fascinating and it had been well worth ordering from Flourish Blott's a couple of years before they would get around to using it in class. Human Tranfisguration wasn't something he was about to start experimenting with, however. The stark warning in the preface about becoming trapped in his newly transfigured form if things weren't done correctly was enough to dissuade him. Harry had been quite keen to get to grips with the theory, becoming an animagus like his father and Sirius had while at school was an exciting prospect, but that had rather dampened his desire. He'd probably have to do any actual experimentation in the Chamber of the Secrets so Hermione didn't catch him and tell Professor Mcgonagall. Their transfiguration teacher would probably award him house points, but only shortly before expelling him for doing something so reckless.

Something for a later date, he decided and swapped the book for his copy of Confronting the Faceless. He badly needed to learn some applicable duelling spells. Harry couldn't continue to conjure serpents every time he was in a tight spot. Actually he'd prefer to never have to, because as soon as anyone saw him manage it he'd be lauded as the Heir of Slytherin all over again.

I wouldn't even be able to deny it.

There was quite a nice selection of curse and counter-curses in his new book, many of which were quite advanced and included the nasty purple looking spell he had been attacked with. Lacero was the incantation for a rather nasty adaption of the cutting spell that was intended for flesh rather than inanimate things. It wasn't something Harry planned to use except in the direst of circumstances.

In its later pages Harry found a section on the unforgivable curses, including the Cruciatus curse he had been hit with at the World Cup. There was a spell he would be doing everything in his power to avoid in the future. There was no sensation quite like having every nerve screaming out. Harry imagined Slytherin's burnt magical children might recognise the sensation and shuddered at the thought. It almost justified the basilisk.

The Imperius curse, described over the page, intrigued him. It was the only unforgivable that could be defended against, even if it required very strong will power to do so. The book suggested that practice would make it easier to fight off, but Harry rather doubted any of his friends would be willing to assist him and cast it at him.

You'd have to be mad to risk being caught casting it. It, like all Unforgivables, carried a lifetime sentence in Azkaban for being caught casting it at another person.

He was rather intimately familiar with the final member of the trio of unforgivables. Absentmindedly he traced the scar on his forehead, remembering dreams that always ended the same way. A flash of bright green light.

'Avada Kedavra,' he murmured very quietly. That was one spell incantation he didn't need to be heard repeating. Rather chillingly they were the first words Harry had ever been able to remember on his own. The dementors had forced him to recall everything he had heard before the curse, but the incantation had somehow stuck in his head on its own. He distinctly recalled attempting to correct a magician at one of Dudley's birthday parties when he had been much younger. It was quite a disturbing memory now he considered it.

AN: Read, enjoy (hopefully) and please review. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed; they brighten my day.

5. Unforgiveables

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowlings.

Another chapter. I'm genuinely surprised by how much I've managed in about 24 hours. I guess that's what you get with a new idea and a free day!

So somehow it's now 02:45 am for me, so I'm just going to upload this and add it to the story when I wake up later.

I did also mean my mention of romance in case anyone came in anticipation and now feels disappointed.

Chapter 5

'It's only been two days since the beginning of term, Ron,' Hermione explained wearing a rather indulgent smile.

'It feels like we've been here for ages,' the red-head sulked, reaching for the nearest rack of toast.

'We were here a bit earlier, but still, it's barely September and nothing is happening until October.'

'It's a travesty,' Ron mumbled around a mouthful toast. 'All that hype about the bloody tournament and we have to wait until October to enter.' Hermione's eyes narrowed at the swear word and Ron instinctively retreated out of elbow range.

'Not much point entering now, mate,' Dean interjected. 'Got to wait for the other two schools first.'

'Are you going to enter?' Seamus asked playfully.

'Nope,' Dean responded, unaffected. 'I choose life. I had a research about it when I heard. It's been cancelled for centuries because all the champions kept dying before the end.'

'Doesn't sound like eternal glory to me,' Neville piped up from across Ron. The second youngest Weasley had made his way through the toast rack and was now polishing off half a plateful of eggs.

Where does all the food even go?

Harry had managed a decent breakfast by his standards. Some bacon, a pair of fried eggs, several pieces of toast and the mushrooms Hermione had snuck onto his plate out of concern. He wasn't even that thin anymore. When he'd first come to Hogwarts he'd been all skin and bones, but three years of abundant food had filled him out well enough and quidditch had gifted him a little muscle to his frame. Neither Mrs Weasley of Hermione seemed to have noticed any of it.

'Sounds like unexpected death to me,' Seamus grinned. 'Still, I'm entering. They'll have made it safer or something now, I'm sure.'

'Well,' Ron emerged from behind his napkin, 'if you see a basilisk, just summon Harry and hide for a bit. That ought to do the trick.'

'That's pretty much the plan,' Dean laughed. 'I'll let the seventh years know. They're the ones who'll get chosen anyway. The tournament is supposed to have the best possible student chosen from all the entered names.'

'How does it know?' Neville asked curiously.

'Magic,' Dean shrugged. Everyone turned to look at Hermione.

'What?' she responded. 'I'm not interested in a silly tournament, we're almost at OWL year now.'

'That's a point,' Harry realised. 'I'd wager the champions will all be sixth years really. No exams that year.'

Ron nodded. 'I'd agree,' he chuckled, 'if I wasn't putting my name in. Can you imagine Percy's face?'

Harry laughed. 'You'd get another howler from your mum,' Dean pointed out.

'Worth it for eternal glory.' Ron seemed quite taken with the idea. 'Pretty much everyone in Gryffindor is putting their name in, even some of the firsties wanted to.'

'House of the brave,' Seamus explained.

'House of the brave and Neville,' Dean corrected. 'Maybe you'll be champion, Nev. Up for it?'

Even Hermione smiled at Neville's suddenly pale face. 'I prefer to leave that stuff to Harry,' he stuttered. 'Giant snakes, swords, dark lords and lethal tournaments are his area of expertise.'

'It's about time it was someone else's turn,' Ron decided forcefully.

'Madam Pomfrey might not let you out next time,' Seamus added.

'We've got double Defence with Mad-eye,' Neville spoke up nervously. 'Madam Pomfrey might be seeing all of us if what I've heard is true.'

'Oh,' Harry swivelled to look at the attention shy boy. 'What did you hear?' He had decided after learning the hard way that it was best to keep an eye on the revolving Defence Against the Dark Arts post.

'Apparently he's been talking about the Unforgivable Curses,' Neville explained. His voice had shrunk under the rapt attention of his audience.

'Bit of an odd thing to teach,' Dean muttered after a moment.

Harry had to agree. They'd covered a handful of mostly useless jinxes and hexes and a lot of information on dark creatures that were best avoided, but little else. Last year they'd done some good work on defending against things like boggarts, but the greatest danger seemed to come more from other wizards. In his case that was usually the teacher themselves.

'It's probably useful, though,' Ron decided in the silence. 'Dad says those three spells are the ones that are most often used by wizards involved in the dark arts.'

'We're about to find out,' Dean said, glancing at his watch.

The so named Mad-eye Moody's class room was full of rather nervous looking students, but the grizzled ex-auror was nowhere to be seen.

'Oi, Potter,' Malfoy sneered. 'How did you enjoy the World Cup? I heard you collapsed again, saw a dementor did you?'

'No, Malfoy,' Harry gritted, 'I did see a blond man in black, hooded robes, though. Did your father enjoy his after-party?'

The slimy pure-blood recoiled as if struck. 'My father had nothing to do with that. As if it wasn't enough that you pranced around with mudbloods and blood-traitors, you've lowered yourself to slander too.' He turned away to a simpering Pansy Parkinson before Harry could remind him that slander was pretty much all Malfoy managed on a day to day basis.

'Ignore him, Harry,' Hermione said coolly, covering his wand arm with her hand. Ron seemed to be considering hexing the blond as well, but his temptation was abruptly quelled by the arrival of their professor.

Professor Moody was even more unsettling up close than he had been in the Great Hall. Above a nose that had a sizeable chunk missing an electric blue eye whirled frantically across the room. It stopped only to hover over each student and to peer suspiciously into the shadows around the edges of the room.

He heaved himself down past the desks, his wooden leg clunking on the stone floor with each step until he came to the front.

'I am Alastor Moody,' he growled in the immediate silence. 'I served as an auror in the war against the Dark Lord and I've seen almost all there is of the dark arts and not from a practitioner's perspective.' From behind his desk he retrieved a large, bell-shaped jar. It contained three quite large spiders.

There was an audible scraping noise as Ron's chair moved slightly further back.

'When it comes to the dark arts, I believe in a practical approach. There's nothing out there that will really prepare you for what's to come. I survived the war, but it cost me an eye and a leg and more to do so.'

He unscrewed the top of the bell jar with stiff, jerky motions and placed it on the desk in front of him.

'There are only three curses that will get you a lifetime ticket to Azkaban if performed, or attempted, on another human being.' Harry shared a wary glance with Ron, Neville had heard correctly. 'Can anyone name any of them?'

'The Imperius Curse,' Malfoy suggested with only the slightest hint of a sneer.

'You'd know all about that one, wouldn't you, boy?' the ex-auror barked. 'I'd wager your father told you about it, he used it as an excuse to escape that very same ticket to Azkaban.'

Malfoy had the common sense to stay quiet for once, but Harry had little doubt that would be referenced in his coming letter home.

Professor Moody levitated the spider out of the jar and onto the desk. 'Nasty curse the Imperius, it gives complete control of the victim to the caster. The ministry had terrible trouble with it, because it's hard to tell when anyone is under its effects. It is, however, the only one of three that can be defended against as a strong-willed wizard or witch can fight it off.'

The scarred ex-auror raised his wand, a thick, notched piece of wood and pointed it at the hapless spider. 'Imperio,' he growled.

To the amusement of most the spider careened around the room, scuttling over students and dancing on desks.

Neither Harry nor Ron laughed. Harry knew from his book the unpleasant truth of the curse and Ron, well Ron was still afraid of spiders.

'Another curse?' their teacher asked as the spider obediently crawled back to his desk.

'The Cruciatus Curse,' Neville whispered. He looked even more pale than he had during breakfast and Harry thought he glimpsed his hands trembling within his sleeves.

'Yes, Mr Longbottom, the torture curse, its incantation is crucio.' The ex-auror's magical eye froze on Neville's face. 'I will not be demonstrating that one in front of the eyes of children.'

He scooped the spider up and poked it back into the jar with the tip of his wand. 'And the last one?' he finished, returning his wand to a holster along his forearm.

'The Killing Curse,' Ron murmured.

'Speak up, Weasley,' the professor snapped. 'You are correct. The Killing Curse. It cannot be deflected, or magically blocked; its only survivor is Mr Potter.' Professor Moody regarded both him and his scar with an air of suspicion for a moment then looked down to screw the jar lid back on. Harry noted he had not told the class the words for the killing spell. It was probably for the best or Malfoy and his lackeys would be out practicing it on small animals before the end of the day.

'Blimey,' Ron whispered. 'That was an intense lesson.'

'The lesson has not ended, Mr Weasley,' Professor Moody retorted from the front of the class where he was tucking the jar of spiders back under his desk. 'There is a very lengthy chapter on hex-deflection in the text I recommended for this year, read it before next lesson, either in here or wherever you please.'

He turned and stomped into his office and Harry glimpsed an array of fascinating looking glass and mirror-like artefacts.

I wonder what those do?

'Come on,' Hermione tugged at his arm. 'I want to check on Neville.'

'I've got to go get started on Flitwick's essay,' Harry apologised. 'I don't want to fall behind.' Hermione gave him a look of disapproval as he hurried off. Harry decided not to turn back and snap at her; it wasn't like he was abandoning Neville. He had to get better to protect friends like Neville from Voldemort.

Myrtle's cubicle was quiet and empty when he reached the first floor bathroom. Nobody actually ever used the place. In fact, now that he thought about it, the only people who had come in here had been him and his friends when they were up to something illicit.

And Ginny.

He vanished the dust on the stairs down to the chamber so he wouldn't have to see her footprints again. The feeling of helplessness he recalled from chasing after her was not something he wanted to re-experience.

Harry vengefully vanished the ink stain as well. Salazar Slytherin would probably appreciate him removing the last remnant of Tom Riddle from his Chamber of Secrets.

'I'm back,' he told the statue in parseltongue.

'Oh, joy,' he heard the portrait announce from within, 'company.'

Despite the comments of the snarky painting of Salazar Slytherin he strode across the bridge eagerly. There was so much he wanted to try.

'You are back,' the ancient painting remarked as he entered. 'That seemed very quick, decided not to go class then.'

'It's been over a day…' Harry trailed off uncertainly.

'How am I supposed to know,' the wizard demanded. 'There aren't any windows and the last I knew the year it was the mid-twentieth century.'

'The century is almost over,' Harry informed him.

'Like I care,' Slytherin retorted. 'I'm a painting. I will exist until I am destroyed, time means little to me now.' Harry raised an eyebrow and wondered how bad Godric Gryffindor must have been if he was the childish one.

'For those who have less time and might wish for more, however, I have a pleasant surprise.' Salazar gestured at his desk with his wand, accidentally dislodging his living serpent necklace.

'A time-turner,' Harry whispered in awe. Hermione had used one last year, but it had required a lot of forms and specific ministry approval from what he'd gathered. This small, golden hourglass might well be the most valuable thing in the chamber.

'Yes,' Slytherin responded testily as his snake slithered back around his shoulders. 'It can't be removed from the Chamber of Secrets, I enchanted it.'

'That's a good thing, very farsighted of you.' Harry could only imagine how much harder it would be to deal with Voldemort if he had one of these.

'I did it so Godric would stop stealing it,' Salazar admitted abashedly. Harry fixed him with a disbelieving stare. 'It's true,' the painting insisted, 'I would never have admitted it otherwise.'

'I thought the two of you were supposed to be enemies not involved in some war of pranks?'

'I did not carry out pranks,' Salazar objected, thoroughly displeased by even the idea. 'We had a healthy spirit of competition. I made all the wards around the castle with Rowena, so he transfigured and enchanted all the gargoyles and suits of armour. When I created the Headmaster's office with Helga, he and Rowena snuck off to make some secret room of their own. They were very proud of it. Especially when I couldn't find it,' he groused.

'What secret room?' Harry inquired, undeniably curious.

'They called it the Room of Requirement,' Salazar explained. 'I never found it, but they never found my Chamber of Secrets either.'

'Any idea where it is?' Harry asked. 'Or what it does?'

'Presumably it is whatever it is required to be, but no, I'm not sure exactly where it is, or how to find it. I narrowed it down to the seventh floor, but it would be a waste of time searching for it when you have all this.' Salazar gestured grandiosely around his secret study, nearly dislodging his snake for a second time.

'True,' Harry agreed. 'I have some magic to practice,' he told the portrait.

'Not in here you don't,' the painting snapped. 'Out into the hall where you won't make a mess of everything. Leave the time-turner there too. It's limited to about twelve hours, but you can come down after class and use it to repeat the day whenever you like.'

It was a good idea and Harry had to concede that without this room he would not be able to go nearly as far this year as he now hoped he could.

'Reducto,' he cried, whipping his wand through two sides of a triangle, and unleashing the blasting curse in the general direction of the dead basilisk.

The dead serpent didn't so much as twitch.

Magically resistant hide, Harry remembered.

'Reducto,' he tried again. The curse sailed past the snake and struck the pile of bones at the far end of the chamber. It left nothing but a very fine dust in its wake.

A few additional attempts, and exponentially more renditions of the mending charm, and Harry had gotten quite adept at changing the strength of the spell.

'Have you finished destroying the finest room in this castle?' the portrait asked acidly when he wandered back into the study.

'I fixed it afterwards,' he defended. 'Do you know anything about using transfiguration and conjuration in duels?'

'I am Salazar Slytherin,' the painting replied indignantly.

'You said Godric Gryffindor was the expert.'

'I'd like to think I know enough to teach a fourteen year old,' Salazar shot back. 'Sit and listen.'

'I've used it before,' Harry mentioned on his way to the chair behind the desk.

'You have?' That seemed to have perked the founder's interest.

'I conjured a basilisk out of ash and killed a wizard who was attacking me,' Harry confessed. His guilt over killing Barty Crouch's son lessened each time he was reminded of it.

'Good for you,' Salazar answered, utterly unconcerned by what was tantamount to murder. 'What was the spell? Serpensortia?'

'I didn't use a spell, I just waved my wand and made it happen.' Harry tried very, very hard to make that sound less childish than it did. He failed miserably.

'Show me.'

'You said not to do magic in here,' Harry objected.

'So pick me up off the wall,' the portrait snarked, 'and carry me out there. It will be nice to have a change of scenery.'

The ancient painting was heavy and Harry staggered clumsily along the bridge hoping very much he didn't fall in. The founder berated him every time he lurched too close to the water.

'Is that my basilisk?' Salazar asked when Harry propped him at the side of the chamber.

'Yes,' Harry gave the enormous serpent another glance.

'She grew a lot,' the founder smiled. 'How did you kill her?'

'With a sword,' Harry replied, keeping a straight face.

'It had better have not been that ridiculously shiny, goblin-made atrocity Godric used to wave around,' Salazar warned.

'It was exactly that sword,' Harry admitted, and the portrait lapsed into a stream of swear words in parseltongue.

'Show me this conjured serpent,' the painting asked once it had regained its calm.

'I managed to repeat it with fire,' Harry began, 'but I don't know how well water will work.'

'Just try, it shouldn't really matter.'

Picturing the basilisk coalescing from the pool just as it had struck from the cloud of ash Harry slashed his wand forwards and well away from himself.

A vast, liquid basilisk maw rose from the pool to crash like a wave against the wall across from Harry. It disintegrated back into the pool in a wild spray after impact.

'Well now,' Salazar remarked, 'that's a very impressive piece of silent battle-conjuration. If you hadn't used a serpent I daresay Godric himself might have deigned to teach you.'

'Er, thanks,' Harry replied. He wasn't sure if anything connected to Godric Gryffindor was compliment when it came from the mouth of the painting of his rival.

'Try again. This time don't imagine a striking snake, but one that hovers in the air over the pool.'

Harry dutifully did so and they watched as the water rose to roil in the form of the king of serpents. It hung for a few seconds, coiling and twisting as it awaited a command, then Harry's magic gave out on him and both he and the snake collapsed.

'I can imagine how tiring that must have been,' the ancient painting said once Harry had regained his breath. 'It looks powerful, but draining. That's not a spell you should be using until you've got a lot better at directing your magic.'

'I have no idea how to do that,' Harry admitted.

Salazar gave him an incredulous look. 'To conjure and animate something like that would require a great deal of magic. Even in my prime I would be capable of wielding it for no more than a minute or two and you're using imprecise wand movements and pouring magic all over the place. Focus on only your spell when you cast it and keep your wand movements small.'

Harry struggled to stand and try again but the painting shook its head. 'Not now. There are some rituals you can undertake to strengthen both your body and magical core.' He eyed his appointed heir critically. 'I'd recommend them. They did Tom Riddle a world of good back when he was scrawny little thing like you.'

'I'm not doing anything that wizard did,' Harry denied vehemently.

'You're going to use the time-turner aren't you?' Salazar asked.

'Yes,' Harry ground out from between his teeth.

'Then you're following in his footsteps already. That time-turner is what made him such a brilliant student. Of course, you're rather more sane than he turned out to be. You don't have delusions of vengeance against muggles or an over-inflated sense of self-worth do you?'

'Not that I am aware of,' Harry answered tensely.

'Good.' The painting nodded. The snake on his shoulders nodded too. 'Use the time-turner, do the rituals, outstrip him and redeem the title of Heir of Slytherin if you dislike the connotations he gave it so much.'

Harry carried the portrait back to its resting place.

'I'm not doing the rituals,' he decided, rubbing his aching arms.

'Suit yourself,' Salazar replied. 'It will make carrying my picture a lot easier if you did. If you happen to change your mind you'll find the ritual books you're looking for in the corner of the library up there.' The painting pointed to a particularly high spot just behind where the ladder rested.

'I'm not doing them,' he repeated wearily.

'I'm not going to force you,' Salazar Slytherin responded, strangely gently. 'You're my heir, the last reputable member of my family as far as I know. I'll help you as much as you allow me, especially since you saved me from the insane ramblings of my poor basilisk.'

'I'm not sure I want to ask,' Harry decided aloud.

'She had nightmares,' Salazar explained simply. 'I think the magic which was used to create her, that which made her loyal to me, punished her for what she did, even if she believed it was what I wanted. I'm glad you put her out of her misery. She is free of Tom Riddle and I no longer have to listen to her tortured raving.'

'Where did she go?' Harry asked after a moment. 'I just walked in here and found the study and it's far too tidy to have housed a seventy foot serpent.'

'She slept underneath,' the painting elucidated. 'When you intend to wake her any parseltongue command would have brought her forth. You wanted to open the door so you came here. A good thing,' the portrait noted, 'since you probably wouldn't have been able to get out of her resting place had you fallen down there.'

Harry threw a glance around the study. He would have liked to stay longer and study more, the shield charm was one of the things he really needed to learn, but he was aware than he had virtually depleted his magic and should probably rest instead.

'I'm going to head back to Gryffindor Tower,' Harry announced. Salazar exploded into another muttered rant about his heir being in Godric's house rather than his own and didn't show any signs of stopping so Harry left him to it. He rather hoped he wouldn't find another founder portrait should he stumble across the Room of Requirement, another one might be too much to bear.

Hermione was waiting for him in the common room when he returned. 'Where have you been?' she demanded. 'I looked in the library, and asked around, but nobody had seen you since you left us after class.'

Harry shrugged vaguely. 'It's easier to work out of sight where I won't be disturbed.'

'Did you finish the essay? I can look over it for you.'

'It's not quite done yet,' he lied. 'I want to check a couple of things, maybe squeeze in an extra bit to give Flitwick a good impression at the start of the year.'

'Good idea,' Hermione agreed. Harry was rather surprised by how well he deceived her. He was also rather sickened by how smooth it had all sounded.

Tom Riddle would be proud.

Salazar had already said he was following in his footsteps and Harry had done his best not to physically flinch from the idea. There had been similarities between them, too many for comfort, but few enough that he could ignore them until the founder's portrait had all but said they were the same.

'Ron's upstairs with Seamus and Dean,' Hermione told him. 'Neville said he was fine, since you were so concerned earlier, but I think the Unforgivables really bother him.'

'The Unforgivable Curses bother everyone except the worst kind of wizards, Hermione. What would you have to be to not be bothered by curses to control, torture and kill?'

'I think they bother Neville more than most,' she replied quietly. 'I'm going upstairs, you're acting differently again.'

Harry watched her disappear towards the girl's dormitories.

Differently.

He was meant to be different. This was the year he started to really fulfil his potential and become strong enough that people like Pettigrew couldn't hurt the ones he cared about. It was a good thing, so why had Hermione sounded so negative about it.

Harry put it out of his mind. Perhaps he'd been a little distant today with his trip to the Chamber of Secrets and he knew Hermione was a little annoyed about him stealing her limelight in some of the classes. She'd get over it. Ron got jealous of him all the time and he always moved on quickly enough. This would be no different.

AN: Enjoy the read and please review.

6. The Butterfly Effect

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowlings.

Thanks to anyone reviewed; this has been a lot more popular than I thought it would be already.

I do have some bad news now. My rate of posting might slow a little as I begin to wrestle with details and things go more AU and I'll be in Tanzania for a couple of weeks which will make posting and writing new chapters tricky.

Chapter 6

October came fairly quickly, despite Harry managing to slip in an extra four hours each day in the Chamber of Secrets with his newfound time-turner. Scottish summer was short at best and the light, warm rain gradually transitioned into heavier, cold rain. The leaves of the Forbidden forest began to change, the Whomping Willow moulted and an autumn mist began to settle over the Black Lake in the mornings.

No matter how swiftly Harry felt the month had gone it seemed it had not been fast enough for Ron. The coming of October was synonymous with the beginning of the Triwizard Tournament this year and its approaching advent had been all anyone was talking about.

Gryffindor Tower had separated into three groups: Ron, Seamus and the majority of the house who had already decided to enter their names and were looking at previous tasks from before the tournament had been cancelled, Hermione, Neville and those who had been unable to resist the growing interest, but had no desire to actually enter, and Harry, whose desire for eternal glory had permanently died at the age of eleven.

Today was October the first and according to many, especially Ron, the beginning of the legend of the coming and inevitably glorious Hogwarts' Champion. Harry had had severe reservations about that and had tried to warn his friends by pointing out that most of the old Prophet articles they were using to research the old tasks were about the death of a champion, but they refused to listen.

He had given up after Seamus told him that most of the creatures were fairly harmless until provoked in a manner so like Hagrid Harry had to shake his head in disbelief. His scepticism hadn't been particularly helped by the fact they were looking at a piece about one of the final years of the tournament. The first event had resulted in all three champions being killed by an irate sphinx.

Harry reassured himself that the organisers would have learnt their lesson and it was unlikely they would include some form of large, dangerous magical creature in the opening round this time. It made it marginally less likely that whomever was foolish enough to get selected would die straight away.

'The other schools are coming today,' Seamus crowed excitedly from a little way down the table where he, Dean, Neville and Ron were enthusing as normal. Harry returned his gaze to his book, pausing only to glance down the table to where everyone else was sitting and dodge Katie Bell's best attempts to spill pumpkin juice over everything nearby. A deft touch she might have with a quaffel, but goblets seemed to be a long way beyond her if the trail of juice that was edging its way towards him was indicative.

Harry vanished it distractedly, registering Katie's surprise and gratitude at his use of a vanishing spell, before re-burying his head in his transfiguration book.

Salazar had told him he had something a gift for transfiguration. The founder's portrait had been quite tetchy about his aptitude for one of Godric's favourite subjects, but encouraged him to spend time on developing and practicing the art nonetheless. Harry's ancestor's own areas of study lay mostly in quite obscure fields, most of which the Ministry now considered dark.

The painting had taken that piece of news quite indignantly, but assured him had Rowena been told her response would have come with far more vitriol. Magic was about power and intent and he had accepted that so as long as his intent was good, no deliberate harm could be done. Neville had done his best to shake Harry's belief in this ideal, normally in potions, but with a burgeoning knowledge base that had swelled to encompass a small selection of some quite nasty curses Harry had quite firmly stuck to his justification.

His newest project was to adapt a spell of his own. Salazar had suggested something to do with snakes and conjuring, no doubt having a smaller version of his basilisk conjuring feat in mind.

Harry had chosen a butterfly summoning spell, something he would develop from the bird conjuring spell he had seen and learnt out of A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration. His choice had given the portrait of Slytherin a fit of apoplexy before he had explained that a swarm of butterflies would make an almost impervious shield to the Killing Curse that had its roots in soul magic, the Cruciatus Curse that he was keen to never re-experience or any of the other dark curses that caused no physical damage. A blasting curse would tear through his butterflies like paper, but most such curses could be deflected with practice, unlike the Unforgivables. His ancestor had eventually agreed, but was still begging him to reconsider his choice of creature every time they discussed it. Harry had relented only so far as making the butterflies black.

'Papilionis,' he said firmly, drawing a very narrow, close-bottomed vee in the air with the tip of his wand.

A single, rather lopsided looking butterfly, more grey than black, lurched in comical spiral around his head.

Not quite what I was hoping for.

The tragic creature corkscrewed across the table, narrowly avoiding Ron's fork, to collapse in front of Hermione who poked it curiously with her wand. It burst into a wisp of black smoke. Harry frowned and scratched his head, for some reason the spell just wouldn't work no matter how he tried to visualise the movements of the insects.

Hermione shot him a rather smug look from where she sat. His failure to complete this spell had coincided with the aftermath of their spat over Harry's behaviour in classes. She felt he should be paying attention and trying harder and voiced as much, normally loudly in the presence of the teacher, but when she did force him into the limelight of the professor she got annoyed about his seemingly effortless success. Something he found rather hypocritical of her considering she often accomplished the same feat. Matters were made worse when he refused to answer how he was growing so much better in all of his classes, but it wasn't like he could tell her had an illegal time-turner and was spending an extra handful of hours a day learning. She'd made enough of a fuss over his surprise firebolt from Sirius last year, let alone something as serious as an illegal time-turner.

'Papilionis,' he repeated pushing more magic into the spell.

This time he was rewarded by an extra butterfly and a shriek from Katie Bell who had not expected to be accosted by an insect in the midst of her conversation.

They were a little better formed, Harry decided, as he watched Katie vengefully set his conjurations alight. The wings had been a better shape, and they'd actually managed to flutter rather than corkscrew listlessly. Hermione remained unimpressed.

I'd like to see her try and adapt something to make a new spell, he fumed. Between everyone else's obsession with the Triwizard Tournament and her reaction to his apparent sudden change in behaviour he had found himself with a lot more time to himself, just like things had been before; when he had been nobody.

It made it easier to study, but that just pushed him further away from her and compounded the problem.

At least when the champions are chosen the excitement will die down and Ron will start talking about something else.

'Aren't Beauxbaton and Durmstrang's students meant to be arriving today,' Alicia asked from across where he sat.

'I think so,' Angelina nodded, 'but I don't know how they're arriving.'

A burst of startled exclamations from by the window drew the attention of everyone in the hall.

'What is that?' Dean came to peer over his shoulder, apparently he had the misfortune of having a good view out the window from where he sat.

'It's a bird,' someone dismissed.

'No, it's a plane,' a muggle-born student cried out to a few sniggers and more than a few blank looks from those raised in the magical world.

'It's Beauxbatons' flying carriage,' a seventh year Ravenclaw announced in a very Hermione-ish manner as it drew closer. 'It's pulled by Abraxan horses.'

The coach was a pale, pastel blue and rather ornate. Its wheels reminded Harry vaguely of the Penny Farthing bicycle in that the rear pair were much larger than the front pair. The entire affair, both winged horses and carriage, disappeared behind the central tower and Harry returned to his book again. A few more unfamiliar faces hardly changed anything here in a school where he knew and recognised at best at a quarter of the students.

Somebody had informed Dumbledore because he and the majority of the Hogwarts staff were now entering the hall, trailed by what appeared to be the remainder of the student body. Harry was more than a little bemused by the air of excitement.

'Something's happening to the lake,' a first year squeaked from the other side of the Great Hall. There was a rush of noise as half the students flowed from one side of the room to the other.

'It's bubbling,' someone cried in surprise.

'There's a ship.'

'It must be Durmstrang,' the Ravenclaw from before declared.

'Do they know about the giant squid?' a girl asked innocently. Harry bit back a laugh. That could be a nasty surprise for the arriving contingent from Durmstrang.

'I heard Durmstrang is in the Czech Republic,' Ron announced loudly from down the table. Harry was almost proud of his friend for not joining the congregation around the window.

'The Czech Republic is a landlocked country, Ron,' Hermione declared with some incredulity. 'Travelling by ship would be very impractical.'

'Me mam said something about Scandinavia,' Seamus added.

'If everyone could find a seat on their house tables,' Dumbledore suggested, his wand held against his throat to magnify his voice over the hubbub. 'Let's give a good impression to our guests.'

There was a scramble back to the tables and Harry found himself squished very tightly in between Katie and another sixth year girl he didn't know. He tucked his elbows in as far as possible to try and separate himself from the warmth of the two of them, but as soon as he made space they seemed to encroach into it again. He took several deep breaths and tried to concentrate on his book as best he could to block out the uneasy nearness of the people around and the annoying tickling sensation of Katie's hair on his arm.

The entrance to the Great hall remained open as it always was, presumably to prevent first years from being trapped behind the heavy doors, so there was a good view of the new arrivals.

Katie's attempts to crane her neck around Harry were making him increasingly aware of her proximity and he leant a little further away.

'Sorry, Harry,' she apologised with a giggle when she realised she was all but lying across him. 'Didn't mean to be so forward.' He gave her a slightly awkward smile in return.

The Durmstrang students were dressed for cold weather the likes of which Scotland would never see and Harry thought Seamus' Scandinavian idea might bear some merit after all. Their headmaster, a silver-haired, sour-faced man with a short, pointed goatee came last, his arm draped about the broad shoulders of his final student.

'That's Viktor Krum,' Ron hissed. A murmur of surprise and admiration spread as the prodigious young seeker entered the hall.

'Igor,' Dumbledore welcomed, arms outspread and eyes twinkling beneath his spectacles. He received a sharp, curt nod in return, something Harry thought slightly rude.

'Madame Maxime, is on her way,' the foreign professor announced in surprisingly unaccented english. 'She stopped to give more precise instructions to your gamekeeper about her Abraxans.'

Dumbledore let his arms drop and continued to smile magnanimously as his counterpart joined him at the elevated table and his students, following Krum's lead, found space on the Slytherin table.

The hall began to fill with whispers as they waited for the French students to arrive.

Harry's attention returned to the pages of his transfiguration book and, consequently, he completely missed the arrival of the Beauxbatons pupils. Harry only realised anything had happened at all when the hall fell eerily silent and he caught Katie mutter, 'that girl is not normal.'

Looking up from his reading material for what he decided would be the last time his eyes roved over an unremarkable group of French witches and a number of glassy-eyed Hogwarts students. One of the witches had oddly familiar platinum hair and sat at the very end of the group of new arrivals on the Ravenclaw table. She looked a little left out of the conversation in the few moments Harry watched them and for a second she reminded him of himself and his currently distant group of friends, but he didn't see anyone to justify Katie's comment.

He raised his book to avoid the sudden arrival of food, something that proved to be wise as its spine only narrowly avoided the appearance of a large bowl of fish stew. It had the largest prawns he had ever seen arrayed neatly around the edge.

It looks quite tasty.

There wasn't any room to eat comfortably at the moment and between the elbows of Katie and his other neighbour Harry decided to wait until the table had begun to clear before eating. He had more time than most without any lessons later on in the day.

Everything around him went unnervingly quiet all of a sudden and a very soft, french accented voice spoke up in the silence. 'Do you still want the bouillabaisse?'

Bouillabaisse, Harry assumed, was the name of the untouched dish in front of him.

'Take it,' he replied, leaning out of the way of Katie, who swung the bowl dangerously over his lap, without looking up from his book.

'Merci,' the voice replied with an element of shock. Harry glanced up to catch a flash of platinum hair and Katie's awed stare.

'What?' he demanded.

'You're not acting like all those idiots,' she said, gesturing at the pair of fifth boys across from them who were still staring after the French girl.

Harry blinked, gave her a confused look, and then decided it was easier to read and continue trying his butterfly spell than puzzle out whatever Katie was talking about.

'Papilionis,' he murmured softly, drawing the wand action as carefully and gently as possible.

This time he managed to achieve a whole swarm of imperfect butterflies and those around him erupted in general disgust as they scattered across the table wreaking consternation.

'Sorry,' he apologised, after banishing them into black smoke. 'I wasn't expecting so many.'

'No more insects,' Katie growled. It seemed fair, especially since he had performed the incantation and wand movement perfectly and still not managed the spell. He would have to ask Salazar.

Another argument about butterflies beckons.

The food eventually vanished and Harry, who had only managed a few mouthfuls, was left feeling a little hungry.

'Now that our guests have arrived it is time we come to the main attraction of the year.' The headmaster approached the lectern at the head of the hall. 'It is time for the Triwizard Tournament to begin, but first, the rules.'

Dumbledore's words were largely lost on the hall as the majority of the students eyes were fixed on the goblet that now stood just in front of the lectern. An ancient, roughly hewn artefact made remarkable by the blue flames that twisted above it and the almost visible aura of magic projected around it. He glimpsed Ron staring at it with obvious, fervent desire. His friend's desire to stand out from his brother's and friends had grown stronger and stronger over the years.

'First of all it should be made very clear that nobody below the age of seventeen is allowed to enter.' The hall erupted into groans of disappointment and Harry was certain he heard the almost-seventeen Weasley twins complaining loudly.

'I have,' Professor Dumbledore continued, 'to ensure that no mishaps occur, taken the liberty of drawing an age line around the goblet here. Aside from that the tournament will proceed as it did before it was cancelled. Anyone wishing to be chosen as champion may enter their name into the goblet over the next two days and the names of the champions will be announced by it soon afterwards.'

Most of the table had already started searching for pieces of parchment, ink and quills as if the first few to enter might have some advantage. Harry pulled his book back out of the way of the ink bottles now scattered across the table.

It might be best if I went to the chamber, he decided.

It was loud in the Great Hall, the food was gone, and he was finding it hard to concentrate on his book or his butterfly shield spell. He made his way out, pausing only to overhear Ron launch into an outraged rant about the age restriction. His red-haired friend had been quite convinced that this would be the moment he stepped out of the shadow of his older brothers and made a name for himself.

As he had predicted Salazar's portrait had once again conveyed its dismay at his choice of butterflies.

'They're such feminine insects,' he moaned as his snake eyed the lone, imperfect conjuration that fluttered around Harry. 'Can't you use dragonflies, or bats, or anything more respectable.'

'Butterflies are simple and their wings cover a lot of area,' Harry defended for must have been the twentieth time since suggesting the spell, 'now are you going to help or sulk?'

'Salazar Slytherin does not sulk,' the portrait seethed, crossing its arms.

Of course he doesn't.

'What are you visualising?' the painting inquired.

'Butterflies, swirling around me in a sort of demi-sphere.'

'How are you picturing them forming?' Salazar pressed.

'I wasn't really,' Harry admitted, 'it never mattered for the bird-conjuring spell.'

'You're conjuring from air,' the portrait sighed. 'A single bird or insect you can probably get away with, but for lots you have to focus on them being created from the air beforehand. It's harder to conjure from such an insubstantial thing.'

'Papilionis,' Harry uttered and this time he imagined the butterflies growing from the air, curling together as if made from smoke.

He was abruptly engulfed in a tickling cloud of wings.

'That's very good,' Salazar enthused once they had all dispersed. 'Practice directing them as a shield and you could use them to deflect some types of curses as you wanted, or even transfigure them and use them as weapons.' The latter sounded like quite a good idea. The ancient portrait had already deduced that any duel-style he developed would likely be highly based around a few powerful spells, transfiguration and conjuration.

'You've spent a lot of time down here over the last month,' the founder realised in Harry's moment of quiet contemplation. 'And that's excluding the use of the time-turner.'

'My friends are all obsessed with the Triwizard Tournament,' Harry shrugged. 'I don't particularly enjoy talking about it constantly and I need to get much better at magic than I was.'

'Don't forget your friends,' the portrait warned. 'You'll need them, especially with your record of ending up entangled in anything dangerous nearby.'

'I haven't forgotten them,' Harry denied hotly, 'but it's hard to be with them when most of them don't do anything I find interesting and the only one who does resents having an competition.'

'Choose better friends, then,' Salazar suggested calmly.

'There are no better friends,' Harry declared.

The founder shrugged, bouncing his reptile shoulder garment up and down. It let out an irritated hiss. 'If you say so.'

'I do,' Harry replied confidently.

'Papilionis,' he whispered, engulfing himself in a swirling cloud of black butterflies. This time he managed to direct the swarm to swirl around himself fast enough that he could see through the blur of wings.

With a flick of his wand he transfigured one of the butterflies into a gleaming, steel spike and sent it flying out of the shield.

It hissed viciously across the chamber and buried itself in the wall a few inches above the elaborate frame of Slytherin's picture.

'Be careful,' the founder exploded. 'I do not need one of those impaled through my canvas. Sometimes you're worse than Godric.'

Harry attempted it several more times using sponge balls rather than steel spikes. It was a lot harder than it looked to transfigure and then direct the former butterflies the right way and it took him many tries to get to grips with it.

'My Chamber of Secrets looks like a childrens' playground,' Salazar griped, gazing around at the brightly coloured balls strewn across the floor and floating in the pool. Harry gave the giant corpse of the basilisk, something unlikely to be found in any child's playground, a pointed look, but vanished the mess he had made.

'I think I've got the hang of that,' he mused. 'A little more practice wouldn't hurt though.'

'It's a surprisingly useful spell that you've made,' the founder conceded, 'despite the ridiculous butterflies.'

Staggering back across the tongue styled bridge under the weight of the painting, Harry considered his new spell proudly.

Hermione would throw a tantrum if she saw it working already. That made him smile despite himself.

Salazar was replaced back on his spot above the entrance and Harry slipped off the time-turner to replace it on the desk.

'Godric used to steal that and move my things around,' the painting told him, but for once he sounded rather melancholy when speaking about his co-founder. 'He thought it was hilarious until Rowena found out and yelled at him for messing with time for something so petty.'

'You miss them,' Harry realised.

'I'd miss anyone after half a millennium with no company but a mad serpent and a delusional child,' Salazar retorted, but the bite was missing from his tone. 'I'd even miss Godric's childish japes, Helga's mothering or Rowena's lectures.'

'I think,' the portrait decided quietly, 'when you have redeemed the title of Heir of Slytherin and no longer have need of my advice, I'd quite like to be moved somewhere else in the castle. Maybe you'll find a portrait of my old friends in the Room of Requirement.'

'I'll search for it,' Harry promised earnestly. He was a little uncomfortable with this slightly emotional Salazar. The sarcasm seemed more natural and was easier to deal with.

'You should go back to your tower and see your friends,' the portrait reminded him. 'Heir of Slytherin or not, you'll need them.'

Harry nodded, feeling a little guilty at leaving the painting alone again, but left anyway. Hopefully the age line had quelled the tournament talk down so that they could do something else. He'd quite welcome a game of exploding snap.

Most of the guys from his dormitory were in the common room by the fire.

'It's rather empty in here,' he remarked, crossing to join them.

'Everyone's still by the goblet in the hall and the younger years are in lessons,' Ron explained sullenly.

'Not happy about the age rules, I take it.'

'Bloody pissed off is more like it,' Ron responded. Hermione didn't even bother to scold him for swearing, though she did roll her eyes.

'Don't take it too hard,' Harry told him.

'It was my chance, Harry,' Ron sighed. 'You wouldn't understand, you've always been noticed and famous and had everything I want.' He didn't sound particularly jealous, at least no more than normal, just tired. 'I was going to be noticed too. I wouldn't just be another Weasley, or Harry Potter's friend, or something like that. I don't want the whole limelight or anything, just a glimmer for myself.'

'Honestly, Ron,' Harry began, 'I'd happily give you the whole thing.'

'It's easy to say that from where you're standing, mate,' Dean cut in. 'I'm just another muggle-born student that half the wizarding world doesn't think should be here, you've been a hero from birth.'

'I didn't want to be.'

'We know,' Seamus reassured him. 'It's just a little annoying to be in your shadow sometimes.'

'Well I can promise you all that we'll be in the shadow of the Hogwarts champion together,' Harry said. 'I've no desire to enter my name and I couldn't anyway.'

'Fred and George tried to cheat past the age line earlier,' Hermione announced. 'It didn't work, but I've seen loads of younger students trying everything they can to get in.'

'I'd take my hat off to anyone who manages to slip past an age line created by Dumbledore.' Dean didn't seem to think it was possible and Harry had to agree.

'Maybe next time,' Harry suggested, 'you'd have a better shot at winning then too.'

'It was held every five years back when it was running,' Seamus informed him quietly.

'I'm going upstairs,' Ron declared, shoving himself out of his chair and slouching off. Seamus and Dean shared a glance and trailed after him.

'Did you try and put your name in, or watch the others?' Hermione asked, gazing into the fire.

'No,' Harry replied. 'I've been trying to perfect my butterfly summoning spell.'

'That's really advanced transfiguration, Harry,' Hermione consoled him, unaware it had been successful. 'You shouldn't be trying it for another year at least. I'm impressed you managed to conjure anything at all.' Hermione didn't sound all that impressed. If anything it seemed more like she was trying to convince herself she was impressed.

'Thanks, Hermione,' Harry replied, smiling was the smile of his predecessor, all brilliant charm and obvious emotion. Tom Riddle had taught him one thing that was useful, he supposed.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed already.

7. The Flower of the Heart

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I've reposted this, changed a few things that I wrote when I was tired (no love-magic bonds, sorry guys, normal relatable romance only) and included without really thinking about it. Although my purpose in writing this is to play with the clichés, to offer them up and turn them into something different as best I can, I'll try not to let them have a profound impact on things. I do ask that when one begins to loom you stick with me for a bit, since it's highly unlikely I intend to just let it flow down the same old path as before.

Chapter 7

The face that gazed back blankly from the mirror was proud. High, refined cheekbones, slender, elegant brows, bright, clear, blue eyes and full lips all framed by flowing, silver hair. This was her face and it was perfect.

Fleur was not like other girls. She hadn't really believed that when her mother had told her when she was little, but she'd learned swiftly enough it was true. She'd been a cute child, popular and loveable, but then the other girls had changed and nobody wanted to be cute anymore. They had grown curves where she had only had sweet innocence. Fleur had been left behind. She had been derided, mocked and her friends had left her. It had hurt and despite the strong facade she had maintained there had been more than one occasion when it reduced her to tears.

It had been three very long years of wondering why she was cursed to be different and waiting to catch up, then she had changed too. Now it was those foolish, petty, plain girls who envied her. They had abandoned her for boys and now their boys abandoned them for her at the slightest glance. Fleur didn't even want their boyfriends. That was not how her magic worked, regardless of the jealous whisperings of her self-entitled rivals.

I have no real rivals, she smiled, proud of that fact.

She was more beautiful, more intelligent, her family just as prestigious as any other in France, and her magic was stronger. She would not have wanted her former friends back if they had crawled towards on her knees. Fleur had outstripped them the moment she had hit her Veela puberty and they would never, could never, catch up.

Fleur had her own room in the carriage where other girls had to share. Madame Maxime had known the moment her differences from the other ordinary, human witches became apparent that she would not be one of them again. She had her own rooms at Beauxbatons and the privilege had accompanied her here to this miserable, wet castle in Scotland.

Her younger sister, Gabrielle, had just entered her fourth year at Beauxbatons. She, like Fleur, had already been abandoned by her so called friends, but Gabby had finally begun to change as Fleur had. She had grown three inches in the last month alone and would soon follow in the footsteps of her elder sibling as she passed from being held in contempt to being regarded with jealousy. It was of paramount importance to Fleur that her baby sister not have to go through it as alone as she had.

She had been there when Gabby had come to her rooms crying because her friends had nothing better to do than taunt for remaining like a child and she would continue to be there for her. When Gabby came to her again because the girls she hoped would become her friends now she had changed lashed out in spiteful jealousy and avoided her; Fleur would still be there.

The Triwizard Tournament was not something she needed to compete in, she'd rather be back in France with Gabrielle, but nobody else from school would do as well as her. Since leaving Beauxbatons there had been those hopeful of being champion rather than her and toppling her from her pedestal. It was time to make sure the pretenders were reminded that they had not been her equals since they forsook her and would never be on the same level again.

Madame Maxime was holding a slow and painstaking conversation with Hogwarts' gamekeeper when she peeked outside. Most disturbingly the vast man was wearing an expression she recognised all too well from the faces of the boys she passed by.

Fleur quietly slipped past her up towards the castle. She was not supposed to leave the carriage unattended, but who, other than her headmistress would accompany her. It was not like she was worried about herself. A sixth year she might be, but she had had plenty of time to advance her learning while the other girls had been making eyes at boys and gossiping spitefully about her. Even so, she reduced the aura of allure that radiated off her as much as she could. This was not a time to attract attention when it might bring trouble. Madame Maxime would be beside herself if she caught her unescorted in the middle of a boys school late at night.

It would also validate the rumours those harpies like to spread. Fleur scowled at the very idea of people actually believing those lies.

Somehow her cloak was soaked before she had even reached halfway to the indoors. The rain wasn't even visible. There was as much water in the air as there was in the foul, cold looking lake. Veela were creatures of emotion and fire; they did not enjoy the wet or the cold and Fleur was no exception. She longed for the bright sun of southern France.

The grey, dreary battlements of Hogwarts were a far cry from the graceful architecture of Chateau Beauxbatons. Everything was solid, square and grey, even the few towers were sturdy rather than slender. She supposed they needed the thick walls to keep out the rain and, furthermore, deduced that there was little point in building a beautiful castle when the clouds would always obscure it.

The Great Hall was quiet; a far cry from how it had been when they first arrived. As she had hoped, the initial enthusiasm about the goblet and entering names had faded and the students that had stayed to cheer prospective champions had lost interest after a few hours and none had lingered after curfew.

With quick, confident strides she made her way down the centre of the hall to the flame-filled artefact. The age line rippled as she crossed it, but nothing happened. She was seventeen and had been for almost a month.

Fleur Delacour, the parchment's slanting, delicate script read in the blue light of the goblet before the flames swallowed it and the light flared red. Her name was accepted, as it was always going to be. She had had no doubt of that.

She spun on her heel to make her way back down the hall and to her room where she would be free of both gawping boys and gossiping girls.

Fleur froze as a shadow passed the entrance of the hall. Someone was coming.

If it is Madame Maxime I am in trouble.

The headmistress was the only person at the school she respected. The other teachers were either affected by her allure directly or were just as jealous as the girls they taught.

It wasn't the headmistress and Fleur's shoulder slumped with elegant relief. A dark, messy-haired Hogwarts student made his way along the wall to her right. He was a little shorter than her, about her younger sister's age from first glance, with round glasses that protruded past his face. He wasn't unattractive. There was an untidy, casual appeal to his face, Fleur had seen hundreds of boys with similar aesthetics back in France.

The bespectacled boy followed the edge of the wall, his head tilted to one side in thought. He looked much too young to be taking part in the tournament and must be, like her, sneaking about after curfew for reasons of his own.

As he approached the end with the goblet, its flames illuminated his face, reflecting off his glass and giving her glimpse of intense, emerald eyes. Fleur watched him dispassionately, waiting for him to notice her and grind to a halt, but he never slowed.

She knew he must have seen her, but he did not even acknowledge her presence in the slightest.

Fleur was not sure how to react to that. Boys always noticed her. Men certainly noticed her. Nobody ever just didn't notice her.

It was the same student she had briefly spoken to on her short quest for French food and the boy who had conjured the butterflies; something that had earned him the disgust of those around him at the table. She had not been able to face the idea of heavy English food after travelling and the other girls had swiftly monopolised what native cuisine they could get the hands on. Obviously none of it ever reached her.

He did not even look at me then, Fleur remembered.

Once she could ignore. She had brushed off her surprise at his lack of reaction within moments of taking the Bouillabaisse from his disapproving friend. Twice would not pass without some investigation.

Releasing her hold on her allure she allowed it to swell back to the usual, passive level and made her next step a little louder than necessary so he would turn to look at her. Her charm would only work if he was looking at her. She did not like being ignored, it was unfamiliar and made her strangely nervous.

The young wizard paused a few steps from the end of the hall and Fleur celebrated internally. Nobody ignored Fleur Delacour. She was almost looking forward to seeing his glazed over eyes for having the audacity to not notice her twice.

'Tempus,' she heard him whisper. Silver numbers ghosted from the end of his wand and she saw him shake his head in apparent relief, but he didn't look back and simply continued on his way at the same leisurely pace.

Fleur was speechless and infinitely grateful there had nobody else present to witness her humiliation. She had all but intentionally levelled her charm at him and he hadn't so much as turned to look at her. The dark-haired wizard had piqued her curiosity. She was going to find out what made him so special that she was so far beneath his notice.

As her moment of surprise faded she realised it was not such a slight really. After all, she barely noticed any of the boys around her. They were all the same to her, with their blank, charmed faces and laughable dreams. As if she would ever deign to make their dreams of her real. This boy was no different to any of the others. She had come across those who were resistant enough to her charm to not be affected by the passive aura of attraction radiating from her.

Those boys do still notice you, though. He isn't aware that I exist, resistant or not.

Fleur was still a little curious about exactly how resistant he really was. The few she had come across before crumbled quite quickly once she actually tried to charm them and focused her allure.

Bringing him to his knees would rather make up for his inexplicable indifference to her and restore the pride he had unintentionally wounded. The idea brought a slightly cruel smile to her lips.

Now she had to hurry back to the carriage before Madame Maxime noticed she was gone.

Stealing back out into the drizzle, she cast an enchantment to ward the rain off her clothes and moved quietly back down the hill. The steps were uneven, steep and slippery under foot and it was hard to see how high they were in the dark, so she was forced to take them slowly.

She was back inside before Madame Maxime saw her. Her poor headmistress was still outside speaking to the gamekeeper in increasingly hushed tones. If the man hadn't been so useful in allowing her to leave and return undetected Fleur would have felt a little but annoyed at him for bothering Madame Maxime for so long.

'Where have you been, Fleur?' Caroline's overly dulcet tones caught her before she could reach her room. The small, rounded girl had been skulking the shadows at the of the corridor with a friend, probably waiting for a chance to try and provoke her again. Caroline had a jealous streak as wide a tree trunk and little self-restraint.

'Been sneaking up to Hogwarts to bewitch little boys again?' the second girl cut in.

Emilie. She was Caroline's counterpart in every way. Tall where her friend was shorter, skinny where she was not. The baby fat had melted away over the last few years to leave little but sharp bones and a sharper tongue. It was a wonder she even managed to survive on her vegetable only diet and tiny portions. If she was chosen as the Beauxbatons representative then a well aimed piece of meat would send her into a full, disgusted retreat. Not that the goblet would ever choose someone like either of them.

'I don't bewitch anyone,' Fleur responded icily. 'If you're both still upset that your boyfriends are so weak minded they cannot resist my charm then take it up with them, or, better still, ask yourselves why they might be looking at other girls when they have you.' She was not in the mood to be merciful, especially not to these two who had once been her closest friends.

'Our boyfriends were fine until you used your Veela magic to enchant them and lure them away,' Emilie hissed furiously. 'At least we know those rumours about you really are true. Why else would you be sneaking out in the middle of the night.'

'It's barely even early evening,' Fleur corrected coldly, 'your ability to tell the time is as poor as your duelling, Emilie. Would you like me to remind you which of us is the school duelling champion?'

'You wouldn't dare,' Caroline sniffed. She had a babyish face that reminded Fleur of the mandrakes they had occasionally taken care of herbology. The fact she had ever managed to get a boyfriend in the first place was the real mystery. Fleur suspected heavy doses of amortentia had something to do with it.

'It doesn't matter,' her friend remarked with spiteful, mock innocence, 'she's probably too tired to do anything after her excursion. How many was it, Fleur? Did you lure enough in to satiate yourself?' That was quite a cheap shot coming from a girl renowned for throwing herself at any male who gave her so much as a second glance and still couldn't keep a boy long enough to get her to avoid Fleur.

'Or are you going to go back later and find some more?' Caroline tacked on.

Ignore them, Fleur told herself. They have no understanding of Veela magic.

'Not going to share? We won't tell,' Emilie pressed, triumphantly. 'Or are the other rumours true. The ones that say for all your unnatural abilities poor Fleur has never been kissed.' That hit a little too close to the mark for comfort.

'As if I care what you or your rumours say,' she declared with carefully feigned indifference. 'You are both of you less than me. Less attractive, less powerful and less important. Go satisfy your empty lives by whispering about your superiors to compensate for your own inadequacies.'

Caroline gasped, the sugary pretence of over friendliness completely collapsing under the weight of Fleur's statement. Emilie reached for her wand.

Fleur caught her wrist before it could make it to the wand she had tucked through the waistband of her uniform. 'Why would you even try?' she asked, genuinely curious. 'Charms, duelling, enchanting, I am better than you at every aspect of magic. We are not children anymore, Emilie, you can't flaunt your first boyfriends and early kisses in my face anymore and expect me to care. Go back to your room and take her with you before you lose someone else you care about to me.'

They took her threat more seriously than Fleur had expected and scurried away like frightened mice. It was only when they were gone did she catch sight of her reflection in the window and realise she had partially transformed in her anger.

Veela were not half so attractive when they were enraged. Fleur took several deep breaths and watched her eyes shrink and shift back from black to their normal light blue. Under her uniform she felt the feathers slide back into her skin. At least she had not slipped so much as to conjure fire. Madame Maxime would have been furious with her if she had gone so far, though the thought of charring all the hair off the heads of both of her former friends was very appealing.

How could I let those pair of bitter little girls so affect me? she wondered.

It was worse than weak for her to let their words get to her. She had heard everything they had said before and was normally impervious to it and more.

Fleur hadn't calmed down all that much when she returned to her room. There was just so much that was wrong about being here. The food, the weather, all her normal problems with girls and with boys and the fact that her poor baby sister had been left alone in France without her sister to look after when her former friends were being cruel to her again.

I should write to Gabrielle and make sure she is ok, Fleur decided. Gabby would be lonely without her, even at school they spent most of their free time together.

Her gold-nibbed quill was where she had left it, carefully clipped to quill stand that unfolded from the back of the desk in the carriage. She had promised to write to both Gabrielle and her parents as frequently as she could.

Dear Gabrielle,

I hope you are not missing your dear sister too much, because I am missing you very much. We have finally arrived at Hogwarts. It is a dreary a sight, nothing like Beauxbatons. There's no sun, only rain, and everything is grey: the walls, the clouds, the ground and the sky. The food is terrible, even if the inside of the castle is tolerable, and there are too many boys. Their staring is even worse than before.

This evening, only a few minutes ago, I entered my name into the tournament, but don't worry I'll make sure I get through the competition. There's nobody else who will do any better than I.

I left you the key to my rooms if you need it to get away from anything. Don't listen to anything the other girls say. They don't understand what it means to be Veela and are just jealous. I've told you that before I know, but until they stop I won't either.

I know that you'll be lonely this year with me in Scotland, but Maman says she's trying to convince Papa to let you come with them to watch the Second task after Christmas. I will see you then, because as we know Maman always gets her way in the end.

Love,

Fleur.

She would send the letter at her earliest opportunity, but she would need to find where Hogwarts' owlery was because their family owl, a bird Gabby normally monopolised for their own use, was injured.

In a few days time her name would come out of the goblet and prove, once and for all, that she was better than the girls who shunned her. There would be nothing they could say once she was Triwizard Champion. The goblet chose the best possible candidate for each school.

The thought put a smile on her face even though she had only one more year of school remaining anyway. She would miss Madame Maxime, the chateau itself and her baby sister, but nothing else.

Absentmindedly she fell to polishing her wand with a soft cloth. If she was chosen as champion, something she was virtually certain of, their would be a wand-weighing ceremony to attend and that meant her wand had to be in perfect condition.

Fleur kept it in good shape regardless, her wand was quite temperamental and easily affected by anything from water to the slightest emotion. Another, less obvious effect of her heritage and something else the other girls would never understand.

Fleur the quarter-Veela, boyfriend thief and unkissed harlot was slander on all but one level. There was no such thing as a quarter-Veela, either you were Veela, as all female children of Veela were, or you were not, and she had certainly never stolen anyone's boyfriend. Fleur did not think she could be blamed if they broke up with their girlfriends to pursue a non-existence chance of winning her affections and she was most definitely not a harlot.

I have never been kissed.

It wasn't something she was overly insecure about, but it did rankle that her fellow students could accuse her of both never having kissed a boy and having slept with every male she came across in the same breath. She was Veela, there were a hundred, even a thousand boys that would have kissed her had she let them, but she had never been given a reason to allow them.

There was little she found exciting about kissing a boy so enthralled by her presence he could not even think and even less about spending time with one as the other girls did their boyfriends. When Fleur found someone that she wanted she would allow him to be with her and that would be that. It felt a little arrogant, but they always wanted to be with her, even the ones that resisted her aura and tried to pretend otherwise.

Fleur did allow herself a certain amount of pride. She was Veela and she was a talented witch. It was virtually guaranteed she would have a good career and the promise of a family in the future should she want one.

It is far to look forward to than either Caroline or Emilie have, Fleur decided smugly.

She reached for her hairbrush and began to pull it through her lustrous platinum hair. It didn't really need brushing, it never really needed it, she wasn't affected by the things the other girls spoke of in whispers to their coolest confidants. Acne, freckles, moles, rashes, none of them ever bothered her.

I must save a fortune on make-up compared to Caroline.

The small, too-sweet, plump girl was caked in artificial creams, hair products and perfumes from the moment she woke until the moment she slept. Fleur had no idea what she even really looked like underneath anymore.

Fleur replaced the hairbrush back on the desk beside her letter to Gabrielle and wandered into the bathroom, bypassing the mirror. The best thing about having her own room, besides not having to share her space with one of the jealous harpies that accompanied her here, was having a bathroom to herself. It meant she could spend as long in the bath as she wanted after curfew began because nobody would come to disturb unless the carriage caught fire.

Few enough of them would come then, Fleur thought bitterly.

She ran the water, making it hot, very hot. It was one of the few times she actually enjoyed any form of wetness. Her father had been shocked at the temperature she bathed at. The water would scald anyone not as naturally resistant to heat as she was.

As the bathtub filled she searched for her book on advanced charm alteration and found it buried underneath a pile of old articles about the tournament. Fleur hadn't given them anything more than a cursory glance. New restrictions had been imposed, new rules made, and the competition was meant to be far safer than before, though it would still be dangerous. There was little chance of a second rampaging cockatrice and she was more than capable of looking after herself.

If the worst came to the worst she would use her allure to charm her way past whatever she couldn't defeat with guile or strength. Were she less reluctant to utilise her Veela gifts she might consider turning her aura on the other champions. The Durmstrang champion was certified to be male, Igor Karkarof had only permitted Victor Krum to enter his name, so at least one would affected and it was well known that cheating was basically a part of the tournament.

That would be a very last resort. She would risk serious injury before doing anything remotely close to what the other Beauxbatons girls already accused her of. Fleur would prove herself their better without using anything but that which she had learned from Beauxbatons if she could avoid it.

AN: Enjoy and review. Thanks again to those that have. This is the first Fleur chapter, I'll keep doing them if you like them, but you'll have to review to let me know ;)

8. I am Number Four

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowlings.

Chapter 8 is done!

Chapter 8

Someone had taken the wise precaution of enlarging the tables in the Great Hall. Harry was more than grateful for this, because the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had chosen to rejoin the tables they had sat at yesterday. This left the larger Gryffindor table considerably more spacious than before and nobody needed to brush against him, or sit with a leg pressed up against his.

After enduring Katie Bell's closeness at the last lunch Harry tactically chose a seat between Ron, who would be firmly focused on food at this, or any, mealtime, and the corner. He had space to continue reading without any uncomfortable interruptions and as long as he left his arm between Ron and his rack of toast he had enough breakfast as well.

It promised to be a good day.

The Goblet of Fire was still cheerfully burning away at the opposite end of the hall to where he was sitting. The blue flames flickering in the corner of his eye, reflected on the inside of his glasses. It grew annoying quite quickly and Harry was forced to turn back in towards the table and the conversation.

'Ten sickles says it's Angelina,' he heard Seamus mutter.

'You're on,' Dean replied, keeping a weather eye on Hermione who thoroughly disapproved of gambling. 'It will Diggory or that uppity Ravenclaw for sure.'

'He won't pay you,' Ron accused through a mouthful of bacon. 'Seamus still owes me for the house-elf bet.'

'Don't remind me,' Dean shuddered. 'And keep it down, Hermione's not remembered to try foist badges onto us today yet. Let's try and make it last?'

'Badges?' Harry looked up from his book curiously.

'Yeah,' Seamus glowered. 'It's your damn fault. That rubbish you concocted and fed her about house-elves at Hogwarts set her off in search of the kitchens and now she's gone and started an enslaved magical people's rights group.'

'I wasn't expecting her to do that,' he objected. 'I just wanted to stop her attempts to force feed me.'

'Well it worked, but we're all paying a high price for it,' Dean said with mock seriousness.

'She hasn't tried to sell me one,' Harry shrugged.

'You haven't exactly been around, mate,' Ron retorted. 'We're living dangerously, we are.'

'Yeah, any more refusals and she'll realise we don't agree with her,' Dean cut in.

'Or worse,' Seamus grinned, 'we might end up like Neville.'

Harry looked down the table in search of their shy friend, but saw nothing amiss. He raised an eyebrow at the Irish wizard.

'Hermione's sold him about ten badges already, but he keeps forgetting them. She thinks he's doing it on purpose and has taken to harassing him about wearing them every time she sees him.'

'Better him than us,' Dean advocated, 'better him than us.'

'Too true,' Ron agreed. 'She went mental on Lavender when she refused to wear one because it didn't go with her lip gloss.'

'Best refusal yet,' Seamus laughed. 'Hermione was absolutely livid that lip gloss could be considered of equal importance to her anti-slavery movement.'

'Someone needs to tell her about the differences between keeping house-elves and having slaves,' Ron groused. 'It's growing well beyond a joke.'

They all turned to look at expectantly at Harry. 'I don't actually know myself,' he apologised. 'Have you tried leaving books about it lying around near her? She'll see them, read them, and maybe stop. Once she's learnt a bit more about she'll realise she's wrong and move on. Hermione's never been one to cling to an opinion she knows is incorrect.'

'That's a good idea, mate,' Seamus agreed. 'Cunning. It's worth the trip to the library too.' Hermione, fortunately, was not listening and remained unaware.

'Do you reckon they'll announce the champions today?' Ron asked, throwing a furtive place at the goblet.

'Dumbledore said he would,' Dean answered.

Harry really had very little interest in the Triwizard Tournament and buried his nose back into the pages of his charms book. The cover had started to fall off from centuries of neglect in the chamber, and the outer pages were all but illegible. The section on the water-conjuring spell was both unmarred and interesting, if a little theory heavy for Harry's taste, but he curiously went through it regardless. The charm would save him a great deal of effort in the night. Everyone hated it when someone staggered or rummaged around noisily in the middle of the dormitory searching for a drink.

He quietly pinched Ron's goblet to practice.

'Aguamenti,' he murmured, pointing his wand tip into the vessel.

A very small dribble of water filled the bottom few inches of the goblet. For a first attempt it wasn't too bad, there was water. He could practise the action and visualisation later in the common room or in the chamber.

Turning the next few pages, most of which seemed to be adhered together by something that looked unpleasantly like bile, he found an interesting note on shield charms.

The shield charm is a heavily intent based ward, adapted from basic hex deflection into a more practical defense. As such it can only be penetrated by spells cast with stronger intent and focus. The ultimate example of which is the Killing Curse that has such a potent level of intent it cannot be shielded against.

It was quite a useful little nugget of information and Harry was rather glad he'd snuck the book out past the watchful eyes of Salazar's portrait. It was just a shame he hadn't found a more intact copy, or couldn't read enough of the title to buy one of his own.

Happily ensconced in the weathered tome he continued to pour over the few legible pages, munching on toast in between turning them, and trying not to get any crumbs on the book. His attempt was more out of a learned fear of Madam Pince than anything since this spell book was rather beyond saving.

It was quite a while later, when he was considering the wand movement of the stunning spell, that an odd, uncomfortable feeling began to make itself known.

Harry ignored it as best he could and focused harder on the book, but the sensation persisted and eventually he looked up out of growing paranoia.

The entirety of the Great Hall was staring at him.

I missed something important, he realised, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

Harry was intimately familiar with this feeling; he experienced it every time something went unexpectedly, horribly wrong for him.

'Good book, Harry?' Professor Dumbledore asked lightly from halfway down the hall.

He nodded warily in reply and there was a titter of laughter. The sudden attention was giving him a serious urge to run for the doors.

'Would you mind joining the others?' The old headmaster gestured towards the small door at the end of the hall.

Eager to be out of the hall and from under the eyes of the entire assembled population of Hogwarts Harry complied, still somewhat mystified.

It was only when he caught sight of the utter betrayal etched into his friends' faces and read the beginning of his name off the burnt-edged piece of parchment Dumbledore was still holding that he realised what had just happened.

Oh, he paused mid-step in shock. Oh, this is not seriously happening, is it?

Harry turned back to ask Dumbledore what was going on, but one look at the headmaster's stern expression stopped that idea dead in its tracks.

I didn't even want to watch the tournament, let alone take part.

He fixed the flaming cup with his most venomous glare, half-tempted to try and take some measure of revenge for what the object had just done to him.

'What is it, Harry?' Cedric Diggory asked when he entered the antechamber. 'Do they want us to go back?'

Harry blinked. Evidently Cedric was the Hogwarts representative, which led him down two paths of thought.

What the hell am I here for if he's the champion? Harry wondered. Slightly less importantly, but immediately afterwards, came the realisation that Seamus owed Dean ten sickles.

'This is unprecedented,' a loud voice boomed. Harry recognised Ludo Bagman from his commentary at the World Cup. 'A fourth champion.'

'He is going to compete?' The silver-haired girl seemed almost as displeased by the turn of events as he was. Her unimpressed look of dismissal was reflected in the eyes of both Cedric and Viktor Krum, Durmstrang's chosen student.

'He has to,' a dry, tired voice explained. Harry recognised the voice and face of Mr Crouch from the articles about the World Cup. 'Entering your name in the goblet represents the creation of a magically binding contract.'

Of course it does, Harry fumed. Every year. Every single year. I shouldn't even be surprised anymore.

'What,' he queried, more out of a desire to clear his name than any real hope of escape, 'if you didn't put your name in and happened to find yourself here anyway?'

'Are you suggesting that you did not enter your name, Mr Potter?' Dumbledore swept into the room, taking centre-stage immediately. He was trailed by a disapproving Head of Gryffindor, a rather paranoid looking Professor Moody and a sneering Snape. The latter was not abnormal at all and Harry was almost comforted by the familiarity of the expression.

'I wasn't suggesting it, sir,' Harry defended. 'I can say with complete certainty that I didn't consciously do so, nor,' he continued, as Snape's sneer grew more pronounced, 'did I get another student to do it.'

'He's lying,' the Beauxbatons student declared. 'How else did his name come out?' She tossed her hair indignantly and raised her chin. Cedric and Krum stayed quiet. The actual Hogwarts Champion seemed slightly confused and Krum did not seem to care in the slightest whether he was lying or not. His hostile gaze did not lessen, not even when it passed over his other, more conventional competitors.

'It does seem unlikely, Harry,' Dumbledore probed.

Harry just shrugged. There was nothing else to say. He hadn't done it, was rather tired of being stared at by people, and was stuck in the stupid tournament anyway.

'We would like an extra champion,' the enormous headmistress of Beauxbatons demanded. 'Hogwarts cannot have two when we only have one.'

'Hogwarts has only one champion,' Harry decided, eager to get this over with. 'Cedric put his name in and was chosen, he is the representative of the school.' The Hufflepuff student looked rather taken aback by Harry's announcement.

'You have to compete,' Mr Crouch told him firmly, 'else you will lose your magic.'

'I know,' Harry stated flatly. He was not stupid enough to risk that. 'I don't have to belong to a school, though. I'll turn up and take part, but I won't be earning any extra points for Hogwarts when I never even wanted to compete in the first place.'

'If that is what you wish,' the headmaster nodded. His eyes had lost their twinkle and Harry could only see unending disappointment within them. It struck him as a profoundly unfair reaction. Professor Dumbledore should have made it impossible for this to occur with the age line. He had to know Harry wasn't lying, so why was he wearing that mask of disapproval.

'Is that acceptable?' Mr Crouch asked the other champions.

'It's not like he will earn any points anyway,' the French witch replied. Krum and Cedric just nodded, the latter considerably more amicably.

'Then it's settled,' Bagman cried cheerfully, completely oblivious to the mood in the room. 'We'll come and fetch you before the wand-weighing ceremony at the start of the tournament.'

The other champions filed out past Harry. He received rather neutral looks from Krum and Cedric, but the Beauxbatons champion glared at him through her veil of silver hair.

I don't think she likes me.

'Stay here please, Harry,' Dumbledore ordered.

He waited nervously while everyone else left, wondering what else the headmaster could have to say to him.

'I didn't expect this from you, my boy,' Dumbledore declared, shaking his head. 'I won't pretend to understand why you entered, but you have to take part now and you're at a great disadvantage. The tasks were designed for sixth and seventh year students not fourth years.'

'I didn't enter my name,' Harry repeated, but he was beginning to give up on any hope of anyone listening to him.

'I see,' Dumbledore responded softly. The look of utter disappointment had returned and it was beginning to provoke Harry's ire.

What do I have to do for people to trust me?

This was beyond ridiculous.

He turned and left without waiting for the headmaster to dismiss him. Somebody had put his name in the Goblet of Fire and he would find out who and why before exacting an appropriate level of vengeance.

His journey back to the common room was dogged by whispers and barbed comments. Slytherin and Hufflepuff in particular were rather open about their disdain for him.

At least my friends will believe me once I tell them.

Gryffindor tower greeted him with stark silence.

'I can't believe you, Harry,' Ron spoke up after a moment. 'You said you wouldn't put your name in. You promised us you'd be watching alongside us.'

Seamus, Dean, and many of the friends from his year were regarding him rather coldly. It was worse than the reactions he'd received in the corridors. He'd expected those.

'You could have at least told us how you managed it so we'd have a chance as well,' Seamus said frigidly. 'Your word doesn't mean much does it.' They turned away from him when he tried to protest, even Hermione, though she seemed reluctant.

Why won't they listen?

'You guys believe me right?' he asked, looking rather desperately at three Gryffindor team chasers.

'You told us you weren't going to enter,' Angelina, retorted angrily, 'but your name came out, didn't it?' Alicia and Katie said nothing, but he could see they at least partially agreed with their friend.

Harry searched across the sea of cold faces for a single supportive look, but found none, even little Colin Creevey was looking hostile. Three years of friendship and trust swept aside by an incident he wasn't even responsible for.

So that's how it is. He tightened his hands into fists. So much for house loyalty.

He spun around and stormed out, ignoring the stares that followed him. He was so angry, so utterly furious with all of them. It was white-hot, searing him from the inside, and potent enough to make his whole tremble.

He stalked in the direction of the Chamber of Secrets, fingering his wand. They accused him of betrayal, him, when they wouldn't even wait to hear him explain.

Salazar was right. I should have made better friends.

He stormed right past Myrtle's cubicle down the stairs, but the usually friendly ghost was nowhere to be seen.

Reaching the main hall where the basilisk corpse lay he unleashed every violent spell he knew in all directions, serpent effigies shattered, throwing dust and sharp stone fragments across the chamber, but Harry didn't stop. A sharp piece caught him on the cheek, but the stinging pain was so much less than the burning torrent of rage his house's betrayal had created. No amount of furious spell casting seemed to lessen it and in the end he just slumped against one of the ruin walls and pounded his fist onto the flagstones until it hurt too much too continue.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he sat there seething, staring at nothing and thinking about how his closest friends could have turned their back on him, but in the end his rage abandoned him just as they had.

It left him feeling rather hollow.

'What were you doing?' Salazar asked him incredulously when he made his way into the study.

'Venting,' Harry replied shortly.

'What happened?'

'My name was chosen for the Triwizard Tournament. I didn't even enter, but nobody will listen to me, let alone believe me.' Without the anger he had felt before his explanation sounded very tired, almost resigned. 'My housemates and friends certainly don't,' he finished wearily.

'I do,' the painting told him. The snake stayed silent, eying him through Salazar's hair.

'What does it say about my friends that the only one who trusts me is a thousand year old portrait?' Harry demanded.

'It says Godric and Helga would both be very disappointed.' Salazar's tone was unusually frank. 'Tell me about the tournament.'

'It has tasks,' Harry began, drawing on what he had overheard from Ron and the others. 'Three of them. There is a champion from each of Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, and me.'

'Is it dangerous?'

'It was cancelled because the contestants kept dying.'

'Something worth winning, then,' Slytherin declared.

'I'm competing with much older students; the best in their schools.'

'You're my heir,' Salazar reminded him gently. 'You're a prodigy at transfiguration, you'll be proficient at duelling, and you're powerful in your own right. You can win. You will win.'

'Why would I even want to win?' Harry asked him, exasperated.

'The hat nearly put you in Slytherin, yes?'

'Yes.'

'Then use some of that ambition you must have lurking inside you and prove yourself better. Silence your doubters and former friends by winning the damn thing. They'll come flocking back to you afterwards I guarantee it.' The portrait sounded particularly scathing at that.

'What if I don't want them back,' Harry decided.

'Make better allies, then.' The painting's wand let out a spurt of green and silver sparks. 'You wanted to be stronger, accomplish it. Participating and winning this tournament will prove you really have bettered yourself as you wished to.'

I do need to be better. Harry could not bear the idea of another Pettigrew escaping.

'What should I do?' Harry asked his ancestor. 'How can I win?'

'Cunning. They will underestimate you. Ignore your pride and use theirs against them. A serpent strikes from hiding.' Salazar paused to consider his statement and the snake around his shoulders hissed in the brief moment of silence.

'Do the rituals,' he suggested again. 'The first is more of a risk if you carry it out before your magical core has finished growing, but its benefits will be greater. The second is virtually risk free when done properly. The ritual was a common practice in my time, all but a rite of a passage. It will encourage your body to improve itself more quickly, though that is a very simplistic explanation. Neither will bring you incredible power, but they will help close the gap between you and the others. Tom Riddle profited greatly from these, though he took them many steps further afterwards on his own.'

Harry did not want to follow in the footsteps of Tom Riddle. The idea alone was nauseating. The man had become more a monster than anything human, if he had not been born one to begin with.

'Intent is the most important part of magic,' Salazar reminded him, watching his internal struggle.

He needed to be stronger, but Harry knew that nobody would understand, they'd think he had betrayed them and gone dark. He'd be dubbed the next Voldemort swiftly enough.

He was about to refuse, fearing the reaction of the school and his memory of the time when everyone considered him the Heir of Slytherin, but then he remembered the cold, hostile faces in Gryffindor Tower and the disappointment of his teachers. They already thought he had betrayed them. Salazar had alone had trusted him. Harry should do the same in return.

'I'll do it,' he decided.

There were very faint footprints on the ladder up to where Salazar had informed the books about the rituals were. The feet were too large to be Ginny's, about the same size as Harry's own, but he had never climbed the ladder.

It was with a slight chill that he realised Salazar's comment about following in Tom Riddle's footsteps had come very literally true. Harry scuffed the marks away with his feet.

'First two in the book,' the portrait told him as he jumped off the ladder. 'They're not very complex, just dangerous if you do something wrong.'

Harry placed the two battered looking books down on the text on top of a very dusty copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art. It was a large, black, leather-bound tome with sheafs of parchment sticking out of different pages.

Tom Riddle's homework, no doubt.

He picked up his rituals books and retrieved his wand.

'Am I likely to do anything wrong?' Harry inquired. This was not exactly the best time for Salazar to be encouraging any of his reservations.

'Not with me here,' the painting assured him. 'Now take me out into the chamber. You're not drawing runes all over the study.' Harry sighed. He hated carrying the painting. Whomever had cast an anti-levitating charm on it, probably Salazar himself, was a sadist of the highest order.

Salazar Slytherin was a perfectionist. Harry was made to completely erase and redraw both sets of runes several times before the ancient portrait was satisfied and allowed him proceed.

'A little blood, only a few drops, at each of the points,' he instructed, gazing critically across the shapes Harry had etched into the floor with his wand.

The runes were a bright violet, the enchantments arrayed in an asymmetrical seven-pointed star that spread out around him, and simpler triangle for ritual Salazar assured him would improve his body.

Harry drew his wand gently across his palm, splitting the skin with a wordless cutting spell. A thin line of red welled up and tricked down his palm.

'What happens now?' he asked the founder dubiously, spattering a few drops of blood on each of the corners of the two shapes.

'You stand exactly at the centre,' both Salazar and his snake indicated the middle of the star, 'and channel a little magic. It will increase the potential of your magical core by a very small fraction, but more importantly it will alter the ease with which you can wield your magic.'

Harry didn't move.

'Fine,' the founder sighed, 'I'll embellish. Think of your magical core as a bubble. As you grow towards your majority the bubble gets bigger, taking in magic from outside. This ritual, to use a limited metaphor that doesn't require centuries of study to understand, changes the consistency of the bubble. Very slightly more natural magic is taken in and your magic can be pulled out swifter and more easily, relative to before.'

'And if something goes wrong?'

'Your runes are perfect, so unless you are interrupted,' Salazar gave him a pointed look to remind exactly how impossible that was, 'nothing will happen.'

'Humour me?'

'Your bubble changes too much and bursts,' Slytherin told him flatly. Harry flinched. 'It is a virtually non-existent possibility.'

'And the other ritual? Any nasty surprises there?'

'If you drew the triangle incorrectly or unevenly the effects might only be limited to certain parts of your body, but even if that happened you could simply redo it to correct things.'

'Will it fix my eyesight?' Harry fingered his glasses.

'No,' the portrait shook its head. 'It allows your body to make better use of what it's given, developing more quickly and easily, but won't affect pre-existing problems like that. It will likely only give you the body of an athletic fourteen year old and perhaps speed up puberty.'

That was a shame. Harry hated it when his glasses fell off in the middle of something important. It almost always happened. They'd fall off and he'd have to scrabble around blindly for them, usually in the presence of something highly dangerous.

'I don't have to be naked do I?' It was cold in the chamber. The study had warming charms placed all over it, but out here, directly below the back lake, there was nothing to stop the cold filtering in.

'Only a very precise and advanced ritual would be affected by clothing like yours. Fortunately for both of us these two are neither.' The snake, which had rather insultingly hidden beneath Salazar's robe at his question, slithered back out of the founder's sleeve and curled about his arm. 'You should probably leave your wand outside, though, just in case.'

Harry carefully placed his holly and phoenix feather wand outside the edges of the runic star. He felt rather vulnerable without it.

'I suppose I had best get started,' Harry said. He felt surprisingly light, unburdened by emotion. His fury from earlier had left him and nothing had come to take its place.

I won't turn back, he declared, as the glyphs began to glow more brightly, pulsing frenetically on the floor around him. I won't even look back.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to those of you who have, or will.

9. Ostracised

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up!

Chapter 9

Harry woke up on the very cold, very uncomfortable, floor of the chamber. His cheek pressed into the stones and his arms bent oddly beneath him. Everything was blurry.

My glasses, he realised, squinting around in search of them.

The round-framed lenses were lying only a few feet from him, but when he reached out his body protested. Even Oliver Wood's infamously long quidditch training sessions had not made him as stiff and sore as he felt now.

Awkwardly he pushed his glasses back onto his nose and struggled up.

Salazar was sleeping in his frame and the runes he had so painstakingly engraved across the floor of the chamber had faded. The only signs that he had ever undertaken either ritual were his smarting muscles and the incessant throbbing of his head. Harry groaned. He could really used a drink.

Staggering rather stiffly past the snoring Salazar he bent, grimacing, to retrieve his wand. Pointing its tip into the palm of his hand he softly commanded, 'aguamenti.' His imagination was already full of the images and sound of water from thirst, so he hardly needed to focus.

The spray of water reflected of his cupped hand and struck him in squarely in the chest, soaking his robes.

Wonderful.

Harry didn't know any drying spells, which meant he had to go back to Gryffindor Tower and change. There were few places he wanted to be less than there at the moment.

'Oh,' the painting remarked with obvious sarcasm, 'you survived.'

'I feel utterly awful,' Harry ground out as a warning.

'Why are you wet?' Salazar asked curiously. 'The ritual has nothing to do with water.'

'I wanted a drink,' Harry replied obtusely.

'Your magic came out more easily than you expected, then,' the founder deduced. 'Better to get a bit damp than accidentally destroy something important.'

'I've got to go and change,' Harry sighed.

'Well take me back into the study first,' Salazar ordered. 'I've spent enough time near that basilisk already.'

'Fine,' Harry bent and lifted the portrait. His body screamed in protest at the effort, but he made it across the bridge with a few pauses to rest.

'You should really make better use of her,' Slytherin told him as Harry lifted him back up on to the wall.

'Of who?'

'My basilisk, of course.' Salazar gave him a pitying look. 'There's all sorts of useful stuff on that serpent.'

'Like what?' It was a very big snake, but there wasn't all that much you could do with a two year old, seventy food carcass.

'The venom,' Salazar responded straight away. 'The skin and the meat too, but harvesting all that is probably not worth the effort when you can't use it.'

'I'm not going anywhere near that thing's mouth again,' Harry declared adamantly 'One dose of venom was enough for me.' He vividly remembered the feeling of it burning through his veins. It was one of the few things about his first visit here he remembered clearly.

'You were bitten?' Salazar asked in a tone that implied the question, why are you still alive?

'Phoenix tears,' Harry explained.

'About the only things the ridiculous birds produce that's useful,' Salazar grumbled. 'Helga had one of the silly things; it never did anything except steal fruit and set fire to things. Snakes are far better.'

Harry imagined the founder of the serpent house might be a little biased. He was quite fond of phoenixes himself. He did owe his life to Fawkes.

'My wand has a phoenix feather core,' Harry shared, wondering if the other two founder's had had familiars as well.

'I'd bet it's a powerful, but rather limited, wand. Phoenix feather wands do not excel at some of the more delicate aspects of magic.'

'Do you know why?' Harry had always thought the feather of such a potent magical bird would make it an ideal wand core, especially after learning that Tom Riddle's wand had one as well.

'No. Helga told me it might have something to with phoenixes being of fire, which is notoriously difficult to control, but I think she was guessing.' Salazar furrowed his brow in thought. 'You should get your wand checked, really. That ritual can sometimes have an effect on it.'

'It can?'

'That's why I told you to leave it outside of the runes,' Salazar explained. 'You've slightly changed your magical core and how it interacts, inevitably that will have some affect on the conduit you use to channel magic.'

'How great an affect?' Harry was very fond of his wand. It had never let him down.

'Most of the time it's nothing, neither I nor Tom Riddle ever noticed a difference, but sometimes you might need your wand length changed, a different type of wood or even a new core, but I wouldn't worry about it. You could just have a new one made or, if you can't afford it, don't. The old one might not be a perfect match, but it will still work very well for you.'

'I see.' Harry didn't really want or need a new wand. His holly and phoenix one had been through a great deal with him.

'Well, I should leave.' The water had not really begun to dry and even the study with its warming enchantments wasn't managing to keep the cold off him.

'Visit soon,' the portrait responded, 'but take things easy for a day or two. The rituals will take some time to recover from.'

He nodded and left the portrait to nap in his study, swiftly leaving the chamber, pausing only to inspect the maw of the basilisk and method of extracting the venom without sticking the fangs into his arm again.

'Hey, Myrtle,' he called on his way past the cubicle. There was a startled squeak of alarm and the ghost swooped out to see him.

'Have you been down here all night?' she inquired, her cheeks were rather silver and flushed.

'Yes,' he admitted, 'but you can't tell anyone. I need somewhere that's just for me.'

'I won't share, Harry,' she smiled shyly. 'You're the only person that ever comes to visit and talk to poor Myrtle.'

'Thanks,' he gave her his best smile. 'I have to go change. I'm all wet.'

'I noticed,' Myrtle confessed timidly, then her face went bright silver and she fled back into her toilet.

Odd, Harry thought to himself, eyeing the closed door of Myrtle's cubicle. He shook his head when she didn't re-emerge and continued his way back to Gryffindor Tower.

Professor Mcgonagall caught him on the staircase up to the Fat Lady's picture and the entrance to the common room.

'Mr Potter,' she greeted him tersely. 'Where have you been?'

Harry didn't answer. It wasn't like he was about to tell her he'd gone back to the Chamber of Secrets to practice rituals that were now considered dark magic.

'And why are you wet?' she snapped when he didn't respond.

'I performed the water-summoning spell a little too proficiently,' he relied dryly, ignoring his head of house's tone.

'That's a sixth year spell, Mr Potter,' the transfiguration teacher responded slowly. She did, however, look less displeased with him than she had before. 'If you can perform it then very well done, and all the better since you are excused from all lessons you do not wish to attend as Triwizard champion.'

No more potions, Harry exulted internally. Every cloud.

'I hope that smile has nothing to do with not having to attend your lessons, Mr Potter,' Professor Mcgonagall admonished. 'You've come forwards in leaps and bounds from last year, but this tournament is still much too dangerous for any child, let alone a fourth year. I can't believe that so many of the younger years would have the irresponsibility to try and enter their names.'

She swept off abruptly, both warning and compliment delivered in her typical, stern, Scottish-accented fashion.

The Fat Lady gave him a cool look upon presenting her with the password, but swung out of his way regardless.

Really, he wanted to ask, even the portraits?

The common room grew unnaturally quiet when he entered and the moment he was out of sight up the stairs he heard the room break back out into animated conversation. No doubt some choice rumours were about to spring up about his damp appearance.

His dormitory was empty, none of his friends were around, but somebody had charmed the hangings around his bed a dull white rather than Gryffindor's red and gold. It struck him as quite a petty, spiteful thing to do. He returned them to their original colours and ran his eye over everything else for traps or pranks. The Weasley twins had never taken a serious run at him before, but with Ron so clearly against him he wasn't sure whose side they would come down.

It was nice to be dry again. Harry discarded his wet robes onto the pile of not-so-clean clothes and had just begun to cast some locking spells on his trunk when he heard someone enter the room.

'Harry,' a quiet voice greeted him nervously.

'Neville,' he kept his tone neutral. Harry didn't remember seeing Neville's face among those of his hostile reception yesterday, but he wasn't so naive as to believe that Seamus, Ron and anyone else opposed to him being champion wouldn't have given him an earful about his actions already.

'I'm sorry about the others, Harry,' the shy boy said awkwardly. 'They're just angry that you told them you wouldn't enter, didn't want to, and still managed to come away with something they all wanted.'

'Do you believe I put my name in, Neville?' Harry asked him flatly.

'I don't think it really matters,' he admitted, shuffling by the end of his bed. 'I didn't ever want to take part, but everyone else, they were so hopeful, and then you, who never wanted anything to do with it, became champion. It's annoyed them, especially the older students who thought they had a chance.'

'If I could've I would've swapped with them, Nev,' Harry sighed.

'Yeah, I know, but that doesn't mean all that much when you can't.'

He's right, Harry realised. It doesn't really matter what I say. I still have what they wanted.

'Anyone share your opinion?' he asked as lightly as possible. 'Or is it just you?'

'Most of the younger students are annoyed you managed to get past Dumbledore when they couldn't, the older ones are resentful, especially Angelina, and Ron, Seamus and Dean were really angry.'

'I'll take that as a no, then.'

'Lavender, Parvati and some of the girls in our year and below don't mind. Hermione seems more worried about you and wherever you're spending all your time than anything to do with the Triwizard Tournament. It's Angelina Johnson and the few who were tipped to be champion who you need to watch out for. They're really not happy you stole their place.'

'I didn't steal anything, Neville. I didn't even know what was happening until I was in the antechamber being told I was the fourth champion.'

'I don't think that's going to make much difference to them, Harry,' Neville shrugged apologetically. 'As far as Angelina and Ron are concerned you promised you wouldn't try and then you did, and got chosen. I don't think she's going to choose you to be seeker next year either.'

'At least it isn't everyone,' Harry replied tiredly. 'I can deal with the hostility as long not all of my friends have abandoned me.'

'I don't think very many people are going to risk openly crossing Angelina or the seventh years,' Neville muttered.

Harry looked up at him sharply, hearing the implied apology for ending their friendship in his tone, but Neville had already left.

Is Angelina that upset over this?

It seemed a little over the top. Cedric had been chosen champion for Hogwarts anyway; if anyone had the most right to be upset with Harry it was him. He supposed that if he had what they all wanted after so obviously not being interested in the competition it was going to step on some peoples' toes.

Getting out of lessons and suddenly improving in classes is only going to exacerbate things, he realised.

There didn't seem to be much of a way out for him. He was damned to be ostracised until everyone realised that he hadn't put his name in or got over their own jealousy.

I will be nothing again.

Harry was used to being nobody, to being alone within the crowd and invisible in plain sight. He could endure, but it might even be worth going to charms, Professor Flitwick had never held anything against him, just to try and reconnect with Hermione. He'd have to wait for Ron to come to his senses before the stubborn prat ever listened to a word he said.

That's if I ever want to speak to him again, Harry decided darkly

Harry wandered back down in to the common room in the hope of coming across one of the few who hadn't decided to avoid him. He could really use a nice normal conversation about something mindless. No emotionally charged topics and no sarcasm.

Lavender and Parvati were giggling by the fire. They shot him sympathetic glances, but he doubted he wanted to be involved in whatever they were gossiping about, so he slumped down and stared into the fire.

'There you are, Harry,' a hand came down on either of his shoulders. The Weasley twins. He regarded them warily.

'Don't need to look so concerned, we're not against you.' They pulled up two chairs of their own, each sitting on the chair their brother had brought.

'You believe me?' Harry inquired, more careful of being hopeful after Neville's reaction.

'If we couldn't get past the age line, how could an ickle fourth year?' They smiled together and shook their heads. 'That's not it at all.'

'Besides, even if you did then we'd only tip our hat to you for tricking the headmaster himself.'

'The problem we face is far more tricky. Fred and I, we're quite close to Angelina and Alicia, and we don't want to ruin that, so I'm afraid we'll have to be keeping our distance. Ginny too. Ron's already written home some garbled version of events and told her to stay away from you.'

'She didn't look too happy about it, though, did she, George?'

'Indeed not, Fred, she hexed our littlest brother good, but she said she really wants to join the quidditch team next year and you know Angelina will hold a grudge, Alicia too.'

'They haven't forgiven us for swapping on our double date with them yet,' Fred admitted, 'and that was almost a year ago.'

'No pranks, and no hard feelings.' They each patted him on the shoulder before leaving him by the fire.

It was beginning to seem that anyone in his house was either against him or afraid of Angelina. The quidditch captain seemed to have considerably more influence than Harry imagined. He could count the remaining members of his house that might risk speaking with him on one finger.

Hermione better believe me, or I might as well just move in with Salazar.

He went to charms early and slipped into the seat in the back corner of the class. Hermione always got to charms before anyone else so she could ask Professor Flitwick questions about the material she had skipped ahead to look at it.

'Mr Potter,' the tiny professor squeaked upon entering the classroom and seeing him. 'I was under the impression that you were excused from classes.'

'I'm excused from the ones I don't want to attend, sir,' Harry explained dutifully.

'Oh,' the professor's face brightened. 'Your mother always loved charms, it must run in the family. You're almost as early as she used to be. Do you have questions for me? Miss Granger normally comes early with questions.'

'I'm keeping up fine, professor,' Harry told him. 'I've actually gotten a little ahead.'

'The tiny charms teacher beamed widely. 'That's great news, you'll need the time to prepare for the tournament. Where have you managed to get up to?'

Flitiwick's smile and encouragement was the first really positive comment he'd had from anyone but Salazar's snarky painting in weeks and Harry couldn't help but go looking for another.

'I've finished all of it,' he admitted quietly.

'All of it,' the professor's jaw dropped, 'but it's October.'

'I did some reading over the summer,' Harry added half-heartedly.

'Quite a lot of reading by the sound of it,' the teacher corrected.

Flitwick retrieved the cap of an ink bottle from his desk and placed it on Harry's desk. 'Can you demonstrate your banishing charm, Mr Potter? It would certainly ease my worries about you being a champion.'

Harry flicked his wand without saying a word and the cap hissed across the classroom to ricochet off the far wall.

'Excellent,' the professor cried. 'Non-verbal as well. I wonder why you even came to class today, Mr Potter, you are well ahead of all your peers.'

Naturally Hermione chose that precise moment to enter the classroom.

'Miss Granger,' the head of Ravenclaw greeted her enthusiastically. 'Your friend has just been demonstrating his astonishing grasp of the banishing spell.'

'Professor,' Hermione greeted, caught a little off guard. 'I had a question about our essays.'

'It's a bit late now, Miss Granger. I'm collecting them at the start of class.'

'Oh.' Hermione looked quite crestfallen.

'Er, Professor Flitwick,' Harry started nervously. 'I haven't got my essay.'

'Don't worry, Mr Potter,' the tiny teacher beamed again, 'you clearly are in no need of the revision that writing that essay would provide and you've been excused from classes regardless, remember.'

'Thank you, professor,' Harry exhaled.

'You can perform the banishing charm?' Hermione whispered, nonplussed, as the other students filed in looking remarkably under eager.

'I've been doing my best to improve myself, especially now I have to compete in the tournament. I thought it might come in useful.'

'That's very wise of you,' Hermione nodded sagely. 'Is that where you've been disappearing off to then?'

'Yeah,' Harry confessed, eager to keep at least one of his close friends. 'I needed to practise somewhere.'

'How far have you got?' Hermione asked in hushed tones.

'I've reached a lot of the sixth year material in both charms and transfiguration,' Harry began hesitantly, very aware that Hermione might not appreciate being outstripped.

'Thats amazing, Harry,' she gasped, then lowered her embarrassedly. 'That's incredible,' she said in a much quieter voice. 'I saw you trying to summon butterflies, but I thought it was a one-off attempt.'

'No,' he shook his head. 'I've got the hang of that now.'

'I can't believe you're ahead of me in two classes now.' Harry glimpsed more than a hint of envy in her eyes.

'You'll still be as good as me at potions, our electives and you're miles better than me at essays,' Harry placated.

'Charms and Transfiguration are my favourites after Arithmancy, though,' Hermione sighed, 'and now you're better than me at them.' She fell silent and quickly began to take notes as Flitwick ran through the wand movement and incarnation for the mending charm. Harry noticed she spent a fair amount of time looking at the banishing charm. Hermione would probably practise that until she could perform it perfectly.

When they began to practice the charm, dropping the small, clay tiles onto the desk and mending them he took his opportunity to ask about the tournament.

'Do you think I put my name in?' he asked her quietly.

'Honestly, I'm not sure,' she answered apologetically. 'You've been different since the summer and the World Cup, distant and withdrawn. I don't know what you're thinking anymore.'

'I promise that I didn't,' he insisted. 'You know I hate the attention.'

'I knew you did before the summer,' Hermione corrected, tapping her wand on her shattered tile and watching as it swept back together. The tile still had cracks in places, but Harry thought it was quite an impressive first try. It had taken him ten attempts to fix his glasses when he had initially started.

'I didn't. I'm not even interested in it and now I've got to take part. Everyone seems to think I'm either a liar or worse. It's like second year all over again.'

'At least you aren't the Heir of Slytherin,' she responded lightly.

Yeah, that would be terrible, he thought sarcastically. Salazar was starting to rub off on him.

'I'm sure it'll all pass, just like things did that year.'

'I had to kill a basilisk to prove my innocence,' he objected, 'and nobody in Gryffindor listened to the rumours back then.'

'It'll be fine.' She tapped the tile again and this time it seamlessly crept back together. 'Ron will get over it, he always does, and when it becomes clear you didn't put your name in everyone will feel rather stupid and come to apologise.'

'I'm not sure I even want them back,' Harry whispered as Flitwick glanced their way.

'Harry,' Hermione looked shocked, 'they're your friends.'

'They aren't acting like it, are they?' He retorted fiercely.

'It's not their fault, you must realise what it looks like. You cast a bit of a shadow Harry and it just keeps getting bigger.'

'Do you really believe that matters?' he asked her incredulously. 'I don't care about it. I've never cared about it.'

'But they do,' Hermione persisted.

Harry shook his head in disbelief. She agreed with them. Hermione thought that it was indirectly his fault.

She's almost as bad as the rest.

He swept his bag back up onto his shoulder and left without a backwards glance. There didn't seem to be much loyalty in the house of the brave from where he was standing.

'Shouldn't you be in lessons, Potter,' Malfoy sneered as he reached the end of the charms corridor.

'Shouldn't you,' he retorted, really not in the mood for his antics.

'I heard your housemates have finally realised what a pretentious, pathetic person you are,' he sniped. 'Even Weasley doesn't want anything to do with you. How does it feel to be ditched by a charity case?'

Harry glanced up and down the corridor. There were no teachers.

He slipped his wand from his sleeve. 'Anything else you'd like to say,' he asked sweetly, placing it's tip between Malfoy's eyes. 'I know a wonderful number of hexes now. I'd love to teach you a couple,' he offered.

'You wouldn't dare,' he blustered.

'Try me,' Harry replied with deceptive calm. 'Please, try me, give me an excuse.'

'You think you're such a big shot, Potter,' Malfoy snarled. 'You're nothing.' Harry flinched internally at his choice of words. 'Everyone knows you're just a cheat and a liar now.'

Malfoy shoved himself out from under Harry's wand, drawing himself up in preparation for another piece of vitriol, but Harry had heard quite enough from the mouthy Slytherin student already.

'You've grown brave, Malfoy,' Harry smirked. 'Talking back to someone who has you at wand point and walking around the castle without your lackeys.'

'Aguamenti,' he intoned, pouring magic into the spell and tapping him on the forehead with his wand.

A stream of liquid burst from his wand tip and Malfoy was drenched in water. 'You probably should have kept your newfound bravado in check, Draco,' he smiled, making sure to be as infuriating as possible.

'I hope you die in the tournament, Potter,' Malfoy spluttered through the water dripping off his face.

'I doubt you're the only one,' Harry declared calmly, 'but I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you.' He slipped his wand back into his sleeve and out of sight. 'Oh, and Malfoy, if I find out you or your father have anything to do with my name coming out of the goblet, I'm going to make you wish you had been competing in my place.'

Harry left him in the corridor, soaked and shivering, with his ever so carefully combed blond hair plastered against his forehead. It was a long, humiliating walk back down to the Slytherin Dungeons from here. Malfoy would be ridiculed and then punished for being late to whatever class he was supposed to be.

Normally it was Malfoy who managed to lure them into trouble, but Harry was done being outsmarted by the arrogant little git.

AN: Read and review. Thanks to those of you have and a special thanks to those who keep doing it again and again.

10. Curiosity Piqued

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Yay, double figures!

And a second Fleur chapter, though some of you might be less enamoured of that.

So I accidentally cut a bit off when I originally copied this in, which is my bad. I've reposted with it reattached.

Chapter 10

Fleur's moment of triumph had come, just as she had known it would. The goblet, flaring into red flames, had chosen her, naming her Beauxbatons' champion and thus the best possible candidate for her school. She had risen, with everyone's eyes on her and for once she had truly, completely enjoyed the attention. They hadn't been staring at the Veela but at Triwizard champion Fleur Delacour.

As she strode proudly across the Great Hall to the antechamber every pair of eyes had been a witness to her victory over the rumours her former friends had spread, and every pair of eyes had been on her.

Nearly every pair, she corrected. One wizard had not looked up. One wizard had not noticed her. Again.

It had, of course, been the same young student who hadn't noticed her before. The messy-haired boy had not noticed her as Veela and now he had not noticed her as Beauxbatons' champion. His eyes had not even flicked up from the pages of his book.

Fleur had fumed in the antechamber, ignoring the curious, yet slightly hostile gaze of her competitor, Krum.

After a long minute, in which the Hogwarts champion had arrived, introduced himself and been ignored, she had decided that having his attention was not really that important. She hated not being noticed, it was unusual, discomforting and insulting, but it would not mean anything to her once he did notice. Once he did he'd just be like all the others. The boys and mean that stared at her because she was beautiful, and the girls out of jealousy or disbelief. Her conclusion was going to be the end of her interest in him. The last thought she would ever have on the boy.

Then he had joined them in the antechamber.

Fourth champion, she balked at the very idea. It was the Triwizard Tournament. Three schools. Three champions. It was an honour, the greatest recognition, to be chosen and this Harry Potter stood there and denied he wanted any part of it.

Fleur could not believe him. Nobody would not want to be part of this. It was dangerous, but that was just part of the appeal, another reason to accept the challenge and be remembered as one of their schools' greatest.

In her anger at his audacity and arrogance she had snapped at him and dismissed him as a boy without any chance of competing at their level. He'd barely noticed that either.

It was only after they filed out to leave him with his headmaster that she realised the boy's name must have somehow bypassed the age line. That was no mean feat.

An age line was not a complex ward, but it was a powerful one. A single, simple thing was required to bypass it, in this case, an age greater than seventeen. They were rarely used, as occasions in which they were necessary were rare, but of interest to the very few that, like her, had a knack for enchanting. None of her teachers had known any of its specifics and Fleur had had to go to the library to find anything. It's design was as simple as it was powerful.

Age lines could not be bypassed. Magic remembered how long it had been a part of a living thing and the ward need only touch it to verify its age. No potion or enchantment was capable of deceiving something so perfectly simple. Any attempt to use a spell rather than stepping across it still placed the caster's magic in contact with the ward. The only way past was to actually break the enchantment itself or to possess an artefact capable of completely hiding magic.

There few such artefacts and there was nobody alive capable of overpowering a ward created by Albus Dumbledore. In fact, even if by some miracle this boy had managed to, the power required would have been felt and seen all across the castle, and certainly by the caster of the enchantment.

It made the fact that his name came out quite a mystery, because not only could he not have not passed the age line, but the Goblet could not be lied to either. Any attempt to enter the name of another would fail.

All of this led Fleur towards a rather disturbing conclusion. Either the age line had been set to specifically allow Harry past, or his name had never been in the goblet to begin with, and Professor Dumbledore had merely pretended to pull it out.

Both theories placed the blame squarely at the foot of the Supreme Mugwump.

It was a chilling realisation, for nobody would ever question the word of Albus Dumbledore. He was the vanquisher of Grindelwald, the world's most powerful wizard and certainly one of the most knowledgeable. His opinions were treated as fact. If he had said, or even implied, that Harry had put his name in the goblet and been chosen, nobody would dream of questioning him, simply because he was Dumbledore.

It only underlined the fact that he was utterly beyond suspicion that Fleur herself thought her conclusion too fantastical to be possible simply because it was him, even when she knew of no other logical possibilities.

Of course, if it were true, then that meant Dumbledore wanted him in the tournament for some reason, and wanted him in addition to another, older representative.

An extra bite at the apple, perhaps.

It would certainly explain why he was so disappointed when the boy had declared himself an extra, one whose points would not be tallied for Hogwarts, but if the headmaster had really wanted another champion to increase his school's chances he would have surely chosen an older, more capable student.

That line of thought brought her back to the boy again.

What is so special about him?

She knew who he was. Fleur had known the moment she heard his name in the antechamber and glimpsed his scar peeking from under his wild fringe. She had been quite taken aback by how different he was from the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived. Being Harry Potter was not reason enough, however. As a baby he had survived the killing curse, it was widely known, but at no moment since then had he done anything of note that she had heard of. Even if he was a prodigy it would take incredible skill and no little luck for him to match wizards or witches several years his senior. The gap from fourteen to seventeen stretched longer than three years. It was a period of intense change. They were mature, virtually adults; he was a child still. The only thing separating him from any other boy his age was an odd scar and his infuriating ability not to notice her.

Three times she had been beneath his attention: at the welcoming lunch, after curfew in the Great Hall and when her name had been called. Either he was just incredibly dense and slightly resistant to her allure, or there was something quite different about him. Her need to know, which was more pressing than ever, had now bypassed simple curiosity and was rapidly approaching obsession. She simply did not understand why he did not stare like everyone else.

Fleur had taken to following him when she could, often under the disillusionment charm, but it was not an easy task. Harry Potter was rarely seen around the castle and when she did run into him, he would swiftly vanish only moments later. That left her invisible, in the middle of foreign students, and quite often lost.

It was how she hoped she would not end up this time.

For once the fourth year had not simply walked into a classroom, or around a corner into a corridor only to inexplicably disappear from view. He had walked confidently, albeit with an air of illicit activity, along the first floor corridor.

Fleur, who had been following him since catching a glimpse of his untidy hair and glasses on her way back from owling a letter to Gabrielle, had seized her chance.

It was not between classes, so there were few students in the corridors and she had not rouble following him all the way along the perfectly straight corridor. He paused to take one furtive look back down where he had come and, seeing nothing, then slipped through the door at its end.

When she grew close enough to see where he had snuck off to she almost spluttered with rage and shock.

A girl's bathroom, she seethed. What kind of fourteen year old is he?

As she approached the door, now rather more hesitantly than before, she heard voices, a girl's and Harry's. Their words didn't carry, but their tone did. Whomever Harry Potter was speaking into in the first floor girl's bathroom was rather taken with him.

Fleur checked her charm and slowly crept closer. The door was ajar, so she carefully squeezed through, anticipating catching the boy in the midst of whatever he was always disappearing to do. Fleur was half-afraid she would regret it and never manage to rid herself of the memory of what she might see.

The bathroom was empty. There was no girl. There was no Harry Potter. There was nobody but her, a row of empty cubicles, a large central sink and a sizeable puddle on the floor. Somehow he had given her the slip and vanished, just as he had every other time before. She had a careful look around, but it wasn't a large bathroom and she was quite clearly alone.

Fleur swore under her breath.

She would not waste another moment trying to follow this boy. This was clearly a mystery she would have to solve from afar. It might be easier to just watch him in the tasks. If there was anything to be seen about his character that was different it would become obvious then.

Fortunately for her the first floor was not so far from where she had originally been that she could not easily make her way back, providing the very unhelpful staircases allowed her.

She was only halfway down the corridor when she overheard the boy's name.

'Honestly, Ron,' the bushy-haired girl she had seen nearby Harry Potter on occasion cried with some exasperation. 'This spat with Harry is getting well out of hand.'

'I'm not the one who lied to his friends, Hermione,' the red-head, Ron, retorted angrily.

'We both know Harry's promise isn't what this is about. He's either telling the truth, or he lied to spare your feelings, neither of which you can really blame him for.' The expression Ron was wearing did suggest otherwise.

Fleur edged a little closer. She was not normally one for gossip, having spent the majority of her life not the receiving end of it, but curiosity, the word obsession might have been more apt, but she was damned if she would ever use it, got the better of her.

'Then what's it about?' Ron demanded.

'It's about you, and half of Gryffindor House by the appearance of it, taking out your dissatisfaction at being in Harry's shadow out on Harry. He can't control his fame, Ron. You know that.'

The girl, Hermione, paused, checked through the door of a nearby class, and then dragged the boy in by the arm. Fleur followed quietly, interested in what she might learn.

'Harry isn't taking this well,' Hermione warned. 'He's been different since the World Cup. You've seen how distant he's become. You and Angelina are driving him further and further away. I know you're angry now, but you'll regret losing your friend.'

'I won't lose him,' Ron grunted. 'This sort of thing happens between us sometimes. He'll apologise for lying, I'll apologise for overreacting, the air will clear and things will go back to the way they were. It's how we work.'

'That's how you and the old Harry worked,' the girl snapped. 'The new Harry is as good as me at half the subjects I take, successfully practicing sixth year spells and seriously considering ending his friendships with all of you for good.'

'You aren't serious,' Ron had gone purple. A mix of shock, fury and mortification mottled his face. 'He'd never say that. We argue, yeah, and this time has been bad, but he would never walk away from us, he can't. He's Harry and even if I can't stand him at the moment, we're still friends.'

'I'm not even sure I want them back, those were his exact words on you and everyone else he feels has turned their back on him. For pity's sake, Ron, swallow your pride, drag Seamus, Dean and anyone you can with you, apologise, and hope the old Harry resurfaces to forgive you, because I am afraid that he might not.' The bushy-haired girl seemed very insistent he be forgiven before it was too late.

Part of Fleur rather hoped that Harry did not accept their apologies. The apparent actions of his Gryffindor friends, despite their possible repentance, came a little too close to how her former friends had been to her for her to sympathise.

'Maybe I will,' the red-head's voice was a little shaky. 'I didn't realise he'd taken it so badly. Do you think something happened to him, over the summer, or at the World Cup?'

'I don't know,' she confessed helplessly. 'He says he wants to improve himself, to get stronger, and I only know what Harry told us about the World Cup. He was knocked unconscious and got carried out of the camp by one of the Bulgarian Veela.'

That piqued Fleur's interest. This was not the first time Harry had come across those with abilities like her, maybe her answer to his indifference lay there.

'You think he got cursed while he was out of it?'

'He was very vague about his story, Ron, and he's been secretive since then. Maybe he wasn't unconscious at all?' The bushy-haired girl had adopted a distant-eyed expression of contemplation.

'He was pretty out of it in the hospital wing, Hermione,' the boy declared skeptically. 'You can't exactly fake magical exhaustion and a coma.'

'He said he doesn't remember casting any spells, so how had he drained his magical core?' Hermione shook her head. 'Some things don't really add up about that.' The red-head seemed unconvinced and gave her sort of half-pitying, half-amused stare.

'They don't,' she insisted and stamped her foot rather childishly.

'I'll try and persuade everyone to apologise, but I can't make any promises for the others,' he said finally. 'Angelina Johnson is still on the warpath and that looks unlikely to end anytime soon. I heard Katie Bell pleading with her to change her mind about kicking Harry from playing seeker next year.'

'Did she?'

'No,' Ron shook his head. 'Angelina said he deserved it and that you can't have someone you don't trust as part of a team. Her and Katie are really close still, but as soon as Harry comes up everything gets all awkward and tense around them. Fred and George are sort of avoiding the entire subject as well what with their relationships with Angelina and Alicia.'

'It's ridiculous,' Hermione exclaimed. 'He doesn't seem to want to take part. The old Harry would've liked nothing better but to avoid it all entirely.'

'And the new one?'

'I'm not sure,' Hermione admitted. 'Sometimes I get the feeling that the new Harry wouldn't stop at much in his desire to improve himself and winning the tournament would certainly prove he had done that.'

'He can't've changed that much,' Ron dismissed. 'First sign of something dangerous and he'll be dragged in immediately. Someone always has it in for him.'

'You don't think that might have something to with him being chosen as champion. The Triwizard Tournament definitely falls under into the dangerous category.'

'I considered it,' Ron confessed, 'but it's different to the other times. He was sort of linked to those; there's nothing to connect the tournament to him, no You-Know-Who, no Padfoot and no dirty great serpent.'

Fleur was rapidly losing touch with the conversation. There was a lot of context missing.

'I guess, she sighed. 'The headmaster seemed to think he had entered; he looked very disappointed in Harry.'

'You think he actually might have secretly entered himself using his cloak as well?' Ron asked.

Fleur repressed the urge to snort. Whatever this cloak was it would not be able to fool an age line. A trip to their library should quickly show them that.

'I don't know. I don't know Harry as well anymore. Whatever's changed him is concerning and I don't think it's just me. Dumbledore looks troubled too. Every time he sees Harry he gets this worried, haunted look.'

'I'll apologise,' Ron agreed. 'I'll encourage Ginny to speak to him again, she won't hex me if I offer to cover for her with Angelina, and I'll try to convince Seamus, Dean and the others to back off a bit if I can. I'm still angry with him, but if it's this or his friendship, then I'll do it.'

'Thanks, Ron,' Hermione sighed. 'He flipped out on me and left Charms when I implied it was partially his fault for his fame eclipsing everyone. Since then he's vanished everyday except for mealtimes and the nights.'

So I'm not the only one he's evading, Fleur realised.

That was interesting too. It reminded her of how she acted at Beauxbatons, remaining in her room, or staying with Gabby, and only appearing to attend classes, or eat.

'We'll have to find him to apologise,' Hermione voiced.

'He comes back to the dormitory quite late every day,' Ron told her, 'I'll gather everyone in the common room and we can catch him then.'

'That's a good plan,' Hermione admitted with some surprise. The red-head looked a little affronted.

'Chess player,' he reminded her. 'Not to mention that if you haven't figured out where he's going in over a month we aren't going to in the next couple of days.'

Fleur scowled. He was right about that. Harry Potter's list of talents seemed to include the ability to vanish at will among a short tally that could mostly be summarised as things that infuriated her.

'We need to do it soon,' the girl fretted, somehow simultaneously bossy and nervous.

'Tonight or tomorrow,' Ron agreed. 'I'll talk to the others in class.'

The two of them swept out of the empty class, narrowly avoiding Fleur who had not had the foresight to stand further from the door, leaving her to inspect the rather odd assortment of muggle items that were mounted on the walls.

By the time she had returned to the carriage most of the other Beauxbatons students were outside. It was the first day that had begun without clouds and though some few now littered the sky it did not yet threaten rain. Fleur imagined this was the closest Hogwarts ever got to summer.

The largest group, which included her two least favourite people, Caroline and Emilie, were busy ogling the Durmstrang boys who were relaxing on the deck of their ship. Their school was in Scandinavia, Sweden, she was reliably informed, and very far north even then. This must have seemed quite a pleasant day in comparison to what they were used to. Scotland didn't lose all its light for several months in winter, after all.

It was not pleasant enough for Fleur to endure the other girls, so she headed back towards her own room where she could let her guard down.

'Madame Maxime?' She caught her headmistress midway down the carriage corridor.

'Yes, Fleur,' she responded kindly.

'Do you know anything about age lines?' Her headmistress was the only person she could ask here that might know more than what Beauxbatons' library did, though she doubted she would. The library at the chateau was quite extensive.

'Why do you ask? It cannot possibly be for the tournament.'

Fleur suspected that her headmistress might have a slightly better idea of why she was asking than she let on, but played innocent.

'I was curious. The Hogwarts headmaster used one. I have not seen such a thing before.'

'They're interesting, but quite useless, I don't doubt I am the only one of your teachers who knows more than the name of the enchantment,' Madam Maxime informed her. 'They are a ward designed to allow passage to magical beings provided the age of the beings magic meets the requirement and so simple that they can be neither bypassed nor adapted to any other purpose. It is not a ward you will ever really need to use, I don't think.'

'Thank you, madame,' Fleur replied, disappointed but not surprised. Her headmistress had not known anything she did not which left her only with the rather unbelievable theory that Albus Dumbledore had wanted to place Harry Potter in the tournament.

He must have found a way, she decided. Perhaps someone with the same first and surname who was willing to add their name and then let him pretend it was his.

The idea had some merit, as at no point would either the goblet be lied to or the age line violated. Unfortunately it wasn't a theory Fleur could easily disprove or validate.

How frustrating.

Fleur shouldn't even be thinking about Harry Potter, why he was competing or anything other than the fact that the first task of the Triwizard tournament was less than a week away. From what she had seen the first round normally involved some sort of magical creature: a cockatrice, a manticore and even a sphinx had made appearances in this round. Fleur rather hoped that a sphinx would not be the chosen animal this time. Most magical creatures could be charmed into sleep using a spell of her own derivation and adaption. It made the most of her heritage and abilities, but sphinxes were notoriously tricky and immune to such things. You either answered the riddle they gave you, ran, or got eviscerated.

The latter was obviously the least preferable option of Fleur's list of outcomes, but whatever creature it did turn out to be she should have a slight advantage over the other champions, especially the boy. He was probably going to be the tournament's next casualty, different or not.

The Boy-Who-Lived-Until-The-Triwizard-Tournament-Started.

It was a bit of a mouthful, but Fleur rather liked the new title she had bestowed upon him, even if she did not really want him dead.

Of course, there was the wand-weighing ceremony to consider before the first task and as the last point at which a champion could be rejected and exchanged it was the real beginning of the tournament, so technically he wouldn't die as soon as it started. If he was really lucky he might even escape with just an injury or two like their magical creature professor back at Beauxbatons.

Fleur wasn't particularly fond of the man. He often eyed her with the same professional curiosity he extended to things like griffins, or dragons. Consequently she had not paid a great deal of attention to his classes and didn't know what magical creatures were native to Scotland.

She doubted anything that liked the warm or dry would be here, or that the organisers would have included an untameable creature. Her enchantment would be useless against most of those.

Whatever the creature she was, Fleur was confident that the first task could end in her favour and, as was more than likely in her opinion, with only three champions, as the Triwizard Tournament was supposed to have.

Satisfied that things were looking like they would be going her way Fleur rummaged around in her drawers for wand polish. She had to bend her arm in awkwardly to get her hand right to the back where it had been pushed by her gradually increasing collection of articles about the tournament.

Settling onto the end of her bed she started to carefully apply the substance, hoping to make a favourable impression. Fleur never neglected her wand, but rarely took the time to lavish it with care as she was doing now. Rosewood and Veela hair made temperamental wands. Both materials either bonded strongly with their owner, or never did. Her's was as strong as any she'd ever seen. Her wand had been a reassurance to her back when her friends had begun to leave her behind. Rosewood was, after all, a symbol of inner beauty.

AN: Read and please review.

11. Too Little too Late

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter :)

It's not Fleur, you can all breathe easy.

Chapter 11

He had stormed out of Charms, furious with Hermione for taking the side of Angelina, Ron and all the other Gryffindors who had turned against him. There had been no way he was going to back to the common room after that, and he hadn't been in the mood for Salazar's sarcasm either, especially when he had wanted nothing more than to unleash another barrage of spells into something that would break in far more satisfying way than a clay tile.

Harry had wandered about the school instead. He'd passed the first floor bathroom from which he had carried Ginny Weasley having saved her from Riddle, the third floor corridor from which he had been carried after stopping the loathsome shade of Voldemort that had possessed Quirrell from obtaining the philosopher' stone. He paused to look out over the whomping willow that stood over the passage to the Shrieking Shack where he had met Sirius, his godfather. He desperately wished he could contact the man, but it was too dangerous to risk. His godfather had already nearly been kissed by dementors once.

There were no such memories attached to the floors he had risen to beyond that. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors had drifted past without incident, but then, upon reaching the seventh, he had stumbled on something Salazar had spent years searching for.

He wasn't exactly sure how he had found it, only that he had. Wandering up down the seventh floor corridor, wishing for a place that he could let off steam in and where he would be left alone, a door had appeared. The stone of the plain wall opposite one of the tapestries had shimmered and a small, ordinary door had materialised.

The room within had been anything but ordinary and when he saw the rune covered walls, glass targets and mirrors he had known what he had found. The Room of Requirement Slytherin's portrait had described.

The Chamber of Secrets held a special place in Harry's heart. It was somewhere that only he could enter out of everyone within the school and had become is sanctuary away from the noise and distraction of Hogwarts. The Room of Requirement was beyond even that.

When Harry had wanted to release his anger it had provided him with a whole room of things to destroy and books full of spells to accomplish it. When he had decided he needed to learn how to keep everything a secret because he knew Hermione was searching for where he was going it had provided him a virtual library on protective enchantments and even several books on the arts of the mind. Harry had been fascinated to note that had basic steps to the mind arts were remarkably similar to the exercises he had learnt to help focus his intent and improve his spell casting.

The pattern of his progress shifted.

Every morning for the last two days he would wait for everyone to leave and then, using the Marauder's Map and his father's invisibility cloak sneak to the seventh floor and return to the fabulous room.

Spending the rest of the day reading his way through every book that the miraculous room could provide and practicing anything he dared attempt he would wait until evening then slip off to the Chamber of Secrets.

Salazar's time-turner could not be removed from the chamber so he couldn't take it to the room itself and he already tried and failed to get the room to provide him one itself. There was still more than enough for him to learn in the chamber, so he repeated the day from the beginning, learning from Salazar while his past self was in the Room of Requirement, out the way, and rendering it impossible for anyone to notice his duality.

'Focus,' Salazar snapped grumpily from within his frame. 'Your mind has been elsewhere for the last two days. If you don't concentrate on your destination you're liable to appear in multiple places at once and die. My heir will not die because he splinched himself. Godric would wet himself laughing in the afterlife.'

It was just after lunch, two days before the wand-weighing, three days before the first task; all for the second time.

The Chamber of Secrets was not included within Hogwarts' wards and so it was completely possible to apparate around and from within it. At least it would be if Harry could actually manage to do it. Most of his time was spent focusing very hard on the destination, lurching towards it in the strangest manner without actually moving, flinching, and collapsing on the floor feeling very sick.

The ancient founder was losing patience with him, but he hadn't exactly been helpful. 'Picture where you want to appear and will it so,' the portrait had stated simply, giving Harry absolutely no useful hint as how he should visualise himself appearing there. He had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to look like and, rather, acidly, voiced as much to his ancestor, cutting through his parseltongue rant.

'You've never seen anyone apparate,' the painting responded, dumbfounded. 'Have you been under a rock for the last fourteen years?'

'I was raised by and live with muggles,' he replied stiffly.

'Oh.' Salazar looked slightly embarrassed about his reaction now. 'That explains it. You should just appear in the space. Imagine it as if instead of you moving, some impossible force twisted the world instead, so you were standing where you pictured.'

Harry considered it as he staggered back to his feet and took a few deep breaths to steady his breathing and settle his stomach.

He pictured the tip of the forked, tongue-styled bridge, and imagined the world wrenching back past him.

His magic twisted and instantly he was there.

A wave of nausea and dizziness struck him, his vision failed and he spun, falling into the very cold pool in front of the stature waving his arms desperately.

When he resurfaced his ancestor was laughing so hard he had completely dislodged the snake from around his neck. It had fallen to the bottom of the painting where it hissed furiously at its master and waited for him to stop so it could slither back up to its normal resting spot.

'Shut up,' Harry hissed angrily, lapsing into parseltongue. The nausea struck again when he clambered out and stood upright. It was too much and he doubled over, emptying his stomach onto the floor.

'You'll get used to the feeling,' Salazar assured him, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. 'Godric was hopeless at any form of magical transportation for years. He'd fall over whenever we apparated so whenever we wanted to make a decent first impression Helga would side-long him and hold him upright. He hated it.'

'I can empathise,' Harry growled, wiping his lips and vanishing the contents of his stomach. An over-powered warming charm left him steaming, but much less cold. He reapplied it several times until his robes were dry again.

'You'll be fine,' Salazar smiled, as his snake reclaimed its spot across his shoulders. 'Keep practicing.'

'You just want to watch me fall over,' Harry grumbled.

'It reminds me of Godric,' the painting agreed in one of its rare, heartfelt moments.

Harry visualised the far end of the chamber this time, not eager to repeat his venture into the pool.

He reappeared there immediately and instantly fell over again. Behind him the portrait of his ancestor burst back into laughter.

It took a further ten attempts before he could manage to remain upright and an additional five for him to do it without swaying or staggering all over the place like a drunk.

'It's a good skill to learn,' the founder told him seriously afterwards. 'It's very important in case you get disarmed and have to escape. The ability to quickly apparate saved my life more than a couple times.'

Harry nodded, but would not be practicing that any further for a while. It was not the most pleasant form of travel, even if it was convenient.

'Was there anything else you wanted to learn?'

'The disillusionment charm,' Harry suggested immediately. He loved his invisibility cloak, it was the only thing he had that belonged to his parents, but it wasn't perfect and was a lot slower than a spell.

'Not an easy one,' Salazar mused, 'not if you want to master it. It takes quite a bit of talent and control, the latter more than anything, to manage it flawlessly and become fully invisible.'

Harry let his wand slide out of his sleeve and into his had with an air of determination.

'Well you know what you should be visualising,' the portrait mused, 'and it's fairly close to transfiguration. You should be fairly adept at this spell, despite the phoenix feather.'

Harry narrowed his eyes at the jab at his wand, but twirled his wand around himself in the manner he had read from the book in the Room of Requirement earlier that day.

'Oh, you know the wand motion,' Salazar remarked, impressed.

Harry stared at his body in mild interest as it very slowly changed to mirror the background behind it. He moved his arm and the colouring changed as it moved, albeit far too slowly for his liking.

'Not a bad first attempt,' the founder congratulated him. 'You look like a very inexperienced, giant chameleon.'

Harry fixed him with a flat stare.

'This is a spell that requires a lot of focus and control,' the portrait told him, unaffected by his glare. 'It will take a great deal of practice before you can cast it well enough to move with it on and that's as far as most wizards or witches can ever get.'

'So it's camouflage.'

'You aren't most wizards and witches,' the portrait told him smugly.

Another Heir of Slytherin reference is about to be made, Harry realised. He knew the proud expression on Salazar Slytherin's face well enough to recognise the impending moment.

'You're my heir, and quite gifted in an applicable area, you'll do better in time.'

And there it is.

Harry tried several more times, but, despite some improvement, the spell's full ability escaped him. The best he could manage was full body camouflage that lapsed a second behind his surroundings when he moved. It was something he'd have to practice in the Room of Requirement. It was best not to waste the time he spent with Salazar's advice on things he could manage alone.

He slid his wand away and sat down on the floor in front of the portrait.

'What do you know about occlumency and the mind arts?' he asked, shifting the chain of the time-turner around his neck so it was a little more comfortably placed.

'Enough to get by. Interested in keeping your secrets? I'm surprised you haven't already asked, I'd half-assumed you already knew.'

'I discovered it recently, but the exercises I perform to clear my mind before performing a spell to help me focus my intent are virtually the same as the basic mind arts ones.'

'That does make sense,' Salazar agreed. 'Occlumency is the art of shielding your mind. It's a bit of a misnomer actually since what you actually do is empty your thoughts of anything useful so an intruder cannot see anything.'

'That explains it better than the book,' Harry admitted. The passage in the book had been written in a rather archaic prose and hard to comprehend.

'Where did you learn about it at school?' Slytherin asked curiously. 'I can't imagine it being a part of the curriculum.'

'You remember that room you mentioned Rowena and Godric creating?' Harry shot him a devious smirk.

'You found it,' Salazar exclaimed. 'Ha, I knew I would win in the end.' He threw his arms up in the air, disturbing his now snoozing snake. 'Take that Godric and Rowena.'

'How did you win?' Harry inquired, amused.

'You're my heir, you found their secret room before anyone of their descent found mine.'

'You do know that when I pulled the Godric's sword out of the sorting hat I became his heir of sorts?

'So?' Salazar demanded, mid-celebration.

'I killed your basilisk with it, here, in my second year.'

The smile fell from the painting's face.

'Well that rather ruins the competition, if you're heir to both of us, despite Godric's claim on you being rather less firm than mine, then we both win and it's all null and void.' The portrait went quiet briefly and Harry received the impression that he was sulking again.

'What was it like?' Salazar asked. 'Were their portraits there?' he added, more softly.

'I don't know, the room changes completely based on what you desire. I'll see if I can find their portraits next time I visit.' Harry hoped that by wanting to meet the founder's, or their portraits, they would appear.

'That's where the other, original you is spending his day before coming here and using the time-turner, isn't it?' Salazar deduced.

'Yes,' Harry admitted.

'It does sound like an amazing room,' the founder said wistfully. 'I should like to see it myself, but I doubt it works for a portrait such as myself. Rowena and Godric always did come up with the most fanciful, spectacular things, of course most of them ended up exploding in Godric's face, but the ones that worked were truly amazing. Even I'll admit that they were the finest things any of us ever made, with the exemption of Hogwarts, of course. A school and sanctuary is magic of a different kind.'

'I've only seen the sorting hat and the room,' Harry admitted.

'There were several more, the diadem you might have heard of, that was Rowena's favourite, she pretty much claimed it as hers, though Godric never really complained. He was rather selfless.'

'I wonder if any of them are in the room,' Harry mused.

'The diadem was lost, sadly. Rowena's daughter stole it and lost it before she died.' Salazar's eyes darkened, clearly that story was not one of his favourites. 'What have you been doing in their room?' he inquired, changing the subject.

'Practicing my mind-clearing mostly, but some practice of other spells and a bit of duelling practice. The latter is difficult without an actual opponent.'

'Don't waste your time there,' Salazar admonished. 'You've got access to the two most secret, most useful rooms in the whole building, unless Helga made something else I don't know about,' he finished lightly.

'What did Helga make?'

'She tried to combine enchanting with herbology, plants were a hobby of liked looking after plants, creatures and people. She's responsible for that ridiculously named species of magical tree.'

'Magical tree?' Harry asked, sensing another less known story of the founders.

'She took an innocent, elegant willow tree and turned into something much less admirable. She wanted to plant a whole forest of them to protect the school, but we intervened before she could cause a catastrophe. I think the species probably still exists, she grew and sold quite a few before people realised how large they would grow and rapidly regretted planting them near their houses, or anything else for that matter. Horrible plants.'

'The founders are nothing like I imagined,' Harry grinned.

'Of course we aren't. We founded a school. I'm sure all the headmasters tell you how perfect and well behaved we were. The truth is that even at the age of sixty Godric was more a child than anyone to ever walk these halls after him.' Salazar's eyes misted over slightly, but Harry didn't mind. Nostalgia was hardly a vice for a thousand year old portrait that had been alone since its creation.

'Tempus,' Harry murmured, retrieving his wand to tap it against his wrist. It was later than he thought. Apparition had taken a long while to get the hang of.

'Time to leave,' Salazar concluded from his gesture.

'Yeah, I'll be back tomorrow.'

'You're not leaving before you've put me back up over the door in the study,' the portrait scowled. 'I refuse to spend any more time alone with that serpent, dead or not.'

'Fine,' Harry sighed, unsurprised. Salazar always insisted on it.

He picked his ancestor's canvas likeness up and carried it back across the bridge. It was easier than it used to be. The ritual had definitely had some effect, his musculature and endurance were much improved.

'Do you know anything that can be used to keep the venom from your former snake in?' he inquired.

'Anything inert,' the founder replied. 'It will only dissolve organic tissue or matter. There should be some crystal vials in one of the draws or lying around on the shelves opposite ladder.'

There were. Actually there were quite a few. Harry grabbed a handful and left to wrestle with the basilisk again. He might as well get it over and done with.

At least it will put up less of a fight this time.

He knew very little about extracting the venom from any snake, let alone a seventy foot serpent created with magic. It didn't help that the toxin was deadly in even the smallest quantity.

Kneeling down in front of the basilisk's mouth he gingerly shoved it's mouth wide open.

It could have swallowed me in one bite back then. If the basilisk had the temerity to try again it would find Harry had grown and was more of a challenge.

Very carefully he reached past the teeth towards the venom sacs behind. A dead snake could not be tricked into biting and injecting its venom. The substance had to be taken directly from the glands.

This is the part when I slice the gland open too far and dissolve one of my arms.

Using his wand he carefully cut a very small hole in the gland over the outstretched vial and watched impatiently as the venom trickled in.

It took a long, uncomfortable ten minutes to fill all four vials.

The venom continued to trickle once he pulled away, but he figured he had as much as he could ever need and let the basilisk's own venom begin to dissolve its own dead flesh.

'Did you get any?' Salazar inquired, peering at him interestedly. 'You're still alive, so you didn't impale yourself on a fang.'

Harry showed himself the four vials of thick, viscous, clear venom.

'That's a lot of galleons you're waving around,' the founder told him. 'Leave the venom here, it's very hard to come by.'

'I wasn't going to leave it lying around in the dormitory for some idiot to drink by mistake,' Harry responded incredulously.

Neville probably would drink it too.

Harry shuddered. That would not be a pleasant way to die.

'That would be very thoughtless of you,' Salazar agreed. 'Horrible way to go, makes some of the more morally questionable curses I've seen look kind. You'd sort of melt from within I'd imagine.'

With that cheerful picture in mind Harry abandoned Salazar to his gory thoughts and began to head back towards his bed and the increasingly distant group of people he shared a dormitory with.

Gryffindor Tower's common room greeted him with it's usual oppressive silence. Ron, Seamus and a handful of the others who had decided his shadow was too much for them to bear were sitting around the fire. He spared them no more than a glance and made his way towards the stairs.

'Harry.' Ron's voice caught him with one foot on the bottom step. They all came over to stand around the base of the stairs.

He turned to face them directly, wary, expecting another verbal assault. Ron's face seemed rather contorted, as if he was having problems breathing.

'What?' He kept his voice as neutral as possible, but the word still came out chilly. Surprisingly Ron winced.

'Look,' he began, glancing around to gather courage from the others. 'I'm no good at talking things out so I'm just going to be frank. I know this hasn't been easy for you and I'm not really certain you put your name in the goblet. I'm angry with you, we're all a bit mad,' he gestured at all of the guys except Neville, 'but we know it's not really your fault. You always get dragged into this stuff and come out looking like a hero. I know you hate it, but it's hard for us to always be overlooked when standing next to you.'

'He's trying to say he's sorry,' Hermione interrupted. 'He's done a rubbish job of it because he still needs some time to come to terms with things, but he means it, we all do.'

'So this is an apology.'

Harry had waited for this moment, and had not dared hope it would come so soon as it had. His friends were coming round, things would be back to normal. His heart should have swelled at the thought, but it didn't. It stayed remarkably still and heavy.

I don't care, he realised. There was no rush of joy or relief coming from their change of heart.

It's too late.

'I'm not sure I care anymore,' he shrugged. Their words just didn't seem to mean anything. They had made him nobody again, he could not forgive that. Nobody had never had anyone but himself, Harry had, but they had abandoned him. He could not trust them not to do the same thing again.

'How can you say that?' Hermione exclaimed.

'I opened my mouth, I remembered how I felt about having my entire house turn their backs on me, and I spoke,' Harry explained calmly. 'The only conversations I've had with any of you recently have been to listen to your explanations of why you're avoiding me.'

'We made a mistake,' Ron agreed. 'You must realise what it looks like and how much pressure Angelina is putting on everyone with her grudge against you. Please, forgive us, and we'll carry on as before, stronger.'

It was an admirable attempt and Harry had to admire him for swallowing his pride so greatly and saying it. The Harry that had forgotten what it was like to be nobody would have given in to the pressure and accepted, but he felt no such obligation.

It is not enough.

'You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget.'

Ron snapped, his patience stretched too far.

'Fine then,' he yelled, 'you selfish, pretentious git. Go and bask in your glory. I hope it was worth the deaths of your parents and the loss of your only friends.'

Harry's wand was out of his sleeve and in his face before anyone else could move.

'What did you say,' he hissed. Parseltongue came more easily than English when he was enraged.

Ron went red with rage before his wand and swung his fist blindly. Caught by surprise he caught Harry in the side of the head and he fell back onto the stairs.

The red-head was on top of him before he could roll away, swinging wildly, but Harry was used to such things back when his cousin had used to hit him and his post-ritual body was stronger.

He shoved Ron off him, and smashed his left fist into his ex-best friend's stomach, driving the air out of him.

Someone grabbed the back of his robes and his left arm, but he pulled himself free and lunged for his wand that lay where he'd dropped it in surprise.

There was a flash of light and it shot away from his grasp across the room, slicing past Seamus' head as he ducked.

It struck the wall next to the fire with a loud, audible crunch and fell, shattered, to the floor.

'Oh, I'm so sorry, Harry,' Hermione gasped, horrified. 'I didn't mean to. I've been practicing the banishing spell and it was just the first one I thought of. I panicked and wanted to stop the fight.'

She was babbling, but he wasn't really listening to her. His veins were very slowly filling with ice. He was terribly, terribly angry.

Whoever was holding him had let go and the room was suddenly very very quiet around him. Harry strode across the room to carefully retrieve all the fragmented pieces of his precious wand.

'I didn't mean to do it, Harry,' Hermione whispered.

He fixed her with the coldest stare he could manage, pushing as much of his fury as he could muster into his eyes.

She flinched as if struck.

'I do not forgive,' he repeated in a voice as cold as the ice in his blood. 'I do not forget.'

AN: Read and review please. Thanks to those who have done.

12. Renaissance

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

12th Chapter is up!

50 000 words and I haven't reached the first task :/ Soon, I promise it will come soon.

Chapter 12

The pieces of his loyal, holly and phoenix feather wand were scattered across Salazar's desk. Harry could not even bring himself to touch them again. The warmth he had always felt from his wand had gone with the magic. The splinters of wood were cold, dead.

He turned away from them to the painting.

'They broke your wand,' the portrait hissed in furious parseltongue. 'Strike back, take from them what they took from you.' Slytherin's wand was fountaining streams of silver sparks and the snake had reared threateningly on his shoulders, poised to lash out. Harry was quite touched by the fury his ancestor was emanating on his behalf.

'I'm not going back,' he told Salazar coldly. 'I'll never go back.'

'Perhaps that is wise,' the painting admitted when he had calmed enough to speak in English, though his wand was still emitting sparks. 'I have always had a temper and a tendency to try and see others suffer what pain they had inflicted on me, but revenge is the Ouroboros, never-ending and self-devouring.'

'My association with them is ended, my tolerance and trust spent; that's all the vengeance I'll take.'

'A bond for a bond.' The founder's portrait looked like he had completely regained his calm, but the white-knuckled grip on his wand, betrayed the truth. 'The friendship they held, for the wand they broke. Two bonds severed between each pair of you.'

'You told me I would need my friends.'

'Individually weak creatures hunt in packs to bring down stronger prey,' Salazar replied. 'You were weak, striving to become powerful. This is no longer true and you continue to grow. There are still many wizards and witches stronger than you, but few here at Hogwarts can threaten you, Harry, even if you stand alone.'

'I do not wish to stand alone,' Harry told him.

'Neither did I,' Salazar admitted. 'I found equals who understood me, I would not be addressing my descendant if I had not. You will be no different.'

'I need a wand,' Harry admitted quietly.

'You do,' Salazar responded gently. 'Understand that you are not replacing your old wand and its bond, but forging a new additional one.'

'You changed wands,' Harry realised. The empathy was too genuine for anything else to be true.

'Twice. Once though my own foolishness and once from a loss such as your own.' He eyed the sad remnants of Harry's wand. 'I burned my mine to start anew, but perhaps you should take the fragments to whomever the best wand-maker is and ask about the subject. You might be able to keep an echo of your old partner with you.'

'Ollivander,' Harry murmured.

'What?'

'The name of the best wand-maker I know is Ollivander.'

'I know the name,' Salazar told him. 'The family has been crafting wands for longer than this school has stood. My final wand came from the hands of a member of that family.'

'I'll have to go to Diagon Alley.'

'Go now,' Salazar instructed. 'The tournament must be soon approaching.'

'The wand-weighing ceremony is tomorrow.' Harry laughed weakly.

'All the more reason to leave now,' the portrait reminded him. 'You can apparate, remember. Go, take a vial of the basilisk venom with you. A wand-maker is an alchemist and he will appreciate the gift of such a rare substance. What you are about to ask will be better kept to as few mouths as possible.'

Harry, stepped around his trunk and plucked one of the vials from the desk and closed his eyes in preparation to apparate to Diagon Alley. It was a very long for his first serious apparition and his stomach was clenched tightly at the thought.

'Take the fragments, Harry,' Salazar encouraged him softly. 'It might be worth asking. Do not come back without a wand, you have no time to wait.'

Harry bent over the desk and very carefully picked up each individual splinter, placing them into the cupped palm of his other hand. He shared a look of sorrow with his ancestor then, in a disorienting whirl of the world, he was standing in front of Ollivander's.

Very carefully he checked himself over.

Nothing was missing.

Clenching his fist tightly around the pieces of his old partner he stepped into the shop.

'Mr Potter,' the silver-eyed man whispered softly, 'of all the people to next set foot in my shop I was not expecting you.' He swept out from behind his desk.

'Mr Ollivander,' Harry replied politely, still a little unnerved by the man.

'I remember selling you your wand. Even if I forgot the passing on of every single one of my creations yours would be the last to fade from my mind. Holly, a supple wand I daresay, and eleven inches.'

'Not anymore,' Harry said quietly, opening his left hand and pouring the splinters onto the tops of the nearest table. Some of them had stabbed into his hand under his tight grip and little spots of bright blood welled up across his palm.

Ollivander suddenly looked very sad. 'It is a terrible thing, Mr Potter, to witness the destruction and end of something you have created, but it explains why you have come.' His sharp eyes caught sight of the vial in Harry's pocket. 'Is that basilisk venom?'

Harry presented him with the vial and he appraised it reverently. 'I am not going to ask how you came by this, I have heard rumours of the events of your second year, and I'm not going to ask how you came to be here when you should be far away. I will ask if you are sure?'

'Sure?' Harry queried, suddenly very much lost.

'When a wizard or witch brings me a magical substance to create a wand from, as some of the most dedicated to tradition do, I always ask if they are sure. It is not easy for one not educated in wand lore to make the best decision. We shall check, just in case.'

Ollivander bustled into the back of the store and came back with a very small set of what appeared to be scales. 'A little blood if you please, Mr Potter.'

Warily, Harry extended his hand. Ollivander pricked his finger and squeezed hard until a single drop fell into one of the tiny silver bowls. Setting it down he unscrewed the vial and vary carefully poured a single drop of the venom onto the other side.

'The basilisk's poison will not be an easy thing to use as a wand core, Mr Potter.' Ollivander stared piercingly at the drop on the scales. 'The venom consumes all that is alive, even the strongest wand woods, but there are ways to counter its burn. Alchemy is an essential subject for a wand-maker.'

Harry watched with some trepidation as the silver-haired wand crafter hovered over the small set of scales, tapping his long, thin, pale wand against them as he murmured beneath his breath.

'Blood is a very potent magical medium, as all wizards know. It is easy to check whether your magic is strongly aligned to the substance.' Ollivander tucked his wand away. 'The brighter the blue, the better the match.'

'I was hoping,' Harry smiled a little sadly, 'that I might not have to have a completely new wand.' He gestured at the pieces strewn across the table, 'I gathered every splinter.'

The scales glowed and emitted a very vibrant, bright, blue light.

That's lucky.

'Mr Potter,' Ollivander looked speechless for a brief instant, 'if I did not know better I would assume you to be competition for my role as Britain's premier wand-maker.'

Harry raised an eyebrow, now utterly lost altogether.

'Don't be modest, my boy,' the wand-maker smiled. 'We both know basilisk venom dissolves organic substances completely. You cannot wander into my shop with such a substance, carrying the pieces of your former wand no less, to request a new wand that is not entirely new and expect me not to realise your solution.' He very carefully scraped the pieces of Harry's former wand off the table into his hand. 'Perhaps this is not so much the destruction of your partnered wand as it is its rebirth. How very appropriate for a phoenix feather wand core.'

Ollivander placed one hand firmly on Harry's shoulder and ushered him into he back of the store, past towering shelves of wand boxes to a small crafting area.

'I shall, of course, carry out your idea, ingenious that it is. I have heard Gregorovitch once attempted something similar. His effort failed, but I feel this will work, and when it comes to wands, my boy, feelings are everything.'

Harry watched, still rather mystified, as Ollivander extracted every piece of his wand's broken core under the assistance of a large magnifying lens and added them, shard by shard into the vial of venom. They dissolved one after the other into the vial in tiny streams of silver bubbles.

'Your finger, Mr Potter,' Ollivander requested again, holding the same set of silver scales. Another prick and the silver was marred once again by crimson. He dripped a drop of the venom that now contained Harry's old wand core onto the scales and peered at them with all the energy of a man possessed.

It flared an even brighter blue than before and Harry twitched in discomfort at the sudden light.

'Perfect,' the silver-haired wand-maker whispered. 'Your magic seems to respond especially well to a fluid core, my boy, it flows within you. The effects of certain misunderstood rituals, perhaps?'

Harry eyed him cooly, clearing his mind in case the wand-maker was capable of utilising legilimency.

'Don't fear, Mr Potter, the Ministry disapproves of many things it feels might not suit its purposes or propaganda. I have no such interests. The only question I have for you is what wood should your wand be?'

He carefully cleaned the silver scales and placed them to one side, then reached around Harry to grasp a piece of parchment covered in thin slivers of wood.

'Holly, again, perhaps,' Ollivander mused. 'A third time, Mr Potter,' he asked looking at Harry's hand. 'No need for blood now. You will feel warmth from the wood that best suits you.'

He took Harry's hand in his own and pressed his forefinger against a sliver of wood Harry assumed was Holly. Ollivander's skin was cool, soft and papery. It reminded Harry oddly of the very worn pages of some of Salazar's books.

'Anything?'

Harry couldn't feel the same warmth he remembered from his old wand, though there was some.

'If you are unsure, then it cannot be holly.' The silver eyes of the wand-maker trailed down the piece of parchment. 'Perhaps this one,' he whispered, pressing Harry's finger against a wood much darker than all the others.

Harry flinched away at the sudden rush of heat and Ollivander smiled triumphantly. 'Ebony, Mr Potter, not such a far cry from holly, you know. They are both woods that symbolise protection, but where holly represents protection by sacrifice, ebony denotes protection by power.'

The tape measures Harry remembered from before swept around the bookcase to envelop him within their grasp. They measured almost every length of his body, including, somewhat perplexingly, the extent of his nose.

'Eleven and a third,' Ollivander decided. 'Best to be as precise and thorough as possible with a wand of such potential,' he added, explaining the enthusiasm of the measuring.

Harry gave him a grateful smile, which the man returned whole-heartedly.

'This part, my boy, you cannot witness, despite the ingenuity of your idea. All wand-makers must have some secrets.' He snatched up the vial and vanished off among the shelves, muttering excitedly.

I have just witnessed something almost no other person to come here has seen, Harry realised with a small thrill.

Harry was waiting for some time, several hours at least, and he began to fear that something might have gone wrong with the venom.

'I took my time,' Ollivander whispered, appearing from behind a stack of wand boxes with all the warning of a particularly stealthy ghost. 'I could never rush a wand, let alone one like this.'

He presented Harry with a thin, long box just as he had over three years ago.

Harry opened it, pulling the long, dark length of wood from the box with as much trepidation as anticipation. There was a rush of warmth that ran from his palm to his shoulder.

'Go on, my boy,' Ollivander whispered, 'give it a wave.'

Harry twirled it in small circle in the space between the two of them.

There was no visible reaction, but a wave warmth ran over him from head to toe and he shivered with pleasure, bursting into a reverent smile at the skill of the wand-maker.

'The rebirth of a wand, Mr Potter,' Ollivander said softly. 'A beautiful thing and something I never thought I would witness. I daresay I won't make a wand quite like it again.'

'I can not give you enough to compensate for this, Mr Ollivander,' Harry said, finding his tongue at last.

'My wands cost seven galleons, my boy, no more, no less. I would give you this for free were ebony not so dear. The venom you supplied would have bought you every wand in this shop.'

Harry fished in his robes for the correct number of coins.

'I have not sullied this wand by adding the Ministry's trace to it; you understand what I am saying, Mr Potter.'

'I do,' Harry nodded. 'Thank you.' There would be no restrictions on his magic use this summer. The Dursley's would be horrified when they realised that.

'Thank me by hurrying back to where you are supposed to be and trying a few of your spells before I see my work again tomorrow at the wand-weighing ceremony.' He smiled at Harry's surprise. 'Who else would conduct such a ceremony?'

'I certainly can't think of anyone better,' Harry agreed warmly.

'You are too kind, my boy.'

Ollivander led him back to the front of the shop and ushered him out gently.

'Take care, Mr Potter,' he warned. 'It is a long way for anyone to apparate, even for an emergency such as this.'

The world spun back past him until Harry was standing in front of Salazar again. He looked over himself carefully and cursed violently in parseltongue. The nail of his left thumb was missing.

'Nails grow back,' Salazar reassured him. 'It's a good trade for a wand.' There was a long silence as Harry regarded the skin covering the top of this thumb. 'You do have a wand, yes?' The painting shifted eagerly as Harry slipped the box out from under his robes.

'What is it?'

'Ebony, eleven and a third inches, with my old phoenix feather dissolved in basilisk venom at its core,' Harry explained.

'He dissolved your old wand core in the venom and it worked?' Salazar queried.

'He tested to see whether my magic was compatible with the venom and then with the venom with my old core. It was,' he finished simply.

He smiled remembering how the man had thought the wand had been his idea. 'He thought this was what I wanted from the beginning. I was very lucky to come away with it.'

'Carry me outside and show me a spell,' Salazar instructed. 'I want to see.' He sounded quite eager and childish, like a boy about to get a present. 'It's a good idea to familiarise yourself with your wand as quickly as possible,' he added, more grandly and maturely than was necessary in an attempt to cover his excitement. Harry hid his smile.

'Reducto,' he murmured, whipping his wand in a sharp, small, sideways vee.

The blasting curse reduced one of the nearby serpent effigies into fine powder. Salazar sighed.

'Stop breaking parts of my Chamber of Secrets,' he groused as Harry waved his wand at the dust. The serpent statue reformed from it rather gracefully. 'How does it feel?'

'It's no stronger,' Harry began, 'but it feels right. I feel like I've been painting with my finger all this time only to finally pick up the finest brush.'

'More refined, then?'

'Ollivander said something about my magic flowing and reacting well to a liquid core,' Harry offered.

'I've never seen a liquid core wand,' the portrait mused. 'They're supposed to be very hard to create without making the wand fragile. Try the disillusionment charm.'

Harry twirled his wand over himself and watched the effects carefully. 'I see no difference,' he remarked disappointedly, looking back up at the painted founder. 'I'm still camouflaged.'

'I do,' Salazar disagreed good-naturedly. 'When you move your charm keeps pace, even with fast movements like when you straightened up. 'You were barely more than a ripple in the air, where as earlier you were obviously out of place. Once you've practiced with this you'll be virtually undetectable.'

Harry slipped his new wand into his sleeve for the first time, marvelling in the warm feel of it against his forearm.

'Don't put it away yet,' the painting objected. 'Do something exciting with it, test it, try that basilisk conjuration you showed me the first time you carried me out here.'

Harry didn't need much convincing to get the wand back out and in his palm. He luxuriated in the heat that seemed to flow up and down his arm, vibrating to and from the wand.

Picturing the serpent rising resplendent from the waters of the pool Harry swept his wand up.

Every drop of liquid rose into the air. The conjured serpent king must have been the equal of his ancestor's tainted guardian. It swirled in the air over the bridge, coiling over and over itself, maw poised to strike at a moment's notice.

The drain of keeping the enchantment active was still enormous, but Harry lasted a full minute longer than before he slashed his wand forwards, sending the water-formed basilisk smashing against the chamber wall with a resounding crash.

'Was that exciting enough?' he asked the portrait as the water began to calm itself.

'Very,' Salazar said calmly, but his eyes were sparkling too much for Harry to buy into his dignified pose. 'Your control with that wand is superlative, no longer do you waste so much of your strength. You're going to be a very powerful wizard when you reach your majority, Harry.'

'I have to survive until seventeen,' Harry warned, thinking of his previous adventures.

'The Triwizard Tournament won't know what hit it,' Salazar cackled. 'I hope there's a duelling event. You're a much more promising heir than Tom Riddle ever was. He was refined and oh so focused, but lacked your natural power. He must have undertaken many rituals to become so feared as Lord Voldemort.'

'I suspect you are exaggerating,' Harry told him.

'I am,' Salazar admitted, 'but I'm not lying. Tom Riddle was incredibly talented and very powerful, but so are you. You'll be the real Heir of Slytherin, my heir, and I have every faith that you will outdo him.'

'I'll certainly have to try,' Harry said dryly.

It's not like he's going to leave me alone voluntarily.

'Where now, back to your common room?' Salazar asked with feigned innocence.

Harry stiffened at the implication. 'I said I'd never go back,' Harry reminded him slightly cooly. 'I meant it.'

'There must be other members of your house who were not involved?'

'I will wait for them as I initially intended to,' Harry declared, 'but I won't be returning to Gryffindor Tower until next year at the earliest, if I ever do.'

'Where will you sleep?' the portrait inquired. 'I enjoy your company, Harry, but it's cold down here, even in the study.'

'The Room of Requirement, of course.'

'Oh, choose their room, why don't you,' Salazar grumbled. 'Some Heir of Slytherin you are.'

'You're going back on the wall,' Harry told him, amused. 'Then I'm going to go get some food. I haven't eaten since yesterday lunch and most of that ended up on the floor in here while I was trying to apparate.'

'Fine,' he groused, 'but I want to see you again before the first task. I have a few things I should start teaching you. My fields of specialty.'

'Blood magic and parselmagic?' Harry raised an eyebrow.

'It's not evil,' Salazar sighed. 'You still have some preconceptions to lose, I see. If it reassures you the greatest piece of blood magic I ever created is the parseltongue language you can speak, and there's not really such a thing as parselmagic. I'll explain properly when I actually start teaching you.'

Harry put him back up on the wall over the entrance and the portrait grinned wickedly. 'If you do well enough at learning the arts the Heir of Slytherin is supposed to be paramount at I'll show you how to take off the anti-levitation charm on this painting.'

'I'm in,' Harry agreed sarcastically. 'How could I refuse such generosity?'

He left the chamber to the sound of Salazar Slytherin's echoing laughter.

The Great Hall was blessedly quiet. Harry took a seat at the very end of the Gryffindor table and helped himself to some cold chicken and tried not to moan in satisfaction after not eating for so long.

It wasn't long before he was disturbed.

'I heard your wand got snapped, Potter,' Malfoy sneered, swaggering up to the table. Harry noticed he hadn't forgotten to bring Crabbe and Goyle this time.

'I see you took my advice, Malfoy,' he smirked, 'you should never leave home without your trusty lackeys.'

'I haven't forgotten that insult, Potter, and now you have no wand and no friends.'

'I wouldn't say that,' a hand came down on his shoulder. He recognised the freckled knuckles of one of the Weasley twins.

'He has just many friends as you do now, ickle Draco, so run along.' There was a little warning in the tone of the older Weasley that implied Malfoy might find the consequences incredibly humiliating if he did not.

'After all the trash you've dragged your name through you still can't get rid of the blood-traitors, it's pathetic.' Malfoy left, a silent Crabbe and Goyle in tow.

I don't think I've heard them ever actually speak.

'So, Harrikins,' the twins took seats on the bench either side of him, pushing him further along it. Harry had never thought he would be glad to hear that nickname.

'We heard you had a run in with some of our fellow Gryffindors.'

'We're sorry about that, Ginny is too-

'-but not as sorry as Ron was after our little sister finished with him. She hit him with so many hexes he had to go to the hospital wing. He's still there.'

'It was the first time I've ever seen Snape give points to Gryffindor.'

'Anyway, we just dropped by to say that we're working on Angelina and Alicia, it's slow, but Katie's helping too now.'

'We still have to keep our distance,' they said ruefully, 'but not as much, so don't worry about slime like Malfoy.'

'He's probably more worried about having to compete in the tournament without a wand, Fred.'

'I have a wand,' Harry cut in, before they got sidetracked. 'Thank you, though.'

'Where did you get a wand from, Harrikins?' They asked together, wearing identically surprised faces.

'From a wand-maker, of course.'

'Harrikins is getting smart, George.'

'We'd better watch out, Fred.'

'Angelina is coming,' Harry warned, spotting his former quidditch captain over on the far side of the hall.

'Thanks for the head's up,' Fred smiled.

'Decent of you,' George added. 'This mess with Angelina won't last too much longer if we can help it.'

They walked away quickly to duck in alongside Gryffindor's female chaser trio. Fred winked at Harry from Angelina's side when he caught him watching the group.

The Weasley twins weren't so bad, he supposed. Out of all of the Gryffindor's they had the most to lose by supporting him against their girlfriends and they had done it anyway. The two of them had been clever about it to try and keep things civil, but that was the sort of cunning Harry could only respect.

Ginny was bearable too, if only because she had somehow managed to earn points off Snape for hexing another student, but there weren't many others. He wondered vaguely what Neville was doing, Harry hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since they had spoken in the dormitory.

I'm not going to go searching for him, he decided.

They had turned their backs on him first, even if Neville had shown great reluctance in doing it, so they could come to him. He wouldn't be holding too much of a grudge against most, an apology would be enough for those who hadn't actively turned against him.

He had other problems to deal with first. Winning the Triwizard Tournament was top of that list; it came just above finding whomever had put his name in the damn thing in the first place.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to everyone who has. Your praise inspires me to write more chapters through Harry's eyes instead of Fleur's. ;)

13. Thirteen Yellow Roses

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Sorry, this one took a while to write and is a tiny bit shorter than the rest because I liked ending it as it is. (Only a couple hundred words were lost though.)

And it's Fleur, triple disappointment ;)

Chapter 13

Fleur was the last champion to arrive at the wand-weighing ceremony, slipping embarrassedly through the door until she realised the wand-maker was not yet present and relaxed. Krum was leaning against the wall on the far side of the small room, staring at nothing in a rather broody fashion. The strong-browed Bulgarian looked slightly unkempt, his robes ever so slightly disarrayed, as if he had been interrupted from doing something rather more active. His headmaster, in contrast, was immaculately dressed. The silver-goateed man stood, close-mouthed and rigid, next to his champion, warily eying anyone in the room that passed too near to either of them.

The Hogwarts champion, Cedric Diggory, stood in the centre of the floor, rocking back and forth on his heels as they waited. He seemed oddly at ease, even with Madam Maxime towering over him.

The final competitor, though Fleur hesitated to think of him as such, had been abandoned to the wiles of the reporter Rita Skeeter. The two of them had withdrawn into the only unoccupied corner as the colourful, blond woman sought to extract anything she could write about.

Better him than me, Fleur decided, though she was a little put out the reporter had not tried to speak to her, or any of the other champions from the look of things. She would have thought he first target should be the ones that were chosen properly, and actually had a chance of winning.

The boy looked surprisingly unruffled at being the focus of Miss Skeeter. He had composed his face into the sort of effortless, charming smile Fleur normally found herself the target off and was nodding along attentively to whatever the woman was saying.

He had not, Fleur noted, actually answered any of her questions with anything more than that bright smile and a few vague words. This was something that the woman's bright, green quill seemed to find distressing as it hovered agitatedly behind her, swaying, twirling and often dipping towards her notes, but never getting so far as writing anything.

A Quick-Quotes Quill.

They were a sure sign of a reporter who liked to give their articles a personal touch. The sort of characteristic flourish that left the article's subject wondering just how their words had been so misrepresented when they read it the next day.

The boy was doing a masterful job of fending Rita Skeeter off and from what Fleur could see she didn't seem to have noticed. The reporter's eyes were sparkling with unsuppressed glee, even as her quill writhed disconsolately behind her.

It was then that she noticed the tip of Harry's wand protruding from his sleeve and tucked alongside the inside of his palm. It was glowing ever so faintly. Rita Skeeter could not possibly see it from the way his hand was angled and no hint of anything suspicious could be seen from his relaxed, casual posture. The only sign that the fourteen year old had outwitted the journalist was that subtly concealed two inches of wand and an ever so slightly amused glint in his eyes.

He earned a little of her respect for that.

'I think it is time the ceremony began.' Albus Dumbledore had entered the room and, as he always did, commanded its attention with a gentle, aged authority. He gestured very politely at the wall that was least in the way of proceedings. 'If you'd be so kind as to release our youngest champion, Rita.'

'Of course, headmaster,' she smiled victoriously. She slid graciously to the back wall and began, to Fleur's quiet delight, an inspection of her notepad. She had never seen anyone's face shift from glee to fury so fast, nor flush that particular shade of puce. The boy inclined his head with an innocent smile when she looked up at him and poor Rita Skeeter frowned in confusion, unable to realise what had happened. For a fourteen year old, he had played that very well.

'Let me introduce you all to Mr Garrick Ollivander, Britain's finest wand-maker.' Dumbledore stepped aside, and in the moment everyone else's eyes flicked past him Fleur alone caught the flash of surprise as he glanced at the Boy-Who-Lived.

The wand-maker was a tall, thin man. He had odd, silver eyes that shone brightly out from underneath a wrinkled brow as he peered curiously at each of the room's occupants.

'Ladies first, perhaps,' he suggested softly.

Fleur would have preferred to go last, but stepped forward regardless.

She handed him her wand, perfectly polished as of the last two nights and waited for his response with come curiosity. Many wand-makers, including the one who had actually made her wand, were surprised by its unusual core.

Mr Ollivander turned it over in his long, delicate fingers. 'Nine and a half inches of inflexible rosewood,' he noted, 'but with an uncommon core.' He cast an eye over her curiously and Fleur tensed. 'Veela hair, I would imagine.' He had no further reaction as she feared he might.

He twirled it round once more, eyeing both her and her wand with interest. 'A beautiful wand, both within and without. You have a strong bond with your partner, Miss Delacour,' he remarked approvingly.

'Orchideous,' Ollivander murmured and a bright bunch of yellow roses swirled into existence at its tip. He nodded, satisfied, and returned her wand to her. The thirteen roses fell to the floor.

Glad that her part in the ceremony was done she retreated back next to her headmistress, taking the place of the Hogwarts champion as he moved forwards.

Fleur watched the wand-maker curiously as Cedric passed over his own wand. There was much she could learn about her competitors from their wands.

'Ah,' Ollivander smiled faintly, 'I remember this wand. Twelve and a quarter inches long, ash, and still as springy as when it left my shop. You've kept your wand very well, Mr Diggory.'

'I polish it often,' the Hogwarts student admitted embarrassedly.

'As we all should.' The wand-maker ran a finger along the length of the wand. 'A single hair from a very impressive male unicorn for a core.' Ollivander flourished the wand exuberantly and stream of burgundy wine sprang from it, fountaining over the floor.

The wine formed a puddle around the roses. The wand-maker was beginning to make quite a mess.

'Mr Krum,' Ollivander beckoned. The dark, surly Bulgarian slid off the wall and strode to the centre of the room. He took care not to step in the wine, Fleur noticed.

Krum proffered his wand stiffly to the silver-haired man, stepping back while the wand-maker examined it.

'Hornbeam, ten and one quarter inches, thicker than one usually sees, and quite rigid.' Krum nodded, eyeing the wand rather protectively.

'This is a creation of Gregorovitch,' Ollivander mused. 'Judging by your age it must have been on of his last.'

'It was,' Durmstrang's champion replied, in a thick, eastern european accent.

'A fine crafter of wands, Mykew Gregorovitch, with a knowledge of wand lore second to none.' Ollivander swept the hornbeam wand into the air. 'Avis,' he commanded.

A small flock of white birds, adorned with green and red bands across their wings flitted into the rafters of the room, chirping excitedly. 'Excellent,' the wand-maker, enthused.

Ollivander looked around until his eyes came to rest on the fourth champion, but none of the surprise or distaste she might have expected appeared.

'And Mr Potter.' At the boy's name the man smiled more widely than Fleur had yet seen.

Hogwarts additional, unofficial extra stepped up, his wand sliding smoothly from his sleeve before he passed it into the long-fingered hands of Ollivander.

Fleur did not miss the look of consternation that flitted over the face of Albus Dumbledore when the fourteen year old presented his wand.

'A wand reborn,' Ollivander whispered, spinning it in his fingers. 'Ebony, eleven inches and a third, in such condition it appears it was only made yesterday.' A ghost of a smile passed across the faces of both the boy and Ollivander.

'Perhaps my finest work,' the wand-maker admitted, 'and certainly the most complex. The shards of the phoenix feather core of your first partner, consumed by basilisk venom. A liquid heart.'

The boy has had two wands?

It explained the frown on the face of Hogwarts' headmaster. Having had two wands was not uncommon for an auror, or wizard with a hazard occupation, but for a fourteen year old to have had his wand damaged beyond repair was virtually unheard of and that was without including the fact his second wand was like no other Fleur had ever heard of.

A liquid core. Basilisk venom. The toxin should have melted the wood.

'A bond that has survived destruction and risen again, stronger than almost any I have seen over the last fifty years.'

The wand-maker did not test the wand immediately, but continued to turn it over, stroking its length as lovingly as one might caress the cheek of their child.

'What has this wand seen?' the man murmured very softly, spinning it deftly between his fingers and closing his eyes. 'Oh my,' the wand-maker whispered after a moment.

Ollivander slashed the wand through air across his chest in the direction of Harry.

A twisting, writhing, silver serpent the length of Fleur's arm coalesced in the air between the two of them, coiling about the shoulders of the boy before fading away into nothing.

'Perfect,' the man breathed.

Fleur tossed her silver hair. There was nothing astounding about the test. A snake was one of the easiest things to summon.

At least it did not make any further mess.

The boy's headmaster was staring very intently at the back of the boy's head. His eyes, normally calm and wise, held a hint of concern about them as he gazed at his student. Fleur fancied there was a touch of pride there too. For a fourteen year old she had to concede he was different. His inexplicable ability to not notice her had been proof enough of that and his unusual wand was simply confirmation there was something else to him.

Fleur briefly considered speaking with him as they all followed Dumbledore back towards the Great Hall.

In the end she did not. Madam Maxime would not approve of her fraternising with the competition, and it would be most unwise to associate with him while Rita Skeeter was lurking. His vexation of the reporter combined with her veela heritage would create an article far more potent than anything she might have previously concocted.

He probably would not even notice me trying anyway.

The boy had left the group early on regardless, branching off up the first floor corridor. Fleur had little doubt that if she followed him he would shortly vanish.

'Come with me Fleur,' her headmistress instructed, leading her down towards the carriage. 'I trust you were paying attention to the ceremony, there was much to be learned about your rivals from it.'

'I was,' Fleur assured her.

'What did you deduce?'

'Cedric Diggory is a steadfast, hard-working and honest, but while he is gifted he does not seem an exceptionally powerful wizard. Viktor Krum is powerful, stubborn and unyielding. He will be my fiercest competition.'

'And Harry Potter?'

'He is unusual,' she replied hesitantly. 'Ollivander seemed to favour him.'

'Perceptive as always,' Madam Maxime complimented. 'I believe you are right about Hogwarts' original champion. Krum, though, has hidden depths and, judging by the spell Ollivander performed, excels in the air.'

'He is a quidditch seeker for his country,' Fleur told her headmistress, surprised she did not know already. Madame Maxime nodded.

'Be wary of the boy,' she warned. 'I have never seen a liquid core wand, nor do I know what it implies about his magic, but ebony denotes power and having a basilisk venom core speaks for itself.'

'I will not ignore him,' Fleur reassured her headmistress.

He does enough of that for both of us, she thought bitterly.

'He is unlikely to prove a rival being fourteen,' Madam Maxime explained, 'but he may have one or two surprises that could harm your standing against the others.' She drew Fleur to one side of the path.

'The other champions will soon, if they haven't already, be told about the first task. This is to be expected.'

'Will I?' Fleur asked hesitantly.

'Of course,' Madame Maxime exclaimed. 'I am… stretching, the boundaries a little, but we are going to go get a glimpse of it now. Follow me, Fleur.'

Her headmistress bypassed the carriage and walked into the edge of the woods that bordered the school. Fleur pulled a face and picked her way carefully through the mud after her. She was not wearing particularly sturdy shoes and it was hard going.

Madame Maxime kept going, clearly aware of where she was heading, and the trees grew thicker around them. The forest was a dark place. It was named the Forbidden Forest to keep out students of all ages and a host of rumours surrounded it. She had been here long enough to hear a few of them, mostly in relation to where the tournament might take place. Acromantula, werewolves, centaurs, giants and worse were supposed to have the place their home. Walking among the dark pines she couldn't help but agree with those that thought the place a fitting home.

Is the task taking place out here? Fleur wondered. She couldn't say the idea filled her with enthusiasm. It was dark, cold and damp. Fleur liked none of those things.

A light, a wavering, reddish-orange glow appeared up ahead and Madame Maxime drew her to one side again. 'As it is a little unusual for me to take you here you should cast a disillusionment charm. I know you are adept at the spell.'

Fleur cast it quickly, choosing not to wonder how exactly her headmistress knew about her ability. It was a useful charm that only grew more so when nobody was aware that you could perform it, so Fleur had kept her use of it a secret from all but Gabrielle.

'Good,' her headmistress declared, 'you've improved. Follow me.'

The glow grew brighter and waves of hot air began to billow pleasantly past Fleur, catching her hair, as they grew near to some kind of clearing.

The hot wind swiftly grew oppressive and sweltering until even Fleur, whose veela heritage granted her some resilience to heat, was sweating horribly by the time they passed through the tree line. Four, massive cages dominated the newly made gap in the trees.

White-hot flames billowed from them, too bright to see any detail past. The silhouettes were enough for Fleur to recognise what was trapped within them.

Dragons.

Madame Maxime had disappeared sometime between reaching the glade and Fleur first seeing the cages, but she could remember the rough direction back to the carriage so she wasn't unduly concerned.

The dragons were far more worrying.

Veela were resistant to heat, being naturally able to conjure fire themselves, but fire hot enough to melt steel was not the so easily resisted. If Fleur was caught in the inferno she would be ashes in seconds, veela or not, and that was not how she planned to end her tournament.

Edging a little closer, but extremely aware that dragons were capable of exhaling flames for several metres, she tried to get a better view of them.

Even this close the heat from their flames was all but unbearable. Sweat was running from her forehead and down her back in rivulets, it was unpleasant and her uniform starting to stick to her.

Dragons were not something Fleur had studied in great detail. She liked charms, enchanting and duelling, not running away from magically resistant creatures that expelled gouts of fire.

They were, however, still susceptible to her sleeping enchantment.

The nearest, a red-scaled, snub-snouted thing that thrashed angrily and spewed fire everywhere it could see, had very protuberant eyes. They were a gleaming, viridian green and filled with a wrathful intelligence that made Fleur shiver instinctively. Dragons had no natural predators, and nothing to fear. They were tameable, but only just, hovering between the two uppermost classes of dangerous creatures. It seemed the tournament was going to carry on where it had left off with the cockatrice.

Immediately behind the red dragon was another cage; it contained the largest of the four dragons. It appeared as little more than a shadow even when the nearer was not breathing fire. Black, jagged scales, tattered, ebony wings that were furled around a vicious-looking, serpentine body, and a back and tail covered in cruelly curved spines.

That is a dragon to avoid.

Its head snapped round when the red dragon rattled its cage and Fleur found herself looking straight into a set of bright, yellow eyes. She had never seen so much malicious intent in the eyes of any creature. Underneath its malevolence was a wild, furious intelligence in the glowing, golden orbs that glowered out from under the shadows of four, bronze horns. It hissed with rage and lashed its tail through the bars, scoring a deep scar into the ground. Fleur glimpsed a set of spikes that coated its tail like barbs when the dragon retracted it.

Definitely a dragon to avoid.

All of the creatures were enraged and dangerous, but there was something hungry and feral about the black one that made the rest seem rather less scary.

The other two were further away and Fleur was not foolhardy enough to try and tiptoe past the cages to see them closer. She had seen more than enough of what was to come tomorrow.

She crept back from the glade, keeping well away from the circle of scorched earth and charred leaves that surrounded the ash filled clearing.

Madame Maxime was waiting a few minutes walk back through the forest.

'What do you think?' she asked.

'I think whomever gets the black one is going to regret putting their name in the goblet,' she answered honestly, still a little disturbed by the malice of those yellow eyes.

'The Hungarian Horntail.' Madame Maxime gave the malevolent creature a name. 'I'm not sure it's even tame, from what I was told by Hagrid and his dragon-keeper friend they had to send a fourth on very short notice.'

It's the boy's fault that thing is here, Fleur realised. If I have to face that beast I will hex him halfway to death afterwards.

It was probably an empty threat. The contest between any fourteen year old wizard and a dragon was likely to end very swiftly in favour of the magical creature. Fleur would have to settle for hating him posthumously.

'Do you have a plan?'

'My enchantment, the sleeping one,' she answered.

'The one that makes use of your veela nature,' Madame Maxime remembered. 'A solid plan, but I might suggest having a back up idea, just in case.'

'I know to go for the eyes,' Fleur considered, 'and I know enough curses and hexes that once I hit it will stay blinded for long enough.'

'Practice,' her headmistress insisted firmly, 'and don't mention the dragons. I was not really meant to show you, even if the others will all know by the end of the day.'

They had reached the carriage, so Fleur took her leave of Madame Maxime and quickly returned to her room to read up on the creatures.

Dragons have few weaknesses, if faced with one it is best to distract it and flee. If fighting is the only recourse then its weak spots are the eyes and, on some weaker breeds, the softer scaled belly and armpits.

Fleur somehow doubted that the ebony monster with its glaring yellow eyes was one of the weaker species. It looked like it had sprouted straight from one of Gabrielle's nightmares.

Her enchantment was her best bet if she actually had to face the dragon down. There was a faint hope that the task could be accomplished by more subtle means. Distracting the dragon, or preferably even avoiding it completely. Since there was one for each of the champions it seemed unlikely they would all be part of the event together so she could not allow the others to deal with the creature and then face her competitors instead.

Retrieving her wand from her waist Fleur decided the best spell to use against the dragon if her sleeping enchantment failed was probably the conjunctivitis curse. It would swell the eyes of the dragon shut and give her a chance to lure it or distract it away. She doubted the task would be to actually defeat the creature. It took ten wizards to deal with an adult dragon at the best of times.

'Conjuncto,' she snapped, jabbing her wand towards one of the small floral patterns on her pillow.

The curse was flickered across the room and struck its target dead on, tearing a small hole in it. Satisfied, Fleur mended the pillion and tucked her wand back through the belt of her uniform.

There wasn't a great deal else she could to prepare for a dragon at such short notice. The first task was tomorrow, close enough that she could almost hear the cheers of the Beauxbatons students.

They will probably be cheering the dragon.

She sniffed disdainfully. It would not matter who they cheered or if they did not cheer at all. They would still be there to see her bypass the monstrous creature and witness her victory. Even the boy would have to be watching her, especially if he needed ways to get past his own dragon without dying.

Fleur did feel a little sorry for him now. At first his reluctance to participate had felt like an insult to her and their schools, but now she realised it was more likely to be a healthy survival instinct. It did beget the question, once again, of how his name had come from the goblet when he was so disinclined to participate, if it had at all.

Albus Dumbledore's glimmer of worry and pride over his student at the wand-weighing ceremony came to mind immediately.

Is there some larger game afoot? she wondered. Beauxbatons might be in France, but the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived was just as prevalent there. The headmaster was old, very old, truth be told, perhaps he was grooming his successor. A wizard he hoped would continue his legacy and ideals after Dumbledore was gone.

The Triwizard tournament did strike Fleur as a good way to toughen anyone for a dangerous road ahead, but fourteen was far too young to compete, liquid core wand or not.

It does not matter, she reminded herself. I have my own dragon to worry about.

The memory of malevolent yellow eyes and a bone-barbed tail lashing across ground reduced to cinders by fiery breath was more than enough to redirect Fleur's pity back to herself.

Any dragon but the Horntail.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to all my reviewers, especially the constant ones.

P.S. Anyone who knows about the symbolism of roses gets an extra clue of what is to come ;)

14. Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Chapter 14!

That moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. I've tried to do something a little different from any other fic I've yet seen.

I will mention that, for now at least, I am sort of sticking to the canon timeline of major events like the tasks and leaving their basic schematics unchanged since it would have all been organised and in motion before my AU really gets going.

It's going to be a ripple effect from now onwards, though I will endeavour not to stretch things too far since I think things are nicer when they're recognisably comparable, but have a bit of a twist.

Additionally I have now rewritten all the chapters up to this point, nothing too serious, but a few little things that might make things clearer. Anyone who wants to do me a huge favour reread and review the changes will get a hypothetical cookie ;)

Chapter 14

'It's today?'

'Yes,' Harry replied, giving the portrait a flat look. He'd said that twice already.

'I told you to come see beforehand so I could teach you things,' Salazar exploded, in parseltongue.

'I did,' Harry responded. 'I'm right here.'

'I can't teach you right before the task begins. You'll need your strength for the competition and blood magic is demanding field. It's sacrifice based, after all.' The snake slithered around his ancestor's neck before coming to settle on the other shoulder.

'You can't even teach me about the theory?'

'There's not much point, is there?' the portrait groused. 'Magic is best learned practically and actively, not listening to painting.'

Harry shoved Secrets of the Darkest Arts to one side and sat on the edge of the desk. There was still an hour or so until the task started and nothing to do while the portrait decided not to teach him.

'What is the task?' Salazar asked, after a brief silence.

'I have no idea,' Harry shrugged. 'I think it's probably meant to be a surprise.'

'Where is your cunning?' Slytherin demanded. 'What kind of Heir of Slytherin are you? You should have gone and found out.'

'From where?' Harry asked incredulously. 'The big book of future tournament tasks?'

Salazar sniggered and pointed at the desk behind him.

Harry swivelled and inspected an oddly new looking piece of parchment. 'The big book of future tournament tasks,' he read, amused.

'You left that just before you arrived,' the portrait smiled, 'said I'd understand in about an hour.'

'I used the time-turner, didn't I.' Harry turned to look at the desk only to find the golden necklace gone. 'Where am I?'

'You said you were going to practice occlumency exercises,' Salazar replied. 'Read the rest aloud for me.'

'Dragons,' Harry continued, 'distractions work best. Don't ignore Katie.'

'Dragons,' the painting mused. 'Could be worse.'

'Dragons are pretty bad,' Harry responded.

'Could be another basilisk,' Salazar countered. 'A dragon normally attacks by breathing fire, which they can only do in one direction, and is fairly easy to see coming and dodge. The stare of the king of serpents is much more subtle, and deadly.'

'If I'm hit by the fire. It won't matter.'

'You survived to warn yourself,' Salazar reminded him. 'The plan must have worked, and now you know it, because you will have done it, succeeded and told yourself.'

Harry blinked. 'Run that by me once more.'

'You left yourself a message telling you how to do the task after completing it,' Salazar reiterated. 'Just trust yourself and go with it.' He peered over Harry and frowned. 'What else does it say?'

'The small one bites,' Harry told him, confused.

'I have no idea what you were trying to tell yourself,' Salazar admitted. 'I hope it wasn't important, or that it becomes obvious later.'

'I can't imagine leaving myself an ambiguous note if it didn't need to be,' Harry decided. 'Know anything about dragons?' he asked the painting.

'I am Salazar Slytherin,' the portrait told him.

'You only ever say that when you don't know,' Harry grumbled.

'I wasn't stupid enough to ever pick a fight with one,' Salazar said testily. 'Avoid the fire, the claws and the teeth, their senses of smell and hearing aren't amazing, so once it's blind it's easy enough to remain undetected.'

'Some of that sounded useful,' Harry conceded in mock surprise.

'I hope the dragon gets you,' his ancestor groused.

'So do a lot of people, no doubt,' Harry admitted. 'I'll have a think about what to do on the way there. The rupturing curse should work on the eyes.'

'Cruel,' the painting commented, 'but effective.'

'If it works…'

'I suggest you try and use simple spells to find an elegant, easy solution,' Salazar began. 'Keeping your potential a secret is generally a good idea if you don't want to suddenly make a lot of powerful wizards and witches feel threatened.'

Harry had to admit he was probably right. Conjuring a vast basilisk out of dragon fire was a very tempting thought. The idea of such a spectacular piece of spell work was captivating, even in his mind's eye, but it would rather give away his strengths to everyone and only in the first round too.'

'An easy distraction and the rupturing curse then,' he decided.

'If that fails, don't hold back,' Salazar said sagely. 'Better to have potential enemies and be alive, than to be eaten by a dragon.'

The new motto of House Slytherin, Harry smiled.

'You don't seem very worried about your last living family member,' he noted.

'I know you survive,' the portrait replied. 'You're sitting in the pipes somewhere out there, after all.'

'I suppose,' Harry conceded grudgingly. He wasn't all too convinced about Salazar's theory. As far he was concerned if leaving the note changed anything he could very well die.'

Harry supposed that the version of him to first undertake the task had made such a mess of things he had no option but to resort to this. That version would not exist if the note changes things and so long as Harry remembered to leave the note afterwards the loop would close and things would progress as he hoped.

Of course, I could make a worse mess of things because of the note.

It was just best not to think about it.

'You should go,' the painting reminded him. 'Don't want to be late and miss watching the other champions try and avoid being toasted. You might pick something useful from them.'

Harry left the chamber rather swiftly. He didn't want to be late and upset any events that needed to happen for him to survive and leave the note. He'd been very careful using the time-turner up until this point, so whatever was about to happen must have been important to persuade him to try and change things.

Awful things happen to wizards who mess with time, Harry, he remembered Hermione tell him.

He had stopped listening to her, though.

When he reached the newly built arena it was fairly obvious where he was meant to be. The large, white tent with all the reporters and headteachers outside.

Rather than squeeze past them all, Harry slipped in through the side.

All three of the other champions were there. Cedric looked pale, but determined, Krum was brooding, as he often seemed to be, frowning at one of the tent poles and the french witch was looking rather confident. Harry wasn't sure he liked any of them enough to warn them about the dragons.

'You're all here,' Bagman boomed enthusiastically. He was trailed by a stern looking Mr Crouch and his loyal lapdog, Percy Weasley.

'Stick your hand in the bag to draw out your opponent,' Mr Crouch instructed tersely. 'Your task will be to retrieve the golden egg.'

And there I was at the World cup thinking I would never be stupid enough to try and steal an egg from a dragon.

'You first, Mr Diggory.' Bagman clapped him firmly on the back. 'Home team has to set an example.'

Cedric dipped his hand into the bag rather gingerly. It came out clutching a short-faced, silvery-blue dragon, that twisted and hissed in his palm. He didn't look too surprised to be holding a small model dragon.

'And you, Mr Krum.'

The Bulgarian seeker stomped across and all but snatched his dragon from the proffered back. He'd ended up with a red, bulging-eyed creature that prowled along the length of his palm, snorting small bursts of fire and stretching its bright crimson wings.

'Miss Delacour.'

So that's her name.

The Delacour girl looked really rather pale now in comparison to how confident she'd looked earlier, but when her fist came out clutching a green-brown dragon that seemed more content to curl up and sleep on her hand than do anything dramatic, her colour returned.

Percy turned and thrust the bag at him rather rudely. 'Potter,' he said coldly.

Harry returned his stare with equal iciness until the Weasley boy looked away, then reached into the bag. His fingers met with something warm and small. It wriggled. He drew it out of the bag to have a look.

It was as black as his wand, covered in jagged scales and spines, serpent-like and quite angry. Harry watched it writhe along his palm, spitting small plumes of fire in every direction.

'So Mr Diggory gets the Swedish Short-Snout, Mr Krum the Chinese Fireball, Miss Delacour the Welsh Green and Mr Potter has the Hungarian Horntail.' Ludo Bagman was clearly very excited for everything to start.

'We will proceed in that order,' Mr Crouch added wearily. He didn't seem too happy with his fellow organiser. 'At the sound of the cannon you need only go through the entrance and the task will have begun.'

There was dull boom in the background.

'I guess that means you're out preparation time, Cedric,' Bagman joked. 'Go show them why Hogwarts has won this tournament the most times.'

Cedric shot the man a look filled with a surprising amount of ire for a Hufflepuff, then hurried out through the tent entrance. Ludo Bagman, Crouch and Percy slipped out through the side of the tent, both of the main organisers were judges and needed to be present.

Harry eyed the dragon on his palm, carefully noting the barbed tail it had been named for. The tiny dragon stared back up at him, unintimidated. It's yellow eyes bored angrily into his, then, in a flurry of movement, it turned and seized the tip of his finger between its jaws. Harry swore and flicked it's side until it let go.

The small one bites.

There was a roar from the crowd outside and the enraged bellow of a dragon.

'It seems a bit unfair we can't watch as well,' Harry muttered. Krum, who was still standing nearby, chuckled.

'It would not be fair,' he shrugged. 'Whomever went first would have a disadvantage.'

The Bulgarian had a point, but Harry thought it was rather unfair he had to compete at all and thus had little sympathy for his fellow champions. They had signed up for this willingly.

The cannon boomed once more and Krum straightened up. Discarding his model, he gave Harry and the Beauxbatons witch a nod, then vanished out into the entrance. Harry hoped he survived. He was a good seeker, a little surly, but nice enough and probably his favourite of the other champions.

'Are you not nervous?' It was the first time the witch had spoken to him since she had asked about the stew upon arriving.

Harry raised an eyebrow at her.

'I've seen that dragon close up when it was caged,' she embellished. 'I didn't want to be near it then. I certainly don't now.'

That explained a lot. None of the others had been surprised because they had already known about the dragons as well.

'They're all pretty dangerous,' Harry replied earnestly. His statement was punctuated by the furious roars of the Chinese Fireball from outside.

'You are fourteen, Harry,' the girl reminded him. 'There is no way you could have learned as much magic as us. We are the best of our schools.' He thought that was rather arrogant of her, even if it would have been true for any other.

'I have no choice but to compete,' he responded calmly. 'Why fear something if fearing it will not help,' he searched his mind for her first name but found nothing, 'I'm afraid I don't know your name,' he admitted.

'Fleur Delacour,' the girl told him very coldly. 'I will let you read it off the Triwizard Cup at the end, if you are still alive.'

Harry felt that pretty much ended any chance of conversation with the haughty french girl.

The cannon's thunderous report sounded at that moment anyway, so if the conversation had been going to continue it was over now.

Fleur Delacour shot him a look between anger and pity as she stalked out towards the dragon. She clearly had quite a temper. Harry almost felt sorry for the creature that was about to be in her way.

The tent was much more peaceful and bearable now that everyone else had left. It was nice to have some quiet around him again.

Time stretched on as Harry waited and still there was no sound from the arena beyond. He had heard nothing from either the crowd or the dragon. It was possible the french witch had been eaten and the crowd was in horrified silence, but Harry had the sinking feeling she might emerge victorious and more unbearable.

The cannon sounded again and Harry flinched at the sudden noise. His movement caused the small dragon in his hand, that had finally settled down a few moments ago, to lash out with its tail and stab him in the palm.

Infernal creature, Harry swore internally. If the real one is as bad this one, I'm not going to enjoy this at all.

He eyed the model and smirked.

You'll be coming with me, he decided rather spitefully.

The tent opened into a short, rocky passageway that led down into the arena. Since there was only one way, forwards, Harry followed it, hiding the hand he was holding the model horntail in and slipping his wand out of his sleeve.

The golden egg was nestled on top of a clutch of the dragon eggs. There was no Hungarian Horntail in sight, but Harry was not so foolish as to simply step out.

He glanced around the arena, took aim at one of the rocks and murmured, 'reducto.' He had not put much power into the spell so its impact with the rock created little more than a loud noise.

A searing column of flame engulfed the innocent stone a moment later and the dragon made its appearance.

Oh my.

It was a very impressive looking creature and Harry instantly grasped why Fleur Delacour had not wanted to be near the dragon after the horntail was uncaged. It was only a little shorter than the dead basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets and similarly built. The model really did not do the creature justice. The dragon spread its tattered wings over the nest to make itself appear larger and lashed its tail across the rocks savagely behind it to produce a ghastly screeching sound.

Harry hurled the model dragon to the far side of the arena and took careful aim with his wand.

'Engorgio,' he hissed. There was no limit to the enlarging spell save how much magic could be channelled from the caster and the model dragon was soon every bit as large as its real counterpart. It left Harry with very little magic left.

This has better work.

Faced with a more serious threat than Harry, the Hungarian Horntail whirled around and roared in challenge. The crowd cheered loudly, thrilled by this new turn of events. Harry couldn't blame them.

Who wouldn't want to watch dragons fight?

'Confractio,' Harry whispered, aiming his rupturing curse for its eyes. His first two attempts miss completely as the dragons squared up, his third deflected harmlessly off the real dragon's jaw, but his fourth hit true and blinded the creature on his side.

It screamed with rage and pain, shaking its head and spattering the ground nearby with drops of steaming dragon's blood.

Seeking to eliminate its rival and end the threat to its nest the horntail swung its tail in a vicious circle towards the enlarged model. Fortunately the depth perception of the dragon was hindered with one eye and it only succeeded in obliterating part of the arena wall next to Harry's distraction.

The fragments of stone that sprayed from the impact tore holes through the plastic skin of the model.

The enlarged model lunged forwards, grappling with the the original and the two dragons went crashing to the floor on the far side of the arena.

Harry quietly took his chance and stole a little closer to the nest.

On the far side of the arena the model had pinned the actual dragon beneath it, driving its tail through the tattered, leathery wing of its attacker. The original dragon seemed dazed, but the attacks of the enlarged model were not penetrating the hard ebony scales and deflected off harmlessly. When it recovered its senses the model, which was only enchanted plastic, and then Harry, would be in serious trouble.

He snuck a little closer to the eggs, warily watching the tail of the downed dragon scrape across the ground by the nest.

The real horntail curled its tail back on itself and impaled the creature pinning it to the floor through the chest. Using the tail now embedded in the model it threw the enlarged replica off itself and on to the floor, raking deep gouges into the model when it tried to rise with the clawed tips of its uninjured wing.

Darting towards the nest before the real dragon won and his distraction failed, Harry abandoned subtlety entirely.

The horntail unleashed a second wave of white flames at Harry's battered, enchanted replica. For all the magic placed upon it to make it lifelike the model was not a real dragon, and withered away to ashes within seconds.

That will teach it to bite me, he thought smugly as it disintegrated, then he remembered where he was and swore violently.

Harry took what was left of his opportunity, grabbed the egg, and ran, completely ignoring the roar of the crowd behind him.

There was a horrified gasp from the arena and the barbed tail of the Hungarian Horntail slammed into the rocks beside him a second later. Harry had no doubt that if the dragon had not been half-blind he would have been killed.

Diving behind the nearest cover he dodged a torrent of fire, then wriggled away to hide from the dragon's remaining malicious, yellow eye. He wasn't exactly sure anyone would, but now he had the egg he quite hoped someone would step in and deal with the dragon before it realised where he was and finished him off.

A very loud thump came from close nearby and Harry risked a glance out around the rock.

The Hungarian Horntail was unconscious.

Standing up to the applause of the arena, Harry bounced his golden egg in the crook of his arm. Whatever was inside this thing had better have been worth it.

He found all of three of the other champions in the infirmary tent. Cedric looked like the dragon had used half his body as chewtoy, Krum was a little burned in places, but the french witch was untouched.

'Nobody died, then,' he remarked cheerfully.

'It was touch and go,' Cedric admitted, then winced at the pain of moving. Krum laughed. Fleur Delacour just stared at him curiously. It was rather unsettling, all the more so given that she was looking directly at him and not at his scar like most of the others.

'They will be doing your score,' Krum told him thickly. 'You should go look.'

Harry gave him a nod, mimicking the Bulgarian's action from earlier, and vanished before Madam Pomfrey appeared and tied him to a bed.

The five judges were sitting in an elevated box overlooking the entire arena. As Harry watched Madam Maxime, the french headmistress, raised her wand and shot an eight into the air. It was followed by a nine from Professor Dumbledore and a seven from the Durmstrang headmaster, Karkaroff.

'Bagman gave you a ten and Crouch gave you an eight,' a girl remarked from behind him.

Katie Bell, he realised.

He was about to turn away and ignore her when he remembered the note.

'Thanks,' he forced out. 'What are they out of?'

'Ten, of course,' she smiled. 'You did really well. They only took points off because you stopped to watch the dragons fight and took a little longer than the Beauxbatons champion.'

'What did she do?' Harry hoped it was something less well-received.

'She sang something and then the dragon and every male in the audience fell asleep, even Dumbledore yawned. The judges all gave her nines except Karkaroff. He gave her an eight.' Katie pulled an annoyed face. 'All the guys seem to go weird around her,' she complained. 'Except you, that is.'

'And the others?' Harry had plenty of things he could say about Fleur Delacour, but she had outscored him, so he decided to lose graciously.

For now, at least.

'Cedric did the worst. He transfigured a distraction and went for the egg, but the dragon got him with its wing and tail. You and Krum are equal. He blinded his dragon and collected the egg after it had flailed somewhere out the way, but lots of the eggs got smashed.'

Katie gave him a once over. 'You didn't get a scratch, did you?'

'No,' Harry replied, slightly smug.

'That's impressive. Angelina was really impressed too, you know.'

'I don't care,' Harry told her, rather more coldly.

'She'll come to apologise soon,' Katie warned. 'Like I have.' She gave him a rueful grin.

'Fred and George told me you tried to convince her to stop holding a grudge.'

'I did,' she replied, 'but I still didn't speak to you.'

'You are now,' Harry reminded her.

'I guess I am. I was afraid you'd just ignore me. I think I would have been quite angry if you'd done that,' she admitted. 'Hermione,' there was a certain venom to the way Katie spat her name, 'has been telling everyone how you've changed and won't forgive anyone. She's unintentionally stopped a lot of people apologising by saying that.'

'I won't forgive them,' Harry told her. 'But I won't hold a grudge against the people who tried to help me.' Katie smiled brightly.

'And Angelina?' she asked, almost hesitantly.

'She was the worst in the beginning,' Harry warned Katie.

'She was really jealous,' Katie explained, 'we all told her that she would get it and she got convinced, then everything happened and things got out of hand. I know you don't owe me anything, but would you consider giving her a second chance, if not for me, for the quidditch team. Gryffindor needs its seeker.'

'I'll listen to her if she comes to me,' Harry promised, 'but that's all.'

'Thanks, Harry.' Katie stepped forwards and hugged him suddenly. He stiffened with surprise, but she didn't let go. Hesitantly he returned the hug, wrapping his arms around her.

I'm taller than her, he noted. He definitely hadn't used to be.

'That was nice,' Katie smiled. 'You're taller than you used to be.'

'I noticed.' He looked down his nose at her pointedly.

She gave him a mock glare and a wave as she wandered back towards the arena.

How did she even find her way up here?

The spot between the champions tent and medical tent was quite tucked away and only visible from outside the entrance of the former.

She must have waited.

Harry thought that had been rather nice of her.

'Mr Potter,' a very annoyed voice came from behind him.

Uh oh.

'I do not remember telling you that you could leave my medical tent, Mr Potter,' Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. She was wielding her wand in one hand and a very horrible looking, brown potion in the other.

'You didn't say I had to stay either,' he pointed out.

'In,' she commanded, pointing sternly at the entrance with her wand.

Harry complied. The Hungarian Horntail was one thing, but some battles just could not be won.

'What did you get?' Krum asked, when he stepped through the tent flap. Evidently nobody else had been given permission to leave either.

'Forty two points and a very stern lecture from Madam Pomfrey,' Harry informed.

'You have the same score as me,' Krum nodded. 'Well done. I did not expect it, but it is good to have competition.'

'I did the worst,' Cedric looked miserable, but the left side of his body was normal again.

'Forty four,' was the only comment Fleur Delacour made. She was staring at him again.

'Are you sure you don't want to be Hogwarts' champion, Harry?' the Hufflepuff seeker asked. 'You got eight more points than I did.'

'It's just the first task,' Harry reminded Cedric gently, turning a pointed look on Fleur. She seemed surprised that he had looked at her, but just flicked her hair back over her shoulder and turned away.

'Drink this,' Madam Pomfrey ordered, bustling back out from the other part of the tent.

'I didn't even get a scratch,' Harry protested, eyeing the nasty looking, brown potion distastefully.

'When you've drunk it, you can all leave,' Madam Pomfrey offered.

The potion was gone in one mouthful.

'Go, then,' the strict nurse instructed. 'You'd think you'd be more grateful after spending so much time in my care every year, Mr Potter.' Harry shot her a grateful smile, but the taste of the potion she had given him somewhat curdled it.

'I want to sleep for a week,' Cedric admitted on their way back up to the school. The other two champions had been whisked away by their respective headteachers upon leaving the tent.

'We're excused from lessons, go ahead,' he grinned, tucking his egg back under his arm. 'I think I'm going to go lie down for a bit as well.'

It was at that moment he remembered he had to go back and use the time-turner to leave the note for himself.

Occlumency exercises. He smiled at the lie he knew he must have told the portrait of Salazar. I'm going to find a nice, wide point in the pipes and transfigure something into a bed.

AN: Please read and review :)

P.S. For those who might be concerned about the pairing after this chapter, don't panic and remember your towel! I just like to take things slowly and make them ambiguous.

15. Blood Magic

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I have now returned from Tanzania, and the site is alive again, so posting will recommence. Everything has been rewritten, but it's just little things here and there to try and make sure you all get the right perception of events :) obviously I want you all to reread and review again, but no pressure, it's probably only worth it if you disliked something and want to be sure it's actually gone.

Chapter 15

'Did you ever work out what the note you left yourself meant?' The portrait asked as Harry crumpled up the piece of parchment entitled The Big Book of Future Tournament Tasks.

'I can guess,' he nodded, setting fire to it with his wand. It would be best to get rid of the evidence that he was using a time-turner illicitly, just in case somebody did manage to come down here. Harry thought the eventuality unlikely, but Fawkes had managed and it would be unwise to underestimate Dumbledore's intellect.

It would be rather hard to explain.

'Did you guess?' Salazar pressed.

'There were dragons, the tiny model dragon that was used to select them bit me, and Katie Bell, one of my Gryffindor house-mates approached me after the match.'

'The small one bites,' Salazar smirked. 'Why so ambiguous?'

'If I had been forewarned too specifically the model would not have had the chance to bite me and I would not have been motivated to take it into the arena with me,' Harry began to explain, 'but if I hadn't told myself at all I probably would have ignored it and missed how useful it ended up being. It had to be just right.'

'Very astute of you,' the portrait complimented. 'It explains why you were grinning to yourself when you wrote the note, too.'

'I've never played a prank on myself from the future before,' Harry admitted. 'I found the concept entertaining.'

'So did Godric,' the painting grumbled, 'but he didn't have the decency to carry out his childish activities on himself.'

There was a brief interlude while Harry stacked the books Salazar had recommended he read on the desk. Most of them were ancient, leather-covered, heavy things with blackened pages and fading ink. Half of them were written in english so archaic Harry could barely understand it.

'What about Katie?' the founder asked when he finished.

'I can't be sure, because I didn't ignore her and see the consequences, but I imagine if I had ignored herm she would have been angry and I might have come to regret it.' Harry suspected the note had been left more for the purpose of Katie and their conversation than anything else. She had a short temper and was prone to taking revenge when she felt herself truly wronged.

'Important, is she?'

Harry considered that carefully.

'She's a friend and a team mate. Katie's also one of the few of my house-mates who never completely turned their back on me and has been trying to help me with the others all the while.'

'Don't want her changing her mind and undoing everything she did,' Salazar nodded. The snake mimicked the motion.

'That and I don't really have any reason not to talk to her. We were never close enough for me to expect her to instantly stand by me.' Katie had never really been more than a close acquaintance and team member before this year. He had spoken to the trio she was part of on and off, but normally just to say hi and chat about quidditch.

'She did, though,' his ancestor pointed out.

'In her own way, and not very openly, but I suppose she did, yes,' Harry agreed.

'I told you that you'd find people to stand with,' Salazar reminded him magnanimously.

Harry levitated the pile of books off the desk and lifted the portrait off the wall to carry Salazar out into the main chamber. The founder would not permit the use of any magic that was not tightly controlled in his precious study.

'Now I can finally teach you about the things I was exceptional at,' the painting rejoiced. 'I never really got to teach anyone about these before, you're the first real Heir of Slytherin.'

Harry leant the portrait against the foot of one of the serpent effigies and took a seat on the floor in front of the painting. Blood magic, and by extension parselmagic, were imprecise arts.

'Where to begin,' Salazar muttered excitedly.

'The basics?' Harry suggested. Slytherin looked rather crestfallen.

'Fine,' he sighed. 'It will an age to get to the exciting things, but I suppose it's better than you accidentally destroying the chamber… or yourself,' he added as an afterthought.

This had all the indications of being a very long, theoretical discussion.

'The only real theory behind blood magic is that it is based in sacrifice,' Salazar informed him, 'and the only real rule, is that whatever you sacrifice must be equal to whatever you are trying to achieve.'

'That's it?'

'Of course that isn't it,' Salazar exploded. 'Blood magic is a very subtle, delicate thing. It requires a full, true understanding of magic and self. You cannot really sacrifice something when you do not know its value, nor can you attain a result you do not already understand the implications of.'

'What can I actually do with it?'

'Anything and everything,' the portrait responded. 'Parselmagic is merely an example of complex blood magic. This chamber, the thoughts of sufficiently intelligent serpents and our magic, are all bound to the blood that flows in my veins, and thus in yours. It is my finest creation,' the portrait announced proudly. 'The ability to speak to animals was once more common and applied to more than just snakes, but over time it was lost. The last witch recorded as being capable of speaking to animals died half a millennia before I was born. I attempted, originally through other means, but eventually through blood magic, to recreate part of what was lost. I was not prepared to sacrifice anything more than I did, so my piece of magic only responds to serpents as they are easily summoned.'

'What did you have to sacrifice?'

'Something that was of equal value to me,' Salazar replied, 'someone, to be precise.'

'You sacrificed a person,' Harry exclaimed, horrified.

'She was dying already,' the founder snapped. 'We sacrificed the little time we had left together, much as it meant to us, to create something that would aid our children and their descendants for as long as they survived.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised. 'I should have known better than to assume.'

'Yes you should have,' the portrait retorted viciously. 'You do not understand the magnitude of the sacrifice. I and my daughter searched for many years for an artefact rumoured to be able to cheat the laws of death and enable us to speak with her again. I never found it. I was forced to give up when I became to old hunt for it, but my daughter had not before I died. It is possible she was successful, but I would not know either way. That sacrifice defined the rest of the lives of myself and my daughter in one way and then the rest of our descendants in another. That is the power blood magic can wield.'

'How does it work?' Harry asked, eager to move away from the sensitive topic.

'Blood is the most potent magical medium, personal and puissant. Blood magic makes use of it as a conduit through which to perform otherwise impossible feats.'

That struck a familiar tone with Harry.

'Like surviving the Killing Curse, perhaps?' Harry raised a finger to trace his scar.

'There are very few pieces of magic capable of achieving that,' Salazar replied thoughtfully. 'The Killing Curse is not a simple spell. It is a derivation of the only other field as powerful and complex as blood magic itself. Blood magic could be used, but it would come at the cost of the caster's life, or more, rendering the protection irrelevant.'

'But you could cast it to protect someone who shared your blood?'

'Perhaps,' the founder mused. 'It would not be easy. To make a whole bloodline immune to such a powerful curse would cost more than anyone has to give.'

'I survived it,' Harry told him quietly. 'When I was a baby Voldemort came to kill me. He managed to murder my parents, but his intended final victim reflected his curse back onto him.'

'That could well be blood magic,' Salazar agreed. 'If both your parents were involved then only your exact blood, a mix of their own, would be afforded protection. It would reduce the sacrifice to a level that would be possible to make, though it would have still been very dear indeed.'

The painting frowned and stroked the head of the snake that curled around its shoulders. 'From how you described events I would guess that they carried out a blood magic enchantment that would come into effect should they both die to keep you safe. Your safety from this attacker would be the goal and it would certainly constitute as a sacrifice dear enough to protect you.'

'It lasted at least as long until I was eleven,' Harry remembered. 'When Voldemort tried to harm me in my first year here he burned at my touch.'

'It may still be in effect. Your parents sacrificed their lives and every moment they would have spent with their child, there is little of greater value to a parent.'

'I'd rather not need it,' Harry decided.

'You will not,' Salazar reassured him, 'but it is a powerful advantage while it lasts. The magic will protect you in anyway it can as long as it lingers in your blood. Still, it goes without saying that you should avoid lethal spells, especially the Killing Curse.'

'Why especially? Dead is dead.'

'Most lethal spells are really no different from other curses in that they just cause something to affect you. In the case of most lethal spells the effect is what truly kills you. The Killing Curse is derived from soul magic. It literally tears your soul from your body. The curse kills you outright rather than causing or creating something to do so.'

'Soul magic?'

'Not something I ever more than dabbled in,' Salazar admitted. 'It is the equal of blood magic in some ways, but far more abstract in its concept and very dangerous because of it. I know of few uses for soul magic worth their cost. The Killing Curse is one of the few soul magic spells that has no permanent effect. Using it causes the soul to fracture, but over time, in the right conditions, a soul can heal. If you are interested there is a very old Egyptian book in my study. It's hardly a guide to the field, but the wizard who wrote it, Seth, is attributed with the first use of the Killing Curse. He was likely its creator.'

'The name sounds familiar,' Harry frowned.

'You might have heard it in the muggle world. The muggles of Egypt used to us that name for their God of murder. Whether there's a connection is unclear.'

It seemed a fairly obvious connection to Harry. A wizard capable of using an unblockable, spell that killed instantly and left no mark upon the body would have left an impression in the days before the Statute of Secrecy.

'Did you bring all the books I recommended?' Salazar asked, gazing at the still floating tower of tomes.

'Yes.' Harry named them one after the other, descending down the stack.

'The Secrets of the Darkest Arts?' Slytherin questioned when he reached the final tome.

'I didn't mean to bring that,' Harry realised, staring at the weathered book and the sheafs of parchment wedged within the pages. 'I must have stacked the other books on top of it in the study.'

'It probably has something useful in it,' Salazar decided. 'Blood magic was used in quite questionable ways and the element of sacrifice didn't help its reputation any. It will likely feature in there somewhere.'

'I'll read it last,' Harry conceded. It was the largest of the books and pieces of old, ivory parchment stuck out from between the pages towards the very end. The edges of annotations and notes in a neat, flowing script were visible on some.

Harry hadn't had the chill of seeing that writing since reading the diary and watching Tom Riddle write his name in flaming letters in the air of this very chamber.

'Take them to the Room of Requirement after this tournament meeting you have to attend,' Salazar suggested, 'just make sure you aren't seen reading them and bring them back to the study afterwards. Most of those books were old and valuable when I bought them; they'll be worth a fortune now.'

Harry cast a quick time-checking spell only to find that it would soon be time for the meeting.

How does he even know what the time is?

There was no watch or clock in the study, and Salazar hadn't even known the year when Harry came down into the study for the first time.

'There's nothing else I can teach you until you've read those and understood the two principles of blood magic and their applications. It isn't a pure subject like transfiguration, but it can be used to augment or create wards, enchantments and other such areas.'

The painting suddenly went very quiet.

'I just quoted Godric,' Salazar murmured in absolute disgust. 'He used to go on and on about how blood magic wasn't really a field in its own right.'

Harry carried the portrait back, ignoring the founder's rambling about Godric's disdain for his areas of expertise. He had learned to just wait until the painting had finished rather than being ignored when trying to interrupt.

It's probably a result of being on his own in here for a thousand years.

Salazar was still grumbling about Godric's lack of appreciation of his parselmagic when Harry left, taking his cumbersome golden egg with him.

'All our champions are here,' Bagman cried delightedly as Harry entered the room. Crouch gave him a disapproving frown for being late.

'The first task,' the weary official began dryly, 'is over. You have each obtained the golden egg your dragons were guarding and achieved a score for your methods.'

'Some of which were spectacular,' Bagman cut in enthusiastically, staring at Harry. The man was dressed in the black and yellow of his former quidditch team, but the robes looked considerably tighter than they must have been a decade ago.

'The egg,' Crouch continued with no hint he had even heard Bagman speak, 'is your clue for the second task. Solve it.'

Harry examined the object he was holding and noticed most of the others doing the same. There was nothing of note on the outside he could see.

I'll have to try opening it.

It made sense for the clue to be inside, given the object it was contained within was an egg.

Cedric was turning his over in his hands, Fleur was running her wand over it lightly, but casting nothing, and Krum was shaking his curiously, wearing an expression of mild displeasure. Harry suspected he preferred the more active, practical sort of tasks.

'Well unless any of you have questions this meeting is concluded.' Crouch did not seem the sort to answer questions, so Harry refrained from asking him how to open the egg.

'Harry,' Bagman caught his arm at the door. 'If you want a hand with the egg just give me a shout,' he whispered. He walked away with a wink, but Crouch cut him off with a stern expression and the two held a furious, muttered argument.

Harry received the distinct impression that Ludo Bagman was being severely dressed down for his offer assistance. He get some sympathy for the for the former beater, but only until he remembered that the man was a poor gambler and likely offered with his own interests at heart.

He should have been more cunning and not got caught.

Cradling his clue to the next round beneath is arm, he set off in the direction of the Room of Requirement.

Harry got as far as the Great Hall before he was stopped.

'Ginny,' Harry greeted coolly. She hadn't spoken to him since the beginning of the year and the World Cup. He had been surprised she hadn't tried; his isolation would have been the perfect chance to get closer to him and even if he had noticed he might not have cared.

'Harry,' she replied, very nervously.

'You stopped me,' he reminded her.

'I know.' She flushed slightly. 'I wanted to say sorry.'

'A lot of people have been from what I've heard.'

'A lot of people didn't want to try and stand up to Angelina and all the seventh and sixth years.' Ginny shifted uncomfortably, but Harry wasn't about to take pity on her. She might have hexed Ron, but no girl who professed to love someone, which he knew Ginny had done, ignored their intended partner for half a year.

'Angelina is having a change of heart, he told her. Harry rather suspected that she knew that. The timing of Angelina's change of mind and the sudden rush of apologies did not seem like a coincidence.

'Katie said that, did she?' There was far too much bitterness in Ginny's time for Harry to stomach. Ginny had missed her chance. She could have spoken up for him like Katie had, but she, like so many other Gryffindors, had not been brave enough.

How ironic.

'She did,' Harry replied, adding a little ice to his voice.

'I didn't turn my back on you,' she insisted. 'I just didn't want to suddenly act all close with you, because,' a red flush was steadily creeping up her neck and cheeks, 'I was afraid you'd think I was just trying to get close to you.'

'You should have done,' Harry told her bluntly. 'I probably would have noticed, but I wouldn't have minded all that much.'

'It's too late, isn't it,' she realised in a very small voice. Harry gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic smile.

'Sorry,' he said eventually. 'If it helps I'll accept your apology.'

'I'd like that,' she smiled. 'I was hoping to be someone better this year, not just Ron's little sister who got into trouble and needed rescuing.'

'You succeeded,' Harry reassured her. 'I haven't seen you stick your elbow in a butter dish in years.'

'You saw that,' Ginny's flush returned.

'I tried not to laugh.' He regarded her more seriously. 'I'm not the same boy who rushed down to the Chamber of Secrets after a basilisk to save you anymore, Ginny.'

'I know,' she admitted. 'I don't think you were ever really the boy I couldn't be in the same room as without hiding. Hermione said you'd changed.'

'She's right.' Harry's voice cooled considerably at the mention of the witch who had broken his wand. He would be civil with Ginny and those who never really knew him well enough to want to stand up for him, but Hermione and her ilk were another matter altogether.

'Touchy subject,' she winced.

'You would not be fond of the witch who broke your wand either. I heard what happened to Ron.'

'He was being an idiot,' Ginny scowled, 'he still is.'

'Still?' Harry had not seen hide not hair of Ron since their fight in the common room.

'He and Hermione have some ridiculous theory that something happened to you at the World Cup. They think you were hit by some dark curse and that its affected you in the head.' Ginny snorted, clearly not thinking much of the idea.

'Does anyone actually believe that?' Harry asked incredulously.

'Seamus and Dean, but a lot of the house is just sick of the whole thing now. Most are just avoiding anyone involved or waiting to see who turns out to be right. Neville still hangs around Ron and everyone, but it's because he hasn't got the courage to go make other friends.' Ginny seemed thoroughly unimpressed with all of them and she wrung her hands irritatedly.

Harry thought it quite appropriate the ones who had ignored and shunned him were now being ostracised in turn.

'They do deserve it,' Ginny agreed, seeing his smile.

The Great Hall was starting to fill with people as lunch drew near and Harry began to shift restlessly from on foot to the other. He could sense that Ginny was waiting for something, but he had no idea what it might be.

'What else?' He asked impatiently, the noise was getting too loud for his comfort. Harry had always disliked loud places and being near other people, especially crowds, but all the time he had spent alone or in the chamber has exacerbated things.

'I was hoping you'd come eat lunch with us,' she admitted.

Us?' Harry was automatically wary. Ginny was friends with a lot of people who had turned their backs on him. People he didn't particularly care to speak to.

'Me, the twins, Katie will be there,' she finished hurriedly and a little sadly. Ginny was not entirely over her crush, it seemed, as though well on her way to accepting things she still bore a grudge against Katie Bell.

It was a slightly illogical thing for her to do on Harry's opinion, as he had never consciously shown any interest in her. Admittedly she was the only girl he had hugged apart from Hermione, but Harry was fairly confident that a hug like that was quite innocent.

'I have to go play with this thing,' he answered, tapping the top of his golden egg. It made a surprisingly hollow ringing sound.

'I see,' Ginny said sadly. 'I hope the second task goes as well as the first,' she told him by way of goodbye.

It has to go better. I have to be better.

There was no way he would be able to beat Fleur Delacour if he didn't improve and he quite wanted to beat her. Salazar had convinced to him to try and win to get experience and that was his primary reason, but wiping the proud smile off the French witch's face came a close second.

Harry left the Great Hall before he was accosted by anyone else. He had decided to be civil with the Gryffindors that had not directly turned against him, but a confrontation with Ron or Hermione would likely turn as nasty as the last.

Making his way swiftly up to the seventh floor and the hidden room opposite the tapestry of tap dancing trolls Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad to be away from all of the students. His feat with the dragons had turned disdain and anger to pride and respect, but to Harry, states were stares and he did not like them.

The Room of Requirement had taken the form of a rather simple, plain room. There was a bench covered in carvings of half-fish, half-human creatures wielding tridents. The swarm of what Harry assumed to be mermaids swam in excited shoals over the bench, scattering when he approached to sit.

A small bubbling pool commanded the centre of the room.

It was not exactly what Harry had had in mind when thinking of a place in which he could open the egg to get the clue, but he had yet to fully comprehend the subtler nuances of the room Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw had made. Neither of the two other founders had the foresight to leave a painting, or, if they had, asking the room for it did not bring them to him.

Harry turned the egg over in his hands, looking for a catch or clasp. There was none, but tapping the egg with his wand caused it to split in four and fall open.

A ghastly screeching filled the room and Harry slammed the egg shut again.

Some clue that is, he seethed, angry at the loud, sudden noise. He really hated violently noisy surprises. The mermaids on the bench froze at the screaming sound and gestured at him angrily. The carvings seemed no more fond of the noise than he had been.

He dropped the egg on the floor and kicked at it moodily. Harry had a while until the second task, for now he would focus on Salazar's teaching of blood magic. It was likely to be much more important to him if his parents really had used it as his shield when he was a baby.

The egg rolled across the floor next to the bubbling basin of water, teetering gently on its edge. Harry ignored it and reached for his stack of books on blood magic. They were a link, no matter how tenuous, to his parents and much more interesting than the golden clue.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who has!

16. The Owlery

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

A new chapter! One of the several I wrote in Tanzania and now have to redo to get out all the spelling errors and autocorrect errors my phone had helpfully added to spice things up.

Also, on a slight sidenote, if you're going to tell me it's too close to cliché's let me know which, even if it's by a PM! I have a plan, and it's not something I've seen anywhere else, (there are a lot of fics though so there will likely be some overlap) but I'd like to know so I can tweak things so there are no misconceptions. I hate it when my attempts at subtle foreshadowing go unnoticed ;)

Chapter 16

'I would like to discuss the first task with you, Fleur,' Madam Maxime told her firmly.

'You were not happy with my performance?' Fleur was confident she had done as well as she could.

'You performed perfectly,' her headmistress reassured her. 'I would like to discuss the other champions and their methods so that you are familiar with their skills.'

Fleur nodded eagerly. She had not been able to see any of the tasks and was quite eager to see exactly how Harry Potter had escaped the Hungarian Horntail entirely unscathed.

'The Hogwarts' Champion, Cedric Diggory, was the first to compete. His plan was commendable, but not carried out effectively. However he did display some advanced transfiguration and it would be wise to assume he is equally proficient in other subjects.'

Cedric Diggory seemed a brilliant student, but Fleur fancied she held an edge over him.

'I do not think that the Hogwarts' Champion will be your main source of competition,' Madame Maxime concluded.

Fleur nodded again and waited for her headmistress to continue, knowing about Cedric's task was useful, but not that which she was most interested in.

'Viktor Krum too, displayed some proficiency.'

Fleur suppressed an irritated frown, of course Harry Potter would be last.

'He used the Conjunctivitis Curse to blind his dragon, his casting was very swift and accurate, but his plan did not account for the damage the injured dragon would do. Durmstrang's Champion is clearly powerful and an accurate spell caster, but he lacks foresight. He is a dueller and a flyer, not a planner, he will prove a strong rival in any task with Karkaroff to help him plan.'

'And Harry Potter?' Fleur asked quickly.

'He cheated,' Madame Maxime smiled, seemingly impressed. 'He took the model dragon,' she gestured at the Welsh Green that was sleeping peacefully on Fleur's bed, 'and used a very powerful enlarging charm. The Horntail fought the model and while it was distracted Mr Potter used the Rupturing Curse to blind the eye on his side. The model, for all its enchantments, was only plastic and didn't last long, but the boy stole the egg in the gap.'

'An enlarging charm,' Fleur frowned. She had been hoping for something a bit more spectacular, something that would give a reason as to why he was so different.

'Oh,' her headmistress tapped her fingers on the doorframe, 'disappointed by his simple solution?'

'No.' Fleur had to concede it was a brilliant strategy.

'Jealous, then?' Madame Maxime pressed. Her headmistress was oddly fixed on getting Fleur to answer and she was afraid her teacher might have noticed her curiosity in the boy.

'It was a good solution,' Fleur decided, 'but only for this exact situation. I doubt he is capable of creating the enchantments that were already on the model, and even if he were, almost any magic would be able to defeat such a creation. It is impossible to create something that is capable of using magic as a witch or wizard does.'

'You must look deeper than his solution,' Madame Maxime remonstrated. 'The scale of the enlarging charm indicated surprising magical power for a fourteen year old, equal or better than any other champion, including yourself. His knowledge and use of a curse considered dark is also very interesting. Albus Dumbledore would not consent to it being taught here, so he must have another source of counsel.'

'You are impressed with him,' Fleur realised quietly.

'Indeed I am,' her headmistress admitted. 'There is something different about him, do not pretend you have not noticed it.'

'I might have,' Fleur confessed. Madame Maxime levelled a knowing stare at her.

'He does not react to your allure, does he?'

'No, he barely even noticed me until the first task.' Fleur scowled at the memories and her headmistress smiled amusedly at the expression on her face. Her amusement did not help Fleur's temper in the slightest.

'He is not to be underestimated,' Madame Maxime warned. 'You cannot beguile him, he appears to be much more powerful than we suspected, and knows at least one questionably immoral curse well beyond what wizards his age should.'

'I will not,' Fleur promised. 'Experience and knowledge will allow me to remain ahead. The first task is always the simplest. He is only resistant to my passive charm,' she added. 'I have met many who are like him in that regard. They crumble when I actually exert it upon them.'

Fleur made no mention that even those still noticed her, or that she suspected his solution to be as simplistic as possible for reasons other than his limited education. There had been no fear and no surprise in the eyes of the boy before the task. His distraction had been simple and spectacular, it drew the eye away from Harry Potter himself.

'Perhaps,' her headmistress replied, 'but I must insist you be wary of him. He has technically cheated already, he might do so again and in a less benign way. It was his breaking of the rules alone that cost him the points that would have placed him first. If he had had the presence of mind to summon the toy, you would be second.'

That was a humbling realisation. Fleur had been beaten by a fourteen year old. She might have more points, but his solution had been superior to hers.

It was unacceptable.

'I cannot guess at enough info the boys talents or personality to offer a useful opinion,' Madame Maxime began, 'but he is a dangerous unknown, one that seems to have unsettled even Albus Dumbledore.'

With that her headmistress retreated from the entrance to Fleur's room.

Albus Dumbledore had not seemed particularly unsettled to Fleur. Concerned, yes, proud, perhaps, but no fourteen year old was going to unnerve a wizard of such legendary power. Harry Potter was different, unusual enough to catch her attention and then keep her curiosity, but, despite his legend and his evidently prodigious talent, it was unlikely he would win the tournament.

The fact that she was even considering him a rival was a surprise. Fleur had been sure he would not pass the first task, certain enough to pity him before facing the Horntail and even attempt to offer some comfort. She had been met with a cool, calm exterior and it had thrown her off.

He did not even know my name.

Fleur had been quite insulted by that. She knew that he must have heard it, if not at the choosing of the champions then at the Wand-weighing. It appeared she had been beneath his notice again and it hadn't helped when he returned to the medical tent after facing the nightmarish Hungarian Horntail without a scratch and only two points shy of her own score.

Fleur grumpily poked the sleeping model of the Welsh Green. This was not the time to contemplate her curiosity about Harry Potter. She had a letter to send and without an owl of her own that meant a trek to the Owlery.

Fleur carefully tucked her letter to Gabrielle into her uniform and reached for her wand.

Casting the disillusionment charm she snuck out of the carriage, slipping between Caroline and Emilie when they opened the door. It was much easier for her to remain unseen, especially with the Christmas celebrations approaching. The fact that she had to attend and thus needed a date was the sole major detractor of her status as champion.

Hogwarts' Owlery was at the top of another grey, dreary tower about ten minutes walk from the Beauxbatons' carriage. She hoped that like her school the school provided owls with which to send letters. Her family owl could not be spared to fly between herself and Gabrielle all the time when they were such a distance apart.

The Owlery at the tower top was not the neat, elegant birdcage of Beauxbatons. The room was full of thick, wooden beams and worn perches. A smell of sour bird droppings and musty, dry wood hung like smoke throughout the building. Fleur was hardly surprised. The Birdcage was one of the tallest, most graceful parts of the chateaux in the Pyrenees; it would not find its equal in this land of clouds and rain.

She sniffed very quietly and tip-toed though the open door into the centre of the room. Fleur had learned to move quiet stealthily with her constant use of the charm. Disillusioning something did nothing to conceal any sound it made, so it was necessary for her to be light-footed and careful if she did not want to be discovered.

Fleur did not want to be discovered. She knew the minute she was seen outside of the tasks or theBeauxbatons' carriage she would immediately be the target of every male student who hoped to attend the Yule Ball that accompanied the Triwizard Tournament.

'That is a very good disillusionment charm,' somebody remarked from behind her with a hint of admiration and amusement. It only took Fleur a moment to remember the person attached to the voice.

He only notices me when I am invisible.

It was absurd. Nothing about Harry Potter ever seemed to be as she expected.

'Thank you,' she replied a little stiffly, dispelling the charm. It was evidently useless now. 'How did you notice?'

'Miss Delacour.' The boy seemed slightly surprised, but not as shocked as she had expected. 'I am aware of the weaknesses of the charm,' he explained, 'and thus capable of recognising it.'

'What are you doing up here?' Fleur asked. He was holding neither an owl nor a letter.

'Sending a letter,' he responded, raising an eyebrow at her question. 'So are you.'

'No I am not,' Fleur sighed. 'I have no owl.'

Harry Potter's expression grew thoughtful. 'Perhaps I could offer you the use of my owl?'

'Did you not just send a letter?' Unless he had two owls his offer was useless until his returned. Fleur did not really like the idea of being in his debt either, even for such a small thing, but Gabby was more important than her pride and if she had had to accept his charity she would.

'I was sending a letter to my godfather,' Harry embellished. 'For one reason or another I have not been able to contact him until now, but he sent his own owl and I returned my letter with it.'

'I did not realise you had a godfather,' Fleur admitted.

'Not many do.'

He stepped past her, taking great care not to get too close to her. Fleur appreciated that. Too many men took any opportunity to brush as closely past her as they could, something she hated even more than the stares. It did strike her, however, that the gesture seemed as much for his benefit as for her's.

A beautiful, black-speckled, snowy owl perched by the window in the far side of the tower top. It gave Harry a rather unimpressed look, then deliberately swivelled its head around to look in the other direction.

He laughed gently. 'Don't be like that Hedwig, I was going to give you a letter to deliver on behalf of an acquaintance of mine.

Is that what I am? An acquaintance.

Fleur rather felt that you had to notice a person to deem them an acquaintance, but she supposed it was accurate enough. They had sort of met and spoken, but they were certainly not friends.

Hedwig's head slowly swivelled back around to stare at her owner.

After a long moment of staring the bird hopped closer to Harry and hooted softly.

'I knew you wouldn't be able to resist,' the boy smiled.

He turned to Fleur, still smiling and held out his hand. 'Do you have the letter? She's a bit particular about who gives her the things she takes, nearly took of one of my friends fingers a year ago.' There was a a very sight emphasis on the way he said friend that gave Fleur the impression they were nowhere near as close now as they had been.

'I do.' Fleur reached inside her uniform and pulled out the now warm envelope from where it had been tucked through the strap of her bra. Hopefully Harry would not realise where she had been keeping it. It would be the first time his ability to not notice her would act in her favour.

Harry took it rather gingerly, clearly aware that it had at least been close to her, holding the uppermost corner. Fleur felt a little insulted that he was so repulsed by just her body heat.

Maybe I should just hug him should we have to confront one another during the task.

'Gabrielle Delacour,' he told Hedwig. 'It is a long way to Beauxbatons from here. You can find her?'

The bird fluffed its feathers in indignation and took off through the window without a sound.

'I shall take that as a yes,' Harry smiled. 'Your younger sister?' He asked after a moment of watching his owl fly away.

'Yes,' Fleur answered, quite curious as to how he had known. It was possible that the young wizard had been researching his rivals just as she had been looking into him.

'She attends school, but is not here at the tournament,' he seemed to have sensed her query, 'if she is anything like you she would be here were she older or a twin.'

Fleur could find no fault in his logic. 'I often write to Gabrielle,' she told him. 'She misses me when I am away.' Fleur missed her baby sister too, but she would not share something as personal as her feelings for her sister with an acquaintance.

'It must be nice for her to hear from you,' Harry replied politely.

'I'm sure your family find it equally nice to hear from you,' Fleur responded amicably.

Harry laughed and she immediately realised what had been wrong with her absent minded statement.

'I'm sorry,' she apologised. The words sounded strange coming from her mouth. Fleur had not said them sincerely to anyone in a long time.

'Don't worry,' he shook his head. 'It's actually almost refreshing to have somebody forget.'

'They stare,' Fleur murmured.

'Yes, they do,' Harry said with a little irritation. For a brief moment his eyes seemed a lot older than his fourteen years, then his face slid smoothly into calm countenance. It was as much a lie as the stunningly bright smile she had occasionally seen him flash when he wanted to charm someone. His bright, but empty smile reminded Fleur of the soft one of her own that she wore to let the world know it could not touch her.

Sometimes a smile is the simplest lie. It was not the first time Fleur had thought that. The phrase had been in her head since her fourth year at Beauxbatons.

It was something of a relief to Fleur that he seemed to hate the stares almost as much as she did. She wasn't quite sure why, but she was glad that something about him was similar enough to her to make sense, even if their reactions had been at opposite ends of the spectrum. Fleur had chosen to eclipse and ignore all her former friends, proving them wrong, whereas he had decided to vanish from sight and shut out everything but his own goals.

'Madame Maxime told me about your task,' she began, eager to see a little more of the boy that had captured her curiosity so thoroughly.

'What did she say?' Harry had been eyeing the door behind her, but now seemed curious enough to abandon thoughts of escape. Fleur shifted further in front of the entrance regardless; she wasn't going to let a chance to see what was so different about him slip so easily.

'She said you cheated by bringing the model dragon in and that if you had summoned it you might have got full marks.' It bruised her pride to all but admit he could have bested her in the task.

For a brief second Fleur glimpsed a spark of anger in his eyes, then it disappeared as he shook his head.

'I forgot about the wands only rule,' he confessed. 'How stupid of me.'

'You still came second,' Fleur reminded him. She did agree that it had been stupid, but his mistake had left her first, so she wouldn't encourage him too much. He might prove a serious rival if she did.

'Second is not first, is it?' He gave her an amused look.

'No,' she admitted. 'You intend to try and win.' It was not a question, the desire in his eyes was clear.

Perhaps he did put his name in after all.

'Winning will prove that I am stronger than I used to be,' he explained. There was enough conviction in his tone that Fleur knew she had indeed found a third rival in the tournament.

'You are fourteen,' she reminded him in surprise at his ambition.

He didn't like that. Harry's eyes narrowed and went hard. Fleur cursed internally at wasting a chance to learn more about him.

'When I win I will let you read my name off the Triwizard Cup.' He seemed to take a delight in repeating her own prideful words back to her. 'I guarantee it will not say my age,' he finished coldly.

Just like that the wizard she had been speaking to in almost amicable terms had gone and in his place was the personified form of infuriating disinterest. Harry Potter's eyes swept over her as if she were just another part of the room.

Fleur grit her teeth at his sudden dismissal of her and prepared a vitriolic response of her own, but Harry brushed past her before she could retort. Fleur was left to listen to the sound of his footsteps as they echoed down the tower.

She reassured herself that there would be other chances to see what was so special about the boy. He had spoken to her after she had been rude to him before the first task and he would speak to her again. He did not seem the sort to hold a grudge.

It was not as if she had learned nothing from their brief conversation. There had been enough emotion behind his words at time to let her begin to paint the picture of the wizard Harry Potter was.

The canvas of his character was a slightly disturbing thing. There was nothing unsettling about the boy himself, just the way that he seemed slightly unsure if he was really there. A lingering uncertainty about whether or not others could see him persisted around the edges of his smiles.

From that alone she gleaned that while their situations were somewhat similar, both Fleur the veela and The-Boy-Who-Lived drew the unwanted eyes and envy of those around them, what ever it was that had made Harry Potter so different was so deeply ingrained into his mind that it affected every aspect of him.

Fleur would be considering him as a serious rival for the Triwizard Tournament. There was every bit as much ambition, conviction and desire in his eyes when he spoke of winning as she had glimpsed in her own when she imagined herself holding the trophy before her mirror. Harry Potter would be doing his utmost to get his name engraved on the cup and she would be a fool to underestimate him.

Recasting her disillusionment spell she decided to take a detour back to the Beauxbatons' carriage. Walking through the centre of the school might get her discovered again and though only Madame Maxime and Harry Potter had been able to penetrate the cover of her charm it was not worth the risk of so many propositions from potential Yule Ball dates.

Instead of turning back towards the Great Hall she wandered round the edge of the quidditch pitch and looped back towards the temporary accommodation of her school.

The route was practically deserted. Fleur glimpsed only three people from under her disillusionment charm and she only recognised one. Ludo Bagman, one of the judges and the head of the department of magical sports was sitting in the bottom row of the stands talking quietly with a witch dressed in official ministry robes. She couldn't see Bagman's face, but his companion had a vacant, forgetful cast to it offset by a slight, sharp glint in her eyes. It was a gleam Fleur recognised from some of the more spiteful, rumour-spreading harpies amongst the other girls at Beauxbatons.

She gave the two of them a wide berth, not liking the look of the witch, and narrowly side-stepped the third person who appeared from nowhere in front of her.

The rat-faced wizard did not notice her, but Fleur certainly noticed him. He was unkempt, with darting, nervous eyes and smelt faintly of both stale food and dirt. She couldn't even begin to imagine what his role at the school could be. Another gamekeeper, or caretaker, perhaps. She had not come across the caretaker so far, and so couldn't know whether this was the infamously bad-tempered squib, Argus Filch, or another, but he fitted the image Fleur had in her head, despite the lack of a cat.

He did not join Ludo Bagman and the witch in the stands but scuttled rather swiftly into the shadows of the red and gold painted section. Fleur did not see him emerge again in any of her cautious backwards glances towards the pitch. She was fairly glad of that. The short, unkempt wizard had held a slightly unusual aura about him. He had seemed almost furtive and wary.

After seeing him Hogwarts' quidditch pitch seemed rather more eerie than before. Every shadow held a hundred dark creatures, the posts jutted into the sky like the ominous, towering spires of Nurmengard she had seen in the pictures from old papers as a girl.

Fleur shivered, then frowned at her own fear. She was a Triwizard champion, one of the best witches of her generation, there was nothing for her to fear in the umbrae of Hogwarts.

Of course telling herself that was not enough to give her the confidence to stop glancing into every pool of darkness between the pitch and the carriage and Fleur was more than a little glad nobody had seen her moment of weakness.

AN: Please read and review, or at least try, there might be another power outage...

17. The Secrets of the Darkest Arts

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up!

This is the last one I completely wrote in Tanzania and, in case anyone is curious, I wrote it just before midnight and the ascent under moonlight from 4600m all the way to Uhuru point at just under 5900m; which is the top of Kilimanjaro.

Chapter 17

Sirius' letter was carefully folded under the edge of his plate. His godfather had not been able to contact him until recently, but the moment he had Harry had received a letter as long as his forearm.

Most of it was no longer relevant, but a few snippets were very enlightening. His father's invisibility cloak was apparently a very old family heirloom and the Marauders had discovered it resisted summoning charms, the revealing spell and many other spells besides. Sirius thought it possible that it might have been able to hide him from the age line.

If that was true it would explain why Dumbledore had genuinely seemed to be disappointed with him when it had seemed impossible for Harry to enter.

In addition to his knowledge of the invisibility cloak came a warning to be wary of Igor Karkaroff, a former Death Eater, Alastor Moody, whose descent into paranoia and madness was well known, and Snape, because his godfather still hated the man.

Harry had followed their actions on the map, but had seen nothing untoward in their actions. Neither had strayed from their normal routines and Harry had been forced to conclude that they were not responsible.

His suspects were Lucius Malfoy, who had planted the diary in this second year, and Peter Pettigrew. He had seen the latter on the Marauders' Map from time to time, lurking by the quidditch pitch.

Most importantly to Harry was Sirius' choice of words. At no point in the letter did he even imply that Harry had entered himself. His godfather had known he had not without a word from Harry himself.

His reply has been brief, but honest. A thank you for not asking whether he had entered and a short relation of events up until this point. He has only excluded the Chamber of Secrets and Salazar from his recounting. Sirius would understand that he had to grow stronger and would know that Harry wasn't going to misuse any of what he learned, supposedly dark, or not.

'Harrikins.' The twins slid themselves on to the bench across from him. The Great Hall was the only place anyone had been able to find him; it was also somewhere he couldn't avoid.

'We should probably stop calling him that, Fred.' Harry tucked the letter out of sight while they were distracted.

'I suppose,' the other, possibly George, agreed. 'He did survive the dragon.'

'Shouldn't the two of you be over there?' Harry asked, nodding in the direction of Angelina, Alicia and Katie.

'No,' they announced together.

'They're coming over here,' George told him cheerfully. 'We told you this wouldn't last long if we could help it.'

'Although it was Katie that did most of the persuading,' Fred added.

Harry watched the three Gryffindor girls approach with mixed emotions. On one hand he wanted to play seeker next year, but on the other was the fact that both Angelina and Alicia had turned their backs on him.

'Angelina, Alicia, Katie,' he greeted them coolly, his tone only thawing when he addressed Katie who squirmed a little upon getting a more favourable introduction.

'I was assured that you would hear me out, despite the rumours that you wouldn't accept apologies from anyone in Gryffindor.'

'I promised somebody that I would at least listen to you,' Harry responded. 'I keep my promises.'

'Then I shall apologise for acting as I have,' Angelina said quietly, but confidently. 'You have represented both Gryffindor and Hogwarts as well as I could have, regardless of whether you used an invisibility cloak to put your name into the goblet.'

'So you do not believe me, but have moved past your jealousy at not being chosen yourself,' Harry summarised bluntly. He assumed Ron or Hermione was to blame for the rumour about his cloak, but he doubted his cloak would have let him bypass the line, family heirloom or not. The age line had been made by Albus Dumbledore, the greatest living wizard.

There was a long silence in which everyone turned to look at Angelina.

'I suppose that is a fair description,' the quidditch captain admitted.

'Then I will tell you what I told the few others who have come to speak to me. I don't forgive you and I won't forget what you did, but I do understand why you did it well enough not to hold a grudge and perpetuate this affair. We are no longer friends, Angelina, Alicia, from the next time we met it will be as if we had never met before.'

Harry watched the reactions of each of the sixth years. The twins seemed to accept it, Harry suspected they had already guessed what he was going to say from speaking with Ginny, and Angelina and Alicia seemed resigned, even a little relieved, by his decision. Hermione's rumour mongering, intentional, misguided, or otherwise, had clearly spread far. Katie was smiling. It was a wide, bright, beaming grin that brought a twitch of a smile to Harry's own lips. She was a glitter of white teeth between pale, pink lips, with mahogany eyes glimmering with the same swell of joy and framed by messy hair that scattered past her ears in loose strands. Katie always wore her emotions in her eyes and on her face in an endearing, earnest manner.

'Thank you,' Angelina said. ' I assume you excluded Katie because she spent so much time trying to convince us we were wrong?'

'She was the one who convinced me to listen to you,' Harry replied simply.

'I'm not very surprised that Katie didn't go along with the attempt to ostracise you,' Alicia smirked, eliciting a faint blush from her fellow chaser.

The four departed leaving Harry with a nervous looking Katie.

'Thank you for listening to them,' she said, tugging anxiously at her little finger.

'I said I would,' Harry responded, scrunching his toes within his shoes. Katie's nervousness was beginning to put him on edge. She had never acted like this around him before, it reminded him faintly of how Ginny had been, but he had no idea what she wanted.

'Do you want to go to Hogsmeade at the weekend?' She blurted suddenly, then bit her lip in embarrassment.

'Who's going?' Harry asked, oblivious to the rising blush on Katie's cheeks.

'Me,' Katie said in a very small voice.

It took Harry a second to realise what had just happened.

A date with Katie.

He had no idea how he was supposed to reply, or even if he wanted go on a date. Harry would have been happy to wander round Hogsmeade with her, but she'd asked too officially for it to be anything but a date. Katie was nice, he supposed, Harry could be himself around her, they had shared interests and she was hardly unattractive. In fact, as she stared up at him with wide, anxious eyes, it was rather hard to miss just how cute she really was and Harry couldn't see why he had never seen it before.

'If you don't want to go it's ok,' she told him, just as quietly, looking down at the floor.

'What time?' Harry asked. He'd made up his mind. There were really no reasons for him not to go once he ignored his own nervousness and inexperience of what exactly a date was meant to be.

Katie burst into the same bright smile as before, only this time it was accentuated by a full rosy blush. 'Eleven,' she decided. 'I'm not much of a planner. We can figure out what to do when we get there.'

'That sounds perfect.' Harry flashed her a smile of his own to cover his growing anxiety. Katie's blush bypassed all the remaining intermediate shades of red and skipped straight to crimson. Glancing to either side of her she released a small squeak of joy and jumped forward to hug him tightly.

It wasn't as uncomfortable as Harry normally found such closeness. She was warm, very soft, and pressed in against him in a way that seemed quite natural. He had never realised the feeling of having another person so closely moulded to the contours of his body would be so pleasant.

There was only a moments delay before he wrapped his arms around her and pressed her closer still, bending down slightly and inhaling the fragrance of her hair. Katie smelt like grass and broom polish. It was a smooth, sporty, but still natural scent that rather suited her.

She didn't let go for a long time, even when people nearby started to stare and whisper, and it was only when Harry reminded her that lunch was almost over and she hadn't eaten anything yet that she released him and stepped back, still blushing madly.

'I'm sorry,' she apologised. 'I've never asked anyone on a date before and I sort of expected you to say no.' She was speaking very fast, the words rushing over each other in a happy tumble. ' I need to get some food, and go find Angelina and Alicia and…' Katie's words blurred together into an ecstatic, but unintelligible burble.

For a second she looked torn and Harry half-expected another hug, then she gave him a wave and a smile before skipping happily away after her friends.

'Hogsmeade with Katie Bell,' Ginny spoke up from a few places down the table.

How long has she been there?

Harry had not even noticed her. He felt a little guilty about that.

'Yes,' he responded, the guilt doubling as he remembered their last conversation.

'I was going to ask you if you'd take me to the Yule Ball,' Ginny continued in an unsettlingly happy tone, 'but if you're going on dates with Katie then you'll be going with her.'

Harry honestly had no idea what the Yule Ball was or what it entailed. He could guess from the name it was both at Christmas and involved dancing in the style of the Jane Austen novels his aunt was so fond of.

'I guess I will be,' he realised. It would be a bit strange if Katie wanted to go on dates with him and not accompany him to this Yule Ball.

'I suppose I've missed my chance then,' Ginny said, rather too cheerfully for Harry's liking. Her happiness about something that should have definitely upset her was ominous. Harry felt there was a whole storm of unspoken words waiting to break from her lips.

'Sorry,' he began, but Ginny cut him off.

'I can go with Dean, or with Michael,' she smiled. 'I'll enjoy myself with either of them.'

'Don't make any decisions with me in the back of your mind,' Harry told her, finally understanding the reason for her odd cheer. She would not provoke the jealousy or regret from his that she hoped for. Ginny was no longer Ron's little sister to him, but she would never be anything more than a friend. There was no feeling between them like Harry felt with Katie.

'Ah,' Ginny's happiness vanished abruptly and left a very sad, small smile in its place. 'I hope you enjoy going with Katie.' She sounded surprisingly genuine. There was a note of bitterness when she said Katie's name and her eyes were looking a lot more liquid than normal, but she managed a smile as she turned to walk away.

I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but the words died in his throat. He was sorry that she was unhappy, but nothing more, and he didn't want to give her false hope. It would be far better for Ginny's feelings to fade away completely than survive and fester.

Harry decided, as he watched Ginny's back recede away, one sleeve pressed to her face, that the Yule Ball, whatever it turned out to be, was going to cause a great deal of trouble for him and many others. He really wanted no part of it. The Yule Ball would be loud, close and everything that Harry hated, were it not for Katie it might be unbearable.

A thousand possible scenarios for the Ball paraded through his head, each more uncomfortable than the last until he finally decided that thinking on it was only making things worse.

Katie will make it bearable.

The Chamber of Secrets was far removed from this newly unfolding drama and Harry could not be more eager to return there. Salazar was very unlikely to cry, ask him on a date, or invite him to a ball.

He made it halfway across the hall, walking along the length of the Gryffindor table, before Ron rose from his seat to block his path.

'What did you say to my sister?' he demanded furiously.

Harry noted that Dean was similarly incensed. He must have already asked Ginny and just worked out her delay was to see if Harry would go with her before falling back on Dean if he would not. It was no wonder Dean was angry.

'I told her something she knew I would, but hoped I wouldn't,' Harry answered vaguely. Hopefully Ron would let him pass and vanish before he worked it out.

'Was she not good enough for you?' Dean said loudly, setting his goblet down with a bang.

'I could not say yes in good faith,' Harry defended.

'So you just crush her and walk away like it was nothing?' Ron had finally caught up.

'Better she understands now and gets on with her life,' Harry told him coolly. It was nice of Ron to be protective of his younger sister, but he hadn't really thought things through.

'If you've hurt her,' Ron began.

'You'll do what?' Harry asked coldly. 'It is not your place to decide things for Ginny, but if you wish to be the protective older brother you can start by asking Dean what his intentions were in asking her to the Yule Ball.'

Ron swivelled to stare at Dean in disbelief.

'I was going to tell you if she said yes,' Dean admitted, 'but she wanted time to think about it, obviously because she wanted to go with him.' He levelled a hateful stare at Harry as if he hoped that if he desired it enough Harry might burst into flames.

'It's alright,' Ron said, after a long, hesitant moment. 'I trust you, Dean, but if you do upset her you'll have me and all her older brothers to answer too and we won't be merciful to anyone who harms our baby sister.' He turned to glare at Harry. 'You've already hurt her, you utterly arrogant prat, and we'll make you pay for it.'

'Threatening me, Ron, is not a good idea, and you know it,' Harry responded icily. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ron would not stand a chance against him in a fight. Magically he was more knowledgeable and more powerful and while they were of similar physical size Harry had developed a high tolerance for pain over his years at the school. He wasn't afraid of Ron or any of the other students in his year or below.

His former best friend considered saying or doing something more, but a lot of the Great Hall was watching now and under their curious stares he backed down.

Harry didn't even look at him when he walked past.

'Did you read all the books?' Salazar asked him when Harry lifted him off the wall to carry him outside.

'I did,' Harry replied, staggering across the bridge. His post-ritual body was stronger, but only by a little. His baby fat melting away and the first signs of late puberty appearing were little help in carrying the heavy, hardwood-framed portrait.

'Then you know about all the different examples of blood magic that have been used and recorded. Did you understand them?' Slytherin asked as Harry set him down on the floor.

'I understand the principles, but not how you would decide on an appropriate sacrifice.'

'That knowledge comes from understanding yourself, your desires and your principles,' the portrait answered. 'Was there anything in the books that caught your eye?'

'Yes,' Harry answered. 'In the Secrets of the Darkest arts I found over a hundred pieces of parchment that must have belonged to Tom Riddle. I found it curious that he had devoted so much effort to the subject, but had other things on my mind.'

The founder shifted within his frame, the subject of Tom Riddle, his errant heir, made Salazar uncomfortable.

Harry tapped the tome. 'Do you know what a Horcrux is?'

Salazar peered at him very seriously. 'It is a branch of soul magic,' he replied. 'I know very little about it other than it involves separating a piece of a person's soul to anchor ten to the world when they should die.'

I was less than the meanest ghost, but I was alive.

Harry recalled some of the first words that Tom Riddle had ever said to him and knew instantly how he had survived his reflected Killing Curse.

'Tom Riddle created one,' he told the painting.

'To think I aided him and named him my heir,' Salazar shook his head in disgust. 'Whatever he made into a horcrux is anchoring him here. It would have to be destroyed before Riddle can be killed.'

'How can I find it?' Harry asked.

'Casting the person revealing charm might locate it once you were close enough. The charm is derived from soul magic and may well identify a fragment of a person's soul as well as the whole thing.' Slytherin raised a hand to stroke the head of his snake as he thought. 'These items will be very dangerous,' he warned. 'A soul fragment, if brought into close proximity, could theoretically affect those around it.'

A very nasty thought occurred to Harry. 'Could it possess someone?'

'I believe it could in the right circumstances,' Salazar replied slowly, 'but I know little about the secrets of soul magic. Why?'

'When I slew your basilisk it had been unleashed on the school by a girl possessed by a shade of Tom Riddle. The shade was connected to a diary and was only destroyed when I stabbed it with a basilisk fang.' Harry spoke each word with a growing dread and suspicion.

'That may very well have been a horcrux,' the founder nodded. 'What else did the diary do?'

'It wrote back if you wrote in it, it showed me his memories and it tried to drain the life from Ginny to become real again.'

'Horcrux or not that was no ordinary enchanted book,' Slytherin told him gravely. 'It is possible Tom Riddle created something different with similar effects, but it sounds like the diary contained a soul fragment.'

'I have to tell Professor Dumbledore,' Harry declared. 'I gave him the book after leaving the chamber, what if it is not completely destroyed?'

'Basilisk venom is potent enough to destroy whatever that diary was, horcrux or not,' Salazar reassured him. 'This Professor Dumbledore, he is the same one that taught Tom Riddle and defeated Grindelwald, a powerful dark wizard?'

'Yes,' Harry replied. 'He is recognised as the most powerful living wizard.'

'If he is as powerful and knowledgeable as Tom Riddle feared and you believe, then I have little doubt that he knows exactly what the diary is,' Salazar declared.

'He would have told me, or someone, so that people could be warned about Voldemort,' Harry defended the headmaster.

'Perhaps,' the portrait replied sceptically, 'but it seems he hasn't and I can't help but wonder why he would not. There is too much that we do not know.'

'He might not have realised,' Harry considered slowly, not really believing his own words. Professor Dumbledore always knew. In his third year he had suggested, very subtly, the time-turner be used to save Sirius and Buckbeak, Fawkes had come to him when Harry needed help against the basilisk Tom Riddle twisted into his service, and the headmaster had found him before the Mirror of Erised in his first year.

I wonder what the mirror would show me now?

Harry was not the same child he had been then. His parents and his hope for a family would be within the reflection without a doubt, Sirius might have joined them, but he had new dreams to go with his maturing old ones. He needed to be strong, to have enough power to stop Tom Riddle and people like Peter Pettigrew from hurting anyone, especially those he cared about, even if that list of people had dwindled of late.

'It does not yet matter,' the founder decided. 'We have no real proof he ever created one, just a stack of notes on the subject in his writing. Read through them and perhaps we will learn something that might shed light on things. Albus Dumbledore will have his reasons for keeping this a secret. It is possible he intends to quietly destroy the other anchor and wishes to ensure Riddle does not suspect anything, that way it will be undefended.'

'There has to be another anchoring horcrux,' Harry pronounced. 'The diary, horcrux or not, was destroyed by the basilisk venom, so there has to be another one somewhere.'

'The horcrux will be well hidden and probably dangerously warded,' Salazar confirmed. 'Tom Riddle will not want it found or harmed.'

'I am surprised he left the notes here,' Harry voiced.

'Tom Riddle was the last of his family,' Salazar explained. 'He would not have believed it possible for another to enter the Chamber of Secrets, but if they did, his secret was guarded by a basilisk and hidden within my study.'

The painting frowned and shook its head in bemusement. 'Tom Riddle's hubris was born in this room and it grew to consume him. He would have never believed I might find a more suitable heir than him and so expects my Chamber of Secrets to be his for as long as he lives.'

'Dumbledore must be searching for the other horcrux,' Harry decided. The headmaster would not needlessly leave him, or the wizarding world, in the dark if it was not necessary.

It was likely that the announcement of Lord Voldemort's survival would cause not only panic, but the recommencing of the war that Harry had unknowingly ended. He suspected that the headmaster wanted to quietly eliminate the anchor and thus Tom Riddle before anyone was wiser. Dumbledore did not seem like the type to endanger anyone if it was not necessary, far from it.

'Or,' the painting suggested thoughtfully, 'he has already found the anchor and is searching for a way to destroy it and confirmation it is the only one. It is unlikely there are more than a few, the side effects of soul magic are not something to risk lightly.'

'What kind of effects?' Harry could vividly remember the appearance of Voldemort's spirit, crimson-eyed, black as smoke, with slit nostrils and unnaturally pale skin.

'The soul is a reflection of many things,' Slytherin stated simply. 'I have only dabbled in the art briefly, an attempt to find a way to reverse the sacrifice I made by creating an artefact such as the one my daughter and I searched for. I swiftly gave up when I realised it was a feat far beyond me.'

The snake around his neck gave off a melancholy hiss and slithered tighter around the shoulders of the founder.

'From what you have told me of your previous meetings with Tom Riddle, or Voldemort, as he has left behind his original name completely, it appears he has permanently damaged his soul. Whether that is a result of you reflecting his Killing Curse, or just the effect of his deeds upon himself I do not know.'

'Is his soul weaker?'

'A soul does not have strength in such a simple way. It is the essence of yourself. Your body has strength, your magic has power, your mind has its intellect and will, but the soul is little more than a reflection. You die if your soul's link to your body is severed, and souls can be used as the basis of magic, but their action is passive. A soul exists and changes, nothing more. The magics of the soul are separated into two branches: the larger, spells such as the revealing spell which make use of the existence of the soul but do not interact with it, and the smaller, true soul magic such as the Killing Curse, horcruxes; that which actually touches the essence of yourself.'

Harry understood most of what Salazar was trying to say. Soul magic was even more vague and abstract than blood magic. Its existence was used passively in many spells, but spells actually affecting the soul were rare and seemingly very dangerous. All magic came with a price, casting a spell drained that magic from the magical core of a wizard or witch, casting blood magic required sacrifice equal and casting soul magic was no exception. The Killing Curse, which tore the soul from the body of the victim, put such strain on the soul of the caster that it fractured. Harry did not know if that strain came from the caster having the desire and intent necessary to cast the spell or the actual action of the magic itself, but he wasn't eager to find out.

AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone who has or does.

P.S. Out of fear that my readers are all H/F addicts and about to pre-emptively abandon ship I'll semi-officially announce this is H/F, agonisingly slow as it may be (Everyone pretty much knows that already, but just in case anyone starts getting concerned).

18. Living Anchor

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter!

Some of it's a little fluffy for my personal taste, but I'm not a particularly romantic soul so no surprises there.

I also posted the old, Iphone notes version initially. I apologise for that, this one's a bit better, not too different, but sort of padded out around the dialogue if you get what I mean. I'm tempted by the prospect of having a Beta to stop little things like this. It might also help deal with my typos and missing word issues, since I literally cannot see them when I check. It's like those stupid things you see on Facebook where someone removes every 'the' from a sentence and your brain just fills them in anyway because you expect to see them. Anyone have an opinion on that?

Chapter 18

There were pages and pages of notes on the subject. Much of which was in quite incredible detail. If Tom Riddle had not performed this himself then he must have witnessed it or found a reference from somebody who had. It was too visual and graphic for anything else to be true.

The portrait of Salazar Slytherin, returned to its resting place over the door, watched restlessly as he read through Riddle's neat writing at the desk.

'What have you found,' the painting demanded, unable to simply sit and watch as his heir read through something so important in front of him.

'The theory behind creating a horcrux,' Harry skimmed the next few sheets, 'and how it's meant to work.' It was not light reading. Harry did not know where Riddle had found this book, it had no place in Salazar's study, but he was sure it would not even find a place in the restricted section of the library.

'Tell me,' the founder commanded, peering down at the notes from above the door.

'They're created by using the side effects of the Killing Curse,' Harry began, thoroughly horrified at the implications of the magic he was reading about. 'Using the curse fractures the soul allowing a wizard or witch of sufficiently strong mind to tear a fragment away and place it within another object.' Harry read the excerpt from the book in a rather sickened tone, from what he had learned of souls from Salazar he understood how wrong this was.

'What type of object?' Salazar asked.

'It does not say, but I assume any, since the notes often mention things that don't work.' The notes had the horrible feel of trial and error to them, as if Tom Riddle had gradually accumulated the knowledge on these sheets of parchment by experimenting over and over again.

'So anything could be a horcrux.' Harry understood perfectly the solemn tone the portrait had taken. The anchor that was keeping Voldemort alive could be anything and anywhere.

'Yes,' Harry agreed. 'Once they are created they're supposed to be almost impossible to destroy, basilisk venom, fiendfyre and other very destructive spells are the only things capable of it. They act as an anchor of sorts. Riddle wasn't certain, but guessed that for a person to die the whole soul has to be disconnected from everything else. The anchoring piece would still be connected to the rest of the soul and bound to an object, hence preventing death so long as it exists.'

'All types of death?' Harry had had the same thought when he first read Riddle's analysis of why they worked.

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'The soul can only last as long as the rest of the person and while the book says body and mind can be physically replaced whatever causes them to degrade also affects the soul. An anchoring horcrux will slow the process, but not halt it.'

'So Tom Riddle will die of old age regardless,' Salazar mused.

'A very old age,' Harry pointed out. 'His notes suggest that having a horcrux could add half a lifetime onto his own, we don't know if having more than one compounds the effect, and powerful wizards and witches tend to live longer anyway.' He was pretty sure that Dumbledore had been alive for more than a century, and the headmaster wasn't looking like he was about to keel over.

'I wasn't about to suggest hiding until he died,' Slytherin responded acidly. 'Such behaviour is not acceptable for my heir. You will grow strong enough to defeat him, either in a fair duel or more cunningly. It's about time you acted like a relative of mine instead of charging off like a younger, less knowledgeable version of Godric.'

Harry turned over the last few pages, but there was only a reference to never entering the nothingness of the death and the words Lord Voldemort scrawled across the bottom of the page in uncharacteristically untidy hand. The final letter had almost completely vanished beneath an inkblot formed where the tip of the quill had been pressed so hard into the parchment it had snapped.

Without any clear evidence a horcrux had been made Harry resorted to checking the book that the notes had been found in.

What he found was both horrifying and terrifying.

Under the section entitled Horcruxes he found a brief note implying that a fractured soul would heal over time in the right conditions, but one that remained fractured could weaken and unintentionally fragment again. A shiver trembled its way down his spine, the hairs rising across his body.

'A soul that is fractured and remains unrepaired may weaken and, should it be put under further stress, fragment. Since the soul remains connected even after fragments are separated the pieces are likely to return to the original, but it is hypothetically possible that this could create a horcrux of which the owner is not aware. A bond may well form between accidental anchor and owner possibly resulting in either of the two developing an obsessive interest in the other or displaying similar characteristics and skills,' Harry read aloud. Every word he spoke into the cold study made him feel more sick and more afraid. It sounded too familiar, too similar to something he had already heard. The sharp icy fingers of fear had tightened themselves around his stomach, clenching to his core.

'Why did you read that out?' Salazar asked, there was enough evident concern is tone to indicate he was aware of Harry's distress.

'In my second year, when the shade of Riddle opened the Chamber and I learned that I could speak Parseltongue, I asked Dumbledore why Tom Riddle and I were so similar.'

The memory of the conversation was slowly turning his fear to fury and Harry had to swallow to control his rage as it surged within him. The hand of ice around his stomach melted as his fury at being lied to over something so crucially important and personal to him swelled into a crescendo. It was strong enough to taste. The tang of iron rage on his tongue was hot enough to set his words alight with vehemence.

'He told me that he believed I had absorbed a small piece of Voldemort's power when I was given this scar,' Harry hissed furiously in parseltongue. 'It was that that had made us similar, he said, and gave me my ability to speak to snakes.'

'He is wrong and he lied to you,' Salazar deduced, sparks shooting from his wand with an intensity Harry had not yet seen. The portrait's speech was completely distorted, wavering between Parseltongue and English as he raged, but attempted to control himself.

'My parselmagic cannot be passed on in such a way, it is imperative that you have my blood for the magic to work, and magical power cannot be absorbed in such a manner or there would be wizards killing each other to do so. He knows about the horcruxes, he knows that you are one, and he has always known.'

I am a horcrux. I am what is keeping Voldemort alive.

It made Harry even more furious, furious that Tom Riddle had done this to him, furious that Dumbledore had known what he was from the moment it happened and furious because of what it meant for him.

'I have to die,' he announced aloud in a very hollow tone. 'The diary is gone, when I am dead so will Tom Riddle be.'

Salazar scowled. 'I will not allow it,' he hissed, lapsing fully into Parseltongue. 'You are the Heir of Salazar Slytherin, not a sacrifice to be used by lesser wizards. We will find another way, or we will make one.'

'How many will have to die before we find one?' Harry asked, woodenly. His insides were twisted with despair and bitter resentment at how unfair things were.

'As many as necessary,' Salazar spat, still speaking in the tongue of snakes. 'We do not know how many of these horcruxes Riddle has made, your death may simply ensure his secret remains undiscovered.'

'I can't tell Dumbledore I know about them,' Harry realised. The old wizard must have known what Harry's fate was from the start. For whatever reason the headmaster had not told him. It did not matter that it could have been to keep him safe, happy or under the watchful eye Dumbledore, he had deserved to know something so important about himself. The headmaster should have told him, but he hadn't. Harry could no longer completely trust him.

'No,' the portrait agreed. 'You cannot. We can't predict his reaction once he knows you know. He may be searching for other horcruxes, or keeping you alive as long as he can, but the moment you become a liability he might kill you. Worse things have been done for the greater good.'

'I am not a match for Albus Dumbledore.' He wasn't even close to a match for the man most regarded as the world's greatest wizard. Harry knew only one who might be, Tom Riddle, and he was not a potential ally.

I will have to walk a path apart from either of them.

'I will think on this,' Salazar decided. 'Prop me up over the desk so that I can read the relevant parts of the notes. A solution may present itself.'

Harry lifted the painting off the wall above the door and leant it against the bookcase where it met the edge of the desk. From his new position Salazar could read all of the pages on the desk.

'Tempus,' Harry commanded, tapping his wand on his wrist.

It was a few minutes before eleven.

Katie.

Harry groaned. He had no idea what to do on a date. For a moment he considered not going and sparing her from being involved in whatever his life would throw at him next.

No, he decided. It is too cruel to her, I should give her the chance to make her own decisions, and if I am to die, I shall enjoy as much of my life as I can first.

The Marauder's map showed Katie was waiting for him at the entrance hall. It also showed Pettigrew by the quidditch pitch, but he put that out of his mind to focus on his date.

She had clearly put some effort into looking nice and for the first time Harry really noticed how cute she was. Katie had tomboyish appeal to her and even dressed up as she was you could see the sporty, scruffy chaser underneath.

Harry decided he was not adequately dressed and quickly ducked into a nearby archway to correct his appearance by transfiguring his creased robes into something more fitting. He attempted to fix his hair, but as always it proved futile.

'Harry.' She smiled when she saw him, a look of relief passing across her face. 'I was beginning to worry you weren't coming.'

'Well I am nervous,' he admitted, 'but not that much.' He was not nervous at all about his date, not anymore, it was the last thing he had to fear now.

She beamed and slipped her arm through his. It felt very strange to have someone so close, Katie was practically pressed against his side from thigh to shoulder, but it was a pleasant feeling.

'So where are we going?' Harry knew enough about dates to ask Katie what she wanted.

'Madam Puddifoots?' She seemed quite eager to go and held his arm more tightly while he tried to place the name.

'The place with all the pink?' Harry was sceptical. He didn't mind going if that was what Katie wanted, but fluffy pink and white lace didn't really seem her thing.

'Yes, do you mind?' There was a slight glint in Katie's eye, a warning.

'Not if that's what you want,' Harry said, trying to remember where the tea shop was. 'It doesn't really seem like your sort of place, though,' he added.

'Full marks, Harry,' Katie laughed. 'I wanted to see how you'd react, and you did very well, especially knowing me well enough to be sceptical.'

'So you don't want to go?' Harry was quite relieved. The tea shop had a reputation as being the stuff of nightmares in the boys dormitories.

'All girls like a little romance,' Katie smiled, 'but that's not my type. Let's go to the Shrieking Shack, we can meet up with Angelina, Alicia and the twins afterwards if you like?'

He nodded. It would take his mind off other things, walking would prevent him thinking as much as he could if he was sitting still, and seeing the Gryffindor Quidditch team would help with that as well. Harry had already decided that he would stick with his decision to treat Angelina and Alicia as if he had never met them. If the girls were willing he would befriend them all over again, but, unlike before, they would have to earn his trust. Harry had given it away all too freely when he first came to Hogwarts'. The sudden change in surroundings and promise of others like him had let him forget the reality of the wizarding world was only a little different from the muggle one.

Harry led the way to the Shrieking Shack, but only so far as having Katie's arm through his would allow.

'I love this place,' Katie beamed. 'Nobody ever dares come in, but it's so cool.' She looked around curiously, taking in the scratches and other marks that Harry remembered seeing at the end of last year. 'That's new,' she remarked, pointing to the dent Professor Lupin had left in the wall when Harry had disarmed him.

'Do you know the real story?' Harry asked. He was fairly sure that Professor Lupin wouldn't mind. Everyone knew his secret now, courtesy of Snape and Hermione, and telling a story was much preferable to just sitting around letting his mind run.

'No,' Katie exclaimed, 'everyone just knows it's haunted.'

'I can tell you, if you like?'

Katie brushed the splinters off the three-legged chair and gestured for Harry to sit on one half. He obliged and Katie took the other side, wrapping an arm around his waist to keep her balance.

'Tell me,' she all but commanded.

'A while back there was a student at Hogwarts who was a werewolf,' Harry began, trying to think of a way to leave the names out. 'Every full moon he would come here to transform, sneaking out of the castle using a secret passage.' He was wise enough to keep the entrance to himself; it would be a very bad start to his date with Katie if she were squished by the Whomping Willow. 'The werewolf was lucky enough to have three friends who did not care what he was and they decided, in order to help him that they would become animagi.'

'How would that help?' Katie asked, eyeing the claw marks on the walls with more interest than before.

'Werewolves are not dangerous to animals, remember, their bite only effects humans. The transformation is supposed to be very painful and so to keep him company they turned into animals and came here with him.'

'Did nobody ever realise?'

'I don't know,' Harry admitted. 'That's the whole of the story as I know it.'

'How did you learn about the place?'

'Do you remember Professor Lupin?' Harry asked gently. It had been common knowledge that he was a werewolf after his resignation came into effect, but Katie had not yet seemed to make the obvious connection.

'Yes,' Katie nodded, 'he resigned because... Oh,' she realised. 'He was the student.'

'He told me about it last year,' Harry explained.

'Who were the other three, then?' Katie asked.

'Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew,' Harry endeavoured to keep his voice even at the name of the traitor, 'and James Potter.' His voice cracked at the last name and looked away embarrassedly.

'Your father,' Katie surmised sympathetically. She fell silent for a little while, clearly searching for something to say, then squeezed his shoulder and gave him a smile. 'Thanks for telling me the story.' Harry heard the unspoken gratitude in her tone for voluntarily telling her something that he knew would interest her, but might stir up less enviable feelings within him.

'I've come here almost every time I visit Hogsmeade,' Katie began after a moment of silence, 'but I never knew what it was actually for.'

'What did you think it was?' Harry knew that most students believed it was haunted with the prevalent theory being a more violent version of Peeves the Poltergeist occupying the building.

'I always thought it was a hoax,' Katie admitted. 'I never saw any ghosts when I came here.'

'Well, now you know,' he glanced down at the chaser, who was staring up at him quite cutely.

'It's good you're taller now,' she noted, tucking herself under his arm. 'You can keep me warm.'

'It is a little cold,' Harry agreed. November had only grown chillier as it reached its end and the Shrieking Shack, with its broken windows and gaping walls, had little in the way of insulation.

Katie beamed and shifted a little closer to Harry, but under their combined weight the gnawed chair leg gave way and pitched them both onto floor.

'We've broken part of one of Hogwarts' most iconic buildings,' Katie giggled, pulling herself up on Harry's offered hand.

'Professor Lupin won't mind,' Harry grinned. 'He started the demise of the chair himself.'

Harry surveyed the remnants of the chair as Katie carefully brushed the dust off her clothes. It was in four separate pieces and unlikely to ever recover on its own. He considered using the mending charm to undo the damage, but Harry really didn't feel like fixing it. It sort of felt that by repairing the chair he would be undoing the moment that broke it and he had quite liked sharing the chair with Katie. It had been a comfortable closeness that they had been sharing and Harry could not remember feeling anything quite like it before.

I could grow to quite like Katie, Harry realised.

'Let's go to the Three Broomsticks,' she suggested, 'there's nowhere to sit now.'

Harry nodded his agreement and they made their way back towards Hogsmeade's best pub.

It struck him that he hadn't even thought about Peter Pettigrew, getting stronger, the tournament or horcruxes since he had seen her. Harry smiled and his steps through the frosty ground became a little springier.

Katie waited only a few seconds after leaving before reaching out and taking Harry's hand in hers. For once Harry didn't mind or resist contact with another person, her hand was soft, and pleasantly warm.

They found Angelina, Alicia and the Weasley twins sitting round a table pressed against the side wall of the inn. It was as crowded as normal and Harry instinctively shifted a little closer to Katie and the reassuring warmth that seemed to emanate from her.

'All we need now is the keeper,' Angelina remarked as he and Katie pulled up a chair.

'It's a good thing Wood's left to join the big leagues,' a twin, presumably Fred since he was sitting closest to Angelina. After learning that the two girls were still holding a grudge for them swapping places on the last double date he doubted that they'd do it again.

'Indeed, brother mine,' George replied. 'He'd be outraged.'

'He'd be the only member of the team not dating another team mate,' Fred snickered as Katie disappeared towards the bar.

'We'd get a very long lecture about squad relations and then he would have forced us all to be married so we couldn't separate and harm the atmosphere of the team.' Harry laughed, a little grateful Katie had not been next to him to hear that. She was almost two years older than him and it might not seem like much now while they were at school, but he guessed a few successful dates and a year or so later might make some differences seem greater. Katie might start to think about the future as she left school and took the next steps in life. A career, a husband, a family all came after that final set of exams, hovering in the back of the head as a reminder of everything that was to come. Harry only considered it vaguely, being fourteen it was all a long way off, and he wanted a family some time in the future, but it seemed rather early in life or his relationship with Katie to be thinking about anything like that. It made him more than a little nervous.

'I got Firewhiskey,' Katie grinned when she returned to the table, three small glasses clutched in either hand.

'How'd you manage that?' The Weasley twins looked on in awe. Harry had absolutely no doubt that they had tried to get hold of the liquor here on more than one occasion.

'Well the drinking age is seventeen,' Katie shrugged, 'I might only be sixteen, but I'm sitting with two sixth years who might be overage and I guess they just assumed I was two.'

'What about Harry?' Fred asked. 'He's an ickle fourth year.'

'He's not ickle,' Katie defended, then flushed scarlet when Angelina and Alicia burst into giggles. Harry rather felt he had missed something.

'They never asked,' Katie continued, still blushing furiously. 'I guess they assumed that if he can defeat a Dark Lord as a baby he can manage alcohol.'

'Are you sure you can manage him, Katie?' Alicia teased. Harry didn't need any of the emphasis on the word manage to realise what they had meant before and meant now. He really had no idea how he was supposed to react to innuendo, but he wasn't going to flush like Katie was. That seemed to just encourage them. He kept his mouth shut and practiced the mind-clearing techniques that were the basis of occlumency; it was a surprisingly effective way of keeping his mortification from showing.

I might need the Firewhiskey if they keep this up.

'I guess I'll be keeping this, then,' Katie threatened, passing a single whiskey glass to Harry and each of the Weasley's, but keeping the other three for herself.

'We'll behave,' Angelina promised. 'Harry doesn't want to see a drunk Katie on his first date.'

'It would put even the most lovesick of suitors off,' George agreed.

'I remember when Alicia was given a whole case of elderflower wine because the shop lost her ordered bottle and the three of us drank it on New Year's Eve. I took the candle you stole from the Great Hall and you got so angry you tried to transfigure me into a goblin.' Angelina was in stitches before she finished her telling, gasping the words out through a fit of giggles.

'I didn't,' Katie denied, 'I only threatened.'

'No,' Alicia laughed harder, 'you tried very hard, but you were using a breadstick from the kitchens instead of your wand.'

'You were certain that it was your wand,' Angelina remembered, having recovered enough to regain the ability to speak. 'Alicia ate it in front of you and you burst into tears because you thought you'd never be able to do magic again.'

'I did not,' Katie repudiated rather weakly. 'I don't remember doing any of that.'

'Of course you don't,' Alicia smirked, 'it was a thirteen bottle case and you drank seven of them. You fell asleep in the middle of crying about your breadstick and we had to carry you back to bed.'

'Never let her drink, Harry,' Angelina warned, 'she's very funny drunk, but an absolute disaster to deal with. We've a hundred more stories from that night alone.'

'Well keep them to yourselves,' Katie sulked. 'Or I'll keep the whiskey for myself.' She looked very cute she sulked, Harry decided. Katie pressed her lips together and curled them inwards as she frowned. The expression was quite heart-melting.

'Go ahead,' Angelina challenged, calling her bluff.

Harry's date did not even hesitate. She lined up the three glasses and drank them down in three distinct gulps, placing them in a neat row in front of her and beaming happily at her friends.

'Uh oh,' Fred and George intoned together, 'we're in trouble now.

'Fire whiskey is potent stuff,' Fred explained at Harry's puzzled glance. 'It's meant to give you a buzz no matter now much you drink, but the more you do the stronger and longer the feeling.'

Harry gave the three empty glasses a nervous look. 'Don't worry Harry,' Katie chirped,' if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' She pushed his glass towards him as the Weasley's linked arms and exuberantly drank their own.

Harry eyed the amber liquid with suspicion. He had never actually drunk real alcohol before. Nobody considered butterbeer alcoholic when you had to drink a lake of the stuff to get even the slightest tingle.

'It doesn't hurt,' Katie reassured him. 'You'll feel great,' she added a little dreamily.

Harry raised the glass to his lips and emulated his date in drinking the entire thing in a single gulp.

It felt like he had swallowed napalm. The inside of his throat was burning and he had to wonder if this was how his dragon from the first task felt when it breathed fire.

The burning faded swiftly and with it went any form of unease and discomfort he felt. The crowded room no longer concerned him, the fact that he was touching Alicia's foot with his own toes was not important and the warm feeling of Katie's thigh pressed against his own no longer came with a flutter of nervousness.

Harry decided he quite liked Firewhiskey.

'See,' Katie beamed, shifting close enough that her whole body from knee to shoulder rested against Harry.

'How long does this last?' Harry asked, luxuriating in the warm tingle he felt throughout himself.

'An hour or so for you,' George told him, 'a few more for Katie.' That was good. The effect, pleasant thought it was, would have worn off completely for him by the time they needed to leave Hogsmeade. Katie would probably only be slightly affected once the two hours were up.

'We should head towards Honeydukes,' Alicia reminded the older three. 'Fred promised us chocolate and Lee is probably waiting there by now.'

They rose and squeezed out past Harry who for once felt no urge to flinch from their sudden proximity.

'Keep her cheerful,' Angelina warned good-naturedly, patting him on the shoulder as they passed. 'Katie's an extremely emotional drunk, but lovely as long as she's happy. Let her get upset or angry and there's no telling what she might do.'

'Of course,' Alicia added, 'being Katie and being drunk means just about anything could upset her. She once cried for ten minutes because she dropped her sandwich when we went to the kitchens after celebrating Lee's birthday.'

'I'm always happy,' Katie declared with confidence that could only be born from alcohol.

'Thanks for the whiskey, Katie,' the twins laughed together as they left. She nodded in reply and leant her cheek onto Harry's shoulder.

'Let's go wander,' she suggested, slipping an arm about his waist and trying to lift both him and herself without having to move away from him.

Harry pushed himself up from his seat, staggering slightly when his movement coincided with one of Katie's insisted tugs and he overbalanced.

'Where shall we wander?' he asked her as they left the inn.

'I don't mind,' she beamed, her arm still around his waist. Harry certainly didn't mind. He was busy enjoying the abundance of warmth that he felt. Next to Katie he was somebody. The tingle of the whiskey, the touch of the sun and the heat of Katie's arm and side against him told him that with utter certainty.

I don't want this feeling to ever end.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to those of you who have and keep doing so.

P.S. The first part of this chapter really isn't fluffy at all, but luring you all in expecting fluff right away and giving you horcruxes instead amused me. I will also add that while the pace of things will gradually continue to increase a little, there will not be some ludicrous jump off the back of Harry's realisation. I have something in mind I haven't seen yet and I quite want to try it. You always see either complete ignorance and last minute escapes, or narrow victories when all seems lost from main characters and while they are an enjoyable and indispensable part of any story it might be nice to branch out.

P.P.S. This note (now amended since it didn't come across as I intended) Nobody who spends a lot of their time reading things without speech in uses some of the more informal contractions (ones like 'we've', 'could've' etc) when they speak, so it's the same for those of my characters who fit that profile. It's a habit you pick up from always reading and thinking in terms without such contractions, hence why Harry, Hermione and other very well read characters won't use them. I can personally attest to that as I never use contractions like those anymore. I hope that makes sense!

19. Kindred Spirits

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Another chapter!

However, as you guys all seem to appreciate my speed, I feel I should warn you that it is possible it might slow a little. I write fast, I can do one of these chapters in handful of hours, plus a bit longer to check, but the amount of free time I have is about to decrease. Between finishing my maths degree, finding a job, my decision to do a second part-time natural science degree (just for fun) and just the general progression of life from student to burdened, tax-paying adult, I have a lot of things to do. Not to mention the football season has started again, that's 90 minutes of pain and disappointment a week that I can channel straight into writing ;)

Chapter 19

The golden egg sat obstinately on the floor of the bathroom. Nothing Fleur did seemed to affect it. The horrible screeching persisted every time she opened the egg, no matter what enchantment she cast. She had come to quite hate the thing.

Moodily she poked it with the tip of her wand. It rocked a little then returned to its spot on the floor. She hoped that the other champions were having as little success as she was.

The clue was not easy to decipher and Fleur was tempted to try and find out how far the other champions had progressed again. Over the last few days, as her hope at succeeding with the egg began to diminish, she had kept an ear out when she snuck around the school under her disillusionment charm. Specifically she had been listening out for hints that any of the others had met with success.

Fleur had not been met with great success. She'd learned a lot of interesting things, but few had been about the Triwizard tournament. Ludo Bagman, someone who in her opinion should not have been anywhere near the organising process for the tournament, had been talking about how fascinating the Black Lake was and all the creatures it contained with a two quidditch playing girls dressed in the red and gold of Gryffindor house. The man was not particularly intelligent and she had read, in one of Rita Skeeter's articles, that he had owed a lot of money to the goblins until very recently.

Madame Maxime had suggested that Karkaroff was assisting Krum with his strategies, but she was not sure if that extended to figuring out the egg and as her rival kept mainly to himself she had no clues as to how he had progressed.

Fleur had seen him and many of the other Durmstrang students diving into the Black Lake, but it seemed only to be for recreation and Fleur had better things to do than ogle them with the rest of the Beauxbatons' students.

Cedric Diggory on the other hand seemed to already know the answer. She had heard a group of Ravenclaw girls gossiping about how smart he was when she had joined the table for lunch. The three girls had seemed more taken with his looks than his intellect, but it was concerning that another champion might have figured it out. There was always the possibility that Diggory was lying and judging by his performance in the first task Fleur refused to discount that. Her pride might have had a little do with it as well.

The most interesting thing she had learned had been about Harry Potter. His progress towards the second task still remained a mystery to her, but in one of her frequent library visits she had over heard Hermione, the bushy-haired girl who was often in the library, and Ron, her red-headed friend, discussing her rival.

They seemed to be under the impression he might be under the influence of another wizard because of his sudden behaviour change. Fleur found their wild theories of love potions, Imperius curses and enslavement to Bulgarian veela laughable. Harry Potter's behaviour was not something that had just suddenly manifested, if they had not noticed it or he had hidden it then it might seem new, but it was obviously the result of something chronic.

The pair had held many wild speculations about what he was doing, but Fleur ignored most of them. The fact that they thought a simple thing like an invisibility cloak was capable of tricking an age line or the goblet was evidence enough that they really didn't know what they were talking about when it came to enchantments or enchanted items. Invisibility cloaks were expensive, but little more than disillusioned apparel, and the disillusionment charm that both she and Harry were familiar with, was not capable of tricking a age line.

Fleur had almost stopped listening to them when she finally overhears something much more interesting. Harry Potter's first wand had been broken by Hermione when she tried to use a spell she was not adept at to stop him reaching it in the middle of a fight between him and Ron. It had been the last time Hermione had spoken to him, though she still professed to be his friend, unlike Ron, because he never came to either the common room or the dormitories of Gryffindor Tower.

The idea that Harry Potter now had his own room, just as Fleur did, intrigued her. They were not dissimilar, Fleur had seen more than enough similarities between them to make her pity the boy, but they had always acted differently. Harry vanished where she decided to stand out. That they both had made the same choice in the same situation at roughly the same made Fleur wonder if by the time he was seventeen he would be even more like her. He would be powerful and talented enough to rival her properly at that age and would not doubt stand out as one of Hogwarts' best students.

The longer she thought about it the more parallels she was able to draw between the two of them and the greater her regret became at having been rude to him. It was possible, had they not gotten off on the wrong foot, that he might have been able to understand her and see more than just the veela, or the champion.

It would be nice to have someone to share my thoughts with.

Gabrielle was her little sister and there was nobody that Fleur loved more, but she was too young to understand some things, or to truly empathise with her older sibling. In a few years, once she had endured everything her elder sister had, she could be the perfect friend for Fleur, but four years was a long time.

Perhaps I should be more polite to him.

It would hardly require much effort on her part to test the waters and see if he was potentially more than just an acquaintance. If he was like her then the moment he realised their similarity he would, just as she had, be hopeful of finding a real friend that understood. It was a surprisingly attractive idea and the longer she imagined it the more attached to her hope she became.

An image of the two of them welled up from some corner of Fleur's mind that still retained some of the naive, wishful girl that she thought had long since been tempered into something stronger. It was a simple scene. Two friends, smiling, trusting and achieving great things together. There was no bright, blinding, empty charm radiating from his lips and no small, sham of aloof politeness fixed on hers. Fleur was shocked by how much she wanted the company of an equal, someone to stand who understood. Whether it was Harry or another hardly mattered, if he was capable of becoming half of her envisioning, she would endeavour to treat him as an equal in the making. Harry Potter would have to show that he knew she wasn't so beneath him first, though. Fleur would not deign to spend time with somebody who thought she was below their notice, famous or not, that was not how equals behaved towards one another.

There were many things that she had to deal with first. The Yule Ball was approaching and she needed to find a suitable date. A wizard who was not going to be lost in her allure all night and capable of paying attention to her. Fleur wasn't particularly hopeful of finding anyone and intended only to stay as long as had to or as long as she was enjoying herself. The former was likely to be much longer than the latter. Primarily, of course, her attention needed to be focused on the golden egg in front of her. How she hated the thing. If Fleur was allowed to keep it after the task she was half-tempted to destroy the frustrating object.

The most annoying part was that she was not sure at all what deciphering the egg entailed. It was incredibly difficult to solve such a vague problem. She had tried revealing anything written on the outside, even throwing it into the fire in the hopes that it might reveal something. It hadn't. The egg had screamed just as loudly as before.

She was starting to wonder if the screaming itself was the clue, rather than just a noise to indicate failure. It might change to something recognisable if she cast a charm or altered the egg's surroundings, or the next task might be to defeat something that screamed just as unbearably as the egg did.

Madame Maxime might know of any such creatures.

Fleur found her headmistress sitting in the communal area, a place Fleur normally avoided at all costs, drinking coffee from fine, white china mug. Fortunately there were no others in the area, probably as a direct result of the presence of their headmistress. If she knew of half the things that her students got up to once they came of age, or, in the case of many, once they came close to it, she would be both shocked and appalled.

'Madame Maxime,' she began, hoping her headmistress would not construe this as cheating, or, if she did, that she'd be as uncaring as she was about the actions of Harry Potter.

'Yes, Fleur?' She set down her mug of coffee and turned all her attention to Beauxbatons' foremost student.

'I was wondering if you knew if any creatures that emit such screams as the egg?' Fleur patted the golden object gently as if it were precious to her. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Madame Maxime smiled. 'I'm afraid I cannot say,' she replied, 'but I would like to recommend you a book. I do not have it here, but Hogwarts' Library certainly will. It is called Magical Creatures of the Water and their Secrets.'

'Thank you,' Fleur said very gratefully. Her headmistress' help was the only chance she had at deciphering the egg, even though the task itself was not until after the Christmas Holidays.

Casting her disillusionment charm Fleur all but ran to the library. The other champions might have been given similar hints and then had the foresight to take the book out to prevent their rivals from taking the same route they did.

Hogwarts' Library was one place Fleur had to concede it bettered Beauxbatons. It was not as attractive and open, Beauxbatons had terraces and balconies surrounding its domed equivalent, but it was far larger and just as organised.

Fleur found the book she was searching for tucked away in the section for magical creatures.

Someone, she noticed, had taken out all of the books pertaining to veela and she rather hoped it was not related to her. Veela had their weaknesses just like any other and she didn't want her rivals to be able to exploit hers.

Flicking through the book she ignored the sections on Grindylows and other lower forms of magical life. None of them were capable of emitting more than growls and squeaks.

It was almost an hour of poring through the pages of the book before she came across a useful passage.

The singing of the Merpeople cannot be understood above water, Fleur read. Any attempts to hear their singing above the waves will only be met by a loud shrieking.

Fleur snapped the book shut. She had her answer. The egg needed to be underwater to be understood.

Saying a silent thank you to her headmistress and ending her concealing magic, she picked up the book and headed to the library exit.

It was with a slightly smug smile that she checked out the book. None of the others would learn the answer as she had.

Eager to finally decipher the clue she hurried back through the corridors towards the nearest bathroom. The sooner she discovered the clue the better.

Filling the sink furthest from the door with water and casting a charm to keep the bathroom locked she tapped her fingers impatiently along the length of her wand. She was so close to finding out what came next, waiting was unbearable.

The instant the sink was full enough to completely contain the egg she opened it and dropped it in. The screaming cut out instantly and Fleur could just make out the sound of singing from the basin.

It was not loud enough to hear, regardless of how close to the water she put her ear.

Sighing she swept her silver hair over her right shoulder and gingerly dipped her ear into the water.

Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this;

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour, the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

Fleur did not like the sound of any of it.

The first line alone was enough for concern. Merpeople could only be heard underwater and that meant the second task would be taking place there. As a veela she was weakened in such an environment. It was not a drastic reaction, but her magic would be sluggish in the cold, and less powerful in the wet, just as it was ever so slightly quicker and stronger in the hot and dry. There wan nothing she could do about her natural aversion to the wet and the cold. Hopefully it would not be noticeable to the judges.

The rest of the song was every bit as worrying. It was obvious that the Merpeople would either be given or would take something precious to her. Fleur did not really consider many things as particularly precious, but those she did she was very attached to.

Sorely miss will not do it justice.

Fortunately the majority of the things she loved were with her and as of yet untouched by any other. The first thing she would do when she returned to her room in the carriage was make sure they could not be removed by anyone except her. Fleur imagined they needed something, but after failing to find anything of clear value would settle for something less important. If she did fail to recover what was taken, it would only be a disaster in one dimension.

That just left finding a way to survive underwater for an hour.

Fleur knew of several ways that this could be achieved. The most obvious, but also the most difficult was self-transfiguration. She was better than most at transfiguration, but averse to the idea. Veela already had two natural forms and a transformation they could undertake, if self-transfiguring went badly the attempts to return her to her original form might well not work. There were plenty of stories of failed veela animagi who had to live with feathers permanently because the magic used to reverse their transfiguration attempts could not distinguish between the human and creature forms of a veela.

She would be opting for a more simple, elegant approach. The bubble-head charm could be held for an hour with ease, but it left her vulnerable. If anything burst the bubble she would not be able to recast it underwater without an air source. Some adaptation of the charm or a contingency plan was needed as it seemed unlikely the Merpeople would just give back what they had once she found them.

Pulling the plug on the sink she retrieved the book on water creatures and her egg, shaking the worst of the water from it, then tucking it under her arm. There was nobody outside the bathroom when she undid her locking charm and exited, but the handle had been tried enough times for it be considerably loser than before. Fleur hoped that the girls who had come here had had the sense to give up and find another toilet before they wet themselves. There were plenty within a few minutes walk of here.

She began to make her way back towards Beauxbatons' carriage, following the corridor down to the stairs that led her to the Great Hall.

As she walked she considered what she knew of the bubble-head charm. It trapped a considerable amount of compressed air within a bubble around the nose and mouth of the caster and allowed breathing underwater or in areas of high altitude. Fleur knew that the more magic she put into the spell the larger the bubble and the more air she would have to breathe, but she knew of no way of protecting the bubble itself. If it was burst she would have to have a contingency plan. To recast the spell would require a considerable amount of air, something she was not willing to rely on being able to find once the task started.

Perhaps I can take the air with me.

A container of some sort, a bag, or a box or air that was large enough to contain enough air for an hour underwater could be shrunk, as long as it was airtight, and summoned to take with her once the task had started. Fleur would not be making the same mistake that Harry Potter had in forgetting he could simply summon what he needed to assist him and trying to take it in as well as his wand.

'Miss Delacour,' a smooth baritone voice came from behind her only moments after she had passed through the entrance to the Great Hall. She instantly knew from the tone what this would be about.

The Yule Ball. I should have disillusioned myself again.

Fleur turned slowly, taking in the slightly glazed eyes and hopeful faces of over fifty students, wishing very much she had not been so caught up in her solution to the second task that she forgotten to conceal herself.

I hate this, she cursed. Stupid, passive veela magic.

'Would you do me the honour of accompanying me to the Yule Ball?' The young wizard who asked was a lean, but unattractive young man. He would be only the first of many that Fleur would have to refuse if she couldn't quickly continue on her way.

'Sorry,' she answered, smiling politely as she knew should, 'but no.'

The hope blossomed afresh on the faces of all the boys around her. Fleur resisted the sudden urge to transform and burn them all to a crisp. Half of them were in their early teens and couldn't be more than first or second years.

'Miss Delacour, my name is Roger Davies, I was hoping you would let me accompany you to the Ball?' It was a far better phrased attempt to get her to be his date than most others she had heard. Fleur felt it at least deserved an answer rather than falling ignored as she walked away.

Roger Davies was dark-haired, blue-eyed and a little taller than she was. A neat, earnest and kind appearing individual whose eyes were not glazed like those of the students around him. He was not unattractive. There was a noble, angular quality to his face, an impression given off by his brightly coloured eyes, high cheekbones and strong, confident jawline. It was a face of obvious pure-blood heritage.

The faces' hope dimmed, even the girls seemed upset, clearly they expected her to say yes to Roger Davies. Dismay rose in the eyes of every student in the hall save one.

Harry Potter entered the hall from the far side, hand in hand with the same girl who had passed her the Bouillabaisse when she had first arrived. He seemed utterly oblivious to Fleur and her dilemma. It was infuriating. She had earlier extended so far as to consider him a kindred spirit and future equal and here he was mocking her with his lack of notice again.

Her mood flipped completely.

Roger would have proved passable company if he could at least resist a little of her allure, but his face bore a slight resemblance to Harry Potter's in its angular nature, though the fourteen year old had not yet fully lost the baby fat from his cheeks. The Potters were another old pure-blood family if she remembered correctly. Fleur was not in a good mood and felt like being cruel. She could not reach Harry without bringing trouble upon herself, but she could reach Roger Davies who bore enough of a passing resemblance to the source of her temper to make her feel vindicated in her viciousness.

'No,' Fleur repeated, still looking at Harry and the girl, 'I'm afraid you may not.'

In the silence that followed her refusal of the Hogwarts student came quiet, but obvious laughter. Harry Potter clearly found her predicament amusing.

Fleur's anger reach new, previously unknown heights at the reaction of her rival. He knew that they stared and had seen the lengths to which she went to avoid being noticed. Harry was a kindred spirit of sorts. He was supposed to be able to understand.

Harry Potter, of all people, should know better than to laugh.

It would not stand. Angry tears threatened to rise in her eyes at his betrayal of her hope, her envisioning crumbling away. The wizard, her comprehending equal, alongside her faded until Fleur stood alone once more. She blinked the tears stubbornly away, fixing her polite smile firmly upon her lips. Fleur Delacour did not cry, but she would happily seek vengeance for slighting her dream.

With no desire but to see him humiliate himself before the girl whose hand he held she unleashed a torrent of her allure in his direction. It was not everything she could control, but it would be enough to turn even the most resistant men Fleur had encountered into a drooling, doddering wreck.

As her charm travelled across the hall it captured every male in its path. They were left enthralled, staring at her with vacant, empty eyes, lost completely in the rapture of her allure. Roger Davies was no exception.

It was obvious what she had done, every girl in the hall was staring at her in anger or disbelief. Madame Maxime would be furious, but Fleur could not bring herself to care. All she wanted was for Harry to understand how wrong of him it was to laugh at her and how angry she was with him. It would be best if he did that by coming to beg her to be his date for the Yule Ball in front of the girl he seemed so close to. Then he'd understand how it felt to have the hope of a dream torn away. Fleur would feel they were even again after that.

He didn't notice. Harry's only reaction was to throw a puzzled glance around the room, shrug and smile before turning back to the girl at his side.

It cut the wind from the sails of Fleur's anger and for a second she just stared at the couple in shock.

He cannot possibly have not felt that.

Yet Harry still seemed oblivious to what she had done. The girl he was with, however, was staring at her in apoplectic rage. The fingers of the hand that was not in Harry's had clenched into a fist so tight her knuckles had turned white and was inching towards her wand with deliberate malice.

It was then that Fleur realised she had just done what every Beauxbatons girl had accused her of. She had deliberately used her allure in an attempt to charm another girl's boyfriend. It did not matter that her intent had been to humiliate him rather than steal him, or why Fleur had tried it, she done it all the same and everyone would know.

The girl started towards her in clear, righteous anger, but Harry caught her arm and whispered something to her before she could cause a scene. The two of them began whispering to each other very quietly, with Harry gesturing confusedly at the hall and people around them.

Even now he does not notice, does not realise.

It was too much. Nothing would give him a glimpse of the realisation she had had. His potential to be her equal would fade as unnoticeable as she seemed to be to him.

Fleur took the opportunity to turn away and leave before things grew worse. Her guilt was not strong enough to force her to apologise, even if she knew she should, her pride was seriously smarting from validating the rumours she had believed herself above for so long, but the image that had somehow become dear to her slipping further out of reach hurt most. A weaker Fleur, a younger Fleur, would have cried, but she had grown stronger in the time she had spent alone.

As she strode, head held high, still smiling stiffly, from the hall, she glimpsed Harry and his girl locked in an argument of increasingly furious whispers.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to those that do! (I like that, it rhymed) I do apologise for this being a tad shorter than usual and if anyone has any better ideas of how to format the song please PM me or include it in a review. I don't really like how it is set out at the moment, it's offending my sense of right and wrong, but I have no alternatives.

20. Nobility's Curse

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I have breached the 80 000 word mark! Actually this feels like a bad thing at the moment since my most recent, original novel is still 210 000 words long after cutting out sections. I need to get rid of more and every time I delete a word I feel like I'm killing one of own children, which is technically true in a rather morbid, metaphoric way.

Anyway, you guys came to read my ramblings not listen to me complain about the minor tragedies of my first world problems, so, without further ado, chapter 20.

Chapter 20

Harry had not seen Katie since convincing her not to attack Beauxbatons' champion in the middle of the Great Hall. It had only been a couple of days, but he was beginning to worry.

He didn't even know what he had done that had upset her. Fleur was a Triwizard Tournament champion and, though Katie was tough, would have demolished her with ease. Harry had not wanted to see her hurt, especially as there hadn't really been a reason for Katie to be angry in the first place.

Sighing, he turned to watch the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower, fingering the unopened letter from his godfather and leaning on the balustrade. Katie would come out for breakfast eventually, then he would able to speak with her and work out what was going on. If it was to do with Fleur, which was the only thing he could think of, then he would make sure Katie didn't feel jealous or threatened by her. He wasn't all that concerned by the french witch. She seemed haughty, proud and arrogant, though occasionally he glimpsed something more, like when he had leant her Hedwig to write to her sister and seen, for a moment someone that reminded Harry of himself. That instant had been a few seconds long and he had considered opening up just a little to her, then she had insulted him again, implying that his age meant he was somehow unable to have ambitions or dreams he could fulfil.

Harry had quite enjoyed throwing her own words back in her face to spite her. It had felt very justified. Fleur Delacour, then, was in no way a threat to Katie, nor had she done anything to enrage her. It confused him completely.

He would just have to hope that her anger, which might have been exacerbated by the Firewhiskey she had drunk at the Three Broomsticks Inn, had passed.

Not that there is a reason for her to feel like that in the first place.

It was several long minutes and many more neutral or cold looks from his housemates before she appeared.

'Katie,' he greeted her warmly.

'Harry.' She looked very upset for some reason. He hoped whatever had caused it was not because of him. Harry rather thought he could grow to like Katie quite a lot.

'Are you ok?' He asked the question very carefully, swallowing nervously when her face fell even further.

'I did something very stupid,' she admitted in such a small voice Harry could hardly hear her.

'If it's to do with what happened in the Great Hall then it doesn't matter,' Harry assured her. 'I don't know why you were so angry with Fleur Delacour, I just hope it wasn't to do with me.'

Katie gave him a shocked look. 'Do you not see how she affects everyone around her?'

'They all stare at her,' Harry remembered. He had found it amusing that for once he was not the one being stared at when he entered a room.

'She's part veela, Harry,' Katie explained. 'I overheard Hermione telling the other guys in your year. They all stare at her because she uses her magic to charm them into liking her.'

'I've never noticed it.' Harry had felt the affects of the Bulgarian veela at the World Cup, but felt nothing from Fleur Delacour. Hermione was probably right, she normally was, but Harry had never felt any affects from Fleur Delacour.

'I know you don't,' Katie smiled. 'In the Great Hall, after you laughed, she tried to use it on you even though we were clearly together. You didn't even flinch, but I was so angry...' She trailed off, whatever had upset her clearly resurfacing in her mind.

'I didn't realise,' Harry confessed. 'I didn't know why you were angry.'

'She tried to steal you with her magic and then,' Katie's lip trembled, 'then you defended her.'

'I'm sorry,' Harry apologised, guilt flooding through him as he realised how it must have seemed to her. 'I didn't know. I promise.'

He had hurt her feelings so carelessly, so sure he was right that he had never even tried to consider things from her point of view.

I should have paid more attention and known what was going on around me before jumping to conclusions. Salazar was right; there was still too much he did not know.

'I know you didn't,' Katie's eyes were gradually filling with tears, 'but I was so angry with you that when Roger Davies asked me to the Yule Ball in the corridor afterwards I said yes immediately.'

All of the guilt that Harry felt evaporated. Roger Davies. The one who Fleur Delacour rejected before trying to charm him had asked Katie to the Ball.

It was blindingly obvious he had done it to get back at Harry for managing to get Fleur Delacour's attention when he could not, and Katie had agreed to go with him.

How could she?

'I'm so sorry.' Katie's eyes overflowed and tears began to pour down her cheeks. 'After the Ball we can go on another date,' she half-suggested, half-begged through her tears. 'I really enjoyed our first one.'

Harry didn't understand. He would have never considered doing what she had, no matter how angry he had been, and surely she could just tell Roger Davies she had changed her mind.

He's considered quite attractive among the girls, a cold, spiteful little voice reminded him. Perhaps Katie is a little taken with him too.

Harry wanted to ignore the voice that sounded chillingly like Tom Riddle, to defend Katie and cry out she was innocent, but the little ball of cold had settled where his heart was and all the words he might have said froze somewhere in his chest.

When he didn't say anything Katie stumbled forwards and collapsed into his chest. He closed his arms around her to hold her up. Her tears were warm as they soaked into the shoulder of his robes, but they were the only warmth he felt from her. The comfortable, pleasant heat he had felt before had vanished completely.

'I was going to ask you to the Yule Ball,' he wondered aloud, the words coming straight from the cold ball in his chest. 'I sort of assumed we would eventually end up going together after you asked me on a date.' His voice came out very flat and devoid of feeling. 'I turned down Ginny for that and I was about to ask you now because I wanted to make sure you didn't worry about Fleur Delacour.'

Somehow Katie's crying had grown harder at his words and the warm, wet patch on his shoulder spread to encompass part of his chest and upper arm.

Harry waited for her tears to cease and then drew back as she dabbed at her face with the sleeve of her robes. Katie's eyes were red and her cheeks shiny. Somehow after crying she looked even cuter than before.

If she had looked like this yesterday I might have kissed her.

Harry had no desire to kiss her now. The idea simply seemed wrong.

'I think we could have made a good couple,' Harry told her with genuine regret, 'but I guess we'll just have to settle for being something else instead.'

He had a vague, desperate hope that he might somehow forget what she had done so they could return to the happiness of before, but he knew, even as he hoped, that it would never happen. It was a small thing really, a tiny, petty gesture made in alcohol affected anger, but it had been enough. Roger Davies' face hung in his head every time he looked her and he knew he would always doubt her fidelity.

Such a small thing and so much lost.

Harry's heart thawed and he choked on something that was part laugh, part sob, this was not how he had imagined his first relationship ending. It hadn't even really started, but he couldn't forget what she had done to spite him and he couldn't seem to forgive her for it either.

Katie's lip began to tremble once more and she whirled and ran back into Gryffindor Tower before her tears started again.

Harry felt hollow, as if someone had drive their hand into his chest and pulled out his heart. He might have believed they had if he could not hear its beating faintly in the back of his head. The sound of its rhythm was the only thing he could really focus on, everything else seemed distant and unimportant. Harry might as well have been back at the World Cup for all the ashes he could taste within his mouth.

It had not been until Katie told him she was going with Roger Davies that he had realised he had been looking forward to going to the Ball with her. Even the opening dance that just featured the champions would have been enjoyable with Katie. Now he would have to find another girl to go with. One of the ones who gawked at his scar, or dreamt of the limelight. A girl who would stand next to Harry to be seen while he felt like a silhouette of himself beside her.

Perhaps I just won't go.

He had been completely right in his assumption that the Yule Ball would cause problems for him, but he had severely underestimated how much they would hurt. It, Roger Davies' spite and Fleur Delacour's temper had cost him Katie, whose friendship had come to mean a great deal to him.

Harry was half-tempted to go and exact revenge on Roger Davies. His jealous, petty retaliation against Harry was what had caused this most of all. There were a thousand ways he could take his vengeance, but in the end he decided just to walk away. It was easier to treat them all as if they were strangers. Eventually they would all become strangers and he would not care.

Every time he got involved with Gryffindor Tower this year things seemed to get worse. Ron, Hermione and his first wand, and now Katie. It seemed to be his fate for everything to go wrong within his house, then he remembered what he was and smiled bitterly.

My fate is to die.

The thought was overly melodramatic and he laughed weakly before turning away from the portrait of the fat lady.

Harry would not be coming back here if he could avoid it. The Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets, where he was now headed, were all he needed.

He sat down on the tip of tongue that spanned the pool across to the door to Salazar's study. Slytherin could wait until he had read Sirius' letter. Harry hoped it was good news, or encouragement, or praise, or just anything positive. He wasn't sure he could withstand anything negative at the moment. He'd reached out earnestly and been somebody to someone again for the first time he could remember. The someone, Katie, had betrayed him, left him so inexplicably, and now he was nobody to everyone again.

I hate it, he snarled to himself.

There wasn't much he wouldn't do ensure he did not become this person of nothing again. The feeling of emptiness, purposeless was unbearable. He had been flung into the void, the space between feelings and distractions, where the consuming whispers waited. They gnawed at him, eating away everything he thought was himself and if he could not escape them they would one day devour him completely. Harry would be left a hollow, apathetical shell of a person that the world could never touch. He could imagine no worse fate.

Fortunately, Sirius' letter was about as positive as anything inanimate could be, and harry felt a flood of affection for the man. There was concern for his well being, pride at his achievements, condemnation for his fickle, former friends. Everything and anything Harry could have expected from a parent was untidily scrawled across the cheap parchment in thin ink. Sirius may well have risked a fate worse than death simply to buy the materials with which to send this letter.

It was the last sentence that had brought the affection from Harry. Concern at his entering the tournament was to be expected and not unwelcome. He was glad his godfather cared about him, pride at how well Harry had done and how much better he was becoming, that was pleasing too, but the single line that contained Sirius' advice on the Triwizard Tournament was invaluable to Harry.

Prove them all wrong, it read, in letters that had been etched hard into the parchment's surface. Win the damn thing.

Harry would do exactly as his godfather advised. His former friends thought he was under the influence of a dark wizard, he'd show them he was too strong for that to be true, those who thought turning on him would let them step out of his shadow, would find themselves further within it, and Fleur Delacour, whose affronted pride had been part of the reason he lost Katie, would never forget being beaten by a fourteen year old. There would be a trophy with his name on it. A real, tangible thing that he had done himself and would be know for. That would make him somebody. It had to.

Harry gave the piece of parchment a small smile. For all of his godfather's flaws, and Harry knew there were many, he had earned as much trust as Harry had to give. A cold chill ran down Harry's spine at the idea of telling Sirius everything. It was not that he feared Sirius would abandon him like the others, Harry knew he would not, but how could he explain that he had to die to the only real living family he had. Salazar's portrait had been dead for a thousand years and Harry knew that it would never accept the idea that his heir should sacrifice his life.

So he could not write about horcruxes, or about the pain that Sirius would feel when he learned that his godson had to die. There would be no warning and no preparation for the poor man who had little else left to lose but Harry.

It is unfair.

It was always unfair. Harry had done nothing to deserve this. His parents had done nothing to justify their fate, neither had Sirius, or any of the others who had suffered at Voldemort's hand. Yet there was nothing that could be done.

He raised his wand from his sleeve and pressed the tip against the centre of Sirius' letter. The parchment browned where the wand's tip touched it, then burst into flames, curling upon itself and disintegrating into ash. The word win was illuminated briefly, surrounded by yellow licks of flame, then it was gone with the rest.

Harry hated having to burn the letters his godfather sent him. They were the only ones he got and watching them crumble to pieces twisted something jagged within him. Again, though, there was nothing that could be done. If the letters were discovered then so might Sirius be and his godfather's life and soul were worth far more than any regret Harry felt for destroying his letters.

Writing a reply would be just as painful as burning the letter. He would have to pretend everything was as it had been when he sent the first. The Triwizard Tournament would need to seem his main concern and finding whomever had put him in his second. Katie, horcruxes and the Chamber of Secrets would never appear. It was little better than lying to the one man who cared about him more than anything else and went so against the grain of Harry's nature it physically hurt.

He tilted his hand and let the ashes slip into the pool beneath the bridge. Somewhere down at the bottom of the cold, dark water they would join what little was left of the other letter Sirius had sent.

Harry watched them scatter across the surface, float, then eventually sink, with a clenched jaw and a heavy heart. Nothing ever seemed to go his way. The only consolation he would get in return for his hopes, dreams and life was that Voldemort would be coming with him into death.

It was very little solace to him.

Dying would make him nothing again, and this time it would be permanent. In an awful moment Harry imagined the nothingness that came after death might be the same as the consuming emptiness he felt when he stood alone amongst others.

If that is true, then I never want to die.

Salazar was still staring down at Tom Riddle's notes on Horcruxes, just as Harry had left him, when he eventually mustered up the will to stand up from the bridge and enter the study.

'I may have a solution,' he announced grandly the moment Harry walked in.

'Tell me,' Harry replied tiredly, wanting nothing more than to forget and escape from the yearning he felt for the warmth Katie's hand had gifted him.

'I believe that the piece of Tom Riddle's soul must have latched on to your own in order for it to survive being in the same body as another soul. A body cannot house two souls in conflict, one must be subdued or they must coexist peacefully.'

Coexisting peacefully did not seem a very appropriate description to Harry. He remembered all too clearly the lengths to which Quirrell had needed to go to house Voldemort. Drinking unicorns blood and subjugating himself to his phantasmal master. The man had tried to kill him twice, coming closest when he jinxed Harry's broom. Quidditch, of course, just reminded him of Katie.

Maybe I won't be seeker next year after all.

'And that means what for me?' Harry tried to focus on what the portrait was saying about horcruxes, crucial to him as it was, but the slowly cooling damp patch on his robes was a potent reminder of the girl he had thought he would allow him to remain someone.

'Since you are still in control of yourself and were unaware of its presence the soul fragment must be subdued. From the notes a connection must exist between the two souls within you.' The portrait drew itself up, face solemn. 'It should be possible for you to either absorb or expel it once the link is broken. The latter is more likely since I only saw a single reference to the absorption of soul fragments and it was in hypothetical reference to pieces of ones own soul.' The portrait peered down at the notes to refresh its memory. 'There it is. The author believed that true, complete remorse, the opposite of the intent used to fracture the soul, combined with an attempt to undo the creation of a horcrux might reverse the affects of one, transferring and absorbing the piece back to where it belongs.'

'How would I break the link?' Harry queried, finally forgetting about Katie in the hope of having a way to escape death.

'You would have to fracture your soul,' Salazar responded.

'No.' Harry knew exactly what the painting meant and he would not do it. 'Find another way.'

'I tried,' his ancestor confessed, 'I knew you would not agree so I kept searching.'

'You found nothing,' Harry deduced, a wry, regretful smile crossing his lips as his hope died once again.

'I found nothing.' The snake writhed agitatedly across the shoulders of the founder. Slytherin knew that he would fail and his family would end if he did not convince Harry, his desperation and determination were obvious, but futile

'Then I must die,' Harry decided with a hollow smile. 'Once we are sure there are no other horcruxes, I must die. There is nothing that can be done about it.'

'You do not need to be a sacrifice,' Salazar pleaded. 'You are my heir, the last of my family that I recognise.'

'So I should sacrifice someone else in my place?' Harry demanded.

'Someone must die,' Salazar said bluntly. 'It can be you, or someone of your choice.'

'I will not kill to save myself,' Harry declared vehemently, switching to Parseltongue as his emotional state fluctuated wildly between despair and anger.

'You can choose someone who already deserves death,' Salazar suggested. 'The Killing Curse will not change its affect and you, who deserve more, do not need to be sacrificed. A single, deserving death to temporarily fracture your soul, then a moment's pain to rip the piece of Riddle from you if you can find it. Tell me that it is not a sacrifice worth making to preserve your life. You are a good wizard in more ways than one, your death is unnecessarily noble, be selfish for once. In the end the wizarding world may profit from it too.'

'I will not do it,' Harry decided. 'It is not my place to judge others, or sentence them.'

'You have grown much since you first found me here, Harry, but you still let others use you for themselves without a thought to what it will mean to you. Nobility was Godric's curse too, but even he listened when I offered alternatives.' Salazar shook his head sadly. 'I hope you reconsider in the time to come,' he finished.

'I do not let others use me,' Harry denied. 'There are plenty of those who wanted nothing from me but friendship.'

'How many of them stand alongside you now,' the portrait asked. 'Your housemates have abandoned you, the few who you tell me have returned to you want things you cannot give them. Albus Dumbledore has kept you alive, but only to sacrifice you later when it best suits him.'

'My godfather,' Harry responded fiercely. A day ago he would have added Katie's name, but now, even if she still hoped to be with him, he was not so sure.

'Sirius Black,' the painting stated sceptically. 'You told me his story and for all his determination to stand by you now, which is both resolute and admirable, Harry, his first reaction to the death of your parents was revenge, not seeing to your well being. Sirius Black may care for you a great deal, but his past actions have been misguided. Vengeance rather than justice, a failing I know too well, wallowing in misery for thirteen years rather than trying to change things, then ignoring the lesson of the past and trying for revenge again. When he has to choose between being there for you and Peter Pettigrew what do you think he will do?'

Harry could not refute the implication his ancestor made. It had been the same as last year when he broke out of Azkaban to kill Peter Pettigrew. Sirius was his godfather, he did care, Harry cared for him, but his hatred of the treacherous Wormtail had been more important to Sirius than Harry before.

'There are alway things that are placed above you because you let those around you feel that you will always stand by them and help them no matter what they choose, so they choose whatever they want most and rely on you to sacrifice and endure. They exploit your nobility, your generosity and your tenacity, they always have, and they always will. I wish you would not let them.'

'I will find others,' he echoed Salazar's words from before, 'equals. They will stand alongside me, never let me down and never leave me alone.'

In the eye of Harry's mind he was standing next to Katie, a smiling, blushing Katie with one hand in his and the other lightly resting upon her stomach. One of his arms lay across her shoulders, a glinting band of silver adorning the third finger of his hand and hers. Equals, partners, bound together by more than magic. It was an image more bittersweet than anything the Mirror of Erised could have shown him.

'I hope you do,' the founder replied sorrowfully, 'but what good are such friends when you know their eventual role will only be to bury you.'

AN: Please read and review. A thank you to all those who do. I hope you all hate this chapter in the same way and as much as I do.

P.S. Somebody please re-read my earlier chapters and tell me if they're a bit better. Even if it's just a skim over them. I wanna feel appreciated ;)

21. Dumbledore's Mistakes

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Happy times are here!

Additionally, though I'm very flattered that in the handful of hours between me mentioning it so many people have offered, that I'm probably ok without a beta for the moment. A lot of you have said that there aren't too many errors and I do write quite fast and don't want to impose 12 000 words on some poor person a day. I do have a list of names of people who were willing to help me in case I change my mind though :)

Chapter 21

If there was a word that Harry had would use to describe how he had spent the last week it would have been wallowing.

Nothing had managed to break him out of his misery. He had spent almost all of his time sitting on the end of the Gryffindor table practicing his disillusionment charm and eating whatever food had appeared on the table. He was fairly sure he had even slept sitting there, still invisible.

The disillusionment charm had been the only magic he had performed. The warmth of his wand when he cast the spell was the only heat he felt in the cold hall and Harry dearly missed the brief flare of something that he had had with Katie.

Harry was certain he had not really loved her. He didn't know an awful lot about love, his only source prior to his date with Katie had been the overly romantic rubbish in Aunt Petunia's favourite books, but Harry knew that he had not known her well enough to truly love her. It had been pleasant to be with Katie, she had liked Harry, and as long as that had been true he had known he would never completely return to being nobody. It had been comforting and it had made her important to him in a way few others had been, but that was gone now, and he was left missing what he hadn't previously realised existed.

The worst part was that he could not understand why she had done it. Katie had asked him on the date, she had initiated every aspect of their short lived relationship and seemed just as content in his company as he had been in hers. Her reaction simply didn't make sense.

Harry could, if he really tried, understand the reactions of the other member of his house. They were tired of standing in his shadow and, no matter how much he disliked his own fame, nothing had ever happened let them into the light. Having spent most of the first eleven years of his life unseen he could empathise, though he did seriously disagree with how they had reacted. Even his family's hatred of magic was comprehensible; everyone fears the unknown. Katie's decision was so inexplicable Harry could not wrap his head around it. She must have known what Roger Davies actually wanted and that she would regret it afterwards, but Katie had done it regardless. It left him at a loss as for how to act around her, or he would have had he spoken to Katie since.

Harry hadn't actually spoken to any living person since Katie had run from him into Gryffindor Tower with tears streaming down her face. He supposed he should have spoken to her, apologised or tried to fix things, but he just couldn't seem to bring himself to try. It was like the chair that lay in pieces on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, mending it meant undoing the moment, and though Harry longed for nothing more than to undo what had happened he knew that undoing it simply allowed for it to happen again. He and Katie might fix things, the warmth might return, the company, the feeling that he mattered, that he meant something, was somebody, might be reborn, only to be torn away a second time. Harry could not find it in himself to risk that hollow, empty feeling again. His courage had found its limit.

Some Gryffindor I am.

It all seemed rather pointless now. He was a horcrux, getting stronger did not matter when he had to die, becoming somebody to someone did not matter when it would not last. Dumbledore would find the other horcruxes Tom Riddle had made, destroy them, and then it would be his turn.

His body had gradually begun to grow visible again, so Harry recast the charm. The magic swirled from his wand with a soft ripple of warmth up his arm and he noted uncaringly that he had finally achieved the state of complete invisibility that most wizards and witches never could. There was bitter irony in his mastery over a charm that rendered him invisible, unnoticeable and nobody when being nothing was what he had always been.

Wonderful, he thought. Now I can sneak about even better than Fleur Delacour does.

There was a small surge of pride from having beaten the other champion after she had been so dismissive of him, but it was swiftly swallowed by the same swell of apathy that had consumed everything else. Fleur Delacour was a talented witch and likely already older than he would ever be. She would have a career, a family, children, all the things Harry had half-dreamed of having himself and there was nothing he was willing to do that could change it.

Fleur Delacour might have to read his name off the Triwizard Trophy, but it would be more an epitaph than a statement of triumph. His pride was little more than a bitter taste in his mouth.

Harry had been more tempted by Salazar's solution than he had let on. There were plenty of wizards and witches that were more deserving of death than him. He had not lied, it was not his place to sentence or judge, but there those who had already been sentenced and judged by society. They lived on stolen time, and deserved the death that might save him. His refusal had been based on his desperate desire to avoid emulating Tom Riddle any more than he already had and his revulsion at the Killing Curse itself.

He very much doubted he could be convinced by anyone to use the curse that had robbed him of his family and left him as nothing. If he had to die he'd rather it was on his own terms, amongst equals, or at least with those who respected him.

Only those who are strong get respect.

Harry had read that somewhere. In one of Vernon's guides to management and leadership, in some novel of Petunia's, or one of the hundred spell books he had found at Hogwarts. It didn't really matter; it was true. If he couldn't live to be somebody, to find equals, he would at least die respected.

No more wallowing, no more avoiding what is coming.

The disillusionment charm cut out abruptly, his intent to be seen and respected nullifying the enchantment. It was only a matter of minutes before he was noticed. He stoically ignored the stares of the other students and the whispers, even when he caught Katie's name being bandied about.

'Mr Potter,' the stern voice of Professor Mcgonagall called after several long minutes had passed. 'If you would like to accompany me to the headmaster's office.'

Harry rose from his seat, stretching stiffly. He wondered what Dumbledore wanted. The headmaster had not spoken a word to him since his remonstration in the antechamber over a month ago.

'If you like, Mr Potter, we can go via the tower so you can change into some fresh clothes.' There was a stiff suggestion in the tone of his head of house.

'It's ok,' Harry smiled, glancing down at his crumpled, creased robes. With a subtle motion of his wand within his sleeve he transfigured them. Crisp, clean black school robes took the place of his worn clothing.

'You have become much more accomplished than I realised,' Mcgonagall commented. There was a glint of approval in her eye as she inspected Harry's transfiguration. 'To the headmaster's office then.'

No further words were spoken between them until they reached the gargoyle.

'Sweet crystals,' Mcgonagall ordered in a tone that implied a certain level of resignation at the headmaster's choice of passwords.

Harry followed his head of house slowly up the staircase, wondering with every step why he had been summoned. He hadn't seen or heard anything from Dumbledore since his headmaster had conveyed his disappointment in Harry after his selection for the Triwizard Tournament and, after his recent realisations, he didn't want to see him.

'Harry,' the headmaster gestured to the seat in front of his desk. 'Humbug?' He proffered a bowl of the offensively bright, striped sweets in Harry's direction. He shook his head politely, still bemused by the eccentricities of the world's most powerful wizard.

'Professor Mcgonagall has been quite concerned about you, Harry,' the headmaster announced sadly, withdrawing the bowl. 'She overheard some of the rumours and after investigating brought her suspicions to me.'

The aged professor ran a hand through his silver beard and shifted in his chair. 'It seems that nobody has seen you in some time, Harry. A few of your fellow students were quite concerned.'

'Who?' Harry was genuinely curious.

'Miss Weasley, Miss Bell and Mr Longbottom.' Dumbledore fixed him with a piercing look, his electric blue eyes as bright as gimlets. 'I am glad you have learned more about the cloak Harry, it is a powerful heirloom, but you should try to resist the temptation of using it. Artefacts such as your cloak carry a risk with them, becoming addicted to their use is dangerous.'

'I do not understand,' Harry responded, puzzled. 'Heirloom or not, it is still just an invisibility cloak with a few extra enchantments.'

Dumbledore pushed his half-moon spectacles up the bridge of his nose. 'What do you know about age lines, Harry?' he asked curiously.

'They prevent anyone below the set age from crossing them,' Harry shrugged.

'Do you know how?'

'No.'

For a moment the headmaster seemed incredibly old. 'I have made a mistake, it seems. There have been too many of late.'

'What do you mean?' Harry hoped he was about to tell him of horcruxes, but somehow he doubted it.

'Your cloak is a very useful thing Harry. It is not an invisibility cloak but a rare artefact designed to completely conceal its owner, including his magic. An age line can only be cheated by such an object. They are very simple, if obscure, wards that distinguish the age of a wizard or witch's magic and respond accordingly, as such they are almost impossible to cheat, especially in conjunction with the Goblet of Fire, an object that is very hard to deceive indeed. I'm afraid that when your name came out I simply assumed that you had figured out the abilities of your family heirloom and had used it. I felt it was the most likely possibility and am ashamed to admit I never really considered the others.'

'I did not use it,' Harry defended, then, remembering what the headmaster had once said to him before the Mirror of Erised continued with a small smile. 'I do not need a cloak to become invisible, headmaster.'

'That is a very admirable ability, Harry,' Dumbledore smiled, there was obvious pride in his expression. 'We are two of very few wizards or witches who attain such prowess with the disillusionment charm. I am glad I do not have to ask if you entered the tournament.'

'That is all very well, Albus, but not what I came to you about.' Professor Mcgonagall's tone had gained an extra note of stiffness.

'I know, Minerva,' the headmaster nodded sagely, 'but it was important too.'

'I am concerned about the rumours that you have not been seen inside Gryffindor tower for a month, that when I asked for your whereabouts my Gryffindors, my lions, did not care about one of their own enough to find out. What is happening in my house?' Professor Mcgonagall had her lips pursed in the same look of appalled outrage she normally reserved for Neville's attempts at transfiguration.

'They do not understand,' Harry answered simply. He did not care to explain the rift that had formed, it was not going to go away just because the headmaster or his head of house knew about it.

'Is there anything that we can do?' the transfiguration professor asked more softly.

'There is nothing,' Harry smiled wryly, remembering what he was, 'that can or should be done.'

'Very well,' Dumbledore sighed. 'I will do my best to discover how you have ended up in the Triwizard Tournament. Professor Moody has his suspicions, he has been telling me for weeks that the faces in his foe glass are getting closer and clearer.'

Harry shifted on his chair rather sceptical of the paranoid professor and his paraphernalia of instruments.

'Is there anything you would like to discuss Harry? You did well in the first task, much better than anyone expected, especially with a new wand.'

There were lots of things Harry wanted to discuss and he had to bite his tongue to stop him from asking about horcruxes just to see the look of shock on Dumbledore's face. Self preservation, no matter how temporary, was more important that fleeting satisfaction.

'I will try my hardest to win,' Harry informed him seriously.

'Mr Potter the Triwizard Tournament is meant to be a stern test for exceptional wizards several years older than you are.' Professor Mcgonagall seemed more worried about him than dismissive of his chances, but Harry still felt a small flicker of fury.

'Then when I win it will be quite the embarrassment for the other three,' Harry replied as calmly as he could. Dumbledore gave him a small smile and selected a pink-striped humbug from the bowl on his desk. Slipping the sweet into his mouth he sucked it thoughtfully for a moment.

'I do have a question for you, Harry,' one wizened hand extended across the desk to catch his own. The missing thumbnail was glaringly obvious atop the mahogany surface. 'When did you learn to apparate?'

'This year,' Harry answered earnestly. 'I would have been wandless for the first task had I not.' He eyed his headmaster warily, knowing all too well what he did was technically illegal.

'I am not going to report you for illegal apparation,' Dumbledore reassured him. 'I was merely concerned you might splice yourself more seriously next time you tried to visit Diagon Alley. Mr Ollivander was very impressed by you and very proud of your new wand, he is an expert in the lore of wands and I trust his judgement on the subject implicitly. He told me your wand, despite it's changed and even slightly worrying nature, was not something to be concerned about and that you were a prodigious and talented pupil I had every right to feel proud of.'

'I won't be repeating my feat,' Harry told him. 'It was only out of necessity that I ever attempted it.' He withdrew his hand from Dumbledore's loose grip and tucked it into his pocket. 'As for my wand, it is no concern of anyone's but mine.' He flashed Dumbledore his brightest smile to convince him, but the glimmer of teeth did not have the effect Harry had hoped for.

Instead of smiling back, or acting reassured by it, the headmaster shivered and paled considerably.

'Albus?' Professor Mcgonagall asked, concerned.

'It is nothing, Minerva,' the headmaster smiled, nodding rather foolishly. 'I was momentarily reminded of another mistake of mine, one that I still hope to be able to correct before it is too late.'

Is the mistake me and my harboured horcrux, Harry wondered, or Riddle. It could be either of them, but Harry suspected it was the latter. He had borrowed Tom Riddle's charming smile for his own use without ever thinking that others might recognise it.

'No need to look so nervous Harry,' Dumbledore smiled. He had finally finished his humbug. 'There is nothing you need to worry about except the Triwizard Tournament for the moment. You have your OWLs next year too and I expect you to perform quite spectacularly on them.'

So I do not need to die for another year and a half at least, Harry realised. Provided Dumbledore was not lying, and he did not appear to be, the benign twinkle had returned to his eye, Harry had only Voldemort to fear for a little while.

Only Voldemort.

If he had been alone he would have laughed at the thought. Any other wizard would have been terrified at the prospect of Tom Riddle constantly coming after them. Harry was afraid, but only of dying in ignominy. If he was to be a sacrifice to stop Voldemort's terror returning he wanted to be remembered and respected for it. It seemed only fair he got some small compensation in return for losing everything.

'You can return to your studies, or to trying to discover the clue to the second task,' Dumbledore told him benevolently. It seemed that the kindly headmaster had returned, his trust and approval restored.

It's a shame his trust in me has returned just as my trust in him has been broken.

Harry had no intention of taking Albus Dumbledore at his word ever again. For all his good intentions the old wizard knew too much, and worse, he kept that knowledge from those who deserved to know it in his attempt to arrange events in whatever manner he thought best. The headmaster was clearly a believer in the greater good.

The gargoyle slid shut behind him and Harry was left with a slight sense of relief that Dumbledore was no longer watching him but looking for whomever had put him in the tournament and a list of three names. Ginny, Neville and Katie. They were the only members of the school that had been concerned about him and his whereabouts. Ginny's reasons were clear and he could not face Katie, not yet. Neville, on the other hand, intrigued him. The shy, clumsy boy had not spoken to him since he had effectively ended their friendship in the dormitory, but evidently retained some loyalty to one he had once considered a friend.

The corridors grew progressively emptier as he made his way up towards the Room of Requirement. He felt the need to test himself, to see how much stronger he was than he had been at the start of the year. Harry might only have a year and a half to live after all.

Halfway along the seventh floor corridor a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him into the wall. Harry bounced off it hard and fell, winded, on to the floor. His glasses slid from his face on impact with the wall and skittered across the floor out of reach.

'So,' a familiar voice drawled, 'you actually got something right, Weasley.'

'Shut up,' Ron's voice snapped. 'Seventh floor I said, and here he is, skulking.'

One of Crabbe or Goyle dragged him up from the hard floor and pushed him against the wall.

'I told you that you'd pay,' Ron smirked. 'Nobody hurts my little sister, not even you.' There was genuine ire in Ron's voice. It was a bit of a surprise to Harry who had assumed his threats in the Great Hall were empty. At least it seemed Ron was loyal to his family, if not to some of his friends.

'So you join forces with Malfoy,' Harry sneered at his once friend. 'That's a new low you've sunk to, even for you.' He readied himself for a fight, there was no way he was not going to struggle.

'He's still a git,' Ron snarled, 'but we needed some extra muscle to make sure you didn't slip away and disappear again. Besides, Dean is here too.'

'Is he,' Harry peered at the faces of those around him, without his glasses it was hard to see who was actually here. 'I assume he's still upset because your sister would rather spend her Christmas with me than him.'

'At least he'll be going with someone, you've only got a few days left,' Malfoy drawled. 'Everyone knows Katie Bell ditched you for Roger Davies. He's a much better prospect than you to be sure, but I never guessed that girl was actually smart enough to pull off something like that.' Harry's jaw twitched at the mention of Katie, but he ruthlessly suppressed the surge of emotion he felt. Now was not the time to show weakness, not in front of them.

'So what now?' Harry asked, straightening his right sleeve surreptitiously and fixing his bright smile on his face. 'Are we going to have a pleasant conversation?'

Someone shoved his glasses roughly back on to his face and things swam back into focus. Harry resisted the urge to smile at their stupidity, they had wasted a large part of their advantage in their desire to intimidate him.

'We're going to hex you so badly you'll be in the hospital wing for a week,' Dean growled, reaching for his wand as Crabbe and Goyle stepped back out of the way of the coming jinxes. It was he who had returned Harry's spectacles.

At least I won't have to worry about the Yule Ball, then.

The muggle-born was surprisingly quick, but Harry was faster. His wand was out of his sleeve and raised before Dean could draw his own.

There was no time for Harry to consider the consequences, he was outnumbered and cornered; it was hit hard, hit first and worry later.

The lightly powered blasting curse struck Dean on the shoulder and hurled him against the wall with a loud crack. Harry winced, but turned to the others without pausing.

'Serpensortia,' Malfoy cried. Clearly he had not learned from second year that summoning snakes against a parseltongue was ill-advised.

The summoned snake flew past Harry to land several feet away; he ignored it for the time being.

Thick, black ropes spun from air twisted around Crabbe and Goyle as they advanced. Dodging Ron's disarming charm, he swept his wand sideways and threw Malfoy's two henchmen into the blond Slytherin, cutting off his attempt to perform the paralysis jinx. His hawthorn wand was knocked from his hand as the three of them squirmed over one another in attempt to stand.

Harry knew they would have little success. His conjured ropes were strong and tightly bound around them.

That just leaves Ron.

The red-head was frozen, his wand outstretched towards Harry, as he looked around the corridor.

'Perhaps you should have brought a few more friends,' Harry suggested, stepping further away from the rapidly advancing serpent Malfoy had summoned.

Ron snapped out of his reverie.

'You used a blasting curse on Dean,' he spat, raising his wand again.

'It wasn't powerful,' Harry told him coldly, 'and you all deserved worse for trying to ambush me. You wanted to step out of my shadow and be seen as yourselves instead of my friends, I gave you that chance when I left you alone.'

He disarmed Ron before the youngest Weasley could attempt anything else and tossed his wand away down the corridor.

'You should have returned me the same courtesy,' he snapped icily and flicked his wand. Ron disappeared under black ropes, bound from head to toe. Harry frowned, he had not meant to put so much magic into the charm, but his temper and new wand often incited his magic to flow more strongly than he anticipated.

Malfoy had finally managed to squirm out from underneath his two henchmen, but it was another four metres to his wand. He wouldn't make it, and the blond pure-blood knew it.

'You tried this before,' Harry reminded him, gesturing at the snake that was still advancing towards him. 'Why did you think it would work now, when it failed last time. I'm much stronger.'

Malfoy just sneered. 'You won't hurt me, my father would destroy you.'

Harry gave him a blinding, charming smile. 'Shall we find out?' he offered. The snake was poisonous, a cobra, but not a species with lethal venom and Harry was in a very cruel mood. Crabbe and Goyle were almost out of the ropes and would take him to the hospital wing quickly enough.

They really should have never mentioned Katie.

'Bite him,' he hissed to the conjured cobra in angry parseltongue. Malfoy went white as a sheet at the sound.

'Did you forget?' Harry laughed as the snake lunged past him at Malfoy's chest.

There was a strangled exclamation and a gasp of pain as he walked on towards the Room of Requirement, but he didn't bother looking back.

Ron, Dean and Malfoy should have learned their lesson. If they left him alone, he would leave them alone. Otherwise he would dip into his more nasty collection of curses. Harry did not condone violence, but if they continued to try and visit it upon him, then perhaps the use of the bone splintering curse on a finger or two might remind them that what they were doing was wrong on more than one level.

A swift check of the Marauders' Map showed Ron and Dean on their way to the hospital wing and a few corridors back from them Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle followed. That was good. Harry only wanted them to leave him alone, he didn't particularly want them hurt.

He scanned the map for Katie and found her in the library with the two other Gryffindor chasers, Lee Jordan, and the Weasley twins. It was too early for him to want to speak with her. Harry needed to figure out his feelings first.

The map also showed Peter Pettigrew. It was the second time he had seen the traitor's name out by the quidditch pitch and Harry was sorely tempted to go down there, find him, and clear his godfather's name.

Not yet, he reminded himself. I'm not ready.

Harry was much stronger than he had been, but it was still a little while before he thought himself capable of winning a duel against an experienced, skilled wizard. Pettigrew, for all his cowardice, had been a Death Eater and shouldn't be underestimated. Harry would get to him when he was ready and when that moment came he would not fail. Peter Pettigrew would be captured, Sirius' name would be cleared, and the one person most responsible for his parents' deaths after Voldemort himself would be given to the dementors.

If anyone deserved a fate worse than death Harry thought Pettigrew did. A coward who had sold out his best friends out of fear to an inhuman wizard incapable of remorse or mercy. The dementors would have plenty of memories to feed off and Wormtail would have much misery to spend the rest of his life reliving.

AN: Please read and review, and thanks to everyone who has.

P.S. I noticed in a few reviews that some of you have been anticipating parts of this chapter for a while, hopefully it came soon enough to feel real. In addition it explains in part his lack of attempt to go after Pettigrew, something I hadn't previously included.

22. Finding a Date

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

We have reached the end of everything I wrote, or half-started writing, in Tanzania. That's a good thing, because it should mean fewer typos, or less typos, since I can't seem to find them to count them.

For all those who might be getting concerned about my pace for H/F, you were warned this would be slow, it's all planned out, and not going to change. That said, there are two reasons not to panic. The first is that this might now almost be a hundred thousand words, but it's only a month old, it isn't getting abandoned any time soon and frankly it's unlikely to ever be dropped; I hate leaving things unfinished. The second is, well, you'll just have to read on and see...

In case anyone is curious, and partially because I just like typing, my original novel is a very ambitious attempt to create a fantasy epic of similar detail (if not the quality since I'm not arrogant enough to hope of achieving it) o Martin o Tolkien, though more the latter than the former, and then using a deeper view of character and more emotive spin on things. I actually write psychological thriller, despite loving fantasy more, and want to sort of combine the internal, mental aspect of my genre with the creative, descriptive part of fantasy.

Having re-read that paragraph I might try changing my middle name to two names beginning with 'R'. Could be something there ;)

Chapter 22

'Why are you still trying to get stronger,' the portrait demanded from its place beneath one of the serpent effigies.

'I need to be more powerful,' Harry reminded him. He was a little puzzled by his ancestor's question; he'd answered it before and the painting never asked the same thing again once it received a satisfactory answer.

'For someone so set on dying you seem remarkably reluctant to accept it.'

'I do not want to die,' Harry told the painting from behind clenched teeth. 'I want to live. I want my dreams. I want my hope and I want my life.'

Salazar Slytherin blinked and peered at him closely. 'So you are not going to let them use and sacrifice you.'

'Either I am sacrificed for the gain of everyone, or I must use somebody for my own gain,' Harry replied sombrely. 'I'm not Tom Riddle. I will not destroy the lives of others just to preserve or improve my own.'

'Riddle stands at one extreme, you at the other,' the founder cried exasperatedly. 'See the middle ground! Walk it! Don't throw away your life because you're paranoid of emulating your predecessor.'

'Voldemort is not my predecessor,' Harry hissed.

'He was my heir before you came and proved to me you were more worthy. He is, without a doubt, distant family of yours. Do not delude yourself into thinking he is some personification of evil that you must avoid.' The portrait too had switched too parseltongue. 'I will tell you of the Tom Riddle I knew.'

Harry waited, fuming silently. He knew enough about Voldemort to know he should not be following in his footsteps.

'A boy came into this chamber, thin, ragged and alone. A child who dreamed of becoming something great enough to be remembered, to protect the few who had protected him. He was family, my heir, my legacy and I offered him my help. As the years past he withdrew within himself, cut off from the few he had trusted. Albus Dumbledore threw him back to the muggles that loathed him without a second thought for his well being, the students avoided him, not wanting to be dragged into his spiral to self-destruction. Within this chamber he learned he had the ability to be something great and he was determined to seize it. He swore he would be stronger. He promised himself to be powerful enough to be respected.'

'You said that you would tell me about Tom Riddle,' Harry interrupted, 'not me.'

Salazar laughed coldly. 'I am.'

Harry blanched.

'Did you think you were so different?' The founder asked him more gently. 'Even accounting for the effect of the horcrux within you the two of you would have been similar. I have said nothing because I knew you would not want to listen, but I will not stay silent if it means you will throw away your life over it.'

'Perhaps,' Harry responded, still slightly horrified by the resemblance between Tom Riddle and he, 'it is best I do, if I am so like him. The world does not need or want a second Lord Voldemort.'

'Don't be a fool,' Salazar snapped. 'You are a hundred times worse than Godric. It took Rowena and I a month to convince him the first time he killed that he was still a good person and a good wizard. You stand here with only noble intentions and speak about dying before you become a dark wizard. Did you not listen when I explained to you the principles of magic?'

'There is no light and dark, only power, and the intent that directs it,' Harry remembered.

'Then there is nothing that needs to be said. You are like him, but you are not him. I am sure I am not the only one who sees the similarity, Dumbledore must as well, Riddle often spoke of the man as something akin to an idol.'

'He does.' The image of the headmaster's playing face when Harry flashed him Tom Riddle's blinding smile swam briefly in the eye of his mind.

'And has he ever shown any concern that you might become another Voldemort? He may be raising you to sacrifice, keeping you alive until your death suits him best, but he knows that the two of you are still different.' The founder straightened up and raised his chin proudly; a sure sign some pithy phrase was about to fall from his lips. 'The two of you are apples, fallen far apart, but from the same tree.'

I suppose it is better than some of his metaphors.

Harry felt more than a little relief that his ancestor did not believe him too similar to Tom Riddle. A small voice of doubt murmured that the painting had probably not known him as well as it thought it did if it had not been able to predict what he would become, but Harry allowed himself to be convinced.

'It still changes nothing,' he reminded the portrait. 'I have to die, or Voldemort will eventually find a way to return and many more will suffer.'

'The horcrux that anchors him has to be destroyed,' Salazar corrected, 'you do not have to die for that to happen.'

'Someone has to die. I won't use the Killing Curse to tear apart my soul just to save myself.'

'It will heal,' the founder insisted. 'If it works somebody who should die will be dead and you will remain unchanged. The soul reflects you. As long as your intentions do not shift down a darker path your soul will be fine and you will never so much as see Tom Riddle's footprints again.'

'I won't do it.' Harry wished fervently that the portrait would give up. He wanted to test his magic, not argue with his canvas ancestor and wrestle with the less selfless side of his conscience.

'So you say,' Slytherin lamented. 'I wonder how many more of your trusted friends will try to use you before you realise that you too are entitled to be selfish.'

'I have no trusted friends left,' Harry told him flatly. 'There is small chance of me being used as you seem to fear. Those that would not stand by me will drift apart and I will no longer care for them. I will find equals who understand, or I will die strong enough to be respected by all.'

'I would sooner the former, than the latter, but if you insist on following this selfless path, one even Godric would have baulked at, then I fear the latter is the best you can hope for.'

Harry shot his ancestor a cold glare and drew his wand from his sleeve.

The disillusionment charm was the first thing he cast, to check whether his perfect invisibility had been fluke.

'You mastered it,' Slytherin murmured, impressed. Evidently it had not been luck.

'Papilionis ,' Harry whispered, ignoring the painting.

The Chamber of Secrets was filled with black butterflies. They swarmed and swirled around him in a whirring demi-sphere of wings.

'The butterflies,' he heard Salazar grouse faintly beneath the thrum of his conjurations'. 'What was wrong with conjuring snakes, a proper Heir of Slytherin would conjure serpents. Anything would be more seemly than little butterflies.'

Harry grinned and flicked the first butterfly in the portrait's direction as he transfigured it from the harmless insect to a razor-edged shard of steel.

'Stop that,' the painting exploded as the projectile ricocheted violently off the serpent above him.

In a matter of moments Harry covered the chamber in flurry of steel pieces. He had grown adept at this, the scratched, criss-crossed hide of the dead basilisk bore mute testimony to his practice with the piece of magic. It was a neat, clever combat enchantment, even if he had to say so himself. Harry did have to say it himself, because the only other who knew about it was Salazar and he'd rather light himself on fire than admit he approved of his heir using butterflies.

'You've grown very good at using that embarrassment,' Slytherin remarked acidly.

Harry ignored the snide comment and dispelled his butterflies and strewn projectiles in wisps of black smoke.

Turning to the pool he prepared to use his most draining enchantment. He always ended every session of magic use by trying to hold it as long as possible. Salazar had assured him that by practicing a spell so demanding, both magically and mentally, he would improve swiftly.

'Not from the water,' the portrait ordered. Harry turned to regard it curiously. His conjuration had always had an elemental twist to it, the strength of the summoned serpent came partially from whatever he had created it from.

'The air,' the founder suggested. 'If you can conjure it effectively from nothing but the air around you it will become a far more versatile and dangerous tool in any duel or combat you might find yourself in.'

Harry remembered how hard it had been to conjure his butterflies from the air and frankly thought that his ancestor had probably spent a few too many centuries down here on his own if he thought conjuring a seventy foot basilisk from air was even possible.

'Don't look so sceptical,' the painting snapped. 'I don't want you to give it flesh, blood and scales, coalesce it from the air, give it form from the element just as you have always done.'

Harry's scepticism did not fade in the slightest, but he did his best to rearrange his face into something more hopeful.

He slashed his wand away from his across his chest, focusing as clearly as he could on forming a basilisk form the air, its fang-filled maw and smooth scales striking from nothing across the chamber.

There was a blur of motion, like heat-haze in the distance, then the tongue bridge shattered like so much glass, spraying pieces across the pool.

'Never listen to my suggestions again,' Salazar told him sternly. There was a piece of bridge lodged in the edge of his frame and more than a few marks across the canvas from smaller bits of debris. 'Your focus must have been frighteningly intense to create an effect like that.'

The two of them silently regard the damage until Harry waved his wand and cast the mending charm. The bridge reformed perfectly, but Salazar's portrait was not affected by the spell.

'I don't understand why we couldn't see it,' the fonder muttered. 'I expected,' he clarified at Harry's raised eyebrow, 'for translucent serpent similar to the water based one. Yours was barely visible. It was as if you tried to form it from nothing rather than air, and somehow succeeded.'

Harry frowned, trying to recall his exact thoughts when he had performed the enchantment. He had, he realised, visualised creating it from nothing, but he had done the same for the butterflies without any unexpected effect.

'I think you made it a vacuum,' Salazar suggested tentatively. 'Somehow your mind made that conjured basilisk out of nothing, grasping the idea of something being made of nothing so completely and comprehensively it worked. I've never seen anything like it,' he finished a little jubilantly.

'I can test it again,' Harry suggested lightly.

'Not in the chamber,' Slytherin hissed. 'Go and ruin the Room of Requirement instead.'

Harry chuckled and tucked his wand up his sleeve. He was rather proud of just how destructive that piece of magic had been. He hoped he was able to replicate it in the future, no simple shield charm was going to stop an impact like that.

Then the implications of Salazar's explanation struck him and his pride drained away.

My most powerful spell is based on understanding the feeling of nothing.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. The irony was so bitter it burnt.

'Are you leaving?' The painting stared up at him from its propped up position. 'If you are you're not going until you've put me back in the study. I refuse to be left on the floor. I am Salazar Slytherin.'

'Technically you're just his painting,' Harry pointed out. The portrait was a little too fond of reminding him of who it was.

Slytherin opened his mouth a few times, but no words came out. Harry relished the brief moment of speechlessness that came before he was buried in a torrent of furious parseltongue.

'Ungrateful, am I?' he repeated, picking one of the few tangible words. 'You went back on your words about show me how to remove the anti-levitation charm on this thing. I'm not very grateful about having to keep carrying it back and forth.'

'I don't know how,' the portrait admitted. The snake had buried its head in Salazar's robes out of shame.

'You're Salazar Slytherin,' Harry repeated in mock pride.

'Rowena put it on, not me. I wasn't as good as she was at enchanting things.'

'So in other words I have to keep carrying you around.' Harry was none too impressed by that.

'It's an honour,' the portrait assured him good-naturedly. 'Think of all the things I've taught you.' Harry couldn't exactly deny how much the painting had helped in his effort to improve himself. It had been by far his best teacher. Perhaps because, unlike all the other professors who were somewhat distanced from the student body by their positions and thus never quite part and party to what was happening, Salazar was near enough to help. Whatever the reason was the ancient, slightly eccentric, short-tempered piece of canvas has become the one thing he trusted most. There was only one piece of advice from it he would not follow.

'I am leaving,' Harry answered finally, picking up the portrait and hefting it back to its spot over the door. 'I need to eat, especially after using so much magic.'

'Watch out for your former friends,' the painting warned as he left. 'They do not seem so noble as you.'

As if Ron or Dean would have thought twice before saving themselves.

Harry was certain that if any of there other Gryffindors had been his position there would be an unexplained body on the grounds, probably in silver and green bordered robes, and one less anchor for Tom Riddle's spirit to cling to.

Lunch was pumpkin pastries. It was Harry's least favourite meal at Hogwarts, though still far preferable to anything Petunia or Vernon had ever voluntarily given him. Having pumpkin pastries meant that, between the food and the drink, over half the meal tasted of the oddly flavoured, orange-fleshed fruit and Harry was none to fond of pumpkins. He'd disliked them ever since almost cutting off his thumb in an attempt to make three ghost-like lanterns at Halloween when he was seven. Only the smallest of the three had even survived the night. The other two had caught fire from the inside and burned until they were twisted, unrecognisable masses of stinking, charred mess. Dudley and the other Dursleys had immediately claimed that the survivor was his work and Harry hadn't cared enough to argue.

Lunch was also when he was most likely to be visited by former friends, new enemies, or even the few people that fell into both categories. He managed at least half an hour, longer than usual, before a distinctly feminine presence took the place beside him.

Don't let it be Katie.

Cowardly as it might be Harry still couldn't bring himself to face her. He knew he might give in and take her back just to feel the warmth, to feel like he was somebody again, but a little later he would remember what she had done, or worse, she might do it again, and everything would spiral back to the empty hell he'd only just escaped from.

'Harry,' a strident tone announced from just outside the frame of his glasses.

Ah, the only person I might want to talk to less than Katie, of course.

He wouldn't be able to ignore her. Harry knew perfectly well that any attempt to ignore Hermione Granger would simply exacerbate things.

'Hermione,' Harry responded, then blinked. He had not meant for his voice to sound so cold. A little icy, yes, to demonstrate that they were no longer on speaking terms, but his tone could have given dementors hypothermia.

'Where have you been?' she demanded. Harry blinked again. He'd been expecting an apology for the breaking of his wand before she tried to squeeze information out of him like he was a particularly difficult book. He voiced as much in a tone that grew only marginally warmer.

'I already said I was sorry, Harry,' she insisted. 'I didn't mean to break it. I had been practicing the charm after Professor Flitwick said you could do it so well and it was the first thing in my head when I cast.'

'If you didn't come to apologise then why did you come?' Harry asked. There was a slow, cold chill of ice beginning to spread through his veins at the girl he was sitting next to.

I left them alone, he wanted to scream. Why can they not do the same.

'We're worried about you,' she said gently, or at least as gently as she could. 'You've been so different after the World Cup.'

'I've heard your theories,' Harry told her. 'You might be interested to know that Dumbledore believes me when I tell him I didn't put my name in for this tournament. Pass that along to Ron, he can tell his new friend Malfoy when visits him in the hospital wing.'

'How did you know about Malfoy, Ron said not to tell anyone,' Hermione whispered.

'What else did he say?'

'That Malfoy was bitten by a snake and Dean's collarbone and arm got broken in a fight between them on the seventh floor. He was really angry about it. I only found anything out because I pressed him when he and Malfoy were being even more antagonistic towards each other than normal.'

A temporary alliance that has since ended. That was good. Harry did not want his enemies joining forces again. He'd been lucky to get out so easily.

'That was it,' Harry said incredulously. 'He didn't mention the two of them trying to ambush me with the assistance of Malfoy and his two goons?'

'No,' Hermione shook her head. 'You broke Dean's arm, Harry,' she gasped, 'and Malfoy was almost paralysed by that snake.'

'He summoned it,' Harry defended casually. He certainly didn't feel he had done anything wrong. They had attacked him, not the other way around.

'Oh,' she seemed a bit too relieved. 'So it wasn't you.'

'It was me,' Harry took great satisfaction in her horror. 'I commanded it to bite him. He should know better than to summon snakes against me.'

She was silent for a very long time and Harry wondered if she was going to get up and leave him be.

'I heard about Katie,' she said softly. He had absolutely no idea how she had come up with the idea that he might want to speak about that with her.

'That's good,' he replied as sarcastically as possible, 'you're probably the only person who has and I really wanted to discuss it with you.'

Hermione flinched.

'We are not friends anymore, Granger,' he reminded her coldly, using her surname to make sure she understood. 'You broke my wand, one of the most precious things I had. I won't ever forget that and I certainly won't forget that your justification behind doing so it that you were so unable to accept I was just as talented as you that you had to attempt a spell you weren't ready for.'

'I was ready for it,' Hermione replied loudly, shaking her hair in indignation.

'I'm glad that that is the only part of my statement you wanted to contest,' Harry snapped. 'Because I'm not sure I could have suppressed my temper if you'd tried to convince me we could still be friends.'

'I don't know what has happened to you, Harry,' she responded with vehemence and the beginnings of tears.

'I'll tell you,' Harry replied, his speech distorting slightly as his emotions fluctuated beyond his control. 'My friends betrayed my trust and abandoned me over petty things, you broke my wand, I was lied to and used. Now I've decided to become strong enough that it can't happen again.'

Hermione got up and left without another word.

Harry watched her back recede into the crowd of students at the other end of the hall with a small, cold smile. He knew his former best friend well enough to be able to see when she was holding back tears.

He finished his pumpkin pastry with rather more gusto than ever before and sat back to think.

If he had to die, he wanted his sacrifice to be recognised and remembered, not for the fame or the glory, but just so he wouldn't disappear into nothing afterwards. He'd heard somewhere that a person died three times. He couldn't recall the first two specifically, though he assumed actual death was one of them, but he had never forgotten the last death. He didn't want the last saying of his name to come for some time, if at all.

There was some commotion at the far end of the hall and Harry, disturbed from his reverie, glanced over curiously.

'No,' he heard a cold, slightly french accented voice say in disgust. 'Not if you were the last male in this school.'

Ah, he realised. The charming Fleur Delacour.

She appeared to have as many problems as he had, but if she didn't he would be sorely tempted to add to them for her part in losing him Katie. As it was he suspected her attempt to steal him had had other, more stress based motives. It couldn't be easy for the french witch, balancing being a champion, a veela and more.

A crimson-faced, mortifed Ron Weasley slunk out of the crowd that surrounded Fleur. The pupils parted to let him go and amongst the slightly glazed expressions that were directed at Beauxbatons' champion were plenty of smiles at his former friends expense.

Harry shot the humiliated Weasley one of his own.

It turned out to be a mistake as he immediately turned on Harry.

'I don't know what you find funny, Potter,' he snarled. 'I'm just as successful as you are and you have to open the ceremony.'

Harry didn't reply. Ron was quite capable of making things worse for himself without his input.

'No wonder Katie dumped you,' he sneered, 'you don't have the courage to ask anyone. It explains why you can't bear to show your face around Gryffindor Tower. There's no room for cowards in the house of the brave.'

That was a step too far for Harry to stomach.

'I don't care about the Yule Ball,' he replied icily. 'Since you're so obsessed with the limelight and being seen you can polyjuice as me and take Hermione.' He smiled a little cruelly, spying Dean across the Hall. 'You'll only have to deal with your little sister making eyes at you the entire time.'

Ron spluttered incoherently and Harry chose to press his advantage.

'Alternatively you could do something to try and make yourself known in your own right, why not try asking Fleur Delacour to the Yule Ball?' he suggested with a deceptively straight face. 'I'm sure she wouldn't be too scathing in her response, not when there are so many people around to witness your humiliation.'

'As if I would ever lower myself to act like you,' Ron yelled loudly. 'You don't even have the courage to ask anyone to the ball, let alone Fleur Delacour.' The slightly dreamy way the red-head had said her name rather ruined the effect of his statement and Harry burst out laughing.

'I don't even want to go, let alone with Fleur Delacour,' he answered, unaware of the silence that fallen over the Great Hall in the quiet following Ron's yelling. 'Besides,' he added amusedly, 'she has so many fans, I wouldn't have time to finish my lunch if I wanted to join the queue and ask her.' The mocking lilt to his voice did nothing to contradict the sincerity of his statement. Harry really did not need the attention of going with the french veela, though he had to admit it would make a rathe spectacular form of revenge against Roger Davies.

The Great Hall was very silent for a lunch time he realised suddenly. Harry had spent too much time in the quiet of the chamber and Room of Requirement and didn't notice how unnatural the hush was until too late.

A very familiar sinking feeling manifested itself, growing heavier with each distinct, clear step that rang out across the floor of the hall from his left.

'So,' a soft, french accented voice commented from just above his shoulder. 'You find this… funny.'

Something about the tone Fleur Delacour used reminded him very much of the eyes of the Hungarian Horntail and a very primitive instinct to remain still seized him. Harry searched frantically through his mind for a way out, but he was all too aware of the other Triwizard champion standing close enough for him to feel her breath against the side of his head. He glanced around the room in hope of finding an escape.

Most of the students were watching in fascination, but Ron's face was caught somewhere between horror and worship, gradually transitioning towards shades of purple Harry hadn't seen since Vernon had found the broken the television remote. Dudley had sat on it.

He tried not to laugh at the expression and memory it recalled to him. He really did. It just sort of slipped out anyway.

A very soft-skinned hand caught him by the chin and turned his head round.

Harry found himself staring into a pair of very blue eyes. There were all sort of emotions swimming there that he hadn't seen, or even expected to see, from Fleur Delacour before. Ones that he recognised well. Pride was dominant there, but it was hollow, superficial, and underneath there was so much more. Harry had never, would never, have guessed how similar they actually were if he had not been able to see all his thoughts in her eyes. It was shock enough to momentarily rob him of coherent thought.

'I think you will make a good date to the Yule Ball,' Fleur told him quietly and firmly. It wasn't a request. It wasn't even a question. There was not a shred of doubt in her tone as to whether he would want to go with her.

She is used to getting what she wants.

Harry was half-tempted to refuse, but he knew, somehow, that Fleur genuinely preferred the company of somebody who didn't want to go with her over that of any of the others who succumbed so easily to her allure and he couldn't find it in himself to refuse. It would be cruel to steal away what must be her last hope of finding a date who would be capable of higher brain function in her presence.

A very small part of him reminded him of what Salazar had said about his nobility being used by others to their own ends, but it was swiftly drowned out. He didn't have the heart not to help her.

Glimpsing Roger Davies in the crowd probably helped him decide too.

'I agree,' he smiled. It was his most charming, bright version of Tom Riddle's expression and it earned a small, polite, proud curving of Fleur's lips.

Neither are real, he realised, and he wondered briefly if Fleur knew that too.

'Good,' she patted his cheek, then retracted her hand to flick her long, silver hair back over her shoulder. 'Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,' she murmured, so only he could hear. 'I'll meet you at the Owlery as we met before, so we can take a day to get to know each other a little before the Yule Ball.'

There really wasn't anything Harry could do but nod. He had heard the unspoken promise of an explanation in her tone, as well as the expectation of one from him.

I'll have to apologise for laughing.

Fleur Delacour left in a swirl of silver hair, leaving only the lingering scent of burnt holly in her wake.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to everyone who does. The chapter you were all waiting for and probably not expecting quite so soon! In my defence it was before the 100 000 words mark... just about.

P.S. A word of caution for my wonderful readers. The next few chapters need to be just right and will take longer to write to get perfect, like the last two have. As I post pretty much as I finish each chapter, you may have to resign yourselves to the knowledge that you're only getting one chapter a day.

23. Dancing Lessons

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter.

I noticed some people think he should be blaming Fleur for what happened with Katie. He does a little, but really when all things are considered I think he's less likely to place the blame on someone he empathises with than Roger Davies' cheap attempt at vengeance and Katie's idiocy.

Chapter 23

The Owlery was not really the most romantic place to meet, but Harry supposed Fleur knew that and had chosen it deliberately. Their Yule Ball agreement was not a romantic thing, she was unlikely to want to actually date a fourteen year old and Harry thought that if she did then her taste in romance was ringing some serious alarm bells.

Nobody should find the smell of bird droppings and musty wood romantic.

He had agreed to meet her here, but she had not specified a time. He assumed, for the sake of safety, she meant early, but had rather resigned himself to spending some time in the dilapidated tower under his disillusionment charm.

He was rather proud of his mastery over it, even if his most effective spells did have a concerning parallel between them.

Harry put the basilisk of nothing out of his mind and focused on whatever Fleur Delacour expected of him.

Perhaps showing off my perfect invisibility is not the right way to start.

He considered dispelling it, but there were a lot of people that came here over the course of a day and he did quite want to see her face when he surpassed her. Not all of that pride was superficial.

'That,' the soft, french voice of Fleur Delacour remarked from behind him, 'is an even better disillusionment charm.'

How amusing, Harry thought, abandoning his concealment. Our positions have reversed.

'How did you notice?' he asked, following the pattern of their previous and only real conversation.

'I am aware of the weaknesses of the charm,' she replied, with a smile altogether different from the perfect picture of proud politeness he was accustomed to seeing on her face from afar.

'I suppose I owe you an apology for laughing,' Harry began, wanting to get this out of the way.

'I would rather know why you thought it was funny,' Fleur cut in. 'I expected you to understand.'

'I was laughing at Ron,' he finished simply.

'And the first time?' Harry stared at her curiously, before remembering the incident that had cost him Katie had started with his laughter.

'I found some irony in not being the one who was stared at when I entered the room.'

'Ah,' there was flicker of something that might have been guilt in her blue eyes. 'Then consider my company tomorrow an apology for overreacting. I thought you were laughing at me.'

'If it were an apology I would not accept it,' Harry responded in a slightly cooler tone. 'I am aware that you chose to go with me for your own reasons, not to apologise for your part in destroying my relationship with Katie.'

'It is destroyed?' The same flicker appeared and disappeared and Harry was sure this time that it was guilt.

'Whatever becomes of my bond with Katie it will never be what it could have been because of you and Roger Davies,' Harry replied. He would not sugar-coat anything for the french witch. He owed her nothing.

'I am sorry to hear that,' Fleur told him earnestly, 'but perhaps, if such a small thing can do so much damage, it is for the best.'

Harry wanted to argue, but had nothing with which to refute her statement.

'Shall we go?' she suggested. 'The tower has an aura inappropriate for what could loosely be termed a date.'

'Where would be better?' Harry followed her down the stairs, keeping his distance ever so slightly. Every few steps Fleur would linger a little longer than was usual, taking her back inside the area Harry preferred people did not come. He got the impression she was testing him and his reaction, but could not fathom how she knew and had found something that made him so uncomfortable. He was not aware anyone had noticed his aversion to close contact, nobody had ever mentioned it, but Fleur barely knew him, and if she had picked up on it surely anyone could have.

'Perhaps I will think of somewhere as we walk, though I admit I am not fond of Hogwarts. It is cold, grey and wet.' Fleur took a long route back to the castle, one that avoided passing by where Harry knew the Beauxbatons carriage was.

'I hope,' she began calmly as they neared the Great Hall, 'you do not think less of me for using you as a shield.'

'A shield?'

'I am a veela,' she informed archly. 'You might not have noticed, but I attract a lot of attention in ways I would rather I did not. If I could, I would not attend this Yule Ball, but having a similarly minded date will be far preferable than the alternative.'

There was far too much emphasis on the part about Harry not noticing her for him not to get curious.

'You dislike the attention, but find the fact I do not stare at you annoying too.'

'I dislike being dismissed,' she answered proudly, scrutinising him with her sky blue eyes. 'I do not enjoy being looked down on, either.'

'I would rather be dismissed than stared at,' Harry remarked. Fleur's hostility seemed based on rather conflicting feelings. If she did not want to be stared at she should not be so upset by people who did not stare.

'There is a difference between those who do not stare and those who display such an insulting indifference.'

They stepped through the doors into the Great Hall and heads immediately began to turn in their direction.

'I do not know who they are looking at,' Harry said with a wry smile.

'I do,' Fleur sniffed. Harry took a longer look about the room and noticed the slightly glazed look in the eyes of most.

'I know somewhere most people do not,' Harry offered.

'Let's go,' Fleur agreed, shifting inside his area of comfort again. Harry flinched away slightly. He really wished she would not do that.

Harry led her higher and higher up the moving staircases, covertly keeping an eye on the Marauders' Map; he did not need to be ambushed again, until they reached the seventh floor.

Peter Pettigrew, he read from the edge of the quidditch pitch. The traitorous rat had started lingering around there far more than before and Harry was seriously starting to consider doing something about it. The longer he was left out there the more likely it was somebody else would get hurt. He couldn't tell Dumbledore, not anymore, his motives were unclear and Sirius couldn't find out, because he might risk himself trying to take revenge again. That just left him.

Perhaps I will incapacitate him myself.

He was probably capable of it by now, especially if he caught him by surprise.

It had occurred to him that he was about to share something he had not shared with anyone yet, and it was one of his most precious secrets about the school. Still, Fleur would not be here long, and he doubted she would share anything he told with anyone else. They seemed a little too similar for that.

'This,' he gestured calmly at the blank space of wall opposite what had to be Hogwarts' worst tapestry, 'is the Room of Requirement.'

To her credit Fleur looked more intrigued than sceptical. 'How does it work?' she asked, tilting her head to one side to regard the wall from a different angle. Her action sent her silver hair cascading over her ear and onto her shoulder.

'Imagine what you want,' Harry told her, 'and the room will provide. It has to adhere to the laws, though, so no food.'

The door that appeared on the wall was very different to the thick, stout wooden doors of Hogwarts'. It had a slender, elegant appearance and was painted a very light shade of blue.

'How ingenious,' Fleur remarked, reaching out to touch the door very tentatively. 'I suppose we should go in.'

It was clearly her own room that she had imagined. Harry could understand that. If he had ever had a room that had been his enough he might have tried to recreate it to.

It was a window into the mind of Fleur Delacour. Harry gazed through in avid curiosity.

Everything was kept neat, from the bed, to the shelves of books and, where her collection spilt over onto the floor, the towering stacks that rose almost to the ceiling. A vast collection of tiny, enchanted items surrounded everything in a deliberate, ornamental scatter.

'You can change it from within,' he told her, as she shifted slightly uncomfortably. Her eyes had immediately fallen on the single picture in the room. Two almost identical, silver-haired girls, one with eyes of deep blue, the other with eyes touched by grey, both were smiling.

Gabrielle, Harry surmised. Fleur evidently loved her little sister very much.

'Thank you,' the french witch said quietly and the room began to shift around him into something much larger.

The ceiling transitioned into a high, arched vault similar to that of the only cathedral Harry had ever been in. There were long, tall windows of thin glass down either side. They looked out onto mountains and a sparse woodland of gnarled, short pine trees. The stonework was pale ivory, broken only be decorative terracotta tiles.

'Beauxbatons' gallery,' Fleur informed him. 'We have no Great Hall, only an open forum, when winter comes this is where large groups gather.'

'I can understand why you do not find Hogwarts attractive.' If all of Fleur's school was like this then Hogwarts was, for all Harry loved it, rather ugly in comparison.

'It is not a beautiful place,' Fleur agreed, 'but we do not have a room such as this, either.'

Harry thought that was probably the most complimentary thing she had ever said about his school.

'Tell me, Harry,' she said, with sudden confidence, 'do you know how to dance?'

'No.' The beginnings of regret started to seep in. Dancing was something he wanted to spend as little time doing as possible. Harry had no fear of tripping, or falling, he expected with practice he could be every bit as elegant as was necessary. It was the partner he objected to.

The treacherous room had started playing music, Fleur's desire to dance was clearly stronger than his will not too. It was something of a surprise to him since he could think of few things he wanted to do less.

'My date will have to dance. If you can dodge a dragon, you can avoid standing on my feet, so there are only the steps to be learnt.' Fleur stepped very very close to him.

Harry froze.

He could feel the warm that emanated from her and the brush of her breathe against his face. She was too close. It was wrong.

Fleur was studying him with bright, blue eyes.

'You do not like the closeness, do you?' she asked after a while. Harry noted that she did not step back.

'No,' he answered shortly. The music drifted on underneath their voices, the happy, fast-paced tune oblivious to his emotions.

'I can try and alleviate your discomfort,' she offered. 'You will not feel it if you pay attention to me.'

Harry grasped instantly what she meant. Fleur Delacour was willing to use her allure on him. She had done it before, of course, but never with the intention of making things better for him, and never at the cost of the one thing she gained from attending the Yule Ball with him.

'I will be fine,' he managed, twisting his face into Tom Riddle's brilliant smile. He would never allow her to do something like that. He had his own pride.

Something slightly unkind marred Fleur's face and she reached out to firmly, but gently take his hand in hers. Her other drew his arm about her waist and pulled them so close there was less than an inch between his body and hers.

'These are the steps,' Fleur murmured, her breath washing over his cheek. She still smelt of burnt holly leaves. It was a sharp, sweet smell that Harry found hard to ignore.

In the end focusing on learning the motions of the dance was the best way for him to forget how close she was to him and he became proficient enough to be released.

It was an instant relief.

Harry's heart relaxed its pounding and his body, that had remained tense the entire time, slackened ever so slightly. A very small sigh escaped his lips.

'Do you know how many there are within these walls who would like to take your place?' Fleur asked him, but she seemed more amused than annoyed.

'Many,' Harry shrugged, 'but I am not them.'

'No,' Fleur mused, 'I suppose you are not. We are both a little bit different to the rest.' She favoured him with the softer smile; the one he had glimpsed next to Gabrielle's. Her eyes seemed a great deal warmer in that more natural expression.

Harry gave her his most charming version of Tom Riddle's smile, pushing as much emotion into his eyes as he could. It was his most brilliant yet.

'Do not,' Fleur snapped coldly, 'smile at me like that.'

Harry flinched, startled. She should not recognise its source.

She knows it isn't real, he realised, remembering her more usual expression from the Great Hall.

'Sorry,' he apologised, 'it has become a habit.' They were unnervingly similar in some ways. Fleur Delacour was as alone as Harry, just in a different way.

It struck him then why she might have actually asked him to be her date to the Yule Ball. It had nothing to do with wounded pride, escaping from the attentions of her enraptured admirers, or apologising for the fiasco she had helped cause with Katie.

She's looking for an equal, for somebody who understands.

They were looking for the same things and even if Harry had to die Fleur Delacour might understand that too. Then again, Harry recalled how proud she was, verging on selfish, she might not.

A slightly wry, half-smile crooked at the corner of his mouth.

'That,' Fleur commented quietly, 'is much better.'

They stood in silence for a while, the music had faded away the moment Fleur had released him.

'How does a fourteen year old forget how to smile?' she asked, breaking the silence.

'How does a seventeen year old?' Harry countered.

'She has nobody to smile with,' Fleur replied with surprising candidness, 'only people to smile at.'

'Then you already understand,' Harry told her. His words carried unintentional weight and the french witch turned to scrutinise him more carefully.

'Do I?' she asked. 'We are not the same.'

'Similar enough. Fleur Delacour is seen through,' Harry smiled, remembering the wand-weighing, 'a rose tinted lens. I fall underneath my own shadow.'

'It is equally hard for others to see either of us,' Fleur finished. She tossed her hair back over her shoulders, smoothing it with both hands. 'I am glad that your name came out of the goblet,' she admitted.

'You are?' Harry grinned. 'You might change your mind when you come second.'

'I will come first,' Fleur said quite adamantly. 'You did not enter, did you?'

'No,' Harry sighed. 'Things like this always seem to happen to me.'

'Do you know how an age line works?' Fleur asked curiously.

'Professor Dumbledore explained it to me. It detects the age of your magic.' Harry wasn't quite sure where she was going with this.

'Nobody younger than seventeen could have crossed the line,' Fleur told him. 'So you could not have entered your name.'

'You believed me all this time?'

'Albus Dumbledore is too powerful to have one of his wards broken by any student, you could not have crossed. My reason for bringing this up is because I also know how the Goblet of Fire works.'

'So do I,' Harry remarked. 'It selected names.'

Fleur gave him a pitying look. 'It selects the best possible candidate from the names it accepts and it cannot be lied to. If I tried to put another's name in, I would fail.'

'So nobody but me could have put my name in.' The horrible sinking sensation had returned to his stomach.

'Nobody who was not called Harry Potter and was above the age of seventeen,' Fleur corrected, 'but such a scheme is far-fetched.' Harry had come across some fairly far-fetched schemes at Hogwarts, but had to concede it was unlikely.

'So I had to have put my name in for it to come out,' Harry said slowly, 'but I did not, and my cloak has not been missing.'

'Your cloak?' Fleur looked confused. 'An invisibility cloak cannot conceal you from an age line, Harry. Your friends are wrong.'

'My former friends,' Harry amended, 'are more right than they realise. My cloak is an heirloom capable of bypassing the line.'

'Had I known that before I would have never questioned your attempt to enter,' Fleur confessed.

'Dumbledore assumed I used it.'

'Your headmaster cast a charm that made it impossible for you to enter, and the goblet makes it impossible for almost anyone else to enter you. The fact that he read your name out-'

'-does not mean my name came from the goblet.' Harry understood perfectly now.

Every year I encounter danger at Hogwarts under the nose of Albus Dumbledore. Every year I almost die. He's been trying to quietly destroy his accidental horcrux from the very beginning.

Some of his anger must have shown on his face because Fleur had take several steps back.

'Sorry,' he apologised. 'I just realised something that has made me quite angry.'

'You think your headmaster put you in the tournament,' Fleur concluded. 'I arrived at the same deduction, but I could believe Albus Dumbledore would do such a thing. He must believe in you very strongly.'

'I'm sure he will be overjoyed when I win,' Harry ground out.

'When you come second.' A small smile played around the corners of Fleur Delacour's mouth.

'We'll see,' Harry retorted, but not harshly. The bitterness of their previous encounters had been abandoned.

'Have you progressed anywhere with your egg?' she asked.

'I solved it a few days ago,' Harry lied, unwilling to show any weakness in their competition.

'What solution did you come up with?' Fleur seemed genuinely curious. 'I thought your plan for the first task quite ingenious. A simple charm and plan, you solved the problem spectacularly and gave away little of your abilities.'

Harry laughed. 'If I told you it would rather undermine my chances, no?'

'I suppose that is true,' Fleur frowned, her delicate eyebrows arching into a gentle vee. 'I won't be able to convince you that I have already found one of my own and am just interested?'

'You might,' Harry conceded. 'I don't think you'd lie to me, but I still won't be able to tell you.'

Mainly because I have no idea what the clue is.

His golden egg was sitting on the desk in Salazar's study, acting as both a book-end and a wonderful device that prevented his ancestor's portrait from getting too carried away in his lectures.

'Caution is to be admired,' Fleur said simply. 'I would not risk any of my rivals using the same solution as me.'

'Do you know if either Cedric or Viktor have figured it out?' Harry asked.

'Why would I know?' Fleur smoothed her uniform and took a seat on the chair that had appeared behind her. She was grasping how to use the room far quicker than Harry had.

'You knew about my cloak, and despite the fact my two untrustworthy ex-friends have spouted about its existence to most of my house, I doubt that reached your ears so passively.' Harry had, in fact, received the distinct impression she had been keeping an eye on her rivals and anything that happened to them.

'It might not have done,' Fleur smiled. There wasn't the slightest shred of guilt visible in her eyes. Harry quite envied her confidence, if he had had her strength of will earlier so many things might have been different.

Peter Pettigrew would not have escaped.

'As far as I know, neither of them have done anything more than decipher the clue, but from their actions I would assume Viktor at least has a plan.'

'You don't seem very worried about them,' Harry remarked.

'Cedric Diggory is an exceptional student and a talented wizard, but he has overestimated himself by entering this tournament. He lacks the will to win it. Viktor Krum is used to winning, but his abilities do not lie in making plans. Igor Karkoroff can only compensate for that so much.' Fleur's analysis of the other champions was quite brutal and direct, but knowing less than she clearly did Harry could only accept it.

'And me?'

'Young but prodigious and powerful, with a will strong enough to win it and capable of cunning.' She patted him on the shoulder in mock consolation. Harry twitched away only very slightly and Fleur smiled. 'You'll make a very good runner-up.'

'I think silver is more your colour than min, Fleur,' he joked, indicating her hair.

'The Triwizard Tournament trophy is silver, Harry,' she reminded him.

So it is.

'What about you?' He was quite interested to see what Fleur thought of herself, though he doubted she would share everything.

'I am more complete than any of my rivals. My experience is greater than yours and I am just as talented. Provided the tasks do not exploit my natural weaknesses to much, I will win.'

'You are very confident,' Harry remarked.

I wonder what her natural weaknesses are? He assumed it was something to do with being veela, or part-veela, or whatever Katie had said Hermione had found out.

Harry was a little tempted to go and look for them in the library, but it went against his nature to do something so underhanded, especially when Fleur had done nothing to deserve it of late.

Katie, the small voice whispered.

Katie and Roger Davies are to blame, he decided, silencing the Riddle-esque whisper that he was starting to fear might be the voice of the horcrux itself. He shuddered to think how many of his thoughts might have been its if that was the case.

'I take pride in being the best at my school, Harry. When you are older, you will do the same.' She paused to consider something very briefly. 'Do not mistake my pride in myself for dismissal of the abilities of others. I may be better than most, but I still respect the talents of others, and will have my own equals and betters in turn.'

It was perhaps the most honest thing she had said to him yet. Fleur Delacour was proud. She refused to lose, to listen to others around her or to accept anything less than the best from herself. It had made her strong, just as Harry wished to become.

'I think I should return to the carriage,' Fleur decided. 'I should warn you before the Yule Ball that there are those, amongst Beauxbatons' students at least, who believe that I have charmed you into going with me after stealing you from your previous girlfriend.' Her tone indicated both how laughable and how annoying she found the rumours. Harry could empathise with that.

'I do not care,' he answered simply. 'I have never noticed your allure before and I did not even know you were veela until Katie told me after the incident in the Great Hall.'

'I am sorry about that,' Fleur apologised. 'I misunderstood and reacted very badly to having my pride slighted.'

'I blame Roger Davies and Katie for what happened to my relationship with her more than you,' Harry assured her.

Fleur rose to leave and Harry got up too. He really needed to get started on working out the golden egg if his three rivals had likely already solved it.

'I should like to see if my allure has more of an affect on you at some point,' Fleur suggested. 'I haven't met anyone quite so resistant to it before.'

'If you like.' Harry suspected his resistance was what had captured her attention in the first place and if i helped her feel slightly less insecure then he was willing to let her try. He had thrown off the influence of the veela at the World Cup, so he doubted he would do anything particularly humiliating.

'Thank you.' Harry was enveloped in sudden warmth, his face pressed into her silver hair, Fleur's arms around him. The smell of burnt holly was suddenly very strong.

She hugged me.

Tentatively he returned the gesture, ignoring his instinctive desire to move away.

The only person who had ever hugged him like that before was Katie.

AN: Please read and review! My thanks to those that do. It's the little things that make everything worthwhile ;)

P.S. Who would turn down a date like Fleur when there's only a day to go and nobody to ask... I thought that was obvious enough from the context, but if anyone seriously disagrees I'll spend a minute or two adding it in.

P.P.S I rather stupidly, at about 2am, tried to moderate all my reviews using my haywire trackpad. It has water or dust under it, so unless another mouse is connected it clicks and scrolls everywhere on its own. I'm not sure exactly which reviews were deleted and which were posted, normally I just allow them all, but if you can't find your review that will be why. Fortunately I could read them all first so their main purpose was fulfilled. I can also announce the return of PaC, whose reviews are among my favourites (no sarcasm, I promise). Hopefully PaC's made it through the roulette, I'm fairly sure I saw several parts when I went back through the pages. Anyway, this will be among PaC's favourite chapters, I added a few bits just for for his/her enjoyment. (That one may have contained some sarcasm), but I'm quite looking forward to your review of it PaC, in a french accent, of course, so don't disappear please! I'd actually appreciate it if you PM'd me as well, feedback is so much easier if it's a two way thing, but I fear it is unlikely.

24. The Yule Ball

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I waited exactly 9 hours after finishing writing before posting this, mainly for the sake of sleep, so come and ******* get me Smokeapound. I'm waiting ;)

And here's some food for thought for those claiming Harry has loads of experience.

He's good with a patronus charm and excellent at keeping a brave face, but his survival in the first year was mainly due his mother's blood magic. I'm using my slightly adjusted series of events here. The second year was Fawkes and the Sorting Hat, he'd have been a very small bulge in the belly of the basilisk if he'd actually tried to do it all himself, third year he manages the Patronus, but really only because he already knows he has. Nothing he's done has ever completely been his own accomplishment until fourth year. He had guts, determination and all the stereotypical hero traits, but the key difference was always made by external factors. He knew about three useful spells at the end of the third year, has no real duelling experience and little knowledge of anything outside of the few classes he pays attention in. Fleur has a massive advantage over canon Harry in anything that isn't Gryffindor-esque personality traits or luck, and frankly Harry's luck only kicks in after it has dropped him in it already. Obviously my fic is now a little different, but the experience still stands in her favour as far as my opinion goes, especially from her PoV.

Anyway. New chapter!

This the filler, Fleur chapter before the ball that you were all really excited about!

Just joking, it's Yule Ball time!

Enjoy.

Chapter 24

The music was drifting up from the Great Hall to where Harry was waiting at the foot of the stairs. Professor Mcgonagall, who was clad in a tartan something, had elected that this was the place where all the champions and their partners should be gathered.

Harry felt it was a very poor choice. Everyone walked past the location to enter the Great Hall.

'You do have a partner, don't you, Harry?' His head of house asked tartly.

Does she not know anything about what goes on in her house and school? Harry was certain that everyone in the student body knew who his date was, clearly the staff were less observant, or just not privy to the rumour mill.

'I'm sure she is just fashionably late, professor,' Harry replied dryly.

'Well you can transfigure your robes into something more suitable while you wait,' she ordered him sternly. 'As long as she arrives before Miss Delacour and her date it will not matter.'

Harry resisted the surprisingly strong desire to ask Mcgonagall if she too was going to transfigure her clothes into something suitable.

'I don't think Fleur Delacour's arrival will come before that of Harry's date,' Cedric smiled. The Asian Ravenclaw on his arm giggled into her date's shoulder.

Viktor Krum said nothing and his date certainly wasn't stupid enough to try and speak to Harry either. Surprisingly Hermione was rather attractive once she sorted her hair out of its unmanageable mess. Viktor Krum either had amazing foresight, or found bossy, strident, jealous girls attractive. Harry didn't really care which.

He waved his wand over his school robes, transfiguring them in one smooth motion from plain black to a very dark, almost black, emerald with silver edging. Harry felt that both Fleur, who would almost certainly have some shade of silver on her and Salazar would appreciate his wardrobe.

I finally look like the Heir of Slytherin.

His former friends would probably take this as confirmation of their fears that he was under the control of a dark wizard. After all, wearing silver and green could only have one possible motive to most of the narrow-minded Gryffindors.

There was some faint disapproval in Professor Mcgonagall's expression, but the slight softness around her eyes was enough to indicate she understood how he now felt about his house.

Should have listen to the raggedy hat, Harry realised. It would have chosen Slytherin for him, had he let it. If he'd had the strength of will to accept himself for what he was rather than cave in to expectations and conform.

Better be Gryffindor, Harry snickered to himself.

'Miss Delacour,' Mcgonagall remonstrated very sternly, 'you are late and without a date.'

She was dressed in a gown of shimmering silver. It was as if the individual threads had somehow been coated in the molten metal and it shivered around her figure as she walked. There were going to be a lot of jealous males in the Great Hall tonight.

Fleur gave the transfiguration professor the sort of look that had reminded Harry of the Hungarian Horntail and wondered if it was something to do with her veela heritage. He knew reptiles and birds were distantly related.

'My date is already waiting for me,' she answered, her normal smile back in place. Now that Harry knew what she looked when she was genuinely happy he found he rather hated the expression. There were few things he wanted to do more in the instant it hovered on Fleur's lips than wipe it away and let her smile for real.

The french witch swayed gracefully into the middle of the group and slipped her arm through Harry's. A flicker of warmth passed through her eyes when he tensed, but did not flinch away from her.

Professor Mcgonagall's mouth opened and closed several times, but nothing came out.

'International co-operation,' Fleur explained in a tone laced with amusement.

'It is time for the opening dance,' the head of Gryffindor house said once she had recovered herself.

Time for the part that Harry was looking forward to least of all.

'I do not enjoy dancing,' Fleur told him in a whisper, 'not with people I do not know or trust, so I hope you do not mind if we dance together. For as short a time as possible if it makes you uncomfortable still.'

Harry gave her a very slight nod of the head as the three couples took their positions. The thin, immaculately dressed organiser of the ball was staring daggers at Harry. He assumed this was the wizard who had come up with the initial choreography and then had to change it once his name appeared.

Now he has to change it back because of Fleur.

Harry fixed his smile upon his face, flashing a mild apology at Fleur as Tom Riddle's adopted charm commandeered his expression. If he focused on the steps and not the feeling of Fleur being so unnervingly close he would be fine. It was just a single dance.

Fortunately it worked.

The feeling and motion of the floor beneath his feet was enough to focus on and drown out all but the occasional flash of bright, sky blue eyes a few inches from his own. He wasn't sure if Fleur was trying to use her aura to calm him, or if it was just her normal passive effect and the way she stood out from every other girl in the Great hall, but every wizards' eyes were on the two of them.

At least he was used to that.

When the opening dance finally came to an end Fleur was smiling. A genuine, warm expression that twisted Riddle's brilliant beaming to one side of Harry's face and made it his own again.

'That was not so bad,' he decided, following Fleur to the side of the room and the quite surprising range of drinks.

They're serving alcohol at a ball underage wizards and witches can attend?

'The ball was only supposed to be for students who were seventeen and over,' Fleur explained at his puzzled expression. 'When your name came out they had to let younger years attend or you'd be all alone for the event.'

'I guess nobody remembered to remove all this from the drinks list.' Harry ignored the slightly pitying tone Fleur had adopted in her explanation. He appreciated her understanding, but he didn't need or want her to pity him.

'Wine?' she proffered an expensive looking bottle of elf-made wine in his direction, two crystal glasses already tucked under her arm.

'You don't want to dance again?'

'I would not mind,' she told him kindly, 'but I think you've endured enough, none of my allure even affected you, and I threw a sizeable amount your way.'

'You should not have done, the others-'

'They would have stared regardless,' Fleur declared proudly. 'It is why I could not understand your lack of interest. Even without my aura I have always been watched.'

'I might as well,' Harry decided, indicating the wine bottle. He had quite enjoyed the Firewhiskey.

I hope Katie is not drinking.

Harry had the horrible feeling that a drunk Katie might just manage to find a way to ruin not only his evening, but Fleur's, Roger Davies' and her own, not that he particularly cared about Roger Davies. He glanced out into the crowd, but saw nothing of the Gryffindor chaser.

'Searching for someone?' Fleur followed his line of sight into the crowd. Harry counted himself fortunate that he had not managed to catch sight of Katie. Platonic shield or not he imagined the proud french witch would not take kindly to him spending the evening looking for another girl.

'Avoiding,' Harry smiled wryly.

'Ah,' Fleur responded. If anyone understood the benefit of evading some members of the opposite sex it would be her.

They found a spot further towards the end of the tables where it was mostly empty. The usual furnishings that had been pushed back against the walls of the Great Hall to make space for the dancing. Once seated Harry helped himself to a wide ranging selection from the nearby piles of Christmas food. Fleur was more picky, avoiding the heavier meats and potatoes in favour of the sweeter, lighter dishes.

'Hogwarts is very different to Beauxbatons,' Fleur told him, sipping her wine, and gazing around the room at the slightly confused style of decoration. Harry felt they probably should have removed some of the original decorations, the suits of armour, for example; they looked a little out place in a ball.

'I imagine it is,' Harry replied earnestly. He had gathered as much from the elegant, renaissance influenced architecture of the Beauxbatons' gallery Fleur had summoned from then Room of Requirement.

'We have ice statues at Christmas in France instead of this.' If Harry had not been paying close attention to the slight changes of expression that betrayed Fleur's true feelings he would have thought she were belittling Hogwarts. 'I learnt last year the enchantments to prevent the ice from melting, so I could make one for Gabrielle.' Most of Fleur's first wine glass was gone, her food too and Harry was left to marvel over when exactly she had managed to eat or drink it while speaking and watching the room. He'd barely touched anything of his own.

'You miss your sister.' Harry could hardly empathise with missing a sibling, or any part of his family, but there had been a time, not so long ago, he had considered his housemates siblings. He understood missing that company well enough.

'She is coming with my mother to see the second task,' Fleur announced, reaching for the bottle. Harry prudently drank some of his own when she glanced away. Half the glass went down very easily, far more smoothly than the sickly pumpkin juice he was used to.

On the far side of the hall Peeves caused momentary chaos, bursting into the room to shower nearby dancing couples with white berries. Harry guessed they were mistletoe, but knowing Peeves they could have been stolen from the more exotic end of Snape's stores.

He was, however, delighted to see that Dean and Ron, who were standing surlily and alone against the wall were among the poltergeist's victims.

'Beauxbatons does not have a poltergeist either,' Fleur remarked, proffering the bottle to Harry. There was a spark of mischief in her eyes as she watched the pearly figure of Peeves beat a hasty retreat from the hall when Dumbledore's eyes turned upon him.

Harry topped his glass up with the burgundy liquid. It looked and tasted perfectly innocent, but so had the Firewhiskey he had drunk with Katie.

'I believe there is a debate every year over whether he should expelled from the halls or not,' Harry said. 'He doesn't cause too much chaos, just enough to be a nuisance every now and again. The caretaker, Argus Filch, hates him.'

'From what I have heard your caretaker hates everything except his pet.'

'There is some truth in that,' Harry admitted, lightly sipping his drink and eyeing the rather delicious, but still untouched Christmas cake. He rather wanted a piece, but was very reluctant to be the first person to take a slice.

'Do you want some?' Fleur had none of his reservations about the cake. She stood, transfiguring the knife she held to something more suitable for cutting car-sized confectionery, and cut a very thin slice.

'Thank you.' Harry gratefully accepted the slice, noting that Fleur had cut herself one almost twice the size.

'I have a sweet tooth,' she confessed, 'most veela do.'

'Is that your weakness?' Harry asked playfully.

Fleur laughed softly. She had a very smooth, throaty chuckle. It was the first time that Harry had really heard it.

'No,' she shook her head. 'It would take more than the offer of something sweet to persuade me to let you win, though I am very fond of marzipan.'

'I would never have guessed that veela were partial to sweet foods,' Harry mused, watching Fleur's slice of cake vanish in a series of elegant forkfuls.

'Most wizards know very little about veela,' Fleur shrugged, 'and witches know even less.'

The bottle was emptied into Fleur's empty glass when Harry politely declined her offer of more.

'I have to admit that the only thing I know about veela is the effect of your allure. I felt it at the World Cup.'

'So you do feel it,' Fleur murmured, amused. 'I wonder, then, why you are so resistant to mine.'

'I heard that you were part-veela, perhaps your aura is not as strong?' Harry suggested.

'You were correct that the only thing you know about veela is the feeling of our charm,' Fleur told him with a frown. 'You should have really gone to the library once you knew I was veela.'

'I've had a lot on my mind,' Harry replied dryly.

'Well, so that you do not embarrass yourself, or me, in the future I will tell you something about veela.' She flipped her silver hair back over one shoulder and shifted her chair around to face him.

'You'd throw away your advantage?' Harry asked her.

'Don't be naive,' Fleur smiled. 'It would take less than hour for you to find out what I intend to tell you and this way I control what you know.'

'I do not think you would tell me that if you had any intention of actually using the opportunity,' Harry smiled. Fleur's eyes flicked towards the bottle momentarily.

'Perhaps not,' she admitted. 'The first thing you need to know is that there is no such thing as a part veela. A female child of a veela is a veela. It is a common misconception that we are part-human creatures when in fact we are simply witches with an extra set of inherited abilities.'

'Like parseltongue,' Harry observed, suddenly much more interested.

'A little more wide-ranging and less reviled,' Fleur amended with a sniff, 'but yes.'

'So where do the veela come from?'

'Eastern Europe has legends that fit our description going back millennia, they can be traced East and down through the Caucus mountains to the earliest such stories in Mesopotamia. There were myths of harpies and fire worship all across the region and the rituals and miracles in ancient scripture there are often familiar to us.' Fleur had not actually answered his question completely, but whether that was because she did not know any more or because she did not want Harry to know any more was a mystery to him.

'You can conjure fire,' Harry realised, remembering the veela at the World Cup. Some of his envy at such a useful ability crept into his tone.

'I am also resistant to it,' Fleur told him. 'Do you want any?' She had leant across the table to procure a bottle of sweet, desert wine. It was also elven.

'No, but thank you.' Harry felt that the two glasses he had already had were probably enough. He was fourteen and, unlike Fleur, not from a wine drinking culture and used to alcohol/

'It's very nice,' Fleur promised. She did not, despite her assurance, offer to share a second time.

She began to pour herself a glass, but, midway to tipping the bottle glanced up and caught sight of the nearby wizards who were making eyes at her.

'I hope,' the french witch frowned, 'you will not be insulted if I leave as early as possible.'

'Relieved,' Harry reassured her. He was not going to be offended by Fleur's attempts to avoid having her evening ruined.

'We can returned to the Room of Requirement?' she suggested. Harry raised an eyebrow quizzically. 'I can't go back to the carriage now,' she confessed. 'It would be humiliating and I have no other company I might prefer.'

Her blue eyes were earnest and Harry felt a light spark of warmth at her words.

'I don't see why not,' he agreed.

Katie won't be able to find me there, and nor will Ron, or Dean, or Ginny.

There was a moment's pause as Harry realised just how many people he did not want to see tonight.

I'm avoiding a considerable number of people.

They made their way towards the entrance, striding through the clusters of conversations which parted for Fleur like clouds before a summer sun.

'You're leaving.'

I was so close.

'I am,' Harry replied.

Katie had either been waiting at the only exit, or he had been very unfortunate to choose the one moment she was returning as his point to leave.

'If you're bored, or in want of a partner you can always come dance with me.'

Fleur, who had been slightly ahead of Harry after they split to walk around opposite sides of one of the groups of students, turned back, her eyes ever so slightly narrowed.

'Has Roger Davies abandoned you?' Harry asked, only slightly spitefully.

'Yes,' she admitted, pointing to where the Ravenclaw was dancing with a member of his own year and house.

She extended the same hand in his direction. 'Would you like to? Not as a date,' she hurriedly clarified, 'just as friends.'

He was tempted, for an instant he shifted his weight forwards towards her and the warmth she had once shared with him.

I don't need her. I'm stronger now. The little voice asserted its opinion proudly, coldly and correctly.

He relaxed back onto his feet and smiled brightly.

'I'm afraid,' Harry replied, one eye on Fleur's tightening grip on the bottle, 'that I can't.'

'Oh,' Katie realised, following Harry's gaze. 'I guess I would have had to worry after all.' Katie must have assumed that his going with Fleur would have ended just as prematurely as her night with Roger Davies. 'It's ok. I understand.' She gave him a weak, but honest smile. 'I'll find Alicia and Angelina, have a good night, Harry.'

He watched her walk away, very aware that the last chance to be anything more than friends with Katie Bell might have just passed. Surprisingly it did not affect him as much as he had expected.

'What did she want?' Fleur asked archly when he caught up to her.

'To dance,' Harry replied.

'You said no.'

'I had a prior commitment,' Harry explained casually. 'I couldn't abandon her to dance with another girl.'

'How noble of you,' Fleur smiled, her eyes soft as the summer sky.

'I think it would have been a bad idea,' Harry said calmly. A part of him had really wanted to dance with Katie, but that little voice had spoken up and he couldn't seem to ignore it. He hoped it was just his paranoia that made it sound like the younger version of Tom Riddle as the thoughts it offered were often right. It, or he, had known it would be a bad idea to risk getting involved with Katie again. He suspected Fleur might have eviscerated him for leaving her too.

'I think you were right,' she replied. Her tone implied just how much of her wrath Harry's decision had averted.

She would have definitely been angry.

Judging from the way she had been holding herself, and how concerned Harry had been that her grip might break the bottle of sweet, elven wine she had removed from the Great Hall, Fleur Delacour would have been very angry indeed.

Harry let her decide what form the room would take when they reached it. She would only be able to use it for as long as she was here, Harry had another three years of being able to utilise the remarkable magic there.

'Ice statues,' Harry murmured, stepping into the winter palace Fleur's mind had mustered. There were four of them, one in each corner, sparkling like so much diamond and reflecting a thousand scattered flares of the candles that hovered above them.

'I like the candles in the Great Hall,' she explained, gesturing at her hovering sources of light. 'Beauxbatons has chandeliers, but I think this is more scenic.'

The french witch took the furthest seat from the door, filling the elegant crystal glass that appeared on the arm of the chair with the contents of her purloined bottle. Harry took the only other seat.

'Do you like it?' she asked. 'I tried to make it something that was of both our schools.'

'I do,' Harry answered honestly. The room was more in the style of elegant, renaissance Beauxbatons than stout Hogwarts, but Harry didn't mind. He loved Hogwarts. It was the home he had never had, but it was not the most attractive building on the inside, no matter how awe inspiring its exterior appeared.

'Alone with a veela in a room that can provide almost anything you want,' Fleur began lightly. 'This, I imagine, is the beginning of many adolescent wizards' dreams.'

'Not mine,' Harry grinned. 'You told me too much about veela to risk me getting set on fire.'

'I would have an advantage here,' Fleur surmised, 'looking over the room. It's warm and dry, my magic would flow faster here than normal here.' Harry filed that away for a later date. Presumably if warm and dry had a positive effect then wet and cold would create the reverse.

I wonder how her faster flowing magic would compare with mine since doing that ritual?

'My wand is easier to reach,' Harry pointed out, letting it slip from his sleeve.

A ball of blue flames burst into sparks at his feet before he had managed to catch it. 'I do not need my wand if to set you on fire, remember.'

'Can you transform?' Harry asked her curiously. The veela at the World Cup had taken on a birdlike appearance at the very end.

'I can,' Fleur replied enigmatically, 'but I won't, not for your curiosity.'

'I suppose that's fair,' Harry answered evenly. He wouldn't start spouting parseltongue for her interest either.

There was a short silence as Fleur finished her glass of wine. It had been a small bottle and only half a goblet more remained.

'Where would you be if I had not asked you to be my shield?' The french witch seemed genuinely curious.

'Probably here, just alone' Harry admitted with a wry smile. 'Or,' he mused. 'If I had gone I might be downstairs kissing Katie.'

'I've never kissed anyone,' Fleur remarked, finishing the last of the wine. She was a little flushed, either from the alcohol or their topic of conversation.

'Neither have I,' Harry half-smiled. 'But I sort of suspect that if I had agreed to dance with Katie I would have ended up kissing her.'

'A good thing I made you come with me, then.'

'Possibly,' Harry conceded. 'I can't imagine kissing Katie would end well.'

'I asked you yesterday if you would let me test to see how resistant you are to my allure,' the platinum blond began as tentatively as he had ever heard her.

'I stand by what I said,' Harry responded before she had to actually ask. He was curious himself now that he knew Fleur was every bit as much a veela as those at the World Cup.

'Focus on me,' Fleur commanded, leaning in closer to him.

For the first time since he had met her Harry focused simply on Fleur. Her bright, clear, summer sky blue eyes, the lustrous, silver-blond hair, pale rose lips. Her face had soft, warm kind quality to it that he had somehow never really managed to notice when she wasn't smiling. Something lurched wildly in his chest; Fleur Delacour was really rather beautiful.

I am clearly not as resistant as either of us thought.

'What do you feel?' she asked, tilting her head coyly to one side.

'I have no idea,' Harry began, breathless, 'how I didn't notice you from the very beginning.' He swallowed his embarrassment at what he was about to say, relying on his occlumency to fight off the blush that he knew was beginning to creep onto his cheeks.

'You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.' Raw honesty was evident in the shakiness of his voice. Fleur stared at him for a long moment, a small, bemused smile at the corner of her lips.

Above his head green, twisting strands of leaves entwined their way down from around the candles. The sweet smell of hot leaves, joined the perpetual scent of burnt holly that clung to Fleur.

The leaves unfolded, their emerald hued, droplet shapes surrounding a scatter of white berries as they descended to hang just between and above their two chairs.

Fleur is in control of the room.

His eyes flicked down from the ceiling of candles and mistletoe to the girl whose thoughts they mirrored.

She was inches away; her face still ever so slightly flushed.

Harry froze, cold surprise gripping him at her proximity, then instantly thawed when Fleur pressed her lips ever so gently against his in a moment of such softness and warmth that Harry's mind lost track of his other senses.

He was vaguely aware of her lashes brushing against cheek, the same sweet smell of burning holly, and the taste of wine and sugar, but he forget them all when her tongue traced with excruciating bliss over his lower lip.

She pulled back, her blue eyes flickering open demurely less than a hand's length from his own.

There were no words that Harry could find in the quiet as she left the Room of Requirement with her real smile spread delicately across the curve of her lips. The only thing he could find on his tongue was the ever so sweet taste of Fleur Delacour.

AN: Please read and review! Thank you to everyone who does. I'll be very interested to know what people think of this chapter ;)

P.S. Noticed a few 'why doesn't he just avada kedavra Crookshanks or whichever pet is nearest ideas. I'm working off the principle that non-self aware creatures have less of a soul. It's like a sliding scale from ants, to the dolphins and humans, and the actual effect of fracturing comes from the strain of tearing the soul away with your magic. So using the Killling Curse on something less than human would not cause sufficient damage to the soul, especially since your intent would not be purely self-motivated as in using the curse on an animal you'd be trying to reserve others. I was saving this little piece of theory for later on down the line, but just in case I don't find a way to slip it in, here it is.

25. The Morning After

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Someone mentioned in the reviews my Harry was quite OC, it was a guest, I think, so I can only respond in a note here. You guys do read the summary, right? The little bit that mentions how his personality is very different and why might have offered some warning.

So it continues.

Chapter 25

Light had spilt in through her window, bright and offensive. Fleur gradually became aware of a pounding in her head, the taste on her tongue, dryness in her mouth and the slightly unsettled, fragile feeling of her stomach.

Too much wine.

Her weakness for sweet things like dessert wines had led her here before, but normally only when she was at home and among those she trusted and was open enough with to risk drinking so much.

The lingering effects of the night of the Yule Ball disappeared after a long drink of water and a a strongly cast charm directed at refreshing and cleaning her mouth. It was one of the most useful spells she knew. It took five minutes and Fleur felt much better afterwards, as if it were any other morning.

Just like that all the problems of my morning are gone.

A nagging feeling that that was not even slightly true could not easily be dismissed and after a few seconds it struck her.

I kissed a fourteen year old.

There were so many more problems this morning than any other morning in her life.

That was my first kiss.

It hadn't been so bad. Fleur distinctly remembered enjoying kissing him, as disturbing as that was. She was not so sheltered she didn't know how to kiss someone, but she'd never had practice and Harry likely hadn't either.

Harry.

Fleur had no idea what he must think of her.

Harry, for all his prodigious talent and insight did not know as much about veela as Fleur both feared and wished he did. He did not know how their allure worked and so had remained blissfully oblivious that he remained unaffected by hers even as he spilt out his feelings to her.

You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.

Just remembering it made her shiver.

If he had been affected by her allure he would have wanted to impress her, needed to catch and keep her attention, but instead he had simply told her she was beautiful. There had been nothing Fleur had wanted so much in that moment as to kiss him and he didn't even know what he had said.

She was smiling just thinking about it.

His shyness had demonstrated without any doubt that he had not even noticed the full force of her allure and Fleur could not be more glad that he had not. His notice of her, now that he finally he had, was completely of her, there was no magic compelling him.

Harry still does not realise.

Her happiness came crashing down.

He still believed that he had been under the effects of her aura, which meant he would attribute everything he had felt to her magic. Fleur was caught somewhere in the middle of relief and despair. She didn't want to him to ignore his emotions when expressing them had brought her so much happiness, but he was three years younger than her.

Merde, she swore silently. Merde. Merde. Merde.

For once Fleur had no idea what to do.

This wasn't something she could use magic to fix, not unless she leapt to extremes and attempted to obliviate Harry. The very idea of doing that disgusted her. He had trusted her, treated her as an equal, understood far more than anyone she had ever met, and chosen staying to keep her company over dancing with the girl he would likely have ended up with had Fleur not interfered.

Something unpleasant, jagged and angry twisted in her chest at the idea of the two of them dancing together. It tightened when she remembered what he had said about kissing her.

Katie Bell.

A girl who did not deserve Harry. She was not his equal. She would never be able to stand alongside him.

Fleur could. He would be the one standing next to her, the one who understood her, and held her back against the world. She was sure of it. If only she hadn't kissed him and potentially ruined everything her dream of friendship could have been.

Harry might well like her. He would not be the first boy to, even if he was the first that had clearly managed it without the aid of her allure, and she had no idea if she liked him. He was fourteen.

Or he might not like me.

Fleur really didn't know which was worse. The idea that he might like her when she did not like him, or the fact that he might not like her when she liked him.

She tried categorising her feelings, sorting through them for signs, attempting to quantify her emotions, but the only conclusions she came to were that she did not want to let her go of her hope of having a close relationship with someone similar enough to understand her, and that she was horribly confused about how close she wanted that relationship to be.

What do I do next?

That was the most important question. Fleur needed to know how she should act around him, or others might notice things she didn't want them to see.

A cold, sickening plummet of her stomach heralded a new, more horrible realisation.

Everyone knows I used my allure on him.

They would all think she had charmed their Boy-Who-Lived, stolen his affections and enthralled him. Even Harry might believe it; she had tried in the Great Hall and on the evening of the Yule Ball, even if it had been for different reasons.

Merde.

'Fleur?' Madame Maxime's stern query was accompanied by a rap on the doorframe that could only have come from her headmistress.

My scolding for the incident in the Great Hall and my choice of date, no doubt.

It could not have come at a worse time.

'One moment,' she sighed wearily, kicking her crumpled dress from the floor of her room into the bathroom out of sight. It was a deplorable way to treat such a beautiful item of clothing, but far preferable than letting her headmistress make any more assumptions about her evening.

'I did not see you return from the castle after the Yule Ball,' Madame Maxime stated in a tone that very much demanded explanation. Fleur had not even managed to fully open the door.

'The disillusionment charm. I left early.' The first question had been mercifully easy to answer.

'You did not return here early, neither Emilie nor Caroline saw you.'

'I spent some time with a friend,' Fleur answered resignedly. She knew where this was going now. Emilie or Caroline, likely both, had not even waited until the next morning to start spreading stories.

If they'd managed to get dates they wouldn't have had time to make things worse for me, Fleur thought scathingly.

'Your friend was also your choice of company and fellow champion Harry Potter, I assume.' Madame Maxime's voice was stern and disapproving.

'You assume correctly.' There was nothing to be done until her headmistress actually gave her something to refute.

'He is fourteen, Fleur,' the towering french teacher remonstrated. 'I can understand your desire to have a platonic date, one that is not affected by your natural magic, but sneaking off with him for the evening… I can not and will not condone such behaviour. He is a child.'

'I think,' Fleur cut in as respectfully as she could manage, 'you should have put less trust in what you have heard about my evening.'

'Oh,' her headmistress remarked. 'So you were not seen by your fellow students disappearing off to the abandoned upper floors of the castle?'

'I'm sure we were,' Fleur snapped, her patience short, stressed as she was. 'I wanted to spend the evening away from gossiping, shallow individuals who had nothing better to do than cast aspersions at their betters. Harry was kind enough not to leave me on my own. My only regret of the evening is failing to avoid them half as well as I had hoped.'

And kissing Harry, a treacherous thought reminded her, or kissing him and leaving before he understood why I did.

It was safe to say that Madame Maxime had never had one of her students speak to her like that before. The headmistress went through several different stages of shock and rage before eventually settling on disbelief.

'You mean to say you spent the whole night talking?'

'Until I left at a little before midnight,' Fleur responded testily. She was pointedly ignoring the memory of mistletoe descending in spirals of tear-drop leaves around the hovering candles.

What is the point of asking me these ridiculous questions if she is not going to believe my answers?

Her headmistress steepled her fingers and adopted a thoughtful expression for a long moment.

'I believe you,' she said after a while. 'However you showed poor judgement in directing your allure at him so blatantly, then again in attending the Yule Ball with him, and you compounded it by vanishing with him for evening. Rumours are already flying.'

'Let them,' Fleur sneered with disdain she did not feel. 'I have never cared before.'

I hope Harry doesn't believe them.

'It might be best for the two of you to let things calm down before spending too much more time in each other's company,' Madame Maxime advised. 'I approve of your friendship Fleur,' she continued more softly, 'Harry Potter stands a better chance than most at understanding the trials you suffer because of your heritage, but neither of you have made things easy for yourselves in acting as you have.'

She might be right.

Fleur had to sort her own feelings out, prepare for the second task, and deal with all the other Beauxbatons girls before facing up to a candid conversation with Harry. He was strong enough to last a few days, she was sure of that.

'You should probably read this,' her headmistress finished, depositing a copy of the Daily Prophet in Fleur's hand.

'I don't think I need to,' Fleur replied. The title was more than enough to convey the message that was in the article.

Part-veela rival charms Boy-Who-Lived. Fleur snorted angrily. There was no such thing as a part veela.

It was the work of the scavenging Rita Skeeter who had been pestering Harry at the wand-weighing. The woman would probably forget all about her and move on the moment she found her next juicy victim. As long as Harry did not believe it the article would do no damage to anything Fleur was concerned with.

'I have already written a letter to your father in France to reassure him there is no truth behind this piece of trash.' Fleur doubted her father would have even believed it for a moment, but she appreciated her headmistress' assistance.

'Thank you.'

'I must suggest that you focus on preparing for the second task. It will help take your mind of this and allow time for the air to clear for both you and Mr Potter. He has his own solution to worry about too.' Madame Maxime retrieved the paper from Fleur's hand and tucked it away somewhere within her clothing, presumably for further reading.

'Is there anything you would like assistance with?' Her headmistress leant a little further through the frame of the door, blocking out most of the light.

'How much are you allowed to give?' Fleur asked suspiciously. Her brief talk with Harry and his reaction to the dragons had implied that either he was getting less help than he should, or the others were getting more than they were supposed to.

'As long as I am not directly helping you with the task it is not cheating,' Madame Maxime explained, a little abashed.

Fleur weighed up her options.

Better to win, she decided. The others were likely all cheating anyway and she was already at a disadvantage due to the nature of her magic.

'I need to adapt the bubble-head charm for long and repeated underwater use,' Fleur told her headmistress.

'Not the best choice for a long underwater venture in which you might encounter dangerous creatures,' Madame Maxime frowned. 'The more power put into the charm the more dangerous the reaction when the bubble is burst.'

'Is there an alternative?' Fleur had not considered the extra compression over-powering the charm might cause.

'Transfiguration, or enchanting an item of clothing to convert water to breathable oxygen would be your best solutions,' the headmistress suggested. 'The latter especially given your skill at enchanting and charming. There are plenty of pieces of spell-weaving capable of creating such an effect, but I suggest simplicity. You do not need it to last the rest of your life.'

Finding an appropriate set of enchantments meant another disillusioned trip to Hogwarts' library and a long week of research and practice before she was done.

I won't be able to see Harry for a short while anyway, Fleur realised. It was probably for the best. It would give her some time to straighten out her thoughts and let the rumours fade before they had to talk about the evening of the Yule Ball.

'I shall leave you to it,' Madame Maxime decided, withdrawing from the doorway as Fleur began to ponder her new solution in earnest.

She already had an item in mind. A thin piece of gauze that had one been part of a scarf. It could easily be tied around her lower face and secured so that she did not lose it.

A light tap on the window heralded the arrival of Hedwig, the owl Harry had leant her. She had made a few journeys between Fleur and Gabrielle now.

Opening the pane of glass and allowing the snowy owl in to her room Fleur decided that writing everything she felt down in a letter to her sister would at least help her. Gabby might not understand, being younger, but pushing it all through a pen would certainly make Fleur feel a little better.

At least until Gabrielle starts asking questions.

Her sister's letter, which Fleur knew she was only allowed to take once Hedwig had made sure of who she was. The beautiful, white owl scrutinised with first one eye, then the other, and finally both, before hooting softly, dropping the envelope and vanishing back out of the window.

Fleur would have to go to the Owlery again later. The bird was as difficult as her master.

Gabrielle's letter was long, very long, and rambling. A very tightly folded and compressed wad of parchment that was covered in her sister's small, neat handwriting from top to bottom on both sides. She knew her baby sister well enough to know what that meant. Gabrielle was lonely.

Their letters were probably the only company either of them had had until recently. A longer letter demanded a longer reply. Gabby needed some attention.

Fleur's welter of feelings swirled.

Her sister was about to get a lot more than she bargained for.

It took Fleur the better part of an hour to pour her tangle of troubles into ink. Seeing them in dark, blue script made them feel a bit less daunting than before. They were just words, and Fleur had dealt with words before, both hateful and kind.

Time to find Hedwig.

She twirled her rose-wood wand over herself, waiting for the charm to take affect and render her virtually invisible. Fleur would venture first to the Owlery, then to the library. It would be best to get started on her solution for the second task straight away. The quicker it was done the sooner she could concentrate on other things.

Emelie and Caroline were sitting in the communal part of the carriage when Fleur passed it, sniggering over the article. They seemed a little too pleased with themselves for Fleur to stomach.

'Credidero,' she whispered angrily, looping her wand in a circle at each of the girls.

The believing curse was fitting revenge, one she had been saving for just such a moment. It was more commonly known as Cassandra's Curse now. Nobody would believe a word that came from either of their mouths while the magic lasted. Fleur only regretted that she did not have the skill with the curse to make its effect on them as permanent as it had been on the Trojan witch and seer.

She swept out of the carriage and up the hill towards Hogwarts with a satisfied smile on her lips. Emilie and Caroline deserved everything they got for setting Madame Maxime on her.

The grass was wet, and Fleur had to follow the stone paths to avoid leaving footprints and getting herself soaked. Part of her hoped that this would make it more likely for her to run in to Harry by accident, but part of her was afraid of the exact same event occurring.

The Owlery was blessedly empty, but Fleur was still cautious, especially once she had dispelled her concealing piece of magic. Harry's disillusionment charm was perfect, unlike hers, and he had told her that he owned an artefact capable of completely hiding his presence. She had only found him last time because he knew he would have come under concealment and that he would have been here.

Why would he sneak around his own school? Fleur asked herself.

The question did nothing to reassure her as she hoped it would, only called to mind all the times she had spent concealed at Beauxbatons.

Hedwig was on the same perch that Harry had first found her on. She weighed the letter a little grumpily in her beak when Fleur passed it to her, but left with it all the same. He had a very smart owl. Most birds did not demonstrate half the things Hedwig did. Her bond with Harry was strong.

The snowy owl disappeared out the window just as she had the first time, and every occasion in between.

To the library, she decided after a moment's hesitation.

If Harry was here he did not want to speak to or be seen by her. Fleur hoped that neither of those were true. She might be conflicted about what to say and how to act around him now, but she wanted him to want to speak with her. They could never develop the friendship and bond between equals that Fleur desired if he did not.

The journey from the Owlery to the Library crossed the entire breadth of the school so unless Harry had returned to vanishing, which was possible, Fleur conceded, then there was a chance she might see him. The prospect made her both smile and frown above the butterflies that danced in her chest.

She did not.

The only other Triwizard Champion that she noticed was Viktor Krum. He too was in the library, slumped over a stack of transfiguration books and what looked like a detailed anatomical study of some kind of fish.

So he is aware of the second task too.

His solution looked rather more complicated and less elegant than Fleur thought hers would be, provided she managed to make it work.

He glanced up as she passed, blinking away the slightly glazed look that immediately affected him and covering his notes.

Fleur dipped her head in greeting. Viktor Krum would do very well if he managed to transfigure himself as he appeared to be attempting.

'Someone took out the best book about magical creatures,' she heard Hermione Granger announce as she approached Durmstrang's champion. Evidently school loyalty was not as important as personal loyalty to the former friend of Harry.

The girl had at least made whatever she did to her hair to fix it permanent.

'Madam Pince told me that it was the Beauxbatons' champion that took it out,' Hermione said fiercely. 'She shouldn't be allowed to take books out of our library, isn't one schools knowledge enough for her.'

'We do not have access to our own libraries, Hermione,' Viktor reminded her in his thick accent. He seemed on the verge of laughter at her vehemence. 'It is a good sign. Fleur Delacour is winning, if she has the book we want it means we are on the right track.'

Yes it does, she thought a little smugly, glad that there was at least some mutual respect between the champions if not the rest of the schools.

'It's still a bad idea,' Hermione sniffed. 'She's bewitched Harry already, and he was joint second with you. You're her next target, Viktor, her nearest competition.'

'You think because she is veela she will manage to charm me into letting her win.' Fleur could hear the smile in his tone as she leant against the bookshelf. 'I am from Bulgaria, we have a proud tradition of veela witches there, they rarely stoop to such a thing. Besides, I am very competitive, I do not let anyone beat me.'

'And Harry? She used her allure on him, everyone knows that.'

Fleur ground her teeth but listened regardless. She needed to know what Harry would be hearing.

'He did not seem enthralled by her at the Yule Ball,' Viktor dismissed. 'You can tell when someone is under the charm of a veela, it shows in their eyes. I have never seen it in his, Harry Potter is more more resistant than I am, so even if she tried she must have failed. It hardly matters given the location of the next task. A veela is at a disadvantage in such conditions.'

'Only if you manage to transfigure yourself,' Hermione reminded him.

'Exactly why I should be concentrating on learning the details of this diagram and not getting distracted talking with pretty girls.'

Hermione huffed loudly, but Fleur could tell she was flattered.

'It's only a partial transfiguration,' Viktor continued, 'I shall be fine, but we should keep our voices down, Fleur Delacour is in the library too and might come back this way.'

'Maybe she brought the book back,' Hermione wondered eagerly as Fleur started her search for breathing enchantments in earnest.

'It will not be returned until after the task.' She faintly caught Viktor's chuckle at the younger girl's naivety.

Of course it won't be, Fleur scoffed, locating the right section of the library.

There were a surprising number of books on enchanted items that turned water breathable. Fleur found her preferred choice in one the older less obviously useful books. A study of the greek wizarding city of Atlantis that had been collapsed into the sea by the eruption of the volcano Santorini over a millennia ago. The wizards there had made a great deal of money raising and growing aquatic plants and coral, but needed a way of harvesting them.

Their solution had been to develop an enchantment that effectively summoned the oxygen from the water around and kept a thin, but constant layer of it on the reverse, or dry, side of the enchanted item. Fleur was half-tempted to use it on all of her clothing to try and keep the water from interfering with the flow of her magic.

It was cited as the precursor to the bubble-head charm, but Fleur felt that the popularity of the newer charm was probably more down to a widespread lack of enchanting ability than any true superiority over the simple, ancient solution of the people of Atlantis.

She couldn't cast and test the enchantment here, however, which meant it was time to return to the Beauxbatons carriage.

The fastest way back was through the Great Hall. It was the most likely place she would see Harry and with that in mind Fleur couldn't quite bring herself to reapply the disillusionment charm she had used to arrive.

There were a lot of stares.

Fleur ignored them, her polite smile never slipped until she passed by the entrance of the Great Hall. It crumbled the moment she caught sight of the head of unruly, black hair and twisted into something both bitter and longing without Fleur's permission.

Harry was sitting at the far end of the Gryffindor table, staring up at the vast, stained glass window that covered the end opposite to the door.

She made the first few metres into the hall without really thinking about it. Harry needed to be told what had happened, why it had happened, and that she was going to be occupied for a bit.

Fleur had made halfway down the tables before looking around at the other students and then back at Harry. Her smile fell from her face, whatever form it had taken crumbling away.

I don't really know why it happened.

She had no idea what she would say and there were so many people around them. Her indecision froze her for the briefest instant.

I can't do it.

Her pride had deserted her. No number of polite smiles would save her from how much it might hurt if she made a mistake and ruined the friendship she hoped they might be able to build.

Very slowly and quietly Fleur turned and walked back the way she had come.

AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone who does! This was probably the hardest chapter to write so far and I'd imagine it shows, so apologies for that, but it's a necessary chapter. A special mention to PaC who managed to guess how I was going to do the second task in regards to Fleur, albeit I'm not sure he did so intentionally, but in retaliation I've changed it ;)

26. Qui immolat diis sacrificium

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The other side of the coin...

Chapter 26

The candles, the mistletoe and the chair Fleur had vacated had vanished the moment she left the room. Harry remembered the way the room had changed from Fleur's desire to his. How he had sat alone in a room of silver mirrors, beside the quietly crackling fire that had formed beside him. The thick, holly, logs burning merrily beneath a summer sky blue ceiling.

Sometimes, he decided, the Room of Requirement is too perceptive.

He'd left the moment he had realised what Godric and Rowena's masterpiece was doing and only returned to sleep when he was sure he was so tired that the only thing he could possibly want was sleep.

The bed that the room had created for him had been bedecked in blue and silver hangings, and the sheets smelt as if they had been hanging above the very fire that Harry had previously abandoned.

He had been too tired to argue with the room, or to try and change the decor.

Harry had been so tired that he hadn't awoken until mid-afternoon at which point the only thing he really wanted was one of the few things the room could not provide.

He'd come to the Great Hall early in the vague hope that if he was here before usual then the house elves might take pity on him and the food might arrive early too.

So far the tables remained woefully unadorned and Harry had been left to watch the gradual gathering of students as the evening approached.

It also left him rather too much time to think.

Smiling over being kissed by Fleur gradually shifted to the question why. Harry dearly wished she'd appear somewhere so he could speak with her. He'd even considered going to the Beauxbatons carriage, but that felt like a bad idea.

He sat on the very end of the table, spinning his wand round on the surface considering his question as it began to give birth to more and more queries in turn.

Why did she kiss me?

Harry could have understood if he'd kissed her, or tried. Fleur had been testing her allure on him. Unless there was some secret about veela kisses he was not privy too then he couldn't see why she would have kissed him.

As a thank you for the evening, perhaps?

It was possible. He'd seen and read, though Harry suspected the word exposed would be more apt, enough romance to know that it happened, at least in fiction, but it did not feel like something Fleur Delacour would do.

She was like him and Harry would never dream of cheapening something that should have such meaning behind it. He had learned how good it felt to know that someone would always stand behind you and he knew how terrible it felt to discover someone you hoped would be beside you had turned away.

Fleur knew this too.

People began to flow in to the hall in earnest. Scattering in small groups from the door to the four tables. Harry watched them in the reflection of the great, stained glass window.

He picked out several faces from the crowd. A cheerful looking Seamus and Neville. Ron and Dean looked a miserable pair, the latter's arm was still in a sling. He spied Ginny with a dirty blond haired Ravenclaw he vaguely recognised, and glimpsed the trio of Gryffindor chasers at the far end of the table to him.

Katie was in the middle of the three for once, and both her friends seemed to be doing their utmost to hold her attention. It was possible she had not enjoyed the rest of her evening as much as Harry had if Roger Davies had abandoned her so early.

He watched curiously in the window as Alicia and Angelina kept dragging her attention back to themselves and found something new to laugh about every time Katie through a regretful look down to his end of the table.

A flash of familiar silver in the window caught his eye and he immediately forgot about Katie Bell.

Fleur Delacour drifted halfway down the hall between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, her step uncertain and her usual smile fixed upon her face. Harry suppressed the surprisingly fierce urge to change her expression back to the perfect, kind of curving of the lips that he had seen last evening.

Her eyes flicked to the end of the table where he was sitting and her smile changed.

It did not shift as Harry had hoped. The polite, cool pride twisted into something bitter and she stopped, mid-stride.

As Fleur turned away to leave the hall the cold grip of a hollow hand returned itself to Harry's heart.

She is avoiding me.

All of a sudden he felt rather sick, food could not have fallen further from his mind. Very slowly and deliberately he spun his wand once more upon the table surface and slipped it back into his sleeve.

The moment he was certain that the french veela must have passed out of sight of the doors to the Great Hall and the staircase he left.

Harry took the steps two at a time, only pausing to dodge the trick step on his way to the Chamber of Secrets.

There were so many reasons that Fleur might have for not wanting to speak to him, but Harry didn't want to think about any of them. He needed something to do, anything that would occupy his hands and mind.

'Harry!' The cheer on Myrtle's face vanished instantly at the expression he was wearing. The ghost girl paled, growing even more translucent. 'What's wrong, Harry?'

Amazingly only one thing came to mind.

'You flooded the bathroom again, Myrtle,' he sighed. The ghost giggled.

'If you slip and break your neck you can stay here with me,' she offered.

'Thanks, Myrtle.' Harry didn't have the heart to tell her that he might have the opportunity to take her up on her offer sooner than she expected, so he simply disappeared down the stairs. Dumbledore would only continue playing with Harry's life for so long before he he lost patience and simply finished him off. The worst part that was it was necessary and the old wizard was right.

'Don't even think about opening that egg,' Salazar snapped the moment he entered the study.

'I have to open it to figure out the clue,' Harry reminded the portrait.

'Maybe the clue is on the outside,' the painting suggested more in hope than knowledge. Harry gave him a flat look. He'd sit in the study and let the egg scream at him for the whole day if it stopped him thinking about whatever mess had been made of his friendship with Fleur Delacour.

'It sounds worse than Godric's singing,' the painting grumbled. 'The only things less bearable than his singing were the months he spent learning Mermish and speaking it constantly above water and Rowena's poetry. She just couldn't grasp that a poem needed more than just a rhythm and some rhyming.'

Harry ignored the paintings rambling. He had reached the conclusion some time ago that if the basilisk had been able to hear Slytherin then Tom Riddle was probably only partially responsible for its madness.

The egg swivelled on the desk once, revolving on its axis before Harry attempted to open it.] 'Mermish,' Salazar exploded from behind him. The founder was growing senile. 'Don't open it until it's underwater.'

'I can't hear it if it's underwater,' Harry patiently told the portrait who promptly broke into apoplectic rage.

'You'll be underwater too,' Salazar hissed in parseltongue, 'stop acting sceptical and listen to the wizard who was heralded as one of the greatest of all time.'

'Will it sound any different underwater?' Harry asked.

'It's Mermish,' Slytherin explained, sufficiently calm to speak in English again now Harry was listening. 'It sounds horrible above the ground, but below it is supposed to be quite beautiful.'

'How deep is the pool?'

'Only about five metres,' Salazar answered. 'I didn't want my basilisk to drown if she fell in. It will be cold.' Harry detected more than a note of vengeful humour in the tone of his ancestor.

It seems my anti-Salazar device has come back to bite me.

The egg screeched horrifically all the way to the bridge, drowning out Slytherin's indignant protests at his early opening of it.

Harry stripped off his robes and dropped, naked, into the pool before the vast likeness of Salazar Slytherin's face. The moment the water covered his head he could hear the singing. It was choral, and such a drastically different tune to the egg's last that he would have never guessed it could have come from the infernal thing.

He had to wait until the song had finished before he could listen to it from the beginning.

Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this;

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour, the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

He dragged himself out of the icy water, shivering violently in the cold of the Chamber of Secrets while the serpent effigies looked down indifferently upon his discomfort.

It took several strongly cast warming charms before he was dry enough to put his robes back on. His teeth did not stop chattering until he was back in the study.

'Was it warm,' Salazar snickered, looking pointedly towards his blue fingernails and pale skin.

'I will leave the egg open when I depart,' Harry threatened, half-serious.

'What did it say?' the founder asked, more subdued.

'Something of mine will or has been taken,' Harry informed him, 'something important.'

'Oh,' the portrait raised an eyebrow in a fashion eerily reminiscent of Harry, 'I thought everything you possessed was down here cluttering up my study?'

'So did I,' Harry mused. 'Maybe it's just a turn of phrase,' he suggested weakly.

'Maybe they intend to take something you can't hide or protect,' the painting countered, 'a person, perhaps.' It made sense, but there were few people that Harry would sorely miss.

They can't choose another champion, Harry decided. That would play havoc with the tournament.

'The only person they could take is my godfather,' Harry announced confidently. 'If they find him then being party to the tournament is the least of his worries, or mine.'

'What else did you learn?'

'Whatever they intend for me to retrieve will be kept by the Merpeople, underwater, for at least an hour.'

'There are Merpeople in the Black Lake,' Salazar responded straight away. 'Godric used to talk to them.'

'There's a giant squid and who else knows what in there too.' Harry did not relish the idea of going into the lake. It was likely every bit as cold as the pool and much less hospitable.

'Where did the squid come from?' Salazar asked.

'How would I know?'

'You might have been curious,' he ventured.

'I wasn't, but I do know it eats toast. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan feed it.' Slytherin peered at him in disbelief. 'It's true,' he insisted.

'Squid do not eat toast,' the founder denied flatly. 'Still, I advise avoiding it for the duration of the task. How do you intend to breathe. There's the bubble head charm, but it isn't really meant for long term use, self-transfiguration, enchanting and even a selection of magical plants.'

'Transfiguration is my forté,' Harry decided. 'I don't want to have to choke down anything from Snape's stores. He's probably pre-emptively poisoned half of it.'

'You'l have to pick something to transfigure yourself into,' the founder pointed out. 'You've chosen the hardest route. You won't be able to master a full self-transfiguration in time, but a partial one could be managed.'

'Obviously it needs to be something that breathes under water,' Harry mused.

'Don't get too complex,' Salazar warned. 'You only need to breathe for an hour, gills would be enough.'

Harry gazed rather wistfully at the books on the anatomy of water creatures on the far side of library.

'Another time,' Slytherin chuckled. 'Having an animagus form is very useful, but it takes a great deal of study and has more effects than you realise.'

'Just gills then,' he agreed. 'They can't be too complicated.'

'You're going to have to redesign half of your respiratory system,' Salazar informed bluntly. 'If you replace the alveoli and bronchi within your lungs with the filaments of gills you will simply have to inhale water to breathe. As long as you keep oxygenated water flowing over the filaments you will be fine.'

'That sounds deceptively simple,' Harry frowned.

'You'll have to breathe very quickly to keep the water flowing in and out fast enough, not to mention it will feel extremely unnatural to inhale water in such a manner.'

'I knew there would be a catch,' Harry sighed.

'If you're careful you'll be fine. I'll teach you the spells used to reverse faulty transfigurations before you start practicing, just in case.' Slytherin clearly did not appreciate the idea of his heir dying in such a mundane fashion.

'It's probably unfair that I have your assistance,' Harry remarked.

'Unfair on who? Your rivals? Tom Riddle? Albus Dumbledore?' The portrait fixed him with the look Harry had dubbed the your-acting-like-Godric expression.

'I suppose that is true,' Harry conceded.

'You aren't going to defend Dumbledore?' Salazar seemed quite surprised.

'The prat has been doing his best to get me killed every year,' Harry answered coldly. 'I won't be defending him unless I really need him.'

'There's my heir,' Slytherin crooned. Harry suddenly felt a stab of pity for his children, that was not a voice he wanted in his childhood memories. 'Don't let him use you, you aren't his sacrifice to make.'

'I'm not anyone's sacrifice but my own,' Harry told him firmly.

'I suppose that is better than being everyone's enduring, noble hero,' Salazar sighed. 'Any chance you'd consider not dying to destroy that horcrux.'

'It has to be destroyed,' Harry told him quietly. There were hundreds of people who would never have to lose anyone, thousands, and all it would take was a single death. He could understand Dumbledore's decision, even if the nature by which he had carried out was highly offensive and manipulative. 'I want to live, but I don't think I have it in me to condemn someone to death just for my own survival.' Oddly the statement felt perilously close to a lie, perhaps it was because when he considered the idea he could only ever really imagine sacrificing someone who didn't deserve it. The ones who did never seemed to be an option when there was a choice over who was to pay the price.

'Normally you spit vitriol at the mere suggestion,' Salazar remarked, ever curious and observant. 'What is distracting you?'

'The aftermath of the Yule Ball,' Harry admitted. He had never told Salazar about Fleur, the topic had never come up.

'The Katie girl again?' Slytherin asked.

'No, I went with Fleur Delacour, my rival,' Harry explained.

'I suspect there is some context to explain that,' the painting probed. The founder sounded surprisingly understanding and sympathetic.

Perhaps his children weren't so unlucky.

'She is like me,' Harry began, trying to structure his thoughts. 'I did not realise at first, like many who look at me and see only the Boy-Who-Lived I saw only Fleur Delacour the proud, arrogant french witch. I realised, eventually, that we were more similar than I suspected and remembered what you told me about finding equals. She… demanded, that I take her to the Ball and I agreed.'

'She left you for another during the evening?'

'No,' Harry snapped. Fleur would not have done that, not after how she had reacted to Katie's offer. 'We spent the day before together, getting to know one another a bit beforehand. We talked about a few things, the egg, the second task, veela…' He trailed off at Salazar's darkening expression. 'What?'

'Veela?' he asked, trying to mask his previous displeasure.

'She is veela,' Harry explained.

'That makes sense,' Slytherin responded, for all his best attempts his frown remained about his brows and the corners of his mouth still curved down. 'Did she use her allure on you?'

'Yes,' Harry admitted, 'but not how you think. I am resistant.'

'Of course you are,' Salazar announced proudly, 'my family have always been gifted with the mind arts, the longer you study occlumency the less effect you will feel from such magic.'

'She turned the full force of it upon me to test my resistance and, once I gave in, she kissed me and left.'

Salazar's frown had turned to confusion. If the situation had not been so close to Harry's heart he would have laughed at the unusual expression. His ancestor was rarely so perplexed.

'I do not understand,' the painting confessed. 'There seems to be no dilemma except why she might have kissed you, I had feared-'

'She's avoiding me,' Harry admitted, his stomach clenching at the memory of Fleur turning away from him in the hall. 'I thought,' his fists balled, 'I knew, that it would be too good to be true. I'm fourteen she is seventeen. I don't know why she kissed me, but it has cost me my hope of having found an equal, a real friend.'

'Ah,' the portrait said delicately.'

'Ah?' Harry repeated.

'I was about to say that my fears seemed unfounded, but-'

'But they weren't?' Harry interrupted.

'You said she asked about the second task and the egg,' Salazar reminded him very carefully. 'And she began avoiding you shortly after realising you were not entirely resistant to her allure.'

Several little pieces began to fall into place in Harry's head; the small stones that start the avalanche.

Fleur Delacour had understood him. She had been like him enough to empathise. Fleur had used her understanding against him. Probed to see if she could find any weaknesses in the one rival she had not already completely categorised, tested to see if her allure might be useful against him, and now she no longer needed to act kindly to him.

'I could be wrong,' the founder suggested tentatively, 'she did not have to kiss you.'

'No,' Harry laughed bitterly, 'she did not have to kiss me. Fleur could have walked away and I would have been left in blissful ignorance.'

The side of the mountain on which he had built his hopes of having found an equal crumbled and collapsed as the avalanche fell with an angry roar.

'She used me,' he hissed, furious. A small patch of ice had formed in his chest.

'She did not need to ask you to the Yule Ball,' Salazar ventured, concern clear in his eyes.

'Fleur was plagued by wizards wanting to be her date. I was her platonic shield,' he rebutted. The ice was spreading across his chest, egged on by the little voice in the back of his head. It was whispering names, the names of everyone who had ever chosen themselves over him and left Harry to endure.

Albus Dumbledore, it repeated four times hatefully, once for every year of danger.

The voice was right. Salazar had been right. He had been wrong.

'You were correct,' he laughed, high and cold. 'I let them take advantage, let them walk over me as if my goals and dreams did not matter as much as theirs.'

The portrait wisely stayed silent. The snake had fled inside the neck of Salazar's robes to escape Harry's wrath.

'I will not be used again, not by anyone,' he swore fervently. 'I'll seize my dreams and if I find anyone worthy of my trust and friendship along the way then so be it.'

I will not become nothing, not for a world that has been nothing to me.

The slender piece of parchment was snatched from his pocket, unfolded and activated under the worried eyes of his ancestor. The name he was searching for hovered in black ink upon one folded side. Harry took one look and dropped it on the table. He had what he wanted, what he needed to escape.

'Where are you going?' Salazar asked, as Harry made to leave. There was paternal panic in his voice.

'I'm the Heir of Slytherin,' he echoed icily as he swept out, 'not a sacrifice for lesser wizards.'

On the table behind him the Marauders' Map fluttered in his wake, Peter Pettigrew's name clearly visible upon its upturned face.

AN: Hahaha, and someone thought it was getting near the end... Anyway, please read and review! I do apologise for how short this chapter is, but there simply wasn't anything else that felt like it would fit within it. I double posted to make up for it. I also hope that anyone who felt the Yule Ball moment was rushed now realises that one kiss does not the relationship make...

27. Splat the Rat

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I had an admittedly cruel temptation to spend all my writing time today doing some proper proofreading for all the chapters, it would be a first, and hunting down all those missing words and typos. I have to read it all aloud and it takes as long as writing anything from scratch, but it does need to be done. Fortunately for anyone who wants the next chapter more than they care about my typos, I changed my mind.

Chapter 27

The grass was wet. For every two steps Harry made up the slight slope, he slid one backwards, but the tree line at the edge of the quidditch gradually grew closer. He would make it.

Pettigrew, the ice in his chest tightened viciously at the thought of the traitor, should still be here.

A shadow lurked, short and furtive, twitching beneath the pines.

Peter Pettigrew.

Something within the ice uncoiled, something hungry, something selfish. It raised its head, opening eyes within himself that Harry had never known he had had. With its awakening came memories. The fury of his uncle when he yelled that Harry was nothing but a freak, the quiet contempt and spite of his aunt, the learned hate and disgust of Dudley, and every moment he could recall in which he had believed, or known, or thought that something else might have been worth more than he was.

I will not become nothing.

He disillusioned himself.

The pine trees smelt just as he remembered when he smeared their sap across his fingertips. The sharp, sweet scent of pine resin that was forever associated with spilt unicorn blood, acromantula and werewolves, overpowered any scent he might leave. The instincts of a rat would not save Wormtail.

'Incarcerous,' Harry hissed triumphantly. The unmistakeable silhouette of the treacherous animagus flinched, but it was too late. His emotions twisted the intent of the spell beyond the black ropes he had intended. Thin, cruelly barbed wires, snared the rat in a net he could not have escaped in either of his forms, cutting into his skin. Hoarfrost coated the metal, lacing the iron with icy spines.

'Were you waiting for someone?' he asked, dispelling his invisibility. 'Another hapless student to hide with, an innocent victim to betray.'

'Harry,' Pettigrew's voiced wavered somewhere between relief and fear.

'Expecting some else?' he asked guilelessly, Tom Riddle's charming smile spreading across his face. Something flickered through Pettigrew's eyes. He had been waiting for someone, but Harry didn't care. He wasn't here for anyone else, there was no stone to save, no misled little girl and no wronged godfather. This moment was simply his.

'What are you going to do?' Wormtail whined. He tried moving, twisting within the wires, but they only cut more deeply into his skin. Blood began to run in tiny trickles across his pale, dirty skin.

'I'm not going to hurt you,' Harry promised.

'I know you aren't,' Pettigrew whispered, 'your parents would never want you to do something so cruel, but the wires are tight, Harry, they're hurting.'

'You know something, Peter?' Harry stretched his smile wider, pouring innocent emotion into his eyes. The creature of ice uncoiled further within his chest, its eyes narrowing, lips curling back before needle sharp teeth.

'No.' Pettigrew, for all his cowardice, was not stupid, he knew something was wrong and his voice was faint.

'I don't think,' his smile ceased all pretence of kindness, curving cold and cruel, 'that the dead want anything.' Pettigrew whimpered. 'I want something,' he continued, as Wormtail's eyes roved desperately.

'Revenge won't bring them back,' Pettigrew pleaded. 'If it did, I'd've turned the Dark Lord's wand against the monster himself the first chance I got. They were two of five people that cared about me. I was never brilliant like any of them, but they cared for me all the same. I wish, more than anything, that I'd remembered how to be brave when the Dark Lord found me. He was searching for Sirius and thought I might know. I wish I'd died then, and been remembered as I was for thirteen years, but I didn't, I wasn't, and I just want to live.'

'I spent eleven years wishing for parents,' Harry shared, with malice so sweet it seemed to drip from his tongue. 'Wishes like that, they just don't come true.'

The slim, ebony shape of his wand slipped from his sleeve again, eleven and a third inches of intent.

'If you kill me Sirius will never have his name cleared, take me to the aurors, to Dumbledore, to Azkaban, but kill me and he will never be free.'

It gave Harry pause. He had never considered that his action might have such severe consequences for his godfather.

Sirius didn't try to capture Pettigrew and clear his name, the voice, Riddle's voice, perhaps the horcrux's voice whispered. It was right. His godfather had wanted Peter dead, not a prisoner, or a soulless husk. The Ministry was unlikely to ever admit a mistake that had left an innocent man in Azkaban for more than a decade. Harry had met Fudge. The ice creature coiled tighter around his heart. Sirius would have wanted him to do this.

He deserves to die. He's already dead to the world.

Harry's grip on his wand tightened. Peter Pettigrew would be dead. The friend who had betrayed his parents would die to free him from the very fate his cowardice had condemned Harry to. It was almost poetic.

'Harry,' Pettigrew whispered desperately. 'Harry, please.'

His eyes were fixed on the tip of Harry's wand where, as his intent swelled, a point of bright green light had appeared.

Tom Riddle's smile twisted in a beautiful parody of triumph across Harry's face.

I won't be used. I won't be nothing.

The hot, black tip of Harry's wand, encased in incandescent green, came to hover between Pettigrew's eyes. It was perfectly still. The prospect of freedom, of escaping the fate he had all but resigned himself to in his naive, noble ignorant belief that sacrificing himself was the right way, had the creature of ice coiling and uncoiling in excitement within him.

'Do you know what the first two words I remember are?' he asked. The helpless Wormtail shook his head, squirming within the wires, staining both grey iron and white ice a bright crimson.

'I'm sure you can guess,' Harry told him pleasantly, mentally preparing himself for what was to come. The book and Riddle's notes had both spoken of pain beyond any name.

Tom Riddle's brilliant smile curved up on the left side of Harry's face, becoming his own.

There was a blinding green flash as Harry spoke the the first two words he had known. The pine trees were illuminated for an instant in the ghastly light of the curse he had been adamant he would never use. Their needles threw sharp shadows across the blank face of Peter Pettigrew.

Riddle's notes had contained the best clue at what came next. Two words, six letters, then four, the latter carved into the parchment.

Listen, the first instructed. The second was a warning. Pain.

There weren't words for magic like this, it was too abstract, too complex and emotional for simple latin to capture the intent. Harry could do no more than try to hear, to see, what he knew must be there.

The pine trees melted into nothing, the sound of their needles, the whisper and touch of the breeze, the smell of the resin, all faded from thought.

A thousand inky black fragments screamed within him.

Their screams were not a sound. They whispered, howled, gibbered and cried without ever making a noise.

It was deafening.

One of them is not me.

He concentrated on each individual fragment, listening to the sounds within each shard of the broken mirror that was his soul. There were more different, distorted, reflections of himself than he could have ever dreamt. Voldemort had wondered if they were all the possible outcomes from the event of fracturing the soul, every in between from fully recovering, to never healing.

Harry sought desperately for one that was not a reflection of him, but something else.

They were all of him.

No.

He refused to accept that. The horcrux was here and he would find it.

Harry listened again, more intently, embracing each image of himself as they came, until, eventually, there was an image of himself that came with an echo. It was a cold-eyed, brightly smiling Harry, with tousled, messy hair, no different from a hundred others, but underneath it there was a susurration of something else, someone else. Red eyes gleamed behind green.

The horcrux had been a part of him so long that it was intertwined with his own soul, and even now, fractured and screaming as Harry's essence was, the horcrux clung to him rather than breaking free.

Out, he hissed at it. Get out.

He set himself and tore.

The creature of ice shattered, melting away before the torrent of agony his action had unleashed. Nothing had ever felt half so wrong as what he had just attempted, but it had to happen. The piece of Voldemort had to go.

Harry steeled himself and ripped again.

Something gave, and the pieces screamed louder. Harry screamed too.

There was nothing outside of the terrible, unnatural torment. He could hear the pieces screaming, hear himself, vaguely, distantly crying out for anyone or anything. His wand had grown hot, so much so that that he knew it must be burning his hand, but he couldn't feel any pain but that of the tearing.

He could physically feel himself coming apart, splitting and lessening.

Something thick and sticky rolled down his face and he opened his eyes in shock.

In the reflection of Pettigrew's dead eyes he watched tears of ebony slowly crawling to his chin. They left inky trails down his cheeks and dripped heavily to the floor, spattering in poisonous hisses and then rising as a thick, swirling, black smoke.

For every tear the agony increased, bypassing what was bearable, what was not, and annihilating all coherent thoughts save one.

It has to come out.

The pain climbed higher still. Its shadow blotted out everything, obliterating any focus Harry might have hoped for. The writhing, ebony substance scattered and disappeared behind an explosion of white sparks that filled his vision.

It might have been better to die.

Suddenly the pain was gone and Harry was left on the ground, curled up into a ball, covered in dirt and surrounded by clawed, disrupted ground. He could smell the resin again, hear something that wasn't screaming.

For an instant it was bliss.

Then the pain returned, searing waves of it, all emanating from the cracked, blackened flesh of his wand-hand.

The slender piece of ebony was unmarred, but the entire inside of his palm and fingers were charred away. Harry glimpsed bone when he flexed his hand the crack stretched. He knew no healing charms, but hoped, rather desperately that Madam Pomfrey did.

It has to be fixable.

Madam Pomfrey had regrown his bones.

Cedric, he remembered, relieved, despite the pain. The dragon had hit hard enough that his landing had given him friction burns strong enough to strip the skin and muscle from his arm and side. Harry's hand was nothing compared to that.

Staggering to his feet he tugged his wand out of the ruin of his right hand. It came away easily, but the centre of Harry's palm came with it and a new wave of pain washed across the site.

Gripping it loosely in his other hand he transfigured Peter Pettigrew's body back into the rat he had spent thirteen years pretending to be. A weakly powered incendio set it on fire and Harry sent it flying far into the Forbidden Forest with a blasting curse. It would turn back to a body eventually, but Harry doubted there would be anything left to implicate him, if there was anything left at all. There were plenty of creatures in the Forbidden Forest that were unlikely to pass up an easy, free meal. He would have done more, but his magic was all but spent.

He swayed, instinctively putting out a hand to catch himself, but habit led to him extending his dominant hand and pain exploded from the charred flesh. He'd never really felt all that much remorse for Quirrell until now.

The hospital wing was too far to walk. Harry knew he would never make it in his condition, so he focused as hard as he could on the very top stair of the steps from the Chamber of Secrets, mustering what little of his magic he could find.

The world twisted back past him and he collapsed out of the stairs onto the still soaking floor of Myrtle's bathroom.

The water stung, but Harry was grateful for it. The new edge to the pain was keeping him focused enough to walk and think.

He disillusioned himself with his left hand. The charm was nowhere near as effective as it normally was, tiredness, pain and poor wand movement with his weaker hand all reducing his prowess, but it would have to do.

It took him over a thousand steps to reach the doors to the infirmary and by the time he did the edges of his vision were darkening.

'Mr Potter,' he heard the stern nurse exclaim as his charm and his legs finally failed him.

She rushed across, whipping her wand at the curtains around the other beds so they closed and kept him from view.

'Drink this,' she ordered. Something vile and peppery flooded down his throat. His next breathe was so cold it felt like he'd swallowed ice and he gasped hoarsely.

'Sweet Merlin,' Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. 'What did you do to your hand?'

'I burnt it,' Harry answered, still searching for a plausible reason behind his injury. The weeping, seeping cracks in the limb were oozing something clear and syrupy. Harry watched it fascinatedly. He'd never seen burns quite so, well, bad.

'What with!?' she burst out incredulously. 'I haven't seen burns like this since the last war. If I find out you were trying to cast Fiendfyre, Mr Potter-'

'I wasn't,' Harry interrupted. 'The last thing he needed was for someone to think he was beginning to dabble in dark magic.'

No matter how true it might be.

'Then how, exactly, did you do this?' Madam Pomfrey was running her wand tip over his mutilated limb and, ever so slowly, the flesh and skin began to creep back over the bone, filling in the horrible, pink cracks.

'The golden egg was guarded by a dragon,' Harry explained, hoping his excuse was good enough to stave off an interrogation by anyone else. 'I thought fire might make it reveal its secrets.'

'That was incredibly stupid of you,' she remonstrated, watching carefully as the blackened, ashen flesh sloughed off to make room for the regrowing hand.

'Not even a hint of the tongue of Mordor,' Harry joked weakly. Madam Pomfrey blinked, not understanding the reference, but whoever was in the bed next to him laughed.

'You're healed,' she sighed, tucking her wand away. 'I would insist you remain here for the night, so I can keep an eye on you, you've exhausted most of your magic with whatever you were doing, but I doubt you'd stay.'

'Already?' Harry inspected his newly restored hand, flexing it experimentally. It seemed as good as new.

'Yes, Mr Potter, already. Now, go, and this time take more care. I distinctly remember telling you that I did not want to see you here again at the beginning of the year.'

'Well,' he smirked, 'if you insist.' An overdramatic swirl of his wand later and he was gone beneath his disillusionment charm. It was almost perfect while he was stationary, but the dregs of magic he had drawn on were already running dry.

'Get out, Mr Potter,' Madam Pomfrey sighed.

He made it out of the door just before his charm failed completely.

Now he was healed and without pain he could think clearly enough to remember what had happened.

I failed.

He'd ripped Tom Riddle's horcrux, or whatever it had become, from himself, but he'd lost control before he could destroy it or push it into something else.

Harry needed to speak to Salazar, or read the book again. He had no idea what happened to a soul fragment once it was outside the body and released.

Retracing his steps he made his way back through the bathroom and down into the chamber.

'You came back,' Slytherin exclaimed the moment he must have heard the door open.

'What did you do?' he asked Harry the moment he became visible.

'I fractured my soul.' Strangely, all the disgust he had previously felt was gone.

'And?' Salazar was peering at him very carefully.

'I found the horcrux that Riddle left me,' Harry's revulsion resurfaced, 'it was almost a part of me, but I ripped it all away.'

Salazar Slytherin let out a most undignified sigh of relief. 'So it's gone.'

'I don't know,' Harry responded quietly. He listened,searching once more through the screams of his soul fragments, but could not find the image with the echo.

'How can you not know?' Salazar demanded. 'You ripped it out, didn't you?'

'I might have,' Harry muttered, remembering the sticky, tar-like, black tears and the swirling smoke. 'I lost control, it hurt.'

'Can you feel it?' Salazar asked intently. 'If you have a horcrux linked to you then you should be able to feel it. Any sort of feeling of warmth, familiarity or anything from anywhere or anything that was not there yesterday.'

Harry relaxed, but felt nothing unusual, only the warmth of his wand against the skin of his forearm.

'No,' he answered finally. 'There's nothing.'

'Then it it is either destroyed, or, more likely it returned to something it was linked to.'

'Something it was linked to?'

'Can you feel the piece of Tom Riddle's soul?'

'No,' Harry replied immediately. That distorted echo of himself was gone from amongst the myriad of inky, whispering reflections.

'I would hazard a guess that the horcrux returned to whatever it was most strongly linked to, Voldemort, and whatever you ripped off from yourself returned back where it belonged.' The founder did not seem particularly sure.

'A guess?'

'Soul magic is not my area of expertise,' the portrait reminded him. 'However, neither fragment can survive alone unbound to an artefact or living thing, and since there is no new link to you no part of your soul is out there. That leaves only two options. My guess or the alternative.'

'I'd like to know what you think the alternative is,' Harry decided. Salazar was playing a little too evasive.

'You reabsorbed both fragments completely.'

'So I could still be a horcrux.' A tiny pinprick of ice formed in his chest.

'If you cannot feel the piece of Riddle's soul in the state that your soul is in then I do not think it is possible that it remains within you and independent. It is either gone, or absorbed completely into your own.' The founder patted the head of his serpent companion as he thought. 'Absorbing a piece of soul was mentioned in the book and Tom Riddle's notes, but, like almost all of the material I read it was hypothetical and vague.'

Harry relaxed and the tiny shard of ice vanished. Salazar had yet to be wrong, if he did not think there was a chance that Harry was a horcrux then Harry believed him. I helped greatly that no matter how much soul-searching he did there remained no sign of the echo of Voldemort.

I'm free.

He was not really free, not completely, Voldemort would still come after, Dumbledore was unlikely to believe he was no longer a Horcrux and he was still alone, but he didn't have to die an unappreciated sacrifice.

He grinned. A genuine, bright, half-smile beaming up at his ancestor whose expression softened.

'Looks like you'll have to put up with having an heir who acts like Godric a little longer than I thought you would,' he joked.

'A tragedy I remain unable to correct,' Salazar sighed. For all the mock disappointment in his tone his expression remained soft, though Harry did detect a slightly victorious glint to his eyes. The founder was no doubt very glad that Harry had had a change of heart and his last living family members would not die killing each other.

'So what now?' Harry murmured. There was so much more he could do now the axe was no longer hanging over his neck.

'Focus on the tournament,' Salazar told him. 'Win it, the experience of using magic outside a classroom and in dangerous or testing circumstances will be invaluable. You will be far stronger for it.'

'Of course.' A slightly cold smile found its way onto his lips as he imagined outstripped the other champions. Fleur Delacour would be coming second, at best.

'You'll need to learn the charms to reverse self-transfigurations in case you make a mistake with your lungs. It's simple enough, an extension on the prior incantem, actually.'

'It is?' It seemed a long way from detecting the last charm a wand used to reversing it.

'The charm detects the exact strength, flow and intent of the piece of magic used and then applies its exact opposite. There are many different levels of it under different names and it's widely used by healers.'

'You know a lot of healing magic?' Harry queried.

'Snakes are not just associated with biting people,' he responded acidly. 'They were a symbol of healing and longevity before that was forgotten. I was never as gifted as Helga, she could use that charm to cure almost anything, but I was better than most. My skill at healing kept my wife alive for years longer than we thought possible after my other friends had passed.'

'How did the other founders die?'

'Rowena fell ill after he daughter was killed,' Salazar answered sadly. 'Godric was killed in a duel, searching after some wand he deemed too dangerous to be left in the hands of others well into his old age, the idiot. Helga outlived us all, perhaps she died peacefully.' Harry frowned. He had, for some reason, expected them to all to die peacefully. 'Mundane, in the end, weren't we?' Slytherin remarked bitterly. 'You cannot escape death, and those who try are often consumed by their attempt. Tom Riddle certainly was.'

'And you?' Harry dared to ask.

'I was consumed,' Salazar answered darkly. 'My search for a way to circumvent the barrier of death took everything I had. I died searching from my bed, too frail to do anything more than think and hope that my daughter might succeed in my place.'

'Did she?' Harry wondered.

'I would not know,' the painting responded sadly. 'Like all such creations I was enchanted to carry the knowledge of my original self from death. Anything that happened after that point I have needed to learn from an outside source. You, or Tom Riddle.'

'We were the only ones?' Harry asked, shocked. It had been a thousand years, a hundred generations of his family must have passed through these walls.

'It only takes our shared blood to open this chamber,' Salazar smiled ruefully, 'but far more is needed to ever find it, or want to. I overlooked that when I made it, assuming all my family members would be as I was. I told you my only company was the basilisk.'

'I thought you might have turned the other away,' Harry admitted. 'Found them unsuitable.'

'Found them unsuitable,' the painting frowned. 'They would have been my family, my legacy. You are as like Godric as me, an irony of time you cannot fully understand, but I did not turn you away just because you are not identical to myself. That is not how family works.'

It was how my family worked, Harry wanted to say. Vernon, Petunia and Dudley had hated anything that had not been the same as they were. He got the impression that the founder was offended he had ever considered the notion.

'Sorry,' he apologised. Slytherin should not be tarred with the same brush as the Dursleys.

'Apology accepted,' the founder said graciously. 'It was not, I think, a mistake entirely of your making and not the first time I have been accused of such.'

'I did not accuse you,' Harry denied, then his mind caught up to his mouth. 'Riddle said the same thing?'

'I told you that you were similar,' Salazar reminded him. 'It takes a crucible of terrible caliber to forge a person of such strength. The greatest wizards and witches are always born from adversity. Every single one you name suffered and was stronger for it. Some chose to rise above their pain and fears, others embraced them and chose revenge.'

'Tom Riddle succumbed,' Harry deduced.

'No,' an odd smile hovered about the painting's lips. 'Tom Riddle's path was not defined by revenge. Like you, he learned to simply let go of the things that hurt him. I do not know what drove and then consumed him. Logic and cunning were his masters, though he was proud to the point of arrogance and believed himself different to all other wizards, and he rarely gave in to emotions. I suspect it was partially his fear of death that caused him to become what he did, but I feel that there must be more than that to it. Everyone fears dying. Tom Riddle loathed it with inexplicable hatred.' The founder sighed and shook his head. 'It does not matter now, what he has become is more important than the path that led him there.'

'He cannot be allowed to return,' Harry agreed.

'Tom Riddle was rarely stopped from getting what he wanted,' Salazar warned. 'It will not be easy, especially when neither of us knows how he might attempt to return to a body.'

'The book was singularly unhelpful on that,' Harry remembered. Riddle's notes, which must have had an additional source to Secrets of the Darkest Arts, had only referred to metaphors of rebirth and the book itself only detailed how to create and destroy the horcruxes themselves.

'It is no longer a problem for the immediate future,' Salazar reminded him and Harry felt a jolt of pleasure knowing that it was true. 'You have a tournament to win. There are two wizards who want you dead, for one reason or another. Voldemort, and Albus Dumbledore. They aren't going to listen to a weak, ignorant fourteen year old who cannot earn their respect.'

'Voldemort is unlikely to listen at all,' Harry remarked.

'Do you think Albus Dumbledore will believe you either?' Slytherin asked his question with a degree of venom. 'He did not listen to Tom, when the boy warned him he would not be safe at the orphanage, and sent him back regardless.' It was the first time he had heard the founder refer to him by his first name alone and the first real hint of the affection Slytherin must have once had for the young wizard.

'I will not tell him,' Harry responded. 'Neither will listen, neither will change from their attempts to decide my fate. If they are my crucible then I shall rise above them and outstrip them both.'

'Such ambition,' Salazar smiled proudly. 'You, my heir, will make me every bit as proud as my own daughter did whenever she surpassed or bested me.'

AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone that has. A milestone has been reached.

28. A Sirius Conversation

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Sorry this one was posted a little later in the day than all the others. I had less time to write it. I'm going to try and stick to my current rate of posting, but I'm starting my new degree soon, and hopefully finding a job as well.

Chapter 28

'Transfigure your thumbnail into something different,' Salazar instructed.

Harry gave the painting a flat stare. It had only just begun to grow back.

'Nobody will notice if it's still missing,' the founder sighed. 'The whole point is that you learn to reverse the effects of transfiguration upon one's self.'

'Can't I just transfigure something else?' Harry asked. There were hundreds, thousands of things he would rather test this on than himself.

'It's a counter for spells applied by a wizard or witch to themselves,' Salazar reiterated tiredly. 'It will obviously not work if you try it under different circumstances.'

'Fine.'

Harry tapped his half-returned thumbnail with the tip of his wand, wincing at the sudden feel of cold he received when it turned to bright steel.

'Shiny,' Slytherin remarked. 'I'm sure nobody will notice if that ends up being permanent.'

'What's the incantation?' Harry demanded. The second task was steadily growing nearer. It was early February already, and he was barely any closer to managing the self-transfiguration. He blamed Salazar for this. The painting had made him spend hours in the library researching and learning about how gills worked so when that he, and by extension his magic, understood the changes he was going to make.

'Redeo,' his ancestor replied. 'Focus on making things as they were before.'

'Redeo,' Harry repeated. His nail returned to its former colour. Sceptically he tapped it with the tip of his wand and was none too surprised to hear the ring of steel.

'At least it is less conspicuous,' Salazar smirked. 'Try again.'

Harry fixed the portrait with a baleful glare, but repeated the process regardless, this time with more determination and focus.

'That's more like it,' Slytherin nodded. He was mimicked by the serpent at his shoulder.

Harry's nail had not only lost its metallic nature but regrown to the size it had been before his splinching on the return from Diagon Alley.

'Now can I actually try transfiguring my lungs?' he asked. It felt like the longer he took to manage this the further he fell behind the other champions. He knew from Fleur Delacour that they were already well on their way, and that had been three weeks ago.

'I suppose we are running out of time,' Salazar admitted. 'There's only a week and half left to the task in which to master it, remove any teething problems and for you to get used to the sensation of breathing so differently.'

'I'd best get started then.' Harry raised his wand, but stopped when Salazar shook his head.

'You'll need water to breathe afterwards,' the founder reminded him, as if he were an idiot. 'You'll have to get reacquainted with the pool.' An amused smile had found its way onto Slytherin's lips at the idea. He hadn't been able to watch the last time Harry had been forced to take a dip, but now his ancestor had a front row view.

Not this time, Harry decided, raising his wand again.

A very powerful warming charm left the pool of water steaming slightly in the cool of the chamber and looking a far more attractive prospect than before.

Salazar looked rather crestfallen.

'I congratulate you on your cunning and independent thinking,' he smiled after a moment of mourning for his lost entertainment. 'Not so long ago you would have simply jumped in without a second thought if I told you to.'

'I won't be blindly following instructions again,' Harry told him proudly. 'Not even yours.'

'Good,' the portrait hissed fiercely. 'Rushing into things blindfolded will get you killed.'

'I'm amazed I'm still alive,' Harry grinned brightly. Rushing into things blindly was a fairly good way to describe the last three years of his life.

'Get in the water,' Slytherin commanded, 'and try not to drown yourself.'

Harry stripped off his robes and sat on the tip of the forked-ended bridge, then he lowered it until the water to reached his jaw. He took a deep breath.

'Are you ready?' Slytherin asked.

Harry placed the tip of his wand over his chest and pictured the inside of his lungs changing. The small sacs that were his alveoli lengthening into long, wavy filaments, transforming his lungs into something he imagined as rather resembling the tendrils of an anemone. He took a deep breath, sucking air into his lungs.

No sense of relief came with the action. The desire for oxygen only increased.

Ignoring the growing urge to use the reversal charm and give up he ducked his head under the water and gulped down a lungful of the lukewarm liquid.

It was slight relief, but once his lungs were full he could barely empty them, the muscles of his diaphragm lacked the strength to force all the water out and he could no longer rely on diffusion to act in his favour.

'Redeo,' he croaked, spluttering water everywhere. Slytherin looked on, worried, as Harry coughed up several mouthfuls of liquid before pinching the bridge of his nose.

'I take it that it did not work?'

'I can't get the water out of my lungs once I've breathed it in,' Harry informed him. 'Without some action to move the water my internal gills will fail and I will drown.'

'You'd best return to the library, then,' Salazar decided. 'I can't help you here, you need some sort of changes to your chest muscles to help move the water in and out, but without detailed study you could end up killing yourself far too easily.'

'Back to the library,' Harry grumbled. He'd spent far too long in there already for his liking. It wasn't that he had lost his enjoyment of reading or discovering new aspects of magic, more the company he had to keep avoiding.

Hermione seemed to have abandoned her loyalty to Hogwarts completely in favour of her new friend Viktor Krum. Harry imagined it had had something to do with her not being able to coexist with Ron without another person as a buffer. If Krum had shown any appreciation for her intelligence she would have jumped at the chance to have someone to impress.

Fleur frequented the library almost as much, but she had confined herself to the enchanting section of the library and seemed to still be doing her best to avoid anything so terrible as eye contact with Harry. He'd spoken more to Viktor Krum than to her, and he'd only repeated the same informal greeting to the Bulgaria a few times when they found themselves reaching for the same section of books. Harry suspected that whatever solution Krum was preparing was similar to his own. At the very least it was relevant to transfiguration.

'Off you go,' Salazar encouraged gleefully. The portrait knew full well that Harry disliked having to dodge Hermione every time he spent any time in Hogwarts' Library.

Harry re-dressed himself, grateful to be warm and dry, even if he would have to come back later. He'd already suggested, several times, that he do this in the Room of Requirement which could cater to almost every whim. His ancestor had never taken the idea very well.

Slytherin had been outraged that he'd wanted to use Godric and Rowena's room rather than his, and incensed that Harry would try something so dangerous somewhere he could not be present to offer assistance. He suspected that Salazar's ire had at least as much to do with the former as it did the latter.

'Actually,' the painting decided, 'before you leave, I should teach you a very useful charm. There are plenty of things that you don't want or need others to discover and this piece of magic can be enormously useful in managing that once you've mastered it.'

'What's the spell?'

'The memory charm,' the founder revealed with unnecessary drama.

'I know the incantation and wand action already,' Harry agreed. Lockhart had claimed to be very good with the charm and he'd certainly demonstrated some power over it when he'd wiped every adult thought from his own mind. It could be very useful. At the very least he could use it to sabotage his rival champions. It would be tragic if they happened to forget their solutions to the first task a few moments before it began.

'You need to know exactly what you are removing' Salazar told him firmly, 'else you could end up doing significant damage. It's almost impossible to remove events that have great meaning or importance on a permanent basis as the mind clings to them and they resurface. Once an idea is ingrained it can be very hard to get rid of, so the sooner the charm is performed the better. Focus on wiping something clean, a board, a window, any such visualisation will work. Mastering it will take some time'

'How exactly am I to practice this?' Harry inquired.

'Well once you have a rudimentary grasp you can ask someone to let you test it once, and then do it over and over again.' Slytherin chuckled. 'They'll never notice and as long as you only remove small things you won't do any lasting damage or leave any suspicious gaps.'

'I'm sure I can find a more moral way,' Harry smiled. As amusing as it would be to play pranks on Malfoy, or Ron, or anyone who had wronged him, it was quite a bit too dangerous to try his novice obliviation on another person.

'I would not suggest that you test it on yourself,' Salazar warned.

'I'm not going to,' Harry responded. There were plenty of things that he'd like to forget. The sensation of ripping his soul apart was the first thing that came to mind, and it was shortly followed by Fleur's kiss, Katie's betrayal, and a horrible image of a naked Dudley.

'Good,' the founder said dryly. 'You're much better than you used to be, but you still have moments of brainless Godricness now and again.'

'I'm going to the library,' Harry told the painting, hefting it back over the bridge into the study. 'I'll come down here to practice once I have a solution or two.'

It was somewhat inevitable that Viktor Krum and Hermione were once again in the library. Harry strode around the back of their table, confident that Hermione was not going to look up from her book, and if she did, he was sure he should not care. She had wronged him, broken his wand, there was no reason that he should be afraid of or avoiding her. People only avoided those they knew that they had wronged, or those that might hurt them.

Hermione was neither to him.

Harry pored over the section on the anatomy of magical water creatures, now he regretted abandoning the Care of Magical Creatures at the start of the year. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for, so he browsed through every book that seemed like it might be vaguely useful.

'You're looking at water creatures too,' someone muttered shyly behind him. Harry whirled and too find Neville, who squeaked in surprise at his sudden motion and at the sudden appearance of the first few inches of Harry's wand.

'I am,' he replied calmly, tucking his wand back out of sight. 'Sorry, Neville, I didn't mean to startle you.'

'I'm easily startled,' the nervous boy assured him rather morosely. He looked really rather miserable.

'What are you doing here?' Harry asked him. Poor Neville looked like he hadn't been sleeping.

'Returning a book,' he explained, 'at least until I saw you over here.'

'And now?' The shy, clumsy Gryffindor shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

'I was going to make you an offer,' he admitted eventually. 'I thought it might be the best way to speak with you.'

'What kind of offer?' Neville wasn't wrong, but Harry couldn't think of anything he had that might be useful.

'Well I couldn't help but notice that Hermione has been checking out and reading books to do with water creatures and transfiguration in her attempt to help Viktor Krum.' There was surprising condemnation in the boy's voice. Evidently disloyalty was something that Neville truly could not understand or condone. Harry's respect for him grew a little.

'The second task is underwater,' Harry told him. Neville was certainly not going to help his rivals after being so scathing of Hermione, one of the few who had always been kind to him, over her betrayal.

'What do you know about Gillyweed?' Neville asked with sudden confidence.

'I assume I might find it useful,' Harry deduced, 'given the name and its relevance to our conversation.'

'It would let you breathe underwater with ease,' Neville assured him. 'I don't know where you'd find any on such short notice. It grows in the Mediterranean and isn't normally harvested until summer.'

'I have a way of breathing underwater,' Harry said absentmindedly. 'I just need to perfect it.'

'Oh.' Neville looked very downcast and Harry took pity.

'That doesn't mean I can't help you, Nev.' His friend's eyes snapped up at hearing his nickname for the first time since they had talked in the dormitories of Gryffindor Tower.

'You would?'

'As long as it is within my power. I do have the tournament to consider.'

'Of course, I understand. I was hoping you'd help me with, well, everything,' Neville admitted, ashamed. 'Everyone calls me a squib and I can't ever seem to get anything right. You improved so much since last year and I hoped you'd help me.'

'Everything,' Harry murmured. He would quite like to help Neville, to give him the push that would let him stand on his own two feet, but it was a serious commitment. 'Have you asked Hermione?' he wondered aloud.

'No,' Neville denied. 'She's too busy helping Krum to speak to anyone in Gryffindor much anymore and the other guys all study different things, play different games and sports to me.'

'They left you on your own, didn't they.' Harry saw, for a brief moment, a shadow of himself in Neville Longbottom and wondered if he was left to suffer how like Harry he might eventually become.

Would he crumble, or survive his crucible?

'I'll help you,' Harry decided. 'Weekends, between lunch and dinner, for however long you need or want. Meet me on the seventh floor at the top of the stairs the third weekend after the second task. I'll help you, Nev.'

'Thank you,' Neville smiled, straightening, and Harry was gifted a glimpse of the wizard he could be if he was ever allowed to find some strength within himself.

'I'm only helping you help yourself,' Harry told him.

'At least you are helping,' Neville muttered. 'Ron, Seamus and Dean; they don't care. It's like we were never friends.'

'You can find new friends, Nev,' Harry assured him. 'You'll find equals, people who understand and respect you for who you are.' Salazar's words slipped all too easily from his tongue, as if Harry still wholeheartedly believed them. The truth was that even as he said them he could only think about Fleur Delacour, someone who should have been everything to him that he had just promised Neville.

His friend stood tall, never noticing the doubt that Harry felt. 'That's what you're doing,' he realised. 'You're being yourself.' There was blatant admiration in Neville's tone and Harry remembered that his grandmother was renowned for her fierce, overbearing manner. His friend might have never had a chance to try and be anything but what his guardian had wanted him to be.

'There's nobody else we can be,' Harry finished simply. It sounded rather silly in the open, but Neville nodded and something that was almost determination flared to life in his eyes.

'Thank you, Harry,' he said clearly, without any sign of his stutter.

'I'll see you on that weekend, Nev, we'll make sure nobody ever calls you a squib again.' It was too close to the magical equivalent of calling someone nothing for Harry to stomach. 'Don't listen to any of those prats, Nev,' he added as his friend began to walk away, 'they're still just children. We're growing up faster, we've had to.'

Harry was not the only one that had been abandoned by Gryffindor Tower, it seemed. He wondered, in between returning his current book and reaching for the next, how many other students there were who slipped into the cracks at Hogwarts. Nobody really ever paid much attention to Neville except when he was causing disasters in class. Casual dismissal and neglect were what currently defined his friend.

The injustice of it remained in the back of Harry's mind as he perused through the library.

His search only came to an end when he was assaulted by a small grey ball of feathers. Sirius' owl.

The Shrieking Shack, today, Harry read. The ink was still wet and had formed a faint, mirrored duplicate of the words on the other side of the piece of paper. Carefully he ushered the tiny owl into the pocket of his robes. Madam Pince would ban him from the library for life if she thought he had brought a bird into her domain.

He looked back at the small stack of books he had yet to investigate, and then down at the message in his hand.

I'm not likely to find another solution, he decided. One was probably, hopefully, enough. A change to the exterior of his lungs, allowing them to expand and contract in the same way as the book described a heartbeat. None of the books on water creatures had contained anything useful, they all had external gills and swam around to keep the water moving, or had to come up for air.

As swiftly as he could he replaced the books back on the shelves, waving his wand to levitate them up and back to their original places. The second they were in place he checked the Marauders' Map and, sure enough, right beneath the picture of the Whomping Willow hovered a label with his godfather's name.

Sirius was waiting.

Harry hurried out of the library, ignoring Hermione's shock at seeing him stride past their table. Sirius had risked a fate worse than death to come so close to the school. It must be important.

He swept down the corridor overlooking the greenhouses, scattering second years on their way to Herbology, and out into the Whomping Willow's corner of Hogwarts. Helga Hufflepuff's worst herbological creation, at least if he listened to Salazar, was suspiciously still. Either Sirius had already pressed the knot on the trunk, or it was waiting for him to stray too close before swatting him like a fly.

'Papilionis,' he murmured.

The black-winged, delicate butterfly made it halfway to the tree before being flatted by a branch the width of Harry's body.

Lying in wait, then.

Harry levitated a small piece of wood from underneath the trunk of the tree and used it to press the button. There was no sense in trying to reach it himself and being squished like his conjured insect. The tree shivered and froze immediately.

Sirius was waiting at the very start of the passageway.

'Harry,' he grinned, enveloping him in in a hug. His godfather was looking surprisingly clean and well-fed for a wizard on the run. His robes no longer hung off him and his skeletal appearance had returned to the well-built, if lithe, figure he must have had before being sent to Azkaban.

'I managed to return to my family's home,' Sirius explained, seeing Harry's confusion in his appearance. 'I'd offer to show you, but it's under the Fidelius, and really not very homely. Perhaps in a year, when that miserable house-elf has managed to restore the place to a liveable standard.'

'Is it safe?' Harry didn't mind how dirty the house was if there was a chance that the Dementors might sweep in and take his godfather's soul.

'Fidelius Charm,' Sirius repeated. 'There's few things that are safer.'

'Who's the secret keeper?' Harry was of two minds about the Fidelius Charm. On one hand it was incredibly secure, only one person could give up the location, but on the other, his parents had been under the charm when Voldemort had come for them.

'Dumbledore is,' Sirius enthused. 'I'd like to see anyone try and get the secret out of him.'

'That's good,' Harry agreed, keeping his reservations about Albus Dumbledore to himself. The headmaster would keep Sirius safe. He did his utmost to keep everyone safe if they were innocent. Only Harry, the sacrifice, was meant to be risked and lost.

'I didn't come here to talk about how safe I was,' Sirius began, drawing back and speaking much more seriously. 'I want to know what's going on. There's no way to send an owl to where I'm staying without knowing the location and Dumbledore was adamant that he tell nobody yet.'

'Everything has changed,' Harry answered simply.

'It seemed that way. You were a boy last year, when I came after Pettigrew, now you walk and speak like you aged a decade in eight months.' He started back down the passage to the rotting building.

'I suppose I have grown up,' Harry decided. 'I wasn't strong enough, Sirius. Every year I've been thrown into some new situation and each time I've escaped by the skin of my teeth and because of others. That won't last.'

'You aren't meant to be strong at fourteen, Harry,' his godfather told him gently.

'I have to be,' he shrugged. 'My enemies are not fourteen, so I can't act like it either.'

'As right as you are,' Sirius replied sadly, 'I wish it were not true.'

'Wishes like that, they just don't come true,' Harry said bitterly.

'Are you stronger?' Sirius asked.

'Yes,' Harry declared, 'much stronger, but it isn't enough. The wizards I have to surpass are amongst the strongest ever born.'

'Power is not the only way to be strong,' Sirius remarked. 'Lily, your mother, told James and I that back when we were in our last year and the war was on the brink of beginning. I suppose she was right.'

'Being powerful will make me strong,' Harry countered half-heartedly. He did not want to argue with the words of his dead mother.

'Then be powerful,' Sirius exclaimed, 'but be strong too. Win this tournament you've ended up in, prove that you're better than everyone who turned their back on you. If your childhood has to be sacrificed then get everything you can in return.'

'I will,' Harry responded firmly.

'Good,' Sirius grinned. 'Now tell me what's happened since your last letter.'

'A lot,' Harry whispered, remembering the flash of green light and Peter Pettigrew's empty eyes.

'It doesn't sound like it was good,' Sirius said after a moment of silence. They reached the Shrieking Shack, climbing up into the building through the only intentionally made entrance. Most visitors came through the hole on the far side of the building.

'Some of it was,' Harry smiled. He was free of Riddle's soul fragment, had Salazar, and maybe Neville too. He clamped down on the line of thought before it took him to kissing Fleur in the Room of Requirement.

'I've learned so much more this year than any past one, my new wand has been perfect for me, I have goals, dreams, that I could not have before.' His face darkened. 'It cost me the friends who didn't understand why I had to change. I've been all but alone.' His voice cracked at the end, betraying Harry's feelings more strongly than he had intended to.

'I was alone in Azkaban,' Sirius' grin had vanished. 'There's nothing there to keep you from the inside of your mind. The Dementors keeping stirring your thoughts, pushing the most miserable, painful ones to the fore every time they draw near. It was enough to start eating away at my sanity, and I knew I was innocent, had something to cling to that they couldn't touch. The others; their screams were almost as harrowing as the cold of those creatures. You'll find something, an ideal, or a goal, to devote yourself to and that will be enough to stop it consuming you. Afterwards, when everything else has fallen into place, you'll find yourself surrounded by people and not so alone as you thought. I came out with only the goal of killing Pettigrew. Now I have you and Remus.'

'Things get better,' Harry paraphrased.

'That's the only good thing about hitting the bottom, you know that there's no further to sink. My mother said that to me when I was sorted into Gryffindor,' Sirius grinned. 'She hated having a respectable, unbigoted child.'

Harry snorted. Sirius Black's school days had been anything but respectable. He was joint holder of the record for the number of detentions received in a single school year.

'How's the second task going?' His godfather's eyes gleamed with excitement and pride. Harry knew instantly that he would have been one of those who had put in their own name.

'I'm going to transfigure myself. The task is underwater.'

Sirius beamed even more proudly.

'To be able to do such advanced transfiguration at your age is exceptional,' his godfather patted him firmly on the back, 'becoming an animagus requires lots of effort, but less understanding of magic than you'd expect. I'd imagine you could give it a shot soon enough. I wonder what you'd be, another stag, like James, or maybe a bird, you seem even better at flying than your father was.'

Harry listened cheerfully as his godfather launched into speculation about his animagus form, simply very glad to be able to talk someone who truly cared about him.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to anyone who does. I've reached over a thousand now, which feels like it should be some sort of milestone in itself. Is it?

29. Valentine's Day

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up, still managing to keep things on schedule, though my muse has sadly abandoned me and things aren't quite coming as easily as before. It took me five hours to write this, which is twice as long as normal. I blame the muse. I shall have to find another one who's more devoted ;)

Chapter 29

It was Fleur's least favourite day of the year. The day where everything in her life that she could not stand became far worse. Saint Valentine had a great deal to answer for in her opinion.

By now everyone at Beauxbatons knew that Fleur Delacour did not go anywhere with anyone on Valentine's day. That didn't stop some of the more susceptible wizards from asking her, however, and it didn't come anywhere near quelling the glares she got should her aura affect someone's date, so Fleur normally went home, or remained in her room.

Everything was fine when she could go home and be with her family or just her sister, but when she could not Fleur began to feel the hollowness of isolation. Nobody should spend an entire day shut off from the world; it wasn't right. At the first signs loneliness she would always throw herself into whatever magic she was studying. Valentine's Day was often one of her most productive days.

This particular Valentine's Day was worse than any other so far. Fleur could not go home, she was not at Beauxbatons with Gabrielle, and her only company until the evening was the unenchanted veil across her lap. It was more lonely than she remembered it being on previous years.

She twirled her rosewood wand around her index finger, disconsolately staring out of her carriage window. It was somewhere between lunchtime and the evening. Fleur had heard, a little while back, the movement of several of the other girls in the direction of the Great Hall, but had decided not to accompany them. There would be a lot of people there, and there were only three, maybe four, who Fleur really wanted to be with. Her mother and sister, half of the people she felt close to, were arriving this evening, after Gabrielle had finished school and her mother returned from work at L'ingrédient Parfait, the potions shop in Carcassonne. Her father was too busy to come, as he'd profusely apologised for many times before she left. Fleur wished he could, but did understand. A head of department of government was always busy. The last was, of course, Harry. He would understand her isolation, he wouldn't be affected by her passive magic and was more than comfortable in his company.

In the days that had led up to this one Fleur had on occasion considered asking Harry to once more be her date. Only this time it was different. Fleur was not taking an interesting, potential equal who was both disinterested in her and resistant to her allure. She would be inviting a wizard she had kissed, one who was only fourteen, out on Valentine's Day, and consequently she had never managed to work up the courage to speak to him. It probably would not have mattered, because, once again, he seemed to be unable to notice her.

They had crossed paths in the library multiple times, and each time Fleur had frozen, unsure of how to act around him, but Harry had never looked up from whichever book he had been buried, or he'd always be watching something else. He too was focused on the second task and from his choice in reading material Fleur assumed that he and Viktor Krum were both using some form of self-transfiguration to survive underwater.

In fact the only champion she had not seen in the library at least once a day was Cedric Diggory, but she knew from overhearing the same group of Ravenclaw girls, one of whom had been his date to the Yule Ball, that Hogwarts' champion already had his solution perfected.

Some cruel part of her rather hoped he had chosen the Bubble-Head Charm.

Harry and herself worked away in their respective, opposite corners of the library, quietly concentrating on their solutions. Viktor Krum had laid claim to one of the tables near the entrance and, along with Hermione, his date, and former friend of Harry, spent as much time conversing with her about Hogwarts and Britain as he did about transfiguration.

The no longer bushy-haired girl knew a frightening amount of trivia about Hogwarts and the magical community of the British Isles. Fleur was daughter of an influential, well-respected member of the Bureau d'Magie and she knew less than half as much about France. She reassured herself that as the majority of Hermione's knowledge seemed to encompass things of small import that she was not really at a disadvantage. Fleur knew when she was outmatched, the girl clearly had a memory second to none, but she was wasting so much of it on such useless pieces of information. Viktor Krum had probably learnt a lot of things that might be useful for the tournament, but she doubted they'd ever be so applicable again.

Fleur had benefitted from the girl's knowledge too, so she was hardly upset. Hermione had casually spouted everything a foreign champion could hope to know about the Black Lake at just a single question from the Bulgarian Seeker.

There were Merpeople in the lake, there was also a giant squid, and just about every magical creature native to the waterways of Northern Europe, but the Fleur was only really concerned with the former. It was the Merpeople who would be guarding whatever was taken from her.

Unfortunately nobody had ever tried to map the lake's interior, aside from the wreckage of the sunken ship there, so Fleur had no clues where exactly to begin her search.

She did have to admit that Viktor Krum had chosen his date well. Attractive, intelligent, if a little disloyal to her friends and school, though Fleur had the distinct impression that the girl probably only had had a few friends. She seemed a little overbearing at times, studious to the point of obsession and uninterested in most of the things a girl her age would normally be. Viktor Krum seemed to both respect and appreciate her intelligence, however, and they made an odd, but seemingly happy pair. She imagined they were probably still there even today. Hermione seemed the sort to spend Valentine's Day in the library and Viktor Krum was probably as fond of the Valentine's Day as Fleur was.

Harry might be up there too.

She ignored both the desire to go to the library and the twist of anxiety her stomach now seemed to perform every time she thought about him. It was, she decided after further thought, unlikely.

The day before he had replaced his ever-growing stack of books and left in a hurry. He had been talking with someone shortly before leaving about Gillyweed, a magical plant that would provide almost the perfect solution to their problems, if only it was not so rare in Northern Europe. Gillyweed was predominantly grown around the Dodecanese and Corsica. The former was the largest, but most of its harvest went around the Mediterranean. Her mother had to order the plant by request from Corsica because there was little demand for it in potions, or for swimming in the horribly cold waters of the Atlantic and North Sea. She hoped Harry had not decided to change tactics, because it was incredibly unlikely that he would get his hands on enough of the plant to survive underwater for an hour.

Harry will be fine, she told herself.

Really she shouldn't be so concerned about a rival at all, especially one who might actually have a chance of beating her.

If he was our age we might not stand a chance.

Fleur preferred to think he was simply maturing and growing early, but if he continued to be so much more prodigious than his peers he would be truly frightening when he came of age. It was hard to estimate just how powerful a wizard would be. The ancient bloodlines were capable of producing exceptionally gifted wizards when the right characteristics combined, but for every one of those that was born there were a dozen others that that were no better than any other. France was perfect proof that the bloodlines were not completely responsible for magical puissance. The revolution had ended almost all of the oldest, purest families and Grindelwald's war had extinguished the rest, but despite that the country was still a pre-eminent magical power. It had no Albus Dumbledore, no Grindelwald and no Voldemort, but frankly that seemed to be for the best. There were few other countries that retained as many bloodlines as Britain. The magical communities of most of the former magical powers had been devastated by war or revolution since the Stature of Secrecy had ended all but a handful of international, magical wars. France, America, China and India were among the new generation of countries who had a higher number of above average wizards and witches, but no exceptional ones. Britain remained the country with the most powerful wizards, and the mightiest of all the magical communities, but it hardly mattered. The magical world was united and Great Britain's dominance over the magical world had faded to the influence of a few individuals like Albus Dumbledore.

Perhaps Harry is the next such wizard.

He was already famous enough and potentially powerful enough to if you listened to the rumours. The smart and sensible members of the magical world had feared what Voldemort's leadership of Britain would bring. The strongest nation led by a muggle-hating, power-craving dark wizard. It had been enough to make its nearest neighbours tremble, France included. Provided there was no interference from the non-magical world, where her father told her the balance of power was different, there wasn't much that could stand in the way of a united magical community of Britain. It was why Voldemort's death had been celebrated across the world and should Harry ever leave Britain he would find himself just as unable to escape his fame.

Fleur hoped that he wasn't. Mainly because she knew that Harry would loathe the attention that came with his power. He would enjoy being strong, for a while, but then he would find himself tied to and involved in almost every dispute. Albus Dumbledore had buried his head in Hogwarts to escape, resigning from almost all of his positions, Harry was too noble for that. Any wizard that would sacrifice the chance to rebuild a relationship for keeping someone that he hardly knew company would not be able to walk away. He would be worn away to nothing.

Of course, if he was that powerful, then Fleur's chances of winning the Triwizard Tournament significantly decreased, and there was no way she was going to accept that.

Fleur returned her attention to the gauzy strip of material that lay across her lap. Her solution to the imminent second task of the tournament. Truthfully she could have attempted to finish it some time ago, but something had kept drawing her back to the library to re-read books, or look further at the issue.

It seemed a bit silly now that she considered it. The last few times she'd spent the day there all she'd done was listen to Hermione ramble and agonise over whether she should speak to Harry.

She spun the slim piece of rosewood around her ring finger until it struck her thumb.

There really was no reason for her not to finish it now.

Enchanting was not like casting a spell, not when you advanced beyond the most basic elements to contemplate the intricacies of the matter. Goblins made the best enchanted items, their magic lent itself well to creating things that lasted, it was possessive and stubborn. Fleur's magic was neither, but she was still considered one of the bet enchantresses to come through Beauxbatons in the last few decades. It had led to more than one article entitled with some variation of enchanteresse enchanteur. The only work of journalism that Fleur hated more was the article that Rita Skeeter had concocted about her and Harry.

She still had a copy of that particular paper, several, in fact. The other girls had been kind enough to keep providing her with them, or to leave them lying around the communal area.

Fleur's hope that Harry had not seen the article was short-lived. Possibly the oldest, most tattered, grey owl she had ever seen had collapsed in front of him midway through breakfast only a few days ago. It had been clutching a copy of the article and a letter that Harry had clearly not been expecting.

Fleur hadn't been able to decide if he found what he read humorous or infuriating, his expression had seemed to convey both, but he'd deposited the unconscious bird in front of the idiot red-head who had tried to ask her to be his date to the Yule Ball. She supposed she owed the moron a thank you, if anything, had he not attempted to goad Harry into asking her she would never have had such an enjoyable night. He would not, of course, be getting any such sign of gratitude from her.

She ran the tip of her wand along the length of the veil, murmuring the incantations to the spells she wanted to enchant the veil with. The trick to enchanting was not to push magic into the item to force the spell to adhere to it, but to weave the enchantment within the object. Her magic, affected as it was by her veela nature, was slightly more fluid and subtle than most, and so manipulating it to do so came more easily to her.

There were a total of eleven spells that she had to cast on the piece of gauze. None of them were overly complex, but several of them had principles that conflicted and required some clever exploitations, such as casting them on either side of the veil where they could not interfere with one another, to work.

The strip of gauze had adopted a sort of shimmer to it when she finished. A glimmer of ethereal light along one edge and a haze along the other. Which, as Fleur was quite happy to note, was exactly how it was supposed to look. She loved it when she got things right first time.

It still needs testing, she reminded herself. It wouldn't do to get too carried away now only to drown during the second task.

Filling the sink in her bath room she waited for the water to still, tapping her wand idly against the side of the basin, then gently placed the veil in.

It took a few moments, but soon a long, thin bubble formed along the upturned side of the gauze. It was about the length of her little finger and, when she poked it with her wand, displacing the original bubble, it reformed in moments. Fleur left it in the sink just to make sure. If there was still a bubble when she came back from meeting her mother sister later than it would definitely not fail her in the lake.

Now, though, she had nothing to do and ever so slowly the creeping feeling of isolation began to return.

Fleur could only ignore it for so long and was soon unable to resist the urge to check the time. She hoped that it was not too long until she had to leave for Hogsmeade to meet her family, because the moment she knew the time she could be counting seconds.

It was just after five o'clock.

Her mother and sister would be arriving by portray at six, but it only took half an hour to walk there, and that was if she purposefully went slowly.

Maybe they'll come early.

She straightened her uniform, tucked her wand into the belt at her waist, and carefully scrutinised her room.

There was nothing to tidy or adjust. She'd already spent an hour so carefully arranging everything as neatly and perfectly as possible.

I shall have to walk very slowly, she realised, disillusioning herself and stepping out into the corridor.

The communal room was full. Fleur knew from what she had overheard and from what normally happened that the girls were either going out with their dates from the Yule Ball, or together. Apparently the best place to get ready and chatter was the communal room. She supposed it was better than it could have been, none of them were paying any attention to the door, and there were no new copies of the Daily Prophet article on her and Harry lying around. Hopefully that meant they had run out of copies.

It was cold when she stepped outside. The sort of sharp, clear cold that came with cloudless skies mornings of white frost. It was by far the best weather that they had had so far, even if Fleur did hate the cold. After all, casting a warming charm was much less inconvenient than warding off the rain.

Fleur cast three warming charms. One to make the cold bearable, and then two more so it felt like she was in the spring of the South of France.

Warm, and anticipating the arrival of her family, she began to wander as slowly as she could in the direction of the apparently quaint, little village. Fleur had never been to Hogsmeade before, she'd never been to Britain before either, but she hoped to find somewhere a little more refined than Hogwarts.

There was really only one room that Fleur admired in the Scottish school and it hadn't felt right to return there without Harry. It was his room. The way he had shown it to her had implied that it was a secret of his, somewhere precious. It certainly made a perfect place to escape to.

Hogsmeade was every bit the medieval magical community. The buildings looked like they had not been touched since the village had been constructed, only the interiors had changed. Fleur could appreciate the attraction of such an atmosphere, even if she preferred the slightly more modern communities in France.

The French Revolution and the three wars that had been fought across French soil since had rather ruined the majority of anywhere similar in France. Most of the surviving settlements were from the renaissance era like Beauxbatons and the newer ones had been built in the same style out of nostalgia and tradition.

The main street was lined with a handful shops and the two inns that Fleur had often heard referenced by Hogwarts' older students. Most of the shops were closing, or closed, and only the inns and a rather horrible looking tea-shop remained busy.

Fleur eyed Madam Puddifoot's with distaste. There was such a thing as too much pink and Madam Puddifoot had eclipsed that point quite spectacularly within just a few feet of the door. She supposed that if you discounted the horribly overdone colour scheme and the aura of slightly overzealous romance it wasn't such a bad place. It was full. There were almost fifty couples crammed in and only a handful of them looked uncomfortable - normally the male halves of the pairs who felt out of place submerged in Madam Puddifoot's personal vision of romance.

She somehow suspected that there was not a Mister Puddifoot given the witches dedication to the romance of others.

Halfway down the street she caught sight of Katie Bell, the girl who had tried to steal Harry away to dance when they had been leaving, she was arm in arm with another Gryffindor. For a second Fleur's heart plunged at a flash of black hair and she turned away to grind her teeth, her disillusionment charm collapsing at her loss of focus, but then her pride returned in full force and she drew herself up confidently. Whomever Harry decided to spend his time with was not really any of her concern. She took another quick glance anyway, just to make sure that he was happy and wouldn't prefer the company of anyone who might better understand him than Katie Bell could.

It was not Harry.

A swooping, flood of relief carried Fleur's heart back up where it was supposed to be.

Merde.

She knew enough about relationships to know what it meant when a witch really didn't want to see a wizard with another girl, especially one he might have been more than friends with. Fleur was not stupid enough to try and pretend that she was not fond of the English boy, but, of course, he was only fourteen, no matter how old his eyes seemed.

I can't keep avoiding him, she realised. There was no way she could allow him to be alone, not when it would be so easy for him to find another person to be close to. The worst part about her imagining Katie Bell on Harry's arm was that it could so likely be true.

Katie Bell and her dark-haired female companion disappeared into the Hog's Head and Fleur decided to hold off on her exploration of Hogsmeade's inns. She didn't want to walk in after that girl only to find Harry was there waiting for her after all.

Her mother and sister were portkeying to just outside of Hogsmeade's Post Office, which was back down the street she had followed to where it crossed Hogsmeade's other main thoroughfare and left. She had glimpsed it crossing the road from Madam Puddifoot's.

'Tempus,' she muttered. It was still ten minutes until they were supposed to arrive.

Fleur began to walk in that direction regardless. It would take her a few minutes to reach the Post Office and so she would not be waiting overly long, not unless they were late.

She smiled to herself. He mother had picked up her father's sense of prompt timing, albeit to a lesser extent, and Fleur was normally quite punctual, but the concept seemed entirely lacking in Gabby. She was capable of making the whole family late, even when her parents and older sister organised everything they could for her.

They were both already waiting for her outside the small building when Fleur turned the corner.

How did maman manage to get Gabrielle here early? Fleur wondered. She knew her sister would be here on time, Gabby was as attached to her elder sibling as Fleur was to her younger, but she was very disorganised. She always thought that she was ready to leave, but nothing really ever seemed to occur to her until the very moment of departure.

'Fleur!' Her not-so-little anymore sister let go of her mother's arm and covered the distance between in a matter of moments. She hit Fleur hard, wrapping her arms round her sister's chest and pressing her face into her collarbone.

'Hello, Gabby,' she laughed, patting the top of her baby sisters head and internally marvelling at how much she had grown since the beginning of the year.

Gabrielle, like Fleur, had inherited the abilities of veela magic and now, midway through her fourth year, she was enduring the late surge of puberty that came as part and parcel of being veela. She'd grown three inches since Fleur had last seen her, her head no longer tucked neatly under her older sister's chin, and she had definitely lost most of her childish figure.

'I look like you now,' she beamed, stepping back and twirling for Fleur to see. 'We can pretend to be twins in a few months.' Fleur blinked. Gabby spoke very fast, especially when she was excited, and unless you concentrated words seemed to disappear into one another and vanish.

'You'll still be my baby sister,' Fleur cooed, patting Gabrielle on the cheek.

She scowled adorably, but then giggled and glanced back at their mother who was approaching at a much more dignified pace.

'I got your letter,' she smirked, pushing her collar down far enough to reveal the corner of the envelope.

Merde.

Fleur gulped. She had forgotten about that letter, or, more honestly, she had forgotten exactly what Gabrielle might do with that letter when the mood struck her. Her baby sister was every bit a capricious as the stories about veela said, compassionate and shy one moment, only to be loud and cheeky the next.

'Perhaps I could look after it,' she offered, extending a hand out of sight of their mother. Gabrielle's only response was a look of pure innocence, one that was rapidly spoiled by the glint of mischief present in her eyes.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

P.S. I fixed my slight dates issue from the last chapter in case anyone is confused. I meant early February rather than mid-January, I thought the second task was the fourth, rather than the twenty-fourth, but that's all sorted now.

30. Into the lake

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I know you half of you hate the Fleur chapters, but without them her interactions with Harry are going to look like ridiculous jumps and they're important for when the reader needs to know more than the character about what is happening.

Anyway here's the next chapter.

Chapter 30

'Are all the champions here yet, Ludo?' A rather terse sounding, and increasingly fierce looking Mr Crouch demanded. He was a far cry from the thin, tired sounding man Harry had seen rambling on to Percy at the World Cup. He wasn't getting his assistant's name wrong anymore either.

'Not yet, Barty,' Bagman grinned. He seemed only more cheerful that there was a champion missing.

'Well we aren't waiting, tell these three about the task.'

'Right then,' Bagman boomed, clapping his hands together loudly. 'Welcome to the second task of the Triwizard Tournament.'

'Actually, Ludo,' Crouch decided, cutting in, 'if you don't mind, I'll explain.'

Bagman looked quite disappointed and even, dare Harry believe it, angry. He'd never seen the so overtly good-humoured man with such a violent glint in his eye.

'The second task,' the soon to be former head of the Department of International Cooperation began crisply, 'is upon you. I hope you have discovered the secret of your golden egg or you will be woefully unprepared for what is to come.'

None of the two other champions present looked particularly nervous and Harry wasn't either. He was going to win.

'As the clue states we have taken from you something that you will sorely miss, to clarify, we have taken a hostage that you must recover.' Cedric stiffened, visibly angry, and Harry caught him mouthing his girlfriend's name under his breath. 'To alleviate confusion,' Crouch continued, uncaring, 'as some of you may know the hostages of other champions, Ludo will tell you who your hostage is, you are not to interfere with the hostages of the other champions while they are being kept hostage, or afterwards.'

Harry nodded. That rule made sense. An unscrupulous rival might kill, or injure the hostage of another champion to ensure they failed the task. He was, however, more principally concerned with who had been chosen for him.

Bagman returned to the fore, accompanied by a stern looking Professor McGonagall and the all three headteachers.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the arrival of Fleur Delacour, who skidded to a halt amongst her rivals. She looked ever so slightly panicked.

Good, Harry thought, if she is distracted, she will be easier to beat.

He ruthlessly stamped down on the feelings that suggested he ask why, or do something to assist her. Fleur Delacour's concerns were not his, this worked in his advantage.

'My apologies,' she breathed, still gasping from running, 'I was unable to find my sister to say goodbye this morning.'

Gabrielle is her hostage, Harry concluded.

It made perfect sense, she had mentioned her family's arrival, and given the pre-arranged nature of the tournament he doubted their timing was a coincidence. It struck him as slightly cruel, Fleur loved her sister more than anything else, even more, Harry imagined, than her pride.

It's more than slightly cruel.

He smiled, choosing to side with the vengeful grin that had threatened to spread across his face than the twist of pity he felt underneath.

It did rather make him wonder who they'd chosen for him. He couldn't have been arranged for in advance and there weren't really any people he'd sorely miss that they could take.

'Well,' Bagman announced slightly less jovially than before, 'now that we are all here I shall inform you each who you're hostage is.' He seemed rather less cheerful now Fleur had arrived. Harry suspected, from his offer of help and his attitude towards the other champions that Bagman had some kind of personal stake in his success. The man was known as a gambler and it would hardly surprise Harry were he to learn the former beater was trying to make the most of the long odds he had been offered at the tournaments beginning.

Harry smirked. He imagined those odds were a little shorter now.

The french witch, meanwhile, had made the same deduction as Harry had about her sister. There was a distinctly avian feel to her features and Harry was rather glad she had come to a halt on the far side of the group.

'Miss Delacour, as you might have gathered your hostage is your younger sister, Gabrielle. Mr Diggory, you are searching for your girlfriend, Miss Chang. Mr Krum was originally going to be looking for a friend and quidditch teammate, but he has taken ill and so you will be going after Miss Granger instead.' Harry raised an eyebrow, but Viktor Krum only grunted his understanding. 'Mr Potter,' Bagman grinned, his good humour restored, 'your hostage is Miss Bell.'

Harry attempted to stifle a laugh without complete success.

'He is being serious, Mr Potter,' McGonagall snapped. 'Miss Bell was the only one willing to risk herself being your hostage in this task, without her, you would have been unable to compete and fallen far behind.'

It wasn't like I was going to refuse to save her, he fumed.

If he was honest with himself he did feel slightly guilty for laughing. It what McGonagall had said was true then she might have just saved him from failing. It was a little unfair that he could have been penalised so harshly for not having anyone willing to descend into a lake and risk drowning for him, but he was more than slightly grateful she had.

He turned away from his head of house and looked out over the lake instead. The water was every bit as dark and uninviting as the icy pool in the Chamber of Secrets. The Black Lake was also rather too large for him to warm with a heating charm.

'This is going to be unpleasant,' he remarked, dipping a toe into the water to judge the temperature.

Fleur smiled, Cedric's mouth spasmed somewhere between humour and concern, and Krum chuckled.

'First to get caught by the squid wins,' he suggested in his Bulgarian accent, offering a hand to Harry.

'Or the Grindylows,' Harry reminded him, clasping Viktor's hand in his own.

'On my whistle,' Mr Crouch commanded and the champions divested themselves of their robes. He seemed a little happier than normal with the show of friendship, but it was hard to tell when his face was carved with permanent frown lines.

The whistle went not a second later.

Fleur was gone first, she pulled a slim veil up over her mouth and nose, tied it tightly, and dove gracefully into the lake. He did his best to ignore how good she looked in her swimwear. Harry pressed his wand against his chest, visualising the piece of transfiguration he was about to complete successfully for the fourth time. Cedric went next, dropping feet first into the water, his face and neck enclosed within a vibrating bubble. Harry hope he had done something to address the weakness of prolonged use of the Bubble-Head Charm, or he was going to get a horrible surprise the first time something punctured it. Pretty-boy Diggory wouldn't be half so attractive once the explosion of pressure caved in his skull.

Harry abruptly lost the ability to breath and staggered towards the edge, tucking his wand back into the waist band of the shorts he was wearing.

Next to him Krum was undergoing a similar process, his head halfway between human and shark. Harry took a moment to admire the rather advanced piece of transfiguration before leaping resignedly into the water himself.

It was even colder than he had anticipated, but he could breathe again.

A few tentative inhales reassured him that his piece of self-transfiguration was working as intended, even if seeing his chest undulate in such a fashion was every bit as weird as the comforting rush of water into his lungs.

A temporary sticking charm fixed his glasses more firmly upon his nose and he began to win down towards the bottom of the lake and out into its centre where Salazar remembered the Merpeople to be.

He passed over long light-green weeds that rose up at least several metres from the lake bed. Harry stayed well above the plants; he remembered from last year that Grindylows like to ambush their prey from such places and he was fairly sure he'd glimpsed the occasional tentacle and horn amongst the weeds.

Nobody in their right mind would risk swimming through there when the open water was so much obviously safer.

Eventually the green weeds gave way to thick-looking, black mud and Harry was sure, as he passed the sunken wreckage of a ship, that he glimpsed the giant squid. It's bulbous form was lying in the gap between the two halves of the broken vessel, with its tentacles trailing out across the lake bed. Harry thought it looked rather harmless, but he wasn't particularly eager to win his bet with Viktor.

A pale figure appeared in the distance, drifting at a slower pace than Harry in the same direction he was headed. He drew his wand. Most spells still worked underwater, albeit slower and so sometimes less effectively. Transfiguration, fortunately, was not affected in the slightest.

'Myrtle,' he burbled into the water.

'Harry,' he voice was unaffected by the medium. 'You look better now, much happier, are you searching for the Merpeople too?'

He nodded, unsure if the ghostly girl would actually be able to understand him if he spoke.

'Cedric was too, they're that way,' she waved one arm in the direction Salazar had suggested. 'Good luck.' It seemed she had no intent on accompanying him, so Harry smiled and waved his thanks before swimming on.

The mud had turned to rock. Dark, grey columns loomed up over the lake bed, monolithic, and decidedly unnatural looking. Listening hard he caught faint snatches of Merpeople singing, but couldn't make out the words. Either way, he was definitely close.

The columns grew smaller as the song grew louder. Harry could understand it now. Half the time was gone, and if the other half slipped by then Katie would not be leaving the lake.

I won't let that happen.

She must have known what she had been risking by agreeing to be his hostage. Understanding had been implicit in Professor Mcgonagall's vehement response to his laughter. For that, Harry decided, he could forgive her. He would have failed without her help. He doubted that they'd be back to holding hands anytime soon, though.

There was a loud explosion from in front of him and a wave of pressurised water made his ears pop.

Shaking his head to throw off the sensation Harry peered suspiciously around him. He wasn't sure if that had been an offensive spell cast in his direction, but he did know that Cedric must be around somewhere. Nowhere in the rules of the task did it say that he champions couldn't eliminate their rivals themselves.

Cautiously he continued swimming forwards, drawing his wand as he did.

Floating above him, lying very still, too still to be conscious or alive, was the original Hogwarts champion, scattering away beneath him were a horde of very battered looking Grindylows.

One of them must have somehow punctured the bubble.

The remnants of Cedric's Bubble-Head Charm still clung to his nose and mouth, but the stream of air rising above him was a clear indicator that it would not last much longer.

Clearly he had reduced the effects of the compression bursting, but apparently not enough to do much more than to temporarily save his life from the explosion, as he was now on the verge of drowning.

'Homenum revelio,' he said into the water. The words came out in a garbled mess, but Cedric's body lit up red and, in the distance, Harry glimpsed two more red figures. One far off to his right and the other closer and directly in front of him.

He was alive. Harry swam closer and tried to wrap an arm around the unconscious Hufflepuff only to find he had a great deal more width than normal.

Cho Chang was strapped to his side, but she was out for the count too.

Harry mulled things over, but the quickly approaching red dot on his right, and the oddly still one in front of him urged him to hurry. One of his rivals had already reached the village and been caught leaving and it seemed another might have found it too.

A weakly powered blasting curse sent both Cho and Cedric shooting up through the water. They'd be noticed, and likely rescued, as soon as they burst out of the water.

His conscience appeased, Harry swiftly swam on towards the source of the singing. He was sure he could see the outline of buildings in the distance.

The village of the Merpeople was empty, the stone and seaweed dwellings were silent, but a crowd of them had gathered around the ring of standing stones that had been raised just beyond the edge of their huts.

Harry swam quickly, but warily through the village. Merpeople were intelligent, but not overly friendly if what Salazar had told him was true.

In fact what Salazar had really told him was that Godric had needed to be healed by Helga after being impaled by tridents, twice. Negotiations of mutual co-existence with the aquatic creatures had been slow to start and Slytherin, who had told Godric not to just dive down and try to reason with them, had found the results rather amusing.

There were twelve towering, black monoliths and the furthest three bore human figures, enshrouded in the fading red glow of Harry's failing revealing charm, upon them.

Viktor Krum had already arrived, his head and neck transfigured into that of a shark. His self-transfiguration had not gifted him particularly good vision, however, something Harry felt a slight sympathy for, and he was struggling to sever the ropes that bound Hermione to her stone.

Harry weighed up his options. He could take Katie and leave, but that risked turning his back on Durmstrangs' champion and Fleur was still behind him too. If they let him pass, something Harry thought unlikely, Krum had reached here first and was likely the better swimmer of the two of them.

Sorry, Harry mentally apologised to the surly Bulgarian. The surly seeker wasn't so bad once you spoke to him a little, but he was competitive. Neither attribute was going to save him from Harry's conjured ropes, however.

The thick, black bindings shot from the tip of his wand, but, slowed by the water, they failed to wrap around the Bulgarian and only loosely entangled his legs and arms.

He was free in seconds of a well applied cutting charm and Krum swiftly retaliated with what looked like the blasting curse.

The jets of water sped towards Harry at far greater speed than his ropes had managed to travel and though they appeared to be weak enough not to harm him too badly Harry had no plans to wait around and find out. He dived down beneath them, taking cover behind one of the monoliths.

Viktor abandoned his attempts to free Hermione and swam up above Harry to render his cover useless, casting several more hexes as he did so. They impacted harmlessly on the other side of the monolith or drifted off into the lake behind Harry.

Taking advantage of the moment Harry discretely used the Cutting Charm to free Katie from the rock; it would speed things up later.

Viktor turned and unleashed another trio of reductos down at Harry. They hammered into the monolith, chipping pieces off the top and filling Harry's view with dust-clouded water.

Damn.

Harry was forced to abandon his cover to take offensive action, there was no way to effectively defend himself and Katie from Krum with so much open water to cross to the finish and he couldn't duel blinded by rock dust.

With a slight smirk he cast every single one of the childish, school corridor jinxes that he knew in a swift barrage and watched with some amusement as the jelly legs jinx and the dancing jinx struck him on the side.

For a moment Krum's limbs swayed bonelessly, then he ended both jinxes and raised his wand in reply.

The retaliation shattered the monolith completely. Evidently Krum did not find the result quite as funny as Harry did and had stopped pulling his punches.

A slight shiver traced its way down Harry's spine. Things were much more serious now.

He didn't recognise half the spells that Krum was casting at him, so he dodged as many as he could manage and was grateful to see his shield charm deflect the rest. He swept his wand across the pebbles underneath Krum's position, transfiguring them into a small school of snake-like fish.

Viktor vanished into the shoal for a moment and Harry grinned triumphantly. His arsenal of spells and abilities were quite limited underwater, but he was still giving as good as he got.

His grin was wiped off his face when he was suddenly grabbed from behind by a giant stone hand.

Transfiguration was Krum's solution too, he reminded himself, shattering the stone arm and sending the pieces flying towards his opponent. The moment Krum deflected them away he cast a handful more spells and then, in their shadow, followed up with a disarming charm.

Viktor was not deceived. He deflected the curses away and shot several angry yellow looking jets of water in Harry's direction. One of them grazed his shoulder, drawing blood, and he hissed in pain.

The other two drilled foot deep holes into the ground behind him and he looked incredulous up at the Bulgarian. Those spells were easily capable of killing.

The surly wizard stared back, a silent warning in his eyes that if this duel continued Harry might not survive.

He takes winning very seriously.

Harry grinned up at the Durmstrang student.

It's no fun beating someone who doesn't want to win.

Evidently Krum took his grin as defiance because he launched four more of the same curse at Harry in quick succession. His spells missed, carving another set of depressions into the ground.

Harry raised his wand in preparation to retaliate in kind, only to watch it fly from his hand across the lake bed. Viktor Krum looked confused for a second, then his eyes widened and he shield himself just in time to deflect another disarming charm.

Fleur, Harry realised.

Krum whirled around to throw spells off to Harry's right, so Harry launched himself after his wand, keeping an eye over his shoulder to where Durmstrang's champion was dodging colourless jets of water that came with surprising speed.

Grabbing his wand from where it lay Harry kicked round the edge of the monolith to give himself a clear view of the duel.

Fleur and Viktor were engaged in a dispute just as violent as Harry and Krum's had been. Watching it was almost comical, the spells seemed to travel very slowly, with the exception of whatever the clear curse was that Fleur would occasionally use, and their movements were exaggerated in the water.

Harry smiled at the hilarity of it all, then transfigured the lake bed beneath them both into towering spines of stone. The piece of transfiguration cost him a great deal of energy, but it caught both Fleur and Viktor by surprise.

Fleur shattered the spires beneath her and Krum with a very powerful blasting curse of her own, but using the spell so powerfully at close range threw her off balance and she was struck by one of Viktor's yellow curses directly in the face.

Harry froze, horrified.

Fleur drifted backwards through the water, her silver hair shrouding her face and what Harry knew must be a horrific and fatal injury. Both he and Krum were as still as the stones around them, neither had really wanted one of their rivals dead, even when throwing around potentially lethal spells.

Harry's chest tightened and the pinprick of ice he felt at watching her glide suddenly spread across his chest. The creature within the cold twisted violently, baring its teeth and demanding revenge. Harry's wand tip flicked up, a slight, but vivid, green spark visible there.

Fleur's hair floated away from her face and Harry was treated to a full view of where the curse had struck her.

There was nothing.

Harry couldn't even see a drop or wisp of blood in the water around her and although the french witch's lips were swelling, her chin was red and bruised, and she seemed furious, Fleur was unharmed. Her veil, however, hung in tatters around her neck, a small plume of bubbles rising from the edges of the fragments of cloth.

Fleur made ten metres towards the hostages before the bubbles stopped completely, then she shot Harry a look somewhere between utter hatred and desperate pleading, jabbed her wand upwards, and ascended out of sight.

When Harry looked back he found Krum was already disappearing out of sight, Hermione cradled underneath his transfigured maw.

He dived back down towards the monoliths, grabbing Katie's arm and pulling her into his chest. Cedric and Fleur would probably still have decent scores, since both reached the Merpeople, but if he finished outside of the time limit he might get nothing. Barty Crouch did not strike him as a lenient man.

Gabrielle Delacour bobbed against the final monolith.

She was Fleur's sister, the beloved younger sibling who he knew meant more to the french witch than almost anything. He understood the look she had given him, now he was looking at Gabrielle. It wasn't part of the tournament, but Fleur had asked anyway. She wanted him to save her sister as well as Katie and she knew, just like before, that he wouldn't be able to leave her behind, because Harry wasn't capable of it.

Damn her.

He wished that he was heartless enough to abandon the girl, but she looked too innocent, too pure for him to even want to do so. He couldn't be responsible for her death, if indeed the hostages were lost once the task ended, he couldn't live with that, Harry certainly couldn't do something so cruel to Fleur. He would, if he left Gabrielle, be ripping away the one person who meant most to her, and he simply couldn't.

Fleur knew that. Fleur knew that he knew that. She used it against him to make sure that her sister came back to her.

The worst part was that Harry could understand. He could hardly blame her. If there was someone so much more important than anyone else in his life there would not be much he would not do to keep them safe.

Resignedly he severed Gabrielle's bonds too.

The Merpeople appeared from nowhere, swarming around him in a shoal that bristled with tridents.

Harry narrowed his eyes and raised his wand, pulling the silver-haired girl into his embrace next to Katie.

The nearest of the Merpeople jabbed his trident at the girl and shook his head, raising a single finger.

'Only one,' it told him threateningly.

Harry brought out his coldest smile, and calmly transfigured the trident into another serpent-like fish. If they stood in his way then he would force them from it. Gabrielle Delacour was worth more to him than a few Merpeople, he wished it was not so, because he knew that her only value to him lay in how much she meant to Fleur, but it was. The french veela had somehow entranced him, with or without her allure, and now he could do nothing to stop her using it against him.

'You can try and stop me,' he warned them. The water twisted his words into something unintelligible, but his intent was clear. The Merpeople scattered back to the edges of their standing circle, eyeing the glowing tip of Harry's wand with fear.

Harry eyed it in surprise himself. He had not realised he was broadcasting his intent so strongly.

The tip was growing with bright green light.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to those of you who have.

I'm also announcing the end of my experiment with differing contractions between Harry and everyone, though I'm not going back to change things now. While it has seemed to create the feeling of distance I intended between Harry and his former friends, everyone seems more concerned with how unnatural it feels for a fourteen year old to speak formally rather than why he might be speaking with such distance to most people and then informally with the few he's close to.

Additionally I bothered to go and see if the review on DLP had been updated so that it was a bit more relevant. It hasn't, which is annoying since half of the points are either wrong or now irrelevant because I went back and rewrote the first 15 chapters to iron out a few of the misconceptions and errors. My main gripe is simply that it seems to notice less than half of the things I do, but when it does notice one, such as my experiment with contractions, it never considers why and just jumps to the conclusion it's a mistake. I'd be very interested to know what logic suggested I had accidentally reworked Harry's entire speech pattern from about chapter 8 onwards. A few other things that I found a bit odd were the tendency to abandon ship at the first sign of a cliché when I'm sure I've pointed out that I'm trying to use and make something new of them. It's hard to do that without them appearing in the first place. There was also the assumption that anything implied must immediately be true, no matter how weakly or strongly, and the complete skipping over of the fact that anything Ron and Hermione do is often seen through Harry's eyes, despite my writing style, and he is obviously going to have some bias.

I personally, and somewhat unsurprisingly, disagree with several points, for example Hermione is a girl who is very loyal to her friends, but why anyone expects her to remain so loyal to someone who has literally told her that they aren't friends confuses me. My main hate, however, is the idea that I somehow created a new 'super' wand for Harry in a day. Not only are there no hints in canon, which this is not regardless, of how wands are made, but it isn't even super, something I went out of my way to point out because I wasn't fond of giving him the Elder Wand Mark II. The whole purpose of the new wand was to convey with some not so subtle symbolism the change in Harry's direction, it's a bit vexing to see all that effort interpreted as 'super wand.' Some of that blame has to lie with me since I'm meant to be creating the impression, but if you're going to do a review I feel you should really consider things in more depth than just reading it through without analysis.

There are few points that were right, the key word in that phrase being were, but after I rewrote it so long ago to remove the very errors that were pointed you could at least do me the courtesy of updating your review, which is the whole point of this not so little note. I'd rather people weren't put off from reading this because your review is inaccurate, and it has become increasingly so. The summary is now quite obviously relevant, it is a summary of the fic, not the first handful of chapters, after all.

So, basically, update the damn thing because it's old and frustratingly obtuse in places, even if it is meant to be one-sided, and please try and think why something is there before dismissing it. I can personally guarantee that while this fic will include a lot of the clichés, they'll all be given a new twist, so don't see a portrait and assume basilisk eggs and neo-Slytherin or anything quite so ridiculous as that.

I'm not sure that's quite a rant, but it's now reached its end. Apologies to anyone who bothered to read that and discovered it's only really relevant to three people whose usernames aren't very hard to guess.

31. And Back Again

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

And the next chapter comes...

Chapter 31

She couldn't breathe.

There were dark spots hovering in her eyes and the lake around her seemed strangely grey. Fleur knew her spell would take her to surface, that she just had to hold on, but the impulse to take a breath was so strong she wasn't sure she could resist much longer.

Gradually the dark spot swelled to cover more and more of the lake and the bursting, aching pain in her chest grew too strong to be ignored any longer. She hoped she was above the water, because she couldn't hold on any longer.

Fleur took a deep breathe.

The water was icy cold, so cold that it burnt and froze the inside of her mouth and throat as she instinctively gulped for air.

None came.

The desperate desire for oxygen only intensified, and her addled brain could only provide one solution.

If I cannot reach the air, then the air must reach me.

'Evanesco,' she croaked, pouring everything she had into the spell, desiring only that the water within and above her vanish.

A surge of exhaustion overwhelmed her and she gasped at its intensity, the cold and the wet had made her magic slow and sluggish, but her strength still obeyed her, despite the increased toll.

Sweet, blissful air rushed into her lungs.

In an instant the black spots were gone and she could think again. She half-wished she could not.

Fleur was still rising, but the lake was returning to reclaim its victim. The water she had vanished had left a ten metre high cone of air above, but the black water was returning faster than she was rising.

She took one last deep breathe as the walls of water rushed to meet her and hoped that the impact didn't hurt too much.

The water hit hard, from both sides, spinning her around like a doll and leaving her dizzy. Amazingly her wand remained in her grasp, and, though most of the air had been knocked out her, the urge to breathe was nowhere near as overwhelming as it had been before.

All she had to do was swim up.

Fleur kicked upwards, towards the dark surface of the water only to stop when a stream of silver bubbles sank down from her nose and lips, past her chin towards the bright depths of the lake.

Bubbles don't sink, Fleur realised.

Fleur turned herself around, swimming as fast as she could up towards the light, the surface, air and life.

She burst to the surface, gasping with relief, and taking deep lungfuls of air.

For a minute she floated there, kicking water, revelling in her ability to breathe normally, then events caught up with her.

Gabrielle.

Her sister was still down at the bottom of the lake, her only hope of rescue lying in the hands of Harry Potter. Fleur wanted to believe that he would take Gabrielle with her, she needed to believe it.

Harry was noble, and he was like her; he would understand what Gabby meant to her and bring her back. She was sure that he was not cruel enough to deliberately and knowingly take her sister away from her. There was no reason for such an action.

He knew what he was doing when he caused the distraction that let Krum hit me.

It was an ugly thought, but it was true. Harry had put the tournament and winning before everything else, indirectly preventing her from saving her sister. For a moment she had truly hated him for it.

If he did not save Gabrielle, then he had as good as killed her, and Harry had no real obligation to save her younger sibling. Fleur had come to the conclusion that his returned inability to notice her was not a coincidence, and it hadn't taken much thought to work out why he might be acting distantly towards her. She had kissed him and then avoided him, reached out to him and snatched her hand away.

Some equal I was.

None of that, however, mattered as much as Gabrielle.

If she is gone…

Fleur could not even finish the thought, her stomach and heart twisted all up and around one another, and her eyes grew hot. She had to know if he had saved her.

Striking out towards the shore, forcing the last of her magic to keep her warm, she swam as fast she was able. Her route back across the lake surface would be quicker if she could keep the cold from seeping in and as long as she persevered; she might even arrive back before Krum or Harry did.

When they returned with their hostages, Fleur would know if she had lost her sister or not.

Please let Harry have saved her, she begged of anything that might be listening.

The family would be nothing without capricious, clever Gabby and her playful nature. A hard lump formed in her throat and her eyes prickled violently.

Fleur Delacour does not cry, she tried to remind herself, but for the first time in years her pride failed to catch the tears before they fell and warm trails began to trace their way down her cheeks and into the lake.

By the time she reached the finish she had cried herself into exhaustion, and the cold of the lake had settled into more than her muscles. Fleur could not even manage to drag herself up onto the platform, the mediwitch, Madam Pomfrey, had to levitate her and then hold her up before she could collapse.

'Come with me, Miss Delacour,' the stern witch ordered, already casting warming charms.

'Gabrielle,' Fleur managed to say, shaking her head and looking around desperately.

There was no sign of any of the other champions.

'Anyone who comes out of the lake will be brought straight to this tent,' Madam Pomfrey told her kindly. 'You will see you sister quickest if you come this way.'

Fleur was too weak to escape the witch's firm grip on her arm and could only hope that she was right.

There were three full beds in the medic tent, the three furthest from the door, and a shirtless Krum, whose torso was covered in hundreds of small bite marks. Gabrielle was not among the occupants of the tent and Fleur's tears threatened to return.

'Sit,' the mediwitch commanded, pushing Fleur towards one of the beds. She traced her wand over her lips and lower face, eliciting a spike of pain. Fleur flinched away from the unexpected discomfort, earning a tut from Madam Pomfrey, but she didn't care. The condition of her face did not even come close to how important her sister was.

The pain gradually faded away to a dull throb, and then to nothing as the nurse cast several spells upon Fleur.

'Stay on the bed,' she instructed, once she had finished with Fleur's face. 'You're exhausted, and your body temperature has fallen well below what it should be.' She cast an array of warming charms that Fleur barely noticed and pushed something thick, sticky and sweet into her mouth. It tasted like marzipan and Fleur gratefully choked it down. 'You'll feel much better soon,' the nurse encouraged her. Fleur doubted she would feel anything of the sort until Gabby was here in the tent with her.

Madam Pomfrey strode across the room to Krum, muttering about the insanity of subjecting children to trials like this.

His bite marks were healed within moments, none of them had been deep and whatever had bitten him had clearly not been poisonous.

'They are still sleeping,' he told Fleur in his heavy, Eastern European accent. 'The enchantment used to keep them asleep and breathing underwater is meant to last for the full hour and no matter what, so they will not wake for a few more minutes.' He shifted uneasily, looking guilty, and tapped his forefinger against his lips. 'I am sorry for the curse,' he apologised. 'I was angry, things got out of hand.'

'What happened to Gabrielle and Harry?' Fleur asked, not caring about his apology in the slightest. Krum had done nothing outside of the rules, so if Gabrielle was fine she would not care. If her sister was still in the lake, the it would not matter how sorry he was; Fleur would hate him until he died for destroying her veil and stopping her from saving her sister.

'Your sister,' Krum gave her an apologetic look, 'when I left she was still a hostage of the Merpeople. Harry has not yet returned, he swims slower than me, and I had a head start.'

A silver cat suddenly bounded in through the flaps at the entrance, sitting up on its haunches to murmur in the distinctive Scottish accent of stern looking Hogwarts teacher of transfiguration.

Fleur could not make out the words, and when she tried to stand up and get closer she swayed and fell back onto the bed.

'Drink this,' the nurse commanded, thrusting the same peppery smelling, pick-me-up potion she had forced down the throats of all the champions after the first task. Evidently the food had not been enough.

Madam Pomfrey was gone out of the tent before Fleur had finished the concoction.

'She must have gone to get Potter,' Krum deduced, eyeing his two rivals, thoughtfully. 'I hope he is ok, I owe him revenge for all the bites in the next task.'

'The bites?' Fleur repeated absently, staring at the flap in the tent. Her stomach was twisting and turning in anxiety as she prayed that the nurse would return with Gabrielle.

'He transfigured all the pebbles around me into aggressive fish,' Krum laughed. 'They had very sharp teeth. I owe him a curse or two, I think.'

'He's only fourteen,' Fleur reminded the Bulgarian, slightly worried for Harry.

'He was holding his own against me for several minutes before you came and disarmed him, and I think he was holding back, every spell he cast was a minor curse or hex. He hit me a couple times, had he used some of the more powerful curses he knows I would still be in the lake.' The Durmstrang student seemed quite upbeat about being matched in a duel, even one in such unusual conditions, by a fourteen year old.

'I wonder what our scores will be?' Cedric Diggory had awoken. 'Did you guys all make it there and back?'

'Yes,' Krum answered curtly.

'No,' Fleur confessed, very quietly.

Gabrielle.

'Oh,' Cedric fell silent. 'Where's Harry?'

'The nurse went to get him,' Krum replied, pulling his robes back on now he was healed. Fleur did the same, dragging her Beauxbatons uniform from the end of the bed and slowly dressing herself. She felt like all her fingers had suddenly become thumbs, fumbling with the buttons, and belt.

The flaps of the tent parted and Madam Pomfrey stepped inside, she was smiling slightly, but the only girl floating behind her was Katie Bell.

He left her.

Fleur's heart collapsed, leaving her chest hollow and sore. Harry had left her baby sister to drown.

Harry Potter ducked through the entrance, turning sideways to brush the flap out of the way with one arm. His face was blank and unreadable, but Fleur thought she caught a slight tremor of despair there.

She pushed herself off the bed to demand why he had not saved Gabrielle too, but then he turned, and cradled in his arms lay her precious, younger sister, sleeping peacefully with a small smile on her lips.

'You saved her,' Fleur whispered. Her heart rose from the ashes of her disconsolation.

Harry placed Gabby gently on the bed next to his and accepted the proffered Pepper-Up potion from Madam Pomfrey with resigned, wry smile.

'I do not expect, Mr Potter,' Madam Pomfrey lectured, 'to see such a dangerous use of self-transfiguration in all the rest of my life. You turned your lungs into some horrible parody of gills, restructured the entire musculature of your chest and thought it would have no consequences.'

Harry nodded, then turned away to cough violently into this hand. Fleur glimpsed a spatter of crimson upon his palm before Madam Pomfrey sat him down.

'You put far too much strain on your lungs,' she muttered, running her wand over his exposed chest. 'I've fixed you as best I can, but you'll have that cough for the next week or so anyway. Maybe it will remind you that we can't just put you back together every time you try something so reckless.'

Harry looked like he wanted to object, but bent over to cough into his hand. It was a deep, painful, wet sounding action that made Fleur shift uneasily and Cedric wince.

He had been fine under the water when she had seen him by the hostages, and Fleur somehow knew that it had been swimming with the weight of both Katie Bell and Gabrielle that had put too much strain on whatever he had done to his lungs.

A flurry of guilt struck her as she remembered how much she had hated him in the brief moment between losing her veil and having to head for the surface.

'Thank you,' she surged off her bed onto her feet, with every intention of throwing her arms around him and kissing him again. She didn't particularly care that he was fourteen, not when he acted so maturely and was so noble, and she certainly did not care what anyone else thought.

He caught her right hand between his own, grasping it an impromptu shake, before swiftly releasing it.

'That's ok, Fleur,' he responded cheerfully. 'It's what anyone in my situation would have done.' He flashed her a bright, charming smile.

Fleur recoiled.

The smile was warm, but it never rose far enough to melt the ice in his green eyes. He knew what she had been going to do, he knew, and he had deliberately prevented her from touching or reaching him. He hadn't involuntarily flinched from her like he did from all close contact, he'd coldly dismissed her gratitude and affection in a way he knew only she would recognise.

How could he be so cruel?

Something had changed in him since the Yule Ball. The Harry she had spent the evening with had gazed up at her with clear eyes and told her she was beautiful, lost himself, when she had kissed him, but this Harry wanted nothing to do with her. He seemed to loathe even the idea of touching her.

Fleur's heart lurched once more, and her eyes filled with hot, angry tears. This was not how her equal was supposed to treat her. This was not how the wizard she was afraid she might love should act towards her. He was different; somehow she'd ruined everything between them with her indecision.

Neither the warmth of the smile, nor the ice in his eyes dissolved as he stepped back from her, but she caught, as he turned away, a flicker of something else, something cruel, and his smile curved up on one side into genuine amusement.

He knows his rejection hurt, she realised, stunned, and he enjoys it.

The noble, understanding Harry Potter, the one that must still exist somewhere for him to have saved Gabrielle, was not the face he turned towards her anymore.

'The scores are being announced,' Krum told them, peering out through the flap.

The four champions moved outside to where they could see the judges' stand, leaving the still sleeping hostages in their beds.

Something sparked angrily inside of Fleur at the sight of the peacefully breathing Gryffindor girl. Katie Bell had been his hostage, despite being someone Harry should no longer sorely miss. The girl must have come back to him after the Yule Ball, when she had not been sure what to do, and poisoned Harry against her.

Fleur's hand snapped to her waist, unable to resist her desire to curse the unconscious girl, but her wand was gone.

'Forty,' she heard Cedric grin's rather than saw it, 'after my Bubble-Head charm exploded I feared I would do the worst.'

'You were there first?' Krum asked, surprised. 'I did not see you.'

'I used the Bubble-Head Charm and transfigured some seaweed into flippers so I could swim faster, but my adaption to the charm failed and it still exploded when a Grindylow burst the bubble,' the Hogwarts champion explained.

'Ah,' Krum realised. 'You lost points because you did not return to the finish, but surpassed the rest of us elsewhere.'

Behind the two of them the judges were conjuring a new set of numbers, hers.

'Thirty six,' she counted, disappointed but not surprised. Her enchantment had been the perfect solution, but she had not saved her little sister.

'For an innovative and exceptional piece of transfiguration,' she heard Bagman announce, 'and for being one of only two champions to return with their hostage, we award Mr Potter forty points.'

A murmur of surprise came from the spectators and champions alike. Harry's face was fixed in abject fury, his gaze settling in icy rage upon Barty Crouch who had conjured the number four from his wand.

'Had Mr Potter not interfered with the hostage of another champion I would have no reason to remove points,' the head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation announced cooly. Harry's hand twitched towards his wand, his composure shattered, and she was sure she glimpsed a glimmer of green from beneath his fingers.

Fleur felt her heart sink a little lower. Harry was paying the price for defying the rules and saving Gabby, no wonder he had chosen Katie when everything she did seemed to cause him trouble or pain.

'The winner of the second task, and new highest scoring champion, is Viktor Krum, whose brilliant piece of transfiguration and swift return with his hostage grant him a score of forty four.' Ludo Bagman seemed disgusted by the turn of events, turning to argue angrily with his fellow judge Barty Crouch.

Krum grinned, though he seemed a little put out by Harry's score. Fleur imagined he wanted to beat everyone at their best. He seemed that sort.

'Eighty six,' Cedric said contemplatively, pointing at Krum, 'eighty two, eighty and seventy four.' He indicated Harry, Fleur and himself in turn. 'We are all close enough for the last to task to decide everything.'

'Yes,' Krum nodded, 'I owe you for those fish.' He grinned at Harry rather viciously. Harry returned the expression with an equally savage smile of his own, but his eyes never left the form of Barty Crouch.

'I'm much better above water,' Harry warned him good-naturedly, tearing his eyes away from the judge. They were just as competitive as each other, as determined to win as she was. Cedric Diggory seemed slightly less motivated, but only by the slenderest of margins.

'Aren't we all,' Fleur muttered. She would certainly be better off in the last task. Cedric Diggory was right. They were all close enough together for things to go anyone's way. She was determined to make sure it was hers.

The idea of winning, however, of beating Krum, Diggory and Harry was no longer quite as brilliant as before. Any victory over Harry would be tainted by the knowledge that he might only have lost because he chose to save Gabrielle, and she could not, in good conscience win because of that, but not could she ever hope that he had not saved her.

How did things get so much more complicated?

Before Christmas there had only really been the Triwizard Tournament to consider, now there was Gabrielle, winning, Harry and more. She knew, of course, exactly the moment at which things had become more complex.

I wish I had never kissed him.

It wasn't true. Fleur still wanted to kiss the talented, empathetic wizard who had captured her interest, her attention, and then more, but Harry Potter had changed. The bright, false smile he vanished behind was half-real and a touch of cruelty had crept into his eyes.

She spared the young wizard a glance, only to flinch away immediately. His bright, cold green eyes were already fixed on her, his face twisted with a unidentifiable, tangled mass of emotions.

Suddenly her mother was by her side, squeezing Fleur's hand and talking very fast. She couldn't seem to hear any of the words that she was saying.

Fleur blinked, shook her head free of thoughts of Harry and focused.

'You can still win,' her mother was assuring her. 'Four points is nothing, there will be ample opportunity to outdo them in the next task. You did well, Fleur, especially in such an adverse environment.'

'If it had been real, Gabrielle would be gone,' Fleur said woodenly. It had been Harry that saved her sister, not her; she had failed.

'Gabby was never in danger. When they asked us who you would be most determined to save your sister volunteered. We were assured that she would be in no danger.' Her mother gave her a reassuring smile, one she recognised from the years she had spent asking why she was different, the times she had failed to cast a spell successfully her first time, and when she had struggled to learn to control her allure. Her confidence swelled a little stronger at the sight of it.

'Only me,' Fleur smiled, relieved.

'You nearly drowned,' her mother whispered, squeezing her hand very tightly.

'The Triwizard Tournament is dangerous, maman,' Fleur told her tiredly, 'I knew that when I entered.'

'I do not think you really realised it,' she responded, 'not until now.'

'I'll still win,' Fleur declared. That was how she would do it. She'd do so well in the final task that it wouldn't matter Harry had lost points saving Gabrielle as she had pleaded him to. Fleur would beat him, Krum and Cedric by such a margin that it wouldn't matter. Her pride glowed at the thought of her holding the silver trophy, but the image in her mind showed Harry looking up at her and smiling proudly.

Fleur knew that that would not be the case. He would hate her for winning, hate even more than he already did for having to save her sister and costing him points.

It isn't fair.

His anger felt so petty, so unnecessary and unlike the young wizard she had seen. The Harry who had dismissed Katie Bell to keep her company would have never resented losing points in the tournament for saving the life of Gabrielle. He would have been angry at Crouch for taking them away when Harry had simply been doing the right thing, but he would have never hated her for it.

Katie Bell.

The girl had turned him against her. She must have. Sometime in the weeks since the Yule Ball, when Fleur had foolishly left him alone and exposed to the insidious advice of others, she had come to him and whispered her malice into his ear.

Fleur tugged herself free of her mother's hand and stepped forwards to face the youngest champion.

'She is lying to you,' Fleur hissed angrily. 'Whatever she has said is not true.'

'Who is she, Miss Delacour,' Harry's tone was cold, but curious, 'are you, perhaps, referring to yourself in the third person?'

Fleur's next words died somewhere on her tongue, frozen by Harry's voice.

'If you are,' Harry continued, icily polite, 'it would have been best to warn me before I believed you.'

'Katie,' the girl's name stuttered from Fleur's tongue, 'Katie Bell.'

'She has not said a word to me since the Yule Ball,' Harry responded. Some of the cold had thawed from his voice; he was confused.

'Then, then why?' Fleur asked in small voice. Her angry, prideful confidence suddenly seemed a very long way away and she felt exceedingly tiny in his eyes.

'I'm afraid I don't understand,' he smiled, with perfectly portrayed charm, but there was a faint flicker of something hopeful in his eyes that the expression couldn't conceal.

Why are you so cold to me? Why have you changed? How could a few weeks make so much difference? Why wouldn't you let me kiss you?

None of her questions made it out of her mind and over her lips, they simply froze in her throat, caught on the lump of emotion that stuck there.

The flicker faded from his eyes with painful slowness and Fleur could do nothing but watch as they hardened, freezing over as the smile extended its icy reach all the way across his face.

'Harry-' she began, but he cut her off.

'I wish you luck with the next task, Miss Delacour.' His hand twitched ever so slightly towards her, but he turned away, still smiling, to stride in the direction of the castle, and she was only able to stare after him.

Her mother caught up to her, patting her on the shoulder in slight bemusement and then leading her away back towards the medical tent and Gabrielle. Fleur let herself be led, vaguely aware that Bagman and Crouch, the only person Harry seemed more angry with than her, were still arguing.

Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts' stern nurse, was ushering a rather cheerful Cedric Diggory and his date from the tent. They were followed by a beaming Katie Bell, who without sparing Fleur so much as a glance, took off towards Harry's retreating back.

You don't deserve him, she wanted to scream, and the tears almost returned.

Fleur Delacour does not cry.

The thought was filled with self loathing instead of pride. Perhaps, if Fleur Delacour cried and begged and betrayed like Katie Bell, she would have got what she now knew she wanted.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. I hope the balance of the chapter seems right. It felt like there could have been a flood of emotion, next to nothing, or everything in between, so I'm not sure how realistic it will feel for you guys.

32. Neville's Crucible

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I have decided to emulate canon in the regard that I'm time-skipping through to the third task in just a few chapters instead of building in loads of filler. My reason for announcing this is that I'm a little concerned it will make some interactions look like random jumps rather than proper progression, so if it does go crazy in the review section and I'll rewrite and stretch it out over the filler chapters. This chapter should be a good indication of whether it's bearable or not.

An open question to the floor, should I add angst to the genre? I ran out of characters for the summary, so unless I rewrite it, which would be troublesome, it can't go there. I didn't think it was all that dramatic overall. Both characters have little to no experience of what they're going through, so I personally wouldn't expect them to have any idea of what to do. Is it used as an overall statement of genre for the whole fic, or a sort of genre list of anything included? The story will hopefully go from here to the very end and as the angst will only conceivably last as long as I'm keeping Harry and Fleur apart I don't know if I should add it or not. I had the same debate with myself at the beginning, actually.

Chapter 32

'Harry.' He smiled in resignation. The game, it seemed, was up.

She finally cornered me.

It had taken Katie the best part of a month to manage to trap him somewhere he couldn't slip away from. Harry had known it was coming, he had to speak to her eventually, but he had been afraid of what she might ask, and more afraid of how he might respond.

'I've got you,' she beamed. Katie had chosen her moment perfectly, stepping onto the staircases just as they moved, leaving the two of them stranded together for a few minutes.

'I suppose you have.' There was no use in denying it.

'I, er, I have a lot of things to say,' she began. Her smile vanished immediately, the nervousness peaking out past her bedraggled hair. 'I probably won't be able to say all of it before the stairs come back,' she joked weakly.

'I guess I'll have to wait for them to pass again,' Harry responded, taking pity on her. It wasn't like this conversation was going to disappear, they would have to have it eventually.

'Thank you,' she murmured.

'I guess I should start with the tournament.' Katie bit her lip cutely, but the urge Harry had always had when she did something he found cute before had changed. He no longer wanted to kiss her for it; it just made him smile.

'Professor McGonagall came and asked me if I could be your hostage,' Katie explained. 'She said that the hostage was someone that you'd be most determined to save, someone you'd sorely miss. I, well, you're still important to me, Harry, I miss talking with you, our date was fun, but you're not really important to me in that way, not now.'

Harry did a silent double take as Katie launched into justifications. He'd been expecting another suggestion of a date.

'It's not that I don't like you anymore, I do, we weren't all that close before, but I realised when we were almost together that I really wanted to be close with you. Then things sort of went wrong, and I missed the closeness, and tried to just carry on without it. I have Angelina and Alicia, but they've got Fred and George and sometimes I'm on my own and it's, it's not so great. When we stopped talking they tried to drag me around with them, but it felt so forced, and, well, I guess I kind of wanted to be able to sit around in Hogsmeade like we did on our date. I, I don't think I like you the same way as I thought I did, but I still want to be able to talk with you and spend time with you. It's nice to have a close friend other than Angelina and Alicia, they're both a year older than me, after all.'

The stairs swung back to them and Harry stepped onto the lower set. Katie stared at him incredulously, so he firmly reached out and pulled her down onto the step next to him before they swung away and she misunderstood.

'Let's go wander towards the quidditch pitch,' Harry suggested. It was always quiet out towards the pitches, especially this year with no practices or matches. Katie nodded, clearly relieved he hadn't been about to just walk away from her, but anxious that he had not said anything in response.

They had reached the doors of the Great Hall before either of them spoke again.

'Harry,' she prompted, very tentatively.

'Yes?'

'Aren't you going to say anything? I know you said that we wouldn't be able to keep on dating and I was… I was very upset for a while, but I came to believe that maybe we would be better as friends and then I was chosen as the person you would miss most…' she trailed off, biting her lip again.

Harry laughed. 'Professor McGonagall did not tell you that she asked others and they refused to risk themselves for me, did she?'

'No,' Katie shook her head, 'she mentioned that you'd have to have the average score of the other champions if a hostage couldn't be found, but I knew you'd save me, so I didn't need to worry.'

'She told me that I would have failed the task completely if you had not accepted,' Harry remarked, amused that his head of house had given in to her temper so easily.

'You're not upset, then, that I don't want to be with you in the same way?' Her question came a little more confidently.

'No,' Harry smiled, very glad that it was the case. 'I don't have many friends, Katie, they all proved… fickle. I enjoyed being with you, even if I'm not sure that I ever wanted to be your boyfriend,' his tongue stumbled slightly on the unfamiliar word and Katie giggled.

They stepped out into the spring cool, picking their way across the grass and dodging the protruding tips of the spring flowers that were beginning to push their way out of the soil.

'We'll be friends again?' she asked him, her smile was threatening to spill across her face. 'You'll forgive me, for going with Roger Davies and being so stupid.'

'No,' Harry told her bluntly. 'I won't forgive you for overreacting so inexplicably,' he squeezed her shoulder when her face fell, 'but you were not entirely to blame. Davies wanted to revenge himself on me for getting Fleur Delacour's attention when he could not, and she,' he grit his teeth at the thought of the beautiful french witch who had all but driven him from the Room of Requirement, 'she couldn't stand the idea of anyone being as good as her, or resisting her charm, or something complicated.' Harry wasn't all too sure what went through the mind of Fleur Delacour. They were similar, but so different. He'd very much like to know what she was thinking, it would make everything easier, but he couldn't just walk up and ask her.

'So we'll be friends?' Katie didn't move away, but something in her manner faltered and Harry saw in the reflection of her eyes how cold his face had become.

'I think we'll be good friends.' He pushed all thoughts of Fleur from his mind and the ice melted from his expression. 'You never did turn your back on me, I saw you watching, even after the Yule Ball.'

'You looked very lonely,' she admitted. 'I wanted to go and speak with you, but Angelina and Alicia thought it was a bad idea.'

'They were right,' Harry admitted. 'If you hadn't agreed to help me with the task I would have never let you catch me for this conversation.'

'Really?' Katie seemed upset by that.

'Sorry,' Harry shrugged. 'I can't just keep forgiving people for choosing all the other things in their lives over me when they proclaim to be my friends.' He stopped speaking and tried to think of the reason why, but nothing came to him, he just couldn't bring himself to be like that again. 'I've changed,' he finished.

'I won't choose anything over you,' Katie declared.

'You will,' Harry told her gently. 'The difference is that I now expect some things to be chosen above me, everyone has goals, dreams and people more dear to them than others. As long I know where I stand on your scale and think it's fair, then I'll never be disappointed or hurt by your decisions.'

Katie beamed, leaping up the steps into the stands and taking a seat in the Gryffindor section. After a moment of bemused smiling at her occasionally childish nature, Harry followed her.

'I don't have long,' he told her, squishing into the next seat. 'I promised that I'd help Neville.'

'You did?' Katie looked thoughtful, then frowned. 'Neville's been sort of forgotten in the middle of everything else, we see him in the greenhouses with Professor Sprout quite a bit, but he's never around the tower anymore and I've not seen him speaking to anyone in your year in a long time either.'

'He's sick of being called a squib,' Harry remembered. 'He hates being looked down, being a disappointment and being clumsy. He thought that because I've grown so much better I could help him.'

'I'm sure you can, Harry,' Katie agreed, 'but I think you should be gentle with him. He seems fragile now. I heard that when he met Mr Crouch, the tournament judge, in the hallways, he accidentally set fire to every tapestry within ten feet of him.'

'Neville?' Harry asked disbelievingly. 'He did violent, accidental magic at our age?'

What could have pushed him so far?

Harry realised within a few short seconds of the thought that he really didn't know all that much about Neville and felt rather guilty for it. The shy boy had always just hovered on the fringes of the Gryffindor group.

'I heard it from Alicia who said she heard Malfoy and Ron arguing over it,' Katie embellished. 'Apparently Malfoy was going on about how he heard Neville couldn't even perform accidental magic as a child. There's some story about Neville's family trying to provoke him into doing some when he was a baby and Malfoy was bandying it about. Ron had to be dragged away by Seamus and Dean.'

'When was this?' Harry demanded.

'A week ago,' Katie guessed. 'I can't believe you didn't hear about it. The whole school was talking about it for days.'

'How has Neville been?' Harry had long since stopped listening to the rumours that drifted through the school.

'I haven't really seen him,' Katie admitted. 'I don't think anyone has. Ron defended him, but it was more because he hates Malfoy than anything to with Neville.'

'I can't imagine Neville doing something like that,' Harry said, still slightly reluctant to believe the story.

'It's true,' Katie insisted. 'I've seen the walls on the fourth floor where the tapestries used to be. I don't know why it happened, but please be kind to Neville when you help him.'

'I was going to be,' Harry assured her. 'He needs someone to believe in him, to give some confidence and tell him that he's going to be strong.' Katie nodded, her dark hair scattering across her face in tangled disarray. 'I have to go meet him,' Harry told her.

'When will I next be able to corner you?' Katie asked, when he stood up.

Harry grinned. 'You won't be able to,' he replied lightly. 'I'll meet you whenever I can, Katie, you know where I turn up by now.'

'You can't hide from me,' she beamed.

He couldn't resist. It had been so long since anyone had been truly impressed with him or something he had done himself. Salazar didn't really count; he was a portrait, and family.

'Can't I,' he smiled, fading from view as he cast the disillusionment charm with his wand still inside his sleeve.

Katie laughed brightly. 'That explains a lot,' she called after him, as he began to make his way towards the seventh floor. She seemed suitably awed and for the first time he felt a surge of genuine, true pride. He'd performed and mastered this charm. It hadn't happened because of some magic cast over him at birth, with the assistance of others, or because he knew that he had already done it in the future. It was his accomplishment, his alone, and Katie's pride in him was his too.

It felt beyond good, and Harry half-wished he did not have to go find Neville so he could stay with her and just spend time with his rediscovered friend. It wasn't in him to abandon anyone he still considered a friend, even a slightly distant one like Neville, so he set off, ending his disillusionment.

Neville was leaning against the tapestry opposite the Room of Requirement when Harry reached the second floor.

There's an item of furnishing Hogwarts won't miss if he feels like setting fire to something else.

'We're using the room?' Neville nodded at the blank wall across from him with surprising confidence.

'Yes,' Harry informed him.

'I found it over the last year,' Neville answered Harry's unspoken question. 'I often come to wander the school away from anyone, and not many people come up here. One time I just wanted somewhere to be one my own and the room appeared. How did you find it?'

'I knew it was here,' Harry said honestly. 'I came looking for it, and eventually I found it.'

'Shall we, er,' the stutter almost returned, 'shall we go in.'

'After you,' Harry smiled, 'you know how to use it and what you need better than I do.'

His decision was not wholly based on the reasons he had given Neville, but as long as he concentrated on helping his friend Neville would be none the wiser.

The door grew into place on the stonework and, once the handle had appeared, he followed Neville inside.

The room was empty.

'I guess I don't really know what I want,' Neville admitted, hanging his head. Harry watched the walls nervously, aware that the room was his if Neville's will was lacking. He didn't need to be shown that he wanted most, but the room wasn't about to change how it worked for him and it would only be a matter of time.

It took only a few moments for it to start, just as it had every time he'd entered the room since the Yule Ball.

'Let's try again.' He ushered Neville out the door and slammed it shut, sparing only a single glance for the newly formed gallery of photos, that surrounded a holly log fire.

A thousand faces of Fleur Delacour.

'You're disappointed in me too now, aren't you,' Neville said miserably.

'No,' Harry told him firmly.

'You're just saying that,' the boy mumbled. 'Everyone knows I'm not much of a wizard.'

Harry decided then that he knew exactly what Neville needed.

'Would not much of a wizard be able to set an entire corridor alight without using his wand?' Harry demanded. Neville looked more guilty than anything and didn't reply. 'I don't think they could,' Harry answered his own question. 'You even rid the school of some terrible tapestries,' he grinned. 'If you'd got that one,' he jerked his thumb in the direction of the tap-dancing trolls, 'you'd have your own award for special services to the school!'

Neville smiled slightly despite himself.

'You're strong,' Harry insisted, 'you just need to stop listening to the people who try to tell you otherwise. If you expect and visualise your spells failing, they will.'

'I'm not like you, Harry,' Neville burst out. 'I can't just be strong. I can't stand up to You-Know-Who, or basilisks, or anything like you've done.'

'You're just like me, Neville,' Harry told him quietly. 'I never did any of those things by myself. Luck and the assistance of everyone else has kept me alive, nothing else, not until now. You have to want to be strong, and then you have to do whatever you need to get there.'

Harry certainly had. He'd killed to be free, to be strong in his own right, and he wasn't about to turn back, or look back.

'What if you can't do it?' Neville asked quietly.

'How would you know until you've tried as hard as you're sure you can?' Harry countered.

'I-I-'

'You don't,' Harry told him before he could spend too long thinking about it. 'There's nothing to be gained from giving up, Neville. You're stronger and braver than half of the Gryffindors I've seen, and to prove it you're going to call Voldemort by his real name.'

'I can't do that,' Neville shook his head, 'even Gran doesn't say his name.'

'You will,' Harry insisted. 'Repeat after me, Tom, Marvolo, Riddle.'

Neville looked flummoxed, but repeated the name, clearly enunciating every syllable. 'Tom Marvolo Riddle.'

'See,' Harry said triumphantly. 'You, Neville Longbottom, just said Voldemort's real, original name. One he hates, one he would probably try and kill you for saying if he knew. What happened when you said it, Neville?'

'Nothing,' the boy mumbled, still perplexed.

'And nothing will happen next time you say it, or if you say Voldemort,' Harry continued, 'go on.'

'Voldemort,' Neville repeated. He nearly stuttered, the first syllable warbled on his lips, but the rest of the name came smoothly and he never flinched.

'You're braver than your Gran,' Harry grinned.

'But-' he began.

'There are not buts, Neville,' Harry caught him before he overthought things and the point was wasted. 'You said the name, you were brave. If you can be brave when you thought you couldn't be, then you can be strong too.'

'But my magic always fails,' he said miserably, 'I know it will.'

'You knew that you couldn't say Voldemort a moment ago,' Harry disagreed. 'Forget what happened last time. Magic is about intent. If you want it to happen, if you focus, and understand what you're trying to achieve, then you'll make it happen.'

'I always want it to happen,' Neville argued.

'I'd bet you never believe it will, though.' Neville had nothing to say to that. 'So believe it, Nev,' Harry told him gently. 'If you can set fire to a corridor without a wand, you can do a few spells at school.'

'It's not the same,' Neville disagreed. 'I was so angry when I saw him. It was like he thought he was better than the rest of us, striding down the corridor, with nothing but disdain for everyone else. He judges everyone but himself.' Neville's face twisted in fury, it was a truly frightening expression on a face that Harry had never seen anything so violent on. 'He has no right to, not when his son was a monster.'

Barty Crouch Junior had come to quite a specific end. He disliked the madman's hypocritical father almost as much as Neville seemed to; it didn't help that Harry knew it had been Crouch who sent Sirius to Azkaban without a trial, or that his son had tried to kill Harry. The man's principles were wrong, and he had the arrogance to look down on others because of them. Nobody should deduct points from anyone for trying to save a girl's life. His rules were not as important as the life of Gabrielle, they were not even close. The mad apple had not fallen too far from the amoral tree, and Barty Crouch Junior was better off dead where the Death Eater couldn't ruin anymore lives. Harry would kill him himself, were he still alive. The magic rushed eagerly to do his bidding at the flicker of intent, and a faint, green light emanated from his right sleeve.

Harry suppressed the thought immediately. If even being willing to kill was enough to give off such a glow when he was touching his wand, then he'd have to be careful of his thoughts. The connection with his wand had grown much stronger since he first used it.

'His son is dead, isn't he?' Harry asked carefully.

'Not dead enough,' Neville hissed. 'Not after what he did.' Harry had enough tact not to ask, but Neville gave him a faintly apologetic look and began to explain. 'My parents were aurors in the war. A group of Voldemort's followers,' the name came out without the slightest tremor, 'tortured them with the Cruciatus Curse for hours. They don't even recognise me,' he finished with a bitter smile. 'I wanted to make them proud, I use my father's wand, but they'll never be proud of a stranger, why would they?'

Harry stared at him for a long moment. He would have never for a second guessed what lay in Neville's past. He had assumed he was an orphan for a far less tragic reason. A more manipulative, cunning part of himself noted that if he ever told Neville just who was responsible for the end of Barty Crouch Junior he would have a loyal follower for life, but he ignored it. He was not Tom Riddle. Harry was here to help his friend, not himself, though it was not going to be as easy as he'd thought.

'What can I do about that, Harry?' Neville demanded.

'Nothing,' Harry told him.

Neville flinched.

'Just like there's nothing I can do to bring my parents back. You should be strong for yourself, your own reasons and your own goals. I'd be proud of you for that and I'm sure your parents would be proud of you for doing so, your gran too, and if they aren't, then they should be.'

'They'd be so disappointed if they could recognise me now,' Neville said hollowly, 'sometimes I'm glad they can't, just so they don't have to be let down by me like my Gran is. I'll never be as good as either of them.'

Harry was beginning to lose patience with Neville's pessimism. He'd seen enough to know Neville could be a strong wizard if he just believed he could.

'You won't be as good as them if you give up,' Harry agreed, abandoning subtlety completely, 'but if you believe in yourself, why can't you be better? That anger you have, it used your magic and burnt every shred of cloth off the walls for ten feet, use it to make yourself stronger. I know you can!'

Harry wracked his brain for a way to prove it to him.

'I want you to open that door, Neville, and I want to see what you think you need.'

Neville walked up and down the corridor, his face twisted somewhere between determination and doubt.

The door appeared.

'What will I find?' Harry asked.

Neville smiled slightly nervously, but the anxiety faded away almost immediately. 'Nothing,' he said calmly. 'What I need, who I need, is already outside with me.' Something warm flooded across Harry's chest. 'If you believe I can do it, then I must be able to, because when you believe something can happen, even if it's against the odds, it always happens. I'll trust you.'

'Then you'll make yourself strong,' Harry told him, 'and just to prove it to yourself beyond all doubt.' He moved to open the door of the Room of Requirement, knowing the moment he did so what he would have to face, to display, to help his friend. It seemed his most recent moment of brainless Godric-like nobility had come.

Neville isn't the only who needs to be brave, he reminded himself when his fingers paused on the handle. There was no way he would be able to help Neville if he was acting so hypocritically.

A hundred different reflections of Fleur Delacour looked down at him, smiling warmly and leaning forward, only a memory away from kissing him.

'Harry?' Neville asked uncertainly from behind him, gazing up at Beauxbatons' champion.

He turned to smile a little ruefully at his friend, knowing that in this moment Neville would see far more of Harry than he really wanted anyone to. 'Something you should know about the Room of Requirement, Nev. If there's more than one person within it and they want different things, whichever is wanted most appears.' He gestured around the room at the images of the beautiful french witch. 'Now show me how much you want to be strong.'

The bright blue eyes and silver hair of Fleur Delacour faded from the walls of the room to be replaced by shelves of spell books. Harry watched them go with some relief, listening to his anger and keeping his distance from the girl wasn't changing anything in the slightest. She still only seemed to speak to him when she needed him, and, despite the occasional moment in which he manage to delude himself that she might actually care, he feared she never would.

'Well done, Nev,' he congratulated his friend, burying his thoughts about the attractive french witch.

Neville gaped about him at the walls of the room, realising in that moment that his will to get what he wanted most must be at least as strong as Harry's if the room had come under his control.

Harry flashed him a smile to hide his guilt. He had lied to Neville. The room was still under his control to an extent. He'd spent longer here, mastering how to use it, than Neville could have, and he knew that if he wanted to help Neville as much or more than Neville wanted to be strong, then his friend would not be able to tell the difference in the resulting appearance of the room.

Now he'll believe that he can be strong, let's just hope he doesn't ask any questions about the room's initial appearance.

Harry didn't need to talk about Fleur Delacour. He was already anticipating having to answer Katie's questions next time they met.

'I did it,' Neville gasped.

'Here's a test,' Harry suggested. 'The Blasting Curse, the incantation is reducto,' he demonstrated the wand motion with his hand. He conjured a statue of Barty Crouch, then tucked his wand away. 'Destroy it.'

Neville's eyes burnt hot with hate. 'Reducto,' he spat, sweeping his wand sharply and violently. The spell hissed across the room and blew the upper half of the statue into dust.

'Not bad for a first try,' Harry smiled. 'Your wand motion was over exaggerated, though.'

'Reducto,' Neville cried again. The remaining half of the statue exploded into shining grey dust and Neville grinned triumphantly.

'Well done,' Harry told him. 'It's no worse than my first few attempts. When you have a better grasp of the spell you'll be able to control the power put into it, and cast it silently.'

He drew two sharp, horizontal fees in the air with his wand, silently unleashing two Blasting Curses at one of the empty walls. The first sparked out quite pathetically, he had put as little power as possible into it, but the second rippled across the wall and they both felt the wave of hot air the curse's detonation reflected back at them.

'I should practice,' Neville decided, looking at Harry with open admiration.

'Practice everything you think you need to,' Harry told him, 'but don't forget how successful you were here when you're doing it on your own.'

'I won't,' Neville stared furiously at the dust that had once been the statue of Barty Crouch Senior. 'I only wish that I could have shown Barty Crouch he wasn't anything more than the father of a monster.' His friend looked up at him in furious regret. 'He's disappeared. I heard Professor Sprout talking to Professor McGonagall about it this morning by the greenhouses.'

'Has he,' Harry murmured, a small, cold smile spreading over his lips. 'What a shame.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. It's time for Harry to start reconnecting a little with the world. This fic would end up being very boring if he spent the next three books worth in the chamber with a slightly senile painting.

P.S. A second question for the floor. Does anyone feel like recommending any good stories with a well done Daphne/Harry? Or any other interesting pairings that aren't Harry/Hermione or Harry/Ginny for that matter.

33. If You Go Out In the Woods Today

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

There seems to be some differing opinions on adding to the genre list, but since most seem to think it's unnecessary I shall hold off at least for now.

Chidori's very diplomatic review that this is my best story is possibly my favourite review of late, deliberate or not, because this is, of course, my only story ;)

I hope you enjoy this completely filler, eventless chapter in which nothing of importance happens and no nasty surprises occur at all.

Chapter 33

Something patted her none too gently on the cheek. Fleur shifted away from it, turning onto her side.

'Wake up Fleur!'

Gabby.

Fleur turned back and eyed her baby sister with some distaste. 'You know I hate it when you do this. How did you even get in here?'

'The carriage lets in all Beauxbatons students,' Gabrielle beamed.

'My room does not,' Fleur told her.

'You warded it?' Gabby eyed the doorframe speculatively from beneath her blonde hair.

'Like my room at Beauxbatons,' Fleur explained. Her room at the chateaux was warded rather specifically. It had taken the entirety of her first year and a lot of help from Madame Maxime for her to be able to successfully create and cast the wards. Gabrielle had not been able to simply walk in to her room before Fleur had altered the enchantments to grant her access.

'Well I'm almost like you now, Fleur,' her sister grinned, poking her in the side, 'so I just walked in and nothing happened.'

Fleur considered that. Gabrielle was her sister, they had both inherited the veela magic, and it was likely their magic was of similar nature. It did, of course, mean that her wards were not quite as perfect as she had considered, they were only meant to allow her to pass, but Gabby was probably the only one who could exploit her error.

'I shall have to lock you out again,' Fleur teased, throwing back the covers and moving in search of her uniform.

Gabrielle's face fell slightly at the sight of her sister. Fleur had seen that look before.

'It takes time,' she reassured her baby sister gently.

'But it's already been so long,' Gabby pouted, in slightly better humour than before. 'I want to be like you, Fleur, you're so much prettier than me. It's not fair.'

'You'll be just as beautiful as me, Gabby,' she told her baby sister, rummaging through her drawers for a clean bra. 'And then you'll come to realise it's not as good as it seems.'

'Only people who are already pretty don't care about being pretty,' Gabby sulked, then her eyes lit up with mischief. 'I bet Harry wouldn't be so fond of you if you weren't pretty.'

'Harry doesn't seem very fond of me anyway,' she remarked lightly. 'He's not important.' She was quite proud she managed to say it with a straight face.

Gabby giggled. 'Nuh uh, Fleur,' she wagged her finger, 'I know you better than that. I'm your sister, and even if I wasn't, I still have a letter you sent me that says otherwise.'

No you don't,' Fleur smiled deviously. Gabrielle looked puzzled, and patted down her pockets. 'I stole it back,' she smirked, tucking her wand into her waistband.

'Oh,' Gabby pouted. 'I was going to have so much fun showing that maman, and papa, and then,' her eyes gleamed with silent laughter, 'I was going to show it to Harry .'

'And that, Gabrielle, is why I took it back,' Fleur sighed. 'I love you, but sometimes you're just too much trouble.'

'Spoilsport,' her sister grinned, her eyes flicking furtively around Fleur's room.

'You won't find it,' Fleur told her, amused. 'It's gone now.'

'You destroyed it?' Gabby gasped. 'But if the letter is gone, how is Harry going to know you love him and come to find you?'

Fleur laughed a little bitterly at her sister's naivety. 'Yes, I burned it. I think you've been reading too many books from maman's romance collection again, Gabby. That isn't how things work.'

'They're good books,' Gabrielle grinned, unrepentant. 'You changed your mind about him, then?'

'He changed,' Fleur answered vaguely. Her sister was prying. They didn't have many, if any, secrets between them, but sometimes Gabrielle took it upon herself to find things out that Fleur was quite ready to tell her. 'I'll change my mind in time too,' she finished morosely.

'Or you could go find him and tell him everything you wrote to me?' Gabby suggested, with hearts in her eyes. No doubt her younger sister expected the heavens to open along with Harry's heart, before they walked off into an early sunset. This being Britain she would at least be right about the rain, if none of the rest.

'I am not chasing after someone who doesn't even want to touch or look at me,' Fleur declared proudly. 'Even in maman's books it is the wizard who runs after the witch.' She neglected to mention that she would be standing out in the rain with him without hesitation if she had any hope he would be anything but cruel to her.

'So you don't want him?' Gabby grinned. 'Can I have him instead? He's my age anyway, that's too young for you.'

'No,' Fleur retorted angrily. 'You haven't even met him, Gabby.'

'He saved me from the lake,' she sighed melodramatically and collapsed on Fleur's bed, 'like a true hero.'

Fleur snorted. 'You know you weren't in any danger.'

'He didn't,' Gabby pointed out, 'and he still saved me, so either he's a hero, or,' she looked up at Fleur whimsically from under her lashes, 'he had some other reason for saving your darling, baby sister.'

She would like to hope that Harry had saved Gabby for her for that reason, it made her heart leap, but he'd seemed so angry with her afterwards that she just couldn't believe it.

'That's enough, Gabrielle,' Fleur said a little more sternly. Gabby pouted, but she knew when Fleur was serious and dropped the matter.

'Do you think you're going to win?' she asked instead.

'I'm going to win,' Fleur smiled. 'I always win, remember. Where's maman? There's no way she would have let her little chick wander off on her own, and you aren't sneaky enough to get away yet.'

'You don't win when we play cards, I'm luckier than you,' Gabby grinned. 'Maman is speaking with Madame Maxime, she has to go back to Carcassonne soon, but I'm almost as far ahead of everyone in my year as you were and I want to stay to watch.'

'All the way to the end?' Fleur asked, more than a little excited by the idea.

'All the way until the third task,' Gabby smiled. 'It's not so much fun at the chateaux without you, and I know you must miss me.' She fluttered her eyelashes and kicked her feet against Fleur's pillow.

Not so much fun was Gabrielle's understated way of saying that she was lonely and would rather spend four months with her sister in a different country than stay at school.

'I hope Madame Maxime lets you stay,' Fleur smiled. Gabby was not her, her baby sister was a little more like her father than Fleur was, a touch softer. She let everything get to her in a way that Fleur never had. More than once in the last couple of years her little sister had come to her crying, about the taunts of the girls in her year, or the dismissal of the boys who chose her more mature friends over her. Both groups would be left behind when Gabby grew up over the next few months, but she wold find herself just as lonely once she was like Fleur as she was now. She had never had the heart to do more than hint at that, crushing Gabrielle's hope was too cruel.

'She will,' Gabby grinned. 'I got the highest marks in my classes since you took them.'

'Still trying to beat me,' Fleur smiled.

'I'll beat you next year in the real exams,' Gabrielle declared fiercely. There was enough of their mother in both of them to make their rivalry strong, but it was never bitter. Gabby wanted nothing but the best for her, and Fleur would gladly sacrifice anything she had for her sister's success.

Something tells me I won't have to give anything, she thought to herself.

Gabrielle was in danger of surpassing her elder sibling without any help from anyone else. The only thing she seemed to struggle with was surviving without her family at school. She was certainly better at controlling her veela magic than Fleur was, even at her age.

'Let's go somewhere?' Gabby pleaded, 'your room is boring without all the little things you made.'

'I can make you something if you want?' Fleur offered. 'It's probably best to stay around here so maman knows where you are and doesn't have to worry about you getting into trouble.'

'I never get into trouble,' Gabrielle grinned. 'And maman won't worry about me when I'm with you.' She looked up at Fleur imploringly, all big blue eyes, white teeth and silver hair. If she did not know that the allure could not be used against another veela she would be suspicious of her sister's begging look. She could draw tears from a stone if she wanted to.

'Fine,' Fleur caved. 'Where would you like to go?'

'Somewhere exciting,' Gabby cried.

'I can show you where they kept the dragons from the first task?' A short wander into the edge of the woods should keep them well from danger. Gabrielle had a penchant for attracting or, more accurately, causing trouble, but there couldn't be anything all that dangerous in the trees.

'Let's go,' her sister decided, jumping off the bed and smirking evilly. 'We can sneak out.'

'We can just ask,' Fleur sighed, knowing Gabrielle would disagree.

'Sneaking is more fun,' Gabby smiled, pulling her wand out from the chest of her uniform.

Fleur spluttered. 'You keep your wand there!?'

'I couldn't before,' she exulted, 'but I can now, and it's much less likely to be lost or stolen when it's safely tucked away here.'

'You can't draw it very quickly,' Fleur remonstrated. 'The best place to keep it is at your waist or up your sleeve.'

'Fine,' Gabby grumbled, 'but we're still sneaking.'

'We can sneak,' Fleur conceded, 'but you always get caught.'

'Not anymore,' her sister smirked again, 'watch.'

She twirled her wand in a very familiar fashion over herself and faded from view. Gabrielle wasn't quite as good as Fleur was with disillusioning, but she wasn't too far behind. Complete invisibility would probably elude them both by a fraction, but of all the wizards and witches who could cast the charm they would definitely be better than most.

'Tell me you've seen anyone my age with a better disillusionment charm,' she crowed, twirling almost imperceptibly.

'It's very impressive,' Fleur congratulated her. She had, of course, seen Harry Potter's mastery of the charm, one that outstripped her own. He was one of the few who could fully conceal themselves with the spell, but Gabby didn't need to know that, though her sister would probably relish the chance to talk about him with her again.

'Let's sneak,' she giggled, opening Fleur's door and tip-toeing out.

She cast her own charm and followed her sister, used to Gabby's antics. The door swung quietly shut behind them and Fleur was stuck following the slight impressions of Gabrielle's feet across the carpeted hall.

Fortunately for Fleur, as she was always the one who ended up taking the fall for Gabrielle's mischief when they were together, neither her mother or Madame Maxime noticed them and they were soon outside.

'Which way?' Gabrielle chirped, dispelling her disillusionment charm. Fleur did the same, pointing her wand in the direction of Hogwarts' quidditch pitch.

Gabby took off, scampering across the wet grass without a care for her clothes.

'Slow down, Gabrielle,' Fleur called after her. 'If you get lost in the woods we won't ever find you again.'

Admonished, her sister returned to her side.

Her calm demeanour did not last long, by the time they were near the trees at the edge of the pitch she was already bounding ahead into the trees and Fleur had to hurry to keep track of her bright hair in the trees in front of her.

'Gabby,' she called, when her sister managed to lose her among the trees. 'Come back.'

There was no reply and Fleur's heart began to beat a little faster.

A shrill scream tore through the trees, and her mind went into overdrive. Her wand was in her hand instantly as she ran, sprinting through the branches towards the sound.

Gabrielle.

The sharp-needled boughs whipped across her face as she ran, despite her shielding arm, but Fleur ignored the stinging. There hadn't been a sound since the scream.

She rounded a tree and hit something soft, bouncing off and rolling across the floor.

'Fleur,' Gabby groaned, rolling off her legs which immediately sprang back to life, prickling and tingling.

'Why did you scream?' she demanded, pulling herself up on a nearby tree, still holing her wand.

'Look,' her sister's voice wavered, horrified, but still proud enough to maintain her demeanour.

Fleur twisted away from the tree, brushing her hair out of her eyes to look where Gabrielle was pointing.

She recoiled instantly.

It was little more than a skeleton, the bones blackened, charred and twisted by the fire that had rendered the corpse both fleshless and unrecognisable.

'Stay away from it, Gabby,' she warned. 'Actually, go get Madame Maxime, she'll know what to do.'

Her sister hurried off, running back in the direction they had come.

Fleur edged a bit closer, inspecting what was left of the body without getting too close. Most of the bones were shattered or cracked, the teeth mostly smashed out, and the skull dented. Fleur had seen injuries like that when her mother took her with her to magical hospitals to drop of ingredients for potions. They were normally the result of playing quidditch too fervently, or a particularly strong blasting or banishing curse.

There wasn't much left of the face, or anything really, just a few hard, carbonised strips of flesh stretched and cracked across gaping bones. The body was half-covered by fallen pine needles, most of which were brown and long-dead. This skeleton had been here far too long to belong to the missing judge. Fleur heaved a sigh of relief, she didn't want to be involved in anything to do with that. Rita Skeeter would be only too happy to write another article, presumably one suggesting she had lured him into the woods with her allure and murdered him.

'Fleur,' her mother's voice cut through the trees better than any spell, 'what's going on? Gabrielle was rambling about skeletons.'

The large form of Madame Maxime stepped into the small clearing and gasped. 'Expecto Patronum,' she whispered, and a huge, silver swan bust from the tip of her wand. 'Go to Dumbledore, tell him we have discovered a body on the school grounds, but we do not know who it is.'

The swan of silver mist shimmered and then soared off towards the castle.

'How did you find this?' Madame Maxime asked kindly.

'Gabby wanted to go somewhere, so I offered to take her to where the dragons were,' Fleur explained.

'You shouldn't have given in, Fleur,' her mother scolded, 'you always do whatever Gabrielle asks without considering the consequences.'

'It is a good thing she did,' the headmistress decided. 'This is not Barty Crouch the Triwizard Judge, the skeleton is the wrong height.'

A bright, flame-edge red flash burst through the branches and the Hogwarts Headmaster stepped into the clearing. He was not the calm, odd, old man he normally seemed. An aura of power and comfort came with him into the clearing.

'That is not Barty Crouch,' he announced after a moment. 'I have a few questions, Miss Delacour, then it would be best you returned to the carriage and remained somewhere the aurors can find you in case they require answers of their own.' Fleur nodded stiffly.

'You cannot be suggesting they will suspect her?' Her mother was outraged.

'I am implying nothing of the sort, Madam Delacour, but they will have questions about the body that your daughters can answer.' Albus Dumbledore drew his wand, a knotted, engraved length of unusually light wood and cast some very powerful wards in a tight circle around the body. 'Did you only just find this skeleton, Miss Delacour?' The headmaster looked down at her a reassuringly kind, bright glint in his blue eyes.

'Yes,' Fleur replied. 'Gabby screamed and I came running after her and found it.'

'Have either of you touched the body?'

'No,' Gabrielle whispered, eyeing the charred corpse from just behind Fleur. She jumped slightly, not expecting her younger sister to have managed to edge so close to her. 'Who is it?'

'I don't know,' Dumbledore answered gravely, 'but we will find out. I can assure you that it is not a student, the wards of the school would have notified my the moment one of them left the grounds without permission and I know for fact they are still working as of just before the wand-weighing ceremony.'

'That was sometime ago, Albus,' Madame Maxime noted.

'It tells me that they have not decayed over time enough to fail, and nobody has tampered with them in over a decade, that I would have certainly noticed. Whoever this poor unfortunate is, he is neither staff nor student.' The old wizard tucked his strange wand away to run his fingers through his beard. 'That does rather lead to the question of what he was doing here. Alastor has been growing increasingly concerned of late, but I had no evidence to lend credence to his theories but the shadows in his foe glass.'

'I will have to warn my students, Dumbledore,' Fleur's headmistress informed him.

'Of course, Olympe. I would expect and advise nothing less.'

There was a low cry and a bird of vibrant red and gold settled upon the wizard's shoulder. 'I must notify our ministry and the aurors,' Dumbledore said calmly, 'please do not try to touch anything, the area is quite strongly protected.'

A second flash of fire washed over the clearing and the old wizard was gone.

'Can we go back to the carriage?' Gabby asked. 'I don't like this place, it feels angry, and cold.'

Both Fleur and her mother glanced sharply at her younger sister. Gabrielle was far more sensitive to the emotions left in magic than either of them were. Fleur's allure was stronger, but Gabby's empathetic sense of magic was much more precise.

'What do you feel, Gabby?' her mother asked gently.

'I don't want to,' she shook her head, 'please don't ask.'

'It's important, Gabrielle,' Fleur told her, stepping next to her sister and taking her hand. Just listen to what you can feel for a minute. Her sister looked scared, but nodded and closed her eyes.

'It's distant,' she muttered, 'far away and fading, but it must have been so strong.' She shivered and her eyes flashed open. Fleur's sister looked very disturbed. 'It's like an echo,' she said. 'I don't think they died here, but the magic is still clinging to them. It's like thick, black smoke.'

Fleur stared at sister horrified. Gabrielle very rarely described what she felt so visually and when she did it was always in terms of bright colours or soft feelings.

'And it's cold,' Gabby whispered. 'It's so cold, like sharp ice. I-I can't touch it. It's angry, it's furious and cruel. I don't want to touch it anymore, please.' Fleur squeezed her sister's hand.

'It's ok,' her mother told her. 'Stop listening.' She turned to Fleur. 'Take her back to the carriage and keep her mind off it,' she instructed. 'I need to talk to Madame Maxime.'

Taking Gabrielle's other hand Fleur led her still distressed sister away from the clearing and the feeling of magic. They only made it a few metres back towards the quidditch pitch when Gabby froze and whimpered.

'Not that way,' she muttered. 'It's stronger that way.'

'Can you lead me to where it's strongest?' Fleur asked her.

Her sister's hand clutched more tightly, but she slowly began to walk, her eyes pressed tightly shut, in the direction they had been travelling.

They came to stop only a few metres from the edge of the quidditch pitch. There seemed nothing out of place, no matter how hard Fleur looked, but Gabby was visibly shaking.

'Let's go,' she pleaded, 'please, Fleur, let's go. It's so empty here, there's just nothing, and it hurts. I can't stay,' she insisted desperately. Gabby tugged violently at Fleur's hand, dragging her away out towards the pitches.

Gabrielle didn't stop until they were inside Hogwarts at the foot of the staircases. She was still trembling.

'I want to show you something,' Fleur told her. 'You'll love it.' Gabby didn't respond, she was still caught in the remnants of whatever she had been forced to feel. The empathy of veela magic was exceptionally strong in her, far more so than in Fleur, or any other veela she had met.

She led her sister up the stairs, pausing when they swung away, and being careful to step over the points that all of the other students avoided. Fleur knew that there were trick steps on these stairs.

The room was Harry's secret, somewhere he had shown her that she doubted he had shared with many others. Fleur certainly hoped she had been special enough that she was the only person he had shared it with. Gabrielle, though, she was more important than Harry's secret, especially when he had never even asked her to keep it.

They passed a pudgy, shy looking boy who Fleur had occasionally seen in the vicinity of Harry's former friends. She didn't know his name, only that he stared like all the others when she was near.

He wasn't staring like he used to. There was the strangest, strongest mixture of anger and sadness in his eyes when he looked at her as they passed him on the seventh floor corridor. Had Fleur not been trying to cheer up her sister she would have been sorely tempted to stop and see what had caused him to look at her like that.

The door to the Room wouldn't form when Fleur tried to reach it, not until she was almost desperate, and when she made it in Fleur found she and Gabrielle were not alone inside.

'Fleur.' Harry was gazing up at the walls. He'd been looking up at whatever had just faded from them, but she could only glimpse the silver edges of photo frames. 'I'll leave the room to you and Gabrielle.' His voice was nowhere as near as cold as it had been the last time they had spoken. It seemed almost resigned; his smile was tired and wry.

Perhaps he does not hate me.

Her heart squirmed in hope, but she refused to listen to it now only to be disappointed later.

'Thank you,' she responded with earnest warmth.

He dipped his head, glancing with both concern and curiosity at her still withdrawn sister.

'She'll be fine once I've shown her what the room can do,' Fleur explained, hoping he heard how important it was to her and that he understood she had not revealed this place lightly.

'I hope she finds it as amazing as it is,' Harry grinned, but the expression faltered as the walls began to change again, the frames reforming on every inch of wall space. 'I should go,' he blurted. 'Good luck for a month's time.'

A month, Fleur thought, confused. The third task, she realised. It had grown a lot closer than she had realised. The second task seemed only a few of days ago.

Harry stepped swiftly towards the door, moving close to Gabrielle, who flinched uncharacteristically back from him.

Fleur watched his back disappear, then turned back to inspect the room, focusing on their conservatory from home. The edges of the pictures faded again, the pictures Harry had wanted to see were replaced with the open glass windows that looked out into the garden.

Gabby was watching, wide-eyed.

'What is this room?' she gasped.

'The Room of Requirement,' Fleur answered. 'Harry Potter showed it to me after the Yule Ball, I told you a little bit about it in my letter, but not much, I didn't want to give away his secret.'

'It's amazing,' her sister gushed, 'everything is exactly like home.' She turned to the door, tentatively reaching for the handle. 'Can we go outside?'

'We can try,' Fleur smiled, glad her sister was feeling better. For some odd reason she had the oddest feeling things were going to be better now, like she had somehow glimpsed the light at the end of a tunnel she had not known she had been in.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to those who do.

34. Riddle after Riddle

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter that contains some filler, sorry guys, I promise the third task is really really soon ;)

So here we go...

Chapter 34

Someone had ruined the quidditch pitch. Katie, of course, had been livid when they had discovered the knee-high hedges on one of their walks.

Harry had been intrigued. Most, if not all, of the strange things that had happened this year had been connected to the Triwizard Tournament, and he had been prepared to wager much of what he had that the maze were connected to the final task.

Now he was willing to wager everything.

He had, not wanting to pass up the chance of an advantage, tried mapping the hedges, but the moment he had put quill to parchment they had shifted and moved. Someone had clearly anticipated a champion trying to plan a route through before the task began.

Katie had been rather more furious about what they'd done to the pitches, and where the quidditch goals had gone, but, once she'd vented her rage trying to set fire to them with a series of violent incendios, they'd concluded it was another first to the finish event.

Interestingly the hedges had not been so much as scorched by Katie's curses, which had immediately implied Harry's plan of simply burning his way to the finish and avoiding following the paths was unlikely to work. He wasn't surprised, but he wasn't overeager to have to follow the pre-defined routes that would certainly be full of obstacles.

Most of his plans had been to do with picking a more unconventional route through, or above, or under the maze, rather than trying to force his way down the paths.

He'd even dragged Neville down to take a look at the hedges.

Harry had rather regretted that. Neville had been reluctant right up until he'd been close enough to see the distinctive shape of the needles. The normally shy, even if Harry had managed to build up some self-belief in him over spring, had lost all signs of nervousness and rambled incessantly about extremely rare magical plants for well over five minutes.

Eventually he'd managed to extract the name of the plant and its properties from Neville. The maze was grown from Lying Leylandii, a particularly rare type of Cypress that was supposed to be all but extinct in Britain.

Harry was more concerned by the fact that it was lying Leylandii and though having needles shaped like tiny tongues was quite cool, the fact that it rearranged itself to deceive anyone close to it and was magically resistant to all but the strongest cast spells made it a very annoying plant. Once they were far enough within the maze nobody would be able to observe them because of the nature of the hedges. It was the only thing Harry liked about the plant.

Neville, on the other hand, seemed to be in love with it, and Harry was fairly sure he'd seen him taking cuttings to cultivate in the greenhouses, and Gryffindor Tower, and his home, and really anywhere he thought he could safely keep it to grow.

Neville is going to be furious when he learns how I plan to get through.

Harry had very little hope of being able to avoid following the incredibly dangerous, set paths to the cup that lay at the centre without use of his sole remaining plan. He had only a single spell, one he had coaxed from Salazar with great difficulty, that he was sure would manage to damage the green walls in front of him. Unfortunately his control over fiendfyre was still quite abysmal, though he had, through great practice, mastered extinguishing it in small amounts.

It was an intent driven spell and on a par with some of the most dangerous spells Salazar knew. The portrait, of course, agreed with Harry when he had said that the spell was not dark, because there were no spells that were. It did, however, require no small amount of desire to destroy something completely, and that was rarely justifiable.

He might make an exception for the maze, though. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like being in it very much.

'All our champions are here,' Bagman boomed. 'That means it's almost time to begin.'

Harry eyed his rivals. Cedric was looking determined, Fleur, well it was best not to think about how she was looking, especially after the debacle in the Room of Requirement. He shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn't managed to escape before retaking control of the room from her.

Krum patted him firmly on the shoulder with a wand-enclosing fist. 'I have not forgotten the fish,' he whispered, grinning.

Harry smiled innocently. 'I was afraid that if you had I might have to conjure them again,' he replied quietly. Krum laughed, thumped him on the shoulder once more, and withdrew his hand.

'Not more than a few minutes ago my assistant and I, accompanied by Alastor Moody, placed the Triwizard Trophy at the centre of the maze. The first one to retrieve it wins,' the former-beater stated simply. 'If you wish to withdraw you need only send up red sparks from your wand.'

'What about the points?' Cedric demanded, eagerly. He was last and had the most to gain if the points now turned out to be useless. Harry suspected that they would not be.

'Mr Krum will enter first, as he has the most points, and for every point the next champion is behind him ten seconds will be lost.' Cedric frowned. He was more than a minute behind the Bulgarian.

'Is there anything we should know about the maze?' Fleur asked seriously. She was eyeing the hedges with a certain level of suspicion.

'I can't tell you anything that might help you,' Bagman shrugged. He seemed rather glad that he couldn't answer Fleur's question and Harry narrowed his eyes at the man. Ludo Bagman was normally quite susceptible to her allure, even her passive charm.

Harry smelt a rat.

At least it is not Pettigrew.

That had been a potential headache. Someone had discovered Pettigrew's body in the Forbidden Forest. Harry's attempt to get rid of it had not sent it as far as he hoped. From what he had heard Pettigrew had been well beyond recognisable, which was unfortunate for Sirius, but good for him, and the Ministry had taken it to try and identify. Harry had spent some time researching the processes they might use, and he was quite confident that none of them would reveal his part in the Pettigrew's well deserved end, even Wormtail's identity eventually came to light. There wasn't a time-turner made that had the power to go back far enough to catch him in the act, and very cases were ever passed on to the Unspeakables.

I have a maze to deal with, he reminded himself, and focused on the third task again.

There were too many unknowns for Harry to decide whether the time difference would make any impact on things. He had no choice but go as quickly and directly as possible towards the trophy.

Three hedges should be far enough, he decided.

Neville had told him that a single hedge of this size would be more than enough to keep them out of sight, but Harry wasn't going to be casting any random spell. It would be best to have a conservative estimate before attempting something as supposedly dark as fiendfyre was.

All four of the champions edged a little closer to the entrance of the task as they came to the same conclusions. When the gap was in seconds every meter would count. Krum was chuckling under his breath next to Harry as he leant forwards ever so slightly. The Bulgarian clearly would not be giving up any of his advantage if he could avoid it.

'Well I suppose that's really all there is to it,' Bagman grinned. 'Mr Krum…'

Viktor Krum leant forward a little further.

A shrill whistle blew and Krum flew forwards and into the darkness of the maze.

He's fast.

Harry was fairly fast, but Krum was something else. If he hadn't been magical Harry suspected he could have a good life as a track athlete.

Fleur was counting down from forty behind him. When she got to twenty it would be Harry's turn.

He leant forwards. It rather reminded him of athletics back before Hogwarts. He'd been a damn sight better than Dudley, especially at anything involving running.

On your marks, get set…

Fleur reach eighteen and Harry's muscles coiled.

Go!

He was in the maze before Bagman had managed to blow the whistle.

It was dark. The hedges looked a whole lot taller from within, twenty feet seemed a lot more like twenty metres, as the definitely-no-longer-knee-high walls towered over either side of him as he ran.

Krum's footprints went left at the first fork; Harry went right. He'd rather not catch the Bulgarian in the process of creating his shortcut. Harry quite liked Krum.

The path followed a gentle curve along what was likely to be the edge of the maze. Harry frowned and resolved to take the next left in towards the centre, he needed to get at least three hedges between himself and the edge as quickly as he could.

He ran full tilt into something very hard and bounced off into the hedge.

The walls of the maze shivered and Harry was sure he could hear the leaves whispering, but that all faded out of his mind when the original obstacle turned to face him, clicking its pincers menacingly.

Who let Hagrid help?

Harry swore viciously and raised his wand, watching it rise up in each of the eight, almost life-size reflections of himself.

'Lacero,' he hissed. The curse put out one of the reflections, and the monstrously over-sized spider clicked furiously, thick, sticky green liquid dripping from its mandibles.

The curse Harry had used was designed to cut through flesh and muscle, but it seemed to do little more than gouge lines into the acromantula's carapace whenever Harry aimed at something a bit more vital than its spare eyes.

The giant spider surged forwards and Harry hastily dived underneath it, disillusioning himself and lying very still. The creature clicked slowly, stalking up and down over the top of him, but proved unable to find him.

Instead it began to spin a web across the path, blocking Harry's way further into the maze. He'd forgotten how intelligent they were. Aragog had been able to speak, this was one was clearly capable of some strategy. Very fine fibres of their silk were sometimes used to make expensive clothing, but the webbing between Harry and his goal was as thick as his bicep and every bit as strong as steel.

He didn't have time or magic to waste carving his way through that; he couldn't surreptitiously use fiendfyre so close to the outside of the maze.

Then inspiration struck. A carapace wasn't too different to bone. It was called an exo-skeleton for a reason and he doubted the magic would see the difference between the two.

'Osassula,' he whispered, flicking his wand in an inverted c shape.

His bone-splintering curse missed its original target off the spider's carapace, but it struck one of the legs instead, shattering it, and the acromantula stumbled, screeching in pain.

He fired off three more, crippling two more legs on the same side before the spider collapsed and his final curse flew harmlessly into the hedge.

Harry gazed down at the writhing spider curled up on the floor in front of him. Its legs were curled in on itself no differently from the garden spiders Dudley delighted in tormenting, and it was making a high-pitched, keening noise. He'd put it in such pain, it might have been kinder just to simply kill it.

His wand flared green and Harry frowned. He would never use that curse again, not if he could help it.

The spider screamed when he stepped towards it, and jerked forwards towards the sound of his footsteps, pincers clicking.

Injured animals are dangerous, he decided sadly. And it's in the way.

From the dirt beneath him he conjured a long, thin, steel spike and, with a high powered Banishing Charm, sent it deep into the acromantula's skull. Hagrid would be upset, but Harry would be alive.

He stepped over the spider's still legs, dropped his invisibility, and ducked through the gap in the webbing.

The maze began to curve in towards the centre more dramatically, and Harry had to fight the rising temptation to burn his way through to the centre the further in he felt he had come.

It was only a few moments before he heard heavy footfalls up ahead.

Harry immediately disillusioned himself.

Some horrific cross between a scorpion and a lobster was prowling along the path before him. It was a slimy nightmare of a creature. Harry was sure that Hagrid must love it dearly, whatever the hell it was.

A shower of sparks shot from forth from its end and it propelled forwards into the hedge, flailing its stinger wildly.

He made a split second decision that avoiding it was better than trying to fight something he knew nothing about and cast a noise suppression charm upon himself.

The creature was still thrashing about in the wall of the maze, stinging the hedge furiously and expelling gouts of spars as it drove itself deeper into the wall.

Harry sprinted past it silently and invisibly, trusting his charms to conceal him from the monster and hoping it's disgusting, fishy stench was a sign it had a very bad sense of smell and would not notice him.

There was another fork directly ahead of him, one that had no footprints on either path. Harry looked up into the slit of sky that was still visible to him, searching for any sign of the sun behind the clouds or hedges. There wasn't so much as a glimpse of it.

Idiot, he scolded himself, placing his wand flat on his palm.

'Point me,' he murmured very quietly so as not to agitate the thing that was still wrestling with the maze wall only a few metres behind him.

His ebony wand swirled to point down the left fork. North would take him close enough to use fiendfyre and get to the cup before anyone else.

He made it fourteen steps before he came across his next obstacle. A boggart.

It turned to face him immediately, despite the fact he was both invisible and moving silently.

'Expecto Patronum,' Harry said, focusing on his happiest memory and not even waiting for the creature to change shape. His disillusionment charm and muffling spell both failed as his concentration was diverted.

A half-hearted, sluggish, silver mist poured from his wand tip onto the floor and swirled helplessly around his feet.

That's not meant to happen.

He had been expecting Prongs. His stag patronus would have made short work of the boggart turned Dementor, but his happy memory somehow seemed inadequate now, like he no longer really believed it had felt so good. Something feathered rose out of the mist at his feet, a wing tip, then it burst into nothing and Harry was left standing before the Boggart.

It was not a Dementor.

Harry stared, terrified, but fascinated, at himself. There was no difference between the two of them. Emerald eyes, messy, ebony hair and jagged scar all behind wide-framed glasses. It had captured him perfectly, even the slight emptiness he always feared he saw in his eyes. Harry might as well have been looking into a mirror. Then the other version of himself opened his mouth.

'You're nothing,' it told him calmly, without a hint of emotional inflection, as if it knew this was fact. 'You're too weak to protect the people who make you somebody, they'll die.'

'No they won't,' Harry denied, it was just trying to scare him.

The boggart smiled coldly.

'They will,' it stated in such a Hermione-ish, correct manner, that Harry couldn't bring himself to argue again. 'You need to be stronger,' it took a step forwards, 'you need to be more like me.' Its eyes suddenly glowed red, the soft, hypnotic red of glowing coals and the precise hue of Voldemort's eyes.

'No,' Harry hissed in furious parseltongue. His wand came up, hungry, angry flames billowed from its tip, rippling over the boggart and down the path in front of him.

The creature never made a noise, the fiendfyre consumed it immediately. The heat from the flames was such that Harry had to step back and shield his face. The tip of his wand was glowing an eerie crimson.

I'm done with this maze.

He was angry now, with the boggart, with himself for listening to it, and with the maze for proving him weaker than he hoped. The ice was spreading across his chest, cracking and creaking in fury.

The flames twisted, writhing and rising in the form of a vast serpent. The tips of the flames were still red, but the core of what Harry somehow knew was a basilisk burnt white hot, too bright to look at directly.

It lunged forwards slithering and searing through the hedges as if they were so much mist. A distant part of Harry's mind remembered that Neville would be very angry with what he was doing to the hedges, but right now he really just wanted the maze to understand that he was strong than it and that he would win.

Harry walked confidently forwards in the wake of his fiendfyre serpent, breathing in the blistering hot air and the ashes with a contented smile upon his face. There was nothing that would stop him from reaching that cup first now.

And somewhere ahead of him a girl screamed.

The serpent twisted aside from its path without instruction, the flames flaring blue as it lunged towards Fleur Delacour.

No.

Harry's wand cut the connection to the fire instantly and the snake collapsed in on itself as he had never managed before. He began to run through the floating ashes of the hedges, the ice melting from his chest in fear of what he might have done.

Fleur was sprawled out across the path, her silver hair draped over her face. Her wand was beside her hand, warm from the strength of the magic she had just been casting. Her chest was still moving slightly as she breathed, but it was lost in the faint trembling Harry knew came from being put under the Cruciatus Curse.

She is still alive.

A sickly yellow curse hissed past his face, carving into the ground him, but he paid the damage no mind. If Krum had done this then no number of dark spells were going to save him from Harry. Fleur should not be hurt, she would not, not while Harry was here.

He swirled, rising to his feet, the bone-splintering curses hissing from his wand as swiftly as he could spit the incantation and flick his wrist. Krum threw himself to one side, rolling across the path and back to his feet.

'Not me,' he yelled, desperately, 'not me.'

'Then who?' Harry demanded coldly.

'Diggory,' he gasped, and Harry's body lit up with pain.

It hurt more than Harry could imagine, more than the fiendfyre when he had lost control for the first time in the chamber, more than the basilisk venom in his second year and more than when Voldemort had touched him with Quirrell's hands.

It hurts more than anything.

Then Harry remembered the feeling of tearing his own soul, and the pain suddenly just seemed less. He could think again.

'Lacero,' he whispered.

The curse sliced a deep, crimson line along Cedric's cheekbone and the Hufflepuff faltered, shaking his head for the briefest of moments. Harry paused, recalling the madness of Barty Crouch Junior, unable to believe it was a coincidence they were acting so similarly.

'Avada Kedavra!' Diggory screamed. Harry flinched aside instinctively from the flash of green light, but, from behind him, came a quiet, yet distinct, thud. He didn't need to look back to know that Krum was dead.

This can't be Cedric.

It simply wasn't possible. Pretty-boy Diggory wasn't capable of any of this. Everyone knew he was the perfect Hufflepuff, incapable of treachery or hurting a fly. He couldn't have cast the Killing Curse if his life depended on it.

Harry came to simple decision.

Throwing himself flat, he let the triplet of stunning spells fly harmlessly overhead.

'Obliviate,' he commanded. Salazar had told him he needed to know exactly what he wanted to remove, but Lockhart, who had been so proud of skill with charm, could not have known every detail of the years he stole from the mind of others. Harry focused on the moment Bagman had first blown the whistle.

Diggory staggered, his mouth opened and close several times, but nothing came out.

'Harry?' he questioned, staring about him in utter confusion.

'Stupefy,' Harry replied, and Cedric dropped heavily to the ground leaving him standing over the other champions.

I've won, he realised, surveying the scene. It didn't feel like he had won. There was a hidden hand at work here, someone had done this, guided all the champions together except him. That meant either they were the targets, or he was. Harry knew well enough how this worked to know which was likely to be true.

Riddle.

The goal of Voldemort's scheme was a mystery to him, but he knew he couldn't leave things like this. As things stood, two Unforgivables had been used, Cedric would have no memory of casting them, and Harry had benefitted most from their effects. An accusation would not stand up to scrutiny, his memories, Fleur's and their wands would provide evidence to exonerate him.

It will condemn Cedric.

Harry was certain the Hufflepuff was no more than the tool used to achieve Voldemort's ends in the tournament, so he couldn't leave him to be sent to Azkaban like Sirius was.

He bent down and picked up Cedric's wand, twirling it in his fingers as he thought.

Someone was waiting for their pawn to accomplish their ends. Cedric was meant to be blamed and needed to be alive to confess and seamlessly take the blame. Fleur was expendable to Voldemort, or his servant, whoever it was this time, and he didn't have the strength to take both Cedric and Fleur with him.

I can't leave her behind.

Harry knew without a doubt that even if he had just come across her on the floor he would have not been able to leave her, not even after shooting up red sparks for her rescue, just in case something did happen in the moment after he left and they came.

He raised Diggory's wand high in the air and shot a bright burst of red sparks up into the air. Someone would come and deal with Cedric and Viktor, he hoped it was Dumbledore, or someone good.

Dipping his head in final farewell to Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian had earned his respect, he twirled Cedric's wand one final time then snapped it and dropped the pieces beside the Hogwarts champion. He would have no memory of what he did, and there would be no evidence to pin him to it without his wand's evidence. The Hufflepuff did not need to live with the knowledge of what he had been forced to do.

Harry bent down, slipped the rosewood wand back into her belt, and gently scooped Fleur into his arms, cradling her against his chest with his left arm and keeping his right free to use his wand.

There was no time for following the paths of this maze. Fleur needed the task to end quickly, she would need medical attention and he was very sick of this tournament and the game someone was playing in the shadow of it.

A rippling wave of fiendfyre consumed the hedges in front him for a hundred metres then died away to nothing. Harry fell to one knee from the strain of controlling and dispelling it.

It will end soon, he told himself.

There hardly seemed much more that could go wrong, but Harry dare not think that aloud, not with Voldemort looming over events.

A single ring of hedge remained on the far side of the field of ashes and embers that Harry had created. The only gap in it was guarded by a sphinx. It was watching him with some amusement and curiosity.

'I'd like to go through,' Harry told it as he approached, the hot ashes swirling about his feet. The hedges had not burnt in his flames which meant they were very well warded indeed, there were few things capable of surviving fiendfyre, even the relatively weak version of Harry's second casting.

'I can see that,' it laughed, in a beautiful, female voice. 'You still have to answer the riddle, or you can try to force your way through.'

Harry suspected trying to fight a sphinx would be a very bad idea when he was fresh and not holding an unconscious Fleur Delacour, let alone now.

'The riddle,' he decided.

'The man who built it, doesn't want it. The man who bought it, doesn't need it. The man who needs it, doesn't know it. What is it?' The sphinx's enigmatic smile seemed to darken into something slightly morbid.

'How many guesses do I get?' Harry asked warily.

'A good question to ask,' the sphinx told him, its smile widening. 'Normally, if we met by chance, you would only have three, but since I came here especially to test Salazar's descendant,' Harry felt the sinking feeling return, 'you only get one. I hope you don't disappoint me.'

'So do I,' Harry laughed weakly.

If I die, Fleur is vulnerable.

'If you don't mind,' he warned the sphinx, 'just in case I do disappoint.'

Harry placed the tip of his wand on Fleur's forehead and cast Salazar's favourite protective curse on her skin. He was not so skilled with it as Slytherin had been, it would fade in a few hours, but while it lasted anyone that tried to touch her while intending harm would wither and likely die, including the sphinx. For good measure he disillusioned her too. If someone came searching for Fleur, they would still find her eventually, but Harry suspected that anyone intending harm would be looking for him.

'I'm sorry,' he apologised to the creature's unnatural symmetrical features, 'I seem to have forgotten the riddle while casting that.'

'The man who built it, doesn't want it. The man who bought it, doesn't need it. The man who needs it, doesn't know it. What is it?' The sphinx shifted impatiently and Harry received the impression he was running out of time in which to avoid disappointing it and presumably dying.

What do we make that we don't want?

There were so many things that they made and didn't want. 'I don't suppose you give hints?'

The sphinx smiled more widely and shook its head.

I have no idea, Harry realised. I'm going to die, sent to my coffin by a sphinx. Voldemort will be furious.

Suddenly the answer was there, in his head and he almost gasped with relief.

'A coffin,' he answered confidently.

There was a splitting pain in his temples, and Harry clapped his free hand to his face.

I was wrong?

'No,' the sphinx answered. 'I was just curious.'

'Legilimency,' Harry realised.

'Indeed,' the sphinx responded, leaning to one side to let him pass. 'I will enjoy watching what happens to you, Harry Potter, Heir of Slytherin. For answering my riddle correctly, you may pass, for passing my test I offer this, a second riddle, of sorts, that might help end a third. When is a key, not just a key? And when is a bond, not just a bond?'

Harry blinked, committing the words to memory. He had no idea what they meant, but it seemed unwise to forget anything a creature like a sphinx offered in assistance.

Rebalancing Fleur in his arms he squeezed past the creature's flank into the ring of hedges.

The Triwizard cup gleamed silver not five metres away from him, and nothing lay in between him and it. Now he had won.

Harry walked, very carefully and warily, towards the cup. He was inside whatever wards protected the centre of the maze, but Voldemort or his follower was still out there somewhere and Harry still had to take the cup all the way back to the start of the maze.

Very gently he set Fleur down on the ground next to the plinth. He couldn't carry them both as tired as he was, but he could travel faster with just the cup, end the task, and send help straight to where she was. He was proud that it was genuinely his feelings for her that were responsible, her well-being blotted out all thoughts of victory until she was truly healed again. He didn't need the Room of Requirement to tell him what that meant, or any time to realise that he really needed to talk to her when she woke up. For now, however, he had to make sure the Fleur did wake up, and that she was healed when she did. Behind the wards she would be safe, especially with Harry's curse still guarding her, so he would have to leave her for a short time, even if it felt profoundly wrong to take the cup instead of her.

He tucked his wand back up his sleeve and reached out with his right hand to take the trophy.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. I wanted a slightly more adult riddle, but it isn't mine, I was told it a few years ago by a friend, and I have no idea who originally wrote it.

P.S. I've also cut out a couple of chapters between the last and this, they felt pretty bland and the events within them weren't essential at this point in time. Hopefully it doesn't feel like too much of a jump.

35. Lord Voldemort

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

First things first, seen several reviews saying the last two chapters felt a bit rushed/jumpy, so do you guys want me to go back and write the ones that were meant to be in between before continuing?

They would be really, really filler, since I wouldn't have left them out if the majority of important events weren't happening off stage for this period, but I will go back and add a couple of them for you if you prefer. Alternatively I can edit the two before this to fill in a bit of anything you think really should come in between, as long as it doesn't mess with the plan, of course.

Second off, I rewrote the summary a little bit, which means I was finally able to include that last word I wasn't able to fit in at the beginning.

And finally, for those skeptics who thought Krum should dodge and live, he couldn't see Cedric's wand, as he was behind Harry, obviously he would have tried to move, that goes without saying, but he would have been better off staying where was when he rolled to the edge of the path rather than stepping back into the middle. Harry steps to the side from the middle, but Krum, who is already at the edge of the path, can only step into the middle, so their instinctive movements save Harry and kill Krum respectively. Sadly, since you see this through the lens of Harry who's looking the other way, most of it isn't apparent, and all you know is he dies. Hope it make sense :)

Chapter 35

Harry hit the ground hard, bouncing across it, almost losing his grip on the handle of the cup.

The cup is a portkey?

It saved him from having to go all the way back through the maze. Fleur would be helped even quicker. He smiled, abandoned the cup, and pushed himself to his feet to find Madam Pomfrey.

A thin, grey mist curled around his feet, not unlike the patronus spell he had failed to cast, it hung around and over rows of what were clearly tombstones.

This is not Hogwarts.

His stomach plummeted and he immediately tried to apparate away, but nothing happened.

Every year.

He turned around very slowly, realising that the mist was curling around him from behind.

A bright, cheerful looking witch, with curly brown hair smiled at him. There was a very large cauldron behind her, steaming.

'Hiya Harry,' she chattered, 'nice of you to join us.'

'Do I know you?' Harry asked politely, turning his forearm to hide his wand for when he slid it into his palm.

It wasn't there.

'Oh no, Harry, you don't know me,' she giggled, 'nobody really knows me. I'm just the talkative, cheerful witch who listens. My name is Bertha Jorkins.'

'You worked for Crouch,' Harry remembered, his eyes searching every thin spot in the mist nearby for his wand.

'Sorry, Harry,' she smiled, waving the thin piece of ebony in the air. Thick, black ropes leapt from his wand, wrapping about him painfully tightly and pinning him to the nearest headstone.

'For the briefest moment I hoped I was wrong,' he remarked dryly.

'You weren't,' she laughed. 'You see, when I left Hogwarts I wasn't good enough to get where I wanted to go, and I didn't even want that much. Nobody noticed me in the war, though I helped Barty Crouch by keeping an eye on a few suspicious members of the ministry and was responsible for the capture of more than one Death Eater, but not one person ever thanked me for it. I learnt then that knowing secrets and using them for other people's good gains you nothing, not even gratitude. I kept making friends even when things calmed down, I've always been good with people, someone who listens can be invaluable and I learned all sorts of things. One day I came across something very interesting indeed. My oh-so-perfect, principled, head of department Barty Crouch, had snuck his son from Azkaban. I meant to blackmail him, but I needed proof, so I went looking.'

'That was a bad idea,' Harry cut in.

'For you, yes,' she giggled. 'Barty Crouch Junior was not what I was expecting. He was nothing like his father like I expected, instead I found a young wizard driven to madness by Azkaban and the Imperius Curse of his own parent. In the few moments of lucidity he gained he would tell me about his master, the one who recognised his value when his father and the world deemed him worthless.'

'You believed him?'

'Not to begin with,' she admitted, 'the Dark Lord was supposed to be dead, but then, his servant came and found us.'

'He was still alive,' Harry gasped with mock horror, very subtly trying to escape his bindings. They seemed looser than they should be, the more he wanted to escape, the easier it seemed to be to move.

'He was,' Bertha tittered. 'He showed me that I was not so useless with magic as I had come to believe. He taught me that I was simply thinking about things the wrong way. I could always listen to people, get them to trust me, to talk to me, to do what I want. I never guessed I would have such a talent with the Imperius Curse, one that even the Dark Lord respects.'

'He taught you a spell, so you fight for him?' Harry momentarily stopped struggling in shock. It was such a small thing. He'd taught Neville several spells.

'He respected me for the one thing I know I am good at, and that is why I follow him, because nobody else ever did that for me!'

'He's lying to you,' Harry told her sadly. He had no hope of convincing her, she was too lost, like Quirrell, blinded by Voldemort's lies and promises.

'You aren't going to convince me, Harry,' she responded, amused. 'I've come too far to turn back even if I wanted to, and I don't.'

'What have you done?' Harry asked, 'I assume the disappearance of Crouch was you?'

'Yes,' Bertha smirked, 'he was too suspicious, when I vanished and Barty died free of the curse, he began to connect things other people couldn't. I waited as long as possible to make it appear an unrelated event, but he had to die the moment Pettigrew went missing. I assumed, mistakenly in the end, that he had captured Pettigrew, or, if someone else had, Crouch might learn enough to stop us. It took so much planning to get you here, Harry,' she laughed. 'We spent hours devising a plan just to get your name in the goblet. So many complex pieces of magic, all ineffective. Ludo and I struggled terribly. Of course, it hardly helped that I had to keep him under the Imperius the whole time.'

Bagman, Harry realised.

He'd left Fleur somewhere Ludo Bagman could easily reach her, then he remembered the Withering Curse and sighed in relief. If Bagman, or anyone else, even tried to hurt for the next few hours they would die in a most unpleasant manner. The idea cheered up him somewhat.

'So how did you do it?' The first of the ropes fell to the floor behind the tombstone.

'We never put it in,' she laughed. 'Bagman was a surprisingly useful tool, he confunded the goblet before it arrived, knowing that Amos Diggory would never let his son pass up the chance to enter. It selected Diggory believing he was the only applicant under the name of a fourth school, but to everyone watching he appeared a believable Hogwarts champion who nobody ever suspected or checked. When the name of the real champion came out, we used a simple switching spell to replace the parchment with one bearing your name. Nobody was expecting a fourth name, so nobody was watching the goblet and the spell went undetected as we hoped. Dumbledore took the goblet and spent hours checking for irregularities, but your selection as Hogwarts champion was genuine as far as the goblet knew.'

Harry admired the simplicity of the plot for a few moments, before easing himself out of the second rope. He really needed his wand, and Bertha wasn't paying too much attention while she was monologuing.

It really is quite cliché of her.

'And now we come to what we're really doing here waiting for you.'

'We?' Harry asked. He could only see Bertha Jorkins and really hoped that her company was just an imperiused Ludo Bagman.

'We,' a new voice answered. It wasn't Ludo Bagman. Harry recognised the sibilant whisper of Voldemort's shade all too well.

'Hello, Voldemort,' Harry greeted, as politely as he'd greeted Bertha. It was best not to enrage him when Harry couldn't see him and had no idea where he was.

'You've learned some manners,' the wraith whispered. 'No more chatting, Bertha, it is time.'

'Yes, master,' she smiled cheerfully.

The curly-haired witch waved Harry's wand at the cauldron and bright flames sprang up around it, but only for a moment.

The fires guttered out and Bertha stared at Harry's wand, puzzled. Harry was little confused too, the wand had never failed him, if anything it was almost too eager to throw magic at anything he intended.

'Use your own,' Voldemort hissed. 'It will not matter anymore.'

She nodded, tucking Harry's wand into a pocket, and withdrawing her own. It was a short, thick piece of what looked like hazel.

The cauldron fires were relit immediately and this time they stayed burning. Within a matter of moments the surface was sparking, releasing a scatter of glowing orange pinpricks every few seconds. They drifted across the nearby gravestones like fireflies, following the mist that fled from the heat of the fire.

Bertha Jorkins bent to the floor on one side of the cauldron, losing sight of Harry who took the opportunity to squirm on of his arms free behind his back.

She was holding something hideous when she stood back up.

Harry only glimpsed a few patches of exposed skin before she placed it gently into the waters. Hairless, scabbed, leprous and slimy skin that sank out of sight into the cauldron. Its unnatural appearance made all the hair stand up down his spine.

He hoped it would drown.

He knew it would not.

'Bone of the father,' Bertha intoned, still cheerful, 'unknowingly given, you will renew your son.' The ground at Harry's feet cracked open, and a stream of white dust, and a single bone flew from within into the cauldron.

It sparked violently, orange specks exploding off it, then turned a poisonous blue almost too bright too look at.

'Flesh of the servant,' her voice was trembling now, 'willingly sacrificed, you will revive your master.' From somewhere in her robes she produced a gleaming silver knife and, placing her left hand on the edge of the cauldron, brought it down upon her wrist.

She screamed and paled, her hand half-severed and hanging over the potion. Harry began to tear frantically at the ropes to get free, this was his chance, while she was distracted. Half of the bindings seemed to have vanished, but the rest were still in the way, and he could not free himself before the witch had managed to steel herself and bring the weapon down once more.

Bertha Jorkins gave a strangled sob of pain that was all but lost in the splash her dismembered hand made as hit the surface of the potion. It rippled a raging red.

Then she turned to Harry, who had really been hoping against all likelihood that he was just going to be a witness.

'Blood of the enemy,' her voice was thin and wavering, 'forcibly taken,' she winced and had to stop speaking. Bertha Jorkins' skin was pale, and, despite whatever enchantment the knife had possessed to cauterise the wound, the stump still oozed nastily.

'Looks painful,' Harry noted, kicking his feet free when she closed her eyes to try and block out the agony.

'You will resurrect your foe,' she finished, stepping next to Harry before he could finish freeing himself and slashing a shallow cut across his cheek.

Bertha Jorkins darted back from him and flicked the blood into the cauldron, Harry glimpsed the end of his wand protruding from the pocket facing him.

He ripped the rest of the ropes away.

The potion flared a blinding, shimmering white, steam pouring off it onto the floor in a thick creeping blanket that quickly rose to obscure anything more than a silhouette.

Something tall stepped towards him in the steam, something that was far too tall, and had far too little curly hair, to be Bertha Jorkins.

Harry hurled himself where Bertha Jorkins had been a moment ago, but only skidded across the dirt.

He turned to find himself looking directly up at Tom Riddle, but the wizard was not how he remembered from the chamber. His skin was pale, translucent and veined, with no hair, misshapen facial features, and slitted, serpentine pupils. Harry had the distinct impression that this ritual was only the most recent he carried out and that Salazar had been quite correct in his assumption that Riddle had made use of many others. He seemed only a little more human than he had as a wraith three years ago.

'Where are you going, Harry?' Voldemort asked, amused.

'Back to Hogwarts?' Harry tried, smiling wryly and pulling himself to his feet. Riddle had all but killed him twice, and that was when he hadn't had a body.

I'm stronger now, he reminded himself.

'I don't think so,' the Dark Lord whispered. 'I can understand why you would want to return there. It feels like home to begin with, a new world, a place where you belong, then that world turns out to be no better than what you thought you'd left behind. You'll see that soon enough, if you haven't already.' Voldemort's lips curled back in a cold grin. 'I didn't just want you here for the ritual, Harry, there were easier ways to get your blood, even if it needed to be taken against your will and still be fresh. No, you're here to bear witness to my return.'

'Bertha,' he commanded smoothly.

'My Lord,' she murmured, appearing from the fading cloud of steam around the cauldron, still clutching at her arm.

'Your arm, Bertha.'

The curly-haired witch proffered her unharmed limb towards her lord. 'Sorry, my lord,' she apologised, when Riddle had to push up her sleeve himself. Harry shot her an incredulous look. Nobody in their right mind would ever believe Bertha Jorkins culpable for that. Even Riddle looked slightly amused.

A black tattoo of a snake entwined within a skull, throbbed painfully upon her upper forearm, bulging half a centimetre from the skin and writhing under its surface.

Voldemort regarded it carefully, then pressed his long, pale forefinger firmly into it. Bertha's fingers curled up into a fist, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut again.

Suddenly they were no longer alone in the graveyard.

How did they apparate in?

Once more Harry attempted to apparate out, picturing the chamber, where he would be safe, within his mind and willing the world to twist him away.

Nothing happened.

'Ah,' Voldemort sighed, 'my family returns, my friends, my so very loyal followers.'

A circle of robed and masked figures surrounded the two of them, Bertha Jorkins stumbled away into one of the many gaps.

'It feels just as it did thirteen years ago,' Riddle smiled, 'only then you had not betrayed me, not abandoned me, not forsaken the oaths you swore to stand beside me.' An ice cold cruelty crept into his tone as he continued.

'Lucius,' he whirled on the nearest Death-Eater, 'you were content to continue following the old ways, having your fun at the World Cup, but never did you search for me.'

Riddle ripped the skull mask from the face of Malfoy.

'Crabbe, Goyle,' he prowled round the circle, 'Nott, all of you have forgotten the words you said when I gave you your marks. You are hale, healthy and enjoying the full comforts of your powers just as you have been for the last decade.'

'Master,' the stooped figure of Nott quailed.

'Silence,' Voldemort hissed. 'These gaps, these are where those who truly stood with me have their place. Those who never renounced me, were never disloyal, those who are in Azkaban, and those who are dead.'

He stalked around the inside of the circle, bare-foot, robes whispering along the floor.

'You have disappointed me, you have all disappointed me gravely…'

A figure stepped out of the circle, trembling, to prostrate themselves before Voldemort. 'Please, master,' he begged piteously, 'forgive me, forgive all of us, we were afraid.'

'Forgive you,' the Dark Lord's voice was very very cold. 'Get up, Avery,' he ordered. 'Stand next to me, like you swore you would.' He reached out and took Avery's chin between his thumb and forefinger. 'You ask for my forgiveness? I do not forget. I do not forgive…'

It struck a very familiar chord with Harry. Riddle's words might as well have been taken from the tip of his tongue for how close they were to his own.

He began to laugh.

'You find their betrayal funny, Harry?' Voldemort's attention snapped back to him and the laughter died instantly as he met his eyes. The slitted pupils bored into him relentlessly, then Riddle turned away. 'I suppose I might find the similarity amusing too,' he whispered, 'were I in your shoes. Harry slammed his occlumency barriers down, clearing his mind of every thought.

Voldemort laughed. 'I will have my repayment from all of you. A second chance to prove you meant the words we spoke together when you took my mark. When you have fulfilled your debt to me we will stand alongside each other once more, and remake this country in our image.'

He moved back to the centre of the circle. 'Perhaps, though, some of you feel that Avery was right, that there is a reason to fear. Dumbledore, that champion of the undeserving rabble, walks in your nightmares, or maybe you even fear Harry Potter.'

The sinking feeling had begun to creep back, driving his stomach further and further down.

'Bertha,' he commanded sibilantly, 'our wands.'

'Of course, my lord.' The witch passed both Harry's wand and another, slightly longer, pale wand to Voldemort. She made to step back into the circle, but Riddle caught her injured stump in one hand.

'You have never asked repayment for the sacrifice you made to restore me to my body,' he said smoothly, 'such devotion is admirable.'

From the tip of his wand a hand of shimmering steel spun, attaching itself to the stump of Bertha's arm.

'Thank you, my lord,' she whispered reverently, flexing her shining fingers.

'Back you go, Bertha,' Voldemort whispered, 'your reward is not for your devotion, but for understanding that no follower of mine need ever beg what they deserve from me. Only those who suffered Azkaban rather than renounce me will be more exalted than you.'

Malfoy looked horrified at the thought, but he'd looked rather unhappy about the return of his master from the very beginning.

'Now.' Riddle turned back to Harry, spinning his ebony wand around his fingers just as he had spun Harry's holly wand in the chamber of secrets. 'I shall prove to you, my friends, that there is nothing to fear, not from Dumbledore, and not from his pawn.'

A shard of ice formed in Harry's chest. He was nobody's pawn.

Stepping across the circle Voldemort extended Harry's wand back to him, a cold smile on his face.

'Now, Harry, we duel, and you die, just as you would have done thirteen years ago, had your mother's magic not interfered.'

I don't want to die. I refuse.

Voldemort stepped back to the circle edge and Harry warily mirrored him. He knew that etiquette demanded they bow to each other before the duel began; it was the only thing Gilderoy Lockhart had actually taught him.

Riddle inclined his head, folding gracefully at the waist.

Harry reciprocated, copying the inhuman looking wizard. If he was going to die, he would leave an impression. He shot a glance at the Triwizard Trophy that had brought him here. It was still faintly glowing. He very much hoped it was still a portkey, because the first opportunity he got he was leaving.

'Crucio,' came Voldemort's cold whisper.

Harry threw himself to one side, and then back when a second red curse hissed through the air where he had been. He wasn't as fast as Harry expected.

I can survive. I can escape.

His wand burst into warmth, the heat flooding up his arm. 'Osassula,' he retaliated, sending the curse flying back at Voldemort who batted it aside casually, but seemed a little shocked at the spell.

'Such dark magic, Harry,' he remarked, circling around the edge, deflecting every bone-splintering curse and hex into the ground around him. 'What would that old fool Dumbledore, say?'

'There is no such thing as dark or light,' Harry quipped.

'There is only power,' Voldemort finished, amused again. 'I did not expect you to listen, Harry, when I told you that three years ago.'

'I didn't listen,' Harry dismissed, unleashing every powerful spell he knew, keeping Riddle on the back foot was essential to his escape plan, all he needed was a moment of distraction.

'There is only intent,' he told Voldemort, steeling himself for the drain of the spell, then bathing the circle of Death Eaters in fiendfyre. The cloaked figures scrambled out of the way as tombstones, grass and even the cauldron were consumed.

Riddle's serpentine eyes studied him curiously though the hungry, red flames, even as the fiendfyre twisted back around Voldemort's wand at Harry, swirling into a serpent's maw.

Harry's wand flared red at the tip and the fiendfyre roiled down into the ground, billowing out of existence in a wave of searing heat.

'Perhaps,' Riddle murmured, 'there was something to that prophecy after all.'

Prophecy?

That was certainly something to investigate.

'If you were anyone else, save that old fool Dumbledore, I would offer you a place within my inner circle, Harry,' he said smoothly, gesturing to the ring of Death Eaters now reforming around them. Some, to Harry's pride, looked slightly scorched.

'I'm already within your inner circle,' Harry replied dryly, gesturing to the ring himself.

'Indeed you are,' Riddle's lips curled in amusement.

The pale wand flashed up impossibly fast and the graveyard around him dissolved into a hail of curses. Voldemort had been playing with him, testing him and toying with him, but the games were over now.

His shield charm shattered only moments after the tombstones disintegrated, and the first red beam of light hit him.

Searing pain wracked his body, and he crumpled into a ball. Voldemort's Cruciatus Curse was far beyond Cedric's, there was no space for thought or anything but the pain.

'A taste of the pain I endured that night at Godric's Hollow, Harry,' Riddle announced cruelly, ending his torture so Harry could hear him.

Harry rolled himself over and pushed himself to his feet, unwilling to die on the floor at Voldemort's feet, not when there was still a chance of escape and survival.

'Again, Harry?' Riddle asked coldly. 'For the pain I suffered at your hands when you killed my servant Quirrell, perhaps.'

The yew wand came up, but this time Harry was ready for how unnaturally fast Riddle had become.

'Papilionis,' he cried, and Voldemort's Cruciatus Curses burst harmlessly into wisps of black smoke around him.

'Avada Kedavra,' Riddle hissed, furious at how successful Harry's shield had proved against his torture curses.

There was another wisp of black smoke and an expression of utter outrage crossed the face of the Dark Lord. Harry would have laughed if he were not close to death, but it would take only seconds for Riddle to figure it out and use something as simple as the blasting curse to break his defence.

He flicked his wand, transfiguring a single butterfly into a steel spike, and sending it flying across the circle at Voldemort.

Riddle side-stepped, sneering and the steel fragment hissed past him.

There was a small gasp of pain behind Voldemort and Bertha Jorkins collapsed holding her neck. Bright, crimson blood spurted out past her shining, silver fingers as she blinked desperately.

'Master,' she pleaded, her entire left side soaked in blood, 'master, please.'

Riddle never even turned around to look at her as she died.

'I told you,' Harry reminded her, smiling coldly. He had no sympathy for Bertha Jorkins, she had earned her fate.

The curly-haired witch giggled slightly hysterically, paling rapidly as her blood pooled across the ground, then she blinked one last time and slumped still.

She's the third person I have killed.

Harry felt no guilt for any of them, he'd never felt much to begin with, only worried about what being capable of the act made him.

'Now,' Voldemort's cruel smile returned, 'you are no different from us, Harry.'

The ice spread across his chest in fury, Riddle had no right to compare him to any of them, not after everything he had done. The glowing red eyes of the Harry the boggart had become gleamed in memory. Something stirred in the ice.

'Now,' he responded icily. 'She is the third servant of yours I have ended, Voldemort. I felt no pity for her and I will feel no pity for you.' His wand snapped up, summoning the portkey cup to him. He caught it in his left hand, but there was no jerk, no magic.

'I would have to have very foolish followers to leave such an obvious avenue of escape open,' Voldemort laughed in his unnatural, high way.

'Avada Kedavra.' This time the bright flash of green came from Harry's wand.

It missed Voldemort by inches, hissing though one of the gaps in the circle behind him when he apparated away, and spattering harmlessly against one of the stubs of the tombstones.

He apparated.

Something had changed, the wards that kept him here were gone. All he needed was a moment.

'So you do have the desire to kill,' he hissed, surprised. 'Who then of my followers have you killed, for whom else's sake shall I kill you?'

'Barty Crouch,' Harry told him, feeling nothing but pride, 'and revenge against Peter Pettigrew.'

It was foolish of him to declare it before all the Death Eaters and he knew it, but he couldn't reign in his pride and anger enough to stop himself. It was not like they could do anything with it, not hearing it under these circumstances for someone supposedly dead thirteen years and a madman killed in the chaos of the World Cup.

'Pettigrew, perhaps,' Voldemort considered, deflecting Harry's bone splintering curse with a shining silver shield composed of thousands of tiny serpents. 'He was a poor wizard, useful, but pathetic. Barty Crouch, on the other hand was talented, no fourteen year old could have beaten him in a duel, how do you claim to?'

Harry's lips twitched, a dreadful temptation overwhelming him. He couldn't resist, and he could always apparate immediately afterwards.

'Like this,' he smirked, and slashed his wand across his chest towards Riddle. There was a shimmer in the air between him and Riddle, a hazy basilisk maw of nothing that slammed into and shattered Voldemort's shield like it was glass, sending him staggering backwards and down to his knees.

The conjuration took almost everything Harry still had to spend, but he managed to remain on his feet, swaying as Voldemort picked himself up from the floor, raising his wand.

The incantation was already on the lipless mouth of the dark wizard, so Harry dragged whatever magic he could imagine from within him, and pictured where he wanted to be most, with the girl he had left behind.

'Legilimens,' Voldemort spat, as Harry twisted.

His apparition was too slow and even as the world swirled back past him he felt Riddle's mind crash into his own, tearing the intent and emotion of the spell he had cast from him. He struggled to clear his mind and force Voldemort out, but no matter how much he tried to empty his head he couldn't push the dark wizard from it. Riddle followed the thought pattern back. There were glimpses of his childhood, eleven years of memories with the Dursleys stolen in seconds, but alongside them he gleaned others, moments Riddle could not disassociate from Harry's recollections. An orphanage, with sneering children who hated him because he was different, disdainful peers who abhorred him because he was a muggleborn, a nobody, and then the pain ended.

I was nothing once too.

The thought was not Harry's.

The connection broke, and the voice of Riddle, the real voice, the one of the young man from the chamber, was torn away. Harry saw a flash of silver before his eyes, then he hit something very hard and the world swirled to a halt, bursting into darkness with an explosion of bright, white sparks.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

36. Summertime

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So this chapter is a little longer than the others, it wasn't really meant to be, but there just seemed a lot of things that needed to happen before the summer started.

This is also the last chapter of A Cadmean Victory, my GoF AU part... Fortunately for anyone still reading, it will be immediately followed (tomorrow) by the first chapter of the OotP AU part of the same story ;)

Enjoy...

Chapter 36

He was inside something, some cage or cell. It was too dark for him to see it, but he could sense the walls around him, feel them curving close.

It was wrong, and he was sure the walls of his prison were growing nearer in the gloom, but he couldn't seem to move to escape.

His magic moved in frustration, pulsing, pushing at the closeness containing him.

It shattered.

Harry found himself staring at a line under his hands, a divide between black and white. Slowly he pulled back his hands, staring at the grey prints he left behind across the line. Around him the fragments of his prison disintegrated into nothing.

The marks of his hands spread, turning both the dark and the light on either side of the line to grey.

Harry rose to his feet, and found himself standing on the chessboard from beneath the third corridor.

The pieces were not as they had left them, but frozen in the midway into the beginning of a new game, with different figures than before. The white king had no crown or sword, but he stood, regal, righteous and powerful, his hands clasped humbly over his great beard.

Harry eyed the other pieces, they were all still, the only piece missing was the white king's pawn, the piece that should have been occupying his square.

My prison.

He stepped from his square, leaving grey footprints across the board as wandered. The marks swiftly swelled to swallow their squares.

The white king looked down on him with pride and benevolence, but there was no understanding in his blank eyes and Harry felt nothing as he gazed at the sculpted figure.

The black king's eyes tracked him too, staring with cold, apathetic curiosity as he traced his fingers over the surface of the nearest white pawn. It too, turned to grey.

Fascinated, Harry reached out to the next white pieces, to the white knight that stood beside the changed queen's pawn and the rook beyond it.

They changed too, but not as he expected.

Instead of leaving his grey finger marks upon them, they crumbled away into nothing, leaving piles of dust on their greying squares.

The black king looked on unaffected, even as resigned, stone tears fell from the eyes of the white king.

The black pieces changed too, some crumbled, the black queen and the two knights, but others were consumed by his handprints, coloured grey as the squares he strode across.

In curiosity he turned, covering the board, brushing past the white queen, who collapsed into dust at his trailing finger tips, and placed his hands firmly upon the white king's chest.

He too, crumbled into nothing, and Harry flinched back, slipping on the squares and falling.

The jerk dragged him awake.

'Mr Potter.' Harry had never heard anything so sweet as the stern tone of Madam Pomfrey. There was no way she would ever be working for Voldemort, he didn't have the authority to coerce her, nobody did, not in her ward.

'I'm awake,' Harry smiled at her, 'and perfectly fine,' he could see the steaming goblet of whatever that was in her hand and really didn't want to have to drink it. It was fine when he was unconscious; he couldn't taste it then.

'You are not perfectly fine, Mr Potter,' she snapped, placing the goblet next to his bed. 'I am going to permanently label this bed as yours for next year.'

'I feel fine?' Harry attempted, eyeing the thick, chalky looking liquid with some distaste.

'You are the second student I have had in this wing in the last week suffering from the effects of the Cruciatus Curse, and yes,' she caught him looking at the goblet, 'you will be drinking that down to the last drop!' Harry barely registered her last words.

Fleur.

He immediately looked up and down the length of the ward, but the curtains were all drawn back against the walls and the beds were empty. He was Madam Pomfrey's only victim.

'What's it for?' Harry asked, resignedly reaching for the potion.

'It's everything your body needed the last week it spent sleeping off the effects of bouncing off the anti-apparition wands,' she informed in a surprisingly mild tone.

'Will it taste as bad as it looks?' he questioned cheekily, then gulped it down before she could force it into his throat in revenge.

'Yes,' she answered sweetly, as something akin to burning liquorice coated the inside of his mouth, 'yes it will.'

She pulled her wand from her uniform pocket, and traced it over his torso lightly.

'You seem to be perfectly fine, Mr Potter,' she told him with a small smile. 'Except for another scar, you've come away unscathed.'

She handed him a very small mirror and Harry stared at the small mark on his cheek. It was a small triangular nick on the edge of his cheekbone.

'I couldn't get rid of the deepest part of the cut,' Madam Pomfrey explained, 'whatever was used had some enchantment to seal the wound up and I was not able to fully undo the effects.'

'It's barely noticeable,' Harry shrugged, and handed her back the mirror. It was hardly going to drag the eye away from his other scar. 'I-er-I don't suppose you'd tell me what's happened since the tournament ended?'

'You won,' Madam Pomfrey told him, 'but it was a mess after Bagman's involvement came to light.'

'Bagman?' Harry kept his tone innocent.

'He was the one who put your name in,' the nurse sniffed angrily, 'the whole tournament was rigged so you'd get there first and disappear off to You-Know-Who. He confessed to everything immediately once the Imperius Curse was lifted and spouted the whole story to the headmaster and the minister.'

'Where is he?' Harry felt the buffoon deserved some punishment for his role in everything. Krum was dead and Fleur had been tortured because of his weakness.

'The minister carted him off to Azkaban immediately,' Madam Pomfrey shook her head in disbelief, 'no trial, no nothing, just gone, and all for things done under the Imperius Curse. If that was the done thing half of wizarding society would be there after the last war.'

Harry felt a small flicker of pity for the former Wasps player. He had allowed himself be manipulated and tricked, and because of it people had been hurt and killed, but Azkaban was a step too far. Fudge was clearly just sweeping things under the rug.

No doubt Lucius Malfoy was advising him.

'He took the blame for what happened in the tournament?' Harry asked carefully. He'd done his best to remove Cedric from the line of fire, but there had been nothing he could do about himself, the only unattacked champion.

'He took the blame for everything, Mr Potter,' the nurse sniffed. 'The minister didn't seem very interested in his version of events at all, even when it was obvious he had been under the Imperius Curse.'

Harry was hardly surprised, not from what he knew of Fudge. The man was putty in the hands of Malfoy and his ilk, and considering the company the pure-blood kept, Harry wouldn't been counting on the Ministry of magic for anything anytime soon.

'At least the students know what happened,' Madam Pomfrey assured him. 'Dumbledore announced everything at the end of the year feast.'

The end of year feast?

'Exactly what is the date, Madam Pomfrey?'

'Oh,' the nurse looked momentarily flustered. 'It's the second of July, Mr Potter, everyone has gone home except for the staff and you. You should write to Mr Longbottom and Miss Bell, they were often in here to see you over the last week and will be grateful to know you have recovered.'

Harry felt a rush of affection for the loyal pair. They had not forgotten about him while he had been injured, even though Harry had not been able to teach or help Neville, or spend time with Katie. He'd write to them the moment he could.

Everyone, Harry suddenly realised, his heart sinking.

'And the other schools?' he asked the nurse, very quietly.

'They've gone back to their own institutions,' Madam Pomfrey told him, swiping the goblet from his bedside and disappearing into her office next to his bed.

She went back to France.

Harry felt oddly sick. Fleur was a very long way away now, too far for him to ever find to even speak to again.

Of course.

'Are you ok, Mr Potter?' The nurse had stepped back out of her office.

'I'm perfectly fine,' he reminded her, smiling bitterly. It was inevitable that he wouldn't get the chance to speak to her now he wanted, how he rued not ignoring his temper by the lake, or lingering by the Room of Requirement, or taking any of the moments over the last few months in which he had wanted to find her.

'If you insist,' the nurse sighed. 'The headmaster wants to speak with you before you leave, he's on his way down to the ward now.'

Harry took that as permission to get out of bed and dress himself in the robes he had been provided with. No doubt the staff and the house elves had failed to find his stuff, located, as it was, in the Chamber of Secrets.

'Harry,' Dumbledore strode through the doors into the hospital wing. 'Are you feeling well?'

'Yes,' Harry lied. Something fluttered at the edges of his mind when he met the headmaster's bright blue eyes and he furiously cleared his mind, his hand flashing to his wand.

'Ah,' Dumbledore looked slightly guilty, 'you have been learning the mind arts. I apologise, Harry, it has become a habit for me to take a peek using passive legilimency, reprehensible, I know, but sometimes necessary for the greater good.'

'I would appreciate it, sir,' Harry responded cooly, 'if you refrained from doing that. I am aware of occlumency and its principles, but not legilimency. How does it work?'

He remembered quite clearly the final spell Riddle had cast in the graveyard. Voldemort had only glimpsed the emotion behind his spell and memories of his childhood, things from before Hogwarts, but he couldn't risk him seeing anything more important next time they met. Harry had to find a way to keep his mind closed off completely.

'It's a complicated and obscure branch of magic,' Dumbledore began, 'one Voldemort has mastered. It allows a wizard to create a connection to the mind of another and, from there, see his thoughts, feelings and memories. Passive legilimency does little more than skim the surface and let me glimpse very strong reactions or thoughts, but a more active approach would allow me to follow those thoughts and feelings as far back as they run, and even create visions of my own in your head.'

'I think I would like to learn to defend myself against it,' Harry decided.

'It is often a good idea, especially for you, Harry, whom Voldemort has taken an interest it. The easiest way to defeat it is to break eye contact with the caster, all but the most skilled practitioners require eye contact to maintain the magic and it is far easier to do with it.'

That is how I broke the connection, Harry realised.

He'd apparated away from Riddle, and that had separated them. It was a disturbing thought that in the seconds between being hit by the spell and escaping Voldemort had still managed to see so much.

'I can point you in the direction of some good books on the subject, Harry, but I must press you on what happened after you touched the cup and were whisked away. Ludo Bagman, who altered the portkey, knew only that he was sending you to Little Hangleton, Voldemort, and that the Dark Lord would be returning on that night.' Dumbledore ushered Harry out of the door and into the corridor, beginning the route towards his office.

'He is back,' Harry answered simply. 'There was a ritual in the graveyard, using my blood. He has a body now.'

'What else do you remember, Harry?' The old wizard was staring him intently and Harry, remembering the explanation of legilimency, carefully cleared his mind.

'He was angry with the Death Eaters, we duelled.' Harry dragged his words out, acting confused while thinking furiously. 'Bertha Jorkins was the one who Imperiused Bagman, she killed Crouch when he found Pettigrew, and Pettigrew for getting caught and risking his master. We can't prove Sirius' innocence now, can we?'

I'm sorry, Sirius, he silently apologised.

'I'm afraid not, Harry,' Dumbledore shook his head sadly. 'That does explain the body that was found on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, though I suspect Cornelius will not accept its true identity.'

'There was more,' Harry looked down in feigned embarrassment to hide his momentary smile of triumph, 'Voldemort beat me, he was too strong, I only just managed to apparate away when the wards trapping me failed.'

'Surviving a duel with Voldemort is something to be proud of, Harry,' the headmaster told him gently. 'At your age you should not have had a chance. Did something inexplicable happen that allowed you to escape?'

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'He apparated to dodge my spell,' he shifted his wand further up his sleeve out of sight at the faint hint of green light, 'so I tried to apparate back here and sort of succeeded.' Madam Pomfrey had mentioned bouncing, so he doubted he'd arrived quite as planned. Dumbledore looked faintly surprised. 'Should something have happened, Professor?'

'As I'm sure you remember your first wand shared a brother core with Voldemort's. It is possible for that to cause an extraordinary effect known as priori incantatem,' the old headmaster explained as they approached the gargoyle. 'Your new wand must be different enough that it cannot occur.'

'Sugar Quills,' he told the gargoyle cheerfully.

'What happens now, headmaster?' Harry asked.

'I suspect, Harry, that Voldemort will seek to keep his return a secret while he regains strength. I will do everything I can to expose him, but there is nothing you can or should be doing at your age to stop him. In a few years, perhaps, but not yet.'

The headmaster moved quickly up the steps, leaving Harry in his wake, and by the time he'd reached the open door to the office Dumbledore was seated in his office.

'Take a seat, Harry,' he smiled, 'and help yourself to a humbug if you want. I find they help me think.'

'I'm ok thanks, Professor.' Harry took a seat on the opposite side of the desk, avoiding the proffered bowl of sweets.

'First of all,' Dumbledore pushed a rather weighty looking bag in his direction, 'your winnings from the Triwizard Tournament, you did, despite everything return with the cup.'

Harry remembered then that he had still been holding it when he had apparated.

I won.

He bit back the grin. This wasn't the time to celebrate. He wouldn't even be able to read his name off the trophy next time he saw Fleur. That considerably dampened his rush of triumph. Harry would have happily listened to the french witch read her own name off at him if it gave him an excuse to speak with her.

'I do have a few questions for you, Harry,' Dumbledore said seriously, adjusting his half-moon spectacles.

'Of course, Professor,' Harry kept his face calm and still, even as his heart began to race.

'What happened within the maze, Harry?'

'Krum was killed,' Harry said in a dull monotone. He didn't have to fake his regret, he'd liked the competitive Bulgarian. 'I came across the end of the fight.'

'You stunned, Mr Diggory,' the headmaster confirmed.

'I obliviated him as well, Cedric would never have done any of those things on his own, so I stunned him and broke his wand. He won't be blamed now.' Harry hoped his gamble was about to pay off. He did not want to take the blame for what the Imperiused Cedric Diggory had done instead, there were many places he'd rather be than Azkaban.

'That was very noble of you, Harry,' Dumbledore smiled. 'Mr Diggory is distraught over what has happened, but given the position Cornelius has taken and your risky act, he will never suspect the part he played or have to bear the guilt. I'm very proud of you.'

'Thank you,' Harry replied quietly.

'It may leave you in a very tenuous position, Harry,' the headmaster warned. 'There will be those at the ministry who seek to taint your reputation, and this will be an opportunity for them.'

'I know, headmaster,' Harry smiled faintly, 'but my friends would never believe that, and I won't fear their lies.' He'd cross that bridge when he came to it, if nothing was said, all the better, since Bagman had taken the blame for everything there would be no official accusation or trial.

'That's very wise of you, my boy,' he smiled. 'And now I must ask you what Voldemort said to you in the graveyard.'

'He didn't really speak to me much,' Harry lied, feeling slightly guilty for doing so. He had a feeling that Dumbledore knew what the prophecy Riddle had mentioned was, but he didn't trust the headmaster to tell him, and if he knew Harry was after it, it would make things more difficult. 'Just some insults and the Cruciatus Curse, really.'

'I see,' the headmaster looked quite old for a moment. 'I'm very sorry, Harry, I don't seem to be able to keep you from harm for a single year, do I?'

'I'm sure you aren't to blame, sir,' Harry responded. He had intended to be kind, but a note of something slightly cruel managed to seep in and the old wizard flinched ever so slightly.

'I have only one more thing I need you to speak about before I can let you apparate home, though I must ask you to refrain from using your excellent ability except when in the direst need. It is still illegal, if harmless, but the supporters of Voldemort in the ministry will be waiting for any excuse to smear your name.'

'I will only use it when I have no other choice,' Harry agreed, choosing his words carefully.

'Thank you, Harry,' the headmaster nodded. 'I appreciate that. I'm sure you're dying to be able to use your magic whenever you can, when I was young I used to use my magic at every chance I got.'

'What did you want to ask me about?' Harry inquired.

Let it be horcruxes, let it be the prophecy, let me trust him like I used to.

Harry was well aware it was a foolish hope. There was no reason Dumbledore would change his mind. He was still the final sacrifice as far as the headmaster knew or planned.

'We found Miss Delacour quite a long way from where she remembered falling unconscious when we apprehended Ludo Bagman.' The headmaster's face shifted to something quite grim. 'It was very lucky that we stopped him, since if he had touched her like he intended he would have suffered quite a horrible fate.'

Harry looked up at him innocently, emptying his mind of thoughts, and staring into the headmaster's eyes. 'I carried her out of harm's way, it was either her or Cedric, and I figured he was needed alive to take the blame, but Fleur was not. When I encountered the sphinx I had to make sure she was safe in case I answered its riddle incorrectly.'

'That does not, Harry, excuse the use of such a horrible piece of magic. That was a particularly dark curse you used.' Dumbledore looked very disappointed.

'I'm not perfect, sir,' Harry played guilty. 'It was the only way I knew to protect her. It was for the greater good, headmaster,' he finished guilelessly.

'I understand, Harry,' the old wizard sighed. 'Far worse things have and will be done for the Greater Good, try not to let it burden your conscience, nobody came to harm.'

Harry did his best not to let his anger at the obvious self-justification show. 'I won't, sir,' he managed to reply tonelessly.

Worse things like raising a child to die, he wanted to spit across the desk.

Dumbledore was starting to look only a little better than Riddle in his actions towards Harry. They both wanted him dead, one for good intentions, the other for selfish ones, and neither were of great comfort to Harry.

'I'll let you go back to your home, Harry,' the headmaster told him kindly. 'Professor McGonagall and the house elves were unable to locate your things, so I'd remind you not to forget anything and collect your trunk from wherever you have hidden it before you leave.'

He was more right than he realised. Harry was going home, but only very briefly before he returned to the Dursley's.

'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied, picking up his somewhat weighty bag of galleons. 'I hope you have a good summer.'

Harry left the office, leaping down the spiral stairs and out past the gargoyle, before taking off in the direction of the Chamber of Secrets under his disillusionment charm. The founder was likely to be quite unhappy that he hadn't seen Harry in some time.

'Oh,' Salazar enthused with more sarcasm than Harry had yet to endure, 'you are alive. Thank you, sole remaining family member, for being so considerate as to visit and let me know.'

'I was sleeping off my encounter with Riddle,' Harry told him, grinning. He was glad of Slytherin's ire. He knew it meant the senile old portrait cared.

'What happened?' The painting demanded immediately.

'The third task was going to plan. I used fiendfyre once I was far enough into the maze to be unseen, and nobody seems to suspect me for the razing of the hedges, but the other champions were taken out by one of his servants so I could get to to the cup and be abducted. Voldemort was also responsible for my name ending up in the goblet,' Harry explained. 'His followers arranged events so that I ended up with him, using the trophy as a portkey, and he resurrected himself using my blood before I escaped.'

'Your blood?' Salazar asked sharply.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. He'd expected the founder to have some sort of reaction to that.

'The protection of your mother is not lost to you,' the painting decided after a moment of contemplation. 'It is possible that this has formed a bond of sorts between you. He cannot undo the blood magic your parents used, but he has stolen its protection for himself by using your blood in the ritual. He is protected just as you were, though I am unsure of the specifics. He may be protected from your actions, or from the results of his own, I do not know.'

'That is only one of many things I have learned,' Harry informed his ancestor quite gravely. 'There is a prophecy, Riddle mentioned it, and implied that it is at the very least relevant to me.'

'You must find it and learn what it says,' Salazar instructed firmly. 'If Voldemort knows what it is then that may dictate every action he takes against you. We can't afford to be left in the dark.'

'I know nothing about it,' Harry shrugged, 'only that it exists.'

'Find out about it,' Salazar snapped, 'someone must know something. A prophecy cannot be made without a witness.'

'I'll search as soon as I can,' Harry agreed, not having much clue as where to start, 'but I'll be out of contact with the wizarding world until term starts after summer.'

'Why?' Slytherin demanded incredulously.

'That's how it is every summer,' Harry told him helplessly. 'I can apparate here, but going anywhere else will attract suspicion and I don't really want to be attracting any adverse attention with Voldemort back.'

Dumbledore had been right about that much.

'So you can't even use magic for the summer,' the painting said, disgusted. 'This is why I wanted the school to take on Muggle-born students full time, they get left behind and cut of the world that they rightfully should be part of by their own families.'

'Why doesn't it?' Harry immediately regretted asking the question.

'Godric insisted that breaking up those families was wrong, and the others agreed. I could hardly argue against all three of my friends, so I relented.'

'Perhaps you should not have,' Harry mused, remembering Riddle's memories and how he had once believed Hogwarts his home, just as Harry did. He had no doubt that they were both thinking of the same specific part. The Chamber of Secrets had been home to both of them.

'Did you still win?' The portrait seemed rather expectant that he had. Slytherin would never accept anything less than his best from his heir.

'I won,' Harry didn't need to hold back his smile this time, even if it was still tainted by regret.

'Then at least you have proved that girl from the other school wrong,' Salazar nodded, 'I hope you went to speak to her.'

'She's gone back to France,' Harry informed hollowly. The painting stared down at him with slight pity, the founder knew that he had formed an attachment to Fleur Delacour. He'd had nobody else to speak to it about when the Room of Requirement had begun to make it unbearable.

'I take it you are about to leave?' Salazar asked, peering down at him and changing the subject.

'Yes, my aunt and uncle are no doubt already furious with me for being late, but I'll come back when I can.' Uncle Vernon was likely to explode with rage, not only had Harry inconvenienced them, but he was about to use magic to return to their house. Harry was quite looking forward to it.

The founder looked concerned.

'If it becomes unbearable you can just return here through the chamber,' he suggested gently.

'This is going to be the best summer yet,' Harry grinned, 'I have to catch up on everything I missed in my classes because of the tournament, and,' he slipped his wand from his sleeve, waving it cheerfully, 'Ollivander was kind enough not to apply the trace that prevents me using magic in the summer without being detected.'

Salazar laughed rather coldly. 'I hope your muggle relatives realise how different things are going to be because of that.'

'They'll come to realise soon enough,' Harry smirked.

'Now?' His ancestor asked rather sadly, clearly a little upset that Harry was going to be leaving him alone down in the chamber. 'What about your things?'

'I need only my wand,' Harry responded. 'Hedwig can find her own way to me, she's a smart owl, and I have every book I could need in here. I'll just apparate back when I need something.'

'It's a long way to apparate just for a book,' Salazar remonstrated very half-heartedly, 'you might splinch yourself again.'

'It is,' Harry grinned, 'I'll get very good at apparating.' Salazar attempted and failed to hide his smile at the obvious excuse to visit.

'Off you go then,' he ordered, 'but you're cleaning up that basilisk corpse first thing when you next come back. I know you can use fiendfyre well enough to get rid of it now.'

Harry shot him a parting smile, pictured the Dursley's back garden, and twisted the world back past him.

There was a shriek of surprise and a smash as something glass broke.

'Hello, Aunt Petunia,' he called cheerfully, waving at the horrified woman. 'Hello, Uncle Vernon, Dudley, I'm back.'

There was a moment of silence as Vernon did his best to cover every shade of red known to man before moving on to purple. Harry smiled icily.

I'm going to enjoy this.

'Where have you been, boy?' The man's bellow could probably have been heard on the other side of Surrey.

'The neighbours, Vernon,' his aunt hissed.

'And how dare you appear like that!' He had reached a shade of puce Harry hadn't seen before, and was yelling only a little quieter than before.

'I was in hospital,' Harry explained, letting the cold creep into his voice. He wasn't scared of his uncle, not after duelling Voldemort.

'Don't take that tone with me!' Vernon rose to his feet to tower over Harry as threateningly as he could. 'You can't do anything freakish now, boy, go to your room and change into normal clothes and then we'll talk about your behaviour. I won't tolerate…' He trailed off as Harry's wand gently pressed itself into his jowled cheek just below his right eye.

It was glowing a bright, cold green.

'Oh,' Harry smiled brightly, 'please carry on, uncle, don't let me interrupt you.'

His aunt's mouth was opening close in a manner amusingly similar to a goldfish, and Dudley was frozen in disbelief.

Uncle Vernon opened his mouth, but the only thing that emerged from under his bushy moustache was a strangled whimper.

'I shall assume you have finished speaking, then,' Harry concluded. 'Now, if an underage wizard,' there was another strangled noise when Harry said the forbidden word, 'performs illegal magic a letter arrives to inform them what they've done and what will happen next. Observe.'

He retracted his wand from his uncle's face and transfigured Dudley's sandwich into a cobra. The boy screamed every bit as loudly as his aunt, even eclipsing her for pitch, and they both recoiled from the table to cower across the garden from the admittedly deadly Egyptian Cobra.

They waited in the garden for several minutes as the snake made a mess of the table, scattering perfectly prepared sandwiches everywhere.

'No letter,' Harry remarked in mock surprise. Vernon blanched, and Harry banished the snake with a flick of his wand that made all three Dursley's flinch. 'I'm going to my room to change,' he told them firmly, 'please remember that demonstration for the future.' Everything but the ice slid from his face and eyes, leaving his previously warm smile cold, cruel and menacing. 'I'd hate to have to make this point a second time, I might decide I need to do something slightly more dramatic than summon a small snake...'

He slipped his wand away and strode inside through the back door, while the Dursley's were still stunned. His wardrobe was full of Dudley's cast offs, but a little transfiguration and nobody would ever know, he could keep reapplying it until he bought some new clothes of his own. For the most part, the summer looked bright.

Hedwig was sitting on his desk, one taloned foot outstretched on the folded, manila surface of an envelope.

Did Ollivander lie to me?

He immediately discarded the idea. Hedwig would not be the owl to deliver an official ministry warning.

Curious, Harry unfolded the envelope. There was only a single line of writing on the front. It had been written next to a hand-drawn image, sketched in pencil, but animate, as all images in the wizarding world seemed to be. The picture was of a tree, a willow, leaning over a bend in the river, its branches caught in a slight breeze.

Eleven o'clock on the day you receive this, or the first afterwards, Harry read. The word is argent.

He flipped over the picture, hoping for a name, fearing he would find the Dark Mark. He didn't exactly trust portkeys at the moment.

Fleur Delacour.

Her name was signed elegantly, looping gracefully across the bottom of the page. It could have said anything or nothing on the other side. Harry would still be holding it tightly, smiling like an idiot, with a shivering heart, just so long as the signature remained the same.

A more conservative part of him warned that it was probably a trap, but a quick glance at the clock told him it was less than half an hour to eleven and that voice of caution was swiftly overpowered. There was nothing that could stop him from going. Voldemort would surely have chosen a less convoluted plot to capture him.

He flipped the sketch back over, eyeing the drawing in anticipation.

'Argent.'

Nothing happened.

'Argent,' he tried, pronouncing it with a french accent. The picture glowed, there was a sudden jerk, and suddenly his back was flat against something warm and rough.

He was standing under and against the trunk of the willow tree from the picture, looking over the bend in the river.

Harry tilted his forearm to make it easier to get to his wand, but it felt a little warm to be England, and he was very much hoping it was a real invitation.

'You're early,' a soft, french accented voice told him from above.

Definitely Fleur.

There was a quiet thud as she jumped down out of the tree next to him. 'I said eleven,' she reminded him, 'you are lucky that I come here often, else you would have had to wait.'

'I think I could have survived,' he responded with a smile, looking around him. It was a beautiful, peaceful spot.

'You owe me an explanation, Harry Potter.' Fleur's bright, blue eyes bored into his, and he became even more aware of the tree trunk behind him. 'I did not walk myself all the way too the centre of the maze, and I certainly did not place a curse capable of killing anyone who tried to touch me intending harm on myself.'

'That may have been me,' Harry admitted, not seeing a way to deny it and not really wanting to lie to her. 'I couldn't leave you for whichever of Voldemort's followers was lurking around.'

'So you carried me all the way across the maze to the wards instead?' Fleur's eyes sparkled and she took a step closer. 'My little sister, Gabrielle, has a theory as to why you might have carried me all that way instead of simply sending up red sparks as you must have done for Cedric Diggory.'

Harry gulped, suddenly Voldemort was looking like the better option. 'Is it an interesting theory?' His question came out very weakly, and something almost predatory gleamed in the silver-haired witch's eyes.

'I think that I would very much like to know if she is right.' Fleur placed a hand either side of him on the willow trunk, cutting off any avenue of escape save the drawing he was still holding.

'You made a portkey,' Harry noted, trying his best to clear his mind and not let either her proximity or her aura affect him. She was his Fleur from the Yule Ball again, the one who was so like him, who understood without pushing, and the one he had previously feared a lie created to use him.

'They are easy to make.' Fleur shrugged with slightly smug nonchalance. 'It will take you back, but that requires a different word to the one that brought you here.'

'You've trapped me,' Harry laughed. 'I did think it might be a trap, but I did not expect to be trapped by you.'

'I will give you the word once you answer my questions,' Fleur assured him, proud of her trick. He was showing her the Triwizard Trophy for this, that would remind her who won the real competition.

'What questions?' There were so many questions that he couldn't, shouldn't answer if she asked. He hoped it wasn't any of those, he didn't want to lie to her.

I won't lie, he decided.

'Why would you not speak to me after the Yule Ball?' Her eyes fixed themselves on a point just between his, piercing, and he wondered if she could use legilimency. Half of him wished she could, because it would be far simpler if she already knew, the other half curled up in embarrassment at the very idea.

'You avoided me,' he replied, 'you used your allure on me, kissed me, and then refused to speak to me for almost two months.' Harry felt he had a fairly solid case, even if he regretted some of his reaction afterwards. He didn't feel any remorse for some of it. Pettigrew had died and Harry had been freed because she had pushed him over the edge.

'I did not use my allure to affect you,' she defended. He was glad to see that small flicker of guilt pass through her eyes again and know for sure that whatever he was to her, it was not nothing.

'Yes you did,' Harry exclaimed, 'after the Yule Ball in the Room of Requirement, when you wanted to test my resistance. I felt it, Fleur.'

'You called me beautiful,' she smiled, leaning in a little closer. Harry had the distinct impression that she knew something he didn't.

'You used your charm on me,' Harry pointed out in his defence, 'and then you kissed me and left.'

'I'd drunk more wine than I should have,' Fleur confessed. 'I was feeling reckless, and I had never kissed anyone before, but I could not use my allure to make you think I was beautiful, not even if I tried. It is a compulsion to impress, to want, nothing more.'

'I didn't feel any desire to impress you,' Harry remembered aloud. He had never even come close to managing to forget that evening. 'Why did you avoid me?' He asked quickly, to escape the next question, the one he saw looming ominously in Fleur's very clear, very close eyes.

'I had a lot of things to think about,' she explained calmly, 'most of them were to do with you.' There was a flicker of something across her face, a tremor of anxiety that shook the facade of calm she was presenting to him.

'I'm sorry about the second task,' he said after a minute. 'I should not have been so cruel to you.'

'Why did you do that?' Fleur drew back a little so she could see him properly and Harry suddenly found there was a whole lot more air in between them to breathe. It all smelt of the same scent of burnt holly that clung to the blond veela.

'I was angry,' he admitted. 'You used to me to save Gabrielle, you used how I felt about you to make me do what you wanted. I hated that.' Harry had really hated that.

'How do you feel about me?' Her question, the question, wavered when Fleur spoke it, but she leant in confidently, as if unphased. Her face was much closer than before, only a hand's length from his own.

All the air disappeared from in between them and the words went with it, evaporating off his tongue every time he tried to say something.

'I won't give you the word to go back until you answer,' she warned him, half-teasing, half-serious. Fleur's voice grew increasingly uncertain.

She's nervous too.

Words didn't seem to be helping him. They kept abandoning him, vanishing on his lips, and as they remained stuck in his throat, Harry could see the hope in her eyes slowly dying. Something wet welled desperately in its place.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her across what little was left of the gap between them, giving up on his traitorous tongue.

'Is that your answer,' she whispered, her hair falling around their faces in a tickling, silver cascade.

Harry shook his head. 'No,' he managed to exhale. Her hands came from beside him on the willow tree to rest on his shoulders, but she didn't move away from the gentle pressure of their contact.

It was enough to give him the courage to kiss her. He slid his other hand up from the small of her back to the base of her neck and pressed his lips into hers as gently as he could.

Fleur was far less tentative.

The moment their lips touched her hands swept up into his hair and she crushed herself against him, pushing every curve of her body into the contours of his, and pressing his back hard into the tree. Her tongue tasted of marzipan again, leaving a sweet tang traced along his upper lip.

'That was a good answer,' she told him breathlessly when they separated.

'Gabrielle was right?'

'She will not let me ever forget it.' Fleur scowled playfully, but she was too happy to hide it for long and her warm smile soon spread back across her face.

'Good,' Harry decided. 'I don't ever want you to.' She kissed him again for that, more softly, taking his lower lip teasingly between her teeth.

'You aren't getting the word for the portkey,' Fleur smiled, running her hands through his hair, 'not until I'm satisfied.'

'I'm only fourteen, remember,' Harry reminded her, suddenly fearful.

'Almost fifteen,' she smirked, eying him coyly, then she laughed and kissed him again. 'It doesn't matter, I stopped thinking about your age a while ago.'

Harry leant his head back against the tree trunk, letting Fleur rest her cheek on his. 'How is this going to work? You will be in France, I will be in Britain.' Thoughts of Voldemort, Dumbledore, horcruxes and Death Eaters flooded through his head as he wished, not for the first time, that he was someone else.

'You can come visit me,' Fleur murmured into his neck, eyes closed, 'with that portkey. I will make one for myself, and we will both come here, whenever we can.'

'For the rest of our lives?' Harry asked her gently.

'Until we think of something better,' she told him, 'or I will just not tell you the word to send you back to Britain, and keep you here with me. Gabby would like that, she'd find it very romantic.'

'You'd kidnap the Boy-Who-Lived?' Harry teased her.

'Nobody would ever look for you here in France,' she decided, sounding worryingly serious. 'If you wanted, you could disappear and stay with me.' There was an unspoken desire there, but enough realism for Harry to know he wouldn't hurt her by refusing.

'You know I can't,' Harry responded, with surprising regret. 'I have to finish school, and that's the least of my worries.'

'Voldemort,' Fleur muttered angrily. 'We heard the rumours, even if your ministry denies it.'

'I have a plan,' he assured her, grinning cheerfully. 'He'll be defeated, I'll get wonderful exam results, win the house cup, and be in complete control of my life for the first time.'

It was a very vague plan, one that was little more than a list of four words, but it seemed to reassure Fleur.

It's five words now, Harry decided, changing his mind. Prophecy. Horcruxes. OWLs. NEWTs. Fleur. And certainly not in that order.

'I will help,' Fleur decided, shifting slightly to look up at him. 'I have only six more months at Beauxbatons left, then I am applying for a job with the Bureau d'énigmes. It will not be easy to get in, it takes years sometimes, but, hopefully, I will be able to work with the most complicated enchanted things in existence. Other things do not interest me yet, and my family is wealthy enough. In the meantime,' she leant back into his neck, 'I shall help you however I can and you will come and visit me.'

That apparently was that, because she gently place her finger on his lips when he tried to talk about the future again, and shook her head. Harry relaxed and kissed the finger tip.

Fleur was right. This was not the time to worry about such things, somehow, despite his best efforts, he'd managed to find her, his closest equal, and in this moment that was more important to him than anything else could be.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. Now the second part of the genre definition will actually begin in earnest, though I'm still concerned that without the three chapters pre-third task that the ending of this chapter will feel like a leap. I hope that gives you an impression of how long this could end up being provided I don't die first, either of natural causes or by being assassinated by J K Rowling for butchering her universe. I do wonder sometimes if she ever reads this stuff, and what she would make of it if she did.

37. The Game is Afoot

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I was tempted to make a second fic for the 'sequel', but then I realised it would make a mess of the titles and I'd have to spend ages thinking of something vaguely clever and relevant to name each one. Which is probably not worth it. So I'm just going to continue straight on, if you hate this decision, or have any brilliant ideas on structuring, feel free to review and tell me.

The first part of the OotP arc begins here.

Chapter 37

'Doesn't your school start today,' Vernon grumbled as Harry made his way downstairs.

'Yes,' Harry answered distantly, stealing Dudley's bacon off his plate in passing. The boy gave a squeal of outrage and looked pleadingly at his parents. They did nothing. The elder Dursley's had learnt their lesson very quickly.

Dudley was a bit slower, and would probably never realise that size wasn't everything, but Harry enjoyed tormenting him. It felt quite justified.

'That's very good bacon,' he congratulated his aunt. She pursed her lips in displeasure at his behaviour, but Aunt Petunia had been oddly uncaring of his use of magic around the house. Harry had even caught her watching him with soft eyes on occasion, just as she was now.

Perhaps I remind her of her sister more now.

Harry didn't particularly care. The Dursley's had missed their chance to earn a spot in Harry's heart or life a long time ago.

'Why are you still here then?' Dudley demanded, still upset over the loss of his bacon. It was the only remaining part of his old breakfast, and Harry knew he saved it to the end to take away the taste of the grapefruit.

'The train leaves London at eleven, it's already nearly ten.' Aunt Petunia noted very quietly.

Harry raised an eyebrow and she turned away, unwilling to explain just how she knew the time at which the train departed.

'You remember how I can apparate at will,' Harry explained to Dudley. He'd found that once he changed the way he described magic to make it seem like some kind of super-power, or an ability from one of his games, that Dudley suddenly became a surprisingly attentive audience.

Dudley nodded with a wary glance at his father, who was listening just as attentively while staring very hard at the paper.

'I can do that to get to school, the other students can't, so I don't need to get the train like them.'

'Oh,' Dudley responded, 'that makes sense.' His face was stretched into the that's-kind-of-cool expression he normally reserved for Harry's special explanations, or the TV.

He let him keep his last piece of bacon for that. It might help his cousin learn.

A reward for positive behaviour.

'So when are you leaving?' Vernon demanded, his brows crumpling suspiciously over his small eyes.

'Now,' Harry grinned, and vanished with a loud crack that made Uncle Vernon yelp. He was fairly sure he'd made Dudley drop his piece of bacon too. He smirked to himself as he listened to the sounds of argument coming from the kitchen below.

'This can't continue, Petunia,' Vernon's voice drifted up, 'he just does whatever he wants.'

'What do you think we're going to be able to do?' His aunt's reply was slightly impatient and terse. They'd had this conversation several times in the last week alone when they thought he couldn't hear. 'When I was nineteen, Lily and I came back to our parents' house to help them rearrange their garden. Our mother decided she didn't want the shed, it was empty, and nobody had the key to open it. Lily burnt the whole thing into ashes in seconds without saying a word as if it was ordinary and James,' it was the first time he had ever heard either of them say his father's name, 'he was far worse, doing things like that every time he turned around.'

There was another strangled whimper from Uncle Vernon.

'He'll leave like Lily did in a few years and then it will just be us and our son, how we always dreamed it would be.' Harry smiled slightly morbidly. Aunt Petunia might be more right than she realised, Voldemort might decide to make sure he left in the exact same fashion as his mother did.

Harry lifted up the cage he had bought for Hedwig. It was something his relatives would never touch, even if they did suddenly discover the audacity to come into his room without knocking first.

'Argent.'

He wasn't going to Hogwarts until just before the evening and the welcoming feast, which meant at least some of the day could be spent in France, with Fleur.

It was a lot brighter under the willow in France than it was in Britain. The sun lanced down through the gaps in the dome of willow branches, glimmering back of the water and the smooth, round, white pebbles of the shore.

He took a moment to breathe it in: the sound of the water, the rustling of the willow leaves, the warmth scattered in bright bars of light across his back, the smell of grass, hot stone and her.

Fleur was sitting on their branch, her legs and bare feet dangling down to kick gently over his shoulder. She'd tried to set up their portkeys so they'd arrive on the branch, but after Harry had missed it the first few times and ended up bruised and wet from falling into the river he'd persuaded her that it wasn't really necessary.

'Coming up?' Fleur asked, looking down at him from underneath her veil of hair.

Harry grinned at her and apparated up onto the branch. He had no other choice; it wasn't reachable from the ground.

'I still can't believe you're able to apparate at fifteen,' Fleur said enviously, 'even if it is illegally.'

'You're just upset I can get up here too,' Harry quipped, slipping an arm around her shoulders, and letting Fleur lean into his side.

'I'm very glad you can join me up here,' she murmured into his neck.

They watched the ripples of the river and the slim shadows of fish darting underneath. This tree and it's spread of branches was part of the surroundings of Fleur's family home, but to Harry it was their place. A spot so far from Riddle, the Ministry of Magic, and his problems that he might as well have stepped into another world.

'I'm going to have to tell my parents about us soon,' she warned him, 'I never spent half so much time here before, they're suspicious.'

'I don't mind,' he told her. They would have to know eventually, he'd have to meet them. He and Fleur had been whatever this was for the whole summer now.

'Gabrielle has already guessed,' Fleur laughed quietly. 'She spends her time trying to work out how this happened. She wants to know the story.' Neither of them had ever used the words boyfriend or girlfriend. They seemed too childish, too immature, to describe what they meant to each other.

'When do you plan on telling them?' Harry asked. 'I should make sure I can come here to meet them.'

'I don't have a date,' Fleur admitted, 'whenever feels right, or,' she smiled into his shoulder, 'whenever Gabby finally figures out where I keep disappearing off to and tracks us down. I think she considers us her own personal romance story.'

'I shall have to give her my memories of the Room of Requirement,' Harry remarked absentmindedly.

'You are not showing her our first kiss,' Fleur ordered, straightening up and flicking her hair back over her shoulder. 'That moment is ours.'

'I meant the other memories,' Harry placated, he'd no intention of sharing something that would be so embarrassing to watch. It was bad enough that he had thought he'd been under her allure, Fleur had never let him forget that, she seemed to take great pride in it.

'That's the only time we were ever in there together,' Fleur responded, puzzled, but curious.

I never told her, did I?

Now that he'd brought it up without thinking he remembered why. It was almost as mortifying as showing Fleur's little sister their first kiss would be.

'It's not important,' he smiled, knowing that Fleur would not let it go.

'No,' she smirked, enjoying his embarrassment, 'you have to tell me now.'

'No I don't,' Harry countered, already aware of what would happen next. Fleur would make him look at her and then she'd do something that made it impossible for Harry not to give her what she wanted.

A pair of cool fingers turned his face to hers, leaving him to gaze helplessly into her summer sky eyes.

If I didn't know better I would think it was her allure.

Harry knew that it was impossible for her to charm him like that now, he'd made her test him several times, just to see if he was affected at all as his occlumency improved over the summer. There was an impulse, a slight desire to impress her, but it faded the moment he began to clear his mind, something he had now advanced well beyond.

The fact that he couldn't seem to refuse her anything was entirely inexplicable.

'Fine.' He crumbled quickly, just Fleur knew he would. She kissed him gently to make him feel better about giving in to her again. 'When we weren't speaking,' Fleur shifted uncomfortably on the branch next to him, 'I would go back to the room to use it to help me, but since it tries to give you want…' He left it hanging, unwilling to explain any further if he had to. Not even his occlumency exercises were enough to stop the flush rising onto his cheeks.

'The pictures,' Fleur somehow remembered. She chuckled softly at his obvious shock. 'I nearly saw those twice,' she told him, 'you all but ran from the room before it changed back.'

Harry squirmed under her amused stare, cheeks burning.

'Gabby would love to see that,' she smiled, 'she'd find it quite romantic.'

'It's embarrassing,' Harry muttered, 'I could barely use the room.'

Fleur's hand slid up his cheek bone into his hair, pulling him across so she could kiss him.

'I like the idea of you moping about me in a room full of my pictures,' she laughed. 'Will you do it again this year?'

'If I can't visit you often, probably,' Harry confessed, kissing her back.

Of course Fleur liked the idea. She had a proud streak as wide as the willow tree, she'd love that she had had such an affect on him.

'Have you told anyone about me?' she asked, looking up at him demurely.

'Sort of,' Harry smiled. 'I don't have any living magical relations, but I mentioned you to my friends.' Salazar already knew, he didn't have any secrets from the painting of his ancestor.

'Katie Bell,' Fleur growled more than a little possessively.

'Not a threat,' Harry grinned, 'she knows you'd come and scorch her if she tried anything, but she doesn't want to. It's all in the past, like our spring of discontent.'

Fleur scowled at him, but she was only playing. He'd told her the second time they'd met here, that he and Katie were just friends and would never be anything more. Her concern about it had been touching, even sweet, but only until she'd threatened to immolate Katie if she ever had tried anything.

'Neville Longbottom too?'

'Yes,' Harry nodded, 'they both knew, Neville saw the room and Katie just refused to accept that she was wrong when I told her that there was nothing between us.' Fleur scrunched her nose up at the reminder of how they'd danced around each other. Harry knew she regretted not speaking to him, she'd said as much, sitting up here and telling him that there were daffodils in Spring and that she should have shown him. He'd told her that she could show him next year, and all the ones after that.

'I can't stay here all day,' Fleur said sadly, running her fingers along the rough bark of the bough. 'I am not able to apparate to Beauxbatons, because of the wards. I still want to know why you think you can apparate into Hogwarts, especially after you bounced off the wards last time you tried.'

'It's a secret,' Harry announced proudly. Maybe one day he'd tell her, but not until he was sure it could never be used against either of them. He looked down when Fleur didn't respond like she normally did. 'You have go now, don't you?'

'We've been here for longer than you think,' she smiled, pointing at the sun through the branches of the tree. It had risen over and passed the tree in the time they'd spent there.

'How will I know when I can meet you?' Harry asked.

'I'll enchant something to let us stay in contact,' Fleur decided, 'we'll use that.'

'I'll send you a letter when it breaks,' Harry jibed.

'It will not break,' she declared, jumping off the branch to land lightly on her feet. 'I will owl it to you, with a suitable phrase to use it, of course.'

Fleur's suitable phrases often turned out to be jokes at his expense in french, so Harry had developed a habit of translating them with an old dictionary he'd found before saying them. She hadn't taught him enough French for him to catch them on his own yet. In fact that was probably why she hadn't.

Harry apparated down behind her with a soft snapping sound.

'Still not silent,' she teased.

'It will be eventually,' Harry defended, 'you have an advantage with your special magic, I have to work harder for it.'

Fleur huffed, sparks dancing across her fingers. 'You are envious,' she decided, 'and your magic is not normal either, is it, you have a very unusual wand.'

'True,' he conceded, 'but I still don't have, how did you describe it, soft magic.'

'It would not make sense to you,' she told him, slightly serious, 'you are not veela, you can't feel it. Gabrielle can feel everything about a piece of magic if it is strong enough, but I can still feel enough to identify whose it is if I know them well enough.'

'Oh,' that caught Harry's interest, she had not mentioned it before.

'The maze was blanketed in your magic,' she told him by way of explanation, 'I knew it was yours, Gabby told me it was roiling, hot and angry. She said it was like boiling water, but hungry,' Fleur laughed throatily at his scowl. Gabrielle made his magic sound like a cup of tea.

'Well I was all of those, except hungry,' Harry responded.

'I'd love to know what spell you used to give off such an aura,' Fleur eyed him speculatively, 'but I don't think you'll tell me.'

'It's a secret,' Harry repeated, worried, but still sounding playful.

'You're just afraid I'll do it better,' she decided.

'It's a fire spell,' he told her, 'I know you'll be better at it, not that you need it,' he grinned, nodding at the sparks she was still absentmindedly conjuring over her finger tips.

'True,' she echoed back at him.

Fleur's face fell.

'I have to go now, Harry,' her toes curled reluctantly into the ground, 'but I'll enchant something and send it to you as soon as I can so we can come back here.'

'I could spend forever with you here,' Harry told her, more than slightly sad. He planned to, one day. Harry had spent all summer making plans and thinking things through, just to try and make sure he came back here in the end.

'I know.' She kissed him again, for longer than usual, pressing herself against him to remember how he felt, just as he pulled her into him, then she gave him one last smile and flickered away without a sound.

Just to rub it in.

Harry took one last look around at the tiny world he wished he never had to leave, then with a soft snap the world spun, and he stepped into Slytherin's study.

'You're back,' the portrait noted, as Harry checked himself over.

'All of me,' Harry decided, not finding anything missing. He hadn't splinched himself since apparating to Diagon Alley last year, but it paid to be careful.

'What are you planning on learning today?' Everything was planned now, even when they fell apart there were more plans underneath. Five words had become five thousand and it had become second nature to perceive the world around him as the rippling actions of others. Harry had come to realise that it was easier to create the ripples than weather them unaware. Salazar had dubbed it his true character, proud of his heirs eventual adoption of his mindset, and attributing the brainless Godricness to Dumbledore's influence.

'There's not too long before the welcoming feast,' Harry informed him, 'so nothing complicated.'

'The welcoming feast,' Salazar mused, 'already, but you're not even halfway through what you wanted to learn over the summer.'

'Well-'

'You told me that you expected to have finished all the OWL level work in the subjects you feel behind in last year by now.'

'I'm ahead of where I wanted to be with my study of Occlumency, I caught up from last year, and I'm already well past OWL level in some subjects,' Harry countered. 'And you should know what day and time it is, I bought a clock for you, it was the first thing I did.'

'It broke,' Salazar told him matter of factly.

Of course, Harry remembered. The magic here would interfere with the electricity.

'My point still stands,' Harry continued, mentally planning the purchase of a more antique time-keeping device.

'It's a good point,' Slytherin said acidly. 'You excelled in an area that we have always been exceptional at, and forgot about everything else.'

'It was the most important area,' Harry reminded him.

'Of course,' the painting continued as if it hadn't heard, 'if you hadn't spent every second you could in France you might have had another year to learn about the more interesting fields of magic.'

Salazar was taking it a little too badly for everything to be as it should be.

'What don't I know?' he asked.

'Enough about magic to survive or stand a chance of defeating Voldemort,' the portrait retorted sharply. 'You'll get stronger naturally as you move towards your majority, or if you decide to keep moving through the pages of the books on rituals, but knowledge is a part of power, Harry, and he has decades more of it than you.'

'I don't have decades,' Harry replied a little tartly.

'Which is why you can't afford to waste time.' He shook his head when Harry's eyes narrowed. 'I'm not saying spending time with her is a waste, I know better than most how valuable time like that truly is, but don't forget about everything else.'

'I won't,' Harry assured his ancestor. 'We have a plan,' he reminded the painting, 'several, in fact.'

'I suppose you can learn about the more important areas of magic in our time down here,' Salazar decided. 'Legilimency is what we should start with. Riddle was, as all our family is,' Harry winced, 'talented at the mind arts. You need to be able to keep him out, and use the skill against his followers.'

'I have no safe way of testing my prowess,' Harry shrugged, 'not without provoking Dumbledore to go rooting through my head.'

'That's a bad idea,' Slytherin agreed, 'and you can't exactly learn how I did.'

'Why not?' Harry demanded.

'I learnt from a sphinx,' he said simply. Harry blinked.

He has a point.

'Did it test you?' Harry asked curiously, remembering the sphinx in the maze.

'No,' Salazar shrugged. 'Sphinxes live for thousands of years, but they're normally very reclusive. This one was interested in us, spent centuries studying how we thought in comparison to how it did, I tracked it down near the Byzantine city of Ephesus and convinced it to teach me about the mind arts. It was an unexplored branch of magic back then, not many wizards bothered with it, and most still don't. It takes a certain type of wizard or witch to understand and master it.'

'It tested me,' Harry told him.

'You met a sphinx?!' The painting dropped its wand in surprise.

'There was one in the tournament,' Harry shrugged, unconcerned.

'A sphinx would not have deigned to take any part of that tournament,' Salazar shook his head. 'They don't care about wizards and their affairs, not when they can strip every thought from your head in an instant.'

'Than what was it doing there!'

'Testing you, obviously,' Slytherin retorted. 'Did it tell you anything?'

'A riddle, one I don't understand.'

'Well don't forget it,' the founder told him sternly, 'it will make sense when you need it, no doubt.'

'I shall teach you the principles of legilimency, then,' the painting decided. 'You'll have to find your own way to test yourself and your progress.'

'Now?' There was still a little time before he had to sneak to the Great Hall and pretend he had been on the train.

'I'll give you a brief introduction,' Salazar confirmed.

Harry took a seat behind the desk, pushing the stack of newspapers and the bag of galleons to one side.

'Legilimency is not the opposite of occlumency,' Slytherin began firmly. 'That's a generalisation made by wizards who don't understand the subject. Occlumency is organising and controlling your own emotions, memories and thoughts, whereas legilimency is the art of reading and understanding those of others. It is a different principle entirely, and far less obvious.'

Harry was tempted to argue, both the sphinx and Riddle had been far from subtle in their attempts to use it upon him, but he refrained, because there wasn't time for Salazar's rebuttal and explanation.

'The first step is active legilimency, the incantation is legilimens and it requires direct eye contact to maintain for those who are not a master of the art. This is not the same as transfiguration, you can't visualise it, your intent must be entirely focused by will. Active legilimency is a battle of intellect and intention. The mind is not a straight forward object, you cannot read from its pages, meaning and connection must be gleaned by more abstract means, like all the best branches of magic,' Salazar added cheerfully.

'And passive legilimency?'

'The more subtle, undetectable by the unaware, aspect. It's an extension of wandless, wordless, active legilimency and very hard to master. You have to perfectly find the edge of the knife, a legilimency attack so light it cannot be felt, but strong enough to skim the surface thoughts and emotions of your target.' The painting petted his serpent thoughtfully.

'I felt it when Dumbledore tried to use it against me?' Harry inquired.

'You're a practitioner of occlumency, you're much more aware of your mind, so you are more sensitive to such attacks.'

'That makes sense,' Harry agreed.

'Go to the feast,' the painting sighed, 'I can see you edging towards the door as it is.'

Harry shot him a rueful smile, but strode out with a parting wave.

'Oh wave,' he heard the painting say bitingly as he crossed the bridge, 'why don't you wave your wand at that basilisk that you still haven't removed?'

Harry smiled, pausing before the gaping mouth of the basilisk, and sending a thin stream of fiendfyre down its throat. A ghastly, red glow poured out through the dead serpent's mouth and eyes, brightening to white, then its scales hardened and the whole thing crumbled to ash.

They drifted gently across the chamber, settling onto the floor where Harry vanished them.

'Hey Myrtle,' he called out into the toilet above the chamber.

There was a loud squeal of surprise and the pearly figure of the ghostly girl flew through the two cubicles walls.

'Harry,' she gasped, flushing silver. 'How did you get here?' Students aren't meant to be at the castle yet,' she whispered slyly.

'I came to see you, Myrtle,' he smiled. 'Things are going to be complicated this year, he's back, the one who opened the chamber.'

'I thought he was dead,' Myrtle paled, turning so translucent Harry could hardly see her.

'I need you to watch the entrance for me, Myrtle,' Harry asked, his tone serious. 'Tell me if you see anyone near it, or looking for it, anything suspicious at all.'

'I will, Harry,' she promised. 'I'll do anything I can to make sure he's defeated.'

'Thank you, Myrtle,' Harry reached out and placed his finger on the ghost's cold cheek, brushing the cold echo of life with its tip.

'Any time,' she stuttered, then squeaked and dived back into her toilet.

Good. Now I have a guard on the entrance to the chamber.

He felt a little bit guilty for deceiving Myrtle, but it wasn't quite a lie, and he needed a pair of eyes to make sure he knew if anybody found where he was, or even started looking.

It took a small list of spells to make sure he was hidden, the disillusionment charm, the muffling charm and an older, rather clever adaption of the concealing charm that hid anything he touched. Harry suspected it would hide footprints, his scent, and more but had yet to test it.

He arrived in the throng of students flooding into the hall, sliding into a seat alongside Neville and dispelling his pieces of magic.

'Hey, Nev.'

The shy boy jumped several inches, but didn't squeak like he used to. 'Harry,' he smiled, glancing nervously down to where Ron, Seamus and Dean had gathered with Hermione. The whole group seemed more subdued than normal, Seamus and Ron were whispering to one another, but their conversation seemed tired, like the arguments they probably still had about quidditch when the same points were repeated over and over.

He's worried about their reaction to me, Harry realised.

'Don't worry about them, Nev,' he reassured him.

'They might be angry that I'm talking to you,' Neville said sadly.

'Will that make you stop?' Harry asked, knowing the answer before he gave it.

'No,' Neville denied fiercely.

'Then why worry?'

Neville seemed to consider that, then grinned. 'I suppose not, it's hardly anything compared to what the Daily Prophet has been writing about you and Dumbledore.'

'I have a very nice collection of headlines,' Harry smiled. He had a stack of about twenty in the chamber, all dedicated to the smear campaign against anyone who might disagree with the Ministry's version of events. Most of the articles focused on Dumbledore and his supporters in the Wizengamot, but Harry's mentions were normally equally derogatory, just fewer in number.

'I had to make Gran subscribe again so I could see what they were writing.'

He argued with his grandmother?

Neville's letters over the summer had started to imply a certain step up in confidence, with both changes in phrasing and words that were written more firmly onto the parchment, but saying anything against his grandmother was a way beyond what Harry had been expecting.

'Rita Skeeter is a very good journalist,' Harry laughed, 'a terrible person, though. I do wonder how she finds out some of the things she does. Her articles on some of Dumbledore's more outspoken supporters were quite personal and unexpected.'

'Just don't let her find out about your trips to France,' Neville warned, very grave, 'you know what the Ministry will do with that.'

Harry knew only too well. The first article, the one at the very bottom of the stack, was dedicated to the Yule Ball and the date he had enjoyed with Fleur.

A french veela, there are few girls that the pure-blooded bigots would hate to associate with more.

'Are you coming back to Gryffindor Tower, then?' Neville pressed.

Harry had said he was considering it in his letters. The animosity of his housemates had faded towards the end of last year, but after the summer of the Ministry smearing his name he wasn't sure it was the best idea.

'You should,' Neville told him, 'you can't keep using the room, it isn't fair that you're uncomfortable in your own dormitories.'

'I'll come back,' Harry decided. It would be best to act as normally as possible from the beginning to avoid the watchful eye of Dumbledore. He had a prophecy to find, and that would be far easier if he wasn't already under suspicion.

Somewhere at the front of the room the hat finished singing and the huddle of nervous looking first years began to be sorted. Harry wasn't particularly interested in the sorting. He knew by now that if Voldemort intended to try and get to him it would come through the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

The new teacher, given she was the only new face, was a dumpy, wide-faced woman whose sickly smile and horrible pink, velvet attire were likely a step too far even for Riddle. If he was hiding somewhere under all that pink then Harry tipped his hat to him for managing to endure the mortification that must come with it.

His attention was swiftly dragged away from the new teacher to the sudden arrival of steak and kidney pie. It was, inevitably, accompanied by more pumpkin related products than he could shake a fork at, or ever desire to eat.

Further down the table, Katie, who had found herself wedged in between the twin, winked at him and gave a small wave of greeting.

Harry returned it with a small smile. He'd missed his friends, despite having the company of Fleur. Letters were simply not the same.

As the tables cleared the headmaster rose to speak, approaching his lectern with a cheerful gleam in his eyes just as he had every time for the last four years.

Unlike the previous times he was cut off by the clear, precise throat clearing of Hogwarts' new teacher. Harry watched, fascinated, as the squat, pink-clad woman began to speak instead.

'My name is Dolores Umbridge, former Undersecretary to the Minister, and your new Professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts.'

That was all Harry needed to hear. He didn't need to listen to her spiel on slipping standards and ministerial concern, or Hermione's outraged proclamation, to understand what was about to begin happening this year.

The Ministry is afraid of Dumbledore's influence here.

He wasn't all that surprised. The children of most of magical Britain were within these walls and the old wizard's grasp. Riddle's Death-Eaters and Dumbledore's followers had all been interfering within the school at some point over the last few years. The Ministry were last to the party, which was almost amusing considering they were the only ones legally allowed to take action. The real dilemma was how Harry could get this to benefit him and his search for that prophecy.

Umbridge sat down, a satisfied simper spread across her wide, pale face. She was the catalyst, Harry decided. Her character and actions would determine what he had to do this year to get what he needed. He wouldn't be waiting for Voldemort to come and try to kill him, or letting Dumbledore move him around while he remained blind, not this time. This time he had his own plans, and they would be fulfilled.

Dumbledore thanked the new professor very graciously for her words, but the twinkle had faded from his eyes. There were four sides at Hogwarts now. Riddle's, Dumbledore's, the Ministry's and Harry. His advantage lay in everyone assuming there were three.

It's like a game, he grinned.

AN: Please read and review, and thanks to everyone who does. Yes, I skipped out the whole summer, which is a massive, sudden timeskip, but, in context, probably necessary and nothing to panic over. Well, not unless you wanted to read ten chapters of serious filler, punctuated only by fluffy Fleur moments and the occasional piece of Dudley baiting. I did have a few good ideas for the latter, though...

38. Dolores Umbridge

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up...

Chapter 38

It was strange waking up back in the dormitory of Gryffindor Tower. Harry had had to blink and rub his eyes before he remembered he was not in the Room of Requirement and that was why the hangings were red and gold, rather than silver and blue.

He dressed as quickly as he could, then gathered his things and went to wait downstairs for Neville. It was best to avoid the tension between Seamus and Ron. The two had been whispering all evening through the feast, but eventually it had broken down into an awkward silence between the two of them. Harry was fairly sure that they hadn't been talking about quidditch this time.

Neville had made a scruffy, half-asleep appearance a few minutes later, arriving with half his books in his arms rather than in his bag.

'Seamus and Ron are arguing again,' he explained, borrowing the arm of Harry's chair to sort his things. 'They were having a heated discussion on the express, but they're just yelling now.'

'What about?' Seamus, Dean and Ron had been close last year.

'The Daily Prophet,' Neville shrugged. 'Seamus' mum agrees with the Ministry and Ron, being an insensitive idiot insulted her without realising. Seamus wasn't too happy with it and they've been arguing about whether Dumbledore's wrong or not every time they've spoken since.'

'At least it isn't about me,' Harry smiled wryly.

'They weren't too bothered about anything the Prophet said about you. Ron mentioned his mum being upset, but he didn't care what they were writing about you, said it as none of his business since you weren't friends anymore.'

'First intelligent thing he's done in a while,' Harry remarked.

'Second, actually,' Neville laughed. 'He believes Dumbledore, and by extension that you were put in the tournament by Voldemort, not hoodwinked by some dark wizard.'

'You said the name,' Harry noted.

'I gave Gran an awful shock,' his friend smiled, 'she was going on and on about how corrupt and useless the Ministry is and how there was no reason I could ever want to read anything in the Daily Prophet if it was basically promoting for You-Know-Who. I corrected the name and she stopped dead and renewed the subscription without a word.'

'She must have realised you knew what you wanted, Nev,' Harry replied, impressed. He'd heard enough about Neville's grandmother to know she was not a lady to be trifled with.

'I do know what I want,' Neville said quietly. 'I want to be strong, so nobody ever calls me a squib, or looks down on me again.'

'Should I say I told you so to Ron?' Harry joked, as the Weasley stormed through the common room wearing a thunderous expression.

'I wouldn't,' he warned, 'Ron's decided to just let things go, since he knows now it's at least partially his fault and that you aren't going to be friends with him, best not to cause trouble again.'

'I'm only joking, Nev,' Harry told him. 'It would be silly to create animosity between myself and someone whose fighting one of my battles for me.'

'Breakfast?' Neville responded hopefully, his books now in his bag.

'Definitely,' Harry agreed, 'we've got Snape with the Slytherins first thing again, I need a full stomach to cope.'

Neville looked more than a little nervous at the mention of his least favourite professor, but nodded despite it.

The groups of students seemed to sort of melt away before him as he walked down the staircase towards the Great Hall. Neville stuck by him, and some of the older Gryffindors and Ravenclaws seemed content to simply ignore him, but the vast majority of the younger years in every house scattered out of his path.

Harry had to bite back a laugh that would, no doubt, have leant credence to the rumours the Ministry was doing their best to spread.

At least it meant that they didn't have to put up with the chattering first years near them on the breakfast table.

'So where were you on the train this morning then?' Neville asked, helping himself to the toast rack.

A few of the more nervous Gryffindor first years darted past their spot near the doors, huddling together as they passed Harry. Clearly the rumour-mongering of Rita Skeeter was having more of an affect than he'd anticipated, but there wasn't much he could do about it, not yet, anyway.

'I came in my by myself,' Harry replied, 'didn't fancy sharing a compartment on the train with any of that lot, so I avoided everyone.' He gestured vaguely at the first years who were occasionally throwing glances his way.

Neville nodded, making the assumption Harry wanted him to.

'I'm impressed you managed to stay out of sight for the whole journey,' his friend smiled.

'I'd've ended up like this,' Harry pointed at the several metre gap around them at the table.

'Nobody wants to sit next to a dangerous murderer, Harry,' Neville remonstrated, waving a finger.

His joke was rather ruined by Hermione, who swung herself in next to Harry before he could finish speaking.

'What happened in the maze?' she demanded, not even reaching for any of the food.

'Why do you want to know?' Harry asked coolly, buying time to think. There were plenty of ways telling anyone anything could come back to haunt him, he'd rather keep his cards close to his chest.

'Viktor died in there,' she gasped, incredulous.

'So they told me,' Harry responded, more solemnly. He'd liked Krum, they hadn't been close, but he'd admired the Bulgarian.

'The Daily Prophet is keen to spread the suggestion that you were responsible,' Hermione pressed. It was clear she didn't believe it, she just hoped Harry would hate the accusations and want to clear his name enough to tell her what really happened.

Last year I would have.

This year was different. He had a plan.

'I'm not interested in what that paper says,' he shrugged nonchalantly. 'I didn't see Krum die,' he looked at Hermione seriously, 'I'll even swear an oath to that if you want.'

'No,' she looked distraught. 'I just need to know what happened. Dumbledore said Voldemort was responsible, the Ministry blamed Ludo Bagman, but neither of them could have possibly cast the curse themselves.'

'Have you tried asking Cedric Diggory?' Harry suggested. 'He's the only other champion who you can ask, but I don't know how much he'll remember. I stunned him when I came to investigate the screaming.'

'The screaming?' Hermione looked slightly pale.

'The Beauxbatons champion,' Harry replied calmly, as if the very idea of Fleur suffering didn't make his blood boil.

'Oh.' She looked quite relieved and Harry's wand hand twitched with anger.

'Ask Diggory,' he told her sharply. 'The Ministry is advised by Malfoy's father, and he's probably not the only supporter of Voldemort in their ranks either.' He cast a completely unnecessary glance at the distant pink figure of Professor Umbridge. Hermione followed his eyes, and he quickly looked away as if afraid of being caught, just the faintest suggestion of distrust.

So it begins.

'So how was your summer?' Harry raised an eyebrow at her, and she looked down, admonished. 'Sorry,' she muttered.

'It was surprisingly tolerable,' Harry smiled, there was no reason he couldn't be civil, he supposed. She might be useful later, most of the Gryffindor's listened to Hermione when she wanted to be heard.

'Your relatives?'

'Oh,' Harry grinned darkly, 'they weren't any trouble at all.'

They'd tried to be trouble. His uncle had dared to go rummaging through his things in search of his wand, earning himself some quality alone time with the asp, and Dudley had tried to hit him once. He hadn't tried it again, not after his dinner had turned into a small pool of maggots halfway through the meal. He'd refused to touch anything that looked remotely like chicken for almost a week afterwards. Harry suspected his transfiguration trick had done more for Dudley's diet than any number of grapefruit.

'That's good,' Hermione smiled uncertainly, then she caught sight of Diggory getting up to leave and was gone in moments.

Harry helped himself to more eggs.

'What did happen in the maze?' Neville asked, slightly nervous.

'You don't want to know, Nev,' Harry said quietly. 'I'd rather not talk about it either, sorry.'

His friend nodded understandingly, then took another bite of toast, carefully balancing slices of tomato along its edge.

'Potions,' he sighed after he finished eating the tomatoes that had fallen free.

'Potions,' Harry agreed. The Triwizard Tournament had had some upsides, and avoiding Snape's dreary dungeon was foremost among them.

He rushed down the last few forkfuls of eggs, gathered his bag from under the bench and followed Neville down. Snape had probably been saving every scrap of disdain from the last year until this lesson.

'Ah,' Snape murmured from the back of the dungeon once everyone had filed in. 'At last we have the privilege of Mr Potter's company again.'

He strode down the aisle between the desks, tutting softly.

'This June you will all be sitting an examination in which you will prove just how much you have learnt about the composition and used of magical potions. Some of you,' his eyes drifted past Neville to rest on Harry, 'have not spent all of the last four years as wisely as they could have done.'

He waved his wand at the board, casting a simple, wordless revealing charm to disclose the recipe of the revealing charm to the class.

The Draught of Peace.

'Partner up,' the potions professor drawled, 'and I suggest due diligence in the preparation of this particular potion, it requires a delicate touch.'

'Come on, Nev,' Harry began to arrange his things across the desk between them.

'You want to work with me?'

'Why would I choose anyone else?' Harry stared at him curiously.

'I'm terrible at potions,' Neville stated.

'You don't think well with Snape looming over you,' Harry corrected. 'There's no way he'll be able to pass up commenting on me, so if we're together that means I'll draw all his attention.'

Neville tentatively reached for the moonstone, but Harry caught his hand.

'Make sure everything happens exactly as it says on the board,' he warned, 'I don't think Snape was joking about due diligence.'

His friend gulped, but began to slowly add the powdered moonstone just as the instructions said to. The potion very slowly changed to a bright purple. It was a only a few shades beyond Uncle Vernon's most spectacular effort of facial colouration.

'Let it simmer,' Harry reminded him gently, when Neville's hand strayed towards the syrup of hellebore.

From his favourite shadowy spot at the back of the dungeon Snape was staring at the pair of them, an unreadable expression on his face.

Harry ignored him.

Across from them, Ron and Dean were frantically retreating from a violently sparking potion. The bowl of powdered moonstone was sinking, upside down, into the top of the cauldron.

'That will be zero, Weasley, Thomas,' Snape sneered, vanishing the contents. 'Apparently when I instructed you to be careful you thought yourself above listening.'

Their potion flared pink and Neville stopped moving in motionless surprise. He was staring at the potion in shock, glancing at the instructions and back at his cauldron.

Is he really so surprised that it's working?

He left Neville to keep things going, trusting him to add the syrup and leave it to simmer until it was ready. Snape had not been kind enough to provide powdered porcupine quills, which meant one of them had to carefully and meticulously grind the whole ones down to a very fine powder.

'Longbottom,' Snape remarked dispassionately, 'you've found yourself a new victim.'

'Add these, Nev,' Harry told his friend, passing him the the porcupine quills and stepping around in between him and Snape, supposedly so he could retrieve the powdered unicorn horn.

The potions master gave Harry a piercing stare, but turned on his heel and swept off to the front of the class.

Their potion did not reach the anticipated glimmering white that the instructions described. It came to a thin, ivory hued liquid that, when Harry or Neville forgot to stir and it grew too hot, would thicken just enough to let off the merest hint of a shimmer.

Around them the rest of the class had either long since given up, or continued to add more porcupine quills in the hope it might prompt their potions to shift somewhere further along the spectrum from yellow to white.

'We did ok,' Harry decided, finding only a few comparable brewings. Malfoy had reached a similar sort of state as they had, though his potion was slightly less white and more glowing than glimmering, and Hermione had somehow managed to achieve a potion that was glimmering perfectly, but remained an odd silvery-grey. It rather reminded Harry of Bertha Jorkins conjured hand.

'If you are…. finished,' Snape's eyes swept contemptuously across the class, pausing only to rest on the three pairs that had come close to the desired outcome, 'bring a flask of your potion to my desk.'

'I'll do it, Nev,' Harry volunteered, 'you start tidying up.'

He very carefully filled one of the flasks, it wasn't quite basilisk venom, but he didn't want to spill it on himself and find out the difference. Neville had managed to make even the most inert potions dangerous previously, and Harry wasn't taking any chances with his draught of peace.

Snape slid the flask firmly across the surface of his desk using the back of his hand, moving it to join a handful of others, among which Hermione's and Malfoy's could be counted.

'Remain behind, Potter,' he called out as Harry turned away, 'I need to make sure your latest year of glory hasn't dragged your grade down past its usual level of mediocrity.'

It wouldn't be potions without detention or points lost, Harry supposed.

The rest of the class, once Harry smiled at a lingering Neville to show him it was fine to leave, quickly escaped the dungeons and headed for the next lesson. Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Harry leant against the corner of the bench nearest Snape's desk and waited for the sallow-faced man to begin.

'Why did you partner with Longbottom?' Snape demanded silkily.

'He's my friend,' Harry responded calmly, wearing a blank mask.

'Well, despite your choice of potions partner your brew is marginally better than the only other two I shall spend my time grading.' Snape's tone had changed from its normal, disgusted drawl. It was almost neutral. 'It seems you might have a chance of continuing to learn from me after this year, so long as you keep Longbottom from destroying your work.'

'Perhaps, sir,' Harry ventured, 'you might consider not standing over him as he works, he does not need to be intimidated.' Snape's eyes flashed fire, but the professor did not respond to Harry's bold suggestion.

'I have kept you behind, Potter, to inform you that you need to be more careful. The headmaster believes that you will somehow be very important in the coming war against the Dark Lord. I have warned him that he shouldn't expect too much from a child, but he was adamant. The headmaster insisted I gently remind you that apparating around your house and vanishing every other day is not a good idea.'

How did he know? And why tell Snape?

'I will tell you,' Snape continued softly, ' that not only is it not a good idea to risk the justice of the Ministry, but it is a terrible idea to act so irresponsibly in the face of the Dark Lord's return.'

He stalked round his desk and pulled out a thin parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

'Black sends his love,' the potions professor sneered, 'he'd have got himself killed sneaking out to see you if we hadn't promised him a way of communicating, so take this. It's an enchanted mirror, two-way, speak Black's first name to activate it and if he's near the mirror, which I'm sure will be at all times, then you'll get an answer.'

'Thank you, sir.' Harry ignored Snape's disdain and took some joy from the devotion his godfather had to him. He hadn't been able to write to Sirius, courtesy of the Fidelius charm that concealed him, and missed his godfather greatly over the summer.

'And, Potter,' Snape suddenly assumed his neutral demeanour again, 'next time you want to distract the Dark Lord it would be best not to do it by claiming to have killed his more useful servants.'

Harry's eyes snapped up to the dark orbs of his professor, emptying his thoughts as had become habit upon making eye contact with the wizards, and turning his forearm ever so slightly, just in case.

'We both know that you lied to the Dark Lord, but he seems to believe you, despite any advice to the contrary.' Snape swooped round the desk to grab Harry's wrist, his fingers pressing painfully into the underside of his arm. 'Do you understand, Potter? He is taking you seriously now.'

'He wasn't before?' Harry asked, half-serious, half-joking.

'Get out, Potter,' Snape hissed, but none of his usual contempt accompanied his anger.

Harry happily complied. It was defence after double potions, and he was quite looking forward to seeing just what their new professor would be up to this year. He needed to remain out of sight, so he could continue to learn from Salazar and discover what the prophecy said about him, which meant that the Ministry, Dumbledore and Riddle's sycophants all needed to focus on each other instead of him. It wouldn't be easy to do that given the Ministry seemed utterly unwilling to accept the version of events Dumbledore had related to them. This new, horribly pink, teacher was his opportunity to get a glimpse of what the Ministry really thought.

He was, courtesy of Snape, already late, so he doubted he would be getting on the teacher's good side, but she was from the Ministry, so he hadn't really stood much of a chance to begin with.

The squat, pink-draped woman was lecturing the class on the syllabus for the year when he walked in and apologised for being late.

She didn't take it well.

'Mr Potter,' she simpered. 'Why are you late?'

'Professor Snape wished to speak with me,' Harry answered politely, closing the door quietly behind him.

'You have a note?'

'Sadly the professor neglected to burden me with one.' He smiled disarmingly and took a seat at the back beside Neville, as far from the former official as possible.

'That will be ten points from Gryffindor for lying, Potter,' she announced in her high, girlish voice. 'Lying is a terrible habit to get into.'

Harry suppressed a wry smile. Ten points was not a bad price for learning how Professor Umbridge would be trying to deal with him.

As I was saying before Mr Potter started creating stories, your education in this subject has been unacceptably broken up. A new teacher every year, all very poor choices, and jumping all over the curriculum, with no regard to what the Ministry knows you need to understand.' She tutted to herself, then pulled a short, thick wand from her handbag and gave it sharp flick. The stack of books on her desk rose and deposited themselves before every member of the class.

Defensive Magical Theory.

A cursory flick was enough to tell Harry that any students who couldn't get additional help from others were going to fail their OWLs.

It was, while completely useless, a fascinating book. The pictures and instructions reminded him of the emergency procedure cards and demonstrations on planes, and the absurd lack of any practical magic in the only class Hogwarts taught that covered offensive magic was very interesting. Has someone convinced Fudge that we might rise up to overthrow him?

'I have a question,' Hermione, like several of the class, had opened the book to scan its contents.

'Is it about the book, Miss…?' Umbridge queried, adjusting her lurid, pink cardigan.

'Granger,' Hermione responded, 'and not entirely.'

'Well, if it isn't about the book, perhaps you can wait to see me at the end.' The suggestion was sugar sweet.

'My question is about the aim of the course,' Hermione continued, staring hard at the squat professor. 'It's our OWL year, Professor Umbridge, and I'm not convinced this book is sufficient to enable us to pass.'

At least she was intelligent enough not to directly challenge her in her own classroom.

'The Ministry has consulted the opinions of several very experienced witches and wizards, Miss Granger, there is no need for concern. I can assure all of you that this will be completely unlike previous years where you have been exposed to some very dangerous creatures.' Harry had the feeling she wasn't referring to Grindylows and Boggarts. A small plume of anger rose at her bigotry towards Professor Lupin, his only good teacher in three years.

'There's no mention of using magic,' Dean called out, confused and more than a little horrified. Nobody wanted their favourite, most practical lesson, to transition into another repetition of theory.

'Please raise your hand if you wish to speak…' she trailed off, not knowing the muggle-born's name.

'Dean Thomas,' he replied stiffly.

'Why on earth, Mr Thomas, do you think you will need to use dark or dangerous spells in a classroom?' Umbridge tittered. 'It's quite ridiculous.'

'How else are we going to be prepared for what's out there?' Ron demanded.

'Raise your hand, Mr Weasley,' Umbridge snapped, her unnatural girlish demeanour vanishing for an instant.

She recognises the pure-bloods, then, Harry noted quietly.

Professor Umbridge was quickly making herself unpopular with his classmates, and she was revealing more of herself than she should. An obvious advocate of pure-blood supremacy and, if his assumption was correct, none too fond of werewolves either. Harry leant back in his chair and watched, hoping to see more.

'There is nothing out there,' she simpered. 'The Ministry is merely concerned for the safety of the children of our society.'

'Then they should teach them defensive magic and let them practice it,' Ron burst out, 'or You-Know-Who is going to wander across this country killing who he bloody wants.'

'Ten points from Gryffindor,' Umbridge breathed furiously. 'I will not tolerate such language or such lies in my classroom. The rumour and fear-mongering of a few questionable individuals is not to be listened to. The Ministry clearly stated the truth of events.'

Every eye in the classroom turned to him.

'I agree,' Harry shrugged, suppressing a grin. 'You shouldn't swear in class, and listening to baseless rumours is ill-advisable.' Professor Umbridge's surprised expression was worth the betrayed looks of his fellow students. 'It's obvious that to dismiss the rumours we simply need to find evidence that they aren't true. I'm sure the Ministry are doing their utmost to discredit them,' he finished innocently.

Hermione understood what he was saying straight away, and a ripple of realisation slowly crossed the classroom. It was the first step to ensuring nobody believed anything the Daily Prophet wrote about him. Professor Umbridge was only going to become more unpopular and by associating the rumours written about him with her, Harry would render them toothless.

Umbridge herself could only fix her simpering smile more firmly on her face and pretend that Harry was agreeing with her.

'Turn to the first chapter of your books, please,' the Pink Professor, as Harry had now mentally dubbed her, instructed.

There was a reluctant rustle of paper. Harry picked a point about midway through the first chapter and ran his hand along the spine to keep the book open there. He still needed a way of practising his abilities with the mind arts. The library had no books on the subject, though a few mentioned it briefly in passing, and none of his research had turned up anything remotely useful.

I'll have to ask Salazar, he realised.

The painting would probably be able to offer something useful, perhaps the founder knew how Riddle had mastered it.

Harry couldn't wait to get started, passive legilimency would be an incredible advantage for him, especially if the mind arts were as obscure as Slytherin seemed to believe.

He turned a few pages further, just in case Umbridge was watching, and pushed his wand up the inside of his sleeve, catching it when it fell. The small surges of warmth he got from touching it were a pleasant distraction from the verbose, uninspired meanderings of Wilbert Slinkhard.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Ron, Dean and Hermione muttering subtly between themselves while the Pink Professor watched them maliciously. Harry would not be first in the line of fire, it seemed.

'There's no way I'm going to pass this class' OWL exam now,' Neville fretted in a panicked whisper.

'You aren't going to learn anything useful in here, no.' Harry agreed. 'But I promised to help you, didn't I?'

'You'll help me pass?' Neville abandoned his book to stare, and Harry pointedly tapped its pages until he returned to his pretense.

'Of course I will,' Harry assured him.

'Nobody else would ever do that for me,' Neville murmured gratefully. Harry nodded, stifling the uncomfortable feeling welling up within him.

Why couldn't he have expressed his gratitude in a manner less like Bertha Jorkins?

A brief image danced before his eyes. The curly-haired witch laughing hysterically as she died, killed by a transfigured butterfly. Bertha Jorkins had been seduced, used and abandoned by her uncaring master.

Is that what I'm doing to Neville?

Harry hoped not. He liked Neville, understood the shy Gryffindor and what had made him how he was. He would never abandon him, not how he had been left by those he had thoughts friends last year.

I care about him, Harry decided, refusing to agonise over it. That's the difference.

He turned back to the pages of Umbridge's textbook, flipping through the last few to the end of the chapter.

'We can go up to the Room of Requirement again, Nev,' he muttered. 'We need to find a copy of the curriculum first, though. I learnt lots of practical spells, but I don't know everything about dark creatures and the like.'

'I'll ask Hermione,' Neville responded, then they were both forced to pretend to read in earnest as Umbridge stood up from the front, gaining enough height to see all the way to the back.

Harry returned to thinking about his brief experiences of legilimency. The sphinx had left no impression but pain, and Harry suspected that was because it had managed to see everything it wanted in an instant. Voldemort, however, had jumped through a list of his memories, some of Harry's worst ones, and even shared a few of his own, though Harry was not sure if it had been by accident or design.

The only deduction Harry had made was the moments had all been linked by a common feeling or state of mind and Riddle had somehow followed that, but it only meant he really needed to go to the Chamber of Secrets and speak to Salazar's portrait again.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that has!

39. The Delacours

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

They are likely to be less frequent than before, but still present. The first from Fleur in the new arc.

Chapter 39

Fleur turned the smooth, silver locket over in her hands, brushing her thumb around the line of the opening. The round-cornered, triangular ornament was her finest and favourite creation.

She snapped it open, gazing at the tiny reflection of her face, in the three-sided mirror within. It was three inches along each edge and normally hung over her heart on its slim, silver chain.

Harry had one of his own, to wear in the same fashion.

'Le lotus,' she breathed gently, and waited for Harry to feel his own copy grow hot. She had chosen her second favourite flower as the word to activate the enchantment. Fleur liked roses most of all, but she cringed at the thought of using such a clichéd flower for something like this. It was bad enough that her name was Fleur, but she hadn't realised that until Harry had laughingly pointed it out.

The mirror surface went black, then Harry was gazing up at her.

'Do you have time to visit?' she asked, hopefully. Fleur had missed him enough to be glad there wasn't a Room of Requirement at Beauxbatons. It was also a trap, her parents had stopped waiting for her to tell them on her own terms and begun to press her about where she was spending all her time. Harry would have to face the music.

'Of course I do,' he smiled. The mirror shifted, and she caught a brief glimpse of an imposing portrait in green and silver and shelves of books. She assumed it was part of the library she had never found her way too.

'Argent,' she heard him whisper, then he was standing in front of her, shutting his locket and tucking it back under his robes.

'I missed you,' she murmured, feeling the blush creep up the sides of her face as she stepped closer to him.

'I had to avoid the room for a few days,' he confessed, looking slightly mortified. His words brought something warm to life inside her, glowing from her chest.

Fleur stepped in next to him, wrapping her arms around his chest and leaning her left cheek on his right shoulder. Harry swept his arms over hers around her shoulders without hesitation. He'd grown taller over the summer, tall enough for her to lean on very comfortably if she let her feet slide back her few inches. They were almost the same height now.

'How have you been?' he asked her, talking over the top of her head as he squeezed her gently against him.

'Bored, lonely,' she smiled a little regretfully. 'Gabby has grown up now,' she told him, 'she spends all her time throwing fire at things just because she can.'

'What about her sister's mystery romance? Will she throw fire at me?' He stepped back from her, and Fleur looked up at him, her head rest gone.

'Gabrielle's a much more sensitive veela than I am,' she reminded him, 'but I am stronger. I would toast her for trying.' She reached out and traced the triangle on his cheekbone, he didn't flinch. Harry never flinched from her anymore. 'Besides, that would ruin the story, no?'

Harry laughed. 'I suppose it would.' He caught her fingers and pulled her back towards him, kissing her eagerly upturned lips. 'Have you brought me back to teach me more french?' He teased.

'I've taught you plenty of french,' she defended, switching languages, 'you know enough to hold a normal conversation.'

He smiled, slipping his hand to the back of her neck and into her hair, running his fingers through it. 'You have,' he agreed, in only slightly accented french. Fleur was too busy enjoying the shivers from having his fingers in her hair to reply immediately.

'What are things like in Britain?' She had heard over the summer that the Ministry of Magic had ignored the warnings of both Harry and Albus Dumbledore, something she thought was very unwise, and since then Harry hadn't told her much more than they were trying to discredit the claims anyway they could.

'Hogwarts is unchanged, still grey, draughty and unattractive,' he smirked. 'We have a teacher from the ministry for Defence Against the Dark Arts. She's an unpleasant, ugly woman whose real role is to try and open a rift between the students there and anyone who agrees with Dumbledore.'

'What has she done?'

Harry's eyes hardened. 'Most of the time she just spews nonsense, and does her best to stop us learning anything that might be practically useful, just in case any of us decide to join the imaginary coup that Dumbledore is supposed to be leading, but she has a vicious streak in her.'

'What are you doing?' Fleur doubted Harry would take it lying down, even if he pretended to in the beginning.

'Nothing yet,' he grinned. 'Everyone hates Umbridge already, and that teaching position is cursed, nobody ever lasts longer than a year. If she keeps spouting hateful nonsense about half-humans though,' his voice darkened angrily.

'Hey,' she entwined their fingers together, stopping him from running his hand through her hair. 'I don't care what she thinks.'

'I care,' he ground out. 'She's walking across very thin ice as she is, insulting you…' he trailed off, taking deep breaths to regain his calm. 'Insulting me makes sense, they're trying to discredit Dumbledore and I am the source of his announcement that Voldemort has returned, but there is no justification or reason for her saying things about you.'

'Me, specifically?'

Does the British Ministry somehow know about us?

'No,' Harry conceded, 'she hates anything that isn't at least fully human and well-connected to a pure-blooded family.'

Fleur snorted. 'Veela are fully human,' she sighed. 'You know that.'

'She doesn't,' Harry shook his head angrily, 'every disgusting piece of bigotry that leaves her mouth is aimed at you and Lupin.'

'Lupin?'

'A friend of my parents, he taught at the school for a year, but he's a werewolf.'

Fleur laughed. 'A werewolf whose name is Lupin?'

'I know,' Harry smiled, his anger mostly forgotten.

'This teacher. If she is sent by the Ministry then she will be a danger to you, especially if you let her get to you.' She didn't need all the details to guess that this teacher would go out of her way to cause trouble for Harry. 'Promise me that if you do anything, anything against her, that you will be careful, she demanded fiercely.

'I promise,' he agreed readily. 'If I get caught I will have to come and stay here,' he remarked playfully. Fleur rather liked the sound of that.

'You'll have to get caught then,' she smiled, releasing his hand and kissing him softly on the cheek over his triangle shaped scar.

'Perhaps it would be worth it,' he mused. For a moment he looked serious and Fleur allowed herself to briefly dream.

There were too many bitter realities for her vision to last long.

Voldemort might be in Britain now, but, just as Grindelwald had, he would soon set his sights on more than one country and then both she and Harry would be back where they had started, only far more families would have died in the meantime.

'So why did you want to see me?' His hand slipped from her hair to encircle her lower back, pulling her close to him and leaving nowhere for her to look but into his emerald eyes.

'Can I not have just missed you?' He wasn't going to believe that, Fleur knew that he knew her too well.

'You'd never admit to that if it were true,' Harry laughed gently, 'you'd have thought up a reason for me to be here.'

'You're right,' she scowled, evading his kiss. 'My parents have stopped waiting for me to tell them what I'm doing with all my time.'

'So it's meet the Delacours time, is it?' Harry smiled. His smile didn't quite wipe away the anxiety in his eyes and Fleur felt very bad for being suddenly glad that she would never have to meet his family and go through this herself. It was bad enough when she was introducing Harry to her family.

'Sorry,' she apologised, very guilty.

'It was going to happen eventually, and we've been doing this for several months now.'

'I mean I'm sorry for being a little bit glad that I won't have to be in your shoes,' she embellished in a small voice, sure he would be disappointed in her.

He kissed her instead.

'I forgive you,' he teased, poking fun at her failing. 'I'm nervous enough that I'd be happy to put this off for a few more days, though,' he looked vaguely thoughtful, 'I suppose that would just give me more time to worry.'

'You should thank me for the surprise then,' she pointed out coyly.

'I do love surprises,' he sighed, more than a little sarcastic.

'Mmm, but this is a good surprise,' Fleur chuckled, 'not a basilisk, I promise.' Harry had managed enough nasty surprises in four years for a lifetime, and his seemed to be particularly horrible.

Discover a new world to escape the one you hate, and there's a powerful megalomaniac waiting to kill you there.

He didn't really have very much luck at all. Except for her, of course, that made him very lucky. She smiled at the thought.

'Your mother isn't going to immediately try and immolate me?'

'Not if she knows what's good for her,' Fleur retorted. 'My family won't hurt you,' she assured him, in case he was genuinely nervous, 'they might be a bit protective, though.' She left the rest unsaid, Harry didn't need her to tell him why they would be protective of her. Fleur hoped that he wouldn't be too closed off from her parents and sister, he had grown up alone, she knew that much, but he'd reached out to her and she'd like him to trust her family too.

'Which way?' he asked, glancing curiously around him.

The house was not visible from down by the river, their willow tree was at the farthest end of the land that surrounded the house.

'The chateau is over the hill,' Fleur gestured up the grassy slope on their side of the river. 'It's quite a walk, though.' She extended one arm, allowing Harry to link his through hers, just as they had at the Yule Ball last year.

'What am I expecting?'

'I don't know,' Fleur tugged thoughtfully at her ring finger. 'I've never brought anyone to meet them like this.'

'That's encouraging,' Harry laughed, still obviously nervous, 'I feel like I'm back in the graveyard waiting for Voldemort.'

'Don't compare my family to that man,' Fleur frowned.

'Sorry,' he glanced down at their feet, moving in tandem, 'you can apparate us now.' Fleur squeezed his arm gently, to let him now she wasn't really angry with him.

'How did you know?' she asked.

'You're barefoot again, and neither your dress nor your feet are grass-stained, so you don't normally walk.' Fleur blinked.

Observant. I wonder what else he has noticed.

'You're right, since you aren't included in the chateau's wards I have to take you in with me.'

'I don't think I'm all that surprised you live in a chateau,' he remarked, shifting his weight slightly in preparation for apparating.

'All old french houses are called chateaux,' Fleur shrugged delicately. 'You'll see.'

She pictured the entrance hall of her home, with its open, sandstone walls and floor, the scatter of Gabrielle's shoes and the handful of tasteful landscapes of pine covered mountain slopes, enchanted to change with the seasons. Taking a slightly firmer grip on Harry's arm she twisted, and with a soft snap Fleur brought someone of the opposite sex home for the first time.

'It looks a lot like a chateau to me,' Harry murmured, smiling slightly. 'I think I'm beginning to see where Gabrielle's first scene in our story will start.'

'We don't have a tallest tower,' Fleur remarked, before his analogy developed any further towards the ridiculous, 'and I am not a princess.'

'You already dealt with your own dragon too,' he laughed. 'No self-respecting princess would interfere with the hero's task like that.'

'Perhaps,' Fleur smiled coyly, 'you should have let me deal with the Horntail then?'

'I seem to remember you not wanting to face that particular dragon, you were on of the lucky three whose dragon had actually been tamed.'

'A dragon is a dragon,' she responded tartly. 'Now come on, it's nearly evening and my family is waiting.' She kept a firm grip on his arm, just in case he tried to apparate away when Gabriella arrived. Harry couldn't physically apparate out, of course, the chateau was well warded, but if he tried it would be embarrassing, not that she would blame him if Gabby was in one of her more mischievous moods.

'Maman, papa, we are here,' Fleur announced in french, leading Harry through the entrance hall to the main room.

'Fleur,' her parents were on the far side of the largest room, chatting amicably. Fleur was not fooled, this room was cold and rarely used outside of meals; they had been waiting. 'And you must be?' It was her father who asked the first question of what would doubtless become many.

'Harry,' Harry responded, politely. Fleur was the only one that caught his almost imperceptible twitch of amusement.

'It's nice to meet you,' he mother rose from her seat to clasp Harry's hand, 'I am, Fleur's mother, but please call me Apolline.'

Her father, as he often did, followed her mother's example, but anything he might have been about to was interrupted by Gabby's delighted cry.

'You finally brought him to meet me,' she abandoned her shoes by the door, darting dangerously over the floor, nearly stumbling twice, but coming to a halt next to their mother.

'Gabrielle, I presume,' Harry smiled, still speaking french and extending a hand politely.

Gabby, of course, ignored it, opting to jump forward and wrap her arms around Harry's chest. 'We've already met,' she reminded him, neglecting to mention that she had been unconscious the entire time. To his credit Harry didn't flinch from the sudden contact as she had feared.

'Laurent,' her father declared, stepping up alongside his his wife, and extending a hand that Harry shook around Gabrielle, who had yet to release him. 'I see you've already met my youngest daughter.'

'He saved me from the Black Lake for Fleur,' Gabby giggled, finally letting go of Harry who looked a little relieved to be free.

'It would be Harry Potter, then, would it?' Her father seemed slightly pleased that he had deliberately left his surname off.

'Just Harry suits me fine,' her partner, she refused to even think the word boyfriend, replied evenly. 'Adding my surname only seems to make people act differently around me.'

'Well, it is almost dinner,' her mother announced, 'you're most welcome to join us, Harry.'

As if you would pass up the opportunity to make sure he is good enough for me.

'I'd love to,' Harry smiled brightly. Fleur's face fell slightly at the expression. That was the smile he wore when he knew he was supposed to be happy, or when he didn't want people to look to closely for what he really felt.

'We decided to eat in the kitchen,' her father told them, 'it's a little more informal.'

Both her parents moved towards the kitchen, and the small table that comfortably sat four, but would be a squeeze with five. Gabby didn't move.

There was mischief burning in her sister's eyes and Fleur shifted just a little closer to Harry in case she had to ward anything off.

'Sorry, Fleur,' she chirped, then turned to look up directly into Harry's eyes. He looked back down at her quizzically, then glanced at Fleur in bemusement.

It was a moment before she realised what her little sister had just done.

How dare she?

Fleur motioned for Harry to follow her parents, then, once he was round the doorframe and out of sight, pinned her baby sister against the wall.

'What were you trying to do?' she demanded furiously. Gabby looked up at her, perfectly innocent, but it only lasted a few moments before she giggled delightedly. 'Gabrielle,' Fleur hissed, not at all in the mood for her capricious little sister's games.

'He didn't even notice,' she whispered, 'and that was everything I could direct at him. He must love you, Fleur,' she squealed quietly.

'Did you just test Harry?' She tried in vain to keep the flush from her cheeks, veela magic did not work like that, it was just effective whether you loved someone or not. Strength of will determined much of how resistant anyone was. Still, it was a very flattering thought.

'I don't have allure like yours, Fleur, but nobody ever just doesn't notice it like that.' Her eyes went a little dreamy and she slipped out from under Fleur's arm. 'It must be true love,' she sighed.

I'm hiding every single romance novel in this house, Fleur decided.

It was for Gabrielle's own good. If she spent all her time alone, reading those books she'd spend half her life waiting for someone to come and sweep her off her feet, and the second half regretting the first. Fleur certainly hadn't been waiting for anyone, even if Harry had managed to at least knock her off balance.

She found her parents and Harry talking about the Triwizard Tournament, but steering clear of mentioning the third and final task. Fleur had never told them what had actually happened in the maze, they'd have been furious. As it was they simply seemed glad that she hadn't shared Viktor Krum's fate.

'Are you going to tell me why Gabrielle decided to try and charm me?' Harry murmured quietly in English when the food appeared courtesy of Binky, their family's house-elf.

'She wanted to see how much you loved me,' Fleur whispered, reverting briefly to English herself and throwing a dirty look at her sister who was grinning with unseemly delight at the pair of them from across the table.

Gabby probably thought the way they were sitting so close was sweet and romantic, rather than the result of the table being slightly too small for two people to sit on one side.

Harry was deliberately avoiding looking at her sister, whose staring was even making Fleur uncomfortable, and letting his eyes roam around the kitchen. He wouldn't find anything of particular interest, the room hadn't changed much since her father's grandmother had inherited it and brought it into the family in the seventeenth century.

'So you're the heir of the Potter family,' her father's interest in history was the bane of family conversation and their holidays.

'As far as I know,' Harry agreed. He had never actually ever mentioned his family, Fleur knew only that his only close blood relatives were muggles, and not particularly pleasant people.

'That's a big name to be responsible for, especially in Britain where pure-blooded families are held in such high-esteem,' her father remarked evenly.

'I'm not a pure-blood,' Harry shrugged, he knew well enough that France did not care about such things anymore. 'My mother was from muggle parents.'

'Ah,' her father seemed unsure of how to react. 'If I remember correctly the Potter family has some quite illustrious ancestry, a great number of great names ended up becoming Potter.'

'Honestly I wouldn't know,' Harry admitted. 'My only living relations are from my mother's family and are non-magical. I know very little about the Potter family, only that it nearly came to a very abrupt end fifteen years ago.'

'I know a little if you want me to tell you?' Her father seemed enthused by the prospect of having someone half-willing to listen to him talk about history.

'Perhaps another time, Laurent,' her mother smoothly cut in, preventing a conversational catastrophe. 'I understand you won the Triwizard Tournament, Harry?'

'I think,' Harry answered tactfully, 'that I simply lost the least.'

Surprise flickered in her mother's eyes, Harry did not know that she had not told her parents about what had happened in the third task. Fleur very subtly traced her fingers over his thigh under the table, forming the word no over and over until he turned and smiled at her to show he understood.

'Fleur was quite confident that she would win,' her mother continued, sending a small smile at her daughter.

'Yes,' Harry grinned, a genuine smile forming, 'when I asked for her name the first time we spoke to each other, Fleur told me I could read it off the Triwizard Trophy at the end.'

Gabrielle giggled and opened her mouth to say something that was certain to be even more embarrassing, so Fleur kicked her under the table.

Gabby was not deterred. She rarely was.

'Fleur said that she would beat you by such a margin in the last task that it would make you losing points for rescuing me irrelevant.' Fleur quietly sighed with relief. She'd said a whole litany of things more embarrassing and emotional in the months between the two tasks. The sort of things that she really didn't want Harry to hear, let alone her parents. Her own versions of the photos in the Room of Requirement.

'I didn't in the end,' she responded, slightly wistfully. It would have been nice to be the winner of the tournament, but she was glad that things had come out as they did. If she had not been unconscious then Harry would never have needed to help her. He wouldn't have carried her across the maze to where he was sure she would be safe, and Fleur would have never realised that he far from hated her.

'What did happen in the third task?' Her father leant forward, spreading his hands on the table either side of his now empty plate. 'Fleur told me that she was knocked unconscious early on by one of the other champions, but there were stories in the papers and rumours that contradict each other.'

'A wizard, one of the judges, interfered with the task, he was responsible,' Harry glanced at Fleur briefly before continuing, 'for everything that happened in the maze. Viktor Krum was killed, Fleur was attacked, and Cedric Diggory was stunned by me when I found him with the others. I briefly believed he was responsible.'

'Fleur said she was found on her own, at the centre of the maze?' Her mother asked sharply, catching the discrepancy between what Harry said and what Fleur had previously told them. A slight red tinge crept up Harry's cheeks at the question.

'Harry took me with him,' Fleur explained, to spare him further embarrassment. 'It wasn't safe outside of the warded centre of the maze.'

'That's so romantic,' Gabby sighed, 'why couldn't you have chosen someone your own age, Fleur?'

The red tinge on Harry's cheeks flared to bright crimson, and Fleur flushed violently herself before stamping on Gabrielle's toes under the table. Her sister gave a satisfying squeak and closed her mouth.

Say something like that again at your own risk, she tried to convey in her glare.

Gabby looked back with a slightly wounded expression.

The clock chimed softly behind her sister's head to mark halfway past the hour.

'You need to return to Hogwarts,' Fleur reminded Harry softly. He glanced up at the clock, then nodded slightly ruefully.

'You are welcome to stay,' her mother offered, 'there are plenty of spare rooms.'

'Or you can just share with Fleur,' Gabrielle giggled, before receiving a sharp glare from everyone except Harry.

'I would be missed if I was away for the night,' Harry explained, 'but thank you. It was nice to finally meet you.'

Make it sound like I kept us apart why don't you.

'Harry is not technically supposed to be here,' Fleur mentioned tentatively. 'His curfew at school begins in half an hour.'

'Ah,' her father remarked, looking more than a little amused by that. 'Then it was a pleasure to meet you as well.'

Her mother smiled in agreement. 'You're welcome back whenever,' she told him kindly.

'Bye, Harry,' Gabrielle chirped, waving cheerfully.

He smiled at her family, then shot her a questioning glance. It was fairly obvious what he wanted to know.

'It will work,' she assured him. He flashed her a smile, reached out to squeeze her hand gently, then vanished with a whisper to the picture portkey. He could apparate back from their willow tree.

Her mother called Gabrielle away into the main room, leaving Fleur with her father. He was giving her the contemplative look he always wore when he wanted to talk about something.

'He's a little younger than you,' he began carefully, 'but he seems mature enough. I don't dislike him.' Fleur gave him a pointed look, a hint that he might as well come out and say whatever was on his mind.

'He's English, Fleur,' her father sighed. 'He seems like a good choice, especially as he was unaffected by the passive allure of my three ladies, but Britain is not the same as France or the rest of Europe and the old magical countries.'

'Why not?' Fleur struggled to see the relevance. She had chosen Harry, not Britain.

'That short stretch of sea between France and Britain has kept them isolated and exempt from the turbulence of the last few centuries. Across Europe revolutions have come, then wars and Grindelwald's anarchy followed to finish things. The pure-blooded families that dominated France were broken by the half-blood Robespierre and his attempt to create one equal French nation, their fading influence was shattered by the devastation of Grindelwald. Britain has never weathered such change, its Ministry is still controlled by a handful of old families, and the prejudices and hatred of darker times remain.'

He fears they will hate me because I am veela and not pure-blooded enough for a Potter.

The Delacours were descended, from the marriage of her father's grandmother, from one of France's more ancient families, the Beaulieus, but it was a single connection from centuries ago. In France nobody cared about these things anymore, not since Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite had brought over fifty magical families half a millennia old to an end, but in Britain she supposed they would be regarded with contempt by many of the pure-bloods. Fleur did not particularly care; they would be one more group of people to ignore.

'Harry does not share them,' Fleur defended, 'so it does not matter.'

'He is the heir to an esteemed pure-blooded family, over time he will be exposed to and affected by those opinions, and that is ignoring the rumours that are flying about him in Britain.' Her father looked quite concerned, pushing his palms together anxiously.

'He will not listen to them, he would never listen to them,' Fleur spat, her temper rising. She had found someone who she loved, and her father would have her give him up because he might have to listen to the prejudice of others, or, worse, because he believed the nonsense the British Ministry was extolling to discredit him.

'If the rumours are true, Fleur, then I fear for your safety. Either Harry is not what he seems, or their Dark Lord has returned and The-Boy-Who-Lived will be his first target.' He looked quite miserable, then steeled himself, pulling the stern expression of a government official across his face. 'I do not want my daughter hurt, if you are involved with Harry Potter then you will be dragged into the chaos that surrounds him.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

40. High Inquisitor

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Today's chapter is up!

Chapter 40

'How was detention with Umbridge?' Harry heard Hermione ask Ron and Dean when they emerged from the dormitories, the latter still rubbing his eyes.

'Didn't you hear?' Ron exclaimed in delight.

'McGonagall cancelled it,' Dean grinned. 'Apparently she had a blazing row with Umbridge on Friday about it.'

That was interesting. Harry had never known McGonagall to cancel the detentions of another teacher before, she'd been fine for him to spend many hours in Snape's company for a whole array of offences that included, but were not limited to, talking too loudly, silent insubordination and malicious breathing.

'Yeah,' Seamus nodded, slightly less exuberant than the other two, but pleased all the same. 'Umbridge can't give you detentions and dock points for trying to practice spells we'll be tested on this summer.'

Harry shook his head and shared a knowing glance with Neville. Ron and Dean had been attempting to cast the shield charm, very poorly if he recalled correctly, in the empty classroom before their Defence class. Neither of them had the wit to see what was really taking place at Hogwarts this year, and for some reason Hermione hadn't told them either.

He was more disgusted by how terrible their shield charms had been, a damp paper plane could have breached them. Ron's had been a very faintly luminescent patch of air all around him, barely noticeable until all the curtains were drawn across the windows and the lights extinguished, and Dean, he had created an almost impenetrable, blindingly bright area of protection about the same size as Harry's palm. Even Neville's first attempt had been better.

'Well we've got her again now after breakfast,' Hermione reminded them, 'so try not to let her antagonise you into doing something she can actually give detention for.'

'Still can't believe McGonagall cancelled your punishments,' Seamus shook his head. 'I heard that Umbridge was absolutely furious. I bet she's even nastier than normal this morning. You should keep your heads down and stop standing up for him.'

Him was, of course, Harry. Seamus persisted in his belief of what the Ministry said, though he seemed to take the more vicious rumours about Harry and Dumbledore with at least a small pinch of salt. He hated Umbridge, along with almost every other student in the school, and, to maintain peace in the dormitory, he and Ron had agreed not to argue about who was right about Voldemort's return.

'I'm not defending him,' Ron replied, puzzled. 'I believe Dumbledore, and I'm sick of th rubbish that hag spouts at us every lesson. Professor Lupin was our best teacher, though it was a given since he wasn't a moron like Lockhart and was at least slightly sane.'

'Well you should probably keep it to yourself, Ron,' Hermione advised. 'She's going to be going after anyone who appears to advocate Dumbledore's side. Harry's being very clever in not openly disagreeing with her, but still clearly opposing Umbridge.'

It's nice to be appreciated.

Neville nudged him, picking up his stuff and moving in the direction of breakfast. Harry tipped his head in the direction of the other Gryffindors and mouthed Katie at him. He nodded and moved to join the others in their discussion of how unlikely it was they'd pass their OWL with Umbridge around.

They drifted out past Harry in a few moments and he caught a few suggestions from Dean that they practice their spells somewhere Umbridge wouldn't notice. Neville gave him a hesitant nod as they went, and Hermione's hand twitched towards a wave before she thought better of it and slipped it back into her pocket.

It was a few minuted before Katie appeared, slightly disheveled, and bleary-eyed. Harry waved a couple of times until she noticed him and stumbled over, smoothing her hair back.

'Morning Harry,' she grumbled. 'Are we going to breakfast now?'

'I was waiting for you,' Harry reminded her. Katie was normally grouchy until she'd had something to eat.

'Let's go then,' she decided, making a vague attempt at fixing the disarray of her uniform before giving up completely with a shrug.

Harry swept his stuff up from beside his chair in the common room and squeezed out behind the portrait of the fat lady next to her.

'Ah,' Katie cackled, her mood suddenly improving as impressionable first years edged away from Harry, 'vulnerable children, ripe for sacrifing in dark rituals.'

'You are not helping,' Harry told her, grinning in spite of himself. The first years edged further still.

'If you become a Dark Lord I'm volunteering myself as Dark Lady,' she decided. 'I love watching them scatter.'

'I think you're likely to get immolated talking like that,' Harry reminded her, pulling her arm to drag her towards the Great Hall rather than letting her stalk down the corridor towards a large group of second year Hufflepuffs.

Katie flushed slightly, realising what she'd accidentally implied, but allowed herself to be steered away with little more than a pout. 'Spoilsport,' she groused. 'They're adorably easy to scare.'

'Have I ever told you that I sometimes worry about you?' Harry quipped.

'Oh, all the time,' she grinned. Katie adopted her most imposing, menacing face, but it fell a long way short of Voldemort's inhuman, pale face. 'And you should,' she whispered dangerously.

Katie slid onto the Gryffindor bench across from the Weasley Twins.

'Morning, Dark Mistress,' they greeted her, bowing low over their breakfasts. 'What evil deeds have you planned for today?'

'She's been scaring the first years again,' Harry grinned, waving a hand towards the nervous huddle that were considering whether to squeeze on the end, or risk walking past their spot.

'Ah,' the leftmost twin sighed, 'that's our Katie, they won't be free from terror until the quidditch season starts.'

'It's about time Angelina sorted tryouts, don't you think?' The rightmost commented. 'Maybe you should tell her?'

'Me?' The leftmost disagreed. 'She's your girlfriend!'

'You're quite right, George,' the other twin replied, 'that's why you have to tell her.'

'Hush,' Katie ordered. 'I'll remind her later.'

'Yes, Dark Mistress,' they replied, bowing low again. Fred misjudged his bow slightly and accidentally dipped the front of his robes in his eggs. Katie giggled and helped herself to toast.

There was a brief lull in conversation as they ate and Errol, the ancient Weasley family owl, collapsed onto the table in front of the twins. They read the letter together, mirroring expressions of disgust growing more pronounced.

'It's from Percy,' they announced. 'Does anyone have a copy of the Daily Prophet.'

Several papers appeared immediately from all angles.

They scanned, moving in tandem, then tossed it across the table between Katie and Harry. 'Percy decided to offer us some advice,' Fred sniggered.

'It's time to let trouble-making and running riot come to an end. Things are changing, and we must change with them,' George quoted in a childish, high-pitched voice.

Dolores Jane Umbridge, formerly Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and newly appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts has, in a surprise move by the Wizengamot, become the first ever official to hold the position of High Inquisitor.

Harry didn't like where this was going one bit. Umbridge had been doing him plenty of good as she was. The woman had made herself thoroughly unpopular, stealing the spotlight, and providing a useful buffer between the attention of the Ministry and Dumbledore.

This will change everything.

'Have you read this?' Katie shoved the paper further under his nose. 'The High Inquisitor has power over all sanctions and punishments within the school.'

The position of High Inquisitor, Harry read, created by Educational Decree Number Twenty Three also enjoys the ability to determine the sanctions scheme of Britain's education establishments courtesy of the seceding decree.

'She must have written to Fudge over the weekend about McGonagall overpowering her and rescinding her detentions,' Harry surmised. 'Now we've got this to deal with.'

Stupid Ron and Dean, if they'd not been caught this wouldn't have happened.

'This is ridiculous,' the twins echoed Katie's sentiments. 'With that foul woman in charge of punishments who knows what will happen next.'

Harry knew. Anyone who spoke out against the Ministry's version of events would find themselves on the receiving end of increasingly harsh punishments and eventually nobody would dare to speak out. It would stop being worth the risk. The other side of the coin was that Umbridge might just take things too far, and earn herself such a reputation that speaking out against her was seen as the right thing to do.

If she is clever, she will reserve the use of her power for situations in which it seems appropriate and never let the school unify against her.

Harry hoped she wasn't too clever, or he'd find himself trapped at Hogwarts, unable to find out about the Prophecy and away from Fleur.

'Well,' Fred was saying to Katie and George, 'you know what this means, of course.'

'I do indeed, brother mine. It means we will have to listen to Percy and… not get caught!' They grinned splitting the remaining half of the toast rack between them.

'You're incorrigible,' Harry remarked. 'You really don't want to get caught, though,' he added more seriously.

'We never get caught,' they reminded him, wagging fingers in a manner eerily reminiscent of their mother, 'we just get suspected.'

'I don't Umbridge is going to distinguish between suspects and culprits,' Katie warned, buttering two pieces of toast to make herself a bacon sandwich. 'She tried to get your younger brother Ron and his friend put in detention for practicing spells that are in the Defence OWL. So be extra careful.'

'Yes, Dark Mistress,' they acquiesced. Katie beamed, raising her chin in the air and looking down her nose at the two Weasley twins. 'You're a bad influence, Harry,' they remonstrated. 'Look what you've turned our innocent Katie into.'

'I did nothing,' Harry denied, raising his hands, 'she was like this underneath the whole time.'

'Surely not,' Fred gasped. 'Not our Katie.'

'All those quidditch practice sessions in the rain, the times when she would lovingly hurl the quaffle at us until she got her way.'

'The threats to tell Angelina and Alicia if she didn't get what we wanted.'

'No, Harry,' George shook his head, 'I just can't believe it. I won't.'

'And then there was the time she drank fire whiskey after winning the quidditch cup and hid all our essential pranking supplies in Snape's office,' Fred continued tearfully.

'No that was us, Fred,' George reminded him. 'Katie hid all our essays in McGonagall's office.'

'Ah,' Fred sighed, 'sometimes its hard to remember. She definitely warned the girls we'd switched on our date with them, though.'

'You have a point, Fred,' George conceded. 'Harry, you might be right.'

'We think Katie has been evil all along after all.'

'Don't you three have some classes to go to?' Katie cut in, before her defamation continued any further.

'No,' the twins grinned evilly, 'we're free all morning.'

'Umbridge,' Harry admitted, earning himself some sympathetic glances.

'You'd probably best get going,' Katie smirked, 'don't want to be expelled for being late, do you?'

Harry shot her a half-hearted glare, then helped himself to half her bacon sandwich in revenge.

Bacon thieving is becoming a habit.

Neville was lingering outside the classroom, acting as lookout for the four others within who were trying to cast the shield charm with about as little success as before. Only Hermione was anywhere close to a fully functioning defense.

'Did they leave you outside to guard?'

'I can already do the shield charm,' Neville told him proudly.

'Care to share?' Harry hadn't seen anything since his first attempts at the end of last year.

'Protego,' Neville commanded, and he was instantly surrounded by a glowing demi-sphere of translucent, silver light.

He has been practising.

It wasn't quite as powerful as Harry's own, which could form a wall of light too bright to see past if he poured his magic into the charm, and nor was it perfect, the light trembled and shivered, but it certainly had the potential to be formidable once he'd fully mastered it. He was suddenly rather glad he'd chosen to keep Neville as a friend, the young wizard had potential after all.

The shield flickered, gaps appearing from where Neville's concentration lapsed slightly and then it faded away completely.

The click of pink heels echoed down the hall from around the corner, and Neville quickly slipped in to hiss a warning to the others inside. Harry waited for a moment then wandered in and joined Neville at the back of the room.

A handful of other students joined the, before Umbridge swept into the room, her pink cardigan flaring out behind her and lurid handbag bouncing on her elbow.

'Good morning class,' she greeted them, 'placing her handbag down on her desk and turning to face the class.

Nobody gave her the response she was looking for.

'Now that won't do,' she frowned, the corners of her wide mouth turning down. 'That's not polite at all.'

Is she really going to insist on this at the beginning of every lesson?

A half-hearted good morning, Professor Umbridge, rang out, mostly from the vulnerable looking students at the front.

'Today we will be continuing with our reading,' she announced with a satisfied smile as the room groaned. 'Please turn to the next chapter, and copy out all the relevant, key passages at the bottom of each page.'

'Anything that's not a picture a four year old could have drawn, then,' he heard Neville mutter to himself and he had to suppress a smile.

Retrieving Slinkhard's worthless compilation of nonsense from his bag, Harry propped it up open on the edge of his desk and pulled just enough of his things to make it look like he was doing as Umbridge instructed.

'I managed to get a copy of the curriculum off of Hermione,' Neville whispered, when Umbridge turned away to loom over Dean and Seamus who were unwisely sitting at the front still.

'What does it say?' Harry asked.

'It says that if things carry on like this then the only ones who are going to even pass will be us and Hermione. There's a list of almost twenty spells you can be asked to demonstrate, of which the shield charm is one of the simplest, and Umbridge isn't going to be teaching us about any of them.'

'Sure about that, are you?' Harry smirked. 'She might have a change of heart.'

'We had a peek at her lesson plan when we got here before she did,' Neville made a small disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

'That bad?'

'Once we have finished copying out every written word from this,' Harry hadn't seen that much anger in Neville's eyes since they had talked about Barty Crouch, 'she's going to teach us to run away from our problems.'

'You're serious?'

'Officially it's called conflict avoidance and fleeing,' Neville bit back a laugh. 'There's a bit on iguanas too. I thought we'd be free of those lizards once Quirrell was replaced, and his pet was gone.'

'I miss that iguana,' Harry sighed nostalgically. 'It used to escape and hide on top of the cupboards. Parvati was terrified of it.'

'I was terrified too,' Neville pointed out, slightly embarrassed.

'It was a big reptile, there's no reason to be ashamed,' Harry smirked, reaching out to pat Neville on the cheek.

'You've been spending too long with Katie,' Neville grumbled, brushing of Harry's hand.

'The first years are almost as scared of her as they are of me now,' Harry remarked. 'Can I have a look at that curriculum?'

Neville glanced down to the front of class where Umbridge was supervising Ron's very slow, half-hearted attempts to copy out of the textbook.

'Here,' he murmured, slipping the sheet of paper to Harry under the table.

He took a glance down the sheet, making a mental note of the recommended books, then passed it back. At the front Ron earned himself another detention for accidentally misspelling the title of the book as something that looked suspiciously like A Hundred Ways to Let You-Know-Who Win.

'We can get some of those books out of the Room of Requirement,' he decided. 'It'll be easy to learn them on our own up there and I can help you if you struggle with any of them.'

'Thanks,' Neville smiled, then he looked sharply back down at his work and tucked the curriculum out of sight. 'Incoming,'he hissed quietly.

Harry quite deliberately knocked his ink pot over his blank piece of parchment and made an extravagant show about trying to save his work as Umbridge approached.

'What are you doing, Mr Potter?'

'I spilt ink on my work,' Harry explained slowly and carefully, holding up the dripping piece of parchment, spreading the mess further. The drops joined up to run over and down the edge of the desk, drawing close to Umbridge's spotless, pink shoes.

'That was clumsy of you,' Umbridge tittered, 'you'll have to start again, won't you?'

'I know,' Harry nodded amicably. 'Would you mind vanishing the ink for me, Professor Umbridge? I'd do it myself, but I don't want to injure anyone by using magic in the classroom.' He couldn't have poured more false concern or innocence to his tone if he had tried.

'I'm sure your attempt will be safe, Mr Potter, but I'm glad you had the wisdom to ask for the approval of one more knowledgeable than yourself before attempting anything,' Umbridge simpered.

'If you're sure, professor,' Harry responded, simulating nervousness.

Raising his wand he tentatively spoke the words to the vanishing spell, and wordlessly banished the ink off the desk to spray Umbridge's pink cardigan and shoes in dark blue.

A tiny fraction of what you deserve for insulting Fleur.

'Oh, professor,' he gushed, feigning distress, 'I'm so sorry, here,' he raised his wand again, 'let me try again.'

'I think that's quite enough, Mr Potter,' she replied, her voice very strained. 'Finish copying out the chapter, I'm going to have to go and change.'

The door of the classroom swung slowly shut, then the class burst into laughter.

'That was brilliant, Harry,' Neville grinned.

'Thank you,' he inclined his head graciously.

Umbridge didn't return before the class ended, and not a single word was written on she'd departed. Even Hermione's quill found itself on the desk untouched, but that was probably because she was busy scolding Ron for not being able to go a lesson without getting detention for something so stupid. Harry suspected he would have ended up with one eventually, just so Umbridge could make an example of someone, but he'd made it easy for her.

He trailed Neville, Hermione and Ron back to the common room, vaguely aware of the heated discussion they were holding and Hermione waving the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum animatedly at Neville who was trying to convince them of something.

'Why can't you act more like Harry does, then?' Hermione's scolding of Ron had only been interrupted by whatever Neville had suggested.

'Because she deliberately tries to get me in trouble,' Ron spat. 'It's not even close to fair.'

'Well you should just ignore her,' Hermione sighed. 'Now you have to have detention with her, and I bet she comes up with something horrible for you.'

'Mimbulus Mimbletonia,' Neville said to the Fat Lady, who swung aside for them all to enter the common room.

'We can't just let her get away with spouting all that nonsense,' Ron declared, 'she's poisoning the students against Dumbledore and when You-Know-Who attacks he'll take everyone by surprise and we won't even be able to defend ourselves because she wants us to run away.'

'So we practise the spells on our own,' Neville suggested.

'We tried that,' Ron disagreed. 'We'll just get detentions, and now she's in control of them McGonagall can't overrule her.'

'So don't get caught,' Neville shrugged. 'I know somewhere we can go she won't find us.' He shot a glance back at Harry who nodded to let him know it was ok.

'Where?'

'It's on the seventh floor,' Neville told him, 'you can cast all the defensive magic you want there and she'll never know if we don't want her to.'

'Will you help us with our shield charms?' Hermione asked. She was speaking quite humbly for her, Harry thought.

'I never thought I'd see you asking Neville for help,' Ron laughed, 'but seriously, Nev, will you?'

'Yeah,' he nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. 'I'll try. We-er-we can go now if you want?'

'Let's do it,' Ron agreed, clapping Neville on the shoulder. 'We can grab Dean and Seamus from the Great Hall on the way.'

Harry drifted past them on his way up to the dormitories, that was every boy from their room, so he had a chance to speak to Sirius while they were gone.

The mirror Snape had passed to him was a the bottom of his trunk, disillusioned and slid underneath the lining so anyone who might search through it wouldn't be able to feel the glass.

It worked in a very similar way to his locket, they worked in almost identical way, only Sirius was a lot less attractive company than Fleur.

'Sirius,' Harry whispered into the mirror, fogging its surface with his breath. It flared white and he hurriedly wiped the misting off with the sleeve of his robes.

'Harry,' his godfather sounded both overjoyed and relieved at the same time. 'You took your time?'

'I've been busy,' Harry explained apologetically. 'Are you still safe under Dumbledore's fidelius charm?'

'Yes,' Sirius looked quite displeased. 'I'm tucked up all safe and sound in this dirty house where I can't do anything that might alert the Ministry to my location.'

'At least you're safe,' Harry smiled. 'No dementors in there, are there?'

'Had a boggart and a whole flock of doxys to get rid of when Remus helped me tidy over the summer, but for the large part this house is mostly danger free, as long as you remember not to go in the library or to touch anything in a glass display case.'

'What kind of house are you in?' Harry asked, curious. It sounded like a repository for dark books and dangerous items.

'The home of a most ancient and noble family,' Sirius grinned. 'I can't tell you much about it, obviously, but I can tell you it's in London, and that the Order of the Phoenix is using it as its headquarters. Only useful thing I've been able to do,' he added darkly.

'I have no idea what the Order of the Phoenix is,' Harry pointed out.

'You don't?' Sirius looked perplexed. 'Why haven't you been told? Your father, mother, Remus and I were all part of it in the last war. It's a group Dumbledore started to oppose the Death-Eaters in ways the Ministry can't.'

Dumbledore's followers, Harry surmised. I knew he had his own secret group.

'What does it do?' Harry asked, hoping for a glimpse into Dumbledore's plan. The headmaster had not spoken a word to him since the end of last year.

'Mostly we warned the Ministry of where attacks would come and guarded places of crucial importance, but right now we're trying to make sure the Ministry opens it's eyes before it's too late. Well, all the other members are, I just sit around in here disposing of dangerous artefacts and priceless family heirlooms. One day I'm going to get that portrait, too,' he mused, an almost dreamy expression in his eyes.

'Sounds fun,' Harry smirked, knowing Sirius must be bored out of his mind.

'So why have you been so busy?'

'The Ministry appointed Dolores Umbridge as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, she's here to make sure we don't learn anything useful and to try and undermine support for Dumbledore in Britain's next generation of students. I'm making her life difficult,' he explained.

'I've heard of her,' Sirius' face twisted in distaste. 'She's a half-blood who's obsessed with trying to be as pure as possible, hates magical creatures, non-humans, muggles and anyone who associates with them. Umbridge is personally responsible for some of the most bigoted pieces of legislation ever to pass through the Wizengamot, including a law that makes it all but impossible for Remus to get a job anywhere.'

'I know how much she hates anyone she believes to be less than human,' he agreed icily. It took all his self-control and occlumency exercises to stop him from cursing her when she spewed her prejudiced drivel at the students, but he knew Fleur would be disappointed in him if he lost his temper over that.

'Be careful of her, Harry,' Sirius warned. 'She's only a half blood, but still managed to rise quickly through the ranks of the Ministry from obscurity to a position that's never been held by anything other than a pure-blood before. Fudge is a bumbling idiot incapable of seeing beyond his own aspirations as Minister, but Umbridge is a nasty, slippery piece of work with connections in all the wrong corners of the Wizengamot.'

'Duly noted,' Harry grinned. 'So openly embarrassing her in front of a whole class would be a bad idea?'

'What did you do?' Sirius sighed. His attempt to act like a responsible adult lasted only as long as it took him to remember all his own misdeeds and a wide grin soon spread across his face.

'I spilt ink everywhere and when I tricked her into giving me permission to try and vanish it, I sprayed it all over her instead,' Harry explained, smiling proudly.

Sirius roared with laughter. 'Good one, Harry.'

'She didn't look very happy with me, but I did nothing wrong.'

'It was a bad idea,' Sirius told him, remembering he was meant to be the mature adult of the two of them, 'best to keep your head down until things get straightened out with the Ministry. We don't need to make things worse than they are.'

'I'll stay out of sight as much as I can,' Harry promised.

There was a loud thud from Sirius' side of the mirror and a horrible shrieking started up in the background.

'I have to go,' he told Harry, 'but use the mirror whenever you want. I've nothing else to do around here except shut that painting up and try and think of ways to destroy it.'

'Bye, Sirius.' Harry held the mirror further away from himself to wave.

'Shut up, you old hag,' he heard his godfather roar before the mirror returned to showing only his only reflection.

Perhaps I should ask him to tell me how he gets rid of the painting, Harry mused.

It could be useful for figuring out how to strip away some of the more annoying enchantments on Slytherin's frame.

I still need to buy another clock, Harry realised with a groan.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

41. Ice Ice Baby

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Chapter 41

'You told me you wanted to learn about legilimency, not those silly little hexes and jinxes you've been practising all this time,' Salazar complained from the spot on the floor.

'I need to know them for my OWL exams at the end of the year and to be able to teach Neville, since our current teacher is more interested in keeping us helpless and under the sway of the Ministry.'

'None of them are even remotely useful,' Salazar pointed out, 'why use something like the Impedimenta Jinx when you know how to splinter bones?'

'Because if I use the bone-splintering curse in my exam I'm liable to be expelled, or fail,' Harry remarked, dryly.

'This school has gone downhill,' Slytherin griped, 'I blame the Ministry, they were created to uphold that Statute of Secrecy that Tom Riddle told me was made to keep our worlds separate and safe, not restrict the types of magic wizard and witches can use or learn about.'

'Umbridge won't last long,' Harry smiled darkly, 'Riddle cursed the position she's holding, nobody's ever lasted a whole year, and she's made enemies of the entire school, Dumbledore and myself.'

'You're part of the school,' the portrait reminded him.

'I'm quite a bit more dangerous than your average fifth year,' Harry remarked.

'You're more dangerous than any other student here since Riddle,' Salazar agreed proudly, 'and you're probably more powerful than he was then, if decidedly more moral.'

'All the more reason not to have to worry about Umbridge being here for more than a year,' Harry grinned.

'You have plenty of other things to worry about,' Salazar pointed out. 'That prophecy, Riddle, Dumbledore, the Ministry,' his serpent bobbed its head every time he added another problem, 'and that's just the big ones you know about.'

'I'll figure it out,' Harry assured him, 'I have a plan.'

'It's vague, and you are running out of time. Voldemort is biding his time while he gathers his strength, but soon he'll be back to trying to kill you, probably because of that prophecy, and Dumbledore will be doing his utmost to make sure he's successful. No doubt he thinks you'll make a great sacrifice, and an even better martyr.'

'All the more reason to master the Impedimenta Jinx,' Harry quipped. Salazar shook his head in disgust and Harry relented before he was on the receiving end of a full blown rant. 'I'm finished with them,' he decided. 'I can perform them all well enough.'

'Then it's time you learned about legilimency,' the portrait ordered. 'No heir of mine will be anything less than a master of it and you don't have long left before you need to leave.'

'You were a whole lot more agreeable before I brought that clock,' Harry told him. He'd managed to get one from the Room of Requirement, which seemed to have an unlimited supply of things, but Salazar had taken to using it to schedule his days for him.

'Have you thought of a way to practice your legilimency?'

'I've had a couple of ideas, but nothing particularly practical yet,' Harry admitted.

'What have you come up with?'

'I considered using it on someone who's asleep or stunned,' Harry began, but Salazar was shaking his head in exasperation.

'If they're stunned they won't be thinking much about anything, and there's not a lot a novice can do with a sleeping mind. I suppose it would give you some practice of using the spell and might help you learn control over it,' Slytherin decided, 'but largely it's useless, there would be no practice of actually confronting a defended mind.'

'I could find someone to attack?' Harry suggested, his mind torn between the idea using it on Umbridge or Snape.

'Very bad idea,' Salazar snapped. 'What if they know how to repel you? Legilimency is a very rare skill, but occlumency is known at a basic level by many, since it helps with magic in general.'

'I could offer to teach Neville occlumency,' Harry mentioned finally, expecting to be shot down once more.

'That might be useful,' Slytherin remarked, 'but he would have to keep your ability to use legilimency a secret and needs to know about and want to learn occlumency for his own reasons.'

Harry raised an eyebrow, fairly sure he could just offer to teach Neville it like he had already been doing.

'He'll be suspicious of your motives otherwise,' the portrait explained. It struck him as slightly paranoid. 'Worth trying, though.'

'So what can you teach me?' Harry asked, growing sceptical. 'This isn't like the blood magic where you could only teach me the principles, is it?'

'I haven't taught you half of what you need to know about blood magic before the end of this year,' Salazar replied sombrely, surprisingly melancholy. 'After legilimency, that's what I'll be teaching you as well as a painting can.'

'And legilimency?' The portrait hadn't actually answered the question.

'I am a little limited in how much I can teach you,' the founder confessed, 'but I can tell you how it works in as much detail as possible.'

'I know you form a connection and can then somehow follow emotions,' Harry told him.

'From when Voldemort managed to use it on you?'

'Yes, he didn't get anything particularly important, no more than I glimpsed from him,' Harry realised.

'Then it doesn't matter,' Salazar decided, 'you are similar enough that you will come to understand each other well enough anyway. The spell forms the connection, allowing you to see anything that's currently in the mind of the victim. What Riddle did requires a very strong connection. He latched onto one particular feeling and dissected it, glimpsing some of the memories and thoughts that created it.'

'How can I do it?'

'If your will is stronger, or you can make sure that your opponent can't clear their thoughts so you're unchallenged,' Slytherin informed him simply. 'Legilimency is one of those branches of magic that comes down to some quite plain principles, but can be applied in an infinite number of complex ways.'

'Your favourite,' Harry noted sarcastically.

'Yes,' the founder either ignored or didn't notice his sarcasm. 'You need to practice casting the spell, to get the hang of the scale over which it can be cast. The more magic, the stronger the connection and the harder it is for you to be thrown out. Occluding the mind actually has no affect on the connection itself, simply rendering it meaningless, but you can be expelled by strength of will in a manner similar to throwing off the Imperius Curse.'

'So lots of magic makes the connection hard to break,' Harry summarised, 'but doesn't affect how much I can actually see.'

'Exactly,' Salazar nodded approvingly. 'Once you've got the hang of casting it, you can work on casting it without a wand or an incantation, and then with as little eye contact as possible. The intricacies of legilimency all come once the connection has been made except for passive legilimency, that creates too weak a connection.'

Harry bit his lip thoughtfully, then nodded himself. He followed most of that. Salazar was right, it had simple principles at least until the connection was made.

'What about after the connection has been created?'

'Much more complicated,' Salazar told him with a wry smile. 'Every wizard does it differently because we all think slightly differently from each other. The goal is to get your victim to think about what you want to know, you can do it by showing them images, your own memories and thoughts, or by following and dissecting theirs like Riddle tried to do to you. That's why practice is so important, you need to create your own style and tactics.'

'So teaching Neville to try and protect a secret while I learn how to get it out of him is a good idea?' Harry asked.

'As long as you trust Neville implicitly or are prepared to use the memory charm on him repeatedly,' Salazar warned.

'I trust him,' Harry decided. An idea struck him. 'Can you use legilimency on yourself?'

Salazar stared at him curiously. 'Why would you want to?'

'To see how well I can occlude my mind,' Harry answered, he'd thought it was rather obvious.

'I don't know,' Slytherin mused. 'It's something to experiment with.' The portrait sounded quite excited by the idea. 'You could use the time-turner so you had a version of yourself to attack and defend, or you could try and create a connection from your mind to itself,' he had lapsed into parseltongue in his enthusiasm, 'I have no idea what might happen.'

'Perhaps it's best not to try, in case I make a mess of something important,' Harry suggested.

'But we have to know,' Salazar pleaded. 'Try with the time-turner, you'd be expecting yourself, and not affecting anything too much so it won't do anything too terrible,' and if it does you can leave yourself a warning by going back and warning yourself not to do it.'

'I'm not doing that unless I'm very desperate,' Harry decided. 'It sounds like a great way to kill myself twice in the same moment or too get myself stuck in some ridiculous time loop.'

'Fine,' the painting sulked, 'waste the chance to discover something incredible.'

'I will,' Harry retorted just as childishly.

'You need to go back to Gryffindor Tower,' the founder told him, looking at his brand new clock, something he had complained didn't match the decor of his study until Harry asked him why he had never put one in the first place. He didn't really feel that being able to cast the tempus charm was a valid excuse, but Slytherin had been adamant it was a good enough reason.

'So I do,' Harry realised. 'It's almost time for Quidditch practice.'

Katie had told Angelina that she needed to hold tryouts, and within a week Angelina had managed to book the pitch, despite the best efforts of Hufflepuff's team to book it up to the beginning of the season.

'Before you go,' Salazar began seriously, 'make sure you only portkey out to France from within my chamber.'

'Why?' Harry was confident that he had, though it was only by coincidence.

'The school's wards inform the headmaster the moment a student leaves when they aren't supposed to. The chamber is a loophole. You move outside of the wards which is recorded, but you don't actually leave the castle, so they aren't triggered to actually alert the headmaster.' Slytherin seemed slightly smug. 'So you can leave from here and Dumbledore won't know you've left unless he actually goes to check you're still at Hogwarts.'

'That's how he knew I could apparate,' Harry realised. 'He saw I had a new wand and realised I must have gone to Diagon Alley, so he checked to see if I had left. If he ever looks he'll be able to see every time I've gone to France this year.'

'Yes,' the portrait agreed. 'Don't give him a reason to check, Harry. The only time periods he can't check are those he wasn't headmaster for.'

'Does he know about the loophole of the Chamber of Secrets?' Harry asked

'There are only three wizards who know any of the secrets of this place and Dumbledore is not one of them,' Salazar said simply.

'As long as he doesn't have a reason to look for when I've left I'll be fine,' Harry decided, making a mental note never to trigger the alerts or to let Dumbledore suspect that he'd left the castle at all.

That makes things even more complicated.

'Practice your legilimency,' the founder called after him as he left, striding past the sooty shadow of the basilisk upon the chamber floor.

I will, mother, Harry thought.

'Myrtle,' he called quietly. The ghost wasn't always in the toilet on the second floor, she often wandered the plumbing, rather like the basilisk had, though not quite as terrifying.

There was no reply, even after waiting for a few minutes, so he disillusioned himself and walked far enough from the bathroom to avoid suspicion before dispelling the charm and continuing back towards Gryffindor Tower.

He found the chairs by the fire occupied by Neville and his newfound following of devoted pupils. Somehow the previously shy wizard had managed to teach all three of Ron, Seamus and Dean to produce a half-decent shield charm. They were having what sounded like a highly technical discussion about that very spell, while Colin Creevey dozed across the only other chair, leaning dangerously far across the arm of the chair.

Well, Salazar said to practice.

He owed Creevey for all those photos in the second year anyway.

'Legilimens,' he murmured, pointing his wand out the tip of sleeve of the sleeping fourth year.

Abruptly he was plunged into dreams of taking photos for the Daily Prophet, of passing his exams and, Harry just managed to avoid laughing, of writing an exposé on Umbridge. There was little else beyond the dream, even when Harry tried to concentrate on the feelings of hatred for the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, he only found a scatter of images, her office, a horrible, pink-draped room, with china-decorated walls, a glimpse of a black-feathered quill, and the recollection of a sharp, burning pain across the back of his hand.

The pain startled him and broke the connection, and though Colin remained asleep, he stirred and shifted, as if his dreams had suddenly turned unpleasant.

Harry cast the charm several times more, but saw nothing more than he already had even if he did get a slightly better grasp of how strong the connection would be if he put a certain amount of focus and magic into the spell. His attempt to cast it wordlessly failed all but completely as he received nothing but the faintest tickle of pain across his hand again.

It did concern him that Creevey was associating physical pain, and quite a severe one if Harry was any judge, with Umbridge, but it was possibly the product of his dream, and there wasn't anyone Harry could go to anyway, even if she had done something. Umbridge was in full control of the sanctions scheme at Hogwarts now.

'Harry,' Katie bounced across the common room floor, 'it's tryouts time!'

'Then why aren't you in your quidditch gear?'

'We're only trying out for a keeper, Angelina is keeping the old guard together, so we don't have to compete, just help judge.' She pulled him from his chair across from Colin. 'Let's go, we can watch from the stands with everyone else.'

'I don't actually get to fly if I come, though, do I?'

'No,' she admitted, 'but I want you to come and you aren't doing anything here.'

'Fine.' Katie wasn't looking like she was about to relinquish her grip on his arm anyway.

They walked quickly down the marble stairs, and out towards the pitch, not even stopping to let Katie scare any of the first years who were moving back towards the common room. That was a bit of a shame in Harry's opinion, she was getting rather good at it, and it was quite funny.

The group of potential Gryffindor players had gathered at the edge of the stands around Alicia and Angelina who were wearing their team robes and the Weasley twins who were knocking a bludger back and forth between them.

At the other end a handful of Slytherin players were playing a half-game in practice with one bludger and no snitch.

'Harry, Katie,' Angelina waved them over. 'You're a little late, but we're still waiting for Ron Weasley anyway.'

'Where is he?' Alicia asked.

'He has detention with Umbridge,' Harry recognised Ginny's voice from within the huddle.

'Well we'll start with chaser trials then,' Angelina decided. 'Ginny, since you're the only one who wants to try out for seeker and chaser,' Harry laughed quietly at her audacity, 'you can join this first. You'll be reserve seeker either way, as Harry's first and there's nobody else who wants to play there for some reason.'

'They probably think Harry will murder them for trying to steal his spot on the team,' Katie beamed, unhelpfully.

'If anyone wants Katie's place I'll happily murder her,' Harry offered. Katie pouted playfully.

'Get in the sky,' Angelina ordered, producing a whistle, 'murder is only acceptable if you're the captain.'

The five potential chasers kicked off and began to swerve through a series of drills. Harry took a seat on the edge of the stands with Katie and the other members of last year's team.

'What do you think?' Angelina asked after they had made it through the first few.

'Weasley's good,' Alicia decided, 'the other's are reserve material, nobody's losing their spot today.'

'I agree,' Katie voiced.

'Kirke, Sloper,' Angelina called, 'grab that bludger off those two idiots,' she gestured at her boyfriend and his twin, 'and show us what you can do. Ten shots, as many hits on the edge of the ring as possible while your partner hits the bludger back at you.'

They nodded and took off, shouting down at the Weasley twins who knocked the bludger up into the sky and tossed them the bats.

'They're not bad,' Fred grinned. Harry assumed it was Fred since he was sitting next to Alicia and not Angelina.

'Almost as good as us,' George decided.

'Not as handsome though,' Fred added, 'what do you think Angelina?'

'Shouldn't you be asking Alicia?' The Quidditch Captain remarked acidly.

'Can't you tell us apart?!' George gasped, faking horror.

'Yes,' Alicia and Angelina answered together.

'Oh.' They looked a little crestfallen about that and Katie laughed.

Ron came running across the pitch to join them. 'Sorry,' he gasped. 'Umbridge's detention ran on longer than I thought and she wouldn't let me leave until I was done.'

'Get in the air Weasley,' Angelina told him kindly. 'You're not late yet, we haven't started tryouts for keeper yet.' Ron grinned, relieved, and swapped hands on his broom to take off. Harry glimpsed a gleam of crimson smeared across the back of his hand and along the underside of his forearm as his robes shifted.

Umbridge.

There was no coincidence. Colin's dream and Ron's bleeding were both clearly the work of their little Pink Professor. A spot of ice flared to life in his chest at such a disgusting, obviously immoral act. She was doing whatever that was to children like Colin. He wasn't going to let that stand, she needed to learn a lesson about what was acceptable and what was not. Dumbledore and the staff wouldn't be able to do anything, their hands were tied by the Ministry.

I'll find another way to dissuade her, he smiled coldly.

The Slytherin game had drifted near to the tryouts, sweeping through the chaser drills.

'Oi,' Angelina yelled, 'get out of our half of the pitch.'

One of the beaters, Harry recognised the distinctive profile of one of Crabbe or Goyle, just spun and hammered the bludger down at them.

It Katie in the side and there was an audible snap as something broke.

Her face went white, and she clenched her jaw tightly shut.

Fred and George had their wands out, banishing the bludger back twice as fast to knock Crabbe off his broom as the Slytherin team flew down to get a better look at what they'd achieved. Malfoy's henchman bounced twice across the grass, his broom snapping underneath him, before coming to stop and curling up into himself.

The other two members of Slytherin's trio of bullies landed in front of the Gryffindor team.

'You'll pay for that Weasley's,' Malfoy snapped.

'You'll pay for hitting that bludger at Katie,' Angelina retorted, furious.

'That was an accident,' Malfoy shrugged, 'what those two blood-traitors did was deliberate, Professor Snape will see you in detention for the rest of the year at the very least. Personally I'm hoping you'll just be expelled.'

'Shut up and disappear, Malfoy,' Harry snapped. He'd been angry with Umbridge before Crabbe had hurt Katie; he was furious now, all the rage he'd suppressed whenever the Pink Professor said something about Fleur resurfacing.

'Is that a threat, Potter?' Malfoy sneered, his hand flashing to his wand. 'Are you going to kill me as well as Krum?'

'What is going on here?' Umbridge's high, girlish voice carried across the pitch. 'I have never seen such a display of aggression over anything at this school. Mr Weasley and Mr Weasley, you will serve two weeks detention for your unprovoked attack on a fellow student, and,' her smug, smile spread wider, 'since you cannot be trusted to play this sport I'm afraid I will have to ban you both from playing.'

'You can't do that,' Angelina cried. 'He attacked Katie.'

'For life,' Umbridge finished, pleased with the outrage she had provoked. 'And I know what I saw, Miss Johnson.'

'I told you that you would pay,' Malfoy sneered.

'You never learn do you, Draco,' Harry hissed. 'Aguamenti,' he spat, raising his arm and slipping his wand from his sleeve in one smooth motion to produce the spell.

A thick stream of water shot from the tip of his wand, striking Malfoy on the shoulder and knocking him of his feet, but the charm did not act as Harry had intended.

The spell came out twisted by his cold rage and within the water, thick, jagged chunks of ice formed, lacerating Malfoy's shoulder and upper arm. The Slytherin screamed, clutching instinctively at the deep, rough cuts through the tattered remnants of his quidditch robes, but only managing to cut his hands not the fragments of ice that were lodged in his chest.

Both groups of students stared at him in disbelief as Malfoy writhed in pain in the floor, making a high-pitched keening noise and smearing blood and dirt all over himself as the ice melted. It was hard to stop himself from smiling, but he quickly managed to pull his features into a horrified look of shock. The surprise wasn't hard to show.

'Mr Potter,' he had never heard Umbridge sound so satisfied. 'You're also banned for life.'

That's it?

Malfoy was lying in a pool of his own diluted blood, whimpering and shaking. He'd expected to be expelled.

Dumbledore must still be the only one who can expel students.

Umbridge had banned him from playing quidditch, but had seemingly forgotten to give him detention in her joy at finally catching him doing something wrong.

'What have you got to say for yourself, Mr Potter?' Umbridge demanded, no doubt hoping to extract further reaction from him.

Harry ignored her, helping Katie to her feet and in the direction of the hospital wing. He'd get his revenge on Umbridge soon enough.

'That was stupid,' Katie gasped, still pale, as he looped an arm under her uninjured arm to let her lean on him and walk more easily.

'I know,' he replied shortly. 'I shouldn't have lost my temper.'

'Fleur's going to be twice as angry with you,' she laughed weakly.

'Why twice?'

She's going to be disappointed.

The thought left Harry with a very bitter taste in his mouth and he raised his free hand to press it to the triangular locket on his chest.

'You did something stupid,' Katie giggled, wincing each time her chest moved, 'and you did it because I got hurt.'

'I'll blame you,' Harry assured her. 'Then Fleur will come and set you on fire instead of me. Now hush, you need to see Madam Pomfrey, I think you've broken some ribs.'

'And my fingers,' Katie agreed. 'I can't move them, and my chest hurts lots when I breathe.'

'Madam Pomfrey will fix it,' Harry smiled, 'she regrew all the bones in my arm after Lockhart vanished them.'

'You can always have a look first,' Katie giggled again, motioning to her chest with her uninjured hand.

'Not funny, Katie,' Harry reminded her. He really hoped it was the pain messing with her head, because he was glad to have his friend back and didn't need anything to come and spoil that now, not when they'd found such a close, comfortable relationship.

She looked faintly disappointed and a little hurt.

'Fleur,' he reminded her.

'I'm not pretty enough for you, Harry,' she giggled. 'I'm glad you're my friend again,' she sighed, collapsing against him, 'I enjoy scaring the firsties with you.'

'You're the one who does all the scaring,' Harry reminded her, sweeping her legs out from underneath her to carry her through the halls to the hospital wing. Katie was heavier than Fleur was. 'I just stand there.'

'It's still fun,' Katie murmured.

Harry disillusioned them both to avoid awkward rumours or, worse, another Daily Prophet article. Fleur might actually immolate him if she found that.

'Are we there yet?' she laughed.

'Nearly,' Harry told her patiently.

'It's quite painful,' she told him, 'like, it really really hurts, but, at the same time, it doesn't. How weird is that?' She was talking very quickly and quietly, Harry could hardly hear her.

'That is quite strange,' he answered absentmindedly, turning around to back though the doors to the hospital wing.

'You aren't going to do something silly and go after Umbridge, are you?' Harry didn't answer that and placed her gently on the nearest bed.

'Madam Pomfrey,' he called out, disturbing the nurse from her office. She bustled out, pulling her wand from her pocket, and giving Harry a contemplative look that suggested she would have been quite unhappy with him if he'd managed to get himself injured again.

'Promise me you won't get caught doing something stupid,' Katie demanded, glaring up at him through half-closed eyes.

'I promise not to get caught doing something stupid,' he responded smiling reassuringly. She beamed tiredly, then squirmed to take a firm grasp on his hand, forcing him to take a seat on the edge of her bed, and shut her eyes.

I won't get caught at all.

AN: Please read and review :)

42. The Pen is Mightier

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up.

Chapter 42

The classroom emptied all but immediately, nobody wanted to stay behind and speak to Umbridge. A lesson spent copying up the best ways to avoid conflict had dulled the enthusiasm to live in every other student. Harry had been anticipating the end of the lesson for completely different reasons. Defence was the last lesson of the day, Friday, and that meant a whole litany of more exciting things were now about to happen. The first of which required his invisibility cloak and family heirloom.

Colin Creevey had a tendency to speak up for himself and Dumbledore, and a habit of napping in front of the common room fire. Harry's legilimency was nothing to be particularly proud of, but a sleeping fourth year was a soft target and he'd eventually extracted enough fragments of memory and feeling to deduce that whatever Umbridge was using to harm the other students was connected to that quill he'd seen in Colin's recollections.

A very short trip to the library had revealed nothing, but a long technical conversation with Fleur about detecting the enchantments on objects had given him enough to start with.

'How's Katie?' Neville popped up beside him just before he pulled his cloak from under his robes.

'Still in the hospital wing,' Harry replied. 'If you hang around for a few minutes I was about to go and visit her.'

Neville gave him a serious look. 'You're about to break your promise to her, aren't you?'

'I promised not to get caught,' Harry told him. 'And how do you even know about that?'

'Katie mentioned it to Angelina and Alicia in the hospital wing. I overheard them talking to the Weasley twins about it and your little stunt with Malfoy.' Neville shook his head. 'I don't know what you thought you were doing, that wasn't some school corridor jinx.'

'It was meant to be the water-conjuring charm,' Harry shrugged, 'I got carried away.' He unfolded the cloak, knowing that Neville and most of the school already knew of its existence, if not the fact that it would hide him from any detection wards that might have been placed around a teacher's office.

'I'll wait out here,' Neville agreed. 'I doubt Umbridge is coming back too soon, but if she is I shall try and delay her.'

'Thanks, Nev,' Harry grinned, vanishing under the cloak. 'I'll be quick.'

He re-entered the classroom, striding down the rows of desks and into Umbridge's office.

It's hideous.

The woman needed a whole slew of lessons, one of which had to be interior decorating, there was just too much pink. It was turning his stomach.

Harry carefully made his way round to her desk. He knew from Colin's memory that she kept the quill in the bottom draw of her desk in an unobtrusive wooden box.

It was silver-tipped, black-feathered, made of something soft as down, and as long as his hand. Harry was more interested in the enchantments that must be on it than how it looked, even if it did appear like quite an impressive writing implement.

Running the tip of his wand over the quill he repeated the words that Fleur had taught him, and had to fight the urge to destroy the object. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Umbridge was far worse than he'd thought. She'd made this herself, enchanting it to take the blood of whomever was holding it as ink and then inflicting it on children, forcing them to write in their own blood and carve the words into their own skin.

Time for a little taste of her own malice.

A simple, if powerful, Confundus Charm on the warded quill was all it took and then he was able to pick it up and tweak a few things. Umbridge only supervised single students in detention and had but one of these quills, Harry had checked the other drawers to make sure. It was fairly easy to predict the outcome of any actions he took.

He slid the quill, no longer finding it nearly as attractive as he first had, back in the box. The quill's enchantments were unchanged, but, instead of taking the blood of the nearest person, it would only ever find its ink in the veins of its owner. Harry permitted himself a cruel, satisfied smile. He hoped Umbridge enjoyed the next detention she set; it might not go quite as she planned, but it would certainly make its mark.

He had added a few additional spells, enchanting was not his forté, Fleur had proven that while he was competent he would never be as good as someone with a true gift for it, but these were simple spells. One to reduce the pain felt, in case Umbridge ever managed to use it against a student again, and a ward to let him know if the magic on it was ever tampered with again. It seemed unlikely, from its crude design, that Umbridge would notice either.

Tucking his wand away he carefully replaced the quill's box exactly as he had found it, and left, leaving the door open as he'd found it.

'What did you do?' Neville asked, when they were safely on their way to the hospital wing to visit Katie.

'Nothing much,' Harry smiled innocently, 'just altered her detention plans a little.'

'The quill?' He whispered his question, even though the corridor was all but empty.

'What do you know about it?' Harry was going to be a little annoyed if he could have just asked Neville about it instead of spending hours trying to wring something useful from Colin Creevey's mind.

'Ron says that Umbridge made him write lines with it,' Neville explained, struggling to keep his disgust to a minimum. 'It takes the blood from the back of your hand when you write, he's got scars from it.'

Serves him right for being so stupid as to keep getting detentions from her.

Harry had only made one mistake, and he'd escaped without detention, but he wouldn't be repeating his mistake again, not now he knew what the woman was capable of. The quill was only a few rungs down the ladder from the Cruciatus Curse.

'It doesn't anymore,' Harry smiled. Neville looked a little taken aback by the satisfaction he was displaying.

'What did you do? If you destroyed it she'll just make another one.'

'I didn't destroy it,' Harry assured him. 'I… improved it.'

'I don't think I want to know,' Neville decided. 'Just, make sure it doesn't end up with someone getting hurts who doesn't deserve it.'

'Umbridge is the only one who will get harmed,' Harry responded firmly, 'and she definitely deserves it. That quill is an instrument of torture, handing it to a child is no better than casting the Cruciatus Curse on them.'

Neville flinched, Harry hadn't forgotten how he felt about that curse and he felt a little guilty for reminding Neville of his parents' suffering. He was right, though, and Neville must have realised it from the way his eyes caught alight with anger.

'I hope it's painful,' he gritted eventually.

'I tried to remove the pain it causes,' Harry explained, 'in case she manages to use it on a student again.' He didn't mention that it also made it more likely to leave permanent scarring, since Umbridge wouldn't notice the effects until it was too late.

I do hope the next words she chooses make a student write are appropriately ironic.

'I suppose that makes sense,' Neville conceded, 'but she'd deserve every iota of agony she got.'

'Yes she would,' Harry agreed, pushing open the doors of the hospital wing.

Katie was still in her bed, propped up with a copy of next year's charms textbook looking distinctly bored and miserable.

She perked up when she caught sight of them.

'Hi Harry,' she beamed. Harry gave her a smile and took a seat on the edge of her bed. Neville hovered slightly off to one side.

'What did you bring?' she asked.

'This is Neville,' Harry replied, patting his friend on the cheek. 'He's a who, not a what, Katie, and I'm sure you know each other.'

'I meant for my get well present,' she scowled.

'He got you revenge,' Neville noted, stepping out of Harry's reach.

'You shouldn't have done that,' Katie told him. 'Rita Skeeter devoted the entirety of her column to your attack on Malfoy.'

'Did she?' Harry pulled the copy of the Daily Prophet out from under Katie's pile of chocolate boxes and well-wishing cards.

Boy-Who-Lied attacks student in vicious, unprovoked assault. Wonderful.

'Look on the bright side,' Katie said sympathetically, 'either Fleur sees this and murders you, in which case you don't need to worry about anything, or you'll still be able to run off to France.'

'Thanks, Katie,' Harry answered sarcastically. 'I've missed you so much over the last few days.'

'He has, actually,' Neville piped up.

'It's true,' Harry admitted, 'the firsties are all but in revolt without you to terrify them into submission. Black times are ahead without Gryffindor's Dark Mistress to keep order.'

'I'm out of here by the end of the weekend,' Katie informed him happily. 'I'll soon have those little tykes back where they belong.'

'It's the way she says it so seriously and genuinely,' Neville shook his head, 'I'm never quite sure you're joking.'

'She isn't,' Harry grinned. 'Katie is evil, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.'

'Did you read the rest of the article?' Katie tapped the copy of the paper he was still holding.

'No,' Harry shrugged. 'It's certainly all nonsense about me being a murderer and attacking students and the like.'

'Some of it makes no sense,' Katie pointed out. 'It says that Skeeter interviewed Malfoy yesterday, but he was still in here with me, complaining to himself about his injuries, and I never saw her at all.'

'Maybe she got the date wrong,' Neville suggested. 'She got pretty much everything else wrong by the look of it.' He was reading the article over Harry's shoulder. 'It says here that Harry just cursed him in the middle of practice when he stopped to show his concern for an injured friend.'

'Perhaps, but the quotes do sound a lot like what Malfoy was saying in here, so she must have spoken to him at some point.' Katie tugged the paper back out of Harry's hands.

'I was reading that,' Harry frowned.

'Get your own,' Katie laughed. 'This is mine to frame as proof I was once heroically defended by Harry Potter. Girls dream about that, you know.'

'It didn't sound all that heroic to me,' Neville remarked solemnly, wilting slightly under Harry's raised eyebrow. 'Sorry, Harry, but you did kind of curse him in front of a teacher for doing nothing more than opening his mouth like he always does.'

'I was angry,' Harry explained. 'I probably should have made sure there were no witnesses, though.' Neville gave him a look that stated quite clearly he thought he shouldn't have done it all, let alone do it with the forethought to worry about witnesses.

'And now you're banned from quidditch for life,' Katie reminded him. 'It's a good thing Ginny Weasley wanted to be seeker or we wouldn't even have one in time for the first training sessions.'

'I'll try to keep my temper in the future,' Harry promised.

'You better,' Katie ordered sternly, 'you promised me, remember?'

'I won't break my promise,' Harry reassured her.

'What did you do to Malfoy?' Katie asked. 'I didn't really see, but Pomfrey had to grow back a lot of his shoulder and arm, keep him under warming charms, and he was on blood replenishing potions for most of the next day.'

'A dark adaption of the water conjuring spell according to some,' Neville explained. 'I heard there was ice involved, but I also heard that you transformed into a giant serpent and bit him, so really nobody knows and those who saw aren't saying. Malfoy's been quite quiet recently.'

'That rumour must have come from Hufflepuff,' Harry decided. 'It has Ernie Macmillan all over it. He's still scared from second year.'

'I did overhear it from Cedric Diggory,' Neville replied. 'He was laughing at how ludicrous it was in the library until he and Cho were kicked out for kissing by Madam Pince.'

Harry was glad to hear that Cedric remained on his side. The Hufflepuff owed him, even he didn't know it, it would have grated to learn of his ignorant betrayal of Harry after he'd put himself in the way of Skeeter's poisonous pen to make sure Diggory didn't end up in Azkaban with Bagman.

'So what have you been up to while I've been stuck in here?' Katie asked, tucking the Daily Prophet back under her collection of chocolates, most of which had already been eaten.

'Lessons as normal,' Harry told her, 'nothing exciting.' Neville shot him a pointed look. 'I might have tampered with an item of stationary in Umbridge's office,' he confessed.

'The quill?' Katie gasped.

'How does everyone know about this?' Harry demanded. 'It took me ages to figure out what she was doing.'

'A lot of Gryffindors have got detention from her,' Katie shrugged, 'word gets around.'

'Then why hasn't anyone done anything? It's a torture device!'

'They're scared of what Umbridge will do to them.' Katie looked a little abashed.

If they're that scared of Umbridge then Voldemort might as well just announce he's back and we'll lose instantly.

It was ridiculous. Umbridge was a cruel, malicious woman with very poor taste in clothing and decor, but hardly anything to be afraid of if you weren't stupid enough to repeatedly provoke her.

'What did you do to it?' Katie whispered, looking around for Madam Pomfrey, who was fortunately too far to have overheard any of their conversation. Harry was fairly sure she would have commended him anyway, she would loathe something created to cause injury or pain.

'I improved it,' Harry answered simply. Katie wasn't as easy to dissuade as Neville; she stared at him until he eventually gave in. It wasn't like she was going to betray him to anyone.

'I may have altered the enchantment on it so its ink source is the creator rather than the user,' he admitted.

'And you reduced the pain it caused,' Neville added quietly.

Katie grinned rather vindictively. 'Good,' she beamed. 'I hope it leaves a permanent scar'. Then she turned to Harry and punched him firmly in the stomach. 'That's for breaking your promise, even if she did deserve it you don't break your promises to your friends.'

'I didn't break it,' Harry gasped, winded. 'I promised I wouldn't get caught.'

'Oh,' Katie looked a bit guilty, 'I did say that didn't I.'

'Yes,' Harry smirked, 'just after offering me a chance to check your injuries.' He gave her a faintly suggestive look and she flushed crimson.

'Let's just pretend I never said that,' Katie groaned. 'I can't believe I thought that would be funny.'

'I'm rather glad you weren't serious,' Harry smiled.

'Do you have to talk about this when I'm right here?' Neville asked plaintively. His face was almost as red as Katie's.

'Sorry, Nev,' Harry smirked. 'Watch out for Katie, though,' he winked, 'she's very forward.'

Katie dragged the blankets back up above her head. 'Go away,' she muttered from underneath, 'go away and let me die of shame under here where I can't be seen.'

'No,' Harry told her cheerfully.

After a few moments she reappeared, glaring and no longer red-faced. 'Why are you still here?' She demanded.

'I don't have anything to do until this evening,' Harry replied honestly.

'No plans for the weekend, then' Katie deduced, incorrectly.

'Death by fire,' Harry informed her.

'Ah,' Katie beamed. 'You're visiting Fleur,' she whispered.

'What about you, Nev?' The shyer of his two close friends often drifted out of the conversation if he wasn't dragged back into it.

'I promised I'd help Hermione, Dean, Seamus and Ron again,' he confessed. 'I'm sorry about telling them about the Room of Requirement, Harry.'

'Why? I'm not sleeping there anymore, and it's part of the school, to be used by the students capable of finding it, which you did.'

'It still feels a bit wrong after last year,' Neville shifted guiltily. 'You taught me how to use it, and it always sort of felt like it was your room.'

'It isn't.' Harry decided not to tell him that pulling the sword out of the Sorting Hat did technically make him the heir of Godric Gryffindor in a convoluted vague manner.

'What are you helping Hermione Granger with?' Katie giggled, biting her lip suggestively.

Neville went very red and squeaked, prompting Katie to dissolve into giggles. 'Nothing like that,' he managed to reply indignantly after a moment, 'just some of the spell we are going to need but not learn in class.'

'It's turning into a bit of a regular thing now,' Harry remarked. 'It'll be good for you to teach, you'll know if you can understand and do it if you can teach it.'

'Hermione said that they're not the only ones who want help, either,' Neville told him gloomily. 'Apparently everyone's struggling without someone to teach them.'

'I'm sure you'll figure something out, Nev,' Harry said sympathetically.

'He's upset he might have even more people there when all he really wants to do is give Hermione some one-on-one lessons,' Katie quipped. Neville flared crimson again.

'She is evil,' his friend bemoaned. 'I don't even think of Hermione like that. It's just weird.'

'I know what you mean really,' Katie told him. 'Some people are just more like siblings than anything else.' She cast a glance at Harry when she thought he wasn't watching. He didn't react, but inside he felt more than slightly relieved.

'I don't have any siblings,' Neville remarked rather miserably. He was obviously thinking about his parents.

'Neither do I,' Harry told him at the same time as Katie, and all three of them smiled. Neville looked quite a bit more cheerful.

'No,' Neville grinned, 'don't even think about saying something touching about surrogate siblings. I don't need to be associated with the Gryffindor's Dark side anymore than I already am.

'I wasn't going to,' Harry shrugged. 'Katie would make a terrible older sister, look at how she treats the first years. I've never heard the words human sacrifice so many times in one explanation of how to get into Gryffindor Tower.'

'Katie would be our younger sister,' Neville agreed. 'She's not responsible enough to be an older sibling. Harry's probably the eldest.'

'Harry's the youngest,' Katie disagreed, 'his birthday is the last of ours and only the youngest sibling has a temper like that.'

'So we've agreed that Neville's the middle child, then,' Harry grinned.

'The one that gets picked on and then blamed for everything,' Katie nodded, 'definitely.'

'It's a good thing we're not actually related,' Neville decided. 'You two are a terrible influence.' He threw a glance down the ward to where Madam Pomfrey was eyeing them sternly. 'I think we're about to be thrown out,' he remarked.

'It does look that way,' Katie agreed, slightly sad. 'I'll be out of here in a few days, so I'll see you then, Neville. Harry, I'll come to your funeral, since Fleur is going to kill you the moment she hears about what happened I likely won't see you again.'

'Every cloud has a silver lining,' Harry agreed, laughing. 'Besides, once I'm dead she's coming straight for you, so I'll be seeing you soon enough.'

'She won't actually be angry with me, will she?' Katie asked quietly, as Madam Pomfrey approached. Neville stepped away, not wanting to hear.

'Maybe a little bit,' Harry confessed, 'but it's nothing personal, you're just part of the reason I got myself in trouble.'

Fleur was just slightly possessive, and wouldn't much like the idea of him defending Katie, even if she wasn't going to make an issue out of it. Harry was fairly sure her little sister, Gabrielle, had reaped Fleur's temper for throwing her allure at him when they had first met, and she doted on her baby sister.

Speaking of Fleur's temper, it's almost time for me to leave.

It wasn't entirely coincidence that he'd recently learned to perform the flame-proofing charm.

'Out you go, Mr Potter, Mr Longbottom,' the nurse ordered them. 'Visiting time is up, and don't let me catch either of you sneaking back in later.' She was looking rather specifically at Harry.

'Bye, Katie,' Neville said, not willing to linger and risk Madam Pomfrey's wrath.

'Goodbye, Dark Mistress,' Harry bowed, earning a giggle from Katie and a slight purse of the lips from the strict nurse, who was waiting for him to go. He fled before Madam Pomfrey evicted him more forcefully, or worse, made him drink something from the potions cabinet.

'You're off to tutor?' Harry asked, as they reached the foot of the staircase.

'Yes,' Neville admitted. 'Dean and Ron still can't quite produce a full shield charm, and I need to work on mine. It's a bit off; it trembles.'

'I can have a look at it after the weekend?' Harry offered.

'Yeah,' Neville accepted gratefully, 'that would be great, thanks.'

He made his way quickly up the stairs towards the seventh floor, and Harry waited for him to move out of sight before turning and hurrying towards Myrtle's bathroom and the chamber.

The ghostly girl was there this time. She poked her head through the cubicle door, and gave him a smile and a wave which he cheerfully returned before disappearing down the stairs. Myrtle seemed to be taking her role in guarding the chamber quite seriously.

'Have you come to see if you can perform legilimency on yourself using the time-turner?' Salazar asked eagerly when he entered the study a few moments later.

'No,' Harry gave him flat look. 'If I wanted to die in a horrible, complicated way I'd go and find Riddle.'

'You probably wouldn't die,' Slytherin tried.

'If you can honestly remove the probably I might consider it,' Harry told him, 'but until then I'm only using the time-turner occasionally to help learn important things, or to rectify serious situations.'

'I suppose that's wise if you want to be overly cautious,' the portrait griped. 'It's inadvisable to constantly use something like a time-turner, all the extra time without sleep puts a lot of strain on the mind, and you can barely use it now everyone's watching you anyway. Someone would notice you were in two places at once fairly quickly.'

'I take it you came here to practise something then? Have you managed to get anywhere with your legilimency?'

'A little practice on a sleeping fourth year,' Harry told him. 'Nothing complex, but I'm getting the hang of casting the spell without an incantation and I know how much power I need to put into the spell to create a weak or strong connection.'

'That's better than nothing, I suppose,' Salazar grumbled.

'I can't do more than get better at casting it without a wand or an incantation as things are,' Harry shrugged. 'I'll have to wait until after asking Neville for more.'

He folded his invisibility cloak up and placed it on the desk next to his pile of Daily Prophet articles and the still unopened bag of winnings from the Triwizard Tournament.

'What did you need that for?'

'I carried out my revenge on Umbridge,' Harry told him. 'The advantage of owning an ancient family heirloom that hides my magic completely is that it makes it easy to get past any wards.'

Slytherin looked at the cloak thoughtfully for a moment, but his attention soon returned to Harry when he glimpsed him pick up the hand drawn picture portkey Fleur had given him.

'Oh,' he groused. 'I see. You came down here to go off to France, not to see me and learn anything important.'

'That's about right,' Harry nodded, sending him an innocent smile.

'Well before you go, tell me what you did to Umbridge. Was it something deliciously ironic? Irony is the most delicious form of vengeance.'

'She has a quill enchanted to use the user's blood as ink. It's painful to use and leaves scars, and she makes students write lines with it.'

The founder's face darkened, a savage, furious glint appearing in his eyes. The serpent hissed, baring its fangs. Harry had the distinct impression that had the basilisk still been sane and around Professor Umbridge might have been fortunate to find herself petrified.

'I altered the enchantment so it takes the blood from the creator rather than the user,' Harry grinned rather cruelly, 'she's going to get a surprise next time she hosts a detention. I reduced the pain to stop it hurting students, but it's going to all but ensure she doesn't immediately notice and gets scarred by it.'

'Good,' his ancestor spat. 'People like her disgust me, using something like that on a child. If my basilisk was still alive…' The painting trailed off his ire fading through vindication to pleasure as he contemplated the nature of Harry's little piece of justice.

'I'm off to France,' he said, waving the pencilled portkey gently to bring the painting back to the moment.

'Go on then,' the portrait, 'but don't say I didn't tell you when Riddle gets you because you weren't quite powerful enough.' He would have taken Salazar's words more seriously if the painting had been trying to conceal a pleased smiled. His ancestor knew how much he enjoyed his time there.

'Argent,' he whispered, and smiled a little nervously as he was whisked off to the willow tree and a French dusk.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who has.

43. From Paris with Love

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The Fleur chapter you were all waiting for, and this time it seems I don't even have to be sarcastic for that to be true.

Chapter 43

Fleur draped herself along the length of the branch, their branch, and tried to listen to the wind instead of her thoughts, spinning her locket around her finger on its chain.

The wind chose that moment to die down, and the browning leaves of the willow tree fell silent.

Fleur listened to the soft noise of the water instead, watching the fallen leaves flowing along its surface, but her distraction didn't last long, just as it hadn't for any of the last hour she'd been sitting, or lying, or hanging or standing on the branch.

Harry is coming soon.

He would be here, he always came when they agreed to return here, to their spot. Fleur wasn't sure how she would react to seeing him. Her father had suggested that she subscribe to the Daily Prophet, just so she had some insight into what was happening in Britain. She knew, of course, that it was largely lies, truths twisted to suit the purpose of the Ministry, and that Harry had never told her what it said because he didn't want her to read it and see what it said about him.

Fleur had subscribed all the same, she wanted, needed, to know what was happening to him, what they were saying about him. She couldn't help him with it otherwise.

The first few papers had barely mentioned him, their subjects of slander were Albus Dumbledore's supporters, but then Friday's paper had arrived and she'd found Harry on the front page. She'd shifted halfway to her other form in an instant and not calmed down enough to change back for an hour.

How could he do something like that?

She was going to kill him when he turned up, and then they were going to talk. Fleur wasn't making the mistake of avoiding speaking to him about anything important again.

Tapping the folded up Prophet with her fingers she waited for the conjured silver numbers of her tempus charm to shift slowly towards the time they agreed to meet and struggled to ignore the soft heat of her anger that urged her to let her body shift.

With a soft snap Harry appeared under the willow tree.

Right on time. He better have a good explanation.

Fleur threw the Daily Prophet at him catching him on the shoulder, then leapt down out of the tree.

'What did you do?' She demanded, pointing a finger at the paper projectile.

'When did you start reading the Daily Prophet?' Harry asked, glancing down at it with obvious concern.

'Since you stopped telling me what was happening in Britain,' Fleur responded, swiping the paper from the floor.

'You're angry,' Harry said quietly.

'Of course I'm angry,' she retorted in french, doing her best to prevent the shape of her face from shifting. She could feel the instinct to restructure herself stronger, to let her body react to her anger, but she resisted it again. This was not how she wanted Harry to first see her change.

'I sort of knew you would be,' he continued, just as evenly, 'but I hoped you'd understand.'

'Understand,' she cried, her cheekbones lengthening under her skin. 'You impaled this Malfoy with four inch spikes of ice, why?'

Harry didn't reply straight away, he looked at her, at the willow tree and the river, then up at the outline of the moon, a bitter, expectant smile tracing across his face.

'Because I wanted to,' he replied simply. 'He was there, running his mouth like normal, while Katie was hurt because of his lackey Crabbe. He deserved it.'

He did it because someone hurt Katie Bell.

Her Fleur knew that he would protect his friends, that he wouldn't let anyone or anything hurt them and go unpunished, but he'd nearly killed the other student for her and it worried her just a little that he was so devoted to the girl.

'I would have done it for you,' he told her fiercely, reading her thoughts from her face, 'if it had been you with broken fingers and ribs, I would have done far worse.'

'You seriously injured a student in front of that Umbridge woman, the one you know would take any chance to act against you. You could not have done anything worse!' Her temper returned, more potent than before. He did not seem to understand how reckless he had been. She could feel the prickling of feathers along her forearms under her robes.

'I was angry,' Harry responded, his tone was growing slightly cool. 'All the insults Umbridge threw at you, the things she inflicted on children, Katie getting hurt, I can't keep my temper forever.'

'You were angry, so you did that?'

'She is mutilating children,' Harry declared coldly, 'forcing them to slice words into their own skin, would you not be angry? Or do you expect me to be some perfect paragon of virtue because I'm called the Boy-Who-Lived?'

His whole stance had shifted from when he first arrived. The easy, open, relaxed air was gone, replaced by a tense, closed off coldness. Fleur squeezed her fists tightly together, thinking furiously. She could see his doubt, his expectation that she would now turn her back on him, and the first steps of his immediate attempts to cut her out first, just so it hurt less when she left.

'I don't know what you want me to be,' Harry whispered.

'I want you to be Harry,' Fleur told him, stepping closer. 'I don't care what else you become, what you do, or what you don't, as long as you are Harry, my Harry, I won't care.'

'No matter what?' He seemed surprised and shaken, his voice coming out hoarse.

'My father thinks that me being with you is dangerous,' Fleur admitted, 'he told me that either you're not what you seem, or I'll be standing next to Voldemort's first target. He is worried about the English pure-blood obsession too.'

Harry visibly shrank into himself for a moment, then he looked her in the eyes and straightened up. 'We can stay a secret,' he decided, 'nobody ever has to know about us, you'll be safe in France from any of them if there's no connection to me.'

'Let me finish,' she snapped, irritated that he'd even consider hiding her away while he risked himself. 'I thought about what papa said, it's why I subscribed to the Daily Prophet, and I came to a realisation when I read that article today.'

'What did you realise?' There a desperate, clinging fear in his bright green eyes and Fleur knew instantly that he was more afraid of losing her than anything else. Their bond meant as much to him as it did to her, everything would be so much less without it.

'I didn't care,' Fleur told him quietly. 'I didn't care what you had done, you could have killed him and I would still have only been worried about you provoking the Ministry's lapdog.'

'That's why you're angry,' he smiled, relieved. 'I hoped that would be why, but when you threw the paper at me, I was so afraid I was wrong. I thought you were disgusted with what I did.'

'You're an idiot,' she switched back to English, pushing him back into the tree. 'Why would I care what happens to any of those small-minded people? English bigots. Not one of them understands me like you do, none of them ever cared about me as much as you do.'

Fleur traced her fingers down the side of the face, smiling when he shivered, letting her fingertips linger on his skin.

'I don't like that you defended Katie Bell so fiercely,' she murmured, 'you're mine, but I know you won't let anyone harm your friends and I don't care what you do to those that do.'

'Katie is just a friend,' Harry cut in, but she placed a finger on his lips. She didn't need him to interrupt her, not when she had worked up the courage to open herself up so much.

'I care that you were stupid enough to do that in front of people. I care that you got yourself banned from playing a sport that you love. I care that you gave that pathetic rag of paper another piece of slander to throw at you.' The Daily Prophet ignited in her left hand, her conjured fire reducing it to ashes in the space of seconds. 'I'm not going to abandon you,' she told him, 'not now, not ever.'

'Not even if I told you what I've done?'

Her fingers flinched away from his face.

'As long as you're my Harry, I won't care,' she repeated, trying to ignore the fear that he might have slipped, that perhaps Katie Bell might have meant more than to him than he said.

He knew, straight away, what she meant and reached out to catch her hand and pull him against her, shaking his head.

'No,' he told her, kissing her forehead gently. Fleur didn't need any more reassurance than that, and a flood of relief flowed through her.

He's still mine.

It almost worried her how attached to Harry she had become. She supposed that the absence of any close bonds outside of her family made the one she had all the more important. If something ever broke it she feared how much it would hurt, her heart contracted in panic at the very idea of its loss, but as long as he was hers nothing would mean as much to her.

'I took revenge,' he admitted, but he didn't sound very regretful, just very satisfied. 'When I asked you about enchanting it was so I could take my vengeance on Umbridge. I'm going to make her suffer before I'm finished with her.' There was something cruel and determined about the way he said it and Fleur knew that he would get what he wanted.

Good, she decided. She deserves it.

The idea of Gabrielle being forced to harm herself because of that foul woman made her bones hot with anger. It made them feel soft, malleable to her magic, easy to bend and reshape into the form of a predator.

'I'm not so selfless as I used to be, Fleur, I used to put everyone before myself, but I can't see things that way anymore, not for just anyone.' He twisted his lips in consternation. 'Things are complicated now,' he said finally. 'It used to just be Voldemort, the Death-Eaters, and everyone else, but that's not true at all. There's a million individuals trying to get what they want, and I'm just one of them.'

'What do you want?' Fleur asked.

'So many things,' he laughed, 'but really, honestly,' for a second he looked horribly vulnerable, 'I want to mean something to someone, to be something important to them.'

She didn't need to see any of the desperate desire in his eyes, or the longing in his voice to know just how much she must mean to him if he thought that Fleur was that someone.

'What would you do to have that?' She had to ask.

Harry gave her a very long, very soft look. 'Anything I had to,' he admitted quietly.

'Then you'll be more careful next time you want to curse someone, won't you?' Fleur teased, letting him slide his hands around her.

He kissed her very gently, slipping a hand onto the back of her neck to keep her lips against his.

'I was afraid that you wouldn't understand,' he murmured, pulling back from the kiss.

'You are still an idiot,' she sighed. 'Do you think I am any different?' He didn't answer, just shrugged and looked away uncomfortably. 'You mean just as much to me as I do to you, Harry,' she pulled his face back round to look at her, 'when I have finished my exams at Beauxbatons this winter I will spend every second making sure you stay mine.'

'And how will you do that?'

'We'll get stronger,' she told him, 'we'll get so powerful that nobody will ever be able to take what we want away.'

'It isn't that simple,' Harry said sadly. 'There are so many things we need to know that we don't.'

'We'll discover them,' she assured him. 'Between us we'll learn enough to set ourselves free from everyone else. Nobody will be able to control us, we'll spend our lives doing what we want, where we want, with each other.'

'Isn't it a little early to say things like that?' He was smiling at her again, a teasing glint in his eye. 'We've only been together for a few months.'

'Are we going to fast for you, Harry?' She breathed, leaning in close, touching the tip of her nose to his, and brushing her lips over his. 'I suppose I should stop-'

Everything else she had been intending to say was cut off when Harry kissed her hard, slipping her around and crushing his lips into hers, pressing her back into the tree and himself into her. His hands were in her hair, drifting to her hips, and running over her shoulders up to her cheeks to cup her face.

It was hot with his passion, and incredibly sweet. Fleur found herself melting into his lips, disappearing into the touch of his tongue on the underside of her upper lip.

Harry pulled back and she let out a soft moan of disappointment. He laughed and she flushed violently, then dragged his mouth back down to hers, where it belonged.

'Now,' she told him, pushing him back and stepping away from the trunk of the tree, 'I want to see what you can do. The Daily Prophet spent so much time talking about this dark curse you used that I want to see it for myself.'

A smirk spread across his lips, and he shook his head. 'I have a better idea,' he grinned. 'You know how to duel, don't you?'

'Of course,' Fleur sniffed. Everyone at Beauxbatons learnt a bit about how to duel in their last two years. 'You want to duel,' she realised.

He nodded. 'Not here, though.'

'You will lose,' she told him archly. 'I am a good duellist.'

'I need the practice,' Harry shrugged, 'but you should know better than to tell me you'll beat me. You said you'd win the Triwizard Tournament too.'

'I would have done if Voldemort's follower hadn't interfered,' she declared. Harry was a powerful wizard, but experience was invaluable when duelling, and she knew he couldn't have much, if any. Fleur's magic was not as suited to duelling as it was to more subtle magics, but it was certainly no weaker than any others, especially when it came to casting spells with a fire element medium. Harry would not know what hit him.

'Let's go back to the chateau,' she decided, taking a grip on his arm.

'It's going to take a while to get used to that,' Harry remarked. He always seemed to find the idea of her living in a chateau amusing, even though it was far from France's most elegant home.

Fleur pictured the entrance hall of her home and pushed the world back past them until they were standing where she had imagined them amongst Gabby's shoes.

'Are your parents home?'

'Not today, not until late,' Fleur told him, 'there is an event in Paris that they are attending together.' She took his hand and led him around the main staircase to the smaller second set of steps and down towards the basement.

'Do you have a dungeon?' Harry asked, smiling brightly. 'Please tell me you do.'

'No,' Fleur answered, 'we have a basement that is partly a wine-cellar, and partly empty. Maman used to brew potions down there, but when they enlarged the shop in Carcassonne she no longer needed to. Gabby and I use it occasionally, normally for practicing magic since it's warded quite extensively.'

'What are the rules?'

'Normal duelling rules,' Fleur answered simply. Harry raised an eyebrow, so she embellished. 'Nothing more dangerous than a stunner, no stepping out of the ring, and no speaking except for spell incantations. I want to see the curse you used on Malfoy first, though.'

The basement was typical of a wine cellar with a high, vaulted ceiling and an earthy, musty smell. Fleur had come down here as a child to explore and play games amongst the bottles, or to watch her mother brew, often dragging an uninterested Gabrielle with her.

She led Harry well past the wine racks and the vulnerable glass bottles into the farthest room and shut the door behind them. Fleur knew all too well that a stray spell could easily slip through the open door and shatter an expensive vintage; the bottles weren't warded or charmed.

'Show me,' she ordered. The paper had made it sound like quite a powerful piece of magic. He'd avoided showing her his fire spell, the one strong enough to burn through the hedges of the maze when most other spells spattered harmlessly off their leaves. Fleur wanted to see this one.

Harry drew himself up, adopting a serious, focused expression and slid his wand from his sleeve. He looked quite ridiculous and Fleur stifled a giggle at his pompous expression.

'Aguamenti,' he intoned dramatically, and a small stream of water burst from the tip of his wand to spatter on the floor. Fleur shot him her hardest glare, caught between laughter and the desire to singe the smug smile off his face.

'That's the spell I used,' he protested, when she drew her wand threateningly. 'I promise.'

'Then show me what you did to it.' He was being difficult again, just like with the fire spell he wouldn't show her.

'What will you do it I don't?' Harry asked.

'I'll tell Gabrielle about the photos in the Room of Requirement,' Fleur answered sweetly. Her little sister would not leave Harry alone until she had the full story, every romantic aspect would need to be explored in detail. He paled slightly.

'That seems a little harsh,' he mused, but raised his wand.

This time, instead of pulling a silly pose, his face hardened and his eyes slowly turned chillingly cold. Fleur could feel, very faintly, the way his magic flowed and twisted though his wand.

'Aguamenti,' he hissed, and there was icy anger in his tone.

The water sprayed across the room against the wall, sharp chunks of ice smashing against the sandstone with the sound of breaking glass.

'How did you do that?' She asked, staring at the pieces of ice. 'That's a simple conjuring spell, not a curse.'

'I told you,' he replied confusedly, 'I was angry.'

'You only meant to drench him with water, didn't you?' Fleur realised.

'I let my emotions get the best of me,' Harry admitted, 'and the ice was the result, though he deserved it all the same.'

Fleur walked over to the jagged fragments and poked them with her toe. They were thick, sharp-edged and the width and length of her palm. He'd turned a simple, school level, conjuration into something lethal. She had no idea that strong emotions could have such an effect on magic. Every wizard and witch knew that their feelings could affect the intent of a spell, that was why they were taught to clear their minds before casting, to ensure their focus was on the spell. Fleur had never heard of emotions doing anything but disrupting the intent and causing the magic to fail.

'I've never seen anything quite like it,' she murmured.

'You haven't?' He seemed upset by that, as if he thought he'd done something wrong.

'It's brilliant,' she told him proudly, 'dangerous, but brilliant.' She poked the pieces once more, admiring them. 'You need to be able to control and channel your emotions,' she decided. 'I'm not duelling you seriously until you can. I don't want to end up like Malfoy,' she smirked.

Harry's wand disappeared into his sleeve before she could blink, as if he was somehow afraid that just by holding it she might be hurt. That needed to be nipped in the bud.

'When does it happen?' Fleur asked him gently. Harry didn't need to be afraid of hurting her, they would still eventually be practicing duelling together, it had been a good idea.

'When I'm angry,' Harry responded quietly. 'I don't know why it happens.'

'It's a good thing, Harry,' she insisted, 'once you've learnt how to control it you'll have an unpredictable ability, that's perfect for duelling.'

'I can't control it,' he replied. 'If I'm really angry, and forget to use my occlumency techniques to clear my mind and focus, it just happens. I never know what will happen.'

'So think of something that makes you angry,' Fleur suggested, 'then try every spell you know a few times until you're aware of the outcomes. I'll help,' she promised.

'Maybe,' Harry responded tentatively. Fleur knew immediately that if he ever did consciously attempt to use his emotions to manipulate his intent it would not be while she was there.

Idiot, she thought, both exasperated and fond.

'Let's go somewhere,' Fleur decided. 'Somewhere nice.' She wanted to take his mind off this, off their argument, no matter how nicely it had ended.

'Where?'

'I know a place in Paris,' Fleur assured him, 'but we need to go kidnap Gabby first.'

'We do?' Harry's smile was back.

'I promised her that we'd go there with her, it's our favourite place, and she's been lonely at Beauxbatons with me always coming to see you.' Fleur had also made Gabby promise to be good, or at least as good as Gabrielle ever managed. She wouldn't be throwing her allure around at Harry, or pestering them about their romance.

'How are we going to kidnap her?' Harry asked, clearly he found the idea quite entertaining.

Fleur pulled the portkey she had made for herself out of her robes and waved it at him. Madame Maxime generally allowed her to do as she pleased, especially as she had finished learning what Beauxbatons could teach her. It was likely she'd get into a bit of trouble for stealing her baby sister without asking first, but Fleur had been scolded before.

'Doesn't Beauxbatons have anti-portkey wards?' Harry wondered.

'Of course it does,' Fleur enthused, proud of herself, 'only a member of staff can create a portkey to the school.' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Aren't you going to ask me how I did it?' Fleur prompted.

'How did you achieve this most brilliant and noteworthy accomplishment, ma cherie?' Harry begged, the teasing glint returned to his eyes.

'I created a portkey to the willow tree while on Beauxbatons grounds that would return me to wherever I had come from. Yours does the same. How did you think it bypassed Hogwarts' wards?' His teasing was not enough to touch the pride she took in managing to achieve something so simple and clever.

He shrugged. 'It's never had to actually take me past the wards,' he revealed. 'I portkey to and from a place that's outside of them.'

'You might as well just apparate,' Fleur sniffed. 'It's a waste of my enchantment.'

'I'm sure it will come in very useful,' Harry grinned, patting her sympathetically on the back, 'but I'd rather not have to explain to Dumbledore where I keep vanishing off to when Voldemort might be lurking in every broom cupboard.'

Fleur supposed that was fair. Hogwarts might have wards to keep track of it students comings and goings, something Beauxbatons couldn't feasibly use, since many of its older students were traditionally allowed to leave the grounds upon earning positions of responsibility, and it was generally accepted that they'd take their siblings or younger friends with them.

'Let's go,' Fleur decided. 'Come here, Harry,' she said coyly, extending her arm, and smiling slightly when instead of holding it he linked his through hers.

'Argent,' she murmured, and they were standing in her room. Harry had seen it before, it was the first thing she had turned the Room of Requirement into, but that wasn't quite the same as having him actually standing here.

'I remember that picture,' he smiled, gesturing at the image of her and Gabrielle that stood at the end of one of her shelves. Her sister was smiling delightedly, waving at them out of the frame, while her own image stared curiously at Harry, who returned Gabby's wave with a small smile.

'Where's your sister?' Harry inquired. 'Do we have to sneak through Beauxbatons?' He seemed quite excited by the prospect.

'Well if we were anyone else we could just walk and nobody would think twice,' Fleur began, 'but since you're famous and I am who I am, it'd be best to disillusion ourselves.'

'Will she scream if we grab her while we're invisible?'

'Not anymore,' Fleur smirked, 'she's used to it. If she knows I'm coming she'll feel for my magic and grab me instead.'

'Does she know we're coming?'

'No,' Fleur smiled. 'Follow me.'

She led Harry out of her room, taking his hand and pausing only to disillusion themselves, then down the corridor in the direction of Gabrielle's favourite spot. Lessons had ended by now, so Gabby would have gone where she always went when she was on her own, a balcony on the floor above that overlooked the Pyrenees.

Fleur could sense his magic, flowing and swirling in its own unique way, a little to her left her as they walked, fingers intertwined, down the mostly empty corridor towards the stairs.

'I prefer Hogwarts,' she heard him whisper provocatively. 'Beauxbatons is beautiful, but it doesn't quite seem as magical.'

'You are biased, Beauxbatons is far more elegant and just as magical,' Fleur whispered back. 'Hogwarts is grey, draughty and has that horrible forest.'

Harry squeezed her hand affectionately and she heard him laugh quietly. 'You haven't seen half of the horrors of that forest.'

Fleur disagreed, but not aloud. She didn't need Harry worrying about her unnecessarily and telling him that Gabrielle had found burnt skeleton would definitely kill the upbeat mood. That conversation could wait for another, more morbid time.

'Gabby's out there,' Fleur raised there joined hands in the direction of the door at the far end from the top of the stairs. 'The door leads out over the buttress to a small balcony, nobody else ever goes there.'

The door creaked loudly when Fleur pushed it, and her sister's silver hair swirled when she snapped her head round. Gabrielle closed her eyes for a moment, then she broke out into a wide smile.

'Fleur, and you brought Harry too.' She looked around carefully, then frowned. 'I can only see where Fleur is.' Gabrielle stepped forwards and hugged her, and Harry let go of her hand, dispelling his disillusionment.

'Gabrielle,' he smiled. Her baby sister gave him a similarly warm greeting, but remembered this time that directing her allure at him would get her clothes scorched.

'You were right next to Fleur,' she pouted. 'How could I not see you?'

'My Disillusionment Charm is better than hers,' he grinned, throwing her a challenging look over her little sister's shoulder.

'Why are you here?' Gabby chirped. 'Am I being kidnapped again?'

'This is a regular thing?' Harry asked, amused.

'Beauxbatons is boring,' Gabby grinned. 'I always get Fleur to come and rescue me and take me somewhere more fun. Normally we go to Carcassonne or Paris.'

'Paris,' Fleur cut in, 'we're going to your favourite place in all of France.' Gabrielle's eyes lit up and she all but dragged Harry across to Fleur, clutching his arm and grabbing Fleur's hand.

'Let's go,' Gabby enthused. 'I've been craving meringues all day.'

Fleur retrieved Harry from her sister's grip, linking arms with him, and adjusting her grip on Gabrielle. 'Do you remember your promise?' Fleur murmured to her sister.

'Of course I do,' Gabby sulked. 'No trying to charm Fleur's boyfriend, she gets overly tetchy about it.' Gabrielle grinned at her mischievously. 'You never made me promise not to tell him about you.'

'I made you promise to be good,' Fleur reminded her. 'If one word of the things I said to you about Harry comes out of you I'm going to burn every pair of shoes you own.' To her surprise her sister only looked mildly horrified and slightly calculating, as if she was trying to judge whether it would be worth it. 'Don't even consider it,' she warned.

'Are we going?' Harry was trying not to laugh, he clearly had better hearing than she realised.

'We're going,' Fleur nodded, and side-long apparated them all onto the cobbles of Paris opposite a quaint little restaurant.

'Welcome to Madam Antoinette's,' Gabby grinned. 'It has the best desserts in all of Paris and most of France, we've checked.'

The tiny restaurant was as quiet as normal, not many wizards or witches bothered to apparate all the way out to the edge of Paris' magical district just for a dessert. Gabrielle had slipped out of Fleur's grasp and made her way to their normal table, tucked away into the back of the restaurant where they couldn't be seen so easily and their allure less noticeable.

The owner, a small, stout man wearing the same chocolate-stained chef's coat as always, looked up, slightly dazed, when they entered after Gabby.

'I thought this was Madam Antoinette's?' Harry asked, curiously as they joined her little sister, who was already proffering menus in their direction in an attempt to hurry them into ordering.

'It's a very bad joke,' Fleur explained. 'The owner is muggle-born and doesn't realise that most wizards won't understand, of course he does make wonderful food, so we have forgiven him.'

'They're out of meringues,' Gabby announced very unhappily. 'I shall have to have Clafoutis instead.'

'What an unbearable situation for you, Gabby,' Fleur smirked.

'I wanted meringues,' she sulked, 'they're sweeter.' Harry raised an eyebrow and Fleur smiled, answering the question he hadn't quite asked.

'It's not a veela thing, just a Delacour one.' She turned a pointed look on her baby sister. 'Gabby is the worst of all of us.'

'I am not,' she denied. 'Everyone knows Fleur is the worst,' she told Harry, particularly cheerfully. 'She once ate a whole box of icing sugar in the middle of the night.'

'I remember having a significant amount of help eating that,' Fleur reminded her sister, who had the grace to blush.

'And there's fact you have honey for breakfast,' Gabby finished triumphantly.

'Lot's of people eat honey for breakfast,' Fleur remarked, smiling. They'd had this argument before.

'I have honey for breakfast when it's available,' Harry agreed.

'Fleur eats it out of the jar,' Gabby crowed, 'with a tablespoon.'

'That is unusual,' Harry grinned. 'I think Gabrielle might be right.'

Fleur shrugged, unrepentant. She'd never been able to resist sweet things, they just tasted too good. 'You should be grateful for my love of sweet things, Harry,' she reminded him. 'If I did not love dessert wine so much our evening at the Yule Ball might have ended very differently.'

Harry flushed and Gabby squeaked with embarrassment, her face flaming violently from behind her menu.

'Fleur,' she gasped. 'You didn't?!'

'Didn't what?'

Gabby shifted, glancing at Harry. 'You know,' her eyes flashed with mischief, and the flush rose further up her face as she giggled suggestively.

'No!' It was Harry who realised what she meant first and answered, looking anywhere but at Fleur. 'She kissed me under the mistletoe,' the teasing light surfaced, 'then she ran away.'

'I did not run away,' Fleur denied proudly, a blush of her own beginning to rise. Gabby was giggling madly on the other side of the table from her and she was sorely tempted to stamp on her feet again. Her sister was the one who had started this conversation.

Their conversation was fortunately interrupted by the owner, who came across to ask what they might fancy.

Harry had chosen the Clafoutis, and Fleur got what she always did when they came here, the religieuse, but Gabby stubbornly asked for meringues, even going so far as to direct her allure at the owner to get what she wanted. Fleur did stamp on her toes for that, she should know better than to use her allure in such a manner.

Gabrielle sulked for a few minutes when Fleur ordered the Clafoutis for her as well, but cheered up immediately when it arrived. Cherries were her favourite fruit.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

44. Dumbledore's Army

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter is up. It's time for things to start to move on a little bit and build up steam, the end of the beginning has begun...

Chapter 44

Somehow Harry found himself in the Hog's Head sitting next to Katie and watching, bemused as Hermione, Ron, Dean attempted to persuade Neville that he was really quite capable of teaching anyone he wanted to.

He was only here because Neville had insisted on it, because Hermione had clearly worked out that Neville's newfound improvement and his closer friendship with Harry were no coincidences, and because Katie had finally escaped the care of Madam Pomfrey and wanted to go outside. It had been the latter that really clinched things, Katie had not been taking no for an answer.

That left the two of them sitting around the edge of a table in the Hog's Head, sipping butterbeer and watching the spectacle unfold in front of them.

'Why are we here?'

'I wanted to get out of Hogwarts and go walking around Hogsmeade for a bit,' Katie reminded him, taking a sip of her drink and getting foam on her upper lip.

'I mean right here, as in the Hog's Head, we already went walking up to the Shrieking Shack earlier.'

'Oh,' Katie gave him an incredulous look, licking the foam of her upper lip, 'don't you know?'

'Obviously if I knew, I wouldn't be asking,' he responded acidly.

'Don't be grumpy,' Katie remonstrated him, patting him gently on the cheek with her cold, slightly damp hand. Harry wiped the condensation of his cheek and gave her a flat look.

'Umbridge is refusing to teach us,' Katie explained, 'apparently Neville's proven himself a good teacher and is a way ahead of where he's supposed to be. Hermione, Ron and Dean have been offering to form a group for him to teach, though,' she nodded at the dispute that was still continuing in front of them, 'it seems they did it without asking Neville first.'

'So why are you here?' Harry asked. Katie was in the year above them, she'd already passed her OWLs.

'I thought it might be fun,' she grinned, 'besides, I have a pretty good guess where Neville learnt his stuff from.'

'I taught him everything he knows,' Harry admitted, with a slight smile. Lying to Katie, or teasing her too much, normally only got him quaffle-sized bruises. He was no longer allowed to attend quidditch practices, but that probably meant she'd just hex him where he stood instead.

'Thought so,' Katie beamed. 'He's a lot better now, you know,' she added more quietly and seriously. 'Whatever you've told him or showed him has really helped him. He used to just drift around silently, break things and squeak with surprise, like a big, clumsy mouse.'

Harry laughed, briefly drawing the attention of the arguing quartet.

'It's going to be quite a small group,' he remarked. 'I'm teaching him, they're already learning from him, and you're only here to have a laugh and hex me.'

'Everyone's supposed to coming in about five minutes,' Katie responded, taking another long sip of her drink. This time she avoided getting foam over herself.

'Ah, so it won't just be us.'

'No, though I have no idea how many people will actually be coming,' Katie's face scrunched up in thought, 'maybe ten or fifteen.'

'They might be disappointed,' Harry pointed out, finishing his drink and nodding at the quartet. 'Neville might not ever agree to teach them.'

'You'll have to teach us instead,' Katie smiled.

'Dark ice curses for beginners,' Harry grinned, only to get punched firmly on the shoulder.

'Don't joke,' Katie admonished him. 'Impaling other students with icicles isn't funny.'

It is when it's Malfoy, Harry almost said.

He rubbed his shoulder and stuck his lower lip out dramatically instead.

'Harry,' Hermione's voice interrupted, 'tell Neville he has to teach us.'

'Why?' Harry shrugged. 'He can make his own decisions. If you want to, or think you should, then by all means teach, Nev, but don't let them force you into something you don't want.'

'Umbridge isn't going to teach us,' Ron pointed out, still surprising calm.

He'd have exploded by this point last year. Maybe he finally grew up a bit.

'Yeah, and Neville helped us already with his shield charm,' Dean added. 'I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping you, or anyone else if he'd only get over his fear of speaking to people he doesn't really know.'

'I know I should teach,' Neville muttered, 'but nobody would listen to me, they'll never think that I know what I'm talking about.'

'Show them they're wrong,' Harry responded firmly. 'When they see you're better than them they'll have to swallow their pride and ask for help. It will be fun.' Hermione shot him a glare, and Katie drowned a giggle in her butterbeer next to him, spattering foam over her mouth.

'Very attractive,' Harry congratulated her, and the chaser flushed slightly.

'Everyone will be here soon,' Hermione fretted.

'You should have thought about that before leaving it to the last minute to tell Neville what you wanted him to do,' Harry told her unsympathetically.

'I assumed he'd want to help his friends,' Hermione responded pointedly.

'Maybe he already is helping all his friends,' he replied coolly. Neville looked uncertainly between them.

'I'll teach,' he decided, then smirked, an expression Harry wasn't used to seeing Neville wear, 'but Harry will be my assistant.' Ron and Dean looked nervous, no doubt considering the prospect of numbers falling once they realised Harry was involved. Hermione looked rather too happy about it.

'That's good,' Katie told them all cheerfully, 'because everyone's arriving now.'

Neville gulped, but straightened up and fixed a determined expression on his face.

'There are a few more than ten,' Harry pointed out to Katie, as the Hog's Head swiftly filled up to the point of inconvenience.

'I underestimated Neville's appeal,' she giggled.

'That or nobody has managed to teach themselves how to do a shield charm.' Harry decided his second reason was the more likely of the two. He was still trying to find a way of improving his own, the shining, silver barrier that Voldemort had created was much more impressive than his bright light. He was also slightly tempted to see what would happen should he cast it angry, but it would be best to wait until he was in the chamber for that, though he would be spending even less time there now than he wanted.

Umbridge had forgotten, in her glee, to give him detention, but the moment Dumbledore had been told Harry had somehow found himself scheduled to be spending at least one evening a week with Snape for the rest of the year. It meant, as likely as anything else, that he would be very well acquainted with the school cauldrons come the summer and that the headmaster could keep an eye on him.

'I guess we should start then,' Hermione said suddenly, throwing a disappointed look at the trio of boys beside her. 'Professor Umbridge doesn't want to teach us any real magic, so we'll have to learn it and practice ourselves. Neville has already helped us from time to time,' she looked faintly embarrassed having to admit to needing assistance, 'and he's agreed, with a few stipulations to help teach a larger group.'

'Longbottom?' A blond Hufflepuff laughed. 'He doesn't even know which end of the wand to hold.'

Neville flinched, and Hermione opened her mouth to retort in his defence. Surprisingly, Neville beat her too it.

'Let's see your shield charm, Smith,' he ordered, in an oddly authoritative tone. The Hufflepuff flushed and sat down without saying anything else.

'Protego,' Neville said, and he was instantly surrounded by a bright wall of silver light. There were more than a few exclamations of surprise. Harry shot his friend a grin when Neville looked up to give him a grateful nod. Neville let the shield hover for a few moments before dispelling it, and Harry noted that it was still trembling slightly.

'So now it's obvious that Neville can help, we want to know if you're interested in being part of the group,' Hermione announced.

'How will it be run?' One of the other Hufflepuffs asked.

'And what were Neville's stipulations?' A Ravenclaw asked warily.

'I had three,' Neville replied, answering the Ravenclaw's question. 'They are not negotiable, if you wish to be helped you will have to accept them. Firstly, nobody tells Umbridge, none of us want to spend any time in her office doing lines. Secondly, the locations and dates of meetings will be conveyed secretly and are to kept a secret, along with the group's name and the names of the other members. Lastly, Harry Potter will be assisting me.'

'I'm not letting him use dark magic on me,' Smith declared over a none too quiet murmur of discontent. 'I read about what he did to Malfoy.'

'Malfoy pretty much deserved it,' Ron snapped. 'I was there, and so were Angelina, Ginny, Katie and my brothers. He thought it was funny to gloat over having deliberately attacked Katie.'

'Look on the bright side,' Katie piped up in the silent shock of hearing Ron defend his former friend for the first time in a year. 'You'll get very good at defending against the Dark Arts if Harry's helping.'

'Thanks, Katie,' Harry congratulated her sarcastically. She gave him an innocent stare in return and finished her drink.

'What's wrong with just learning from Neville?' Terry Boot demanded.

'Harry is the one who taught Neville,' Hermione answered simply. 'You're learning from him indirectly anyway.' The room fell silent at that.

'Fine,' Smith sneered, 'but don't expect us to like it. I don't trust him.'

'It will give you a good motive to work on your shield charm, Smith,' Neville noted uncharacteristically viciously.

'So how are we doing this?' Terry Boot asked.

'Everyone who wants to join signs their name on this list,' Hermione waved an inauspicious piece of parchment in the air, 'anyone else might as well leave now.'

A handful of students from Ravenclaw left, but nobody else did.

Harry waited until last to sign his name, running his forefinger down the list of names as if he was reading them while quietly checking for enchantments with his wand held in his sleeve.

There were some quite nasty ones.

Hermione's serious about this remaining a secret.

Should anyone ever knowingly betray the group they would find their treachery quite hard to conceal. It was quite ingenious, but not ironclad. An indirect betrayal would leave the perpetrator's face completely free of pimples.

Harry signed his name with a flourish and rejoined Katie in the middle of the group.

'So how do we know when to meet and where?' Angelina asked. There were a handful of students from older years who had come to join. Harry presumed it was because they believed Dumbledore and wanted to be prepared rather than concerned about retaking their OWLs.

'That's easy,' Hermione answered, glowing with pride. 'You all get one of these.' She held out a box of horribly familiar badges. Neville paled slightly at the sight of them.

S.P.E.W.

'Since I had nothing to do with them, I've enchanted them with the Protean Charm. When Neville changes the numbers on the back of all the badges it will change on all the others. The number will give you the time and date of the next meeting.'

'Do we have to wear them?' Lavender asked, distinctly nervously. Ron sniggered.

'No,' Hermione conceded, 'but do try to be more careful about losing them this year than you were last year.'

'That's very clever,' Boot voiced, sounding genuinely impressed, 'but it doesn't tell us where to meet.'

The Protean Charm was a NEWT level spell if Harry remembered correctly, and not one he knew as it had not seemed obviously useful to him. Hermione's use of it was quite clever, and more than a little impressive.

It's actually quite a versatile charm, he decided. Maybe I'll have to learn it after all.

'All our meetings will be held in the same place, you'll know where to come from the second time, but for the first you should meet next to Hogwarts' worst tapestry on the seventh floor.' Neville's announcement was greeted by blank looks for the most part and only a handful of knowing grins. The Weasley Twins didn't know of it, but a blonde-haired, grey-eyed Ravenclaw, one of Ginny's friends, smiled and so too did Susan Bones.

'We need a name for the group,' the nearest Weasley twin decided.

'Ronniekins Rangers,' his brother suggested, grinning, 'or Hermione's Heroes.'

'How about something vaguely appropriate?' Angelina interrupted. 'And something that doesn't encourage your obsession with alliteration.'

'The Defence Club,' Smith proposed.

'Well it's a bit boring isn't it,' one of the Twins complained.

'Obvious too,' his brother pointed out.

Somewhere in the back of Harry's mind the beginnings of a plan began to form. Dumbledore was being a nuisance, assigning him detentions, watching him, potentially checking the school wards to expose his visits to France, and Umbridge certainly needed to go.

Wouldn't it be perfect to get rid of the both of them, one after the other, using the same piece of parchment?

'They should call it Dumbledore's Army,' he whispered to Katie, 'that's what the Ministry seems to think we're being turned into.'

Katie laughed, then repeated it loudly to the room, just as Harry had hoped she would.

'All in favour of Dumbledore's Army?' Hermione asked, smiling at the joke.

Harry's hand rose into the air perfectly in the middle of the thicket of raised limbs. All he needed now was a few moments alone with that list of names and the framework of his scheme would be laid.

Sorry, Katie.

He didn't like lying to her, or manipulating her; she was his friend, and loyal enough to have never completely deserted him. He would make sure that neither she nor Neville were hurt because of this, and so long as they were never affected by it, he wouldn't feel too guilty.

'Dumbledore's Army it is,' Hermione decided, writing the name in elegant, neat letters across the top of the list of names. Harry smiled slightly, very satisfied with how well that had worked out in his favour.

'You should tell them about the list, Hermione,' Ron warned, 'just in case.'

Hermione looked a little reluctant, but began to speak again after a moment. 'I've placed a few enchantments on the paper, they took me quite some time to look up and create. When you signed your names you entered into a magical contract with the group. If you willingly, or knowingly betray us, there will be unpleasant consequences.'

'What kind of consequences?' Smith asked, he seemed a little more shaken than before.

'Let's just say everyone will know know who it was who betrayed us,' Neville replied firmly.

The box of badges began its rounds, growing progressively more empty.

'I thought I'd escaped these last year,' Harry remarked, choosing one for himself and passing another to Katie.

'It suits you,' Katie told him, 'the green brings out your eyes.'

'Thank you,' Harry responded with mock seriousness. 'I shall wear it always.' There were a few muffled sniggers and Hermione shot him a look that was somehow both hopeful and scathing.

'So what will we be learning?' Terry Boot asked. 'Nobody actually specified.'

'I can help you learn everything that you'll find on the OWL exam.' Neville shot Harry a questioning glance and he nodded in acquiescence, he might find more allies among this group of disaffected students. 'For those who want to be able to do a bit more, then Harry has taught me some very useful spells and knows a lot more.'

'Like what?' Smith seemed more apprehensive than anything.

'Dark ice curses,' Katie answered, beaming evilly. 'Great for creating beautiful icicles and impaling vulnerable first years who stray too far from their common rooms.'

So much for that not being funny.

'The blasting curse,' Neville replied, drawing the rooms attention away from Katie, who was basking in the mix of horror and humour. 'The stunning spell, and a good few more, nothing remotely dark.'

Harry resisted the urge to shake his head in irritation. They were so naive, so narrow-minded, he was more glad than ever that he had seen the truth about magic, else he too would be facing Death-Eaters with only stunning spells and a handful of virtually harmless jinxes.

There is no light and dark, Salazar's words echoed in his head, only power, and the intent that guides it.

'The Patronus Charm,' Hermione suggested. 'Harry can cast a corporeal patronus.'

Harry frowned, no longer sure that was true. He vividly remembered his last attempt to cast the charm in the maze of the third task, and the sluggish pool of silver mist he'd summoned around his feet. It had barely even been a shield.

'I can teach you the steps to cast it,' he told them, 'but the form of your patronus is quite personal, so I'd rather not display mine.'

'Then how do we know you can cast it?' Terry Boot asked, suspicious.

'Only light wizards can cast a patronus,' Smith added, pointedly creating tension.

'Sorry, Katie,' he whispered. 'I think it's too late for you.' She giggled and the bubble of anxiety burst. The Hufflepuff would have to try far harder than that if he wanted to goad a reaction from Harry, and he'd likely regret it if he was successful.

'I've seen it,' Hermione responded sharply, silencing Smith.

'The first meeting will be in a week, the same time as today,' Neville decided. 'If you can't make it, keep an eye on your badges for the next one and follow other members to our location.' He pressed the tip of his wand to the badge, screwing his face up in concentration, and the numbers on the back of the badge blurred and changed.

A week to think of a way to get hold of that list.

Harry could do that. Fleur would be more than happy to teach him a few tricks about enchanting, she loved showing off her skill in the art and Harry quite liked listening to her. It was pleasant just having her speaking to and focused on him.

The students began to disappear in small groups, chatting excitedly.

'What now?' Katie asked, 'want to stay or head back?'

'I don't have much of a choice,' Harry shrugged. 'Dumbledore sent a note via McGonagall that I have detention with Snape in his office today for an hour, and again every week for the foreseeable future whenever he can organise it.'

'What for?' Harry raised an eyebrow at her. 'Oh,' she realised. 'Malfoy. I thought you'd managed to escape with just your ban.'

'Not much of an escape that,' Harry joked. It would have been an incredible escape. Any other student would have been expelled, or at least suspended, but Dumbledore wanted him where he could watch him, so Harry remained at Hogwarts.

'I guess we should head back then,' Katie decided, standing up and almost tripping over her chair.

'Too much to drink?' Harry quipped.

'No,' Katie scowled. 'I'm more careful now, after…well, you know when.'

'Yeah,' Harry responded quietly. 'I know.'

'Harry,' Hermione scooped her things into her bag very untidily, wincing slightly at the sound of crumpling parchment, and jogged to catch them before they left.

She must really want to speak to me.

'What do you want?' He still treated her coolly, it was no more than she deserved for breaking his wand.

'I spoke to Cedric about the third task.' Harry waited for her to continue. He doubted Cedric remembered very much. 'He says he remembers hearing the whistle and starting to run into the maze, then nothing until seeing you stun him.'

'That's unfortunate,' Harry remarked.

'He does remember being told that he was found unconscious next to Viktor, and that his wand had been broken.' Hermione seemed quite upset and disturbed by something, she clearly wasn't buying the set of events she had been told about.

Harry very carefully thought through the possible outcomes in his head and decided that while it would be best to keep his mouth closed for now nothing could come back to bite him. Cedric might end up feeling very guilty, which he didn't deserve to, but Hermione's search, at worst, would simply give Hogwarts' champion nightmares.

'You don't think that's weird?'

'Of course I do,' he agreed. 'You heard what Dumbledore said, someone was interfering, they probably got Cedric too and he'd just woken up when I found him.'

'It doesn't make sense,' Hermione shook her head, 'his wand was snapped deliberately, but for no obvious reason.'

She's not going to let this go until Cedric is forced to realise what really happened.

It made him more than a little angry with his former friend. She was going to stir up a lot of unpleasant truths, hurt Cedric unnecessarily and in return she would find nothing more satisfying than the story she already knew.

I can't even dissuade her, because it will make me look suspicious.

'I only know what I saw,' Harry responded evenly.

'I know,' she sighed. 'I'm sorry to bring it up after everything that happened, but I need to know what happened to Viktor.'

'Most people who go digging don't find gold, Hermione,' Katie warned, in a rather uncharacteristicly metaphoric manner. Normally she was quite blunt. Hermione glared at the chaser and stalked off, probably more determined than before.

'Is that actually a saying?' Harry asked.

'I made it up,' Katie admitted. 'I thought it sounded good.'

'I've heard worse,' Harry conceded.

'What actually happened in the maze?' Katie inquired quietly. 'You were answering her questions in a very specific manner, and you're not happy about her searching into this at all, are you?'

'If you're worried that I was responsible, don't be,' Harry assured her. 'I know exactly what happened, but I took a risk to protect someone. Her digging is going to undo that and it's not going to benefit anyone. They will get hurt, and nobody else will really be affected in the slightest. It's too late to implicate me,' he told her calmly, before she could worry about that.

'Cedric,' Katie realised. 'You snapped his wand so nobody could see the spells it cast and stunned him.' She scrunched her face up in thought. 'Why are you helping him if he killed someone? What don't I know?'

Harry felt a surge of gratitude towards the scruffy chaser. She had trusted him implicitly, assuming he had a good reason rather than telling him he was doing something wrong.

'Cedric didn't do anything consciously,' he told her, in a very quiet whisper. 'I spared him from blame in case Bagman hadn't been caught, now I'm only keeping him from the guilt of knowing, but it's no less than he deserves.'

'You obliviated him,' Katie deduced. 'That was noble of you, Harry,' she teased. 'Still a Gryffindor at heart. I won't tell anyone, it's unnecessarily cruel to Diggory.'

'As brainless and reckless as they come,' Harry grinned, and thank you.'

'So how come you're only teaching Neville and not me?' She asked as they drifted back onto the school grounds.

'There would be an outcry from the lower years if anyone caught wind of me teaching you anything,' Harry smiled. 'You've terrified them all already, imagine how they'd react if they thought I'd been teaching you dark ice curses too.'

'Angelina said you used the water conjuring spell,' Katie pointed out.

'I did,' Harry grinned, 'but didn't you read what Rita Skeeter said. It was clearly a very dark curse, so I must have tricked her.'

'You aren't going to tell me, are you?'

'It was an accident,' Harry admitted, choosing his next half-truths carefully. 'I wanted to drench him in water, but I was angry and I think I did some transfiguration by accident after conjuring the water.'

'You must have been angry about me being hurt to do accidental magic at fifteen, Harry,' Katie suggested coyly. 'Is there something you need to tell Fleur?'

'Only that sometimes there are people who you see as more siblings than anything else,' Harry smiled at her slight flush, 'and that she should feel free to throw fire at you.'

Katie pouted, and turned towards the Owlery. 'I need to send a letter,' she told him, 'have fun scrubbing things for Snape.'

'I'm sure I will,' Harry gritted, annoyed at the time he might lose in the chamber because of this.

He was already slightly late to Snape's detention, they'd walked back from Hogsmeade more slowly than he'd realised, but Harry didn't particularly care. Dumbledore was not going to expel him for being five minutes late, and since he was already in detention for what would conceivably be the rest of the year they no longer had anything to threaten him with.

He walked past the Great Hall and down towards the dungeons and Snape's office at a casual pace, taking the time to watch the lower years edge away from him. Katie would have been pretending to recite the words to some dark spell by now.

Harry wasn't really tempted. It was funny when she did it, or when they did it together, but not while he was on his own.

'You're late, Potter,' Snape drawled when he eventually reached the office.

'I got held up because of Professor Umbridge,' Harry replied, which was very loosely true. The meeting had been held to make up for her lack of teaching.

Snape's office looked very similar to the potion's store, only the ingredients on the walls looked a good deal rarer. Harry spotted a few things he was fairly sure Snape shouldn't have in jars on the wall, including Ashwinder eggs and something that looked quite like dragon's blood.

'The headmaster is concerned by your recent spate of behaviour,' the potions teacher told him, looking down in the same strangely neutral expression as before. 'He believes there is a connection between you and the Dark Lord, and that his emotions are influencing you through it.'

A connection? Harry thought acidly. Are you sure he didn't mention anything about a piece of his soul being inside me?

'He has decided it would be prudent for me to teach you the mind arts and show you how to block out the Dark Lord's influence.' Snape fixed him with a piercing stare, something Harry avoided meeting given the subject of his detention. The potions master lips curled into the slightest of smiles. 'He mentioned that you had something of an interest them, though I'm sceptical that you have the emotional discipline for them.'

'How will you be teaching me?' Harry asked. If it was anything more than theory, then he'd have no choice but to occlude Snape from the very beginning. There were too many things that he couldn't let him, or Dumbledore know.

'I will attempt to breach your mind and you will try and keep me out.' Snape sneered slightly at the thought of not being able to penetrate the thoughts of a fifteen year old.

'Clear your mind, Potter,' the potions teacher ordered, drawing his wand. Harry emptied every thought from his head, focusing on the feeling of nothing, on the emptiness he had used to be, feeding every emotion and thought in his head into it.

'Legilimens,' Snape hissed, and a stabbing pain erupted from his temples. Harry ignored it, and let the nothingness consume him further.

Snape visibly flinched, but continued to press his assault, driving the ache in his head to new heights. Harry hurled himself into it, recalling the disassociation from everyone and everything, the aimless, meaningless hollowness that had been him, and letting everything else drown within it.

Snape swore and broke the link. Harry looked up, curious, he had never heard the man curse before.

'That was not proper occlumency, Potter,' he spat. 'I have never met a wizard who defends his mind by using creating such an unbearable feeling in which to trap their opponent.' His lips curled up again into that faint smile. 'It is quite unorthodox.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied, wary now of where this conversation would head. If Snape thought he was competent enough to keep Voldemort from influencing him, then he and Dumbledore would realise that Harry's actions had been purely his.

'How long have you been practising the mind arts, Potter,' Snape asked, his tone cool, but not overtly hostile.

'A little over a year,' Harry answered honestly. 'The basics of clearing your mind help with focusing to cast spells, and I continued learning once I discovered more about it.'

'Then you have come a very long way in a very short time,' Snape told him flatly. It wasn't quite a compliment, or congratulations, just a statement of fact.

'It seems to come to me naturally,' Harry shrugged, 'maybe I inherited a knack for it from my parents.' He knew for a fact that an aptitude for the mind arts had been inherited from somewhere on his family tree.

Snape's upper lip curled. 'If you have, it was not from your father,' he sneered. 'James Potter did not have the discipline or the subtlety that the mind arts require.'

'My mother then,' Harry responded calmly, not let letting Snape antagonise him.

'You should be thankful that you appear to be more like her than anyone realised,' Snape said, his tone subdued.

Did he know her?

Harry knew that they must have been in the same year, his mother and father had been in the same year as each other and Snape was the same age as his father would have been. He supposed it didn't really matter, they were both dead.

'So what now, sir?' Harry asked.

'I was supposed to teach you how to occlude your mind from the influence of the Dark Lord, but it seems you are completely capable of it already as long as you remember to do it.' Snape looked briefly thoughtful, a surprisingly placid expression his sallow face. 'I have to keep you in detention for at least an hour every week until Christmas to avoid external repercussions for your actions, so we shall continue to practice your occlumency regardless. We must be certain that you can keep the Dark Lord out.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied, keeping his tone even, despite his irritation. He'd rather hoped Snape would just stop giving him the sessions altogether.

'You can go for today, Potter,' Snape instructed, waving a hand at the door. Harry turned to leave, glad he could go early and more glad that it seemed Snape was not capable of stealing his secrets as long as he was careful.

'Potter,' the potions teacher called, just as he stepped out of the office into the corridor. Harry turned back, but Snape didn't speak immediately. He seemed to be struggling with something. 'It's reassuring to see that you have not wasted as many years here as I thought,' his face tightened uncomfortably, 'your mother would be proud of your recent improvements, don't slide back into acting like your contemptible father.'

So he did know her.

A younger Harry would have asked about her, might even have begged, but he only gave Snape a neutral look in response to his backhanded compliment, then continued on his way. His parents were dead. He wished they weren't, but Dumbledore had warned him in front of the Mirror of Erised how dangerous it was to dwell on unachievable dreams.

Snape does have a point about wasting time, he realised.

He'd improved a vast amount last year, but relatively only a little this year. Granted, he had less time, there was no excuse not to go to lessons, or not to do his homework, and he was not so far ahead as he had been then, but he'd still managed far less than he ought to have.

It's time to push things on, Harry decided.

He'd offer to teach Neville occlumency, start improving his duelling by learning to deflect hexes like Riddle and by practising with Fleur, and he would talk to Sirius again. Hopefully his godfather might have learnt something about Dumbledore's plans that would help Harry implement his own. If he wanted to find about that prophecy it was likely he would have to leave Hogwarts, and it really would be best if both Dumbledore and Umbridge were unable to interfere.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who has, your reviews give me motivation to keep writing :)

45. Pink is the New Black

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Wow, some of you were pretty quick to jump to conclusions about Harry's involvement with the DA...

Either way, here's the next chapter to confirm or assuage your fears!

Chapter 45

Someone had talked to Umbridge. It hadn't been one of the members of Dumbledore's Army, he'd checked every face that had been in the Hog's Head and none of them bore the work of Hermione's jinx.

That meant that one of the Ravenclaws that had left early had gone to talk to her, or someone that they had told, had done it instead.

Harry grinned. It made things much easier for him.

There had only been three students that had left early, Cho Chang he already knew, and it hadn't taken long to find out the names of her friends. Marietta Edgecombe, and Lisa Turpin. One of them had betrayed the group to Umbridge, and the Pink Professor had trusted their word enough to write to Fudge for help again.

One of them might prove very useful in the future.

It wasn't Cho Chang. Harry knew she loathed Umbridge as much as her boyfriend, Cedric did, but a couple of innocent questions about the attractive strawberry blonde at the Ravenclaw table and he knew that Edgecombe had a mother in the ministry, one who was quite outspoken in support of Fudge.

That had led him here, to sitting under his cloak on the table across the library from where Cho, Lisa and Marietta were studying, just before lunch began.

Harry fingered the tip of his wand. This was a risk, a huge risk, but one that was worth the gamble. If he knew who it was among the students that Umbridge trusted then he had one of his breadcrumbs ready made, and he could slip whatever he wanted into her ears via Marietta's mouth.

'Legilimens,' he whispered, surreptitiously pointing is wand at Marietta's back.

He cast the spell as lightly as possible, knowing from the few times Creevey had actually been awake by the fire that a very underpowered attempt could pass unnoticed.

There was a brief flutter of unintelligible images; the connection was a fraction too faint.

'Legilimens,' he repeated, a little stronger this time, and the connection formed almost perfectly, not too weak to be useless, but not strong enough to be felt as anything more than a slight headache.

Marietta was gossiping about some boy in their house, his picture and hers were prevalent among her thoughts.

Harry slipped an impression of pink in among them. Too simple to seem foreign, too subtle to be detected.

Pink made her think of Umbridge, of having tea in that ghastly office and talking about an organisation that her friends had chosen not to attend, but existed to flout what Umbridge was teaching.

Harry broke the connection, withdrawing from her mind. Marietta Edgecombe would be Umbridge's first breadcrumb when the time came.

Pulling the cloak off and folding it away under his robes he quietly left the library, leaving a concerned Cho Chang to ask her friend why she was suddenly pressing her fingers against her temples.

He met Katie on the way down to lunch, she was cheerful, buoyed by a good mark on her latest transfiguration essay.

'How was Arithmancy?' She asked him.

Harry twisted his lips in discontent. 'It's not easy, and it's not as interesting as I hoped, but it isn't boring either.'

'Like all subjects then,' Katie smiled. 'It's not your strongest area, so I wouldn't worry about it.'

'I wasn't it,' Harry assured her. 'I'm much better at Charms and Transfiguration, but Arithmancy is useful, it's very helpful in understanding why certain things happen in… some areas of magic.'

He'd almost said rituals, which made use of the magical properties of some numbers to channel, focus and amplify the magical qualities of the ritual, but at the last moment remembered the connotations of the word. Harry doubted Katie would judge him, but there were plenty of people around to do it for her.

'Have you seen the Daily Prophet?' Harry inquired.

'No,' Katie gave him a worried look, 'did you do something?'

'It's not to do with me,' he screwed his face up, 'well, it's not directly to do with me. I'll show you at lunch, someone always has a copy lying around to read while they eat.'

She realised immediately that he really meant when there are fewer people nearby and quickened her pace, swiftly descending the stairs, bypassing the unfortunate younger Creevey who had somehow managed to get both his feet stuck in one of the trick steps.

'So what's happened?' Katie pressed, all but pushing him into the nearest empty seat and shooing a handful of second years further up the table. They didn't dare linger to argue.

Harry glanced down the table, catching sight of an unattended paper, and summoned it, wordlessly and wandlessly into his hand. Katie blinked, then beamed.

'That's really impressive,' she gushed, 'you're so powerful and brilliant, my lord.'

'Hush you,' Harry remonstrated, grinning. 'It's taken me hours and hours of practise to be able to do that, I'm allowed to show it off.'

'How many hours?' She asked curiously, unfolding the Daily Prophet he'd so extravagantly summoned over a portion of the game pie that Harry had intended to be his. He cut himself another slice instead.

'At least ten,' Harry decided thoughtfully. There had been a lot of scattered summoning of things to get used to the movement of magic well enough for it to be remembered and form an instant mental association with the intent. 'It's like learning drills for quidditch, you have to do it so many times it sinks in and becomes a reflex.'

'So it probably took Dumbledore hours of practice to be able to light the candles on his lectern like he does to impress the first years every year.'

'I'd never thought about that,' Harry laughed, 'but yes, probably.'

'So what did you want to show me.' Katie was flicking through the pages from the wrong side, so Harry retrieved it from her and turned it over to show her the headline.

'Educational Decree twenty-five,' Katie read aloud. 'That doesn't sound good.'

'Every student run club or organisation has to apply to her for permission to continue,' Harry explained, taking a mouthful of pie.

'The quidditch team,' Katie realised, horrified, dropping her fortunately clean fork into her lap.

'The DA,' Harry whispered, trying not to laugh at the expression on her face. 'Someone went and told her and she must have written to Fudge to try and stop it forming.'

'Since when were we calling it the DA?' Katie asked quietly, retrieving her silverware.

'Do you want to be heard talking about Dumbledore's Army and sent to see Umbridge?' Harry asked bluntly.

'Not when you put it like that,' Katie pouted. 'I've not seen anything of Umbridge today, though, and apparently she wasn't in her class this morning.'

'Has anyone had detention with her recently?' Harry inquired, taking a few more forkfuls as Katie thought about it.

'Colin Creevey, again,' she replied, puzzled, then her eyes widened as she remembered what Harry had told her about the quill. 'You don't think that's why, do you?'

'I hope it is,' Harry responded with vindictive cheerfulness, 'otherwise she's probably causing trouble for someone somewhere.'

'Maybe she's redecorating her office,' Katie suggested, 'it's about time someone pointed out to her how hideous it is.'

'Maybe that's why Creevey had detention,' Harry murmured, fighting back a laugh at the idea. 'She probably has I must not criticise the colour pink permanently scarred onto her hand now,' he chuckled.

Katie scowled at him, but then gave him a slightly reluctant smile. 'So who do you think told her?'

'Nobody whose name is on that list,' Harry replied seriously. 'Otherwise we would know, so it must have been one of the students who knew about the meeting and didn't sign up.'

'Well we aren't likely to find out who,' Katie growled, upset by the loss of the chance for revenge.

'You'll have to settle for hexing firsties,' Harry agreed.

Neville collapsed heavily onto the bench beside him. 'There you are,' he sighed. 'I've been looking for you since the end of your first class.'

'Why?'

'You said you'd have a look at my shield charm for me,' Neville reminded him, 'and now I have to teach it to a load of people I need you do it soon.'

'Well if you come with me in a moment, I'll take a look in an empty classroom,' Harry offered. When he said an empty classroom he really meant Umbridge's classroom, because he quite wanted to see if she had suffered the effects of his retaliation.

'Thanks,' Neville smiled, relieved. 'I don't know why it trembles, it's like I can't quite get my magic to do what I want.'

'Hopefully we can figure it out,' Harry shrugged. 'Have you decided what you're going to teach first?'

'The shield charm, then a few of the jinxes,' Neville informed him, helping himself to the Daily Prophet with a frown. 'Have you seen this?'

'Yeah,' Harry nodded. 'One of the people who didn't sign ratted us all out to Umbridge, I've been checking faces all morning.'

'Looks like we'll have to be careful, then,' Neville grimaced.

'Keep an eye out for anyone who doesn't come to the first meeting and then take their badge back if they've back out,' Katie suggested calmly. 'Everyone else is dedicated enough to be on our side.'

'Where's the list?' Harry asked, injecting just enough concern into his tone.

'Hermione has it,' Neville answered lightly.

'Make sure she hides it somewhere safe,' Harry reminded him. 'Umbridge will be able to get her hands on it if it's just in Gryffindor Tower, she'll be looking for any proof the group still exists. The meetings are safe since we're in the Room of Requirement, but that list will get us all on Umbridge's detention roster. Hermione'll want to find somewhere it won't be found.' Harry phrased his advice quite specifically and just about managed not to smile when Neville's eyes lit up with the idea he hoped to place.

'I know where she can hide it,' he grinned. 'If we're safe in the room, then the list will be too, right?'

'I guess,' Harry shrugged noncommittally, 'if there's a place to hide things.' He was perfectly aware of the Room of Hidden Things. He'd found it when he'd been reading the Secrets of the Darkest Arts and needed somewhere to store it in the meanwhile. He could easily access the list once it was left there.

All it will take is a few words to find their way to Umbridge about a room of hidden things on the seventh floor that appears when you need it and that list and I will be a step away from being able to act.

Harry calmly finished the last few mouthfuls of his pie while Katie interrogated Neville about the Room of Requirement in heated whispers. Things were starting to fall into place.

If only I knew more about that Prophecy.

He needed to speak to Sirius later.

'Coming, Nev?' Harry glimpsed a slightly pale looking Pink Professor take her seat on the staff table, a clean, white bandage wrapped around her right hand. He smiled at the cruel satisfaction the sight filled him with.

Time to find out what she got Creevey to carve into her own hand.

'Yeah,' his friend pulled himself up and straightened his robes, 'I'm coming.'

'What about me?' Katie sulked.

'You've got Charms now,' Harry reminded her. 'Neville and I are free for the rest of day.'

'I have Herbology last thing, actually,' Neville corrected him.

'Well I'm free all day,' he smirked, waving a smug goodbye at Katie, who glared at him.

'Which empty classroom?' Neville inquired, glancing into every single one they passed.

'This one,' Harry grinned, ushering him into Umbridge's room, and pulling the back cloak out from under his robes.

'Not again, Harry,' Neville moaned, as he slipped into Umbridge's office, concealed by his family heirloom.

Her office was considerably less tidy than the last time he'd snuck in here. The pink drapes were askew, and a handful of the decorative china pieces were missing from the walls. Umbridge had clearly not reacted well to Harry's little surprise.

A small, messy stack of parchments on the corner of her desk were covered in rust-brown ink, a colour that was close enough to dried blood to catch Harry's eye.

I must not blindly believe the lies of others, he read.

He re-read it several times at the top of each page until, three sets of side later, it came to an abrupt stop with a thick blot. It looked like Creevey had driven the quill into the page when she'd realised what was happening and asked him to stop. Harry's respect for the camera wielding menace rose a few notches.

It's perfect, he decided. I couldn't have chosen better words if I'd tried.

He replaced the papers as he'd found them, and swiftly checked on the quill. His enchantments were as he'd left them, but the silver tip had been snapped by the force with which Creevey had driven it into his page. She'd have to make another to if she wanted to continue her malicious punishments, and Harry would be more than happy to re-enchant that one for her too.

'Are you done?' Neville demanded.

'I haven't done anything,' Harry responded. 'I just wanted to see what the words she chose to give to Creevey were. I suspect they've left an impression.'

Neville shot him a slightly guilty grin. He hated Umbridge, and a handful of others too, Harry imagined, but he wasn't capable of the same level of cruelty that Harry was.

'Show me your shield then,' Harry told him, waving his hand at Neville and taking a seat on the nearest desk.

'Protego,' Neville commanded clearly, extracting and waving his wand. The shield sprung into being around him exactly as it had on the last two occasions Harry had seen it.

'I don't know what's wrong with it,' Neville despaired, 'my pronunciation, my wand motion and my intent are all clear.' Harry was inclined to agree with him, he had heard and seen nothing wrong, so the problem was either with Neville's focus, or with his magic.

That's his father's wand, Harry remembered.

'I have an idea or two,' he suggested softly, 'try not to be offended.'

'I'm not going to be able to do it, am I?' Neville asked miserably.

'If I'm right about what's wrong then it can easily be fixed,' Harry reassured him. Neville perked up slightly at that. 'It looks like your magic isn't quite doing what you wanted. That wand,' he gestured at Neville's hand, 'it was your father's, yes?'

'Yes,' Neville nodded.

'It's possible that your problem is due to using a wand that isn't quite right for you,' Harry explained gently. 'You are unlikely to be perfectly suited to your father's wand and you might be better off getting one of your own.'

Neville's eyes caught fire, and his knuckled tightened possessively on the wand until they whitened. 'There's nothing wrong with the wand,' he snapped.

'Here,' Harry held out his own,' try using mine.'

'Protego,' Neville repeated, swapping hands and using Harry's ebony wand.

A very faint shimmer of silver light surrounded him, then Neville hissed with pain, dropping Harry's wand on the desk next to him and the shield dissipated.

'It burnt me,' he murmured, shocked, and turned his hand to show Harry the thin red mark along the length of his palm and the slightly swollen finger tips.

'Sorry,' Harry apologised, retrieving his wand. 'I think it's quite strongly bonded to me.'

'I take your point about not using a wand that isn't suited to you,' Neville laughed, rubbing the burn mark. 'I'll talk to Gran about it, if I find a wand better suited to me at Ollivander's then maybe that will fix things.'

'It should help you with everything,' Harry told him. 'A wand is the conduit through which you use your magic, the better matched to you it is then the easier you will find performing magic.'

'That makes sense,' Neville agreed, 'but still…' He trailed off looking down at his father's wand.

'Just because you're not a perfect match for his wand,' Harry began carefully, 'does not mean he wouldn't be proud of you. You're like your father and your mother, Nev, you'll need something in between them both.'

Neville swallowed hard, and carefully replaced his father's wand into the pocket of his robes.

'What were your other suggestions?' He asked.

'There was only one,' Harry told him. 'It's possible you aren't quite focused enough, I know a branch of magic I can teach you that can help with that. It's not easy to learn, though, and you'd have to keep it a secret that I taught you.'

'It's not something dark is it?' Neville asked, his voice wavering.

'No,' Harry laughed. 'It's called Occlumency, it's about organising your thoughts and clearing your mind of emotions and thoughts. It's meant to protect your mind, but the principles are very helpful for focusing your intent and that's why most wizards learn it.' He studied Neville carefully. 'I can teach it to you, it'd not dark, just a bit obscure. Voldemort is supposed to be very good at its opposite, which is why I'm learning it.'

'I want to learn it,' Neville decided after a moment of thought. 'If it helps me perform magic better and stops wizards attacking my mind then I should learn it.'

Perfect, Harry exalted mentally.

'It won't be easy to learn,' Harry let the slight amount of guilt he felt for misleading Neville show on his face, 'it can be painful, and you need to trust me completely.'

'I trust you,' Neville declared immediately. 'I'll learn it however you think is best.'

Thank you for your loyalty, Nev, Harry thought sadly, but perhaps you shouldn't trust me so readily.

'When do we start?' He seemed quite eager and Harry's guilt surged a little higher.

We both profit from this, Harry reminded himself, and his remorse ebbed away again.

'You have to do the first bit yourself,' Harry told him, 'practise emptying your thoughts, forcing your mind to go blank, even when you're angry, or upset.'

'I'll finally have something useful to do in Umbridge's lessons,' Neville quipped.

Harry laughed, forgetting the last of his guilt completely. 'Yes, I suppose you will.'

'Let's leave before Umbridge gets back,' Neville suggested. 'I need to plan what I'll be helping everyone with once the meetings get going.'

'I'm sure you'll think of something,' Harry shrugged.

'You're my assistant,' Neville reminded him, as they left the classroom and head back towards the main staircase.

'We both know that's just an excuse to get me in so I can teach you all the Patronus Charm,' Harry grinned. 'How long did Hermione bug you about it before you gave in and decided to just get me to teach everyone instead of learning it from me and passing it on.'

'She might have mentioned it a few times,' Neville admitted.

'Thought so,' Harry smirked.

'You're not coming to many of the meetings are you,' Neville realised.

'Of course not,' Harry responded bluntly. 'I don't have any reason to help them. I can barely tolerate most of them while they're quiet, let alone when they're effusing nonsense about me. I'll join and teach the Patronus because Dementors are horrible creatures and you can't use that charm against me, but I'm not coming to as many meetings as I can get away with.'

'I'm not going to force you,' Neville decided, 'though I think some of the older students might be disappointed.'

'They want to see what I can do,' Harry smiled, 'but I have no intention of showing them. If they want to learn something, try asking Cedric Diggory to help you, he was a Triwizard Champion too.'

'Will you at least come to the first meeting?'

'I'll come to the first one, and whichever one you want to learn the Patronus in, but that's all,' Harry told him firmly. 'I don't have time to waste, Nev, Voldemort's not going to wait for me to get stronger.'

'I understand,' Neville answered, splitting off towards the common room before his Herbology class began. 'I'll see you at dinner.'

Harry nodded and continued off towards Myrtle's bathroom. Salazar would be pleased, he'd taken a big step towards improving his legilimency, and he hoped to have a plan in place for when he could do something about that prophecy.

'Myrtle?' Harry called quietly.

'Harry,' she cried, zipping out of her cubicle and across the flooded bathroom floor to hover in front of him.

'How have you been?' He asked gently. 'You haven't been here the last few times I've come.'

'I don't spend all my time here, Harry,' she giggled, 'there's all sort of interesting places to go. I saw that red-headed boy you came here with in the second year in the prefect's bathroom a few days ago. He has freckles everywhere.' She giggled again and winked.

That is a truly horrific image.

Harry shook his head to try and get rid of it. 'I'm glad you've been having fun, Myrtle.'

'Nobody has come looking around here,' she told him in a whisper, 'but nobody ever comes in here except you anyway.'

'Thanks, Myrtle,' he flashed her a smile, opening the entrance to the chamber.

'What is down there?' She asked, curiously.

'Nothing anywhere near as interesting as the Prefect's Bathroom I assure you,' Harry grinned. 'Just what's left of a very big, dead snake and some space to think.'

He gingerly made his way across the puddle that permanently covered the floor of the bathroom, picking up his robes so they didn't get wet around the bottom, and with a wave to Myrtle disappeared down the stairs towards the chamber.

'I'm back,' he called out to Slytherin's portrait.

'So it would seem,' the reply came as Harry crossed the bridge into Salazar's study.

'I need to speak to Sirius,' he told the founder, 'but afterwards I have a few questions. I've been a bit lazy since escaping the fate that should come with having been Riddle's horcrux.'

'Yes you have,' the portrait agreed, 'but you've deserved it, after everything that's happened.'

Harry shot him a grateful look and deposited the invisibility cloak on the back of the chair, it's normal home. He'd brought Sirius' mirror down here as soon as he could sneak it out of the dormitory unnoticed, it was much easier to hold a private conversation down here.

As long as I remember to go outside and shut the door to the study, that is.

'Sirius,' he breathed onto the mirror, walking back over the bridge and sitting down in the dark of one of the alcoves where he couldn't see Harry's surroundings.

It flared white for a long minute, then his godfather's face appeared in the mirror.

'Harry,' he smiled, displaying a mouthful of sparkling white teeth. He was looking a lot healthier than last time they'd talked. His cheeks were no longer sunken and his hair and regained some lustre. The shadows under his eyes remained, but they were no longer as thick or dark.

'How have you been?' Harry asked. 'Cleaned out the whole house yet?'

'No,' Sirius grumbled. 'Gave up a few days back when I discovered that Kreacher was just keeping every single artefact we tried to throw away.'

'Kreacher?'

'House-elf,' Sirius explained. 'He comes with the house, he knows too much for us to free him now.'

'So what are you doing if you aren't tidying?'

'I'm organising the members of the Order who help out down at the Department of Mysteries,' he answered carelessly, then winced at his slip.

Now that sounds interesting.

'What's down there?' Harry inquired curiously.

'Sorry, Harry,' Sirius pulled a disconsolate face, 'Dumbledore was adamant about not telling you anything. I disagreed, but I was outvoted.'

'If it involves me then I deserve to know,' Harry pointed out.

'I'm on your side,' Sirius told him earnestly, 'but I gave them my word not to talk about anything you hadn't already been briefed on.'

'Well our conversations are going to be short,' Harry responded acidly, 'since nobody wants to tell me anything. I haven't even spoken to Dumbledore all year. I nearly killed a student and he sent me a note telling me I have detention.'

'I heard about that,' Sirius grinned. 'That Malfoy kid probably deserved it, especially if he's anything like his father.'

'He's a lot like his father,' Harry ground out, still annoyed. He'd hoped to find out about Dumbledore's plans from his godfather.

'You should have finished him off then,' Sirius commented darkly. 'One less potential Death Eater. We learnt that in the first war, you spare someone you think deserves it, then they turn around and murder the wizard next to you.'

'Malfoy would make a very poor Death Eater,' Harry snorted. 'He doesn't have the guts to do anything more than run his mouth.'

'You'd be surprised,' Sirius warned. 'Lucius doesn't seem like all that much either, all pretty robes and words, but I have it on good authority that he's quite a handful in a duel, he curses first, claims the Imperius Curse made him do it later.' His godfather laughed at his slightly dark joke. 'What are you doing at Hogwarts? Carried out any nefarious plans that I'd be proud of?'

Oh yes, Harry tried not to grin, but you might not be so proud of them.

'You can't smile like that and stay silent,' Sirius told him testily, 'spill.'

'I got Umbridge again,' he told his godfather calmly. Harry was fairly sure that Sirius was a firm believer in an eye for an eye. He hadn't been particularly quick to hand Pettigrew over to the aurors.

'What did you do?'

'She had an enchanted quill that she uses to make students write lines with,' Harry began, his tone darkening. 'It used to take the blood of the user to write with.' Sirius' smile froze.

'That woman has been torturing students,' he exclaimed. 'I'm going to murder Dumbledore, he said everything is in hand.'

'She won't be doing it again, not if she's learnt her lesson.'

'What did you do to her?' His godfather demanded. 'I hope it was bad.'

'I changed the enchantments on the quill,' Harry smiled faintly, 'it changed its source of ink to the creator rather than the user. She's been wearing a bandage around her hand today.'

Sirius looked slightly disturbed, but eventually nodded. 'If it's stopped her using that thing on students then good, sometimes you can't always do what Dumbledore preaches and win by being nice or noble.'

'She banned me from playing quidditch for life,' Harry remarked. 'That was for cursing Malfoy.'

'I read about that, do you know if she can she actually enforce that?' Sirius asked.

'She can certainly stop me playing at school, but other than that I've no idea,' Harry replied. 'If the law is as malleable as it seems I'm sure she could just get Fudge to create another Decree stopping me from playing.'

'Molly as furious about the twins being banned,' Sirius mentioned. 'I've never seen her so angry, took me and Arthur to stop her sending howlers out to everyone involved.'

'They were banned for retaliating after Crabbe hit a bludger at Katie when she was sitting in the stands. I had to carry her to the hospital wing.'

'I heard Crabbe had to go to St Mungo's.'

'I've no idea.' Harry hadn't actually seen Crabbe since he's gone bouncing across the quidditch pitch. 'He deserved it either way.'

'Speaking of people who deserved things,' Sirius' smile grew savage, 'I heard that it's Pettigrew's body that pair of french girls found on Hogwarts' grounds.'

French girls?

Harry made a mental note to ask Fleur about that, he hadn't known that Pettigrew had been discovered by Beauxbatons' students.

'We can't prove your innocence now,' Harry reminded him.

'I don't care,' Sirius growled. 'They wouldn't have let me have a trial anyway, I should never have let Remus talk me out of just killing him when we were back in the Shrieking Shack.'

'He's dead now,' Harry responded bluntly.

'You don't look all that surprised,' Sirius remarked.

'I already knew,' Harry told him, 'it came up at Voldemort's resurrection.' His godfather sniggered at the offhand remark.

The muffled sound of Salazar yelling for him to hurry up so he could learn something before having to go back to the dormitories managed to reach not only Harry, but his godfather too.

'I'd better go,' he apologised.

'It does sound like something's happening,' Sirius noted, 'lots of shouting about something.'

'We'll talk again soon,' Harry promised, 'maybe I'll have been briefed by then.'

He had a slight hope that if he knew a little more about the prophecy he might be able to persuade his godfather to talk about it and even help him.

'See you soon, Harry,' Sirius grinned, then Harry found himself staring at his own reflection again.

He summoned the bridge, and opened the door to the study, stalking angrily inside.

'Did you have to interrupt?' Harry demanded.

'You don't have time to waste,' Salazar reminded him, 'Riddle's biding his time and building up his power, not chatting to people through enchanted mirrors. Now what were your questions?'

'I need to get a lot better at duelling,' Harry told his ancestor, remembering how the graveyard had dissolved into shattered fragments of stone and flying curses the moment Voldemort had stopped toying with him.

'Can you defend your mind?' Slytherin asked instead of answering Harry's unvoiced query.

'Yes.' Snape had been repulsed completely.

'What about your legilimency?'

'I've convinced Neville to let me teach him,' Harry told the founder, 'and I'm starting to get good at creating a connection of the right strength. I can send concepts and images if I want to easily enough too.'

'You've tested it, haven't you?' The painting's tone was faintly disapproving.

'It was worth the risk,' Harry assured him.

'You weren't caught,' the portrait replied evenly, 'so it doesn't matter.'

'And duelling?' Harry prompted.

'There are ways to improve yourself to give an advantage,' Salazar told him. 'Your eyesight is a weakness, your glasses could easily be exploited by an unscrupulous foe, and your reflexes and strength could be improved by a ritual or two.'

'More rituals?' Harry was rather less bothered by that than he had expected he would be. It didn't feel wrong anymore, they weren't dark, nothing was dark, and it was hardly cheating to want to live.

'Yes,' the painting answered. 'We'll need to use blood as a medium for the best effect, and you'll have to get your hands on some magical ingredients which have the ability to enhance certain things. We can create our own ritual to keep the effects permanently using blood magic.'

'What will the sacrifice be?' Harry asked warily.

'Nothing too dear,' Slytherin reassured him gently. 'Time. Blood. Pain. All things you can afford to give and not regret afterwards.'

'What will I need?'

'Wormwood and Bayberry, they will provide the source for fixing your eyes, unicorn horn, or hair, something of a highly magical creature to imbue your items with, you will need enough for two rituals, and then a griffin's claw and Salamander's blood with which to improve your physical body.'

'Will that be enough?'

Slytherin laughed bitterly. 'It is never enough, I can assure you of that, but while the former will simply fix your eyesight, the latter will certainly give you an edge over most other wizards.'

'I just have to find that list?' Harry asked.

'You'll need a lot of blood too,' Salazar warned, 'best to do them separately. Your eyesight is the most pressing concern.'

'I don't think I'm going to be finding many of those things just lying around,' Harry pointed out. 'I might be able to buy some of them,' he gestured at the bag of galleons he'd won from the Triwizard Tournament, but something tells me they won't come cheap.'

'In the meantime think about what your strengths and weaknesses are,' Salazar suggested. 'Create your own style that plays to these. What do you remember from duelling Voldemort?'

'He was fast,' Harry replied immediately, 'he was bloody fast, I couldn't even think the incarnations as fast he was casting them.'

'Practise turning one wand-motion into the next, the flick of the wrist for the Blasting Curse can easily transition into the curve of the Bone-Splintering curse.' Slytherin peered down at him expectantly. 'What else?'

'He deflected almost everything I sent at him that was blockable,' Harry remembered with a scowl. He'd not really even come close to touching him, not even at the end when he managed to break through his shield with what was his strongest spell.

'Mastering how to deflect hexes would combine very well with your,' Salazar paused in disgust, 'ridiculous butterfly conjuring defence. You can use those ridiculous insects to swallow curses like the Killing Curse and deflect anything else back out at your opponents. Almost anything that isn't an Unforgivable can be deflected, or at least blocked, by a proficient, practised duellist.'

'I'll practise,' Harry promised. He could practise at least some of it with Fleur when he visited in a few days time. She'd be more than happy to teach him how to deflect hexes by sending mild jinxes his way. Gabrielle probably would too.

'You'll die if you don't,' Salazar told him bluntly, cutting right through his surge of motivation.

'Thanks,' Harry responded dryly. 'I'm going to go to the library and research those ingredients, if I'm lucky they're in some of the potions taught here and I can simply steal them from Snape.'

'You'll need them whole, not ground, powdered, or preserved in any fashion,' Slytherin warned as he left. That pretty much ruled out Snape's potion's stores.

He hoped they sold all of it in Diagon Alley. He was fairly sure that he could find Salamander's blood, and the magical plants there, but a whole griffin's claw seemed a less likely prospect. Harry really didn't want to go and have to wrestle a griffin for one of its talons, so he committed to hoping instead.

Hope wasn't so hard for him to find anymore. He had his plans, his power, both growing unseen by either Riddle, the Ministry or Dumbledore, and he had Neville, Katie and Fleur beside him.

Things are beginning to go my way, Harry mused, as the Chamber of Secrets slid closed behind him.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

46. Gabrielle's Gift

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

A new chapter has appeared!

Chapter 46

The willow tree had lost the last of its leaves, letting the dappled light of a weak, nearly winter sun slip through the clouds and fall across Fleur's face. It was a faint, pleasant warmth on her skin as she lay along the length of the branch, her head resting in Harry's lap.

These were the moments she treasured. They seemed so far from the rest of the world and the gathering troubles it was easy to forget everything else and just enjoy the sunlight playing across her face.

A single wet drop landed on her cheek, the first threat of rain from the cloud-patched sky.

Sooner or later it always has to end.

'We should head back to the chateau,' Harry commented, brushing the droplet off her cheek, and replacing his glasses on his nose. 'It's going to rain properly this time.' Fleur frowned, she preferred him without the spectacles, they hindered her view of his eyes.

There had been scattered, brief rain and faint rainbows all day. The sky could not seem to decide whether to go with sun or showers.

Fleur reluctantly sat up. She supposed Harry was right, but Gabrielle was back at the chateau for the weekend and likely bored enough to cause trouble.

'Are you going to apparate me?' He asked her. 'Or do I have to walk in the rain?'

'If my parents were around you would be offering to walk,' Fleur remarked with a touch of humour.

Harry had understood where her parents were coming from, and she knew he didn't really blame them, but he still didn't like how they slightly disapproved of his relationship with Fleur. Every time he conversed with them Fleur could detect the thinnest veneer of ice in his ever polite voice. She could hardly blame him, not when she'd reacted so much more strongly than him.

Her father had taken to leaving copies of the Daily Prophet out where she could see them, just like the spiteful girls had done last year. He meant well, Fleur knew he did, but he had no right to do what he was doing and she had told him so, bright-blue, conjured flames running over her fingers as she yelled at him.

'I have nothing against your family,' Harry told her smoothly, but he looked a little guilty.

'You get on with Gabrielle,' Fleur agreed, smiling at him to show she didn't mind, 'but you did bribe her with Clafoutis, so I'm not sure it counts.'

'It wasn't a bribe,' Harry protested. 'It was a deal. I gave her the Clafoutis and she would stop pestering us about being romantic.'

'Well it's worked so far,' Fleur congratulated him.

The raindrops began to fall in earnest, beating an increasingly fast-paced staccato that dissolved into the patter of a full shower, drowning out the sound of the river beside them.

'Let's go,' Fleur decided, taking Harry's arm, and apparating them back into the safety of the chateau before they got soaked.

'Did you kiss in the rain?' Gabby asked cheerfully, bounding into the entrance hall at the sound of their apparition.

'No,' Harry answered resignedly.

'It's ok,' Fleur patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, 'the deal lasted a lot longer than anyone expected.'

'Three hours is not a long time,' Harry pointed out. 'We've barely seen each other since we went to Paris!'

'Are you going back outside to kiss?' Gabrielle pressed.

'I will hex you,' Fleur promised her little sister sweetly.

Gabby stuck her tongue out childishly. 'I'm bored,' she pouted, 'there's nothing to do except read and I've been reading all morning. I even read that silly English paper.'

Harry looked vaguely apprehensive, casting a glance past Gabrielle into the room behind her.

'I've read it,' Fleur told him. 'There's nothing about you, for once.'

'Just a big article about an escape from Azkaban,' Gabby agreed. Harry blinked, then swept past her sister to snatch the paper from the table and read it himself.

He read it quickly, skimming down the column with hardening eyes.

'Is any of it true?' Fleur asked him gently.

'Some of it,' he shook his head angrily, 'I have no doubt that these prisoners have escaped, but it wasn't Sirius Black that helped them.'

'I thought Black was a Death Eater too?' Gabby asked from the entrance hall.

'He wasn't,' Harry replied firmly. He gave Fleur a look that promised an explanation, then changed the subject. 'Do you want to help me practise hex deflection?'

Fleur nodded, then flicked her hair back over her shoulder. She had promised to help him and being able to block and deflect spells was crucial, that and throwing stinging hexes at him would be quite fun for her.

'Can I help?' Gabrielle asked eagerly.

'Only if Fleur agrees and you promise not to ask anymore questions about kissing in the rain,' Harry replied dryly.

'You can help,' she assured her little sister. 'We're going to be hexing Harry until he learns to block and deflect them back.'

Gabrielle grinned, then froze at the sound of hissing from the kitchen. 'My hot chocolate,' she exclaimed, scampering off to rescue her drink. Her little sister had avoided managing to make that promise quite well.

'Come one,' Fleur gave him a gentle push in the direction of the basement, 'you can tell me about Sirius Black on the way while Gabby is distracted.'

Harry nodded, and let her lead him away.

Once they were a few metres down the stairs and out of earshot of her sister he began to explain. 'Sirius is my godfather,' he told her simply. 'None of what they say about him is true. He never betrayed my parents and he certainly didn't help anyone escape from Azkaban.'

'What really happened?' Fleur asked.

'Voldemort broke them out,' Harry responded slowly, as if she had missed something very obvious.

'I meant at Godric's Hollow.'

'That makes more sense,' Harry grinned, then his face shifted into something more sombre. 'Sirius was supposed to be the secret keeper for the Fidelius Charm, but it was decided that he was too obvious so they switched to Peter Pettigrew at the last moment. The rat was the true traitor, he faked his death and Sirius ended up in Azkaban.'

'Pettigrew's still alive,' she realised. 'He better hope we never get our hands on him.'

'He's dead,' Harry told her, as they made their way past the wine racks into the reinforced and warded part of the basement. 'He was killed last year, someone from Beauxbatons found what Dumbledore told me was his body.'

Fleur paled. It had been her and Gabrielle that had found the wizard's body in the Forbidden Forest. She quite vividly remembered the scorched skeleton.

'What's wrong?' Harry asked, taking her hand.

'Gabby and I found that body,' she told him. 'It was horrible, Gabrielle had nightmares for a few nights afterwards because of the magic she could feel there.' Harry frowned, looking a little worried. It was sweet of him to feel concerned over them.

'Dumbledore said that the Ministry wouldn't accept who he was,' Harry continued, kindly leading the conversation away from the unpleasant memory. 'Sirius' name won't be cleared, not until the Ministry open their eyes.'

'I'm sorry,' Fleur murmured.

'You have nothing to be sorry for,' Harry smiled at her. 'He was rather happy that Pettigrew was dead, I don't think he ever expected to be cleared in the first place.'

'You're in contact with him?' Fleur asked. Sirius Black was being hunted all across Britain and Europe, having any contact with him was very dangerous, especially when the Ministry was waiting for any excuse to act against Harry.

'He's quite safe and very well hidden,' Harry assured her. 'We won't get caught.'

'Good,' she told him, squeezing his hand tightly, 'don't do anything stupid.'

'I won't,' he promised seriously. 'Rita Skeeter's said quite enough about me for one lifetime.'

The patter of Gabrielle's hurried footsteps became audible as she neared the door and the end of the basement.

'Did I miss anything?' She asked, placing her hot chocolate on the floor next to the door. The white mug was coated with foam from where she had spilt it running down after them. No doubt her sister had left a nice trail all the way back up into the house.

'We haven't even started,' Fleur laughed. 'I was just about to explain to Harry what he's trying to do.'

'I read a bit about it at the start of last year,' her beau commented.

'Gabby will be learning about it soon anyway,' Fleur shrugged, 'so I might as well start from the basics.'

'You just want to play teacher again,' Harry smirked.

Fleur felt herself flush slightly, but didn't reply.

So what if I like explaining things to someone I know will listen?

'Go on Professor Fleur,' Gabby giggled.

'Hush class,' she responded good-naturedly, 'or it will be detention.'

'I don't think Harry will mind getting detention with his Professor,' Gabrielle snickered.

Fleur drew her wand threateningly and her sister dramatically pressed her fingers across her mouth to indicate she would be quiet.

'Deflecting hexes is based off the effect created by two colliding curses,' Fleur explained. 'If two spells meet in the air, then they can ricochet off one another or just stop dead. You're trying to achieve a more controlled effect by projecting your magic through your wand to deflect spells away.'

'So it's like conjuring a mirror to reflect spells,' Gabby voiced.

'Gabrielle got it first,' Fleur remarked, amused.

'I already knew that,' Harry responded grouchily, 'and even if she did, so what? We're the same age!'

'Then you'll be able to deflect this,' Fleur smiled. 'Expelliarmus.'

Harry cheekily side-stepped it instead and Gabby giggled.

'I'll deflect it next time,' he promised, sliding his wand out of his sleeve. Gabrielle eyed the slender piece of ebony curiously. If she listened her sister could learn a lot about a wizard's or witch's magic from their wand, much more than Fleur could.

'You better, move a bit further away Gabrielle, you don't want to be hit by the deflected curse.' Fleur raised her wand once more and cast again, this time she used the Stinging Hex, just in case he needed some extra motivation not to let it hit him.

Harry flicked his wand casually in the direction of the approaching curse and Fleur almost sighed, there was no way such an unfocused attempt would stop her hex, even an underpowered one like she had just cast.

The Stinging Hex flashed back past her head and fizzled away against the wall. Fleur smoothed her hair, narrowing her eyes at Harry.

'You have done this before,' she growled.

'I haven't,' he promised, raising his hands placatingly. 'I've only seen it done.'

'Did you intentionally direct it back at me?' Fleur asked.

'Maybe…' His eyes glinted mischievously, and Gabrielle laughed.

'We'll have to speed things up,' Fleur decided, eager for a little revenge, 'care to help Gabby?'

'Of course,' her baby sister chirped. 'What are we casting?'

'Just very light Stinging Hexes,' Fleur instructed firmly. 'I do not want to explain to maman why we accidentally killed Harry in the basement.'

'Not very romantic,' Gabrielle agreed.

Harry shifted his footing and balance, raising his wand. Behind his glasses his bright, green eyes sharpened and froze. Fleur shivered slightly, he looked quite dangerous wearing that expression. She quite wanted to kiss him looking like that.

Gabrielle cast the spell at the same time as she did, Harry deflected hers, sending it hissing viciously off to one side, but Gabby's struck him on the hip and he winced.

'Not at the same time, Gabby,' Fleur told her sister.

'Sorry,' she laughed, watching Harry ruefully rubbing his hip.

'You're pushing too much magic into it,' Fleur corrected. 'You want it to be enough to redirect the hex, not to try and hurl it away from you.'

'Again?' Gabrielle asked, cheerfully raising her wand.

'Does she get to practise this as well?' Harry was giving her baby sister a flat stare.

'Not until she's older,' Fleur decided, ignoring the fact that Harry was the same age as her sister. 'Hex him, Gabby.'

Harry deflected the Stinging hexes Gabby happily threw up at him with less and less force until it seemed he was simply flicking them away off from the tip off his wand. Fleur cast a few of her own, reducing the time he had to think in between spells, but he kept going even when when stretched, sending spells scattering away from him into the walls until there was smashing sound, and Gabby squeaked despairingly.

'My hot chocolate,' she moaned, lowering her wand to gaze mournfully at the pieces of china and spreading puddle.

'I think that might be karma,' Harry remarked, as Fleur waved her wand to repair the mug. Sadly the spilt hot chocolate couldn't be saved and continued to steam on the floor.

'You spilt my hot chocolate,' Gabrielle accused him. 'You owe me,' she decided, turning the full force of her pleading look on Harry. Her beau met Gabby's big, blue eyes with his own calm stare, then smiled triumphantly and turned to Fleur.

'It doesn't work for her either,' he grinned. 'I can ignore it.'

'I'm not using my allure,' Gabby protested, throwing nervous look in Fleur's direction. 'I promise.'

She had better not have.

Her sister had given a promise never to direct it at Harry again, not because Fleur was afraid it would affect him, but because it was not done for a veela to deliberately charm the companion of another veela, little sister or not.

'You mean that's natural?' Harry looked faintly disturbed, and Gabrielle's lower lip quivered dangerously. 'Alright,' he caved. 'I owe you.'

'Can I touch your wand?' Gabrielle asked, extending a hand.

'I don't think your sister would approve,' Harry responded with a completely straight face. Gabby spluttered, red-faced and Fleur had to fight back her flush.

'Revenge is sweet,' Harry decided triumphantly. 'You can,' he grinned, 'but don't try and cast anything with it, Neville got burnt when he tried. It's very closely bonded to me.'

Gabrielle took the ebony wand from his hands, holding it between her forefinger and thumb.

'It's cold, like I'm gripping an icicle,' she frowned, 'I don't think it likes me holding it. Do you mind if I listen to it?'

Harry glanced at her quizzically.

'You remember I told you that we can feel magic to a certain extent?' He nodded. 'I can tell whose magic is whose, as long as the casters aren't too similar, so I'd have trouble with similar people who were close relations, but Gabby is a lot better than me.'

'Let me explain, Fleur,' Gabrielle interrupted. 'You always make it sound so strange.'

'It is strange,' Fleur jibed, 'but go ahead and explain to Harry.'

'I can feel the magic when I listen to it,' she chirped happily. 'As long as I focus on it I can find out what it's like. Most of the time I just get an impression of what the spell feels like, but sometimes, if it's strong enough, I get more. Fleur only gets a fraction of what I do.' She stuck her chin in the air and Fleur couldn't suppress her smile. It was good that Gabby was quite a different veela than she was, she wouldn't want another version of herself as a sibling.

'What do you feel from a wand?' Harry asked, suddenly looking very curious.

'Wands are meant to feel like the magic of their owner,' Gabrielle answered. 'If I listen to the wand then I can feel what your magic is like.' She pulled a slightly anxious face. 'It's quite a personal thing, but you're Fleur's now, and Maman said I can listen to anyone's wand if they're part of the family.'

A strange, soft smile, flickered across Harry's lips for an instant and he closed his eyes briefly. 'Listen away,' he decided. 'I'm curious to hear what you feel.'

Gabby took his wand in both her hands and pressed it tightly against her chest, scrunching her eyes tightly shut.

'It's cold,' she complained.

She stayed silent for a long minute, listening, an enraptured, fascinated expression on her face, her eyelids flickering.

'It's so alive,' she whispered.

Fleur blinked, surprised. Gabrielle had done this to her, several times, and told her that her magic felt like running her fingertips across warm silk, or hot, dry rose petals. It was soft, but strong. Her mother's magic had been described as similarly warm and smooth, like all veela influenced magic was, even if their mother was not so gifted as they were. Her father's had been the most different so far, Gabby had told him that it was like warm wool, less fine than their magic, but still strong.

'It's like holding my hand in the river in winter,' Gabby smiled, still not opening her eyes. 'The current is strong, and it's ice cold.' Her voice was full of fascination. 'I can almost hear the water whispering.' She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. 'I'm sure if I could just listen a little harder I would hear it.'

Harry frowned and pulled his wand from her grasp. 'I think that's enough,' he decided, smiling slightly. Gabby looked disappointed, but Harry glanced pointedly at her hands that were pale, and purple-nailed from the cold his wand had been exuding.

'Don't try stealing it later,' Fleur warned her sister. 'Harry's wand is quite unique, it has a liquid core and seems to be very closely bonded to him. It was reluctant to respond to you were pouring your magic over it to listen, and that was when he gave you permission, please don't try it later.'

'It burnt Neville when he tried to use it even after I gave him permission,' Harry added. 'It wasn't particularly painful, but it looked quite uncomfortable.'

'I wasn't going to,' Gabby sulked. Fleur knew that she had been planning to do exactly that and gave her a sharp, disbelieving look. Her sister giggled mischievously.

Harry slipped it back inside his sleeve.

'Getting back to why we actually came down here,' Fleur reminded them, 'Harry's got the idea. It won't be as easy deflecting different spells at different speeds and still be able to control where they go, and you could probably do with working on your reflexes to make sure you're as fast as you can be.'

'Has the lesson ended? Are we free to leave, Professor Fleur?' Gabrielle asked cheekily.

'Shoo, Gabby,' Fleur smiled, watching as her sister snatched her mug and set off to replace her lost hot chocolate.

'Your mother runs a potions shop, doesn't she?' Harry mused.

'Yes,' she answered. 'Why?' Harry had never shown any particular interest in potions beyond what he needed to know for his exams.

'Did you mean what you said about not caring what I did?' He asked quietly.

'As long as you're mine,' she reminded him softly, moving across to lean herself against him.

'I know a way to improve my reflexes, and my eyesight,' he told her hesitantly, 'but I need a few things that I don't know how to get hold of.'

'What do you need?' Fleur asked, dubious. She knew of most of the potions that might help him, but none of them lasted very long.

'Wormwood, Bayberry, unicorn horn, unicorn tail, salamander's blood and a griffin claw,' Harry listed.

Fleur frowned, those things did not go together at all. 'Is it some kind of strengthening potion?' The griffin claw and salamander's blood would both fit into such a recipe, and unicorn products were magical potent, but neutral in most potions. The magical plants had nothing in common with any of the other ingredients, but both were added to potions used to undo damage to the macula and retina in aurors who'd been exposed to bright light.

'Not exactly,' Harry's lips twisted nervously. 'I need the effect to be permanent.'

'Just tell me,' Fleur demanded. 'I don't care how bad you think it sounds.'

'A ritual,' Harry admitted, 'using blood magic.'

It did sound worse than she had anticipated, and her stomach squirmed, but her fear was only for him. Fleur trusted his judgement. Harry wouldn't do something without good reason, and she didn't want him getting hurt just because she was afraid of what other people might think or say about his route to staying strong.

'That sounds dark,' Fleur responded trying to sound teasing, but her voice came out uncertain and wavering.

'There's no such thing as dark or light magic,' he explained seriously. 'The only thing that matters is the intent behind your casting. I could use a supposedly harmless spell to hurt someone, or a dangerous spell to save your life. Please don't label me like the others have.'

'I'm not judging you, Harry,' she told him fiercely. 'I don't want you dying because you lose your glasses. I just don't want you doing something that will get you in trouble, or change you into something you shouldn't be.'

'I only need those items,' he assured her. 'Once I have those I just use a bit of my blood as the medium, a sacrifice to ensure that the effect remains permanent.'

Fleur suppressed her slight sigh of relief. She had feared, after hearing the words blood magic, that it would involve some kind of twisted sacrificial magic and he'd come out completely different to what he was now.

'I think I can get you all of those,' she smiled. 'Does this mean you'll stop wearing your glasses?'

'I won't need them if it works,' he grinned. 'That will be the only noticeable change, though.'

'I like your eyes,' she told him, kissing him softly. 'I think it's a good idea if you're going to stop hiding them behind those spectacles.'

'Thank you,' he whispered, kissing her back a little harder. 'Thank you for not jumping to conclusions.'

'You have to tell me what you're doing though,' Fleur instructed him, letting him wrap his arms around her waist and keep her close. 'I don't like not knowing what you're up to. You might be doing something stupid or dangerous again.'

'As you command,' he grinned, pulling her closer still. 'It's a ritual that uses the magical properties of numbers to focus and enhance the useful properties I gain from those ingredients.'

'And the blood magic?'

'To make the effect permanent,' Harry answered. 'A sacrifice to allow me to keep the benefits. As the upsides aren't too beneficial in the great scheme of things, the relative sacrifice is affordable. Don't worry about it. The principles of blood magic are probably applicable to every field of magic, you know, including enchanting, but I doubt you'll want to make use of it.'

'Why not?' Fleur asked. If all it took was a sacrifice of blood to enhance her enchanting she would have no qualms about using it.

'The sacrifice has to be proportional.' He swallowed slightly. 'It's going to cost me a lot of magic, and a lot of blood to fix my eyes and give myself a small edge. I'll be weak for several days afterwards even with the benefits of the ritual. It's a relatively small sacrifice,' his smile turned wry.

'But you'll be fine afterwards, won't you?' Fleur's heart beat a little faster.

'I will, I know I need to be careful,' he reassured her. 'A powerful wizard who used blood magic to recreate something that had been lost regretted how much he had to sacrifice for it, even if he never regretted the action itself. He wanted to let himself and every blood descendant of his to be able to speak to animals like some wizards of old had been able to. He used blood magic to accomplish a tiny part of that, sacrificing his dying wife and every moment they might have spent together before they parted. The magic worked, but he missed his wife so dearly that he spent the remainder of his life searching for a way to undo his sacrifice and died without ever coming close. I think my parents might have used it to let me survive the Killing Curse, but the magic required everything they might have had if they'd lived for that protection to be granted. It's lasted fourteen years, but they sacrificed everything they had for it. The price is far too high even in success for it to be used lightly.'

'I won't meddle,' Fleur promised, a little upset that he was dabbling in such a dangerous branch of magic.

'I'll only use it when I have no other option,' Harry told her, tightening his arms about her comfortingly. He was very warm, and the gentle throb of his heart against her chest pushed her anxiety away.

'You better not make a mistake,' she warned him.

'I won't,' he grinned. 'I promise.'

'I'll apparate to Carcassonne before you leave and get the ingredients for you,' Fleur decided. 'You'll have to pay, though.'

'They have to be whole,' Harry revealed. 'How much will I owe you?'

'About three hundred galleons, but that excludes the griffin's claw.' Fleur considered briefly how much a whole claw might cost. 'Maybe about six hundred galleons all in,' she informed him.

'I can finally use some of my Triwizard winnings,' he smiled. Fleur scowled playfully until he kissed her like she wanted him to.

'Was there anything else you wanted me to help with? She asked magnanimously. 'Hex-deflecting, rare ingredients for your dark rituals, I'm not sure what else I can offer.'

'Do you know a way to conceal something so it only reveals with a certain phrase?'

'What are you trying to conceal?' Fleur inquired. It was quite a simple thing in principle, but it did depend on what exactly he was trying to hide.

'A map, hand drawn.' Something slightly cruel gleamed in his eyes, and Fleur decided not to ask. He'd told her two of his secrets already, she shouldn't press for a third. Harry would tell her when he wanted to, and Fleur knew he would want to, nobody else would listen to him like she would.

'Easy,' Fleur smiled proudly. 'Enchant it with concealing charms, then just add an activation phrase like I have with our lockets and the portkey. Let's go upstairs and I'll show you.'

They drifted back up the stairs, and Fleur was pleased that Harry didn't even seem to consider removing the arm he'd left around her waist. He'd come a long way from the young wizard who'd flinched every time she came too close.

'So how do I do it?' Harry asked, watching her carefully as she stole part of Gabrielle's drafted essay, earning a pout from her sister.

'You enchant the ink with the concealing charms, but you make sure that they're all tied together. If you imagine all the enchantments as small pieces of thread, you want them intertwined to form a stronger thread. That will stop anyone from being able to reveal it by just using the Revealing Charm or other normal methods.' Fleur demonstrated, borrowing Gabby's quill and ink.

'It's disappeared,' Harry remarked dryly when Fleur cast the Revealing Charm and nothing happened. Gabrielle sniggered slightly.

'Do you want me to show you?' Fleur asked, not really offended.

'Sorry,' Harry apologised, not looking the least bit guilty. He never genuinely apologised for poking fun at her.

'You then want to enchant the parchment to reveal anything upon it when a certain phrase is said. That's a simple, single piece of magic and as long as you make it strong enough it will bypass the concealment charms on the ink.'

'That's it?' Harry asked. He looked a little disappointed.

'If you wanted me to show you something more spectacular you should have been more ambitious in what you wanted to learn,' Fleur retorted, smirking. 'I'd suggest a few extra enchantments to stop anyone tampering with, or re-enchanting the parchment, but it's the most elegant solution I know. Enchanting the ink to conceal itself permanently rather than making a complex set of triggers is a lot safer and easier.'

'If the ink is permanently hidden, then how is the enchantment on the parchment going to reveal it?' Harry asked, slightly puzzled.

'The two enchantments are not connected,' Fleur pointed out. 'The ink will remain concealed, so that area of the parchment will not change, but the rest of the map is able to darken or change to show where the concealed ink is once the activation phrase is spoken.'

'That's very clever,' Harry grinned.

'I can make it for you, if you want?' Fleur offered. She was fond of making things for Harry, even more than she was of making them for Gabby, and rarely got an excuse.

'I don't have the piece of parchment I need to enchant with me,' Harry admitted. 'I shall have to do it myself and hope I manage to do it half as well you would have done.'

Fleur smiled, then kissed him for his flattery.

'Not while I'm here,' Gabby complained, retrieving her quill while Fleur was distracted.

'I thought it was romantic?' Harry laughed.

'It's romantic if you kiss her in the rain,' Gabrielle explained. 'It's just awkward if you do it while I'm sitting right here.'

Harry grinned, leant forward, and kissed her again, more ardently than before, flicking the tip of his tongue against Fleur's bottom lip. A shiver of pleasure tingled its way down her spine.

Gabby screwed her eyes shut and pouted in protest.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to all those who do.

P.S. (Newly dubbed as PaC Script) I'm assuming there were 3 more parts to that review, but I only got to moderate part one four times? (This is why you should have an account!) You have some fair points, but I'd like to point out my hands are still a little tied by the sometimes sketchy rules of J K Rowling's universe, and that you probably should have read Chapter 45, before getting too judgey over the DA, it would have saved you some typing if nothing else. Besides, you don't have to forgive someone for them to be useful, do you? Anyway, please keep reviewing, I'm always interested, even if there's no french accent ;)

47. Cartography

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I meant to post this a lot earlier, but it slipped my mind, sorry for the extra wait everyone!

Chapter 47

'You want to do it now?' Salazar didn't seem convinced it was a good idea. 'It's the morning.'

'How long will it take?' Harry asked, picking the canvas off the wall and carrying it out across the bridge into the main chamber.

The portrait leant its head to one side, thoughtfully stroking the head of his companion. 'Around an hour,' Slytherin decided eventually, 'depending on how quickly you manage to create the patterns of the ritual.'

'Just enough time before lunch,' Harry grinned, slightly nervous.

'You'll tired for the rest of the day,' the founder warned, 'and I don't mean the occasional yawn. You'll be fighting to keep your eyes open every second of it.'

'I've only really got one piece of magic I need to perform later today,' Harry shrugged. 'I'll venture to the hospital wing for a potion or two to keep me on my feet.'

'Well if you've made your mind up I can hardly stop you,' the portrait snarked. Harry propped it up against the usual effigy that doubled as Salazar's support and pulled out the book.

'What do I want?' He asked, flicking through the first few pages. 'I'm assuming something in patterns of seven, it is the magically strongest number.'

'Three concentric stars,' Slytherin confirmed, 'large enough for you to stand in, and unbroken.'

'I'll have to draw them in blood, won't I,' Harry realised.

'Yes,' the founder nodded seriously, 'and you'll have to do it quickly, the ritual needs the blood to be fresh, its effect fades once it has begun to congeal.'

'Perfect,' Harry commented dryly. 'I'll prepare the Wormwood, Bayberry and unicorn horn first, then.'

'Remember that you want the leaves to be cut fine, and well mixed,' Salazar instructed from his spot on the floor.

'I remember,' Harry replied lightly. 'Can I use magic? They're going to be covered in my blood regardless.'

'Magic will be fine,' Slytherin agreed.

Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve, casting the cutting curse at the ankle high pile of leaves over and over again until they had been reduced to tiny flecks of green.

'That's more than adequate,' Salazar told him. 'You'll want unicorn horn at every inner point of the smallest star, and the plants at every outer one.'

'So I just have to draw it all,' Harry realised, re-arranging the items with a flick of his wand.

He raised his wand and began to sketch all the relevant patterns and runes into the floor around him in burning, purple flames, correcting his design whenever Slytherin tutted and called out a mistake.

The three symmetrical, seven-pointed stars blazed especially bright when Harry carefully placed the unicorn horn and mixture of Bayberry and Wormwood leaves in their respective places. A circles of forty-nine runes surrounded the stars and, unlike the last two times, he understood their meanings and significance within the ritual. A description of his intent written in glyphs around him.

'That's as close to perfect as you'll be able to make it,' Salazar decided, looking approvingly over the patterns surrounding Harry. 'Now you just need to go over the stars with blood.'

He makes it sound so simple.

The stars were half a metre along each face; it was going to be quite a lot of blood. His toes curled uncomfortably, but he bared his wrist all the same and pressed the tip of his wand to it.

Harry gently drew the tip of his wand across the smooth skin, watching as it parted, stinging and burning as the trickle of crimson thickened into a stream and began to drip down onto the point of the first star.

He was pale and shaking by the time he managed to finish the final star, but an unbroken line of his blood, as thick as his thumb ran along every face of the shape.

'I'm ready,' he told the portrait, conjuring a rope to tie around his forearm.

'You should take off your glasses, then,' Salazar remarked. 'You shouldn't be needing those again.'

'Will I black out like last time?' Harry asked, stepping into the centre of the pattern, blinking at the blurry runes around him. He could only just make out those for blood or essence, body, sight and sacrifice at the top of the circle.

'No,' the founder shook his head, mirrored by his snake, 'it will hurt, though.'

'Everything seems to hurt,' Harry commented.

The runes were beginning to pulse, glowing a brighter purple, and the three stars shone a deep, brilliant crimson, even as the small piles of leaves hissed and burst into clouds of thick white smoke.

It stung violently at his eyes and Harry blinked furiously, trying to keep them open, but he swiftly pressed them tightly closed when the seven inner points of the stars flared a blinding white. Even closed his eyes still burnt, and it quickly became clear that it wasn't the smoke that was affecting them.

A tingle of something cold wrapped itself around his feet, curling and climbing up his calves. It moved quickly, numbing his muscles as it spread across his stomach and chest from his legs. He felt like he was slowly being submerged in cold water.

Harry instinctively took a deep breath, choking slightly on the smoke, when the cold reached his lips, then it was across his face and the sensation in his eyes intensified a thousand times over.

He flinched, pressing his hands desperately into his brow, but it did nothing to alleviate the sensation. His eyes continued to burn and tingle unbearably, and the brilliant light of the ritual shone through his eyelids.

Abruptly the light vanished, and the stinging in his eyes went with it, but the cold grew stronger than before, freezing him to the spot, so he couldn't even open his eyes. Harry felt it draining away his strength, stealing his magic from him as his sacrifice to keep the effects of the ritual was finally taken.

The cold vanished, and Harry opened his eyes. The blurriness was gone, he could see every detail of the runes he'd inscribed around him, and take in every aspect of the blackened, bloody leaves and horn fragments about him.

'Did it work?' Salazar asked. Harry nodded, but the sharp motion of his head made him feel dizzy and nauseous, so he sat down heavily on the floor.

'Regretting not doing it in the evening?' Slytherin asked snidely.

'No,' Harry disagreed. 'I'm really very hungry. If I could muster the energy to get to the Great Hall for lunch I'd say I timed it perfectly.'

'The dizziness will pass,' Salazar told him. 'Go to the hospital wing before eating, then get some energy back and try do as little as possible for the rest of the day.'

'That last bit sounds like a good idea,' Harry smiled faintly.

'Then go,' the founder ordered. He looked around him irritatedly. 'You can leave me here for now, if you tried putting me back we'd probably both end up in the pool.'

Harry slowly dragged himself to his feet, eyeing the remnants of his ritual. He'd have to get rid of that when he next came back here. The runes would fade in their own time, even if he didn't magically remove them, but the rest would need vanishing.

It felt like an awfully long way across the chamber to the stairs, and even further up those dusty steps into Myrtle's bathroom where he paused to check his appearance. He didn't have the energy to disillusion himself.

The mirror showed him pale, shivering and sweating, with a blood-soaked left sleeve and no glasses. His eyes were ever so slightly brighter than before, an unnatural gleam of magic hovered there and he grinned.

A complete success.

Harry rinsed his face in one of the few sinks that did work, and dried it on his other sleeve. Madam Pomfrey would heal his wrist, and know which potions he should take to help him recover. He was willing to bet that a blood-replenishing one would be among them.

Myrtle was absent from her toilet, likely off spying on the Prefect's Bathroom again, so Harry carefully snuck out into the corridor and made his way down towards the hospital wing.

'What have you done to yourself now, Mr Potter?' Madam Pomfrey sighed, when he lifted through the doors of the infirmary. Harry had no doubt that his attempts to revert his appearance had been undone by the journey here. He'd been seating horribly and he could feel himself shaking like a leaf.

'I think I've lost quite a bit of blood,' he murmured.

The nurse dropped the blankets she was folding and swept over to guide him to the edge of a bed.

'Where are you injured?' She snapped, running her wand over him. 'And how did this happen? You're covered in magical residue.' Harry struggled for an excuse, but nothing presented itself, so he extended his left arm instead.

Madam Pomfrey hissed in displeasure, undoing his makeshift tourniquet which swiftly dissipated into the air. The cut welled up anew, swelling crimson. Withdrawing her wand from Harry's forehead she pressed its tip lightly against the edge of the cut.

'This was created by magic, Mr Potter,' she frowned, 'if you aren't going to tell me how this came about then I can only assume the worst and deduce you have been duelling in the corridors somewhere.'

Not even close.

The nurse sniffed when Harry didn't reply and drew her wand along the length of the cut, watching critically as it closed.

'That did not heal easily,' she muttered. 'What dangerous magic have the students been learning now. Albus needs to take a firmer stance on things like this.' Madam Pomfrey slipped her wand away, and moved over to one of the cupboards of potions. 'You'll need several of these,' she pulled a rack of vials full of a dark red potion out, 'you've lost almost a litre of blood.'

'Filch would be furious if he had to clean it up,' Harry smiled, feeling a little better now the throbbing in his arm was gone, and he was stationary again.

'You'll need these as well,' the nurse ordered sternly, depositing the first rack of vials on the bed next to him and then adding two more. 'One for the pain, and one to help replenish the energy you've lost. It looks like you're about to collapse.'

She looked back at him, pointing a finger at the potions. 'Why aren't you drinking?'

Harry reached for the first of the red potions and gulped it down, hoping it would leave him feeling a lot less fragile than he did.

He ended up just feeling very full of liquid and slightly less shivery.

'If I tell you to stay here, will you actually do it, Mr Potter?' Madam Pomfrey asked, slightly more kindly than normal.

Harry pretended to think about it, the grinned as cheekily as he could. 'No,' he decided.

I didn't think so,' the nurse sighed, levitating the vials off the bed and out of the way. 'Off you go then, and make sure you eat something before lunch ends. You're excused from anything strenuous, magical or otherwise, until the end of the week, and I will be talking to your teachers to make sure that they know.'

'Yes, Madam Pomfrey,' Harry agreed, wisely choosing not to argue. Any magic he needed to perform wasn't going to be cast in class.

He swung himself off the bed, stomach sloshing, and onto his feet. There was a slight spell of dizziness, but nothing more. His shivering had stopped, and a glance in the window reassured him that much of his colour had returned.

Harry still looked quite awful, but it was a great improvement on how he'd appeared when he staggered into the hospital wing.

Lunch was almost over when he arrived in the Great Hall, but he found Neville talking with Cedric Diggory at the end of the Gryffindor table and collapsed into the seat next to him.

'You look terrible,' Diggory commented, looking mildly concerned.

'I had a run in with Madam Pomfrey,' Harry smiled, helping himself to as much food as was within reach. He was ravenous after the ritual.

'Did she order you to eat?' Cedric asked, watching with some amusement as Harry consumed enough mashed potato to make a small mountain.

'She might have done,' Harry admitted, swallowing his mouthful.

'Have you heard about the most recent decree?' Neville asked.

'No,' Harry raised an eyebrow at his friend and glanced around for a copy of the paper. They were all a little bit of reach, and he'd rather not summon them in his state.

'There's some law about teacher's not being able to discuss anything with students that isn't about their subject,' Neville told him seriously.

'It's because of the breakout from Azkaban,' Cedric snorted. 'My father says there's no evidence that Sirius Black is even in the country, but Fudge doesn't want anything to contradict the Ministry's version of events.'

'Does it apply to Umbridge?' Harry inquired hopefully.

'I doubt it,' Neville shook his head angrily. 'Not much is going to keep her from spewing nonsense every lesson we have to endure. I almost miss copying out of the book.'

'A shame,' Harry responded wryly.

'I need to be going,' Neville said suddenly. 'You promised to come to this one, Harry,' he reminded firmly.

'I'm coming,' Harry acquiesced, glancing at Cedric.

'I'm coming too,' the Hufflepuff grinned, 'Neville wanted an assistant who'd actually teach someone, but I'll wait for Harry to finish.'

Neville nodded and swung himself out of the bench. 'You were right about the wand,' he said, pausing before he left. 'It's not made a huge difference, but the trembling stopped and I don't have to force myself so hard to get the same effects, so thanks, I'm glad I listened.' He held his hand up, displaying very faint red marks where Harry's wand had burnt him. 'Not so glad about these though,' he joked as he left.

'There was something wrong with his wand?' Cedric asked.

'He was using his father's wand,' Harry replied casually, glossing over the reasons behind Neville's choice. 'It wasn't the best match he could have had.'

'Quite a lot of wizards and witches do that,' Diggory told him.

'So why are you coming to our little group?' Harry asked, between forkfuls of sausage and potato.

'I'm not fond of Umbridge,' Cedric answered, 'she's destroying your chances of passing exams and getting good jobs later on. The Ministry is spouting nonsense, there's something wrong with the version of events they keep saying. I just know it isn't true,' he shook his head, frowning slightly. 'Do you ever have that feeling you've forgotten something important?'

'All the time,' Harry grinned.

The charm is failing already.

Hermione was already undoing his work with her incessant digging to uncover what happened. He ground his teeth slightly, annoyed by how selfish she was being in her ignorance.

'I talked to the girl in your house who went with Krum to the Yule Ball, she isn't convinced either.'

'Hermione,' Harry nodded. 'I'm not surprised.'

'I'm wanted to ask you about what happened,' Cedric confessed. 'I remember you stunning me, but that's it.'

'Did Hermione not tell you what I told her?' Harry asked.

'She did,' he responded hesitantly, 'but I know you had a falling out with most of your housemates, and I thought you might know a bit more.'

'I do,' Harry told him bluntly, getting up from the bench. 'I know exactly what happened, Cedric, but I don't think you want to.'

'Would you tell me anyway?' He asked. 'I'm afraid that I might have had something to do with what happened.'

Harry scrutinised him carefully as they walked towards the stairs. The memory charm he'd cast was already giving way, it was probably best to give him the true version of events before Hermione managed to create another version for him to believe.

'You did,' Harry told him sympathetically. 'Bagman only cast one curse at any of us, the Imperius Curse, and he cast it at you.' Cedric paled white, and shook his head in horror. 'I warned you,' Harry said gently.

'You did more than warn me, didn't you?' He realised. 'Bagman would have never been caught if I'd been culpable. You obliviated me to undo the Imperius Curse, it wouldn't work if I didn't know the commands I'd been given, then you stunned me and snapped my wand so I couldn't be blamed.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised, 'it was the only thing I could do, Krum was already dead and Fleur was unconscious.'

'Don't be sorry,' Cedric told him, his voice thick with emotion. 'I owe you a debt I can't repay. If you hadn't done that I might be in Azkaban, my parents would have been heartbroken, and I would be worse than dead.'

'Best not to tell Hermione,' Harry suggested. 'If you're still acting like you don't remember then nobody attracts any suspicion. I'm not going to get in trouble for what I did.' The Hufflepuff prefect nodded gratefully. It wasn't true, it wouldn't make any difference now Diggory knew, but Harry didn't think Hermione deserved to find out so quickly, not after single-mindedly pursuing what she wanted without a care for anyone else.

They climbed the stairs to the seventh floor in silence, Cedric seemed to be taking it all in, his fists clenched and his jaw tight. Harry hoped he didn't torment himself too much, Riddle was the one who was really responsible.

A group of about twenty five students had gathered around Neville by the tapestry. Harry recognised the faces of most of those who'd come to the meeting in the Hog's Head. Cedric was immediately accosted by Hermione, who wanted him to sign her list straight away. Neville, meanwhile, was pacing in the corridor, waiting for the doorway to the Room of Requirement to form.

Eventually it did, the unspectacular wooden door flowing from the stone to excited whispers, and Neville ushered everyone inside.

'Welcome to the first session of Dumbledore's Army,' Hermione announced. 'I'm glad that everybody came, even though this group is now technically illicit courtesy of Umbridge.' There were a few small smiles.

'What is this place?' Katie asked him, appearing next to him in her usual state of disarray.

'The Room of Requirement,' Harry replied quietly. 'It's quite handy.'

Not that anyone here but me knows more than a couple of its secrets.

Harry had mastered how to use this room, he knew its intricacies far better than any other he knew of, and had no intention of sharing them. As far as the DA members would know, the room gave the person who opened it what they wanted.

'It's awesome,' Katie beamed, then she tugged his sleeve and laughed quietly. 'I think Neville's going to make a speech.' Harry followed her line of sight and caught sight of Neville fumbling with a piece of parchment and looking distinctly nervous.

'This should be good,' Harry grinned. 'He's still quite shy around people he doesn't know well. It's a bit strange actually, he's worse with them than he is with complete strangers.'

'So,' Neville paused anxiously, 'like Hermione said, welcome to the first meeting and the place where we'll be practicing for all the future sessions.'

'What are we doing today?' Smith interrupted.

'We'll be testing the Shield Charm and the Disarming Charm,' Neville's eyes glinted, he didn't like being spoken across, not after having to suffer it for the last four years. 'Split into pairs, one can shield and the other can try and disarm. Smith can go first with me, to demonstrate.'

The other members backed away from the Hufflepuff student as Neville pulled his new wand out of his robes.

'Ready, Smith?' Neville asked.

'I can't cast the Shield Charm,' Zacharias Smith shrugged, leaving his wand in his pocket.

Neville's jelly-legs jinx hit him squarely in the face and he collapsed on the floor, swearing profusely amid everyone's laughter.

'What the hell was that for, Longbottom?' He spat.

'If you're going to come here and ask for my help, Smith,' Neville began coolly, 'then you should be polite and not interrupt. I'll undo the jinx once you've apologised.'

'Fine,' the Hufflepuff said angrily. 'I apologise for interrupting. Happy?'

'If I'm not,' Neville performed the counter to the jinx, 'you'll find out soon enough.' Smith pushed himself off the floor and slunk back into the group.

'Right,' Neville continued, still holding his wand, 'the Shield Charm is about intent to protect, if your focus is strong enough it can be an effective barrier against most spells.'

'What ones isn't in effective against?' Terry Boot asked curiously.

'Ones powerful enough to break through your shield of magic, or ones with potent enough intent to simply pass through it,' Neville answered. 'The Unforgivables require such strong intent to successfully cast that no Shield Charm can deflect them.'

'So dodge those ones,' Ron added, grinning.

'Or you'll end up with a really big scar on your face,' Katie finished in a whisper next to him. Harry ignored her.

'Split up into pairs,' Neville instructed, 'fortunately there's an even number of us, so nobody will be left out.'

The group separated into pairs that drifted away across the room that subtly expanded out give them the necessary space. Harry sat down on the floor and gave Katie, who seemed to have volunteered herself as his partner a bright smile. The other students had been kind enough to leave the two of them twice as much space as necessary, just in case he started cursing anyone nearby.

'Get up, Harry,' Katie ordered. 'I want to practise too.'

'Madam Pomfrey forbade me from doing anything strenuous,' Harry informed her gravely. 'I'm afraid I have to sit here and watch.'

'I'll hex you on the floor just as happily as if you were standing,' Katie warned cheerfully.

'You wouldn't assault someone who's ill, would you?'

Katie inspected him critically, taking in his slight pallor and the shadows under his eyes.

'I suppose you do look moderately awful,' she decided, sitting next to him on the floor. 'What's wrong with you? Is it contagious?'

'It's definitely not catchable,' Harry smiled. 'I could just do with a few quiet days to recover.'

'I can probably skip one session of practise,' Katie smiled, watching the other groups. 'I suspect they'll need more than one meeting to get the hang of this spell.'

She wasn't wrong. The majority of the younger students were managing to produce slight shimmers or patchy shields. The only one who seemed to get the hang of it in less than a handful of tries was the blonde Ravenclaw paired with Ginny. Her shield was an odd, grey-tinted shade of silver that seemed almost nebulous, but it definitely worked, since the youngest Weasley was not having the slightest success in penetrating it.

'Not going to practise, Harry?' Neville asked, 'even Cedric's practising with the older students.'

'They're trying to shorten the time it takes for them to cast the shield,' Harry told him, 'and Diggory's attempting to do it wordlessly.'

'Can you do that?' Katie asked.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'Although I'm not yet able to cast it as strongly wordlessly as I am with incantation.'

'Want to practise with me then,' Neville offered, sticking a hand out towards Katie, 'since your partner seems unwilling.'

'That's alright, Nev,' Katie beamed. 'It's quite comfy here, and I'm fairly good at casting them already.'

'You need to keep an eye on them,' Harry grinned, inclining his head in the direction of the Twins, who had stopped attempting to shield and disarm and were busy casting tripping jinxes at Ron.

'Fred, George,' Neville called, trying not to laugh as Ron stumbled and bounced off Hermione's shield to land face first on the floor. 'Leave him be while he's practising.' Ron rose from the stone, nursing a red mark on his forehead and glaring at his elder siblings.

'Sorry, Ronniekins,' they sniggered, returning to trying to wordlessly cast the charm like Cedric was.

After a while the pairs switched, and there was a clatter of wands on stone as the first few attempts to cast the Shield Charm failed.

'So why are you here of you aren't going to take part or teach?' Katie asked.

'I wanted to see how good everyone is,' Harry answered honestly, 'and I will teach them the Patronus Charm eventually.'

'Making sure you're still far beyond them?' Katie asked, laughing at the slightly contemptuous face he had pulled after watching Zacharias Smith only manage to shield his back and promptly get disarmed for a fifth straight time.

'He's not very good is he,' she remarked.

'Maybe he's only planning on running away like Umbridge insists so he only wants to protect his back,' Harry suggested, as Smith's wand bounced across the floor to land next to Katie's foot.

'I am not,' Smith scowled, retrieving his wand.

'You're not going to last very long in a duel, then,' Harry smirked.

The Hufflepuff seemed to consider responding, but wisely thought better of it, and stalked off. Even in Harry's state he could wipe the floor with someone like Smith.

'I think that's enough for one meeting,' Neville announced loudly after about half an hour. Smith had finally managed to produce a charm that covered his entire body, even if it was still too weak to deflect him from more than the weakest spells.

'Keep an eye on your badges for the time of the next meeting,' Hermione added, 'we'll try to organise them around things like quidditch.'

The other students gradually dispersed in the direction of their common rooms. Harry followed Katie out, then excused himself, pretending to head towards the hospital wing before disillusioning himself and doubling back.

'You think we should hide the list in there?' Hermione asked Neville, looking thoughtfully at the wall where the Room of Requirement would form.

'Yeah,' Neville nodded confidently. 'Not much chance of anyone finding it, someone in the group might guess that's where we've put it, but I don't expect anyone else too.'

Hermione considered it for a while then turned and opened the door to the room. Harry cast a second charm, to muffle the noise of his footsteps, and slipped through the door after them. He nearly walked into Neville's back, as he and Hermione stared around them in wonder.

Harry didn't blame them, the Room of Hidden Things was quite spectacular. He suspected that it was from here that the room procured everything it provided that could be removed. There were towers of furniture, mountains of books, which Hermione was eyeing covetously, bottles, wands, and vast quantities of every item ever banned from Hogwarts.

'We need to put it somewhere we will be able to find it,' Hermione said, still slightly enraptured by the room.

They strode a few paces into the room, standing next to the large bust of a particularly ugly looking warlock.

'He'll do as a landmark,' Neville grinned, 'we won't be able to forget that face.' Hermione laughed, and placed the list underneath the bust. She drew out her wand and cast a couple of spells, ones that Harry couldn't recognise from the wand motions alone.

'A anti-summoning enchantment,' she explained to Neville, 'just in case anyone finds out it''s in here and tried to find it.'

Smart.

Harry himself would not have been able to find it without considerable luck if he hadn't followed them in.

Carefully he crept up alongside and past them, crouching down in a small gap across from the bust next to a tarnished, silver circlet and a small collection of dusty bottles of fire whiskey. He still had to lean precariously back out of their way when they left, putting a hand on the floor next to the sapphire adorned tiara to balance himself.

The door closed with a dull thud, and he dispelled the disillusionment with a sigh of relief.

'Accio ink, accio quill,' he murmured, sure that somewhere within the room he would find something passable to write with, and pulled the list out from under the bust.

Unscrewing the lid of his newly acquired bottle of ink he began to cast the charms that Fleur had cast in from of him, wincing each time he finished one and felt it take its toll.

Selecting the least broken quill of those he had summoned, he blew off the dust and began to draw, watching as the ink faded from the page.

It was a simple drawing, a circle, labelled with runes for creature, keeper and home, then a meandering trail that led from it to a final rune, Ehwaz, the Futhark representation of advancement and progress. Ambiguous enough to allow him to later twist its meaning however he needed to entice Umbridge into following it.

Harry smiled in satisfaction as the ink faded from sight. The route led past Hagrid's hut and out into the forest. It was a path he wasn't ever likely to forget taking, and the last time he ever trusted Hagrid's directions.

Follow the spiders, he smirked.

Casting a handful of new charms on the reverse of the list to prevent any of the enchantments he had added being easily noticed or altered, he pondered briefly the best way to lead Umbridge to the list and whether he should further tamper with it. He couldn't remove the anti-summoning charm on the off chance that those who were on the list of names were questioned, and he couldn't take off his own name without all but confessing his guilt.

Umbridge would need to be able to find it, make use of it, then later discover the map he'd left for her. Which meant she needed to know where she was looking when entering the room.

Harry picked up the circlet, giving it a curious stare when it chittered at him softly, and then placed it on the bust of the warlock. It made a memorable landmark now, one that he could easily feed back to the Pink Professor.

Marietta Edgecombe could easily be induced let slip the landmark and location of the room to Umbridge. She would find the list and Dumbledore would be out of the way, then Harry could find some way for her to discover the map on the reverse and its activation phrase to get rid of Umbridge as well. It was simply a matter of timing.

He pressed the tip of his wand against the parchment, wracking his brain for a suitable activation phrase, one that Dumbledore might conceivably have chosen.

Of course, he realised, what could be more appropriate for a man who would sacrifice a child to save a country.

'For the Greater Good,' he whispered, smiling at the delightful irony and watching the parchment darken to reveal the map before tucking it back under the bust.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does.

48. Morsemordre

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Today's chapter arrives, just in time for lunch...

Chapter 48

'What have you been up to?' Slytherin asked, leaning forward to peer at Harry. 'You must be awfully cheerful to forget that you aren't allowed to put your feet on my desk.' He'd been a bit tetchy since Harry had forgotten to come back to the chamber and hang him up for a few days after the ritual.

'It's not your desk anymore,' Harry reminded him, 'but yes I am happy.'

'Are you going to answer my original question?' The founder leant a little further forward, dislodging the serpent from around his neck, briefly giving Harry a glimpse of a slender, silver chain.

'My plan is taking shape perfectly,' Harry explained, still smiling, and not moving his feet off the desk.

'Which plan is this?' Salazar inquired curiously. 'You had several.'

'They're all part of the same plan really,' he grinned. 'Find the Prophecy, find out why Voldemort is after me, destroy his horcrux, or horcruxes if there are still more than one left and kill him.'

'Which part, then?' The founder asked impatiently.

'I'm one spell away from getting rid of Dumbledore for as long as the Ministry remain against him, and I can't see a way it will fail.' Harry smiled icily. 'Even Riddle's horcrux couldn't come so close.'

'Just because you cannot see a way, does not mean it doesn't exist,' Slytherin warned.

'I know,' Harry agreed, 'but if I cannot think of one after so much careful thought, then the chance of it being disrupted seems small.'

'Would you care to share this work of genius with me?'

'Dumbledore has been keeping too close an eye on me,' Harry began happily, 'with Snape's lessons in occlumency and the school wards should he ever look at them. I don't know what he's keeping his sacrifice,' both Harry and Salazar sneered, 'alive for, but if I start to look like a threat he will eliminate me.'

'You think you've found a way to outmanoeuvre Albus Dumbledore?' Salazar asked, a hint of skepticism in his tone. 'Riddle was always wary of him for a reason.'

'He thinks I am on his side,' Harry smiled, 'and why would he not. The other sides are Voldemort who murdered my parents and seeks to kill me, or the Ministry who continue to slander me. Never in his darkest dreams does he imagine that there might be a fourth side, my side.'

'So you think you will take him by surprise?'

'I will. Neville has started a group to openly flout the Ministry's rules about teaching students under Dumbledore's influence to fight. I managed to get them to name themselves Dumbledore's Army,' he grinned. 'Once the group is discovered there will be nothing Dumbledore can do. Either he tries to fight the Ministry, which helps Voldemort, or he lets the Ministry expel thirty of the students including his martyr and those closest to him.'

'If there are as few loopholes in your trap as you believe then you have done exceedingly well,' Salazar congratulated, sliding into joyous parsletongue. 'It is no more than he deserves for even thinking about trying to sacrifice my heir, a member of my family.'

'There are a few loose ends,' Harry admitted. 'I won't be in suspicion if I can indirectly betray the group, but while I'm fairly confident ordering somebody else to lead Umbridge to the list that is to be her proof will not break the contract I signed when I joined I'm not certain.'

The founder looked thoughtful. 'What are the exact terms?'

'It wasn't a specific written contract,' Harry told him. 'I will be very careful about how I word my instructions to Marietta Edgecombe, the girl who will tell Umbridge, and that should be enough.'

'You're replacing Dumbledore with the woman who tortures children,' Slytherin hissed, suddenly furious.

'Only temporarily,' Harry's smile turned a little sinister. 'On the back of the list is a map, one that I drew and concealed with an enchantment requiring an activation phrase-'

'Where did you learn to do that? I never taught you any enchanting,'

'Fleur is very good at it,' Harry grinned. 'She's taught me a few little pieces when I've asked.'

'All that time in France was worthwhile after all,' Salazar commented dryly.

'The phrase is for the Greater Good,' Harry told him. The painting enjoyed the irony every bit as much as he did, chuckling darkly. 'The map appears to lead into the forest to something important, I intend to entice Umbridge into investigating it.'

'I assume she won't be coming back from her investigation,' Slytherin remarked amusedly.

'No she won't,' Harry grinned, 'there are an awful lot of acromantula in that part of the forest, with a little help she'll wonder right into the middle of their nest unaware.'

'How tragic,' Salazar sighed, his tongue dripping with sarcasm. 'That gets rid of the two trouble causing teachers, but you still can't take advantage of it yet.'

'I think my godfather will tell me about the Prophecy if I can convince him I know enough that there's little point in withholding the rest. At the very least I should learn what the Order of the Phoenix is planning.' Harry swept his feet of the desk and tapped the time turner. 'If the worst comes to the worst I can use this to go back and change my conversations with Sirius to make sure he is convinced.'

'You're willing to experiment with it now?' His ancestor's face lit up.

'No,' Harry reminded him sternly. 'I don't know why you're so eager to lose the only descendant you have that isn't a mass-murdering megalomaniac in the currents of time.'

'You wouldn't be lost,' the painting retorted.

'How would you know?'

'I'm Salazar Slytherin,' the founder replied, but he sounded more hopeful than anything else.

'Nice try,' Harry laughed.

'Fine,' Slytherin relented. 'I wanted to ask you about something different. You're doing well to deal with the Ministry and Dumbledore, but Voldemort will make himself know soon. If he's allowed to launch a surprise attack on the Ministry you will find yourself hard-pressed to defeat him.'

'You are right,' Harry realised. 'What can I do?'

He considered his options. It was obvious that nobody would believe him if he tried to tell other people without proof, and he doubted Voldemort would be so kind as to turn up at the Ministry to prove them wrong.

'I need to make it look as if he's returned,' Harry concluded.

'And you need to do it well enough to be beyond reasonable doubt,' Salazar added. 'What did those articles say about why Voldemort wasn't back?'

'No proof of his return except the word of Dumbledore and myself, neither of whom is having much luck convincing anyone with Rita Skeeter out there defaming anyone who speaks up adjacent Fudge.'

'Anything specific?'

'Voldemort was reported dead thirteen years ago, though no body was found, and they cited the lack of the Dark Mark over any of the disappearances that were claimed to be the work of Death Eaters.'

Slytherin smiled triumphantly. 'There you have it,' he proclaimed.

'What do I have?' Harry asked, not at all following.

'If someone disappears under the Dark Mark, that should begin to make people think twice about the Ministry's propaganda. Especially if it's someone noticeable.'

'The Ministry will just cover it up,' Harry dismissed.

'So find someone willing to publish or spread the story, or make it so spectacular that it cannot be ignored,' Slytherin replied evenly.

'The Dark Mark is quite hard to miss by all accounts.' Harry had seen the court transcripts and seen the pictures from the last war. 'I could cast it in a handful of locations that make it hard to ignore, but I don't know how.'

'Find out,' Salazar shrugged, making his serpent bob upon his shoulders. 'There must be some former followers of Riddle around somewhere.'

'I suspect most of them are with Voldemort,' Harry commented wryly, 'but I'll ask around, Sirius might know.'

He reached for the mirror and started towards the nearest dark corner. 'Don't say anything,' he warned his ancestor, 'he has sharp hearing.'

'Sirius,' he said, waiting for his godfather's face to appear in the mirror.

'Harry.' It took a few minutes for him to appear. 'This isn't the best time, Podmore got himself caught and sentenced to time in Azkaban for being somewhere he shouldn't be.'

'He's an order member?'

'Yes, we're trying to re-organise everything so it works without him, but it's proving difficult.'

'I have a question, just a quick one,' Harry smiled winningly. 'Are there any former Death Eaters I should be looking out for, ones that aren't obvious?'

Sirius snorted. 'I can think of one or two straight off the top of my head. There are a handful of those who were acquitted under suspicious circumstances like Malfoy and Macnair, but the only one close enough to be a risk to you is Snape, though Dumbledore assures us he's trustworthy.'

'Snape?' Harry asked, not believing his luck was quite so brilliant.

'Oh yes,' Sirius glowered, 'don't turn your back on Snivellus, he's not to be trusted, no matter what Dumbledore says.'

'I won't,' Harry assured him, 'and I'll be taking Dumbledore's advice with a pinch of salt from now on too. A former Death Eater shouldn't be teaching at a school.'

'He doesn't always make the best decisions,' Sirius agreed, 'but I have to go, this is quite serious.'

'Bye, Sirius.' Harry raised a hand into the mirror's view just before it flared white and he found himself staring into his own, ever so slightly luminous eyes.

'Did I understand that correctly?' Salazar asked. His speech was very quiet, but slightly distorted with anger, wavering between English and Parseltongue. 'Your Potions teacher, the wizard Dumbledore forced you into learning occlumency from without knowing you could defend your mind, was, and likely still is, a Death Eater.'

'I believe so,' Harry answered coldly.

'If I were still alive.' Slytherin's speech shifted all the way into Parseltongue as angry silver and green sparks shot from his wand across the canvas, making his snake flinch.

'He knows how to conjure the Dark Mark,' Harry reminded him. 'This betrayal is a blessing in disguise.'

'What will you do?'

'I will take it from his mind,' Harry decided, turning to leave. 'I promised I'd practice with Neville for the first time before my detention, I'll be ready.'

'It won't be easy,' Slytherin warned, catching him at the door. 'If Dumbledore trusts him he's either going to be righteously angry or a very impressive occlumens.'

'Nothing that is necessary is easy,' Harry replied, smiling bitterly. 'I have an idea of how to get past his defences easily, without him ever realising, in fact.'

'What?'

'I believe he was fond of my mother.' Harry's reply echoed back through down the chamber to the founder.

He strode towards the stairs up to the bathroom, turning things over in his head. Harry needed the incantation, and this was likely the only chance he would get to learn it without anyone realising. The risk would have to be taken eventually, and it would only grow larger the longer waited.

Perhaps it would be best to learn a little more about Snape first.

He realised then that it would have been a good idea to ask Sirius, but it was too late for that, the mirror was in Salazar's study, he was halfway up the steps and Neville was already waiting for him.

Harry stepped out into Myrtle's bathroom, splashing quietly across the floor towards the exit.

'Harry?' The ghost drifted tentatively through the side of her cubicle.

'It's me, Myrtle,' he smiled. 'How have you been? Seen anyone in the Prefect's Bathroom lately?' He asked lightly.

'Not that I was interested in,' she sulked, 'but I did once watch Cedric Diggory and his girlfriend take a very long bath together.'

'I did not need to know that,' Harry remarked. He'd never be able to look at Cedric and Cho the same way again. They were an intimate couple, always staring close to each other, touching, and kissing, but there were some lines his imagination just didn't want to cross.

'There aren't many attractive male prefects at the moment,' she commented, rather wistfully. 'You'd be surprised how many couples I've seen in there, though.' She gave him a rather wicked glance. 'I remember a certain head boy and head girl going there together once.'

Harry knew instantly she was probably referring to his parents, and fought down a shudder. Myrtle probably had half a century of naked male prefects stored in her head. An idea suddenly occurred to him.

'Did my mother know Professor Snape?' Harry asked, feigning mild curiosity perfectly.

'Oh yes,' Myrtle smiled. Harry silently prayed to whatever deity might exist that she was not about to tell him housemother had Snape had bathed in the Prefect's Bathroom together. 'They were very good friends once,' she gossiped, 'but they had a big falling out one year, she was crying about it in the Prefect's Bathroom on her own.'

'Thank you,' Harry smiled, hiding the sudden malice that had welled up within him for Severus Snape. 'I need to go, Neville's waiting for me. Take care, Myrtle.'

'I'm dead, Harry,' she laughed, flushing a faint silver, before vanishing back into the pipes.

It's a fair point.

He didn't disillusion himself upon leaving this time, it was during classes for most students, though both he and Neville had a free session after Herbology today, so he wasn't afraid of being seen. It also seemed prudent to save his magic. He'd mostly recovered from the ritual, only a slight tiredness lingered, but it was best to be prudent.

Surprisingly nobody had actually commented on his lack of glasses, though whether that was due to Hermione telling everyone he must have changed to contact lenses, or the fact that nobody had cared enough was unclear to him.

Neville was leaning against the wall next to the fat lady, watching, with some apprehension as spoke with the other portraits abut singing.

'Perfect timing,' he noted, as Harry joined him. 'Are we going up to the seventh floor?'

Harry considered it.

'There not much point,' he decided in the end. 'We'll just go in there.' He led Neville into nearby empty classroom and closed the door, throwing up a silencing charm for good measure.

'I've got the hang of clearing my thoughts,' Neville told him, 'even when I was angry in Umbridge's lesson.'

'We'll find out,' Harry grinned.

'What are we doing?'

Harry adopted a more sombre expression. Neville would likely not enjoy this, even if it did make him stronger. 'I will attempt to break into your mind and see your thoughts,' he replied, 'you will do your utmost to empty them and stop me from seeing anything.'

'Will it hurt?' Neville asked, slightly hesitant.

'Yes,' Harry answered bluntly, 'but you'll be a better wizard for it.'

'Then let's go,' Neville decided, taking a seat on the desk.

Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve, raising the slim piece of ebony and staring directly at Neville.

'Legilimens,' he whispered.

He spared no effort from the spell, and Neville's thoughts were immediately known to him. Harry could see the admiration his friend had for him, the loyalty, the devotion and he followed it, glimpsing flashes and fragments of their time together, the moments in which Harry had bolstered his confidence, taught him, improved him and shown him that he was more than just a failure.

He broke the connection.

'Try again, Nev,' he suggested. 'It's not at all easy.'

He repeated the spell, just as forcefully as before, but this time he focused on the pain Neville felt from the intrusion, he concentrated on it, fed it, even as Neville struggled to clear his mind. To his credit his thoughts did eventually fade away, and Harry was left seeing nothing and ended the connection.

'That was good,' he praised him.

'What are you doing when you cast that spell?' Neville asked. 'The first time, you saw all my memories of when you were helping me,' he squirmed slightly, 'you went through every moment in which I was most grateful you.'

'I forma connection between our minds with it,' Harry explained. 'It enables me to see what you are thinking, if I can then get you to think about what I want to know, I win.'

'You aren't going easy on me, are you?' Neville asked hesitantly. 'I've never succeeded with anything the second time of trying.'

'I'm not trying any of the more insidious, crueler methods of seeing what I want,' Harry admitted, 'but that's because I'm teaching you to clear your mind, not protect a single thought from me.'

'Try,' Neville demanded. 'Do your worst.'

'Do you realise what you're asking, Neville?' Harry asked softly. 'I can drag every one of your worst memories and suspend you in them, twisting them about one another in a grotesque parody of a nightmare until your sanity leaves you.'

'Do it,' Neville responded firmly, swallowing hard, but looking determined.

'Legilimens,' Harry hissed, casting it more strongly than he ever had before.

The moment the connection was formed he fed a scatter of images to his friend. The circle of masked Death Eaters in the graveyard, the fear of the basilisk and the burn of its venom in his veins, then pain of the Cruciatus Curse, the endless torment of an instant.

Neville's mind flooded with thoughts and emotions. Fear of the Death Eaters, rage, burning hot, and the face of Bellatrix Lestrange, the hollow, empty eyes of his broken parents in the ever so white ward of St Mungo's.

Harry ended the spell and Neville slumped over on the desk, holding his temples, with tears running down his cheeks.

'I'm sorry, Nev,' Harry told him gently, 'you weren't ready to face something like that so early. I shouldn't have let you convince me.'

'When you try again,' Neville whispered hoarsely, wiping his tears away with his hand, 'I'll be better and I'll stop you.'

'You should bear in mind that I am quite talented in the mind arts,' Harry told him quietly, 'they are an obscure field I intend to master.'

'Did I do well?' Neville asked. 'I know you saw everything, but I didn't do too badly, did I?'

'Neville,' Harry placed his hand on his friends shoulder, 'you did exceptionally well. You successfully managed to clear your thoughts when in pain, keep practising it, whenever you're angry, or sad, or at all emotional, try to empty your mind, and you will quickly improve.'

'Are we done?'

'I think you've suffered enough for one day,' Harry smiled. 'I have to go and endure detention with Snape now.'

'You showed me things,' Neville murmured, 'you showed what it felt like to be under the Cruciatus Curse.'

'I'm sorry,' Harry apologised. He knew it was a terribly cruel thing to do, especially to Neville, but his friend had asked for him to do his worst, so he had.

'Don't apologise,' Neville snapped, suddenly angry. 'I'm glad you did,' his rage faded, 'it helped me understand.'

'Understand what?'

'When I was younger I used to resent my parents for not being stronger,' his friend admitted. 'It was a horrible thing to do, and I know how wrong it is, but I couldn't help it, until now I still hated them for not managing to resist, to stay sane, so I would have had parents like everyone else. I understand now.' Neville looked him in the eye, his smile spreading. 'I think that might be the best thing you've ever done for me,' he said quietly. 'I can't explain how much it means to only be proud of them like I know I should always have been.'

'You don't need to, Nev' Harry reminded him. 'Until I knew what happened to my parents I hated them with every fibre of my being for leaving me.'

He let his hand slip off Neville's shoulder and pulled him up onto his feet.

'You should head back to the common room,' he reminded him. 'We've got an astronomy essay to do for the end of the next lesson.'

'Don't remind me,' Neville groaned. 'Every single planet seems to be in some phase that indicated danger or imminent death. It's like how you used to describe Divination to us.'

'It might be a valid prediction,' Harry grinned, grateful for the lightened mood. 'If I hear the phrase Uranus is illuminated I might not be able to stop laughing before I suffocate.'

Neville chuckled, then looked rather despondent. 'I guess I'd best get started,' he realised. 'You already did some yesterday so I have to catch up.'

'We're both still ahead of Ron,' Harry assured him. 'I overheard Hermione telling him twice yesterday that if he'd paid any attention he'd know that there hadn't been an eclipse in over two years so he couldn't possibly have written about it for his whole essay.'

'I doubt he cares,' Neville commented, opening the door.

'You're probably right,' Harry agreed. 'If you're still up when I get back from Snape's detention do you want to help me enchant all of Ron's chess pieces to switch sides mid-game?'

'Can you do that?'

'Oh yes,' Harry grinned, 'he always swears when he plays, so if I use the word bloody as the activation phrase I can make them all change colour at least twenty times a game.'

'Can't they just ignore it?' Neville asked.

'Not if I do different words for different pieces,' Harry smirked, starting down the stairs to the dungeons. 'Then they'll all change at different points.'

'I think I can see where Katie learnt it all from,' Neville laughed, disappearing up the stairs towards the common room.

Harry continued on down towards Snape's office and its collection of interesting jars. He had a spell to learn by whatever means it took.

'Potter,' the teacher drawled, hovering in the shadows across from the door to his office. 'You are early.'

'Better early than late, sir,' Harry replied earnestly.

'Come in.' Snape swept from the shadows of the alcove he was lurking in into his office.

Why was he even out here?

'We will start where we left off,' the potions teacher told him, waving his wand to clear space from the centre of the room. 'Are you ready?'

Snape didn't wait for him to answer, his wand snapped up to point out menacingly from under his black eyes.

'Legilimens,' he uttered silkily, with a small, satisfied sneer.

Harry was ready. The moment the connection was made he pushed the memory to the surface, forcing it into Snape's view.

Not Harry, please no, take me instead-

His mother was screaming, Voldemort's cruel, high laughter echoing in their minds, before the words of the Killing Curse ended the memory in a flash of green. Harry could feel his pain, his guilt, far stronger than he'd hoped, then he could have dreamt. It would make this almost easy.

Harry reversed the connection, tearing back along Snape's thoughts, sending him images on the robes and masks and men he'd met in the graveyard. The potions teacher struggled to control his thoughts, but it was too late, among the myriad of memories of murder and worse Harry glimpsed Severus Snape thrust his wand into the sky, felt his magic surge, and heard him cry out the incantation.

Morsmordre.

Harry shattered the connection, ripping their minds apart, his wand tip already protruding from his sleeve, even as the former Death Eater looked up furiously.

'Obliviate,' he commanded, erasing the last few seconds. The last thing Snape would remember would be the screams of his mother before she died.

'Professor?" Harry asked, feigning some slight concern for the man.

'What was that, Potter?' The man asked, with none of his usual loathing. The words seemed empty without it. Hollow.

'My earliest memory, sir,' Harry answered honestly. 'I used to only be able to remember the words. I've always known them,' he remarked offhandedly, 'I used to murmur them to myself as a child, wondering what they meant.'

Snape was staring at him, horrified, and something cruel stirred in Harry's chest. This man had been a Death Eater, had tormented him, insulted his father and far far worse.

'The dementors in my third year, they let me remember the rest,' he continued, 'it's the only memory of my mother that I have.'

The sallow face of the potions teacher paled, twisting, despite his best efforts to conceal it, in self-loathing and agony. The cold creature of malice in Harry's chest laughed in triumph, exalting in their revenge for a thousand petty slights and insults.

'I'm sorry,' the former Death Eater whispered, all the soft strength had left his voice. 'Please leave.' The wizard was all but begging.

Harry turned on his heel and strode out, pausing only when he heard the scream from within the office and the shattering of glass. In one instant he'd caused the man more pain than Severus Snape had ever managed to inflict on him or anyone else.

It was still less than he deserved from what Harry had seen in his head, but he permitted himself a small, cold smile at his achievement regardless.

He all but ran back to the chamber under his Disillusionment Charm, curfew was close, and he couldn't afford to attract any suspicion on himself while he was balancing so many things.

'I have the incantation,' he called out to Salazar, 'I stole it from Snape's mind and modified his memory.'

'He is an accomplished occlumens,' Slytherin snapped, 'he will notice the memory loss almost immediately.'

'He was far too emotionally distraught to notice the loss of a couple of a seconds. He was more fond of my mother than I knew,' Harry smirked cruelly, 'I showed him the memory of her death and followed through his memories.'

'What will you do with it?' The founder seemed slightly saddened by what Harry had done, but he supposed it was because he had not seen Snape's memories and did not know just how much the wizard deserved it.

'I will cast it somewhere it cannot be ignored,' Harry decided after a moment's thought. 'I'm going home for the first time in fourteen years.'

'You can apparate there?' The painting was skeptical, as it often was of Harry's plans.

'I know what it looks like, I've seen enough pictures to create a portkey to the memorial, it won't take too long to learn the spell.' Harry ran his finger across the back of the books until he found the one he needed.

'It is a simple one,' Salazar agreed. 'Don't get caught.'

'I have no intention to,' Harry grinned.

Flicking through the pages he skimmed the technical description of the spell, he only needed a one-use portkey that he would then destroy, it didn't need to be perfect.

'Portus,' he tried, tapping his wand against one of the empty inkpots on Slytherin's desk. Nothing happened.

Harry tried again, concentrating harder to envision what he wanted the portkey to do. This time a slight blue glow flickered around the edges of the object, and the moment he touched it he was jerked violently forwards to roll painfully across the wet grass of another graveyard.

His surroundings were enough to make his heart beat faster, and he snatched his wand up from the floor from where it had once again escaped his sleeve. Fortunately this time there was no Bertha Jorkins to pick it up before he could. It was clearly Godric's Hollow, he recognised the church, and the ruin of his parents' house was visible just down the street. His portkey had simply missed by a small margin. He picked up the inkpot from where he had dropped it and placed it on the ground away from any graves before destroying it with a small flare of fiendfyre to ensure there was no trace of his magic here.

Moving through the graveyard he spared a moment to pause before the graves of his parents, gazing down at the black lettered inscription on the white marble.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death, he mused. Voldemort might agree.

Tracing a finger over their names, he wondered how different things might have been if they had not died, if he'd grown up in this small quiet town as just Harry Potter.

It is a futile wish, he realised, walking along the row towards the gate past a dozen ancient graves whose names were worn away.

They all bore the same sigil at the top of the tombstone, an odd triangular shape, with some unrecognisable design inside. Only the most recent of those graves had a legible name.

Ignotus Peverell.

The triangle was likely the symbol of the family who must have lived here for generations until their last family member, Ignotus, had died and been buried alongside his ancestors.

The memorial was covered in flowers, the walls of the house with graffiti, messages of good will mostly, though Harry noticed a few declarations of the Dark Lord will return.

The cold marble likenesses of his parents reminded him of the Mirror of Erised, and suddenly Harry wanted to leave, to get away from this terribly sad place where the sorrow seemed to hang over the stone like fog, thick, grey and suffocating.

'Morsmordre,' he whispered, slipping his wand from his sleeve and pointing it into the sky.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thank you to everyone who does, the more reviews I get the faster I write!

49. The Department of Mysteries

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I've been away from my laptop until this afternoon, so I only just finished this chapter now. It's about 15:00 GMT in case anyone's curious. So here's the next one and I'm still just about managing one a day, though tomorrow might be tricky as I've got tickets to watch England vs Australia at Twickenham for the Rugby Union World Cup and I can't exactly take my laptop ;)

Chapter 49

'Did you manage to get any of your essay done after I went to bed?' Neville asked through the hangings as they dressed.

'No,' Harry answered, he'd been too tired after apparating back to work for long. It had been a few days since the ritual, and his eyesight remained perfect, to his great satisfaction, but he still hadn't fully recovered. A few of the books in Salazar's library mentioned magical exhaustion, but most were warnings to avoid it, and only a handful ever explained what made it worse. Harry had committed a fair few of those mistakes. It was best to rest and not perform any magic until completely recovered, but he'd repeatedly tired himself out, first enchanting the map, then conjuring the Dark Mark.

Today will be a quiet day, he decided.

'It's due after lunch,' Neville reminded him helpfully. His voice had moved and now came from by the door where he was waiting to go to breakfast.

'I'll finish it in Transfiguration,' Harry told him, pressing his hands down on the top of his head in a futile attempt to gain some semblance of dignity.

He pulled back his curtains and swung himself out onto the floor. Ron was still snoring and Harry could hear Seamus and Dean dressing across from him.

'Let's get Ron's chess set,' he suggested, producing his wand.

'Not again, Harry, it took Hermione ages to undo your work,' Neville pleaded.

'Spoilsport,' Harry commented, but he replaced his wand and started to head down for breakfast.

Katie was waiting in the common room by the fire, warming her feet dangerously close to the flames. She knew what time Harry always came down to breakfast for and often waited for him when Alicia and Angelina wanted to sleep in.

'Morning Harry, morning Neville,' she remarked cheerfully. 'Nice hair.'

'Thanks,' Harry grumbled, trying half-heartedly to smooth it down again. His attempts only succeeding in dislodging his back from his shoulder and spilling his Astronomy books onto the floor.

Katie got out of her chair to return him his book, and Harry decided just to hold onto it. He could probably manage an inch or two during breakfast as long as Katie managed to avoid knocking anything over.

'Planning to get some done during breakfast?' Neville asked, correctly surmising Harry's plan

'Yeah,' Harry nodded, 'I reckon I can get a few inches in on Callisto's craters before we have to go to transfiguration and then I'll finish on Ganymede. I was almost done when we got distracted by pranking Ron last night.'

'That should get you all the way,' his friend agreed, as they ducked out past the portrait.

'I remember my Owl year astronomy,' Katie sighed. 'George and Fred developed the punching telescope that year, I'm sure it ruined the classes grades.'

'Is that why the three of you were always wearing eyeshadow?' Harry asked

'No,' Katie denied, looking a little embarrassed. 'I might have been trying to catch someone's attention and Alicia and Angelina sort of emulated me.'

'I did notice,' Harry defended.

'Who said it was you?' Katie countered, but she was looking even more abashed. Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Fine,' she admitted, 'it was.'

'I knew it,' Harry grinned. 'It did make you look cute,' he added as an afterthought.

'Cute?' Katie seemed quite disgusted by that. 'I didn't want to look cute,' she complained, 'it was supposed to make me sexy.'

'It didn't work,' Harry told her, sniggering until she punched on the arm.

'Oh look,' Neville remarked, not wanting to be stuck on the outside of the conversation any loner, 'first year Hufflepuffs.'

'No, Neville,' Harry began, 'don't encourage her.' It was rather too late, as Katie had taken off cackling and casting corridor jinxes after them. 'She'd been so good until you reminded her,' Harry told Neville reproachfully. 'Barely an attack in the last few days.'

The first years escaped into the safety of the Great Hall and Katie stopped to wait innocently by the entrance for them to catch up.

'Bad Katie,' Harry remonstrated playfully as they entered and took up seats in the gap in the middle of the table. 'You're supposed to have been reformed.'

'No real Dark Lady ever reforms,' she replied, helping herself to orange juice. Harry moved her goblet to the opposite side of her plate, away from his essay. There were a couple of copies of the Daily Prophet, but no obvious mention of Godric's Hollow. He'd have a more thorough look at lunch.

There was a brief silence as Katie carefully prepared the toast she intended to make her habitual bacon sandwich from. Harry eyed it contemplatively until she waved the knife at him.

'If you touch my sandwich again I will make Fleur a very disappointed girl.'

'If she isn't already,' Neville piped up.

'You too, Neville,' Harry pulled a wounded expression.

'You have stolen her sandwich a lot of times,' his friend pointed out.

'That's barely relevant,' Harry dismissed, helping himself to the rest of the toast rack and rummaging around in his back for a quill that wasn't bent.

Now what rubbish shall I write about Callisto?

It was the most cratered object in the solar system, but that was pretty much the extent of his knowledge.

'Either of you know anything about Callisto?' He glanced hopefully between Neville and Katie.

'What's it worth?' Katie asked, beaming triumphantly.

'Some Gryffindor you are,' Harry remarked snidely.

'You have to come to the next DA meeting and teach the Patronus Charm,' Neville decided. He was quickly backed by Katie, who nodded.

'Fine,' Harry conceded.

'You haven't been to one since the first meeting and it's almost the beginning of the Christmas Holidays,' Katie told him.

'Have they all got the hang of Shield Charms?' Harry asked.

'Everyone's capable of casting most of the OWL level spells, I've been getting them to practice duelling with each other.'

'That's a good idea,' Harry agreed.

'Neville's been putting people in their place,' Katie giggled.

'Oh?' Harry fixed Neville with a curious stare. He reddened slightly and looked down at his plate.

'Well some of the members weren't convinced that I was going to be any good in a duel,' Neville explained, not looking up. 'They weren't rude or anything, they just needed some convincing.'

'So Neville challenged Terry Boot to a duel. He broke right through his shield as if it wasn't there,' Katie cut in.

'Everyone did what I suggested after that.' Neville grinned, a touch of pride present on his face.

'It was very impressive,' Katie assured him. 'Boot was so sure his shield would deflect it, but Neville's spell went right through.' She sighed happily. 'The look on his face just before it hit him.'

'Through the shield,' Harry looked up from his essay in surprise, 'you've improved.'

'The focus exercises helped a lot. Thank you, Harry,' Neville replied, smiling his gratitude. Harry felt a little better about convincing him to learn it after that. He'd been caught up in his plan for Snape, allowing Neville's desire to challenge himself to convince him too easily into doing something he regretted. The potions master he had no sympathy for, but he should have never been so cruel as to Neville.

'I'm glad they helped,' Harry answered, realising that he hadn't said anything for over a minute in reply. 'Now, about Callisto?'

'I wrote a whole paragraph about its naming, and how old it is compared to other satellites,' Neville told him. 'Try and use lots of long words to stretch things out, Ron repeated the word the twice every time he needed it to make it longer. He claims that nobody ever notices.'

'Has anyone?' Harry asked, amused.

'Hermione noticed straight away. She made him rewrite it last night before you came back from detention.'

'That's a shame,' Harry decided, brushing crumbs of his essay. 'I would have quite like to see what Professor Sinistra did.'

'She gets very strict when anyone disrespects her subject,' Katie agreed. 'I heard that at the end of our OWL year she collected all the punching telescopes that Fred and George made, mixed them in with the others, and then gave them a detention separating them for all the disruption they caused.'

'I think that was just a rumour,' Neville pointed out.

'Maybe,' Katie shrugged, 'it's still a good story though.' She took another bite out of her sandwich as she turned to Harry, scattering a few more crumbs across his essay.

'Sorry,' she apologised, as Harry brushed them off again. 'Speaking of stories, are you really wearing pieces of plastic in your eyes? Hermione was telling everyone that that must be what you'd done if you weren't wearing glasses anymore.'

'They're called contact lenses,' Harry explained mildly, grinning at Neville's horrified expression. 'It's like wearing really small glasses on your eye.'

'That's kind of weird,' Katie decided, 'but you do look better without them, nobody will mistake you for Myrtle's descendant now.'

'Thanks,' Harry replied dryly.

'You two should probably go,' she pointed out, as the Great Hall began to empty in time for lessons. 'You don't want to be late and then get caught writing an essay for Sinistra by McGonagall.'

Harry rather reluctantly tucked his essay back into his bag and got up. There was less than an inch until he'd reached the requirement and he'd been starting to hope he'd have it done before Transfiguration.

Neville swung himself out from the bench and they departed with a wave to Katie, who twisted to wave back and knocked her drink over, covering what had been Neville's seat in orange juice.

'Narrow miss that,' Harry remarked, as they left hall and headed towards the Middle Courtyard.

'She has a thing for forgetting where she's put her drink, doesn't she,' Neville agreed. 'Normally I'm the clumsy one.'

'You still are, Nev,' Harry reminded him. 'Last time we had potions you nearly knocked over out cauldron and melted a desk, Katie just hates goblets.'

They weren't quite late to the lesson, but McGonagall and the first half of the class had already arrived before them. It suited Harry just fine, since it gave him an excuse to sit at the back of the class where it would be harder for the professor to spot him writing his essay.

As McGonagall began to explain the Doubling Charm Harry quietly continued writing about Ganymede, swearing profusely under his breath when he ran out of things to say a few lines from the target length.

'Run out of ideas?' Neville whispered, craning his head across to look.

'I feel like I'm trying to explain what's in the teacup to Trelawney. It's painful,' Harry complained.

'It's probably a grim,' Neville smiled. 'Astronomy isn't so bad, though, the only things Trelawney ever predicted successfully were Hermione leaving her class and me breaking her teacup.'

And Pettigrew's escape, Harry remembered, carefully using his wand to cut a thin sliver off the bottom of the parchment his essay was written on. It should be enough to make it look as long as the others.

'My Gran's friend, Griselda Marchbanks, is on the Wizengamot and head of the examinations board,' Neville began, murmuring underneath McGonagall's explanation. Harry was half-listening. 'I heard her tell Gran that the Divination OWL exam is her least favourite because the students just make stuff up and they have to pretend it's right because there's no real way of checking. She said the only real prophecies are in some mysterious department of the Ministry.'

That caught his attention immediately.

A mysterious department, or a Department of Mysteries?

'What department?' Harry asked, sliding his essay away out of sight as McGonagall began to hand out bottle caps of Ogden's Whiskey to practise on. His still smelt faintly of alcohol.

'The Department of Mysteries,' Neville answered. 'It's supposed to have loads of weird bits of magic nobody can explain in it, but only the Unspeakables are allowed down there because of how dangerous things are.'

'Do you reckon they'd send you to Azkaban for getting caught down there?' Harry wondered aloud. Sirius had said something about one of the Order of the Phoenix getting captured.

'Probably,' Neville nodded. 'If it's as high security as it sounds.'

Fleur wants to work at the Bureau d'Énigmes, Harry remembered. That sounds awfully similar.

He made a mental note to ask her about it as soon as he could.

'Sounds interesting,' he shrugged nonchalantly. If he was lucky Fleur would know enough for him to be able to convince Sirius to tell him what he needed to know.

'Mr Potter, Mr Longbottom, I severely doubt that you are discussing the Doubling Charm, so I suggest you get on and start practising,' McGonagall called from the front.

'Geminio,' Harry muttered, flicking his wand at the bottle-cap an envisioning a second cap beside it.

A second bottle top formed, but the letters were blurry, and the colours slightly different shades. It was a passable first attempt, but Harry was too busy trying to figure out when he could talk to Fleur to really focus on the spell.

Neville repeated the spell next to him, flicking his wand, but his new one was slightly longer than his father's and he caught the tip on the desk and dropped it. The bottle caps continued to multiply at an exponential rate, showering off the desk and onto Neville who had bent to retrieve his wand.

Professor McGonagall swept over immediately. 'End the spell, Longbottom,' she instructed tersely, as his friend managed to get back on his feet.

'Finite,' he muttered, looking embarrassed.

'That is the perfect example of the as of yet unexplained mystery of this charm,' the transfiguration teacher commented. 'If the caster is interrupted before the spell ends, the item continues to multiply.'

Around her the copies of the bottle cap were collapsing into nothing, handfuls at a time, until the original sat innocently on the desk, unmoved from when Neville had first cast the charm.

'More practise, Longbottom,' McGonagall ordered, bustling away to deal with Ron, who'd managed to turn his top into what appeared to be a button mushroom.

Harry spent a few minutes perfecting the spell, concentrating on replicating the cap once perfectly, but the moment he managed it he sat quietly next to Neville pressing his hand against the locket under his robes waiting for the lesson to end so he could speak to Fleur.

Transfiguration dragged on painfully slowly.

Professor McGonagall came to disturb him twice, demanding he demonstrate his ability with the charm, and twice he performed it perfectly, even though his thoughts were elsewhere.

Sitting in the back of the class, watching everyone else struggle or talk amongst each other he realised something he had yet to notice about himself.

Hogwarts no longer feels like home.

Harry still loved the school. It had been his gateway into a world without the Dursley's, even his fame and Voldemort could not make him wish things were otherwise, but the aura of belonging was lost. It was no longer coming to Hogwarts that let him relax his guard after summer with the Dursleys. A willow tree in France, and the company of Fleur had taken its place.

'Can you tell Professor Sinistra that I'm feeling ill?' Harry asked Neville.

'Are you feeling sick?' Neville looked slightly skeptical.

'Of a sort,' Harry answered honestly.

Homesick.

Everyone was beginning to pack their things away, wands disappeared into robes and books back into bags. Harry passed Neville his essay, shooting him a grateful smile and joining the line of students that filed out of the class.

When they turned left to head towards the Astronomy Tower he lingered and then walked right towards the stairs to the second floor as fast as he could.

The corridors were full of students, so he ducked in to an empty room a few doors down from Myrtle's bathroom to wait until he could go in unobserved.

It's taking too long, Harry decided impatiently.

He disillusioned himself, hurrying past the few straggling groups of students and darting into the bathroom. Hopefully anyone who saw the door move would simply blame Peeves, he was the usual suspect for odd happenings across the school.

Myrtle was absent, for which Harry was grateful, since he didn't want to stop and talk to her, but he would offend her if he just rushed past.

Harry splashed quickly across the floor, frowning at the onset of dampness around his feet, and hurried down into the chamber.

The moment he was on the stairs he pulled the locket out from under his robes and snapped it open, whispering the activation phrase and waiting hopefully as the three edges grew warm for Fleur to reply.

A single, summer sky blue eye appeared in the mirror. It blinked, then it was replaced by Fleur's face as she drew back.

'Harry?' She asked, looking worried.

'I need to talk to you,' Harry told her, surprised by the strength of the relief he felt at hearing her voice. It had only been about a week since they had last met, but he had missed her.

'That's an interesting coincidence,' Fleur said. Her voice was trembling, and Harry realised that she was far more upset than he had ever seen her.

'Do you want to meet me at the willow?' Harry asked, striding into Salazar's study. The portrait remained quiet, but watched him curiously as Harry shifted his cloak to retrieve the hand drawn portkey.

'I think that would be a good idea,' Fleur agreed. 'I will see you in a moment, then.'

Her face faded from the mirror, leaving Harry with a nervous knot in his stomach and a dry mouth. He hoped she wasn't upset with him. He hadn't done anything to upset her, not that he could think of.

'Argent,' he whispered, his voice cracking slightly.

It was raining. The leafless willow tree offered little protection from the gentle rain, so Harry transfigured a fallen stick into an umbrella large enough for two and waited for Fleur.

He didn't have to wait long.

Fleur appeared only a moment later, and now that she was actually in front of him Harry couldn't tell if she was more angry or upset.

'What's wrong?' He asked, forgetting about his questions in the face of her distress.

'I did something stupid,' Fleur admitted.

Harry froze at her words, the umbrella shivered, spilling small streams of water onto the ground around him. They were the same words that Katie had used when she had made her mistake with Roger Davies.

'What did you do?' His voice was very quiet, he could barely hear himself over the rain.

'No,' she shook her head, realising the reason for his fear, scattering her silver hair about her face and stepping under the umbrella with him. 'Nothing like that,' she promised him fiercely. 'You are mine,' she took his face in her hands, cupping his cheeks tightly between them, 'and that means that I am yours.'

'What happened?' Harry's voice was only marginally louder. He knew it had to be bad for Fleur to be so visibly distressed. 'Is Gabrielle ok? Your parents?'

'They are fine,' Fleur assured him. 'I did something stupid. One of the girls here, one who came to Hogwarts, she has family in England, a cousin, or something similar, and she was talking on and on about what the Daily Prophet has been spouting.' Her hands slipped from his face to his shoulders, pulling him against her. 'I was so angry with her,' Fleur confessed, 'I still am. I used Cassandra's Curse, but it was stronger than I expected. The mediwitch thinks that the effects might last for almost a month.'

'So?' Harry tilted her chin up so she was looking at him. 'You told me you did not care what I did so long as I was yours, Fleur. I feel the same.'

'I am in a lot of trouble,' she fretted. 'The school has suspended me, I can take my exams, but if I fail I can't return and do them at the same time as everyone else. They wrote to my parents too.'

'You won't fail,' Harry reassured her. She was Fleur. She would never fail her exams, she created enchanted items that were more complicated than the final exams for fun.

'But my parents,' she whispered. 'They will realise why I did it, and they will blame you for influencing me.'

'I'm sure they won't,' Harry started, but Fleur cut him off.

'They're right,' she told him quietly. 'I would have never done something like that if I hadn't met you.' Harry let his fingers drop from her chin, shifting away from her, just in case it made things easier.

'It's a good thing,' she insisted, taking his hand and pulling it back around her. 'The only other person I would defend like that is Gabrielle, but they will be angry with me for doing it, and with you for being the reason I did it.' She pressed her forehead into his collarbone. 'I'm sorry,' she murmured into his neck. Her breath was warm, and tickled slightly, making him squirm.

'I don't mind,' Harry decided. 'I quite like that you wanted to defend me,' he kissed the top of her head. 'Does it change anything?'

'I was going to ask you come here for Christmas,' Fleur responded, 'but I'm not sure if my parents will allow it now, or, if they do, they might be unpleasant to you.'

'If you want me here, and I am allowed to stay, then I will come no matter how much your parents disapprove of me,' Harry told her gently.

'I was afraid you would not understand.' She laughed quietly, realising at the time as he did that their positions had reversed from their last such conversation.

'I will always understand,' Harry assured her, pulling her a little closer.

'Why did you want to speak with me?' Fleur asked, prompting Harry to suddenly remember his questions about Prophecies and the Bureau d'Énigmes.

'What do you know about the Bureau d'Énigmes?' He asked.

'A little,' she shrugged, 'it is a secret what they actually do, but most people know about the general fields, the mysteries are famous.'

'Oh?'

'The bureau was created by an English wizard who came to France after marrying a French witch, he designed the Bureau d'Énigmes on your Department of Mysteries, though the bureau is a half a century younger.' Fleur looked up at him quizzically. 'Why do you want to know so badly?'

'Are there prophecies in the Bureau d'Énigmes?' Harry asked her.

'Yes,' Fleur answered simply. 'The witnesses of the prediction are obligated to leave a memory in the bureau. There are only prophecies about French wizards and witches there, the Bureau d'Énigmes has no authority to keep any others.'

'But if there are prophecies in the Bureau d'Énigmes, then there are likely ones in the Department of Mysteries as well,' Harry surmised thoughtfully.

'Why are you interested?'

'When I escaped from Voldemort I surprised him with how much stronger I had grown since our last encounter. He mentioned a prophecy and implied that it was about, or at least mentioned me.'

'You want to hear it,' Fleur realised. 'Why not ask? You are legally entitled to listen to a prophecy that is relevant to you in France and I'm sure it is the same in Britain.'

'The Ministry would never allow me to view a prophecy that is connected with Voldemort, not when they're doing everything they can to cover his return up.'

'Tell me you are not planning to steal it,' she said roughly.

'I could,' Harry responded slowly, 'but I would have to lie to you. I need to know what it says, Fleur. I don't have to explain how important it could be.'

'How would you even get in?' Fleur demanded.

'I don't know,' Harry shrugged. 'I only learnt about it today. I might be able to get my godfather to help, he and the rest of Albus Dumbledore's followers are secretly guarding the department, though whether it is the prophecy or something else I don't know.'

'Don't rush in and do something reckless,' Fleur ordered. 'I will not have you die, or get sent to Azkaban because you wanted to hear some prophecy that might not even help you.'

'I will be careful,' Harry assured her. 'I won't go until I'm certain I can get in and out without being caught or seen, and I will wait until after I've completed the other ritual to make me stronger.'

'And you will tell me what it says,' she demanded. 'I can't help you if you keep me in the dark.'

'The dark is the last place you should be,' Harry grinned, eyeing her teasingly until she blushed.

'Are you sure?' She leaned into him suggestively, sliding her hand up his chest. 'There are all sorts of things we could do in the dark.' His skin was tingling from her touch and Harry had to let out a shaky breath or two to steady himself. Fleur was smiling triumphantly, even if she was still blushing, and Harry had to focus on his occlumency to clear his head. She didn't need her allure to captivate him, all she had to do was look at him and let some emotion into her eyes and he was hers.

It's ridiculous, he thought, trying to ignore how happy it made him.

'You didn't answer,' she chuckled, slipping her hands up around his neck and pulling him close to kiss him. The umbrella disappeared completely as his transfiguration wore out and his focus vanished. Fleur's fingers were trailing down his back, her left hand tracing a dangerously low path across his stomach, and up inside his robes onto his chest. Harry let the arm he had around her waist slip a little lower, emboldened by her wandering hands, and pulled her tight against him. She moaned in quiet satisfaction at the closeness and slipped her tongue past his lips.

She tasted like marzipan again, a light sweetness that melted on his lips as she traced them with the tip of her tongue and elicited a shiver of pleasure from him. It fanned the flames within, pushing him to be more daring. Harry's other hand came to rest on her hip, slipping inside her uniform to slide his thumb in gentle circles across the smooth heat of her stomach. Fleur quivered in turn and closed her eyes at the sensation, kissing him harder until they needed to breathe.

'Gabby will be happy,' she sighed when they reluctantly separated.

Harry laughed when he realised her meaning, gazing around him at the rain, and their moment of novel worthy romance.

'I should make sure we're doing it just right,' he decided playfully.

Harry gently bent Fleur over backwards until she was gazing up at him and laughing, then leant in to kiss her once more.

AN: Please read and keep reviewing, thanks to everyone who has!

50. Expecto Patronum

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So here's the chapter that I couldn't write yesterday because of the rugby. Given the result I'd almost have rather stayed at home and written, but what can you do?

Additionally, anyone who wants to read this in French might want to consider the version that LordHiraishin is just starting to translate and post under a similar title. I should probably mention he has my permission to do this so it's not plagiarism or story stealing.

Chapter 50

Colin Creevey dozed beside the fire in the common room, breathily heavily and steadily until his head slipped off the the edge of the chair back and jolted him back awake long enough for him to reposition himself and repeat the cycle.

The younger Gryffindor hadn't been dreaming, and Harry's attempts at wordless, wandless legilimency were not strong to give him any more than the slightest hint of thoughts or feelings. He saw nothing in the mind of a sleeping Creevey without using his wand, but it hardly surprised him.

Being able to cast the spell with any success without the incantation or a wand was quite exceptional, and had Harry been able to maintain eye contact he was sure his attempt would have let him glean something of his targets strongest emotions and thoughts.

He had agreed to stop teaching Neville earlier in the day. His friend was capable of clearing his mind during most of Harry's straightforward legilimency assaults, and occasionally capable of breaking the connection completely. Neville had asked, demanded and even pleaded to get Harry to do more than just contest their willpower or throw basic impressions and images at him, but he'd refused adamantly each time. If Salazar's opinions about the family's talent for mind arts were correct then there would be precious few wizards capable of matching Harry's attempts on Neville's mind.

'You're not looking very ill,' Katie remarked, drifting across to slump on the arm of Harry's chair. 'That horrible sickness you picked up yesterday has vanished.'

'I found a cure,' Harry smiled.

He had. The rest of the day had been spent sheltering under a succession of conjured umbrellas with Fleur's head on his shoulder. It had been the best moment in months. There was something very right about being with Fleur under their willow tree. Harry wanted nothing more than to go back, with Fleur suspended and at the Chateau the temptation was worse.

'Was it French medicine?' Katie asked innocently.

'Why would you think that?' Harry asked, trying furiously not blush at the memory of just how he had been kissing Fleur.

'I went to the hospital wing when Neville said you were sick, but you weren't there and nobody had seen you since your lesson with McGonagall.' Katie was beaming happily down at him from her perch on the arm of his chair. She knew she was right.

'I might have got lost on the route to the hospital wing,' Harry admitted.

'You can just admit you miss her,' Katie told him, ruffling his hair.

'Of course I miss her,' Harry caught her wrist and replaced her hand on the chair arm, 'I'll always miss her when she's away. That's how it's meant to be, isn't it?'

'I wouldn't really know,' Katie shrugged. 'I missed you when we briefly together but apart, but I missed spending time with you and talking with you more than anything else.'

'That's not the same,' Harry murmured quietly. He missed speaking with her, hearing her voice, hearing her laugh, but he missed the warmth of her head on his shoulder and being able to run his fingers through her cascade of silver hair.

'It is how it is, I guess,' Katie decided. 'Everyone's different. Just be careful about getting caught disappearing off to France. Rita Skeeter hasn't written anything about you in almost a week, she's probably desperate for another.'

'I'll be careful,' Harry promised. He certainly had to be more careful than he had been last time. There had been wet footprints by the door when he'd left the chamber, nobody ever tried to use Myrtle's bathroom, so someone had seen enough to become curious.

I'll have to ask Myrtle if she saw anyone.

'Since you were away did you happen to read what Skeeter wrote in the absence of a story about you or Dumbledore?

'No.' Harry looked up, interested, he'd never managed to have a more thorough look at the paper. 'I only glanced at the front page and noted I wasn't there.'

'Someone cast the Dark Mark over Godric's Hollow,' Katie lowered her voice to a whisper, 'the Ministry are blaming Sirius Black as an escaped supporter of You-Know-Who, but Skeeter went a bit off the script from the look of things. She mentioned that Black was last reported in Cyprus only three days ago, and that he never cast the Dark Mark after killing Peter Pettigrew.'

'Just enough to inspire doubt about the story,' Harry realised, puzzled. 'Maybe someone at the Ministry upset her and this is the only way she can get back at them.'

'Or she might just want more money,' Katie suggested lightly. 'The interesting thing is that the Prophet got into trouble for revealing the details of a secret investigation, so Skeeter shouldn't have known about the Cyprus thing at all.'

'I don't think she should know a lot of things that she writes,' Harry grinned. 'She must know someone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.'

'She is very good at finding out secrets, isn't she?' Katie mused. 'I wonder how she does it.'

'What else did the article say?' Harry asked.

'Not a great deal, it was only part of her column. There was a bit on the Dark Mark, that it's He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's personal symbol and only cast by members of his inner circle, some of whom have escaped from Azkaban.' She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, shifting further on to the arm of Harry's chair. 'She speculated about why the mark might have been cast over Godric's Hollow too.'

'My parents,' Harry replied simply.

'The Daily Prophet believes it was Black taking credit for their deaths.'

'I suspect they'll never actually catch whomever was responsible, Sirius Black or not,' Harry commented. 'They didn't manage to keep him in Azkaban and they haven't found him in two years.'

'You don't seem all that concerned by it,' Katie remarked. 'The Dark Mark was cast over your parents house.'

'They died when I was a baby, Katie, and everyone knows who killed them,' Harry replied. 'The house is just a memorial, I've never set foot inside it. There isn't really a good reason for me to care, I'd rather they were casting big obvious pieces of magic in the sky than murdering people.'

'Maybe they're only just getting started,' Katie suggested darkly. Harry tilted his head to look up at her.

'Maybe they are,' he agreed. The more times he cast the mark somewhere appropriate the more doubt he would create in the minds of the Ministry and the public.

I'll have to think of another place to cast it soon.

'Enough gloomy talk,' Katie decided, forgetting that she was the one who had started talking about it in the first place. 'It's almost DA meeting time.' She gestured at the handful of people who were making their way out through the portrait.

'Have fun,' Harry encouraged, gently pushing her off the arm of the chair onto the floor.

'Oh no you don't, Harry,' Katie pouted up from the floor, 'you promised you were coming to this one.'

'I did, didn't I?' Harry remembered, frowning. 'Might as well get it over and done with, then.'

He dragged himself reluctantly out of his chair, offering Katie a hand to get back to her feet from where he had unceremoniously shoved her.

'Such a gentleman,' she laughed, pulling herself up.

'I try,' Harry nodded magnanimously. 'So what's the DA doing today?'

'Neville promised everyone that today would be the Patronus Charm. Hermione looked quite excited by it,' Katie embellished. 'There are going to be questions.'

'I'm sure there will be,' Harry remarked dryly. 'The Patronus Charm is a light spell, how are you able to cast it if you're a dark wizard?' Harry mimicked the squeaky voice of Dennis Creevey, the even smaller, more annoying version of Colin, who, unlike his older brother was almost as scared of Harry as he was of Katie.

Katie laughed, and dragged him towards the portrait, still holding his hand. Harry slipped it free to go first though the passageway.

'Harry.' He started slightly, Ginny's voice had come from right next to his ear.

'Ginny?' He hadn't spoken to her in a long time.

'I was wondering about something,' the red-head began. She was twisting her fingers round one another anxiously and Harry's stomach began to sink in expectation. Katie stepped out of the passage into his back, pushing him forwards.

'Ow,' she remarked, rubbing her chin from where it had hit his shoulder.

'I was wondering if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade on the next weekend,' she blurted.

'We talked about this Ginny,' he sighed. 'I'm sorry, I can't.'

'You can't or you don't want to?' Ginny demanded, a little of her hope still lingered for the slight chance that he was busy and might come with her on another occasion.

'Both,' Harry replied gently. 'I don't want to keep leading you on.'

'Then why can't you go?' Ginny asked, throwing a glance past him at Katie who was hovering awkwardly off to one side looking very much like she wanted to be anywhere else but here.

Harry couldn't find an answer. He could hardly tell her about Fleur, but there didn't seem to a lie that fitted.

'He's busy,' Katie spoke up, saving him.

'Oh.' Something flickered in the red-head's eyes as she glanced between them. 'I see. I just had to ask, Harry. I promised myself that I'd ask one more time and if you said no then I'd move on.'

Harry knew he should say something to make her feel better, but he had no idea what. If Fleur had not returned his feelings there wouldn't be any words that would make him feel better. He opened and closed his mouth slightly several times, absent-mindedly watching a spot of blue crawling along the girl's shoulder.

'There are plenty of guys who would be lucky to be with you,' Katie told her, saving Harry once more.

'Just not the one I want,' Ginny answered, her tone slightly cool. 'I'll see you at the meeting, Harry,' she added, more warmly, spinning away on her heel in swirl of red hair. The spot of blue was brushed off her shoulder over the balustrade onto the stairs below.

'That could have gone worse,' Harry decided after a moment.

'It could have gone better too,' Katie commented softly. 'Did you see how she looked at us?' Harry raised an eyebrow questioningly. 'She thinks the reason you can't go with her is me,' Katie explained.

'Oh,' Harry breathed.

'Exactly,' Katie agreed.

'Do you think she'll tell anyone?' Harry asked, more in hope than anything.

'Will she talk to her friends about why she's upset over you turning her down?'

'Well when you phrase it like that…' Harry trailed off. 'Everyone's going to believe it, aren't they?'

'Most likely.' Katie didn't seem too put out by it. In fact she seemed to find it more amusing than anything else. Harry supposed since they both knew it wasn't true and didn't want it to be that it was sort of funny, or at least it would be as long as Fleur didn't find out and jump to conclusions.

'I'll tell her we aren't together at the DA meeting,' Harry decided, belatedly following Ginny up towards the Room of Requirement. He wasn't risking Fleur misunderstanding what had happened.

'What will you tell her when she asks why you're busy? You aren't going to tell her about Fleur, are you?' Katie bounced after him, catching his arm to pull him back alongside her.

'I won't tell anyone about Fleur who doesn't already know,' Harry explained. 'I guess I just won't answer.'

'She won't believe you.'

'It isn't her I'm worried about believing me,' Harry reminded her. 'It's Fleur hearing about it that concerns me.'

'You could always swear an unbreakable vow,' Katie suggested lightly.

'I might have to,' Harry agreed. 'I'd rather do that than have her misunderstand.'

'You'd rather permanently bind your life and your magic than have her upset at you?' Katie was staring at him, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

This time he did flush, realising he might have given away more of his feelings than he meant to, and looked away to admire the worst tapestry in all of Hogwarts.

'That's so sweet of you,' Katie sighed. 'I'm such a lucky a girl,' she giggled.

'Don't say things like that where other people can hear,' Harry pleaded. 'It stops being funny when important people think it's true.'

'They'll forget about it in a few weeks. I'll just have to look particularly insulted every time someone asks whether we're together.'

'Whatever it takes,' Harry agreed, glancing up and down the corridor, then opening the door.

'Ah, the teacher arrives,' Cedric announced. 'Neville was beginning to fear you weren't coming.'

'I promised I would,' Harry reminded him, stepping to the middle of the room.

The members of the DA were looking at him with a mixture of expectation and wariness, except for Hermione whose eagerness could not be contained. She was rocking back and forth on her heels, tapping her wand into her palm.

'The Patronus Charm is more advanced than anything else you will likely be learning at Hogwarts,' Harry began. 'It creates a partially tangible form of positive emotion and intent. The steps are relatively simple, you need only focus on a positive emotion and speak the incantation, but having the ability to cast it is another thing entirely.'

Harry spread his hands to indicate they should move apart from each other.

'Can anyone produce a patronus of any sort?' Harry asked, looking at Cedric.

'Nope,' he shook his head, 'if I knew how you wouldn't have nearly died when they interrupted our quidditch game in third year.'

'I can,' Hermione burst out. 'It's not a proper one like yours, but I can cast it.'

'Show everyone,' Harry instructed.

Hermione stepped out of the group, glowing pink with pride, but also appearing rather nervous.

'Expecto patronum,' she cried, closing her eyes.

A rush of silver vapour shot from her wand to form a shining shield between her and Harry.

'That's very impressive,' Harry remarked neutrally, 'self-taught I presume.'

'Yes,' she admitted.

'How long have you been trying?' Harry asked. 'All the way since the end of third year?' Hermione nodded, a little abashed that she hadn't completely mastered it in over a year.

'You heard the incantation,' he told the others. 'Hermione pronounced it perfectly. Focus on the happiest memory you have, or imagine something that will make you happier still, and then cast.'

'Which do you use?' Ginny asked.

'Whichever comes easiest,' Harry answered simply. It was a lie. He had used to imagine a scenario that would make him happy, but it had failed him in the maze. Now he was tempted to cast it off his happiest memories, but not in front of all the members of the DA, not if he could avoid it.

'Can you show us yours?' It was Cedric that had asked. Neville and Katie knew better than to ask him, well Neville did, Katie sometimes pushed her toes over the line. Cedric was the only other person in the room who would dare ask and Harry couldn't refuse without adding further fuel to the dark wizard rumours. He'd just have to hope that it didn't fail completely when he chose a memory that wasn't quite his happiest.

'Expecto patronum,' her murmured, sliding his wand a few inches out of his sleeve. A bright cloud of silver vapour burst from its tip, hovering in the air in front of him. The vapour didn't hang still like Hermione's had, it twisted and churned within itself, trying to take on a corporeal from, but not quite having the strength to manage it.

'I thought you said you could form a corporeal patronus,' Smith accused.

'He can,' Ron spoke up, 'we all saw it at quidditch in our third year when Malfoy tried to pretend to be a dementor.'

'Stags don't have feathers,' Terry Boot commented. Harry's gaze snapped back from Smith to his weakened patronus. The Ravenclaw was right, the tips of ghostly feathers shivered at the edges of the mist, flaring as if to catch the wind.

Harry dispelled it immediately. He didn't need everyone seeing whatever it was his patronus had become. He could cast it later without concern in the chamber to find out for himself.

'A patronus takes on a corporeal form that is unique to the caster,' Hermione recited. 'A corporeal patronus generally takes the shape of the animal the caster shares the deepest affinity with.'

'He probably doesn't want us to see what it is,' Smith sneered. 'It's likely a snake.'

'With feathers?' Terry Boot asked sceptically. Smith shot the Ravenclaw an angry look, but couldn't deny he had a point.

'It's changed,' Hermione remarked, staring at Harry. 'A corporeal patronus only changes when the caster has been though a dramatic, emotional upheaval. The book said things like loss, love and betrayal have caused changes in patronuses.'

Thanks, Hermione.

'Perhaps you should all try casting your own patroness now,' Harry instructed, moving the topic on from him and his patronus.

The members of the DA slowly split up and began to cast the Patronus Charm, most had little success beyond a few wisps of silver that shot from the wands to disperse into the air.

'Pick your happiest memory, or if that doesn't work choose something that would make you happy and imagine that while casting,' Harry reminded them. He took a seat on the floor nearby where Katie and Neville were trying.

Both of his friends were producing copious amounts of silver mist, but Katie's seemed to coalescing more each time she cast.

Watching with interest Harry sat back as the silver mist gradually transformed into a crow.

Katie pouted. 'Well that wasn't what I was expecting,' she beamed, far too happy about being the first person to manage a corporeal patronus to be upset by her rather surprising affinity for crows.

'That explains a lot,' one of the twins grinned.

'Oh great Dark Mistress,' the other added with as straight a face as possible.

'Well done for being the first,' Harry congratulated her. 'Though,' he surveyed the room, 'Cedric, Hermione and Neville look like they're getting fairly close now.'

Cedric got there before the two Gryffindors, a rather noble looking, silver badger forming from his wand to patrol rather cautiously around his feet.

The Hufflepuff grinned ruefully up at Harry. 'It was inevitable that it would be a badger, wasn't it?'

Hermione managed to produce a silver otter, that chattered cheerfully and scampered about her until it eventually faded to nothing. His former friend was still one of the most talented witches Harry knew of and he felt the otter quite suited her.

In the distraction that Hermione's otter caused Harry drew Ginny to one side.

'I'm not with Katie,' he told her bluntly. 'Don't get the wrong idea,' he warned, watching the hope begin to rise, 'I just don't want to have to listen to all the rumours about us. She doesn't deserve it.'

'Is she why your patronus changed?' Ginny asked, her tone cool.

'I don't think so,' Harry shook his head. 'A lot of my friends turned their backs on me last year,' he reminded her, 'that could be counted as both betrayal and loss.'

'Not love then,' she managed to joke weakly.

'No,' Harry lied, thinking of Fleur.

'I wasn't going to tell anyone,' Ginny said earnestly. 'I might have told my friends that I thought you were with someone else, but I thought you and Katie were trying to keep it a secret and just act like you were friends.'

'We are just friends,' Harry smiled. Ginny nodded, and glanced over at Katie who was watching the two of them curiously.

'I think she knows what we're talking about,' Ginny realised. 'I should keep practicing.'

Harry watched her produce a strong cloud of silver mist twice, before reclaiming his spot on the floor by Katie. The session would end in a few minutes for Gryffindor's quidditch practise and he could sneak off to test his Patronus Charm alone.

Only Neville managed to produce a corporeal patronus before the session ended and Harry left to make his way to the chamber.

His was the most surprising of all.

A clicking, gleaming silver scorpion shot from his wand and flexed its tail menacingly in front of his knees. His patronus' form was certainly interesting. Harry knew that the scorpion was used by ancient Egyptian wizards to represent the number six, but he vaguely remembered that they had also considered it symbolic of revenge, nature and had that scorpions had been considered the protectors of the dead.

Harry was very curious to know what his had become.

'Myrtle?' He asked quietly from the edge of the puddle, waiting for her to drift out from the cubicle she normally occupied.

'Harry,' she shot out though the wall to hover immediately in front of him. 'I had visitors at lunch time yesterday,' she warned, tapping her fingers together nervously. 'First years, or maybe second, they were very small. They wanted to know if there was anything special about the bathroom.'

'Did they decide anything?' Harry pressed, his stomach tightening in concern. The chamber was his lifeline, Salazar's advice, everything precious that he owned, his route to Fleur, almost every important aspect of his life would be affected if someone discovered he was using it.

'They never found anything,' Myrtle reassured him, 'but nobody has ever come looking here after you did.'

'If they come back, please tell me, Myrtle,' Harry asked. 'You don't know how important it is to me that the entrance remains a secret.'

'I'll tell you, Harry,' she promised. 'I always know when someone's in here. I can feel it.'

'Thanks.' Harry smiled, his fear averted for the time being. A pair of curious younger students who must have seen the door move on its own when he entered and come back to investigate at lunch after their lesson were not yet a problem.

'Open,' he commanded in parseltongue, waiting for a moment until the top of the staircase was visible before slipping through the still moving entrance and descending into the chamber.

'Mother, I'm home,' he called out upon reaching the beginning of the bridge.

'Welcome back, darling,' he heard the painting mutter with soft sarcasm as he entered the study. Harry chuckled and took a seat on the edge of the desk, shoving the greatly reduced bag of galleons to one side.

'I was wondering what you knew about the Patronus Charm?' Harry asked. 'Mine appears to have changed.'

'Changed?' Slytherin peered at him curiously.

'It used to be a stag, then I was almost unable to cast it, and now it seems to be something feathered, though I have't cast a complete corporeal charm yet.'

'That's interesting,' Salazar agreed. 'The charm itself is very old, it's one of the obvious, emotion-related concepts of magic, but very hard to produce despite that. My own patronus changed form twice.'

'When did it change?' Harry asked, hoping to glean some insight onto why his might have.

'If you wanted to know why you could have just asked,' the founder pointed out. 'It was originally a regular serpent, but when I met my wife it changed and became a runespoor. I was very proud of it.' His expression darkened with sorrow and more than a little regret. 'After my wife's death, and the beginning of my quest to try and undo the sacrifice I made it changed again, shifting to the form of a moth and so it remained until the time I was last able to cast it.'

'You stopped being able to cast it?' Harry inquired.

'You said you were almost unable to cast it, when was that?' Salazar asked.

'In the maze during the third task,' Harry answered. 'None of my memories seemed happy anymore, and I couldn't imagine anything that seemed particularly positive either.'

'Then you already know why,' Slytherin responded with a bitter smile. 'I told you that those who commit themselves to escaping death are consumed by their quest. By the end of my life everything else had lost meaning, and I had all but given up on ever discovering it. My happiest memories were tainted by loss and I could not longer cast it.'

Harry could see the similarities, though his case was far less extreme. His happy memories with his former Gryffindor friends were tainted just as Salazar's memories of his family had been, and his dream had seemed out of reach.

'Are you going to cast the charm and show me?' Slytherin pressed, gesturing eagerly with his wand.

Harry closed his eyes, picturing the times he had spent with Fleur over the summer, the warmth of the sun though the willow and the perfect feeling that this was how things should always be. Her remembered the brightness of her silver hair in the sun, the way she always smelt of burnt holly and tasted of sugar.

'Expecto Patronum,' he murmured, sliding his wand from his sleeve.

There was a rush of heat up his arm from his wand, and a great eagle burst from the ebony tip of his wand in an explosion of silver vapour. Standing as tall as he did it spread its ghostly wings across the width of the study, fluffing up its silver plumage and eyeing its surroundings with sharp intelligence.

'An eagle,' Harry commented, letting his patronus fade.

'That's not an eagle, Harry,' the founder breathed. 'That is an Anzu, a giant bird supposedly capable of magically breathing fire. They went extinct millennia ago and are only found in the oldest stories of Mesopotamia their homeland.'

'An extinct, fire-breathing eagle,' Harry grinned. 'I like it.'

'The fire-breathing aspect of the Anzu is possibly a mistranslation from non-magical histories that associate the bird with their element worshipping religion,' Salazar told him. 'Having an extinct creature, let alone a magical one, as the form of your patronus is very rare, but it does suit you.' Slytherin eyed him slyly. 'A new patronus with the form of an ancient Mesopotamian magical bird, do you know where the first veela are supposed to have come from?' His smile stretched wide and unusually soft. 'I don't think it's any mystery what caused this change.'

'I like my eagle,' Harry told him. 'Is that why it's that form?' He asked after a moment. 'Is it really because of Fleur?'

'It's an Anzu,' his ancestor reminded him, still smiling softly, 'most eagles would disappear under its wings. It seems that way, mine changed because I found my wife, and then when I lost her. Helga's never changed from a phoenix, Rowena's was always an owl and Godric's patronus was a griffin for as long as I knew him, but he mentioned it changed when his parents died.'

'It's actually that large in real life?' Harry asked, awed. 'I expected the other founders' patronuses to be the same as the house sigils.'

'They were extinct long before I was alive,' Slytherin shrugged, 'but the corporeal form of your patronus takes on the exact shape of the animal as far as I understand, so probably.' He peered down at Harry curiously. 'Why would you assume we would give away so mush information about ourselves? Rowena chose a bird famous for its intelligence, I chose the serpent because nobody would expect anything else from me, Godric wanted to choose a griffin, but I told him that would look vain, so he chose half a griffin instead, and Helga just liked badgers. She thought they were adorable.'

'That completely ruins my image of the four of you being the perfect embodiment of your houses traits,' Harry sighed.

'Rowena's is fairly accurate,' Salazar mused, 'mine too. Godric would have hated the students in his house if what I've heard from you is true. He valued bravery, loyalty and forgiveness above all else.'

'What about Helga?'

'She loved children. Helga spoiled every child she met, her nephews and nieces adored her more than they did their parents. It wouldn't matter which house you were in to her as long as she could mother you.'

'I wonder how Slytherin ended up having such a bad reputation,' Harry thought aloud.

Salazar laughed bitterly. 'The blame lies partly with myself and partly with the traits I valued. Ambition, cunning, intelligence and bravery can all be used to do terrible things, but while bravery can be foolish and intelligence misapplied, cunning can only really be outdone by others. It did not help that I dabbled greatly in dangerous magic in the final years of my life. That would have attracted a great many wizards and witches of questionable morals to my house.'

'Like Tom Riddle,' Harry muttered.

'He was nearly sorted into both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, actually,' the founder remarked. 'His ambition outweighed his desire for knowledge and the loyalty he felt towards a world that accepted him when his did not, but only just.'

Harry might have laughed at the image of Tom Riddle in Hufflepuff a year ago, but now, having glimpsed some of the moments from his childhood himself it did not surprise him or amuse him; it only made him sad.

'If only the magical world had not turned its back on him like the muggle one,' Harry voiced.

'If he had chosen either of Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff it might not have done,' Salazar commented sadly, 'but his desire was too strong and he did. There is little point regretting it now. I watched him change from Tom Riddle to Voldemort with pride and said nothing, not realising how much he had lost from himself in his becoming.'

'Could you have stopped him before he changed too much?'

'I believe so,' Salazar answered sadly, staring at Harry. 'I hope so.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who keeps reviewing!

P.S. Nobody mention this Rugby World Cup to me ever again, I don't want to remember but, if you do, please include a note that tells me who your favourite character is in this fic and how you want them to die... ;)

51. Family Matters

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So from the more recent reviews I gather that you guys are hoping for pretty much every single character to die, mostly in horribly embarrassing or disturbingly sexual ways. I'm mildly concerned about who's reading this story now, and I really think encouraging you all is a terrible idea...

So, here's chapter 51!

Oh, and for those who saw the query about lemons and are curious, a lemon does feature in this chapter ;)

Chapter 51

Somehow Harry found himself on the chessboard again. Only this time he knew it was a dream, and he was no longer trapped. He stood at the centre as he had before, shrouded in flowing, grey robes.

The pieces were in different positions than before; the game had progressed. The black pieces had moved, pushing further up towards the centre of the board, but the white pieces had barely shifted, and the crying, bearded king could only watch as his cold-eyed counterpart took the advantage.

Harry didn't feel any urge to touch the pieces this time. His grey handprints lingered on some of the pieces, both black and white, and he knew that if he wished it he could move them.

A dull grinding noise began, rising louder and louder as a black pawn slid diagonally forwards on the board. The white pieces remained still, blissfully unaware of what was coming.

Something hot flared on his forehead, and he flinched from his pillow, clapping a hand to his face.

The heat faded the instant he was awake and upright.

Tentatively he raised his forefinger and pressed it against his scar. It hadn't troubled him since he had ripped Riddle's horcrux from himself, and Salazar had been sure that it was gone for good, whether it had been absorbed by him or expelled.

His forehead was warm, unnaturally so, but to his relief the heat was not confined to the area around his scar. He pulled the hangings open an inch to gauge how light it was outside. There was faint bird song from outside, and pale, orange light. He guessed it was somewhere around five.

Harry pulled the hangings open a bit further, just to check. Dean's glowing clock, a rather hardy piece of muggle equipment that he had to repeatedly charm to keep it working amidst all the magic, told him that it was actually half past seven.

Winter has come, Harry realised.

He was still used to it being light as early as four in the morning.

A second check of the clock told him that it was only one more day until the christmas holidays began. The holidays wouldn't make any difference to him. He would officially be remaining at Hogwarts, but he hoped to be spending at least some of it in France with Fleur. He would rather like to spend all of it in France, but he had plans to make. He needed another place, a more convincing, obvious target for the Dark Mark to be cast over.

Nothing springs to mind.

He knew his options well enough. The Dark Mark wasn't lightly cast by Death Eaters. It signified a victory of import, a signature to create a stir and strike fear. Harry couldn't just stroll around casting over random houses. Godric's Hollow was the only place he could cast that might be believable without someone disappearing, and he wasn't so in line with Dumbledore's beliefs that he would willingly sacrifice someone for such a small chance of convincing the Ministry. He was more likely to simply lengthen the list of his godfather's crimes.

Harry pulled his robes on as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb anyone, though he doubted anyone would hear him rustling over Ron's snores. There didn't seem much point staying bed now he was awake and it was so close to the morning.

Pulling his wand out from under his still warm pillow he conjured a simple, glass goblet fro the air and then whispered the water conjuring charm.

Sipping his slightly warm drink of water he rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes, made one futile attempt to flatten his hair and slipped as quietly as he could down into the common room.

It was blessedly empty.

The fire had died down over night to nothing but cold ashes, so Harry threw a few logs onto it from the basket nearby and cast a quick spell to set it alight. He almost cast fiendfyre, the offensive, dangerous piece of magic being the first flame spell that sprang into his head, but fortunately he remembered at the last minute and used the simple Fire-Making Charm.

The logs crackled merrily, glowing a hot orange along the cracks in the ash.

Harry was fairly sure that the house elves were meant to take care of the fire, it was alway lit in the evenings, but everyone liked to add logs, and poke the flames, so the dutiful creatures kept a small basket full of wood to one side.

There were several things he could be doing and probably should be doing instead of warming his feet in front of the fire. He needed to speak to Sirius about the prophecy, though he was confident that he would have more success after Christmas when the members of the Order, who likely included the elder Weasleys and other staunch supporters of Dumbledore were unable to do anything to keep his godfather occupied. He could also be doing any of the three essays that were due in. Charms and Transfiguration were no longer a challenge, and he could probably breeze through Flitwick's and McGonagall's assignments in an hour, but Snape, who'd been avoiding him to the extent of only speaking a single sentence to cancel their occlumency sessions, had set an essay on the strengthening solution.

The potion had eerily similar ingredients to those Harry had procured for the second ritual he intended to carry out and a small amount of research had revealed that griffin's claw enhanced the strength of muscle fibres, while salamander's blood, the key ingredient sped up the rate at which the fibres moved, significantly increasing the speed of reflexes and movement, and slightly enhancing strength. The potion used a higher ratio of the claw to the blood relative to the ritual, but Harry had been quite fascinated to see the connections between potions, alchemy, rituals and blood magic all unfolding in front of him.

He knew too much about the potion because of his curiosity to feel satisfied with his normal acceptable or exceeds expectations grade. He also wanted to play with the potion teacher's emotions. If Snape couldn't bare to look at him or speak to him after seeing the memory of his mother, then Harry would have to find other way to remind him of his and its existence.

His other option was to continue plotting while he had no company and time to think. His plan to remove Dumbledore waited only on a single spell and Marietta Edgecombe, the moment Harry could make his way into the Department of Mysteries and see the memory of the prophecy then he would remove the headmaster from his way. That left him free to rid the school and world of Dolores Umbridge, whose recent efforts to claw back control over the students had left her more unpopular than ever.

The blood quill was gone, but a handful of the more outspoken students were beginning to suffer increasingly nasty accidents. The blond Ravenclaw who Harry occasionally saw around Ginny had been given detention for insulting the Ministry with absurd theories and speculation and made to open Umbridge's mail. Unlike Lockhart it seemed someone had sent her an envelope of Bubotuber pus, but Harry had heard that the letter had been blank, and the the Pink Professor had staged the accident herself.

Someone needs to keep an eye on that woman.

Harry couldn't watch her, he didn't have the time and couldn't afford the risk of sneaking into her office over and over again to prevent her from harming anyone else, but he knew of no other way to stop her. He was the only one who could move about the castle unseen and undetected with the cloak, nobody else managed to pass unnoticed.

House elves, he realised. A cruel smile crossed his lips. Perhaps Umbridge would like to have the protection of Hogwarts' only free elf just as I did in the second year.

He pulled himself out of the chair and disillusioned himself to sneak out past the sleeping portrait of the Fat Lady.

The not so secret entrance to the kitchens wasn't too far from Gryffindor Tower and Harry was sure he would find Dobby there.

He strode down the steps into the basement level, taking them two at a time and then along the well lit corridor with its many paintings of food.

At its end lay a large picture of a bowl of fruit within a silver bowl and Harry knew, from overhearing the escapades of the twins and Katie's ill-fated, alcohol inspired kitchen trips that tickling the pear would grant him access.

The pale, green fruit giggled and transitioned itself into a large door handle.

The kitchens were enormous, every bit as large as the Great Hall above, with a high vaulted ceiling, and walls covered in shelf after shelf of brass and copper pans.

It was also full of house elves.

'I'm looking for Dobby,' he announced loudly, drawing the attention of every elf in the room. They froze, staring at him curiously, pausing in their work to look at their visitor. The nearest elf, who was busy preparing fruit for the breakfast drinks, lost his grip on the lemon he was was holding, and the yellow fruit rolled across the table and fell onto the floor.

There was a loud crack and the bright green eyes of the mildly mad elf gleamed up at him in a disturbing adoration.

'Master Harry Potter called,' Dobby, bobbing his head up and down, setting his ears to flapping like broken bats' wings.

'I have something that I need your help with, Dobby,' he murmured so the others couldn't hear. 'There's a teacher at this school who's harming the students and needs to be stopped.'

'Dobby knows the one Harry Potter means,' the elf nodded, 'but Dobby can't help, not while he's an elf of Hogwarts.'

'Ah,' Harry sighed.

So much for that brilliant plan.

'Dobby could help if he had a different master,' the elf continued, still staring at Harry intensely. He was fairly sure the elf had yet to blink.

'If you had a new master would you be able to watch her office and remove anything that could be dangerous to students from it?' Harry asked.

'Yes,' Dobby nodded enthusiastically. 'If Harry Potter offers, if he wants, then Dobby will be accepting him as his master, and serving him as proudly as any elf could.'

'How should I offer?' Harry inquired. 'Is there something I have to do?'

'Harry Potter has to offer Dobby his magic, once Dobby has touched and accepted a wizard's magic Dobby is bound to them.'

'Do you want to be bound to me, Dobby?' Harry didn't want to enslave the elf again, not when he had been so happy to be free of the Malfoys.

'Dobby likes working here,' the elf finally blinked, and Harry almost sighed with relief, 'but an elf is best off with the magic off a master and a family. Hogwarts has enough magic to keep house elves alive and sane, but it's distant magic, Harry Potter, not personal, it's lonely magic.'

'I'm not sure if that's a yes,' Harry grinned.

'Dobby would most certainly like to have Harry Potter as a master, Harry Potter is a great wizard, one an elf would be proud to serve. Dobby heard how master Harry Potter dealt with his nasty former young master.' The elf grinned viciously, and Harry almost took a step back from the sheer malice and hate present in the normally cheerful eyes of the elf.

'Then I offer you my magic, Dobby,' Harry said, wondering exactly what would happen next.

The elf beamed, and reached out one small hand and firmly grasped Harry's wrist for an instant. In that moment he felt his magic surge to the surface and subside again, and Dobby shivered and straightened up.

'Master Harry Potter is a very great wizard,' Dobby uttered adoringly. 'His magic is stronger than Dobby imagined.'

'Can you watch Umbridge for me, Dobby?' Harry asked. 'And if she tries to harm a student, make sure she's stopped. I know you can use your magic within the school walls and remain undetected.'

'Dobby will stay and work at Hogwarts,' the elf agreed, 'he will make sure the nasty pink woman doesn't hurt any of Master Harry Potter's friends.'

'Thank you, Dobby,' Harry smiled. 'Do you still want paying?'

'Master Harry Potter freed Dobby from… from,' Dobby's face screwed up in hatred, 'from the Malfoys and lets him touch his magic. A house elf is greatly affected by his master's magic and Master Harry Potter's magic is strong. Dobby owes him a debt that he can never repay.'

Harry was tempted to ask the elf to stop addressing him as such, but he knew well enough that Dobby would likely no listen unless he gave him a direct order, and that was something he was loathe to do if it was not necessary. Harry did not want servants and slaves to follow his whims. That was a path he was determined never to tread.

'Dobby will go and start watching,' the elf decided, stepping back. Harry was surprised to see that the elf's skin had tanned to a slightly more healthy shade, the lines on his face and the curve of his spine had reduced, and his eyes glowed bright with magic.

Dobby disapparated with a loud crack, leaving Harry in the kitchen in front of a curious horde of elves, who were suddenly a lot closer than before. One of the elves darted forwards to place a lemon in his hands, along with half a slice of buttered toast wrapped partially in a napkin, nodding enthusiastically all the while.

Unsure of what to say he accepted the unusual gift and gave them a wave before turning and heading back the way he had come towards Gryffindor Tower, munching on the toast. Some of the earlier risers might be up and around by now so he snuck back as quickly as possible. The Hufflepuffs dorms and set was around the basement somewhere and he didn't need any more of them thinking he was up to no good than already did.

He ran into Katie in the passageway behind the Fat Lady, staggering forwards as he held her to him to avoid knocking her over, and dropping his lemon. It rolled out of sight.

'Harry,' her voice was shaky and upset, 'we have a problem, a big problem.'

He was suddenly aware that she was holding onto him rather tightly and that a warm, damp feeling was spreading across his shoulder.

'What is it?' Harry asked gently, guiding her back into the common room and trying to ignore the twist of anxiety in his stomach. Katie slumped onto the arm of his chair, sliding partially into his lap until Harry moved across to share with her. The room was otherwise empty, but Katie seemed distraught.

'This,' she pulled a copy of the Daily Prophet out from under her creased robes and Harry got a glimpse of red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.

Love Triangle at Hogwarts, Harry read, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.

'Fuck,' he swore. Katie started slightly at the vehemence in his tone. It was the first time he had cursed out loud in front of her, normally her didn't swear often at all.

'This bit,' Katie tapped her forefinger weakly on the third paragraph.

'Undeterred by the obstacle I ventured to discover the truth of the matter,' he read aloud. 'Ginny Weasley, a fourth year Gryffindor student and close friend of Harry Potter, who's sensational stores and history have often been a feature of my articles, has her set herself on winning the heart of the Boy-Who-Lived. Your intrepid reporter has discovered that not only does Mr Potter appear to be allowing her affections, but at the same time is pursuing a relationship with former flame and ex-quidditch teammate, Katie Bell. The two of them were known to be briefly together before the Yule Ball last year, but separated under suspicious circumstances when the impressionable Mr Potter suddenly chose to abandon his girlfriend and accompany the French, part-veela instead.'

'It gets better,' Katie commented, her eyes welling up again as Harry's face hardened.

'It seems that having fallen for the allure of Miss Delacour, who subsequently abandoned him, that Mr Potter learnt a few tricks of his own about manipulating the opposite sex and is now stringing along two young, innocent girls in his games. Miss Bell, who according to reliable sources is often seen in close company of Harry Potter, was apparently the slighted party when he assaulted and gravely injured a fellow student, for which he was banned from playing quidditch, and has since become all but inseparable from him as he encourages her to bully and torment younger students.'

Harry stopped reading in disgust. The article only got worse, speculating wildly at what debauched things they must be doing and what dark magic he had to be using to influence Katie and Ginny.

Katie was quietly crying, curled into a ball with her head against his arm.

'Fleur is going to murder me,' Harry remarked, trying to inject some humour into things. His attempt came out weak, flat and worried. Fleur, Gabrielle and her parents would all see this article, and Fleur's family were already reluctant to accept their relationship.

'My parents are going to murder me,' Katie whispered, rubbing her tears away with the heel of her hand. 'They believe most of what the Prophet says, even though they think it sometimes exaggerates.'

'I'm sorry,' Harry apologised, smoothing Katie's hair. 'It's being around me that's dragged you into this.' He steeled himself, taking a deep breath before giving her an easy way out. 'If you want to keep your distance or pretend to dislike me then I understand.' He hoped she wouldn't take his offer, Katie was his closest friend at Hogwarts, Neville was more similar, more likely to understand him, but Katie brightened his day like nobody but Fleur could manage.

'The whole school is going to think I'm some kind of whore,' she spat, angry tears sparkling in her lashes. 'How did Skeeter even know about any of this.' She stabbed her finger at the article, indicating a quote supposedly from Ginny. 'That's word for word what Ginny said outside the portrait last night, but there was nobody there but us.'

There were too many similarities between the quotes and their conversation outside the portrait and Harry's mind was drawn to the speck of blue he had seen crawling over Ginny's top.

'I think I might know how,' he said.

'What?' Katie demanded. 'I hope it's something illegal we can destroy her career for.' Harry blinked, he had forgotten how vicious Katie could be when slighted.

'Sirius Black managed to get in because he was an animagus,' Harry murmured, 'but don't tell anyone that, it might start a panic, if Rita managed to sneak in then maybe she's one too.'

'Ginny had a beetle on her,' Katie remembered. 'It was bright blue. If she's unregistered she could be sent to Azkaban.' Katie seemed quite delighted by the prospect.

'I'm not going to try and expose her,' Harry shook his head. 'She's useful to the Ministry at the moment and she knows it, until they stop needing to discredit me she's more valuable than I am and nothing will happen.' He wasn't lying, the Ministry would never take his word over hers, not now. That didn't mean he wasn't going to try and do something about her, he might be able to bluff her into doing something useful for him.

'So she's going to get away with this,' Katie fumed. 'This article is going to make everything hell. My parents will believe it, the other students will, Fleur will be upset by it and you're telling me you won't do anything.'

'I'd like to think that Fleur knows me well enough not to be worried,' Harry smiled, ignoring the sharp plunging of his stomach at the fear she might not.

'What if I tell everyone about Skeeter?' Katie suggested.

'You've been manipulated and tricked by me, remember,' Harry said acidly.

'There's nothing we can do,' she realised in small voice. 'We just have to live with it.'

'Skeeter will eventually write something offensive about someone dangerous and get her just reward for it,' Harry decided darkly. 'I can reassure Fleur that there's nothing true in the Daily Prophet, even if I have to swear an Unbreakable Vow to convince her, and we will just ignore it, like we ignored all the other rubbish the paper has spouted. It's far worse for Ginny,' he finished, feeling quite sorry for the red-head.

'Oh,' Katie realised. 'She actually loves you, and now everyone is going to know and the think the worst of her for it.'

'Exactly,' Harry frowned. 'I don't think I'll be seeing very much of Ginny for the foreseeable future.'

'What are we going to tell people who ask?' Katie questioned, straightening up next to him and using the sleeve of her robes to hide the fact that she had been crying.

'The truth,' Harry shrugged. 'We have nothing to hide, we're just friends, anyone who really knows us, our genuine friends, will believe us and there's no reason for us to care about anyone else. Your parents will believe you,' he assured her.

Footsteps sounded from the steps down from the girls dormitories and Katie suddenly realised where she was sitting, squeaked in mortification, and threw herself into the chair opposite Harry.

It was Alicia.

'You're down here,' she remarked, coming across to sit next to Katie. 'Have you been crying?' Alicia shot a glare at Harry, the only nearby person and thus te likely guilty party.

'I'm going for a walk to think,' Harry told Katie, 'I'll let you and Alicia talk about things.'

I have a letter to send.

He made his way out of the tower again, ignoring Alicia's whispering behind him. She'd find out what was wrong soon enough, and Alicia knew Katie better than to believe the article.

The Owlery was a long, cold, quiet walk away from the common room. Very few students were up at this hour, and fewer still were out of their house areas. Harry only saw one student, a yawning, upper year Slytherin, who was making his way back from the greenhouses holding a small basket of something brightly coloured. Presumably it was a collection of flowers whose magical properties were lost unless they were harvested at a specific time like dawn.

The window of their dormitory was always open so the room didn't get too hot or stuffy, and once Harry was outside he summoned his quill, some parchment and an envelope to him.

Miss Rita Skeeter, Harry wrote on the envelope as he walked, then quickly continued to pen a brief note offering insider information on the sordid relationship of his housemates in Gryffindor. He left it unsigned.

Pausing on the steps up the tower to the Owlery he linked the envelope and a spare piece of parchment in his pocket with the Protean Charm that he'd decided to learn after seeing Hermione utilise it so cleverly, then Harry enchanted the envelope's address to change to whatever it's current location was, something Skeeter was unlikely to notice.

If he wanted to have a quiet, surprise meeting with Rita Skeeter in her home where they wouldn't be disturbed, then he needed to know where she lived.

Harry continued his way up the tower, folding the letter into the envelope, and sealing it.

'This is for Rita Skeeter, Hedwig,' he told his owl, who was eyeing him indignantly. 'Make sure you deliver it to her home.'

The snowy owl fluffed her feathers hooted softly and hopped towards the window before taking off into the sky.

Time for breakfast, I suppose, Harry thought, descending back down the tower.

The corridors were a little busier now, the wave of early breakfasting students were on their way to the Great Hall and Harry could already hear the whispers about him, picking out his name, Katie's and Ginny's from the conversations around him.

He gritted his teeth and headed into the hall.

The Gryffindor table was mostly empty, so he took a spot close to the end, and helped himself to sausages, eggs and toast. He was quite hungry having been up earlier than normal.

Katie came down when he was about halfway through his breakfast, but she was shepherded away from him by Alicia and Angelina who trapped her in between them as they went to join the twins.

Harry raised an eyebrow at her down the table, but Katie just shrugged miserably and focused on her breakfast, half-heartedly cutting up a piece of toast into smaller and smaller pieces on her plate.

She looked ever more unhappy than when he'd left her in the common room. He hoped her friends hadn't persuaded her to avoid him to try and prove the article wrong, but he had a niggling fear that they might have.

I shouldn't have made that offer, he decided.

He'd not wanted her to accept his proposition of remaining distant, not in the slightest, but by bringing it up he might have let her be convinced that he wouldn't mind as much as he did. Angelina and Alicia certainly had little care for him beyond being Katie's friend, not now he was no longer on the quidditch team and he didn't doubt that they would try to keep them apart if they thought Katie would be better off.

The worst part was that they might actually be right.

Harry returned his attention to his breakfast, moodily slicing his fried egg open and watching the yolk run across his toast and spill onto the plate. He was definitely going to try and do something about Rita Skeeter.

It's a shame I can't make her disappear under the Dark Mark, he thought viciously, stabbing the egg a few more times.

Skeeter's disappearance would not make sense, she was no threat or concern of Voldemort's.

'Has it offended you?' Neville asked, coming to sit beside him.

'It's not going to be a good day,' Harry told him tersely.

'Seen the paper have you,' Neville realised. 'Well it only gets better,' he added grimly, 'Umbridge first thing with ammunition to use against you.'

'I can keep my cool around her,' Harry promised him.

'It still won't be any fun,' Neville warned. 'I've heard from Gran this morning that there's another Educational Decree being passed today, something that lets Umbridge assess and dismiss the other teachers.'

'Wonderful,' Harry exclaimed sarcastically. 'At this rate the whole school will be carpeted and draped in pink, students will be writing their exams in blood, and she'll be the only teacher left.'

Neville watched him worriedly for a moment, before pouring himself some orange juice. 'Have you spoken to Katie or Ginny?'

'I talked to Katie this morning, she showed me the article, I thought we were ok, but I think Angelina and Alicia have since convinced her to avoid me, or are at least trying to make sure that she does.'

'She looks miserable,' Neville commented, glancing down the table to where Katie was sitting silently between her friends.

'It worries me when she's quiet,' Harry agreed.

'So you haven't spoken to Ginny, then?' Harry shook his head. 'I haven't seen her yet, but I overheard that she was crying in her dorm this morning from.'

'Great,' Harry replied dryly. 'I can't even really talk to her about it because she actually does like me.'

'It's a bit of a mess,' Neville decided, helping himself to bacon. 'Ron's furious about it, of course, Dean too.'

'I take it they blame me.'

Neville shrugged, his mouth full of bacon. 'I'm not sure,' he answered when he'd swallowed, 'but probably.'

The other Gryffindors from his year, brushed past them and went to sit with Katie and the twins, Ginny was in their midst, sheltered from the room. Evidently Neville was the only one who was concerned how he was reacting to the article.

'Fuck it,' he said, just loudly enough to carry down the table. 'I'm going to Defence, maybe I can charm Umbridge into loving me too.' There were a few smiles and chuckles, but nobody looked down at him and he had to bite his tongue at the unfairness. He'd been the subject of the article too, but that didn't seem to matter all that much to them.

He dropped his cutlery on his plate and swept out of the Great Hall. It was almost a shame Malfoy had avoided speaking to him since his stay in the hospital wing, he could use a target to let off some steam at.

Harry was the first student to Umbridge's lesson, though he took his usual seat at the back and pretended that the Pink Professor wasn't in the room eyeing him malignantly.

The other students joined him after a long ten minutes of ignoring her.

'Wands away,' she simpered. Harry bit back a laugh, as if any of them had even bothered to get their wands out to begin with. 'This lesson we will be discussing the theory of dark magic and why it is so dangerous to practise.'

Some of the class perked up, surprised to have their low expectations exceeded for once. The lesson had been supposed to be on theory, which really boiled down to Umbridge making them copy from another book while making sure anyone who seemed to be resisting her authority found themselves in detention for one reason or another.

'Dark magic is labelled by the Ministry as some of the most dangerous magic in existence,' the Pink Professor began girlishly. 'There are a whole list of reasons that lead to spells being classified as dark, but the underlying similarity is that they are corruptive.'

Her wide, vicious eyes came to rest on Harry, who was watching her curiously, waiting to see how she would twist this into Ministry propaganda.

'A wizard who practises or is exposed to dark magic becomes addicted to it,' Harry resisted the urge to sigh at the nonsense she was spewing, 'they are twisted and changed until they become dangerous, intolerable individuals with no respect for authority, society or morals.'

Umbridge smiled widely. The class was silent, but everyone knew to whom was referring.

'Half-breeds and dark creatures cannot be trusted for the same reason, dark magic affects them making them dangerous and to their superiors.' Umbridge's pretentious assumption of superiority was one of the few things that he truly couldn't ignore.

The first cold points of anger began to freeze in Harry's chest.

'Known dark spells to have this effect are of course spells like the Unforgivables,' her gaze retuned to Harry, 'those exposed to such magic become violent, amoral and inhuman, influencing and perverting those around them until their infection can be purged. Sadly such individuals often lead others very far astray from what could be considered proper behaviour, engaging in all sorts of lewd activities.'

The ice spread across him, flooding through his veins. Harry's fingers flexed in anger and he had to clench them shut to stop himself from doing something that might derail his plans.

We'll have our revenge, he reminded himself, smiling icily. Every insult now will make things sweeter.

Harry crossed his arms casually, leaning back in his chair with feigned nonchalance and tucking his right forearm under his left, so the faint, green glow emanating from his right sleeve was no longer visible.

Ron's jaw snapped shut with an audible snap.

'Do you have something to add, Mr Weasley?' The Pink Professor inquired sweetly. Harry caught a glimpse of Ron's scarlet ears.

He's going to explode, Harry realised.

The door creaked open and Professor Dumbledore stepped into the room, catching Ron at the moment of his outburst.

'I'm afraid, Dolores,' he said with calm authority, 'that I need three of your students to come with me. They will not be returning to the lesson.'

'Might I inquire whom and why, headmaster?' Umbridge was seething, her scheme to provoke Ron and set another example had born fruit, but Dumbledore had stolen it away from her.

'You may,' the old wizard agreed amicably. A few long moments passed as he waited, a patient, serene smile on his face.

'Whom do you require?' Umbridge asked, the sweetness slipping slightly.

'Mr Weasley, Miss Granger and Mr Potter,' Dumbledore answered immediately.

Harry picked up his bag, nodded to Neville, and rose to his feet. Hermione and Ron were similarly in motion.

'Why are you removing from my lesson?' The Pink Professor inquired.

'I'm afraid that it's a family matter, Dolores, and as neither their head of house nor the headmaster I cannot discuss it with you, especially not in front of other students.' The amicable tone of the headmaster had transitioned into something much sterner. A rebuke that even Umbridge would not yet dare ignore.

A family matter.

Harry assumed that that meant something must have happened to one of the Weasleys. He had no family, and there was no reason for he or Ron to be told about anything that might have happened to Hermione's family. They'd never met.

Ginny, he thought, concerned she might have hurt, or worse, done something stupid while she was upset.

'Follow me please,' Dumbledore instructed softly, leading them to the gargoyle that led up to his office.

'Ice Mice,' he said softly to the statue, then strode swiftly up the stairs.

The three of them followed, Hermione whispering questions to Ron about his sister that the red-head ignored in favour of clenching his jaw in anxiety.

The entire Weasley family with the exception of Percy was in the office. Their faces were pale and drawn, and they turned sad, angry eyes on Harry when he entered. Ginny was among them, crying quietly, and Mrs Weasley, while dry-eyed and silent, looked like she might fall apart the moment her daughter let go of her.

'Earlier this morning, while assisting the Order in guarding something very important, Arthur Weasley lost his life.' Dumbledore's tone was grave and filled with such sorrow that Harry almost believed it sincere. 'He was attacked by Voldemort's familiar, the serpent, Nagini, outside the Department of Mysteries and died before help could reach him. I am very sorry for your loss, he was a brave, good man that we will all dearly miss.'

How many other brave, good people have died following you, Harry wondered, then he realised that meant that Riddle was after the prophecy too.

It struck him as strange, because he had already known about it in the graveyard, so Harry stood in the corner of the office, turning things over in his head, while the Weasleys mourned and Hermione rubbed Ron's shoulder comfortingly.

None of them turned to speak to him, but he caught the condemnation in the eyes of Mrs Weasley when he moved and she glanced at him, and he knew in that moment that whatever Arthur Weasley had died protecting was to do with him.

Harry felt no guilt; he stayed in his corner, feeling very distant from the sadness in the room. It had not been his decision to send Mr Weasley there, it had not been his fangs, nor his familiar that had killed him, but he was certain now that he had to get his hands on the prophecy, because it and its guardians were simply not safe.

Dumbledore folded his hands on the surface of his desk and looked down at the desk. Harry hoped he felt guilty. The prophecy was not his secret to keep or guard. It was clearly about Harry and Voldemort, it belonged to them, not Dumbledore, and certainly not any of the Weasley family who had paid the price for the old wizard's decision to protect it.

I need to hear it, and then it needs to be destroyed, Harry decided.

Harry could make this work in his favour, salvaging some good from this sacrifice that Dumbledore had unnecessarily made.

At Christmas he would make sure that Fleur knew what he was doing, she didn't deserve to be kept in the dark, then he'd try and deal with Skeeter. Ginny didn't need to be trying to cope with the article at the same time as losing her father, and it would benefit everyone if Skeeter could be convinced to change her tune. It was just a matter of getting from Hogwarts into the Department of Mysteries after that. He was sure Sirius would agree that he deserved to know, especially since Harry knowing meant the prophecy could be destroyed and nobody else would then be hurt defending it.

Stick to the plan, he reminded himself, repeating the words over and over in his head. Skeeter. Sirius. Dumbledore. Umbridge. Prophecy.

He took one last glance at the grieving Weasley family and Hermione, then slipped quietly back down the stairs. He didn't spare a glance for Albus Dumbledore, the meddling, manipulative man who was so willing to sacrifice those dear to others, but never ready to dirty his own hands.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who has.

52. Christmas

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Unfortunately my schedule has shifted so my free time has moved and I can't post a new chapter until later on in the day at the moment, but here's the next one regardless.

Chapter 52

'When is Harry arriving, Fleur?' Gabrielle asked, bouncing down into the kitchen in search of her morning, and first hot chocolate.

'Soon,' she answered nonchalantly, trying her best to ignore the look her parents exchanged at the other end of the kitchen. Fleur had spoken with Harry through the locket a couple of times, but her mother had insisted that she help out at the shop in Carcassonne while she was suspended, which left her too busy to be able to meet him.

Neither of them had mentioned the last article in the Daily Prophet, but her parents had done it enough for both of them. Always bringing it up, always slipping little, unnecessary remarks into their conversations.

'In ten minutes,' their mother specified. 'It will be nice to talk with him a little more, it's hard to really get to know someone in such a short period of time.'

And another.

'Not for me,' Gabby chirped happily, wielding hot chocolate powder, milk, cream and spoon to a disastrously messy affect nearby.

'That's true,' Fleur smiled, taking more cunning approach like Harry would. 'Gabrielle would be able know a little about what he was like just from touching his magic.'

Her mother gave her a stern look. 'Gabrielle's empathetic magic is not something that should be used lightly, just as your stronger allure should not be either. I don't want to hear of either of you using them on anyone who doesn't understand what it means and hasn't given permission.'

'Harry's magic is really powerful.' Naturally her baby sister chose that moment to speak up. 'His wand felt completely different to any of yours,' she finished whimsically.

A series of expressions ran across her mother's face, ranging from outrage to curiosity. Eventually her need to know won over her anger at Gabrielle betraying the existence of her ability without consulting her mother first.

'What did it feel like?' She asked stiffly, still disapproving. In the background Fleur's father listened in with interest.

'Not telling,' Gabby declared, stirring her spoon and sending small waves of hot chocolate froth over the sides of the mug. Fleur tried and failed to hide her smile. Gabrielle was fond of Harry. She didn't say it outright, but her little sister gave off enough signs for Fleur to know that she definitely approved of her choice.

Harry had given her Clafoutis, after all, and that was certainly going to win him points with her sugar addicted younger sibling. Fleur was a little put out that he had never bought her something so tasty, but then they'd only really managed a few dates, it was risky to go anywhere with Harry being so well known.

'Gabrielle,' her mother sighed. 'We just want some assurance that what the papers are saying about him is not true.'

'And obviously my word wasn't enough,' Fleur commented.

'Harry is perfect for Fleur,' Gabrielle agreed. 'If she didn't love him then I would steal him instead; he saved me from the lake. If he'd kissed me and woken me up it would have been the perfect moment.' Fleur scrunched her face up in disgust at the idea of Gabby kissing her Harry. They might be the same age, but Harry was hers, and Gabrielle was her baby sister, she shouldn't be kissing anyone, let alone Fleur's beau.

'You know you weren't in any danger,' Fleur admonished, burying her distaste.

'But you didn't, did you,' Gabby giggled, mischief bright in her eyes. 'You told me what happened, your enchanted veil got torn and you couldn't get to me, so you sent one pleading look at Harry and he went and saved me as well. He was coughing up blood from straining himself to swim with me and the other girl.'

Fleur turned away from her sister and her mother, both of whom were watching her, one gleefully the other thoughtfully.

'Is that true?' Her mother asked, her tone far less sharp, but still slightly disbelieving.

'What does it matter,' Fleur snapped, feeling her face partially shift. 'I chose him, that is the first and last statement you need on the subject.'

Her mother flinched and recoiled instinctively from the sharp spike of Fleur's veela magic. Gabrielle shivered slightly and took a sip of her hot chocolate, she was attuned to the magic of those she spent a long time with and could no doubt feel Fleur's anger.

'Sorry,' Fleur apologised guiltily, letting her face slide back into its usual shape. For all her attempts to be a good, strict mother her magic was unexceptional for a veela. Her mother's strength sat in the middle of the spectrum, her allure, form and empathy were unremarkable. Fleur was stronger. Her allure and her shifted form were much more powerful than her mother's.

'I don't like the way you constantly question Harry. You do not understand him like I do. Nobody does.'

'We don't like you being with someone so dangerous,' her father finally spoke up. 'We have discussed this before, whether the rumours are true or not does not matter, either way you will be targeted by someone who could hurt you.'

'Veela are always targets and I am more than powerful enough to look out for myself,' Fleur told them proudly. 'I am a stronger and better dueller than either of you, maman, papa.'

'Better than the Death Eaters of Britain? Harry Potter is not the enemy of ordinary wizards.'

'Harry is not an ordinary wizard and I am not an ordinary witch,' Fleur retorted. Her father gave her the look she had once given Harry.

He is fifteen, it said.

'I am going to meet him now,' she decided, striding angrily from the room.

'Fleur is right,' she heard Gabrielle say in one of her rare, serious moods. 'Harry is going to be very powerful, and he's nothing like what the papers say. Fleur chose well.' She felt a rush of gratitude towards her younger sister who never openly risked defying their parents over many things.

'We hope she's right,' Fleur caught from her mother, as she paused near the door to put on shoes. 'We're just afraid of what might happen if she's wrong.'

She apparated away, not caring about the rest of what they said. The same conversation came around again and again. Her parents would make their little comments to try and make sure she was always watching for things that might show her Harry was lying, then they would argue, saying they only wanted to know that he would not get her hurt, but never accepting her word on the matter.

Harry was already at the willow, dressed in normal, muggle clothing as the wizards and witches of more forward thinking magical countries often did. He looked very nervous.

The article, Fleur remembered suddenly, and then he was babbling.

'I'm sorry,' he apologised, the words rushing over his lips so fast they disappeared into one another. 'I wanted to talk about it, but I kept being afraid that you would be angry with me. None of it's true, I would never do that, I could never-'

Fleur stepped close and kissed him to stop him from talking. She knew that Harry was hers. Any doubts she had ever had about his loyalty wavering had disappeared the moment he had told what he would do for the one person who understood him.

'Idiot,' she told him fondly in French. 'I know you, Harry Potter,' she reminded him. 'You never even mentioned this Ginny Weasley to me, and you already promised that you and Katie were friends. I do not like the article,' she chuckled at the understatement, every copy she had found had been burnt, 'but I certainly do not believe any of it.'

'That's good,' Harry decided, not looking at all comforted. 'I would never do something like that to you,' he told her, shaking his head angrily at the idea.

'Not if you wanted to live,' Fleur smirked, raising a fire-coated hand. 'I would turn you to ashes if you ever did anything to hurt me like that.'

'As long as you bury me under our willow tree I'll die happy,' Harry grinned, but Fleur received the distressing impression that he was only half-joking. The thought of never being able to touch him again made her all cold inside.

'Don't say things like that,' she frowned unhappily. 'It's not at all funny.' He looked briefly guilty and fell silent for a few moment, tracing his fingers over the back of her hand.

'What about your family?' Harry asked, anxious again. 'Do they believe anything about the article?'

'Gabrielle has decided that you are perfect for me, she read the article and laughed at the idea of anyone being able to steal you away from me,' Fleur smiled, trying not to enjoy his blush too openly.

If all my allure can't even tempt him to step away from you, then nothing else will either, had been her sister's exact words.

'My parents are still worried about me being hurt,' she told him apologetically. 'They don't really believe the articles, but they don't want me to ignore them, just in case.'

'Ah,' he responded disconsolately. 'They won't ever approve of me will they,' he said. 'I'll either be a dangerous dark wizard, or Voldemort will be coming after me and anyone close to me.'

'They do not dislike you,' Fleur shrugged helplessly. 'It isn't personal,' there wasn't really much she could say, 'and they aren't really trying to separate us either. They just don't want me to forget about the consequences of choosing you.'

'It feels personal,' Harry admitted, smiling slightly. 'I had this faint hope that I could just step in at your side and find myself part of a family,' his smile turned bitter, 'but nothing is ever as easy as we dream.'

'Gabrielle considers you family,' Fleur reassured him. 'I don't,' she smirked, 'I consider you mine.'

'There's nobody else I'd rather belong to,' he told her dryly, but his eyes shone happily again, no longer hidden behind his glasses.

'Good,' she told him imperiously, 'now we must head inside and deal with the more important things, like what you bought Gabby for Christmas.'

'I think she will like it,' Harry smiled, 'I don't really know what anyone expects so I tried to get something I felt fitted.'

'I wouldn't worry too much about your present for Gabrielle, she loves being given things more than the things themselves. If you gave her pebbles from the river she would keep them and treasure them. Her room is full of things she has horded and I've never seen her throw away anything, not even her shoes.' Fleur smiled, taking his arm to apparate them back. 'If anything we should be more concerned about what she might have bought us, her present to us is for both of us together.' Harry did look faintly nervous about that, no doubt remembering some of Gabby's more embarrassing questions about their romance.

There was a soft snap as Fleur whisked them both back into the entrance hall.

'I finally understand the shoes,' Harry commented.

'They are almost all Gabrielle's,' Fleur smiled, 'she is incorrigible, and maman has given up trying to get rid them, I think Gabby has bribed Binky to make sure that they don't get thrown away.'

'How sneaky,' Harry grinned approvingly.

'Harry is here,' Fleur's little sister, stepped into the other end of the hall and spotted them talking while Harry removed his shoes.

'Nice socks,' Gabby complimented, seeing Harry's orange and green striped feet.

'Thanks,' he replied, straight-faced, 'nice shoes.'

'They are all Fleur's,' Gabrielle lied, giggling. Her short, serious conversation with their mother was likely the only sober moment she would have today. Christmas was Gabrielle's favourite day.

'And you lied to me and told me that they all belonged to your innocent baby sister,' Harry pulled a shocked face.

'I wanted you to buy me more,' Fleur responded wryly, 'but I suppose it really is time I threw away all my old shoes.'

She pulled her wand from her waist and Gabby gasped in horror, stepping in between Fleur's wand and one of her precious collections.

'You seem very attached to your sister's shoes,' Harry remarked.

'You shouldn't just throw things away,' Gabrielle pouted. 'It's not right.' She reached out with the hand that wasn't clutching a half-full mug of hot chocolate and led them firmly into the main room by Fleur's wrist.

'Harry,' both of her parents smiled the same tolerant, polite smile, and Fleur's father stepped forward to shake his hand.

'How has your first term back at Hogwarts been?' Her mother inquired in French.

'Not the best,' Harry smiled ruefully, replying in his own, much improved second language. Fleur glanced at him, surprised. She had not been expecting him to be so open with her parents. Harry would not lie, not to her or anyone she cared about, not unless he really had to, but she'd anticipated bright smiles, and deflective humour rather than simple, candid honesty.

Her father opened her mouth to say something further, but was fortunately interrupted by Gabrielle. 'Are we giving gifts now?' She asked, sprawling across one of the more comfortable sofas and pushing her feet up against the pale stonework of the wall.

'You already gave us your gifts,' their mother reminded her. 'You could not wait until lunch and Harry's arrival and you pestered Fleur for an hour about her present for you.'

'Harry doesn't know anyone of the other people who gave us things,' Gabby protested, 'I still have my present for him and Fleur.' The mischief was gleaming in her eyes again.

It's going to be something horribly embarrassing, Fleur realised, stifling a groan.

Harry seemed to have come to the same conclusion, but he was smiling good-naturedly, her beau genuinely seemed to enjoy her baby sister's antics, even at their most mortifying.

'Here, Gabby,' she reached behind the nearest sofa, releasing Harry who promptly took a seat, and handed her sibling a small thin wooden box.

Gabrielle inspected it cheerfully, gently turning it over in her hands before sliding off the lid. The sparkling, white camellia she had sculpted from ice and enchanted lay within.

'You always ask me to make them for you, so I thought you might want a more permanent one,' Fleur smiled.

'It's so pretty,' Gabby chirped, carefully taking it out of the box and twirling it in the light. 'It won't melt, will it?' She asked, her eyebrows momentarily pinching together.

'Not for a long time,' Fleur reassured her sister, 'and never if one of us keeps replacing the enchantments on it.'

'Thank you, Fleur.' Gabrielle carefully placed her ice flower back into the box and turned expectantly to a smiling Harry.

He reached inside his pockets, pulling out a small handful of tiny presents, evidently he had shrunk them to bring them to France, and placing them on the sofa in between the two of them. There was a glimmer of light as his forearm passed over them, and Fleur glimpsed the tip of his wand against the pale skin of his palm. All of the restored presents were vague, rectangular shapes and Fleur found it hard to guess at what they might contain. She hazarded a guess at books for two of them, likely the ones for her parents. Harry knew better than to buy her a book.

'This one is yours, Gabrielle,' he told her softly, leaning across and offering the second smallest to her.

She unwrapped it carefully, while Harry waited, doing his best to pretend he wasn't nervous.

It was a mug, a very colourful, bright, china mug, that was filled with packets of sugar quills.

'After what happened to the last one I thought you might want a new one,' Harry grinned. Fleur chuckled, recalling their hex deflecting practise and its porcelain victim. 'It's enchanted to be unbreakable, to keep your drink warm, and the colours will disappear if something suspicious finds its way into your drink.'

'It's perfect,' Gabby beamed, subtly pocketing the sweets before their mother could intervene. Harry flushed slightly, and Fleur slid her hand across the sofa to cover his encouragingly.

'These are for you, Monsieur Delacour, Madam Delacour.' Harry got up to pass over the two Fleur suspected of being books. 'I thought that you might appreciate these.'

Her father unwrapped his with interest, very delicately opening the cover of what was clearly a very old book. 'This is one of the oldest book on wizarding heraldry in the British Isles, France and Spain I've ever had the privilege of touching,' he murmured reverently. 'This isn't something to give away lightly, Harry, there can't be more than a handful of copies of this left in existence.'

Harry looked somewhat surprised by that and Fleur made a note to ask him where he found such a rare book without somehow realising what it was.

'I know you like history, heraldry and the like,' he explained. 'It caught my eye and the previous owner was willing to part with it, for a price.'

'I shudder to think what that price was,' her father chuckled, still turning the pages.

'That was a terrible present, Harry,' Gabrielle piped up, 'we're not going to see papa for weeks now. He'll lock himself in his study with your book and won't come out for anything but meals.'

'I'm sure Binky wouldn't mind bringing my food to my study,' their father mused, tracing his fingers over the old pages. 'This is quite fascinating.' Gabby scowled, and their mother hid a smile behind her hand.

'I'm not going to open this and find some incredibly rare potions ingredient am I?' Her mother asked warmly, undoing the string that kept the paper in place.

'Would you have preferred something like that?' Harry bit his lip anxiously.

'Obscure Potions and Unique Ingredients,' her mother read from the front, 'I have never heard of it.' Fleur hadn't either, but it looked every bit as old as the book on heraldry her father had still not managed to put down.

There was a moment of silence as her mother read through the contents and then she gasped.

'Do you know who this was written by?' She demanded, closing the book to re-read the cover disbelievingly.

'Helga Hufflepuff,' Harry smiled faintly. 'I don't think it's the original, but it's handwritten and autographed.'

That did manage to drag her father's attention from his own book.

'You're idea of normal Christmas presents are two virtually priceless books.' He shook his head at Harry's apparent generosity. 'Where did you find them? Once might be a coincidence, but to find two rare books so well suited for us can't be.'

'I stumbled across a collection actually,' Harry admitted. 'I chose two that I thought you would appreciate, and I doubt I will ever value them as highly as you will, so they're better off with someone who will truly be interested in them.'

Her father laughed weakly. 'We might have to improve the wards on the chateau if someone finds out about this,' he tapped the pages of his book. 'This is the sort of indisputable evidence of blood relations that some British wizarding families would do a great deal to own.'

'It's not too much, is it?' Harry asked, frowning again. 'I've never really done this before.' Fleur squeezed his hand, realising the effort he was making to be open with her family rather than hide all the parts of himself he was insecure or ashamed of.

Gabrielle, who had been sitting quietly for once, suddenly remembered her voice. 'If that's what he bought for you, I don't want to imagine what he bought Fleur.'

'I think I'll give you my present first,' Fleur joked, hoping he hadn't given her something that eclipsed her own gift to him by too much.

'It's a little more than we expected,' her mother replied diplomatically, 'it makes our present for you seem very inadequate.' Her mother passed him a soft package. 'Fleur mentioned that you don't actually own any dress robes, so we took the liberty of choosing you some suitably stylish ones. She said that black, dark greens or blues and silver suited you, so I hope you like them.'

Harry raised an eyebrow at her and she laughed. 'I am veela,' Fleur reminded him. 'I can feel magic, not as well as Gabby, but I know when you're wearing transfigured clothing, it's saturated with your magic.'

Reaching into her pocket she pulled out the small cloth bag that she had discovered and used to keep Harry's present in.

'Here, this is my gift for you,' she smiled, opening it and presenting him with the thin circle of wood within. She hoped he liked the ring, it hadn't been at all easy to get right, there were half a hundred failed attempts in her room she hadn't managed to convince herself to throw away because they might have been for Harry.

'I made it from one of the branches of the willow tree,' she explained, letting him take the smooth, pale ring from her fingers.

'Fleur!' Gabby exclaimed in mock surprise, craning her neck to see what Harry was now holding. 'It's too early for you to get engaged, and Harry's meant to be the one who proposes to you,' she finished cheekily.

They both ignored her, though Fleur had no doubt that the heat on her cheeks was clearly visible.

I will strangle Gabby later, she decided vengefully.

'It's beautiful,' Harry smiled, admiring the patterns in the wood. 'What did you enchant it to do?' He asked curiously.

'It will help keep you safe,' Fleur told him, blushing slightly. 'Wear it on your wand hand,' she instructed him. 'It should prevent you being easily disarmed or injured. I cast the protective spells on it many times, but please don't try and test them.'

'Thank you,' he smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist to squeeze her tightly. Fleur leant in to his touch ever so slightly, aware that her parents were watching.

'My turn,' Gabrielle decided, dispelling the disillusionment on a large portrait in the corner. Turning around to hold it up in the light it covered Fleur's little sister from shin to head.

She had to admit that it was a beautiful picture, the willow and the river in the autumn sun, with Harry and her kissing against the trunk of their tree. It was a little concerning that Gabrielle had managed to get that image, though. Fleur remembered that day, and Gabrielle had not been nearby.

'I snuck down after you one day a while back and then sent the memory to a portrait maker in Paris,' Gabby explained. Her sister was so very proud of herself and Harry, despite the faint red tinge to his cheeks, seemed to like the image as well.

'You are the worst sister,' Fleur told Gabrielle fondly, 'but thank you, it is beautiful.'

'I'm your only sister,' Gabby declared cheerfully. 'Now let's see what Harry got for you,' she enthused, bouncing across to sit on the arm next to him.

'I couldn't think of anything that I could make, or create that would be anywhere near as good as something you could make yourself,' Harry admitted, 'so I thought I would give you these instead. I'm told they are useful for holding all sorts of things.'

He passed her the remaining present which clinked softly when he deposited it in her palm.

The paper unfolded to reveal a handful of very small, crystal bottles, stoppered with tiny, rune-engraved corks and filled with a swirling, silver nebula.

'Those are memories,' Fleur realised.

'I didn't just want you to have an empty set of vials, even if they are enchanted to be all but indestructible, so I put something important inside.' His voice had lowered to a very embarrassed whisper. Fleur knew without asking that they would be his memories of their times together.

She didn't press him on the subject, but leant across to kiss him gently on the cheek in thanks.

'The Yule Ball night is there,' he told her quietly, 'the Room of Requirement, and our meetings at the willow too.'

'Can I see?' Gabby asked, her eyes widening pleadingly.

'No,' Fleur childishly stuck her tongue out at her baby sister. 'They're mine.' She wasn't going to be sharing Harry's memories of their time together with anyone.

'Lunch will be in an hour,' her mother told her softly. 'If you want go watch the memories don't linger here, we'll keep Gabrielle out of mischief for a while.'

Fleur smiled gratefully at her mother, shot a smug look a her sulking sister and motioned to Harry, leading him down towards the basement.

'The basement?' Harry asked, confused.

'I'm not going to watch the memories now, they're the next best thing to having you here, so I won't waste my time watching them when I already have you.'

'So what are we up to?'

'Where did you really get those books from?' Fleur asked, halfway down the stairs and out of earshot. 'I know you didn't realise how rare they were.'

'I didn't lie,' he replied quickly. 'I stumbled across them at Hogwarts. I'll show you where one day, but not yet. You're right I didn't realise how rare they were, I had three copies of the one I gave your mother, and five of the book I gave your father.'

'I don't like it that you have secrets from me,' Fleur scowled.

'I still worry that eventually I will share a secret with you that will make you turn away from me,' Harry confessed.

'You are still an idiot,' Fleur told him softly.

'I know,' he smiled ruefully, 'you've told me three times today now.'

'Are there any secrets you do want to share with me?' She asked curiously.

'I want to share them all with you,' he told her honestly, as they drew to a stop in the wine cellar.

'One of my housemates parents, a member of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's followers, was killed guarding something in the Department of Mysteries,' he told her grimly. 'Voldemort is after the prophecy too, and Dumbledore is willing to let people die protecting it rather than actually acting.'

'You're going to get it,' Fleur realised, a cold chill tracing its way down her spine. 'You're going to break into one of the most heavily guarded departments of your ministry, that is guarded by this Order, and being watched by Voldemort.'

'I have to,' he shrugged helplessly. 'I need to know, and the longer I wait, the more likely Riddle will get it, and the more people will die needlessly defending it.'

'You have a plan?'

'I always have a plan,' Harry grinned. 'I can get Dumbledore thrown out of the school, then I can remove Umbridge, who will undoubtedly take his place, and my godfather should be able to get me in to the department just like the Order are doing.'

'No,' Fleur shook her head. 'You're not glossing over the details and missing things out, tell me everything. I'm not sitting around here in France waiting for you if I don't know exactly what you're doing and the risks entailed.'

Harry frowned and pinched the brow of his nose. 'If I tell you, then you have to promise that you'll stay here and act as normal. Please, Fleur.'

'Fine,' she scowled, not at all happy with having to let him go on his own. 'I promise, but you better tell me everything.'

'The British Ministry is under the delusion that Dumbledore is trying to usurp their power,' Harry began. Fleur got the impression this was a long story, and her scowl deepened. He had been keeping this to himself for a while. 'There is an illicit group at Hogwarts, one which Umbridge is currently still searching for, and when it is discovered its name will lead to Dumbledore being ousted from his position as headmaster.'

'Why?' Fleur demanded, sensing he was leaving something out.

'I indirectly suggested the group name itself Dumbledore's Army, the Ministry won't waste the opportunity. I will make sure the group is discovered, so the headmaster can't check the school wards to see if I'm away.' He paused in his telling to consider something. 'I can't leave Umbridge as headmistress, not knowing what she's capable of, so I have to get rid of her as well.'

'That sounds a lot more permanent than the way you referred to ousting Dumbledore,' Fleur noted quietly.

'Sorry,' he murmured, looking worried, but not guilty.

'I don't care,' she reminded him. 'That woman deserves worse from what you have told me, and if removing her means you see this prophecy and makes it more likely that you survive Voldemort then I will get rid of her myself if I have to.'

'You would?' Harry's eyes widened.

'I may live in a chateau, but I am not a princess,' Fleur warned him. 'When she is dead, what then?'

Harry blinked, taken aback by her bluntness, but continued eventually.

'Umbridge is the sort to take any chance to further themselves, she'll leap at the chance of being the one to deliver conclusive proof against Dumbledore and will take my bait without thinking twice. My map, the one that you helped me create, will lead her to a particularly deadly area of the Forbidden Forest. I need to talk to my godfather about actually getting into the department, but getting to the door itself will be easy with my cloak.'

'And once you're inside?'

'Find the prophecy, hear it, then break it so Voldemort can't see it and so Dumbledore's followers don't have to die defending it.'

'I don't like the idea of you in the Ministry alone,' Fleur decided. It was a gross understatement, the image of him alone and vulnerable surrounded by hostile wizards and dangerous artefacts was all but pushing her to shift.

'I can try and convince Sirius to accompany me, if that will make you feel better?'

'How do you know he won't just tell Dumbledore?' Fleur demanded. His godfather was part of the Order of the Phoenix and might just tell Dumbledore.

'He disagrees with Dumbledore's approach, but as long as he tells him after we're done it doesn't matter, the majority of my scheme cannot be traced back to me.'

'I would still rather you freed me of my promise and let me come with you.' She swallowed her pride. 'I will beg if it will make you reconsider it.'

'I can't.' He shook his head almost desperately. 'I can't let you come with me. I need to know that you're safe and waiting for me. I'm sorry, I know you must hate it, I would if I were in your place.'

'When are you going to try and sneak in to the department?' Fleur asked, feigning innocent curiosity.

'I haven't decided, ' Harry told her, smiling faintly, 'and I won't tell you when I have, I know that you will try to come with me.'

'If I keep my promise then I want one from you,' Fleur pressed, determined to stop this from happening again. She did not like not knowing what he was doing, and she hated being left behind to hope he came back even more.

'Name it,' Harry responded instantly.

'No more secrets from me,' she told him fiercely. 'There is nothing you can do that would make me change my mind about you, Harry Potter. Blood magic, rituals,' she steeled herself for what she was about to say, hoping he would not judge her, 'murder, even torture, as long as you remain mine, I will not care.'

'What would stop me from being yours?' Harry asked, an odd light in his eyes.

'Nothing,' Fleur replied firmly. 'You told me you would do anything to achieve your dream, and I believe you. I already know how far you are prepared to go to get what you want, and the only thing I object to is not being able to come with you!'

'It seems I am stuck with you,' Harry grinned.

'You look so unhappy about it,' she replied archly, trailing her fingertips along his jaw and teasingly down his chest. 'But you didn't promise.' Her fingers came to rest on his abdomen.

'I promise,' he shivered, 'no more secrets, everything I do I will share with you... Except for Christmas presents, birthday presents and happy surprises,' he amended, capturing her hand and kissing her hard. His eyes were smouldering from her teasing.

'Then is there anything else you would like to tell me?' Fleur whispered into his lips.

'Yes,' he smiled, 'but not here, and not now.'

'Where, then? And when?' Fleur demanded.

'Soon, somewhere very appropriate for sharing secrets,' he smiled wryly. 'I'm going to take you to meet my only real family.'

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does.

P.S. I apologise for this being predominantly fluff and only containing a couple of important things, but sadly not every chapter can be spell-slinging or scheming if they are to preserve their effect.

53. The Interview

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

This ended up being a little longer than I expected, I'm sure you'll all hate that, so it's about an hour later than I expected.

Chapter 53

'I thought you were meant to be at home for Christmas?' Harry asked, when Katie unexpectedly joined him for lunch.

'I came back,' she grinned. 'Ange and Alicia were taking their plans for my well being a bit too far so I told them I would go home when they did. I went home, had a really interesting conversation with my parents, and came back today.'

'What did your parents say?' He inquired. She seemed happy, certainly she was more cheerful than in the few days of being shepherded away from him before leaving.

'They cancelled their subscription to the Daily Prophet,' Katie beamed. 'Dad told me that I could go out with whomever I damn well pleased as long as he was kind, good-looking, rich and polite, and they both said that they knew me well enough to see the article was trash.'

'That's good,' Harry decided. 'It's about time more people realised how kind, good-looking and polite I am.'

'Are you rich?' Katie asked, giggling. 'Should I warn Daddy that I might have found someone who has designs on his darling daughter and fits his criteria?'

'I have a trust fund,' Harry told her, 'and my family is an old, pure-blooded one apparently, but I actually have no idea.'

'I guess it doesn't really matter until you're seventeen and emancipated,' Katie decided.

'Voldemort will have killed me long before then,' Harry agreed. 'It's not going to be a problem.'

'Don't joke about things like that,' Katie scowled, thumping him on the arm.

'Yes, Dark Mistress,' Harry inclined his head mockingly, rubbing his upper arm.

'Good boy,' Katie congratulated him, patting him on the cheek.

'Did you like your present?' Harry asked.

'Oh, yes,' she grinned, 'but if you keep giving me things like that then a girl's going to start thinking you want to be more than just friends.'

'Just don't tell Rita Skeeter,' Harry remarked. 'I can't use it, and I'm sure it was only a matter of time until Umbridge tried to confiscate it.'

'I might not give it back even if your lifetime ban gets wiped away,' Katie warned him.

'I knew I should have made you sign something in blood,' Harry sighed in good humour. He'd missed Katie's banter.

'For a Firebolt I would have signed almost anything,' Katie nodded.

'Well if you're willing,' Harry fished a scrap of parchment out of his pocket, 'how does eternal slavery sound?'

'To you?' Katie eyed him coyly and bit her lip. 'Do I get to call you Dark Master?' She asked in her smoothest, most dulcet voice.

'If you want,' Harry answered playfully, then, suddenly remembering what purpose he'd given this piece of parchment he turned it over. To his delight the address written upon the reverse clearly belonged to a house, rather than a workplace. He had Skeeter's home address.

'It's a shame you already gave it to me for the foreseeable future, then,' Katie responded slyly.

'You'd have been a terrible slave anyway,' Harry decided.

'Well your present was a lot better than mine,' Katie admitted.

'I always wanted a sneakoscope,' Harry smiled.

'Then why don't you have it with you?' She accused.

'Because it whistles constantly for no reason, I had to wrap it up in my socks and bury it in my trunk so nobody can hear it.' Since that had also proved unsuccessful he'd put it in the chamber with Salazar and it had finally stayed quiet.

'Been doing untrustworthy things have you,' Katie grinned.

'Every other second of every day?' Harry asked incredulously. 'When there's nobody in the room?'

'How do you know it was making a noise if nobody was in the room?' Katie glanced up at him from her food.

'Because I can hear it from the common room when it's quiet,' Harry explained. 'I did like the chocolate,' he smiled, 'my sweet tooth is getting worse, too many bad influences.'

'What did Neville get you?' Katie asked. 'I know you bought him that really rare, unpronounceable cactus, he sent me a letter that had the damn things name twice in every sentence. It took me hours to read it without tying my tongue in a knot.'

'Mimbulus Mimbletonia,' Harry corrected her, extending his forearm in her direction, and tugging up the sleeve of his robes to reveal the slim, dragon-hide duelling holster his wand was now in. 'He got me this, aurors use them.'

'Cool,' she exclaimed. 'How does it work?'

'I flick my wrist,' he demonstrated and his wand shot into his palm.

'What happens if you don't catch it?'

'I drop my wand and look like an idiot,' Harry grinned, 'and presumably lose whatever duel I was about to fight in. I've practised using it.'

It was a valuable gift, dragon-hide didn't come cheap, and being able to draw his wand faster and keep it safely within his sleeve was priceless.

'Enjoy your lunch,' he told her, retracting his wand and standing up.

'Going somewhere?'

'I have a promise to keep,' he smiled.

'France, then,' she surmised. 'You only smile like that when you're sneaking off to see Fleur.'

'That obvious?'

'Only to me,' she gave him a cheerful wave. 'Have a good time, if anyone comes asking I'll tell them you were with me all along.'

'Thanks,' he returned her wave.

He retraced his steps from the morning back towards the Chamber of Secrets. The corridors were emptier around christmas, especially this year, almost all of the students had gone home and he didn't have to worry about disillusioning himself.

A morning of trying to develop his duelling style, something he had been attempting off and on in his spare moments, had remained rather unproductive. He was faster, he could bend one wand motion into the next much more easily, he'd spent much off his time in Charms practising that when Flitwick wasn't watching him, but it didn't feel like enough improvement to be a match for the onslaught Voldemort was capable of unleashing.

Salazar was happy to remind him that being a lot faster, and capable of swiftly switching from one spell to the next was a serious improvement. He also reminded him that comparing himself to Voldemort, who relied on very powerful spells and speed, was not the right comparison when Harry's most powerful magic was often based in transfiguration.

You just need experience, he would shrug, then look unhelpfully blank when Harry asked him were he expected to get that experience from.

Myrtle was absent from her bathroom, so Harry gingerly crossed the puddle and opened the chamber.

'I thought you were spending the rest of the day with Fleur,' Slytherin remarked, hearing his footsteps echoing as Harry strode past the shadow of the basilisk the fiendfyre had left.

'I am,' Harry responded, wandering into the study.

'So why are you here?' Salazar asked, quirking his eyebrow. The serpent around his neck slithered forwards to eye Harry with equal curiosity.

'We've been together for six months,' Harry told him keeping a straight face, 'it's about time she met my family, don't you think?'

'You've never referred to your muggle relatives as your family before,' the founder remarked thoughtfully. 'You intend to bring her here.'

'You are the only real family I have,' Harry reminded him, 'painting or not, and I promised her no more secrets.'

'Tom Riddle never brought a girl to meet me,' Salazar considered.

'You think it's a bad idea?'

'No,' the painting eyed him softly, 'If you truly trust her, then I think it's a very good idea. However, without our bloodline she can only enter here by invitation.'

'Then how could Ginny, Ron, Lockhart, Fawkes,' Harry trailed off from his list at Slytherin's flat stare. 'I invited them all in some fashion, didn't I,' he realised.

'The Weasley girl was possessed by Voldemort and that would have likely acted as an invitation in her case, just as opening the door for your friends was one, and as for the phoenix, they're annoying creatures, interpreting odd meanings from anything if it benefits them. Helga's once came to give me aid in the middle of a feast, it relit the fire when it went out, but I'm certain it was just hungry and wanted an excuse to get past the wards to the food.'

'So I can just apparate us both here?' Harry asked. He didn't particularly want to find himself bouncing of anti-apparition wards into the Black Lake again.

'Yes,' Salazar sighed. 'Clearly I need to teach you a lot more about blood magic.'

'You've taught me next to nothing about it,' Harry reminded him, 'and I can't go asking my teachers either.'

'I suppose,' he grumbled, delicately pulling his serpent back onto his neck with two fingers. 'Go on then, you have my permission, approval or whatever it was you wanted from telling me.'

He apparated away to the willow tree, no longer needing the portkey now Fleur's parents had decided to include him in the wards.

To his surprise it was Gabrielle he found there, sitting on the white pebbles and tossing the small ones into the water.

'Fleur,' he greeted in mock surprise, 'you've shrunk!'

She laughed briefly before slipping back to a more sombre expression. 'Fleur is in her room at the chateau,' she told him quietly, choosing another perfectly smooth pebble from those around her.

'Lonely?' Harry asked, stepping down beside her at the river's edge. He knew the expression she was wearing well enough.

'You've stolen my sister,' she said after a while, tossing another stone into the river. 'I used to have all her attention to myself, but now I have to share her.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised, sitting down on the pebbles and choosing a small, smooth one of his own. 'I didn't intend to steal her from you.'

'I don't mind,' she assured him. 'I just wish I had someone like she does. It's going to be a bit miserable for me at Beauxbatons when Fleur is gone.'

'I'm sure she'll come and kidnap you,' Harry smiled.

'She'll be busy with her own life, off being brilliant and strong and with you, like she should be, and I'll have to fend for myself. I'm not the same as Fleur,' Gabrielle confessed her. 'I can't ignore everyone around me so easily as she does. I can feel their emotions in the magic they cast, their jealousy, their pity, their anger.' Her fingers tightened on the stone. 'They affect me.'

'If there is anything I can do, you only have to ask,' Harry decided. It was horrible to see her so sad, a shell of her usual cheerful self.

'There is nothing anyone can do,' she shrugged. 'I will learn to survive it without Fleur, but thank you.' A glimmer of her usual mischief appeared in her eyes. 'My sister is waiting for you, she's been impatiently waiting since Christmas, what did you promise her?' There was nothing subtle about what Gabrielle was suggesting.

'Maybe you'll find out when you're older,' he replied, knowing that her birthday was actually before his. 'Or, if you're really eager, you can try following us and making another portrait.'

'I think Fleur would murder me,' she giggled. 'Can you apparate me back?'

'Of course,' he nodded, taking her proffered arm, and picturing the entrance hall of the chateau.

The world spun back past them with a soft crack, and he had to keep a tight grip on Fleur's little sister to stop her falling over all the shoes.

'Thanks,' she told him seriously, flashing him a grateful smile. 'I'll get Fleur for you.'

She had bounced off up the stairs towards the far side of the house before Harry could thank her, calling Fleur's name and cheerful casting all sorts of aspersions on what they might be about to do.

After a moment a slightly red-faced Fleur appeared, trailed by a slightly sooty Gabrielle who's wide grin stood out from her ash-streaked face.

'I take it this one of those happy surprises, you were referring to,' she commented, watching her little sister's back warily as she headed off towards the nearest bathroom.

'Soon has become now,' Harry answered, offering her his hand.

Fleur stepped around it and chose to wrap her arms around his waist instead.

'I've never apparated like this before,' Harry remarked.

'Don't you like it?' She asked coyly, pressing herself a little closer to him. Harry chose to kiss her rather than answer such an obvious question. If she pressed herself much closer against him she would find out exactly how much he liked it. His cheeks reddened at the thought.

'So where did you apparate Gabrielle back from?' Fleur asked. 'She was going on about the feel of your magic again.'

'The riverside next to the willow,' Harry replied. Fleur frowned and pressed her lips together, clearly Gabrielle only went there when she was unhappy. 'She's more cheerful now,' Harry added quietly, just in case Fleur's little sister was listening.

'Good, and thank you for helping her,' Fleur whispered, 'I worry about leaving her at Beauxbatons all alone.'

'We'll have to come and steal her away more often,' Harry suggested. Fleur shot him a grateful smile and tightened her arms around him expectantly.

Harry pictured the oversized bust of his ancestor and the serpent effigies of the main chamber, focusing on Fleur as the world swirled back past them and deposited them on the floor of the chamber.

'I think this method of apparition works well,' Fleur commented from her much more preferable position of on top of him.

She lingered over him momentarily, just long enough to tease, then got to her feet and stared around her in wonder.

'Where is this?'

'The Chamber of Secrets,' Harry grinned.

'Is it actually called that?' Fleur wrinkled her nose distastefully. 'And I don't know what that means.'

'The wizard who named it had a few issues with his ego,' Harry pointed at the giant bust of Salazar Slytherin.

'I heard that,' Salazar hissed in parseltongue from the study, and Harry chuckled. Fleur tensed at the sound, but Harry smiled reassuringly.

'The Chamber of Secrets was built by Salazar Slytherin to house a guardian to protect the school from attackers. It slumbered here until a descendant of Slytherin was able to enter the chamber, but Voldemort had his own purpose for the basilisk,' Fleur gasped, 'and set it on students instead.'

'Who puts a basilisk in a school of children?' She demanded, just as Harry had once done. 'It's not still here is it?' Fleur asked suddenly, paling.

He laughed. 'I asked the same question, and no, it's gone. In my second year Voldemort managed to unleash it on the school again, it petrified Hermione, one of my friends at the time, and dragged Ginny Weasley down here.'

'You went after it,' Fleur surmised flatly.

'I came down here and I killed it with a sword in a very dashing, heroic manner.' Behind him he caught a faint murmur about brainless Godricness from the painting.

'That explains why Ginny Weasley likes you,' Fleur muttered, scowling.

'There's not much left of the basilisk,' Harry smiled, pointing at the seventy foot shadow along the floor. 'It was starting to smell.'

'Merde,' Fleur whispered. 'You are such an idiot, anyone less lucky would not have survived.'

'He nearly didn't,' Slytherin called from within the study, 'the idiot got bitten and had to be saved by phoenix tears. Thankfully he's started acting like a member of my family should since then.'

Fleur looked up in surprise.

'My ancestor,' Harry explained, 'his painting hangs on the wall through there, presumably to perpetually irritate all of his descendants who find his Chamber of Secrets.'

'You're descended from Salazar Slytherin?' Fleur asked curiously. Harry felt rather disappointed in her her reaction. If he'd told anyone from Britain they would have been shocked.

'Yes, though I'm not exactly sure how, presumably through my father as my mother was muggleborn,' Harry smiled. 'Salazar tells me that I wouldn't be able to enter here, or speak parseltongue otherwise.' He took Fleur's hand and led her away from the outline of the basilisk and into the study.

'This is where you got the books from,' she realised, gazing around the study in wonder.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'My latin is pretty poor, but I know enough to get by, and some of them,' he glanced at Secrets of the Darkest Arts, 'were helpfully translated by my predecessor.'

'So this is Fleur,' Salazar spoke up from over the door, 'it's a pleasure to meet you face to face.'

Well you could hardly say you were meeting her in the flesh, Harry thought wryly.

'It's an honour,' Fleur replied. 'I can see some of the similarities between you and Harry.' She inspected the portrait curiously, glancing between it and his face.

'There aren't many,' Slytherin said softly, 'he has my wife and daughter's nose, and there is a little of me in his cheek bones and jaw, but little else.'

'It has been over a thousand years,' Harry pointed out. That portrait nodded mimicked by his serpent, and Fleur chuckled.

'So this is where you kept sneaking off to last year,' Fleur deduced, 'no wonder I could never figure out where you were going.'

'Were you following me?' Harry asked, amused.

'No,' she denied, flushing slightly, 'well, maybe occasionally, you were different. I was curious.'

'That explains where Gabrielle learnt her stalking her behaviour from then,' Harry laughed. Fleur's flush brightened. 'You wouldn't have been able to get in anyway, not without an invitation.'

'The chamber is protected by blood magic wards,' Salazar explained, sighing at Harry's lack of detail. 'You have to be a blood relation to me, or invited by one, to enter my chamber.'

'Are there any others?' Fleur asked immediately.

'Just one,' Harry responded darkly.

'Voldemort,' she remembered.

'He will not be visiting here just yet,' the painting assured them, 'and I know how you can seal him out of the chamber when the risk grows greater. There is nothing you need fear in this place unless you make a mess of my my study again.'

'So is this the last of your secrets?' She eyed him speculatively and he shook his head, grinning slightly. 'I didn't really think so,' Fleur sighed.

'You know most of them,' Harry told her, 'in fact there's only really one left to tell you, but I have to be sure that you can defend your thoughts before sharing it.'

'Occlumency,' Fleur realised. 'I am passable,' she shrugged, it's a requirement for applying to the Bureau d'Éngimes. My veela magic helps as well, my allure affects the connection.'

'Could you defend your thoughts if someone tried to steal them?' Harry asked.

'I believe so,' Fleur decided. 'It would take a very talented practitioner of the mind arts to steal my thoughts.'

'Avoid Albus Dumbledore and Voldemort, and it will be fine,' Slytherin surmised. 'I assume this is the discussion about horcruxes.'

'Well if it wasn't it's going to be now, isn't it?' Harry pointed out acidly.

'So I'm right either way then,' the painting shot back.

Fleur blinked twice. 'What are horcruxes?'

'A very horrible piece of magic that tears a piece of your soul away and binds it to an object. It acts as an anchor against death until it is destroyed, and it is how Voldemort survived without a body.'

'So you're planning on destroying it,' Fleur guessed.

'There's likely more than one,' Salazar elucidated, glancing at Harry who shook his head ever so slightly when Fleur wasn't watching. 'It was a horcrux that caused my poor basilisk to be unleashed again before Harry killed the mad creature and destroyed it, but Voldemort survived its destruction to return to a body, so there must be at least one other out there somewhere.'

'The prophecy is just the first step,' Fleur realised. 'You're getting ready to kill him.'

'And anyone we have to in the process of getting to him,' Harry added quietly. 'He won't ever leave me alone, and I suspect the prophecy has something to do with it. Why would a powerful wizard try and kill a baby unless he knew that infant might be a threat for some reason.'

'What do we do?' Fleur demanded.

Slytherin laughed and Harry scowled at him. 'I need to see the prophecy, and I need to get the Ministry to accept the truth before Voldemort launches a surprise attack and crushes the majority of his opposition.'

'We,' Fleur corrected immediately.

'You're not coming to the Department of Mysteries,' Harry reminded her, 'you promised.'

'It is still our goal,' she told him firmly.

'Fine,' Harry relented. 'There is so much to do,' he told her. 'I need to be so much stronger, stronger than Dumbledore and Voldemort, but they're so far beyond what I can do.'

'Why do you need to be stronger than Dumbledore?' Fleur asked. 'Is he not on your side?'

'He believes I am part of his side,' Harry explained bitterly, 'but he is not on my side. Dumbledore keeps me in the dark, if I had done as he hoped I would have been dead in my first year.'

'Why don't you show her how far you have come?' Salazar suggested mildly. 'It will be easier.'

'We can duel,' Fleur agreed excitedly, eyeing him speculatively and striding back out into the main chamber. 'I will see how long you last against me,' she called back.

'Proud, isn't she,' the painting commented in parseltongue.

'With good reason to be,' Harry replied in kind.

'She reminds me of my wife a little,' the founder remarked. 'I hope she is as good for you as my wife was for me.'

'You make it sound like we're married,' Harry frowned uncomfortably.

'You seem close, even if you didn't want her to know that you were a horcrux.'

'It would just upset her and make her worry unnecessarily,' Harry shrugged. 'She's going to get a surprise,' he finished, reverting to english as he left the chamber.

She was waiting in the middle of the chamber with her rosewood wand, extended out to her right.

'Don't worry about the chamber,' Harry smiled. 'I've broken the effigies many times.'

'Normal rules,' Fleur decided, conjuring a glowing circle across the floor. 'Nothing too dangerous, and no speaking anything but spells to try distract your opponent.'

Her wand snapped up without warning, and Harry immediately flicked his into his palm in preparation.

'Good reflexes,' she commented, 'the other ritual?'

'I haven't done that yet,' Harry admitted, 'it takes time to recover afterwards and I don't need Madam Pomfrey getting too suspicious of me when I'm injured again and mentioning it to the headmaster.'

'Shall we begin,' Fleur returned her wand arm to its original position and Harry mirrored her, forcing himself to look away from her eyes and consider her an enemy.

Fleur struck first, unleashing a trio of jinxes that Harry didn't recognise, her wand movements sliding from one spell into the next without halting.

He deflected two of them back at her, side-stepping the last and attacked himself, throwing every one of the borderline useless spells he had learnt to teach to Neville back at her, but Fleur proved impossible to touch.

She stepped around them, weaving fluidly, almost dancing amongst the beams of magic, deflecting the few she could not dodge back at him and constantly turning and twisting him along the edge of the ring stretching the angles he could deflect her spells at to their limit.

Harry couldn't seem to pin her down, no matter how fast he cast, and his spells were slicing across the air from his wand tip twice as fast as Fleur could send them back. She was glorious in action. It was hard to ignore the way she moved to avoid his magic, the way Fleur curved away from his hexes was almost hypnotic.

Abandoning his assault for a moment, he animated the effigies along the walls, commanding them to bind her still, and weathering her renewed attacks behind his Shield Charm, deflecting those he could back at her, carefully choosing where he placed his feet to prevent her from trapping him along the edges of the ring.

She gasped with surprise when one of the stone snakes curled around her leg, but shattered it with the Blasting Curse and stepped along the edge of the ring, forcing Harry round towards the horde of serpents so that her stray curses destroyed his supporting animations.

Her back was to the pool now, so in between casting he Impedimenta Jinx and the Stunning Spell he conjured his shield of butterflies, ignoring Fleur's gasp of surprise when the swirling insects swarmed into existence around him.

A unwavering stream of transfigured butterflies hissed across the ground between them, forcing Fleur to hold her ground and shield herself for the first time. Slashing his wand across his chest he drew the water from the pool behind her, conjuring a liquid serpent the length of the bridge that twisted forwards through the air to encircle and shatter her shield.

'Expelliarmus,' Harry murmured, just as her defences faltered, and then it was over, and Fleur's wand was in his hand.

Grinning triumphantly he waved it at her.

There was a bright flash of blue and something hot struck him on the chest, knocking him out of the circle and across the floor.

'I do not need my wand to conjure fire, Harry,' she reminded him, waving back. Her hand was coated in bright blue flames and glowing menacingly.

'I had already disarmed you and won,' Harry pointed out, standing back up. 'You said normal rules, that includes no sneaky veela attacks.'

Fleur scowled, but shrugged in what Harry assumed was agreement.

'So what did you think?' He asked.

'What do I think?' Fleur repeated incredulously. 'I am a talented duellist, eighteen and did the best I could, but I still got overpowered by a fifteen year old. It's annoying.'

Harry looked at her helplessly.

'I am not angry with you,' she relented. 'I just expected to win. I didn't expect you to be this good.'

'So I did well?' Harry inquired. 'I've never duelled anyone other than Voldemort above the water and to the best of my ability.'

'I use a counter attacking style,' Fleur began, waving her wand to repair the damage they had done to the chamber. 'It has proven effective against every opponent, and is even more effective without the ring, but I never even came close to touching you. You're defences were simply too powerful,' she said simply. 'Every spell just dissipated against your shield, and those that did not you deflected away like they were nothing. It was very frustrating,' she added in french.

'That's pretty much how I felt while watching you weave around everything I did no matter how fast I tried to go,' Harry commented.

'You were casting spells incredibly fast,' she told him, 'only the duelling instructor at Beauxbatons is close to being that quick, and me, perhaps,' she decided. 'You are a very dangerous duellist,' she continued, 'powerful, fast and creative. I don't even know how I could defend against what you did at the end.' She scowled angrily, the wrinkling her nose very attractively. 'I can't dodge at that speed, I can't transfigure them myself because your magic is too strong for me to overrule and I can't block them without leaving myself vulnerable.'

'Those two pieces of magic are among my best,' Harry admitted. 'The butterflies are a shield foremost, but they are quite versatile.'

'A shield?' Fleur frowned. 'Surely a Blasting Curse would go straight through?

'They are meant to defend against things like the Cruciatus Curse,' Harry replied. 'I can deflect most other spells.'

'At least I know you can look after yourself,' Fleur decided after a moment. 'I still can't believe you beat me already,' she sighed.

'Already?'

'I expected you to win eventually, I'm good at duelling, but I'm better suited to enchanting and other subtler aspects of magic. I wasn't expecting you to surpass me at fifteen though,' she griped. 'Gabrielle is going to laugh at me.'

'If it had been real what would you have done differently?' Harry asked.

'I'd have had more room to move, and I could have used my elemental medium spells, but there's not I could have done other than making it a bit more difficult for you. That's why it's annoying,' she sulked, looking for all the world like a lightly older Gabrielle. 'What about you?'

'I probably would have been casting some much more dangerous spells,' he answered as Fleur closed her eyes, 'and I could have made more use of my surroundings.'

'This place is amazing,' Fleur said after a moment. 'I can feel the magic around it, it's almost as strong as the Room of Requirement.'

'Don't let Salazar hear you say that,' Harry laughed. 'He designed this himself and Rowena and Godric created the room, they were quite competitive about things like this.'

'I can understand that,' Fleur smiled. 'Gabrielle is always trying to outdo what I was like at her age.'

'Does she?'

'We have different magic,' Fleur shrugged, 'so sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn't. Her enchantments weave together better than mine, but my magic is stronger and holds for longer.'

Harry sat underneath one of the effigies, leaning his back against the smooth stone, then shifting along to give Fleur space when she moved to join him.

'I feel quite selfish,' she said, leaning into him.

'Why?' Harry asked, slipping his arm around her shoulders.

'I asked you for all your secrets, but I have none to share with you in return.'

'Clearly you're just not as mysterious as I am,' Harry grinned.

'Apparently not,' Fleur agreed. 'I have all our secrets to keep now, though. There are so many problems we have to solve.'

'I know,' Harry nodded. 'It's daunting. I try not to think about it and just focus on the next small step.'

'What is the next step?'

'Speaking with Rita Skeeter,' Harry replied lightly.

'Skeeter? The one who writes the articles?'

'She's an animagus, and likely an unregistered one. I'd like to persuade her to write something more useful. I sent a letter to her and used it to procure her home address.'

'I am coming,' Fleur decided.

'It's not worth the risk,' Harry disagreed. 'If things go wrong you might get hurt, or worse. You're actions would have huge repercussions for your family.'

Fleur didn't make any sound, but Harry knew she was scowling again. 'Then I will come with you under your cloak and nobody will know.'

'Only until I see Skeeter,' Harry countered.

'Why?'

'Because once she has written the article for me she will no doubt take steps to make sure I can no longer influence her, and once she has I will be making headlines again. I'd rather you weren't sharing those sort of articles with me.'

'Fine,' she acquiesced.

'Nuh uh,' Harry smiled, 'you have to promise.'

'You are worse than Gabby sometimes,' Fleur commented snarkily, 'but if you want, I promise.'

'Thank you,' Harry kissed her gently on the cheek.

'I won't keep promising things like this,' she warned. 'I refuse to hide while you take all the risks.'

'I don't expect you to,' Harry told her. 'I would have to be an idiot to refuse the help of a witch like you.'

'You are an idiot,' she decided. 'You tried to kill a basilisk with a sword.'

'I didn't have my wand,' Harry defended.

Fleur stared at him incredulously, then shook her head, sending ripples through her veil of silver hair. 'Are we going then?'

'Going?'

'You said you had Skeeter's address,' she continued slowly.

'Now?'

'Do you have something more important to be doing?'

'Well…' Harry eyed her suggestively until she blushed faintly.

'Be careful Harry,' she warned, 'or I might take you up on that later.' She stood up and pulled him to his feet. 'Now where are we going?'

'We'll have to apparate to Diagon Alley in London,' Harry told her, then make our way from there. It isn't far, I remember seeing the street name when I first visited Diagon Alley.'

He reached out for her arm, but she shook her and winked, wrapping her arms around him again.

'Like this is better,' she told him.

'Not when we fall over at the other end it isn't,' Harry grumbled half-heartedly, but he made no move to dislodge her. It was worth the bruises.

Flicking his wand out he swiftly disillusioned them both and apparated them away to the same point outside Ollivander's that he had first travelled to.

'Are you missing anything?' He murmured, carefully checking himself.

'Not that I can see,' she replied dryly.

'Follow me then,' Harry instructed, casting a few silencing charms over the pair and walking towards the end of the Alley taking Fleur's hand so he didn't lose her.

From memory Rita Skeeter lived on a street that was only about a mile from the exit of Diagon Alley, a short walk under his Disillusionment Charm.

'She won't be there when we arrive, will she?' Fleur asked, as they weaved in and out of the groups of muggles on the pavement, walking quickly.

'No, we'll have a chance to look around first,' Harry responded, ducking an enthusiastically waving tourist.

'There,' Fleur said, 'where I'm pointing.'

'We're invisible, Fleur,' Harry reminded her, trying not to laugh so hard that the muggles heard.

'Eleven o'clock,' she told him, 'and stop laughing, I forgot.'

Harry pressed his free hand over his mouth to muffle his chuckles, and starting towards Rita Skeeter's street. Her house was number five, so he hoped it would only be a few metres down the road; else they would have to walk to the other end of the street.

The journalist lived in a surprisingly small, modest looking house with a lime green door and a loose step that Harry avoided stepping on just in case it was a security measure.

'Here,' he whispered, unfolding the cloak and passing one end to Fleur. Underneath it they would remain undetected.

'Diffindo,' he muttered, running the tip of his wand along the edge of the door. There was a metal click as he severed the lock.

Rita Skeeter was a tidy individual, her house was neat, clean and well ordered with soft carpets and worn, cosy furniture.

'Have a look for anything that might be useful,' he suggested to Fleur, 'but please stay under the cloak.'

She nodded, and Harry stepped out, dispelling his disillusionment and exploring the lower rooms. He found a lovely set of porcelain china, and some homemade cakes, but nothing that might prove useful.

'Harry,' Fleur hissed from right behind him. He jumped, and glared at where he assumed she must be from the sound of chuckling. 'I found a whole cabinet of files upstairs, come see.'

There was a file for almost every name that Harry knew of in the wizarding world, and a hundred more that he did not.

'Perfect,' he grinned, flicking through Lucius Malfoy's.

'Make her write an article about all the Death Eater's in here,' Fleur suggested.

Harry considered it. Skeeter would probably write the article if he stayed here and forced her to, but she'd never send it to the Prophet. A very different plan to his original one began to form in his head.

The fire place in the room across from them flared green. He'd have to ask Fleur for forgiveness later.

'Go,' he told Fleur, 'I'll come to France and see you as soon as I can.'

She disapparated silently, leaving the cloak to fall to the floor next to him. Harry gathered it up and folded it away before choosing to lean casually against the door frame.

'Rita,' he smiled politely, when she stepped out of the fire. To her credit she didn't even flinch.

'Mr Potter,' she quirked an eyebrow, 'this is unexpected, and illegal too.'

'Now now, Rita,' he admonished, ' don't go throwing stones from your glass house.'

'Muggle phrases,' she acknowledged, 'but I'm afraid I don't understand.'

'I believe they sentence unregistered animagi to Azkaban, don't they?'

Her eyes narrowed. 'You must have proof to make an open allegation like that,' she commented bluntly.

'I would not be here if I thought it might go wrong,' Harry bluffed calmly. 'I was hoping we might come to an arrangement.'

'What sort?'

'The sort where you write a highly controversial article and I keep your secret,' Harry elucidated. 'The article will even have the benefit of being true, for once.'

'Who would you like me to enlighten my readers about, Mr Potter?'

'There's a whole list of very interesting files in that cabinet. I had a brief read through and I think Mr Malfoy would make a very nice subject for you.'

'No,' Rita shook her head, 'not worth the risk to me.'

'How about you write the article, then I will swear an oath, an Unbreakable Oath, to never mention your little secret again before I leave. Would that assurance be worthwhile?'

Rita Skeeter's eyes gleamed and she stepped across to catch his hand in between hers. 'We have a deal,' she answered hurriedly. 'I don't particularly want to spend anytime in Azkaban.'

'I've heard it's an unpleasant place,' Harry agreed. 'Now, the article?'

'Of course,' Rita smiled wolfishly, her acid-green quill already writing away on her note-pad. 'Perhaps you'd like some cake while I write?'

'That would be lovely,' Harry agreed, following her down into the kitchen.

'Pound cake,' Rita smiled, cutting him a generous slice, 'a personal favourite of mine.'

'It's very good,' Harry complimented her, taking a bite. 'Is it home baked?'

'Yes,' a touch of genuine pride coloured Rita's tone.

'I'm impressed,' Harry laughed. 'There's a hidden side to Britain's best journalist.'

'To you as well it seems, Harry.' She eyed him curiously. 'How did you get in undetected?'

'Now that would be telling,' he smiled brightly, 'but rest assured that your wards are not flawed, I simply found a way to bypass them. There aren't many wards that can keep me out if I really need to get in.'

'How fascinating,' Rita exclaimed. The quill had moved from notepad to paper entitled with the Daily Prophet's title, writing a more official looking version of the article, presumably that was what her submissions actually looked like.

'May I see?' Harry asked, leaning across to skim the article.

'Of course,' Skeeter waited until the quill passed before proffering him the sheet.

'How scathing,' Harry grinned. 'It's perfect.'

'And now for your side of our deal,' she pressed tentatively.

Harry nodded, finishing his slice of cake, and gently placing the plate back on the table.

'We need a magical witness,' he decided. 'My house elf should suffice.' He didn't wait for Rita to disagree, not that she would, Dobby would be bound by the oath of his master. It was the perfect witness for her.

'Dobby,' he called.

There was a crack and the house elf appeared, looking around in confusion.

'I need you to witness an oath for me, Dobby,' Harry instructed softly. 'It's very important.'

'Dobby will not disappoint Master Harry Potter,' the elf responded enthusiastically.

'Now,' he drew his wand, passing it to Dobby, 'what are your terms, Miss Skeeter?'

Rita reached forward with her right hand, clasping his hand firmly as Dobby held the wand closely to the two of them. 'Will you, Harry Potter, agree to never speak of my animagus abilities again?'

'I will.'

A tendril of fiery, white magic flared from the tip of his wand to encircle their hands. It was cold, and tighter than he anticipated. He could almost feel it binding his life.

'Will you, Harry Potter, agree never to break into any property I own, or into anything that contains my belongings?'

'I will.' A second tendril joined the first.

'That is sufficient,' she decided, releasing him. 'You have your article, and I have my assurance.' Harry nodded mildly, and Dobby disappeared with a loud crack after returning his wand.

'I'll be leaving then,' Harry told her politely, 'it was nice doing business with you.'

Her face spread into a victorious smile at his perceived mistake. She knew that the oath he had sworn fully protected her, but that she had no obligation to actually get his article printed.

'There is one last thing,' Harry paused in the door, his wand flicking out into his palm. 'Morsmordre,' he commanded, and then the top floor of her house was gone, torn away by the conjured skull and serpent.

'The Dark Mark,' she gasped, paling rapidly, her eyes darting to the article that would provide the reason for her death at the hands of Voldemort's supporters and then back to him.

'I see you understand,' Harry smiled coldly. The cracks of apparating aurors were audible all around the house, but he would be long gone by the time they broke through the wards.

'Your vow,' she tried desperately, but she was bluffing and they both knew it. The terms of his Unbreakable Vow were clear and would no longer be relevant in two words time regardless when her magic no longer existed to bind him.

'Avada kedavra,' he intoned, embracing the icy intent in his chest.

There was a single, bright green flash and when it was gone, so was Harry.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing! Thanks to everyone who does.

54. The Godfather

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I just about managed to get this in today. I had to read so many reviews, so thanks for all the wonderful feedback it makes my day. I do now know if I ever want to up the number of reviews this fic has I just need to brutally murder someone. Maybe I should make a poll ;) I'm just kidding, only I get to choose who gets brutally murdered, author's privilege.

I've also changed my interpretation of the Fidelius charm back, I've found a easier way to solve the problem without creating a succession of small (or not so small) plot holes to fix. Thanks for pointing out that it was only after Dumbledore died that everyone could become secret keepers, I missed that.

Here's the next chapter...

Chapter 54

The light crept up the side of the window, inching, as it had been since the sun first rose, over the stonework he sat opposite from. Harry had watched it since sitting here to see the sunlight slip down his body the previous evening.

Sleep simply wouldn't come. He knew the moment he lay down in the bed and stopped watching the light that his thoughts would start to swarm again. All the questions that hadn't occurred before rising to the surface.

He was sure that what he had done had been the best possible solution for him, for them, but that wouldn't help him explain things to Fleur. He wasn't sure that there even was a good way to say it. It would solve so many of their problems if things went anywhere close to how he expected them to and yet the act itself was unforgivable.

Surely she will understand.

The thought was filled with hope, brimming with it, but hope was not enough to quell his fear that this time she would finally say that it was too far. It was not enough to let him sleep. It was not enough for him to manage the two words that would let him speak to her and know for sure.

He was not being brave, his reluctance to face the consequences of his actions disgusted him, but the hope was better than risking knowing Fleur had changed her mind, and so the smooth, triangular mirror clenched in his palm remained clear.

Fleur would find out soon anyway. Their morning paper would come, she would see the result and then she would come to speak to him. Not contacting her was probably just making it worse.

The sunlight passed another line in the stonework of the window, and not for the first time he was glad that the dormitory was all but empty. Neville, the only other occupant now he had returned a day early, slept like the dead. Harry could only faintly make out his breathing when he strained his ears. His friend wouldn't wake up until the last moment he could before going to breakfast, which left him at least another hour or so here on his own to contemplate the repercussions of his actions.

Closing his eyes he focused on his magic, trying for the first time since he originally cast the Killing Curse to feel the soul he had once fractured.

The pieces were no longer screaming, their deafening silence had lulled to a whisper, a subtle susurration that surrounded him as his reflections stared back at him from within the fragments of himself.

There were fewer than before, but almost every pair of eyes he could feel gazing up at him were cold, hard and curious. To his relief there was no gleam of crimson among the emerald eyed crowd, no hint of the part of him that had once been part of Voldemort.

The cracked mirror of his soul had a over hundred faces, where there had once been a thousand, for every inky black fragment that murmured from within him there had once been ten. He was healing.

He opened his eyes.

Rita Skeeter's death had done little damage to his soul in comparison to what Peter Pettigrew's had done. That made him feel a bit better about it. The less mutilated his soul was then the less selfish the intent and motivation behind casting the Killing Curse had been, and that was reassuring like nothing else could be.

The mirror grew hot in his hand.

He took a deep breath before raising it to his face and replying.

'Fleur,' he smiled warmly. Her eyes remained cold, narrow and furious. The structure of her face had shifted ever so slightly, just as the veela he had first seen shift at the World Cup, hinting at the avian form she could take, and the depths of her anger.

'There is a long way from blackmail to murder,' she told him, her expression cool and distant. He felt like he was suddenly talking to the Beauxbatons witch who had dismissed and insulted him again.

'I had no choice,' he defended. 'She would never have written the article unless she thought she would not have to publish it.'

'She can't publish anything now she's dead,' Fleur responded icily, her chin sharpening slightly. 'Nor does that explain why the Dark Mark was cast over her house.'

'I didn't need her to print anything,' Harry explained, 'I just needed to create doubt about the story the Ministry is spreading. Rita's death under the Dark Mark, which I am capable of casting, can't be ignored.'

'You think just because someone has died under the Dark Mark that they will believe Voldemort has returned,' Fleur exclaimed in angry French. 'There is no motive, no reason for them to attack someone who was covering up their existence. They will simply blame your godfather again.'

'The article I made her write, the one she thought she would never have to print because I swore a vow that voided my influence over her before she handed it in, was all about Lucius Malfoy and his Death Eater connections. The aurors will have found it, and the cabinet of files she kept.'

'So they think she was about to start exposing them,' Fleur realised. 'She dies under a Dark Mark that most of London saw, and doubt begins to spread,' her features grew distinctly more avian, 'it sounds like a very well thought out plan.'

'Thank you?' Harry questioned very hesitantly.

'Thank you,' she hissed, shifting the rest of the way for an instant before regaining control and reverting, 'thank you. You had a well thought out, clever plan that achieves one of our aims, and you fed me that rubbish about blackmail, made me promise to apparate away to worry about you and didn't contact me when you returned to let me know you were safe. What happened to no more secrets?' She demanded furiously. 'Or was that as much of a lie as the plan you told me in your Chamber of Secrets.'

'I didn't lie,' he snapped, angry with her for the first time since the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. If she agreed with his actions he had done nothing wrong; there was no reason for her to be angry with him.

'You told me you were going to blackmail her, not kill her and conjure the Dark Mark over her house.' Fleur's wide, dark eyes bored into him, aflame with wrath.

'I was going to blackmail her until I realised I wouldn't have enough leverage to actually get her to do what I wanted, even if I bluffed successfully, and I only came to that conclusion once you'd left. The Ministry would ignore her offences as long as she keeps slandering Dumbledore and myself, so I had to offer her permanent protection against me knowing her secret, and a way to ensure she didn't risk herself.' He stared at her furiously, ignoring the cold spreading across his chest, she was supposed to know him better than this. Fleur should know that he wouldn't lie to her.

Fleur's face shifted, the bones rearranging themselves back into their usual structure, and the darkness drained from her eyes to leave them the summer sky blue that Harry loved.

'So you didn't lie to me,' she voiced slowly.

'Of course I didn't,' he told her coldly. 'You should have known that I wouldn't.' Part of him wanted to snap the locket shut, to let her believe he was angry with her for falsely accusing him and leave her to suffer, but he couldn't quite bring his fingers to do it.

'Where did you learn to conjure the Dark Mark?' Fleur asked quietly.

'What does it matter?' Harry retorted viciously, her accusation had hurt him more than he had expected. 'You'll just assume I'm lying again anyway.' Fleur flinched as if he had slapped her, and he immediately regretted his petty jab.

'I'm sorry,' Harry apologised, feeling awful. 'I shouldn't have said that, and I know I should have contacted you afterwards. I sat here all night trying to think of a way to tell you what I'd really done.' He shrugged helplessly. 'I haven't moved.'

Fleur breathed her amusement out through her nose. 'I did not sleep either, I was too concerned, and then I was watching the memories you gifted me when I wanted to stop worrying. Did you really just sit in an empty room surrounded by pictures of me?' He flushed and looked away from her eyes, but nodded. He'd rather be embarrassed than arguing with her.

'I know you like the idea of me missing you so badly,' Harry said, 'so I thought you might like to have it, it's not like you didn't already know about it.' He paused, considering the worst possible outcome of creating that memory. 'Just don't let Gabrielle see it,' he pleaded. He shuddered to think what Gabrielle would make of that.

'I won't,' something faintly possessive coloured her tone, 'I'm going to be the only one who watches these.'

'Trying to keep me all to yourself?' Harry teased.

'I'm not trying,' she answered archly.

'When can I next come to see you?' He asked, hoping very much that she said tomorrow, or, better yet, today.

'I have my exams over the next two weeks,' she informed him sadly. 'I will be too busy for long visits, but we can still speak like this from time to time.'

Harry nodded, more than a little disappointed. 'Good luck,' he forced himself to smile, 'I'm sure you will not need it.'

'I hope not,' Fleur admitted, a brief flutter of uncertainty passing though her eyes. 'I don't have a second chance if I fail.'

'Since when has Fleur Delacour failed,' Harry reminded her playfully.

'Fleur Delacour does not fail,' she agreed, gracing him with a warm smile and a throaty chuckle. She sounded so like Salazar Slytherin's portrait that Harry could not help but laugh. 'I have to leave, maman has finished breakfast and we must go to Carcassonne. I am still suspended,' she wrinkled her nose in dainty distaste.

'Have fun,' Harry grinned. 'Actually,' he added thoughtfully, 'would it be possible for me to order some Polyjuice Potion from you?'

'What are you going to do with it?' Fleur asked.

'I'm going to steal one of your sister's hairs and pretend to be her evil twin for as long as I can,' Harry replied, straight-faced.

'Gabby will be the more evil twin,' Fleur smiled, 'but seriously?'

'It might be useful,' Harry responded honestly. 'My plan is quite complex, so I'd like to be as prepared as possible for when things don't go quite as anticipated.'

'I'll order it for you,' Fleur promised, 'you can pay me next time you come to visit.' She gave him a wave, then blew him a kiss and the mirror went blank.

'Who were you talking to?' Neville asked sleepily from behind his hangings.

'We're the only two people in the dormitory, Nev,' Harry pointed out calmly.

'I didn't hear what you said,' he yawned.

'It doesn't matter,' Harry responded evenly, smoothing out his robes in an attempt to make it look like he hadn't spent all night in them.

'I suppose I should get up and go towards breakfast,' Neville grumbled to himself. The sound of rustling clothing was soon audible and in a few minutes he managed to extricate himself from his bedclothes and open the hangings.

'Morning, Neville,' Harry commented, as his friend stepped away from his bed, tangling one foot in the hangings and stumbling to the floor. 'Breakfast?'

'Yes,' Neville agreed from the floor. 'I've got loads of stuff to tell you that my Gran found out last night.'

'Oh?' Harry extended a hand to help Neville back to his feet and raised an eyebrow.

'Apparently Rita Skeeter was killed in her home yesterday and the Dark Mark was conjured over the top, but,' Neville continued missing Harry's lack of surprise, 'they found all sorts of interesting stuff in her house.'

'What did they find?' Harry asked evenly, already knowing the answer.

'Some article about Lucius Malfoy and Death Eaters that she was going to put in her column.'

'So Malfoy was the one who did it then?'

'His associates, Gran reckons,' Neville explained. 'Malfoy has alibis, but it's likely he just asked some of his friends to cloak up and do it for him.'

'So he escapes justice once again,' Harry concluded, as the crossed an empty common room towards the passageway out.

'Yeah,' Neville frowned. 'The interesting thing is that Gran said Amelia Bones, the head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement, has been working her office round the clock since aurors got through the wards on Skeeter's home, and almost a hundred Ministry officials resigned, or were fired this morning. There were a lot of former Death Eaters among them too.'

They found the filing cabinet, Harry realised.

He hadn't intended anything to come of it other than extra evidence that Death Eaters were likely responsible, and he would have preferred to take the other files himself, but his Unbreakable Vow bound him from breaking into anything she owned and she would still own her possessions until her will was read out.

It had worked out quite well if the employees forced to leave their jobs because were those in Rita's collection of subject material. The Ministry would be a lot better of without so many morally reprehensible individuals among them. If Voldemort attacked he would have far fewer allies inside the Ministry. Of course that did mean he now had more outside in his actual army, but Harry hoped they would do less damage in the open.

'What's the Prophet saying?' Harry asked curiously, stepping carefully over the trick step on the main staircase and catching Neville before he forgot and got trapped.

'They couldn't sweep this one under the rug,' Neville smiled a bit grimly, 'most of London saw it, there were a lot of Memory Charms performed on muggles. They tried to make it look it was Sirius Black and his rogue Death Eaters, but that excuse is wearing thin. Gran said their emergency Wizengamot session was largely an attempt by Fudge to convince everyone that Voldemort hadn't returned and that his days as Minister are numbered.'

'Does you Gran tell you everything that happens in these sessions?' Harry grinned. The Great Hall was practically empty. A scatter of students, mostly Ravenclaws, were eating alone along their tables, and the staff table was empty save for a rather cheerful looking Professor Vector.

'Yes,' Neville sighed. 'The Wizengamot seat is hereditary and she's just my proxy which means that once I'm seventeen I have to go myself. Gran wants to be sure I know what I'm doing so she spends an hour talking to me after every meeting.'

'That sounds wonderful,' Harry smirked, taking a seat on the completely empty Gryffindor table.

'I don't know why you're laughing,' Neville responded. 'I'm fairly sure you have at least one seat yourself.'

'At least one?' Harry had assumed there was something democratic about the way the Ministry was run.

I probably should have known better really, he thought wryly.

'You have an old family that absorbed a few other prominent names and accrued a lot of political weight,' Neville explained. 'Gran mentioned that once you're of age you'll one of the most politically powerful wizards or witches in Britain, especially with your fame.'

'That sounds fun,' Harry dryly. 'A lifetime of exchanging barbed compliments with the likes of Lucius Malfoy.'

'Hopefully he'll be in Azkaban by then,' Neville pointed out.

'Or I'll be dead,' Harry agreed. Neville laughed. 'Katie and Fleur got angry when I made that joke,' he mused.

'Why?' Neville asked bemusedly. 'It was funny.'

'Beats me,' Harry shrugged.

There was a short silence as Harry carefully constructed himself a bacon sandwich from the nearby platters of breakfast, liberally cramming bacon between his slices of toast.

'I'm not sure you'll be able to bite that,' Neville remarked, watching as he ate a less ambitious breakfast of sausage and poached eggs.

'I can certainly try,' Harry countered, stretching his jaw to encompass the sandwich. It was a bit far to be comfortable. 'Maybe I should cut it,' he sighed, reaching for his silverware.

'Probably for the best,' Neville agreed, 'you don't need to substitute for Ron's table manners when he's away.'

'My sincerest apologies,' Harry replied dryly. 'So what are you doing today? Nobody comes back until tomorrow.'

'Professor Sprout offered to let me help her in the greenhouses,' Neville smiled, 'I brought Hannah to show to her.'

'Hannah?' Harry blinked. 'That's not how you introduce your girlfriend to people Neville, but congratulations for finally asking her out, everyone knows you like Miss Abbott.'

Neville let out a very undignified squeak and turned the colour of a rather overripe pomegranate. 'I named my mimbulus mimbletonia Hannah,' he admitted in a small voice.

'Oh,' Harry realised. 'Well if you want my advice I'd make sure Hannah, the girl that is, knows how much you love your cactus, before she finds out you named a slimy, spiky, stinky sap shooting monster of a plant after her and takes it badly.'

'You think she won't like it,' Neville gulped.

'I think she'll like it once she knows how much you love the plant,' Harry mediated. 'If she doesn't know that, though, then you're going to be spending a whole lot more time with the less attractive, green version of Hannah than with the pretty, pig-tailed one.' Neville had continued to colour reaching a very splendid shade of Gryffindor crimson as Harry talked.

'When you said everyone knows,' he began tentatively.

'I meant that literally every person in the school knows that you like her,' Harry grinned. 'I wouldn't be surprised if Professor Dumbledore's end of year speech mentions it.

If he's still here, Harry added silently.

'So Hannah knows?' Neville squeaked.

'I think she was one of the first to notice, Nev,' Harry told him. 'You spend a lot of time staring at her, and then you start getting really dreamy-eyed and go all red. What do you start thinking about?' He did his very best to copy Gabrielle's suggestive, mischievous glance.

'I think I need to go see Professor Sprout,' Neville decided, abandoning his breakfast.

'You could just ask Hannah to Hogsmeade,' Harry suggested. 'She might say yes, you know.'

Neville didn't look at all convinced, or any less flushed, as he hurried along between the tables.

I suppose I should check on Dobby and then go and speak to Sirius, Harry decided, finishing his sandwich in a series of messy forkfuls.

The elf hadn't seen him since acting as a witness for his vow with Rita, and while Dobby could never betray him, it would be best if the house elf believed there was a really good reason for what happened. His godfather, on the other, more important hand, might know a lot more about what was happening at the Ministry, and, of course, it was time to ask about the prophecy. Sirius had had long enough to stew pent up wherever he was in London over Christmas.

Harry swung himself off the bench and began to wonder in the direction of the Chamber of Secrets.

'Dobby,' he called quietly.

There was a loud crack, and the elf appeared directly in front of him, forcing Harry to halt in his path to avoid falling over him.

'How have you been, Dobby?' Harry asked, slowly walking up the stairs and along the corridor towards Myrtle's bathroom.

'Dobby is good, Master Harry Potter,' the elf looked around furtively, 'Dobby is happy that his master has managed to strike back against that family and their friends. Dobby knows the nasty green lady from before, she is a friend of Dobby's old master.'

'She wasn't a very nice person,' Harry agreed, 'but what happened was about making sure your former master's master doesn't win.'

'Dobby understands,' the elf nodded, bobbing alongside him. 'Master Harry Potter is very noble, he tries to protect everyone however he can.'

'Thank you, Dobby,' Harry smiled. The house elf was likely never going to think badly of him. 'Have you been watching Professor Umbridge for me?'

'Dobby has. The nasty pink lady has tried to harm students over and over again, so Dobby has been making sure she can't.' A vicious grin appeared on the elf's face. 'She is getting suspicious of Dobby now, there is much more magic around her office than there used to be.'

'Can you still get in?'

'Dobby won't fail Master Harry Potter,' the elf declared adoringly. 'Master Harry Potter risked his life to save all the students from the monster of the chamber when Dobby only tried to save one. Dobby knows better now. He will do what Master Harry Potter would have done and save them all.'

'Thank you, Dobby,' Harry knelt in front of the entrance to the bathroom to clasp the house elf's hand between his. 'You're assistance is invaluable in keeping everyone safe from Umbridge.'

'Dobby will not fail,' the elf repeated, ears flapping as he nodded, then vanished in another loud crack.

Harry shook his head at the elf once he'd gone. The utter adoration with which Dobby regarded him had been funny once, but now it was a little disturbing. He felt a little sorry for the house elf, having such blind loyalty for him when he'd changed so much.

I'll make sure Dobby's well looked after, Harry decided. Loyalty should be rewarded.

Stepping into Myrtle's haunt he gave the ordinary looking bathroom a quick check, but everything was in its normal place from the tiny snake engraved on one of the taps to the perpetual puddle on the floor.

'Open,' he commanded the chamber, hurrying down the dark stairs to speak to his godfather.

It was a little strange walking through the serpent effigies and knowing that someone else knew about this place now, even if it was Fleur whom he trusted implicitly.

'I'm back,' he called out to his ancestor.

'Alone? Or have you brought your French muse with you?'

'Alone,' Harry replied calmly, ignoring the slight twinge he felt at knowing he probably wouldn't really see her for a while now.

'Have you come to learn something?' Salazar asked. 'Or are you going to tell me what happened yesterday?'

'I came to speak to my godfather,' Harry answered, 'it's time to press him about the prophecy. Rita Skeeter, however, is dead, and the Dark Mark was seen by most of London.'

'Are they starting to believe?' Slytherin asked.

'I don't know,' Harry mused. 'I do know that a lot of wizards and witches who might have been Voldemort supporters, or become ones, no longer work for the Ministry after aurors discovered all the material Skeeter dug up.'

'That's good too,' the founder decided. 'An unexpected bonus.'

Harry picked up the mirror from the desk and breathed his godfather's name onto it, pressing a finger to his lips to warn Salazar that he had to be quiet.

The response was instant.

'Harry,' his godfather grinned delightedly. 'How are you? How was your Christmas? I have your present, but I can't seem to get Dumbledore to give it you.'

'It was good,' Harry didn't smile, 'except for what happened to Mr Weasley.'

'Yes,' the grin vanished. 'Arthur is already missed, things have been subdued here.'

'He shouldn't have had to die,' Harry said with genuine ire.

'He died on duty for the Order,' Sirius responded, 'which is better than what I'm doing, rotting in here, not helping anyone.'

'Nobody should be guarding the Department of Mysteries,' Harry declared, 'the prophecy should be heard and then broken.'

Sirius paled. 'How do you know about that?'

'Voldemort mentioned it,' Harry shrugged. 'I assumed there was a good reason for me not being told,' he lied, 'or I did until now. Mrs Weasley looked like she blamed me.'

Molly is upset after losing Arthur,' Sirius replied uncomfortably. 'She doesn't really blame you, none of the Weasley's do, but knowing he died protecting something for you makes it hard for them to be around you without being reminded of what they've lost.'

'I understand,' Harry said sadly. Truthfully he didn't particularly care. He had respected and liked Arthur Weasley, but he wasn't responsible for his death, and if the Weasley's couldn't face him because they blamed him in part then there was nothing he could do about it. Apathy was an effective armour sometimes.

'How much do you know about it?' Sirius asked curiously.

'I've gathered that it's about me, that it's in the Department of Mysteries, that you're secretly protecting it and Voldemort is after it.'

'That's pretty much all there is to it,' his godfather informed him.

'I want to know why you haven't just broken it, or if you can't the surely you could have moved or stolen it.'

'Only the person the prophecy is about can remove it,' Sirius explained, 'there are some very nasty protections on them.'

'So only Voldemort or I can take it?' Harry asked, glancing up at Salazar who was listening intently.

'Yes,' his godfather agreed.

'So unless he gets it, which is obviously bad, people are going to keep dying unless I come and take it.'

'You can't come and get it, Harry,' Sirius told him. 'This is why Dumbledore insisted we didn't tell you, he was afraid you'd insist on coming to get it.'

'Yeah, but it's fine for you to die guarding it when I could just come and see it and then break it,' Harry retorted sarcastically.

'Well if you come then you might get hurt,' Sirius explained half-heartedly, clearly not really convinced himself.

'You mean there's a chance someone might get bitten and killed by a snake?' Harry asked mockingly. 'If you can secretly guard it, then I can secretly sneak in, listen to it so we know what it says, then destroy it so Voldemort never knows and nobody else will get hurt.'

'I suppose,' Sirius sighed. 'I'll talk to the Order.' His face grew more determined as he thought about it. 'I think you're right, we just have to persuade everyone to listen.'

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'Dumbledore will never agree. We can sneak in together, under the invisibility cloak, nobody will ever notice, and tell him afterwards. He doesn't get to dictate what we do, he's just as prone to mistakes as the rest of us, Arthur Weasley died because he thought sneaking me in for an hour was more dangerous that leaving people permanently in harm's way!'

'It sounds like being back at Hogwarts and sneaking out after curfew,' Sirius grinned.

'I don't know how to get in,' Harry commented.

'I'll think of something,' Sirius assured him. 'We'll go when Mundungus is on watch, he can easily be bribed or threatened into letting us in the department, and once we're in after hours the place will be empty.'

'How do I get to the Ministry?' Harry asked.

'Once you're here I can apparate you,' Sirius decided. 'Everyone else already knows, the Weasley's and Hermione were here over Christmas and in the summer to help clear the place up. He looked down and there was a brief rustle as he searched his pockets. I kept this when Dumbledore gave it to me,' he grinned holding up the tattered piece of parchment.

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is at number twelve Grimmauld Place, Harry read in the smudged, but elegant, slanted script of the headmaster.

'You kept the note he gave you?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'I doubt Dumbledore would approve.'

'I can't leave the house, if someone finds that note they're already inside and it doesn't matter,' Sirius explained. 'When are we going to go?'

Harry considered it for a moment. He still needed to make sure he had a way to oust Umbridge, even if he could probably improvise a little bit when he had to.

'I don't know,' he answered finally. 'I need to find a way to sneak out without Umbridge or Dumbledore realising.'

'I'll be waiting,' his godfather nodded, grinning maniacally. 'I feel younger just thinking about doing this. It will be good to have some excitement again.'

'And to destroy that prophecy,' Harry reminded him.

'That too,' Sirius conceded. 'Have you heard about what's happening at the Ministry today?' 'No,' Harry shook his head.

'Since you should really know this stuff, and you seem to have a habit of finding things out anyway I'll tell you what the Order knows. You'll be a member soon anyway. Lily and James both were.' Harry felt a slight flare of guilt at the mention of his parents. He doubted they'd be very proud of him if they knew everything he had done and was about to do.

'What's happened?'

'Tonks, a cousin of mine, and our eyes and ears amongst the aurors, said Amelia Bones found a whole cupboard of dirty secrets and that the office has been working non-stop investigating them since yesterday. A lot of the Death Eaters and their allies have been forced out of the Ministry, though we lost a couple of our own too. It's the best thing that's happened since the Order was reformed, without those officials Fudge's grip is weakening, he lost a lot of supporters, Malfoy's the only one left with any real power, and he's under suspicion for the death of Rita Skeeter.'

'That's good,' Harry agreed. That cabinet had done a great deal more than he'd ever anticipated. It was a welcome surprise, and a warning that his plans might have serious, unexpected consequences if he wasn't more careful.

'Good?' Sirius grinned again, the lines around his eyes deepening. 'It's better than good! It means the Ministry might be about to wake up and realise what's happening before it's too late and Voldemort razes the place to the ground.'

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does! A Cadmean Victory has just gone past a million views today, so champagne for me!

55. The Caduceus

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's/

This is a shorter chapter I'm afraid, we're back to what used to the normal chapter length when the story started; there didn't seem much point trying to throw in a lot of filler to pad around a couple of important events before everything starts to kick off.

I've also corrected my blunder with the Fidelius Charm, I glossed over one of the key facts to do with the death of the secret keeper and misinterpreted how it works, but that should all be fixed now.

So this the next one!

Chapter 55

The return of the other students also meant that Harry's favourite target for legilimency practise had returned. He'd moved well beyond trying to cast the charm on him from his sleeve while his victim napped in front of the fire, and now, in the first free period following Arithmancy and Runes, Harry was proudly skimming the surface thoughts of the hapless Colin Creevey without needing anything more than brief eye contact.

Creevey didn't have a great deal to share except a growing dislike of potions, frustration and despair at his coming grade, so Harry switched targets, brushing at the edges of the minds of a scatter of the younger years who were brave enough to meet his eyes. Most of them were afraid of him, or at least very uncomfortable under his attention, so he gleaned next to nothing else from them. He did learn that one of them had been mysteriously abducted from Umbridge's office before he could have a nasty accident with some very corrosive liquids. Dobby was doing well.

A loud thump jolted him from his hobby and announced Neville's return from the library.

He'd acquired a very large book on magical cacti, presumably at the instruction of Professor Sprout, and proceeded to open it mumbling about mimbulus mimbletonia under his breath.

'Looking for something interesting?' Harry asked. He had a choice between finishing his Runes essay, something he'd rather not do at that minute, and finding excuses to distract himself. The latter seemed the more preferable of the two.

'Assyrian magical plants,' Neville replied absently, still flicking through the pages. 'There's supposed to be very special soil types that Hannah needs to survive.'

'Still calling it Hannah, then,' Harry laughed. 'Has she found out yet?'

'She's only been back for one night,' Neville frowned, 'who would have told her?'

'Professor Sprout,' Harry grinned. 'She's bound to mention the prized possession of her favourite pupil to the best Herbology student in her house.'

'Please stop,' Neville pleaded, looking very red and slightly faint. Clearly he hadn't considered that.

'That bad?' Harry smirked. 'Look on the bright side, now you know that she really will be flattered that you've named it after her. Professor Sprout will say nothing but nice things about Hannah, your Hannah, that is, the cactus.'

'How would you like it if I constantly teased you about Fleur?' Neville demanded, closing the book.

'I wouldn't,' Harry admitted, 'but you've rather missed the moment for that. Still, I'll stop, but only when you've asked her to Hogsmeade, otherwise I'll just get worse and worse.'

'That's the most horrible way to make sure I ask her out,' Neville muttered. 'You couldn't have just tried to convince me she would say yes, could you?'

'I don't think it would be as fun,' Harry remarked cheerfully. 'Do you know anything about runes, Nev?'

'Nothing that you don't know,' he shrugged. 'I don't even take the subject.'

'So I'll have to wait for Hermione to come down and start enthusing about her essay to figure what I might have missed out and can use to fill in the last inch or so,' Harry realised.

'I'm not sure she's done it yet,' Neville told him, lowering his voice. 'I heard from Ron that Lavender told him she was up all night. Apparently she had some kind of nightmare, she wasn't taking anywhere near as many notes as normal today; she must be tired. Ron's been pretty withdrawn too, I've only seen him voluntarily speaking to the guys in our dorm, Hermione and Lavender.'

'Ron's father died just before christmas,' Harry explained sombrely, thinking back to their Runes and Arithmancy classes. Hermione had looked more tired than usual, and he couldn't remember seeing Ron doing anything more than stare out the window morosely at breakfast and lunch.

Ron not eating must be a warning sign of something wrong.

'I didn't know,' Neville looked mortified.

'It's not exactly something to shout about is it,' Harry pointed out.

'No,' Neville said softly. 'It explains what he said to Romilda Vane, though.' Harry raised an eyebrow and Neville elucidated. 'She was asking about your adventures in the early years, Romilda's well known for having a bit of a crush on you. Ron told her that they're only adventures for the people who don't get hurt and walked off.'

'They're not adventures at all,' Harry commented, agreeing with Ron for the first time in a while. 'Too many people nearly died. Me, Ginny, Ron, Hermione and more. Calling them adventures is naive and thoughtless.'

Neville looked at him thoughtfully and then nodded slowly. 'Ron said pretty much the same thing to use afterwards.'

Harry returned to his Arithmancy essay, tapping his quill on the table and wracking his brain for anything else he might know about the divination of numbers.

Nothing immediately useful sprang to mind and he sighed, abandoning any last hope of managing to reach the length Professor Vector had prescribed to the class. Every essay she set seem just a little longer than anyone could realistically write about the subject for.

Neville had returned to flicking through his giant Herbology tome, frowning more and more deeply.

'Something wrong?' Harry inquired.

'I'm going to have trouble re-potting Hannah,' Harry stifled a laugh, 'the silica content of the soil has to be just right or it becomes too alkaline and she'll die.'

'Can't you just order some special soil from wherever it's native too?'

'Hannah comes from Assyria, but I guess I could,' Neville nodded. 'It's cheating really, you're supposed to make your own blend of soil types, but it would be better than letting her die.'

'What would Hannah think if you let her namesake wilt from neglect?' Harry grinned, rolling up his essay and tucking it into his bag. 'I'm going to go and give this to Professor Vector,' he announced. 'It's not due until tomorrow, but I don't want to see it anymore.'

'Fair enough,' Neville chuckled. 'I've got lots of things to research for taking care of Hannah, so I'll still be here for a while.'

'I might go for a walk down near the lake,' Harry told him. 'Don't wait for me or anything.'

'I wasn't going to,' Neville shrugged. 'I've got a DA meeting to do, the first one since everyone's come back.'

'Enjoy,' Harry smiled, knowing Neville genuinely did take pleasure in helping and teaching the DA members. He hoped that once it had served his purpose for him that it could be in re-instated officially. He was almost tempted to go just to make remarks to Neville about the plant Harry had bought him while Hannah was listening, but it wasn't worth putting up with the other students. They'd almost certainly try to rope him into teaching them something.

He passed Ron and Lavender talking just outside the portrait, and, unable to resist temptation, caught Ron's eye. The red-head looked away immediately, but Harry had long enough to glimpse a fragment of conversation with Hermione about her terrible taste in necklaces and the constant aching sadness that clouded his thoughts.

Harry hadn't really lied to Neville, he been a bit misleading, but he hadn't lied to his friend. That was a line he was trying not to cross if he could help it. The chamber was directly below the lake after all.

Glancing back down the stairs he caught Lavender's back disappearing into the passageway behind the Fat Lady. Binns wouldn't notice if he was absent from History of Magic should he not come back in time. Neville wouldn't say anything about Harry's absence.

'Hello, Myrtle,' Harry greeted calmly, glimpsing a flash of pearly white through the door of her cubicle. 'How have you been?' He asked, opening the chamber.

'Harry,' she floated shyly over. 'I've been ok.'

'Seen anything in the Prefect's Bathroom?' Harry inquired, smirking. He face went silver, and a slightly dreamy look came over her face. 'Actually, I'm not sure I want to know,' he decided playfully.

'Are you sure?' Myrtle looked disappointed.

'If you must tell me,' Harry smiled, 'then go on.'

'Cedric Diggory was in there yesterday when he came back after christmas. He had a really long bath,' Myrtle sighed, 'all the bubbles ran out.'

'You're incorrigible,' Harry grinned. 'Didn't he see you?'

'No,' Myrtle giggled. 'I can be sneaky if I want to.'

'Well no peeking on me if get made prefect next year,' he laughed, starting down the stairs.

'No promises, Harry,' Myrtle called after him. He could practically hear her blushing.

The Chamber of Secrets was colder than he expected and Harry was shivering by the time he had crossed the thorough the gaze of serpent effigies lining the hall to reach Salazar's study.

'Cold?' The painting asked.

'It's not warm down here,' Harry commented, casting a couple of warming charms over himself to remedy things. 'Why couldn't you have included a fireplace or something?'

'Where would I put a chimney for the smoke?' Slytherin countered.

'You're Salazar Slytherin,' Harry retorted. The founder gave him a flat look and shut his mouth before breaking out into a smile.

'Nobody's turned that line around on me since Godric got himself killed chasing myths.' He stroked the head of his snake, smiling nostalgically. 'Why have you come?'

'To learn, of course,' Harry responded dryly. 'And maybe discuss a few ideas with you.'

'Well if you want to learn something it would be best for it to be blood magic,' Salazar decided. 'That or you can try and improve your duelling skills.'

'Why not both?' Harry asked, gesturing at the time-turner.

'As long as you don't overuse it,' Slytherin agreed. 'You were using it too much last year, but we didn't have much choice to make sure you were skilled enough to survive. It would be best to only use it once or twice a week, just to avoid putting to much stress on your mind and driving you insane.'

'We wouldn't want that,' Harry agreed. 'Then there'd be two senile people in here.'

'That's why you should only use it sparingly,' Salazar quipped, 'best to only have one of you at a time.' Harry laughed at the retort, and sat down at the desk.

'Blood magic first,' he decided. 'I can learn in here for a bit, while future me practices wand motions outside.'

The founder nodded approvingly. 'Before we start on blood magic have you got anywhere with the mind arts?'

'I'm capable of utilising passive legilimency now,' Harry answered proudly. 'I haven't tried it on more than a handful of unprotected minds to avoid the risk of detection, but I can do it.'

'It shouldn't make too much difference,' Salazar shrugged. 'The connection is so faint and slight it takes a very competent practitioner to detect or prevent.'

'I noticed Dumbledore's,' Harry disagreed.

'You're naturally gifted at this branch of magic, all our family is, you're more than very competent.'

'Thanks,' Harry smiled. Most of the compliments he got from the painting were down to being a part of his bloodline and family. Salazar Slytherin had been a very family orientated man from what Harry could see. Proud too.

'The truth is the truth,' the portrait nodded. 'Now, blood magic. Do you remember what I taught you before.'

'You pretty much told me that it used blood as a medium and was often sacrificial based,' Harry summarised.

'I doubt I said it so simply and inelegantly,' the painting remarked snidely, 'but that is a very basic paraphrasing of a rudimental understanding.'

'I'm happy to listen to a more elegant definition,' Harry told him flatly, putting his feet on the desk. Salazar eyed his raised toes distastefully, but relented.

'Blood magic is any magic that uses blood as a medium, sacrifice or focus,' he explained. 'Most commonly it is used as a sacrifice, and a medium simultaneously. Not many wizards do more than dabble in such a dangerous branch of magic, but those that do normally utilise it for rituals, wards and enchanting.'

Fleur might find this interesting, Harry noted, wondering if he should tell her, or if she might be safer not messing with it.

'You're not listening,' the painting snapped.

'I was considering the applications to enchanting,' Harry retorted.

'You were thinking about Fleur Delacour again,' Salazar corrected, smiling softly despite the acid remark. 'You had that silly smile on your face.'

'I'm listening now,' Harry conceded, trying not to flush at the founder's remark.

'Good. Since it's such a powerful medium for magic, the most powerful and personal as far as we know, it can be used to create powerful wards, ones that only someone of the same blood can cross, such as those in this chamber, or ones that require a sacrifice of blood to bypass. The latter can be useful in creating traps, if your enemy thinks that spattering a bit of blood will grant him entry he might be tempted to risk it. Once he's within the wards a clever enough casting can leave him trapped or, two way wards that allow entry for everyone and exit for only one person are useful. I cast two sets over my home so that any attackers would be trapped between them for as long as I desired.'

'Can they be broken?'

'Blood magic wards are very powerful,' Slytherin responded, 'but yes, if you're of sufficient puissance then you can overpower the magic behind them and eradicate them. I wouldn't advise it, though. Anyone capable of creating blood magic wards is likely powerful in their own right, and since the magic is tied to their blood you'll be forced into a conflict of direct magical strength.'

'What about the wards tied to this chamber?' Harry inquired. 'How do they work?'

'The wards of this chamber are bound to my blood,' Salazar explained with a touch of pride. 'Only a parseltongue can open the entrances, and only someone of my bloodline can pass through the other wards. It's why you can apparate in and out of here, but nobody else can.'

'Except Voldemort,' Harry reminded him.

'Except Voldemort,' Slytherin admitted, 'but I doubt he would come here until it's worth the risk. He has nothing here that he cares for and no reason to come until he wants to enter the school. He never came back after leaving the school, not even at the height of his power.'

'What about portkeys?'

'Only someone of my blood can portkey here, though anyone who has seen the inside can create a portkey here.'

'What would happen if they tried?' Harry asked.

'I don't know,' Slytherin mused. 'Maybe you should get someone to try, just to find out. I suppose the portkey would just fail, or they might bounce off and arrive nearby. They might even vanish completely,' he enthused.

'Maybe another time,' Harry decided. He'd save playing with experimental magic until he no longer wanted to live a long and fulfilling life. 'How did you make the wards?'

'With great difficulty and over a very long time,' the painting replied proudly. 'I had to sacrifice something very dear to create them, I did it after my wife passed. We had matching lockets,' Harry's hand darted to the warm triangle of metal against his chest, 'my wife's went to my daughter, but I had to sacrifice mine to create these wards. It was the only thing I owned that I could use except my own life.'

'And apart from that?' Harry knew the founder would rather not talk about his wife and daughter too much. He still felt guilty for his sacrifice and the effect it had had on their lives afterwards.

'Every single protective spell I knew and could cast save the Fidelius Charm, which I considered trying to convert so that my bloodline would be permanent secret keepers, but the cost was already too high and I chose not to try.'

'I don't understand how you cast all these spells and then bind them to your bloodline,' Harry admitted.

'It's abstract magic,' Salazar agreed gently. 'You cast all the spells with runes rather than your wand, just as you did for the ritual to correct your eyesight. I drew a runic description of my intent within the confines of the chamber using my blood as ink, making it the medium and bond, and then combined with my intentional sacrifice that was enough.'

'I understand the concept,' Harry decided, turning it over in his head. 'I could probably draw the runes with a bit of help, but I'm not sure I would know what to do with the sacrifice.'

'As long as the value of what you're sacrificing is roughly proportional to what you're gaining then it will work. My locket was one of the last connections I had to my wife, losing it was painful, but protecting and aiding my future family was just as important, even if I personally valued the locket more highly than just about anything else.'

'I see,' Harry murmured. 'So if I wanted to create blood wards around a house to protect someone important to me I would have to sacrifice something of approximately equal value. I could use the ring Fleur gave me, then, to create more powerful wards than if I used my blood as the sacrifice.'

'Yes,' the painting agreed. 'Though if you only sacrificed the ring to create some effect unrelated to blood that would technically just be sacrificial magic, something Godric and I believed to be love based. It would also make no difference to the magic how great your sacrifice was once the maximum effect was reached. The ward you make can only be so strong, so there's a point at which sacrificing more makes no difference.'

'So how would I enchant something using blood magic?'

'That's the simplest use,' Slytherin answered quickly. 'The enchantments you place would simply be bound to your blood so only you and your descendants could safely use them, or use them at all. Using blood as a medium through which to create the enchantments would make them much stronger than normal too. Some of the most legendary magical artefacts made by wizards were likely made using a combination of sacrificial and a blood magic medium to create the desired effect.'

'A powerful sacrifice and a powerful medium to create the strongest possible enchantment,' Harry surmised.

'Exactly,' Salazar nodded. 'Though it would likely require a great deal of topical knowledge and a mastery of runes and relevant lore to have the understanding and intent required to create something quite so exceptional as those such artefacts.'

'The Caduceus is one,' Slytherin told him thoughtfully. 'It was seen in the classical era and earlier, but was lost after the fall of Rome. It was a staff of healing without comparison. Imagine a wand that was so powerful any healing spells cast through it were almost always successful. It was rumoured to be so strong that anything but death could be cured by a talented healer who possessed it. It was so famous it remains a part of non-magical mythology to this day.'

'Any others?' Harry asked, curious.

'A very long list,' Salazar smiled. 'I'll tell you about some of them in the future, but you have more important things to worry about now.'

'That's true,' Harry nodded. 'I can't think of a way to sneak out of here to the Department of Mysteries without running the risk of Dumbledore checking the wards and seeing I have left.'

'If you leave via the chamber he will not be directly alerted, but if he looks at the records at a later date it will be rather obvious.'

'So he has stop being headmaster for at least the time period in which I'm going to be away for,' Harry deduced.

'I believe so,' the founder agreed. 'You already have a plan to oust him, don't you?'

'Yes,' Harry agreed, 'but with the Minister losing power I don't know how long Dumbledore's exile will last.'

'Act fast,' Salazar shrugged. 'Get rid of him, the Ministry's replacement if you're certain she cannot be left in control, then go as soon as you are able.'

'I'll have to,' Harry responded. 'I'm sure that Fudge, the Minister, will jump at the chance to get rid of Albus Dumbledore and try and earn some credibility back, but his days are supposed to be numbered now, so I have little doubt the headmaster will be back if he wants to be.'

'If his martyr is here, he will want to be,' Slytherin replied darkly.

'No doubt,' Harry sneered angrily.

'Your godfather sounded willing to help you,' the painting remarked after a pause.

'It shouldn't be too hard to get in. If Dumbledore and Umbridge are gone nobody will be watching me and the only obstacle will be getting through the door into the Department of Mysteries.'

'You should ask Sirius Black about that,' Slytherin encouraged. 'If the Order of the Phoenix has been guarding the place all this time then they should be able to get in by now.'

'They better,' Harry nodded. 'Or I'll have to try and force my through. I could try the cloak,' he mused, 'but I'd still need to get rid of any physical barriers.'

'Yes,' Salazar agreed. 'Don't lose that cloak, Harry,' he warned seriously. 'That's a very rare and useful artefact, if it truly makes you and your magic undetectable to everything then you have something on a par with the Caduceus in your possession.'

'Really?'

'Oh yes,' Salazar nodded, staring curiously at the silvery cloak. 'It's not a story for now, you have enough on your mind for the moment, but in the near future it might be prudent for you to learn a little more about that cloak.' He adopted a faintly regretful expression. 'You should always know exactly how much something means to you.'

'It's the only thing I have from my father,' Harry said quietly. 'It's going to mean a great deal regardless of how useful it is.'

'Well I'm not advocating sacrificing it for any reason,' Slytherin said quickly, 'in fact I advise against for any reason other than to save your own life. It's likely very valuable.'

'How valuable?'

'Priceless,' Slytherin smiled ruefully. 'It's the sort of thing wizards spend lifetimes looking for.'

'How intriguing,' Harry murmured.

'Just don't lose it,' Salazar warned him sternly.

'I wasn't going to,' Harry grinned. 'I did wonder how good it was if it's capable of crossing age lines, the wards around Rita Skeeter's house and making me all but undetectable. Dumbledore did find me under it once,' he admitted though.

'Really?' Slytherin mused. 'That's quite an impressive feat, quite an impressive feat indeed. He may have outdone death.'

'He what?' Harry asked, perplexed.

'I'll tell you once this plan to do with the prophecy is completed,' Salazar promised. 'You need to keep your focus for now, not go chasing after obscure myths like Godric and I did.'

Considering Harry knew that both Salazar and Godric had been killed or consumed by their quests he was more than happy to listen to the painting. Unlike Dumbledore Salazar genuinely cared for his descendant and would have a good reason for waiting to tell him.

He reached for the time-turner, ducking his head through the thin gold chain. 'Any suggestions for what I should practice for my duelling?'

'Yes,' Salazar smiled. 'Try casting your Shield Charm and your silly butterflies simultaneously. If you can manage that then you'll have a very powerful defence to fall back upon.'

'How can I cast two pieces of magic at the same time?' Harry demanded. It sounded either impossible or useless since the intent behind one would be frail, rendering it fragile and pathetic.

'You can cast the Shield Charm wandlessly and wordlessly, yes?' Slytherin asked.

'More or less,' Harry answered. It wasn't quite as powerful when he cast without a wand, though it was faster.

'Then you have it down to a reflex already, a bit of practice casting both should allow you to combine the two spells into what will be effectively a single piece of defensive magic.'

Harry considered it. 'How is it any better than deflecting hexes from within the butterflies?'

'It's safer,' Salazar replied. 'You won't be able to attack, and it's less flexible than duelling while your animated defense protects you, but defensively it is stronger, should you need or want to weather a lot of spells in a short period of time then it may prove the best tactic.'

'I'll practise it,' Harry decided, flipping the turner several times.

'Practise chaining your wand motions too,' Slytherin added, as the room around Harry blurred and time spun backwards around him.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does, and I hope my explanation of blood magic and related areas wasn't too incomprehensible, explaining complex, abstract things is not as easy as I thought it would be!

56. The Difference a Patronus Makes

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter is here, a rare Fleur chapter!

Also, there might be some explicit moments in this chapter, so if you're easily offended, below eighteen (or whichever age is applicable), then read on at your own peril etc etc

Of course there may just be fruit again ;)

Chapter 56

Fleur had not missed Beauxbatons, not even when she left after her exams ended. The beautiful chateau with its, turrets, towers, galleries and stained glass windows was breathtaking. It clung to the mountains, poised delicately across the summit of a smaller peak, framed between the pine-covered sides of its larger neighbours. For all its spectacular splendour the castle had become cold to her, just as the students were.

She felt very sorry for Gabrielle. It was cruel that her little sister had to return here and watch as the galleries and gardens that had once housed such good memories were poisoned by solitude.

It would be worse for her softer, more empathetic sister than it had been for her. Gabby could not learn to stop caring, she would always know how those around her felt, and it would affect her for the entirety of her life.

When Fleur's friends had first begun to leave her behind, Gabrielle had come to take their place, when their distant pity had turned to jealousy, her sister's support had already been evident, and when they tried to avoid her because they disliked what she had become, Gabby had come to find her. Fleur would do her best to do the same, but there were so many other directions she was being pulled in at the same time.

'Your final exam was this morning,' her mother commented, drifting into the kitchen, bypassing the fruit bowl and it's collection of rather disappointing looking lemons. 'I take it that it went well since I find you down here, rather than being pent up in your room.'

'It went as well I needed,' Fleur shrugged elegantly, 'if not as well as I wanted.'

'Which one was it? Advanced Transfiguration and Conjuration?'

'Yes,' she nodded.

'It was never your strongest subject,' the older veela smiled, 'but you are still good at it.'

'It is more Harry's gift than mine,' Fleur agreed. She had only needed to conjure a goose and then transfigure it into a vase, a difficult, but standard request for the exam.

'He is better than you?' Her mother pursed her lips disbelievingly.

'Oh yes,' Fleur smiled faintly, recalling quite vividly the swarm of butterflies, a spell he had created himself, and the shattering of her Shield Charm. 'I could teach him years of lessons about enchanting and warding, but when it comes to transfiguring, duelling and likely most charms he will naturally exceed me.'

'At fifteen,' her maman muttered, shaking her head. 'At least you chose someone who would not be eclipsed by you,' she decided. 'If you are as successful this year as you have been every previous one then you will be Beauxbatons best student in almost two centuries.'

'It will only last until Gabrielle graduates,' Fleur laughed. 'She is determined to outdo me.'

'She will have plenty of time to study,' her mother said solemnly.

'Yes, she will,' Fleur agreed quietly, reminded of what she had been thinking of only moments before.

Her mother crossed the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee, waving her wand absentmindedly at different parts of the kitchen and waiting as her drink came to fruition in front of her. Gabrielle wasn't allowed to use magic to make her drinks anymore, she had a tendency to make mistakes which either made a vast mess or create an unstomachable concoction.

'Have you thought about what you will do now?'

'I have, maman,' Fleur told her, pulling her wand out to summon the letter she had received a few days ago down from her room. 'I applied to join the Bureau des Énigmes, and Gringott's offered me a job as a liaison between themselves and some of the private artefact recoverers.'

'Gringotts?' Fleur started in surprise when her father ducked into the room. She had expected him to be at work in Paris. 'That's an interesting coincidence.'

'You're home early, mon cherie,' her mother remarked. 'Was it a particularly good day, or a particularly bad one?'

'A good day,' he announced cheerfully. 'There was a miscommunication with whoever was arranging the portkeys for the other heads of departments and they all ended up somewhere in Sardinia rather than Paris. I was the only one missing from the meeting, so they had it without me.'

'Didn't you need to be present?' Her mother inquired.

'Oh not even slightly,' her father laughed. 'I'm the vice-président for the Bureau des Affaires Internationales, it was Henri who had to go and sort things out, I am glad that I am not the président. He had to cancel his entire afternoon in the vineyards and hurry off to somewhere in Sardinia while I did some interesting research on English magical nobility.'

'Papa,' Fleur admonished, frowning furiously at him. 'What sort of research?'

'Harry clearly has little knowledge of his family and its history,' her father responded seriously, 'he needs to know about things like this. You know how important it can be. I did a little bit of investigating though the outpost of Gringotts in Paris. The only wizarding bank is England is Gringotts, so they would have the most accurate records I could easily see.'

'The goblins do not share information on their clients for no reason,' her mother remarked, sipping her coffee.

'No,' her father replied hesitantly. 'I may have had to follow through the first steps of legal action against him to find out what I wanted.'

'You what?!' Fleur did not even try and resist the impulse to let herself change, but she was only halfway through shifting into her more dangerous form, before her father began to explain and she had to listen again.

'I didn't take any action, and the goblins will be discreet, they simply wanted me to have to pay them for the information by way of acting as legal advisors for a case that will never exist. I was rather hoping that you would invite Harry hear to join us. I expect he would like to learn this, and he should really be the first person I tell.'

'He is in school, papa,' Fleur reminded her father.

'He's been visiting you at all hours of the day throughout your suspension,' he chuckled. 'I'm sure he will come if you ask, especially if you tell him that it's about his family.'

'I will ask,' Fleur agreed. It would be nice to see Harry again, they hadn't done anything more than speak though the lockets she had enchanted since her exams had begun almost two weeks ago.

She wandered out of the kitchen, drifting up the stairs towards her room while she waited for Harry to respond.

'Fleur?' he answered inquiringly after a moment. 'I was about to go to one of my classes.'

'Can you come here instead?' She asked. 'I think it's important.'

He nodded, looking thoughtful. 'I doubt anyone will notice,' he agreed. 'Our teacher is a ghost, and his lessons are always impossibly dull.'

'You will likely learn more important history by coming here,' Fleur informed him, 'my father took it upon himself to investigate your family.'

'Oh.' Fleur knew that she had captured his curiosity. The stonework behind his head began to move past him more rapidly as he hurried towards the Chamber of Secrets. 'I will see you in a few moments,' he said by way of farewell. She smiled and tucked the locket back into her dress.

'He is coming,' Fleur announced to her parents, returning to the kitchen. There was a soft snap from the entrance hall as she finished speaking. 'He is here,' she corrected, smiling.

They stepped out of the kitchen into the hall to where Harry was standing, adjusting clothes that he had clearly just transfigured from his school robes.

'Nice try, Harry,' she laughed. He shot her a rueful grin, but didn't release the magic.

'Mr and Mrs Delacour,' he greeted cordially. His attitude towards her parents had warmed considerably since they stopped trying to pressure her into considering all the consequences of their relationship.

'Harry,' her mother smiled. Fleur's father inclined his head.

'Fleur told me that you'd been investigating my family?' There was the slightest edge to his curiosity, but she wasn't sure whether it was desire or displeasure.

'My interest got the best of me,' her father admitted. 'I was surprised to learn that you knew so little of your family and I took it upon myself to determine whether or not we might discover some unpleasant surprises when you turn seventeen.'

'Will we?'

'I made some inquiries though the Parisian branch of Gringotts,' he replied a little guiltily, 'they were helpful in some regards, but without your presence I could not discover everything I wanted to.'

'What did you want to learn?' Harry asked, leaning his head slightly to one side to better observe her parents.

'I'm going to have to explain a few things,' her father decided, running one hand over his stubbled chin. 'It might be easier to sit,' he suggested gesturing into the main room. Harry smiled and stepped through, taking a seat on Gabrielle's favourite sofa. The one with chocolate stains.

'Here in Europe things are done a bit differently than in Britain,' her father began taking a seat next to his wife on the sofa next to them. 'The German States, Spain, Italy and most countries have lost the majority of the noble families that ruled in the last two centuries. Traditions and practices have moved on and been modernised. France is split, but every year a few more old laws are overturned by the growing pro-modern majority.'

'I take it this is not the case in Britain,' Harry realised.

'No,' her mother smiled. 'As my husband is far too fond of mentioning, Britain has been the pre-eminent magical community for three centuries, only growing relatively stronger since Grindelwald massacred his way across the mainland.'

'You are concerned about the pure-blooded mantra of some noble houses?' Harry inquired.

'I am concerned about Britain's Dark Lord, but should he fall then the pure-bloods will fall with him. Britain's revolution has finally come, two centuries after France's, and the effects are still felt in this country.'

'My family is one of the old pure-blood houses,' Harry agreed, 'but not in any way associated with bigoted nonsense Voldemort uses to lure followers.'

'As a noble family in a traditionalist society I was worried about the existence of any agreements your family might have that you were unaware of,' her father explained. 'In France these practises have mostly died out, and those that do occur between the few surviving old pure-blood families are frowned upon. Those families are the ones that fled the disastrous attempts of Robespierre to unite magical and muggle societies under his control, and survived the war that followed. They are unpopular for abandoning their country to shelter in Britain, as most of France's magical families, including mine, were created during or afterwards that chaos and looked down on those that had not suffered as we did.'

'I take it these agreements still exist in Britain,' Harry concluded. 'What kind of agreements?' Fleur was waiting for the angry realisation that would come with her father's inevitably verbose, diplomatic explanation.

'They do, and can often be very specific and still binding even generations after they are created.' He rubbed his chin again and Fleur one he was thinking of a way to try and explain himself without insulting Harry's family.

'It is normal practice in Britain, and not unlikely that such agreements exist,' her mother stepped in, folding her hands in her lap. 'Since you are with Fleur, and my daughter seems quite determined that you are who she wants, we wanted to make sure she wasn't going to suddenly disappointed.'

'I don't understand,' Harry frowned.

'I went looking for several types of agreements,' Fleur's father informed her beau. 'First and foremost on my list was any outstanding, accepted offers of marriage between your family and any others.'

Harry paled, and shifted slightly closer to her.

'Were there any?' He asked eventually.

'I still do not know,' her father grimaced. 'The goblins would not help me on the matter without personally given proof that you were involved with a member of my family.'

A little colour returned to Harry's face. 'How likely exactly are these agreements?'

'Increasingly less, even in Britain, as the number of families decreases the interrelated families of high standing grow too closely related for such agreements to be made, and lesser magical families are rarely considered in them since they have little to offer worth a daughter or son of a powerful family.'

'That's good,' Harry smiled, relieved.

'I did ask the goblins to notify me of your house's political stance on the basis that my family might be drawn into any alliances or conflicts you have, but fortunately there are none still existing.'

'None?' Harry asked. 'You're sure.'

'Very,' her father replied immediately. 'There was an agreement of some kind with the Black family, but it was broken twenty years ago. That was the most recent.'

'If I went to Gringotts and asked about theses marriage offers would they tell me?' Harry inquired carefully.

'I was rather hoping you would ask that,' her father smiled triumphantly. 'Should I return with your company the goblins will be willing to answer almost all the questions I wanted answering before.'

'What were the other questions?' Harry grinned.

'I thought you might want to know what state your family's vaults were in, but they would only tell me that the majority of your assets were liquidated over twenty years ago, and they only told me that because I could legally inquire about any property your family owns.' Her father pulled a distasted expression. 'Goblins are very loyal and honourable creatures, but stubborn and cunning too. The reason I asked was because the goblins won't give you anything you do not ask for. They prefer to have as much wizarding wealth within their walls as they can manage, so if you know of any families that are related to yours that you might be able to lay claim to then you need to ask to receive anything.'

Sudden interest flared in Harry's eyes and he looked faintly thoughtful. 'I'm afraid I can only think of one family that I might have any claim to.'

'Only one?' Her father seemed surprised. 'The Potters are an old family, though not particularly prestigious until the fourteenth century when the last member of a very old and famous family married into their family and their status was suddenly elevated. They were originally from France, but were forced to choose a new name to escape the associations the other branch of their family made in Aguilar with the Cathar movement. It was a good thing they did.'

'The Cathars were rather prejudicially crusaded against in France and Italy over a century or so,' Fleur explained, familiar with this part of her father's lecture. 'They were a point where muggle religion met the magical world, and drew the ire of the Papacy for it.'

'Your family moved away and was forgotten long before the crusades of De Montfort,' Fleur's father continued, 'but they were renowned for being a neutral, conflict wary family for many years and consequently outlived and absorbed a lot of other magical families, some of which were quite prestigious. Eventually all the links with greater families made the Potters great too.'

'You were serious about inquiring about my family,' Harry commented.

'I actually already knew all of that,' her father admitted, abashed. Her mother laughed lightly. 'I have a long list of names that might yield something if the goblins are asked about their vaults, but they will only do it if you are present, and they won't actually do anything but register a request has been made until you're seventeen.'

'I see,' Harry nodded. 'So you would like me to accompany you to Gringotts?'

'I would,' her father answered only to freeze as a giant, silver eagle the height of a man suddenly burst into the room, flaring its wings to stop in front of Harry.

'There's likely nothing left.' It was Harry's voice that emanated from the bird, and her mother gasped staring at him with soft eyes. 'He suggests making a request just in case, but insisting it remain a secret.'

'That's your patronus?' Fleur's mother asked in a slightly strangled tone.

'Yes,' Harry nodded, a slight red tinge touching his cheeks.

'I didn't know you could send messages using your patronus,' her father remarked. 'How do you do it?'

'I don't know,' Harry grinned. 'I suspect I'll find out sometime in the next six hours though.'

He has a time-turner, Fleur realised.

It was the only thing that made sense. There was no other way he could send a patronus message to himself using a method he had not yet learnt. It didn't explain her mother's reaction to it though.

Fleur glanced pointedly at the kitchen, catching her mother's eye.

'We'll leave you two to talk about history,' Fleur's mother smiled. 'Try not to be too enthusiastic about it Laurent. These are the only conversations that explain how my youngest daughter ended up like she did,' she told Harry lightly.

'Beauxbatons,' Fleur said, catching Harry's raised eyebrow as she was stepping out. It was sweet of him to care about Gabrielle.

'What was wrong with his patronus?' Fleur demanded the moment she was sure they were out of earshot.

'Wrong?' Her mother asked, shifting uncomfortably. 'There's nothing wrong with it all, far from it. I fear we may have misjudged him horribly,' she admitted.

'And that is related to his patronus' form because?' Fleur pressed, sensing her mother was trying to evade actually answering the question.

'I suppose if he was willing to cast it where we would see, then he does not mind us all knowing,' her mother sighed. 'Do you remember what I told you about veela when I started teaching you how to control your veela magic?'

'Yes,' Fleur answered. 'Or at least most of it.'

'The you know the myth of the origins of veela is that they are the descendants of beautiful witches who were raised by Anzu, long extinct, magical birds.' Her mother gave her a pointed look, but Fleur didn't need it to realise what she was saying about Harry's corporeal patronus.

'It's an Anzu, but what does that matter?'

'In mythology the Anzu were used to denote the elements of fire and air, and the origin myth is likely a poorly interpreted reference to our magical affinities, but regardless of the real reason for its association with veela your boyfriend,' Fleur frowned at the immature sounding noun, 'has the strongest affinity to a creature synonymous with veela.'

'That's a good thing, surely,' Fleur responded.

'A good thing,' her mother made an odd choking noise. 'It's a fairly well known fact that a patronus often changes for dramatic emotional upheaval or change. Ask him if it has changed and you will understand or it will be irrelevant.'

Fleur pinched the bridge of her nose, frustrated with her mother's roundabout explanation. She was always this way when she thought that Fleur needed to work something your for herself.

'We're going to Gringotts,' her father called from the entrance hall. 'Do you wish to come, Fleur, Apolline?'

'Go,' her mother told her, 'and don't forget to ask.' She shot her mother one more frown before striding quickly into the entrance hall.

'Maman doesn't wish to come,' she announced. 'I can side-long apparate Harry,' she added, smirking slightly at the opportunity to make blush in front of her father.

'It's fine,' Harry assured her calmly, but the mild panic in his eyes gave away that he had guessed her plan.

'I insist,' she laughed, stepping close to him and wrapping her arms around his chest.

There was a quiet crack and they disapparated in front of Fleur's father's shocked face.

'Did you have to do that?' Harry complained.

'Yes,' she smiled. 'It was funny, and I wanted to ask you a question.'

'Ask away,' Harry sighed. 'I'm sure we have a moment while your father recovers from watching you throw yourself at me anyway.'

'I did not throw myself at you,' Fleur disagreed, despite knowing that was only one small set beyond what she had done. 'I like side-long apparating like that, don't you?'

'It is quite nice,' he conceded, smiling fondly at her.

'I wanted to ask if your patronus has ever changed,' Fleur told him.

He flushed ever so slightly and glanced around the street before answering. 'It might have,' he said eventually. 'It used to be a stag.'

There was a long pause where she stared at him, trying to figure out what her mother meant. 'Fine,' he sighed, the flush creeping further up his face, 'it changed in the last few months of last year and over the summer.'

Emotional upheaval, Fleur mused. Oh.

There wasn't anything she could say in response to his roundabout, indisputable confession, so she kissed him instead. Hard, dragging him close to her by the collar of his transfigured robes.

Her father, of course, chose that moment to apparate in next to him.

'Am I interrupting?' He inquired, taking every single iota of amusement he could from their embarrassment.

'I think she was about to let go of me,' Harry replied, touching his fingers to lips that were likely tingling just as much as hers.

'I was not,' Fleur disagreed, brushing his hand out the way and kissing him again, more softly. She didn't want to bruise her mouth too badly, not when she could keep him with her for the rest of the day.

Her father sighed, but he seemed much happier about them being together than he had before.

Mother told him, Fleur realised. She only wanted Harry to have to admit it to me.

There was some more evidence that Gabrielle's obsession with romance had not come from their father. She supposed that as long as her mother did not start demanding they kiss in the rain, and her help went as well as this, then Fleur didn't really mind.

'Shall we go,' her father suggested lightly once Fleur had realised a distinctly red-faced Harry.

They strolled across the street and into the marble-floored, slim-pillared colonnade of the Parisian branch of Gringotts. It was not as large as the main branch in London. Britain's Empire, trade dominance and magical superiority made them the centre of the global economy for long enough to have a permanent impact.

'Mr Delacour.' One of the older, more gnarled looking goblins stepped our from behind his desk to greet her father.

'I've returned with the aforementioned third party,' her father responded quietly.

'Ah,' the goblin smiled, displaying a rather impressively sharp seeming set of teeth. 'Step this way please.'

The goblin picked up a thin, black brief case and led them into a private meeting room a few paces along the corridor from his desk and closed the door.

'I am Nagnok, Mr Potter,' the goblin introduced himself, not offering a hand. Goblins did not particularly like wizards and disliked to be overly familiar with them, but then goblins disliked other goblins and anything that wasn't gold, silver, ancient, or valuable.

'A pleasure,' Harry answered coolly, not at all put off by the staring goblin.

'I assume that you are here to verify Mr Delacour's questions are legitimate inquiries,' the goblin said snapping open the case he had brought with him.

'I am.'

'I take that this is the daughter with which you are involved,' the goblin glanced dismissively at her. Harry's eyes narrowed but he nodded.

'Don't ask her to prove it,' she heard her father murmur under his breath. Harry chuckled, obviously overhearing as well.

'Then I can conclusively answer your questions,' Nagnok announced. 'Here is a list of the current accepted marriage offers for the Potter family.'

He passed it to Harry who scanned it tentatively.

'What does it say?' Fleur asked nervously. If she needed to go and immolate some British witch then she needed her name.

'Katie Bell,' Harry said solemnly.

Fleur's heart plummeted.

Harry burst out laughing. 'The look on your face,' he turned the piece of parchment over, 'it's blank.'

For a long moment Fleur was torn between the equally strong urge to burn him to cinders for making her worry and joking about something so important, or kissing him repeatedly just because he was still hers.

'You can set fire to him later,' her father commented, trying and failing to conceal his own smile.

'Can I enquire about the current status of my family's assets?' Harry asked Nagnok.

'You may,' the goblin smiled.

'Will you tell me when I do?' Harry continued, unfazed.

'I will,' Nagnok's smile grew.

'Then consider that my enquiry,' Harry responded firmly.

Nagnok turned back to his case and the pile of documents within, shuffling through them, before nodding and turning back to face Harry.

'As I am not the account manager for your family, and not authorised to share the explicit details without their express permission I can only tell you that the majority of the assets your family held were liquidated by Charles Potter to try and limit losses in the escalating wizarding war, but after his death James Potter spent all but a small fraction of it. Since then there have been a multitude of wills bequeathing small amounts to you and no further action other than to maintain your trust fund.'

'Are there any further details you could share?' Harry asked. Fleur had to agree with him. Without knowing the size of the fraction or how wealthy Harry's family had been he could have anywhere from a fortune to a pittance.

'I can tell you that your trust fund cannot possibly be exhausted under any circumstances, but if you truly tried you would come close to wiping out half your family's remaining fortune.' Nagnok smirked, clearly not expecting Harry to be able to do anything with the information.

'Thank you,' Harry responded politely. 'I would ask that you investigate any claim I might have to these vaults.' Her father passed him a handwritten list from under his arm. Harry frowned and added a single name to the bottom. Fleur didn't need to guess to know which.

Nagnok looked faintly surprised, but scanned the list of names. 'I can say with almost utter certainty that any claim you have to the assets of theses family will avail you nothing. I know the names of most of Gringotts oldest clients, whom these families would definitely be among, and only the last has anything stored within our walls. In accordance with your request I can inform you that the vault in question is little more than the remnants of an unpaid dowry.'

'That is more than I hoped for,' Harry replied earnestly. 'Make sure that inquiry remains discreet,' he instructed. 'I would prefer that nobody outside of ourselves learnt of it.'

'I understand, Mr Potter,' the goblin smirked nastily. 'It might cause a bit of a stir.'

'Exactly,' Harry nodded. 'Will you comply?'

'Of course,' the goblin looked mildly affronted. 'We do not share our clients secrets without good reason.'

Nagnok ushered them out, while Harry endured the curious stare of her father.

'Which family did you add?' He asked eventually, unable to resist. Fleur could only imagine how much it must vex him that he had missed someone off his genealogy.

'If I tell you,' Harry said slowly, 'you must swear not to tell another soul, including your wife and Gabrielle.'

'That seems a little drastic,' Fleur's father frowned.

'Perhaps,' Harry agreed, 'but as I know you are aware the British media has a fondness for misrepresenting facts about me.'

'You have my word,' her father decided, 'but I will tell my family if I think it will affect them.'

'I can accept that,' Harry nodded. 'The name I added was Slytherin.'

Her father stopped dead in the street.

'Are you serious?' He sputtered. 'That's not mentioned in any of the books at all.'

'I have good reason to believe it,' Harry assured him quietly, 'very good reason.'

'Parselmouth,' her father realised. 'The Daily Prophet mentioned it, but I assumed it was simply rumour-mongering.'

'It was one of the few things that they got right,' Fleur said dryly. 'Shall we go back before Harry is recognised?'

She didn't wait for anyone to respond and jumped at Harry, who instinctively caught her, stepping backwards under the sudden weight. Fleur wrapped her legs around his waist.

'That's me throwing myself at you,' she murmured, apparating them home.

They collapsed in the entrance hall, Fleur still wrapped around him.

'How do I always end up on the bottom?' Harry complained.

'Magic,' Fleur replied wryly, untangling herself from him.

'That would explain it,' he smiled, standing up. 'I should return to school, curfew comes soon.'

'You could simply stay until the morning,' Fleur suggested, throwing a challenging look over her shoulder at her mother who was watching from the end of the hall.

'Only if your parents are ok with it,' Harry decided, 'and I will still have to apparate back briefly, just to make sure I can send the patronus.'

'I'm ok with it,' her mother agreed, just as her father appeared behind them with a crack. 'Laurent will be as well, Harry.' Fleur smirked, she knew her parents would let her, if only because they knew she would simply sneak him back in anyway or do anything they were afraid of happening elsewhere.

'Thank you, Mrs Delacour,' he smiled.

'No,' Fleur's mother shook her head, 'Apolline, please. Fleur has decided that you are a part of this family and I agree with her.'

The difference a patronus makes, Fleur thought happily.

'I'll be back in just a moment,' he grinned, 'though it will feel like hours for me.'

Fleur chuckled, evidently he was going to use the time-turner.

'Harry is staying until the morning, papa,' she told her father, as her beau vanished almost silently.

Fleur's father eyed her resignedly. 'I would get Binky to make up one of the spare rooms, but something tells me it will be a waste of time.' Fleur smiled innocently. 'I console myself in the knowledge that Gabrielle will likely be far far worse than you.'

'She takes after her father,' her mother chuckled, 'mischievous and charming, but I hope she spends less time chasing the opposite sex than you did.'

'I only chased one girl,' her father defended. 'And she cruelly rejected me for years.'

Harry returned appearing suddenly on top of Fleur's left foot. She gently pushed him off and gestured upstairs, leaving her parents to reminisce about their own romance.

'Do you have a spare room I can stay in?' Harry asked. 'Of course you do,' he laughed, 'you live in a chateau.'

'No,' Fleur smirked.

'You don't?' Harry looked slightly confused, then he saw her smile and realised what she meant, flushing violently.

'I suppose I can live with that,' he decided. He eyed the bed with equal parts apprehension and anticipation. 'You don't snore, do you?' Harry grinned.

'Of course not,' Fleur dismissed. 'Sometimes I get cold, though,' she added coyly, 'it's probably because I like to sleep in as little clothing as possible.'

Her teasing had the desired effect, but only for a moment as he suddenly seemed to remember something and turned serious.

'I'm going to have to act soon,' he told her.

'Not now,' Fleur decided, silencing him by pressing her finger to his lips. 'You can tell me all about that in the morning.' She flicked her wand at the door, shutting and locking it. 'I've missed kissing you,' she murmured, slipping her hands into his hair. 'I've missed being able to do this as well,' she teased, pushing herself close against him and enjoying every inch of his reaction to her closeness.

Fleur trailed the fingertips over her right hand down his neck and over his chest, moaning slightly as he kissed her and traced his tongue over her lower lip. Harry let his hands slide to her hips, pulling her into him as he kissed her back, letting the warmth of their contact burst into a smouldering heat that emanated from his eyes in heart-melting waves and shivered through her body in searing jolts of pleasure.

She'd never wanted anything quite so much as she wanted to feel him against her in this instant.

A brief flare of blue sparks scorched his robes from his torso, letting Fleur's fingers slip over his skin as the transfigured robes reverted and fell from his shoulder. It was so much more satisfying than touching him through his clothes that she almost gasped in relief.

Harry's hands were drifting under her top, a provocative heat that slid up her back and round over her stomach to brush teasingly along the sensitive underside of her breasts. The sensation was maddeningly arousing, feeding the flames of her desire with each unfulfilled promise of further pleasure.

Fleur kissed him harder, flicking her tongue into his mouth, touching its tip teasingly to the end of Harry's. Her fingers drifted lower, tracing the outline of his abdomen as they dropped dangerously low, provoking him as he was her.

She could feel how much he wanted her, she could feel it pressed against her, in the desperation of his kisses and the way he wanted to touch every inch of her, but his hands never did more than stray close to where she most wanted to be touched.

His fingers slid upwards over stomach again, drawing searing hot lines over her skin, and this time she leant into the contact, stifling a gasp into Harry's mouth as his fingertips brushed over her rigid nipple.

It broke the last of his reluctance to touch her, and somehow her top was gone and his hands moving over every part of her, his kisses trailing down her neck. Fleur moaned once as his lips brushed the hollow of her throat, then twisted him around over her on the bed, biting her lip when his kisses ghosted across her chest.

She twisted her hands in his hair, pressing her lips together as his tongue traced soft circles around her areola. Her need for him was growing unbearable. Harry's lips came up to kiss her even as she scorched away the last of their clothes.

Fleur didn't need to tell him what she wanted next.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to all those who do! I've never actually tried writing anything like the last part before, normally I just hint and move on, so I'm interested in what you all thought of it. I'm also a little unsure of the rating rules, it's a little ambiguous given what I've read on here and what they seem to imply.

P.S. Someone wanted me to explain how the time-turners in this fic work, so here goes. You put it around your neck, you turn it however many times, then you are physically transported backward in time and exist alongside your past self. Events continue until the loop ends and only one version of the traveller exists. It can get more complicated with multiple loops, but I'm avoiding that. In other words, it's just like in canon, only I've written it so we see the effects from a different perspective than watching the time loop happen directly. In this chapter, to pick it apart as an example, Harry receives his patronus message, thus he knows it has to be cast by the other version of himself and understands he has to travel back in time and send the message for things to happen as he will want them to. He apparates out of the chateau, uses the time-turner to travel back a few hours and talks with Salazar, then he casts the patronus spell. He has to wait in the chamber (or do something more useful than just sit around) until the time he knows he will leave the chateau to and use the time-turner. At which point he can then apparate to back France, closing the loop of time he has created and continuing on. Simple :)

P.P.S. Anyone who wants to debate about me with this should PM me and be prepared, because I find the concept fascinating and will message you endlessly about it if you show any interest ;)

57. The First Domino

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Today's chapter has been posted...

Chapter 57

'Where are your clothes?' The portrait remarked, suppressing its laughter to an entertained smile.

'They had an accident,' Harry replied ambiguously. He did not want to explain exactly what kind of accident to his ancestor, the memory of Fleur's hands burning through his clothes and hers was private, very private.

'Why didn't you conjure or transfigure something?' Salazar asked, continuing to press the subject with the same soft, amused smirk.

'I did in the morning, but it's easy to change here when I'm apparating back anyway,' Harry shrugged, pulling on a fresh set of school robes.

'You might want to take a look at your neck,' Slytherin sniggered, revealing his agenda at last. 'Had a close run in with a toothless vampire, did you?'

Harry flushed red and used Sirius' mirror to check. Now that the founder had so delicately reminded him he did remember Fleur's lips and teeth on his neck and shoulder on several separate occasions.

A vivid crimson mark, dulling to purple at its centre, sat proudly under his jaw line, while a scatter of similar, smaller ones trailed along his collarbone underneath. Harry stared at them, torn between scowling and smiling. He liked the marks, enjoyed the visible proof that he was hers, but it was rather too visible to everyone else as well.

Fleur had to have seen it in the morning, when they were talking, but she hadn't said a word about them to him. Not that that particularly surprised him, she would enjoy knowing that she'd left her mark on him to show the world he belonged to her.

He raised the tip of his wand to his neck, the incantation to remove and heal minor injuries on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

He conjured himself a scarf instead, wrapping it gently around his neck to conceal the bite mark while Salazar laughed uproariously at his decision to keep them behind him.

'That does explain why you didn't come back to speak to me,' he smirked, still eyeing Harry's neck. 'Do Fleur's parents know what you've deflowered their daughter?'

Harry smiled a little at the play on words, but his amusement vanished with a groan upon realising that the marks must have been visible the entire time this morning, including when he had thanked Fleur's parents for letting him stay.

At least Gabrielle wasn't there, he consoled himself.

'I'll take that as a yes,' Salazar smirked.

'It isn't funny,' Harry grumbled. 'How I am I supposed to look either of them in the eye now? They'd only just started to accept me.'

'I'm sure that you'll manage,' the painting commented, still amused. 'Now what did you learn from Gringotts?'

'The fortune of my family was mostly spent in the war with Voldemort by my father,' Harry said bluntly. 'The vaults that I might have been able to claim from connected families do not exist, save for one under your name, but I received the impression it is a meagre amount.'

'Were there any alliances, agreements or such?' Slytherin asked. 'Gold can be earned, stolen or won. Your word is more important. It can often only be kept.'

'None that are still binding,' Harry smiled.

'That is good,' Salazar smiled, petting his serpent in good humour. 'You are free to carve out your own path.'

'Once Voldemort is dead,' Harry reminded him.

'Well, yes,' the founder agreed. 'There's no avoiding that, but you have come so far from the weak, thin child who first came into my study and couldn't even recognise his most famous ancestor.'

'I'm still not strong enough,' Harry disagreed.

Salazar laughed. 'You are powerful, you are driven, you are fast, you are cunning and you are ruthless when it is required. In two years you have transitioned from a child to a wizard that any opponent would have to take seriously to survive. You have another two years before your magic reaches its peak, Voldemort will not wait, but he will underestimate you, and when he does you will be there to bring his delusions crumbling down around him.'

'You're very confident,' Harry remarked, not half so sure of his victory as the founder seemed to be.

'You underestimate yourself as much as your enemies, Harry,' he said proudly. 'There is no reliable scale by which to compare wizards and witches, but I can assure you that there are few who are as talented in so many different branches of magic as you are.' He pulled a vaguely amused expression at Harry's disbelief.

A silence fell over the study as Harry extricated the Marauder's Map from under his cloak, and studied it briefly, searching for one particular name.

'Fudge will be desperate now,' Harry murmured aloud, still scrutinising the map. 'He'll act as soon as he can if he thinks it might save him from having to resign.'

'Fudge?' Salazar looked every bit as mystified as Gabrielle had when he'd explained that Fudge was a person, and that Britain's Ministry was not run by animated confectionery. Not that you'd be able to tell the difference in some places.

'The Minister for Magic, he's clinging to power by a thread, but determined not to let go at any cost from what I know of him. The moment Umbridge gives him hope of a lifeline he will seize the rope with both hands.'

'You intend to hang him with it?' Slytherin inquired.

'I do not care what happens to Fudge,' Harry shrugged. 'His desperation makes it the perfect moment for me to act, and the chaos of his dismissal will cover the few traces I leave. Nobody will be looking very hard for an unpopular former undersecretary when Voldemort has just returned and war looms.'

He finally spotted the name he was searching for, the girl was walking towards the Owlery. Harry would be hard-pressed to catch her if she didn't dally, but he couldn't have chosen a better place to come across Marietta Edgecombe if he tried.

'I'm leaving,' he decided, tucking the map into his robes, and turning on his heel to sprint up to Myrtle's bathroom.

'Clearly,' Salazar replied distantly and dryly.

Harry cast every charm he knew that would conceal him, as he ran up the stairs to the entrance, hissing at it to open. Silencing spells to hide the sound of his footsteps, the Disillusionment Charm to render him invisible, and a weak compulsion to encourage students to step away from him and clear his way.

He banished the water on the floor across the bathroom with a flick of his wand as he hurtled across the floor and into the corridor. Harry didn't need to be leaving disembodied footprints behind him.

The Owlery was a good ten minute walk from the chamber, but Harry hoped he could run it in just a couple. Marietta had been about a minute away from the tower when he had found her, so he should make it in time if he hurried.

Sprinting along the corridor, he chose to slide down the rail of the stairs rather than run and risk falling into a trick step in his haste, but the stairs shifted away from where he needed to go. Cursing under his breath he cast a Cushioning Charm on the steps below and jumped.

The impact jarred his knees painfully, and he winced as pain lanced up from the bottom of his feet, but he had made it onto the stairs he needed to be on and ran on regardless of the discomfort.

Classrooms flashed by. Ancient Runes passed in a blur, the Advanced Arithmancy class he intended to go to next year went past in single snatch of Professor Vector's strict voice, then he was past Trelawney's lair and gasping by the entrance to the Owlery.

In the moments he needed to catch his breath in the empty corridor he dispelled his disillusionment to check the Marauders Map for nearby names.

We're the only two.

He reapplied his invisibility, just in case someone checked Marietta's memories or attempted to use legilimency on her.

The red-haired Ravenclaw was humming to herself as she watched her owl fly from the window, probably to her mother in the Ministry if what he had overheard about her from Cedric and Neville was true.

Stepping close behind her he flicked his wand into his palm and pointed it at the back of Marietta's head.

'Imperio,' he whispered, even though the silencing charms prevented her from hearing him.

She stopped humming immediately, absorbing the desires he had focused on while casting the charm, and freezing upright.

Harry watched curiously as she smiled to herself, relaxed and then turned to leave the tower. He couldn't tell whether she was under the influence of his spell or not, so he followed her at a distance.

Her route led straight to Umbridge's office and Harry turned away with faint smile. The first of his dominoes was falling, now he just had to get back to Gryffindor Tower in time for the Pink Professor to come and round up those she deemed ringleaders after she found the list.

He ended all the spells he had cast upon himself, sneaking around was the last thing he needed to do now.

Harry wandered swiftly back towards the common room, trying to ignore the excitement that was growing within him. He'd been waiting so long for this to happen, and now it would finally begin.

Fleur had advised him to be patient, after berating him for not mentioning anything during the last week and a half while she had had exams. It hadn't felt fair to distract her from something so important to her. This was Harry's plan, she didn't need to be worrying about it while taking the most important tests of her life.

She had at least promised to not try and accompany him to the Department of Mysteries. The last thing he needed was her getting caught or hurt in Britain where she would be vulnerable to the bigotry of their society.

He smiled at the Fat Lady, cheerfully announcing the pass phrase and ducking through the passageway.

The study tables were full, and Harry spied Neville, Ron and Seamus labouring at one, all pestering Hermione for her assistance.

Harry chose to sit with Katie, Alicia and Angelina instead, just to make a statement about how he felt over them forcing Katie to avoid him. Their identical boyfriends were also present, but when Harry sat down they nodded at him stiffly rather than greet him as warmly as they had used to.

'Hi, Katie,' Harry smiled, squishing in next to her so they were pressed together from knee to shoulder. 'That doesn't look very interesting,' he commented, glancing at her transfiguration essay.

'It isn't,' she agreed, perking up at his arrival much to the irritation of Angelina and Alicia who sighed and shook their heads. 'Hush you two,' Katie remonstrated. 'You're leaving at the end of this year, and Harry will be my closest friend.'

'Am I not already your closest friend?' Harry asked, wiping away imaginary tears.

'No,' Katie beamed, patting him on the cheek. 'You're not cute or female enough.'

'Well that seems sexist,' Harry remarked. 'Do you want help?'

'With NEWT level transfiguration,' Alicia smirked, 'that's sweet of you Harry, but Katie's one of the best in our year.'

Concentrating very hard Harry flicked his wand out and conjured a black butterfly out of the air, sending it to flutter around the heads of the three girls. Angelina and Alicia looked shocked, but Katie just eyed the insect warily.

'Sure?' Harry grinned, directing the butterfly to land on Katie's face with his wand.

'Get it off, Harry,' she growled, swiping at it until it burst into a wisp of black smoke. 'Did you conjure that from the air?' Katie asked, once she was sure the offending insect was definitely dead and gone.

'Yes,' Harry answered with a touch of pride. 'Figured out how last year.'

'I remember,' Katie scowled, 'you showered the table in them at lunch. They couldn't fly properly.'

'That was then,' Harry smiled. He conjured another pair wordlessly, summoning the full swarm non-verbally was still beyond him, but he could manage a small scatter. 'What shall I turn them into?'

'Earrings,' Angelina suggested.

'A boyfriend for Katie,' Alicia joked pointedly, earning an angry look from Katie.

Harry briefly considered listening to Angelina's sensible, non-provocative idea, then decided that Alicia probably deserved something for being cruel to his friend and turned them both into large spiders that just happened to fall onto the girl's lap.

Ron swore loudly from the other side of the room and Alicia shrieked, brushing them off and leaping out of her seat, which Katie promptly stole half of.

He laughed, then transfigured them into a pair of glass earrings in the shape of broomsticks. 'They'll vanish in a few hours,' he told Angelina, who had picked them up to admire them, 'but until then they're yours.'

'Will you turn them into spiders if I put them on? She asked, as Alicia squished back in where she had been sitting.

'Not as long as you don't try and do anything Katie doesn't want you to,' Harry answered amicably.

Angelina regarded him warily for a moment, then put them on, and Harry returned his wand to his sleeve.

'They look nice,' Alicia decided hesitantly. 'Would you make me a pair?'

Harry favoured her with a smile, knowing what she really meant, and flicked his wand back out to conjure a second and third pair into existence.

'Now you can all have matching quidditch earrings for a few hours,' he grinned. 'The magic will probably wear off before the novelty does.'

Katie looked up from her essay, which had grown by at least an inch in the last few minutes, to inspect her pair. She poked them around on her palm with the tip of her wand.

'These are really good,' she congratulated him. 'I guess you might be able to help me after all.'

Harry's I told you so moment was curtailed by the distinctively irritating cough of Professor Umbridge and the hush that fell over the common room in its wake.

The Pink Professor was smiling gleefully, flanked by two wizards Harry didn't recognise but knew to be Ministry aurors from their badges. He knew instantly that his plan had worked, because, clutched with triumphant possessiveness in one pale, stubby-fingered hand, was the list he led her to find.

'Mr Potter, Mr Longbottom, Miss Granger and Mr Weasley,' she simpered victoriously, 'you will all be accompanying me to the Headmaster's Office.'

'What for?' Ron called loudly.

'We will be discussing your expulsion,' Umbridge answered sweetly, and a murmur of discontent rippled around the room.

Harry stood up, patting Katie reassuringly on the cheek in payback for her earlier gesture. 'I suppose we'd better go and find out what this is actually about,' he shrugged. He cast a warning glance at the other's as he turned around, trying to convince Ron to stay quiet before he gave anything away.

The aurors said nothing, but stepped out to walk on either side of the group as Umbridge gleefully clicked her luridly pink heels way down the stairs towards the Headmaster's Office.

The others had either taken his warning to heart or realised it was best not to say anything, because the journey remained silent until they reached the already open entranceway.

'Wait here,' Umbridge instructed, disappearing up the stairs with their escort.

'Don't say anything,' Harry ordered the instant she was out of sight.

'She has the list,' Neville fretted.

'Someone must have betrayed us,' Ron decided, and Neville's eyes caught ablaze in anger. 'We'll soon see who it was, Hermione's jinx will make it pretty clear.' The girl in question remained unusually quiet.

'The list isn't dated,' Harry told them, 'at the moment there's no proof we've done anything except sign up the day before joining became illegal.'

Ron's mouth gaped in surprise, then clapped shut and spread into a relieved grin. 'Clever,' he admitted grudgingly.

'It might not be enough,' Neville warned, still enraged that one of their friends had betrayed them. 'There are aurors here, it must be more serious than just an illegal club.'

You don't know how right you are, Nev, Harry thought, ignoring the slight upwelling of guilt at being the responsible party.

He could keep Neville and Katie from trouble by declaring no meetings had taken place since the sheet was signed. The name of the group would condemn Dumbledore either way. Everything now hung on the headmaster's reaction.

The excitement climbed another notch inside him.

'Come up,' Umbridge ordered, no longer accompanied by her two aurors.

Dutifully the four of them followed her up the spiral staircase, Hermione looked pale, especially with the rings under her eyes, and was biting her lip nervously. Ron looked faintly determined and Neville still looked furious.

Harry hadn't been to the Headmaster's Office since the end of last year, but it had hardly changed. The silver instruments still spun, twirled and swirled on the shelves, and Fawkes still perched over the desk, Harry was fairly sure the bird was eyeing the bowl of lemon drops.

'The Minister will be here shortly,' he heard Umbridge breathe in her most girlish voice yet, 'to pass sentence on these miscreants and expel them from this institution for good.'

'I'm here, Dolores,' Fudge announced, fidgeting in front of Dumbledore's impassive stare.

'I'm afraid,' the headmaster remarked softly, standing up from his seat, 'that you have me at a loss Cornelius.'

'Oh I'm sure I do, Dumbledore,' Fudge crowed. 'We'll deal with Potter and his co-conspirators after we get to the heart of the matter.'

'Of course, Minister,' Umbridge simpered. 'At the suggestion of one of Hogwarts' more conscientious students I discovered this.' She proffered the piece of paper to Fudge who accepted it timidly. 'I have been aware of this group for sometime, but I did not even begin to suspect what we were truly dealing with.'

'Dumbledore's Army?' Fudge gasped, paling and glancing from the list, to Harry, to Dumbledore and back again. The headmaster's expression remained unreadable.

'Exactly, Minister,' Umbridge pulled a sickly smile across her flabby features. 'It's obvious what has been happening here, Potter and his friends have been recruiting to assist Albus Dumbledore in subverting the minds of young witches and wizards. He's been filing their heads with his nonsense and lies while he schemes to steal your seat.'

Fudge was rendered speechless, and Harry rather suspected that it had not been obvious at all to the Minister. For the first time he was quite grateful to Umbridge. His plan had nearly crumbled under the Minister's obtuseness.

'Well,' he breathed, spinning his hat in his hands, 'well. You four will have to be expelled for your part in running a clearly illegal organisation.'

'Illegal?' Dumbledore interjected calmly before Harry could, shooting him a warning glance. 'This list is dated from before the relevant educational decree was passed, it's existence is not proof of anything at all.'

How he had managed to read it upside down at such a distance confused Harry until he realised that Dumbledore was maintaining eye contact with the Minister.

How clever, Harry admired.

'I suppose that hardly matters,' Fudge dismissed, dropping the list, 'your crimes are far worse, Dumbledore.'

Umbridge spared no seconds in retrieving her precious proof, tucking inside her cardigan possessively. Harry smothered a smile, clearly the command he had conveyed to Marietta to imply that the list was much more important than it seemed had come across perfectly.

'My crimes,' Dumbledore mused evenly, as if their existence remained a complete and utter mystery to him.

'You've been plotting against me,' Fudge cried. 'Raising an army to overthrow the Ministry by manipulating The-Boy-Who-Lived and your students.' Harry blinked, he seemed to have gone from criminal to victim in the span of a few sentences.

'Indeed I have,' Dumbledore agreed pleasantly. Harry tried his hardest to look as horrified as the other three, but he was sure that the expression hadn't convincingly materialised on his face.

'That's a confession,' Fudge blustered. 'You will be taken into custody, formally charged and then sent to Azkaban to await a trail.'

Well, Harry mused, that's more than Sirius got.

'That sounds awfully tedious, Cornelius,' Dumbledore said gently, 'I can think of a very long list of things that I would rather spend my time doing. Are you sure you want to insist on this foolishness?'

Fudge sputtered in surprise. Apparently there had been several leaps of assumption made between the Headmaster's Office and Azkaban, one of which being Dumbledore's acquiescence. Harry didn't care either way. Albus Dumbledore would not be headmaster of Hogwarts whether he was taken to the Ministry and charged or whether he chose to flee. The first of his dominoes had fallen successfully.

'Dawlish,' Umbridge snapped, her smile gone, and a horrible, angry, crimson flush rising steadily up her neck. The colour clashed nastily with her cardigan.

One of the aurors, an average looking mad in a grey coat, shifted casually, his hand drifting innocently towards his chest.

'Don't be silly, Dawlish,' the headmaster smiled kindly. 'I remember you being an excellent student and I'm sure you are a fabulous auror, but if you do something foolish I will not feel responsible for the consequences.'

'Do you intend to duel the Minister, myself and two aurors?' Umbridge demanded shrilly.

'Only if you are insistent upon continuing with this madness,' Dumbledore responded, his tone hardening for the first time.

'We're not intimidated,' Umbridge responded. Fudge was noticeably silent.

The grey-coated auror's hand shifted another inch and suddenly Dumbledore's wand was in the air, a succession of blinding flashes filling the room, blinding everyone.

Harry glimpsed Dawlish go flying backwards, even as Umbridge and Fudge crumpled either side of him. He suppressed the instinct to draw his own wand, listening intently for any sounds as he struggled to blink the spots from his vision.

There was a crash, the sound of shattering glass, then silence and Harry was treated to the sight of the four Ministry officials spread across the floor. A trickle of blood crept down the forehead of the auror whose name Harry did not know. The shelves behind Dumbledore had been destroyed, the delicate silver instruments strewn in pieces across the floor.

Fawkes trilled regretfully, and Dumbledore tucked away his pale wand, frowning at the destruction of his office.

'They will be awake soon,' he said evenly, as if the events that had taken place were no more than a slight disagreement.

'Will you go back to the headquarters?' Ron blurted.

Grimmauld Place, Harry realised.

He hoped not, Dumbledore's presence there would set him back again, he'd have to find a new way into the Department of Mysteries and Sirius might not be able to keep the secret from the headmaster if he was around to use legilimency.

'No.' Dumbledore shook his head and Harry breathed a quiet sigh of relief. 'I will use this chance to get a breath of fresh air from the school grounds. I might go visit the countryside, or perhaps catch some sea air.'

'What do we do?' Hermione asked quietly.

'You stay here, Miss Granger,' Dumbledore instructed firmly. 'Even if I am not headmaster the castle's wards make it one of the safest places in Britain. Besides,' he added, absently stepping over Fudge's outstretched form, 'I have little doubt that I will return to being headmaster soon enough.'

'Harry.' Dumbledore turned to look directly at him, his bright, electric blue eyes fixed on Harry's own. He felt the connection form between their minds, faint, but evident, and swiftly cleared every thought from his head. 'You have made good progress,' Dumbledore nodded gently. 'Continue practising please, it is more important than you can imagine.'

Fawkes gave another trilling sound, then leapt from his perch into the air, clasping Dumbledore's left hand in his talons.

'One moment, Fawkes,' the former headmaster said, even as Dawlish began to stir. He extended his free hand to retrieve the bowl of lemon drops on his desk, winking gently at the four of them. The phoenix warbled with amusement, then they both vanished in a flash of red fire that seared at Harry's unprepared eyes.

The four of them stood there helplessly, waiting for the Minister and his aurors to come around. At this point Harry no longer cared what happened. He was not going to be expelled, not yet, and Dumbledore was gone, driven from the school by a single piece of paper. Harry rather felt he'd done a better job than Tom Riddle had. He remained unsuspected, and he hadn't had to possess or petrify a single student either.

'Where is he,' Dawlish yelled, staggering to his feet. 'Proudfoot.' He shook his partners arm until the wizard rose to his feet, drawing his wand.

'He can't have apparated,' Proudfoot replied groggily, 'check the stairs.'

Dawlish was gone immediately, wand in hand, but Proudfoot remained behind to help Fudge to his feet and retrieve his hat. Umbridge was left to dust herself down.

'Return these children to their dormitory, Dolores,' Fudge instructed. 'We will discuss the situation at length in your office when you return.'

'I'm sure they can make their own way back, Minister,' Umbridge simpered.

'Very well then,' Fudge blustered, making condescending shooing gestures, 'off to bed with you four. Let this be a lesson that not all figures of authority are correct and to be blindly believed in like we did in Dumbledore. I used to listen to his advice all the time,' Fudge continued shaking his head, 'sometimes you simply shouldn't trust them, no matter how innocent they might appear.'

They began to make their way towards the door, but Fudge reached out and caught Harry's arm. 'I'm sorry about all that nonsense in the Prophet, my boy,' he apologised, fixing a smile on his face. 'Dolores has mentioned that you've not corroborated any of Dumbledore's absurd claims, but the papers tend to get carried away. Rita Skeeter made up all sorts of rubbish, it cost my friends their careers in some cases.'

'Thank you, Minister,' Harry answered politely, trying very hard not to laugh at the man's pathetic attempt to gain from what little glamour The-Boy-Who-Lived might still be able to offer him. 'I'll take your lesson to heart,' he added, smiling with poisonous innocence.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who has. This chapter is pretty close to canon, so nothing too exciting here I'm afraid.

58. The Room of Hidden Things

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it continues!

Chapter 58

The school was subdued. Three weeks of Umbridge's best attempts to stamp her authority over every student and teacher within the walls had worn most down, defiance had been dampened to sullen disgust.

It was simply easier to conform, or to appear to, than to run the risk of having to spend an evening in the newly minted Headmistress' Office. The room had formerly been the premise of the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, but Dumbledore had neglected to share the password to the gargoyle guarding the real office with Fudge or Umbridge, and the few teachers who Harry was sure must know it seemed to have mysteriously forgotten.

Harry was fairly sure that if he really wanted to get in he could stand there and list every item of confectionery known to either wizards or muggles and eventually the gargoyle would step aside. In fact he found the idea quite tempting, and on the brief occasions he found himself nearby he had taken to murmuring a handful of potential passwords while disillusioned.

None had granted him entry as of yet.

Idly he spun his wand around on the table, enjoying the brief flare of warmth it gave him when he touched his fingers to it.

For all of Umbridge's vaunted Ministerial influence she still had to run the school effectively in the manner the Minister instructed, or Fudge would replace her with another ambitious, suitably sycophantic servant.

The lessons continued as normal, even quidditch continued, something the Gryffindor still managed to win, much to Malfoy's growing discontent and Harry found he was no longer persona non grata. The much maligned Dumbledore had taken every measure of the guilt, and the poor, naive Harry Potter had been as trapped in his lies as everyone else, something a particularly sympathetic Fudge had often reiterated.

Umbridge, of course, still loathed him, and he suspected she was doing her best to take out her hatred on those close to him, because Neville and Katie were in detention with her almost every other night, something Dobby had taken great care to repeatedly interrupt in one manner or another. Most recently his preferred method was to lead Peeves into her office and leave him to wreak havoc, but Harry knew he'd also meticulously tidied the room away, after sticking it all the furnishings to the ceiling, and simply whisked students away from under her nose.

'Not hungry?' Harry glanced up at Cedric Diggory, who was taking something of a risk by sitting on a different house table.

'Not particularly,' Harry replied, catching his wand and returning it to its holster.

Further along the table Ron, Neville and Hermione got up to take new seats across from him. Ron decided to bring his plate of food with him, scattering carrots across the floor when he tilted the overloaded plate a little too far.

'I figured out who betrayed the DA,' Diggory remarked calmly, as if he was discussing the weather.

Harry tilted his head in interest, obviously Cedric wasn't completely right, or he wouldn't be talking to him, but it might prove useful nonetheless.

'Who?" Neville demanded, clenching his fist around his fork.

'Cho said that her friend Marietta Edgecombe hasn't received a single detention or so much as a rebuke from Umbridge or her squad of morons.' Harry smirked at the reference to the Inquisitorial Squad, Umbridge's attempt to counteract the prefects' unwillingness to assist her. 'Her mother works at the Ministry too, she's one of the officials who helps to monitor the floo network and fireplaces at the castle.'

'Marietta isn't part of the DA,' Hermione disagreed.

'She was at the first meeting,' Neville remembered. 'She left early, before signing the list. I'd bet she told Umbridge and that's why she was looking for us in the first place.'

'She wouldn't have known where to find the list,' Ron pointed out in a marginally more common moment of intelligence.

'Where was it?' Harry asked.

'We hid it in the Room of Requirement,' Hermione answered. 'I tested it. There was no way it could be found by anyone who didn't already know where it was.'

'Can you show me?' Harry inquired. 'I'm good at using the room, I might be able to figure out Umbridge managed to find it.'

'We tried everything already,' she dismissed. 'Neville is an expert of using the Room of Requirement.'

'Let's go,' Neville decided, ignoring the shock on Hermione's face at being overruled. 'Harry taught me how to use the place, it's a good idea.'

There was still half an hour of lunch left, and it was all too easy to avoid the pair of Inquisitors who constantly patrolled the seventh floor, unaware of what they were really guarding.

'Has anyone seen any hint of the jinx Hermione placed on the list?' Cedric asked quietly as they passed the staff table. Harry pretended not to notice the angry stare Umbridge sent him from where she perched primly on the headteacher's chair.

'No,' Ron shook his head, 'and we've all double checked every face. None of our members have shown any sign of it, and none of them have been absent, ill or gone home.'

'Could it have simply been removed?' Harry queried, fully aware that as the punishment for breaking a magical contract it could not be.

'No,' Hermione smiled, raising her chin, 'nobody could betray the group and avoid my jinx.'

Well that's not quite true, Harry smiled to himself, you left too many loopholes in the intent of your enchantment.

Had Hermione been a bit more specific about the definition of betrayal he would not have been able to indirectly betray the group without suffering the penalty Hermione had prescribed.

'So Marietta seems likely,' Cedric commented.

'Yeah,' Ron nodded. 'I'll set the twins on her if she did, they'll make her life as miserable as everyone else's is now Umbridge is in charge.'

'I still don't see how Marietta could have told Umbridge about the list,' Hermione cut in.

'She knew it existed,' Neville reminded Hermione. 'Maybe she followed us to the room.'

They hurried up the steps in silence, pausing on the sixth floor.

'I'll distract them,' Ron offered, pulling his wand out.

'Let me change your hair first,' Hermione ordered briskly, casting several enchantments over him. Ron's red hair darkened to a jet-black like Harry's own, his freckles faded, leaving his skin pale and the bones of his face seemed to shift upwards slightly, giving his face a noble lilt. The new countenance was oddly familiar, but Harry couldn't quite recall where he had seen it before.

Ron inspected himself in the window for a moment. 'Blimey, Hermione,' he gaped. 'How did you do this?' Even his voice sounded different, smoother and higher.

Hermione swelled up with pride, about to burst into explanation, but Harry shook his head and pointed upstairs. If she really wanted to share everything about the spell then she should do it later.

Ron darted up the stairs, the echo of his footsteps fading until there came a distant cry. 'Stupefy, stupefy,' Harry heard, before Ron came back round the corner.

'I thought you were going to distract them,' Hermione hissed.

'Well it seemed easier to just stun them,' he shrugged. 'They're not hurt, they didn't even see me.'

'Fine,' she cancelled her enchantments with a wave of her wand, and Ron winced as his face rearranged itself.

'That's bloody uncomfortable,' he swore quietly. Hermione shot him a glare for using foul language.

'Let's go,' Neville decided, leading the group on towards the Room of Requirement. He paused before the entrance, concentrating briefly, before the unremarkable door to the Room of Hidden Things appeared.

'Wow,' Harry feigned admiration upon entering. 'You hid it here?'

'Yes,' his friend smiled.

'It seems like a lot of people have found this place,' Cedric noted. 'If Marietta ever followed Cho, or any of us, she could well have stumbled across this place.'

'Perhaps,' Neville's face darkened. Ron and Hermione led the way towards to the bust of the warlock where they'd hidden the list. Harry hung back, making sure it was clear that he was following them.

'We left it here, under the bust,' Hermione informed him, looking around with a frown.

Harry inspected the surroundings, almost everything was as he'd left it, the only differences were the absence of the list and the tarnished diadem he'd used to mark the bust out more clearly. He was almost disappointed to see the circlet was gone, it had been a curious thing.

'It's not very far from the entrance,' Harry pointed out. 'Umbridge has had a month or so to search this place, possibly with help. She might have just come across it.'

'You think she just got lucky?' Ron asked incredulously.

'What other explanation is there?' Harry countered. 'Nobody on the list betrayed us, or whatever jinx Hermione used would have come into effect, and only the three of you knew exactly where the list was in the room.'

'Harry has a point,' Cedric nodded. 'Marietta's a smart girl, she could have easily followed us to the room if she wanted to. Cho says she wouldn't have expected her to betray us, but she's not so sure now with things the way they are.'

'It hardly matters now,' Harry insisted, eager to move on now his version of events was established in their minds. 'It was found, Dumbledore's gone, but you heard what he said, Fudge isn't likely to be Minister for much longer and he'll be back. We do what he said. He's Dumbledore, I'm sure he knows exactly what he's doing.' Harry just managed to bite back the sarcasm he longed to speak that sentence with.

'S'pose you're right,' Ron said at last. 'We'll just have to endure Umbridge.'

'Hopefully not for too long,' Harry agreed, brushing lightly at the edges of Ron's mind when he red-head met his eyes. He found no suspicion there, and Cedric and Neville readily agreed with him. Hermione would not stop trying until she knew the truth, but Harry doubted she would ever find anything that would lead back to him. Even confronting Marietta would only direct her further from him.

'Let's go back,' Cedric suggested. 'It's lessons soon.'

They backtracked from the room, though Hermione seemed slightly reluctant to leave, glancing around her in wistful confusion as if she longed to stay, but wasn't quite sure why. Harry watched her curiously all the way back to the Great Hall.

The bruises beneath her eyes had faded, or she'd learnt to heal or cover them. Harry suspected the latter from the way she had disguised Ron, but her usual attempts to be cordial with him had stopped, and her eyes adopted only a cool distance when they fell on him.

'Hermione?' Harry called as they reached the hall, catching her eye and gently forming a connection between their minds as they retook their seats on the Gryffindor table.

'Are you ok?' He inquired bluntly. She seemed taken aback by his question, before blinking and nodding.

There was a brief flutter of fears through her mind, exam results, loneliness, loss, but nothing untoward. Her feelings and thoughts were distinctly hers. Harry severed the connection once he felt her decide Harry thought she might know something they didn't and before she realised anything was amiss. Hermione was certainly bright and intelligent enough to have picked up the basics of occlumency on her own, so even using passive legilimency was a slight risk.

One of the silver-badged Junior Inquisitors hurried across the hall, his robes creased and a large bruise forming on the side of his face. He stopped in front of the staff table to speak to Umbridge, whose face turned a mottle red with rage.

'Tell me we don't have Defence Against the Dark Arts next,' he muttered to Neville.

'I could,' his friend groaned, 'but I'd be lying to you.'

'Wonderful,' Harry commented dryly, watching Umbridge out of the corner of his eye as she glared furiously at him. 'I have a suspicion she will be doing her utmost to place me in detention.' 'Like every lesson,' Neville grinned. 'That's nothing new.'

'I think she might try a little harder than normal,' Harry warned. 'Don't say anything, and try and make sure nobody else does either.'

'Ron won't listen,' Neville sighed, 'not if she makes him angry enough.'

'He might listen to Hermione,' Harry suggested.

'It's worth a try,' his friend agreed, collecting his bag from under the table as lunch came to an end and striding across to speak urgently with Hermione.

Harry followed after them at a marginally slower pace, dragging his heels on the way to Umbridge's class and the inevitable period of inescapable boredom.

'Books out and wands away,' she instructed. The girlish voice she usually adopted was gone, the pleasure she seemed to take at their suffering in silence did not spread across her wide face. Indeed she seemed rather indifferent and uninterested in it.

'We will be recapping the chapters on defensive theory from now until your exams,' she announced. 'Study hard and you will succeed.'

Harry opened his pristine copy of Wilbert Slinkhard's worst and only publication, pushing his hand along the spine to try and keep the book from closing itself.

There were so many better things he could be doing with the time, even Hermione, who normally found a clever way to make use of this lesson seemed to have run out of ideas and was writing in the margins of the book every few minutes. Ron's eyes had glazed over, and Neville had fallen asleep with his nose in the pages.

Fortunately Umbridge had not seemed to notice anything.

If he did not know that he was able to use his time-turner to reclaim at least some of these wasted lessons, then Harry had little doubt he would not be here. As it was he could easily slip off to the chamber the moment lessons ended for the day and make better use of the extra hours his time-turner allowed.

There was a muffled thump as Neville fell of his stool, and a light titter ran around the room. Umbridge looked balefully, surveying the room, but seeing nothing amiss returned to whatever she was writing at the front.

'Are you alright, Nev?' Harry whispered, as his friend slid back onto his stool.

'Fell asleep,' Neville rubbed his shoulder ruefully, then suddenly burst into a wild grin. 'What is that mark on your neck?'

'Mark?' Harry turned to look at him innocently, shielding the fading, purple blotch on his neck from Neville's view. It was only the size of his smallest fingernail now, and quite faint, so he'd abandoned his scarf. Evidently he'd made that decision a little too early to be safe.

'Nice try,' his friend grinned, 'but after all those remarks about Hannah I'm not going to show any mercy, especially when I'm this bored.'

'Shall I liven up the lesson?' Harry offered, steering the conversation away from the almost faded love bite under his jawline.

'What will you do?' Neville took the bait.

'Watch,' Harry smirked, flicking his wand into his palm under the desk and pointing it towards Parvati's textbook further along their desk.

Concentrating very hard he carefully transfigured it into a large iguana, chuckling under his breath when the girl shrieked loudly and threw herself backwards of her stool away from the lizard.

'What is going on?' Umbridge demanded, standing up.

'There's an iguana, professor,' Harry announced loudly. Drawing his wand he approached the conjured lizard slowly, watched by the entire class. 'I'll take care of it.'

Carefully and deliberately he raised his wand, then paused and frowned as if in thought before placing his wand on the desk in front of the iguana and stepping back.

'What are you doing, Mr Potter?' Umbridge asked incredulously.

'Avoiding conflict with a dark creature, professor,' he answered, somehow keeping a straight face. 'Should I flee now?'

The rest of the class, with exception of Parvati, broke out into laughter. The iguana stoically ignored the noise, choosing to drag itself slowly over towards Neville, who immediately surrendered his wand as well to further chuckling.

'That's quite enough,' Umbridge ordered furiously.

She dug angrily around in her handbag for her wand, pulling the short, stubby looking piece of wood out in a flash of silver and sapphire.

'Evanesco,' she proclaimed with disturbing delight, vanishing the lizard that had once been Parvati's textbook. Harry caught her eye innocently as she stowed her wand away and, unable to resist, wordlessly and wandlessly cast the legilimency spell.

Umbridge was beyond angry. Her thoughts were an incoherent tangle of rage, and flickering, flashing images. He pulled out only a few impressions, a clear, odourless tasteless liquid, veritaserum, himself, and a strong desire to use the Cruciatus Curse.

She's growing more malignant, he realised.

The blood quill had been a disgusting, amoral thing to use. Torturing children with such a thing had been a clear message about her character, but the psychological ramifications of forcing a child to hurt themselves over and over was far from the cruelty required to cast the Cruciatus Curse.

I have to act as soon as I have the polyjuice, Harry decided.

'What's veritaserum?' He whispered to Neville, leaning across to reclaim the wand he had surrendered to the iguana.

'A very powerful truth potion,' his friend replied, mystified. Harry felt he rather should have guessed that from its name. 'It's very tightly controlled by the Ministry and very hard to brew. Gran told me that it can't be used for trials in the Wizengamot because it can be resisted.'

'How can you resist it?' Harry asked quietly. Judging by Umbridge's expression it might be something he needed to be able to do.

'I'm not sure,' Neville answered apologetically, 'she said it produces a powerful compulsion to speak honestly, so maybe if you're strong-willed. There's an antidote you can take too, and like the serum itself it's undetectable so nobody would know if you took it before the trial.'

'Thanks,' Harry murmured gratefully. He'd wager quite a lot that knowing the mind arts would enable him to resist and what better way to convince Umbridge to follow his treasure trail to Aragog than to spill its supposed secrets under the influence of the truth serum.

She would never even dream of suspecting.

He just needed a way to provoke her into drugging students, the former DA members would be at the top of her list of suspects, so he could simply impersonate one of his least favourite members with the polyjuice.

Quietly he thanked Fleur for agreeing to get it for him, and whatever had given him the inspiration to ask for the potion in the first place.

He spent the rest of the lesson keeping his head down and enduring Parvati's glares. She had clearly realised that the iguana's appearance and the loss of her textbook were connected to him.

'Well that was a better lesson than normal,' Neville remarked, when Umbridge finally released them.

'Amazingly there were no detentions,' Harry agreed. 'Normally at least one of Ron, Seamus or Dean finds themselves in Umbridge's detention schedule.'

'The iguana made a marvellous distraction,' his friend agreed. 'Well done, that's NEWT level transfiguration too.'

'Thanks,' Harry grinned, 'I thought distracting Umbridge worked well.'

'Umbridge?' Neville laughed. 'We both know you did that to stop me asking about the marks on your neck as much as alleviating out boredom.'

'Perhaps,' Harry admitted. Neville knew him well.

'Seeing as you don't want to speak about it, and I'm nicer than you I'll only make one comment about them,' Neville promised, turning to the portrait of the Fat Lady.

'Really?' Harry asked, surprised.

'Yes,' Neville grinned. 'I'm going to tell Katie.'

'That seems cruel,' Harry complained. 'Can't you just pretend you never saw it?'

'I believe in revenge,' Neville replied. He wasn't joking either. If Neville ever came across any of the Lestranges Harry fully expected him to do his utmost to kill them.

'Can't I owe you a favour instead?' Harry tried. Katie would tease him about it mercilessly.

'No.' Neville shook his head, taking a seat across from Katie, who was working alone at one of the study tables in the common room. Harry took a seat on her left, making sure Fleur's memento was on the other side to her.

'Have you seen the beautiful, purple mark on Harry's neck?' Neville asked her, not even trying to sugar coat it.

Katie's essay was immediately forgotten.

'Oh,' she favoured Harry with a sultry smile, 'and who was the lucky girl?' Harry gave her a flat stare, before showing his unmarked right jaw line.

'There's nothing there,' she sulked, turning to level an accusing stare at Neville.

'It's on the other side,' Neville grinned.

'That was more than one comment,' Harry pointed out, as Katie none too gently turned his face round.

'This is old and fading,' she beamed, 'and I know you haven't been able to visit her since Umbridge took over. She must have been enjoying herself a lot for it to last this long.'

'How would you know?' Harry countered. 'Been sneaking off for secret meetings in broom cupboards again, have you?'

'Again?' Katie's voice slipped up an octave. 'The only meeting I've had in the last two years with a boy ended in disaster,' she confessed lightly. 'It's a shame really, I've heard his current girl really appreciates him.'

For once a retort, witty or otherwise, didn't spring to mind; mainly because Harry was busy remembering just how much Fleur had appreciated that evening, and was desperately trying to control his flush.

'Are you blushing?' Katie giggled. 'So did she give you those for fun, or is little Harry no longer innocent.'

'I guarantee she gave me these so everyone, especially you,' Harry added pointedly, 'would know that I was hers.'

'You didn't answer the whole question?' Katie reminded him coyly.

'No I didn't,' Harry agreed. 'I'm also wishing that I'd never told her the marriage contract between us was just a joke so she'd come and hunt you down.'

'What marriage contract?' Katie demanded, dropping her quill and staring at him.

'I paid a visit to Gringotts with her to check anything that might affects us in the future, such as old marriage agreements,' Harry grinned, recalling the look of perfect horror on Fleur's face when he'd told her Katie would have to be his wife. 'I told her that we were engaged,' he sighed nostalgically, 'you should have seen the look on her face. I thought she was going to immolate me on the spot, kiss me, or both.'

'That was a horrible joke to play,' Katie cried, swatting him on the head with her rather hefty transfiguration text. 'No wonder she was so determined to mark you as hers if you keep baiting her about me.'

'That was the only time,' Harry placated, relieving Katie of her weapon.

'It better be,' she warned, 'or I'll spend my free time terrorising you.'

Neville watched the trouble he had caused with mild amusement, no doubt feeling vindicated after all the times Harry had happened to mention Hannah, either Hannah, in Herbology.

'Oh,' Katie remarked suddenly. 'I worked out what was happening with Umbridge's detentions,' she beamed.

'What?' Neville leant in. As both he and Katie suffered more than most, and had been repeatedly saved by Dobby, they had decided to try and track down the cause.

'It's the house elves,' she announced triumphantly. 'Normally the room gets re-arranged, or things start moving around, but last time she tried to get me to clear out this horrible, old looking closet. It was covered with black stains,' Katie shivered, 'and then there was a crack and I was in the courtyard. I only realised it was a house elf because I saw it's reflection in Umbridge's window.'

'Does Umbridge know?' Harry asked swiftly.

'I don't think so,' Katie shook her head, and Harry suppressed his relief. 'It happened fast and she was busy talking to Filch about the next decree.'

'Hear anything interesting?' Neville cut in.

'Only confirmation that Umbridge is every bit as depraved as we thought,' Katie sneered. 'She's given that vicious old man free reign to punish as he pleases. I heard him muttering gleefully to himself about flaying students.'

'That's torture,' Neville said, sickened and pale.

'That's Umbridge,' Katie spat.

Harry frowned to himself. The woman was vicious, spiteful, bigoted and thoroughly detestable, but recently she was becoming disturbingly malicious. The thoughts of the Cruciatus Curse and her new decree were extreme even for her, and if Dobby had needed to physically apparate Katie out of her office then he doubted the cupboard had contained her cardigan collection.

Her sudden increase in cruelty didn't make sense. It was unpredicted, unprecedented and inexplicable. Harry didn't like what it might herald at all, but there was nothing he could do but continue with his plan to remove her as quickly as possible.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does. Did someone request four more Fleur chapters before the DoM arc? ;)

59. True Freedom

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

A new chapter! A nice, undramatic chapter full of fluff and romance and all things sweet. Sadly not technically a Fleur chapter though.

Chapter 59

He was woken by a warmth on his chest, a soft, pulsing heat that he knew to be from the locket Fleur had gifted him.

Groggily he searched for his wand under his pillow, casting a tempus charm once he had retrieved.

Nine.

Harry blinked, rubbed his eyes, and checked again.

The numbers didn't change.

Normally he was long since awake and up by now, he woke up at just after seven every day without fail. The extra use of the time-turner was tiring him out quicker than he had anticipated. At least this morning was without lessons, he had Runes and Herbology in the afternoon, but only History of Magic now, and he never, ever, went to that lesson.

The locket pulsed again, and Harry swiftly cast a silencing ward over his bed, transfigured his clothes and made an attempt to control his hair. Fleur would not be fooled, but he didn't want to look completely awful to her.

'Morning, Fleur,' he smiled, opening the locket.

'You finally answered,' she frowned, scrunching up her face.

'Sorry,' Harry apologised. 'I was asleep.'

'So I can see,' she smirked. 'You look quite attractive like that, come and see me, I have your polyjuice and things we need to talk about.'

'That sounds ominous,' Harry grinned. 'Have I done anything deserving of being scorched?'

'No,' she said slowly, pursing her lips to consider it, 'though I still owe you for your joke in Gringotts.'

'I was hoping you had forgotten,' Harry told her. 'If it's any consolation Katie definitely knows that I'm yours.'

'Oh,' Fleur managed to pull off complete innocence for longer than Gabrielle, but only for a moment.

'You made your mark,' Harry laughed. 'She found it funny, and then hit me over the head with a book for making the joke.'

'Good,' Fleur smiled, 'you deserved it. Now hurry up and come here,' she eyed him deliberately demurely, 'I've missed you.'

'Coming, ma princesse,' he said, holding the mirror out so she could see him bow. Fleur tried to scowl at him, but ended up smiling helplessly and shaking her head.

'Do not let Gabby hear you call me that,' she warned.

'Will it really make her interest in our romance any worse?' Harry asked.

'No,' Fleur admitted, waving goodbye, 'but she'll insist on being given the same nickname since you saved her from the lake.'

No saying that in front of Gabrielle, Harry agreed.

The inevitable moment of explanation to Fleur's parents that would follow him being seen calling both of the Delacours' daughters princesses was to be avoided at all costs.

Stripping off his pajamas, he quickly changed into a fresh set of robes, one of the few pairs he actually kept in the dormitory rather than with the rest of his things in the chamber, and pulled back the hangings.

Everyone else had gone, presumably to the Great Hall for breakfast and then back to the common room.

He disillusioned himself, sneaking out past his friends seemed easier and preferable to having to lie or mislead them. It also gave him him an alibi for the few things that were on his to do list for the day.

Harry slipped quietly downstairs, closing the hangings around his bed and warding them before he left, just in case anyone tried to check on him.

Pretty much the entirety of Gryffindor House was in the common room, as was now normal with Umbridge, her silver-badged lackeys, and Filch stalking the corridors searching for excuses to punish anyone they hated. The caretaker was particularly bad, dragging every single student he could even try and accuse to Umbridge for detention.

He was the second thing on Harry's list for the day. Argus Filch needed to be reminded just how much of a privilege in Britain it was for anyone close to non-magical, even a squib, to work at a place like Hogwarts, especially when it was the house elves that did all the work and he just got to wander around the castle yelling at nervous first years.

That, however, could come later, and he hurried a little faster along the empty corridors towards the Chamber of Secrets.

'Hi Myrtle,' he announced himself, giving the ghostly girl a cheerful wave, as he waited for the entrance to open.

She flushed and waved back.

Harry stepped into the stairwell, beyond the school wards, which he was almost certain Umbridge couldn't check since she was conveniently locked out of the Headmaster's Office. If she were not such a danger to everyone within the school he would be tempted to leave her be, as her ignorance worked in his favour.

He gave a nod to Salazar, who rolled his eyes, already having guessed where Harry was going, and snatched a sufficient handful of galleons from his slowly depleting Triwizard winnings.

With a soft snap the world spun back past him and he stepped into the atrium of the Delacours' chateau.

Fleur was waiting for him, dressed casually, with her veil of silver hair swept back over one shoulder and twirling a single vial of polyjuice potion in her hands.

'I'm here,' he smiled. The second part of his greeting was cut off by her kiss.

'You did miss me,' he commented, when she pulled back to let him breathe.

'I am unaccustomed to not being able to be with you for such a long time,' she scowled, 'it's… unpleasant, but I would be far worse if we did not have these lockets.'

Harry understood exactly what she meant. The locket was little more than temporary relief from the ache of being apart, a brief tonic that only made things all the worse after their conversations came to a close.

'I have your polyjuice,' she said, leading him up to her room.

'Thank you,' Harry exchanged the handful of galleons he'd taken for the vial. 'This looks an awful lot like badly cooked porridge,' he remarked, 'why is it that potions are always so unappealing.'

'Not all of them are,' Fleur told him absently, 'amortentia will smell exactly like what you desire most.' She frowned, double checking her counting of the money he'd given her. 'This is to much,' she told him.

'I don't have any change,' Harry shrugged. 'It doesn't matter.'

He was busy wondering exactly how amortentia would smell to him, burnt holly, he imagined, with maybe a hint of marzipan and roses.

'You are not listening.' Fleur poked him in the side, and dragged him down to sit next to her on the edge of her bed.

'Sorry, I was wondering about something,' Harry admitted.

'What were you thinking about that was able to captivate you so?' Fleur asked curiously.

'How amortentia would smell to me,' he confessed, inspecting the titles of the many books on enchanting on the opposite bookshelf.

'And how did you think it would smell?' Fleur teased, whispering her words against his neck.

'Probably a lot like you,' he decided, turning to catch her lips with his own. 'I am listening now,' he smiled.

'I was accepted by the Bureau des Énigmes,' Fleur told him.

'That's brilliant,' Harry congratulated her softly. 'I told you that you wouldn't fail.'

'I asked to delay the beginning of my role their until I had completed my contract at Gringotts,' she continued, confusing Harry completely.

'You have a contract at Gringotts?' Harry asked. 'This isn't payback for the marriage agreement joke is it?'

'No,' she poked him again, harder. 'I signed it a few days ago. I start in a few weeks as a liaison between Gringotts and the private magical artefact retrieval groups. I'll be based in London,' she smiled warmly. 'This way we won't have to endure another year like this one, and I'll be there to help you.'

'Have you spoken to your parents?' Harry inquired gently. There was nothing he would like more than to be able to openly spend time with Fleur as often as he could, but he didn't want her to sacrifice her family for him, and he certainly didn't want her in harms way, even if she was capable of defending herself.

'I did,' Fleur admitted. 'They were not ecstatic about it. They knew straight away the reason I had taken the role, I have little interest in being a liaison for Gringotts, it's basically part time and not very challenging.'

'What did they say?'

'They told me that they hoped I would reconsider, but that if I didn't they wanted me to be careful in Britain.' She laughed suddenly. 'Maman suggested that I try and apply for a role at Hogwarts if I wanted to be near you because it was safer.'

'And your father?'

'He asked about what your plans were. I think he understands that anything we plan will be for the both of us now.'

The idea gave Harry a warm, comforting glow, that melted across his chest and into his stomach.

'I told them that Voldemort would not leave you alone, that the quicker he was defeated the better and safer we would be and that I was not going to leave you alone to fight such a wizard on your own.' Fleur slipped an arm around his waist. 'I meant it, and they know that.'

'But they still aren't happy that I'm the reason you're leaving France to go somewhere that is not only prejudiced against you, but actively dangerous.' Harry had hoped that her parents had begun to accept him, they had certainly seemed to, but it seemed he might have been wrong.

'No,' Fleur nodded sadly, 'but they have accepted it. Maman certainly understands that I would be happier in Britain with you, than in France without you, and I think Papa does too. He just hopes that there might still somehow be a solution that works for all of us and keeps me safe.'

'You've decided then?'

'I have,' she kissed his cheek, 'I will work at Gringotts, it pays well enough to live off, and the percentage cut I get from any agreements I liaise on should eventually cover the cost of renting or even buying somewhere to live.'

'Have you chosen anywhere?' Harry ran a hand through his hair, thinking furiously. 'I could ward the place to make sure it's much more safe.'

'How?' Fleur quirked an eyebrow, a habit Harry was sure she had adopted from him. 'I am better with wards than you are, remember?'

'Blood magic,' Harry smirked. 'It will leave me a bit under the weather, but it's worth it to keep you safe.'

'Us,' Fleur corrected, smirking. 'I wanted to talk to you because I rather doubt you want to continue living with your relatives.'

'You want us to live together?' Harry couldn't keep the surprise from his tone, and winced slightly when Fleur looked upset. 'I just didn't expect something like that so fast,' he explained. 'I'll be sixteen.'

'We will have been together for over a year,' Fleur told him softly, 'if you include all the time we spent not speaking about how we felt the almost a year and a half. It's not such a short time, and I feel I know you well enough. If you don't want to, then I will understand.'

'I want to,' Harry said immediately. Fleur was wearing the slightly hopeful, slightly vulnerable and completely irresistible expression she always wore when she really wanted something.

'Really?' She pressed. 'I know it's a big step.'

'I want to,' Harry repeated. 'I'm more concerned about how I would be able to manage it without anyone finding out. I'm sure Dumbledore keeps an eye on me over the summer.'

He wasn't sure exactly how, but there was no way the former headmaster would allow his most important pawn to be unattended for so many months.

'Can't you just leave?' Fleur asked, puzzled.

'I am still a minor,' Harry reminded her. 'I would need the permission of either my relatives or Dumbledore, my magical guardian, and I doubt I will get either.'

'So we do it in secret,' Fleur decided. 'You go back, then you just disappear and come to live with me.'

'He will find me,' Harry disagreed. 'The Dursleys will tell him I left if he asks, and that I'm able to use magic outside of school, they have no reason to keep my secrets.'

'Memory charm them,' Fleur countered. 'I know how to cast the Fidelius Charm, with a few months practise I'm sure I can learn how to cast it, then we can't be found even if he knows you're gone.'

'We'll need a secret keeper,' Harry mused, starting to take to the idea. If they were under the Fidelius, something that Voldemort himself could not get around without the assistance of the secret keeper, then he doubted anyone would be able to find them.

'I know just who to choose,' Fleur smiled, pulling him into her. 'Someone with no obvious connection to you, but every reason in the world not to give us away. Someone who nobody will ever suspect even for a moment.'

'Who?' Harry was very aware of the consequences of choosing the wrong secret keeper.

'Gabrielle, of course,' Fleur laughed. 'Even if our relationship becomes well-known they would never expect us to entrust the secret to my baby sister, and she is well protected in France out of the eye of either Voldemort or Dumbledore.' She pulled a face. 'Why are you so worried about Albus Dumbledore?'

'I am beginning to believe he would rather make a martyr of me than anything else,' Harry answered calmly, hiding the anger he still harboured towards the old wizard.

Fleur's reaction was rather more dramatic.

Her face shifted completely, her chin and lips lengthening into a cruelly curved beak and her eyes darkening, widening and gleaming with anger. Feathers had thrust themselves through her skin, and her fingernails had lengthened into short, sharp talons.

Harry swallowed hard. He'd never seen an enraged veela quite so close before, but he didn't move away. Fleur didn't need to think he was scared or repulsed by her, nothing could be further from the truth. Oddly he still found her quite beautiful, just as he had the dancing veela at the World Cup.

She hissed angrily, sending white-hot sparks dancing over her hands, and all the feathers stood up along her neck. The air shivered away from the white fire, and the heat washing over him from it was enough to make Harry consider moving her hand slightly further away, but then Fleur took several long deep breaths and slowly shifted back.

He watched in abject fascination as her facial structure rearranged itself back into the countenance of Fleur's beautiful human form.

'Sorry,' she murmured in disconsolate French. 'I hope you do not find my other form too unattractive.'

'I actually still found you quite attractive,' he admitted, flushing at confessing something that must certainly be strange.

Fleur stared at him for a long moment, her summer sky eyes unblinking, then she crushed her lips and self against him, knocking him back onto the bed and straddling him.

'You are staying mine,' she whispered furiously between and into kisses.

'I think,' Harry replied breathlessly, 'that I could learn to live with that.'

'You will have to,' she responded archly. 'I am not letting you go.' She took another deep breath and smiled at him, eyes blazing in a manner that sent butterflies exploding across his stomach. 'It's a shame we still need to talk,' she commented, still straddling his waist.

'We do?' Harry asked plaintively.

'Yes,' Fleur nodded. 'You are not living with your relatives, not if if I have to give this up.' She shifted her hips back a little and he had to seriously fight the urge to push up against her.

'Agreed,' he grinned, losing the battle, and enjoying the way she bit her lip to keep control of herself.

'So you will leave your relatives, remove their memories to protect your secrets if you have to, and come to me. I will master the Fidelius Charm, make Gabby our secret keeper and then we can live together there for as long as we please.' Fleur smiled coyly. 'We just need to choose a place, and buy it,' she decided.

'I have a trust fund,' Harry told her, sitting up to kiss her. The friction from the change of position rather interrupted his train of thought and he had to think for a moment to remember exactly what he had been intending to say. 'It's around fifty thousand galleons, from memory.'

'That's some trust fund,' Fleur smiled, 'enough for us to discretely find a small place for ourselves if I help.'

'From what Nagnok said I suspect that the Potter family fortune is around six times that,' he grinned. 'Though I can't access any of it except that trust fund until I'm seventeen.'

'Your fund tops up every year, doesn't it?' Fleur asked, shifting herself off his lap, much to Harry's disappointment.

'Yes.'

'Good,' Fleur sighed. 'That means we won't have to get a loan to buy somewhere, only combine what we have.'

'Have looked at anywhere?' Harry queried.

'A few places that seemed like they might be affordable,' she admitted. 'I saw a nice apartment I liked, but having muggle neighbours can cause problems. There was a small house in one of the magical villages in Dorset, and a nice little place in Godric's Hollow…' she trailed off at the slightly bitter smile Harry was now wearing. 'You don't like Godric's Hollow?'

'I don't think I want to live in the village my parents were killed in,' he told her gently, aware that she would not really understand what it might be like for him. 'Maybe the other small house?'

'It's in Budleigh Baberton,' Fleur told him, 'a charming place. It's in the West Country. I could happily choose there.'

'I leave it up to you,' Harry smiled, spreading his fingers to run them playfully through her hair. 'Just not Godric's Hollow, or Ottery St Catchpole, the Weasley's live there, and they would alert Dumbledore.'

'You're going?' Fleur had heard the implicit goodbye in his tone.

'I have to,' he sighed, 'though I would very much prefer to stay, especially now we no longer have to keep talking.'

'Why do you have to?' Fleur complained.

'Now I have this,' he pulled the vial out of his robes and waved it cheerfully, 'I can get rid of Umbridge before she hurts anyone else.' His expression darkened. 'She's growing disturbingly malignant of late, and I fear what she might resort to if left in power for too long.'

'Go on then,' Fleur grouched, scowling. 'You come and visit me as soon as you can,' she ordered.

'I will,' Harry promised, 'you know I will.'

He stood up, adjusting his robes and bent to kiss Fleur goodbye. When he tried to draw away from the light kiss she tangled her hands in his hair and held his mouth against hers.

'I was expecting you to stay,' she told him wistfully. 'Use the locket, I'll let you know when I've chosen somewhere suitable.'

Harry nodded, then apparated away, trying to ignore the ache that had sprung up again in his chest at their parting.

Reappearing in Salazar's study he was immediately accosted by the painting.

'No vampires this time?' The portrait smirked.

'No,' Harry answered flatly, activating the Marauder's Map. It was time for number two on his list of things for the day.

'Up to something nefarious again?' Salazar inquired, peering futilely towards the map.

'I'm encouraging the caretaker that his role here is a privilege rather than an excuse to torment children he's clearly jealous of.' That painting shared a look with his snake, then shrugged and fell silent.

Filch was patrolling the third floor, his name marker floating up and down as if he was pacing.

Harry set off at a brisk pace, flicking his wand in and out of his palm. He had already had a good idea of how he was going to deal with the cantankerous caretaker, but it relied on him attempting something he had never tried before.

Myrtle was gone from the bathroom, though the puddle remained. Filch's name had stopped pacing up and down, and was moving slowly back down the stairs.

Harry tucked away the map, and drew his wand, not bothering to disillusion himself. He wouldn't need to worry about Filch remembering seeing him.

'What's this?' The caretaker cackled gleefully. 'A student out on his own, up to no good I reckon.'

'Hello, Filch,' Harry replied coolly.

The calm, even tone caught the squib off guard and he recoiled in surprise. 'What are you up to, Potter?' He snarled. 'You think I've forgotten what you did to my Mrs Norris?' He was almost yelling, so Harry cast a silencing ward over the area.

'Legilimens,' he whispered.

The squib never had a chance, with no magic, and no idea of what to expect Harry tore through his mind with absurd ease, following the trail of hatred and resentment back to its birth, witnessing every connected moment in half a century .

The path began with the beaming visage of a young, dark-haired, pale-eyed girl, wielding a wand in Ollivander's, and surrounded by yellow sparks. She bathed in the pride of her parents while Filch watched on, forgotten, forlorn and furious.

'Obliviate,' Harry murmured. He knew from Lockhart's implication that it was possible to modify memories, but even the gilded fraud would have baulked at what Harry was about to attempt. There were fifty years of feelings to alter, half a lifetime to change or erase, ending with their meeting on their stairs.

He purged every moment of the bitterness, every memory of watching magic and feeling the resentment well up inside him was changed. The discontent that had defined Argus Filch warped into calm acceptance, and every instant along that string of emotions was transformed into something else.

Argus Filch's eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped to the floor.

Harry flicked his wand back into his sleeve, turned on his heel, and strode back in the direction of the chamber.

Without the root of the resentment, without those bitter recollections the hatred they had fed would wither and fade. He imagined that both the students and Filch would be much happier for it.

He paused outside of Myrtle's bathroom to unfold the map, and waited until Filch's name began to move again. The caretaker continued down the stairs as he had been doing before, drifting slowly back towards his office. Harry watched until he was sure that Filch had no memory of him and wasn't about to to go search of Umbridge, then he wiped the map and tucked back into the pocket of his robes alongside the polyjuice vial.

Myrtle's bathroom opened and closed with a creak, and Harry winced instinctively at the noise even though there was nobody to hear him.

He had just stepped to the edge of the perpetual puddle when there was the familiar, loud crack of apparition and Dobby appeared in front of him.

'Dobby?' Harry inquired. The elf had never come to find him, not since his misguided attempts at protection in the second year.

To his horror the elf simply slumped onto the bathroom floor, and twisting threads of red liquid began to spread across the surface of the puddle.

Turning the elf over gently, Harry hissed in distaste, a trio of deep gaping cuts marred Dobby's upper chest and neck. The elf blinked slowly several times, eyes bright with pain.

'Master Harry Potter,' he murmured. 'Dobby saved the students,' something that was almost a smile drifted across his lips, 'Dobby saved them all.'

None of the healing charms Harry knew helped even remotely, and nothing he conjured lasted longer than a few moments before dispelling. The flow of crimson continued to blossom across Dobby's pillow case, flooding down his sides and spilling into the puddle.

In the end Harry gave up trying, his promise to take care of Dobby was nothing in the face of reality and the spreading red pool. The house elf's wounds resisted every attempt he made to heal or contain them, no matter how much magic he poured into the attempt.

He stood over the elf, watching, and feeling very hollow as the blood spread across the floor of Myrtle's bathroom, running in the lines between the tiles, bright against the white ceramic.

'Did Dobby do well?' The elf gasped, blinking furiously. 'Dobby tried to do what Harry Potter would have done,' a fresh wave of blood swept across the puddle as he shifted, 'but the nasty pink teacher was faster than before.'

'You've done better than I would have, Dobby,' Harry answered honestly, but his voice sounded ever so far away, ever so insignificant before the bright, white tiles and brighter, crimson pool. The spot of ice in his chest was spreading, distantly screaming Umbridge's name, demanding revenge, demanding justice. He could feel the icy anger, held back behind a paper thin bubble of disbelief and exhaustion.

'You're free forever now, Dobby,' Harry told him gently, taking the elf's hand in his own.

'Free,' the elf sighed, a small smile spreading over his lips as his fingers closed around Harry's. 'Dobby is free.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does, has or will.

60. For the Greater Good

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

To those of you who so kindly PM'd me to make sure I was still alive and writing, thank you for your concern... I yet live!

I apologise for the interlude, I don't suppose anyone will believe me if I say I was mourning for Dobby? In reality I've been sorting out stuff for my new job, references and all that tedium, nothing so exciting as illness, injury or impending doom.

This is quite a short chapter, I was tempted to roll the next to into one longer one, but then I can't put emphasis on the last line of this chapter, and also because that would mean an even longer wait, so I'll double up today (Friday, I'm on GMT) if I can.

Chapter 60

The floor of the Chamber of Secrets was cold, its chill had seeped from the stone into Harry's flesh every second he had spent sitting on its smooth floor, sinking until it reached his heart and numbed the sorrow.

It did nothing for the rage.

The roiling, burning, freezing fury swirled through his veins, clenched its fist around his heart and refused to relent.

He'd burned Dobby, not with fiendfyre, not even with much magic. Harry had had to apparate out to collect wood from the Forbidden Forest and borrow matches from his aunt and uncle's house, but it felt right to build the pyre himself. Using magic to make the action effortless seemed disrespectful to the elf who had given his life following Harry's commands.

There had been no ashes, the fire had been white hot; that much he'd used magic to make sure of. He hadn't wanted to bury Dobby, confining him into the ground, condemning him to the earth and trapping him under it was far less fitting than setting him free in smoke.

He'd watched the smoke drift out of the chamber, up into the sky, and away, but he hadn't left, not even when the warmth of the fire had waned and the smell of the smoke and subsided.

If he'd gone back, attended his lessons, rejoined his classmates, then he would have heard her name, maybe even seen her face, and there would have been nothing in existence that could have stopped him taking his revenge.

So he'd stayed in the Chamber of Secrets, he'd waited, forced himself to remember the plan and assured himself that his revenge would come. He only had to follow his scheme through as and Umbridge would pay just dearly as she ought to.

Harry opened his eyes. His anger might not have left, its ice still coiled in his chest, but that didn't matter, he'd focused it now, honed it to a razor sharp edge and controlled it.

Besides, its time had come. He had the polyjuice, she had the map, all he needed was to give her a reason to question someone from the DA, anyone or everyone would do.

He'd give her a reason she couldn't ignore.

Pushing himself to his feet, he walked with slow deliberate steps along the length of the chamber. The glinting eyes of the serpent-entwined effigies followed him, tracking every footstep towards his revenge.

Myrtle's bathroom was still covered in blood, a thick, sticky pool of it, still only half-congealed that the pearly girl hovered over, wringing her hands with worry.

"Harry,' the ghost gasped, swooping over to him. 'I thought something terrible had happened to you.'

'It's not my blood,' he assured her quietly, flicking his wand out. 'It belonged to a follower of mine, a friend in truth.' He didn't want to say house elf, too many might dismiss the loss of an elf as unimportant.

'A student?' Myrtle asked quietly, 'will I have company?'

'Not a student, a loyal friend, but I don't think so,' Harry answered. 'He's free now, he'd have no desire to linger here and be bound to this world.'

Harry vanished the blood, removing the tainted puddle to leave the tiles, white, pristine and clean. All of Dobby was gone now, all of him was free.

'What happened?' Myrtle asked, pushing her finger nervously together.

'He was murdered,' Harry responded coldly.

Myrtle looked oddly unaffected by that, but then she had been murdered too, and Harry knew that ghosts rarely formed any attachment to the living world at all, even young ones like Myrtle.

'Was it him?' The ghost asked.

'No,' Harry shook his head, holstering his wand, 'but they'll pay for it all the same.'

'You get them, Harry,' Myrtle echoed encouragingly, 'you'll get him too.' She paused almost thoughtfully, adopting a wistful, distant look. 'I think I'll be free then, free to move on.'

'To the next great adventure?' Harry inquired, momentarily distracted by her uncharacteristic, melancholic longing.

'The next great adventure?' The ghostly girl wondered distantly. 'I think there's just nothing, that when whatever keeping me here comes to an end, I will fade too.'

She fell silent, drifting gradually away into her cubicle without another word.

Harry watched her go, taken aback by her sudden swing of mood. He supposed that Myrtle had had a long time alone to think about why she was still here, and what came afterwards, but she sounded so uncaring about the possibility of oblivion that it made all the hairs stand up on the nape of his neck.

It was enough to distract him from the plan, but only for a moment, then the ice swirled and tightened in his chest, flooding his veins with cold determination.

He left Myrtle's bathroom, disillusioning himself, then following the empty corridors towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts Class. Lessons were taking place either side of him as he stalked vengefully towards Umbridge's office, the students and teachers both blissfully unaware that he was about to liberate them.

On the stairs he passed Filch and Mrs Norris, neither noticed him, but the squib's muttering had descended from threats of violence to harmless irritation, and the deep sunken scowl lines seemed to have softened slightly.

Harry eyed him briefly. Without the memories of his hate and resentment Filch's attitude could only improve, and if his charm failed and the caretaker returned to his unacceptable activities then Harry would take a more permanent solution. Second chances were Dumbledore's premised, not his.

He checked the Marauder's Map that he'd never got around to returning to the chamber. Umbridge's class was empty, and so was her office, just as Harry had hoped. Stopping at the door to her office he took a good look around the inside of the room.

It's about time this place was redecorated, he thought grimly.

The fiendfyre burst from the tip of his wand in waves of cherry red, plunging formlessly though the door and washing across the floor in ripples of heat. Harry poured his fury into the charm, harnessing his intent to erase every tiny piece of Dolores Umbridge from the school.

The lurid, pink carpet was acrid smoke in moments, the legs of the furnishings wrapped in wreaths of his flame that had brightened to a blinding white even as the fire poured up the walls, catching the drapes and scouring the pink paper from the stone.

Something within him screamed in joy at watching all her possessions irrevocably destroyed and the cursed fire that swirled within the room exploded into life, obliterating everything within in an instant of unrestrained, burning ecstasy.

A slash of his wand and the fiendfyre was gone, billowing and collapsing in on itself until there was nothing.

The room was a scarred, seared eyesore. The fire had been to hot to leave any ash; the stone had been scorched clean of her taint, the walls glowing, the mortar melted, running in tears from the cracks as Hogwarts cried at its cleansing.

Harry took a moment to burn a message into the stone in purple, flaming letters, a suggestion and a hint to make her more amenable in the near future.

For the Greater Good, the flames etched in the floor professed. But mostly for revenge, Harry decided coldly.

Disillusioning himself he nonchalantly placed one foot in the doorway, triggering the wards that were placed around the edge of the room, then he left, striding quickly away to await the interrogation that was coming in the Great Hall.

He hadn't eaten since yesterday, and it was nearly lunch time.

The Great Hall was practically empty, though the food was just appearing when he entered. Nobody wanted to be trapped under the gleeful, glaring smile of Umbridge, who took it upon herself to preside over every meal time, sitting herself in the headteacher's seat with an air of infuriating smugness.

Harry somewhat suspected that she wouldn't be quite so smug today.

He didn't have long to wait.

Umbridge was beyond furious. She had attained a shade of red so mottled and vivid that he half feared she might rupture one of the throbbing veins in her temple. It would be far too quick a death for her.

She deserves to watch the moment crawl closer, Harry decided.

Their pink-clad headmistress was sputtering in abject fury on the stage, stripped of her simpering sweetness and incapable even of speech.

The other students watched on apprehensively, Harry concealed a smile, if she couldn't think to construct a coherent sentence convincing her to follow his breadcrumbs would be even easier than he'd hoped.

'Professor Snape,' she snapped, whirling on the potions teacher. 'I want every last vial of veritaserum you have in your stock, and I want it in my office.' Harry clenched his jaw to suppress a smile at the spasm of fury that trembled across there face.

'Very well,' Snape answered smoothly, not raising so much as an eyebrow in protest. It hardly surprised Harry knowing his history, the former Death Eater would likely be more than happy to share torturing tips with their short-tenured headteacher.

'And bring every student on this list with you, one at a time, starting with Potter.' Umbridge's glare fell on him, but he only gazed innocently back, breathing steadily, and clearing his mind to halt the spread of the ice through his veins.

Patience, he advocated. Her time is coming.

'Now, Mr Potter,' Umbridge instructed sweetly, her girlish demeanour reasserting itself. No doubt she was salivating at the prospect of what he might spill under the influence of the truth serum.

It was the largest stumbling block in his scheme. He had no idea whether he would be able to resist or not, but he imagined, since he was capable of resisting veela allure, legilimency and the Imperius Curse that the serum would be no different as long as his will was strong enough.

Harry rose calmly from the table, catching Katie's worried glance from across the hall, and followed Umbridge from the hall back to the office he had razed only minutes ago.

Malfoy and the members of her Inquisitorial Squad flanked him, but, unlike with others they surrounded, he noted they were keeping their distance, and Malfoy's hands were in his robes already clutching his wand.

They are afraid of me, Harry realised.

The realisation made him smile with icy satisfaction; they hadn't seen more than the merest hint of what he was now capable of.

Snape was waiting by the entrance of the office holding a handful of clear vials and inspecting the inside of the razed room with something akin to curiosity. Harry watched him warily. It was possible that the former Death Eater might recognise the magic he had used once before in the Triwizard Tournament.

The potions master said nothing if he did, though he was smirking slightly when he turned to Umbridge.

'There is enough veritaserum there for every student on the list,' he sneered, 'but only if you refrain from using more than the prescribed three drops for each student.'

'I have to be sure,' Umbridge decided. 'Will it be enough?'

'It takes considerable mental strength to fight the effects of veritserum, something I would not relish doing, but could accomplish. It would be a very rare student who was capable of the same.'

Snape threw a glance at Harry, but there was nothing discernible in the eyes of the former Death Eater, and Harry dare not attempt legilimency on him to check his surface thoughts for suspicion.

'Very well,' Umbridge hissed, snatching the vial from him.

Harry observed as she carefully poured three droplets from the vial into a conjured, shining, metal goblet.

'May I ask what's happening?' He inquired mildly.

'Drink up, Mr Potter,' Umbridge instructed sweetly, 'then we shall discuss what's happening at length and in great detail.'

'I look forward to it,' Harry replied dryly, taking the goblet and letting the small amount of liquid fall onto his tongue. It tasted of nothing, but it felt like he'd just pressed his tongue against something very cold, and an odd numbness crept down his throat.

'A few seconds for it to take effect,' Snape cautioned before the detestable witch could begin questioning. 'A test question is advisable to begin with, something simple.'

'What is your name?' Umbridge simpered.

'Harry James Potter,' he answered easily, surprised to hear his voice come out monotonous and even. There was a compulsion to trust the pink wearing witch, to open his heart and spill out his secrets to her.

'Where were you this morning?' She continued, her eyes flashing furiously as she glanced at the blackened, heat-warped remnants of her office. It really was an improvement over the pink.

'Hogwarts,' Harry replied. There was no point fighting the urge to tell her the truth if he did not have to.

'Specifically?' Snape drawled. The small smirk was at the corner of his lips again.

He had an almost overwhelming desire to tell them that he'd been in the Chamber of Secrets, that he'd been in Myrtle's Bathroom and in here, but somewhere in the back of his head a little voice reminded him that if he did that then Umbridge would escape his plan and her well-deserved end.

'Gryffindor Tower,' he replied, keeping his voice even and dull. There was no compulsion strong enough to steal his revenge from him. She frowned, wrinkling her wide, pale brow.

'Where is Dumbledore?' She asked suddenly, a gleeful grin spreading across her wide face at the prospect of eliciting such an important secret from him.

It's almost too easy, Harry thought.

She was already asking questions and searching for a way to further herself by handing something about Dumbledore to the Ministry. Umbridge would jump at the chance the map would seem to offer.

'I have no idea,' Harry answered earnestly. He hardly cared. As long as he wasn't in the

causing trouble for him, then Albus Dumbledore could go anywhere he pleased.

'Have you attended any meetings of,' the witch's pale face twisted in disgust, 'Dumbledore's Army, since the first?'

'No,' he droned. That was almost true.

Umbridge's face fell, but Snape's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

Not good. He knows I might be lying.

'Why did you not attend any meetings?' Umbridge pressed, seeing the potions teacher's reaction.

'The club was illegal,' he answered, trying not to laugh at the sheer disbelief on Snape's face, 'and I would not have been welcome after everything that had been written about me.' The incredulousness faded from the face of the potions master, that half-truth he had swallowed.

'Did you destroy my office?' The Pink Professor asked resignedly, aware that she wasn't getting any of the answers she wanted.

'No,' Harry replied in the same emotionless tone.

I didn't destroy it, he corrected to himself, I razed it. I improved it.

'You may go, Potter,' she spat, clearly angry that he had not been the culprit. 'Mr Malfoy, if you would be so kind as to fetch,' she paused to survey the list, 'Mr Smith,' she decided.

'You want to check Potter's answers against another, more insignificant member?' He heard Snape ask as he left.

A swift check of the Marauder's Map showed Zacharias Smith on one end of the Hufflepuff table. Umbridge was going to be so very disappointed when he only corroborated Harry's answers, but he imagined the revelation of the map would make up for it.

He set off at a brisk pace, concealing himself once again. Malfoy and the others would also start at the Great Hall, so he would have little time in which to act.

Fortunately Smith was sitting in clear view of the doors, giving him an uninterrupted line of sight.

'Imperio,' he commanded softly, willing the Hufflepuff to rise and walk out towards him.

Footsteps indicated the Inquisitorial squad was coming, so he led Smith round the corner and pulled him into a broom closet, stunning and disillusioning him after tugging a couple of hairs out of his head.

Unstoppering the vial of polyjuice he dropped the handful of hairs in and watched as it changed from the colour and consistency of a very thick, mud-like porridge to an off colour sludge-like brown. He didn't particularly care to guess what that said about Zacharias Smith, it was what Zacharias Smith's doppelgänger was about to say that mattered.

Pinching his nose he downed the potion, trying not to gag at its foul taste and feeling.

A horrible writhing sensation sprung from his stomach, accompanied by a fierce heat that spread all across his body, burning just beneath his skin. His bones twisted, lengthening, in some places, shortening in others, his skin rippled like liquid wax, and muscles melted away from under his skin. Hissing with pain he collapsed onto the floor and curled up until the transformation ended.

When it was done he checked his reflection in the locket Fleur had given him, making sure he completely resembled the Hufflepuff, then he transfigured his robes, changing their size and colour to exactly match what Smith had been wearing.

Stepping back into the Great Hall he rejoined Smith's friends for a few moments before Malfoy spotted him and dragged him off the bench.

'The Headmistress wants to speak with you,' he sneered.

Crabbe and Goyle took an arm each and half-marched, half-carried him down the corridor. The difference between his two journeys was amusing, but he made a mental note to ensure the two brutes paid for their behaviour. He hated being manhandled, he always had. A lasting gift from his uncle and cousin.

'Mr Smith,' Umbridge greeted him politely, pushing a plain china cup in his direction. It was full to the brim of steaming tea and Harry had no doubt whatsoever that there were a few drops of veritaserum in there as well.

Snape had left, presumably he had only be concerned about Harry's interview.

He eyed the tea carefully and just managed to pick out a thin, clear film of liquid over the top. Part of him wanted to shake his head. Umbridge had just poured it on top, she hadn't even tried to mix it in and hide it.

'Have a drink, Zacharias,' she suggested saccharinely, 'and relax, you're not in any trouble. I just want to ask you about some of the members of that group you were a part of. They've done a great deal of criminal damage to Hogwarts and my own possessions.'

Harry picked up the tea cup and took a sip, ignoring the odd combination of the veritaserum on his tongue and the burning of the tea down his throat.

'What is your full name?' She asked curiously. 'I don't remember seeing a middle name on the records.'

'It's just Zacharias Smith,' Harry answered. 'I have no middle name.' Now he'd off the effects of the serum once the compulsion felt far weaker than it had before, but that could be because he hadn't drunk all the tea.

He took another cautious sip, aware he had to pretend to be oblivious.

'So how many meetings of this group did you go to?' Umbridge inquired lightly.

'All of them,' Harry replied, calmly lying through his teeth. 'There was only one meeting though.'

'That's good,' a simpering smile spread across her face. 'What did you plan to do at the meetings?'

'We wanted to practice magic,' Harry responded honestly. 'I was afraid I wouldn't be able to pass my OWLs otherwise.'

'You're right to be concerned, the exams are very important,' Umbridge nodded kindly, 'but you must be careful who you listen to.' Harry took another gulp of the tea, which had cooled to reach that small window of censurability between scalding and icy. 'How was the group organised?'

'The DA was run by Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, they came up with the idea, but several different students were going to teach, whomever could help. They had a big list of all the names on.'

Harry dropped the first breadcrumb at her feet and she snatched at it immediately.

'What was the list?' Umbridge asked with sugary sweetness.

'It was a list of every student in the group,' he wrinkled his brow as if in thought, 'but I think there was more to it than that,' he admitted. 'Granger and Weasley were very careful about hiding it an keeping it safe, they talked about it in the corridor when they didn't know I was there.'

'What did they say?' She breathed, a sickly, triumphant smile appearing on her lips.

'They said it was a map,' Harry told her monotonously, 'there was a phrase to reveal it,' he continued, 'one that Dumbledore gave them.'

He was very glad that Snape had left now, there was no way he would swallow this story, even if Umbridge seemed to.

'Do you know the phrase?' Umbridge reached for her handbag, prying open the clasp with her stubby fingers, drawing out her wand, the list, and the tarnished tiara he had used as a marker.

Why did she take that?

He supposed it was hardly important.

'I think so,' Harry nodded, pretending to try and remember.

'Take your time,' Umbridge cooed.

'For the Greater Good,' Harry said eventually. The ice in his chest was crying out in triumph, waves of shivering cold trembled victoriously through his veins. There was no way she could resist, not now.

'For the Greater Good,' Umbridge commanded, tapping her wand to the list.

Nothing happened.

'For the Greater Good,' she repeated, trying the other side. This time the rough map he had drawn was revealed in contrast. 'Oh, yes,' she breathed.

Abruptly she stood, spilling the diadem onto the floor, and seizing a handful of floor powder.

'Thank you, Zacharias,' she told him, seemingly sincerely. 'You may go, just remember to be much more careful about who you listen to in the future.'

Oh I will, he laughed to himself, perhaps you should have done the same.

He finished his tea, it seemed a shame to waste it, especially as it was a perfectly adequate cup, then rose to leave. As he did, Umbridge bent to retrieve the circlet, placing it on her head with a high-pitched, girlish laugh, cocking her head almost as if she was listening.

'Dawlish,' he heard her order smoothly after a second, 'come at once, and bring a partner,' there was a silence in which he lingered outside the door, 'no don't bother telling Amelia Bones, there's no time, this is of critical importance to the Minister.'

Harry slowly began to walk back in the direction of the broom closet, periodically checking the map to make sure he knew where Umbridge was. He didn't want her to wander off into the forest without him, it would be a terrible shame for her to die unaware of how she had been led to this moment, how he had led her there.

Harry wanted to stand next to her and smile triumphantly as she realised all her victories had simply been steps on the road to her own ruin.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, I got a ridiculous number of reviews for the last chapter, almost 200, so extra thanks for that.

61. But Mostly for Revenge

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I couldn't manage to double post yesterday, but here's today's chapter a little earlier than has become usual.

Additionally that dreaded time when I start my new job in earnest is now arriving, and naturally that will mean less writing time and likely longer between updates, but hopefully we will all survive.

Chapter 61

Harry poked around the floor of the broom closet with one foot, searching for the disillusioned Zacharias Smith. He found a bucket and several mops before his toes came into contact with something softer and warm.

Now how to do this?

Sometimes the plan had holes in, little things that seemed very simple at the start, but turned out to be complex later. Things like how to re-insert your unconscious victim once you'd cleverly removed and replaced him with yourself.

He supposed that he'd just have to improvise.

Hoisting the invisible body of Smith over his left shoulder he stepped out of the broom closet and wandered down towards the Hufflepuff common room. He knew where it was, he knew where all of the houses were, it was hard not to notice when distinct groups of students followed the same patterns on the Marauders' Map.

'Zach,' a tall, pompous looking Hufflepuff gave him a nod, and wandered across to join him. 'The whole school's been locked down, we've got to go back to our common rooms and stay there until further notice. What's happening? What did Umbridge want?' Harry didn't know his name, but he recognised him vaguely from the few meetings of Dumbledore's Army he had attended.

'She gave me a cup of tea and asked me some questions,' Harry answered, uncomfortably aware of the unconscious body on his shoulder and attempting to mimic Smith's mannerisms.

'Oh? What about?' The Hufflepuff glanced around, 'I heard she was interviewing all the members of the DA.'

'She is, but it's not really about them,' Harry did his best imitation of Smith's smug smile. 'Someone set fire to her office, burnt the whole thing completely clean.'

'That explains why there are aurors here and why we're all being shut in,' Smith's friend frowned, slowing his pace down the stairs towards the basement. 'Saw them come in through the hall a few minutes back, they swept right through after Umbridge without a word.'

'Well if they find whoever did it he or she's in trouble,' Harry commented carefully. 'I daresay that the only things Umbridge has left are in her handbag.'

'Good riddance to all that bloody pink,' the Hufflepuff cheered quietly. 'Did she actually make you take veritaserum?'

'The tea,' Harry feigned shock, 'it could have been in the tea.'

'That must be illegal,' Smith's friend decided. 'I'm going to ask Cedric about it.' He knocked on the barrel in a peculiar rhythm, then led Harry into the common room.

It was a cosy, warm, comfortable atmosphere, not unlike the Gryffindor common room, with small knots of students gathered around the armchairs and sofas.

'I think I'm going to lie down,' Harry told him. 'I'm starting to get a serious headache.'

'It's probably because of what that woman made you drink,' Zacharias' friend said seriously. 'I'm definitely talking to Cedric about it.'

Harry nodded, hanging back to wait for everyone's eyes to move off of him, before choosing a random dormitory and walking up.

It took him two attempts to find the correct room, but once he had he drew the hangings around the bed, lay Smith down and dispelled his disillusionment.

'Obliviate,' he murmured.

Again he attempted the same thing he had with Filch, only instead of altering memories he fed him an edited version of his own recollections. Harry abridged the conversation with Umbridge, but kept almost everything else as he had experienced, including being dragged there by Crabbe and Goyle.

Disillusioning himself, he ducked quietly out of the hangings on the far side, and crept out of the Hufflepuff common room.

He had no intention of staying in the common room, either Hufflepuff's or Gryffindor's, but he did need people to think he had been there, so he had to go back.

Halfway up the stairs from the basement, the polyjuice began to wear off. There was a brief flare of heat across his body, then he could feel everything start to shift slowly back into place. It was a horrible feeling, the re-organising of his bones as they returned to his normal appearance.

His robes grew uncomfortably tight across his shoulders and chest as he broadened from Smith's slight figure, threatening to tear, so he swiftly undid the transfiguration he had cast to resize and alter their appearance.

Harry had never been more glad to be himself.

Hurrying up the steps he snuck back into the Gryffindor common room, dispelling his concealment out of sight in the passage and striding cheerfully across the room to join Neville, who was conversing animatedly with Ron and Hermione. The red-head seemed to be caught in between their disagreement, but they all stopped speaking when Harry arrived.

'Someone set fire to Umbridge's office,' he grinned, not having to fake his amusement in the slightest.

'She thought it was you?' Neville asked.

'I wish it had been me,' he replied wistfully, 'but I'm tired, and not feeling at all well. I think whatever I had a few weeks ago might be resurfacing so I'm going to disappear upstairs and lie down in a moment.'

Nothing could be further from the truth. The excitement was burbling within him, rising up from his stomach in great bubbles of cold adrenaline that coursed through his veins in anticipation of vengeance. He was glad that he had been patient, very glad, the moment was going to be all the sweeter for it.

'Rather you than me,' Neville agreed. Ron nodded absently.

'Want to trade?' Harry offered, pulling a tired smile.

'No thanks,' his friend smiled, 'you go and die quietly upstairs. It better not be contagious either.'

Harry left them with a smile he could barely suppress from spreading all the way across his face. Hermione never looked up.

Their dormitory was empty, he'd glimpsed Dean and Seamus playing exploding snap with Lavender and Parvati by the fire, so he drew the hangings around his bed, then warded the area to make sure nobody could draw them back.

Unfolding the Marauders' Map he searched hungrily for Umbridge's name, smiling delightedly when he saw her making her way down towards Hagrid's Hut, accompanied by two names that must belong to the pair of aurors she had summoned.

It's time.

The ice tightened in triumph at the prospect, the cold flooding across his body, anticipating the satisfaction to come.

Once again he concealed himself from view, but this time he cast very charm or ward he knew that might keep himself from being detected. It was imperative that the others believed he was still in the tower. His alibi had to be ironclad, even if he didn't expect any investigation to be levelled once Fudge collapsed and the increasingly disturbing, erratic actions of his former undersecretary came to light.

That meant he couldn't leave or return through the portrait of the Fat Lady; she would remember that a student had been out at the time, even if she didn't know it was him, and once the suspect was known to be in Gryffindor tower he would find himself under the magnifying glass.

He opened the window, squeezing out onto the ledge.

This is a terrible idea.

There wasn't much of an alternative, but it was a horrible long way down and for the first time Harry found himself agreeing with Salazar. Living in a tower was not a good thing. It was seven floors down to the ground.

My firebolt, he remembered at the last moment.

Squeezing back into the dormitory he flicked his wand out and, quickly checking the map to ensure Katie wasn't in her dormitory where Harry knew she kept it, likely in some kind of quidditch shrine, he summoned it to himself. It was technically still his, so she wouldn't complain if he borrowed it back from her briefly. He noted that Umbridge and her two aurors were making their way past Hagrid's Hut and into the edge of the forest.

The broom pressed itself against the outside of the window with a clatter, making Harry, who'd expected it to come up the stairs, jump and tuck the Marauders' Map away under his robes.

They must have their window open.

It was probably a good thing, nobody would have seen it come to him, and while he could easily explain that he just wanted to use the time to take care of it, it was easier not to have to say anything in the first place.

For the second time he stepped back out onto the ledge, casting the Disillusionment Charm over his broom as well. Flying was a far better idea than his half-formed plan to try and levitate himself down from roof to roof.

Swinging a leg over the firebolt and kicking off the sill into the air he revelled in the rush of the wind through his hair.

It had been so long since he had flown.

Harry had not realised how much he had missed it as he corkscrewed, still disillusioned, down over the greenhouses and the courtyards to come to a halt next to Hagrid's overrun pumpkin patch.

Tucking his firebolt in between two of the large orange fruits out of sight, he pulled the map back out and hurried into the forest after his prey.

The Forbidden Forest was quiet, it was always quiet, especially at night. He walked silently, the pine needles compressing softly beneath his feet as he stalked quickly after the trio he could hear ahead of him.

They were noisy.

Umbridge's short, loud footsteps were audible from over ten metres away as she crunched and cracked her way beneath the pines.

The aurors a few metres ahead of her were more subtle, they walked on the balls of their feet rather than bouncing on their heels, with hands inside jackets, and wary, narrowed eyes. Neither looked like they would be an easy opponent, but then he had no intention of duelling either of them, let alone both, that would be foolish.

The pines grew more dense as they moved deeper into the forest, the distance between the pines decreasing until they were brushing the edges of the trunks when they weaved along the same path that Hagrid had once sent Harry on.

Slipping past Umbridge, who was flouncing gleefully forwards though the trees murmuring to herself and clutching the map to her pink cardigan, he endeavoured to catch up to the aurors.

They were conversing quietly as they prowled through the trees, debating in hushed tones the merits of this mission.

'I'm telling you this is bad idea,' the taller of the two, Kingsley Shacklebolt according to the map, said.

'We're aurors,' Dawlish muttered, 'we follow our orders to keep our society safe.'

'This isn't keeping anyone safe as far as I can see,' Shacklebolt pointed out. 'We've been sent into an area well-known for being inhabited by some of the most dangerous magical creatures in Britain, and she hasn't even told us why.'

'I'm sure Dolores has a good reason, King,' Dawlish responded, ducking under a branch. Harry didn't need to use the mind arts to hear the doubt in his voice.

'What do you think we're doing out here then?'

'If Dolores is risking herself to come out here it must be important,' the grey-coated auror commented.

'Important to her and Fudge,' Shacklebolt remarked disparagingly.

'Yes,' Dawlish said slowly, 'I'm sure you would see it that way.'

'What do you mean?' They split up to walk around one of the trees, and Harry drifted a little closer so he didn't have to strain his ears to listen in.

'We've been working together for the best part of a decade, King,' Dawlish answered eventually. 'I know whose ideals you follow, don't think I haven't noticed you disappearing off at odd times.'

'I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about,' Shacklebolt said stiffly.

'Don't worry, King, you're an excellent auror, your motivations for keeping everyone safe don't concern me. Dumbledore's turned down the Minister's position three times, he's not plotting anything, jumping at shadows maybe, but nothing sinister. I don't care if you're a member of his covert little group, if I believed that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had actually returned I might join myself. The Ministry isn't investigating, so I hope for all our sakes that he's wrong.'

Harry cursed under his breath.

Of course, Kingsley Shacklebolt had to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

That shredded his plan completely. He couldn't justify killing either of the aurors, not when their deaths assisted Voldemort's cause more than his, but he couldn't let them witness Umbridge's death, and it was too late to turn back. The map was in play, the pieces were moving, and unless Umbridge's lips were sealed, permanently, things might yet be traced back to him.

'Madam Bones isn't at all happy about things,' Dawlish was saying, 'she'll be furious with the both of us when we get back, I wish we'd let the pink harpy wander in here on her own.'

'She should never come back if she were left in here alone,' Shacklebolt shook his head, 'detestable as she is she does not deserve to die because of it.'

'There are plenty of wizards and witches who would disagree with you there,' Dawlish retorted. 'Still, you're the senior auror, so you'll be the one who gets it in the neck from Madam Bones… again.'

Harry hurried past them, trusting in his magic to keep him concealed from the aurors, and thinking furiously. Somehow he had to separate the aurors from Umbridge, and he had to do it a way that wouldn't arouse the slightest bit of suspicion, or he could just continue with the plan, and leave all three to die.

Harden your heart, he told himself, but he knew he couldn't do it.

They weren't in his way, they didn't deserve death, and there was no good reason for him to lure the two of them in as well. Killing them was out of the question, he was not Voldemort, who massacred anyone he wanted, and he was not Dumbledore who sacrificed anyone he thought he might have to without a second thought.

In an instant he decided to change the plan. It was time to improvise again.

He swept forwards, running through the trees until he reached the first span of spider webbing that spread between two pines. The webbing was as thick as arm, and hard to miss.

Smiling coldly he disillusioned it, pressing the tip of his wand to the webbing and watching as it and all its interconnected strands faded from view. There would be no signs of the trap they were walking into, he just had to think of a way to allow the aurors to escape without letting Umbridge go or giving anything away.

It was easy to find his way forwards, he could follow the increasingly more prevalent webbing, concealing it as he went, and eventually he stepped out into the small hollow that Aragog and his family called home, gazing up at the trees and the shadows of the acromantula.

I may regret this, he thought wryly, but it's a small risk for two lives.

He revealed himself, stepping forwards into the centre of the hollow.

Furious clicking erupted from the trees around him, and the vast arachnids descended from every shadow and crevice to surround him.

Harry stood his ground, but flicked his wand back out into his palm.

'So, friend of Hagrid, you have returned,' the ancient, milky-eyed acromantula patriarch stalked out from under the roots of the largest of the pines. 'I remember your last visit well.'

So do I, Harry thought, recalling sprinting away from the man-eating spiders all too clearly.

'Are you going to try and eat me again?' He asked dryly, concealing any sign of his own anxiety. A thousand acromantula were well beyond his ability to slay, and while he might be able to escape again, it would rather ruin his plan.

'My children are always hungry,' Aragog murmured, 'but no, my family owes you a great debt, slayer-of-the-creature-we-do-not-speak-of. Hagrid told me of your deed, you freed my friend from his prison with your actions, and saved my children from the creature's hunger.'

'A debt,' Harry mused. There was a lot of possibilities for an indebted acromantula horde, but outside of the shadows of the forest, out of their element, they would be no more than a distraction to a well-trained wizard or witch.

'Yes,' the ancient spider whispered, 'but you did not know of it until now. Why have you come?'

'I have a deal for you and your children,' Harry proposed, thinking things through quickly as he spoke.

'A deal,' Aragog murmured, clicking his pincers and stalking closer, looming over Harry.

'Fulfilment of your debt,' Harry explained.

'What would you have from my family, friend of spiders?'

'There was a wizard who was once known as Tom Riddle,' Harry began, but was interrupted by Aragog's furious hissing.

'I know of Tom Riddle,' the spider spat, 'he expelled me from my home, destroyed the future Hagrid had planned.'

Well that makes things much easier.

'He unleashed the basilisk I slew,' Harry told them, smirking as the creatures flinched from the word. 'But he goes by a new name now,' Harry grinned, 'he calls himself Voldemort, and seeks to dominate Britain.'

'You would have us fight him,' Aragog assumed. 'We are hunters, ambushers, we live amongst webs and shadows, outside our forest we will be little more than a shield against your spells. I will not condemn my children to such a fate.'

'I ask you and your family to guard the forest against him, to agree never to aid or join with him, no matter what he offers, or how long he lives.' Harry slipped his wand away. 'If you agree, then I will hold your oath fulfilled, and as a gesture of friendship I will hunt with you.'

It seemed like the sort of thing that Aragog and his kin would respect, acting as a fellow hunter would earn him their respect.

'I agree,' the ancient spider whispered without hesitation, clicking his pincers and surveying his family around him. 'You ask for little in return for the freedom you have gifted us. When will you hunt with us?'

Harry smiled up at the spider, the ice screaming in triumph inside him. 'We already are.'

'Where then, is our prey?' Aragog seemed more curious than disbelieving.

'Walking towards us, lured into the middle of your web, to this very clearing, a trio whom I can offer one of to you and your children.'

'Only one?' The vast arachnid mused.

'The other two must live, they must not know of me, but they must live.' The acromantula around him were moving freely, walking over and around him, crawling up the trunks into the trees as if his presence were completely ordinary.

'I have told my children that you are one of our family, just as Hagrid is,' Aragog explained, 'and I accept your hunt.'

'Then we only need to wait,' Harry told him. 'When the three arrive scare them, make them flee, make them run and make sure they do not return. I will ensure the female does not escape. She is your gift.'

He followed the ancient acromantula back into the hollow under the roots of the pines, revelling in his coming revenge. Aragog clicked furiously, and the multitude of acromantula swarmed back up into the trees, retreating to the shadows, barely visible. Harry would not be able to see them if he were not looking for them.

'They are waiting,' the patriarch arachnid clicked, 'when the prey comes they will ambush and drive the males off, returning once they are sufficiently far from our home. We will deal with the female.'

It was several long minutes before the sound of Umbridge's footsteps became audible, and with every excruciating second of anticipation the rushing, freezing flood of ice in his veins grew more intense.

Cautiously he peered out round the roots. The two aurors spread out, shifting to watch the only entrance to the hollow, but Umbridge, still muttering to herself, strode to the very centre of the clearing.

'For the Greater Good,' she commanded, as the acromantula began to descend, unseen, from above.

Yes, Harry agreed, but mostly for revenge.

Shacklebolt saw the acromantula first and swore, pulling Dawlish back into the small entrance and drawing his wand.

'Run,' the grey-coated auror barked, 'Dolores!'

The pair only waited for a moment, conjuring a vast shield that prevented the spiders from reaching any of them, as Umbridge ran shrieking towards them.

Harry waited, concealed among the arachnids as he strode from the hollow, for the perfect moment.

It came as the aurors turned to run, dropping their shield.

'Osassula,' he whispered.

The curse hissed viciously across the ground, narrowly missing several of the acromantula who were moving to pursue the two aurors, and struck Umbridge on the ankle with a pleasing snapping sound.

She dropped with a loud scream.

Neither Dawlish nor Shacklebolt looked back.

'Filthy spiders,' Umbridge screeched, firing curses into the empty shadows around her. The acromantula had gone, pursuing the feeling aurors to ensure they did not return and steal Harry's gift from them.

'I see you followed the map I made,' Harry commented icily, stepping into her line of sight.

'Dumbledore,' she spat. 'You'll suffer for this, consorting with such creatures.'

'Dumbledore?' Harry would have laughed if he did not feel so insulted. The former headmaster would have sacrificed the aurors rather than saved them. He was better than the old wizard.

'Potter,' she breathed in disbelief. 'I am the headmistress of Hogwarts, you will be expelled, your wand snapped, and then sent to Azkaban for the rest of your life. It will only take a word from me to Cornelius and you will be destroyed.'

'You seem to be labouring under the delusion that you're ever leaving this forest,' Harry smiled cruelly.

Umbridge's rant died on her lips, a crazed, desperate gleam rising in her eyes as she muttered to herself, pressing her left hand to the tiara she still wore.

Her wand sprang into her hand, she no longer kept it in her handbag, and a nasty looking curse flashed past him as he ducked, carving deep gashes into the trunk of the pine behind him. He was ready for her second attempt and deflected it nonchalantly back at her, increasing the velocity as much as he could. It struck the diadem as she tried to duck, knocking it off her head and throwing it across the clearing.

'Crucio,' she cried, with desperate loathing, but a single, wordlessly conjured butterfly swallowed the Unforgivable Curse before it reached him.

'Lacero,' he responded calmly, casting the spell as swiftly as he was able and walking slowly closer to maximise the advantage his speed afforded.

The purple curse tore a line across her forearm before she could flinch, splattering blood across the pine needles. Her short wand fell from her stubby fingers to the floor.

She tried running then, but a well-placed bone-splintering curse fractured her pelvis and she fell, shrieking, onto her face, to slowly crawl away from him, sobbing and clawing at the dirt with her fingers.

Harry walked slowly up behind her, stamping cruelly on the outstretched fingers of her uninjured arm, eliciting another piercing scream.

With one foot he roughly flipped her over onto her back, smiling coldly down at her soiled pink cardigan and skirt. The creature of ice in his chest screamed in triumph, roiling and coiling rapturously within him.

She was crying.

Thick lines of tears dribbled their way down her pale, mud-smeared, flabby face, as she gasped and sobbed in fear.

'Sometimes,' he reminded her pleasantly prying the map from her hands and tapping it mockingly, 'when something seems too good to be true, it's because it is.' Her eyes widened in shocked realisation, understanding, at last, how she had been led here. It was the first beautiful thing he had ever seen on her face, and it would doubtless be the last.

Harry turned away, picking up her wand and twirling the short piece of wood between his fingers, before snapping it and carelessly discarding the shards on the forest floor. If anyone was foolish enough to return, they would find nothing that pointed to him.

'She's yours now,' Harry told Aragog, raising your voice. 'I don't need to kill her, you can.'

'We spiders do not kill our prey so quickly,' Aragog laughed wheezily. 'We keep them still, warm and breathing, then feast for as long as they can remain alive.'

The spider stalked out from under the roots, looming over Umbridge who had fallen silent at the description of her well-deserved fate.

'I thank you for your gift,' Aragog whispered, 'I and my children will defend the forest from Tom Riddle and those who follow him. The aurors will be close, my children dare not pursue too far for fear of retribution.'

The ancient acromantula struck with surprising speed, lunging forwards to grasp Umbridge in his pincers. There was a very soft, wet noise as Aragog bit her, then she gave a loud gurgle and flopped limply to the floor.

'Homenum Revelio,' Harry murmured.

The spell took effect immediately, sending a shimmer across the air in the hollow. Distantly he spied two small red figures, they were leaving the forest. Either the aurors did not care if she survived, or they believed her to already be dead.

She might wish she was, Harry thought, taking a great deal of dark satisfaction from her fate.

He turned away to hurry back to Gryffindor Tower and make himself known to his friends, ensuring his alibi, but as he did, the soft, red glow emanating from the tiara Umbridge had taken from the Room of Requirement caught the corner of his eye.

'Curious,' he mused aloud, bending down to retrieve it, brushing the dirt and needles away. The circlet chittered when he touched it, and he received the strangest impression that it was happy he had found it.

Wit beyond measure is Man's greatest treasure, he read.

They were Rowena Ravenclaw's words. He vaguely remembered Salazar saying something about one of their greatest creations being a lost diadem. Harry slipped it into his pocket. Slytherin's portrait would be able to clarify whether it would be of use to him.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to all those who do.

62. Resilience

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's. (I'm also still alive)

The next chapter, sorry it took so long, I've been busy with my new job, and I've go training for the next three days, so I might not be able to manage more than one or two chapters. I promise to try and resist the temptation to make them all cliff-hangars ;)

Chapter 62

The carven, gold-leafed chair that Umbridge had always sat so primly and regally upon was conspicuously empty.

It had not gone unnoticed.

For every moment that Professor Umbridge did not appear to stare over them the whispers grew louder, swelling from susurration to soaring roar; it's reverberation filled the Great Hall.

Harry listened to the whispers, the outlandish stories, rumours and vindictive hopes of the Gryffindors along the table from him. Ron, Seamus and Dean were sure that their Professor had succumbed to the curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts post, disappearing in a convoluted and dramatic tale involving Dumbledore, Sirius, the Order and Dementors. Hermione, ever the voice of logic, eventually prevailed upon them that it was likely the aurors had discovered her indiscrete and unjustifiable use of veritaserum on children. His former friend shot him the occasional glance, and from the flutter of her thoughts he glimpsed both her worry and her curiosity.

Lavender Brown's opinion was his personal favourite. From the imaginations of the blonde, Parvati, and a trapped and rather helpless looking Neville, came the certifiably inexplicable decision that Professor Umbridge had left her office to meet up in the greenhouses with Filch for a midnight tryst, only to be snatched and consumed by the Venomous Tentacula.

Harry was a little surprised that Neville hadn't told either of the girls that their suspect plant was incapable of eating a person, but the blushing boy seemed quite happy to be wedged in between the two girls.

He'd have to make sure to mention the moment loudly near the greenhouses, or anywhere that Hannah Abbott might overhear.

Eventually the noise of speculation grew too loud, and Professor McGonagall rose, clearing her throat in uncharacteristically mocking mimicry of their missing headmistress.

'As you are all aware,' the head of Gryffindor began, allowing the hall to quiet, 'Professor Umbridge is no longer at the school. There is some speculation as to what actually happened, but it will suffice to announce that she is unlikely to be returning and I will be forced to act in her stead until the summer.'

A cheer rose from the four tables, sparks were launched into the air from upraised wands and, courtesy of Katie, at least one goblet of pumpkin juice went flying.

Harry noted Malfoy and his lackeys doing there best to act pleased, while hurriedly removing the little silver badges from their robes. They would no doubt be reaping the reward of their recent abuse of authority in the weeks to come.

For all the joy and rapture the rest of school was displaying Harry felt only anxiety. Dumbledore was gone. Umbridge was gone. The two obstacles that were blocking his path to the Department of Mysteries were gone. He could leave the school and go there the minute this feast ended so long as Sirius was able to get him though the door. The tantalising anticipation blended with his fear of what the prophecy might say, pushing cold, light bubbles up through his stomach.

'So what do you think happened?' Ron asked him hesitantly.

It was the first time that the red-head and voluntarily initiated a conversation with him in a long time, and it caught him off guard.

'Hermione is correct,' he answered once he'd recovered. 'The use of veritaserum on children would have earned her a very long and unpleasant holiday in Azkaban once Magical Law Enforcement heard about it.'

'It's no less than she deserves,' Ron decided darkly. He'd hardly touched his plate of food, picking at it just as uninterestedly as Hermione was next to him. 'If scum like her weren't corrupting the Ministry then,' his hand clenched white around his fork and he fell silent. Harry didn't need him to finish the sentence.

If not for Fudge and his irresponsible denial, Arthur Weasley might well be alive.

In truth he felt a slight twinge of pity for Ron. He'd grown up alone, without his parents, or a family at all, but he'd never had to feel what it was like to have it torn away. Oddly Ron seemed to be handling it the best out of all of the Weasley's. The Twins avoided him, Ginny too, though that might be because she was spending all her time with Michael Corner, only Ron seemed to be beyond blaming him in part for what happened.

Harry didn't share any of his sympathy. It simply wouldn't help. Patting him on the back in some unhelpful pretence of recognising the pathos of his predicament would achieve nothing for either of them.

Across from him Colin Creevey's knife scraped loudly across his plate, setting Harry's teeth on edge. Frowning at the diminutive student Harry abandoned the rest of his breakfast to think. He'd come so far, it wasn't worth taking any more risks than he needed to now he was so close. Harry had to be as strong as he could be when he went after the Prophecy.

The second ritual, he decided, ignoring the apprehensive lurch of his stomach.

This time he had to be careful, he had recover quickly, much more quickly than last time. Madam Pomfrey would not be impressed if he appeared in her infirmary again, and with Umbridge gone there was nothing stopping her contacting McGonagall or any of the other professors about his injuries.

I'll have to steal what I need, he realised.

Blood-replenishing potions, at least a litre of them, and it was well past time he asked Salazar about healing magic. Even a a few spells to fix himself up after injury could prove invaluable.

Harry slipped away from the throng of students flooding excitedly from the Great Hall in the direction of the Hospital Wing . Madam Pomfrey had been at the staff table and still eating when he left, so Harry figured he had at least a minute or two to help himself to the selection of potions he needed.

Having visited the Hospital Wing as frequently as he had he knew where the nurse kept the key to the potions cupboard and he knew it was well-stocked. His small raid would pass unnoticed for weeks so long as he was not seen.

He passed Peeves on his way. The poltergeist was cackling and juggling bottles of ink as he zoomed towards the crowd of students leaving the Great Hall. Some poor person was about to be feeling blue.

The beds were all thankfully empty, with the sheets neatly folded and the curtains drawn back.

Good, Harry decided.

Madam Pomfrey was less likely to hurry back if her demesne was without any subjects.

He wasted no time, hurrying past the empty beds and into Madam Pomfrey's office to retrieve the key to the store cupboard from inside the small, decorative urn on her desk.

There were more potions inside than he had expected, someone had spent a great deal of time weaving some very sophisticated spacial-expansion charms on the room. It had almost ten metres of shelving stretching up to eye level.

Fortunately the nurse was an orderly, logical witch, and the stock was organised alphabetically with the blood-Replenishing Potions immediately on his left.

Harry helped himself to several large flasks, taking them from the back so their absence was less conspicuous. He helped himself to a vial of the invigoration draught as well. It was easy to brew, and Harry had considered making it himself, but Madam Pomfrey had enough to drown a small dragon. A single vial would never be noticed.

Moving quickly he locked the door and replaced the key back inside the urn. He disillusioned the bottles he was holding, using a sticking charm to attache them to his chest where they are unlikely to be touched.

He walked towards the chamber very slowly, paranoid that his magic might fail and the precious , essential flasks might fall and shatter.

They didn't, but Harry knew he must have looked very strange to constantly touching his chest every few moments. It was a good thing everyone still gave him a wide berth.

'Open,' he commanded the chamber, descending down the stairs as soon as he could see them. His apprehension grew with each step. The first time he had carried out this ritual he hadn't really realised the cost, but this time he was fully aware of the pain and fatigue ahead. It was not enough to make him change his mind, he need the power, but it was sufficient to unsettle him.

The silence of the Chamber of Secrets reassured him. The staring, empty eyes of the serpent effigies entwined around every column gave him confidence. He was the Heir of Slytherin, a prodigy in his own right; he could manage another ritual, especially if he knew how to heal himself.

'Salazar, I'm back,' he announced, stepping into the study, and depositing his potions on the desk.

'So you are,' the portrait smiled. 'How is the illustrious headmistress?'

'She's a little tied up,' Harry grinned, recalling the last glimpse of her face. Tear-streaked, pale and horrified, peaking out through a swaddling cocoon of webbing.

'Not dead?' Slytherin remarked sharply.

'Acromantula keep their prey alive while they eat,' Harry answered evenly. 'She won't become a liability. Aragog and his family will leave little more than bones and that lurid pink cardigan.'

'Good,' the founder smirked viciously. 'She deserves it. We founded this school to protect our children, not to let such despicable people torture them.' He took a deep, calming breath and gently steered the head of his serpent away from under his chin where it had been tickling him with its tongue. 'There is no obstacle between you and the Department of Mysteries now.'

'I intend to complete the final ritual,' Harry informed him. 'I shall speak to Sirius too.'

He levitated the ingredients for the ritual off the desk, then, in a flash of genius, took the time-turner with him as well.

'I can start to recover from the ritual before I do it,' he explained, at Salazar's raised eyebrow. His ancestor smiled approvingly at his idea, but said nothing as Harry lifted him off the wall and carried him out over the bridge into the main chamber, followed by the floating jar of salamander's blood, the griffin's claw and the shimmering unicorn tail hair.

'Three triangles,' the portrait instructed, before Harry even asked. 'Draw them so each triangle has two points shared with the other triangles. That way your three triangles form another triangle between them at the centre.'

Harry wasted no time in inscribing the design on the floor in purple flames. It was more simplistic than the last, something that surprised him. He voiced as much to the founder.

'It's actually a less complex ritual,' Salazar told him cheerfully. 'You're improving the existing template of your body by increasing what's already there. It's like having a number, then tripling it. The other ritual required you to rewrite the template of your body to fix your eyes. You had to erase the number and make a new one.'

It sort of made sense. Increasing his reflexes and existing functions was, in essence, simpler than redesigning his eyes.

'Before I do this, can you teach me how to heal myself?' Harry asked mildly. 'I don't want to have to stagger down to see Madam Pomfrey again.'

'Of course,' Slytherin frowned. 'I should have made sure you could do this a long time ago.'

'Where do I begin?'

'The first thing you need to know is the better your grasp of human biology the better your healing spell will be. You can intend to heal someone, but the more you know about what you actually want your magic to do the better your focus will be and the more efficient the spell.'

Harry nodded, flicking his wand out into his palm.

Salazar shook his head. 'No point practicing now,' he pointed out, 'you're about to injure yourself anyway. The incantation you want to heal cuts or lacerations is vulnera sanentur, for bones, use ossio sanentur.'

'What are they capable of healing?' Harry inquired.

'For you,' Slytherin mused, 'probably all but the worst cuts or breaks. You have enough magic to throw at the problem that you can likely heal just about anything, though you'll never be particularly efficient or perfect at it. They won't do much for burns, though, nor injuries that are resistant to magic.'

'Best to avoid them in the first place,' Harry laughed lightly.

'Exactly,' Salazar agreed. 'I'd suggest improving your knowledge of human biology if you want to be able to competently heal anyone other than yourself. Your mind and magic have a subconscious, inherent image of how you should be, so strong intent and lots of magic is often enough when healing one's self. It's a lot less effective on others without that subliminal source of focus and to direct the magic.'

'I see,' Harry scratched his chin. 'For now I'm happy just being able to fix myself up after this ritual.'

'It's something I pursued on my own for the same reason,' Slytherin agreed. 'Blood magic is always expensive and I did more than dabble.'

Harry went back to inscribing the runes for the ritual, drawing them out with the tip of his wand in three concentric circles around the triangle.

'There are a lot of threes for this ritual, but no sevens,' Harry commented, intrigued. He understood the arithmantic implications of the use of the number three, but he was curious as to why they had not used seven again. Seven was the most powerful magical number, after all.

'Three threes is a very powerful magical combination,' Salazar pointed out, indicating each triangle with his wand. 'It's one of the most powerful feasible combinations, exceeded only by seven threes, three sevens, and seven sevens.'

'Feasible?' Harry stepped back to admire his handiwork, pausing to correct a few less than perfectly drawn glyphs.

'Every time you increase the number combinations the effects are also improved. Having three threes of three, would be more powerful than three threes, but the increase quickly becomes negligible and meaningless for rituals. The human body only has so much blood after all,' Salazar smirked.

'So if I were to draw another three triangles around this then it would be more powerful.'

'That would be six threes,' Slytherin disagreed. 'You'd have to create a three-sided pyramid by drawing those runes in the air around you and levitating your blood,' Salazar grinned enthusiastically. 'I tried it once. Took me a month to recover, but,' he smiled triumphantly, 'I was never hungover again. The look on Godric's face the next morning after I woke up as usual was patronus worthy.'

Harry stared at the painting in disbelief. A month, and all that blood to avoid feeling sick the morning after drinking.

'Is it worth me doing it for this ritual?' He asked, still slightly incredulous that Salazar had used a ritual for something so easily cured with a potion.

'No.' The painting shook its head, mimicked by the serpent around his shoulders. 'The increase in amplification isn't necessary for the ritual you're doing and it will take much longer for you to recover if you do. Maybe next time,' Salazar consoled him.

Strangely he was a little disappointed, despite knowing how much more it might cost him.

'Next time?' Harry quirked an eyebrow, wondering what ritual Salazar thought would help him next.

'Well as I'm sure you've noticed there are some parallels that can be drawn between the ingredients for the ritual and those for potions that have a similar, temporary effect,' the founder began, launching enthusiastically into his explanation. 'I was always very curious to see what would happen if you tried to make the effects of Polyjuice permanent through ritual.'

'That does sound like a brilliant idea,' Harry agreed, sarcasm dripping from his tongue.

'Well it would be interesting to see what would happen,' Salazar defended. 'It might be a permanent version of the transformation, you could be whoever you wanted to be!'

'That sounds like a terrible thing to experiment with,' Harry disagreed. 'Imagine if you accidentally, permanently ended up looking like Godric.'

Harry had never seen the painting look quite so distraught as he did in that moment.

'Maybe you're right,' Slytherin agreed, 'that would be terrible, his beard.' The founder visibly shuddered.

'I'd best get on with this ritual then,' Harry smiled.

'Yes,' Salazar focused back on the inscribed purple flames. 'It looks fine,' he decided. 'Unicorn's hair needs to be placed on the face of every one of your triangles, the salamander's blood should go everywhere,' Harry interpreted that as over all of the pattern, 'and the griffins claw should be dissected and a piece placed at every point.'

Harry used the Severing Charm to dissect the claw. He knew by now that using magic on the ingredients was harmless since they were all about to be saturated in it regardless.

Before long he was standing at the centre of three triangles carefully covered in salamander's blood, unicorn hair and slices of griffin's claw, and within the circles of flaming, indigo runes.

Extending one hand he wandlessly and silently summoned the potions he had stolen from Madam Pomfrey, deftly catching them one after the other.

'I'd suggest not carrying the time-turner during the ritual,' Salazar commented amusedly.

Harry slipped the small, golden hourglass out of his pocket and placed it on the floor well out of the way. He was more than a little relieved the founder had pointed that out before he began, but slightly irritated he'd waited so long to do it.

He raised his wand to make the necessary cut across his wrist.

'And you should speak to your godfather before doing this, just in case you collapse afterwards.'

'Any other suggestions,' Harry remarked dryly, 'or would you like to wait and list them one at time to annoy me as much as possible.'

'Ungrateful child,' Salazar groused. 'If you weren't family I'd have half a mind to let you carry out the ritual with a time-turner on you to see what happened.'

'I'd probably end up in my eleven year old body,' Harry quipped, 'forewarned and vastly more powerful than I was before. Voldemort wouldn't stand a chance.'

The founder snorted. 'Get on with it, you don't have all day.'

Harry summoned the mirror just as he had the potions, prompting an indulgent sigh from Salazar who knew how long he'd spent working to master the spell, and how much pleasure Harry derived from being able to hold out his hand and nonchalantly summon things.

'Sirius,' Harry murmured, angling the mirror so that his godfather would not be able to see more than the dark ceiling.

'Harry,' the man sighed with relief. 'You're ok. We were all worried.'

'You were?'

'Of course,' Sirius looked taken aback, 'with Dumbledore gone there's been nobody to keep Dolores Umbridge in check.'

'She's gone,' Harry told him. 'McGonagall didn't say why, but she openly used veritaserum on children, and even Fudge can't condone or ignore that.'

'What Fudge does or doesn't condone scarcely matters now, the Wizengamot is fighting over who will take his place according to our sources.' His godfather looked at him penetratingly. 'You're not really interested in that are you?'

'No,' Harry grinned. 'I wanted to know if you'd got anywhere planning our little holiday to the Department of Mysteries.'

'I have,' Sirius burst into a bright smile. 'You'll come via Grimmauld Place, if Umbridge is really gone then you can just floo here. I can apparate us to the entrance of the Ministry and then we can go in with me under James' cloak. The door isn't easy to get past, but fortunately we figured that out a few months back, so I know how to get through that.'

'What about the guard from the Order?' Harry inquired.

'Old Mundungus has had his eye on several treasures from among my mother's collections. I was going to throw them out, but I'll give them to him in return for him letting us through when he's guarding.'

'He sounds reliable,' Harry commented.

'He's not one of the members we'd use to guard something important if we had a choice, but with Arthur gone and Podmore in Azkaban we have little choice.'

'So when is this Mundundgus guarding?'

'Everyone has their shift, except me, Snivellus and Dumbledore whose off doing something so important he can't talk to the rest of us.' Harry stifled a smile. Hi godfather seemed quite put out with the headmaster. 'We normally give 'Dung the evening shift, stops him getting into trouble in bars or down Knockturn alley after dark.'

'So any evening,' Harry mused.

'As long as it's after six,' Sirius corrected, 'it's Emmeline Vance before then, and I can't bribe her. Fifteen years ago I could have just smiled at her and then walked past while she was daydreaming,' he sighed nostalgically, 'how times change.'

'Tragic,' Harry agreed wryly. 'How the world will miss your philandering.' His godfather nodded sadly, completely serious, a distant, despondent gleam in his eyes.

'So if I came tomorrow, you would be ready?'

'I would leave now if I could, Harry,' Sirius burst out. 'I hate this place, I grew up here, spent the only moments of my life comparable to my time in Azkaban here. The only thing Grimmauld Place needs to equal that place is dementors, and my mother's portrait is most of the way to being one.'

'You want to get out.'

'I need to get out,' Sirius corrected. 'I can't stay here and let everyone else fight.'

'I understand,' Harry nodded earnestly. He would not be able to bare being cooped up in a house he hated waiting for others to win a war he should be part of either. He'd already learnt that.

'I know you do,' his godfather said gravely, 'you were right about Dumbledore. I feel more and more that he tells us only what he thinks we need to know when he thinks we need to know it. I make my own decisions and mistakes, I have since the day I was burnt off my family tree, and I won't stop now.'

He frowned, and Harry caught a glimpse of the scarcely sane man he had been when he'd first met him. There was a shadow lingering in the depths of his eyes that seemed to be growing darker, despite his smart, healthy appearance, the longer he spent imprisoned within Grimmauld Place.

'I'll floo over when I'm ready,' Harry leant his head to one side in thought, 'it will be soon, likely tomorrow or the day after.' It depended entirely on how fast Harry could recover, with the potions, his newly learnt healing spells, and using the time-turner to rest he hoped he would be close to fully recovered in just over a day. Two uses of the time-turner could be squeezed into that period, doubling the rest period, and Salazar had implied that this ritual was less demanding than the last.

'The sooner the better,' Sirius grinned, the shadow vanishing.

'Should I use the mirror to warn you?' Harry asked.

'I like surprises,' his godfather shrugged, 'nobody will be here except Kreacher and my mother's portrait. Nobody who visits listens to my mother, they didn't listen when she was alive either, and I'll order Kreacher not to speak about your visit.'

'Ok,' Harry smiled. 'I have to get back to everything, I'll be seeing you soon,' he grinned, ending the magic.

I'm so close.

Part of him wished to rush off now, longing to finally know something he should have been told about years ago, but it would be foolish to dash in when he could wait a day and be more likely to succeed.

Flicking his wand into his palm he put the mirror down outside the the runes and pressed its ebony tip against his wrist.

'Anything I've forgotten?' He asked Salazar dryly.

'No,' the painting smirked. 'Have fun.'

Harry gave him a flat stare, unsure if he was actually being sincere, then lightly drew the tip of his wand across his wrist.

Blood flooded in thin rivulets from the cut, trickling across and down his forearm to the floor. Remembering how long it had taken him to drip blood across the pattern for the last ritual Harry very tentatively used his wand to redraw the design of triangles in the air from his wrist, deliberately pulling the crimson liquid from his body before letting it slowly descend onto the pattern below with a soft, wet spatter.

This is the bit that hurts, he reminded himself, ignoring the dull, ache in his wrist that throbbed to the beat of his heart.

The runes flared bright, searing at his eyes, and there was an explosion of white sparks from the triangles at his feet, then the blood-inscribed pattern glowed a deep, vivid emerald green.

It started as tiny pinpricks of heat in his toes and fingertips, points of pain so small he wasn't sure they actually hurt. The heat sank deep, as if the full length of the glowing needles that had previously been placed against him had been driven into his fingers and toes.

He refused to scream, but he bit down so hard on his lip his mouth filled with blood, and then the sensation crept along his fingers, spreading slowly but surely over his body.

Harry felt every single individual needle, each burning point was as clear to him as the sun in an empty sky, and they soon covered every part of his body. He could feel them in his chest, his thighs, his face and even his tongue, prickling, fiery specks of pain he could not ignore, and then, in an instant, his body was flooded by a pleasant warmth.

It was a fluid, liquid heat that filled him, swelling like the tide before draining away to leave him standing stiffly in the centre of his triangles.

'You didn't collapse,' Salazar observed. 'How do you feel?'

'Strange,' Harry answered, watching the portraits lips move.

It was the weirdest sensation, because he knew that the painting and the world were moving just as fast as they normally did, and the fact that he knew he could somehow go faster was profoundly unnatural.

'Reducto,' he hissed, flicking his wand into his palm and casting the curse as fast he could.

The motion was a seamless blur, he had barely finished thinking he wanted to move to cast the curse before the effigy opposite him disintegrated.

'Oh my,' Slytherin remarked amusedly, 'that was fast.'

Harry turned to raise an eyebrow at the founder, but was rendered speechless by the obvious gleam of pride he saw in his ancestor's eyes.

'You should heal your arm,' Slytherin reminded him.

Harry twisted his forearm to inspect the cut, pausing in disbelief and staring for a long minute to make sure what he was true.

'It's healing itself,' he noted in a tone strangled by surprise.

'Really?' Salazar sounded more fascinated than concerned, scanning the runes and patterns of the ritual.

'I think I might know why,' he decided after a long pause. 'You used a rune that is synonymous with strength, but foremost means resilience. In most aspects this would have meant nothing, it is a mistake I might have made as well, but the ritual may have made you fast and resilient, rather than fast and strong.'

'Is that not a good thing?' Harry felt that being resilient may well be better than being strong. Brittle things were strong up until a point, then they shattered under the stress.

'Perhaps,' Slytherin shrugged, peering curiously at the fading cut on his wrist as Harry downed his potions and retrieved the time-turner. 'Only time will tell.'

'I will see you five hours ago,' Harry smiled. He did not feel as exhausted as he had expected, perhaps the effects of his newly-developed resilience, and the icy bubbles of anticipation were welling upwards at the prospect of seeing the prophecy sooner than he had dared to hope.

The time-turner spun within its golden frame, over and over, then events blurred backwards past him and he closed his eyes with a small, tired smile.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing! Thanks to everyone who does.

63. Man's Greatest Treasure

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Someone just reviewed about giving Harry the inevitable Dobby power-up, I genuinely cackled to myself... Too soon?

Anyway, next chapter!

Chapter 63

Dean's clock was wrong. The muggle-made device had given out again, its batteries warped by the magic around them. Dean would have to get Hermione to come and fix it for him again.

The clock face told him it was still twenty six minutes past two, just as it had before double transfiguration with their new interim headmistress. Harry had little doubt that Dumbledore would be returning the moment Fudge finally slipped from power. His Tempus Charm revealed that it was really five minutes to five, and full time he left.

The ritual had not taken as long to recover from as he had feared; it had not even taken as long as he hoped. Within a day he had been physically fully recovered, and only caution had kept him from leaving straight away.

Harry was still not entirely sure exactly how his body had been changed by the ritual to become more resilient. Salazar had offered a vague explanation that had boiled down to the regenerative properties of salamanders' blood being mimicked by the magic of the ritual and incorporated into his own blood and he seemed to be right.

Harry had, tentatively at first, but then more confidently, lightly cut thin lines across his forearm to watch them heal. No matter how deep he drove the knife the wounds slowly faded without a scar, though it took close to an hour for the very deepest to vanish completely. The flesh around the injury would swell red as if bruised, then grow feverishly warm until the wound had healed and the skin had crept back. It was almost fascinating to watch.

He knew that salamander's could grow limbs back if they lost them, but he had no desire to test his capabilities so drastically. The advanced healing he had gained was a blessing that could prove far more useful than the increased strength he had been attempting to gain.

Rooting around in his trunk for a clean pair of socks his fingers brushed something warm, something that, like the seat of a lost tooth drew the tip of the tongue, needed to be touched, caressed and held.

It chittered jubilantly as he trailed the tip of his forefinger along the curving edge, growing warmer still, rejoicing wordlessly in his closeness.

Such a strange thing, but what secrets it must hold.

The circlet fitted the description of Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem, tarnished though it was, but it did not behave as he expected it to. It certainly didn't appear to be a shining font of knowledge and wisdom, but then the sorting hat was hardly what he'd expected either.

Harry weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. The diadem was supposed to increase the intelligence of the wearer, something that might prove invaluable to him in the future. Leaving it behind felt rather imprudent.

Salazar will know whether it is the genuine article, he decided, slipping the tiara into his pocket alongside the Marauder's Map.

He pulled the hangings across his bed, covering them with the usual wards to keep anyone too nosy from discovering anything inconvenient. Tonight he needed to give nobody a reason to think he might be elsewhere.

Calmly he strolled out of the dormitory, keeping one eye on the map he had half-concealed in his pocket. The quidditch team was on their way to practice, they wouldn't be returning until late, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Hermione and a handful of other Gryffindors were not present on the map, which meant they were either in the Chamber of Secrets, something Harry suspected to be unlikely, or they were holding another DA meeting in the Room of Requirement.

The common room was much emptier than usual. Without Umbridge's tyrannical enforcement of her decrees there was nothing to keep the students from the corridors anymore, and after being pent up for so long everyone had made the most of the opportunities.

Nobody looked up to see him leave, but he wasn't particularly concerned. He was no longer unpopular, the students seemed to be only capable of hating one figure at a time, and Umbridge had claimed his pedestal. Now he was simply ignored. They did not forget what they had read about him, but they were no longer so sure it was true, so they stepped back and waited to see what the truth would be.

Harry knew he would be innocent, not because he was, but because the victor would write what was true, and Fudge had lost, the Ministry just hadn't told everyone yet.

Strolling casually towards Myrtle's Bathroom he stroked the smooth, silver surface of the diadem in his pocket. Harry wasn't going to be parted from this precious artefact. He was barely able to resist the desire to wear the tiara and see what secrets Rowena Ravenclaw had entrusted it with. Were he not cautious enough to know to ask Slytherin to verify that this was the real tiara he would already have it upon his head.

As if in response to the idea the circlet twittered quietly in his pocket, and the metal flared warmer under his fingertips.

He passed a group of Hufflepuff first years, the same group he had once watched Katie terrorise by transfiguring their books into giant bats. They no longer shrank away from him, though they did glance at him warily as he passed and pull their bags closed.

He blamed Katie for that reaction.

Striding into the unused girl's bathroom he swept the water-covered floor clean with his wand, banishing the water out of his path to splash against the wall.

'Open,' he murmured in sibilant parseltongue. In his pocket the diadem chittered excitedly once more.

Harry walked progressively slower down into the chamber. He didn't have much time to spare before he left to go to Grimmauld Place, it seemed almost wasteful to spend it asking questions of Salazar when he could be making use of the diadem instead.

Maybe it's time to improvise, he mused, uncertain, his fingers twitching towards the diadem. Surely I would know if it was the real one the moment I wore it.

He paused at the bridge, pulling the circlet from his pocket and balancing it upon his palms. All the knowledge, all the wisdom he might have at his fingertips, did it matter how he found it, was that reward not worth the risk. He doubted Rowena Ravenclaw would have made it dangerous to wear.

His fingers curled around the circlet, tightening in anticipation as he raised it towards his head.

Better safe than sorry, he decided, changing his mind and striding into the study.

'Do you recognise this?' Harry demanded, holding the tiara out for Salazar to see.

'Where did you find that?' Slytherin hissed in surprise. 'It was lost.'

'So it is the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw?'

'Without a doubt,' Salazar marvelled. 'We all thought it lost for good after Helena foolishly stole it and fled. Rowena allowed a young man who wanted to win her favour, possibly with an eye to courting Helena, to go after her to bring back her beloved daughter and the diadem, but they never returned. She never told us exactly what happened and died soon after so we could not retrieve it.'

'I found it in the Room of Requirement,' Harry answered. It didn't really seem to matter that he'd retrieved it indirectly via Umbridge in the Forbidden Forest, or that he had noticed it when he performed the Human-Revealing Charm and it showed up.

'I suppose it makes sense for the artefact to be linked to the room in some way,' Slytherin agreed. 'Rowena was very attached to it, she intended to leave it to advise her daughter and her future family members.'

'How does it work?' Harry asked, turning the circlet over in his hands.

'You wear it,' the painting replied flatly. 'It's a tiara, what were you expecting?'

'I thought it might have a phrase to activate it,' Harry defended.

'Keep it in the chamber,' Salazar advised, 'if we ever have need of it then you'll know where to find it.'

'I'm going to use it to think through the plan one last time,' Harry decided, softly stroking the circlet's edge. Salazar had said it was the genuine article, so it must be safe.

Gently he placed the diadem upon his head, enjoying the brief flare of warmth that rose from it, and smiling as it chittered ecstatically. He supposed he would be overjoyed to be used if he'd been lost for so long.

'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,' a soft, male voice murmured quietly, as if into his ear. It sounded strangely familiar, an echo of someone he had somehow already heard. 'Such a neat little saying, but we know it isn't true, don't we,' the voice laughed, a cold, sinister chuckle that Harry recognised all too well.

'We know there is only power,' Voldemort's voice whispered gleefully.

Harry tore the tiara from his head, sending it skittering across the floor screeching and screaming furiously.

'What are you doing?!' Slytherin exclaimed.

'It has Riddle's voice,' Harry told him distantly, sickened by how easily it had lured him to into wearing it. 'It showed up when I cast the Homenum Revelio,' he murmured, cold horror flooding his veins. He knew what that meant, the charm was derived from soul magic, it only revealed things that had human souls, and yet somehow it hadn't seemed to register with him.

'Why did you not say?!' The painting exploded. 'You knew it was a horcrux, you saw it has a soul!'

'It didn't seem important,' Harry replied, horrified. 'I just wanted to wear it, to make use of its wisdom. If I hadn't recognised his voice…' He trailed off fearfully, knowing that he would have listened to every word it said, accepted its malicious whispering as wisdom, just as Umbridge must have done.

'Destroy it,' Salazar spat.

Harry didn't dare touch it again, his skin crawled at the very idea, and his stomach twisted at the way he had caressed the circlet that harboured a piece of Riddle's shattered soul. Instead of reaching for it he conjured a long, thin piece of metal and flicked the tiara out into the door way, where his magic wouldn't harm the study, or its enchantments.

Flicking his wand into his palm he directed a stream of fiendfyre as thick as his arm at the diadem, smiling vengefully when it screamed and holding the flames over it until the sound stopped.

I won't be used, he declared to himself. Not by Dumbledore, not by Voldemort or any of the pieces of his soul, not by anyone.

Dispelling the hungry flames before they consumed the floor of the chamber he tentatively nudged the smoking tiara with his toe. The blackened, cracked circlet neither moved nor chittered, but a thick, inky-looking cloud of smoke belched forth from the cracks and dissipated soundlessly.

'Homenum revelio,' he murmured, just to be sure.

Nothing appeared, the faint red glow that he remembered seeing in the forest before was no longer evident and he sighed with relief.

'It's destroyed,' he told his ancestor.

'Good,' the portrait gritted. 'I've never seen such a dangerously insidious piece of magic, and for him to use something like Rowena's Diadem.' Slytherin's face darkened, closing his eyes as he frowned. 'That circlet was precious to her, as cherished as this was to me, it would have torn her heart to see it used so.' The painting slipped a hand under the serpent that encircled his shoulders and pulled out a gleaming, silver locket adorned with his simple, single elegant initial.

'Your locket,' Harry realised, remembering the tale Salazar had told him.

'I sacrificed the real one for my blood magic,' he said sadly. 'It's destruction created an ache that I never forgot in all the time I lived. Rowena would be heartbroken to know what became of her diadem. Few of the things we deemed precious survived,' he murmured morosely, clenching his fist around the locket. 'That's why blood is important,' he continued sternly, 'little else of you lasts long after your death but your bloodline.'

'I don't know of any others who claim to be descended from your friends,' Harry told him quietly.

'I feared it would be so,' Salazar intimated, 'Godric was too set on saving other people to ever do something so selfish as follow his own heart, Rowena had only one daughter, and it seems my only two descendants are doing their best to kill each other. Soon there will be nothing left of us but a divided school, Godric's scruffy hat, that ridiculous sword and two forgotten, empty rooms.'

'What about Helga?' Harry asked, hoping to cheer the portrait up.

'She had family,' Slytherin commented a little more hopefully, 'but I would imagine a link to any of us would be known and claimed. You would have heard if it existed.' He looked thoughtful for a moment, tucking the locket back into his robes. 'Perhaps some of her work survives, the plants she created, the potions, spells, or even that useless cup.'

He chuckled suddenly, his humour returning, and the unexpected noise made Harry start and he shifted to cover his surprise.

'She convinced Rowena to spend hours helping her enchant a cup to absorb the properties of her phoenix's tears so that anything that was drunk from the cup would be imbued with their power. Of course the silly woman forgot that phoenix tears don't actually do anything if you drink them they have to be placed directly onto the injury to heal it. I suppose if you burnt your mouth while eating then drinking something from the cup might work,' Salazar grinned. 'It was a wonderful piece of magic, Rowena and I were so excited about its potential, then she told us what substance she'd chosen to imbue the cup with and we were so let down. Only Helga could have made such a mistake,' Slytherin mused happily, 'or Godric, but he would have chosen the perfect substance, and then accidentally enchanted the cup to spew it out the bottom onto your lap when you tried to drink from it.'

'What mistake would you or Rowena have made?' Harry asked, smiling at the founder's cheer.

'Rowena would have lost the thing,' Salazar snorted. 'I, well,' his face fell again, 'if it was really important to me I would have probably ended up sacrificing it for something I didn't really need.'

A long, sad silence passed between the two of them.

'You should go,' Slytherin said at last. 'You came here to go to get the Prophecy, not to listen to me reminisce about our flaws, many though they were.'

'They make you seem human,' Harry told him honestly, 'without them you would be just as distant and unreachable as the other names that have outlived the faces they were once associated with.'

'That sounded wise, like something I would say,' Salazar smirked.

'Wisdom can be found in the strangest of places,' Harry retorted dryly.

'That definitely sounds like me,' the painting laughed. 'Now go, go and find out what's so important about this prophecy that both Dumbledore and Voldemort will sacrifice lives for it.'

'I will,' Harry agreed, excitement welling up again after the horror and sorrow of the diadem had passed. He kicked the marred circlet into the pool, where it sank into the black water and out of sight. It would remain lost as far as the rest of the world was concerned, and certainly as far as Voldemort was.

Disillusioning himself he pictured a shop he had only ever entered by mistake, then the world whirled, and he was standing, still invisible, on the edge of the fireplace in Borgin and Burke's.

Harry remembered accidentally flooing here the first time he had used the network, so he knew that this fireplace was linked to the network, and that he could travel from here to Grimmauld Place which must be connected for Sirius to recommend travelling by it. He suspected that the Fidelius Charm simply concealed it from the watching authorities and prevented anyone from arriving there unless they knew the secret of its location.

Taking a pinch of powder from a rather macabre, and hopefully fake hollowed out vase carved from a human skull he glanced around to check nobody was close enough to hear.

'Number twelve Grimmauld Place,' he commanded, making sure to enunciate the words clearly, and throwing the powder into the fire.

The flames flared green, then he stepped in, only to inhale a lungful of smoke and collapse out to sprawl across a cold, hard, stone floor.

He'd forgotten how much he hated travelling by floo, it was worse than portkeying, and much worse than apparating. Squeezing his eyes shut to suppress the dizziness he dragged himself upright on the wall, taking long, deep breaths. His Disillusionment Charm was gone.

Grimmauld Place was aptly named.

At some point, likely several decades ago, this would have been quite a handsome city house, but it seemed that since then it had been caked in dust, grime and worse. The attempts to clean the house had rather finished it off, whoever had scourgified the walls had stripped everything off, tattered wallpaper, rotting plaster and more had been scoured away to leave bare, rough stone.

Cosy, Harry grinned.

It was no wonder his godfather was going insane if he was trapped in here on his own all the time.

There was some sign of habitation. The sink was full of tins, soup tins from the look of it, clearly Sirius wasn't much of a cook, and a collection of dirty mugs occupied the side next to it. It was certainly better than rats, and whatever he'd survived on in Azkaban, but Harry couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. Dumbledore had imprisoned him in this dilapidated ruin, no doubt for the Greater Good again.

He drifted out of the kitchen into a narrow hall that must have once been quite grand, panelled and floored in expensive dark, hard woods. It was scratched, scraped and rotting now, decaying with the thick, musty scent of mildew.

The thick, velvet curtains to his left flew open and his wand was immediately, instinctively in his palm, the incantation for the bone splintering curse on the tip of his tongue.

It was just a portrait. A life-size, incredibly detailed, painting of a woman that clearly bore some reaction to Sirius. They had the same chin, nose and ears.

'You're not my blood-traitor son,' the portrait commented, surprised. Her face twisted out of its expression of ugly disdain into something that would have been handsome before age marred it. Harry didn't reply; he was busy deliberating whether or not to incinerate the woman. Paintings could travel between different frames if more than one picture of them existed, and he didn't need to be remembered here by anyone he couldn't trust.

'You look like you come from a good family,' the woman sniffed, 'good bone-structure, nice-eyes, what's a proper pure-blood doing in among the half-breeds and traitors my son consorts with?'

'I'm Harry,' he introduced himself, 'I'm afraid I don't have the pleasure of knowing your name?'

'Walburga Black,' the woman smiled, her face shedding several decades. 'Do you have a family name?'

'Slytherin,' Harry grinned, waiting for what doubtless be a great reaction.

'An honour,' Mrs Black dipped her head regally. 'I assume you aren't here to join my son's little group of muggle-lovers.'

'No,' Harry agreed. 'I have very different aims.' He hoped if he said the right things he might have found himself a useful spy, or at least convince her not to mention his presence to anyone inconvenient.

'Do you follow the Dark Lord?' Walburga Black inquired, 'my Regulus followed him, he was a proper pure-blood scion.'

'No,' Harry smirked, 'the Dark Lord has been unmasked. His real name is Tom Riddle, a muggle-raised, half-blooded wizard who doesn't even believe in blood purity.'

'He lied,' Walburga Black looked shocked, 'but my Regulus died for him.'

'So did many others,' Harry responded grimly, 'so will many more.'

The painting didn't say anything for a long while after that, just stared out at him in confusion. He didn't feel particularly sorry for her, Sirius' mother or not, her son had died for Voldemort, that made him a Death Eater, whether he went because he believed in pure-blood bigotry, or because he enjoyed torturing others mattered not. He had still set out with intent to cause harm, and no reason good enough to justify it, and that was what really made the difference. Regulus Black had earned his fate.

'Why are you here?' The painting asked quietly. 'You didn't come to rip apart a long-dead woman's world.'

'No,' he shook his head, 'I came to meet with Sirius.'

'So you are one of the blood-traitors,' Mrs Black sniffed, but without her previous venom.

'I do not care about blood purity,' Harry told her coldly, 'I respect power, and the intent with which it is wielded, whether you're muggle or carry a name as old as mine does not matter to me if you are my equal.'

'All powerful wizards are pure-bloods,' Walburga stated.

'Tell that to your Dark Lord,' Harry laughed, 'he's just a half-blood, remember.'

'I serve no half-blooded imposter,' she hissed furiously. 'That liar stole my Regulus from me and brought half a hundred old families and bloodlines to an end. He is no lord of mine.'

'He is a distant relative, as I'm sure you've realised.' Harry ignored the upwelling of distaste that came with acknowledging Riddle as any relation of his. It came with almost as much bile as acknowledging any relation to the Dursleys.

And you?' Mrs Black eyed him curiously. 'You never actually said. I assumed you're pure-blooded if you truly carry the Slytherin name, but I made the same mistake with Lord Voldemort.'

'I'm not sure,' Harry answered honestly. 'I don't know the exact boundaries, but I don't particularly care either. I'm stronger than most my age, pure-blooded or not.'

'Very likely a pure-blood by my estimation,' Walburga decided, as if that were the only estimation that mattered. 'You have the feel of a pure-blood, and the looks too. With a name like yours I can't imagine you'd be anything else.'

'I don't use that name except in particular company,' Harry told her firmly. Her insistence that he had to be pure of blood amused him. His father was probably pure-blooded, the Potters were an old family, but his mother was most decidedly not. He wasn't going to tell her differently, if she believed he was pure-blooded and liked him for it then that suited him just fine.

'Understandable,' Mrs Black scowled, 'there are many muggle-lovers who would like nothing more than to condemn us for being more than they are. We are not born equal, magic is in the blood, and our blood is oldest and purest of them all.'

'You are not going to convince me to adopt a pure-blood agenda,' he smiled wryly. 'I judge each individual on their own merit, no bias and fewer mistakes because of it.'

'A pity,' she sniffed. 'I had hoped you might knock some sense into my son before he completely ruins this family by selling us out to blood-traitors.'

'If your family comes to ruin it will be the work of Voldemort and Dumbledore,' Harry said curtly.

'It will be the work of my eldest son,' she disagreed vehemently. 'He is the last scion of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, he needs to find himself a suitable wife and an heir. Regulus would be married by now.'

'If only he wasn't dead,' Harry remarked dryly.

Why am I still talking to this painting? And where's Sirius?

'I don't suppose you know any eligible girls from good families?' Walburga asked, apparently not hearing Harry's snide comment.

'Not off the top of my head,' Harry laughed. He was definitely telling his godfather about this part of the conversation.

'Kreacher,' the portrait shrieked suddenly, making Harry start.

There was a loud crack and a hunched, withered house elf appeared next to Harry. It stared up at him with suspicious, narrowed, washed-out, pale blue eyes.

'Mistress called Kreacher,' the elf croaked bowing so low before the painting that the tips of his ears brushed the floor.

'This is Harry,' Walburga hesitated, then left the surname he had given out, 'he is from a very respectable family, you will treat him as he deserves, not like the other blood traitors my shameful son has brought into my home. Find the family records, search for any other possible male heirs of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, my son cannot be trusted to take his duties to the family seriously. He never has had any love for us.'

'Yes, mistress,' the elf grinned delightedly.

The curtains swept closed, but the elf did not leave. It remained staring up at Harry unsettlingly, clearly Kreacher was not completely convinced of his Mistress' judgment of him.

'From a respectable family Mistress says,' Kreacher muttered, 'but Kreacher knows that only nasty traitor Master's friends can come to Mistress' house. Blood traitors, filthy creatures and mud-bloods all of them. Mistress did not give Kreacher a name for this respectable family, maybe the stranger lied to Mistress, but Mistress gave Kreacher orders, and Kreacher will follow them.'

'Shut up, Kreacher, you've got a decade of cleaning to catch up with,' his godfather snapped, appearing at the other end of the hall. 'He's a miserable little house elf, malicious as the day I left this place and a whole lot less sane than I remember.'

'Yes, Master,' the elf bowed, though not half as low as he had to the painting. 'Nasty blood-traitor master, abandoning Mistress Black and Master Regulus,' he muttered as he left.

Sirius shot him a hot glare, and the elf slunk off up the stairs out of sight. They followed him at a slightly slower pace. Every step creaked, and there were more than a couple of dubious stains on some of them.

'I hate that elf,' he shook his head. 'The destruction of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is Kreacher's greatest fear, and he's been stuck here to watch it collapse with only that delightful picture of my mother for a decade. She's driven him insane.' His godfather grinned rather viciously at the idea. 'That's not quite fair, he's been a bit more coherent with his utterings since Christmas, perhaps having half the house tidied cheered him up a bit.'

'I spoke with your mother,' Harry smirked.

'I didn't hear any screeching,' Sirius frowned.

'She seemed convinced I was a pure-blood, and tried to ask me about eligible girls for you to marry and produce a male heir with.' Harry burst out laughing at the look of horror on his godfather's face.

'You do look the part, especially now you've filled out. She probably thought you were the first respectable wizard to visit since she died,' Sirius laughed loudly, clapping a hand across his shoulders. 'If she'd had her way I would have been married to someone like cousin Cissy, or, worse, my other cousin, Bella, actually,' he paled considerably, 'that might have really happened if I hadn't run away, my parents were second cousins. Fortunately I did and they went off to marry Malfoy and Lestrange instead. Anyone she considers a suitable match is likely wearing robes and a mask now.'

He made a mental note that Sirius seemed to be related to most of Voldemort's inner circle of Death Eater's through one form or another.

'I told her Voldemort was a half-blood,' Harry commented, 'she seemed quite upset about that.'

'She would be,' Sirius' frown darkened. 'She moulded my younger brother into the perfect pure-blood then sent him off to die serving that maniac. I hope the guilt tortures her until I find a way to get rid of that damn painting for good. Britain's better off without the ever-so-pure Black Family.'

'So have you really been stuck in here all this time on your own?' Harry asked, eager to change the subject. He'd had enough of talking about blood purity for one day.

'This isn't even the worst bit,' Sirius chuckled, 'follow me, we haven't cleaned the top floor yet, I'll show you what the whole place was like when I came back.'

Harry dutifully drifted up the stairs after him.

'I'm not always on my own, in the school holidays some of the Order members come here. This is the headquarters after all, my father had the whole place warded as extensively as possible and after Dumbledore cast the Fidelius Charm it became all but impossible for anyone to come here without invitation. Most of the time it is just me,' he admitted. 'You have no idea how much I've been looking forward to getting out of here.'

They passed what was presumably the second floor from the top for the scoured clean stone and bared wood suddenly vanished underneath several inches of decaying, grey plaster, tattered paper and tapestries.

'Beautiful, isn't it?'

'The whole place was like this?' Harry asked, angry that Dumbledore had forced his godfather to live somewhere like this for so long.

'Until the summer,' Sirius answered absently. 'I didn't really notice after Azkaban and living on the run, but Molly wasn't having any of it and started everyone cleaning the moment she arrived. Ron, Hermione and the other Weasleys helped a bit at Christmas, but the top floor has the library, my father's study and the attic. Nobody wants to use any of them, so I've had Kreacher start cleaning them.'

'He doesn't seem to have got very far,' Harry remarked. There was no sign that the house elf had even attempted to clean anything on this floor.

'I know,' Sirius shrugged. 'I was hoping there would be doxies, another boggart, or something that would finish him off, but sadly the horrible creature lingers on to irritate me.'

A loud rattle came from the room at the end of the corridor. It sounded like something was trying to get through a locked door, twisting the handle back and forth repeatedly.

'That's probably him now,' Sirius sighed. 'He's likely trying to save everything he can find that belonged to my family before cleaning. I'd better go and stop him before he manages to hide anything away again.'

The door at the end of the corridor was locked, but when Sirius pushed at it the frame was so rotten that the metal lock simply tore straight through the softened wood.

Harry's parents were standing on the other side of the desk, arms folded across their chests, faces twisted in anger and leaning against each other so that they seemed joined at the hip.

'You failed us,' James hissed at Sirius. 'You left our Harry to throw yourself in prison, and now you hide in here. You should be out fighting, we fought, Remus is fighting, even Peter fought for someone. You're a coward Black, a pitiful, terrified coward. You sicken us.' His mother said nothing, just stared at his godfather in terrible, cutting disappointment.

Then they started to change.

Harry's mother's hair darkened, slipping across her face to cover it as his father melted away into her side and they shrunk into the skeletal, cloaked form of a dementor. The cold, creeping chill slid across the room, and the dementor rose to hover over Sirius, pulling back its cowl to bare the terrible orifice it called a mouth.

His godfather was frozen, his hands trembling as he moaned. 'I escaped,' he whispered, pulling at his hair, 'I'm free, they're gone, they're gone, they're gone. I'm not a coward,' he yelled, swinging his fist at the dementor.

Harry pushed him out of the way, and he collapsed heavily to the floor, curling up into a shivering ball. Sirius hadn't realised it was just a boggart and couldn't really hurt them.

The dementor turned, twisting itself to face him and he found himself staring into identical eyes of his reflection, just as he had in the maze.

Harry flicked his wand into his palm, he knew a thousand ways to destroy a boggart, laughter was simply the least malicious, but he was curious to know what he feared most of all and the incantation caught on his teeth.

'We're free now,' the boggart whispered, a terrible, bright smile beneath eyes that burnt with righteousness. 'We're free from them all, free forever. We won't be used, not by Dumbledore, not by Riddle, not by those who professed to be our friends,' the smile spread disturbingly wide, 'and not by those who claimed to love us.'

It raised its crimson-smeared hand, and dangling from it's dripping fingers was a lock of bright, silver hair.

'Lacero.' The word slipped viciously past his lips and the purple spell shredded though the form of the reflection, obliterating one of his bright, green eyes and the shelving behind. Paper exploded across the room, floating fragments of parchment drifting around him, flurrying about himself and his mutilated, screaming reflection.

'Lacero,' he repeated, over and over again, until there was nothing left of the boggart but the fear it had shown him, an image he knew would haunt his nightmares to the time that something more terrible supplanted it.

Cursing the curiosity that had led him to wait and watch what form it would take, he slipped his wand away, and helped his godfather up from the floor from where he had collapsed after seeing the dementor form of the boggart. Sirius should recover quickly enough not to delay their departure to the Department of Mysteries, but if he didn't then Harry would have to go on alone. He couldn't afford to waste this chance to even the game up, or maybe even twist things in his favour. The Prophecy was too important. Sirius would understand.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who does! Department of Mysteries soon, I promise.

64. The Price of Prophecy

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter has finally arrived. Short, sweet and uneventful as always.

Chapter 64

'Lily and James,' his godfather croaked hoarsely, scrunching the handful of paper fragments in his hand into a ball.

'It was just a boggart,' Harry told him gently, brushing the pieces of shredded parchment off his shoulders. He'd done a great deal more damage to the study than he had realised.

'They'd be so disappointed,' Sirius whispered. 'I've run back to a house I hated to hide from the same people they died fighting.'

'They'd be proud,' Harry disagreed, dragging him roughly from the study. 'You survived a decade in Azkaban, you're helping me still, and you're not a coward. No craven would be coming with me to the Department of Mysteries if they didn't have to.'

His godfather considered that for a long moment, then he straightened up, though his hands were still trembling slightly. 'What happened to the boggart?'

'It showed me something I didn't want to see,' Harry smiled coldly. 'It won't be doing it again.' The hair on the nape of his neck rose at the memory. His dripping, red hand, Fleur's hair, and the wide, mad smile that had no place on his face had cut deeper than he wanted to admit.

'You destroyed my father's study,' Sirius noticed, finally taking note of his surroundings, and discarding the ball of crushed paper. He glanced at the mess Harry had made of the boggart once, then made a show of unconcernedly surveying the rest of the room.

'Sorry,' Harry said, unapologetically.

'I hated this room,' Sirius grinned, 'my father used to drag me up here to lecture me about how a proper pure-blood hair should act. My first bout of accidental magic was breaking the priceless heirloom of a vase he kept on the desk. Maybe Kreacher will finally clean it now,' he finished cheerfully.

'It certainly needs tidying,' Harry agreed, poking the tattered remnants of the boggart with one toe. It had died in his form, though he had mutilated it beyond all recognition, and the gruesomely shredded, scattered pieces of his doppelganger's flesh were strewn all across the floor behind the split and splintered desk.

'We should leave,' Sirius suggested, picking up half of the small, ornate, wooden clock that had sat on the corner of the desk and waving it gleefully. 'It's time we split,' he laughed.

'I've got everything,' Harry responded, ignoring what was possibly the worst play on words he had ever heard.

'Good,' his godfather smiled. 'Let's go and destroy a prophecy. It's about time the Order actually took action rather than waiting for Voldemort to strike and hoping to limit the damage.'

'Cloak?' Harry offered, pulling it out from under his robes.

'Just like old times,' Sirius grinned, sweeping it over the two of them and taking a firm grip on Harry's arm. 'Except this time we're stealing a very valuable magical object for Britain not McGonagall's fire-whiskey for a party in Gryffindor. This is probably safer,' he chuckled, 'your mother was a cruelly strict prefect.'

Harry snorted, and shifted his weight in preparation to apparate.

'I'll take us to the entrance of the Ministry,' Sirius said, 'then we'll make our way through to the Department of Mysteries under the cloak from there. Ready?'

'Of course,' Harry answered.

There was a loud crack and Harry staggered forwards along the pavement of an unremarkable London street.

Harry glanced up and down the road taking in the chewing gum marked paving stones, the scatter of scabrous looking pigeons, worn railing's and the battered, red phonebox.

'This is the right place, isn't it?' He asked his godfather.

'What were you expecting,' Sirius grinned, 'a giant entrance saying Ministry of Magic?'

'No,' Harry answered, 'but more than this.'

'It's grander on the inside,' his godfather laughed, 'they don't want the muggles getting curious.'

He stepped towards the phonebox, opening the door and gesturing for Harry to join him inside. The peeling, red painted booth certainly didn't seem like the entrance to the centre of power in Magical Britain, but Harry supposed Sirius knew where he was going.

'This is the visitors' entrance,' his godfather told him, 'normally everyone just floos in, but obviously we can't do that without getting caught. The Ministry does monitor the network fairly efficiently.' He turned to the phone and poked a hand out from under the cloak to quickly dial a number. 'Emmeline will be on her way out by now, so we're within our window of opportunity.'

'Welcome to the Ministry of Magic,' a female voice stated dispassionately, 'please state your name and business.'

'Sirius Black,' his godfather announced magnanimously, 'and I solemnly swear I am up to no good.'

Harry stared at him in disbelief.

'It's probably not a real person,' he grinned, 'the voice is still the same as it was before my stint in Azkaban.'

There was a soft click and a badge slid out of the change dispenser of the phone. Sirius picked it up, pinning it to the front of his robes with obvious delight.

Sirius Black, Harry read, laughing despite himself, up to no good.

'I always wanted a badge like this,' his godfather sighed. 'This is the best thing the Ministry has ever given me.' He paused, frowning. 'It's the only thing they've given me, actually, it's not like I received a trial.'

The phonebox lurched and they descended into the depths of the Ministry. Harry watched the pavement slide up past the window, wondering all the while how no muggle had accidentally dialled the number and ended up in the Ministry by mistake.

The atrium was empty. The only movement came from the ceiling. Golden runes twisted around one another, flowing in ever changing patterns across the royal blue background.

'This way,' Sirius said, taking Harry's elbow and leading him along the hall of empty fireplaces past the noticeably empty security desk. 'We're lucky, whomever's on duty must have snuck off somewhere, or Mundungus might have bribed him to be absent for a convenient moment so he can get in and out unobserved.'

They hurried past the desk, and the overly cheerful denizens of the fountain who quietly spouted water from the strangest places, though the golden gates of the true entrance to the Ministry.

It is a bit grander on the inside, Harry decided.

'In here,' his godfather instructed, leading him across to a set of lifts and impatiently tapping the down button over and over until the lift appeared.

The gates to the lift rumbled apart, and the two of them slipped inside. Sirius prodded the number nine button several times, then the doors clanked shut.

'Department of Mysteries,' the same female voice announced coolly.

'It's on the lowest level,' Sirius told him seriously. 'We're inside the wards now, so the only way out without breaking them is by floo, which is monitored, or back the way we came, and breaking those wards is no mean feat.'

'So don't get caught or we'll be trapped,' Harry translated dryly.

'Exactly,' his godfather grinned. 'But we can dispense with the cloak,' he decided, 'the Department of Mysteries has a very complicated, well protected door that the Unspeakables seal when they leave. Mundungus will be the only one down here.'

Harry slowly folded the cloak back up, stuffing it securely into his robes as the lift ground to a jerky halt.

'Welcome to the Department of Mysteries,' the voice announced as the two of them hurried out into the corridor.

'It's just around the corner, but it won't be easy to get in. The wards are some of the strongest in Britain; it took us half the time we've been protecting it to figure out how to get past the illusions and actually see that there's only a single door and not a thousand identical ones' Sirius whispered, eyeing the flickering torches. 'And we've been guarding the door from the moment the Order was reformed last summer. Luckily Voldemort hasn't said anything specific about it to his Death Eaters yet.'

'How do you know that?' Harry inquired. He didn't imagine that Riddle's meetings had minutes that were easily available.

'Snape,' his godfather gritted. 'He's Dumbledore's spy within the Death Eaters. Not much gets past him,' Sirius added with begrudging respect. 'He's always been a sneaky, clever sort, but I think he can be trusted…' He trailed off as they rounded the corner.

'Not much gets past him,' Harry commented, flicking his wand into his palm.

'Apparently he's not as sneaky and clever as I hoped,' his godfather ground out.

The plain, black door at the end of the corridor had been melted back to the hinges by fire fierce enough to scar the floor and ceiling above.

Fiendfyre.

It was likely one of the few pieces of magic capable of destroying the wards on the door when cast with sufficient strength and intent.

'I'm calling for the rest of the Order,' Sirius decided, reaching inside his robes for a battered, bronze phoenix amulet.

Harry advanced down the corridor a bit further, stepping carefully over the dark, crimson smear along the floor next to the door and retrieving the broken halves of a wand from next to the ashen remnants of the both door and likely Mundungus Fletcher.

'They'll be coming,' Sirius announced, 'but it will take a while without Dumbledore to get them in.'

'We should keep going,' Harry decided. He hadn't come so far and done so much to give up and not discover what that prophecy said. 'If they're already inside then someone has to stop them.'

His godfather nodded, drawing his wand from inside his robes, and stepping cautiously through the door.

'There are no wards,' he murmured. He pressed the back of his hand to the frame of the door, then hissed and flinched it back. 'It's still hot,' he shot a worried glance at Harry, 'they're probably only a few minutes ahead of us.'

'Let's go,' Harry slipped past Sirius into the department.

The corridor continued on beyond the ruined door, a long, unremarkable hallway, tiled and paved in shiny, black slabs that reflected the gleaming torches.

They followed it along for several minutes before Sirius swore quietly and pulled him harshly to a halt.

'It's a circle,' he whispered angrily, 'a loop. It just seems like a straight line. We've been walking around the same ten feet of corridor all along.' His godfather raised his wand and swept it viciously at the nearest torch.

The blue flames guttered out all along the corridor, plunging them into blackness and even with his enhanced vision he could barely make out anything more than the silhouette of Sirius and pools of shadow that seemed darker than all the rest. He tried to conjure a light, or cast the light-casting charm, but although he knew that both spells were successful the corridor somehow remained just as dark as before.

'Let's try this door,' Sirius suggested. He had been running his fingers along the wall until he came across something that wasn't the smooth, tiled surface of the corridor.

The room they entered was perfectly circular, tiled just the same as the corridor, and empty except for the tall, gleaming mirror at its centre. Harry had never expected to see the Mirror of Erised again, and knowing hoe dangerous it was he wasn't all that glad he had.

'This isn't it, Sirius,' he said. His godfather had his fingertips pressed against the glass of the mirror, obscuring Harry's view of the surface.

'We're all together again,' Sirius breathed. 'I can see us all together again, Remus, James, Lily, me, even Peter.' He moved further forwards, pressing his forehead against the mirror's surface. 'He's not a Death Eater,' he rejoiced, 'he never betrayed us.'

'Sirius,' Harry snapped up, dragging his godfather back from the mirror. 'It's a lie.'

'A lie,' his godfather murmured, 'but I can see them, they're there.'

'No,' Harry told him, 'you just want to see them.'

'Oh,' the lines in Sirius' face suddenly sunk terribly deep, the shadow of Azkaban spreading over his features. 'I thought, I hoped, it might be real.'

'It isn't,' Harry told him, glancing past Sirius into the mirror himself. His face smiled brightly back at him from behind the glass. His reflection had one arm around Fleur, who leant into his shoulder and wrapped her own arm around his waist. He knew immediately they were happy, together and free. From the side of the mirror a smaller, silver-haired girl leapt across to take Fleur's arm and stared up the beautiful French witch, her back facing Harry.

Gabrielle, Harry smiled.

Gabrielle turned to glance up at him, but her eyes were bright emerald, not summer sky blue, and Harry felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Not Gabrielle, he realised, warmth flaring from somewhere within him. A daughter. Our daughter.

She was perfect enough for him to want to reach through the glass and drag her out into reality, but he knew the mirror too well to fall for the temptation and his hand remained at his side.

'It only shows you what you want most,' Harry said, tearing his gaze away from the girl's startlingly vivid, green eyes.

'Let's go,' Sirius said, shaken.

They exited the circular room, leaving the mirror behind, and Harry forced the memory of the green-eyed girl from his mind, banishing her from his thoughts. It was too early to dream of things that might never be.

He trailed his fingertips along the wall, mimicking Sirius who did the same on the other side of the corridor. His fingers slid smoothly over the tiles, each line in between the tiles another bump of hope then disappointment, until, eventually he touched something warmer.

'Sirius,' he murmured. 'I found another door.'

His godfather nodded in the gloom, but seemed a lot less eager to cross the threshold after the room with the mirror.

This room was as perfect a circle as the last, but worn, weathered and ancient stone benches were carved in concentric circles from the walls into the raised dais at the centre, and upon that platform a simple, single arch of stone stood.

'What is it?' His godfather whispered distantly behind him.

'I'm not sure,' Harry replied, unable to look away from the rippling, shimmering aperture between the pillars. The harder he stared the more he was sure he could hear it crying out to him, whispering, just too low for him to hear the words, no matter how he strained his ears.

Somehow he found himself standing in front of the arch, though he had no memory of stepping any further than through the doorway, and running his fingers down the stone arch. Harry could feel thousands of tiny runes under his fingertips, they stretched in spirals, circles, triangles and stars all across the span of the stone, but they were in no language he knew. The only glyph he recognised was large enough to read with his own eyes, imprinted faintly at the summit of the arch. He had seen the same symbol on the fading graves in Godric's Hollow.

'Harry,' his godfather hissed urgently, 'we need to keep going.'

He snatched his fingers back from the symbol, and stepped away from the whispering fissure that had been close enough for its cold to brush at his nose.

With great difficulty her turned his back on the arch, ignoring the whispers and following his godfather out of the room.

'What was that?' Sirius asked him fearfully. 'You were standing there for ages.'

Harry blinked.

'It only felt like moments,' he muttered. 'I hope the next door is the one we need, this place is far more dangerous than I expected.'

'The most abstract, dangerous and mysterious aspects of magic are studied here,' Sirius smiled grimly, 'we were never just going to be able to waltz through to the prophecy with ease.'

'The Death Eaters,' Harry remembered, 'we've wasted so much time, where is the rest of the Order?'

'Coming,' Sirius assured him. 'Don't worry about the prophecy, Dumbledore told us that only you can remove it from the shelf. You have to be part of the subject of the prophecy to take it.'

There was a short silence.

'I've found another door,' his godfather whispered apprehensively.

'Let's hope this is the right one,' Harry replied.

It stretched further than Harry could see, shelf after towering shelf of sparkling, glowing, swirling white orbs descending into the distance. The blue flames burned cold at every junction between the shelves, illuminating the cathedral of prophecies in an ethereal light.

'How do we find the right one?' Harry asked. There had to be hundreds of thousands of the glass orbs that he assumed to be prophecies.

'They're labelled,' Sirius answered from where he was inspecting the nearest shelf. 'These are all this year. We need to go further in. The prophecy had to have been made at least sixteen years ago, that was when Dumbledore said Lily and James needed to go into hiding. We'll start there.' He strode off into the shelves, keeping an eye on the labels.

Harry followed tentatively, his wand back in his hand.

They passed almost fifty shelves before they found the first from the year before Harry's birth. Scanning the shelf he found a list of dusty labels, each detailing the subject of the prophecy and the date it was heard.

'Here,' Sirius said sharply. 'It was made to Dumbledore, he's the only one with so many initials, and it's about you and Voldemort.'

'Me and Voldemort,' he whispered, 'nobody else?'

'Just the two of you,' Sirius grinned, 'good thing we came to find out, now let's hear it and leave.'

Harry stepped up to his godfather's shoulder, eyeing the small, glowing orb fascinatedly. The answers to almost every question he had might reside within this swirling, misty piece of glass. He plucked it off the shelf and tucked it into his pocket.

'Very good, now let's go,' Sirius decided. 'It doesn't matter if the Death Eater's find an empty shelf.'

Harry's blood ran ice cold as he suddenly realised that the Death Eaters could not have come alone, not if they wanted the prophecy.

'If it's about Voldemort and I, then he won't have sent Death Eaters to retrieve it,' he realised aloud. 'He would have sent them to clear the way, because he has to come and get it himself.'

'Shit,' Sirius eloquently summarised.

'Let's get out,' Harry decided, hurrying back towards the door as quickly as he could.

They stepped out into the shadows of the corridor, then froze at the sound of brisk footsteps and the clicking of metal on stone.

'Where is the room, Lucius?' A furious, female voice hissed.

Sirius had gone still as a statue, so Harry dragged him back several steps and pulled him after him into the nearest door, leaving it ajar so he could hear.

'The next door,' Malfoy's smooth voice answered. 'If you hadn't been so distracted by trying to get through the sealed door at the far end then we'd already be there.'

'Hush,' the witch hissed. 'We're not alone.'

'My Lord?' Lucius called softly along the corridor.

Harry shook Sirius back to life, taking in the room around them. There was no other exit, but thousands of time-turners hung along the walls, and at the centre of the room, on and old, blackened table, a bird with a bell jar was born over and over again.

'They're between us and the exit,' Harry whispered, 'and there's no room to sneak past under the cloak.'

'Perhaps the Order have another guard within the Department of Mysteries,' Lucius Malfoy suggested, amused. 'One that prefers to hide rather than do his duty.'

'A wise one,' the witch giggled. 'Homenum Revelio,' she cried. 'Ahead on the left, two of them.'

'We'll have to fight,' Sirius decided. 'I'll go out first.'

He drew his wand and stepped out into the corridor. Harry made to follow him, but stopped.

I can't leave a whole room of time-turners here, he realised.

All it would take is one, and Voldemort would have a huge advantage. Every attack, action or plan he made would be almost impossible to stop. Harry couldn't leave them here. He couldn't leave any of them here.

I wonder what happens when they break?

The fiendfyre swirled from the tip of his wand, coalescing into the smouldering, white-hot, form of the basilisk, then lunging forwards, coiling around the room, incinerating everything along the walls. The shelves, racks and tiny, golden hourglasses were consumed by the fire immediately, but Harry forced it hotter, just in case.

'Cousin Sirius,' he heard the witch cackle delightedly. 'It's a reunion. If only the blood traitor Andy and her daughter were here. I could purge the family of all its filth in one go.'

He slashed his wand horizontally through the air, extinguishing the flames. The time-turners were gone, destroyed, and though it seemed a terrible waste Harry knew it was better they were destroyed than risk Malfoy, or Voldemort getting hold of them.

Stepping out into the corridor he held his wand low and ready at his side, joining Sirius who poised on the balls of his feet across from Malfoy and his companion.

'Potter,' Malfoy sneered. 'The Dark Lord will be pleased when we bring him you.'

'He's here for the prophecy,' the witch realised furiously. Malfoy blanched.

'You'll never hear it, Bellatrix,' Sirius spat. 'It's too late.'

So that's Bellatrix Lestrange, the witch who tortured Neville's parents into insanity.

A cold point of anger froze within his chest as he took in her appearance. If he had not been aware of the ugliness within he might have thought her beautiful. She had the same delicate cheekbones, nose and jaw as Narcissa Malfoy, with perfect, pale skin, slender eyebrows and thick, sultry, red lips that pouted out from under her heavy-lidded, smouldering, dark eyes. The fire of madness burnt there within, glimmering in the odd, purple-hued irises and stretched across the shadows of her face.

'Give it to us,' she spat. 'It belongs to the Dark Lord.'

'It belongs to me,' Harry retorted lightly, almost amused by the way she reverently breathed Riddle's adopted title.

The black-haired witch's wand was in her hand faster than Harry thought possible, even with a wrist holster, and sickly, yellows curses flashed past their heads as both he and Sirius ducked desperately.

'Protego,' he spat, shielding them both from the next barrage of curses. 'We need to get back to the lift and the atrium,' he whispered urgently.

'We'll have to get round them somehow,' Sirius realised. 'Stick together, we stand a better chance if we fight them at the same time than if we're separated. Bella's not all that good at playing as part of a team.'

'Crucio,' Lestrange shrieked from outside the shield.

The Unforgivable splashed harmlessly against the wall between them.

'Papilionis,' Harry responded immediately, conjuring his shield of butterflies to swarm around both him and Sirius.

'Oooh pretty,' he heard Bellatrix laugh. 'Avada Kedavra,' she giggled.

A single butterfly burst into black smoke.

'Clever little Potter,' she sang. 'The Dark Lord said you were more than you seemed, maybe you'd like to play with Bella for a bit. I won't kill you, that pleasure belongs to the Dark Lord, but we can still have a little fun together.' Harry was certain he heard Malfoy sigh exasperatedly at his partners antics.

He flicked his wand, transfiguring one of the butterflies into a sharp, steel spike and sending it hissing towards Malfoy. The blond Death Eater blocked it, ripping the black tiles from the walls to act as a shield against the following wave of projectiles.

Sirius was casting bright orange curses down the corridors at Bellatrix, but the witch was deflecting them all back or into the walls, shrieking with laughter as she ducked under the shattered fragments of tile from Malfoy's shield.

'Reducto,' Harry murmured, whipping his wand through the motion for the blasting curse, then blending seamlessly into the action for the bone-splintering curse, flicking his wrist so fast his fingers blurred.

The tiles disintegrated beneath the onslaught of spells, forcing Malfoy to dive across the corridor behind Bellatrix.

Sirius laughed delightedly at the sight of the proud wizard sprawling across the floor to safety, redoubling his efforts to break through Bellatrix's defences. Lestrange chose that moment to go on the offensive, and the brightly coloured beams of light from many spells that Harry didn't recognise shot between them down the corridor, ricocheting off one another to shatter tiles not the walls and scorch the stone floor.

He defected the few he knew back down the corridor towards the two Death Eaters, but he was forced to dodge the vast majority of the spells simply because he didn't recognise them and couldn't risk unsuccessfully blocking or deflecting something.

The shattered tile fragments sprang to life between them, shifting into a swarm of scorpions that scuttled down the corridors towards them when Malfoy swept his wand forwards.

'Incendio,' Sirius spat, incinerating the insects long before they reached either of them. Harry took his place exchanging spells with Bellatrix, unleashing every spell in his arsenal as fast as he could.

To his delight he found that he could cast far more quickly than she could, his spells moved faster, and dealt far more damage when they smashed into the tiles around them, but to his dismay the advantage was short lived. The mad witch stopped trying to match his speed and strength and settled for deflecting his own spells back at him at equal speed. He was less adept at deflecting them than she was, and many of the ones he attempted to deflect again went off target, allowing Bellatrix to slip in a few of her own, more obscure, dangerous spells.

Harry quickly found himself retreating across to stand by Sirius, unable to deflect the spells he didn't recognise.

'Switch,' Sirius commanded, transfiguring the tiles behind Bellatrix into ropes that swirled around her, hampering her wand arm as she repeatedly cast the severing charm to get rid of them, forcing Malfoy to shield himself from her carelessly cast magic.

'Expulso,' Harry hissed, pouring a great deal of strength into the curse in the lull and aiming his wand down the corridor past the two Death Eaters.

The explosion threw Bellatrix and Malfoy down the corridor towards them. Harry grabbed Sirius arm and pulled him past the sprawling pair, twisting to rain bone-splintering curses over his shoulder as they ran towards the lift.

They made it as far as the next door before Malfoy ripped every tile off the wall and and sent them flying across the corridor to bombard them. His attack knocked them both into the room on their right, breaking the door and sending them both rolling down over the benches.

Harry dragged himself to his feet, aware that Sirius was also hauling himself up on the bench nearest the dais.

'Lacero,' he whispered viciously, sending the purple curse though the wall to where he guessed Malfoy must be. There was a hiss of pain from the other side of the wall, so Harry unleashed every spell in his arsenal though the wall, smashing through the tiles, tearing ragged holes into the corridor to reveal a dishevelled and furious Bellatrix who had her fingers pressed to the deep gash across her thigh.

Malfoy remained somehow untouched, his long blonde hair coated in dust, and his robes creased, crumpled and torn. Neither he nor Sirius looked any better.

'Avada Kedavra,' Bellatrix cried. There was a bright flash of green, but the Killing Curse vanished harmlessly into the archway behind Harry who retaliated by transfiguring the bench nearest them into a stone serpent and sending it plunging through the ruined wall at the pair.

'Confringo,' Bellatrix sneered, shattering the stone serpent contemptuously, but the flying fragments hit Malfoy who doubled over pressing a hand to his ribs.

'You never could play well with others,' Sirius taunted her, casting many of the same bright orange spells he had started with at the injured Malfoy.

Lucius' hand came away covered in crimson, but his wand came up just as swiftly as before to deflect the curses harmlessly away.

'Silly cousin Sirius,' Bellatrix cooed, caressing her wand, 'thinking he can betray the family and not pay the price. You'll die today for your treachery, just like James and the mudblood, then I'll show little Potter what I did to his friend's parents.'

His godfather gave Lestrange a look that dripped loathing, and looped his wand in a wide, sweeping motion, the tip covered in conjured, purple flames.

'Ardens flagello,' he spat, and the flames lashed out, slicing, in a dark, shimmering line of purple fire, across the room. The fire melted through the ceiling, tiles and benches as if they weren't there, leaving the edges glowing and smoking as it hissed across the room towards the pair of Death Eaters.

Bellatrix ducked, cackling madly, but Malfoy wasn't quite swift enough and the purple flames seared across the left side of his face and shoulder. It was a glancing blow, but the fire melted the flesh like wax, sending it bubbling and running down the side of his face in smoking, stinking rivulets.

Lucius screamed, dropping his wand to press his hands to face, and Sirius' next spell, a stunner, caught him in the chest, sending him back into the ruined wall where he slumped down unconscious.

'Such dark magic,' Bellatrix giggled, dodging Harry's blasting curses and deflecting Sirius' second stunner away.

'I know that spell too,' she giggled. 'Ardens flagello.'

Bright, vivid, pink flames burst from the tip of her wand as she flicked it upwards, melting a deep line through the floor where Harry would have been had he not thrown himself sideways. Sirius flinched from the heat of the fire as it splashed harmlessly off the archway behind him, wincing away into the centre of the dais.

'Expelliarmus. Crucio,' she spat, as Harry span, struggling to his feet, and expecting the searing pain of the torture curse.

No pain came, but Bellatrix's triumphant laughter echoed across the room regardless. Harry desperately summoned his wand to his hand, realising now that he had never been her target.

'Crucio,' she delighted, thrusting her wand forwards gleefully at Sirius, who was wandless before the whispering veil within the archway.

The red beam hit Sirius square in the chest.

AN: Please read and keep on reviewing, thanks to everyone who has and does! I just couldn't resist ending the chapter here, the temptation was too much for me.

65. The End of the Game

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

To the occasional person who disagrees with my choice of speech marks. Single quotes remain an acceptable and common in British publications, and I really think if reading something with them in annoys you enough to review on solely that subject then it should irritate you enough to spend thirty seconds on wikipedia to actually check whether or not it's true before placing your proverbial foot firmly in your mouth.

To everyone else, I apologise for that small outburst.

And, because I noticed a lot of reviews have suggested Harry using one of the time-turners to go back before the Death-Eaters and escape I'll clarify things and throw out a few problems I felt didn't need spelling out in the last chapter. First, and most importantly, when he went back he'd be trapped in a Department full of Unspeakables employed by a hostile-influenced Ministry, that's exchanging two known enemies for many more unknown ones, then there's how hard it would be to make sure any action he takes leaves the time stream undisturbed so he can still get to the prophecy and come to the time-turner later, additionally, messing with something as complicated as time with so many important, extra variables on top when he already has a time-turner of his own, and merely wishes to stop Voldemort having one, is a bit of an unnecessary risk. If it isn't really feasible for him to go back in time, then he has to either destroy them all, or try and steal some and destroy the rest. It goes without saying that they're likely to be protected from theft and touching one is probably a bad idea, so in my mind casting something as magically destructive as fiendfyre to obliterate every enchantment in the area is the most sensible option. If Harry can't have a time-turner (another one) then nobody can.

But that's enough of that, nobody really ever does more than skim the author's notes anyway, so on with the story.

Chapter 65

The veil fluttered, trembled; its liquid-like surface flaring forwards to brush against his godfather's back as he fell, crumpling to the floor, mouth stretched in a soundless scream.

Bellatrix was laughing from within what remained of the doorway, giggling victoriously as Sirius curled into himself, shaking and shivering silently between the two pillars of the archway.

The ice flared to furious life within his chest.

His wordless banishing spell smashed Bellatrix back through the broken wall and down the corridor, sending her bouncing past her partner.

'Sirius,' he shouted.

His godfather didn't respond.

Harry summoned him, sticking out his left arm to wandlessly pull Sirius across the room to him as he leapt up the steps, ignoring Bellatrix's shriek of fury as he dragged his godfather towards the lifts.

A barrage of yellow curses sprayed past him, splintering the tiles and smashing ragged holes into the tiling around the lifts. Harry pressed the button with his left hand, letting Sirius slide to the ground to free his arm.

Bella had awoken Malfoy, and the two of them were advancing down the corridor under cover of the mad witch's hail of spells.

He had no choice but to shield or deflect them, Sirius was behind him. The brightly coloured curses flickered up and down the corridor as he sent as many as he could back in their direction.

'Avada Kedavra,' Lucius hissed, the weeping, ruined half of his face twisted into a vicious sneer.

'Papilionis,' Harry whispered, burying them all beneath the butterflies and watching for the wisp of smoke.

Behind him the lift door clanked loudly, opening painfully slowly. He went on the offensive, buying them some time to move by transfiguring his butterflies into thousands of shards of glass, and sending them whistling down the corridor in a wave of jagged points and sharp, slicing edges.

Under the cover of his attack he shoved Sirius into the lift, then retreated in after him, flinching back from the fire that Bella sent searing down towards them to destroy the glass. Malfoy flinched too. Fear flashing in his eyes as his fingers flew up to his face.

'Osassula,' Harry hissed through the ever diminishing gap between the doors, smirking at the hiss of pain, then the lift entrance shut with a metal-edged thud.

He pressed the button for the atrium, ignoring the voice, to regain his breath. Without the adrenaline he could feel how tired he was. The throbbing ache in his wand arm, and the slight heaviness of his eyelids was a testimony to how much magic he had actually spent in the corridor and before the arch.

The lift jerked upwards, acerbating towards the atrium and the exit, and a moment of silence fell across the small lift: it was deafening after the tumult of the duel.

The lower half of the doors shattered in a single, massive concussion that sent his head spinning and fragments flying across the lift.

His instinctive shield was too slow to stop the first few, they drew hot lines of pain across his legs and abdomen, but the others deflected away harmlessly into the walls. Gritting his teeth against the pain he turned to Sirius, who lay slumped against the back wall, eyes closed and pale, with more than a few shards of metal sticking out through his ragged robes.

'Rennervate,' Harry muttered, jabbing his wand at Sirius.

His godfather's eyes snapped open, his chest heaved, and he scrabbled through his robes for his wand.

'It's not there,' Harry told him. 'Bellatrix disarmed you and I didn't have time to summon it when we escaped.'

Sirius nodded, then cast an eye over himself and started pulling out the pieces of the lift door that were embedded across his left side. 'Any particular reason I feel like a pincushion?' He inquired through teeth clenched against the pain of his lacerations.

'They destroyed the door,' Harry gestured to the gaping hole in the side of the lift, 'I doubt we've seen the last of them either.'

'They'll come up the shaft once we're out of the way,' Sirius warned, 'we're not out of this by a long way yet.'

'You should get out,' Harry decided, 'without a wand you'll be an easy target. I'll cover our backs as we go.'

'I'm not leaving you,' Sirius shook his head, pushing himself up against the only intact wall. 'The Order will be here soon.'

'You said that when we first entered the department,' Harry commented with a frown, 'are you sure they got your message?'

'They got it,' Sirius confirmed. 'They should be here by now.' He seemed unsure, and Harry mentally resigned himself to having to fight his way out alone. It would hardly be any different to before, he'd always been left to save himself on his own.

'Vulnera sanentur,' Harry whispered, when the last fragment of metal slid out from under Sirius' skin to join the small pile of blood stained pieces on the floor.

'How did you come away unscathed?' His godfather complained, eying the small pile testily.

'Luck,' Harry grinned, glancing down at the thin tears in his robes where the fragments had hit him. He had already healed, the thin, shallow cuts from the debris were swiftly fixed by his new resilience.

'You're worse than James,' Sirius grinned, standing up unaided, 'he always came out of scrapes like this without so much as a scratch.'

Harry took Sirius' word for it, though he rather doubted his father had ever had to fight his way out of the Department of Mysteries.

'Atrium,' the dispassionate voice announced, and the lift ground to a halt.

They hadn't made it more than a few steps from the lift doors before collapsed in on itself, shrinking as it fell back down the shaft.

'Go,' he snapped as Sirius, raising his wand and readying himself to fight again. There was room here to use his more destructive spells without bringing eight floors of building down on his head.

His godfather ignored him completely, diving across next to the lift exit.

'Clever little Potter thought he'd escaped,' Bellatrix laughed, stepping out of the empty shaft, 'but you'll have to do more than that to stop me, only the Dark Lord has ever beaten me.'

'No more games, Bella,' Malfoy hissed, his leather encased fingertips pressed against the ruined side of his face. His partner just giggled, shaking her dark curls in little rippled about her head.

'It's all games,' she cooed delightedly, 'and eventually we all lose.'

Sirius hurled himself from the shadows next to the lift entrance, hitting Malfoy, and knocking the blond Death Eater's wand across the floor where it skittered out of sight.

'I guess I'll play with cousin Sirius later,' Bella remarked, almost sadly. 'It will be fun,' her expression brightened, 'the Dark Lord didn't say that had to keep him alive.'

The ice that had faded from him in the calm of the lift flared up anew, colder and tighter than before. It hissed and cracked somewhere in his chest, uncoiling as his rage awoke in earnest. He slashed his wand across his chest, and the indistinct form of the basilisk lunged forwards, tearing the floor apart as it swept across the atrium.

'Confringo,' Bellatrix sneered again, but this time her spell dissipated the instant it touched the outstretched fangs and with a small shriek of surprise she flung herself across the floor and out of harm's way. Harry's conjured basilisk hammered into the lift entrance, obliterating the golden gates, and wall completely. The flying pieces spewed out across the atrium, showering Sirius and Malfoy as they grappled across the floor and knocking Bellatrix across the floor.

'Potter knows how to play,' Bellatrix breathed, staring at him with something close to awe in her eyes. Her wand streaked up as she pushed herself from the floor, an array of coloured curses slicing through the air between them.

Harry flicked them away, sending them curving back towards her as they spiralled around one another. In the background behind her Sirius was driving his fist into Malfoy's face, doing his utmost to ruin both sides of the Death Eater's face.

'Lacero,' he whispered, melding the want motion seamlessly into a small string of other spells, pushing himself as fast as he could go.

It was faster than Bella could deflect, and stronger than her shield which flickered insubstantially in front of her briefly before shattering.

'You got me,' she giggled, pressing a finger to the cut across one cheek, then licking the blood from it. 'I never could understand shielding,' she sighed, 'why defend yourself when you can just attack?'

A fresh volley of painfully bright, yellow spells streaked from her wand tip, but Harry knew this spell, he had seen Sirius deflect it in the corridor, and he sent all five hissing back at her far faster than she had cast them. The first three splattered into the floor, leaving deep, scorched craters at Bella's feet, but the other two arced past her hip and shoulder, striking Sirius in the side, and Malfoy in the chest, scattering them both across the floor.

'Ooops,' Bella giggled. 'Were you expecting me to deflect them back,' her face stretched in a wide, bright smile, 'the rules of the game have changed.'

Neither Sirius nor Malfoy moved, and though he could see their chests rising and falling the ice tightened its grip at being tricked so easily. Something cold and cruel opened vast, dark eyes within him, staring out with open malice at the world. The fiendfyre swirled in the shape of a serpent past Bella, forcing her to the edge of the fountain before she swept it back at him in a formless wave and he was forced to extinguish it.

'Don't worry little Potter,' she laughed, 'Bella will nurse her cousin back to health, just give me the prophecy from your pocket, let me win, and I'll only prescribe the Cruciatus Curse when I'm bored.'

The golden centaur behind her shuddered as Harry's magic wrapped itself around it, then drove its arrow directly through the back of her knee. Bellatrix hissed, shattering every statue in the fountain with an angry flick of her wand.

'Crucio,' she shrieked, over and over again, sending a shower of red spells into Harry's hastily summoned cloud of butterflies. It was her trademark spell, Harry remembered. The one she'd cast on Neville's parents until their minds snapped under the strain, the one she'd cast on Sirius, her own family, and tried to cast on Harry.

'Osassula,' Harry whispered.

The curse shattered Bella's desperate shield and struck her fingers, sending her wand spinning into the water behind her.

'Perhaps Bella would like a taste of her own medicine,' Harry wondered aloud, summoning her wand to him and snapping it in his left hand. The witch screeched furiously, uncontrolled, childish magic rippling at him, melting its way across the atrium floor to crash against his shield, knocking him stumbling backwards onto the floor.

The glass orb shattered within his pocket, and the hoarse, rasping voice Harry recognised from hearing Professor Trelawney's prophecy in the third year echoed out of his robes. Bella fell quiet, tilting her head to one side, spilling her black curls across a face filled with childish curiosity.

'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…'

'Equal,' Bellatrix wondered childishly, 'the Dark Lord has no equals, he's the best player in the game, but better safe than sorry, better to still be playing than to lose, better to play than to be dead, so no more little Potter, and no more little Longbottom either, Bella saw to that.' She giggled gleefully, recalling her actions with obvious delight. 'That was Bella's favourite game.'

'Crucio,' he spat through clenched teeth, thrusting his wand forwards. The pale, red beam dissipated on the severed torso of the centaur as Bella twisted out of the way.

'You've got to mean it, little Potter,' she cackled, 'if you don't really want to hurt the other players, then you'll lose the game.'

A game.

The lips of the ice creature within curled back, revealing an insatiable maw of a thousand, needle-like teeth, and fury enough to swallow the world.

The naive cruelty of a child, wearing the face, body and power of a witch.

How he wanted to make her understand, but he knew without having to use legilimency that Bellatrix would never understand what she had done. In her mind this was all the game of a little girl, every spell a move, every death the defeat of another player, another person tagged, and the only people she truly hated were those who hadn't the magic to play her game with her.

'Crucio,' Harry repeated, his lips twisting into the same smile he felt spread within himself.

Bellatrix screamed, flailing and thrashing in the water, as the crackling, crimson beam joined them together in an instant of understanding as pain overwhelmed Bella's mind, proclaiming in the only way she understood that Harry was the better player in her world of games.

Did I mean it enough for you, Bella, he wanted to demand.

'Potter does know how to play,' she giggled between gasps, violet eyes alight with excited glee. The pain had only driven her further into her delusion. Her mind hid from the horror of her reality too completely for it to ever fail or falter.

'Master,' she breathed reverently, suddenly ignoring Harry completely.

Harry spun, half-crouching defensively in front of the Dark Lord.

'Bella's sorry,' the mad witch tittered, 'Bella lost her game, little Potter was better than Bella, but Bella heard the prophecy-'

'Avada Kedavra,' Harry whispered, ending Bella's game before she spilt something he'd rather Voldemort not hear.

'Harry,' the Dark Lord murmured in quiet fury, anger flashing in his crimson eyes as he watched the body of Bellatrix Lestrange sink into the fountain. 'Bella was one of my most useful servants.'

'Not anymore,' Harry smiled, 'she lost.'

'Yes,' Voldemort's lips curled back in a cruel grin. 'She lost her great game at last, but I'm sure she enjoyed every moment of it while she still played.' He surveyed the ruins of the room, tracking the spell marks across the atrium, the shattered statues and scorch marks.

'What was so important about the prophecy?' Harry asked, glancing across to where Sirius lay, still unconscious.

'The wards are still up,' Voldemort laughed softly, 'the only way out is past me, I'm afraid, and your chance of escape would be small enough if you were fresh to the fight, but I will humour you. The prophecy tells of a child born with the strength to eclipse me, a wizard I can't allow to live because he will always be a threat.'

'Me,' Harry deduced.

'Perhaps,' Voldemort murmured, 'but I never heard the entire thing, and now I know you I wonder if there isn't more to this prediction than I originally thought.'

The pale, yew wand snapped up, unleashing a trio of curses far faster than Bellatrix had been capable of. Harry jumped back, narrowly avoiding the three spells that slammed into the floor showering his feet in fragments of stone.

'Avada kedavra,' Voldemort murmured smoothly, only smiling when Harry's silently summoned butterflies swallowed the spell. 'Confringo,' he continued, tearing great, gaping holes through Harry's swarming shield, forcing him to deflect the curses ineffectively back at the Dark Lord.

Harry retreated, curving round past the fountain to try and lure Voldemort further into the atrium and open an avenue of escape.

The golden statues melted around his feet, seeping across the floor to take the shape of vast serpent that coiled across the floor, blocking his exit. The only way was through Voldemort, and the Order was not coming, not if they were taking so long to arrive.

'Ardens flagello,' Harry hissed, remembering the power of the spell that Sirius had cast in the room beside the veil.

A vast swathe of purple-edged, ebon flames lashed from the tip of his wand, melting through the golden serpent Voldemort had transfigured as if it were butter, but the fire guttered against the swirling, silver shield that the Dark Lord conjured, then vanished completely when Voldemort unleashed flames of his own.

The red, raging tongues of fiendfyre swept across the atrium from floor to ceiling, obliterating the elegant golden runes and gleaming green tiles in a wave of destruction.

Harry clenched his jaw, knowing that he had little energy left to spend, and that he had to either escape soon or die. He slashed his wand forwards, and the the fiendfyre swirled about, flowing into the form of the basilisk he had envisioned then surging back down the atrium, fangs agape.

Voldemort laughed, a cold, high sound of genuine delight, then the floor shuddered and vast spires of stone burst from the floor, impaling the basilisk to the ceiling even as they melted, showering the floor in hissing droplets of glowing, molten rock.

'Ever you surpass my expectations, Harry,' he murmured. The tip of his pale wand flicked back down from the ruined ceiling to point directly at Harry's forehead. 'Legilimens,' he ordered.

Harry had only an instant to clear his mind. Focusing on the feeling of utter nothingness that had so successfully expelled Snape, he determined that he would not lose this contest. He might be tired, but his will was as strong as ever, and Voldemort was the one expending energy to link their minds together.

A flicker of images assailed his barriers, emotions, desires, feelings and dreams that Harry knew would have drawn him from his defense had it been anything less. Instead the emptiness swallowed them all, consuming every thought and feeling Voldemort sent at him until the Dark Lord lowered his wand, a fascinated smiled upon his lipless mouth.

'Interesting,' Voldemort murmured. 'Even I cannot claim to exceed your gift for legilimency, not when you defend your mind as perfectly as I guard my own.'

'Then you know that the knowledge of the prophecy dies with me,' Harry smirked.

'If you die I will have no need to fear it at all.' Harry had to concede that Voldemort did have a point. 'So,' the pale wand flicked back up, tracing a small semi-circle in the air, 'contusio,' he whispered.

A scatter of pinpricks of silver light flared from Voldemort's wand, tracing delicately through air towards him. Harry mustered the dregs of his magic, sweeping the water from the fountain across the atrium to intercept them in a thin veil.

A succession of rippling concussions tore through the air, hammering at his ears as the delicate, silver drops of light exploded against the veil of water and spraying Harry with scalding water.

'What,' Harry began, as green flames flared in all the fireplaces along the hall, 'if I told you the prophecy?'

'Then I would not need you alive,' Voldemort countered, but his gleaming crimson eyes were also watching the fires, and Harry knew that he had his attention.

'You would have no reason to kill me either,' Harry persisted.

'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord,' Voldemort intoned almost mockingly. His wand curved up, reforming the golden serpent Harry's fire had destroyed, and sending it careening down the atrium, smashing through the fireplaces on the opposite wall.

'Power is directed by intent,' Harry smiled, aware now that his life hung from his tongue, every and any word could be his last, because his magic was all but spent.

'I should trust in your intent, then?' The Dark Lord laughed softly. 'A foolish risk to take, those who trust are betrayed, aren't they, Harry?'

'A trade then,' Harry proposed, as the fireplaces' emerald flames billowed bright, threatening the arrival of others. 'I will take Sirius Black, and leave, you will learn the last line of the prophecy.'

'Tempting,' Voldemort mused. 'You are interesting.' He twirled his wand thoughtfully in his fingers, just as the shade of the younger Tom Riddle had in the chamber. The pale, yew wand spun around and around his forefinger, trailing silver sparks, and twirling hypnotically.

'I accept,' he decided at last, and the wand vanished into his sleeve.

Harry flicked his back into its holster, wandlessly summoning Sirius to him.

'The prophecy, Harry,' the Dark Lord prompted.

'And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal,' Harry repeated confidently, 'but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.'

'Interesting,' Voldemort mused, 'it does not say if you are fated to defeat me.' Harry's smile was not entirely benign. The prophecy's last line was known only to him. He had lied to the Dark Lord, and as long as Voldemort had not lied he would escape with the truth still a secret.

'No,' he lied, 'it doesn't, though I must wonder what the power you know not is.'

Voldemort's wand was in his hand again, and Harry tensed. 'I was going to kill you anyway,' he remarked casually, 'but I'm curious, Harry, to see what you will become. Someone once told me that I should find an equal to stand either alongside or opposite, I never really believed it, but I wonder if he might have been right after all.'

'You did mark me as an equal,' Harry added dryly, running a forefinger along his faded scar. The Dark Lord looked at him carefully, a surprisingly human fascination across his inhuman features.

'Self-fulfilling prophecy,' Voldemort agreed softly, 'and now there is this power I know not. Until next time we meet,' his lips curled cruel, 'and I'm sure our paths will cross again, Dumbledore will insist upon it. He is the only other who knows the full prophecy.' Harry could hardly disagree, especially if the old wizard knew the real last line.

Either must die at the hand of the other.

He could be many things, a hero, a martyr, as Dumbledore intended for him, or he could simply be the one who walked away from the aftermath, as he intended.

There was a very soft double snap and Voldemort was gone, flickering from one side of the room to the other, then vanishing, ripping through the anti-apparition wards like so much wet paper. Harry was instantly grateful for the Dark Lord's curiosity, and even for Salazar, from whom the words that had stayed Voldemort's hand had originally come, because he had not had a fraction of the strength left to accomplish such a feat.

Harry glanced around, taking in the ruined room, Bellatrix's body, and the shattered statues. Voldemort had taken the maimed Malfoy with him while he was still unconscious on the floor.

If this does not convince the Ministry that something is afoot then there's no point in continuing to try.

He pulled Sirius more tightly to him and focused on the Chamber of Secrets. His godfather could be trusted with the secret of its existence, though Harry would only be showing him the main chamber.

The world twisted back away from him, but he was sure, in the last moment he gazed upon the atrium, that he caught a flash of phoenix flame and heard Dumbledore's sorrowful sigh.

He staggered across the smooth, black marble of the chamber, laying Sirius' body down on the cold floor to catch his breath and rest as the adrenaline abandoned him. The ice thawed from his veins, receding back into a single, cold, hard point in his breast.

The Order of the Phoenix never came.

He could not convince himself that it was coincidence that Dumbledore had appeared when the duel should have long since ended, nor that the Order's mysterious failure to help Sirius was not a result of his machinations.

We were meant to be martyrs.

'Renervate,' he muttered, tapping Sirius lightly on the head, and ordering the bridge back into the waters of the pool.

'What hit me this time?' Sirius asked, grinning up at him weakly.

'Bellatrix tricked me,' Harry answered apologetically, 'she manoeuvred herself between us and when I sent her spells back at her she let them go on to strike both you and Malfoy.'

'She was always dangerous,' Sirius reassured him, 'what about the prophecy? And the Order?' He glanced around curiously. 'This isn't Grimmauld Place either.'

'I'll tell you the story from when you started your impromptu nap,' Harry quipped. His godfather chuckled and sat up, propping himself against the nearest snake-encircled pillar.

'Go ahead,' he gestured.

'After you and Malfoy were knocked out I duelled Bellatrix across the atrium, and disarmed her, but the orb containing the prophecy was broken, and we both heard the words.'

'So Voldemort will know what it says,' Sirius concluded. 'What did it say?'

'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…' Harry told him. 'Bellatrix heard the whole thing, but when Voldemort turned up I killed her before she could tell him.'

Sirius flinched.

'She deserved to die, if not worse,' Harry pointed out patiently, knowing Sirius' reaction was more down to surprise than distaste.

'I didn't expect you to be capable of it,' he apologised. 'James and Lily were too kind-hearted, they believed wholeheartedly in Dumbledore's proclamations about purity of heart. You don't seem too upset about killing her?'

'I'm not,' Harry shrugged. 'We could hardly send her back to Azkaban if I stunned her, and I'm not letting Voldemort know the whole prophecy, her life is not worth as much as mine, nor as much as those whom I care about.'

'He knows part of it?' Sirius inquired.

'We duelled again in the atrium, made a bit of a mess of it actually,' Harry grinned, 'but I told him the rest of the prophecy in return for being able to leave with you.'

'You told him!' Sirius exclaimed furiously.

'I told him one line,' Harry interrupted, 'enough of the truth to mislead him, but not enough of a lie for him to notice. We'd both be dead otherwise.'

'The Order would have come,' Sirius persisted, but there was tangible doubt in his tone.

'They never came, though I'm sure I saw Dumbledore just as I apparated us away. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why the members of the Order never came and why he arrived at the scene long after we should have been killed, but before the Ministry could have arrived.'

'I sent the warning,' Sirius muttered, 'they should have come, they all know what it means.'

'The last line of the prophecy,' Harry stated bluntly.

'Either must die at the hand of the other,' Sirius recalled, 'but surely Dumbledore would want to make sure you killed Voldemort.'

'That's not very pure of heart,' Harry reminded him, side-stepping a long discussion about horcruxes. 'Surely a martyr's death to ensure Voldemort's end is preferable.'

Harry had never seen his godfather so angry as he seemed in that moment. He half expected his magic to lash out and sear the world around him.

'That meddlesome old man,' Sirius hissed. 'That's why he won't let me take custody of you, that's why he sends you back to your relatives, why he pushes you into acts of heroism and acts like you risking your life for others is the most you could ever hope to do.'

'He wants a malleable, naive child to throw into Voldemort's path,' Harry explained. 'No doubt he believes that the power the Dark Lord knows not is something abstract, pure-hearted and perfectly heroic.'

'Love,' Sirius ground out. 'He has often made references to your ability to love and risk yourself for others. He expects you to die like Lily did, only with a more permanent effect.'

'He will be disappointed,' Harry smirked. 'I have no intention of dying.'

'As you shouldn't,' Sirius half-shouted. 'I'm going to tear that wrinkled, old snake apart with my bare hands. I'm done with his Order of the Phoenix. I bet Snape knew about the attack tonight and poor Mundungus was just another sacrifice he decided to make.'

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'We need to know what he's doing if he intends to make a martyr of me.'

'So I should stay and spy,' Sirius realised, regaining his calm.

'I don't trust Dumbledore or his Order and I don't need them either,' Harry declared. 'I was strong enough to defeat Bellatrix. I've survived Voldemort alone and by my own efforts twice. We'll be fine without him.'

'We just need to make sure he isn't trying to throw you into harm's way at every opportunity,' Sirius said slowly. 'You can't stay with your relatives, you can't come to Grimmauld, he's the secret keeper, and you can't stay here, wherever this is.'

'The Chamber of Secrets,' Harry said, chuckling at the look of shock on his godfather's face. 'It's one of two rooms in this castle not on the Marauders' Map, and my backdoor in and out of the castle.'

'Clever,' Sirius grinned, 'sneaking in and out right under Dumbledore's nose without him realising, but you can't live here for the summer.'

'I'll sort something out,' Harry assured him. He'd wait to talk to Fleur, something he really had to do soon, before he told Sirius anything about their plans together. She wouldn't mind sharing them with him, not if she knew Harry trusted him, but Fleur wouldn't like not being asked first.

'Do you promise?' Sirius asked gravely.

'I promise,' Harry nodded. 'I won't be spending a single night with the Dursley's again.'

'I guess I should go back to Grimmauld Place then,' Sirius sighed. 'What do I tell Dumbledore?'

'Ask him what was going on and find out what he knows before telling him as little as possible about what really happened. It helps that you were unconscious.'

Harry wasn't actually sure that it mattered if Dumbledore knew the truth or not, but the more he knew that the old wizard didn't improved his chances of not ending up as a sacrifice, willing or otherwise.

'I'll tell him that I felt something was wrong, snuck in, and destroyed the prophecy when I found Voldemort coming to take it,' Sirius decided. 'Will he know you were there?'

'He might,' Harry mused. 'I don't know if he saw me before we apparated out or not.'

'I'll say nothing I don't know he already knows,' Sirius grinned. 'It's like trying to avoid detention with McGonagall.'

'Only you would compare getting out of detention to lying to the strongest wizard alive,' Harry laughed.

'They're not that different when you get right down to it,' his godfather shrugged, rising to his feet. 'I should go, this Chamber of Secrets of yours is creepy, it's the sort of place my mother would dream about. You should go to bed,' he quipped, 'don't you have exams?'

Sirius stuck out a foot in preparation to apparate and closed his eyes, only to reopen them in confusion when nothing happened.

'You can't apparate out of here,' Harry chuckled. 'You'll have to sneak out via Hogsmeade, I'll open the entrance into the castle for you, follow me.'

AN: Please keep on reviewing and reading, guess who isn't dead... yet.

66. Flower in the Alley

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I'm a little concerned by the handful of people who thought I was referring to myself when I asked you to guess who wasn't yet dead, that's quite a morbid mindset you guys have, either you're really afraid I might not finish this fic, or a surprising number of authors on this site die unexpectedly and nobody's warned me about the risks of joining. I literally just meant Sirius hadn't vanished through the veil.

Anyway, here's the next one, though it's inevitably a little less flashy and visual than the last two...

Chapter 66

Sirius had gone, sneaking out through the school in his animagus form, just as he had snuck in during his attempt to get to Pettigrew. There was nobody looking for him, and nobody who was capable of recognising him apart from Ron and Hermione and they were both in Gryffindor Tower according to the Marauders' Map.

'You didn't introduce me this time,' Salazar commented quietly from above the door when Harry returned early in the morning after a few hours of desperately needed sleep.

'Sirius is my godfather, I trust him, but he might not react well to my heritage if I told him that on top of everything else,' Harry explained. There had been a lot for him to take in recently, the real face of Dumbledore was a sharp shock. 'He has history with Slytherin House and the pure-blood bigotry you've become synonymous with. It's bad enough he has to return to his prison of a home and pretend to follow a man who has not even the slightest regard for his life. I'll tell him, just over time, his belief has its limits.'

'But Fleur's does not?' Slytherin inquired.

'No,' Harry smiled, 'but if you never see me again after today you know that I was wrong.'

'It serves you right,' the portrait smirked, 'you've hardly spoken to her in the last week or so.'

'I was busy,' Harry shrugged, 'she'll understand.' Fleur would understand, he was confident of that, but he was rather less confident that she wouldn't be absolutely furious with him first. That was why he was having this talk with Salazar before leaving. If Fleur wanted him to spend time with her for a bit now she was in Britain he could do it without out having to interrupt their time to talk with the painting.

'My wife would have understood,' the portrait agreed, 'but she would have made sure I felt every iota of her anger at being sidelined and not told I was doing something very dangerous.'

'I told her it was going to happen soon,' Harry reminded him. 'Don't you want to know what happened?'

'I was waiting for you to tell me.'

'Well it didn't exactly go to plan,' Harry started wryly. 'We got in, and to the prophecy easily enough,' he didn't bother mentioning the mirror or the strange archway, 'but we got caught between Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, and the way out, so we had to fight.'

'You seemed to have come out unscathed,' the painting commented, 'were they any good?'

'I heal fast,' Harry reminded him, poking his finger through one of the numerous holes in his robes, then switching them for a fresh, slightly less well ventilated pair . 'They were both quite competent, certainly more experienced and better versed in duelling than I was, but not as fast or as powerful.'

'I told you the rituals would help you,' Salazar pointed out, raising his chin ever so slightly. A gesture of smugness that was completely ruined by the serpent mimicking him from around his neck.

'Are you going to let me finish?' Harry asked acidly.

'No,' Slytherin snarked. 'You should go and see Fleur now, then come leave her and come back here while she's still angry with you, that's a much better idea.' Harry's flat stare did nothing to dull the glitter of amusement in Salazar's dark eyes.

'We duelled, for a long time,' Harry recalled, realising with some disbelief just how much energy he must have spent. 'It was an even match in the basement where I couldn't use my most powerful spells without bringing down the building, but once we got up to the atrium I eventually just overpowered Bellatrix. I'm a lot more powerful now, she must have been exhausted by the time she lost.'

'She was talented at duelling though?' Salazar inquired.

'To use her own words,' Harry snorted, 'nobody has ever beaten her except the Dark Lord. I believe she might have been exaggerating a little, and she was likely weakened having only just escaped from Azkaban, but there aren't many wizards or witches that I would confidently back to beat her regardless.'

'Good,' Slytherin said fiercely, 'so you defeated her and returned here?'

'Not even close,' Harry grinned. 'Guess again.'

'Or you could just tell me,' Salazar remarked bitingly.

'I thought you wanted to guess,' Harry said, feigning innocence.

'This is me telling you that I don't want to guess,' the painting stated. 'Must you act like Godric? I thought we were past this this phase of immaturity.'

'Bellatrix wasn't quite what I would call sane,' Harry told the portrait, ignoring the last comment completely. It was sad when he considered it, whatever she had seen had been so horrifying to her that it had forced her to flee from reality, leaving a childish witch still capable of accidental magic when pushed to it. 'She managed to break the orb that held the prophecy, and we both heard it.'

'I presume you killed her then,' Salazar deduced.

'Of course,' Harry replied calmly, 'ruthlessness when required.'

'So what did it say?'

'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…' Harry paused to regain his breath. 'It can be interpreted in several different ways.'

'Yes,' the painting mused, 'yes it can.'

'Do you believe it holds?" Harry asked. 'I know little about the rules of prophecy.'

'What rules?' Salazar asked acidly. 'A genuine prophecy always comes true, but whether that is because people twist events to suit their interpretation, because people have fulfilled it themselves, or simply because the prophecy is true I do not know.'

'So I should assume that what it implies must eventually come to pass?'

'Yes,' Salazar replied seriously. 'Voldemort believed in it enough to try to kill you as a baby, Dumbledore has been throwing away the lives of his followers guarding just the record of it, they both will insist on ensuring that the outcome they desire comes to pass.'

'Dumbledore knows the whole thing,' Harry said simply, 'but I traded a half-truth to Voldemort in return for being able to escape the Department of Mysteries with Sirius.'

'He was there?'

'How else was he supposed to acquire the prophecy? Only one who is the subject of a prophecy can remove it from the records.'

'I didn't know that,' Slytherin remarked. 'Prophecies are quite fascinating really. I do wonder if a prophecy that was told but never heard or learnt about would actually come to pass.'

'Is the answer to that immediately important?' Harry asked snidely.

'Just because it seems to have no relevance now does not mean it will not be useful later,' Slytherin sulked. 'What did you tell Voldemort?'

'I told him the penultimate line,' Harry smirked. 'I thought it would be enough of the truth to imply I might not be a direct threat, but I don't think he really believed me.'

'The Tom Riddle I knew would never have fallen for such an obvious trick,' Salazar agreed, 'but he must have had a reason for letting you go.'

'He wants to see what I will become,' Harry remembered. 'You told him to find equals too, didn't you?'

'Everything I have told you, I once told him,' something bitter passed across the portrait's face, 'I only hope that you listen better, or, maybe, that whatever I said to drive him into becoming Voldemort you ignore.'

'He considers me similar to himself, an equal in the making,' Harry realised, 'a potential threat he allows to exist out of a curiosity born from what you once almost convinced him to believe.'

'I think you are likely right,' Salazar said softly. 'Voldemort is not Tom Riddle. The brilliant boy I taught here has been consumed and become something quite different to what I hoped. Tom would have never been arrogant enough to allow such a threat to exist, no matter how curious he was. He would have made an ally or a corpse of you.'

'He tried,' Harry reminded the founder. 'When he learnt of the prophecy he tried to kill every child who might fulfil it.'

'By sending his followers out to slaughter babies and marching off himself before understanding or even considering the coincidences of his actions.' Salazar seemed more disappointed than anything else. 'Perhaps his horcruxes and apparent immortality made him believe himself untouchable. He was always quite detached from others and it grew worse as he grew stronger. I suppose it doesn't matter, Dumbledore will not stop trying to engineer the outcome he wants from the prophecy, and Voldemort's curiosity at your similarities will only last as long as it's convenient for him.'

'I do not expect to escape him in such a manner again,' Harry agreed, 'neither wizard will stop their attempts to bring about my death. Voldemort will at least be direct, but Dumbledore, I think Sirius may have been correct when he said he expects my willing sacrifice to act as my mother's once did.'

'It would be very convenient for him,' Salazar's face twisted with disgust, 'the living horcrux is destroyed, Voldemort defeated-'

'And all in such a pure-hearted and noble manner,' Harry finished darkly. 'He will not even stop if I kill Voldemort, because he will never be able to overcome the doubt that while I live, Voldemort does too.'

'His desire to make you a martyr makes him marginally less dangerous now we know of the prophecy,' Slytherin decided. 'He will not risk you dying at the hand of anyone but Voldemort, and he will do everything he can to make sure you go willingly, forewarned and alone.'

'I am out of his influence for the time being,' Harry said confidently. 'I will not be returning to the Dursley's, Sirius will keep me abreast of the Order's movements, and I will be safe under the Fidelius Charm.'

'As long as you choose the right secret keeper,' Salazar reminded him.

'I know the perfect person,' Harry grinned. 'Someone nobody will ever suspect.'

'So long as you're sure,' the painting said sceptically, 'but I'd add some wards too if I were you.'

'Blood wards,' Harry assumed, 'that's probably a good idea.'

'All my ideas are good,' Salazar told him, 'well,' his face darkened, 'most of them are.'

'I should go and meet Fleur,' Harry decided. 'I'm going to surprise her, hopefully a happy surprise will save me a scorching.'

'I don't think it will,' the founder sniggered, 'but I wish you luck.'

'Thanks,' Harry responded dryly.

'I'll think about this prophecy for you while you're off begging for forgiveness, the more possible interpretations we know of the better off we will be. Forewarned is forearmed. We need to speak about the future more when you return, so don't stay away too long.' It had been a while since Salazar had come up with a sensible saying he hadn't yet heard, even if that had sounded a little familiar, and Harry could only agree. He was a little concerned about his ancestor's desire to talk about the future. It sounded awfully ominous, but his good humour at knowing he would soon see Fleur swiftly over came the feeling.

'Have fun.' Harry cheerfully waved his goodbye before disillusioning himself and apparating with a soft snap to the steps of Gringotts.

Diagon Alley was busy. The stores were starting to open and the first wave of visitors swept or apparated in along the length of the alley.

Harry appeared on top of a short, balding wizard who flinched violently away from the unexpected contact, losing his hat in the process. The startled man looked around wildly for the culprit before retrieving his hat and taking off towards the Leaky Cauldron muttering under his breath.

Finding Fleur proved more difficult than Harry had anticipated in the crowd. He knew she was briefly renting a room at the Leaky Cauldron, but she wasn't there when he followed the short wizard in to look for her, and he was sure he wouldn't find her out in the crowds of the Alley. There were few places Fleur would rather not be than alone among a crowd of male, English wizards.

In the end he wandered down the alley back towards Gringotts, scanning the gaps in the crowd for the telltale shimmer of her disillusionment charm, and wondering if it might be a better idea to just use the lockets to tell her.

Eventually, after several trips from one end of the alley to the other, he caught a ripple of distorted air over one of the benches by the bank entrance, as if someone almost invisible had suddenly risen from the seat.

Harry followed the shimmer through the crowd with some difficulty, nearly losing the invisible figure several times, but eventually catching it when the distortion stopped and vanished in front of a stall that was just beginning to put out stacks of the day's Daily Prophet.

Break In a the Department of Mysteries, Harry read from the front page, Atrium Destroyed in Overnight Duel Between Intruders. Bellatrix Lestrange Found Dead.

It rather ruined his plan to surprise her and then ease her gently into the news, but at least he was sure that the invisible figure was Fleur. The steady stream of French swearing, threats and repetition of his name was more than enough to convince him of that.

'It wasn't half as exciting as they make it sound,' Harry said hopefully, stepping alongside her. There was a soft gasp in the midst of her torrent of furious french, then a distinctly taloned hand closed itself around his arm and led him across the alley under the brightly coloured umbrellas of one of the many cafés there.

Her disillusionment charm had slipped with his appearance, so he abandoned his, wincing at the resurgent flare of anger in the large, dark eyes of her partially transformed face when he appeared in front of her.

'Sit,' she ordered, pushing him none too gently into one of the seats. 'You have a lot of talking to do.' Fleur took a couple of deep breaths, closed her eyes, and gradually her facial structure shifted back to its normal place.

'I suppose I do, don't I,' Harry agreed tentatively. 'Where would you like me to start?'

'How about at the reason for not telling me any of what you've been doing for the last week or so?'

Apparently that wasn't the right question, Harry realised.

'I did tell you that things were going to happen and I might not be able to see you,' Harry defended. He hadn't been that bad, it wasn't like he hadn't warned her. 'Everything had to happen really quickly,' he explained hurriedly at the decidedly avian glare he received, 'I didn't have time to tell you everything.'

'No time,' Fleur considered, as if it were the single least believable thing she had ever heard. 'Not even a few moments to let me know you'd got rid of your repulsive headmistress, or a minute to warn me that you were going to the Department of Mysteries after the prophecy.'

'Don't say that too loudly,' Harry warned, 'the last thing we need is for me to be in Azkaban for the foreseeable future.'

'I'd probably get the same amount of attention from you,' Fleur retorted angrily.

She's being a lot less reasonable than I expected.

'I should have warned you,' Harry relented, more to pacify her temper than out of any real sense of guilt. It was understandable that she was upset, but there wasn't all that much he could have done about it. 'I'm sorry. I got caught up in things.'

'It never happens again,' Fleur told him, her tone strict, but horribly fragile. 'I've spent every single day here in Britain worrying about why I hadn't heard from you. I knew you were about to go after it,' she clenched her jaw and blinked furiously, 'I was worried you might not have managed to get out again, and then I read the paper today.'

'I nearly didn't,' Harry admitted quietly. 'Things didn't go as we planned. Voldemort went after it too.'

'Lestrange?' Fleur asked softly.

'Yes,' Harry answered, knowing she would not care that he had killed her. 'Malfoy and Voldemort himself too. It was a close run thing,' he grinned, then hissed in pain when Fleur drove her heel into the top of his foot.

'It isn't funny,' she whispered furiously. 'I've been on the verge of panic. I do not like having to wait helplessly to hear you are still alive.'

'Now I know how Gabrielle feels,' Harry groaned, nursing his injury. Fleur was a lot stronger than she looked.

'I don't do it so hard to Gabby,' Fleur told him, smiling vindictively, 'you deserve it. Now keep talking.'

Harry briefly considered rebellion, or bribing her with kisses, but decided he did need to tell her, and she was likely to stamp on him if he told her later anyway. 'Sirius and I duelled Malfoy and Lestrange after acquiring the prophecy, my godfather and Malfoy ended up unconscious in the atrium, Bellatrix and I both heard the prophecy, but I killed her when Voldemort arrived so she couldn't tell him.'

'He was there,' Fleur paled and tugged anxiously at her little finger, running her eyes over him to make sure he was all there and unharmed.

'I duelled him for a bit, but when the floor network lit up I convinced him to let me leave with Sirius once I told him the rest of the prophecy, then he left with Malfoy and I apparated out.' 'So you both know what the prophecy says?' Fleur cocked her head curiously.

'No,' Harry smirked. 'I lied.' Fleur's smile was distinctly proud as he related the entirety of the prophecy to him. 'I told him the line about him marking me as his equal, but not the actual last line. He wouldn't have let me leave alive if I had.'

Fleur's hand slipped over the table top to squeeze his.

'Dumbledore knows the entire thing,' Harry frowned, 'and I fear he has interpreted it in such a fashion that requires me to sacrifice myself for the Greater Good.'

'I hope,' Fleur said carefully, drawing circles on the back of his hand, 'that you aren't even considering such a ridiculous idea.'

'Of course not,' Harry laughed softly. 'If I had not seen the truth of the man maybe I might have, but I know too well how little he cares for me or anyone else. He's spent too long labouring over abstract concepts of nobility and lost sight of the people themselves.'

'Will he try to hurt you?' Fleur asked softly.

'No,' Harry shook his head confidently. 'I must willingly walk to my death at Voldemort's hand, and my sacrifice will then somehow unleash some hidden, magical power that will destroy the Dark Lord, just as he believes my mother's sacrifice did.'

'That's ridiculous,' Fleur spat, stopping her circling on his hand.

'He's quite wrong,' Harry agreed. 'My mother's sacrifice was linked to blood magic, not some pure-hearted, unintentional, love-based shield. I am grateful for his delusions though, else I would likely be long dead.'

Fleur looked a little puzzled by that, but made no comment, and Harry remembered then that he had never told he had once been a horcrux.

'Dumbledore arrived just as I left and long after the duel should have ended,' Harry said distantly. 'I would wager a great many things that Snape, his Death Eater spy, had told him that the prophecy was being stolen tonight, and that he intended to let me be lured there, or knew of my plan to take the orb myself already. He has meddled in my life since before it began, and will continue to do so at every opportunity.'

'So stop him,' Fleur suggested angrily. 'You can't let him keep throwing you into Voldemort's path in the hope you die.'

'I cannot openly fight both of them at the same time, and if I defeat Voldemort then Dumbledore will likely still try to kill me,' Harry admitted, realising now that there was nothing for it. He would have to tell her about the horcrux he had once been.

'Why?' Fleur demanded.

'I told you about horcruxes,' Harry prompted her quietly, 'any object can become one, living or otherwise.'

'You're a horcrux,' Fleur didn't need much prompting to work it out, but Harry hated the way the life seemed to drain from her face at the revelation, even if it was only for a moment, and wished he could have spared her from it completely.

'I was,' Harry corrected. 'I am no longer, the fragment of his soul was torn from mine. Salazar said it had either returned to him, or it has been assimilated into my own and destroyed.' He was rather more fond of the former explanation than the latter, but either was preferable over remaining a vessel for a piece of Voldemort's soul.

'So if you do not die Dumbledore will never believe that Voldemort truly has,' Fleur realised slowly and coolly. 'I assume you have considered telling him and doubt he will believe you.'

'He has invested too many sacrifices and too much time in his plan for me to let any evidence-less claim sway him.'

With increasingly icy determination he realised what he would have to do. Dumbledore wouldn't let him walk away free after Voldemort was defeated, and the old man was a formidable foe to have focused upon him.

I can't allow such a threat to exist.

'It's the only way,' Fleur told him bluntly. 'If he will not let us be to live our lives, then we will have to make sure he does.'

'I don't need to kill him,' Harry decided, ignoring the bright, painfully cold point of fury in his chest that believed the old wizard deserved it. 'I can pretend to be his hero still, then find some way to trick him into thinking I have died. I survived the Killing Curse once, maybe he will believe that I survived it again through the power of love, or some part of being a horcrux.' He was clutching at straws, there was no easy, harmless way of removing the ancient wizard from his path, and he knew it too.

'Was that all that happened at the Department of Mysteries?' Fleur asked, changing the subject rather than trying to needlessly argue with him.

For a fleeting moment Harry remembered their reflections in the cold, misty, metal surface of the Mirror of Erised and the clear dream of a silver-haired, green-eyed girl between them, but he knew better than to let the visions of the mirror influence him.

'That was everything,' he answered evenly.

'Then let's go to Gringotts,' she decided, rising in one, smooth, elegant motion and pulling Harry up after her. 'I have drawn up a contract to purchase the small home in Budleigh Babberton for around one hundred and ten thousand galleons, once we've paid a certain percentage it will become binding, the house will be ours, and we then have a decade to pay the rest off.'

'Ah,' Harry grinned, taking her arm and concealing them both from view, 'you want me to empty my fault for you.'

'For us,' Fleur reminded him, but she was smiling.

'Then let's go,' he agreed. 'I can check to see if any of my attempts to claim the holdings of other extinct families has paid off.'

'Is it likely?'

'No,' Harry conceded, 'the goblin in Paris hinted at the possibility of one small vault, but nothing more than a half-paid dowry.'

'That's a shame,' Fleur shrugged, 'but hardly a problem. We are both talented enough to work wherever we want, and while the house is not cheap it will not lose any of its value.'

'So modest,' Harry sighed.

'Hush,' Fleur admonished him playfully as they snuck through the door of Gringotts and looked about for an empty desk to go to.

'There's one on the far side,' Harry told her, ending their concealment, and walking as unobtrusively as possible along the line of desks.

'What can I help you with?' The goblin asked, fixing them with a calculating stare.

'I made an enquiry about inheriting a number of vaults from different families not long ago,' Harry began, but the goblin grinned and cut him off.

'Mr Potter,' the grin widened to reveal a set of very sharp teeth, 'you caused quite a stir with some of your claims, step this way and a spokesgoblin will be with you shortly.'

The still grinning goblin ushered them into a small room in the corridor just behind his desk and then hurried off in search of the spokesgoblin, presumably his superior.

'I seem to have caused trouble,' he commented idly in the silence after the goblin left.

'You're quite gifted at it,' Fleur replied, leaning gently into him, 'worse than Gabrielle.'

'That seems a little unfair,' he chuckled.

'Perhaps,' Fleur sniffed, 'but my baby sister hasn't destroyed any centres of government in the last week.'

'Give her a few years,' Harry grinned.

An older, more wrinkled goblin entered the room, carrying a file half as wide as Harry's waist.

'I am Bodak,' he announced imperiously, dropping the file on the table with a loud thud, 'the senior spokesgoblin for Gringotts in Britain, it is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Potter, and I presume this is Miss Delacour.'

It was not even close to a question. The goblin knew exactly who Fleur was, the information had likely been passed on from Paris that Harry had come inquiring about things accompanied by the Delacour family.

'The pleasure is mine,' Harry replied evenly, curling his toes at how much like his uncle he sounded.

'Oh no,' Bodak grinned, 'the pleasure is ours, we haven't had a request as interesting as yours in some time.' He opened the file, pulling out the top piece of parchment, an ancient, worn looking thing covered in faded writing that had been torn deliberately in half, then taped together and stamped in gobbledegook.

'This is the marriage agreement between one Shelagh Slytherin and Rufinus Gaunt, it was annulled after the former had a child out of wedlock with another man and died giving birth. Gaunt married Shelagh's sister instead, but the dowry was never paid because the bastard child never claimed his mother's name and nobody from the Gaunt family could claim it while his line lived since they owed it to the Slytherin family. It might interest you to know that the bastard child was quietly adopted by a member of the Potter family afterwards, and thus the dowry belongs to you now you have claimed the name. That dowry is, once adjusted for inflation, about sixty five thousand galleons.'

'And the other inquiries?'

'Unsuccessful,' Bodak answered curtly. 'Though you would have a claim on anything they had left there is nothing to be claimed.'

'Thank you,' Harry smiled. He was quite a bit richer than he had expected to be, and he now knew where the connection to Salazar in his family tree likely came from.

'Should I transfer the money into the Potter family vault?' Bodak asked.

'No,' Fleur answered for him, 'there is a contract drawn up under both our names for a property in Budleigh Babberton, we would like to make the first payment on it.'

Bodak looked between them, then nodded when Harry did not disagree. 'I'll transfer the money straight from the dowry account to the former owner's,' the goblin decided. He looked vaguely contemplative for a moment. 'I can pay the rest of the cost of the property if I take the money from your trust vault, Mr Potter, it will simplify things, though we will have to adjust the contract since the house will technically belong to you in its entirety.'

Harry raised an eyebrow discreetly at Fleur who smiled to show him that she didn't mind living his his house as opposed to their house.

'How much will be left in my trust vault?' He asked.

'Approximately a thousand galleons,' Badok answered immediately. 'It will be topped up in a few months time, though, and it remains impossible for you to exhaust more than half your inheritance until you come of age.'

'Do it,' Harry decided. He could survive on a thousand galleons for over a year if he really needed to.

'It will be done, Mr Potter,' Badok extended one long fingered hand in his direction which Harry shook firmly, hiding his distaste at the cold, leathery texture of the goblin's skin.

'I assume Gringotts will take its brokerage cut,' Fleur commented.

'The ten percent commission is included in the initial price on the contract, Miss Delacour,' Bodak assured her. 'The property will be yours in no more time than it takes me to walk from this room to my office.'

That, apparently, was farewell, since Badok scooped up his enormous file and swept out.

'I'll pay you back half the cost of the house when I can afford it,' Fleur said quietly, 'we can do it officially through Gringotts to ensure we have half each.'

'I don't mind,' Harry told her, frowning slightly. 'I'd rather we were both safe together.'

'I don't like being in your debt,' Fleur responded stubbornly.

'You're so proud,' Harry told her, trying and failing to sound anything other than besotted. Fleur's chin shifted a little higher, but she made no other response to his comment. 'Do you think we can go to our new house now?' He wondered.

'Badok said it would be ours in a few minutes,' Fleur smiled, 'and when I went to have a look it was already empty and ready to be moved into. We'll need to buy some furniture though.'

'So we could go now and cast the Fidelius Charm,' Harry suggested. The sooner they were safely concealed in their new home the better. He was relatively safe at Hogwarts, but Diagon Alley, where Fleur was currently staying, was a big target. It would be nice to have somewhere he could relax, somewhere they knew they could always go back to and be safe.

'Let's go and kidnap our capricious, little secret keeper,' Fleur agreed, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

AN: Please read and review!

67. Second Chances

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

On we go, no long author's note this time.

Chapter 67

It felt strange to be back in the Great Hall after everything that had happened. Even with their exams right around the corner he found it hard to take education and school seriously. It seemed rather trivial in comparison to all his other problems, and some of the exams were quite trivial indeed. He'd long since surpassed the standards of OWLs in some of their subjects.

The rest of the student body had descended into pre-OWL panic. Mandy Brocklehurst, an excitable Ravenclaw Harry had seen once or twice at the DA, had needed to be taken to the infirmary three times in one day for calming draughts, and he had overheard in the common room after returning from Beauxbatons empty handed that Hermione had all but completely moved into the library.

It really didn't surprise Harry that Hermione had suddenly started isolating herself in the room with the most books. It probably wasn't very healthy, but he had little doubt that she would excel in her every exam, even if she was sleeping as little as Parvati believed. Personally Harry felt it was more likely she just napped in the library instead of coming back to Gryffindor Tower.

There was a loud clatter as Katie swung herself in next to him, knocking his fortunately empty goblet over with her bag.

'Morning Harry,' she yawned. 'Long time no see.'

'I've been busy,' he answered vaguely, standing the goblet back up again.

She made a noncommittal noise somewhere between a sigh and another yawn, then leant an elbow on his shoulder to use her arm as a pillow. 'Where's McGonagall?' Katie asked sleepily.

'No idea,' Harry shrugged, gently displacing her off his shoulder and onto the table, as the food had arrived, and he needed both arms to be able to eat.

'Food,' Katie realised, perking up a bit and stealing the toast rack that Harry had just been about to reach for.

He wandlessly summoned it to him before she could take anything, enjoying the look of outrage that passed across Katie's face at the loss of her breakfast.

'You're annoying,' she pouted. 'First you disappear for a week, then you steal my breakfast!'

'I would feel a great deal guiltier if I didn't know you considered the latter the more heinous a crime,' Harry commented, passing back the toast now he was finished with it.

'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,' Katie remonstrated mockingly. 'Ron understands,' she giggled, pointing down the table to where the red-head was fiercely guarding his own toast rack from Seamus and Dean.

'You should be encouraging me to eat then,' Harry countered, swiftly helping himself to bacon. He knew all too well what would happen if he left the plate unattended for too long. Katie's sandwich would grow precariously tall if she thought she could get away with eating all the bacon herself.

'I am,' she childishly stuck out her tongue, 'just not from my food.'

'The bacon-'

'-Katie deariest-'

'is for everyone on the table.'

'Nobody ever told me that,' Katie denied hotly.

'We tell you that every mealtime we're with you, don't we, George,' the leftmost twin reminded.

'We do,' the other agreed. 'Quidditch practise is tonight,' he continued, 'Angelina organised an extra one.'

'Right before exams?' Katie asked curiously.

'Quidditch is far more important than OWLs or NEWTs,' the same twin, probably Fred, responded, in a passable imitation of Oliver Wood.

'Harry.' They dipped their heads neutrally in his direction, before moving off to join Alicia and Angelina. All the Weasleys had become more distant since Arthur Weasley had died. It hurt a little bit, because he'd still considered the twins friends, and Mrs Weasley had only ever been kind to him, but he could understand. Their father hadn't died fighting Voldemort, he'd been killed protecting Harry, guarding a prophecy to keep the Boy-Who-Lived a little safer until Dumbledore was ready to sacrifice him. They had every right to be angry, even if they hadn't realised the truth of who to blame.

He didn't ever expect them to realise that truth.

The first owls burst into the great hall. A great parliament of them, more than Harry had ever seen in the hall at one time before.

Something's happened, he mused, then, shaking his head at his own stupidity, he remembered what. The Department of Mysteries.

'Harry,' Neville slid into a gap across from him, 'you're looking cheerful.'

'I am?'

'You will be,' his friend grinned. 'Your favourite politician has been forced to tender his resignation.' The front page was adorned with the a title almost as dramatic as the one he had read in Diagon Alley with Fleur the day before.

Fudge Resigns, the front page proclaimed. Educational Decrees Revoked.

'Gran said it was only a matter of time once it became obvious Voldemort had returned,' Neville cheered, stifling a grin. 'The Wizengamot voted to show no confidence in him after half the Ministry's atrium was torn apart and the Department of Mysteries broken into. Apparently only Dumbledore's appearance managed to prevent anything terrible from happening.'

Harry stole the paper from a nearby third year and flicked through the first few pages curiously. The outraged student turned to object, but paled and closed his mouth when Harry raised an eyebrow at him. Sometimes his less than perfect reputation came in useful, though it was mostly just abused by Katie to get the best sofas in the common room.

Dumbledore duels He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Ministry.

His jaw tightened angrily. The old meddler had taken credit for his triumph. It had been his actions that caused the public to doubt Fudge, his plan that had begun to convince them of the possibility the Voldemort returned, and he was the one who had prevented the Dark Lord from seizing victory in the heart of the Ministry.

'Is something wrong?' Katie asked, putting a hand gently on his arm.

'No,' he forced himself to smile evenly, 'I was just surprised the Daily Prophet managed to change its tune so fast from slandering Dumbledore to publishing this story.'

It does not matter that he claimed the credit, he told himself. You have what you wanted and more.

The thought reassured him. Everything he had set out to accomplish in the Department of Mysteries had come about. The Ministry had even opened its eyes if the Daily Prophet was to be believed.

'War's coming now,' Neville said gravely. 'I'm going to continue with the DA next year. We'll all need the practice.'

'I'll help if you want,' Harry offered. Allies would be a valuable commodity once the conflict began in earnest. He had Fleur and Sirius, and he hoped that Neville would stand alongside him too, but should Dumbledore openly turn against him he wasn't sure whose side Neville would end up on. His parents had been a part of the Order of the Phoenix, and his friend hadn't really seen anything of Dumbledore other than the benign face he presented to the world.

'Maybe every now and then,' Neville answered thoughtfully. 'I can handle it for the most part.' That was enough of an opportunity for Harry. A few minutes here and there to give them a chance to see the truth. If they glimpsed it and were prepared to believe it then they would come to him, and he would know that they might be trustworthy.

'Oh,' Katie pouted, 'I enjoyed Harry teaching the Patronus Charm.'

'Only because you managed it so quickly,' Neville pointed out, 'all the other meetings you went to you either sat around with Harry and did nothing, or sat around on your own and did nothing.'

'That's not true,' she protested, helping herself to all the bacon that Harry had left to create a sandwich as thick as Harry's arm. Neville sighed, realising he'd missed his chance for bacon already, and monopolised the eggs, carefully building a breakfast of fried tomatoes and eggs on toast.

'No,' Neville conceded, grinning up from his food, 'there was that one time you transfigured Smith's robes into a short, pink dress after he called Harry a spiteful coward with no interest or care in anyone else's well being.'

'He didn't look very good in it,' Katie wrinkled her nose at the memory, beaming proudly when Harry chuckled at her defensiveness of him.

'Maybe it was because of the colour,' Neville suggested.

'It was his legs,' Katie disagreed, completely serious. 'He doesn't have the calves to pull off a dress like that, especially not with all that leg hair.'

Neville shivered slightly. 'McGonagall still isn't here,' he remarked, changing the subject to less perturbing matters.

'Ominous,' Katie agreed, eyeing the empty spot on the teacher's table, she normally eats breakfast here. 'Maybe Umbridge's back?'

Harry somewhat doubted that was likely. Aragog didn't seem the type to easily relinquish anything, least of all a live meal wrapped in webbing and suspended a hundred metres above the ground.

'I hope not,' Neville grimaced, 'she hasn't been missed.'

'Your gift of understatement is second to none,' Harry smiled. 'I doubt it's Umbridge, how would she have returned here when Fudge has fallen from office?'

'True,' Neville's face brightened. 'Do we have a lesson now?'

'No,' Harry shook his head. Katie didn't deign to answer, but he suspected she was too busy trying to find a way to eat her sandwich without covering herself in bacon to hear.

'Extra breakfast then,' Neville grinned, 'if Katie leaves any for the rest of us.'

'There's plenty of toast and eggs and sausages-'

'But no bacon,' Harry cut in, earning himself a glare that was half-amused half-angry.

'Well I have lessons first thing,' the brunette stated, 'so I have to keep my strength up and need the bacon more than you do, besides, Harry, you've grown enough this year. I miss being taller than you.'

'You're practically a midget to me now,' Harry agreed, patting the top of her head condescendingly. She narrowed her eyes at him, but made no attempt to brush his hand away.

'McGonagall's here,' Neville muttered, 'and she's smiling.'

Harry glanced up curiously as their head of house drifted across to stand in front of her seat, smiling far more widely than he had ever seen before. His stomach sank. McGonagall was standing in front of her old seat, not the gold, gilt throne of the headteacher.

'It gives me great pleasure to announce the return of Professor Dumbledore as headmaster again. He has just arrived at the castle and bids me tell you that he has greatly enjoyed his holiday, but simply couldn't stay away longer.'

Exciting whispering and more than a few cheers rang out across the Great Hall, but the only group that looked as underwhelmed by the news as he was were wearing robes edged in silver and green. It was likely the first time he had ever agreed with Malfoy.

Damn him.

Harry had been hopeful, confident even, that Dumbledore would not be able to return until the beginning of next year once the chaos in the Ministry had settled down and the new Minister sought to bolster his reputation by undoing Fudge's questionable decisions. He'd underestimated the wizard and now the old man was back at the school, looming over his shoulder just as summer approached and he wanted to take that final step from under the wings of the Order of the Phoenix.

'That's good,' Neville smiled. 'Gran will be happy, she wasn't expecting he'd be able to come back until next year.'

Her and me both, Harry thought irritatedly.

There was little he could do now. The watchful eyes of the headmaster would be firmly on him. It was likely only a matter of hours before he was called to meet the meddler.

McGonagall took her seat, beginning her own, belated breakfast and Harry went back to toying with the last piece of toast.

'You don't seem particularly cheerful about Dumbledore's return,' Katie said softly. 'Is there something I should know?'

'I'm not sure,' Harry began carefully, 'lately I've felt there was something a bit off about Professor Dumbledore. I'm sure it's nothing,' he finished with a smile. It was a start, a simple, single instant that marked the moment he really decided that he needed Katie and Neville on his side, especially Katie. Neville was a good friend, he had his similarities to Harry too, but when their loyalties had been tested Neville had chosen to distance himself from everyone, whereas Katie had fought against all her friends for him.

'Really?' The slight note of curiosity and suspicion in her tone was all the reassurance he needed of their bond. Katie would never question his word, if he told her something she knew it would be for the right reasons, and that he believed it to be true. Unlike most others who had the same confidence in him she was actually right.

'It's Professor Dumbledore,' Neville shrugged. 'Everyone knows he's a little barmy, but he's the greatest wizard in the world for a reason.'

Not for long, Harry decided. I'll be greater. He hasn't left me any other choice.

The general clatter and cacophony of breakfast was subsiding around them as the first lesson of the day drew closer. The tables emptied, small groups of students scattering back towards the stairs and out towards the rest of the school.

'I have to go,' Katie sighed. 'McGonagall will notice if I'm not in her lesson.'

'She's in a good mood,' Neville pointed out, 'you might get away with it.' He raised his hands in admission of the improbability of his statement when Katie tilted her chin and quirked an eyebrow at Neville in a terrible imitation of Harry.

'I'll see you later, Harry,' Katie told him pointedly. 'You owe me a catch up conversation.'

'I gave you my firebolt,' Harry protested, as she gathered her bag from under the bench.

'Bribery doesn't work on me,' Katie beamed.

'That's a lie,' Angelina rebutted, appearing alongside Katie with Alicia in tow. 'Have you tried offering her fire whiskey chocolates?'

'No,' Harry replied, grinning at Katie who was biting her lip whimsically at their very mention. 'Would that really work better than a firebolt?'

'It would now you've already given me the broom,' Katie admitted, 'but not for something so important.' She gave him another meaningful look then fell in alongside Angelina and the still silent Alicia. Gryffindor's Quidditch Captain had forgiven Harry for dragging Katie into his media mess once it had become obvious that none of it was true, but Alicia had been rather less forgiving and didn't deign to speak with him.

'Good,' Neville muttered quietly as the three girls passed out of earshot. 'We can talk freely now.'

'You can trust Katie, Nev,' Harry admonished him.

'I know,' his friend shifted uncomfortably, 'but this isn't something I want to talk about with anyone else.'

That caught Harry's interest.

'Dumbledore killed Bellatrix Lestrange,' Neville whispered, breakfast forgotten. His knuckles had whitened around his fork and while Harry couldn't see his other hand he knew that it was clenched into a fist within his robes. 'She was meant to be mine.'

It was the slightest gap, the smallest rift, but Harry knew that he should take every opportunity he could, and, thinking furiously, grabbed his chance.

'No he didn't,' he responded quietly. 'Albus Dumbledore doesn't believe in killing. It's never justified in his eyes. He would rather offer a second chance to those who have committed crimes, or, for those who have done something truly unforgivable, he would send them back to Azkaban, just like all the Death Eaters were after the last war. Had he really been the one who duelled Bellatrix Lestrange she would be imprisoned on that island again.'

'She would have escaped again,' Neville hissed disbelievingly. 'Dumbledore must have realised that if any of the Death Eaters are sent to Azkaban they will simply escape and rejoin Voldemort.'

'Of course he does,' Harry agreed, 'but he would rather that happen than abandon his ideals. If the Death Eaters had faced a fate half as cruel as their victims Voldemort would have far fewer followers and be far less of a threat. The only second chance they deserve is the opportunity to prove themselves useful before they meet a just end.'

'Instead he let them live and gave them a chance to break out and carry on killing and torturing.' Neville's voice had gone distant and faint, but his eyes simmered with furious fire.

That's right, Nev, he thought, see for yourself the repugnant price others have to pay for his Greater Good.

'How can he believe that,' Neville spat, 'it's ridiculous.' His voice carried to the group of Gryffindors in their year farther down the table and Harry quickly threw a silencing ward up over the area around them, concealing his wand beneath his forearm as he cast.

'I don't know,' Harry admitted. He truly didn't. There seemed no reason to justify Albus Dumbledore's attitude towards killing. A single spell from him, a little guilt, some blood on his own hands rather than those of his followers, and his own Greater Good would have been far better served. 'He does not kill,' Harry told Neville simply, 'and he certainly doesn't use the Killing Curse, and that's what Bellatrix died from.'

His friend was silent for a long time, thinking over what Harry had said.

'How do you know she died from the Killing Curse?' Neville asked eventually. 'It wasn't in the Daily Prophet, even Gran didn't know. I asked,' he finished darkly.

'I was there,' Harry confessed, hoping he would not have to do something as unforgivable as memory charming Neville if he didn't come around to Harry's side. 'You can't tell anyone, Nev,' he warned his friend firmly, 'but I was there, and so was Lucius Malfoy, Sirius Black, Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort. Dumbledore arrived after everything was already over.'

'Who killed Bellatrix, Harry?' Neville asked. His eyes were no longer angry, but they were hard, and fixed unblinkingly upon his own. He didn't need passive legilimency to know what Neville had somehow realised, but he used it, just in case there was a chance he could be convinced otherwise.

There wasn't.

'You already know,' Harry answered evenly, not looking away from Neville's stare.

'You stole my revenge,' Neville whispered. 'I needed that. I needed to kill her for what she did to my parents.'

'But you know it's better if she's dead already, and can't hurt anybody ever again,' Harry reminded him gently. 'Besides,' the corner of his mouth curved cruelly, 'there are two other Lestranges still living.'

The fire burst back into Neville's eyes. 'There are, aren't there,' he murmured. 'Will you help me?'

'You'll have to trust me, Nev,' Harry said earnestly, cold triumph coiling within, 'but I'll help you. I'll be standing alongside you when you cast the last spell.' He would be more than happy to be there. Harry wasn't inclined to leave himself or anyone he cared for vulnerable by letting their enemies off lightly.

'Does Dumbledore know?'

'About Bellatrix?' Harry considered it. 'I don't know,' he grinned, 'but I won't tell him if you don't.'

'Oh I won't,' Neville shook his head seriously. 'I'm not risking those scum escaping because of our headmaster's misguided mercy. How can such a powerful, brilliant wizard be so blind?'

'How indeed.' Neville was not converted, not completely. He wanted his revenge, he hated the Lestranges too much for anything less to satisfy him, and he was willing to cross Dumbledore for that, but only for that. He still believed in the old wizard's power, wisdom and intelligence. The mask of kindness Dumbledore wore to conceal his careful cruelty remained intact to him.

It will take time to swing him over to my side completely, if it's even possible, Harry realised, as Neville began to start eating his rather appealing plate of tomato, egg and toast.

There was a rippling flash of red light and a wave a warmth that settled through him in a pleasurable shiver. Neville relaxed instinctively, leaning back to carefully arrange his eggs even as Harry tensed and flicked his wand into his palm, but he only found himself eye to eye with Fawkes.

The phoenix, whom Harry had always regarded in a positive light, eyed him carefully, hopping closer over the plates not he table while the whole hall turned to watch. Angling one dark eye, it fixed Harry with a beady stare, peering suspiciously from his outstretched wand to his face and back again.

He flicked it away, and the phoenix trilled happily, hopping closer still to help itself to Harry's pumpkin juice, and the plate of fried tomatoes.

Those probably aren't good for him, Harry thought, amused, as the phoenix greedily scoffed half the plate.

Fawkes turned back to Harry and trilled again, this time more insistently, and Harry somehow knew that he was asking permission for something. Curious, if still wary, he slowly nodded, and steeled himself for whatever Fawkes might do.

The phoenix bobbed its head, stealing one last, large tomato, then hopped onto Harry's shoulder, almost unbalancing him. In another undulating flare of red fire they vanished, and Harry had only time enough to glimpse the flames flood like liquid across the table, setting Neville's breakfast alight.

He was dropped unceremoniously into a slightly uncomfortable chair and the weight of Fawkes abruptly left his shoulder. Harry shot the immortal bird an icy glare when he almost toppled out of the chair at the sudden shift of balance.

'Sorry, Harry,' Dumbledore apologised kindly. 'I should have known that Fawkes would not have given sufficient explanation.' Harry gazed across the desk at the old wizard in brief disbelief. Fawkes was a phoenix and the power of speech was quite obviously not among his many gifts.

'I assume you wished to speak with me, sir?' Harry inquired innocently, eyeing up the room around him. Dumbledore seemed to be most of the way through unpacking, many of the interesting magical instruments had returned to the shelves, and the table and pieces of the silver, spindly artefacts had been cleared away. Most interesting to him was the small box on the side of the desk. It initially appeared quite innocuous, but closer study revealed cleverly hidden runes carved along the edges of the metal bands and lock. They were barely more than light scratches to his sight, and he was sure he would not have noticed them as anything more had his vision not been improved.

'Yes,' the newly reinstated headmaster nodded, sliding himself into the much more comfortable looking seat opposite Harry. 'Yes I did.'

A short silence fell as Dumbledore straightened the piles of letters, books and papers on his desk, then, from within the obviously well warded box he produced an elegant, silver bowl full of bright, acid yellow sweets and placed it on the desk between them.

'Sherbet lemon?' The headmaster offered, selecting and unwrapping one for himself before proffering Harry the bowl. 'I've had ample opportunity to indulge my fondness for sweets recently.'

Harry resisted the urge to sigh. Only Dumbledore would keep something as mundane as sherbet lemons inside such an interesting looking box.

'Harry?' The headmaster tipped the bowl back and forth.

'Thank you, sir,' Harry smiled, carefully choosing one for himself. Dumbledore looked faintly surprised and retracted the bowl out of arm's way.

'You're the first person to accept one since Gilderoy Lockhart,' the headmaster remarked cheerfully. 'Most of the students seem so very suspicious of them, something I find odd given they're perfectly prepared to eat Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans.'

The sherbet lemon had a strong sour-edged sugariness to it that only grew more pronounced the longer Harry held it in one place in his mouth. He'd never been one for sweets, at least not until Fleur and Gabrielle had corrupted him, but that might have been because Dudley had devoted the majority of his childhood to eating them with such tenacious persistence. Harry had often been forced to sacrifice what little he ever got his hands on to appease his cousin's sugar addiction. Harry rather enjoyed the first muggle sweet he had eaten in years, making a note to introduce Fleur to them if she hadn't already come across them.

'How have you been?' Dumbledore asked, having finished his sweet. 'I see you have abandoned your glasses.'

'Since you… left?'

'Indeed,' the headmaster nodded gently.

'As well as could be expected,' Harry answered amicably, not mentioning his eyes. 'Professor Umbridge wasn't the best teacher, sir.'

'No,' Dumbledore agreed sadly, 'I imagine she might not have been. Dolores was an unfortunately short-sighted woman.'

'At least she was arrested,' Harry grinned, 'even Fudge couldn't let her get away with using veritaserum on students.'

'Arrested?' The headmaster studied him curiously. 'Why do you say that?'

'She used veritaserum on students, aurors were seen at Hogwarts, and then she disappeared. I doubt Fudge would have wanted her publicly shamed so she must have been quietly sentenced somewhere.' Both Harry and Dumbledore knew differently, of course. Harry knew from being there, orchestrating events, and one the aurors that had escorted her, Kingsley, had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

'She inexplicably ventured into the Forbidden Forest, Harry,' the headmaster shook his head sorrowfully, 'you know as well as I the dangers of the forest.' Harry stared at him, wearing what he hoped was his most confused expression. 'That is not, however, what I brought you here to discuss.'

That, Harry decided, was definitely a good thing. Dumbledore had not realised his involvement in the events that had forced him or Umbridge from the school.

'I haven't been entirely honest with you, Harry,' the headmaster admitted, his hands steepled in the perfect picture of repentance. Harry had to bite his tongue to hold back the litany of sarcastic remarks that sprang to mind. 'Professor Snape serves a unique and crucial role within the Order of the Phoenix, the group that your parents and godfather joined to help stop Voldemort.'

'He's a spy,' Harry nodded, 'Sirius told me.'

'He is possibly the most important member of the Order of the Phoenix,' Dumbledore continued softly, 'the information he divulges to us may be vital in stopping Voldemort for good, and I trust him completely.'

Harry said nothing. There would be a point to this, but, as always, Dumbledore insisted on being verbose to the point of distraction before arriving at it.

'A few days after the Triwizard Tournament ended Professor Snape returned from a meeting of Death Eaters to inform me that Voldemort was not only intrigued by your evident increase in skill, but also bemused that you did not seem to know of the prophecy. I waited for you to ask about it, but you never came.'

'Would you have told me if I had?' Harry asked, doing his best to mask the ice in his voice. Dumbledore sounded awfully like he was trying to get Harry to accept responsibility for the mess the Order of the Phoenix had made of protecting the prophecy.

'I would have told you as much as you were ready to hear,' the headmaster replied kindly.

'That is why I waited, sir.' Harry swallowed his anger, deciding on a version of events that would benefit him best. 'I trusted you to tell me when the time was right.'

'Ah,' Dumbledore nodded, and behind him, from his perch, Fawkes trilled softly. 'How then did you come to be in the Department of Mysteries?'

'I trusted you and waited, but only until Mr Weasley died,' Harry responded grimly. 'I started asking questions then. Sirius agreed that it would be better if we broke in and destroyed it after I heard it rather than risk anyone else dying.'

Your godfather can at times be quite rash,' the headmaster sighed. 'Mundungus Fletcher, for all his flaws, was very loyal to me. I helped him out of a tight spot and offered him a second chance to make something of himself, you see.'

'He warned you about Sirius,' Harry realised quietly.

'He did indeed. I was not sure what to make of it to begin with, but I knew Sirius knew that it would take either you or Voldemort to remove the record from its place upon the shelves of the department and did my best to plan accordingly.'

'Nobody from the Order came,' Harry said, and this time he was unable to conceal the cold completely from his voice.

Dumbledore flinched slightly.

'We had to wait,' the lines along his brow deepened, accentuating his age, 'only a privileged few knew of Voldemort's plan to attack then, and once I realised the days coincided I had no choice but to delay so Professor Snape's position as a spy was not compromised.'

'Did Snape tell you to delay?' Harry asked bluntly, admiring the runes engraved along the lock of Dumbledore's stash of sweet.

'He recommended it,' Dumbledore replied. The admonishment at not using Snape's title teetered on the tip of the headmaster's tongue, but he wisely seemed to think better of it and moved on. 'Fortunately nobody was hurt too badly, indeed, because of the damage, poor Cornelius has finally paid the price for his denial and been pushed from office. The Ministry has begun to face up to reality.'

'You couldn't have planned it better yourself, sir,' Harry smiled, poisonous innocence dripping from his tongue. Dumbledore, fortunately, did not hear the malice the had seeped into the statement.

'I must know, Harry, what happened to the prophecy. Sirius told me that you retrieved it and broke it, but he did not say whether you heard it or not.'

'Bellatrix Lestrange broke it,' Harry answered easily. It was the first completely honest thing he had said. 'Neither of us heard the prophecy, Voldemort was very angry with her for that.'

That wasn't quite so honest.

'His short temper cost him a valuable follower,' Dumbledore nodded. There was an unnervingly dispassionate undertone to his statement, and Harry had the distinct feeling that the headmaster considered her a wasted bishop, a piece that Voldemort had carelessly and arrogantly thrown away.

He believes it was Voldemort who killed her, Harry realised jubilantly.

That was good. While Dumbledore believed him pure-hearted and capable of sacrificing himself he would be predictable and protective. Harry didn't want to find out what would happen once the headmaster realised this wasn't the case, so he would play innocent for as long as it benefitted him.

'Fortunately when the prophecy was spoken it was heard by another, and while the seer herself, Professor Trelawney in fact, has no memory of the telling, any other witness can recall it at their own leisure.'

Dumbledore slipped his wand from his sleeve and waved it gently at the cabinet doors to his left. In the brief moment the wand was visible Harry glimpsed an unusually pale wood, carven in odd, spiralling patterns.

'This,' Dumbledore smiled, 'is a pensieve. A very useful tool. One can store any number of thoughts and memories within it for future review. Among my many recollections here,' he poked the silvery cloud of memories with a finger, 'is the night that prophecy was made.'

'You witnessed it?' Harry inquired. 'How then, did Voldemort learn of it?' A tiny part of him immediately jumped to the conclusion that Dumbledore had deliberately allowed the information he wanted to reach Voldemort so that he might have the advantage and be able to shape events as he best wished. A parentless, unloved orphan would be quite willing to sacrifice themselves for the first people to show him affection. For all its unnerving accuracy Harry couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. Dumbledore was meddlesome, impersonal and manipulative, but he would not go so far as to orphan a child, two children, even, in the hope that the prophecy came about.

'I heard it above the bar in the Hog's Head after going to meet an applicant for the post of Divination Professor,' Dumbledore began, 'but a young Death Eater overheard the first part before I cast a silencing ward and rushed off to inform his master.' Harry could sense the reluctance to discuss the subject and pushed on, interested precisely because of that unwillingness.

'Who?'

'Does it matter, Harry?' Dumbledore asked gently. 'The past cannot be changed.'

'A crime should not be left unpunished, sir,' Harry disagreed. 'Whomever passed on those words condemned my parents to die.' He bit his lip before he continued on to mention Neville, or his parents, that would be giving away too much of what he knew.

'I can assure you that the wizard in question has suffered for it every day since.' The headmaster closed his eyes in thought. 'Perhaps I should tell you, it might help you too understand that things are not always so simple as they seem.'

'After the prophecy, professor,' Harry decided, gambling that Dumbledore might be further persuaded by a show of maturity.

'You are quite right, Harry,' the headmaster smiled benignly, 'the prophecy, the future, is far more pressing.'

He pulled a single strand of silver, hooked on the tip of his wand, out of the basin.

'There is no need to experience it in its entirety,' Dumbledore said solemnly. 'Hearing the words will be enough.'

Professor Trelawney's hoarse, rasping voice echoed from the glowing silver strand at the tip of Dumbledore's wand, echoing, much to Harry's surprise, the full, unedited prophecy.

'You see, Harry, the mistake that Voldemort made. In his fear and hubris he attempted to fulfil the terms of the prophecy as he knew them, and, to his cost, he was proved mistaken. That he does not yet know the full prophecy and a way by which he can safely defeat you is one of our greatest advantages.'

'That doesn't help me defeat him, professor,' Harry responded softly. 'He knows far more magic and is much stronger than I am. How am I supposed to defeat him?'

'There are many mysterious forces in this world,' Dumbledore answered, a brilliant twinkle in his electric-blue eyes. 'Magic is only one of them. In the Department of Mysteries lies a door that is kept locked at all times. The force behind it is deemed too complex to understand and too powerful to study by Unspeakables that investigate time, death and many other equally terrible things.'

It had better not be love, Harry thought. If he tells me the room is full of love I will strangle him with his own beard.

'Within that room is contained the most powerful force in the universe,' the headmaster continued, an element of passion creeping into his tone, 'love.'

Harry's hands twitched ever so slightly towards the tip of Albus Dumbledore's impressive white beard, but he managed, through a titanic effort, to restrain himself from assaulting the old fool.

'Voldemort never knew love,' Dumbledore told him pityingly, 'he does not, can not, understand it, and I believe that will prove his undoing.'

'I don't understand, sir,' Harry frowned. He was telling the truth again. He genuinely could not understand how Dumbledore could even begin to believe that being able to love made him capable of defeating a wizard like Voldemort, heroic sacrifice or not.

'Your mother's love has protected you to this day,' the headmaster said softly, 'your own ability to love will prove to be Voldemort's downfall.' He fixed Harry with a gentle, but penetrating look. 'You must trust me, Harry. I have, in my absence from Hogwarts, been collecting and studying memories of Tom Riddle, the boy who became Voldemort, and learned a great deal of his character. Aside from once again having to recruit a new Defence Professor, my summer will be spent beginning to try and make sure that everything you need to defeat Voldemort comes your way.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry smiled, wondering all the while whether that meant Dumbledore was out hunting for the other horcruxes to prevent Voldemort surviving Harry's planned martyrdom in the same way he had survived his mother's.

'Now,' Dumbledore's eyes lost their twinkle, assuming a gleam of pride Harry had not yet glimpsed from him. 'I have understood from your teachers that your performance over the last year has improved dramatically, even Professor Snape grudgingly admitted that you might be demonstrating the hard work and maturity required to temper talent into something more.'

'That was unexpectedly kind of him,' Harry commented dryly.

'Professor Snape is, amongst other things, a very fine judge of character.' Harry raised an eyebrow at that statement. 'When he was a young student here, Severus Snape was a clever and committed student in Slytherin House, one who was even brave enough to befriend a muggle-born girl in Gryffindor, but, thanks in part to the efforts of a handful of marauding Gryffindors, he was eventually driven to fall in with some less reputable house mates. From there he was led down a path of mistakes that would lead him to a cold, wet night at the Hog's Head, and making a decision that betrayed the one person he cared about most.'

My mother, Harry realised furiously. Snape was the one who told Voldemort.

'The consequences of his choice have tormented him every day hence,' Dumbledore murmured sorrowfully, 'and despite the gravity of his errors I believe he has earned himself the right to try and make amends.'

The former Death Eater who had taken such obvious delight in torturing him, in telling him, over and over, how worthless he was, did not seem particularly repentant to Harry. He would not treat anyone so indirectly important to him in such a manner. He would barely treat his enemies in such a manner. His useless, helpless fury at Dumbledore's blind naivety was reflected only in the vast, dark eyes of the icy creature within. He could feel its gaze, malignant, hungry, and fixed on the image of Severus Snape, but he ignored its ill-timed suggestion of vengeance, taking deep breaths, and focusing on the old wizard in front of him.

'Professor Snape is a very different man to the misled young Death Eater he was,' Dumbledore assured him kindly.

He is wrong again, Harry fumed, forcing the twisting, raging coils of ice to still and cease, suppressing the creature to a single point of emotion beneath his breastbone before his temper betrayed him.

'I must ask that you promise not to add to Severus' woes, Harry,' Dumbledore sighed. 'I tell you this secret of his in the closest confidence. He bears a great weight of responsibility on his shoulders, one we can't afford to add to by helping him drown himself with guilt.'

'It's ok, Professor Dumbledore,' Harry replied, masking the bright, hard point of cold within his chest with a slightly sad smile. 'I understand. I'll give him the opportunity to make amends if he truly regrets his actions. He'll have the second chance he deserves.'

AN: Please read, review and hopefully enjoy. The white bumblebee returns...

68. OWLs

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up...

Chapter 68

'It's exam day!' Harry cried sarcastically, gently shaking Katie's shoulders from behind her position on the sofa. He'd originally intended to do this to Neville, but his friend was currently reading their transfiguration textbook, clutching it so tightly his hands were shaking and he couldn't bring himself to sabotage Neville's last minute confidence boost.

The brunette chaser groaned, and turned her head to stare at him with unbridled fury. 'Stop shaking me,' she growled. 'I don't even have exams today.'

'Oh,' Harry blinked, 'that's right, you're in the in between year so you only get pretend tests.'

'Yes,' Katie nodded dangerously, 'so stop.'

Harry prudently let go, and swung himself over the back of the sofa to sit next to her, slumping casually across the other half.

'Aren't you going to do any last minute revision?' Katie asked, pointing at Neville. Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Of course not,' she realised, 'it's Potions, Transfiguration and Defence today, you don't need to revise for any of your exams, let alone the last two.'

'Potions is later in the week,' Harry told her, 'and that's not even close to being true,' Harry disagreed. 'I couldn't confidently take anything except Charms, Transfiguration and Defence without revision, though I might be able to have a stab at Arithmancy and Runes if I was completely unconcerned about my OWLs.'

He wasn't looking forward to having to share a room with Snape again, even if the wizard had been avoiding so much as looking at him since their last encounter. The two-faced Death Eater was too entangled in the web of games between Voldemort and Dumbledore to be easily removed and it was too soon after the revelation for him to even consider vengeance.

'You're not getting into the spirit of things, Harry,' Katie complained. 'I was frantic in my OWL year, not only were you doing your best to die in some stupid tournament but Mad-Eye Moody set our exam. Angelina had to slip me alcohol before our Defence Exam to calm me down.'

'Well there's no tournament this year,' Harry replied evenly, looking down curiously as Katie twisted and stretched out, dropping her feet into his lap, 'and I'm not an alcoholic.'

'Neither am I,' she pouted.

'Angelina, and Alicia if she ever speaks to me again, would disagree.'

Katie's face fell a little and her feet shifted slightly in Harry's lap. 'I'm sorry about her,' she apologised quietly, glancing at Neville, 'she's not happy about how close we are after that article.'

'Does she still think it's true?' Harry asked disbelievingly.

'No,' Katie smiled and shook her head, 'don't worry about it.'

'As long as you're ok with it then I'll let it be,' Harry decided. Alicia was Katie's friend, and he wouldn't interfere if she didn't want him to.

'Thanks,' Katie beamed, looking relieved. 'It would make everything terribly awkward.'

'So what exams do you have?' Harry inquired, looking around the common room curiously. Katie was the only student here not in his year.

'I've already taken most of them, higher years go first,' Katie told him, 'just Transfiguration left and that's my best subject.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised. He hadn't been around to notice with everything that had been happening.

'That's alright,' Katie told him, stretching and yawning. Her feet pushed over his thigh and knocked the armrest off the sofa onto the floor. 'I know you must have a good reason for being distant, and they went well enough so I didn't need a shoulder to cry on.'

'Like you would have come to cry on me,' Harry smirked.

'I definitely would have,' Katie disagreed cheerfully. 'You wouldn't have known what to do and might have bought me chocolate or even let me keep your broom.'

'So shallow,' Harry sighed playfully. It felt slightly surreal joking about her crying on him, because he could vividly remember what it felt like to have her hot tears soaking into his shoulder.

'Hush,' Katie admonished, lightly kicking her feet against his leg.

'If you don't have exams, and you're clearly not working, why're you up and down here so early on a Saturday?'

'Oh,' Katie looked faintly embarrassed. 'I wanted to wish you luck of course.' She glanced around the room and recovered her composure. 'Just because you forgot to wish me luck doesn't mean I'll forget as well.'

'Well I wish you luck with your Transfiguration exam,' Harry responded dryly.

'I won't need it,' Katie beamed, 'watch.'

She pulled her wand out of her robes and pointed across at the table in the corner where Ron, Dean and Seamus were trying to read through what looked like a year's worth of Hermione's notes in the next few minutes before the exam. Ron looked like he had given up, since he was holding the paper upside down and staring disconsolately at the ceiling.

With an overly elaborate twirl of her wand Katie transfigured the edging of Ron's robes from red and gold to an offensively bright shade of orange.

Instead of getting angry Ron turned and grinned at her, giving her a crooked thumbs up. 'Chudley colours,' he laughed, before turning back to Hermione's notes and resuming his attempt to revise. This time he had the notes the right way up.

'Impressive,' Harry smiled. It wasn't easy to transfigure something so precisely. Charming them or changing the whole robe would have been easy, it was likely more convenient to transfigure and re-imagine the entire robe than achieve the level of precision needed to just change the red and gold border.

'Thanks,' she laughed. 'Ron seems to appreciate it. I was expecting an explosion.'

'He's grown up a bit,' Harry said, 'if you'd done that to Hermione we'd have had a duel on our hands.'

'She's not here,' Katie noted.

'It's probably for the best,' Harry decided. 'She'd be furious if she saw that they'd taken her notes out of their proper order.' Katie just shrugged. She'd never been all that fond of Hermione. Harry assumed it was because she had no interest in quidditch, which was effectively sacrilege to Katie.

'It's almost time for you to go,' she reminded him, 'you don't want to be late, the examiners get quite upset by it, and if you get there early enough for a practical exam they'll let you go first and get it out the way.'

'What about being drunk?' Harry teased. 'Do they mind that?'

'I wouldn't know,' Katie smiled. 'I was only confident.'

'I suppose I'd better go,' Harry realised, staring pointedly at the pair of bare feet still in his lap.

'Oops,' Katie giggled, following his line of sight. 'Sorry. You make a good foot rest.'

'Thanks,' he said dryly, 'I'll bear that in mind.'

There was a short pause as he waited.

'Are you going to move your feet then?' Harry asked.

'Yes,' Katie flushed faintly and quickly retracted her legs to the other side of the sofa so Harry could stand.

'Coming, Nev?' He asked his friend.

'Don't have much choice, do I?' Neville replied from behind his book.

'No,' Harry agreed with a chuckle. 'Not if you want to pass.'

'Have fun,' Katie called from the sofa as they ducked into the passageway. Her shout earned her more than a few looks of disapproval from the surrounding students still studying.

'Feeling confident, Nev?'

'Not really,' his friend answered miserably. 'Transfiguration isn't my best subject.'

'You'll be fine in Defence, though,' Harry reminded him. 'You might even be the second best student in the year.'

'Well we both know who's coming to come top in most of these exams,' Neville smiled, looking a little less nervous.

'Hermione,' they both laughed at the same time, crossing the staircases on the way up to the Transfiguration classroom where their first set of practicals were being held.

'What do you reckon the practical will be on?' Neville asked, a hint of his former anxiety returning.

'Probably a couple of the spells we learned this year,' Harry replied. 'They're the harder ones, but I've heard you can go above and beyond the material to earn extra credit.'

'I think I'll just stick to the spell they suggest,' Neville said.

'I won't hold it against you,' Harry grinned, 'not unless you get the Doubling Charm wrong again and sabotage the whole exam.' Neville swallowed and fingered his wand nervously within his pocket. 'Don't worry about it, Nev,' Harry reassured him, feeling a little guilty for his teasing. 'You'll do fine.'

'Gran has a NEWT level in Transfiguration,' Neville said distantly, 'she'd be awfully disappointed if I didn't at least pass my OWL.'

'You'll pass,' Harry told him confidently, 'besides, you're not your Gran, you've got a much better taste in hats.' Neville laughed despite himself.

He was still chuckling when Harry pushed open the door to the classroom.

'You're early,' a stern looking witch snapped.

'And quite relaxed to be taking such an important examination another,' portly wizard commented more cheerfully. 'You can go first if you like?'

'Why not,' Harry agreed, discreetly nudging Neville forwards.

'Over here then, Mr Potter,' the stern looking witch instructed, gesturing impatiently.

Harry abandoned Neville to the portly wizard with a wave and smile, striding across the floor to his examiner. He imagined Neville was quite happy that he'd got the witch, she rather reminded him of how Neville described his Gran.

'The first thing I would like you to do is vanish this,' the witch said firmly, placing a large block of wood on the desk in front of her.

'Evanesco,' Harry said softly, flicking his wand from its holster to perfectly draw the wand motion for the spell in the air. The wooden block disappeared completely, and the witch nodded approvingly.

'Good.' Her tone relaxed a little. 'Now I would like you to use whatever method you prefer to create another desk such as this one.' She tapped the desk in front of her with one, long-nailed finger.

This time Harry didn't bother with the incantation or a proper wand motion. He needed neither. From the air around him he brought forth a perfect copy of the desk, smiling benevolently at the witch who was no regarding him with something akin to respect. It was only then he realised that it was probably expected he use the Doubling Charm.

'Very good, Mr Potter,' she breathed more kindly. 'Is there anything you'd like to try for extra credit. If you should fail it will have no bearing on the grade you have already obtained at this point.'

'I don't see why not,' Harry shrugged, glancing at his conjured writing desk. A swirl and a flick of his ebony wand and the writing desk shivered into the form of a large, glossy-feathered, raven.

The witch broke into a smile and clapped her hands together, startling Neville who had just conjured a slightly lopsided looking desk of his own. 'Is there any reason you chose to do that particular piece of magic, Mr Potter?'

'They seemed similar to me,' Harry grinned.

'An outstanding piece of transfiguration, especially for an OWL student,' the witch told him, poking the raven with the tip of her wand. The bird hopped onto the desk and cawed loudly and indignantly at the unexpected assault. 'Full marks I think, Mr Potter, and that is all. If you want to wait for your friend please do so outside.'

Somewhere on the other side of the room Neville sighed.

'That wasn't so bad,' Harry smiled, when Neville came out a few minutes later.

'You've ruined the exam for everyone else,' Neville told him resignedly. 'I managed to successfully cast the doubling charm on the desk, and the wizard told me I'd done well, but it wasn't quite a raven.'

'Well it wasn't,' Harry defended, 'but it sounds like you did well.'

'I think I passed,' Neville agreed, 'but my desk had less detail in the grain, and the back legs were a bit shorter than they should have been.'

'Still a pass,' Harry assured him. 'Might not be an outstanding, but at least an acceptable or an exceeds.'

'That's true,' Neville's face brightened up, 'perhaps Gran will be pleased.'

'She won't notice anything after seeing your marks for Herbology and Defence,' Harry grinned. 'The only way you're not ending up the top student for Herbology is if Hannah distracts you midway through the practical.'

'They won't let me do the practical on my own plant,' Neville told Harry absentmindedly.

'Wrong Hannah, Nev,' Harry laughed. 'I meant the pretty blond one that doesn't shoot goo at people when they get too close.'

'Oh,' Neville's face flushed scarlet. 'Do you think we can do our Defence practical early too?' He asked, desperately trying to change the subject.

'Worth a try,' Harry agreed, taking pity on his friend. He had been much worse with Fleur, and Neville had only commented once or twice when he found him sitting on the floor of the Room of Requirement staring at the pictures. He was fairly sure that his friend had just been trying to distract him too.

They were brushed past by Hermione halfway along the corridor. She was bouncing on her heels in excitement, not even noticing them, and clearly rushing to the exam in attempt to be early like they had been.

'Do you think she'll outdo you?' Neville inquired curiously.

'Not in the practical,' Harry mused, considering it, 'but she'll do better in the written part. We won't be able to tell who did best anyway, since it's likely we'll end up with the same grade.'

'Confident much?'

'It's one of my best subjects,' Harry shrugged. 'I'll get an outstanding, just like we both will in Defence.'

They continued along the corridor, fighting against the flow of students trying to get to the Transfiguration exam. He was very grateful Katie had told him that they might let him go first if he was early. The tension and anxiety was palpable in the crowd.

'Did you leave the raven in there?' Neville asked suddenly.

'Yes,' Harry began to chuckle, 'it's not going to disappear anytime soon either.'

'Hermione's going to take it as a challenge,' Neville commented.

'If she wants to,' Harry shrugged, 'I'm more worried about it escaping and flying off with a first year. My reputation is bad enough already.'

'Maybe it will take mini-Creevey,' Neville grinned, as they pushed their way across the crowd and into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. 'I heard he's almost as annoying as his brother.'

'Room's empty,' Harry sighed, taking a seat on one of the desks.

'I guess we won't be taking this one early,' Neville agreed, leaning against the wall across from him and peering curiously into what was left of Umbridge's office.

'Nev,' Harry began, waving his hand to get his friend's attention. 'Do you know why Alicia's not particularly fond of me?'

'No,' Neville raised his arms helplessly, demonstrating how much he wanted to answer that question. 'She's been less than cordial, as my Gran would say, since last Christmas and the Yule Ball, but I know she really wasn't happy about that article Skeeter wrote about you and Katie.'

'Maybe she just holds a grudge longer than Angelina,' Harry mused.

'Or Angelina's better at hiding it,' Neville suggested. 'It's the friendly ones you have to watch out for. You should keep an eye on anyone who's unexpectedly nice to you.'

'Thanks, Nev,' Harry said dryly. 'Nice justification for keeping an eye on Hannah Abbot.'

'Would you stop,' Neville pleaded, flushing brilliantly. 'I don't say anything about Fleur.'

'You do when you have something to say,' Harry countered. 'If you just asked her out everything would be much easier.'

'Says the wizard who spent half a year moping in the Room of Requirement.'

'I wasn't moping,' Harry denied. 'I was training for the tournament. You remember it, it was the life-threatening series of circumstances I found myself in last year.'

'You haven't been in many this year,' Neville remarked.

'Don't jinx it, Nev,' Harry warned. 'One is one too many.'

The door behind them creaked open and a quartet of old, absent-minded looking wizards strolled in, carrying an odd assortment of items. Harry spied eggcups, a whole box of crystal balls, and a rather disgruntled iguana which he pointed out with a discreet nod to Neville, exchanging a smirk with him as they remembered their class with Umbridge.

'I think we're late, Tofty,' the foremost complained.

'We're on time,' the second quavered in a paper thin, wavering voice. 'These young men are simply early.'

'Early? Are they allowed to be early?'

'There's no rules against it,' the youngest of the four, who was not a day under sixty, stated confidently. 'If I help Phoebus unpack, then Tofty can get started with Mr Potter, and you can examine his young friend.'

Neville scowled, but said nothing.

'A splendid idea,' the eldest agreed, adjusting his glasses and lifting the iguana out of the box. 'Come on then, Mr Potter.'

The old examiner led him further back into the room, meandering past a few desks to place the iguana down and take a seat himself. 'I'm Professor Tofty,' he introduced himself, 'and this is Kanoni.' Harry glanced sceptically down at the iguana. 'He's older than two of my colleagues and has overseen just as many exams as I have, not that his judgement will have any impact on your grade.' The old professor chuckled dryly. 'He gets lonely when I leave the office for long periods of time so I have to take him with me or he causes trouble.'

'It's nice to meet you both,' Harry smiled, wondering if there was an age at which all wizards went senile.

'Well then,' Professor Tofty smiled, adjusting his glasses once more, 'we might as well get started.' He rummaged around in the pockets of his robes to retrieve a long list of names. 'Could you name and perform the spell you would use to defeat a boggart, Mr Potter?'

'The Boggart-Banishing spell,' Harry answered confidently.

I prefer to use Fiendfyre or an enhanced version of the Cutting Curse though, he thought, the corner of his lips twitching slightly.

'And to demonstrate?' Tofty twitched excitedly towards the edge of his chair.

'Ridikulus,' Harry intoned, flicking his wand out to flawlessly demonstrate the motion.

'Good,' the examiner quavered, leaning back again to make a few notes on his paper with a bent-feathered quill. 'Now I'd like you to cast the Impedimenta Jinx and its counter for me.' The iguana slowly made its way off the desk and behind Tofty, hiding, it seemed, from Harry.

'He's not going to do it to you, Kanoni,' Tofty sighed. 'I had one student hit him with the levitating charm a few years back, he's been nervous around magic ever since.'

Harry cast both the Impedimenta Jinx and its counter silently, mainly because he was afraid he would laugh at the examiner and his iguana if he opened his mouth to say the incantation.

'Excellent,' Professor Tofty squeaked. 'Non-verbal spells aren't meant to be covered until NEWT level.' There was a moment of furious scratching as he hurriedly scrawled something across the paper. Harry hoped it contained the word outstanding.

'The Shield Charm next,' the examiner instructed kindly, dragging Kanino off the back of the chair behind him and onto the desk so he could lean back again.

Harry didn't need the incantation for this piece of magic either and swiftly summoned a blindingly bright, silver shield that gave off a faint, bell-like shimmer.

'Oh my,' Tofty said, delighted, 'that's quite extraordinary.' The other examiners, except Neville's, were staring across the room at him as well. 'Is there anything you'd like to try for extra credit? It won't harm your grade if you fail.'

'There is,' Harry decided.

He raised his wand, pointed the ebony tip towards a clear part of the classroom, and focused on his happiest memory. There was a surge of warmth from his wand as he remembered the burst of happiness that had accompanied the first time he had kissed Fleur in France, then the Anzu burst from his wand in an eruption of brilliant silver. It hovered in the air, flexing its wings and peering around imperiously at the room's occupants before throwing its head back to give a soft echoing cry and vanished.

'Outstanding,' Tofty cried, clapping his hands together.

'Really?' Harry asked, amused. He was sure the grades weren't meant to be announced so casually.

'Well,' Professor Tofty looked rather flustered, 'I didn't mean it quite like that, but just between us, my boy, it's more than likely.'

'Thank you professor,' Harry smiled.

Behind him Neville's own patronus, a silver scorpion, coalesced from a cloud of mist to click its pincers idly and scuttle about the floor.

'Remarkable,' one of the other examiners exclaimed. 'Two students capable of producing a corporeal patronus at their OWL examinations. I haven't seen anything like it in years.'

'I daresay the two of you will go far,' Professor Tofty enthused, rescuing Kanino the iguana from the intangible threat of the the scorpion patronus.

Further than anyone imagines, Harry agreed, turning to leave. Neville trailed after him, an unseemly wide grin on his face.

'Think it went well?' Harry asked lightly, taking a more circumspect route back towards the main stairs rather than try and fight the flow again.

'No,' Neville mimicked his best glum face, one that Harry had seen less and less of since their fourth year had ended, 'I think it went outstandingly.'

'That was awful,' Harry smirked. Neville just shrugged.

They circled quickly away from the Transfiguration class, but had to slow to avoid a confrontation with Malfoy and his group of Slytherin sycophants. Instead of barging past they lingered behind listening to Pansy Parkinson moan about the exam.

Eventually even Malfoy got sick of pretending to listen to her. 'It wasn't that hard, Pansy,' he sighed, sounding oddly tired. 'I'm sure it didn't help that the giant raven stole your wand at the start,' Harry bit his lip, 'but that's not going to count against you. All the tasks were completed, you've got at least an acceptable.'

'But I didn't manage to do anything for the extra credit,' Pansy whined.

'You don't even want to take the subject for NEWTs,' Malfoy reminded her, leading the group away down towards the dungeons.

'You remembered,' Pansy responded saccharinely, shuffling closer to his arm.

'It was hard not too when I get told every lesson,' the blond groaned.

'You dislike some subjects too,' Pansy sniped, 'I know how you feel about Care for Magical Creatures, you're still scared of Hippogriffs.' Harry had to stifle a laugh at Malfoy's misfortune, then dragged Neville away before he burst out laughing and caused a scene.

The locket flared hot against his chest, and he smiled. Fleur must have finally managed to persuade Gabrielle to leave her studies for a day. Fleur's little sister was quite determined to beat her sister's academic record and had been very reluctant to leave Beauxbatons. Harry shuddered to think what had been promised as a bribe.

A million meringues, perhaps.

'I need to go, Nev,' Harry whispered.

His friend nodded and patted him on the shoulder. Neville knew by now that when he said that he was going to see Fleur for one reason or another.

'I'll tell Katie,' he offered, 'so she doesn't set up camp in the common room waiting for you to tell her how your exams went.'

'Thanks,' Harry grinned. He didn't mind being ambushed by Katie all that much, but it might get inconvenient when he was trying to disappear off to do anything morally questionable.

'See you later, mate,' Neville said with a nod.

Harry waited for him to drift off, then stepped into the nearest empty classroom and cast a silencing ward around him before opening the still pulsing locket.

'Fleur,' he smiled.

Fleur wasn't smiling. She was wearing the same expression of indulgent, strained affection that Gabrielle often provoked from her. 'Gabby's being difficult,' she sighed. 'I've persuaded her to come to Budleigh Babberton, on pain of being dragged there, but she wants to talk to you before she casts the Fidelius Charm for us.'

'Is something wrong?' Harry inquired. 'I thought she already agreed when you started teaching the charm?'

'She did,' Fleur grimaced beautifully, 'but you know Gabrielle, she's changed her mind, and probably not for the first time since then either.'

'I'm coming,' Harry grinned, switching to French. 'I can bring Sirius too.'

'Sirius Black?' There was more than one question within the inflection on his name.

'It is time you met my family,' Harry quipped. 'He can be trusted,' he continued more seriously, 'my godfather has chosen me over Dumbledore, and we need somewhere secret he can meet us to tell us what's happening with the Order of the Phoenix.'

'Bring him,' Fleur smiled.

'If nothing else we can trade him to Gabrielle as a pet in return for performing the charm,' Harry laughed.

'He would never forgive us,' Fleur chuckled throatily, 'now hurry up and come.'

Her face vanished from the mirror, and Harry had to ignore the slight pang he always felt at her disappearance.

Time to get Sirius, he reminded himself, cancelling his ward and leaving the room.

Fetching Sirius meant going to Grimmauld Place again, since Sirius had no idea where their house was, and couldn't apparate himself there.

Sighing at the many-staged journey ahead of him, he'd been hoping just have to apparate their and back, he began to walk in the direction of the Chamber of Secrets.

He disillusioned himself, just in case, but never crossed paths with anyone before reaching the door to the bathroom.

The floor was flooded, like always, and Myrtle hovered anxiously in front of the row of sinks that hid the entrance to the chamber.

'Myrtle,' Harry greeted the ghost quietly, dispelling his charm. 'How have you been?'

'Harry,' the girl floated across into his face, close enough for him to feel the chill of her presence. 'The headmaster was here earlier.'

'He was?' Harry tensed, running his eyes around the bathroom for any visible runes or anything to to indicate wards of any kind.

'He asked if anyone had been in here,' Myrtle fretted. 'I said no, of course, and that seemed to please him.'

'Did he cast any magic while he was here?' Harry asked.

'No,' Myrtle shook her head. 'He just asked me some questions. Is everything ok?'

'Everything's fine, Myrtle,' Harry smiled. 'Don't worry. Dumbledore's just as concerned about anyone going down there as I am, only he can't actually enter like I can so he doesn't know for sure that it's safe.'

Not that it is safe, Harry remembered. Voldemort could apparate in whenever he wants. It's a good thing there's no reason for him to risk coming to Hogwarts yet.

'Oh,' the girl sighed, relieved, 'I was afraid you were in trouble.'

'Not yet, Myrtle,' Harry grinned, opening the entrance now he knew it was safe to do so. 'It's only matter of time, though, you know me.'

'Can I tell the headmaster you come here?' Myrtle asked smiling. 'I don't like lying.'

'I'd rather you didn't,' Harry said slowly, thinking of a way to appeal to the girl. 'I like having somewhere private to be by myself, and he might forbid me coming here if he knows and I'll lose my retreat.'

'I won't tell,' Myrtle promised, flaring a darker shade of silver. 'I won't expose your refuge.'

'Thanks, Myrtle,' Harry smiled, 'you're the best. I knew you'd understand.'

He stepped onto the top of the stairs, avoiding walking through Myrtle as most would, something he considered quite rude.

'Bye Harry,' the ghost called after him.

His steps echoed down the stairs and out into the main chamber, reflecting back from the smooth, black walls of the chamber. Now that he considered it there really was nothing stopping Voldemort coming here except his own lack of desire. Considering this was effectively a secret backdoor into Hogwarts Harry couldn't imagine that it would be ignored forever.

Perhaps there's a way to ward him out, Harry mused, crossing the bridge.

It was something he would have to bring up with Salazar.

'How are your exams going?' Salazar enquired mockingly. 'Are they hard?'

'Hush,' Harry admonished him, 'you know perfectly well that I'm far advanced in the subjects I intend to continue. The others will require some work, but I have plenty of spare time to revise in.' He tapped the time-turner pointedly.

'Don't use it too much too frequently,' Salazar warned. 'I've told you before that it puts great strain on your mind to be awake and active for so many extra hours.'

'It's just a few sessions here and there for the next week or so,' Harry assured him, retrieving Sirius' two way mirror from under a handful of books on Astronomy, the last subject he'd been revising down here using his time-turner.

'Off out?' Slytherin deduced.

'I'm going to get the Fidelius Charm cast on the new house Fleur and I have, and since our secret keeper is normally quite inaccessible it's a good idea to get her to pass on the secret to my godfather now.'

'Sirius,' he murmured. His breath fogged on the cold glass of the mirror.

There was a long silence.

'Maybe he's busy,' Salazar suggested when Harry started to get concerned.

'Maybe.' Harry hoped that Dumbledore hadn't decided that Sirius' part in the Department of Mysteries fiasco meant he should be placed under guard.

'Harry,' his godfather cried delightedly, 'sorry, I was just having a very unusual conversation with my mother's portrait.'

'Has she found you a spouse?' Harry smirked.

'Don't joke,' Sirius warned. 'She was being oddly civil, said something about me associating with some wizards of respectable descent and not being a completely lost cause. Told me I should take my responsibilities to the Black Family more seriously, then proceeded to list every eligible pure-blood of close enough relation and with no allegiance to either Voldemort or Dumbledore as a potential heir to be named.'

'Was it a long list?' Harry asked.

'No,' Sirius grinned, 'there's no middle ground left, and only one name on the list. He wasn't even really a pure-blood, though my mother insists that he must be because she thinks that his father's family had no connection to whatever mysterious family she was so impressed by.'

The sinking feeling that Harry had become so well acquainted with returned in full force.

'Was my name really the only one?'

'Yes,' Sirius laughed. 'First thing my mother and I have agreed on in twenty years.'

'Are you alone?'

'Coming to visit?' His godfather asked.

'No,' Harry smiled. 'I'm coming to pick you up and take you somewhere exciting.'

'It had better not be another department of the Ministry,' Sirius said lightly, 'I've already got a badge.' He shifted the mirror to show off the badge he'd been obtained from the phonebox. Harry wasn't all the surprised he was still wearing it, though he was a little amazed it had survived the Department of Mysteries.

'Can I apparate to you?'

'Actually,' Sirius looked unusually thoughtful, 'you probably can now.'

'Now?'

'You're a recognised member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black as of today,' he grinned, 'you're even on the tapestry which is more than can be said for me.'

'Wonderful,' Harry responded dryly, putting the mirror down on the desk. 'I'm coming over.'

There was a soft snap and he appeared exactly where he had visualised, the foot of the stairs. His godfather was sitting on the bottom step beside one of those suspicious looking dark smears, tucking the mirror back into the pocket of his robes.

When he saw Harry he jumped up and hugged him tightly. Sirius, Harry noted, smelt oddly like tomato soup. Evidently he had already had breakfast.

'So what exciting place are we going to?' His godfather asked.

'My house,' Harry answered vaguely, 'I just bought it.'

'That's how you intend to avoid the Dursleys,' Sirius realised, 'but Dumbledore will never allow you live on your own.'

'You'll see,' Harry promised, offering his arm in preparation to apparate. His godfather took a firm grip on his forearm, an anticipatory gleam in his eyes.

The world wrenched back behind them both and Harry stepped forwards onto the front path of a not inconsiderably sized house. Sirius collapsed face-first onto the grass next to him having let go of his arm a fraction too early to balance.

'Smooth,' Harry chuckled, waiting for his godfather to drag himself to his feet.

'Where are we?' Sirius asked, rubbing his reddening forehead.

'My home,' Harry answered, striding up the path, 'though this is the first time I've come here.'

'It could do with repainting,' Sirius commented lightly.

'You're going to make remarks about the condition of my house?' Harry asked incredulously. 'I had to kill a boggart last time I visited you.'

'Fair enough,' Sirius grinned, 'but it does need repainting.'

'It needs more than that,' Harry retorted good-naturedly. 'Furniture, paint, a new name and some more serious wards.'

He glimpsed a flash of silver hair though the window as the approached the peeling, white-painted door. Fleur and Gabrielle were already here.

'Time for introductions,' Harry chuckled aloud, knocking gently. He was quite looking forward to the expression on Sirius' face.

'Welcome home, Harry,' Fleur greeted him demurely, opening the door. Harry slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close enough to kiss deeply, smiling against her lips at the distinctly disgusted sigh Gabrielle made from behind her.

'Harry?' Sirius inquired hesitantly.

'Oh,' Harry grinned at the utter shock plastered across his godfather's face, 'this is Fleur Delacour, my girlfriend, and hiding somewhere behind her is Gabrielle, her younger sister.'

'I'm not hiding,' Gabrielle disagreed indignantly. She didn't sound as cheerful as she normally was, and Harry was reminded of the time he had spoken with her on the riverbank.

'Nice to meet you?' Sirius tried, blinking a couple of times.

'Come in,' Fleur ushered them both inside, shutting the door firmly after Sirius and dislodging several slivers of paint.

'You weren't joking about furniture,' Sirius said, gazing around the empty house.

'No,' Harry smiled. 'We really did only just buy it.'

They fell silent for a moment, before Sirius' patience ran out. 'Just tell me,' he burst out. 'There's a long story somewhere here.'

'We've been together since the start of the summer,' Harry told him. 'It's quite a short story really.'

'Especially if he leaves out all the embarrassing parts,' Fleur noted.

'Which I am definitely leaving out,' Harry grinned.

'So you're living together now?' Sirius asked carefully. 'That's quite a step.'

'Yes it is,' Gabrielle said bluntly. Fleur shot him an apologetic look and Harry surmised that her little sister would be like this until she got whatever it was off her chest during their coming conversation.

'Shall we go out through to the back?' Harry suggested, looking at Gabrielle. 'I'll leave you to tell Sirius about all the embarrassing details of our relationship, Fleur.'

Fleur laughed, but nodded, shooting her sister a pointed look that Gabrielle completely ignored.

'So why did you want to speak to me?' Harry asked gently, stepping out into the untended meadow the back lawn had become.

'I do not like the idea of my sister living here in England on her own for most of the year,' Gabrielle told him sharply. 'She is safer in France, all her dreams are in France, all of them except you.'

'I won't let anything happen to her, Gabrielle,' Harry promised. 'I'll swear an Unbreakable Oath if you want, but we need the Fidelius Charm to keep us as safe as possible.'

'I will cast the charm,' Gabrielle replied quickly, 'if Fleur must stay in Britain then I want her as safe as possible, but she is only here for you, and once your war starts she will be a target. I love my sister, Harry,' Gabby's bright, blue eyes were pleading, 'she's been there for me all my life. I can't imagine what it would be like if she was not.'

'I know she is safer with your family,' Harry sighed. 'I have suggested she stay in France and everything stay secret.'

'She would not listen,' Gabrielle laughed resignedly. 'Fleur is stubborn, talented, and the proudest person I know, but for all that she is not so powerful as you. I fear she will be hurt or worse fighting here.'

'I will not let anything happen to her,' Harry told her, swallowing the horror that rose at the very idea of her being gone. Without Fleur he would be right back where he had been at the beginning of the fourth year. There were others he needed, but none were so dear and important to him as Fleur, none even came close to how much he needed her.

'If you asked, if you really forced her to, she would come back to France with me,' Gabrielle said softly.

'She would hate me for doing that,' Harry cringed, 'I don't think I could endure it.'

'Not even if it saved her life?'

'Do you think I'm being selfish?' Harry asked, knowing he could never bear to send Fleur away from him when she would never forgive him for it.

Gabrielle reached out one hand and placed it directly over Harry's heart, spreading her fingers across his chest and closing her eyes. He resisted the urge to flinch away, knowing her empathetic gift with magic bared his soul to her, and his soul was far from how pure it had once been.

'I can see you, Harry Potter,' she whispered. 'I can sense the emotions present in your magic, and the better I know you the more I can see. Think about losing her, about asking her to leave you and go home to France,' she pressed, 'consider it seriously.'

He did.

It hurt.

'What do you see?'

'Fear,' Gabrielle began softly, 'fear, hate and fury so cold that I can barely stand to touch it. You do not do things in halves, do you, Harry? You love my sister dearly, and there is nobody I would rather have at her side, she chose you for a reason, but if she dies, if you lose her, I will never forgive you.'

'I would never forgive myself,' Harry's lips twisted bitterly.

Gabrielle's fingers shifted slightly, and she opened her eyes. 'Fleur needs you, she has tied all her dreams to you, and there is nothing she would not do to protect you and them. Are you as dedicated as she is?'

'More,' Harry answered earnestly, covering Gabrielle's hand with his own, willing to her to feel what he felt for her. 'Can you see that?'

'Yes.' She flinched her fingers back, her eyes widening slightly as she realised the depth of his devotion.

'If Fleur is hurt,' she said eventually, 'I do not think I will be able to blame you, not now I know how far you would go for her.'

'Does it scare you?' Harry knew how far he would go for Fleur, there were no lines he would not cross.

'It's both unsettling and comforting,' Gabrielle smiled, a hint of her usual, more cheerful side appearing. 'Now I know I do not need to ask you to promise me you will keep her safe.'

'I promise you I will anyway.'

'Words like that mean little compared to what I can sense in your magic,' Gabby laughed, 'but I appreciate it, Harry.'

'Do you feel better about it now?' He asked.

'I still do not like it,' she shrugged, glancing back into the house, 'but I will no longer worry as much. I know that the risk Fleur's taking for you is truly worth it. Shall we cast the charm?' Gabrielle waved at her sister and Sirius, and they come out to join them on the grass.

'Are you going to cast it?' Fleur asked quietly.

'I am convinced,' Gabrielle chirped, perking up.

'Cast what?' Sirius asked.

'The Fidelius Charm,' Harry grinned, 'Gabby will be our secret keeper, Dumbledore cannot send me to the Dursleys if he cannot find me.'

'I can do it,' Sirius offered, 'wouldn't you rather Voldemort comes after me?'

'Gabrielle will be far out of his reach, he will not even know of my connection to her,' Harry assured him, 'and when Dumbledore comes looking you will be too obvious a choice.'

'The last time words like that were spoken they were mine,' his godfather's face darkened, the shadow of Azkaban spreading from his eyes, 'it was the last thing I ever said to James and Lily.'

'I can do it,' Gabrielle snapped, good humour lost. 'This way I know that Fleur, and Harry, are likely safe so long as my lips are sealed.' Sirius raised his hands in defeat.

'Close your eyes,' Harry instructed him. 'I don't know what would happen if you watched the charm being cast since you are not technically part of it.'

His godfather shut his eyes, and Gabrielle stepped forwards, her wand emitting a bright, white light as she traced complex wand gestures in the air. Harry noted the shape of several runes within the motions, and their forms lingered in the air with a crackle of ozone, overlapping with each other as they slowly faded. A brilliant, translucent bubble spread from the end of Gabrielle's wand, encasing the house, it's garden and brightening until it became too blinding to look at and they all turned away. From the tip of her wand burst a line of blazing, white fire, spiralling around Gabby's forearm, and up past her shoulder to encase her entire body in undulating waves of snow-white flames.

'What is the name of the house?' Gabrielle asked faintly, the strain of the magic obvious in her tone.

'The Meadow,' Fleur answered, putting a finger to her lips to forestall Harry's objections to the name. He supposed it would do. There was a meadow, and it was quite nice, even if he's rather have named it something clever.

'Harry Potter and Fleur Delacour live at the Meadow,' Gabrielle whispered.

There was flash of light so bright even Sirius, whose eyes were still shut, flinched, the white flames tightened, vanishing within Gabrielle, and Fleur's sister dropped to one knee gasping for breath. The smell of ozone persisted.

'Are you ok?' Fleur asked, kneeling down to put an arm around Gabrielle.

'I could do with something to eat,' Gabby grinned, 'do you have anything tasty?'

'In Britain?' Fleur laughed.

'I can probably supply you with a lifetime's worth of sherbet lemons,' Harry offered. 'They're a kind of sweet, Dumbledore has hundreds of them and they're quite tasty, but I'll have to steal them from his office.'

He might actually expel me for taking his sweets given how fond of them he is.

'Stolen sweets do taste better,' Gabby smiled, 'you owe me a sherbet lemon. I want to try one. I've never heard of them before.'

'Where's the house?' Sirius asked, opening his eyes and gazing around in bemusement.

'It worked then,' Gabrielle smiled delightedly. 'Who's the best at charms now, Fleur?'

'You had a good teacher,' Fleur replied deliberately patronisingly, earning a fierce scowl from her younger sibling. 'Tell Sirius where we live please, he must not have heard you when you cast the charm.'

'Harry and Fleur live at the Meadow,' Gabby chirped at his godfather. 'Now take me back to France, Fleur, I need to study, and you both owe me a trip to somewhere nice in Paris as well as a sherbet lemon.'

'Fine,' Fleur smiled indulgently down at her baby sister, still holding her with one arm, reminding Harry of the vision of the green-eyed girl he'd seen in the Mirror of Erised.

'Bye Harry, I hope I see you soon.' Gabby stepped forwards to hug him goodbye, pulling his head down to whisper in his ear. 'Remember the promise I didn't have to hear you make.'

'Always,' Harry murmured fervently.

Fleur took a firm grip on Gabrielle's shoulder and, with a smug wink at Harry, apparated silently away.

'She can apparate silently,' Sirius commented, impressed.

'She does it to rub it in my face,' Harry sighed. 'She knows I can't do it.'

'You're a lucky guy,' Sirius grinned, 'that's one hell of a girl you've got there, Harry. James would be so very proud of you. She's part veela, isn't she?'

'Yes,' Harry smiled proudly. 'Is her aura an issue for you?'

'After Azkaban?' Sirius chuckled hollowly, 'not even a little bit.'

'You're a decent occlumens then,' Harry realised.

'I'm competent enough,' Sirius shrugged, 'most pure-bloods are taught similar exercises and my time in Azkaban only strengthened my resolve.' That reassured Harry. He knew that Sirius would almost certainly be a passable occlumens, but it was comforting to hear it aloud.

'So,' his godfather's eyes glinted suggestively, 'how close have the two of you got?'

'I'm not going to dignify that with a response,' Harry retorted, flushing at the images that leapt unhelpfully into his head at Sirius' remark. It was very very hard to push the memory of Fleur's delicate, pale skin covered by nothing but her the tresses of her flowing silver hair from his head, and he shifted uncomfortably until he mastered himself.

'So you haven't de-fleured her, then?' Sirius teased.

'One more comment like that, especially one that's such a terrible play on words, and I'm telling your mother's portrait that you're secretly amenable to marriage.' He was not having this conversation with Sirius. He wasn't having it with anyone. Ever.

'My lips are sealed,' Sirius promised, paling. 'I'd rather marry Kreacher than whoever she chooses.'

'I don't think Kreacher loves you enough to say yes,' Harry smirked.

'I sure hope so,' his godfather shuddered. 'Can you imagine?'

'I don't want to,' Harry grinned.

'Didn't you have that elf who was utterly devoted to you?' Sirius asked, eyes sparkling again.

'Dobby,' Harry's humour faded immediately. 'He's dead.'

'Sorry,' Sirius gripped his shoulder reassuringly. 'He sounded like a good friend.'

'One of the most loyal,' Harry agreed.

'Speaking of loyalty,' Sirius began, changing tack, 'Amelia Bones is looking likely to take over after Fudge, though Rufus Scrimgeour is another possibility, both are loyal to the Ministry, and Dumbledore seems quite pleased with how everything has turned out. He's assured the whole Order that you're on the right path to defeat Voldemort.'

'He's more right than he realises,' Harry agreed, thinking of the diary, the diadem and himself.

AN: Please read, enjoy, and review! Thanks to everyone who does.

69. Staying Safe

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter! It's not quite as long the last, but that was the longest one I've yet written for this fic. Enjoy...

Chapter 69

'You know I almost began to miss the days like this,' Salazar sighed, sounding surprisingly genuine.

'Almost every day is like this,' Harry commented, rolling his eyes. He'd spent an hour writing about polyjuice potion, and then three hours scrawling down everything he knew about wand legislature and the goblin rebellions linked to it. As it had turned out he could have happily left two hours early and likely managed a comparable amount. He'd snuck down to the chamber after that and repeated the last five hours of the day within it. Speaking to Salazar for the last time this year. Term had all but ended.

'Actually you're normally down here to apparate somewhere else, or to bury your head in books and spell theory like you did for the last few hours,' Slytherin corrected. 'You're rarely here to speak to me.'

'Are you feeling unloved?' Harry asked, grinning.

'I'm feeling angry,' the painting retorted, 'look at the mess you've made of my desk!'

Harry regarded the neat, even stacks of books and papers for a moment and raised an eyebrow at him. The desk hadn't been so tidy in weeks. Evidently Salazar was feeling a bit tetchy again.

'Well,' Harry continued cheerfully, 'I'm here at the moment.'

'Yes,' Salazar peered down at him from the wall, more focused than Harry had seen him in some time. 'And none too soon.'

'Is something about to happen?' Harry inquired.

'The rest of your life,' the painting drawled, 'short as it may end up being if you don't start thinking seriously.' Harry frowned, he thought he'd done rather well this year. 'The summer is here, Voldemort's return is now accepted, and the conflict will now move out into the open. You're out of time, Harry,' the portrait stated simply.

'Surely I still have a year or so left?' Harry disagreed.

'Why?' Salazar asked bluntly. 'Voldemort has no reason to not go directly after what he wants now, and that means Dumbledore's plan to hurl you into his path is moving towards its conclusion.'

'He implied he had things to do first,' Harry reminded his ancestor, not entirely convinced of his impending doom, but not overly sceptical either.

'Presumably there are more horcruxes,' the founder nodded, 'their existence is the only thing, aside from any action you take, preventing Albus Dumbledore from, say, leaving you somewhere only his followers and likely Voldemort, after his rebirth, can enter due to blood magic based wards, and waiting for an inevitable conclusion.'

'Well, when you say it like that…' Harry smiled. 'I'm not going back to my relatives anyway, so Dumbledore will lose track of me, and surely Voldemort will be more concerned by the Order and the Ministry at the moment?'

'For now,' Salazar admitted, 'but not for long. You need a plan again. One that stretches beyond hiding under the Fidelius Charm and sneaking out to search for pieces of Voldemort's soul.'

'I'll have to come back to Hogwarts,' Harry shrugged, 'that was never going to be a feasible plan.'

'So consider what you know,' Slytherin suggested firmly. 'You have a home, a well-protected home, though I would suggest creating a more formidable set of wards just in case your Fidelius fails, and you can remain there relatively safely for the summer. You have to return to Hogwarts for the next term, and I would suggest finding a way to take your NEWTs early and then getting out from under Dumbledore's shadow. There is at least one horcrux still in existence that needs to be destroyed, and then you will have to face Voldemort.'

'And Dumbledore, unless he can be tricked into thinking the soul fragment within me is destroyed.'

'And Dumbledore,' Salazar agreed, adjusting the squirming, serpentine necklace he had draped around him.

'That's not the easiest thing to make a plan for,' Harry remarked dryly.

'No,' the painting said softly, 'much of it lies beyond your control, that's life, Harry, but some of it you can affect, and you should not discount any of the influence you are capable of having over your own fate.'

'My NEWTs are next then, and finding the horcrux, or horcruxes.'

'It is likely, unless Voldemort was extremely paranoid, that only a single, deliberately made horcrux remains. It would appeal to Tom Riddle to have three anchors, given it is a number with arithmantic properties, though I cannot say with complete certainty.' The portrait looked thoughtful, gently stroking the blunt head of the snake entwined about his neck. 'He entrusted one anchor to one of the members of his inner circle, Malfoy, it is possible he gave another to a different member.'

'Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, the Lestranges,' Harry listed those he knew to be within that ring. They would not be easy to catch, and their secrets would be harder still to spill.

'You should do as much research over the summer as possible, and study for your NEWTs, only this time put more effort into it than you did for your OWLs last summer,' Salazar instructed scathingly.

'Transfiguration, Defence, Charms, and I suppose I should continue with Potions should Snape let me,' Harry sighed. 'At least I am well ahead in all but the latter.'

'You would not consider Ancient Runes or Arithmancy?' Salazar asked.

'Maybe Arithmancy,' Harry agreed, knowing that Advanced Arithmancy would prove both useful and interesting, 'but I don't want to take too many, especially not if I intend to take them early.'

'You won't struggle,' Slytherin sniggered, 'you could probably take the first three today and still pass.' He sobered up to stare at Harry expectantly. 'You should take as many as you think you can handle early, Harry,' he recommended seriously, 'they'll be useful to you after you've defeated Voldemort and you might not get a chance afterwards.'

'It's hard to conceive of afterwards,' Harry mused.

'Well you'd better get conceiving of it,' Salazar smirked 'because once you've redeemed my family name I expect you to further it by doing something suitably extraordinary.'

'I'll assume that defeating one of the most dangerous wizards in history isn't enough then,' Harry commented wryly.

'No,' Slytherin smiled, 'you should go out and make yourself into something greater than just Voldemort's opponent.'

'Such high expectations,' Harry grinned proudly, 'what's a wizard to do?'

'Well first you need to find that horcrux, deal with Dumbledore, deal with Voldemort, and, more critically, avoid embarrassing me by using that ludicrous butterfly spell in a public place.'

'We both know you're jealous of that spell,' Harry retorted. 'I bet you just tried to conjure or animate nearby things into the way of spells like that when you duelled and couldn't come up with anything as elegant.'

'I'm Salazar Slytherin,' the painting replied, drawing itself up, 'nobody dared duel me in the first place!' Harry laughed. That was definitely not true, and he rather suspected he was right about Slytherin's tactics.

'I'll apparate back here over the summer to speak with you,' Harry promised, 'no doubt I'll need your help.'

'Did you ever find a portrait or painting of any of my three friends?' Salazar asked softly.

'No,' Harry apologised. 'I know there aren't any on the walls, and the Room of Requirement gave me nothing when I tried to get it to show me.'

'I suppose I was the only one who left one,' Slytherin sighed. 'I guess it isn't all that surprising. Helga would never have been inclined to make one, Rowena died before any of us expected to, and Godric probably couldn't have made one without her or my help anyway.' He stared pensively down at Harry, his mood suddenly shifting sour. 'I suppose it hardly matters now.'

Harry didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't imagine what it must be like to be isolated for so long, even if Slytherin had slept in his frame for all the years before Tom Riddle came and found him.

'You mentioned warding the chamber against Voldemort,' Harry reminded him, changing the subject. 'Should I not do that soon?'

'Very soon, while has little reason to visit the chamber, his backdoor into the school must be looking more and more tempting now he can act openly,' the founder replied solemnly. 'When you come down here to leave tomorrow I will tell you how to ward it from him, but it will be complicated, and I need to consider all of the possible variations first.'

Harry gathered from the way his ancestor said complicated that it would also be tiring, and likely require more than a little of his blood to complete. He was not adverse to the idea though. Whatever it took to prevent Voldemort from being able to simply walk into the school through the Chamber of Secrets would have to be done.

'Off with you,' Salazar ordered suddenly, flapping his hands in a shooing motion. 'I need to think, and your lingering is likely to make me make mistakes.' Harry rolled his eyes at the painting again, but traipsed out regardless, sealing the study and hiding the bridge behind him. If Salazar wanted to think on his own then he could have the study to himself. Harry wanted to briefly try a new spell.

It was not something he wanted to be seen trying, not until he'd mastered it, and certainly not if anyone recognised where he'd stolen the inspiration from.

'Contusio,' he commanded, flicking his wand into his palm. The magic of the spell compressed everything at the ebony tip of his wand into a small point. It created a familiar silvery speck of light, that trailed through the air in front of him as he moved his wand from side to side. Voldemort had managed to make several in one go, but Harry would rather wait until he could make one before he pushed the boat out too far.

With a flick of his wrist he sent it sailing across the chamber.

The small, silver spark drifted slowly and innocently through the air, then it collided with the wall. A violent flash of bright silver light lit the chamber, and a deep, head-ringing percussion echoed up and down it's length incessantly. Whatever he'd done was not quite the same as Voldemort's spell, which had created concussing explosions alone, but he liked it, and if he ever used it against Voldemort having the same incantation, but a slightly different effect, might surprise the Dark Lord.

A furious stream of parseltongue became audible from within the study as the ringing in his ears faded, and Harry decided it was probably a good time to vacate the Chamber of Secrets until Salazar calmed down. The painting did not like disruptions when he was thinking.

He beat a hasty, but tiptoed retreat when Slytherin's portrait went suspiciously quiet, sneaking back up the steps towards Myrtle's Bathroom in the hope that the painting thought he'd already left and went back to whatever it was thinking about. Salazar would likely have forgotten about the disruption by the next time Harry visited.

Harry continued to tiptoe across the bathroom, not because he was trying to avoid Myrtle, she would know he was here anyway, but because the puddle seemed even deeper than usual.

Slipping out through the door, now disillusioned, he took a few steps along the corridor and then dispelled the charm when nobody was looking. The corridors were empty regardless, everyone was busy packing for going home tomorrow morning and lessons supposedly ended early on the last day of term, though Harry had never experienced it himself having somehow spent the end of every year in the hospital wing.

The Gryffindor common room was fairly empty as well, but the sound of trunks moving over dormitory floors echoed down from both sides of the staircases. Harry spied Katie waiting to ambush him on the sofa by the fire and catching her eye he made his way across.

'Not packing?' He asked, slumping down next to her.

'No,' Katie beamed, her toes curling underneath her knees. 'I can't fit everything in my trunk and my shrinking charms won't last long enough for the journey back.'

'You want me to help?' Harry offered. If he pushed enough magic into it he could easily shrink things for that long.

'If you want,' Katie blinked, 'it will only take a second, then we can come back down here next to the fire. It's loud upstairs with everyone packing.' She uncrossed her legs and pushed herself out of the sofa, extending a hand to pull Harry gently up to his feet. Katie wandered casually towards the other set of the stairs, leading him by the wrist she had yet to let go of, but the moment Harry put one foot on the steps they smoothed out into a slide.

Katie gave a squeak of surprise and jumped backwards onto Harry's foot to avoid falling over.

'How inconvenient,' Harry grinned, pulling his foot out from under Katie's and extending his wand. 'If this doesn't work you'll have to do your own packing.'

'Confundus,' he smirked, as a few heads in the common room turned to watch him curiously. He could almost see the horror in Hermione's eyes when he heard her break off quoting the relevant passage about dormitory access in Hogwarts A History to watch the stairs revert back to their original form with Harry's foot still firmly on the first step.

'Someone make a note of how he did that,' he heard Seamus mutter, 'that's got to to be the most useful thing we've seen all year.' There was a murmur of consent from the other Gryffindor males.

'That's against the rules,' Hermione burst out, as Katie giggled maniacally and dragged Harry up the rest of the steps.

'What's he going to do?' Ron asked her incredulously, 'steal your underwear?'

'Have you somehow not heard what his father was like from Padfoot?' Hermione replied desperately. 'If he's anything like him then there won't be a pair of panties left in Gryffindor Tower by tomorrow.' Harry had never heard anything quite so strange as the word panties coming from Hermione's mouth.

'Where is Hermione's spot?' Harry asked innocently. Katie laughed, but said nothing, leading him up to her dormitory and a bed that was filled halfway from mattress to canopy with clothes, half of which were quidditch uniforms or jerseys.

There was a strangled exclamation of surprise from the only other girl in the room who was understandably shocked to see Harry in the room.

'Sorry,' Katie apologised for Harry's unexpected presence, 'but at least you're dressed for once.'

Her roommate, whose name Harry didn't know, fled abruptly towards the common room, turning a brilliant shade of scarlet.

'Now I've got room to watch you pack,' Katie enthused.

'I'm going to shrink things,' Harry told her amusedly, sitting down in the window, 'you're doing all the actual packing.'

'What if I asked really nicely?' His friend tried, fluttering her eyelashes in deliberately ridiculous manner.

'Not even then, Dark Mistress,' Harry grinned, silently shrinking every item on the bed to a third of its size.

'Fine,' Katie pouted, scooping the considerably smaller piles off the bed and none too carefully stuffing them into her battered trunk. 'I hate packing.'

'You're terrible at it,' Harry commented, 'but you do have some nice clothes,' he laughed, as something black and lacy fell out of the middle of one of the piles onto the floor by his feet.

'Not one more word,' Katie growled stuffing it back out of sight, flushing a bright, rosy red.

'So who did you buy that for?' Harry teased, ignoring her warning.

She was saved from answering by the timely arrival of Alicia, who froze at the sight of Harry, glancing between them with her mouth open. Two high spots of colour rose on her cheeks, something Harry hadn't seen since the quidditch training Katie had been injured by Crabbe in. Alicia was rarely so riled.

'Harry's helping me pack, Alicia,' Katie explained, forestalling whatever conclusion Alicia had mistakenly jumped to. 'I needed him to shrink everything so the spell lasts all the way back to London.'

'Oh,' Alicia said eloquently, closing her mouth. 'I just wanted to ask if you had any room in your trunk for an extra pair of shoes?'

'No,' Katie laughed, trying to force the lid of her trunk down with little success. 'Couldn't you have shrunk them a little more?' She demanded, turning back to look up at Harry. Alicia disappeared abruptly, stalking off disapprovingly.

'And miss out on this?' Harry grinned.

'Are you going to help?' She asked pouting coyly.

'If you insist,' Harry agreed, pushing himself up and pushing the middle of the lid down with one foot so Katie could lock it shut.

'Thanks,' she beamed, leaning her head to one side tilt her disarrayed hair out of her eyes, flushed from the effort and panting slightly. 'Shall we go back down?'

'That's probably a good idea,' Harry smirked, 'but you might want to make sure you don't look too dishevelled, let's not have another article written about us.'

Katie made a bit of a show of straightening her robes and smoothing her hair. 'If anyone believes that your reputation is going to suffer,' she giggled, still flushed, 'we've only been up here alone for about a minute.'

'So you never did tell me who you had in mind when you bought that very fetching piece of clothing? Harry reminded her. There was no way he was letting that insinuation be the last word in this conversation.

'And I'm not going to,' Katie stuck her tongue out, a bold, mischievous gleam in her eye, 'so you can stop picturing me in them.'

'I wasn't until you said that,' Harry defended, casting the Confundus Charm on the stairs again so they could go back down without sliding.

'Sure,' Katie giggled, unfazed by his indirect admission of guilt.

There was a quiet cheer from the boys when he appeared on the stairs, and a short round of applause for overcoming the girls' dormitory's stairs, one of the greatest opponents of wizards of Gryffindor Tower. Even Ron was clapping. He resisted the urge to bow, and shooed a pair of second years out of the sofa by the fire, reclaiming their spot and waiting for the attention to move on before speaking.

'I think that did more for altering your Dark Lord reputation than anything else this year,' Katie beamed, settling in next to him and sprawling comfortably across the two seat he'd left unoccupied.

'What kind of self-respecting Dark Lord spends his time sneaking into girls' dormitories,' Harry agreed.

'Alicia's going to give me an earful about that later,' Katie told him absently, 'she wasn't happy to us up there together.'

'She was angry, wasn't she?' Harry remembered. 'At least she's only really mad with me, that article wasn't your fault at all.'

'Like I said,' Katie waved a hand at him vaguely, 'don't worry about it. She's leaving this year so you won't have to worry about it anymore.'

'You will,' Harry pointed out.

'It'll be fine,' Katie reassured him. 'Now how was your History of Magic exam?'

'Tedious,' Harry groaned, 'I lost all feeling in my hand halfway through the essay. That's a subject I won't be missing next year.'

'That's the best thing about going from OWLs to NEWTs,' Katie told him, 'no more Binns, not that you went to any of his lessons this year. Have you chosen which ones you want to take?'

'Yeah,' Harry nodded, 'similar to yours actually. Transfiguration, Defence, Charms, Potions and Advanced Arithmancy.' Katie took all of those except for Advanced Arithmancy, a subject she loathed with a passion only equalled by her distaste for opposing quidditch teams.

'Five's a lot,' she warned him, biting her lip.

'I'm quite good at some of them already,' Harry reminded her modestly.

'Prat,' Katie smiled, squirming around to wave at Neville who had just entered the common room and shifting across into the middle next to Harry to free up a space for him.

'Have you chosen your OWLS?' She asked when Neville collapsed into the free corner of the sofa.

'Herbology, Defence, Charms,' Harry guessed smirking, 'and something Hannah Abbot's taking.

'Care of Magical Creatures and Astronomy,' Neville finished, ignoring the jibe about Hannah.

'Really?' Katie asked, 'Astronomy?'

'Lunar phases and things like that can be important for Herbology,' Neville explained, 'and I think that our exam went pretty well.'

'Five as well,' Katie commented, 'most only do three or four,' she warned.

'Maybe I'll not continue Care of Magical Creatures then,' Neville mused, 'it depends on results anyway.'

The portrait swung open and Dennis Creevey bounced across the room wearing a vast grin on his face.

'Looks like the raven didn't get him after all,' Neville sighed.

'It got Pansy Parkinson's wand for a bit though,' Harry chuckled, raising an eyebrow when the younger Creevey bounded across to their sofa and began babbling incoherently while staring at him in a rather starstruck manner.

'Once more please, Dennis?' He asked politely, ignoring Katie's giggling.

'Professor Dumbledore would like to see you,' Dennis repeated just as quickly, 'the professor said something about you both enjoying sherbet lemons, but I didn't really understand.'

'Thanks, Dennis,' Harry said, grimacing, and exchanging a brief glance with Katie.

'I wonder what he wants?' Neville said after a moment.

'He probably wants to know why you aren't in the hospital wing this year,' Katie suggested cheerfully.

'I'd better go and find out,' Harry sighed. 'In case I come back quite late and don't see you guys before you leave tomorrow then I hope you have a good summer. I doubt we'll be able to exchange letters,' the Fidelius Charm rather scuttled the Owl Postal Service, 'but I'm sure we can try and meet up or something.'

'Why won't we see you on the train?' Katie asked curiously.

'I can apparate,' Harry whispered, enjoying her look of pure envy.

'Well,' Katie decided, 'we'll have to meet up over the summer if you can't send letters. You'll be able to find me on Diagon Alley easily enough. My parents own one of the cafés on the South side of the alley and I'll be helping out.' Harry couldn't imagine Katie working in a café, not with her recurring issues with goblets and cups. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.

'I can change the date on the badges for the DA,' Neville suggested, as Harry stood up to leave. 'We can meet up there then, none of the other members will know where to be.'

'Sounds like a plan,' Katie beamed. 'Did you actually keep yours Harry?'

'Of course,' he sulked, before realising how much like Salazar he sounded and snapping out of it immediately.

'Well hopefully I'll see you both later,' Harry smiled, picking his way across the common room and ducking out past the portrait.

Professor McGonagall was waiting outside, with pursed lips. She was gingerly holding a sherbet lemon between her fingers.

'I believe this is for you, Mr Potter,' she sighed, passing him the sweet.

'Thanks, Professor.' Harry unwrapped the sweet and slipped it in his mouth.

'You shouldn't encourage the headmaster to give you muggle sweets, Mr Potter,' McGonagall remonstrated him. 'They're very sickly and not at all good for you.'

'This is the first year I've not ended in the hospital wing,' Harry grinned, in a good mood despite his summons, 'it's also the first year I've accepted a sherbet lemon. Coincidence? I think not, professor.'

McGonagall gave him a long suffering expression and led him towards the gargoyle. 'Sometimes, Mr Potter, you act a great deal like your father.'

'So Snape tells me,' Harry commented dryly, eying the entrance to the headmaster's office with some trepidation. It was time for the conversation about returning to the tender care of his relatives.

'Sherbet lemon,' Professor McGonagall sighed at the gargoyle, gesturing for him to go up whe it stepped aside. 'I will see you next year, Mr Potter. I'm assured that there's a very good chance you will be in my class.'

'I'll be there,' Harry agreed, making his way up the spiralling steps.

But maybe not for as long as everyone else is.

The door was open at the top of the stairs, so Harry drifted in unannounced hoping to catch Dumbledore in the middle of something interesting and secretive.

He was disappointed.

The headmaster was calmly leaning back in his chair on the other side of the desk, holding his hand out in supplication to Fawkes who appeared to made off with the bowl of sherbet lemons.

'Harry,' he greeted kindly. 'If you'd be so kind as to bear with me for a moment, Fawkes is experiencing a bout of adolescent rebellion. Sadly, being a phoenix, they come about more frequently than one might hope.'

The phoenix trilled amusedly, tilting his head at Dumbledore, then hopping from his perch to replace the bowl on the wrong side of the desk, just out of reach of the seated headmaster.

'I suppose that will have to do,' Dumbledore chuckled.

'What did you wish to speak with me about, sir?' Harry asked, sucking on the remnants of his own sherbet lemon.

'About the summer,' the headmaster replied gently, adjusting his chair a few inches closer to the desk.

'What about it, professor?' Harry didn't have to try particularly hard to feign confusion. The summoning did seem slightly unnecessary, as far as Dumbledore knew the only place Harry had to go to was Privet Drive, which hardly merited a discussion.

'You know, of course, that you have to return to your relatives to be as safe as we can make you,' Dumbledore told him sagely, 'but I've also asked that a couple of the members of the Order take turns making sure you're still safe.'

That's how he knew I was apparating around last year, Harry realised. Ah well, let them try and find me.

'When can they first get there?' Harry asked innocently.

'The day after tomorrow,' Dumbledore smiled benignly, inching his hand across the smooth desk surface towards the bowl of sherbet lemons.

So there will be time for me to arrive and leave again.

'Who will it be?' Harry continued, watching on as Fawkes extended one taloned foot in front of the bowl to impede Dumbledore's progress. The old wizard sighed in defeat and looked away from his prized stash of sweets.

'Nymphadora Tonks, Alastor Moody and Hestia Jones are the three who will spend the most time there, Harry,' the headmaster shared kindly, 'but I must ask you to try and make things easy for us by not apparating off anywhere. Voldemort will be much more active now he's been exposed, and you remain, of course, in the forefront of his mind.'

Dumbledore's hand flashed forwards with surprising speed, seizing the bowl of sherbet lemons before Fawkes could react and returning it to its proper place on the desk. The phoenix let out a low cry of mourning, and hopped back onto his perch. Harry got the distinct impression the bird was now sulking.

'I promise, headmaster,' Harry answered honestly. 'I'll stay where I'm safest.'

Harry would be very surprised if Dumbledore could find anywhere safer than the Meadow. By the time he and Fleur were finished casting protections over their home it would not only be under the Fidelius Charm, but also behind layer after layer of wards and some blood protections of Harry's own creation. Even if Voldemort found the place he would not find it at all easy to get inside.

'Thank you, Harry,' the headmaster sighed, with obvious relief, 'I know it must be trying for you to endure the company of your relatives. They are not the most affable of people.' He adjusted several books on his desk, uncovering a particularly familiar looking tome. Albus Dumbledore, it appeared, had his own copy of Secret of the Darkest Arts. His likely didn't come with such helpful, how-to, annotations however.

'Now,' the headmaster smiled warmly, 'onto more pleasant, but no less important matters. Professor Tofty, an old associate of mine, and some of his colleagues have been most impressed with your performance in your OWLs. I recall a long, interesting conversation about a large raven you transfigured from a desk stealing the wands of other students before eventually dispersing. Normally, of course, I would frown on such a thing during an exam, but since the fault largely lies with the examiners for not being able to bring themselves to vanish your remarkable piece of magic I can only congratulate you on your accomplishments. That is well in advance of your studies.'

'Thank you, sir.' Dumbledore's compliments were not to be taken lightly, especially not in the field of Transfiguration.

'I remember performing a similar feat back in my youth,' the headmaster beamed, choosing a sherbet lemon from his recovered collection. 'I transfigured a particularly attractive, Chippendale styled chair into a swan. My professor was very impressed, but only up until the moment my creation broke his arm. I had, of course, not accounted for the aggressive nature of the bird.'

'Did you get full marks, sir?' Harry asked, rather hoping this recollection was coming to an end so he might see Katie and Neville before the evening wore on.

'I did,' Professor Dumbledore nodded, 'but I also received a string of detentions with the Alchemy Professor. My interest in your skill with Transfiguration is slightly selfish, I'm afraid. Professor McGonagall has been pressing me heavily to assist her with a personal project of hers for some years, but, alas, I never seem to have the time.'

'I don't think I'd be a suitable replacement for you, professor,' Harry commented disbelievingly. It did, however, explain why McGonagall had been so sure that Harry would be in her class next year.

'Have faith in yourself, Harry,' the old wizard encouraged gently, 'you are a very powerful wizard. Professor McGonagall has requested my help in her study of her subject not because my skill is any greater than her own, but because she needs a wizard or witch capable of sustaining partial, human transfiguration for a long time that she can then study.'

'I'm only an OWL student, sir,' Harry shrugged, 'surely another professor or a seventh year student would be preferable to her.'

'Your modesty is admirable, Harry,' the professor smiled. 'You performed an innovative feat of self-transfiguration last year for the Triwizard Tournament, something I understand Madam Pomfrey was quite horrified by, and I'm sure you would find Professor McGonagall's assistance with any interests in the field quite useful yourself.' The headmaster looked up at him, eyes twinkling. 'I'm sure that the notion of following in your father's and Sirius' examples has ocurred to you.'

'Becoming an animagus,' Harry mused.

'It is quite the useful talent,' Dumbledore nodded. 'My brother, Aberforth, is more adept at it than I and takes the form of a quite spectacular Billy Goat.'

'Do you have a form, professor?' Harry enquired, curious.

'For all my skill at the subject I have never found the inclination,' the headmaster admitted. 'It is no small project, as those who have undertaken it will tell you, and I have never quite had the motivation to begin it.' He looked thoughtful, pushing the sherbet lemon around his teeth with the tip of his tongue. 'I can honestly say that I have little idea what creature might suit me best. Would you be amenable to the idea, Harry?'

'I suppose I might be,' Harry agreed, unable to think of a good reason not to accept. The offer seemed genuine, and he could not, no matter how he considered it, see any trap within the chance. 'I have a request of my own, actually.'

'Oh,' Dumbledore shifted eagerly, 'you are more than welcome to another sherbet lemon, Harry.'

'I was hoping to be able to take some of my NEWTs early, professor,' Harry said cautiously. 'I find myself quite advanced already and with a while summer to spend studying.'

'It's not unknown,' the headmaster steepled his fingers, 'but it does depend on your results, anything less than an outstanding would not be encouraged by the faculty. Which subjects were you considering?'

'Transfiguration, Charms, Defence, Potions and Advanced Arithmancy, sir,' Harry answered swiftly.

'I have heard, from Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall, that you are casting, and have been casting some NEWT level spells since your fourth year, non-verbally as well.' Dumbledore ran a hand along the upper length of his beard, smoothing the silver hairs as he ruminated. Harry was unsettled, but not unsurprised, that the news had reached him. He always seemed to know exactly what was happening in the school. 'Defence Against the Dark Arts has always been your best subject too, but Professor Snape has never intimated any precocious gift for potions, and Professor Vector rarely lets any student take an exam early.'

'Is that a no, sir?' Harry asked, disappointed.

'Quite the opposite,' Dumbledore pulled his fingers from his beard, 'I think it's a splendid idea, provided, of course, you can study hard over the summer, but you will need written permission from each teacher. How early would you like to take them?'

'As early as possible,' Harry decided. Fleur had done it, so he could do it too. He suspected the written consent rule would eliminate the chance of him taking Potions early, but most students only took four NEWTs anyway.

'Next January?' The headmaster regarded him seriously. 'That is an ambitious undertaking, Harry.'

'The sorting hat did want to put me in Slytherin,' Harry reminded him, smiling faintly.

'A test, then,' Dumbledore enthused. 'I haven't done any teaching in some time and I daresay I could use the practice to keep in touch.' He reached into the bowl and drew out another sherbet lemon, placing it on the desk between them. 'I would like you to transfigure this into the most complex thing you can think of.'

Harry stared at the sweet. He knew immediately what would be most difficult. The sherbet lemon was small, inanimate, and technically food. He smiled, since it was food he could transfigure it into a different form of food without violating the first principle, and anything larger and living would be considered an accomplishment provided he did not get overly ambitious and choose something too large to be transfigured from it.

He flicked his wand into his palm and carefully, precisely altered the sherbet lemon into a real, waxy skinned, citrus fruit about the size of the palm of his hand.

'Very good,' Dumbledore nodded, looking pleased. 'You chose something difficult but obtainable. I shall assume you have put the same amount of thought into this choice to take your exams early and allow you to take them early provided you have the written consent from the teacher of each subject.' Harry untransfigured his lemon, frowning at himself. He'd missed the real test that Dumbledore had set, and the perceptive, subtle intelligence of the headmaster was provoking his paranoia. Anyone clever enough to set such a test was also clever enough to see through most deceptions.

'Was that all, Harry?' The headmaster asked. 'It's getting late and while I assume you will be making the most of your ability to apparate you will still have to get up early to say goodbye to your friends.'

I already said goodbye,' Harry answered absently as he left, not noticing the headmaster's slight frown at his words. It was likely too late for either Katie or Neville to still be in the common room, so unless someone woke him up early tomorrow he wouldn't see either of them until they met up in Diagon Alley.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. This chapter appears to have come out quite light-hearted for some reason, but maybe that's just me, or maybe it's because nothing horrible happened for once! ;)

70. Sealing the Chamber

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 70 is up. We're back to normal length now, no 8000 word monstrosity this time.

Chapter 70

Something heavy draped itself across his stomach and his eyes flashed open, hand snapping under his pillow to find his wand.

'Morning Harry,' Katie beamed from where she had leant back across his stomach. 'Time to get up.'

'Get off,' he groaned, looping an arm under her shoulder and pulling her upright off his stomach. 'I'm not even getting the train, remember.'

'Oh I know,' Katie giggled. 'Did you know you have the best bed hair I've ever seen?'

'How did you get in?' Harry asked, eyeing her curiously. 'I put a sticking charm on the curtains.'

'I knew that too,' she said, indicating the hole she had clearly cut in the drapes around his bed. 'It took me almost five whole seconds to get in once I lost patience with trying to draw them.' That at least explained where all the light was coming from.

'You wanted to say goodbye again this badly?' He teased, undoing his sticking charm, and sitting up. 'Does Alicia know where you are?'

'Yes,' Katie smirked, looking awfully smug about something. 'I finally convinced her to see sense: it only took until the last hour of our school life together.'

'Better late than never,' Harry quipped, distractedly patting his hair down, and transfiguring his pyjamas into something less revealing. Katie looked mildly disappointed, and pulled back the hangings for him.

'Where is all your stuff?' She asked, peering around his bed at his mostly empty trunk.

'Around,' Harry answered vaguely, stifling a yawn, and casting a quick tempus charm. It was just before nine. Katie was uncharacteristically active and cheerful for this time of the morning.

'Where's everyone else?' All the other beds were empty, something Katie had apparently only just noticed.

'Maybe they all left before they were forced to witness you murdered for waking me early,' Harry told her brightly. 'What possessed you to come and disturb me?'

'I wanted to say goodbye,' she answered, sitting down in the window and gazing out at the grey, undecided Scottish sky. Her breath fogged up the panes.

'Breakfast?' Katie suggested, turning back to look at him.

'Fine,' Harry grimaced. He wasn't going to be getting back to sleep, and he supposed there were worse ways to spend the next hour than with Katie, even if she was being exuberant a little earlier than normal.

'Why are you so cheerful?' He asked. 'It's your last day of school with Angelina and Alicia.'

'I know,' Katie beamed. 'Angelina had to cast a handful of Cheering Charms on me when we woke up so I'd be less miserable and actually get out of bed. She cast a few too many,' Katie giggled again, 'then I came down here to see you and she went to argue with Alicia about something.'

'That explains a lot,' Harry grinned. 'Though not why you thought waking me up was a good idea.'

'You get to see me,' Katie stated matter of factly.

'Let's go to breakfast,' Harry decided, closing and locking his trunk. His transfiguration would last easily long enough to sit through breakfast with Katie.

'Good idea,' she laughed, bouncing cheerfully from the room. Harry sighed, levitated his trunk, and followed her down into the empty common room. The trunk floated along after him, bumping against the wall when he turned the corner on the stairs.

'I'm going to miss Angelina and Alicia,' Katie nodded happily, 'they've been my best friends since second year when I joined the quidditch team.'

'You can still meet up with them over the summer and at Hogsmeade,' Harry assured her, ducking out through the painting of the Fat Lady, his trunk still trailing after him.

He wasn't entirely sure the Cheering Charms had been the best idea, it might have been better for Katie to just get through her emotions normally rather than have them so switched around on her. He briefly considered accompanying on the train so he knew there was someone to deal with the inevitable collapse, but Angelina and Alicia would be there for her, and he had to ward the Chamber of Secrets.

'I know,' Katie nodded. 'They're helping Fred and George with some enterprise they're starting this summer, but I'm not supposed to tell you that.' She looked oddly thoughtful. 'There's a lot of things they don't want me to tell you really.'

'You should probably listen to them,' Harry commented. He didn't really want to know what secrets Angelina and Alicia had shared with Katie. At the very least he would end up learning more about Fred and George than he ever wanted to.

'I promised,' Katie agreed, bounding down the stairs, narrowly missing the trick step and stopping to wait impatiently for him by the doors to the Great Hall while he tucked his trunk out of sight at the bottom of the steps.

It was full, completely so, and Harry sighed under his breath. He could've had a nice, quiet breakfast in the kitchens in another hour, then drifted to the chamber to follow whatever Salazar decided was the best way to ward the chamber. Instead he had to accompany what was effectively a drunk Katie at nine o'clock in the morning where everyone could see.

He'd already resigned himself to not getting any bacon.

Katie took a seat right on the nearest end of the Gryffindor Table, shooing second years up the bench to make space for the two of them.

'Here,' she beamed, passing him the toast rack with one hand and surreptitiously retrieving the plate of bacon with the other.

How devious, Harry smiled to himself.

'Thanks,' he said dryly, helping himself to a pair of pieces and taking a bite out of the first. To his shock she then offered him the plate of bacon, giggling at his expression. Knowing that it wasn't likely to come back if he refused he took a forkful and made himself a haphazard sandwich.

Harry glanced down the table, noting that everyone in his year, including Neville, was sitting just past the middle, and an irritated Alicia was sitting next to a very guilty looking Angelina just past them. He looked away when Angelina caught his eye and bit her lip.

'So what're you doing over the summer, Harry?' Katie asked.

'Not much,' Harry replied. 'Studying for NEWTs probably, and meeting up with friends.'

'Not going to see Fleur?' She asked quietly.

'I'll be seeing a lot of Fleur,' Harry grinned, then flushed at Katie's suggestive look. 'Probably be keeping my head down and staying safe as well,' he added more seriously. 'I'll be a target now,' Harry warned her.

'You've been a target every year.' Katie patted him on the cheek gently, accidentally brushing the tips of her fingers against the corner of his mouth. 'I don't care.'

'I'm still coming incognito when I meet up with you over the summer,' Harry smiled 'just in case.'

'You should bring Fleur,' Katie proposed. 'I'd like to actually meet her at some point. I have so many things to tell her about you.' A rather disconcerting spark of mischief gleamed in her dark eyes.

'Planning to embarrass me?' Harry chuckled.

'I'll try my hardest not to scare her off,' she shrugged.

'I don't think there's much you could tell her that would be more embarrassing than what she already knows,' Harry admitted, 'but don't let me dissuade you.'

'You won't,' she beamed, taking a large bite of her sandwich that inevitably contained all the remaining bacon.

'Wonderful,' Harry responded wryly, watching the first, most eager students start to head towards the doors and the carriages back to Hogsmeade Station. Katie noticed them too and took a more hurried bite of her sandwich. She was looking considerably less cheerful, the magic Angelina had cast was wearing off.

More and more students began to filter out, and Harry glimpsed Neville and Ron among them, the latter jostling aggressively with Malfoy when he strayed too close. Katie finished her sandwich, throwing a glance to where the other two chasers were lingering waiting for her.

'I'll see you in the summer, Harry,' she promised, leaning across to hug him with one arm. 'Any day's fine if you want to come visit. My parents own the third café on the left in the southern part of Diagon Alley.'

She probably should have told Neville that too, Harry realised.

'I'll come visit,' Harry assured her, returning the rather awkward, sideways hug as best he could until Katie eventually relinquished him and drifted reluctantly away to join Angelina and Alicia. He watched her back recede out the door, smiling when she looked back at him, then quietly helped himself to some eggs.

In a few minutes he was alone in the hall, scarfing the eggs down quickly so he could get to the chamber and out of from under Dumbledore's crooked nose as soon as possible.

Stealing one last slice of toast from the nearest rack he swept out of the hall, pirouetting around Argus Filch, who mumbled tetchily at him, and levitated his trunk again. The caretaker watched him ambivalently. His attitude was a little improved, though still far from perfect, now he no longer remembered the torment of being the only one without magic in his family.

Mrs Norris' stare, however, was every bit as malignant as before, and she watched Harry walk away up to the second floor with her dull, yellow eyes, licking at her paw in a manner that was somehow menacing.

Myrtle was hovering over the entrance, floating to and for in front of the sinks over a dry floor. She seemed strangely more translucent than normal. The usual, pearly aspect of her appearance had faded to little more than a faint outline, as if her figure was formed from heat haze.

'Are you ok?' Harry asked carefully, aware Myrtle had a tendency to fly off the handle when asked certain questions.

'I'm fading,' she whispered, sounding horribly distant. Her voice echoed from another place.

'What does that mean?' Harry knew little about ghosts, but fading sounded oddly final the way Myrtle had said it. He'd never considered anything more final than dying and becoming a ghost.

'I don't know,' the ghost murmured, floating over to him and sweeping her hand through his face. Harry felt only the faintest hint of cold from her fingers. 'I'm scared,' her voice trembled. 'I haven't been afraid in fifty years.'

'Maybe you're moving on?' Harry suggested as optimistically as he could.

'Maybe,' Myrtle sank down level with him. 'I don't feel attached to the bathroom anymore. I didn't even know you were here until you spoke. I can't feel it anymore.'

The horrible thought struck Harry that maybe Myrtle wasn't attached to the bathroom so much as the room where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was. A room that he was on the verge of changing.

Could Myrtle somehow know her connection with the entrance is about to change?

It seemed too convenient to be a coincidence.

'I can't see,' the girl gasped, horrified. 'I can't see anything.'

Harry snapped his head up, searching the air for the ever-fainter form of Myrtle. He found nothing, not even when he swept his hand through the air in search of that unpleasant cold sensation. Myrtle was gone.

'Open,' he hissed, still a little in shock. He'd never considered the possibility of something happening to a ghost. Even the stare of the basilisk did no more than petrify them, and now, for a reason he felt horrible sure was his fault, Myrtle had faded.

He drifted slowly down the stairs into the chamber, listening to the echo of footsteps across the main chamber, and justifying his actions to himself. If it was his fault, as he was increasingly certain it might be, then there was nothing that he could have done even if he had known. Voldemort could not be allowed entrance into the Chamber of Secrets and Hogwarts, not under any circumstances.

Sorry Myrtle, he apologised, just in case her fading was his fault.

'I'm back,' he announced, opening the door to the study and waiting for the bridge to rise out of the pool.

'So you are,' Salazar agreed quietly. The snake that normally encircled his shoulders was tightly wrapped around his chest, its head tucked against Slytherin's cheek. 'I have a story for you.'

Harry settled himself down in front of the desk, depositing his trunk in the corner and shifting the piles of books apart so he could clearly see the portrait. 'What's it about?' He inquired, intrigued by the painting's sorrowful tone.

'There are several variations,' Salazar began, 'but they all start with a witch and her younger brother. The witch, whose name has been lost to history, all but raised her younger brother after their parents died. She turned out to be quite a gifted witch, and, once her brother was old enough to remain at home alone, travelled the country crafting wands and other objects for the wealthy. Eventually she was asked to create an artefact of incredible power, a mirror that would create a perfect, permanent copy of any object it reflected.'

'That sounds like something that should not have been made so lightly,' Harry commented.

'Godric would agree, and, now I have learnt better, so do I,' Slytherin replied. 'It took the witch many attempts to craft the mirror, working in secret so as not to advertise her project, but when she was successful she left her brother behind and went to present it to the wizard who had commissioned it. This wizard was very pleased with her creation, but, fearing she might create another for another ordered her killed, and the witch was executed.'

'What happened to her brother?'

'That is the true story,' Salazar smiled faintly. 'He grew up knowing what became of his sister and determined to have his revenge and find a way to bring her back.'

'But she was dead,' Harry remarked, 'how could she be brought back?'

'Many things that were once considered impossible have become possible though magic,' Slytherin said sagely. 'He planned and studied for decades, for the wizard with the mirror had used it to become very powerful, marrying, having and raising his children, but never forgetting his goal. The younger brother went on to craft a wand to take his revenge, a wand that would be more powerful than anything any other wielded. It was rumoured that he was so bent on his revenge that he invoked the power of death itself to craft it, trading his own soul in return for it.'

'That sounds unbelievable,' Harry decided sceptically.

'I suspect he just crafted a very powerful wand,' Salazar agreed, 'but nonetheless he was not satisfied, because one wand against all the power of the wizard's followers would not be enough. He went further, crafting a cloak to let him sneak into the wizard's castle undetected, a cloak that was supposed to be powerful enough to hide him completely.'

Harry threw a glance at the folded, silvery surface of his own invisibility cloak.

'I see you have guessed at some of the relevance of this story,' Salazar smiled proudly. 'I knew you would. The younger brother slipped into the castle under his cloak, killed the wizard, destroyed the mirror his sister made so that it might never be used again, and left, but his desire to see her again had only grown over the years and his vengeance was not enough. At the advice of his wife and children he created a stone, one with the power to show him the dead, so that he could prove his quest was not impossible. It showed him his sister, drawing her from whatever comes after death, but her existence was not true enough and, determined to bring her back in full, he created one last artefact.'

'Why are you telling me this story?' Harry asked, a sudden feeling of foreboding striking him.

'You'll understand soon,' Slytherin assured him. 'The last thing he made was a gate, a veiled archway into the realm of death itself that he intended to enter and return from with his sister. The younger brother left the first three things he had made in the hands of his three children, the wand to the eldest, the cloak to his youngest, and the stone to the middle child, who had lost his daughter to disease, then went to find his sister. His family waited, they waited for many years, his wife died, but their father never returned.'

'Is this a warning?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'I do not intend to go chasing after the dead.'

'You have nobody to chase yet,' Salazar chastised him. 'This story was a myth when I lived, but Godric died trying to recover and destroy a wand that fitted its description for an old wizard by the name of Ignatius Peverell. He claimed the wand was an heirloom that had been stolen from him, but Godric believed the myth and wanted to remove such a dangerous weapon from the world. A decade or so later my wife died, and I came across his notes on the three artefacts, deciding, against logic, to search for the stone that might let me see my wife once more. I never found it, and the Peverell's denied its existence. My daughter never believed them.'

'And the cloak?' Harry asked, running his fingers across the material of his own.

'I suspect that the Peverell family kept the artefacts for themselves, encouraging the belief of myths and legends to conceal the truth of their existence. I have heard others, one even claims that the three brothers, the sons of the wizard who went through the gate, earned them from Death himself. Your cloak fits the description of the artefact from legend, and, should I be correct, will bear the symbol of the Peverell family upon it.'

Harry unfolded the cloak, running his eyes carefully over each inch. 'What am I looking for?'

'According to the myth the artefacts became talismans of the younger brother's family and they adopted their symbol as their own. In my day the Peverell family had an odd crest, one quite unlike any other I have seen. It was a triangle, divided in half by a line, and encasing a circle.'

'A triangular marking like this?' Harry held up the cloak, pointing to the barely visible symbol that might, with artistic interpretation, have once been a triangle like those he had seen on the graves in Godric's Hollow.

The veil, he realised, recalling where else he had seen that marking.

'It's true,' he voiced aloud. 'I've seen the doorway, it's in the Department of Mysteries.'

'Then it is likely the other artefacts exist too. I was sure, but never quite certain.'

'Why are you telling me about them now?' Harry demanded. 'You told me I would have to wait to learn about it.'

'Because it is time to reseal the Chamber of Secrets,' Salazar told him firmly.

'You think I will need one of the artefacts to seal it?'

'No,' Slytherin shook his head sadly, 'but you might desire one after we have, and it is dangerous to devote yourself to obtaining them.'

Harry frowned, not understanding at all.

'How do I seal it?' He asked, deciding eventually that it might be easier to try and figure out Salazar's cryptic story another time.

'I tied the blood wards here into my bloodline, and thus could use parseltongue and the sacrifice that had already been made for my family.' The painting sighed, wrinkling its brown, and gently stroked the blunt head of the serpent against his cheek. 'You have no such sacrifice to tie the wards too.'

'Can I not use my mother's?' Harry inquired.

'No,' Salazar shook his head. 'I have spent a long time considering this, it was necessary the moment Voldemort returned, and I have decided what has to happen. You are me heir now. If there are other descendants among your generations they have not found me, so we will reseal the chamber so that its wards are tied to those of your blood, and your descent. Your mother's sacrifice was intended only for you, not your descendants.'

'So how much blood?' Harry grinned nervously, all too aware that he had no blood-replenishing potions left.

'A single drop will be enough,' Slytherin answered slowly.

The grin slipped from Harry's face.

'I have to sacrifice something more valuable than just my blood and magic,' he realised, paling.

'Something almost invaluable,' Salazar told him sadly. 'It is the only way, no ordinary wards will suffice.'

'The cloak,' Harry exclaimed hopefully, 'that's why you told me the story, so I would understand how valuable the artefact is and can sacrifice it.'

'I wish it were so,' Salazar sighed, 'but your cloak, while very useful, is not invaluable. What do you have that is so dear to you that you might not survive without it.'

Fleur.

'No.' Harry's heart froze. 'I won't.'

'Not her,' Salazar assured him gently guessing at the source of his distress, 'I would never ask you to do that. Never. The answer is staring you in the face, Harry.' The painting peered down at him regretfully. 'I am not, as you once so tactfully told me, Salazar Slytherin, just an imprint of him on canvas. No lives need be wasted when I will suffice.'

'But I need you,' Harry murmured disbelievingly.

'I am here to assist my descendants, my family,' Slytherin said simply, 'there is no better choice than me.'

'I won't ever be able to speak to you again,' Harry whispered. The painting was a sarcastic, snide character, but, for all his faults, he cared, and Harry had grown used to having him care. That said nothing of how useful his knowledge and wisdom was.

'I have taught you as much I can before the risk of leaving the chamber unsealed grew too great. You will survive without me, and,' Salazar's smile returned, 'perhaps you might succeed where I failed and find the stone. You might have to tell my shade what has transpired, but I know myself, I will stand by my heir even when called from beyond the threshold of death.'

'You said it was too dangerous to search for one?'

'I said it was dangerous to devote yourself to finding one,' Salazar corrected. 'Look for it, but expect to be disappointed, give up if you find yourself sacrificing other things for your hunt, do not let the search consume you as it did me.'

'I'll look for it,' Harry decided.

And I'll find it, he decided to himself. The Peverell's must have been a famous family. It cannot be hard to discover what became of them and whomever has the stone now will lose it to me, one way or another I will have it.

'You have runes to draw,' Salazar reminded him unaware of Harry's resolution, 'the runes for the wards are inscribed in the patterns of the snakes' scales in the main chamber and across the ceiling, you need only go over them with your own magic.'

'Shall I carry you outside?' Harry offered.

'Just levitate me out,' the painting smirked.

'Wingardium leviosa,' Harry intoned, both amused and annoyed. The painting lifted off the wall, and floated gently after him across the bridge.

'There was never an anti-levitation charm was there,' Harry sighed.

'No,' the portrait smirked, 'but if it makes you feel better Tom never realised either and he was carrying me around for twice as long as you were.'

'I wouldn't have minded carrying you about a little longer,' Harry told him bitterly, the humour fading the moment his thought returned to what he had to do.

'The things that are necessary are not always easy,' Salazar comforted him. 'Besides,' he continued quietly, 'I have lingered in this chamber for long enough alone, and my friends have left no imprints of themselves to keep me company.'

Harry set him down at the centre of the chamber, using a sticking charm to keep the frame of the canvas upright, and very slowly and carefully inscribing the outlines of the runes that made up the scales of the serpent effigies.

There were thousands.

Each pillar had more than a hundred glyphs, and, in all the time he spent etching the symbols onto the stone in purple fire, Salazar watched him, smiling so proudly it hurt Harry's heart to look at him.

Eventually he had coated the columns in shimmering patterns of purple fire, the tiny runes all but illegible from where he stood in the centre, and Harry turned his attention to the ceiling, bathing the chamber in an indigo glow.

'You'll need a few extra ones now,' Slytherin told him. Harry already knew. The founder had needed only to use his blood to tie in the sacrifice that had already been made. He would need to make one of his own.

He scanned the lines of twisting, glowing runes that ran up the columns and onto the ceiling, then, at the ceiling's centre etched a few, simple glyphs with a shaking hand.

'Are you sure there is no other way?' He almost begged.

'I am,' Salazar whispered. 'I would not leave you to face Voldemort without me if there were a better option. Your intent must be strong, your desire to ward the chamber must be great enough to drive you to willingly sacrifice something practically invaluable, else the wards will fail.'

'Can I not just intend to sacrifice you?' Harry's voice choked on the last two words.

'It would not be the same,' Salazar reminded him gently, 'you know this.'

'How?' Harry asked, swallowing the lump in his throat, and clenching his jaw to stop the hot, prickling in his eyes.

'Do it quickly,' Salazar advised him softly, 'I will feel no pain regardless, but it will be easier for you if it is done in an instant.'

Weak, pale, yellow flames burst from the tip of his wand to hover in the air between them, guttering and failing. Slytherin's face shifted in slight disappointment at his lack of resolve.

'It is hard, Harry,' he said more firmly, 'but you are my heir, you will survive this and more.'

He needn't have said anything. The flicker of disappointment was enough to shame Harry into action. Salazar was sacrificing himself and he couldn't even bring himself to conjure fiendfyre properly.

It's pathetic, he snarled at himself. Unacceptable. I will see him again once I have the stone.

The flames billowed, flashing from yellow to a white so bright it obscured the purple glow of the runes around them. The fangs of the basilisk closed over the portrait of his ancestor with a sharp hiss, incinerating it in an instant. Harry knew Salazar would have appreciated the shape of the spell. Not giving himself time to think about the loss he extinguished the fire with a violent slash of his wand and drew its tip across the ball of his thumb. Flicking the droplets of blood that welled from the shallow cut up to spatter across the runes on the ceiling he waited, staring hard at his thumb and watching it slowly heal.

The flesh and skin had only crept halfway across the wound when the Chamber of Secrets lurched, trembling as if caught in an earthquake. The runes flared painfully bright, pulsing frenetically, then the light of the glyphs suddenly faded, plunging him into the dark.

He stood there for a long moment, closing his eyes against the gloom and the silence, hoping against hope, that Salazar might have survived, but he knew that the painting could not have. A thin, fragile wall held back his sorrow, catching it in his chest before it could spill out into the room around him.

Picturing the empty hall of his new house he stepped forwards, fleeing the silent chamber and barely noticing the world as it whirled back behind him.

He found Fleur in the next room, sitting on the old sofa, the only piece of furniture in the room. She stared up at him with worry and suddenly there didn't seem to be anything holding the hurt back anymore. Collapsing onto the sofa next to her he let the tears run, flowing hot across his cheeks despite his best attempts not to let them fall. Fleur gently drew his head down into her lap, cradling him softly until he cried himself to sleep in her arms.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

71. Ignorance is Bliss

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter! The last from Harry's fifth year too.

Additionally here's a potentially interesting piece of trivia for those who don't already know. A cadmean victory and a pyrrhic victory are actually subtly different from one another. Thermopylae, for example, was a cadmean victory for Sparta and its allies, but a pyrrhic victory for Persia.

Chapter 71

'Did you sleep well?' Fleur's arms were still around him, his cheek still pressed against her thigh. She had not moved all night save to pull their feet up onto the sofa and conjure a blanket to cover them.

'No,' Harry answered honestly. He had not dreamt of dark things, no nightmares had plagued him, but the restless feeling of loss, and the sensation that something had been stolen away had not faded even when he slept. Harry knew that if he had not had Fleur to wake up to the ache would be considerably worse.

'Will you tell me?' She asked softly, tracing what were doubtlessly deep bruises beneath his eyes. 'Will that help?'

'I don't know,' his mouth was dry, and speaking into her lap muffled his words, 'has it ever helped you?'

'Sometimes,' she reassured him gently, running her fingers through his hair, 'it seems to help Gabrielle when she gets upset.'

'I had to seal the Chamber of Secrets,' Harry told her quietly. 'All of the wards bound to Slytherin's blood had to be altered so that I and those of my bloodline can still enter, but Voldemort can't.'

Fleur didn't understand blood magic and its intricacies, so he wouldn't try to explain the details of why to her, only that it had been necessary, and that it still hurt.

'I had to sacrifice someone invaluable to demonstrate intent strong enough to create such an incredible piece of magic.'

'Someone?' She whispered, horrified. Her hands froze in his hair, and the gentle swell of her chest against shoulder stopped dead.

'Salazar,' Harry mumbled into her leg. 'He said there was no other way.'

'I'm sure that he was right,' Fleur comforted him, breathing again. 'Losing him must have been necessary for him to advise it himself.'

'I needed him,' Harry admitted, reaching over his head to hold her hands in his own. 'Without him I would still be blind, stumbling along the path that Dumbledore intends for me, and now he is gone and I don't know how I will know which way to go.'

'You still have me,' Fleur told him, pulling him upright from her lap and shifting her legs. 'You will always have me.' She kissed him softly on the cheek, turning his head to face her with two, slender fingers.

'It hurts,' Harry responded, pressing his fingers to the point in his chest where the ache was almost tangible.

'You'll get used to it,' she told him not unkindly. 'It is not the same, but when I was younger and my differences to the other girls became apparent they gradually stopped spending time with me. They wanted to do other things now they were no longer children, but I remained… immature. It hurt when they left me to play alone, and for a long time I was very upset over it, but eventually I realised that there was nothing I could do. Time passed, the ache faded and I grew used to how things were.'

Harry had seen how that had affected her. The face Fleur Delacour had first presented to him and still showed most of the rest of the world was apathetic and distant. She sought refuge from others' cruel words in her pride, and cared little what happened to those who had not proved their love for her.

'There is something I can do,' Harry remembered, recalling Salazar's story with an upwelling of hope.

'Harry,' Fleur frowned worriedly, 'if he is gone, then he cannot be brought back.'

'There is a stone,' Harry told her, 'an artefact that can raise an imprint of the dead.'

'I know the story,' Fleur sighed, standing up. 'The three brothers, the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone and Death's Cloak. It is a myth, and we do not have time for you to try and convince me otherwise.'

'My relatives,' Harry recalled, springing to his feet. 'The guards from the Order will be coming today. I have to go now.'

'I am coming,' Fleur decided, leading him into the kitchen, 'and you are eating something first.'

'There isn't time,' Harry banished thoughts of Salazar, 'and if the members of the Order are there then they cannot see you.'

'Why not?' She demanded, tossing her hair indignantly. 'I do not care if they know we are together, in fact,' she tilted her chin defiantly, 'I would prefer it if they did.'

'You would be a target,' Harry gritted. This was a continuation of their old argument. Fleur was proud. She would not consent to hide when she thought she should be standing alongside him, and Harry knew that he would agree were he in her position.

But I promised Gabrielle I would make sure she came back to France.

'I will be under the Fidelius,' she retorted, turning to rummage through cupboards for anything edible and easy, 'safe as can be.'

'And Gabby?' Harry asked. 'What about when Voldemort goes looking for our secret keeper knowing of your link to me. Will your family be safe then?'

Fleur whirled on him, abandoning her search to stare at him angrily. 'He will never reach my sister when she is behind the walls of Beauxbatons,' she answered coolly. 'It would take all his strength to break the wards there, and Voldemort would not dare risk provoking France's enmity while he still struggles in Britain. I would have never even considered Gabrielle as secret keeper if I thought there was any great risk to her at any point.'

'It's not worth risking her or you,' Harry retorted. Her stubbornness was as infuriating as it was inexplicable. Logically he knew he was right. Her presence was an unnecessary risk when the longer they were a secret the safer she was.

'I did not come to Britain to hide, Harry Potter. I will fight, or I may as well return to France.' His stomach twisted at the idea of forcing her away.

Low blow, Fleur.

'This is not fighting,' Harry tried a little desperately. 'Once Dumbledore and the Order are aware of you, then, in all likelihood, Snape and Voldemort will be too.'

'They will find out eventually anyway either when I fight alongside you or sooner,' she shrugged. 'Do you think they will not be looking for you over the summer? We attended the Yule Ball together, you went to great lengths to protect me in the tournament, and it is no secret that I am in Britain for flimsy reasons. My English is already perfect. Someone will see or guess the truth.'

'But they might not,' Harry protested. 'Not yet.'

'Are you ashamed to be seen with me?' Fleur demanded fiercely, changing tack so fast Harry was momentarily disorientated.

'Of course not,' Harry replied fervently, confused why she would even have to ask.

'Then why should I hide?' Fleur asked, more calmly this time. She returned to rummaging through cupboards, eventually passing him a rather flat, battered looking croissant. 'It was under the jam,' she apologised. Harry accepted it gratefully, peeling layers of the pastry off while trying to think of a way to convince her without repeating himself.

'I don't want you to hide-'

'Good,' Fleur interrupted, 'then we should leave once you've finished.' She eyed him proudly, daring him to disagree again.

Harry caved. The rest of his sentence, a plea for her to wait, died on his lips. She wasn't going to take no for an answer and would probably just grab him if he tried to apparate alone anyway.

'Fine,' he sighed. 'I just hope nothing happens to you because of it.'

He did not need to guess what would happen if he lost Fleur. Revenge first, anyone remotely responsible would pay the price for his pain, then he would search for the Resurrection Stone until he found it and saw her again. It would not be a pretty path to walk. Salazar had warned him of it.

'I can take care of myself,' she reminded him pointedly. 'I work within Gringotts, it's one of the best protected places in Britain, and I live here, under the Fidelius Charm. I will be safer than you!'

'That will not stop me worrying,' Harry confessed, hurriedly finishing his croissant. It wasn't the easiest thing to eat wth a dry mouth and he choked several times on the dry flakes of pastry.

'I like that you worry,' Fleur smiled, 'but once the war begins I will be in danger, and you will have to simply accept it. I had to accept it when you went off to the Department of Mysteries, it is unavoidable, even if it seems unbearable.'

'I suppose,' Harry grimaced, stifling another fit of coughing.

'You should transfigure your clothes again,' she instructed, 'the magic is unravelling.'

'Thanks.' Harry redid the transfiguration, restyling the pyjamas he'd altered into plain school robes into more casual, wizard's robes. Apparating in wearing pyjamas would rather ruin any of the drama to his final farewell to the Dursleys.

'Now let's go,' she smirked, 'I want to meet your family. You did get to meet mine a while ago.'

'Well if you get attached to any of them I'm prepared to trade for Gabrielle,' Harry said dryly.

'That bad?' Fleur raised an eyebrow daintily.

'Gabrielle at her most mischievous is a thousand times preferable to any of my relatives,' Harry chuckled, 'let alone all of them together.'

'I can hardly wait,' she decided.

'They loathe magic almost as much as they hate me,' Harry warned. 'Don't expect a warm welcome, and don't listen to anything they say. I've been away long enough for them to forget I can use magic at will now.'

'I'm sure you'll remind them,' Fleur smiled, 'and I do not care what anyone else says about us.'

'Except for Gabby,' Harry reminded her wryly.

'She says completely inappropriate things,' Fleur blushed faintly. 'I told her that we'd, well, you know, and now I can't say anything about you to her without getting suggestive looks and cheeky remarks.'

Harry reluctantly extended an arm for Fleur to hold so that he might apparate her to Privet Drive. She draped his arm across her shoulders rather than hold it, and wrapped her own arm around his waist instead, pressing them tightly together.

'Shall we go? It's time for Harry to fly the nest.'

'Bird references?' Harry raised an eyebrow and looked down at her pointedly. 'You're making bird references about me?'

'Hush,' Fleur admonished, squeezing him lightly around the waist.

Harry laughed, and shifted their weight forwards, apparating them both straight into the back garden of Number Four, Privet Drive.

'Homenum revelio,' Fleur whispered, pulling her wand from her waist. 'Only three people close enough to the house to see us,' she told him.

'Perhaps my intended baby-sitter is not yet here,' Harry grinned. He certainly hoped so. That would be the best possible scenario. Fleur would be happy since she came with him, and he would be happy because nobody knew about her yet. It was safest that way.

'You should get your things first,' Fleur reminded him. She had not stepped away after apparating alongside.

'It might be easier,' Harry agreed.

With a soft snap he apparated them both upstairs to his room.

'You don't have very many things,' Fleur commented, gazing around curiously.

'My relatives are not overly zealous about spending money on me,' Harry shrugged, not particularly desiring to discuss the eleven years of emptiness that had preceded his escape to another world.

'So I can see.' Fleur's tone was icy. She had connected the dots on her own. It did not surprise him, she was the first to see how he disliked being in the proximity of others, and the first to really understand him. Fleur could not have done that without having some idea of how he had been treated.

Harry drew his wand, levitating neat piles of muggle clothes onto the bed. It was only when he realised that there was nothing else in the room that he was at all attached to did he realise just how little he cared for this place and his relatives. Eleven years of living and he was leaving with a handful of clothes he had bought himself last summer.

'Are we going downstairs?' Fleur asked. Her tone was deliberately even and enough to concern Harry.

'Will you promise not to do anything drastic?'

'What are you going to do to them?' Fleur countered.

'I'm going to give them the same safety and security from the magical world as they gave me,' Harry smirked cruelly.

She regarded him carefully, leaning her head to one side to study his expression, then a small, satisfied smile crept onto her lips and she nodded. 'I promise.'

He shrunk the clothes, sweeping them off the bed into a plastic bag and took one last look around.

I will not miss one thing about this place.

The stairs creaked loudly under his feet. The days he spent creeping across the landing and hallway out of fear of his uncle's temper were long passed.

'I think he's back,' Aunt Petunia sniffed from the living room.

'I am indeed back,' Harry announced, entering the room with Fleur still on his arm.

The Dursleys were sitting around the television that, though muted, still played the news, showing pictures of unusual weather and inexplicable accidents across the country. The living room hadn't changed in eleven years. Neat, prim and carefully designed to give the impression of a normal suburban family room.

'Well things aren't going to be the same as last summer,' Vernon blustered, but he ground to a halt upon catching sight of Fleur.

'Who is this?' Petunia asked, oddly politely. Harry bit back a sneer. No doubt his aunt would change her tune once she was sure that Fleur was a witch and not nice, normal decent folk.

'Fleur Delacour,' the silver-haired witch introduced herself. Her tone left the Dursleys under no illusions as to what she thought of them. 'I am with Harry.'

'With Harry?' Dudley was the only one with confidence to ask the question Fleur had deliberately left hanging, though Harry suspected it might be because he was the only one in the room stupid enough to need to ask it in the first place.

'When a boy and a girl love each other very much,' Harry began, adopting a babyish voice that sounded uncomfortably like Bellatrix Lestrange, 'they become… partners.' Girlfriend still seemed too childish a word for what Fleur was to him.

'You're married?' Petunia gasped, her gimlet eyes searching Fleur's fingers for a ring. That had not been the response he had been expecting, and he flushed slightly at the idea. Fleur chuckled softly next to him, displaying her unadorned hands for all to see.

'I'm fifteen,' Harry said dryly, recovering his composure.

'Lily married young,' Petunia defended, 'your kind have all sorts of strange ways.'

'Why're you going out with Harry?' Dudley demanded. 'You're, like, a model.'

'You think I'm attractive?' Fleur asked, with deceptive innocence.

'Yeah,' Dudley gaped.

Fleur relinquished Harry's arm, shifting her facial structure suddenly to stare down at his relatives with huge, dark avian eyes and a cruel, hooked beak.

'How about now?' She hissed, amused by Dudley's look of pure terror.

Vernon swore loudly rocking back in his chair, and Petunia let out an odd little shriek, covering her mouth with both hands. Dudley, uncharacteristically wise for once, said nothing.

'That's it,' his uncle shouted, lumbering to his feet and turning an interesting shade of puce. 'I won't have this anymore.'

'Oh?' Harry regarded him curiously. 'What do you intend to do, Uncle Vernon?'

'I'll- I'll,' the bluster faded very swiftly, deflating when Petunia shot him a warning glare.

'It's nice to meet you, Fleur,' she simpered, somehow conveying a crisp, veneer of politeness despite her strained expression.

'A pleasure,' the witch smirked playfully, allowing her face to return to its usual form and taking Harry's hand again. 'However brief a meeting it will be.'

'You're not staying?' Dudley looked a little disappointed, and Harry took a deep breath to control the urge to do something horrible to him for staring at Fleur like he was. As a muggle Dudley had no feeling for magic, so her allure had no affect upon him, but he stared just like those who were under its thrall.

'I came back to say goodbye,' Harry grinned. 'I'm leaving.' He raised his hands when his aunt opened mouth. 'I know it's sooner than you expected, and I'm sure you'll all miss me terribly, but we've got our own house now and I promised Albus Dumbledore I would stay where I was safest.'

It took a moment for it to sink in.

Vernon bristled at the sarcasm, but drew himself up in triumph when the idea that Harry would be gone finally reached his brain.

'But the protections,' Petunia burst out shrilly, surprising Harry with her knowledge. 'If you're gone then there's nothing keeping us safe from your kind.' Vernon gaped at his wife, paling from puce to white. Dudley just looked confused, squinting between his parents, Harry and Fleur.

'Don't fret, Aunt Petunia,' Harry assured her with a smile. 'I'm going to make sure you're every bit as prepared for the magical world as I was.'

Vernon exhaled loudly with relief and Dudley's face brightened upon hearing his father's sigh, but Petunia, ever the sharper of the two, shivered with fright.

'What are you going to do?' She quavered.

'You know what they say, Aunt Petunia,' Harry grinned, 'ignorance is bliss.'

'Obliviate,' he smirked, erasing every memory of his existence from first his uncle, then his cousin and watching with some amusement as they collapsed heavily, one after the other, onto the floor.

'What did you do?' Petunia demanded, backing away from him and shaking the shoulders of her husband who had passed out.

'I modified their memories,' Harry answered honestly. 'They have no memory of me, or anyone connected to me, and in a moment neither will you.'

'What about Lily?' Petunia whimpered. 'Will I still remember my little sister?'

'No.' Harry gazed down at her, unconcerned. 'You'll never even know you had one.'

'But our childhood together, all the happy times I have from before she left me, they'd be gone.' Petunia looked genuinely distraught, the careful, precise lines of her eyeshadow and mascara smeared by sudden tears. 'I loved my perfect, baby sister.'

'It never sounded like it to me,' Harry said, as apathetic to her distress as they had always been to his. 'Obliviate.'

Petunia slumped limply over the top of her spouse.

'What now?' Fleur asked, watching as Harry levitated them back into their usual chairs.

'We walk away,' he answered simply, holstering his wand. 'Dumbledore or someone from the Order will come here when they realise I am gone, and my memory charm may be affected by their enquiry, but I doubt it. I put a great of power into it.'

'And what if Voldemort comes?'

'Then they have every protection from him that they afforded me,' Harry stated coldly, 'and I suspect he won't bother saying more than a very specific couple of words to mere muggles.'

He didn't care what happened to his relatives. Looking at them lying limply in their chairs brought no feeling of pity or satisfaction. It had been a long time since he had deigned them worthy of hating. Fleur didn't seem overly concerned by his response either, if anything she looked like she wanted to take a pound of flesh for herself before they left.

'Good,' she decided. 'They are as unaware of the threat to them as you were when they denied you the knowledge of your family,' her face shifted slightly, 'and I hope they are not so lucky as you have been.'

'I should thank them really,' Harry smiled, kissing Fleur gently on the nose.

'Why?' She demanded, looking at him as if he had just volunteered to be permanently transferred to the same ward as Gilderoy Lockhart in St Mungo's.

'If they had not raised me like they had I might have not been fortunate enough to end up with you,' Harry explained, wrapping his arms around her in preparation to apparate as she preferred.

'You would have loved me anyway,' Fleur disagreed softly, 'I am perfect for you, no?'

'In every way,' Harry agreed, kissing her more ardently.

Fleur apparated them straight back to their home, catching Harry by surprise and spilling them onto the floor of the empty hall when he subsequently lost his balance.

'You did that deliberately,' he accused, narrowing an eye up at her as she cheerfully straddled him.

'Of course,' she smirked, sliding off him teasingly. 'Shall I show you the house?'

'Is there anything to see?' Harry asked.

'I have chosen a bedroom,' Fleur told him as he rose to his feet, rubbing his back where he had hit the floor, 'but apart from that, the old sofa, and the kitchen nothing has been decided and all the rooms are empty.'

'And outside?'

'We have a lot of land,' Fleur laughed softly, 'I did not realise when I first looked at the house how much of the surroundings belong to us.'

'The Meadow,' Harry nodded.

'Meadows, actually,' Fleur corrected. 'There are three. The one behind the house, then two more the other side of the copse of elm trees and either side of the stream.'

'We need to buy some furniture,' Harry remarked, peering into the three, unused rooms on the ground floor. They were all empty save for the thick, dark, old wooden beams that held the ceiling up.

'Furniture shopping,' Fleur looked rather excited at the prospect. Harry groaned. 'It's probably not a good idea to try and buy everything at once,' she decided, 'so we'll just get the essentials. A table and some chairs for the kitchen would be a good start.'

'I can probably convince Sirius to give us some of the things from where he's staying,' Harry suggested, slightly uncomfortable with the idea of creating a home with Fleur. 'I imagine, knowing his family, that it's all quite expensive and stylish, at least once it's been cleaned,' Harry added.

'We shall buy our own,' Fleur asserted, pausing a few steps from him to put an end to that idea before he got attached to it. 'Our home will not be filled with the product of begging.' The uneasiness grew a little with our home. It sounded awfully committed. The sort of step Harry would expect to take in a decade's time, not when he was still in school.

'I wish we'd bought a smaller house,' Harry complained, swallowing the feeling as best he could for the time being. 'It will take all summer to fill the rooms, and that's just the downstairs.'

'If you are hoping for me to tell you that the upstairs is better furnished you will be disappointed,' Fleur laughed. 'I will buy a piece from Diagon Alley whenever I can and bring it back, slowly we will have a home rather than a house.'

'So you don't want me to come with you?' Harry inquired cautiously. He sort of hoped she didn't. It would less permanent if they didn't go together.

'Our first trip will be together,' Fleur smirked, 'we need to decide on a few things before I start buying alone, decisions of decor and the like.'

'That sounds awfully,' he searched for the right word, 'mature.'

Fleur stared at him for a long moment, her nose wrinkled in dainty disappointment, then she smiled softly and shook her head. 'I forget sometimes that you are younger.'

Have I disappointed her?

'Is it a bad thing?' His voice wavered. 'I don't want to live with my relatives, I want to be here with you, but this just seems…' he trailed off at her light laughter, confused.

'It is too early in our lives for this,' she agreed, crossing the few steps between them, to embrace him warmly. 'It is not a bad a thing to be unsure,' she kissed him again, gently on the cheek, 'anyone would be. I am. This is only temporary,' she reminded him, 'we're not living here together permanently. The British weather is terrible,' she finished lightly, 'and I do not want to spend the rest of my life in the rain.'

Harry was both relieved and a little disappointed that Fleur did not want to spend the rest of her life living here with him. Relieved because he was only fifteen, and that was simply far too young to make such a huge decision. Disappointed because maybe, in the not too distant future, he might want to make the choice that would lead him here. A resolution that might eventually see him standing with Fleur, holding the silver-haired, green-eyed girl from the mirror.

He shivered, suddenly cold, and clutched her slightly closer, seized by an irrational desire to make sure she never left his side, so the Mirror of Erised's promising vision of a family might eventually be truth.

'What's wrong?' Fleur murmured, feeling him tense.

'I am torn,' he admitted. 'Part of me wants nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you, but the other…'

'The other?'

'It urges me to run away screaming I'm too young,' Harry smiled.

'I am the same,' Fleur responded simply, switching to french to better convey her feelings without misconception. 'You are very mature for someone who is nearly sixteen, and I am fairly mature for someone who is eighteen, we are both of us too young to be living together like this.'

'You're closer to nineteen,' Harry reminded her. Fleur's birthday was the third day of October, so for a couple of months at the end of every summer their ages were only two years apart and Harry felt less like a child when the age gap was mentioned.

'Nineteen is not much older than eighteen,' Fleur shrugged. 'Don't worry about it. This is not the same thing, think of it as practise,' she laughed softly again. 'We have plenty of time to get used to the idea and wait until we are both ready.'

It sounded, despite Fleur's effort to remain casual, that she had already made up her mind. They might be too young now to really take such a serious step, but, in the future, she expected them to make it, and every implied step that followed. A rush of warmth followed the realisation that in essence she had decided to stay with him.

'Thank you,' he whispered. Fleur didn't reply, but her arms tightened around him, and he felt her heart speed up against his chest.

AN: Please read and review, thank you to everyone does, especially those of you who take the time to review each and every chapter. Hopefully this chapter is less depressing than the last!

72. The Unyielding Shield

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 72 and the beginning of the next year, though there will be chapters all through the summer this time. I'm reliably informed that should you google the phrase I've adopted as a title for this story my fanfiction now appears above the Wikipedia page, which is quite cool and a little flattering even if "A Cadmean Victory" isn't the most frequently searched phrase on Wikipedia.

Chapter 72

It was cold. It was wet. Her feet and legs were drenched from walking through the grass of the meadows before the dew had dried, and Fleur was rather coming to regret accompanying Harry on his exploration of the meadows past the elm trees.

He seemed unaffected by the discomfort, despite his obviously soaked clothing, leading her along the bank of the small stream by the hand with a cheerful smile.

'That is as far as it goes?' He asked, raising their linked hands to point at the edge of the woods.

'Yes,' Fleur nodded, his smile drew her mind away from thoughts of freezing feet and damp hair.

'It's quite a lot of meadow,' he grinned, looking back to the distant elm trees and their house. The building was at least a thousand metres away, the pale, white-washed stone just visible though the leaves.

'More wet grass than I would ever care to walk through,' Fleur replied archly. Harry squeezed her fingers gently. 'At least we can apparate back,' she smiled, looking down at her grass-stained robes.

'I was going to suggest creating wards,' Harry mentioned lightly.

'Across the whole area?' Fleur considered the idea. She could probably manage it, provided he only meant basic wards to prevent the more obvious methods of access or detection.

'Of course,' Harry said, 'it is all ours.'

'I can do it,' Fleur decided, resigning herself to being very tired for the rest of the day. 'If you watch you might learn something new.'

'I thought you did not like being watched?' Harry teased, eying her playfully.

'I make an exception for you,' Fleur smirked, angling herself suggestively and watching the desire smoulder briefly in Harry's eyes before he closed them and kissed her. His lips met hers just hard enough to steal her breath away.

'What will you show me?' He asked, pulling away.

'Warding,' Fleur answered. 'In its most common form.'

'Oh?' He looked curious. She knew that he had little knowledge of wards beyond the fraction she had shown him, and the little he had learned from his ancestor's painting to produce blood magic bound protections. Fleur suspected that the blood magic he had used was very different to the warding she had understood.

'We don't want any unexpected visitors,' she mused, 'so anti-apparition wards and anti-portkey wards, are a must, and then we'll need actual protections as well.'

'Anything I can help with?' Harry inquired.

'Not unless you've managed to learn a great deal about enchanting and warding in the last few months?'

'I can't say that I have,' Harry conceded, his eyes sparkling with amusement. 'I suppose I shall just have to watch you.'

'Are you complaining?' Fleur countered wryly.

'Not even a little bit,' Harry grinned, stepping back to openly look her up and down. A slight heat rose to her cheeks at his obvious appraisal, embarrassed, despite knowing what wizards thought of her, that he thought she was attractive. She'd known already, of course, he'd let it slip for the first time in the Room of Requirement, but it was pleasing to hear it.

Very pleasing, Fleur's toes curled despite the damp.

Drawing her wand she strode several paces further towards the edge of their meadow, stopping only a few paces from the edge of the trees.

'Fianto Duri,' she murmured, casting the strongest protective enchantment she knew. Harry watched, from a safe distance she noted, as she thrust her wand into the air, unleashing a crackling, glowing beam of bright light into the sky.

The torrent of magic rose almost a hundred feet into the air before tendrils spread away from its tip like the petals of some vast flower. They arced upwards, feeding the spreading, translucent barrier that grew above their heads.

'That's quite impressive,' Harry grinned.

'The Unyielding Shield Charm, but I'll have to do it again on the other side,' Fleur told him, watching the barrier's expanding edge begin to slow just before it reached the copse of elm trees.

'Will you be ok?'

'I'll be fine,' she assured him. 'Very tired, especially after adding the other enchantments, but fine.'

Very tired was an understatement. The piece of magic she had used would take an incredibly powerful piece of magic to break. It was the sort of enchantment that would stop squads of aurors in their tracks, and consequently the drain on her magic was vast. Fleur doubted that she could cast it three times without passing out or dying from exhaustion.

Fortunately I only have to cast it twice.

'Shall I apparate you across?' Harry offered, taking her hand again.

'Not yet,' Fleur shook her head. 'I'll do the other wards while I'm here.'

'Will you tell me how they work?'

'That's a good idea,' Fleur agreed. If nothing else it meant that next time he could do the simple ones and save her having to do them on top of casting Fianto Duri.

She twirled her wand thoughtfully, its polished surface reflecting the towering column of light above them. Were the location not under the Fidelius half of Britain might have seen it.

'Anti-apparation wards are easy enough,' Fleur told him. 'Do you know what apparition is?'

'Probably not in enough detail to understand your explanation of the ward,' Harry confessed. He was wearing the same attentive smile he always wore when listening to her talk, whether she was explaining something or speaking about the most insignificant events.

'Madame Maxime,' Fleur began, pondering the best way to phrase things, 'told me that apparition was like travelling from one edge of a piece of paper to the other by magically folding up all the paper in between until the distance between the two edges was single step.'

'Salazar told me that it was like spinning the distance past me as I stepped,' Harry mused.

'Perhaps there are different ways to apparate,' Fleur shrugged, 'but both methods involve using magic to manipulate the space in between the beginning and end of the journey.'

'So how can you prevent that?' Harry inquired.

'The ward I am about to cast prevents any manipulation of space or distance around its edge. Nobody can apparate across the border because of it.'

'That's quite simple,' Harry smiled.

'It is one of the most basic wards,' Fleur agreed, flicking her wand gently. A brief shimmer fell where she had placed the ward, but it quickly faded leaving the air clear. 'It can be overpowered by compressing the space either side of it until the ward itself covers so little space it is ineffective, but that is no easy feat and beyond most wizards or witches.'

'Voldemort did that,' Harry told her absently. 'He broke the anti-apparition wards over the Ministry.'

'He is a powerful wizard,' Fleur nodded, 'these wards, even my Fianti Duri, will not keep a wizard like him out if he really wanted to get in, but I'm sure it will tire even Voldemort.'

'Could you break through?' Harry asked.

Fleur considered it. She had several advantages over most, her magic was soft, more refined and suited to such subtle manipulations of magic. The anti-apparition ward would not bar her progress, but her first and strongest protection would likely cost her dearly to overpower.

'Yes,' she answered, 'but I would be tired enough to be at a serious disadvantage afterwards.' Fleur flipped her hair back over her shoulder and out of the way. 'Now I shall create anti-portkey wards, they are only a little more complex than anti-apparition wards.'

'How do they work?' Harry asked eagerly.

'If you imagine the same piece of paper as before then instead of folding it many times, the portkey bends the paper so that the points are next to each other on opposite sides of the paper. It then pokes a small, temporary hole the surface of the paper to join the points, and that is what the user travels through.'

It took Harry a little longer to grasp the concept of portkeys than apparition, and Fleur felt a touch of pride that there was still something she was better than him at. He had surpassed her so quickly in so many schools of magic that she had begun to feel slightly useless. How could she ever be considered his equal when she hid away, knew less, and did less than Harry?

'So how can you prevent that?' He wondered aloud. 'You can't create a boundary like with apparition.'

'It takes a bit more magic,' Fleur nodded, raising her wand that now hummed with turquoise light. 'It is like making the paper tough so the hole cannot be made, the more magic, the harder it is for the portkey to make the hole.'

There was a brief flash of turquoise and for a few seconds everything had an odd, cyan tint to it, then the colour dispelled and Fleur exhaled shakily, glad Harry was here to help. She was likely to collapse after she cast the Unyielding Shield Charm again.

'Apparate me?' She asked coyly, favouring him with a tired smirk.

'Of course,' Harry agreed easily. He had never let go of her hand all the while she had been talking and casting.

The world spun dizzyingly back past them and, now that she was looking for it, she noticed the differences between how they both apparated. If she had to guess she would say that Harry whirled the world to meet him, compressing his destination to him for an instant whereas she, and every other wizard to witch she knew, crumpled the points together.

Something to study when I have the time, she decided.

They alighted on the far side of the elm trees in line with the outermost part of their house. Fleur almost fell, her numb toes unable to preserve her balance as she swayed, but Harry caught her and guided her to lean against his chest instead.

'You will have to take me back to the house after this,' Fleur warned him. 'I may not even be able to stay awake.'

'Do you want me to cast it?' Harry offered, glancing up at the pillar of white energy that rose over the trees behind them.

'I do not have time to teach you it,' Fleur disagreed gently. 'The protection will be better when completely cast from my own magic. The two halves will be more compatible. Besides,' she pulled herself upright to stand unaided, 'I am better at wards than you are and this is my part to play.'

Harry looked down at her fondly, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth as he inclined his head in acceptance. His accord did not stop him from stepping back next to her and wrapping his arms around her waist abdomen.

'In case you fall,' he murmured into her hair.

'Fianto Duri,' she intoned, thrusting her wand skywards once more.

A second torrent of magic erupted from the tip of her wand, crackling loudly as it ascended towards the sun and unfolded to complete the barrier over their home.

'It is done,' she breathed, replacing her wand and sagging back against Harry's chest. The translucent shield stretched all the way across the Meadow, its shimmer eventually fading as the bright columns fed their way into it and vanished.

'Back to the house with you,' Harry decided, gently lifting her off her feet and apparating them inside immediately.

He laid her down carefully on the sofa then disappeared into the kitchen. Fleur listened, closing her eyes to rest them, as he searched his way through still unfamiliar cupboards and caught the distinct clink of cutlery on china.

Harry returned a moment later carrying a piece of the religeuse Fleur had bought on a small plate. Somehow he had known just how hungry she was, and just how much she wanted something sweet.

'Can you sit up?' Harry asked lightly, 'or shall I feed you?'

Fleur was very tempted to tell him that he should feed her, her stomach squirmed pleasantly at the image, but for her pride rebelled and she hauled herself upright. Harry could playfully feed her when she was less tired and more appreciative.

She took the proffered plate, stealing the raspberry off the top and dipping it into the cream that overflowed from the sides of the dessert.

'Thank you,' she smiled.

He took a seat beside her, slipping an arm around her waist.

'We should have warned Sirius about the wards,' he said after a short while, he's likely to come soon now that I've openly flouted Dumbledore's advice.

'He'll be fine,' Fleur smirked, taking another mouthful, letting the sugar melt on her tongue. 'Once he's bounced off he'll know to floo here, or apparate into the square and walk to our edge of the village.'

'I suppose it will be funny,' Harry grinned at her. His eyes strayed to her dessert, obviously contemplating stealing some of it.

'Don't you dare,' Fleur warned, tilting the plate away from him. 'Ask Gabby what happens when people steal my sweets.'

'Foot stamping,' Harry guessed, a teasing glint in his eyes, 'or maybe just a scorching.' The fingers of the hand not around her slid over her legs towards the plate.

'You don't want to find out,' she said, placing her free hand over his. 'This is mine.'

'You're so sharing and generous,' he laughed, giving up.

'Here,' she relented, offering him the raspberry she had set aside.

'It's yours really,' he told her softly, directing her fingers back to her own mouth. 'I already ate all the others anyway.'

'What?!' Fleur demanded. There had been enough to last her the rest of the week and she had been looking forward to them since she bought them. Harry burst into laughter and she realised immediately that he had not been serious.

'I wouldn't dare,' he admitted, still laughing. 'You haven't looked so angry with me since I pretended to have that contract with Katie.'

'They are crimes of equal measure and similar punishment,' Fleur responded archly. She still hadn't really got an appropriate level of vengeance for that little heart-stopping escapade, even if he had intended it as a joke.

'Oh?' Harry eyed her warily.

'Very grave transgressions,' Fleur continued, wiping cream from the corner of her mouth and licking it off her forefinger. Harry watched her in helpless fascination and she felt quite a thrill from enrapturing him so easily.

'I don't suppose you'd consider pardoning my offences?' Harry dragged his eyes away from her lips with flattering reluctance.

'No,' Fleur smirked, then leant forwards to kiss him softly. If she were not so tired she would have done more, but teasing him like this would count as some retribution for his little marriage contract joke.

A dull, echoing thud rang out, interrupting their moment and Fleur frowned.

'That,' she said, answering Harry's unspoken question, 'is the sound of someone failing to apparate past the wards.'

'Sirius or Gabrielle,' Harry realised.

'Sirius,' Fleur corrected. 'The ward I made will recognise and not oppose the magic of either myself or you and Gabby's magic is similar enough for such a simple design to be unable to distinguish the difference. She can't apparate yet either,' Fleur noted. Teaching Gabrielle to apparate had seemed like a bad idea. She caused enough trouble confined to one place.

'You did not tell me you had made a cleverer ward than what you described,' Harry groused.

'I'll show you how sometime,' Fleur promised, 'but we should let Sirius in, he's probably feeling a little bruised, bouncing of anti-apparition wards can hurt.'

'I know,' Harry grinned.

A sharp, irritated knock came from the door. Sirius didn't sound at all happy about the abrupt nature of his arrival.

'I suppose I should let him in,' Harry sighed, shifting off the sofa in the direction of the door at the sound of a second, terse knock. His reluctance to move away from her was endearing, more than that if she really considered it. Having him next to her made everything else seem unimportant.

The door creaked open.

'Decided to put up some wards did we?' Harry's godfather commented tetchily, growing louder as he grew closer.

'Just this morning, actually,' she heard Harry answer, amused.

'Thanks for the warning,' Sirius grumbled. There was a bright red smear on his upper lip and chin, still wet and glistening under his bent, broken nose.

'Episkey,' Harry grinned, watching the nose straighten with a soft crunch. Sirius winced and blinked hard.

'Thank you,' he said dryly.

'We can't leave you with a crooked nose,' Harry chuckled, 'think of the outcry when the world hears Sirius Black's face has been marred.'

'Witches everywhere will be devastated,' Harry's godfather agreed, completely serious.

'The wanted posters will not be half so attractive,' Fleur added sarcastically, not moving from her spot on the sofa.

'Don't joke, Fleur,' Harry smirked, 'I've had to use magic to stop hundreds of attempts to kiss Sirius.'

'Really?' Fleur asked. Sirius had gone rather pale.

'Oh, yes,' Harry smiled innocently, 'dementors can be such persistent creatures.'

That explains the pale complexion.

'No witches?' Fleur inquired, matching Harry's innocent expression.

'Not even one,' Harry's godfather sighed, recovering his composure. 'I should consider myself fortunate really, my mother is lining up candidate after candidate to continue the most pure bloodline of the Blacks.'

'Your mother is still alive?' Fleur had never heard Harry mention the woman.

'No,' Sirius grinned. 'She's a maddeningly annoying life-size portrait.'

'So she can't actually arrange you a marriage then,' Fleur deduced.

'Not for lack of trying,' Harry smirked.

'You laugh at my misfortune now, Harry,' the dark-haired wizard commented, 'but you're the only other possible heir to the family that my dear mother will consider now you've convinced of the Dark Lord's unworthiness.'

'So?'

'Her attempts to direct the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black might soon be your problem rather than mine.' Fleur sniffed quietly. No portrait would ever be able to control Harry. One day they would be free from everyone who tried to dictate their fate, and she pitied anyone foolish enough to stand in their way.

'Speaking of your mother's painting and it's picturesque placing, how has everyone been?' Harry's question carried the faintest touch of malice.

'You caused panic,' Sirius laughed. 'Your disappearing act was a good prank.'

'Panic?' Fleur set aside her plate. The cake long since gone.

'Oh yes,' Sirius laughed. 'You instigated the largest meeting of the Order of the Phoenix since Voldemort returned. There was outright alarm until Snape promised us that Voldemort knows nothing about this .'

'What did Dumbledore say?' Harry's malice intensified slightly, and Fleur curled her toes angrily at the name of the wizard who would dare presume to throw her Harry's life away.

'He sent a letter to the meeting that expressed grave disappointment in you,' Harry's godfather answered evenly.

'Only a letter?' Fleur voiced her confusion.

'Albus Dumbledore has disappeared somewhere on his own agenda. He only told us that it was very important.'

Off hunting horcruxes, Fleur guessed.

Harry had implied that there must be other anchors when he had explained the situation to her. Of course he had not told her everything. He'd kept the last, most crucial detail to himself and not shared it with her until it was necessary, and even though she knew it was to keep her from hurting his secrecy rankled. Fleur would not allow it to continue.

'Mad-Eye Moody wanted to drag you back to headquarters and imprison you until the summer ended,' Sirius continued drily, 'but Dumbledore assured is that you would have to be returned to your relatives.'

'There's a small snag with that,' Harry pointed out.

'Your memory charm,' Harry's godfather nodded. 'Dumbledore mentioned it in his letter. It will be left as you made it until you're found, then he intends to undo it and return you to your relatives under stricter rules.'

'Rules,' Fleur ground out from between clenched teeth. 'Albus Dumbledore has no authority over Harry save that which Harry gives him.' It occurred to her that Dumbledore had not tried to protect the Dursleys at all. They were just as expendable to him as they were to Harry.

'Try telling him that,' Harry remarked. 'What did the rest of the Order think?'

'The Weasley's were angry,' Sirius sighed. 'I know that you and Ron have drifted apart, but they took your disappearance as irresponsible and were furious. Molly fears your actions will cause more members of the Order to be put in danger.'

'They volunteered to put in danger when they joined,' Harry shrugged. 'The Weasley's are angry because of Arthur's death, they can blame Dumbledore or me, and their choice is obvious.'

Petty, Fleur decided.

Harry was not at fault.

'Insensitive,' Harry's godfather admonished, 'even if it is true.'

'The Weasleys are not the only members, despite their number,' Harry reminded Sirius calmly.

'No,' his godfather nodded. 'Moony panicked, he was on the verge of taking off to hunt for you, and when Moody suggested imprisoning you,' Sirius chuckled, 'we got a glimpse of the wolf within. The others, they all follow Dumbledore blindly, and he has suggested they look for you whenever and wherever they can.'

'Even Snape?' Harry's voice was cool, more than cool. Fleur could sense the icy anger stirring within and place a hand gently on his arm.

'He seemed,' Sirius struggled with himself for a moment, 'impressed. Snivellus is a sneaky sort himself. He probably admires your ability to disappear as much as he envies it.'

'Envy?' Fleur knew only that Snape was an unpleasant man, a potions teacher that loathed Harry and was hated by Harry in turn.

'If Snivelly could disappear and escape both his masters he would,' Sirius explained. A flicker of disagreement crossed Harry's face, and Fleur made careful note of it. He had said nothing in front of Sirius, but he would tell her once his godfather was gone.

'So Dumbledore is off secretly doing something important. Neither Voldemort nor he know where I am, and the Order searches for me fruitlessly instead of fighting.' Harry seemed none too impressed.

'Be careful if you leave the Meadow,' Sirius warned. 'My cousin, Tonks, is adept at tracking down fugitives and is capable of altering her appearance.'

'I'll be careful,' Harry dismissed. Fleur hid a smile. Harry didn't sound like he was all too concerned about being found by anyone except Dumbledore or Voldemort in person.

And why should he, Fleur thought proudly, they are the only two strong enough to challenge him now.

'I need to return,' Sirius decided. 'The Order is at Headquarters more frequently now and my presence will be missed if I'm away long.'

'Bye, Sirius.' Harry wrapped the arm Fleur wasn't holding around his godfather in a brief but strong hug.

'I'll let you know as things change,' Harry's godfather promised, 'but for now the Order is simply trying to combat the rising wave of attacks as best as possible however we can.'

He leant forwards, then smiled ruefully and straightened up. 'I'm going to have to walk past the wards, aren't I?'

'Yes,' Fleur answered. ' Walk to the road, that's far enough to be beyond them.'

'If I break my face again you'll be hated by hundreds of witches,' Sirius warned playfully.

'I'm sure,' Harry grinned. 'Take care,' he added, more seriously.

'You know me,' Sirius grinned back, stepping out into the hall. 'I never do anything rash.'

The door creaked open and shut, closing with a soft thud and Sirius footsteps faded away down the path.

'You have things you wish to share?' Fleur asked pointedly, sure that Harry's godfather was now out of earshot. 'You did not agree with him about Snape.'

'With you?' Harry smiled warmly down at her before taking his seat beside her again. 'Always.'

There was a moment of silence and his expression grew dark, his eyes gleaming cold.

'Snape was the one who passed the prophecy to Voldemort and condemned my parents, he was fond of my mother, and I have little doubt that his true loyalty is really to his quest for revenge rather than either of Dumbledore or Voldemort.' Harry's voice was far colder than she had heard it in a long time, as cold as when he had rebuffed her by the lake after the second task.

'He's not the only one who wants vengeance for what happened, is he?' Fleur realised quietly.

'No,' Harry admitted. The look in his eyes when he glanced up at her was anxious, but determined. 'Snape will suffer what he deserves.'

'Don't let your anger blind you,' Fleur warned, wrapping her arms about him. 'Be careful, be cunning, don't kill him while he might still be useful, and most importantly don't get caught. I will do it myself if you aren't able to avoid suspicion.'

'I can't ask you to do that,' Harry shook his head.

'Severus Snape is nothing to me,' Fleur dismissed. 'Worse than nothing, he is responsible for your hurt. If he dies, by my wand or yours, it will not matter to me in the slightest.' She was not lying. Fleur cared nothing for those that did not care for her, and Harry's happiness meant more to her than the life of one treacherous teacher.

'Thank you,' Harry smiled gently, immediately understanding the unspoken sentiment.

'So what will you be doing while the Order and Voldemort search?' Fleur asked, directing the conversation back to less emotional, but no less important matters. She needed to know what Harry planned, what Harry knew. Fleur wouldn't be able to help him if she didn't, and she certainly wasn't waiting on the sidelines for him to risk everything alone.

'Dumbledore is going after horcruxes,' Harry stated. 'I'd wager almost anything on it. He will not trust me now, but he will try to get me to trust him. If he knows about the other horcruxes then it's worth risking his influence and close proximity after the summer.'

'And during it?' Fleur pressed. He had not yet answered her question.

'I wish to leave Hogwarts as soon as possible,' Harry told her. 'I'll study to take my NEWTs early, this winter if I can, and do whatever research of my own about the horcruxes I can manage. Anything I can do make myself stronger and more ready.'

'There were a lot of pronouns in that sentence that should have been we,' Fleur commented firmly. Harry gave her a wry smile, softly kissing the hand she had placed on his arm. 'The war is only just beginning, Harry, and both sides want you to die. You can't afford to keep the few you can implicitly trust away from it.'

'I won't. We will survive this,' Harry promised. 'We'll be free of Dumbledore and Voldemort both.'

'and free of this miserable weather,' Fleur agreed, frowning at the British Summer. Her feet were still cold.

AN: Please read and review. Thanks to everyone who does! I haven't written a Fleur chapter in a while, so I felt it was overdue before she got left out of the limelight again.

73. Beyond Death

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up, sorry about the wait. The summer is starting.

Chapter 73

Whatever he had been dreaming about was lost instantly and he suddenly became aware that he was falling.

Harry's eyes flashed open just in time for his back to hit the floor with a solid thud. He groaned at the rude awakening and squeezed his eyes shut again, ignoring Fleur's light laughter from upstairs. She knew exactly what had happened. It happened every night, though normally only once around one o'clock. This was the second time it had happened this night, catching him by surprise, and he was not amused to find himself unexpectedly on the floor.

The sofa sat innocently against the wall, his wand lightly resting on top of the armrest. At some point in the last few moments it had clearly forgotten that it was meant to be a bed and his transfiguration had come undone.

'Tempus,' he grumbled, retrieving his wand and slumping onto the unfaithful furnishing.

It was early morning, but later than he had expected. The sun was up, throwing a pink and orange glow into the kitchen and across the far end of the room that was currently his temporary bedroom.

Fleur had wanted to acquire furnishings straight away, but Harry, less excited by the prospect had convinced her to wait until the Order had searched Diagon Alley and the obvious places he might stay. She'd accepted the excuse, grudgingly, and he'd managed to put off the shopping trip for a week, but it meant he had to sleep on the sofa downstairs and endure this. Fleur wasn't exactly sympathetic either, as her laughter from the much more comfortable, single bed indicated.

The water was running upstairs, Harry could hear the pipes humming, so Fleur had already found her into the bathroom before him. She would be leaving for Gringotts soon. He would be able to watch her hurried morning ritual of showering, dressing, eating and departing all within the span of a few minutes. Harry still wasn't quite sure how she managed it, but Fleur was adamant that getting up earlier to give herself more time was not an option and he knew better than to try and persuade her from sleeping.

Gingerly he poked a few parallel lines of points across his back, wincing when he came across a particularly painful bruise. There were more than a couple. The floor was hard. They would at least be gone in a few minutes, bruises faded swiftly with his magically altered healing.

No more love bites, Harry realised, both relieved and disappointed by the idea.

He quite liked being so obviously Fleur's, but at the same time it wasn't really worth all the remarks he got from Katie.

The sound of water had stopped and he judged it worth trying to get to the bathroom himself. Pushing himself up he patted the sofa back into some semblance of tidiness and drifted up the stairs. They creaked cheerfully underfoot, something Harry quite liked. It was nice to be able to walk around loudly with no fear of repercussions.

'Up already?' Fleur asked from the top of the stairs. She was already dressed, and cut a pulse-stirring figure even in her simple, formal work attire.

'My morning alert went off,' he replied dryly, pausing briefly on the top step to kiss her. Fleur, he had learnt, enjoyed being able to kiss him down the stairs. Kissing down to him was a novelty she cherished.

'So I can see,' a single finger traced its way lightly over Harry's fading bruises. 'Ready to go shopping yet?'

'Soon,' Harry relented. He could hardly change his mind now, not after listing all the reasons they should wait, and certainly not when she knew the real reasons for the delay, not least among which was Fleur's both daunting and exciting decision to get a double bed.

'Stubborn,' she admonished, kissing him again. 'Brush your teeth,' she smirked, wrinkling her nose. 'I will see you this evening.'

'Bye.' Harry shifted to one side to let her pass him on the stairs, watching as she swept gracefully down and out of sight with the same twinge of regret that always came when they separated.

He waited their on the top step, listening to her leave. Harry was never actually sure when she was gone, and Fleur took great pride in the fact that her achievement of silent apparition sometimes caught him out. Occasionally she would come back and steal another kiss before really departing, or, just as frequently, something sweet.

Nothing moved in the house.

Not this time, Harry thought sadly.

Shaking off the shadow of melancholy that threatened to settle he made his way into their bathroom and divested himself of his clothes and wand. The room was a small, tiled affair, with a wide sink underneath a small mirror, and an antiquated looking, highly temperamental shower.

The pipes hummed as he switched it on, carefully directing the water well away from him until its slightly delayed warming enchantment heated the water to something close to warm. He had about five minutes until the enchantment warmed the water to the point it became uncomfortably hot. Fleur had promised to fix it, but she'd been too busy working to get around to it. From what she had said it seemed everyone was trying to get all their business done before the conflict reignited and made it impossible.

The tepid water splashed over his back, and head, flattening his hair against his scalp, and Harry began to ponder what he would do.

There were a great many things he could and should be doing, but it was difficult to pick where to start. Studying for the NEWTs he intended to take early was a sound plan, but the exams seemed a great deal less important than anything else. He could be improving his strength, or beginning an attempt to locate the remaining horcruxes.

Steam began to cloud the windows and the mirror, which huffed irritatedly and voiced its disapproval in no uncertain terms.

A bit of all three, Harry decided.

Whichever felt most productive would become his preference.

The water abruptly turned scalding and he hissed, reflexively swivelling to wrench the tap closed and halt the flow. Fleur really needed to fix the enchantments.

Leaning out of the shower he found his wand and cast a few quick spells, drying himself and dispelling the cloud of steam.

The S.P.E.W. badge that doubled as the DA's method of communication was leant against the mirror where he would always notice it. Harry flipped it over to check, as he did every morning while brushing his teeth, whether the numbers had changed. They had.

Lunch. Today's date, Harry realised, thanks for the warning, Nev.

It would halve how productive he might have been today, but he couldn't claim to be annoyed, not when he'd already wasted several days avoiding returning to the chamber. Without going back he had no access to most of his things and time was being wasted. Salazar, Harry knew, would be disappointed, and that small, sharp pain he felt at letting his ancestor down had finally cut deep enough to force him back.

Best to get it over with.

Harry would go there, take what he needed, and return. Hopefully he wouldn't have to see the blank, quiet space that must now exist over the doorway from Salazar's study for more than a moment.

He dressed quickly, choosing to wear one of the few sets of casual robes that he owned, and slipping the soft, hide straps of the wand holster Neville had gifted him about his forearm. It would not be a good idea to visit Diagon Alley in muggle clothing. He'd draw every nearby eye and likely be found by either Voldemort or Dumbledore in a matter of minutes.

Fully clothed, with his wand safely holstered, and his determination to endure returning as great as it would ever get, he prepared to apparate. Harry wasn't hungry enough for breakfast. Fleur would be upset with him for not eating if she found out, and she would, because she always seemed to notice, but Harry would take his scolding later.

She'll probably force breakfast on me tomorrow, he smiled.

There were worse things than being made to eat croissant in the mornings by Fleur. He was quite happy to let her feed him if it made her smile.

Steeling himself he took a deep breath and apparated, closing his eyes until he felt his feet touch the floor of the chamber and heard the echo of his step surround him.

He almost called out. The normal greeting, with all its habitual, casual sarcasm and levity nearly slipped from his lips as he crossed the bridge to the study, but he caught them on the tip of his tongue. Harry was grateful for that. The silence that would have come in place of Salazar's reply would have hurt more than knowing he need to speak.

Standing in the doorway it was as if nothing had changed. The neat piles of books and objects on the desk remained the same, as did the lights, the shadows of the bookcases and the musty, dust coated tomes that lined them.

Harry strode round the edge of the desk, consciously avoiding looking up, and, in his distraction, knocked the slim, pale ring Fleur had gifted him against the desk edge. The wooden click made him jump and scan the shadows to make sure he was alone.

There was nothing, as he should really have known because the only living being capable of entering the chamber was himself, and it would remain that way until he had children.

Smiling at his own paranoia he ran a finger down the spines of the few piles of books that weren't laden with dust. These were the ones that he'd recovered from the Room of Requirement a year ago when he had requested things to help him study, and he suspected they had originally come from the Room of Hidden Things. Quite why anyone would want to hide their copies of the school's textbooks was beyond him, but it was good for him that they had.

There were quite a list of books that he needed to read over the summer. Despite being capable of performing a most of the magic in three of his five NEWTs there was two years of theory to cover as well. Fortunately Harry had chosen his NEWTs wisely. He had never been troubled in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and doubted he would be. Non-verbal spells were easy, and he was already intimately familiar with Dementors, the most complex dark creature they would study.

He left the Defence related books behind for the most part, selecting only a single tome on inferi, which he knew came up, from Salazar's own library. It appeared more an instruction to their creation and use than a guide to dealing with them, but it should still prove useful. Transfiguration required a slightly lengthier list. Untransfiguration wasn't something he had even begun to look at in its own right, though he had learnt a single spell from Salazar for the Triwizard Tournament, and his knowledge of human transfiguration wasn't particularly comprehensive either.

At least, he decided, I can likely perform all the spells from Charms already.

He'd already learnt the Water-Making Charm, and, similarly to Defence a lot of emphasis was placed upon non-verbal spell casting, something Harry had no trouble with.

Harry was feeling rather confident having selected only four books for his first three NEWTs, inferi, untransfiguration, human transfiguration, and a thick book about substance altering charms. He could read through these slowly and thoroughly and still be done in a month or so.

Potions and Arithmancy burst his bubble of confidence straight away. The former subject required almost a whole shelf, so Harry prudently decided to devote himself to that after he had returned. It was likely Snape wouldn't let him take it early anyway so there was no point getting ahead for no good reason. Advanced Arithmancy on the other hand needed only two books, unfortunately both of them were as thick as Harry's waist and written in progressively more indecipherable shorthand.

I'll need Fleur's help.

It stood to reason that Fleur would be good at Arithmancy if she was so gifted with and interested in warding, enchanting and their theory. If she wasn't then he was in trouble, because no more than twenty pages in to the Numerical Properties of Magical Ambiences all of the expressions and explanations were punctuated with odd unrecognisable characters and he couldn't make anything of it.

He gathered the books into a stack on the edge of the desk and considered whether he should take any other items with him, drumming his fingertips lightly on the surface of the top of the pile.

The book on rituals, Harry decided, climbing the ladder to retrieve it and placing on top of the pile. And maybe Voldemort's annotated copy of the Secrets of the Darkest Arts.

Harry opened the book, pulling out the sheafs of Riddle's notes from the back and skimming quickly though them again. The book would have no information on where the horcruxes might be, but if Voldemort had planned ahead then his annotations might.

There was nothing but a carefully, neatly inscribed intention to use objects and people of importance to create his anchors to immortality.

Perhaps not then.

Harry stuffed the sheets of parchment back into the book and discarded it. The book slid across the desk, knocking the time-turner over the surface to swing gently off the back of the chair. The sparkling, shining golden sand within its glass seemed oddly dull now, the obvious magic that had once saturated the object had diminished.

Harry ran the tip of his and over the hourglass. For all he knew this was the last time-turner in Britain, and its enchantments appeared to be fading, fraying away like a the end of a severed piece of rope.

It was bound to the wards of the Chamber, Harry remembered.

He ran his wand over it again, concentrating hard to check how swiftly the magic was disintegrating. The difference was imperceptible, so he repeated the action several times, waiting a few minutes between each attempt.

There was no noticeable difference at any point, whatever damage had been done to the time-turner had already happened. He span it once, blurring back fifteen minutes and disillusioning his body to avoid a complicated conversation with himself.

This time when he checked the magic had plummeted, almost a quarter of it had gone.

I'll have to save it, he realised, waiting he caught up with himself. It's no longer restricted to the Chamber of Secrets now I've altered the wards, but there's only about an hour's worth of travel left.

It could still be very useful once more, maybe even more useful than if it had remained bound now he could use it for something apart from practising magic, studying or sending himself messages.

For the first time since entering he allowed himself to look up above the door and see the faint, dusty outline of the painting that had hung there. Harry stared at it for a long moment, feeling for the first time in over a year, the creeping, consuming emptiness within.

I'll find a way, he promised the outline. I'll find a way, or I'll make one.

He scanned the shelves, running a fingertip over the dust covered books that began or were primarily related to a subject beginning with the letter P. Harry wasn't disappointed. Salazar had compiled a collection of heraldry studies that included the line of the Peverell family from its earliest recorded history in Britain to a few years before the founding of Hogwarts. Slytherin had been thorough. Harry took them all. If a descendant of the Peverell family still held the Resurrection Stone he would be able to find them by following the family tree to whomever had inherited their wealth. A thousand years of history had occurred since Salazar had failed, but he would succeed. Pure-bloods could be depended upon to record their illustrious ancestry. There would be other books that showed the family history of the Peverells since the tenth century, and he'd soon discover any living descendants if they existed. If they didn't exist then he would have to look further afield, following rumours and legends until he reached the grain of truth they had grown from.

The four musty tomes were added to his stack and he swept them off the desk into his arms, grabbing a decent handful of galleons at the same time for lunch in Diagon Alley.

There was nothing else he might need from the chamber worth risking. The Hallow, his invisibility cloak, he left behind. It was too valuable to keep at the Meadow, even with the Fidelius and the other wards Fleur had added. The ability to pass completely undetectable by magic or sight was too rare a gift to risk. He'd keep it here, where only he could come, and when he found the Resurrection Stone he'd bring that here too.

Harry quite liked that idea. It had a pleasing symmetry to it, a comforting familiarity. He would be coming down to the chamber to see Salazar again, like he had been before, and everything would be how he wanted it.

From behind closed eyes he saw himself, the cloak folded over one arm, Fleur and their green-eyed girl on the other, and Slytherin's shade beside him. He was free, so obviously, perfectly free of every constraint imaginable it made him giddy. Even death could not take what he wanted from him, and there was no reason he could not make this dream come true.

We will be free, Harry decided fervently, but he tempered his desire with caution.

There were many obstacles in his path and it would not do to look so far ahead down his path that he stumbled. His crucible remained.

He apparated back, appearing with a soft snapping sound in the kitchen and depositing the stack of books on the table. The four on the Peverell family tree he concealed under the sofa where Fleur was unlikely to stumble across them. She'd seemed less then happy about his decision to find the Resurrection Stone so he'd keep his research out of her sight until he could prove it was real. Fleur would help him once she knew it wasn't a fool's errand he was devoting himself to.

What to do until lunch? Harry wondered.

Spreading the remaining books across the table he resisted the urge to start tracing the Peverell family tree. That should wait until he had its entirety to hand. Transfiguration was a better idea, or the book about inferi, just because it was the only one he needed for a whole subject.

Perhaps I should start thinking about the Inner Circle Voldemort might have entrusted a horcrux to.

There were so many choices, but in the end he went with human transfiguration. It was one of the NEWTs he was likely to be able to take early given McGonagall was happy to have him helping her on a project, and Fleur would likely be quite put out with him if he started a horcrux hunt without her.

General human transfiguration was not as exciting as it had sounded and Harry had discarded the book after a few moments in favour of his book about inferi.

The Inferius is a re-animated corpse bound to the will of its creator. A macabre puppet of flesh that's greatest advantages lie in the horror and fear it inspires the Inferius can be a potent tool in the arsenal of any wizard or witch. They are best employed in ambushes or in great numbers to compensate for their lack of magic. A well cast animation may produce puppets with not only increased speed and strength but also capable of weathering grievous damage.

The book definitely sounded like more of a manual than a defence related textbook, but it was originally from Salazar's library and so it was probably never on Hogwarts' recommended reading list. It occurred to Harry that Slytherin might have bought this book and the other necromancy related tomes as part of his attempt to reclaim his wife from death. The though brought a lump to his throat and he turned back to the pages of the book.

The Inferius' greatest weakness is fire, Harry read, but severe physical damage will also destroy them.

The rest of the book went into rather too much detail about how to create an Inferius yourself, including a rather disturbingly specific section on their physical characteristics. Harry skimmed it curiously, but he had already absorbed what he needed to learn from the tome and he knew exactly what would happen should he ever come across any inferi. There would be fiendfyre, lots of it, and far fewer animated corpses afterwards.

He set the book aside, then, thinking better of leaving that lying around where someone might see it he tucked it and the book on rituals under the sofa as well. Harry was more concerned about Sirius or Gabrielle reading them than Fleur. He'd probably end up showing Fleur the book on rituals anyway, she knew far more about the magical plants and ingredients he might need than he did.

Gabrielle on the other hand, should not see it unless absolutely necessary . Fleur's little sister had already seen more of him than he wanted, and the nagging fear that she might decide that Harry was best avoided lingered, despite his best efforts to dispel it or her assurance that she approved.

Both unsettling and comforting, Harry remembered her telling him, and the words held true for his feelings as well.

Frowning to himself he began to write a list, etching the names of all the members of Voldemort's Inner Circle onto a spare piece of parchment with the tip of his wand.

Malfoy. Crabbe. Goyle. Nott. Avery. The Lestranges. The Carrows. Dolohov. Macnair. Yaxley. Travers.

Harry could already rule out most of the names as unsuitable. Malfoy had already been entrusted with one, the latter four lacked the power, wealth or prestige to keep a horcrux safe from the Ministry, and nobody in their right mind would give anything valuable to a Crabbe or a Goyle.

It still left six potential candidates, and those were only the ones that were currently alive. If Voldemort had entrusted a horcrux to one of the Death Eaters who had died in the last war then it would be very difficult to discover.

He holstered his wand with a frown. Harry had known it would not be an easy feat to find what was likely the last of Voldemort's three horcruxes, but he'd come across the first two so easily that he'd never really considered just how difficult it could be to get the last. If it had been he with three horcruxes to conceal and protect he would have kept one on his person, one in the chamber and placed one somewhere very secret and very safe. Voldemort had used the Room of Requirement rather than the Chamber of Secrets, a decision Harry could not understand given its relative accessibility, and chosen to entrust one to Malfoy, neither of which were particularly safe options despite the power of the horcruxes themselves. It stood to reason that the final horcrux was either similarly entrusted or somewhere very safe, and the only places Harry could imagine that were close to completely secure were Gringotts, a location only Voldemort knew of and could access, or on the Dark Lord's person. None of the three were particularly appealing. Breaking into Gringotts was widely considered as a particularly unwise form of suicide, finding and entering anywhere Voldemort had hidden and protected was certainly going to be hazardous, and the latter, while convenient should Harry manage to defeat Voldemort at the same time, would likely end up in him losing his third duel with Voldemort. Harry had lost the first two comprehensively and despite his improvement he had very little confidence in seizing victory himself.

I need to be stronger still.

There weren't many ways to improve his strength left except for practising over time, and he had precious little time to spare. Voldemort had completed every useful ritual in the book that Salazar had kept and then gone on to write several chapters of his own.

He pushed the books away from him, slipped the list of names inside the cover of the tome on untransfiguration and took a long, deep breath. This was when he needed Salazar. When he didn't know which course was wisest to pursue the portrait would have. He and Fleur would have to decide alone and hope for the best.

Lunch was almost upon him, and with it his reunion with Katie and Neville, or at least Katie, because Harry wasn't sure anyone had actually told Neville which café it was that Katie's parents owned. It would be nice to speak with them and put all this briefly to one side. They might even help him. Neville certainly would should Harry ever go after the remaining two Lestranges.

He stood up from the chair to apparate, then remembered he was hiding from the Order and Voldemort and couldn't go out looking like Harry Potter without finding himself back at Privet Drive, or worse, Little Hangleton or wherever Voldemort had taken up residence, in short order.

Harry knew enough human transfiguration to alter his face a little. It was probably one of the simplest pieces possible. A few tweaks to his bone structure, raising the cheekbones slightly, altering the tone of his skin, reshaping his nose a fraction.

It was almost disturbing how little he had to change to see Tom Riddle staring back at him from the kitchen window.

His eyes he couldn't tamper with; he didn't know enough to do so, but he could lighten his hair, colouring himself an unremarkable dark blonde and he could certainly conceal the scar on his forehead.

A young, blonde Tom Riddle smiled at his reflection.

Very few people knew of the boy who would become Voldemort, far fewer purebloods would follow him if they did, so unless Voldemort or Dumbledore themselves were walking through Diagon Alley's cafés and keeping an eye on the facial structure of everyone nearby he would pass undetected. The two wizards would both be furious if they knew whose face he had chosen to wear over his own.

The prospect quite amused him.

The kitchen swirled back behind him as he stepped from its floor into Diagon Alley, blinking in the sudden sunlight. Fleur would be having lunch around now, but Harry knew she preferred to remain within Gringotts and away from the crowd or any who might prove particularly vulnerable to her aura.

Third café on the left, Harry recalled, drifting slowly towards the southern side of the alley.

It was busier than he had ever seen Diagon Alley before. Every shop was full, even Ollivander's, and that was a risky venture given some of the wands more violent reactions to being tested.

Katie's parents' café had very appropriate red umbrellas outside, unfurled to shield the old, wooden tables from the sun, and Harry spied his friends chatting amicably in the sun just beyond the shadow of the last umbrella.

'You're starting to sunburn, Nev,' Harry warned, pulling a third chair across to the two table for two.

'I've been outside shopping with Gran all morning before her Wizengamot meeting about awarding Amelia Bones emergency powers,' Neville groaned, scrunching his slightly pink face into a scowl.

'Why are you in disguise?' Katie demanded, shielding her eyes to stare at his new appearance.

'Because I don't want to be recognised, of course,' Harry gave her a quizzical look, 'why else would anyone be in disguise?'

'Nice glamours,' Neville grinned, 'you make a good blonde.'

'They'e not glamours,' Katie mused, poking Harry gently on the cheek and running a hand through his already messy hair. 'Too detailed for glamours,' she tugged lightly and Harry winced, 'you transfigured your face.'

'I did,' Harry agreed, removing Katie's hand before she could tug again. 'I don't know enough about eyes to alter them though, so they had to stay the same and are still obviously mine.'

'You have quite distinctive eyes,' Katie smiled, fiddling with the white-hemmed collar of her robes. 'They're a very nice shade of green and they do the same thing Dumbledore's do.'

'My eyes do not twinkle,' Harry intervened.

'No,' Neville laughed, 'but they do have a bit of an aura. They're a bit more vivid and bright than anyone's eyes should naturally be.'

'It started when you began wearing those lenses Hermione told us about,' Katie added thoughtfully.

'What lenses?' Harry asked.

'Hermione told everyone you must have switched from glasses to muggle contact lenses and you never disagreed so we assumed she was right,' Neville explained.

'She's normally right,' Harry smiled.

'But not this time,' Katie realised.

A group of wizards wandered past their table, cutting out the sun that Katie was basking in and earning themselves a glare from the girl. Harry chuckled gently.

'Not this time,' he admitted. 'I fixed my eyesight magically, but it had a few side-effects. I prefer the lenses explanation to having to tell everyone about my solution.'

'Well whatever you did was a good idea,' Katie decided cheerfully, 'those glasses really didn't suit you.'

'Speaking of suiting things,' Neville cut in, 'have you seen Katie's work robes?'

'Do I want to?' Harry asked. Katie, who had turned as pink as Neville's sunburn, was wearing plain, slightly formal, black robes with a white hem, and Harry could see nothing wrong with them.

'Stand up, Katie,' Neville grinned.

'No,' Katie shook her head violently, 'not happening.'

'She spilt some old witch's potion on herself this morning when I arrived,' Neville sniggered, 'now there's a large, bleached patch down her leg.'

'Why didn't you transfigure them?' Harry inquired. Katie was easily good enough to alter the colour. Neville's laughter grew harder.

'It's magic resistant,' Katie sulked.

'She briefly tried to turn it black, but it went transparent instead,' Neville announced gleefully to Katie's consternation. Harry had the the briefest recollection of picturing her in the underwear she had accidentally revealed while packing before he flushed slightly and forced the image away. Katie appeared to be doing everything possible to avoid looking at Harry, and finally settled for glaring furiously at Neville.

'How's Hannah?' She asked sweetly.

Neville's laughter came to a halt.

'I'm taking good care of my cactus,' he answered with more nonchalance than Harry had ever seen him manage before.

'And what about that pretty, blonde girl I saw you talking to and staring after while you were out shopping this morning?' Katie smirked triumphantly and leant forwards. 'She looked quite put out that you said goodbye to her in order to come and meet me alone in a café.'

'She did?' Neville gulped, his bravado failing.

'Very put out,' Katie confirmed cheerfully. 'She probably thought it was a date and you were ditching her for me.'

Neville looked positively horrified.

'I might run into her later and be able to explain,' Neville said hopefully, fidgeting. 'She said she still had to things to buy too when she asked if I was going to here over lunch.'

'I think that was her trying to get you to ask her to have lunch,' Harry pointed out.

'It was?'

'Yes,' Katie beamed, 'and you wasted your chance.' It seemed she wasn't feeling particularly merciful to Neville after he had told Harry about her little accident.

'What about if I found her now?" Neville asked desperately. 'Do you think she would still want to go?'

'If you're lucky,' Katie smiled.

'I,' he glanced at the two of them pleadingly, 'I'll see you guys next time?'

'Good luck,' Harry grinned, pushing Neville's hastily abandoned chair next to the other table with his foot. 'Do you think she'll say yes?'

Katie gave him an incredulous look. 'Everyone knows that Hannah Abbot has the hots for Neville.'

'I didn't,' Harry shrugged.

'All the girls do,' Katie smirked, 'that's why it's so funny. He likes her, and she likes him, but they danced around each other nervously for a whole year instead of just getting together.'

'They weren't that bad,' Harry defended. 'None of the guys in Gryffindor knew anything about Hannah liking Neville too.'

'Neville could have been worse,' Katie agreed, smiling playfully, 'he could have gone to a ball with her, disappeared for the evening, pretended to hate her while moping, and then tried to keep his relationship a secret while hiding the bruises on his neck.'

'I never pretended to hate Fleur,' Harry disagreed, 'and I didn't mope either.'

'That's not what Neville said,' Katie smirked.

'Well you shouldn't listen to him,' Harry warned lightly. 'He's a malicious liar.'

'He's the sole of gentility and truth,' Katie countered, 'I danced with him at the ball just after you left with Fleur actually.'

'I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed,' Harry smiled.

'So do I,' Katie admitted softly.

'I'm sure I would have had one wonderful dance,' Harry continued cheerfully, 'and then Fleur would have probably immolated me for abandoning her.'

Katie giggled quietly.

'Is there any food?' Harry asked.

'It's a café, Harry,' Katie pointed out. 'We have food. Mainly sandwiches and cake,' she conceded, 'but the cake's good.'

I could bring Fleur here, Harry realised. She'd enjoy having cake here in the sun with me.

'Mum,' she called, waving at the short, brunette witch by the counter.

'Aren't you meant to be working?'

'I'm on my lunch break,' Katie beamed, 'so that means mum has to get my sandwich instead.'

'You're a terrible employee,' Harry remarked.

'Yes she is,' Katie's mother agreed warmly, reaching the table. A note-pad and quill reminiscent of Rita Skeeter hovered over her shoulder. It's feather was the same red as the umbrellas.

'This is Harry,' Katie introduced, evidently forgetting he was meant to be in disguise.

'Harry?' Her mother turned to look at him curiously, her eyes drifting over his hair and forehead in confusion.

'I'm in disguise,' Harry explained dryly, 'but Katie has forgotten.' The younger brunette looked faintly embarrassed.

'It's nice to finally meet you,' Katie's mum smiled kindly, extending a hand which Harry shook. 'I've heard so much about you,' she paused, 'from Katie, that is, not the rubbish in the Daily Prophet.'

'Thank you,' Harry responded cordially. He distinctly remembered the article about he and Katie that had made his friend cry, something Rita Skeeter had answered for, but it was a little awkward meeting her parents after such a first impression.

'What would you like, Katie?' Her mother asked. The quill perked up at the question, the feather snapping straight and the nib dipping towards the page.

'We'll just have two chicken and bacon sandwiches,' she decided, 'but without the tomato for me please.'

'Worried you'll make a mess of yourself again,' her mum laughed, patting a fuming Katie on the cheek in the exact same way Katie had used to do to him. 'Harry? My daughter often forgets that her friends like to choose their own food.'

'I don't mind. I'll go with it,' Harry smiled.

'Any drinks?' The quill bobbed.

'No thanks,' Katie shook her head. Harry nodded slightly in mute agreement.

'I'll bring them over in a minute, Katie,' her mother promised, 'you can have a bit of a longer break today than usual too.' Katie's mother threw another smile at Harry, then bounced cheerfully off to the next table.

'She's so like you,' Harry grinned.

'So everyone always tells me,' Katie grimaced. 'We even look like twins. I took an ageing potion once and Dad almost mistook me for her.'

'Awkward,' Harry commented.

'He realised as soon as he saw what I was wearing,' Katie shrugged. 'Mum's more concerned about her appearance than me. I don't really bother with pretty clothes and make-up.'

'It gets in the way of quidditch and it makes it harder to scare firsties,' Harry agreed.

'No self-respecting Dark Mistress wears pretty dresses and make-up,' Katie nodded happily, 'they'd get ruined by all the blood or torn on some nefarious deed.'

Katie's mother gave her daughter an odd look then slid their sandwiches onto the table. 'Here you are,' she beamed, 'I took the tomato out for you, Katie, so this time you won't spill it all over your lap like a baby.'

'Thanks, mum,' Katie growled. The older Bell smiled angelically back at her glaring daughter, but frowned darkly when two aurors strode past the table down the street.

'What was that about?' Harry asked, when Katie's mother had moved off towards the counter.

'Dad used to be a Hit Wizard for the Department of Law Enforcement,' Katie explained quietly. 'He fought in the war against,' Katie clenched her jaw, 'against Voldemort, and he was fairly accomplished. Amelia Bones has been trying to get every trained wizard or witch back into uniform now things are escalating and there are more and more attacks every week, but mum doesn't want him out fighting where he might get hurt.'

'He might not have a choice about fighting,' Harry warned gently. 'Even if he doesn't go back to law enforcement the war might come to him. Diagon Alley is a big target.'

'I know,' Katie took a bite of sandwich, chewing miserably. 'I'd still rather he was at home and a bit safer, even if it's selfish.' Harry didn't have the heart to remind her that by being friends with him she and her whole family were in more danger than most, so he took a few bites of the sandwich instead.

'It's going to be bad, isn't it,' Katie murmured. 'I've never seen Diagon Alley so busy, everyone's trying to get things done before the chaos begins, all the shops are packed.'

'It's going to be bad,' Harry told her, unwilling to lie, 'but you'll be fine. I promise.'

'And you,' Katie looked at him seriously, 'the Boy-Who-Lived, you'll be right in the middle. He'll be going after you himself.'

'I'll be fine,' he smiled, and he was surprised to find that he actually believed it. He would be fine. He would survive, and he would be free,

'You better be,' Katie warned. 'If you get yourself hurt Fleur won't get the chance to set you alight, I'll get you first.'

'I think Fleur will probably resent you stepping in line ahead of her,' Harry grinned. 'She'll set you alight too.'

'You'll be safe?' Katie demanded.

'I'll certainly try,' Harry assured her, 'though I suspect Voldemort may try quite hard to prevent that.'

'And Dumbledore,' Katie heard the name he had left unspoken. 'You don't trust him.'

'Do you?' Harry knew that Katie trusted him, but Albus Dumbledore was Albus Dumbledore.

'An awful lot of dangerous things have happened to you under his nose,' Katie pointed out with slight vehemence, 'it's clearly more than coincidence, and it's hard to completely trust anyone who allows things like that to happen.'

'I can't help but agree,' Harry nodded, 'he's known all these years that Voldemort was not dead, he must have a plan, but I can't see it, and I don't see it working.'

Especially not when I have to die for it.

'Then who will stop Voldemort?' Katie didn't even question his conclusion about Dumbledore.

'I don't know,' Harry answered, 'but someone will, maybe it will be you, maybe it will be me, or maybe it will even be Neville. I don't care. I just want myself and those I care about to survive.' Katie smiled weakly at him. She understood. He could tell.

A distinctive Snowy Owl came to land on the table, stealing the remaining part of Harry's sandwich.

'Hedwig,' he protested, reaching out to retrieve his meal. The owl gave him a cool, warning glare and hissed grumpily.

'She's mad at you,' Katie remarked.

'I left her in the Owlery because she can't find where I'm currently living,' Harry admitted. 'She appears to have taken in upon herself to find me.'

'And your sandwich.'

'And my sandwich,' Harry agreed.

Hedwig finished Harry's sandwich in a few, swift beakfuls, then hopped towards Katie, who hurriedly finished her own, stuffing it inelegantly into her mouth with a triumphant, if muffled cry. Hedwig hooted softly then hopped back across to indignantly peck his hands a few times.

'I shall have to take her back with me,' Harry decided.

'She might take a whole finger next time if you don't,' Katie laughed, eying his ravaged hands.

'Sorry, Katie,' her mother squeezed between two tables to take their plates, 'it's become really busy and I need your help.'

'I guess I'd better get back out there then,' Katie sighed, standing up. 'Sorry, Harry.'

'Don't worry,' he smiled, sliding out of his chair. 'I've got a few books about family history to find.'

Katie's mother turned away, twisting between chairs and tables, and followed by her floating pad and quill.

'Until next time,' Harry turned to say, but Katie was suddenly closer than he expected, throwing her arms round him in an impromptu hug. She was pleasantly warm and smelt of an odd combination of broom polish and coffee.

'You are a lot shorter than me now,' he noted, patting the top of her head that just neatly tucked under his chin, then wrapping his arms back around her.

'Hush,' Katie admonished, 'I remember when you were a midget back in first year, all skinny and tiny.'

'You're the tiny one now,' Harry chuckled, letting go of her and stepping back. Katie's mother was watching them with soft eyes from across the café, and Katie flushed when she followed his gaze across.

'I'm sorry if she gets the wrong idea,' Katie apologised in a small voice.

'Don't be,' Harry grinned, 'can't be any worse than the Daily Prophet.'

'You don't know my mother very well,' Katie laughed.

'True,' Harry conceded, 'if she's as much like you as she appears then maybe I should be worried.'

'Go,' Katie ordered playfully, 'and next time bring Fleur back with you so my mother works out what's really going on.'

'I will,' Harry promised, though he had the oddest feeling that introducing Fleur and Katie might come back to bite him. Neither showed any remorse for teasing him, least of all Katie, and they had far too much material to share with each other. 'Maybe Neville will bring Hannah,' he suggested cheerfully, ushering Hedwig up onto his arm.

'I hope so,' Katie beamed, 'think of all the herbology jokes we have to tell her about.'

'Katie,' her mother called.

'You have to go,' Harry reminded her.

'I know,' Katie's face fell, slipping back to the serious, sad countenance he so rarely saw from her. 'Stay safe, Harry.'

'I will,' he promised again, watching her walk away. She'd chosen his side already, without even considering the others. Neville would, once he realised that Dumbledore's mercy would only perpetuate the conflict, and he had his godfather, and Fleur too.

Hedwig nibbled impatiently at his ear from her perch upon his shoulder.

And you, girl, he agreed. And you.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that does!

74. To Cut Down the Tallest Tree

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Sorry for the longer than usual wait, it's been a busy week, but I finally finished this chapter and posted it for you!

Chapter 74

The tiny, bronze ring spun on the blank surface of her desk. It's intricate pattern of garnet petalled roses revolved round and round beneath the tip of her wand, glinting gently in the light of the lamps. The ring was a present, an apologetic gift from one of the curse breakers whose associate had embarrassed himself under her thrall.

Fleur was bored.

For the first few months she had been busy all day every day as business deals were hurriedly finalised before the inevitable conflict could interfere. Those deals were closed and no new deals had been made. Fleur suspected none would come until Voldemort was defeated.

The ring swirled a little too violently as her concentration wavered and the four millennia old artefact rolled gently across the desk and fell into the inkwell with a soft clunk. Fortunately the well was empty of ink and the ancient ring came out untarnished - not that it was likely to be damaged. She'd evaluated the enchantments on the thing and short of hurling it into a volcano or something of similar temperature the ring was unlikely to come to harm.

Harry had found that amusing, and happily made plenty of jokes based on what Fleur presumed was muggle literature. He'd explained them dutifully, one after the other, smiling brightly and never taking his eyes of the ring, but Fleur knew him well enough to recognise the faint gleam of paranoia.

She'd intended to get rid of the ring. It was scarcely valuable, despite its age, and should it have been priceless Fleur would have thrown it away all the same. Nothing had ever turned her blood so cold as the fear and suspicion on Harry's face when she had told him about the gift, and yet she still had it. The poor curse-breaker had seemed so embarrassed by his colleague's actions and his apology had been so earnest she couldn't bring herself to cheapen it by throwing it away.

I'll keep it with me, she decided. If Harry never sees it again, it won't upset him, and in a week or so I'll be able to give it away. Gabrielle might like it.

Fleur slipped the ring into her pocket and shrugged.

How much trouble can a ring even cause?

She was fairly sure Harry would have had another muggle literature joke if he'd heard that.

A group of her coworkers drifted past, laughing amongst themselves and juggling a suspiciously innocent looking teaspoon. Fleur watched, confused, until one of the younger curse-breakers held onto the teaspoon for a fraction of a second too long. He was immediately assaulted as the teaspoon sprouted large, grey tentacles and latched itself onto his face.

The group dissolved into helpless laughter as their unfortunate colleague flailed around on the floor before eventually pulling the tentacled teaspoon from his face and patting the flushed curse-breaker on the back. He looked embarrassed to be caught out so easily, but laughed along with group at his misfortune. Then they caught sight of her.

Immediately the laughter faded, and the effects of her allure swept over them. It's attraction, even in its restrained state, was evident in the sudden straightening of uniforms and smoothing of hair. Fleur turned away, annoyed, breaking their line of sight and her spell over them, but not before she glimpsed the rueful grin and shrug of the red-haired curse-breaker that had apologetically gifted her the ring.

At least they aren't all affected.

The laughter began anew as the teaspoon, forgotten in the moment they had caught sight of her, struck again, wrapping its tentacles around the arm of the nearest curse-breaker. She smiled to herself at their antics; it was refreshing to see something so lighthearted when the rest of Britain seemed so determined to focus on the gloom to come.

They'd even chosen an appropriately cursed item to mess around with, rather than risk the wrath of the goblins. Fleur had overheard from the senior curse-breaker she acted as a liaison for that a young curse-breaker had once tried to scare his friend by giving him a ring that couldn't be removed. He had failed to ensure that it's permanent nature was the only enchantment, and his friend had nearly died from the Withering Curse before a nearby goblin had had the presence of mind to remove his arm and stop the spread.

Those few of her senior colleagues who had not already left early began to tidy their desks as she had very slowly done over the last hour. The rustle of their papers and the rattle of locked drawers marked the end of the day. If the senior curse-breakers were leaving, then Fleur was well within her rights to disappear too.

She slipped a hand inside her blouse, opening, activating and closing the locket that connected her to Harry. He would feel the pulse of heat and know what it meant. He might even be waiting for her already. It was about time he gave in to reason, even if he only did it because Fleur had been enchanting the sofa to be ever so slightly more resistant to magic each day.

She was a little surprised he hadn't caught on to her trick, but something had needed to be done to distract him from his concern. It was sweet that he was afraid of them going to fast and falling apart, but buying furniture was hardly a proposal of marriage, and they were in desperate need of some new chairs.

Her locket flared hot against her breastbone. Harry was waiting.

Fleur pushed her chair back so quickly it almost fell over, and hurried out, weaving impatiently past her slower associates and the short, slower goblins, ignoring both the glazed stares of the human employees and the irritated frowns of the goblins she swerved in front of.

There were over a hundred wizards outside Gringotts, many of which were the same height and build as Harry was, but Fleur needed only a single glance to find the wizard who was hers. There was, after all, only one wizard who was gazing up at her with clear-eyes. She checked, just in case, closing her eyes and pushing her magic out to touch him.

It was Harry; there was no mistaking his unique magic.

'Fancy finding you here,' he grinned.

'I'm sorry,' Fleur apologised as haughtily as she could manage, 'who might you be?'

'I,' Harry's grin spread wider, 'am Tom Marvolo Riddle… but blond.'

'Am I supposed to know who that is?' Fleur inquired.

'Tom Riddle has a new name now,' Harry chuckled, ' a new face as well, and there are not many who would recognise either.'

'You're wearing Voldemort's old face around Diagon Alley,' Fleur realised, sighing. It was the sort of thing that he would find funny, worse, it was the sort of thing he knew she would find funny but would have to remonstrate him for doing. No doubt that had been in the back of his head when he'd chosen it.

'You know me too well,' Harry laughed. 'It's a bit disturbing when you really think about it. I barely changed anything to get from my face to this one.'

'I shall call you Marvolo,' Fleur decided delightedly.

'Is there something wrong with my name?' Harry asked, not looking at all enthused by the idea.

'This is the price you pay for choosing such a dangerous disguise,' Fleur admonished him. 'Next time choose an inconspicuous, innocuous nobody instead of a face that is not only the original countenance of the Dark Lord, but also incredibly similar to your own.'

'It's still funny,' Harry sulked.

Fleur paused. At some point over the last year Harry had learnt to mimic Gabby's pout perfectly, only unlike her baby sister's version his sulking face gave her a sudden, strong desire to kiss him. She resisted, gently biting her lip and taking his hand.

'Furniture shopping time,' she sang playfully.

'I know,' Harry groused. 'I wouldn't have come for another week or so if you hadn't meddled with the sofa.'

'So you did realise,' Fleur laughed. The sound stopped every wizard within hearing distance on the street.

'Of course,' Harry looked insulted, 'the first time I woke up on the floor earlier than expected to the sound of your laughter I brushed it off, but not the second, or the third, or the fourth…'

'You were far too worried about this,' Fleur told him kindly. 'It's a little daunting if you look at it in a certain light, but,' she tightened her grip on his hand, entwining their fingers, 'I quite like the idea too.'

'You can choose the furniture then,' he retorted cheerfully.

'Of course,' she replied. 'I'm not letting you pick.'

'How hard can it be,' Harry shrugged, 'we're just buying a bed, a few chairs, and some cupboards.'

'That, Marvolo, is why you're not choosing,' Fleur explained. 'There's all sorts of more complicated things to consider. There's the colour scheme, the time period, the style, the price, and then we have to arrange them when we get back.' She neglected to mention that she had already considered these, and that, should Harry agree, they had to do no more than collect the furniture she'd already scouted during lunchtime excursions.

'I knew I should have stayed at the Dursleys',' Harry quipped. 'So where are we actually going?'

'There's a place on the North side of the Alley that enchants and sells furniture,' Fleur explained, leading the way. 'What colours do you like?'

'Green,' Harry shrugged unhelpfully, 'grey, silver, maybe blue.'

'Ivory,' Fleur suggested innocently, 'with pale wood and pastel blues.'

'Or that,' Harry grinned. He didn't seem to mind her choosing at all.

'That makes it easier,' Fleur told him. 'I've already found and reserved a list of what we need that fits that colour scheme.'

'When did you do that?' Harry asked, looking far more relieved than curious.

'My lunch breaks,' Fleur answered, 'if I am always busy for lunch I do not have to worry about being invited out by my colleagues.' Harry's face hardened. 'It is nothing to worry about,' she reassured him, 'it's just easier to avoid their attention than deal with it.'

'You shouldn't have to,' he frowned, staring hard at the cobbles underfoot.

'I wouldn't if you weren't so fixated on keeping our relationship a secret,' Fleur reminded him. He had no reason to be annoyed or jealous when he was the one causing the problem. If Harry just accepted that their relationship was going to be revealed eventually anyway and stopped trying to hide her away where she was safest then none of her colleagues would have a reason to invite her out.

None of the respectable ones, at least, Fleur amended, but she didn't want to worry Harry about those, she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

'I suppose.' His lips twisted in irritation then curved into a rueful smile. 'You want me to let you tell them about us.'

'I already have,' Fleur admitted, 'not by name, of course, but I have said that I am already involved with someone.'

'Physical proof is needed for the more persistent,' Harry realised, slightly amused.

'Exactly,' she agreed, looping her arm through his and leading him through the door to the shop. 'Now, it's time to buy some furniture for our home, Marvolo.'

Harry screwed his face up in distaste, gazing around at the array of chairs, tables and every other conceivable item of furniture that were piled across the floor in sprawling heaps. 'I don't think shame and hate for his muggle relations were the only reasons Riddle changed his name.'

'Marvolo is a wonderful name,' Fleur told him, straight-faced, 'Riddle's mother clearly had good taste.'

'Well if Riddle's father looked anything like him, then his mother had very similar taste to you,' Harry reminded her smugly.

'Sometimes a pretty face can make up for all the underlying personality flaws,' Fleur jibed.

'I sure hope so,' Harry grinned, 'else I chose a veela for nothing.'

'The veela,' Fleur noted archly, 'chose you. I made you take me to the Yule Ball-'

'Out of pride, and because you really overreact when you think someone is laughing at you,' Harry interjected happily. 'Isn't there anyone in this shop?'

'And I invited you to France when you weren't doing anything about us except sitting in that room moping,' Fleur continued.

'Kidnapped,' Harry corrected cheerfully, 'you lured me there and kidnapped me. If I hadn't kissed you I'd probably still be under that willow tree.'

'No,' Fleur smiled innocently at him, 'the wind would have blown your ashes away over the river.'

'That seems unreasonable,' he chuckled.

'It worked,' Fleur shrugged daintily. 'You are mine now.'

'I can't complain,' Harry's smile softened briefly, 'although you must realise that if you'd not run away after kissing me we wouldn't have had any problems at all.'

'I did not run away,' Fleur disagreed, narrowing her eyes at her beau. 'I kissed you and left you thinking about me. Gabrielle agrees that it was a good, romantic idea'

'But you ran away the next time you saw me,' he pointed out. 'Oh,' he swivelled to look over her shoulder, 'there is someone here. I was beginning to think this was just warehouse.'

Fleur twisted about, instinctively stepping back from Caratacus, the old wizard who owned the store, into Harry's chest. His hands immediately slipped onto her waist, keeping her against him as if he was afraid she might step away. Fleur leant back a little further into him; she was more than happy where she was.

'It is,' the old wizard quavered, 'are you here to pick up and pay, Miss Delacour?'

'I am,' she confirmed. 'Do you like what you see, Marvolo?' Harry glanced at the furniture, then eyed her suggestively and nodded when the old man wasn't paying attention. Fleur smothered a smile.

'This is for you and your friend, Miss Delacour?' The wizard croaked.

'His name is Marvolo,' Fleur announced, trying not to sound too smug, but failing miserably. Harry's fingers slid dangerously low over her abdomen in retaliation and she had to bite her lip to prevent herself from visibly shivering.

'Wait,' Harry gazed around him at the stacks of furniture, 'this is all for us?'

'Of course,' the old wizard nodded, closing his eyes happily, 'Miss Delacour has spent many hours choosing some of my finest pieces.'

'I'm sure she has,' Harry replied evenly, his fingers slipping a little lower. Fleur could feel his smile just behind her hair and discreetly elbowed him in warning. This was not the time or the place for him to be teasing her.

Plenty of time for that later, her treacherous thoughts decided.

'It looks perfect,' Harry agreed, his fingertips retreating back to a more acceptable rest over her hips.

'I have enchanted every piece of furniture as you requested, Miss Delacour,' the wizard wheezed, 'you will find it quite hard to accidentally ruin or spoil any of these pieces.'

'Thank you, Caratacus,' Fleur smiled. She could have enchanted all the pieces herself, but it would have been time consuming, and the enchantments that caught her eye were generally a lot more dangerous and clever than simple stain resistance.

'Five hundred galleons and fifteen sickles,' Caratacus quavered. 'A signed letter of promise would be preferable to a mound of coins,' the old wizard added.

'Of course.' Counting out half a thousand coins was tedious, and that wasn't including carrying them around. A note of credit signed in magical ink that the bearer could take to Gringotts was easier all round.

'I'm going to have to shrink everything aren't I,' Harry realised.

'Yes,' Fleur nodded, 'it will give you something better to do with your hands.'

'My hands were happier where they were,' he murmured huskily into her ear before stepping away and flicking out his wand.

'The letter?' Caratacus hinted. She flushed, remembering what she had been doing before Harry had distracted her and quietly thanked any deities that might exist for the old wizard's poor sight and hearing.

By the time she had looked up from signing the letter Harry had finished and was leaning patiently against the wall of the now empty warehouse.

'Thank you,' the wizard croaked, and shuffled out of sight clutching the letter of credit tightly in one old, prominently veined hand.

'What now?' Harry asked tentatively.

'We apparate back and arrange the furniture,' Fleur decided, 'or, more accurately, we apparate back and you arrange the furniture where I want it.'

'That feels unfair,' Harry complained.

'I chose it,' Fleur responded unsympathetically, 'all you've done is shrink a few things and let your hands wander in the middle of a shop.'

'I didn't hear you saying stop,' Harry grinned. 'In fact,' he smirked, 'the only response you gave was that little shudder.'

Fleur took his arm to apparate them home, scowling at his proud smile, but the effect of the expression was rather ruined by her heated, rosy cheeks.

With a soft snap she apparated them back into the hall of their home, throwing an arm around Harry's stomach when he staggered at their sudden apparition.

'Now what?' Harry was eyeing the empty spaces in the rooms apprehensively. 'Do you have a planned place for every piece?'

'No,' she laughed, 'put them wherever you think looks best, we can move things around later if we want. I shall fix the shower.'

'Finally!' Harry exulted, 'just because you're resistant to heat doesn't mean the rest of us enjoy being scalded every morning.'

Fleur snorted, flicking her hair back over one shoulder, and dancing up the stairs. He could deal with the old sofa and his little stash of book underneath while she was upstairs and out of the way. If he was hiding them from her rather than Sirius or Gabrielle should she ever visit, then he needed to find a better hiding place than under the only sofa in the room. It was completely unnecessary to hide them from her anyway. Fleur did not care if he knew how to create inferi, and she'd like to read the book on rituals herself when Harry was finished with it. There might even be something useful for her, though it was unlikely given her magic and body were already altered by her veela nature.

The mirror sighed despondently when Fleur entered the bathroom. The enchanted mirrors never liked her, or Gabrielle either. They took quiet exception to those who were naturally and effortlessly able to fulfil the purpose for which they had been created. It wasn't fond of Harry either, since his hair resisted any and all attempts to tidy it no matter what the mirror advised, but Fleur was the only one who was treated with such offended silence.

Not that she particularly cared. It was just an animated mirror, a jealous mirror at that.

She ran her wand over the shower, tutting to herself when she realised what the problem was. Whomever had enchanted it had completely failed to weave the two separate pieces of magic together. It was a simple fix. Fleur stripped the enchantments away, then recast them, taking care to ensure that her enchantment was well weaved, otherwise Harry would still be having short showers every morning.

'I've arranged things,' Harry smiled, stepping into the bathroom. 'You can go and rearrange everything now.'

Fleur craned her neck around the door frame, running an eye over the new interior.

'It will do,' she decided. 'We have more important things to talk about than furniture.'

'There is a horcrux to be found,' Harry agreed, 'but it will not be easy.'

'It should be all but impossible,' Fleur said. 'If Voldemort had any common sense we would have already lost. It is a blessing he has been so careless with the pieces of his soul. Do you have your list on you?' She asked, suppressing a smirk at his look of faint surprise. Harry should have known that he would not eb able to hide things from her so easily.

'Yes.' He recovered his composure swiftly, grinning and extending a hand that the list floated into. Harry was still far too proud of being able to wandlessly summon things.

'This is the Inner Circle?' Fleur inquired, deftly plucking the parchment from his fingers.

'Yes,' Harry nodded, 'all the ones I know of, anyway.'

'And you think Voldemort has entrusted his soul anchor to one of them.'

'He did it once already,' Harry explained. 'I hope he has done it again, or there is precious little chance of finding the last horcrux.'

'The last?' Harry had never mentioned that before.

'He will have chosen a magical number,' Harry grinned. 'A diary and a diadem have been destroyed, the third is still out there.'

'If I had a horcrux I would not entrust it to my followers,' Fleur disagreed, 'even if I had more than one I would not.'

'What would you do?' Harry seemed genuinely curious.

'Give it to you,' Fleur smiled gently, 'or hide it somewhere nobody else could ever hope to find. The ocean floor, the ice caps at the summit of the world.'

'Sadly Voldemort has not entrusted his horcrux to me,' Harry grinned. 'This is simply the only way we are going to find it ourselves. If he has hidden it, then I will have to take the information from his mind,' his face darkened into a frown, 'and I suspect that will prove extremely difficult at best.'

'Malfoy seems likely,' Fleur deduced. She knew he was rich, powerful in his own right, and capable of hiding and protecting the horcrux for his master.

'Good guess. He was entrusted with the diary,' Harry smiled. 'Nott, Avery, the Lestranges, Dolohov, Macnair, Yaxley, and Travers are the others that might have been given one,' Harry read out calmly. 'I wouldn't trust Crabbe or Goyle with a cupcake, let alone a horcrux.'

'I know very little about the names,' Fleur admitted. She had heard them, occasionally in the papers, or from her father, but attached little importance to them until now.

'They're all pure of blood, powerful, and well off,' Harry summarised. 'I believe that Voldemort would have entrusted his horcrux to those he thought were most loyal from his most capable followers. If I were in the habit of giving pieces of my soul out that's what I'd do.'

'Those who went to Azkaban were likely the more loyal,' Fleur suggested, and Harry smiled in agreement. 'Travers, the Lestranges, and Avery, were all imprisoned.'

'And consequently are all out of our reach since they're in hiding from the aurors,' Harry pointed out cheerfully. 'I think our best bet is to go for someone on the edge and see what they know. Someone like Yaxley or Nott.'

'Nott,' Fleur pondered aloud, 'he's the reclusive one who lives alone with his son since his wife died and always refuses to attend the sessions of Britain's Wizengamot, isn't he.'

'No idea,' Harry shrugged, 'though there is a Theodore Nott in Slytherin in my year, so it's possible.'

'How exactly to you intend to find out what they know?' Fleur doubted they would just answer his questions honestly, and her mother was not licensed to brew veritaserum.

'Legilimency,' Harry smiled dangerously, 'I'll tear the knowledge I need from their thoughts.'

Fleur's stomach fluttered. There was something very appealing about that smile. The subtle, savage edge to it tugged at her heart, and curled her toes. It was the smile of a wizard who knew what he wanted, and knew that there was nothing he would not do to achieve it. The sight of it excited her heart, igniting a soft, hot fire in her stomach. Harry's desire was simply for them to be free, and together they would take it.

'It sounds illegal,' she remarked slowly, 'we'll need to be careful.'

'I don't know if it actually is,' Harry mused, 'but needless to say that Mr Nott won't be waiting around to chat with us.'

'We can pay him a visit at home,' Fleur suggested. 'Everyone knows where the old pureblooded families live, and if Nott is as reclusive as I remember hearing about we'll have no trouble once we're through the wards. An ageing Death Eater and his inexperienced son are not a challenge for me, let alone the both of us together.'

'Nott it is then,' Harry grinned. 'You can get through the wards, can't you?'

'Easily,' she smirked. 'Short of the Fidelius Charm there are few wards that I cannot bypass, and I sincerely doubt Mr Nott has set anything like an age line, or blood magic around his home.'

'We're both over age anyway,' Harry laughed, 'so it won't help him if he has.'

'When?' She asked, knowing that it would be better to wait a while to research Nott and his home before going.

Forewarned is forearmed.

'A few weeks,' Harry shrugged. 'He's not going anywhere, and we do need to be cautious. Dumbledore will be watching every move I make, and every move made that might have been mine.'

'This doesn't feel like much of a plan,' she commented. It was better than anything he'd managed before this year, hurling himself recklessly against acromantula, dementors, dark lords and a basilisk without a second thought.

'I normally just improvise as I go along,' Harry agreed with a smile. She could almost see the same events running through her head in his eyes.

'I know,' she scrunched up her nose in distaste, 'it's a wonder you're still alive.'

'Aren't you lucky?' Harry grinned.

'I intend to stay lucky,' Fleur told him softly. 'I've plenty of free time now business is waning before the war. I'll look to see what I can learn about Nott, and anyone else on that list as well. There's probably something useful in Gringotts' records.'

'Probably,' Harry nodded. 'I suppose I'll just carry on studying for my NEWTs, and reading the Daily Prophet to find out which few unlucky Death Eaters and hit wizards died in what skirmish.'

'The Carrows were killed today,' Fleur said dispassionately. 'They tried to ambush Amelia Bones in her home with a few of Fenrir Greyback's followers.'

'Foolish,' Harry shook his head, 'she's Minister for Magic. They were on my list,' he realised.

'They didn't even make it through the wards from what I heard,' Fleur said evenly, 'they triggered the perimeter wards and were cut down by her bodyguards halfway across the lawn.'

'How do you know that?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'There was nothing in the paper.'

'One of the curse-breakers was talking about it with a pink-haired lady in the atrium at lunch,' she explained.

'How would a curse-breaker know?' Harry wondered, rubbing his chin and the light stubble that was beginning to grow there. 'Did he have red hair?' He asked after a moment.

'Yes.' Fleur glanced at him quizzically, her fingers straying to the rose-emblazoned ring in her pocket, an apologetic gift from the same wizard. The only colleague she had who was able to resist her allure when she did not consciously restrain it.

'Bill Weasley,' Harry deduced. 'A member of the Order of the Phoenix like every member of his family over the age of seventeen, a stalwart follower of Dumbledore, no doubt, but probably a decent wizard.'

Bill Weasley.

It was nice to have a name to go with the red hair, rueful grin and apologetic frown.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

75. The House of Black

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it's been a while, almost a week, but here's the next chapter!

You're all very suspicious people! Is it not at all plausible that a poor curse-breaker might give something he found, and was trivial enough that he was allowed to keep, as an apology rather than actually buying something? No? Ok, then. There are a lot of fics that have every single relationship Harry enters under constant threat of destruction by love potions, compulsion charms and worse, but, come on, all references to the Nibelungenlied aside, it's only a little ring...

Chapter 75

Light streamed into the room, thrusting a warm, orange glow through his eye-lids and bathing him in heat. Lying half-awake on his side Harry was content to quietly bask, but Fleur, as always, grew restless in the warm, shifting across the bed to slip an arm around his waist, and tuck herself under his chin to press light kisses along his collarbone.

Harry opened one eye to look down at her gently, and kissed the top of her head, the only part of Fleur he could easily reach to kiss.

'Sirius will be here soon,' Fleur murmured into his neck. Her breath tickled warm against his skin and he squirmed slightly, opening his other eye and abandoning all hope of remaining as they were.

All good things must come to an end.

'And you have to go to work,' Harry finished reluctantly.

'Yes,' Fleur's reply tickled him once more.

'I suppose we'll have to get up then,' Harry said, freeing an arm to wrap around her shoulders.

Neither of them moved towards the edge of the bed.

Eventually Fleur moaned, and slipped out from under his arm, discarding her nightdress with a coy look. Harry found himself suddenly much more awake than before, and shifted subtly towards his clothes to conceal his reaction.

Judging by the smirk on Fleur's face as she drifted, still naked, towards the bathroom, he hadn't been even remotely successful.

She found him downstairs once her frenetic morning ritual was complete, pausing in her habitual preparation to firmly place a decent-sized breakfast on the table in his usual spot, and eye him questioningly.

Harry knew better than to disagree, not that he minded to begin with, her single-minded determination to make sure he was always taken care of was as touching as it was unprecedented. Nobody else had ever seemed quite so dedicated to putting him first.

'So what will you be doing while I'm sitting at my desk reading through files on prominent families who may have connections to Voldemort?' Fleur asked, inhaling croissant and coffee, while simultaneously reading the Daily Prophet.

'Adding the final touches to the protections of our home,' he smiled, glad to see the corner of Fleur's mouth curve at his choice of words.

'Something sanguine?' She inquired, brushing crumbs daintily away from her lips.

'Yes,' Harry nodded, dragging his eyes away from Fleur's mouth to the back of the paper. In bold, black font, the Daily Prophet declared the last skirmish between Voldemort's followers and the hit wizards a victory for the Ministry, but the substantially longer list of dead or injured hit wizards suggested otherwise.

'Will you need some of my blood?' Fleur looked more than a little curious, and some part of Harry briefly entertained the fantasy of being able to teach her all about it in the future. The rest of him firmly proclaimed that it didn't like her doing something that often ended up being very dangerous.

'Yes,' Harry decided. The first part of the ward would require blood from both of them.

Fleur folded the paper gently in half and placed it on the table, then reached calmly for the knife at the side of her plate. Holding it with two fingers she dipped her thumb upon the gleaming, silver tip, and extended her hand towards him, a bright, crimson bubble welling upon the ball of the digit.

'Thanks,' Harry told her dryly, flicking his wand out to levitate the drop of blood over the table.

'Before I forget,' she explained, carefully wiping the tip of the knife clean.

'Do you want me to heal it?' Harry offered.

Fleur tilted her head at his question, conveying in her expression both her gratitude and her amusement at his suggestion. 'I am quite good with healing spells, Harry,' she assured him, 'even if I do not heal like you do.'

'Nobody heals like me naturally,' Harry shrugged. Fleur had not so much as batted an eyelash when Harry had cut himself accidentally and healed completely in the space of a few heartbeats. She'd been fascinated enough to demand a full explanation of the ability, which Harry had happily given once he realised she had not even the slightest aversion to the magic behind it.

'I am jealous,' Fleur sighed, blinking gratefully at him when he levitated their plates across the room and onto the unit beside the sink.

'You can wordlessly and wandlessly conjure fire hot enough to melt steel,' Harry reminded her. 'No ritual will gift me that.'

'I had a read through that book,' she told him, pointing in the direction of the tome he had taken from Salazar's library, 'none of the rituals within seem prudent considering my nature.'

'I told you that was likely,' Harry agreed. It was as close to I told you so as he could come without inviting a tart response.

'I know,' Fleur wrinkled her nose, 'maybe when we have more time we will be able to create some of our own and I will find a way to safely replicate that ability of yours for myself.'

'It'll be fun,' Harry grinned. He'd developed a bit of a taste for the rituals, the combination of blood magic, self improvement, and interesting magical ingredients was addictive and fascinatingly complex.

'Have you chosen?' Fleur asked him evenly. He shot her a wry smile. Harry should have known that she would have guessed his purpose straight away.

'Yes,' he admitted. 'Though I will have to design one myself,' he grinned, 'it'll be interesting to see if it works.'

Salazar would be proud, he thought. Will be proud, he remembered.

Harry would see him again.

'Will it be messy?' Fleur inquired softly.

'It won't be too bad,' Harry reassured her, 'especially when I have you around to nurse me back to health.'

'I will not be gentle on you just because you thought it was a good idea to empty your veins for a fractional advantage over others,' Fleur warned.

'A fractional reduction of my disadvantage you mean,' Harry corrected. 'Voldemort has likely done every ritual imaginable on himself, and even though his old body was destroyed it's likely many are still effective.'

'How many more do you intend to do?' Fleur asked apprehensively. 'I know you enjoy creating them, but they're dangerous.'

'Only two for now,' Harry decided, mentally scrapping plans for a third, extremely risky ritual in favour of not being immolated upon attempting it. He shouldn't make Fleur worry unnecessarily.

'One,' he continued, knowing she wanted details, 'will be to try and even things between Voldemort and myself. As it stands I can match him for speed, and likely for power, but I tire much faster than he does. This ritual will help me recover quicker, and ensure I last a bit longer in a prolonged duel.'

'And the other?'

'A precaution,' Harry shared with a small smile. 'Given that the potion's master at Hogwarts is likely a Death Eater, or, at the very least, influenced by them, it feels prudent to try create a ritualistic immunity to most poisons.'

'Is that actually possible?'

'I believe so,' Harry nodded. Salazar had managed a form of it. 'I still have to design parts of it myself, and buy the things I need from Diagon Alley.'

'I suppose that will give you something to do other than NEWT work,' Fleur smirked.

'And horcrux hunting,' Harry reminded her with a smile.

Fleur tossed her hair over her shoulder. 'I'm doing all the hunting at the moment,' she pointed out, 'days and days of reading through Gringotts files on out potential guardians while all my colleagues are entertaining themselves.'

'Well,' Harry grinned knowingly, 'if you want to go with them you can, leave the research to me and go spend all your time with your colleagues.'

'I prefer the research,' Fleur admitted. 'Gringotts' files do not stare, and ask me out for lunch every few minutes after being told that I am already seeing someone.'

There was a soft knock at the door.

'Sirius is here,' Fleur remarked, 'I'll need to leave in a few minutes.'

Harry rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then tucked the ritual book back out of sight. Sirius was many things, but it seemed unlikely he would approve of such magic. He did, despite his use of destructive and dark-dubbed magic in the Ministry, believe in the fallacy of light and dark, and while the occasional spell would be acceptable in his eyes, rituals were probably not.

He pulled himself up out of his chair to let Sirius in while Fleur cast a brief charm to animate the rather cheerful looking sponge and sent it towards their plates, trailing bubbles along the unit.

'Hi Sirius,' Harry greeted, pulling open the door. 'How is everybody?'

'Frantic,' he grinned, following Harry into the hall. 'But I bring good news.'

'Oh,' Harry eyed his godfather warily, there was an ominous mischievous edge to his tone.

'Is Fleur around?'

'I am,' she replied for herself, stepping out of the kitchen, and tucking her wand into her waist.

'Perfect,' Sirius chuckled. 'Harry you have a chance at the honour of being named the new head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.'

'I do?' Harry's suspicion of foul play was only growing.

'Yes,' a few more of Sirius' teeth became visible as smile spread, 'my dearest mother has decided that there is nobody more suitable to carry on our family name, though she refuses to tell my why.'

'There is a catch, isn't there?' Fleur realised.

'Oh yes,' Sirius laughed, 'to be the head of my illustrious family you must be able to produce pure-blooded, children directly descended from the Black family tree. You are related through Dorea Potter, but not directly enough to satisfy the tradition.'

'So I can't become the head of your family?' Harry asked confused. Fleur exhaled sharply though her nose, looking very unimpressed. Clearly she understood something that he did not.

'You can,' Sirius all but crowed, 'only you have to marry a daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, and there's only one available.'

'I thought you were the last member of your family?' Harry's eyebrows rose. 'If you're about to tell me you're secretly a girl and have been under a spell all this time I'm not going to believe you, and I'm certainly not going to be flattered by your interest.'

'No,' Sirius looked scandalised, 'I'm far too rugged and handsome to be a girl.'

'So there is a girl who fits the description?' Fleur's tone was completely even, and quite soft, but there was something about it that seemed to hint at fire, copious amounts of fire, and the permanent end of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

'Er, yes.' Sirius seemed to have understood the danger too, because his smile had abruptly vanished. 'She's a member of the Order actually, a disowned daughter, whom my mother will graciously allow to return to the family tree because her skill as witch is evidence that the Black blood has overcome any muggle taint.'

'Does she have a name?' Harry inquired.

'Nymphadora,' Sirius sniggered to himself, 'she hates it.'

'Well, Harry?' Fleur turned to look at him, a perilously gentle smile on her lips. 'Are you interested.'

'No,' Harry shook his head. For a moment he'd been tempted to joke, but his sense of danger, finely attuned after so many years at Hogwarts, had strongly advised against it.

'I shall convey your refusal, and my I told you so to my mother,' Sirius laughed, 'it will, of course, make no difference to her plans.'

'Wonderful,' Harry sighed.

'If you see Kreacher nearby, don't sign anything until you've read it, even if you think you've already read it,' Sirius warned.

'Isn't he your house elf?'

'He's much more fond of my mother than me. I was cruel to him as a child,' Sirius confessed. 'He sees me as a traitor to the family he's devoted his life to.'

'Can't you just order him to stay within the house?' Harry pleaded. He did not need to be entrapped into a marriage contract or anything so ridiculous archaic and contrived.

'Well I could,' Sirius grinned, 'but it's far funnier not to.'

'I'm glad you find it funny,' Harry grimaced. 'Does, er, Nymphadora know about this?'

'Oh yes,' Sirius' smile grew impossibly wide, 'my mother's portrait went into great depth and detail in explaining it to her before the last meeting of the Order. I've never seen her so flustered; I got away with calling her by her first name for almost an hour afterwards.'

'Well I'm glad someone got something out of the situation,' Fleur commented sharply, 'personally, I'd quite like to meet your mother.'

'The portrait's all but indestructible,' Sirius sighed. 'I've tried everything short of fiendfyre, and I would have tried that if there wasn't a risk it would consume the whole house when I lost control of it.'

'I'm willing to try again,' Fleur responded dryly.

'So what are the benefits of being the head of the family?' Harry asked innocently.

Sirius chuckled, and began to describe, in great detail, the many wonders of his family in a mostly sarcastic tone, but most of it was lost on Harry, who was all too aware of the slim, soft fingers that now encircled his wrist in a tight, possessive grip.

'Do you have any other living relatives?' Fleur cut in, interrupting Sirius' cheerful allusions to the upsides of marrying a metamorph.

'A few,' Sirius' face darkened. 'Harry got my cousin, Bella, in the Ministry, but her sisters are still alive, Narcissa, and Nymphadora's mother Andromeda. Apart from that we're tied through recent marriage to the Malfoys and the Lestranges.'

'A nice collection of relatives you have there,' Harry mused, realising Fleur's intent. She had likely learnt of the connections to their targeted members of Voldemort's elite through Gringotts. 'The Lestranges are a gregarious group.'

Sirius snorted. 'The only sociable events they ever partook of were muggle baiting, and balls held exclusively for pure blooded families. I've never even spoken to either of the brothers, not unless they were wearing masks in the last war.'

'A shame,' Harry quipped, 'you might have got on really well.'

'I have to go,' Fleur noted quietly, squeezing his wrist, and kissing him gently on the cheek.

'Have fun,' Harry smiled, keeping her close for a moment before she had to be away from him for most of the day. A faint, approving smile flickered across Sirius' face at their farewell, but for once he said nothing, not even when Fleur silently apparated away.

'So how's everything going?' Sirius asked calmly. 'You seem to have more furniture now, this place feels more like a home, and less like Grimmauld Place after Molly's been at it.'

'Fleur chose most of it,' Harry replied, 'I just arranged it.'

'Lily never let James arrange anything,' Sirius remembered quietly, 'she had this thing about having everything in straight lines or at perpendicular angles. We used to move things by a few inches just to tease her.'

'I didn't inherit that,' Harry smiled.

'Obviously,' Sirius cast an eye over the room, 'it's spacious, but Lily would've gone spare until she'd moved it all into line.'

Harry slumped into the nearest chair, and Sirius mirrored him, swinging his feet over the arm to lie across it.

'You mentioned everyone being frantic?' Harry asked, suppressing a yawn.

'Dumbledore's disappeared off for some reason,' Sirius shrugged, 'and he left Moody, and Tonks, that's Nymphadora by the way, in charge of finding you, but they've not even come close.'

'And they won't,' Harry grinned, 'not unless Moody's eye can see past the Fidelius Charm.'

'It's not foolproof, Harry,' Sirius warned, 'you should know that better than anyone.'

'I know,' Harry assured him, 'it's not the only ward placed over the Meadow.'

'Anti-apparition wards don't keep out dark wizards for very long,' Sirius pointed out calmly.

'The Fianto Duri will,' Harry smirked, 'Fleur's more than just a pretty face.'

'That can be broken too,' Sirius said, but he looked impressed.

'If it is,' Harry rubbed his chin, 'then they still have to get past the wards I'm setting up, and that's easier said than done. You can watch me create them if you want,' he offered lightly, 'I'll need your help for a moment anyway.' It would prove a good moment to show Sirius a little more of the magic he was capable of using that did not conform to the Ministry perpetuated fallacy.

'What sort of ward is it?' Sirius asked. 'I don't know much about them I'm afraid, only that they're never as impregnable as the casters claim.'

'The sort that requires blood,' Harry answered evenly, standing up and flicking his wand into his palm.

'Blood wards,' Sirius murmured. A brief conflict raged across his face before he nodded in acceptance, and followed a covertly smiling Harry back outside.

With a few elegant flourishes of his wand, Harry drew burning, purple runes along the walls and windows of the Meadow, leaving them inscribed in glowing, spiralling patterns across the stone. Sirius watched wide-eyed.

'What does it do?' He asked when Harry finished etching.

'To enter requires blood that the ward recognises,' Harry answered, summoning the drop of Fleur's blood from the kitchen and leaving it hovering in the air in front of the door.

'I assumed that was the help you needed,' Sirius grinned, biting the side of his thumb and letting the blood run down the side of his hand.

'Exactly,' Harry nodded, drawing a drop from the wound, combining it with Fleur's, and then slicing open his palm to add his own blood. He was confident that after having competed the ritual that had gifted him his speed and resilience that his blood was now different enough from that which Voldemort had stolen to prevent the Dark Lord being able to just walk in, but there was a contingency just in case.

'So I have to lose blood every time I visit?'

'No,' Harry frowned at the idea of such an inelegant solution. 'The ward will know when your ry to cross whether your blood is allowed entry or not.'

He neglected to mention the other part of the ward; the contingency. In case his blood was not quite so different he had disguised the ward, casting a second over the top of it. One that required a voluntary sacrifice of blood to bind the visitor to adhering to a specific magical oath, and then revealed the entrance. Voldemort himself could come and visit, should he bypass the other wards, but unless he broke the blood ward he would be unable to do anything that might lead to causing them harm while inside.

Of course, Harry reminded himself, he's much more likely just to break it.

The ward was simple,and fairly strong, but it could be overpowered by a sufficiently knowledgeable or puissant invader. Voldemort was likely both.

Harry guided the drops of blood onto the runes directly over the mantel of the door, closing his eyes to avoid being temporarily blinded when they flashed a brilliant, bright white.

His godfather yelped with surprise and swore, squinting irritatedly at Harry.

'Consider it payback for bringing up your mother's plan in front of Fleur,' he told him sweetly.

'I guess that's fair,' Sirius grinned, running his own wand over his thumb. 'Do you want me to heal you?'

'I already did,' Harry answered smoothly, extending his unmarked hand.

'That was subtle of you,' Sirius remarked, 'can we go back in? Or do we have to wait?'

'The ward is done,' Harry answered, 'anyone with our blood, or a combination of our blood may enter, unless someone with identical blood is already inside, but I feel like walking around a bit, maybe to the stream.'

'So the twins are going to have to split up if they ever visit?' Sirius laughed, walking alongside Harry towards the copse of elm trees and the stream.

'I don't know,' Harry mused, 'it'd be interesting to test though.'

'Now you sound like Lily,' his godfather remarked. 'She used to play with experimental charms in her spare time, tested more than a few on me without my consent too.'

'I'm sure you deserved it,' Harry grinned.

'I probably did.'

'How's the Order faring?' Harry inquired.

'Do you actually care?' Sirius asked. 'I'm not the best at it, Harry, but even I can see the difference in your eyes when you refer to Fleur, yourself, and the others.'

'I have no attachment to them,' Harry admitted, 'but that doesn't mean I think they should die if I can prevent it, nor that I shouldn't help them.'

The words sounded earnest, but they rang hollow in his heart, and the truth became horribly clear. Somehow he had stopped caring for anyone except those he held dear, and he was simply unwilling to risk himself and them for another who meant so little to him.

'The Order is torn between hunting for you and trying to help the Ministry counter the Death Eaters,' Sirius explained, moving swiftly onwards. 'Voldemort has many supporters, most of the more dangerous ones were fortunately expelled from the Ministry after that debacle with Rita Skeeter,' Harry managed to keep his face blank, 'but it's chaos.'

'The Ministry is trying to give the impression they're winning,' Harry noted.

'They are,' Sirius sighed, 'but at a terrible cost. Voldemort has learnt from his mistakes, instead of mindlessly attacking across the country like he did last time he has been directing his Death Eaters at important targets, and throwing his other supporters at the hit wizards to wear them down. The Ministry is suffering, but holding out, and in a war of attrition the larger party wins.'

'He can't have that many supporters,' Harry frowned, stopping under the branches of the elm trees on the bank of the stream. A few slim shadows darted in the deeper parts of the water, scattering under the bank when they noticed their arrival.

'You'd be surprised,' Sirius said bitterly, 'the Ministry has been influenced by his supporters, those like Lucius Malfoy, since he fell from power, and they have constantly ensured groups like werewolves, vampires and giants are oppressed and embittered.'

'And once they have turned them against the Ministry they offer them emancipation from Voldemort,' Harry realised.

'There are no flocks in Britain, vampires have never settled here in numbers, but the werewolf packs are united under Fenrir Greyback, and he follows Voldemort to take revenge against all wizards and witches who have oppressed them.' Sirius rubbed his eyes, looking awfully tired for a moment. 'And that says nothing of those he has swayed to his side in the hope of power, many minor pure-blood families hope for a share of the spoils once the Ministry is toppled.'

'So what can the Order do?'

'We pass information to the Ministry,' Sirius answered simply. 'Snape tells us what he can, and we pass that on to Amelia Bones, then we assist wherever we can, but there are relatively few of us, and so we are limited to protecting that which Dumbledore deems most important.'

'Me,' Harry smirked, 'his martyr.'

'Yes,' Azkaban's shadow carved deep trenches under his eyes, and for a moment something furious and feral gleamed there. 'Do you know what Dumbledore is off doing?'

'I have my suspicions,' Harry admitted. 'There are a number of objects that are very important to Voldemort, destroying them is crucial, and I suspect Dumbledore is searching for them as we speak.'

'What else do you know about them?' Sirius asked. 'I will not tell Dumbledore what I know, Harry,' he promised fervently, 'the senile, meddling, old man has sacrificed his last pawn if I can help it.'

'They are called horcruxes,' Harry began, 'they contain a fragment of Voldemort's soul. I believe there were three, but I have already destroyed two. Dumbledore is aware of one, the diary that possessed Ginny and opened the Chamber of Secrets was one.'

'What about the other?'

'Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem,' Harry smiled, 'I found it in the Room of Requirement and destroyed it once I realised what it was.'

It took far too long for me to realise, he added darkly.

Harry had come far too close to that horcrux.

'I don't know anything about the third,' he shrugged, 'but we're looking for it.'

'We?'

'I have no secrets from Fleur,' Harry explained. 'I hope that he has entrusted it to one of his followers, like he did the diary, and that we might be able to take it from them.'

'Is there anything I can do to help?' Sirius demanded. 'I feel useless at Grimmauld Place.'

'Dumbledore must not know that I am aware of horcruxes,' Harry warned seriously, 'the consequences would be dire.'

'That sounds like a no,' Sirius muttered, annoyed.

'You can keep a careful eye on Dumbledore,' Harry suggested. 'If you can learn anything about the Inner Circle, especially on of them being given something to guard by Voldemort then that would be useful.'

'These horcruxes are the priority then,' Sirius surmised.

'While they exist Voldemort cannot truly die,' Harry said calmly, 'they have to be destroyed, and he must not learn what we are doing until the very end if it can be avoided.'

'I understand,' Sirius nodded. 'I'll keep an eye open, and I'll have a look in the library for anything that might prove useful. There's plenty about all kinds of dark and dangerous magic in there.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

76. The Spiny Serpent

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter! The summer is about halfway over, which means there's relatively few chapters involving shopping left, though, I will confess that this is a chapter that involves shopping and running around Diagon Alley again ;)

Enjoy!

Chapter 76

He had drastically underestimated Slug and Jiggers Apothecary. Where Harry had expected a limited range of rare, or powerful ingredients he found row upon row of gleaming glass jars. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the inside of Snape's office. Harry had already considered stealing what he needed from Snape in an attempt to justify the treacherous former Death Eater's continued existence, but Dumbledore would not take long to realise the true culprit if the wards were not triggered.

Instead he had come to Diagon Alley, disguised, as Fleur had expressly told him not to be, as a young, crimson-haired, emerald-eyed Tom Riddle. The look worked surprisingly well, and though his blood-bright hair drew everyone's eyes that was all they seemed to see, or remember.

He ran a finger gently along the closest row of vials, letting the willow ring on his finger tinkle over the curved, glass edges.

The rituals he intended to undertake required enough ingredients to burn through what remained of his winnings from the Triwizard Tournament. Floating around him were several hundred galleons worth of glass encased potions constituents. Myrrh, bloodroot and vervain for the first ritual, and mistletoe, yew sap, a bezoar, and unicorn horn for the second; the one he had designed.

Harry was still one vial short, but he knew he wouldn't find the final ingredient here. There were more poisons in the world than he had ever anticipated, and for all his research he had come across only two substances capable of rendering him truly immune to the majority; phoenix tears, and unicorn's blood. He had some experience with both, but Fawkes was unlikely to give his tears to Harry for such a task, so he was left to pick his way carefully around the curse of unicorn's blood.

Slaying or injuring a unicorn for its blood would certainly bring the wrath of the curse upon his head, but simply buying it should not, not so long as he was sure the unicorn had not been harmed to obtain its blood. He would have to take a trip into Knockturn alley; uncursed unicorn's blood was just as illegal as cursed blood.

Swiftly striding to the counter he paid for his purchases, stacking the jars into a box which he tucked under his arm rather than shrunk as he might have preferred. The ritual was already going to be a delicate thing; it was best not to have any other trace of magic upon its components. If it worked Harry would be very proud of it, his first original steps into a plane of magic Salazar had placed great value on.

He will be proud when I tell him, Harry smiled, brushing his wave of crimson hair off his forehead.

Harry had spent a great deal of time designing the ritual, carefully considering each aspect and refining it until he was sure it would have the desired effect. There was good reason to be careful; it was no small risk. The threat of a cursed life loomed equally large as the threat of potential poisoning.

Stepping out of the shop he strode confidently towards the shadier side of the alley, listening to the click of the cobbles beneath his feet, and trying to ignore the uncomfortable edge of the box against his hip.

It was a beautiful day; a rare, true spell of summer, cloudless, warm, and brilliant beneath a sky the same hue as Fleur's eyes. Consequently everyone had chosen it as the day to visit Diagon Alley, and there were so many people that the shop windows were hidden from view behind the crowd. The whole length of the street was obscured behind wizards and witches who swerved around one another the throng.

Fortunately the crowd seemed to part for Harry. Whether it was the hair, or the way he carried himself he was not sure, but those before him shifted themselves from his path rather than dare obstruct him.

He turned onto Knockturn Alley, stepping from the crown into the relative quiet of the ill-reputed area. Two hit wizards drifted along the street, hands in their sleeves, no doubt already gripping wands, and a scatter of rag-clad hags eyed them suspiciously from the shadows.

As he passed them the nearest scuttled from her shadows to snatch at his bright hair. Her long, wrinkled, yellow-nailed, fingers passed harmlessly though the air as he tilted his head away, and Harry's left hand snapped up to catch her thin, fragile wrist.

He met her jaundiced eyes, passive legilimency extracting a semblance of intent from the twisted thoughts of the creature.

Bright, he saw within its mind. Red, pretty, like blood, it continued, should be ours.

Unnatural, he felt it realise as he broke the connection, wrong, dangerous, flee.

The hag quailed under the cold, scrutinising stare he fixed her with and flinched away, cowering behind her free limb, but Harry simply released her, and let her flee shivering back into the umbrae.

He passed Borgin and Burkes, ignoring the display of dark curiosities, and the flash of blond in the window, passing directly across the alley to the Spiny Serpent.

The front door was locked. It was always locked. No customer of the Spiny Serpent ever went in through the front, he'd learnt that from employing a few subtle forays of legilimency into those nearby when scouting for places he might be able to buy unicorn's blood.

Harry stepped around the row of large vases, walking along the thin gap between the line of vessels and the wall until he reached the true entrance, a small, stained wooden door engraved in the rough likeness of a serpent.

'Come in,' a voice invited before he could knock, 'I can hear you.'

Harry pushed open the door, cautiously entering the secretive establishment.

He found himself face to face with an unnaturally slender, pale-faced figure, and, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could make out the sharp nails, gaunt cheeks, and sharp teeth that betrayed the vampiric nature of the owner.

'You look familiar,' the vampire whispered, 'have we met before?'

'Not that I am aware of,' Harry replied easily. If he did look familiar it was likely that the vampire had once met a young Tom Riddle out buying questionable items just as Harry now was.

'I never forget a face,' the owner murmured. There was a soft whisper of cloth and a gentle orange light settled over the shop, revealing an empty stone room with two chairs at its centre. 'What brings you to my shop then, young wizard?' The vampire asked, sliding with unnatural grace into the furthest chair from Harry.

'I'm seeking to buy something I might not be able to find elsewhere,' Harry answered, taking the other chair.

'A wise choice to come here,' the creature agreed, tapping its elongated nails on the arm of the chair in a slow deliberate rhythm. 'I have run this shop for almost two centuries, as my sire did before me. There are few things I cannot obtain. What have you come for?'

'Blood,' Harry smiled slightly, 'unicorn's blood to be precise.'

'Uncursed, I presume,' the vampire nodded. 'What price are you willing to pay?'

'I have enough gold,' Harry revealed. 'A single drop of blood will be sufficient for my purpose.' The ritual would only require the tiniest amount to work; the magic in the blood of a unicorn was incredibly puissant.

'Sometimes I ask for gold,' the vampire smiled, revealing a two pairs of curved, sharp canines in his upper jaw. 'Not always.'

'What price would you ask?' Harry inquired, raising an eyebrow. The creature should know better than to demand too high a price. There were few laws that protected vampires in Britain, and Harry had very little to fear from anyone should he decide to simply take what he wanted.

'Blood for blood,' the vampire mused suggestively, 'a fair exchange.'

'My blood,' Harry surmised.

'I do not need any of the gifts of vampirism to feel the strength of the magic in you, young wizard,' the creature crooned. 'It is plain to see. Your eyes glow with power, the eldritch effuses from you. Your blood will be an instant of bliss to me.'

'A drop of mine for a drop of yours, then,' he agreed.

'Yes,' the vampire breathed almost giddily, extending its hand. Harry took it firmly, not flinching from the cold skin and strong grip. 'One moment.'

The creature straightened from his chair, turning and stepping through a previously hidden doorway in the wall behind him.

When the vampire returned it came clutching a small glass vial no longer than the tip of Harry's finger, and within it swirled a gleaming, silver fluid that could only be unicorn's blood.

Harry extended his hand, allowing the vampire to take it between his own and drive one of his long, sharp nails into the ball of his forefinger. A single, bright bead welled up, bursting onto the curved underside of the creature's claw-like nail and filling it.

A pale, long tongue slipped from between the vampire's lips to lap the blood collected in his nail. 'Take it,' the creature smiled with red-smeared lips, proffering the vial. 'Our business is concluded, young wizard. May you always walk in shadows.'

Harry inclined his head, pocketed the vial, and swiftly left the vampire to collapse in the chair, lips aquiver with pleasure at the sensation his blood had bestowed.

He had not made it more than a few yards from the row of vases concealing the true entrance when a hand caught his arm in a firm grip.

Expecting the hag again, he whirled, wand already in hand, and a host of spells ready to spill from his tongue. He recoiled from the almost glowingly bright bubble-gum pink haired witch. The colour reminded him of Umbridge.

'Found you,' she proclaimed cheerfully.

Auror robes, Harry noted.

'Indeed you have,' Harry smiled, playing innocent. 'May I ask why you were looking for me?'

'Everyone's looking for you, Harry,' the witch laughed at his raised eyebrow, 'your disguise is good, but not I'm adept at seeing the real person behind a new face.' Her hair faded ebony for a brief moment as she spoke, her cheekbones rising, and lips growing fuller. 'I'm Tonks,' she told him.

'Ah,' Harry grinned, relying on charm now that his cover had collapsed, 'my potential fiancée; it's nice to finally meet you… Nymphadora.' Behind his grin he was thinking furiously. Tonks would want him back with the Dursley's, or back under Dumbledore's twinkle-eyed gaze, neither of which were acceptable, so she either had to agree not to tell anyone, or conveniently forget all about their encounter.

'Never Nymphadora,' the witch scowled, 'just Tonks, and how do you know about that?'

'I have my sources,' Harry shrugged, slipping his arm out her grasp while she was distracted. He had no intention of letting himself be forcefully apparated anywhere.

'Are these the same sources that drew you to Knockturn Alley?'

'No,' Harry shook his head innocently. 'I'm shopping for potion's ingredients,' he patted the box under his arm, 'you can carry this is you like, it's a bit awkward though.'

'I'm sure you'll manage.' Tonks hair brightened a bit, and Harry bit the inside of his cheek in annoyance, giving her the box would have given him the perfect chance to step out of sight and cast the memory charm.

'So care to tell me where you've been?' The pink-haired auror asked, leading the way back into Diagon Alley.

'I promised Dumbledore I would stay where I was safest,' Harry smiled, enjoying the brief flicker of disbelief across her face, 'so I did.'

'The wards around Privet Drive keep you far safer than anything else could,' Tonks frowned, 'Dumbledore said so himself.'

Dumbledore lied, Harry wanted to spit.

Her faith in the old wizard was nauseating. The ancient meddler wanted his martyr somewhere he had no way of practicing any combat related magic so his sacrifice was all the more assured.

'I suppose then,' Harry responded cordially, 'that he and I must have misunderstood one another.'

Tonks didn't look at all convinced, but wisely let the subject drop.

'So now that you have found me what are you going to do?' He enquired. 'I've pretty much finished shopping.'

'The Order would like to make sure you are safe,' Tonks replied. 'I understand you can apparate?'

'I can,' Harry nodded, 'but the only place I will apparate is back to my current residence.'

'And where, exactly, is that?' Tonks demanded. 'We're supposed to be protecting you, not chasing you down while you're out shopping in crowds of potential Death Eaters.'

'I'm afraid I can't tell you,' Harry smirked. It was literally true; the Fidelius made sure he couldn't.

'Can't, or won't?' Tonks pressed.

'If you tell me where the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is, I'll tell you where I'm currently residing,' Harry offered.

'I can't tell you that,' she snapped, then suddenly grinned when the real meaning became clear. 'You're under the Fidelius too,' she breathed. 'That explains a lot.'

'And thus quite safe,' Harry pointed out firmly.

She fell quiet as they drifted south down the alley, her belief in Dumbledore conflicting with what she knew of the Fidelius Charm.

'So if you're safe, what have you been doing?' Tonks eventually asked.

'Practicing for my NEWTs,' Harry replied, half-honest. 'I asked Professor Dumbledore if I could take some of them early since I'm quite far advanced in some subjects.'

'I've never heard of anyone taking them more than a year early before,' the pink-haired auror voiced, 'you must be really good if Dumbledore thinks you're capable of it. Transfiguration is one of them, isn't it.'

'Yes,' he nodded, 'the face?'

'The face,' she grinned. 'I'm a metamorph so I can do that naturally, but you've done a spectacular job for just normal human transfiguration. Dumbledore didn't think you'd be able to hide the scar.'

'Well I won't tell him if you don't,' Harry remarked lightly.

Tonks gave a light chuckle. 'I suppose that's fair,' she shrugged and looked a little guilty. 'It doesn't seem that there's all that much point in searching for you and moving you when you've managed to do such a good job of hiding on you own. I've never seen Moody so embarrassed,' a delighted smile spread across her face and her hair shifted a bright, golden yellow, 'the famous Mad-Eye, outwitted by a school student.'

'Maybe he'll be more vigilant now,' Harry suggested dryly.

'I'm not sure that's possible,' Tonks scowled, 'he yelled at me yesterday for tripping over a chair leg, not because I was being clumsy again, but because I didn't have my wand out ready to duel immediately afterwards in case I'd been attacked by a dark wizard and not a chair.'

'That does seem unreasonable,' Harry agreed, wondering how long it would take her to ask the next question on Dumbledore's list of things to know about Harry.

'He's good at catching dark wizards,' Tonks smiled wryly, 'but not so great at anything else anymore.'

'The Order needs him.'

'The Order needs Sirius' mother's portrait removed,' Tonks grimaced. 'There are only two people she won't insult, you,' Tonks' hair turned a slightly rosy shade of pink, 'and me. Anyone else gets it straight in the neck, and I pity the person who dares insult you in hearing distance of that painting. Snape was partially deaf for days, and I'm sure I heard the words pure-blooded scion of far greater worth than any who befouls and besmirches the house of my forefathers echoing on the far side of London.'

'It's nice to be appreciated,' Harry grinned. 'What has she said to you about marriage?'

'Only that she's glad to see the Black blood shine through and that it would be the dream of any proper witch to marry someone of your heritage.' Tonks arched an eyebrow. 'What heritage?'

'I'm a Potter,' Harry shrugged.

'She must think you're something more,' Tonks surmised. 'That mad house elf was muttering about you stealing that which was rightfully Master Regulus', and if you've managed to win the kind of approval Walburga Black had for her younger son, then you've impressed her.'

'I daresay I'll find out what she thinks eventually,' Harry grinned. 'I'll be old enough to join the Order in a year.'

'Hopefully the war is already over by then,' Tonks responded gently. 'You're too young for this, hell, I'm too young for this.'

Harry laughed. Tonks was likeable enough, friendly even; he hoped he would not have to memory charm her, but he wouldn't find out until she decided to steer the conversation back to his summer arrangements again.

'I tell you what,' she began tentatively, 'if you answer my questions honestly, I won't tell Dumbledore that I met you, only that I learnt these things from a reliable source.'

'Will you stop trying to return me to live with my disgusting, bigoted relatives?' Harry asked.

'Are they that bad?' The witch asked quietly. 'Sirius said that by making you live there we were making you suffer needlessly, but Dumbledore disagreed, thought my cousin was just being dramatic.'

'They used to be,' Harry admitted. 'I'll answer your questions if you keep your word; it will save me from having to obliviate you in a few minutes.'

Tonks laughed, not realising he was only half joking.

'First question, the big one, why did you leave?' She smiled at him warmly, doing her best to reduce any awkwardness.

'I don't want to live with them,' Harry said simply. 'I would rather live by myself than with the Dursleys, and with the Fidelius I have no reason to stay.'

'And the memory charm?'

'For their safety,' Harry answered, and it was true in a way. He'd done it to give them the same safety they'd offered him; revenge was sweet. It was satisfying to be even with them after all those years. He did not like feeling he had lost; that he had somehow come off worse, so he made sure that things were balanced out.

'How well protected is the place you're staying?' Tonks eyed him seriously, and he realised that this was the really big question. If she felt he was truly safe, then it seemed the likeable pink-haired witch would do the right thing and let him be.

'The Fidelius,' Harry began focusing purely on the metamorphagus, 'anti-apparation, anti-portkey, and the Fianto Duri.'

'All of them?' Tonks looked awed. 'That's… you're a sixth year!'

'I told you I was safe,' Harry grinned.

'I barely believe you,' she breathed, 'but the Fidelius explains why we have failed to find you, and that alone is protection enough for me to trust you with your own safety.'

'It's true,' Harry said calmly. 'I'll be back at Hogwarts in a month and a half too.'

'Of course you will be,' Tonks smiled, 'Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain.'

It is now, Harry thought, now Salazar is sacrificed.

'Do you smell smoke?' The pink-haired witch frowned, turning around curiously and almost slipping on the cobbles.

Harry sniffed the air. There was a distinct tang of smoke, a thick, acrid burning smell and gentle wisps of grey drifted over the crowd of shopping wizards.

Something is wrong, Harry realised, a tendril of ice slithered down his spine and he carefully placed the box and the vial down in a corner where they were safely out of harm's way.

'Morsemordre,' a hoarse voice cried as he straightened up, and the glowing green skull exploded over the Alley.

Everyone was screaming. Dark robes and colours flashed within the panicked crowd. Sudden cracks rang out as every wizard capable of apparition fled the alley.

Harry's wand was in hand immediately, but he could not cast anything for fear of hitting the innocent members of the crowd.

'Go,' Tonks urged. 'Apparate out now.'

'No,' Harry replied firmly, 'I can help.'

His eyes flicked over the masked faces and robes, searching for some clue as to their identity, hoping that somewhere among the dark-robed attackers he might find one of the Lestranges or another of the Inner Circle who might be of use to him.

He saw the shimmer of the anti-apparition wards as Tonks cast the ward, and realised her plan immediately. Diagon Alley would be swarming with hit wizards in moments, they would apparate in all along the street, and the Death Eaters were now unable to escape.

There were only three in the street, though Harry was sure he had glimpsed several more. Two had shining silver masks, carved in unique patterns, and covered in runes, but the last had a simple white mask, unadorned. He hung back on the far right, his wand still in his robes. Clearly he expected the Inner Circle to deal with the two of them themselves.

'An auror,' one of the masked wizards sneered, his thin, short wand brandished with supreme arrogance.

'Yaxley,' Tonks spat. 'I should have guessed you'd be here. Where's your master, hiding in the shadows?'

'The shadows?' Yaxley laughed. 'The Dark Lord does not hide in the shadows, witch, he rules them.'

'Then where is he?' Tonks retorted. 'I see you, Yaxley, and Avery on your left, but no Voldemort.'

'You dare to say his name?' The third, plain-masked Death Eater, spoke for the first time since the three stepped forwards. It took only a word for Harry to recognise that smooth, sinister politeness, and he hoped, desperately that he was wrong, that he had misheard. He wasn't ready to face him again yet; he was still too weak.

'It's just a name,' Tonks replied, before he could warn her of his suspicions.

'There is power in a name,' the Death Eater replied. Harry could feel the smile behind the ivory, and the anticipation of the fear he was about to inspire.

The mask burst into white smoke, and the cold, crimson gaze of Voldemort fixed itself upon them.

'You're brave, Nymphadora Tonks,' his lips curled, 'but being brave does not make you strong.'

Voldemort's red eyes traced their way over Harry's face, taking in his borrowed countenance with some amusement, and for the briefest moment his smile turned almost warm.

'You need to transfigure your eyes,' the Dark Lord remarked almost amicably, 'their colour and aspect betrays you.'

'Are you not going to leave?' Harry asked calmly. 'Your message is sent.'

'Not yet,' the Dark Lord replied evenly. 'In my absence they have all forgotten the truth, while I have bided my time their fear has faded. They no longer understand what I am to them, what the reality of this world is, so I shall remind them, and they will fear me as they did before.'

'I am not afraid of you,' Tonks hissed, 'the hit wizards will be here in a few minutes, and then the Dementors will have your soul.'

Voldemort's lips curved upwards again at her brazen defiance. Her voice was steady, her hands still, and her face determined, but she was afraid, and they all knew it.

'Avery, Yaxley, you two deal with… Tom,' the almost warm smile flashed once more, 'the auror is mine.'

'Crucio,' Yaxley cackled, and the crackling beam of red burst against the wall behind Harry. Avery's silent spellfire hissed viciously past him to score scorching craters into the cobbles. He could not leave them space, or they would encircle him, so he reached for the cold fury within, letting it twist his conjuration, entrapping the three of them within a maze of sharp, icy shards.

'Hold them off, Harry,' Tonks gasped, deflecting, shielding and dodging as best she could, 'the hit wizards will be here in moments.'

'You don't have moments,' Voldemort said coldly. The string of silver beads of light trailed from his wand tip towards Tonks, ghosting ominously through the air.

'Contusio,' Harry commanded, focusing as much magic as he could into the spell in that instant and whipping the pinprick of silver into the ice immediately between the two Death Eaters and their Master.

Voldemort shielded himself instantly. The concussion of Harry's spell detonated Voldemort's early, and the waves of force dissipated over the Dark Lord's animated, slithering, serpentine shield without leaving so much as a mark.

Avery and Yaxley were not so swift.

Avery was fortunate to be hurled into the alley to skitter across the cobbles like a skipped stone, but Yaxley was hurled onto the ice, impaled on the frozen spines in a splatter of blood and viscera, to twitch limply as he gasped his last moments away.

His thin, short wand fell onto the ice fragment strewn cobbles with a quiet click of cold wood.

Harry did not pause, wordlessly summoning his shield, and the cloud of conjured butterflies to protect both him and Tonks against Voldemort's coming wrath while the pink-haired auror gaped at him in horror.

Had he been a second slower he would have been torn apart.

A hail of spells descended upon the two of them; Voldemort's retaliation was raw, and angry, a mixture of crackling, glowing Unforgivables and furious curses that split them and separated them, forcing Tonks to hide behind her own shield charm, and tearing through the spikes of conjured ice.

Around them red umbrella's were scattered and shredded, tables splintered and melted, and chairs shattered. Voldemort's burning rage razed everything along the length of the street beside them.

Fiendfyre billowed from the Dark Lord's wand when his curses were not enough, swirling towards Harry in a bright, burning wave of roaring, red-tongued fury, consuming the remaining few hapless butterflies that still fluttered around the two of them, and instantly sublimating the ice. The fiendfyre he unleashed was the most detractive version Harry had ever seen, but its curtain wasn't bright enough to disguise the brilliant, viridian flash, nor its sound loud enough to hide the cruel whisper of the Killing Curse.

Harry twisted the flames about him into twin serpents, sending them curing around his body and searing over the molten, glowing cobbles to consume the battered body of Avery and the crumpled corpse of Yaxley in a cacophony of pained screams he hardly heard.

Voldemort stood over the still body of Nymphadora Tonks, unmoved, and remorseless, a slight, cruel smile playing across his countenance.

Tonks' hair was black now, and curly rather than straight, her lips fuller, her cheekbones higher and her wide, empty, violet eyes stared up at the summer sky.

She looks like Bellatrix, Harry realised. The Black family is ended.

'You killed two more of my Inner Circle,' Voldemort said quietly. He was angry, the cold fury emanated from him in waves. 'Wearing my own face, no less.'

'You killed Tonks,' Harry replied, keeping his wand and his guard up.

'Not just Tonks,' Voldemort told him, the corner of his lips twitching in a satisfied smile, 'you robbed me of Bellatrix, a loyal follower, now,' his gazes drifted to the red umbrellas, 'we are even.'

Katie.

Harry's blood ran cold, and he turned to run towards the ruined café. He caught the Dark Lord's whisper too late, and something struck him hard in the back, knocking him across the cobbles into the debris. The ring on his hand seared hot, then crumbled from his finger into dust, as Fleur's enchantments were overpowered by Voldemort's magic.

'Go find her, Harry,' the Dark Lord told him coldly. 'Maybe she will live long enough for you to watch her die, for you to see her loyalty and devotion stolen from you, and then you will understand that we even once more.'

Voldemort apparated away with a soft snap as Harry picked himself up from the floor to search through the ruined front of the café. Sprinting over red scraps of cloth, each flash of ruby stabbed at him, with every glimpse of crimson cloth he feared he would find her there on the floor.

There was brown hair trailing out from under the broken glass of the counter.

He froze, grinding to a halt, and skidding on the fragments of glass, sliding to a stop on his knees, and pulling the pieces of the counter away from whomever lay underneath.

Katie's mother.

His relief sickened him, but he began to breath again, became aware of the burning pain in his hands and knees from the countless lacerations he had given himself in sliding to a stop. Her chest was rising and falling; she was still alive.

Someone laughed close by; cruel laughter, and the tendrils of cold fury began to spread within him. Bright, green light flared from his wand, reflected in series patterns across wall from the shattered glass on the floor.

If they've hurt her.

He walked towards the laugher slowly, picking his way silently over the glass and down the corridor. There were bodies in the passage. Two of them. Werewolves; he recognised the signs of their lycanthropy. Fenrir Greyback's followers were here.

'There's something ever so satisfying about using an axe,' a thick, brutish voice explained slowly.

Macnair.

The creature murdering, bloodthirsty Death Eater was well known for using an axe to execute animals rather than more conventional methods.

A third body shuddered in the passage, pale hands pressed to a gaping, seeping wound along his throat. Harry stunned Katie's father before he could recognise him, then swiftly cast a few healing spells to stop the flow of blood until the hit wizards found him.

'It's the sound,' Macnair continued, 'the way the feel of severing bone trembles up your arms, and the blood sprays across the floor.'

Harry tip-toed through the gory pool that spread from his friend's father, writhing, crackling, green sparks pouring from the tip of his wand.

They're dead, he decided. They're all dead.

'Hold still sweetheart,' Macnair growled. 'It's cleaner if you don't wriggle.'

'Are you sure I can't turn her?' Another voice grumbled.

'Yes, the Dark Lord said she was to die,' Macnair snapped as Harry rounded the corner. The two Death Eaters were facing away from him, but Katie wasn't, and she went completely still at the sight of him.

'That's better,' Macnair grinned, 'best to just give in, and get it over with.'

The conjured axe rose high into the air above Macnair's head, and Harry struck.

'Avada Kedavra,' he hissed.

Macnair crumpled; the axe vanishing. Katie was still frozen, her back against the wall; terrified.

The werewolf hurled himself forwards, but he made only three feet towards Harry before Harry's volley of piercing curses tore through him and stopped him in his tracks. The creature staggered, gazing in horrified stupefaction at the fist-sized holes penetrating his chest, then slumped forwards onto his face with a soft moan.

Harry turned towards Katie, but she flinched away, and he froze.

'I'm not going to hurt you,' he promised, slipping his wand away. 'It's me, Katie.'

'You cast the Killing Curse,' she stuttered, shaking like a leaf.

Stupid, Harry cursed himself.

There were so many other spells that would have saved her, but he'd only been able to think of those two words; they'd reverberated in his ears, blotting out everything else with their furious whisper.

'I couldn't let him hurt you,' he admitted, taking several small steps closer to her. Katie was taking deep breaths, and still shivering, but she was regaining colour rapidly, and calming as she caught up with events.

'You do scary things when I get hurt, Harry,' she whispered, but this time when he moved closer she didn't flinch.

'You're my friend,' he answered, 'I keep the people I care about safe however I have to.'

'My parents?' Katie asked, eyes shining with unshed tears. She feared them dead.

'Alive when I last saw them,' he said softly, 'but injured badly.'

'What am I supposed to do now?' She crossed the last step herself, collapsing against him, her fear forgotten.

'I don't know, Katie,' he murmured, wrapping an arm around her back as she sobbed into his shoulder.

I know what I'm going to do, he decided.

Someone had told the Death Eaters where Katie and her parents were, and Harry knew, without knowing how he knew, that it had been Snape. Snape was a teacher, he had access to every student's address, and he certainly had motive. If Voldemort asked, Snape would answer, either to protect his own skin and cover as Dumbledore's spy, or just because his master had spoken.

And neither are good enough reasons, neither are even close.

'Do you have anywhere to go?' He asked her. 'I can't be here when the aurors come, they'll arrest me for using the Killing Curse to save you.'

'I can stay with Alicia and Angelina,' Katie replied into his shoulder, still crying slightly. 'Go before they come and set up wards, but come and see me soon.'

'I will he,' promised, hugging her a little more tightly.

'I'll be waiting,' she whispered, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek. 'Thank you.'

Harry apparated twice. Once to where he had left his box of potion's ingredients, which had miraculously evaded the fiendfyre, and once back to the Meadow, where Fleur hovered fearfully and tearfully on the doorstep for him to return.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

P.S. This chapter also contains violence and character death, forgot to mention that at the start...

77. Complications

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it's been a while, but here's 77, I meant to post this on monday, but my friends dragged me to Shrewsbury for a few days so that didn't happen.

This chapter is completely child-friendly, so if you're under 16, or 18, or whatever, just carry on reading through; it'll be fine. (I'm lying, there's definitely some vaguely suggestive stuff, but I've warned you now, so I take no responsibility for everyone who's too young ignoring this note and reading it anyway).

Chapter 77

The small, cool room at the far end of the house to their bedroom had swiftly become Harry's study. Neat, towering piles of books encircled the walls from the doorway to the window that looked out over towards the rest of the village.

It was a plain-walled, and simple, white, plaster ceilinged affair. The only touch of colour came from the books, the emerald green ink Harry had taken to writing in, and the Peverell family tree he had sketched on several sheets of parchment across the far wall.

'Are you done?' Fleur called.

'For now,' he replied easily, dropping his quill unceremoniously onto the desk. There was a lot of magical theory he needed to cover to pass his NEWTs as early as he intended, the ever rising stack of notes next to the desk could attest to that, but he'd already managed to perform the vast majority of the magic he would be tested on.

'If you're done you should be coming,' Fleur pointed out, her voice growing louder as she came to drag him from his chair. There had been times when he'd become so focused on his work, or his study of the Peverells that he'd forgotten about meal times, or when it was advisable to sleep. Fleur had taken exception to that, taking it upon herself to scold him whenever he forgot to eat.

'We're supposed to be leaving,' she stepped through the doorway, as he hurriedly tried to finish arranging the stack of paper he had produced this morning, 'in fact, we are supposed to have left.'

'I'm done,' Harry announced, abandoning his arranging and standing up.

'Good.' She seemed slightly tense; there was a stiffness about her posture that Harry had not seen in sometime.

'Are you ok?'

'I'm fine,' Fleur smiled, relaxing a fraction. 'Are we leaving?'

'As soon as I have altered my face,' Harry answered, still puzzling over the source of her tension. They were only going to meet Neville and Katie.

He drew his wand, and, gazing into the reflection of the wand, transfigured his features, returning his hair to the same brilliant crimson he had become accustomed to disguising it as.

A few more subtle shifts to his cheekbones, nose, lips and chin, and he was staring at Tom Riddle once more. Fleur sighed lightly, indulging him; now that Harry knew Voldemort disliked Harry using his own face against him he was definitely not changing to anyone more innocuous. Raising his wand he held the tip just before his eyes, ready to alter their colour now he better understood how. Voldemort had been right, his eyes betrayed him, and while he could not seem to undo the subtle aura of magic they held he could switch their colour.

'No,' Fleur's hand caught his wrist, 'don't change them.'

'Anyone who looks at me carefully will know who I am,' Harry warned.

'I like your eyes how they are,' she told him softly. 'If we are confronted, then we shall simply apparate away.'

'Nobody ever really looks past the hair anyway,' he shrugged.

Fleur, he suspected, didn't like the idea of accompanying him when he wasn't wearing his own face, and probably quite approved of the idea of the two of them finally being seen together and for what they were. Harry could hardly blame her. He had entertained the notion of revealing their relationship several times recently, normally when Fleur mentioned some of the more persistent coworkers, but he had no notion of how to do it without throwing her into Voldemort's line of sight.

Today is the first step, I suppose, he decided.

The date on the back of the badge had changed three days ago, and Harry was anxious to see how Katie was faring. It had been almost a week since he had last seen her, crying in the ruins of her shop, before he had had to leave her. There had been no way to safely contact her since then; the Fidelius prevented the sending of letters, and Harry worried about her. Most of all he worried that it would change her, and the bright, cheerful girl would be permanently tainted by the suffering.

Perhaps it was his anxiety that Fleur had somehow sensed, and that was why she seemed suddenly more tense than usual.

'Let's go then,' she decided, 'I am quite eager to meet your friends.'

Harry replaced his wand and extended an arm for Fleur to hold, but she stepped in closer, and wrapped it around her waist instead.

It was almost as if nothing had ever happened. Diagon Alley bore few scars from Voldemort's attack, though Harry knew now that the demonstration had only been secondary to the Dark Lord's real goal. Voldemort disliked feeling like he had come off worse just as much as Harry did, and no doubt his desire to break even would be in the back of his mind even now.

'It looks like nothing ever happened,' Fleur commented quietly, 'even if it is a bit less busy.'

There were fewer people, the crowds that had thronged through the alley before were a far cry from the small clusters of wizards and witches that traversed the street now. The nearest such group began to move again, revealing a smooth, flat, streak of street where the stones had been warped beyond recognition, and Harry didn't need to guess to know that it was the result of the fiendfyre Voldemort had conjured. The cobbles would likely never recover if they hadn't already been fixed.

'Are we going in?' Fleur asked, following his gaze to the marred surface with narrowed eyes. She had been frantic when he had returned from Diagon Alley late amid reports of a Death Eater attack, so panicked that she had cried when he returned, and he had, to ease her worries and stop her tears, promised not to return without her.

'Let's go,' he agreed. He didn't like thinking about Fleur's tears. It was the only time he had ever seen her cry, and Harry had hated holding her helplessly more than anything.

There were no people underneath the red umbrellas, the tables were empty, and the café closed. He separated himself from Fleur, unable to dismiss the idea that Voldemort might have returned to finish what Macnair had failed to do, and drew his wand.

The door was unlocked, and creaked softly when Harry gently pushed it open to stalk on the balls of his feet into the café itself.

'Homenum revelio,' Fleur murmured behind him. Her eyes swept over the room, gleaming hard and determined. 'Nothing,'she stated, 'if anyone's here, then they're downstairs.'

For a second time he ventured past the counter, but this time he was walking slowly rather than hurrying, and his deliberate, steady steps echoed down the passage. Fleur's lighter footsteps were just audible underneath, as she moved to walk alongside him, casting the same revealing chair under her breath every time they passed a door.

'Harry's late,' he heard Neville remark, 'do you know if he's actually coming?'

'No, we have no way to contact him other than these meetings, but I'm sure he will be here.' Katie sounded like she was worried, but not overly so. He exchanged a relieved glance with Fleur and hurried up the steps to the first floor in the direction of his friends' voices.

Harry made it three steps into the room before something flashed a brilliant orange in his vision and he was slammed against the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his body. He was vaguely aware of a searing, roiling heat filling the room, and someone was apologising frantically; it sounded like Katie.

'I didn't realise,' the voice continued frantically, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we're all a bit on edge after what happened.'

Katie's mother, Harry realised. At least it means she's recovered.

He picked himself back up off the floor, brushing the dust from his robes and swiping his long, crimson hair off his forehead.

The heat came from Fleur. A pinprick of cerulean fire so bright it hurt to look at smouldered a few inches above her fingers, its heat distorting the air around it, and Harry could see the shimmer of the wards she had instantaneously raised around the pair of them. He recognised the fading, white energy of the Fianto Duri. Katie's mother was backed up against the wall on the far side, her wand held shakily in her left hand, and her eyes darting from Harry to Fleur and back. Katie looked like she had swallowed something particularly bitter, and Neville was shielding the blonde, pig-tailed Hannah Abbott from Fleur's line of sight.

'Everyone this is Fleur,' Harry grinned, 'Fleur, everyone.'

'Nice to meet you,' Neville answered dryly. The fire disappeared, and Fleur relaxed, releasing the wards she had cast in two stages. They were more complicated than Harry had initially realised; evidently he had not been the only one seeking to improve himself over the summer.

'You wand,' Katie pointed out, bending down to retrieve the slender piece of ebony from the floor at the same time as Fleur.

'Don't,' Neville warned, clearly remembering the time it had burnt him.

'Don't?' Katie inquired, picking the wand up from the floor before Neville could stop her. 'It's warm,' she commented curiously, then her lips twisted, and she deposited the wand gently into Fleur's hands where it started to cheerfully glow with soft, white light.

'Thanks.' Harry smiled at them both, slipping his wand back into its holster, and enjoying the usual rush of warmth he felt from handling it.

'Sorry,' Katie's mother apologised again, 'I didn't realise it was you, Harry.'

'That's ok,' Harry grinned as everyone settled into seats around the room. 'No harm done.'

'There should have been,' Katie's mother frowned, 'that wasn't a friendly spell. How are you so unaffected?'

Without knowing the exact spell Harry wasn't entirely sure, but he didn't feel particularly unaffected. It felt like Uncle Vernon had spent several hours jumping up and down on his chest, and then thrown hot oil on the bruises, but the pain was fading as he healed.

Likely something to do with the rituals, he surmised, and that wasn't exactly an answer he could voice aloud.

The real question,' he glanced pointedly at Neville who immediately flushed, 'is how did Neville manage to transfigure Hannah the cactus into such a perfect copy of his favourite Hufflepuff?'

Katie sniggered, and Fleur smiled lightly as his friend's face turned a worryingly bright shade of crimson.

'Hannah the cactus?' The blonde asked, smiling coyly and tugging at one of her pigtails.

'Hasn't he shown you the mimbulus mimbletonia yet?' Harry pressed, ignoring Neville who was mouthing no over and over, and shaking his head violently when he thought Hannah wasn't watching.

'Of course,' Hannah nodded, 'it's such a rare plant, and so hard to keep. Professor Sprout was very impressed that Nev had managed it.'

'Neville named it after someone very important to him,' Katie explained, beaming victoriously.

'That's very sweet of you,' Hannah cooed, cheeks tinged pink.

'Sweet,' Harry frowned, 'it's a bulbous, spiky thing that squirts horrible smelling sap at people.'

'But Neville loves his cactus; he's very proud of it,' Hannah argued, 'so it's cute.'

'Very cute,' Harry agreed, as Neville shifted uncomfortably, still red-faced. That was an embarrassing enough adjective for him to settle for.

'So,' Hannah began hesitantly. 'I don't mean to sound rude, by why s Beauxbatons' former Triwizard Tournament champion here?'

'I am with Harry,' Fleur answered simply, placing her hand over his on the table.

'Oh,' Hannah looked momentarily stunned. 'I didn't know, I mean, I know you went to the Yule Ball together, but I didn't realise you were a thing.'

'It's a good story,' Neville piped up, a vengeful glint in his eyes.

'It's not,' Harry interrupted, 'Neville's a malicious liar, and you shouldn't believe anything he says about me.' Fleur laughed lightly, but her grip on his hand tightened slightly. She, it seemed, would rather like them to know the story.

'Tell it if you must,' Harry sighed, 'but it goes no further than this room. Fleur and I are trying to make sure our relationship isn't made known to Voldemort.' Katie's mother twitched nervously at the name, and then quietly left the room, but none of the others moved, not even Hannah.

'Hannah won't tell anyone,' Neville assured him. 'She keeps all my secrets like they were her own.'

'That's right, Nev,' Harry said wryly, 'justify your revenge to yourself.' Katie giggled, but Neville ignored him in favour of launching right into the story.

'I apologise if I get any of the details wrong,' he grinned, 'I've only ever heard Harry's version.'

'Harry's spent most of the last two years dodging vicious rumours,' Katie interceded. 'I don't think you can do any worse than Rita Skeeter did, Neville.'

'But he'll try,' Harry commented dryly.

'Of course he will,' Katie laughed, 'he wants payback for all of the jokes we made about him at Hogwarts.'

'You've ruined it now,' Neville bemoaned. 'Hannah won't believe anything I say.'

'Shame,' Harry smirked. 'I take it Neville managed to convince you that he's just an idiot, and he wasn't ditching you for Katie when you ran into each other in Diagon Alley.'

'He did,' Hannah smiled fondly. 'It took him several tries to get past the stutter, but I never believed he was with Katie.' She glanced almost warily at Fleur, before shrugging and kissing Neville lightly on one cheek.

'I thought we'd got past that stutter,' Harry mock sighed, oblivious to Fleur's all but imperceptible frown.

'He must have regressed,' Katie shook her head, 'when we're together at Hogwarts next year we'll have to sort him out again.'

'We will,' Harry grinned. 'We'll have plenty of time; I'll be doing my NEWTs, so hopefully I won't have to go to classes if I don't want to.'

'Again,' Katie scrunched up her face, 'have you actually been to any of your classes in the last two years?'

'I've been to some,' Harry grinned, 'but there were better places to go, the company in France was much better than in class.'

Katie scowled slightly. 'It's alright for some, I wish I could have done my transfiguration NEWT early; it would have made things easier this coming year.'

'I have more important things to worry about than NEWTs,' Harry said lightly, 'Dark Lords, Death Eaters, and getting my Firebolt back off Katie.'

'One of those is likely impossible,' Neville added impishly.

'It's mine now,' Katie beamed, sticking her chin in the air.

'I think that places you in eternal slavery to me,' Harry noted dryly.

'Could be worse,' Katie shrugged, undeterred. Fleur raised a delicate eyebrow in query until Harry explained that he leant Katie his broom after getting banned from the quidditch team and he suspected that the quidditch loving brunette might not return it.

They fell into brief silence, and Harry took the opportunity to turn the hand that still lay under Fleur's over and began to trace patterns across her palm with his middle finger.

'I have to ask,' Hannah burst out suddenly. 'Katie told Neville that you saved her when she was attacked, but how?'

'Walden Macnair wanted to take Katie's head off with an axe,' Harry said bluntly, 'I prevented him.'

'But he was a Death Eater,' Hannah pressed, 'an experienced, powerful duellist.'

'It wasn't a duel,' Harry smiled innocently, 'I caught him by surprise, and he didn't get a chance to retaliate.'

'You stunned him?' Neville frowned, 'so he's still out there?'

'No,' Harry carefully schooled expression into a blank facade, 'he's not still out there.'

'Good,' Neville said fiercely. 'They don't deserve mercy, and they simply escape Azkaban to carry on committing atrocities.' Hannah looked slightly uncomfortable, but she voiced no disagreement.

Harry caught her eye, wordlessly and wandlessly using legilimency to determine her reaction to Neville's opinion. There was anger; she hated the ones who had killed most of her family, there was satisfaction; she was glad one of them was dead, but she was glad that it had nothing to do with her. Hannah wanted the Death Eaters to pay, but she wasn't prepared or ready to do anything to stain her own hands.

'Did you impale him with icicles?' Neville asked curiously. 'You seriously injured Malfoy the last time Katie was hurt.'

Katie shifted awkwardly, looking anywhere but across the table at Harry and Fleur.

'No,' Harry rubbed his chin, 'there were two of them actually, 'so I just acted without thinking.' That was no lie, if he'd been thinking about it more clearly he wouldn't have used the Killing Curse in front of Katie.

'There were several members of Voldemort's Inner Circle there you know,' Harry continued, before Neville could ask about the spells he'd used again.

'Two of them were killed,' Neville commented, meeting Harry's eyes.

'Good riddance,' Hannah said quietly.

'As long as it wasn't either of the remaining Lestrange brothers,' Neville interceded. 'I want them for myself.'

'I'll save them for you,' Harry told him wryly. Neville's small smile indicated that he understood. If he could Harry would tell him when he moved against the Lestranges and they would take Neville's revenge together.

'I need to go, Nev,' Hannah whispered, 'I promised I'd be back by now.'

'I'll see you later,' Neville nodded, hugging her tightly, 'I do wish your family would let you out more.'

'We don't all have an adoring, proud grandmother who lets us do whatever we want,' Hannah teased. Neville looked rightly more proud than abashed; he had earned his gran's pride. 'Anyway, it was nice to see you all, and it was nice to meet you Fleur.'

'Likewise,' Fleur smiled. She had been quiet, unusually reserved for when they were together, and were he not so aware of her presence Harry might have forgotten she was there.

Hannah's footsteps trailed down the steps and out into the shop.

'So you finally got the girl of your dreams, Nev,' Harry grinned.

'No thanks to you,' Neville grumbled, 'she's going to bring that cactus up all the time in Herbology next year. I know it.' He shivered slightly, and stared at Fleur for a moment as she released the allure she had been consciously restraining.

'That's better,' Fleur sighed. 'It is annoying to have to concentrate on holding my magic back.'

'So kind of you to restrain it to stop Neville from embarrassing himself in front of Hannah,' Harry smirked. 'Maybe next time.'

'Maybe,' Fleur matched his smirk, and Neville gulped.

'How does it work?' Katie asked tentatively.

Fleur eyed her carefully for a long moment, watching her squirm nervously, and Harry hid a smile; he'd never seen the outgoing brunette so flustered.

'It's a compulsion,' Fleur answered eventually. 'The more magic I direct to it the stronger the compulsion to desire me becomes, and it requires them to be looking at me. The more focused they are on me the greater affect it has. My magic is stronger than most,' a touch of pride coloured her tone, 'so the aura I naturally produce is potent enough to enthral anyone who does not know how to resist; it is not normally so.'

'It doesn't seem to be affecting Neville,' Katie said curiously, 'or Harry,' she added.

'I taught Neville occlumency,' Harry mentioned, 'that will help him.'

'And Harry is all but immune,' Fleur sulked. 'All my aura makes no difference unless I catch him off guard.'

'You tried?' Disapproval emanated from his friend.

'I was curious to see how resistant he was,' Fleur replied, unrepentant, 'so was Harry, for that matter.' He eyes hardened. 'I did not seek to lure him to me with it if that is what you are afraid of.'

'I'm not afraid of that,' Katie smiled. The expression looked oddly strained, and Harry gave in to the temptation to use legilimency for a moment, catching her unexpected disappointment, before remembering how wrong it was for him to violate her privacy, and angrily severing the connection.

Fleur did not look reassured, an odd tension hung between the two of them. Harry squeezed her hand, trying to distract her attention from whatever was annoying her and get her to look at him so he could subtly ask her about it.

She only shook her head imperceptibly at his raised eyebrow.

'I take it Neville is the only one of us not aware of how you were saved,' Fleur began, changing the subject, 'it might be prudent to tell him.'

The Lestranges are one of our targets, Harry recalled.

They couldn't have Neville chasing after them in case they knew something important about Voldemort's horcruxes.

'Is it like Bellatrix?' Neville asked carefully.

'Bellatrix?' Harry gave Neville a pointedly confused look, and his friend took a hint. Katie did not need to know about that particular excursion yet. 'Macnair was going to cut off Katie's head after seriously hurting her parents. I took exception to that. I killed him and the werewolf with him.'

'With the Killing Curse,' Katie murmured. 'You were furious, I haven't seen you so angry since you were banned from quidditch.' Fleur's hand slid smoothly from atop Harry's into her lap. 'It was scary.'

'There's no middle ground with Death Eaters,' Harry warned, 'they won't stop until they, or Voldemort are dead, and we can't imprison them because they've already started escaping from Azkaban.'

'I don't like it,' Katie looked down at her hands, 'you shouldn't have to do things like that. The aurors and hit wizards are meant to; it's their job.'

'Harry's more powerful than they are,' Fleur added softly, 'and more involved.'

'I like it,' Neville said flatly. 'They're Death Eaters, they torture, kill, rape and worse, death is least they deserve.'

'I suppose,' Katie grimaced. 'I'll stick to school and quidditch when we go back there, there's nothing I can do anyway, I'm not particularly powerful, just good at quidditch and transfiguration. My dad has rejoined the hit wizards after the attack on us, and mum is helping out at St Mungo's when she can. We're not strong enough to make much of a difference.'

'I'm going to get strong enough to make a difference,' Neville vowed, 'then I'm going to kill both Lestranges for what they did to my parents, and I'm going to do it before they can hurt anyone else.'

'Tell me first,' Harry instructed firmly, 'they may possess something very important that needs to be destroyed, and if they die we might not be able to find it. It's a dangerous magical artefact belonging to Voldemort,' he explained at their stares.

'Like the diary?' Neville asked.

'Yes.' Harry smiled slightly at his friend's unknowingly accurate deduction. 'You'll still get your revenge, don't worry.'

'Is that what you're doing then?' Katie asked, tugging at her hair nervously. 'You're looking for that?'

'Yes,' Harry answered honestly, 'as well as studying for my NEWTs.'

'And repainting the door to the house,' Fleur reminded him sweetly.

'And that,' Harry rolled his eyes, 'I'll do it eventually, but it doesn't really need it.'

'It's a terrible colour,' Fleur disagreed, 'this country is not warm enough to merit so much white. I would like a blue door.'

'I haven't found the right colour paint yet,' Harry defended. He had looked, briefly, through muggle magazines, and the shops in the their village, but he hadn't managed to find a hue of blue close enough to what he wanted. That precise shade of summer sky was proving elusive.

'You sound so grown up,' Neville chuckled.

'Fleur's being hypocritical,' Harry childishly stuck his tongue out at her, emulating some of Gabrielle's less mature behaviour, 'it took you weeks to fix the shower.'

'The shower wasn't really a problem,' she shrugged daintily, suppressing a smile.

'I'd call being scalded every day a problem,' Harry disagreed.

'It was only a little hot water,' Fleur smiled.

'It's only a little white paint,' Harry countered.

'I will take away your books about the Peverell family,' she threatened playfully.

'I'll do it tomorrow,' Harry grinned, defeated. He knew Fleur would only really ever even consider that if he became so obsessed it was a problem. His search for the stone was too important to him for anything else. However it had been a while since he promised to paint the door, so he should do it.

'So how is everything then, Katie?' Harry asked gently. 'Your parents sound like they're ok, but you haven't reopened the café.'

'Nobody wants to risk hanging around Diagon Alley for longer than they have to,' Katie shrugged, 'the café would be just as empty if it were open. We're all ok though,' she smiled warmly at him, 'thanks for asking.'

'Good,' Harry frowned, unsure how to say what he had to say next. 'Voldemort didn't send them here by chance, Katie, he wanted to take something away from me. You'll be safe once you're at Hogwarts, and he's not interested in your parents, because they aren't close to me, but until term starts you should try and keep your head down.'

'I'll be careful,' Katie promised fervently, 'what kind of Dark Mistress would I be if I succumbed to your rivals so easily.' She seemed almost enthused by the idea that Voldemort was targeting her because of Harry, and he couldn't help but smile.

'Dark Mistress?' Fleur's voice lilted in amusement.

'Katie enjoys acting the part Harry was accused of in the Daily Prophet last year,' Neville grinned. 'She goes around scaring the first years with threats of sacrifices.'

'She had half the Hufflepuff first years convinced I was going to use them in dark rituals for a whole list of implausible reasons,' Harry remembered with a fond smile. 'It's funnier now they know it isn't true.'

'Luna Lovegood helped,' Katie admitted, 'her reasons were always the best.'

'Which ones were hers?' Neville asked.

'My favourite was the one where Voldemort's newest mission was to seduce as many girls around our age group as possible to prevent the pure-blooded lines from ever being lost, but because he himself is impotent, he had to create Harry to do it for him, everything else is just an elaborate cover to fool Dumbledore, the Ministry and the Witch Weekly magazine who have opposed Voldemort since discovering his terrible secret.'

Fleur snorted with laughter. 'You are not very good at your mission, Harry,' she laughed, 'you've seduced one girl, and she's far from pure blooded.'

'I think I need to talk to Luna,' Harry groaned, suddenly the terrified blushing of the younger Hufflepuff girls made horrible sense.

'It's ok, Harry,' Katie beamed, patting him on the cheek, 'we warned them off.'

'You should probably try warning Romilda Vane once or twice more,' Neville sniggered. 'I've overheard talk of love potions.'

'I'll do it,' Fleur offered in a dangerously sweet voice.

'And no we're all accessories to murder,' Harry said dryly. 'Well I suppose Fleur isn't actually, being the murderer. Who is Romilda Vane?'

'Dark-haired, not unattractive, a year or so younger than us, apparently quite a dab hand at potions,' Katie giggled. 'I'd watch your food, Harry, and your back, or she'll be dragging you into broom closets after quidditch.'

'Thanks, Katie, but it won't be the first time I've been offered something inappropriate by a girl after quidditch.' Harry's comment earned him another pat on the cheek from a scarlet Katie who had clearly forgotten about that little incident. Fleur, who was fortunately unaware of that event, was still smirking, her hair cascading over one shoulder in a silver veil as she watched the their repartee.

'You should probably keep an eye out for potions though,' Neville added more seriously, 'I don't think she was actually joking.'

'Really?' Katie's tone did an abrupt u-turn, and settled into something so hostile it was normally reserved for addressing Slytherin's chasers.

'Yeah,' Neville looked a little bit awkward, 'come to think about it, they knew an awful lot about amortentia.'

'I'll keep an eye out,' Katie growled. 'If anyone tries anything like that I'll test my human transfiguration on them. Romilda can spend a few hours as a parakeet, or a flamingo. I'll take her to the lake and feed her to the squid...'

'Isn't she adorable,' Harry grinned at Fleur.

'Quite,' the blonde witch replied distantly, staring at Katie, who was obliviously continuing her line of vengeance through most of the animal kingdom.

'A mouse,' she decided triumphantly. 'I will feed her to Professor McGonagall.'

'And on that note,' Harry decided, realising how late it must be getting, 'we should go.'

He stood up to leave, patting Neville firmly on the shoulder. Katie slid out of her chair, smiled her goodbye to Fleur, then embraced him tightly, lingering for almost a minute before she released him. Harry couldn't help but notice that she still smelt like broom polish.

'You have a door to paint,' Neville grinned, as Harry stepped close to Fleur to apparate back to the Meadow.

'You have a cactus to look after,' Harry retorted. 'Have you explained the name to your gran yet?' Neville went a horribly sickly white colour, and went abruptly quiet. 'Good luck with that,' Harry grinned victoriously. 'I'm sure she'll approve.'

'She'll tell all her friends,' Neville whispered, horrified. 'They're all on the Wizengamot, the entirety of Britain's government will know why I named my cactus Hannah.'

Katie's giggles drowned out the soft snap of his apparition, and he could swear that they echoed all the way to the still white front door of their home. The moment they arrived he restored his face to its normal appearance, ignoring the brief moment of discomfort as his bones shifted, and flicking his now dark hair off his forehead.

Fleur paused before the door, her hand on the lock, and her expression conflicted.

'I'll paint it tomorrow, I promise,' Harry smiled, anticipating her thoughts.

'Thank you,' she smiled slightly, 'but that's not what I want to say.'

'Then say it,' Harry frowned.

'It will make things more complicated,' Fleur warned gently.

'I'd rather hear it than not,' Harry decided, suddenly nervous.

'She still likes you,' Fleur stated simply.

'Who?' Harry was momentarily nonplussed. 'Katie?' He laughed; Fleur was adorably jealous sometimes. 'We talked about it more than a year ago, and she said that she didn't feel that way anymore.'

'She lied,' Fleur murmured confidently. 'I could feel how much she wanted to be sitting where I was, all those mentions of the two of you being together at Hogwarts, her reaction to my use of my allure, and how angry she was with that foolish girl's idea of using amortentia on you.'

'She's just being protective,' Harry dismissed.

There's no way that she could still like me like that, Harry decided, not after how we've been such good friends, not after that article.

It was more trouble thinking about it than it was worth. Fleur was just being paranoid like he had occasionally been. It was understandable, he got worried about losing her sometimes, when she had been given that ring he had been afraid that it meant something to her, but he'd not seen it since. Harry knew Fleur would never betray him, and she must know that he would never leave her; he needed her too much for that, but considering a life in which she was absent still made him feel almost sick.

'I don't think she is,' Fleur shook her head gently, scattering her silver hair over her face, 'you'll see.'

'It doesn't matter even if she does, and I don't believe it at all,' Harry assured her firmly. 'I'm yours, ma princesse, and I have every intention of remaining so.'

Fleur stared at him for a long moment, blue eyes smouldering, then suddenly she was kissing him, pushing her lips almost painfully hard against his, and sliding her hands under his robes across his chest.

'We're outside,' Harry reminded her, when her lips trailed down his neck and he could breathe. They would be in full view of anyone who walked past the house.

'The Fidelius,' Fleur whispered huskily into his collarbone, not pausing in her kissing across his torso. 'Nobody can see us.'

'Oh,' he grinned, kissing her back ardently, and trailing his fingers teasingly up the inside of her thigh until she shivered, and pushed herself against him. 'I had forgotten about that.'

'I'll make you forget about it again,' Fleur promised, biting her lip to unsuccessfully try and stop herself moaning into his hair. She wrapped her legs around him as he picked her up and pinned her against the door, pressing her hips almost desperately into his, tilting her head back with a soft gasp, and scoring lines through the white surface of the door with the nails of her left hand.

It was definitely a good thing he hadn't repainted the door.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does! It wasn't really all that suggestive, and very short, but just in case anyone's easily offended I did bother to put a warning.

P.S. Thanks to Avis soul who pointed out that I'd forgotten Harry was originally still wearing Riddle's face at the end of the chapter; I was almost tempted to leave it, but it has now been tweaked to iron out that little wrinkle.

78. Forget me Nott

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it's been a while, almost a week, but here's the next chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter 78

It was early afternoon when Harry drifted past the window of the kitchen she stood at. He was picking his way through the grass towards the copse of elm trees, trailing a procession of glass jars and vials behind him in the air as he went.

He's doing the rituals, Fleur realised.

Harry had been designing the more complex of the two for the last few days, though he had bought all of the magical items he needed back when Diagon Alley had been attacked.

Curiously Fleur set down her rosewood wand. The enchantment she was trying to weave could wait. She wanted to see the rituals for herself, and while her project was both interesting and useful she had plenty of time to work on it another time.

She stepped out through the back door and followed her beau's trail through the grass, for once the knee high meadow was dry. One of Britain's few days of true summer had finally come.

'Curious, were you?' Harry asked, when she stepped into the copse.

'I was,' she admitted.

'You must have been to put aside your pet project,' he grinned. 'It's quite ingenious, breaking all those similar enchantments down into small pieces of magic and placing them onto different parts so when the object is physically altered its effect is also altered.'

'I was hoping I could use it to protect things,' Fleur smiled. 'If you know the right physical form you can open the lock, otherwise you get cursed, but I have yet to find a suitably similar set of spells.'

'It will come,' he said earnestly.

'I know,' she smirked. It always came in the end, even when it took longer than she expected. She was fairly close as it was, the piece of magic to unlock something was already enchanted across the set of rotating rings so that when they were twisted into a particular position the small box would open, and she was only a burst of inspiration from creating a curse that would open every synapse in the body of anyone who tried to open it when the rings were in the wrong position. They would be paralysed until they were released by another, or the enchantment faded; which would be about two or three hundred years by Fleur's best estimate.

Harry swept his wand in a vague circle, and the vials spread out to hover in a loose circle around the edges of the grove before descending gently onto the ground.

'What are you doing?' Fleur asked, as Harry began to draw runes on the ground around him in incandescent, purple flames.

'A ritual to increase how fast I recover after using magic,' he answered absently. 'Think of it like increasing your stamina. I'll recover more quickly after casting a spell, so I'll be able to last longer in duels. It's an obvious advantage to have, one I'm sure Voldemort has already seized for himself.'

An interlocking design of seven triangles, all etched in patterns of blazing purple runes surrounded him, and from the three largest jars, rose the finely sliced leaves of plants Fleur vaguely recognised. They were all used by her mother in potions she made for the infirmary in Carcassonne.

'Myrrh, bloodroot, vervain,' Harry told her unnecessarily, carefully scattering the sliced leaves across the design in an even spread. 'At the moment this ritual would act as no more than a very potent version of some of the recovery potions you can get at St Mungo's or in Diagon Alley, so to make it permanent I get to do the fun, blood magic bit.'

He flicked the tip of his wand across his wrist without warning, cutting deeply into his wrist, shedding a thick stream of crimson along the underside of his palm.

Fleur curled her toes into the ground in distaste. She knew it was necessary, and not even particularly dangerous, but watching Harry so casually cut a line into his own arm was still unsettling and altogether wrong.

She clenched her jaw and ignored the irrational impulse to stem the bleeding.

The blood flowed in an unbroken pattern over the same design, spattering ing the plants in viscous liquid as Harry made his way around the triangles.

He paused briefly to clean the congealing blood from his hand and arm, and to wait for the cut to heal, the surrounding tissue swelling red as the edges crept back together.

'Let me,' Fleur offered, pulling her wand from her waist and stepping to the edge of the set of triangles. 'Vulnera sanentur,' she murmured, tracing her wand over the cut until it faded away.

'Thanks,' Harry smiled, watching enviously as his cut healed in an instant. For all his magical puissance, the deft, soft, nature of healing magic was something Fleur was far more gifted in.

'You should close your eyes now,' he warned, then he twirled his wand in his fingers, set his jaw, and with a bright, purple flash completed the ritual.

Fleur only just managed to squeeze her eyes shut in time, but the moment the flash had passed she snapped them back open.

Harry stood at the centre of the pulsing purple runes, every vein standing out from his skin, jaw clenched, and his eyes glowing an eerily bright emerald. For a horribly long moment he was frozen, and Fleur began to fear he had made a mistake, then he relaxed, and sighed loudly.

'Not the most pleasant feeling,' he commented wryly. 'It felt rather like I imagine having molten lead poured through your veins would, or how showering in this house used to be before you finally fixed the enchantments in the bathroom,' he grinned.

'I did a better job of fixing the shower than you did of painting the door,' Fleur noted archly. 'It's supposed to be smooth, and even.'

'It is,' Harry defended.

'It is now you've gone and used magic to fix it,' Fleur corrected teasingly. 'Before there were lumps everywhere, and more blue on the doorstep than on the door.'

'It's harder than it looks,' Harry protested lightly. 'I needed a better brush really.' He stuck his chin in the air in a deliberately exaggerated imitation of her. 'Next time, 'Arry,' he drawled in an atrocious French accident, 'I shall paint ze door myself; it 'az more 'air on it zan ze brush does.'

She pouted at him, but given those were her actual words there wasn't much she could refute. Just the terrible accent. Fleur wouldn't be caught dead speaking like that; it was ridiculous.

Harry swept his wand in the general direction of the ground around him, and the blood soaked leaves flew across the clearing at the centre of the copse in a small wave to land out of the way. After a moment of thought he burnt them, incinerating the remains of the ritual with a thin tendril of flame that writhed from the tip of his wand.

He was looking quite excited now.

'This is the one you designed to resist poisons isn't it.' Fleur realised, smiling at his obvious enthusiasm and watching him draw a perfect, triangular prism about himself in the same glowing purple runes as before. Now that he was writing them in the air she could read a few of them, though it was difficult to understand them backwards. She made out a few of the runes that meant imbue and the glyph for consume appeared several times in the pattern.

By the time he had finished Fleur could barely see him behind a wall of floating, indigo fire.

The vials and jars that remained came drifting across the copse to hover around him, opening one after the other to divulge their contents before Harry sent them tumbling away again. She briefly glimpsed a handful of bezoars before the crumbled to dust under the tip of Harry's wand, and spread in small tendrils of cloud across the glowing prism of runes. There were crushed mistletoe berries too, and unicorn horn that was also ground to dust, before being directed to join the floating array of ingredients in the air and the identical lines traced across the floor.

'Is that unicorn's blood?' She gasped, when the smallest vial opened to shed a single, brilliant, silver droplet.

'Yes,' Harry nodded proudly, 'uncursed; it's the only thing magically powerful enough to nullify most poisons on its own. That,' he gestured to the remaining vial, 'is yew sap.'

The sap scattered in a fine mist across the prism, but the drop of silver blood ascended to to the summit of the prism, glowing like a tiny beacon.

'This is probably one of the most complicated rituals I will ever do,' he grinned cheerfully. 'There are a lot of ingredients.' He paused, looking suddenly thoughtful, and staring hard at the runes on the floor around him. 'Actually,' he smiled, 'since this is unlikely to have any adverse affects even if it goes wrong, why don't you join me?'

'Join you?'

'Yes,' Harry nodded emphatically. 'You'll be immune to almost every poison that isn't magically potent, and much safer.'

'What do I have to do?' Fleur asked, squeezing into the centre of the prism. The floating ingredients parted to let her through.

'I'll have to add a few more runes,' Harry mused, 'to separate out our identities, otherwise anything in your blood might affect me and vice versa, but other than that the only thing that remains is the blood magic.'

'We have to cover the whole prism,' Fleur deduced flatly. It wasn't small, and she definitely wasn't backing out now; Harry couldn't possibly produce enough blood to cover it and remain standing.

'We do,' Harry pulled a rather reluctant face, 'each, but better that than you get poisoned.'

He opened his wrist once more, drawing a very thin, fine ribbon of blood from the injury and using his wand to hang it in the air around them, before draping it across the ground. The prism was large enough that he healed twice before he was done, and had to re-inflict the injury to continue.

'Your turn,' he said softly.

Fleur grimaced, but gripped her wand tightly and slashed it across her own wrist, murmuring the incantation of the cutting curse. A deep line carved itself into the soft, pale skin of her forearm, and Harry, looking rather anxious, quickly performed the same piece of magic he had used on his own blood.

'Close your eyes,' he told her gently, 'and steel yourself.' She felt him heal the wound on her wrist; its throbbing, burning pain faded away, and then his hand was in hers.

'Will it hurt a lot?' She asked tentatively.

'It always does,' Harry warned, 'but it will be worth it. I would not have even considered doing this with you if it was not.'

He didn't say anything to start the ritual, but the indigo runes glowed brilliantly, pulsing so bright the light penetrated her eyelids, and, unable to resist, she opened them.

Harry was staring curiously around as well, and when he saw she too had peaked he grinned at her, and motioned upwards with his head. The drop of unicorns blood was shining so brightly it left spots of colour on her retina.

'It's beginning,' he whispered, squeezing her hand.

A fine, cyan mist began to pour from the floating lines of the prism, filling the air around them. There was no choice but to inhale it, and the moment it touched her tongue Fleur could taste the metallic tang of blood. Beneath it was a hint of something sweet, but she swiftly forgot it as he lungs began to burn. Her fingers curled into fists, clenching her nails into her palm and Harry's.

He didn't seem to notice.

The searing sensation in her chest began to spread down, settling as a pool of roiling heat in her stomach, and Fleur had to fight the impulse to throw up as she forced her gorge down. Harry's breathing had become light and fast as he tried to reduce all the movement to his own stomach.

The sound of the air, the taste of the blood, and the flaring light was making her dizzy, everything was covered by a disorientating, cyan haze, and the copse of trees kept twisting back forth across her vision as she swayed, trying to keep her balance.

Harry tottered alongside her, sometimes dragging at her arm, other times collapsing into her shoulder, and she was amazed that they were still upright given she could barely make out the trees though the thickening mist.

It was a long few moments until the dizziness began to recede, and Fleur had never appreciated having the ground stay still and firm under her feet quite so much until then.

Without warning the colour drained away, and the sensation of burning faded from her lungs, lingering only in the back of her throat and on the tip of her tongue.

'That wasn't so bad,' Harry muttered next to her. 'I don't feel too tired.'

She wasn't tired either; they hadn't expended too much blood, but she couldn't agree. It had felt pretty awful to her.

'Is it over?' She asked warily, not wanting to be caught unaware by another bout of sickness and hurl her breakfast onto Harry's feet.

'It's done,' he grinned weakly. 'Do we have anything strong tasting in the kitchen?'

'Yes,' Fleur nodded enthusiastically. There were plenty of things that could replace the taste of blood on her tongue.

Wine, she decided, very sweet, white wine.

Harry vanished the remnants of the ritual, and slipped his wand back away, before apparating them back into the kitchen. Fleur caught herself on the table when she swayed, but Harry, who had nothing within arm's reach, sprawled across the floor with a groan.

'I retract what I said,' he muttered into the tiles, 'this one is just as bad as all the others.'

'What were the others like?' She asked, as he dragged himself into a chair, looking distinctly ill.

'They hurt a lot,' he admitted, 'but I didn't feel so horribly sick.'

'Maybe this will help,' Fleur smirked, producing the wine bottle. Harry looked like he was definitely the worse off of the two.

She conjured them two glasses, and poured a decent measure into each one before drinking it in one gulp.

'That is a very British way to drink wine,' Harry smirked, 'your family would be horrified.'

Fleur poured herself a second, more modest glass, and sipped it in a more befitting manner. 'Happy now?' She asked archly.

Harry quaffed his own drink, and closed his eyes for a moment. 'Now I'm happy,' he grinned, looking immediately less sick.

'Good,' she tucked the wine bottle back away, 'lying around feeling sick was not the plan for the rest of the day.'

'No,' his expression sobered immediately, 'no it wasn't.'

'Do you think it is still a good idea to go?' Fleur asked, knowing full well Harry would not have changed his mind even if he'd had to douse the ground beneath the elm trees with a couple of pints of his blood.

'Of course,' he nodded, a stubborn glint in his eye. Fleur suppressed a smile at the sight of it. 'Do you not feel up to going?' He asked, more concerned. 'I can go alone.'

'No,' she snapped, unwilling to let him entertain that idea for more than a moment. It had taken him far too long to include her completely to let him slide back into his old, overprotective ways. 'I'm fine,' she clarified more calmly.

'Sure?' He scrutinised her carefully.

'Very,' she answered warningly. 'So how are we going to do this?'

'You know where he lives, don't you?' Harry raised an eyebrow.

'I do,' she dipped her head, 'I can apparate us.'

'He lives alone save for his son, who's my age,' Harry mused, 'but he likely has a house elf. House elves must be able to identify a wizard's magic to bond with them, so if it feels us it will likely be able to identify us in the future.'

'Avoiding a house elf within its own residence is all but impossible,' Fleur frowned.

'Then we will have to be sure that it cannot identify us in the future,' Harry decided calmly. 'I will have to use legilimency to see if Mr Nott knows anything useful, but if we're subtle we can get in and out without ever encountering his son. He should not have to die for the sins of his father.'

'This doesn't feel like much of a plan,' Fleur sighed.

'When is it ever?' He grinned. 'Shall we go?'

His smile was infectious, and she couldn't help but return it. They were wandering into the home of one of Voldemort's most trusted followers half blind, with all but no plan, and she was smiling like an idiot just because he was.

'Let's go,' Fleur agreed, hauling Harry out of the chair with one hand, and simultaneously apparating them both.

It was, somewhat inevitably, raining, when they appeared with a soft snap on the open, gentle slope of a Kentish hill underneath a spread of late blossoming hawthorn.

Two hedges, a ditch and a low, loose-stoned wall lay between them and the lawn of the Nott's residence, but beyond that area of neatly kept grass was a smart, symmetrical Georgian era home and a grey-veiled view of the South Downs. It was, Fleur decided, quite a beautiful, simple place, as lovely in its own way as any part of France.

At least it would be were it not for the rain, she frowned, casting a silent charm to keep the weather off both herself and Harry.

They picked their way across the fields, cautiously apparating past the hedges and over the ditch, until they stood before the wall.

Neither of them were fooled by its simplistic, ordinary appearance; its existence was too convenient, its shape too perfectly circular for an conventional boundary.

Fleur closed her eyes, pushing her magic gently out around her, sensing, listening, as Gabby had dubbed it, for the magic of the wards that must be around her. The specific ward was obvious the moment she touched it from the way it curved and stretched away from the fringes of her magic.

'There are anti-apparition wards, several layers, and anti-portkey ones as well.' Fleur was not overly concerned about those, either of them could tear through with relative ease. 'They've cast the Fianto Duri,' she said, almost impressed. It was not an easy charm to cast, and its nature required it to be recast every few days.

'So?' Harry did not understand wards well enough to appreciate the intricacy and elegance of the Unyielding Shield Charm.

'It is a flawless piece of warding, the pinnacle of spacial manipulation, draining the ward with spells will take several hours at best,' Fleur summarised.

'Do we have to drain it with spells?'

'Not with me here,' Fleur smirked, drawing her wand.

The edge of the shield stretched away from anything magical it touched, expanding the gap between its borders with no limit to distance or speed until the magic upholding it gave out. Nothing magical could pass through until the ward drained, but an identical, opposite piece of magic would force it to try to expand infinitely far in an instant, and exhaust the magic immediately. The only catch was that to defeat the charm Fleur had to effectively cast it in equal or greater strength herself.

The tip of her wand hovered millimetres from the edge of the ward, a slender, but brilliant torrent of crackling white energy pouring from its tip as she cast a second Fianto Duri to overlap with the original ward.

The air shimmered over the home. A visible, shivering barrier rippled and distorted for a moment, then the white beam vanished and the sky cleared of everything but the rain.

'They know someone's here,' Fleur warned, throwing up anti-apparition and portkey wards of her own within the pre-existing layers to prevent escape.

Harry's eyes flickered from the new shimmer in air to her. 'The floo?' he inquired.

'Nott dislikes it,' Fleur assured him, 'the residence isn't connected to the network at all. I checked.'

'In we go then,' he grinned.

Harry's ebony wand flicked into his palm as he stepped gracefully over the wall and onto the shorter grass inside. Holding the slim, dark piece of wand low and angled away from his body none hand he took her free wrist in his other and apparated them in front of and then past the window into the downstairs hall in two apparitions so fast the soft noises of their air displacement merged together.

It was quiet inside the house, so quiet Fleur could hear her heartbeat over the soft sound of the rain. She swallowed hard; this creeping, rising tension was not how she had imagined this being. Every shadow, every silhouette had the potential to be an ambush, and Fleur could not help but glance into every shrouded corner, eyes straining for movement, her heart hammering harder at every sound.

Why does it have to be so quiet? She demanded, annoyed with her own anxiety.

Harry seemed unaffected; if anything he seemed quietly elated, prowling along the corridors silently, the slim length of ebony in his fingers drawing small circles as he twirled it over and over.

Something creaked from the left behind them, and Fleur whirled, instinctively unleashing a stunning spell, and, twisting away from where she stood, cast three more.

All three spattered harmlessly across tapestries in the space of a second, and her opponent's spell, a bright blue beam, melted two feet through the wall next to her head, taking some of her hair with it.

Harry's first response, a piercing curse, caught the wizard in the thigh and he stumbled, clutching at the gushing groove in his leg.

Jugson, she recognised.

He was one of the Azkaban escapees.

'Aguamenti,' Harry murmured, his eyes as hard as stone, and his voice cold.

Ice cracked and spread across the hall, coating the tapestries, and thrusting, in cruel jutting spikes, from the floor and walls.

Jugson, already injured, couldn't evade them all, and his desperately gasped blasting curse, merely sprayed sharp shards of ice into the tapestries and himself before the first spine impaled itself through his achilles heel.

It was followed by a host more, trapping him within a painful prison.

Fleur disarmed the wizard, snapping the wand the moment she caught it, irritated that her reaction had been so much more ineffectual than Harry's.

'There is a house elf in residence here,' Harry asked smoothly, 'summon it.'

'The house elf,' Jugson's disdain was evident despite the pain in his voice. 'Why?'

'I do not make the mistake of underestimating magical creatures just because they are not intimidating,' Harry answered with equal contempt. 'You would not take a dragon lightly, and house elves are far more magical than dragons. Now summon it.'

'Askey,' Jugson reluctantly groaned the name. His fingers were pressed so hard into his leg that they had turned white under all the blood.

There was a loud crack.

'Master Jugson, sir?' An old elf quavered.

'Not quite,' Harry apologised, genuinely remorseful. 'Avada kedavra.'

The bright, viridian flash of the Killing Curse illuminated everything in a painless instant of ghastly light, and the wrinkled, weathered, bald elf collapsed as if the strings had been cut from his marionette. He spared the elf a single, long sad look, then his face hardened again.

Fleur's toes curled. The elf was a risk they could not afford, and Harry was not in the habit of taking risks he could avoid.

'Are there any others here?' Harry asked Jugson evenly.

'Are you going to kill them too, Potter?' the Death Eater grinned. 'The Dark Lord was right about you; we should have listened.'

The slender tip of his wand traced its way down Jugson's cheek, cutting off his next comment and coming to rest over the gently quivering artery in his neck. Harry gave the wizard a small, encouraging smile, but the glimmering, emerald glow emanating form his wand left neither her nor Jugson in any doubt as to what the Death Eater's fate would be.

It is no less than they deserve, Fleur dismissed.

They were nothing to her.

'Go to hell, Potter,' he spat. 'We'll all be waiting for you there.'

A final piercing curse left a hole Fleur could have fit her fist through where Judson's heart would have been, and the Death Eater toppled limply onto the floor of the hall, crushing shards of ice beneath his weight with a soft crunch. Blood, poured gently from the gaping wound to spread across the hall, but it did not spurt and spray as it would had Harry severed the artery like he had threatened.

Slightly less messy, Fleur thought, staring apathetically down at the body.

'Let's go,' Harry encouraged, pulling her gently away before the blood could reach her toes. He looked worried until she met his eyes, conveying in a glance that she did not care what he had done to either Judson or the elf.

'Do you think there will be others?' She whispered.

'There is only Nott, and his son,' Harry replied confidently. 'I asked only to provoke him to think about them. He might have lied even if he had answered, but Jugson lacked the skill to deceive my legilimency.'

They strode swiftly down the corridor, sweeping past dull, plain tapestries depicting scenes of hunting, and many empty rooms until they came to a slightly more grand doorway.

'Nott is in here,' Harry smirked, 'he's expecting his master, the only wizard he believes capable of breaking his ward so easily, so hopefully that means Theodore will stay away.'

Fleur felt a slight tingle of pride at the praise. Voldemort was not by any means a poor comparison.

The doorway crumbled to fine dust at the tip of Harry's wand, pooling and swirling about their feet as they stepped into the hall.

It was a dining hall. Elegant, expensive chairs surrounded a mahogany table that stretched from one end of the room to the other beneath an array of crystal chandeliers. Fleur thought it was surprisingly tasteful considering the rest of the decor.

Their target sat at the far end, at the table's head, by the fire, upright and obviously nervous beneath a painting of his wife.

'My lord,' Nott bowed, then froze in surprise.

Harry laughed.

'Potter,' he hissed, pulling his wand smoothly from his robes. 'How Lord Voldemort will honour me when I bring him you.'

A flurry of bright orange curses arced towards them over the long, mahogany table, but Harry flicked them casually aside from the tip of his wand, sending them to hiss and spatter across the floor. Fleur stepped round him, adding her spells to his as they retaliated, advancing further into the room.

It felt almost like they were dancing in the Room of Requirement again, only this time Harry did not flinch away like he had used to. She moved around him as he advanced, her constant motion to evade Nott's magic complemented by Harry's implacable advance.

A stray curse struck the chandeliers, and fragments of crystal rained down between them cascading in a glittering sprawl across the centre of the room. The great mahogany table collapsed into dust when Harry placed the tip of his wand upon it, and Fleur, gracefully twirling around him, deflected the volley of curses Nott unleashed back at their caster, who rolled across the floor to evade them.

Chairs splintered, and shattered under stray spells, and Nott, growing desperate as they drew closer, and unable to match their speed any longer, turned his wand upon her.

'Imperio,' the Death Eater snarled.

There was a light, floating sensation, and an almost irresistible urge to turn her wand upon Harry, but Fleur did not move.

Bring him down, something urged, more strongly, and the tip of her wand trembled even as Harry's butterflies surrounded them to swallow the crackling red beams of Nott's Cruciatus Curse.

Not Harry, something else insisted, something deeper.

Her wand tip snapped back to Nott, but he was already defeated.

The ebony butterflies flooded him, twisting from their forms into to black mist and then into thin, dark ropes that grasped the Death Eater and dragged him into his chair, binding him so tightly he could not move his wand arm.

The effect of the Imperius Curse had fully faded, and she moved to join Harry as he wandlessly summoned two of the surviving chairs from the wreckage of the room, and took a seat in front of their target.

Fleur joined him, deftly removing Nott's wand from his now limp grip, and tossing it into the fire behind him. Harry seemed to have a tendency to forget little details like that.

'To what do I owe the pleasure?' Nott drawled.

'Jugson is dead,' Harry caught the Death Eater's gaze with his own, 'nobody is coming to save you.'

Nott flinched, looking decidedly unsettled, then drew himself up proudly. 'I have nothing to say to you.'

'That's a shame,' Fleur commented, 'because we're only here to ask a few questions.'

'Sorry about the room,' Harry added, grinning.

The wooden floor was scorched, and scarred, the table gone, the chandeliers shattered, the tapestries burnt, and the paintings on the walls were empty save for Nott's wife, who had a hand clamped over her mouth, and sheltered, horrified, behind the tree she was painted next to. The others were smouldering frames, or just faint, pale outlines on the wall.

The levity seemed to take Nott aback, and Harry, who was leaning casual back in his chair, though still retaining eye contact, took his opportunity.

'I was wondering it you knew of any of your fellows being given something to protect by Voldemort. An object that he valued a great deal.'

'I told you I have nothing to say to you,' Nott sneered. 'You, descended from such a prestigious bloodline, and consorting with this creature.' His eyes flicked to Fleur for the first time since the duel. 'It's not unattractive I suppose, but to even touch it is to contaminate centuries of magical blood.'

Something very cold and cruel manifested in Harry's eyes, and for a moment she feared he would kill him before they got their answers, so she reached out with one finger, and placed it lightly on the Death Eater's forehead.

'There is more magic in this finger, than you possess,' she dismissed him contemptuously. Harry did not look appeased by Nott's slight twitch of discomfort. 'Let me show you.'

A brief, blue spark, burst into life upon the tip of her finger, as she withdrew it to give him a better view. Gradually, as she directed more of her magic, it grew brighter, turning a soft white hot enough to distort the air around it.

This time she replaced her finger more firmly, and Nott, held tightly within his conjured confines, could not escape. He sat teeth getting audibly, as the tiny spark seared his brow.

Some of the fury had faded from Harry's face, so Fleur released the fire, and leant back. Nott slumped limply in the ropes, subdued, and Fleur felt a tiny lick of satisfaction at quelling the wizard. It was, after all, no less than he deserved for such a remark; its stupidity was almost as insulting as the comment itself.

'Father!' A young voice cried from the far end of the hall, cracking in distress.

Fleur was out of her chair before Harry could move. This time she would not be as ineffective as the last.

A young wizard, clutching a short, light wood wand in one shaking hand, stood opposite her. She spared a glance at Harry.

'He's seen us,' her beau replied calmly, leaving no question as to what Theodore's fate would be, but despite his outward apathy she knew it both upset and annoyed him that they now had to kill someone when it could have been avoided.

'No,' Nott burst out, 'I don't know anything about any object, I swear, but not my son, not Theo.'

Theo's first curse missed her by some margin, flying harmlessly into the wall where it burst against an empty frame.

A stunning spell, Fleur recognised.

This wizard was barely more than a child born into the wrong family, but now he was in their way, in Fleur's way.

'I thought you didn't have anything to say to us,' she heard Harry remark cruelly from behind her, 'but I suppose, if you said something useful, maybe Theo could just be memory charmed.'

He was lying, of course. Neither he nor Fleur would risk the aurors undoing the charm and coming after them, but Nott was desperate.

She'd never heard anyone talk so fast, but nothing he said they did not already know, so as she batted the younger Nott's ineffective spells aside she prepared herself to do something unforgivable.

Harry had killed the house elf, killed Jugson, Rita Skeeter, Bellatrix and more. He had already proved how far he would go to get what he wanted, now it was her turn, and she hoped she too could be so ruthless. If she couldn't be then she feared he might not believe that she was as committed to being next to him as he was to her.

Her aura, the natural magic her peers had so loathed, and avoided her for, washed across the room in waves. Fleur's was stronger than most, and Theodore Nott, unprepared and unskilled, was enthralled in moments. It was the first time she had ever successfully tried to enthral anyone, and it was to kill them easily.

What would Caroline say to that, she wondered. Something spiteful, no doubt.

Her rosewood wand rose to point gently at the young wizard who gazed up at her with adoring, enraptured eyes that were glazed with her magic. How Fleur hated that expression; it had followed her for her whole life.

'You said you would memory charm him,' the elder Nott croaked nervously.

'I did,' Harry answered evenly, turning to give her a small smile. 'Fleur?'

'Avada kedavra,' she whispered, and the painting of the boy's mother froze and fainted. The glazed eyes of the enchanted Theodore Nott's went blank in a brilliant, green flash, permanently extinguishing the expression she so loathed.

'No!' Nott cried, 'you, you-'

'I lied,' Harry said coldly, rising from his chair.

'Theo,' the Death Eater whispered brokenly, staring at the body of his son. Silent tears trickled down the man's face. 'I failed you,' he murmured, twisting his head in the ropes to stare at the picture over the mantel. The bindings were tight enough to cut into Nott's neck, but he didn't seem to care.

Fleur waited for the satisfaction, for the guilt, for whatever was meant to come after taking a life, but nothing did. Theodore Nott was dead, and that was all there was to it. It shouldn't have had to happen; it was a waste of life, and regrettable, but she had had no choice once he entered the room, and thus no fault of hers. Her lips twitched into a smile; she was strong enough, ruthless enough, to stand beside Harry after all.

'He knew nothing,' Harry said disappointedly. 'We have wasted our time.'

'Two less Death Eaters,' Fleur reminded him, 'likely three from the spells he was trying to cast. There are others.'

'Yes there are,' Harry's expression brightened. 'I'll take them all away from him, one after the other.'

He walked slowly over to join her, slashing his wand across his chest in a vicious line without looking back. Fleur saw the fire swirl in the chimney behind the only living Nott, then the massive, flaming serpent's maw lunged from over the logs, closing around the Death Eater with a searing, hissing snap and a single short scream.

Harry took her hand, apparating them both to the edge of the wards Fleur had created.

'I can raze the place,' he suggested quietly, looking to her for agreement. Fleur nodded gently. They shouldn't leave anything behind that might lead back to them for either the Ministry or Voldemort to find. Not that it was likely the Ministry would look, the escalating conflict had spread out across the country spilling into and splitting communities as the violence and bloodshed surged. The three deaths here would be lost in tomorrows list in the Daily Prophet.

'This is the spell I used to get through the maze,' he remembered with a soft chuckle as Fleur regrew the lock of hair she had lost in the fight in the hall. 'It's the one I wouldn't tell you about because I was afraid you might try it and lose control.'

'Fiendfyre,' Fleur realised, the mention of control enough to give away the piece of magic. 'I did wonder what you knew that was powerful enough to harm the hedges, but I have very good control, remember?'

'It's a very useful piece of magic, but not easy,' Harry grinned, raising his wand.

Fleur raised hers too, refusing to be left out. It was a fire spell at its most simple; she should be quite adept with it.

'Together then,' she insisted.

Red-tipped flames flowed from their wands in billowing gouts, entwining with each other and rippling across the grass towards the house. The strain of keeping the flames focused was far harder than she had imagined, and she knew without any doubt that had their spells not combined and reinforced each other with their intent hers would have collapsed and spread beyond her control.

Instead, from the roaring waves of flame, rose the head and wings of a vast, feathered serpent, so great that it's burning, shimmering body of white fire was able to encircle the house, melting the windows and setting the curtains alight just from it's proximity.

The fiendfyre serpent spread its wings, rising over the home like a cobra, then plunged down into the house smashing though the roof, and drawing its coils tighter, crushing the walls beneath its wings.

Harry flourished his wand, and the serpent dissolved, collapsing in a thin pool of fire across the ruins of the house. Already a thick column of smoke was rising above the devastated building.

Fleur dispelled her piece of the fire, but it would not fade, stubbornly refusing to give up its appetite for destruction. Instead of a serpent, a long legged, crane like bird rose over the ruins, darker, red-edged flames protruding from the back of its head to form a crest, and a cruel, hooked beak clacked beneath its burning, white eyes.

She tried again, as Harry watched curiously on; they were both safe from the flames, and he was capable of dispelling her part too if she could not.

He did not have to.

The bird lashed out violently with one leg, stamping furiously at the ground, then dissipated.

'That is incredible control for the first time you have ever cast that piece of magic,' Harry remarked, obviously slightly envious.

'It's not quite the first time,' Fleur admitted. She had tried it, knowing her inherited veela magic gave her an aptitude for both control and fire, but never on such a scale.

A wave of tiredness washed over, dousing her in cold exhaustion and she leant against Harry to still her trembling legs, releasing the wards she had cast, so he could apparate them back home.

'Are you ok?' Harry asked softly.

'I'm tired,' she answered, leaning closer and putting her head on his shoulder. The Fianto Duri and Fiendfyre made a draining combination; she was exhausted, completely spent. Her eyelids were already beginning to droop.

'That's not what I meant,' he chided.

'You are worried about how I feel,' Fleur surmised. 'Why should I care about their fate? They were nothing to us, less than nothing; they were obstacles. I am glad,' she smirked, pushing herself upright so Harry could see her face clearly, 'glad to find that we are both equally devoted to getting what we desire most.'

Something very soft shone in her Harry's eyes.

'There is a mirror,' he began, 'that can show you want you desire most.'

'The Mirror of Erised,' Fleur nodded, leaning back onto him again, and grasping his arm so she did not fall. 'It is quite famous.'

'I have seen it,' he admitted.

'What did you see?' She asked, her breath catching in her throat. Fleur did not need to see the mirror to know what it would show her. Harry would be there, their family, Gabrielle, and her parents; they were all she really wanted in the end, but was his vision the same as hers.

He apparated them back rather than answer straight away, appearing by their bed with a soft snapping noise, and laying her gently down so she could sleep off the toll of their magic casting. His fingers lingered on her cheek when he pulled the duvet over her, and he left his arm within her grasp, sitting beside her rather than taking his company away to pore over books in his study.

'I saw you,' Harry answered gently, as her eyes drifted shut. 'I saw you.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

79. A Labyrinth of Delusions

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter!

Chapter 79

'What are you doing?' Fleur demanded, as another pebble crumbled into dust at the tip of Harry's wand.

'Creating a spell,' he explained. 'I've done plenty of work for my NEWTs over the last few days, so I thought I'd do something more interesting.'

'You're destroying pebbles,' Fleur noted sceptically, 'that's the eleventh.'

'I know,' Harry chuckled. 'It's developed from the Withering Curse and the Disintegrating Curse, but it only seems to work if my wand is touching the target, and it only affects inanimate objects.'

'Still useful,' Fleur decided. She, of course, recognised the piece of magic he had used to destroy the door to the Nott's residence, and the table in the hall.

'Very,' Harry grinned, 'good for dramatic entrances, and clearing obstructions.'

'If it already works, what are you trying to do?' Fleur queried.

'I am trying to imbue it on to conjured items,' he revealed with a smirk, 'but I can't get it to last longer than a few seconds, and I need to touch my wand to the objects I have conjured to imbue it.'

There was a short silence as she considered his problem, frowning cutely.

'The butterflies,' Fleur exclaimed suddenly, 'you conjure them wandlessly, but you can also create them from your wand, no?'

'I can.' A smile spread across his face as he realised where Fleur was going with her idea.

'So imbue each conjured butterfly with the spell upon creation, then you need only make it last longer.'

'Which I can do by simply making it more powerful now I don't have to cast it at something before imbuing it,' Harry grinned. He conjured a single, ebony-winged insect, suffusing it with his new spell as it left his wand's tip, and directed it across the table to alight upon the pebble.

The small stone crumbled into dust, and the butterfly vanished in a wisp of black vapour.

'You're brilliant,' Harry enthused, leaning across to chastely kiss the girl who'd solved his problem in a few seconds. She firmly clutched the front of his robes, holding his lips to hers to steal far more than the chaste kiss he had offered, and glancing in the direction of the orange juice he had just been drinking at the taste of his tongue.

'I know,' Fleur smiled, releasing him, and playfully tilting her chin into the air. 'How long have you been struggling to make that spell more useful?'

'Not that long,' Harry defended. Fleur raised one delicate eyebrow. 'Fine,' he conceded, 'on and off for the past week, but most spells take years to develop, so I'm still doing pretty well.'

'Almost as well as me,' she agreed, producing a small, polished, wooden box, with inlaid, metal circles upon the top.

'You finished it?' Harry realised.

'I did,' her smile grew proud, 'if you get it wrong, you'll be paralysed for about a century and a half, or until someone releases you.'

Harry's hand paused halfway to the box, and slowly slid back across to his side of the table.

'What are you keeping in there?' He inquired.

'Not much,' Fleur shrugged, blushing slightly, 'just some odds and ends that I've been given.'

'Oh,' Harry eyed the bands of runes around the rings, curiosity piqued.

'There are five rings, and nine runes on each,' Fleur commented, catching his look, 'not good odds for guessing.'

'Not good odds at all,' he agreed. His curiosity wasn't strong enough to risk paralysis. Harry didn't want to invade her privacy anyway, even if he did quite want to know why she was blushing, and should he get caught doing so he'd likely be spending at least a few hours paralysed. Fleur could be quite vindictively vengeful when she thought she was wronged.

'Where's Hedwig?' The box disappeared back into whichever cupboard beside the sofa it had come from.

'I sent her to get my OWL results,' Harry answered. 'The traceable Ministry owls can't find us, but Hedwig seems to be able to leave to hunt and then return easily enough.'

'Maybe she knows the secret, being your owl,' Fleur wondered, 'or maybe the Fidelius Charm relies on concepts too abstract for her to understand. It certainly doesn't seem to be keeping any of the spiders out, or the earwigs.' Fleur pulled a face.

'If only you were so lucky,' Harry grinned. 'Sadly your most powerful piece of magic is not enough to keep you safe against such terrifying creatures.'

'They are horrible,' she defended pulling her slim shoulders together in discomfort. 'Just thinking about their creepy little tails makes me shiver.'

'It's a good thing nobody else knows about this achilles heel,' Harry laughed. 'If I can conjure butterflies I'm sure I can manage earwigs too.'

'I have never seen them in France,' Fleur retorted softly, 'so my parents and Gabrielle do not know.' His playful threat dawned on her then, and she narrowed her eyes to smile dangerously sweetly at him across the table. 'If you summon so much as a single one of those horrible creatures you will find yourself sleeping on the sofa again.'

'It might be worth the screams,' Harry chuckled.

'Oh,' Fleur's smile turned sultry, 'there's nothing you would miss about sharing a bed with me?' It sounded so much more suggestive in French than it ever could in English, and filled Harry's head with a multitude of images, none of which were appropriate.

'Maybe a couple,' he grinned bashfully, shifting on his chair.

'More than a couple,' Fleur smirked triumphantly.

The arrival of Hedwig in a soft flutter of white feathers and low, satisfied hoot interrupted Harry's likely ill advised reply.

'What did you get?' Fleur asked, an edge of competitiveness to her tone.

'I haven't even got the letter,' Harry pointed out, retrieving the thin, brown envelope from between Hedwig's talons. 'Are you that eager to know if you have beaten me?'

'You have now,' Fleur responded. 'But no, I am not that eager to know if I have beaten you,' she smirked archly, 'I want to know by how much.'

'What did you get?' Harry asked carefully, shielding his envelope from her, and pushing's chair back so he was out of her reach.

'The highest grade,' she smiled.

'So Os in everything,' Harry deduced.

'Whatever the English equivalent of full marks is.'

'Right.' Harry ran his eyes down the list of grades. He had done well, incredibly well, given everything else he had been doing, but for the first time he wished maybe he had put a little effort into some of his less useful subjects.

'Can I see?' Fleur pleaded. The gaze of her vast, soft, blue eyes was irresistible, no matter how hard Harry tried to counter its effect with occlumency.

'Fine,' he sighed, surrendering the envelope, and resigning himself to her teasing.

'You did very well,' Fleur smiled, 'especially considering what is happening around us.'

Here it comes, Harry realised, as her smile turned playful.

'But there are a couple of letters in here that aren't Os,' she commented innocently, 'what do they mean?'

'You know full well what that means,' Harry told her.

'You mean that you didn't get the highest grade in four subjects,' her affected surprise was cute, but he fought the smile it brought to his lips out of principle. 'Well I suppose that if we really need to undertake anything challenging to do with the subjects that you're less apt in then I can help you.'

'What challenging things are we ever going to need to undertake involving Astronomy, or a History of Magic?' Harry asked. 'Unless you've been planning a goblin rebellion while you've been at Gringotts?'

'I meant Potions and Herbology,' Fleur responded, 'as you very well know.'

'Well,' Harry grinned. 'I have Neville for Herbology, but if he isn't around I'm sure I can deal with any annoying shrubbery we come across. Fiendfyre is a gardener's best friend.'

'And the potions?' Fleur laughed.

'I know a very beautiful, very intelligent, wonderful girl who would surely help me if I asked for it,' Harry said gently to a glowing Fleur, 'but I haven't spoken to Hermione in a while, so it might take a week or two to convince her.'

He chuckled at his pouting partner, and ducked the playfully thrown ball of fire.

'It's a good thing all our furniture is fairly fireproof,' he decided, watching the small pool of blue flames spattered across the table behind him gutter out.

'I asked for it specially,' Fleur admitted. 'For Gabby. She is quite taken with her new ability to throw fire; it is one of the last things we learn how to do.'

'Has she set fire to anything?' Harry asked.

'No,' Fleur shook her head with a smile, 'maman has all the same enchantments we do.'

'Anyone?'

Fleur laughed daintily. 'Not that I know of, but it would be best to be nice to her, or she might try.'

'I'm always nice to her,' Harry objected.

'She is very fond of you,' Fleur nodded, 'as long as you don't steal anything sweet from her you'll be fine.'

'Sounds familiar,' Harry grinned.

Something thrummed within the house. A soft, but unmissable vibration that permeated the entire house.

'Someone is here,' Harry noted.

'Sirius?'

'Probably,' Harry nodded, but his wand remained in his hand, just in case. He really didn't want to open the door to find a scarlet-eyed Voldemort and a host of Death Eaters and not have his wand to hand. 'I'll get it,' he offered quickly.

A flicker of annoyance passed across Fleur's face at his overprotectiveness, but it was tempered by empathy. She had felt no differently once, but, unlike him, Fleur could be kept out of the thick of things more easily, and he found it harder to accept that she might have to be in danger.

He cautiously opened the door.

'Just me,' his godfather said soberly. There were shadows under his eyes, deep, dark ones that looked like they had little to do with Azkaban.

His cousin, Harry remembered. Tonks.

He had liked the colourful auror. In a few brief minutes of conversation he had been able to see both her sincere dedication to doing what was right and her compassion. She had died bravely beside him, against a wizard few had any hope of defeating.

Guilt twisted within him, because he knew Voldemort had killed her to take something away from him, even if she had chosen to fight, and even if it had been her duty to do so. The life of Nymphadora Tonks had been payment for what Harry had taken from Voldemort; the Dark Lord placed no more value on her life than that.

The smiles of moments ago seemed an age away now as Harry ushered Sirius into the house and shut the door behind him.

'Dumbledore is back,' he said flatly, slumping in the chair across from the sofa Harry shared with Fleur.

'Did he say what he has been doing?' Harry inquired.

'Chasing things that are important to Voldemort and crucial for the war,' Sirius sneered. 'The only evidence there is that he's even been outside while others die in the streets are his new pair of gloves, and you'd be heard pressed to find a more ridiculously decorated item of clothing.'

Fleur exchanged a worried glance with Harry that Sirius caught.

'Sorry,' his godfather apologised. 'There's nobody else I can talk to about this. Members of the Order are dying all over the place, and they just look sad and repeat the same mantra of trusting Dumbledore over and over.'

'Tonks,' Harry said quietly.

'She's dead,' Sirius told him sadly. 'You already knew,' he realised after a moment.

'I was there,' Harry admitted.

'What happened?' Sirius asked simply.

'Voldemort,' Harry answered. 'He wanted to make a point.'

'She's the fourth member of the order to die over the last month,' Sirius said hollowly. 'This war isn't like the last. Voldemort has learnt from his mistakes; there are no muggle hunts, no unnecessary raiding and murdering, just constant, unending attacks on his enemies. We can't keep up, especially now the only auror who's a member is Moody.'

'What happened to Shacklebolt?'

'Disappeared in Yorkshire helping hit wizards,' Sirius answered distantly, 'another pyrrhic Ministry victory.'

'Who else?' Harry inquired carefully.

'From the beginning,' Sirius ran a finger along the arm of the chair, 'Mundungus, of course, Arthur, Shacklebolt, Tonks, and Emmeline Vance.' He fell quiet. 'Haven't heard from Moony in a while either, not since Dumbledore suggested it might be a good idea to offer werewolves an alternative to Fenrir Greyback.'

'Lupin,' Harry murmured. He hadn't thought about his father's friend and former professor in a while. The werewolf had slunk away from the school when his secret was outed, and Harry had not heard from him since, despite Lupin's close relationship with his father. The fact that a convicted criminal on the run had managed to see him more often than Lupin won the werewolf no points in Harry's book.

'At least everyone else is losing people just as fast,' Sirius said vindictively. 'The Ministry estimates almost half of its hit wizards are dead, and that includes those they have recalled; the aurors are faring slightly better, but not by much. It's almost a thousand dead now.'

'And Voldemort?'

'Without anyone in the aurors' department we don't know the most recent numbers, but last time we did it was estimated that a little over eight hundred of his followers are killed or missing. The problem is that he has rallied many creatures to his cause, and attracted the support of the desperate purists from Europe. His ranks are swelled with those who seek freedom from justice on the continent.'

'So he has more followers?' Fleur inquired

'About even, actually,' Sirius corrected, 'but the Death Eaters have the advantage. Hit wizards aren't particularly well trained, they're meant to catch smugglers, not dark wizards, and the upper echelons of Voldemort's followers are very proficient at duelling.'

'You don't need to tell me that,' Harry frowned. He remembered the skill Malfoy and Bellatrix had displayed, experience beyond his emulation, and that was with the two of them not even trying to work together. A group would be more than a match for almost any foe he could imagine, and no doubt that was exactly what Voldemort had intended.

'I know I don't,' Sirius grinned. 'Bellatrix, Yaxley, Avery, and Macnair if you were at Diagon Alley, and I would hazard a guess at Nott as well, given the use of fiendfyre. You've done more damage to Voldemort's Inner Circle than either the Order or the Ministry; I've only got half of Lucius Malfoy's face.'

'It sounds like a lot more names when you list them,' Harry remarked absently, not denying his responsibility for their deaths.

'It's good someone is doing something,' Sirius replied firmly, 'else we'll be torn to pieces when Voldemort stops sending his less dangerous, more expendable followers at us and commits his true Death Eaters.'

'Does Dumbledore not intend for you to fight back?' Fleur cut in incredulously.

'He does not belief in killing,' Sirius shook his head. 'Dumbledore spend his time gazing into the distant future he hope for where everyone is alive and redeemed save for Voldemort himself.'

'So he expects you to do what?' Fleur demanded. 'Capture them, send them to Azkaban, and wait for them to break out again?'

'He insists that now Amelia Bones has taken his advice and included many hit wizards and aurors in Azkaban's wardens that the prison is both impregnable and inescapable again.'

'If Azkaban is guarded by serious number of aurors, and the Dementors, then he may have a point,' Harry equivocated, 'but why take the risk? If they do escape, and harm a single person after having done so, that blood is on his hands.'

'I don't think Dumbledore sees the world that way,' Sirius snorted. 'I think he pictures himself as offering redemption and salvation to those that have lost their way. The consequences of his mercy do not seem to concern him anywhere near as much as they perhaps should.'

'He is an old fool,' Fleur decided acidly, tossing her hair. 'Albus Dumbledore has entangled himself within his own labyrinthine twists of delusion; it is a dangerous wizard that is so strongly opinionated and so powerful.'

'He is not concerned with Voldemort for the moment anyway,' Sirius sighed. 'The reason I came was to tell the two of you that in every moment I have seen him since his return he has been devoting his time and energy to locating you.'

'Oh?' Harry couldn't imagine he would have very much success. There were very few ways to trace them back to the Meadow.

'I believe he suspects that I know where you are,' Sirius smiled wearily. 'Once again I find myself falsely accused of keeping secrets.'

'Were you careful in coming here today?' Fleur asked worriedly.

'Very.' Sirius' smile brightened ever so slightly. 'Dumbledore went to speak with your relatives, hoping to gather some clue to your intent from your interaction with them.'

'He will not find our location there,' Harry frowned, 'but he will discover our relationship, Fleur.'

'Let him,' she shrugged gracefully, 'he would have discovered it soon enough, and he can't find me here anyway.'

'He can find you in London,' Sirius warned.

'Then I shall terminate my contract with Gringotts,' she decided simply. 'It's not like I'm actually doing any work or making any money; the goblins will understand.'

'Do it soon,' Harry urged, utterly unwilling to leave her exposed. Dumbledore had already shown himself willing to sacrifice one innocent to end the war, another seemed hardly much of a stretch.

'I will,' she promised, putting a hand on his leg to reassure him.

'So how is everyone enjoying Grimmauld Place?' Harry asked.

'It's quiet,' Sirius answered slowly, 'and it feels oddly empty. After Nymphadora's death my mother's portrait ordered Kreacher to destroy it. She didn't want to watch the last days of her beloved family, or, worse, see our name taken by the Malfoys. Dumbledore has returned to Hogwarts, but when he does make an appearance it is to try and influence me into revealing your location, and to express his disappointment in your current path.'

'I'm sure he will give us a chance at redemption,' Fleur quipped.

'Of course,' Sirius grinned briefly before his smile collapsed. 'Most of the older members of the Order are fighting, and are constantly away, and the younger members don't seem to have truly grasped what is happening. Molly occupies herself cleaning the house to keep herself from missing Arthur, Ginny is still a little girl, and the Twins are still making jokes items.'

'Ron and Hermione?' Harry inquired. The former had seemed to mature a great deal after his father's death.

'Ron spends most of his time studying, practicing magic, and learning from the three older brothers who understand what is going on. He has grown up.' Sirius' tone carried a note of approval.

'If only he had been so mature two years ago,' Fleur commented disparagingly. Harry smiled at her fondly; his partner held deep grudges against anyone she felt had wronged him. If he looked back honestly though, he could hardly solely blame either Ron or Hermione. His emotions had been wild, uncontrolled, his self-control had been lacking, and his responses sometimes unmerited.

The effect of the horcrux, perhaps, he wondered.

It would certainly not surprise him if the soul fragment had been able to affect him in his weaker moments.

'Hermione, on the other hand, has hardly changed.' Sirius' frown returned the shadows to his face. 'I've been scouring the family library for any mention of those horcruxes you mentioned, and she's been in there as often as me, reading through tome after tome. I've kept an eye on her, and I haven't caught her reading anything dangerous, but she's completely focused on her books, and hardly notices anything else.'

'I always imagined she would become a professor,' Harry nodded. 'It just seemed to fit.'

'She needs to learn a little more about the magical world itself for that,' Sirius remarked, 'but it would suit her. She's very intelligent, but often blinded by her own brilliance.'

'Being wrong a little more often might lend her some perspective and help her get over herself,' Fleur smirked.

'Hypocrite,' Harry teased.

'I know when I am wrong,' Fleur defended.

'You just never admit it,' Harry finished for her.

'Are you comfortable?' She asked sweetly.

'Yes.' Harry's answer was wary.

'That's good,' her smile turned predatory, 'because if you continue you may find yourself sleeping here, and I wouldn't want you to be in any discomfort.'

Sirius cackled gleefully at their exchange. 'You two remind me very much of James and Lily sometimes,' he chuckled. 'James teased Lily constantly, and I mean constantly, until eventually he'd push it too far, and then she'd hex him horribly.'

'Fleur throws fire,' Harry grinned.

'I do.' Her smirk was proud.

'But she's not hit me yet,' Harry continued, slipping an arm around her waist.

'From this range,' Fleur's fingers were coated in shivering, blue sparks, 'I can hardly miss.'

'Who would you kiss if you immolated me?' Harry played his ace, his favourite card in their playful arguments; the pout he had copied from Gabrielle.

'I suppose I might miss you now and again,' she admitted, but he could see the temptation to kiss him written across her face, and in the soft biting of her lip.

'So romantic,' Sirius sighed.

'You're just jealous,' Harry grinned.

'Of course I am,' he gestured at Fleur's slender, fire-coated fingers, 'she can conjure fire. Do you know how much fun I could have had at Hogwarts if I could have done that? Girls would have loved it.'

Harry snorted. 'You would have spent all your time setting fire to Snape,' he disagreed.

'True.' Sirius' face grew slightly wistful. 'It would have been such fun.'

'Well you should set him alight now if you want to,' Fleur smiled, glancing at Harry. 'Spies have a short life expectancy.'

'Dumbledore would be furious,' Sirius grinned. 'For some reason Snape is his favourite. I can't do it though, he's too important.'

'Important?' Harry raised both eyebrows. 'He spies for both of the sides that intend for me to die, feeding information back and forth between both his masters. I'm fairly confident he was the one who told Voldemort where Katie Bell lived, and thus is the reason why he attacked Diagon Alley.'

'And that's just the beginning of his sins,' Fleur added icily.

'You think he is the reason Nymphadora died?' The shadows slipped back onto Sirius face, and a furious, feral rage glinted in his eyes.

'Voldemort came for Katie,' Harry told him. 'He came to take away someone from me in return for me taking Bellatrix from him. Who else among his Death Eaters knows where a Hogwarts student lives. He would've asked Snape; I would've.'

'That self-serving, selfish, greasy-haired puddle of slime,' Sirius spat. 'I'm going to rip his throat out with my teeth the next time I see him.'

'No,' Harry said sternly.

'He deserves to die,' Sirius raged. 'You said it yourself; he's not important to us, and he's killing people we care about!'

'His life is Harry's,' Fleur said sharply, cutting through his godfather's apoplexy.

'Why?' The rage had stilled temporarily, but Harry knew his next words would ignite it again beyond all reason.

'My parents died because of Voldemort's fear of a prophecy,' Harry began quietly, feeling the cold hate spread within his chest, 'a prophecy that he heard from the lips of Severus Snape.'

Sirius went very still in his chair.

'Dumbledore told me,' Harry revealed evenly, hoping that the longer he kept talking the calmer Sirius would become. 'It's the only thing he has really shared, and he only said it to convince me to give Snape a chance to redeem himself.'

Sirius vanished in a deafening crack of barely controlled apparition.

'We should not have keyed him into the apparition wards,' Harry frowned, concerned.

'We didn't,' Fleur reminded him, her wand out. 'He broke them.'

'I hope he doesn't kill Snape,' Harry worried, pulling nervously at the hem of Fleur's dress.

'Because you want your revenge?' She asked carefully, covering his hand with hers before he pulled the seam apart.

'Because openly killing Snape will infuriate both Voldemort and Dumbledore. Sirius is already on the run from the Ministry, he has enough enemies, any more and we may have to hide him with us for the rest of his life, and that's no way for anyone to live.'

'I'm sure he won't.' Fleur didn't sound very sure.

'You hope he won't,' Harry corrected.

'There's nothing we can do but wait, and hope he calms down,' she counselled. 'Let's go and fix the apparition wards,' she suggested. 'I'll teach you how to do it yourself; it will keep your mind off worrying.'

Harry nodded. It was a good idea. The piece of magic would be useful, and Fleur was right; there wasn't anything they could do but wait and hope Sirius came to his senses before he did something stupid.

AN: Read, review and enjoy, thanks to everyone who does!

80. Revenge is Never a Straight Line

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Here's number 80; it's quite a short one, so I wrote it quick, and so late it has become early! Enjoy...

Chapter 80

The mirror was less put out with her this morning. It's customary, disgusted huff had been little more than a slight sigh, and Fleur was hardly surprised. She'd been up all night.

Teaching Harry the anti-apparition wards until he could cast them flawlessly had kept him busy for almost an hour, and anti-portkey wards had bought her a little longer after that, but her attempts to distract him all inevitably failed in the face of his godfather's reckless exit.

On reflection they should have known better than to tell him without first making sure he would not be able to do anything rash, but Fleur had not expected him to be able to break her wards.

At least he will not be able to repeat the feat, she reassured herself.

Her second set were much stronger; there had been no need to conserve her strength for casting another piece of magic, and Harry had cast an inner layer himself around the house, just in case. He'd poured so much magic into them that she had thought he might exhaust himself completely, so she'd hovered anxiously nearby until he finished.

Harry hadn't collapsed, but she had almost wished he had so he wouldn't have had to endure the wait. Fleur hadn't seen him so distraught in a long time, and it unsettled her to see him so far from his usual aspect.

She'd been showing him what she had decided to keep in her newly enchanted box when they had been interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Harry had apparated from their lounge to the door in an instant, and she had been left to quietly sigh with relief at the sound of Sirius' voice, and carefully replace the vials of memories Harry had gifted her into the box.

His godfather had apparated through her wards back to the headquarters of the Order, somewhere she knew was also under the Fidelius, demanded to know Snape's location, swearing he was going to kill him, then had taken two steps towards the man before collapsing. It took considerable energy to break anti-apparition wards like hers, and they were fortunate that the toll it had taken had prevented Sirius from doing something he would regret.

The three of them had stayed up until the early hours of the morning talking over everything Sirius could remember, but he hadn't been able to recall much more than his own words. In fact the only words he remembered aside from his own had belonged to Harry's former friend Hermione.

Sirius had laughed while relating them, chuckling at her naivety. The girl believed he must have been influenced by a dark wizard, and hoped that Sirius would now listen to Dumbledore and stay inside where he safe. He'd fallen asleep still chortling about the look on her face when he'd apparated away in front of her the moment he awoke.

Harry was still sleeping, despite it being nearly lunch, but she had to return to Gringotts to terminate her contract of employment. She no longer needed an excuse to be in Britain, everyone would know about her and Harry soon enough, and being exposed to followers of either Voldemort or Dumbledore everyday in London was a risk Harry was justifiably adamant that she need not take.

Several weakly cast healing charms repaired the broken blood vessels beneath and within her eyes, and her face swiftly regained its usual, flawless appearance. It did nothing to alter the slight fog of weariness that clung to her, but that was nothing something to eat wouldn't cure.

Slipping quietly back into their bedroom she gently kissed Harry on the forehead, smiling when he stirred in his sleep, lips curving faintly upwards. He would meet her at the café Katie's parents owned for lunch; they had agreed it would be a nice idea to go out briefly together before he had to return to Hogwarts.

Fleur straightened her clothes, smoothing them down, and clamped down on her magic, restraining her natural aura as much as she could. With a last, fond look at Harry she apparated silently away onto the steps outside Gringotts.

Diagon Alley was warm, not the pleasant dry heat of the French summer, but warm enough not to be intolerable. She strode quickly out of the alley, ignoring the scatter of stares as she always did, and entered the bank.

'I need to speak with Haftak,' she informed the most senior goblin on the floor.

'Haftak is quite busy,' the goblin warned, 'is it important?'

'It relates to my employment here,' Fleur explained simply. Goblins did not appreciate misdirection or dancing around the subject; it was best to get straight to the point before they took offence and took the point of whatever weapon was nearest straight to you.

'Follow me,' the goblin instructed, sliding out of his chair and ushering in a replacement.

Fleur was led through one of the more opulently decorated corridors of Gringotts. Few of the areas of the bank were furnished in anything more than the solid, functional wooden desks, and green lamps, but this one was interspersed with twisting, flowing metal sculptures and the busts of the goblins famous kin.

'Haftak is inside,' the goblin told her shortly, gesturing to the door at the end of the corridor, 'but he does not have time for a long meeting, so be brief.'

'I will be,' Fleur promised politely, opening the door and stepping inside.

Haftak was an ancient goblin with a tonsure of long, brittle, white hair, deep-etched wrinkles, and gleaming, gimlet eyes. He was also in charge of managing all Gringotts non-goblin employees.

'Mademoiselle Delacour,' the goblin folded its long fingers over the surface of its desk. 'I must say that I have been expecting this meeting for some time.'

'Then you know why I am here,' Fleur responded calmly. The goblins were already aware of her link to Harry, and, being cunning creatures, had no doubt guessed the real reason for her presence in Britain.

'I do,' the Haftak swung himself off his high chair with speed that belied his age and stepped out from behind his desk. 'It is a shame to lose your skills, you're a fine enchantress, for a human, and a good liaison, but this no time for a veela to be in Britain without good reason.'

'Indeed it is not,' Fleur agreed, watching the goblin carefully as it pulled open the grate before the fire.

'I do, of course, know that working here was not your reason for coming to Britain,' Haftak continued, pulling a thin folder from the cabinet beside the fireplace, and dropping it casually into the flames. Fleur glimpsed her named on the blackening paper, as the fire curled over it. 'So I think it would be best if there was no record that you ever worked here, in case the Ministry falls into the hands of those who might look less favourably upon you.'

'Thank you,' Fleur said, more than a little surprised. Goblins were not known for their generosity, least of all goblins of Haftak's stature.

'Don't be so shocked,' Haftak grinned nastily. 'I am not doing this for you, but for me, and my kin here in Britain. If Harry Potter wins, then I shall have avoided his enmity, and if Voldemort is victorious there is no link between us and his enemies.'

That makes much more sense, Fleur decided, almost relieved.

'Now,' Haftak pushed the grate back into place, and made his way back into his chair, 'since you no longer work here, Mademoiselle Delacour, I must insist that you return to the visitors' section of the bank.'

'Of course,' Fleur agreed pleasantly. 'Au revoir, Manager Haftak.'

'Goodbye,' the goblin disagreed politely as she closed the door to his office.

Fleur was hardly surprised. The goblins were proud; they didn't offer places within their bank lightly, and certainly not twice to the same person. If you walked away then that was that.

The locket flared hot against her chest as she left the bank; Harry had got the note she left him reminding him that they were having lunch in Diagon Alley.

Fleur was quite looking forward to it. It would be nice to spend some time with Harry just being together, and there was the added benefit of the two of them going to the café Katie Bell worked at. The girl needed a reminder that Harry was Fleur's; it was fair payback for the overly long embrace she had inflicted upon her beau in front of Fleur the last time they had met.

She quickened her pace towards the red umbrellas as the crowd parted before her, anxious to get somewhere more concealed. Nothing about the stares pleased her anymore, not now she had Harry. Their covetous eyes could never compare to the understanding he offered, and she wished, as she always did, that they would no longer notice her.

How far I have come, she realised, remembering Harry's words to her before the Yule Ball.

Fleur had basked in their stares then, let her pride tell her that they were deserved, that they were a sign she was fulfilling her potential. Now she too would rather be disregarded than stared at.

Cutting past a handful of wizards who looked vaguely familiar she took cover beneath the red umbrella closest to the corner. Harry would know to look for her somewhere out of obvious sight. He wouldn't arrive for a little while though. Unlike Fleur he couldn't seem to manage to get out of bed, dressed and anywhere very quickly or efficiently.

He's probably still trying to fix his hair.

She let her eyes rove over the café; it was almost empty, only a handful of tables were occupied on a day that in any other year would have had every chair filled. For now nobody had noticed her, and that suited her just fine. Fleur did not want to have to endure any awkward conversation with Katie or her mother while she waited for the wizard they both loved to come and join her instead of the brunette she had all but stolen him from.

There was still a twist of guilt that came with that thought, because in essence she had stolen Harry away from Katie Bell just as she had always been accused of doing. They had been happy, slowly drifting towards becoming a couple until she had interfered and made a mess of everything. A few weeks later and she'd taken Harry for herself and Katie, who had made a single mistake, one provoked by Fleur at that, had lost Harry forever.

Hopefully forever, Fleur admitted, cautiously brushing her fingers against the wooden chair beneath her.

Katie Bell didn't seem to have given up, not if the way she acted around Harry was any indication of what she was still hoping for, and Harry, though oblivious, seemed to enjoy her company more than Fleur was truly at ease with.

Movement flickered in the corner of her eye, and the girl she was thinking about breezed cheerfully around the counter to collect a stack of mugs before disappearing back towards the kitchens.

Fleur scowled after her. Katie Bell would never be anywhere near as powerful, talented or beautiful as she was, pride or not that was true, and they both knew it, but she had a warmth, a bright, brilliant aura about her that was every bit as captivating as Fleur's allure could be.

A great deal less artificial as well, Fleur groused, testily rearranging the stack of napkins on the table in front of her.

'Miss Delacour?' The voice was vaguely familiar, and rough, but not rude, however Fleur was not in a mood to tolerate some enthralled fool. She forced a polite smile onto her lips, and turned to face whoever had decided to pester her.

'Sorry,' the young, red-haired wizard apologised, 'I didn't mean to intrude, I just saw you sitting here all alone and wondered if you might like some company.'

'You would be surprised by how many wizards make the same mistake,' Fleur noted. 'They are normally affected by magic though,' she relented, noticing the clear, unaffected gaze. 'Bill Weasley, yes?'

'Yes, but Bill is just fine, otherwise I feel old,' he seemed surprised that she knew his name, and burst into a wide grin. 'I didn't expect you to remember me.'

'I almost didn't,' Fleur shrugged, wiping the grin from his face to no little satisfaction. 'A lot of wizards take it upon themselves to introduce themselves to me.'

'You get that a lot do you?' Bill looked faintly apologetic, and Fleur suddenly remembered the ring he had given her, weighing heavy in her pocket.

'All the time,' she answered dryly, 'the worst ones are those that don't realise when I want them to leave. They all want the same thing.' The redhead looked distinctly less comfortable, and Fleur hid a smile, rather enjoying herself.

Bill did not leave though, and instead slid into the seat opposite her, the slim, shiny curved earring swaying from his ear.

'It's a dragon fang,' he grinned, ' but it was a present from my brother; I didn't have to get quite as close to one as you did.'

'It's nice,' she remarked politely. 'Your brother has good taste.'

Harry might look quite nice with one, she mused, before shaking her head.

It probably wouldn't quite suit him.

'Charlie prefers dragons to people,' Bill said happily, 'he only just came back to Britain from the reserve in Romania.'

'It might have been safer to stay away,' Fleur said. Harry had mentioned that the Weasley's were all part of the Order; it was possible that Bill's persistence was because he had been volunteered to investigate her presence in Harry's life.

'I'm sure it would be,' Bill sighed. 'Which makes me curious as to what a French witch is doing here still when she has no real reason to stay?'

'I would not be here if I did not have good reason,' Fleur smirked.

'You enjoy working for Gringotts that much?' Bill chuckled good-naturedly. 'I'm a curse-breaker, we get to do all the exciting stuff, and even I don't love it that much.'

'I do not work for Gringotts,' Fleur said simply.

'I've seen you there,' Bill frowned. 'You're a liaison between the independent treasure hunters and Gringotts.'

'I no longer work there,' Fleur explained, wondering how long it would take for Harry to arrive, and glancing about in search of him.

Looking up proved to be a mistake, because the only thing she saw was Katie Bell's face caught somewhere between fury and ecstatic hope.

Merde.

Fleur was not naïve enough to think that Katie wouldn't try to spin this into something that suited her. The way she was ominously beaming as she reclined on the bench by the counter was far too gleeful for anything less to come about.

'So why are you staying in Britain if you don't work here anymore?' Bill asked bluntly. 'If you don't mind me asking,' he added hurriedly.

'As I have mentioned half a hundred times,' Fleur answered with a touch of irritation, 'I am here because of my partner.'

'Right,' Bill nodded, but it was obvious he didn't believe her. Clearly he was one of those wizards who needed to see something before he accepted it. 'So what does your partner do?'

'He kills dark wizards.' Fleur suppressed her smile.

'An auror,' Bill rubbed his chin thoughtfully, 'is he any good?'

'Like he's been doing it since birth.' This time Fleur couldn't resist a smile. 'He's quite famous actually.'

She was done playing games with Bill Weasley. There was no sense in leaving him with any hope when Katie was going to be stirring up trouble regardless. Anything he might think he felt for her was getting nipped in the bud now.

Fleur's hand dipped into her pocket, retrieving the ring he had once given her.

'This was a good apology,' she said as kindly as she could manage, 'but I can't accept it.'

'Oh,' Bill's face fell.

Fleur opened her mouth to let him down gently, but the words stuck in her throat.

It was no sudden change of heart that caught her tongue, just the sight of an innocently smiling Katie leading her Harry by the arm to sit at the table next to her and Bill. Fleur could almost see the smug satisfaction radiating off the girl as she bounced away. No doubt she intended to watch for fireworks from a safe distance. Fleur made a silent promise to exact something suitably spiteful for revenge. There were countless empty tables, and absolutely no need to place Harry right next to her when she was being bothered by another infatuated wizard.

'Fleur?' Bill's question was oddly hopeful. The ring loomed large between them on the table, painfully obvious after she had promised she would get rid of it. Fleur threw a panicked glance at Harry, fearing she would find his eyes hard, cold and angry, only to see him trying his utmost not to laugh at her misfortune.

Fleur was so relieved that he wasn't upset, or paranoid that she might have betrayed him she forgot to be angry that he was once again laughing at the trouble she had with wizards.

And this time he really is laughing at me, she realised, unable to find any ire at all.

'Harry,' she smiled softly at him, hoping Bill would take a hint and leave, preferably taking the ring with him.

'You know each other?' Bill's eyebrows had disappeared into his hair. Fleur was amazed he hadn't contacted the Order. The one person they were searching for most was sitting next to him and he hadn't moved a single muscle.

I suppose that makes it obvious that he is not here on behalf of the Order of the Phoenix.

'Of course,' Harry grinned. 'She was my competition in the tournament. It was an unforgettable experience.'

'You should try curse-breaking,' Bill grinned, 'some of the spells I've had to take apart make getting eaten by a dragon look blissful by comparison.' His nonchalance would have been more impressive if he hadn't looked quite so put out that Fleur had smiled at Harry and not at him.

'So what brings you to Diagon Alley?' Harry asked.

'Fleur is being mysterious,' the redhead laughed, 'she won't tell me what she's doing.'

'I'm sorry,' the corner of Harry's mouth twitched in amusement, 'I meant you, Bill. I know why Fleur's here,' he dismissed with an easy smile.

'You do?' Bill looked like he'd swallowed something particularly sour. 'I came with my family; you know how it is Harry, pre-school year shopping. You should probably carry on with yours before all the good stuff vanishes.'

'I did all mine a while back,' Harry smirked, ignoring the jibe about him still being in school. 'I've had all summer to wander around Diagon Alley,' he remarked, 'I must have spent half the summer here.'

Bill's face tightened momentarily in anger; it seemed he had been part of the search party Harry had been so effortlessly evading. Fleur bit her lip to avoid laughing. She would feel slightly guilty. Bill Weasley hadn't been as bad as most of the other wizards that had accosted her; he'd actually paid attention to her a little. A more innocent Fleur might have given him a chance.

'I'm glad you've been enjoying your summer,' Bill gritted. 'I wish mine had been so easy,' he sighed, 'but the war against Voldemort is harrowing.'

Perhaps I should keep score, Fleur mused, enjoying their sparring with the knowledge that Harry had already won the battle Bill thought they were fighting almost two years ago.

'Having to fight Voldemort is a terrible burden,' Harry agreed. 'Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, wouldn't you agree?' Bill missed the edge of ice in his question, but she didn't.

'I suppose they do,' the red haired wizard rubbed his chin again, stroking the short, ginger stubble there. 'Ah,' he grinned, 'here's everyone.'

Fleur threw a glance over Harry's shoulder to glimpse a large group of redheads approaching the café.

Joy, she thought dryly.

Harry looked none too pleased either.

'I should introduce you,' Bill decided cheerfully, waving the entire Weasley family over.

'Mum, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, Ron and Ginny,' Bill gestured to each of his relations in turn as Harry leant casually back in his chair to observe. He threw his family a warning look as if to give them a hint that he wanted them to behave in front of her so that she would be impressed. 'This is Fleur Delacour,' he said cheerfully.

'I'm Harry's girlfriend,' Fleur added helpfully.

She had never seen anyone look quite so devastated as Bill Weasley did at that moment.

Stony silence descended over the group, and Fleur was distinctly aware of Katie Bell drifting at a suspicious distance, wearing an expression torn between genuine happiness and utmost disappointment.

'It's nice to meet you,' Ron said after a moment, and Fleur was surprised to see that he was mostly unaffected by her allure now. There was only the slightest hint of glazing in his eyes, and no hint of it in his voice. It seemed he had grown up since she had last encountered him in Hogwarts' Great Hall.

'Indeed,' Percy added icily.

'A pleasure,' the identical twins murmured coolly.

Their mother said nothing, but stared at Harry with such profound disapproval Fleur thought he might wilt. Of course, he didn't. Her beau just stared back innocently for a moment, before rising from his chair and drifting round to slide an arm about Fleur's waist. Harry planted a light kiss on her cheek, ignoring the look of probably justified outrage that Bill was sending him. It hadn't been at all nice of Harry to lead him on and into this embarrassment, but she had told him she had a partner, so some of the blame was his.

'It's nice to see you all again,' he smiled. The irritating, false bright smile retuning briefly to his face. 'I hope you enjoy your shopping.'

'Congratulations,' the girl, Ginny, said quietly, looking straight at her.

Another one, Fleur deduced, annoyed for an instant, but she quickly realised from the look in her eyes that Ginny Weasley had already given up on Harry.

'Thank you,' she replied earnestly, but the Weasley's had already turned away.

'So that's the selfish attachment Dumbledore said Harry was harbouring,' they heard Mrs Weasley exclaim a little too loudly. 'Everyone else is fighting, or worrying about him, and he's run off to mess around with some air-headed, pretentious veela.'

Harry took a step back in the direction of the Weasleys after hearing that, but Fleur caught his arm hurriedly before he caused a scene by cursing a prominent supporter of Dumbledore in the middle of Diagon Alley.

'I don't care what they think about me,' she said. 'I want to enjoy being here with you before you have to go back to Hogwarts, and while you're wearing your own face for once.'

Harry's hands flicked up to his unaltered features.

'Damn,' he frowned. 'I knew I forgot something. Well, at least that explains all the looks.'

They settled back down at their table, where a conflicted Katie came out to ask them what they wanted just in time to catch Fleur kissing Harry particularly ardently.

Such a shame she happened to see that, Fleur crowed internally, stealing a few more kisses while Katie hovered awkwardly.

She had a terrible weakness for sweet things, and revenge was the sweetest thing there was.

'Oh look,' Harry remarked, when Katie hurriedly departed with their order. 'Bill forgot his ring.'

'So he did,' Fleur realised, picking it up off the table, and weighing it in her hand. Three thousand years old, well made, beautiful, and well enchanted; it was likely worth a few galleons to the right person, but not to her. Fleur just wanted it gone. Idly she tossed it over her shoulder into the street. 'Maybe the next person who receives it will actually want it,' she said simply.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does! I was trying to slip a good quote in from Kill Bill, but I couldn't quite manage it. Only one line in this chapter is actually particularly important, so I'm indulging my love of well filled out stories a bit, but it does mark the end of my fun with the ring. I suppose the chapter title where it makes its first appearance does kind of give the game away though.

81. Enter Ariadne

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Another quick one. I've had quite a bit more free time than usual, so I've briefly been able to return to my previous update rate of one a day.

Anyway, we're back at Hogwarts, and now the summer has finally crawled to its resolution, I can lift the curtain in earnest.

Chapter 81

'There are a lot of people here,' Fleur remarked beside him, staring down the platform.

'Many of whom are likely allies, or potential allies of Voldemort,' Harry shrugged. 'He won't risk alienating himself by attacking those he hopes will eventually join him, or those that already have.'

'You might be right,' Fleur acquiesced, though her hand did not move from the wand at her waist.

'I can scarcely think of a better way to unite a divided country against someone than the person attacking all their children in one go,' Harry added, eyes roving along the platform.

Somewhere Neville and Katie would be waiting, and they were the reason why he was on the train in the first place. While attacking everyone would be nothing short of madness, the disappearance of a single student might not be noticed for some time given all the other withdrawals that had occurred.

There was a distinct lack of muggleborn faces among the groups Harry recognised.

'It is leaving soon,' Fleur warned.

'I'll find Katie and Neville on the train, then,' he decided. Unlike the other students, who were wielding large trunks, Harry needed no luggage. He'd already deposited his things in the chamber, and Hedwig would prefer to fly the distance herself over a few days rather than be cooped up on the train for so long in her cage.

'I will continue our search where I can,' Fleur promised, switching to french and lowering her voice. 'Both out searches, in fact.'

'You will?' She had always seemed slightly disapproving and sceptical of his hunt for the hallow.

'Are you going to stop searching?' Fleur asked him, amused.

'No,' Harry admitted.

'Then it will be better if I help,' she said. 'Either we will find it faster, or find we cannot find it faster, and I a curious to see such a thing if it exists.' A flicker of fascination passed across her face. 'The enchantments upon it must be beautiful.'

'You're not taking it apart,' Harry told her warningly.

'Of course I'm not,' she looked scandalised at the thought. 'An artefact like that is priceless; I'd give a great deal to be able to look at one.'

'Remind me to show you my cloak,' Harry grinned.

'Your cloak?' Fleur seemed oddly puzzled at the reference. 'It can hide your magic, can't it,' she mused. 'I suppose that does make it worth looking at it.'

'It's the cloak,' Harry said, sure he must have told her before.

Fleur's head snapped round so fast he was afraid she might have broken her neck.

Evidently I haven't told her, he realised.

'You mean you've had one of the Deathly Hallows since you were eleven,' she shook her head in disbelief. 'Are you sure?'

'It has the mark on it,' Harry nodded. 'Salazar was certain.'

'So there is some credence to your Peverell theory,' she murmured. 'The Peverells married into the Potter family, and that cloak is an heirloom.'

'Of course there's credence,' Harry objected. 'Did you think I was just grasping at straws?' Fleur's slightly guilty face was all the confession he needed. 'So little faith,' he sighed playfully. Really he only had himself to blame when the best proof of his theory was the cloak he had somehow forgotten to tell her about.

'Train,' Fleur reminded him. The platform was emptying; there was only a few seconds left until it departed.

'I'm going.' Harry stepped up onto the edge of the door, then bent down to kiss her firmly, unable to resist the wonderfully clichéd image in his head. She laughed softly when he pulled away, stepping back at the sound of the whistle to gently wave goodbye, and then disappear silently back to the Meadow.

Harry noticed her absence immediately.

For the first time in several months Fleur was simply not nearby, and not returning to his side soon. It felt horribly wrong. The excitement Harry had used to feel about returning to Hogwarts had been replaced by a welter of anxiety, fear, and regret.

It feels like home to begin with, a new world, a place where you belong, then that world turns out to be no better than what you thought you'd left behind. You'll see that soon enough, if you haven't already.

He wasn't quite sure what had made him recall Voldemort's words about Hogwarts in the graveyard, but they were eerily accurate. The days of longing for the summer to end so he could return to Hogwarts, to his friends, and his world, were far behind him. It was almost a shame, he did miss the innocence, and the naivety in a way. The times he had spent blind running around, acting the hero, and saving the day had been some of the best, before he had seen the truth that tainted those times, and given them up to be powerful enough to really save the ones who mattered. Few as they had become.

The train lurched forwards out of the platform, gathering speed to begin its overly long journey to Hogsmeade.

It would have been so much easier to apparate.

Harry would have had longer with Fleur before leaving, and he wouldn't have to sit on a train for ages with nothing to do.

It can't be helped, it's the best way to ensure that Katie and Neville safely make it to Hogwarts.

He began to make his way swiftly up the train, casting his disillusionment charm, and glancing into every compartment he passed.

Harry found Neville only a little further along the train, on the edge of the compartments that the sixth years normally chose, and accompanied by Hannah, Susan Bones, Ron, and Ginny.

Entering after a moment of deliberation, neither of the two Weasleys had been anything but polite when they had run into he and Fleur in Diagon Alley, he slid into the only spare seat in the compartment.

'Harry,' Neville grinned, 'good timing.'

'Hermione just left to go to the prefect's carriage,' Hannah explained.

'Ron has decided not to go,' Neville added, 'despite claiming to be taking his responsibilities and education more seriously this year.'

'Nobody does anything in the meeting except ignore Malfoy mouthing off, and introduce themselves to the new prefects in their year. I already know everyone in the year below because of Ginny, and I have better things to do other than listen to Malfoy.' Ron's justification was shockingly logical, and, more surprisingly, was made over the top of their Defence textbook for the year.

It took a moment for the true depth of his maturation to sink in, and Harry was briefly lost for words.

'Hermione didn't approve,' Neville chuckled. 'She said, and I quote, you have a responsibility to set a good precedent as a person in a position of influence and authority, and then she stalked off.'

The girl did have a point. Harry had to concede that, but Ron was probably right in thinking reading his textbooks before the year began was a better use of his time.

'She's been like that all summer,' Ron grumbled quietly. 'I told her I was going to take things more seriously now when I started actually studying and practicing proper, useful magic, and she took it as an excuse to try and force quotes from muggle philosophers down my throat.'

'Which ones?' Hannah asked curiously.

'All of them,' Ron sighed, 'literally every single one. If I hear one more line from Gandhi I'll set fire to the library at Headquarters.'

'Which line?' Harry was genuinely interested, knowing only a handful of the many sayings of the Indian pacifist.

'A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.' Ron's tone indicated he believed it, even if he was sick of hearing it, but Harry had his suspicions as to the source of her quote.

'Why was she quoting Gandhi?'

Ron seemed reluctant to answer at first, then he closed his book and set it down on his lap. 'She was trying to explain to me why I shouldn't regret my father's death as anything more than a terrible loss, because he died doing a good thing. Dumbledore told her the quote, I believe, and you know Hermione, she's not always the most tactful, so she tried to borrow the headmaster's words to help her.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised for prying.

'It's not your fault,' Ron shrugged awkwardly. The red head looked away out the window. All the animosity that had flared up between them two years ago had faded, but they would never be friends again; they'd grown too different.

'So how's Fleur?' Neville asked, breaking the silence. 'Everyone will know about the two of you now, Katie and I will have to protect both of you from Romilda Vane and the others.'

'She's well,' Harry answered. It felt strange to talk about Fleur so openly when he'd spent so long keeping them a secret. 'Spends most of her time playing with her enchantments, making new, clever things, and eating sweets,' he finished with a grin.

'That's good,' Hannah smiled, pigtails bobbing. Susan shifted slightly on her seat, looking confused until Hannah shook her head and mouthed something that looked a lot like he doesn't know at her.

What don't I know? Harry wondered.

Neither of the two girls would know anything about Fleur, so he had nothing to fear there, but he didn't like being in the dark, not after discovering he'd spent the first fourteen years of his life there.

'How long have you been together?' Susan asked curiously, and, Harry suspected, out of courtesy, since he was sure Hannah would tell her everything she knew now it was no longer a secret.

'Since the end of fourth year,' Harry grinned.

'Wasn't she in France?' It was Ron who asked, looking serious.

'I can apparate,' Harry said simply.

'That's a long way,' Ron responded, almost in admiration. 'Mum was wrong,' he added under his breath.

'Yes she was,' Harry agreed. 'I didn't run away to play with pretentious veela, just to live with my girlfriend of a year instead of my relatives.'

'Sorry,' Ron looked mortified that Harry had overheard his mother's comment, though not particularly surprised. Mrs Weasley was not the quietest person they knew.

'I'm used to people saying things about me without knowing what's actually happening,' Harry dismissed. Ron flinched slightly at the reminder, but nodded.

'It's a good thing Dumbledore told her not to interfere,' he revealed. 'Mum was all for dragging you back to Headquarters with us, and separating the two of you permanently.'

A very good thing, Harry agreed.

Mrs Weasley would not have liked the consequences of trying to separate him from Fleur.

'Took us two days to cheer Bill back up after that,' Ron continued, slightly more lightly, 'he was very taken with Fleur. In the end Mum was almost grateful you had got her first.'

'I'm sure he was,' Harry replied evenly, 'she's hard to ignore.'

'Well,' Neville cut in, grinning gleefully, 'credit should go where it's due. It wasn't Harry that asked Fleur to the Yule Ball, someone, who will remain nameless, provoked him into causing that. Your Mum should be thanking you, Ron.'

Ron didn't seem particularly enthused by that; he flushed crimson in embarrassment instead. Clearly that memory was one he would rather not remember. Harry couldn't blame him, neither he nor Ron had been acting maturely at the start of that year, and there were plenty of moments when remembering his actions made him cringe.

A confident knock at the door drew their attention back to the present, and away from Ron's unfortunate role in creating Harry's relationship with Fleur.

'Here's trouble,' Neville cackled, earning himself a swat from Hannah. 'Someone hide Harry, and nobody eat or drink anything she gives him.'

'Hi Harry,' the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl smiled. 'I'm Romilda, Romilda Vane, it's so nice to finally meet you.'

'Hi,' Harry replied eloquently, accepting the slim slip of ribbon bound paper she proffered towards him. He did his best to avoid both Neville's eyes, and the dangerously low neckline of Romilda's blouse which was only emphasised by the way she was leaning forwards to give him the note.

'Thanks Romilda,' Neville said, taking the note she carelessly passed in his direction. The girl didn't spare him a glance, her eyes remained fixed on Harry as he unwrapped the ribbon to read the missive.

'Dear Harry,' he read aloud, 'I hope you would do me the honour of joining me for luncheon in compartment C, Professor H J Slughorn.'

'He must be the new professor,' Neville deduced.

'He's a potions teacher,' Ron remarked from the corner, dragging his eyes away from the lingering Romilda's cleavage to look at Harry. 'Snape's teaching Defence,' he shook his book pointedly, 'that's why I'm reading, the git isn't going to grade any of us fairly, he'll probably teach us everything wrong to soften us up for Voldemort.'

Susan twitched, and Romilda let out a little gasp of shock, something that Harry was certain was fake from the way she also sidled close enough to let her legs brush against his. Her skirt, he realised, was incredibly short.

'I guess we'd better go, Nev,' Harry decided standing up to put a little distance between him and Romilda. Ron looked faintly amused at his capitulation from behind his book, and Susan and Hannah were stifling giggles at his expense.

'Did you know veela can throw fire hot enough to melt steel,' Neville commented innocently as they made to leave.

'No,' Romilda looked confused, pausing for just long enough for Harry to slip past her.

'Food for thought,' Neville grinned, following Harry out of their compartment towards Slughorn's impromptu luncheon.

Compartment C was filled with the most unusual combination of students Harry had ever witnessed in one place, and, presiding over the whole affair, was the wizard he presumed to be Professor Slughorn.

Harry did not judge by appearance; malice and danger could hide behind the sweetest simper, or the most innocent titter, but Horace Slughorn didn't seem overly dangerous.

The man's love of the finer things was evident from his first glance about the room: his clothes were tasteful, not overstated, but clearly of very fine make, the food so casually arranged across the table would have reduced Petunia to tears at her own inadequacy, and the small, approving smile, barely visible beneath his impressive silver moustache, spoke of a quiet satisfaction with his comfortable surroundings.

He stood at the centre of gaggle of students, caught up in three conversations at the time, as each waited on his word, and approval, as he directed aperitifs, and small glasses of elven wine, to the closer students about him. All the while his belly protruded like the abdomen of gorged spider, swelling so massive as to strain the brass buttons of his elegant waistcoat.

His light, pale green eyes lit up when he caught sight of Neville, but a shadow passed across his face when he met Harry's eyes.

'Everyone is here,' he announced, 'take a seat, take seat,' he instructed jovially, casually ushering students to places around the table until Harry found himself sitting at the wizard's left hand, staring across the table Blaise Zabini, and Neville, both of whom were doing their utmost to ignore their closest company.

'Help yourselves,' the pudgy professor encouraged, pouring Harry a generous measure of elven wine, before passing the decanter down the table. 'There's no need to stand on ceremony at my informal little gatherings.'

Harry picked delicately at the pheasant in front of him, carefully removing the wings and legs with deliberate, almost surgical precision as he subtly listened to Slughorn's best attempts to converse with the Carrow twins, who were renowned for not being the most social.

'I heard that you were a professor here once before, sir,' Flora eventually asked, just as Slughorn was beginning to look like he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

'I was, this is my second tenure, Albus finally managed to tempt me back,' he chuckled loudly. 'He's been trying for years, of course, and I finally let him have his way. My retirement was growing a little too repetitive for my liking, and I couldn't resist his most generous offer.'

The conversation ebbed and flowed back about the table, but Harry couldn't help but notice that there were a handful of students Professor Slughorn made no effort to include, ones, he realised, who were not quite so talented, or well connected as their fellows.

Melinda Bobbins captured his attention for almost ten minutes, waxing eloquent about the apothecaries of her family, as Slughorn gently extracted everything the girl knew about her parents business over thinly sliced celery, red grapes, and an Italian, blue cheese.

Then it was his turn.

'Harry,' the gooseberry green eyes were ever so slightly wary when they came to rest on him, 'how could I not invite you to our little gathering?'

Zabini and Mclaggen sneered from the other side of the table, but they both fell quiet when Harry glanced up at them.

'It's a pleasure to be here, sir,' he offered politely.

'Indeed, my boy, indeed,' Slughorn nodded, all three chins bobbing together. 'When Dumbledore told me he had a student that might remind me of an old favourite of mine I didn't believe him, but now I've seen you I can't deny the resemblance. Lily Potter, your mother, was one of my best students when I last taught at Hogwarts; I have some photos of our old gatherings that I simply must show you.'

'That would be very kind of you,' Harry smiled.

Slughorn's eyes shadowed at the expression, recognising, just as Dumbledore had once done, the same false smile he had adopted from his distant, and reviled relation. Harry had little doubt in that instant that the favourite he had been compared to had not been Lily Potter.

'You have the same eyes, and smile,' Slughorn told him, smiling back, but the practiced warmth of his tone faltered slightly.

'Thank you.' This time Harry made sure to pull the same roguish grin he had often seen Sirius wear over his lips. The relief on the professor's face was almost obvious, and Harry made a mental note to be careful to act innocently around the old professor until he had gained the wizard's confidence.

The burgundy red liquid in his glass rippled gently as the train began to slow, and Harry realised they must be arriving at Hogsmeade. He'd spent far longer here than he had realised or wanted to, though he had learnt some interesting things about their new teacher.

'Harry,' the professor caught him as he attempted to leave with the others, passing him a thin, leather-bound book. 'I thought you might appreciate this when I came across while packing to move into the castle; it's the handful of photos from my little gatherings which have your mother in.'

'Thank you,' Harry replied, earnest despite knowing Slughorn's motivations for cultivating a good rapport between them. 'I don't know how I could ever repay you for something like this.'

'Harry, my boy,' the professor clapped him on the shoulder with a pudgy hand, 'you don't repay someone for a gift, but if you insist on reciprocating the favour, then I'll let you know that I'm quite fond of crystallised fruit.'

The professor blinked, suddenly sober, then shook his head slightly and smiled again. 'Ambrosius sends me little packages from time to time, he owns Honeydukes now you know, but is still kind enough to remember an old mentor. However one can never have too many sweets, just ask Albus, Professor Dumbledore, I mean,' he corrected himself easily. 'Now you;d better hurry and change, can't have you coming into school looking so casual, can we, Harry?'

'It wouldn't set a good precedent,' Harry agreed lightly. 'If I find something I'll be sure to remember you, sir,' Harry said by way of farewell, sliding out from under the new Potions teacher's arm and hurrying back towards his compartment hoping to catch Neville before they reached Hogsmeade.

The compartment was full when he returned; Hermione had made her way back from the prefect's carriage, and was busy trying to fill Ron in on what he missed over the top of his book. The odd role reversal made Harry chuckle, as Neville swept a surprised but not very reluctant Hannah into his lap to make room for him.

'Hermione,' he dipped his head politely when she noticed him.

'Harry,' she returned coolly, eyeing him cautiously. 'You need to get changed,' she instructed, relaxing slightly.

A casual, silent, swish of his wand and he was dressed in his school robes like all the others, much to Neville's chagrin. He'd had to change in front of everyone.

'What did you think of our new Professor?' He asked Neville.

'He didn't seem to think too much of me and a few others,' Neville remarked, 'but he was quite taken with some of the students, those with powerful, rich parents, or who were particularly talented.'

'He enjoys his little circle of friends and the favours they do for him,' Harry agreed. 'I think he'll be a better teacher than Snape, though, and I can take a potions NEWT with him here.'

'What did you get in your OWLs?' Hermione inquired with scarcely restrained force.

'Os mostly,' Harry shrugged, 'got an E in potions and Herbology though, and only an A in Astronomy and a History of Magic.'

'She got straight Os,' Ron announced from behind his book, stealing her thunder spectacularly. 'Wouldn't shut up about it for weeks.'

Hermione shot Ron a scathing look, but was unable to keep the smile off her face at outdoing him. Harry didn't particularly mind that she thought she was better at him at something like Astronomy or History of Magic, Hermione would be right, but he didn't want her getting too carried away.

'Dumbledore asked me to replace him in helping Professor Mcgonagall with her research,' he said calmly, 'so I must have done well at the Transfiguration.'

'You conjured and transfigured a giant raven,' Neville deadpanned.

'That raven was you!' Susan burst out angrily. 'It took the examiners half an hour to get my wand back from the blasted bird, I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick, or faint, or both.'

'They could have just vanished it,' Harry shrugged, unrepentant. 'Dumbledore said the examiner s were to blame for not being able to bring themselves to get rid of my raven when they were supposed to.'

'You sabotaged half of the students in our year,' Hermione summarised succinctly.

'Not intentionally,' Harry rolled his eyes. She didn't look convinced.

'Have you seen Katie?' Harry asked, changing the subject.

Hannah and Susan exchanged a glance, but shook their heads, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione just shrugged and Harry knew Neville wouldn't have seen her since he had been with him from the start of the journey.

Paranoia stabbed at him.

'I'm sure she's fine,' Neville assured him.

'She's probably chattering about quidditch somewhere,' Ginny added optimistically.

'We'll find her at the feast,' Neville promised.

The train ground to a slow halt next to Hogsmeade's platform, and Harry took advantage of his ability to apparate, vanishing with a soft snap when everyone else was looking the other way to appear on the far side of the platform by the Thestral led carriages.

The two nearest skeletal, winged horses snorted, and sniffed at his hands pulling the carriage closer to nuzzle at his right wrist with cold noses. Their wide, dark, staring eyes gazed up at him with soft approval that was ever so slightly unsettling as he waited for Katie.

A handful of students drifted past him, relieving him of his spectral company, and he spied, among a group of giggling, eager looking girls, Romilda Vane, whose school robes were only slightly less scandalous than her own.

Does she not know how to do buttons? Harry wondered, calmly averting his eyes to search for Katie.

'Waiting for someone, Harry,' Romilda inquired hopefully, batting her eyelashes.

'Yes,' Katie bounced over, looking particularly vindictive, 'me. Scram little girlies.'

Romilda scowled, looking Katie up and down disdainfully, but stalked away, her gang of girls in tow.

'Check everything you eat or drink,' she advised, watching Romilda's dark hair recede into the distance. 'In fact, check it, and then let me check it too. I doubt you know as much about love potions as I do.'

Harry raised an eyebrow, trying desperately to ignore the trickle of ice making its way down his spine at the thought of who Katie might have learnt about love potions for.

'Not like that,' she flushed, practically dragging him into the nearest carriage.

'Not waiting for Neville?' Harry asked.

'Do you want to find out how many more girls there are like Romilda?' She countered. 'She's not even the worst either,' Katie continued. 'Romilda, along with several others thinks you're attractive, and you're famous too; there are a handful of girls who read that article about our relationship and took a much keener interest in you.'

Harry turned slightly green. That article had implied some very interesting things about his sex life. He didn't want to be anything close to alone with any of those witches.

'Good idea,' he agreed, as the carriage began to move up towards the castle.

'I knew you'd see it my way,' Katie beamed, patting him cheerfully on the cheek with one warm hand.

'So how have you been?' Harry asked.

'Well enough,' she shrugged, moving her shoulder against his. He realised then that she was sitting very close to him on the same side of the carriage when there was plenty of space on other side. The sinking feeling returned in full force; it was starting to look like Fleur might have been right.

There are other explanations, he decided, putting it from his mind.

'I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to say much more than hello when we last came to Diagon Alley, but we were ambushed by Weasleys.'

'I saw,' Katie smirked. 'It was quite funny really.'

'I think Bill was probably waiting for his chance to catch Fleur alone for a while,' he grinned, 'thanks for setting me up to sabotage him so spectacularly.'

'Any time,' Katie smiled, but it seemed slightly strained.

The reached the doors to the Great Hall before either of them said another word.

'So what's this year?' Katie asked lightly, taking a seat beside him. 'Any death defying stunts you'd like to get out the way before I have to take my NEWTs?'

'Nothing I know of yet,' Harry smirked, 'but they tend to just spring up unplanned.'

The rest of the students filed in, and the sorting began with the customary song, but Harry wasn't really paying attention to the new students. His attention was fixed upon the more noticeable gaps along the tables. Ron's left hand side, normally reserved for Dean Thomas, was empty, and he was not the only muggleborn student to be missing. A scatter of them had vanished, though, to his slight disappointment, the Creeveys remained.

Perhaps they were among the more intelligent, Harry decided grudgingly.

Hogwarts had some of the strongest wards in Britain.

Across the hall on the Slytherin table the bright blonde heads of the Greengrass sisters were gone; their whole family fled to Scandinavia to avoid the coming war, and among the older students Harry glimpsed the harder, colder eyes of those who had seen the war in earnest.

Malfoy caught his roving gaze, his grey eyes glinted with tired malice, flicking to the empty seat next to him and back to Harry in clear message. Theodore Nott's absence had not gone unnoticed, and someone had deduced that he was responsible, likely Voldemort, who had seen him cast and control fiendfyre more than once.

'Did I tell you that I'm quidditch captain?' Katie gushed suddenly, interrupting his staring contest with Malfoy.

'No,' Harry grinned, 'congratulations, have you planned to buy a new broom yet?'

'I already have a professional grade one,' Katie responded innocently, 'it was a present from a friend.'

'I think it was lent to you by a friend,' Harry corrected.

'He never specified for how long I was able to keep it,' Katie beamed triumphantly.

'No I didn't,' he realised with an amused smile. Some of his cunning was starting to rub off on her it seemed, something that would not doubt horrify the younger students she had terrorised previously.

'It's mine then,' she decided.

'Until I ask for it back,' Harry reminded her.

'You decided not to play anymore,' she pouted.

'I was banned for life,' Harry corrected.

'Same thing,' Katie dismissed in a whisper as Dumbledore began his welcome speech.

'Not quite,' Harry laughed quietly.

Down the table Ron was staring impatiently at his plate, half-listening to Seamus, and Hermione, Harry frowned, catching her eye. Hermione was staring at him with the same expression she normally reserved for her arithmancy homework.

Whatever the headmaster had been saying was lost under the clatter of cutlery as the feast and the new year began, but Harry did notice, as the ancient professor returned to his seat, that Sirius had been entirely correct. Dumbledore's choice of oddly patterned, bright, wool gloves left a great deal to be desired.

Beside him, Katie's goblet clattered onto the table, rolling past the empty places next to her where Angelina and Alicia had almost always been, and over the edge to the floor.

So like last year, Harry mused, ignoring the sharp, blue eyes that were observing him from afar. So like last year, but not.

He summoned the goblet back to him wandlessly, catching it by the stem as it floated towards his outstretched hand. Blue eyes crinkled softly in the corner of Harry's own, twinkling at the obvious demonstration of his magical prowess, then turning to offer some remark to the dark clad figure of Snape. The Death Eater, spy or not, was staring down at his plate in disconsolation, though whether that was to do with Dumbledore's comment, or the pile of celeriac that the Headmaster had inflicted upon him was unclear.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to all those who have, and do! Since nobody mentioned the glove reference in any of the reviews for the last chapter I decided to make it blindingly obvious.

Update: Turns out most people noticed the gloves, but nobody mentioned it, so I've smoothed out the more blatant reference into something less jarring.

82. The Hand of Ianus

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 82 is up... This one is a touch shorter than normal too, though really it's just the same length as all of the chapters used to be back in beginning. My free time continues to be greater than usual, and you all know what this means!

Chapter 82

Somehow the open, casual air of the classroom for Defence Against the Dark Arts had transitioned into the same gloomy, sinister environment the dungeons had been. The long, black curtains, still bearing the stains and scars of a decade beside the cauldrons now hung across windows that had seen Harry's favourite lessons. If he did not know better then Harry might have been tempted to believe some of the rumours of vampirism that haunted Snape's footsteps. As it was, the only things over their exchanged Professor's shoulder was a dubious, dark personal history, and Harry himself.

The sullen silence that pervaded the air before their potions lessons had come too. The Slytherin students looked uninterested, and bored, Malfoy was staring hard at the surface of his desk, ignoring a chattering Pansy, Hermione was searching for Snape in all the shadowy corners of the room, and Ron seemed to have decided to use the time get further ahead.

'Something tells me this is no longer going to be my best subject,' Neville groaned quietly.

'Herbology is your best subject,' Harry reminded him, scouring the shadows himself.

'It's not quite as useful in a war,' Neville shrugged.

Something rippled in the air in front of the board, a faint, shimmering haze that Harry recognised all too well.

He uses the disillusionment charm just for a dramatic entrance, Harry chuckled softly. Mine's better.

'Mr Weasley,' Snape appeared next Ron's desk snapping his book shut with a flick of his wand. 'While I am glad that you have finally learnt to read I have not told you to open your books; I wish for you to listen before you learn.'

'Ah,' Neville whispered, 'speech time.'

Harry grinned, catching Snape's eye when the professor narrowed his eyes towards their suspicious spot at the back of the classroom. There was no subtle touch of legilimency against his thoughts, the Death Eater knew better, but he didn't need the magic to see Harry's amusement.

Oddly, he didn't comment.

'This subject has been under the care of no fewer than five teachers during your stint at this school. Each with their own methods, matters, and manner. With such… inconsistency, it is small wonder that so few of you have achieved the necessary level to study the Dark Arts for your NEWT.'

I'm fairly sure we took Defence Against the Dark Arts, Harry smirked, and Hermione, ever attentive at the front, also noted Snape's choice of wording, twitching uncomfortably.

'I will not lessen the infinite complexity of this subject with poorly referenced metaphor, or simile, nor,' his eyes dipped to Hermione, 'will I ask that you commit entire tomes to memory. Neither is a viable approach to defend against something that evolves so swiftly, fluidly and dangerously as the Dark Arts do.'

Snape paused, moving back around from the front row of desks to behind his own.

'If you want to survive them,' he continued smoothly, 'you must become every bit as elegant, as subtle, as deadly, and as tenacious as they are.'

He whirled, summoning, from the cupboard on the far right, a handful of dead spiders, and dropping a diseased, crumpled arachnid on the desk before each of them. Ron, Harry noted with some amusement, looked none too pleased, but his chair remained firmly where it was.

'When it comes to the Dark Arts, no number of books, or words alone will truly help you understand what it is to face them, and,' Snape's mouth crooked in a small, vicious smirk, 'I believe in a practical approach.'

He flicked his wand upwards in a sharp, jerking motion, muttering something beneath his breath, and the spiders spasmed back to life.

Hermione gasped in shock.

'Imagine that each of these spiders is a true, human inferius,' Snape drawled, as the class dissolved into chaos. 'Deal with them as best you can, but try to avoid being bitten. They're mildly venomous.'

'Reducto,' Neville said firmly, blasting his to pieces before Harry could warn him.

The spider's legs sprayed across the desk, but, after a moment, glowed an eerie yellow and crept jerkily back together, and began to advance towards Neville more rapidly.

Harry let his creep across the desk, then pinned it to the surface with the tip of his wand to study.

It writhed furiously under the piece of ebony, but couldn't escape Harry's attention, and eventually it curled into a small ball of legs to wait for its release.

Studying the magic that ran through the spider as if it were an enchantment Harry came to a handful of very interesting conclusions. Foremost among them was that Snape knew exactly how to create an inferius, and he knew it well enough to know how to modify the spell to make them less dangerous. The professor had stripped the spiders of the aggression that characterised the inferi, though he had left the magically enchanted strength, speed, and their limited ability to reassemble themselves.

Pansy Parkinson shrieked as her spider put itself back together unexpectedly in her lap, while small flickers of flame began to bathe most of the desks, crisping and blackening the animated arachnids until they fell still.

Most of the class were sporting several sore-looking red bites, and only a handful, Hermione, Ron, Malfoy, and Neville seemed to be unscathed. Pansy Parkinson was the worst off, her arms had been so badly ravaged by the animated insect that it looked like she had dipped her limbs into splotchy, red paint.

'Stop playing with it, Potter,' Snape drawled from the front. 'A true inferius will not stop just because you have touched it with your wand.'

Oh I beg to differ, professor, Harry grinned.

The spider crumbled silently into dust.

Snape, for once, looked both intrigued and impressed, not that he voiced either sentiment to the class.

'Were you facing an animated corpse, rather than a harmless insect,' Pansy sniffed loudly, and Snape gave the bite-covered girl a withering look, 'you would all, with a few exceptions like Mr Malfoy, likely be dead.'

The remains of the spiders vanished, and Ron relaxed ever so slightly over the unnecessarily dark scorch mark on his desk.

'The larger the creature animated the more magic is required,' Snape explained silkily. 'For something like a spider the increases in strength and speed are negligible, since so little magic is put into the spell, and for something like a dragon, the increases would also be negligible, since all the magic would be required just to animate it in the first place.'

Several members of the class paled at the suggestion of a dragon inferius.

'However a human corpse, or something of similar size, gives the best ratio of strength and speed gained with regards to the cost of the spell, which is why most inferi are humanoid. That, and the obvious psychological aspect of it.' Snape's eyes roved around the room. 'Mr Malfoy, perhaps you be so kind as to explain your tactics in defeating your opponent?'

'I used fire,' Malfoy scowled, clearly not happy at being singled out.

'Three words is not an explanation,' Snape reprimanded. 'What Mr Malfoy means, is that fire sufficiently destroys the physical body of the inferius to unravel the magic bound to it. There are other ways, but fire is amongst the most efficient.'

'Can we not just blast it to pieces?' Someone called out.

'I suspect, Smith, that any attempt made to cast that many powerful blasting curses before the inferius reaches you would fail spectacularly, and the corpse would tear you limb from limb, before its master added the remains of your foolish self to his collection inferi.' Smith recoiled, chastised and pale.

'Are there any other foolish questions?' The professor asked smoothly.

Nobody was brave enough to ask anything, not even Hermione.

'Good,' Snape snapped. 'Fortunately for all of you, there are very few wizards with the power to actually create and command more than a single inferius at a time, and you may rest assured that animating a magical creature like a dragon is all but impossible given its resistance to our spells.'

Harry's momentary regret at destroying the corpse of the basilisk faded alongside the tantalising image of unleashing the seventy foot serpent inferius upon an unsuspecting Snape.

'Are we likely to come across any inferi?' Ron asked, tapping his wand on the desk.

'The Dark Lord has been known to use them in the past,' Snape revealed, 'so it would be wise not to rule out their appearance in the future, and wiser still to expect and prepare for it. However, besides the Dark Lord few other wizards are capable of or inclined to create them.'

'I expect, on my desk at the start of our second lesson next week, fourteen inches on the characteristics of inferi and how to counter them. After that point we will move on to cover other dangerous creatures you are likely to encounter, recapping werewolves, giants and covering Lethifolds in more detail.'

Something tells me Dumbledore chose this curriculum carefully, Harry mused.

Not that he was objecting; it was the best decision the headmaster had made about the Defence Against the Dark Arts class in years. Though, given his track record of hiring Umbridge, Voldemort, Voldemort's followers, and the only teacher worse than Voldemort, Lockhart, Harry felt he hadn't been setting the bar very high to begin with.

'For those of you who were... unable to handle your spider,' Snape's upper lip curled in contempt, 'Madam Pomfrey will be able to get rid of the rashes in a few seconds. I suggest a brief trip to the hospital wing, else you will spend the rest of the in discomfort.'

Pansy, who was busy applying every cosmetic charm Harry had ever seen or heard of, and a good few he had not, to her face and arms, looked utterly relieved, almost as relieved as Malfoy, who had realised that meant he would not have to listen to her for a short while.

'Why are you all still here?' Snape drawled.

'Good question,' Neville muttered, packing up his stuff swiftly. 'I have a free period now, so I'll be in the common room listening to Parvati and Lavender gossip about Hermione's nightmares again. I'll see you after you've endured Advanced Arithmancy.'

Harry lingered when the rest of the class dispersed. He needed Snape's permission to take the subject early, and thought it best to get it now, before the Death Eater suffered a horrible accident of some sort.

'I don't remember asking to speak with you, Potter,' Snape remarked curiously.

'Professor Dumbledore had offered me the opportunity to take my NEWTs early, should I have written permission from the subject's professor,' Harry explained.

'And you expect me to grant this permission?' Snape's sneer crept back, no doubt provoked by what he assumed to be arrogance.

'I can demonstrate if you like, sir,' Harry grinned. He would be more than happy to demonstrate his capabilities with combative magic on Snape.

'Very well,' Snape mused, 'I will indulge your suggestion. I will cast a jinx at you, and you will block it, silently.'

Snape's wand was out of his robes before Harry could react, casting three, distinctly dangerous looking curses.

Fortunately Harry did not need to be more than touching his wand to cast the Shield Charm, and the trio of yellow spells fizzled out against brilliant, blinding, wall of silver light.

'That's enough, Harry,' Snape gritted. 'I do not want to have to have Madam Pomfrey fix my eyesight because of a simple shield charm.'

He would have pushed a little more magic into it at that, but he was so surprised at the use of his first name that the shield collapsed anyway.

'It seems that I was mistaken to warn you last year that the Dark Lord had taken your boasting seriously,' Snape continued when the light had faded, 'perhaps I would have done better to warn the Headmaster that you were taking him seriously.'

'Did you?' Harry asked, curious as to whether Dumbledore was aware who was responsible for the deaths of three Death Eaters.

'No,' Snape said curtly. 'You will find, Harry, that unless you yourself are the utmost extreme of opinion you must make do living in between others' ideas. Dumbledore would be devastated to learn that you had marred yourself by casting the Killing Curse. He suspects you are not so innocent as you appear, but he still clings to the hope that you are not irredeemable.'

'Nobody, no matter the nature of their crimes, seems irredeemable in his eyes,' Harry said, with soft, deliberate malice.

'So you know,' Snape said calmly. The Death Eater was many things, but he was not stupid, nor unobservant. 'He told you, I presume.'

'Dumbledore did,' Harry confirmed.

'I will not ask for your forgiveness, Harry, nor do I expect you to forget,' Snape's stoic countenance crumbled into something hollow for a fraction of a second, 'you're the only person who lost more than I did that night.'

You lost nothing you did not deserve to lose, Harry wanted to hiss, but he couldn't, not without raising suspicion.

Instead he kept his face blank. 'My NEWT exam, sir?'

'You have my permission,' Snape said slowly. 'I will write a brief note to the headmaster. Do you intend to attempt your other subjects early as well?'

'I do,' Harry admitted, wondering whether the professor would begrudge him his talent, or mistake it for conceit.

'Good,' Snape murmured softly, the corner of his mouth crooking ever so slightly into a genuine smile. 'Your mother was a dedicated, brilliant witch; one who would have been ashamed of the talent you have until recently been squandering.'

Harry said nothing. All the words that sprang to his tongue were inflammatory and furious, so he swallowed them bitterly, and hid his outrage that the friend who had condemned his mother to death could dare to speak of what she would be ashamed of.

'Professor McGonagall will not think twice about allowing you,' Snape voiced aloud, 'and neither will Professor Flitwick, but I don't think you will convince Professor Vector, and nor will you manage to sway Professor Slughorn as you are.'

Does he mean to help me? Harry wondered. Is this how intends to assuage his guilt?

'I'm a competent brewer,' Harry defended, more curious now than anything else.

'Competent certainly,' Snape agreed smoothly, 'but Professor Slughorn will only let you risk escaping his influence early if you are truly exceptional, or already indebted to him. He is a consummate Slytherin,' the smirk returned to his lips, 'much like yourself, though in a different vein.'

'I have no intention of being indebted to Professor Slughorn,' Harry warned.

'And nor should you,' Snape seemed to thoroughly approve of Harry's caution. 'No, my intention was to make you appear as a prodigious potioneer, one at a level few others have reached at your age.'

'More extra lessons,' Harry realised, tempted. It would give him far more access to Snape should he decide to finally dispense with the slippery, self-serving spy and take his revenge before Voldemort forced his follower to make a more direct contribution to his attempt to kill Katie.

'A few tips, here and there,' the professor corrected smoothly, looking down his hooked nose at Harry with uncharacteristically soft eyes.

'I would be a fool to pass them up,' Harry replied simply. No matter how much he loathed the man for all the damage he had done to his life he couldn't deny he was a gifted wizard, both at potions, and evidently with the so labelled Dark Arts.

'Yes, you would,' Snape agreed, silently summoning a glass goblet from within his office, and pouring himself a drink of very dark red, almost black wine. 'Blackberry,' he said, noting Harry's look, sipping gently. 'I enjoy a glass from time to time during the day; it eases the frustration of marking, and teaching, amongst other things.'

Other things being spying for both Dumbledore and Voldemort, the guilt from betraying your only friend to her death, and the regret at almost sacrificing students to theirs.

Harry did, however, make a note of the tidy row of glass goblets he could glimpse through the open door to Snape's office. They sat in sparkling line on the top shelf, over the assortment of jars and small chests that he had brought up from the dungeons, and a softly bubbling cauldron that was spewing thick, white mist across the surfaces and onto the floor.

'For now,' Snape continued, 'the basic principles of true brewing will serve you best. It requires innate talent to truly grasp any branch of magic, an intuitive understanding of how things work is simply essential. I teach you by providing an adequate process you may copy; it will produce a serviceable potion, but there are many ways in which it can be enhanced. To do so, however, requires you to step away from the crutch of my recipe and try things for yourself.'

'That's why I only ever got an E,' Harry realised.

'You perfectly followed instructions,' Snape nodded, 'just as Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy, and a handful of others have, but you never considered how you might improve upon the process. There are plenty of ways to increase the potency of a potion, extracting the ingredients more efficiently is the most basic, but often a couple of extra ingredients can prove invaluable should you know what you are doing.'

'And if you don't?' Harry was honest enough to concede that he had no innate grasp of the subject.

'A brief study of the properties of the most common ingredients will serve you well,' Snape advised. 'Professor Slughorn will not teach you as I have done, he prefers to provide processes that require a touch of intuition to perfect, rather than recipes for improvement, but the principle remains the same.' Snape finished his goblet of wine, setting the glass cup neatly down on his desk. 'Impress him enough and he will go out of his way to favour you, and in so doing, later favour himself.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry said politely.

'That spell you used to destroy the spider,' Snape began, his eyes suddenly calculating, 'what was it?'

'A creation of my own,' Harry revealed with a touch of pride. Fleur was rubbing off on him. 'It does not work upon living things, but an inferius is not alive.'

'You do not want to let a real inferius get so close,' the professor warned, but he seemed to approve of Harry designing his own spells. He did not voice the sentiment, but the same, slightly soft gleam entered his dark eyes.

'I have no intention to,' Harry agreed, he enjoyed his limbs as they were; attached to his body. 'There are many ways to completely destroy something.'

Fiendfyre would be his first choice, especially against many inferi, but his imbued butterflies might prove equally effective, and less dangerous to anyone else around him.

'You are late, Harry,' Snape reminded him silkily. 'Professor Vector is unlikely to let you take her subject early anyway, but you're not helping your case with her.'

Harry nodded, turning to leave while he mulled over what he had learnt from the two-faced wizard. If Snape was right, then Harry needed him to ensure he could take his crucial, fourth NEWT early.

He smiled wryly as he made his way along the corridors towards Arithmancy.

Perhaps helping me realise that was his intention all along.

A wizard like Snape did not survive very long by becoming useless to those who might prefer him dead, but Harry suspected, and hoped, that he was simply trying to assist Lily Evans' son now he recognised her in him.

Otherwise he already had an inkling of his fate, and would be that much harder to harm.

'Just on time, Harry,' Professor Vector announced, as he slipped quietly in. 'I was just starting to go over our material for the year.'

'Sorry, Professor Vector,' Harry apologised. 'I needed to speak with Professor Snape about my NEWTs.'

'Ah,' Vector nodded sympathetically. 'I've heard rumour of this. I'm afraid, Harry, that this winter is altogether too early for you to be taking a subject this complex, however, should you prove yourself capable, I might be open to letting you take it this summer instead.'

'Thank you, professor,' Harry replied, taking the seat next to Hermione; the only remaining one. She was staring at him in disbelief, likely horrified at the thought of anyone even trying to take their NEWTs so quickly and throwing away so much time that they could have spent learning just for the sake of it.

So I need Snape, he frowned, realising the wizard's assumptions had been correct.

The Death Eater turned spy's comeuppance would have to wait, it seemed, at least until Harry had a way of buttering up Slughorn on his own. It was irritating. Harry had been hoping to remove the potentially troublesome link between Voldemort and Dumbledore, the two sides to the vice within which he found himself, and take his vengeance quickly. Preferably before Snape could tell either side anything about him he didn't want them to know, but it looked like he would have to be patient, and either trust to hope, or earn the spy's confidence in their little tip sessions.

The fact that he had not yet been called to speak with Professor Dumbledore was both relieving and alarming. Snape had said that the old wizard believed Harry capable of redemption, which presumably meant Dumbledore thought there was a way to lead him back onto the path to sacrifice, but without speaking to the headmaster, and hearing it for himself, Harry couldn't be sure what it was, and he very much disliked not knowing part of Dumbledore's plan. He had survived the man until now because he was capable of appearing close to what the wizard expected, and hoped, to see. Harry couldn't do that anymore until he met with him again, and he knew that the headmaster would be watching his every visible action in the meantime.

At the front of the class Professor Vector was sketching four dimensional matrices, and equations to help them visualise, and study the shape and structure of magic upon an imagined plane of reality in the air in bright, green fire. The shimmering, viridescent numbers, and ellipses were almost hypnotic, and it was hard to look past and see more than their shape and colour.

I prefer purple, he noted absentmindedly, then blinked, and frowned.

He needed to focus for this. It wasn't even close to easy, and most of the class looked like they were already beginning to regret their choice. Hermione, on the other hand, looked positively riveted, and had already covered two sheets of parchment in neat, close scripted notes.

He sighed, and began to write himself, missing the times when he'd managed to get so far ahead alone that he had not needed to pay attention during classes.

This is Fleur's area of expertise, not mine, he decided.

Wards and enchanting were the area Advanced Arithmancy was most applicable, though Harry would touch on it when undergoing rituals, and there was no possibility of him ever managing to outstrip his partner in her own field.

The subject was interesting, Harry would give it that much, but it was huge step up from the OWL level work they had been doing, and difficult within only a few minutes of starting the year. Judging from the faces of a few around him, including Terry Boot, this was a subject that might lose a few students over the coming week or so before schedules were finalised.

Quietly grateful that his request to take this subject early had been denied, and resigning himself to some long, exhaustingly complex homework in the near future he settled down to write, tuning out his thoughts to the scratching of quills.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to all those who do!

Oh, and a brief note to those who are curious; I have finally chosen one of the three endings I've been torn between since first coming up with the idea of this fic back in September. Since we've now completely passed the point at which it gives anything away, and there are those of you who think Katie might make a better partner, it might interest you to know that one of the endings did involve Fleur leaving Harry over the summer, and Katie picking up the pieces as the year begins, before things progressed on in a roughly similar manner for around the next ten chapters. Obviously that hasn't happened over the summer, so no spoilers!

83. That's so Raven!

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I am also, for those who recognise it, a victim of the vanishing reviews. Which is annoying because I had just posted a chapter, and now there are a hundred and fifty reviews I can't read until it's sorted out again.

Update: I can now read all the reviews, so I'll finally post this chapter without fearing the responses to it will be lost in the ether.

For those who feel Snape is a touch OOC; in canon he is perfectly capable of respecting Riddle, and I imagine he was not overly fond of Lily's killer, so it seemed in keeping to extend the same principle to my evolved Harry.

Alternate endings have been considered, but, to realistically create the character changes required for all but two of the alternates, I would have to rewrite about 150 000 words of this fic... several times. So unless I find myself feeling unhappy with how this ends (unlikely, but possible) it won't happen. Sorry, everyone.

And, for the record, who says veela can't conjure fire hot enough to melt steel? Their abilities are barely touched upon in canon.

Anyway, here's number 83!

Chapter 83

Red and gold, bright and bold; the inside of Gryffindor was so far removed from the cool, soft blue and ivory he was used to, and fond of. The first thing he had done was to ward his bed, the hangings, and the battered, all but empty trunk by his own four poster next to the window. They wouldn't be stopping anyone truly determined to get in, but they'd certainly slow them down long enough for Harry to get to the wand that was back beneath his pillow.

He had grown so used to sleeping somewhere safe over the summer, to relaxing his guard, that every time he awoke here to find himself alone, he instinctively snatched his wand from his pillow.

The slender piece of ebony swelled warm against his palm, and his heart rate slowed back to its usual, slow throb.

Neville's steady breathing was not audible, nor were Ron's snores reverberating around their dorm. Things were oddly quiet.

It must be late.

Harry pulled the hangings back, dressing swiftly; it was breakfast time already. Normally he would hear Neville rising, or, failing that, Ron's loud, slow preparation for the day could not help but wake him.

He holstered the wand he was still holding, gathering this things for the day, and pressing one hand against the faint warmth of the locket around his neck as he left the dorm. It was a poor supplement for Fleur.

The common room was empty, everyone was at breakfast already, so Harry hurried out through the portrait.

His late entrance drew a few eyes, and as he drifted along the length of Gryffindor's table, he noted both Romilda and Katie clear space for him next to them. Frowning gently he took a seat next to the latter.

'What's wrong?' She asked, offering him the plate of bacon.

'Nothing,' Harry replied, blinking, and wiping the frown from his face. 'How was your first day back?'

'Boring,' Katie groused. 'Apparently being quidditch captain means I have to organise everything myself.'

'That was a surprise to you?'

'Yes,' Katie grumbled, helping herself to everything Harry had left on the plate. 'McGonagall wouldn't let me delegate responsibility.'

'Really?'

'She said that referring to my teammates and subordinates as minions wasn't how a captain should act,' Katie told, pouting ever so slightly.

'She has a point,' Harry grinned, frown forgotten. 'You're not supposed to let them hear you refer to them as minions, that's poor Dark Mistressing.'

'I cry your pardon, your Supreme Darkness,' Katie smiled.

'Where's Neville?' Harry asked, not seeing his friend amongst the row of faces. Hermione was missing too, which was unusual, she rarely missed mealtimes.

'Room of Requirement,' Katie answered absently, 'he and Hannah have been bribing the house elves to bring them breakfast up there.'

'He's growing so sneaky,' Harry sighed wistfully, 'I remember when he was a shy, stuttering chubby thing.'

'He still is sometimes,' Katie grinned wickedly, 'you just have to say the right sort of things when Hannah's nearby.'

'Like what?' Harry asked, smirking. Teasing Neville was one of the few things that brightened up their more boring classes, though, ideally, he would no longer have to endure any.

'A few questions,' Katie's grin grew suggestive. 'Ones like, how far have you gone? Is she shy? Does Hannah like it if you pull on her pigtails?'

'You're a cruel girl,' Harry decided gleefully, imaging Neville's distress.

'You taught me well,' she beamed. 'I convinced Luna to ask him the last one in front of Professor Sprout.'

Harry nearly choked on his mouthful of bacon and eggs, coughing helplessly, eyes streaming, until Katie offered him her drink, and patted him on the back none too gently.

'You ok?' She giggled.

'Wait until I'm not swallowing next time,' he chuckled, finishing the rest of her drink in one swift steal. It wasn't pumpkin juice.

Katie snatched the goblet back, scowling at her empty cup. 'I had to bribe a house elf myself to get that,' she growled. 'Next time I'll poison it.'

It won't work, Harry thought, amused, though I might drink it just to watch the look on your face.

'Don't you have a class to go to?' She sulked, but Harry could see her lips trembling as she tried not to smile at him.

'Charms,' Harry said, 'then Potions, and Transfiguration.'

'A full day,' Katie remarked.

'Very.'

'Think any of them will let you take the subject early?'

'Flitwick and McGonagall hopefully,' Harry smirked. 'I'll have my Transfiguration NEWT before you.'

'You can help me at the end of the year, then,' Katie decided, leaning over him to retrieve a rack of toast, apparently she hadn't noticed the one just a foot away from her on the other side.

'If I'm still here,' Harry agreed.

'Where else would you be?' Katie asked, smiling, but obviously worried that he might actually leave.

'France is nice,' Harry teased, 'I know a beautiful spot with a willow tree.' He rubbed his chin, noting his need to shave again soon, and turning serious. 'I could spend forever there,' he smiled softly.

'You'll have to show me,' Katie replied casually, concentrating very hard on her toast.

'Maybe one day,' Harry grinned. He couldn't go back there now, not until Voldemort was gone, and Dumbledore dealt with; he'd lead the danger right back to Fleur's family otherwise.

'You should head off to charms,' Katie remarked, slightly stiffly.

'Don't you have any classes of your own?' Harry raised an eyebrow, both in query and at her tone.

'Not this morning,' she sighed. 'I might as well organise the quidditch practices and plays; all my friends are younger than me, and have fewer free periods.'

'I'll have a lot more than you after today,' Harry grinned.

'You think Flitwick and McGonagall will just let you stop coming to classes?' Katie looked hopeful.

'Hopefully,' Harry shrugged, 'I'll probably not go anyway if I'm honest; there's no point me being there.'

The only lessons he was sure he was going to keep attending were Slughorn's, Vector's, and Snape's; the former to impress him, the latter to keep an eye on the two-faced spy, and he didn't want to see what would happen if he fell behind in Arithmancy.

'You can come and keep me company in the common room then,' Katie's face brightened.

'Or I could jump off the Astronomy Tower,' Harry mused playfully. She glared at him, and kneed him none too gently in the calf, but her leg lingered for a noticeable moment before she retracted it back beneath the bench.

'If you have to jump off something try and land on Romilda Vane and take her with you,' Katie suggested. 'That girl needs a wake up call, who'd choose a normal girl like her over someone like Fleur.'

'I'm sure she's a nice girl,' Harry wrinkled his brow, 'but she needs to learn how to do the buttons on her blouse up, and realise that she's grown up too much to keep wearing her second year uniform.'

Katie snorted. 'Like that's going to happen. If she puts on any more eyeliner, she'll look like she gets as little sleep as Hermione.'

'She can put on as much makeup as she likes,' he shrugged, 'but I'm not really into girls that cover themselves up like that. A little bit looks nice, but that much just seems excessive.'

'I didn't think you'd like it,' Katie agreed cheerfully. 'Poor Romilda is spending a futile fortune trying to get your attention like that.' She glanced around her at the clearing crowd. 'You should go,' Katie told him reluctantly.

She was right. The Great Hall was quickly emptying. Harry smiled his own goodbye to Katie, patting her on the cheek on the way out, and doing his best to ignore the way she tilted her face into his fingers.

Flitwick was hovering just inside the door to the class when Harry got there, but everyone else was seated. Katie had clearly kept him until the last possible moment.

'Harry,' he squeaked animatedly, waving a thin piece of parchment in the air as if it were his wand. Harry was not entirely sure the excitable professor was aware that it wasn't his wand. 'This is for you, if you can perform a quick example for the class.'

'Is it a permission slip, sir?' Harry asked politely. Several of the Ravenclaws narrowed their eyes contemptuously, clearly they disagreed with their Head of House's belief that Harry was capable of taking the NEWT early. Not that he really cared what they thought. Half of them had once believed he had been setting a basilisk on unsuspecting students.

'It is indeed, Harry,' the tiny teacher nodded, ushering him cheerfully to the front to stand by a crystal wine flask.

'It's a bit early for me,' Harry grinned, knowing full well what Flitwick really wanted him to.

'You can drink it after the example, Harry,' Flitwick responded glibly.

'No thanks, sir,' Harry chuckled. He had no desire to drink a litre of vinegar. 'Non-verbal?'

'Of course,' Flitwick bobbed his head, 'wouldn't be a perfect example otherwise.'

Harry drew his wand, smoothly flicking it into his palm, and tapping the flask gently on the side.

The deep, burgundy colour transitioned smoothly to a dark brown with a clear, crystalline chime. Ron looked impressed, Neville rolled his eyes and grinned from the back, and Hermione, on whose desk the flask was resting, peered intently at the liquid before pursing her lips and sniffing gently.

Someone is envious, Harry grinned.

'Still thirsty, Harry?' Flitwick asked cheerfully, proffering him the note.

'Not even a little bit, sir,' Harry disagreed lightly.

'That is a perfect example of how to turn wine to vinegar using a nice little non-verbal charm you'll all be learning towards the end of this year.' The professor stepped up onto one of the stacks of books beside his desk so he could see all the way to the back. 'You will note that Harry, unlike myself, does not bother with the proper wand motion. This is because Harry has power enough not to need the extra precision, and can afford to waste a little magic to save time. It is not something I expect you to be trying until next year, since it requires a very intimate understanding of what you're trying to accomplish, and a supreme level of focus.'

'So it's better to use the full wand motion?' Hermione asked.

'In principle, using the full wand motion and incantation is the most efficient and safe method for every spell, Miss Granger,' Flitwick explained. 'However, in practice it is generally preferable to save time by sparing the motion, and to conceal the nature of the spell by casting it silently. It is crucial when duelling,' the tiny professor added, hopping off his stack of books.

Hermione's eyes flicked to Harry, to the flask, and back again, glinting with an odd light, but she said nothing further.

'There's no point you wasting your time doodling at the back of my class, Harry,' Flitwick squeaked, 'go find Professor McGonagall, she wants to discuss a few things with you.'

'Thank you,' Harry grinned, sweeping out of the class to more than a few envious eyes.

He hadn't been up to McGonagall's office in a long time, not since he had last been in trouble, and he hadn't been caught in quite in some time. Harry smirked briefly at the realisation of just how long it had been since he'd been apprehended for something.

'Come in,' Professor McGonagall called out clearly when he gently knocked on the door.

'Professor Flitwick said you had some things you wanted to speak with me about?' Harry drifted slowly towards the centre of the room, pausing when McGonagall got up from the desk and, with a sweep of her wand, cleared all the desks and chairs from the room.

'I do,' the strict teacher nodded, 'Professor Flitwick and I have come to the conclusion that there is little point in keeping you in our classes if you already know the material, since you are here I assume you passed his test.'

'I did.'

'I have no such test for you,' the transfiguration teacher admitted, 'you have, to Madam Pomfrey's dismay, already demonstrated sufficient knowledge of our seventh year syllabus to satisfy me. Quite impressive for a fourth year, Mr Potter.'

'So I can take it early?'

'Indeed you may,' McGonagall agreed. A second flick of her wand sent a piece of parchment sailing across the room from her desk into his hand. 'I wished to discuss the project that the headmaster suggested I ask for your assistance with instead of his.'

'Dumbledore didn't go into a great deal of detail,' Harry said, shrugging, 'just mentioned I needed to be able to sustain a partial, human transfiguration for a while.

'A very basic description of your role,' McGonagall frowned. 'I will not burden you with two many details, Mr Potter, but the aim of my project is to try and study the point at which a partial, transfiguration of one's self into an animal becomes a full one. It is my goal to try and better determine, and maybe even affect, the mental effects of such a transfiguration.'

'I take it that would have wide-reaching implications?' Her tone certainly implied it.

'An animagus, Mr Potter, as you are well aware, is able, once they are fully capable of using their form, of retaining most of their faculties, even if they are influenced while within their animagus body. Ordinary human to animal transfiguration leaves the altered wizard or witch with no more intelligence or understanding than the animal they have become. A partial transfiguration can have either effect, depending on the part of the body altered. Should I be able to affect this then the result will be any gifted transfiguration user will be able to, in effect, have an infinite number of animagus forms.'

'You're an animagus, aren't you, professor?' Harry remembered the first lesson he had ever had with her.

'As you may well be by the end of this project,' McGonagall replied earnestly. 'We will delve far enough into the principles behind it that you may well be able to take great strides towards following in your father's footsteps.'

'It might be fun, I suppose,' Harry mused. He'd not spent a great deal of thought in considering becoming an animagus. It had its benefits, but they seemed few and far between given how much effort had to expended to become one. If, however, he had to do the work regardless, then it may well be worth it.

At the very least I may well be able to shock Fleur, he thought, a devious grin spreading across his lips.

McGonagall eyed him warily.

'We may as well get started, Mr Potter,' she decided, 'since you now have nothing to do.'

'If you like, professor,' Harry shrugged.

'You used to have to hold a mandrake leaf in your mouth for a month,' McGonagall noted almost wistfully, 'but simpler, more ingenious ways to influence the body to change have been devised since then. Your father and his friends stole all the leaves from the mandrakes in the tower, causing a whole class of first years to faint in their next class when they mistakenly emptied out the apparently empty beds without ear guards.' There was the faintest hint of wistful humour to her tone as she related the incident, though none of it showed on her face.

She handed him a small, green pill about the same size as his thumb nail.

'The transfiguration is easier, and more sustainable if you use the form most compatible with your own, so at the very least you will learn the creature you could become as an animagus.'

Harry picked the pill out of McGonagall's palm, holding it suspiciously between his thumb and forefinger.

'Eat it, Mr Potter,' the transfiguration teacher instructed, 'I have not poisoned it.'

The pill tasted very strongly like wood, but he swallowed it easily enough.

'What now?'

'That pill, Potter, has saved you two months of preparation for learning your form. As it is you should close your eyes, and let your innermost thoughts guide you.'

'Will it be the same as my Patronus?' Harry wondered aloud.

'Sometimes,' McGonagall answered, not realising the question was rhetorical. 'Most often it is not. A patronus embodies your emotions, your feelings, the animagus your instincts; it is your very essence altered into it's most fitting form.'

'Interesting.'

Harry closed his eyes.

Let it be an earwig, he hoped quietly, closing his eyes and relaxing.

There was a glimpse of a slim, black body. Slender scales, tapering away. Dark eyes, gleaming like gimlets. The dispassionate, distant curiosity of the hunter, its patience, its power. The cruel-edged, long, straight beak, curving talons, and the sleek feathers that concealed him in the shadows.

A raven.

It was not going to provide anywhere near as much entertainment as being an earwig, and wasn't amazingly useful, but at least it wasn't a snake. He had no use for the form of a limbless, earth-bound reptile.

The curiosity was catching, the sense of the raven slipping closer to himself, pervading and permeating his mind, twisting his thoughts into unreadable loops. Harry was distantly aware that he was changing, the world looming larger, and the ceiling rising away from him.

Old-cold-living-stone.

It rung under his talons as he tapped them against it, intrigued that what was not-alive felt so strange. He clacked his beak, hopping from the floor to the warmer, dead-wood-once-trees; it gave him a better view of the room. Dipping his beak into his feathers he eyed the surroundings, tilting and tipping his head to take in as much as he could as quickly as he could.

Two-legged-no-wings-no-feathers.

The creature seemed familiar, but it was old, and slow. He could see it in the lines of its pale skin, the talonless tips of its feet, and the greying of its hair.

Not prey. Not threat.

He clacked his beak at it curiously, hopping closer. It was the only creature present. The living stone drove the others away with its unusualness.

The creature moved with sudden speed, and the desk crumpled underneath him, pitching him onto the floor with an indignant squawk, until he found himself staring at his fingers on the stone, and the raven faded away.

'How curious?' Harry stood up slowly, inspecting himself to see if he was completely human again.

He was.

'I truly was the raven.'

'A raven.' McGonagall's expression was unreadable, her lips pursed in thought. 'And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming. And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor. Shall be lifted—nevermore!'

Harry did not recognise the quote she muttered under her breath, for McGonagall was quoting, her face and tone turned reflective and taut.

'I did not expect to be a raven,' he remarked.

'Nobody is ever how we write expect them to be,' the transfiguration teacher sighed. 'At least I know you have not been studying to become an animagus alone. Your father, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew were at least able to look after each other.'

There was no inflection to make him guess it, nor any wavering of her tone to suggest it, but he was suddenly sure that Dumbledore had not suggested him because of his power, his aptitude for the subject, or any desire to see Harry become an animagus. The headmaster wanted to see if he already was one.

Why?

Harry gently flicked his wand into his palm, and back into its holster several times while he considered it.

The wards. He wants to know if that was how I was leaving the castle unnoticed.

'How do you not become the raven?' Harry inquired, quietly admiring the devious scheme. Had McGonagall not been unaware of Dumbledore's intent and stated her own, identical concern so explicitly he might never have guessed its purpose.

'You do not,' McGonagall replied simply. 'The reason the animagus is able to distinguish their self from their animal form is because the animal form is similar enough to them. You will become the raven, and then raven will become you.'

'It sounds… complex.'

'It takes a great deal of self study, understanding, and thought to be able to see the similarities between yourself and the form, and even more to bring them together.'

Harry nodded gently. The raven might be useful, very occasionally, but it felt unlikely that it would justify so much time spent dedicated to it. If he could manipulate these project sessions into suiting that purpose he would, but he would not pursue it himself.

'So what will we be doing next time?'

'We are not done, Mr Potter,' McGonagall remonstrated sharply. 'Now we know which form suits you best I can devise the optimum partial alterations to use. In the meantime focus on transfiguring your hair into the feathers of the raven; just your hair, mind you.'

Harry flicked his wand back out, imagining the feathers he had felt over himself, losing himself in the strange, stilted memories of the raven.

'Just the feathers,' McGonagall said sternly.

Harry frowned, relaxing and clearing his mind of all the thoughts of feathers and the raven. He rose another two inches, regaining his usual height, and the dark feather tips covering his arms retracted back into fine hairs.

Just the feathers, he reminded himself.

He silently wondered if it might be useful to ask Fleur about this, given she was capable of growing feathers herself.

This time he was able to keep himself detached from the raven when reviewing its memories, and the tiny, slight feathers spread across his skin, cascading down his neck, and rising from his head in a soft, sleek, ebony crown.

'How do you feel?' McGonagall asked, inspecting him curiously. An avid, genuine interest was present in her pursed lips, and for the first time in his life Harry caught a glimpse of a younger McGonagall, experimenting with transfiguration herself.

'Like Harry,' he answered simply.

'No raven?'

'None.'

'Try changing all your skin now,' she suggested, then wrinkled her brow. 'No,' she shook her head, changing her mind. 'Spend some time studying the anatomy of the raven, we'll continue on when you have a firmer grasp of what you're transfiguring yourself into. It will be a more reliable study if you're not just relying on your innate instincts from when you were the raven.'

'I should go?' Harry raised an eyebrow.

'Yes,' McGonagall agreed. 'It is nearly time for your next class. Do you have any questions before you leave?'

'Not that can't wait until next time,' he decided. 'I can understand why my father, Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew named their animagus forms now.'

'It is not quite the same as being yourself,' McGonagall noted, 'though I felt no need to name my own form. The further you progress to becoming a true animagus the less separate you will feel from your other form.'

'I will not name mine,' Harry concluded. 'It might actually detract from the process.'

'Yes,' his head of house looked faintly approving, 'I daresay it might.'

'Thank you for letting me assist you, professor,' Harry said politely, sincerely grateful for the venture. It had proven quite interesting.

And I know that Dumbledore is not aware of how I can enter and leave the castle without triggering the wards, Harry realised grinning, setting off in the direction of Slughorn's class, and the hopefully less dreary dungeon. He couldn't imagine the portly wizard teaching in the same room Snape had.

He was right.

The dungeon was filled with steam, smoke and the scents of both potions and food. Slughorn himself sat on the front of his desk, his belly protruding out into the class beneath a box of what looked like either crystallised lemon, or pineapple.

'Welcome, welcome,' he chuckled, chins wobbling, beckoning Harry, and the gathering group behind him into the classroom. 'Take a seat.'

The desk Snape had set in neat, rigid rows were gone, and the sets of tables were scattered casually across the room. The uncomfortable stools replaced by padded, velvet backed chairs.

The Slytherins, including a dour-faced Malfoy, took the table upon which a small cauldron of polyjuice bubbled thickly, and the Ravenclaws another, huddling around the perfectly clear veritaserum, which left Harry to be joined by Hermione, Ernie Macmillan, and Ron, whom Harry would have been surprised to see here if not for his sudden maturation.

The cauldron in front of them shimmered iridescent, giving off soft, white mist in subtle spirals.

'Well now,' Slughorn began jovially. 'Who can identify these potions?'

Hermione's hand was instantly airborne.

'Yes, Miss Granger,' Slughorn's eyes passed over the others who had raised their hands, Ernie, and Terry Boot, uninterested. He was evidently aware of Hermione's talent, and potential.

'Polyjuice, veritaserum, and amortentia,' Hermione gestured to each cauldron in turn while Slughorn beamed approvingly.

'Quite right, Hermione,' he nodded cheerfully, 'you don't mind if I call you by your first name, do you? You can call me Horace at my little gatherings.'

'Of course not, sir.' Hermione seemed quite excited by the prospect of being on first name terms with a professor.

Harry leant forward curiously to inhale the mist while everyone's attention was elsewhere. A flood of pleasant aromas washed over him, the subtle, sweet smell of burnt holly, a faint hint of almonds and sugar, he caught a hint of old, musty paint, the sharp tang of eldritch ozone, a whiff of broom polish, coffee, and gentlest, almost indiscernible scent of cold, crisp ice.

'Ah,' Slughorn's eyes fixed on Harry, who swiftly leant back, 'Harry knows a thing or two about amortentia it seems. Care to tell us what you smelt?' The class stared at him curiously, and Su Li, the only female Ravenclaw, was watching him like a hawk. He realised immediately that anything that smelt remotely like any girl was going to be school wide gossip by the end of the day.

'Broom polish, and marzipan,' Harry admitted casually. Everyone knew he had liked quidditch; it was hardly a great revelation, and nobody who didn't already understand would be able to place the marzipan.

Su Li looked crestfallen, and dropped her like the others, but both Ron and Hermione were still staring at him. He met their eyes, glimpsing, with the aid of a touch of legilimency, Hermione's disbelief that he smelt anything, and Ron's memory of walking into Katie after quidditch practice.

Hermione flinched away from his gaze so violently that she jolted the cauldron, soaking her book in amortentia, and flaring very red at her apparent clumsiness.

'What about that one?' Malfoy asked, pointing imperiously at the small cauldron on the desk beside the professors paunch.

'Felix Felicis,' Hermione gasped, craning her neck, ruined book forgotten. 'That's liquid luck; it's really valuable, and almost impossible to brew.'

And very useful too, Harry imagined.

'To liven things up on our first day together I've decided we shall have a little competition.' Slughorn bobbed up and down on the edge of the desk, making it creak ominously. 'Whomever brews the best version of the Draught of the Living Death shall find themselves the owner of this,' he held up a tiny, bottle of the golden liquid, 'twelve hours of the best fortune they will ever have.'

'Have you ever taken it, sir?' Terry Boot asked. Harry hurriedly, but discreetly, flicked through the pages of his textbook to the Draught of the Living Death while everyone else looked on, making a careful note of the ingredients.

'Twice,' Slughorn's face took on almost wistful aspect. 'Two of the most perfect days you could ever wish for, but, since it is banned from being used in any competition or exam, you can only take it on an ordinary day.' He pushed himself off the desk, which rose at least an inch. 'Better get started,' he beamed, 'there's not long left.'

Harry was gone from his desk immediately, selecting the best looking ingredients from the cupboard while the rest of the class opened their books. He was joined by Hermione, Malfoy, and Su Li a few moments later, the former looking desperately along the shelves for a legible copy of the text book.

Bad luck, Harry grinned, seeing his toughest competition already at a disadvantage.

Having assembled his ingredients in a tidy, distinct pile next to his cauldron he was about to leap into action, his silver knife already in hand, when he remembered Snape's advice, and paused to think for a moment.

Considering what he knew of the Draught of Death, and the basics he had read up on since Snape had suggested it, it might be better to slice his roots lengthways rather than horizontally, and to remove the outer layer first.

Using the edge of the knife he quickly stripped off the hardened outer skin, and with a few deft cuts sliced his roots along their length. Hermione was watching him disdainfully, almost jumping to force her weight down on the knife he was pressing against the desk.

She's crushing the beans, Harry realised, grateful for Hermione's habit of preparing everything she could at the beginning while her cauldron boiled.

He mimicked her, smiling cheerfully at her furious scowl when his potion turned a perfect, blackcurrant, then faded to a smooth lilac. In the moments he had while it simmered down before stirring, he considered what the book had told him about arithmancy in potions, and, knowing that Hermione's was likely to be just as good as his when it was finished, he gambled.

Every seventh stir he added in an extra one in the opposite direction, watching gleefully as the potion's colour turned an almost perfect pale pink, fading a little more with each set of seven stirs.

'I think that's time,' Slughorn announced, tucking away a splendid looking, silver pocket watch.

He shuffled slowly around the cauldrons, nodding and tutting as he went, until he came to Hermione's, whereupon he stopped and bounced gently on the balls of his feet.

'Oh,' he cried softly, 'oh vey well done, Hermione, very well done indeed. This is almost perfect. We may have a winner!'

Malfoy sneered furiously, clearly unimpressed that he had been outdone by a muggleborn again. Harry really thought he should be used to it by now.

Slughorn caught Harry's eye, and his gaze flicked down to the cauldron swirling gently beneath. 'Oho,' he swept round the table more swiftly than Harry thought him capable of, 'but what's this?'

He glanced between the two practically identical potions for a moment, then he nodded, a shadow passing though his eyes.

'It seems you've inherited your mother's talent for potions, Harry,' he cried, pressing the golden bottle firmly into Harry's hand and shaking it gently. 'Well done, quite remarkably well done, even if Hermione gave you a run for your money.'

'Thank you, professor,' Harry grinned, slipping the bottle into his robes. Hermione looked both furious and worried. Her defeat in a fourth class to him must have shaken her faith in herself, though Harry had to concede he could not have picked his potion from hers had they been placed next to each other.

'Don't go using it for something silly,' Slughorn warned, the faintest waver in his tone.

'I wouldn't,' Harry shook his head. 'I'm going to have to get you a gift now,' he added thoughtfully.

'Oh there's no need for that,' Slughorn beamed, concerns forgotten. 'It's your prize! You're too humble, Harry.'

Hermione snorted, disgusted, and turned away to start packing up her things. He felt a little bad for her really, because he was starting to suspect that Slughorn might be trying to stay on the good side of the student who so reminded him of his former favourite.

Not that I'm complaining, Harry smirked. Life is unfair.

He would stow the liquid luck safely in the Chamber of Secrets where nobody could access it save him, and save it for the prefect moment.

'Off you go,' Slughorn waved, absently ushering Malfoy towards the door while the blonde was in mid sentence about his famous grandfather. 'I have heard, Harry, from the grapevine, that you intend to take your NEWTs early?'

'I do,' Harry replied earnestly. 'It will leave me time to pursue other things.'

'Severus implied as much,' Slughorn's chins bobbed down onto the brass buttons of his waistcoat, 'I'll evaluate your progress before deciding myself. Can't have you leaping too early and wasting all that talent.'

'You probably know best, professor,' Harry agreed.

'I have spent a lot of time teaching,' he gestured to the photos that were just visible lining the walls of his office. 'If there's anything you want to know, or are just curious about, come and ask,' he offered happily. 'I'd be happy to direct you to the right place; I do my best to do it for all of my students.'

'That's very generous of you, professor,' Harry said evenly.

'Nonsense,' Slughorn shuffled back around to his desk, 'it's what any good teacher should do. If I can help someone on their way to a glittering career somewhere then I should.'

'As long as they remember your help,' Harry frowned innocently, 'it's not fair that your important assistance should be forgotten.'

'I do get a lot of birthday presents,' the portly potions teacher admitted fondly. 'Pineapple, Harry? It's my favourite.'

'Thank you,' Harry selected a small piece. It was very sweet, and tasted only faintly like the fruit, but it wasn't unpleasant. Fleur would probably like it. He finished tidying his potion away, while he enjoyed it, dipping his head in goodbye to his new professor when he left. Slughorn smiled jovially back at him, then vanished the contents of the cauldron on his desk.

That seems a bit of a waste, Harry frowned.

Slughorn did not seem the type to waste anything that might still be useful, so he presumed that the potion had already served its purpose in being awarded to him. If that was so then it was an expensive bribe for his good will, and a neat way of earning Harry's favour without allowing him to escape the potions teachers influence early.

All the teachers seem more cunning this year, Harry noted, caught between elation at the challenge, and irritation at the new obstacles.

He would have to be far more careful, especially now he was almost certain that Dumbledore, Snape, Slughorn and McGonagall were all concerned about him for one reason or another.

The sooner my NEWTs are done and I am out from under their authority the better, he decided.

AN: Please read and review (I will see them eventually!), thanks to everyone who does!

84. The White Bumblebee

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 84, new chapter!

Chapter 84

Snape's second brief session had proved even more useful than the first, and Harry had begun to almost admire the wizard's self preservation instinct, cunning, and intelligence. He still could barely be in the same room with him, though, and for all his admiration of Snape's skills, the more he realised the capabilities of the man, the more he knew that he could only trust him as far as his goals aligned with Snape's.

The end of Voldemort was the only aim they shared.

Severus Snape, Harry had swiftly realised, was an apathetic, cruel shell of a man, dedicated to achieving his vengeance, and prepared to do or give anything he had to for it to happen. The only thing Snape seemed to loathe more than Voldemort, was the fact that he had to depend on, and follow others to get revenge upon his master.

The lingering affection for his mother had driven him further into the Dark Arts than any of his misled former school friends, but Snape seemed to take little satisfaction from them anymore.

'You're still here,' the former potions teacher drawled, returning from his office with a glass of blackberry wine in hand. 'I expected you to go to the headmaster immediately.'

'I am,' Harry replied mildly, tucking Dumbledore's note into his pocket. 'I was curious about the Dark Mark.'

That was close to the truth; it was at least half of it. Harry actually wanted to get a better glimpse at Snape's office, to check whether any of it was warded should he ever have reason to enter illicitly, but he was curious about the Mark too, and whether Snape was prepared to show him, and share one of his secrets with Harry.

'I presume you want to know how it works?' Snape remarked without a hint of emotion, baring his left forearm.

'I do,' Harry leant close, grasping Snape's forearm with his right hand. The sallow-faced teacher flinched slightly, and the Dark Mark squirmed between Harry's fingertips. The snake writhed through the skull, tongue flickering, scales rippling, and fangs agape.

'How curious,' Harry wondered aloud, rolling Snape's arm onto his wrist to check the outer of his forearm. It was blank, but the professor hissed quietly, and snatched his arm back from Harry's grip. He stared at Harry angrily for a moment, assessing whether or not he was to blame, then seemed to think better of it, and frowned deeply.

For a long moment he was silent, then there was a flash of fury unlike anything he had ever seen from Snape. It was just an instant of ire, a momentary burst of fire that, for Snape, signified unbridled wrath, and Harry had to wonder what had just occurred to him.

'It allows the Dark Lord to summon us, acting like a portkey, but it also symbolises an oath of fealty to him, a magical promise,' the professor said calmly, putting his goblet on his desk.

'Oh?' Harry eyed the tattoo once more, but Snape pulled his sleeve back down once he noticed.

'I studied it in great detail,' Snape's lips crooked, 'and it has its flaws. As long as I still serve him, then I have not broken it, even if I serve another, or myself, as well.'

'What happens if you break it?' Harry asked.

'It was made by the Dark Lord, Harry,' Snape drawled, 'he is not known for mercy, nor compassion, what do you think happens?'

'Death, then,' Harry deduced simply. He would have done the same. A well worded magical contract that bound his followers to serve him, and their own interests so long as the two did not conflict, and a harsh punishment for those that were not able to remain loyal.

'Death,' Snape nodded, sipping his wine gently. 'I have to carefully avoid any commands that might clash with Dumbledore's goals.'

'And yours,' Harry added with a small smile. 'What happens if you are given an order?'

'I must carry it out,' Snape admitted, staring into the goblet as if it held a glimpse of the future, 'no matter the command.'

So that's what happened with Katie, Harry realised. He has no choice, if he wants to live, and to keep serving Dumbledore to get his revenge then he has to do whatever Voldemort commands.

'I have a little leeway,' Snape continued, 'I can interpret his orders in a certain way, but sometimes things are simply black and white, or yes or no.'

'Perhaps you should forget to learn the addresses of the students,' Harry suggested, with more than a touch of ice. Snape's eyes jerked up from his goblet. 'I imagine that there are those who are less understanding of your situation, particularly if someone they cared about was hurt, or killed, because you gave the location for Voldemort to attack.'

'If I said I was sorry, it would not change anything.' The hollow look was back in Snape's dark eyes.

'No,' Harry's smile curved a little cruel, 'no I don't suppose it would.'

'Number fourteen, South Street, Diagon Alley,' Snape muttered, underestimating Harry's hearing. His stomach clenched, steaks of ice bursting across his chest. That was Katie's address.

'That would be a good address to forget,' he commented quietly.

Snape looked up warily, his eyes darting to Harry's right wrist and wand holster, before he relaxed and replied. 'The Dark Lord already knows it,' he said smoothly, 'it would be best if Katherine Bell does not return there. He is insistent that she be taken from you, though I am unsure as to why she is so important.'

'Voldemort feels that I have taken more from him, than he has from me,' Harry smirked. 'It is understandable, there is little that he can take from me, and much that I can tear from him.'

'He is the Dark Lord,' Snape's sneer returned slightly, 'you lack the power or intellect to threaten him.'

As long as he, and his followers believe that then I am better off, Harry dismissed, not correcting Snape in case he passed any of their conversations back to either master.

'We have already lost then,' Harry shrugged.

'Dumbledore is certain there is a way to defeat him.' The confidence in Snape's voice seemed rehearsed. 'For all his naive belief in selfless sacrifice the headmaster is a powerful wizard, one that the Dark Lord is foolish to underestimate.'

'I would be surprised if he did,' Harry mused. 'Voldemort must have a plan for his former professor.' Snape held his gaze, eyes and surface thoughts open and earnest. From that Harry gathered that there was such a plan, that Snape knew it, and that he had decided not to share it with him. Snape's mind was never so easily read, normally he reacted to all but the faintest touch of Harry's thoughts, and such a slight connection gave Harry no more incite than looking at the professor's face.

He frowned slightly, if Snape was going to share everything he had to with Dumbledore and Voldemort that left him at a severe disadvantage.

'I should go see the headmaster,' Harry decided, turning away from Snape, and leaving him with his wine.

'I suspect he has many important things to tell you,' Snape agreed smoothly as he left.

Does he? Harry mused. Does he now?

Dumbledore had almost certainly been horcrux hunting over the summer, and Harry had to wonder if he'd been successful. There was, by his reckoning, only one left now that he'd destroyed the diary, the diadem and torn the fragment of soul from within himself. If Dumbledore had found and destroyed one, something he was certainly capable of, then Voldemort was already mortal.

The next time his Killing Curse reflects off a baby will be his last.

Harry grinned, glimpsing a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the first time. He had not realised just how close he was to outlasting his crucible.

A quiet shuffle in the corridor behind him interrupted his thoughts, and Harry, his instincts now well honed, whirled, wand in hand, and tongue taut with incantations.

It was Hermione. Pale-faced, and with dark shadows under her eyes.

'What are you doing out of Gryffindor Tower at this time?' Harry asked curiously, replacing his wand to Hermione's obvious relief.

'I could ask you the same thing,' Hermione retorted. 'I'm a prefect,' she tapped the shiny badge, 'and on my rounds, you are not.'

'And I would tell you that I have talking with Professor Snape, who told me that I should go and see Professor Dumbledore immediately.'

'I was following Malfoy,' Hermione admitted, knowing that Harry knew she was a long way from her normal patrol. 'Ron reckons he's seen him clutching his arm a couple of times, so when I saw him slinking about in the evening I decided to keep an eye on him. I caught sight of you afterwards.'

'And you decided to follow me?'

'I was about to ask you what you were doing out of the tower,' Hermione corrected, 'but you caught me by surprise before I could.'

'Any idea what Malfoy was doing?' Harry asked. There was a good chance that Voldemort would prefer more than one set of eyes and ears within Hogwarts, and the handful of seventh years that Harry suspected owned robes and masks would not be around for long enough to remain useful.

'He was skulking around the potions labs, and Professor Slughorn's office,' Hermione bit her lip. 'I think he was looking for the rest of the felix felicis.'

'There are a lot of poisonous things down there,' Harry noted absently. Malfoy, it seemed, was likely just being his normal, opportunistic self.

'He'd probably end up poisoning himself,' Hermione smiled, and for a brief instant the dark bruises beneath her eyes seemed to lighten. 'I can't be too careful though,' she continued, half to herself, 'what if he really is a Death Eater, and intending to poison someone.'

'He's our age,' Harry shrugged. 'If he serves Voldemort it's likely he's meant to be passing information on Dumbledore. Worrying about having to hurt him because he's secretly an assassin for Voldemort is paranoid.'

'It's only paranoia if I'm wrong,' Hermione responded sharply. She sounded oddly like Mad-Eye Moody, and Harry could not help picturing her among a room of curious, dark-detecting objects as she strained to escape her foes.

'Hope it's paranoia then,' Harry suggested evenly.

'I do,' something desperate flickered across her face, 'I do.'

'Right, I should be going, before I'm late to see Professor Dumbledore.' Harry was more than happy to leave following Malfoy to Hermione.

'Will you listen to him?'

It was such an odd, unexpected question that Harry did not know how to reply, so he pretended he didn't hear it, and continued on his way towards the gargoyle.

'Sherbet Lemon,' he said absently in the direction of the gargoyle. Dumbledore had not specified that the password had changed, so he assumed that it had not.

The gargoyle stepped aside to reveal the small, spiral stairs, and Harry, after taking a deep breath, clearing his thoughts, and preparing himself for what would not doubt be a subtle interrogation, made his way up.

'Come in, Harry,' the headmaster called as he reached the door.

'Professor Dumbledore,' Harry dipped his head, crossing the room to stand opposite the old wizard next to Fawkes, who trilled softly at him.

'Take a seat,' Dumbledore conjured a comfortable looking armchair behind him, 'we have much to discuss.'

Harry sank back into the chair, gazing casually up at the headmaster who was peering down at him over steepled fingers.

'How was your summer, Harry?' There was nothing to indicate any anger in the wizard's voice.

'Liberating.' Harry's lips twitched as he fought to keep the smirk from his face.

'We were most concerned about you, Harry,' Dumbledore remonstrated, and this time there was a hint of disappointment to his tone. It was the same edge of dismay that he had turned on Harry two years back.

'I kept my promise, sir,' Harry responded innocently. 'I spent the summer where I was safest.'

'Your aunt and uncle, while not the most pleasant, or polite of people were of your blood, and the wards there kept you far safer than anything else you might find.'

'Even the Fidelius?' Harry wasn't sure how long he would be able to maintain his facade of innocence.

'You can cast it?' Dumbledore's eyes twinkled with something that might have even been pride, though Harry suspected it was more likely to be a less noble emotion.

'No,' Harry admitted.

'Miss Delacour, then,' the headmaster deduced. Harry nodded curtly, not trusting himself to say anything about Fleur without his feelings slipping through. 'I can understand your actions, Harry,' the headmaster sighed, 'but I fear you have not fully thought through the consequences of them.'

'I disagree, sir,' Harry remarked evenly.

'Allow me to elucidate.' The headmaster placed his palms felt upon the desk, and Harry momentarily studied the flowing patterns of unicorns and dragons that flitted over his fingers. 'Your aunt and uncle, while no doubt happier without you, or any memory of magic,' the twinkle faded from Dumbledore's eyes, 'were safe only as long Tom never targeted them. I suspect he will not, since you are neither very fond of them, nor will they know anything useful, but it is hard to be certain.'

'I do not think he even knows they exist, sir,' Harry commented, 'else he would have surely tried to get to me during the summer, while I was unable to use magic, and far less well protected than when I am within these walls.'

'Perhaps,' the old wizard conceded, running a gloved hand through his beard, and look vaguely contemplative. 'Your decision to vanish, however, was ill-advised, even if spending the summer in the company of Miss Delacour must have seemed irresistible.'

'She is a lot more attractive than Dudley,' Harry agreed.

'True as that may be, Harry, there are few protections that Tom cannot penetrate, for, despite his many failings, he remains a brilliant wizard.'

'He cannot penetrate what he can't find,' Harry countered, 'and, should he have found us, we would be gone long before he passed through our wards.'

'There was more than the Fidelius Charm?' Dumbledore leant forward slightly.

'Of course,' Harry's surprise was earnest, 'I know better than most that the Fidelius is not foolproof. The Fianto Duri, and wards to stop anyone apparating, or portkeying, within the confines of our home.'

'Miss Delacour is supremely talented,' the headmaster smiled almost approvingly, 'it is not often that we are able to find someone so well matched to ourselves.'

And doesn't she know it, Harry thought fondly.

'Voldemort could not have found us without finding our secret keeper, nor could he have penetrated our wards without alerting us in time for us to escape, we were quite safe.'

'It is your choice of secret keeper that concerned me, Harry,' Dumbledore nodded. 'Sirius may be your godfather, but he can be quiet rash. I would prefer it, since you seem set on staying there, that you allowed me to keep your secret. I let your parents choose Sirius, and then secretly Peter Pettigrew, but I have no wish to see the past repeat itself if I can avoid it.'

Unless it involves another person sacrificing their life to destroy Voldemort, Harry disagreed.

'Sirius almost never leaves the headquarters of the Order, which are also under the Fidelius, making him almost the ideal secret keeper,' Harry commented.

'He is not your secret keeper, is he?' Dumbledore surmised swiftly, and Harry quietly cursed the perceptiveness of the wizard.

'No,' Harry smiled, 'he is not.'

'Am I able to persuade you that I will make a more cautious choice of secret keeper?' The Headmaster asked tiredly.

'I'm afraid not, sir,' Harry replied. 'You are a target for Voldemort, and his followers, should you die, my protections will unravel, whereas the current secret keeper will never even have to witness the war; their existence and reaction to me is not even known.'

'I shall have to hope that you are right, Harry,' Dumbledore decided. 'I daresay I will find you equally adamant on remaining in the company of the charming Miss Delacour, so I will keep my concerns about her safety at your side to myself.'

'Wise of you,' Harry agreed. He quietly suspected that the headmaster was simply waiting for a better moment to have that discussion; it would not be possible for his martyr to have any selfish reason to live.

'Alas, wisdom is one of the few benefits of age,' Dumbledore sighed, removing the left glove to reveal a slender band of gold set with a dark stone. 'Yet it is one I have ignored all too frequently.' He removed the right glove, and Harry's study of the archaic ring immediately ceased.

Dumbledore's wand hand was shrivelled and blackened, the flesh had retreated back to the bone, leaving veins and tendons to rise and stand prominently under stretched, thin skin.

The withering curse, Harry realised. How is he alive?

'What happened, sir?'

'You are aware of the curse I have contracted, I believe,' the headmaster reprimanded softly.

'I apologise, sir,' Harry did not bother to defend his phoney innocence, 'I meant how did you contract it?'

'A moment of rashness on my part,' Dumbledore admitted, adjusting his glasses with his uninjured hand. 'Tell me, Harry, have you ever wondered how Tom survived the reflected Killing Curse on that night all those years ago?'

'The question had crossed my mind,' Harry replied.

So it is finally time, Harry mused. He has left it late to share this with me.

'Allow me to explain the mystery, then.' The Headmaster stroked Fawkes with his left hand, burying his fingers in the phoenix's splendid plumage. 'There is a branch of magic known as soul magic that either relies on the concept, or actually interacts with, the soul of a being.'

'The Killing Curse,' Harry voiced aloud.

'Yes, that is a product of this branch of magic.' Dumbledore's disgust at the spell did not go unnoticed by Harry. 'While relying on the concept has produced many fine, and useful pieces of magic, interacting with the soul directly has produced very few spells that should be remembered.'

'Sorry, sir,' Harry interrupted, 'but what exactly is a soul?'

'Ah,' the headmaster beamed, 'a very good question. The soul is not something we have ever been able to quantify. There are references, in the few surviving works of Egyptian wizards, who pioneered this branch of magic, to the soul resembling the character and deeds of the person, and that idea is visible in the mythology of non-magical Egyptians. Regardless of its appearance it seems that it is essential for true life. The Killing Curse tears it from the body of its victim, and the Dementor's kiss steals all but the faintest imprint of it, robbing their victim of the very traits their soul once reflected.'

'If the Killing Curse removes the soul,' Harry frowned, 'how did Voldemort survive?'

'The short answer is that he did not, not truly,' Dumbledore sighed. 'The magic of your mother's sacrifice was stronger than anything I have seen before or since; there was nothing left of Voldemort in that room, his body was utterly destroyed. His spirit, however, endured. I believe that to truly die, one's whole soul must cross the threshold into death, and Voldemort's did not.'

'Why?' Harry pressed, impatient for the wizard to get to the point and tell him about horcruxes.

'Because by the time he tried to kill you the majority of Voldemort's soul was no longer within his body,' the headmaster revealed. 'There is a particularly dark piece of magic capable of fragmenting a wizard or witch's soul, and then binding it to something. While that artefact survives the soul is in two places, and thus the wizard or witch cannot be truly slain.'

'So Voldemort has one of these objects,' Harry pretended to deduce.

'More than one, I believe,' Dumbledore slid open the drawer to his desk, and placed the battered, fang riven form of the diary upon its smooth surface. 'The memory of Tom Riddle you destroyed in your second year was likely far more than a memory.'

'You knew?' Harry asked, unable to help himself. 'You knew then what this was, and you didn't tell me?'

'You were twelve, Harry, would you have understood?'

'I certainly would have been old enough to understand before now,' Harry countered.

'It is dangerous knowledge,' Dumbledore warned, 'Professor Slughorn has returned to this school to escape Tom, whom he realises will not let him live knowing the secret of his immortality.'

'I suspect he will not let me live either,' Harry remarked bitterly.

'There are worse things than death, Harry,' the old wizard smiled, but, for all the genuine, earnest emotion in Dumbledore's bright, blue eyes, it was not enough to convince Harry.

What could be worse than becoming nothing forever, from being torn from everything you deem precious. You are wrong, Dumbledore, Harry decided. You are wrong.

'This diary is not the only such object, or horcrux, I have encountered,' the headmaster continued, placing a finger on the dark stone of the ring he wore. 'This ring was an heirloom of the Gaunt family, from whom Tom is descended, and that heritage is something he places great value on.'

'So it has a piece of his soul in it?' Harry asked. He rather doubted that it did anymore. Judging by the state of Dumbledore's hand the headmaster had already paid the price for destroying this horcrux.

'Not anymore,' Dumbledore replied, confirming Harry's suspicions.

'So he is mortal now,' Harry mused, knowing that the blackened shell of the third, and likely final horcrux was resting at the bottom of the pool in the Chamber of Secrets.

'I suspect Tom may have made more,' Dumbledore disagreed, 'he had quite an interest in Arithmancy, and I would be very surprised if he had not made a very specific number of horcruxes.' The old wizard patted Fawkes once more, then slipped his gloves back on to conceal his withered hand. 'I think that is enough on this particular topic for now, Harry,' the headmaster decided. 'If you wish, and I would certainly encourage it, you may join me to learn more about Tom. I have collected a series of memories from those who have encountered him, and I hope to use them to locate and destroy his horcruxes, but, I may have need of your assistance.'

'Do you really think a few memories will provide the locations?' Harry asked sceptically.

'I have spent thirteen years searching for these specific memories, Harry,' Dumbledore admitted gently, 'they are not passing recollections, but ones of great relevance and import. For all his brilliance Tom never truly shed the impulses and desires of the ambitious, dangerous boy I met almost half a century ago. His hubris will not allow him to use objects he deems unworthy, and he will place them in locations that hold meaning with him.'

Just as I would, Harry realised.

He could only think of a handful of places that he might feel comfortable entrusting a piece of his soul too. The Chamber of Secrets, Fleur, the willow tree beside the river in France, the Room of Requirement, and possibly even Aragog's hollow.

'I would be happy to assist you,' Harry decided. No doubt Dumbledore wanted to use the time with him for things other than hunting horcruxes, but it was a risk Harry had to take. He couldn't allow any of the horcruxes to survive before he and the Dark Lord inevitably clashed.

'Thank you, Harry,' the headmaster responded kindly. 'Now, I have heard from Professor McGonagall that you make a handsome raven?'

'Only briefly, sir' Harry admitted. 'I managed to transfigure myself into a raven, as the most fitting form, but it was no animagus transformation. I was the raven, but the raven was not me.'

'An interesting way of putting it,' Dumbledore said softly. 'It takes a great deal of thought and effort to truly have the raven become you, as you so eloquently put it.'

'You are not an animagus, are you, sir?' Harry asked, remembering a previous discussion on the subject.

'No, though Aberforth, my brother, insists that I will be a particularly feminine sphinx. It has to do with my penchant for speaking in riddles, I believe.'

Harry chuckled quietly at the image of Dumbledore transforming into a sphinx, then, remembering the sphinx in the maze, fell quiet, suddenly suspicious of its presence. 'Is it possible to take the form of a magical creature?'

'No,' Dumbledore shook his head slightly. 'While there are animals that may suit our characters, most magical creatures posses qualities that humans do not, and thus are never similar enough to be an animagus' form.'

Harry relaxed slightly. At least the sphinx would not turn out to be Voldemort or Dumbledore in disguise.

'I must admit, Harry, that I do know the form best suited to me.' Dumbledore smiled fondly, and Fawkes trilled with amusement. 'You must promise to never tell my brother, but were I to ever attempt to become an animagus I would become a most handsome bumblebee.'

Harry blinked, taken aback. He knew that the old wizard was telling the truth, because Dumbledore was all but projecting the memories and thoughts at him through legilimency. It was quite a large bee, with stripes of yellow so bright it seemed almost white.

'A very handsome bee, sir,' Harry agreed, wondering if the insect form was in any way related to Dumbledore's fondness for sugary things. 'And I promise not to tell your brother either, professor.'

'Thank you, Harry,' Dumbledore nodded benevolently. 'Aberforth would never let me hear the end of it. He likes to ensure that, despite my not so modest accomplishments, my feet remain firmly on the ground. I suppose that it is a good thing he continues to remind me of my mistakes, I daresay I might have made more had he not.'

The clock behind him chimed softly, and Dumbledore glanced over Harry's shoulder. 'Ah,' he realised, 'it had grown later than I thought. You should be off to bed, Harry, if not for your sake, then for mine. You will find, when you are as old as I am, that you will need a great deal of sleep.'

Harry's smile at the old wizard's statement vanished the moment he remembered that Dumbledore did not intend for him to reach anything like old age.

'Good evening, sir,' he responded politely, concealing the icy rage that had flared up at the memory. White bumblebee or not, Dumbledore's hands were hardly clean.

His right hand certainly isn't.

He chuckled to himself briefly on the way back down the stairs. The headmaster had not yet attempted to try and separate him from Fleur, nor had he decided to try and undo Harry's decision to leave the Dursley's, and, most importantly, while Dumbledore still did not know how Harry was leaving the castle, he seemed determined to trust him with much more than Harry had anticipated.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to all those who do!

85. The Depths of Betrayal

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Chapter 85 is written! There's been a brief burst of productivity that may even continue over the next couple of days, working and degree allowing.

I am curious as to how powerful you now consider Harry to be, relative to others. I consider duels as too complex scenarios to be determined by power alone, so I've skirted around explicit power comparisons and kept it vague, but I'm considering throwing in a handful of new spells. I do not, however, want anyone to seem unreasonably powerful, so if it's not necessary, I won't.

Chapter 85

The drawing in the textbook was almost comical. If the colours had been reversed it might have been a child under a tattered sheet, but Harry had seen what lay under the cape of a Dementor. Its ruin of a face, the gaping, unnatural maw, and rotting body were a far cry from the wide-eyed, innocent eyes of a child on Halloween. If anything, he was glad of the cloaks that concealed them, comical or not.

A glance around the class showed that most of the other students were staring at the pages with a mixture of boredom, and horror. Most of those who looked bored were students Harry recognised from Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, the ones who had not attended Neville's DA. Interestingly Malfoy seemed rather unconcerned by the idea of lethifolds, and the prospect of having most of his soul sucked out through his mouth. Something Harry thought odd, given it was a fate both his parents may well be facing should Voldemort fall.

Unable to resist his curiosity Harry surreptitiously pointed the tip of his wand at the back of Malfoy's head.

'Legilimens,' he murmured.

He caught the briefest sense of resignation, then Malfoy's thoughts abruptly cleared, and Harry, realising the blonde Slytherin must have learnt some occlumency from somewhere, swiftly broke the connection between them before he was caught.

Instead of looking around for the perpetrator Malfoy stared furiously over the top of his book at Snape, gripping the pages so hard his knuckles turned white. The professor spared him an unreadable look for a moment, but swiftly turned away in apparent disinterest.

Interesting, Harry mused.

Five years of favouritism seemed to have finally come to an end.

'I will assume, since you have been given ample time, that you have read the chapter on lethifolds, specifically Dementors,' Snape drawled softly. 'So I if I see any books still open I will be… displeased.'

There was a distinct snapping noise as almost every book in the classroom shut immediately.

'Mr Malfoy, Miss Granger, and Mr Potter,' Snape continued smoothly, 'do you three somehow think yourselves above my instruction?'

Hermione shut her book with a quiet, irritated sniff, and Malfoy's shut with a sullen thump, falling off the table onto the floor. Snape's lip curled slightly, but he made no comment.

Harry shot him a beatific smile, and left his open on the desk for a few moments longer, then, as Snape turned away, a muscle twitching in his jaw, he quietly closed the textbook. The sallow-faced spy should be more than aware that Harry was not to be trifled with. Ignoring him in class, and treating him like all the rest was understandable, and acceptable, but singling him out was unwise.

'Did Snape just pass up another opportunity to take points away from you?' Neville whispered.

'Snape's other occupation has made him quite aware of what I am capable of,' Harry reminded his friend pointedly. 'And I suspect Dumbledore may have instructed him to curb his enthusiasm towards my detention tally.'

'He knows?'

'He is a part of the Order of the Phoenix, a spy for Dumbledore amongst Voldemort's ranks.'

'That's brave of him,' Neville murmured.

'It's only bravery if you are risking something,' Harry disagreed. 'Snape risks only others.'

'Still,' Neville frowned. 'To face and lie to Voldemort every time, knowing that each time he is summoned might be his last.'

'He does not lie to Voldemort,' Harry revealed. 'Snape is more a servant of two masters than a spy. He does whatever he is ordered by either, and does his best to destroy Voldemort for his own reasons rather than the betterment of Britain.' He fell silent as Snape swept past the back of the class to destroy the small, paper Dementor that Pansy Parkinson had charmed to spew ink over Hermione's notes.

'That sounds much less brave,' Neville admitted.

'Bravery is the prerogative of the blind,' Snape said with surprising venom from a point about two feet over Neville's head. 'Being brave does not mean that you will win, Mr Longbottom. Of all the people in this class you should know that best.'

Neville's flashed into fists on the top of the desk, and Harry hurriedly put a hand on his shoulder to stop him doing something stupid.

'Granger,' Snape drawled, apathetic to the distress he'd caused Neville. 'You're likely to know the answers.' He sneered slightly. 'No doubt you've already devoured this textbook. How would you repel a Dementor?'

'The Patronus Charm,' Hermione replied, unfazed by Snape's remark. It was likely true, after all.

'I said how would you repel it, Granger,' Snape said curtly. 'Are you capable of casting the charm?'

'Yes,' Hermione beamed proudly. 'Harry taught some of us how to do it.'

'Did he now,' Snape murmured, fixing Harry with an irritated stare.

Ah, Harry realised. I've ruined your lesson plan, haven't I.

'Well then,' Snape decided, sweeping back to the front of the class. 'Perhaps we shall test Mr Potter's teaching prowess. Let's go around the class and see who can produce anything of a true patronus. Mr Malfoy,' Snape's gaze glittered hard, 'perhaps you would be so kind as to go first.'

'Potter managed it years ago,' Malfoy sneered, 'it can't be hard.'

He pushed himself out of his chair, standing tall and proud in front of the class while Pansy stared up at him adoringly.

'Expecto Patronum,' he said, his voice and face suddenly soft.

There was a rush of silver mist from his wand, swirling into a bright hippogriff that snorted, and champed haughtily at the ground. Harry raised an eyebrow and smirked at the form Malfoy's patronus took. He was rather surprised he could produce one.

'Very good, Mr Malfoy,' Snape congratulated him smoothly. 'What memory did you use?'

'That's none of your business, ' Malfoy said quietly, sitting down again. 'I said it wasn't hard,' he added, with feigned triumph.

'Continue down the rows,' Snape instructed. 'For those of you like Mr Malfoy, who has been trying since third year, I expect to see a similar result.'

Malfoy scowled furiously, but wasn't brave enough to risk a response.

A succession of small bursts of silver mist made their way across the desks towards the back where Neville and Harry sat, interspersed with the occasional creature from those he had taught in the Room of Requirement. A lean, lithe mountain lion, growled softly around Ron's waist before fading from the room, much to Hermione's obvious pride, and Harry was amused to note that almost all of his temporary students were capable of producing either a corporeal patronus, or something close to one.

'Miss Granger,' Snape prompted, when Hermione seemed not to notice it was her turn, 'since you were so confident.'

Hermione looked anything but confident now that everyone was watching which struck Harry as unsual, since he had seen the otter she had previously produced, and she rarely had an qualms about demonstrating something before the class.

'Expecto patronum,' she muttered eventually, but it was not an otter that burst from her wand.

A bright, four-winged moth hovered above her head, rubbing its legs against its head, fluttering slowly.

The class' eyes moved on to the next in line, but Harry's did not. He, unlike them, knew what the moth symbolised, and could only wonder why her patronus had so changed. He remembered that Salazar had once had a moth patronus, while he had searched so desperately for the Resurrection Stone, but before he had lost hope.

Interesting.

Suddenly Neville's scorpion was clicking beside him on the desk, and, glancing at Snape for the first time, he realised the real reason the professor had asked for this demonstration. Most of the students were simply unaware of the glimpse they were giving him of themselves, but to Snape, and to Harry, Neville's scorpion plainly demonstrated his temper, his belief in revenge, and his loyalty.

'Ah,' Snape drawled softly, 'now for the main event, Mr Potter?'

'I could hardly have taught them if I could not produce one myself, sir,' Harry dismissed. 'Everyone has already seen mine back in third year.'

'Then you won't mind demonstrating once more,' Snape pressed, black eyes gleaming at Harry's unexpected reluctance.

'You're the professor, sir,' Harry smiled, 'surely you should be the one demonstrating?'

The class held its breath.

'Expecto patronum,' Snape spat, goaded, and a brilliant, silver doe leapt from his wand to spring around the room.

It's significance was not lost on Harry.

How dare he?

The ice had never seemed so cold. He had thought Snape had deluded himself. Deep down he had not truly believed it possible that Snape had truly cared so deeply for his mother, but the evidence was still standing in the classroom, soft-eyed, silver, and silent.

His love for Lily Evans was every bit as strong as Harry's was for Fleur. His patronus was just as affected, taking a form that Harry knew without any doubt was representative of his mother.

And he betrayed her regardless.

The ice coiled and cracked within. Snape had destroyed something so pure, something so precious that it ought to be blasphemy. Harry could think of nothing more wrong than violating what he shared with Fleur.

'Expecto patronum,' he hissed, making no attempt to hide the fury in his tone. Hermione stared at him in disbelief, and Snape flinched like he'd been struck.

The towering anzu dispersed Neville's scorpion, placing one cruelly taloned foot straight through the insect and staring regally down at the other students. It screeched softly at the fading doe, spreading its wings in a flash of silver light that shattered every other surviving patronus in the room. Snape's doe burst apart, collapsing like a punctured cloud, and Hermione's moth exploded softly, scattering the silver mist in a small wave to the edges of the room where it dispersed softly.

'Anzu,' Hermione murmured in the silence that followed. 'They're an extinct eagle of Mesopotamia associated with fire, enthralment and destruction.'

'Thank you, Miss Granger,' Snape interrupted silkily. 'You do not have to recite the dictionary definition of everything you come across.'

The damage is already done, Harry decided angrily. As if they would ever have understood the truth of the form of my patronus.

Hermione barely noticed Snape's rebuke she was so busy still staring at the anzu, which had not taken its eyes off her since she had started speaking.

Harry banished it, and the anzu vanished with a soft, ominous screech.

'I think that will be all for today,' Snape said curtly. 'Mr Potter, it appears, has already taught this class. If you would be so kind as to stay behind, Mr Potter, so I can discover if there are any of my other classes that I no longer needed to teach.'

The others filed out of the class, most giving Harry a wide berth, especially before he returned his wand to his wrist holster.

'Have fun,' Neville murmured, before leaving Harry to return to the common room. It was their last lesson of the day, and he was no doubt quite looking forward to slumping in front of the fire in the common room and watching Katie cause trouble among the first and second years.

'You dislike the form of my patronus,' Snape observed coolly. If Harry was not mistaken the wizard seemed almost hurt.

'I do,' he agreed coldly. 'It shows the depths of your betrayal.'

Snape flinched again, the horrible, hollow look returning. 'Then you hate it almost as much as I both love and loathe it.'

'I trust you asked me to stay behind for something more than discussing your patronus?' Harry asked.

'I wanted to know if the rumours I've heard about you, and Beauxbatons' former Triwizard Champion are true, but there seems little point in asking now.'

'There would have been little point in asking before,' Harry commented, taking a subtle, deep breath to calm himself. Snape seemed to approve of that, because the corner of his mouth crooked, and he ushered Harry into his office.

'How is your attempt to sway Professor Slughorn going?' Snape asked curiously.

'He intends to assess my progress over the next few weeks I suspect, I have until about Christmas to convince him.' Harry was fairly confident he could persuade Slughorn by then. A scatter of gifts between the two of them, a handful of reminders of his mother, and of Riddle, and Slughorn would be happily supporting him for one reason or another. All he needed was to learn enough from Snape to sustain his progress.

And I have learnt quite a bit already, Harry mused.

He was likely capable of improving or tweaking the majority of the potions that they would be asked to brew, though his theory might fall down if he was asked to provide too much detail.

'I thought I might offer some advice in some aspects that most overlook,' Snape said. 'You have a silver-plated knife do you not?'

'Yes.'

'Yet your cauldron is only pewter.'

'Silver lined cauldrons are going to be expensive,' Harry remarked. Snape gave him flat stare that quite clearly belied his disbelief that Harry was going to buy one. 'I shall have to use my spare knife to line the inside,' he smirked.

'You'd be surprised at the difference something like that will make,' Snape nodded. 'The other thing you should do is to buy a silver spoon, and a flask of completely pure water to wash things with so that you do not contaminate your potions. Should you not have the resources to purchase one, I'm sure Professor Slughorn has plenty, and you need only ask.'

Harry made a mental note of that, wondering briefly if there were any other instruments he should get covered in a more inert metal.

Snape was watching his with the same, oddly soft gleam to his eyes.

'What?' Harry demanded, calling him on it for the first time.

'There are times when you look very much like your mother,' Snape said bluntly. 'Whenever you finally decide to use your brain you get the same glint in your eyes that she used to.'

A bright point of cold welled up over Harry's heart, and he was tempted, in that instant, to take his revenge regardless of the consequences, and make Snape finally pay for everything that he had caused to be stolen away from Harry no matter how useful he might be. The wizard seemed oblivious to the fact that such comparisons, made him, no less, were merely reminders of all the things he should have already known and seen for himself. Things Snape had taken from him with his betrayal of the woman he loved.

'What're you brewing?' He asked instead, to distract himself. The same small cauldron rested on Snape's desk, spewing thick, white mist across the desk and floor. It smelt heavily of mistletoe berries, and Salamander's blood, two things Harry recognised from his rituals.

'A potion to arrest the effects of the headmaster's most recent act of foolishness,' Snape revealed.

So that's how he has survived, Harry deduced.

In the brief moment of admiration for Snape's skill as a potion maker he realised then that the spy who served both his potential enemies, and had betrayed his mother and father to their deaths, was also the only thing between Dumbledore and a slow, creeping death.

His wand was halfway into his hand before he could stop himself.

'I should head back to the common room,' Harry decided, silently repeating all the uses that Snape might have to himself in his head.

'Have a good evening,' Snape offered smoothly, eyes glinting with amusement. Clearly he knew something that Harry didn't, or he found how close he had come to death funny.

'Thank you, sir,' Harry smiled politely.

He hurried back to the common room, keeping a weather eye out for anyone suspicious. Malfoy's sudden ability to utilise occlumency coinciding with his sneaking about was lending Hermione's paranoia some credence, enough to make Harry a little concerned about his role in Voldemort's plans.

'You're coming!' He heard Hermione almost yell, before the portrait was even fully open.

The Fat Lady winced. 'That one was much quieter last year,' she commented. 'Spent less time sneaking about the castle after hours too.'

'Don't blame me,' Harry raised his hands at her accusing stare. 'I'm not involved.'

'You're always involved,' the Fat Lady sniffed, 'Sirius Black was after you when I was so violently assaulted.'

'He was after Peter Pettigrew, actually,' Harry clarified cheerfully. 'Turned out to be a nice chap in the end.'

The Fat Lady eyed him as if he had gone mad, but swung aside so Harry could enter the common room and see the reason for the commotion within.

'I don't want to go your stupid party,' Ron was explaining wearily. 'I have no obligation to go when I could be better spending my time here studying.'

'You can't study all the time, Ron,' Hermione sighed exasperated.

'Hark,' Neville whispered, ' you are black, says the pot to the kettle.'

'What's so great about this party anyway?' Ron asked.

'Professor Slughorn is hosting a small gathering for students he thinks have the potential to go far, and I, having been invited, need a date.'

'A date,' Ron had suddenly gone very red, and Harry could hear Katie cackling from her spot beside the fire. 'Well why didn't you just say so?' He demanded. 'Ridiculous girl.'

'So you're coming?' Hermione inquired.

'Yes,' Ron sighed fondly, 'but you really need to work on how you ask guys to go with you to things. Even I was never that bad,' he grinned sheepishly.

Someone loudly coughed something that sounded a lot like Fleur Delacour, and Ron went red again, brightening further still when he caught sight of Harry who was openly grinning at the spectacle.

'Why are you laughing?' Neville asked loudly. 'You're going too, and you don't have a date either.'

'Merde,' Harry swore.

'I think I saw Romilda in the library,' Neville offered cheerfully.

'I will curse you,' Harry warned. He glanced around the room, noting the suspiciously disinterested looks of a lot of the girls. 'I suppose there is only one thing for it,' he decided loudly. 'Neville,' he grinned, 'would you accompany me to the party?'

Neville sputtered for a moment, then regained enough composure to respond. 'I don't think Hannah would approve,' he answered solemnly, 'but I will ask her.'

'Has anyone seen Neville's cactus?' Harry asked equally loudly. There was a brief outburst of sniggering, before Neville surrendered and fell silent.

'You still don't have a date,' a familiar voice pointed out.

Harry shot Neville a look that conveyed every ounce of betrayal and horror.

I thought you said she was in the library.

'Yes he does,' Katie piped up, silencing the common room completely. 'I will take pity on you, Harry,' she beamed.

'I'm sure Harry can make up his own mind.' Romilda wasn't backing down without a fight. A fair few of the boys were disappearing towards the dormitory to escape the scene before them. Neville made to sneak past, but Harry carefully cast a sticking charm on his chair before he could get up.

'You're responsible for this,' he murmured. 'You're going nowhere, and I'm going to encourage Katie to ask Luna to ask you all sorts of things now.'

Neville blanched, then grinned. 'You have to survive tonight first. If Katie doesn't get you, Fleur will.'

Something uncomfortable twisted in Harry's stomach at his friend's choice of words. They rang horribly true for reasons that had nothing to do with the party he was about to have to endure.

Something burst in brilliant red sparks against the fireplace, drawing both their eyes, then there was a slap as Katie divested Romilda of her wand, sending it skittering across the floor out of reach.

'Go to bed, Romilda,' Katie dismissed. 'Buy a uniform that fits, wash your face, and do the buttons up on your blouse for once. Harry likes his girls a little older than he is.' She turned and winked at him, and Harry plastered a smile across his face, hoping she meant Fleur.

Romilda took his smile at Katie as a sign of defeat, because she retrieved her wand, throwing a last smile at Harry as she provocatively bent down to pick it up, then hurriedly retreated upstairs when Katie growled.

'So,' Harry smirked. 'Have you asked Hannah yet, Nev? I need a date, and Katie's scared away your competition.'

Ron came back down, wearing smarter dress robes than he had managed for the Yule Ball, and looking visibly relieved to not find Romilda around.

'Take Katie,' Neville shrugged. 'She's not going to throw herself at you like Romilda, and she's not terrible company.'

'I suppose,' Harry sighed, with reluctance that was not entirely feigned. He was no longer quite as sure that Fleur was wrong, and no longer convinced that Katie was any less motivated than Romilda Vane, even if she was being subtle enough that Harry wasn't sure.

'I need to find a dress,' Katie panicked. 'I am not prepared for this.'

'Just transfigure something,' Harry suggested lazily, absently changing his robes into the same style as he had worn to the Yule Ball.

'No!' Katie looked scandalised at the very idea, and she swiftly vanished up the stairs to the girls' dormitories. Harry shared a slightly exasperated glance with both Neville, and Ron.

'Will Fleur mind?' Ron asked after a moment.

'I don't think so,' Harry smiled easily, and Neville chuckled, shaking his head.

I'm dead, he realised. There won't even be a body.

Hermione descended after a moment, looking far better now she had removed the shadows from under her eyes.

'Who's Harry going with?' She asked curiously, noting his attire.

'Katie,' Neville answered, trying to escape his chair. 'Harry,' he pleaded. 'come on, let me go.' Hermione looked a little concerned but Neville's answer, but quickly schooled her expression into something unreadable.

'That's good, when did you ask her?'

'He didn't,' Neville grinned. 'Katie was protecting him from Romilda Vane.'

'Oh.' Hermione sounded about as convinced as Harry felt.

'I'm ready,' Katie announced to the room, bouncing happily down the stairs, her hair scattered messily over a dark green, close fitting dress, to take Harry's arm in hers. The dress suited her fairly well.

'You just had that lying around, did you?' Hermione asked curiously.

'Yes,' Katie beamed, 'just in case.'

'We should go,' Harry suggested, before the conversation turned up anymore convenient coincides that would make this any more uncomfortable. He had a feeling that Katie owning a dress the such a similar colour to his eyes was not an accident.

I shouldn't have let Fleur tell me, he decided regretfully. It was easier when I didn't know about her suspicion. Now everything that might be a coincidence looks like something else.

Slughorn's party was a tasteful, small gathering, in his now almost unrecognisable classroom. There were only a handful of other couples present around a table so laden with aperitifs and expensive food that it looked like it might collapse.

'Aha,' Slughorn cried, 'Hermione, and you must be Ron, come in, help yourself to an aperitif the path is delightful, and I'm sure I saw something a little healthier for those not already lost down the path to temptation.'

'Thank you,' Hermione squirmed with something that might have been delight, 'Horace.'

'Harry!' Slughorn's exclamation was loud enough to startle everyone nearby. 'You came.'

'Of course, professor,' Harry smiled.

'I had such trouble tempting your mother here to these gatherings,' Slughorn sighed. 'In the end I had to convince several quite notable people to join us just to tempt her. She never liked the aperitifs much either,' he chuckled, noticing Harry avoiding the proffered platter.

'This is Katie Bell,' Harry introduced, before Katie started pouting.

'Charmed,' Slughorn dipped his head, his neck disappearing into his chins briefly. 'You're a lucky wizard, Harry.'

'Oh we're just friends,' Katie explained, slightly embarrassed, glancing at where she was still holding Harry's arm, though she did not release him.

'Well you're welcome in any case,' Slughorn beamed, 'have something eat, or a drink, there's some lovely elven wine around her somewhere that I picked up in Italy. That's a country that knows wine, even the elven stuff seems to be better there.'

Katie, it seemed, was quite eager to try both the food and the wine, because she quickly led Harry to the opposite side of the room from the potions professor.

'It's really nice, actually,' she decided, after half a glass of the wine Slughorn recommended. 'The food too.'

'Here,' she passed Harry a glass, filling it, and refilling her own, 'stop looking so worried.' Katie patted his cheek gently with the hand that wasn't cradling a glassful of alcohol. 'There's no need to worry, Harry.' She smiled, retracting her hand slowly. 'Fleur's comfortable enough to kiss you quite passionately in front of me, so she's not going to mind me accompanying you to something like this.'

Harry couldn't help but disagree, but he knew better than to stir up trouble by voicing his opinion.

'Professor Slughorn,' Filch called through the door, clutching a squirming Malfoy by the scruff of his neck. 'I found this one lurking nearby.'

'I was coming here,' Malfoy sighed loudly, 'and since I have been… assisted here, you can et go of me now.'

'A gatecrasher,' Slughorn chuckled jovially. 'There's always one! Come in, there's drinks and food aplenty.'

Harry gave Malfoy scrutinising look as he slunk towards the food, clearly none too happy. The Slytherin was still wearing his school robes, his hair was a far cry from its normal slick appearance, and there was a noticeable absence of Pansy.

He was sneaking, Harry surmised.

Hermione, who was also watching Malfoy, seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

'Something the matter, Potter?' Malfoy sneered.

'Unpleasant company,' Harry sighed, locating Katie a few metres away monopolising something that looked awfully like the quails' eggs his aunt had been so fond of serving up to guests as a snack.

'Sometimes it just can't be helped,' Malfoy agreed almost politely. He took a step forwards around Hermione. 'But times are changing, and soon we won't have to put up with muggleborns, blood traitors, or you. My father will have his repayment for your insult.'

'Never liked Lucius,' Harry remarked absently, his lips curving into a smirk, 'bit two-faced for my taste.'

Malfoy's hand flicked towards his waist, but he seemed to think better of it after a moment, no doubt remembering the last time Harry had cast a spell at him.

'You'll get yours, Potter,' he hissed. 'The Dark Lord will strip everything you hold dear from you, and only when your hope is spent will you be allowed to die.'

'Not if I strip everything away from him first.' Harry's smile turned cold, and Malfoy took a step back, bumping into Hermione who squeaked and stepped away.

'Theo will be avenged,' Malfoy threatened.

'If he is it won't be by you,' Harry dismissed, 'you're a little fish, Draco, neither mummy, nor daddy holds a candle to me anymore. They know it, you know it, I know it, and Voldemort does too.'

'My father is worth a hundred of you,' Malfoy retorted.

'Go back to the dungeons, Malfoy,' Harry told him carelessly, 'and put essence of murtlap on your forearm if it's hurting. You have nothing to say worth listening to.'

'We'll see about that, Potter,' Malfoy spat, but he turned on his heel, brushing past Hermione and stalking out abruptly, brushing the hand he had touched Hermione with furiously on his robes.

Katie reappeared a few moments after Malfoy left, glasses in hand. 'Why the sour face?' She giggled.

'I had a brief chat with Malfoy,' Harry answered with a grin. Katie was beaming happily, all smiles, and bright, brown eyes, with wine-reddened lips, and flushed cheeks. She looked more cheerful than he had seen her in a while.

'How boring,' Katie declared. 'Every other word he says is father, or mud-blood, he's not good conversation at all.'

'Sadly I seem to have no better alternatives,' Harry sighed playfully.

Katie growled at him, then smiled again, and finished her glass of wine.

How many of those has she had? Harry wondered.

'There aren't many people to talk to,' she said quietly. 'I don't really know anyone else here except you.'

'Shall I get Professor Slughorn to introduce you? I guarantee they'll all know me already,' he added dryly.

'No,' Katie shook her head firmly, 'I'm happy here.'

Several then.

She looped her arm closely through his, and Harry took the opportunity to remove her wine glass, before anymore of it ended up in her, or went on him. He knew what she was like with glasses.

'Such a gentleman,' she giggled. 'Making sure I don't do anything silly.'

'A lost battle,' Harry chuckled.

'I do a lot of silly things,' she agreed, suddenly sad. 'But not tonight,' she decided.

'That's good,' Harry replied warily.

'You're ok, aren't you?' Katie asked. 'You're happy?'

'Well it isn't the greatest party, but I'll live,' Harry grinned.

'I meant in general,' she pouted. 'Sometimes you look… less than cheerful,' she finished diplomatically.

'I'm fine,' Harry assured her. 'You, however, Katie dearest, are drunk, already.'

'Already?' Katie protested. 'We've been here a while.'

Harry glanced at the clock, and it was later than he thought. Late enough to leave and not offend his host. 'Perhaps we should head back?' he suggested.

'I might need assistance,' Katie admitted.

'Here,' Harry slipped an arm loosely around her waist, scrunching his face up in resignation when she smiled slightly and leant into him.

He excused himself from the party, bidding Slughorn and the others a fond farewell, and escorted Katie, who was still attached to his side, back towards Gryffindor Tower.

'You never answered my question?' She asked him, while they waited for the Fat Lady to wake up long enough to open.

'I did,' Harry replied absently, 'I said I was fine.'

'That doesn't mean anything,' Katie growled softly. 'I wouldn't be fine if I saw my girlfriend out with some other wizard, I'd be angry, and I wouldn't be fine if there was a Dark Lord after me either.'

Don't be doing what I think you're doing, Katie, Harry pleaded silently.

'You can always rely on me,' she promised, stumbling over the lip of the entrance to common room. Neville, Harry, noticed, was asleep nearby, still stuck to the chair where Harry had left him.

'I know,' Harry responded, helping her gently onto the sofa next to him.

Katie slumped beside and into him, and Harry, despite his best efforts, caught a glimpse of something familiarly dark and lacy beneath the front of her dress. Fortunately Katie did not notice him noticing, else he might have really found himself in trouble.

'So how come Alicia and Angelina are so unhappy with me?' Harry inquired. Katie had been reluctant to tell him, always skirting around the subject and brushing it off, but he knew better than most that she was less careful about her actions when she'd been drinking.

'Oh,' Katie smiled sadly. 'That's my fault. They think you're messing me around, because of the article, and fourth year... and stuff.' She yawned, and settled her head onto his shoulder. 'I'm sleepy now,' she murmured. 'Don't move.'

Merde, Harry swore, waiting patiently until her breathing evened out, hoping all the while that nobody came to the common room, and Neville remained asleep.

He swept her off the sofa when he was sure he was still asleep, carrying her, with her head still on his shoulder, towards the stairs to the girl's dormitory and disillusioning both of them at the bottom of the steps. He released Neville too, since his wand was out.

'Confundo,' he muttered, and quickly scaled the staircase. The sooner Katie was in her own bed, on her side, just in case, the better. He really needed to forget about what Katie had said about Angelina and Alicia's reasons for disliking him.

And stuff, he shook his head, hoping to shake the thought loose where it might be lost. Fleur could still be wrong, he decided, halfheartedly.

It seemed unlikely now, with the way Katie was acting, and certainly with the way he had to pry her fingers loose from his robes before tucking her into her bed, but he could hope all the same. Transfiguring the dress into one of the quidditch shirts he knew Katie normally slept in, pushing enough magic in so that it would last until the morning and save the dress from being ruined, he pulled the covers over her, and crept back down the stairs.

He wasn't tired, and so he took the chair closest to the fading fire, staring into the flames and absently practicing the wand motions of the spells he needed, both for his upcoming NEWTs, and the less reputable, more dangerous ones he had mastered for duelling.

Harry was still there when Hermione and Ron returned a little later, but he ignored their curious looks, and Hermione's guarded gaze, twirling his wand thoughtfully in his fingers until they left him alone to practise once more.

AN: Please read, review, and hopefully enjoy! Thanks to everyone who does review, I enjoy seeing what you think of each chapter.

P.S. Occasionally I get a review saying Harry and Fleur aren't particularly relatable, and, while I have deliberately written their characters in a slightly stilted, unique fashion, which inevitably makes it harder to empathise with them, I'm curious why, or if, it seems easier to relate to a completely selfless character (as appears in canon, and many other stories on the site), than quite a selfish one?

86. Ianus' Choice

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The next chapter!

I appreciate all your responses, diverse and interesting as they were, and I must admit I mostly agree with the general consensus, even if I find it almost impossible to write a completely selfless character without cringing horribly every other sentence. There are some wince-worthy moments in this fic too, but at least their jarring inconsistency in character is in keeping with the plot, so it's not too terrible. Maybe if get around to rewriting - which I almost certainly will given my inability to type sentences without missing out words - I'll throw in a little more depth here and there. I've been fairly light with Fleur in the interest of keeping things moving along at the right pace, but the odd sentence to embellish her character wouldn't go amiss.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter 86

'Excellent, Hermione,' Slughorn beamed, chins wobbling as he squeezed his belly past her cauldron and Ron's. 'Exemplary work! Everyone here could learn a thing or two from you,' he chuckled, 'well,' he caught sight of Harry's equally perfect potion, 'everyone except Harry, of course.'

'Thank you, sir,' Hermione smiled, though her eyes flickered irritatedly towards Harry's cauldron. She shut her book, stuffing the tattered tome swiftly into her bag, and then carefully labelled a flask for Slughorn to mark.

Harry set his own flask down next to hers.

'Nearly identical,' she sniffed, frowning.

'Joint top of the year,' Harry sighed, 'such a catastrophe.'

Hermione laughed, and shook her head. 'There are more important things than books and grades,' she echoed, so softly it was almost sad. 'I forgot that briefly,' her face hardened, 'but not anymore.'

'You won't mind me looking at your potions textbook then?' Harry asked innocently. He was fairly sure that her sudden increase in talent was down to the battered book she kept with her at all times.

'Get your own,' she dismissed. 'It's identical.'

'But mine's in my bag,' Harry continued evenly.

'So's mine,' Hermione countered.

'I'll steal it,' Harry told her bluntly. 'In the night I will come up to your dormitory and take it,' he grinned wickedly, 'along with every pair of panties in the tower, just to let my father's legacy continue.'

'Fine,' Hermione sighed. 'It has a few annotations, they're useful, but I don't know who wrote them.'

She extracted the book from her bag and opened it, still holding it out of Harry's sight. 'Since you already seem to know this stuff I can show you without giving any of my advantage away, but you have to promise not to tell anyone.'

'I promise,' Harry said quickly.

'See,' she opened the book, 'lots of annotations, nothing more.'

The book's margins were filled with cramped, slanted script that Harry recognised immediately.

She has the same assistance I do, he realised, amused.

'Mystery solved,' Harry grinned. 'I was curious.'

'Just curious?'

'You got better very quickly,' he shrugged. 'I hope you're not trusting everything you find in there without thinking it through?'

'It seems harmless so far,' Hermione defended, 'but of course I'm not. If it seemed like it wouldn't work I wouldn't do it, but they all work so far.'

'I imagine most of them will,' Harry remarked. 'It belonged to our former professor of this subject when he was younger.'

'Snape?' Hermione gasped.

'So take it with a pinch of salt,' Harry warned. 'He may be a member of the Order now, but he's always loved the Dark Arts.'

'I know,' Hermione scowled, emphasising the shadows under her eyes, 'he goes on about them as if he were in love. Parvati, who sleeps in the bed next to mine, has been having nightmares every now and again about her sister becoming an inferi, and strangling her.' She shuddered. 'I've not seen Parvati look so terrified.'

'He's not wrong though,' Harry mused. 'The things the Ministry classifies as dark are often powerful, it's better Parvati know how to destroy an inferius and lose a little sleep, than get ripped apart by one.'

Hermione's frown deepened. 'They are illegal for a reason,' she stated matter-of-factly, 'Snape makes them look attractive to students like Malfoy who have few morals, and too much ambition.'

'He's a lost cause already,' Harry said calmly, 'you saw how he was stealing around again while we were at Slughorn's party? I doubt he was intending to gatecrash when Filch found him.' He was quite curious to see if she had learnt, or seen, anything that might prove useful in discerning Malfoy's role in Voldemort's plans.

'I did,' Hermione tucked the book back away, 'he seems particularly hateful of you, now.'

I killed one of his friends, and stood alongside Sirius when he scarred his father.

Malfoy actually had a couple of genuine reasons to hate him now. Which made him all the more concerned about why he was lurking around the potion's labs at odd hours.

'He's always disliked me,' Harry dismissed. Hermione looked sceptical as she lugged her book-heavy bag out of the lab towards Charms, leaving Harry to drift slowly out in her wake. They rarely exchanged more than a few words, especially since they now only shared one lesson in which they could speak. Nobody wanted to risk Snape's temper, and Advanced Arithmancy required all of Harry's attention.

'Draco.' The whisper was so quiet Harry barely heard it, and if he had not become accustomed to listening closely for the slightly inflections that indicated emotion in Snape's tone he would never have noticed the hint of desperation within.

A sly glance behind him in the reflection of the window revealed Malfoy being half-dragged into a nearby empty classroom.

Well, Harry decided, this might be interesting.

It was fortunate that he had decided to keep his cloak on him at all times. While it was safer in the chamber, Harry felt more comfortable carrying it around with him; it was his tangible proof that the Resurrection Stone existed, and both a reminder of his goal, and a constant comfort.

Pulling it over his head, and casting an array of charms to conceal his footsteps sound and shape, he slipped through the door a moment before Snape pulled it shut.

'What do you think you're doing?' The professor hissed. 'You know the task that the Dark Lord has given you.'

'This is the only way I survive carrying it out,' Malfoy shot back. 'He murdered Theo, he's probably the one who maimed my father, and he'll curse me again without hesitation.'

'It was Sirius Black who charred your father's face,' Snape told him, disgusted, 'petty revenge will get you killed. The Dark Lord may not have commanded his followers to leave Potter be, but that is because he believes them incapable of killing him. He still wants to defeat Potter himself, he is simply confident that he is now the only one capable of it.'

'Potter isn't that powerful,' Malfoy sneered.

'Barty Crouch Junior,' Snape interjected bluntly, 'Peter Pettigrew, Bertha Jorkins, Bellatrix Lestrange, Avery, Yaxley, Macnair, Jugson, Nott, and Theodore too.'

He knows about almost all of them, Harry realised. And he is perfectly placed to tell Dumbledore and Riddle about anything I do in the future.

'I don't believe you,' Malfoy shook his head.

'The Dark Lord has attributed those losses to Potter himself,' Snape's lips curled, 'disagree with him at your own risk.'

'Then the Dark Lord is wrong!'

'Do you really think so?' Snape tutted. 'You're being foolish, both in not believing what is plain to see, and in drawing attention to yourself. Complete the task the Dark Lord has given you, and remain safe at Hogwarts for the rest of the war.'

'Like you care whether I am safe or not,' Malfoy retorted bitterly. 'I know about the oath you gave my mother. You just want me to be successful so you don't have to follow through on your Unbreakable Vow and risk your own skin for once.'

'Be quiet,' Snape hissed, 'you petulant, arrogant infant. You know nothing about what you speak, and clearly very little about what you're doing too.' His black eyes burned with rage. 'I am trying to keep you alive, and antagonising Potter is a very very stupid thing to do. In fact,' Snape's mouth crooked suddenly into a small smile, 'the only thing more dangerous is to antagonise the Dark Lord himself.'

'If he is so powerful and dangerous why doesn't the Dark Lord do something about him?' Malfoy asked, not fully convinced, but cowed by Snape's wrath.

'He does not believe that Potter will do anything to directly oppose him unless his hand is forced,' Snape explained slowly. 'He thinks that their conflicts so far have been coincidence, the work of Dumbledore, or retaliation for losses at the hand of the other. This is why your mission, and its timing, are so crucial. Once your target is dead, Potter will move directly against the Dark Lord, and drop the act he so convincingly wields. That act only exists for Dumbledore,' Snape warned, 'he is the only wizard Potter believes himself outmatched by on the side of the light.'

'Then he is as arrogant as always,' Malfoy smirked.

'Is he?' Snape frowned imperceptibly. 'You've fed him enough aconite to kill half the school, and he hasn't even noticed. Those Death Eaters he killed, they didn't die in their sleep, nor were they killed from behind. Your aunt was a formidable duellist, despite her madness, and the effects of fifteen years imprisonment in Azkaban, and she was pulled out of the fountain in front of the Ministry of Magic the same day Potter spent walking around school without a scratch on him.'

I am definitely checking my food from now on, Harry decided. If not for my ritual I would be dead, and who knows how many others around me have come close to dying.

Snape's judgement was also a little harsh on Bellatrix, she had inflicted plenty of scratches, Harry simply healed fast.

'Maybe he has noticed.' Malfoy swallowed hard.

'You would already be dead,' Snape disagreed. 'Potter does not play with his food like some our foolish allies, especially not those who endanger his friends. If he knows, and you still live, then you have only more reason to fear, because that means he is saving you for something.'

'You speak about him the same way you talk about Dumbledore, and the Dark Lord,' Malfoy noted quietly.

'Occasionally a wizard is born with the potential to be more than great,' Snape murmured silkily. 'You are a strong wizard, for your age, as am I, but the Dark Lord, Dumbledore and Potter are all a little bit beyond the rest of us. Potter is young, and already formidable. He is the weakest of the three, but also the most dangerous. Dumbledore and the Dark Lord have clear goals. Dumbledore is a champion of his Greater Good, a purer form of the philosophy Grindelwald once advocated, and the Dark Lord seeks dominion, obedience and recognition, because he believes himself the strongest, but Potter, Potter has no objectives. He is ruthless, cunning, powerful, and unpredictable. Stop baiting him, before you get us both killed.'

'It will just be me,' Malfoy laughed tiredly. 'My father's connections are cut, his wealth is useless now, and my mother is not a fighter. I am the only useful Malfoy remaining, and this is my family's punishment for failing the Dark Lord.'

'If you're cunning nobody will suspect you, and you will escape notice, remaining here safely when Potter leaves these walls to openly oppose the Dark Lord.'

'I am already being watched,' Malfoy admitted. 'The mudblood Granger is watching me as often as she is Potter.'

'Do not use that word,' Snape sneered. 'The Dark Lord despises muggles, not muggle-borns, power is power, and magic is magic, no matter the source.'

'Pure-bloods have more magic, and more power,' Malfoy dismissed. Clearly this was an argument they had had before, likely every year since he had come to Hogwarts.

'Go,' Snape ordered, pulling open the door, 'and stop drawing attention to your task.'

'Our task,' Malfoy corrected, smirking slightly. 'Don't forget your vow, professor.'

He left before Snape could respond, but Harry was there to witness the spy's hands curl into fists, and hear his teeth grind in anger before he too departed. Malfoy might have decided to stop poisoning him, potentially, since he had made no promises, but Snape was still magically bound to assist him should he fail.

Malfoy always fails, Harry noted thoughtfully. Snape will not.

Whomever their target was had to be either important, or already easy to eliminate for Snape to give such an oath, and the only person Harry could think of who fitted, given what he knew about Snape's potions, was Dumbledore. Nobody else was particularly important to Voldemort, since he had been excluded already, and Harry rather felt that it might be prudent to eliminate Malfoy's more competent assistance.

An Unbreakable vow could not be avoided for long, not with Malfoy consistently failing, and Harry had no need of Snape if keeping him alive helped Voldemort more than it did him.

When Snape is gone, so soon might Dumbledore be, Harry remembered, with a soft smirk.

That meant that killing Voldemort would be down to him, and him alone, Fleur would not be involved in that duel, not if he could help it, not that Dumbledore seemed to have any intention of engineering any other outcome.

His death will allow me to oppose Voldemort as I wish, Snape's skills will be a serious loss to Voldemort, and to Dumbledore if he survives the withering curse without Snape's potion.

Truthfully Harry was not sure if Dumbledore would be able to find another source for that potion, it seemed likely, given his reputation, but it hardly mattered. If he survived, the status quo that Harry was prospering in would continue, and if he died, then Harry had outlasted half his crucible, and the more knowledgeable, more popular half at that. Nobody in the Ministry questioned Dumbledore now Fudge had fallen from grace. Voldemort was understandably less well regarded by the general wizarding public.

As long as I am beyond suspicion, Harry realised.

If he was suspected, by anyone, or, worse, implicated, then everything would be thrown into chaos.

Still under the cloak he made his way towards Snape's classroom and office. Hopefully the wizard would be absent, or teaching, and Harry would be able to slip through to get what he wanted unobserved.

Snape was teaching.

A class of rather intimidated second years were ineffectively shooting red sparks at one another while Snape acidly assured them that any Grindylow they encountered had found itself an easy meal.

Harry suppressed a chuckle at the class unfortunate enough to reap Snape's bad mood, and slipped, silently down through the middle of the class, pausing only to let the occasional jet of sparks pass in front of him.

Snape was so fixated on his class' failings that he did not notice the door to his office quietly open and shut, and none of the second years dared risk looking up for fear of catching their professor's gaze.

How to do it? Harry wondered.

He'd already considered it briefly. Snape's habit of drinking Blackberry wine from the same set of glasses was not so safe as he thought. Although his office was heavily warded, Harry's hallow let him stroll in and out undetected.

Helping himself to one of the glass goblets he tucked it beneath his cloak, and then surveyed the small series of cupboards and jars along the walls.

Aconite, aconite, aconite, he searched.

There was plenty left. Snape, it seemed, rarely used it.

Perfect.

Malfoy must have some stashed away somewhere, and he had been none too subtly stealing it from Slughorn under Hermione's watchful gaze. Hopefully then, Malfoy would take the blame, even if there was likely to be too little evidence to have him expelled.

Harry scooped enough aconite to kill a hippogriff into the goblet, sealing it shut with a piece of paper and sticking charm, and wedging it firmly into his bag where it wouldn't slip out. Conjuring a replacement goblet, and pouring enough magic into the creation to keep it there for several weeks, he replaced the one he had stolen, and slipped out the door.

He nearly stepped into Snape's back.

Wincing, he closed the door as quietly as possible and edged around the wizard's figure until he could walk to the back of the class and wait for his attention to move on long enough for Harry to leave and head to the chamber.

It took longer than he would have liked, and he almost jumped when, having relaxed to watch the showers of sparks, Fleur's locket flared hot against his chest. Fortunately Snape eventually spied a nervous looking girl who was holding her wand loosely, and flinching away from the spark, and the Death Eater descended to berate her for her failings with ruthless contempt.

Harry slipped out, hurrying, still invisible, towards the Chamber of Secrets, hoping that Fleur was just missing him, and that the secret had not been lost.

It's incredibly unlikely, he reassured himself as he stole through the bathroom that had been Myrtle's. The Fidelius is almost flawless, and Gabrielle is safe and anonymous within the wards of Beauxbatons.

Abandoning the poison filled goblet, the bag, and his cloak he apparated within feet of entering the chamber itself, flicking his wand into his palm as the world swirled away behind him.

A pair of arms threw themselves around him the moment he stepped into the hall of the Meadow, but they were slim, soft, and pale, and the breath against the back of his neck smelt faintly of marzipan, and of the same sweet tang of burnt holly.

She's fine.

He sagged slightly in relief.

'Did you miss me?' Fleur murmured gently in his ear.

'You know I did,' he told her, twisting in her arms so he could kiss her.

'I have been tempted to call you back here overtime I found something,' she admitted, 'but I didn't want to selfishly interrupt anything more important.'

'There is nothing more important than you,' Harry promised her firmly, smiling when her arms tightened slightly around him. 'What have you found?'

'Not until you tell me what you've been up to,' Fleur smirked. 'Sirius comes round every now and again when he can, and while he is not terrible company, he is not you, and knows nothing about what you're really doing.'

'He only learns what Dumbledore tells him, and Dumbledore sees as little as I can manage.'

'Answer the question,' Fleur demanded, pouting.

'Nothing too dramatic has happened,' Harry smiled. 'I got permission to take my NEWTs early in three subjects, and I'm working on the fourth.'

'You only need three to be considered for most roles or jobs,' Fleur shrugged.

'I want four,' Harry said stoically, 'you have four.'

'Is that all?'

'No,' he conceded. 'Malfoy has been tasked with killing someone at Hogwarts, possibly Dumbledore, and Snape has sworn an Unbreakable Vow to do it himself if Malfoy fails.'

'You are planning on taking your revenge,' she realised, ever perceptive of his intentions.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'Dumbledore contracted a withering curse from Voldemort's final horcrux, Snape's potions are keeping him alive.'

'So killing Snape kills Dumbledore anyway, grants you your revenge, and removes a dangerous, obsessed wizard with too many masters.' Fleur frowned. 'Dumbledore will die even if Snape lives, and Snape has not yet proven himself our enemy, killing him may not be worth the risk.'

Harry took a step back out of her arms.

'He betrayed my parents, my mother, the witch he loved, to their deaths,' he reminded her coldly.

'He may not have done so knowingly,' Fleur said, pulling him back into her. 'How could he have known that it was your mother the prophecy he overheard spoke of?'

'He could not have done,' Harry admitted grudgingly.

'Would you not betray a stranger in the hope of saving me?' Fleur asked, already knowing the answer. 'Your parents were in hiding by then, perhaps he wanted to redirect Voldemort's attention from them, from your mother.'

'You think his intentions were pure,' Harry swallowed his anger, trying to think clearly. 'It is possible,' he sighed after a brief period of contemplation. Snape's emotions were genuine; the patronus proved that.

'Give him a chance to choose you,' Fleur urged softly. 'It's not so farfetched. He wants Voldemort dead, does not share Dumbledore's ideals, and may prove a useful ally.'

'I will offer him a chance,' Harry decided. 'If he chooses me, then I will ignore the consequences of his decision, because you asked me too. Otherwise,' his lips twitched, 'I have an aconite smeared goblet for him.'

'You are being careful, I trust?' Fleur asked, biting her lip.

'I have to avoid all suspicion,' Harry agreed, squeezing her gently, 'don't worry.'

'No drama, you said,' she laughed.

'That is not all,' Harry confessed, stomach twisting nervously. This was the part he was truly dreading. 'I think you might have been right.'

'When am I not?' Fleur teased. 'But about what?'

'Who,' he corrected, 'Katie.'

Fleur's jaw clenched. He was aware of every muscle stiffening and coiling against him, and the shifting shape of her face into his shoulder.

'What did she do?' Fleur asked quietly, her voice slightly distorted by her altered features.

'I had to go to a party with a date,' Harry began, speaking quickly. 'She fended off the other girls to save me from them, so I reluctantly took her, but she drank more than was wise, and got… clingy.'

'Just clingy?'

'I put her to bed,' Harry responded gently, 'nothing more.'

'What did she say?' Fleur sounded concerned, not truly worried, but certainly unhappy.

'She wanted to know if I was ok,' Harry remembered, 'asked if I was angry about seeing you and Bill together at the café that time.'

'Did she,' Fleur's voice distorted further. 'After she deliberately put you next to then in the hope something would happen that would let her steal you away from me.'

'Katie wouldn't do that.' Harry shook his head, but he wasn't quite as adamant about that as he might have been. She was much less scrupulous than she used to be.

'She would for you,' Fleur pulled her face out of his shoulder. 'Was she happy, while you were there?'

'I haven't seen her so happy in a long time,' Harry said, after resigned pause.

'You believe me now, don't you?'

'I don't want to,' he sighed, but he knew now that she was right. Denying it was pointless.

'Will there be more parties?' Fleur asked softly.

'I need to stay on Slughorn's good side to get him to give me permission to take my NEWT early,' Harry answered gently, 'but I'm sure I can take someone else, or go alone.'

'No,' Fleur decided, suddenly firm. 'Take Katie.'

'Why?' He asked, extremely wary over the sudden reversal.

'Are you going to choose her over me?' Fleur asked, looking him in the eye as her features faded back to their normal appearance.

'Never,' Harry promised.

'Then let her have her consolation prize,' Fleur told him, surprisingly kindly. 'I can't fault her taste, and while I might not like it, she has been a good friend to you, and deserves better.' Her voice faded to little more than a faint whisper. 'I stole you from her, after all.'

'I never blamed you for that,' Harry reminded her. 'I did not even notice your allure, and Katie knew that. She shouldn't have retaliated for something that was not my fault, and she certainly shouldn't have trusted Roger Davies to be well-motivated.'

'I still feel guilty,' Fleur admitted. She was no longer looking him in the eye, her face buried back in the crook of his neck, and her arms tightly wrapped about him as if she was afraid he might disappear.

'You shouldn't.'

'I am a better match for you, more your equal,' Fleur laughed a little at her own pride, 'but she is a perfect fit for you. If you had never met me, you would be just as happy with her.'

'I would be happy,' Harry supposed, 'but not as happy.' He tilted her face up to look at him, and kissed her cheeks gently until she smiled, and the threat of tears faded. 'I'll take Katie, if you think I should, but she will never be anything more than a friend to me, and I'm sure she knows that really. Besides,' he grinned, 'platonic dates never lead to good relationships.'

'I hope she knows,' Fleur replied softly, stifling a small smile at his reference to their Yule Ball.

'What have you found?' Harry asked, changing the subject. 'You said you wanted to call me here every time you found something, so you must have.'

Fleur nodded, running a fingertip under each eye with a rueful smile, and leading him by the hand up to the room that had been his study, and was now clearly Fleur's.

'I found Travers, and even if the last horcrux is gone, he might know something useful,' she smiled proudly. 'He's been seen in the midlands, or someone wearing the same mask as he was caught in has been.'

'It is likely that it is Travers, and even if it is not, then a distinguishable mask means Inner Circle, and tearing Voldemort's most useful followers from him should be our first step in defeating him.'

'Exactly,' Fleur smirked. 'Travers leads raids on the scatter of villages around there, picking off those who outspokenly oppose Voldemort and,' her expression darkened, 'indulging his own appetites in doing so.'

'So we wait for a raid and grab him?' Harry frowned. It seemed unlikely that a raid would occur at a convenient moment.

'I wait for a raid,' Fleur corrected. 'When his guard is down I stun him, and use this,' she produced a Death Eater mask from under a pile of papers, 'it's an exact replica of his.'

'What does it do?'

'I will cast the protean charm on his mask and this one before I memory charm him, so that when I change the design here,' she flipped the mask to reveal an almost invisible set of scratches, 'it will change on his mask too.'

Harry didn't need to ask her if she was sure her memory charm was good enough. It was the sort of subtle piece of magic that she would be good at.

'It's like the enchantment on your box,' Harry deduced after a moment of contemplation.

Fleur pouted, initiating her little sister. 'You stole my moment,' she complained. 'It will become a portkey,' she smirked, 'and he will find himself in a nice, empty spot in the Lake District, where we will be waiting.'

'If he isn't wearing the mask we'll just have that very unattractive piece of fancy dress,' Harry warned. It was the only flaw he could see in the plan.

'Portkeys only activate when they are touched,' Fleur reminded him, and Harry flushed slightly at forgetting something so obvious. 'He might be touching something when we kidnap him, though' she finished thoughtfully.

'You've thought of everything,' Harry grinned. Her plans were much more thorough than his.

'As long as he does not have his lips pressed to the hem of Voldemort's robes we will have no trouble dealing with him, or anyone he might bring with him by accident.' Fleur's confidence was catching, and Harry found himself nodding. He was more than a match for most Inner Circle members, and together with Fleur, catching them by surprise, they should have little trouble.

'Be careful when you're waiting for Travers,' he pleaded gently.

'I am more than capable of looking after myself,' Fleur told him gently. 'However I shall be very careful, nothing must be suspected before we activate this.'

'Hopefully we can wring the locations of most of his fellow Inner Circle members from him,' Harry mused. 'Eradicating most of them will deal Voldemort a serious blow.'

'This is not the most interesting thing I have found,' Fleur smirked. 'I have been continuing your search as well.' She seemed quite excited all of a sudden, and Harry had to force down the upwelling hope that surged dangerously within him.

It is unlikely that she has found it so soon, he reminded himself.

'I've been trawling through legends, since the Peverell family tree links off to several notable families, amongst which is yours, Slytherin's, and a handful of others, though they are all now extinct.' Fleur traced the new additions on his wall of ancestry with her forefinger. 'There is virtually no mention of the cloak, as the last Peverell, who must have taken it with her, brought it into the Potter line many generations ago, and it has never left the family line. The Resurrection Stone,' her face turned apologetic, 'is almost as scarcely mentioned, there is a reference to it being sought after by many wizards, your ancestor, Salazar, among them, but none of them found it.'

'So maybe it too remained in the family,' Harry suggested.

'If it did, then you would already own it,' Fleur disagreed. 'It must have been, stolen, lost, or given away to another.'

'That's not encouraging,' Harry grimaced.

'It was never going to be easy,' Fleur warned kindly.

'I know.' He did not expect to find it for many years, but he did expect to discover it eventually.

'The Elder Wand, however, is much easier to trace,' Fleur passed him a list of owners, 'it has changed hands a hundred times in the last few centuries alone, though most recently the only reference I could find was the claims of a wand maker. Gregorovitch,' she clarified.

'I am not interested in the wand,' Harry shrugged. It did not give him anything he desired, he had a wand, and, from the look of it, the Elder Wand simply made him a bigger target.

'The wand has to be taken from its last master,' Fleur told him. 'I do not know if the other hallows require the same thing, but-'

'It might be best not to risk it,' Harry finished. 'I understand. What does taken entail?'

'The Elder Wand has been claimed by theft, murder, duelling, and disarming, that I know of. Any method of taking it without the consent of the owner seems to work.'

'So I should make sure to take the stone,' Harry decided. 'I would probably have to anyway, nobody in their right mind would willingly give it up.'

'I did find one other thing, though it seems unrelated, as their is no evidence he ever found, or owned, any of the hallows.' Fleur tapped the drawing of the symbol Harry had glimpsed on the graves in Godric's Hollow, on the archway, and on the inside of his cloak. 'Grindelwald adopted this as his symbol,' Fleur informed him, 'it is infamous across Europe because of it. I did not realise it was the Peverell coat of arms beforehand.'

'He never found any of them?' Harry inquired. Grindelwald was not somebody he wanted to have to need to talk to if he could avoid it. The old warlord was imprisoned in Nurmengard, his own prison, and it was practically impregnable.

'I think we would have known if he had,' Fleur smiled. 'I cannot see him having any use for any of the hallows, even the Elder Wand makes little difference when you are already so powerful.'

'Perhaps he just liked the symbol,' Harry grinned.

'It is simple, and elegant,' Fleur agreed. 'For an irredeemable, mass-murdering, dark lord, he had a good taste in emblems.'

'I should be heading back,' Harry realised, noticing the darkening sky outside over the village.

'Not yet you aren't.' Fleur's smile turned sultry, eyes smouldering, and she caught his wrist before he could apparate. 'If I cannot see you as often as I would like, then I should make the most of when I can.'

'I can probably linger a little longer,' Harry grinned, immediately changing his mind.

Fleur's dress was sliding to the floor before he could apparate them to their bedroom, her lips hungry against his. There was soft snap as he shifted them to the bed, collapsing underneath Fleur onto the mattress.

'You're still wearing too much, Harry,' she decided coyly from atop his waist, covered by nothing but her hair. His robes smouldered to nothing under her fingers before he could tear his eyes away from her to reply.

Summer sky blue eyes burnt bright with passion behind a silver veil. Fleur had definitely missed him.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

87. Ex Memoria

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 87. Just finished on Monday, though with only about half an hour to spare!

Enjoy...

Chapter 87

'Come in, Harry, come in,' the headmaster beamed, pulling his half-moon glasses from his nose and setting them down on the desk. They were promptly stolen by Fawkes, who, trilling triumphantly, hopped back onto his perch, spectacles clutched in one taloned foot.

Dumbledore gave the phoenix a reproachful stare, which Fawkes pointedly ignored in favour of inspecting Harry as he conjured a seat opposite the headmaster.

'How have you been, my boy?' Dumbledore extended a hand across the desk in the direction of his phoenix, silently, and wandlessly, summoning his spectacles out from the talons of the distracted phoenix. Harry suspected it was neither the first nor the last time that this particular battle had been fought.

'Fairly well,' Harry answered honestly. He'd been improving everywhere he devoted his time to, practicing and mastering a handful of dangerous spells, as well as absorbing everything Snape could offer him. Versatility was everything in a duel, though speed and power were crucial too, and while his rituals, and natural gifts made him more than a match for most, his arsenal of spells was still relatively small, and he was not fighting most. Neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore could be lumped in with the rest.

His fingers slipped to the slim, gold chain about his neck. In a little while, at this precise moment in time, Harry would be seeing if Snape could still be useful, and if he wasn't, then Dumbledore himself would provide his alibi.

'Professor Snape told me you have done a remarkable job in teaching some of the others in your year the Patronus Charm,' Dumbledore nodded gently. 'A very admirable deed, my boy, it is a hard charm to cast, despite its simple theory, and yet so many of your peers have achieved a corporeal version. Perhaps you should consider teaching yourself.'

'I think I lack the necessary patience, sir,' Harry admitted. 'Did Snape really use those words?'

'Professor Snape,' Dumbledore looked almost relieved to be making the familiar correction, 'may have not said that in so many words, but his meaning was easy to infer.'

'After you picked your way through the insults?' Harry asked, eyebrows raised.

'He was quite complimentary I assure you, Harry,' the headmaster replied softly. 'He was most curious about the form of your patronus. I understand it is no longer a stag?'

'An anzu,' Harry said evenly. There was no point trying to keep that a secret. If Snape had mentioned it, Dumbledore would already know anything Harry might want to hide.

'Remarkable,' his smile was incredibly soft. 'Miss Delacour is a lucky girl. You must be quite devoted to her for it to affect you so deeply.'

'Snape's patronus is similarly affected,' Harry shrugged, unwilling to discuss Fleur.

'Yes,' Dumbledore sighed, rubbing the corners of his eyes, and the point on his crooked nose where his glasses sat. 'He mentioned that you had noticed that, and that you disapproved.'

'That is not the only thing I have noticed, professor,' Harry began hesitantly. It would require some skill, and no small amount of subtlety to successfully imply Malfoy had fallen out with Snape. 'I saw Malfoy arguing with Snape about something, and Hermione has warned me that Malfoy has been up to something, lurking in odd areas of the school, and holding his forearm.'

'I am aware of Mr Malfoy's actions,' Dumbledore admitted. 'His target does not concern me, I do not believe he has it in him to be successful. Professor Snape is taking care of it nonetheless, Harry, and it would be best if you did not involve yourself. Mr Malfoy may act rashly if antagonised.'

'Of course, professor,' Harry agreed. Given it was likely Malfoy's target was Dumbledore Harry had little reason to act in the first place, and even less if the old wizard believed Malfoy no threat.

'Mr Malfoy has yet to truly choose his side,' Dumbledore explained slowly and gently. 'I hope to show him that there are other ways than those of his father before he loses himself completely. While he is in Hogwarts, I can keep him safe, and make sure he does no harm to others while he is fixed on this mission he is undertaking.'

'Do you know what it is, sir?'

'Yes,' Dumbledore looked suddenly weary, 'I am aware, don't let it trouble you. There are others you should be worrying about before Mr Malfoy.' His veiled reference to Fleur did not go unnoticed, and Harry's jaw twitched slightly in irritation.

'My apologies, Harry,' the headmaster offered, noticing. 'You are both capable of making your own decisions, and mistakes.' Harry said nothing in reply, and Dumbledore hurriedly continued. 'That is not to say I consider your relationship a mistake, my boy, as dangerous as it may be for her, and for her family,' Harry's jaw tightened ominously, 'anything that has such an affect can only be for the best. Love is, after all, the most powerful of magics.'

'Your note mentioned a memory, sir?' Harry asked, eager to leave this topic behind.

'Ah,' Dumbledore nodded, beard swaying, and rose to open a nearby cabinet. Inside Harry glimpsed a bowl of carven stone set in simple wood, with rings of runes around its rim. 'Would you care to join me, Harry,' he extended a gloved hand, the uninjured one.

Harry dismissed his chair, stepping around the desk to stare into the swirling silver mist within the basin.

'This recollection belongs to Professor Slughorn,' the headmaster revealed, poking the mist with the tip of his wand. Harry frowned, not recognising the odd shade, and grain of the slender piece of wood, nor the knotted carvings along its length.

'What will it show us?' He inquired, sidling subtly closer to Dumbledore's wand hand.

'You will see.' The wand vanished back into his sleeve, and the headmaster extended his hand once more. 'Harry?'

There was a brief, disorientating lurch as their fingers touched, then Harry found himself standing in the same room he had been brewing in only a few days ago; it was almost identically furnished, though Slughorn himself was slightly slimmer, and his waistcoat looked less strained.

The rotund professor set his glass down upon the desk, closing the box of what Harry suspected was crystallised pineapple, then started at a sudden noise behind them. Harry jumped too, his wand halfway into his hand, before Dumbledore's firm grasp gently steered him to the edge of the room where they had a clear view.

'Look sharp, Tom, you don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect…'

The younger Riddle looked almost unremarkable, save for the slim gold band on his finger, the same ring Dumbledore now wore, he appeared almost exactly as he had in the Chamber of Secrets in Harry's second year. The only hint of his infamous future was the faint eldritch gleam of power to his hardened eyes, and the confidence with which he held himself.

'Sir, I wanted to ask you something.'

'Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away…'

'Sir, I wondered what you know about… about horcruxes?'

Slughorn stared at the young Voldemort, who looked innocently back, observing his professor's nervous fingering of his wine glass with a perfectly feigned air of obliviousness.

'Project for Defence Against the Dark Arts, is it?'

'Not exactly, sir,' Riddle replied. 'I came across the term while reading, and I didn't fully understand it.'

'No… Well… You'd be hard pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that'll give you details on horcruxes, Tom. That's very dark stuff, very dark indeed.' The slightest enigmatic smile appeared on Riddle's lips at Slughorn's mention of a book, no doubt he was amused by the ease with which he had found it within Salazar's library; it shifted into the tiniest sliver of a sneer when Slughorn mentioned the false dichotomy of dark and light.

'As you can see, Harry,' Dumbledore interrupted softly. 'Tom was already quite proficient in extracting what he wanted to know from those around him. By the time he was this age, sixteen, he already knew far more than most adult wizards ever would about the intricacies of magic.'

'Why are watching this, sir?' Harry asked, glancing back at Riddle, who was listening intently to whatever Slughorn was explaining to him about horcruxes.

''This is the moment I believe that Tom started down the road to Voldemort,' Dumbledore sighed. 'The instant he decided that anything was better than death.'

No, Harry realised, staring at the eyes of his distant relative. It is not.

He could see a terrible, desperate ambition already reflected in those intense mahogany eyes, fuelled by a vast, hopeless fear. Tom Riddle was already well on his way to becoming Voldemort; it was so obvious he could not understand how Dumbledore did not see it.

Whatever fear it was that drove Tom Riddle to become Voldemort had already consumed him to the point where he was nothing else but its pale shadow. A spectre of that which he sought to escape.

Death, Harry suddenly knew. He fears death.

He could hardly blame him; there was nothing he could imagine that was more terrible than death.

To be nothing forever, he shivered.

'Yes, sir,' Riddle was saying, an air of caution in his tone. 'What I don't understand, though - just out of curiosity - I mean, would one horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, 'a gleam of hunger rippled through his eyes, 'to have your soul in more pieces? For instance, isn't seven the most magically powerful number, wouldn't seven -?'

Whatever Slughorn's yelped response was was lost in Harry's numb, icy shock.

I underestimated him, he realised. Seven, not three, seven.

Somewhere out there were another four horcruxes, hidden, just as the three that had already been destroyed were.

Merde.

They were nowhere near destroying all of Voldemort's safeguards.

'You understand now,' the headmaster noticed. 'I too looked just as horrified as you when I first saw this memory. Its revelation was my price for Slughorn being allowed to return to the safety of these walls.'

'Seven,' Harry murmured. 'So many.'

'I had suspected such a thing for some years now,' Dumbledore confessed, pulling them from he pensieve. 'I had hoped for three, but I know, having seen this, that he intended to make seven, even if he was not successful.'

'Not successful?' Harry settled himself back into his chair, re-conjuring it.

'Tom has always had a flair for melodrama, and a terrible hubris,' the headmaster explained. 'He would only use items he deemed worthy to use as horcruxes, and only create them from the deaths of those he thought noteworthy.'

'The diary?' Harry asked. It seemed not to fit with Dumbledore's theory.

'That diary is proof of his heritage and ancestry, something he has always been proud of,' Dumbledore explained kindly. Harry, however, couldn't quite accept it, there seemed something wrong with the headmaster's suggestion, something that didn't quite ring true with what he knew of Tom Riddle.

'So we have destroyed two of seven?'

'Two of six,' Dumbledore corrected. 'Seven pieces means six horcruxes, since one part of the soul must remain within the body.'

'Oh,' Harry blinked, embarrassed. He'd been too caught up in his horror at there being more to realise that.

The diary. The diadem. The ring. And now three more.

'I have,' the headmaster continued, 'over the last few years of searching, located a few of the items I believe to have been made into horcruxes by Voldemort. If you will venture with me once more?' He was still standing by the open cabinet.

Harry drifted over, deep in thought to take the headmaster's gloved hand once more.

If Dumbledore knows more about these horcruxes, then I cannot risk his death, he decided, as the silver mist swirled past them. So I cannot risk Snape fulfilling his vow.

The golden time-turner, freed from the wards of the chamber, weighed heavy around his neck at the realisation. If Snape did not agree to help him unconditionally, then he would have no choice but to remove the wizard from the way, else he was risking everything for the life of the man who had betrayed his parents.

Even if he did it to save her I cannot risk it.

The memory flowed around him, an older Riddle, paler faced, with eyes that glowed with power, and carrying such an aura of puissance that the nearby house-elf looked almost as giddy as the old woman with whom he conversed.

'He is eighteen,' Dumbledore revealed, as the old lady delightedly directed Riddle's attention to two, velvet lined boxes, and a small platter of lemon cakes. 'You can see for yourself that his pursuit of power has already lead him into controversial areas of magic.'

Rituals, Harry recalled. Blood magic too.

Salazar had said as much, and Harry recognised the ethereal edge to Riddle's eyes from his own visage.

'Tom was, by this point, quietly pursuing his own goal of immortality while he waited to apply for and take up a post at Hogwarts itself. He was much taken with the castle,' the headmaster noted sadly, 'I believe it is the only place he ever considered home.'

The boxes were opened carefully, and Harry recognised both artefacts with a sickening plummet of his stomach.

He didn't.

The golden badger was all too clear upon the cup, almost as evident as the crimson flecks in Riddle's eyes as he gazed at it, magic swirling in ardent avarice about him.

The next piece almost made Harry lash out at the memory. A slim, silver chain, attached to an elegant locket inscribed with a single letter S. Identical to the one Salazar had worn and sacrificed. He carefully concealed his wand, holding his sleeve shut to cover the bright viridescent glow of his fury that poured off it in crackling waves of sparks. Dumbledore, fortunately, was on the other side of him, and remained oblivious to his ire.

Riddle corrupted the pair of Salazar's locket, he seethed. Defiled it when he should have treasured it.

The insult to his ancestor, the one who had taught him, helped him, was unforgivable. There was only one person whom that locket could have belonged to, Salazar's sacrificed wife. The woman who had died to leave a gift to all those who would be her family had had the final treasure she owned adulterated by her own descendant.

The crimson glow was obvious now, gleaming scarlet suffused Voldemort's irises, for by now Harry knew there was nothing of Tom Riddle left about this boy, and the familiarly cold, contemplative expression he wore when the old lady turned away sent a chill down his spine.

Harry knew that face; it was the countenance he wore himself when he decided to kill someone who opposed him, only seeing it on Voldemort's face was extremely unnerving.

'Hepzibah,' Harry presumed that was the lady, 'died later that week, apparently from accidental poisoning by her house elf, but,' Dumbledore shook his head sadly, 'we both know that that was unlikely to be the case. The locket and the cup were missing.'

'Is that all?' Amazingly his voice was still and even, despite the bursting points of icy rage within.

'I think that is all we need to see of this,' Dumbledore answered sadly.

Harry collapsed into the chair, taking subtle, deep breaths. Salazar would have been furious, beyond furious, at what his supposed heir had done to the locket that had once belonged the woman he loved. Quietly he vowed to destroy the tainted heirlooms, just as he had the diadem, better they were gone, than lingered on in such a corrupted form.

'What do you know of the others?' Harry inquired curiously, suppressing his anger, though not completely enough to prevent the slight distortion of parseltongue from creeping into his speech.

The headmaster winced slightly, but answered regardless. 'The locket and the cup I have worked to locate with little luck until lately, but as for the fourth of his horcruxes; I believe his control over the serpent Nagini is too great for a simple familiar.' A slight smile adorned his lips. 'As you have no doubt noticed I have very little influence over my own.'

'Fawkes does seem a particularly free spirit,' Harry smiled, grateful for the humour and distraction.

'That he does,' Dumbledore sent an indulgent smile in the direction of the phoenix. He took his seat again, and Harry emulated him, sensing that their ventures into memory had come to a close for the time being.

'There will be other horcruxes,' the headmaster said slowly, 'ones I have not yet been able to identify as certainly as those two, but I am confident that together we will be able to discover and destroy them.'

Locket. Cup. Diadem. Diary. Nagini. Ring.

Harry's mental list was six long.

I know of all of them, he realised, relieved.

Now there was only the not so simple matter of finding and destroying them. Nagini at least would be easy to locate, for she rarely left her master's side, and Harry hoped, probably in vain, that she might be present when they clashed, and thus eliminated without raising suspicion.

'There are a handful of other memories I wish for you to see,' the headmaster revealed tiredly. 'Ones that will shed some light upon Voldemort's character itself, and the connection to the heritage he was so proud of, but for now, Harry, I'm sure you have enough to think about.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry offered quietly.

'Thank you, Harry?'

'For sharing this with me,' his gratitude was calculated, 'you could have simply pursued them alone and left me in the dark, but I am glad that you have not. It is nice to be trusted.'

'Indeed it is, my boy,' the headmaster's smile was soft, 'indeed it is.'

Harry made his way slowly down the staircase and back to the common room; it was late, and after bidding Neville good night he head upstairs and closed the hangings around his bed.

Once he was sure that everyone knew he was asleep, he pulled the time-turner from within his robes and spun it once, twice, thrice, until it glowed bright, then the sand faded to fine, black dust.

The world blurred backwards regardless, but the slim chain was cold, its magic spent, and the turner itself clinked gently against the edge of the goblet he had tucked under his cloak.

Harry disillusioned himself, throwing his cloak over himself for good measure, and carefully silenced his footsteps, before retracing his steps back out of the tower, and heading for Snape's office.

I have destroyed the horcrux that Dumbledore has not found, he mused, and Dumbledore will hopefully locate the two that remain.

As long as Dumbledore lived long enough to discover them, or to point Harry in the right direction, then things would continue on track, but if Malfoy, or Snape, fulfilled their task, then he might never be able to find the remaining horcruxes.

'Professor?' Harry asked, knocking politely on the door, and discarding both his concealing charm and the cloak.

'Harry,' Snape drawled, 'to what do I owe the pleasure of your company at such a late hour, should you not be with the headmaster.'

I am, he smirked.

'I wanted to ask you a few questions about the Dark Mark,' Harry answered innocently.

'More questions,' Snape looked suspicious, and rightfully so. It was late, and an odd time for Harry to be coming to him with such concerns.

So the game begins, Harry though, concealing a smile.

'How is it given?' He asked with curiosity that wasn't entirely feigned. The knowledge might prove useful. 'Are there any restrictions on giving it? Do you have to be of a certain age? Or fairly powerful?' He pulled his most innocent face. 'Could he give it to someone of my age?'

'The Dark Lord marks those of certain value to him,' Snape explained, turning his chair to face Harry, and moving his glass of wine out of the way of his elbow. 'However there are no restrictions save the receiver being magical, and consciously, knowingly accepting it.'

'So those who bear it,' Harry leant forwards, 'know exactly what it entails, and what they have agreed to do?'

'They think they do,' Snape corrected warily. 'Even if they are misguided in their belief.'

'Either way they are far from innocent,' Harry decided. Dumbledore, then, was likely wasting his time trying to save Malfoy from his self, especially as it seemed he was risking his own life to do it.

He scratched his shoulder, using the motion to touch his wand tip to the goblet, disillusioning it, and pushing it down onto his lap.

'There are very few innocents,' Snape sneered. 'Naivety is common, innocence is not. There are naive Death Eaters, and naive Order members, but no innocent ones.'

'Least of all those who belong to both,' Harry remarked.

Snape's lips crooked and he inclined his head gently in agreement.

'I find it hard to believe that was your only reason for coming.' The spy eyed him curiously, and Harry caught his gaze, using the brief moment to set his hands, and the aconite smeared goblet on the table, placing it directly next to the identical one Snape was drinking from.

'It is not,' Harry conceded. 'I find myself with a dilemma,' he revealed with a small smile. 'I know a man who wears two faces, he smiles in two directions, and lies to both. I am forced to wonder if either are at all true.'

'A promise is only as good as the wizard or witch who makes it,' Snape answered enigmatically. 'A man with two faces might as well have three, or more.'

'And yet none would be true, and none could be trusted.'

'As long as he is necessary,' Snape's eyes gleamed with amusement, 'it would not matter.'

'And if he became redundant?' Harry raised an eyebrow, leaning back.

'Then he would find himself crushed between those he pretended to serve, no matter his true intentions.'

'I suppose, then,' Harry's smile turned slightly cool, 'that he best ensure he is always more useful alive, than dead.'

Snape inclined his head, smiling more widely than Harry had ever seen him. 'How fares your attempt to win over Slughorn?' He asked silkily.

'I have glimpsed another's successful efforts to do the same,' Harry smirked, enjoying the flicker of alarm in Snape's eyes. 'Sadly it conveyed no knowledge of potions upon me.'

'A shame,' Snape agreed calmly. 'I shall have to keep propping up your attempts, then.'

'I'm sure my mother would approve of your assistance,' Harry responded casually, and Snape's slight flinch was all the final proof he needed.

Pure intentions, he surmised, but no loyalty to anything but his revenge for a dead woman, and no way to convince him that my method is more likely to give that end than Dumbledore's will.

'I learnt an interesting thing today,' he continued, as if he had not come to a decision. 'Dumbledore showed me a memory about a young Tom Riddle, a name I'm sure you know.'

'Oh,' Snape drawled, clearly curious. 'And what did this young wizard do?'

'Nothing of great importance,' Harry lied, 'it was his manner that intrigued me. What do your… associates, think of death?'

'Many, if not most, consider it only as something they visit upon others,' Snape replied smoothly. 'Some, the more intelligent, fear its shadow in the form of the aurors of the Ministry, their master, Dumbledore... and you, but the Dark Lord believes himself beyond it, often he has spoken with quiet confidence of his overcoming of the last enemy.'

'The last enemy to be destroyed is death?'

'Yes,' Snape's eyes flickered up, 'those exact words, in fact. How do you know them?'

'They are a motto, a phrase held dear to a family Voldemort's illustrious ancestor once thought of great importance. I suspect he learnt them from the same place I once did.' A thought occurred to Harry, something that had not registered before, but now, now that he knew Voldemort so feared death, it was a possibility he could not ignore.

'Tell me,' Harry slipped his wand slowly from his to draw the Peverell coat of arms in purple flames upon the air, 'does this hold any meaning to you?' The unspoken or him was obvious.

Snape leant forward to inspect the simple symbol, and, taking his opportunity, Harry performed a simple switching spell, exchanging the blackberry wine in one goblet for the air in the other, and reversing the disillusionment spell upon the two to leave the full, poisoned goblet visible and the original concealed.

'No,' he decided slowly. 'The Dark Lord does not believe in children's tales.'

'Good,' Harry grinned.

'Should he?'

'I doubt he will find what he seeks if he does,' Harry answered. 'I do have another question, sir.'

'Ask away,' Snape said smoothly.

'What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?'

'You'd be perilously close to the draught of the living death,' Snape answered, and Harry silently vanished the invisible, original goblet.

'And what, professor, is the difference between monkshood, and wolfsbane?' He asked playfully.

The professor understood then, paling slightly at the implication, but acting as if he knew nothing, still confident he was more useful alive than dead. 'None,' Snape said dryly, 'they are the same plant.'

'A poisonous one also known as aconite,' Harry's smile curved in satisfaction at the spy's discomfort. 'I remember you asking me those questions right at the start of the first lesson you gave me; I'm sure you are glad to know that your students were listening.'

'You look like your father,' Snape admitted, surprisingly candid in his attempt to avoid acknowledging Malfoy's efforts to season Harry's meals. 'He and I… we did not see eye to eye, even before he married the girl I loved.' He regarded Harry cautiously, eyeing the wand that he still held. 'I have since learnt that there is precious little of James Potter about you.'

Harry twirled the wand in his fingers, then tucked it away again, and Snape relaxed ever so slightly.

'Professor Slughorn tells me constantly that I remind him of one of his old favourites,' Harry agreed, 'though I am not sure if I should feel flattered or insulted by the comparison.'

'He always was fond of Lily,' Snape muttered, then his sallow face drew itself into a frown as he realised the true comparison that was being made. 'Flattered, I think,' he decided with a dark smile. 'There are few wizards who feel like the Dark Lord. His presence is intoxicating, his magic is almost tangible, his charisma, and intelligence nearly unmatched, and danger clings to him like smoke. If there is a wizard that embodied the Dark Arts, it would be him.'

'Subtle, elegant, ever changing and deadly,' Harry recalled from Snape's lessons. 'If you wish to survive them, you must become as they are.'

'I am glad you are finally listening to my lessons,' Snape's lips curled, but it was trembling ever so slightly at the tension. He was aware of the little game they were playing, and trying, as hard as he could, not to reveal anything that might affect how useful he was to Harry, while attempting to figure out what Harry already knew, and knowing, all the while, that Harry was the one in control, and each answer might be the words that decided his fate. Snape could not move against Harry, not without angering both his masters, but Harry had no such issues.

'If I imbued myself with a drop of unicorn's blood, amongst other things, can you guess what it might do?' It was time to change the game, time to be a little less subtle, and give Snape one last chance to demonstrate that he cared about more than revenge for Harry's mother.

'It would act as a potent protection against harm,' Snape decided after a few moment's thought. 'With right accompaniments, and some use of magic the Ministry would be tempted to condemn you to Azkaban for, you would be immune to most poisons, or any similarly effective spells…' he trailed off.

'I would be,' Harry clarified, 'but imagine, if you will, that I am sitting in a hall filled with children, the naive, if not the innocent, and everything that I might touch, could also be touched them, those who are unprotected.'

'A tragedy might unfold,' Snape agreed quietly, but there was no flicker of emotion across his face, nothing in his eyes, and even the faintest touch of Harry's legilimency revealed no hint of feeling, only understanding, and apathy.

He knows, Harry realised, but he does not care.

'It is fortunate, then,' he continued, 'that no such tragedy has occurred.'

'Very,' Snape nodded, smiling ever so slightly. 'I must admit I was concerned, Professor Slughorn expressed some worry over missing ingredients, and I too have found some of my supply gone.'

'I'm sure the guilty party will be revealed,' Harry smiled.

'Are you?' Snape drawled, reaching, at last, for the goblet. 'You have an inkling of who to blame then?' He asked evenly, taking a long sip.

'I know exactly who is to blame, Snape,' Harry's voice lost all hint of politeness, the ice he had been holding within him from his meeting with Dumbledore released at last. The vast, dark eyes of the monster staring out with furious, swelling, hungry hate, teeth bared; a thousand needle-like fangs poised to devour the world.

Snape flinched, dropping the goblet, which shattered on the floor, spilling aconite laced wine across the stones.

His wand was in his palm seconds later.

'I cannot allow you to harm him,' he gritted out, 'go, before my vow forces me to act.'

'I have no intention of harming Malfoy,' Harry assured him, and Snape sighed with relief, tucking his wand away. 'He is likely to be as successful in killing his target as he has been in killing me,' Harry continued, as Snape's eyes flared in alarm. 'You're vow to help him should he fail, however, does worry me. You might succeed.'

'I can interpret the vow how I choose,' Snape promised.

'It doesn't matter,' Harry told him coldly.

The game is over.

'It doesn't matter?' Snape stared at him, confused, then cleared his throat, rubbing at his larynx. He tried again, looking concerned this time, but it didn't seem to help.

Suddenly he doubled over in his chair wracked and convulsed with deep, wet, hacking coughs, spitting flecks of bloodstained foam onto the table in front of him, and clawing and clutching at his chest in pain.

'No,' Harry watched his futile struggle without moving, 'it does not.'

'Aconite,' he realised, gasping his words between spatters of crimson tainted foam. 'How… ironic.'

'Ironic?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Malfoy has stolen more than enough to take the blame, and Dumbledore believes the two of you were arguing, as will the school. My part in this will never even be suspected, given I am sitting with the headmaster at this very moment.' He briefly pulled the gold chain around his neck to display the time-turner.

Snape pushed himself off his chair, staggering a couple of paces before collapsing onto the floor, and crawling desperately towards the chest of drawers on the far side of the room, and Harry spied a section labelled bezoars there.

He rose, stepping swiftly around the coughing wizard, and placed a foot on his outstretched hand before he could reach his salvation.

Snape looked up at him, pupils dilated, and face pale, staring at him as if he was truly seeing Harry for the first time; there was horrified disbelief in the man's dark eyes, and Harry's instinctive legilimency revealed Snape's horror at what Lily's child had become before he slumped down onto the floor, breathing light and fast as the poison claimed him.

'Lily's eyes,' he whispered hoarsely into the stone floor, 'were never that cold.'

Even now he only thinks of the woman he loved, Harry thought, his smile twisting from satisfied to sad.

He removed his foot from Snape's wrist, flipping him over onto his back, and pinning him down as the wizard's body trembled on the threshold of death.

Would I die like this? He wondered.

Harry knew the answer, knew how he would die if he could see it coming. He would go fighting, struggling with all he had against the nothingness he feared until his final hope had faded, but his last thoughts, those that came when he knew he had failed, would always be for Fleur.

He thrust out one hand behind him, summoning, without words or wand, a bezoar from the drawer, and stuffed it into the mouth of the man who had betrayed his parents. Snape's breathing slowed into a gentle, peaceful rhythm, but he remained unconscious.

He is too like me, Harry decided. I cannot kill the man I could so easily become.

And it was obvious to him at last what had made Snape into this ruin of a wizard. The bitterness, the apathy, the hollow, cruel, shell-like shadow of the young wizard he once was were all that remained of anyone when the only people who mattered to them were torn away.

He does not deserve to die, but he cannot remain here.

'Gemino,' he muttered, conjuring a perfect, but inanimate copy of Snape, then, vanishing the remnants of the poisoned wine and goblet, he took a pinch of Floo Powder. Disillusioning all three of them, and hauling Snape, and his corpse double with him he chose a destination.

'Borgin and Burke's,' he commanded, then disappeared into the whirling green flames.

The shop was empty, and closed, covered with anti-apparition wards, and more, but Harry knew how to break them, and he tore them apart with ease, marvelling, as he did, at how easy something that most wizards could not hope to manage had become. The anti-apparition wards shattered like thin ice underfoot as his magic swirled, practically visible, through the shop in a brilliant, burning aura of power that melted, warped and ruined the artefacts around him, and set fire to the handful of wands on the closest shelf.

He dropped Snape and the body in the small copse of elm trees, uncaring of the damage he had dealt to the store on Knockturn Alley, and sent his patronus to alert Fleur to his return.

'Where are we?' Snape rasped, rolling over to stare at Harry. He had awoken more swiftly than expected, evidently he had built up some immunity to the poison, even if it had not been enough to resist the huge dose Harry had slipped him.

'My home,' Harry answered, 'you will not be able to find it again, given it is under the Fidelius, and you do not know the secret.'

'I am still alive.' Snape sounded quite surprised, and not particularly thrilled.

'Yes, you are,' Harry agreed softly.

'I did not realise you were capable of such compassion.'

'You reminded me of myself, so devoted to the woman you loved,' Harry admitted softly. 'If you had not, I would have killed you like I intended.'

Snape frowned, pulling himself up into sitting position.

'What did I do wrong?' He asked after a moment. 'I thought for sure that you needed me alive, more than dead.'

'I can persuade Slughorn without your help, now,' Harry said calmly, not revealing the real reason. 'You are inconveniently perceptive, cunning, and serve two masters I distrust. Your death weakens both Dumbledore, and Voldemort, while strengthening me.'

'So what now?' Snape demanded. 'If we go back, we will be playing the same game again.'

'Only I am going back,' Harry decided.

'And me?' Snape gave him an incredulous stare. 'If you are not going to kill me, what will you do?'

'You are leaving,' Harry instructed. 'Your part in this is done.'

'My vows will not allow me to,' Snape shook his head almost in disappointment at Harry's simple resolution. 'I have made promises to follow the orders of both Voldemort and Dumbledore.'

'He demanded an oath too?' Harry asked, spying Fleur leaving the house at the far side of the field.

'I swore a more vague one to Dumbledore, to allow me to still serve Voldemort and play spy, but such a vow to you would be useless at best.'

'Does the Dark Mark show if you are alive?' Harry asked.

'No,' Snape answered, suddenly attentive, and staring with avid interest at the limp replica of himself still lying on the ground before them.

'Nobody gives orders to dead men,' Harry suggested.

'That might work,' Snape agreed softly, 'if I wanted to leave and disappear.'

'I will have a vow from you,' Harry told him, 'and when I am sure you cannot obstruct me, I will let you go from here to wherever you wish.'

'Who is this?' Fleur asked quietly, stepping close behind Harry. 'Snape,' she answered her own question. 'Why is he here?'

'I do not want to kill him,' Harry answered earnestly, 'but he cannot remain here, his vows make him too dangerous to us.'

'So you brought him here?' Fleur's voice rose an octave.

'He does not know the secret,' Harry reminded her, 'so he will not remember.'

'Miss Delacour,' Snape inclined his head politely. 'Lily would have liked you, from what I know.'

Fleur shared a glance with Harry, surprised that he made no response.

'Time for your vow,' Harry said simply, and Fleur, realising her part in this, withdrew her wand.

Snape, knowing he had no other choice, joined hands with Harry.

'Do you, Severus Snape, swear to never use your given name again?' Harry began, thinking furiously through all the possible avenues. He could not leave a single route for the wizard before him to explore, because Snape was capable offending and exploiting any loopholes.

'I do,' the former professor's face was unreadable, and a thin tongue of white fire enveloped their wrists.

'Do you swear to leave Britain, and to never return to its shores?'

'I do.' There was a second tongue of flame.

'Do you swear to never contact either Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Voldemort, or Albus Dumbledore, or any of their associates again while either of them live?'

'I do,' Snape answered, swallowing hard as a third line of fire looped around their wrists.

'Do you swear to take no action to harm Harry Potter, or anyone that he is associated with?'

'I do.' Snape's eyes gleamed with approval. He clearly appreciated the cautious approach Harry was taking.

'His death,' Fleur reminded him gently.

'Do you swear to never reveal the truth of your identity to anyone, in any manner, and to take any acceptable steps to prevent it from occurring?' Harry smiled his thanks at Fleur, who blinked fondly at him in response.

'I do.'

'Then that is all I require of you,' Harry said.

'I want an oath from you,' Snape demanded.

'You are in no place to make demands,' Fleur pointed out icily.

'Do you, Harry Potter,' Snape said, ignoring Fleur, 'swear to do your utmost to destroy the wizard who brought about your mother's death?'

'I do,' Harry said, lips curving. Snape was not thinking clearly, or he might have realised that Harry could interpret that as several different people, one of whom he had already killed.

A final sliver of flame wreathed their wrists, then the oath was done, and Snape leant back against a tree, more casual than Harry had ever seen him.

'What now?' He asked.

'I disfigure that body beyond recognition, and return it with your wand to Hogsmeade under the Dark Mark,' Harry replied. 'You disappear, and we never speak again.'

'Dumbledore will mourn the loss of the spy Voldemort finally discovered, and Voldemort will attribute another kill to your name,' Snape deduced smoothly. 'Neither side will suspect I live, and as long as that is true, then there are only two vows that bind me.'

'Your vow to Narcissa Malfoy relies on Malfoy failing his task,' Harry said. 'He cannot truly fail until he has died in the attempt, or placed himself in a position where he can no longer try. I will remove the memories of your life until now, if you wish it.'

Snape's lips twitched at Harry's twisted suggestion of mercy. 'I might not deserve to die in your eyes,' he said softly, 'but I do not deserve the freedom and bliss of forgetting what I have caused. Lily's memory should remain with me forever.'

'Then there is nothing else to say unless you have anything to add.'

Snape considered this quietly for a long moment.

'Make sure Malfoy's attempts do not succeed until he is released from the mission or dead,' Snape advised. 'Dumbledore will not live long without my potion, though I have brewed an ample supply for now, and I believe he intends his death to the event that will direct you back to the path he wants you on.'

'I will,' Harry lied. He did not care whether Malfoy succeeded or not, but he doubted he would even come close to killing Dumbledore before he died from the withering curse. Harry was even more sceptical that Dumbledore's death would suddenly give him the desire to die for so many people that meant nothing to him, but he didn't voice that sentiment either.

'Auf wiedersehen, Harry,' Snape murmured quietly, taking one long, last look at the final view of Britain he would ever have. Evidently his destination was Germany, or so Harry assumed from his chosen farewell. Snape was not one to choose his words lightly. 'Do better by Fleur than I did by Lily,' he added softly, glancing at the beautiful, silver haired veela who stood at Harry's side.

Snape dropped his wand onto the ground by the body, watching it roll across the dirt for a moment, then apparated away with soft crack.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that does!

88. Under the Lily

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter!

I had not realised how long this story has become until now. It doesn't feel anywhere near as long as it is, perhaps that's because I've kept a lot of filler in though.

Chapter 88

His footsteps echoed across the cobbles, ringing loud and clear across the empty street. There was nobody outside; there was nobody brave enough to venture out underneath the ghastly green light of the Dark Mark before the aurors were visible.

Harry stopped, following the thin streams of crimson back between the stones to the sprawling, maimed and brutalised body he had discarded in front of the cross at Hogsmeade's heart. A single, white lily bowed over the unrecognisable remains of what had once been a perfect copy of Snape's face, the feather soft petals brushed at the floor, and drooped over the snapped pieces of the former professor's wand.

The blood had stained the tips of the flower vibrant scarlet.

He took three more steps away, leaving red footsteps, then vanished the blood from the bottom of his shoes, and apparated back into the Chamber of Secrets.

Snape's part was done.

The body that he had placed in Hogsmeade was a perfect, inanimate copy of the wizard. Flesh, blood, skin and bone were all identical to the former professor's, and alongside the wand and the flower, beneath the skull and serpent, nobody would doubt the identity of the deceased.

It's perfect.

Fleur had suggested the flower, and he had teased her about her obsession without flowers for a good few minutes before she put a finger over his lips to force him to listen. It had been a good suggestion. Dumbledore would see it as Voldemort's declaration of why Snape had betrayed him, and Voldemort would see it as Harry explaining why he had killed Snape.

Neither would suspect the spy lived, and, bound by his oaths, Snape could not contact them in anyway until they were dead. Harry supposed that there was a loophole there, since Voldemort had horcruxes, and had technically almost died already, but he did not expect Snape to be so foolish as to replace himself in the jaws of the vice he had only just escaped.

He slipped quietly over the bridge, sparing a single glance for the outline over the door, and discarding the broken time turner into the pool with a soft splash. It had fulfilled its final use for him. Now he had to quietly ensure that Malfoy found himself under the scrutiny of the rest of the school, so that his attempts to kill his target were even less likely to succeed.

The entrance to the chamber shut quietly behind him and he made his way swiftly towards Gryffindor Tower, pulling his cloak about his shoulders to hide himself from the eyes of any teachers up in the hour before breakfast.

The Fat Lady was asleep in her frame, snoring gently as the painting swung open and then shut to let him in.

'Where have you been sneaking about?' A familiar voice demanded.

Hermione. She, of course, knew about the cloak, though not what it truly was.

'I was awake before everyone else got up,' he answered, pulling it from his shoulders, 'so I went for a walk, and took this because I shouldn't be out of the tower at such a time. Are you going to dock points, prefect?' Harry raised an eyebrow, daring her.

As if I care.

'Yes,' she sniffed. 'Rules are rules, provided they are made by the right people, and you have broken them, so that's five points gone.'

'I'm so ashamed,' Harry responded dryly, tucking the cloak safely back into his robes, and taking a seat next to the fire. There was little point going back upstairs now. 'So why are you up so early,' he ran his eyes over her curiously, noting the mud on her feet, 'and having been out of bounds yourself. You weren't sneaking, were you?'

She flushed, huffing quietly and cleaning the mud from her feet when she realised what had given her away.

'I couldn't sleep,' Hermione admitted after a moment. 'Parvati was having another nightmare.'

'Still not a good reason,' Harry shook his head in mock disappointment, 'rules are rules…' 'You have broken every rule in the school,' she retorted tartly.

'Most of them with you beside me,' Harry reminded her. Hermione exhaled gently, looking quite regretful for a moment. 'They were good times.'

'I am sorry about your wand, you know,' she said after a while, 'I didn't mean to break it.'

'I overreacted,' Harry shrugged, thinking of the horcrux, and the whispering little voice he was sure that it had been. 'What's done is done. I cannot change the past.'

'And the future?' Hermione asked, staring at him intently.

'I'm not going change it,' Harry grinned, catching sight of a dishevelled Neville descending from their dormitory. 'I'm going to decide it.'

Hermione looked none too enthused, and gazed silently into the flames instead of saying anything further.

'Morning, Nev,' Harry greeted him. 'How've you been?'

'Sleeping,' Neville replied flatly. 'I have been sleeping.'

Harry looked all around him, feigning confusion. 'Where's Hannah?' He asked.

'Too early,' Neville grumbled throwing a cushion at him which Harry cheerfully summoned into his left hand before it could hit him. 'That's cheating,' Neville commented, running his hands through his hair.

'Says who?'

'Me?' Neville tried hopefully.

'Sorry,' Harry grinned, 'you have no authority here.'

'Anything exciting happen yesterday?' Neville asked, referring to Harry's meeting with Dumbledore, and, beside them, Hermione perked up slightly.

'Not really,' Harry smirked. 'Saw Malfoy and Snape arguing again, Malfoy seemed furious about something, maybe Snape finally told him that he's not all that great after all.'

'Again?' Hermione was definitely interested.

Perfect, Harry exalted.

'Yeah, I've seen it a couple of times now,' he elucidated falsely, 'though this was the worst. Snape nearly saw me lingering on the way back from Dumbledore's office.'

'Good thing he didn't catch you,' Neville chuckled. 'You'd have had detention for eternity.'

'He's stopped doing that,' Harry reminded him.

'He's probably scared you'll enthral, immolate or destroy him,' Neville commented amusedly. He, of course, understood the real reason behind Harry's patronus. The reference was obvious to those who knew about Fleur, even if Hermione had chosen the literal definition to spout to the impressionable class.

'I'm not sure I'd want to enthral him, Nev,' Harry shuddered, 'not like that.'

Neville went slightly green.

'Malfoy must be up to something,' Hermione decided, worrying her lip.

'I'm sure it's harmless,' Harry replied calmly, aware that this would only make Hermione more determined to discover it.

'Well,' Neville said suddenly, 'if you want excitement, then you need only wait until tonight, or you can come back to the DA, we're starting to try actual duelling now.'

'Oh?' Harry's paranoia tingled dangerously, and not at the mention of the DA.

'It's another one of Slughorn's parties,' Neville grinned. 'You get to take Katie, since she has elected herself your platonic date, we get to to watch Romilda, and the rest of your little fan club sulk, and you have to explain it all to Fleur.'

'Fleur doesn't mind,' Harry answered, not entirely confident of that statement. He rather felt that Fleur did mind, and while she felt a bit guilty, and a little sorry for Katie, whom she had basically replaced, even if Harry and Katie were barely together then, that allowing them to go together was not as charitable as it seemed. In fact, while he was certain that Fleur did want Katie to go with him because she felt his friend deserved some time with him, he suspected that she might have an ulterior motive too. Spending the evening so close, yet so far, from what she wanted was a bittersweet reward, and Fleur, he knew, was a vengeful girl.

'Doesn't she?' Hermione looked like she believed it about as much as he did.

'Well,' Harry struggled to keep his face blank, 'she says that she wants me to take Katie, but…' He trailed off, Hermione was smart enough to deduce Fleur's reasons for herself.

'Breakfast for me,' Neville said, as he was accosted by a giant, silvery flamingo that Harry assumed to be Hannah's patronus.

'You know,' Hermione said quietly, waiting until Neville was out of earshot.

'Know what?' Harry asked innocently.

'About Katie.'

'Katie?' Harry pulled a confused face. 'Quidditch player? Really short, messy hair, terrible sense of humour?' No idea.'

'You do, don't you,' Hermione burst out, 'and you just let her!'

'Let her do what?' Harry frowned, his tone turning cold, 'be my friend? Are you jealous that she was able to keep what you threw away?'

'No,' Hermione hissed, 'you let her do everything short of throwing herself at you naked, and for what!?'

'We're not having this conversation, Granger,' Harry interceded, mid-rant. 'My relationship, and my friendships, are none of your business anymore, and you have only yourself to blame.'

Hermione huffed, throwing herself from the sofa and stalking out of the common room to breakfast. It was an unfair comment, Harry had to concede that he was as much, if not more to blame for what had happened between them, but its cruelty was merited by her demands. She was not entitled to know everything, he only owed that to those who returned that trust in kind.

'What was that about?'

Speak of the devil.

'Nothing important,' Harry dismissed, getting up himself.

'Uh huh,' Katie nodded, not convinced. 'So that's why I heard my name a handful of times on the way down is it?'

Harry shot a dark look in the direction of the closing portrait. Hermione had a lot to answer for.

'Not going to tell me then,' Katie laughed nervously. 'It's ok, I can guess.'

'We don't need to talk about it if you have already guessed,' Harry grinned, gesturing towards the exit. 'Breakfast?'

She gave him a long look, opening her mouth several times as if there were things she wanted to say, then smiled sadly, and nodded. 'Breakfast,' she agreed resignedly.

She knows I know, Harry deduced from her slightly hesitant manner.

Katie was walking slightly further away from him that normal, the moments when she would burst against him, or the casual, usual manner in which she was always so close, and so cheerful had faded. A withdrawn, silent, nervous looking girl half-followed him to the Great Hall.

It will pass, he hoped. She'll forget I know, and go back to acting like she usually does.

He missed his bright, beaming Katie already. She cheered him up every morning after the locket flared hot against his chest, and helped him smile, rather frown at the knowledge that Fleur was thinking of him far away.

It took almost the entire meal for her to perk up again, and he'd almost given up trying to lure her into conversation after every attempt would bring her back for a few seconds before she remembered and fell quiet again. Even talking about the rapidly approaching Christmas didn't hold her attention for long, though he did manage to extract a promise from her to stay with Angelina and Alicia rather than going back to Diagon Alley.

It didn't help that Harry was keeping an eye out for anything that might be wrong with his breakfast at the same time. If Malfoy was still adding extra ingredients to his food then he didn't want them finding their way onto Katie's plate.

'I have project work with McGonagall almost all day today,' Harry bemoaned. 'I thought it would just be the odd thing here and there, but she wants me to change, over and over, for her?'

'Change?' Katie looked up again at the mention of her favourite subject.

'Transfigure myself into the animal that suits me best,' Harry explained.

'You're an animagus?'

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'I know my form and can transfigure myself into it with a wand; there's a big difference.'

'What form?' She was munching more happily again, rather than picking disconsolately at her toast.

'A raven,' Harry answered evenly.

'A raven,' Katie's tone wavered, 'quite similar to a crow then.'

Harry had feeling recollection of watching crow of silver mist bobbing its head around Katie's ankles in the Room of Requirement.

'Yeah,' he forced his smile not to slip, 'they're fairly similar. Crows aren't as maligned though, they're more mischievous and playful, and they have silly, bald heads.'

'Crows are better,' Katie agreed, nodding in a manner oddly similar to her patronus. 'They're more fun, and,' she continued shifting back to her usual, cheerful self, 'they don't eat the intestines of dead things.'

'Yes they do,' Harry told her, 'that's why they're bald, so they can stick their heads inside without getting their feathers all messy.'

Katie sulked, patting her hair gingerly. 'I McGonagall makes you a raven permanently,' she decided.

'No you don't,' Harry grinned. 'I'd come and fly around your face during quidditch and distract you.'

He ducked as Hedwig swooped down onto the table, depositing the sizeable box of crystallised fruit Harry had ordered upon learning it was something Slughorn enjoyed.

'I would get our new beaters to use you for target practice,' Katie retorted, inspecting the box curiously 'they need it.'

'Quidditch not going well?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'It's not for you,' he told her, chuckling when she pouted.

'Not as well as it used to,' she confessed. 'We're still winning, but it's a bit… disjointed, without Angelina and Alicia, and Fred and George, not to mention out star seeker is still not playing for his house.'

'Someone stole his broom,' Harry commented dryly.

Katie giggled. 'You'd need it back to play, wouldn't you,' she sighed. 'Good thing Ginny's pretty good,' she beamed.

'I'm never getting that back, am I?'

'Over my dead body,' Katie nodded, smiling so brightly her eyes shut. 'So,' she began, finishing her breakfast in a few quick bites as the hall began to empty, 'apart from being turned into a bird what else are you doing?'

'Hmmm, let's see,' Harry feigned checking an imaginary schedule, 'transfiguration project, hiding from Romilda, and, ah yes, Slughorn's lunch party.'

'Sounds like a good day,' Katie beamed smugly. 'I have nothing to do except quidditch practice this evening, and Charms this morning.'

'And Slughorn's party,' Harry reminded her. 'I'm not taking Romilda, and Neville is playing hard to get, so that means you have to come and endure it with me.'

'You're not blonde enough for Neville,' Katie grinned, but she looked happier than Harry had seen her since she fell asleep on his shoulder in the common room after the last party. 'There's nice food there, though,' she nodded thoughtfully.

'Wait,' Katie said softly, catching his arm as Harry got up to leave. 'Fleur won't mind, will she?' Her face contorted reluctantly. 'I don't want to cause any trouble.'

'I asked her,' Harry said bluntly, 'and she said that she wants me to take you.'

'Did she?' Katie looked briefly delighted, then her eyes narrowed, coming, no doubt, to the same conclusion that Harry had about Fleur's other motives. 'I suppose it is fair,' she admitted, looking slightly guilty herself. Bittersweet, it seemed, was better than nothing.

'I'll meet you just outside,' Harry promised her.

'I only have that green dress,' Katie apologised. 'I can charm it a different colour though.'

'It's fine, come however you want,' Harry smiled, 'I'll transfigure something to match when I see you.'

'You should buy some dress robes, Harry,' Katie sighed.

'Fleur's parents bought me some,' he grinned, 'but I think they're in France still.'

'You're hopeless,' she beamed, waving cheerfully as he trudged in the direction of McGonagall's office, box under his arm.

The small huddles of younger students parted before him, scattering from his path, clutching books and bags to themselves in fear. He grinned at their apprehension, despite the Ministry's sudden change in tune, nothing had really been printed to undo the reputation he had been painted with, though only those young enough to be naive still avoided him.

It didn't bother him. Not anymore. He'd learnt from Fleur not to care for the opinions of those who did not care for his, and it made going anywhere in the school easier with no first years underfoot.

There are enough rumours about me that anyone who has heard half of them has probably stopped listening or caring.

'Mr Potter?' McGongall greeted sharply from her desk when he reached the open door. 'You're a little late.'

'I was waylaid at breakfast,' Harry shrugged, by way of an excuse.

'Try not to let it happen again, Potter,' she sighed, knowing he wouldn't listen, 'this project will require considerably more effort from myself without your assistance, enough to make it almost untenable.'

'Sorry, professor.'

'Right,' McGonagall strode around the edge of her desk, 'straight to work, then.'

'Which bit of me am I changing?' Harry asked, flicking his wand out, and carefully placing the box beneath the nearest chair.

'I trust, Mr Potter, that you have read the things I advised you too?'

'I have,' Harry answered, embellishing a little. Read was probably not quite the right adjective. Skimmed might be more apt, or glanced at.

'In stages, then,' McGonagall decided, looking pleased. 'Start with your hair into feathers, then your bones, and onwards until you are a raven. I shall observe, and note the point at which your behaviour changes.'

'Wonderful,' Harry said glibly, beginning the transfiguration.

Now he was no longer entirely guided by instinct he found it much easier to keep the sense of the raven at bay, its curiosity prickled in the back of his mind once he had finished changing his bones too the lightweight constructs of a bird, but it wasn't until he began to change the soft tissue within himself that he began to struggle to distinguish between himself and the raven.

'That'll do, Mr Potter,' McGonagall decided after a while. 'Redeo,' she snapped, flourishing her wand when he didn't respond to his name.

Harry's form swiftly reverted to its usual nature, and collapsed gently onto one of the chairs pushed back around the edge of the room. Controlling the change in such fine detail, and changing so slowly was surprisingly draining.

'Biscuit, Potter,' McGonagall offered, waving a tartan patterned tin under his nose. 'They're ginger.'

'Thanks,' Harry selected the least battered looking one, at bit a corner off.

It's probably the safest thing I've eaten in a while, actually, he grinned ruefully.

Everything else had likely found itself under the attention of whichever house elf Malfoy and tricked or convinced into adding the aconite to his food. It was about the only way Harry could imagine him managing it. House elves could be very subtle when they wanted to be, or when ordered.

'It's quite nice,' Harry decided, taking a larger bite of the biscuit.

The awfully coloured tin returned to a safer distance.

'They go well with Ogden's,' the transfiguration teacher said absently, frowning sharply the she realised who she had said that to. 'I'd prefer it if you kept that to yourself, Potter,' she instructed tersely.

'You use the bottle caps for lessons with your fourth years,' Harry grinned. 'Everyone knows.'

A soft knock at the open door interrupted the professor's reply which, from the softer edge to her frown, was likely some anecdote to do with one of his parents.

'I'm not interrupting, am I?' Dumbledore asked softly, poking his head, and half the length of his beard around the door frame.

'Not at all, headmaster,' McGonagall smiled.

'Good,' he beamed, sweeping into the room. 'I wanted to see this handsome raven for myself.'

Of course you did, Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. You are not sure whether I managed to deceive McGonagall, or if I genuinely am not an animagus.

'Did you know, Harry,' Dumbledore began cheerfully, 'that one of the few ways to tell between an animagus and a simple transfiguration is the homenum revelio spell?'

'I didn't,' Harry eyed the professor curiously. 'Why does it only work on one?'

'It is one of the spells that relies on the existence of a soul,' the headmaster elucidated gently. 'However, the principle is rather like that of the sonar employed by bats, and other insects. The caster magically throws the outline of his own soul out around him, and anything similar is revealed.'

'Ah,' Harry nodded, understanding, 'the distinction of self unique to an animagus is related to the soul.'

'It is,' Dumbledore agreed, running his fingers through his beard. 'I, and no wizard or witch that I am aware of, understand exactly how, but a full transfiguration into an animal also changes the soul, though an animagus transformation does not.'

'You could have told me this before, Albus,' McGonagall snapped exasperatedly. 'That would have been a most useful piece of information for this project.'

'Oh,' Dumbledore looked momentarily taken aback. 'I must admit that I had not considered that. Would you like to test it?'

'Well,' Harry kept his face innocent, as if he did not know the game Dumbledore was playing, 'I can transfigure myself to see if it works?'

'That would be very kind of you, Harry,' Dumbledore smiled. 'I would quite like to see this raven that Professor McGonagall mentioned.'

I'm sure.

He pushed himself out of the chair, letting the sense of the raven envelop him, even while changing as slowly, and as carefully as he could manage, just in case Dumbledore thought he was trying to conceal his ability by transforming lazily.

He hopped onto the dead-wood in front of him, croaking his displeasure at the cold wash of alive-not-alive power that covered him briefly, and eyeing the shiny, round thing under his feet, pushing it from side to side with his beak and watching it glitter.

'Redeo,' the headmaster murmured gently, and Harry found himself standing rather foolishly on McGonagall's desk.

'What did you see?' He asked, jumping down to a more conventional level, catching the bottle cap that had been under his foot before it hit the floor.

'No red,' the headmaster mused, 'you would have shown up red if you were an animagus.'

'I am not,' Harry shrugged nonchalantly.

'Nobody becomes an animagus after a few weeks, Mr Potter,' McGonagall reassured him, mistaking his affected indifference for disappointment.

'I confess I did not come here just to see Harry's form as I intended when we spoke yesterday,' Dumbledore sighed heavily, glancing at McGonagall. 'Another Order member has lost their life.'

'Another?' McGonagall looked both shocked and weary at the same time. 'There are not many of us left, Albus.' She pursed her lips. 'You should go, Mr Potter, I think we are done for today in the light of this news.'

'No,' the headmaster shook his head gently, 'Harry should stay to hear this, it pertains to him.'

'Who?' McGonagall asked hoarsely, looking at Harry. 'Not another of the Weasleys?'

'Severus,' Dumbledore answered gravely.

'Severus,' McGonagall blinked, 'but-'

'Tom finally discovered him, it seems,' the headmaster sighed. 'Without him I fear we are as blind as we were at the start of the first war, and this time Tom is being much more clever than the last.'

'Snape is dead?' Harry asked, rising both eyebrows and adopting his best disbelieving face. It wasn't overly hard, not given he knew the man was likely somewhere in Germany, lying low.

'Professor Snape acted as spy at great personal risk,' Dumbledore said slowly, 'and he has finally been revealed to Tom, though I am unsure how.'

'Serving two masters must have been dangerous,' Harry said carefully.

McGonagall flinched slightly, opening her mouth to retort angrily, but the headmaster raised his gloved hand, the injured one, to forestall her comment.

'Professor Snape died for the one he loved,' Dumbledore told Harry gently, 'or, I suppose, he died for her memory, and the child she left behind. There is no more noble a death than the sacrifice he has made; it should not be belittled.'

'It would have been more noble if he hadn't betrayed her to die in the first place,' Harry said coldly.

'I'm sure if he could have died to save your mother he would have done,' the headmaster murmured. 'It is not behooving to speak ill of the dead, Harry,' he remonstrated gently, 'especially not of a man so devoted to the woman he loved that he would die for not just her, but her family too.'

A brief stab of guilt at the words of his necessary deception pierced at him, because Harry could only agree that had Snape truly died in such a manner it would have been a noble sacrifice, one Harry might have admired, even if it had been made as much in the pursuit of vengeance for his mother than in her name. He pushed the remorse away, burying it being the knowledge that he had given the wizard his freedom.

'What happened, sir?' He asked, more quietly, as if chastised.

'His body was found in Hogsmeade,' Dumbledore said sadly. 'Tom did not let him die easily,' the headmaster's fingers strayed to his maimed hand, 'we were only able to identify it by the wand until St Mungo's confirmed the identity.'

'He was tortured?' McGonagall had gone very pale. She clearly did not have the stomach for this, but Harry wasn't surprised, she was a professor, not an auror.

'Tom is not kind to those he believes have betrayed him,' Dumbledore sighed, 'there is no other offence he punishes so severely.'

'Poor Severus,' McGonagall whispered.

'He was found under a bloodstained lily,' the headmaster shook his head, the slightest hint of tears visible beneath the half-moon frames.

A masterful performance, Harry decided. Either he is genuinely remorseful for the loss of Snape's second chance, or he is a superb actor.

'I suppose he won't be able to redeem himself after all,' Harry murmured.

'Has he not,' Dumbledore turned to fix his sad, electric blue eyes on Harry, 'there are few deeds an act like that cannot redeem.' He turned back to McGonagall. 'We are meeting at headquarters, to discuss how we will proceed now that Severus has been lost.'

Has been lost, Harry mused, and I almost believed him.

Had it not been for that last reference, the slight indication that he viewed Snape as a resource more than a man, Harry might have accepted Dumbledore's sorrow as truth.

'I have to attend Professor Slughorn's party,' Harry excused himself.

'There are better places to find inspiration to getting permission to take your NEWT early, Harry,' the headmaster told him, the slight note of disappointment evident again as he stared hard at the box beneath his arm.

'I ordered it three days ago, professor,' Harry said calmly, but if anything the headmaster only looked more dismayed.

'My apologies,' he said at last, 'after sharing that memory with you I'm afraid I jumped to conclusions.'

'That's ok, sir,' Harry nodded. 'It's the intent that is important, isn't it?'

'I try to do everything for good intentions,' the headmaster smiled softly, reassured.

I'm sure, Harry thought bitterly. I shall see you on the road to hell, professor.

At least everything was going as he had hoped. There had been no suspicion in Dumbledore's eyes, none of his conversation had seemed to indicate he might consider Harry possibly responsible for Snape's death.

The time-turner served its purpose well.

He left McGonagall's office, leaving hurriedly in case he was late and had to sit next to Zabini, or, worse, Malfoy, whom he knew was actually invited to this one.

It was only three corridors to the venue, one of the slightly better lit classrooms usually used for charms.

'You're early, Harry,' Slughorn chuckled, catching him outside the room.

'I brought you a gift, sir,' Harry smiled, following him in and placing the box on the table beside him. 'I heard that it's your favourite,' he added, unable to resist.

Slughorn nodded happily. 'You spoil this old man,' he replied fondly. 'You were quite right that it's my favourite,' his hand froze over the box for a instant, 'did you have a question?' His tone shifted wary.

'I just wondered if you'd put any thought into letting me take my NEWT early,' Harry said easily, leaning against the doorframe.

'Well,' Slughorn sighed, looking visibly relieved, 'that seems harmless enough, nothing Dark about that.'

'Dark, sir?' Harry asked innocently.

'Don't worry, m'boy,' the potions teacher clapped his hands together, nearly catching the dangerously strained brass buttons upon his waistcoat between his fingers. 'I'll write your note this evening.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry grinned. 'I need to find my date, if you'll excuse me?'

'Of course,' the professor nodded, chins wobbling. 'Can't come like that to one of my parties, what would Miss Bell think?' His eyes turned sly, his fingers drifting to tug at his moustache. 'Or should that be Miss Delacour?'

'No girl could ever condone such terrible form from their date,' Harry smiled, avoiding the question.

'Indeed not.' Slughorn's fingers fell from the vast swathe of silver hair beneath his nose, looking a little as if the wind had been cut from his sails.

Katie was already outside, tapping her fingers against the wall while she waited for him.

'I made it blue and silver,' she smiled. 'I thought you might like it in this colours?' To her credit her tone didn't waver.

'It looks nice,' Harry told her gently, waving his wand over himself until he was dressed in robes of silver and sapphire himself.

'Romilda was furious,' Katie giggled. 'I think she hoped to catch you before I was around to fend her off, but apparation classes are very close to here, so I had a headstart.'

'Damn,' Harry sighed, 'and I was so hoping to spend the party with her.'

'She's not so bad,' Katie defended a little guiltily, 'just a little unhappy about how things are. She was one of those girls who had a dream of being swept off her feet by someone heroic and famous.'

'Better than the other sort,' Harry grinned, 'the ones that have a copy of our article on the bedroom walls, beside the handcuffs…'

'Much better,' she agreed, giggling. 'Most people know about Fleur now, you've disappointed a lot of girls, Harry.' She waggled a finger at him in feigned remonstration and he grinned. This was the Katie he had missed this morning.

'I'm sure Romilda and the others will get over it eventually,' he replied carelessly, wincing inside when he remembered how Katie might interpret that.

'Of course they will,' she beamed, 'now they know there's no chance they'll get over you fast enough, even if sometimes it's hard not to be tempted when someone else has something you want. Romilda knows she'll never have it, though, that's why she's not causing trouble.'

'That's good to know,' Harry smiled carefully, distinctly aware of what she was really saying. 'I'm sure Romilda's friends will be grateful to know that she isn't going to be abandoning them to chase after me.'

'It seems like it,' she agreed, smiling sadly.

Other couples drifted past into the room, which, at some point between Harry leaving and looking back in, had suddenly filled with furniture and food.

'Shall we go in?' Katie suggested. 'I'm hungry.'

'Aren't you always,' Harry smirked, leading her to the table, and then catching her hands before she could steal food while everyone else was still sitting down.

'Spoilsport,' she sulked, leaving her hands in his, and biting her lip guiltily when he gave her a querying look. Her hands didn't move regardless, but Harry didn't mind so much now, not now he knew that she wasn't trying to force anything, just to enjoy as much of what she wanted as she could.

Across from them, ignoring a chattering Pansy, who was clearly judging their company with no small amount of spite, sat a tired, wary looking Malfoy, who, upon noticing Harry's gaze, raised his goblet in a mocking toast, inclining his head. He needed no other indication that Voldemort had decided he was responsible for Snape's apparent death than that.

AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone who does!

89. Porcelain Perfection

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

New chapter!

This one may continue some dark themes, not suitable for readers aged 17 or under (as if anyone will actually skip the chapter because of this warning).

Chapter 89

'Last time I was here it was Valentine's day,' Fleur remarked, eyeing Madame Puddifoot's with distaste. It was only a little less pink than when she had last seen it. There were fewer cupids, and the decorations were more tea-themed than the fluttering, winged paper hearts, but the colour scheme remained as monochromatic as ever.

'Ah,' Katie smiled, 'one visit was enough then, can't say I blame you.'

'I did not go in,' Fleur shuddered at the very thought of what Gabrielle would have said, 'this was when Harry was moping.'

Her beau shot her a betrayed look.

'Ah,' Neville grinned. 'The good times. I remember those days. There is nothing quite so strange as having someone teach you spells while a thousand pictures of Fleur are smiling down at you.'

'Not even naming your cactus after the girl you not-so-secretly have a crush on?'

'That's pretty bad,' Katie agreed, dragging Neville and Harry into Honeydukes, despite Harry's best efforts to direct their attention elsewhere.

For once we agree, Katie, Fleur thought, happily following the three in, pausing to eye the sugar crystals by the door.

She found Harry openly laughing at Neville who was buried beneath half a dozen boxes of firewhiskey chocolates, and artfully dodging any attempt made by Katie to thrust any confectionary upon him.

'Hold these, Harry,' she smiled, gently placing her armful of sugar crystals into his arms from behind.

'Damn,' he sighed, resignedly shouldering his burden to Neville's glee.

'You didn't think I would come in here and not buy something, did you?'

'I was hoping today might be an exception,' he chuckled, 'but I suppose I should be grateful you are not like Katie.'

Yes, Fleur agreed silently, you should. Try explaining your hobby of creating rituals to her.

Neville, who's glee had turned to horror when Katie had returned with a life-size, chocolate bowtruckle, was wrestling heatedly with the animated chocolate.

'It's worse than Trevor,' he groaned, when the chocolate creature was finally subdued, and imprisoned within a flimsy looking box.

'I'm going to eat it alive,' Katie beamed, earning an odd look from the assistant who quickly moved on to the next aisle.

'We should move on,' Harry warned, still smiling at the assistant's reaction to Katie, 'Neville's gran will come to apparate him back home for Christmas soon.'

'She is still apparating around at her age?' Katie inquired, surprised.

'There's not much that will stop Gran,' Neville grinned. 'I pity Voldemort should he ever try and mess with her, but Harry's right,' he eyed the bowtruckle, which was suspiciously still, 'we do need to move on to the Three Broomsticks if we're ever going to have this talk Harry's been promising.'

'Or we could have it here,' Katie suggested, catching sight of the unguarded free samples.

'There's nobody else in this part of the shop,' Fleur remarked, 'it's likely quieter than the pub.'

'See,' Katie grinned cheerfully from beside the samples, 'Fleur knows better than to pass up free sweets.'

'She also has better sense than to eat all of the alcoholic ones,' Harry reminded the brunette. Katie's hand froze over the sample tray, a guilty expression plastered over her face. 'But we can talk here,' he glanced around, and Fleur caught the subtle shimmer of the silencing ward he cast, 'nobody will hear us.'

'So what was so important that I had to get my gran to apparate me back from Hogsmeade rather than get the train?' Neville asked, carefully stacking Katie's boxes of chocolates back on the shelves while she was distracted. Fleur thought it rather kind of him, given she knew from Harry that Katie and her parents were running a little low on money after having to repair their café.

'You remember I mentioned that important object I was after?' Harry enquired lightly.

Neville frowned, then nodded. 'The one that the Lestranges might have?'

'Or any of Voldemort's most loyal,' Harry agreed. He glanced at her briefly, and she nodded encouragingly knowing Harry feared how his friends would react to hearing what he would have to do. 'It turns out there are more, and they're not just dangerous objects either.'

'What are they?' Katie's attention had finally been dragged away from the free samples.

'Horcruxes,' Harry murmured, 'and the reason Voldemort cannot be killed.'

'So he's immortal?' Neville looked visibly sickened by the thought.

'Not completely,' Harry explained. 'The horcruxes are pieces of his soul, bound to objects, or animals, and while they exist he cannot die, though he will be greatly weakened and end up as a spirit for a while.'

'Like when you were a baby,' Katie realised.

'They have to be found and destroyed,' Harry said flatly. 'No matter what, or who, they might be.'

'Who?' Neville exclaimed, horrified. Katie's face had paled to bone white.

I'm sure I did not react so dramatically.

'A person can be a horcrux,' Harry responded grimly, 'but I belief I know what the remaining horcruxes are. There is a locket, a cup, and Nagini, his familiar.'

'So the Ministry is going to have to destroy those?' Katie asked.

'The Ministry is not aware they exist,' Fleur sniffed at her naivety, 'and they must not learn of it either,' she added, seeing Katie open her mouth. 'If Voldemort learns we are looking for them he will either keep them close, or hide them where we will never find them.'

'He would keep them close,' Harry whispered. 'I would, if the hiding places I thought safe were discovered.'

'So who will destroy them?'

'Us,' Neville realised. 'That's why you're telling the two of us now, when you knew before. There are more than you realised, and you're afraid you might not be able to manage it alone.'

Harry nodded, smiling slightly, and Fleur pursed her lips a little. Neville was not quite correct, but it was a more innocent interpretation than the reason Harry had given her. He suspected that Dumbledore might have no use for him once the horcruxes were gone, and, knowing Harry had no intention of sacrificing himself for everyone, try to force things. Having Neville and Katie to destroy, or help him destroy the horcruxes before Dumbledore was ready could be decisive.

'So how do we find them?' Katie asked, looking fearful, yet determined. Her eyes, Fleur noted with a touch of pity, were fixed only on Harry.

'I was going to ask,' Harry grinned.

'We were going to ask,' Fleur corrected reflexively.

'Ask?' Katie did not follow.

'You're going to learn from the members of the Inner Circle,' Neville murmured, 'but they'd never tell you, not unless they had no choice, Harry, you must know that.'

'Of course,' Harry looked bemused, 'I wasn't going to ask nicely.'

Neville's jaw tightened, and he took a step away from the two of them. 'I won't let you do that, Harry,' he warned. 'Stopping them from killing or harming people again, and taking justice for what they have done is one thing, but torture can't be justified!'

Torture? We do what we have to for each other.

They did not cause pain just because they could. Harry took no pleasure from being able to harm others, and neither did she. Revenge was one thing, but to hurt people simply for the sake of it, to harm for no reason, was as unjustifiable as it was illogical. Fleur shifted irritatedly. Neville understood revenge, that was clear, and he understood what it meant to be placed in a position few others could comprehend, but she had overestimated him. Neville still saw things in black and white. The Death Eaters were the dark ones, those who fought them, the light, and while the means no longer mattered to him, the naive perception of light and and dark still lingered.

'Torture?' Harry eventually raised an eyebrow. 'I'm going to use legilimency, Nev, not the Cruciatus Curse. It's what I did to help you learn occlumency.'

'Oh.' Neville looked suitably mortified.

'You thought he would torture people?' Katie predictably rounded on Neville. 'Are you insane?' Neville flinched, and not just from the accusation of insanity. The brunette chaser looked like she might assault Neville with the final box of fire whiskey chocolates.

'I'm sorry,' he placated, 'but what else was I to think?'

'You should know me better,' Harry told him, and there was an edge of disappointment to his voice. A hint that he felt the sting by Neville's assumption as acutely as she did, more so, given Neville was his friend, and not hers.

The still slightly chubby young wizard shrank bank in the face of Harry's disappointment, and Fleur, who knew the unaffected face Harry was wearing to be false reached out a hand.

Her fingers found Katie's, outstretched towards in the same gesture.

For the briefest of moments the brunette's fingers lingered in Harry's direction, then she smiled very sadly, closing her eyes briefly and dipping her head to Fleur, and her hand fell away.

The victory did not taste so sweet as Fleur had expected.

She had assumed that Katie's final capitulation would be something she would revel in, despite the pity she felt towards the girl, and the guilt she couldn't write seem to quash for stealing Harry from her, no matter what her beau said.

She only felt sad, finding herself wishing that Katie had never loved her Harry, so that the poor girl wouldn't have had to lose.

How I have changed, she marvelled.

Before, when she had been without Harry, she had felt only disdain for the boy's who left their girlfriends for her, and only vindictive amusement in the tears of her female peers. They had been the girls who had teased her when she had remained immature for longer than they, and it felt justified that they know reap the reward for their unkindnesses.

Katie has never been unkind to me, Fleur realised.

She had tested her, with Bill, over her allure, and in so many other little ways, but Fleur finally understood the conflict that she had displayed when Fleur passed. Katie was happy that Harry and her were so inseparable, and devastated that it meant she would never have a chance.

For the first time in half a decade Fleur felt a kinship with a girl who was not Gabrielle, and, surprising herself, replaced Katie's hand on Harry's other shoulder.

The messy-haired brunette frowned, confused, a glint of something that was almost hope swelling to life in her eyes.

Fleur gave her a long stare.

No, the look said. He is mine. He will always be mine. You will never be where I am, but it doesn't mean you have to cut yourself off from him completely.

The realisation in Katie's eyes was bittersweet, but her fingers remained where Fleur had placed them.

'The other reason we are telling you this,' Harry continued, recovered from Neville's misunderstanding, and oblivious to the moment she and Katie had shared, 'is that there is a Death Eater who will die in the Lake District today.'

'You're going to…' Katie trailed off, then looked down at her feet, scrunching her toes in her shoes.

She doesn't want to know, Fleur surmised. She wants Harry to survive at whatever cost, but she doesn't want to know the price.

The brunette was softer than she was, kinder, perhaps, lighter, happier, and a better person, but not, Fleur decided, completely certain at last, a better match for Harry.

She is not as strong as we are. There is too much innocence in her, and it doesn't want to wither.

'We have to know,' Harry told her softly, 'and it is the only way we know of. If there was a better one, we would have taken it.'

That was not entirely true either. Fleur had come to realise that about Harry. When he was with her he was not the same as he was with others. There were facets of him he did not entrust to others, fragments he didn't think they could face, so he hid them. With Katie he remained the playful, cheerful man he was often with her, Neville understood more, but the true face and feelings of her Harry were for Fleur's eyes alone.

No other knew that he wanted to tear Voldemort's loyal followers from him one by one in revenge for the way the wizard had warped his world. No other other knew of the lengths Harry would go to to make sure that he stepped from that warped world into one that was theirs.

'Will you come?' Fleur asked. She knew before the words left her lips how Katie would reply, and the distinction, the difference, that made Harry hers, and not Katie's, would be obvious from the answer.

'I can't,' Katie stuttered uncertainty. 'I don't know how to fight, and I don't want to see…that.'

'We won't force you,' Harry reassured her gently, throwing her a look that reproachful, and empathetical in equal measure.

He understands, Fleur smiled softly, shaking her head. Of course he does.

'Neville?'' Harry turned her question to his other friend.

'I could come,' Neville replied slowly, 'I should, the Lestranges are Inner Circle too, but I don't know if I am ready.'

'There's only one way to find out,' Harry replied thoughtfully, 'and you'll have to take that step eventually if you want your revenge.'

'It's justice too,' Neville frowned, 'but I will come.'

'You should send a note to your gran that you will be back late,' Fleur told him. Harry always forgot little things like that.

'Good idea,' Neville swallowed, 'she'd be furious if she had to search all over Hogsmeade for me.'

'We'll wait a few minutes then,' Harry decided, looking pointedly at her.

Time to begin, Fleur realised.

'I will see you all soon,' she said softly. 'We can meet up safely here over the holidays now and again if Neville can escape his gran's custody.'

'I can,' Neville promised, glancing up from the note he was hurriedly scrawling.

'You can come and visit me again,' Katie beamed, 'since Harry made me promise to stay here with Alicia and Angelina instead of going back to London.'

'You're safer here,' Harry said firmly.

'I know,' the brunette sighed, 'that's why I promised, that and you would have left me for Malfoy if I hadn't.'

'Slughorn's party,' Harry explained. 'Malfoy gatecrashed the first one, and Slughorn invited him to the second. He probably wants to avoid making any enemies if he can avoid it.'

'Nobody is scared of Malfoy,' Katie laughed, 'not since you icicled him. He couldn't harm a pygmy puff.'

'Hermione's worried about him,' Neville cut in, 'but she also thinks that Krum was murdered by someone other than Bagman, who she thinks was imperiused to take the blame, and that Diggory was memory charmed to hide things.'

Typical Hermione, Fleur resisted the urge to roll her eyes, grasps the wrong end of the stick again.

The girl was too intelligent, and over thought everything even when the answer was right in front of her. She'd clearly deduced enough of the pieces to get close, and then had jumped to the strangest conclusion.

'Any idea who?' Harry asked curiously.

'No idea,' Neville shrugged, clearly unconcerned. 'Probably Malfoy if her recent obsession with following him is any indicator.'

'Malfoy couldn't successfully Imperius a baby,' Katie snorted.

'He's initiating his master then,' Neville grinned, 'failing to deal with babies must be a thing for dark wizards.'

'Malfoy,' Harry murmured thoughtfully, weighing the word on his tongue. 'That seems far-fetched to the point of reaching beyond reason, and Hermione is nothing if not logical.'

'I sent the note,' Neville announced, charming his swiftly scrawled apology into a lopsided bird, and sending it on its way.

'You could have just sent a patronus,' Harry remarked.

'They can carry messages?'

'Of course,' Harry grinned, 'did you not know that?'

'No,' he groused. 'At least I have something new to teach at the DA… If I can figure it out.'

'Hermione will be able to,' Harry assured him. 'It's not too complex.'

'We'd best depart,' his fingers briefly caught hers upon his arm, 'you'll have to get the portkey first.'

'I'll meet you there in a moment,' Fleur decided, smiling her farewell to Katie.

'Stay safe, Harry,' she heard the girl whisper as her beau apparated away clutching a surprised Neville.

Fleur barely even paused between her apparations. Silently appearing in the room that was their study to grab the mask she had enchanted, then stepping soundlessly onto the scree slopes of one of Britain's largest hills. They weren't majestic enough to be mountains, though they did hold a certain picturesque appeal to them.

Harry and Neville were standing alongside her. Her beau was shielding himself from her windswept hair with one hand, and staring out over the lake.

'It's nice here,' Neville said.

'It's a shame,' Harry agreed quietly, eyeing the descending sun. They'd tarried too long in Hogsmeade.

'If Travers is wearing his mask, which he should be, given that tonight is the full moon, and there are usually raids on the full moon, then he, and anything he or his magic is touching will be brought here,' Harry explained swiftly.

Fleur raised the mask, carefully adjusting the lines she had carved onto the back, and shifting them into the pattern that would activate the portkey.

'The Death Eater is called Travers, and he's Inner Circle, but we don't know much more about him than that.' Harry gave Neville a serious look. 'He will be armed, he is likely a powerful, dangerous wizard, and we need to defeat him and trap him so I can find out what we need from inside his head.'

'Whatever you do,' Fleur added, as Harry created a particularly powerful set of anti-apparition wards, 'don't panic. Stay calm, and shield or dodge if you're not certain of what you're doing, don't toss around anything that might hit or Harry or I in the back.'

'I won't,' Neville gulped, hands clenched and trembling, but eyes hard, and determined.

'Good,' Harry nodded, and Fleur twisted the last line into place.

There was a loud crack, and something heavy hit the scree in front of them, spilling and scraping down the slope around them.

It was far too loud to be one person.

Neville gasped, flinching away from what lay at his feet, only to trip over another that had slipped to lie behind him.

Blonde-haired, milk-skinned, and blue-eyed, with pale, rose lips, and blank empty eyes. Almost twenty, none older than Gabrielle, and all as cold and still as stone.

'Potter,' the black robed, silver-masked figure above them on the slope spat, stooping to kneel over the nearest body. 'I will not make the same mistake as my fellows.'

He rose, raising his wand.

'This is not the spell I intended for you, my beauties,' he whispered hoarsely, 'but I have no choice.' The eye-holes in the mask fixed themselves upon her, and the her stomach turned at the disgusting desire she could sense from behind the mask. 'You are a little older than I normally would like,' he muttered covetously, 'but you will make a fabulous replacement for them all the same.'

The wand twirled in elaborate gestures even as Harry hauled Neville to his feet.

'When your skin is cold as porcelain, your eyes bright with beautiful death, I will make you mine, and you will serve at my side until your perfection is tainted by time.'

The wand jerked up, and the bodies of the beautiful girls rose with it, as if dragged on the invisible strings of some unseen puppet master.

Harry's first spell was fuelled by fury. Fleur didn't need to hear the incantation to know that the Death Eater's words had incensed him beyond reason. Cracking, creaking spears of ice thrust from the floor in direct line from his wand tip to Travers, reflecting the eerie green light that sparked furiously from his wand.

Several of the girls were impaled, but Travers was not, and the child inferi soon tore themselves free, ripping off the parts of themselves that were stuck, or dragging themselves off the sparkling icicles to hurl themselves furiously forwards.

Now they were closer she could see the true horror of their appearance. The youthful innocence of the young girls was twisted in horrifying aggression, tattered clothes flapping, nails painted pink and sparkling extended in clawlike hunger.

The very thought of what Travers had intended to do to these girls made her feel sick.

'Incendio,' she heard Neville yell, and one, the closest and youngest looking girl, vanished in a gout of flame, that seared the flesh from her arms and face, melting her eyes until they burst with a sickening popping.

The inferius continued regardless, little more than a skeleton, trailing smoking tendons, and flaming hair as it hurled itself in reckless rage towards them.

Fleur cast the first spell she could think of; it was the new one she had been making, the temporary, white flash of energy as her redesigned version of the Unyielding Shield Charm distorted the the space between her and the melted face of the girl for a few seconds.

It was long enough for Fleur to conjure fire, and destroy her more completely.

Harry flicked his wand, and a tendril of thin, purple fire sliced across the mountain side, neatly dissecting and consuming those inferi that were behind her and Neville.

A bright hail of curses hissed towards them, bursting harmlessly on the skin of the inferi, and fading into the sky behind them as Fleur twisted away.

Neville was retching, shaking on his knees by the remains of the girl.

'Get up,' she hissed at him. 'Or end up like them.'

'I don't think he likes little boys as much,' Harry said coldly, and the dismissal in his tone sparked Neville into action again.

'Reducto,' he yelled, and the nearest inferius burst apart in scatter of gore, chunks of flesh, and splinters of bone.

'Fire,' Harry hissed at Neville, deflecting Travers' spells back at the Death Eater, 'use fire.'

The inferius Neville had blasted emitted a slight yellow aura, and gradually pieced itself back together, snarling more furiously than before, and baring, small, white teeth. The regeneration was not flawless, bits of her were missing, the side of her face, her tongue, and thick, raw, red lines stretched where the undead girl had been torn part.

'Incendio,' Neville shouted angrily, unleashing a stream of cherry red flames that encompassed the nearest inferi.

Fleur took the middle ground, guarding Harry's and Neville's backs as they fought either side, casting and recasting her temporary spacial distortion to catch the magically imbued corpses for a few seconds, and then burn them with bright, white flames hurled from her left hand.

The unattached torso of a girl who could not have been more than eleven dragged itself over the scree, too fast for Fleur to catch, and sank its small, sharp baby teeth into Neville's calf. He yelped in pain, and set her, and the bottom of his robes, alight.

Fleur severed the burning cloth from the rest with a swift charm, and returned to watching Harry's back as best she could, trapping the inferi who got close within a maze of small distortions, then burning them, one at a time.

'Enough,' Harry said firmly, and a cloud of black butterflies burst from his wand tip, streaming around them in a circle.

He flicked his wand, and from the cloud sped a scatter of the ebony insects, hurtling at speeds far beyond that which they should be capable of to explode in wisps of smoke against the inferi around them.

Each time the butterflies touched, the inferi crumbled to dust, and remained destroyed.

'No,' Travers moaned, 'you destroyed all of them.' Fleur could hear his anguish echoing from beneath the mask. 'A few I could have sacrificed, for you, Potter, and for her, but all of them!'

'You disgust me,' Harry responded icily.

'Imperio!' Travers cried, directing his wand at the insects around Harry.

One small, black butterfly broke from the cloud, floating slowly, but surely towards Harry.

It burst against his chest with a small puff of ebony mist, and her beau chuckled. Fleur sighed. There was a time for finding amusement, and this was not it.

'Fine,' Travers hissed hollowly. 'Taste the beauty of everlasting death; the perfection in which I will keep you and her until I am tired of you, or until your flesh has worn out too much to be of service to me.'

At the thrust of Travers' short wand the scree swarmed around them, animated, gathering together into serpentine twists of stone with the slithering and clacking of slate.

'Contusio,' Harry countered, shattering the crude stone serpents between him and the Death Eater with an ear-splitting concussion, and flash of bright light. Sharp shards of slate sprayed across the mountain, deflecting off Fleur's hurriedly conjured protection and into the night.

Travers ran the edge of his thumb along the line a piece had left in his mask, around him, the serpents reformed from the gravel, lunging past Harry at Neville and her.

'Reducto,' Neville cried once more, blasting the serpent apart into dust, but it quickly reformed a swirling, furious cloud through which bright, crackling beams of magic passed as Harry and Travers exchanged spells.

The second stone serpent unravelled as Fleur stripped some of the enchantments from it; they had been made in haste, and were not safeguarded from having the magic imbued into them altered. It collapsed, writhing, to the ground, until she banished it off the slope and into the lake below.

'Help,' Neville pleaded, watching the dust constrict around his shield charm, gradually crushing it inwards.

'You were not ready,' Fleur told him harshly, dousing the dust serpent in water, and waiting, flames shivering around her fingers, for it to reform out of mud.

Stray spells batted aside by Harry and Travers bored smoking holes into the dirt, and left dark, angry scorch marks on the stones.

'Stay back,' she warned Neville, as the mud at his feet began to twist and slither over itself. Swiftly she began to alter the enchantments upon it, absently admiring the skill it must have taken to create something like this so quickly. They were a formidable aid in a duel, and had Travers been able to stop her from changing the magic upon them, might have kept her and Neville busy long enough for him to fight Harry alone.

Not that he is ever going to win.

The Death was already starting to look the worse for wear. There were smoking holes in his robes, dark spots spattered across the scree beneath his feet, and the breath behind the mask was ragged, and fast.

'Avada kedavra,' Travers spat, the viridescent coloured curse splashing harmlessly against the slope behind Harry. He followed it with a barrage of bright, multicoloured curses, some of which left deep holes in the scree, and others that left, hissing, bubbling craters.

Harry's wand was crackling with white sparks, glowing so bright it was hard to look at, and the strong tang of burning ozone spread swiftly from him.

'Fulminis,' he replied calmly, flourishing his wand, and flicking, from the tip, a crackling bolt of white lightning that flashed from Harry's slender, ebony wand to Travers before the Death Eater could react.

It left a smoking hole the size of Fleur's hand in Travers stomach, and open, weeping burns across skin now bared by burnt, melted robes.

'Expelliarmus,' Harry murmured, snatching Travers wand from the air, and twirling it between his fingers briefly.

It snapped a second later, and the splintered pieces fell into the shattered scree.

'Kill me then, Potter,' Travers whispered. 'Make me as beautiful as my girls were, let pale, cold hands caress away my fears, feelings and future.'

Harry flicked his wand down abruptly, smashing the Death Eater's face into ground, and separating him from the spell-scarred, silver mask.

'Not yet,' he said coldly, pointing his wand between Travers' eyes. 'Legilimens.'

Several long minutes passed, then Harry blinked, and smiled ecstatically.

'Bellatrix Lestrange,' he announced brightly, as Travers slumped to the ground muttering brokenly beneath his breath. 'He entrusted one of them to her, and she placed it in the safest location she knew… Her vault at Gringotts.'

'We found one,' Neville grinned, dirty, and pale, but victorious.

'It will not be easy to get hold of,' Fleur warned, but her warning was more for Neville.

Harry had a Deathly Hallow that would conceal him from any and all enchantments the goblins might place to detect intruders. They needed only to find the vault, and persuade a goblin to open it.

'Kill me,' the Death Eater pleaded hoarsely, 'make me as perfect as they were, with white, cold skin, bright, brittle hair, and such wonderful, blank eyes. I want to be as I made them, my porcelain people.'

'You can rot here,' Fleur spat, disgusted by what the Death Eater had done to girls like Gabrielle in his depravity. Travers flinched, lips curling in horror, then Harry's piercing hex put a hole where his heart had been.

'You were not quite ready,' Harry said not unkindly to Neville.

'Sorry,' his friend looked distraught.

'If you want your revenge,' Harry's lips twitched, 'your justice, you will have to be better. A handful of hexes from a school book are not enough to keep you alive, let alone help you kill someone like Travers.'

'And there will be two of them,' Fleur added sharply. Neville needed to learn how to duel in earnest, before he got himself killed, or, worse, got Harry killed when he was meant to be watching his back.

'I'll be better next time,' Neville promised.

'Next time?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'We have learnt what we need for now, Gringotts must be next, and it will be easier if I go alone.' He met Fleur's furious stare with calmly.

'There is room for two under that cloak,' she commented acidly. 'Don't even try saying it,' she added warningly, when he opened his mouth. 'Someone has to go to watch your back, and that someone will be me. I know Gringotts best.'

'I can't argue with your logic,' Harry conceded. 'I'm going to apparate Neville back, I'll see you at home in a few moments.'

'Are we going to just leave him?" Fleur asked, pointing at Travers.

'I thought you wanted him to rot,' some of the ice crept back into his tone when he glanced at the Death Eater.

'I will burn him before returning home,' Fleur decided.

Harry disappeared, taking Neville's arm with a nod, and vanishing with a soft snap.

White hot flames swirled from Fleur's palm, engulfing the body of Travers, and the dust that was all that was left of his victims. A thick column of inky, greasy smoke rose from the fire, and the smell began to turn her stomach, so she stepped away, returning silently to a field of winter flowers, and the home she shared with Harry.

AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone that does!

90. The Sole Survivor

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

90 chapters! It feels like a lot less somehow, but here we are.

Enjoy...

Chapter 90

He was woken by a slim, warm arm slipping gently around his shoulders, and opened his eyes just in time to receive a faceful of silver-blonde hair as Fleur tucked her head into his collarbone.

'It's cold,' Fleur complained sleepily into his neck, pushing herself as close to him as she could manage.

There was frost on the window, twisting, spiralling patterns of it that spread all the way across the glass. This was Fleur's first real taste of English winter, and Harry had no doubt it was a far cry from the mild chill she was used to in France.

'I'm sure there is some way to enchant the walls and windows to retain the heat better,' Harry told her, using his free hand to smooth her hair down out of his eyes.

'Dangerous,' Fleur mumbled in response, pulling her knees up, and Harry winced as her feet came into contact with his calves. They were cold as ice. 'It's very complicated, and if you get it wrong you can destroy your house in any number of ways. Air currents, mould, damp, and fire,' she listed, sounding progressively less sleepy as she went.

'Speaking of fire,' Harry smiled, 'I'm sure there are easier ways to warm your feet.'

'I like this way,' Fleur decided. 'It is nice to have you here warming up the bed again.'

'I feel so appreciated,' Harry grinned, kissing her gently on the head, then rubbing his nose where her hair tickled him.

It is nice to be back, he thought.

The dormitories at Hogwarts were full of people, and had once felt like the home Harry had never had, but nothing could now compare to waking up beside Fleur. It was how the days were meant to start, and each dawn that did not happen so was a day that was less than it should have been.

'You know you're appreciated,' Fleur smirked, pulling her head back to give him a smoulderingly sultry stare from under long eyelashes. The fingers of the hand not around his neck gently traced their way down Harry's stomach, leaving light, hot lines as they trailed lower and lower.

Something crashed against the door, and Fleur's fingers flinched away.

Harry thrust his left hand out, wordlessly summoning his wand, and gently scooping Fleur off his chest.

'I'll see who it is,' he told her, conjuring himself a set of simple, dark robes from the air.

'Nobody is meant to be visiting today,' Fleur whispered, scrambling for her clothes on the opposite side of the bed. 'Sirius said the Order was busy with something big.'

Harry returned her concerned look, then, wand in hand, stealthily made his way along the landing and down the stairs, avoiding the creaky floorboards by the door to the bathroom and at the summit of the stairs.

The door banged again, more loudly, but Harry's revealing spell showed only a single wizard; it was red-edged, glowing silhouette he would always recognise.

'Sirius,' he greeted warmly, opening the door, 'what time do you-'

He fell silent.

His godfather was caked in blood, mud, and worse, dark, oily water dripped from his hair and ran from his soaked clothes to pool across their doorstep. Harry ran his eyes over Sirius, but none of the multitude of cuts and scrapes seemed life-threatening, though a few oozed nastily.

'Would you like a shower?' Harry offered glibly. 'You can tell me everything you need to when you're cleaned up, and healed. Fleur will do a better job than I when she's up.'

His godfather nodded tiredly, wand still clenched tightly in his trembling fingers, and staggered across the doorstep.

'You won't need that here,' Harry told calmly, nodding in the direction of the wand. It wasn't Sirius' second wand, which had been lost in the conflict in the Department of Mysteries, and nor was it the replacement he'd been using since; the wood was much lighter. Harry knew his first had been snapped upon his sentencing to Azkaban, so he could not have retrieved that wand, and that meant somewhere a wizard or witch was missing their most prized possession.

The light-wooded wand clattered to the floor.

'Whose is it?' Harry asked, picking it up gingerly. He was aware, given the extremely picky, defensive nature of his own wand, that some wands were best left alone. This wand didn't burn him, but a few, dull, green sparks sputtered from its scarred, battered tip.

'Moody's,' Sirius said after a long while. 'He's dead.'

'Tell me everything,' Harry ordered firmly, forgetting about the shower he had suggested completely, and helping a still filthy Sirius onto a chair in the kitchen.

'The Ministry relies on its eyes and ears across Britain, and, secretly, on the Order, to anticipate Death Eater attacks and raids,' Sirius relayed woodenly. 'Without Snape, the Order is blind, we heard nothing for weeks, and the raids began to grow expensive, aurors and hit wizards lost every time we turned around.'

'There was another raid tonight?' Fleur asked, descending from the stairs, tucking her wand back into her waist now that she knew it was only Sirius.

'Not a raid,' Sirius shook his head, 'a prison break.'

'Azkaban,' Harry realised softly.

'Voldemort needed the rest of his followers, the ones who fought for him in the first war, but weren't high enough priority the first time he broke out a group.' Sirius' eyes had darkened at the mere mention of the hell he had spent thirteen years in. 'When we learnt of his plan we reacted immediately, we never thought, never even considered, that it was the first thing we had heard for weeks, and so used to knowing his true plans from Snape, we didn't suspect a thing.'

'It was a trap.'

'Worse,' Sirius whispered hoarsely. 'Minister Bones committed almost every auror and hit wizard she could spare to defending Azkaban, and we were winning, even when Voldemort himself entered the conflict we were winning.' He took a deep breath, clenching his still shaking fingers into fists on the surface of the table. 'Werewolves, giants, every wizard in Europe who is willing to kill innocents for amnesty in Britain, and his Death Eaters, the real deal, not the blank masked, black cloaked initiates that have been raiding across the country. Moody reckoned it was almost his entire army.'

'And you were winning?' Fleur's disbelief was evident, and her wand was back in her hand now she had seen Sirius' injuries.

'Azkaban does not easily relinquish her victims, a fact I know all too well,' Sirius chuckled darkly, 'and a lesson I have learnt again.' He stared down into the wood of the table as if the visions of the Mirror of Erised were displayed within it. 'Scores of his followers died taking the harbour,' Sirius' voice hardened noticeably, 'it's the only place you can magically travel to or from, and even then only by a portkey authorised by the Ministry.'

'They had another spy, then,' Harry deduced.

'Likely many,' Sirius agreed absently, his hands had stilled, and his breathing slowed to a more even pace. 'It was only when the bodies of his initiates had piled so high that nobody could move that Voldemort acted himself. He and his Inner Circle drove most of our side back from the harbour's edge, and into the prison itself, but we held again once we had the walls and wards to shelter behind. Moody refused to retreat, staying to fight alongside Dawlish, and Scrimgeour at the top of one of the inlets, and I,' he grinned ruefully, 'I listened to my pride, and went after Lucius when I should not have done.'

'What happened to Moody?' Harry asked. The ex-auror had fought and survived more battles than anyone else, and he couldn't imagine the auror being killed easily.

'Voldemort,' Sirius said simply. 'The Inner Circle kept everyone pinned inside the walls, so nobody else could get out to fight, and Moody was left to duel him alone once Dawlish and Scrimgeour fell to the Lestrange twins, and Dolohov.'

'He will be missed,' Harry murmured.

'Voldemort ripped out his spine in front of the walls,' Sirius continued bluntly. 'He flicked his wand like Molly Weasley does when she's turning fish in the oven, and tore out Moody's skull and spinal column while he was still alive.'

Fleur winced, and even Harry frowned. There was nothing worse than finding yourself at the end of the Dark Lord's wand when he wanted to set an example.

'Once Moody was dead he had his followers surround the place, and ordered us to throw down our wands, join him and realise the prisoners, or die.' The shadows on his godfather's face lengthened. 'Nobody did, of course. The walls are well warded, and his numbers counted for little in the face of them, I thought we had a fair chance of winning, even with Voldemort there, but we forgot about the wardens.'

'The dementors,' Harry gritted, of course the creatures had joined Voldemort.

'They let the prisoners free from their cells, and attacked us just before Voldemort's followers outside did. It was a massacre.'

I hope Katie's father was not among the hit-wizards, Harry thought, a cold finger of fear wrapping around his spine. It's unlikely, he convinced himself, she would have contacted me with the badge if that had happened.

'How did you escape?' Fleur asked, running the tip of her wand along the last of Sirius' visible wounds, and watching it fade to a thin, pink line.

'I was not inside,' Sirius answered. 'Malfoy wanted revenge for his face, and I foolishly let him provoke me. We duelled along the inlet and he had forced me down to the edge of the sea when the dementors attacked. He did this.' Sirius drew back the tattered edge of his robes to reveal his ribs. A dark, crescent-shaped cut oozed thick, yellow pus, and weak, watery blood down his side. 'It looks worse than it is,' his godfather assured them, at their joint intake of breath.

'What spell was it?' Fleur asked, poking the inflamed flesh around it with the tip of her wand.

'I don't know,' Sirius shrugged helplessly. 'He cast it non-verbally, of course, but from the wand motion, and the colour of the spell I would guess that it's a variation of the flesh cutting curse.'

'Whatever it is,' Fleur frowned, flourishing her wand repeatedly over the wound, 'it is not healing, and the inflammation and infection is already spreading across your chest.' She traced the tip of her wand gently over the swollen, dark veins that stretched across his ribs. 'There are potions in the cupboard under the sink,' she told Harry quietly, 'bring the reddish-pink one, and one of each of the small vials.'

'Is it bad?' Sirius asked carefully.

'It's not good,' Fleur replied, 'you are lucky that my mother saw fit to foist any potion I might have use of on me in the times I have visited her.'

'It will heal then,' he smiled darkly. 'One more scar to tell another bitter story.'

'It will not heal completely,' Fleur corrected, taking the the armful of potions from Harry as he returned from the cupboard. 'These will stop it spreading, but that won't heal properly for at least a month or two, and the infection will take twice as long to fade.'

'A small price to pay,' Sirius shrugged, squeezing a small swell of pus and blood down his side. The rush of liquid came with a fetid, rotting smell, and Fleur's frown deepened.

'It's corrupted,' she said, peering more closely at the wound. 'This will hurt,' she warned, setting her wand down, 'it will hurt a lot.'

Without any further notice she pressed all five of her fingertips into the flesh around the wound, and pinched, squeezing out half a pint of red-tinged, yellow pus, and pushing the crescent open.

Sirius hissed, then clenched his jaw. 'That wasn't so bad,' he grinned weakly.

'I haven't done it yet,' Fleur told him seriously.

Harry's godfather paled, and swallowed hard.

A bright, blue flame burst into life over Fleur's forefinger, hovering there for a moment until it swelled white hot, then she thrust the tip of her finger inside the wound and held it there for several long seconds.

Sirius writhed, sweating and twisting in the chair so much that Harry cast a handful of sticking charms to keep in place.

'Are you done now?' He asked hopefully, when Fleur withdrew her finger.

'I am done,' she nodded. 'That curse would have rotted you from the inside out over the next week if I had not burnt away all the flesh affected by it.'

'That explains why he let me escape,' Sirius muttered, slumping in the chair as Fleur gently dabbed potions onto the edge of the crescent. 'I thought it was odd he let me swim out to sea without trying to curse me.'

'Will it have any permanent effects?' Harry asked Fleur softly. The wound looks even worse now that it had been cauterised. The inside of the crescent was blackened, burnt flesh, and the whole area was even more red, and swollen than before.

'He's not going to be up to duelling anyone for a month or two,' she said simply, 'and when it is healed as well as it ever will he will find that the scar, and the damage to his muscles will affect his movement.'

'Soon there'll be no more marauders left,' Sirius added quietly. 'I'm the last. Moony's gone too. Greyback tore him apart for interfering with the packs, he bragged about it at Azkaban.'

'We'll get Greyback,' Harry promised.

'I'll get him,' Sirius disagreed. 'You need to find those horcruxes. There's not much of the Ministry left now, certainly not enough to stop a determined attack should Voldemort throw his full strength into it, and the Order is gone. It's just me, Minerva, Filius, the Weasleys, and Dumbledore left, and I'm useless,' he poked viciously at the injury on his chest before Harry or Fleur could catch his hand. 'Dumbledore doesn't care about us, he's not said a word since Snape died, and we're dropping like flies, and Minerva and Filius are teachers.' He looked up at Harry, his eyes glazed with pain, practically delirious with it. 'There's nobody else left to stop him now. We're out of time.'

A cold shiver ran down Harry's spine. Voldemort was on the verge of victory from the sound of it, Dumbledore, and what was left of the Ministry and the Order were all that stood in his way.

The locket. The cup. Nagini. We need to go to Gringotts as soon as possible, Harry decided, sharing a look with Fleur.

'We found one, and Dumbledore has destroyed another over the summer and identified the rest,' Harry told Sirius. 'Nagini, Voldemort's familiar, and a locket,' a cold flush of fury flared at the memory of what Voldemort had defiled, 'then the cup which is in the Lestrange vault in Gringotts.'

'The snake that killed Arthur,' Sirius murmured, closing his eyes. 'I'll watch out for it. It was at Azkaban, if only I had known.'

'Go to sleep,' Fleur told him kindly, transfiguring the chair into something more comfortable, 'when you're rested, and feeling a bit better you can return to Grimmauld Place to recuperate if you must.'

'I must,' Sirius sighed faintly. 'Can't let them find this Fidelius too.'

'This changes things,' Fleur said after a long silence. 'We can't wait and pick off Inner Circle members one at a time anymore.'

'We need to go to Gringotts,' Harry agreed. 'When school starts again at the beginning of next week I will sneak you in through the chamber to the room of requirement too help me plan with Neville and Katie.'

'Why do we need them?'

'Neville deserves his chance for revenge against the Lestranges,' Harry explained, 'and Katie will cover for me with everyone at Hogwarts.'

'So we go after the horcrux in Gringotts,' Fleur summarised, 'what next?'

'The locket, and Nagini,' Harry said flatly. 'The snake is always with its master, so I will have to kill it just before him, but the locket is harder to find.' He looked wearily at Fleur. 'I'm not strong enough to defeat Voldemort yet either,' he gave her an apologetic look, 'I am going to have to do something drastic.'

'What?' Fleur sidled closer, fingers grasping as if she were afraid he might disappear if she were not holding onto him.

'The first ritual I did,' Harry said slowly, 'it altered my magic ever so slightly, making it more fluid, faster, there are a whole succession of rituals that follow on from it. Voldemort will have done them, so I must do them too.'

'Are they dangerous?'

'Not on their own, with a careful amount of time in between them,' Harry grinned ruefully, knowing Fleur would realise his plan immediately. Voldemort had likely done them in a cautious fashion over the years before he began his first war.

'All together,' she murmured, bowing her head and disappearing beneath her cascade of hair.

'We are out of time,' Harry said simply. 'I have everything I need,' he admitted. 'They're done almost completely with arithmancy and blood; it's simply a matter of using arithmantic principles to amplify, affect and alter the properties of my magic, and blood magic to make it permanent.'

'Will it make you much stronger?' Fleur asked quietly.

'It will change my magic,' Harry answered, 'I will be no stronger, but the differences will make conventional, usual defences less viable against me, and increase the effectiveness of certain aspects of my own spells.'

'Now?'

'No time like the present,' Harry remarked dryly.

'What will the ritual do?' Fleur asked, raising her voice to be heard over Sirius' snoring.

'It will make things more volatile and sensitive,' Harry answered. 'My magic will be more answerable to my emotions.'

'And that means,' she sighed.

'It means I will need to keep a tight rein on my feelings to cast some spells, and others, well if I pour my emotions into them they will become far more powerful.' The fiendfyre Voldemort had unleashed in Diagon Alley bore all the earmarks of a spell that had been so enhanced.

'Afterwards we will go to France,' Fleur decided softly. 'If we are out of time, then I should take my chance to see my family, just in case.'

'You know you can stay there,' Harry offered gently. 'The weather is much better.'

'The cold is not so bad with company,' Fleur answered firmly. Harry hadn't really expected her to consider it. 'Do you need to go outside?'

'No,' Harry shook his head, 'the blood will freeze, and wreak havoc with the ritual; it will have to be done in here, but you don't have to watch if you don't want to.'

'If I am not here,' Fleur rolled her eyes, 'who will pick you up and put you together afterwards.'

'It's not going to be Sirius,' Harry agreed, throwing a pointed look at his exhausted, injured godfather.

'I will tell Gabrielle that we are briefly visiting,' Fleur said, 'my parents too.' She disappeared upstairs to find her locket, which she had not had time to put on with Sirius' surprise arrival.

Harry drew the tip of his wand across his forearm, drawing, in crimson ichor, and burning, purple fire, the patterns of the runes in the air around him, and across the ground beneath him. He was careful to ensure that the patterns were perfect, and that his arithmantic properties were exactly as he needed.

With flourish of his wand he closed the patterns, and then, tensing his jaw, he activated the ritual, hoping it would finish before Fleur returned to see him suffer.

Please let this not hurt more than I can bear, he hoped.

There was nothing, no pain, no discomfort, no queasiness, and no sensations out of the ordinary whatsoever.

A faint, prickling, tingling feeling began in his fingertips and toes, little lancelets of discomfort that spread with excruciating, inexorable slowness from his extremities inwards.

He took several deep breaths, waiting for the pain to come as it inevitably must.

Harry did not have to wait long.

By the time the tingling had reached his elbows and knees it had swelled to sudden, stabbing pains that rippled over his skin like a cascade of needles, amplified the closer it drew to his chest.

Sensing what was to come would likely be far worse, Harry calmly took a seat on the floor crossing his legs, and folding his arms before, as an afterthought, casting a swift silencing charm upon himself.

Fleur did not need to hear him scream.

He took one last deep breath as the sensation swept over his shoulders to his heart, then squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth.

It was as if he had had his fingers dipped into magma. The burning sensation was so intense his fingers felt cold, and it moved fast, faster than Harry could anticipate to wash over him in a vast wave of hurt that blotted out everything else as its crest hung over him. In the eye of his mind he stared up at it for an eternity, waiting for it to break and obliterate him, but it only rose higher.

Something within him lurched, and twisted, contracting into itself and swirling like molten mercury with a wrenching pain that ripped the air from his lungs in a startled gasp.

The wave broke in a moment of noiseless, senseless darkness, the pain too much for Harry to comprehend.

He opened his eyes to find his head cradled between Fleur's fingers, pressed tightly into her stomach as she tried to wrap herself around him and shield him from the pain.

'Your silencing charm disintegrated,' she told him, voice and lip wavering. Her eyes were wet again, her lashes too. Tears she refused to let fall trapped between within them.

'Sorry,' he apologised ruefully, sitting upright. Fleur reluctantly let go of him, wrapping her arms around his chest instead.

'Is it over?' She asked.

'Yes,' he nodded, wandlessly summoning his wand from where he had dropped it.

The slender piece of ebony flew towards him far faster than before, and only his quick reflexes saved him from being hit in the face.

'What has changed?' Fleur demanded. 'What was worth that?'

'My magic is denser,' Harry frowned, twisting around to cup her cheek, 'and more volatile. It answers much more easily to my intent now, the affect my emotions had on my magic before will be amplified, and my denser magic will let me cast spells much more powerfully than is otherwise possible.'

'Was it worth it?' She pressed, placing her hand over his, keeping his fingertips against her face.

'I survived,' Harry said simply, 'my experimental ritual has worked, and there is nothing I need to give.'

'You need to recover,' Fleur told him firmly, reaching for the row of bottles he had not noticed.

'Ah,' Harry grinned weakly, trying and failing to stand and escape treatment. 'Hello, nurse.'

'Next time I will not look after you,' she said sternly, passing him potion after potion and waiting expectantly until he drank them. Harry recognised the iron tang of the blood replenishing potion amongst a handful of unfamiliar ones.

'You'd leave to me suffer?' He asked innocently, knowing she was bluffing.

'I would heal you perfectly,' Fleur responded lightly, 'then take away that silly book, and make sure you cannot ever get your hands on another.'

'I don't think there are any other copies,' Harry mused. 'It's handwritten by Salazar, and most of the ritualistic blood magic looks like it has been invented by him.'

'That explains why nobody else has ever done the rituals,' Fleur murmured softly.

'That and most of those who tried would have died,' Harry added absently, wincing when he realised that Fleur would definitely not appreciate his cavalier attitude to the dangers.

'Died?' There was certainly a note of ice to her tone.

'It takes a lot of magic to reach the threshold at which the ritual becomes permanent,' he explained quickly, 'more than almost any wizard has, and it all has to be from you. Other wizards and witches have different magic and that would upset the ritual.'

'How much?' Fleur looked only a little mollified.

'I can think of only a handful of recent wizards or witches who could manage it. Myself, of course, Voldemort, Dumbledore if he was so inclined, and maybe a handful of the most powerful, like Bellatrix Lestrange.'

'Could I?'

'I don't know,' Harry tried not to sound completely opposed to the idea, but it wasn't easy. 'Your magic is already different from usual, and I'm not sure what affect that would have.'

'It's ok,' she reassured him softly, 'I have no intention or need of carrying out such a ritual. It would likely ruin my skill at enchanting.'

'That's probably true,' Harry agreed, relieved. 'I will have to be careful with my spells now,' he admitted, 'but hopefully my magic will now be closer to matching Voldemort's.'

'And Dumbledore's,' FLeur reminded.

'I think my magic is already more powerful, and volatile than his,' Harry responded thoughtfully. 'Voldemort's is too, but Dumbledore is the epitome of experience, he knows a thousand ways for every one I do, and never wastes a drop of magic he does not need to. I think,' he finished cheerfully, 'that I would prefer to duel Voldemort. More powerful is not necessarily more dangerous.'

'That sounded almost wise,' Fleur teased gently, pulling him to his feet. His failed attempt, that he had tried to conceal to keep her from forcing another batch of bottles upon him, had evidently not gone unnoticed.

'France?' Harry raised any eyebrow.

'France,' Fleur agreed, apparating them both before he could.

The kitchen whirled away into a weak, winter sun. There were no leaves on the willow tree, and a thin film of ice coated the pebbles at the bend in the river, but the spot besides the tree trunk was as beautiful as ever.

'It feels a world away,' Fleur said, voicing his thoughts.

'I wish I could stay here,' Harry murmured, 'with you, and never have to leave.'

'We can stay in France,' she suggested half-heartedly. Fleur knew that it was not possible, but she would make him tell her, just to kill the last of her hope before staying here made it's loss all the harder.

'You it will only delay the inevitable,' Harry sighed, 'and then it will be your family at risk as well. Eventually,' he threw a wistful look at the branch they had so often sat side by side on in the summer before his fifth year, 'I will return here, and on that day I will stay.'

'Let's go,' Fleur said softly, 'lingering will only make leaving later harder.'

'Fleur! Harry!' It took a moment for him to realise it was Gabby that had spoken, and not her older sister. 'You're here.'

'Only briefly,' Fleur warned, as a silver-haired blur buried itself into her shoulder, scattering shoes across the hall. Her sister was only an inch or two shorter than her now.

'Is everything ok?' Fleur's parents joined them in the hall having heard the two of them arrive.

'We are fine,' Harry answered, 'but the Ministry is losing the war, so we have come to visit while we can.'

The in case we can't again was left unsaid, but sounded loudly in the silence all the same. There was no need to sugarcoat things, they would find out one way or another anyway.

'Stay in France,' Gabrielle pleaded, grabbing Harry's hand as well as her sister's, clutching the two of them tightly.

'I can't,' he said slowly and sadly, 'he will come for me regardless of where I am, and the only way to defeat him is in Britain.'

He tried not to be visibly taken aback at how Gabrielle had changed since he last saw her. She had always had the same figure as her sister, but the youthful, childish innocence and playful nature that had been so prevalent before was faded. Her eyes now held the same hard, wary edge as Fleur's did, only softening for Harry, and family, and tightening in the instances when her thoughts drifted elsewhere.

She has been left alone, he realised sadly.

A terrible wrench of guilt turned his stomach suddenly, for it was his fault that she had been left on her own.

You have stolen my sister from me, he remembered her saying, and it was true, he had.

'You can stay for tonight?' Fleur's mother asked hopefully, her fingers twisted in the folds of her dress.

'For a few days actually,' Harry smiled, making his decision in an instant. 'At least until term starts.'

He'd give Gabrielle her sister back for as long as he could, and let Fleur have some time with her family too, but then he would return to Britain, and destroy Voldemort permanently so the Dark Lord could wreak no further indirect harm upon the ones he cared about, and so that he did not have to hurt them again either.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

P.S. Greyback was not the werewolf Harry killed in Diagon Alley, he was mentioned as simply a follower of Fenrir.

91. Azkaban's Aftermath

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

The aftermath of Azkaban. For those who think that the last chapter felt rushed, which I will assume is to do with Voldemort suddenly getting much closer to victory, I have to disagree (obviously, else I wouldn't have written the chapter ;) ). There are turning points and critical moments in every conflict; this is the most recent, and obvious, courtesy of Harry rather selfishly and carelessly removing the spy that's been keeping the Order, and thus the Ministry on top so far. A sudden change merits a quick response, hence the ritual that Harry had previously discarded as hopefully unnecessary, and that's that.

It's probably worth noting that it's not all that sudden a thing either, the battle at Azkaban would have required a lot of advance planning, but sadly neither Harry not Fleur are privy to Voldemort's nefarious plotting, and couldn't know until it happened.

Chapter 91

There were no cheers, jokes or laughter in the Great Hall at breakfast, there had been none for the welcoming feast, and nor had there been any at King's Cross or on the train.

Everything was subdued.

A fearful silence had seeped into every student, the compartments had been full of whispers, the platform at Hogsmeade had been hushed, the carriage journey quiet enough for Harry to hear the hooves of the thestrals, and the four long tables were full of hollow-faced, red-eyed students, even Slytherin, whose ranks likely held the larger number of supporters of Death Eaters.

Their children would still be grieving, Harry realised, sweeping his eyes along its length.

Nobody was missing from his year, but a few faces had vanished from among the seventh years, both in Slytherin, and among the other houses too.

Those who have died fighting, and those who have fled.

There weren't many places to go now. The other countries, Harry knew from being in France, were being careful to monitor anyone who wished to enter, fearing that the first wave of Voldemort's spies might now seek to slip within their borders, and most were turned away.

His gaze flicked along his own table, to those who had been closer to the Order, and the wizards who had died defending Azkaban.

Ron looked less affected than most, but he had already felt the presence of death amongst those he counted dear, and knew better than the others how to deal with it. He was shovelling eggs, cereal and fruit into his mouth with the fork in one hand, and practicing wand motions with the knife in his other forcing Hermione to keep a wary, if approving, eye on his cutlery.

'Malfoy looks like he hasn't eaten all holiday,' Neville muttered, surreptitiously pointing in the direction of the Slytherin table to where a worried looking Pansy was attempting to slip mushrooms onto Malfoy's plate while soothingly patting him on the arm.

'He's as skinny as I used to be,' Harry agreed, watching the brunette's uncharacteristic show of concern just as bemusedly as the other Slytherins seemed to be.

Evidently the fact that his target is still alive is causing him distress, especially since he is likely one of Voldemort's few sources of insight into the castle, Harry deduced. Not much Pansy can do about that.

At the thought of Malfoy's task his eyes strayed to the staff table, to Dumbledore, who was still dressed in his brightly coloured robes and gloves, and to the empty seat next to him that had once belonged to a nameless wizard now somewhere in Germany.

There was, Harry decided, a distinct edge of tiredness in the lines of Dumbledore's face, and though he appeared physically unaffected by the withering curse Harry knew he still harboured, he was eating slightly more slowly than usual, and not cheerfully assisting the other staff members by providing them with oddly named vegetables as he had often done in the past.

'Not a very cheerful start to term,' Neville said with quiet vehemence. 'Voldemort and his followers have a lot to answer for.'

'And a short space of time to answer for it in,' Harry added, taking a few bites of his own breakfast while a despondent Katie pushed her food around on her plate, practically leaning on his shoulder.

He could hardly blame her. Her father was one of the few hit wizards still out there fighting for the Ministry as Voldemort's followers took control of the wizarding villages one at a time, forcing the Ministry back to London, and her mother was a healer at St Mungo's, somewhere that must be high up on Voldemort's list of targets given how important it was to the Ministry.

'You're planning on going to Gringotts?' Neville asked casually, as if Harry was simply intending to withdraw money.

'Very soon,' Harry nodded, 'provided I can.' He squeezed Katie's shoulder supportively, earning a slight smile, then turned back to Neville, his face grave. 'Care to accompany me again?'

'Do you think I should?' A hint of that former nervousness returned. 'I don't want to get in the way?'

'Last time was a bit of a baptism by fire,' Harry admitted. 'I was expecting only one Death Eater, not him and a horde of inferi he was in middle of creating.'

'And this time it's just Gringotts, and a horde of angry goblins.'

'I suspect there is more than goblins down in the depths of that place,' Harry grinned. 'Room of Requirement after Defence,' he decided, 'you too, Katie,' he said softly, 'but only if you want to come.'

'We're not going today are we?' Neville paled. 'I mean,' his mouth opened and closed a few times, 'I will if I have to, we need to do whatever we can to stop the Death Eaters, but wouldn't it be better to plan…' He trailed off at Harry's smile. 'It's just planning isn't it,' he realised.

'I'll bring Fleur,' Harry told them both quietly.

'Here?' Katie's head swivelled. 'How?'

'I have my ways,' he smirked. 'I'll be very careful though, for some reason the news about the two of us hasn't really spread.'

'People have had other things to talk about,' Katie said sadly, taking another small bite out of her toast.

'We'll put an end to it,' Neville told her fervently. 'There are only three, and once we've destroyed them, and Harry's killed him, everyone will be safe from Voldemort and his Death Eaters.'

'It won't be that simple,' Katie warned quietly, and Harry had to agree. 'There are many Death Eaters, and they won't stop even if Voldemort is dead. They're winning, they'll choose another leader, and everything will carry on.'

'We won't leave any Death Eaters to carry on fighting,' Neville pressed, eyes alight, 'they don't deserve a second chance, not after what they've done.'

'So you'd have Harry destroy the horcruxes, kill Voldemort, and all of his followers,' Katie replied indignantly, voice rising, and Harry hurriedly cast a silencing ward that, thanks to his altered magic, was strong enough to almost be visible.

'Someone has to,' Neville answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 'I'm not going to leave him to do it alone. We should all be prepared to do what we must to stop the Death Eaters, and Voldemort.'

Katie did not look convinced, and chewed her lip briefly before falling silent and glancing between the two of them with a frown.

Harry had seen that look before; it was the one she wore when she had spotted a problem nobody else had yet considered, but wasn't sure whether to voice her concerns. He normally saw it at quidditch practice back when he'd played and they'd all been discussing chaser strategy.

'Defence,' he reminded Neville, before his friend could retort. 'I want to see who's teaching it.'

'At this rate it will be Voldemort, because everyone else will be terrified of the curse.'

'Again,' Harry said dryly, 'it will be Voldemort again.'

'He taught here before?' Katie gasped. 'Who let him?'

'Dumbledore,' Harry grinned. 'Although he didn't apply in the conventional method, spent most of his time sticking out the back of the head of our favourite stuttering idiot.'

'You mean,' Katie paled dramatically, a hint of her usual humour returning. 'Surely not!'

'I'm afraid so,' Harry smirked, guessing where she was going.

'But he seemed so harmless,' she continued innocently. 'He was such a cute wizard, all shy, and stuttering, quite chubby though, and terribly forgetful.'

'Hey,' Neville objected, finally realising that Katie wasn't talking about Quirrell. 'There's nothing sticking out the back of my head, thank you.'

'More than can be said for you, Harry,' Katie agreed, cheerful again.

'Shush you,' he smiled, patting futilely at his hair. 'We need to go to Defence, Nev,' he added, glancing up to find the rest of the seats at the staff table as empty as Snape's.

'Is it a single period?' Katie asked.

'Yes,' Neville replied, when Harry shrugged to say he didn't actually know. 'We'll see you upstairs afterwards.'

'I'll be there,' she beamed. 'I want to know how you intend to sneak Fleur in.' Katie swung herself out of the bench, stretching her arms in front of Harry, who looked pointedly away. 'Until then I'm going to go flying,' she decided. 'Later!'

'You're not going to tell her, are you,' Neville grinned.

'Not until at least after the first few guesses,' Harry replied, smirking, 'she'll come up with an entertaining story all on her own.'

'So,' Neville picked up his bag, and finished his last piece of toast in two bites. 'Any idea who is teaching us?' He asked, after swallowing several times.

'No idea,' Harry admitted. 'Why did you think I would?'

'You know stuff,' Neville answered honestly. 'I'm fairly sure you know more magic than the rest of the students, and probably most of the staff too.'

'Only a few specific areas,' Harry shrugged. 'I wouldn't want to challenge any of the professors in their own subject, there's a reason they're here.'

'What about the Defence teacher?' Neville grinned, as they traipsed in the direction of their class. 'Could be another Lockhart.'

'I still wouldn't challenge them,' Harry dismissed, 'there'd be no point. If it really is Voldemort, then I'll consider it,' he tilted his head thoughtfully, 'but I'd probably just fill any essays he had to mark with snide remarks. Doodle little drawings of cups, lockets, snakes, rings, and tiaras around the edges and wait for him to explode in fury.'

'Really?'

'Be serious, Nev,' Harry smiled, 'if it was actually him, then I'd curse him the moment his back was turned and nobody was looking not bait him into killing half the school.'

'Oh,' Neville looked slightly relieved, and a little put out by Harry's choice of tactics. 'Probably for the best.'

'Certainly a better idea than us having a pitched battle in the middle of a school,' Harry remarked, 'can you imagine how many children might be hurt, or killed just from being nearby the two of us, let alone an actual army.'

'We'd have to find a way of protecting them,' Neville responded, nodding to himself. 'We could send them to the kitchens, or the Room of Requirement.'

'They'd all be in one place,' Harry agreed, 'safe right up until they're found, then swiftly slaughtered. Best not to fight here if it can be avoided,' he said grimly, 'and besides, think how cross Filch would be with all the mess.'

'He might finally retire,' Neville grinned, 'though he's been much more pleasant this year, since Umbridge vanished actually.'

I wonder why, Harry thought victoriously to himself.

It was almost as if Snape had never left, the curtains still hung alongside the windows, shrouding the room in its perpetual gloom, and Harry was sure he could still smell aconite.

Although, he remembered, frowning, I did forget to check my food again.

The short stay in France had left him a little complacent.

The Slytherins had already monopolised one side of the classroom, and Harry and Neville were forced to join Hermione, who seemed to be suffering from some sort of identity crisis given she had taken a seat at the back of the classroom rather than the front.

'It's very dark in here,' a wizened voice commented. 'How did Severus ever manage to see anything in this?'

Surely not, Harry sighed.

A sharp movement in the doorway caught his eye, and the curtains swept back to flow the room with light.

'That's better,' Dumbledore beamed cheerfully, tucking his wand away in his sleeve. 'Can't teach much in the dark.'

The headmaster strolled gently along between the desks, surveying the students casually, and no doubt making a careful note of what he could deduce from their appearance, and likely from a touch of legilimency too.

'Since Professor Snape suffered a unfortunate demise,' Dumbledore continued gravely, the previous cheer evaporating, 'I am forced to cover these classes myself, but I daresay I have picked up enough over the years to still have a thing or two to teach you.'

There were a few, barely veiled murmurs about treachery from the green and silver lined side of the room, and while Dumbledore seemed not to notice them Harry was sure he caught the old wizard's eyes flick across the faces of the culprits, pausing just long enough to take note of their identities.

'We shall start,' he decided, 'with the Shield Charm. You all learnt this last year, and some of you have displayed it quite admirably since, but in NEWT year we must learn to cast such spells non-verbally.'

He flourished his wand, and a soft, pulse of silver light surrounded him briefly.

Harry took the opportunity to study his wand, he knew, from both Dumbledore's and Ollivander's reaction to his own wand, that you could learn something about a wizard from their wand, and Dumbledore's was no simple stick of oak.

For the first time he had ample chance to see it for longer than a few moments, and made careful note of the carvings, which he realised now were clusters of berries, and he did his best to hold in his head the exact shade and grain of the wood, though he did not recognise it from what he could recollect of the ones Ollivander had offered him. It was a strange wand, but nothing obvious about Dumbledore could be surmised from its appearance, and Harry was hardly surprised. Albus Dumbledore was not a wizard who gave up his secrets lightly.

'I find that thinking on your feet, and having a suitable incentive makes the best way of learning,' the headmaster said, dispelling his shield. 'So, to create such a situation I will pair you up, and one of you will attempt to non-verbally jinx the other while they shield themselves in the same fashion.'

Dumbledore strolled through he benches once more, selecting pairs seemingly at random. Harry wasn't sure why he thought that Neville and Malfoy would make a good pair, but watching the blond Slytherin try and penetrate Neville's shield would be almost as amusing as seeing him get repeatedly jinxed. The rest of the class seemed to agree, as, minus a fretting Pansy, they were smirking unanimously.

'And that just leaves the two of you,' Dumbledore nodded, gesturing at the back bench, upon which only Harry and Hermione now sat. 'If I may,' he added, running his gloved fingers through his beard, 'I might suggest the body-bind jinx as your jinx of choice, it will be easy for me to judge it's effectiveness, and is not overly dangerous.'

'Do you want to shield first?' Hermione inquired, smoothly pulling her wand from her waist.

'I don't mind,' Harry shrugged, flicking his own wand into his palm. Hermione's eyes flashed to the eleven and a third inches of ebony twirling between his fingertips, and her eyes narrowed.

Her wand darted up, completing the wand motion quickly and perfectly, and had Harry needed to cast the Shield Charm using the wand motion, he would not have had time to block it.

As it was, her spell fizzled harmlessly out against a wall of blindingly bright, silver light.

'Excellent, Miss Granger,' Dumbledore announced from the front, shimmying between pairs, and stepping past jinxes with only millimetres to spare. 'First time?'

'I've been practicing, professor,' Hermione admitted reluctantly.

'Nothing to be ashamed of, Miss Granger,' Dumbledore said approvingly, 'I did not get where I am without a little practice.'

Oh, compliment her, he thought irritatedly, as if my non-verbal shield charm wouldn't have stopped anything short of an Unforgivable, and hadn't been cast in an instant.

'My turn?' Harry asked the smiling girl, still annoyed that the headmaster had ignored his ability to cast a shield that he himself would have been proud of.

'Yes,' her smile faded, and she raised her wand.

Harry flicked the tip of his ebony wand in her direction with no small amount of vexation; he didn't need the wand motion, or the incantation for a spell like this.

Hermione's shield charm was cast a second before his spell hit her, the sizzling, crackling bolt of magic burst in an explosion of white sparks against her shield, that was at least as strong as Neville's normally was, and Harry frowned, turning away. He had expected his spell to break through, even if she did manage to block it, simply because of what he had done to his magic with the last ritual, and the appearance of the spell, which was far from what it should have been, had lent him confidence.

What went wrong? He wondered, twirling his wand idly.

'Harry, stop it,' Hermione's voice was panicked, and he swivelled instantly on the spot.

Her shield, which had previously been a wall of white light, was coated in a thick, dripping layer of hoarfrost. Spines of ice stretched sharp from its surface, growing all the while he watched, and behind the ice Hermione's breath misted and froze only a foot from her face.

The rest of the class fell still to watch in horrified fascination as Hermione was slowly enclosed in a prison of icy spears. Malfoy was looking even paler than usual, and Pansy was holding his arm so tightly her fingers had gone bone white.

'Harry,' Dumbledore frowned, 'I said to use the Full-Body-Bind.'

'I did,' he answered absently, watching curiously as the floor beneath her toes froze, the ice swelling and cracking to encase her feet, and calves in a thin, but sturdy layer.

'Can you end the magic?' The headmaster demanded, sweeping closer, but seemingly believing Harry's answer.

'I'm not casting anything anymore,' Harry shook his head, 'it's not under my control.'

'Reducto,' Hermione shouted ineffectively from within, her voice muffled by the ice, and Harry could see that it had crept up to her waist now, despite her struggles to move.

It's rendering her immobile, he realised, relieved.

No serious would harm would come to her by his hand, even is she would be a little rattled, and hopefully the imprecise nature of non-verbal spells would be blamed for his loos of control over his magic.

My irritation with Dumbledore, he realised, fingers curling into a fist in frustration.

He'd been annoyed, but not overly so, and his volatile magic had warped his spell to an incredible extent because of that tiny flare of emotion.

'Reducto,' Hermione cried again. The red flash heralded a spider's web of cracks across the dome, but they quickly began to disappear, re-freezing.

'Incendio,' Dumbledore murmured, drawing a thin ring of fire around the dome of ice. 'Stay still, Miss Granger,' he warned gently, 'the ice seems to be attempting to fulfil the purpose of the body-binding spell, and will likely not harm you.'

'Get if off me,' Hermione hissed angrily. She could no longer mover her wand arm, the ice had surrounded her from her feet to her neck.'

'In just a moment, Miss Granger,' Dumbledore replied patiently. He cast a second spell, one Harry didn't recognise, and the ring of fire suddenly spread into a thin sheet that, for an instant, covered the spiny surface of the dome of ice, then exploded into a cloud of steam, leaving a dripping wet, furious looking Hermione tightly clutching her wand.

The Slytherins were sniggering, and most of Harry's housemates looked a little amused now there was no danger, but Malfoy and Pansy seemed just as worried as before, though Harry suspected it had more to do with his puissance, than any concern for Hermione's wellbeing.

'What the hell was that, Harry?' Hermione demanded in shrill voice.

'My spell did not come out as I intended,' he answered, sounding suitably apologetic.

'Indeed not,' Dumbledore agreed. 'An honest mistake, I believe, Miss Granger, so I'm sure an apology will suffice.'

'My apologies, Hermione,' Harry offered, genuinely sincere. He had not intended to scare or hurt her.

I need to remember to keep my emotions under control, he decided firmly, else they will twist every spell into something unexpected.

Hermione huffed, and turned away.

And it seems I have lost my partner.

'Perhaps you should try once more,' Dumbledore suggested when Harry went to put his wand away.

'Mr Malfoy,' he instructed, taking a gentle but firm grip on the Slytherin's arm, and ushering him from Pansy's petrified clutches into the spot Hermione had just vacated. 'You non-verbal Shield Charm,' he prompted.

Harry's wand flicked up, and Malfoy flinched slightly.

'Protego,' he shouted, casting quite a strong looking shield.

'Non-verbal, Mr Malfoy,' Dumbledore remonstrated over the top of his glasses while the class tittered slightly. 'Harry, if you will.'

He flourished his slender length of ebony once more, making sure he was in control of his emotions, even if he was not calm, and employing the more basic occlumency exercise just in case they would help.

There was a bright, white flash, and Malfoy keeled over, his shield charm shattered.

'Excellent, Harry,' he headmaster enthused, 'I haven't seen such effective casting in almost fifty years.'

'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied warily.

'Ten points to Gryffindor, I think,' Dumbledore decided, 'and five to Slytherin too, that was a well cast Shield Charm, Mr Malfoy, despite it's fate.'

Malfoy stalked back over to the green and silver side of the room, looking weary, and obviously not at all caring about the points that Dumbledore had awarded him.

Hermione looked scandalised.

No doubt she thinks I should have lost points for the mishap with my first spell, Harry mused, rolling his eyes.

'Well,' the headmaster said cheerfully, 'after all that drama we seem to have reached the end of the lesson. If you could stay behind for a moment, Harry, just to discuss what might have gone wrong with you first spell.'

'Of course, sir,' Harry said evenly.

Will I ever leave a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson on time, he wondered irritatedly.

It was cutting into his time with Fleur, even if they would be spending it planning to break into one of the most secure buildings in Britain.

'Harry,' Dumbledore took a seat on one of the edges of the benches with visible relief. 'I haven't seen such potent, powerful spell casting in some time, but I must apologise for deceiving you.'

There's a first time for everything, Harry thought wryly.

'I actually wanted to ask if you were willing to join me in my office in a few days time for another of our increasingly important meetings. As you know things are not going as well as I had hoped, so we must hurry if we are to stop Tom before he does anymore damage to peoples' lives.'

'I'll be there, professor,' Harry answered, a little annoyed. He had better things to do now. Dumbledore seemed to have fallen behind him in his hunt for horcruxes, and, as the old wizard was clearly aware, there was little time to waste.

'Please try to keep you magic under control, Harry,' Dumbledore told him softly as he made to leave. 'You have been gifted with great power, but it is up to you to ensure that you do not inflict it upon others as Tom has.'

Harry pretended he hadn't heard that, and continued swiftly out the door and towards the bathroom on the second floor, disillusioning himself as he did so.

Now that Myrtle was gone, and that a new year, who had not been warned about the bathroom had joined, girls had actually started to use it again, which made getting to it a lot harder than before, so Harry was forced to choose his moment carefully.

He slipped in through the entrance when a young Ravenclaw girl came out looking quite distraught and fleeing in the direction of their tower with red stained fingertips.

Ignorance is bliss, he decided.

One of the stalls was occupied, so he cast a quick silencing ward over the area, and a sticking charm on the door itself while he opened the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, then released them just as the doorway ground shut.

I never thought I would miss Myrtle, he sighed, but I do now.

He dispelled his concealment, apparating straight from the top step to the Meadow, and Fleur, who was happily piling sugar into her hot chocolate by sink gave out a little gasp when he appeared next to her, then looked very guilty and attempted to hide the bag of sugar innocently behind her back.

'Nice try,' Harry grinned, 'but I think that proves who's the worst between you and Gabby.'

'Hogwarts?' She asked, pouting every bit as cutely as her sister, but in a far more devastating manner.

'It's planning time,' Harry explained.

'And we both know that your plans are vague and overly complicated at best,' Fleur said absently.

'They work,' he defended, taking her proffered arm.'

'Only because they are so vague it's hard for them to fail,' she retorted gently as they appeared back in the chamber with a soft snap. Fleur was still holding her hot chocolate in her left hand.

'Here,' he passed her the cloak, trading it for the hot chocolate after a pause in which Fleur genuinely seemed to be considering if one of the Deathly Hallows was worth the temporary loss of her treat. 'It's only until the room,' he said.

'Good,' Fleur nodded, 'this smells. Do you ever wash it?'

'No,' Harry stopped misstep to disillusion himself, 'it never occurred to me.'

'I am going to have to wash my hair,' Fleur groused as they exited the chamber.

'I don't think it's been washed in centuries,' Harry whispered gleefully, opening the door.

Somehow Fleur managed to stamp playfully on his foot, despite his invisibility, and hers.

'Let's go,' he grinned taking her hand, and leading her along the corridor while the coast was clear.

Once he was near the stairs he abandoned his invisibility, which was no longer necessary now that he was outside of the girls' bathroom, and guided Fleur up the stairs, past the trick step, which he nearly gave in to the temptation to lead her into, and to where Neville and Katie were waiting.

'Harry,' the blunt greeting did not belong to either Neville or Katie, and caught him by surprise.

'Ron,' he dipped his head neutrally.

'Hermione's not at all happy with you,' the red-head told him, smiling slightly. 'I think she believes you did that on purpose.'

'I didn't,' Harry shrugged, 'but whatever keeps her happy.'

'Is that hot chocolate?' Ron asked curiously, peering at the mug. 'I didn't realise you went in for hot drinks.'

'Yes,' Harry grinned, 'quite tasty actually,' he took a long slow sip, doing his best not to wince at the tightening of Fleur's fingers around his wrist.

It was thick, and very sweet. Harry imagined it would be an awful lot like drinking molten sugar that someone had carelessly left near some cocoa powder for a few seconds.s

'If you take one more sip,' Fleur whispered. 'I'm going to keep this cloak.'

'Did you hear something?' Ron asked, looking around confusedly.

'No,' Harry smirked, raising the mug to his lips again, 'not a whisper.'

'Ok,' Ron nodded, 'I have to go to class, see you around, Harry.'

The moment he was out of earshot Fleur's heel came down on his instep like the wrath of God. Harry hissed in pain, nearly spilling the hot chocolate.

'It was a tiny bit,' he protested, clutching his injured limb, 'and you nearly made me spill it all.'

'Mine,' Fleur said grumpily, and invisible fingers stole the mug away. 'It's bad enough I have to wear this. Deathly Hallow,' she muttered, 'it's still a cloak, who doesn't wash something for so long, especially something you put on your face.'

'You are genuinely not happy about that are you?' Harry realised.

'It smells,' Fleur replied tartly, and Harry could hear the tilt of her chin in her words, and squeezed her fingers affectionately.

He opened the small wooden door opposite Hogwarts' worst tapestry, and led Fleur inside to join Neville and Katie, both of whom were sitting quietly around a fire on sofas that looked an awful lot like the ones in the common room must have done before a few centuries of use.

'You may as well take it off,' Harry told her quietly. 'I don't think the castle wards cover this room, or Salazar would have been able to find it when he was searching for it.'

'Heist planning time,' Katie beamed, seeing the two of them arrive. Fleur shot Harry a sceptical look, clearly not convinced that Katie was taking this seriously enough.

'Well,' Harry began, 'I suppose the first thing we should do is decide who is coming. Are there any reasons why you might not want to help me break into what is arguably the most well-protected place in Britain?'

'No,' Fleur smirked, taking a seat next to him, and opposite Katie.

'I don't want to be in your way,' Neville said tentatively, 'last time I was just useless.'

'Well you don't have a choice,' Harry grinned, 'because at the moment the only way I can think of involves polyjuice potion, and that isn't meant to be used for gender-switching.'

'So you and Neville will have to go,' Fleur deduced, pulling her eyebrows into a delicate vee.

'There are only two Lestranges,' Harry apologised.

'Why am I here?' Katie demanded, swinging her feet around and dropping them dangerously close to Harry's lap. He half suspected that she had intended to do just that again, only to realise Fleur might not approve and change her destination at the last minute.

'Well someone has to be around to cover for us while we're gone,' Harry grinned.

'She's getting better at Occlumency,' Neville said, 'everything you taught me, Katie seems to understand.'

'That will help,' Harry warned, 'but only as long as nobody has a reason to really look around in your head.'

'I won't give them one, then,' Katie stated.

'That's broadly the idea,' Harry grinned. 'Right,' he closed his eyes to concentrate, and then a small, wooden model of Gringotts as far as he knew it rose out of the floor between them. 'If Neville and I are going as the Lestrange brothers, then we're going to need hair or something from them.'

'Easy,' Neville said darkly. 'They left plenty of blood behind at my parents' house; it's still there on the walls.'

'You're sure it is theirs?' Fleur asked gently.

'I know the story of what happened well enough to know where the people were,' Neville explained distantly, 'so I know whose blood is whose.'

'Well that makes things easier,' Harry sighed, 'the other option was for me to transfigure us into them, but it would be very complicated and tricky.'

'If you provide me with the blood, Neville, I can make the polyjuice potion,' Fleur offered gently.

'I'll owl Gran,' he decided.

'And she won't be concerned with what you're doing asking for the blood off the walls of your parents house?' Katie asked sceptically.

'Probably,' Neville nodded, 'but she won't tell anyone, and what other choice do we have?'

'We could go there,' Fleur suggested, 'I can apparate you, Neville, and we can get the blood.'

'It won't work,' Harry frowned, 'you can only apparate him from Hogsmeade, and we don't have time to wait until the next weekend.'

'Gran it is, then,' Neville decided. 'It will be fine, if I tell her it's important, and for stopping Voldemort she won't even ask. She trusts me, and my judgement.'

'Fine,' Fleur sighed.

Harry pushed his aside his own unease. He didn't like relying on someone he couldn't fully trust, someone other than the three outside these walls, and Fleur's family, who he refused to drag any further into this.

'So we polyjuice, request to go to the vault,' Harry shot a pointed look at Fleur, 'then what.'

'Once you convinced the teller to take you to the vault you will have to cross the protections that Gringotts employs.' Fleur tugged gently at her little finger. 'Most of these won't trouble you since you're being taken to the vault by one of their tellers, but the polyjuice will only last until you cross the waterfall.'

'The waterfall?'

'It undoes the effects of most magic,' Fleur told him enthusiastically. 'It's one of the goblins' finest pieces of enchanting. The water is imbued with water magic they use, and cycled round.'

'Does nobody ever complain about getting wet?' Harry asked.

'It only needs to be near you,' Fleur said, 'it passes either side of the path, but the touch of the spray is enough.'

'What will we meet after that point?' Neville looked unwilling to give up this small piece of vengeance over an enchanted waterfall, no matter how brilliant a piece of magic it was.

'Nothing,' Fleur's face darkened. 'The teller will likely need persuading again, but he will still take you to the vault, and grant you access. The cup can be destroyed and the object achieved.'

'Getting out will be tricky,' Harry realised.

'Exactly.' Fleur's tugging at her finger are more agitated and Harry, afraid she might hurt herself, put his hand over hers. 'As soon as the waterfall is triggered they'll put up the wards and alert all the defences. Getting out will be all but impossible.'

'What choice do we have?' Harry echoed.

'None, I suppose,' Fleur gritted, and Katie pulled a disconsolate face.

'It's not much of a plan,' Neville murmured.

'Harry's plans never are,' Fleur said sharply, 'he likes to improvise.'

Uh oh, he winced.

Fleur was really not happy with this plan, though there was little either of them could do about it for now, and Katie, whose temper could be equally destructive, was looking, if anything, even less pleased than Fleur.

'I will cast the protean charm on Gringotts visitors records and schedule,' Fleur decided. 'It's about time I bought back half of our home, and when I meet with the goblins to organise it I'll take the opportunity to create a linked copy, just in case anyone interesting decides to visit Gringotts.'

'You think the locket might be there too?' Harry inquired.

'If he has entrusted it to one of his followers to keep safe it makes sense that they would put it somewhere they believed to be unreachable by anyone but them.'

'It's a good idea,' Harry smiled, 'but be careful, please, and be quick.'

'I will spend as little time in Diagon Alley as possible,' Fleur assured him. 'It will no doubt be cold, or worse, raining, so I have no reason to linger.'

'How good are you at duelling, Nev?' He asked, turning to his friend.

'I'm not sure,' Neville admitted, 'nowhere near as good as you or Fleur, but ok, maybe, you can come to the DA and find out, we need someone to show us duelling tactics.'

'Perhaps,' Harry mused. He had no enemies in the DA, if anything they were likely to be allies, so helping them wouldn't hinder him, and he needed Neville to be proficient enough to guard his back.

'I'll come,' he decided.

'Good,' Neville grinned. 'The next meeting is in a few days time, check the badge.'

Harry glanced over at Fleur, who was whispering something to a still quiet Katie, and Neville, who had until this moment been completely oblivious to Katie's affection for him suddenly seemed to realise something, and levelled an incredulous stare at Harry.

He nodded regretfully, and shrugged to show there wasn't much he could do. Neville seemed to accept that, and they both strained their ears to listen.

'He'll be fine,' Fleur was murmuring, 'if he doesn't come back to us in one piece I promise to let you hex him, but only after I'm done with him.'

'I suppose you should go first,' Katie sighed, 'all things considered.'

'I'm glad we agree,' Fleur nodded, giving the girl a gentle pat on the shoulder. 'His plans always seem to work out, though,' she finished absently, 'so I'm sure we're worrying over nothing.'

'I don't think I could keep doing this,' Katie confessed. 'I wouldn't be able to endure waiting like you have, and I'm not powerful or skilled enough to go with him.'

'Then it's probably a good thing that you don't have to,' Fleur remarked, but not unkindly.

'It doesn't feel like it,' Katie said miserably. 'It feels like I'm falling apart from the inside.'

Neville quietly slipped out of the room, abandoning Harry with the two girls.

Thanks, Nev, he thought acidly.

'I understand,' Fleur told her former rival gently as Harry did his best to pretend he wasn't there while simultaneously listening and hoping they wouldn't notice him.

'Do you?' Katie's tone turned bitter. 'How could you?'

'Not too long ago I watched Harry turn from me at the side of the lake he risked so much in to save my little sister. I am sure that he hated me then, and there was nothing I could do but watch him walk away, and watch you follow him. I was certain in that moment that you would catch him, and I had lost.'

'I should have walked faster,' Katie said hollowly.

'It's probably best not to think about it,' Fleur said softly. 'Things are what they are.'

'Sorry,' Katie apologised, looking past the silver curtain of Fleur's hair to Harry, who was doing his best to wish himself away. 'That must have been awkward for you,' she giggled weakly.

'A little,' he agreed, 'but I'm glad I heard it.' He shared a soft, grateful look with Fleur, thankful that she had been so kind to Katie when it might have been easier for her to push the girl away from him.

'I should go,' Katie hurriedly excused herself.

'Thank you,' Harry said gently in the quiet after the door shut.

'I could not be cruel to her when I might have ended up in her shoes,' Fleur admitted. 'I think I understand now why you spared Snape.'

'Katie's a nice girl,' Harry said carefully, 'cute too,' Fleur's eyes narrowed, and he grinned playfully, 'but she's not you.'

'Nobody else is me,' Fleur tilted her chin into the air dramatically. 'I am Fleur Delacour.'

'Doesn't say it on the Triwizard Trophy though, does it?' Harry laughed.

'You cheated,' she insisted sliding across the sofa to lean against him. 'Voldemort was helping you to the final.'

'Not very well,' Harry denied. 'I should complain next time I see him,' he grinned. 'I wonder what he'd say?'

'Avada kedavra,' Fleur replied dryly, flipping her hair over the shoulder away from Harry so she could kiss him.

'You're probably right,' he smiled against her lips, 'apparently it happens every now and again.'

'More frequently than you admit,' Fleur agreed. 'Gabrielle will outdo me this year, I think,' she said fondly. 'She has more reason to spend all her time studying than I did, and she is just as talented as I am.'

'Not as wasteful with sugar though,' Harry commented.

'If I am eating it, it is not a waste.'

There was a short silence as Fleur remembered her hot chocolate, and hurriedly drank it before it cooled any further.

'Have you found anything else about the Hallow?' Harry asked quietly, unable to help himself.

'Sorry,' she said softly, shaking her head. 'I've traced all the family trees I can find, but there has been no mention of it, or anything that might be it, in any of the wills, and all the family lines are now ended save for yours.'

'Damn,' Harry muttered.

'We will find it,' Fleur promised him. 'It is real, like your cloak, so it's out there somewhere, and if something is possible, then together we can do it.'

Harry nodded, pulling her back into him again; it was nice to spend a little time with her, even as the time they could afford to spend was running out.

He folded the cloak gently across his lap.

'No,' Fleur wrinkled her nose.

'No?' Harry frowned. 'If you do not wear it you will show up on the castle wards straight away.'

'I meant don't fold it up and put it back in the chamber,' Fleur explained. 'I'm taking it back to the Meadow briefly, and then I'm washing it… Repeatedly.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

92. The Gloves Are Off

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I'm not 100% happy with this chapter, but I can't figure out why, so I've posted it.

It's a really boring one, literally nothing important happens, and nobody dies! Does anyone actually trust my author's notes anymore when I say stuff like that?

Enjoy?

Chapter 92

Harry had wracked his his brain over the last couple of days to think of a good way to teach Neville to duel, to give him a little bit of experience, without having to attend the DA meeting like his friends had suggested.

Unfortunately he had not been able to think of a suitable excuse.

I don't particularly care about helping those who haven't learnt to help themselves doesn't sound like something Neville would take well.

That train of thought had led him here, to the quiet, far corner of the Room of Requirement in which the DA still met. Katie, his usual company at the few meetings he had attended in the past, wasn't yet here, and, given she had stopped coming after Umbridge had left, was likely only going to turn up because Harry was.

There were more students than he remembered. A lot more. Neville seemed to have mustered most of the school from their year down to the third years, and the room had swelled into a vaulted hall two thirds the size of the great hall to accommodate them all. Among them he spied most of last years members, though a couple of faces were missing, and he noted that the majority of these more-experienced students had stopped carrying their wands in hard to access, inconvenient places.

'Where's Nev?' Ron wondered loudly, ushering Hermione over to join him. 'He's not normally late.'

The door creaked open halfway through Hermione's listing of all the possible places Neville might have gone before coming to the meeting.

'Sorry,' Neville apologised sheepishly, 'I've been searching for my assistant, but he's proven elusive.'

'Your assistant?' Ron frowned.

'Last time you had an assistant it was Harry,' Hermione noted none too enthusiastically.

I think the first lesson of dueling should be to check the corners of the room in case you aren't alone, Harry smirked.

'He's still my assistant,' Neville nodded. 'We need to learn how to duel properly.'

'Why can't you teach us that?' Someone, probably Smith, called out.

'I don't really know what I'm doing,' Neville admitted, 'but Harry does.'

'What about Hermione?' Terry Boot suggested. 'I heard she produced non-verbal spells first time in all her classes, and they're meant to be important for dueling.'

'I can teach,' Hermione agreed, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

'Didn't Potter trap you within your own shield?' One of the few Ravenclaws in their year pointed out.

'Because he used magic he wasn't supposed to be,' Hermione snapped. 'If he'd used the correct jinx I would have blocked it. Neville and I can teach this, Harry's not even here.'

'Aren't I?' He called out, amused at the silence which immediately descended.

'We can still teach this,' Hermione decided scathingly.

'If you don't want my help, I shan't give it,' he shrugged. 'We can practise together some other time, Nev,' he assured his worried looking friend.

'No, Harry,' Neville shook his head firmly. 'You don't have to go. They don't realise the difference yet.'

'Telling them didn't seem to work,' Harry commented idly, 'so you'll have to make do with what you have.' He threw Hermione a flat stare to show her just what he thought of her dueling capabilities.

'So we can show them,' Neville grinned.

'That's probably not a good idea,' Harry disagreed, unwilling to display his prowess before so many witnesses. Things about his style, and technique could easily find their way back to Malfoy, and then to more worrying wizards and witches.

He started towards the door, more than happy to teach Neville privately and away from prying eyes.

'Afraid you'd lose?' Smith called out. 'Neville's probably better than you from what I've seen, you're just worried we'll tell everyone you aren't all that great after all.'

'You've been telling people that for years, Smith,' Harry responded dryly. 'In second year you thought I was setting a giant snake on muggle-borns, third year people stopped listening to you briefly because they realised you're an idiot, but oddly they forgot again afterwards, and since then you've been telling everyone I'm a dark wizard, or some other nonsense.'

'You are a dark wizard,' Smith insisted.

'Not contradicting me calling you an idiot then,' Harry grinned, hiding his irritation at how naive they all were.

Dark and Light, he thought disgustedly, a dichotomy of ignorance.

'How about a test,' Hermione suggested carefully. 'One potential teacher against the others. Whichever side wins the duel clearly knows more, and should teach. That's fair.'

'Others?' Neville asked suspiciously.

'It's Harry,' Hermione explained, 'or it's us.'

'You want to duel Harry… voluntarily,' Neville said slowly, bemused by her enthusiasm.

'Normal duelling rules,' Hermione said reassuringly. 'So no dangerous spells, no leaving the ring, and no talking about anything except the duel until the duel is over.'

'And when is the duel over?' Harry inquired, now interested. Hermione was starting to annoy him, and if the other students really thought that knowing a handful of spells was going to be enough to protect them from Death Eaters then maybe it was a good idea he show them how wrong they were before they discovered it for themselves in less favourable circumstances.

'If one side is stunned, or unable to use magic,' Hermione recited eagerly.

'I suppose it will be good practice,' Neville agreed nervously, 'but try not to be too cruel please, Harry.'

'I won't damage anything Hannah will miss,' he replied innocently, causing the blonde girl to flush violently red.

'We'll need a ring,' Neville said hurriedly, changing the subject.

'Done,' Harry said calmly, flicking his wand into his palm and drawing a wide circle of purple fire around them on the floor. Hermione watched with faint admiration, lips pursed as she tried to puzzle out the piece of magic for herself. Harry doubted it would take her long; it wasn't too complex, and she was easily smart enough to do it herself

There were a few murmurs as the ring curved closed, and Harry was sure he heard several of the Ravenclaws placing bets on how the duel would end, how long it would last, and how many spells would be cast. Their ignorance of the principles of a even a controlled duel obvious in their declarations, let alone a true one, where any spells might be cast.

Hermione drew her wand from her waist, tapping its tip against her palm as she moved to stand next to Neville on the opposite side of the ring from him.

Time to have some fun, Harry decided.

He wouldn't use anything dangerous, mostly the useless jinxes he had learnt to teach Neville in their fifth year, and fairly obvious strategy; it wouldn't be too hard to show them the gulf between himself and them without revealing much of himself.

'Will you adjudicate, Ron,' Hermione instructed tersely.

'Will I what?' The red-head replied, baffled.

'Judge, Ron,' Hermione sighed. 'You need to judge.'

'Oh,' he nodded. 'Why didn't you say so?' He grinned.

Hermione didn't respond, she was biting her lip, while Neville was already looking rather resigned to defeat. The fact that the walls of the room behind him were slowly covering themselves in padding didn't exactly display a great deal of self-confidence.

'Begin,' Ron yawned lazily.

'Stupefy,' Hermione hissed, drawing her wand perfectly through the wand motion, and then from it into a handful of small school corridor hexes that Harry recognised from watching Malfoy throw his weight around in their fourth year.

He batted them away, deflecting each curse into the ground to leave small, smoking rings on the floor without moving his feet. Hermione would have to try harder than that.

'Neville,' she urged, taking steps along the side of the ring to try and catch Harry between the two of them, casting stunners as she went.

'Right,' his friend nodded, mirroring her movements.

I wonder, Harry mused, shielding himself wordlessly as they stalked closer, and watching the faint, red ripples of light splash harmlessly across the outside of his defense.

The Chamber of Secrets, the room Salazar had created, was beyond the wards, and his ancestor had said that Godric and Rowena made their most impressive things.

I need the anti-apparition wards to end, Harry tried.

He didn't really need them that badly, he could just shield, or deflect their curses past each other, or any number of things, but he quite wanted to watch Hermione's face when she saw him apparating on school grounds.

A bright, red beam shot from the tip of Hermione's wand, and another, more brilliant, and crackling with power, came from Neville's.

There was a soft snapping noise, and Harry twisted around to face them from the other side of the ring, the light of his shield dissipating between his two opponents.

It worked, he grinned.

A brief check showed that the Room of Requirement had created a small, ward free, bubble within it, just like it had when he had brought Fleur to visit, which allowed him to apparate, but only within the bubble.

The chamber is better, he grinned. Salazar will be very pleased when I tell him.

The founder would probably be unbearably smug too.

'That's not possible,' Hermione said, flabbergasted. 'The wards at Hogwarts can't be breached.'

'He's using the room,' Neville realised, 'it can probably allow us to apparate within it.'

'Good guess,' Harry told him with a smile. 'But now it's my turn to cast spells.'

His ebony wand snapped up, unleashing every jinx he knew in a veritable hail of crackling, sparkling colours that hissed and spattered off the floor and walls around Neville, bursting in showers of smoke upon his shield, which wavered every time his spells struck it.

A little more, he decided, allowing the irritation he had felt at Hermione to guide his magic.

His spells shattered in showers of ice against Hermione's hastily conjured piece of wood, covering the floor with small fragments, and leaving shallow scars across its surface.

The tip of his wand twitched in an almost imperceptible vee, then the blasting curse ripped the wall of wood into splinters. Harry's follow up jinx of choice, the jelly legs hex, tore through Neville's shield like it was wet paper, and every subsequent spell struck his hapless friend leaving him with boneless, waving legs, a faceful of tentacles, waist length hair of quite a charming shade of teal, and no wand.

There was a groan of disappointment from the audience, and Harry frowned.

Did they want me to lose so badly?

A pinprick of cold flared to life in his chest at their ingratitude, part of the reason he was doing this was to help them, he was risking tipping his hand to Voldemort to keep them safe even when they meant nothing to him, and him nothing to them. He carefully suppressed his anger lest it warp his magic into something dangerous again.

'Flammam ungui,' Hermione cried, taking advantage of his moment's distraction.

A thin, hooked claw of fire lunged from the tip of her wand, narrowly missing Harry's shoulder as he threw himself out of the way, and singing his shoulder.

Nothing dangerous, he thought furiously, as the DA members cheered excitedly, and Ron's mouth stayed shut, despite his slightly guilty countenance. I'll show you what happens to girls who play with fire, Hermione.

The tiny shards of ice on the floor cracked and twisted to life, rising as shining, transparent moths, that swirled about his former friend in a vicious storm, beating against her hurriedly raised shield, until their wings broke and they fell to the floor.

Hermione emerged, beaming triumphantly at the fate of his animated insects, only to freeze as she caught sight of him, and the furious white sparks that crackled and leapt from the tip of his wand to the floor. The flickers of energy left dark scorch marks on the floor, and showered them both in small, glowing pinpricks of light that floated in the air for a few moments before fading.

She paled slightly as they swirled and condensed at the tip of his wand, flaring too bright to look at, and Harry spared a brief, cold smirk in reply.

Girls who play with fire get burnt.

'Fulminis,' he said calmly, forcing his anger down just before he released the spell.

A single beam of bright, white lightning leapt between them, piercing through Hermione's desperate shield. The light dissipated instantly, scattering like steam before wind, and the spell hit exactly where Harry had intended it; the point between her feet, melting the stone beneath her toes, and scorching her shoes.

She yelped at the spreading heat and jumped back.

'Perhaps you'd prefer not to break the rules?' He suggested deceptively evenly, a fresh wave of white sparks spiralling along the length of his wand, filling the room with pungent tang of burning ozone. Ron's jaw was clenched, and it looked like he wanted to do nothing more than end their duel, but couldn't without revealing obvious favouritism after Hermione had cast the first dangerous spell.

Hermione's eyes narrowed, and thick bands of copper began to encircle his legs and waist.

Clever girl, Harry conceded, releasing the spell into the floor before the metal grew too close, but you should never have broken the rules.

The audience seemed to have realised that Hermione had started something she was unlikely to be able to finish, because they were looking distinctly nervous, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. Smith looked like he was on the verge of panic.

The copper bands fell from his body as he wrest them from Hermione's control, twisting and stretching into shining snakes that slithered around the edges of the ring even as Harry deflected Hermione's spells, some of which he thought she must have made herself, because he had never seen them before, back at her and into her shield.

She melted his copper snakes, vanishing the copper pools before Harry could make use of them, but, despite her determined glare, her breathing was coming fast.

Time to showcase duelling tactics, he decided.

He stepped along the edge of the ring, casting spells across Hermione at her far shoulder just as Fleur had tried to do to him in the chamber, and forcing her along the curving line of purple fire closer and closer to him.

She tried her best to resist, but Harry could simply deflect her spells back where he was already casting, and the two drew inexorably closer until Hermione was forced to throw up her shield, unable to dodge, or step any closer to Harry without being hit straight away.

He flicked his wand lazily, directing the vibrant, crimson bolt of magic into Hermione's shield, and watching it collapse with a ripple of scarlet that flooded over it as the spell struck Hermione in the sternum and she dropped like a stone to the floor.

'Enervate,' Ron muttered, attempting to revive her, but his spell flared out ineffectively against Harry's denser magic.

Harry quietly undid the effects of his hexes on Neville, which were similarly resistant to t he counter curses, and then revived Hermione himself.

'Well,' Neville grinned ruefully, patting his chin to check all of the tentacles were gone. 'I think the winner is pretty obvious.' He turned to give Hermione a disapproving look. 'You shouldn't have broken the rules,' he told her, 'someone could have got hurt.'

'I knew Harry would be fine,' she dismissed, waving her hand vaguely. 'He's not going to be troubled by a few fire spells.'

'Care to explain what you did, Harry?' Neville asked, and Ron, who was murmuring something in a slightly disappointed tone to Hermione, turned to listen intently.

'Simple tactics,' he shrugged. 'I split the two of you up, forcing Hermione to protect you in a way that hindered your ability to duel because you couldn't see, then capitalised on it. I knew, when you were gone, that I had more stamina that Hermione, so I lured her into using expensive spells, then trapped her once she was too tired to fully maintain her shield.'

Some of that was even true.

All of it was valid advice, but he'd never had to think about this duel. There was simply too big a gulf between himself and the others. His magic was stronger, he was more experienced, his spells more powerful, and he knew far more magic to throw at them.

It was never close to a fair contest.

Neville would likely be a fair duellist. He had enough power, though he lacked speed and creativity. Hermione was going to be quite proficient; she was always going to be knowledgeable, that had been a given from before the first day of term, but she was creative too, and fairly fast.

She might be able to hold her own against most wizards and witches with a bit more practice, Harry realised.

'There you have it,' Neville grinned. 'Split up into pairs, and have a few practice duels between you. We need to know how to fight to stop the Death Eaters from harming our friends, and our families. Remember, if you've defeated a Death Eater make sure your opponent can't get up after you've gone and go on to hurt others.' Hermione nodded slightly at Neville's words. 'We can't afford to give our enemies a second chance to hurt us when they have already done so much, we have to protect everyone at whatever cost.'

Still naive, Nev, Harry thought.

He was right to make sure his enemies stayed defeated, but protecting everyone, when there were so few who would do the same for you; he didn't believe it was worth it. Harry knew with little doubt that he could protect those that deserved it, but only if it did not risk him, or those he deems truly precious.

I have become far less selfless, he realised, almost proud, because he had finally fully adopted the ideals Salazar had shown him.

'I need to leave,' Harry announced, when the rest of the room was no longer listening.

'Meeting Dumbledore?' Neville asked.

'Yeah,' Harry nodded. 'I might check on Katie too, I was expecting her to come this evening.'

'We're in Hogwarts,' Neville said reassuringly, 'there's not much that could happen to her.' Harry gave him a long, flat stare until the boy wilted.

'There's not much that could happen to her as long as she isn't near you,' Neville amended, grinning.

Too right, Nev, Harry thought slightly guiltily.

'She hadn't finished her transfiguration essay,' Neville told him when Harry didn't smile. 'I found her sulking about it in the library while I was searching for you. She really wanted to come and watch you wipe the floor with Smith.'

'Good,' Harry laughed, relieved she was fine. 'I'll tell her what happened to you when I next see her.'

He needed the support of his few friends too much to nobly walk away from them and leave them safe, and it was too late for them regardless. Katie was already on Voldemort's list of targets, even if she wasn't likely to be a priority, and Neville intended to go after the Lestranges and put himself in danger regardless.

'Don't,' Neville groaned, 'you've already destroyed my reputation, how did you manage to break my shield with a Jelly-Legs Jinx?'

'Skill, Nev,' Harry grinned, 'pure skill.'

'Sorry, Harry,' Hermione said, drifting over from where she'd been talking with Ron. 'I got a bit carried away.'

'I noticed,' Harry said neutrally, as Neville moved away to put out Colin Creevey's robes which had caught alight.

'I designed the spell myself,' she said a hint of pride resurfacing, 'but I shouldn't have cast it at you just to see where I was relative to you. Neville was right, someone might have been hurt. I'm better with books than battles, anyway.'

'You'll be a good duellist, and no harm was done,' Harry answered absently. He was more concerned with the meeting he was about to have with Dumbledore than Hermione's slightly insincere apology. No matter how genuine her remorse for risking the health of those nearby might be, she hadn't seemed at all concerned about Harry; it wouldn't have bothered him if she knew his full duelling ability, because he wasn't likely to be hurt by a spell like that, but she didn't.

I suppose she could have deduced it, he surmised, slipping out of the room before he was accosted by anyone else, especially Smith, who was throwing him dark, suspicious looks, and not turning his back on Harry even while he was practicing duelling.

The corridors were empty at this time, the only things that ran this late were the DA and quidditch practices, and Harry pitied anyone that was outside in the driving rain this evening. Nobody enjoyed quidditch in weather like this, not even Katie.

'Sherbet Lemon,' he ordered the gargoyle, but it didn't move, and he stubbed his toes on its clawed foot when he continued unsuspectingly.

He didn't tell me the password, Harry sighed.

'Sugar crystal, fizzing whizz-bee, cockroach cluster, chocolate frog,' Harry listed, wondering what other types of sweets he knew. 'Jelly slug, sugar quill, liquorice wand, acid pop-'

The gargoyle sprang aside, and with an exasperated shake of the head at how easy it was to break into the headmaster's office, Harry continued up the spiral staircase.

'Harry,' Dumbledore greeted from the top of the steps. 'I wondered who had managed to open the gargoyle when I had only just changed the password.'

'You asked me to meet you, professor,' Harry reminded him.

'Indeed I did,' the headmaster nodded, beard swaying, 'I do apologise for not telling you the password beforehand, but I hadn't chosen a suitable item of confectionery. I was about to send Fawkes to find you.'

'A good thing I was already here, then,' Harry smiled.

Phoenix travel wasn't his favourite method of motion, especially as Fawkes had a habit of helping himself to anything nearby that he deemed tasty.

'Exactly so,' Dumbledore beamed, ushering him inside with a hand on his upper back. Harry resisted the urge to shrug it away irritatedly, and conjured himself a comfortable chair in front of the desk. 'How are you feeling about your NEWTs, Harry?' The headmaster asked, relaxing in his chair.

Merde, he thought, realising he'd rather forgotten about them since Christmas.

'Other things on your mind recently,' Dumbledore deduced, 'I hope you are ready nonetheless, Harry, it is too late to back out now.'

'I will be fine,' Harry decided after a moment's contemplation, 'it hadn't quite dawned on me how close they were.'

'Three days,' the headmaster noted, 'and I took the presumption of requesting an apparition test too.

'Thank you, professor,' Harry smiled. It hadn't really bothered him that his apparating was all illegal, but a license might be useful just in case.

'Once you have taken them what will you do?' Dumbledore asked curiously. 'You have a whole year.'

I will leave, Harry thought.

'Perhaps I might take Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Care of Magical Creatures next year,' he lied.

'Seven NEWTs,' the headmaster beamed proudly. 'I myself only had six at the age of seventeen.'

'What did you want to show me, headmaster?' He inquired politely, changing the subject before the headmaster managed to deduce his real plans.

'Another insight into the mind of Tom Riddle,' the headmaster said sadly. 'You may find it as pitiable as it is harrowing.'

Harry suspected he would find it neither of those things.

'When he was very young,' Dumbledore began, folding his hands in his lap, 'Tom found that he was different from other children. I suspect, from how his accidental magic manifested and grew into something more sinister, that he was not well-treated where he grew up.'

'Where did he grow up?' Harry asked.

'Ah,' Dumbledore looked down at desk, 'Tom's mother was a woman named Merope Gaunt.'

'Gaunt?' Harry asked, only just managing to keep the sharp note of surprise from his voice. The Gaunt family were on his tapestry of descendants from the Peverells.

'Yes,' the headmaster took off his spectacles and placed them down between his forearms, giving Fawkes a warning look when the phoenix trilled mischievously and perked its head up. 'The Gaunts claim to be descended from Salazar Slytherin, and their ability to speak Parseltongue made it difficult to deny. They were blood purists of the most unfortunate kind, marrying within their own family tree, sometimes even brother to sister, to preserve their purity.'

'No wonder Voldemort didn't turn out well,' Harry mused.

'Tom was raised in an orphanage, actually,' Dumbledore corrected gently. 'His mother, Merope, fell in love with a rich muggle, and, using magic or more likely potions, since it is believed she was a squib, she seduced him, married him, and became pregnant.'

'I imagine her family didn't take that well.'

'No,' the headmaster looked terribly sad, 'Merope was abandoned by Tom Riddle Senior when she stopped controlling him, and died in childbirth after naming her son. Her brother Morfin, and her father, Marvolo never searched for her.'

'How heartless of him,' Harry frowned.

'I daresay Merope was grateful she was not found,' Dumbledore sighed, 'Marvolo would not have taken kindly to what his daughter had done, especially not as she took one of his precious heirlooms, a locket, with her. 'Still, it is sad that she found herself so bereft of affection, life often offers us naught but bitter pills, and there is little we can do but swallow them and pretend they are sweet.'

He offered Harry the bowl of Sherbet Lemons, taking one for himself.

'So Voldemort grew up never knowing about his family either,' Harry said evenly, helping himself to one of the sour, yellow sweets.

'I believe Tom was never treated with affection by anyone when he was young, and by the time he realised he was different he had come to hate the world that hated him.' Dumbledore sighed, and rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'When I gave him his Hogwarts letter he was overjoyed to see that there were others like him, even if he concealed it and was wary of a trick to begin with.'

'So he came to Hogwarts,' Harry summarised, 'but the magical world didn't turn out to be the home he expected.'

Dumbledore frowned. 'Why do you say that, Harry?' He asked softly.

'I can easily imagine how it must have been for him to discover there was a whole world to which he belonged when he had never fitted in where he was,' Harry said calmly. 'It must have come as a terrible disappointment when he discovered this world was not much better than the one he hoped to escape.'

'Perhaps you are right,' the headmaster agreed quietly, but Harry got the distinct impression that Dumbledore did not think so. 'In any case, Tom had already developed a very selfish, introspective view of the world, he cared nothing for others, took what he wanted if he could, and had no qualms about hurting those in his way.'

Harry's paranoia sense began to tingle slightly; Dumbledore was not so far from describing him, though he would have used less unflattering terms to portray what he felt were simply realistic moral boundaries.

'He collected trinkets, and trophies, hooded things that held any sentimental value to them, and prized them above all else. That, Harry, is one thing that has never changed, as his estimation of himself grew, so did the value of his trinkets, but he never stopped collecting them.'

'This is to do with his choice of horcruxes, isn't it?' Harry realised.

'Indeed,' Dumbledore beamed, approving of Harry's intuition. 'I suspect that Tom has created his horcruxes using objects that he valued above all others, either as trophies, or as trinkets, important objects, as I said before, but he will have placed them in similarly important places.'

Dumbledore rose from his seat to stir the pensieve with tip of his strange wand.

'I am not sure whether he made this ring, or the diary first, but I do know that he killed his father, and his father's family, and, knowing him like I do, I suspect he used the death of his father to make a horcrux of the ring he took from his uncle. It was a trophy of what he had accomplished, since his uncle, Morfin, was framed for the murders, and died in Azkaban, and it was a symbol of his heritage, his ancestry that traced him back to Slytherin an set him apart even in this world.'

'He values things that set him apart,' Harry concluded.

'Tom did, and does, place great importance on the traits he believes separated him from the others. When he was a child he clung to the things that made him special, and when he was at school he basked in the light of being brilliant, deluding himself into believing that only the traits he possessed were worth having.'

'What about his followers?' Harry asked. None of the Death Eaters reminded him of Voldemort, they were all different, talented, or powerful in their own way.

'I believe he sees them as useful in different ways,' Dumbledore sighed sadly. 'Even while he was at school he showed little true affection for any of the wizards that admired him, or any of the witches that threw themselves into his path. If anything he seemed quite contemptuous of them, especially the latter.'

They did not understand him, Harry realised, but he kept his thought to himself; he did not need Dumbledore to start believing that Harry empathised with Voldemort, true or not.

"I will show you the horcrux I found this summer,' the headmaster said softly, extending a gloved hand in Harry's direction.

He found himself on an overgrown path in the soft, warm rain of summer. The woods were green, the ground soft, brown and sticky with clay where the thicket of brambles, bushes and bluebells did not cover.

'The Gaunt's manor,' Dumbledore said, pointing over the shoulder of his memory self at what was little more than a dilapidated shack.

'Manor?' Harry raised an eyebrow at his generosity.

'The Gaunt family are descended from the Peverells, and a multitude of other pureblood families, but, once their excessive inbreeding grew too much for even other purist families to stomach they were isolated, and their fortune dwindled to nothing more than a handful of heirlooms they were too proud to part with.'

They followed the form of the headmaster as he hummed some cheery dirge, strolling gently up the path, as the foliage bent itself out of his way, in a plum suit with ivory pinstripes.

'As you can see, Harry,' Dumbledore indicated the rotting, swollen bodies of dead serpents writhing in the mud between the gate and doorway to the shack, 'Voldemort does not leave his horcruxes unguarded.'

The plum-suited Dumbledore paused at the gate, flourishing his wand and revealing a set of burning purple runes running along the boundary of the property. The headmaster paused, then, after a moment, cut his thumb and pressed it upon the gate.

The serpent inferi swarmed in a thick, festering waved towards the path, but Dumbledore simply walked past them as if they were not there.

Harry and the headmaster, who was looking distinctly paler, and more weary than his counterpart from memory, followed.

'The snakes, professor, why did they not attack?'

'Voldemort does not want anyone leaving with his treasure,' Dumbledore explained, 'but anyone who comes here has learnt a secret he does not want known at all, so he desires to lure them in, before trapping and killing them to keep his weakness concealed.'

'So the blood?'

'A sacrifice to ensure the visitor is weakened when they try to leave,' the headmaster nodded grimly, 'he can be quite crude at times.'

The door to the shack had the skeleton of a serpent nailed to it, but the mouldering bones fell from the rotting wood when Dumbledore forced it open with a flick of his wand. The headmaster did not immediately enter, but instead took several long minutes to inspect the surroundings, then cast some very complicated looking pieces of enchanting.

'The wards within were quite clever,' Dumbledore admitted from beside Harry, 'had I not been aware of the compulsion charm I would have not noticed them and been caught within.'

He led Harry after his memory self, drawing Harry's attention to all sorts of small, nasty spells placed on what looked like hordes of treasure, but, once Dumbledore had peeled away layers of enchantment, were revealed to be bricks of clay, wood, and rusting iron.

'For all his ingenuity, Tom consistently underestimates people. I do not think he believes it possible for a person to exist without ambition, avarice or anger.'

The false treasure faded, as did the shelves of old books, and the promise of forgotten knowledge, spells and power. In their place stood a simple, stone table, little more than a rough plinth, and on it, in a small depression encircled by a silver serpent, was the ring Dumbledore now wore.

'And now for my mistake,' the headmaster sighed. 'Alas,' he said softly, 'even I am not infallible and might be overcome by temptation and the hope of long abandoned dreams coming true.'

The Dumbledore of the past walked around the plinth, unravelling the enchantments upon the silver snake, and watching it dissolve into nothing, but he froze when he reached the side opposite Harry, and his face lit up with wonder.

Slipping his wand away he carelessly reached out and took the ring, only to drop it in horror a second later, and cast half a hundred spells Harry did not know upon the fingers of his wand arm.

'I found it,' Harry heard the memory of Dumbledore murmur, picking up the ring between the thumb and forefinger of his withered, blackened hand and holding it up into the light.

I've found it, Harry realised, ecstatic glee exploding within him.

Dumbledore nodded sadly beside him, oblivious to his triumph, ignorant that Harry might recognise the crest upon the stone set in the ring.

'A costly error,' the headmaster said quietly, and Harry nodded in mute agreement.

You should never have shown me this memory, he exalted silently.

Dumbledore, the one who intended to sacrifice him, the wizard who had set himself so firmly in Harry's path that he had no choice but to try and move him from it, the man who was already dying possessed the one thing Harry wanted most.

Perfect, he grinned, as the memory faded and he found himself standing in the office again.

'As you can see, Harry,' Dumbledore pulled the glove form his injured hand, baring both blackened flesh and band of gold, 'it is dangerous to go after these horcruxes alone. I would like, if you are amenable, for you to accompany me in a week's time to a location that may hold the next.'

'Of course, professor,' Harry agreed, unable to tear his eyes away from the ring.

'Thank you, Harry,' the headmaster sighed with relief. 'Without Severus my injury takes a greater toll on me, and I fear I will need your assistance.'

'Why me?' Harry inquired, still staring hungrily at Dumbledore's hand.

'Why not someone older? Or more powerful?' The headmaster paraphrased. 'There are few wizards as powerful as you, Harry, and I can trust none of them. You have something that most don't as well, an ability that Tom cannot understand or anticipate.'

'Love?' Harry asked, managing to keep the withering condemnation from his tone.

'Yes,' Dumbledore beamed. 'Tom will always underestimate and dismiss the power of that he cannot comprehend. Were it not for the mutilation of his soul he would have been utterly destroyed by your mother's sacrifice. You see the difference between the two of you, one born from a loveless union, the other with a father willing to die for his family, and a mother capable of sacrificing herself for her child.'

'It is a pity then,' Harry said slightly coolly, 'that you had not already found these.'

Dumbledore smiled, despite Harry's obvious displeasure at the reference to his mother's death. 'You're a lot like her, Harry,' he said gently. 'You may resemble your father, but inside you burns a fire as bright Lily's hair. That passion, that devotion to the one she loved most drove your mother to perform magic capable of overcoming anything Tom could ever hope to cast.'

'But she is dead,' Harry said calmly, 'and now she will never see me, nor her husband, everything she devoted herself to was lost to her when she made that sacrifice. No matter how noble it was, no good came from it for her.'

'Did it not? Her child, the one she loved more than anything else, survived when you would have otherwise died. That knowledge alone was enough to fuel her brave act. Sometimes a great deed must come at great personal cost,' Dumbledore told him kindly, his eyes dark with sorrow. 'I have learnt that first hand, and though I wish it were not so, it is. Death is not so terrible, Harry,' he smiled benignly. 'Many of those I hold dear are there waiting for me there. I think living as Tom, and others I have known have to be a fate far worse.'

'A pity that those we hold dear cannot be brought back to us,' Harry said solemnly, watching with no small swell of satisfaction as Dumbledore's eyes dropped dejectedly to the ring he wore.

Who did you lose, I wonder? Did you sacrifice them as you would me? As Salazar did his beloved wife? Would you bring them back if you could?

'It is selfish of the living to drag the dead from their rest, and dangerous to dabble between worlds that ought to remain separate. A wizard who spends too long surrounded by the dead might seek to join them and be reunited.' Dumbledore's wisdom fell short in Harry's mind, for the wizard's lack of fear lent him no desire or ambition to escape or defeat it. A reunion could have the dead rejoin the living instead of the living joining the dead if only he had the drive to find a way.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death, Harry remembered from the graves of his ancestor.

He had to concede that Dumbledore was right in some respects though; it was too late to bring Salazar back. To do so would be needlessly cruel, for all those he held dear were already gone and with him in the nothingness that came afterwards. The resurrection stone did not actually restore the dead, however, else there would have been no need for the archway; it was likely a shadow of the one the bearer summoned was all it could conjure, and that was all Harry had ever had to begin with.

'It is not yet possible to disturb the dead,' Harry said quietly, 'and I would not drag someone back to our world when there was nothing left for them here.'

'You are a better wizard than I was when I was younger, Harry,' the headmaster admitted, unaware that Harry would have no qualms about bringing back someone who did have something to live for if he truly needed them.

'Did you lose someone, professor?' Harry inquired with gentle curiosity.

'A wizard as old as I will have lost many,' the headmaster smiled sadly, 'but yes, yes I did. I am, at the risk of sounding immodest, a great wizard, Harry, and great wizards are not forged from fortitude, but from misfortune and opposition. Once I hoped to bring them back, feeling they did not deserve something as terrible as death, but now I believe they are probably happier there, just as your parents must be.' A hint of warning entered his tone, Dumbledore was not quite as unaware as Harry had initially believed, though he mistakenly believed that Harry still longed for his parents. 'It would be selfish of me to try and bring them back into a world so different from what they knew.'

'How would you have brought them back, if you had tried?' Harry asked, wondering if Dumbledore knew anything of the veil, for the archway bore the symbol of the hallows, but held no place in most of the legends.

'That is a story for another time,' the headmaster finished softly, tracing the gold band upon his forefinger.

'Of course, sir,' Harry agreed gently, 'sorry, professor, I did not mean to pry.'

'I am not upset, Harry,' the headmaster smiled kindly, 'curiosity is only a vice when untempered by caution.'

'Until next week,' he promised after a long silence, 'and hopefully we will destroy another of Tom's horcruxes together.'

'Do you think it is likely to be there?'

'I do,' Dumbledore nodded confidently, replacing his glassed, to Fawkes disappointment. 'I will tell you more before we depart, but I believe it likely we will find a horcrux there. It is a place Voldemort remembers well, and holds an attachment to.'

'Until then, professor,' Harry agreed, dipping his head respectfully as he stood up from his chair and let it vanish.

It must be the locket, he realised, all the others are accounted for.

He hoped, even in the face of wrenching disappointment, that Dumbledore was right, for if he was, then that last horcrux which Harry had had little chance of locating was found already, and delivered into his hands while he had the expertise of the headmaster to penetrate defences he might not be able to defeat.

All my goals within my reach.

The resurrection stone, a goal he had not expected to even see for many years, sat proudly on Dumbledore's finger, only a foot away across the table, and Harry had to fight the smile that threatened to curl across his lips almost as hard as the impulse to reach out for the ring. It did not matter who Dumbledore had lost; the resurrection stone would not be his for long.

I need it more, Harry decided.

Dumbledore believed he would see those he missed when he died, and given the withering curse was no longer held in check, that happy reunion would come soon. Harry could steal the ring, taking it as a Deathly Hallow might have to be, and Dumbledore could be allowed to think that Harry was following his martyr's path as they destroyed the horcruxes together until the headmaster succumbed to the curse, and Harry was freed to oppose Voldemort as he wished.

He paused at the door, unable to withhold his smile any longer, nor resist the temptation to take one last look at the ring, just to make sure it was real.

The headmaster slipped his glove back on. The soft, brightly coloured wool obscured Harry's view of the crack-riven Peverell coat of arms, the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, but it did nothing to dampen his desire, which, like furious flames, welled hot, high and triumphant within him.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does! To be fair, nobody died...

93. Perfect Wishes Like That

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

A shorter one I'm afraid, this one's back to normal length, but the last one was longer, so it's not too bad.

Chapter 93

'Shouldn't you be somewhere?' Katie inquired, sitting on the other half of the sofa Harry was sprawled across, cheerfully putting her legs over his ankles when he didn't withdraw his feet to his half of the seat.

'Yeah,' Harry nodded, 'I suppose I should.'

'Last set of exams at Hogwarts,' she mock celebrated.

'I will have completed my NEWTs before you,' Harry stuck his tongue out at her childishly, 'and the written ones all went well already, the potions practical was good.'

'You said the potions paper was hard,' Katie reminded him, shifting her weight, and Harry winced as her hips ground against his shins.

'It was,' he admitted, 'but overall ok.'

'You have an apparition license too,' she giggled. 'Now you're allowed to apparate around everywhere like you do.'

'Takes all the fun out of it,' Harry agreed, pulling his feet out from under Katie.

'You're going then?' She asked quietly, the cheer fading.

'Not until the end of the year,' Harry assured her. 'It's only a few months.'

Not until I have the resurrection stone, he corrected silently.

'Good,' she beamed, 'we'll leave together.'

'What are you going to do when you leave?' Harry asked, frowning. Katie had never actually mentioned her future plans.

'I'm not sure,' she shrugged. 'I have a few try outs with quidditch teams, but nobody huge, and my exam results are good enough to apply to most places, so if my quidditch doesn't work out I guess I'll just search for something that looks good and work there.'

'I'm sure it will work out,' Harry grinned, 'especially with such a good broom to play on.'

Katie blinked at him gratefully, and trailed after him to the edge of the entrance to the common room, ducking out through painting behind him. 'Neville's off with Hannah,' she told him, 'but he asked me to wish you good luck.' She had to speak loudly, for between the two of their faces the satin-clad lady who acted as guardian to Gryffindor tower was singing surprisingly sadly.

'I won't need it,' Harry smirked, ignoring the portrait.

'Hush,' Katie pouted, 'don't tempt fate.' She gave him a quick hug, squeezing him tightly. 'Good luck,' she smiled, 'don't set a giant raven on everyone nearby this time.'

'I'll try my hardest,' Harry promised, chuckling.

His exams were being held in the classroom he normally had Transfiguration in, and where he acted as guinea pig for McGonagall's research; it was only a short walk from Gryffindor Tower.

The door creaked when he pushed it open, and the occupants of the room turned to look at him one after the other. Dumbledore, McGonagall whose classroom they were using, Professor Tofty, whom he remembered from last years exams, and a sheepish looking Professor Slughorn.

'Harry,' the headmaster beamed. 'I'm afraid you will have a bit of an audience. Professor McGonagall decided to stay, and since this is her room I couldn't find it in me to refuse. Professor Slughorn assures me that he left his class of fifth years under supervision to come and watch, though I didn't realise you were taking a potions exam.'

'I'm not,' Harry replied, bemused.

'I wanted to see how well Harry does,' Slughorn chortled, brushing off Dumbledore's veiled rebuke. 'I remember what a gift Lily had for Charms, and Filius praises you as if you have inherited it and more besides.'

The door creaked one more time, and Harry stepped forwards to let the tiny Charms professor into the room as well.

Why not, he figured.

'Oh,' Flitwick squeaked. 'I didn't realise so many of us were coming, don't you have a class, Horace?'

'I left it in the capable hands of a pair of my seventh years,' Slughorn explained. 'It's only a babbling beverage, and relatively harmless.'

'Shall we get started,' Tofty quavered, shooing his iguana off his lap and onto the table where it promptly took an interest in Dumbledore's beard, slowly swiping at it with one clawed foreleg.

'You will remember to vanish anything Harry conjures this time won't you, professor,' Dumbledore reminded gently.

'Of course, Albus,' the old wizard replied in good humour. 'I rarely make the same mistake three times, but as long as Mr Potter does not set a giant swan upon me I will count myself lucky. You deserved every detention you received for that, no matter how majestic a creature it was.'

'As you can see, Harry,' Dumbledore smiled ruefully, 'your teachers will always be reluctant to remember you as anything other than the foolish young men we all once were.'

Slughorn looked rather like he'd just discovered the Wolfsbane potion, no doubt that particular story would be retold at the next party, and likely several after that.

'Transfiguration first,' Tofty decided, gesturing impatiently until Harry came closer. 'I'd like you to perform a partial, human to animal transfiguration upon yourself if you can?'

Harry grinned at McGonagall, who pursed her lips in resignation, and, with a flick of her wand shut the windows just in case.

A moment later and he was bedecked in ebony feathers from head to toe.

'Excellent,' Tofty cried. 'I would ask you to conjure something animated, but I have the records of your OWL exams here, and frankly it seems pointless to ask you do it all again, so if you could untransfigure yourself I will have only one more task in this subject for you.'

Harry obliged, shedding his feathers with a flourish of his wand, and watching patiently as Tofty hasty scrawled something across his clipboard. Behind him Slughorn nodded jovially, reading the notes over Tofty's shoulder until Dumbledore smoothly distracted him, and even McGonagall looked faintly approving.

'I would like you to transfigure this,' the examiner held up a small apple, 'into a clock.'

Harry levitated the apple into the air between them, picturing a simple, wooden clock in his mind, and directing his magic wordlessly through his wand.

If it continues like this, he exalted, I will be free to leave Hogwarts without consequences in less than an hour.

The stalk of the apple lengthened, splitting in two to form the elegant, dark, wooden hands of the clock, and the apple itself flattened out to form the face, but rather than turning to the light wood Harry had envisioned, it crystallised, buoyed by his uncontrolled emotions, and warping his magic away from what he intended.

'Amber,' McGonagall voiced with genuine respect as the clock hung in the air between them, the hands gently moving across its translucent, orange surface. 'Quite impressive.'

'Well done,' Tofty marvelled, shooting a glare at McGonagall, who had infringed upon his role as examiner. 'Do you mind if I keep it,' the old wizard quavered, looking faintly embarrassed.

'Of course not,' Harry agreed politely.

'Very kind of you young man,' Tofty beamed, scribbling frenetically on the clipboard, and tucking the clock carefully away into his bag.

Dumbledore carefully stepped to his left, blocking Slughorn's view of the clipboard, and moving the tip of his beard out of reach of the iguana, whose name Harry had totally forgotten, as it attempted to take a bite out of the lustrous, silver facial hair.

'Now,' Tofty folded the first few sheets of paper over, 'Charms.'

Flitwick shuffled around Slughorn's protruding stomach to get a better view upon hearing it was his subject, and Harry began to wonder if any classes were taking place today with the number of teachers here to watch his exam.

He wasn't even sure they were allowed to be here in the first place.

'If you could fill this with water for me,' Tofty instructed, conjuring a simple, glass vase. 'Non-verbally,' he added helpfully.

Harry dipped the tip of his wand into the vase, and watched as the vase filled itself to the brim with steaming water.

Happiness is harder to suppress than anger, Harry realised, performing as many of his mind-clearing exercises as possible to prevent the continued affect his feelings were having upon his spells.

'Wonderful,' Tofty decided, eyeing the steaming water with some curiosity. 'And into wine if you please.'

Harry paused, momentarily taken aback. This charm was meant to be performed with vinegar, and he was unsure if it would work the same with simple water. He could think of no other way to charm the water into wine, though, not without venturing into Transfiguration, so he performed it all the same, pushing a bit of extra power into it just in case it required more magic to charm water than vinegar.

The liquid turned a deep burgundy, and Tofty shakily bent forwards to sniff the liquid, his back creaking as he did.

'Good,' he nodded, noting down Harry's apparent success on his clipboard as he quietly breathed a sigh of relief. 'Now, multiple, non-verbal charms,' the examiner instructed, pushing the flask back in Harry's direction with the tip of his wand. 'I want you to freeze, levitate, and change the colour of just the wine,' Tofty explained.

Freezing is my forté, Harry mused.

None of the spells were tricky on their own, and he could perform them all without wand motions, so, deciding to sneakily cheat, he cast them all in quick succession while raising his wand, levitating, changing the liquids colour to a bright green, and freezing it into a a solid, emerald orb in the air all before he had finished raising his wand.

'Excellent,' Tofty cried again, oblivious to Harry's technical side-stepping of the rules. Dumbledore smiled, adjusting his spectacles, obviously aware of what Harry had done, while Flitwick chuckled from his precarious position between Slughorn's belly and the clearly hungry iguana which was doing its best to stealthily slide closer to the end of the headmaster's beard.

'Just Defence Against the Dark Arts,' the examiner said cheerfully, 'and I daresay you should be good at this one!'

Harry smirked slightly at that. There were many members of the school that would agree with Tofty for less admirable reasons than the examiner believed.

'A Shield Charm, and a Stunning Spell please, Mr Potter,' the old wizard wheezed excitedly, 'silently, of course.'

Harry nodded, casting the latter, which crackled across the room to hit the iguana just as it reached Dumbledore's beard, and then, without any wand motion, he cast the Shield Charm as he lowered his wand.

'Did you cast them simultaneously?' Tofty demanded, amazed.

'No,' Dumbledore beamed proudly. 'I had an old friend who like to do the same thing the he duelled, only with two different offensive spells. Harry cast one when his wand was outstretched, and the second without wand motions as he lowered it.'

That's an even better idea, Harry decided, such a trick would give him a definite edge in any duel.

'I don't remember any of your friends displaying that in their exams, Albus,' Tofty frowned, and Harry quietly revived the iguana while nobody was watching.

'He wasn't educated here in Britain,' Dumbledore explained softly. 'He was a pupil of Durmstrang.'

'Well he must have been an impressive duellist,' Tofty decided. 'Have I heard of him?'

'Most definitely,' Dumbledore smiled benignly, 'and he was one of the finest duellists I have ever encountered, not to mention a brilliant wizard.'

'Well,' the old wizard quavered, 'it's a shame I didn't meet him, I should have like to.'

'He resides in Germany,' Dumbledore said lightly. 'I visit him from time to time, since he cannot come to visit me, our discussions are as stimulating now as they were when we were young, more so, even, now that he has gained greater perspective.'

'Well,' Tofty said, losing interest in what Dumbledore was saying, though Harry was more curious given the almost mischievous twinkle in the eyes of the old wizard, 'the only other thing I am supposed to ask is if you can produce a Patronus Charm for me.' The old wizard laughed, and wrote something on his clipboard before tucking it back into his bag.

'Are you not going to ask?' Slughorn inquired.

'I saw Mr Potter's corporeal Patronus last year,' the examiner explained.

'I'm sure he wouldn't mind demonstrating again,' Dumbledore suggested mildly.

You just want to see if you yourself, Harry frowned.

'If you insist, Albus,' Tofty conceded. 'Sorry, Mr Potter, I am supposed to ask you anyway really, but I felt it was unnecessary.'

'Expecto Patronum,' Harry whispered, allowing his emotions to run free as he envisioned the family he had glimpsed in the Mirror of Erised, only in his mind he now wore the Gaunt family ring on one finger.

The anzu materialised from the silver cloud that exploded from the tip of his wand, and Dumbledore, who Harry noted was watching carefully, frowned, nodded almost imperceptibly to himself, then smiled, his face relaxing back into that of the benign headmaster Harry wished he was, but knew he wasn't.

'Well,' Tofty scooped his iguana up in his arms, 'that's all I need you to do, Mr Potter, congratulations.'

Harry blinked.

Aren't I meant to have to wait for results?

Tofty seemed to realise a moment later what he'd done because he looked quite flustered, and avoided meeting the eyes of everyone in the room, especially a particularly disapproving McGonagall.

'If that's all,' Harry began, 'should I return to the common room?'

'Of course, m'boy,' Slughorn boomed. 'Just try not to cause too much trouble for the rest of they year now you don't have any studies to undertake.'

'I'll do my best, professor,' Harry smiled brightly. He had plenty of studying to do, just not the type that anyone here would approve of. he'd already had to conceal his reading material from a curious Hermione several times with a quick bit of Transfiguration. The last thing he needed was to be caught reading questionable tomes in the common room.

He turned left and headed up to the second floor rather than going right back towards to Gryffindor Tower. He had promised to tell Fleur when he was done with his NEWTs, and while she expected him to use the locket, he'd rather visit her himself and catch her by surprise.

Harry wanted to be able to see her face when he told he had found the resurrection stone.

Fortunately the bathroom was empty for once, and he was able to slip straight into the chamber without interruption, or having to hide from second and third year Hufflepuff girls, many of whom still seem convinced by Luna Lovegood's explanation of his mission and couldn't look him the eye.

Harry could only imagine how badly that particular rumour would escalate if he was caught in a girls' toilet.

Damn you Katie, he thought amusedly, stepping into the entrance of the main hall of the Chamber of Secrets.

With a soft snap he apparated himself into the room that had become their study.

'Get off my paper,' Fleur shooed, apparently unsurprised by his sudden appearance.

He took several steps back off the large sheet of rune-covered parchment that covered the floor. Fleur, it seemed, was sketching out all of the runes she could find on the Deathly Hallow and writing them in columns down the page.

'That is not washing,' Harry commented dryly.

'It's not like I had a way to give it back,' she shrugged, unrepentant.

'Find anything exciting?' He asked.

'Every thread is covered in thousands of runes, and they're all different, and they've been woven together to create a texture of different pieces of magic, like what I did with the lock, but a thousand times more complex.'

'That sounds like a yes,' he grinned.

'I could study this for the rest of my life and still not understand how it works,' she enthused.

'That's good,' he smirked, 'because I need it back.'

Fleur pouted from her spot on her knees on the floor, but passed his heirloom back to him regardless.

'NEWTs went well,' Harry said absently, 'Potions was hard, and so was the written part of Charms, but I certainly passed.'

'Did you get an Outstanding?' Fleur rose to her feet, carefully folding up the piece of paper and tucking it into one of the drawers.

'Hopefully in all of them,' Harry nodded, 'though I'm not sure about Potions.'

'I got four,' she smirked.

'I have a Triwizard Trophy,' Harry retorted playfully.

'I have better OWLs too,' she continued happily, tossing her hair back over one shoulder.

'I steel 'ave a Triwizard Trophy,' Harry grinned, adopting a terrible French accent, and tilting his chin in the air how Fleur did when she was being playful or proud.

'You're supposed to pick a new thing,' Fleur told him archly, switching to French so she could laugh at his genuinely imperfect accent.

'I don't need to,' he smiled, also in French 'it's like a trump card; it beats everything else we've done.'

'Until you defeat Voldemort,' Fleur reminded him, 'then you can make yourself a Dark Lord killing trophy.'

'I think I will,' he grinned. 'I will make it a little column, with a book at the bottom, then a cup draped in a locket, and containing a ring, with a diadem on top, and all encircled by a serpent.'

'You're incorrigible,' Fleur told him fondly, 'and it will look hideous.'

'Better than the door,' Harry responded, 'which was definitely nicer white, than blue.'

'Liar,' Fleur accused, smirking. 'I know how much you like that shade of blue after you painted the walls of this room with it too.'

'I had some left over.' Harry shrugged casually, as if he hadn't deliberately bought too much to give himself a reason to paint the inside of his study, the room he spent most of his time when Fleur was away, the same shade as the summer sky.

'So did you only come to pick up the washing your partner has dutifully done for you?' She teased.

'Not entirely,' Harry pulled his most innocent face, and Fleur immediately looked suspicious.

'What have you done now?' She demanded.

'I found it.'

'Found what?' Fleur asked.

'The stone,' he grinned victoriously, 'I found the resurrection stone.'

Fleur's eyes widened and she swept across the room to extend her palm out in front of him. 'Show me,' she pleaded excitedly.

'I said I found it,' Harry placated, closing the fingers of her hand, 'not that I have it.'

'Oh,' Fleur looked crestfallen. 'Where is it?'

'Currently?' Harry's smile turned a little cold. 'On the finger of Albus Dumbledore, but it won't be there for long.'

'Don't do anything rash,' Fleur warned, catching his fingers before they left hers.

'I'm not going to duel him for it,' Harry laughed. 'There's no way I would ever win, and it's not worth the risk.'

'You have to take it,' Fleur reminded him gently.

'I will steal it,' Harry grinned, 'that ought to do. We're hunting horcruxes together soon, if an opportunity doesn't arise then, I will engineer one by discovering the diadem again.'

'Good,' she looked very relieved that he did not intend to try and duel Dumbledore, and he could hardly blame her. The headmaster might be old, and Harry doubted he had dabbled in rituals to the extent that he and Voldemort had, but he moved sprightly when he needed to, and had such an extensive knowledge of magic that it would likely be a short conflict.

'I will plan everything through in detail with you before I do anything,' he promised softly.

'As you should,' she told him fiercely. 'How did he come by it?'

'The ring was owned by the Gaunts,' Harry smiled, 'Voldemort's family.'

'They are descended from the Peverells,' Fleur recalled, 'and Slytherin too. An unsavoury group,' she wrinkled her nose, 'had a habit of marrying each other.'

'That sounds about right,' Harry chuckled. 'Voldemort made it into a horcrux, and I don't think he even knows what it really is.'

'It's so close,' she breathed, fingers twitching against Harry's.

'You want it almost as much as I do,' he accused gently. 'So much for a children's story.'

'Now that I know they are real,' Fleur shot him a pointed look, 'I cannot wait to see them for myself. The enchantments, the ingenuity…' She trailed off in awe.

'We'll have the rest of our lives to study them,' Harry promised her.

'It may take that long,' she trailed the fingertips of her free hand over Harry's cloak almost reverently. 'I can barely decipher the runes themselves, let alone the intent of the piece of magic woven into each thread.'

'And then there's the way the threads are woven together,' Harry finished for her, smiling indulgently at her raptured fascination.

'What else have you been up to?' She asked suddenly. 'You haven't found the Elder Wand too, have you?' Fleur asked coyly.

'No,' he grinned, 'sorry, you told me nobody has seen or heard anything of it since Gregorovitch claimed to have it, so I didn't go looking. Dumbledore wanted to tell me lots of things about Voldemort'

'Well if you happen to find it,' she smirked, 'hold on to it, it's probably useful, and I want to see the enchantments on that too. Now what did your headmaster say about Voldemort?'

'I'll get you one for your birthday,' Harry promised dryly, and Fleur laughed lightly.

'I'd prefer something sweet,' she admitted guiltily.

'Are we out of sugar again,' he grinned.

'Perhaps,' a faint such suffused her cheeks.

'If Voldemort ever discovers us it's going to be because you have to keep going in to the village to buy sugar,' Harry remarked amusedly.

'As if I will run into the Dark Lord in the local shop,' Fleur rolled her eyes. 'I doubt he has a holiday home here.'

'Probably not,' Harry laughed.

'Dumbledore said…' Fleur encouraged.

'Sorry,' Harry apologised, 'I got distracted. He told me about Voldemort's family, which was interesting but not overly useful to me right now, and, more importantly, he invited me to go horcrux hunting with him.'

'Gringotts?' Fleur asked hesitantly.

'No,' Harry's smile widened, 'I don't believe it is.'

'The locket,' she realised ecstatically, 'but that means…'

'We're almost there,' he nodded, wrapping her in his arms and pressing her tightly against him. 'Soon,' he murmured gently into her hair, 'there'll just be him and Nagini, I'll have the resurrection stone, and I am free to leave Hogwarts at the end of the year once I have it.'

'We'll be free,' Fleur breathed into his collarbone, pushing her face further into the crook of his neck.

'Neville can look after himself,' Harry continued, 'Katie will be leaving with me, and I'll make sure she goes somewhere safe. We'll be here together, Gabby and your parents are fine in France, Dumbledore will fade as the withering curse consumes him, and I'll find some way to defeat Voldemort.'

'You make it sound so easy,' she sighed.

'It will be,' he assured her, buoyed by how well things were suddenly going. 'I don't have to be more powerful than Voldemort to kill him. I just need to be clever.'

'He's clever too,' she warned him.

'He has more enemies to worry about, more problems to consider,' Harry countered, 'but Voldemort and his wretched reptile are the only things standing in between us and what we want most.'

'What do you want?' Fleur asked, pulling back to stare up at him through her veil of silver hair.

'Mostly you,' Harry admitted, unable to resist kissing her when she looked up at him like that. 'But there were other things in the mirror.'

'The Mirror of Erised,' Fleur realised softly. 'Was Salazar in there? The Hallow? Katie or Neville?'

'I think Salazar would be now,' Harry said quietly, 'but neither Neville nor Katie were. They are not what I want most, even if I value their friendship more than almost anything else.'

'So what was there?' She asked curiously. 'I know what I would see,' Fleur continued, knowing that she should share her dream if she wanted Harry to reveal his. 'We'd be there together, with my parents, and Gabrielle, under the willow tree maybe.'

'In the warm,' Harry commented wryly.

'Everyone I care about in one perfect place where they can't be harmed,' Fleur murmured.

'There was another girl in the mirror,' Harry confessed very quietly, and Fleur stiffened suddenly against him. 'She had silver hair, and looked so much like you I thought she was Gabrielle at first,' he squeezed her reassuringly, 'but when you picked her up she turned to look at me, and she had my eyes.'

Fleur's arms tightened around his back, crushing herself into his chest, and burying her face against his neck. Harry softly kissed the top of her head.

'It's not a dream for now,' he continued gently, unable to completely ignore the twist of anxiety that told him she might flinch away from such a commitment, 'but maybe… one day.'

'One day there will be a little, green-eyed girl with silver hair,' Fleur whispered, and Harry needed no indication other than her tone to know how happy he had made her.

I should have told her a long time ago if it makes her so happy, he realised, smoothing her hair down, and running his fingertips through the cascade of soft silver.

Something warm and wet slid down the side of his neck from beneath the brushing of Fleur's eyelashes against his throat, leaving a hot trail along his skin as he held her gently against him, kissing her forehead, as the stream of joyous tears soaked quietly into the collar of his robes.

'What a perfect thing to wish for,' she murmured.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

94. For Whom the Bell Tolls

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Chapter 94 is up!

It's another short one I'm afraid, and it's relatively upbeat and fillery except for a handful of paragraphs here and there, not that you should skim it, I'd feel mildly offended if I found out you had.

Anyway, enjoy, or not, whichever seems the most apt!

Chapter 94

It had been peaceful in the common room. Neville was working on one of the many essays Harry no longer ever had to do again, while he lounged across the sofa, and Katie, who was using his stomach as a headrest, was napping happily across the chair Harry had conjured to keep her from jumping on him to take a seat on the more comfortable sofas.

Everything had been perfectly relaxed for once, until Hermione and Ron had started arguing on the far side of the room.

They'd been whispering to begin with, and so Harry had closed his eyes and ignored them, but their murmuring had grown so heated that they'd briefly awoken Katie, though only for long enough for her to transfigure a cushion into a very stylish, pink pair of earmuffs, and he'd been unable to help but overhear.

Apparently Ron took exception to the fact that he was the third party in the relationship Hermione had with the library, and had finally worked up the nerve to tell her that he'd prefer it if they spent a little more time together.

Hermione had invited him to study with her, and that had escalated the pitch to the point at which Harry wouldn't have not been able to overhear if he had tried.

It was small wonder that the common room was so empty.

'You know we have to be serious about this Ron,' Hermione insisted, for what was at least the third time.

'But not about us?' Ron questioned bitingly.

'About both,' Hermione responded fervently. 'If we won't stand up for everyone then how can we expect anyone else to. This is a school, it's meant to be safe, a haven for learning, but every year it's barely safe for the students to stay. The only year it has been safer for them here than outside, as the founders intended the school to be, has been this year, and that's because Britain is at war with itself!'

'As valid as your point is,' Ron lowered his tone, 'it seems like a bit of a jump from Hogwarts should be safe, and we should help our peers to I'm too busy to spend time with my boyfriend.'

Harry blinked.

They're dating?

That had been kept quiet very well, though, now he looked back at it, he supposed there had always been signs that they liked one another.

'My boyfriend,' Hermione pressed, 'can still spend time with me, but I have really important things to do, someone has to keep an eye on the more suspicious students.'

'You mean Malfoy, right?' Ron sighed.

'Him and any other student who has given in to the lure of power and abandoned proper morals,' Hermione agreed.

'Professor Dumbledore is more than capable of keeping us safe,' Ron told her bemusedly.

'I was petrified by a basilisk, Ron,' Hermione retorted scathingly, 'and that's just the beginning. Since then I've been attacked by a werewolf, Victor,' Ron scowled darkly, 'died on the grounds under very suspicious circumstances, a body was found in the forest, Umbridge was torturing students, and one of our professor's was found dead under the Dark Mark in Hogsmeade.'

'Nobody can keep everyone safe all of the time, Hermione,' Ron protested. 'He did the best he could.'

'Well it wasn't good enough,' Hermione decided shortly. 'It's unreasonable to expect one wizard to keep us all safe anyway, so we should help, and that means we have to be able to look after ourselves.'

'We can,' Ron pointed out. He was a little misguided in Harry's opinion. For a student he was not someone to be trifled with, but most adult wizards wouldn't have much trouble with him in the end. 'We have the DA.'

'The DA is just the start,' Hermione disagreed, hair bouncing animatedly. 'You saw what Harry,' she shot a furtive glance at him, then flushed when he waved cheerfully, 'did to Neville and I.'

'Well he's Harry,' Ron shrugged. 'He's special, isn't he.'

'Are the two of you ever going to be quiet?' Neville demanded. 'If studying is so important, Hermione, then at least leave the rest of us in peace to manage it.'

'Sorry,' the girl apologised. 'You agree with me, don't you, Neville?'

Neville put his quill down slowly, clearly abandoning any further attempt at his essay.

'Yes,' he decided eventually. 'It's not really fair for one person to have to keep us all safe, so we should do whatever we can to help him.'

Neville, Harry knew, meant him, though neither Hermione, nor Ron realised that it wasn't Dumbledore who would end up defeating Voldemort.

Or dying in the attempt, he thought cynically.

'That doesn't mean you should just seal yourself off to study spells in the Room of Requirement,' Ron cut in, 'you're in there every free period practicing.'

'Ron's right too,' Neville said, 'if you spend all your time learning magic to help protect everyone, then you'll lose all the friends you intended to protect.'

Hermione huffed, but seemed to concede the argument.

'So?' Ron asked hesitantly.

'I suppose I should spend a little less time among books,' she relented. 'It's a Hogsmeade weekend, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Neville sighed, 'and I was hoping to have my essay done before now, since it is almost the time at which we agreed to leave.'

'Sorry, mate,' Ron raised his palms in apology.

'It's fine,' Nev grimaced, 'I wasn't really getting anywhere with it anyway.'

A finger firmly poked him in the side, and Harry turned away from the conversation he was watching to look down at Katie, who'd woken up again.

'What?' He asked, catching her finger before she could poke him again.

'Is Neville going with Hannah?'

'Probably,' Harry shrugged, 'I don't know, I'm not his keeper, she is.'

'I'm bored,' she whined, 'let's go gatecrash their date.'

'Seems a bit cruel,' Harry frowned.

'Well we'll only do it if they're not really doing much,' Katie yawned, pushing her head into his stomach as she stretched.

'Oh so that's fine then?'

'Yes,' she beamed, poking him again, 'now get up, I need to buy broom polish, and chocolates.'

'I'm up,' Harry grinned, dispelling the chair he had conjured and dropping Katie onto the floor, 'in fact,' he peered down at in false surprise, 'I'm waiting for you.'

'Very funny,' she sulked, using his hand to pull herself upright, 'didn't Fleur tell you that's not how you treat a lady.'

'She never mentioned it,' Harry admitted, 'but I'll ask the next lady I meet so I can let you know.' He looked down at her appraisingly. 'Nice earmuffs, by the way,' he smirked, 'they bring out the embarrassed blush of your cheeks.'

'I'm not blushing,' Katie protested, flaring crimson.

'No,' Harry deadpanned, 'not even a little bit.'

'Hush,' Katie remonstrated, 'let's follow Neville.'

'There are so many more important things I could and should be doing,' Harry sighed, as Katie all but dragged him towards the portrait and out of the tower.

'There is nothing more important than Firewhiskey chocolates and quidditch,' Katie told him firmly, trailing Neville, and darting behind small groups of students, most of whom were a head shorter than her.

'You are not very good at sneaking,' Harry laughed, retrieving his arm from her grip, and strolling casually down the corridor.

'You're not embracing the spirit of this,' she sulked, slinking out from behind the cover of a group of Hufflepuff girls who were standing absolutely still.

'Maybe because he likes his girls older and more mature than a twelve year old,' one of the girls in the group Katie was using as cover quipped.

'Oh,' Katie peered into the gaggle, 'Romilda. I didn't recognise you without all that eye-shadow.' The dark-haired girl scowled. 'Why aren't you in Hogsmeade with your boyfriend?'

'I don't have one anymore,' Romilda said proudly, 'he wasn't dedicated enough.'

'Ah,' Katie said with delicate glee. 'Come, Harry,' she declared loudly, catching sight of the huddle of Hufflepuff third year girls, eyes lighting up with mischief much to his dismay, 'there are many students to seduce.'

Why me? Harry asked silently, as the girls flushed brilliantly and scattered from his path like frightened sparrows. Ah well, he grinned, in for a penny…

'After you, Katie,' he told her with a suggestive wink, stopping the brunette in her tracks for a moment.

She fled playfully an instant later, cackling happily, and throwing herself over Neville demanding he protect her virtue from alluring dark wizards.

Luna Lovegood has a lot to answer for, Harry decided.

It hadn't helped that the blonde ravenclaw genuinely believed the story she had told everyone, nor had it been helpful that her father owned a paper, The Quibbler, and had absolutely no scruples about the quality of what he published.

I hope Voldemort enjoys it as much as I do, Harry smirked.

'Good sneaking,' Harry told Katie when he finally caught up to her at the edge of the village.

'So overt it's covert,' she beamed proudly from where she had her nose pressed against the glass of the quidditch supplies shop.

'If I thought you were actually that sneaky I'd be worried about my virtue,' Harry remarked glibly.

Katie's smile slipped slightly, and she turned away from the window.

'Sorry,' he frowned, 'I shouldn't joke.'

'It's fine,' she said, shaking her head, 'if we can't laugh about it then what can we do?'

'Can't argue with that,' Harry smiled, looping his arm through hers. 'Shrieking Shack?'

'No thanks,' Katie beamed, 'someone broke the only chair.'

'You, if I remember correctly,' Harry commented.

'Pretty sure it was you,' she retorted cheerfully. 'Honeydukes? Or Three Broomsticks?'

'Honeydukes first,' Harry decided, 'let's get the trauma out the way so I can drink my sorrows away afterwards.'

'You're buying,' she exclaimed, darting across the street and through the door, before Harry could disagree.

'I'm not rich enough to fund your chocolate addiction,' he complained good-naturedly.

'Centuries old pure-blood family,' she reminded him, eyeing the life-size animated chocolate models.

'No,' Harry warned, when she stepped towards the Grindylow, 'I'm not wrestling with that for the rest of the day.'

'Just the one box then,' Katie nodded, 'it's all I really intended to get anyway.'

'Choose a nice one,' Harry offered generously. He might not be particularly rich, but he could afford a lot of chocolate, and properties in wizarding villages only got more expensive.

'Or a big one?' She fluttered her eyelashes.

'As long as it isn't animated,' Harry agreed. Neville had come of decidedly second best in his battle with the bowtruckle, and Harry had not intention of adding his own name to the list of victims.

Katie bounced off down the aisle, swapping boxes as she tried to make up her mind, and Harry drifted towards the end of the aisle where he had spied something Fleur might appreciate.

Animated hot chocolate powder, he read curiously. Creates chocolate bubble creatures that last longer the more powder you add.

'Something for Fleur?' Katie popped up behind him, a slim, brown package tucked under one arm.

'She likes sweet things too,' Harry grinned. 'What am I buying for you?'

'Chocolate coated, butterbeer creams, and Firewhiskey hearts,' she confessed guiltily, patting the package. 'They're really nice looking,' she peeled back the paper to reveal a slim, dark box, that contained almost two dozen chocolates nestled in white paper.

'Tasty,' Harry commented, reaching out towards them playfully.

'Mine,' Katie admonished, batting his hand away, 'you buy your own.'

'I'm buying yours,' he reminded her pointedly, and she had the presence of mind to feign innocence if not remorse. 'Incorrigible,' he sighed, picking up a pot of the hot chocolate powder, and the slim box that Katie passed him.

'Six galleons,' the bored sounding girl behind the counter droned.

'Here,' Harry passed her the correct number of coins, and returned the box to Katie's arms. 'I bought it, so you can carry it,' he told her, when she bit her lip and fluttered her eyelashes again.

'Hey,' the girl behind the counter perked up suddenly, 'aren't you-'

'Voldemort,' Harry nodded, interrupting the girl mid question, 'but ssssh, I'm in disguise, it's so hard to get good chocolates when you're committing mass murder and organising a blood purist revolt.'

The girl's mouth was still hanging open as they left the shop.

'Three Broomsticks?' Harry asked, shrinking the hot chocolate after checking the label to make sure he could do it without ruining it.

'I saw Neville and Hannah,' Katie suggested slyly.

'Ok,' Harry grinned, more in the mood for her games now. 'Hold still,' he instructed, flicking out his wand.

Katie scrunched up her face, and shivered as Harry's magic touched her.

'What are you doing?' She demanded.

'Casting glamour charms,' he smirked, conjuring a flat disc of water in the air in front of her as a makeshift mirror.

'Oh,' Katie's grin turned evil, 'I like the way you think.'

They strolled into the pub together, casting an eye around for Neville and his blonde companion. The pub was very crowded, as it always was on the first Hogsmeade weekend of the term, with overage students all around the bar, and underage ones lurking tentatively nearby it.

'Over there,' Harry pointed surreptitiously, 'in the corner a few booths across from the toilets.'

'Good spot,' she beamed, 'I'll be back in a moment.'

'Have fun,' Harry grinned, 'and Katie dearest,' he conjured a gaudy, fluffy, pink, heart-shaped cushion and deposited it into her hands, 'whatever you do, don't cause a scene.'

Katie bounced away across the floor under the glamour charms, drawing the eyes of every student, as Professor Sprout was rarely seen moving so spritely, nor clutching a cushion so horrendous that Madam Puddifoot might have treasured it for years.

'Neville,' she cried, sinking to her knees once she was roughly in the middle of the room, and bursting into very loud, very fake sobs. 'How could you!?'

'Professor?' Neville inquired politely, slowly turning brighter and brighter crimson, as Hannah stared at the scene in stupefaction.

'I hoped,' Katie wailed, 'that the rumours were untrue, but now I see that my fears are not unfounded, you have left me for a younger woman.'

'What?' Hannah gasped.

'How could you do this, Nevvie?' Katie cried, laugher starting to suffuse her voice as she thrust the cushion at Neville's shins. 'Surely the arms of this buxom, young blonde cannot compare to the nurturing affection of Herbology. Return to my bosom, to the bosom of mother nature, and the soft, warm soil of the greenhouses.'

'Harry!' Neville yelled, guessing the game. 'Get out here, and collect your accomplice before I hex her back to Hogwarts and bury her in the soft, warm soil of the greenhouses.'

'Game over,' he grinned, removing the glamours from Katie, who scampered back behind him to hide from a visibly annoyed Neville.

'Not funny,' Neville groused when the two of them joined him, and a giggling Hannah, who, now she knew it was a joke, found it as hilarious as the rest of the pub's occupants.

'It was pretty funny, Nevvie,' Hannah told him, patting him on the arm comfortingly.

'Oh,' Katie beamed, waving suddenly, 'Angelina and Alicia, does anyone mind?'

'No,' Neville agreed very quickly before Harry could remind her that her two friends weren't very fond of him at the moment.

'Thanks,' she waved again, and eventually caught Alicia's attention who dragged Angelina across too.

'Hi Katie,' they chorused, 'Neville, Hannah,' they exchanged a glance, 'Harry.'

'Girls,' Harry replied dryly, throwing an equally unsubtle look in Katie's direction.

'I see you made it Honeydukes,' Alicia smirked, tapping the brown-papered box.

'Harry spoils me,' Katie beamed, 'though he wouldn't let me buy an animated Grindylow.'

Neville breathed a sigh of relief.

'I'm not spending my day fighting one of those,' Harry shook his head, 'I saw what it did to Nev.'

'I had bruises for weeks from that bowtruckle, and in inconvenient places too.' Hannah nodded absently in agreement, then flushed bright red.

'I'll head to the bar and get us a round of drinks,' Katie suggested, nodding none too subtly in the direction of Angelina and Alicia, when Harry glanced up at her. 'And I'm taking these with me,' she added, snatching her chocolates out from under Alicia's fingers.

Oh, he realised. Time to sort this out.

'Firewhiskey?' Katie asked, counting all their heads and leaving towards the bar before anyone could object.

'Firewhiskey it is,' Angelina noted wryly.

'Time for that conversation Katie wants us to have,' Harry added glibly. Neville retreated back into the corner to avoid the drama, dragging Hannah, who seemed more curious, with him.

'Oh,' the girls heads snapped around from where they were tracking Katie's progress to the bar. 'The one where you pretend you aren't messing out best friend around?'

'The one,' Harry continued icily, 'where I tell you that I already have a girlfriend, and it's not Katie.'

'That doesn't make it better,' Alicia told him flatly.

'Katie and I are friends,' Harry said, pretending he hadn't heard, 'just friends, and we both know the boundaries of our relationship.'

'So you're aware that she likes you,' Angelina remarked, considerably less coolly, 'and you're not keeping her around as some sort of back up option for that veela girl.'

'No,' none of the ice left Harry's tone, but he relaxed back in his chair, 'I will not need a back up for Fleur, and Katie deserves better than that.'

'Good,' Alicia looked a little guilty, 'er, we're sorry for being a bit hostile, then,' she added hesitantly. 'After that article, and how you acted when she was hurt in quidditch, we thought you and her were together, but you were keeping it under wraps, and playing around.'

'And then when Fleur turned up too, well,' Angelina shrugged, 'we assumed the worst.'

'Stupid article,' Harry grumbled, 'apparently there's a whole sect of witches with interesting appetites who liked it more than I'm comfortable with.'

'I know of a couple,' Alicia smirked, dangling imaginary handcuffs from her fingers.

'No thanks,' Harry grimaced. 'Katie's coming back.'

The group, including Neville who had returned from the corner now the drama was done, turned to watch Katie meander across the floor, trailing a line of floating glasses of Firewhiskey.

'I got them,' she beamed, 'Madam Rosmerta was feeling chatty though, so it took me a little longer than I expected.'

'We're all sorted,' Angelina said bluntly. 'Harry's a nice guy, he's not messing you around, you were right all along, and we're sorry.'

'Well that totally ruins my I told you so,' Katie sulked, unwrapping her package from Honeydukes. 'Chocolate?' She offered, absently peeling back the paper. 'I'm feeling generous.'

'Well if you're going to be so kind as to offer me one of the chocolates I bought you,' Harry grinned.

'Nothing for Harry, then,' Katie decided, catching his eye as she pulled open the lid of the slim, black box, giving him a wink.

There was a glitter of bright, moon-white opal over her knuckles, then, with a small gasp of surprise, Katie collapsed onto the table with a dull thud.

'Katie?' Alicia asked nervously. 'Are you alright?'

The brunette did not respond.

Move, Harry urged her, don't stay so still.

For a very long moment he hoped she would stir and show everyone she was fine, but somewhere deep down Harry knew that Katie wasn't alright, and that she never would be again.

'She's not breathing,' Angelina shrieked, and Alicia started hyperventilating, but their screams seemed very far away, and all Harry could see or understand was the messy shroud of his friend's hair, and the trickle of bright blood running from her ear to drip off her jaw into the Firewhiskey beside her.

She's dead.

Ice crept across the table from where he sat staring, coating every surface in spines of hoarfrost as long as his fingers. His magic surged and roiled wildly, uncontrolled, unconstrained, freezing the liquid in the circle of glasses around Katie, cracking and shattering the glass, freezing the alcohol, and trapping the shards in an elegant crown of ice.

It spread across the room as the pub fell silent, aware that something was wrong, coating the walls, floor and ceiling in frost, breaking every unfinished glass, bursting the pipes that ran along the walls and behind the bar, sending copper pieces clattering to the floor. The candles around the room guttered, and died as the air froze, the fire shivered before the frost that washed over the grate, and the windows creaked and cracked against the cold, falling from their frames.

They were all watching now, but Harry didn't care. He barely noticed the cold that turned his breath to icy mist, nor the way the tables and chairs crumpled, and crumbled away in front of him, collapsing in frosty fragments to the floor as his magic unleashed his emotions upon the world.

Madam Rosmerta was chatty, he remembered, a single, coherent thought making itself known.

With every eye in the room on him it was easy.

He didn't use the incantation, or his wand, but there was nothing passive about the legilimency he employed, thrusting the image of the box into her head over and over, ignoring oddly twisted recollections, uncharacteristic thoughts and impulses, until he found what he desired.

'What would you like young man?' Rosmerta asked warmly.

'To survive the consequences of what I am about to do,' her customer replied shakily. 'Imperio.'

The barmaid slumped limply to the floor, shaking, shivering, with blood running freely from her eyes, nose and ears. He had what he wanted, what he needed.

Harry knew that voice, knew it without any shred of doubt.

Neville, he was vaguely aware, was dragging him by one arm, and Hannah by the other, but he did not care, could not feel the bruises forming and healing upon his body, nor the fear, and horror that emanated from the crowd of students scrambling from their path.

Malfoy, he seethed, his fury beyond words, or scope of emotion.

The creature stirred, thrashing furiously within his chest, dark eyes open and alight with wrath, mouth agape, a thousand, needle-like teeth bared before a whip-like tongue, and icy breath that whistled and whispered of vengeance.

Snape had tried to warn him, but he hadn't listened, hadn't even suspected, the truth.

Harry had been a fool to think she was safe at Hogwarts.

His target was never Dumbledore.

A fresh wave of his magic pulsed off him as his fury rose further still, forcing Neville and Hannah to release him with cries of pain, their skin blistering and cracking at the caress of his magic. He was dropped onto cold cobbles. The icicles protruding from the stones cut his palms, slickening the ground with blood that froze only moments later, but the pain was nothing before Harry's rage, and the wounds faded.

The manipulative, old wizard had known who the target was, he had said so, and he had told Harry not to worry, allowed Malfoy to complete his mission instead of stopping him as he should have done.

'One less attachment for his martyr,' Harry hissed aloud, the parseltongue slipping more easily from his enraged tongue. 'Dumbledore,' he spat, with venom-filled promise, his wand flicking into his palm. Viridescent sparks poured from its tip to lash out at anything living around him, scarring the cobbles, and searing the sleeve of his robes away to a wisp of smoke.

He would have that stone, and his revenge, and he was done waiting for Dumbledore to do any more damage to those he cared for.

There's only one person left he will try to take.

With a violent crack he disapparated, disappearing back to the only person that had meant more to him that Katie did.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that does! So all the non-upbeat paragraphs might have come at the end... I've been waiting to write this chapter for a very long time, and I will eventually name it "For Whom the Bell Tolls" but I didn't want my love of terrible puns to ruin the surprise!

P.S. This was always going to be Katie's fate, in every potential one of the three endings actually, even the one when she gets the guy, poor girl...

95. The Return of a Gift

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Short one this, no action, no killing, and nothing at all violent in this one...

Enjoy!

Chapter 95

There was ice all over the walls of their living room; it had lingered for the whole day. Hoarfrost coated the chairs and the sofa, the windows and floor, icicles hung from the ceiling, and thrust from the floor, formed from fury, now melting.

The house echoed with its soft dripping, and the hollow, cold reverberations were the only measure of time within its walls.

'Harry,' Fleur said softly, squeezing the fingers she had been holding since he had arrived.

'I'm going to see her again,' he said firmly, and some of the frost fell from the walls, running in small waves of water down to the floor where it lapped about their ankles.

Fleur said nothing, but her frown spoke volumes.

'What?' He demanded.

'The resurrection stone does not bring people back, Harry,' she reminded him. 'Salazar was already little more than a memory, no matter how much he meant to you, but Katie,' she leant forwards, shivering slightly, 'she will be little more than a shadow of our friend.'

'I know.' Some of the water at his feet refroze, thin spines spreading from the surface of the puddle. 'It will not be the same,' he admitted softly, 'but it will be better than nothing.'

Anything is better than nothing.

'You know the story of the resurrection stone,' she warned gently, 'this gateway unto death opens both ways.'

'It does not bring back the dead,' Harry said eventually, wrestling with the painful truth. 'My death will not re-unite us, nor would I leave what I have in this world behind for Katie, the conjured spirit will be a small comfort, and,' his voice cracked, 'one I think I might need.'

'I understand,' Fleur shifted closer, squeezing his fingers again, 'I would be more than distraught if I lost Gabrielle.'

For a long while Harry stared at the longest of the icicles, which descended fully four feet from the light fitting, plunging through the table, and, as it melted, dripped into the spreading pool of water on the floor. The drops that fell from it threw wide ripples across the room, lapping gently against the walls.

'He let her die,' Harry continued, voicing, for the first time since he had apparated here, his deepest grievance.

'Who?'

'Who do you think?' Harry laughed bitterly. 'The man would see me a martyr. He knew who Malfoy was after all along, so when I warned him he told me not to worry, and I foolishly listened, seeing what I wanted to see instead of what was really there.'

'Dumbledore,' Fleur deduced carefully. 'He has the resurrection stone too.'

That alone would have been enough to set Harry against him, but after Katie, after his continued attempts to shepherd Harry towards his martyr's mirage, he no longer felt that simply stealing away the stone would suffice.

'I will take it,' Harry promised her, 'somehow I will take it, but I need to be careful, Katie is gone because I underestimated that old wizard. I will not make the mistake twice.' Fleur sagged with visible relief, and he shot her a small smile, grateful for her concern.

'And in the meantime?' Fleur asked, releasing his hands.

'Vengeance,' Harry whispered coldly, he could not forget the part that Malfoy had played, Voldemort's puppet, and he would not forgive it. Around him the dripping stopped, the water refreezing into jagged, sharp spears that jutted up around the two of them as magic swirled around him.

Fleur's fingers flared with blue fire, keeping his cold at bay as best she could without setting fire to anything he hadn't already ruined.

'Stop it, Harry,' she shivered as her flames guttered out, 'control your magic!'

He blinked, seeing the swirling storm of snow and ice that surrounded him, and Fleur's blue nails and lips.

I'm hurting her.

She was hunched against the stinging ice, and invasive cold, but unwilling to take so much as a step away from him.

Enough.

Harry's fingers curled around the slender shape of his wand, and, driving the emotions deep down inside, he flourished it, sweeping the ice away.

'Thank you,' she shivered once more, then briefly cast a handful of warming charms upon herself. 'That ritual had a profound effect, I see.'

'Volatile,' Harry reminded with unspoken apology, even with all his occlumency he couldn't clear feelings so intense from his mind, not without embracing the nothingness completely, and he would rather have the pain than that dreadful, hungry emptiness .

All of the emotions were compressed into a small, boiling, freezing burst within his breast, not gone, just contained, but buried they no longer dominated his thoughts and he began to piece things back together more pragmatically.

'I need to return,' he realised. 'I've been away too long already, everyone will already have noticed my absence, and I should go back.' He frowned, fingers clenching around his wand that was crackling with green, glowing sparks at the very idea of returning close enough for vengeance. 'But if leave now, I'll do something we may both end up regretting,' he smiled ruefully, 'I won't be able to help myself.'

'Go,' Fleur nodded resignedly, knowing he had little choice, 'but don't get caught.' She swept forwards and caught him in a brief, tight embrace. 'Damned either way,' she whispered. 'Blamed, or condemned.'

Aren't I always, he thought darkly.

'I would rather be condemned for vengeance than blamed for harming a hair on Katie's head,' he told Fleur seriously.

'I would rather you were neither,' she replied just as gravely, 'so,' she had still not let him go, 'don.'t. Get. Caught.'

'I won't,' he promised, sitting back down, 'but, since I have already been missed, I might as well linger as long as I can.'

Fleur blinked at him gratefully, descending gracefully next to him, then appraised the room critically, vanishing the water with a flick of her wand, and carefully repairing the lights, table, and furniture.

'It is a good thing you came back here,' she decided once the room was restored, looking faintly tired. 'Your magic does not like to have what it was ruined restored, and I can only imagine what might have happened to anything or anyone nearby.'

'There might not be much left of the Three Broomsticks,' Harry admitted quietly. He could not clearly remember leaving, only that he had been angry, enraged beyond coherent thought or reason, more so than he had been here with Fleur, and even the recollection was enough to cool the air around him.

'I've finished a new project,' Fleur told him carefully, showing him her wand, and twirling it beneath his eyes so he could see the runes engraved around it. 'It's one of the few parts I could decipher from what I copied off your cloak.'

'What does it do?' Harry inquired, happy to be distracted.

'It prevents it being summoned by anyone other than its master,' Fleur explained. 'I can only use it on my wand, since I do not know enough to replicate the enchantment properly and get an item to accept me as its master, but my wand has already chosen me.' She stroked the rosewood fondly. 'It's as much a piece of me as anything could be.'

'Beautiful within and without,' Harry remembered absently, and Fleur blushed faintly, curling her toes on the chair beside her.

'You can summon wands?' Harry raised an eyebrow, he'd always assumed that something so simple just wouldn't work.

'Not from its owner's hands,' Fleur reassured him, 'no wand would betray its wielder so easily, but if you were powerful enough you might be able to take it from their person, or from the floor nearby them even if they were aware and resisted.'

'Like the Disarming Charm, then,' Harry deduced.

'I imagine they're rooted in the same principle somewhere,' Fleur agreed. 'One day I intend to understand every rune, and pattern on all three of the hallows,' she sighed wistfully.

'And the archway,' Harry told her, just as curious as she was to see how they worked, even if he doubted he would ever be able to enchant something like that himself.

'I will not be able to get to the archway,' Fleur said with no small measure of disappointment.

'I guess you'll just have to make your own, then,' Harry smiled faintly, unable to muster anything more.

'Maybe,' she mused. 'It would make a very interesting project.'

'Each to their own,' Harry frowned. A gateway to nothing was something he wanted nothing to do with.

'You have your projects, I have mine,' Fleur shrugged, a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. 'Speaking of which?' Fleur crooked an eyebrow in an awkward imitation of him, trying her best to look more curious than concerned.

'No more rituals,' Harry placated her, 'I need to be able to destroy horcruxes, and defeat Voldemort, there's little more I can do with rituals in such a small time frame.'

'So what else are you doing?' Fleur asked, not fooled.

'There might have been some experimental magic planned,' Harry admitted, unrepentant. 'Nothing too dangerous.'

'Show me?'

'It's not really got anywhere,' Harry said, flicking his wand out regardless, since he knew Fleur was unlikely to take that for an answer. 'I had a look through the old copies of the Daily Prophet in the library, as well as some research in books I shouldn't be seen reading. I re-read my book on inferi too, and a handful of books on duels from Salazar's collection, but mostly I've ben researching Gringotts; it's unbelievable how little we seem to know about what is actually down there, but I digress,' he said wryly. 'Gellert Grindelwald has half a tome dedicated to the spells and tactics he invented for duelling,' he nodded appreciatively, 'so I've been trying to recreate some of his more powerful spells from the accounts.'

'I am surprised you found books like that in Hogwarts' library,' Fleur frowned, 'even the restricted section. There was nothing like that that I saw when I was there.'

'The Room of Requirement provided them,' Harry explained, 'someone must have stashed them there, and never reclaimed them, so when I needed them, it gave them to me.'

He opened his left hand, silently summoning an orange from the bowl on the side of the kitchen. Levelling his wand at the fruit he focused, directing the air around the orange with his magic, and with a soft snick a thin slice of peel spun across the table.

'An invisible, wordless cutting curse?' Fleur looked distinctly unimpressed by Grindlewald's creation.

'No,' Harry shook his head, 'it's a combination of very advanced transfiguration and charms. If you conjure something, they are tied to your intent, like my butterflies, unless that is somehow altered by another piece of magic, this spell imbues the air with my intent, placing at under my control just as something I conjure would be. It's hard to counter if you don't understand it, and quite powerful actually.'

'It doesn't look like it,' she frowned.

Harry's lips twitched, and with a gentle tweak of his wand the orange was pulverised onto the table's top, flattened into a very fine, thin layer of paste.

'Oh,' Fleur smiled teasingly, dipping a finger into the fruit and sucking the juice off. 'Your example was just terrible.'

Harry levelled his wand at her, flicking the air through her hair to leave it in disarray. Fleur pouted at him under her scattered hair, and Harry was immediately reminded of Katie, whose hair had been in constant chaos.

'I need to go back,' he murmured, the good humour that had taken hold in his absence of memory faded in the face of his returning fury.

'Your trip with Dumbledore is tonight,' she warned.

Harry blinked.

How could I forget?

'Maybe I'll get lucky,' he shrugged, standing to apparate back to the Chamber of Secrets.

'I prefer it when you have a plan,' Fleur grumbled, worried.

'I have one,' Harry assured her.

Malfoy. Destroy the locket. Start looking for a way to steal the stone.

'Is it more than a handful of vague objectives?' Fleur asked sweetly.

'Of course.' Harry paused when she frowned. 'Maybe?' he tried. 'No,' he admitted when her expression didn't change, 'but it's worked so far.'

Except for Katie, he thought bitterly.

'I'll find out more details before I act against Dumbledore,' he promised, 'unless something irresistible crops up, that is.'

'Go,' Fleur told him biting her lip, 'go before I decide I don't want to risk you not coming back to me and come with you.'

If you could come with me I would take you in a heartbeat, Harry thought sadly, but he said nothing, knowing it would only upset her more, or, worse, tempt her into trying to come, and apparated away.

The Chamber of Secrets was cold, dark, and silent.

The weight of his isolation was almost crushing within it, and in the moment he stood alone there he had never missed the acerbic greeting of Salazar's painting, nor Katie's bright warmth so much.

Unable to resist the saturating sadness he strode across the bridge to stand in the office and look up at the empty outline on the wall over the door.

Soon, he promised it. Soon.

Turning back to the doorway a glint of gold caught his eye.

Picking up the small bottle by its cool cork Harry eyed the mouthful of potion calculatingly.

'Maybe I'll get lucky,' he repeated thoughtfully, tucking the vial into his pocket.

There were twelve hours of liquid luck in the small bottle, more than enough to see him through his revenge, and, hopefully, its influence might even be enough to reveal some way of stealing the stone from Dumbledore.

He didn't bother disillusioning himself when he left the chamber this time, the time for subterfuge, and subtlety was drawing to an end, and he was growing sick of having to sneak around while Dumbledore and Voldemort stood proudly in the light.

The bathroom was empty, though a handful of the stalls were full, so he hurried out, ignoring the vaguely suggestive looks he received from a handful of Hufflepuff boys in the year above. They would likely wait around to see which girl followed him out, but he couldn't care less. He snorted to himself as he strode towards Gryffindor Tower, as if he'd ever betray Fleur in such a manner.

When he walked in through the entrance the entire room fell silent.

'Harry,' Neville said, relieved, 'you're ok.'

'I'm just fine, Neville,' he replied, lacing his voice with sarcasm.

'We're sorry to hear about what happened,' Ron said earnestly, looking like he fully understood for once. 'We all liked Katie, and Voldemort will pay for hurting her.'

Hermione sniffed quietly.

'Will you tell us what happened?' Ginny asked quietly. 'Neville said we should wait for you to tell us what happened to her.'

As if they haven't all been talking about it for the last day, he thought venomously. They just want to see if what I say is the same.

'She was killed,' Harry said flatly, walking away from them up towards the dormitories. Neville trailed after him, shaking his head when some of the other Gryffindors attempted to follow.

He plodded slowly up and over to his bed, seething silently.

When he pulled back the hangings he found his Firebolt sitting there.

'Her dorm mates gave it to me,' Neville explained from the doorway, 'I thought you should have it back.'

Harry wrenched the hangings closed, unable to stand the sight of it.

'Do you know who?' Neville demanded, fists balled at his side.

'Yes,' Harry answered, 'I know exactly who-' He stopped, mid-sentence, and tilted his head to indicate they had company. 'Wrong dormitory, Hermione,' he said evenly.

'I didn't come here to sleep,' she said, raising her hands, 'and I didn't come to argue either.' Hermione leant on the doorframe next to Neville, wringing her hands awkwardly. 'I'm really sorry about Katie, Harry,' she offered, 'I know the two of you were close, we'll find whoever is responsible and send them to Azkaban.'

'Azkaban?' Neville laughed. 'You mean Voldemort's new summer home?'

'You know what I mean,' Hermione frowned.

'The Ministry doesn't have the time or the resources to investigate,' Harry said simply. 'A student was killed by a cursed artefact in the middle of a war, someone will tell her parents, someone will decided that the trail is too vague to find a culprit, and that will be that. M- Whoever did it will get away with it.'

'Malfoy,' Hermione said, eye narrowed. 'You were about to say Malfoy.'

'So what if I was?' Harry shrugged. 'It's not our place to dispense justice.' Hermione looked shocked, but after a brief moment composed herself and looked quite approving.

Neville understood the real message.

Not justice. Revenge.

'Is Katie still here?' Harry asked quietly.

'She's in the hospital wing,' Hermione told him softly. 'You can go visit her if you want to, I'm sure Madam Pomfrey would let you in, or you can just use your cloak.'

Harry nodded, and turned to leave, following Hermione down the stairs, then stopping so he could continue talking to Neville without her hearing.

'Malfoy did it,' he said calmly, tasting the fury on his tongue in a burst of iron.

'You're going to get him back,' Neville realised.

'And you should stay well clear,' Harry told him. 'What I said about the Ministry investigating is true so long as there is little evidence, reputation or motive, but I will have enough of the latter two to warrant suspicion, even if there will be no proof.'

'So let me do it,' Neville offered.

'Could you kill him?' Harry asked. 'Do you think you're capable of it?'

'I want it almost as much as I wanted Bellatrix and her accomplices dead,' Neville answered hotly.

'They'll accuse me regardless,' Harry told him sincerely. 'There's no point in risking the both of us.'

'Can you not wait?'

'No,' Harry gritted. 'I can't, and I won't.'

They continued down the stairs into the common room, Neville looking troubled, but resolute..

'I'll come with you to the hospital wing,' Neville offered.

'If you want,' Harry agreed. Katie had been his friend too, so he deserved to say goodbye as well, if he hadn't already.

'I was watching Malfoy while we were in Hogsmeade,' he heard Ron whisper to Hermione as they passed their table, 'he was in Scrivenshaft's at the time, but he could have used the Imperius, or got one of his friends to get the necklace to Katie.'

'Angelina and Alicia said that Harry bought her chocolates as a present,' Hermione said slowly, and Harry paused, not believing what he thought he might be about to hear, 'but the box had a necklace in instead.'

'You're not suggesting…' Ron trailed off incredulously.

'I don't know,' Hermione wilted under the weight of Ron's disbelief, 'but I can't help it but feel there's something wrong going on somewhere, and it isn't just Malfoy.' Her voice wavered. 'People just seem to die around him for no reason, but he carries on like he's not affected by it at all, and that scares me, Ron.' For a very brief moment Hermione looked absolutely terrified. It was a fleeting instant, but it brought to mind Ginny's face when she had awoken in the Chamber of Secrets all those years ago. 'So many in the Order, Lupin, Snape, Victor,' he tone wavered, 'your dad, and now Katie, his closest friend, and he's just walking around in the common room like it was another day. You locked yourself in your room for a month.'

'Harry's stronger than me,' Ron said simply.

He passed out of earshot, unable to linger without becoming obtrusive, or absolutely furious that Hermione thought he did not care.

Icy footsteps trailed in his wake, and Neville, who had heard every word that Harry had, stared apprehensively at the frosty footmarks.

'What are you going to do to Malfoy?' Neville murmured.

'I don't know,' Harry answered, pausing before the doors to the hospital wing, 'whatever feels… justified.'

The doors creaked when they opened, but Madam Pomfrey was not present.

The only figure was in the furthest bed, a familiar form, draped in white.

A flick of his wand unfurled the sheet, baring Katie's face, and shoulders. Neville swallowed, clenching his jaw and turning away to hide wet, burning eyes.

Harry stared down at the girl who had loved him.

She was plain in death.

Her hair still found itself strewn across her face, but the warmth had faded from her face, the life that had glittered in her eyes was gone, and the girl in the bed below him who looked like Katie, simply was not her anymore.

The beautiful, gleaming opal necklace that now adorned her neck, shimmered faintly with eerie green light, resisting Harry's efforts to remove it, and coiling tighter into Katie's equally pale throat.

Harry's fingers tightened on his wand, and the necklace trembled, falling from her neck to slip down the sheet onto her chest.

'It looks expensive,' Harry said distantly, levitating the ornament above the form of his friend, and staring at the glittering malice of the moon-pale stones.

'Expensive?' Neville stared at him, nonplussed.

'Very,' Harry nodded slightly, lips curving, 'it would be most remiss of me not to return it to its owner.'

Neville's mouth flattened into a thin, hard line, as he watched the ornament defend gracefully into Harry's pocket.

'Goodbye, Katie,' Harry said quietly, and remembering what he had promised her before he reached down and took her hand. 'I promise not to get caught doing something stupid,' he echoed, but this time there was no smile, no tight, warm grip on his hand as she clung to what little she could keep of his affection.

Katie's lips were cold, dry and dead, but he kissed them gently all the same. Fleur would understand. Neville did. His friend watched with clenched fists as Harry rose and swept the sheet back over Katie's face.

'I think,' Harry said slowly and apologetically, 'that I need to be alone for a little while, Nev.'

'That's ok, Harry,' Neville was still staring furiously at the shrouded figure of their friend.

'Will you do me a favour?' He asked gently.

'Of course,' Neville nodded.

'My Firebolt, Katie's Firebolt,' Harry exhaled slowly, 'take it outside somewhere and burn it.'

'Burn it?' Neville repeated disbelievingly.

'I do not ever want to see it again,' he replied evenly, and with deceptive calm. 'Burn it, the handle, the stirrups, every last twig until it is in as many ashes as Katie's dreams for the future.'

'I will,' Neville promised miserably.

'Thank you, Nev,' Harry called out gratefully, and his friend turned and left him alone without another word.

It was not long until he had to leave with Dumbledore now but, he cast a quick spell to check, there was still some time left before their horcrux hunt.

Long enough for vengeance with a little luck, his fingers slipped to the small vial of swirling gold in his pocket, easily long enough.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

96. Liquid Luck

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I would imagine this is the chapter you've all been waiting for, although, since it is the next chapter, this is generally the case regardless of its content.

There may be some dark themes in this chapter, but, if you're still reading this by now, I suspect that won't bother you all that much!

Enjoy!

Chapter 96

The small bottle of golden liquid shone and spun as Harry carefully twisted the cork from the neck of the vial. He dropped the stopper onto Salazar's desk, something which would have no doubt incensed the painting had it been around to see.

'To the ouroboros,' Harry smiled wryly, raising the vial in the direction of the portrait's empty outline.

The felix felicis tasted like sparks bursting on his tongue, as if someone had simultaneously dipped his head into a pool of cool water, and pumped liquid fire into his veins.

He knew, without the faintest trace of doubt, that everything he wanted would be, and that everything he needed to be, was.

This will go perfectly, he realised, laughing softly to himself and leaving the study, wand in hand.

He would wait no longer; there was no reason to. His vengeance was meant to be taken now, he was giddy at the very prospect, elated by the emotion even as the fury, that pure point of pain and cold in his chest flared beyond feeling.

The pool beneath the bridge froze as he walked over it, ice spreading from his footsteps to trace across the walls and ceiling of the Chamber of Secrets, spines of hoarfrost forming in his wake.

The toilet was empty, as he had somehow known it would be.

The Marauders' Map was still in the chamber, but Harry didn't feel like retrieving it, in fact, now he truly thought about it, he quite wanted to go to the Great Hall.

Seems like a good idea, he decided.

He reined his magic in now he was in the school itself, everyone had seen what he had done to the Three Broomsticks, something he was told that the officials from the Ministry had been unable to fix, just as the healers at St Mungo's had been able to do nothing for Madam Rosmerta. Their finest mind healers had been unable to get her to recall anything more than the feeling of helplessness, and a vast, oppressive fury.

He ignored the twinge of guilt in his chest, and continued on his way past the gaggles of students, strolling gently up on to the dais, and sprawling casually across Dumbledore's golden chair to wait.

The other students seemed too absorbed in their lives to glance up and see him, so they slowly drained away, filtering out to whichever common room they belonged to while Harry watched patiently, twirling his wand over and over in his fingers, enjoying the rush of warmth from the wood.

Minutes slipped by, and with each long second that passed his anticipation swelled higher, rising towards a summit he could neither see nor imagine.

A thin, weary figure slunk in through the doors at the far end, slinking swiftly along the middle of the tables until, suddenly aware that the hall was not as empty as it believed, the figure stopped to look up at Harry.

Malfoy's horror was sweeter than anything Harry had ever tasted.

'Draco,' he smiled politely.

The doors gently swung shut.

Malfoy's wand was already in his hand, but he cast nothing, gazing around himself at the closed doors the to the hall, at the windows, and then back up at Harry.

'Potter,' he grimaced, taking a few steps closer, glancing to either side as the tables slid back against the walls, pushed aside by the air Harry had imbued with Grindelwald's spell.

'You're out past your curfew,' Harry stood up from the throne, tutting, 'and you a prefect.'

His wand brushed against the staff table, and it crumbled to dust, leaving his path forwards clear, and removing any trace of himself that might have lain upon it.

'What do you want?' Malfoy demanded, as if he didn't already know, and hadn't spent so long trying to poison Harry to avoid this moment once he had completed his mission.

'To return some lost property,' Harry answered with poisonous pleasantry. The pale-stoned necklace hovered in the air between them; a silent promise. 'Funny,' he continued evenly, 'how your misplaced property ended up around my friend's neck.'

'You don't scare me, Potter,' Malfoy sneered tiredly. 'I have stood before greater wizards than you.'

Harry regarded him intently, but there was no hint of fear in Malfoy's eyes anymore, only resolution.

'I should have killed you the moment I had the chance,' Harry decided softly. 'I was foolish to think that Snape was the only one of the two of you capable of causing me pain. I would have had to get rid of him eventually, even without that vow. He was an obstacle, spreading information about me to both sides, but you I deemed harmless. It was stupid of me to think so.'

Malfoy flinched, evidently he had not expected Harry to know about the vow. 'So what now, Potter?' He demanded, straightening himself, and his robes

Harry smiled coldly. 'Now, we duel.'

He dipped from the waist, but Draco, seizing the opportunity cast the first spell.

'A stunner,' Harry remarked disdainfully, deflecting it into the ground with a casual twist of his wrist. 'And you forgot to bow,' he reminded the boy disapprovingly, directing the air behind Malfoy to bend his spine almost horizontal with a gentle dip of the tip of his wand.

Malfoy glared at him furiously as he was released, bringing his wand up slowly, almost halfheartedly to point at Harry.

A handful of other spells flitted across the Great Hall at him, but he batted them away just as easily, knowing all the while that it would take but a twist of his wand to crush Malfoy like the orange. There was nothing the boy could throw at him that he could not throw back with far more force, but he wanted to play with him, to let him taste hope, before he tore it and everything else away.

'Avada Kedavra,' Malfoy tried, but the green beam wavered and faded before it even reached Harry.

'Your intent is as weak as your magic,' Harry noted contemptuously, and, on a whim, he destroyed the throne with shattering it into splinters with a simple flick. Grindelwald's air imbuing spell was horrendously tiring to use for most, though his altered magic allowed him greater freedom with it than most, but it was wonderfully useful against opponents who did not know how it worked.

'Tell me, Draco, do you hope to win, or escape?'

There was a loud clatter that echoed in the Great Hall as Malfoy threw his wand onto the floor, sending it skittering across the stone to rest at Harry's feet.

Neither then, Harry realised.

'Kill me then,' Malfoy said bitterly. 'I have been dead for days, for months, what does it matter, there is no pain you can show me I have not already known. I've felt his Cruciatus already, you cannot match it.'

The tip of Harry's wand twitched up in temptation.

'Would you like me to try?' He offered, stepping onto the surrendered wand with the heel of his right foot, and twisting it, grinding the wand into fragments beneath his weight without ever looking down.

'Go on then,' Malfoy invited, watching the loss of his wand with as much resignation as chagrin, 'do you think I care?'

'Katie would not want me to,' Harry said calmly, watching Malfoy's face for movement. A flicker of relief passed across his features, and through his thoughts, guarded though they were, and that was all the evidence of hope he needed.

'Crucio,' he said cruelly, sending Malfoy sprawling and writhing across the floor, flopping like a dying fish as Harry kept the crackling red beam upon him until his eyes rolled back in his head.

'Katie, however,' he hissed icily, as frost spread across the floor from his feet, 'no longer wants anything.'

'The Dark Lord's is worse,' Malfoy spat weakly through mouthful of blood. He'd bitten his own tongue, and globules of blood and saliva dribbled over his chin to the floor, but he hadn't screamed.

'You're lying,' Harry smirked, reading the reality from his mind, and Malfoy flinched, immediately averting his eyes.

'Legilimency,' he said hollowly, 'you really are his equal aren't you, Potter.'

'I will be his better,' Harry said walking slowly towards Katie's murderer, the fury rising to a cold crescendo, frosty air trailing from the tip of his wand.

'I doubt that,' Malfoy chuckled, 'but I do not care. I hope you all die, Potter, you, Dumbledore, who protects only those he deems pure, and Voldemort,' Harry was surprised to see him say the name so succinctly, 'who, for my father's failures, set me with a choice. Fail and I, Pansy, my father, and my mother would all die, so I could kill Dumbledore, an impossibility, or kill Katie Bell, and die when I succeed.' He shrugged, helpless and bitter. 'At least this way it is only me.'

'And Katie,' Harry reminded him, incensed that he had so callously dismissed the life of his friend.

'She was already dead,' Malfoy told him, 'Voldemort wanted her dead more than he wants Dumbledore gone.'

He wants to know how I will react, Harry surmised, sickened that his friend had died simply because Voldemort was curious. He wants to see if I am truly like him.

'You are wrong either way,' he said, speech distorted by parseltongue, 'it will not just be you.'

'There's nobody else here,' Malfoy told him. 'Take your revenge, Potter, and get it over with, I'll wait in the next world for you all.'

'Not here,' Harry's lips curled into a cruel smirk, 'but Pansy, your parents… It won't just be Dumbledore, Voldemort and myself who you'll be waiting for in the nothingness.'

'No!' Malfoy spat, desperately hurling himself across the last few feet, until Harry's magic caught, encasing his legs in ice. 'Don't touch them!'

'Why should I not?' Harry asked with cold curiosity. 'You took someone I cared about from me, so I will do the same, only I will not leave you alive to retaliate again.'

'Please,' Malfoy said weakly. 'I will beg if I have to.'

'Beg,' Harry ordered him, 'on your knees, Draco, as if I were your master.'

'Please,' Malfoy pleaded, sinking on to the frost covered stonework, 'not my parents, not Pansy, just me,' he said so quietly Harry could hardly, 'let it just be me.'

'Very well,' Harry said evenly, 'I will not harm them.'

'Thank you,' Malfoy said, slightly sarcastic, but still overwhelmingly grateful, 'thank you, Potter.'

The air tightened around him, at Harry's silent command, raising him up into the centre of the hall, and pinning him onto the Slytherin House banner so firmly Harry heard his ribs crack, and his spine crunch.

The boy groaned, but remained conscious.

Good, Harry thought venomously. I want him awake.

'I'm going to send your colleagues a message,' Harry smirked, 'one even the least intelligent of them will understand.'

His magic peeled away Draco's robes, leaving him almost naked, pale and thin. His ribs showed starkly, and his stomach was sunken into his hips beneath them. Harry charmed the familiar emblem of the skull onto the serpent adorned banner behind Malfoy.

'You are all blind,' he spat, the fury no longer contained at all.

A flick of his wand and he ripped Draco's eyes from their sockets, leaving them to dangle by the nerve down against his cheeks. The boy spasmed, but remained silent, sweat soaking his unkempt hair.

'You are all weak.'

Malfoy's arms and legs were splayed against the banner, wrenched from their sockets and bent into the crude points of a star.

'You are all lost. Cadent a latere mortem,' he read aloud, carving each word into the soft, pale skin of Malfoy's chest as if he were drawing runes on the walls. 'Consumed by death.'

This time Malfoy did scream, writhing against the flag, staining the green and silver with dark blood that slowly soaked its way through to drip to the floor.

'This,' Harry whispered ecstatically, levitating the necklace, 'belongs to you.'

The opals glittered in the night sky of the Great Hall, reflecting the false moon and stars as Harry held the necklace an inch above Malfoy's neck.

'Oh, and Draco,' he remarked nonchalantly. 'About not harming Pansy and your parents…'

He felt rather than heard Malfoy's intake of breath.

'I lied,' he finished maliciously, smiling in satisfaction at the perfect fear and outrage on Katie's murderer's ruined face before the necklace draped itself about his neck, coiling tight, and Malfoy's head slumped against his breast.

The boy lay still, swallowed by the emptiness he had condemned Katie to, but the fury did not abate with his demise.

It's not enough, Harry seethed.

The creeping, consuming emptiness of death, by far the worst thing Harry felt he could inflict, seemed insufficient revenge for the pain he suffered at losing Katie.

There are others to take revenge upon, Harry reminded himself, Dumbledore, and Voldemort.

He didn't really care about Malfoy's parents or Pansy Parkinson, they had played no part in Katie's death. He only needed Malfoy to believe it to exact some small measure of revenge.

Speaking of Dumbledore, he mused, driving the fury down within again.

Harry turned, removing the ice with a sweep of his wand, and openly smiling at the scene he had left.

Someone is going to have nightmares as bad as Hermione's, he laughed softly to himself.

Malfoy was left displayed against the flag, his twisted, mutilated form would send a macabre message to anyone who was brave enough to dare consider taking someone he thought precious from him.

They will not be able to condemn me.

The thought came with such utter certainly that he could not even seem to consider the alternative. There seemed little point thinking about such things when he knew exactly what he needed to do to get what he wanted.

'Acid pop,' he told the gargoyle benevolently.

His wrath, so all devouring and consuming just moments ago, seemed like it should be hidden now, and the gentle, yet inexplicable urge to conceal it was too much to ignore.

Felix Felicis, Harry suspected, aware, yet unable to fight or truly quantify its effect.

'You remembered the password, Harry,' Dumbledore beamed, as he stepped into the office.

Fawkes eyed him curiously, then trilled gently, and shifted on his perch, hopping gently to the deskwards side of his seat.

'I did,' Harry agreed evenly, carelessly re-holstering his wand.

'I hope you do not mind if we leave straight away?' Dumbledore asked, draping a horribly patterned green and purple travelling cloak about his shoulders.

'Of course not,' Harry nodded. He was eager to destroy this horcrux, and take one more step towards his goal. There were only a few more afterwards, daunting though they were, and he could almost feel the French sun filtering down through the leaves of willow tree onto his face.

'Would you care for a Sherbet Lemon before we go?' The headmaster offered, passing the bowl.

'Thanks, professor,' Harry selected one, then, gripped by the same odd desire, took a second, conjuring a thin cloth to wrap it in. 'One for later,' he smiled, 'if you don't mind, sir?'

'A splendid idea, my boy,' Dumbledore nodded, replacing the bowl.

Harry stepped around the desk to take the headmaster's proffered arm.

'Where are we going, professor?' He asked.

'The seaside,' Dumbledore said mildly, 'though it is not the best time of year for it.'

'Ah,' Harry nodded, as if that made perfect sense, and slightly leant his weight forwards in preparation for apparating.

There was an almost imperceptible snapping sound, and Harry found himself standing on sand, no more than a few feet from the water's edge, on a clear, crisp beach beneath white, limestone cliffs.

'There is a cave,' the headmaster began, striding swiftly along the scattered seaweed that marked the high tide line, 'that holds particular sentiment to Tom behind this bluff here.'

'Why?' Harry inquired curiously, avoiding the footsteps Dumbledore left upon the sand.

'It is here,' Dumbledore said sadly, 'that Tom took his first step onto a very dark path. I told you that I believed he was mistreated, loathed even, before he came to Hogwarts, and once, maybe, in the beginning, this behaviour was unwarranted, but Tom learnt to retaliate very quickly, and one day, when he and his fellow orphans were taken to this beach, he discovered this place.'

The headmaster stopped suddenly at the edge of a ravine that ran deep back into the limestone, and where the waves rushed violently between the two narrow bluffs.

'He lured two of his fellow orphans in here,' the old wizard continued sadly, 'and while they never spoke of what occurred, they were no longer the same from that day onwards.'

'How did he find it?' Harry asked, peering through the spray, but unable to make out anything that looked like a cave.

'It has grown only harder to reach as time has passed,' Dumbledore noted absently, 'without magic it may now be nearly impossible.'

The old wizard counted his steps from a distinctly misshapen spur of limestone back across the sand towards the crest of the bluff, stopping to stare across the thrashing waves when he reached seventeen.

How to cross?' He wondered aloud. 'I do not think it wise to apparate across to the doorway, for Tom will have created formidable defences to guard this horcrux.'

Harry bent down, and touched the tip of his wand to the water, smiling innocently, and watched as the waves froze, frosted froth flaking and falling onto the twisted mass of ice that now spanned the gap between the two bluffs.

'Professor?' He inquired, stepping carefully onto the ice.

'Not how I would have done it,' Dumbledore said, adjusting his glasses, 'at my age one starts to worry about falling a little more than is necessary, but effective.'

The ice creaked a little under their feet, but held, as Harry had known it would, until they reached the far side.

'Ah,' the headmaster murmured, running his wand over the apparently unmarked cliff face, 'how ingenious.'

A complex, twisting pattern of runes washed across the limestone, bathing them both in purple light.

Harry studied them intently while Dumbledore was preoccupied.

This place is guarded by blood magic, he deduced, and complex wards at that.

The wards were beyond him, Voldemort had clearly mastered this path of magic, but Harry knew more than enough to decipher their meaning. He had seen among Salazar's notes some of the clever traps concealed within the patterns of these runes.

'A sacrifice, I believe,' Dumbledore decided, removing his gloves and baring his palm. 'Crude, but, once again, Tom seeks to weaken any trespasser to make them easier to trap, rather than bar them from entering entirely.'

Harry opened his mouth to tell him that there was far more to the blood magic than a simple, small price for entry, but, once again, the strange urge that that would not be the right thing to do gripped him, and he remained silent.

Dumbledore will discover whatever magical contract he just agreed to for himself.

Harry hoped it would be nothing that would cheat him of his vengeance, or, infinitely more worrying, the resurrection stone upon his finger. If it was lost, he swallowed hard, unable to consider the concept with a clear head.

There is almost nothing that would be worse, he decided hollowly.

'Coming, Harry?' The headmaster asked.

'After you, professor,' Harry said dryly, stepping into the cave at the behest of his strange confidence despite not having made any sacrifice himself.

Nothing happened.

Perhaps my blood is similar enough to Voldemort's that the magic has not acted against me.

'You are underage,' the headmaster elucidated. 'The wards, blood magic of a level I can not produce myself, even if I am able to interpret the runes, do not affect those whose magic is still changing and developing. Hubris has always been a weakness of Tom's.'

An odd, eerie greenish glow permeated the air, reflected in the mist that hovered over the surface of a vast, black-watered lake, and throwing distorted shadows across the water's dark surface.

'That would appear to be our destination,' Dumbledore remarked, indicating a small island out in the midst of the lake.

'I hope you can swim, professor,' Harry commented amusedly, 'I don't think I will be able to freeze this water.'

Magic permeated the lake, saturating the water and the mist above it so thoroughly that Harry was quite tempted to cast the bubble-head charm. He decided to let Dumbledore go first instead.

'I think this will suffice,' the headmaster smiled gently, tapping the length of chain beside his foot with his wand.

Out of the mist a small, decidedly rotten looking dinghy approached, into which the headmaster cheerfully bounded belying both his age, and the curse that was slowly consuming him. Harry stepped in much more carefully, discreetly checking for enchantments, but, once again, it seemed only Dumbledore was recognised.

He stared into the water instead, running the tip of his wand along its surface.

'Fascinated by your reflection again, Harry?' Dumbledore asked curiously.

'It is not as interesting as some, but far less dangerous' Harry agreed. 'I am glad the mirror is back in the Department of Mysteries.'

'You found it again?' The headmaster peered at him carefully. 'Forgive an old man's curiosity, but did you see your parents again?'

'I saw a thick, woollen pair of socks, professor,' Harry smiled courteously, 'one can never be too careful about the cold,' he added, buoyed by sudden confidence.

'Ah,' Dumbledore looked slightly chastened. 'I do not, despite what I once told you, see myself with a new pair socks, Harry,' he ignored the flat glance that Harry sent his way at the idea that he might actually still believe that, 'I see the things that should have been instead.'

'Oh?' Harry raised an eyebrow.

'My sister, Ariana,' Dumbledore said softly, 'alive, well, restored,' he murmured in a way that made Harry think of the resurrection stone, 'my father, and mother too, with Aberforth, my brother.'

'Your family, sir?'

Did we once see the same thing? Harry wondered, unsure if Dumbledore was telling him the truth, even if the luck potion was pressing him to accept it as such.

'Not just them,' the headmaster admitted, 'I had such grand ambitions as a boy, and they have not completely faded. I still wish to see the world I dreamt of, but know now that there is a long, bloody gulf between realism and idealism.' Dumbledore ran his fingers through his beard, and peered down into the water concernedly. 'Gellert is there too, my partner in ambition, my dearest friend, but he is as he should have been, rather than as he became.'

'Grindelwald,' Harry mused, unsurprised. The books he had found had indicated a certain amount of friendship between the two when they had been young, more, certainly, than was commonly understood.

'You know, I see,' the headmaster sighed. 'We were very young, and believed we were the only ones able to change the world into what it should be. I,' he smiled sadly, 'well I grew up after Ariana was killed, 'but Gellert clung to our dream. He wished to make a perfect world.'

'Wishes like that don't come true,' Harry answered absently, dipping his wand into the water curiously.

'Indeed not,' the headmaster said sagely, 'not for a price worth paying. Some sacrifices, Harry, are too dear to be borne.'

Oh I know, Harry thought viciously, you don't need to tell me that.

'I see my family still' Harry admitted, 'but it is no longer the parents I will never know, but the family I might one day have.'

'You have a wise dream, Harry,' the old wizard smiled gently, 'covetable, but conceivable.'

A pale hand thrust upwards from within the murky depths to flail at his wand, interrupting their conversation and he flinched back into the boat.

'Best not to disturb the water, Harry,' Dumbledore admonished him gently, indicating down with a finger.

Harry looked beneath the keel, and shuddered. There were hundreds of them, rotting, swollen, putrefying and floating in the lake beneath. Bound, no doubt, to its waters, and given the properties Harry had seen of the water, likely immure to much of the magic any trespasser could cast.

'Voldemort doesn't want us to leave, does he?' Harry remarked archly, not at all looking forward to having to fend off the inferi if the lake was disturbed again.

'Tom prefers his treasures remain secret,' the headmaster agreed mildly, stepping onto the island.

It was little more than small circle of stone, and set at its centre, in a basin filled with clear liquid, Harry found the locket Voldemort should have treasured rather than defiled. It was identical to the one that Salazar's portrait had worn, silver, inscribed with a serpentine initial.

His anger flared up anew, but he suppressed it. Now was not the time for fury, not when he needed to be so careful to ensure the horcrux was destroyed.

'I believe,' Dumbledore said, poking the water within the basin with his wand, 'that it has to be drunk, truly intended to be drunk no less, else the liquid will remain in the basin.'

'In one go, professor?' Harry offered, conjuring a glass pitcher, as the old wizard slipped his wand back into his sleeve.

'That might be best,' the headmaster agreed. 'I do not believe it is meant to kill, for Tom might one day need to retrieve his horcrux himself.'

Dumbedlvore dipped the pitcher in, scooping all of the clear potion from the basin in one sweep, and Harry smiled to himself. Now the potion was out, taken by one intending to drink it, he could take the locket whenever he liked, and break the jug to stop the headmaster from actually having to drink whatever Voldemort had left behind.

Soft, glowing purple runes traced their way around the basin's edge, when his fingers brushed against it.

The contract, he realised. To enter is to pledge your magic to emptying the basin in some way.

It was still able to be bypassed by more than one person, Harry realised, shaking his head at Voldemort's mistake. His wards ensured that only a single adult wizard could make their way here in so many ways as to make the alternative impossible, but those under the age of seventeen, or even muggles, might have no trouble at all.

He raised his wand to break the pitcher as Dumbledore raised it to his lips, but the spell caught on the tip of his tongue, restrained by the sudden knowledge that it would be better if it was drunk by the headmaster.

Dumbledore drained the liquid in one smooth motion, then, after blinking once, collapsed to the floor gasping, sobbing, and muttering.

'Ariana,' he heard the wizard whisper, horrified, 'Gellert? Why?'

Not tasty, then, Harry smirked, quite enjoying watching the man indirectly responsible for taking Katie from him writhe around on the edge of the island.

'Water,' the headmaster gasped, flopping to the edge of the island. Then, before Harry could stop him, he ducked his whole head into the lake.

Merde.

The floating, bloated figures froze, then surged towards the surface, scrambling over each other in their haste to assault those who were trespassing in the cave of their creator.

Harry dragged Dumbledore to his feet, swiftly checking how cognisant the old wizard was, only to find him coherent, but weak.

'Fire, Harry,' the headmaster wheezed, rolling away towards the basin. 'Use, fire.'

The first inferius, swollen, rotting, clad in tattered black robes, under long, lank, coal-black hair, and with half a tarnished, engraved, silver mask encased in the putrefied flesh of his face, was nearly upon them, so Harry cast two spells, just as Dumbledore had said Grindelwald liked to do, one to blast the inferius back, ripping the mask, and half the animated body's face away to reveal oddly familiar features beneath, and the other to clear a path for the boat, which he he pushed Dumbledore none too gently into.

Thrusting his wand towards the plinth he buried the locket in a torrent of white-hearted fiendfyre, watching the silver ornament melt and crack with no small satisfaction. Voldemort's corruption of Salazar's heirloom was at an end.

The blackened, twisted stump of the basin was bared only for a moment before the flames swirled and coalesced into the familiar form of the basilisk. Harry brought it around to encircle the the boat in a searing, steaming ring, incinerating any inferi in its path, cutting an ash-laced swathe through the horde, and destroying any that attempted to hurl themselves through it from the water as they returned towards the distant lake shore.

'Fiendfyre,' Dumbledore realised softly, 'and controlled too well to be your first time at casting.'

'The Triwizard Tournament,' Harry told him, knowing that the headmaster would only deduce it himself if he kept his quiet.

'For the hedges,' Dumbledore realised, relieved. 'It is also capable of destroying a horcrux as you must have hoped.'

As I know, Harry corrected silently.

Harry directed his basilisk into the water of the lake, evaporating fully of half of it, and destroying the remaining inferi before his fiendfyre was extinguished by the magically resistant waters.

'I hoped I would never have to see you cast such spells,' Dumbledore sighed tiredly, 'but we would be dead if you could not.'

I'm sure you didn't, Harry scowled. Martyrs need nothing but their faith.

The fiendfyre had taken a great deal out of him, controlling, directing and sustaining flames hot enough to destroy Voldemort's magic-saturated, water soaked inferi for so long had drained a great portion of his strength, and Dumbledore was looking like he was faring even worse.

Fortunately the door opened at the headmaster's touch, and they both exhaled in relief to leave the confines of the cave for the clear, if cold, winter weather outside.

'I suppose,' Dumbledore said with a touch of wry amusement, 'that this time went better than the last, all things considered. I have yet to touch a cursed artefact, after all.'

Whatever had been holding back Harry's wrath suddenly vanished, and he knew, with sudden, maleficent certainly, exactly what he should do.

Dipping his hand into this pocket he surreptitiously cast the Withering Curse upon the Sherbet Lemon he had saved.

Just another bitter pill from life, professor, he smirked subtly.

'Sherbet Lemon, sir?' Harry offered, extending the re-wrapped sweet in his hand.

'Very kind of you, Harry,' Dumbledore beamed, accepting the sweet gratefully.

He froze the moment the sweet touched his skin.

'Harry?' He asked, voice quavering, as the flesh of his already withered hand tightened, and blackened further, baring bone, and dry, taut sinew to the air. 'Why?' He exhaled, almost pleading.

'Why?' Harry demanded furiously, as the sand, the sky, and the sea froze around them. 'How could you ask that? How dare you ask that!'

He thrust out one hand, fingers half-curled, to summon Dumbledore's wand from his sleeve, and when its wood struck his palm he knew he had won, knew it from the thrill within, and the heady rush of cold, pure power that shivered over him.

'I am not your sacrifice, Dumbledore,' he hissed, 'but I would not have killed you unless I had to for trying to make a martyr of me.'

'Then why, Harry?' The old wizard gasped, flesh paling, as whatever potions he still had in his system fought the curse Harry had cast. His eyes strayed briefly to his wand Harry had taken from him, and he closed his eyes in sorrow.

'Because you let her die,' he retorted in a cold whisper. 'When I asked you about Malfoy you told me not to worry, and Katie died, just so I would have one fewer reasons to live when you needed me to choose to die.'

'Malfoy's target was me,' Dumbledore croaked, 'Katherine was never meant to be harmed, she was a mistake.'

'She was Voldemort's retribution for Bellatrix,' Harry told him cruelly ,'a follower for a follower, he told me when I clashed with him in Diagon Alley. Malfoy was never targeting you.'

'You killed Bellatrix,' the headmaster gasped, paling further.

'She deserved no less,' Harry said callously. 'Or are you going to tell me that we should have sent her to Azkaban again, so she might escape, and harm more, acting so noble all the time while very year, every single, sickening year you sought to destroy your unwanted, accidental horcrux however you could, until you decided you could use him better.'

Harry bent and ripped the ring from Dumbledore's finger, slipping it onto his own hand.

'But that's just the start,' he smiled, unable to sate his fury now he had finally stepped from the shadows. 'I wanted this,' he tapped the stone, 'so I can see them both again,' he explained wistfully.

'You knew,' Dumbledore realised, rolling over onto his stomach, as creeping, dark veins spread over his arms, and neck.

'About both horcruxes and hallows long before you told me anything,' Harry spat. 'You let Katie die, threw away the lives of those who follow you, and would have sent me blindly to my end, to the utter nothingness of death, to the emptiness… And I will not be that again,' he swore fervently, 'never!'

'You… don't understand,' the headmaster murmured, tears shining in his beard. 'You have to die, or else Tom never can, so I had to get you die, I arranged everything.'

'Oh I understand,' Harry hissed, thrusting the old wizard's wand into his own sleeve, ignoring the brilliant white sparks that leapt from its tip at his touch. 'You would have had me throw away my life for the meaningless existences of those who have never given anything for me.'

'Thirteen years of planning,' Dumbledore whispered hoarsely, shaking his head in despair, 'every time I set you against Tom to make him believe that you were his greatest enemy, hardened my heart and put in you in harm's way when I would have give anything not to, just so he would one day decide to take your blood for the ritual that would be his only chance at restoration once Nicholas' stone was gone.'

'My blood?' The confession had become confusing, and Harry's bemusement penetrated the cold haze of anger.

'By taking your blood, and the protection upon it, he has ensured that the both of you are shielded from the actions of the other,' the headmaster wheezed. The blackened veins had spread across his face and into his eyes, flecks of blood spattered at his lips as he strained against the spell to speak. 'Your sacrifice for others would have been enough to destroy him, just as your mother's would have done when no horcruxes remained, and because he took your blood you would have lived, Harry, but you could not know, because you had to truly intend to die to survive.'

Thirteen years of planning.

Harry's blood ran cold, and not with rage.

He always intended for everyone else to live, right until the very end.

'Now it is all lost,' Dumbledore muttered, soft, fat tears rolling into the sand. 'You are lost, treading the same dark path that Tom did, Severus is gone, so many of those I wished to save are gone.'

'Snape is alive,' Harry said quietly, able to offer only that slight comfort, for it seemed everything else he had said was true. 'I removed him because he was in my way, but I set him free from his oaths to either master by letting you all believe he was dead.'

Something desperate flickered in Dumbledore's eyes, something hopeful. He opened his mouth, wheezing, and breathing faster as the curse crept up his neck, and his shoulders withered back to the bone.

'That would have made your parents proud,' he croaked, his glasses slipping from his face, snapping from the bridge of his nose to fall in two separate pieces to the ground.

'My parents were naive,' Harry said softly, 'they would not understand me.'

'They died for the one who they loved most,' Dumbledore gasped, 'and for the one who loved them most, there can be no greater understanding than that.'

Perhaps, Harry conceded, as the curse wrapped itself around Dumbledore's throat, cutting off any attempt at speech.

'I am sorry,' he said helplessly, eyes burning, chest swirling with indecipherable emotion, the ice around him collapsed, crumbling and melting away.

Dumbledore's head moved slightly from side to side, his lips crooked in a gentle smile, forgiving, even at the end, and, without wand, or words, in brilliant white flames, he etched the Peverell's sigil into the air between them, splitting the symbol into three separate pieces.

The triangle that represented the cloak framed a slender, proud stag whose meaning was obvious, the stone, remained a simple circle, for they both knew where it resided, but the line for the wand had altered too, and there, in flickering flame upon the air, was a perfect representation of the wand Harry now had tucked within his sleeve.

He stared incredulously at Dumbledore, who could only gaze back at him with bright, electric blue eyes full of emotion, and in that instant of eye contact he felt something touch his thoughts, a faint, fleeting impression, too slight and subtle to last any longer, but Harry thought he understood all the same.

The old wizard still had hope for him.

Harry could see the the sentiment burning in those blue eyes, but it only lasted for a moment, for the fire faded all too swiftly, and with it went Albus Dumbledore.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does! Hopefully this chapter wasn't overhyped either.

P.S. Note on Felix Felicis - Because I don't want it to be any more ridiculously overpowered than it already is, and then inexplicably never used at a more important plot point like in canon, I am limiting the effectiveness of the potion by making its objectives subjective. So, in this chapter, Harry wants his revenge on Malfoy, and the potion gives him a nudge in the right direction to achieve that, however, it would have the same effect regardless of whether Malfoy was innocent or not, because the 'optimal scenario' the potion is helping to create is based off of Harry's belief Malfoy is guilty. I am unsure whether this is canon compliant, given all the lucky things that happen to Harry already seem to fit the method I have chosen.

97. Expelliarmus

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter, yay!

I do apologise for my obsession with terrible puns as chapter titles, well, I'm not really sorry, but I feel I should apologise for them nonetheless...

Chapter 97

The first rays of light crept over the edge of the horizon, spilling across the shores of the Black Lake, casting long shadows from the the towers and turrets of the school, and bathing the face of Albus Dumbledore in a soft, orange hue.

The old wizard's face looked almost peaceful now Harry had closed his eyes, but, despite the illusion of repose, the thin, blackened, dead veins that traced their way under pale, paper-thin skin marred the image.

Harry gently placed the broken, half-moon spectacles on the desk next to Dumbledore beside the stack of empty vials he knew must have once contained the potion Snape had brewed to arrest the affects of the curse.

There would be no mystery about his death; it would, Harry smiled wryly, be the least secretive thing the man had managed.

There was a flash of red flame, and a soft, happy trill as Fawkes reappeared on the edge of desk, and, when Dumbledore did not move, the phoenix triumphantly stole his spectacles and swooped over to his perch with his prize.

'He won't be able to play that game anymore, Fawkes,' Harry said sadly.

The phoenix was the only thing in the room capable of hearing him, the portraits were confunded, thought they were almost all asleep anyway, and the wards around the office were nothing for the one who owned the concealing hallow.

Fawkes trilled once more, this time Harry could hear the alarm in the phoenix's song, and dropped the spectacles back onto the desk, nudging them with one taloned foot, and then its beak towards Dumbledore's hand.

When his partner did not reclaim his glasses the phoenix became distressed, hopping across to blink thick, heavy tears onto Dumbledore's hands, but the tears that had once saved Harry had no affect.

Fawkes, seemingly realising that his partner was truly dead, let out a cry of despair, and a wave of hot, angry magic that swirled about the room, rustling papers and rattling the doors to the cabinets.

Then the phoenix turned its eyes on him.

'Sorry,' Harry apologised quietly.

Fawkes hissed at him, scoring lines into the desktop with his talons, and trilled a song filled with so much scathing, angry disappointment that Harry almost wished the office would floor would open and swallow him.

A final flare of red flame and the familiar was gone.

'I am sorry,' Harry repeated, seating himself opposite the dead headmaster. He could hardly disagree with Fawkes. The phoenix had shown no hostility towards him until now, despite the acts he had previously committed.

I have crossed a line.

Killing the headmaster made things easier for him. Harry knew that, had known that from the moment he had removed the horcrux, but it was no longer justified, for Dumbledore, unlike any of the others he had hurt, had done nothing, and would never have done anything to deserve his fate.

Harry helped himself to a sherbet lemon, slowly unwrapping the sweet, and sucking on it several times before he placed one on the desk in front of Dumbledore.

The light had crept a lot further since he had last noticed, and Harry imagined the castle would be stirring soon; it looked about as bright as it was when he normally awoke at this time of year.

He slipped the ring from his hand, running the tip of his forefinger slowly and possessively along the edge of the gold band.

'Let's see what you're capable of,' he murmured.

I don't actually know how it works, he laughed bitterly.

He'd killed for this stone as much as for his misguided revenge and he didn't even know how it worked. Touching it had no effect, and running the tip of his wand over it only gave him an impression of a web of magic too complex for him to comprehend.

Maybe Fleur will know, he mused. I'm not even sure who I want to see first.

Harry couldn't bring himself to summon Salazar, or Katie, he wanted to see them too much, but it felt wrong, like he was rewarding himself for killing a man who had only good intentions towards him.

He flicked the ring into the air off his thumb, watching the band glint in the light from the window.

It spun, once, twice, three times, before landing in his palm.

My parents, perhaps, he decided; he would have to summon them at some point, just to see them.

'Harry.'

The voice from behind him was little more than a whisper, and it echoed, despite the Headmaster's Office never having had such an affect before.

He knew instantly, and without turning to look, that his company had not come from among the living.

Flipping the ring, or the stone three times, he realised, mustering the courage to turn, and see what his parents thought of him

It made sense that it was a magically powerful number.

He swivelled slowly, suppressing his emotions, and his hope, until he knew what they thought of him, and of what he had done.

They were both little more than shadows suspended on dust, translucent, distant outlines that wavered, and trembled as if he was watching them through water, but they were the closest he had ever been to seeing his parents.

'Harry,' his mother repeated softly, 'you've grown up so much.'

'I had to,' he replied, hand closing tightly around the ring.

'Sorry, his father murmured guiltily, 'we did not want to leave you alone, but it was that or have you come with us.'

'I would rather be alone than dead,' Harry smiled. His statement was perilously close to a lie, and it was only the knowledge that being alone might not be permanent that distinguished between the two fates.

'You're so powerful,' Lily beamed, sliding closer, fingers outstretched hungrily towards his face. 'I told you he would be special, James.'

Her caress was cold, little more than the brief flare of a zephyr against his skin, and his mother's fingers fell away disappointedly.

'The Dark Lord's equal,' his father said slowly, gazing past Harry at the still, silent form of Albus Dumbledore.

'We all make mistakes,' Lily remonstrated. 'Albus always liked to keep secrets, hoarded them, and left everyone in the dark while he tried to orchestrate things; our Harry can hardly be blamed for misinterpreting his actions.'

'Why did you not ask him?' James said suddenly, stepping alongside his wife to stare, with eyes that were little more than a memory, at his son.

'If I had been right, and he had known I knew he would have killed me,' Harry answered.

They disapprove, he realised.

'Albus should not have tried to bear the burden himself,' his father decided after a long pause.

They were more distinct now, their shapes solidifying, reaching an almost smoke-like state.

'Exactly,' Lily smiled sadly, 'Harry can hardly be blamed for defending himself, and we would have both avenged a friend.'

'You killed Peter,' James grinned viciously, 'well done.'

'You aren't worried that I am Dark?' Harry asked curiously.

'What does Dark or Light matter to the dead?' Lily shrugged. 'You are alive, our blood magic worked, and you have a hope of happiness as we dreamt of.'

'Is that all you wanted?'

It seemed so simple, so easy, that he could hardly believe it.

'I do not remember wanting anything else,' his father answered slowly, 'but I think I must have done once.'

They do not remember, Harry frowned. They are just echoes. It does not truly raise the dead.

'It is not wise to surround yourself with those who have departed,' his mother warned gently. 'Call on us, on Katie, and on Salazar,' Harry looked up at her at the mention of the ancestor she should not know of, realising that they knew far more than they should even as echoes, 'but don't depend on us for company.'

'I won't,' he promised with a smile.

'You have Fleur,' James reminded him, 'don't forget your dream.'

'I won't.'

He turned the stone back over in his palm, watching the spirits of his parents fade, unsatisfied. They had been little more than echoes, their personalities all but imperceptible.

Perhaps it was because I never knew them.

He turned the stone once more, calling on Cadmus Peverell, the wizard who had claimed to have been gifted by the stone by Death, but nothing happened.

Harry tried several more famous wizards that he had never met, and was met with the same result.

Someone I knew, then.

He flipped the ring thrice, curious as to whether how well he had known the person affected the shade he saw.

'Bellatrix Lestrange,' he instructed softly.

He was not met with the tall, dark-haired, gaunt-faced witch he had duelled in the Ministry, but a small, swaying, smiling child, with lustrous curls that toppled across one side of her face, and dazed, empty eyes.

'Potter,' the childlike shadow of the witch breathed, 'you killed me.'

'You lost,' Harry reminded her.

'Bella was always going to lose eventually,' she agreed, bobbing her head happily, 'at least I lost to a wizard who could play.' Her eyes slid past him to Dumbledore, and she giggled. 'You killed Dumbledore,' she murmured almost reverently, 'such a beautiful game.'

'Draco too,' Harry said absently, studying the witch's form as it solidified beyond the smokey shadows his parents had been into something that seemed only a step away from colour.

'That's what happens when you lose,' Bellatrix shrugged, 'you'll lose one day too, little Potter, the Dark Lord is my master, and the master of the game.'

She faded when Harry turned the ring back over again.

'Victor Krum.'

'Harry,' the Bulgarian grinned, 'you won!'

'I did,' he laughed, amused that Krum's competitiveness was the first thing that had reappeared.

'It was not fair, though,' Krum sighed, 'I should have liked to have faced you at your best, just us, without Voldemort's fingers at our strings.'

'Sorry,' Harry apologised.

'You have nothing to apologise for,' Krum shook his head, 'I should not have tried to dodge when I couldn't see the curse coming.'

The Bulgarian's form grew no more distinct than Bellatrix's had, and Harry began to turn the ring over again in his palm.

'Look after Hermione for me,' Krum asked softly, 'she is afraid.'

He was gone before Harry could answer.

The clamour of morning and breakfast was beginning to rise up from the Great Hall, and Harry knew he had to leave before he ran out of time.

Just one more.

'Albus Dumbledore.'

'Harry,' the old wizard steepled the shadows of his fingers, 'what would you have me say?'

'What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?' Harry asked. 'And where did you get the Elder Wand from?'

'A great deal more than most,' Dumbledore answered modestly, condensing to the edge of colour. 'They have a bloody history, stretching back far further than the legend would imply, and the wand I took from Gellert after he stole it from the wandmaker Gregorovitch.'

'How far?'

'There are references in Hellenistic literature to the finger of the Keres, a wand that bears remarkable resemblance to the one I once wielded, and is now yours. In Britain the legends of Arthur tell of an invisibility cloak that fits the description of the one you have inherited. The stone is harder to read from the pages of history, but Asclepius, whose ability to raise the dead was legend, may have once possessed it.'

'So they were not made by Death or the Peverells?' Harry inquired.

'I doubt they were made by the Peverells,' Dumbledore agreed mildly, 'the family came from Rome, likely bringing them with them, and later adopted the mark, but they are far older. I believe they are aspects of death, created as the oldest spells once were by simple emotion, and understanding. Since their creation they have been explained away by many stories, claimed by wizard after wizard, until the truth has become indistinguishable from death.'

'I do not understand,' Harry admitted.

'The cloak, invisible, intangible, undetectable and unstoppable,' Dumbledore began, 'just as death is. The stone, the lingering sorrow and regret that it imparts upon those who have lost loved ones to it. The wand, the ability to strike down any with impunity, just as death does.'

'So they are death.'

'Perhaps,' the former headmaster murmured, 'I do not know. There is the veil as well, the gateway that has never been explained. I am unsure whether that is a last aspect, or if it was created by the Peverells, the last to have all three Hallows together to study.'

'I am sorry,' Harry told him sincerely, turning the stone over twice.

'We all make mistakes,' Dumbledore told him softly, 'those of us who are powerful make mistakes with greater consequences. Good intentions, my boy, that is what matters most, and even now having done things I would have never dreamt you had, your heart is not so hollow. After all,' he smiled benevolently, 'you still chose the hallows over horcruxes, and unlike Tom you have someone you love, and someone who loves you.'

Harry turned the ring over one last time, letting the shade of the headmaster fade.

I will not call him again, he decided.

Dumbledore had a way with words, and Harry wasn't sure exactly how much of the old wizard was within the echo. It seemed unwise to expose himself to the advice of a wizard who had intended to have him sacrifice himself, even if he had intended Harry to eventually live.

He slipped the ring back onto his hand, made sure the Elder Wand remained tucked securely within his sleeve, and threw his cloak over himself to make sure he remained undetected by any wards on the office itself.

Swiftly he left the office, striding down the stairs, and out past the gargoyle guardian.

Breakfast time, he decided, sweeping the cloak off in a convenient alcove. I can continue to experiment with the stone later when Fleur is around to help.

He suspected it was likely that the Resurrection Stone created the imprint of the person from his mind somehow, and that was why he had to have known the person to be able to call upon them. It also explained why his parents were so without personality compared to Dumbledore, for he had little memory and knowledge of them for the stone to use.

The Great Hall fell utterly silent when he entered.

There were aurors on the stage in a small cluster around Professor McGonagall who seemed to be deputising in Dumbledore's as of yet unexplained absence.

'Harry Potter,' the first of them said sternly, 'for the destruction of the Three Broomsticks you owe its owner several thousand galleons for repairs.'

Harry blinked, taking in the faces in the room while he attempted to suppress his surprise. That had not been the reason he had been expecting for the aurors' presence.

It seemed the rest of the school shared his opinion, because most looked either shocked, horrified, or, in Hermione's case, an odd mixture of both. His revenge hadn't won him many friends, but, despite the wary glances, and disturbed looks he was receiving there was a faint sense of approval behind the eyes of many of the students, even those in Slytherin.

An eye for an eye always appeals to some.

'Mr Potter?' The auror, whom he didn't recognise, prompted.

'I can pay,' he assured them, 'just provide me with the vault number and I'll transfer money to pay for the damages.'

'Then that is all,' the auror announced, leading his team past Harry and out of the hall to the outrage of some.

Harry decided that quietly taking a seat next to Neville and keeping his head down might be prudent.

'Mr Potter,' McGonagall said sharply, 'up here if you please.'

Harry shot Neville a glance, but his friend was avoiding his eyes for the time being.

No doubt he approves of the end, but not the means, Harry deduced.

Neville would understand when he explained the reasons behind what he had done to Malfoy.

He came to a stop in front of McGonagall, and the table and throne he knew to be conjured replacements.

'The Ministry has decided there is no evidence to implicate in you in what has taken place,' his head of house said bitterly, 'but it has been brought to my attention that a lot of people whom you have a motive to harm get hurt, and thus, for the safety of my students, I hereby expel you from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.'

That wasn't part of the plan, Harry frowned.

He sensed the hand of felix felicis at play here. There was little reason for him to remain here, he had his NEWTs, his home was well warded, he could return through the chamber if he wished, and he had the stone. It seemed his actions, which, now he looked back on it, had been a little more extreme than necessary, had conveniently granted him an escape.

'Your wand, Mr Potter,' McGonagall said quietly, 'you're not seventeen yet, and though your parents would be heartbroken to see me to do this I think it must be done.'

'I would not advise trying that,' Harry replied equally quietly, and completely calm. He had no intention of allowing her to snap his wand, not now, not ever.

'Was that a threat?' McGonagall whispered, shocked. 'I have been practicing magic for several times longer than you have been alive, Mr Potter, no teenage wizard is going to scare me.'

'No?' Harry smiled innocently, glancing up at the missing flag on the far side of the hall. 'I am fond of my wand, Professor McGonagall, and I suspect I shall need it.'

For a moment it looked like she might reach out to try to take it, and so Harry let a little of the rage he felt at the idea of having his wand taken flow, cooling the air around them, and casting their breath as pale mist.

There was an audible scraping noise as the nearby staff retreated.

No doubt everyone knew what had happened to the pub in Hogsmeade.

'Goodbye, professor,' Harry said, turning on his heel to stalk out, leaving frosted footprints in his wake. 'It seems I must leave,' he added, loudly enough for all to hear.

Halfway down the hall he caught a glimpse of Hermione, her face caught somewhere between regret, relief and satisfaction.

'However you will find,' he smirked, 'that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me.'

Hermione, who recognised the words, looked outraged, and Harry smiled in satisfaction. He knew exactly who had been bringing things to McGonagall's attention. She had done it before after all, with the Firebolt.

Ignoring the lump that formed in his throat at the happy memories that broom had brought, and he made the most of his opportunity and while Hermione was stuttering he locked eyes with Neville. His friend had straightened up to stare at him the moment Harry had been formally expelled.

Soon, Harry promised him, thrusting the thought straight into his head. I will come to find you when it is time to visit the piece of revenge against the Lestranges.

Neville lacked the ability to reply, but Harry felt the hot upwelling of hate at the mention of the Death Eaters, and the surge of desperate desire that accompanied it.

There's so little left, he thought, as he swept out towards the Forbidden Forest and the edge of the wards. The cup, and Nagini and Voldemort.

He apparated the moment he crossed the boundary, not even pausing to look back up at the castle.

The looming pines whirled away to be replaced by the simple kitchen he and Fleur had, and window filled with spring flowers.

'I'm home,' Harry called out tentatively. He could not hear Fleur, which normally meant she was intensely focussed on something.

His first instinct was to check the study and whatever she was enchanting, his second was to open the tastiest looking box of cake in the kitchen. There was no way she would't notice that.

'Welcome back darling,' a much deeper voice cried, flinging their arms around him.

'Get off,' Harry grunted, detaching himself from his godfather, 'you're not pretty enough for me to want you so close, and why are you still here?'

'No point me staying at Grimmauld Place now,' he said, 'the Order has crumbled, Dumbledore has abandoned us, and the Ministry has fallen back to London in disarray.' His fingers slipped to the bandages that were just visible about his chest, and to the wound that Lucius Malfoy had led them with as he frowned.

Dumbledore is dead, Harry added silently.

'How was school honey?' Sirius asked, humour returning.

'I got expelled,' Harry grinned, watching Sirius splutter.

'Why?' He demanded, when he'd regained his composure.

'Malfoy.' Fleur swept into the kitchen, brandishing that morning's paper.

Malfoy heir murdered in school hall, Harry read. Death Eater's suspected.

This Ministry was just as adept at spinning the media to print its message as the last. Everyone knew who had killed Malfoy, but suspected was not proven guilty, as Malfoy's own father had so succinctly shown over the years.

There's a piece of irony, Harry noted grimly.

'You did that?' Sirius looked slightly sickened. 'Harry there is a line between killing the person who killed your friends, something I would do, tried to do, in fact, and whatever that was.'

'That was a message,' Harry explained calmly. 'I am sure that those who consider joining Voldemort out of fear, will now find themselves equally afraid of joining him.' He frowned, admittedly killing Malfoy in such a spectacular manner had not been the smartest thing to do, but he had feeling the luck potion had been at work there. He voiced as much, and Sirius looked quite relieved. Fleur, on the other hand, simply looked curious.

'It does not matter,' she shrugged. 'Katie is avenged.'

'Completely,' Harry agreed, extending his wand hand to display the black stone upon its thin gold band.

'Is that?' Fleur gasped, sweeping over to snatch his hand.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'The Resurrection Stone, to go with the Invisibility Cloak, and another horcrux destroyed, though it has taken a great toll on Dumbledore.'

'Can I?' Fleur's fingers were already tugging at the ring in excitement, 'just for a few moments?'

'Not yet,' Harry apologised, 'I am unsure exactly how it works, but I've tested it, and spoken to the shadows of my parents. Besides,' he teased, 'it is too early for me to be giving your rings, no?'

'Your parents?' Sirius looked completely lost. Fleur pouted, and stopped her attempts to steal the stone, though she did not let go of Harry's hand, and withdrew her wand, now engraved with a slim ring of runes around its middle, to study it while it was on his finger.

Harry supposed that was the best compromise he would get.

'This, Sirius,' Fleur said absently, tracing her wand over the ring, 'is one of the Deathly Hallows.'

'They're a myth.' Sirius' scepticism was obvious.

Harry pulled the ring from his finger, turned it over three times, and, with an amused smirk, decided on the perfect person to call to demonstrate without risking Sirius becoming obsessed with the stone.

'Walburga Black.'

'Oh,' the shade of Sirius' mother wavered into being, 'my wayward, useless son, and you, who could have been the greatest wizard of our name.' Her respect for Harry was tinged with regret, and hurt at the offer he had spurned.

Sirius stared blankly at Harry.

'He can't see me,' the shadow of the witch said quietly, 'only you can, heir of Slytherin.'

'Ah,' Harry frowned, 'it seems only the master of the stone can see those who have been summoned by it.'

'Why didn't you want to save my family?' The spirit demanded sadly. 'Look at what has become of my sons, one missing, likely dead, and the other so hateful of his kin he would see his own name ruined.'

'I would have done if your family would not have cost me Fleur,' Harry told her.

'Who are you talking to?' Fleur asked curiously.

'Sirius' mother,' Harry said simply, and laughed when his godfather blanched. 'I've released her now,' he added, turning the stone back over in his palm.

'Thank Merlin,' Sirius sighed, 'that horrible woman should stay dead.'

'She was sad because her family has been ruined,' Harry told him softly.

'Her perfect pure-blooded line, you mean,' Sirius sneered.

'Family is family,' Fleur said quietly.

'So it's a hallow,' Sirius said quickly, unwilling to talk about his family any longer. 'What does that mean?'

'It means Harry can speak to the dead,' Fleur said gently, 'including Katie, and apparently his parents.'

'Anyone I have known,' Harry elucidated, 'but the less well I knew them the less of the real person is in the echo.'

'There wasn't much of James and Lily in the shades you summoned,' Sirius realised. 'Sorry, Harry,' he shrugged helplessly.

'It's ok,' Harry reassured him, 'there was a little of them left, just the strongest parts, the desire that lingered longest after death.'

'It is the second hallow that we possess,' Fleur announced triumphantly, 'the cloak is the cloak.'

'James' cloak?' Sirius looked mortified.

'Yes,' Fleur smirked.

'Do you have any idea of the things he and I have done under that?' Sirius asked incredulously. 'I'm certain that he slept with Lily under it,' Harry scrunched his face up in disgust at the idea, 'and I have definitely had sex with at least,' he counted briefly on his fingers, 'four girls, under it.'

'I've been wearing that for years,' Harry said disgustedly. 'Children have been touching it.'

'It is a good thing I washed it,' Fleur nodded, equally repulsed. 'What a way to treat a legendary artefact.'

Sirius chuckled, torn between embarrassment, guilt and pride.

'Two hallows,' Fleur repeated thoughtfully, 'the things I might learn.'

'It's the third hallow we have,' Harry corrected, slipping the Elder Wand, Dumbledore's wand, from his sleeve. 'He had the wand as well.'

'All three!' Fleur looked like she about to have a heart attack from excitement, her fingers were twitching at her side. 'You have to let me see them, Harry,' she pleaded.

'We'll test them both together soon,' Harry promised, throwing her a fond smile.

'If the legends are true,' Sirius said slowly, 'then that wand will be of great help against Voldemort.'

'Perhaps,' Harry agreed, slightly optimistic, but cautious of hoping before he had tested its capabilities. 'It might help balance the scales at the very least.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

98. Farewells

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So I received over 200 reviews for chapter 96, which is phenomenal, and really appreciated, apparently Dumbledore's death was a big thing, who would've guessed!

I am puzzled by why some are surprised Harry was expelled. He killed a student, the child of a suspected Death Eater, in cold blood, hung his mutilated body in the Great Hall, and everyone who was willing or forced to see the obvious knew it was him that did it, even if it could not be proved. There's no way McGonagall would leave a known murderer in a school full of the children of suspected Death Eaters. That's like asking Hannibal Lecter to do the catering for your party and introducing him to your sister...

Still, here's the next one, enjoy!

Chapter 98

Fleur's fingers slipped into his, their warmth the only comfort he had , for the cold pebbles of the lake shore, and the steady, cold wind that whistled across the lake only fed the numbness he felt.

'You could not have known,' she reminded him gently, 'this is the price of keeping secrets.'

Harry said nothing, but shuffled on the stones of the shoreline, the pebbles grating beneath his feet.

Across from their invisible bodies, a gathering of students, staff and many witches and wizards brave enough to attend bowed their heads as the eulogy ended. Harry could not have come here openly, the country whispered that he was a murderer, that he had succumbed to darkness, and he was reviled, and feared by as many as still held him in high regard for the result of his parents' blood magic.

The boy-who-killed, Harry thought, apathetic.

'I do not know whether I should be victorious or sad,' Harry said eventually, watching as the wizard raised his wand to surround Dumbledore in bright, white flames. 'He would have led me blindly to my death, but he would have done it so that I could live freely afterwards.'

'I would mourn the loss of an equal, of a great, pure-hearted man,' Fleur decided, 'but I would be relieved at the death of a wizard who might have killed me.'

The white flames rose high above the bier, swirling spirals of smoke shivered high in curling columns across a clear, cold sky, and, in a rippling flash of red, Fawkes appeared above the crowd. His song was muted, the cheerful trilling had become a long, mourning keen that cut at Harry's heart.

Sorry, Fawkes, he thought sadly, I did not wish to take him from you, only to stop him taking someone from me.

The phoenix keened once more, swooping low over the crowd, and flaring his wings to hang in the air over where he and Fleur were hidden for a moment's pause. A single, bright, crimson tail feather floated to fall at Fleur's feet, then phoenix vanished in a final flash.

The white flames flared bright, scattering the smoke, and Dumbledore's figure was encased within hard, cold, white marble.

'A phoenix's feather,' Fleur murmured, bending to retrieve it while it remained unnoticed, 'these are not given lightly.'

'Fawkes' farewell, we should not keep it,' Harry frowned.

'I was not going to keep it,' Fleur murmured, running an invisible finger along it's length. 'It is a farewell gift for you, I think,' she mused, 'not for Albus Dumbledore.'

'Are you listening?' Harry asked curiously.

'I am not so good as Gabby,' Fleur whispered, as the crowd began to leave, 'but the magic of a phoenix is strong, emotive, and easily sensed.'

'What do you feel?'

'It is not forgiveness,' she decided, 'it is a gift so that you might earn it. Your first wand, it had a phoenix feather, no?'

'It did,' Harry nodded.

'From the same phoenix,' she said, clearly certain. 'The shards of the heart of your first partner, consumed by basilisk venom,' she remembered absently. 'This is for a new wand, for a fresh start.'

Harry picked the feather from her fingers, considering it carefully, as he drifted towards the tomb. The suggestion was obvious.

Be as you once were, not as you are.

'I do not need a new wand,' he decided, 'nor a new start.'

'The phoenix would disagree,' Fleur commented, but he could hear the approving smile on her lips. She did not want the naive, sacrificing idiot he had once been. A child with a heart so pure he would have died for the first wizard or witch to lie to him. A child that would have died and left her alone.

'How would Fawkes know?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'I made a mistake, and one that was not fully of my own making. I should be more careful, I was arrogant, complacent, and callous, but none of my dreams of have changed, and there is still nothing I would not do to achieve them.'

'You just intend to make sure that what you do is something you must do,' Fleur understood.

'Exactly.'

Never again, he swore. I will do anything I must, but I will never make this mistake again.

Harry placed the feather on the top of the tomb, and watched, intrigued, as it crumbled to ashes, vanishing in the wind. The tomb itself shivered, shimmered, and reformed. A gleaming, glinting coffin of crystal encased Dumbledore, throwing rainbows over his face, and perfectly preserving the peaceful countenance he would forever wear.

'A fitting funeral and resting place for a great wizard, and a greater man,' Fleur said softly.

'He is the only Hogwarts headmaster to be buried on the grounds, and it is an honour he deserves,' Harry agreed.

'Umbridge,' Fleur reminded him, smirking slightly.

'She wasn't buried,' Harry chuckled grimly. 'She was suspended in the trees, eaten alive, and discarded as a desiccated husk.'

'That probably doesn't count,' Fleur nodded, discarding her disillusionment.

Harry did the same.

'I think I will do it now,' he decided, slipping the ring bearing the Resurrection Stone from his finger.

'Now?' Fleur inquired. 'Why?'

'It feels right,' Harry answered simply, turning it over three times.

Salazar Slytherin, Harry commanded.

'You found it,' the shade exclaimed proudly. 'I knew you would succeed where I had failed.'

'I do not know how it works,' Harry said, 'and I am starting to think that the only thing worse than having this stone would be for me to have it and then lose it.'

'It gives you an echo of those you knew,' Salazar said softly. 'Magic remembers the shapes of the souls it has been bound to, and the closer they are to the summoner, the stronger the memory.'

'I did not think you could be real,' Harry confessed.

'Too good to be true,' Slytherin nodded. 'You were right to be cautious; it was wise of you.'

'It's not often you accuse me of wisdom,' Harry grinned half-heartedly.

'If you spent less time acting like a brainless moron I would,' Salazar told him.

'I rarely do anything reckless,' Harry insisted, gaining wildly, Fleur raised an eyebrow at that statement.

How I missed this.

'I have grown strong,' he told the founder, 'stronger than I would have ever hoped before, even if I have made mistakes, and done things that others would condemn me for.'

'Revenge is a temptation few can resist,' Slytherin admitted. 'I could not, we are very alike in that regard, and in your perfect ruthlessness. Godric would not agree with your methods, you are more my heir now than his,' there was a touch of smugness as he spoke, 'but he would have approved of your heart, and for all his flaws, he was a great wizard too.'

'As great as you?' Harry asked cheekily.

'Not quite that great,' Salazar smirked, 'but close enough that he could dream of it.'

'Such modesty.'

'You are as powerful as either of us,' Slytherin reminded him dryly, 'the first wizard in history to unite the hallows alone, or,' his eyes drifted to Fleur, 'perhaps with united purpose would be a better description. Perhaps you will leave a legacy greater than my own,' he mused, 'I hope so, it is the dream of all parents to watch their children outshine them.'

'I do not think it will be enough,' Harry said quietly. 'I can destroy horcruxes, slaughter his servants, delve as deep as one can go into the study of magic, even push its boundaries further than anyone has pushed them before, but he will always have a head start on me.'

'You underestimate yourself,' Salazar told him gently. 'Magic is about intent, if you want it enough, then there is almost nothing you cannot make happen. That dream in the mirror is almost close enough to see, you need only find the strength to reach it.'

'I will reach it,' he told himself, searching for the conviction within. He found no belief, nor confidence but he didn't need them, such feelings were unnecessary motivation.

There is no other choice, he knew, I reach my dream, or I become nothing, and that will not, must not happen.

He could not bear it.

'The last enemy to be destroyed is death,' Slytherin told him wryly. 'I think it is more apt to say that the last victory is not to be destroyed by death, but to transcend it. We all must die, Harry,' he warned, 'but something of us can remain, while we are still known, remembered and respected, then we must still be something.'

Is that true, he wondered.

He hoped it was, the idea stilled a little of his fear of the emptiness, of the consuming, creeping void.

'Let me go, Harry,' Salazar's shade suggested gently. 'Don't call on me again if you can help it, don't dream of the dead when the living stand beside you. Harden your heart, my heir,' he insisted softly, 'say farewell, step forwards, and don't turn back,' he smiled proudly, 'don't even look back.'

'Farewell,' Harry repeated hollowly, letting the shadow of his ancestor vanish.

'Are you ok?' Fleur asked carefully.

'I will be fine,' Harry assured, 'there is one last person I need to say goodbye to.'

Katie, he thought fervently, stomach twisting in anticipation as he turned the ring over. This one will be the hardest.

'Harry,' Katie beamed up at him.

Her shade shivered straight into a solid state, and her form was so strong that he almost reached out to touch her. Everything he had inexplicably been unable to see for so long was obvious now. The way she stared at him, moved herself, even as an echo of life, so that she was always as close to him as she could be, her eyes and hands lingering upon him.

'I missed you,' she told him, stepping closer, so close that her smoke-like, silver skin all but brushed against his own.

'I am sorry,' Harry whispered, unable to resist trying to touch her when she came within arm's reach. 'I should have kept you safe.'

'I think it's better like this,' Katie disagreed, and she was smiling still, but her smile was so strained and sad that Harry had to swallow the lump in his throat, and clench his jaw to still the hotness in his eyes. 'I'm not in the way now.'

'You were never in the way,' he promised her, flinching as his fingers faded through her form. Fleur's hand slipped into his in comfort, her eyes on Harry, watching his reaction to the spirit that she could not see.

'It's better this way,' Katie echoed stubbornly. 'There wasn't room for me, not really, and this way I don't have to watch you walk away,' she blinked long, and slow, something sparkling on her lashes, 'I prefer this end, to enduring that.'

'I would have never walked away,' Harry said, horrified, and so disgusted by the idea he slipped into parseltongue.

'Not quickly,' Katie replied, somehow understanding him, 'but slowly it would have happened, a little at a time, with each passing day, you would have forgotten me, and I would have had to watch it happen.'

'I won't forget you.'

'You will,' she said gently. Her tears were falling now, running in slender, silver lines along her cheeks, 'but I won't have to see it happen, and that is a kindness I am grateful for.' Her fingers drifted over to pat his cheek, but he felt nothing at her touch for her fingers ghosted through him just as his had through her.

Harry clenched his free hand into a fist, trying desperately to ignore the numbness of hollow hands around his heart, and the biting, bitter sadness that swelled within him.

'I can't do this,' he told her, his voice cracking. He knew now why this stone was so dangerous; it could drive any wizard or witch mad with longing. There was little he would not trade just to be able to touch her, for she seemed so close to life, yet he knew she was just out of reach.

'Don't send me away,' Katie begged, tears cascading now. 'I don't want to leave you, please,' she pleaded, eyes wide, 'let me linger with you just a little longer.'

'I have to say goodbye,' Harry told her forlornly.

'I know,' she agreed miserably, 'you were always going to have to say goodbye one day. I wish that I had never said a word to Roger Davies all that time ago,' she said distantly. 'Such a small thing, and it could have changed so much. I wish it more than anything, but,' she brushed away her tears with the heel of her hand, a bittersweet smile on her lips, 'we both know that wishes like that don't come true.'

'I don't want to say it,' Harry said. Even the idea of saying goodbye was too much. A harsh, jagged something was ripping and twisting in his chest.

'Then don't,' Katie smiled sadly, drifting so close all he could see of her was her bright eyes, and tear filled lashes. 'I dreamt that one day you would kiss me,' she whispered, 'but deep down I knew you never would.'

Harry said nothing; there was nothing he could say. He knew she had loved him, and that even though he would always be Fleur's, Katie would have remained silently his, pretending friendship, and crying quiet tears with each kiss given to the other girl.

Her silver face slipped closer, the shadow of her lips upon his, but neither of them felt anything, and, unable to endure it any longer, the ring slipped from his fingers onto the shore.

Fleur retrieved it, offering it back to him, but he shook his head, unable to squeeze any words past the swelling of sorrow on his tongue.

She stared at him for a long moment, then with a deft piece of magic, slipped the ring onto the necklace beside her locket, and pulled his head down onto her chest, wrapping her arms about him, and slipping her fingers into his hair.

'Let's go home,' she murmured, shifting their weight.

Harry nodded into her collarbone, taking deep, calming breaths.

I will never see them again.

Fleur apparated them silently back into their bedroom, sitting them down on the edge, and keeping her arms around him the entire time.

Don't turn back. Don't look back.

Harry took one last deep breath.

The only way their loss is ever going to be bearable is if Fleur and I free ourselves to live as we want.

'I'm going to test the wand,' he decided, gently pulling Fleur's arms away so he could sit up. 'I want to see its capabilities for myself.'

'You can test it with me,' Sirius said gravely from the doorway.

'What's happened?' Somehow Harry knew Sirius didn't mean he wanted to watch Harry cast a few spells in the meadow outside.

'Voldemort is going after your mother's sister and her family,' Sirius said flatly.

'If we know this it is because he wants us to know,' Harry said tiredly.

'You think it is another trap?'

'No,' Harry shook his head. He knew what Voldemort wanted.

It's a test.

The Dark Lord wanted to see what Harry had become now that Katie had been torn away, and Dumbledore was gone. He wanted to lure Harry out into the open to see the effect for himself, and in the process he intended to take away one more attachment that Harry might hold.

'Do you know anything more?'

'He's sending Fenrir Greyback,' Sirius snarled.

'You want revenge,' Harry realised.

'I cannot come with you,' Fleur warned, 'the polyjuice potion for Gringotts needs to be finished today, so I won't be there to watch your back.'

'I will keep Harry safe,' Sirius insisted, 'we duelled our way out of the Ministry together, we can handle one werewolf and his lackeys.'

'You're going to go, aren't you,' Fleur said quietly.

'I need to test the Elder Wand,' Harry said slowly, 'and Fenrir Greyback's death will be very helpful, for without him the packs will dissolve into chaos, and Voldemort will lose a good portion of his allies.'

'I'll get ready,' Sirius said eagerly, the shadows dark and vicious on his face.

'Sirius is not fully healed, he's barely even begun to recover,' Fleur warned, 'be careful, and don't take any risks.'

'I will test the wand, deal with Greyback, and return,' Harry promised, if he was lucky, then that might even happen.

'You do not believe that,' Fleur admonished him gently, instantly calling him out on his false optimism.

'No,' Harry smiled guiltily. 'Voldemort will be there, he will come himself, to see me, even if he does not decide to fight.'

'Why?'

'He is curious,' Harry whispered. 'He wants to see how losing Katie has changed me, to see how alike we are, if we are equal, and what the power he knows not could be. I do not think he wants to kill me yet, not until he was torn everything away and seen what I become in its absence.'

'How can you know that?' Fleur demanded, clasping him tightly as if holding onto his arm would prevent him from leaving.

'Because,' Harry smiled ever so slightly, 'I'm a little curious too.'

'If you are right,' Fleur whispered, hearing Sirius approach, 'then Sirius, Neville and I will be next.'

'I am not curious enough to play his game,' Harry said firmly. 'He will be dead before he ever comes close to harming you, and if he is not, then he will have to step over my body to do it.'

'In a few days there will only be the snake left,' Fleur said, half to him, half to herself, 'we are so close.'

'So is he,' Harry said grimly, clasping Sirius' forearm to apparate back to Little Whinging. 'Dumbledore is dead, the Ministry is under siege in London, and I am likely the only wizard in Britain he believes might ever match him.'

'We had best stop him soon, then,' his godfather grinned, shifting his robes over his bandage to try and hide the lightly damp spot upon his side. 'If you see the snake, Harry, don't hesitate.'

'I was going to tell you that,' Harry told him lightly, shifting his weight forwards and stepping onto the pavement outside the Dursley's home.

The Dark Mark already hung in the sky over the house, green and ghastly before a full, bright moon.

'The raid was meant to be in a few hours time,' Sirius gritted.

'This isn't really a raid,' Harry told him, slipping the Elder Wand from his sleeve and ripping the mark from the sky. 'Voldemort is satisfying his curiosity.'

He's likely already here somewhere.

'He'll be paying for that satisfaction with Greyback's life,' Sirius spat angrily, drawing Moody's wand, which he had adopted as his own since Azkaban had fallen.

'Homenum revelio,' Harry muttered.

Almost thirty red outlines shone brightly around them, skulking in the shadows of the streets, behind bushes, bins, fences and hedges, and a small cluster further back, at the end of the street.

'We are quite outnumbered,' he warned his godfather.

The more the merrier,' Sirius grinned. 'Greyback's followers don't use wands, they revile wizards, but they're very strong, very fast, and quite bitey.'

'Don't get bitten,' Harry said dryly. 'I'm not going to walk you every full moon.'

The red figures hurled themselves forwards, howling with furious glee.

'I already like my steak rare,' Sirius grinned, unleashing a barrage of curses at the onrushing werewolves.

The werewolves dodged with unnatural speed, resistant to most of the weaker spells an auror might attempt, but neither of them were using spells that could be considered weak.

Sirius' wand gushed vivid purple fire, thin streams of it lashing from it to force back the creatures around them, keeping a rough perimeter while Harry, whose casting was significantly faster, hurled piecing hexes, bone-splintering curses and worse at the werewolves who lingered too long in one spot.

One by one the pack dwindled.

'Where are you Greyback?' Sirius yelled out angrily. 'Come out and face me.'

'I am right here,' a deep voice growled from the Dursley's porch.

Harry whirled, unleashing another piercing hex, but Greyback simply twitched his head out of its path, gazing contemptuously down at them.

'You are good at killing weak wolves,' he snarled, standing up before the moon. Harry frowned, for while Greyback's body was deformed, and twisted, his nail claws, his teeth long and sharp, he was not truly transformed, and it was the full moon.

'I do not care for killing muggles,' he spat, tossing something off the roof towards them.

It landed with a wet thud on the street below, and Harry recognised the limp, dead form of his cousin.

'They have no magic,' Greyback continued jumping down from porch easily, as if the ten foot drop was nothing, 'so they cannot become one of us.' He bared his teeth in a feral grin. 'They are fun to hunt, but nothing more, and that one,' he looked vaguely disgusted, 'that one did not run very fast, or very well.'

'You killed Remus,' Sirius hissed, stepping towards Greyback, ignoring the other wolves that slunk about them.

'The Lupin boy,' Greyback remarked, running a clawed hand over his teeth. 'He was the strongest child I ever turned, the stronger the magic in the child, the greater the wolf, but he was a disappointment.'

'He was a greater man than you will ever be,' Sirius yelled, 'you're barely even human!'

'He was pathetic,' Fenrir Greyback snarled in response. 'He tamed his wolf, caged the monster, and buried strength he should have embraced. He was so afraid of who he really was the the wolf never even stirred,' Greyback ran his tongue over his teeth hungrily, 'not even when I ripped out his throat.'

Purple fire splashed across the front of number 4 in a wave, hot enough to melt the glass of the windows. The bricks burnt, and his aunt's prize rosebushes were reduced to ashes in an instant, but Greyback simply stepped through it. Fire that should have let him a charred skeleton set his skin to burning, and blistering, and Harry could see it peeling from his flesh in a shroud of black smoke, but it had healed in moments.

The unnatural werewolf let out a low, gravelly chuckle, and hurled himself forwards, only to be stopped dead by Sirius' banishing charm that hit him hard, hurling him back into the burning building.

'Greyback is mine,' his godfather demanded, throwing spells into the house of a progressively darker, and more vicious nature. 'That won't have killed him, not after whatever he has done to himself.'

Blood magic, Harry recognised, a ritual to make him magically resistant and resilient, no doubt a gift from Voldemort to win his loyalty.

'I'll deal with the others, then,' Harry said, shifting his grip upon the Elder Wand. It let out a delighted rush of power as he thrust his magic through it and into the air, imbuing it with his magic, and his intent.

The other werewolves hurtled from the shadows, transformed fully, with long limbs, elongated snouts, and furious yellow eyes.

There were only six, and they died instantly, crushed into in an unrecognisable pulp of splintered snapped bones, and mashed flesh, spreading red across the road.

He had only meant to knock them back.

The wand shivered delightedly in his fingers, openly exalting in the power it wielded through him.

Aspect of death indeed, Harry thought, twirling it in his fingers.

Greyback smashed his way out of the house, hairless, smoking, and hideously burnt. His face was little more than bone, melted, twisted, seeping flesh and burning yellow eyes. Sirius' spells were hitting him, but most were simply dispersing against his skin, or knocking the werewolf back. His godfather didn't seem to mind too much, and was grinning savagely as he hurled spell after spell into Greyback's teeth, but Harry could see all too clearly the way Sirius' wand arm came up far more slowly, affected by his injured side, and the way the damp patch spread across the side of his robes, soaking through the bandage beneath.

'Time to go, Sirius,' Harry warned. He'd tested the wand, tasted its strength, and while Greyback was likely resistant to much of the magic cast in duels the Killing Curse would still prove fatal to him. It would be best they left now, before Sirius, whose injury was already taking its toll upon him, tired any further.

Four distinct cracks interrupted any further attempt to persuade his godfather.

'Just as the Dark Lord predicted,' a smooth voice remarked, 'our failures will be forgotten if we are successful here.'

Three blank, white masks, and one silver one. Two stocky, short figures, two slender ones, all four cloaked in black robes, wands outstretched.

'Avada kedavra,' the nearest of the shorter two grunted.

Harry simply sidestepped the beam of green light, summoning his butterflies about him. They swirled, ebony winged, swallowing the barrage of unforgivable curses, then hissing dangerously back past the Death Eaters, transfigured into steel spikes, and impaling themselves into the neat, white-painted fences, tearing through straight-edged shrubbery, and smashing shards from hard brick.

I will win this, he decided.

The silver masked Death Eater was inner circle, and a threat, but the others, they were slower, less skilled. He could see it in their steps, the way shuffled rather than strode, it was evident in their choice of spells, powerful, but disjointed, they knew what to cast, but not how or when was best.

'Lacero,' he said calmly in the lull, casting a wordless, motionless piercing hex in the instant between that spell and bending his wand into the wand motion for the seceding bone splintering curse.

The cutting curse decapitated the azalea bush, deflected away by the silver-masked wizard, but the piercing hex, unexpected, and too fast to be dodged, bore straight through the other slender wizard who hissed and fell fortunately to one knee, letting the bone splintering curse strike his ribs, rather than his pelvis.

Now he understood how Voldemort cast so many curses so quickly. Not only had he undergone rituals, learnt to twist his wand motions into one another, but he was capable of casting many of his curses without words or gestures, slipping the spells into his string of hexes.

'Crabbe, Goyle,' the silver masked wizard spat, 'stop acting like fools. Rookwood, use that mind you are so proud of.'

Rookwood pushed himself back to his feet, weight all on one side, and the fingers of his left hand pressed into the chest of his robes where Harry's spell had struck him.

'Legilimens,' he snapped, meeting Harry's eyes.

He received a flicker of images, dark hair burning slowly, red liquid spilt on snow, bright brown eyes in a pale dead face, and the greenish glint of glowing opals.

How dare you.

Rookwood froze, the impressions he sent faltering, swallowed by nothingness, consumed.

Fool, he thrust into the wizard's mind, smiling as he flinched from Harry's fury, but unable to clear his thoughts, or push Harry from his head.

Legilimency was a double-edged sword.

Harry slipped his own images in among Rookwood's, glowing crimson eyes, the whisper of black silk along wet grass, the sibilant hiss of parseltongue, then, as Rookwood relaxed, his assault less dangerous than the wizard had expected from Harry's wrath, he drove the pain of the torture curse deep into Rookwood's head, and filled his thoughts with every iota of his rage.

He twisted Rookwood's mind with his fury, bent it beyond all recognition, anger seared cold and sharp though the Death Eater's thoughts, obliterating everything else away, reason and recollection fled from it, and Rookwood crumpled, screaming to the floor, hands pressed against his temples, shivering and shaking as blood ran from his nose, ears and eyes.

A single piercing hex stilled his shrieks, and Harry turned to face the remaining three.

'Shit,' Goyle swore, 'Dolohov what do we do now?'

'We do what we would have done if we hadn't been lumbered with that useless spy,' Dolohov snapped, 'curse him. You two pin him down, and force him to shield, I'll break through and finish the duel.'

Too simple, Harry smirked. They are used to fighting aurors of equal or less strength than themselves.

Harry repeated his attack, using Grindelwald's adopted tactic as effectively, and frequently as he could, burying the Death Eaters beneath a hail of spells so they couldn't retaliate, pinning them between the skeletons of the cars Sirius had set ablaze and the column of flames and smoke that had once been the Dursleys' home.

The half-molten, charred chassis screeched to life under the tip of the Elder Wand, writhing in sharp, tipped tendrils and striking towards the Death Eaters.

The stockier of the two, Crabbe, swore, blasting them away, but Goyle was slower, and the creeping metal vines ensnared him, slicing deep, thrusting through his stomach, slipping between his ribs then stretching wide, tearing him in two.

Dolohov tore the metal vines apart, then banished the cars back across the street so the two of them would no longer be in each other's way.

The silver-masked Death Eater seemed to be the only one of the four with any idea of duelling tactics.

Crabbe tore the white mask from his face, hurling it aside, and unleashed a torrent of fiendfyre in Harry's direction to avenge his bisected companion, but he was no master of the piece of magic. A simple flick of the Elder Wand and the raging chimera dissolved, the hungry, red tongues slumping low and spreading to swirl back around him, melting tarmac into sticky black pools beneath their feet.

Harry ushered the fire forwards in a wave, obscuring their sight. Dolohov banished it with a simple slash of his wand, but Harry had already taken his opportunity. The melted tarmac slid from beneath Crabbe's feet, slithering swiftly up his legs, setting his robes alight.

None of his desperate attempts at magic freed him from the tar, so he dropped his wand to claw at hit, burning his hands and fingers as it spread up his throat, spilling over his lips and down his throat.

He banished the fiendfyre; it was unnecessary now. Dolohov would not be killed with such a spell, and Crabbe was already dead.

The stocky Death Eater hadn't realised it yet, but both Harry and Dolohov had.

A string of brightly coloured curses burst from the Death Eater's wand, and the silver-masked wizard, moved swiftly and erratically around Harry, casting all manner of magics from every angle, but where he was fast, Harry was faster, where he was powerful, Harry's puissance was greater, and every spell fizzled out into the congealing tarmac.

Brilliant, white sparks spiralled around the Elder Wand, condensing with a crackle, and the smell of burning ozone.

Harry did not unleash the spell as a single bolt this time, but flicked the tip of the wand, sending thin tendrils of lightning out in long, flashing whip.

It cut through Dolohov's conjured copper barrier, and his hastily cast Shield Charm as easily as it did the air, severing his wand arm at the elbow, and cauterising the cut instantly.

'I was assured that the four of us would be more than enough,' Dolohov gritted, clutching the stump of his missing limb, and watching with Harry as Greyback finally succumbed, exhausted, and unable to heal.

'Did Voldemort tell you that?' Harry asked, amused at the wizard's ignorance. 'I think you failed him once too often, now he wants to see what I will do to you without the attachment he has torn from me to hold me back.'

'I am Inner Circle,' Dolohov wavered, 'I'm not as expendable as those idiots.'

'You all look quite expendable to me,' Harry smirked, teeth flashing in the viridian light of the killing curse that finally put down Fenrir Greyback.

'Crabbe and Goyle were inept,' Dolohov agreed, 'Rookwood thought himself smarter than us all, but a spy is useless after being revealed.'

'And you are simply a sacrifice,' Harry finished.

'Unfortunately for you, Antonin,' a calm voice whispered, 'Harry is right.'

'My Lord,' Dolohov stuttered, horrified.

'Fulminis,' Harry dismissed.

The white beam of lightning leapt from his wand, striking Dolohov on the forehead with a violent flash. The street lamps above him burst, small shards of glass scattering across the street, and the wizard burst first into flames, then into ashes, leaving only a warped, melted silver mask to smoke on the floor where he had knelt.

Voldemort stepped forwards, placing a foot either side of the mask, and wandlessly summoning it to his hover over his hand.

'Oh shit,' Harry heard Sirius mutter.

'I gave these to those who swore themselves to me,' Voldemort said evenly. 'I would lead them, give them power, fame, and influence, and in return they would stand beside me until death, after death, even.'

Harry glanced at Sirius, who leant forwards slightly, then shook his head.

Anti-apparition wards, Harry realised.

There was no snake, no followers, he was already slightly tired from duelling, and the cup still languished in Gringotts, but this was the best chance he had been given so far.

'Antonin betrayed me,' Voldemort seethed, shivers of heat washing across the few feet that separated him from Harry. 'I, the greatest wizard who has lived, offered him a chance to stand beside me, and he lied to my face, indulging himself whenever he pleased, harming whoever he wished, ignoring my instructions, my orders, and the loyalty he owed me.'

He dropped the mask onto the floor, kicking it spitefully away into the burning house.

'I despise traitors,' he hissed in parseltongue.

'Have you not seen what you wished to see?' Harry asked warily.

A glimmer of amusement flickered through Voldemort's crimson eyes.

'I did not expect the old fool to die,' he said slowly. 'The younger Malfoy made his choice, succeeded, and then faced the fate he chose, but Dumbledore,' Voldemort spat the name in hatred, 'how did he die, Harry?'

'Not well,' Harry answered calmly, 'but better than Malfoy.'

He twirled his wand in his fingers, throwing a warning glance at his godfather.

'What are the lives of a few ordinary wizards compared to one extraordinary one,' Voldemort's lips curled into a cold smile, 'or the population of the wizarding world's greatest country. You must see that I have won, Harry. Dumbledore is dead, the Ministry is bleeding away in London, and soon it will all be mine.'

'They hate you,' Harry reminded him, shifting his weight to apparate. 'To them you will never be great, only terrible.'

'Let them hate me,' Voldemort hissed, suddenly incensed, 'it does not matter so long as they fear me.' His words sounded oddly rehearsed, as if he had repeated them to himself, over and over. 'To be great is to be powerful, to be powerful is to be feared, and none of them dare to even speak my name anymore.'

'Voldemort,' Harry said dryly, tearing down the wards Voldemort had cast without a word. The Elder Wand flared with power, and the Dark Lord's eyes widened almost imperceptibly in surprise at their shattering.

'Avada Kedavra,' the Dark Lord hissed, but the Killing Curse did not fly towards Harry. Instead it flashed past him, over his shoulder, to crackle through the air where Sirius had stood only moments before. Had Harry not warned him that he should be able to apparate his godfather would be dead.

'I will take them all from you eventually,' he promised coldly. 'And when they are gone, we will see if you're truly my equal.'

'I will be your better,' Harry told him furiously, watching the brilliant, white pinpricks of power swirl around Voldemort's wand, and matching the spell with his own.

'Your lies did not, and will not deceive me, Harry, and they will not help you deceive yourself,' the Dark Lord told him, amused. 'There is no veela girl waiting for you in France, your smokescreen may have fooled other, lesser wizards and witches, and kept Katherine Bell's true value to you from being realised by them, but I know better,' he murmured. 'And now she is dead. Sirius Black will be next, then Neville Longbottom, should he ignore what the world has come to think of you, Harry. I will tear them all away,' crimson eyes gleamed cruel, and curious, 'we will see then what power you have that I know not.'

'Fulminis,' Harry spat at the same time as Voldemort.

White lightning clashed between them, swelling bright for an ominous moment, as their spells struggled against one another, then, as Harry's proved itself equal, there was a blinding flash, and he was hurled back across the street away from Voldemort.

He glimpsed the Dark Lord's figure similarly spilled across the street as he picked himself up.

'Run, Harry,' Voldemort whispered hungrily, staring past the burning house that Harry had never called home, 'flee from death. I will see you soon enough.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that does!

99. Menander's Wisdom

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowlings.

Number 99, which, if I were inclined to leave this story with a nice round number of chapters, would make this the penultimate one...

Enjoy!

Chapter 99

He had run.

To his shame he had clenched his jaw and fled, apparating away back to the Meadows; it hurt his pride, but he knew there was little sense risking himself in a duel with Voldemort before the horcruxes were destroyed.

Those who run away live to fight another day, he told himself, sitting quietly in their kitchen, watching Fleur play with the dragon-shaped chocolate bubble above her drink.

Sirius silently opened his robes, tugging at the gleaming, wet bandage beneath.

It was crimson from waist to armpit, but blotches of black, and yellow liquid spread from over the crescent shaped wound.

'Looks pretty,' Harry grimaced, as Sirius poked at it gingerly with his forefinger.

'Don't poke it,' Fleur snapped irritatedly, 'I'm not redoing the bandage again.'

'It's soaked through already,' Sirius grumbled, but he relented, and pulled his robes closed again.

'No more duelling if you can avoid it,' Fleur answered, as the dragon collapsed back into her mug, 'not until that's healed.'

'It's not that bad,' Sirius grinned, rolling his eyes.

Fleur reached out without looking and poked him firmly in the side.

'Shit,' he hissed, almost falling from his chair.

'Not that bad?' She quipped lightly.

'Fine,' Sirius groused, 'it's uncomfortable.'

'Cast a spell,' Harry told him flatly.

Sirius drew his wand, stifling a groan and wincing when his arm moved away from his chest. His spell, the simple light casting charm, came out weaker than usual, and flickered as he pressed his free hand back to his side.

'No more duelling,' Harry agreed, and Sirius nodded, tucking his wand away sheepishly.

'Stupid Malfoy,' he mumbled. 'What am I supposed to do now?' He demanded. 'What are we supposed to do now?'

'Is the polyjuice finished?' Harry asked curiously.

'It needs the blood,' Fleur said, 'but other than that yes, we need only speak to Neville.'

'He has the blood by now,' Harry nodded confidently, 'I'm sure he will.'

'Polyjuice?' Sirius looked baffled.

'We need to pick something up from the bank,' Harry said dryly.

'The horcrux,' Sirius nodded. 'Watch out for the goblins, Harry, they don't take kindly to thieves,' he looked vaguely contemplative, 'or wizards and witches, for that matter.'

'I wasn't planning on getting caught.'

'I should check the protean charm for their visitors' ledger,' Fleur decided, draining her mug, 'I haven't looked since before Dumbledore died.'

'Good idea.'

'So there are only two horcruxes left apart from the one in Gringotts?' His godfather asked, brow furrowed.

'There is the cup in Gringotts, and Nagini,' Harry corrected. 'Dumbledore and I destroyed the other one of the three.'

'We're so close,' he realised.

'Not close enough,' Harry said quietly.

I'll see you soon enough, he remembered Voldemort saying, smiling with covetous confidence even as he apparated away from him.

'Voldemort has all of Britain save London,' Harry continued, 'and we have a horcrux to destroy before the Ministry finally falls.'

'So destroy it,' Sirius suggested lazily, 'the Lestranges' vault will be right at the bottom of that bank, but with the cloak you can probably just walk in and out again.'

'You have to leave,' Fleur blurted, all but sprinting back into the room.

'Leave?' Harry stood up from his chair, Elder Wand in hand immediately. 'Have the wards been breached?'

'No,' Fleur brandished the piece of paper she held under his nose, 'the Lestranges are visiting their vault, and speaking to their account manager today.'

'Merde,' Harry swore, thrusting out a hand and summoning his cloak into his palm. 'Voldemort must have seen that Dumbledore died from a Withering Curse, and recognised one of the protections on his horcruxes, now he's checking on them.'

'He's not going to be happy, is he?' Sirius commented wryly.

'He didn't know when apparated out of Little Whinging,' Harry decided. There was no way Voldemort would have let him go if he was really a threat, no matter how curious he was about Harry's power. 'And he doesn't know about Fleur either,' he added more cheerfully.

'What?!'

'He thinks you're a story I made up to protect Katie,' Harry said solemnly, all too aware that Fleur might not approve of that.

'That's,' Fleur looked both offended, and calculating, 'that's good, I suppose, but he's really over thought that.'

'I wouldn't complain,' Sirius grinned, as Harry tucked his own wand into his sleeve as a spare, and stuffed the two vials of polyjuice potion into his pockets.

'It's almost sad that his first thought is that everything he hears is a lie made by others for their own good,' Fleur remarked, sliding around Sirius, to squeeze Harry in a tight hug. 'Be careful,' she whispered to him sternly, fingers pressing almost painfully into his back.

'You know I'll try,' Harry promised.

'If I hear the word improvise even once when you come back,' Fleur warned.

'You won't,' he grinned, 'I'll keep it a secret.'

He gently pulled her fingers away, stepping out of her grasp.

'I will be back in a little while,' he said softly, then apparated straight onto the top of the steps out of the Chamber of Secrets.

The Marauders' Map fluttered into his fingers after a few seconds of waiting.

Neville was in the Gryffindor Tower, in the common room.

Nothing is ever easy, he groaned, throwing the cloak over himself and stepping out of the chamber.

When he walked into the tower he found the common room all but empty, and Ron, Hermione, and Neville were embroiled in a furious shouting match.

'You sold him out to McGonagall,' Neville was yelling, 'and now you have the gall to demand my help?'

'He murdered another student,' Hermione hissed back.

'He avenged Katie,' Neville retorted, 'Malfoy was a Death Eater, I was there when they took his body down, and the mark was on his arm plain as day.'

'Revenge would have been killing him,' Ron said slowly, somehow he had become the voice of reason, 'revenge I could have understood, but Harry didn't just kill him, he tortured him too.'

'A message,' Neville spat, 'to stop others from making the same mistake Malfoy did and joining Voldemort.'

'You know who else sends messages by torture,' Hermione replied scathingly, 'the same wizard who dropped Professor Snape's body in the middle of Hogsmeade, the ones who attacked your parents.'

Neville flinched slightly, but shook his head.

'They did it for pleasure, for power,' he decided, 'Harry was thinking of the greater good.'

This time Harry winced, glad that Neville was wrong, but torn that his real reason had been little better than the Death Eaters themselves.

'And everything else?' Hermione asked, two pink patches of rage high upon her cheeks. 'Look at how things are, Neville,' she cried, 'Voldemort rules Britain, everywhere save London, and Hogwarts, Dumbledore is dead, our friends, our families will either have to struggle in his shadow or die, and Harry, the boy who was supposed to defeat him, the one we were meant to help destroy Voldemort, is little better than the dark wizard himself.'

I don't have time to eavesdrop, Harry remembered, I have to get Neville's attention.

'Either Harry is on our side,' Ron said simply, still keeping his cool, 'then we, all that's left of the Order, will help him, or he will turn out to be against us, and instead of an friend, we have an enemy's enemy.'

Hermione sniffed disdainful, spinning on her heel, in a swirl of bushy hair and a glint of silver. 'What if he turns out just to be an enemy,' she snapped, stalking up to the girl's dormitories before either of them could reply.

'Sorry, mate,' Ron apologised. 'I don't know what's gotten into her recently. It's like she's certain Harry and Voldemort are equally evil.'

'They aren't even close,' Neville said hotly.

'Harry's no hero,' Ron grimaced, 'but he's still on our side.' He sighed, staring up the stairs after Hermione. 'I should go talk to her,' he said slowly, 'at least Harry showed us how to get past that stupid slide.'

He was gone in the time it took to cast a Confundus Charm, following in Hermione's footsteps.

'Neville,' Harry announced himself softly.

His friend started, spinning round to stare at where he stood, invisible.

'Harry?' He asked warily.

'It's time,' Harry told him simply, pulling the cloak off his head.

'Gringotts?' Neville gulped, hands slipping into his pocket to pull out two small envelopes.

'Follow me,' Harry instructed, ushering him close and throwing the cloak over both of them, 'we have to be quick.'

'Why?' Neville inquired tentatively, almost walking into Harry's back when he stopped, catching movement in the corner of his eye.

He looked, but there was nothing there.

'Voldemort suspects our goal,' Harry said evenly, reassured that they were alone, 'the Lestranges will be at Gringotts.'

Neville's breath caught beside him.

'Don't get carried away,' Harry warned, 'revenge if it's possible, but the horcrux must come first. Voldemort has to be stopped, and that is more important than personal revenge.'

Harry was almost proud of himself for saying it. He was proud of himself for believing it again.

'Myrtle's bathroom?'

'Not quite,' Harry grinned. 'Open,' he whispered in parseltongue, and chuckled when Neville jumped away from the sinks.

'Is this?'

'The Chamber of Secrets,' Harry nodded, stepping past the threshold. Neville attempted to follow, but found he could not step across the boundary. 'Coming?' He invited, and this time Neville's foot crossed the line.

'This place is not what I expected,' Neville remarked, eyeing the sooty shadow of the basilisk with some trepidation and no small amount of awe.

Harry pulled out the two vials of polyjuice, unstopping them and setting them on the floor. 'It was more than just a lair for a serpent,' he shrugged, 'Salazar Slytherin was a great wizard, it was Voldemort who twisted this place into something to be feared.'

'What's through there?' His friend asked, pointing into the study as he handed Harry the two envelopes.

'Salazar's study,' Harry said softly.

'You speak like you knew him,' Neville remarked confusedly.

The blackened, dried flakes of blood slid into the vials, setting the thick, porridge-like potion to bubbling and churning. One turned a dark, noxious looking orange, the other an equally disgusting shade of yellow.

'I did,' Harry answered, passing Neville his potion, the disgusting looking yellow one, 'he left a portrait here.'

'Can I speak to it?' Neville asked. 'I mean,' he shuffled awkwardly, 'if you don't mind.'

'No,' Harry said evenly, 'it was destroyed.'

'Oh.'

'Drink up, Nev,' Harry encouraged tipping his vial in his friend's direction, and downing it in one gulp.

The unpleasant warping heat of the transformation washed over him, squirming and writhing along his limbs.

Harry shut his eyes and silently endured it.

When reopened them he found Neville staring hatefully at his own reflection in the pool.

'Time to go,' Harry said firmly, 'we'll find the Lestranges, and separate them somehow, then I will replace Rudolphus to one brother, and you will replace Rastaban with the other.'

'Can we not just kill them?' Neville gritted.

'After we persuade one to open the vault for us,' Harry reminded him.

'Won't they notice when there are two pairs of Lestrange brothers at the vault?' Neville asked.

'Leave a mark in the passageway before the vault if you get there before me,' Harry said, 'and if you see the mark, then you know you are free to take revenge.'

'What mark?' Neville demanded.

Fleur's right, Harry realised, I do leave out little details.

'This one,' he smiled, drawing the Peverell crest in purple fire in the air. 'Now,' he swept the cloak back over the both of them, 'let's go to Gringotts.'

There was a soft snap, and the two of them stood on the steps of the bank.

'Are you ready?' Harry whispered as they slipped in to the bank in the wake of a rotund, portly wizard with ruddy, red cheeks and worn boots.

'No,' Neville grinned weakly, 'not even a little bit, but I can't wait, not when I'm so close.'

Harry understood that well enough.

Under the cloak they shuffled off to one side, glancing about for any glimpse of the Lestranges they were polyjuiced as.

'There,' Neville hissed, pointing at a pair of nondescript, thickset looking wizards on the far side of the hall.

'Sure?'

They were talking to a rather prestigious looking goblin, and while Harry spied dark, coal black curls beneath the hood of the further of the two.

'Oh I'm sure,' Neville whispered angrily, 'how could I not recognise them.'

'We need to split them up,' Harry said, as they drifted closer so they might be able to tell which brother was which.

'How the hell are we going to do that?' Neville demanded.

'Easy,' Harry grinned, pointing the tip of the Elder Wand at the brother whom Neville currently resembled. 'Get ready to take his place.'

'Take his place,' Neville took several deep breaths, 'fine.'

'Imperio,' Harry murmured, ignoring his friend's start of surprise. He needed no legilimency to feel the disapproval emanating from Neville, but now was not the time to argue.

Rastaban Lestrange shivered slightly as Harry's will washed over him, then drew his wand and turned to stride across the room and into the alcove where they were hidden. Harry threw the cloak over him, and Neville walked back across to join the man who had helped torture his parents.

His friends hands were curled tight, and pale, but there was no other indication of his hatred than that.

The two of them, true Lestrange, and false, followed the goblin towards the same meeting room that Harry and Fleur had used to purchase the Meadow.

'Let's go visit the vault,' Harry instructed the enthralled Lestrange beside him, slipping the cloak off, and stepping back out into the centre of the hall.

'I would like to visit my vault,' Rastaban demanded proudly, extending his wand to the goblin.

The creature, whose name Harry knew better than to ask for lest it cast him in suspicion, turned it over in his long fingered hands, then nodded, and passed it back to Rastaban.

The Death Eater snatched it back possessively.

The creature smiled toothily. 'Follow me,' he nodded, ushering them down the rough, torchlit passage, and into one of Gringotts rather small carts.

Harry rubbed shoulders with the Death Eater, who seemed none too thrilled about the coming descent on the thin, iron tracks that disappeared deep down into Gringotts bowels.

He had definitely come off the better of the two of them.

Neville, no doubt, was enduring the meeting with the goblins, and Harry hoped he had the sense to keep his mouth shut as often as the meeting would allow.

The cart plunged abruptly, leaving Harry's stomach hanging somewhere up above and behind him.

Rastaban turned with all the dignity and poise of a pure-blooded lord, and pressed the fingers of the hand that was not clutching tightly at the cart's rim over his mouth.

The goblin who stood at the head of the cart smirked nastily.

'Not too much further,' it said, as the cart twisted and dived lower.

This is far farther than I have ever come before, Harry realised. It will not be easy getting out if we are discovered.

They were going to fast to glimpse much more than vast, milky columns, stalactites that descended from the ceiling in marble spears, and glittering stalagmites that thrust up from the floor.

There was a spray of water, a fine, thin film that cooled his face, and soaked his hair, and beside him Rastaban shook his head furiously.

The thief's downfall, Harry gritted.

He had hoped for more warning than that.

The polyjuice was fading already.

His body shivered, shuddered and squirmed hot as it returned to its usual form, and his fingers tightened about the wood of the Elder Wand as he tried to shift himself around to find the space to cast anything.

'Intruder,' the goblin hissed, fingers darting to the brake at the front of the cart.

'Imperio,' Harry ordered, and the goblin relaxed back into his seat.

'Potter!' The Lestrange beside him hissed, swinging his fist wildly at Harry.

Harry ducked, but the Death Eater's knuckles grazed his shoulder, knocking him back against the edge of the cart, and the Elder Wand slipped from his fingers under their seats.

He hit back, catching Lestrange in the stomach, and driving his knee deep into the Death Eater's face when he doubled over, winded, but Lestrange simply hurled himself forwards, smashing Harry back against the edge of the cart, and for an instant he saw only bright pinpricks of white light as his head struck the iron-bound side.

A loud crack, and a flare of pain along the right side of his face dispelled them.

Lestrange stood over him, blood-smeared knuckles raised before his chin.

'Not so tough,' he sneered, and his fist flashed forwards again, spreading the white-hot pain further across Harry's face. 'You've evaded the Dark Lord long enough,' the Death Eater grinned, dipping his hand within his robes for his wand.

'And I will continue to do so,' Harry spat, thrusting his hand out, and summoning the Elder Wand back to him before Lestrange could react.

The Death Eater's spell tore away the side of the cart as Harry threw himself out of its path, then the cart ground to a sudden halt and they were both hurled forwards into the goblin.

'The Lestrange vault is just through here,' the goblin announced, indicating a passage far below them, beside the pink-scarred, dirt-encrusted, white-scaled hide of something that looked horrible draconian.

'No,' the Death Eater hissed. 'You have come for our Lord's treasure, but you will not have it.'

The goblin had started walking down towards the vault, seemingly not aware of the fight around him, nor the flash of emerald that streaked over his shoulder when Lestrange attempted to kill him and prevent either of them from being able to open the vault.

Harry threw several Piercing Hexes in his direction, forcing the Death Eater to shield until the goblin was on the path, and out of sight. The Elder Wand hummed, vibrating angrily as the magic it unleashed shattered stalactites, but sundered no souls.

Rastaban was swearing furiously, and throwing every dark curse Harry had ever read about in his direction.

The entrail-spilling curse flew over his head, the blood-boiling curse he deflected to spatter and hiss against the stalagmite beside him, and every other spell that Lestrange hurled in a rainbow of poisonous, sickly hues followed suit.

The cart they had come on was knocked from its rails to fall into the chasm below the track, but the Death Eater, all too aware that the goblin was under Harry's influence, abandoned his assault to throw himself down the slope, sliding across the filth towards the dragon and the door to his vault.

He hurled himself after Lestrange, pausing only to engrave the Peverell crest onto the stalagmite by the cart's stop in glimmering indigo flames. The apparition wards were too strong for him to break.

Down below the dragon snarled furiously, snapping at Lestrange, but unable to reach him from within its chains and the Death Eater ignored it, casting desperate curses at the goblin who was obliviously attempting to open the vault door.

Harry slid down onto the terrace with the dragon, hurling bone-splintering, and flesh-cutting curses after Lestrange.

If he kills the goblin then not only are we both trapped down here, then the vault cannot be opened either.

Harry had no illusions about his chances of breaking through that vault door on his own.

The Death Eater conjured a copper sheet behind him as a shield, and though Harry's spells dented it, they could not pierce the makeshift defence.

'Merde,' he swore, sprinting across the terrace, and banishing the piece of copper violently out of his way.

The goblin was dead against the vault door, eyes blank and staring, but Lestrange looked furious, for, despite his best efforts to pull it shut, the vault door was ajar.

'Fulminis,' Harry hissed, unleashing the white lightning in violent, arcing tendrils.

A second piece of copper attracted them aside from their target just before they struck, and the Death Eater grimaced from the heat as his conjured copper warped and melted beside him.

'You won't take another step towards my vault,' he declared, squaring his shoulders and raising his wand.

Harry turned his magic on the goblin, animating the dead flesh beside the vault door and directing its fury at Lestrange.

The Death Eater cried out in pain as the goblin hurled itself on him, biting, tearing and ripping at the wizard's flesh through his dark robes.

Harry ran past the struggling pair and into the vault.

It was a mountain of gold, gems, and priceless things.

It would take me hours to even find the cup, he realised in dismay, staring around him at the piles. I only have to know it's here, he decided grimly.

'You're too late, Lestrange,' he called out through the door. 'The cup is destroyed.'

The Death Eater did not respond to his taunts save to hurl the lifeless head of the goblin inferius he had created into the nearest pile of coins.

'I will die for my failure,' he gritted, 'but you will die here as well.'

The coins exploded, multiplying over and over, and swelling in a burning wave across the floor of the vault.

'You lied,' the Death Eater gasped, eyes flicking past Harry to the far end of the vault.

'I did,' Harry grinned, 'but now I know it's truly here.'

His piercing hex came too fast for Lestrange to deflect, but the wizard hurled himself to one side, and it only grazed his shoulder, knocking him back out onto the terrace.

Harry sprinted after him, ducking the purple beam that cut a deep line across the vault door where his head had been only moments before.

The fiendfyre billowed from his wand, swirling around him, hungry red tongues dripping smoke and spilling across the floor.

The Death Eater snarled and raised his wand, readying himself for the assault that he was sure to have to face.

The fiendfyre coalesced, the bright, burning, white-hot basilisk rising from the floor to curl around his feet.

'I am not afraid of fire,' Lestrange spat angrily, 'you won't intimidate me.'

The basilisk lunged forwards, but not towards Lestrange; it thrust itself into the vault, slithering through the open door behind Harry, who released his control of it the moment the fire was mostly within the wards of the vault.

'No!' Lestrange screamed, realising his mistake.

He hurled blood-boiling curses at Harry, who, deflecting them away, smoothly stepped aside, letting the Death Eater advance to the edge of the vault.

'Expelliarmus,' Lestrange yelled, and Harry, gambling, let the Elder wand be torn from his fingers, and fly into the Death Eater's hand.

Rastaban had no idea what he held, but with Harry's wand in his hand he relaxed, raising his own wand to banish the fiendfyre before the horcrux Voldemort had entrusted him was consumed by it.

Harry's slender, ebony wand slid into his fingers from his other sleeve, and with a flick of its tip the whip of bright fire took both of Lestrange's arms off at the elbow before he could vanish the fiendfyre within the vault.

The Elder Wand flew back to Harry's hand, shivering delightedly in his fingers, and sending cold thrills of power up his arm and down his spine.

'What now, Potter,' Rastaban hissed. 'Another of the Dark Lord's trusted killed. He was already coming for you, now he will be furious.'

Harry ignored him, walking slowly across to pluck the Death Eater's wand from the floor, and then snapping it into four pieces before tossing them into the flames through the vault.

The fire within was hot enough to sear at his face and hands even outside the wards; nothing within would have survived it.

'You'll die, Potter,' Rastaban Lestrange threatened, 'but not until you're alone, and not until your life is the only thing the Dark Lord can yet take from you.'

Harry looked at him, sparing him a single long glance.

Voldemort will never touch Fleur, or anyone else we care about, he promised himself.

He kicked the Death Eater back into his own vault, then, with a cruel smile, he plucked the keys from bloodstain beside the lock, and thrust the wrong one into the lock.

The vault door slid shut immediately, and Harry hurled the right key down into the chasm.

Now to find Neville.

He took three steps away from the vault when he heard the cart coming, and sprinted forwards to duck behind the stalagmite he had engraved the mark on.

'You've got guts little Longbottom,' he heard Rudolphus laugh, 'you take after your parents in that. They were strong wizards, brave wizards, but not cunning, and I daresay you aren't either.'

Cursing Harry crept up the slope, unfolding the cloak.

'He is a thief in Gringotts, wizard,' the goblin snarled, 'and thus he is ours.'

'I caught him,' the Death Eater disagreed, 'he is mine.'

'The bank is aware of the intruder,' the goblin continued nastily, 'and soon my kin, and the guards will be here; it would be best if you gave us our prisoner.'

Merde.

Harry and Neville could walk out under the cloak if the only thing in their way were wards, but he imagined the goblins would not helpfully be leaving all the doors open.

'Was that a threat, goblin?' Lestrange replied hotly.

'Gringotts is goblin land,' Harry could hear the wide-toothed smile, 'and under goblin law.'

'Fine,' Lestrange relented furiously, 'but only after he tells me why he came. I owe the little bastard for my hand, and for my brother!'

'He must be alive, and coherent,' the goblin said, as Harry rounded the stalagmite, glimpsing a tangled mass of flesh where the Death Eater's fingers should be on his left hand.

'Crucio,' Rudolphus sneered, as Neville writhed beneath his wand. 'Where is my brother?' He demanded. 'If he is dead, or harmed, I will torture you until your whole family has a ward in St Mungo's.'

Harry's fingers tightened lividly around the Elder Wand.

Ice spread from his feet, crackling across the floor, spines of frost growing in its wake.

The goblin frowned, stepping back, fingers twitching as it stared at the ice. 'There is another intruder,' it realised fearfully, but too late.

The ice thrust from the floor, impaling the other Lestrange through the thigh and arm as he attempted to twist away.

'Harry,' Neville gasped in relief, 'I'm sorry, I was caught. They're coming now.'

He ignored his friend, banishing the other Lestrange brother off the path to bounce down across the slope onto the terrace.

Neville's wand floated gently into Harry's hand from the Death Eater's robes.

'I imagine,' Harry said slowly, 'that it will be quite easy to take your revenge now.'

Neville struggled up, taking his wand from Harry's fingers, and levelling it at the wizard who had tortured his parents into insanity, but his fingers were trembling.

'You know the words,' Harry encouraged gently, 'take your revenge, Nev.' Lestrange groaned, slowly pulling himself upright with on hand on the pillar beside him. 'The moment you've waited so long for is passing,' he warned kindly.

Neville's eyes were hollow, and the wand tip wavered and fell.

'I can't,' he admitted, 'I just can't.'

Perhaps you aren't like me after all, Harry thought disappointedly.

'Reducto,' he murmured.

The weak blasting curse knocked the Death Eater back a few metres across the floor, leaving a thin trail of blood on the marble.

'Some terrifying wizard you are, Potter,' Lestrange laughed, 'if I had a wand you would be dead in seconds casting magic as pathetic as that.'

'You might want to look away, Nev,' Harry advised, for behind the laughing Death Eater the dragon was stirring.

Neville flinched his eyes aside only a moment before the jaws closed about the Death Eater, but nothing shielded him from the distinct crunch that echoed up from the terrace below.

'You fed him to a dragon,' Neville whispered distantly.

'You had your moment, Nev,' Harry said simply, 'you couldn't kill the man who tortured your parents, so I did.'

Neville flushed and dropped his head.

'You didn't look away,' Harry heard him whisper, 'you didn't even care.'

The goblin, who had been wisely silent until now, opened his mouth. 'You sneak into our bank, into our lands,' it hissed, 'you steal from us, you kill our clients within our own walls. The arrogance of wizards!'

'I would suggest silence,' Harry responded evenly.

'I've seen what the world thinks you will become, have become,' the goblin smirked, 'catching you in the act will prove very lucrative for us, and for me.'

'Harry?' Neville asked nervously. 'How do we get out now?'

'Get out,' the goblin grinned. 'This is Gringotts, nobody steals from Gringotts and survives.'

Neville looked like he might start hyperventilating, so Harry put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

'They said the same thing about Azkaban,' he reminded Neville.

'Azkaban was run by wizards,' the goblin sneered.

'I think you've said enough,' Harry told the goblin coldly, 'in fact,' he continued, realising that the goblin knew both of their identities, 'I think you've seen too much as well.'

'Wait,' the goblin raised his hands, paling as it remembered the reality of its position. 'I can help you escape.'

'Talk quickly,' Harry ordered.

'There are tunnels back up from every level,' the goblin said, 'goblin tunnels, they're warded, so you will need me to go through.'

Why?' Harry asked.

'If you are not a goblin then you will not be able to enter without one's permission,' the goblin said simply, 'the wards will detect you, and you will be trapped.'

'Where does the tunnel lead?'

'Up,' the goblin said, hesitantly pointing past the dragon to a small opening in the shadows of the pillar.

Of course it had to be behind the dragon, Harry grimaced, why are there always surprise dragons?

'How far up?' Neville demanded.

'There are steps all the way up to where the carts descend from,' the goblin answered reluctantly.

'Let's go,' Harry decided, eyeing the dragon warily.

'Good idea,' Neville agreed, looking relieved. 'Do you have a name?' He asked the goblin politely.

'Griphook,' it replied slowly, bemused by Neville's foolishly friendly demeanour.

'Nice name,' Harry nodded guilelessly. 'Goodbye, Griphook.'

The Elder Wand let out a brilliant, white flash and then there was nothing left of the goblin but ashes.

Neville froze.

'Come on, Nev,' Harry urged, grasping his arm.

Neville pulled away, staring at the floating, grey specks.

'He was innocent, Harry,' his friend said, appalled. 'Why?'

'He would have betrayed us the moment he had a chance,' Harry told him slowly. 'And innocent is a strong word to use for a greedy, possessive creature such as that one.'

It's obvious, Nev, he frowned. You're still so naive sometimes.

'We could have stunned him!'

'He knew who we were,' Harry said, dragging Neville down the slope towards the dragon. 'We would have had the goblins after us for the rest of their lives.'

He pulled the cloak over them both, and they slipped past the dragon into the narrow, dark passageway beyond. The walls were rough, and lit by glowing chunks of crystal in bronze braziers that lined the twisting, thin-stepped staircase. Harry hurried forwards, knowing Neville had to follow now.

'You could have memory charmed him, you must know how.'

'It's not reliable,' Harry told him calmly.

Neville will see when he realises that this was the only option to get us out unharmed and unknown.

'Then we should have taken the risk!' Neville yelled, his voice echoing up the passage.

'Hush,' Harry hissed, 'we may not be alone. I killed the goblin because he was in our way,' Neville's eyes widened in horror, 'and because if I had not we would both die in here. I promised Fleur I would be careful, and I will not leave her over a goblin who would have let a Death Eater torture you in front of him.'

'You didn't need to kill Griphook,' Neville said sullenly, sullenly stalking up the steps beside him.

They didn't speak all the way up to the top, nor even when Harry apparated them back into the Chamber of Secrets, and led Neville back up to Myrtle's Bathroom.

'Here,' Harry said eventually, pushing the Marauders' Map into his hands. 'This will help you keep everyone in the castle safe; it shows where everyone is at all times unless they are in here, or in the Room of Requirement.'

'Thanks,' Neville said stiffly. 'I'll do my best to protect everyone.'

'If I win everyone will be safe, Nev,' Harry told him softly, even as Neville turned his back to walk away.

'But that isn't why you're doing it, is it?' Neville asked.

He didn't wait to hear Harry's answer, and the door swung shut behind him before Harry could think of anything to say, truth or lie.

'No,' Harry admitted to the empty bathroom, 'no it's not.' He knew why he wanted to win, and those reasons were his own, they were selfish dreams, but they were what he wanted. 'They'll still be saved either way,' he told the bathroom bemusedly. If I can keep them from harm, then I will. Surely that makes it the same.'

Yet the intent is different, he thought, and that is all that is important in magic.

Harry apparated from the top step, the world whirling away until he stood in the kitchen of the Meadow.

He was immediately engulfed in silver hair, and soft, warm arms.

'What happened?' She demanded, pressing his face into her chest.

'I improvised,' her grinned, unable to resist.

She stamped on his foot, hard, and he flinched, swearing in French at the sudden pain.

'You do not come back with a face like that and joke,' she hissed at him angrily.

My face.

His fingers crept up to the soft throbbing. They came away dark, and sticky.

Lestrange, he remembered.

It was mostly healed, the bone had fractured, he recalled hearing it, feeling it snap, but only some bruising and the blood was left.

'The horcrux?' Sirius asked carefully.

'Destroyed,' Harry let himself enjoy the brief swell of satisfaction, 'there's only the snake left now, but he knows, and Nagini will not be easy to kill.'

'We'll find a way,' Sirius assured him. 'You go after Voldemort, Fleur and I will go after the snake while you duel, and then we'll come back to help you.'

'You make it sound so easy,' Harry smiled. Behind his smile, beneath the genuine amusement he felt, came a creeping, cold fear, because there was no better plan. Voldemort was coming for him, and he couldn't let either Fleur or Sirius duel the Dark Lord.

'It will be anything but,' Fleur murmured into his hair, pressing him more tightly to her, 'but we will survive. We have a dream, a wish,' she whispered, 'and we'll make it real.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

100. Distinguished Alumnus

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Number 100... What else is there to say?

Chapter 100

'What is wrong with the weather in this country?' Fleur complained from the kitchen, rummaging through cupboards irritatedly.

'It's raining again is it?' Harry asked without looking up.

'You know it is,' Fleur scowled, 'you can hear it.'

'Stay inside then,' Harry grinned. 'Nothing good ever happens in the rain.'

'It was clear when we got up,' she sighed, 'I wanted to go out into the meadows today. It's the middle of spring, Harry, there should be some sun.'

'There is,' he chuckled, 'it's just behind all those grey clouds.'

'You're so British,' Fleur smiled fondly.

'I prefer the sun, actually,' he reminded her, 'you know where my favourite place is.'

'I wish we could just go back there,' Fleur said softly.

'Soon,' Harry promised.

Deep down he knew there was nothing to come but a single duel, one that would be set on a stage above anything he had ever fought or seen before, and despite his possession of the Elder Wand he was not sure who would win.

I will win, he reminded himself. I made a wish I have to make real.

'It's still raining,' Fleur sniffed, shutting the last cupboard rather more firmly than was necessary.

Harry looked up from the table to stare at the girl who had ensnared him carefully. She was standing, arms folded across her chest, eyebrows curving into a delicate vee, lower lip slightly extended and all shrouded under a veil of silver.

He hadn't seen her looking so sulky in some time, and it made her irresistibly kissable.

'We're out of sugar, aren't we,' he deduced amusedly.

'I bought a whole bag last week,' she cried out exasperatedly. 'Sirius is stealing it. I know he is.'

'I'm not Sirius,' Harry placated her, slipping out of his chair, giving into temptation.

His lips pressed lightly against hers until her pout faded, curving into a soft smile he traced his tongue over until she shivered.

While he had her distracted he discreetly extended his left hand behind his back, tangling his right into her hair, and pulling her mouth more firmly against his. The jar of sugar that he had seen his godfather sneakily stashing behind the sofa slapped gently into his palm.

'Here,' he grinned, offering it to her wryly. 'Sirius isn't very good at hiding things.'

Fleur eyed the jar, then gave him a smouldering look. 'Yet you kept it a secret long enough to steal your kisses,' she murmured.

'Would you have it any other way?' He teased.

'Well.' Her lips trailed over the corner of his mouth and along his jaw. 'I can think of a much more appropriate award for returning my stolen treasure,' she breathed.

'Let's not give Sirius a show,' Harry whispered to her, catching her chin as her lips lingered on his neck.

'He's not here,' Fleur sulked, pushing herself into him.

'Not yet,' Harry said, finding it increasingly hard to remember why Sirius seeing them would be so terrible.

'Fine,' Fleur groused, neatly plucking the sugar from Harry's hands and setting it beside the mug she had been making for herself.

'One for the hot chocolate,' Harry commented, knowing how Fleur liked to make her drinks. 'And one for me,' he finished, grinning as Fleur stole the next spoonful of sugar for herself.

'Hush,' she laughed.

'Your teeth will rot,' Harry warned cheerfully.

'I'll just regrow them,' she shrugged, sipping her hot chocolate, then frowning and absently adding more spoonfuls.

Half the jar was already gone, and it hadn't been a small one.

'Where is Sirius?' Harry wondered.

'He sleeps in,' Fleur said more seriously. 'The injury Malfoy gave him keeps him from sleeping well.'

'Ah,' Harry nodded, 'probably a good thing he doesn't sleep well, otherwise we would have likely woken him up this morning.' Fleur flushed faintly, and Harry winked at her; they both knew who had been making the most noise out of the two of them, and who had promised they had already cast a silencing ward just so Harry hadn't needed to get up, and find his wand to cast another.

Something hit the wards and the whole house shivered.

'Sirius is inside, isn't he,' Harry said slowly.

'Yes,' Fleur set her mug of hot chocolate down carefully, pulling her wand from her waist. There was a second and third set of runes engraved around it now.

'Added to it?' Harry inquired, walking cautiously towards the door.

Is this soon enough? He wondered to himself. Have we been found.

'It's a part of me I don't want to have to part with,' she agreed. 'It can only be summoned by me, and it will only answer to me now, not that it would have answered to anyone before,' she smirked, 'veela hair and rosewood is a temperamental wand combination, but a very picky one.'

'Beauty within and without,' Harry grinned, drawing the Elder Wand, and casting the homonym revelio spell.

There was nobody outside.

Fleur frowned, having cast the same piece of magic herself.

'Odd,' Harry grimaced, he would have preferred being able to see his enemies to this uncertainty. 'Could anything have triggered them?'

'A spell,' Fleur said thoughtfully, 'but there's no reason for a stray spell to be find us, and the Fidelius should keep our home concealed.'

'I'm going out,' Harry decided.

Fleur clenched her jaw, but said nothing.

A silver scorpion hovered at the edge of the wards, scuttling in circles at the point the Fidelius shrouded their dwelling.

'It's Neville's patronus,' Harry called out curiously.

Fleur swept out to join him.

'How did it find where we lived?' She wondered.

'Perhaps it was looking for me, and not our home,' Harry mused.

'That's a tenuous difference,' Fleur scowled, 'but possibly. Why is it here?'

Harry stepped a little further towards it, slipping outside the protections of the Meadow.

'Harry,' Neville's voice emanated from the scorpion. His friend's tone held a note of desperation and fear that he had not witnessed. 'He's here, Harry,' the scorpion pleaded, 'they're all here. We need you. We can't keep them safe without you. I'll be waiting in the bathroom.'

'Voldemort is at Hogwarts,' he said slowly.

I can't leave them all to die. I have to face him eventually anyway, and where better than a place I know well, where he is surrounded by as many enemies as I will be.

The thought did very little to quell the fear that had arisen with the knowledge that the moment he had not worried would be so soon had already come.

'We're going,' Fleur said simply, understanding immediately what he had already decided. 'I will wake Sirius.'

She disappeared back into their home, perfectly calm except for the way her fingers twisted in the material of her clothes.

Harry dispatched his own patronus. He didn't give the anzu a message; it didn't need one.

Turning back towards the Meadow he followed Fleur back inside, slipping his original wand into the wand holster on his right wrist, and keeping the Elder Wand to hand.

I'll need it soon enough.

'I heard we're going back to school,' Sirius grinned, rubbing sleep from the shadows beneath his eyes.

'You look terrible,' Harry said flatly.

'I'm not staying behind,' he looked affronted, 'not when I can still cast spells, or seduce enemy witches.'

'Looking like that?' Fleur raised an eyebrow.

'Why did you and James have to choose such cruel women?' Sirius whined.

'Are you ready?' Fleur asked, ignoring his godfather. Normally she would have laughed, but Harry could feel the tension radiating from her.

'I suppose we'll find out,' Harry smiled weakly, trying to will his heartbeat to slow down before it hammered its way through his ribs.

Fleur took one hand, entwining her fingers tightly through his, Sirius wrapped an arm over his shoulder, and with a soft snap they appeared in the Chamber of Secrets, staggering forwards under their combined weight.

Sirius hissed with pain, and pressed his fingers to his chest.

'You go up,' Fleur told him, 'I'll check on Sirius' injury.'

He pulled her close to kiss her hard.

'If he's too hurt to duel make sure he stays down here however you have to,' he whispered.'

'If I can,' Fleur agreed.

'I'll go see Neville then,' Harry agreed, running up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and calling out ahead to open the entrance.

'Nev?' He called out.

Something hit him hard in the side, throwing him against the wall, and he almost lost his balance, falling momentarily to one knee, then cold, hard ice encased his arm, trapping him against the tiles.

'Not pleasant, is it?' A girl's voice said sternly. 'I remembered where you keep your wand, Harry.'

'Hermione?' Harry raised an eyebrow, looking around for Neville. 'Might I ask why? Or where Neville is?'

He tested the ice, but it held firm, holding him against the wall from the tip of the Elder Wand to his shoulder.

'Neville is there,' Hermione indicated a sprawled, still form with one foot. 'He was stupid enough to invite you here, I knew as soon as I saw your patronus, so I followed him to stop whatever you have planned.'

'Joined Voldemort have you?' Harry asked, thoroughly confused.

Jealousy, and disgust are one thing, he realised, but this is another completely.

'No,' she hissed indignantly, 'but just because I oppose him doesn't mean I will invite someone just as bad into a school full of children.'

'I am nothing like Voldemort,' Harry denied fiercely, though he knew it was not even close to true.

'You're a killer,' Hermione half screamed, 'how many deaths are you really responsible for? I want to know, before I stop you from falling any further.'

She means to kill me, something in his stomach twisted in desperate fear, not like this, not the nothingness, not when Fleur is so close.

'How many have I killed?' He answered calmly, slowly, dragging every syllable out to preserve every precious second. 'As many as I needed to.'

'Who?' Hermione seethed, 'I want you to say their names.'

Where are Fleur and Sirius?

'The first wizard I killed was Quirrell,' Harry said slowly, 'but I was too young to understand, so I suppose he doesn't count. Barty Crouch Junior would be next,' he admitted with deceptive calm. 'He attacked me at the World Cup in the ashes of the camp, and I killed him by mistake, after that I knew I had to get stronger, so I did.'

'I knew there was something different about you after then,' Hermione exulted. 'I was right!'

'I spent a long time learning more useful spells,' Harry continued, 'magic that would help me defeat Voldemort.'

'Dark magic,' Hermione whispered.

'There is no dark or light,' Harry corrected automatically, 'only power and the intent that guides it.'

'Who else?' Hermione demanded, as disgusted by his belief as he was with her naivety, and levelling her wand at his heart.

'Peter Pettigrew,' Harry said dispassionately. 'Bertha Jorkins too, they helped rig the Triwizard Tournament.'

'Victor?' She asked him, almost pleading, 'did you kill him too?'

'No,' Harry shook his head. 'Would you like me to tell you what really happened?' He offered gently.

'No,' she hissed, 'you'd just lie,' but a horribly vulnerable, desperate longing in her eyes belied her denial.

'He was indirectly killed by Bertha Jorkins,' Harry began, stopping abruptly when her wand glimmered with purple light.

'I said no,' she spat. 'I don't want to hear your lies.'

When did she become so unreasonable, so illogical?

'Who else?' Hermione repeated angrily.

'Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange,' Hermione started at the witch's name, and Harry smiled slightly, 'Dumbledore was surprised by that too.' After those two there have been many. 'Nott, both Nott's, Jugson, Macnair, Avery, Travers, Yaxley,' there were more than he had realised, and he couldn't remember all the names of the Death Eaters, just the ornate silver masks, 'Malfoy, of course,' he smirked slightly.

At least this way if I die here nobody will ever think to accuse Fleur.

'Do you not regret any of them?' She almost pleaded.

'Only one,' Harry admitted.

'Katie?' Hermione asked, eyes narrowed.

His magic surged, unprepared for that accusation, even though he should have guessed it was coming, and the floor of the bathroom froze. Hermione stepped back warily, wand still levelled between his eyes.

'Never,' he spat, 'I would have all but died before I let anyone hurt her.'

'I don't believe you,' Hermione decided. 'I wish I could, but you, you've grown so dark, Harry.' There were tears trailing down her cheeks, dripping from her chin past her outstretched wand. 'I wish I did not have to do this, but I must, you're no better than Voldemort is now.'

'Dumbledore is the death I regret,' Harry added swiftly, hoping to buy himself a few extra seconds before Hermione cast the spell.

'No,' she shook her head despairingly, wand wavering, 'you couldn't, you wouldn't, tell me you didn't kill the only wizard who could have stopped Voldemort!?'

'I could stop him,' Harry said softly.

'And then you would follow in his footsteps,' his former friend declared. 'No. It has to be this way.'

What an ignominious way to die, Harry thought hopelessly. Salazar's going to be very disappointed.

'I miss the boy who dragged us all into danger to save anyone and everyone he could,' Hermione whispered to herself, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, 'but you aren't him, you're someone else, someone too dangerous to live.'

'My name is Harry Potter,' he told her icily unwilling to let her believe that, and have any shield from the guilt of what she was about to do, 'and I hope this haunts you for the rest of your life.'

Sorry, Fleur, he thought, swallowing the lump in his throat, straining hopelessly at the ice that trapped him.

There was a rush of footsteps on the stairs behind him, but Hermione's wand was already raised, and he dared not hope.

'Sectumsempra,' Hermione screamed, slashing her wand at him.

Something shattered the ice around his arm, and he crumpled to the floor.

Hermione's spell carved a jagged line a finger's length deep across the wall, tearing past the entrance and straight across the chest of his saviour.

'No,' Harry and Hermione whispered in horrified tandem.

'That's Snivellus' spell,' Sirius remarked distantly, watching the line of crimson wash red, vibrant and vivid across his chest, swelling past the ivory gleam of bone, then he toppled onto his face, and fell still.

The Elder Wand was out of reach, but he lunged for it anyway, hurling himself across the floor, avoiding the claw of fire that tore through the air where he had been only moments before.

'Sirius?' He heard Fleur ask in disbelief.

'You're really with him,' Hermione's voice echoed Fleur's disbelief.

'Of course I am,' Fleur spat, features shifting furiously. 'You despicable traitor, attacking those who have come to fight to keep you safe.'

'He's a murderer,' Hermione hissed, wand coming back up, and cold, tight fear clenched at Harry's stomach.

Fleur is the better dueller, he told himself, summoning the Elder Wand back to his fingers even though he knew he would be too late to cast anything to stop Hermione's spell.

'Sectumsempra,' his once friend cried, slashing her wand wildly at the pair of them, over and over again.

Had the spell ever reached them they would have been cut to ribbons, but he needn't have worried.

Fleur's ward distorted the spell, and the jagged, brutal slashes faded out of existence between them even as a stream of white flames emanated smoothly from Fleur's other hand to strike Hermione in the sternum.

Girls who play with fire get burnt, Harry recalled hollowly, but this time there was no satisfaction to be had.

The girl dropped without a sound, a hole the width of Harry's hand where her heart should have been.

'Renervate,' Fleur snapped, awakening Neville.

Harry stared in horror at the body of his friend, for, glittering in the cavity of her chest, swaying gently between her charred, hollow ribs, was an all too familiar locket.

I destroyed it, he thought in shock, I watched it burn.

Slytherin's lost, corrupted locket swung triumphantly in the chest of its victim, somehow it had found its way here. The one he had destroyed in the cave had been a decoy, or a fake, or something insignificant. It hardly mattered what it had been that he had destroyed in the cave, for the true horcrux hung here.

'Sorry, Harry,' Neville groaned, 'she caught me by surprise.'

'Sirius is dead because you were followed,' Fleur snapped, 'your apology is not enough.'

The price of Neville's naivety, Harry thought bitterly.

Strangely he did not feel angry, not really, just empty. One of the pillars upon which he'd built his dream was gone, torn away.

Neville paled, staring at the body of Harry's godfather for a moment, then he turned to Hermione and flinched in horror.

'Harry,' he gasped, 'that was Hermione!'

'What was left of her,' Harry said sadly, pointing to the dangling locket, 'that is a horcrux, Nev.'

'The necklace,' he murmured, 'but she's been trying to open that for over a year, since the Christmas before last!'

Neville bent down to unclip it from her neck, but the moment his fingers grazed the chain he flinched back as if he had been burnt.

'What's wrong?' Harry asked, surreptitiously shifting his weight in case Neville was similar affected.

'It showed me you,' Neville whispered, edging away, 'you were terrible.'

'I think it must have showed Hermione the same thing,' he realised, and suddenly so much was clear. 'It gave her nightmares, kept her from sleep, filled her head with fears, twisted her onto the path that led her here.'

Harry could only imagine what would have happened to Hermione if she had succeeded in opening it. He thrust out a hand, summoning the vial of basilisk venom that still lay on the shelves of Salazar's study from all that time ago, and steeling himself he snatched the necklace from his friends from by its chain, catching the vial in his other hand.

For an instant the world fell away, and he found himself standing in France, beneath the willow tree.

It was dead.

The trunk was charred, twisted and withered, the branches shrivelled into skeletal fingers, and the river ran dark beside it, white pebbles spattered red. The whole scene gleamed eerily under the ghastly, green glow of the skull and serpent in the sky above him.

None of that held any horror compared to what he found at his feet.

There was more red than he could have ever imagined, staining everything scarlet, but there was still a sliver of silver, just enough for him to recognise how much he had lost.

'Open,' he ordered the locket, not caring that he had slipped into parseltongue in his distress, and pouring the vial onto the locket.

The metal screamed, blackened and cracked, the chain slipping from his fingers onto the bathroom floor. He pitied the girl that had been his friend. Harry was not sure he could have lasted so long under the locket's influence while ignorant of the true source of the terrors it must have fed her.

'What did you see?' Neville asked hesitantly.

'Something that will never come to pass,' he said coldly, stepping over Hermione, whom he set alight with a flick of his wand. The truth behind her fate would never be known; it was the only mercy he could show her now.

Goodbye, he bid the girl who had once broken her precious rules beside him.

'The snake,' Fleur said calmly, placing a hand upon his shoulder. Harry suspected that she had already guessed the gist of what he had seen while touching the locket.

'The snake,' Harry agreed viciously.

I'm going to enjoy tearing what little Voldemort treasures away from him before he dies.

It was good that he had torn himself to pieces, and scattered the objects so Harry could destroy them, for the Dark Lord cared only for himself, and there would be nothing Harry could take him from had he not.

'We'll come back for Sirius,' he told Neville, gently levitating the body of his godfather into the safety of the chamber, and closing the entrance.

I can still say goodbye to him, he reminded himself, remembering the ring that hung around Fleur's neck, and I cannot mourn him now.

'And now?' Neville asked.

'Follow us,' Fleur told him contemptuously. She clearly held him in poor regard for his failures, and Harry could hardly blame her. Neville had failed when they kidnapped Travers, he'd nearly got the two of them trapped in Gringotts, and now he'd managed to be careless enough to let himself be followed.

Sirius is dead because of him.

Whatever Neville might have been to him he could never be now. Sirius's easy grin and casual air would always be reflected in his eyes, and so would that blood-soaked tangle of coal-black hair, and his jagged, rent flesh.

Harry strode out of the bathroom, before the sadness could swell within him, Fleur at his side.

The sound and sensation of magic swelled within Hogwarts, and the clamour of conflict, its cries, screams and shouts, echoed through empty corridors.

'Where is everyone?'

'The teachers are defending the courtyard,' Neville said slowly, 'but most of the students are in the Great Hall.'

'All of them?' Harry asked incredulously. There was only one way out of the hall, they would be massacred the moment the doors were forced open.

'The younger ones are on their way to the boathouses,' Neville said, 'it's the only way out between the Death Eaters, and the Forbidden Forest.'

'To the Great Hall, then,' Fleur suggested calmly.

They only made it to the stairs.

'The professors,' Neville breathed in horror, seeing the Death Eaters, and those of Greyback's followers who had remained loyal to Voldemort within the walls.

'I suggest you focus on staying alive, Nev,' Harry told him bluntly. 'Go find Hannah, keep her safe.'

'Fulminis,' he commanded, clearing a path through debris and Death Eaters alike. None of those who survived dare step towards him, the blank, white masked Death Eaters, backed away, fleeing to find weaker opposition.

Neville gave him a sad look, then clenched his jaw and ran through the ashes that floated over the stairs.

'Good riddance,' Fleur said quietly. 'He is far too weak to be so judgemental, forcing others to make the harder decisions because he lacks the power, then condemning their actions.'

'He sees Death Eaters as evil,' Harry replied mildly, 'it fractures his view of the world to see they are not so different from the rest of us. Neville is correct in a way,' he admitted, 'I suppose what I have done is not right, but…' He trailed off, staring helplessly at her.

'I know,' Fleur smiled faintly.

'I think I should head outside into the courtyard,' Harry told her. 'If I were Voldemort that is where I would be waiting.' He smiled wryly. 'It is the best place for such a dramatic duel, the perfect setting to see if I am his equal or not.'

'Homenum revelio,' Fleur whispered, taking advantage of the lull to check whether Harry was right.

'Anything?'

'The serpent,' she whispered, 'it's above us on the stairs.'

'Why?' Harry asked warily. 'It may well be a trap.'

'It's heading back the way we came,' she told him, 'someone is with it.'

'Perhaps I won't have to go outside after all,' Harry smiled weakly.

'It will save you going into the rain,' she joked, but her voice caught halfway through, and Harry squeezed her wrist.

'Time to go,' he said dryly, walking back up the way they came, trying to ignore the fear that was welling up within him, 'you get the easy snake, I get the Dark Lord.'

'Don't joke,' she told him, voice strained, and fingers almost painfully tight about his.

'Sorry.'

They caught the pair in the middle of the corridor back towards the Chamber of Secrets, Harry stepped straight into the serpents companion, pushing him away, and levelling his wand at the wizard, the snake squirmed wildly, vanishing from sight, but there was nowhere it could hide in Hogwarts, not with a piece of soul within it.

'You're looking a little short for Voldemort,' he grinned, recognising Ron.

'I'm going on a snake hunt,' the red-head grated.

'Care for some company?' Fleur offered.

'As long as it ends up dead,' Ron spat. 'I don't know why it's skulking up here, but it killed my father, and now I'm going to kill it.'

Voldemort is trying to send it somewhere he knows it will be safe, or he wants to know why the chamber is sealed to him.

'Where is it?' Harry asked Fleur, casting the revealing charm that identified the familiar as Voldemort's final horcrux.

Something red glimmered around Ron's feet, then lunged past him, fangs flashing. Harry braced himself for pain, but it never came.

Fleur gasped, hands grasping at her heel.

No!

Harry's scream was silent, and the corridor froze in an instant, burying everything under almost a foot of cold, dark ice, bursting lights, windows, and ruining every painting.

Voldemort's snake struck once more, catching Fleur on her shoulder, then there was a brilliant green flash, and the serpent slumped still.

Ron stared at his wand, half-horrified, half-satisfied with spell he had just cast.

Harry did not care.

Cradling Fleur against him, he brushed her hair back from her face.

'It broke my wand,' she whispered heartbrokenly, extending the dangling pieces of rosewood, joined by a single, gleaming, silver thread.

'You can have mine for as long as you need,' Harry promised, pushing his original wand into her hands. 'Just don't leave me,' he pleaded softly.

'I'm not going anywhere,' she pushed herself off the floor, clinging to him to keep her balance as she inspected the puncture marks on her arm, and at her achilles heel. 'It was only a little bite,' she sniffed, smiling fondly at him, 'but I'm glad to know you would have missed me.'

'Always,' Harry sighed, relieved beyond words when she accepted his wand, and used it to heal her injuries.

'A piece of you,' Fleur smiled, fingers curling possessively around the slender piece of ebony, tilting her head into the crook of his neck. 'I won't let anything happen to it.'

'You better not carve runes all over it,' Harry warned her with a chuckle.

'I would never,' she promised, blinking slowly several times.

'Are you ok?' Harry asked, the cold fingers of fear tracing their way back along his spine.

Fleur was very pale.

'I feel a little dizzy,' she admitted. Her grip on his robes loosened, and he had to catch her to stop her from falling.

'It's venomous,' Ron said grimly, ever so morose. 'That's what killed Dad.'

Poison, the air was ripped from his lungs, stomach twisting so tight he couldn't breathe to replace it.

Somewhere, a long way away, someone was saying his name, over and over, echoing meaninglessly in his head until Fleur's fingers caught his chin, and drew his attention back from the faint, pink pinpricks on her ankle.

'It's a very good thing we're both immune,' Fleur breathed, reassuringly. 'I feel very very sick, but it's passing, Harry, I'll be fine.'

The ritual, Harry remembered, and the ice melted, cascading into water around them, then evaporating into shimmering steam.

'Never again,' he told her weakly.

'I promise.' She kissed him gently. 'No more getting bitten by very big, dangerous snakes.'

'I'll hold you to that,' Harry said quietly, smiling against her lips.

Ron splashed away down the corridor, face haunted, guilty and angry.

Harry let him go, he'd taken his revenge on the snake that had killed his father, and done more good than he realised in destroying the last horcrux, but it wouldn't help bring his father back.

Fleur straightened up, gathering the pieces of her rosewood wand, and carefully placing them into her pocket.

'Lumos,' she murmured, directing Harry's ebony wand in the correct gesture.

A very faint light emanated from the tip, then wavered out.

'Wonderful,' Fleur sighed, 'your wand doesn't seem to want to me to wield it.'

'It's very loyal to me,' Harry shrugged, eyeing the length of ebony in disappointment.

Fleur needs a wand.

'Reducto,' Fleur muttered, whipping the his original wand in a sharp vee, even as Harry raised his hand to swap wands with her. He would rather face Voldemort with no wand than leave Fleur defenceless.

The banisters shattered into splinters, and the last thing Harry saw of Sir Cadogan was the splinter studded canvas and frame above the stairs.

'Well that was quite effective,' Fleur noted. 'It should be ok to duel with, even if I can't use it for more delicate things.'

'Be careful then,' Harry warned her, 'don't try to use your wards.'

'I have other weapons,' Fleur smirked, raising flame bathed palms, and making her way back down the steps, stopping only when Harry caught her arm to keep her from falling into the trick step.

'Potter!' Someone shouted furiously from the corridor below, and Harry swivelled to deflect an onslaught of curses, batting them to either side, and directing them back at his assailant.

Beside him Fleur was duelling two blank masked Death Eaters at the same time, moving all around them, forcing them into each other's way, and deflecting all their spells expertly back at the pair of them.

Half a silver mask shone brilliantly up at him from the bottom of the staircase. The other half was blackened, melted and warped.

'You die, Potter,' Lucius Malfoy hissed, transfiguring the wooden shards into scorpions, and sending them in a wave up the stairs before unleashing another barrage of curses.

Despite his injury he was no less dangerous than he had been in the Department Mysteries, but Harry had grown far stronger than he had been then.

Fiendfyre destroyed the scorpions, swelling past Malfoy's feet, burning through the wall, and melting the golden hourglasses in the Great Hall. The spells were flicked away from the tip of the Elder Wand, and Harry smiled coldly. Here was one last member of the Inner Circle who had so far escaped him. Someone who swore to stand beside Voldemort.

Something I can take away from him.

Malfoy was still casting spells, not even attempting to shield in his anger, but Harry was too fast, and every single one was brushed aside to spatter harmlessly against the wall, or fly over the heads of the fearful, watching students huddled in the hall beyond him.

A twitch of his wand, and the bodies of the two Death Eater's Fleur had just dispatched hurled themselves at the Death Eater, glowing an eerie yellow.

Malfoy incinerated them in a few seconds, but that moment of freedom was all Harry needed, and from behind Malfoy a serpent of molten gold coiled from the ruined hourglasses, rising silently.

The Death Eater sensed the danger too late, turning only in time to be crowned in melted metal as the snake struck, spattering itself over his head.

He screamed as it seared his face, pouring in through the eyeholes of his mask, collapsing to writhe desperately on the floor.

Harry left him twitching in front of the silent students to search out his true foe.

Where is Voldemort?

It was not like the Dark Lord to hide away while his followers were felled so easily, not when Harry was the only wizard left to challenge him.

A handful of blank-masked Death Eaters dared to challenge him from by the doors out to the courtyard, so he infused the air with his magic, imbuing it with his intent.

Fleur engaged them before he could sweep them aside, and he watched, unable to use this piece of magic with her so close, as she neatly defeated them, cutting them down one after the other as she danced and spun through bright beams of magic.

The last of them tore the mask from her face, as a group of Hogwarts' students stepped around the corner, following Neville as they cast volleys of stunning spells at the wizard Fleur had just eviscerated.

'You killed my son,' she hissed furiously, dropping the ivory to the floor with a hollow clatter.

Narcissa Malfoy.

'Your husband too,' Harry told her icily, stepping aside from the curses she hurled angrily in his direction.

Narcissa Malfoy was no duelist, but her fury lent power to her magic, and Harry was forced to dodge until she overextended, and he was given an instant to think about retaliating.

A simple twist of his wand, and he snapped her neck in swirl of air.

Her grey eyes were blank before she hit the ground.

Behind her Neville turned away, disgusted, leading the members of his DA back towards the Great Hall where the other students hid.

'Is he outside?' Fleur asked quietly, lip trembling.

'I would imagine so,' Harry nodded, handing her the cloak he had inherited from his father, his fingers lingering over hers when she took it from him.

He's definitely outside, Harry thought.

Sometimes you just knew.

Fleur opened her mouth to say something, but the words seemed to catch on her tongue, so she simply clutched him to her instead, crushing herself into his arms. For a long moment he simply held her, wishing he did not have to step through the doors in front of him, but, he did, and he knew it.

The doors to the courtyard creaked open at a flick of his wand, and Harry gently pried Fleur from him, pushing her out of the way of the doors, and out of sight Voldemort.

I do believe this is the end, he thought with no small amount of trepidation.

Harry twirled the Elder Wand in his fingers, spinning it about the span of his hands, and putting all thought of prophecies, promises and people from his head; they would only distract him from the reality of the duel. Two would fight, but only one would walk away to see their dreams fulfilled.

Stepping through the doors he walked out to face the single figure in the courtyard's centre, glancing up at the grey sky, and shielded Scottish sun.

It was beginning to rain.

AN: Please read and review, and thanks to everyone that does. Fortunately I am not the sort of person who needs to have a nice round number of chapters... Otherwise I wouldn't be able to leave this ludicrously melodramatic cliffhanger!

101. Happy Endings

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Here we are, a nice palindromic number for what will hopefully be a good chapter.

Chapter 101

Rain drops, the first heavy few, burst upon the stones between them, running like tears across his cheeks, and soaking silently into his robes.

'You've been busy, Harry.'

Red eyes glowed, hot as coals, barely restrained fury etched in every aspect of Voldemort's face.

Around him lay bodies by the score, tattered, blood-drenched school robes, and glassy-eyed professors among a scatter of dark-robed wizards bearing unadorned, white masks. A single, uncovered pathway led from the entrance to Voldemort's feet. A straight line not broken by a single body; where the wizard had walked from the gates to the courtyard's centre.

'You and Dumbledore,' the Dark Lord whispered furiously, 'have spent too long destroying things more precious than you understand.' The parseltongue carried clearly across the courtyard, but they were the only ones who understood. Voldemort did not want his secret bandied about if he could help it, and there were still others nearby.

Wizards and witches of either allegiance lingered at the edges of the square, lurking behind the cover of archways, not daring to duel, not able to tear their eyes away from what everyone now knew was coming.

'When I learned of how Dumbledore died I could not help but wonder,' the Dark Lord whispered, 'I do not believe in coincidences. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the heirloom of my ancestors lost.'

Harry did not have to. Its echo was plastered across Voldemort's features, concealing incandescent rage.

'So I checked the others.' Voldemort's wand shimmered briefly with emerald light. 'They were gone, lost. My mother's locket.'

'Burnt by me in the cave you entrusted it to,' Harry said simply, speaking in parseltongue.

'I searched for my diary, entrusted to one I was sure would keep it safe.'

'Riven by a basilisk fang ripped from the monster you set on students.' Harry raised his wand, steeling his nerves.

'The Lestrange brothers I sent to secure the cup that was once Hufflepuff's, they did not return,' the Dark Lord said.

'They died badly,' Harry answered, 'and the cup is gone.'

'You will not destroy the others,' the Dark Lord whispered furiously, 'you will not take my immortality from me!'

'I already have,' Harry smiled coldly. 'The diadem, blackened and burnt, and Nagini, slaughtered in the halls.'

'Your former friend has paid the only price I would extract for her death,' Voldemort murmured. A flick of his pale wand bared Ron's pale, still face from the crowd of bodies. 'Now I will take from you the only thing you could still value.'

'You will try,' Harry said, voice icy cold, fingers tight about the Elder Wand.

'I will succeed.' Voldemort's lips curled. 'I never fail.'

'You have already failed,' Harry told him, dispassionate, detached. 'Where is the boy who was nothing now?'

'He became the greatest wizard who ever lived,' Voldemort retorted fiercely. Beneath him the stones of the courtyard smoked and steamed, magic seething and searing around him.

'He is nothing still,' Harry disagreed. 'Voldemort's name is feared, but Tom Riddle is lost, nobody remembers him. I am the Dark Lord's equal,' he echoed the words of the prophecy, 'not Tom Riddle's.'

Voldemort flinched.

The motion was almost imperceptible, lost to anyone who was not adept at legilimency, and reading the emotions from a face, but Harry saw it, and it made him smile.

He is not invulnerable.

'It does not matter,' Voldemort decided. 'I am no longer Tom Riddle, and we have yet to see if you are truly my equal.'

'When I was a baby you destroyed by me,' Harry said softly.

'Your parents' magic, blood magic,' Voldemort said. 'I did not expect it.'

'When I was eleven I destroyed the stone you sought, burnt you from the body of your host.'

'Dumbledore's doing, not yours.' Voldemort shifted the sleeve of his robe, severing it completely at the elbow so it would not hinder him.

'I slew your basilisk, and defeated the shadow of your diary in the chamber that is and will forever be mine.'

'Had it truly been me you faced alongside Slytherin's serpent you would have perished,' Voldemort answered.

'I escaped you in the graveyard, broke your shield when few others have even grazed it.'

'A strong spell, and again something I did not expect,' Voldemort admitted, 'but a single spell is not enough to make a wizard great.'

'It is enough kill a wizard, great or not.'

The shadows of wizards and witches around the edge of the courtyard drew back in fear, neither friend nor foe would risk coming between them.

'And now it ends,' Voldemort said. The pale yew wand came up, gripped tightly between long, ivory skinned fingers, its tip gleaming green.

'No,' Harry said, 'now it begins.'

A dream will be born from a death here.

The bodies rose, writhing, jerking, spasming onto their hands and feet. Nails, hair and teeth elongating under Voldemort's spell, skin swelling, cracking and hardening.

Ron's wild, red mane flowed as his defiled body lunged forwards.

Harry bathed him in fire, but while his robes smouldered, charred and turned to ash the shell of his former friend refused to catch alight.

Fiendfyre washed from Harry's wand, and this time the inferius burnt, but only for a few moments for Voldemort wrested enough control of the flames to banish them, and Harry was forced to use Grindelwald's spell to knock the inferi back against the walls.

'Fire is not enough, Harry,' the Dark Lord said, casting glimmering orange curses that Harry deflected away into the repairing inferi. He seemed almost disappointed.

A stream of butterflies swirled from the end of the Elder Wand, flowing around him in ribbons of ebony wings, then streaming forth to burst in wisps of dark smoke against the encroaching inferi.

He matched Voldemort's smile with one of his own, locking gazes through the settling cloud of dust.

'Lacero,' he cast, flicking his wand lazily, casting a bone-splintering curse either side of the flesh-cutting curse to test Voldemort's speed.

The three curses were swatted aside, the first by Voldemort's wand, and the second two, which the Dark Lord would not have been able to deflect away, by the same brilliant, silver shield Harry had seen in the graveyard. They scored long, dark scorch marks along the stones, and Harry took a deep breath as the silver shield faded.

He is no faster than I am.

Voldemort's retaliation was anything but lazy, however, and the wizard clearly had no desire to test Harry. He would unleash his full fury, and Harry would prove himself equal, or perish in the storm.

There were no unforgivebles, not yet, but more spells than Harry thought he would ever be able to learn arced from the tip of the yew wand, hissing viciously across the air between them.

Harry apparated away, reappearing on the far side of the courtyard with a soft, double-snap, and unleashing a hail of his own.

Voldemort did not bother to defend. He merely carried on casting, and their spells met in the middle, deflecting off each other to ricochet wildly away, crackling beams, and floating, drifting specks of light of all hues burst, hissed and spattered against the walls of the courtyard, chipping shards from centuries old stone.

The tree in the corner withered, then burst into flames.

Yet for all Harry's speed it seemed his spells were not strong enough.

Voldemort's magic seared at the sky, the rain dissolved about him, his spells shivered, and shimmered through it. Harry could feel the heat of it upon his face, taste it in the dryness of the air, and see it in the way the stone melted away at its touch.

Volatile, he remembered, apparating away to the roof, flinching from the stone beneath him as it crumbled before the onslaught.

The water in the fountain, leapt forwards, stabbing, in long, lethal needles of ice, towards Voldemort's back, but the moment it neared him it sublimed instantly to steam, yielding to the burning aura of magic that rippled from the wizard.

'Contusio,' the Dark Lord uttered confidently, flinging the string of tiny beads of light from the tip of his wand.

Harry's hurried use of Grindelwald's favourite duelling spell sent them slicing off in different directions to explode in dull, booming ripples against the towers above them.

He transfigured the falling tiles into bats, sending them to impede Voldemort while he attempted to catch the Dark Lord off guard by apparating about him to hurl spells from all different directions.

A hiss of pain and surprise announced his success.

The bats dissolved into flames, combusting from the heat of the magic emanating from the Dark Lord alone, and allowing Harry a glimpse of the red line he'd torn through Voldemort's robes and shoulder.

It was little more than a shallow cut, and it faded in moments just as it would have had it been him.

'Fulminis,' Voldemort spat, drawing a small ellipse in the air with the tip of his wand to focus the swirl of sparks.

Harry apparated once more, and the blinding beam struck the doors to the Great Hall instead, warping the metal, lighting the wood, and sending out spatters of glowing sparks to splash across the stone.

The lightning did not dissipate, and the slight twist of Voldemort's bare forearm was all the warning Harry had before it lashed back around behind him, slicing through the stonework like so much soft butter, and leaving the dissected, smoking, cauterised corpses of ally and enemy alike beneath the canopy.

'Fulminis,' Harry cried, meeting the lash of lightning with an arcing tendril of his own.

There was a brilliant flash, and then that side of the courtyard was gone.

The cracked, charred columns were strewn in rough hewn chunks across the flagstones, and the stones themselves were glowing, bubbling hot and molten where their magic had collided.

The heat was pouring off the Dark Lord now, stone glowed cherry-red beneath his feet, and he was half-shrouded in a shimmering haze.

A flick of the Elder Wand and the air curled, tightening around Voldemort, crushing and squeezing at the body he had built.

For an instant the wizard clutched at his chest, then he smiled, and with a mirroring flick of his own wand he countered the spell.

'Contusio,' Harry murmured, unleashing his own version of Voldemort's spell at its inspiration.

The single pin-prick of light exploded violently against the silver-shield, waves of force rippling across it, but it did not break. The reflected shockwave shattered the fountain, sending pieces of the sculpture that had somehow remained untouched spraying dangerously in all directions until Harry transfigured them into moths, setting them to swallowing spells about him.

A serpent's maw lunged from the lava that had once been the courtyard's centre, thrusting its fanged maw at Harry, but, with a twist if his wand, he transfigured the ground beneath into towering spikes pushing the conjured creature away from him, bursting its molten skin and sending waves of molten stone lapping across the far side of the square to set fire to the gate.

Voldemort was laughing.

'See how strong I have made you,' he said, almost proud, 'everything I have taken from you has driven you to this, and now, when you have nothing left but yourself and your goal you have almost equalled me.'

Almost.

A tight, bright point of cold welled within him. Raindrops froze, falling to shatter around his feet.

I did not lose Katie, Sirius, and so much more for almost.

The cold flared, shivering along his wand arm, seeping into the air around him, and every spell he cast left hoarfrost outlines against the stone, and trailed icy mist in its wake.

Their magic collided again, no longer simply restricted to spells, but two vast waves of volatile emotion and intend crashing against one another. Frost and fire fought between them, steam, stone and sky split, froze, melted, and fractured.

The Elder wand hummed, screaming in delight, and sending shivers of power through him, but, for all its joy, Harry could feel his magic waning, its potency spent. The stinging of a thousand small cuts, the throb of a hundred bruises, and the protesting ache of his limbs as he forced them faster and faster dogged him, as pushed himself on regardless.

The Dark Lord looked haggard too.

The sleek, black robes were scorched, and ragged. Frost coated the remaining sleeve, and sweat dripped down the sides of his serpentine skull.

I can win, he urged himself. I will win.

The silver serpents flowed around Voldemort as he shielded himself for a moment of respite, but Harry, suspecting that Voldemort may well have carried out innumerable rituals to improve his recovery from injury and exhaustion, dared not let him.

The hazy outline of his basilisk thrust its fangs at his foe, shattering the silver shield even more comprehensively than before, throwing Voldemort across the cobbles like a child's toy until he apparated mid-tumble to renew his assault on Harry's own shield from behind.

Abandoning it, he made to apparate, only to find he could not, and Voldemort's curse struck him on the shoulder, hurling him into the charcoal skeleton of the tree that once grown in the corner.

The Dark Lord frowned, shifted his weight, but remained firmly in the same place.

'The Ministry,' he realised aloud. 'They have come to throw what little they have left at me.'

'You are outnumbered,' Harry grinned viciously, 'and trapped.'

'When you fall,' the Dark Lord's lips curved cruelly, 'so will have they.'

Their magic clashed again, wordless, wandless, without gesture, or direction, only instinctive, pure hate to guide it.

The ice spread across his chest, and this time, rather than suppress it, or simply listen to it, he embraced it, encouraged it, and poured himself into it until there was nothing else left within him.

White scales, sharp, tapering to cruel, curved points, coated in hoarfrost spines, and emanating a cold so fierce it cracked the stone beneath, froze the air, and shattered what little glass still remained in the windows.

This time it was real, a manifestation of his magic.

Across from it another serpent reared from the molten ruins of the gatehouse. It was just as painfully white, flames rippling from nose to tail, eyes of incandescent fury, burning there so bright the flames were no longer visible. When its mouth gaped, it screamed with a thousand fiery tongues, a challenge Harry could only answer in kind.

Vast, dark eyes slid open over a maw of needle-like teeth, that glittered like icicles, they gleamed with hunger, an insatiable, destructive desire.

It surged forward with a hiss like the cracking of ice.

They met with a crash, writhing, biting, and wrapping around one another, flailing furiously until the courtyard was little more than a crater, and dulling in colour as they weakened. The serpents faded to cherry-red, and pale blue, then vanished completely, dark eyes melting into a wave of black water that drenched the flames of Voldemort's creature, both bursting into a sea of steam.

The steam scattered, but there was nothing left to see of the courtyard, nor the gatehouse, or even many of the surrounding buildings.

They stood alone over a plain of rubble, gasping, bent double, magic all but spent.

It was Voldemort who regained his breath first, straightening and turning to watch the silent, white wings of a snowy owl pass over their heads, while Harry continued to gasp.

'Ever you surpass my expectations,' he smiled, the expression almost soft, but oddly hungry. 'If only I could let you live, leave you to grow, and watch what you become.'

They both knew it was impossible, no wizard who dreamed of being the greatest could suffer an equal, no enemy's understanding was worth risking the everlasting emptiness.

The yew wand snapped up, and Harry raised his aching, trembling arm again.

The storm of spells renewed itself against Harry's wavering shield, the butterflies clouding about his head, dipping to swallow the spells his shield could not stop, but he knew that it would not, could not last.

I cannot win, he realised, watching ripples of colour flood across his shield, its light fading a little with each wash of vivid magic. And if I fall, they fall.

There was no magic left, every drop that lingered would be spent on the next spell he cast, no matter its intention or purpose.

I cannot even apparate away to try again.

The Ministry had trapped them all within their wards.

He wanted to laugh, but the mirth that bubbled in his throat died, strangled by sorrow and drenched in despair.

The Elder wand rose, flourished, fell and twisted, painting purple patterns on the air.

I will fall, he accepted hollowly; it was already certain.

Harry swallowed his pain, abandoned all his fears save one, the last, the worst, the one he could never allow.

She will not.

The light of his shield wavered, but he ignored it, and kept drawing the runes, carving his intent, his dedication into the sky around him, just as Dumbledore had always intended him to do. He knew now the real reason for those references to Fleur, to sacrifice, the conversations in his office about love, and its power. He was always intended to die for those he loved, if not everyone, then just for her; it would have worked just as well.

Harry hoped, desperately, that Dumbledore's theory about the blood magic bound between them from the resurrection would save him, but he knew the field better than the old wizard had. There was no horcrux within him to be sacrificed in his stead, and without it the chances of escaping the nothingness were slim.

Better I die like this than her.

He could never allow anyone to condemn Fleur to that emptiness, without her he would be nothing again anyway, better she live and he die, better she survive and he fall, better she remember and he vanish, than both of them fade.

The shield flickered, the once bright, blinding light now little more than a faint glow, and with a leaden heart he knew the time had come.

The Elder Wand trembled in his fingers as he twirled it, fighting the desire to look back through the doors, knowing his sacrifice would be all the more potent if he gave up that too.

There had been a dream, a desire, for love, for Fleur, for family, and for a silver-haired girl with green eyes, but they were bittersweet ashes on his tongue. He should have known better than to hope, to believe, because he had always known the truth, the reality, cold and cruel as it was.

Wishes like that, he thought, smiling bitterly, they never come true.

The shield fell, butterflies bursting in wisps of ebony smoke, shrouding him from sight, as Voldemort stepped forwards, the first words Harry had ever remembered on his lips.

He raised his chin proudly, letting the Elder Wand fall from his fingers on the floor.

Why? Voldemort's eyes seemed to ask, widening in incredulous shock, as the spell left his wand.

Fleur, Harry answered, though the Dark Lord could not hear him, always Fleur.

There was a brilliant, viridescent flash, a wave of emerald that washed out every other hue, then there was pain, pain beyond words, thoughts or feeling, his very essence screamed out soundlessly, and he blindly, desperately hurled himself towards the only escape.

AN: Please read and review, thanks for everyone who does! Also, don't hate me too much?

I have already written the next chapter, I wrote them together, but I'm going to hold back on posting it for a day or two so that any reviews I get for it are based solely on that chapter rather than the events of both. You'll see why when you read it!

102. Are For Stories Yet Unfinished

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Still not quite finished... I bet the chapter title makes more sense now.

So I'm caving into peer pressure and posting this now, but review this chapter separately please, because I've tweaked the prose style a bit more introspective for this moment, and I want to know if it's any good.

And a shout out to those who realised the reference to the Tower of Joy scene in the last chapter; I realised halfway through writing that the dialogue style at the start felt familiar for a reason and decided just to go the whole way and include a proper reference.

Chapter 102

A girl with silver hair stood before him, crouched, crying, and shaking with rage, fingers clutching the silver chain about her neck.

'For you,' he deduced aloud, 'he did this for you.'

It was confusing.

He had been sure he had stripped everything away, torn every attachment, taken every piece of his opponent's person save his life, yet, somehow, he also knew that he had not, that he had never even come close, and he had inexplicably known this all along.

The strange, pale, knotted wand that had turned such power against him floated gently into his hand, and at its touch came wave after wave of cold puissance, exhilarating and addictive. The tip glimmered green, levelling itself at the girl who had cheated him from true victory. How he hated her, how he wished he had ensured she wasn't real, then made sure she was dead, so that their duel might have forever answered questions he had no other way of solving.

'I want nothing more than to kill you,' he whispered. 'You were the piece of him I missed, the one that drove him to die, rather than fight, the piece that needed to be torn away before he could truly equal me.'

The silver-haired girl did not answer. She gathered the body of his final challenger into her arms, wand twisting, tearing at the wards, shifting them. He shifted his weight, trying again to apparate, but nothing happens, whatever she has done has not broken the wards that the remnants of the Ministry have thrown up.

He was hardly concerned, a good few minutes of rest here and he will have recovered sufficiently to shatter them himself, and victory will at last be his.

'He was more than you will ever be,' the girl hissed, features shifting as he knows enraged veela will.

The words of the Killing Curse hover at the tip of his tongue, but something shies away from saying them, it writhes, twists and screams within, protesting violently, furiously, and the strange wand falls almost involuntarily back to his side; there are others whom he has to kill, and he swiftly remembers the reason he should not act against her.

'You are protected by his sacrifice,' he told the girl, 'and Lord Voldemort does not make the same mistake twice.'

He has no horcruxes to anchor him now.

She vanished silently, apparating away, and taking the body of his equal with her, but at her departure a strange melancholy falls, a thick, grey shroud over everything he has achieved.

Fleur, he remembers. Her name is Fleur.

Something twists inside, twists so hard and fast it breaks, and with her and his rival gone, he finds himself feeling oddly alone.

He hates it.

Heat seethes about him, and the circle of his followers flinch. They are white-masked, for those that promised to stand beside him, those that had worn silver, are all gone, torn from him by the opponent he has now slain.

He died for the girl.

The idea is so foreign, so alien, he cannot understand it, the concept of willingly hurling himself into the emptiness sends shivers down his spine, and he cannot conceive of anyone that would have been worth that.

Yet it stirs memories he had long left behind him.

The bitter envy of the other children when he was able to leave to go to school, and they were left within the city to watch the fire fall from the skies, dreaming of death flying on metal wings.

The joy he had felt in escaping them, their war-riven, weary world, and finding a better one, one where he had belonged, where everyone was just as special as him.

The squirming agony as his wonder withered, broken beneath the brunt of bigotry, and the same jealousy that had always followed him.

It's lonely, isn't it, he remembers her saying, but he cannot quite recall her features, for they are distorted, blurred, and the only thing that sticks in his mind are her glasses. Wide, thick-framed, and cheap.

He shakes his head, unsure whether the memories are his, or simply some of those he has stolen over the years, the ones glimpsed in the thoughts of his foes and followers.

There are aurors, hit-wizards, and whomever else the Ministry has who can duel and die among them now.

'Go,' he whispers, and his Death Eater's disperse.

Go, he hears himself scream from decades ago, yelling it hotly at the others who tormented him with bitter, angry, jealous eyes, and hurtful words for the boy whose curiosity all the matrons thought was sweet before he learned to retaliate against their cruelty, to fight fire with fire.

He remembers running too, fleeing his less fleet-footed assailants, then, taking a wrong turn, he recalls wishing, and finding himself far away upon the roof.

There is magic around him, spells bursting, and burning about him.

He bats those that might strike him aside with wand he has claimed.

The Elder Wand, he smiles, but he cannot remember how he knows.

An auror with one arm steps bravely from the chaos to confront him, wand raised, eyes proud.

He dies in moments, torso burning and crumbling to ash from the heat of spells twice as powerful as they should be, but beneath his remnants, spreading from under soiled silk, are faint patterns of frost.

It's different, unexpected, but familiar, and for an instant the world twists away.

Let me show you the entrance, he grins, leading her by the hand into the bathroom.

She is not beautiful, she is not strong, but she is clever, she comes from where he has, the other world, and together things make sense. They are both reviled for being from that other place, both isolated in the world they left behind and the one they have found. He dreams of being strong, she dreams of being clever, and they know that they will achieve it with each other to help them.

Understanding is built from their years together.

Flames curled across the stone underfoot, washing past him as he tears control of them from the wizard who created the fire, twisting the inferno away, up the wall, and into the fight again.

The Death Eaters burn alongside the aurors, but he does not care, none of them swore to stand beside him.

He remembers other flames. Thick, bright, red ones. They poured across the floor of the orphanage, rippling from his feet as he rose furiously to defend the girl who had come to visit him there against their taunts, unable to restrain his emotions, full of hate, and fury for those ordinary, envious people.

The other children burned.

The smell of scorched flesh is one he knows well, he smells it now around him in the ruins, he smelt it then in the orphanage as it burnt, and he remembers the scent of his hands, blistered, peeling and painful from the frying pan in the kitchen of his relatives.

The something stabs at him again, and his mind recoils, the Elder Wand flicking up of its own accord to shield him from the curses of the female auror before him. She casts the Killing Curse, over and over, but he blocks it every time, his butterflies swallowing the spell effortlessly.

His wand twitches up, almost without command, tearing fist-sized holes through the chest of their assailant, glimmering orange spells arcing from its tip to leave bright, molten cracks against the walls.

'Damn you,' the auror gurgles, 'monster.'

She dies, but he flinches.

Monster, the girl whispers fearfully, you don't feel any remorse for those children, do you?

His fear, his anger, the betrayal, raw, open and agonising again. She who was supposed to understand turned her back on him, telling him she was going to alert the aurors, and ruin everything he longed for.

He cannot hurt her, despite her betrayal she is still the girl who came to find him, the one who stood between worlds with him, so he takes her memories instead, ripping away every recollection of their time together.

The rubble around him is a molten pool, Death Eaters and aurors alike are aflame at its edge, and he knows he is killing them, his foes, and his followers, but now, as he tries to think clearly, he cannot remember which is which, only two faces ever speak of friendship.

The silver-haired girl, with eyes of summer sky.

Fleur, part of him breathes with desperate longing.

The girl with glasses sobbing on the bathroom floor.

I feel a little better here, he hears her tell the mirror, but he knows she cannot remember why, because he stole that comfort from her when she abandoned him.

The book he has tucked under his arm, his diary, was created to replace her, but it is ink and paper, and there is no real understanding to be taken from its cold pages; it only echoes his own thoughts back at him.

His magic pulses, a whirling wave of heat pushes the battle back from him, and the wizards and witches flee, their duels moving away from him, to safety from his flames.

The ruin of the courtyard is his own now, but he has been alone before. It is no hard thing to recall the way they turned their back on him, his so-called friends, betraying him from beneath his shadow over such petty things, leaving him when he grew strong enough to survive. His family too, when he finds them, do not want him, they pretend to have never known of him, and deny his relation to them while they look down at him from their perfect life, not wanting him to intrude into the relationships they have.

He kills them, taking revenge and a ring, binding a piece of himself to the heirloom after he kills the man who should have been his father, so that he will never die, and when he eventually escapes the emptiness it can never reclaim him. He killed the traitor too. Captured, bound and murdered him among the trees, taking revenge for the loss of the family he should have had, and ripping himself apart after the act to take his freedom.

The portrait of his ancestor, the last semblance of kin he has, his teacher, his mentor, a parent in paint, turns his back on him, disgusted by his attempts to kill the ordinary, envious filth that have fled the other world to corrupt the one that he will make his.

He remembers it vanishing beneath white flames, surrounded by runes he both recognises and cannot recall, the canvas curling and charring away to ash.

The courtyard seems a world away, and he is with the girl in the bathroom again, only this time she is crying, remembering some of the things he thought he had taken, and he hopes, he hopes so much, that she might return to him.

Wishes like that don't come true, he reminds himself, dreaming bitterly of green-eyes in mirrored glass.

The girl betrays him again, and this time he is too angry to care for her.

Her body is lifeless and still on the bathroom floor, and while there is no blood the scarlet still stains his hands. He knows now that he will always be alone, that no matter how strong he becomes they will never love him, never understand him.

In the chamber of secrets he seethes and broods, while the ghost of the girl cries in the bathroom above.

Let them hate me, he remembers deciding. Let them hate me so long as they fear me.

Old castles, pine-filled forests, dark things, dark places, magic without words, without name, ritual after ritual, blood, pain, sacrifice and swelling strength.

I will be the greatest wizard, he promises himself. I won't look back.

A vivid flash of emerald light, pain his mind cannot bear to recall, ripped from his body and cast adrift on the world, fleeing, floating, consuming and surviving until eventually the agony is ended.

Red eyes burn like coals in his sockets, stained as scarlet as his soul, reflected back from water spilt out of the cauldron, the vessel of his rebirth, and his followers shrink back in terror from his new visage.

To be powerful is to be feared.

There is only power, only fear, and he will have the most.

The something within twists violently again, objecting, protesting, pushing a single hue of sky blue into his thoughts, and the smell of sweet, burnt holly.

It is not the girl who betrayed him in the bathroom; it is the other girl. The one with silver hair, the one his rival died for, who loves sugar, her sister, fingers in her hair, and elegant, delicate things.

The one I died for, he realised, recalling kisses against the bark of a hot tree, the simple comfort of entwined fingers, and the perfect knowledge that he was always somebody with her.

The flames burned within as well as without, magic bending, boiling and swirling as it fought itself. Beneath the fire was frost, as deep, dark and cold as the flames were bright and hot, perfectly alike, but impossibly different, unable to coexist.

Finally he understands.

He is not one, but one of two.

Only one soul can inhabit a body, there cannot be two. He knows this from thirteen years of trying, even the homunculus he inhabits, resilient in so many ways, cannot survive that.

Neither can live while the other survives.

The last line of the prophecy that he has known, and not known for years, sends a shiver down his spine. One of them will fall into the emptiness, and be consumed by death.

He laughs almost giddily, because he does not know which he is. The boy who burnt the children, or the one who was abandoned in the tower, the young wizard who killed his absent father, or the one who burnt the painting, Voldemort, or Harry.

The frost and the fire writhe.

The cold swells within.

The flames flare without.

Something snatches the Elder Wand from his fingers, slicing his palms as it is stolen away, so he pulls the yew wand from his sleeve in its place. The slender length of wood is more false comfort than protection, for his magic is no longer his, but theirs; it belongs to Harry and Voldemort, and he cannot control it.

The wand spins about his fingers as he twirls it, over and over, round and round, remembering one life, then another, with only an emerald moment to separate them.

Which was I? He wonders, for he does not know, can't tell.

There is anger, fierce as flame, hate, cold as ice, seeping through the stilted, twisted, warped memories of two shattered souls. They are scattered, tattered shadows, bound in foreign flesh, thrust together within a mannequin of man, mutilated and merged.

The crooked, pale yew wand thrums with heat.

It is smoking.

The wood peels, burns, and cracks, flames running from its tip to his severed sleeve; the shredded, ragged robes are wreathed in white flames, but feel as cold and smooth as wet silk.

A palmful of ashes that were once yew slip through ivory-skinned, long fingers that blacken and crack, baring bone.

Only then does he realise that he is burning too.

The flames roar in rage, and the ice howls in hate, but neither are loud enough to obscure the pain, and there is nothing, for he has no wand, no magic, no name and no-one.

All he can do is scream.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does.

P.S. I apologise for these few chapters being a little shorter than usual, but I'm sure you all understand why that is!

103. Epilogue: A Cadmean Victory

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

I know the last chapter was ambiguous and incredibly introspective, but, well, you guys realise what happened at the end, right? The bit where the homunculus their souls are in catches fire...

And now it's the end!

Epilogue

The sun spilled through the leaves of the willow tree, falling in dappled patterns across white pebbles, sparkling, clear water, and glimmering crystal.

This was still their place.

She still came to meet with him here.

Only now she is the only one who speaks, because he cannot reply. She visits almost every day, even now, when a summer has already passed since she placed him here where their dream had been born, and where it should be remembered.

She had pinned him against the trunk, trapped him until he confessed the thing she had wanted so desperately to hear, and since then they had spent so many hours here, talking, kissing, sleeping, and dreaming.

Now she can remember hearing the footsteps of her parents, walking away up the hill, leaving her to grieve when they could not persuade her to move on, the sound of the soft spattering of her tears upon the tomb, and Gabrielle's quiet sobs at the loss of a wizard she had assumed a brother.

Fleur lifted the silver chain over her head.

This is the only place she would ever take it off for more than a moment.

The silver locket rests gently over its partner, separated by inches of clear, hard stone, the ring, the thing she has pinned all her last, desperate hopes upon, rolls to rest against the end of Harry's wand.

'We tried again,' she tells him, as she has a hundred times. 'We failed again, but one day, we'll succeed. I'll create a resurrection stone that will bring you back, even if I have to create every aspect of you from magic itself I will do it, and we'll have our dream.'

Beneath the layer of crystal his smile was faint and proud.

'The ring does not really show you to me,' Fleur whispered. The shade it gave her was not truly him. She knew from the runes she had interpreted that it was but an echo. He knew things he should not, lacked some of the smallest, most essential pieces of Harry, the ones had made him who he was. Fleur could not bear to use it anymore, so she had stopped, promising herself never to look again until she was successful, and Harry was at her side once more.

Her and Gabrielle had both promised, learning in the bureau they had both joined, delving deeper and deeper into experimental enchanting in an attempt to rediscover what they needed.

'I made something today,' she told him, picking up his wand. 'It's a silly little thing,' she admitted, placing the simple, black butterfly on the tree trunk, 'but it reminded me of you.'

Harry's smile remained unchanged, and she swallowed hard, tears prickling at the edges of her eyes. The butterfly warmed its wings in the sun, a real, living creature ensnared and changed by her magic into the exact likeness of Harry's conjurations.

'I broke my promise to you too as well,' she confessed, smiling slightly. 'I showed Gabby the memory of the Room of Requirement. She loved it, of course.' Fleur's face fell, for Gabrielle had loved it so much she had cried again. 'You would be so embarrassed,' she sighed, 'and I'm sure you would tease me horribly until you felt we were even again.'

She rolled the wand between her fingers, listening to the echo of Harry's magic within it.

Fleur had only ever cast a single piece of magic with his wand since he had stepped through the doors and into the courtyard. It was the same enchantment that had been placed on Dumbledore's tomb to keep him from decay. She could not bear to think of her Harry rotting, and withering beneath the earth.

'Britain is still changing,' she said slowly, repeating herself. 'The Ministry of old is all but gone, washed away in the wake of war, and a new country is rising. You would have liked the changes. The corruption is cleaned away, and you're a hero again.' She laughed a little, because Harry would have hated that. He had never wanted to be a hero, a martyr, or anything other than hers.

Fleur's fingers tightened about the ebony wand, clutching it to her chest, and pouring her magic over it, immersing herself in that faint echo of Harry within.

'Why did you have to die?' She asked him brokenly.

Harry's magic, the faintest trace of it, caressed hers, its cold, fluid rush sweeping gently over her.

'I would have fought beside you if you'd let me, I should have anyway,' she whispered guiltily, placing the wand back upon the tomb, 'then at the very least we would have fallen together, and I would not be left chasing echoes.'

The wand lay still, but she was sure, just for an instant, that it whispered back. There were no words in what she heard, just the simple, quiet murmur of comfort he had made when he used to hold her.

A soft hoot came from the branches above, and Fleur's eyes snapped up.

An owl? They should not be able to find me here.

The willow tree was well warded.

She froze in surprise at who she saw hopping down the branches towards her, a pale twig grasped within her talons.

'Hedwig.'

The snowy owl had vanished, and neither Fleur or Gabrielle had seen or heard anything of her.

'You look terrible,' Fleur whispered.

The owl's feathers were tinged grey, moulting, ruffled and bedraggled with patches of plumage entirely lost all across her body. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy, pupils gaping wider than was natural.

She hooted tiredly, hopping closer, dropping whatever she was carrying onto the floor beside the tomb, and lurching, lunging towards the edge of the tomb before faltering and stopping, gasping and wheezing only inches away.

Fleur bent and picked up what the owl had dropped, holding it between her fingers in disbelief.

The Elder Wand.

'Reparo,' she breathed. The wand resisted, Fleur could feel it protest at serving one it did not call master, but the pieces of her rosewood wand, broken in Hogwarts, flowed seamlessly back together regardless.

Hedwig lurched forwards with horrible, hissing wheeze, placing one foot upon Harry's basilisk-venom wand, and freezing, falling dead still, eyes gleaming with the eldritch.

It was a glow she knew, a bright, ethereal glimmer that had been in both Harry's emerald eyes, and Voldemort's scarlet ones.

Magic shivered, white fire pooling from the wand tip, the same flames that had been said to consume Voldemort in his final moment of madness, and bright, familiar frost encircled the slender length of ebony from the wand's other end. The two met in the middle, pushing against one another for an instant before they faded, and a pool of smoking black tar seeped from the wand to dissipate across the top of the tomb.

The snowy owl coughed, a raw, hoarse, horrible sound, and from her beak spilled a tendril of shadow. Fleur watched, fascinated, terrified, desperate not to hope, but unable to resist wishing. Harry had told her stories of how his first Defense teacher had died, and the dark vapour that had fled from him as he burnt.

Hedwig coughed again, blood spattering across the crystal, and a thick, dark mist pouring from within her to writhe above the tomb. The owl slumped down among the pebbles, ruined, white feathers stained crimson, eyes blank.

The shadows coalesced above the tomb, a formless, shapeless thing that radiated magic in a terrible, oppressive aura that burnt and froze her skin.

Faceless it stood before her, smiling without lips, staring without eyes, whispering without a voice. One blurred, vaporous hand stretched to the surface of the tomb, and with a violent crack the crystal shattered, shadows scattering.

Fragments poured to pile around her feet, but she did not notice, did not care, for bright, vibrant, emerald eyes had flashed open, and a dream defied its death.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who has, and I hope you all enjoyed the story at least until chapter 100... I leave interpreting the ending to you guys, there are just enough hints scattered throughout to give away the truth of what happened, but I'm not one for spoon-feeding, so have fun! I always prefer endings open enough to let you pick a preference.

P.S. I am in the midst of writing another story, although planning would likely be a more apt description. It's A Song of Ice and Fire, rather than Harry Potter, and because the world is so complex and clever composing a plot is proving equally intricate! Hopefully I'll start posting chapters relatively soon, though I doubt it will be written at the same pace as this one was; there's far more to consider!

UPDATE: I've posted the prologue of A Canvas of Crowns, my ASOIAF fic, so anyone interested is obviously welcome to read it!

DOUBLE UPDATE: One of my original fics is now in the novel contest at Inkitt, so anyone who wants to check that out (and hopefully vote for it) can do! There's more detail and a link in my profile if anyone's interested.

PROBABLY FINAL UPDATE: The original fic I'm writing is now also on Fictionpress, and anyone who wants to read it is better off looking there rather than on Inkitt because it's just a much much better interface!

104. UPDATE

Don't panic, it's not a real chapter!

Those who've accidentally, or even deliberately, found themselves on my profile, may have realised I'm remastering this story. It's, well, it has its good points, but also its bad ones, and the remastered version will hopefully have more of the former and fewer of the latter. In addition to A Cadmean Victory Remastered I might dig out my old plans for the sequel, and we'll see where that leads...

The entire story will be on my website as I build it up. If you're interested, do take a look at my profile, the details are all on there.

For clarification, as things have changed about a bit over lockdown while I've been remastering. I'm posting a chapter of the remaster on here, Ao3, and my website for free every four days. There's a further chapter you can see if you're a member of my discord server and active enough to earn the unlocking role! And then there are the early access chapters for my patrons, which run about 10/15 chapters ahead of the ones everywhere else. And, of course, the stuff I really love, all my original works, are behind the patron barrier waiting!

DE