Search:

SIYE Time:13:53 on 29th March 2024
SIYE Login: no


Echoes of Power, Part I: Anger
By moshpit

- Text Size +

Category: Alternate Universe
Characters:Draco Malfoy, Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Minerva McGonagall, Neville Longbottom, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley, Severus Snape, Sirius Black
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Humor
Warnings: Death, Sexual Situations, Violence
Rating: R
Reviews: 542
Summary: Harry mysteriously disappeared at the age of six, and then benefited from years of tutoring from an old family friend. With the return of Voldemort, it is finally time for a 15 year old, well-trained and somewhat cynical and sarcastic Harry to take up his place at Hogwarts. Life at Hogwarts, however, is not always what Harry anticipated. There, secrets are revealed, allies are discovered, and the journey to power begins. Completely AU.
Hitcount: Story Total: 334081; Chapter Total: 13248





Author's Notes:
See the end.




ChapterPrinter
StoryPrinter


… where the wand is a tool to simplify the use of magic and the development of initial skills on the slow trek to mastery of core use. While general-purpose wand-less magic is possible, the unfocused and unpredictable results attained by such efforts relegated it to a curiosity rather than a preferred mechanism millennia ago.

The wand was introduced prior to 1550 B.C., as evidenced by fragments of texts found that were composed to Amenhotep IV in the ancient Egyptian empire. The Egyptian hieroglyph corresponding to 'Pharaoh' was replaced with a new variant that had a clearly depicted wand at the bottom of the symbol [pr-`3], though the common Muggle interpretation is a pillar of support. The sudden rise of the wand among the Pharaoh class, frequently depicted in portraits using a rod or short staff of judgment, is an unsurprising development. The ruling Pharaohs were oft rumoured to have supernatural powers as direct descendants of the gods, which leaves open much speculation as to the source of wands or the veracity of magical bloodlines dominating in that ancient culture. Sadly, all known records that would reveal the exact sequence of events that influenced the development of the modern wand were lost when the library at Alexandria was destroyed in 673 A.D during Global Goblin Insurrection IX (see L'Histoire Contemporaine de la Magie: Les Conquêtes Mondiales, by E.C.).

Wands are fundamentally made up of two discrete compounds, which combine to make a powerful instrument for any magic-using individual. Either compound alone can be observed to have an impact on the flow of magic, but the combination of the two makes a unique tool that is quite sensitive to the energy it receives from a magic-user. The exterior of the wand, a carefully selected wood from one of a few types of tree, acts as a shepherd for the magic energy released by a user. The wood is a powerful attractor, drawing the released energy to it much as a magnet draws the iron filings from a shop floor. As the wood gathers the magic released, it focuses it into the inner part of the wand. This region contains a so-called core, which is actually an extracted substance from a powerfully magical species (e.g., dragon heartstring or unicorn tail hair). This inner material, encased in the wood exterior and suspended in a magically inert mix of other compounds, is the buffer that blends the discrete particles together. It is shaped with the surrounding casing to discharge the combined flow through the tip of the wand. Breaking the shape of the core is catastrophic to the functioning of the wand, although cores that are not irreparably damaged may be transplanted to a new wand.

As with everything in life, natural affinities exist in wands as well as wand-cores. The different types of wood are better at collection for different types of fundamental magical particles. Each wood type is better or worse at collecting some combination of magic energy, which in turns lends a particular type of wood being more useful for some classes of magic than others. Similarly, the wand-core also has an affinity, and the wandmaker must balance the natural affinity of the core to the affinity of the wood casing. When a balanced wand is created, it will confer the property that any use of the specific blend of magic it is best suited to for is a pleasant, low-effort burden upon the wand-wielder. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true – for those tasks or magic uses that require a different signature of energy patterns, the wand acts as a mild resistor to the flow of energy. This, then, is the source of the widely believed myth that "the wand chooses the wizard." The reality is that the distribution of conduits in a magic-user predisposes the user to a certain range of wand materials and cores of particular facility in use, where the lowest resistance pairing between user and wand may be found. For completely untrained children that pick up a wand, the leakage of energy from their core is more than sufficient to test the match by merely holding a wand and waving it about. Although a poorly matched pair may produce unpredictable results, a well-matched pair becomes obvious as the wand amplifies the leakage for the matching magical energy patterns in those lacking conscious control over their core. This is commonly witnessed in a tangible aura as the core is suddenly drained, manifesting the energy about the wand, including but not limited to effects such as glowing or shooting sparks.

Those magic-using species that lack wands (e.g., house-elves, goblins, dragons) contain within themselves their own form of magical focus – the very focus that wands use in their core. Through extensive research, it is apparent that the wand cores are just as potent – if not more so – in the living form than in the prepared form found at shops around the world. The secondary consideration is that many such species also have a particularly dense concentration of conduits at key locations, allowing for the shaping of a magic focus through constructive spatial interference patterns. This allows more precise control than that which humans may attain without a wand but frequently lacks the precision and fine adjustment that can be demonstrated with a wand. It is critical to note that wands are not superior tools by any means – they are tools, and tools alone, no more and no less. Conceptually, any species may develop wands attuned to the conduit density, placement, and signatures representative of that species.

The obvious corollary to wands and their affinity is a direct result from the observation that wands concentrate and focus magic, allowing more precise control and targeted applications. That wands exist and that their naturally occurring materials behave as stated imply there also must exist those naturally occurring substances that are the antithesis of wands – magical disruptors, in effect. Such disruptors parallel both wand woods and wand cores and cause a variety of effects from diffusion of focused magical energy all the way to so-called 'grounding rods' or 'lightening rods' that…

… Excerpt from Theory of Magic, Volume II: Classical Training, Section III: Teaching Fundamentals, edited by R.J.L.

oOo oOo oOo oOo

… and the culmination of GGI IX led to the short-lived rise of Childeric II, the unified ruler of the Merovingian Franks. The misplaced common belief is that the destruction of the irreplaceable and vast magical knowledge of the Library at Alexandria symbolised the end of global magical insurrections, as many species lost centuries of specialised knowledge with the library's destruction.

A second source for this commonly reported misconception that GGI IX was the last global uprising of the goblins lies in the simple fact that it was by far the most expansive and globe-encompassing series of battles. Scholars, however, have shown that GGI X was a short-lived but fierce re-hashing of the principles behind GGI IX, spanning the winter of 983-984 A.D., starting with the fall of Otto II. The last thousand years of goblin-human conflict history demonstrate regional problems and hotspots only, easily traced to localised political phenomenon such as…

… Excerpt from Contemporary History of Magic: Global Conquests, Years 230BC — 984AD, by E.C., translated by R.J.L.

oOo oOo oOo oOo

Sat, 16 Sep 1995

"Good morning, Harry," the familiar voice called from far too near.

Harry buried his head in the pillow, willing the blankets to block his ears and make the message quite clear to leave him alone. When no sounds of an unwanted body leaving the room came, he swore silently. "What d'you want, Remus?"

"That's not quite right, Harry," the voice responded.

Harry's mind suddenly caught up to his physical consciousness. He was awake far more thoroughly than if he had been doused in cold water. "Err, right, Floppy. Just to repeat myself, that's damn annoying of you."

"I'm still willing to change," the Hat offered in tones that mimicked Umbridge perfectly. "There are several good choices," the Hat said, switching seamlessly in mid-sentence to Ginny's overtones, "depending on your mood, I should think."

"Must you?" Harry had put up with the Hat talking like Remus every time they were alone the previous day, and it had slowly driven him crazy. He was tempted to put in the effort to master ignoring the voice of his friend, but that would only lead to complications in other ways. In all, when Harry had vented abruptly at Floppy, the Hat had obliged him by switching to the commandeering voice of Hermione Granger, verbally sparring with him as he moved about the castle. All he tried to do after that was get everything unimportant done before the weekend started and not destroy the Hat in retaliation – assuming such was even possible.

"If it is the means to being able to hold a conversation," the Hat said, switching back to Remus' voice, "then yes, Harry, I must."

Harry needed to go back to training regularly, and all the little diversions that appeared to come with being in the castle were severe impediments to his old preferred lifestyle, not to mention the diversion of a Hat that was trying to be conversational. The Granger Voice, as Harry thought of it, had been far too perfect for piercing his composure given how the girl was stalking him, threatening to show him who knew more esoteric hexes if he failed to rescind his little charms work on her possessions. She had been convinced that she successfully neutralised his spells, only to find all of her school-work related possessions abruptly moved to Ginny at eight o'clock sharp. Harry had heard the quiet speculation of his demise long before Hermione found him, Ron in tow, and made her desires more than clear. Having received a rather thorough beating in hand-to-hand combat from Master Gata earlier in that same afternoon, Hermione's threats had left Harry curt and cold to the couple.

"Remind me when I die to kick Gryffindor's arse for his overly clever party hat tricks," Harry muttered as he crawled out of bed and gathered his towel for a shower and the morning hygiene ritual. If his wake-up call was going to be representative of the day, he was faced with what could only be described as a test of endurance.

It was only when he reached for the towel after his shower that he discovered just how long the day was destined to be. Before he could use his oversized, thick, white terry-cloth towel to dry off, there was an abrupt pop!, and he was faced with a fluffy white lemming that was chittering excitedly. A fluffy white lemming with weak brown stripes that was approximately fifty times larger than any lemming that had ever existed naturally. Before he could fully process what had happened when he had reached for the towel, it looked at him and, in a bright, squeaky voice like a record that was spinning too fast, cried out, "I love Harry Potter!"

In the heartbeat that it took for him to process the words, his mind rapidly shuffled through the names of everyone that might have the desire and the skill to do what he was witnessing. His mentors, of course, could achieve this, though he was under the impression that everything there was currently in a neutral state. A declaration of prank warfare was usually made quite clear with the first salvo, and so far nothing had been revealed. The next stop would be Hermione, particularly after the prior evening, but he was certain she lacked the means to pull this trick off in his heavily protected suite.

"Err, right," Harry said to the lemming that was watching him avidly. "You're from whom?"

"I love Harry Potter!" it announced again in a squeaky scream, its too-fast voice bordering on an outright screech.

The various Weasley siblings were another possibility, and while he was hesitant to rule out the twins, he felt this was too sharp of an escalation after their earlier attempts. It was clear to him that they were slowly working their way up through the echelons of sophistication to evaluate Harry's skill level, considering there was no time limit on their mutual challenge. There was a possibility this was Ginny's next volley in her retribution plans, but the same problem came back to him – his suite was heavily protected.

"Harry's not here right now, may I take a message?"

"I love Harry Potter!"

The other logical choice was the Weasley matriarch, but he stumbled there at the same problem that Ginny, the twins, and Hermione were unlikely to solve: the mandatory interior access to the suite. The only added strength to the matriarch's possible status was the rather vague and suggestive short letter she had delivered earlier in the week.

"Make yourself useful, and get me a towel."

"I love Harry Potter!"

Thankful for small favours, Harry was glad that Cyril was still out and about and had yet to return to their suite. No further communications had arrived from his Mentor, and the same absences were found among all of his cohorts at home. The only person he had been able to find the previous day was Master Gata, and the man had been more than happy with an impromptu extended training session. When Harry had mentioned during a brief lull that he was beginning to teach a friend the basics of the style, Master Gata's eyes lit up, and he proceeded to put Harry through a gruelling two-hour rehashing of the proper first and most fundamental techniques. Harry's muscles were still sore this morning.

"Bugger."

"I love Harry Potter!"

Satisfied that the magic was limited to that one statement, Harry climbed out of the shower and tried to minimize the water dripping all over the floor. Reaching into the open shelving, Harry grabbed another white towel, only to have it pop! into another lemming that fell to the floor without an appreciable sound. "I love Harry Potter!" it squeaked out on landing.

The first lemming was not to be outdone by a rival and immediately chimed in again. "I love Harry Potter!"

The proclamation from the first lemming was sufficient to trigger the second lemming again. Harry immediately recognised the vicious cycle that had been set up and knew he wanted to avoid having any more of the annoying creatures show up. Two crying out their adoration for him in a non-stop back-and-forth session was annoying enough. Picking up his wand gingerly from the counter and pleased to not see it change into an annoying ball of fluff, Harry cast two rapid, silent Stunning Spells on the lemmings. As each spell hit, the lemming reverted back to a towel, albeit slightly scorched where the spell had impacted.

Sighing, Harry reached down to pick up the reverted towel, only to be rewarded with another pop! and "I love Harry Potter!"

"Dammit!"

"I love Harry Potter!"

Harry briefly wondered whether he was a latent seer of some kind before snorting in derision, earning another "I love Harry Potter!" declaration for his effort. He was able to touch the walls, the plumbing, the shelves, and the cabinets but not the towels. Looking across the counter, he spotted a container of tissues and grabbed one. When his fingers made contact, the top tissue turned into a very, very small lemming.

"Mi msmv mmsmk mkktrr!"

Harry knew what the words were, even if the voice was just barely in the audible range of humans – or perhaps dogs.

"Problem, Harry?" Floppy called out from the bedroom.

"I love Harry Potter!"

"Mi msmv mmsmk mkktrr!"

Sighing, Harry ignored the Hat and focused on what was different. He could touch the structures of Hogwarts but not the things inside Hogwarts. On reflection, he realised that was not quite strictly true – he could use his wand without it converting to a lemming, so there had to be a rhyme behind it all, since the reason was escaping him.

In some respects, Harry quite hated being in the castle. Everything was so inherently magical, there was a glow of magical auras everywhere, and tuning in to one specific aura was annoying if it lacked sufficient magnitude to stand out from the noise. He could see a radiant pattern around the towels and the tissues, but it was incredibly faint compared to the blocks comprising the walls or the shower facilities directly. It was less than clear if the magic was in the objects themselves or just leakage from surrounding objects.

His toothbrush, however, he knew was entirely Muggle. Reaching out to touch it, his suspicions were confirmed when a severely under-sized lemming, with rather spiky and messy fur, appeared, crying out, "I love Harry Potter!" faintly.

"I love Harry Potter!" the overly large lemming cried in response.

"Mi msmv mmsmk mkktrr!"

Three Stunners later, Harry was scowling at the remains of his partially melted plastic toothbrush and at the wisps of smoke coming off of the towel on the floor. The tissue had vaporised, apparently. He was almost sure he would receive a lecture from someone for defacing Hogwarts' bath towels.

Using his wand as a drying tool, he was at least no longer sopping wet or standing amongst puddles on the floor. However, it was a safe bet that he would never be able to get dressed, climb back into bed, or touch his beloved Muggle notebooks or pens and pencils. Repeated uses of Finite Incantatem upon himself and his surroundings changed nothing about his lemming problem, leaving him convinced he was subject to a potion of some sort.

At the same time, he knew that there was a finite amount of magical energy that could be routed in such a manner, given that he was not consciously directing his magic to perform these transformations, and thus it was quite limited. Therefore, if he waited for a bit, whatever it was should wear off – unless, of course, a spell had been attached to some truly obscure part of his body, as he had done to Snape. Harry was still mildly curious to know how Voldemort had ascertained the location of the multiple hexes that Harry had laid upon the dour man's nape hairs. It was convenient as a location that was nearly impossible to direct a Finite Incantatem at with any precision if trying it yourself, let alone the many hairs that were there. It was ideal as a location for latent hexes due to an interesting feature of human physiology, for the base of the neck contained a cluster of magical conduits there, virtually untapped to the unwitting. Placing a long-term hex there would ensure a lifetime of power to the hex and a very unlikely chance of removal.

The only obvious trigger with his current predicament seemed to be that non-magical items were transformed, and magical items were not. Moreover, application of magic to an item reverted the transformation. Opting to test the logical conclusion, Harry cast a benign Glamour Charm on one of the scorched towels, causing it to appear as though it was dark blue. Reaching out to touch it, he was pleased to find the towel had not transformed. The remaining problem was the sheer impossibility of navigating from his suite to any other place without touching something non-magical – including other students' possessions. Resigned to waiting out the hex, Harry moved to the chair at his desk after charming it to be flat black in appearance, carrying the towel with him. He would have to test the presence of the prank he was under every few minutes until it wore off. Sighing, Harry thought again about how long the day was likely to be.

"All right, Floppy, it looks like you've got a captive audience. What shall we talk about now?"

oOo oOo oOo oOo

It took just under two hours later by Harry's watch for the prank to finally wear off completely. That had ensured he missed the official breakfast period, but knowing how to get into the kitchens was a safe workaround. For once, Floppy seemed to pick up on his lack of desire to discuss anything serious, and he had to admit to enjoying a conversation about the personal quirks of the four Founders. It was amusing to think that Salazar had an incurable sweet tooth, to the extent he had his own personal house-elf that had only one job: bringing into the school every type of sweet that could be purchased throughout the world.

"You're not serious when you say that Rowena developed a charm just to remove the pits from olives, are you?" Harry asked as he finished getting dressed. "Muggles have been doing that for thousands of years."

"Oh, very," Floppy replied in his dry mimicry of Remus. "She always had a weakness for olives, especially the dark green ones properly salt-cured, and being rather too hasty at one point, she nearly choked on one with the pit still in. After that, she was determined to find the fastest yet most accurate method to remove the pits from an entire container."

Harry had to chuckle at the mental image of late nights, smudged parchments, and a hell-bent focus to develop a new charm. It would have been far too easy to just ask a house-elf to do it the Muggle way and clearly unsuitable that she might get her hands dirty doing it herself. "You wouldn't happen to know the charm she developed, would you?" Harry could think of several uses for such a charm, and olives or fruit in general were nowhere in his visions. "Might be handy."

"Sadly, no," Floppy replied. "I was designed such that I cannot learn spells or repeat them to others."

"Really? No spells at all?" Harry had a suspicion that the Hat was less than honest on that score.

"With one exception, yes," Floppy offered. "You've asked previously about how I was created. That is the exception, but there are rules governing with whom I may discuss it."

"Rules, eh?"

"The rules were part of my construction, and it's literally not possible for me to express them."

"Did I mention that I want to smack Godric around when I die?"

"I'm almost certain there will be a queue, Harry. For him and for you."

As Harry approached the exit to the suite, his stomach complaining slightly at the lack of sustenance, he was stopped by the slight murmur of voices on the other side of the portrait-door. There was nothing particularly threatening or ominous, but it was the first time he could recall hearing multiple voices near the door. The complete lack of a peep-hole through the doorway was something he had failed to note previously, but now he was wishing he had installed some work-around to achieve that result.

Cracking the door open, Harry saw one of the twins moving about in the hall, wooden implements in hand, and he could easily surmise the other voices belonged to the usual suspects. Harry slid through the opening and quietly closed the door behind him, careful to avoid stepping into the hallway cluttered with things. He was amused to see Fred, George, Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Neville industriously working with the fairly simple but strange things.

"Right, now the powder, George," Hermione called. She held something that looked rather suspiciously like a clipboard and was making notes on it as people moved about. All the signs were there that this was Hermione's show, and the rest were the assistants or hangers-on.

Looking about, Harry saw that they had set up a grid of small round discs with the equivalent of a sole chopstick sticking up from the centre. Bits of what looked like brightly coloured string connected each rod to the four nearest neighbours. To his eye, it appeared that the distribution should have been a square grid with two feet per square side. Interestingly, however, the arrangement formed a compressed parabola with a tangible focal point some three feet in front of the portrait-door to his suite. The open space was more than sufficient room for someone to stand in front of the door and open or close it. Beyond that area, the squares became less and less distorted until they were unskewed to the naked eye.

As he moved quietly to stand in the centre of the open space before the door to his suite, he saw George heft a bag of clear white powder and begin shaking it in a light layer across the floor. The redhead was moving in a careful pattern to avoid making any tracks in the powder he was spreading.

"Are you sure this will work?" Ginny asked as her brother continued to put powder everywhere. Harry had to suppress chuckling as George casually sauntered right past the open space, easily within touching distance, and the powder fell harmlessly to the floor.

"It's Fidelius protected, you said," Hermione muttered absently, making marks on her clipboard. "We can't consider getting around that until we know where the Fidelius is."

Ron was watching Hermione warily from what Harry could tell, but the twins were just grinning at each other and grinning maniacally. "And then we hit paydirt!" Fred echoed.

"Has anyone seen Harry since last night?" Ron asked to no one in particular.

"No," Ginny replied immediately. "He was supposed to meet me at breakfast, but he never showed up." Harry winced at that, knowing he needed to apologise for missing the meeting. He would need to think up a suitable half-truth excuse to avoid giving any ammunition or openings to the girl.

"Probably off tormenting some poor soul," Ron said as George finished spreading the powder across the floor.

"Nah," Neville said with a faint smile, "I'd bet he's much more skilled than mere tormenting." Harry had to hand it to his new friend, for Neville seemed to have a way with words.

Hermione shot a brief glower at Neville. "Right, Fred, George, to your places." Harry leaned up against the portrait-door as Fred and George both moved up against the same wall he was on, forming a large triangle to his view with Hermione at the apex vertex. Each boy was stationed some ten feet to his right or left, and they were looking at each other in a way that Harry could only describe as through his own body. He knew they should have their vision blocked, but the faces they were making at each other made it clear that they could see just fine.

For reasons completely outside of Hermione's apparent plans to explore the limits of the Fidelius Charm, Harry was fascinated. With Remus and Nicolas, he had tinkered a few times with the Fidelius and any methods in which it might be breached, but they had never done a systematic study of the way the magic behaved. When Nicolas told them it was impossible to break, they took his word for it and moved on to other aspects of the Charm.

"Neville, Ginny," Hermione said brusquely, "you too." The indicated duo split apart and moved to stand half-way between Hermione and one of Fred or George, respectively. It was obvious she was setting up a multiple reference-point perspective to try to isolate any deviation in the perceived space. It was a clever idea, but given how the grid on the floor was laid out, Harry could tell in advance that it would fail.

"Ron," Hermione said, "start walking." Her boyfriend said nothing but just moved to the first chopstick contraption on the floor. As soon as he arrived, Hermione made a mark before looking up. "Everyone can see Ron, right? Nothing looks odd, right?"

Ron stepped over a string to the next chopstick station following the chorus of dutiful 'yes' answers. It was tedious to watch, which meant Harry knew Ron was annoyed to be doing it, but the outcome was fascinating. It made no difference whether Ron was in the region of distorted squares or the larger area of proper squares, everyone said that they could see him and that it appeared he moved the proper distance each time.

"Right," Hermione said when he was finished. "That's the first pass. We confirmed what Ginny had previously tried and told us. It doesn't matter where you are. It looks like there's nothing wrong or missing. Ron's footprints match the grid in the air." Harry was not surprised to hear that Ginny had been casing the suite he was living in. He knew she wanted the Map back. "Ron, back to the beginning. Everyone remembers the spell I taught you last night, right?"

This time, as soon as Ron arrived each of the others cast a quick spell and then reported the distance from Ron to them one at a time. Harry was intrigued. He had no idea a magical measuring spell existed. Hermione dutifully wrote it all down, nodding at each response. Ron then proceeded to the next point in the grid, and Harry was very curious to know how this scene was going to play out. Hermione said nothing as the data continued to roll in, but Harry could tell she was becoming excited over something.

When Ron's second pass was complete, Hermione smirked in obvious triumph and held up a sketch for everyone to see. Harry could see little numbers all over it, but more than that, the sketch was a very close approximation of the variably compressed parabolic distribution in the grid that he saw. The grins all around among the co-conspirators were well earned in his opinion.

Placing her clipboard on the floor where she was standing, she strode directly towards Harry, and for a moment he was convinced she would walk through the protections. When she abruptly sat on the floor, holding her nose and crying out, Harry was surprised. For all intents and purposes, it was as though she had walked into a solid wall, though Harry knew nothing was there in reality. Ron was at her side in a blink, and the others gathered around shortly after.

"Help me up, Ron," she commanded, one hand still holding her nose. "I should have expected that. Honestly, sometimes I'm just too dense." As the others backed away while she made shoo-shoo gestures, Harry watched her pull out her wand. She turned her back to him and measured the distance to her clipboard. Then she turned back towards Harry and measured the distance to the wall. "Well, we know it's here now, and we know the volume that hides it. I'm not sure what to do next, though."

Fred, however, was apparently not dismayed in the least. "Allow me, Hermione," he said grandly, scooping up a handful of the white powder on the floor. With a casual toss, he threw it straight at the wall in front of Hermione, where it impacted visibly and slowly slid down, leaving white powder hanging, suspended in space from Harry's point of view. It was amusing and fascinating at the same time, though his hunger was making itself known again.

"Harry, you can come out now," Ginny said calmly.

Everyone paused in their actions and swivelled to stare at the redhead. Harry went extremely still and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible.

"What are you talking about, Ginny?" Hermione's voice was sharp, but Harry could almost hear the resignation in it.

"Harry's over there somewhere." Ginny pointed in a vague way at where Harry was, and he was amused to notice that she was close to dead-on accurate. "He has been for a while, though I just figured it out."

Harry knew the game was up, but he had no idea how the end had come about. Ginny knew he was there, even though he was behind a Fidelius-protected location, but it took her time to realise it. Aside from Hermione's tricks to map out a Fidelius region, this was something else to contemplate on a whole new level of problem importance.

"Harry?" Neville asked after a moment. "Going to join us?"

Harry glanced up and down the hall and saw no one around. Moreover, he saw no arched doorways in this region – only the corridor walls, the Gryffindor portal portrait, and the portrait behind him were present as structural objects. Concentrating on it, Harry took a half-step and Disapparated with a sharp crack!

"You can't Apparate into or out of Hogwarts!" Hermione nearly screamed at him as he materialised right next to Ginny.

"Oh? You can't?" Harry said with as much indifference as he could offer. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

Hermione was doing a credible impression of an outraged fish, while Neville was chuckling and the twins were regarding him with an evil eye. "No one can!" Hermione ground out slowly. "It says so in Hogwarts, A History."

"I didn't get the memo on that, sorry," Harry said with a shrug. "Nice trick with the measuring thing, by the way." Ginny gave him a sly wink as Hermione immediately became full-fledged flustered. It was obvious that she had no idea how to react to the casual dismissal of the Apparition concept when coupled with a direct compliment from Harry about something she had done. "That really was brilliant, Hermione. What spell were you lot using anyway?"

Ron was eyeing Harry without an overt expression other than perhaps distrust on his face. Hermione's posture slowly settled back into a proper one, her face relaxing into at least a mask of normality as she regarded him with what calm she could. "I, err, made it up."

"Hmmm. Interesting." Harry successfully controlled his surprise, and he knew he let nothing show out of the ordinary at her statement. "We should compare notes on it later."

"Dumbledore was looking for you this morning," Neville said, neatly changing the topic. Harry made a mental note to get his friend a gift bag from Honeydukes or the like the next time he was out and about casually.

"With or without Slughorn?" Harry asked warily. After rejoining the school on Friday morning, the headmaster had introduced the new Potions professor during breakfast to much applause from the students. Harry knew that Slughorn was already circulating among the students at meals, making polite conversation with many but increasingly focusing on just a few students by the time dinner was over. To his irritation, the man kept after Harry, trying to get him to attend a private meeting.

Harry could find nothing particularly wrong with the new professor, but he was beginning to understand his Mentor's distaste for the fellow – it left you wondering about his real agenda when the man moved so effortlessly among so many different castes in the castle.

"Without," Ginny said promptly. "Where were you?"

"I had a bit of trouble sleeping," Harry offered, thinking about Floppy's desire to wake him early. "So I decided to stay in a bit." That was certainly true as well. "Sorry for missing our meeting."

Ginny shrugged, but her expression made it clear she thought he was being less than forthcoming. "It was just breakfast, Harry. It wasn't like we were supposed to talk about something critical. Besides, Remus warned me you don't always get up early on the weekend."

For his part, Harry hoped his expression was still one of calm and normality. First, he was unsure how much of what she was doing Ginny had revealed to the others. Using Remus' name in an off-hand manner suggested she was not trying to hide anything. Second, he was now debating whether this morning's fun was a result of Remus or the Weasley matriarch. It was a little too coincidental that Remus should point out a warning like that, only to have a prank show up so soon. "Sometimes," he agreed blandly before turning back to Hermione. "So, you know the proximal location of the suite entrance. What's next on the agenda?"

Silence was his reward, which only caused Harry to chuckle lightly. "Right, I'm not taking you through the Fidelius, and I couldn't even if I wanted to. Carry on, then," Harry offered with a wave as he left the group behind. "I'll expect a report on your success later. And don't forget to clean up, or Mrs Figg will be after you."

Harry thought a light snack from the kitchens followed by a moderate training session would be the best way to re-start the day.

oOo oOo oOo oOo

His trip to the Great Hall for lunch was interrupted when he spotted a large notice board in the Entrance Hall. It was all but literally wallpapered with posted notices of laws, regulations, and specialised meeting notices. At first, Harry wanted to laugh outright at the volume of effort Umbridge or her cronies had to put in to get this installed and up-to-date. As he started looking at some of the titles, however, he just wanted to sigh.

Edgar had been particularly silent lately, and Harry was looking at two very new notices that clearly defined the Hogwarts High Inquisitor, the powers ascribed to said position, and a notification of Umbridge being ratified to fill the post pro tempore and exclusively as a proxy for the Minister of Magic, who could overrule the pro-tem proxy on any actions. Moreover, her powers would include enacting suitable punishments and rewards for those that hindered or helped her in her duties.

Given the posting dates, Harry realised that one week from that day would see the High Inquisitor fully entrenched at Hogwarts. Or rather, as entrenched as the Minister wanted her to be. Harry was a bit disappointed that Edgar had failed to neuter these as well, but he knew that was a trick that they had to be careful in using. Moreover, he saw a notice posted that the Ministry of Magic was formally filing a challenge to the ICW governing body about matters pertaining to jurisdiction, jurisprudence, and of all things, jus ad rem conflicting with jus naturale and jus cogens when framed in jus soli. The last notice was full of double-speak and innuendo but boiled down to a thinly veiled challenge to the ICW for the legal status of a minor protected by international convention rather than local convention, and the logical paradox such a situation creates given that a minor cannot declare any citizenship other than that of the parents. Reading between the lines, it was very likely that the minor involved was him, and the objective was to strip him of the jurisdictional protections conferred by the limited War Mage status he held.

While it was a bold move, Harry suspected that the only way to get around the ICW rules and regulations was to attempt secession. Such an act would be historical, in that no one had ever tried, but also rather doomed in the end, as the ICW had at some point enacted allegiance oaths for handling "rogue" nation-states that were not party to the ICW. The human magical folk in England would find magical trade severely scrutinised and hampered, ultimately leading to pressure on the Ministry to stop being silly. In the short run, however, even a temporary cessation of observance over the ICW statutes would be very complicated to work around. Harry was aware that on some level, he was poking the dog's owner with a sharp stick when he dealt with Umbridge, but surely no one would think his annoyances rated such a drastic move. Until he could talk to Edgar, he knew that the real story behind these moves would remain a mystery.

With a sigh, Harry entered the Great Hall, ignoring the whispers and stares that followed him where he went. Dumbledore was sitting at the Head Table again, though his left arm was out of sight as it had been ever since his "release" from the infirmary. Harry dropped into the seat next to Ginny, aware of McGonagall watching him closely. Knowing what her stare was likely to be about, he gave her a faint shrug and tried to put on an expression of "I tried" on the Umbridge issue. He thought he received a faint nod in response before the professor turned away and began talking to Flitwick.

Ginny nudged him sharply in the side, and when he looked back to see what the problem was, he caught her gesture to the short woman in hideously pink attire striding toward him. Inwardly, Harry groaned, thinking that the day just kept getting longer no matter how much time went by.

"Mr Potter, how nice to see you joining us," Umbridge offered in a tone that conveyed all pleasantries. "And how are you today?"

Knowing that she was leading up to something, Harry kept his expression neutral. "Still alive, Arts Madam."

Her smile flickered ever so slightly before she glanced at those sitting around him. "So I see, Mr Potter. Did you see the new notice board?"

Knowing what she was after now, Harry gave her a dry smile, knowing how it would irritate her. "It's kind of hard to miss." Harry casually began pouring himself some juice before gathering various fruit to his plate, doing his best to ignore the woman standing across from him.

"You did us a service, Mr Potter," Umbridge said sweetly. "We were neglectful in posting those notices. I must say, there were all kinds of interesting things I learned reading through them. You might find them interesting as well."

The casual phrasing was cultivated to pique his interest, but Harry knew all but three of the proclamations from prior discussions with Edgar. Two of the new ones pertained to the High Inquisitor, and the last was the ICW challenge. She was hinting at the ICW challenge more than the others, as there would be no surprise in the Inquisitor papers, but he also knew that she was unaware of his knowledge about the other things.

"Perhaps," he agreed, never looking away from the apple he was slicing up. "It's always amusing to me how much effort the Ministry spends trying to renege on its promises and agreements, so maybe I'll read those notes for a laugh or two."

As the silence stretched out, he finally looked up to see Umbridge glaring at him, her squat face flushed. Hermione was leaning ever so slightly away from the vicinity of Harry and Umbridge, her face pale. Abruptly, Umbridge turned away from him and gave her beady eyes free roam over his companions. "Miss Weasley, I shall expect you in my office next Saturday morning at nine o'clock. Miss Granger, Misters Weasley, Mister Longbottom, each of you will follow Miss Weasley thirty minutes after each other. Work out the schedule yourselves, but if any of you are late, you'll all spend a week in detention with me. Is this clear?"

After she received some form of acknowledgement from everyone, she stalked off to the Head Table, leaving Harry to exhale slowly. "Sorry, people," he offered quietly. He was going to have to explore ways to neutralise if not outright neuter the Inquisitor before she could inflict too much damage.

Ron was staring angrily at the table, but his words were quiet. "And Ginny just got free of the hag, too."

"Ginny?" Harry tried to ask what was going on with the one word.

"I've been in detention every night, Harry. I finished it last night." She did not turn to look at him; instead she busied herself with scooping roast chicken and vegetables onto her plate.

From her blatant behaviour, he could tell she had no desire to talk about it, so he just changed the topic instead. "So I take it that I didn't miss anything at breakfast other than Dumbledore?" Harry speared some of the same roast chicken that Ginny had helped herself to, happy to be eating something solid for a change.

"Not much," Neville offered. "Just Umbridge announcing the notice board, and Hermione here conscripting us into Fidelius-breaking boot camp."

The eye-roll at the end of his statement made Harry chuckle a bit, but Hermione ignored the byplay. "Ginny has something for you," she announced instead.

"Oh? I was going to ask about your progress in the corridor, but what's this about?"

Ginny looked puzzled for a moment before she nodded swiftly. "Yeah, bit weird. I got a letter that asked me to hand something to you…" Her voice trailed off as she dug into her pockets for a moment. "I thought it might be from one of your, err, friends, as I didn't recognise the writing. I assume they all know you're not allowed to get mail directly now."

Harry took the parchment after putting down his fork and knife, absently washing down the chicken with pumpkin juice. Flipping the very thick tri-folded note over, he saw where a seal had been broken and that there was handwriting on the outside.

Ginevra M. Weasley

Gryffindor

It took a moment for it to register, but Harry knew that handwriting. He knew it, and suddenly everything in his stomach was lead. "Harry?" Ginny's voice was distant to his ears, but he could tell she was acutely worried. Opening the first fold of the letter, he saw that another seal, which had not been broken, protected the second and third folds in the parchment. The same handwriting had neatly scribed a short note on the top of the parchment.

Dearest Ginny,
I know you're very friendly with our mutual acquaintance, your Mr Potter. I also know he's not supposed to directly receive mail at the moment. Would you be so kind as to pass this letter to him?
I look forward to the day when we might be introduced.
Until then,
TMR

Harry's lingering appetite was long gone, and his hand was betraying his mental control by showing the very faintest of tremors. The remainder of the parchment was still sealed and contained a lingering trace of magic, but not enough to be anything of concern. As though he was a dispassionate observer from across the table, he watched his other hand break the second seal and unfold the remainder of the letter.

The primary filler of the remaining space on the parchment he saw was from a magical Impression Copy Charm that had been applied to a Muggle newspaper article, with a short hand-written note underneath. The article was fairly brief, obviously from a back page given the narrow column width, but Harry knew it was not going to be a positive thing, no matter what his opponent's prior claims might have been.

Parole Granted
Today, Vernon and Petunia Dursley received full parole from their sentence, imposed nearly ten years ago, for the neglect and abuse of their nephew. In prior hearings, discussions of their past actions coupled with their lack of true remorse led to parole denials. When the issue of their past acts was not raised this year, the Parole Board psychologist decided that the Dursleys were no longer at risk for repeating their behaviour.

"Their sentence of fifteen years was due to expire at the mandatory two-thirds sentence release date next year, so the early release by one year changes very little," said Board member Edward Hughes. "They have been appropriately disciplined for…

Harry stopped reading, his stomach roiling. The handwriting across the bottom was short and to the point.

Do you consider this justice?
–LV

Ginny was tugging on his arm, trying to get his attention, and all he could see was an abattoir, bodies and carnage everywhere. He knew, as Cyril had warned him he would. The letter was a declaration of knowledge on so many levels that it simply staggered the imagination. Whom he was sitting with, whom he was friendly with, whom he spent extra time with, the punishments he received, and the status of things in the castle – he knew all of it. And had put his thumb across all of it.

"Harry?!"

Hermione's voice cut through faintly, and he realised Ginny was looking completely pale and all but sick herself. The people sitting around him were openly confused, but it was barely registering at any level. He could see Ginny, the glint in her eyes long gone from a Killing Curse. George with matted blood changing the red hues of his hair. Neville with a face distorted from the Cruciatus.

They were all dead, but none of them knew it yet.

Harry rose to his feet, ignoring the people around him, and quickly left the Hall, feeling as though everything were shifting. Somewhere he could feel anger building. Anger that the news imprint contained the content it did. Anger that Voldemort had access to such contemporaneous sources for news. Anger that he had lost two precious weeks of time to build connections and root out the remaining problems, thanks to the aborted ambush outside the headmaster's office.

The orb arrived Wednesday morning, with a timing that was unsettling. The letter arrived Saturday morning and spoke of things that the other only implied. Yet new implications were carried along, more troubling implications.

Harry barely noticed the suit of armour that was blocking his path to the outside, and he flicked his hand out in irritation, sending the suit of armour flying to the third floor as he stormed onto the grounds, a faint clatter the only sound to accompany his exit from the castle. Harry knew he was still struggling to catch up with what Riddle was doing since the orb had arrived, and the addition of today's events just made things worse. Fleetingly, he recalled the headmaster telling him at St Mungo's that his own actions had been too hard to keep up with, and a faint sympathetic feeling lodged in his head.

The ante was raised, the game well afoot, his own hand the only constant, and the discard pile precarious. He needed to find a new way to move, a way that would change the basis of the rules, for if he let Riddle continue to control the cards, he knew he would lose in short order.

He was paying no attention to where he was going, just that he was going outside, away from the castle, away from the damned. He had always thought that his own life was damned on some level, that he had somehow done something truly horrific in a prior life that he had to pay penance on with this life, but this – this was simply going too far. He knew coming to Hogwarts would let others find him, subjecting him to scrutiny from untrusted parties. He knew it was placing a target on the castle, but there was a target here regardless of whether or not he was present.

He needed to inform Dumbledore of this development, as well as the others, but they had agreed to delay resuming their official schedule until Monday. That meant that Harry needed to track the headmaster down this afternoon and play catch-up with events. He could almost imagine the arguments that would inevitably follow the revelation. And once again, Harry was confronted with the issue of how Riddle knew of the Dursleys and how he had tracked them down, wherever they were. To Harry, that was a disturbing sign of functioning well in the modern Muggle world, which was something that he did not want to attribute to Riddle, since it violated far too many principles they had used as a basis for building their long-term plans. Muggle society had changed drastically since Riddle's last real interaction with it fifty years prior. Moreover, Riddle had no known supporters that would know how to track that information down for him. Damned twice over was still damned, and Harry felt a flicker of genuine hate for the situation he was in, that he had placed the others in.

Faced with the accuracy and timeliness of Riddle's knowledge regarding the goings-on inside the castle, Harry was further frustrated. It had been their belief that if he rapidly forced the exodus of those with connections to Riddle, there would be low risk directly from his presence for the remaining students. It would only be expected that he would develop casual friendships among people his own age, but no students would be high value targets for the other side – unless, of course, he did something to make them so. Romantic entanglements were ill advised, as was participation in any team or club activity. At the same time, consistent and public close camaraderie with anyone would be bad, which was why he worked with Ginny at unpleasant hours. Clearly, despite the very few meetings that he had shared with the redhead thus far, his effort had failed, unless Riddle was interested in her for some other reason. Her rather vague and misdirection-laden rationale for requesting his aid with training came back to him, and he wondered again about the root of her issues.

"`Arry!"

A voice called out across the grounds, jarring Harry from his aimless stroll to the Forbidden Forest, one place he knew he could escape to and think in peace. Looking around, he spotted Hagrid waving energetically from the back of his cabin. He knew immediately that he should have Disillusioned himself, but there was no avoiding the man now that he had been spotted. Trying to still the vicious cycle in his mind, Harry trudged over to Hagrid.

"Been wonderin' when yeh'd get 'ere, 'Arry!" Hagrid said with a smile. The big man paused for a moment before looking closer at Harry. "Yeh a'right there? Lookin' a mite peaked, I'd say."

Harry shrugged, glancing at the oddly shaped object under some tarp behind Hagrid. "Had a bit of bad news, but I'll be fine," Harry said quietly. The glint of what looked like a muffler sticking out jarred Harry's brain into wondering why Hagrid might have been waiting for him. "Err, is that Sirius' bike?"

Hagrid beamed at Harry, patting the bike with one hand. "Yep, I pulled it ou' jus' a li'l' while ago." Harry smiled vaguely, hoping Hagrid would ignore his discomfort at the moment. "Knew ya wouldn' ferget, not fer Sirius."

In a way, the opportunity to spend some time doing mechanical labour on the Triumph was appealing. It would give his body something to do, and he could either distract himself mentally with the chore or he could try to contemplate the new complication. At the same time, he felt guilty that he had, in fact, completely forgotten that they had discussed working on Sirius' old bike on the weekends. Since this was the first weekend since that conversation, naturally Hagrid would have been expecting him to come down.

"Actually, Hagrid, I'm sorry, but I did forget for a while there. I'm glad you reminded me, though." Harry saw Hagrid was still smiling, so he hoped there was no harm done. "How about if we agree to do this every Saturday for a few hours after lunch, until it's done? Then you can go with me, and we'll give it to Sirius together?"

"That'd be fun, 'Arry!" Hagrid, if anything, seemed even more excited and happy. It was somewhat contagious, and Harry felt himself smiling a bit in response to the big man's enthusiasm and pleasure, even if he was still troubled.

"So where do we start?" Harry asked. He had a basic knowledge of how engines worked, any Muggle did, but he had no clue about how to go about repairing one, especially one that could fly.

Hagrid pulled an over-sized Muggle book out of his pocket, and Harry could clearly see the title as Chilton's Motorcycle Repair Manual, 1947-1976. Harry started laughing lightly, realising that Hagrid must have been planning this ever since they talked about it. "Got a Triumph section in there, does it?"

"Yep!" Hagrid said with a smile, flipping the book open and thumbing through it. "Thought th' gener'l stuff like cleanin' an' all was easy fer magic. We need t' get th' engine runnin' first."

Harry decided that this would, in fact, be the perfect diversion from everything. That would allow his subconscious to ponder things, his conscious to be engaged in a challenge, and his body to burn off adrenaline-induced energy. At the same time, he could get to know Hagrid better, for it was obvious the man would be a good friend to have.

"How've yeh been, 'Arry?" Hagrid asked as he started pulling other items out of a box. Motor oil, emery cloth, spark plugs, hoses, belts, and grease started the pile, while Harry was impressed at just how much the man had collected. "Not havin' problems after tha' with th' Orb, eh?"

"No, I've been okay," Harry said as he looked at some of the diagrams for how to take the bike apart. "It's all been rather crazy since I got here, so I shouldn't complain, you know? A good bit of it's my own fault."

"Maybe," Hagrid said as he wrestled with the tiny packaging holding a socket set together. "As far's I can figure it, though, ya never start th' trouble. Yeh jus' get sucked in once it's rollin'."

"Dumbledore told me I'd been making too many waves," Harry said after a moment, the book in his hands forgotten. "I didn't think anything of it until today, actually. I think I might understand what he meant a bit."

"'E's like tha', 'Arry." Hagrid finally passed the package to Harry with a sigh, and Harry had to smile as he opened it effortlessly. "Ruddy well hate those Muggle pack'ges, plastic everywhere an' fer tiny fingers. Yeh should know, Dumbledore came down 'ere this mornin' ter talk ter me. Wants ter get the' 'old crowd' together, if yeh know what I mean."

Harry handed the socket set back to Hagrid and nodded briefly. "He's coming to terms with what's been going on, then. I was worried it would take more work to convince him that Riddle's active again, but events caught us up there."

"Great man, Dumbledore is," Hagrid said as he dropped to the porch floor with an abrupt squat, making everything tremble slightly. "'E's as human as th' next guy, but 'e's still great, always tryin' ter do th' right thing to th' very end."

Harry said nothing to that, for his own experiences were conflicting. "So where do you think we should start, Hagrid?"

oOo oOo oOo oOo

Some three hours later, Harry was hungry and tired but felt that they had made a solid start on the Triumph. The engine needed all new gaskets, for some kind of fungus had grown on anything soft. They had tried charming and hexing it off, only to wind up destroying the rubber washer they were experimenting with. Hagrid told Harry he had a friend that could get the parts, and Harry said he would cover the charges for it – although he had admitted they would need to wait a bit, as he was strapped for cash for a little while. Hagrid had simply said they would work out the balance in the end, and not to worry about it for now.

Standing outside the Hogwarts gates, Harry could feel the stress building back up after the calming time of working side by side with Hagrid. The big man had an easy demeanour, and it was surprising how effective he was at calming Harry down. It had taken little time for them to start laughing and joking, with Hagrid throwing in the occasional story about people from before – including Sirius – that Harry knew would become blackmail material in short order. Still, the diversion had been pleasant and relaxing, but now he was facing the real world situation again and all of the ugliness that entailed.

Harry had the uneasy recollection that lately, he had been lax in scanning himself for Tracking Charms. While not instantaneous communications, they could be risky under the wrong circumstances, even here when he crossed the threshold of the protections. With Dumbledore down and out for all intents and purposes, Snape and the hard-core known problems neutralised at the castle, and no one he could conceive of as a magical threat left, he had let his guard down. Given the letter sent to Ginny, he knew that he was going to have to reverse the trend and actually push it further in the other direction. With a sigh, Harry swept his wand in the collection pattern, simultaneously testing for and moving any Tracking Charm onto his wand. When it glowed brightly, Harry knew that swearing would be a pointless exercise. He had no idea how long it had been in place, who had placed it, or any of a host of other questions. Flicking the tip of his wand with a magical push, he transferred all of the charms onto the gates of Hogwarts.

Looking at the castle and thinking of the growing conversation he needed to have with Dumbledore later in the day, Harry was full of mixed feelings when he firmly covered his watch with his other hand and activated the Portkey home. Standing there and looking at the place he called home, he could tell it was empty. The overcast day that was brooding whether or not to rain made things dark enough that no one could read without lights, and there were no comforting nor welcoming lights in the windows.

While he would get to eat something and spend some time with Hedwig, he felt frustrated that his various mentors and co-conspirators were still out and about, doing whatever it was they were doing. He hoped for a letter inside but knew that it was likely a futile thought, as letters could be intercepted if they contained anything even remotely interesting.

"Problems, Harry?" Even Floppy's voice was subdued.

"No more than usual, Floppy. I'm sure you've realised something happened this morning." Harry could hear the tiredness in his own voice, but he knew it was entirely a mental fatigue.

"Indeed, as it did with you on Wednesday morning. Would you be willing to share those memories with me?"

"Yeah, maybe. At least then you can write my epitaph accurately. Ask me again in the morning."

"Very well, Harry. And I'll overlook your sarcasm for now."

Harry had barely stepped toward the protections around the property when he saw Hedwig ghosting out of the tree she liked to roost in, heading straight for him. He smiled and held up his arm for her as he continued on toward the back door. "Hullo, girl," Harry said as she alighted very gently on his arm and then shifted onto his shoulder. He reached up and began scratching around the edges of her head in all the places he knew she liked.

"Wish Remus would let you come with me to Hogwarts," Harry offered casually as he swept through the door and locked it behind him. Turning on the kitchen lights, he began rummaging for a simple late lunch – leftovers, tea, and fruit. "Although I have to admit, I think I'm starting to agree with him that it's better for you here."

Hedwig gave him a sharp nip on the ear for his comment, which was not entirely surprising when he thought about it for a moment. "It's not like that, Hedwig. You're safe here – well, aside from that accident last week. I think I'd be worried someone would hurt you to get to me if you were there, you know? I like knowing you're safe."

Hedwig bit him again, though it was far gentler, and rubbed the side of his head with her own. "Yeah, I know, I miss you too, girl. I'd like to go flying again with you, but that's another one of those things that we can't do right now."

Her bite this time was a little more painful. "C'mon, Hedwig, you know we can't unless the others are around. That's been a rule since we started playing tag and what not. We both get too distracted to pay attention to what's around us."

Hedwig hooted softly and went back to nuzzling the side of his head. Harry suspected that, based on the number of his hairs she had removed through the years, she probably had a nest somewhere that was made entirely of Harry-hair. It was the kind of thought that was somewhere between nauseating and funny, but it was Hedwig in total. He kept threatening to look for it and bin it, but he knew that she knew he was never serious about it.

"Well, it's just us, Hedwig. The house feels empty when no one else is around." Harry placed his meal on the table and sat down to eat. "Wish they'd leave a note or something." The leftovers were a mix of Shepherd's Pie with some baked rolls, along with the two Winesap apples he had cut up. Hedwig was still preening herself and his hair when he finished, but that was mostly to be expected. "Caught any more of the sciurid, Hedwig?"

She hooted once sharply, which Harry knew was her way of saying you-are-being-silly-for-doubting-me. He knew that she had taken it as her personal mission to hunt them whenever she could, ever since they had taken to throwing acorns about. She had depopulated the homestead of them in short order, and Harry knew she was constantly expanding her search for others to deal with. They might be cute and fluffy, but to his girl, they were food. He supposed he might have a similar level of desire if he had been the recipient of a few thrown acorns as well. At some level, it was just the natural order of things.

After puttering around the house for a bit, Harry realised he was becoming increasingly edgy. He was uncomfortable staying in the empty house, despite the protections, since the only thing he had to distract himself was a biting Hedwig or his own thoughts, which were still too circular to be useful. Clearly far too soon for Hedwig's happiness, Harry said goodbye and activated the Portkey back to Hogwarts.

His mixed feelings were amplified as he passed the gates, and he found it odd that he was battling the urge to tell everyone to get the hell out at the same time as he had the urge to call in their allies and take the place over directly. It would be ridiculously easy to defend the castle for a group of people that truly understood what to do, but at the same time, it would be incredibly stupid to keep so many liabilities around when they could just be booted out and sent home.

As Harry walked toward the lake, he tried to piece together a new way to look at the things going on around him. From the revelations during the first war he knew Riddle wanted the building, with a desire that could only be described as fanatical. Further, he knew that the fundamental reason for that desire remained unchanged. Therefore, it made no sense to think that Riddle would change that desire. Given that the castle was desirable, then it followed that Riddle would do nearly anything to capture it.

But the crux of the problem was that capturing the castle was insufficient. An invading group would have to capture it and then hold it long enough to subdue it. The magic inside the castle would be designed not to harm others but rather to protect them, and it would all have to be replaced for it to serve Riddle's needs. No one sane wanted to fight a two-front war, particularly a magical two-front war, for the outcome was almost always disaster as shown by the downfall of Grindelwald.

He found himself standing by the edge of the lake, watching the reflection of the overcast sky in the weak ripples of the water, trying to find a way forward. Riddle wanted something urgently, something that he was willing to risk exposure for after striving to remain hidden. Some few of his free followers had been moved to Azkaban, and the Dementors were still there, guarding them all – until Harry's foe summoned them to his side, at any rate. Another battle lost despite Edgar's best efforts was to replace the so-called guards with real guards, people who could communicate and use a level of sentience that would inhibit stunts like their "rescue" of Sirius.

He was still standing there when he felt a presence coming closer and turned slightly to see a familiar ghostly form floating nearby. "Potty, wee Potty," Peeves said quietly, "we is needing to settle scores."

"Really?" Harry tried to keep his tone casual as he looked about, making sure there was no one that could hear them. He was almost certain that they could be seen, for there would be people outside or even looking out of windows, but being inaudible was sufficient. Harry quickly cast a Proximity Charm to be sure nothing sentient crossed into the audible region and looked back at the poltergeist. "What for?"

"Myrtle has been pestering poor Peeves," the figure murmured slightly. "Peeves has been good so far, but Peeves is not pleased with this."

"True, but how is it my fault?"

"Not mad Potty's fault, no, no," Peeves said with a bit of cackle. "But Potty struck a deal with the devil. Peeves is saying Potty needs to help, or Peeves has secrets to tell. Oh yes, secrets to tell."

"Why should I?"

"Peevesy knows that Potty knows how to control spirits, and Potty knows that Peevesy knows that."

Harry said nothing in response and watched the shimmering form for a moment. It was always dangerous to interact with an unpredictable agent of chaos, but in some ways, they were predictable. "All forms of request like this are based on barter, Peeves. You know that. What are you offering me for my aid?"

The Proximity Charm went off, Hedwig's hooting reminding Harry of what he had recently left behind. With a flick of his wand, it was cancelled, and he heard a voice that was hauntingly familiar behind him. "Peeves found you, Harry. I'm so glad; he was despondent when he couldn't find you earlier."

"Hello, Luna," Harry said without turning, "how have you been?"

"Oh, all's fair in love in war, Harry." Luna stood beside him, her head tilted at an outrageous angle as she regarded Peeves openly. "He doesn't really look surprised, does he?"

"Peeves has seen it all," the spirit announced grandly. "All!"

"No one doubts that," Luna said calmly before she turned to Harry. "You know why, right?"

Harry found himself again frustrated since he had no idea on which level this conversation was taking place. Shrugging to Luna, he focused on Peeves instead. "What payment?"

Luna clapped briefly. "Oooh, are you negotiating so soon? I wanted to know the secrets everyone else does."

"Peevesy offers one favour."

Harry shook his head. "You want me to deflect Myrtle, which means a lot of work on my part. One promise."

Luna smiled widely at Harry, and he could almost swear she was laughing at him inside.

"Peeves won't sell promises, no, no. Two favours?"

"Luna, is there anything you'd really, really like to know?" Harry knew this tactic would frustrate Peeves, but it would increase his own bargaining power.

"How to catch a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. I want to see if their nares really are in the shape of the lost Phoenix rune. I've always wanted to burn like that."

Harry fought the urge to smile as widely as Luna was. She really was pretty, though her strange way of carrying on a conversation probably kept most people at arm's reach. "Right, Peeves, you have to deliver to us a captured, err, Snorkack, as well as give me two favours."

Peeves was flying about in a tight circle around them, obviously agitated. "No, no, Peevesy won't, Peevesy can't, and it's not allowed! Four! Four favours!"

Harry sighed dramatically. "Right, then, four favours, no time limit."

"Yes! Yes!" Peeves zoomed up and around their heads a time or two before he settled back down in front of them. "Mad Potty still owes Peevesy though, don't forget!"

Before Harry could say anything, the poltergeist left in a streak of silver, headed back for the castle.

"Peeves is selective with his secrets, Harry. Did you know that?" Luna asked.

"Naturally. He's a poltergeist, and his secrets are only as good as his desire to keep them. That's why I asked for a promise." Harry chuckled for a moment. "They are bound by their promises, and it's hard to extract one."

Luna's smile was comforting in some ways, and Harry found himself smiling slightly back at her. "But the promise has to be worded properly, Harry. Just making the promise doesn't mean you can't all but reveal the promise."

Harry shrugged. "It's rather an academic question, isn't it? Or do you have a promise from him?"

Luna's smile changed not at all, but somehow he felt she was no longer quite so calm. "I only know of one promise Peeves has ever made, Harry."

"Oh?" Harry reached down and ran his fingers through the water of the lake, enjoying the sharp coolness against his skin. Looking back up at Luna, he put on his best challenging I-dare-you expression. "What would that be?"

"You know that this is only just beginning, don't you?"

The tangent left Harry puzzled. He had been sure she was going to reveal something of merit for a moment. "Which beginning?"

"Every day is a new beginning and a new ending. You shouldn't take everything so personally."

"It's not my ending I worry about." Harry went back to feeling the cool comfort of the water. "Or rather, it's not the act of ending, it's the aftermath."

"Yes, of course. The next great adventure is always waiting, but what of those who are not so lucky? Comfort comes from many places, if you only ask for it."

They were again in territory unfamiliar to his linear thinking, and he was unsure if there was a purpose to her tangents. "And yet, asking for something demeans the value. Were it offered freely and compassionately, it would mean far more."

"That's just silly, Harry," Luna said, sinking to her knees beside him, gently pushing the grasses at the edge of the water aside while she peered into the shallowest regions. "Is your pride too great to admit being human?"

"Who says I'm still human? I thought most people believed otherwise by now."

"If you think it will all be so bleak, perhaps you should do something about it, Harry."

"Talking to Ginny, are you?"

Luna laughed lightly, which surprised him a bit. "Not at all. I don't talk to my friends, Harry. I talk with them."

"Sophistry, from you?"

"You should try it sometime, Harry." Luna patted him on the shoulder in what he thought was a fairly patronising manner, but then her hand darted into the water and came back out slowly. He could see a small minnow swimming in the water she held cupped in her small hand. "It's not in the least bit magical like us," she said in a whisper, "but it knows everything it can know about life and has a magic all its own. Bleakness is a state of mind, not a state of being."

"Luna, just how much do you know?" Harry was unable to keep his sarcasm out of his voice, but given the wild tangents that always seemed to centre on a specific theme, he thought it was certainly a fair question.

"Do you find life fleeting, Harry?"

Harry stared at her for a moment before snorting. "Not today." How right he had been when he feared it would be a long and drawn out day.

"How well do you remember your past?"

"What? In what way?"

Luna placed her hand back in the water, watching the minnow swim off while Harry watched her in turn. "Do you dwell in your past? Or is it fleeting, with the future spread out before you?"

"Err…" Harry had no clue where she was going with this line of inquiry, but she seemed to pay him no mind at all.

"Relativity is there, you know. The future is eternal, and the past is fleeting. That's how it should be. You might want to try that, too."

"Err..."

Luna stood up and smiled at him again. "You owe me a favour or a promise, Harry, but not a Peeves promise, when I ask it of you. In exchange, I'll deal with Myrtle for Peeves. She likes me, you know, and is one of my three-and-a-half friends." With an airy wave, she was gone as quietly as she had come, and Harry was still confused about what exactly they had talked about. Worse, he still had no idea what Luna knew and what she was merely guessing at. If Cyril wanted 'new-think,' however, Harry knew where his Mentor could find it in spades.

The sensation of discomfort in his thighs gradually intruded on his bemused mental state, and he realized he had been half-kneeling, half-squatting at the edge of the water for some time. With a mocking laugh at his own idiocy, Harry splashed some of the water on his face to try to force his mind back into gear.

As he took a step through the tall grass on the water's edge, however, his hand brushed several of the plants, and he was surrounded by a cacophony of pop! pop! pop! He drew his wand and fired the first hex before he even realised what was happening.

"I love Harry Potter!"

The phrase rang out from a series of nearly normal-sized lemmings, all vying with each other to make the words clear, all running over each other as each one's cry of adulation triggered the others to speak again.

"Dammit!"

Harry rapidly shot everything moving with a Stunning Spell and then tried to remain still. He then carefully applied a flat-black Glamour Charm to all of his clothes, just in case they decided to change and leave him starkers in the middle of the grounds. Disgusted with the prank that had come back for the second time with him still clueless, Harry stalked off to his suite, resigned to waiting out the two hours or so until the damn thing wore off. Maybe Floppy would have some further stories about the Founders to pass the time.

oOo oOo oOo oOo

"Well, Floppy, it looks like the thing has worn off again. Finally." Harry could hear the annoyance in his own voice, but after just under three hours this time, he was hungry and cranky again.

"It did seem to go on quite a bit, didn't it?"

"I suppose. I'm not ready to draw conclusions yet, but I'm starting to get suspicious." Harry was nearly certain now he was dealing with the Weasley matriarch. "I'd just like to make sure of it before I retaliate."

"Until then, what next?"

Harry sighed and rolled over on the bed. "What Luna told me to do, I suppose."

"She told you to do something? I don't recall that part of your conversation."

"Not in so many words, Floppy," Harry pointed out slowly. "I think she was basically saying to accept the situation I'm in and move logically from there. That means training the others, as Ginny and all have been asking for – in some form or another. And, of course, I need to get that love-note to Dumbledore. I guess I should do that first."

Heaving himself out of bed, Harry left his suite and went for the most direct path to the headmaster's office. He had missed dinner again, but knowing his way to the kitchens would once more prove useful. There were a few students about, all of who gave him a width berth and furtive glances as he moved past them, but that was fairly normal when taken in context. The gargoyle, however, seemed to be most unfriendly when he came to a stop in front of it.

"Ice mice," Harry muttered. It sat there, not moving in the slightest, and glowered at him.

"Floppy, can you get this thing to move?"

"No, Harry. It responds to the headmaster or the password only."

"Right." Harry pulled out both wands this time, one in each hand. "Perhaps you've heard of what I did in response to the Fat Lady's little display of non-support. I see three ways forward, Rocky. One, you move aside, I deliver my letter, and we're all happy. Two, you're reduced to rubble, I deliver my letter, and then you're unhappy. Three, you convince the headmaster or his phoenix to come down and personally take my letter – no one else will do. Then they're probably annoyed, but we're both happy. I'll give you to the count of five, and then you're going to be renamed Pebbles. One."

"Really, Harry, must you solve–"

"Two."

"–everything with violence?"

"Three."

Harry could tell Floppy was annoyed with him, but he was unwilling to take his eyes of the stone guardian.

"Four."

In a brilliant flash of fire, Fawkes stood on top of the gargoyle, his wings flapping once before he settled down slightly. The phoenix looked at Harry with his head cocked, and it left him thinking that the bird was laughing at him just as much as Luna had been.

Pulling out the letter Ginny had received, he held it out to the phoenix. "This arrived at breakfast, and I received it during lunch. He'll be able to figure out the rest from reading it."

Fawkes took the parchment, ruffled his feathers, and disappeared again in a flash of fire.

"A pleasure doing business with you, Rocky."

"You know, Harry, that wasn't particularly nice of you."

Harry was humming to himself, a tune that was from nowhere and just fit his mood of mild annoyance at the moment. "Floppy, I could have stood there guessing sweets or other cutesy phrases until I hit on the right one. Or I could have just blasted my way in. Instead, I made it clear I had an important message and left the choice up to Dumbledore. We both know that he hears whatever someone says to that thing."

"It's not a very good one, but it is a point. I concede, at least this time."

Harry came to a stop in front of the Fat Lady, who was giving him a rude hand gesture. "You know, this is a very familiar scene. You can open quietly, or you can open loudly, but you're going to open." Harry saw her eyes dart around to her possessions, and with one last glare, the portrait opened.

Harry strolled into the Gryffindor common room and looked around. Many students were there in the room, but none of the ones he was looking for. Silence slowly stretched out, though it was – for a change – not bothering Harry in the least.

"Dean, I'm looking for Hermione, Neville, and Ginny. Ideas?"

Dean looked surprised to be called upon but shrugged absently. "Neville's in the greenhouses, the girls are up in the dorms."

"Right. Thanks."

Harry ignored the looks and snickers that started up as he headed straight for the archway leading to the girl's staircase. He wanted to laugh at the recollection from when he first came into Gryffindor Tower. Someone had told him that no males were allowed up the female stairs, and he was going to put that to the test.

"You know you can't go up these stairs, right?" Floppy sounded almost cautious, which was different from the norm. "Or at least, you shouldn't be able to."

Harry walked into the base of the stairwell, passing through the archway. "What, you're not giving in to that 'he can do anything' crap, now are you?" Glancing back, he saw that the entire common room had gone silent again and was watching him avidly.

"I've seen your memories, Harry. I'm unwilling to stake a claim here."

Laughing, Harry put one foot on the stairs. Immediately, a shrill alarm sounded, and the stairs became a slide. Snorting, Harry pulled out his wand and studied the area for the source of the alarm. There was a blatant old Muggle-style alarm that looked like the source of the noise, but it was obviously fake – the alarm lacked the sound of the individual hammers striking the bells. Two or three feet to the left of the Muggle alarm, however, Harry could see one of the bricks in the inner tower glowing brightly. Chuckling at the misdirection, Harry cast a non-verbal silencing spell on the brick, and silence returned to the tower.

"I don't want to know," he heard someone say quietly. "Really, I don't."

Harry studied the problem a bit more, since now all he had to do was bypass the slide. The obvious answer was to use the slide in the opposite direction, which was simple enough, though it lacked the elegance he desired. Feeling the edges of his hunger, Harry decided that brute force was well enough for now and promised that the next time he would have a better plan in mind.

Sitting with his legs folded at the base of the slide, Harry cast a non-verbal and low-powered Hover Charm on himself with his second wand. Floating a scant inch or so from the floor, he aimed his first wand at the wall by the first platform and cast a silent Accio! While keeping a firm grip on his wand, Harry was able to repeatedly Summon his way straight to the 'FIFTH-YEAR STUDENTS' door, where he seized the handle and used it to stay standing, dropping the Hover Charm. Rapping sharply at the door, he called out, "Ginny? Hermione? Got a moment?"

The door opened abruptly, launching Harry into an untidy heap on the floor. "Way to welcome a fellow, Ginny," he said as he got up. "You could have just said hello."

Hermione was staring at him from behind the red-haired girl, obviously less than amused. "How did you get up here?"

"Are you a witch or aren't you?"

When Ginny giggled, Hermione finally flushed slightly before looking into the hallway. "You'll tell me how you did that, right?"

"Maybe," Harry said with a vague gesture. "I need the two of you and Neville for a bit of conversation. Sadly, I missed dinner. So we're going to have this conversation in the kitchens, right?"

"What's it about?" Ginny asked quietly. "I've got a good bit of homework I need to get caught up on after all that detention this week. Hermione is trying to help me with it."

"Thirty minutes, can you spare that? It's about this training you all want me to do. I'm going to agree but with conditions."

Harry watched the two girls trade silent looks, which seemed to communicate volumes, before they both turned in unison to put their shoes on. When they were ready, they followed Harry to the edge of the doorway. "See you at the bottom!" Harry sat down and enjoyed the ride. It was like being in a play park again, though he doubted McGonagall or Dumbledore would want to know that. When he finally reached the bottom, he stood up and walked through the archway, at which point the stairs reformed.

Everyone was watching him, which was the same as before, except this time he was getting a much wider range of reactions. Many of the girls looked very uncomfortable, while several of the guys appeared ready to tackle the stairs themselves. Harry chuckled at the idea and leaned back into the area long enough to cancel his silencing charm. There was no point in making it easy for anyone.

"So did you get all the way up there?" Dean finally asked.

"Yeah. Not much of a security system, really."

"Only you, Harry," Hermione's voice cut in from behind him, "would say something like that. It's never been defeated before, according to Hogwarts, A History."

"Oh, right. That's the book that says you can't Apparate around here, right?" Harry grabbed Ginny's elbow in one hand and Hermione's in the other, steering them out of the common room post-haste. "I don't think your book is necessarily correct, Hermione."

Hermione muttered something unintelligible, which made him smile faintly. When he turned to Ginny, though, she was frowning at him. Obviously she was irritated with something, but he was unsure what it was.

"What about Ron? Should we get him, too?" Hermione asked.

"No. That's part of what we'll talk about." Harry stopped when they came to the stairs. "Err, Hermione, would you get Neville from the greenhouses so I can have a quick word with Ginny? We'll be in the kitchens."

Without giving either girl a chance to answer, Harry dragged Ginny off down a side corridor, heading for a secret passageway that went straight from the seventh floor to the corridor just before the passageway to the kitchens.

"Where are we going? The stairs are –"

Harry held one finger up in a silencing motion, tapped an over-sized tapestry of a sleeping dragon between the eyes, and pulled Ginny behind it. As soon as the tapestry settled, Ginny let out a squeak when the floor shifted abruptly. Harry felt her hands grab his arm like a vise, and then it was over. The floor was still, and he pushed through to the other side, dragging Ginny along with him. She looked around for a moment before her mouth formed a silent 'Oh!'

Walking into the kitchens, Harry called back over his shoulder, "Coming?"

As the elves bustled about gathering food for Harry and a tea service for the others that were coming, Harry sat down at the small table in the corner. "What's got you upset, Ginny?"

Ginny sighed and sank into the seat next to him. "You need to stop pushing on Hermione so hard, Harry. I understand your concerns, and I can see some of the twisted logic, but cutting her down isn't going to help. She doesn't handle change well, and you've been nothing but changes."

Harry thought about that for a few moments and then shrugged. "All right. I'll lay off her for now."

Ginny coughed her tea down. "What? You're giving up just like that? I thought I'd have to hex you to get you to back off."

Harry shrugged again. "It's a fair point. And you gave me the truth, not some story. I trust you as much as I can, and if you say it's like that, that's good enough – for now." Ginny said nothing, but then he really had cut the wind out of her sails if she had been looking for an argument. "Look, we only have a couple of minutes. I don't want to keep you from your homework. The letter you gave me today was from Riddle." When she failed to react immediately, he sighed. "Sorry, I keep forgetting you're catching up. Riddle is Voldemort."

Ginny's hands started shaking almost immediately, and Harry took the cup from her before she dropped it. "Yeah, that was what I was thinking. You asked for training, but you didn't ask for that. Unfortunately, you're stuck now, because he obviously knows we've been spending time together recently. Unless you want to avoid me like the plague and hope he doesn't try anything for a few months, I'd say you're probably in the top twenty or thirty on his 'I want this person' list."

Ginny was extremely pale and put her head into her hands. Harry felt bad for her, but she needed to know.

"It's not a death sentence, Ginny, though I admit it's not good. But think about this for a moment. He knows about everything going on here to some degree. If I suddenly spend a lot of time with all of your friends and family, training the lot of you, what's he going to want to do then?"

Her brown eyes peeked out between her fingers, and he had to agree with the fear he saw there.

"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd feel. You're in deep shit, and don't think otherwise. But if you still want to push forward, it's going to work differently. I'm really going to go all out with training you. I won't do that with the others. You and I will meet privately, and I'll show you things I'm not showing anyone else – and I mean anyone. Your fealty oath and all that, right?"

She nodded slowly, but he could see that the fear was still there. It was almost palpable in the air around her.

"Right. Then you will decide what, if anything, to pass along to Hermione and Neville. You'll train them like I train you, but there will be things I'll forbid you from showing them. Then, if the three of you want to train others – your family, other students, whatever – that's entirely up to you lot. I'll probably not be there, and that means no other students here should ever be on his mind, as it were."

Ginny said nothing and buried her head in her arms as she dropped to the table.

"One last thing. Do not make any more problems with Umbridge. I'll work to slow her as I can, but based on what I've seen so far, expect her power here to be absolute – beyond Dumbledore's. And I'll definitely talk to you before you go see her next weekend about what the rules and limits are. In the meantime, if something, anything, happens with her, come talk to me. Even if it's just another detention. There's more going on there than you know, and I need to keep track of what she's doing. Got it?"

The elves deposited a small mountain of food in front of him, and Harry felt sheepish in asking for a large dinner since he had only eaten lightly all day. He doubted that everyone in his year would be able to finish what was in front of him.

"Look, for what it's worth, I'm very sorry you've been dragged into this. If you want out at any time, I'll find a way to get you out as safely as possible. Just let me know."

"Harry?" Ginny's voice was barely audible.

"Yeah?"

"How do you get out of bed in the morning?"

Harry sighed, trying to find a way to answer her. His conversation with Luna came back to him, and suddenly he thought he might understand a small part of what she had been trying to tell him. "Luna told me something, Ginny, something like, 'the past is fleeting, and the future is eternal.' The way I interpret that right now is that if you don't get up and try, you can't be what you want to be."

Ginny said nothing more, so Harry ate as he waited for Hermione and Neville to join them. When they finally did arrive, he found it odd that both seemed to be avoiding each other's gaze, and both were blushing sporadically, if faintly. Harry ignored it as irrelevant for the moment and quickly sketched out how things were going to work. He omitted the reason for the indirection of Ginny teaching them, but he agreed to do magical theory correspondence with Hermione, again through Ginny. No one was to hand him anything, and no one was to spend a lot of time being friendly with him, except for Ginny. He would try to distribute the time he spent with others and make an effort to branch out at least amongst the Gryffindors. If nothing else, his method of defeating the security on the girls' stairs should make him temporarily welcome among the other boys. By the time their brief discussion was over, Ginny was still pale, and she held onto Harry's arm all the way back to the Gryffindor common room.

Harry stood outside the Fat Lady's portrait as the others filed in, but the last image he had was of Ginny looking back at him before she disappeared into the tower. She looked lost and afraid, and he knew exactly how that felt. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to be available to her when she needed to escape. He knew how the knowledge that Voldemort wanted you could eat at your mind, eat at your soul, and leave you a walking zombie. He was less than certain it had been a wise thing to do, telling her the truth, but he knew it was the right thing.

As he entered his suite of rooms, he noticed again that Cyril was missing. His Mentor's door stood open, the bed made, everything neat and tidy as it had been since the man disappeared. There was a lack of any note here, either, much as there had been at home. His only hope lay in his Transporter Box, which was a very secure means of communication. Were there no letter in the Box, he was increasingly tempted to call out the hounds to find someone. Things were too volatile for one of his mentors to just disappear without warning, let alone all of them. As he entered his room to retrieve the Box, the voice that spoke was, for a change, unsurprising.

"It was the right thing to do, no matter how hard," Floppy said in Remus' voice. "You'll need to tell the headmaster that she knows."

"Yeah, I figured that one out. At the minimum, he'll have to talk to her teachers, well, the ones that will care at any rate." Harry began the tedious work of going through the wards on his trunk and then on the Transporter Box compartment. Pulling it out, Harry flipped it open, and was relieved that there was something inside. Perhaps it was foolish of him, but he was beginning to feel abandoned and fearful that something had gone hideously wrong. The letter from Remus cancelled those deep fears out completely.

15 Sep 2007
Harry,
Sorry for being out of touch. We're all running around like mad at the moment, though someone will check the Box at home at least once every other day. David has been summoned to the corporate home office and will be out of town until Thursday evening. The rest of us are trying to understand what's happening, because something big is going on – we just don't know what, and we don't know how we missed it.
We need to convene a Family Meeting with our partners and allies. It's slated for this next Saturday, 23rd Sep, starting at five o'clock. Cyril and I both want to state that this is a serious occasion, and you should dress and act appropriately. Also, we both are making a blanket offer. If there are people there that you think should be here, bring them. This is an open invitation for you to use at your sole discretion. Dumbledore, Ginny, anyone – the choice is yours, though you may need to brief them on proper protocol, particularly any females that you bring. You know how it works, so there's no problem there.
I must now warn you on several fronts. First, Umbridge's rise to power was unstoppable, and Edgar felt it better to let it go through unchallenged than to burn political power now. We can make some 'adjustments' later in the game, but for now – head down! Fudge is also particularly hot for your demise, though there are other things going on with him that are confusing as well. Our bipolar Minister may be developing a third pole.
The Auror corps, particularly the ones Moody has been 'bringing up to snuff,' has also become extremely paranoid lately. The incident at Hogwarts did not aid things, and I must urge you in the strongest manner possible to avoid tangling with any Aurors under anything but life-threatening conditions. You will see, if you have not by now, a notice that the English Ministry is challenging the ICW protocol for you in particular. It's being worded more generically, but it is meant to strip you of all of your protections and return you to ordinary minor citizen status. Keeping your head down will help make defence against this easier, but moreover, we have no idea if it does push through when it might happen. Any Auror entanglement may come on the wrong side of the timeline.
Finally, Dumbledore has been sending out notices to what he calls the 'old crowd,' which we have told you is the Order of the Phoenix. The details are unimportant, except that the first gathering is next Saturday, the day of our meeting, at two o'clock in the afternoon. It will be held in the Hog's Head Inn, a rather disreputable place run by Dumbledore's brother. You should not arrange to be there, so please don't. We'll share the complete memory log of what happened with you after the FM.
I know you are impatient about the Riddle matter, but all I can say is, patience for one week. We'll all see where things are then. In the meantime, head down, work on your theory and training, and see if you can't reverse the trend and try to make a few more friends, right?
– Remus

Harry was at once irritated and angry over the contents of the letter. "Mentors to a mushroom, it would seem," he muttered as he pulled out a blank piece of paper and began writing quickly on it.

Harry paused after a moment, took the sensory monitor out of the pouch around his neck, and nestled it into the Transporter Box. He then went back to his writing, barely aware that he was cursing under his breath. Finished and still irritated, Harry threw the letter into the Box and activated it with a tap of his wand, not even bothering with any words.

His mentors had at once warned him away from everything vital, told him to go back to making nice-nice, and then instructed him to be a good boy and do more school work. While he could understand the cautions and implications, it was the final paragraph that really pushed him over the edge. Blowing off the Riddle matter, compounded with today's events, which he had sent back, was not something he was going to be able to ignore for a week. By the time Saturday rolled around, he would be acting like Ginny was. Of course, his becoming a wreck would only push her into a complete collapse, which would be loads of fun to explain to her brothers.

Grumbling, Harry went back into the bathroom to brush his teeth. There was no way he was going to get any successful reading or thinking done in the state he was in, so he may as well lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Of course, his toothbrush was destroyed, but a conjured one would work well enough for the moment.

After spitting the toothpaste into the sink, Harry picked up the towel, only to hear, "I love Harry Potter!"

"Reducto!"




A/N:

Note, I'm far from intimately familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphs. If I've mangled this, I apologize – but I would appreciate any corrections. Special thanks to EnFuego, who lended an extra mind to the ideas noted in the introductory material and cautiously approved them – with the caveat he's no expert either. That said, he's more familiar with them than I am. If you know more, drop me a PM and we can discuss the issues.

Special thanks to Lathac, one of our Brit-pickers on this story, for the legwork in digging up the various parole procedures for England and Ireland.

Thanks, as always, to the betas: cwarbeck, Chreechree, Reg, Sovran, and Sherylyn all kicked the tires a good bit.

Reviews 542
ChapterPrinter
StoryPrinter




../back
‘! Go To Top ‘!

Sink Into Your Eyes is hosted by Grey Media Internet Services. HARRY POTTER, characters, names and related characters are trademarks of Warner Bros. TM & © 2001-2006. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions on this site are those made by the owners. All stories(fanfiction) are owned by the author and are subject to copyright law under transformative use. Authors on this site take no compensation for their works. This site © 2003-2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Special thanks to: Aredhel, Kaz, Michelle, and Jeco for all the hard work on SIYE 1.0 and to Marta for the wonderful artwork.
Featured Artwork © 2003-2006 by Yethro.
Design and code © 2006 by SteveD3(AdminQ)
Additional coding © 2008 by melkior and Bear