The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Chapter Nine
Dawn was creeping in through the stained glass windows of his room when Harry woke. He opened his eyes and was astonished to realize he had slept through the night without a single dream and the buzzing ache in his scar was so minor compared to its usual ostinato that it was almost as if it weren't there at all. He didn't bother to get up; instead, he watched patches of color move across the floor and walls and tried to figure out what he was going to do with Ginny.
She had led him up the stairs and right into his room and he had let himself be towed along in her wake without a protest. He had been icy cold and hot all at once and he kept flinching, and trying to conceal it, wondering at any moment when Voldemort would appear to finish him off, or worse. Ginny had pushed him down to sit on the bed and had dragged off his boots without asking. She had started tugging at his too small jeans before he had stopped her in alarm. In answer to his astonished, "What are you doing?"
She had merely replied, "Getting you undressed. You're not going to be comfortable sleeping in your clothes, you silly git."
"I am not taking my clothes off with you here!" he had responded.
She had simply clucked in annoyance and answered, "I know what boys look like. I've only got six brothers, you know." She had put her hands on her hips and stood there waiting for him to undress as if he were a child and he had turned quite red with embarrassment before her cool gaze.
"I am not going to sleep," he had said through gritted teeth and he was more relieved than he had let on when she had nodded and sat down next to him.
"Right," she had said, "then you can tell me what happened at the meeting and what that last little drama was all about."
"I can't tell you what happened at the meeting, Ginny. You know that," he had replied. Then he thought twice and realized she probably didn't know about Bill yet, so he added, "I can tell you one thing." He had told her all about Bill wanting to marry Fleur and Mrs. Weasley's reaction and how they were planning the wedding now for before school started, thought her Mum still didn't seem happy. He waited for her to react happily, but she didn't.
"I always thought she was a bit stuck on herself," Ginny responded. "She wasn't very nice to you, was she, until you rescued her sister out of the water. And she liked to date only the most popular boys, like they were trophies. A bit like Cho, if you want my opinion."
"Cho?" Harry had said, "What's she got to do with this?" He had started to get annoyed. He didn't half like what Ginny was implying.
"Just that they're similar types," Ginny huffed back. "You know, really pretty, popular and they like to show off their boyfriends." Harry had shaken his head.
"That's just...ridiculous. She, Cho really liked Cedric. She kept crying over him all the time I went out with her. The one time I went out with her," he had amended.
"Yeah, well, you should have heard what Luna told me how Cho carried on when she got to date the famous Harry Potter. She was boasting about you like she had raised you up and helped you defeat Voldemort and all her friends just hung on every word she had to say about you."
"Oh, I see," he had said, "So no one would want to date me if I wasn't famous, then."
Ginny had made an angry sound and said, "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that's why she wanted to date you. She just loved it that you were all moonstruck over her. And she loved it that she got to date you when all the other girls would have loved to."
"They would not," Harry had answered quite unreasonably.
"Of course they would," Ginny had answered. "You're right up there as one of the most eligible boys in the school."
That had made him laugh and she had hissed like a steaming teakettle at him. "You are so stupid, really. You have no clue what people think of you half the time, do you?"
He had stopped laughing and stared at her then because he knew that what people thought of him most of the time was whatever had been printed in the Daily Prophet that week, or that day.
"Is that why you used me to make Dean jealous, then? You wanted to show me off, too, the famous Harry Potter."
She glared right back at him and flushed bright pink. "I wasn't showing you off. It was Dean who started it anyway. He was the one who thought there was something when there was nothing. And you went along with it. You didn't mind it when we knocked Malfoy off his broom. I know you wouldn't have dated me if it had been for Dean, but you don't have to throw it in my face that I'm not pretty or as popular as Cho. You don't have to go kissing me on the train either then and bite my head off when I'm just trying to see that you get some rest before you half-kill yourself again!"
"Talk about ridiculous," Harry nearly shouted. "You know perfectly well that you're pretty and all the boys want to date you. And I don't need to be babied and put to bed like..." He stopped there because when he thought about it, no one had ever put him to bed in his life. Aunt Petunia had put Dudley to bed when they were little, cooing over him and singing songs to him horribly out of key. So Harry knew what it was supposed to be like. But he had been sent off to the cupboard by the pointing of a bony finger or by the roar of Uncle Vernon's angry voice, or sometimes, painfully, shoved into bed in the cupboard by a hand twisted in his hair.
"What?" Ginny had said. "What is it?” she had asked then and she had sounded almost scared. "Is it Voldemort? Is your scar hurting?"
He had stared at her and shaken his head again and said hoarsely, "You're right. I am a stupid git. I haven't enough sense to appreciate what friends I've got. I'm sorry," he had added, "I've no business yelling at you like that."
Ginny opened her mouth and closed it again. Then she said anxiously, "You must really be ill. Did you just apologize to me when I was perfectly awful?"
"You know what I think," Harry had said, "I think Bill is bloody lucky. I wish...I ...that is, I am so envious of him, you know. I can't think of anything better than to be married and have kids and have a family. You don't know how lucky you are to have great parents and brothers and all."
Ginny had stared at him in surprise and said awkwardly, "But you can have that, someday, you know."
Harry had shaken his head once more. He had felt so cold again, just so cold. "You don't understand, Ginny. Nobody does. Well, maybe Dumbledore does, I dunno. I can't marry anybody, ever. Not while Voldemort's alive. He'll kill any family I have, like he already has. My Mum and Dad. Sirius. I mean, he even went after Aunt Petunia, just because she's my aunt."
Ginny had stared at him, her face nearly as cold and white as when she had lain near death in the Chamber of Secrets, when Riddle had stolen most of her life away.
"Then he's won already, hasn't he," she whispered. She sat up straighter and said, "No. I won't stand for it. You have to fight this. You can't let him steal your whole life. That's giving in to him before you've even fought him." And he had grown angry then and he had taken her by the shoulders and shaken her just a bit, as if he could shake some sense into her and make her see what he saw.
"I'm not giving into him," Harry said angrily. "But I'm not handing him weapons either. I can't take it, anymore. He'll go after the rest of you next. That's his strategy, you see. He wants to make me pay just for living, so he'll make me bleed bit by bit and kill off everyone and everything I love, until I don't care anymore. Until death seems welcome because that's where my heart is."
He had stared at her and found that his hands were wrapped up in her long red mane and the last thing he wanted to do was let go. But he did. "You see," he said, "I have to harden my heart. I have to close it off. I have to be as cold and empty as he is, or I'll lose. And then everybody will lose, if the prophecy is right. And I can't afford to act as if it's wrong, can I? Because if it's right, and I mess up, then you'll be stuck with him and his evil for good."
But he had underestimated her, as people were likely to do because she was small and pretty. "Damn him, anyway," she had said. "I won't be scared of him. And I won't let you be either."
Harry stared at the sunlight floating through the window and wondered whether the best thing to do was exactly what the Daily Prophet had suggested. Maybe, he thought, he should just get it over with. His eyes swam as he tried to figure out what the shapes were floating in the light. Green and blue and red and gold all played in a grand mix across the floor and walls and the cover of his bed, but without his glasses, the colors had no shape, no definition. The red and gold mixed together reminded him of the vivid red of Ginny’s hair: Copper in some lights, almost red-gold in others.
He had been on the brink of shouting again when Mrs. Weasley had walked in. She had taken one look at him sitting on the bed with his boots off and Ginny sitting next to him and he had very nearly ducked in case she hexed him.
Ginny had taken the lead, however, and before Mrs. Weasley could open her mouth, Ginny had complained witheringly, “The great lug will not listen. He won’t lie down. He won’t rest. I think you’ll have to charm him, Mum.”
Mrs. Weasley said firmly, “Yes, he will.” She advanced on Harry, goblet on hand, and said, “Drink this.” Though she had said nothing about Ginny sitting where she was sitting, her eyes had flicked for one second from her daughter to Harry and back again.
Harry flushed and thought about refusing the potion, but he had felt quite guilty for thinking about exactly what Mrs. Weasley probably had suspected he was thinking about. He had taken the potion and swallowed it down, grateful that it didn’t taste too awful. Then he had thought again and said, “You haven’t put another sleeping draught in there, have you?”
“Of course, I have,” Mrs. Weasley had replied. “You aren’t to be wandering around in the middle of the night instead of sleeping or you’ll never get better.”
“Maybe you should have consulted Snape or Professor Dumbledore first,” Harry had said. The room had begun to spin and he had to hold his head up with great effort to finish. “They don’t want me taking sleeping draughts, you know.”
Mrs. Weasley had huffed very like her daughter and said, “Severus Snape is quite clever, but he doesn’t know everything. Tonight,” she had said, “you’ll sleep without dreams.”
And he had. He had sunk back on the pillow as his eyes would stay open no longer and he had been barely conscious when someone, or two someones, had very efficiently tucked the down comforter over him and taken off his glasses. He had wanted to protest that he needed his wand under his pillow, but he hadn’t the energy left to speak or to take his hand away when someone held it until he slept.
He found himself smiling at the memory and when he dressed for the day and ran down stairs, it was with a spring in his step that had been missing for months. When Harry entered the kitchen in search of breakfast, Mrs. Weasley was already gone again, and Snape had already arrived. The Potions Master was tapping his long bony fingers on the table and glowering with disdain at Ron and Hermione, who were both eating healthy portions of cinnamon scented porridge and fruit. Ron had a rather goofy smile on his face and Hermione looked serene, but distant, as though she were thinking of something that required all of her concentration.
Harry supposed she must have found a new book in the library downstairs, which she had talked about enthusiastically and incessantly at last night's dinner. Harry helped himself to some porridge and attacked the fresh strawberries and blueberries with relish. He studiously ignored Snape's impatience and drank his coffee at a liesurely pace, as if he were truly on holiday and had all the time in the world.
"Well," Snape growled, as Harry sipped his coffee, "did you dream last night?"
Ron and Hermione looked up. The goofy grin dissolved off Ron's face and Hermione's attention snapped back on alert.
Deliberately, Harry swallowed his last sip before answering, "Not at all."
"No?" Snape asked.
Harry shook his head calmly and deliberately cut-off the subject. He stood up and stretched luxriously and strolled into the great room saying,
"Well? Are you coming?"
He would have liked to disapparate there just to annoy Snape, but decided to save really testing Snape's temper for a better time. This time, Snape had them disapparate from the great room into the kitchen. This was much more of a challenge and required serious concentration as a mistake might leave you with the kitchen table inside your midriff. Harry pulled himself together and paid careful attention to every one of Snape's instructions.
Apparition was one skill he really wanted to master. He had been forever impressed by Dumbledore's skillful use of disapparition when the elderly wizard had battled Voldemort at the Minstry of Magic and won. Harry reflected that Dumbledore ought to have simply killed Voldemort then. It would have saved Harry the trouble and worry now. Then he recalled with a faint shock that Dumbledore had been afraid to kill Voldemort: he had feared that killing the dark wizard whilst Voldemort was actively possessing Harry's mind would result in Harry's death, too.
"Pay attention, Potter!" Snape's angry voice interrupted Harry's ruminations.
"Right. Sir," Harry answered and he disapparated quickly and apparated back to the great room again. He was feeling quite pleased with himself until Snape roared from the kitchen, "You forgot your wand again, you dunderhead!" Snape appeared back in the great room in the normal way and glared furiously at Harry. Ron popped back into the great room with a loud crack and made both Snape and Harry jump. Harry then laughed and Ron grinned back. The goofy grin had reappeared and Harry resolved he had to have a chat with his friend quite soon. He wanted to know just what was making Ron so happy when they were stuck in this miserable house with Snape giving them lessons.
Hermione appeared a moment later with a relatively quiet crack and Harry was spared Snape's next lecture by a knock on the door. Harry sobered quickly when the door opened to admit Inspector Bones and Sergeant Kray.
"What are you here for?" Snape snapped at the officers. He eyed them suspicously, as if anyone with anything to do with Muggles and Muggle government might be carrying a contagious disease.
Bones gave him a cool, assessing look and replied, "We're here on Order business, and our business as well." He turned to Harry and said, "I understand you have a good idea as to the identity of some of Riddle's followers."
Harry frowned and said, "A few. But not all." He thought it quite interesting that Bones felt comfortable calling Voldemort by his real proper name, but still couldn't bring himself to use Voldemort's alias.
"Well, if you don't mind," Kray said, "we'd like for you to come in and look at some photos for us and see if you can match any of the names to faces."
Harry very nearly suggested that Snape could probably match every face and every name; or quite a few, in any case. Then he remembered that not everyone, and probably not the two officers, knew Snape's past or what his present role very likely was.
He nodded and said, "Maybe Ron and Hermione should come, too. They've both seen some of the Death Eaters at one time or another. And there's some of them I only know by name and never saw their faces. On account of them being hooded, you know."
"Where would we go?" Hermione wanted to know.
Bones smiled and said, "My office at the Yard."
"Scotland Yard?" she asked, looking quite impressed.
Ron, however, looked as though he thought the whole thing was a rather dubious undertaking. Harry was amused to see that Snape and Ron's reactions were nearly identical. Neither one of them thought anything to do with Muggles was of any interest. It was too bad, Harry thought, that some of Mr. Weasley's interest in Muggles hadn't infected his son. Harry also thought that Hermione wouldn't have been so impressed, or at least so enthusiastic if she'd been in that office for questioning rather than as a friendly witness.
On reflection, Harry was pleased to get a chance to leave the grim house with its painful reminders of Sirius and its barely contained atmosphere of dark magic. He was sure that in the year since the Order had last used the house any number of dark things must have crept back in, ignored, if not encouraged, by Kreacher.
"We'll be glad to," Harry said to Bones. "I can follow you there on my bike."
"You will not," Snape cut in. This time Harry wasn't so disposed to listen.
"I'm of age," Harry replied, "and I have another stop I want to make anyway."
"You are not to be gadding about attracting attention, Potter. If you're going to be in the Order and if you insist on your grown-up status, then do act grown-up."
Bones observed their sparring calmly and then decided the matter. "Professor Dumbledore said you might come, but I gave him my word that you would return safely and be under my eye the whole time."
"Oh, really," Snape said. "And what do you propose to do if Death Eaters attack?"
Bones said cheerfully, "Well, you"re quite welcome to come along."
Snape glared at Bones and said, “I think not. I have other things to do.”
“What do you want to do?” Sergeant Kray asked. Her blue eyes gleamed curiously and she added with cool amusement, “Perhaps a trip to the store? You could use some decent clothes.”
“Well, actually,” Harry replied, “I wanted to stop at Portobello Road.”
“Well, you won’t find anything there but moldy old second hand junk, that’s probably in worse shape than what you’re wearing.”
“We could stop at Harrods,” Hermione suggested with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “They have proper clothes there.”
“I’m sure they do,” Harry answered. “In fact, we can stop there as well.”
“Why don’t you take a tour of the entire city of London,” Snape said sarcastically. “And why do you want to go to Portobello Road? No doubt you have some idiotic idea of finding the Dark Lord there, or pulling off some other ridiculous stunt.”
“Nonsense,” Bones said.
“You just say that because you don’t know him like I do,” Snape answered. “And he’s worse when the other two are with him. You won’t believe what they get up to at school.”
“Look,” Harry cut-back in, “I want to go and ask some of the junk dealers a few questions. I want to find out how my cousin and his Muggle friends got sold genuine a wizard’s wand and crystal and a knife that had a really nasty dark curse on it. I want to know if it’s a wild coincidence or if someone knew who they were. And I want to know who they belonged to as well.”
Sergeant Kray stared at him and said, “You know, you would make a rather good policeman, Mr. Potter. You ask the right questions and you think of the right places to go to ask them.” To Harry's considerable disappointment, he did not get to ride his motorbike again that day.
Bones escorted him to the Silver Miata, which, with its sleek aerodynamic lines, would have appealed to him if Harry had been at all interested in cars. However, the ride to Victoria Street was a made uncomfortable by the tight squeeze of people all jammed into the back seat. Just as they were about to leave, Ginny had come down and demanded to go along, and no one seemed to be willing to tell her no.
Ron remarked under his breath that the car could use some "adjustments;" Harry was amused but he thought Bones was unlikely to permit any magical alterations to his car, even if he was a wizard. Ron attempted to appear blase when they took the elevator up to the Homicide Department, commenting, "Well, it looks quite similar to my Dad's office."
Hermione, on the other hand, was keenly interested in everything and she alone was really impressed with the framed degrees decorating the walls of Bones' office. A secretary helped bring in extra chairs for them and later sodas and snacks.
With a cynical glance, the secretary said, "They start younger and younger, don't they?"
And she snorted when Bones said, "They're just witnesses, not suspects."
"Got to keep an eye out on them, you do," the secretary replied. "You never know, do you? I mean, where there's smoke...you know."
She eyed them darkly as she left and muttered in a way that made Harry think of Moody. Constant vigilance, he reminded himself. He felt rather a shock to find that he didn't think the instruction was excessive anymore. Constant vigilance was all that would keep any of them alive now that Voldemort was on the move again.
They sat and looked through pictures of people, mostly men, many of whom looked like right villains, but none of whom looked familiar to Harry. The pictures also looked like regular snapshots and not official police photos as many of them were taken in smoky looking bars or in dingy warehouses. He had flipped past several dozen before he noticed a face he knew.
He had, in fact, almost flipped right past that one, too, because the person wasn't dressed as a wizard. Then, with a start, he recognized the bald head and bulging biceps of Warren Macnair. He couldn't suppress a gasp. Macnair was one of the anstiest of the Death Eaters. His nickname of "the Executioner" was well deserved; not merely because of his former position as executioner for the Department for Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, but also for his reputation for enjoyment of the act of killing.
"Got someone?" Sergeant Kray asked. Harry nodded.
He poked Ron and said, "Look. See who it is?"
Ron's face darkened immediately. "Yeah, Macnair. He’s the one that was going to do Buckbeak. And he was at the Ministry when they all attacked two years ago, wasn't he?"
It was Ginny who found the next one, Nott, who had been killed by Voldemort himself during the attack on Hogwarts the previous spring. And Hermione found the one with Crabbe and Goyle. They hadn't bothered to wear very good Muggle clothing, so they stuck out among the crowd of ordinary Muggle thugs that surrounded them in another smoky tavern.
"Where did you get these?" Harry asked with fascination.
"Ah," Bones smiled coolly, "we were working undercover last year. That lot were some of the ones we had tracked who were part of the ganglord's top men. Riddle's that is, when he tried to take over the London gangs and control the drug and weapons traffic among other things.
"Why d'you suppose he mixed in with that?" Ron asked.
"That's obvious," Hermione answered absently. "He wanted bodies. He wanted more men underneath him to be called on to fight when he wanted. And he must have had some reason for wanting access to the things he was bringing in."
"That's a very interesting suggestion," Sergeant Kray said. "I don't think we even considered why he'd want to control the drug trade. We just assumed that he wanted the power and the money that go along with it."
Harry thought back to last year and tried to figure out what Voldemort's real interest would have been. Then it struck him and he said, "He was getting more than weapons. He was getting rare metals and things you'd need to make the Stone. The Philosopher's Stone. And he was getting drugs and ingredients that are illegal for some of his potions, I think. Poisons, like snake venoms and such."
Bones stared at him and said thoughtfully, "What potions? What was he making that would need such ingredients?" Harry shrugged.
"Something to help keep him alive, I think. Or maybe something to make his new body stay alive, you know. The one he possessed. After...well, you know..." He shrugged again and looked away from the others. The memory of the fight with Voldemort resurfaced. With perfect clarity he seemed see and feel himself thrusting out to stab his enemy right through the heart and the icy shock of it as he lunged right onto Voldemort's poisoned magical blade. He blinked to clear the memory and looked without seeing at several more pictures to cover the momentary dislocation. He ignored the eyes on him and pretended that he was perfectly calm.
In the end, they had identified four Death Eaters and Bones was looking grimly satisfied. He had each of them sign statements and Ginny was quite entranced by the speed with which he produced them at his computer.
The trip to Portobello Road started out to be far less productive. As they didn't know which of the junk dealers might have sold the wizard's items to Dudley's friends, they started at one end and methodically questioned each of stall owners eliminating each one as they went. Harry thought he had rarely seen such on odd lot. They could have competed for eccentricity with the regular patrons of the Leaky Cauldron and that was saying something. After half-an hour, Ron was starting to look longingly at every food stall they passed and the stalls with costume jewelry and second-hand clothes fascinated Ginny. She tried on a wide-brimmed vintage hat that was trimmed with white swansdown feathers, and Harry had to admmit she looked quite wonderful, with the vivd red hair floating out beneath.
Hermione clucked and then succumbed to temptation herself, holding up a gown made of faded rose velvet and saying, "Can't you just imagine the parties she went to, the woman who owned this once?"
"Why would you want a moldy old thing like that?" Ron asked. "Wouldn't you rather have something new of your own?"
"Oh," Hermione said, "you have no imagination, you know. It's a piece of history. It's part of someone's life."
"Yeah," Ron answered, "So I suppose my moldy old dress robes were interesting history, too. Honestly, history is nearly as awful in the junk it produces, as it is to learn in Professor Binns' class. And at least in Binns' class you don't have to look like a stupid prat wearing it." Harry was enjoying this part of the trip even though they hadn't found anything. All up and down, the sellers hawked their wares, calling out as they passed,
"Hi, duckie. Look at this. Eighteenth Centruy silver passed down from my grandmother's grandmother," or "get a great price, DVD players for ten pounds only. Can't pass that up, can you?" Harry had begun to think that they would get no result at all. There were at least three stalls that sold "wizard" things like books on the occult and tarot cards, but none of those had anything remotely like real wizards' things. Finally, they reached a small stall sandwiched in between a food cart and another jewelry merchant. The stall had a lot of stuff that looked like old junk. Chipped cups with blue willow patterns tumbled off shaky looking shelves; and other odd mementos, spotted mirrors, old lamps with torn silk shades, and rickety tables stood forlornly crying for attention. On one shelf in the back, however, were small crystal balls, wands, knives and even a rusty looking cauldron.
Harry tugged on Hermione's sleeve and said, "Look there."
She stared with narrowed eyes and said, "That looks promising. And he's selling to Muggles, too, isn't he?"
Harry grinned and said softly, "Who knows? Maybe Mundungus Fletcher is his supplier?" Harry advanced toward the stall's prorprietor. The man was quite short and had dusty brown hair mixed with gray. His eyes were peculiar. One was blue and the other was a dull brown and they were set unevenly in his face above a very crooked nose. Excessively large eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose giving him a permanent frown.
"Can you show me one of those crystals," Harry asked quite courteously. He heard Inspector Bones saying something to Sergeant Kray not far away, but he was too busy looking at the stall's owner to mind what they were saying. The man looked at him and smiled unctuously.
"What interests you, young man? Fortune-telling is all the rage these days."
He turned to reach for one of the crystals and Harry could tell by the cloudy shapes floating in it that it was real. The man held out the crystal and said, "Take a look. I won't charge you for just a look. You'll want to buy it for sure, if you do look."
He smiled again and held the crystal out to Harry. Harry looked at the man's mismatched eyes instead of at the crystal and asked in as matter-of-fact a fashion as he could, "How is it that you sell real crystals to anyone off the street? Won't you get in trouble for selling to Muggles?"
"Nah," the man replied. He looked sharply at Harry and said, "The Ministry's too busy to pay attention to the likes of me these days. And I might ask the same of you. What's a nice lad like you..."
Harry was sure the man had meant to say, "doing in a Muggle market like this?" but the man never completed his sentence. His eyes had traveled to Harry's forehead where his scar must have shown through. The man's jaw dropped and his face turned dead white.
"You're not...you are, aren't you?" he whispered. He started to say Harry Potter , but he stopped that before the first breath of the starting "ha" came out and said instead, "The Boy Who Lived!"
As he often did when some complete stranger recognized him, Harry started to blush with embarrassment. But nothing prepared him for the man's reaction. He took to his heels and ran leaving his stall and all of his goods behind.
Harry yelled, "Hey. Come back!" He ran after the man thinking that he must be the one who had sold those things to Dudley, but just as he caught sight of the man's lopsided face and beetling eyebrows again, he vanished with a crack leaving Harry gaping after him and feeling like a fool. Hermione had followed him and the others as well.
"Did you recognize him?" Bones asked.
Harry shook his head in puzzlement. "I've never seen him in my life." He turned to Hermione and asked, "Why'd he run away? You don't think he was a Death Eater do you?"
"He must be," Ron interjected. "It doesn't make sense that he'd run away otherwise." Hermione, however, was looking in the direction where the man had vanished with a funny expression on her face.
"What?" Harry asked. He felt quite disconcerted. The man's reaction seemed really very disproportionate even to someone of Harry's dubious fame.
"It's just that," Hermione started to answer. She bit her lip and stopped and then went on. "He was scared of you. You're quite famous, after all."
"Well, that's nothing new," Harry answered. "I suppose he's one of those who read the Daily Prophet and still thinks I'm a nutter after all those stories they had about me Fifth year."
"I don't think so," Hermione answered quietly. "If he believed the Prophet, he'd think you were an unbeatable hero now."
"Well, then," Harry said, "he must be a Death Eater. He must have thought I'd got Ministry people with me, or Dumbledore or something."
Hermione shook her head very like McGonagall did when a very slow student simply could not get a lesson. "You don't realize, Harry," she said, "that some people are actually scared of you now. You defeated Voldemort again, right in front of a hundred people. So some people think you might be as powerful a wizard as he is. Maybe more so. And some people think you must have used dark magic to defeat him, because how else could you have beaten him?"
"But, I'm not. I didn't," Harry protested.
"We know you didn't use dark magic," Hermione answered, "but they don't. People like him. So he was scared." Harry hardly said a word on the way back to Grimmauld Place nor for the rest of the afternoon. He couldn't have explained why the thought that someone thought he might be a dark wizard put him in such a funk. The very thought of it made him cringes with shame, and yet the thought of it was like some tiny tick: once it bit into you it would never let go.
He avoided everyone and paced about his room wondering whether he had used dark magic to defeat Voldemort, wondering whether he'd have to use dark magic in order to defeat him again permanently, wondering whether he would himself be utterly corrupted if he did defeat Voldemort, wondering, not for the first time, whether Voldemort's connection to him wasn't actually poisoning him bit by bit. And whether he wasn't already beyond redemption. He felt again that he was marked for life.
That he had never had a chance. He felt as if his whole life was out of his control and that every choice he made was somehow predetermined and written in the stars as part of some giant struggle, one in which he wanted no part. The walls of the room seemed to close in on him and he wondered whether Sirius had felt like this: trapped like a wounded animal, with no way out, no hope. His scar burned and he smothered a scream of defiance, sinking onto the bed in despair. He was startled out of his distraction by two near simultaneous cracks and the appearance of two identically wicked freckeld faces.
"The Emergency Joke Squad is here to treat one terminally under-humored patient," Fred said.
"Right," George said. "Examination of the patient comes first." He waved his wand over Harry's chest and Harry squirmed away in horror, quite sure he was about to be turned into a glowing green slug, or something equally awful.
"Now, now," Fred said, "no avoiding the exam. We'll have you treated and up and smiling in no time." He pretended to think and then said, "Ah, George, we need to offer him our newest product, "Take the Shine Out of Professor Snape's Hair! Guaranteed to remove the oil from that famous Professor's coiffure and make all the Hogwarts girls gaze at him as dreamily as our old friend, Gilderoy Lockhart!"
Harry stared at him feeling as though he would explode with rage. Fury ran through him. How could they, he thought, chunter on as if the world was one great laugh, while people were dying.
"It's not working," George said. "We need something stronger." He waved his wand and said "Accio Anti-depressant Gum." There was a tiny pause, and then the door whooshed open and a pound of bite sized purple wrapped pellets zoomed into the room and hovered in the air waiting for George's hand to seize them. George casually unwrapped one and popped it in his mouth. He began to chuckle. At first his chuckle was quite low and mild, but he began to laugh with increasing volume and hilarity.
Fred watched him eagerly and explained, "This is one of the newest perfect way to get out of a dull boring class. Share a few of these with your friends and no one will be able to teach with all the laughter. And it's infectious. Even your teacher will laugh, too." Fred held out a purple pellet quite hopefully and his face sagged with disappointment when Harry shook his head. George was still laughing, now quite uncontrollably.
Ginny poked her head in and said, "Have you cheered him up yet?"
Harry stared at her angrily. "You set this up, did you?"
"Yes, I did," she said defiantly. "And don't you go getting mad at them or me. You need to stop taking yourself so seriously and laugh a little more."
"Yeah," Harry said, "well I don't feel like laughing. I don't think it's funny." His voice had started to rise in volume. "I don't think anything is funny anymore. And you wouldn't either if you were me."
"Oh wouldn't I?" Ginny answered. She had also started to yell and George and Fred were now watching their shouting match with expressions of detached interest.
"You know, Harry," she said cuttingly, "I think Hermione was right when she said you had a hero-complex. You think you have to go out and save the world and that's your destiny. And it makes you mad so you take it out on us. Well, you want to know what I think?"
"Not really," Harry answered, "but I'm quite sure you'll tell me anyway."
"Too right I will," she answered.
"Ten points for you girl," George said.
"I think you need to deflate your head is what I think. So what if that man was scared of you? So what if one stupid ignorant man was scared of you? Is that any good reason to go and shut yourself up and refuse to talk to us as if we did it?"
"Not bad," Fred commented, "she's almost got as good a head of steam up as Mum, and that's not easy to do." Absently, he pooped the pruple pellet into his mouth, and he began to chuckle just as George had done. Then that set off George again, and the two of them were soon laughing hysterically and uncontrollably.
Harry drew his wand and he was never quite sure afterwards whether he meant to hex them or simply to stop them. Suddenly, as if it had never been, his bad humor lifted, and he began to laugh, too. He laughed immoderately, loudly, without stop. At first, Fred and George were delighted and they exchanged a vigorous handshake, congratulating each other on another successful invention. Harry found that even funnier and he continued to laugh. His sides shook and he dropped his wand on the bed and fell over on his side, sobbing breathlessly with laughter. At some point, he couldn't tell when, the laughter turned to sobs and he found himself weeping just as helplessly as he had been laughing before.
That stopped Fred and George dead. "It's not working quite right, is it?" Fred said.
"I dunno," George answered, scratching his head and staring at the purple pellets. "I didn't cry. Neither did you."
"Oh, get out," Ginny snarled.
"Well, that's nice," Fred said, "see if we come at your emergency call again." Ginny didn't answer and Harry had no breath to either. The shudders that shook him continued and Ginny wrapped her arms around him and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought it would help. I didn't know it was that bad."
Harry shook his head and gulped in air to try to stop, but nothing seemed to work. He heard Hermione say, "We'll have to stop him." She muttered something, and Harry felt the shudders ease and then blackness descend.
"You don't think that was too much," Ginny asked anxiously.
"I don't know," he heard Hermione say at last. "I wonder if that wasn't something he needed very badly." He couldn't disagree as he had fallen fast asleep.
***
The sound of voices just outside the bedroom woke Hermione. It was quite early in the morning and she wouldn't have minded sleeping in for once, but now that she was awake, she was curious to know what Ginny was up to - one of the voices speaking. She threw the covers off and slipped on her robes quickly. She opened the door and got to the landing on the stairs just in time to see a red head whisk out the door.
Then Ginny came loping up the stairs and said airily, "You're up early today."
Hermione gave the younger girl her best stare and said, "Who was that going out?" If Ron was up to something without her, she would have to have a word with him.
"Just Mum," Ginny answered.
"Oh," Hermione said. She felt quite deflated for a moment, but then she thought and asked quickly, "Where's she going?" They had all been dead curious to know what Mrs. Weasley's assignment was. But no one would answer.
"Guard duty," Ginny answered.
"Guard duty?" Hermione echoed. "What's she guarding then? Harry's here and the prophecy were broken."
Ginny gave her a look and said, "Harry doesn't need guarding when he's here. There're enough spells on this house to prevent even Dumbledore getting in if he hadn't laid half of them himself.
"What spells?" Hermione asked. She already knew the house was unplottable and that the secret keeper charm had been cast to prevent anyone finding it. But what others, she was keen to know.
"Anti-apparition jinx, for one," Ginny answered. "No one can apparate into the house. And I'm not sure, but I think no one can disapparate out of the house either."
"There's something wrong with that," Hermione pointed out. "Ron and Harry are having disapparition lessons from Snape."
"Yeah," Ginny said, "I've been watching. But they haven't disapparated anywhere but from inside the house to inside the house, have they." Hermione frowned.
"Then Snape will have to take them out of the house for them to go anywhere very far. And," she added, "They'll have to go to the Ministry to take their tests, won't they?"
Ginny nodded, but her attention wasn't on the conversation. She had continued to climb the stairs to the next floor up where Harry's room was and she stopped outside the door and listened, her head tipped slightly to the side. "What exactly was that spell you put on him last night?" she asked.
"Just a sleeping charm," Hermione answered.
"Just?" Ginny scowled. "He could sleep forever then if you don't wake him up."
"Well, I will wake him," Hermione said. "And besides, what were you planning on doing? That was the most miserable trick you played on him, bringing Fred and George in there and giving him that awful joke stuff."
Ginny flushed and said, "Yeah, I know. I thought it would help cheer him up, you know. He's just...so...I dunno, distant, and depressed and almost like he's got nothing to keep him going anymore except to get his last fight with Voldemort over. I hate it," she added, "what that ba** stard has done to him." She looked at Hermione with a mixture of shame and defiance and said, "Even getting him angry is better than leaving him to drown like that."
"I see," Hermione said. "Well, let's go wake him up," she continued briskly, "he'll be in a terrible mood if Snape gets here before he's had a chance to wake up properly and all." Ginny nodded and stood with her hand on the doorknob listening. Then, apparently reassured that Harry was not yet awake, she turned the knob and cautiously entered the room.
The morning sun lit up the room in brilliantly as it shone through the stained glass windows and laid a path of colors across the floor and the covers of the bed and on Harry's still face. A small patch of crimson and gold played across his cheeks giving the illusion that the sleeping youth was healthy and whole. On closer inspection, Hermione was pleased to note that the fine-drawn look of strain that so often played on her friend's face was missing just now. She thought with surprise, perhaps it did him good after all, to have a good laugh and a cry and then sleep.
Ginny made a funny noise and said, "What's the counter-spell then?"
Hermione gave a little snort and said, "Well, it's not a kiss you know."
"No?" Ginny said. Then her eyes gleamed wickedly, very like Fred and George when they were about to have a good joke and she leaned over and kissed Harry right on the tip of his cheekbone. Harry moved very quickly, in that way he had that was so surprising, like a very large cat that would pounce and attack even before you had notice it was there. He turned and shoved Ginny over pinning her down and his green eyes were snapping with annoyance or was it laughter? Ginny laughed, which was not a good idea.
"What are doing tramping about on the landing like a pair of elephants," Harry griped, "and waking me up like that."
"You were up already!" Ginny said. "You weren't supposed to be up. Hermione put a sleeping charm on you." She wiggled and said, "Let me up, or I'll hex you with my bat-bogey hex first chance I get."
Hermione couldn't help giggling at that and at the offended look on Harry's face, just as though his pet cat had bit him. He let go of Ginny and turned to glare and Hermione in turn.
"Don't you know by now it's not a good idea to go waking up a guy like that."
His jet-black hair was more rumpled than ever and he was squinting at them, no doubt because his glasses were still on the table by the bed.
Hermione considered him minutely and asked, "Why were you up, anyway? You shouldn't have waked until I undid the charm." He shrugged as he so often did these days. An annoying habit he had of getting out of answering questions about his health or feelings. The green eyes dilated and turned inward for a moment.
Ginny stood up quickly and stared at him, "You were dreaming again, weren't you? You shouldn't have dreamed at all if you were under a sleeping charm."
He looked angry for a moment and Hermione thought he wouldn't answer. Then he shrugged again and said, "I do a lot of things I'm not supposed to."
The corner of his mouth tipped up a bit and he said, "You'd both better get out of here so I can dress. The last thing I need is for Snape to show up and catch you in here."
Hermione glared at him and said, "It'd serve you right. You were the one that let us think you were sleeping."
He gave her his best innocent look, but Hermione wasn't fooled when he replied, "It was a good charm. I couldn't open my eyes, even though I was awake."
She growled back at him and said, "We're not in a fairy tale, you know."
He looked at her, squinting again, because he couldn't see, and answered, "I dunno about that. We've got enough fairy tale bits here, you know. Dragons. Magic. Curses." Then he grimaced and said, "At least I didn't get turned into a frog." And then more doubtfully, "I expect you're right, though. The happily ever after part looks like it's not happening."
Hermione didn't know whether to weep or hit him just then and a glance at Ginny told her she was feeling the same.
"Well, you'd better get up or Snape will make you unhappy forever after, won't he?"
With that reminder, Hermione touched Ginny on the arm to be sure she'd follow and swept out of the room.
***
If Harry had thought being inducted into the Order of the Phoenix would make him privy to information he hadn't had before, he learned quite quickly that his membership was more honorary than anything else. He and Ron had morning lessons with Snape in disapparition, but they ceased after the first week because Snape wasn't willing to take them out of the house until Dumbledore gave the say so.
In fact, the most exciting issue was where Bill and Fleur were going to get married. Bill had determined that the wedding had to take place before the school term started and Mrs. Weasley had been bullied by seven other Weasleys into agreeing by having the wedding on such short notice when she really wanted to have an elaborate affair for her oldest son.
The problem, naturally, was Harry himself. No one wanted to keep him out of the celebration, but none of the adults wanted to hold it where Death Eaters might show up and have a go at him. Bill wanted to have it in the garden at the Burrow, which Harry thought would be just wonderful. He had felt just awful when Mrs. Weasley had said, "No! It’s not safe enough for you there," and was provoked enough to say very quietly, "I don't have to go."
It was Fleur who had protested to that. "Zat ees not fair," she said and everything was at a standstill until Harry suggested they just have the wedding right at Grimmauld Place.
Mrs. Weasley brightened up immediately and said, "Oh, are you sure you don't mind? We can use the garden in the back here."
Harry instantly thought, what garden? He hadn't been out of the house since the one day they'd gone to Portobello Road and he was starting to appreciate just how horrible and trapped Sirius must have felt spending all that last year in this gloomy, dark house. He was dead pleased, then, to be allowed out back in the garden and he was quite stunned when he realized how huge it was. One could never have guessed from the front of the house that this great wooded arbor could be found behind.
The once formal garden had grown wild and paths were grown over. Roses climbed in wild profusion over arched gateways and every so often there were small nooks with fountains or benches or statues that came alive and turned if one tapped them the right way. At the very center of the garden was a large folly whose white marble columns were quite overgrown with ivy and it was there that they had decided the ceremony could take place.
Because of the need to keep the place secret, only the Order members were invited and direct family. Fleur had volunteered to join, though what her assignment would be, no one would say. She had suggested herself that her Mum and sister could be brought in blindfolded so they didn't know where they had been.
Mrs. Weasley had sniffed a bit as though she would cry and said, "I wouldn't like that at all if it was me."
"Nevair mind," Fleur had replied, "Maman and Gabrielle will zink eet ees an adventure, and Maman will love ze garden."
The other thing that drove him quite batty was Hermione. She had suddenly woken up one morning and realized that they had only three hundred fifteen days until they had to take their NEWTs and she had instantly begun to organize a study schedule for Ron and Harry and herself. Harry cast about desperately for something else to distract her; and the subject that did was something that surprised him.
He had remarked at the first Snape-free breakfast that it was too bad they had to have the wedding at such a horrid house. Hermione had given him her steeliest glare and said, "Be glad you've got such a great wizard house. Nothing's stopping you from changing it to how you'd like it, is it?"
"Change it?" he'd said. "You mean like decorate or something?"
The very thought of it made him feel like running. Every other year Aunt Petunia would decide she needed to fix something in the house on Privet Drive in order to keep the neighbors and the members of the Little Whinging Garden Society impressed. When he'd been little, that had meant long stays in the cupboard under the stairs where he couldn't do something to mess up her new wallpaper or get in the way of the upholstery man. Later, it meant long days out in the hot sun with no lunch until every workman had left at the end of the day.
But Hermione, having got a new idea in her head, was quite keen to organize a whole new clean up. The house had to be fumigated completely. Somehow, in the two years since they had been there, spiders had nested back in odd crevices and doxies had found their way back in under the huge glass-fronted cupboard that still held various objects that had escaped Sirius's attempts at removal. Harry suspected that Kreacher was behind that. Ginny had also entered into the project enthusiastically.
After the first week of simply getting the worst of the remaining dark spells and creatures out, Ginny had turned to him and said, "Okay, now what about these curtains? Do you like the color? We can just repair them so they'll look almost new, or we can change the color, if you like."
Harry stared at the dingy dark green curtains and said, "Anything but green. And can we get rid of all the serpent candleholders and doorknobs? I feel like I'm living in the Slytherin common room. I keep expecting Malfoy to pop in any moment."
At Harry's comment on the prevailing green color scheme, Hermione and Ginny gave each other a significant look. Hermione flicked her wand and said "Reparo!" and the dingy curtains no longer appeared motheaten.
Ginny said gleefully, "Gold? Or red? Or purple?"
Hermione flicked her wand again and the curtains changed to a mellow shade of gold. Another flick and they were a deep crimson. A third made them a dark pruple.
The girls looked at Harry and said, "Which?"
Harry regarded them with alarm and said, "You do it. I think I'll have a walk in the garden."
Ron, who had been watching the entire exchange with the dull glazed look of someone who had been up for three nights in a row, said hastily, "I'll join you."
Hermione said firmly, "Gold in here, I think."
Ginny considered the room thoughtfully and said, "You do this room and I'll do the bedrooms. But before we let them out, they have to help clean out the cupboard."
Ron jumped, probably thinking about spiders and said, "I'm sure you can handle it. And Harry needs some fresh air for his health."
Harry was about to agree until he noticed Ginny's ears turning red and Hermione's eyes acquiring The Look. He coughed and said, "We can help with the cupboard. I expect it's not too bad."
Hermione tapped the glass doors with her wand, but they stayed closed. She said firmly, "Alohomora," but the doors stayed closed. Harry was inclined to laugh at the grim look on her face, but he held it down to a barely suppressed chuckle and said under his breath "Open sesame."
Unfortunately, she had heard him. He ducked slightly even though she hadn't actually done anything more than to give him The Look again.
Then he had to turn to look in the direction she was gawping at because her look of surprise was so very comical. It took him a full moment to realize that the cupboard doors were now sitting open. Then he gawked at them, too, and said, "That was a joke. Really."
Ginny giggled suddenly and said, "You didn't do anything special. It's just, the house obeys you is all. You could have said anything and the doors would open." Hermione looked strangely relieved. Harry supposed with another suppressed grin that she was very unused to having her spells fail her.
"You know," Ron said, "I could have sworn we threw out most of that stuff last time we were here."
Harry noted that the cupboard contained a silver framed photo of various Black family members. One of them swqueaked and they all turned their backs on Harry. There was also the crystal bottle filled with red liquid that Harry had thought last time was blood. The closer he looked, the more he was sure that it was. He reached in and removed the bottle and though the newly repaired curtains were drawn, for the first time since Harry had shouted for them to shut up, the portraits began a screaming, yelling cacophony that was louder than any that had been heard in the house yet.
"Blood traitors!" shrieked Sirius' Mother from behind the screening draperies. "Desecrator of my House! Kreacher! Kreacher! Throw them out! Throw the traitors out!" For the first time in days, the ancient house-elf showed his face. His huge eyes were mournful and he held a handful of cold bacon on one hand.
"Hey!" Ron said, "He's nicking the food! And look how he still answers to that horrid portrait. You should just throw him out, Harry. Who knows what he'll do behind our backs," he added darkly, "now that he's free."
Harry stared at the wrinkled old face of the elf and felt disgust rising. This thing had betrayed Sirius. And the old bat in the portrait was still shrieking. Kreacher stood very still, his batlike ears drooping, and he began to sob piteously, though no words could be distinguished. Harry could feel the others waiting for him to make a decision. Peculiarly, even Hermione didn't urge him to have pity this time. The wailing, shrieking, cursing voice of Sirius' mother made his anger grow further. He lifted his arm, the crystal bottle in hand and prepared to throw the bottle of blood right at the portrait. That, he thought, would shut up the poisonous old witch.
Kreacher's eyes grew huger than ever and Ginny said abruptly, "Don't!"
Harry stopped and stared at her. "Why not?" he asked. "It's disgusting. It's filled with blood."
"It is the blood of the House," Kreacher whispered. "Most potent magic and protections come from that blood. Break the crystal," the elf whispered, "and you break the House."
Harry stared at Ginny and Ron and said, "Is that true?"
Hermione was frowning as if though she were trying to remember something. Ron, however, coughed uncomfortably and said, "Well, yeah. Sort of. Some wizards do that. It's supposed to be protection for the family, to keep it going. That might even have been there since the first Blacks made this House."
Harry frowned. The practice seemed somehow bizarre and primitive almost. "Well, what good did it do? There aren't any Blacks left, are there? Not direct descendants. Since Sirius died."
Harry looked at Kreacher again with dislike. The ancient elf replied, his deep bass frog-like voice surprising everyone with its firmness this time. "Master Sirius left this House to you. Master Sirius continued his line through you." Then the huge eyes went cold the elf added, "Break the crystal, and you break your own protection now."
"I don't believe you," Harry answered.
"I dunno if I believe that stuff," Ron said with a sudden change of mind. "It's just like Trelawney's prattling about doom and grims and stuff. Throw it out and throw out the elf with it."
Kreacher crouched down and his eyes darted nervously to Harry. It was the poor scrap of cold bacon that made up his mind. He shook his head and said, "No. Leave him. And if he wants food, he can have what he likes."
He put the vial of blood back in the cupboard and said, "Forget this, right now." He swung around and said, "I want some air. If you want to decorate or do whatever, go right ahead."
And he strode out of the kitchen into the hidden garden in search of someplace where he could feel clean and innocent. Hermione watched Harry stalk away alone toward the kitchen, all her pleasure in refurbishing the house gone.
“He’s doing that too often,” Ginny said. “He keeps on doing that, walking away alone.”
“Sometimes,” Ron answered, “a guy needs to be alone.”
But his eyes, Hermione noted, followed his friend with as much anxiety as his sister’s or her own.
“You don’t go off like that all the time,” Ginny retorted. Ron considered his younger sister. His usually open face was grave and closed.
“I don’t have the same problems Harry does,” he answered.
“What are you saying, then?” Ginny responded. “You think there’s something wrong with him? Like he’s barmy or something?”
“It’s only amazing he isn’t,” Ron answered calmly. Hermione was amazed he hadn’t lost his temper. Usually a provocation like that was good for a real Weasley fight. And she could see that Ginny was spoiling for one, with Ron as her victim since she couldn’t yell at Harry. Ron stared at Ginny and added, “I’d be a real nutter if I had the most evil dark wizard in the world wanting to kill me. Truth is, I dunno how Harry stands it sometimes. It’s amazing he doesn’t just hide in a corner or dig himself a hole under the covers and refuse to come out.”
“That’d just make him feel worse,” Ginny muttered. “The thing is, he keeps things from us. Like how he reacted to that vial just now. That was a bit excessive, don’t you think? I mean, it’s almost like he has a phobia about blood or something. Except, he doesn’t really. He doesn’t normally react like that.”
“There is something to that,” Hermione said slowly. She was thinking, casting back, trying to decide what had caused his sudden fury.
“It’s not surprising really,” Ron said. “It reminded him of things.”
“What things?” Ginny asked quickly.
The faint warning signs of temper were still there. Hermione knew that Ginny didn’t like being kept out of things, especially where Harry was concerned; she supposed that this was part of it. When she thought of it, she realized just how often Ginny would ask her questions about Harry when the two of them were talking alone.
“When Voldemort came back,” Ron said. Hermione drew in a breath. She ought to have remembered that herself.
“What do you mean?” Ginny asked again. “I read his whole interview in the Quibbler, if that’s what you’re talking about. There was nothing in there about blood.”
“No,” Hermione said softly. “There wasn’t. He told the big things, I suppose. But there were things he left out. Things maybe he didn’t want everyone knowing. Or things he just didn’t feel like talking about.”
Ginny said nothing. She simply stood there looking like she would stamp her foot any second if they didn’t tell. Being the master of The Look, Hermione wasn’t much moved by the younger girl’s stare. Not much.
“It was when they did the rebirthing spell,” Ron answered. He was frowning slightly and Hermione saw with surprise that he was answering, not because Ginny had stampeded him into it, but apparently because he thought she should know. “Wormtail took some of Harry’s blood to complete the spell. I think that’s what upset him.”
Ginny frowned, trying, Hermione thought, to picture it, to figure out what had happened. “But they fought,” Ginny said at last. “Harry wouldn’t have stood still for that.” She stopped and then added, “I always did think there were things left out.”
“They tied him up,” Ron said. “He was tied up during that part. They didn’t let him go until later, when Voldemort decided to pretend he was going to let Harry duel before he killed him.” He added grimly, “Imagine his surprise when Harry stood up to him and got away. That wasn’t in his plan at all.”
Ginny looked quite pale and Hermione thought, that wasn’t a good idea to tell her that. One more nightmare to dwell on. “What else did he do then?” Ginny asked. “It wouldn’t be like Voldemort to let him get off lightly. He had him tied up and at his mercy. What else did he do?”
Hermione felt a stir of something like fright. She had assumed Harry had told them everything. She looked at Ron and saw that he was wondering the same thing. They knew about the Triwizard Cup being made into a portkey. They knew about Cedric being killed. They knew Harry had been tied up and watched as Wormtail had placed the fetal Voldemort in the stone cauldron. They knew Wormtail had cut of his hand and then taken blood from Harry. They knew Voldemort had risen, summoned his Death Eaters to him, and then had Harry released so they could “duel.” They even knew about Harry’s wand having connected with Voldemort’s, and the “ghosts” of the murdered people, including Harry’s Mum and Dad, having come out of Voldemort’s wand.
“I thought he told us everything,” Ron said. “Even about his protection from Voldemort being gone cause Voldemort used his blood. So what else would there be?” The three of them stared at each other until Ginny spoke the thought they were all wishing would go away.
"This is Voldemort we're talking about," she said. "He would have wanted to hurt him, to humiliate him, to make him be afraid...to make him beg...so he could show his power."
"How..." Ron started to say; how can you possibly know that, Hermione finished in her mind; but she already knew the answer, and so did Ron. It was Ginny whom Voldemort had possessed and used to open the Chamber of Secrets; it was Ginny who had been the final bait to bring Harry down to the rescue and into the near fatal coils of the basilisk.
Hermione had wondered before just how much of Voldemort's mind and personality the younger girl had seen and understood...and absorbed. That she had understood more than the adults around her had comprehended then was patent now. Ron smacked his hand into his fist, that wonderfully male way of releasing tension. Hermione bit her lip. What she wanted to do was scream, and that was too cowardly and too girlish for her. She sought for something that would bring them back to normal, or as far back as was possible when the world was inhabited by such a monster.
"Well," she said after a breath, "I think we ought to get on with this. The least we can do is make the place more cheerful."
Hours later, having transfigured the curtains to a mellow gold and the leather couches to a comfortable chocolate brown, Hermione looked up and saw that Harry had finally come in. He was lounging against the doorway staring at the room quite dreamily. Hermione had no clue whether he liked the change or whether he had simply retreated emotionally to some place where no one could touch him. His face and hands were dirty and so were his jeans. Not that that made a difference as, being worn nearly white, they were pretty much unmentionable to begin with.
"What have you been doing?" she asked before she could stop herself.
His green eyes focused on her and he said quite seriously, "Gardening. It's full of weeds. The garden, you know."
"You didn't do that by hand, did you?" she asked. Not that she needed to. The scratches on his hands answered the question for him.
He gave her a funny look and said, "That's how I always do it. For Aunt Petunia. She's quite particular about her garden."
A faint flush washed through his cheeks and he said, "I suppose I could have used magic." He added sheepishly, "I didn't even think of it." He looked around the room again as if he were seeing it for the first time.
"It's nice," he said. A small smile curled the corner of his mouth. "It's magic, isn't it?"
Hermione smiled back. "Yes, it is." And she saw that he, like herself, could still feel it, the wonder, the astonishment, that such a thing as magic really existed.
"You ought to go wash up before Mrs. Weasley gets back," she added. "She'll never let you near the dinner table looking like that."
"Won't she?" he said. A faint spark of mischief lit his eyes and he said, "What if I came to the table and put my feet up? What if I did everything wrong? It's my house, isn't it? I can do what I like, can't I?"
"No, of course, you can't, you silly prat," Hermione answered, "You have to be even more polite when it's your house and the other people are your guests."
His face fell just a little and he said ruefully, "I knew that. It just sounded like fun."
She was dreadfully tempted to tell him to try it. Anything that made Harry use the word fun these days was worth trying. But he looked at his hands and swiped his damp hair out of his eyes leaving another patch of dirt on his forehead, so that the lightning scar stood out in perfect relief. He shrugged and said vaguely, "I think I will have a wash," and he left the room making sure to tiptoe around the newly refurbished Axminister carpet, whose pattern was now all in gold and cream and blue and rose instead of green and black and salmon.
***
When he got up to his room, Ginny was there contemplating the changes she had made. The room resembled a cross between the Gryffindor common room and his dormitory. The walls were a deep red and the bed cover now was the same red with a gold pattern of some kind shining through it.
She took one look at him and said, just as Hermione had done, "What have you been doing to yourself?" The intonation was so exactly like her Mum's though, that Harry grinned when he answered. Her response was also so perfectly Mrs. Weasley.
"Gardening? Haven't you got a wand? Whatever were you thinking, tearing yourself up like that? What did you do, pull up the weeds with your bare hands?"
He contemplated his scratched, dirty hands and said, "Erm...yeah."
She put her hands on her hips and said, "What were you trying to prove, then?" Her eyes were sparkling and he thought, she isn't crying is she?
"Nothing," he protested. "That's how I always garden."
"You do not!" she answered. "Madam Sprout doesn't have people pulling things up and messing themselves up like that."
"No," he said patiently, "I meant when Aunt Petunia has me do it."
He turned to go into the adjoining bathroom, but she said hesitantly, "Is this okay? The colors and all, I mean." Harry looked again at the room. On any other day, the red and gold colors would have made him happy. Today, the red, a deep dark color, made him squirm; but he didn't want to say that.
"It's the red, isn't it?" she said. "I ought to have known that would bother you." She mumbled to herself, "Not green, not red, what to do?"
"It's all right," he said hastily. "Red's okay. Some reds are great," he added looking at the burnished golden copper of her hair. She turned back and took a closer look at his hands.
"Yeah," she said, "but first let's get your hands cleaned up before we fix the walls."
"I can wash myself," he said stiffly. "I've been doing that since I was quite small." He walked into the bathroom and ran the water over his hands until the worst of the dirt came off.
The small cuts stung when he soaped them up, but he didn't mind. He had dug at the weeds with all his attention, concentrating on removing each one as completely as possible. There were still acres of them to pull up yet, though, and that was a good thing.
"I think that's clean enough now," Ginny said startling him out of his thoughts. Harry glared at her, annoyed at being startled and annoyed that she was still there when he really just wanted a bit more privacy. She came over and took his hands and inspected them carefully. Then she pulled out her wand and waved it over them. The tiny cuts healed up and the sting of all those little slices disappeared.
"I forgot," he said. "You're pretty good at that. Did you ever think of studying to be a healer?"
"Not really," she said. She turned back to the room and gazed at the walls as if they would come up with an answer all by themselves. "Not purple purple. That would be too much," she muttered to herself. Outside, the sun was setting and dusk was settling in. Only the stained glass windows were unchanged, and the dusky light fell through it casting muted versions of the morning's brighter cousins. She tipped her head and then lifted her wand. She walked steadily about the room, very like a painter spraying the walls with paint, except that light came out of her wand, and where she passed, the red walls changed to a muted dusky color, somewhere between blue and violet. Another wave turned the bedcovers a deeper shade of the same.
"That's nice," he said, though he knew it wasn't nearly adequate for the effort.
"Yeah," she said absently, "but it needs something more." She flicked her wand again and again, and on the walls, silvery and gold patterns showed up faintly in the darkening light. With another wave, the fireplace lit up and the candlabras sprang to life. The firelight reflecting off of the silvery and gold patterns illuminated the shapes of moons and tiny stars. And on the ceiling, the stars formed the shape of a lion.
Ginny nodded her head and said, "That's better." He wanted to agree, but the words stopped in his throat.
The firelight lit the vivid red hair and his thoughts were anything but innocent. He blushed fiercely when Mrs. Weasley poked her head in the open doorway and said,"What's keeping you? Dinner's ready." Ginny didn't seemed to have noticed thankfully.
"We've been redecorating," she answered. "No more green. It was too much like Slytherin for Harry." Mrs. Weasley's glance flitted from Ginny to Harry and back again with the smallest of flicks.
She said only, "It's very nice." Then her sharp eyes noted the dirt on his clothes and she asked him for the third time that day, "What have you been doing?" This time Ginny got the joke.
She giggled and said, "Gardening."
"Well you can't come to the table like that," Mrs. Weasley said determinedly and without asking she pulled out her wand and said, "Scourgify!" Harry felt as though a wind had blown through him. His hair seemed to lift up of its own accord and his jeans returned to a pristine state. At least, as pristine as they could be given their wear. Mrs. Weasley shook her head. "There's no fixing some things," she muttered as she waved them down the stairs to join the others for dinner. Harry was surprised to find that only Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and the four of them were there for dinner.
When asked, Mrs. Weasley merely said vaguely, "A few of the others might come later."
Harry thought of pressing her for more information, but he felt oddly, that a night with no one else might be nice for a change. He poked at his food and listened to Ron's jokes and Ginny's giggles with a quiet pleasure. Hermione grinned at something Ginny whispered to her, and then whispered back again leaving Ron looking quite outraged. Mrs. Weasley watched all of them and Mr. Weasley watched Mrs. Weasley.
Harry noticed that Mrs. Weasley had gotten much thinner again and she looked both younger and older all at once. The bones in her face showed through more, so that she looked at times very like her younger daughter. At others though, the light was unkind, and it showed the faint worry lines the anxiety in her eyes.
By the time dinner was done, Harry felt once again almost overpoweringly trapped. He wondered whether it was something about the house itself, that no decorating in the world could change. Or perhaps, a voice whispered slyly at the very back of his mind, you're just getting tired of having to listen to everyone else. Perhaps you just want to be free to do as you and come and go as you like. Shut up, he told the voice silently and he rose restlessly and headed toward the door to the garden.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Weasley demanded.
"Out into the garden," he said quite calmly. He was pleased that none of his obsession showed; he hoped it didn't. He needed, had to, get out of the house. He opened the door and Mr. Weasley stood up to follow him out. The garden was dark and full of shadows, but a full moon was rising and the stars sparkled as brightly as though they had been in the country far away from any man made lights at all. Mrs. Weasley followed them out and Mr. Weasley tapped something that brought a rosy light on to the right and started a fountain playing with a whoosh to the left.
Mr. Weasley took Mrs. Weasley by the hand and said, "Let's go take a look at the place where our Bill will be married."
Harry ambled on further and Ron, Hermione and Ginny followed out. Mrs. Weasley turned to look at them and Mr. Weasley said firmly, "They can't go anywhere Molly. It's as safe as Hogwarts would be."
Mrs. Weasley didn't reply, but she turned away and followed Mr. Weasley toward the folly at the heart of the garden. Harry waited a moment more and saw that Ron and Hermione were taking the path toward the right. He watched them go and saw that Ginny stood quite irresolute, unsure whether to follow the others or go off on her own.
"Let them alone," Harry said softly. "Ron wants her to himself for a bit, I think." Ginny took a step back toward him, and then another.
"Yes," she agreed, "but does she want to be alone with him?"
"Oh, I think so," Harry answered. He watched as Ron draped a long arm around Hermione's shoulders and felt a pang, though at what he wasn't certain. He moved toward the left where the fountain played softly. Ginny shrugged and followed him, though for some reason she looked bothered. He slowed to let her catch up and they wandered down a rose covered archway and into a niche that should have been dark but for the brightness of the moon. Faintly, Harry heard laughter, tinkling, and high-pitched, accompanied by soft music. He lifted his head and listened, trying to figure out if the Muggles next door also had a garden and if they could be heard in this enchanted one if they did.
"It's fairies," Ginny said, answering his thought.
"Fairies?" Harry asked. His eyes tracked to where she was pointing, and sure enough, there was a cluster of light among the roses of the archway and the giggling laughter came from there. He watched them a moment more and lifted his head to the sky to drink in the expanse of the sky and feel the faint touch of the wind on his cheek. He wished there were some great magic ship one could take to go up there and see all the stars they studied in Astronomy class. Were there worlds there, too, he wondered, and did they have wizards and magic? He shook his head and thought, probably not.
"What are you thinking?" Ginny asked.
"Nothing much," he answered, though that wasn't altogether true. He took a deep breath wanting, for once, to stop thinking and only to feel; to feel free, for once. Roses scented the air and jasmine and gardenia. They should have clashed, but they didn't. Not being bottled, their scent was light and pleasing and undertones of earth and willow and oak and pine played the bottom notes to their brilliant top.
He breathed deeply again and abandoning all effort at thought, he reached out and pulled the girl beside him close and bent down to kiss her. His blood whooshed through him in time to the sound of the fountain nearby. Instinct told him it wasn't necessary to think. Feeling sometimes was enough. In the distance, a dog howled and the music played a mellow sweet air. He heard again the tinkling laughter of the fairies and wished the moment could go on forever. He pulled her closer and again instinct told him there was more, but before he could do anything further a hand clapped on his shoulder and a dry sarcastic voice woke his mind back up.
It was Snape. And Dumbledore. And McGonagall. Ginny gasped and hid her head in Harry's shoulder. He felt the rush of heat of embarrassment and something close to rage at being interrupted.
"What?" he said aggressively, not bothering to apologize, Professor Dumbledore regarded him with a faint amusement, and yet, at the same time, Harry thought the elderly wizard had got some other thought behind that. Something thoughtful and canny and hopeful all at once.
Snape, on the other hand, was his usual self. "Teenagers," he said with disgust. "The safety of the world depends on a reckless, unthinking teenager."
Harry glared at him and said, "Well at least it doesn't depend on a jaded cynic like you."
"All of us were teenagers at one time," Dumbledore said, "But some of us have a harder time recalling what it was like than others."
"Some of us didn't make very good teenagers when we were teenagers," McGonagall said under her breath.
Harry couldn't believe she of all people had said that. But apparently, Snape hadn't heard the comment because he simply jerked his head at Dumbledore in what Harry thought of as a not very tactful prompt to get on with things; which hint Dumbledore took.
Very seriously, the elderly wizard said, "Miss Weasley, I must ask you to return to the house immediately. Your parents and brother and Miss Granger will be waiting for you there."
"But I want to help," Ginny protested. "You're not sending Harry off alone, are you?"
Dumbledore shook his head and said, "Not at all. But we do need his help in a small matter. Go on in," he added, in the voice that everyone obeyed.
Harry frowned in puzzlement. If it were a small matter, he thought, Voldemort wouldn't be involved. "Is it Voldemort?" he asked. "What's he up to?"
Both Snape and McGonagall winced slightly at his use of Voldemort's name, but it was Snape who answered, not Dumbledore. "Not HIM," Snape said, "not directly. Lupin."
Harry goggled at the Potions master and looked back at Dumbledore for confirmation. "Professor Lupin? He wouldn't do anything wrong," Harry said angrily. "He's never been on Voldemmort's side."
"No," Dumbledore answered. "Unfortunately, under certain cricumstances, he can be a danger to others and to himself." Harry's first thought was to deny that. Then he looked up at the sky, at the full moon lighting the garden and he felt quite sick.
"What about the wolfsbane potion?" he asked.
"He drank it," Snape said grimly. "I prepared it myself and handed it to him."
"But then," Harry said, "does it stop working or something after a while?"
Snape shook his head. "No. It should have worked. But he didn't drink it immediately. He set it down among a group of us and then drank it."
"A group of you?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Snape answered. "We meet in other places sometimes."
"So what are you saying," Harry asked, "somebody, a member of the Order, tampered with it?"
"That would be the obvious conclusion," Snape answered. "It seems we have a spy amongst us." Harry stared at him.
"If that's so, then Voldemort knows for certain you're spying on him." Snape's dark eyes were unreadable.
They glittered as he said, "Not at all. I told him myself I've joined the Order. He thinks I'm spying on you for him."
"That's a hell of dangerous game to play," Harry said. He stared at Snape and said; "I think the Sorting Hat might have made a mistake with you."
Snape's face went quite blank and Profesor Mcgonagall made a very funny sound, almost like a cross between hiss and a purr.
Dumbledore, on the other hand, looked unusually thoughtful. "We're wasting time," he said, ending the discussion. "We need to get on with this and find Remus before he does any damage."
