The Hidden Truth
Prologue:
Harry Potter looked down at the piece of parchment before him on the table, nestled between the bowls of scrambled eggs and bacon on the Burrow kitchen table. His school list sat before him, his Seventh year school list. After everything that had happened last year, some people might've found it strange that they were all going back for their final year; especially that he would. He hadn't even been sure that he was going to, but Hermione had talked him, and by extension Ron, into it, and Harry had quite liked the idea of being in the same year as Ginny. With Voldemort gone he hoped he'd actually manage to achieve a quiet year.
"Well, here we go. It all looks simple enough," Hermione said, glancing through the lists quickly as Mrs. Weasley dished out breakfast for each person at the table. "Should we go to Diagon Alley today? I'd like to get a start on this reading list."
Ron snorted through his potatoes at that, although he was hardly surprised.
"Why would we want to start early? It's not like the books are going to be changing what they say."
Hermione frowned at her boyfriend and Harry could easily see a 'bookstorm' brewing, but it was too beautiful a late July day to begin it with an argument.
"Why not?" he quickly put in, "we'll have more of a chance to visit with George and Percy."
No one had been more shocked than his mother when George had decided to move back to London and re-open the Joke Shop, but everyone had been flabbergasted when Percy had decided to go with him.
"He needs someone to look after him," he'd reasoned, "and everybody knows I got the brains of this family. You just wait, within a year there'll be Weasley Wizard Wheezes shops all over England."
Wisely no one had challenged him, although they all knew it was as much for himself as for George.
The idea of visiting George and Percy mollified Ron and he stopped grumbling, while Hermione went back to reading through the booklist.
Harry was just trying to think of some place he and Ginny could sneak off to, and not be found out by her mother, when he heard Hermione, of all things, snort in amusement.
"What's so funny, all of a sudden?" he asked.
"This" Hermione flipped the booklist to show him the last item, "Ancient History of Magic; the Lost Faire Lore? Honestly, that has to be the most ridiculous read ever; there are no such things as fairies."
"Now don't go assuming things just because you don't know!" Ginny argued, surprising the trio. "There are Unicorns, that you know for sure, and basilisks, and mermaids and hippogryphs, goblins, trolls, and centaurs, too. After everything you three have seen over the last seven years, how can you just assume that fairies don't exist either?"
"Well, because…because I've never seen one, or read anything serious about them!" Hermione insisted, but even to her it seemed a poor excuse.
"Tell them, Mum!" Ginny begged her mother.
"Now, now, Ginny is quite right, you should not assume," Mrs. Weasley started, deflating Hermione a bit further. "Fairies do indeed exist, or they once did, in any case."
"They once did? You mean like they're extinct now?" Hermione asked her, curiosity afire.
Mrs. Weasley nodded. "They disappeared during the Dark Times; but I'm not the best person to tell that story, there's a good reason it's left until final year," and she refused to say any more. However, now Hermione was desperately curious, but all she got out of Ron's mother was a suggestion, "Ask Professor McGonnagall, Professor Binns, or Hagrid."
"Hargrid, why Hagrid?" she wanted to know.
"Well" Mrs. Weasley replied, "He is the Care of Magical Creatures teacher now, he would know."
And with that maddeningly vague reply, Hermione and the boys were left to wonder for the rest of the summer.