D/C: Harry Potter is owned by Warner Bros and the publishing rights are owned by JK Rowling. All original content copyright.

A/N: This story is the idea of NightMagic and I'm very grateful for it! Thanks, NightMagic! I appreciate all comments and suggestions from my readers, thanks for reading. This story starts during the summer between Harry's fifth and sixth years.

Chapter 1 – Dawn

Chess, he knew, was something that Harry was likely to never beat Ron at. Only pride and embarrassed determination made him keep trying. It had been almost five years of this, but Harry couldn't bear to give it up.

'I could take that pawn,' Ron thought aloud, 'but I'd feel cruel doing that to you'. He grinned wickedly at a picture on the wall, not looking at his best friend.

'Go on then.' Harry rubbed the back of his neck and surreptitiously glanced around for something with which he could distract Ron. Not to cheat, of course - that would take the sweetness out of his imminent win - just to take Ron's mind off the game long enough for Harry to slip in some unexpected move.

Ron outstretched his hand to capture Harry's black pawn with his knight, nose wrinkling in feigned guilt in the sunny room. They were lounging on the floor of the Weasleys' living room while playing alongside the occasional sound of the ghoul in the attic (who was in a particularly foul mood this summer) rattling the pipes loudly enough to interrupt their chess game. This was what Harry was hoping for. It would be brilliant to win against Ron for once.

He hesitated before he moved his queen, sure that Ron would flatten her with some already premeditated mode of attack, which he did, all too self-assuredly for Harry's liking. Ron settled more comfortably on his stomach and sighed, contented.

There was a sound of feathers brushing against something; Errol flapped in on their eye level, so languidly he looked as though he were ready to drop out of the air any minute. Looking absolutely, unapologetically innocent, he flew straight at Ron's face. A feather ball exploded all over the room, followed by rude yells from Ron and hurt hoots from Errol. As soon as the storm of discarded feathers cleared, Ron spat out a mouthful of them, grabbed the owl by the leg and marched into the kitchen. He threw Errol outside and returned to the living-room in much the same manner in which he had left.

Harry, having caught the feathers from behind Errol, was dripping with them. He was covered to the extent that he resembled a half-furry yeti gripped with maniacal laughter somewhat disproportionate to the humour to be found in Errol's accident.

'Stupid feather duster', muttered Ron, but a small smile sneaked onto his face at seeing his friend laugh again all the same. He threw a few grey feathers at the roaring Harry. Then he gasped and the colour drained from his face to churn his stomach. 'Clean it up before Mum sees', he hissed urgently.

Harry stopped laughing immediately at the thought of Mrs Weasley's reaction to the state of her living room and helped Ron clear it of feathers unattached to owls. They both had forgotten completely about the chess game. Harry felt a bit sorry for Errol, who had been lobbed out the kitchen window, and decided to check on him when Ron went upstairs to make sure that nobody else had heard anything of the chaos. He opened the kitchen door and stepped outside. The owl was lying on his side among the chickens in the front yard, hooting feebly; Harry picked him up, shook him out awkwardly, took him back inside and delicately placed him against the windowsill. After being thanked with a lethargic hoot, Harry walked to the staircase to wait for Ron.

He sat on the bottom stair. A hot weight took him for a moment. It was like a brief fever. Then it was gone and if it had been another of Voldemort's feelings, at this moment, while he was so happy, he didn't want to know about it. Harry let it alone as Ron descended the stairs with an expression of relief and instructions from Mrs Weasley to fetch plates for lunch.

The sweet scent of dawn was, surprisingly, the first thing to meet him as he woke. The sharp pleasantness of it filtered through to his sleepy brain.

Then he was struck, full and square, inside his head. The heat of high fever possessed him and the shock of it had a sick rhythm of its own. He groaned. The groan adopted the beat. Dizziness joined in and they circled him relentlessly.

Someone touched his arm as it lay limply and heavily sprawled; the movement sent walls of compacted light-headedness along the arm to his head. Waves hit him, intense and sickening, but less so with each one. He gave the throb vocal form in a short cry.

He heard clumsy feet pounding the floor a long way below him, far away. A prolonged creak of the door, the swish of a dressing gown on carpet. It was strange that he could register every sound around him while his other senses had faded, useless. His heart skipped and quickened. Harry tried to open his eyes; it was either that he couldn't open them or that there was no light, because he couldn't see anything at all.

The heat surged upon him once again. It wholly devoured him and he wished that he could hide from the ill feeling he was now aware of. He tried to move and so break the enclosedness, but could not shift away: he was alone under, enveloped by, a quiet, dark hell.

The door again, and intense relief as a light touched the space around him. He could see. The footsteps were coming closer. Hands lifted, jolted, stroked him. He wanted the hands to leave; they were making the dizziness combust through all of his body.

He had to escape, but too quickly for him they were wrapping him in something, adding another layer to his cocoon. It was warm, a different kind of warmth to normalcy: it felt alien, and prickly to his skin. Burned by the paired heats of his blanket and his cage, he wanted an end to it.

The light went out. He was being held firmly. They pressed something against him, something slippery, and then he was rushing through space, still tightly wrapped, tightly held. The slippery surface, he realised, was a gumboot Portkey. As he was moving an explosion was building in his head; fiery tendrils of it were breaking into flame across his limp body.

They slowed and stopped. He was nestled between them and stifled by their bodies. Light presented itself again and he heard the faint sounds of voices in the distance.

The breeze smelled of the last days of a soft and beautiful summer. The inviting, spicy coolness was the herald of autumn, of death and other forms of loss. Autumn was a cruel disguise, a pretty display of colour designed to distract the world as it was smothered by the descent of winter. Everything shrivelled with winter, closed itself off to the world, died.

Lily uncrossed her ankles and set her diary down on the table beside her chair in the deserted Gryffindor common room. Someone had opened a north-facing window through which the enticing breath of wind chased itself, bringing a whisper to Lily from nature of a deep sadness and resulting similarity between itself and her. A sudden urge to go outside, into the arms of nature, rose in her. They could comfort each other, bear witness to the sadness.

After a moment, she stood up to reluctantly close the window to prevent her homework, which was scattered around the table at present, from flying away and joining the breeze in its chase about the room. She had wanted to leave it open so the pleasant scent of dying summer would still be in the room when she returned. But Lily didn't, because she was always sensible, practical. She tidied her thick hair with smoothing fingers.

She stood up; half-ran towards the portrait hole; climbed out; raised a hand in greeting to the Fat Lady; ran, hard now, down the corridor; down the stairs; through the Entrance Hall; into the grounds and wind and smell and sunlight.

She closed her eyes until the breeze found her nose. Breathing it deeply, she let her feet take her on her usual route, thinking of nothing in particular.

She came to the wide, flat tree stump in the clearing by the lake. It bore the rings of many years, which faded in and out of each other so that each one was visible by itself, but not distinguishable from the others. She walked around the stump, one hand on its top, her eyes roaming around the landscape of trees and curves and spaces. Why can't it be like this forever? Just me, and the wind, and the world?

The swellings were growing to be uncomfortable. He touched the glands around his throat tentatively, testing them, as a surge of frustration at his helplessness arose inside him. Boredom had crawled its way inside the crevices of his mind. All he wanted was to fall asleep, heavily, deeply, into a gentle oblivion in which boredom didn't exist, but he couldn't fall asleep. The heat had settled down but only to join boredom in its quest to conquer his brain with reliable monotonies.

A long while had slipped away since Harry had woken up with one hand stretched out wide and straining on the rough cotton hospital bed sheet. The room he was in was bare and all the same shade of white. He wondered how the staff could get everything to be the exact same colour. Feeling out of place in this uniformity, he had turned over to escape, but dizziness found him again; he kept still until the confused rushing in his head calmed. With his head pressed against the pillows he had become aware of the lumps at his throat and their slight pressure and unusualness.

It had occurred to Harry that he was not going to be enjoying the last week of the holidays.

His watch now seemed to be counting the minutes at whatever pace took its fancy: sometimes ten minutes by it seemed like one, or the second hand would slow down until Harry thought it was going to stop. After a while he stopped looking at his watch in disgust and tried to sleep.

He stirred and found that some of his senses were already functioning before he had woken up in earnest. He wanted to slip back into sleepy depths but some alert part of his mind told him to stay awake. He obeyed and was rewarded with the sight of two large balls coloured by two circles, black and green, one inside the other; slightly luminous in the dark. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the balls belonged to the eye sockets of a small, flap-eared creature: Dobby. Harry blinked in confusion.

With a cold jolt he remembered why he was in this hospital bed. Lockhart had taken all the bones out of his right arm after the Bludger had broken it. He tried to move his fingers and they worked. The Skele-Gro must have grown his arm back already.

But why was the house-elf here, at Hogwarts, let alone at night? Harry felt the stirrings of remembered incredulous anger and wondered why it had risen and manifested as the burning of his cheeks.

Dobby presented Harry with a small black diary. A submerged memory was at the near surface of his consciousness and was trying to fight its way up.

Riddle's diary… the Chamber of Secrets… Lupin, Pettigrew, Sirius and his father, James. The graveyard. Cedric. Voldemort returned. And Sirius, gone -

It had been pleasant to believe that he was twelve again and innocent, but the confusion of fever had lifted enough for Harry to come forward to the present in which his arm was unbroken but the rest of him was otherwise.

Dobby wanted to speak and was requesting Harry's attention with his up-right stance. 'It was your mother's, sir. Dobby didn't look at it, Harry Potter'.

Harry retreated into confusion again. He realised that Dobby meant the diary and took it off his chest, tracing his fingers on the cover. It had been his mother's. Electric emotion coursed through him: he was holding something of hers at last. He quivered. But he couldn't read it; it looked like her personal diary. That would be a violation.

'It is yours to keep, Harry Potter, sir.'

Harry stroked the old book with the fingertips of his left hand, afraid he would tear it because it was so fragile and because it was so precious. It bore an untouchable stamp of her and that was priceless to Harry.

'Why did you have it?' There was a need to protect it from anyone who didn't understand.

'Dobby is cleaning the Gryffindor common room, the other elves still won't because of all the clothes Harry Potter's friend is hiding. They is not willing to risk clothes, sir.' Dobby pulled down the neon-green and mustard-coloured tea cosy so that it sat more firmly on his head. He looked sad. 'Dobby is cleaning the ceiling because Peeves smeared owl droppings on it. Dobby is using elf-magic to scrape the stubbornest bits off and a book falls to the floor; it had a camouflage spell and a sticking charm on it so Dobby didn't see it there before, but they is gone now because of the elf-magic. Dobby is looking inside the front cover and sees Harry Potter's mother's name and snaps it shut at once. Then Dobby comes to see Harry Potter, but sir, why is you here?'

There were myriad things clamouring for Harry's attention, but the two that won it were the needs for solidarity and sleep. 'I'm sick, Dobby. And I don't want to talk about it. But thanks for bringing this to me,' Harry dismissed him as politely as he could.

Dobby looked at him closely, seeing the swelling around his face and, more alarmingly, the quiet endurance in his eyes.

'Ah, sir, Dobby wishes that Harry Potter were not sick. Dobby hopes Harry Potter heals quickly, he looks forward to seeing sir at Hogwarts soon,' sympathised Dobby.

'Thanks.' A firmer dismissal.

He took the hint. 'Dobby will come and see you soon, sir.' There was a cracking noise and then Dobby wasn't there anymore.

Harry slept.

The healer put the manila file down on the bedside table. 'The problem is that you have the mumps.' She looked pleased that she had it all figured out. 'It's a funny thing, the mumps is a Muggle childhood disease, you know. We've only ever had one other case'.

'Ok, fine. So when can I get out of here?'

The healer smoothed her greying hair, buying time to think of a tactful approach. 'The illness itself and therefore the solitary confinement will be over in two weeks.'

Harry feigned a polite half-smile, but didn't speak, there seemed to be more to come.

'There are a few possible after-effects,' she continued. 'None are likely to occur, however, you could, for example' - she was stumbling over her words now - 'become infertile. Now that I think about it, our other mumps patient did. Oh, but I'm not helping by telling you that… well, er, any questions?'

'How am I supposed to know what to ask?' Harry just wanted to get the following weeks over with; he didn't care about anything else.

She looked ruffled by this, but then a young woman in a different uniform came inside the ward and whispered something in the healer's ear, then scurried out as if on fire.

'Yes, I know, Harry. Well, I shall notify your family of your condition. I have to attend to another patient now, if you'll excuse me.' The healer hurriedly followed the young woman, calling out something about Billywig allergies.

He was going to miss the first week back at school. Harry wouldn't have put it past Snape to invent more potions work for him to catch up then he'd actually missed. Still, he couldn't wait to be back at Hogwarts.

He lay back and sighed heavily. Turning to his right, he realised that the healer had forgotten her file on the bedside table. Seeing the "Potter, Harry" label on the front, he picked it up. He decided to look inside. Harry felt a little guilty, but, as he reasoned with himself, it was after all his file; it wasn't as if he were snooping.

As this was his first time in hospital and because he hadn't been here all that long, the file didn't have much in it. There were a few pages of notes and a form which had been filled out with his details. It was unsettling to see his entire life rationalised and summarised on flimsy paper that he could hold in his hands.

The last page in his file was of notes comparing the two mumps cases, being, well, the only two on record at St. Mungo's. The other person had had swollen glands and the like as Harry did now, but the notes for the other went on longer. They spanned the duration of his illness, while Harry's were of just the small part he had already experienced; he had been in hospital only about a day so far. At least the mumps didn't seem to be life-threatening, possible infertility and other side-effects or otherwise.

Harry found the other person's name. And then he wished he had left the file on the table for the healer and never opened it.