Author's Note: This story is based on two separate ideas that I had. The first is that Harry could've burst at a less than opportune moment with someone with more of temper when he was influenced by Voldemort in his fifth year. The second is that Voldemort could actually act like a Slytherin. Not just sneaky, but actually cunning. You'll see what I mean, plus I'll explain a little about at the end of the chapter. Warning, this story has a slightly manipulative Dumbledore, but only to the same extent as in the books. He did lead Harry to death, after all.

P.S. I don't own Harry Potter or any of the character. Furthermore, anything in italics is taken directly from one of J.K Rowling's books.


"He's not an adult either!" said Mrs. Weasley, the color rising in her cheeks. "He's not James, Sirius!"

"I'm perfectly clear who he is, thanks, Molly," said Sirius coldly. "I'm not sure you are!" said Mrs. Weasley.

"Sometimes, the way you talk about him, it's as though you think you've got your best friend back!"

"What's wrong with that?" said Harry.

"What's wrong, Harry, is that you are not your father, however much you might look like him!" said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes still boring into Sirius. "You are still at school and adults responsible for you should not forget it!"

"Meaning I'm an irresponsible godfather?" demanded Sirius, his voice rising. "

"Meaning you've been known to act rashly, Sirius, which is why Dumbledore keeps reminding you to stay at home and —"

"We'll leave my instructions from Dumbledore out of this, if you please!" said Sirius loudly.

"Arthur!" said Mrs. Weasley, rounding on her husband. "Arthur, back me up!"

Mr. Weasley did not speak at once. He took off his glasses and cleaned them slowly on his robes, not looking at his wife. Only when he had replaced them carefully on his nose did he say, "Dumbledore knows the position has changed, Molly. He accepts that Harry will have to be filled in to a certain extent now that he is staying at headquarters —"

"Yes, but there's a difference between that and inviting him to ask whatever he likes!"

"Personally," said Lupin quietly, looking away from Sirius at last, as Mrs. Weasley turned quickly to him, hopeful that finally she was about to get an ally, "I think it better that Harry gets the facts — not all the facts, Molly, but the general picture — from us, rather than a garbled version from . . . others."

His expression was mild, but Harry felt sure that Lupin, at least, knew that some Extendable Ears had survived Mrs. Weasley's purge. "Well," said Mrs. Weasley, breathing deeply and looking around the table for support that did not come, "well . . . I can see I'm going to be overruled. I'll just say this: Dumbledore must have had his reasons for not wanting Harry to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got Harry's best interests at heart —"

"He's not your son," said Sirius quietly.

"He's as good as," said Mrs. Weasley fiercely.

"Who else has he got?" "He's got me!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Weasley, her lip curling. "The thing is, it's been rather difficult for you to look after him while you've been locked up in Azkaban, hasn't it?" (From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

For Harry, that's been a step too far. His anger from before, towards Hermione and Ron for not telling him anything came back with a vengeance.

"And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?" he asked in an icy cool voice that would've made Snape proud. A sneer upon his face showed the contempt that Mrs. Weasley unwittingly brought upon herself. He felt self-assured with a righteous anger on behalf of his god father. "Sure, Sirius made a mistake, but he's paid the price in full, wouldn't you say?" His voice began to rise. "And who are you to call yourself as good as my mother? MY MOTHER DIED FOR ME!" he shouted angrily.

Mrs. Weasley's face began to turn a lovely shade of puce that he'd only seen before on Uncle Vernon. Harry felt he may have over-stepped his bounds, but she'd done so first.

"You housed me for a month! A MONTH! To call yourself my mother is to put her sacrifice to shame! And what next? Will you go to her grave and tell her it's been rather difficult for her to look after me while she's been buried FIVE FEET UNDER?'"

Finally, Harry huffed and stormed away. He could hear Mrs. Weasley's shrill voice calling after him and had no doubt that the Weasley family as a whole would call bloody murder, but he knew he couldn't deal with it right now. Harry stomped up the stairs in a way reminiscent of Dudley every morning before he awoke Harry, though far more light footed. Harry was, after all, much lighter, even now, than Dudley had been when he was eleven.

Harry figured that since he'd been on the bottom-most floor, the furthest he could get would be the top-most one. In the back of his mind, behind all the rage and brooding over his confrontation, Harry noted the horrid décor throughout the house. As one of his main jobs in the Dursley household had been up keeping the house's image, Harry had developed an eye for such things. The house was gothic, to be sure, but far to dreary and dark. For the most part, it was all black (perhaps to fit the name?) with little bits of emerald green added in.

On the top floor, there were two doors. The first, on the left side, had a sign that read, "Marauders Only!" painted in red and gold with a childish charm. The other had a similar sign in a much more elegant script that read, "Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black".

Disregarding the sign, Harry pushed the door with far too much force, causing a loud bang and then slammed the door behind. If he'd left the door open, he would have noticed an old, decrepit house elf pop outside of the door to get him out of the room. However, it couldn't ignore the sig, a direct order from its former master, so it couldn't enter the room.

The Slytherin colors of emerald and silver were everywhere, draping the bed, the walls and the windows. The Black family crest was painstakingly painted over the bed, along with its motto Toujours Pur. Beneath this was a collection of yellow newspaper cuttings, all stuck together to make a ragged collage (From Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows). Across the room from the bed, on the opposite wall, was round mirror next to an open wardrobe filled mainly with robes of slytherin colors. To the side of the room was a black desk with two carved snakes running up each leg, one green and one silver.

"Wonder what house he was in," Harry thought sardonically.

"I think I'll sleep in this room," Harry declared. At this declaration, a wave of magic rushed through the room and Harry could actually feel a breeze through the room, as if it were warming up to him. Suddenly, the name on the silver head borad, which had formerly read Regulus Arcturus Black, changed to read Harry James Potter.

A feminine voice, remiscent of Tonks, though far less open and more… pure-blood like, Harry supposed, if that was really a way to describe something.. perhaps aristocratice would be the right word. Such a voice exclaimed, "Sixteen years! That Regulus Black! If I ever die, I'll wring his neck!"

Harry looked around in fright for the source of the voice. He began to panic when he couldn't find it. The last time he's heard a voice that he couldn't find the source of, he'd had to kill it.

"Over here, in the mirror." The voice commanded. In the mirror, rather than his image was that of a witch, She had thick, shining brown hair similar to Sirius' but curly rather than wavy and much longer. The similarity continued with her pasty skin, though that was a British trait as a whole. Even Harry was pale by most standards. She had long lashes that fluttered in front of her brilliant purple eyes. Overall, she had the great looks that were common among Blacks and held herself in a rather arrogant demeanor.

"Wh.. Who are you?" Harry asked, "and what are you doing in a mirror."

"Hello," she smiled brightly, "My name is Morgana and you are my new source of entertainment."

"Morgana?" Harry asked, feeling a bit sick. This couldn't be the same witch that had fought Merlin, could it? She was dead, wasn't she?

"Yes. Morgana Black nee Le Fay." She responded with a grin on her face, "I take it you've heard of me?"

"Heard of you?" Harry asked incredulously, "You're the most famous dark witch save none!" practically shouting at this point. A memory came up, from the end of Harry's second year. "Ginny! Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anuthing that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain? (from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) he remembered Mr. Weasley shouting. Besides, Harry had bad experiences with mirror in the past.

"Ah, yes, I suppose so." She stated, the smugness rolling off of her was almost palpable, "but Merlin did trap me in a mirror forever, so I suppose that I'm not that powerful!"

Well, Harry could see where she kept her brain, her head, and she wasn't really a mirror, just a person trapped in one, but still, she was Magana Le Fay!

"And what do you mean, your new 'source of entertainment'?" Harry asked, "Maybe I'll just ignore you!"

"Ah, but if you do that, I'll cause enough ruckus that someone'll find out you've been consorting with me and you'll be carted off to prison." She stated with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Besides," she asked with a light pout on her face, "You wouldn't leave a lady to fend against all this dust for herself, would you? A fellow Gryffindor too!"

"How'd you kn… You were a Gryffindor?!" Harry asked, his emerald green eyes wide in a mix of surprise and indignation.

"Well, barely," she muttered, "And you're a Potter. All of them are Gryffindors! Hell, your ancestor was my right hand man… behind Canopus I suppose. That's my husband, before you ask." The woman rattled on longer, though Harry couldn't really hear her. He was still processing what she'd said up to that point, not sure what to do. His idea that he should just break the mirror and stuff the shards inside house elf heads had some merits, he supposed. He'd killed one dark wizard at age one, why not add a witch to that list?

His mouth agape, Harry moved his head away from the mirror. She'd threatened to get him in trouble, but there was no one in the house who'd believe her anyhow. As he moved, he began to feel… fuzzy if you will. Not the type of fuzzy that he'd felt when watching Cho Chang from across the quidditch pitch in his third year, rather light-headed.

Suddenly, he could feel his fingers begin to tingle and his forehead felt rather warm, if a bit wet. Examining his fingers, he couldn't find anything wrong with them, but as he felt his forehead, not only did he find he was burning up, but that there was blood oozing out of his scar.

As he raised his now bloody finger to his eyes, he muttered, "Bloody hell?"

He sat there perplexed, dazed even, for around five minutes, and slowly the smell of iron in the air began to fade. Harry began to see dots in his vision, so he panicked. He ran to leave the room, scared that some dark magic was at work, but tripped on his way.

Scared and bewildered, with no sense of balance, he grasped for the bed to stabilize himself. At this point, he'd lost a majority of his vision. Harry closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands, so that the glowing red of his eyelids grew dark and cool. (From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) All around Harry, it seemed as if there was nothing darkness. If one were in a pitch black room and spinning in circles, would the room seem to be spinning? Or perhaps it was Harry who was spinning? He never found out, for with a bang, his head crashed to the floor and Harry was left, lying in a pool of his own blood.

When Sirius finally found Harry half an hour later, he was writhing on the floor and was panting as if out of breath from escaping a dragon. His ratty clothes, covered with dust and his blood red scar spurting out as if it were a faucet. The eeriest problem, however, was that throughout this all, Harry's eyes were shut and he was unconscious.


The Dark Lord sat at the head of the room. Behind him was an ornate fireplace, in front of him several chairs meant to face towards that fire, but now faced towards him. It was on natural that he, one of such great importance, be the focal point of his follower's attentions. He was the fire to the purist movement.

He was in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. A rather ornate room, very wide in proportions, though nothing compared to the great hall of Hogwarts, where Voldemort planned to hold court once this war was done and over. However this room, with its beautiful crystals hanging upon a chandelier and royal purple walls, would suffice for now.

In his serpentine drawl, Voldemort asked his subject, Peter Pettigrew, "And what of the prophecy? Have you found it?"

The simpering weakling, he flinched away from his Lord's gaze. Perhaps.. Voldemort was not loved by all of his subjects, but he was universally feared. Of course, it was all the better for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Pettigrew was not exactly a pretty fellow.

Pettigrew rather looked like one Vernon Dursley at times, what with his excess fat and short body. Of course, his face was completely different, and Vernon wouldn't be able to keep his hair so poorly, Petunia would no doubt kill him.

Lord Voldemort, however, knew none of this. He just thought of Pettigrew as a rat, whether as an animal or as a person. Some of his animal features had carried over to his human form because of how long he'd been in his animal form. In fact, one could even go so far as to describe his hair as a mousy brown and his clothing as ratty. Perhaps, the only saving grace was his beautiful silver hand, or so the Dark Lord thought.

"I.. I ha.. have found the p..prophecy, my Lord," The sniveling thing stated. Voldemort couldn't believe that he had some of this… things blood in his own body. Alas, at least the blood was pure.

"Well! OUT WITH IT THEN!" the dark wizard screamed impatiently. Pettigrew's light blue eyes dilated and foul smell filled the room as a watery, yellow liquid trickled down Pettigrew's leg and out his pants.

Voldemort sneered, "Get on with it, else you won't have time to… clean up your mess." He drawled, reminiscent of Lucius Malfoy. Of course, Malfoy had imitated that façade from his mater, rather than the other way around.

"Th.. the prophecy is the f.. first in row ni.. ninety-seven in the department of mysteries."

Then, the rat handed the Dark Lord a folded piece of parchment and bowed out of the drawing room. The parchment read, "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…"

The rat was useless. He couldn't even get something that his Lord didn't already have. No doubt, he'd just asked Snape. Voldemort crumpled the paper and threw it in the air, wordlessly and wandlessly burning it with the fire-making spell.

Far away, in a house that none can speak of, save Albus Dumbledore, a boy with emerald green eyes and ebony black hair awoke with a start, clutching at his lightning bolt scar and Lord Voldemort laughed to himself. He knew he could penetrate the boys mind given enough time or a close proximity, so he'd let the boy know of the prophecy on purpose. Perhaps, by the time he did so, the child would know the rest of the prophecy.

Harry scraped and clawed at his forehead because the burning on it would not cease. If not for the magic keeping it there, the bandages around his head would have been torn by his unclipped fingernails. If the twitching that he'd been undergoing when unconscious seemed bad, this all out thrashing and screaming was much, much worse. His bedsheets were left in, as Sirius later called it, "shagging condition".

The only two people in the room other than Harry were Hermione and Sirius, which was rather interesting seeing as usually Ron and Dumbledore were also there after something like this. Once he'd settled down, Harry gave Hermione and cocky smile and asked, "Is this it this time?"

Sirius barked out a laugh and the wild-maned lioness took a pillow from Regulus Black's bed and smacked Harry with it. "You enormous prat!" She huffed, "Do you know how worried you had us?"

"Only you two, apparently." Harry muttered, so none could hear.

Of course, Sirius, with his canine senses, picked up on it. "Hey, don't be like that! Moony wouldn't leave your side for the last three hours, he just went to pee!"

Having heard Sirius' bark of laughter, Remus Lupin darted back into the room from the bathroom (the room had a private one). "Oh, come on! I was gone for five minutes!" he groaned.

At face value, Harry laughed, but at the back of his mind, he couldn't help but feel resentful. Not even Ginny was here! He'd saved her life! He'd given the twins a thousand galleons!

Hermione exclaimed, "Harry, you didn't need to make a sign at the door or inscribe your name on the bed! You could've just told you wanted this room!" then she crinkled her nose in disgust, "Though with these colors, I'm not sure why you like it so much!"

"Aww, that's cute!" Sirius exclaimed, but with a glare from the brunette, he continued, "in a brother-sister way?" feebly. Hermione's glare was truly powerful, it even go a mutt like Sirius to behave himself.

"Who was Regulus Black anyways?" Harry asked, wondering who's room he'd wandered into.

Sirius bitterly spat, "He was family. Hated the lot of them: my parents with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal… my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them… that's him. He was younger than me, and a much better son, as I was constantly reminded. (From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)"

Finally, trying to get the subject off of awkward conversation, Professor Lupin got together his Gryffindor courage and asked, "So, Harry, what exactly was that all about?"

"I had… a… dream." Harry spoke, horror slowly dawning upon his eyes as he realized exactly what his dream meant in the grand scheme of things, if it were true. A prophecy? A bloody prophecy!? Despite his initials doubts about the practice of divination, after having seen Trelawney's prophecy at the end of his third year come true, Harry had quickly become a believer.

Rather than explode, Harry used that Slytherin cunning that the hat had seen in his first year to gather some information. "So, Sirius, what was that you were going to tell me earlier, before I stormed off? What Voldemort wants?" Sirius and Remus flinched at the name. Not even the boldest Gryffindors could get over the suffering that man had caused for them.

"Okay, Harry . . . what do you want to know?"

Harry took a deep breath and asked the question that had been obsessing him for a month.

"Where's Voldemort? What's he doing? I've been trying to watch the Muggle news," he said, ignoring the renewed shudders and winces at the name, "and there hasn't been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything —"

"That's because there haven't been any suspicious deaths yet," said Sirius, "not as far as we know, anyway. . . . And we know quite a lot." "More than he thinks we do anyway," said Lupin.

"How come he's stopped killing people?" Harry asked. He knew that Voldemort had murdered more than once in the last year alone.

"Because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself at the moment," said Sirius. "It would be dangerous for him. His comeback didn't come off quite the way he wanted it to, you see. He messed it up."

"Or rather, you messed it up for him," said Lupin with a satisfied smile.

"How?" Harry asked perplexedly.

"You weren't supposed to survive!" said Sirius. "Nobody apart from his Death Eaters was supposed to know he'd come back. But you survived to bear witness."

"And the very last person he wanted alerted to his return the moment he got back was Dumbledore," said Lupin. "And you made sure Dumbledore knew at once."

"How has that helped?" Harry asked.

"Are you kidding?" said Hermione incredulously. "Dumbledore was the only one You-Know-Who was ever scared of!"

"Thanks to you, Dumbledore was able to recall the Order of the Phoenix about an hour after Voldemort returned," said Sirius.

"So what's the Order been doing?" said Harry, looking around at them all. (From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

At this, Sirius looked questioningly towards Moony, who was sitting right next to him. Moony whispered something to him and Harry could only barely make out the name Dumbledore and the word prophecy, though if he hadn't been listening for the second, he wouldn't have heard it.

"Working as hard as we can to make sure Voldemort can't carry out his plans," said Sirius.

"How d'you know what his plans are?" Harry asked quickly.

"Dumbledore's got a shrewd idea," said Lupin, "and Dumbledore's shrewd ideas normally turn out to be accurate."

"So what does Dumbledore reckon he's planning?" "Well, firstly, he wants to build up his army again," said Sirius. "In the old days he had huge numbers at his command; witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures. You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they'll be just one group he's after. He's certainly not going to try and take on the Ministry of Magic with only a dozen Death Eaters." (From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"But is there anything in particular Voldemort is trying to do?" Harry asked innocently, seeming for all the world as if he were just making sure that the order was being thorough. Of course, the marauders weren't fools.

Moony's eyes narrowed and he asked, "Why do you ask, Harry?"

Harry grinned, trying to project what he thought would be a "teenage" attitude. The general cocky and self-centered one. Exactly what Snape would expect of him. "Well, first you take me on a hour long broom ride to the middle of London, where I find my Godfather's been imprisoned again and then I get knocked out. I'd say, with that track record, this isn't a particularly trustworthy group, especially that mundungus bloke. I'm just making sure you're considering everything!"

Remus chuckled and told Harry, "I can't tell you anything, but you're not wrong."

Whether Remus was talking about the Order of the Phoenix or Harry's idea that Voldemort was after something, Harry wasn't sure, but he'd already gathered enough information. The prophecy was real!


Author's Note: My reasoning is that this is a far more cunning and sensible move. Not only does it give Voldemort a chance to find out the prophecy without getting exposed, but also it drives a rift between Dumbledore and Harry.