Seven Notes

Rating: PG for content

Author's Note: beta'd by manicsubbie, jessikast, and tanizard.  Thanks!

There's a rat at Hogwarts, a rat with a silver leg, and Harry Potter doesn't know where to find him. The Marauder's map is no help - the rat can travel through cracks in the wall; clamber through the plumbing (a little bit of deja vu never goes amiss); edge his way between the very stones themselves. The Map was made for humans, and rats don't stand upright.

The first note comes three weeks into term, jammed under the heel of Harry's right shoe: I'm coming for you, Potter. Harry, older, wiser, and jaded, trots off to Professor Dumbledore, clutching the scrap of parchment with the handwriting he knows so well. Dumbledore looks grave - another thing Harry knows well - and sighs under his breath about wasted youth and misused brilliance. Harry isn't sure if this is aimed at him or the spectre of Tom Riddle, and doesn't ask.

Life continues. Classes continue, and Harry writes his essays and practises his Occulmency like the good boy he has never really been. He and Ron sneak off to Hogsmeade one weekend, with Hermione in the background wringing her hands and lecturing them about safety. They return with all their limbs still in working order and a bag of sweets. None of the teachers say a thing to Harry about it, even though it's obvious they know by the way they pick on him in classes for a week afterwards.

Harry finds the second note at the start of Chapter Seven of his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook: You'll suffer until you scream, and after that we'll talk. That night, after the Be More Careful With Your Belongings, Mr. Potter speech from Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, he spends three hours searching the Marauders Map, to no avail, and neglects his homework.

Potions assignment uncompleted the next day, he gets detention and a stern talking to from Professor Snape. There's no proof that Pettigrew or Voldemort are behind the notes, and nobody but Harry, Ginny, and Lucius Malfoy ever saw the diary. Harry shows the notes to Ginny and she flinches but won't discuss it. When the third note inevitably arrives: You're going to die, tucked between two pairs of socks in his trunk, Harry goes down to the kitchen and questions the houseelves. Dobby is concerned but knows nothing; Winky bangs her ears in the oven door for being unable to help.

Harry corners Malfoy out by the Quidditch pitch, but learns nothing except that Malfoy snivels like a baby when he's in any danger. He doesn't tell anyone about the conversation they had, but obviously Snape at least finds out because it prompts another lecture. This one involves Snape pointing out three facts: 1) Draco Malfoy is not a Death Eater, 2) Draco Malfoy is never going to be a Death Eater, and 3) Draco Malfoy is clearly obsessed with Harry, and probably has some kind of schoolboy crush on him. This last makes Harry burst out in nervous, hysterical laugher, because who would want Malfoy?

He gets called up to meet with Dumbledore one gray, windy evening, and excuses himself from the Common Room with a shrug and a "I'll see you later, okay?" They're all used to him going strange places at strange times by now, so this doesn't raise even a single eyebrow. Dumbledore needs to talk to him about two things: the Boy Who Lived thing, and the Order of the Phoenix thing, only it turns out that these two things are actually one thing, and when he goes back to the Common Room there is a tiny phoenix tattooed on his left ankle.

He finds the fourth note under his upside-down water glass that evening, and his dormmates are confused when he asks how it could have gotten there. This note is longer, a minature scroll tied with a green ribbon:

Dear Potter,

There's no escape for one such as yourself. We're coming.

Yours sincerely,

Lord Voldemort

The 'V' on the 'Voldemort' is strange, curling under itself at the bottom almost as if the scribe attempted an upside-down anhk and failed miserably, and he recognises this from the diary. It's strange to think that the young Tom Riddle practised his copperplate back in the Forties and never moved on from that, but Harry figures that pretentious handwriting is a small item on Voldemort's much longer list of wrongs. The parchment is thin, the type students use simply because it's cheap and they need so much, but the writing is in the darkest of black inks and looks as though it's been engraved in the paper rather than written. Harry notices these things because Dumbledore – and Lupin, and McGonagall, and Snape, and all of his friends, but who's counting? – tell him to pay more attention to the little details of life, and also because his ankle is throbbing and there's a burning in his forehead. Harry finds that concentrating on external objects draw his attention away from pain.

Hermione and Ron interrogate him about the note as soon as they get somewhere private the next day. He doesn't know how to explain that he knows the note is from Voldemort, aside from the signature and all, except that he recognises the handwriting – but that can be faked, Harry, there are all sorts of charms. I can look them up if you want – and that it's really just the sort of thing Voldemort would do, leave notes for his enemy in their personal belongings – mate, you're scaring me. As if you know what You-Know-Who would or would not do - but they leave it alone after he mutters something about his scar hurting. It's a complete lie, but they don't know that. He's had a lot of practise lying, after all.

The fifth note is short, again: Watch out for the end, Potter, curled around his favourite quill on a piece of parchment no more than three inches long. It's Transfiguration, a fairly sunny day, and they're all trying to turn glasses into fried mushrooms. Neville is sitting directly in front of Harry, and has already managed to break two glasses; Harry thinks himself lucky to have managed to make the glasses soft and fungal.

That night he unfolds the Marauder's Map and sets it on the floor of his dormitory. Even with five boys working on it, two magnifying lenses, and a Search Text charm helpfully supplied by Hermione, there's no sign of Pettigrew, or indeed anything nefarious. Lavender and Terry Boot are up in the Astronomy Tower together, a fact that makes Seamus groan in dismay and disgust, but the only people walking the corridors are Prefects, Professors, and Finch.

Eventually Ron tells him to leave it alone for the night, because they're all tired and have classes the next morning; he folds the Map back up and stores it safely in the hidden compartment of his trunk. When he takes it out again the next morning, just for a quick look before breakfast, a sixth note falls out: We're coming to get you.

He ignores it, because he's used to living with a mad Dark wizard after him, and the fact that he hasn't done his Charms homework is somewhat more important. Walking down to breakfast with the other Gryffindor Seventh Years, Harry realises that he, in fact, left his Charms homework up in his dormitory, and turns around to head back.

He turns the corner into one of the shortcuts, a corridor leading under the Charms classroom itself and then cutting through the disused Artifacts wing. It's his favourite shortcuts, mostly because a lot of people don't realise it's there, and it passes the Room of Requirement on the way. In front of him, perhaps six feet up the corridor, lies something, and as he gets closer Harry can see that it's another note. He leans down to pick it up and unfolds it: We're here.

When he stands up straight again he is surrounded by people he recogises from various places – the Ministry, his time at Grimmauld Place, various classes. Two words are spoken before he even has time to draw his wand, and the only thing Ron finds in the corridor fifteen minutes later, frantic because Harry hadn't shown up for breakfast, is Harry's right hand, callused, inkstained, with bitten nails, and a message written on the palm: I win.

The end.