I don't own Harry Potter. In point of fact, I don't own much of anything aside from my laptop and the water pouches I've made from the skin of that dragon I killed that one time, but I digress.

Rarely had anyone seen Dumbledore so utterly, unmistakably happy: the man radiated glee as he addressed his students. "It is with great pleasure that I announce the return of one of our students! He has been missing this past year, but has finally returned, no worse for the wear. Please join me in welcoming back Harry-"

"POTTER!"

"Oh dear," Harry muttered, just before diving under the Gryffindor table, Ron and Hermione staring at him in confusion as he did.

At the exact moment that he had disappeared from sight, the doors of the Great Hall burst open, and in strode a very angry girl dressed in a Hogwarts uniform with a Slytherin tie, though no one recognised her. She had aristocratic good-looks of a typical pureblood, but none of the identifying features of any of the more prominent families, leaving the occupants of the Hall to wonder who exactly she could be.

Everything about her radiated power and danger: her long black hair was whipping around her face even as she stood still, as though it were being blown about by a fierce wind, her eyes were narrowed dangerously, and her stance was aggressive, as though she was preparing for a fight.

"Where are you?" she called out, sounding much more controlled than she had a moment ago, though still angry. "Come out so that I can kill you!"

"Go kill Malfoy! I'm too pretty to die!" Harry called out, giving away his location. He immediately realised his mistake and made to correct it, crawling to the front of the table as quickly as he could, which was surprisingly fast.

The girl's face split into an evil smile and she stalked towards the Gryffindor table slowly. Dumbledore, knowing full well where Harry had been the past year, had a good guess as to who the girl was (or rather, what her relationship to Harry was, which he felt was good enough) and thus chose not to intervene, feeling that something this ridiculous would be good for the students' mood. The other teachers, meanwhile, saw that he wasn't doing anything and decided that they probably shouldn't, either, choosing to trust his judgement.

Harry quickly conjured a mirror and used it to watch her progress. When she was halfway down the table, he began to slowly and quietly crawl towards the other end of the table, hoping that she wouldn't notice when they passed each other. Knowing Harry as well as she did, however, she predicted this and shot a Reductor curse at the floor directly in front of him.

Harry started, knocking his head against the top of the table and causing several of the plates and goblets nearest him to clatter around and fall over. He rubbed his head sheepishly as he reluctantly climbed out from under the table, taking care to emerge on the side opposite the enraged girl. "Hello, Kat," he said, smiling awkwardly.

"'Hello?'" she asked, too incredulous to be made any angrier. "You just disappeared, without a trace, I track you down through time and you say 'hello?' Could there be a more woefully inadequate-"

"I didn't want to leave!" Harry protested. "If it'd been up to me-"

"You would have come back even sooner! Don't bother denying it; we both know you have a massive hero complex." She gave her wand a casual wave and levitated the entire Gryffindor table so that there was nothing between them but two rows of benches. (The students siting closest to them had moved over, hoping to avoid be caught in any crossfire.)

Harry raised his wand, though his hand was somewhat shaky. "You can't curse me if you're holding up the table," he said boldly, despite knowing full well that his somewhat unsteady hand betrayed his nerves.

"And you can curse me. Of course, there's no way you will, since it would make me drop the table . . ." as she was was talking, the girl began walking towards Harry, who backed up slowly to maintain the distance between them. Unfortunately for him, the Gryffindor table was on the far right of the Hall (from the main doors), meaning that his back hit the wall in a matter of seconds.

The girl's evil smile grew as she continued to advance on Harry, who's fear was visibly growing with every step she took. When she was level with him, it became apparent that she was actually a little taller than he was, which was impressive in and of itself: Harry had grown about six inches during the year he had been away, and was now only slightly shorter than Ron.

When they were only three steps apart, she stopped to stare at him, giving him a look that promised a painful death unless he did exactly what she wanted.

"Never." She took a step forward. "Do." Another step. "That." With one final step, she finished closing the distance between them, and was now barely an inch from his face. "Again." She slammed her hands, palms-up, on the wall on either side of Harry's face, just above his shoulders, trapping him where he was.

Harry let out what he would later convince himself was only a small whimper as the girl stared him down, glaring at him in a way that left him in no doubt of exactly how much trouble he was in.

She let Harry stew in his own fear for a few moments before relaxing her posture and shifting her smile from predatory to contented. Harry visibly relaxed just as she leaned in to kiss him, now confident that his life was in no immediate danger. The collective gasp that the occupants of the Great Hall took was completely lost on him, as he was too occupied responding to the kiss (admittedly belated though his reaction was).

The girl broke away and rested her forehead against Harry's. "Seriously, though," she whispered, "don't ever disappear on me like that again."

Harry nodded (or tried to, the fact that their foreheads were connected made it rather difficult), still a little surprised that he wasn't dead. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless.

"I won't," he whispered back. "Promise."

AN: Consider this part two of the prologue: still wicked short (even shorter, actually), but still mostly here for set-up. Favoured Nations? Whatever. Anyways, the next update won't be nearly as prompt, since I'm still working on ironing out the plot details, but it'll hopefully be up next week. The next chapter will be the first proper chapter of the story, so look forward to it, I guess. Speaking of, I'm honestly shocked at the response this story's gotten this far: to quote myself verbatim: "pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless." (No, that wasn't why I included that line, but it was so perfect that I couldn't help myself.) In just a few short hours, this has become my second most-reviewed fic yet, and it's only beaten by something that's been up for months (and by only ten reviews, at that). I wasn't expecting much interest in this story, since most people don't tend to be like Harry/OC fics (or fics that feature OC's in general, but I digress), but no. People seem legitimately invested in it, which, as I say, is both flattering and surprising.

Moving on, I got a review pointing out the potential for drama that this has, since Harry would constantly have to make sure that Kathleen isn't pushed too far lest she go the Bellatrix route. I thought I'd reply to that in an AN, since it's the sort of thing that I can see a lot of people wondering about: Kat isn't in any immediate danger of switching sides; Harry wouldn't've fallen for her if she was. While her methods are . . . interesting . . . her goals are far from sinister. Yes, Harry's terrified of her in this chapter, but that has a lot more to do with him than it does with her: if he'd had another girlfriend in the past who managed to follow him back to the present, he'd've reacted similarly. Also, she's generally intimidating (when she wants to be, since to always be terrifying people would put them on-guard, which would put her at a disadvantage), so it's kinda understandable. Admittedly, I did play it up some for comedy's sake, but that's something I tend to do a lot, so whatever. I'm rambling now, so I'll close things off here. As always, thanks for reading!

PS: I just went through and edited this, since there were more than a few instances of awkward word choice originally. That's what happens when I rush, I guess, so lesson learned. From now on, I'll try to post one chapter every Wednesday, which hopefully means that I'll have more time to edit and give each chapter the attention it deserves. I'm still trying to work out the issue of plotting (I don't really like the whole "Horcrux" thing, since it basically turns the story into a checklist of stuff that needs to be destroyed before the protagonists can go after Voldemort, but I also don't want to have Harry and Kat just say "peace out, we're taking the fight to Voldemort" and have that be that, so I'm weighing my options. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop a PM or a review.

Once again, thanks for reading!