A/N: Hey folks, Wooster here. I want to make sure all blame for slow updates is placed on me. I'm terrible about that kind of thing. Crazzyredhead has had these chappies planned out for ages. Oh, and for any who thought the time travel explanation was…familiar…we blatantly stole it from "Back to the Future 2". It worked. Oh, and we're probably going to change our chapter titles…for reasons that will become clear later. Drat, one more thing. We've decided to ignore the events of Deathly Hallows for simplicity's sake, and continue to operate under the ideas of what would happen that we fashioned this story under.

Disclaimer: Rowling is why I was at a bookstore at midnight July 21st and didn't sleep until the book I'd purchased was finished (sometime around 11:25 a.m.). It's her magic that inspires such insanity, we just run with the madness.

Chapter 3: Talks and Anger

If someone had walked into the second bedroom on the right on the third floor of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, they would have wanted to know what was so sinister about the small patch of grey wall within it that made the young man sitting on the bed glare at it so singularly. Harry Potter stared at the space in front of him, unseeing, as he sorted out what he had just been told. He moved nary a muscle and his eyes did not wander from their fixed point on the wall. Different thoughts swirled around his mind as if in a pensieve, floating to the surface in seeming random patterns. One phrase in particular seemed burned into his mind's eye, like the imprint left after staring at a light too long.

Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…

So it was him or Voldemort…kill or be killed. And apparently, he'd been killed. "Not exactly the ending I'd have hoped for," Harry thought sardonically. He felt a brief surge of rage at the Dursleys, but quickly dismissed it. While he hadn't expected them to sell him out, mostly because he couldn't imagine them dealing with any wizards whatsoever, he wasn't exactly shocked. His thoughts returned to the prophecy, and its outcome. If he was "The Chosen One" as Ron had called him with an ironic tone hinting at some old joke, why in Merlin's name hadn't he been trained to prevent exactly that ending? Even if the others hadn't known, Dumbledore had…

The springs of the ancient bed shrieked as Harry leapt abruptly to his feet. Red seemed to cloud his vision as thousands of instances where Dumbledore could have said something, things that could have been different if only he'd known, rushed through his brain. An image of Cedric's cold, lifeless gaze floated through the haze and he grabbed an inkwell off the desk and hurled it across the room. It shattered with a satisfying force and sent sprays of red ink dripping down the walls as if the impact had caused the wall to bleed. Soon the room was full of the sounds of crashes as object after object flew across the room. The chair was broken in half, the bedsheets were torn from the bed, and an old locket had left a dent in the wall the size of a thumb before Harry realized he was being watched. Halfway through hurling a heavy old paperweight at the headboard, he turned to find Ginny Weasley leaning on the doorframe, smiling sadly at him. Her calm demeanor and the vague amusement in her eyes arrested his movements, and he slowly lowered his arm.

"I…" he started, feeling foolish, but Ginny just shook her head and let out a rueful chuckle.

"You told me once that after Dumbledore first told you the prophecy, you trashed his office." She crossed the room, seeming to admire the damage. With a flick of her wand she remade the bed, but made no move to put the rest of the room to rights. Instead, she sat on the end and motioned for Harry to have a seat as well. Confused, he set the paperweight back on the desk and slowly lowered himself next to her. "I'd always wondered what it looked like, I guess now I have a vague idea." She spared a brief glance at his questioning expression and smiled softly. "You forgave Dumbledore once you calmed down a bit, and after you'd let it sink in you were a lot calmer than you'd been. I think being out of the loop really upset you. No one held your actions against you, least of all Dumbledore, don't worry about that."

Harry blushed, "Oh, it's not that…it's just…" he looked at her oddly once again, "I don't think I've ever heard you talk so much."

It was Ginny's turn to blush, mortified at the memory of her past actions. "Oh. Yes, I was a bit shy back then, wasn't I?" Harry gaped at her. A bit? "Oh don't look at me like that, Potter," she snapped, "I got over it later in the year you came out of, if you must know. We got to know each other quite well through the D.A. and after the battle of the Ministry we became…very good friends."

Harry tried very hard to process all this. It was hard to think of this tired-looking woman as the young girl who blushed every time she saw him and who stuck her elbow in the butter dish, and harder still to believe that they'd become good friends by the end of the year. But then he realized she hadn't blushed around him for a while now, and that she'd talked plainly enough around him without running out of the room since the summer. Setting these thoughts aside, he latched on to another.

"D.A.?" he asked, "What's that?" Fear creeped into his voice, "It's not like spew is it?"

Ginny looked confused for a moment, and then threw her head back and laughed. It transformed her face, and suddenly he could see the girl she'd been. Something deep in his chest seemed to growl, like a monster awakening from a deep sleep, but before he could think what it was, she was answering him.

"No, it's not like S.P.E.W." she said, in a perfect imitation of Hermione. "It's the defense club you set up later in your fifth year at Hermione's prompting. It stood for Dumbledore's Army, as that was what the Ministry was most afraid of. The name was my idea," she said with a bit of a smirk. "You taught us all how to defend ourselves, right under Umbridge's nose. Not only was it a glorious act of rebellion, it helped us stay alive when we ended up fighting at the Ministry later in the year."

Harry immediately remembered Hermione's proposal from the night before. "Had it been such a short time ago?" he wondered. It seemed like ages ago. Then again, it was twelve years in the past, depending on how you looked at it. "You mean I actually agreed to that?"

"Yes, and it was a huge success. No idea why you didn't continue with it after that year. I think everyone would've been willing to return…except for Marietta of course." She snickered at some memory, and Harry wished he were in on the joke…and wondered who Marietta was.

"How many people were in it?" he asked.

"Lots, actually." Ginny smiled at him. "A ton of Gryffindors, of course, but several Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws as well."

At the word "Ravenclaws" Harry's ears perked up. "Was Cho Chang in the D.A.?" he asked eagerly.

Suddenly, Ginny's sunny mood turned cloudy, much to Harry's consternation. "Yes. She was." She stood up. "Well, I'm going to get some sleep Harry. We enter the training room tomorrow." She left the room, leaving a very confused Harry in her wake. "What'd I say?" he wondered allowed. A flash of bright red in the corner of his eye had him looking back at the door, thinking she'd come back and instead found Ron poking his head in the door.

"Hey mate, saw Ginny leave so I figured it'd be safe to visit."

Harry stared at him, confused as to why he was disappointed that it hadn't been Ginny after all. "What do you mean?"

"Ah, she was always the only one who could talk to you when you got like that. The rest of us were too scared, but Ginny…well…I guess growing up with six older brothers left her unafraid of unreasonable boys." He smiled lightly to show it was a joke, and Harry grinned a little in return.

"Hey, Ron?" he asked after a few moments of comfortable silence.

"Yeah, Harry?"

"Did Ginny have some kind of fight with Cho?"

Ron looked at him oddly. "Not that I can remember. Why?"

"Well, we were talking about the D.A. and I asked her if Cho had been a member and she looked upset and then left."

Ron was silent for a while, and seemed to stare out the door where his sister had left only a minute ago. "It's really not my story to tell, Harry." He laughed at the bewildered look on the teenager's face next to him. "Trust me, Harry…I've been married for almost a decade and I still don't understand women. It's best not to try." He clapped a hand on Harry's shoulder and the fatherly gesture made him feel suddenly old. "Don't worry about it. Fancy a game of chess before bed?"

End Chapter Five