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Chapter 11

"You know what Sirius, we should do this more often," Harry said, as he walked back to Hogwarts, laden with bags, like a girl on her way out of the mall.

"And if so many people didn't want you dead, we could," Sirius told him.

"I forgot that small detail about life for the day, thanks for bringing it back."

"I do what I can," Sirius said, and opened the front door to the castle. "Are you sure you'll be okay in dinner?"

"I'll be fine. I can't promise that for everyone else though."

"Don't cause a scene. Kira and Becca are out of the hospital, and will most likely be in dinner."

"Good, maybe seeing them will make her realize what he can do to her."

"Harry," he warned.

"I'll be a good boy and keep my mouth shut," he promised, and charmed his bags to go back up to his room, and followed his godfather into the Great Hall.

It was already full, and by now, the whole school knew that Harry had played hooky for the day, and that Hermione was being shunned by him and the teachers. They all watched him, as he walked toward the group of sixth-years at the Gryffindor table, as if nothing had happened.

Sirius continued up to the Head table, where like always, there was an empty chair beside James that was put there for him. He realized that, as he had thought, the three young girls made it to dinner and were sitting beside Severus. The Malfoy girl was talking much more than the two Grangers, who looked like deer in headlights, as they sat in front of everyone.

"Hey guys," Harry said as he sat down beside Katy and Anthony, directly across from Hermione.

"Where have you been, Harry?" Katy asked.

"We're down 150 points. What happened?" Tracy continued.

"I don't know. Who pissed off the professors?" Harry asked, pretending to be oblivious.

"Apparently it was me," Hermione said, who looked hurt.

"What'd you do?" Harry joked, hoping she would get the hint not to talk about it here.

"I don't know. Though, I'd love to know why I was dragged out of bed by your mother, ignored by my boyfriend, and any thing out of my mouth was shut down immediately. Care to enlighten me?" Hermione asked. All the other Gryffindors pretended to not be there as their friends fought.

"Not here, Hermione," Harry said. The group surrounding them sucked in their breath, waiting to hear her flip about her name being used. Harry just continued eating.

"Can we talk about this?"

"I'm eating."

"Really? You care more about you bloody food than telling me why all of the sudden I'm being treated like crap by everyone."

"Why don't you tell me?" he said, as he put down his fork, and got up out of his seat. Hermione, taking the hint followed. Not soon after, Remus got up out of his chair, and followed the two under the invisibility cloak.

Harry walked into an empty classroom, and waited for Hermione to walk in, then locked the door.

"Well?" he asked, as he sat on a desk, "Why are we all treating you like crap? You know the answer, I know you do."

"I never replied to any of them," she said. She was tearing, but Harry didn't care.

"Any of what? Come on, Mia, I don't know what's going on here. You didn't want to tell me."

"Harry, please, don't do this," she begged.

"Don't do what? Try to figure out why my girlfriend can't trust me enough to tell me that the boy who raped her is sending her letters? Or how about that she was planning on getting trained by my parents, then probably planned to run off, and try to kill her father. Or that you knew that you were related to Zach, that he was your half-brother? That your father was the grandson of Morfin Gaunt? Go ahead, Mia, explain to me."

"Harry, please," she had sunk down to her knees and was openly crying once Harry mentioned the letters.

"I don't even know why I'm here, apparently you don't trust me at all."

"You have so many secrets…. you're dealing with too much… if you knew I was related to that… that scum, I thought… I thought you…" she was kneeling right in front of the desk he was on now.

"That I would hate you?" he finished for her. "Mia, you should know that I don't judge people by their families, look at Draco."

"I know, but I thought that if I ignored the letters, they would stop."

"So your aunt never sent you any letters?"

Hermione shook her head.

"And you never sent one back?"

She shook her head again.

"Did you know your father was alive?"

She paused. This time she nodded her head.

"Did you know that he was working with Zach and Bellatrix and Voldemort before he died?"

She nodded again.

"Were you ever planning on telling me?"

She paused again. "I didn't mean to."
"Did you think I wouldn't find out? You knew I was snooping around, you're not dumb, Mia, you had to have known I would have found out. I would have rather heard it from you, and not from Severus as I was being dragged out of the castle. Then you had the chance to tell me this morning, after knowing that something went wrong last night. And you didn't. I can't trust you, if you don't trust me. I'm sorry," he said, and got up off the desk and went to the door.

"What do you mean? What do you mean you're sorry?" Hermione asked, getting up and running after him, grabbing his hand, knowing full well what he meant.

"It's over," he said and shook her hand off his.

"Harry… please, no," she collapsed back down onto the ground and cried.

"Let's go, Remus," Harry said, as he walked into the hallway, knowing he had to go to his parents' offices. He heard the footsteps start behind him, but couldn't see his uncle.

Harry walked all the way to the office in silence. He didn't want to go, especially not now, but he knew he had to, and he knew he would get yelled at again later. He walked in, and wasn't surprised to see all of his mentors sitting there, along with Professor McGonagall.

"Headmistress," he acknowledged when he saw her, and got a nod in response. Remus pulled off the cloak as he stepped into the office, and for a minute they all just stood there.

"I finished it," Harry said, breaking the unbearable silence.

"She was still in the room when we left. I doubt she'll move all night," Remus added.

"Did you get anything out of her?" James asked.

"She knew everything. She knew it all the whole time, and she didn't fucking tell me."

"Harry, calm down," Lily said. "We need to figure out if we still want to train her."

"Can we trust her enough, to bring her on raids?" Sirius asked.

"Will she see her father and freeze up?" James added.

All the adults nodded in agreement.

"I think we should," Severus said.

"What?" Remus asked, turning to him. "Do you understand that she knew everything all along, they were contacting her, putting her into danger, and she didn't say a word, even after Harry asked."

"Yes, and she's broken down at the moment. So what better way to make sure she is fully with us, than to kick her while she's down, and rebuild her trust in us, and only us."

"Severus, that's horrible," Minerva said.

"That's how the Death Eaters do it."

"We are not going to resort to Death Eater tactics," Sirius said.

"If we do, what makes us any better than them?" Lily asked.

"Nothing. There's no difference between us and them, besides the fact that they kill for fun, and we kill to save, but if we leave her like this, she will go to her father. You all know she was daddy's little girl when she got here. If we leave her broken, she'll go back to him."

"I agree with Severus," Harry said. "I would rather be on a different planet than her at the moment, but if it means she won't go back to her father, I think we should do it."

"Then it's settled. Who wants to go tell her?" James asked.

"I'll go," Remus volunteered and walked out.

"You do know, Harry, that this means you two are going to learn to work together."

"I know, mum, she'll just have to realize that we can never be we again."

--

Harry sat in his room, trying to ignore his roommates, who all waited until just now to write their transfiguration essays that they had two weeks to complete. Harry sighed, if he had known that all this would happen if he came to Hogwarts, he would have fought harder to stay at home. His thoughts swirled around his head as he fell asleep that night. The first time in a while, he didn't use Occlumency.

"You honestly thought you could beat me?" Zach teased Harry, who knelt down in front of him. "You should have known all along that you would never win. Life isn't a movie, the good guy won't always win, the good guy never wins in real life."

Harry looked around him, realizing the tears rolling down his face. He was surrounded by dead bodies. To his right were his mother and father, Severus, Sirius, and Remus. To his left, laid Hermione, Katy, Emily, and a few other Gryffindor girls. Beyond them was a black-haired girl he didn't recognize, but seeing her lifeless face felt like a knife through the heart. The field they were in was full of bodies, and Harry was sure Zach and him were the only two left alive.

"Why did you do this? What did you gain? You killed everyone. You wiped out the magical world. You think muggles will follow you? You're crazy, they will lock you up in a mental institution, and they will think you're crazy."

"Shut up, Potter, you're just mad because I killed your precious family and friends."

"And in the process you killed your family. Your followers are all dead. A leader is only good as their followers. So apparently now we're both fucked."

"I don't care about them. I never did. My mother was just a pain in the ass, and my father was a good for nothing muggle. We just kept him around for kicks."

"You're a bloody idiot, Zach," Harry said and stood up, and began to walk away.

"Don't walk away from me."

"Are you going to kill me? Or are we just going to sit here and talk about how all of our friends are dead?" Zach stared at him. "Exactly. I might as well go start a new life."

Harry walked away, kindly stepping over each body, watching them sink into the ground as he passed. When he reached the edge of the field he looked back, and everything was gone. The bodies had disappeared. Zach was nowhere to be seen. And the distinctive smell of battle had dissipated into the air, as if none of it really happened. He turned back around to see the black-haired girl standing in front of him.

"Don't worry, Harry, it won't end like this. Things will get better," the girl said to him, and began walking away.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, but she too disappeared.

Harry sunk to the ground, but instead of feeling the hard ground, he rolled over and felt the softness of his bed. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He had no clue what the dream meant, and had no clue where to start, since he had been blocking them for so long. He glanced over at his alarm clock and realized it was time to get up anyways, and he rolled out of bed, and pulled on his running shorts and a t-shirt, and walked downstairs to wait for Hermione. A minute later, she came walking down the stairs, and he led her out of the castle, without even a word.

The two ran in silence, however, unlike the silence from the day before, it was awkward. Hermione wanted to him to say anything, anything at all, even if it was him yelling at her again. Harry, on the other hand, was only putting up with her on instructions from his parents, and Hermione knew this. She wasn't told the reason they had agreed to keep training her. She just knew they were going to. She also knew that Harry and she were going to have to train to be partners, and that Harry had said last night he never wanted them to be together again. She had spent the night crying in the classroom he left her in, only moving at midnight, when Snape had come in to tell her to get to bed.

Hermione followed Harry back into the castle an hour later, her head full of thoughts. She knew her life was better now that Harry was in it, however, she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like had Harry never come to Hogwarts. Would she still be with Ron? Would her father have contacted her and told her the attack on the house was a set-up, and the only person to actually die in the attack was her mother? In one of his first letters he spelled out everything. How he had had an affair with Bellatrix Lestrange once he figured out his ancestors, and that Zach was her half-brother. Then how he contacted his old mistress, and got caught up in the Death Eater movement, and then how he helped plan his wife's death. They had it planned to kidnap the youngest, Kira and Becca, so that they could be trained to follow in Zach's footsteps, if he should fail.

"I'm sorry," she said as they walked into the common room, and Harry headed towards the boys' staircase. To her surprise, he actually stopped. "I should have told you, but I was scared. And I didn't want to believe it, therefore, if I didn't tell anyone, it wouldn't really be true."

Harry turned around as she spoke. "It's real, this war is happening, and just because you don't talk about it, doesn't mean it won't happen. It's only going to worse from here," Harry said, then turned around and walked upstairs.

--

Harry attempted to go through classes without looking at Hermione. However, he forgot that they had every class together. He suffered through classes, though he found it slightly funny that the rest of the Gryffindors were shunning her, because she lost them well over a hundred points yesterday. It was slightly his fault she lost the points, but the fact that she was sucking up worse than normal in classes was amusing. She had turned around so much from the shy timid girl who would do whatever her boyfriend told her to do in the beginning of the year. She was now always confident, held her head high, answered questions in class, and strived to be the best. From talking to Katy and Tracy about her, throughout the year, he learned that this was what she was like pre-Ron era, as they liked to call it.

Harry shook his head to get rid of the thoughts of her. He couldn't keep thinking like that, it would only make this that much harder to get through. Harry looked up at Remus who was going through the details of a defense spell that Harry had learned years ago. He hadn't used that particular spell ever, not since the day he learned it at least. Remus and his mum loved to teach him complex and advanced spells, but in truth, Harry used only simple ones, the ones that came to his mind when he was in the middle of battle. In fact, Harry had completely forgotten what the spell Remus was teaching even did, he just recognized it by the movement involved.

Harry turned around as he felt Katy tap his shoulder. She slipped a note into his hand. Harry knew exactly what it was. He watched Tracy pass notes to Hermione all morning. She still hadn't told her best friends what happened last night, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to do it. He opened the note and read:

Harry, is Mia okay? She's been acting strange lately. I was wondering if you knew what was going on, or why she was so upset last night when she came back. –Katy

Yeah, of course he knew. He turned around again, and nodded his head, but didn't give her any more than that.

"Alright class, I want you to write a four-foot essay on why this particular spell could help you or hurt you in battle. You're dismissed," Remus said.

The whole class started packing up their books, and tossing their notes into bags. Harry, who had already done this, darted out of the room as fast as he could. He ran down to the dungeons. He noticed Severus still hadn't let his class out, so he let himself into his office, only to find the door to the girls' rooms open.

"Hey Meg, don't tell me Uncle Sev has you three reading potion books already?" Harry asked, as he walked in, and found the two Granger girls sitting alongside the younger Malfoy, all three reading books.

"Harry! You haven't come down here in so long," Meg said, dropping her book, and running to him.

Harry loved how unlike she was from her older brother. It took a while, but she came out of her shell, and she now walked around the school as if she owned it, the only trait she inherited from Draco.

"Sorry about that, I've been busy. You know, fighting a dark lord and a full load of courses is a lot of work, not all of us can sit in the dungeons all day, reading books. What are you guys reading anyways?"

"They're both reading potion books, they find it fascinating. I, however, I got Uncle Sev to buy me this muggle book; it has all the old fairy tales in it. Like the real version of Cinderella. Did you know her stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper?"

"That's… great," Harry said, not sure how to react to a nine-year-old reading the gruesome tales of the Grimm Brothers.

"Harry?" came Snape's voice from his office.

"Oh, Sev I was looking for you. But, I forgot why," Harry said, realizing he had actually forgotten why he had come here in the first place.

"Must have been real important than," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Anyways, since you're already down here, I want to introduce you to my niece, my real niece," Severus told him, as he walked into the small apartment, followed by the girl from his dream.

She barely looked anything like her uncle, if she hadn't been introduced as such, Harry wouldn't have believed it. Her black hair was long and shiny, completely opposite of her uncles, and her dark eyes stood out from her pale skin. She looked to be about his age, maybe a year older. Her nose was much smaller than his, which matched the rest of her petite build.

"I've always dreamed of meeting the famous Harry Potter," she said, her voice silky and soft, and dripping with an American accent. "Uncle Sev speaks very highly of you."

"Funny, he never mentioned you," Harry said, looking questioningly at his professor.

"She was the top of her year at Salem Witches' Institute, and was accepted immediately into the auror program in New York City. However, I figured she would do better fighting in a real war, not dealing with idiots. So I asked my sister if she could send her over, and she could stay with me. As you can tell, she agreed." Harry knew Severus had a sister, but he never spoke of her. He had assumed that they didn't get along at all. He definitely never mentioned a niece, especially a niece as pretty as this one.

"Nice to meet you," Harry said, holding out his hand. She laughed, and smacked his hand away.

"You Brits have always been crazy about introductions," she said, and pulled him into a hug. "The name's Lizzie, Lizzie Morrison."
"Lizzie is short for Elizabeth," Severus explained to Harry, who had just been released from the embrace.

"Right," Harry said, "So what exactly will you be doing here, Lizzie Morrison?"

"She's going to be trained to fight alongside you and Ms. Granger," Severus said.

Harry was shocked. He knew they wanted Hermione to be trained, but they are going full out into this.

"We aren't letting this one last years like the last one did. It's going to be quick, because we're going to be ready," Severus said.

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