Chapter 12: The Witches' Sabbath

Harry and Hermione entered the Infirmary behind Healer Pomfrey, he holding both hands to his still bleeding mouth and she looking everywhere around and even under the beds for any hidden danger. The events of the Quidditch match had made it clear that Harry's earlier suspicions were correct, but what could they do against a madwizard and his lackey, two fully grown men disguised as Hogwarts Professors?

Listening to Hermione whisper what she saw and her certainty that Quirrel and Snape had jinxed his broomstick made him forget about the pain on his chest, but he still couldn't speak well because of the damage done by the Snitch, which he'd spit out on the grassy ground, and his gums hurt terribly.

As soon as Harry was put on his back on a bed he tried to tell the adult witch about the attack and what Hermione had seen, but Healer Pomfrey shushed him after he accused the professors, indicating the portraits lining the walls with her eyes before finishing her examination and excusing herself to fetch the necessary healing potions and his missing incisors. It was Hermione who understood first and whispered "the walls have ears" in his own ear.

"Sho wha'? Maybe 'ey'll 'ell Fumblefore!" he hissed back, his speech impaired by the lack of front teeth.

"Headmaster Dumbledore would say he's disappointed at you again for accusing two of his professors of attacking you, Harry. I know your first impulse is to yell your outrage at the world, but please hear me first?"

Watching him nod hesitantly, she looked up at the portrait of Healer William the Warty, an old healer that worked in Hogwarts in the fourteen hundreds according to the bronze plaque underneath his frame. His efforts to rid the school body of warts earned him the name; that, and the fact his technique involved plucking the warts from the patient and pasting them on himself instead of vanishing them.

"I believe our headmaster is very much like my friend Mrs Morewitt, she's trusting in a way that few people are, and she has trouble following simple linear logic, because magic itself isn't logical. Yours and my adjustments to our first year lessons in every subject where wands are used prove that each of us has a unique way of doing magic, and although it does follow general guidelines, it can take different paths to create the same result. Do you understand what I've said so far?"

"I fink sho... Bu' wha'sh--"

"What's that got to do with you running to any adults, you ask?" Hermione asked, correctly interpreting his words. "Witches and wizards are used to dealing with what they see at any given time, knowing that whatever happened before could've been an infinite number of events. Point in fact is what Malfoy and his goons did to you, and Headmaster Dumbledore's disappointment of your fighting without bothering to find out what happened before he arrived in the Concert Room. I'd say all wizards expect honourable behaviour from each other because of all this uncertainty, and when it doesn't happen, they can't really understand it, since they couldn't logically conclude that you were the victim unless they witnessed it themselves."

Hermione paused and bit her lower lip for a few seconds, saying "I also believe that's the reason Voldemort gathered so much power. Magical folk won't believe another has evil intentions until someone of authority labels him or her as a Dark Lord or Lady for using the Dark Arts."

"Bollosh!" he said and hit a side table hard with his closed fist, probably breaking his little finger.

"Harry, c'mon, you're better than this," she growled and took his hand in hers, soothing it and looking around for Madame Pomfrey who had left to find Harry's missing teeth but hadn't come back yet. "We need magically sound proof of your jinxed broom before talking to Professor McGonagall, and only afterwards should you go to the headmaster."

"Sowy... Ouch, it hufts!"

"Of course it hurts, it's a rather solid table you took your frustration on!" she said with a frown. They remained silent until hurried footsteps indicated someone coming in.

"Mr Potter, you have rather fine teeth," Madame Pomfrey said as she entered her realm, the Hogwarts Infirmary. "I'll reattach them after mending your ribs, and what pray tell happened to your right hand? Dear Merlin, this child can't be left alone for a single minute!"

"It was that very bad table's fault, Madame Pomfrey, it must've mocked Harry's toothless smile," explained Hermione with a smirk. She didn't let go or stop caressing his injured hand, though.

The healer paused and looked quizzically at them for a couple of seconds before shaking her head and approached Harry on the same bed he has been laid on since arriving at Hogwarts.

Hermione sat next to him on the bed while Madame Pomfrey reattached Harry's front teeth. The healer was doing a better job than Hermione's parents would have, setting the teeth straight and closing the gap he had between them before.

"Maybe I should have mine removed and reattached," she mused out loud, touching her own large set of incisors with an index finger.

"I am not a Face and Feet Specialist, Ms Granger, but I could refer you to a good friend of mine in Diagon Alley, if you wish?"

Suddenly feeling shy and looking out of the corner of her eyes at her friend, Hermione nodded and smiled. "Why am I feeling so self-conscious all of the sudden?" she wondered. Was it because of the insults Malfoy had thrown at her? Or was it something else, some ridiculously vain womanly desire to look prettier?

Beyond those questions, what do faces and feet have anything to do with each other? "Face and feet healers, Madame Pomfrey?" she just had to ask.

"Quite right, both parts of the body need very special care, wouldn't you agree?"

Reluctantly, Hermione nodded affirmatively and chalked it to yet another oddity of the Magical World. She turned her attention back to Harry, looking pointedly at his forehead. The Siegel rune was clearly etched, bringing him the powers of victory and greatness, as she had discovered in her Ancient Runes textbook and while researching for magical myths in the extensive Hogwarts Library.

"The question is, whose victory does that rune-shaped scar empower? Harry's, or Voldemort's own?" thought Hermione while the healer patched her friend up. Harry's was a magically active scar, certainly much more active than her own scarring from the accident that killed her parents. That thought reminded her that she had still to follow up on item twenty-one, "find out whether there was a wizard/witch in my building or not", a to-do entry she had added the day Madame Pomfrey had told her categorically that her body was marked as the result of magical energy. Hermione was now convinced it had been someone doing magic out of fear, trying to save him or herself, but it still didn't excuse whomever it was from not doing enough to save others.

"Hold still Mr Potter, I'm trying to help you here," admonished Madame Pomfrey, who had a curious look on her face while waving her wand all over him, and her QuickChart Quill kept scribbling furiously on a floating parchment to her right.

"Look, Hermione! I can talk good again!"

Swallowing the need to correct his poor use of the Queen's English, Hermione smiled and he returned a grin of his own. "Oh dear," she thought, "I guess Berny was right, I am going to bring a wizard to her home after all." She wondered if Neville would enjoy spending a week or so in a Muggle environment; she would even invite Ron, though she was sure he wouldn't enjoy himself much since always put her magical versus Muggle comments down, despite his father's work in the Ministry. Lavender on the other hand would most surely love to.

"Harry? I'm inviting some first year Gryffindors to spend a week during Summer holidays at my Uncle Charles' home. Do you believe you could ask those people you live with to drop you in London proper by then?"

The black-haired boy looked like he had just been offered a free cauldronful of Swiss chocolate, an expression of happiness in his face that drew a smile from the stern healer in turn. "I'd love to! But isn't it a bit early though?"

"I like to plan ahead," Hermione said with a casual shrug.

Madame Pomfrey sighed and pocketed her wand, looking at her other patients of the day sleeping on their beds. "Miss Granger, I need you to wait by my office for a minute."

Harry was suddenly suspicious. The healer had only been kind and attentive towards him since the beginning of the year, but so had Mr Harper and he was a lying thief who just wanted to use him to cover up his wrongdoing. "What if Madame Pomfrey is working with Voldemort and Quirrell, and now wants to finish the job and kill me?" he panicked and spoke aloud.

"Don't! I mean... I mean, is it alright if she stays, ma'am?" Harry asked.

"I'm afraid she can't. You may owl your family to let them know I wish to speak with them concerning your health, however. I'm sure they would like to know you're well and would approve of Hermione being privy to healing information if you explain it well?"

Both kids snorted and Madame Pomfrey frowned, expecting an explanation to such behaviour. It was Harry who spoke first, "The people I've lived with until coming to Hogwarts couldn't care less about my health... They'd miss their free gardener, dishwasher, mail sorter, cook and general caretaker if I died, though!"

The healer couldn't believe her ears when young Potter confessed to such disregard from his family so casually, going so far as to laugh about it with the Granger child! Or was he simply exaggerating, like all children are prone to do? "Mister Potter, has your family been mistreating you? Merlin, I forgot about you Ms Granger, please go wait in the corridor."

"I said no!" Harry yelled, switching from a good mood into outright anger. "Hermione means more to me than aunt Dorothea and her fat husband and son. Hermione stays here!"

Seeing that Hermione was sitting back on his right, Harry felt his heart rate slowing down, and took comfort from her hand in his. He looked up at Madame Pomfrey and her face was alternating between curiosity to hurt and then disapproval, all expressions he'd been keen to understand in order to survive primary school and life with his relatives.

"Tut, tut... Very well, this is most unheard of, but I will accommodate your plea, Mr Potter. As you surely remember, I examined you after your mishap in your first Potions lesson. What you don't know is that the results were... Unexpected to say the least." Madame Pomfrey sighed, knowing her patient had the right to know this but Headmaster Dumbledore had insisted in keeping it a secret.

If young Potter hadn't come into the Infirmary with broken hands right before his Quidditch match, she wouldn't have kept a watchful eye on him at all. She had been one of the first people to see him fighting against what she believed to have been a malfunctioning broomstick, but her expert healer's eye for hexes, jinxes and curses had allowed her to recognize the faint echo of a real jinx.

Realizing they had told the truth and the child's life was endangered in Hogwarts had thrown her mind off the comfortable pink nimbus it had been living in, and if they were right about the jinxing, could young Potter be right on his accusation as well? "Impossible," she thought, "I don't know Quirinus very well, but Severus can be many things unpleasant, yet never a murderer. Not after... After his rumoured bad experience at the hands of Death Eaters."

In any event, she was going to help him and be honest with him, even if she had no idea how to convince Albus that someone had tried to kill a student, of all things! Helping would start by performing her duty as a healer, properly informing the child as she should have done in the first place.

"There's a concentrated aura of somewhat unsettling magic on your forehead, almost sentient in nature but very, very weak. The problem is that it has increased in power since then," she told her small patient.

"Really? Well, that explains it," Hermione stated, looking sideways at her friend.

"Sentient means something alive, doesn't it?" asked Harry, at which his friend nodded in confirmation. "Huh, now it makes sense. Thank you ma'am!"

Whatever Poppy Pomfrey had anticipated as the children's reaction, it wasn't this. Screams and fear, yes, but smiles and relaxed faces as if they had just solved life's greatest puzzle were as unexpected as the diagnostic of Potter's cursed scar. All she could reply was a feeble "I'm sorry?"

"Ma'am, I don't care if you don't believe me... Us, I mean, but Dum-- Headmaster Dumbledore though I was possessed by Voldemort before his phoenix kidnapped me, and tried to split me from my friends as well as testing me to see if I was evil or not."

Madame Pomfrey flinched at You-Know-Who's hated name, and then looked back and forth between these first years' faces. They looked young enough, but had a presence of mind she had only seen in children who were forced to grow up before their time, those faced with harsh experienced earlier in life.

"And just today, our headmaster said he was disappointed at Harry for fighting against three bullies! The truth of the matter was that my friend had been the victim, and yet we had no proof and the professors arrived in the middle of a scuffle," Hermione commented. "Which is reason enough to suspect he's still fixated on the idea of possession, or perhaps some damage from Voldemort's curse."

Flinching again, the healer had to praise their courage at speaking You-Know-Who's name, unable to put herself in their perspective as Muggle-raised people, who still ignored the true power of words. She jumped a few inches on air when an elderly voice greeted her formally.

"Chief Healer Pomfrey, how fares our Gryffindor Seeker?" asked Headmaster Dumbledore as he strolled into the Infirmary. "Young as you are, Harry, pulling such acrobatic broomstick moves is quite dangerous."

Harry looked at Hermione, "should I tell him?" clearly expressed on his face. She replied with an "it's up to you" face of her own, followed by a nose-wrinkle, which he interpreted as a "maybe not, after all" and he couldn't agree more. She had chewed his head off after meeting Fluffy about always searching help from a professor, but the fact she was wary of an adult who happened to be the highest authority in the castle was an indication of how suspicious the headmaster was to her.

"I understand, sir."

"Glad to hear you say it, my boy. Poppy, why did you worry young Harry with such devastating news of his... His condition? I believe we had an agreement that the boy should be spared of the worry?" the older wizard asked, his voice only partially gentle.

"Why shouldn't I be told? I understand it's a leftover from Voldemort trying to kill me," Harry said, too distressed to be polite. "Besides, I believe in honesty 'cause I've been made a fool all my life and lied to one too many times; I'd like to believe I've got enough courage to do what's right, but I can't do that if people hide stuff from me. They made me hate my mum and dad, did you know that Mr Dumbledore? They lied to me and... And made me hate them-- And then this teacher, he... He used me for money..."

Harry went silent and sagged a little, but then turned to Hermione and squeezed her hand in his. "Another thing is that I've experienced what a true friend is, and I'd like to believe Madame Pomfrey can be more than a doctor-- I mean healer to me, a friend that can trust me to understand if she's got bad news, and then tell me what to do about it!"

His little speech seemed to shake the white-bearded wizard, whose eyes successively widened in surprise, crinkled in a wince and then hardened as if outraged as it went on. Headmaster Dumbledore then looked at him from behind half-moon spectacles and a twinkle in his eyes, while Hermione was amazed that her friend had been able to pull all that out of his chest without yelling and hitting the walls, and not a little proud as well, though her first instinct was to tell him off for speaking back to the headmaster so disrespectfully.

As Harry looked up at the old wizard, he began to feel an uncomfortable pressure and averted his eyes with a gasp. He had already felt that before, at the time Snape had been looking down at him. "Wicked! I'd like to learn how to do that, sir!"

"Do what, my boy?"

"Pull other people's thoughts, of course. Professor Snape does the same thing," said Harry casually.

"Albus! Are you attempting Legillimency on young Mr Potter?" quipped Madame Pomfrey, who took a step forward.

With a sigh, Dumbledore conjured a flashy chair upholstered to match his quadracoloured red, green, yellow and blue striped robes and golden pointy hat, sitting on it. "Yes I am, Poppy. It is a Headmaster's prerogative to use the passive aspects of the Art in order to aid in conflict resolution or in the course of a school-related investigation. My boy, I must apologize on behalf of Hogwarts, I saw the memory of your battle against a faulty..."

"Jinxed," Harry interrupted but the headmaster simply continued talking.

"...broomstick. However, and it pains me to disclose this, the Board of Governors is quite stubborn when it comes to upgrading our leisure equipment, which is at the moment almost a century old."

"Well that's just rich," thought Hermione. "The headmaster can see inside our minds and he still believed Harry was somehow evil!" She decided to voice a question then, "Why didn't you apply the same technique earlier today, sir?" Hermione asked.

Headmaster Dumbledore sagged a little on the chair next to Harry's bed. "Alas, I did. You are a very observant girl, Ms Granger, and capable of discussing matters in a way a child your age wouldn't easily accomplish, I must say. Peter, your Ancient Runes professor, said so as well, highly amused at your verbal sparring after class."

Hermione shrugged and looked down at her lap embarrassed for a second, before insisting on a reply from the old wizard who had cleverly avoided answering. "Headmaster, then you must've seen the memory of those boys hurting Harry!"

"Mr Potter's mind was, to put it simply, drowning in anger at the time. The Mind Arts are as wonderful as they are dangerous, and passive Legillimency cannot break through such clouding emotions," he explained.

"Why didn't you try it on me then, sir?"

"Because, my dear girl, all I saw was a group of young boys. And one girl," he added after the look in Hermione's face, "resorting to violence to settle their differences instead of being civil. There was no need to see anything further, for you were all at fault. Levelling a wand at a fellow student is considered a serious offence with serious punishment under Magical Law at large, well beyond the point deduction and detention Professor Snape has seen fit to punish you with in accordance to school regulations."

Harry frowned at the veiled threat from the headmaster. If there was a subject he was well versed in, it was threats. Uncle Vernon was a master in the use of direct and subtle threats as a motivation for him to do his chores or simply to become invisible inside his house, the opposite of Hermione who would use explanations and reasons to ask him to do things, and even then only if he wanted to.

He smiled a bit at recalling her way of handling him. Snape had accused his friend of being a Potterette on their first day of school, but he actually found it warming to be able to call Hermione his Potterette, despite the way the Potions Professor made it seem like a bad thing. She would help him find proof and show Headmaster Dumbledore that Voldemort was back, and trying to kill him inside the school.

Anyway, Harry had more urgent questions, "But you singled me out, sir. Why?"

"Alas, perhaps it was wrong of me to feel the need to be... Well, to care about your conduct too deeply, to put it simply. Your parents were well-loved students in this school, and yes, perhaps I've overstepped the boundaries between headmaster and pupil," the aged wizard said with growing worry.

Scratching the back of his neck with his free hand, Harry blurted "You saw that I was angry, but what about the Lords of the Playground and Malfoy?"

"As I told your dear friend, there was no need to spend time sifting through their surface memories and emotions as the situation was bad enough. The Mind Arts do require much concentration, which perhaps precludes many from learning them properly, if at all," the headmaster told them in a discouraging tone of voice, before pausing and making his beard twitch from the smile underneath. "Lords of the Playground, Mr Potter?"

Harry took on a faraway expression for a moment before turning to the adult he didn't trust. "It's a personal story, Headmaster Dumbledore."

"I see... Well, time wastes away and you should go celebrate today's victory after Poppy releases you in good health," the headmaster said and stood up, the gaily coloured chair disappearing without a sound. He looked down at the two friends sitting side by side on the infirmary bed and sighed when they avoided his eyes. "As is my duty to inform you my boy, you have the right to lodge a complaint in writing to the Board of Directors of Hogwarts regarding the faulty..."

"Jinxed!" Harry insisted again.

"...broomstick and your accident on the pitch. If you wish, your Head of House shall help you address it properly," Dumbledore added, hoping to steer the oddly rebellious Harry towards trusting someone he trusted himself. And why was the boy insisting on calling the broom jinxed? It was clearly a problem with the charms wearing off, as was wont to happen in equipment that is almost a hundred years old. A first year student would never be able to tell the difference, even if one was to consider the possibility.

"Headmaster Dumbledore?" asked Hermione, who was wearing an expression Harry had already discovered was always on her face when she had a solution to a problem in class. "You said the Board is always tight on the budget for sports implements?"

"Tight on the budget, young girl? I'm afraid your words confuse me," the headmaster said.

"Oh... What I mean to ask is whether they release few funds for Quidditch equipment because the Board favours other areas of learning in Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, phrasing her question differently.

"Just how old is this child?" Dumbledore wondered inside his mind, worried that even now she was avoiding his gaze, as was Harry. Aloud, he nodded and said "You are correct, Ms Granger."

"I might have a solution then."

Harry perked up at that and looked at his friend, silently asking her what she was talking about. But then he remembered who she was in the Muggle world, put two and two together, and his eyebrows rose up. "You're gonna ask the Foundation to help?"

Shaking her head up and down, Hermione smiled and left it at that, failing to notice the intrigued look in their headmaster's face, which turned into amusement as she looked for a small notebook and a quill from inside her silk pouch, as well as a book on Quidditch and a perused broomstick catalogue from last year, pulling more unexpected items out of the way like a capped jar of wet water beetles she must have collected from the lake, and strangely enough, a very rare Egyptian Astronomical Obelisk that looked to be in pristine condition.

"A girl chosen by the Raven and a boy who looks attuned to Magicks of Old. We shall live in interesting times indeed," mused the old headmaster. But why was Harry so distrustful? Fawkes had taken a risk and proven young Harry was in complete control of himself, with a pure soul untainted by evil. But from the clearly horrible household Dumbledore had condemned the child to live in as the lesser of two evils, he should have been a grateful, humble child who would embrace any small act of kindness spared to him and accept any hardships thrown in his path; someone in awe of the Magical World, who could be easily led by the hand to fulfil his sorrowful fate.

Instead, Headmaster Dumbledore was faced with a true Potter Evans child, an apparently smart boy yet too easily angered for his own good, but also valiant and observant, friend to his friends and quick to act against perceived wrongs. He was quite a little mischievous too, as was evidenced by his missadventures so far. "And we're still at the beginning of term!" thought Dumbledore with a real smile, eagerly looking forward to the next years of Harry Potter's life, however short it may be.

Headmaster Dumbledore was also aware of Harry and Hermione's daily rendezvous on top of the Gryffindor Tower, ever since a bronze gargoyle from the eastern walls had gossiped about it to the stone dragon that lined the rooftop of the Great Hall, who in turn told the statues flanking the Headmaster's Office windows about "a couple of ickle firsties worshipping the morning sun together". It was heart-warming to see their friendship blossom, if only Harry was a regular pupil in the Hogwarts student body. But he wasn't a normal child, he was a boy marked by Darkness and the only means to put an end to the embodiment of Evil that is Lord Voldemort.

He wished he could find a solution, distil the ultimate magic and free the boy from his task, for it had brought nothing but pain and suffering to him. "Alas, his path is set and once Evil returns, Harry will face it and, properly guided, defeat it once and for all."

The centenarian wizard turned to Madame Pomfrey. "Poppy, have you perchance brought the Snitch your patient caught so spectacularly up here with him?"

"No Albus, it must have been left on the pitch. Perhaps Rolanda has it?"

"Perhaps she does," Dumbledore replied and noticed he had Harry's attention on him while his friend scratched away on parchment. "Alas, I failed to see it on the pitch and called it with the Accio charm, a useful spell Professor Flitwick shall teach you in a few years," he said looking at young Potter, "but it also failed. So, I considered summoning it to me. Unfortunately, not knowing where it is exactly, I would have summoned every single Snitch in Britain," the old wizard said with a chuckle.

The image of the Headmaster of Hogwarts dodging thousands of summoned Snitches made Harry laugh and Hermione snort. She reddened at her lack of respect and apologized to their headmaster, who waved it off with a laissez faire attitude and amused, twinkling blue eyes.

Lost in thought, Dumbledore finally said goodbye and strolled out of the Hogwarts Infirmary reassessing his view on Harry Potter once again, barely acknowledging the pair of young Gryffindor girls walking towards the double doors he had just exited.

Inside the large room Healer Pomfrey continued to evade Harry's questioning eyes, busying herself with her shelves loaded with potions and salves, undoing and redoing a few beds twice with her wand, or simply fussing over the only other two patients, who were actually fast asleep and in no need of assistance. Hermione was also busy writing what looked like a six-feet essay on the virtues of Quidditch broomsticks, and he actually felt sorry for whoever was going to read her detailed request for a donation.

He had been left steaming about Headmaster Dumbledore's refusal to believe the broom was jinxed and the fact Madame Pomfrey probably knew the broom had been jinxed but wouldn't speak about it in front of the stupid living portraits, nor say a word to the headmaster either.

Humming softly to himself, he tried to remember everything he felt when the flying broom began to act weird, trying to find out how it felt in order to keep an eye out for jinxes and hexes, just like he and Hermione had started doing with their wand magic. His friend would use some fancy words like ex-oh-corporal-something-or-other, but to him it was just "feeling" the magic coming out of his wand.

"Huh, I wonder if I could just ask Quirrell about curses and stuff in class," he thought, imagining the bumbling professor sweating and stuttering even more when he raised his hand and asked how to counter a jinxed broom next D.A.D.A. class. Suddenly Harry a memory of a scared-looking professor being hissed at by Snape came to his mind; Snape seemed to have been injured and had actually told Quirrell to shut up because he named the spell they had used! "They've been together in this since the beginning of the year! That's how Snape got hurt," he concluded out loud.

"But did Professor Snape harm himself trying to hurt you?" Hermione asked in a whisper, once more following his train of thought. "You saw the entry that describes Fiendfyre as an all-burning fire, nigh impossible to control. I'd say such horrible fire would've been quite noticeable anywhere near you or I," she added, reasoning with him.

"Yeah, that's true... Oh, what if they were setting up a trap or something?"

"Possible, but not likely. There are hundreds of kids running up and down the halls all day long, how could they target you specifically?"

"I dunno... Hermione, what if they met Fluffy by chance, then, just like us, and that's why they used that fire-thing and it got out of hand? I mean, if it wasn't to get to me, it sure as hell was to get to whatever Fluffy has been guarding!"

Hermione gasped and clutched a hand to her chest. "You don't think Fluffy's been hurt, do you Harry? Oh, no, maybe he's been-- I-I just can't say it... We must visit with Hagrid today and find out!"

Silently nodding, Harry finally discovered what it was that had been bothering him for the past fifteen minutes. His teeth were all in the wrong positions, or rather they were now corrected, but felt "weird and out of place" as he termed it. A cough brought him out of reacquainting himself with his teeth and he saw Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown standing just a few feet from him.

"Harry?" Lavender called, "I, er... I was climbing down the stands and this... This Snitch was on the ground? I think someone was charming it a while back but I had it in my hands, and... Well, it's got your blood on it. Even I'm aware that you can't be too careful about one's blood."

Hermione and Harry tilted their heads comically together to the left, but Lavender resisted the urge to laugh and tried to explain, extending her hand and presenting the Quidditch Snitch. "Like my mother says, our magical prowess demands respect. In other words, magic can bite you back in the arse!"

"Lavender! How crude," Hermione complained half-heartedly because she was beginning to grow tired of complaining. Truth was, she never knew people cursed so much without meaning an insult in everyday conversation, never being too close to kids her own age except perhaps Bernadette, her cousin, who didn't curse but did call her nasty names at times.

"All right, thanks. But what can you do with someone's blood?" Harry asked, silently giving a nod to let Hermione know it was alright for her to pick the Snitch from Lavender's hand.

"If you aren't into the whole Dark Magic thing, tracking spells and personalized enchantments like what my mum did with me when I was a baby; so I wouldn't wander too far away, you see. And then there's the beautiful charmed necklace that daddy gave me when I was five, it's got all these Ever-Sparkling charms on the rubies, it's so beautiful! And if I ever lost it, all I do is snap my fingers and it comes back as if it were summoned," Lavender said and continued without so much as taking a breath.

"Oooh, and then there's the entire range of Sensing-Your-Senses kind of enchantments, kind of similar and likely like the Situation Clocks? Well, never you mind," she said at the blank look in Hermione and Harry's faces, "the idea is that you get to know what the person you're tracking is feeling at that moment... Yay! You could also add a blood-based charm to your familiar! I so want a pink bunny, you see? Anyhow, this little charm would make it so that my cutest pink bunny of them all wouldn't bite me or run away..."

Harry stared at his fellow Gryffindor with a mixture of awe and annoyance as she continued to babble on and on about blood enchantments and occasionally talking about the things she has or wants to have. It was so similar to the way Dudley would ramble on about the latest toys and things he wanted, that Harry felt like shutting her up with a shout, but at the same it was amazing that she had actually come to the Infirmary to help him, and that she really seemed to want to talk to him.

"Why did Harry's simple question get her so wound up?" Hermione whispered to Parvati.

The Asian girl smirked and replied slowly, as if talking to a little child. "Because he's Harry Potter, silly. Who wouldn't sell a finger to the nearest hag just to have him speak with you?" she added rhetorically. "Ah, but what am I saying, you managed to meet him on board the Express and anger him five minutes later, then befriend The-Boy-Who-Lived only to anger him again, and then be the one to join him in who knows what sort of adventures night after night! And your fingers are all intact, for Shiva's mercy!"

Hermione looked towards her dearest, and perhaps only male friend and spoke softly, yet loud enough for her words to reach Parvati's ears, "I don't care for Harry The-Boy-Who-Lived Potter; I care for the boy behind the glass, the pale and thin boy who shared something so personal to him with me, who looked at me and said I'm just like you without moving his lips."

With a sigh, Hermione turned back to the Patil twin. "You know, Lavender is about the get herself hexed if she doesn't shut up about her charmed tea set and how cute her animated dolls can be."

"Laaavie! Mum is here!" bellowed Parvati with a high-pitched voice, making Lavender yelp and jump a foot on the air while looking around the infirmary like a frightened puppy.

"Merlin's moth-eaten robes, Parv! I've told you never to imitate my mum like that!" she said with a hand over her heart. "She's bad enough as it is, thank you very much. Coming to school was a real relief, you see, mums can be so annoying!"

"Well, I wouldn't know, would I?" Hermione replied scathingly. "Nor would Harry for that matter... You'll see why at my uncle's home; I mean if you are there... I mean to say, I've invited you of course, with me, us, I mean. Blast it all! I'm terrible at this..."

Lavender, Parvati and even Harry kept looking at her, trying to understand what she had tried to say as she spun her arms around, one hand splayed open and the other holding a bloodied Snitch. "You've probably already noticed I'm somewhat ineffective when it comes to socializing," she paused for the expected snorts and taunts, yet they never came from either of the first-year girls. "Anyway, given your liking for all things Muggle as well as your friendship to Parvati, I would like to invite you two to my family's home sometime during the Summer Holidays."

"Certainly! I'd love to, and I hope Parvati's parents agree to drive us there. They have the right to use a car, you see?" Lavender whispered the last part with something akin to lust in her eyes. "A moving Muggle chariot! Only high-ranking Ministry personnel have access to those!"

Harry and Hermione looked at each other and tried to hold their snickers at Lavender's obvious joy just from thinking about riding on a motorcar, something that was so mundane for them both. Although Harry wasn't always thrilled to ride in uncle's vehicle because, well, his uncle is usually there squashing the driver's seat and complaining about foreign cars and their bad engineering because he doesn't fit properly inside.

"Hermione, isn't it somewhat early in the year to be inviting for next Greeshma-- Hmmm, Summer that is, of all seasons?" asked Parvati.

"Well, I-- Don't you dare laugh, Harry!" Hermione said and crossed her arms over her chest with a huff before adding a lame "I merely like to plan ahead..."

Harry still laughed at the upset look on her face, knowing she wouldn't hold it against him, and then told the girls he had said the same thing earlier. Both Parvati and Lavender seemed to preen at his freely given attention, and then began to whisper and giggle to each other, making him very uncomfortable and not knowing what to do next. Harry decided to search for Madame Pomfrey instead and hopped off the bed, leaving the impossible-to-understand pair of giggling girls to themselves.

Thinking that "to do what's right" also applied to his own troubles, Harry walked into the Chief Healer's open door and took in the brightly lit office. A simple wooden workbench served as both desk and preparation table, while the entire opposite wall was covered in bookshelves filled with books and loose scrolls of parchment of all sizes and colours. Next to the door he had just crossed, a series of cabinets held phials and jars with the aid of freezing charms, judging by the icicles inside, and Madame Pomfrey busied herself by crouching down and trying to reach for something deep into the lowest shelf.

"Do you need some help, ma'am?"

"Ahhh! Mr Potter, you truly shouldn't startle older witches like that!" she said after knocking a few flasks and something that tried to hop away on its own to the ground.

"Sorry," he said, really embarrassed for making her break the potions or whatever those were. Then his eyes narrowed and he kept looking at the only framed picture of the room. "Your portrait is empty right now. Why didn't you tell Headmaster Dumbledore what happened if you believed me?"

The older witch seemed to be lost for a second, as if struggling to understand what he was talking about, and Harry realized she wasn't faking it as she had been pretending to be busy a few minutes earlier. Why was she having trouble remembering he told her two professors had tried to kill him?

"I'm sorry, Mr Potter. It was as if... Oh dear!" the healer exclaimed and darted towards her workbench to pick a quill and scribble a series of words in some language Harry didn't know. "What do you remember, child? Tell me now!"

Doing as she asked, he recounted his last minutes of Quidditch playing, from the moment his broomstick began to shudder and buckle to Hermione's whispered words on the pitch stating he wasn't safe in the school. Madame Pomfrey kept nodding and glancing at the still empty frame on the wall, occasionally tutting and writing more than what he had told her; at least that was what it looked like.

"What's going on, Madame Pomfrey? Are you feeling alright?"

"I will be now... Whatever caused the clouding of my memory must have affected an entire wing of the castle, and only a powerful witch or wizard could do so. Or a group of people involved in a ritual, but that would be too noticeable. How is it you remember it still, Harry?"

"Er... Don't really know, ma'am. I guess being thrown out of my broom from a hundred feet high isn't something I'll ever forget," he replied with a shrug.

The healer looked down at him with calculating eyes for a moment, and then made a decision. "Harry, could I trouble you for a willingly given cut of your flesh?"

"Excuse me?!" Harry had just received an interesting lecture on blood-magic, if annoyingly laced with lots of inane commentaries, but interesting anyway, and now the Hogwarts Chief Healer wanted a whole piece of him?

"Mr Potter-- Harry, were you sincere about what you told Albus, that it would please you to be... To forge a friendship beyond this mutual professional relationship of ours?"

"Yeeeah... Why d'you ask?" he drawled suspiciously, before adding a quick "ma'am" at the end, trying to be polite.


Outside the office, a couple of minutes before Harry waited for an answer from the older witch with a raised eyebrow, a brown-haired young witch had been using the tip of her tongue to moisten her lips while eyeing the winged golden ball on her hands, with deep concentration and not a little curiosity. Truth was, she was actually curious about the red liquid covering the Snitch instead of the sporting item itself.

Hermione had developed a sudden urge to taste the still fresh coat of blood from it, probably kept that way as an unexpected result from the ever-clean charms on it. Whatever the case, she knew she was quirky about her food, and about the organization of her bathroom kit, and about a hundred little things normal people wouldn't pay attention to, so perhaps tasting her most significant friend's haemoglobin would simply fall into that big box of quirks she carried around.

Her natural curiosity had been aroused anyway, and Hermione hoped Harry wouldn't mind. She looked up to the healer's office when a loud sound of broken glass came from inside, wondered what had Harry done this time, but quickly returned to the blood at hand. Shrugging, she opened her mouth wide and slowly licked the Snitch.

"Hermione, that's truly disgusting!" Parvati commented, breaking her whispered gossip session and scrunching her face as Lavender said "Eeeew!" and pretended to gag.

She had already ran her tongue over the bloodied Snitch and shivered while her eyes glazed over for a moment. "That was... That was quite disappointing, actually," she thought to herself, smacking her lips to focus on the metallic taste. Taste was all there was to it; no magical burst, no sudden intimate knowledge of Harry's mind, nothing but the odd, scintillating lights on the edge of her vision. "Well, that certainly is something," she mumbled and then the lights began to swirl around her faster and faster, making her sway on her feet.

"P-Parvati? I may have done something really foolish..." she managed to croak out before falling on her back on top of the bed, unconscious.


Back inside Madame Pomfrey's office, Harry snapped his head back as he heard someone yelling for help. He rushed outside to find his friend passed out on a bed, her things all over the floor, Lavender standing on top of a stool because Blacksnout had been slithering into the infirmary, while Parvati tried some spell on Hermione.

"Stop!" he yelled and flung a couple of flasks from the nearest table at the Indian girl, without ever touching them, before reaching for his friend and pushing the bed she lay on away, with enough force to move an entire row of them against the farthest wall. Luckily the other patients had been placed on the wall farthest from the windows.

Awed by the display of accidental magic that left half a dozen bed frames completely destroyed and anther half dozen piled up against the wall, Madame Pomfrey turned her attention to Parvati. The Gryffindor was crouched on the floor looking between the shattered glass behind her and Harry Potter's angry face staring at her from the other side of the room, saying she was only trying to Ennervate his friend.

"Please tell him what the spell does, Madame Pomfrey! I haven't harmed Hermione!"

"Mr Potter, she speaks the truth. The Reviving Spell does exactly as it says, it wakes someone from unconsciousness."

"Fine!" Harry yelled back, shaking Hermione with one hand. "But it ain't working!"

Having lost so many house points in the beginning of term had done nothing to decrease Harry's notoriety, and those who thought of him as a spoiled boy used that as an excuse to slight him, at least until the most vocal about it began to notice an increase of the Weasley Twins' pranks on them. On the other hand, because of how famous he is to Magical Britain and perhaps the world at large, the rest of his fellow classmates expected him to be many things Harry firmly believed he wasn't ever going to be.

Powerful enough to defeat the Dark Wizard not even Dumbledore could stop was Harry's primary objection, for he wasn't even sure how that happened, or if that ever really did happen, despite the headmaster's written testimony found on the W.E.A.K. book Hermione had.

Whatever his self-doubt, after a display of magic no eleven-year-old should be capable of, the legend of The-Boy-Who-Lived as told by Lavender Brown, gossip monger and avid cuteness-seeker, would escalate to new heights after today. "Hermione was fine until she licked some of Harry's blood, ma'am. Now could you please get this thing away from me?" she explained and pleaded, pointing at the coiled snake just below the stool she stood on, swinging its head back and forth while hissing.

"The frightened yellow-haired youngling did nothing to my abaeteh, amigo. After missstresss fell asssleep, the dark-haired one waved a branch at her, but didn't touch her."

Harry listened to the boa's description of what happened, not wanting to correct Blacksnout and tell him that one didn't need to actually touch another with a wand in order to harm him or her.

"Did I ever tell you how a big, fat and deliciousssly scared human once came to clean my neighbor's nest? He's an Aussie snake, ill-tempered that one... It wasss just an ordinary day, asss usual I wasss bored out of my mind when all of the sssudden..."

Tuning out the snake's tale, Harry continued to shake his friend awake, to no avail. "Madame Pomfrey? Please help her!"

"Hold your hippogriffs, young man. She is in no apparent danger, her breathing is normal and her skin still has a healthy tone," said the old witch. "Now, go apologize to the two young ladies for blaming and scaring them while I tend to your friend."

A lifetime of training would have made him obey the adult at once, but after learning the hard way that grown-ups shouldn't be trusted, and now beginning to really understand the Dursleys were wrong about one too many things thanks to Hermione and their morning talks, he frowned and stood his ground. "I'm not leaving her side!"

Sighing, Madame Pomfrey paused her examination, looked down at the scrawny boy and rephrased herself. "Please make amends with your housemates, Harry. They weren't at fault, and I see nothing wrong with Ms Granger, except for an unusually deep dreamlike condition."

"But--"

"Do you wish to have your anger control your life, or handle the right side of the wand instead?" the healer asked pointedly. "Look around you, Mr Potter. This is the result of your misguided chivalry!"

Seeing the scrapheap of mangled beds and the broken glass around Parvati for the first time, Harry felt ashamed of himself because he hadn't even noticed the mess he had caused. Moreover, he could have seriously injured someone.

He then focused on the girls and noticed their star-struck attitude had changed into one of cautiousness and, if he wasn't mistaken, fear of him. "I don't want people to fear me, I'd be just like Dudleykins at school" he mumbled in disgust and scratched the nape of his neck. "I don't wanna hurt innocent people either, Madame Pomfrey. Never like this... Not even for helping someone I like."

That spoken desire was the rune that crafted the enchantment for Poppy Pomfrey, Chief Healer at Hogwarts, solidifying her resolve to protect Harry from those that wish him harm, even if it meant going against Albus' instructions to have minimum contact with the boy. She turned away from the sleeping Hermione to see a very embarrassed black-haired child struggling to find the right words to apologize. He had the girl's roughly five-feet-long snake coiled around his shoulders and looked to be using the reptile as a comforter of some kind.

Harry had tried to find a way to say sorry without looking like a good-for-nothing, worthless freak begging not to be thrown out of the house in front of Parvati and Lavender, but he couldn't find the words to match his feelings. Instead, he settled for plain and simple. "I'm sorry."

"Is that it?" Lavender asked bluntly.

"Lavender! Harry Potter is making an apology. You should be more considerate and let him finish before interrupting," said Parvati with an expectant face.

"Er... That's about it. I'm sorry, you know, for all this," he said, waving his arms around the room.

"Boys!" the two girls chorused after a moment of silence, and then walked away between giggles and whispered words.

Dumbfounded, Harry watched them leave the infirmary and stared at the empty doorway for a moment. He suddenly remembered to close his mouth and hissed "did I sssay sssomething wrong?"

If boas had lips to snort with, Blacksnout would have. "Not very good with wordsss, are you amigo?"

"Sssmart-arssse. Not very good at walking any longer, are you Blacksssnout?"

"But you ssstill have legsss," the boa pointed out, "ssso make them ussseful and get me to my abaeteh. Chop-chop! I want to be there when ssshe awakensss."

Shaking his head, he made his way back to Hermione's bedside and extended his arm for the familiar to climb down. Harry met a disapproving look from Madame Pomfrey but stubbornly refused to stop what he was doing, instead going as far as to open one of the large leaded-glass windows for his friend's winged familiar, before tackling the task of untangling the dozen beds he had damaged.

He grunted, pulled, twisted, huffed and pulled again, using one hand, two hands, a foot and trying to dislodge the iron bars this way and that, only to end up holding a loose brass knob from one of the foot boards, and not achieving much else.

"Why. Won't. These. Things. Move!" he grunted and stepped back panting from the effort, evil-eyeing the scrapheap and kicking it swiftly, causing a resounding clank of metal hitting metal.

"Mr Potter! That will be five points from House Gryffindor!" said madame Pomfrey, who then winked and added "I couldn't very well deduct points earlier, since you used no wand or physical actions to damage Hogwarts property."

Gaping at the healer, Harry started to get angry as he was wont to do when his mood flipped, until he noticed the smirk on her face and suddenly understood what she wanted to say. Rules applied demerits to those using magic in the hallways, but magic with wands! More than that, it seemed witnessed direct action against someone or something was required to grant punishment. "Just like this morning with the Lords of the Playground. And that's how the Weasley Twins had been spending their time pranking Hogwarts at large without getting themselves expelled," he thought.

"I am a Healer, child. A good one, if I may say so, but a healer first and foremost, which is something my... My relationship with Headmaster Dumbledore and his leadership of the Or-- Of tolerant, good people who fought the darkness have obfuscated for too long." She spoke and checked on her other patients, leaving Hermione to sleep under the softest cotton sheets Harry had ever touched, even the ones in his huge Gryffindor bed weren't as comfortable, and that was saying a lot.

"I don't understand, ma'am."

"What don't you understand, Harry? May I call you Harry, by the way?" Poppy Pomfrey asked.

"Yeah, that's all I am, just Harry is fine. I meant your words, like abruscate or something?"

A soft, tired voice interrupted the healer's reply. "Obfuscate. It means to confuse or to make something difficult to understand and sense. Think listening to faraway music when a plane flies overhead, obfuscating it."

"Hermione! You all right? D'you feel any pain?"

Chuckling, Madame Pomfrey stepped forward. "Tut-tut, I believe that is my question to ask, Harry."

"Sorry..."

She waved his apology with a smile and used her wand to pull Hermione's bed into her office, accidentally conjuring a privacy screen right in front of the painting and waving around for added security.

"Well now, how do you feel, Ms Granger?"

"Like I've just run the London Marathon... Twice!" she said and proved it by trying to raise herself, only to fall back on the bed like a sack of potatoes. "Also, why do I have two memories of the very same event?"

"Uh?" was Harry's articulate question.

"I mean, I have a vague memory of watching those men too focused on you when nobody else was, and then you fighting to stay on the broomstick, but I also have the memory of... Of your point of view!" exclaimed Hermione, looking at her friend with astonishment. "Oh, Harry, you were so scared!"

"Scared?" he asked, "No, no. Nuh-huh, I wasn't scared. Maybe I screamed a little, but I wasn't scared. Nope, not at all."

Narrowing her eyes, Hermione huffed. "Boys and their ridiculous bravado. Fine! You weren't afraid of becoming one with the ground, then."

"You mean to say, Ms Granger, that you're still aware of your friend's plight over the Quidditch pitch?" asked Madame Pomfrey.

"Of course, ma'am. Why wouldn't I be?"

The older witch sighed, "I believe someone has cast a broad Confundus charm, or perhaps a ritual with the same results. Only Harry's insistence warned me of it before completion, and you will find that your fellow team players have most likely already forgotten everything regarding a jinxed flying broom," she said, looking at Harry by the end.

"Voldemort!" snarled Harry, making Madame Pomfrey jump and cringe. "He did this to hide his trail! Now I'm never going to convince Dumbledore."

"Uuurgh... Harry, please stop ranting. The lights came back," moaned Hermione while trying to scratch her eyeballs using her knuckles.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk... You children must be the most ailment-prone couple to walk these halls since we last had a pupil in need of special care certain times of the month. No, Ms Granger, not that kind of monthly witchy inconvenience, that's quite easily aided with the right potion and affects us all," the healer said as she looked down on Hermione. On the other hand, Harry couldn't understand what they were talking about and simply shrugged at the adult's initial remark.

"Which is why," she continued, "now that we're out of reach from unwanted ears, painted or otherwise, I must speak to you about the upcoming Samhain," Madame Pomfrey said and adopted a very serious tone of voice.


To say that Harry and Hermione were careful of their surroundings would be an understatement. Paranoid and extremely jumpy would better describe them nowadays, little over two weeks after the Quidditch accident that only the two of them and Poppy knew had been anything but an accident after all. They had dreaded their D.A.D.A. and Potions classes, always ready to hit the floor if the professors started throwing killing curses at Harry.

Fortunately, after two lessons of each, Harry was still alive. Sure, Snape had attacked him with glares, sneers and various oh-so-helpful demeaning remarks at his potion making skills and continuous existence, but as it was he hadn't openly tried to kill him in any way.

Hermione had been astonished at first when, after leaving the infirmary and entering Gryffindor Tower, they found themselves in the middle of a full-swing party with fireworks and all. She had then become indignant when the Twins started hinting of a life-debt from Harry, but had turned outright angry when the two identical red-heads, Neville and Ron complained of faulty broomsticks instead of a clear attempted murder, just as Poppy had predicted.

With that first-hand experience of Voldemort's power in mind, both kids had been spending even more time together, in the apparent privacy of the tower roof, as they were today. The winds were strong and several puffy, heavy clouds travelled the skies at a run, chasing each other and occasionally merging together to create a whole new shape, like idle thoughts when given free-reign inside one's mind.

They sat watching the sunrise, huddled together under red and gold comforters, enjoying the chocolate-frogs that Harry had purchased from an older Gryffindor. He had been given a discount for being The-Boy-Who-Lived-To-Win-His-First-Quidditch-Game, which had been a somewhat happy note to a disastrous day.

"So, we now have the legend of the Phoenix Dome, or Domus Aurea that the Romans pillaged from Heliopolis, where it was called the Phoinix Tholos, and is believed to give immortality to any living creature inside," she paused to bite a chocolate leg, "and there's the similar myth of primeval seedlings from many different cultures around the world; the Tree of Life, the Tree of Death that's similar to what Master Liszt's portrait explained, and the Tree of Knowledge. I also found references to magically important horses--"

"Ha!" interrupted Harry before taking another bite of his chocolate.

"Honestly! Hogwarts: A History wasn't wrong, the book just happens to be very limited in regards to magical beasts of significance," said Hermione, but the smile dancing on her lips betrayed her supposedly stern reply.

Harry's smug grin as he said "If you say so" made them laugh for a while, but then his mood flip-flopped again. She was no longer surprised by the sudden changes, coming to expect them although in all honesty she had a hard time dealing with them. Not to mention the odd wisps of light she could still feel dancing inside her eyes and making her dizzy whenever Harry was angry, happy or simply bored to the extreme. They had been fading day by day, and would eventually disappear according to Madame Pomfrey, but it was annoying all the same.

"What's wrong, Harry?"

Looking far away over the Forbidden Forest, he remained silent but ran his left hand softly on the back of his friend's neck, under the mane of brown hair. He enjoyed doing that, it was a thrilling new sensation he had discovered four mornings ago and he hoped she would never tire of him repeating the caress. He'd never touched anyone willingly like this, expressing something in another language that wasn't speech or music, rather that of human touch. Was it wrong of him to want to touch her like this every morning of his life? He really shouldn't have such wishful thoughts, since nothing ever came out of wishing, in his experience.

"Not only that," thought Harry, "but now there's a couple of teachers wanting me dead, one of them is Voldemort of all people!" No, he would enjoy this friendship with Hermione as it is, living the moment and not worrying about a future that he might never have.

"What we need is a way to spy on Snape and Quirrell. Nobody believes a freak, after all..."

Hermione stiffened and grabbed hold of the hand running behind her neck, looking straight at him. "Don't say that! You told me never to call myself a freak, and the same goes for you too!" She paused for a few seconds and remembered something she had found scandalous at the time; a proposition by a certain pair of identical red-heads. "Harry? I think I know how to solve our needs."

"Okay."

"Aren't you going to ask me how?" she asked with a frown.

"Maybe later... Damn it Hermione, I can't let Voldemort kill me, 'cause once he's done it he'll kill everyone else in this bloody school!" he blurted and then pulled his hand from Hermione's grip, using it to tussle his own already messy hair.

"Language, Harry!" she blurted out of reflex, before wincing and sighing. "Sorry... You know how I hate people swearing."

"What if Mrs Pomfrey's ritual stuff fails? What if you fall ill again because of it?" he asked, ignoring her nagging and absently rubbing the spot Madame Pomfrey had used to extract a willingly given scallop of flesh. It had been Hermione's idea to use "the only available fleshy spot he has", as she had so casually said. His left cheek. His lower left cheek, to be precise.

He had been furious because Voldemort was a Hogwarts professor and nobody noticed. He remained furious because all that mattered to everyone was that Gryffindor had won the match, never sparing some real concern or asking how he felt, even if they believed he had fallen because the broomstick charms had broken down. He would still be furious until Voldemort was behind bars or dead for murdering his and so many others' families, and his mood reflected it.

"The Halloween Feast is tomorrow evening, the Great Hall looks beautiful and Hagrid's pumpkins have been a hit. Doesn't it all help to keep your mind away from... Away from the constant anger, fear and worry?"

Shaking his head negatively, Harry spoke softly. "No, you don't understand... I hope you'll never have to understand what it's like to live with fear and hate. It's what I've known for too long, and only my music keeps it away. My music and..."

"And?"

After a shrug, Harry remained silent but couldn't hide a blush that wasn't caused by the cold wind. He did return his hand to continue caressing Hermione's soft neck, however.

"I've lived in disappointment and longing, Harry. With the pain of knowing my family feared me because of the oddness that happened around myself! It's not the same, I know, and I'll never pity you or compare our lives, but they wouldn't even touch me, and it hurt to feel so... So hideously disgusting." She tilted her head to face him, "So you see, I still feel hideously disgusting, and that fear of constant rejection only goes away when I'm like this, cared for and safe with my friend Harry."

"Would you feel like that about me if your parents were alive? Or if we'd never met each other in London that day?" Harry asked, because he knew that meeting her had led him to finding the magic of music, and he truly had no idea if he would have been the same by the time his Hogwarts Letter came. "Would you still want to be my friend, if things were different?"

"The truth is I don't know, Harry. I would like to believe that yes, I would still be your friend. Closer, more distant? I can't tell, but this is the life we have, and suppositions lead to living in dreams, and while having dreams is a good thing, I would hate to see you wasting yourself with doubts and impossible desires."

Harry laughed, hugged his friend and sat straighter on the shingled roof. "Thank you for being true Hermione. You know, if Headmaster Dumbledore was here, he'd be looking for his twin because that's almost the same thing he told me after He-Who-Has-Fiery-Feathers let me out of the Dome."

"Why do you name Fawkes like that?" she asked after a quick laugh.

Looking around himself, Harry bent sideways and whispered "Because I'm afraid he'll come and knock me out again if I say his name."

"Oh, Harry, that's ridiculous. You're doing the same thing wizards do regarding Voldemort!"

"Care to wager on that?" he said, pointing at their last Chocolate Frog.

"You're on!" she replied with a smile, looking expectantly at her raven-haired friend.

He cleared his throat, and then spoke. "I still don't know why Fawkes kidnapped me."

Faraway trilling and the sounds of the forest swaying under the wind filled the children's ears. They looked up and down, sideways and even over the edge of the roof, but the phoenix was nowhere to be seen. Harry looked disappointed, and after a minute or two conceded defeat. "I guess he'll visit sometime later..."

"How can you be sure Fawkes is male?" she asked after carefully unwrapping her chocolate, folding the greaseproof paper and wiping the included card of crumbs and smudges.

"Dunno... Just a feeling, like when he was so sad about something. Whatever it was, Dumbledore seemed to know a little about it too."

"Headmaster Dumbledore has one in seven chances of popping up in a Chocolate Frog, higher odds than any other wizard," she said absently, looking at the repeated collectable card. Hermione bit another leg and then choked, startling Harry.

He soothed her back and checked she could still breathe, before asking what the matter was.

"Look!" she said, pointing at the card on the comforter. "Read the description!"

"Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, so on and so on... Defeated Grindelwald and famous for finding the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel," he read in a monotone. "We already know all that, don't we?"

"Mostly, yes. But read about his work Harry. Alchemy!"

"So? I don't understand..." he said and read the card again, chuckling softly when the photographed Dumbledore bent forward to read his own description as well.

"What's the alchemical textbook we use here at Hogwarts?" she paused and waited for the expected answer.

"There isn't one, is there? I mean we don't have an Alchemy Class... Do we? Have I been missing classes?!"

"Exactly! And no, Harry, you haven't been missing any classes. It's a lost art, even for magical people... Hold on a second. Flamel, flames... Fire, Fawkes? Phoenix... Fiendfyre!" she spouted, verbalizing random connections from inside her mind. "Harry, let's assume you're right about the professors intent to enter the trapdoor Fluffy is guarding. That being the case, they wanted to do it unnoticed, otherwise they would have just disposed of him, but according to Hagrid he's in good form but then stayed mum about it, meaning his furry three-headed pup is still guarding something that relates to Mr Flamel."

Nodding, Harry waved for her to continue with her thoughts.

"However, Fawkes is a creature of fire himself, couldn't it be that he's another guardian, and that he is the one that actually harmed Voldemort and his accomplice as they were looking for whatever alchemical secret is stored down there, and had to come up with an explanation to their injuries? Furthermore, could Fawkes be asking you to help in some way, by showing you all those places he brought you to?"

"Me? What help could I do, Hermione, I'm just a kid!"

"You could be much help, don't put yourself down. All you need is the will, the desire to be helpful and to--"

Her words were interrupted by an erupting ball of fire above them. The flames materialized into a majestic red bird, that flapped its wings a couple of times before using one to whack Harry on the back the head.

"Ouch! What was that for?" he asked, thankful that he didn't pass out this time. Harry eyed the bird as it landed on the roof shingles and observed Hermione. Fawkes looked unsettled, anxious if he could put it in human terms, and craned his neck to watch them one at a time, back and forth repeatedly.

"Fawkes? Are you... Can I?" asked Hermione, lifting a hand to pet him, but stopping a few inches away.

The phoenix perked up and puffed himself, presenting his chest to be stroked, and she was moving to do so when Kettle dove straight down towards her in a blur of black feathers. His unmistakeable caws sounded challenging, but it was his attitude that confirmed he wasn't about to let Hermione touch the larger bird, as the raven used its shark beak to nip at her hand.

"Kettle, no! No biting!" she told the avian familiar and sucked her bleeding index finger. The large raven flew to her shoulder, cawed again and reached for her wounded hand, this time lightly grabbing hold of it and pulling the finger out of her mouth. Resisting at first but relenting after looking deeply into the bird's coal-black eyes, she let Kettle bite again, drawing more blood droplets, and gasped when he offered her finger to the fiery phoenix.

"What's happening, Harry? This isn't normal bird behaviour," whispered Hermione, awed by the actions of her familiar.

"Magic," was his simple answer, followed with a shrug. "I had to give a scallop of my ass, why wouldn't you give some blood besides that scrape of a tooth for Halloween?"

"Harry! How rude," she said but couldn't stop a laugh from escaping her lungs. "Kettle, are you a true raven or... Or something else altogether?"

The raven cawed and pulled with more strength, leading the unresisting hand towards the phoenix, who seemed to be just as confused as the two human children. The avians looked at each other and screeched, flapping their wings and showing menacing wide-open beaks; a tongue of fire burst from Fawkes' mouth and Kettle had to drop Hermione's finger, flying in a circle to sidestep the golden flames, finally retaliating by picking a loose morsel of broken tile and throwing it back at the larger bird with a swing of his head.

The sharp fragment hit Fawkes squarely in the eye, and he suddenly became as terrifying as he was gorgeous, ruffling fire-coated feathers and sparkling like a dozen suns, seeming to grow in size and presence. Harry and Hermione crawled back from the impending fight but Kettle did a double-loop and bit his companion's finger again in mid-flight, just as another, more powerful tongue of fire was aimed at him.

With no time to react and jump out of the way, the children watched helplessly as the magical fire wrapped itself on Hermione's hand, swirling up to her bleeding index and exploding brightly. They closed their eyes and felt only the sound of a pebble hitting the shingles, rolling down, followed by the rustle of feathers and a repentant trilling.

It was Harry who opened one eyelid first, immediately grabbing his friend's hand to see the damage, only to be shooed away by Fawkes, who leaned his head with the eye Kettle had hit towards her blistered, charred hand.

Two drops of tears later, her hand was healed, looking as if it had never been burnt.

"What the hell were you two thinking!" Harry yelled and waved the birds away. He turned Hermione's fingers upside down and back again, looking for damage.

"It's-- It's all right, Harry, It didn't hurt at all..."

"Are you sure? Shouldn't we go see Pomfrey?"

"Yes... Yes, the pain never came..." she trailed off as Kettle leaned forward and presented her with a bright gemstone that seemed to shine from a fire contained within. Hermione held her palm up and the raven dropped a ruby the size of a walnut, speckled with golden lightning that kept flashing inside. "What? What is this? What are you? What are you doing to us?"

The birds began singing and cawing at the same time, which annoyed them again and restarted their row, but Harry's well placed swats with the rolled-up edge of a comforter put an end to it. "Stop it! You'll only hurt Hermione again!"

"Harry, stop talking to them as if they were people! Those are birds for crying out loud!"

Snorting, he turned to face her. "Yeah, right. Birds that can make a jewel out of your blood, birds that can take me places nobody knows and sing with as much emotion as the greatest masters poured on their music," Harry spoke. "Just a bird that came to you when... When you'd been left f-for dead under the rubble and has been around ever since you can remember. Can't you see the magic that's right in front of you?"

She bit her lower lip and looked down at the gemstone on her hand, then at the pair of magical creatures that were still flapping and screeching softly at each other, bickering like an old married couple, and finally back at Harry. "But there's nothing written about this in the books I've--"

"Oh, for God's sake Hermione! Why must everything about the world be in a book?" he said and placed both hands on her shoulders. "Maybe you just gotta have the courage to believe! To have faith in something that's never been seen, written or thought by anyone, anywhere!"

"I-- I don't... I don't have faith, Harry. I've got reasoning, cause and consequence, the proof of a postulate by logic or contradiction, or empirical evidence and deductive reasoning. I can't have blind faith!"

"Open your hand."

"What?"

"Open your hand!" said Harry again, forcefully this time.

She did, and stared again at the gemstone. Harry then pushed her fingers closed around it, only to pull them back. He did it again, and again, and a third time until she began to accept that her familiar was more than met the eye, and that the headmaster's phoenix had just been conned into creating something magical out of her blood.

Hermione looked at her green-eyes' resolute face, into his determined and pleading eyes. "I understand, and I accept magic's unpredictability, and that desire, intent and belief are as big a part of casting a spell as waving the wand and saying the words. However, please, please don't ask me to have faith like you do, I lost that ability a long time ago."

Suddenly, Harry understood what she was talking about. "You're my guardian angel, my Potterette, and I know that there's a God 'cause you're real. But I don't care if you believe or don't believe, as long as you're the good and kind person you are."

Tearing, she spoke softly in a broken voice. "Thank you. Thanks for being real too, my green-eyes..."


At noon time the children were already enjoying the festive mood of the evening's event, and it held the promise of even greater fun and joy for the evening, although only fourth-years and older had a ball to look forward to as well. Hagrid's pumpkins were everywhere, carved with ghoulish faces, gilded with silver ribbons and floating on clouds of grey smoke up and down the hallways. Bats and black cats added to the decoration, and every student had been delighted to see Mrs Norris being chased by a flock of long-toothed bats, while Mr Filch waved a mop at them, protecting his greatest ally in the quest to end youthful mischief.

Hermione and Harry sat at the Gryffindor table with Ron and Neville attacking the food in front of them, flanked by the ever-giggling duo of Parvati and Lavender, with Seamus and Dean sharing unbelievable stories on the other side. They dodged a swooping pumpkin while Ron made them laugh with his wizarding tales of All Hallows Eve, but it was Neville's horror story of learning to dance with his grandmother and his grandmother's lady-friends that made them hold on to their bellies with laughter.

"And then Mrs Blufbuxom, she's the only living witch from the Maidens of Mercury, she'd pinch my face and call me Jonathan while swinging me around the drawing room, with my face pressed against her chest," he said while making a horrified face.

Neville had been fast becoming more open and self-assured, though no less forgetful and clumsy, not to mention below-average in spell-casting, and it was all because Hermione and Harry always laughed with him instead of at him, and would help the youngest Longbottom using their unusual approach to magic whenever he had difficulty learning something.

When the laughs subsided, Ron shuddered. "Have you ever heard 'bout my Aunt Muriel Prewett?" At the negative head shaking, he took a deep breath, "She's like Snape and Filch mixed into one, with a little of my mum's worse temper added to the cauldron. That's a true Hallows nightmare if you know--"

Ron's staring and unexpected pause made the other three follow his eyes, landing on Hermione's neck. At first she tried to put the collar of her witch robes up to cover her scar, but then Harry pointed at the magical jewel Kettle had tricked Fawkes to create. Harry had had the idea to use one of his goblin weaved ropes made of hag's hair to wrap the organically faceted gem, so that Hermione could wear it like a pendant.

The lightning inside never stopped flashing, and while it gave a mesmerizing golden glow to the ruby-red gem, it also made concealing it that much more difficult. As exemplified by Ron's actions.

"Is that some useless Muggle trinket?" he asked, pointing at Hermione.

"Er... No Ron, it isn't. And Muggle items aren't useless if you actually know what to use them for!"

"All right, whatever," he said after gulping some pumpkin juice. "Sorry I asked."

His easy dismissal was both annoying and relieving. Annoying because, once again, Hermione couldn't understand his behaviour and his beliefs, and her skin itched for closure in each and every argument in which Ron Weasley had simply dismissed or changed the subject, never allowing her to fully settle the discussion. As for Harry, he was happy whenever conflict could be avoided, and happier still to see that their friend wouldn't ask them to explain where the gemstone came from. "I wonder if Headmaster Dumbledore saw it," he thought inside his head, looking at the Staff Table and immediately regretting it.

"Look at him, Voldemort sitting there like a normal teacher. And nobody suspects a thing!"

Hermione elbowed him to stop the upcoming rant. "It's like I suspected, magicals expect honourable conduct from their peers precisely because of how powerful it can be. He performed a single act of magic and, poof! No one's the wiser about the attempt on your life!"

"Yeah, even Cedric forgot about it," he waved at the mentioned older boy as he looked from the Hufflepuff table. "He did promise to talk to his dad about renewing the faulty broomsticks, though."

"Well, I intend to change them all, not just the oldest ones, and add a few more physical sports. And more electives! I must say Hogwarts is seriously in need of more active clubs beyond Gobstones, the Choir and now your Musical Arts. It might sound like nepotism to benefit my own school, but it's not like there are other magic schools in the country..." she trailed off with an inquisitive look on her face. "Ron? What do people who can't afford to come to Hogwarts do?"

"I don't understand what you're asking. If you get an Invitation Letter, then you're coming to Hogwarts, it's a simple as that."

"But what if I couldn't pay the tuition?"

"Then you wouldn't have received the letter at all," Neville answered this time, starting to realize where she was getting at. "And it can be because, like me, your magic is too weak--"

"But Neville, I told before--"

"Look, Harry, I'm happy that you talk to me and make me feel better and all, but I know what I am... As I was saying, if you're a Squib, or your magic is simply too weak, then Hogwarts will not write to you. And if you don't have the gold to pay for it, it won't either."

Talking slowly, Hermione turned to face the pudgy boy. "Hogwarts. Hogwarts, the castle, writes the letter?"

"Of course not," Parvati said, entering the conversation while nodding and talking back to Lavender. How she could keep an ear on many conversations at once was a mystery to Harry. "He speaks of Hogwarts metaphorically, it's actually The Quill that writes the letters."

"A quill?"

"No, no, The Quill," Neville said, making a grand gesture with his hands.

"What are you talking about?" asked Ron, who apparently had never heard of this The Quill.

"My great-uncle spoke of these items once. The Book, The Hat and The Quill. I didn't know The Hat was the thing that sorted us into different Houses."

"Why isn't any of that in Hogwarts: A History?!" Hermione complained after blinking several times in silence, crossing her arms over her chest. "This is just like Schroedinger's Cat, only worse because every time you look at it, it's a whole different breed of living-dead cat!"

Apparently speaking of the living-dead on Halloween was a very wrong thing to say, as the Gryffindor table went silent for a few of seconds, before excited whisperings and finger-pointing replaced the festive air that had been there just seconds ago. Hermione shrank into her place while hastily building a line of defence made of goblets, a pitcher of juice and a pair of salad bowls.

"Hermione, please stop hiding behind the food," said Harry, moving some plates away. He had to physically wrench one of the salad bowls from her hands, which unsurprisingly took a lot of effort from him. His friend had built a strong body after so many years of roof-roaming and climbing.

"Would you listen to them? They all think I'm some kind of dark-magic practitioner or something just as loathsome!"

"Having a black raven and that slimy snake as familiars won't help your reputation much either," Lavender whispered, as if sharing the world's greatest secret and nodding emphatically.

"How can you say--"

"Oookay, Lavender, thanks for the hint," interrupted Harry, hoping to distract Hermione before she chewed the blonde's head out. "Now I think we'd better... Er... Take a walk around the lake?"

She turned to face him with a frown but he whispered "remember, we can't eat anything 'til the whole show-bat ritual is done" in her ear.

"I do remember, Harry. And it's a Sabbath gathering, not show-bat!" she mumbled back while looking longingly at the perfect chicken wing peeking from under a couple of drumsticks, settling for savouring the aroma with a deep sniff as consolation.

Shrugging, he pulled her by the hand and waved at Neville and Ron, who immediately began whispering together before being assaulted with questions by Hermione and Harry's room-mates and not a few older Gryffindors.

As they walked down the marble steps of the main doors, the black-haired boy looked curiously at his brown-eyed friend. She smiled and spoke before he could utter a single word. "Imagine a kneazle, locked in a chest, where there's a runic stone and a lethal potion inside. The potion flask is charmed to break if the runestone creates warmth, but because of the way it's carved and magicked, it can also give cold."

She watched his eyes move up and to the right, and then he nodded for her to go on. "So you can never really know whether the kneazle is alive, or dead, because you can't know if the runestone created cold or warmth until you open the chest and verify it yourself. Before that direct observation, the kneazle is believed to be both in a state of life and death at the same time."

"Huh... You mean the kneazle is a zombie, then? I don't get it. And my head hurts," Harry said, massaging his temples.

"No, what this tries to explain is why certain runic configurations can give different results when they're exactly the same. It's also known as the Principle of Uncertainty in Muggle sciences dealing with quantum mechanics. The math is beyond me at this point, but the ideas are quite straightforward," she said and bounced a little on her feet.

Without really noticing, the couple veered towards the Owlery using the scenic path, harder to climb but one that provided a beautiful view of the Forbidden Forest. They shared a laugh when a gust of wind blew Hermione's hat out of her head and downhill, and Harry being a gentleman had tried to run after it, only to slip on a wet patch of grass and land on top of the hat, squashing the black pointed accessory with his body.

Red-faced, he apologized profusely and quickly cast a quick Reparo charm on the hat, before placing it back on Hermione. She thanked him with a quick kiss to the cheek and walked ahead, leaving Harry to deal with his feelings, some unknown but all of them made him feel good inside.

Entering the Owlery, Hermione paused. "I was under the impression that our headmaster had hidden the Dome?"

"Yes, he did. Why?"

"Because it's right there in plain sight, Harry," she answered a bit miffed at his lack of observation skills. It was a very big wooden cage, clearly impossible to miss.

"No it isn't," he said, looking around the owl habitat. "Truth is I can feel it in a way, but I can't really see it."

Distressed, Hermione grabbed Harry's arm, wondering why she could see the wonderfully carved and adorned phoenix habitat but her friend couldn't.

"Wow!" he exclaimed and pulled his arm away. "Do it again, take my hand this time."

Raising an eyebrow, she agreed and took his hand in hers, making him smile. "You can see it now?"

"Yeah! But why..."

"The stone!" they said together, and she promptly pulled the fiery gem from her neck, laying it gently on the ground. As soon as she let go of it, the Dome vanished for her, but Harry could still feel its presence somehow.

"All right, I guess your raven really did trick Fawkes into giving you something wonderful," he said softly, looking at the doorway.

Snorting, Hermione bent over to pick the jewel and placed it back on herself. "I wouldn't call Kettle my raven. In fact, if he's so intelligent as you believe him and Fawkes to be, he probably has a name of his own! Not to mention the freedom to be an equal to us, as all sentient beings are."

"You still don't believe it?"

"Yes, Harry. I believe you were... You are right about them." She sighed and sat on an old wooden chair, leaving just enough room for Harry to sit as well. "It takes a lot of effort from me to admit to someone being right. No, not because I'm stubborn," she added at his look. "It's because it means that I have misunderstood something, or that I simply don't know enough about a subject where I've been proven wrong."

"I don't mind not knowing stuff. It's embarrassing, sure, but it don't upset me."

She sighed and leaned her head against his. "I know, and that's one more thing I like about you. Though I really feel my skin itch when you speak so badly. The correct form is it doesn't."

Chuckling, Harry said thanks and looked up for his snowy-owl Hedwig. He found her atop a beam, one eye open above a curled wing, half asleep. A smile tugged his mouth and the owl sprung up, gliding softly to land on his knee, hooting and barking in greeting.

"Oh, honestly! You're turning into Dr Dolittle!" She had to regain her breath after laughing, "And-- And someday you can open the Potter Magical Clinic for Fantastic Beasts and Familiars!"

Not knowing who this Doctor Dolittle was, but enjoying his friend's happiness, he actually agreed with her and told her he would seriously consider that idea, making her laugh again. The mood was broken, however, as a drawling voice alerted them of another person inside the owlery.

"Such undignified, yet oddly fitting behaviour for a simpleton Muggle-born and her arrogant, troublesome leader."

The children jumped and raised wands as one, only to have them pulled out of their hands with the flick of Professor Snape's own wand.

"How dare you level your wands at me!" he said and took a few steps forward, looming over Harry and Hermione. "I will have you both scrubbing grime off the dungeon walls until All Hallows Eve is over. Yes, no sweet treats and fun games for either of you tonight, and ten points each from Gryffindor for threatening a member of the staff!"

They watched the Potions Master regard the children's wands in his hand with disdain and pocket them inside his black robes, taking another step towards the couple as Harry moved fast and hid Hermione behind his back. "Stay away from her, murderer!"

His words seemed to throw the man back, as if slapped in the face, but it was the timely appearance of a group of students looking for their owls that saved them.

"Oh, g-good afternoon Professor Snape," one of them said, stammering a bit. The rest winced and shirted away from the wizard, trying to walk back outside unnoticed.

"Out!" Snape yelled and the group of Ravenclaws ran away. "You two, my office in fifteen minutes if you ever want to complete your feeble attempts at educating your minds in Hogwarts." That said, the professor turned and left, billowing robes on his wake.

Harry turned immediately to care for Hermione, finding her white as a ghost and babbling something under her breath. "He didn't kill us! He didn't kill us!"

"And he won't, I'm not gonna let him." He forced her face to look at him with both hands, trying to get her eyes to focus on his own. "No one's gonna hurt anyone in the castle, not while I'm here."

"We. Not while we are here," she told him, snapping out of her panic. "He could have done the deed just now, but the fact we're alive means he hasn't yet obtained whatever treasure is hidden in the castle, and that Voldemort isn't going to risk facing Headmaster Dumbledore and his entire staff of powerful witches and wizards by killing you in Hogwarts proper."

Thinking that it made sense, Harry agreed and released her face. "Then we'll play along, be there for detention and watch our backs, while looking for any clues to what he's planning, right?"

"Exactly!"

Ten minutes later, dressed in their most comfortable clothes underneath Hogwarts cloaks, packing a first-aid kit and two pairs of winter gloves she had, Hermione and Harry walked determined down towards the dungeons, ready to face a madman with their bare hands if need be.

They paused before the Potions classroom, pushed the door and headed for the smaller door that should connect to the Head of Slytherin's office. The room where they learned to properly create potions of all kinds was regularly dark and damp, but at this moment it looked downright frightening, with a single torch lit on a corner and the empty tables pressed together against a wall.

Knocking twice, a silky, grave voice answered back. "Enter."

Harry pushed the handle down, slowly pressing his shoulder against the heavy, screeching door, expecting the tip of a wand against his face. Or a pillow, as Hermione had jokingly said once.

"Fortune, is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth," their evil foe recited, eyelids closed at first, only to stare at them with the cold, bottomless pits he called eyes.

The well-read brunette gasped at the reference and joined Harry's side in front of the professor's desk.

"Beware of what giants you chase, dunderheads, lest real monsters slay you on your backs," Professor Snape drawled, before motioning a hand to a pair of buckets and brushes. "Third lowest dungeon. I will know if you slack, or if you try to leave."

Keeping a dignified haste, the young Gryffindors picked the cleaning equipment and left, closing the door and leaving the classroom, before sprinting away at a run. They didn't stop until there were no further stairs leading to any lower levels, and bent over trying to regain their breath.

"What was... That all... About?" Harry asked. "Did he... Threaten us... Or something?"

"I don't really know... Why would Voldemort quote Cervantes, of all people?"

"Who?"

"Muggle author from the late sixteenth century in Spain, his most famous work being the misadventures of Don Quixote. It's just that the quote he chose and his comments were... Well, it could mean we're chasing ghosts. Or that he'll strike when we least expect him to," she added as an afterthought.

"Whatever... Let's just start attacking the grime. I'm sorry I made you miss your first Halloween at Hogwarts," he said softly.

"Never mind that, it isn't going to be the only feast we'll ever have a chance to enjoy. Now, gloves on, and scrub away!"

Harry had been eyeing Hermione for the past hour or so, not really knowing if she was imagining Voldemort's face on each and every stone she rubbed fiercely with the hand brush, or his own for getting her detention, again. "She pulled her wand at the overgrown bat as well," he told himself, trying to feel less guilty. It didn't work, of course.

After hearing him sighing again over the sounds of scrubbing, as he had for the last half hour, Hermione had enough. "Harry, I pulled my wand on Voldemort's Potions Professor disguise as well, please quit blaming yourself. That goes for the ritual as well, you know very well that Madame Pomfrey is a Healer, and as such is bound by a magical oath to never do harm."

Startled, he looked at her while stretching. "How d'you always know what I'm thinking?"

"Not always, only when it's painfully obvious," she replied with a cheeky grin, before turning serious. "Do you think they've begun?"


Elsewhere, under the waning shadows of a stone circle built upon a node of magical lines directly connected to Hogwarts, a cloaked witch giggled softly to herself. Some tendrils of dark hair escaped the raised hood, and pink dragon hide boots peeked from under the golden garment covering the rest of her with every step she took.

"Then rise, beloved, twirl forth! Dance forth! And bewilder your lover," she sang, then giggled again while conjuring more flower bouquets.

"Marigold! It's been too long," greeted another witch that appeared out of thin air with a popping sound.

"Poppea, thank you so much for calling a Sabbath! I'm already having fun," the first witch said, hugging the white-cloaked newcomer.

"I do have an ulterior motive, I'm afraid..."

"Don't we all, my dear friend?" Marigold asked, receiving only a hesitant nod as a reply.

"When do we start?"

"As the first star shines."

"How do we start?"

"With the joy of our hearts."

"Where do we start?"

"In the Temple of our Mothers."

"What do we start?"

"The Witches' Sabbath!" both witches screamed and laughed a high-pitched cackle.


Back inside Hogwarts, very deep in the dungeons, Harry pondered Hermione's question. "No, but then again it's not like we'd feel anything according to Poppy."

"Oh, well. Back to back-breaking scrubbing then."

"We should learn how to do that whole fireballing thing that phoenixes do," he commented off-handedly after a few minutes of silent work.

She laughed softly. "Only you, Harry. All your interest in learning comes from extra-curricular activities, while regular lessons are barely appealing to you."

"You can't deny it's helped, I'm more of a wizard after you taught me to feel the magic. And that trinket of yours is so cool when we make it do sound and lights!"

"A show! Our magical results turn strangely overpowered and more refined when the puzzle is present, but all you care about is the pretty show!" she complained and threw her hands in the air.


"Florence! Welcome to Samhain Night."

"Abigail, Morgana, how fares life, you old witches? Poppea, darling!"

"Have you seen Marigold? She was singing around here just a second ago," yet another cloaked witch asked.

"No, I have not. Here," the newcomer said and produced a trunk from somewhere under her green cloak. "No Sabbath can be performed without these."

Poppea Pomfrey opened the top of the trunk only a crack, enough to peek inside and closed it quickly. "Thank you Flo, may the Mothers repay your kindness score-fold."

Another round of cracks and pops alerted to the arrival of more cloaked people, all witches by the tone of their voices and the eager greetings that included yelling and hugging. They all wore their hoods up, in all colours of the rainbow, and shades of each.

As the caller of the Sabbath, Madame Pomfrey had assumed the role of White Witch, and the responsibilities that came with the title until the next gathering is called for. The last White Witch had been Marigold Flowers herself, fourteen years ago, and she had done a remarkable job. Yes, it had been too long indeed.

"Sisters! Sisters all, come forth and gather 'round," she said with a magically amplified voice. "Thank you for answering the call. The first star is yet to shine and more witches may find their way to us, however I want to offer Marigold a heartfelt applause for her wonderfully orchestrated Sabbath of seventy-seven."

The witch under the gold cloak stepped forward and bowed under the applause, stepping back after a moment to let the White Witch continue. Two more Apparition bursts announced latecomers, who were fast greeted with hugs and shrieks, before Madame Pomfrey could speak.

"To those whose husband, or husbands," she paused for the giggling, "fellow wives and partners of all kinds," she paused again for the cat-calls and general teasing, "have graciously allowed their beloveds to gather in Sabbath, please give them our thanks. The Arch of the Waters is glowing, and while we prepare for Samhain, let me tell you all, under the secrecy of our Mothers' powers, the story of a little orphan boy as I know it."


Harry had paused his scrubbing suddenly, letting the filthy water slide through the moss covered cracks and joints of ancient stone. He felt as if somebody had suddenly walked over his grave, that feeling that someone or something has taken a great interest in him, making him shudder.

As they were the only living people in the dungeon, Hermione noticed and sided up to him, pulling damp hair from her face. "What's wrong, Harry?"

"Dunno, it's like... Like something is going to happen?" He shook his head. "Has happened, is happening... Argh! I can't think while doing damned castle cleaning under damn Voldemort's orders!" he yelled, throwing the brush at the wall and kicking the bucket with his right foot.

"Enough! I don't care how angry you are, it's no excuse to lose your temper like this." She let her own brush fall to the floor and held on to him, although he immediately struggled to break free.

"Let go! You're not my mother to tell me what to do!"

"That's true, Harry," she said in his ear. "I'll never be your mother, but who else is going to tell you off for letting anger and hate consume you?"

"What about revenge, then? What about wanting that murderer upstairs dead or behind bars for life?" replied Harry, resigning himself to be held tight. "Is it so wrong to wish him to pay for it all?"

"Revenge is a difficult thing. Do you wish to return to your relatives' house this Summer and curse them into oblivion, intentionally harming or killing them? Or does your heart tell you that you can do what's right, and bring justice to your home?"

"That place isn't my home, it'll never be home for me ever again," he spat at her, unconsciously running a hand behind her neck. "But wouldn't it be justice to have Petunia Dorothea trying to clean an ever-dirty charmed kitchen, or Dudleykins being swallowed by the fridge whenever he grabbed some food?"

Hermione chuckled at the ideas, but wouldn't let his joking distract her from the seriousness of the situation. Her friend had been wronged too much, and coupled with his temper, it could make him fall into the darkest paths of life. "That's retribution, Harry. Not justice."

"Then... Then I don't know what to do..."


"You mean to say there's a killer at Hogwarts?! I have great-grandchildren there!" exclaimed an agitated red-cloaked witch.

"I'm sorry, Poppy, but it just sounds so... So far-fetched," Florence, who wore a blue cloak, said while pacing around conjured chairs, sofas and chaise-longs.

"We are in the Temple of our Mothers, Flo. I speak the truth!"

"Albus Dumbledore may be many things, but he's as knowledgeable as he is trusting. If there were doubts about young Potter's soul, who are we to question it?"

"And what of this foolish girl? Drinking another's blood is bad enough, but the magical effects you described are unheard of!"

The ninth of thirteen arches began to glow and soon the gathering would start in earnest, but the Chief Healer had to reach an agreement before it happened in order to perform the ritual. "A mother's sacrifice can be powerful enough," she said and raised a sleeved arm to forestall the obvious observation. "I am aware of the fact that hundreds of mothers have died for their children, but how many of them were personally attacked by You-Know-Who? How many had the thirst for learning that Lily Potter had? How many have born a child by magic, not by flesh?"

An elderly voice coming from under a brown, ragged cloak broke the absolute silence after a moment. "Remember, what passes at Sabbath, stays within Sabbath. Now what is this riddle of words you weave, young Poppea?"

"The baby left the mother's womb of its own volition, in a flux of magic instead of pushing its way to the world in a river of blood. This is a secret I've kept for eleven years, and a sign that might explain his defeat of the Dark Lord, and the reason Harry hasn't been overwhelmed by the ever growing sentient magic infecting him."

"And what, pray tell, says the old codger to all of this?" a bitter voice spoke from the edge of the gathered group. "Or is he so blinded by possibilities that he's forgotten to look at the obvious reality?"

"As you've heard, Albus asked us all to keep distance from the boy, and would still have him isolated if Harry hadn't been sought after by the headmaster's phoenix."

She believed it best not to reveal that the Phoenix Dome had reappeared after so many centuries or it would create a veritable pilgrimage of wizards and witches looking for big and small favours, be it a cure to some yet to be defeated illness or eternal life by entering its fabled flames.

As the twelfth arch glowed, Madame Pomfrey knew she needed to reach an agreement or wait until next year, leaving Harry to protect himself alone. With a heavy sigh, she raised her arms again to speak, but an unexpected newcomer interrupted her first.


A mere minute earlier, back in the damp, grimy dungeons of a magical school, Harry could be seen trying to put his thoughts in order with Hermione's help. He knew he didn't want to become a violent bully like Dudley and his father were, but he wanted the satisfaction of watching them understand how wrong it was to make him hate his own parents, to treat him as if he was the cause of everything bad in their lives. Harry wanted to see them ashamed of all the lies he had been told.

"I believe justice is all about balance, Harry. Killing a man for stealing an apple is just as wrong as killing him because of the way he dresses, or for the colour of his skin. Conversely, that means the other way around by the way, it's also wrong to let a murder go unpunished, when it's done out of malice and ill-intent," she said, explaining her beliefs and hoping her friend would understand that, although no system is perfect, it must be a society as a whole that administers justice, not the individual.

"But Hermione, what if there's nobody to do the punishing? Look at what's going on here in school, that man could be killing someone right now!"

"That's why we need proof of who he is and what he's looking after. Then we can warn Headmaster Dumbledore and he'll take it from there." She scrunched her nose for a while and added, "Perhaps we should send the information to the Ministry somehow. But then again, adults only see what they want to see, and wouldn't really believe a couple of Hogwarts first-years..."

"We're so screwed," Harry mumbled dejectedly, however he yelped and ducked to the floor when an already familiar burst of red flames flashed above his head.

Fawkes flapped a couple of times on the air, trilled a melody that made him sound amused and landed on the boy's back, taking a glance at Hermione before vanishing in the same manner in which he appeared, taking Harry with him.

"Argh! That boy's going to be the death of me!" she complained and threw her filthy brush into the even filthier bucket of water.


The White Witch looked in surprise as a ball of fire turned into a red and gold phoenix holding a small boy in the middle of the circle. She recognized Fawkes immediately, and frowned when the magical creature let go of Harry, letting him fall flat on the ground.

Groaning, the boy turned on his back and looked around, finding himself surrounded by cloaked people peering down at him, some pointing and others snickering. He identified most if not all voices as female, and his acute hearing allowed him to understand the women.

"Look how cute he is," one of them said, while another took notice of how dirty he was. "In my time he would have been given detention!"

He propped himself up on his elbows, greeting the crowd. "Er... Hello?" he said with a feeble wave of his gloved hand.

"Good evening Mr Potter. What are you doing here?"

"That's a question for the mad firebird over here," he said, jerking a thumb at the phoenix on his shoulder, only to receive a slap on the back of the head from the mentioned mad bird. Harry rubbed the sore spot and looked around again, "Where am I?"

"At the Temple, young Potter. I am Morgana, daughter of Callisto the Charming. How do you feel?"

"All right, I guess. I'd really better be going back, Hermione must be freaking out by now," he said looking at Fawkes.

"Do you not want to be granted your fondest wish? Finding the Temple of our Mothers does grant men rewards beyond imagination," another cloaked woman said.

"I can make a wish?" he asked, standing up but still having to look up at most of the witches. "Any kind of wish?"

"Yes, make a wish!"

"Show us your desire!"

"Give us your wants!"

"Bring us your dreams!"

Harry spun on his feet as the witches shouted, demanding him to state his wish, to show them what he wanted most. With a shrug, he looked at the one who called herself Morgana again. "I wish to be sent back to my friend at Hogwarts."

The last he heard before vanishing in flames was the cackle of the crazy cloaked ladies.


Hermione sat on an overturned bucket, chin propped on her left hand while counting stones on the wall. She felt her friend's presence and watched as the fireball turned into a phoenix and a scrawny boy, who looked back at her with a bewildered face.

"That was the weirdest group of people I've ever seen," he said and picked the brush, going back to cleaning the walls.


After a while, the laughter faded and Madame Pomfrey looked at the gathered with a smug smile. "Is he worthy of our efforts?"

"Aye!" said dozens of voices together, as the thirteenth arch exploded in light, signalling the first star had begun to shine on the firmament.

Witches began running up and down the circle, conjuring things out of thin air, transfiguring rocks and twigs into ornate tables and colourful tablecloths. Trunks were opened and charms applied to cool the Butterbeer and warm the Firewhiskey for after the ritual, while other witches started Apparating to and fro, fetching instruments, decks of cards and other games, or this and that for the protection ritual the White Witch had begun to prepare.

First she slashed her palm to draw a heptagram on the ground, surrounding the seven-pointed star with a runic circle and derivative geometric figures, also inscribed with runes, that touched each and every arch of the Temple. After the magical tapestry was finished, she began chanting and blessing the tokens for each point, wondering if she could find even stronger anchors but knowing that to wait another year would be too risky.

"This token of goodness, this piece of love, this morsel of devotion. My all to you I give, your all to me you offer, our all to us shall come," she sang and waved her wand. "I am the wielder, I am the executioner, I am the messenger."

"This example of darkness, this taste of evil, this sample of temptation. My all to you I give, your all to me you offer, our all to us shall come. I am the healer, I am the culprit, I am the mage."

As she finished the seven tokens, the blood-painted heptagram flared and spears of light flew to six chosen, who accepted the role and pulled a huge golden cauldron towards the centre of the star, were it began to boil. The witches slashed their palms, letting the blood fall inside it before the White Witch did the same.

"Move to your places, sisters. We begin-- What now?" Madame Pomfrey asked, watching small bursts of fire on the table set for the tokens. She approached carefully and smiled, silently thanking the Mother and the powers of magic that were favouring Harry tonight.

After repeating the blessings on the new tokens, she resumed the ritual. Soft red light framed the cloaked witches from the ground and their faces were partially illuminated with the shimmering greenish glow of the cauldron, all seven standing over a different runic polygon, from a simple triangle under the White Witch to a complex tridecagon under a violet-clad witch.

Using their wands, each levitated a goblet to the cauldron, filling it and then drinking the boiling draught. Each then raised hands to the firmament, chanting.

"Great Magick, help us to be the always hopeful,
Gardeners of the Magick,
Who know that without darkness, nothing comes to birth.
As without light, nothing flowers.
"

"Grant, O Mother, thy Protection,
And in Protection, Strength,
And in Strength, Understanding,
And in Understanding, Knowledge,
And in Knowledge, The Knowledge of Justice,
And in the Knowledge of Justice, the Love of it,
And in the Love of it, The Love of all Existences,
And in the Love of all Existences, the Love of the Mother and all Goodness.
"

"Let the spirits of the Four Quarters be thanked for their blessings.
In the name of the hawk of dawn and of the element air, we thank the powers of the East,
In the name of the salmon of wisdom and the element of water we thank the powers of the West,
In the name of the great stag and of the element of fire, we thank the powers of the South,
In the name of the great bear of the starry heavens and of the element of earth, we thank the powers of the North.
"

"May the blessing of the Uncreated One, of Her Child The Created Word and of the Magick that is the Inspirer be always with us. May the world be filled with Harmony and Light."

The White Witch walked to the table where all tokens were lined, picked the first and walked to the heptagram point in front of her ritual setting. "Flesh of the champion, willingly given, he shall be the protected," she said and placed the scallop of flesh on the ground.

"Bone of the mate, magically taken, sche shall be his enchantress," Madame Pomfrey described as she placed some tooth shards over the next point of the star. She moved back to the table and then towards the next point, repeating the process seven times in all.

"Ashes of the mother, stolen from the grave, thy sacrifice shall be eternal." It had been difficult for her to disturb Lily's resting ground, but she knew a mother would help her child even after death.

"Flames of purity, unexpectedly gifted, your goodness shall bring him strength," she said in awe of the truly unexpected token. Madame Pomfrey dared believe the phoenix had been sent by Dumbledore to aid her, but she also knew he would deny it even if it were true.

"Feather of friendship, casually found, thou shall weave his bonds." Smiling at the white owl feather, she remembered her own familiar from her time at Hogwarts with fondness.

"Blood of darkness, forcibly taken, thy power shall balance his magic," was one of the last tokens. The blood had been brought by Fawkes as well, and she easily identified where it came from because of the yellow scales and black feathers.

One final powerful token was laid on the ritual tapestry drawn with her own blood: James Potter's transfigured copy of The Sorting Hat, the one that would reveal your most embarrassing memories out loud if you put it on. "Magic of the father, rescued from oblivion, thou shall grant him freedom!" she finished and returned to her setting, joining the other witches for a final chant. The blood-drawn runes started to glow and move, following the paths that led them closer and closer to the heptagram, which became thicker and shone brighter.

The gathered witches beyond the ritual setting had to shield their eyes and could only listen to the sound of rushing liquid, burning flames and chanting voices, until the entire Temple rocked with an ear-splitting sonic boom.


Headmaster Dumbledore was a happy wizard. Watching the students experience joy, happiness, and love in its various forms, made him smile in earnest and laugh freely, forgetting for a moment about all the hard choices he's been forced to make as Leader of the Light.

He had experienced a moment of uneasiness because Fawkes was quite active, and given his independent streak of late, Dumbledore feared his beloved familiar might be causing some mischief with another mischief monger named Harry Potter.

"Speaking of whom, he isn't here because of Severus and his ridiculous grudge," he thought, saddened because the man had lashed out yet again at young Harry. The headmaster understood the professor's initial concern regarding the child's possibility of possession, and he knew it was necessary to keep the poor boy fragile, otherwise he wouldn't be easily swayed towards his ultimate fate, however it may come, but he couldn't help caring for him more than he should.

The Feast was well under way and while the younger pupils had already began to show signs of tiredness, the upper-years had a look of anticipation in their eyes. Headmaster Dumbledore decided it was time to release the youngsters and begin the ball, when the double doors of the Great Hall were pushed open with a bang and Professor Quirrell stumbled inside, wobbling on his feet.

"Giant! Giant in the dungeons! Just thought you should now..." he yelled and collapsed on the floor, unconscious.

Two seconds was what it took for the average reasoning mind to kick that little stick holding the dam of panic, and it certainly flooded the vast majority of the Great Hall. The first scream was, oddly enough, a girlish yell of "we're all dead!" from a seventh-year man belonging to the house of the brave: Nicholas Stumpwood, from Gryffindor.

It took yet another couple of seconds for Headmaster Dumbledore to react, since he had to squash the dreadful cold feeling in his stomach first, and once he did, it was acting on his first instincts. "Everyone, everyone please!" he spoke calmly with a magically augmented voice. "Prefects, escort the students to your respective Common Rooms, and stay there."

He looked at his four Heads of House and quickly realised he had sent Slytherin, whose Common Room was in the dungeons, in a direct path against the giant.

"Tit for tat, headmaster?" Severus Snape asked, clearly letting Dumbledore know he considered his actions to be intentional, and that his real, hidden question was "Are two Gryffindors worth the entire student body of Slytherin House?"

Minerva McGonagall interrupted the private contest by asking who was going to revive Professor Quirrell, but nobody seemed to mind the wizard fainted on the cold floor. "Oh very well. In any event, Poppy asked to spend the night doing private business, leaving Healer Knoggings in charge, so he's better off like this." Her tone spoke volumes about how little trust she held in the substitute healer.

"Now, now, Minerva. He's a very competent healer, I'm sure rumours about his lack of proper judgement are quite erroneous," said Dumbledore. "Now, let us search for this supposed giant, shall we?"


Seven not-quite-so-young witches lay on their backs, legs sticking up on the air and cloaks bunched against the floor, which presented a less than dignified image. As one, they began to cackle and laugh, fisting and hitting the ground hysterically.

Where there once was cauldron only crystallized rock could be seen, and golden threads of smoke still billowed in a corkscrew pattern from the places where seven tokens of magical significance once stood. Slowly, several witches that had been observing the ritual began to pop their heads from behind pillars, chairs and tables, smiles on their faces.

"That was fun!" yelled Marigold, always boisterous. "Let's do it again!"

Her enthusiasm only made the witches on the floor laugh harder, making it more difficult for them to stand up. It took two or three pairs of arms, or just one wand, but where's the fun in that they must have thought, to lift everyone and the White Witch.

"Do you believe it worked?" Poppy asked Morgana.

"Quite well," the woman replied, Scourgifying herself and upturning a fallen settee to relax on. "The strength of those tokens... Whoever wishes harm to your young friend will find it quite difficult to reach him. How did you find ashes and magic from his parents?"

"I went to Godrics Hollow. Disturbed her resting place and broke into his home..."

"You what?!" Morgana exclaimed in awe. "You're very brave Poppea, I hope the boy knows how much you have done for him, and how much you've given of yourself. Artemis be blessed, you stepped where You-Know-Who stood his last!"

"We'll see what the future holds... For now, however, we have a Sabbath to enjoy." She turned and clapped her hands, "Ladies, the night is ours! Charm the music, stir the cauldrons and flick your wands, we witches will feast in communion with Mother, Magick and Nature!"

A rowdier group of witches hadn't been seen gathered together in Britain for a long time. Fourteen years, to be accurate.


"Harry?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"Aren't you going to tell me where you were taken to?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I was surrounded by women, who offered to fulfil my fondest wish all because I was a boy?"

She stopped brushing and blew a lock of hair from her face. "Harry, are you feeling well?"

"See? I said you wouldn't believe it," he said and shook his head. "Weird, crazy people. They even laughed when I said all I wished was to be back here with you."

Hermione dropped her cleaning brush. "Really? That was your fondest wish?"

Nodding, he continued to wash the wall and was easy target for the bushy-haired hugging tackler. Both kids fell to the floor and while Harry tried to wriggle his way to freedom, and to regain his breathing, they suddenly froze.

Thump, thump.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

Thump, thump.

"I did, it sounds like those construction pile driving machines," she replied, disentangling herself and pressing an ear to the floor. "There's an odd scraping sound too."

Harry mimicked his friend and listened to the vibrations, closing his eyes. "Those are footsteps! The scraping sound is from a limp."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I learned to know who was walking closest to me around the house just by listening. I know what footsteps sound like," he said and frowned.

"But those are much too loud to be the sounds of someone walking. Unless..."

"Unless it's a giant!" Harry exclaimed. "He told us! He told us what he was going to do, Hermione! He set giants loose in the castle!"

"Let's verify if it really is a giant first. And if it's dangerous then we have to tell the headmaster, or a teacher at least," she said and tied her hair tightly after removing her sodden gloves.

"Pfff... Like he'd believe anything I say," he replied bitterly.

"Well, giants are somewhat difficult to miss, aren't they? Headmaster Dumbledore would have no other choice but to believe us."

Without speaking any further, they nodded to each other and began to walk the dark corridors towards the only set of stairs that connects the lowest dungeon to the rest of the castle. Harry would watch around the pillars first, run for the next one and wave for Hermione to run at him, and then she did the same for the next stretch of corridor.

Once at the base of the stairs, the rumble of something big pacing up and down could be felt through their shoes, and they cursed Voldemort and his disguise as Professor Snape for taking their wands from them.

"Be right back," Harry whispered and dashed upstairs. He peeked up and down the second lowest dungeon, just in time to see a massive leather shoe the size of a bulldog, disappearing around the corner. "Bloody hell!" he said in a perfect imitation of Ron's favoured expression.

"Language, Harry! What if giants don't like people swearing?"

"But Hermione, it's huge!" he said and called her upstairs. "It went that way, towards the upper corridors where the Potions classrooms are."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Yes, perhaps we could lock him, or her. Well, it anyway, inside one of the rooms and then find the headmaster."

Agreeing on that course of action, Harry and Hermione gave chase to the giant, finally catching up to it on the landing where stairs led towards a part of the castle they didn't know but were sure would take them to the Slytherin Common Room, because whenever they had Potions that was the direction they usually came from and went back to, and the staircase leading further up to the farthest end of the hallway connecting the Great Hall and the East Wing of the castle.

"It's bald," Harry needlessly said. "And it's got a club."

"I'd say it's a he," answered Hermione, taking a step into the lights cast by the wall torches. "Excuse me, sir? May I help you?"

She flinched back when the giant turned. He was easily twenty-five feet tall, and had to hunch himself a little to avoid banging his bald head on the ceiling. Scars marked his face, and one of his eyes was missing without anything to cover it at all. Slowly but surely, the giant searched lower and lower for the origin of the voice and focused his only eye on Hermione.

"Blaaargh! Fraaagh!" the giant yelled and raised his wooden club, poised to strike.

Harry reacted first and pushed his friend between the giant's legs, lifting her from under the arms and then running with her until she regained her balance and could sprint away on her own.

Another unintelligible bellow was heard and small earthquakes followed them as the enraged giant gave chase, swinging his club and breaking huge chunks of stone from the walls. By unspoken agreement they decided not to place the rest of the school in danger and lock the giant in the nearest open room they could find.

"Over there!" Hermione told Harry as she spotted a door ajar some thirty paces away.

The couple escaped another swing of the giant's club and ran into the room, which turned out to be a tiled bathroom with a large ornate mirror in front of five marble sinks and five stalls at a right angle lining the wall on their left side. The door just as big as most doors in Hogwarts, but it was still half as high as the giant chasing them, so the one-eyed walking mountain had to lower his club and get on all fours to push himself inside.

Pulling her first-aid kit from a pocket, Hermione unscrewed the cap off a bottle of antiseptic and splashed the giant's only eye with it while he was still halfway through. The giant screamed and brought both hands to his face, giving the children time to climb over him and head out of the room, pushing the huge leather-clad feet inside and pulling the door closed.

It was as the gigantic screams ceased, however, that they heard another voice scream. A human voice. They looked at each other and blanched. "There's someone else in there!"

Pushing the magically feather-light door open again, their hearts stopped as the huge club was swung around, smashing tile, glass and stone around a girl curled on the floor. Luckily the giant seemed to be still blind, and it gave them the advantage to try and rescue her before anything bad happened.

"I'll distract him and you get her out of here," commanded Harry as he put gloves on and picked a long shard of mirror glass from the floor. "Do it!"

Hermione snapped out of her distress and watched with equal parts pride and fear how he climbed up the giant's leg, then higher until reaching his back, where he found a hole between the roughly hewn furry leather he wore as clothing and plunged the glass shard as hard as he could into his thick skin.

"Graaak!" the giant grunted and tried to reach behind himself to remove whatever it was that was making him hurt, dropping the weapon to the floor.

Seeing her chance, Hermione jumped over a heap of debris and shook the frightened girl to get her attention. "Get up! We must get out of here!"

"Her-Hermione? That you?"

"Lisa? Quick, do you have your wand?" Hermione asked, recognizing the girl she had met on board the Hogwarts Express. The Ravenclaw nodded and she explained what she wanted, "Do the Wingardium Leviosa to charm that club and hammer the giant on the head with it before he gets Harry!"

"I-I can't do it!" she said as her hand shook like a leaf.

In the meantime, Harry continued to hold on to the giant, making small cuts on his back which weren't life-threatening but enough to keep him distracted.

"Argh, give it here," Hermione huffed and plucked the wand from the girl's hand. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

The enormous weapon soared on the air shakily and Hermione understood what the wandcrafter had said about wands choosing the witch. Making magic with Lisa's wand was like trying to lift herself from a pit of quicksand!

Because of the weakness of her charm, the club barely scratched the blind giant, giving him a clue as to where it was and making a bad situation even worse after he caught it and began swinging behind himself to knock Harry out. The young Gryffindor was forced to slide down and jump, twisting an ankle in the process.

All Harry could see was Hermione holding a shaking girl while reaching out for him with her arm as the giant aimed straight at them with his raised wooden weapon. He extended his arm to grab hers and pulled both girls to him, using his left arm to grab hold of a broken toilet bowl. "No!" he yelled and swung the heavy porcelain as hard as he could towards their attacker.

The broken toilet flew like a Bludger straight at the giant's face, where it impacted with a mighty crack, shattering porcelain and bone alike. The enraged being went still, swayed on the spot and then fell like a tree over the remains of the marble sinks, either dead or knocked out.

Hermione and Lisa were staring at Harry, while he tried to see if her friend was hurt in any way, when the doorway was flooded with adult witches and wizards holding their wands high.

"What in Merlin's name?" was all Mrs McGonagall managed to say after seeing the three first-years and the fallen giant surrounded by destruction.

"Potter! What's the meaning of this?"

Ignoring the man pretending to be a Potions Master, Harry turned his attention to the still silent headmaster. "Headmaster Dumbledore, sir? I think there could be more of them around the castle," he said with a nod towards the form bleeding on the cold floor. "But first, can you save him if... If he's still alive, without any danger to the school?"

A full-blown twinkle shone in the headmaster's eyes for a moment, and then dimmed to bring the old wizard a look of regret, maybe even shame if Harry's skills at reading people's expressions were still sharp. He could see nothing but loathing on Snape's face, though, while the rest of the Heads of House looked confused or awed. "Great, more food for that Boy-Who-Lived crap," he thought to himself, glad that Hermione couldn't hear him use such foul language.

"Professors, are there giants living in the Forbidden Forest?" asked Hermione as if she were sitting in class instead of holding Lisa shivering in her arms. It was a novelty for her to be comforting someone when she grew up without being comforted at all, particularly after her first accidental magic, but it gave her a warm feeling to be able to do so.

"Yes, my boy, I believe Professor Quirrell is able to handle the creature safely. And no, Miss Granger, there are no giant colonies in the Forest," answered Dumbledore, intrigued by the scowls on both Gryffindors.

"How could he have come to be here, then? As implausible as it may sound, he must have been brought to the school on purpose, sir." Hermione said this while looking up at Snape, almost daring him to reveal himself. She smiled as she could feel Harry looking proudly at her in turn.

"Ridiculous! It seems Potter's ego has affected the know-it-all as well. That will be a point from Gryffindor for questioning your superiors, and ten points each for leaving the safety of your detention," the pale wizard said with a smirk.

Not a single teacher objected, but they could see Mrs McGonagall thinning her lips and looking disdainfully at Snape.

"Well, I would like to ask my charge, Ms Turpin, what she was doing--"

"M-m-my g-goodness, who c-c-caught the giant this quickly?" interrupted Professor Quirrell as he barged in running. Hermione looked at Harry and both had the same thought. "They weren't expecting him to be defeated so easily."

"As I was saying," Professor Flitwick resumed, "I'm worried about you, Ms Turpin." He reached forward with a small hand and made Lisa focus on him.

"I was... It's my own fault, I was curious and wanted to see it, professor. I wanted to see the giant," she said in a small voice. "I followed it here, but when it turned to attack me, it banged its head on the ceiling and fell."

Again, the Gryffindor pupils looked at each other, each wondering why would she lie about what really happened, as well as why would she be looking for a giant behind the stalls of a very seldom used bathroom.

"That's when Hermione and Harry found me, and soon after the professors arrived," Lisa added, looking at the kids in the eyes.

"Naturally," drawled Snape, "it would be preposterous to believe three first-years could defeat a grown giant by themselves. It's by sheer dumb luck that they're alive, headmaster, and they should be expelled for their stupidity!"

"Severus, you have already assigned fair punishment," Dumbledore said while nursing his beard. "While all of you have been very lucky, as Professor Snape puts it, it is also impossible to dismiss your lack of judgement, Ms Turpin, and your disobedience of a professor's directions, Ms Granger and Mr Potter. Five points demerit on Ravenclaw, and all of you shall serve detention with me Monday evening and Saturday morning the next."

The three children bowed their heads in acceptance, and Dumbledore sent them off to bed by themselves, purposely giving them the chance to discuss what he suspected was the truth of the situation.

Five minutes and four floors higher later, Harry finally broke the silence. "Why did you lie?"

"I had to!" Lisa replied.

"I don't like lies. It's one thing to hide something, but another to lie outright, Lisa. Why would you have to do it?"

"Let me ask you this, Potter. Where's your wand?"

"Vol-- Snape's got it, why?"

"You flung a toilet weighing ten kilos at a giant's face seven meters high, while lying on your back on the floor with enough power to break its skull. Without a wand! Now you tell me why I had to lie for you," she answered and then smirked. "How's your ankle, by the way?"

"Cricket, Harry!" Hermione jumped and spun him around, watching his feet. "You're healed!"

"And you managed to use my wand, Hermione, something that should be impossible for someone our age. I don't know what to think of you two, but I owe you my life," she said and trembled from head to toe.

"No you don't. We led the giant to that bathroom on purpose, only we didn't know there was someone inside!" Hermione explained. "What were you doing there, anyway?"

Lisa looked askance at Harry but neither Gryffindor acknowledged her uneasiness. Harry saw it but didn't understand the reason, while Hermione had never learnt silent girl-speak at all. Sighing, the young Ravenclaw searched for a suitable bench to sit.

"It's silly, I-- Let's just say it's ridiculously silly."

"If something made you hide in a deserted bathroom when there's a Halloween party going on, it can't be that silly," Hermione said. "We couldn't attend because of detention, but you chose not to go, or to leave for some reason."

"An older girl dropped a glass of pumpkin juice on my head. I cleaned it up with a household charm," she explained when Hermione and Harry looked at her hair. "It's just that, well, these pranks have been constant since the beginning of the year because I refused to do their bidding, and I wanted a lonely place to cry in."

"How do you mean, do their bidding?"

"Fetch books or quills and parchment for them, things of that nature," explained Lisa with a frown. "And refill their goblets, and check the schedules for unexpected changes, like all the other first-years have to."

"That's absolutely disgusting!" an agitated Hermione exclaimed. "Why does Professor Flitwick allow that to happen?"

"It's the apprenticeship way. Ravenclaw House has had the same Apprentice rules since the Founders, and they're actually a lot softer now, but still I disagree and I won't do it. However the pranking is starting to frazzle my nerves."

"Well then, I believe I speak for Harry too, we'll be there to help you anyway we can. We're guilty of almost... Oh my goodness... I'm so sorry, Lisa! You could have died and all because I had the stupid idea of locking a giant inside a room!" she said and buried her face in her arms. She tried to hold the tears but now that the adrenalin was gone, she could see how much of a disaster this could have been. "I do deserve to be expelled!" she thought and sobbed hard.

The situation and his feelings at that moment made Harry experience an epiphany. He was proud of using that word, because he had been the one to find it in the class dictionary and complete an assignment Ms Vowel had given a year go. Unfortunately he had paid for it with insults and a backhanded slap at home when Dudley accused Harry of making fun of him in school.

What he realized just then was that he could actually understand justice as Hermione put it. He could just as well want to hurt and kill the Ravenclaws that made Lisa Turpin hide in a bathroom to cry and risk being killed by a giant, but then he would have to punish Hermione in the same way, and do the same to himself for agreeing to lead the giant into that bathroom.

"She's all right, Hermione. Lisa's alive and nobody's gonna think less of you because it was an honest mistake. And even if she had... Well, died," Harry hesitated and looked at the blond Ravenclaw, saying "Please don't take this the wrong way, but even if you'd been killed, it wasn't Hermione's intent to murder you using that giant."

Harry gathered his courage and put an arm around his friend, pressing her flush against him. "Justice is all about balance, and though I can't shove you into a locked room with a huge crazed man holding a kick-ass wooden club, I'd say you feeling so guilty is punishment enough."

"No, it isn't," she answered between sobs.

"Yes it is," Lisa said, surprising them both. "You sure are full of surprises, Harry Potter. Those are very noble thoughts, I can see why you were sorted in Gryffindor."

"It's just Harry, Lisa. And thanks for saying that, but she's the one that taught me what justice is," he explained giving Hermione a small shake. "It just took me a few hours to understand it... And that's a speed record for me!"

"Harry! Don't belittle yourself... And Lisa, would you-- Would you forgive me for what I did?"

"There's nothing to forgive, but if it makes your self-punishment complete, I do forgive your mistake."

Hermione looked like she wanted to hug the girl, yet settled for a nod, a smile and a sincere thank-you. A minute later, since none of them had said another word, Lisa cleared her throat and said good-night. "I really should be back in the tower. Can we-- Would you like to share breakfast together? Tomorrow morning?"

"We'd like that, yes," Hermione said after a quick silent glance between Harry and her. With that, two Gryffindors and one Ravenclaw ended an unforgettable All Hallows Eve, filled with Halloween horror stories to tell their grandchildren, magicked by Samhain rituals for life, and spiced by a Sabbath gathering of their very own that could result in a beautiful friendship.


Notes: 1.- I apologize if Harry's scar has been identified in the original books, because I don't really remember if it ever was. I've read fics where Harry's scar is an Eihwaz or Eoh rune, others where it's only described as a "protective rune" and if memory doesn't fail me, only one in which it was described as a Siegel, Sigil or Sig rune. It is quite unfortunate that this one was used as a base for the infamous SS insignia, which has given the symbol of Sun-related powers of greatness and victory a bad connotation.
Now, looking at the symbolism of canon Potterverse, my belief is that the idea was to use the Eoh rune as Harry's scar, because in what little source material I've got it's the one related to Death and more commonly associated with the yew tree (!) as well as personal knowledge and individual achievements.

2.- Translations: "rendezvous" = meeting; "laissez faire" = a tolerant attitude, to let others do what they will.

3.- Greeshma Ritu is one the traditional seasons in an Indian calendar; there are six of them "ritus" and each has unique weather characteristics and significance that apply to traditional medicine and even musical forms.

4.- Snape recited a famous line from Don Quixote, where the delusional knight charges at windmills convinced that they're giants. I realize Cervantes might be as little known in the Anglo-Saxon literature as Shakespeare is to Hispanic literature, but if anyone has the chance, please read it and look up the historical context of the times.

5.- Does Poppy Pomfrey have a full name? I don't remember, so I hope Poppea Pomfrey is adequate.

6.- The ritual chanting is of Druidic origin, I copied it from several very similar if not identical ritual texts performed in Samhain. The part where the four quarters are honoured is also repeated in other rituals, as it serves to centre the participants.