# # #
"And you'll write to me?" Her big brown eyes were showing him her vulnerability for the first time since she was twelve years old.
He smiled tenderly at her, taking her chin in his hand and pulling her up for a gentle kiss. "I'll write you every time I'm thinking of you," he said. "Which will be every minute of every day, I imagine."
"Poor Hedwig," she said, giggling. "You don't have to write every day. Just most of them."
"I'll miss you," he said seriously, pulling her firmly against him. She was surprised at first; his physical expression of their relationship around her family was always Percy-approved and modest—and here he was, holding her in a loving embrace, for all of the Hogwarts student body to see, not to mention all of her family.
"I don't have to go," she answered, though they'd had this conversation a million times already. "Fred and George wouldn't turn me away for a job; Ron didn't take them up on the offer."
He sighed, resting his forehead against hers. "You can't stay home, Gin, no matter how much I want you to. You have a whole year of school to get through."
"You didn't come last year," she said stubbornly.
"Dumbledore died, Ginny. I owed it to him to join the Auror Department."
"You owed it to him to drop out of school a year early?" she asked, skeptically.
Harry kissed her once more. "I'd rather not waste this time with you arguing about things that don't matter. You're already on the roster for this year, and I am already working at the Ministry. I love you, and I'll miss you."
She was momentarily speechless. "You love me?" she asked breathily.
His face reddened; he hadn't meant to say that quite so soon, and definitely not after their disagreement. Nevertheless, he nodded. "I love you," he affirmed.
She smiled at him, ecstatic. "I love you."
# # #
Bill had died pretty early on in the war; no one had found him after the first Hogwarts breech, and when they did find him he had choked to death on his own blood, a claw mark from Greyback embedded in his pale neck.
Harry hadn't, at sixteen, been able to comprehend the genius that was Bill Weasley, curse-breaker extraordinaire. Now, having spent the greater part of an hour gently picking at the elaborate wards Bill had undoubtedly set up for his family in the wake of Ginny's 'abduction,' Harry realized just how brilliant and capable Bill was at his job. It had taken Harry two years of waking up at five in the morning and training with Moody until five in the afternoon to be able to shut down Bill's wards. And though the Fidilus Charm over the Hogsmeade house was full proof and very advanced, it was not at all as subtle as the wards Bill could create.
Bill's name was added to the list of possible members of his organization.
Harry slipped into the back garden through the creaky wooden fence, closing it firmly behind him. It was dark, twenty-four hours since his confrontation with Moody, who he'd owled that evening with the address of his home, Number 1 Indus Lane.
Hermione was getting things ready that minute, using the privacy that the unplottable nature of the house gave to perform undetectable underage magic. He needed a cage to keep a rat he needed to keep quiet and out of the way for a while. Peter Pettigrew's time at the Burrow was going to come to an abrupt end.
He mounted the broom clutched in his hand, and, being careful to stay low as the break he'd managed to make in the wards wasn't very large, flew to the first bedroom's window. There Ginny Weasley slept.
Tapping at the window was risky; Harry knew from experience that Molly Weasley had keener ears than a werewolf's. He grinned a little at the memory of him creeping down the stairs the night before his wedding to sneak a few minutes…or hours…with Ginny, only to be thwarted and scolded by Molly, who was stationed outside her daughter's bedroom door, sleeping bag and a cup of tea as her companions.
Ginny woke up abruptly; he watched as she rubbed her eyes and looked around her bedroom for the disturbance. He cringed, but tapped on the window once more, drawing her wide eyes to him. A finger to his lips told her to stay quiet, and he whispered the unlocking charm, and lifted the window up.
"Silencio," he whispered, cutting off the sound to the rest of the house. "How are you, Ginny?"
"What are you doing here? Is Hermione okay?"
Harry couldn't help himself; he pulled her into a hug, which she returned timidly. "How've you been?"
She gave him a wry grin, which caught his breath for a moment. It was so very like a shadow of the smiles she used to wear when she was her boldest. "You were right about mum hovering. I haven't been by myself for more than a minute since I've been back. Mum checks on me constantly."
"I'm sorry that it has to be like this right now," he said sincerely. "But I need you to do me a favor."
"Right now?" she asked.
He nodded. "This very important. You know Scabbers?"
She rolled her eyes. "No, Harry, I'm so traumatized by my kidnapping that I've forgotten all about my brother's mangy pet rat."
Chuckling, he replied, "I suppose I deserved that. I need you to get him for me. Sneak down to Ron's room and bring him up to me." He raised his wand, performed a tricky little movement, and conjured a tiny cage. Handing it to her, he said, "Put him in here and bring him up as soon as you can, I'll wait here."
She sent him a questioning look, but he didn't want to say anything more until he had the rat safely locked away.
# # #
Harry's wand shot another Silencing Spell, this time at the cage because Peter was now squealing loudly enough to startle Ginny, who was staring at the rat with a look of horror in her eyes.
"That… that slept with my brother! It's a person?" She sounded as though she couldn't quite believe it.
"Yes," he said, eyes darkening with rage. "This is the man who betrayed my parents to Voldemort."
"Are… are you going to kill him?" she asked quietly.
Don't kill Pettigrew. Hermione's words echoed in his ears. He'd done a lot of things she probably wouldn't approve of since he'd been back, including isolating himself from Dumbledore. As mature as her thirteen year old self was, Harry still couldn't help but feel like something had happened in those years between her childhood and the war—perhaps experience really was as important as intellect.
"No," he said finally. "I won't kill him."
He couldn't read the look on her face exactly, but there was a trace of fear peeking through her expression. She shifted a little on her feet. "Mum's sending me back to Hogwarts," she said finally.
He breathed a sigh of relief; it would be much easier to keep in contact with Ginny if she was at Hogwarts, rather than under the watchful eye of Molly Weasley.
"You still have the mirror?"
She nodded. "It's under the lining of my trunk, just like you said."
The circles under her eyes were pronounced, and he could see them now that her face was turned up toward him. There was an underlying sadness in those eyes, which was now readily apparent now that he wasn't drowning in his own troubles. He had plans and wasn't constantly berating himself for leaving her to the Chamber. Now, he realized that perhaps the old Ginny, the one who had been so resilient always, had been the product of five years of healing. This Ginny Weasley wasn't yet a month fresh from experiencing the death of a classmate, and Harry had again been neglecting her.
"How do you feel, Ginny?"
She pulled away from him and sat down amidst the crumpled bedcovers. "I don't know what to say to you."
"Gin…" She silenced him with a wave of her hand.
"Sometimes you treat me like a twenty-five-year-old woman, Harry, and it feels empowering…I guess, but sometimes you treat me like I'm a five-year-old, like I'm just a baby due for a feeding every few hours. It's confusing… to be someone so important to you."
"You're the only one important to me," he said hoarsely.
"But there's also the fact that I'm not even sure how to feel or to act," she went on, like he hadn't spoken. "I hear Lavender's giggling in my dreams," she said, looking at him with horror in her brown eyes. "Though it sounds much more like screaming when I wake up.
"Mum thinks I've been through trauma, and that I should do regular things," she smiled wryly. "Except those things tend to be cooking and cleaning rather than anything I'd actually like to do."
His heart ached he wanted to help her so much. "I'm so sorry," he said quietly. "I was so… unprepared for all of this. I don't know how to help you."
She nodded. "I figured as much. I was plenty angry when I got back, that you had known all about the diary but didn't tell me and that even after the Chamber you were still bringing me home." At his startled look, she amended, "I mean I wanted to come back, but I felt put out that you let me, for some, undoubtedly girlish, reason. I guess I'm trying to say that I don't hate you, even though you didn't do what I imagine you set out to do."
"I did fail, and I don't expect you to forgive me."
A brilliant smile broke out on her face; half shy and half amused. "It'll take some getting used to, I imagine, but how could I not forgive you? Not every boy will find out how to go back through time just to save the girl he loves."
He gave her a tentative hug. "I've told you before, Ginny. I'll do anything for you, anything it takes."
He tucked her into bed, giving her a brief kiss on the forehead, and then was off, back through the window and away from the Burrow and the Weasley property. Harry knew that the girl he had lived with and loved as a young man was buried inside of little Ginny Weasley, and all he had to do was save the world in five years to win her love again.
For a man like Harry Potter, that was seriously child's play.
# # #
Harry could barely contain his rage until he made it safely into the cellar with Pettigrew. Hermione was upstairs studying, no doubt, so he soundproofed the walls to make sure he and Peter were well and truly alone.
The spell to provoke a change rolled off the tip of his tongue, satisfying him when Peter's human form erupted out of his body. Unfortunately for Peter, Harry had neglected to take him out of the cage he had been crawling around in as a rat, and the man screamed as the metal bent and broke, digging into his rapidly expanding flesh. Peter seemed unable to form coherent words; settling for sobbing nonsensical words which sounded sweet and clear to Harry's ears.
"What's wrong, Peter? Aren't you glad to see me?" He aimed a kick at Peter's torso. "You aren't? Well, maybe you just don't know who I am. My father's name was James, and my mother's name was Lily? I've heard from a great many people that you knew them quite well. Is that true? I think it is. I'm Harry, if you can't remember me." He kicked Pettigrew again.
"S-s-s-stop, please!"
"Stop squealing you pathetic rat!" Harry's mind was somehow disconnected form his body, and he kicked, kicked, and kicked at Wormtail's pudgy frame—his rage so great that he couldn't stop his body from doing exactly what it wanted to do: beat Peter Pettigrew to within an inch of his life.
"P-p-p-please!"
A squelching sound signaled the dislocation of Peter's knee. The man screamed in agony, clutching his thigh. "Don't touch it," Harry commanded. Peter earned another kick by ignoring Harry and continuing to weep and stubbornly hold onto his damaged appendage.
"You're out of shape, Petey. I'm barely thirteen and you just got an Auror style arse kicking. Did you enjoy it? Not the same as a Cruciatus, is it? Answer me!"
Pettigrew vomited bile on the concrete floor of the basement. His face was white, but he met Harry's eyes without flinching. "No," he squeaked. "It isn't the same."
"You know I could kill you at any moment?"
Pettigrew nodded fearfully.
"You know that Voldemort has returned?"
Pettigrew shuddered at the name, but he nodded nonetheless.
"I'm going to let you go, Peter. It's only a matter of time before Tommy wonders where his rat is. He'll wonder where the man who betrayed the Potters is hiding from him. If I keep you long enough, he'll start to wonder if maybe you haven't been a traitor all along. Do you want to suffer the punishment befitting a traitor?"
He muttered something, shaking his head—howling in pain when Harry stepped on his injured knee.
"No! Please, help me!"
Harry raised an eyebrow, though he was sure the drama was wasted on Pettigrew, who was sweating profusely enough that his eyes were screwed shut. "See, that's where we run into trouble. I never make a deal with someone unless they have something to give me. As far as I can see, you've got nothing of value…"
He pretended to consider, looking around the cellar with feigned nonchalance, his heel digging with increased pressure into Wormtail's left ankle. The little man whimpered without much enthusiasm.
"You're a good for nothing sneak," Harry spat, raising his foot quickly and slamming it down again. "But you're attracted to power. Isn't that the only reason you betrayed my parents? Power? If you thought Dumbledore was beating Voldemort, you'd kiss his arse too, wouldn't you? Well, I've got news for you, Pete, I'm running the show now. Anything happens because I tell it to happen. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Peter groaned.
Harry shook his head. "You don't get it," he sighed. "The way I see it, you've got three options. Would you like to hear them?"
"Y-y-yes."
Harry lessened the pressure on Peter's ankle. "You can stop cooperating and can live in a cage in this cellar the rest of your life, or I can kill you right now. Those are the first two options. Do you like either one of those?"
Peter shook his head.
"No, you wouldn't like them," Harry said. "The third option, of course, is that you do what the fuck I tell you, when I tell you, and then I'll let you live for as long as it's convenient for me. I'll have a couple of errands that I'll need someone small and stealthy to do, and you'll do those with a tracking spell on you that is so sophisticated it can tell if you need to take a piss at any given time. And you'll swear your allegiance to me by Unbreakable Vow."
He didn't have to look down to see the desperation in Peter's eyes. "Oh, yes, Pete. You'll be staying here in the cage until I've got someone who will bind us. That way you couldn't betray me if you wanted to.
"Alas, I've got some business to attend to. If you'll excuse me?" A flick of his wand brought about Peter's change to rat form, and he promptly levitated him into the cage stuck to the wall with a Permanent Sticking Charm.
"Good-night, Peter."
# # #
Harry had finally calmed down enough to make it back up the stairs into the coolness of the first floor. His intent was to make Wormtail as uncomfortable as possible, and that meant placing an extra strength Heating Charm over the downstairs area. It was working; the place was like a furnace, but his anger was such that Harry hadn't noticed it until the breath of cool air had hit him as he reached the top step.
His home was what he had always wanted for himself. His childhood had been filled with not only dreams of green light and flying motorcycles, but of a comfortable home where he could live and move freely without the fear of being shut up in a cupboard.
He found Hermione sitting at the kitchen table, a book on Occlumency resting on the table in front of her.
"Ready for me to check your mind?" he asked casually, going to the brand new refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of butterbeer. He uncorked it with a pop, sitting down at the table with a sigh.
She looked queasy all of a sudden. Shifting in her seat, she asked, "Do you suppose I could have another couple of days?"
"I don't expect you to get it right the first time, Hermione," he said kindly.
"I know that…" She searched for the right words. "It's just…"
He shook his head firmly. "After the first time I try to gain entry into your mind, we begin the second phase of training. Once you actually have intrusions to fight against, your mind will feel differently when it's preparing."
"Will you just give me two days, Harry?" she asked stiffly, avoiding his eyes.
"Hermione, what's wrong?"
"Nothing! I am perfectly fine, Harry, spiffy, even," she exclaimed with an air of dignity. She gathered her books and rose from her seat. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll practice mediating in my bedroom." When he managed to snap himself out of his surprised stupor, her bushy hair was gone from the room.
"What the bloody hell?" he asked himself in a low voice. Hermione's behavior had been rational for as long as he had known her, with three exceptions: the first was when she had skived off class the day in first year when Ron had insulted her, the second was when she had sent charmed birds after Ron in their sixth year as punishment for his idiocy, and the third was after Ron was dead, when she was so grief stricken that she had agreed to his harebrained scheme and sent him back in time to redo his life.
Maybe she misses her family, Harry thought. It seemed reasonable enough to him, for a teenage girl to be moody and upset when she was away from her mother for almost an entire year.
He didn't have time to pursue the thought further because an alert signaled someone was attempting to Apparate onto the grounds. The only person who knew where he lived was Moody, so he lifted a hole in the wards with a flick of his wand. He'd have to modify them to allow Moody and, perhaps, Tonks in without him having to go through the process—but that was a problem for another day.
Harry moved back into the sitting room, opening the door with another flick of his wand. He chuckled at the sight of Moody's cane poised to knock on the now wide-open door. Moody grimaced at Harry, but it didn't look like his heart was really in it. Behind him was a bewildered looking Nymphadora Tonks, standing on the bottom step of the porch, looking interestedly past Moody and into the house. She didn't appear to have seen Harry yet, and Harry honestly wasn't sure what her reaction would be—or if indeed there would be a surprise; he had left it up to Moody on how to handle things. She could be as well informed as Moody was (Harry doubted this) or she could be completely clueless.
He motioned for Moody to enter.
"Thanks for welcoming us on such short notice," Moody said gruffly.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You mean no notice?" He chuckled again at the half-frown possessing Moody's face.
Tonks stepped cautiously into the house, though the effect was ruined as she tripped on the last step, landing on her face over the threshold.
"Quit fooling around, Nymphadora!" Moody admonished, dragging her back up to her feet. It was a testament, perhaps, to her suspicions that she didn't even protest at the use of her given name.
Harry closed the door behind them with his wand, and restored the wards to their full capacity.
"Nymphadora Tonks, this is Harry Potter," Moody said bluntly. "Harry here is on a 'leave of absence' from school at the moment, and would appreciate you as his fourth recruit for the new organization."
"Actually, she'll be my fifth recruit," Harry interjected, amused at Tonks' facial expression.
"Really? Who'd you snag this time?"
Unable to speak without betraying his emotions, he choked out, "Peter Pettigrew."
"Bloody hell, Potter, you mean to tell me you just hired your parents' killer to help bring down Voldemort?"
Harry shrugged. "I may need his help in the future, not just to free Sirius. I was going to ask you to perform an Unbreakable Vow for his service."
Moody let out a breath. Turning his attention to Tonks, he asked, "Well, Dora? Will you sit down and listen to Harry's offer?"
She seemed to regain a bit of her composure. "You've known where Harry is all this time, and you haven't told Dumbledore?" Her pink hair turned into her natural, mousy brown. "He trusts you more than anyone else…"
"I'm afraid I'm on the side of whoever I think will bring Voldemort down the fastest. I believe in Harry," Moody said simply, limping his way to a sofa and letting himself down on it.
"He's thirteen years old," she said, pointing at Harry, eyes wide.
Harry, who was rather enjoying himself, sat down on a cushy armchair across the room. "I'm actually twelve until the end of July, but that's neither here nor there…"
"Harry has a lot of secrets, Nymphadora, that I think you'll find interesting."
"I don't understand…"
"All in good time," Harry assured her, but he was preoccupied by the sound of footsteps running down the hallway.
"Harry!" Hermione shouted out. "Harry, Hedwig's just come with a letter for you!"
Mystified, he said, "But no one knows where I am!"
Hermione was breathless, nodding in the direction of the other two people in the room. "She's been hunting for a few days, but I didn't think it was out of the usual. Pringle's Guide to Messenger Owls says that anywhere from two to five nights is normal, even healthy for a regularly used owl to hunt, unless, of course…"
"Hermione, the letter! Who sent it?" Harry exclaimed, frustrated. Who on Earth had spotted Hedwig long enough to attach a letter to her wing? And why had she trusted that person?
"The letter," she said, worry in her eyes. "Was sent by Professor Dumbledore."
# # #
A/N: Well, that's it for chapter twelve, thanks to all those who have reviewed! I really want to thank Alia Ziaen, who really helps me a lot plotting this story out. I wwwoovveee her. *winks*
