AN: Karou, thank you very much for your kind words. Alia, thanks. Author...now lets see. Thank you for the advice. I've changed the description now and we'll see how it goes this posting. As to your question, I'm afraid I can't really answer that at this point. We'll see ;)
Many, many thanks once again go to ShinjuKuroba for betaing this. Enjoy.
Harry woke when Elani shook Luna awake for dinner. As she pulled herself up, Harry felt a strange feeling stab though his mind. Elani chuckled softly as she watched his expression as the blonde slid through the curtains. "Harry, if you're feeling up to it you should be able to go to dinner. Just check back here afterwards, I want to be able to keep an eye on you tonight."
He looked at her for a moment before nodding.
"That would be nice." She smiled and breezed back out of the curtained area as he started to change, motioning to Luna to stop her leaving.
"Harry should be well enough for dinner in the Great Hall, just keep an eye on him for me." Luna started to smile before quashing it with worry.
"Are you sure, I wouldn't want to make him wor-" Elani shook her head.
"Luna, you being here has helped him more than any healing magic. The heart is a strange thing, but it has more power over the body then anyone in this world can understand. Especially so when Gifted are involved." Elani squeezed the young woman's shoulder and her smile softened. "And I suspect he was just as good for you as you were for him." Luna flushed, her breath hitching slightly. "Don't worry, although he is an Empath, he is still very young in that regard. Quite possibly younger than you. He knows he felt something from you, but he's still trying to figure it out. And even when he does he'll probably think he's mistaken until something forces him to act." Luna stared at her and she laughed lightly. "Luna, there's a lot you don't know about me and I come from a world where cultural norms and the like are very different." She cocked her head, smiling. "And I'm also a lot older then you think." She heard the curtains move back and turned. "You ready to go Harry?" He nodded and started forward before stumbling slightly. Elani reacted quickly, but Luna was faster. Her blonde hair flowed out behind her as she darted across the room, catching Harry before he could lose his balance completely. He shook his head to clear it and straightened quickly.
"Sorry about that," he mumbled, embarrassed, "I guess my feet missed the floor." Cheerful laughter greeted his sally and the embarrassment faded away. "After that I think I will need some help on the stairs Luna – if it wouldn't be too much trouble." She smiled shyly.
"Not at all." She moved around, letting him lean gently upon her. "Now, let's go tell the rest of Hogwarts that you're still alive."
"Alright."
Luckily for his – now slightly battered – dignity, none of the staircases tried to move as they made their way to the Great Hall. There were a few moments where he almost lost his balance on the stairs, but Luna seemed to sense them coming and was able to brace herself each time. They ignored the looks they were being thrown as they got closer to the entrance hall as well as the progressively louder shouts coming from that area. Coming out on the stairs that lead straight down into the Great Hall, they had a perfect view of the not inconsiderable argument raging between a certain redhead and Dean Thomas.
"-don't care what you thought! I don't need you any more!" Ginny hissed at the boyfriend she'd been so happy to announce to all and sundry the night before.
"Oh really. Who are you going to be deceiving this time?" Ginny, in a moment of what Harry would inevitably call the worst form of luck, glanced up the stairs before answering.
"Harry Potter. And how dare you accuse me deceiving you!" Dean recoiled as if slapped and she pointed up the stairs, her eyes going soft. "We realised that we love each other after the incident this afternoon and we don't want to waste a moment of it." Ginny turned away from the now forgotten Dean and headed up the stairs as most of Hogwarts drew a collective breath, no one willing to contradict her statement until Harry responded. Harry stifled a sigh; he had suspected something like this might have been in the works this year, but he had expected Albus to at least try to judge his capabilities before throwing Ginny at him. As she got closer he saw her mouth move as she spoke the words of a very complex – and old – spell. Harry opened his mouth to tell her she was severely mistaken on the status of their relationship before a lance of pain shot through him. What the- the thought cut off abruptly as he felt an enchantment shimmer into being within him. Damn it...passive...masked by core...opening my barriers..but wh – oh how could I have been so stupid?
The world seemed to slow and a tendril of thought not his own tore through his weakened shields as his emerald eyes met the brown of Ginny's. He felt her reach into him, finding his perception of her and, after a sudden flash of anger, start to warp it into something far more...intimate. And suddenly he realised that Dumbledore had never given up. He had used almost every method he could think of to bring James back into the fold, but none of it had worked. Potions were either detected before consumption or cleansed soon after, Legilimency simply didn't work and every compulsion he tried to place was fought off too quickly for him to use it. But in the years between the James Experience and now, Albus must have prepared for this possibility. And the first thing he had done was place a powerful passive enchantment upon Harry when he left him with the Dursleys. It was simple enough in its effect, but more importantly it was completely undetectable until activated. It hid itself within the latent interference caused by a wizard's magical core and it had grown as Harry did. He had given Ginny the spell-phrase to activate it earlier in the day and it, at least, worked as advertised; bringing Harry's mental defences crashing down around him. What Ginny was doing, however, was a form of Legilimency that had been lost for centuries before one of his contacts had found a set of scrolls detailing its use. Whilst normal Legilimency allowed you to – in crude terms – read someone's mind and implant suggestions within, the form Ginny was now using did the same to emotions. And this, for almost everyone involved, was where the problems began.
The Empathic Gift is seen – at least by those who observe such things – as one of the rarer and certainly one of the more actively dangerous Gifts. Keeping a secret from a Receptive Empath is almost impossible if they want to find out about it and although they can be overwhelmed with emotions, that can only happen to one who is untrained. But a Projective Empath...that is far more dangerous. A projective can reach into you, find your worst memory and throw it in your face. An Adept level Gift like Harry's could play with emotion as easily as a child plays with toys. And Harry still did not have anything close to complete control over his Gift. So when an exterior force tried to tamper with 'its' province, it reacted and brought his other Gift along too. Even if Harry had had the ability to stop it, he never would have had the time as his Gifts exploded into life. A shockwave of invisible power erupted from him, shattering every piece of glass within fifty feet – consequently alerting the teachers in the Great Hall that something was happening – as his Mage-Gift tore the now revealed enchantment apart. However the visible effects were far less pronounced than the non-visible ones. As his Mage-Gift disintegrated the enchantment upon him, his Empathic Gift leapt out far beyond his control. It drove Ginny reeling back into her own mind, dissolving the changes she had attempted to make in the process. And then, following the wish for vengeance within his subconscious, it followed her in.
Power sliced through the girl before him, digging deep into her being to find what she had found in Harry. Her perceptions, her feelings for those around her. Reaching out, it latched on to two images and hammered a mental command into them. The command was akin to the one she had tried to use on Harry, but this one was temporary only. It would degrade and, eventually, it would fail. Unfortunately for Ginny, "eventually" would be at least a month. Its revenge now firmly in place, Harry's Gift pulled itself forcefully out of Ginny's mind. The results, whilst less violent then they could have been, were not kind.
Ginny had been hammered back into her mind by the mental assault of Harry's Gift. Completely unprepared for the sort of power she had faced within Harry's mind, she unconsciously tried to take a step back. This left her wobbling on half of one foot in the middle of a particularly steep staircase. The swift and utterly uncaring pull out of the Gift in her head pushed her back even further so she was already loosing her balance when the magical shockwave slammed into her. Ginny was the closest person to Harry bar Luna – the blonde in question was seemingly unaffected by the wave of power – and therefore was the first person in almost eight hundred years to be hit by a power-wave. The main effect of the wave was not a noticeable one, but it caused a slight imbalance in her magical core that – while it would fix itself within days – would be rather painful when she woke up. The more obvious effect was the several feet out from the staircase the wave proceeded to propel her. The resulting collision with the ground was heard by a third of the Great Hall as Ginny Weasley, rendered unconscious by the overwhelming power of an Adept level Gift, went flying down the stairs she had climbed, hitting the ground hard.
Harry tightened his grip on Luna's arm, almost shaking with a mix of fear and rage. Tamping down his emotions and tightening his hold over his Gifts, he raised his voice.
"Someone get her to the hospital wing! That sounded painful."
"Why don't you take her, she's your girlfriend." Dean spat and he sighed wearily.
"Dean, the only people I have seen since potions have been Madame Pomfrey and Healer Leysha in the Hospital Wing, Neville, and Luna here. If you want, you can ask Healer Leysha to verify that. Look, I'm quite sure her fall was heard in the Great Hall. Regardless of what she may have done, she doesn't deserve to die!" Dean looked just about ready to continue arguing but before he could rejoin the fray, Lavender Brown stepped out of the crowd and quickly levitated Ginny.
"I'll take her up Harry. You get something to eat, I think you need i-"
"Let me through!" Harry suppressed a wince as Professor McGonagall's voice cleared a path through the crowded students. "What in Merlin's name just happened? And Harry, why are you out of the Hospital Wing?"
"Healer Leysha said I was well enough to attend dinner as long as I was back in the Hospital Wing for the night. On reaching the Entrance Hall, Ginny made some rather confusing remarks involving a relationship we supposedly have. What happened after that," he swept his hand out, palm up, the small gesture indicating everything around them, "I have no idea why whatever caused it happened." McGonagall looked at him for a long moment before nodding.
"Very well. If no one disagrees with that interpretation of events then I'll take Miss Weasley to the Hospital Wing myself." No one spoke up, although that could have been down to the state of shock most of them were still in. The Professor cast her own levitation upon the floating redhead and started to hurriedly ferry her up the stairs towards the infirmary.
Harry slumped against Luna's supportive presence as his adrenaline rush faded. Luna tensed as he fell, holding him up as he regained his balance.
"Are you all right Harry?"
"I've been better." He ground out through clenched teeth. "But I need to be at dinner, if only to show that what happened this afternoon didn't do anything truly harmful." She looked at him strangely and then nodded.
"You mean you need to cultivate your image." He stopped his head snapping round to stare at her through sheer force of will. "I know what this is about Harry, I wasn't put in Ravenclaw simply for how I saw the world." She chastised him gently before lowering her voice. "I'm sorry though, I didn't See this at all." Harry waved it away quickly.
"Luna, the one thing that was just demonstrated quite clearly to me is that you never really are capable of controlling your Gifts. And if you could see everything coming, it would make life boring, wouldn't it." She smiled briefly and nodded. "So," he gestured at the doors to the Great Hall, "shall we?"
"I do believe we shall."
They stepped through the doors of the Great Hall, preceded by the crowd that had gathered around the fight between Dean and Ginny. A wave of whispers preceded them as that crowd melded into the tables and spread their stories followed by silence, rippling out behind the whispers as heads spun and eyes sprang wide. They had all felt the wave of power that had swept through the hall moments before and almost every member of the hall gazed in unconcealed confusion – and no small amount of fear or awe – as the whispers spreading ahead of the silence attributed that wave to Harry. Then the brighter people in the crowd began to connect things. He had come back recently from who-knew-where, was attacked and then protected through unknown means and just shattered every piece of glass in the Great Hall, from the top of the Entrance Hall staircase. Harry stifled a sigh as he felt sparks of insight leap through him and wondered what the rumour mill would have churned out by the morning. He moved slowly down the corridor between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, trying his best to conceal his reliance on Luna's support. Struggling not to slump or close his eyes, he sat down as easily as he dared at the Gryffindor table. Luna hovered at his side for a moment and he smiled. "Sit down. I doubt anyone will argue the point." A small smile tugged at her lips as he spoke and she sat down beside him.
"Thank you Harry."
"Thank me when you need to help me up." He laughed, only half-joking.
"You know, there's this little thing called magic, Harry." He drew back quickly, turning to face her and feigning shock.
"There is? You must be joking, Miss Lovegood. Magic isn't real."
"Oh I assure you, Mr Potter, it is quite real." She responded gamely, her smile spreading across her face into what was almost a grin. "And if I have to, I'll prove it to you." He held up his hands in mock fear.
"Please! Don't turn me into a toad!" She choked back a laugh and shook her head. "What?" He inquired innocently.
"You." She said simply. He looked at her strangely and she shook her head again, her smile turning enigmatic. Something strange swept though him like an electric wind and he opened his mouth.
"Lu-"
"Harry?" A soft voice cut him off as a hand tapped his shoulder. He turned and saw Isabel standing behind him, her face set. He felt worry and fear radiating out from her and reached out to grasp her hand. She shied away for a second before he caught her hand and her face changed as her Gift kicked in.
"Hey." He said softly. "I'm still here. And my promise to you still stands." He made no attempt to let go, simply letting her read through his touch down to the very core of his being. "You ok?" She jumped, startled out of the trance he somehow knew she had been falling into. She nodded, but her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She stood there for a few more seconds, the sparkle of tears fading from her aquamarine eyes. "If you come up with me after dinner, you can meet the person I told you about." He stopped, knowing she had to make the next move.
"I...ok Harry. And thank you." She turned away and made her way back to her friends.
:So plotting lessons so soon, I see. You do realise Elani is going to hurt you for this, yes?: He heard Avira's wry voice echo through his mind.
:I'll have you know that this one at least, I told her about previously. So she may be...slightly more inclined not to kill me?:
:Keep telling yourself that Harry, you might even convince yourself that it's true: He Felt more than heard the laughter in his mentor's voice and a smile tugged at the edges of his mouth.
:So are you going to past-scry tonight?: He asked. Avira's tone changed abruptly, becoming more businesslike.
:That's the plan. I would do it in the Hospital Wing, but there'd be the chance of someone bursting in and interrupting us. Regardless of their necessity in some things, I really don't like using compulsions on people.:
:I know, that's why if you had said you were going to do have done the scry in the Hospital Wing, I would have told you not to. Elani can tell me tomorrow.:
:Can and will, Harry. That's enough chat for now though, you need to eat.:
:Yes mother.: Harry Felt Avira chuckle again before the connection subsided.
"Harry, if you don't start eating I'm going to make you. And it won't be pretty." Luna said gently as he came back to his senses. He stifled a laugh – as he was quite sure she would make good on that threat if she had to – and took the plate that Luna had filled for him with only a touch of resignation. Elani had told him about power-shock previously and had told him about what it could do if you didn't take steps to remedy it. And he suspected that she had told Luna that he had to eat very well at dinner.
So with that in mind, he finished his plate quite quickly, just as Luna was polishing off the last of hers. Deciding by mutual consent to skip dessert this once, Luna unobtrusively helped him to his feet and they began to make their way back towards the doors to the Great Hall, silence rippling out around them as they did so. No one tried to stop them, or even question them, although that, he knew, would have changed by the next time he was allowed out of the Hospital Wing. For now he was just thankful for the peace. Uncontrolled Gift use combined with power-shock had stressed the innate healing powers gifted by a wizard's magic to their absolute limit and he knew that he was going to pay for it in the morning. He touched Isabel on the shoulder as he passed and she quickly excused herself from her friends group to catch up with him. He slowed his pace slightly so that she could walk at her own pace and they walked through the doors of the Great Hall to complete silence. Luna looked back and grinned impishly as people flinched away from her stare. They moved out of sight of the people within the Hall, starting the long trek – at least for Harry in his current state – back towards the Hospital Wing and the Great Hall exploded with gossip behind them.
AN: No new Gifted this time, but I think I can offset that through the main action sequence in this chapter. I'm about three-quarters/half way through Chapter 14 but I'm not sure when it'll be finished. Hopefully within the next few weeks. Anyway, please feel free to drop any thoughts or critique in a review or pm, it will be greatly appreciated.
Wind to thy wings