Chapter 14 - Fears make us rigid and inaccessible

A/N: Big chapter this chapter. Dun dun duuuuuun! As usual, a big thanks to all those who leave a review and those who have added this story to C2s or favorited it. And I've even got a little cliff hanger at the end. I don't own any of the characters or anything.

Harry spent most of Wednesday evening thinking more about the ethical situation that arose out of competing systems of morality back in Britain. He still knew that he was right to get rid of Voldemort and it went beyond just a difference of morality and a difference of opinions. Harry began to think that it was just wrong to kill someone, morally wrong, no matter what happened. And that led to some more uncomfortable thoughts.

Yes, it was understandable that his friends needed to protect themselves, and as a result killed their attackers during the Battle of Britain. Harry hadn't actually killed Voldemort in the final battle - Voldemort had his own killing curse reflected back on him. He had destroyed the horcruxes, but that mostly united Voldemort's soul into one body, rectifying a wrong. The only person Harry had a direct role in killing had been Quirrell back in his first year, but even then Harry imagined it was more his mother's sacrifice than Harry actually doing anything. Harry went back to thinking about the first principle of Unitarian Universalism - he had went back and reread the pamphlet, and it talked about the inherent worth and dignity of every individual.

Did that really mean everyone? Harry immediately thought back to Voldemort. Did he have any kind of worth and dignity at all? He was a terrible man, killed countless people, caused so many lives to be ruined. Even as a kid he was pretty evil. But yet, he loved his stupid snake. Surely there was some kind of redeeming quality in him, somewhere. But just because he had some kind of inherent worth and dignity didn't mean he was a good person and didn't deserve to be stopped. Yes, he thought Voldemort and the Death Eaters were certainly evil, but did that make them Evil? Even the Malfoys cared about their son.

If there had been any way to stop Voldemort without killing him, would Harry have done it? He couldn't answer. Voldemort's death was the only guaranteed way to end the Dark Times and bring hope back to Britain. Well, hope to many people, not hope to everyone.

Harry had trouble saying there was an absolute right or wrong. He was beginning to develop a pretty strict personal moral code, but that didn't make it universal. But Harry decided that ending Voldemort's reign was the correct thing to do as in the end it had saved more lives than it cost. Harry wasn't sure if he could ever do something like that again, however. Did one life mean more or less than a group of lives? Wasn't each life priceless?

Harry had trouble sleeping that night. He knew he had done the right thing but was clearly having trouble justifying it. Harry realized that in battles of differing moral codes, he could only go with the one that felt right to him and try to defend it. There was no way to tell which was The Right One, only the one that was right for him. Harry still wasn't satisfied with that answer, but he couldn't come up with anything better, and finally let sleep take him that night.

When Harry woke the next morning, he felt better. He realized he had taken another step towards healing, and had a better understanding of why some of what happened in Britain had happened. He was still pretty confused, but had at least started thinking about it, and that was indeed an important start. He wanted to journal some of his thoughts down, but was beyond running late and was about to miss his Freshmen Writing class. He grabbed the one page paper due that day on a current event, ran to his car, and headed to Emory.

The highlight of Harry's day had been, by far, his ceramics class, which was rapidly becoming his favorite class, at least his favorite muggle class. He found Intro to Religions his more interesting class, but Ceramics was a nice stress reliever. He was excited to see how his glaze on his first hand molding attempt, the sunflower, turned out. If it turned out well, he would start to practice hand molding at home.

When he arrived, he greeted Joey, and immediately went to the back of the room where the completed projects were organized and searched for his sunflower. There it was, and it had turned out pretty good. Some of the glaze had run during the firing and knew that meant he had used too much. But all in all, it had turned out pretty good for his first attempt. He went back to his table and swapped pieces with Joey. They were supposed to give each other feedback on their entire pieces, and they had a form they were supposed to fill out that was a critique. Joey's cross had turned out well, but boring. Harry thought it needed some different color glazes to show different emotions, and made a note on his form.

Friday passed with out incident, and although Carolyn wanted everyone to go out again Saturday, both Harry and Lee declined (although Ashley told Carolyn she was in, and the two of them made plans to go shopping.) Harry was excited about his first round of volunteering at Marietta Magnet, and Lee said he had a big potions project he wanted to work on. Carolyn told him it could wait, but Lee wanted to get it over with.

Lee turned to Harry and asked Harry, "So, remember what we talked about last week?"

Harry blanked. "No?"

Lee rolled his eyes. "Remember, I asked if I could come over and use your potions lab? Is that still ok?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Harry. "Sure Lee. When were you wanting to work on it?"

"I was thinking Sunday after church. I need to spend Saturday after my tutoring session prepping for it. Then I could come over after church and work on it."

"And he has a date Saturday night!" Ashley interjected.

"Oh, he does?" asked Carolyn with a grin. "Where?"

"Like I'm telling any of you. I don't want you to accidently show up. Anyway," he said turning back to face Harry, "would that work?"

"Sure. If your boyfriend doesn't get too jealous," said Harry.

Ashley and Carolyn burst out laughing, and Carolyn gave him a high 5. Lee blushed and said, "I'll see you Sunday. 9 am like last time? You don't have to cook again."

"No, I want to. See you at 9!"

Harry headed back home and decided to spend the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing that required thought. It had been such a long week on his emotions and brain - from the church service to Wednesday's experience with the Stanleyites to his normal class routine. Harry decided he wanted to go see a movie. He had heard his friends talk about seeing a movie, but wasn't sure where to go.

He pondered on what to do, and decided to see if any of his muggle friends wanted to go see a movie. He didn't want to invite Joey because he was pretty sure Joey would end up making a ton of really bad puns like usual, and imagined he would get pretty aggravated if he had to deal with it outside of class. He decided to see if Chappell and Sarah wanted to go catch a movie. He knew they both lived on campus, but since he had a car, they might want to get off campus for a while. He called them up, happy he had remembered to write down their phone numbers in his palm pilot, and they both said sure. Sarah said she had wanted to go see The Truman Show, having heard great things about it. It had been out for a couple of months, but she still hadn't gone to see it yet. Chappell said sure, and asked if Harry would mind going out afterwards to a grocery store so he could buy some things. Harry told both of them he'd pick them up at the Student Center at 6:30, so they could get to the theater by 7:00.

At 6:25, Harry pulled up by the Student Center. He realized Chappell and Sarah didn't actually know each other, and as a result were standing next to each other, not talking, not realizing whom the other was.

Harry waved in their general direction, and Harry laughed at the surprised looks on their faces. Sarah moved to get in the front seat, and Chappell opened the door for her. After Sarah got in, Chappell closed the door and headed in to the backseat.

"So, hi. Sarah, this is Chappell. Chappell, this is Sarah."

Hellos were exchanged, and Sarah asked how they knew each other. "Oh, well, me and Chappell are in Running Club together. And Sarah and me are in the same English class, and I've started going to her church with another friend of mine."

"Cool," replied Chappell. "So Sarah, what dorm are you in?"

It turned out Chappell and Sarah lived in dorms right next to each other, despite never having met each other before. They weren't in any of the same classes, but did have the same professor for one class. The two of them talked about the professor, who apparently had a very strong Eastern European accent based off how Chappell was trying to imitate.

The three of them made light conversation until Harry pulled in to the movie theater. He had done his homework ahead of time this time, and had gotten out the maps and figured out good directions to get from campus to the closest movie theater, which did indeed have The Truman Show playing.

Harry didn't want to admit he had never been to a movie theater before - they'd probably find it odd, so he ended up just following whatever Sarah and Chappell did. First up was actually buying the ticket, then they gave the ticket right back as soon as they got inside (which Harry couldn't understand the reason for, but went with it.) Chappell wanted a coke to drink, which sounded good to Harry, so the two of them went up to the snack counter. Harry ended up getting the smallest bag of popcorn they had, which still ended up being larger than he had expected, and a gigantic cup of coke.

Chappell had to run and use the restroom, so after they found some seats in the theater he quickly excused himself.

"So, quick, what's his deal James?"

"Eh?"

"Is he single? He's hot."

"I don't know. Never asked."

"Big help you are. Here. Let me sit in the middle. OK, thanks. Say, where's Lee? Couldn't make it?"

Harry shrugged. He hadn't even asked if Lee wanted to come since he had figured Lee would be busy with that potions assignment. "I saw him earlier today and said he had a lot of homework."

"Did you hear about him and Jim?"

"I did."

"You aren't weirded out or anything by it, are you?"

"No, why would I?"

She grinned. "Good. Just making sure. Oh, Chappell's back. I never asked you about if he had a girlfriend."

Harry shrugged and nodded. Chappell sat back down and made small talk with Sarah and to some extent Harry until the lights got pretty dark. The theater wasn't that crowded - Sarah explained the movie had been out for a couple of months and as a result not a lot of people were going to see it. They were lucky it was still in the theaters at all.

Harry was blown away, but was surprised that the movies were only about a minute long each. He then realized, based off a comment that Sarah had made about previews, that they weren't the actual movie. They were just an advertisement for future movies. After about ten minutes of these, the actual movie began.

And so began Harry's love affair with movies. He loved how loud the sound was; sometimes he could feel the vibrations inside. He loved how huge the screen was - so much better than watching television. And the movie they were at had a great story. This guy was living in a television program, but didn't know it was a television program.

His entire life had been scripted out for him, all of the major events. And although he had never known, weird things had been happening lately and Truman was beginning to get a little suspicious. The director fought back, but by the end of the movie Truman had discovered the truth and was faced with a choice - go back to what he had always known, or go into the real world. And Truman had picked the real world.

Harry was incredibly moved by the movie. He really saw himself as Truman, especially in that last scene. He had to choose between going back to a life where everyone was watching him, a life where most of it had been planned out except a few chaotic events, and moving into the unknown future in a different place than he had lived his entire life. Harry felt a lot better knowing that Truman had made the same decision Harry had made - it further eased Harry's mind, and Harry vowed to buy a copy of the movie as soon as he could.

After the movie, the three of them talked about it some and Harry mentioned how he could really relate to Truman. Both Chappell and Sarah were interested in why, but Harry realized he had spoken more than he had anticipated, and clammed up. He said he had to go use the restroom to duck out of the conversation.

When he got back, he noticed Sarah and Chappell smiling at each other. Smiling to himself, he interrupted and said, "So Chappell, you said you wanted to hit up a store to get some things?"

"Right!"

"That'd be nice," added Sarah. "My parents live in Atlanta and they pick me up every Sunday to go to church, but it'd be nice to get a few things while I'm thinking about them. I'll probably forget what I need when I see them Sunday!"

Harry didn't know where there was a grocery store close by the movie theater, but knew where one was by his house. So he drove back to Emory and then back to the grocery store by his house. The three of them each bought a couple of bags worth of stuff before Harry dropped them back off at Emory. They both thanked Harry for taking them and agreed it was a great time and they ought to do it again soon. Harry waved, and told Chappell he'd see him tomorrow morning for their Saturday morning jog. And he told Sarah that he'd see her on Sunday.

—

Harry walked up where he saw Chappell and Phillipe stretching - apparently Harry would always be the last to arrive for these morning runs. He joined them in some light stretching, and the three of them were soon off on their morning jog through the campus.

Harry could tell a difference from last week. The entire group was able to run a bit faster this time around, although they stuck to the same hour long jog. When they finished, Harry wasn't nearly as winded as the week prior. And it showed.

"I can tell you've been practicing," Phillipe said. "Good job. I'm going to keep running for a bit - got a lot on my mind. I'll see you two next week!" Before Chappell and Harry could even reply, Phillipe took off.

Chappell and Harry looked at each other; Chappell shrugged, and started to stretch. Harry followed.

"That was a great movie last night, wasn't it?" asked Chappell.

"It was."

"So tell me more about your friend Sarah!"

"Well," began Harry, "I don't know her all that well. I'm better friends with a friend of hers, Lee. But she's pretty nice from what I've seen so far."

"And cute." Harry grinned. Misinterpreting the grin, Chappell quickly said, "Oh, sorry James. Didn't know she was spoken for."

"What?" asked Harry.

"Oh. You two aren't a couple?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "No."

"So, you wouldn't mind if I asked her out some time?"

"Go for it man."

"Think she'd say yes?"

Harry knew she'd say yes, but had a feeling he shouldn't be that upfront. "From what I know, even if she says no to you, I'm sure she'd want to be good friends with you. She wouldn't panic or anything, but I bet she'd say yes. Never know unless you try!"

"You're right. I will. I suggest we meet up to go to the dining hall later to talk more about the movie. I'll ask her then. Thanks James! I should head back and get dressed and everything. Gotta look my best! See you Tuesday?"

"Sure. Unless you've got a date."

"Here's hoping!" laughed Chappell.

—

Harry made it back home early enough and took a quick enough shower that he had the time to drive to Marietta Magnet for his first day of tutoring. But since it was his first time, he thought it would be better to floo. Harry fixed himself a quick snack, consisting of berries from his garden, and at 10:45 made his way upstairs to floo on over to Marietta Magical Magnet.

When he arrived out of the fireplace, Harry was greeted by…a pretty normal looking office. There was a secretary sitting behind the desk who looked up at him. "Are you one of the new tutors from Emory?"

"I am."

"Then you'll need to see Ms. Riley. Head down this hallway and she's the second door on your right. And welcome!"

"Thanks." Harry found the designated office and knocked at the closed door.

"Come in!"

Harry opened the office and was greeted by a nice, slightly older woman, with white hair and glasses. She was shorter than Harry and a bit larger. "Are you with the ELVES?"

"I am."

"And what's your name son?" she asked.

"James Black."

"Ah, welcome James. Just a little early - perfect. You signed up to help with Transfiguration and Defense, correct?"

Impressed by her memory, he nodded. "Transfiguration's my major."

"So why do you want to help with defense as well? I know Emory doesn't offer that."

"Well, I did really well in it during my secondary education."

She beamed. "Great! See, we don't get a lot of tutors from the ELVES who can help with defense, since it's not a major or a minor there. We've got several this year who can help with transfiguration. I figure we'll use you mostly to help tutor defense, but help out with transfiguration if it's needed. Sound like a plan?"

"Well, it's been a year or so since I had defense, and, well, it wasn't exactly a standard curriculum."

She looked pensive at this reply. "I really need the help with older students with defense, and most of that is dueling. Were you a good dueler?"

Harry nodded. He didn't want to give any details, but suffice to say, he was pretty good at it. "I might need to see what the spells are on the curriculum to better have an idea of how high of a level I could teach, but I'm sure I can help with wherever."

"It's been ages since we had someone who could tutor high level defense. If you would, it'd be a great help! We've got some students already in the tutoring room, why don't I show you there and give you a brief tour along the way, since I know you didn't come here."

The school had four different buildings, although he would mostly be in the main building, which they were in now. There was a building housing the dormitories, one floor for each of the years covered at Marietta Magnet. They had a lot of students who would commute, so the dorms were quite a bit smaller than the actual enrollment would suggest. They taught sixth through twelfth grades. One building housed classrooms for the sixth through eight grades, which they called the Middle School, and the other building housed classrooms for the ninth through twelfth grades. They had a large athletic field that served as both a Quidditch and a Quodpot field, and where they had the mandatory physical fitness classes.

They were in the main building which housed the library, dining hall, offices, the tutoring room, and more. The only time Harry would go to a different building was if a teacher needed a classroom helper that day. Other than that, he'd stick to the main building.

The classes had the same set up as Hogwarts. They didn't pick their electives until they reached the ninth grade, and they had a major series of exams at the end of the eight grade to get promoted up to high school and the final graduation exams, which sounded to Harry like what he imagined the NEWTs were like.

She took Harry in to the tutoring room. There was a wall that had a floor to ceiling bookshelf, with a copy of every year's textbook, and another shelf that was full of three ringed binders. "Those binders are the various classroom notes for each year and they auto update throughout the year. In it are also the course syllabi and such. If you ever want a copy of what your students are covering, let me know, and I'll make sure you get a copy you can take home. I'll go ahead and get you a copy of all the defense syllabi and calendars, especially the upper levels that I hope you'll be about to tutor. Over on that wall is the calendar of every test or scheduled quiz or major homework for each grade. It can be a little tough to read, but it's a lot easier if you tap your wand to one of the numbers at the bottom, which will filter the calendar by year."

Ms. Riley continued to show him a little more around the room, taking great care to point out where the snacks and the coffee maker were. Harry smiled and thanked her when she asked if she could get him a cup of coffee.

Harry saw a couple of people he recognized from ELVES helping different students at different tables, but no one he was friends with. Ms. Riley explained he would stay at one of the tables, and the students would come to him with any questions he might have. If it's slow, she recommended next time he bring some of his homework from Emory, but today he ought to skim through the textbooks and the class notes on defense and transfiguration if he had the time.

She waved her wand and saw a sign appear on the desk reading "James Black, Defense and Transfiguration." She smiled and told Harry that if he needed anything to come get her, and that it was ok if he didn't know an answer. If that happened, he should go get the textbooks and the binder of class notes, and look up the answer together with the student. She waved, and headed back to her office.

Harry noticed a couple of the students eyeing him. They looked so small - had he ever been that little? Granted, there were a couple of students there bigger than him, but Harry was more surprised at how big he was in comparison. Maybe he had grown a lot in his time in America.

"Mr. Black?" Harry turned to look at the kid approaching the desk from the right.

"Just call me James. And you are…"

"I'm Lucas. Lucas Ekuasin. I'm an eighth grader. I saw on your sign you can help with defense?"

Harry nodded. "Sure Lucas."

"You sound funny. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Britain and Australia. And it's not me who sounds funny, you do."

"Do not!" Lucas giggled. "Ok. I need help with defense. I didn't know they had a defense tutor this year! I've always had trouble with it."

"Well, what did you cover this week you don't understand?"

"All of it!" wailed Lucas.

Harry smiled patiently. "I'm afraid I'm going to need something more specific than that."

"Ok. We just started learning about boggarts, and I still don't understand what they are."

"Well, they change depending on the person."

"Why?"

"They can look inside you and sense what your greatest fear is. And since they like scaring people, they change in to your greatest fear."

Harry spent the next three hours doing his best to answer all the questions his students asked. Over the course of the three hours, he ended up working with 10 students. A lot of them came with a friend or two, so he was working with some students at the same time on the same topic. They were pretty spread throughout the younger years, although near the end he had a couple of older students ask for help. They told Harry that word had spread they had a higher level defense tutor for once, and that he should expect more of them to come next week. They were pretty excited to hear he would be there every Saturday, and he might end up helping on Wednesdays too. Harry took a break in between sets of students to get a snack, but by the time he was supposed to leave he was pretty hungry. He finished up with his last set of students, telling them all he had to go but would be back next week, and headed back to the office.

He checked out with Ms. Riley, who wanted to know how it went. She presented him with a full binder, explaining it was each year's defense syllabus with spells taught and the general course schedule for the entire year. She asked if he had felt comfortable teaching the older students, and he had.

"So I have you down for coming next Wednesday, correct?"

"That's right. From Four to Six."

"I expect that you'll need to help out with a defense class. Generally teachers help in each other's classes for demonstrations, but now that you're here we can ease some of that up. Some of the older years are covering dueling as I mentioned, and they need a partner. We've got enough ELVES who can help with Transfiguration to cover all those classroom spots, but I expect you'll be in high demand Mr. Black. If you ever find yourself with more availability, by all means we could use you here!"

Harry pondered. "Tell you what. You can make a note that if desperately needed, I could come in Friday afternoons for that same 4 to 6. But I'd rather not come in unless I'm really needed. Maybe you could tell me on Wednesday if any teacher needs a classroom assistant on that Friday?"

"Oh James," she exclaimed, "that would be absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much dear!" After checking out, Harry flooed back to his house.

Harry had a good time tutoring, better than he had expected to be honest. He was worried about a few things, first that he wouldn't be able to hold back when tutoring defense, but he was fine. The first classroom demonstration ought to be interesting in that aspect, to say the least. He was worried he'd just do a bad job, but his skills in leading the DA in his fifth year proved to be more than helpful when tutoring those kids. Harry felt a strong urge to keep tutoring those kids. He wasn't sure why. But something felt right, so he knew he would keep it up.

Harry spent the rest of the day studying for his English class. He had a big test later in the week on the history of the Transcendentalist movement, and knew it would be a tough one. He would spend most of the weekend studying for it, and wanted to get his Transfiguration Ethics paper out of the way before Monday rolled around.

At 8:00, Harry decided he had quite enough studying for the day, and his eyes were starting to see double. He decided to go out for dinner - he wasn't in the mood to cook, and he thought he deserved a treat anyways. He went down to the local pizza place called Mellow Mushroom and got himself a pizza for dinner.

When he got back home, completely stuffed, he decided to work some more on pottery. It was clear he needed some work on glazing, as his first attempts with the sunflower showed he had a lot more to work on. He headed upstairs to his magical practice room, got out the bag of clay, and began sculpting some more flowers. He wanted to keep trying the sunflower until he got the glazing right.

After crafting five more flowers, he pulled out the magical pottery instructional book and dried the clay using a spell. He then glazed the first one, and cast the kiln spell at it. The glaze still ran, but not as much as before. By the fourth flower, he had found the right amount of glaze to put on the flower so it would stick but not run all over the place.

He trashed the practice sunflowers and got to elaborately glazing the final flower. After the kiln spell, he beamed. The flower looked just has he intended it to look. He had no clue what he was going to do with it, of course, but he had gotten it perfect. He set it up on his bookshelf. He glanced at his watch and was stunned - it was already 1am! He had spent four hours working on the pottery and hadn't even realized it. He thought it had only been an hour.

Harry knew he had an early tomorrow - he was going to church with Lee, which meant cooking breakfast at 9 am, and after church Lee was coming over to use his potions lab to practice. Harry headed straight to bed.

—-

Harry overslept the next morning. Way overslept. He woke up at 8:45 am when he had been expecting to wake up around 7 am. Clearly, his morning jog was off. He bolted out of bed and got dressed, throwing on some decent clothes and his slowly fading Emory hat and headed down to the kitchen. Luckily, with a hat, he didn't have to worry about how terrible his hair looked when he had to wake up in a hurry.

He didn't really have the time to make waffles like last week, so Harry decided to cook up some omelets using fresh veggies from his garden. He would let Lee decide what he wanted in his omelet when he got there. Speaking of which, Harry heard the familiar ding of his floo, indicating someone had arrived. Harry headed upstairs to meet Lee.

"Morning Lee."

"Good morning James! How are you!"

"I'm tired - just woke up, need coffee. You?"

"I'm GREAT! Where should I leave my stuff for later?"

"Oh, the potions stuff? Just drop it off wherever looks good in the potions lab." Harry pointed at a door. "Through that door."

"Great. Thanks."

After Lee dropped off his bag, he followed Harry downstairs to the kitchen. "I'm thinking omelets today. Look through the big bowl over there - it's got veggies from my garden outside. Pick out whatever sounds good to you in an omelet, and I'll get the coffee started."

"Wow, nice spread James."

"Thanks." Harry was too busy getting the coffee pot going to pay much attention. He watched the drips slowly, agonizingly slowly, drip down into the coffee pot. Once there was enough for a cup, he quickly emptied the pot and started sipping it as soon as he got the cream and sugar in.

Harry had already finished his first cup when Lee had finished deciding what veggies he wanted for the omelet. He nodded to Lee and started to get to work on the omelets. Harry was just going to cook himself a simple spinach omelet, and Lee had gone for the spinach and tomatoes.

With Harry beginning to rapidly wake up from the coffee, he asked Lee why he was having such a great morning.

Lee blushed instantly. Harry had an inkling. "Good date last night, eh?"

"You sure you want to hear about it?"

"Might as well. I'm sure to hear about more soon," thinking to the soon to happen Chappell and Sarah romance.

"Well, it was great. He took me out to dinner and a movie; he borrowed his parent's car for it. Although he didn't tell his parents why, just that he was going to hang out with me. I don't think he's ready to tell his parents anything yet."

"Are you ok with that?"

"Sure. It was just a first date anyhow, and it's not like my mom knows anything either."

Harry nodded, and tended to the omelets. Nothing tasted worse than a burnt egg to Harry. "Well, I'm glad the date went well. Can't have any awkwardness at church."

Lee laughed. "No way. He's going to meet us there. He wanted to pick me up, but he understood I needed to come back here afterwards for studying. He thinks we are in chemistry together, by the way."

"Ok. Just keep me in the loop so I don't goof up in front of him or anything."

"Will do."

The two of them continued to make small talk while Harry finished up the omelets, which turned out even better than Harry had been expecting.

Soon the two of them were off to church, with Harry managing to make it there without getting lost once, or needing to ask for directions once either. The service that day, it turned out, was going to be a Blessing of the Pets service. People brought their pets to the service, and they would have a small blessing service. Neither of them had any pets to bring, but Harry thought it would still be an interesting service. Especially in light of his Ethics class on cross species transfigurations.

When they arrived, there were, of course, a lot of pets, but Lee saw Jim waiting outside and ran up to meet him. Harry laughed and followed behind. Soon they were at their usual seats, and Sarah walked in soon afterwards. Sarah sat down next to Harry and promptly told him, "James, why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Chappell and I went to dinner last night in the dining hall and asked if I wanted to go out! Why didn't you tell me he might be interested?"

Harry laughed. "I didn't know until Saturday during our jog. I'm happy he got up the guts to tell you - he seemed a little nervous."

"We've got a date Tuesday night at a restaurant close by campus."

"Wait, you have a date?" asked Lee, grinning.

"Yes I do."

"That's great, with who?"

"One of James's friends." Lee looked at Harry inquisitively.

"Who?"

"Chappell. He's a buddy of mine from running club."

"Ooo. I saw them running last week. Was he the short one James?"

James nodded. Lee leaned forward and grinned at Sarah. "He was a cutie. Way to go!"

"Hey!" said Jim, poking Lee in the side. Lee turned around and although Harry couldn't see the look on Lee's face, whatever it was caused Jim to blush.

Because Jim hadn't told his parents yet, Lee and Jim were on their best behavior, although their hands touched a couple more times than they necessarily needed to. Harry thought the sermon was interesting - it was all about the role animals played in the lives of humans, especially pets. Harry remembered how much he loved Hedwig, and how he still missed her. One day he'd get another pet, but he still felt bad for Hedwig who died trying to protect him, and didn't want to get another pet while that wound still stung.

After the service, Harry joined the rest of the young adults for lunch. Jim clearly felt a little more open to be a couple with the rest of the lunch group, because Lee and Jim held hands throughout the entire meal, although they tried to keep it hidden from everyone's view. The table talked about the service some, and Harry got to know some of the other members of the young adult group, although he still couldn't remember their names.

After lunch, Harry and Lee headed back to Harry's house.

"So Lee, feel free to grab whatever you need. I think I'm going to run for a while in my gym, so if you get hungry, need a drink or anything, help yourself. Once I'm done, I'll probably be all over the place, most likely studying or working outside in the garden if you need me."

"Great. Thanks James."

—-

When they got back, Lee grabbed a coke and headed upstairs to work in the potions lab. Harry decided to change out of his church clothes and in to workout clothes, and begin running. He wanted to increase the speed this time and go for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Harry got in to the zone pretty quickly and completely forgot that some weird potions experiment was going on just above his head. Harry heard someone going down the steps about fifty minutes in to his run, then back up about ten minutes later. Harry kept on going, hitting his goal in both speed and time. After cooling down and stretching, Harry headed in to his bedroom to take a nice long shower.

He took off his running hat - which acted as a sweat collector, which caused him to never wear the hat except when he ran - and tossed it aside. He stripped down and let himself melt into his three shower heads.

Harry stepped out of the shower thirty minutes later, and wondered how he wanted to spend the rest of the day. He'd gotten most of his muggle work done yesterday, and figured he ought to spend the day studying for his Arithmancy test on Wednesday and finishing up the paper for Transfiguration Ethics.

He put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and headed upstairs to get his Arithmancy and Transfiguration Ethics textbooks. When he climbed the stairs he physically ran into Lee, who was just coming down the stairs.

"Oh, sorry James, I was on my way down to get another coke."

"No worries man. I had almost forgotten you were here."

Harry got up first and grabbed Lee's arm and pulled him upright. Lee's jaw suddenly dropped, and he turned a little pale.

"Did I pull too hard? Sorry Lee."

"Uh."

Harry peered quizzically at Lee. "What's up mate?" Then it suddenly hit Harry like a ton of bricks. Harry had forgotten to wear another hat, and Lee's eyes were transfixed on a familiar spot on Harry's forehead.

Harry froze. The only thing he could think was, "oh crap."