AUTHOR'S NOTES: So… I'm going to be a lot harder on Harry in this story than in most of my other stories. And a big part of that is going to be because of Snape.

Also, another plot element pointed out to me earlier is addressed here. Namely, when did DiNozzo and Ziva actually tell Gibbs what happened to Harry?

I also want to point out-if you've never noticed on 'NCIS'-Gibbs DOES occasionally call Ziva 'Ziver'. According to the actor who plays Gibbs-Mark Harmon-it's supposed to be a nickname for the character as a sign of Gibbs' fatherly affection.

Enjoy, folks!

Chapter 14

The room was dark and quiet as the massive snake slid inside and towards the bed where the teenager lay, asleep.

Approaching the bed, the snake rose up, preparing to strike when a massive black dog stood up from his place on the bed, standing over the teenager protectively.

The dog growled and snarled ferociously, hackles raised and ready to attack if the snake showed any sign of striking.

But the snake refused to be intimidated and rose as high as he could, rearing back to strike, fangs bared.

The dog lunged in the split second before the snake struck, jaws clamping down hard on the beast's neck, just below the head. With one firm bite and a hard shake, it was all over as the snake's neck snapped.

X

Sirius had awoken upon Harry stirring fitfully in his sleep as the nightmare began. But as Harry tossed about, he ended up rolling towards Sirius again and as soon as the teenager's hand touched the black fur of Sirius' animagus form, he seemed to calm down and after another few moments, Harry was asleep once more.

Hearing the door open, Sirius looked up sharply, moving so as to defend Harry if necessary but when the figure entered the room, Sirius relaxed, preparing to change back into his human form.

Gibbs shook his head, briefly, and put a hand up in a 'wait' signal. "Don't worry. Just checking on Harry."

Sirius lay back down, making sure to stay in contact with Harry. It reminded him of when his godson was a baby and wouldn't stop fussing until 'Padfoot' was sleeping next to him.

Gibbs smiled as he petted Sirius's head and when the black dog looked at him with bemusement, he said, "Good dog."

At first Sirius felt like Gibbs' actions were an insult but looking into the NCIS agent's eyes, he realized that it was the opposite. Gibbs trusted the former Azkaban prisoner implicitly with Harry's safety and given what he knew of Gibbs, that was saying a lot.

Voldemort was unnerved about the reports he was getting about Harry Potter.

The boy was very sick and Dumbledore's little group—the Order of the Phoenix—had been deployed to protect the teenager.

That meant that the Dark Lord's plans to retrieve the prophecy from the Ministry of Magic were threatened and may need to be accelerated.

But what worried Voldemort the most was Harry Potter himself. Cancer was a disease not unknown in the wizarding world and while blood to blood transmission was unheard of…

No, the Potter boy's illness was no danger, Voldemort assured himself. But the Order did pose a very real threat if only because their constant protection of Potter.

There had to be a way to get at the boy from the inside… some way to get around all the guardians and protections…

Thinking on plans and methods, Voldemort realized that the first step to coming up with a plan was to consult with his spy at Hogwarts.

The day before students were set to return to Hogwarts, Kelly awoke early and went through her usual yoga and stretching exercises before getting dressed and making her way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. At first she'd been concerned about how she was to get up and down the stairs without being able to walk, but Professor McGonagall had explained the enchantments on each individual staircase.

All Kelly had to do was put her hand on one of the banisters at the top or bottom of the steps and the nearest step would extend into a platform that she would then wheel onto. Then the stairs would move in an escalator-like fashion to the top or bottom of the staircase and Kelly could continue on her way.

It was a very efficient method, to be sure, but the fact that it was necessary at all bothered her. As she approached the final set of stairs, she remembered the first time the reality of her impending immobility had really hit her.

She'd just started using the forearm crutches at home and had tried going down the basement stairs by herself when she'd missed the step and fell, breaking her leg as she landed at the bottom.

At the hospital, the doctors had put Kelly into a full length leg cast and ordered that she be in a wheelchair until the injury healed.

"Hey," Harry said as he came up behind Kelly, interrupting her reverie. "You alright?"

Kelly nodded, looking surprised to see Harry up and about so early, not to mention accompanied by Sirius who was still in his dog form. "You're up early," she observed. After a moment, she added with surprise, "You look better."

Harry gave a tired smile as he headed down the staircase with Kelly. "I don't know if I actually feel better but I'm not as drained from the chemo yesterday as usual. I even slept without nightmares and everything." As the two entered the Great Hall, Harry asked, "So… how are you doing?"

Joining Gibbs, Callen, Sam, Ziva, and Abby at the Slytherin table, Kelly tried to look unbothered as she replied. "Good. Looking forward to those scones the house elves like making so much." It wasn't the truth but even if the others suspected something, no one said anything to the contrary.

Once the small group had eaten, Gibbs outlined the plan for the following morning. "Ziva, tomorrow you, Callen, and Sam are going to go to London and keep an eye on the students coming back on the train."

"Got it, Gibbs," Callen, said, quickly. "Plus it helps with maintaining our cover," he added, indicating himself and Sam.

Nodding in agreement, Gibbs turned to Abby and Kelly. "You two stay with Harry, alright? I don't know what Voldemort's got planned but I'm not about to take any chances." His gut was starting to twitch again and this time it was telling him that something going to happen and soon. "I'll be here when the students arrive. Dumbledore wants me at the welcoming feast."

Shooting a glance at Kelly before turning to Gibbs, Ziva said, "Gibbs, if you don't mind I think Kelly should be on the train and I should stay with Harry. She is a better shot in close quarters and she would not be so obvious as a guard."

Gibbs considered that for a while and as he looked from one to the other, he nodded in agreement.

x

After breakfast, while everyone else headed out of the Great Hall for various pursuits, Ziva caught up with Gibbs. "Gibbs, I… I am sorry I let you down before. It will not happen again, I assure you." When her boss, friend, and mentor looked puzzled at that statement, Ziva took a deep breath and started over. "When Harry was found unconscious in the park… I-I thought Tony had called you. I rode in the ambulance with Harry and—"

"Ziver, it's okay," Gibbs assured her, calmly. "Tony told me everything before we left." Seeing that Ziva still felt guilty about what she perceived as failure, he gave her a smile and added, "You did not let me down, Ziva."

Ziva nodded once but despite the reassurance she couldn't help remembering the look on Tony DiNozzo's when he heard about Ziva's failure to contact Gibbs at the hospital.

"I was in the ambulance," Ziva snapped, irritably, at her partner. What about you? Why didn't you call him?"

"Because I was finishing my case notes and getting witness statements," Tony snapped back. After a moment, however, he calmed down and added, "I'm sorry. Look, I'll go call Gibbs and tell him we found Harry in the park."

Tony had been covering for her and that never felt right to Ziva. She hated when other people tried cleaning up her messes.

"Tony was covering for me," Ziva explained, not wanting to let the subject go until she felt the issue was properly resolved. "I thought he had called you… and he thought I had. I can only imagine how you must have felt when you found Harry missing that morning."

Gibbs studied Ziva carefully, trying to figure out exactly what to say. She was right, of course. Finding Harry gone from his bed that morning and then getting the call from DiNozzo that the teenager was found unconscious in the park… After a while, he spoke. "Ziva, I trust you. I know you won't let me down."

xxx

There were times when Severus Snape truly despised being a double agent.

This was one of those times.

The Dark Lord had tasked him with coming up with a way to get past all the protections the Order had put into place to protect Harry Potter.

The problem was that—as much as Snape hated to admit it—Potter was remarkably strong willed. Getting past the boy's mental defenses would not be easy… but perhaps if he was weakened in another way…

Going into his private library and store room, Snape searched for a moment before finding precisely what he was looking for. The book was very old and had been pilfered from the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library way back in his youth. It contained valuable information about the creation of not only magical blocks but how to make physical maladies in a witch or wizard worse.

Thinking on his developing plan, Snape knew full well that putting it into action would be highly dangerous, particularly for himself if Potter's uncle and cousin were to find out. But given Potter's chemotherapy treatments and the side effects perhaps the spells Snape intended to cast could be disguised…

xxxxx

Up in the Owlery, Gibbs stood by one of the windows looking out over the Hogwarts grounds. It was beautiful here. There were rolling hills and even mountains far in the distance. The clear sky and rising sun were reflected on the lake and periodically an owl would fly in or out of the tower Gibbs stood in.

There was a dense forest on the outskirts of the grounds and every now and then a skeletal-looking horse would fly out of the trees.

A lot was going through Gibbs' mind these days…

He knew all too well what the look between Kelly and Ziva was all about earlier that morning. Kelly felt like she was being treated as useless while Ziva felt like she was being punished for her actions more than three months ago.

And there was some truth in that.

Being in a wheelchair and without any magical powers or abilities, Kelly was vulnerable and not able to defend herself as well as Ziva…or even Harry. Sick or not, Harry still had his wand and was quite capable of magically defending himself. But Kelly wasn't helpless. Even if she couldn't walk, there was a reason Gibbs called his daughter 'Sniper'. She was exceptionally accurate with almost any firearm and quite adept with a knife.

When Dumbledore had come to take Harry away after Shannon's murder, Kelly had all but physically attacked the Hogwarts headmaster in her insistence that her cousin stay put. In that moment—Gibbs recalled—the 140-year-old wizard had actually taken a step back, staring down at the young girl glaring at him, her arms crossed, feet firmly planted, and ready to throw down with anyone threatening her family.

Ziva David was very much the same.

She was fiercely loyal to her family and those she cared about and was not afraid to fight back.

Again, Gibbs' thoughts went back to the morning he'd discovered Harry missing from the house.

While Harry was typically a late sleeper during his summer vacation, when he woke early he would go down into the basement and work on the boat that typically took up most of the space. Sometimes, Harry would be outside reading on the porch, a glass of orange juice and some toast next to him.

But that morning he had been completely gone and had even left his cell phone on the counter.

Gibbs has searched the house and the neighborhood and had just been ready to call his team together when DiNozzo had called saying that Harry had been found unconscious in Rock Creek Park and was now at the hospital. Then there had been the call shortly thereafter saying that the doctors had found bruising on Harry's leg and that he was having a biopsy and blood tests done.

"I let you down, Gibbs."

Ziva's words rang sharply in Gibbs' ears. It was something that the seasoned agent had learned very quickly about the young Mossad operative. Ziva took any lapse in duty as failure and expected it to be treated as such. Gibbs knew she'd expected a reprimand or at the very least some outward sign of disapproval. It was something he'd worked hard at trying to change. Ziva saw any lapse in duty or mistake as failure instead of looking at it as an opportunity to learn.

"Hiding out, are we?" Hetty Lange said, casually as she entered the tower and joined Gibbs at the window. Smiling, she studied the seasoned NCIS agent. "Something on your mind?"

'If the wizarding world had a Yoda,' Gibbs thought with a smile. '—it would be Hetty Lange.' "Just thinking about things," he replied. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about how he felt and his thoughts, but he always felt that some things were better left unsaid.

Hetty knew better than to push Gibbs into talking but she also knew that the man was practically an expert in keeping things buried. "I have always admired the way that you are adept at saying so much with very few words," she said, simply. "But should you like to talk about anything, my office is always open."

"I thought it would be easier," Gibbs admitted after a while. "Harry… Kelly… Now Harry's life is in danger and I have no idea how to protect him." Human terrorists, kidnappers, crazy people… that he could handle. But witches and wizards who could kill you just by saying some words? How in the world was Gibbs supposed to protect anyone from that?

It was always the same thing, Hetty thought with an inner smile. Muggle parents of wizarding children knew how to protect their kids when under the belief that they were—for lack of a better word—normal. But eventually, those same parents had to accept the fact that without magic, they were helpless. "Harry is not defenseless," Hetty insisted. "Yes, he may be sick right now and yes, he has some physical disabilities he is learning to deal with…But he still knows how to fight. Harry is stronger than you know."

"Yeah," Gibbs replied, nodding. 'But is he strong enough?'

Sam Hanna, G. Callen, headed out before dawn the following morning with Kelly. The plan was to take a portkey to the Leaky Cauldrom in London and then get to King's Cross Station where they would then take the Hogwarts Express back to Hogwarts.

Meanwhile, Abby and Ziva sat with Harry in his suite while he received his latest chemotherapy treatment.

As Dr. Neely Grant attached the IV to Harry's port, she said, "After this treatment you're going to have a week off, Harry. And I'm going to take some blood samples so we can see how you're doing."

Harry extended his left arm, turning away as Neely drew his blood. "So what do you think? Am I still going to be done by Thanksgiving?" he asked, hopefully.

Neely shrugged but she sounded optimistic as she replied, "We'll see what your tests say. But you're doing well so far…" She trailed off when she noticed harry rubbing his right eye. "You alright?"

Harry blinked and nodded. His eye felt weird but it wasn't blurry or painful so he figured it was nothing. "Just tired, I guess."

Not wanting to take any chances, Neely withdrew her wand and did a quick diagnostic spell on her patient's eye. Not finding anything troubling, she put the wand away. "Well, nothing looks amiss but I want you to let me know if anything changes, alright?"

Harry nodded, but as he blinked again, his eye became blurry and his vision rapidly faded to nothing. "I can't see," he said, quickly. Reaching out for whoever was nearby, Harry felt a rising sense of panic. "What happened? Why can't I…?"

Neely put a hand on Harry's shoulder as she withdrew a penlight. "Hold still, Harry. Just hang on." Seeing nothing out of the ordinary as she thouroughly examined Harry's eye. Not finding anything, she thought quickly on what to do. Without an MRI and blood tests it was impossible to know if the blindness was due to the cancer spreading or some other cause. "Okay, Harry? I'm going leave you here with Miss Scuito and Officer David and I am going to go to the Rowena Medical Center and put a rush on your tests."

"We can't just leave Harry like this!" Abby protested. "You have to do something! I mean, is this from the chemo? Should we leave him on it?"

"It is possible that this is from the chemotherapy," Neely admitted. "But until I can rule out other causes I am hesitant to stop Harry's treatment just this second. I'm going to run the blood tests. If nothing shows up then we'll admit Harry to the hospital and get an MRI."

Harry nodded in understanding and he tried to calm down. "This… Th-this is just temporary, right?" Realizing that one of his worst fears could actually be a reality, he began crying.