Author's notes: IOU: A double chapter.

Disclaimer: "She does not leave me another choice! I'm going to take an hostage until J.K gives me the right to Harry Potter! Since I have no volunteer to be taken hostage, I'll hold myself prisoner until she yield! I'll treat myself reasonably, but I'll give myself only minimum food! Ha!"

"You're on another diet, Tigerman?"

"Shut up!"

"I share the vision of the Minister in the opinion that Gringotts is the safest place in Britain to put our gold and that the goblins are the best, if not the only logical choice. Now, your manager appointed you to me so that I could understand what happened. That would mean to actually answer my questions."

"That was never stated."

Harry sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He needed to know as much as possible about this new Über Nightmare or else he wouldn't know how to fight it! It went away so quickly that the clients interrogated spoke of nothing else but an explosion. A typical case of 'duck and cover'.

The manager hinted that this employee had answers. It was true that he never said he's give them: that part was up to Harry.

"Our Department is working on a solution against the Nightmare problem and without proper information, it will never happen. Your bank almost lost the confidence of its customers. It didn't happen thanks to the quick intervention of our Minister," argued Harry.

"Your feeble society wouldn't survive a week without Gringotts. It was an act of self-interests," sneered the goblin.

"Why are you so…" started Harry before an idea struck him. Reverse psychology. Needle their pride, their honor. He wasn't playing ball? It was time to throw the Quidditch glove down.

"Oh… I see," Harry said, a small smirk now playing with his lips. "How could you have seen anything at all…" Harry said in a lower voice.

The goblin stiffen and looked at him warily.

"There's no shame in that, really. Even a grown wizard, in such a chaotic situation would… could react the same way. I don't blame you, really!" Harry said, closing his notepad, keeping his page noted with a quill.

"What are you implying, wizard? spat the goblin, his fist slowly closing.

Harry was very aware he was playing with fire but he was in no mood to be led around either. He slid the notepad in an inside pocket and got up to his full height, towering over the goblins, effectively looking down on him.

"Well, you can't give me any answers since at that time you were flat down on the floor, cowering with your hands before your eyes. How can you offer valid testimony if you had both eyes closed and sang some goblin's song over the ruckus? I have no interests in what your 'happy place' look like. I heard there was a kid with his mother in the hall. I think I'm going to look for him…"

Harry turned around and started walking away. His left hand was still hidden inside his coat, not that the goblin could notice now, facing Harry's back.

"Wizard! I am NO coward! I saw it all! I saw it! Wait, You will wait!" he said, gripping Harry's right arm harshly after a quick run. He pulled on it sharply with enough strength to turn Harry around.

He met less resistance than expected as Harry rolled on a heel and put a dagger right under his throat. He had a snarl on his face and he showed he meant business by pushing the goblin back by the blade, forcing him to backpedal several meters until he was up against a wall. A trickle of blood now ran on the blade and the goblin gurgled on his own saliva he didn't dare to swallow.

"Now you can be as uncooperative as you want and for this assault on my person I can take your life. I don't care what your manager will think of it, I never guaranteed I'd return you in one piece when I'd be done with you. Give me one reason not to slice you up right here, in the Main Hall, with twenty fucking witnesses around, including your fucking manager, smiling from his fucking corner?!"

"Arrrg…dragon… it was a dragon…" the goblin managed to let out without cutting himself on Harry's blade…too much. He might have been panicking a bit, as he felt the cut burning and itching like hell. Was it a poisoned blade?

"A dragon couldn't do that kind of damage. Explain yourself," ordered Harry, giving the goblin enough space to breath. That meant pointing the tip of the dagger at two millimeters from his eye instead of holding it to his throat.

"It was… a golden dragon but not in the way that its scales were of a golden hue. The dragon was made entirely of gold, and so was its rider," he said, but realized he spoke too much and closed his mouth with a snap. He put a hand on his lightly bleeding throat, but the skin wasn't cut all the way. It still stung like hell.

"What…rider?" Harry asked, the tip of his dagger playing with the goblin's eyelashes. The goblin's mouth quivered but didn't open in an answer. "Do you fell the cut yet?!" Harry asked sweetly.

"It was a goblin rider! All made of gold too, I could tell. I couldn't recognize the dragon as one of the type we use. It spouted golden flames that burned long after they were thrown. It ripped through floor and ceiling as if it was papier maché."

Harry leaned back, took his handkerchief and wiped his dagger clean.

"You see? It wasn't like pulling teeth at all. Pulling teeth with a dagger is so messy after all…" Harry said, smiling sadistically.

"What was on the dagger?" asked the goblin quickly.

"Some rubbing alcohol and sea salt. We can't risk an infection now, can we? One could be sued for that."

Harry went passed the counter, uninvited, toward the mine carts.

"Come on! Follow up! I have a lot more questions to ask on our way to the vault!" he yelled.

The goblin scrambled only after receiving a small nod from his manager. They had to keep their hard-ass image after all.

Harry laid naked with Luna in her bed, under a single satin sheet. He was trailing a finger on her body, from her shoulder, down and around her breast to her belly button, triggering giggles, shudders and light moans. They had little time together and they were multi-tasking. They talked, touched and kissed at the same time.

"H.S.'s work is fantastic," Harry said, scratching her belly lightly with his short nails. "The living room and office shaped into a library like I've never seen. There's actually place for sitting!"

"Hummm. Yes. His idea to induce alternate gravity nods so that the bookcases stuck to the high ceiling was a stroke of genius. You just have to walk up the wall to access them too. It left Mother's wide desk in the middle of the room, but blissfully empty. That tickles, Harry! No, don't pinch that! Oh…"

"I saw that only the scrolls were left. There might be a lot of them but at least, the heavy lifting is done. Hey! Look who's talking of pinching! Using your tongue like that is plain cruel, you know that?! Summer break is in less than a month now. I have my O.W.L.S.'s to prepare for and our summer's travel. We'll have to get rid of as many Nightmares as possible and gather what's left of the dream shards. We'll need to ask Serena if there is a way to know how many could be missing. Do I assume we are done talking from what you're doing?" Harry asked, his cheek reddening by the seconds.

"Luna? Why is your door locked? More importantly, why am I not able to unlock it? Open it!" Serena asked from the other side of said door.

A slight popping noise later and a moan from Harry and Luna could actually speak.

"It's a secret, mom! And no, I can't open the door right now!"

"Why so?"

"Because we're both naked and quite busy! Come back in two hours or so!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Oh, okay then."

"Minced mandrake root… no longer than one inches each…" Hermione mumbled dropping a very precise quantity of said ingredient in the cauldron, spinning the concoction with an iron spatula on the end of a wooden handle.

"The sea tubers, to a length of one to five of its thickness, coming up in a minute," Harry said.

"Humm… you started on them too soon," Hermione said. "The book says you should finish cutting them and put them in right away, but it has yet to simmer for fifteen minutes," she argued.

Hermione was Harry's partner in potion this year again and listening to her often gave him the kind of marks he'd make his parents proud. If he had any. Today, though, he was a bit stressed.

"And why, why do we have to cut it right before?! It's the same ingredient! It won't have time to dry either, so why?"

"Because that's what the book says to do!" Hermione whispered a bit harshly. She didn't like to be one the end of Harry's tongue lashing. Especially after hearing about the Gringotts business.

"Then tell me why the instruction book says that? And why it doesn't explain why it doesn't say it?!" Harry argued further, now oblivious to his surroundings.

"Because, Mister Potter," whispered Professor Severus Snape right in his ear, "The book encourage one with half a brain to ask himself those very questions and it doesn't explain every single steps because that might be the difference between an Exceeded Expectation from any regular, mediocre student and an Outstanding result… from someone not out of his teens. Now stop disturbing my class and get back to work!"

Snape straighten up and billowed his way to the next cauldron. Harry looked at his tubers.

"Why… why do we have to cut them right before…" he mumbled.

Hermione was about to argue not to start again but Harry found his own answer.

"Because… their jelly-like middle is running out of it, and we need as much of it inside the cuts for it to achieve full effect!" Harry mumbled to himself, barely loud enough for Hermione to hear. "Every peculiar operation have a very definite, logical place and order for a very good reason. We could re-think every potions we ever did that way!"

Hermione never stopped rotating her spoon, but she had this far away look, when lost in deep thoughts. She frowned so much her eyebrows and hair were finally two definite entities.

"Do you realize the implications?" Hermione asked, stunned.

"Yeah. Professor Snape is acting like this so we rather search by ourselves instead than constantly ask him questions. He, actually, have a teaching method!" Harry said with wonder.

"Who would have thought?!" Hermione smirked.

Harry's exams were a simple formality, for the most part, and his Herbology one proved to hide a surprise the examiner wasn't aware of. The testing was done at the Longbottom's greenhouses, at a stone's throw from their mansion. The Longbottoms were an old family, but never were that rich. The mansion and greenhouses were their main assets.

The test was to change an adult mandrake root of pots, following the security measure showed in class. Harry gained extra points for his judicious use of a silencing charm on top of wearing earmuffs. Harry explained it was a security measure in case someone walked in at the wrong moment, only to drop dead from the plant's wail.

Harry finished up, took out the earmuffs and cancelled the silencing charms so he could speak with his examiner when they were surrounded by a crystalline laugh. A blur ran between trees, up ahead, too thin to hide anyone behind. The examiner looked around wildly, his beard whipping the air audibly. Harry groaned and rolled his eyes. She finally found him. It was to be expected, but he hoped for a bit more patience form an immortal being. Given, it was a thirteen-years old immortal girl. Granted, Harry himself was only fifteen… almost sixteen! Somewhat, he felt older.

"Are you going to keep the wood nymph routine for long, Lazuli? I'm in the middle of something here!" Harry said aloud.

"Not true! You were finished!" countered the vegetal succubus, running in his back and circling him with her arms. "Caught you! Now you're mine!"

"Isn't it backward? Shouldn't I be the one to run after you?" Harry asked, amused.

"Why should I act as expected? Beside, you don't stand a chance in a game of hide-and-seek against me. It's in my blood!"

The examiner was shell-shocked, his mouth hanging open. Lazuli smiled at him and waved from behind Harry. The poor man answered in the same way, smiling dumbly.

"Harry, my Little Sugar Sap, I need your help. Could you come back to my Thicket please?!" she asked while playing with a strand of his hair.

Harry forced his breathing to be as regular as possible, if a bit deeper. Hormones made his heart rev its engine and a thousand fantasies played instantly in his mind about what kind of 'help' she wanted. The worse was that with her, the possibility of any of them happening was very real.

"I'm sure I can spare some time for a good friend. What's the urgency?" he asked, trying vainly to ignore that her mouth was now playing with one ear.

"There's a big meenie that keeps putting trees on fire! Usually, he circle around Hogwarts or disappear inside, somehow, but he often go in the forest and set some of it ablaze! Lots and lots of animals were so scared! A few even died in the flames! I think the centaurs have been putting out the fires but it could attack my Thicket, my home! I'm totally defenseless! You must protect me…"

Harry's blood purged itself from hormones and iced all over his body.

"A big meenie sprouting fire, you say? Would it be, by any chances, a big, golden dragon with a golden goblin rider?"

"Yes! How do you know?" she asked, impressed.

"It's something that got out of a building in London called Gringotts…the building, not the thing that got out," specified Harry, afraid the dryad would start calling the latest Über Nightmare by the goblin's bank name. It wouldn't be funny. Not at all.

"I'll see what I can do as soon as I can, Lazuli. Did…did it attacked at night or during daylight?" Harry asked, fearing the answer.

"Both. Does it matter?"

"At this point, I'm not sure it does. Anyway I see this, I can't appoint ordinary people to help protect your Thicket or they might fall victim to a Nightmare, or an Über Nightmare. If I can't have someone to help you, it's going to be something… some kind of device. Let me think about it and I'll catch up to you in the next few days."

"Alright. Bring your Luna with you! I really want to meet her! I devised a new hormone just for you and you still haven't jumped on me on the spot! I've got no choice but to make a deal with her too now!"

Harry felt a bit of a nosebleed coming at the images flooding his brain.

"Only if you promise not to harm her, threaten her or hinder her freedom in any ways," quickly stipulated Harry. He felt his blood run in his veins and it was getting quite hard to think straight when so much of it was going south of the border…Damn pheromone, they must accumulate in his system!

"I promise, my Little Sugar Sap!" she said, kissing both his cheeks from behind, one after the other. "I can't wait! See you soon!"

With that, she un-melted from him, skipped merrily in front of the examiner who was impersonating a smiling bubblehead doll and disappeared behind some bushes. She left a thick smell of spring in full swing behind her, having the males left behind breathe in deeply and sigh.

"You are in speaking term with a dryad now, are you?" stated more than asked the examiner, reminding himself of his status. "If I was the least bit suspicious, I'd say you planned this meeting ahead to fit your Herbology OWL…" the older man teased.

The senior examiner wheezed a coughing laugh at the consternate face Harry made. He gathered his notes and prepared the next examinee sheet.

"Shoo, shoo, Mister Potter! And… thank you for this meeting, planned or not. It is every herbalist's dream, something we wish could happen even once in our lifetime. Please, send Miss Granger over here on your way out."

Harry walked away after a slight bow and swore he heard the examiner mumble something about 'devilish vixen able to bring a dead limb back to life'. Harry quickly pushed the notion away and focussed on the current situation. How could he stop a dragon from putting stuff on fire?

There was a knock on the door. For anybody else, it would trigger a light curiosity about who would come to visit. In this case, that feeling was felt a hundred times over with dread topping it. With the curiosity came some excitement, a healthy dose of suspicion and a bit more fear. You can't go wrong with fear. You don't get to be his age by getting careless.

The man went to the door and looked through the peephole only to find a young man, of average height and muscular build patiently waiting on the other side, rubbernecking. When the teen finally looked his way, the old man saw the tell-tale scar of a lightning bolt circled by the moon and bright green eyes. All that remained was the curiosity now. He opened the door.

"Ha! Mister Flamel, I presume," Harry said, putting a hand up for a shake. The alchemist took it and shook uncertainly, a visible question mark on his face.

"And you are Harry Potter, quite a bit taller than the last I saw of you, in the Prophet," answered Flamel. "To what do I own the honour?"

"Honey, don't leave the poor lad doing a handstand at the front door! Invite him in!" came an elderly woman's voice. She came around her husband and lightly pushed him aside, beckoning Harry to come in. "Come on, I'm baking cookies!"

"I do not wish to intrude, but home-made cookies are always hard to turn down!", Harry smirked and Nicholas, rolling his eyes, let him in.

"You're as well to stay for tea, then. It is a safe bet you are here to discuss about the Philosopher's stone, its recipe or an Apprenticeship, hum?"

"Don't press him like a lemon when he barely has a foot in! Do you dislike company so much, dear? If that keep up, we'll both end up in a cave with long beards, playing chess with a set carved in rocks!" chastised his wife while busying around a stove that was literally from another age.

"And you are trusting people too easily! Thieves can be anywhere and what we possess can lure vultures of any kind!" Flamel said, knocking a fist on the table.

Harry smiled and graciously accepted a tea cup from Ms. Flamel.

"Somehow, I imagined you differently…I'm not here to deprive you from your elixir or your stone, but I heard you made it using a combination of 'traditional' alchemy and runes. Your skills in runes are what's interesting me."

"So, you want an Apprenticeship…" started Flamel before Harry burst out laughing.

"Oh, Merlin no! I tried my hand at it and I'm a dead weight! It seems it takes some skill at drawing and I couldn't draw a flat line if my knickers on fire depended on it! No… but you are another case entirely, and I might have a project for you. I'm not the only one fearing you'll wall yourself in your cottage," Harry said shamelessly picking cookies from a plate. Hey, he was a growing teen!

"Really? And who might be interested in my fate? While we're at it, who told you where I lived?" Flamel asked suspiciously.

"The answer to both questions is the same: Albus Dumbledore," Harry said, as if it was obvious. The man couldn't have that many friends still alive…

"D…Dumbledore? He's still alive? I thought he was dead while closing Hogwarts!"

Harry blinked twice.

"By Morgana… you really are closed to the world!"

Harry spent the next hour giving the grouchy alchemist the news of the last ten years or so. How the schooling system now worked and details about the changes in Divination. Now, it make sense! He told everything he knew about the Shades and Nightmares, leaving almost nothing unsaid. After all, that grouchy alchemist was without contest the oldest human alive. He had some experience to speak from. Harry spoke of his godfather leaving Azkaban, running for Minister and taking him in. Harry did his best to keep humble when speaking of his Nightmare hunts. He really did. Then he spoke of the Ministry accident, Fudge's takeover and the return of the Ministry, saving Dumbledore at the same time. He wanted to keep it humble dammit!

Then there was this horny dryad that wanted to jump his bone and asked him for help to save her home. Harry gave up at this point and just told what happened.

"So now, I need to put together something good enough to put out a dragon's fire real fast, and if it could act as a deterrent too, it would be grand," finished Harry, sipping on yet another cup of tea. He would need to ask for the loo before long.

Nicholas Flamel was long mollified and had been listening intently about what Harry wanted.

"So…you need a temporary contraption? I'm sure you needn't my level of skill for such a petty problem…" Nicholas said, his focus a bit off. Probably was he already thinking of something.

"Temporary? Why should it be? Even if we got rid of this creature, there is more than one way to lit a forest! Don't forget that this is a dryad's home. Whatever is set there will be meant to last at least as long as you!"

Flamel's eyes flashed with an inner fire and a slow smile played on his lips.

"A challenge, heh? What will I get out of it, boy? What could you possibly offer me?"

Ms. Flamel was about to scold her husband but Harry quietly raised a hand to signalled he had this one.

"There is nothing on this earth, no riches in existence, that would mean a thing to you, compared to what you already have, once had or already planned to get. The only thing I could exchange is information. More precisely: an answer to a question that must be playing on your mind for centuries."

Flamel was all ears now and Harry paused for dramatic effect.

"Is there any other way to achieve immortality the way you did, and did anyone ever found it?"

Ms. Flamel looked at Harry intently, the first trace of a menace he saw on her since he got there. He would get an earful if he disappointed her husband.

"So…" Nicholas Flamel said slowly, licking his lips, "is there?"

"Do you really think I would show myself before you like this if my answer was 'no'?!"

Flamel's hands started to shake.

"What is it? Who found it?!"

"That… is the information I will bargain in exchange for the contraption you already have in mind to solve my problem," smirked Harry.

Nicholas Flamel started ranting about 'teen, thieves and white bearded traitors', before cursing the world as a whole. His wife smiled knowingly and Harry knew he won the battle. He carefully pulled a tall, folded piece of paper and held it in the air. The simple gesture shut Nicholas up.

"I, Harry James Potter, swear upon my magic that this piece of paper contains the information in order to achieve immortality, and that I will explain it to Nicholas Flamel after his work is completed. Nicholas Flamel, do you swear upon your magic to open this only after your task is completed?"

The older man swallowed painfully and extended a hand to take the paper.

"I, Nicholas Flamel, swear upon my magic to follow those terms."

He took the paper and Harry let it go. The immortal looked at it, visibly fighting the urge to open it. Nicholas dipped the tip of his index in a small honey pot and glued the corners of the folded sheet to keep it from opening.

"I hope you have access to your family vault, Mister Potter, because I never said anything about paying for the materials."