Welcome back! This chapter is a bit of milestone as it is our 25th Chapter as well as the 5th new chapter since I started completing this story this year – whee for regular updates! They'll keep on coming!

Although part of this chapter was originally in Chapter 24, I decided to separate it into two different chapters for better flow. Not to worry, there have been extra scenes as well as extra tidbits added in already existing scenes.

The title of the last chapter is from a quote from one of my first fandoms, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Paraphrased it states that even though the big moments will always happen it's what one does afterward that really counts. Get ready to see what lies ahead!

Harry Potter and the Wish of Life

Chapter 25

Two Sides

The next morning, Harry awoke, well rested. It wasn't until he reached the common room that he quickly learned that Ball Madness had taken a hold upon everyone. Dumbledore had announced the ball that Parvati had speculated on so many months ago, and the Great Hall was filled with balloons, flowers and gooey-eyed students all vying for dates.

His friends (an oasis of normalcy) beckoned to him with congratulations over his Father's turn in health. The good mood wasn't to last long as soon conversation turned to the upcoming Easter Ball.

"So, are you planning on taking anyone, Harry?" Ron asked, pulling clumps of croissant apart before stuffing them into his face.

"Honestly, it's the farthest thing from my mind right now." He rubbed his forehead, wrinkling his nose as he noticed a spot on his glasses, obscuring part of Ron's face.

"I hear you! Why don't the three of us just all go together? You know, do a 'friends only' kind of thing." Ron offered up, smiling.

"Oh," Hermione pinkened, "I can't, actually."

"How come?" Ron's smile had frozen on his face, looking very painful indeed.

"Well, Cormac McLaggen in 6th year asked me yesterday so I said yes-" Hermione trailed off, looking around for something that was most likely her wand in order to defend herself from Ron's certain explosion.

It came right on cue. "WHAT!?" Ron bellowed, his face turning beet red. "What are you talking about? Why didn't you tell us? Merlin, that blighter? He looks like a bloody skrewt! What kind of blokes are you into, Hermione?"

"He does not, Ron!" Hermione colored more, now a nice shade of tomato, "He's actually quite a nice boy and he took the time to ask me, unlike someone else, so just get over yourself." Picking her bag up she threw it over her shoulder with ease before storming away from the table.

Wordless, Ron gaped after her. "Is she on drugs, Harry? What the heck is all that about-"

"Ron," Harry sighed, "You really need to get it together."

History of Magic was the first class back for Harry and it held a nasty surprise. Half the students were already asleep by the time Professor Binns handed back the last assignment. The scroll landed on Harry's desk and as Ron snored beside him, he opened it only to find himself horrified at what lay in front of him.

His marks.

With his memories of this timeline now firmly entrenched in his head, his personality seemed to be figuring itself out. While both sides of himself were, in fact, ridiculously similar, they differed in a few things. One being ambition. The Harry who had grown up with his parents had been trained and educated since his birth and as such had been a spectacular student, maybe not quite as studious as Hermione but not at all as careless as his original timeline.

Groaning as flipped through his essay, Harry felt a headache coming on. If he kept this up he'd be sure to get a D on his OWL's! How could he possibly have thought that he'd be able to get away with this with his parents around? Crumpling the parchment in his hand he wondered if he could use the whole Dad-was-in-a-coma thing as an excuse.

'Harry,' Harry thought to himself. 'You really need to get it together.'

A second difference between his two timelines had been his interest in witches. Original Harry had only ever noticed Cho and had been wholly unprepared when it came to dealing with women. The Harry that had grown up here felt much more at ease with girls, afterall, Papa Padfoot had been the best source of information and his father, the perfect role model.

Sitting at Lunch, he watched as the girl he had dated during fourth year, Aishwarya Lawton look absolutely enamoured as Anthony Goldstein turned all the food around her into roses when he strode forward from Ravenclaw to ask her to the Ball. A very mild sense of loss lingered in his stomach before Harry turned aside only to find Colin Creevey's face so close to him they almost bumped noses.

"Are you going to be taking anyone to the ball, Harry?"

"Er, no Colin."

"But Harry! It's the Easter Ball! It would be a travesty if you didn't take someone, afterall, every girl wants to go with a hero-"

"Potter!" Draco called loudly, having had made his way over to the table and pulling the fork from Harry's hands, "We're late-"

Gratefully, Harry got to his feet and grabbed his bag. As the two boys walked out of the Great Hall, Draco's smirk was prominent. "He wanted you to take him, most likely."

Harry rolled his eyes as they laughed.

As Ball madness captured every student in a sort of manic frenzy, Harry found himself slowly plagued with a different type of insanity. It was hard to adjust to both pasts he had lived. There was the Harry who had been loved and coddled for his whole life and the Harry who had suffered and been ignored. Together the memories gave him a wiser outlook and yet their presence confused him.

The Ball, it seemed, might have been a way for Dumbledore to keep the students occupied on something mindless, as since the halfterm break the Daily Prophet was constantly reporting on deaths, disappearances and devastations. Three days after arriving back at school, Harry found himself in the library, actually choosing to study for OWLs as a way to get his mind off it all. As memories of his life with his family became clearer, he worried that the reason he hadn't had them to begin with was because he would never have been able to leave this world if he had had.

Had the weird sisters perhaps meant for him to choose his other world? Had he doomed them all? It was all very heavy and he found the 3000 page Transfiguration textbook to be much lighter fare.

Ethan had joined him, preparing for a Charms test and the two brothers had done quite well until a fuming Draco Malfoy came stampeding through the Library. "You bloody bastard!" In a second he had grabbed Ethan by the collar, pulling him out of his chair and shoving him into a wall. "What the hell are you playing at?!"

"Draco!" Harry was on his feet, vaulting over the table to push the boys apart. "Are you mad?!"

"Ask your brother that!" Draco yelled, fuming as he stumbled back before whipping his wand out and gesturing toward Ethan, "He's taking Parvati to the ball!"

"Huh?" Harry gaped, glancing at his brother.

The younger Potter's face was stern as he brushed himself off, stretching out his own wand in dueling stance. "Yeah, so? As friends, Draco. You can chill the hell out. Put your wand away."

"Well what kind of friend are you to me, huh, Potter? She's mine and-"

"She's not yours!" Ethan interrupted loudly, "Especially not after what you did!"

Draco reeled back as if he had been hit. "What?" His voice was a deadly hiss.

"She told me, Draco."

Draco then, none too politely, cursed a very wrong phrase at Ethan before turning on his heel and slamming through the library on his way out. Harry was fairly sure he pushed a first year Hufflepuff into a stack of books.

Turning to Ethan, the Gryffindor raised an eyebrow. "Little brother, I think you need to fill me in on things."

A few hours later, Harry tracked Draco down in Remus and Tonks' suite.

"He's in his room in a bit of a strop." Tonks had warned on her way out.

Fairly used to Draco being in a strop, Harry had continued to knock on his door until the blonde opened it.

"What?" He snapped.

"I want to talk."

Stepping back from the door and retreating into his room, Draco rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that crap, Harry. I know your brother has told you everything by now."

"Yeah, he has."

"Here to hunt me down, then?"

"Not quite." Harry sat on the edge of Draco's bed as the blonde paced his room, "I wanted to talk to you about it."

"About what?" Draco's pale face twisted as he grabbed at his blonde hair, "I almost beat my girlfriend. I scared her half to death. I'm a bloody mess and I love her … but I know what's best for her is setting her free, yet I'm too freakin' selfish to even manage that. Shit." He paced back and forth in the room, repeating phrases that seemed to Harry as if Draco had been berating himself with them for the last few hours before Harry had arrived.

"You almost hit her."

Gray eyes were incredulous, "What?"

"You almost hit her. You didn't."

"Yeah, but … you don't know … I grabbed her and twisted her hair and – Merlin – I made her beg me to stop. You can't justify it! It was wrong! I was so wrong!"

"And the fact that you won't justify it, means that you really aren't that bad, Draco." Harry ran his tongue over his molars before continuing, pleased that he had made his point. "Look. Parvati deserves someone good, someone who will protect her. Even I've seen how unhappy she's been, how unhappy you've been. "

"You cannot be saying what I think you are, Harry. I – I - …I am bad for her, I am –"

"You aren't your father, do you get that, Draco?"

His Slytherin friend looked stunned. "You don't know that-"

"Yeah, I do. You were a nasty little shit when we first met, but that wasn't you and despite everything you pulled yourself out of that. You can fight this anger - or whatever it was that caused you to lose it that day - if you just put your mind to it. I think you should talk to Remus."

"What? Are you kidding? He'd kill me if he knew what I'd done."

"Maybe, but he also gets what it's like to feel as if you don't have control over a monster inside of you. I think he could help."

Draco was silent.

"You did something awful, Draco. Is running away the way to handle it? No. You need to fix it, and you better start fixing yourself up fast because that is good damn witch you managed to get and if you don't start making it up to her and treating her right, then yes, I will come hunt you down."

"When did you get so smart, Potter?" He managed to drawl.

"Probably around the time I realised the world didn't revolve around me." He grinned back.

"You realised that? Right on, I wasn't planning on that happening till you were 194 and on your death bed."

"Idiot."

"Prat."

"Git."

"Potter."

The next night, Harry was attempting to once more settle down to study some Transfiguration, when his plans were foiled by a call to visit his Great-Great-Grandfather. Honestly, it was almost as if something out there was purposely preventing him studying for OWLs! Ah well, he had been doodling mostly anyway.

Packing his books and following his brother (messenger boy as always) to Dumbledore's study, Harry burst into a grin seeing his father standing there. James was still very thin, but the color was back in his cheeks and he looked altogether robust for a man who had spent four months in a coma.

Turning to them he opened his arms and like little children the boys ran to their father, tackling him in hugs as he laughed.

"Dad!" Harry's face found the crook of his Father's neck, a familiar security, as James squeezed the boys.

"Now that's a welcome!"

"Are you coming back to teach?" Ethan raised hopefully as he broke away to kiss his Mother hello.

"No, not quite. Poppa wanted us all here to discuss something with him."

It was then that Harry realised the circular room held not only the entire Potter family but also Snape, McGonagall and Remus.

Harry immediately had a bad feeling.

Dumbledore inclined his head as a greeting toward the boys before folding his hands on his desk."I trust everyone in the room is managing their Occlumency just fine?"

Harry was sliding confused eyes toward his brother when the assault on his mind began.

A memory of finding Sirius was just surfacing before Harry was able to steel himself and push Dumbledore from his mind. He struggled for a moment before repelling him with efficiency.

As he regained his senses he noted that everyone in the room seemed equally as shaken aside from Snape who was stony-faced. Dumbledore was looking at Harry with an impressed gaze. He had yet to tell his great-great-grandfather of his choice and so was sure the elder man thought his ridiculous method of pensieve occlumency had actually worked.

"Excellent." Dumbledore steepled his fingers. "I apologize for the intrusion but with everything that has been going on, lessons and practice must surely have fallen to the wayside. I'm pleased to see abilities have not."

He took a breath before continuing, "Now, I'm certain that with the turning of the Dementors and the recent attack on St. Mungo's, it is very clear to us all that Voldemort's power has grown tremendously."

"Yes," Remus supplemented, "I'm afraid that talks with the werewolf packs have also gone on deaf ears, I think they'll be the next to turn if they haven't already."

Dumbledore nodded gravely, "It has been fourteen years of a slow build, but he is finally in a position strong enough to make the type of assault he had been close to doing before our Harry managed to defeat him the first time."

"The Ministry is implementing curfew once more." McGonagall said quietly, "The act is being passed as we speak. We are heading back into the dark days. The Auror reserve is being called upon, I got the notification today."

"Grandmama, you were an auror?" Ethan gaped as a bemused expression crossed the Gryffindor's head of house.

"You didn't know, Ethan? That's how I met my first husband Elphinstone. I worked in the Department of Law enforcement and in those days, during the worst days, everyone was called into action."

"Wow." Both Harry and Ethan chorused, looking at their step-great-great-grandmother with renewed respect.

"In the same regard, we will be calling in the Order reserve as well." Dumbledore continued, "The first meeting will be held the day after tomorrow. We will tier the information as we always have."

"Yes, yes, so what is this meeting about, then?" Snape asked.

Dumbledore wordlessly lifted his hand and a scroll floated into the air between them all. An image appeared against it, a impromptu version of a wiz!vee. Hundreds of loudly chattering witches and wizards were swarmed in front of the Ministry. A stern faced wizard addressed the audience. "-words appeared today, officials are working on a way to remove them but have yet been unsuccessful, the distress is palpable-"

As they watched they came to learn the story. Floating words made of small flames had appeared in front of the Ministry. It was an open letter from Voldemort and read:

Wizards of London, a war is coming. Choose your side well.

My deatheaters are everywhere, walking beside you, eating beside you, sleeping beside you.

The Ministry will crumble at my feet.

Those who stand against me will be killed.

My army will stop at nothing.

Admit defeat. Call for surrender.

I can be life or death.

I am Lord Voldemort.

The room burst into conversation as Dumbledore tried to speak over all the exclamations. "It is arrogant, but the fact that he has chosen to communicate to the community as a whole is not good. Strikes will be coming. Things have escalated quickly … I'm afraid we must begin what we have left for too long-"

"Surely, Albus, you don't mean…" Remus began.

"I do, certainly. We have postulated over it for a few years now and James and I have finally confirmed my deepest suspicions after speaking to Horace Slughorn this afternoon."

"No…" Lily's voice shook.

"Yes. It is time we find and destroy Voldemort's horcruxes."

The words seemed to ring empty in Harry's ears, and as his grandfather looked upon all of them, he bypassed Harry's own curious eyes.

To be Continued….

Do you think Harry is a horcrux? Is Draco worthy of redemption? Will Sirius EVER wake up?!

I'm sure you can all see the stirrings of what will be a very strong, powerful Harry arising? Do you think his dueling histories will strengthen him or weaken him ultimately?

As a celebration of 25 chapters, I will choose one reviewer of this chapter as a thank you and place their alias in a future chapter!

Thanks for reading and please remember to review!