Chapter Twenty-six: The Promise of Dawn
Harry looked at her across the room, and his face remained unmoving, his deep green eyes watching her with no hint of his emotions.
Hermione waited. Still, the boy looked at her, still, his gaze remained the same.
She found herself forced to speak, to break the silence.
"He... he'd cast the spell, Harry. Then, when his power broke him, all that was left was his magic. Voldemort was- well, physically, at least, dead. Dead and gone, but his power remained, and somehow... somehow..." She waited. Still, he looked at her, his face expressionless, all the fear and shock that had been in his features when he'd realised what she was about to say, somehow draining away from it in some indefinable way, although the muscles of his face had not moved.
"Somehow," she went on, "Somehow whatever spells he'd cast around himself did what he'd planned them to do, and his mind, his memories, all of that was bound up in the magic- and it went into your head, Harry." She considered. "I don't even know for sure if he did it deliberately- I don't think he could have done anything different, after the curse rebounded. That's why you were able to learn some of his skills, access some of the power he had."
Still, Harry's face remained the same. Abruptly, Hermione launched herself to her feet, walking round the Sixth Year boys' dormitory.
"That's where he stayed until his mind found Quirrell- in your mind. Barely alive, I doubt Voldemort even knew who he was for a long time." A thought occurred to her. It wasn't, perhaps, the most comforting of thoughts, but she had spoken it before the implications came to light in her mind. "In a lot of ways, Harry, you possessed him, not the other way round. I think that's why he wants to..." she hesitated, startled to turn her head and find the boy looking at her still, his head turning to follow her as she walked, but still giving no other reaction. "To make you hate yourself so much," she concluded. "He's not trying to force his way into your mind, Harry, he's trying to escape it. He left- or most of him left, that first evening we were at Hogwarts, all those years ago, I'm sure of it. It all fits... but remember Snape, that time at Grimmauld Place? He couldn't leave- not altogether, not after all this time. Part of his mind's still trapped in there with you, Harry." She approached him again.
"I know it sounds terrible, Harry..." she began, "But..." Hermione stopped. What could she say, really? Urge him to follow the course she'd always advised against? Use the scar to pry into Voldemort's mind? Unlikely. The connection was strong, but the Dark Lord had had half a century and more's experience of controlling and dominating the minds of others. Although she was certain that the connection caused Voldemort as much pain as it did Harry, she could not deny that, for the Dark Lord, it gave him a chilling advantage. "But I'm sure there's something... we can't destroy the connection- the only way you'll be free is when... well..." She stopped, cursing herself.
Idiot.
"Harry, I'm sure there's..." Still, he stared blankly at her. "Harry!" She put a hand out and shook his shoulder, violently. As if a spring had been released, the young man's hand swung up, and caught her wrist. He looked into her face, and, slowly, but with a terrifying inexorability about it, Harry Potter's mouth pulled into a smile.
Hermione shrank away. The smile was too broad, wrong. He couldn't be... it couldn't be him.
She shook her head.
No, it's impossible... I'm sure Voldemort couldn't do it... he couldn't take him over...
I've been able to guess one of his failures... that doesn't mean I know the strength of his powers.
She tried to pull herself away from what she was suddenly, horrifyingly sure was not Harry Potter, but his grip seemed immovable, and fear surged through her veins.
She knew. She knew the truth, had seen his failure, his weakness. Somehow, somehow, Voldemort had travelled back along that dark path between Harry and his evil, and now he would silence her... she knew it, and, frozen in fear, could do nothing. Harry's face looked up towards her, and light glittered in Harry Potter's eyes. He lunged towards her face.
Draco Malfoy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Somewhere at the back of his mind, a voice screamed. Dully, he nodded his head.
"I understand."
"You will be the instrument of his death," the man opposite him said, crouched over in his chair, one arm gripping the arm rest tightly, with fingers clinging to it like claws. The man sipped from the china cup in his other hand. "You will deliver him to our Lord when the time is right."
Draco nodded. The scream was dying.
"Drink your tea," the little man told him. Malfoy noticed, as he tasted again the bitter liquid, that on the hand that clung to the chair, one finger was missing. He drank deeply, and the scream faded away to nothing.
"You will bring the death of Harry Potter."
And this time Draco's mind stirred to true wakefulness from its torpor, and wild delight surged through his soul.
"My Lord's will be done," the little figure said. "When the time is right."
Harry kissed Hermione lightly on the forehead, then leapt to his feet and spun his friend round the room in a wild dance.
"Fantastic!" he yelled. "That..." he let go of her, and jumped up on to the bed, leaping up and down, "...was..." Harry dived across the space between one bed and the next, landed on it, rolled down and leapt out, landing on his feet again, "... fantastic!" He ran to the window, flinging it wide open, and shouting out of it at the top of his voice. "HERMIONE GRANGER IS A GENIUS!"
He spun round. "If you weren't like the sister my parents never got the chance to give me, I could kiss you, 'Mione!"
"You... er..." Hermione backed away a bit, totally wrong-footed. "You just did," was about the only thing she could manage. Harry looked surprised for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, there you are then," he remarked, beaming at her. "Told you. Now, now we've got that out of the way, I wonder if you could take a look at my Transfiguration homework..." he slapped a hand to his cheek. "We're still missing that class."
"Harry..." Hermione croaked. "Are you sure... are you sure you're all right?"
He couldn't have misunderstood me, could he? Don't be ridiculous.
"Fine, Hermione," Harry grinned- and looked it. "I just wish Ron and Gin were here." His face fell a little. "Still, we're doing this for them as well. I think I'll see if I can get that passage to the Three Broomsticks opened up again- it's time the DA had a bit of a social evening- only Butterbeer," he added, with a wry chuckle. "That filthy Firewhisky Wood brought in made my head feel like Little Tommy had been having a disco in it or something."
"Harry, you do realise...?" she attempted.
His mind's snapped. Dear God, I've sent him mad.
"What?" Harry lunged over to her- and she flinched back, but he dropped easily into a chair beside her, and gestured for her to sit on the bed. "Tommy crawled away inside my brain for ten years?" His eyes glittered. "Oh yes, Hermione, I got that bit." He gave a savage grin. "I also got what it meant."
"Which... was?" she stared. Harry gave her a queer, proud look.
"You see," he remarked, "You're not the only one with a brain. Tom Riddle lurked inside my head for ten years. He was trapped, on his own, as far as he knew... that was it. And you know what, Hermione? For all his magic, all his power... he couldn't take over my mind." Harry's eyes flashed. "Maybe he could influence things- like you said, he called Quirrell to us somehow... and I wouldn't put it past the scaly little bastard to have put a few nasty ideas in Dudley's head over the years- just subconsciously, for both of them... but he couldn't take possession. Not with all his mind." Harry stood up.
"He's had his chance, Hermione." he said, a grim determination entering into his words. "Maybe I still don't know how to fight the pain- but now that I know where it's coming from, we'll find a way... but Voldemort had his chance for a quick victory, and you know what?" He turned round, and, scruffy, untidy as he was, robes askew and tie off-centre, with the light from the window behind him he suddenly looked every inch the saviour of the wizarding world. "Back then I didn't even know he was there. I didn't even know about magic. Back then I was just fighting the world, trying to keep the idea that I was Harry Potter alive against a whole world that seemed to want me not to be. I still held him off. I still beat him, when I was a child and didn't even know how to fight, didn't even know what I was fighting." The Boy-Who-Lived turned, and looked out of the window.
"It's a beautiful day outside, Hermione," he said, the blinding light of revelation having apparently obscured the scudding clouds and squalls of wind and rain from his eyes. "And the next time Voldemort tries to come after me, I'm going to give him the fight of his life."
I call you to me, I bind you, I summon you out of the darkness into the greater darkness.
He stood in a high place, atop a scree of cracked and broken stone, and gazed down on the twisting ribbon of water below. The night wind tugged at his robes, and he exulted in the darkness, feeling his cry, his command, ripple out through the minds of so many that were bound to his will.
He turned his head, and watched as the pale-haired figure beside him, gaunt after months of exile, drew the sleeve of his robe down over the scorched and blackened tattoo on his arm. Voldemort had touched him.
"Soon they will come, Lucius," the Dark Lord gloated, striding back down the other side of the ridge. "Soon they will come to my side. They have no choice, really," he spoke, his voice a whisper of malice. "None of you have."
"Yes, my Lord," Malfoy stumbled down the slope after him, his usually elegant and stately movements un-co-ordinated, unaccustomed to both the terrain and his own weakened state.
"Ah, how weak these mortals are," Voldemort purred, gleefully, and led the way towards the stone watch-house which gazed out across the mountainside. They would leave this place soon. He could feel Potter's mind against his, tearing at his thoughts. Perhaps the boy would remember. Perhaps this place of waiting would be discovered. It was of no real consequence. Soon, very soon, they would have journeyed on, and, will it or no, Potter would find the Dark Lord soon enough.
The watch-house had been abandoned for many years, a low one-roomed building of stone and slate from the quarries below the High Topps on which it stood, a shelter against the weather for some shepherd of long ago. A ragged curtain had been hung half way across it, cutting off the sleeping quarters of those Death Eaters who journeyed with Voldemort from the rest of the room, where their Dark Lord sat, his mind ever turning to new malice.
"Bellatrix..." Voldemort hissed, waiting. After a moment, her black robes like a shroud, the pale skinned, almost emaciated witch slipped through the curtain. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight, blood red. A trickle of blood flowed from her mouth, and her fingers pulled her robes tighter about her, closing them to conceal her nakedness beneath. Voldemort moved closer. Such things no longer had interest to him. The sadistic perversions of the creature he had sculpted were things of hormones, of the flesh, and that he had cast away long ago. Yet, still Bellatrix fascinated him, the needle-sharp and ecstatic pleasure that burned in her at the pain of others was a joy to him, a child he had planted in the womb of her mind, and nurtured it, brought it to fruition, and loved her cruelty as a parent loves a child. He knew that once, before Azkaban had scarred her face, and the long emptiness drained her eyes of all humanity, she had seen her body and found it beautiful- but how much greater a delight to the Dark Lord was the perfect, predatory beauty of her mind, his work of art, his masterwork of the subtleties and elegancies of agony.
"Is he prepared, my servant?" He questioned. Her eyes slid back to the drapes.
"Body, soul and mind, he is bound to your side, my Lord. I have taught him the pathways of power and pain, and cast him into the abyss. He has seen the empty nothings, the true hollow forms that were his life before this time came upon him," she hissed. "I have offered him death, and have shown him salvation in the denial of death. I have shown him the impotence of light, and shown to him the only greater darkness that can hold back the night of death."
"Bring him to me."
She smiled, and held up her wand. A figure stumbled against the drapes, and a pale, bloodied hand clawed at them. Moving like one possessed- for that was what he had become- a naked male figure stumbled through into the presence of the Dark Lord- and fell to his knees. His body was torn, his skin ragged and bleeding, a dozen curse scars interlaced across his back and chest, and his eyes hollow with terror that had stripped away his sanity forever.
"I have shown him you, my Lord," Bellatrix told him, and, taking Voldemort's hand, led him forward. The Auror they had taken alive from the Ministry, the Auror who had killed Randolphus Lestrange with the Avada Kedavra in his terror of the dark, gazed up into Voldemort's eyes, and the agony and fear in his face was suffused with a dark and appalling hope.
Voldemort laid one hand on the broken creature's head, and bowed his head in blessing.
"Only I can raise you from the darkness," he intoned, his forked tongue flashing over his thin lips. "Only in greater darkness still can you hold back the endlessness of oblivion. Only in me can you survive, for I am mightier than Death." He knelt before the shattered man, and took his right arm in an iron grip, slowly drawing his wand once more and touching it to the flesh.
"Step forever into the night, and draw it about you, take it, consume it, sculpt it to your will," he commanded. "Join with the darkness, and feed off the darkness." He pulled the man to his feet. "Stand, Knight of Walpurgis, and eat the death that gnaws at your life. Do this at my command."
Slowly, the Death Eater nodded his head.
Voldemort's snake-leer spread across his face, his eyes blazing with fearful light.
"So be it," he exulted, and struck his wand-tip once more against the man's arm. "Morsmor incandesca eternalis!"
Halloween was fast approaching, and two days after it, the first Saturday of November would bring Gryffindor's final Quidditch match of the term, and with it, the team's first confrontation (on the pitch) with Slytherin. After the disaster of the last match, Harry had determined to give this one his all, but was, in truth, less than convinced by the skills of his team. Although he would never admit it in public, the last victory against Ravenclaw had largely been his alone- while Seamus and Clare had performed excellently, and Andrew and Jack shown real promise, something he would never have believed last year, Colin's enthusiasm far exceeded his ability- and Brian Coplesbury, as Keeper, lacked even the enthusiasm. Thus, the morning of the 29th found he and Hermione talking at something of cross-purposes over the breakfast table, amid the chatter of dozens of hungry students.
"I think," she remarked, looking up from her book, "Goyle's doing excellently. If you want my opinion," she added darkly, "He'd have got on a lot better all through school if he hadn't had Malfoy telling him constantly how useless he was and how his only job was to stand around all day looking tough."
"Goyle?" Harry frowned, scratching his head. "Hermione, I know you've got no interest in Quidditch, but Goyle's playing for the other side."
Hermione sighed.
"I was talking..." she groaned. "About the DA."
"Oh, right," Harry nodded. "Still, you're right, Goyle's a good Beater. I'll warn Clare and the others to watch out for him."
"And how's the... other thing coming?" Hermione lowered her voice slightly. The noise surrounding them seemed to have dropped a bit, one of those periodic lulls in the oceanic movement of many overlapping conversations, and she did not wish to be overheard.
Harry glanced at her, and brushed a finger across his scar in understanding.
"Well, as far as I can tell," he told her. "I'm still finding it hard to use the Pensieve again, though, after what happened..." he trailed off, unhappily. Then his face hardened a little. The hopeless moods seemed to last for less and less time these days. He looked up. "The Occlumency's getting easier, though. More instinctive."
"Well," Hermione observed, trying to keep her voice from carrying too far in the silence that now pervaded the hall, "That's good."
Someone dropped a bowl.
"If you can manage to make it... natural," she suggested, "Rather than trying to turn all your emotions off the way you were doing, I'm sure it'd be a better way of defending you against... Ron."
Harry blinked into his cereal. "Last I checked, Ron wasn't trying to take over my mind," he said, and looked up. Hermione's head had turned towards the entrance doors- in the same direction as everyone else, he noticed with a start, and her face had paled. He looked.
A tall, awkward figure had stepped, hesitantly, through the doors, and was hovering uncertain just inside them. He was a little thinner than when Harry had seen him last, and obviously unsettled by all the eyes ranged upon him. The red haired boy looked to and fro like a frightened rabbit.
"RON!" Harry bellowed, swinging his legs over the bench and charging towards his friend. Ron jumped, and took half a pace back. "Welcome back!" Harry grabbed him by the hand, towing him down the hall. "Come and sit down," he pushed the boy into his seat- although not before Hermione had enfolded Ron in a warm hug, and sat down next to him. Only then did he glance back at the open doorway. No other figure stood there. Harry swallowed the bitter disappointment in his heart, and turned back, determined to enjoy the real happiness he felt to see Ron back at Hogwarts again.
"How are you?" he asked. Ron, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of toast, nodded.
"All right," he said. "Sorry it's been so long," he fidgeted, a little uncomfortably. "Mum and Dad... you know."
"I know." Harry nodded, and didn't shy away from Ron's gaze. The redhead gave a slightly wan, but happy smile.
"It's good to see the place again," he commented. "How've you two been?"
"We've had our ups and downs," Harry told him, "Although I wasn't the one who decided to go housebreaking with Dobby." He nodded meaningfully at Hermione. "That was little miss Perfect here." Hermione stamped her foot.
"I never would have believed," she fumed, "That Harry could get himself into more trouble without you around than with you here, but I was beginning to wonder."
Ron grinned.
"Well, I'll see what I can do about that."
"Don't you dare, Ron Weasley," she flushed. "Don't you dare..."
The boy laughed- a little rustily, Harry thought, as if for the first time in some long while.
"Just get me something to eat, will you? We stayed in the Hog's Head last night, and I couldn't eat their breakfast," Ron grimaced. "There's a time and a place for goat's cheese."
A shiver had gone down Harry's spine. The moment Ron had said 'we', even though he knew how many different things that might mean, his every sense had tuned itself to a new level of awareness. He took his glasses off, and cleaned them, squinting his eyes tightly. After he felt more himself, he set them back on his nose- and saw Ron looking at him. The taller boy put his hand on Harry's upper arm.
"She said she's..." he looked confused. "Well, she said it was where birds go, and you'd know what she meant," Ron said, and rolled his eyes. "Harry..." he added, as, almost without further command from his brain, the Boy-Who-Lived found himself standing up. "She said she'd understand if you didn't want to go and see her."
Harry strode quickly towards the door. Hermione looked after him for a moment, then looked back at Ron, then back again, conflicted emotions flickering on her face. Then, Harry left the room, heading out through the Entrance Hall at a trot, and, with a faint shake of her shoulders, she turned herself back to Ron.
"Just this once more, I suppose you can copy- but do not drink coffee when you're reading my notes, understood?"
Ron chuckled again.
"Understood." He smiled at her. "I've missed you both, you know."
Harry ran down the path to the lake. He didn't know what to think- even what to feel. He could hardly bear to hope- to hope that she might not hate him- but she'd asked him to see her- no, she'd told him he could if he wanted to, she'd left the choice up to him- and what would he find- there had been so much taken away from her- how could she forgive him? He skidded to a halt in the clearing, and began to pick his way along the old path to Helena's nest. Nearly a month since they'd last walked this way. Now he could see the roof of the nest, standing on the headland. His pace slowed still further, and a lump grew in his throat. Ginny was there, within those walls. He forced his pace on, fighting his own pulse. He began the last stretch, was walking round the side of the building, deliberately not looking through the unglazed window frame- was standing in the doorway.
Ginny Weasley sat in one corner, Harry's photograph album open on her knee- he'd forgotten it, no, he hadn't forgotten, but hadn't had the heart to come to the nest even for that one thing since the hammer blow had fallen on her. A long brown travelling cloak hung from her shoulders to the ground, and beneath it her clothes were also dark. Her face, too, seemed thinner than he had remembered it, and her eyes seemed sad beneath her long hair, but there was life in them again. He swayed against the doorframe. Ginny- and it was Ginny, not the empty shape in grief's cloak that he had mourned for those past weeks, heard the slight movement and looked up to him, her eyes flickering in- fear?
"Hello, Harry," she said, in a very quiet voice. "Would you... would you come in?"
He came inside, trying to disguise the unsteadiness of his feet, and sat down, about midway between her and the door, not that that was much great distance in the small building. They looked at one another for a long time, each listening to the other breathe.
"Ginny... I..." Harry looked away first. "I'm so sorry, Gin. For all of it. That blasted Pensieve, for... for everything that happened."
"You're sorry?" Ginny stared at him, surprise forcing her voice louder, to nearer its usual volume. She quietened herself again. "Harry, you haven't done anything you have to apologise for." She looked out of the window. "I blamed you."
He'd known, of course. After all, he blamed himself, and he'd read the anger in her eyes. Of course, he'd known... but still, it was like a sword of ice in his heart.
"I blamed you," Ginny repeated. "I blamed you because you were there, you were alive, you were human... you were everything Voldemort isn't, and you were someone I could see as a person. You were the only one holding me back from it, the one who wouldn't let me just throw myself away into the dark where no one could find me, like I wanted... and I hated you for it." She looked back at him. "I don't know... I don't know if you can ever forgive me for that, Harry, or how long it'll take... but... even if you can't..." She stopped. Tears were coming back into her dark eyes.
Harry moved without thought. He half stepped to his feet, and sat down again next to her. She flinched slightly, as he held out a hand- and then their arms folded about one another and they clung together like one being.
"If... it'll keep you out of the dark," he sobbed, the world swimming before his eyes, "You can hate me for a million years, but I won't let you go, Ginny. Not ever."
"You can't run away into the dark, anyway" Ginny told him through her tears, her breath catching in her throat again and again. "Not really. You can't hide from anything that way. At the end of it, the only things you're really afraid of are the things you take with you."
The nights were drawing in as October crept to its close, and- mindful of the fears that missing students might bring out in their teachers- Harry and Ginny walked side by side back to the doors of the school. They spoke seldom, but the silence between them was not uncomfortable. For a long time, in the morning and the afternoon that followed it unheeded, they had simply held one another, their emotions speaking to one another in tones too deep for words. Then, haltingly at first, they had begun to talk of what had happened to each since their paths had separated that night in London.
Ginny had listened, occasionally questioning, her face growing shrewd and thoughtful while he told her Dumbledore's tale. Her eyes had widened when Harry had told her what Hermione had learned.
"And ever since then," she'd murmured- "Especially since he got his body back, he's been trying to kill you."
"He's not got a choice, Ginny," Harry had told her grimly. "His mind's tied to mine, just the same way mine's linked to his... and even if he can bear to touch me with his body now, after he took my blood... he feels the same pain I do." She reached up a hand to his scar, then dropped it to her side. "It's destroying both of us. He has to kill me, even obliterate that part of him he left behind in me, before it drives us both insane."
Now, their tales told, they returned together. In what sense of 'together', Harry did not question- neither had spoken of romance, and- for now, what lay before them was enough. To see his dear friend alive again in her eyes, to hear life and emotion in her words, that was joy enough.
"Well well, what have we got here?" They hadn't been paying attention to the road. The school lay before them, and, leaning against one of the columns supporting the stone portico over the doors, a familiar blonde figure lounged. "Take a look at this, Crabbe?" he added to his remaining bodyguard. "Professor Snape asked me to come and find you, Potter," Malfoy drawled. "For some reason he likes you to bother to turn up to classes. Can't think why... but now I think we all see what you've been up to, don't we?"
Harry's lips whitened. He vaguely wondered how many times he was going to have to bounce Malfoy off various hard surfaces before the wretched child would shut up.
"Just got your pet Weasel back again, have you?" Draco purred, getting to his feet, and sneering insultingly down at the two of them from the height of the steps.
Harry growled, and drew his wand in a moment. Malfoy raised a finger.
"I wouldn't, Potter. Not after last time," his face darkened for a moment, before the same smile spread back across it. "That old fool can't shield you for ever, scarhead. You're just going to have to learn to control your temper a bit," Draco sneered. "I'm sure Weasel's Hired Whore there can distract you- you never know, she might have a talent for--"
A sharp CRACK tore through the air, and a flash of power moving past him nearly knocked Harry to his feet. Malfoy vanished in an instant- and Crabbe, standing next to his master, gulped, staring down at the small white ferret which shrank against the column, keening in fright.
Ginny stepped past him and started up the steps, her mouth thin-lipped with irritation.
"Harry didn't lift a finger against you," she remarked to the ferret, which squeaked in fear and tried to scramble away into the bushes. "Accio ferret!" She called out, and Malfoy was plucked off his four feet as he ran. "Wingardium Leviosa," she added, not wanting to touch the animal, and the ferret bobbed helplessly in the air in front of her. She leant forward, keeping her nose just out of range of its wildly flailing claws. "A word, Draco," she told him, in a steady voice. "If you ever, just once, call me anything but 'Miss Weasley', or, if you're feeling particularly friendly, which I doubt, 'Virginia'... you will regret it. Refer to me the way you just did again, just once more, and I will fillet you." She gave the creature a quick, sunny smile. "Understood?"
Malfoy squeaked. He didn't really have that much of an option.
Ginny beamed at him. "Good little ferret." Then, a mischievous smile flickering across her face, she turned back to Harry.
"Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry," she said, eyes alight with villainy, "I never brought you any sort of present back." She made a swishing gesture with her wand, and the ferret began to float down towards him, writhing and turning in the air in panic. "Will this do? For Hedwig. She eats rodents, doesn't she?"
Harry stared at her, trying to keep a straight face with some difficulty. He caught her eye, and felt the laughter beginning to surge up through his throat. Quickly, while he still could, he answered.
"Um... thanks, but maybe not this time, Gin. That one looks a bit rancid to me... inbred, by the look of it. It might give her an upset stomach." He paused, and looked the frantically squealing Draco in the eye. "We'd have to cut it up very small," he observed. The ferret's jaw dropped, silently.
Ginny shrugged.
"Oh well." She flicked her wand in a banishing charm, and Malfoy sailed away through the air, Crabbe frantically dashing after the arc of the ferret's flight, hands cupped in front of him. She threaded her wand through her belt, and grinned, taking Harry's hand in hers as they stepped through into the Entrance Hall. In the distance, Crabbe, not looking where he was going, ran into a tree, and Draco came to rest somewhere in its upper branches.
Ginny looked back, then faced Harry once again. "I'm back."
AriKitten: Well, he hasn't really been just over Harry's nose since the beginning of the first year- just tied to it. Still, Dumbledore did have the baby- and Voldemort's spirit- in his hands in Chapter One of "The Philosopher's Stone". And, if you're wondering what would have happened if D-dore (like the abbreviation, by the way) had stepped wildly out of character and smashed baby Harry's skull open, then I suspect that with Voldy already so weakened, that probably would have finished the Dark Lord once and for all. It's probably a good thing Dumbledore didn't know.
Oh, and you mentioned the red-headed league? Good, that means I got the pacing about right for their absence. ;-) Ron'll be getting a bit more attention next chapter.
RuffledFeathers: I hope the clarification Hermione gives at the start of this one's made it a bit clearer- basically, Voldemort's (immortal, thanks to his spells) spirit got pulled into Harry's mind and parked their for a decade when the Avada Kedavra fed back and destroyed him. His essence became pure, unfocused magic, and it was that 'earthing' into Harry's brain that caused the scar on his head.
Hugh Lapham: Voldemort's going to be a little more difficult to get rid of than that, but that's the sort of approach the gang are going to try, yes- when they think of it.
CiA1: I intend to :-)
Wolf's scream: Yes, I was thinking of an EMP effect myself. The whitespace seems to happen whenever I insert something into existing text in document editor- I'll be doing a bit of error weeding next week, so I'll go back and clean the earlier chapters then.
Traveller: No, Voldemort would probably much rather find a safe way to extract the pieces of his mind that are still left in Harry... but he doesn't have that option, and he's not willing to be patient with having Harry Potter, whose mind is utterly antithetical to his, tied to his soul. He'd gnaw his own leg- or, in this case, pieces of his own mind- off to get free, because the link's slowly driving him insane. More insane.
Qazok: Glad you like the idea- I hope Harry's reaction to it fits- I thought it would make a change and be a little unexpected, whilst still making sense.
QueenY C: I can't actually remember where the idea came from- I think just from the feeling that there was something odd about Voldemort, allegedly running away from Godric's Hollow, and then next showing up as a near-bodiless wraith. Also, I felt that Harry meeting Quirrell on the day of the Gringotts' break in seemed... suspicious. It all sort of developed from there.