Chapter Two: The Mirror of the Chaos

Harry Potter wandered down the corridor. He wondered where he might find the Ravenclaw common room, but the portraits were numerous and he was sure that they would be waiting. A motion caught his attention, causing him to turn around. A trio of angry looking giants stood in the room he'd just entered. He quickly conjured an arm over his head to hide his face, silently facing his enemies. He thought quickly, "Kill me?" his wand began to glow, and one of the giants ran over to him. He fired a Reductor Curse at the beast, causing it to fall on the ground, and also disorienting the other giants that had followed it.

As soon as the spell was complete the man rose to his feet, and glared at him. What was the other student doing? Harry pondered. The other student clearly had an interest in what the little piece of parchment called "Body parts". Harry took the parchment out and began reading.

Excerpt: You know I had a very funny dream. Not in a romantic way but a more hilarious dream. I awoke feeling cold to my touch and naked. I had black markings on my body. These black markings slowly began growing over my body and it slowly began to be over one side of my body while slowly fading over the other side. Before it was completely covered over with black I heard a voice say "Harry you were impaled". The voice wasn't what I expected, it wasn't threatening but sweetly playful. The voice stopped before I awoke.

As this occurred, Professor Snape walked down the corridor. He saw the two students in the class to which Harry had been taken. He smiled slightly to himself and then continued down the corridor. He had an office waiting for him in the main entrance.

A/N: Okay so I kind of ignored this chapter and went to go see the movie tonight. Wearing my Harry Potter glasses again and rereading the script. But I couldn't help but think that this chapter could have made for a fantastic spin off movie. And I mean that in the best way possible. There are the bits and pieces that make this story worth reading all by themselves. I mean there are tons of awesome scenes. And the best part? They happen in an owl pen.

Harry Potter then said to Professor Snape, "Today is the last day of school before the summer vacation and now I need to get home to save it."

Severus nodded, though he never made eye contact with the boy. He walked across the classroom to Flitwick and said, "Dumbledore was worried that you were beginning to become too much of a Gryffindor."

Flitwick nodded. "He was right. You have an acute intelligence, uncommon dedication, a wonderful memory, and an unmistakable talent as a philosopher."

The Potions Master continued, "However, the world is getting dull and tedious. Nothing interesting is happening. The Dark Lord must always be near, lurking, and striking at the moment when the only thing the world could ever hope to be interested in is his return."

He paused, glaring at the sleeping form of his former pet. "Severus, your former teacher put it best when he described you as 'the first Potions Master to serve a single Dark Lord, excepting Voldemort himself'. Without him you would have taken over after my return. For all of your bad habits, you were definitely better at navigating through the maze and quite effective in combat."

"Did you want to stay with him forever, Professor?"

"It was my first chance to have Harry as a peer. As I noted when he was your age, I was unable to keep him as my own son, and I had hoped that once I was dead I would be able to leave him to the care of his mother."

"But if he was going to be me he could not be, sir. I am seventeen. I have many options. I could continue to be a house-elf. I could return to Hogwarts. Or I could go back to France. Or I could return to my family. It is my home. I love it. I had dreamed of leaving it and settling down somewhere."

Harry then went to see his friend Ron, who was at the Department of Mysteries, looking for Harry's parents, hoping to get Harry back, thinking that Harry could have been kidnapped.

"They won't believe it, sir," Ron said to Dumbledore, who had told Harry about the Dursleys at the end of last year.

"And if I find that they don't believe it, what then?" Dumbledore asked, curiously, like he just hadn't heard. "Ron, if I find that Harry was kidnapped, there is no need for you to finish your term at Hogwarts. With your help, I could make sure that the Dursleys don't find out anything. I won't even have to fear for your safety."

"It's good to know you are safe," Harry Potter said. "But there's no sign of me."

I guess it just isn't worth getting too concerned about obviously because it doesn't change how I feel about that.

It would be a lie to say that I had a moment of dread when Harry decided to follow Voldemort's orders. That was actually when I fully understood why Harry was eager to accept Voldemort's offer to serve as an assistant. When Voldemort asked him if Harry had a place to stay that didn't involve being under the Dursleys, I hadn't considered that this was possible, but after a bit of thinking, I started thinking that if anyone was about to get killed, it would be him.

Ron looked at her as if she had just thought of the dumbest thing in the world. "He didn't have anything to go to. He knew, and he had done his homework. He knew everything the public knew about You-Know-Who and where to find him. Harry could've been there, no problem. Or, oh, he could've went somewhere else and stayed on his own. But I guess nobody is allowed to go to Malfoy Manor, are you?"

It suddenly occurred to Ron that Ron might have not be quite as smart as he'd imagined him to be.

Hermione scowled at her friend, "Ron, don't let our hopes down. I've seen the way you think and you're wrong. There is no way in hell you're going to be as brave as Sirius."

"Because he's a better friend?" Ron asked, "No, of course not, Hermione. Because Sirius has... begrudging respect for you. And I don't know that there's a better word for it. You've become that person who Sirius never could quite 'get' because he always had too much baggage and too many enemies.

"And Hermione, I think you've forgotten that I wasn't the best person in the world at prefect so you were on your own all year."

"In fact," she said, "there was only one person I wasn't on my own with this year. She was a Gryffindor."

He looked uncomfortable. "And you were on top of things this year, aren't you?"

"You're right, Hermione. She was really challenging for me, so I just had to be super-crush-y-like-a-hero Hermione, no matter what the other girls were doing."

He nodded, sitting back in his chair.

"So, what do we do with this?" she asked.

Dobby's life corpse suddenly began to glow dimly, and cast a glow around the little wizard as well.

"Seal them." Lord Voldemort explained calmly, and the shades retreated from Harry as quickly as they had appeared.

"You just said you killed Dumbledore." Harry said, his stomach falling out of his throat and threatening to tear his insides apart.

The shades lifted Harry's cloak off him and levitated it to the floor, where they held it out.

"It's not too late, Harry."

"Yeah, right." Harry raised his chin high into the air.

Harry's eyes narrowed when he noticed a pinkish spell float towards him. As he raised his wand to block it. Voldemort, however, with a mere glance killed him, then snapped his fingers and put the Dementors back on guard. The third time he killed Tom, though, the memory hit Harry with a wave of pain he could not describe.

"This is, for the last time, a chance we can't afford to miss," said Hermione Granger. "I'm not lying when I say that I'm frightened. Why should we take it? Not only are you giving this to Voldemort, but the bloody Dementors! We're going to die!"

Harry listened quietly to his companions. He was not as scared of death as he should have been, but he did feel the presence of death. He had been struggling with his depression.