Chapter 4:

"The faerie are guarding this place. Sentries surround the entrance to the tomb. Why is it so well hidden? Why would the Faeries, beings of Imagination itself, be protecting the prison of their own god? What am I missing here?"

From the Diary of Merlinus Caledonensis; Earth, 537 Common Era.


Harry was furious. The only thing stopping him from marching back up the stairs and punching Headmaster Albus Dumbledore or whatever the fuck his name was, was the aluminium shackle stuck on his wrist. He was stuck here, with no hope of escape anytime soon. Oh, Double doors said he'd release him once he'd proved he was capable of passing the ordinary wizarding level of magic – a "precaution against hurting himself or others" – but anyone with a brain between their ears could tell he was lying. There was no way in hell he would let Harry go. Ever. And Harry had no choice but to play along.

So now, instead of shoving Dumbledore's wand up his ass – which is what he would like to be doing – he was standing in front of hundreds of people, wearing the 80's equivalent of an overpriced bathrobe. Gandalf's evil twin – so named because Harry had a great deal of respect for the real Gandalf and had decided that comparing Dumbledore to him was blasphemous – had cast a spell on him, some type of illusion he gathered, to make him look presentable (i.e., like he wasn't a homeless street urchin) for his "grand entrance." The colours were apparently to remind him which table he'd been ordered to sit at. McGonagall, whom Harry had decided to like, had talked about a sorting ceremony that involved a talking hat, but evil Gandalf had vetoed it and placed him in Gryffindor House – not that he really understood what that meant – instead. McGonagall had been incredibly confused by the Headmaster's proclamation (Harry assumed it wasn't common not to get sorted via the hat), but Harry knew why instantly. The hat contained one of the trapped faeries Mak had sensed in the room. Dumbledore, even if he couldn't see Mak, knew she there, connected to him, and no doubt wouldn't let him (and by extension her) near the artefact lest Harry know or discover a way to free the poor thing. It was a smart move on his part because it would have been the first thing Harry tried if the hat was put on him.

"Holy crap." It was a girl's voice, coming from the yellow and black table. Another girl at the red and gold one fainted. What had the old man done to him?

That seemed to break the ice, as within seconds the whole crowd began to whisper amongst themselves. Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes – he did shoot a glare at the Headmaster though – and began to walk down the aisle, scanning the table.

He paid the smallest amount of attention possible. His brain was far too busy trying to process what he'd just learnt to bother with the act of walking. His parents, high school sweethearts, had been members of a group of freedom fighters battling Wizard Hitler. And apparently, they were good at it too. So good in fact that Wizard Hitler – whose name only Dumbledore would say – targeted them personally. As anyone sane of mind would do, they went into hiding once they learned he was gunning for them. Harry probably would have made a beeline for France, but he understood his parent's unwillingness to leave a war they'd spent so much time fighting behind. It was crazy, but he understood. Long story short, they were betrayed by his Dad's best friend, who then went and murdered his other best friend before being captured and thrown in a magical prison. Wizard Hitler had found his parents and killed them. Harry supposed he should have felt more at that. An urge to cry or something. He didn't. There was a numbness, and a sense of that tiny flickering flame – the one every orphan kept buried beneath their fears – had finally died. He'd known that his parents, whoever they had been, were dead, for a long time. It was just the final kick to the proverbial bucket.

The piece of the story he'd needed McGonagall to repeat several times to him was what had happened after his parents died. Lord Voldemort (which to Harry sounded suspiciously similar to the French 'vol de mort' which translated as 'flight from death' in English) had then tried to kill Harry himself. According to McGonagall, Harry should be dead, but the spell used by the so-called Dark Lord, the undefendable Killing Curse, had 'rebounded' somehow, killing him instead, and leaving Harry with the scar on his head. At least he finally had something he could tell Nylah, though, if he thought about it, she would probably find the fact that the scar was caused by magic even more annoying than not knowing anything at all!

Harry paused in his thoughts as he walked down the aisle between tables in Hogwarts' great hall. Sitting at the head of the red and gold table, completely isolated, was a girl his age with blazing red hair like flickering flames. Her clothing was old – third hand at the least – and was too short at the ankles. The hem had been let down the whole way. There was a sunken look about her as if she were being pushed down by the weight of the world. And she was the only person in the room not looking at him.

Harry, knowing the sight of an at-risk person when he saw one, made his way in her direction, eliciting exclamations of shock and outrage from several people. So, not being ostracised just because she was poor. Something nasty must have happened to her. Or maybe she had done something terrible to everyone else and was paying the price? Regardless, of all the people sitting at the table, many of them moving to create seats for him, beckoning him to sit next to them, she was the only person he found remotely interesting. He'd follow evil Gandalf's orders until he found a way to get this bloody shackle off, but until then, he'd wiggle his way around them as best as possible, and try and do as much good as he could.

He sat down opposite the girl, who was now hiding her face in her hair. Mak let out a soft gasp from his shoulder, but Harry ignored her for the moment.

"I'm Harry. This morning I learned I was famous, and now the Headmaster is holding me prisoner here. There is no way your day can be going any worse than mine." He held out his hand to her. The hall had gone entirely silent again. He thought he might have caught a soft groan from Dumbledore's direction.

The girl raised her head, jaw slack. She had gorgeous chocolate brown eyes and a thick dusting of freckles across her nose. She hesitantly took his offered hand, and Harry gently shook it.

"There we go. I've already made a friend. Finally, a part of this day that I've enjoyed. What's your name?" Harry was taking a calculated gamble here. Judging by the shadows under her eyes, the jittering of her hand in his and the thinness of her frame, sitting here had been an excellent choice. Depression and anxiety, in all their various forms, were ubiquitous in the Bunker. He'd been a mess when Bran found him, and it had taken months to shake himself out of it. Since then, he'd made a solid effort to pay Bran's faith in him forward to those who needed help. Sometimes, you just needed a friend to watch out for you.

"Ginny," she said quietly, glancing towards the rest of the table, all of whom were staring at Harry and Ginny as if they had the plague. Ginny jerked her hand back, a small 'eep' sound escaping her throat.

"Nice to meet you, Gin…" he trailed off. When Ginny had jerked back, he'd seen a second figure, diminutive, hiding in the tassels of her hair.

"Let the feast begin," Dumbledore said. Golden plates filled to the brim with more food than the entire population of the Bunker had seen in their collective lifetimes appeared on all four tables, and the students were finally distracted from Harry. At that moment, he didn't care in the slightest about the food. He was staring at Ginny. Or more accurately, he was staring at the faerie clinging to the inside of her robes.

Mak, taking his pause as a sign, finally jumped off his shoulder, landing on the wooden table and advancing toward Ginny. Her wings were folded around her dress. Ginny's eyes followed her. The faeries mustn't be able to hide from other bonded like they could hide from ordinary people. He glanced to Dumbledore, but evil Gandalf was in conversation with a dwarf man. The other teachers were still staring at him. Most had the stock standard awed expression, but a man at the end of the table with oily black hair and a long nose stared at him with utter hate in his gaze. Another man, with sandy hair and scars on his face, looked at him with an odd melding of pleading and wistfulness.

Mak pulled apart the curtain of Ginny's hair and snapped at the hidden faerie.

"If you thought you could hide from me you clearly haven't been on Earth for very long!" Ginny's eyes widened as she stared at the blue-skinned faerie.

"That's Mak. She's usually a great conversationalist, except when she's mad. I generally hide when she gets in one of her moods." A faerie with pitch-black hair, ash white skin, and dark clothing stepped shyly out from the folds of Ginny's robes. She floated softly down to the table, and she and Mak began to circle one another like a Mexican stand-off. Mak summoned her silver armour and sword. The dark-haired faerie's face transitioned from fright to confusion, before finally settling on eager determination. She held out her own hand, and pitch-black armour morphed around her, a long-handled black battle-axe appearing in her hands. Red flames began dancing in her raven locks.

"Okay, that's enough," Harry said, placing a hand between the two.

Ginny finally regained her voice. "Ember! Behave yourself!" she exclaimed, face going as red as a tomato.

"Yeah, Ember," Mak mimicked, "Behave yourself."

"You too Zena Warrior Princess." Harry chided. Mak had the decency to look embarrassed, but she didn't vanish her armour or sword. Harry rolled her eyes.

"Sorry about her. She thought she was the only surviving faerie for the past seven years. Finding not one, but four, three of them imprisoned, in a single day, has rattled her more than she cares to admit. Me too if I'm honest." Ginny shivered.

"Imprisoned?" Ember had frozen stiff.

Harry and Mak both nodded.

"The old man has them trapped in at least three artefacts up in his office. That's why I'm here. Well, aside from the fact that I can't leave." He held up the arm with the silver shackle attached to it.

"You were serious?"

"About the Headmaster imprisoning me? Or about not knowing I was famous until this morning?"

"Uh, both!"

Harry smiled inwardly. She was smiling. Regardless of how much today had totally sucked, he'd made her smile. At least that was something.

"When I woke up this morning in my sleeping bag on the floor of a homeless shelter…" Best not to mention the Bunker until he could trust her. "… I was a normal, discarded orphan living on the edge of society." He frowned. "Well, as normal an orphan can be when he's followed around by a blue faerie with a fetish for caramel."

Mak glared at him. "I do not have a fetish. I just happen to enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that."

"You'll get fat. I wonder if you'll still be able to fly with a potbelly."

"I don't get fat!" She said pointedly, folding her arms and scowling.

"Makes one of us." Harry had finally taken in the sheer amount of food on the table in front of him. He hesitantly pulled a piece of roast beef onto his plate, followed by a jacket potato. He'd never had roast beef before, though he'd seen it on the television. Potatoes he'd had a few times, cooked over the firepit in the Bunker. He took up a fork and stabbed at the beef until it was firmly stuck onto the pointy ends and placed it in his mouth. He groaned softly. That had to be the best thing he'd ever eaten. And all created by magic? Maybe he could learn to create food too? If he could, the Bunker would never go hungry again!

"You're really telling the truth," Ginny whispered. Harry looked up at her, the rest of his beef already halfway to his mouth.

"What gave me away?"

"You're holding that fork like a caveman." Harry frowned at his grip.

"It's how you'd hold a knife. Is there a different way for a fork?" Ginny giggled softly. Harry shrugged and continued eating.

"Next time, if you want to know if I'm telling the truth or not, ask Ember." He said after he'd swallowed. He picked up the kitchen knife – it was pretty pathetic – held his potato with his free hand, and cut it in half.

"Why?"

"They can tell truth from lie." He tentatively placed the potato in his mouth. In an instant, he wished he hadn't. It was so much better than Bran's, and that made him feel incredibly guilty. Ginny's eyebrows had gone in search of her hairline. Ember looked confused.

"I… actually I think he's right. I can do that," she whispered. Harry shared a glance with Mak.

"How long have you guys been together?" he asked Ginny and Ember.

"Almost a year and a half now," Ginny said hesitantly.

Harry nodded.

"That makes sense. Mak didn't start to regain her memories until the end of our second year. She's still got a lot of blind spots even now."

"I can speak for myself, you know," Mak said.

"Then speak up." Mak glared at him, before sighing and finally vanishing her armour and sword. She sat down on the edge of his plate and pulled off a piece of beef with her hands. Harry picked up the golden goblet – he was really getting jack of the gaudiness – and examined the orange liquid inside. It smelled kind of like pumpkin. He tried a sip and instantly chocked on it. He spat the juice back into the cup and set it down on the table, trying not to gag.

"What is that crap?"

"Pumpkin juice," Ginny said, giggling once more.

"God, you'd have to be insane to drink that," he said. He went looking through the goblets for one with water in it.

"If you ask it for what you want, it'll change," Ginny told him through her laughter. Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. Not the weirdest thing I've heard today. Goblet, I would like a coke please." The goblet transformed into a red aluminium can. Harry grinned.

"I think I could get used to this place."


Ginny wasn't entirely sure she hadn't finally lost what remained of her sanity. Because Harry Potter - the Boy-Who-Lived, defeater of Voldemort and saviour of the Wizarding World - was sitting opposite her of all the people he could have sat next to at Gryffindor table. She'd thought at first that he'd come for her because of Ember, who'd hidden inside her robes the second they saw that Harry had a faerie of his own. But no, he'd been completely shocked when he caught sight of Ember halfway through the conversation. So why?

He was so… different than she'd expected. Her younger self had put together an image of a dashing hero, charismatic, funny and noble all at the same time, dedicated to protecting all – especially damsels in distress like Ginny. Then, once her father had shattered that dream, she'd conjured a haunted figure, sorrowful and quiet. Someone who had few friends partly because he'd grown up around adults, partly because he didn't trust anyone. The image from the paper had almost reinforced that depiction; a man of power and determination, floating above his enemies, eyes alight with energy.

The Harry sitting across from her seemed to fit neither image. He was funny, charming, and had a trustworthiness about him, almost like an aura of positivity. It was practically overwhelming. But when she looked into his eyes as he spoke of the trapped faeries, and his imprisonment, she could see a hardness there. Anger, resolve, and above all, a fierce determination. She could see it in the way he held himself, the confidence of his voice, in the power radiated from his faerie Mak that neither seemed to notice. Harry Potter was a leader, a warrior, a hero. In other words, the type of person who shouldn't be paying any attention to her what-so-ever.

So, what was Harry Potter, the saviour of Wizardkind, doing as he sat across from Ginny Weasley, the most hated person in Hogwarts? He was drinking a muggle soft drink, as he pulled tiny pieces of meat from his half-slice of roast beef, before offering them to his faerie companion. She didn't think he intended to eat any more. He'd eaten one and a half pieces of beef and a single roast potato, and it was the smallest one on the plate. She ate more than that when she was sick! If she hadn't already accepted his outlandish story about being homeless and not knowing he was famous until that morning; that would have definitely proved it.

As he put his fork down and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, she couldn't hold it in anymore.

"Why? Why sit with me? Everyone hates me here, and you don't even know why. But instead of going to anyone else, who would have been over the moon to talk to the Harry Potter, you come and sit with me. It doesn't make any sense!"

Harry looked her in the eye, holding her gaze with those spheres of intense emerald. Merlin, she could drown in those eyes.

"Because I've been you. The person that everyone wishes would just disappear. You feel it, like a shadow pressing down on you everywhere you go. Every whisper could be about you. No one talks to you. In fact, they go out of their way to avoid you or have nothing to do with you. And what's worse, is you can't even bring yourself to blame them. Because they're better off away from you, having nothing to do with you. You're dangerous, and anyone who tries to help you just gets hurt. If you're going to get hurt anyway, why let someone else share the pain when they don't have too? So, you push the few who try to get close away. In the end, as you sit in your sphere of isolation, the weight of the world, the weight of their stares, trying to pull you into the ground, you think to yourself, why am I still here? What's the point of my suffering? Why can't everyone just leave me alone? Would anyone even miss me if I disappeared?" Harry paused, a soft tremble to his voice. There were tears in his eyes.

"Sound familiar?"

Ginny, heart racing, her hands clammy, couldn't bring herself to even move.

"No one is ever truly alone. There is always a reason not to. Always. No matter how dark it seems when the world pushes down on you, all it takes is one light to lighten the load. A friend in a time of need. I say you're my friend now Ginny, and if you think holding up the sky is a job for you alone, think again, because no one carries the sky by themselves when I'm in town."

They sat in silence for several minutes. Ember was looking at Harry with something that looked a little like awe. Mak had a knee bent, one arm on her hips, a smirk on her tiny face. Finally, as a distraction, Ginny said the first thing that came to mind.

"So, what are you going to do? About Dumbledore, I mean?"

Harry frowned slightly, no doubt seeing her rather blatant attempt to change the conversation. He blinked, and the vulnerability vanished in an instant. His face was once again the charismatic, happy go lucky it had been for most of the night. He glanced towards the Headmaster, still talking to Professor Flitwick at the staff table. Professor McGonagall still hadn't shown up. Ginny grabbed her goblet of juice and took a drink to disguise the dabbing motion intended to hide her tears.

"Once I get this thing off, I'm going to shove his wand so far up his ass he'll need surgery to get it back out." He said it in a solemn tone. Not an ounce of humour in it.

Ginny choked on her pumpkin juice. Fred and George, as if they had a sixth sense for the most opportune moment to enter a conversation, appeared beside them. One sat down beside Harry, the other next to Ginny. Mak instantly summoned her magnificent suit of armour. Ginny could tell Ember was jealous of it. She immediately created her own armour, deliberately with a bigger weapon than Mak's. To think, faeries having ego fuelled deathmatches.

"Well, well, well. Looks like little Gin Gin stole all the spotlight for herself tonight. There are a lot of people mighty pissed off down there for sure. You should have seen Malfoy's face when you walked in Harry. Priceless!" George exclaimed, slapping Ginny on the back so hard the juice stuck in her throat shot back out her mouth, splattering all over the two faeries. They turned towards her with evil expressions. 'Sorry!' She mouthed to them.

"Harry, these are my idiot twin brothers, Fred and George. Don't both trying to tell them apart. Nobody can," she said, trying to regain her breath.

"Fabulous!" Harry said, shaking Fred's hand, a smile that seemed utterly genuine snapping onto his face in an instant. As they shook, however, Harry flicked his eyes between her and the faeries, before sliding back to meet hers. She shook her head slightly. No. They didn't know about Ember. No one did. Harry nodded softly before releasing Fred and leaning across the table to give George the same treatment.

"I live to piss people off it seems. Tell me, who is this Malfoy – a terrible name that – and why was his reaction so excellent?" Fred and George beamed, then turned towards Ginny and spoke in unison.

"We approve." Ginny blushed as red as her hair. Fred and George then began regaling Harry about why Draco Malfoy and his gang of Slytherins were "the worst of the worst". Ginny didn't think it took too long to convince him. Fred and George seemed to open a floodgate of some kind, because within a few minutes, the Gryffindor Quidditch Chasers Angelina, Alicia and Katie were surrounding them. Katie was even sitting with only one vacant place between herself and Ginny. None of them talked to her, no matter how many times Harry tried to bring her into the conversation, but it was the most included she'd felt in years. As more and more people started trickling over, most of them girls, Harry was compelled to tell the story of what happened to him that morning half a dozen times. He recounted it the same, with no differences in every telling. He was happily sleeping in a homeless shelter when one of his friends, a girl named Sammy – Ginny was angry at herself for feeling jealous whenever she was mentioned – was mind-controlled into giving away his location. He was attacked by the Aurors and defeated them with ease. Then Dumbledore had attacked him with his "flying chicken" abducting him and bringing him to Hogwarts, where he was now trapped – he brandished the silver metal clamp around his wrist at that point for emphasis.

Ginny spent the time watching the reactions of those present. Most thought he was having a joke (those who laughed at the end with a "good one Harry"), some thought he was deliberately misleading him (those who frowned and edged away from him), but a few seemed to take in what he was saying. Mainly, Fred and George, Katie, Alicia and Angelina, and two seventh years whose names Ginny couldn't remember.

Harry handled it better than Ginny would have. He listened to everyone, but only let one person talk at a time. He asked about their hobbies, their goals, what their favourite classes were. Ginny thought the whole exercise ridiculous until Mak jumped up on her shoulder, earning a scowl from Ember, and whispered in her ear, "He's mining them for information. Rule number #7, people are always willing to talk about themselves." Her respect for him climbed even higher. Eventually, after all the other tables had practically emptied, Dumbledore ordered the Gryffindors to bed. Harry was quickly pulled away from Ginny by the tide, though he kept trying to look back over his shoulder to her. In a few seconds, Ginny was on her own again. Well, on her own, except for Ember and Mak, who were sitting on either shoulder.

Ginny was the last to leave the hall. As she trudged up the stairs, Mak stared at her with narrow eyes.

"He's right, you know," she said.

"Right about what?"

"You can't hold up the sky alone. Harry… he was a wreck when we ran away from the Dursleys. I… I was newborn, at the time. No help at all. I knew nothing about the Design, about the world. I couldn't even remember my own name for the first few weeks. He… He thought about it as we lay in that hollow in the woods, only the dirt and the worms for company, that it would have been nicer to just go to sleep and not wake up. He tried to hide it, but I saw. I think he might have tried before I came to him. He won't talk about it. But he never let himself get consumed by it. For me. Even at the earliest, I knew that without him, I would die. Something… or maybe someone was chasing me before I found him. I still to this day don't know what it was. Or at least I can't remember. He lived through the cold nights, the hunger, the pain, for me. I was his purpose." Mak was actually crying. Ginny was worried she might too.

"So, this is what you're going to do. Those faeries imprisoned upstairs. They're your purpose. You are going to do everything you can to help Harry set them free. No more, no less." Mak jumped up into the air, and four transparent wings, like an insect, uncurled from around her dress and began fluttering behind her. Ginny hadn't noticed them before. Her blonde hair floated slightly in the breeze kicked up by her wings. A soft mist fell away from her as she floated.

Ginny nodded softly. "Good," Mak said, "Now where did that boy run off too? I swear…" She flew up into the sky and vanished.

Ember poked Ginny's neck, giving her a self-satisfied side-eye.

"A purpose. I can do that." Then, with renewed vigour, she walked up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.