A/N: Well, I did a little better than a two-year update frequency this time! This is a slightly less exciting chapter than the last couple, which I apologize for, but it's because my vision for this story has expanded a lot since I first published Chapter One, and so a lot of groundwork has to be laid for future events. I promise it will all pay off in Chapters 9 and 10, but I hope you enjoy this one regardless!

Harry swore, louder than he meant to. His Invisibility Cloak had been stolen.

"You need to tell Dumbledore about this," Hermione said, her voice quivering slightly.

Harry sat at the foot of his bed, stunned. His Cloak was gone. It was, without doubt, his most valuable possession, having protected him, Ron and Hermione from the eyes of Filch and Mrs Norris more times than he could count. And even beyond that, it was one of the perilously few connections he had to his father. This same Cloak was the reason Lupin had been able to remain a student at Hogwarts, and now it was gone.

"A Death Eater has my Cloak," Harry said. Lupin's words last year, about how in the wrong hands the Marauder's Map could lead an enemy directly to Harry, echoed loudly in his ears. The Cloak was just as dangerous - whoever now had it could roam the halls freely, undetectable by anybody save for Moody, and wait for the perfect moment to ambush whomever they pleased.

Ron and Hermione looked back at Harry, fear in their eyes.

"I hate to complicate things, mate," Ron said, "but how do you know it's a Death Eater that has it? Last time something like this happened, it was Ginny all along. It could be the same thing, it could be You-Know-Who possessing somebody and forcing them to do his dirty work."

"It could also be the Imperius Curse," Hermione added, grimacing.

Harry nodded. "Right then, I'll - I'll go tell Dumbledore."

He got up slowly and walked shakily towards the stairs, not entirely trusting his legs to support him. Everything seemed to be going wrong, all around him. His scar had started to hurt sporadically, Death Eaters had appeared at the Quidditch World Cup, Bertha Jorkins had gone missing, his own name had somehow come out of the Goblet of Fire, the ever-burning torches in the Great Hall had been extinguished, and now somebody had broken into the Gryffindor dormitories and stolen his Invisibility Cloak. It seemed as though all of the pieces were there, but he couldn't quite put them together.

But even if he didn't know how or why it was obvious that somebody wanted him dead. That was what it all came down to. There was no other explanation for his entry into the tournament, or the theft of his Cloak.

He was down in the common-room and almost at the portrait-hole when he heard footsteps coming up behind him. His heart lurched and he spun around, pulling out his wand.

It was just Hermione. She looked from his eyes down to his raised wand, which he quickly tucked away, embarrassed at how easily he had been startled.

"You're almost as jumpy as Mad-Eye," she said, with a smile that didn't reach her dark eyes. Harry tried to smile back, to laugh it off.

"I was going to ask if you wanted me to come with you," she continued. "You look like you could use some company."

The problem was, he really did want her company. His nerves, which had been on edge ever since his discussion with Moody, had gotten an order of magnitude worse, and having Hermione there to talk to would calm him, he knew that. She had an uncanny way of knowing how to put him at ease when terrible things happened.

But he also knew that if someone really did try to attack him on his way to see Dumbledore, Hermione's presence was unlikely to stop them. All that he would accomplish by accepting her offer would be to put her in danger, and that was something he couldn't do.

He'd be fine on his own, he told himself. He was a Gryffindor, wasn't he?

"I appreciate the offer, Hermione," he began, "but I'll be alright on my own. Really, I will, and walking with me would just put you in danger."

He regretted it as soon as he realized he'd said the last part out loud.

Hermione frowned at him. "Harry," she said softly, taking a step forward and putting his hand in hers, "since I arrived at Hogwarts, I've been attacked by both a troll and a werewolf, slobbered on by a three-headed dog, petrified by a Basilisk, and I almost erased myself from existence while travelling through time to save your godfather. I'm past the point where I worry about putting myself in danger, especially if it's in order to help you."

She was looking him straight in the eye, unwavering. "There is a reason I didn't end up in Ravenclaw. I might get scared more easily than you do, but that doesn't make me any less brave. I'm coming with you tonight because I can tell that you need a friend. For that matter, so do I."

She walked past him, out of the common-room, pulling him along with her. Harry clambered out of the portrait-hole, this time closing it behind him (he was realizing, now, that the Fat Lady was very much to blame for the theft), and they started to walk, hand in hand, towards Dumbledore's office.

It was an odd feeling, walking openly through the halls with Hermione's hand in his own. The presentation of the third task must have ended, for the two of them kept passing people on their way down the stairs to the second floor, including a large, excitedly chatting group that looked to be all of Hufflepuff House. Harry kept feeling that this wasn't something he was allowed to show, that he couldn't let people know his secret, but the beautiful part of it was that now he could, and even the 'Potter Stinks' badges couldn't stop him from smiling.

He kept stealing glances at her as they walked. He couldn't help himself. He was still in disbelief at what had transpired today, and he kept looking over in part just to make sure that this was all real, that that really was Hermione.

In part, he looked over just because she was beautiful.

Eventually she caught him looking, and gave a small, demure smile. "It's going to be a while before I'm completely used to this," she said, a slight blush in her cheeks. "I don't really know how this is supposed to work, us going from friends to..." She trailed off, bowing her head.

"Neither do I," Harry admitted. "I only know that I want to spend more time with you and figure it out."

They had arrived at the gargoyle outside Dumbledore's office now, but neither of them let go of the other.

"So what you're saying is we should go on a date," Hermione said. Harry supposed that that was what he had been saying, although not that directly. He wanted to spend time with Hermione - just Hermione - to feel closer to her, but calling it a date hadn't occurred to him.

"I think that's a really good idea," she continued, "and I think I might know the perfect place."

"Where?"

"That'll be a surprise," Hermione said lightly, taking a slow step closer to him. "But that's for another night, anyway. I should let you speak with Dumbledore."

She was only inches away from him now, and Harry could feel her breath on his cheek as she spoke the last few words. His eyes danced around her face, not used to being so close. Her deep brown eyes, her adorably bushy hair, her soft-looking lips...

There was a quiet grinding noise from Harry's right, and he and Hermione leapt apart. The gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office had turned, and the Headmaster was walking briskly down the steps towards them. Harry didn't know what Dumbledore had seen - it must have looked like -

"Is everything alright?" Dumbledore asked, stopping at the base of the steps. "I haven't seen any of my students react so strongly to my presence since the time I walked in on the Weasley twins huddled over a box of Bertie Botts Every-Flavour Beans. It seemed quite the over-reaction at the time, although I did later discover that they were trying to charm them to all taste like earwax... and that they were intended to be an anonymous Christmas present to me."

"Yes," Harry said quickly, his heart still racing. "I mean, no. No. I was just about to go up and see you, actually, about something urgent. It couldn't wait until morning." He almost said more, but some sort of paranoia stopped him from doing so while he was out in the open. Not that many people even knew he had an Invisibility Cloak, and the last thing that he needed right now was somebody like Karkaroff overhearing what had happened and spreading the news all around the castle.

"As it happens, there is another unfortunately urgent matter that requires my attention, but I shouldn't be long, so please do wait in my office for me. The password is Pumpkin Pasty. You're welcome as well, of course, Miss Granger, if Harry consents."

With that, Dumbledore strolled away down the hall, moving faster than Harry thought a man his age should be able to.

"Thanks again for the company," Harry said to Hermione as Dumbledore had turned the corner, "but I think it would be best if I talk to him alone."

She nodded. "I'll see you back in the common-room."

The gargoyle leapt aside when Harry gave it the password, and a moment later he walked into the warm study at the top of the stairs, closing the large wooden door gently behind himself.

He had only been in Dumbledore's office a handful of times previously, mostly after encounters with Voldemort that had left him too shaken to properly look around.

The room wasn't overly large at ground level, but its walls rose high up above Harry, curving to form a dome perhaps fifteen feet above his head. Shelves lined the walls, filled mostly with books but also with various artefacts and metallic instruments that he didn't recognize. He was just about to take a seat in what had become his usual armchair when a bright silvery glow caught his eye.

Off to the side of the room was an alcove, and in that alcove stood a round stone column, on top of which was a shimmering bowl of a silvery liquid. Harry walked over to take a closer look, his curiosity getting the better of him. As he got closer to the bowl, he started to hear things. Voices. A scream. The rattling of chains.

Harry spun around, but there was nobody behind him. The bowl was undoubtedly the source of the sound; the voices got louder as he slowly moved toward it. He was standing right next to it now, looking down into it, and he could see figures moving within the swirling liquid: a dishevelled, unshaven man chained to a chair as a crowd of well-dressed witches and wizards sat all around him.

Then suddenly his feet weren't touching the ground anymore and he was falling, falling, waving his arms to try and stop, but there was nothing to hold on to.


Harry found himself standing firmly in Dumbledore's office once again, this time with the Headmaster standing next to him.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said quickly. "It - I didn't know what it was, and I was just standing next to it and suddenly I -"

"Please do not apologize, Harry," Dumbledore cut in quietly. "I left the Pensieve's cabinet open in my haste, and it is perfectly natural to be curious about such a thing."

"The Pensieve, sir?" Harry asked, as he suspected Dumbledore wanted him to.

"It is a tool - a rather rare one, if you will forgive that slight boast - that allows its user to store some of their memories outside of his or her head, and later relive them at will."

Harry's mind had already started whirring, trying to process everything that he had learned from the Pensieve. Thanks to Moody, he had already known that both Karkaroff and Snape had been Death Eaters, but not that Dumbledore had been the one who had - on at least two occasions - testified in defence of Snape. And then the trial that had come after… Harry had known that Neville lived with his grandmother, but never the reason why. He had thought Neville, like himself, was likely an orphan of the war, but the truth was far crueller than that.

He felt himself fill with rage as he thought of those who were responsible: Barty Crouch Jr. and the three Lestranges. No matter how deluded or prejudiced they might have been, torturing a husband and wife into insanity was not just the act of a partisan or a soldier. You couldn't rationalize it away as a necessary evil that had to be committed in the service of some greater good. No, what had happened to the Longbottoms was the work of psychopaths. It was the work of people that relish in the agony of others, and of people who feed off of pain like Dementors do.

Once again, Snape jumped to the forefront of Harry's mind. Snape had been a Death Eater, he had clearly taken no issue in allying himself with people like the Lestranges. Maybe he had even fought alongside them in battle.

Bile rose in Harry's throat as his anger intensified, and he found himself clenching his fist as he stared down at his feet.

Why did Dumbledore always defend Snape? How could he possibly defend a man who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with people so sadistic they were barely human? And even beyond that, why on Earth would Dumbledore hire him as a professor?

"I have no doubt, Harry, that given what you saw in the Pensieve, you will wish to ask me about Professor Snape."

Dumbledore looked at Harry intently, his light blue eyes seeming to gaze straight into Harry's skull.

Harry spoke reluctantly, feeling almost ashamed. "Professor Moody warned me about him. And Karkaroff. And in the trial, Karkaroff confirmed that-"

"Alastor does not know Severus as I do," Dumbledore said, his voice heavy. He walked to his chair and sat down, gesturing for Harry to do the same. "Like Karkaroff, Professor Snape was once a Death Eater. Also like Karkaroff, Professor Snape left the service of Voldemort before the latter's downfall. But unlike Karkaroff, Professor Snape has never dabbled in the Dark Arts since. Nor will he ever do so."

Harry wasn't sure what to say. He didn't share Dumbledore's conviction in Snape, but he sensed that Dumbledore had no desire to explain his reasons for trusting the potions master.

"At any rate, Harry, I believe you said that had something urgent to discuss with me."

Harry glanced quickly at the clock and saw that it was nearly eleven. More time must have passed in the Pensieve than he had realized.

"I did. My Invisibility Cloak - the one you gave me, from my father - was stolen from my dormitory tonight. Whoever took it also stencilled the Dark Mark into my headboard. That's why I was so curious about Snape and Karkaroff, because they would know how to conjure the Mark."

Dumbledore closed his eyes, his face inscrutable. A moment later he stood up again and began to pace behind his desk. After perhaps a minute, he walked over to Fawkes, who was sleeping on his perch. Harry couldn't hear what he said to the phoenix, but it woke Fawkes, who vanished a moment later in a plume of golden light.

"Professor, whoever took my Cloak … they're going to try and kill me, aren't they? In the maze?"

Harry already knew the answer, but he had to hear it again. He needed to know that he wasn't just paranoid, that he wasn't starting to become a little bit too much like Mad-Eye.

"Yes. I expect that is their plan."

Dumbledore spoke so quietly that Harry could barely hear him. He stood by Fawkes' perch a moment longer, looking deep into the ash left behind from the bird's last Burning Day.

"Come, Harry."

Harry stood up, walking over to the Headmaster so that the perch was between them. Dumbledore didn't look up.

"Harry, it is my belief that whoever entered you in this tournament did so from the start with the intent of using it as a way to conceal your murder. But if it is any consolation, I do not think you are in any immediate danger. Whoever is behind this plan has undertaken a great deal of personal risk this year. I do not believe that they would throw away everything they have worked toward by attempting to kill you before you enter the maze."

Harry took a deep breath. The ashes, which had been in a neat mound, scattered across the base of the perch when he exhaled.

He was feeling somewhat better now. It had been the shock of the theft, and the sudden belief that he would be murdered at any moment, that had sent his nerves into a flurry. It reminded him of how he had felt at one point last year when Ron had woken him in the middle of the night screaming that Sirius Black was standing in the dormitory with a knife. But now that he was able to take a step back, now that he wasn't staring at the Dark Mark on his headboard, now that he had turned the lights on and Sirius was nowhere to be seen, he found himself surprisingly unafraid. After all, he had faced death before. It always came at the end of the year, as regularly as one of his exams, and each time he had defeated it. Whatever would be waiting for him in the maze, it couldn't be worse than a Basilisk, and this time he would at least have the chance to prepare.

"Do you have any idea who it is, sir?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I am sure it is one of Voldemort's supporters who is ultimately behind it, but that tells us nearly nothing. During Voldemort's rise to power, a great number of witches and wizards were enslaved by his supporters, using the Imperius Curse. There are two types of followers that a man like Voldemort attracts, you see: he is followed by the sadistic and the cruel, yes, but also by those who thirst for power and influence yet are too cowardly to seek it themselves, and who hope simply to curry favour with him. That second type of follower often thinks themselves above violence, and so they prefer to act through subordinates, puppets, and slaves."

Dumbledore finally looked up over the top of the phoenix perch and met Harry's gaze.

"Harry, Voldemort will rise again. All the signs are there, and the prophecy you heard from Professor Trelawney last year leaves no doubt. I am also not the only one who has seen these signs: his followers have as well, and they have grown more brazen over the last months. It would not surprise me to learn that the widespread use of the Imperius Curse has begun once more and that many of this year's events were carried out by an unwilling victim. Nevertheless, I will watch closely over Igor during the task, although he seems to me too frightened of Voldemort's return to be the culprit. I will do the same for Lucius, should he-"

Dumbledore stopped abruptly in the middle of his sentence.

"You said the Dark Mark was stencilled onto your headboard? Not carved into the wood, not burned into it with magic, but stencilled?"

Harry nodded, unsure why Dumbledore had seized upon this point.

"And did you talk to the Fat Lady? Did she see anybody out of the ordinary enter the common-room?"

"I did, on my way back to the common-room. She claimed that she had left the portrait open, but it was closed when I got there."

"Left it open?"

"She said she spent the whole evening in a different portrait, with a few friends. She wanted to save herself the trouble of needing to go back repeatedly to let people in."

"And so she wouldn't have seen anything," Dumbledore said under his breath.

"I've sent for Alastor," he continued at a normal volume, "and I will ensure that he monitors the grounds as well on the day of the task, but he is only one wizard, and he cannot possibly see everything. Regardless, given the binding contract that was created by the Goblet of Fire, you will have no choice but to enter the maze, and once you do so I will not be able to intervene. Whatever happens in there will be determined by your own strength and yours alone."

Harry, unfortunately, had figured as much. He reminded himself to make sure he took up Hermione on her offer to make him a training plan. Of course, there was nothing he could do if someone under the Cloak just decided to hit him with a Killing Curse, but somehow that didn't feel likely to him. The whole point of entering him into the tournament was to make his death seem accidental, and so using the Killing Curse would ruin that plan. It was more probable that the plan was to make it appear as if he had been killed by one of the obstacles in the maze (maybe the three-headed snake?) and that would give him a chance to fight back.

"I'll also have Alastor train you in more advanced combat magic," Dumbledore said, even though Harry had remained silent. "I can safely bend the rules of the tournament to that extent, at least."

"Thank you."

Harry felt as though he should ask more questions, that he should take advantage of the fact that this time (for once) he had advance warning of the danger he was in, but it had been a very, very long day and it was hard to focus on anything. Despite that, one thought repeatedly drifted back into his otherwise empty mind, stubbornly refusing to go away.

"Professor, I was wondering … why would one of Voldemort's followers want to kill me so desperately? What could they possibly gain from it?"

Dumbledore glanced up over Harry's shoulder at the clock before responding.

"You are well known for being the instrument of Voldemort's downfall, Harry. I would imagine that some of his more desperate followers might think, wrongly, that killing you would undo the magic that vanquished Voldemort and thus return him to this world."

That made some sense, Harry supposed, but it didn't explain everything. In fact, the more he thought about what he knew, going all the way back to the night his parents had died, the less sense it all made.

"But then why did Voldemort himself come after me and my parents in the first place? And for that matter, how could they have known in advance that they needed a Secret-Keeper? And once he'd killed my parents, why would Voldemort even bother with killing me? I was practically a baby at the time, I was no threat to him."

Dumbledore took a step back from the phoenix perch, walking over to look at a portrait on the wall. It was, Harry presumed, a portrait of a former headmistress, but the witch within it was soundly asleep.

"Your parents were among the few people that dared to openly resist him," Dumbledore said after a long pause. "Once the Death Eaters moved against the McKinnons, many families in the resistance feared that they might be next. I performed the Fidelius Charm in order to hide as many of them as I could from him, but such a charm is useless if, as in the case of your parents, they put their faith in the wrong person."

Dumbledore turned back around to face Harry, a single tear running down the side of his nose.

"But at any rate, Harry, I fear that I have kept you too late, for without your Cloak you run the risk of encountering Mr Filch on your way back to Gryffindor Tower."

Harry took the hint, bidding Dumbledore a good night as he left. He was exhausted - the clock in Dumbledore's office had shown that it was midnight when he had left - but he still felt far better than he had earlier in the day. He felt as though his life, which had been slowly spiralling away from him recently, was coming back under his control. He knew now, more or less, what to expect from the third task of the tournament, and he could prepare for it. Before long, the cloud that had been hanging over him ever since his name had emerged from the Goblet of Fire would finally pass, and he could enjoy spending what was left of the school year with Ron and Hermione.

Hermione. She was the other wonderful part of today. Ever since shortly after the second task, when he had realized that she wasn't just another friend to him, he had been on edge, trying to keep that secret from her even as he searched for hints that she might feel the same way. He no longer had to worry about that. Sure, there was a whole new host of things to be nervous about, but it was an excited kind of nervous, a good kind. He found himself smiling again, and even the Fat Lady's annoyed sigh when he woke her to give the password wasn't enough to ruin his mood.

Harry crept up into his dormitory as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake anybody, and was surprised to see that his part of the room was more or less back in order. His bed was made, albeit very messily, and his things had been put back in his trunk. The lid, no longer functional, had been laid over top of the trunk anyway.

"You're welcome," Ron slurred sleepily from the next bed over as Harry crawled into his own.

"Thanks, Ron," Harry said quietly. "G'night."

Harry's bed felt remarkably good after the day that he'd had. It didn't take him long to drift into a dreamless sleep, but just before he did, some still-active part of his mind realized something.

Dumbledore hadn't answered his very last question.