A/N: Okay, I know this part isn't half so long as the others and probably won't make much sense just yet, but I decided not to hold onto it until I've finished the next chapter because, well, you people are spamming me, and frankly several of you are starting to scare me. ::nervous laughter:: Anyhoozle, everything that happens in here is fully explained in the next chapter (well, as much as I ever explain anything ^_^), and several loose ends are dealt with. Also, since several of you have been wondering, no, I haven't forgotten the whole business with Silversleeves, and there is a reason that Lupin and Sirius were able to bring Doors back--you'll just have to wait until chapter after next to find out what it is. :) Contrary to popular belief, I do plot these things out in advance....(Well, sort of. ^_^)

The Inevitable Catastrophe

While the Hall proceeded to throw itself into a chaos that would have put a Three Stooges' movie to shame, Harry scrambled to locate Ron and Hermione. Just as the inferno of the arbor was doused he found them, both white-faced and fighting their way to the fringes of the room. No sooner had he run into his aunt than a thought had occurred to him, and the sooner he could act on it, the better.

"Harry!" Ron cried, looking shaken. Someone had trod on the hem of his brown dress robes, ripping all the stitching out, and Hermione had half a large red poinsettia blossom sticking straight up in her hair. Both of them were scared nearly witless.

"Oh, Harry, is it really--him?" Hermione asked tremulously, her eyes very round.

Harry, panting, only managed a grim nod. "Oh, it's him all right," he said. "Now come on, I doubt we've got long before he and his...army...get over the shock and start hammering on us with all they've got." And without another word he seized both his friends by the wrists and fairly fled, darting around Hagrid and nearly slamming into an extremely distressed McGonagall.

"Harry, where are we going?" Hermione demanded, as the three streaked through the corridors and slammed up the flight of stairs that led to Gryffindor Tower.

"I need....to get...the Neverstone," Harry choked, more out of breath than ever. Hermione looked at him as though he'd gone starkers, but Ron, who for once in his life caught on quicker, sped up with him until they reached the landing by the portrait of the Fat Lady.

"Toenail clipping, toenail clipping!" they gasped, and the Fat Lady, looking alarmed, swung forward to admit them to the deserted common room. The light was dim, for the shutters over the window had slammed and barred themselves and the fire in the grate gave only a little glow.

Hermione, clutching a stitch in her side, fell back as Ron and Harry scrabbled up the stairs to the boys' dormitory. She evidently had caught on to Harry's plan, however, for as they reached the door she pelted after them and nearly collapsed on Neville's bed.

"You're off your onion," she gasped, as Harry threw the lid of his trunk open and flung his spare robes around the room.

"No he's not, it's probably the only chance we've got," said Ron, shaking out each robe in turn. "But where is the damn thing?"

Harry, exasperated, finally flipped his trunk over and emptied its contents all over the floor. The small black orb he had been so desperately searching for rolled away across the crimson carpet, the faint speck of light deep in its center flaring brighter.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and raced to pick it up, cradling the thing in his hands. Its coldness swiftly vanished as the faint light within it grew slowly brighter, though it seemed to be taking its time about waking up.

Hermione, having caught her breath somewhat, looked at the orb with some trepidation. "Harry, I don't know if you ought to be using that thing just yet," she said, wiping her forehead. "I mean, you've never tried it before, and so little is actually known about Neverstones that they're considered highly dangerous."

Harry didn't look up to reply; the stone was humming faintly, and he could see that the colors deep within it were swirling and tumbling in a senseless, random fashion.

"Aw, sod off, Hermione," said Ron, peering intently at the stone. "What could it do?"

"Yeah, and I'm only trying to have a look at things," interjected Harry, before Hermione could open her mouth. "See just what we're up against." Tongue between his teeth he squinted hard, willing the churning smoke to make some kind of sense.

"Well then, oughtn't you be showing it to Dumbledore?" Hermione's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Harry, I seriously hope you're not thinking of taking on Voldemort single-handed again. I mean, a person's luck will only hold so far, and yours--"

"Herm, you know what Doors said; he's not supposed to show it to anyone, even us!" cried Ron, some of the color returning to his face. "He runs to Dumbledore and the whole world will know he's got one of these things, and ten to one it'll get taken away before he can use it--I say, Harry, what's wrong?"

Ron's voice was reasonably alarmed, for Harry felt himself go grey as a thick, warm, choking blackness washed over him like a smothering blanket, threatening to drown him in its ghastly depths. He threw the orb away and clutched at his head, gulping air like a near-drowned diver and choking.

"Harry!"

Ron and Hermione were kneeling beside him, both looking downright terrified. The shutters at the windows were rattling, and the orb had at last flared into full brilliance in the gloom under Seamus's bed.

Harry, still gasping, leaned over and snatched it, stumbling to his feet.

"Interference," he muttered weakly, feeling as though he might topple over at any moment. He passed a hand over his eyes, wondering just what in hell had caused such a horrible thing to come from his orb. "Too much magic--it's interfering with whatever talks through this thing, and I'm not powerful enough to clear it up."

He wondered at the words that came unbidden from his mouth--how did he know what was wrong with the thing? It was now humming warm and soothing in his hand, the colors dipping and whirling in something that at least resembled a pattern. He didn't know what, in the middle of all this mayhem, had made him think of this strange orb in the first place, but he was beginning to realize that there was more to it even that Doors had told him.

"Harry? You okay?"

He gave a start and nearly dropped the ball--both Ron and Hermione were standing beside him, staring at him in some concern.

"Maybe Hermione's right," said Ron, looking slightly askance at Harry. "Maybe you ought to leave that thing alone for now."

Harry privately agreed with him, but somehow he knew it was use the stone or get smashed into itty bitty pieces by a load of walking corpses.

However, the shutters were rattling madly now, and he realized that whatever else they did, staying up here wasn't a very wise decision.

Ron and Hermione had evidently figured this out as well, for they both started pulling him toward the door.

"Come on, Harry, even if you don't want to share that thing, we can't stay here," said Hermione, glancing nervously at the straining shutters. "Dumbledore's sure to get things calmed down down there, and there's going to be another panic if they can't find us."

She was right, and Harry knew it, but at the same time he wished both she and Ron would shut up for a minute and let him listen.

The three clattered down the spiral staircase to the common room, which seemed to be fairly rocking under the pressure from outside. Ron shoved open the portrait-hole and scrambled through, pulling Harry and Hermione after him.

Harry hung back uneasily, glancing at the orb in his hand. It would make a noticeable bulge in his pocket, and he knew that chaos or no, someone would be sure to question it.

Hermione seemed to read his mind. "Oh, for heaven's sake," she snapped, rolling her eyes. "Harry, don't you know how to disguise anything?" She pulled her wand from her belt, muttered something that sounded very much like, "Rubando", and a moment later Harry found himself holding an extremely large, rainbow-tangled rubber band ball.

"There," she said, satisfied. "You can turn it back with finite incantatem, but I wouldn't do that until you're sure you want to."

Harry looked at her in some admiration as the trio hurried on down the hall, avoiding windows wherever possible and ignoring the shouts from the paintings on the walls. The Fat Lady, who had abandoned her post sometime after letting them in, was passed out on an eighteenth-century sofa and being fanned by a gaggle of ancient Egyptian acolytes. Several suits of armor jogged clankily past them, wheezing and huffing and brandishing a lot of dusty, broken-down weapons that looked like they'd crack in half if you breathed wrong.

As they drew near the Great Hall the three made as little noise as possible, hoping to slip back into things unnoticed and avoid a massive telling-off. Harry kept his hand on the ball in his pocket the entire time, and even debated performing a Seam Charm to seal it in there.

Hermione, who was in the lead, stopped and crossed her arms. "Well, at least Lockhart got what he wanted," she said, in a tone Harry had very rarely heard her use.

"Eh?" said Ron, who was quite distracted by a large line of spiders scuttling across the far wall.

Hermione turned and looked at him. "A wedding Hogwarts will never forget." She jerked her head at the last corner near the end of the corridor, around which stood the doors to the Great Hall.

"Hoora for him," Harry muttered without much enthusiasm, debating whether or not he wanted to have his eyes open when he came around that corner.

A cursory assessment of the scene told him he didn't. One of the great wooden doors was hanging off its hinges, but things weren't looking quite so hectic inside. They had got the fire out, and most of the hysterically weeping had been herded off to one side and so weren't in the way any more.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief once he'd tiptoed through the doors, feeling oddly safer now that he was lost in the crowd again. In spite of all that was going on, he couldn't help but feel that they had a good chance of coming out on top--he was deliberately ignoring the unknown reason for Voldemort's sudden appearance, not to mention his sudden resurrection; worrying about things like that wasn't going to do anyone any good.

In the midst of the chaos, Dumbledore stood up on what was left of the altar (the arbor still sizzling and smoking behind him) and raised his hands. Silence fell as swiftly as if this were simply the Welcoming Feast.

"Students, guests, and otherwise," he said, his tone unusually serious. "In case you may not have noticed, we have something of a catastrophe on our hands."

Somewhere across the room, Lucius Malfoy snorted. Several glares and a Furnunculus curse found their way to him from various parts of the Hall.

Dumbledore continued as if nothing had interrupted him. "I must ask you all not to panic, as viable an option as that might seem right now--at any rate, not until we know more about just what is going on here. Now--"

He stopped. Harry looked at him, bewildered, until a low, fruity chuckling reached his ears, a self-satisfied snickering that could only come from one person.

He turned his head with the rest of the Hall, to look at Lockhart, looking so immensely self-important it made Harry want to gag, standing near the far doors with his hands folded like a monk. He'd somehow ditched his tuxedo robes for angelic white ones, and the Hall-wide tussle seemed to have had no effect on his wavy golden hair. He was beaming wider than Harry had ever seen him grin, every one of his gleaming white teeth sparkling to an almost blinding brilliance.

"My good Headmaster," he said, after pausing an impressive moment to give the crowd the full effect of his absurd splendor. "Why so grim? Surely you realize that the entire problem is within rein!"

Harry and the rest of the Hall stared at him as though he'd gone off his rocker. If Lockhart noticed this he didn't mind--he simply stood, waiting, Harry supposed, for someone to ask him what he meant by that.

"Barking mad," muttered Sirius, who appeared to be rather effectively 'comforting' a distraught Mrs. Chang. Nobody else spoke, however, and so Lockhart continued undaunted.

"What need have you for worry when you have me around?" he asked brightly, his grin melting seamlessly into a look of self-righteous modesty. "Am I or am I not the most accomplished wizard of the age? I mean, I think if I can handle a pack of rabid werewolves I can handle something as simple as a single Dark wizard, can't I?" He raised his eyes to the ceiling (now blackened over with a lot of very ominous-looking black clouds), hands clasped before him and expression uplifted. "It is a high and lonely destiny I serve, but someone must be willing to protect all you lesser creatures from the perils of the world."

There was a scattered (and very short) burst of applause from the various Lockharts dispersed throughout the Hall, but most of the inhabitants were staring at him in flabbergasted disbelief. Surely this idiot didn't mean what he was saying?

He most certainly did, and apparently he was by no means finished. "Why, I'd just been looking for a chance to show dear Margie the full extent of my powers. Really, I couldn't have planned this better myself."

This phrase struck Harry as extremely odd, though for a moment he couldn't figure out why.

"Oh, no way," he muttered, the pit of his stomach sinking another three notches. "He wouldn't......."

For he had remembered Lockhart's bizarre muttering at the start of this fresh nightmare, something along the lines of "They're early." Slow, horrible, and extremely unwilling comprehension dawned on him, as he realized once and for all just what a colossal idiot Lockhart was.

"You didn't," he whispered, feeling his eyes widen as he slowly advanced on the still-beaming Gilderoy. "Not even YOU could be that buggered stupid."

Lockhart's smile faded a little. "Whatever do you mean, Harry?"

"You did it on purpose," he said, his glasses dangling and giving him a frightfully crazed look. He seized Lockhart by the front of his robes, baring his teeth in a very uncharacteristic snarl. "You did it on purpose, didn't you, you bug-brained blonde prat! You brought Voldemort back so you could look like some sort of a big shot, didn't you?" Harry was breathing as hard as though he'd just run a marathon, and Lockhart was shrinking away from him.

Ringing silence fell over the Hall. It was completely unbelievable--surely nobody could be that stupid, not even Lockhart. And the look on his face told everyone quite clearly that he was.

The silence lasted for almost a full minute, as nearly two thousand extremely flabbergasted guests struggled to come to terms with this extraordinary new bit of information. Harry released Lockhart's robes, his hands trembling violently as a wave of horrible numbness washed over his brain.

The Hall likely would have stood like that interminably, had not the hands of Fate galvanized them to action once more. Lockhart was still standing there, grinning like a dolt, when there came a flurry of movement from the midst of the stillness and--

"Bloody BUGGER!"

Crack!

Lockhart staggered backward, one hand clapped to his brilliant red cheek. McGonagall had lunged forward and socked him one with all the strength she could muster, not caring that she split half her seams in doing so.

"You IDIOT!" she shrieked, catching his collar so tightly that his face reddened like a beet in a surprisingly short amount of time. "What on earth were you thinking, you stupid buggering son of a--don't you realize what you ARE?"
Lockhart, who could now officially be called terrified, looked at her helplessly. "What? I--I'm a legend!" he said weakly, his lip trembling..

"You're a FRAUD!" bellowed McGonagall, her voice as loud as though she were shouting through a magical megaphone. "A phony! A complete louse! YOU'LL SHOOT FLAMING MEATBALLS OUT YOUR BLOODY ARSE BEFORE YOU EVER STAND A CHANCE AGAINST YOU-KNOW-WHO!"

And she glared at him so ferociously it was a wonder he didn't shrivel away to a cinder on the spot.

Harry blinked, the feeling slowly returning to his brain. Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn't this, and as he stumbled back into cold reality, he realized that the great front doors were rattling so hard it could be heard even in the Great Hall.

"But...I..." Lockhart protested feebly, his face gone deathly grey. "I..." His eyes were rounder than sickles, and he was mouthing like a dying fish at something behind McGonagall. Just what became all too evident a moment later.

"You...you LIAR!" shrieked Marge, pointing a thick finger dramatically. "You horrible fake! You told me you were the greatest wizard of the age....Order of Merlin, Third Class...YOU TRICKED ME, YOU RUDDY BASTARD!" Marge's veil been ripped half off, though the density of her hairspray was keeping it stuck to her head like glue. "Why, I was right all along," she said, her tone suddenly changing. "I knew dear Sevvie was the one for me..." She rounded on Snape and Petunia, both of whom took a noticeable step backward.

Harry, who was feeling far from at ease amidst all this shouting (not to mention an unusually large torrent of expletives) rather wisely began sneaking to the fringes of the room, avoiding the sight of his aunt fairly glomped onto the Potions master.

"Oi," he muttered, wiping his forehead.

Things were looking grim for poor Snape, what with Marge bearing down on he and Petunia like an overzealous Rottweiler, but they presently grew far worse. Petunia, who was still clinging to him from her earlier fright, wrapped him in a visibly rib-crushing hug and fairly bared her teeth at Marge.

"Oh, no you don't, you fat old sea-cow," she snarled, seemingly oblivious of the look of agony on Snape's face. "You seemed to like Lockwart well enough when he was a pompous ass, and you can keep him now he's a sniveling little Nancy boy. I think you'll be very happy together."

Marge halted, looking ready to shoot some flaming meatballs of her own, but a bellow from Uncle Vernon stopped them both short.

"PETUNIA!" he roared, spit flying from his mouth and one of his beady eyes twitching. "You get away from him this instant! You're my wife, by--"

"Not anymore, I'm not!" Petunia shrieked, pulling the ring off her left hand and hurling it with surprising accuracy at Vernon's forehead. "I want a divorce!"

Uncle Vernon's eyes bulged out of his fat head at that, his face going a sickly, mottle purple and a vein standing out grotesquely at his temple. He bellowed something else, which Petunia, still crushing the breath out of Snape, struggled to shout over.

"Some family you've got there, Harry. Voldemort comes back from the dead with a horde of new friends, and all they can do is sit around and have a marital spat."

Sirius had materialized behind him, arms crossed and surveying the scene with a mixture of amusement and disgust.

"Well, now, they are Muggles," said Lupin, appearing on Harry's right. "We have to make allowances for their ignorance."

Harry shook his head. "No we don't. Nothing can excuse that much stupidity." His point was made clear by Marge, who, lost for words, picked a chair up and hurled it at her brother.

"Hey, where's Doors?" Harry asked, noticing that the inseparable trio appeared to be, well, separated.

"She had to send an owl," said Sirius, not taking his eyes off the feuding Dursleys. Aunt Marge had given up on Vernon, and was now trying, with a spectacular lack of success, to pry Aunt Petunia off an extremely unhappy-looking Snape.

"What?" Harry said, not sure he had heard right.

"She had to send an owl," Sirius repeated.

Somehow, Harry thought it better not to pry further. He had a feeling his head might explode if he tried.

Meanwhile, the Dursleys' little spat was growing more violent by the minute, and Sirius and Lupin exchanged grave glances.

"How long do you give it?" Sirius asked dryly.

"Oh, another fifteen seconds or so," responded Lupin.

Harry didn't have to ask what they meant by that--Petunia had just called Marge something he bet she definitely hadn't found in a Vanderbilt manual, when suddenly there sounded one of the loudest bangs he had ever heard in his life, followed by a shower of charred confetti, porcelain bits, and a number of brilliantly glowing flashes. Half the crowd flung themselves to the floor, thinking the castle was being stormed, and Mrs. Chang appeared seemingly from nowhere and attached herself to Sirius like a leech.

Harry felt his jaw drop, but Sirius and Lupin merely looked at one another and chorused, "The beans."

"Well, now I know why you told me to stay away from bathtub three," he muttered, slapping out a spark. "How many of those things did you plant, or do I want to know?"

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," Lupin said grimly.

How right he was. As though an invisible army were firing mortar-shells, one by one various objects around the room started blasting themselves to smithereens, scoring great scorch marks on the stone walls and singeing the tapestries. The rest of the Hall proceeded to hit the dirt, cowering under the white chairs in their wedding finery. Lucius Malfoy, havin successfully rid himself of the effects of that Furnunculus Curse, was sheltering his wife and bellowing something at their terrified butler, who was too busy trying to put out his burning eyebrows to care.

"Ugh," Harry muttered. He turned to ask Sirius how long this was going to go on for, but found that he and Mrs. Chang were a bit too busy to notice.

"Come along, Harry," Lupin said, shooting a long-suffering glance at Sirius. "Something tells me he's not going to be of much help for a while."

The last of the beans petered out as the two of them met Ron and Hermione near one of the smaller side-doors. Harry had a feeling Lupin didn't want to be around when somebody figured out what had happened, and he couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of the rude interruption Sirius was likely to get.

"All right, you three," Lupin said. "Lorna ought to be back soon enough, and she and Sirius and I can probably keep everyone distracted for a little while longer. You two--" he nodded at Ron and Hermione, both of whom were still looking extremely nervous "--need to make sure nothing interferes with Harry while he's doing his part. Harry, I want you to take the stone and find out as much as you can about what's going on outside, and tell it to Dumbledore as soon as possible. He won't ask too many questions, there's not time for them."

He glanced up and down the dim corridor, his face pale and weary. "And be careful," he added. "I don't know just what Voldemort's got out there, but I'm by no means the only werewolf around."

Harry nodded, not at all happy about having such a weight dumped on his shoulders. Sure, it was all well and good to play with the thing, but what did he know about really using a Neverstone? Suppose he tried to see outside and got nothing but rainbow smoke and a lot of fuzz?

He didn't worry long, however, for before he realized what he was doing he found himself trotting up the dim corridor, Ron and Hermione at his heels and his hand clutched so tightly around his pocket that his knuckles were white. For a moment he puzzled over just where his pattering feet were taking him, until he passed the portrait of Sir Cadogan-surrounded by a gaggle of World War One nurses-and he realized with sinking heart that the Neverstone was drawing him to the North Tower.

"Harry?"

Harry turned, an odd feeling of vertigo washing over him. Ron and Hermione were both hanging nervously back, their eyes fixed on his pocket. Not bothering to look down, he pulled the orb out and was nearly blinded.

Though still a rubber band ball, the Neverstone was shimmering brighter than Harry would have thought possible. It made all of them wince and squint, and Harry, feeling very much as though he was in way over his head, wondered how on earth it was supposed to show him anything when he couldn't even look at it.

"Ugh, finite incantatem, finite incantatem!" said Hermione, shielding her eyes.

In one swift, fluid movement, the orb melted from rubber band ball to its normal form, the light dimming to a tolerable level.

"Well," Harry said shakily, aware now more than ever of just how powerful the stone was. "Let's…get to it, shall we?"

Ron and Hermione looked anything but willing, but no sooner had Harry spoken than the silvery ladder to Professor Trelawney's room descended with a thud, making them all jump.

Harry looked at it, and at the orb. "Oi," he muttered eloquently.

The Divination classroom was almost unrecognizable without its usual blanket of sweet smoke. Harry blinked a moment in the dimness, avoiding the rattling shutters and taking a nervous seat at one of the round tables.

"Do you...do you know what to do with it?" Hermione asked tremulously, sitting across from him.

Harry shook his head. "I think it's more like does it know what to do with me," he said.

Ron took the other chair, he and Hermione both eying Harry as though he were a bomb that might explode at any second. It made him more nervous than ever, and try as he might to collect his scattered thoughts, all he wound up with was a faint ringing in his head.

He set the orb in the center of the table, cupping his hands around it to keep it from rolling off the table. His stomach felt like it was about to fall right out and land on his feet, when suddenly the light of the Neverstone changed.

Harry let out a faint croak that nobody heard, bending down until the tip of his nose was mere inches from the whirling rainbow surface of the ball. "What the--"

His words were cut off by a sudden violent jar, which pitched him forward and seemed to suck him down some giant drain hole. The colors whirled around him, enveloping him in a blurred cocoon like some weird insect.

With a strangled cry he plummeted what seemed like the entire length of the Tower, stopping suddenly in the middle of, of all things, a garden.

At least, he thought it was a garden, but no garden he had ever seen looked quite like this. Dull, clouded grey light shone down on a green lawn stiff with frost-wherever this was, it had escaped the reach of the smothering snow. A high white wall covered in some creeper loomed before him, old and half-tumbled into the strange plants below it. Interspersed among the greenery were a load of odd little humps, about waist-height and covered in little colored flowers that looked oddly like-

"Tie-dye," Harry muttered, throwing up his hands. "Lovely, it's spreading."

He was quite willing to ignore the complete bizarreness of the situation and get on with his business, but at that moment a door swung open in one of the strange little barrows, and out popped a creature Harry identified at once, though he hadn't seen one since fourth year.

It was a small thing, perhaps a foot in height, dressed all in green tweed and leather and sporting a very odd hat over a shock of hair redder than Ron's. It held a small pipe in its tiny hands, and there was a decidedly furtive look on its clever, pointed face.

"Blasted women," it muttered, in a brogue thicker than Mrs. Finnigan's. "A body's got to have a smoke of a mornin', and hang the cold!"

He brought a tiny match up to his pipe and puffed merrily away, and Harry, for a moment struck dumb by the sight of a leprechaun so close, shook himself.

"Er--" he said, not quite not quite knowing how to talk to such a creature, and given his past experiences with things like this, not at all certain the little blighter would even see him. "Er-can you see me?" he asked.

The leprechaun jumped, dropping his pipe to the cobblestones with a clatter.

"Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph!" it fired indignantly, shooting Harry a withering glare as he retrieved the pipe. "Is tha' any whey to snaek up on a body?"

Harry let out a sigh of relief. "Sorry," he said. It's just…."

He stopped, the full absurdity of his situation finally dawning on him. Here he was, in the midst of what could potentially be the greatest war in all of magical history, talking to a leprechaun in some garden that very likely existed only inside an extremely strange glass ball. He had no real idea how he'd gotten here, nor the faintest clue how he was supposed to get back, and for all he knew his real self was having seizures on the floor of Professor Trelawney's room somewhere far away.

The leprechaun puffed his pipe thoughtfully. "Lad," he said, crossing his arms as though about to deliver a statement of profound import, "Ye look like someone just fed ye a plum cake made o' prunes."

And Harry, to his very great surprise, snorted.

The little creature shivered, taking another draw at his pipe. "Ye've got a familiar look about ye," he said, his bright brown eyes scrutinizing Harry closely. "What's yer name?"

"Harry Potter," Harry answered instantly, not bothering to care what the little creature did with this knowledge-he had a funny feeling that his feet were turning into blocks of ice where he stood.

Harry was used to having witches and wizards do a slight double take at his name, but he never figured that any of the Little People would have cause to know who he was. The leprechaun, however, gave such a start that his pipe once again tumbled to the stones, this time landing with a rather nasty crack.

"Ye're no'," he said, grabbing the front of Harry's robes and pulling him down to his eye level. He stared at him for nearly a minute, one eye narrowed as he inspected some invisible something in Harry's face.

"Blimey," it muttered weakly. "Ye are." And before Harry had a chance to blink, he found his hand seized in a surprisingly strong grip, as the leprechaun pumped it up and down.

"It's a pleasure t' meet ye, lad," he said, grinning from ear to pointed ear. "Name's Conn O'Lenihan. I've been a-waitin' to meet ye fer years now."

Harry stared at him, bewildered.

"Er," he offered, his mind suddenly blanker than Crabbe's face.

Conn the leprechaun looked at him keenly. "What?" he asked, suddenly suspicious. "Sure, yer aunt must a' told ye aboot all the mess in Ireland, now?"

No, his aunt had most certainly not told him anything 'aboot' the mess in Ireland. Given the fact that she had been dead for most of the summer, she hadn't told him much of anything, but obviously this little creature didn't know that. Harry cast his mind back, knowing that Doors spent her summers in Ireland but little else, when suddenly it seized upon something that could only be counted as odd.

"I wonder, will she want to come back?" Lupin murmured.

Sirius sighed once more, but this time Harry could sense a smile along with it. "Want to? Remus, what with all that's been going on in Ireland, what with all that will be going on soon, it's a wonder she hasn't found a way back on her own before now."

Clearly, Ireland must be where he was now, and Harry had a nasty suspicion that he was about to find out just what madness was going on here, whether he wanted to or not.

He was right enough about that. The little creature regarded him keenly for a moment, before cracking into a grin that would have made both Weasley twins run away yipping in fear.

"Come on, lad," he said, taking Harry's finger in his little hand. "Let me show you somethin'."

He pulled Harry over to a small door in the tumbled wall, shoved it open, and grinned even more wickedly. And Harry, looking out at what lay beyond it, could only stare, his jaw dropping like a stone.

Voldemort was in BIG trouble.

A/N #2: Yeah, I know that's an evil place to leave you, but the next chapter's not far behind, and I think you'll all live until then. My parts are going to start getting a lot shorter, but there'll also be a lot less time in between posts--the one good thing about this whole chapter system is I don't have to put up such monster installments. Please don't flame me; I promise, this IS going somewhere.

SpamWarrior

P.S. Slight question: I have a rather massive original work that I've actually sent to a publisher, but which I was thinking of posting on FF.N for a while anyway, and my query is, would any of you read it? It's certainly a bit different from my other work (it actually has a plot, for one thing), but Lizyrd's read it and I think enjoyed it, so if anybody wants me to, I just might stick it up for a while. ^_^