1 Chapter 2

2 Captain



There was a sound similar to the shrill whistle of the Hogwarts Express train and then something bulldozed right onto Harry's bed, quick as lightning and twice as shocking. "Wake up, lazy buns!"

Harry's eyes flew open and settled on a shapeless mass, balanced on his bed before him like a statue. He couldn't see who it was, and the voice seemed garbled due to how he was so sleepy. His hand groped the side-table beside his bed for his glasses, and he quickly put them on.

The image on his bed transformed into Hermione, fully dressed in her Hogwarts uniform, her hair up in a tidy bun, her eyes sparkling and ready. " Come on, Harry! You can't seriously be tired still! Today's the day the captain is announced!"

" Is it?" Harry barely managed to groan out, blinking away the last traces of sleep from his eyes.

" Yes! Don't you remember anything?" Hermione tossed his pillow at him. " Stand up and get dressed! Everyone's already eating breakfast."

" How could I have overslept?" Harry wondered to himself.

" I don't know but if you don't hurry up I'll leave." Hermione tapped her foot on the ground.

" You're wearing high heels." Harry noticed.

" So?" She flushed.

" Nothing." Harry quickly said, then stepped into the little room off to the side where he could change. Through the closed door, Hermione told him:

" They're counting ballots already."

" Really?" Harry struggled through his sleep to put on his robe, only to notice it was inside out. He mumbled something under his breath about how tired he was and then pulled the robe on correctly.

" Are you coming out or not?" Hermione asked.

" Yes, I am!" Harry burst out the door, his glasses askew on his nose, his hair even more messy then ever.

She giggled and smoothed down the front of his bangs with her hand. "You look so cute."

" Thanks." He said, sarcastically, and rolled his eyes. " I don't think I'd ever looked worse."

" Believe me, you have." She teased, and then pushed him to the door. "Now let's go!"

Harry emerged from behind the portrait of the fat lady, said a nice "Goodbye" to her (the fat lady waved and yawned back), and then they raced down the steps and into the dining hall.

Breakfast had just finished and Harry slid down by a seat at the end of the table, with Hermione right beside him. Professor McGonagall stepped up to the front of the room and held up an envelope. "We have the winner of the Gryffindor captain position and Hufflepuff captain position. Attention, please!"

The room fell into a silence.

The envelope rustled inside Professor McGonagall's hands as she opened it, then she read: " For Hufflepuff, the winner is. Rebecca Crick. And Gryffindor, by far, was Harry Potter!"

The whole room burst into applause, and Harry felt as if his heart had stopped. Then, with the push of the hands of his friends and even strangers, Harry was slowly maneuvered to the front of the room. The great hall whipped by him, banners dancing shadows across students' faces, the ceiling now illuminated with a spell so that it looked like they were outside on a sunny day, with small cotton candy clouds.

Harry stepped out onto the platform, and Professor McGonagall said to him, quietly: "Now, Harry, I'm sure you've planned out an acceptance speech?"

Not knowing what else to say without getting somewhat into trouble, Harry nodded.

" Good." Professor McGonagall's wrinkled and stern face now turned up in a smile, though still a bit stern smile. The whole audience was looking up towards Harry and Rebecca Crick. She seemed just about as cool as a cucumber, and Harry wondered how she could possibly be so secure and unworried.

" I think Rebecca Crick should begin with a speech. She, as a champion Quidditch player from Beauxbaxton, will add many new strategies to the Hufflepuff team, I'm sure." Dumbledore said.

The Hufflepuff table burst into applause. Rebecca waved to her friends (Cho stood up and cheered loudly), and then the whole room became silent in an anxious wait for the speeches.

" I, coming here, had very few vorries. I knew Hogvarts vas a very good school, and that once they saw my Quidditch skills, they'd allow me to join their teams. Never, though, had I thought I'd be captain!" Rebecca read aloud from a little paper she set up for herself. " I vill very gladly defend our team and our school! Go Hufflepuff!"

The Hufflepuff table all stood in a standing ovation. The other tables clapped politely, except Slytherin, which had mostly coughs and rude remarks.

" And now, Harry Potter." Dumbledore gently took Rebecca's elbow and pulled her back so that Harry could step up to the very center of the front of the room. Harry's ears burned. He searched his pockets, pretending that he was looking for his speech. Inside his left pocket he found a wrapper from the Chocolate Frog he ate on the train and a very dirty-looking jellybean which he didn't eat for it appeared to be moldy bread flavored. He searched his other pocket, and out fluttered the piece of paper with the poem that he'd shared with Hermione. It was perfect for appearing as a short, easy speech. Harry held it in front of him and slightly on a tilt so that Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall couldn't read the true writing on the paper.

Harry began, after clearing his throat in front of the absolutely silent room. " I . . . am very thankful for this honor for being captain. I never thought I'd be a captain, I barely expected to be anything at all. Already I . . . I . . . " Harry's mind whirred with thoughts as to what he should say. The room waited in a lull, but somewhere in the corner Harry heard Draco, Crabbe and Goyle all go into coughing fits, very coincidentally with the time he paused his speech. " I . . . I've been Seeker, which seemed like just about the greatest thing I could be." Harry continued. " Now I am corrected, I'm captain of Gryffindor. I'm grateful for all the votes for me . . . Go Gryffindor!"

The room burst into applause. Even Professor McGonagall cheered. " Well done, Harry. Interesting speech. How did it fit on such a small paper?" She asked Harry, once the cheering died down.

" Oh, I don't know." Harry shrugged.

People surged towards Harry and Rebecca, pushing their hands out, waiting to shake hands and congratulate the new Captains. Hands of all sizes brushed onto Harry's - people with warm fingers, people with icy fingers, some with rings that scratched, others with blisters that felt a bit odd to the touch. He saw Hermione's face in the grounds and pushed towards her. "Herm! I did it! I'm captain!" He exclaimed to her.

" I knew you could do it!" She grinned and then shook his hand. " Congratulations, Harry."

" Thanks." Harry smiled shyly. More hands made their ways into Harry's. Then, suddenly, a particularly cold one felt his fingers, a touch he seemed to remember from somewhere. The hand frightened the reality from him - it was so moist and clammy it was almost soaking in sweat, and yet, it was so unbearably frozen to the touch that Harry didn't quite know what to call it.

A low, slimy voice, similar to the one in his dream, let out a slithering, single word: " Harry . . . "

Then, suddenly, Harry felt his body lurch forwards, almost completely devoid of any life of its own. Thin screams echoed in his mind, people panicking as he collapsed onto the floor. His knees gave a hollow thud that echoed in his ears, then his scar seemed to erupt with a painful fire as he fell onto his face.

His eyes looked up, and he struggled to get up, but his body seemed different, not his own. But from the corner of his left eye he could see the tall, black, lace-up shoes with the golden buttons - Voldemort's shoes.

Harry tried to identify the shoes to a single owner, but when he looked closer, they were gone. He was seeing things.

" Harry? Are you alright?" Dumbledore was pushing through the crowd.

By now, Harry felt his scar thunder once again, and then he saw something pooling under his face, something maroon in color and quickly spreading on the floor. Then, he only saw black.

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The insides of Harry's eyelids turned orange-yellow and his eyes shot open, surprised at the pour of sunlight that was shining onto him. Almost immediately, he propped himself up, looking around himself wildly. " What happened?" He asked aloud.

" You ask me!" Hermione was sitting beside his bed, her eyes red and puffy. " It was you that was doing the thing that was happening. You should know."

" I . . . I don't know. I fell." Harry's hand moved upwards to his forehead, which felt tight. His fingers felt the stretchy, soft material of a bandage over his scar, wrapping around and tied in back, the knot hurting his head.

" You were bleeding, Harry. From your scar!" Hermione said.

" I must have cut it open when I fell." Harry reasoned.

" Must you ruin the mysterious moment?" Hermione laughed, pushing a strand of brown hair back from her face.

" I really think that this is nothing to get worked up about." Harry tried to sit up farther then just an awkward balance on his elbows but he dropped back instead and his cheek slapped against his pillow.

" Harry, you'll be in here for the day. Madame Pomfrey isn't done mending you up. The blow to your scar will leave a mark unless she works on it."

" But my classes!" He grumbled.

" I'll come give you notes from the classes we share." Hermione assured his worries.

" I hate falling behind. Especially any class with Snape. He's absolutely nuts, that's why. He'll kill me. Strangle me." Harry let out a slow, wavering breath. " He hates me, you know."

" You're just imagining, Harry!" Hermione said. " Snape's all crusty and bitter on the outside, but I'm sure he doesn't really have that much hatred inside. There's just people like that in this world, just like there's some of those incredibly nice people that dump all their things if they can help someone."

" Yeah." Harry hugged the covers closer to himself. " You don't think that. something's wrong? Very wrong?"

" What do you mean?"

" My scar really shouldn't be hurting this bad." Harry replied.

" Wait. You feel because of your scar? I thought you tripped. Everyone out there . . ." Hermione pointed out the door at a large crowd of students bustling to classes. " . . . thinks you were so nervous you stumbled."

" It was my scar." Harry told her, in a low and secretive voice.

" Oh, man. that changes a lot of things." Hermione sighed, her eyes looking downwards. " You don't think that You-Know-Who's gonna go after you or something?"

" Well, I don't know!" Harry burst out. " Professor Trelawney told me a whole bunch of nonsense yesterday about how she sees misfortune coming up and friend's sacrifices . . ."

" Not her again." Hermione looked around to see if Madame Pomfrey was near, then told Harry in a voice many tones lower then she normally spoke: " Professor Trelawney is a joke. She probably gets all her fortunes from the horoscopes in magazines or something. Really, for someone like you to believe that garbage."

" I wouldn't be so sure about that. I mean - I'm not a chicken or anything, but I don't know if I should be captain anymore. I should sort of blend back because Volde - - You-Know-Who is free as a caboose." Harry shivered. His fingertips felt freezing-cold, and when he clenched his fists together, the cold practically froze his hands. " Madame Pomfrey really should put some spell on this room to keep it warmed up."

" It's not that bad." Hermione was dressed in her warmest clothing.

" How'd you get out of class, anyway?" Harry asked.

She shrugged. " Professor McGonagall told me she'll take care of things and that I can go see you."

" Did other people come see me?" Harry already knew the answer, for the floor had dozens of muddy tracks on it which led somewhat close to his bed then back out of the room.

" Yeah, a few. Most teachers didn't let their students out of class to see you, though." Hermione stood up and then went to pick up a little crystal bowl that stood perched on an end table. " I brought some jelly beans, the kind you like."

" Oh. Thanks." Harry took a handful and tried the first one from the top. " Gross! Peanut butter!"

" You don't like peanut butter?" She asked.

" No! It's horrible. Especially the creamy kind!" He tried another one. " Take some for yourself, too."

" I guess I will." She didn't seem too eager to try it herself. Hermione had always had bad luck with Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans - she ended up with all the worst ones.

" Well, if it isn't a romantic meeting between Mudblood and Potter." A voice all too-familiar sounded from the doorway. Harry said, not looking up:

" Go away, Malfoy."

" What are you doing here, anyway? Not to see Harry, from what I know." Hermione asked.

" From what I know." Draco repeated, in a high falsetto voice. " I know everything! I'm the great know-all Mudblood!"

" Stop calling me that." She said, firmly.

" If you have to know, I'm here to see Crabbe. He got zapped with the Toothless curse, remember?" Draco looked at Harry with contempt. " You look absolutely pitiful."

" Thanks." Harry shot back, unmoved.

" That wasn't a compliment, you fool!" Draco looked visibly upset.

" Thanks again." Harry knew if there was one thing that made Draco Malfoy steam behind his collar, it was to take his insults as if they were compliments. The same went for the Dursleys - the more Harry seemed to enjoy their abuse, the less they did it for it discouraged them.

" Maa - fooo!" A strange voice called out.

" Oh, Crabbe, you dimwit." Malfoy groaned. " How are we gonna put a snake in McGonagall's office with you in this shape? It spoils a week's worth of fun."

Malfoy walked over to Crabbe's bed, his eyes studying the damage on his friend. " Smile for me, Crabbe." Malfoy finally ordered.

Crabbe did, revealing a mouth full of tiny white caps that didn't come out more then two millimeters above the gums. Crabbe's teeth had only begun to come in and the speeded-up growth time would be another eight or so hours. Harry could remember the pain of growing teeth from his own childhood, though rather bleakly, and so he knew how awful it was if the pain was multiplied about a hundred times or so, judging by how much less time it would take with the speeding-up.

" What are you staring at? Mind your own business!" Malfoy snarled, seeing how Harry was looking at Crabbe's reddened, swollen and painful gums.

" I'm not staring." Harry replied, and then turned away from Malfoy and Crabbe to speak to Hermione: " You should go."

" You're right. There's not much that I can say with HIM here." She looked up at Draco with a grimace on her face. " But. . . I do think that you should tell Dumbledore about the burning in your scar."

" I know, I know." Harry suddenly turned around again for Malfoy was speaking to him:

" By the way, I think you should can it with the fainting trick. It worked with the Dementors, but now its growing old."

" I didn't fake it!" Harry protested, then added, under his breath: " Jerk."

" I heard that." Malfoy approached Harry's bed and stared into his eyes angrily. " We still have a score to settle, scar-face, so you better stay out of my way."

Hermione had by now stood up and was ready to leave, so she said: " I'll be going, so I can continue writing notes down for you - Snape did mention ghastly amounts of notes."

" Take care." Harry told her, then turned back to find Malfoy helping himself to the jellybeans Hermione had left behind on the end table. " Hey!"

" Hay's for horses, Potter." Malfoy stuck another jellybean into his mouth, then spit it out. " Agh! Black pepper! You can have it, Harry." He threw it down on Harry's bedspread. It rolled down and into his shoe.

" Serves you right." Harry laughed as Draco hobbled off to the corner of the room to sit down and remove the candy from his boot.

" Draco, honey, I advise you return to your classes, too." Madame Pomfrey said from the doorway.

Once Malfoy was gone, Harry spent a good time sorting the jellybeans from Hermione into little groups, then grew so bored he decided to get up and walk around.

He felt weak, and his muscles were all worn out for some strange reason, but he managed. Madame Pomfrey saw him, though, and Harry had to spend the rest of the day helping her sort bed sheets by size, so that they'd match to the various-sized beds.

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The next day, Harry went seamlessly through his classes, not really having the day go either way - not a good one, not a bad one. Other then a load of homework from Herbology, he was surprised with how little work he had left to do. Deciding to go to the procrastinating side of him (just a bit of it there), and went to take a walk around the Hogwarts grounds. It was a great day to be outside, after all, and there was at least an hour until dinnertime.

Just as he walked into his common room (he had to say 'Cricket Elbow' a good ten times before the fat lady woke up inside her painting), and right after dropping his bag down onto the floor with a thump, he was surprised to see Neville engrossed in a book.

" Neville?" Harry asked.

The boy looked up, and then said: " Oh, hi, Harry. I'm just trying to study a bit for Potions."

" You hate Potions!"

" Snape's being nice lately. I wanna take the advantage and get on his good side. It's really for the best of it." He flipped the page. " Harry, what's a. . . Whilltilly, again?"

" It's a beet with bones." The taller of the two boys replied.

" Thanks." Neville scribbled a few notes in the margin of his book with a quill, then set the book down. " Where are you going, anyway?"

" Just for a walk." Harry motioned outside through the open window in the common room. " Can't you see how nice it is?"

" Not really. My grandmother says it isn't really healthy to stay out in very bright sunlight. It'll give you the most awful freckles. I've enough to worry about right now, anyway." Neville grumbled unhappily.

" You shouldn't worry so much. Your brain will shrivel up and fall out your nose - like a raisin." Harry's hand shot up to his forehead to adjust his bandage, which had slipped down awkwardly. He was to wear it for a few more hours, just until the spell was done and the ugly mark from his fall will disappear, leaving him with only the original lighting-bolt scar.

" Raisins. I hate those." Neville sniffled loudly. " Do you smell that?"

Harry looked sickened. " Who smelt it dealt it."

" No! What I mean is. I could swear that I could smell something burning." Neville shrugged. " The kitchen elves make mistakes, though. Or maybe Hagrid's gotten another dragon."

" Hagrid. . . I know! I should go see him. He's probably down ever since Dumbledore pulled out on his class. It's just been too accident prone, and all."

" You do that." Neville pulled his book open again. " I have MAJOR studying to do."

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The sunlight indeed was exceedingly bright outside. Harry's arm went up immediately in an instinct to shield his eyes from the brightness. The whole Hogwarts grounds looked magical at this time of the year, and he wanted to get a good glimpse of things. He'd forgotten how red tree leaves could get and how crystal-clear the blue sky could be as clouds rolled lazily across, some small little stretches of cottony white, others long and spattered like fish scales.

Just as Hagrid's little hut came into view, Harry's attention drifted to the bushes nearby. Instead of the usual peace and quiet, someone was making an unnatural amount of noise. Now even an elephantine bird could rustle a bush that way.

Then again, forest creatures would often wander out of the lush woods in order to feed on the fall growth of grass. The Hogwarts staff had no problem with it, for the grass would end up dying anyhow over the winter.

Suddenly, Harry heard the one voice that he most certainly didn't expect: " So, out for a stroll?"

" I just want to see Hagrid." Harry replied to the light-haired boy, who was advancing towards Harry with a suspiciously quick gait. " So leave me alone."

Now that Malfoy was out in the open, Harry saw that Goyle accompanied him. Goyle's mouth was opened stupidly as he gawked at Harry.

" I see you brought along your fan club." Harry said, stiffly. "You have a way of attracting only a certain class of followers."

" You be quiet, Potter. We have a fight to carry out. You've done something nobody had dared do - you called me a jerk. You cast the Evacus spell on me. Then, you told me to shut up. I say I have the perfect right to knock you to your senses - literally."

" Not if I can help it!" Harry turned and was ready to run but Malfoy was quicker. His hand slapped down onto Harry's back and Harry skidded, his foot diving into a giant mud puddle and then sinking down to at least mid- calf. The mud oozed out a single bubble near the top.

" Oh, but you can't help it." Malfoy then slowly stepped closer, giving Harry a powerful shove backwards. The blow caught Harry off guard and he pummeled back onto his side, his leg popping out from the mud and splashing brown dirt all over Malfoy's white breeches.

" You oaf!" Malfoy choked out. "My new pants!"

" You should have saved them for a happy occasion. Like your funeral." Harry had by now stepped back and tried to slink away like a cat, still proud, still full of an elegance of valor yet submissiveness in a wise retreat. " Goyle can make a casket."

" Bring your own casket!" Malfoy hissed. " You're the one going down!"

" I don't want to fight." Harry sighed.

" Too bad!" Malfoy's hand grasped Harry's robes right under the chin and he slowly lifted Harry up an inch from the ground. Despite how it made Harry angry, Malfoy was stronger then him.

" What are you doing? Do you want us kicked out of school?" Harry gasped.

" I have a witness." Malfoy motioned with a smug face at Goyle. Goyle was standing like the idiot he was, casually picking his nose, the perfect example of the best witness to have - stupid and easy to manipulate. Malfoy continued, a bit upset at how his witness appeared: " My witness will say anything I want him to, just the way it happened - according to me! I can make it look just as if you're to blame."

Harry's face ran with sweat as he struggled to get out of Malfoy's tight grasp. The fingers holding his collar grew tighter together until Harry couldn't breathe, except for tight wheezes deep in his throat. " Nobody will believe Goyle! He's a complete fool!"

" Oh! Now you insult my friends! Smart move." Malfoy let go of Harry and he fell to the ground.

Harry knew this was to either be beaten to a pulp or to fight back. Either way, it was a no win-no win situation. So, with fear clutching his insides, Harry punched out at Malfoy's legs.

Malfoy tried to back away but the punch hit him in the shin. "No fair! I wasn't looking." Malfoy hopped backwards, then lunged towards Harry, his fingers digging into Harry's hair, pulling hard.

" Ow!" Harry kicked upwards into Malfoy's stomach and Malfoy flipped over him. Harry jumped up and then ran. His feet thundered, his heart exploded with every beat, but he kept going. Before he could reach Hagrid's hut, though, Malfoy had caught up and pushed him down. Then, sitting down on the ground beside Harry, he punched blindly at the black-haired boy. Harry's glasses flew into the grass, and he was nearly blinded. Also, his eyes were directed at the sun and he couldn't see anyhow.

Finally, just as Harry wondered when he'll die, Draco stopped hitting him and cried out: " Run!"

Then, he jumped to his feet and raced with Goyle down the Hogwarts grounds, his robes billowing in the wind. Harry sat up, cringing in pain, his fingers touching the cut on his lip, then drawing upwards to the stream of blood going down from his nose.

" Harry! Harry, are ya alright there?" Hagrid called out.

" Hagrid! It was Malfoy! He. he." Harry couldn't speak anymore. His hurt pride, the pain he felt inside his heart, everything was exploding from him now.

" Ay, Harry, must ya always be the center of attetnion? Yer not gettin' off too easy from this all." Hagrid's giant hand reached out to Harry. Harry took it and then stood up shakily.

" Yer a mess!" Hagrid continued. " Y'know this ain't gonna go over well with Professor McGonagall, eh?"

Harry just nodded.

" Well, say something."

Harry shrugged. " What's there to say? I feel like an idiot."

Far off in the distance, Malfoy and Goyle were racing up into the Hogwarts main entrance, both looking as if they'd seen a ghost. Harry turned to ask Hagrid: " You saw them, didn't you? It wasn't my fault. They were beating ME!"

" Of course it ain't yer fault, Harry." Hagrid sighed. " Draco has his band o' followers, and a powerful father, though. If they can get someone in trouble, it's you."

" Why?" Harry asked.

" I don't rightly know. Yer always so much better then Draco ever was that he's jealous." Hagrid had by now managed to push Harry into his humble cabin.

Once inside, Hagrid treated the more bloody of Harry's injuries, while telling him a few moral stories to abide the time. Then, Hagrid took Harry's glasses from outside and tried to fix them with tape but the glass crumbled completely and one side of the glasses was completely devoid of any glass.

By the time Harry had left Hagrid's cabin, his head was full of thought and his hands were full of ice, which was wrapped in a cloth and which he kept bringing up to his lip to keep it from swelling. Soon he and Neville would both have fat, swollen lips. But it didn't matter now. Harry just wanted to go to his room and fall asleep.

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The dining hall was alit with merry candles. Harry tried to sneak by through the back passageways, but before he could go very far, someone said: " Oh! Look who's here!"

Harry turned, expecting the worst, and saw Ginny. " Ginny!" Harry exclaimed. " You're here! That means Ron's here!"

" That's right. We're here early." She suddenly narrowed her eyes. " What's wrong with your lip? It doesn't look right."

" It doesn't matter. How's Charlie?" Harry asked.

" He's alright now, but I'm not really supposed to say what happened to him until the Ministry of Magic gets through with processing the information." Ginny then winked. " I'm sure Ron will fill you in on any secret, naturally."

" Thanks Ginny." Harry smiled and she waved to him as he raced to his common room.

Indeed, he found Ron unpacking in the common room, his bag lying wide open and dozens of sweaters and odd-fitting pants strewn on his bed. Ron turned at the sound of footsteps and nearly killed Harry when he ran towards him: " Oh, Harry! Where'd you go? I was going crazy to find you! I have so much to tell you, its not even funny!"

" What happened with Charlie?" Harry asked, seriously.

" Oh, it's the weirdest thing." Ron sat down on his bed, using his hand to push away at least a dozen sweaters, all stacked up one on another on his bed. " First, though, what happened to your lip? And your whole face, for that matter?"

" What do you mean? I always look this way." Harry joked, trying to look as if he were authentically angry though he really wasn't.

" You do?" Ron looked a bit upset, as if wondering if he should apologize or if it were a joke.

" Just kidding." Harry said. " Actually, I had a bit of a fight with Draco."

" Really? Tell me what happened! Did you win?" Ron's face lightened up with hope at news of having Draco Malfoy beaten to a pulp by his archenemy.

Harry started saying the whole story over again, his memory clicking along with the events in the order they happened. Then, he paused. " I. I didn't win."

" You didn't?" Ron gaped at him in surprise.

" Nope. In fact, I lost about as bad as possible. If Hagrid hadn't come along, I'd look twice as bad." Harry shivered at the thought. " My glasses are ruined, by the way."

" They look fine to me." Ron said.

Harry poked his finger in through the side of his glasses where there was no longer any glass.

" Oh, wow! You're lucky you didn't get any of the glass in your eye." Ron exclaimed.

" I know." Harry sighed. " Now, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Tell me about Charlie!"

" Well, it's a long story. here goes."

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" Alright, Harry. You know how the Ministry of Magic contacts my dad the minute something's up and not the way it should be, either? Well, the minute something happened to Charlie, my dad got a message.

" To me, it was strange the way my dad came home all upset and almost deranged to an extent. He took my mum to a side room and they talked for goodness-knows how long! Ginny and I had sneaked up to the kitchen doorway to listen, but I couldn't really catch anything since Fred was upstairs with George, working away on some new prank thing.

" Did I tell you, by the way, about how Fred ended up setting his desk on fire that day? No? Well, he did. Anyway, finally, when my mother and father decided it was only right to tell us why they were being so weird and secretive, they took us all into the kitchen and they something about how Charlie is ill and we should all go to see him in Norway.

" Of course, I thought it was a normal illness, not some huge mumbo- jumbo. Heck, I didn't really worry that much at all. We took the Floo Powder way to Norway, you know, right into Charlie's office. He works with dragons, you know that already.

" It appears that Charlie had been working at his desk for a long time, and getting real tired, trying to document the new English Whitescale they got. I don't think I told you about that either.

" Aye, it's a beautiful dragon. White as snow, I'm telling you. To top it off, it was just about twenty feet tall and twice that wide. Charlie was talking on and on about it.

" Moving on, it seems someone took the English Whitescale for some reason from Charlie. He was watching it, trying to sketch a picture of it while it dozed off; Charlie does those kinds of things. Just as he was nearly done sketching, a big shadow appeared on his paper. He turned, expecting to see a friendly face, but saw two red eyes.

" You-Know-Who kind of eyes, you know.

" Then, a white bony hand yanked his notebook from his hands and thew it at the English Whitescale. That's right, just whipped the notebook at the poor beast. The dragon woke up with a roar, and let me tell you, dragons don't like getting woken up with a notebook in the old block.

" The dragon kind of tried to attack the weirdo that slammed the notebook into it, but the creepy guy took out his wand and cast a spell on the dragon. It immediately became really peaceful and soothed. The stranger climbed onto the dragon's back and then flew away. But just as he was flying away, he aimed a spell at Charlie. He missed Charlie, though, but it was some sort of really powerful spell and it still had some effect on him.

" You know what spell it was, Harry? Avada Kedavra, that's what. That's what the Ministry of Magic thinks, and so that's what I think!

" Charlie was unconscious when they found him. He's really scratched up on the face and arms and stuff, because he fell down. What's worse is that. . . that . . . the stranger left a scar the shape of the Dark Mark on him.

" Oh! Charlie is so embarrassed! He'll walk around with the Dark Mark on his cheek for a week or so before the Ministry of Magic decides to zap the scar off by magic or leave it for evidence in case of anything.

" Now, I don't know what you think, but I think that it's He-Who- Shall-Not-Be-Named that came to attack Charlie. So, of course, the Ministry of Magic, and my dad especially, are busting their brains trying to solve this thing. It's really hard to figure why the Dark Lord needs an English Whitescale dragon, for goodness sakes.

" My dad, though, thinks that it's all to frighten you. I mean, you're close friends with my family, and You-Know-Who doesn't really like you much anyway, if you know what I mean. Maybe he just wanted to creep you out, to keep you on your toes in fear.

" But I don't know, Harry, this is all really scary to me now. You- Know-Who nearly killed Charlie, and now the Ministry is questioning everything from him, and also my whole family, and they might even question you.

" Did your scar burn or anything? Did you sense anything with You- Know-Who connected to it? You did? Oh, gosh, I'm creeped out, seeing you nod your head like that. You're serious? Drat.

" You-Know-Who isn't going to just take a dragon, almost kill Charlie, and then suddenly think 'Hey, I guess I caused enough panic. I think I'll go take a nap'. No! He's going to be back, Harry. If he doesn't have second thoughts about killing Charlie, he'll go after you.

" Harry? Harry, are you paying attention?

" Good. This is going to give me a sore throat in the end, saying a speech this long and all, but I really feel that I need to speak with you about this.

" You see.

" I'm worried about you, Harry. I'm worried that You-Know-Who's getting too powerful. And he's free. Free as a bird, come in the snap of a finger, poof, you're dead.

" So, Harry, what I'm saying is, I think that this all just proves that you should keep out of the spotlight. In every which and way possible. In fact, I think you should completely avoid making any particular notice of yourself. And, for Heaven's sakes, speak with Dumbledore. Talk to him.

" He'll help you, Harry. I know he will. He cares."

*¤*.¸¸.·´¨`»*«´¨`·. ¸¸.*¤*

Ron's long, frightening, and shocking speech left Harry feeling numb to the senses. He swallowed hard, his eyes studying Ron with worry. " I'm putting your family in danger, aren't I?"

" Harry, that matters about as much as the fact that I'll get a sore throat from that speech. I just want you to know we, your friends, are here for you." Ron sighed, then coughed. " I think we should go to dinner. Whatever you do, don't tell anyone about Charlie. Not Hermione, not Neville. Nobody! Promise?"

" I promise."