The halls were quiet. Much more quiet then they would ever be, should the entire student body be present. But due to the problems with the missing students, this Easter, almost all of the student body was gone.
The Weasleys remained, Hermione remained, and Harry wouldn't have left if they had dragged him away. There were a couple of Slytherins still in the school, as nobody from that house had gone missing.
In these quiet halls Ginny walked beside Harry. "Remind me again why you are here?"
She sighed. "I'm going to talk to Heather, discretely mind you, about the missing room. Otherwise I would have to make you bleed on three hundred statues. Why do you have a problem with me being here?"
"It's just, what I'm doing today, is not something I'm very proud of. The less people who see it the better."
"I'm not going to see you, you'll be in the other room. The year is going to end soon, and I want to figure this out before it's over."
Harry ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry I've been so busy. Even dropping the parenting class hasn't helped much with my work. Or dropping the dueling competition."
"It's alright, that's why I'm here," she said opening the door.
Harry threw her an odd glance that she didn't see. Something about that statement was, well it just was. He didn't have time to figure out exactly what it was because Sirius claimed his attention immediately.
He pulled Harry into the back room again. Sirius did not look his best. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair was rather scruffy. It was almost the way he had looked the first night that Harry had met him.
"Are you alright Sirius?"
The older man nodded, a finger pressed against his temple. "I just hate to do this to you."
Harry made his lips turn up in what he hoped looked like a smile. "I'll be fine, really. This can't be all that worse then some of the other things I've been learning."
Sirius gave Harry a look, then turned to a box in the corner. Out of it he pulled what looked at first like a rat. But it wasn't. There was a large thing growing out of its back that looked something like a sea anemone.
"A Murtlap. I pulled this one out of a group that was to be harvested. So he would have died anyway, if that helps you at all."
It didn't. It didn't help at all. Harry stared at the little creature that Sirius set inside a clear plastic cage. He had to kill it. In cold blood, because of Voldemort. Anger boiled. That was good. He fed the fire with all he had.
But that wasn't enough. That anger, he was feeding, everything he had stored in him, still did not make him want to kill this little rat like animal.
"Left arm behind your back, Harry."
Harry snapped out of his little daze and obeyed, swinging his left arm behind his waist. "Hold the wand in your fist. Hard. That's right. Now the rest is up to you."
Harry opened his mouth to say the word, but then realized he had forgotten the most important part of the spell. The desire to kill. He didn't have it. He lowered his wand.
"Sirius, I-"
"No, I know. How much do you know about a Murtlap?"
Harry shrugged. He remembered seeing the name in his book, but he had never read the article.
"Well, they do a funny little trick. There is a poison in their teeth. It works in a strange way. If they bite you, it will not kill you instantly. It takes a full eight minutes to work. But, if the Murtlap is killed before those eight minutes are up, the poison loses its magical quality and is harmless. However, those eight minutes, though you are not dead, are extremely painful, and leave you somewhat paralyzed."
Harry looked in surprise at Sirius. "Why did you bring something that dangerous in here?"
"To help you," Sirius said, reaching over and putting his hand right in front of the Murtlap's mouth. Harry gasped as it bit into Sirius' hand, and he jumped back from the pain.
"You can do it," Sirius said as he fell to his knees and then sideways onto the floor.
"Sirius!" Harry fell down beside him, but Sirius didn't answer. His breathing was slowing, and a look of extreme pain came across his face. There was no mistaking that pain. It looked heart wrenching.
Ginny sat at Heather's desk. "You already gave him the book Rose, why are you still so interested?"
"I don't know. Because there is still so much he doesn't know, and he isn't going to ask anybody about it."
"Well, anything in particular?"
Ginny looked thoughtful for a moment. "What was James and Lily's relationship like?"
"Well, in the beginning, they were hardly friends. Not because they didn't like each other, because they both tended to stay to themselves. She was only fifteen when they got together. They were never apart. They seemed to be linked. One would always know where the other was, or what the other was thinking. They would disappear every other night."
"When she was fifteen?" asked Ginny, shocked.
Heather giggled. "They slept together, but as James would so cleanly put it, they slept."
"Where would they go if they weren't in the dorms?" Ginny silently cheered. This conversation went exactly how she wanted it to.
"James' room. That room he left off the map."
"Did you ever find out where the room was?"
"No, we never did." Ginny's heart sunk. "Not that we didn't try. Wherever it was, the entrance was outside, because Lily would usually fly there. She said it was faster that way. James very rarely flew, but he used to be much faster then Lily. Of coarse, he had all the secret passage ways of the school memorized, so that was probably how he got around."
Ginny's heart flipped over. Outside. That limited it to only a few possibilities. It wouldn't take much time to find it now. A week, maybe. How many statues were outside? Nine, ten, she was almost sure it was ten.
Harry barely kept himself from panicking. 'Would I be able to get Dumbledore in time? Would Heather know what to do? No, she'll panic. Harry, you know what to do. Just kill it.'
The Murtlap hissed threateningly at him. Harry slid his left arm behind his back. His right hand clenched the wand tightly. He looked at the Murtlap, and filled his head with everything he loved in Sirius, everything he would lose if he didn't do this right now.
"Ax-" he stopped and swallowed. He pointed the wand and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it. "Axy-" his voice croaked.
How long had Sirius been lying there? How much time did he have left? He had lost track. It could have already been ten minutes.
He sucked in a deep breath. "Axynovit!" He felt it. Time slowed down. He felt power build up inside him, and explode through his wand. That was the easy part. He felt the Murtlap's fear as the light shot at it. He felt the way it was pushed back a few inches on impact. He felt its life snap. He felt as its life, the life it would have had if he hadn't broken it, escape in the air. Broken. Unknown. That escaped life, held possibility. More possibility then he had ever known possible, but it was dead possibility. All of it was lost. But the part that made him sick, was the bright feeling of absolute control that when along with it all.
When time started to run normally again, Harry opened his eyes. The Murtlap lay dead in the cage. Sirius was standing up. Harry stared at he Murtlap.
"Harry, I'm sorry I had to do that. It was a lie. The whole thing."
This could have possibly been the only sentence that would have broken Harry of his horrified trance. Somebody could have told him that the sky was raining snakes and they were all going to die by drowning on them and he would not have cared by this point. But this sentence made him look up.
"What do you mean it was a lie?"
"Murtlaps are not poisonous, I was not dying." Sirius stared at the floor, pain in the very way he held his body.
"But, you, you were in so much pain."
Sirius looked up. "I was. Here." He put his hand to his chest. "That is the single most painful thing I have ever done. If you are angry at me, I understand, but please know that I love you and I was only trying to help."
Harry's attention was recaptured by the dead Murtlap on the table. "I'm not angry at you, Sirius. You did what you had to. And it worked. I could do that again." He stopped dead. Sirius stared.
Harry wasn't aware when he started running, or when he had made up his mind to do so. It seemed by the time the idea had come across his mind he was already twenty feet down the hall away from Heather's class room. Then he realized that he was being followed.
"Harry! Harry stop!"
There was a fork in the hall. He would have to turn. Should he go left or right. His mind wasn't working correctly. He didn't know. He reached the fork and went straight. Instincts kept him from running into the wall. He threw up his hands to stop. Then sunk to the floor. 'Why is the ground shaking like that? Why is it getting blurry?'
Then his brain seemed to catch up to what he was doing. He was sitting on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Tears were building up in his eyes.
Arms encircled him and helped to slow his violent shaking. "Harry, hush. It's find, I'm here." The voice was a comfort. It didn't matter who or what, just the voice. As long as it didn't stop, then everything would be fine. "It's okay Harry, really it is. Please stop Harry. It's fine. Everything will be fine. I promise. I'm right here."
Heather and Sirius were not as fast as Ginny, but they saw both Ginny and Harry in the middle of the floor. "No, stop," Heather whispered. Sirius looked at her like she was out of her mind, then really took in the scene before them. He didn't move, but he didn't look very happy about it.
'That's Rose,' came a slow slurred thought. But it was that thought that triggered the words.
"I was horrible, everything shattered. All that possibility ruined. So many things that it could have done, unending possibility. Shattered, dead. And the control felt so good. It felt good! I could do it again! I could! Because I was in control. Nothing that I didn't want could happen. Nothing. I controlled it. I wanted it. I killed it. I killed it. I killed it."
"Harry, stop!" He fell silent, and was looking into Ginny's scared brown eyes. "You did not like it Harry. You, you couldn't have liked it! There is no way that you did. I'll die if you liked it."
Whatever it was that had him upset had just escaped out the back window. It didn't matter. Not when those brown eyes were filled with the fear they had now. He reached out and this time he hugged her.
She hid her face as he pulled her up on his lap. "You didn't like it. Tell me that you didn't like it. Harry, please."
"I didn't. I swear I didn't like it. It felt so good to be in control of something for once, that's all. Nothing that I didn't want to could happen. That felt good. And it made me sick that it felt good. But I didn't like it."
Ginny made a fist and softly hit Harry in the chest repeatedly "Don't you ever do that to me again." Her face was still hidden, making her words slightly muffled. "You are the best, bravest, kindest, most loyal, most loving person I know. Never scare me like that. Making me think you went off the deep end. Don't do that again."
"I'm sorry, Rose," he whispered. She looked up at him again, and he smiled at her. "I guess I was kind of insane, running out here babbling like that."
"Oh Harry, are you okay? Was it that horrible?"
A thoughtful look passed over Harry's face. "It was horrible, but somehow it doesn't hurt as much knowing I'm the best, bravest, kindest, most loyal, most loving person you know."
Ginny hugged him tight again. "You're my best friend Harry." Her words were muffled again, and Harry wasn't sure that he had heard them right.
"Your what?"
"Best friend. It's true. Especially since Ron and Hermione are so preoccupied with each other. But even before that. I tell you things that I don't tell anybody else, not even my diary. You're my best friend."
Harry was getting another feeling. It was like the one he had gotten the first night that they had searched for the statue, only stronger this time, and still he didn't know what it was. It wasn't bad, like the one he had about the hidden room. It wasn't the same, this feeling. It felt good, and different.
"Rose," he said hugging her again. "You're mine too. I don't know where I would be without you. I don't know if I could be without you."
Heather smiled, grabbed Sirius' arm and started to pull him away. "He's fine. She has this under control. Now let's go before we ruin the moment, okay?"
The common room, like the halls, was empty. Which was exactly how Ginny really wanted it at the moment. When she and Harry entered, he fell onto the couch with a sigh. Ginny lay down in front of the couch on the floor. She closed her eyes. She wanted to remember every little detail of that encounter. It made her heart swell.
The information on the secret room could wait. There was no reason that he needed to know now. In fact it would probably be better if she waited a while to tell him.
She was his best friend. She wouldn't tell Ron, because that would lead to trouble, but just knowing that she was the first person he would turn to, made her extremely happy and terribly sad at the same time.
Yes, it was great that she was his best friend. But it was most likely that he would always see her that way. 'I could be more to you, Harry. I could be your whole world if you let me.'
Sally was at the top of the stairs, looking down on her two favorite people. She had felt Harry's emotional break down, but it hadn't pulled her. It had pulled through her, to the other bond she carried. Instead of needing Sally, Harry had needed Ginny.
A lot had changed today. And as she watched and read the emotions of the pair of teenagers, it was all she could do not to laugh.
Harry stared at Ginny. What was this? Something was, different. Not wrong, different. Was it better? He couldn't tell. It was hard to think about it for an amount of time. Other things kept distracting him.
She was playing with a lock of hair, and it was so interesting to watch the patterns she made with her finger and hair. She closed her eyes, and her breathing was starting to slow. He could tell because the rise and fall of her back slowed down. She was going to sleep.
He smiled as she drifted off, and then frowned. What was wrong? He had seen her sleep before, and for some reason this was, wrong. When she slept, she looked exactly like she did when awake, but that wasn't true any more. As she fell asleep, the tension and worry lines faded off her face. Her shoulders relaxed, and she looked peaceful.
How could he not notice it before? Now that he saw the difference, it was painfully obvious. Something was troubling her when awake. A problem that she only had a break from when she was asleep.
What could it be? Was it the secret room? Was that becoming even more of an obsession to her? Speaking of which, had she learned anything from Heather today? And suddenly a new interest was sparked in him. If she was so worked up about this, then he should be too. Forget school. They weren't going to kick him out if he was a little slack on his homework, or had to miss a class to get some sleep. In fact, Dumbledore had even told him he could skip Advanced Curses if he didn't feel up to it.
The conclusion that he drew from all of it was that he had to stop trying to please everybody else and pay a little more attention to what was important, like Ginny, or even himself. When was the last time he had gone out to practice his sword? When did he last fly around the Quidditch field that wasn't during practice? Or even just sit by the memorial stones? School would have to kiss his ass.
Hermione and Ron walked in to the common room. Ginny was asleep on the floor. Harry was staring silently into the fire, as if he was in deep thought.
"We probably shouldn't bother him," Hermione whispered. "You know what he did today."
"You don't think he needs to talk to us?"
"I think that's why Ginny is there."
Ron frowned. "Books, do you get the impression that he doesn't need us anymore?"
"I think he does. He just needs her more." Hermione said as she started to drag Ron up the girl's stairway.
"I don't know if I like that."
"Jealous?"
"No!"
Hermione stopped and turned to look at him. "Which one are you jealous of? Ginny spending time with Harry, or Harry spending so much time with your sister?"
Ron stared at her for a moment, then peeked over the edge of the stair where he could see them below him. "Both I guess."
Hermione smiled at him. "You are so cute."
Ron's ears turn to match his hair. "Am not," he muttered. Hermione only laughed at him while continuing to drag him up the stairs.
After about an hour of sitting on the couch thinking, Harry decided that he had to get away from his own thoughts. He crawled off the couch down to the floor beside Ginny.
Her hated to wake her, but if he didn't occupy his mind soon, he was going to think himself crazy.
"Rose?"
"Hmm?" came her sleepy reply.
"Will you wake up for me?"
She smiled sleepily. "Oh, but I don't want to." She opened one eye to look at him.
He grinned at her. "Please?"
"No."
"Would it help if I beg?"
Ginny reached out and poked him in the nose, shocking him. She started to laugh. "That face will work." She sat up and Harry shook his head. "So," she said with a yawn. "What was important enough for you to interrupt my wonderful dreams?"
"Wonderful were they? About what?"
Ginny turned and leaned against the couch, giving him a small smile. "A pair of strong arms and a feather bed." Harry paled, and Ginny laughed at him again. "No really, what did you want?"
"Did you find anything out with Heather today?"
"Oh that. Well, yeah. She said it was outside, at least the entrance was."
"Well, that certainly cuts down on our work."
Ginny looked out the window. "The sun is setting. We could go look for it now if you want to." She looked at him questioningly.
Harry bit his lip. "Yeah, let's go." He stood up and ran up to the boy's dorm room. When he came back down a few moments later he had his cloak, broom, and map.
"Let's get out of here before Booky and Ron get back."
"Oh, they did while you were asleep. They went up to her room. That should keep them busy for at least another hour."
Ginny covered her smile with her hand. "Those two are such a pair."
"Only when they aren't biting each other's heads off," Harry said holding the portrait for her.
"In Hermione's words; they fight like cats and make up like dogs."
"Didn't need to know that. I didn't need to know that."
A few minutes later they had isolated the statues of lions on the outside of the castle that didn't move. As they started to fly to where the statues were marked on the map, they didn't need to wear the cloak. Anybody who could see them wasn't supposed to be out here either.
The first one they checked turned out to be a very interesting lion. It was upside-down, balancing on its head and one paw, with a raven on its one foot, a badger on the other, and a snake wrapped around its leg. They both agreed that that one wasn't it.
The next statue they came to was much more normal. The lion sat tall and proud facing the lake. Harry stopped and looked at it.
"This isn't it," he said flatly.
"How do you know?"
Harry moved his shoulders as if there was something resting on the back of his neck that he wanted to be rid off. "That's just it, I don't know. When we get there, I think I'll know. And we're close, but this isn't it."
Ginny's head tilted slightly to the left. "If you say so, we can always come back."
They got on Harry's Firebolt and took off again.
At the next two statues they checked, both were possibilities. But Harry did the same thing again. Pointed out flatly that these were wrong. Ginny was becoming a little skeptical, but for tonight she wouldn't question him.
They got back on the broom, and Harry was trying to sort himself out again. He was having a whole mixture of feelings. 'Are these emotions, or premonitions? Both? Why can't I sort anything out? I wish Sally would help me with this kind of thing. But no, she just gives me the 'You don't need me to know your own feelings,' speech. There are two different things working here. One of them has to do with the statue, I'm sure. The other, I think has to do with Rose? What could be wrong with Rose? Why would I be upset with her? She's the most wonderful girl that I know. Unless, I'm not upset with her, but about her. But then what does that-'
"We're here," Ginny's voice interrupted his thoughts.
Harry looked up and shuddered. The feeling that had to do with Ginny was gone. The feeling that had to do with the statue was engulfing him. He could have pointed to the lion with his eyes closed.
"Yes, we are."
Ginny looked up shocked. "You mean this is it?"
"You didn't believe me?"
"I, well, thought maybe you changed your mind about doing this and just didn't want to tell me. Or something like that."
"No, we're here."
There were on the top of a tower. Instead of a point, it had a flat top, and was a perfect circle. There was what looked like a trap door near the edge on one side.
"The map says that the trap door over there leads down into a storage room. Do you want to go there?"
Harry shook his head. "That's not it."
There were in fact four statues here. One was of a lion, one a snake, one a eagle, and one a badger. They all faced the center of the tower, where on the stone, there was a discoloration in the form of a red circle.
The snake was directly across from the eagle. It had its head raised in the air. Its mouth has open and it's fangs showing. They looked sharp from were he was standing. It was facing the center, but its eyes were looking at the lion.
The badger was sitting down across from the lion. It had its front paws in a way that they almost looked folded. It could have been looking at the center circle or at the lion. It would have been easier to tell if its eyes hadn't been closed.
The eagle, like the badger, didn't appear to be moving like the snake. It was sitting still, wings folded against it. One of its beady eyes was staring sharply at the lion.
The lion was the largest. Its head was at about the same height as Harry's, and the other animals were in proportion with it. The lion was facing the center. It was sitting still, but it appeared to be roaring. Its sharp teeth were displayed and its eyes faced the stars.
"Well, I bet those teeth would cut me just fine, but then what? How does it test it?"
Ginny looked faithful. "Harry, when you are trying soup for the first time, how do you test it?"
Harry managed the best grin he could. "Very good, Rose. You could give Hermione a run for her money."
Ginny blushed prettily and Harry turned to face the statue. He didn't really have to walk toward it; it was doing a good job of pulling him. He stared into the mouth of the lion. This was it. Now. He would know. His heart was pounding into his chest as he reached up toward the mouth.
(A/N: Sorry kiddies. I can't do it all in one chapter. I want lots of reviews, and maybe it will be up tomorrow night.
Draco- Yeah, but tomorrow night to Lily is about 4 AM. It's 2:51 AM while she's writing this and she still needs to get online and post 32 –34.
Lily- Shove it Draco. It's a damn good thing you're cute as all hell, or I wouldn't keep you around.
Draco- Well I must say I'm flattered that I am the only character you brought with you on vacation.
Lily- Yes, but I didn't bring you for me. But rather for the person I was going on vacation with.
Draco- *Blushes* Yes, well, um.
Lily- *Giggles* Bye all, thanks for reading.