A/N: yay! The next chapter. I really must apologise to all the people who have consistently asked me to email them. Much as I would like to, I barely have the time to write, much less check my email. Please do not take offence to my not having written to you, it was not intended in any malicious manner, it merely accentuates my lack of time. I apologise to everyone again.
"I'm a what?" Harry's words echoed that of when he first found out that he was a wizard, and what Dumbledore had just told him was no less believable to him now, as finding out he was a wizard, was then.
"A mage, Harry, a mage." Dumbledore looked even more old and weary than before.
"No…no…" Harry stumbled over his words, in attempt to say everything he wanted to, "I'm no mage, I can barely pass potions! I mean, look at the triwizard tournament…look…" Everything seemed to be running too far, too fast. "I haven't got any gift, I really haven't. I mean there's nothing special about me. It's just that things have been happening to me…that's all…"
"Nothing special, Harry?" said Dumbledore, lifting his eyebrows. "Getting past the dark lord four times without getting murdered is nothing special? Most people can't do it once."
Harry looked frantically around the room, as if trying to find another excuse.
"Look what happened to Cedric," said Harry suddenly, "I can't do that to people, if they stay around me too long, everyone will kick off."
"Harry, everyone will die anyway, if you don't do this. That is what you need to understand. Without you…it will mean Voldemort, or death."
Harry bowed his head, as if the weight of the world had just fallen on to his shoulders, which, in a manner of thinking, it did.
"I'll do it." He said finally, "If I'm Gryffindor's heir, I suppose I've got to, haven't I? It's not like there's much of a choice." He sighed. "Anymore surprises you want to tell me?"
"A few," said Dumbledore, smiling slightly. "First off, in order to train, you must drop out of Hogwarts…" Harry gasped. "You may take one friend to train with you, and you will be training on the Hogwarts grounds so you will see you're other friends, Harry."
"Only one friend will be able to train with me?" Said Harry, paling slightly.
"Just one." Said Dumbledore firmly.
"Oh dear," said Harry in a very small voice, looking at his feet.
"And the last surprise," said Dumbledore, looking unusually serious. "You know the rule that no one above 17 can train as an auror unless their parents train them?" Harry looked up, did Dumbledore mean what Harry thought he meant? "You're parents are coming back, Harry, Remus and Sirius are coming with them right now. We are using a very special time turner to bring them back, so that they can train you. But you must understand, Harry, that they will only be three years older than yourself, and, they must go back, and die just as they did in your past and their future. So you mustn't tell them anything."
"My parents…are coming back from the dead to train me as an auror, and you don't want me to tell them anything, or be upset when they leave, and I know that they're going to die?" Harry stopped stumbling over his words, and began shouting instead.
"It is a burden." Dumbledore said. "Make no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden, and this more than any, and you will often long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the law."
"Alright. I suppose time with my parents is better than time without them," said Harry, bowing his head again, "but…" he stopped, "how am I going to choose between Ron and Hermione?"
"I would owl them," said Dumbledore, the sparkle in his eye back again, "Tell them to come to Hogwarts. Normally the friends themselves can help you decide better than you can."