A/N: Phew, revision is hell! Just to warn you, this might be the last chapter up for a while. Hopefully not, but just in case. I swear, once my exams are over in May, I'll start to hurry this up. Until then, please bear with me!
Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling, so don't ask.
Dedication: For all those who've encouraged me to get a move on: fio2, tygir (for your many...many reviews), hpfan1750, lilmissperfect (no, not the stick! Anything but that!), DaRkGoDdEsS024, mira-tazura, Emma and everyone else! Thanks sooo much! And also to Lucy- happy birthday!
Harry Potter and the Crystal of Dreams.
The Easter holidays came quickly and left almost as fast. For Harry, the fortnight of work, chess and helping Hagrid with his new charges (a particularly nasty-tempered group of crossbreeds between Doxies and Fire Crabs called Pyroxes) seemed more like a weekend, and it wasn't long before Shannon returned to school and classes began again.
And then, the first day of April dawned sunny and clear.
Shannon sat bolt upright in bed, glad that she had for once achieved a peaceful night's sleep at last. And also happy for another reason. She pulled back the heavy red hangings around her four poster to see Hermione turning towards her, fully dressed and holding a wrapped present quite like the ones piled at the foot of Shannon's bed. They exchanged smiles.
"Awake at last!" Hermione said, handing over the present. "Happy birthday!"
"Thanks, Hermione." Shannon put the gift with all the others and cocked her head. "How do I open these? Biggest first or what?"
"Does it matter?" the prefect asked, seating herself next to Shannon. Parvati and Lavender were still asleep.
"Guess not." Shannon dived for the nearest parcel, adressed from Hannah, and tore away the glitzy paper.
Hermione sifted absently through the parcels, reading the names. There were ones from Ireland, Italy and from her family down in England, but one name seemed to never appear.
"Aw, cute." Shannon laughed, putting aside a bright blue hair clasp and going for another present. "I'll have to wear it to Hogsmeade today."
Hermione considered her options for a moment before taking the plunge. "So, Shannon," she asked casually. "What did your mum send you?"
Shannon looked up (seeming a little too serious, Hermione thought) from unwrapping a small stack of trashy teen romance novels (courtesy of Sarah in Ireland). "What?" Then she grinned crookedly. "Oh, Julianna sent me some sweets." She gestured to a large bag of chocolate frogs next to a bag of magical pranks from Ron.
Hermione decided to be direct. "No, your real mum."
Shannon's grin disappeared and she glanced briefly over to check that their dorm mates were still asleep. She lowered her voice and replied, "My mam's dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "'S OK. It happened when I was a very, very little girl, so it was ages ago. Just don't tell anyone else, alright? I don't want a load of sympathy, not today."
"Yeah. Sorry."
Shannon laughed. "Let's not get too mundane. It is my birthday after all, and April Fools Day..." She trailed off thoughtfully. "Give me five minutes to finish opening this little lot and then we can pull a festive prank on the sleeping beauties over there."
Hermione gave up on the topic and watched the gossip queens sleep on, oblivious to the conversation about them. "It's still early." she mused.
Shannon's eyes sparkled mischeviously. "Well, yeah, but we know that and they don't. Or, at least, they won't when we put their clocks forward a couple of hours, will they?"
A grin slowly spread over Hermione's face and she shook her head half-despairingly. "You are truly evil."
"I know."
*****
With all the excited black-clad students swarming around Hogsmeade, Chloe felt almost as though she was one of them again. She could almost hear the banter she, Lily, Lucinda and Nina used to exchange with the Marauder Boys on these such trips.
Memories were a painful thing she'd done her best to avoid in the past fourteen years, but returning to Hogwarts after all that time had made her confront those endless months of pain and despair.
She might have been tempted to run away if it wasn't for the severity of her message and for Sirius walking beside her in his large black dog form. His presence at least stopped her from reminising as much as she may have otherwise.
Suddenly, Sirius halted and nudged Chloe's foot with his paw. She frowned away from a passing blonde boy who looked strangely identical to Lucius Malfoy had years ago and looked down at him.
"What?" she murmured quietly. "What is it?"
Sirius motioned ahead and she looked up, smiling despite everything else when she saw who it was.
Harry was laughing with a tall boy who had the distinctive Weasley red hair and freckles and two girls. One had bushy brown hair and brown eyes, whereas the other had dark hair swept back into a blue hair clip and greyish teal eyes.
Without completely meaning to, the pair had stopped so that two seconds later, the approaching quartet noticed them standing there.
"Hello Chloe." Harry said. He grinned at Sirius, knowing how stupid it would be to openly great the 'infamous murderer' on such a crowded street. Sirius barked quietly, also to avoid gaining too much attention, and allowed each of the teenagers to pat him on the head.
"I don't think I know everyone else here." Chloe said. "Anyone going to introduce me?"
"Oh yeah." Harry said. "Chloe, this is Ron, Hermione, and Shannon. Guys, this is Chloe. She was a friend of my parents."
There were various 'hi's and 'hello's passed around before Harry asked, "So, how come you're here? Is it good or bad?"
Chloe sighed. "Bad, I'm afraid." Lowering her voice, she continued, "There's a meeting on with your teachers up at the school. Subject's over there." She nodded her head towards a newsagents shop with a standing board outside advertising the Daily Prophet. The Gryffindors turned slightly to look at it and were met by the headline of the day in bold flashing letters.
"Oh my god..." Hermione whispered.
'TWELVE MUGGLES DEAD IN MAGICAL ATTACKS IN DOVER'.
"Dover?" asked Ron confusedly. "Where's that?"
"Down in England." Shannon replied quietly. "By the channel crossing to France."
"And there were attacks in France." Harry said. Chloe nodded grimly.
"Exactly. It seems that they're closely related, so..." She trailed off and then nodded. "So we're here."
Shannon laughed humourlessly. "Oh, what a thing to happen today." Upon Chloe's questioning look, she explained, "It's my birthday."
"Oh." said Chloe. "Well, it was two days ago it happened. The day after it did, the muggle world heard of it, but the news didn't reach the magical world until today." She sighed again. "Hence the headlines."
Up until now, Sirius had been watching the conversation silently and gravely. Now, he barked slightly and Chloe jerked, biting her lip.
"Oh god, right." She looked apologetically at the younger four. "Speaking of the meeting, we'd better go now. Are you all going to be alright?"
Harry snapped out of his shocked silence at the sound of her voice. "Sure. We'll be fine." The others nodded in agreement, still quite numbed by the words. Part of Chloe mentally slapped herself for being stupid and telling them, but there was something in Harry's green eyes that assured her that it was better coming from her than it would be for them just discovering it.
"We'll be off then. See you later." With another serious look at them all, they left. Harry felt sorry for her- he'd seen the self-reproaching look in her cat-like eyes- and made a mental note to send her a letter via Hedwig later on (if he didn't see her before) to reassure her they were OK.
Shannon shook her head as they started off towards The Three Broomsticks and muttered under her breath, "Birthdays are a bad time for me."
*****
That evening, Shannon sat alone on one of the small window seats, feet up on the wall. Tiah was draped around her shoulders, purring contendly after eating most of Shannon's chocolate frogs, as Shannon wrote avidly into one of the books on her lap.
Harry sidled over from Ron and Hermione's latest fight-flirting match and leaned against the wall, watching her scribble away in black ink in her round letters for a second before he said, "What're you up to, then?"
Shannon started, almost knocking over the small square bottle of ink on the nearby ledge as she turned her head to look at him, eyes somewhat guilty-looking.
"Huh? Oh, not a lot."
He moved around to the other end of the window and she obligingly moved her feet and shifted around so that he could squeeze up next to her. In doing so, she put the lid back onto the ink bottle and picked Tiah up from her shoulders. Tiah slipped out of her hands and capered off, probably to find other feline company.
"What're you writing then?" Harry questioned, peering curiously at the small pages full of her untidy writing. She shut the book with a smile in his direction, hand firmly holding the dusky purple covers shut.
"A story." She shrugged. "I write when I'm avoiding certain teenage gossip queens hungry for my blood."
He laughed. "Oh, right, Parvati and Lavender."
"Who else? Dear old Pansy Parkinson isn't in this house." Her laugh joined his now. "Although she's next on my list."
"We'll look forward to seeing it then." Harry grinned. "You really were born on the right day, weren't you?"
"Don't I know it!" She shook her head happily. "Oh yeah, thanks for that bracelet, it was sweet of you."
Harry prayed he wasn't blushing. "Er, that's OK. What else did you get?" Anything to change the topic.
Shannon rolled her eyes and showed him her other book- one of the ones her friend Sarah had sent her. He raised his eyebrows and she groaned.
"Don't ask. This should provide me with half an hour of slushy teen romance that could be worse torture than that detention I had last week with Snape."
Harry laughed again. "I'll leave you to it then. Unless you want to watch Hermione and Ron argue yet again."
Shannon grinned. "I'll just put these away and consider it done! What do you wanna bet they're engaged by the end of the year?"
*****
The meeting in Professor Dumbledore's office had taken place for hours. Hours of reports, discusssions, debates and arguments. Hours that were finally drawing to a close, the members not much more informed than they had been. Dumbledore was the one to start to wrap up the meeting.
"It seems as though Voldemort is deliberately leading us on a trail," he announced gravely. "Although if it is the correct one, we cannot yet know."
His bright blue eyes ran over those assembled, mainly Aurors, but all powerful in their way. Some were old, like Arabella Figg and Mundungus Fletcher, some were young, like Bill and Percy Weasley. Some had suffered more at the hands of Voldemort than others- all of the remaining Marauders had attended.
"Surely there's something we can do to find out." Mundungus Fletcher suggested. "The Ministry could help or something."
"Mundungus, you know as well as we do that Fudge is trying to cover it all up." Nina Johnson laughed humourlessly, pushing back some of her long black hair. "It doesn't tarry with his perfectly-ordered world."
"He's got a point Nina," Remus said. "Although we don't have the support of everyone in the Ministry, there must be some other way."
"There is." Dumbledore said, and all eyes turned to him. He continued. "As most of you already know, we do have a spy working for us against Lord Voldemort. Some of you know who he is, and some will find out later, but this is how we shall find out of the intentions of our enemy- with luck."
For that was why Severus Snape was not present at that meeting.
*****
Thinking of putting a bit of Snape in the next chapter, y'know, just to see what else is going on. Would you like? Hope so. Please review now, I love your reviews!
Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling, so don't ask.
Dedication: For all those who've encouraged me to get a move on: fio2, tygir (for your many...many reviews), hpfan1750, lilmissperfect (no, not the stick! Anything but that!), DaRkGoDdEsS024, mira-tazura, Emma and everyone else! Thanks sooo much! And also to Lucy- happy birthday!
Harry Potter and the Crystal of Dreams.
The Easter holidays came quickly and left almost as fast. For Harry, the fortnight of work, chess and helping Hagrid with his new charges (a particularly nasty-tempered group of crossbreeds between Doxies and Fire Crabs called Pyroxes) seemed more like a weekend, and it wasn't long before Shannon returned to school and classes began again.
And then, the first day of April dawned sunny and clear.
Shannon sat bolt upright in bed, glad that she had for once achieved a peaceful night's sleep at last. And also happy for another reason. She pulled back the heavy red hangings around her four poster to see Hermione turning towards her, fully dressed and holding a wrapped present quite like the ones piled at the foot of Shannon's bed. They exchanged smiles.
"Awake at last!" Hermione said, handing over the present. "Happy birthday!"
"Thanks, Hermione." Shannon put the gift with all the others and cocked her head. "How do I open these? Biggest first or what?"
"Does it matter?" the prefect asked, seating herself next to Shannon. Parvati and Lavender were still asleep.
"Guess not." Shannon dived for the nearest parcel, adressed from Hannah, and tore away the glitzy paper.
Hermione sifted absently through the parcels, reading the names. There were ones from Ireland, Italy and from her family down in England, but one name seemed to never appear.
"Aw, cute." Shannon laughed, putting aside a bright blue hair clasp and going for another present. "I'll have to wear it to Hogsmeade today."
Hermione considered her options for a moment before taking the plunge. "So, Shannon," she asked casually. "What did your mum send you?"
Shannon looked up (seeming a little too serious, Hermione thought) from unwrapping a small stack of trashy teen romance novels (courtesy of Sarah in Ireland). "What?" Then she grinned crookedly. "Oh, Julianna sent me some sweets." She gestured to a large bag of chocolate frogs next to a bag of magical pranks from Ron.
Hermione decided to be direct. "No, your real mum."
Shannon's grin disappeared and she glanced briefly over to check that their dorm mates were still asleep. She lowered her voice and replied, "My mam's dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "'S OK. It happened when I was a very, very little girl, so it was ages ago. Just don't tell anyone else, alright? I don't want a load of sympathy, not today."
"Yeah. Sorry."
Shannon laughed. "Let's not get too mundane. It is my birthday after all, and April Fools Day..." She trailed off thoughtfully. "Give me five minutes to finish opening this little lot and then we can pull a festive prank on the sleeping beauties over there."
Hermione gave up on the topic and watched the gossip queens sleep on, oblivious to the conversation about them. "It's still early." she mused.
Shannon's eyes sparkled mischeviously. "Well, yeah, but we know that and they don't. Or, at least, they won't when we put their clocks forward a couple of hours, will they?"
A grin slowly spread over Hermione's face and she shook her head half-despairingly. "You are truly evil."
"I know."
*****
With all the excited black-clad students swarming around Hogsmeade, Chloe felt almost as though she was one of them again. She could almost hear the banter she, Lily, Lucinda and Nina used to exchange with the Marauder Boys on these such trips.
Memories were a painful thing she'd done her best to avoid in the past fourteen years, but returning to Hogwarts after all that time had made her confront those endless months of pain and despair.
She might have been tempted to run away if it wasn't for the severity of her message and for Sirius walking beside her in his large black dog form. His presence at least stopped her from reminising as much as she may have otherwise.
Suddenly, Sirius halted and nudged Chloe's foot with his paw. She frowned away from a passing blonde boy who looked strangely identical to Lucius Malfoy had years ago and looked down at him.
"What?" she murmured quietly. "What is it?"
Sirius motioned ahead and she looked up, smiling despite everything else when she saw who it was.
Harry was laughing with a tall boy who had the distinctive Weasley red hair and freckles and two girls. One had bushy brown hair and brown eyes, whereas the other had dark hair swept back into a blue hair clip and greyish teal eyes.
Without completely meaning to, the pair had stopped so that two seconds later, the approaching quartet noticed them standing there.
"Hello Chloe." Harry said. He grinned at Sirius, knowing how stupid it would be to openly great the 'infamous murderer' on such a crowded street. Sirius barked quietly, also to avoid gaining too much attention, and allowed each of the teenagers to pat him on the head.
"I don't think I know everyone else here." Chloe said. "Anyone going to introduce me?"
"Oh yeah." Harry said. "Chloe, this is Ron, Hermione, and Shannon. Guys, this is Chloe. She was a friend of my parents."
There were various 'hi's and 'hello's passed around before Harry asked, "So, how come you're here? Is it good or bad?"
Chloe sighed. "Bad, I'm afraid." Lowering her voice, she continued, "There's a meeting on with your teachers up at the school. Subject's over there." She nodded her head towards a newsagents shop with a standing board outside advertising the Daily Prophet. The Gryffindors turned slightly to look at it and were met by the headline of the day in bold flashing letters.
"Oh my god..." Hermione whispered.
'TWELVE MUGGLES DEAD IN MAGICAL ATTACKS IN DOVER'.
"Dover?" asked Ron confusedly. "Where's that?"
"Down in England." Shannon replied quietly. "By the channel crossing to France."
"And there were attacks in France." Harry said. Chloe nodded grimly.
"Exactly. It seems that they're closely related, so..." She trailed off and then nodded. "So we're here."
Shannon laughed humourlessly. "Oh, what a thing to happen today." Upon Chloe's questioning look, she explained, "It's my birthday."
"Oh." said Chloe. "Well, it was two days ago it happened. The day after it did, the muggle world heard of it, but the news didn't reach the magical world until today." She sighed again. "Hence the headlines."
Up until now, Sirius had been watching the conversation silently and gravely. Now, he barked slightly and Chloe jerked, biting her lip.
"Oh god, right." She looked apologetically at the younger four. "Speaking of the meeting, we'd better go now. Are you all going to be alright?"
Harry snapped out of his shocked silence at the sound of her voice. "Sure. We'll be fine." The others nodded in agreement, still quite numbed by the words. Part of Chloe mentally slapped herself for being stupid and telling them, but there was something in Harry's green eyes that assured her that it was better coming from her than it would be for them just discovering it.
"We'll be off then. See you later." With another serious look at them all, they left. Harry felt sorry for her- he'd seen the self-reproaching look in her cat-like eyes- and made a mental note to send her a letter via Hedwig later on (if he didn't see her before) to reassure her they were OK.
Shannon shook her head as they started off towards The Three Broomsticks and muttered under her breath, "Birthdays are a bad time for me."
*****
That evening, Shannon sat alone on one of the small window seats, feet up on the wall. Tiah was draped around her shoulders, purring contendly after eating most of Shannon's chocolate frogs, as Shannon wrote avidly into one of the books on her lap.
Harry sidled over from Ron and Hermione's latest fight-flirting match and leaned against the wall, watching her scribble away in black ink in her round letters for a second before he said, "What're you up to, then?"
Shannon started, almost knocking over the small square bottle of ink on the nearby ledge as she turned her head to look at him, eyes somewhat guilty-looking.
"Huh? Oh, not a lot."
He moved around to the other end of the window and she obligingly moved her feet and shifted around so that he could squeeze up next to her. In doing so, she put the lid back onto the ink bottle and picked Tiah up from her shoulders. Tiah slipped out of her hands and capered off, probably to find other feline company.
"What're you writing then?" Harry questioned, peering curiously at the small pages full of her untidy writing. She shut the book with a smile in his direction, hand firmly holding the dusky purple covers shut.
"A story." She shrugged. "I write when I'm avoiding certain teenage gossip queens hungry for my blood."
He laughed. "Oh, right, Parvati and Lavender."
"Who else? Dear old Pansy Parkinson isn't in this house." Her laugh joined his now. "Although she's next on my list."
"We'll look forward to seeing it then." Harry grinned. "You really were born on the right day, weren't you?"
"Don't I know it!" She shook her head happily. "Oh yeah, thanks for that bracelet, it was sweet of you."
Harry prayed he wasn't blushing. "Er, that's OK. What else did you get?" Anything to change the topic.
Shannon rolled her eyes and showed him her other book- one of the ones her friend Sarah had sent her. He raised his eyebrows and she groaned.
"Don't ask. This should provide me with half an hour of slushy teen romance that could be worse torture than that detention I had last week with Snape."
Harry laughed again. "I'll leave you to it then. Unless you want to watch Hermione and Ron argue yet again."
Shannon grinned. "I'll just put these away and consider it done! What do you wanna bet they're engaged by the end of the year?"
*****
The meeting in Professor Dumbledore's office had taken place for hours. Hours of reports, discusssions, debates and arguments. Hours that were finally drawing to a close, the members not much more informed than they had been. Dumbledore was the one to start to wrap up the meeting.
"It seems as though Voldemort is deliberately leading us on a trail," he announced gravely. "Although if it is the correct one, we cannot yet know."
His bright blue eyes ran over those assembled, mainly Aurors, but all powerful in their way. Some were old, like Arabella Figg and Mundungus Fletcher, some were young, like Bill and Percy Weasley. Some had suffered more at the hands of Voldemort than others- all of the remaining Marauders had attended.
"Surely there's something we can do to find out." Mundungus Fletcher suggested. "The Ministry could help or something."
"Mundungus, you know as well as we do that Fudge is trying to cover it all up." Nina Johnson laughed humourlessly, pushing back some of her long black hair. "It doesn't tarry with his perfectly-ordered world."
"He's got a point Nina," Remus said. "Although we don't have the support of everyone in the Ministry, there must be some other way."
"There is." Dumbledore said, and all eyes turned to him. He continued. "As most of you already know, we do have a spy working for us against Lord Voldemort. Some of you know who he is, and some will find out later, but this is how we shall find out of the intentions of our enemy- with luck."
For that was why Severus Snape was not present at that meeting.
*****
Thinking of putting a bit of Snape in the next chapter, y'know, just to see what else is going on. Would you like? Hope so. Please review now, I love your reviews!