A/N: Yes, I'm on a roll! I've got four chapters posted today! I'll probably be posting the next four chapters, hopefully, tomorrow. I'm crossing my fingers I'll post them tomorrow. I'm guessing I should do all my corrections today so all I can do tomorrow is upload.

Enjoy the chapters!

I don't own Harry Potter, and, yes, I still own Ashton Holmes. We're now sitting at my computer and enjoying his favorite: poppy seed bagels. =)

Chapter 24: Identity Crisis

Harry watched her run. He knew if he ran after her, something bad would happen. But if he didn't run after her, he feared she'd hate him forever. Harry knew that she couldn't keep running away from him, and he couldn't continue playing Hide-and-Seek. He had to run after her.

Harry began running, and he almost forgot about Professor Lupin, and being chaperoned on the grounds, especially at night. Professor Lupin called out for Harry, but he couldn't get himself to stop. He wasn't going to stop. He had to keep going...for Alina.

He slid inside the castle, and looked around the corners, making sure Filch or Snape or even Mrs. Norris didn't catch him out at night. When he saw the coast was clear, and made a mad dash for the staircase, taking two steps up at a time. He stepped off the staircase and began running down the corridors again. He turned the corner, the corner that led right to the portrait of the Fat Lady. He was so close. But...

"Harry! It shouldn't take you so long to get back from the pitch." Harry groaned. Cho Chang was waiting for him. "Why the long face? Maybe I could kiss it away." Cho said, advancing on him. Harry backed away in horror. He put his hands up in defense.

"Get away from me! I'm not your boyfriend." Harry kept stepping back, and Cho kept stepping up to him.

"Don't be that way. Don't be like Alina Halliwell. You shouldn't be going after a girl like her. She's out of your league, Harry. She's a totally different Quidditch match. She shouldn't even be in Gryffindor. She shouldn't be sitting near you, and getting all that attention from you. You shouldn't care about her. Harry, you should care about me." Harry bumped into a pillar, and Cho put her arms on either side of him to keep him from getting away.

"Cho-"

"She won't be there for you. She's too busy with Draco *dearest*. When Draco calls, you'll be on your own until she comes back. She won't be back for long though, Draco is so demanding. He'll want her every second of the day. Then, she won't have time for you. You'll never speak to each other. She'll find interest in Draco, while you're standing off to the side, waiting for her. But you know she'll never come. She's gonna keep running from you. You can't keep chasing her. You need to settle down. Settle for someone like-"

"I will never settle for you. You are *psycho*. You should be locked up in Saint Mungo's! You...you shouldn't be running around Hogwarts, day or night. You are crazy, and I don't want-" Cho pushed herself against him. He was forced against the wall as she roughly pressed her lips against his. Harry was quick with his reflexes, and pushed her off of him. He took the time she was taking to find her balance to run to the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Bubotuber pus! Bubotuber pus! OPEN, OPEN, OPEN!" Harry screamed at the Fat Lady.

"Come along now. Don't worry, I won't let her in." the Fat Lady said, and she closed behind him loudly. Harry leaned against the wall for a while, trying to get his brain functioning correctly again.

******

Alina walked onto the balcony outside the girls' dormitory. She summoned a seat from inside the room, and sat down, looking up at the sky. She heard something behind her, and turned to see Snuffles with a piece of parchment in his mouth. Alina got on her knees and took the letter from him. She wiped the dog saliva off on her pajamas. The dog was beginning to settle himself beside her chair.

"Oh Snuffles, head inside now. It's getting chilly. You could get the bed all to yourself for a while. You deserve it, after you almost passed out after following me back into the castle." Snuffles didn't move. "Go on now, shoo! You don't want the back of my hand." Alina threatened. Snuffles whimpered, and quietly went back into the room. She sighed, and unraveled the piece of parchment. It was a letter from her parents. "They just wrote me last week." She thought.

She read the letter. She read it again. She reread it thoroughly. She checked if there was some sort of mistake, misuse of words. But there weren't any. Her parents never made mistakes, and she knew she didn't need eye glasses to read what her parents had wrote. It's just that...it couldn't be.

"No." she whispered to herself, rolling the parchment back up. "That's not true." She unraveled the parchment again, and reread the letter another time. "This can't be. It's not true." She rolled the parchment back up, and unraveled it before she could roll it up completely.

She memorized the letter, word for word. She didn't know what to do. Would she go to Dumbledore? Tell her friends? Tell Harry? Was she going to keep it to herself? Was she going to confront her parents?

Her grip tightened on the parchment. She crumbled it up in her fist. She tossed it carelessly behind her.

"This is stupid." She muttered under her breath. The air around her grew cold, and she wasn't feeling too good anymore. She got up out of her seat, and turned to go back into the room. She gasped. She wanted to scream. Before she could catch her breath, the hooded figure put a cold hand over her mouth. She tried screaming, but that just made the grip over her mouth tighter. Alina's hands were free, so she tried reaching into the pocket of her pajamas for her wand. But the hooded figure, which she had realized was a dementor, seized the wand out of her hand and pointed it at her. She tried screaming again, and the dementor pointed the wand at her throat. Her screams stopped abruptly. No sound came out of her mouth. With her feet planted firmly on the ground, she knew that she hadn't tried all of her options. She kicked the dementor in the shin, hard. He let go of her to grip his knee, so she made a run for the door to the room. She banged the windows. It would've been easier for her if she had her voice back, but he had her wand. She kept banging on the windows until the dementor grabbed her, and brought her into the dark.

******

"The door is locked." Parvati Patil said as she fiddled with the doorknob to the dormitory.

"Step aside, Vati. You just have a bad grip." Megan pushed through Parvati and Lavender, and turned the knob on the door. She tried pushing the door open, but it wouldn't budge.

"Hey, is Alina inside? I need to talk to her." Harry came up behind the girls crowded outside their dormitory.

"That's it! Alina must've locked the door." Lavender said.

"ALINA! OPEN UP!" Megan yelled. Nothing.

"You think she has the Silencing Charm around her bed again?" Penelope asked.

"What's going on here?" Ron came walking up the stairs with Hermione.

"Why are you all crowded around the door?" Hermione asked.

"Alina's inside. She locked the door on us. We think she's got a Silencing Charm around her bed, and that's why she can't hear us calling for her to open up the door." Megan explained, "DAMN IT, LI! OPEN THE DOOR!" Ron pushed through the crowd to get to the door.

"Ladies," he said, pulling his wand out of his robes, "watch and learn." He pointed his wand at the doorknob, "Alohomora!" the door unlocked, and opened slightly. The girls walked in, followed by Harry and Ron, to an unearthly silence. "It's too quiet in here."

"Snuffles!" Harry ran to the dog, scratching on the glass of the door. "What does this door lead to?" Harry asked. Ron shrugged.

"Balcony." Megan said.

"Where's Alina?" Lavender asked.

"Snuffles is supposed to go with Alina wherever she goes." Harry said as Snuffles kept scratching on the window. He was seemingly begging to be let out. "Can I let him out?" Harry asked. Megan waved her hand in the air. She didn't really care. Just as long as she found out where Alina was. "Guys, I think you should come check this out." Harry called out from the balcony. The girls frowned at each other, and went out to the balcony. There was some rolled up parchment sitting by the door, and a wand was lying by a chair.

"She doesn't go anywhere without her wand." Megan whispered.

"Who?" Ron asked.

"Alina. That's her wand." She said as she leaned down to pick it up.

"How do you know?" Hermione asked. Megan handed Hermione the wand.

"Her initials are carved into her wand." Hermione ran her fingers across the carving of A.H. as Harry picked the crumbled parchment off the ground. He saw it was addressed to Alina.

"Oh...Merlin..." Parvati whispered.

"What's-OH MY GOD!" everyone turned to Lavender and Parvati, whom had their mouths open down to their ankles with fingers pointing up at the sky. Harry pocketed the parchment, and looked up, and then looked to Ron. Ron nodded. Up above them was a massive skull, with a serpent obtruding from its mouth like it was its tongue. The Dark Mark.

"I'll go inform Dumbledore." Hermione said, removing her hand from her forehead. "I think I should also tell him that Alina is missing."

"MISSING!?" Megan roared.

"Meg." Ron said quietly, begging her to keep it down.

"She's not in here, and Harry said she has to be guarded by Snuffles at all times. And her wand is not with her. You said so yourself that she never goes anywhere without it." Hermione said as she started walking to the door.

"Maybe she's wandering around the corridors. Knowing Lina, she probably ditched the mutt," at that, Snuffles growled, and bared his teeth at Megan.

"What about the wand?" Hermione asked.

"Fetch?" Megan said.

"I'm going to Dumbledore now." Hermione opened the door, and Megan tried going after her.

"We could find her!" Megan called out as Ron held on to her. She shook him off her, and turned to Harry. "You're Mr. Adventurer, aren't you? Let's go look for her."

"I can't." Harry said.

"Why?" Megan shouted.

"I just can't. I'm sorry." Harry led Snuffles out the door, and into the boys' dormitory. Harry checked that nobody was inside, and locked the doors. "Sirius, what happened?" Harry asked. Sirius transformed into his human form.

"I was sleeping." Sirius started.

"Sleeping!?" Harry asked.

"Yes. She told me to. You can't turn that girl down. She was going to hit me. So I went to sleep. I woke up to someone banging on the windows."

"What windows?"

"The windows on the door. I got up, and I tried to get outside, but the door was locked. There was something outside with her. I couldn't see her after that." Sirius explained.

"Why?"

"There was no sound. She's gone, and I don't know where. Dumbledore is gonna be so..." Harry remembered the letter, and pulled it out of his robes. "What's that?" Sirius asked curiously.

"A letter. It's addressed to Alina." Harry said as he sat down on his bed.

"I gave her that letter before the incident." Harry looked up and frowned.

"Really?" Sirius nodded. Harry looked down at the letter in his lap, and began reading. "What does it say?" Harry folded the letter and put it back inside his robes.

"They want to know how school is going." Harry stood up, "I'm going to see if Megan is okay. Do you want me to let you out so you could see Dumbledore?" Sirius shook his head.

"He'll come to me. I'll just stay here and see if some evidence of her disappearance shows up." Sirius said. Harry pushed the door open, and started knocking on the door to the girls' dormitory. Lavender poked her head out, and opened the door when she saw it was Harry.

"Could I speak to Ron and Megan alone, please?" Harry looked at Lavender and Parvati. They shrugged, and walked out of the room. The door closed behind them, and Harry reached into his robes. He threw the letter down onto Megan's bed. Ron eyed it.

"What is it?"

"Read it." Harry ordered, nodding to the letter.

"Who's it from? Who's it to?" Megan asked.

"To Alina, from her parents." she grabbed the letter and unfolded it.

"When did she get this?"

"Today." Megan nodded, and began reading. She gasped.

"What?" Ron tried grabbing at the letter. Megan slapped his hand.

"I'm not done yet." She brought the letter close to her. "That is so fucked up."

"What?" Megan shoved the letter into Ron's hand.

"Read." He looked from Megan to Harry with a frown on his face, picked up the letter, and began to read it.

"Whoa..."

"I don't understand why they'd lie to her like that. They didn't want to *alienate* her in her own family. Think about how she feels about this. She grew up believing she was a werewolf. She got into a school for werewolves, and she transformed into one on the full moons. How?" Megan questioned.

"Polyjuice Potion. Did you read that part? They put a hair of a wolf in the potion." Harry explained.

"No wonder she'd be in wolf form for a shorter amount of time than the rest of us."

"I thought you couldn't put animal hairs into a Polyjuice Potion." Ron said, recalling Hermione's Polyjuice Potion mishap. Harry and Megan shrugged.

Harry thought back to his dream. Alina wasn't a werewolf. She could be killed with an Unforgivable Curse. The pieces of the puzzle were slowly coming together. The dream was making more and more sense every minute. But he still didn't understand what "Death to the Mudblood" meant.

"Meg, are Alina's parents wizards?" he asked.

"No. Alina's Muggle-born. She's from a whole line of-"

"Oh Merlin." Harry whispered. Megan and Ron looked at him oddly. "I never told you two about my dream, the one I had during Divination."

"What about it?" Ron asked.

"Don't think I'm strange or something, but I seriously think that dream was a premonition."

"What're you-"

"Alina died. Voldemort used an Unforgivable Curse on her. They said that she's the key to getting me. Death Eaters were chanting, 'Death to the Mudblood'. It didn't make sense at first. I thought it was just a strange dream. But now, that we know she's not a werewolf, she can be killed with an Unforgivable Curse, and she is a Mudblood."

"This...this dream. Were you in a certain location? Maybe we could look for her there." Megan suggested.

"It was in a cave. I don't know how I got there." Megan ran to Harry's trunk, rummaged through his things, and pulled his invisibility cloak out. "What're you doing?"

"We're gonna go look for her. We need this." Megan folded the cloak and tucked it under her arm. She went to her bed, and pocketed the letter. "What're you waiting for? Let's go." She went to the door and walked out, Ron and Harry following behind her.

"How are we going to find a cave on the Hogwarts grounds? This castle is huge, and it's dark outside." Ron said. Megan rolled her eyes.

"From what I've heard, the darkness never stopped the two of you before. Besides, if you were in a cave, that crosses out this school. We'll have all night to look for her." She said as she walked through the portrait hole.

"I'm going to be in so much trouble for this." Harry said.

"You never worried about that before." Ron said.

"You're not the one going against the headmaster." Megan unfolded the cloak, and they put it over themselves. They started walking slowly, and tried not to make a sound. "OW! That's my foot." Harry hissed.

"Sorry." Ron mumbled.

"Which way do we go to get out of the school? I don't recognize the school in the dark." Megan said.

"Who's there?" the three stopped dead in their tracks. They had been caught.

A/N: FOUR MORE CHAPTERS TO GO, YAHOO!!! -Gryffindor Heiress