*~Not Quite A Victory~*

Alright, here I am, back once more. The Amazing Snorkack is back in action, baby! But it's been months since I started Not Quite A Victory; this may affect the course of the fic. Well, time to sit back and see what kind of weird writing I've created after months of HP-free living.

Also, I have absolutely no idea whether Luna is alive or dead yet, she hasn't shown her face but it appears she's alive as of this chapter. So we'll find out, maybe the Boy-Who-Lived was too deranged to remember correctly... heheheheh.

*readers die of shock/prolonged waiting*

And heeeeeeeeere we go!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

~ Chapter 1 ~

~ The Beginning of Their Troubles ~

"Have you ever had the feeling that he hasn't been telling us everything?"

Of course. I've seen it in his dulled eyes, in his slouching posture. The haunting expression that could turn someone to stone. Nobody could have endured anything quite like it, and he has the right not to tell us everything.

"You haven't? It's pretty obvious."

But at the same time, he knows something that could affect others. Innocent wizarding families that are oblivious to these new dangers in this golden age will be in grave peril. We all thought that the bad stuff was past us, that we could finally live our lives openly, perhaps even reveal ourselves to the Muggle world, but it is not to be.

"Look, there must be something we can do. Do you think he's talked to anyone besides us at all? We must be the only two people he's been speaking to since graduation, and for us it's rare at that!"

I don't know what's wrong with him. Nobody does. A few straight-to-the-point writers of the Daily Prophet call him mad. He hasn't ever told them off; maybe he doesn't care, maybe it's true and he wants everyone to know. He lives alone, no pets, no visitors...

"He's got no friends, that's what it is."

"Don't be ridiculous, Ron," Hermione scoffed. "We're his friends. Remus is his friend. Even that nutcase Luna is his friend."

"I call 'em like I see 'em, love." Ron winked at Hermione. He was sitting in an armchair in the living room of their quaint house. Beyond them was an expansive window overlooking the small English town they lived above, their house perched high on a hill. They'd been married for two years now, but with their past, they couldn't think of having children... yet.

She rolled her eyes. Both were supposedly on vacation from their jobs; they were high up in the Ministry of Magic, but also in the less-renowned Order of the Phoenix. Their holiday mission was a very important and confusing one entrusted only to the closest friends of Mr. Harry Potter.

"Let's get down to business. We're the closest people to Harry. We've known him from the beginning of school, we've watched as he –"

"Began to mentally deteriorate into a funny farm candidate?" Ron butted in hopefully.

"NO! He is not insane! In fact, it could be us that are the insane ones and he the sane! Now shut up so I can think."

"But... you've seen him twitching before, haven't you? The twitching always makes me nervous. Really creepy-looking, if you ask me."

Hermione responded with a poisonous glare, and Ron snapped his jaw shut.

"As I was saying before, we've watched his entire life at school. He's told us just about everything."

"Just about. You say that like you're serious about it."

She continued despite the interjection. "But then there was that one night when he disappeared. Nobody had a clue where he went. It turns out the Chamber of Secrets held more secrets than we thought; that's what we're supposed to find out. What went on down there that unhinged the most stable of all of us? What did he bring back?"

She leaned forward in her chair, to really give Ron a good stare. "What did he bring back with him?"

"That stick, the torch-thing. Not much to it."

"Well, we'll start there. Where's the biggest magical library known to wizardkind?"

They both paused for a moment and thought, then answered at the same time.

"Hogwarts!"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was dark.

Well, any idiot could see that. Although the absence of light meant sight was impossible under those conditions. Bringing everything back to the darkness all over again.

It was wet.

His shoes were soaked. The bottom of his robes had been trailing in the dirty water for at least an hour. What he wanted right then was a good, hot shower. And a lobotomy to go with it.

It had all led up until these moments. Agonizing fear as he walked through large rounded archways and slightly luminescent moss growing from the cracks in the stone walls. It was the school's only chance of not being completely destroyed, and as usual, the responsibility to save it fell on him.

"Life is just getting better and better," he whispered sourly, running his hands along the wall to feel for the turns. He actually had no idea why whispering was necessary, but he did it anyway. All the same, there couldn't possibly be anyone here.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ron paced back and forth behind Hermione with a quill and parchment. Her eyes darted back and forth furiously as she read the last page of a giant tome. With a depressed sigh, she slammed the book shut, dust rising from the pages. Another fruitless try.

Ron looked flabbergasted. He waved the empty piece of paper at her. "You've pored over at least a hundred books, and you haven't found one bloody thing?"

Hermione rubbed her forehead with the back of her hands, elbows propped up on the table. "Not even anything pertaining to the Chamber of Secrets!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. How do we know this has to do with the Chamber of Secrets?"

"Well, that's where Harry said he'd gone. He told us, after they calmed him down. I believe him; he wasn't quite the supposed 'nutcase' he is now, at least, that's what I think." She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, trying to make connections at lightning speed in her brain. Lightning, like Harry's scar. The scar that was above his eyes. Emerald eyes, like the –

Like the torch's flame.

"That's it!"

Ron stopped striding and gave her an odd look. "What's what?"

"Oh, why didn't I realize it before! It's so obvious now!"

"What's obvious?"

Ignoring Ron's confusion, she continued, in a burst of speech, to explain what she had just begun to realize.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry Potter was insane.

It wasn't an all-out, psychotic ranting kind of insane. It was more subtle, more... inward. If you hadn't met him before, insane would be the last word you would use to describe him. Either he could mask it quite well or he was totally unaware of it, but since nobody knew what he knew, the answer would remain a total mystery to his baffled friends and acquaintances.

Here was the dead giveaway: the incessant tics. Twitching, unbearable to watch, as though it were a contagious illness that was spawned of eye contact. It was an unconscious reaction to the Cruciatus Curse that had done his mind in years ago, but nobody was clever enough to make the connection, except maybe Harry. And that was only if he cared to delve his mind into the past, which was not often, and mostly ended in a fit of blind rage that cost him some good furniture. He preferred his furniture intact, if possible.

As for his looks, he'd barely changed since the incident. Still short, still with the same messy black hair that never stayed flat (though who would care? It's not like anyone visited any more), the same scar that cut jaggedly across his forehead as a lifetime branding, and his haunted, sardonic expression almost genuinely the one he'd had at the final showdown. What had really changed were his eyes.

Eyes can tell you a lot about a person. The look in someone's eye, the amount of focus, the position of the eyelid over the eye, all a clever body language. Even Harry's eyes once held a feature that could be called innocence, a "twinkle" that alerted people to his good nature and selflessness.

Innocence was for saps. Harry had no incorruptible purity left. He was warped and altered beyond hope by circumstances that would kill most people. He was no longer a child obeyed someone else's rules; he made the rules.

And boy, did he love making the rules.

Most of the time it was simple. If he felt like moving all the rooms in his house around, then he did. It was trickier around other people, the few times he was in the presence of good friends during the basically uneventful life he chose to have. He'd tweak their minds, slowly but surely, and convince them of something preposterous. The modification of a recent memory, a slight adjustment to a well-known bit of information; that whole thing. It was easy and sadistic, and a way to practice the strange powers of telepathy he'd never noticed before recently.

The last time he'd done it, he secretly convinced Tonks that she could fly without the aid of magic. It took the others almost an hour to convince her to come down from the roof of Harry's hose, and the entire time he'd chuckled at their suspicions that she was drunk. It was so simple to undo what he'd done that he wondered if he should tell them all about this new ability to touch and control the world around him with only his mind. But they wouldn't understand if he tried, he knew.

It was strange things like this that let him know he was insane. It was irrational that something like that could happen. Every day he tried to use the power, making sure it hadn't faded away. It would be useful to probe other peoples' minds and discover everything they thought was safe in their skull. Any sort of blackmail was always comforting to have, because you'd never know if you needed it.

It was this telekinetic power that convinced him he could pull it off.

~ End Chapter 1 ~

Responses, Responses...

Mella deRanged ~ Rest assured, there will be no Harry/Luna. It's a nice ship, but it doesn't work in this scenario.

Charliepotter ~ Well surprise, here's chapter one! Hope it makes sense. It should in the end. I wish I could finish my fanfiction, I feel so stupid that I start them and can't seem to finish them...

PrincessEilonwy ~ Yeh, no swear words. And about the reviews, I set the amount to 40 for the other two fanfictions because frankly if there's no reader interest and comments, then it shouldn't be top priority. I know I sound stupid, but I value reader input, it helps shape my stories.

Pyrinsomniac ~ Thanks! Battles are cool.