AN: Son of a bitch! I have to be at the hospital for surgery at SIX IN THE BLOODY MORNING! I never even usually wake up until a quarter to eight. Gah! Anyway, enjoy the chapter and wish me luck on the operating table.

Disclaimer: Why do I always forget to put these effing things up? I honestly just forget; anyway, I don't own any of these sexy and/or evil and/or annoying and/or magical characters. This is a sue-free zone, please keep it that way you bloodsuckers–er, I mean lawyers…

P.S.–This chapter is dedicated to pug320 for being a great (albeit currently absent) reviewer, and to sillypaulie and Monkey, Queen of Insanity for a) being rock-steady reviewers and b) having awesome names. On to the chapter, away with you!

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Harry snapped his eyes open and was on his feet faster than lightning. He whipped around to face Dirk, and his jaw dropped and his eyes bulged when he saw the damage done to the trees behind the older man. A black trail of scorched earth at least twenty meters wide stained the green grass, leading to the burnt remains of several trees; at least fifteen had been reduced to charcoal pencils, and many others had black burn marks. "Wha…what did that?" said Harry breathlessly.

Dirk cleared his throat and tried (and failed) to suppress a wide grin. "You did."

Harry blinked, letting this information sink in–then denying it in full. "No, really. What happened?"

At this, Dirk let out a short laugh. "Do you not believe me, Young Prince? Well, one can only accept so much shock in so short a period of time, I suppose." Dirk's smile faded, giving way to a grim line of determination. "I'm afraid I have run out of time once more, Young Prince. And it is time for you to wake up. Remember our last visit; you will find your path much clearer in the morning."

"But–" Harry tried to begin, but Dirk Everard had already disappeared. The world gave a sudden lurching spin, and Harry dreamed no more.

"Jump him…jump him!"

"Hey, you can't do that! Quit cheating!"

"I'm not cheating, you lousy git. Jump him!"

"I know you're cheating, I saw you move that extra piece onto the board! And don't call me a lousy git, you bloody–"

"Will you guys shut up? You'll wake him up; and you're both lousy gits!"

"What!"

A moan from Harry silenced the heated argument coming from across the room. He sat up and blinked blearily around for his glasses; when he had them on his face he quickly identified the squabbling voices.

Ron Weasley and one of the twins (Harry thought it was George) had been playing wizard's chess in the corner of the unfamiliar room. Hermione had been watching from a second bed, and had been scolding the other two–until she realized Harry was awake, of course.

"Harry! You're awake–how are you feeling? Lupin said–"

"Harry!" Ron interrupted, taking his eyes off the chessboard and therefore missing George putting another pawn by Ron's king. George caught Harry's eyes on him and gave him a wink as Ron got up and quickly crossed the room to Harry's bed. "What happened back there, mate? Lupin only mentioned something about Death Eaters on Privet Drive when he–"

"Ron, later!" said Hermione in a much softer voice. "Remember how Lupin said he'd be when he woke up, now be quiet. Harry, Lupin told us to give you this," she pulled out the small vial of pain relieving potion that Lupin had given him back at the house, "when you woke up. Harry, has this happened before? How did Lupin, and even Moody and Tonks, know what you'd need after you woke up? And Lupin said you'd know how much to take. How do you know that? What–"

She stopped when Harry held up a hand for her silence with a grimace of pain. "Oh! Of course; you need the potion. Here," said Hermione, handing him the vial and a small glass. He quickly poured his dosage and downed it in one gulp, welcoming the relief it offered.

Harry prolonged the silence that had befallen the room more than necessary, as he was trying to think of a way to avoid answering the questions he knew everyone would ask. He was unable to come up with anything better than simply ignoring them, however, so he raised his head and began asking his own questions.

"Where am I?" he said.

Ron and Hermione shared a look with George, and he left looking only slightly put out, closing the door on his way. "You're…we're at the Order of the Phoenix's Headquarters," said Hermione softly, not quite meeting Harry's eye.

He understood why; this was Sirius's house, and even though he'd hated it, it was the last place he'd ever lived. Harry knew his friends were being gentle about this fact, and he silently thanked them for their unnecessary consideration; they didn't know that getting to Grimmauld Place had been his every intent. He only nodded, and then stood up to leave the room.

Ron and Hermione made to follow him, but he paused and said, "I'd… I'd kind of like to look around…alone…for awhile–if you don't mind, of course," he added hastily.

Ron looked like he rather minded a bit, but Hermione nudged him and spoke over any forthcoming protests. "Of course we don't mind, Harry. We'll be here if you need us."

"Thanks," said Harry with a smile, soft but genuine. He went through the door and into the hallway, shutting the door on the way out as George had done. It wasn't that he didn't want Ron and Hermione around, he was actually very grateful for friends like them; he just had some rather important business to attend to–in the Black library.

Now, thought Harry, where is the library, anyway? He didn't remember Sirius saying anything about it before his mysterious letter arrived a few days ago, and the house was so large–the library could be anywhere. Though it would have taken a considerably shorter amount of time to ask one of the Order members if they knew the library's whereabouts, Harry opted to wander around and get reacquainted with the revamped Headquarters.

The last time he'd been in Grimmauld Place, it had been mostly cleaned out but very plain and barren. In his absence over the past several months, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had been polished, painted, and furnished. Most of the serpentine décor remained, however, as throwing it out or selling it (as would likely be the case with Mundungus Fletcher on the job) would raise suspicion and possibly leave a trail leading back to the Order.

The house was far from extravagant, of course, but it was clean, cozy, and complete. The old peeling wallpaper had been removed or replaced (depending on the room), new cushy rugs replaced the old threadbare ones, and mismatched furniture (obviously borrowed from various overstocked homes) had been placed in several rooms. It was now, all in all, a different house. Harry liked it, if not for the sole fact that he knew Sirius would have loved the changes to his former family home.

After Harry walked up and down the house's many halls for a quarter of an hour, opening every door in sight, he began getting a little frustrated. Where the devil was the library? He hoped he wasn't going in circles; his only reassurance that this was not the case was that he had yet to come upon the same room twice.

He was about to turn around and just ask someone downstairs for directions, when he noticed a narrow corridor to his right. It was so dark his eyes had almost completely skimmed over it. After glancing around briefly to check that no one was coming, Harry stepped into the shadowy hallway.

He couldn't see a thing; unlike the other halls in Grimmauld Place, there were no torches hanging on the walls of this mysterious corridor, and Harry wished more than ever for permission to do magic outside of school. As it were, he was not yet of age, and therefore he only reached out on either side of him, palms flat against the walls as he moved slowly and steadily through the passageway.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking when he saw something up ahead through the gloom–a thin, horizontal beam of soft, yellow light, as though it were coming from beneath a door. Hope and relief began to swell in his chest as Harry hurried towards the only light for what seemed like miles. He reached the door and groped for the knob, which gave a sharp, metallic click as it turned.

The door opened to reveal a massive, high-ceilinged room. The walls could not be seen as they were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, upon which lay more books than three Hogwarts libraries combined could ever hold. More bookshelves, shorter than those on the walls, filled the room and surrounded a reading area furnished with two old sofas and several chintz chairs, all but one covered with dusty yellowed sheets; a large mahogany table rested in the middle of them and held several old quills and a large ink bottle. Torches and lamps lay haphazardly wherever they were able to fit, as the walls were otherwise occupied. Behind the reading area were towering, deep green drapes, which presumably hid a view of the Muggle residential area in which Grimmauld Place lay secret. Harry had found the Black library.

He had never seen so many books in one place before, and could only gape for a few minutes in awe. Hermione would lose her head, he thought, if she ever found this place; she'd probably never be seen again if she ever went inside. Shaking off the shock, Harry now felt overwhelmed; how in the world was he supposed to find a thin Portkey book in all this? He wished Sirius had given him a clue as to where it could be, or that he'd left it somewhere out in the open.

Had Sirius left it out? In his letter he'd seemed determined for Harry to find it, so in all likelihood it had not been returned to its original place amongst the infinite shelves. Harry tried to think of possible places the small black could be at the moment; it was a Portkey, so Sirius wouldn't have been able to pick it up and move it without being transported to that mysterious round room again. He had probably just dropped it on the floor next to its shelf after he'd looked at the first page…unless he'd walked somewhere with it, in which case…Harry had no hope of knowing where it could be.

Harry sighed at the bleakness of the situation, but still began looking down all the aisles and rows of shelves for any floor-bound Portkeys.

As he passed the rows of books, he glanced at some of their titles: he saw Fifteen Ways to Skin a Cat by Caleb Barker, as well as A Guide to Practical Bribery by Edsel Gould; then he came upon an entire section devoted to blood purity with titles like Preserving Purity: Family Ties by Theodoric Harving and Mudblood Murderers and the Men They Manipulate by Ulysses Townsend. Harry quickly understood his godfather's desperation (and utter failure) to find some entertaining reading material in a library for dark wizards.

Unfortunately, Harry's own desperation was taking him over as his search of the endless rows yielded nothing more than what he assumed could be found in the Malfoy library as well. He had seen no sign of the Portkey book, and he feared he would actually have to pour through every title in the gigantic room, a feat sure to take longer than Harry's prior years at Hogwarts combined.

With a sigh, Harry turned to go back to the reading area and rest for a while, hoping it would help him think of a better solution. He'd barely taken one step towards the chairs, however, when he heard a quiet thump. Harry whipped around, worried someone else had discovered him, to face the sound's origin. It had come from a few shelves to the right, in the very back of the library. Wand out, he slowly and silently made his way to the final aisle of shelves; with a deep breath, he whipped around the corner, ready to shoot any curse he knew at–

Nothing. Nothing? There was nobody there at all; but somebody other than himself had to have made the noise, because it had come from so far away. Eyes narrowing in determination, Harry's grip on his wand tightened and he moved slowly down the aisle, body tense and ready to move wherever necessary–until his foot caught on something and he crashed unceremoniously to the floor.

"What the–?" said Harry, twisting his body back to see what he'd stumbled over. He squinted into the dark and saw, lying innocently on the floor of the library, a very thin, brown leather-bound book with a beautiful silver compass rose embossed on the cover in lieu of a title. "The Portkey!" Harry whispered in awe.

He looked up at the shelf above the book and saw a very small blank space where it must have lain previously. But what had made it fall to the floor? No one else was in the library–Harry had checked everywhere. And even if someone had knocked it down, how would they know which book Harry needed to find? Perhaps the book fell by itself…

Harry had sudden flashes of another mysterious book with a mind of its own; it had held the memories of a young Lord Voldemort, better known back then as Tom Riddle, an ordinary Hogwarts student. He had tried to steal Ginny Weasley's life in order to regain his own, but Harry had prevented Tom's return…that year, at least.

Harry shook his head to rid himself of those thoughts and returned them to the book at hand. The entire situation suddenly seemed ludicrous to him; here he was, in the library of one of the most prominent dark wizarding families ever known, about to touch a mysterious Portkey, and all based solely on the word of a strange letter he'd supposedly received from his late godfather, but which had seemed so uncharacteristic of him that Harry couldn't be certain of its author at all.

Harry drew back the hand that had unconsciously been reaching slowly towards the book during his musings. He stood up and brushed dust from the floor off his clothes, glaring contemptuously at the Portkey; he was angry with himself for going through all this trouble–he'd willingly attacked Death Eaters! And for what? A one-way ticket to Voldemort, that's what…

Harry was distracted from his self-scolding by a sudden tower of wind and light shooting from the book on the floor. He stared wide-eyed as the front cover was lifted y the magical wind, opening the book to the first page. Swirling letters began writing themselves on it; they looked like they were written in molten gold. Harry could just make them out from his standing position above them:

"Fortunes told in days of old felled the bold and made blood cold…"

The golden words glowed brighter and then faded to black. More golden letters, written in a flowing script by an invisible hand, appeared beneath them: "Find the Records, Seek them out, the Seeker will win the Bout…"

These words also flashed brilliantly before turning black. Harry knew from Sirius's letter (he no longer doubted it to be real) that those had been the only words written inside the book, and was therefore unprepared when new words wrote themselves beneath the familiar ones: 

"Welcome, Young Seeker."

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AN: Wow, I finished this WAY faster than I'd planned. Cool!

Anyway, please review! I honestly want to know what you all think of my story, even if you hate it (as long as you tell me why you hate it; if you don't, I know where you live). Reviews make me happy, and I write when I'm happy (or in pain, for some reason, as is evident by the speed of this update; my back hurts like hell!)

Next time: Does Voldemort have something to do with the Portkey book? Will Harry touch it? Would it deliver him directly into danger?

Review Responses:

sillypaulie: No, Harry wasn't sent to the future; he's back in Dirk's world, the forest in the late 880s. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, and thank you for being a repeat reviewer!

Monkey, Queen of Insanity: (smirks evilly) Who says it was Lucius in that disguise? Methinks she assumes too much! Thank you for being a repeat reviewer!