Disclaimers: Same as first chapter. (I hate repeating them)

The Final War of the Sorcerers

Chapter 3: A Verse

"I am terribly disappointed in you, Harry" Prof. Dumbeldore's voice was grave. "Did you feel that we would leave the Wargs unprotected & expose the students to any danger?"

"I.. er didn't think about that, sir" Harry said meekly, mentally admonishing himself for his stupidity.

"Didn't think! Harry it is high time you start thinking for your sake & for the sake of people who love you" He said letting out a heavy sigh and, for the first time Harry saw in Dumbeldore an Old weary man; a man who had shouldered burdens too long; a man who was now showing the first signs of tiredness and more importantly, a man who truly cared for him.

Almost an hour had passed since Harry had reached Hogwarts. Snape had brought Harry straight to the principles office. A sleepy Dumbledore, dressed in a dark blue nightgown with big white polka dots, had received them with a bemused expression on his face. Snape had presented his case for Harry's suspension painting a picture where it would seem that everything outside, except Hogwarts, was on fire and if it weren't for him, Harry would have set Hogwarts on fire too. Dumbelore had listened to everything quietly and then sent Snape to wake up the other professors. The sleepy professors had then proceeded on a firefighting mission to the forbidden forest. Harry then explained his own side of the story to the Dumbeldore.

The professor expressed his skepticism at the mention of the violent tree & the dwarf. "Harry never in the century of my life have I heard of dwarves except in some fairy tales. To the best of my knowledge there is no such tree in the forbidden forest or there wasn't until a few months ago when we did our routine inspection. Though I want to believe what you have just said, I find it impossible to do so. I am afraid until & unless you can present me with an iota of evidence that you weren't hallucinating I will have to agree with Prof. Snape that you have crossed the line."

Harry's heart sank as he heard this, of all the people in the world if there was one man who would have believed his story, it was Prof. Dumbeldore. There was a strange feeling at the pit of his stomach and his legs suddenly felt heavy. They refused to carry the burden of the rest of his body. He sat down heavily in one of the old teak wood chairs. A million thoughts passed through his head on the scenarios on his suspension.

"However," Professor Dumbeldore continued after sometime, "if you are saying the truth or what you believed of it, I will not suspend you. You will have to repeat the same thing under a small dosage of Veritaserum, once the professors return." He added much to the relief of Harry.

Almost two hours later since they had left, the professors returned grumpy, ill tempered and covered with black soot from head to toe. Prof. Dumbeldore's presence prevented them from openly venting their thoughts on this overtime duty they were subjected to because of Harry. However from the dark looks they were giving him Harry was sure he hadn't made any new friends. Snape 's pale face didn't betray any emotion, however from his short eager movements it was clear that he was eagerly awaiting Harry's suspension. He did fly into a rage, a few moments later, on learning of the Professors plan for Harry. His protests were however cut short by an "I have decided" look from the ageing wizard. The bigger Irony of the moment was the fact that it was Snape who, credit to his potions expertise, administered a small portion of Veritaserum under which Harry repeated his story.

Many of the professors who were listening to the story for the first time had Incredulous look on their faces. Snape did gather some consolation from this fact as most of the teachers presented their disbelief to Harry's story.

A grim faced Dumbeldore, however, paid absolutely no attention to their mutterings.

"Well, that settles one thing, that Harry is not lying. This is at least what he thought he saw. But since he has by his own admission broken the curfew and set fire to the trees, he will have to serve detentions with Hagrid everyday from tomorrow and plant the trees to replace the one's he burnt. Hagrid will supply him with Super Sprout Seeds for this purpose" Dumbeldore ordered, signaling the end of the discussion.

A visibly relieved Harry trudged up the stairs to the dormitory. It was only now that he realised, how tiring the walk in the forest had been. He promptly dropped off to sleep. ________________________________________________________________________

The next morning, the first lecture happened to be Potions and Snape was in a dark mood. Harry tried to hide behind the bulk of Crabbe, who had been paired with Neville, and was luckily right in front of him. Harry had been paired with Ron, who had been granted leave by Madam Pomfrey.

Ron had slept like a log the whole night under the influence of the dreamless potion. He had heard snatches of conversation about Harry and the fire in the forbidden forest at breakfast. Eager to satiate his curiosity he prodded Harry to come out with the whole story. Just when Harry turned to answer Ron, Neville juggled with a jar of venomous weed extract he was using, and dropped it right into Harry's cauldron. The ensuing explosion splattered a thick green gooey substance on everything in the radius of 6 feet. The only saving grace was that this radius of six meters included Draco Malfoy who now had bright green face to contrast with his blond hair.

"Potter!" barked Snape "Getting a knack at arson, aren't we?"

He continued.

"Perhaps not! It was probably that dwarf who did that or perhaps a conspiring tree tripped you and you had no other option than to burn that cauldron to save the school"

The Slytherins erupted into raptures and even a few Gryffindors had bemused expression on their faces. Harry tried to keep a blank look on his face. There was no point in showing that Snape's comments affected him in any way. He was about to retort back that it was Neville who was responsible but he stopped himself. Snape had never been too kind on Neville either. Silence is the best answer, he decided. This seemed to infuriate Snape further.

"But this is not the principles office. This is my classroom and here you will not get off so easily. Both you and Weasley will clean the whole classroom and serve detentions with Filch for the whole week."

Ron's jaw dropped open on listening to this, even by Snape's standards, this was too harsh a punishment for an accident that had not been caused by them in the first place. Harry looked on defiantly at Snape, collected his books and silently proceeded out of the classroom after his classmates.

"I will get you for this Potter!" Malfoy

"Hey! Crabbe who is this toad with you" Ron answered back.

"Duh! What! Who?" Crabbe said scratching his head

"Don't worry there is a dumb Turkey with him too, shouldn't be too difficult to recognize" Ron added coolly to further infuriate a seething Malfoy as they walked off for the next lecture.

The rest of the lectures were a repetition of similar experiences Harry had in his earlier years. The slytherins made it a point to invoke the previous nights events and pass snide comments at every opportunity they got. The only saving grace was the fact that none of the other teachers showed any anger at the previous nights unusual events and taught their usual boring lectures. Professor Trelawney predicted yet another horrible death for Harry, this time by fire.

As Harry and Ron trudged back to the dorms Hermione rushed in to meet them.

"Harry! wait up! I need to speak with you" Harry stopped and turned around. Hermione skidded to a halt and waited for a minute as she caught her breath.

"Harry can we go somewhere else and speak" she said throwing a meaningful glance towards the students in the corridor. Harry nodded and the three of them trudged down to the school grounds.

The sun had almost completed its daily journey and was slowly withdrawing the light it had so generously poured out at the beginning. A cool breeze swept the grounds and it was perhaps this sylvan atmosphere, which made them keep their silence for quite sometime. For some very obvious reasons, Ron steered them towards the lake, away from the wargs, where they plonked down on the grounds besides some sparse shrubbery.

Hermione was the first to break the silence. "Harry can you tell me about what happened the other night in detail." Harry repeated everything he had seen the other night.

"Harry can you remember anything about the man you were following " Hermione asked.

"What's to remember I am sure it was Snape?" Ron said excitedly

"I am not so sure.. But Snape did come into the forbidden forest awfully quickly after the fire" Harry said perplexed. Harry was still not so sure as to where Snape's loyalty lay but he knew Dumbeldore trusted Snape enough to admit him into the order. Dumbeldore had however erred in his judgement before and Snapes actions did nothing to bely the suspicion.

"Harry do you remember absolutely anything about the person you saw in the night" Hermione asked again

"I don't know. Infact now, I am not even sure whether there was somebody in the woods. I thought I saw a black hooded person near the cages but that's all. The person was already far ahead of me, by the time I reached the grounds and there wasn't much light in the forest to catch a clear glimpse of him" Harry said " I could have even hallucinated the whole thing."

"Harry I believe you. But are you sure what you saw were dwarves" Ron asked scratching his head. "You know there wasn't enough light and those things could have been children with beards or something. You know how Fred and George ended up with beards during the Triwizard cup"

Harry just looked at Ron and turned away "Well if even you think I am making it all up so be it"

"No Harry we believe you" Hermione butted in. She still remembered the way these two had behaved during the Triwizard cup and didn't want a repeat from them.

"You know Harry I have been looking up in the library about dwarves and their fables. There is almost nothing in the section about magical creatures. I found a few stories about dwarves and elves and the like but they were just stories. There seems to be almost no mention of them even in Hogwarts a History. However I found this." she said and pulled out a little red book from her robes and enlarged it with a wave of her wand.

It was a Dark Red book with a black colored binding. The title was written in golden Ink which seemd to have some charm on it as it was shining just as good as new. The book was written in some ancient flowy script which Harry could not decipher.

"What is this seems like some runes," he asked.

"That's it... I know almost all the runes in existence and this is something I have never come across" Hermione said excitedly.

"Hermione I know you are a very smart witch but can you be so confident you know all the runes" Ron quizzed with an eyebrow arched in surprise.

"Yes. But that's not it, the first page has this written on it. " She opened the book onto the first page and there seemed to a small verse written in a number of different languages. One of the scripts vaguely resembled English.

"This verse is written in Anglo Saxon and two other scripts I do not know"

"What does it say?" Harry asked

"An act of deceit, a promise broken, splits the two worlds apart
Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and Ents sentenced to the middle world
Wizards remain in the Last world breaking the white power in half

Evil shall reign in both the worlds and I Eleanor narrate the tale before
we depart"

Hermione read out the words her finger slowly tracing out each word as she translated it. She then arranged her glasses, which had slipped down her nose and looked up Harry. Both Harry and Ron were speechless unable to truly comprehend what the whole thing meant.

"What does it mean? "Harry asked in a low voice almost to himself.

"I don't know but this seems an authentic mention of Elves and Dwarves and some other creatures. The only thing I can understand is that they were split apart due to something" Hermione said

"How do you know this is not just another story?" Ron countered

"I don't. But this book was lying in the Biography section and this script is nothing like what I have ever seen. I don't know but the book seemed to almost lure me to itself and I really don't remember how I found it" Hermione said ardently trying to convince her two friends.

Harry maintained a thoughtful silence while Ron made a few unsuccessful attempts to speak, each time changing his mind at the last minute and stopping short of saying something.

The sun had almost completely left the sky and only a pale orange glow remained in its place. The three friends slowly trudged thought the grounds towards the castle.

Watchers Note: Sorry For taking such a long time to update but I was too busy with to update (don't ask why!) I am going to update a lot quicker over the summer (Promise!). Hope you like the chapter. Thank you for your reviews I hope to continue improving.