Since I can't reply to guest reviews normally, I'll do it like this. Everyone else, have fun reading the chapter!
Why I use the Stations of the Canon the way I do is simply because I enjoy the trope. I write fics with some kind of challenge for myself in mind. For this fic, it's the triad ship and keeping up the posting streak. To that effect, I take what I can get when it comes to plot and plot points, because I simply don't have the time to write a chapter per day otherwise. I love Stations of the Canon fics anyway, so I decided to use that to keep the writing going; if I get stuck, I can just follow canon.
However, there is a challenge as well in modifying the plot and still hitting the plot beats I want to hit, and I enjoy doing it even if it's not always the most logical way of doing things. Ultimately, I write the sort of story I'd enjoy reading, and against my expectations, it became my most popular story quite quickly despite its close adherence to the canon plot.
Chapter Ninety-Six: Opening Up
The remaining days of term were easily the most fun of the year. Sure, Malfoy seemed to be out for blood, but having lost quite enough duels that year, he did little more than glare and sulk, and Daphne made sure to not be on her own whenever she could manage it. Though she could probably get away from Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle on her own, she wasn't entirely sure they wouldn't use particularly nasty curses on her, and she had no desire to be sent to St. Mungo's this close to the end of the school year, and certainly not after getting away from a fight with twelve Death Eaters with minor injuries.
So, she spent most of her time outside with Harry and Ginny — Hermione and Ron were also quite eager to have some time together that wasn't filled with stress — and with the weather being as beautiful as it was, it was quite easy to forget that the wizarding world was actually at war.
"So, did you use your one drop of Felix Felicis yet?" Ginny asked as she petted Nyx in the warm afternoon sun.
Daphne shook her head. "Not yet. I'll probably do it over the summer break. Less chance of being interrupted at home," she said.
The mention of the potion reminded Daphne of something else. "There's something I want to tell you, though. If Harry is okay with it too, I mean," she said looking at Harry, who was lounging nearby.
"Yeah, of course," he said. "It's only fair that Ginny knows it, too. I'm considering telling Ron and Hermione as well, actually. I think they deserve it."
Daphne nodded slowly. The main reason she hadn't wanted to tell anyone about her vision was that it would it make it feel too 'real', but now that there was a possibility she might avert it altogether, it had become less terrifying a prospect, if only marginally so.
"Tell me what?" Ginny asked, intrigued.
"Well, you know that I'm a Seer, and that my visions have all been focused specifically on Harry's future," Daphne began.
Ginny nodded.
"Most of those visions, I've told you about. There is one, however, that I only ever shared with Harry, and that I really didn't want to tell anyone else. It's one that keeps coming back, and one that I really, really want to prevent from coming true."
"That…doesn't sound too good," Ginny said hesitantly.
Daphne shook her head. "It isn't." She took a deep breath. "In the vision, I see Harry entering a clearing in a forest, where Voldemort and some of his Death Eaters are waiting for him…and then Voldemort kills Harry," she said.
"Are you…are you sure he kills him?" Ginny asked, paling in spite of the warm afternoon sun.
Daphne nodded slowly. "He casts the Killing Curse, and Harry doesn't do anything to avoid it."
"That's…that can't be real," Ginny said firmly.
Daphne grinned wryly. "Yeah, that's what I've been telling myself for two years."
Ginny looked at Harry. "There's no way you'd just let Voldemort kill you, is there?" she asked.
Harry shook his head. "I can't imagine why I wouldn't fight, at least. I'm certainly not planning on getting killed anytime soon. Besides, we learned that visions from crystal balls can be changed. It isn't certain that things will happen this way," he said.
Ginny didn't look convinced. "Listen, Harry, if you ever decide that letting Voldemort kill you is acceptable, don't bother going to him, because I'll kill you myself," she said.
Harry grinned at her. "I'll keep it in mind."
Daphne checked her watch. "Speaking of Divination and related subjects…we should head over to the Room of Requirement soon. I'm pretty sure the Order is dying to know the truth about what happened at the Ministry."
The day after the battle at the Department of Mysteries, an article had appeared in the Daily Prophet confirming that Voldemort had indeed returned and had been caught at the Ministry while trying to obtain a prophecy. Consequently, not only was Harry once again the 'Boy-Who-Lived', but he was also being called the 'Chosen One', though no one except Dumbledore, Harry, and Daphne currently knew the full contents of the prophecy.
That was going to change in a few moments, however. Initially, Harry had only wanted to tell Ginny, Hermione, and Ron about the full contents, but then he'd figured that Neville and Luna deserved to know the whole thing as well, and from there he'd gone quite quickly to deciding that the Order of the Lightning Bolt as a whole deserved to know the truth for having had enough faith in him to risk being expelled during Umbridge's reign.
Consequently, he'd sent a message using the fake Galleons and tonight, the night before the end of term, he was going to reveal the full prophecy to those members of the Order who wished to know.
It came as no surprise that the entire Order was present — Fred and George had sent Harry an owl telling him they were expecting the full story over the summer — and that even Smith was struggling to keep his expression bored instead of excited. Everyone sat on the pillows they usually used for dueling, and the atmosphere was so light and festive it might as well have been the end-of-year feast already.
When Harry stood up once everyone had arrived, the room fell silent immediately. "It's good to see you're all here," Harry said with a smile. "First off, I just want to thank you all for trusting me throughout the year. Everyone here has improved tremendously from the start of the year — myself included. I know you're all here to hear the true story of what happened at the Ministry, and I will tell you in a moment.
"First, though, I want to ask you all something. Dumbledore has told me that he believes it would be a good idea for the Order of the Lightning Bolt to continue, but that it would still need to remain secret because the Ministry still doesn't really trust either him or me.
"Personally, I'd love to keep it going, but since Umbridge won't be returning next year, it probably won't really be necessary anymore. So my question to you is…do you want the Order to continue, or will this be the last meeting?"
There was a storm of voices, and Daphne could hardly make out who was shouting what. It was easy to pick up the general gist, however, and when Harry raised his hands to calm everyone down again, he did so with a grin.
"Okay…" he said. "Show of hands. Who wants to keep the Order going?"
Every single hand in the room, even Smith's, went up.
"Well, that settles that, then," Harry said. "Once the new year starts, we'll set times in the usual way. It'll probably still be irregular — all of us will have a lot of things to do, no doubt — but the Order will carry on as before."
A loud applause rose and Harry grinned like an idiot. Daphne and Ginny exchanged a look and laughed.
"Alright then…well, I suppose all of you want to know what happened at the Ministry…" Harry began, and the room fell silent once more. No one made a single sound while he told about the prophecy and why Voldemort wanted to get it, nor when he spoke about his arrest and the subsequent battle, culminating in Voldemort being spotted by the Ministry employees, including Fudge and Umbridge.
"We're still not really sure if Voldemort managed to extract the prophecy from my mind. We don't think he has, and it wouldn't matter much if he had, but still, I'd like to ask you all to keep the contents of the prophecy to yourselves, once I've told you. I trust all of you, so please don't betray it," Harry said.
When no one spoke, he gave a satisfied nod. "Good. Then now, I'll tell you the prophecy Voldemort wanted to get his hands on so badly. 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…'"
Though the room had already been quiet, the silence now seemed to intensify somehow.
"So…what does it mean, exactly?" Ernie Macmillan asked. "Do you really have a power You-Know-Who doesn't have? Are you really the Chosen One?"
Harry considered that for a moment. "I do have a power Voldemort doesn't have," he said, and gasps went through the room. "But all of you have that power as well in varying degrees. The power the prophecy mentions is love."
"Love?" Smith asked skeptically.
"Yes, love," Harry said calmly. "I understand your disbelief. I reacted much the same way when Dumbledore told me — but I've seen it vindicated. At the Ministry, when Voldemort possessed me, it was love that drove him out. And even before that, it was my mother's love, her sacrifice, that allowed me to survive his Killing Curse in the first place. And because I survived, I got this scar, and that scar is a connection between me and Voldemort, which is what 'mark him as his equal' means."
"But the last part of the prophecy…" Hermione said hesitantly.
Harry nodded. "Yeah. I need to kill him…or he needs to kill me. But Dumbledore told me that it wasn't because of the prophecy, but more because Voldemort will never rest until he's killed me, so it becomes almost inevitable that one of us kills the other."
"Do you really think you can?" Smith asked.
Harry shrugged. "I don't know. But I intend to try, all the same. He's killed my parents and many, many other people. I'm honestly not fussed about who does him in…but if I get a chance to, you better believe I'm taking it."
He paused for a moment. "In my entire life, Voldemort himself has attempted to kill me five times. The first time I was only a baby, but even discounting that one, he tried in my first year, second year, fourth year, and fifth year. So far, he hasn't succeeded, and every single time it was love, in one form or another, that beat him. Dumbledore's speech last year and the Sorting Hat's song this year both told us how important unity is when we face Voldemort.
"The Order of the Lightning Bolt is a great proof of that. We're all from different Houses and backgrounds, with different friends and hobbies, and yet we help each other grow and get stronger. Dumbledore believes in every single one of us. I don't know if that 'Chosen One' business the Prophet is on about is true, and I don't care if it is. As long as all of us keep fighting together…I think we'll win this war."
"You are such a sap, Potter," Tracey said with a wink.
Harry grinned at her. "Doesn't mean it isn't true," he said.
"So does this mean you'll tell us everything Dumbledore tells you from now on?" Smith asked.
Harry shook his head. "No, probably not," he said. "There will probably be things that need to be kept secret, either because Dumbledore asks me to keep them secret, or if there would be no use in telling you. Everything else, of course, I'll tell you. If I learn any useful spells, I'll definitely teach them to all of you, though."
"You'll be doing nonverbal spells next year," Adrian said. "So it'll probably be useful to practice everything we know like that, as well."
Harry nodded. "Sounds good. We've got some practice with it with the parry, of course, but it's probably going to be harder with the more difficult spells. I'm looking forward to it."
He fell silent once more and looked around the group with a satisfied expression. "Well, I think that's it…if we don't see each other at the feast tomorrow, see you next year, and if you can, practice over the summer. Good night!"
After that last Order meeting, the end-of-year feast was quite tame in comparison. While it looked like Slytherin had finally won the House Cup again because of all the points Umbridge had subtracted from the other Houses, Dumbledore's own favoritism thwarted that once again, and Gryffindor hoisted the Cup once more, to the great satisfaction of the returned Professor McGonagall. Though she still walked with a cane, she seemed otherwise fine.
The swamp Fred and George had created was removed by Flitwick in mere seconds, but he left a section of it roped off as some kind of monument, and in appreciation of the Charms work that went into it.
And then, quite suddenly, it seemed, it was time to head back to London on the Hogwarts Express once more.
"I don't suppose you'll stay over again?" Harry asked semi-nonchalantly when they were on the train.
Daphne grinned. "I'd love to, though I'd prefer the visit to be a bit shorter this time."
"What if I stayed over too?" Ginny asked.
"I don't know if even Daphne's parents have enough money to make them agree to that," Harry said with a grin. "Though if you want to try, I'm all in favor of it."
"Do your relatives even know about your…unique relationship?" Hermione wondered.
"I think the mere suggestion of something like that would strain their minds to the breaking point," Harry said. "Even if other Muggles did something like that they'd disapprove. They hate everything that isn't completely normal and traditional."
"All the more reason for me to stay over, then," Ginny said brightly.
"Are you sure it isn't just because you don't want to face your mum?" Daphne asked with a grin.
Ginny shrugged. "It's been a while. I'm pretty sure she'll have accepted it by now, especially since we all nearly died and she hasn't seen us yet since. It's just…you've met Harry's relatives, and I feel I should, too, even if they don't like magic."
"Honestly, Sirius is my only real relative, as far as I'm concerned," Harry said. "I'd say your family is like family to me too, but, well, that would be a bit awkward given our relationship."
Ginny giggled. "I'll forgive you," she said.
"So…we're going to ask the Dursleys if both of us can stay over?" Daphne asked with a grin.
Harry and Ginny both nodded.
Daphne's grin widened. "I hope Mum and Dad are willing to pay up, then…"
And so, another year ends. Not much in the way of wrap-up, this time, partially because I need to get this chapter posted, and partially because there simply wasn't much wrap-up left in the first place.
Closing statements for the year: it was pretty hard to write. I liked many parts of it, but others were very difficult to get going, and though I've got plenty of ideas still, I know year six will be difficult once more. Still, I'll enjoy writing it, like I did this one.