The Fifth House
Disclaimer: Yesterday, I did not own Harry Potter. Today I still do not own Harry Potter. Tomorrow, I most likely will not own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling does. Yay her! So, I do not own much of this story. The most crucial part, the plot, is mine, all mine. There will be a few characters later in the story that will be mine. But all the rest, Harry, his crew, Hogwarts, the whole wizarding world, they all belong to J.K. Rowling. So deal with it.
Author's Note: How many people read this? The a/n, I mean? Sigh. This chapter will take place at the Weasleys, at Diagon Alley. If anyone read my other fic, I said this was a true story. I meant to say a real good story. I admit, I was trying to talk up my own stories. Anyway, read, review, and rejoice!
Curtains Up!
Chapter Six
"Harry, dear! It's time to wake up!" Mrs. Weasley sang.
"What? Huh?" Harry answered.
Mrs. Weasley moved on to wake up Ron. "Oh Ronniekins!"
"Mum, didn't I tell you to never call me that!" Ron yelled from under his bedcovers.
" It could have come up in conversation…."
"Oh, honestly, Mum! Why don't you wake up Hermione and Ginny, and then come back and wake us up again?" Ron suggested.
" Because, Ron, the girls have been up for almost a half hour!"
"What?!" Ron asked, surprised.
Mrs. Weasley seemed slightly annoyed. "Because the girls know that today is a special day. Today we're going to Diagon Alley!"
"Yep, never been there before," Ron answered under his breath, hoping his mother wouldn't hear.
Harry finally decided to speak up. "You know, Ron, it isn't that bad. It is ten a.m."
"That's definitely too early."
Finally, after much hassling from Mrs. Weasley, the two boys got up and got dressed. Then they walked down the long, winding staircase to the little kitchen. They weren't surprised to find everyone else finishing their breakfast.
"You two were late, so you'll just have to get something in the Alley, because we're all ready to go," Said Mrs. Weasley.
"Fine, fine," said Ron.
"Okay, so we're all ready to go, then?" asked Mrs. Weasley.
A chorus of answers rang out in the kitchen. Then, Mrs. Weasley lined them all up and they took turns using floo powder to travel to Diagon Allley.
Harry was the second to last to go. Mr. Weasley was last.
"Alright then, Harry. You know what to do."
Harry took a little of the floo powder in his hand and threw it into the fire. He walked into the flames, which licked his body and face, it almost tickled.
"Dagon Alley!" he said through a cough; the soot was very thick.
Harry held his arms close to him, and felt very dizzy as he whirled past many fireplaces. He finally felt his feet hit a floor, and he fell forward. He hit his head on the top of the fireplace.
He was happy to realize that he had arrived in Dagon Alley this time. The last time Harry had traveled by the Floor network, he had turned out in Knockturn Alley, which was crawling with weird things like evil books and potions; cursed items and such. Even the people had been queer. That included Malfoy and his father, Lucius, who he'd seen at the store where he ended up, called Borgen and Burkes.
Harry saw that he was in Flourish and Blotts, a store he had been in several times. He didn't, however, see the Weasleys. He decide to walk around the store a little, perhaps they had gone book searching. He ran into Ron, quite literally, in the Divination section.
"Ouch! Watch it Harry, will you? I almost dropped some book on dreams I'm holding for Hermione, she made me get it for her. Didn't seem too keen to be seen in the Divination area, I guess. I'm not about to drop it on the ground, imagine the lecture I'd get!"
Harry had to agree; Hermione had her beliefs that books are our friends. There had been many times that Harry or Ron had wondered why she said "our". No book, other than a photo album Harry had with pictures of his parents, was ever that important to him.
"Where'd the rest of you go? I almost fell out of the fireplace and hit my head, bye the way. I couldn't find any of you anywhere."
"Yeah, well Mum wanted us to get started right away. Hermione, of course, was very excited. She ran off right away. Then five seconds later, she came running back asking me to fetch a book for her." Ron leaned towards Harry slightly, and whispered. "Between you and me, I don't think all this reading's good for her eyes. Of course, if she ever did have vision problems, she wouldn't be able to read all this."
Harry smiled. "But then wouldn't she just make us read things to her?" Harry questioned.
"Oh yeah, never thought of that," said Ron, looking a little put out. Then he quickly found about five more books on dreams. At Harry's confused look, he explained, "In that case, we've got to either get her a ton of books and leave her alone, or just do what she says and stay on her good side."
Just then Hermione ran towards them. "Oh, Harry glad you finally arrived. Do you know where the store clerk is? I don't know where books on clouds would be. I'd search by myself, but it's such a big shop."
"Is that him, over there?" Harry pointed to a tall man with a purple apron that read "Flourish and Blotts Employee" on it.
"Oh, thank you Harry!" Hermione said, as she dashed off.
Harry agreed with Ron that Hermione did read a lot, but he was also extremely grateful that she and Ron would help sort out his summer's events.
Once everyone had all their books, which took about an hour and a half, they all walked out of the shop and onto the alleyway, bustling with bags.
* * * *
After they were finished shopping at several other stores and shops, including taking a look into Eyelop's Owl Emporium, spending a great deal of time less then Harry would have liked in the Quidditch supply store, and becoming very bored while Mrs. Weasley helped Ginny find a color dress robes that went with her hair, the entire group decided to sit down for lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. While they were eating, Hermione was reading one of her new books.
"How many books did you get, Hermione?" Ron asked. "It had to be a lot more than us, because we only needed three new books."
" What?" asked Hermione. "Oh, yes, I got ten," she answered, as if there was nothing unusual about it.
"Ten?" Ron asked, astounded.
Harry added in, " What were the other seven about then?"
Hermione looked confused. "Seven? Oh, I thought you meant the ones I got extra. I got the five you found me on dreams, three on clouds, one on handwriting analysis, and one for pleasure reading."
"And what was the pleasure reading one about?" Ron asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"Oh, it's very interesting, or at least it looks it! Here, take a look, go ahead!" Hermione looked genuinely excited.
Harry looked over at the book she had pushed into Ron's hands. Ron said exactly what he had been thinking.
"Every Witch's Guide to Magic Meals, by Ragusha Rasidovic?"
"Doesn't it look great?" Hermione said.
Harry sensed that a fight to be coming on. If Ron said cooking was stupid, Hermione would come back with Quidditch being pointless. Harry would have to choose side, which he hated doing, and it would only end when something great or awful would happen. He had to say something, and quick.
"Is this so that you can make meals at school, and not cause the House-Elves too much work?" Harry asked. It was something that he actually wanted to know.
Hermione was deep in thought. " You know what, Harry? I never even thought of it that way, but, yes, that's exactly what I'll do! We can all eat together in the common room!" She would have kept going on if Ron hadn't interrupted.
"Excuse me, but we? How about you make whatever you like, and Harry and I eat in the Great Hall like everyone else? Plus, the house elves will be doing extra work for food that doesn't get eaten. Won't that just add to the pointlessness?"
" Yes, I guess so. Maybe I'll only do it once in a while," Hermione answered.
" That I can live with," said Ron.
* * * *
It was late in the afternoon when the group arrived back at the Burrow.
Hermione had decided to read. Ron had said it would be difficult to do in such a loud house. Especially since Fred and George had loaded up on all sorts of strange things at the joke shop, as well as several strange ingredients at the apothecary. Harry added that that meant lots of mysterious explosions. Hermione said maybe he was right, but decided to start a book on clouds anyway.
Harry and Ron had had an interesting conversation with Fred and George. They had to yell through the door, as the twins didn't want anyone to know how they were making whatever new food, it almost seemed like they thought someone would want to. About an hour later they gave up; there were just too many explosions.
When they returned to Ron's room they found Hermione sitting on the ground, halfway through her book. "Don't talk for a second, I'm trying to finish this chapter," she said.
Ron asked what chapter it was, and Hermione said it was seven and shushed him.
"Okay, I'm finished," she said. "Harry, I found a lot of information on clouds. There's a chart in the back here, it explains what the cause of certain clouds are. There is a special chart for magic clouds. I figured it had to be magic, because it tried to break into your room. But I need to know, what color was it?"
She flipped through the pages.
Harry thought about the cloud. "It was really dark, like charcoal or even black."
Hermione searched the pages and glided her finger down several columns.
"Here it is! A dark grey or black cloud means that it could be from an area of extreme evil. It could also symbolize that danger is on the way. That's not too good. It could mean that there will be a great change in your life. Aha! This says that if the cloud is trying to harm you or is trying to get to you in any way, it means that there is something that you should know. Something that is coming very soon, and is extreme danger or could cause you awful pain, terror, or grief. The last thing it says is that it could be a rain cloud someone charmed to attack you."
Ron looked a mixture of confused and intimidated. "Well, someone's definitely trying to do you in this time, Harry!"
This information was all very helpful to Harry, or he was sure it would be. If he forgot it, he could just ask Hermione for the book again. But he was more interested in what it had to say about clouds that tried to break into your home, but turned out to be good in the end.
"Hey, Hermione? Could I look at the book for a second? I just want to look at the other types of cloud, and see what it says about them," Harry tried to say in a manner so he seemed slightly interested.
Ron looked quite surprised. "Harry, since when do you read anything that has a connection to divination? You hate it almost as much as Potions!"
"Yeah, it's just, in case a cloud comes back, I'll know off the top of my head if it's good or bad. It would be easier to have it chase me to the library, and then find out what it is."
"If you say so," Ron said. He still looked relatively amazed.
"Of course you can have the book to borrow, Harry. I think it's wonderful that you're trying to expand your intelligence when we're on holiday." Hermione handed the book to Harry and smiled smugly at Ron, who scowled.
* * * *
After a delicious dinner of roast turkey, Harry rested himself in a comfy chair in the Weasleys' living room and cracked open the book on clouds.
The title was The Sky's the Limit by Cordelia Cirrus. Harry noticed that on each page of the last chapter was a description of a different type of cloud, with pictures of how some could move very quickly. Harry leafed through the book, and finally saw a picture that matched his "evil cloud". It said it was called a cirulimbus. He read that they were very rare, only three had been spotted in the last two centuries! He found one paragraph that he had come to know as the most useful:
Cirulimbus clouds are almost never found in the United Kingdom. It is very good news for the people of this area, because cirulimbus clouds usually depict that a tragedy is too come in the near future. The last three that have been spotted were: in Central Europe before the start of World War I, in Russia before the last czar was killed, and in the United States before the Salem Witch Trials. The last reported that appeared in the United Kingdom was in August 1666, before the Great Fire in London. These clouds sometimes become very bright and luminous once they break through a barrier so that they are with the person they're after. They, in most cases {out of the few that have been}, show pictures of deceased people that were closely related to the cloud's "victim". These can sometimes be the actual people talking, or they can be an evil acting as them. It is difficult to tell, but there are a few ways. One is to ask it a personal question, if it is an evil, it will not know the answer. Another is to wait it out, and see how often it returns. If it is an evil, it most likely will never return. The last, and most difficult, way is to collect some of the mist in an Austrian crystal phial. It must be this kind of phial. You then mix in the following ingredients:
1 dragon heartstring
3 pebbles from the bottom of a dream pool, must be crushed by hand
1 phial full of unicorn blood
2 leaves from a mosaic plant
and finally
1 quarter-phial crushed sand of a Philosopher's Stone
You mix the ingredients above and the phial of mist in an anthracite cauldron and mix in 3 phials luke water. A light steam will float above. Collect this in another, clean, Austrian crystal phial. Shake three times. If the mist turns green, it was truly the deceased person who visited. If it is red, blue or purple, it was evil.
Harry read this many times. He'd have to wait it out. It was too late to ask it a question, and he couldn't collect mist because he had glass phials, and he'd never seen Austrian crystal ones before. Plus, the ingredients were harder to find than even those for the Polyjuice Potion. He didn't know where he'd find a dragon heartstring, and no apothecary would dare sell unicorn blood, let alone stock it. Harry didn't know what a dream pool was. The mosaic plant he'd never heard of, but he had a feeling it was in greenhouse four with the other dangerous plants. But a quarter phial crushed sand from a Philosopher's Stone? That had to be impossible. The last known one existing was destroyed.
The last one known.
He didn't realize that it was very late, and tomorrow he, Ron, Fred and George had planned a Quidditch game out in the paddock. He had to get up early.
Just then, Hermione appeared. She looked shocked. "Harry," she said nervously, "You better come see this."
Harry followed her to Ron's room.
Ron started talking as soon as he came in. "We were just talking, and it hit the roof! The ghoul in the attic frightened it half t death, it was going crazy all over the room!"
Harry stared.
In Ron's hands was an owl. The same crazy owl that had delivered the last two letters from P.1 Rebirth. Ron was struggling to hold it. Harry looked quickly out the window. Just then, a bolt of lightening slashed across the indigo sky, and thunder boomed. Harry looked back at the owl.
Clamped in it's talons was a tiny scroll.
Curtains Close!
Author's Note: Another long chapter! These are getting harder and harder to write!
I was wondering why everyone thinks that Dumbledore's the evil and that Ron and Hermione are going to die. Is it because Dumbledore's eyes looked like they almost twinkled when he found out that Voldemort could touch Harry without melting?
Words of Wisdom: In the year 3054, possessed turtles wearing sunglasses will attack the world chanting, "Boom shaka laka laka! Boom shaka laka laka!
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I love you all!
Ciao!
~Starry