Chapter 12

"Happy birthday!"

Quinn answered the door with a flourish that made Harry laugh despite his trepidation. She looked absolutely gorgeous, as usual, but he didn't sense anything untoward in her low-rider jeans and white tank-top. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, the way he liked it best, and her sunny smile could have brightened the darkest room, yet she let him in without so much as a peck on the cheek.

Maybe it'll be okay after all. Maybe we can really have a nice time and part ways as friends – I'd like that, I really would, for her to be happy…

"Something smells good," he said honestly, following her back to the kitchen.

"I baked," Quinn declared proudly.

Harry grinned when he stepped up in the kitchen doorway. A homemade banner that read "Happy Sweet 16 Harry" hung over the table, and a delicious-looking yellow-frosted cake sat directly beneath it.

"Sparkling cider, from the corner market," Quinn explained, producing a corked bottle from the refrigerator. She selected two long-stemmed wine glasses from the cabinet and poured them each a glass of the fizzy cider.

"You shouldn't have done all of this for me." Touched, Harry couldn't help feeling undeserving of her kindness. After all, he had cheated on her, even though he told her the very next day.

Quinn shrugged. "I wanted to. And it gets kind of boring here, by myself." She glanced away; a knot of guilt lodged itself under Harry's heart.

How could he go away, back to Hogwarts, and leave her here so alone?

She won't be alone, he reasoned, she'll be at her boarding school. And in the summers, well, maybe we can be friends, if tonight turns out okay…

"So, how about a toast?"

She seemed determined to keep the mood light, so Harry forced a smile he didn't feel and raised his glass with her. After screwing her face up in thought for a moment, she grinned and declared, "To Harry Potter, the first bloke I ever kissed!"

They both laughed, although Harry blushed. He wondered – but wasn't about to ask – if she meant the first British boy she'd ever kissed, or the first boy ever. Surely not the latter. She was so pretty, the boys in America would've had to be blind not to ask her out.

The cider was unusually strong (Harry preferred the Hogwarts pumpkin juice) but not bad. He finished his first glass over a piece of cake – white, with lemon frosting, which tasted as good as it looked – and started on a second. Quinn kept up an easy, steady stream of chatter, telling him a horror story about the fitting for her hideous school uniform and bemoaning the fact that St. Mary's was an all-girls' school.

"I mean, it'll be nice to make new friends, but how boring!" She sighed, dabbing at her lips with a napkin. Blushing, Harry tried to stop himself from thinking how soft and kissable her lips looked.

Tried, and failed.

Don't be an idiot, he ordered himself sternly. You're with Hermione. You don't want to go breaking her heart – or Quinn's.

He knew the cider was non-alcoholic – butterbeer was stronger, really – yet the fizziness seemed to have gone to his head. He felt hot, almost feverish, and disoriented. He couldn't recall how long he had been at Quinn's. Would the Dursleys miss him if he was gone all night?

Whoa, all night? And what would you be doing at Quinn's all night, Harry?

But Quinn already seemed to have ideas for that. Shaking his head to clear it, Harry realized she had taken his hand and was leading him up the stairs. Funny…He didn't remember leaving the kitchen…

His head felt detached from his body. Dream-like, Harry noted that they were entering Quinn's bedroom; she didn't turn on the light, but in the semi-darkness he could see her emerald eyes shining, like a cat's.

"So pretty," he heard himself say. His words sounded strange, as if his tongue had become too thick for his mouth.

"Harry." She was right in front of him, her warm palms pressing on his shoulders, her breath fanning his throat. Harry shivered with the not-so-long-ago memory of her feather-light kisses on his neck. "Happy birthday, Harry…"

She was drawing his mouth down to hers, and he knew how it would feel to kiss her – sweet, soft, meltingly soft, incredible… His eyelids drifted closed and he wondered if this was real, or if he was still asleep in his room two houses down, if he would wake to find that Fawkes had never come and Hermione had never sent her gift –

Hermione…

A flash of honey-colored hair over Gryffindor robes brought Harry hurtling back to reality. His lips barely connected with Quinn's – damn, she tasted amazing, he wished he could figure out what she tasted like – before he stepped back, his head reeling as if he'd taken a Bludger to the head in a Quidditch match.

"Quinn." His voice sounded shaky, uncertain. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Quinn, this isn't right. I…I'm with Hermione."

Her eyes, weirdly bright in the dim room, suddenly looked hard, like bits of green glass.

"Oh. Right. So it was okay to cheat on me with her, but not on her with me?"

He blushed deeply. Part of him wanted to make a nasty retort – what, he wasn't sure, but he supposed he could have come up with something – while the other part of him whispered that Quinn had earned a few well-landed blows. He had treated her with total disregard, much as he hated to admit it. He'd known all along where his heart truly was, with Hermione, but he'd been too much of a coward to own up to that until he was certain he could have her; Quinn had been a distraction, a pretty substitute for who he really wanted.

So he ducked his head and waited for her to go on. She did, each word cutting at him like a knife.

"I show up here, completely alone, and meet this guy I think is really cool. God, did you have me fooled, Harry. I mean, I thought you were soooooo different than all the assholes I'd known before. But no. Turns out, you're worse than all the rest of them put together. And you've got all of them fooled, don't you? All those friends of yours. All those teachers. They all think you're special. No, it's like…it's like they all think you're perfect. Saint Potter."

He winced. Don't hold back now, Quinn, let it all out…Bloody hell…

"But I know better." Her words were cold as ice, flinty as steel. "I know the real you. And you're hardly a saint, Harry Potter. You're the biggest fraud I've ever known."

She stalked past him. At the door, she wheeled back around, apparently deciding her fury wasn't quite spent. When Harry saw the tears in her eyes, for him that was more punishment than anything she could have said.

"You wanna know the worst part?" Her voice was high now, almost shrill, and trembling. "I think we could have been happy, me and you, Harry. We could have lived out our little fantasy together, and I would have been perfectly happy never knowing the truth. And I think you would've been, too."

Harry willed himself to meet her eyes, to make her see his own pain there – pain at hurting her. She's right, his inner voice wheedled. You could have been happy. Maybe you still –

But the thought died before it formed. For better or worse, he was in love with Hermione. Whatever might have been with Quinn belonged to a different life; she didn't belong in his world, and any claim she'd had to his heart had disappeared the moment he looked into Hermione's eyes and saw his own feelings reflected there.

"I'm sorry," was all he seemed able to say. He knew it was pathetic, but it was the best he had to offer. "I'll go."

"Yes. You'll go." Quinn swiped tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. She motioned to the bed, where a small package lay wrapped in shiny blue paper. "But open your present first."

With that, she turned on her heel and stalked away. Harry heard her footsteps race down the stairs and, a few seconds later, the front door slam behind her.

Sighing, feeling totally spent and still unusually foggy – had she put something in the cider so she could seduce him? surely not – Harry picked up the package and flipped on the bedside lamp. As the paper fell away, the last of the cobwebs in his mind disappeared. A horrible coldness spread from the tips of his fingers down to the soles of his feet.

No. It's not possible…It can't be…How…?

In his hands he held a small, framed picture – but not just any picture. A picture that was moving. A wizard's picture.

He shook his head in disbelief, reeling. Quinn was a Muggle – he'd stake his life on it – so how…?

Oh. Oh, no…No,no,no,no,no, please no…!

It wasn't just any wizard's picture he was holding. And it wasn't proof that Quinn had been a witch all along, though, with a sickening feeling, Harry realized just how stupidly naïve he had been about her.

From the cherry-stained frame three people smiled up at him, waving and blowing kisses at the camera: a pretty red-haired young woman, a bespectacled young man with tousled dark hair, and a tall, handsome, dark-headed young man with a devilish grin. All three wore Hogwarts graduation robes, all three were Gryffindors.

His mother, his father, and his godfather. Lily Evans, James Potter, and Sirius Black.

She knows who I am…She knows who they were…Bloody fucking hell, how did I not see this coming?

Numb to the very core and shivering from fear and shock, Harry slipped the picture from its frame and turned it over. On the back was written, simply:

Happy Sweet 16, Harry.

The Dark Lord sends his love.

The picture fluttered to the floor; the frame slipped from his nerveless fingers, the glass shattering when it landed. Harry was on his feet and moving before he realized what he was doing. He had one thought in his head – to return to the Dursleys', where he knew Dumbledore's charm would protect him. The rest, all of his questions about who Quinn was – and he prayed she hadn't been Voldemort in disguise, somehow, because his mind might explode from disgust – would have to wait until he was safely inside Number Four, Privet Drive.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, not to realize something was wrong. All those pains in my scar – a beautiful girl wanting me – never even saw her parents…

But who could she be? Some Muggle girl Voldemort persuaded to charm me? But why? Why bother? If she tries to hurt me, I could stop her in a second, she doesn't have any magic…

He was racing through the dark house. He stumbled twice on the stairs, wrenching his knee painfully the second time. He expected to crash into Voldemort or some of his Death Eaters at any moment, yet the house was terribly still, like the grave.

Don't think that way. You can make it, the Dursleys are only two houses away, you can make it.

The night air seemed oppressive. Harry felt as if he were breathing underwater. Quinn must have drugged him; combined with the shock of her cruel gift, whatever she had given him served to turn his limbs into lead. He was shivering uncontrollably. Desperately, he thought of Arabella Figg, the old squib who lived nearby, the one Dumbledore had tapped to keep an eye on him, but he knew he couldn't make it to her house before he collapsed. He was going to be lucky to make it all the way to the Dursleys' front door.

He lurched along the sidewalk. Even for late at night, Privet Drive seemed sinisterly quiet. Harry glanced at the windows across the street and saw that they were all dark; in fact, the whole street was dark, because the streetlamps were out. A wave of panic nearly knocked him to the ground, but he forced himself to stumble on.

Whatever was happening, the Order would sort it out, if he could only make it back to his aunt and uncle's before Voldemort got to him.

Sirens screamed in the distance. Harry's stomach clenched. Never. never had he heard sirens on sleepy little Privet Drive – what in the world could have happened –

And then his stumbling gait faltered. He caught himself on the fence outside the Dursleys' house and stared, unblinking, up into the night sky, where a huge, hideous green skull floated above Number Four.

The Dark Mark. Voldemort's sign. Harry had seen it once before…

Dimly, he heard Arthur Weasley's voice in his head, explaining to them about the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup: "You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed. The terror it inspired…Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside…"

The air left Harry's lungs in a painful rush. He leaned over the fence and vomited. The sirens were drawing closer, and he wanted so badly to sink into a heap on the sidewalk to wait for them, to be carried off to a hospital with clean white sheets where he could sleep and pretend all of this awful night had been a dream.

They can't help you, Harry. They're Muggles. They wouldn't stand a chance against Voldemort or his followers.

I know. I know. No one can help me now – please let Fawkes have reached Dumbledore, please let someone be on the way to help me…

He was already continuing forward, clutching the fence for support. He veered away from it, his head spinning and his vision blurring, and somehow managed to reach the Dursleys' half-open front door.

In the back of his mind he heard Voldemort's shrill, cold laughter, heard him saying again, as he had the night Harry and Hermione almost made love, "You're too late, Harry."

And he was.

Harry stood in the doorway of his aunt and uncle's house with a weight of dread on his shoulders such as he had never known. The entire house was dark. Only a faint; greenish glow from the mark hovering in the sky above illuminated a figure sprawled at the far end of the fall, just outside the parlor.

Uncle Vernon.

Somehow, Harry forced himself forward. His heart hammered painfully in his chest. Every second he expected Voldemort to appear from the shadows, but no one did – the house seemed deserted, totally void of life. Harry glanced down at his uncle's distorted face. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought his uncle died of sheer fright.

From somewhere long, long ago, Harry recalled his own father's desperate shouts as Voldemort encroached on him. James Potter had died protecting his wife and child; ogre though he had been, Vernon Dursley had, apparently, died the same way, trying to buy his wife and son time to run out the back door.

He had failed.

Harry felt the first of many tears slip down his cheeks as he stood just behind the sofa, looking down at the body of his aunt and cousin where they lay crumpled together on the floor. Petunia's bony frame only half-covered Dudley's massive bulk, but it was obvious to Harry that his aunt had died trying to shield her son from the killing curse.

Just like my mother…

He sensed more than heard someone step up behind him. Every nerve in his body came to attention. He wished suddenly, futilely, for his wand; he doubted it would have done him much good, but at least he would have died fighting.

"Why didn't you just kill me, if that's what you wanted?" he asked, without turning. White-hot rage uncoiled in his stomach as he spoke, spreading outward through his limbs like a snake sliding off its perch.

But the voice that answered was not, to his astonishment, Voldemort's. "Oh, Harry," a terribly familiar female voice admonished, "the Dark Lord doesn't make the same mistake twice. He wouldn't risk trying to kill you again while your mother's blood protected you."

He whirled around and gasped. Quinn stood in front of him, but that voice – her voice – it wasn't Quinn's.

Am I going crazy? Have I totally snapped? Is any of this real…?

"You put entirely too much faith in that old fool Albus Dumbledore." Quinn's pretty mouth was forming words in a voice utterly alien to her body. Harry thought he might throw up again as she advanced on him, smiling viciously. "His precious little Order of the Phoenix thinks they have everything so under control, they've got you so carefully guarded, but they're no match for the Dark Lord, Harry.

"If the only way to kill you was to kill your mother's last living relatives and break that silly little charm Dumbledore worked on you, well, then, that's what the Dark Lord will do," she continued. Harry stopped when he backed into the wall. "And if he couldn't send a wizard to kill them because of all the spies around you, well, then he could send a harmless little Muggle girl. Or, at least, a witch disguised as one."

Harry wanted more than anything to close his eyes, to look away before the girl he had been so nearly in love with turned into the woman who had murdered his godfather, who had tortured Neville's parents into insanity – the woman whose voice now echoed all around him. But he wouldn't. He would, if for no other reason than to prove to himself that it was real, watch.

Before his eyes, Quinn grew a bit taller; her pretty red hair became dark and limp; her green eyes turned a cold blue; her beautiful, rosy cheeks changed into a sunken, sallow countenance dominated by a cruel smile.

"Remember me, Harry?" Bellatrix Lestrange laughed.

"It isn't possible." He heard his own teeth chattering. He couldn't feel his body anymore; whatever drug she had given him was finally taking its greatest effect. He felt himself slipping into unconsciousness no matter how valiantly he fought it. "You can't be – you can't be Quinn and…and you…"

"Oh, Harry, you're still so naïve." Bellatrix shook her head. He tried to flinch away when she touched his cheek, but he was too weak. "There was so much I could have taught you…So much, about so many things."

His stomach turned at her suggestive smile. He had kissed this-this thing, this vile woman who had killed Sirius and tortured Neville's parents. How could he have been so stupid?

But how is it even possible?

Bloody hell, it doesn't matter…Just go to sleep, just let it finally be over with…

His eyelids fell shut and, try as he might, Harry couldn't force them back open. He was floating somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, barely registering how loud the sirens had become – they had to be directly outside now, he wondered which neighbor had called the police when they heard the Dursleys' screams – or how tightly Bellatrix was holding his shoulders.

The Metamorphico Charm.

He struggled briefly back toward consciousness. Yes, of course! He'd read it somewhere…Where? In Professor Binn's history class? In Professor Flitwick's charms class?

No, no, Hermione's book, remember? You read about it that night you kissed, about the spell that could entirely change a person's appearance without the Polyjuice Potion, the spell that was practically undetectable…

"Go to sleep, love," Bellatrix cooed in his ear. Harry shuddered at her touch. "When you wake up, you'll be with the Dark Lord…"

So he was going to his death then. Well, so be it. Maybe enough people had died to keep him alive – maybe it was time to face the prophecy and see who won, him or Voldemort.

He heard a loud pop and felt a rush of air across his face, but the effort of staying awake and alert had, finally, become too much. As he drifted into unconsciousness, his last thought was to be glad Hermione was safely away from Privet Drive.

Ron will take care of her, he thought, and blacked out.

Author's Note: Three words. Being. Sick. Sucks! Sorry these two chapter took, like, a month past forever. Now that I feel halfway human again I hope to finish in the next two weeks! But do you like it? Oh, I hope you like it! I promise, Hermione will be back before the end. (evil laugh) Love to you all! Please please review!