Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter then I wouldn't be checking Hp Lexicon and Muggle Net to try and find out who the Half Blood Prince is. I would have already known.
I will go then.....I do not want to though, I am tired of all the pain.
So am I. But I have never been broken. We will never be broken.
Who are already there?
You will know. They will know you. Let us go.
CHAPTER TWO
Ronald Weasley was tired. He was tired of this war; it was a never ending cycle of violence and paranoia in which there was no escape. Every now and then they would have some semblance of peace in which they could recuperate and enjoy what they could. But in the end the peace was always temporary, a reminder of what they were fighting for, of how much they stood to lose if they did not succeed.
In mentioning 'they' he was referring to the Order of the Phoenix. 'Warriors of the light' if one wanted to be so lyrical. The Order was at the forefront of the continuing battle against Voldemort and his death eaters. And as was common, the Order of the Phoenix was currently having a meeting.
"Severus? Any news on when your next assault will occur?"
"None Albus," replied Severus Snape, one of the Order's spy's. "I think the Dark Lord knows he has a mole within his circle, he's decided to keep all plans to himself and a very select few. Even prominent members of the Inner circle do not know much. I believe only 'Parricida' is privy to his plans. I would not be surprised if he was the one that would lead the next strike."
At the mention of 'Parricida' the Potter's and their friends paled. Lily bit her lip and screwed her eyes shut, whereas James visibly hardened his jaw and clenched his hands into fists. To an outsider these reactions would have been passed off as normal taking into account the coming attack, but to the members of the light resistance it was significant to the pain that they had to endure.
Parricida was Voldemort's right hand man. It was rumored that Parricida was second only to his liege in power; he was the Dark lord's favorite and most loyal follower, who according to Snape, left most meetings unscathed.
Ron's brow furrowed in thought. Parricida, latin for 'one who murders a parent or near relative', or the latin translation that order members mostly associated with it, 'a traitor or an assassin'.
It was hard to believe that Parricida was this world's version of his best friend. The Harry Potter that Ron knew and loved would never have received the name 'Parricida' from the order. Parricida, once called Harry Potter, former Slytherin, and one of the most cunning minds to ever graduate from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Now he was Harry Potter the Death Eater. Murderer of the innocent and the man who betrayed his own father to the Dark Lord, before casting the Cruciatus curse himself.
Ron Weasley remembered everything from is 'other' life. He remembered the pain of dying, he remembered the drain of his magic, the love he felt for his best-friend and brother, and he also remembered the intensity of the love reciprocated, the emotion his brother threw into their link when he realized that they were dying for him. It was that emotion that he and Hermione had etched into their soul, a beacon of hope in the dark and trying hours of the morning when they awoke to more horrible news.
He yearned for the life that he had, where he knew that someone would always have his back. It was all so tiring. He was ripped away from serenity and peace to be placed into this warring world. Where there was no comforting link. After having so many reassuring thoughts in his head, he now all of a sudden felt inadequate and incomplete.
Beside Ron, Hermione sat in silence, looking up at the red head she saw the faraway look in his eyes and knew without a doubt that he was thinking about Harry and their former life again.
It had been almost 13 years since they had sacrificed their life and magic for their best friend, and 5 years since they had been thrust back into this world. A new world which was so hauntingly familiar yet still very much different from the one they knew.
Taking a look around the room Hermione remembered the shock when she had woken in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing to find that they were no longer in the world they had been born to, and that the little things that they had known before were now almost irrelevant. Even after the 5 years had passed and they had grown accustomed to the world they lived in, it still felt strange to them.
In the weeks and months following their awakening they had learnt that the former Ron and Hermione hated each other. The past Hermione (whom present Hermione referred to as Granger) and the past Ron (Weasley) were enemies. They did not like each other one bit, Granger thought Weasley was an 'obtuse, dimwitted, brainless oaf', and Weasley thought of Granger as a 'frigid stuck up little bitch'. So imagine everyone's surprise when Ronald Weasley awoke first and refused to leave Hermione's side, that surprise went up to confusion and disbelief a day later when Hermione finally awoke, and amid tears of relief and joy grabbed Ron into an exuberant hug.
The days and months proceeding only got weirder. In trying to find someone who would understand their situation they went to seek out Albus Dumbledore. Unfortunately Hermione and Ron's previous state of relations was not the only thing that was different here. To their shock and horror they discovered that Professor Dumbledore was a permanent fixture in the Hospital Wing, had been for the past year and a half. Coma they said, severe case of magical overload and exhaustion, body and unneeded functions shut down to help healing. Hermione managed to get the story from an old Prophet article (as well as unsuspecting members of the Order, thank you Hagrid) and found out that Dumbledore and a few order members had been ambushed while trying to rescue Potter (she refused to associate her beloved 'Harry' with this traitor) from Death Eaters. Unknowing to them, it was all a setup and while the order members managed to get Dumbledore away to safety once he had gone down, James Potter and Sirius Black had been caught.
What followed was the unveiling of the greatest and most painful betrayal to the light, one in which the Potter's still struggled to accept or discuss, as far as they were concerned Harry Potter was dead, they did not have a son. It was Sirius who came up with the name Parricida, and it stuck.
It had been hard for Hermione and Ron to stem the automatic urge to defend their friend whenever he was insulted or discussed in their presence. It wasn't until Ron himself was attacked by Parricida that they came to an unspoken agreement that this was not 'their' Harry therefore he was a free-for-all if they ever had to attack him. They both strove to ignore the hurt they felt whenever they saw the familiar face during a conflict, but they could not ignore the pang of empty loss after a confrontation. And there was a great many confrontations with Death Eaters. It was obvious to the Order that whatever had happened to Hermione and Ron caused them to have skills in combat and dueling that they never possessed before, and therefore if either could be spared, they were thrown into the fray.
Things started looking up for everyone when two years after their arrival in Hell (as Ron referred to it) Dumbledore awoke suddenly. The Order was not the only organization to rejoice. Other Anti-Voldemort fractions rejoiced too, as well as the general population of Wizarding Europe (Voldemort's influence was successfully blocked by the American ministry; they were competent and did not have internal power struggles that made their British counterpart so unstable). To Ron and Hermione's relief, joy and horror, the Dumbledore that had awoken was their Dumbledore. Unfortunately the horror element came from the fact that there was now two Dumbledore's within the one body, and as Ron pointed out, no-one, bar Harry, could handle one Dumbledore and even then there were times when Harry nearly had to be talked out of flinging himself off of the Astronomy Tower. Voldemort would be in for a nasty surprise.
The Dimension travelers threw themselves into helping out this Order, integrating skills and spells that had been successful in their other life. Hermione was working closely with Lily Potter and a few Unspeakable's to try and find an edge to their war, and Ron was busy with Moody, James, Sirius and Kingsley trying to physically stop the flow of attacks against innocent people. It was working really well, with Dumbledore's return Voldemort had decided to tread softly, it had become a game of chess with each trying to guess the other's move, sometimes the wait was months, fuelling the already anxious and tension filled atmosphere.
When the Order had found out about Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione they were intrigued. Lily and James were very interested in what they had to say about Harry, and in a way it helped to ease the Potter's guilt somewhat in the realization that it was Parricida's own choices that made him into what he was. It was a shock to the entire order to know that in another world Harry Potter was the face of the light, and even more of a shock to find out that not only had he survived the Avada Kedavra, but that he subsequently survived numerous encounters with evil, thereby spearheading their movement and ultimately leading it when Dumbledore 'died'.
Disconnecting herself from her trip down memory lane, Hermione focused back on the meeting to find that Dumbledore had just asked Lily a question about their progress.
"....not getting any closer Albus, it's like we've reached a block and we can't get through. We've looked everywhere. There are some books which we can't decipher, they're written in some sort of language unknown to either Hermione or I. We have Luna looking for something to translate it, but at the moment it's just a sit and wait game."
Lily looked disappointed, it had become such a common feeling among the members of the order and it was no different now. Progress was so slow yet everything their enemies threw at them was at a quick and furious pace.
Arthur Weasley, Ron's father, ran his hand through his hair in obvious confusion. "Would you mind explaining what it is that you're trying to look for? If it's not too much of a secret," he asked.
Lily looked at Albus for permission, with an encouraging nod she turned to Arthur and the rest of the order and explained.
"We, the research and development team are trying to find someway of replicating both Hermione and Ron's bond with Harry. We obviously can't use the exact magic or bond used as their link was magically fuelled by Harry. All we want to do is find a workable equivalent that allows us to link between more then one person. In the trio's link they were able to 'borrow' Harry's excess magic to amplify their own, and as proven with their deaths they were also able to 'give' their magic to Harry to strengthen him."
Lily stopped and looked at Hermione, "you could probably explain it better dear since you were so intimately involved with its creation."
Hermione nodded and pausing to gather her thoughts she launched into what she knew.
"The sole reason why Ron, Harry and I created the link in the first place was so that we could anchor his magic. He had such an extraordinary amount of Raw Magic that if he attempted to do something that needed a large amount of power he wasn't able to control the flow."
Hermione looked around and saw confusion on most people's face. Ron had seen it too and decided to jump in.
"It's like opening a door. If there are only a small amount of people behind the door you can control how many people can come in and out, whereas if you had a huge amount of people on either side it would be harder to control. You have people pushing to get in from the other side and another large amount of people pushing to get out."
After numerous 'Ohs' and 'aahhs' Hermione took control again.
"Right, now still using the door as an example; normal magic users like you and me could have around 100 people (average power) to 1 000 people (powerful) on either side of the door. We are capable of controlling it, yes we may have some sort of struggle but it's not too farfetched to say that eventually, given time we'll get the hang of it.
With a more powerful wizard, like Professor Dumbledore ("My dear your making me blush") will have somewhere around 10 000 people on either side – all an estimate mind you. That would be harder to control, but if he had external help to help control the flow then it allows for a much greater usage of the magic available, with the minimal unstable side effects that usually come with it.
That is what Ron and I did. We were the external help that Harry needed to help stabilize (or anchor) his magic so that he had access to a larger portion of his magical reserve. We stood at the door and controlled who came in and out, allowing Harry to focus on what he wanted to use those people for. Understand?"
Taking a huge breath, Hermione let it out and sat back into her seat. Ron squeezed her hand encouragingly in which she returned with a smile of gratitude.
"Unfortunately or fortunately depending on which way you look at it, Harry's magic far exceeded Albus'. It was a lot of magic. His magic was growing at such an alarming rate that it was utilizing Harry himself as a conductor, possibly to make a little bit more room I guess. It had come to the point where even simple spells like levitation became extremely unstable for Harry to use. One time he tried to levitate a cushion and instead levitated every other item as well as the people in the room. A simple accio spell cast on a book in the library caused every single book within that area of the library to be summoned too.
You may laugh, but we didn't find it funny a few days later when during a dementor attack in Hogsmeade Harry cast his Patronus and ended up booking himself a bed in the Hospital Wing for the next 2 weeks, he was unconscious for the entire time. His body and mind couldn't process the magic that he had summoned and therefore started fighting it instead. Combined with the emotional and psychological beating the Dementors were doing to him his entire body shutdown."
Handing Hermione a glass of water, Ron decided to give her a rest and took over the explanation himself. He knew the next part.
"Knocking Harry unconscious was his magic's way of trying to save his life, I guess it was trying to give Harry's magic time to redistribute in his body. Hermione and I didn't like what was happening to Harry, he was only 16 and his magic was doing things that were not common. Prof- Albus gave us permission to look in the restricted library for a way to help Harry, when he finally awoke we still weren't anywhere near finding a solution. He was told not to do any spells for a while just to see if there were any side effects. When Madame Pomfrey finally let him try magic we found that he could no longer use his wand. We couldn't find any reason for it at first, let me just say that looking back seeing Dumbledore panic was fun- ouch Hermione!
Ummm, yeah. Anyway we found out a month later that Harry didn't need a wand anymore, he had basically become his wand. You know. Wandless magic. The only thing though was that it would only work if he said the incantations in parseltounge. We found out during an attack, good thing Voldemort's snake was attacking Hermione then else we wouldn't have known and the shit would have really hit the fan eh -Ouch! Hermione!"
Said female regretted giving Ron control over her explanation and decided that taking it back was in order. So after a smack across the head with a rolled up Daily Prophet she took over the explanation. .
"Really Ron! I can see that some of you aren't handling Harry being able to speak Parsletounge really well. Harry was not evil, sorry, Our Harry is not evil. Regardless of the fact that he knew how to speak the snake language. Your Harry didn't know how to speak Parseltounge and yet he decided to join Tom Riddle. Harry found out he could speak it the same time the rest of the school found it. It was quite an unpleasant surprise yet Harry turned it into an advantage and used it to help us in the war. As for why could he only say spells in parseltounge? I don't know. The only possible explanation is that when Tom gave Harry the cursed scar he shared some of his questionable talents with him too. Parseltounge is magic of it's own whether you want to believe it or not. Magic does not distinguish between forms and therefore when trying to redistribute itself within Harry it unintentionally made Parseltounge the only language it would activate with. It may seem like a deficient explanation but that's the only one we could come up with."
The Order of the Phoenix was now completely riveted with what Hermione was saying.
"You say this happened in his sixth year? And he was 16?" This was asked by Remus.
Hermione nodded and smiled. She knew where Remus was going with his question; he was one of the few that would have automatically known. His next question proved her right.
"So Harry was going through his majority then?"
Hermione nodded again. Wizards usually reached their majority between the ages 15 and 18, it usually signified the third stage of magical development in which they would gain access to most of their magical reserve.
"But I don't understand. Even taking into account Harry being a special case, I doubt even Albus or Voldemort went through such a process in which their magic became dangerous to their health."
Hermione pursed her lips and hesitated before trying to explain.
"Harry was always going to have it more difficult then others once he reached his majority. This is the same person who had enough magic to cast a Patronus charm, how could a thirteen year old have enough magic to fuel a Patronus that most adults couldn't do. This is also the same person whose accidental magic was powerful enough to assist him in apparation at an age where accidental magic should have been tapering out for him.
Albus and I believe when Voldemort gave Harry his scar he also gave Harry a part of his own Magical Reserve. So we think that Harry might have been running on Voldemort's involuntarily sacrificed magic. That magic suppressed Harry's natural magic, suppressed it, but not stumping its growth.
I'm assumming that we all know about the stages of magical development right?"
Hermione sighed when at least half of the order (the male's) gave her negative shakes of their heads.
"Really. Don't you boy's ever read?" she said in exasperation.
"Of course we do Her-
"Quidditch books and magazines don't count Ron. It's a load of rubbish!"
Ron (and a dozen other men) looked at Hermione like she was a new type of species that they had never seen before. Hermione ignore all this of course and started talking.
"Stage one is known as the Conditioning stage. Accidental Magic is strongest during this time as it works to familiarize the entity with its magic. All magical creatures go through this stage. Once the body has gotten to the point where the magic is no longer foreign you'll find that the accidental magic starts to taper off, which didn't happen for Harry and I'll try to explain later. We now move on stage two.
Strengthening occurs in this stage. The accidental magic while physically diminishing, it isn't within the body. It will work to strengthen the mind and the body's wards for development. This is also the part where you find that wizards become less susceptible to physical injury, you know, falling off a broom and all that. Where stage one will occur between 0 and 6 years of age, two will occur roughly between 6 and 10.
The third stage is Development. Occurring between 10 and 15, Development is what can otherwise be called the three F's: Foundation, Fuel and Flourish. This is where the basis of magic, the very foundation in which every other knowledge of magic will be built on, is learnt. From there everything else gained will only feed one's magic enabling it to grow. You then get a cycle, growth, add to the foundation, stable foundation accumulation of knowledge, accumulation of knowledge leads to growth. Once the mind and the body think that it's learnt enough it will move on, and the witch or wizard will then reach majority. Stage Four.
This is where Harry is meant to be. Access to the larger reserve of the wizards magic to help the three F's to a whole new level. Gained at around 15/16, Majority does not stop until Maximum is reached. Most wizards and witches will die without reaching their Maximum potential (total access to Magical Reserve), your own magic will decide whether or not your body can handle all that power. Most won't be able to; I think Professor Dumbledore might be close. But succeeding in having full control of one's magical reserve is difficult, it only stands to reason the next and final level, learning to control your Magical Core, is near impossible.
There is only one wizard in history that has managed to completely control their Core and that was Merlin."
When Hermione paused for a sip of water Professor Flitwick jumped in with a question, "Your Harry never reached this? Then how did he manage to defeat You-know-who?"
Hermione closed her eyes as she remembered the dying minutes of their link, "the spell used to destroy Voldemort was created by Albus -"
"Why can't we use that spell to destroy The Dark Lord?" interrupted Snape.
"The 'Contero Anima' could only be performed by a person who had the same blood running through their veins as the one whom the spell is intended for. Voldemort took care of that requirement when Harry's blood was used in his resurrection. Unless by some miracle the Dark Lord has reproduced and we don't know about it, we can't use the Contero. And anyway, even if there was a blood relative, there isn't anyone who has enough power to carry off a spell of that Magnitude. It's beyond our capabilities. I wish Harry was here."
Everyone looked away to give Hermione time to get herself back in control. They knew that all three of the travelers missed him, it was hard for them to figure that out sometimes.
Sirius, who had been uncommonly quiet for the last hour decided that Hermione had enough time to sulk. So he asked a question.
"But it still doesn't explain why it is that Harry had a harder Majority then everyone else. And how does all that come back to the spell you're trying to create?"
Lily rolled her eyes. Men! She thought, sometimes they had the understanding of a hypogriff in heat.
"Sirius," she said with exaggerated patience. "The link they had allowed them to share more then just thoughts and emotions, but also their magic. Imagine if we can pool our magic together? We may not be able to use the Contero spell but we'd be able to create another of our own. And in the best thing about it is it won't become another Unforgivable since nobody else will be able to use it."
Hermione nodded and added her bit to Lily's explanation.
"It also allows better communication for the Order. The spell Ron and I used with Harry could only be cast between three people, we didn't have accessibility to the books within the Department of Mysteries and we certainly didn't have the assistance of top Unspeakables.
As for the first part of your question, it all comes back to when Voldemort - "
At this Hermione stopped and sighed, "when will you people stop flinching at the mention of his name. I have stated his name so many times and all the flinches are becoming annoying!"
Shaking her head she went back to her original topic, "where was I? Oh yes, it all comes back to when Voldemort cursed Harry. He unknowingly and inadvertently confounded Harry's natural magic development into giving him what might have been two Majorities."
Numerous horrified Gasps echoed around the room, members of the Order looked at Hermione of wide eyes. But Remus Lupin (God bless his soul) had a pensive look on his face which was explained with his next question.
"How was that possible?" he asked intrigued.
"Harry's body and mind was never properly conditioned as it would normally. Your magic conditions your body so that it reacts like it would a wand. One does not get the same results if you use someone else's wand as you would if you use your own. In using Voldemort's sacrificed magic Harry suppressed his own natural one, you had adult magic trying to condition a fledgling magical being.
His body become much more capable of using larger quantities of magic at a younger age, but in doing so Harry took shortcuts in magical developments. Harry's magic became unstable, he was able to do advance magic like a full Corporeal Patronus at age 13 yet had problems with a simple summoning charm. He had skipped magical development, and it had all become a jumble. This was all later corrected, in a way, by his natural magic during Majority."
She paused as a few people finally understood where she was going. It was Remus who took up the unspoken challenge to try and explain it back to her.
"So what you're saying is, that where in Majority it would be the Magical Reserve that could be accessed, with Harry it was his natural and original magic? Thereby leaving his Magical Reserve still there to be used? So what did his body do?"
Hermione nodded during Remus explanation and then answered his last question.
"It did the one thing it could to correct it. It unleashed the entirety of Harry's natural magic, it filled in the gaps of Harry's development and fused with Voldemort's magic. That's the reason for the wandless abilities that Harry soon received. Harry was so full of magic that his body rushed to find ways to use everything. His wand was no longer enough of a channel for his magic so it manipulated Harry into a wandcore. When Harry shut down for 2 weeks his magic used that time to do a the Superspeed version of Magical Development."
Flitwick squeaked "so did Harry destroy you-know-who and reach his maximum potential?"
It was Ron who answered, shaking his head he said, "No. Harry still hadn't figured out how to access more then 10 of his Magical Reserve. When Harry defeated Voldemort I guess you can say it was a one-off. Harry used all the magic he could, and some of his Magical Reserve to weaken Voldemort so that the Contero could be used. But when he got to that point he must have realized that he didn't have enough energy to go any further. That's where we came in. We utilized the link and poured our magic as well as our Reserve into him. We hadn't controlled it or anything we just let it go. It temporarily made Harry more Powerful then anyone in existence, but like I said, it was temporary. Harry would have probably been sick for months, later on."
The Room was quiet as people tried to assimilate the new information. Hermione could see some people struggling with the entire concept of Harry and his Magical Development, she doubted there was any other way she could explain it in easier and simple terms. Magical Development could never be explained in that way. As for the link, well, she still fought to understand that sometimes too.
Snape opened his mouth to ask a question but was interrupted when the Floo chimes went off signaling someone was trying to contact them.
All eyes went to the Fireplace in the far side of the room, as a head popped up in the grate.
"Ginny?!"
"Professor! Please Hurry, we're being attacked. The Wards are weakening. Death Eaters."
A man, dressed in Gold and Burgundy apparrated onto a hill overlooking a house four stories tall. The village was Ottery St Catchpole, and house looked so crazy that you couldn't help but think it was held up by magic.
Dusk was creeping up on the area, there was light enough but the dark cloaked figures with masks trying to spell the wards, would have been hard to see.
The man standing on the hill looked to be in his mid 20's. A hood kept his face in the shadows but he looked to be just over 6ft tall. He was in no-way muscular but he looked like a man who dedicated himself to his sports. It was hard to tell thought what with the cloak.
He was watching the two dozen menacing figures as they attempted to weaken the wards. The man could sense that the house was occupied still, five people still in there. He watched as three of the cloaked figures raised their wands and created anti-apparition wards. Two others created wards that interfered with port-key travel.
The stranger couldn't do much. He was still weak from his travels, but he couldn't stand back and not do anything. Reaching out his hand he started chanting. Or rather hissing. If anyone had been watching they would have found the display eerie, yet one could not deny the power that radiated from the man.
The wards rippled with energy, just enough to delay the masked people a while longer. Just enough to allow one of the inhabitants of the house to floo for help. The cloaked figures looked at each other in confusion, starting again they raised their wands and started chanting.
Dropping his arm in exhaustion the man continued to watch. He saw the wards ripple and strain with tension. It won't be long now, he thought to himself.
The wards dropped and as they started forward towards the house, a group of people apparated into the yard.
Spells and Curses flew everywhere as the attack commenced. They were evenly matched. For a while at least. The hooded figure on the hill continued to observe. The passive stance belied his worry as he watched the old man bring down another of the cloaked figure.
He saw two men run out from the house wands raised. There were at least four people down now, three of them still had on there masks. Watching still, he saw a brown haired woman get hit by a curse. She was bleeding, but she was still fighting. Back to back with a Red head.
Then he sensed it. Others were coming in. Turning to a point a 10 metres away from the pair he saw a dozen more masked figures appear. He froze. Too many. They were outnumbered.
The pair was isolated from their friends. The old man and some others were fighting to get to them but more black cloaks got in the way. The stranger watched as a red haired woman ran out of the house to try and help, he watched as an enemy raised his wand to curse her and then watched as she fell to the ground in agony. Mum. He heard another cry.
He had had enough. It was time to join in and punish her attacker. He did not like that spell, many times had he suffered under it.
He disappeared from the hill to appear behind her assailant. The man cut of the curse to look up in shock, right in time to get a fist in his face and hissed spell for his efforts.
He walked over to the Woman and looked down at her. He knew her face. Reaching down he touched her shoulder and hissed a spell, she disappeared from the ground and reappeared in the living room of her house.
Looking up he saw that the pair were not faring well. They were tiring out and were becoming sloppy. He raised his right hand palm up and starting hissing, a ball of red light the size of a snitch formed in his palm. Clenching his hand he threw it towards them. The red-haired man turned around to try and stop his attacker from behind in time to see five of them fall to the ground. He looked towards the figure who helped him in confusion.
Ron was so tired. And so was Hermione. He felt someone attacking him from behind, spinning around he knew that this could be it for him, but stopped in shock when he saw that all four of his attackers were on the ground. A ball of red light flew past his head spinning around he saw that the death eater's fighting Hermione had gotten hit too.
Whirling around he searched out who it was that helped them only to see a man in a hooded cloak throwing Red light to other death eaters.
The rest of the Order members gradually became aware that Death Eaters were falling all over the place, but the dismissed it as a spell from one of their people. It wasn't until the last death-eater had fallen that they finally took a look around.
A few order members had their wands pointed at a hooded man. It wasn't long before the rest followed suite.
"Who are you?!"
This was asked by Moody. They all waited for an answer. All they could hear was the heavy breathing and shuffling of feet.
"Who are you lad?!"
Again Moody got no answer. He moved to ask a third time when Dumbledore held up his hand. With a shake of his head he indicated that he would take over.
"I would like to thank you for your assistance. My name is Albus Dumbledore. May I enquire as to who you are?"
Silence.
"Please. Will you not answer me? Who am I to thank?"
Silence.
"How – "
"I don't think you would believe me if I was to tell you who I was Professor," said the stranger. "It has been a while since we last saw each other. And even then I do not think you would remember me."
Dumbledore took a step forward and smiled.
"Why not leave that to me child. How will I know if you are right if I do not see who you are? Take down your hood then. If you will not give me a name, then at least give me a face to attempt to remember."
The figure in the middle of the courtyard moved his arms up. The order members stiffened and raised their wands as one, just in case.
There was enough light to see that the figure was wearing a dark red velvet cloak. He lowered his head so that his chin was nearly touching his chest and slowly pushed his cloak back.
He had black hair. Messy black hair, about shoulder length it looked like. Raising his head his he looked straight into Albus Dumbledore's blue eyes.
"Do you know me now Professor?" he asked softly.
Dumbledore's eyes widened. His throat constricted and he was sure that he stopped breathing.
The man reached up his right hand pushed his hair out of his forehead. A jagged cut graced his forehead.
Hermione and Ron Gasped. Hermione put her hand to her mouth not daring to believe.
Dumbledore took a step forward, and then another, and then another one. He kept going until he was less then meter in front of the stranger.
The rest of the order watched riveted as their leader reached his hand up and touched his long fingers to the scar, tracing the lightening bolt almost reverently. He moved his arms and gripped the man's shoulders. A lone tear made its way down the old wizards face while twinkling blue eyes met jade green.
"I know you very well son. It is so wonderful to see you again Harry."
And with that he pulled him into a hug.
AN
There's probably errors galore in this story. Sorry. This is my update, hopefully it makes sense. Review and let me know what I'm doing wrong. Constructive criticism is very welcome. Thank you very much for reading this story.
Stahchild.