Chapter One

Guilt of the Lonely

The rain kept pouring down, as it had over the past three weeks. Harry Potter laid miserably in his bed, listening to the splashing from the raindrops as they hit the concrete of Privet Drive. He had done this for a few weeks now, ever since he got home from his fifth year at Hogwarts.

Harry wondered how Ron and Hermione, his two best friends, were doing, and if it was raining at their places, too. It was a few days since he had last heard from them, and he was starting to feel more and more alone and miserable. The terrible weather did absolutely nothing to decrease Harry's bad mood. Ever since the happenings in the Department of Mysteries, he had done nothing but thinking of the one he had so foolishly lost - his godfather, Sirius Black.

During the endless, gray days, Harry found himself thinking about how he could have acted differently, so that Sirius would have survived. If he only had taken Occlumency seriously... or if he had listened to Hermione and stayed at Hogwarts instead of running along to what he thought was a rescue mission. Again, he blamed himself for the death of his Godfather, as he did almost every time the thought of Sirius crossed his mind, and that happened awfully often.

A good change, however, was that (after the cryptical warning Uncle Vernon had recieved from Moody, Lupin and Tonks at King's Cross Station the day Harry had got back from Hogwarts) the Dursleys now did not dare to tell Harry what to do or not to do, so Harry could do practically whatever he wanted. Even Dudley did nothing but give him a hateful stare when he got down to the kithen to fetch himself a chicken sandwich or a soda.

However, Harry would rather stay up in his bedroom together with Hedwig, but that got rather lonely when she was out hunting or delivering a letter. Harry was thankful for his friends, Ron and Hermione, who steadily sent him letters that cheered him up or gave him some information of the outside world (though they had to be careful - now that Voldemort and the Death Eaters all were active again, they had to watch out so they didn't write anything that could come of Voldemort's advantage if the owls were intercepted.) But they didn't have to write much - after the Ministry had declared the return of the Dark Lord, the Daily Prophet now covered everything they could get their hands on.

Suddenly, Harry awoke from his light doozing by a knock on the window. He quickly got up from his bed and opened it to find a soaked Hedwig staring fiercely at him from the window sill, as if accusing him for sending her out to drown in the rain. He smiled at his feathery friend, then untied the wet letter she had carried and stroked her softly before putting her into her cage. He didn't bother to close the door, he allowed Hedwig to be anywhere in his room if she didn't ruin anything.

Harry sat down and opened the dripping letter, only to find it almost unreadable. The ink had floated around, but luckily, Harry knew what to do. Apparentlyy, it had been raining steadily the past weeks in Diagon Alley as well, so when Harry had recieved what he thought was a new funny instrument from Fred and George Weasley, he was rather surprised to find a tool he knew probably would come in handy. And it did. Harry lept from his bed and crawled under it to crack the loose floorboard open, where he kept his books and magical things. He fumbled with the Monster Book of Monsters for a few second, then his hand caught what he was looking for.

He dragged the Parchment Repairer out and snapped the floorboard back, before retreating onto his bed and opening the small package, relieving what he at the moment thought to be the most ingenius thing the Weasley twins had ever made. The idea was simple enough - you placed the Repairer over the parchment, and it would immediately begin to recover the script and remove ink spots.

'The only problem,' the twins had pointed out in the letter that followed, 'is that it don't know exactly what the letter said before, so it might turn out to be a few funny words, but we guess you can figure it out.' Harry laughed at the thought,
and wondered if any such 'funny words' would appear in the letter he was trying to recover. Slowly, he saw that words and sentences apperared where the Repairer had worked it's magic.

After a while, the only thing left was the signature, and Harry grinned when the letter was acclaimed to be sent by a certain 'Hermes Nee Granger'.'Poor Hermione,' he thought cheerfully, then put carefully put aside the Repairer and began to read:

Dear Harry,

How are you? I know it's been a wheel (Harry grinned again) since I last wrote, but that I can explain. You see, there has been a, shall we say, disturbance in the city I live in, so my parents and I have fled to You-Know-Where (Harry knew she could not mean anywhere else than number twelve, Grimmauld Place, Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. The thought of the house he had been in for so long make him think of its owner - Sirius - and once again he felt a sharp pain in his stomach, but he kept on reading) by orders of Dumbledore.

We will be safe here, but my parents are not to bappy (Harry couldn't grin by the mistakes anymore) but after a quick talk with Dumbledore I think they understood. I mean, you don't get a guy called the 'Dark Lord' practically on your doorstep every day either.

Harry understood. Voldemort had come to her hometown, and Harry knew he'd been after Hermione - after all, she was one of Harry's closest friends... Harry felt guilty for a second, as he usually did when he reminded himself that he was the reason his friends were hunted.'No,' a small voice inside him said, 'you're not the reason, and you know it. It's Voldemort, he's the real reason. If it hadn't been for him, no one would have been hunted or killed.' There was too much truth in this to overlook, so Harry once again concentrated on Hermione's letter.

Harry - I know what you must be thinking, but don't you blame yourself for this. I wouldn't be safe even if I didn't knew you, nobody is. And Harry, I'd rather be your friend in a little more danger than not being your friend and being in the 'usual' danger.

Now, Dumbledore told me a few days ago that you would arrive here soon, so I guess you'll be receving some kind of notice in a few days. Or perhaps you've already recieved it, that depends how fast Fawkes is.

See you soon Harry (and as far as I know, so will Ron)!

Hermes Nee Granger

Harry smiled slightly at the signature again, but these news were disturbing. Hermione had nearly been attacked by Death Eaters, or so it seemed, and Harry felt quite hopeless knowing there was nothing he could do. Still he trusted Dumbledore, even after what he had told him last year, and he was sure Hermione and her parents were perfectly safe.
He quietly put the parchment back into the envelope, collected the Repairer and hid them under the loose floorboard, still thinking about the letter and its contents.