I've had more than one person express their desire for me to focus on this story "if you had to pick just one", which makes me happy, since this is still probably my favorite (though I love all of them). And, to keep me sane (and productive), I am still and will continue bouncing around from one project to another, sometimes adding only a single paragraph per day to something, just to make sure I'm getting something done.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

The potion took up a significant chunk of Harry's focus. His teachers, usually full of praise for how quickly he managed to grasp new concepts, had begun to notice that his attention in class was wavering. It didn't matter, of course, since he could still pass every test and complete every assignment with his eyes closed, but they still didn't like any student appearing distracted during lessons.

It almost got him in hot water on the quidditch pitch, too. He was playing against a green but talented Cedric Diggory in his first match out of the reserves, and his inattentiveness nearly cost him a snitch catch. Wood read him the riot act afterward, despite the fact they'd won the match 390 to170.

'You'd think they destroyed us or something,' he complained to Fred and George afterward.

'Don't worry about it, Harry,' said George consolingly.

'It's just Wood being Wood,' said Fred.

Then there was the potion itself. Even with the Prince's help (Harry found he still viewed the Prince and Snape as separte entities in his head, despite knowing they were one and the same person), the Aletheialixer was an incredibly complex and complicated potion that would take most of their time during April and early May to prepare. They had opted to make two separate batches, since there would be no time to start over if they made a mistake. They almost immediately regretted this decision, but once made they saw little sense in going back on it.

Some of the ingredients needed to be mail ordered. This was tricky in that they couldn't use Hedwig because she was too recognizable, but they also couldn't use school owls because that would mean they'd have to use their real names. They got around this by renting a post office box in Hogsmeade, then having Dobby retreive the packages for them once they arrived. The box was in Harry's name of course, but as only the people at the Post Office knew that, and they wouldn't know what was in any of the packages, it was as secure as they could make it be.

Some ingredients were too sensitive to be sent through the mail. They could be bought in person at an Apothecary, but even though either of them could have snuck out easily enough, they weren't exactly the sort of ingredients that underage wizards should be buying.

Fortunately, Hogwarts provided them with another way of obtaining these rare components, though it wasn't exactly one Harry relished.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

'You know, the only other time I've been in here was in detention with Luna and Neville,' said Ginny as she and Harry, hidden under the invisibility cloak, passed under the first few trees of the Forbidden Forest. 'And I suppose we did come to meet you and Hermione that night...the night we all flew to the ministry.'

The night Sirius died. He knew she'd realized what she was saying partway through, but didn't hold it against her. It was something that happened to him with embarrassing regularity, after all.

'My first ever detention was in here,' he said. 'With Neville as well, and Hermione and Malfoy.'

'Was that the thing with the Dragon?'

'Norbert, yeah. Er, Norberta. It was also the first time I saw Voldemort, though I didn't know it at the time.'

'We have such lovely memories of our school days,' Ginny said.

'Most of mine are good, it's just that the bad ones tend to stand out,' said Harry. 'I have been in here more times than I care to think about, though.'

'Then at least you have some idea what you're doing and where you're going. Sorry for putting my foot in it back there.'

'It's all right. Happens to me all the time, as you well know.'

'Can we take this off yet? It's hard to walk in here with it on.' She was pawing at the invisibility cloak.

'Oh, yeah, we can,' said Harry, pulling it off of them and stuffing it back in his robes. 'Sorry, I wasn't even paying attention. We don't need it in here. The truth is I just like being under it with you.'

'Aw.'

They paused for a moment so Harry could get his bearings. He had been in the forest many times over the years, it was true, but he hadn't seen all of it. Not even close. He knew the areas to avoid, like Aragog's grove and the centaur camp, but he had only a vague idea of where to go in order to find what they were looking for.

'Lunar ringworm grows above the canopy, where it can get the most moonlight,' he said, repeating what they'd read about the ingredients they needed. 'That means we'll want to find some of the tallest trees in the forest, which will be over in that direction.' He pointed off toward the northwest, forward and to the left of them, and they started off, keeping to the trail as much as possible. 'If we're lucky, we can get some deadly night creeper while we're over there too, though we'll have to keep a sharp eye out for it.' Deadly night creeper retreated from any form of light, meaning it was going to be in the most shadowed areas, and they wouldn't be able to shine their wandlight to find it.

'That's the part I'm least looking forward to,' said Ginny. Harry didn't blame her. Deadly night creeper wasn't as quick to kill you as, say, devil's snare, but the very nature of how it grew meant that in order to find it you had to feel for it, essentially allowing it to grab you. If you weren't quick with a severing charm or didn't have someone to help you, you could be in serious trouble. Not to mention it had the disturbing habit of growing into open cuts or beneath fingernails, making it almost impossible to remove. Dragonhide gloves were an absolute must.

'Just keep an eye out for centaurs,' said Harry. 'This is going to be difficult enough without them telling us to get lost.'

'And acromantulas, surely?'

'Thankfully we're not headed in their direction, but yeah, watch out for them too.'

'This is such a romantic evening,' Ginny said wryly. 'We should do this more often.'

'Ron, Hermione and I used to do this sort of thing all the time and you always said you wanted to come,' Harry pointed out.

'I wanted to come because I wanted to be included, you dolt, not because I craved deadly adventure.'

'Well there aren't any Death Eaters, so this is more like mildly perilous adventure. We wouldn't want to do anything that would affect your mum's clock.'

'You mean like facing down a fifty foot basilisk by ourselves?' she asked, her tone even drier than before.

'Right, like that.'

'We're so lucky she didn't see. I mean, I know it was a necessary risk, but...'

'We could've explained it away with just the basilisk being in school,' said Harry. 'It wouldn't be too hard to argue that everyone at Hogwarts was in mortal peril with one of those things on the loose.'

'I suppose,' said Ginny. 'Anyway it's a moot point now. How far, do you reckon?'

'At least another half hour, probably more,' he said. 'Watch where you step; there are all kinds of weird things in here.'

'Lovely.'

It was slow going. Harry distinctly remembered Hagrid's very first piece of advice about venturing into the forest: stay on the path. Unfortunately, for where they wanted to go, that wasn't always possible. Trudging through the underbrush was a risk in itself – you never knew what was there – but so was hacking their way through. Any minute a centaur could show up and accuse them of damaging the forest they viewed as theirs.

They used the Four Point spell to stay on course – the stars weren't visible beneath the canopy most of the time – and had to reorient themselves every few minutes. They talked of inconsequential things, like how Ginny's dorm mates were getting along, and how Lavender and Parvati had already asked Harry if he and Ginny were a "thing".

'What did you tell them?' Ginny asked.

'That I'm twelve?' Harry responded. 'As far as anyone needs to know, we're friends.'

Ginny twisted up her mouth, and he couldn't tell if she was annoyned or amused. Never a good sign.

'Does that bother you?' he asked.

'No,' she said after a brief hesitation. 'I mean it does, but not that you said it.'

Harry's confusion must have shown on his face.

'I mean I'm not upset with you,' she explained. 'I don't like that we have to hide who we are to each other, but that's nothing new. You made the right decision; I just wish you didn't have to, that's all.'

'I don't either,' he said. 'I can't wait until your third year so I can make a big show of asking you to Hogsmeade and have it all out in the open.'

'We could always move it up to next year, you know,' she said.

'You're not allowed in Hogsmeade next year,' he pointed out.

'Harry!' she said, exasperated with him. 'Going to Hogsmeade together isn't the only thing couples at Hogwarts do, you know.'

'I'm fully aware of that,' he said dryly. 'But most of what else they do I'm not comfortable with us doing at twelve and thirteen.'

She made a show of scoffing loudly. 'We don't have to do that either, you ninny. I mean, I still think a kiss here and there wouldn't be uncalled for, but we can just...spend time together, and go for walks and things.'

'You mean like we already do all the time?' he responded. 'Lavender and Parvati aren't the only ones who've noticed, you know. They're just the ones most interested in the gossip side of it all. Ron and Hermione have made a few comments as well, and Stephen and Natalie have implied things once or twice, and even Neville asked the other day if I fancied you.'

'Bless him,' said Ginny fondly. 'Do you know he told me he thought he fancied me for years until he realized he just thought I was cool?'

'Is there a difference?' Harry asked curiously.

'Yes, there is, you insensitive clod!' she said, swatting at him. 'Anyway, he said by the time of the Yule Ball he'd mostly worked it out, which is why he had the courage to ask me.'

'I can understand that,' said Harry, thinking back. 'Asking out a girl you actually fancy can be a hundred times harder at that age.'

'Does it get easier when you get older?' Ginny asked curiously. The question caught Harry by surprise. He tilted his head in thought when he realized he had no idea.

'I couldn't say,' he finally said. 'I never exactly asked you out properly, did I? We just sort of...happened.'

'That's true,' she said. He could tell by the smile on her face that she was remembering it just as fondly as he was. 'Well, you can find out when you ask me out this time.'

'That won't work,' he said. 'I already know what the answer will be. The fear is of being rejected. You haven't gone off me, have you?'

She put a finger to her chin, pretending to think.

'No, you're still useful to have around,' she teased. 'Were you nervous when you asked me to marry you?'

'Most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life,' he said with no hesitation. She gave him a look like he was insane. Understandable, he supposed. 'I'm serious,' he said. 'For some reason that had me more worked up than anything that should be all rights have been far more frightening.'

'But you knew what the answer was going to be then, too, didn't you?' she asked.

He hesitated.

'Harry!' she exclaimed. 'How could you for one second have thought that I wouldn't want to marry you?'

'I didn't actually think you'd say no,' he explained. 'Not really. But the fear is still there regardless. It doesn't always make sense, you know.'

'Well, I certainly hope you didn't,' she huffed. 'If I hadn't made myself clear by then, I don't know what could have done it.'

Before he could come up with something clever to say, a horrid shrieking sound broke out off in the distance to the west, freezing them in their tracks.

'What in Merlin's name was that?' Ginny asked.

'I have no idea,' said Harry, on high alert. Both of them had their wands out and reflexively taken defensive positions, their backs to each other. 'I told you; there are all kinds of things in here.'

'It sounded like someone slaughtering a rooster the size of an elephant,' Ginny said.

'That's an interesting way of describing it,' said Harry, involuntarily picturing it in his head.

'I wasn't trying to be funny; that's just the closest thing I could think of.'

'Slaughtered a lot of giant roosters in your day, have you?'

'Shut up, Harry!' she snapped. 'One to ten, how worried should we be right now?'

'Honestly?' he said. 'Maybe about a three. It sounded pretty far off, though distance can play tricks on you sometimes, so maybe a four. Let's just stay on our toes and see if we hear it again. If it sounds like it might be closer, we can break out the cloak.'

She deferred to his expertise, but her posture indicated she was still nervous. He couldn't pretend he wasn't, but he hadn't been lying to her either. He didn't feel there was anything to be truly concerned about just yet.

For the next ten minutes or so, they remained as quiet as they could, only speaking in whispers to point out obstacles or to cast the Four Point spell, which didn't work very well non-verbally for some reason. They heard all kinds of things, from owls hooting to bugs chirping and the occasional rustling, but nothing to indicate anything big enough to harm them was close by. They didn't hear the strange shriek again, but all that meant was that they had no idea where whatever made it might currently be.

After a while, Ginny spoke up.

'You know, I've just thought of something,' she said. 'What's our plan if a centaur does find us out here?'

'I thought we'd already settled on that. Just play as innocent as possible; they're usually more forgiving toward children. Worst that could happen is they make us leave; they'll probably come with us to make sure we go.'

'No, I know that,' she said, 'but what's our excuse for being out here in the first place?'

'Sorry?' he asked.

'I can't believe we didn't think of it during all that planning,' Ginny said. 'I feel like a right bloody moron. How are we going to explain a first year and a second year wandering around this deep in the forest in the middle of the night? Even if the centaurs don't care, word will inevitably work its way back to Dumbledore.'

The carelessness of this oversight hit Harry like a punch in the face. A feeling he was all too familiar with, thanks to growing up with Dudley.

'Shite,' he said simply, stopping dead in his tracks. 'I can't believe this. How could we have been so stupid?' The plan had always been "Just be careful to avoid the centaurs, and if they find us, act innocent and talk our way out of it." It wasn't the best plan, but there hadn't been a better option, really. But of course Dumbledore would hear about it.

'So are we changing the plan from "watch out for centaurs" to "absolutely do not get caught by the centaurs"?' Ginny asked dryly.

'It's a bit late to do anything else. Unless...hang on.' He'd had an idea. An idea he probably should have had back when they were planning this whole excursion, though it would make things much more difficult for them as well, so maybe it made sense that he hadn't thought of it before now.

'What?'

'I'm going to disillusion us,' he said. 'It'll make things much more difficult, since we won't be able to see each other either, so we'll have to take extra care to stay together, but it'll hopefully keep anything from seeing us that shouldn't and it'll be easier than trying to walk through all this with both of us under the cloak.'

'I'm not sure if I like this,' she said. 'Wandering around in the forest at night, essentially invisible? If we get separated...'

'We'll still have our wands,' he said. 'In a worst case scenario we'll still be able to signal each other.'

'All right,' she said. 'Go ahead.'

He tapped her on the head with his wand, and she slowly vanished before his eyes. His disillusionment charm was strong; even in broad daylight she'd be little more than a faint ripple, even to someone specifically looking for her, and only if she moved. At night, she might as well have been completely invisible. He held out his hand for her to take while she could still see him, and then cast the charm on himself.

'Don't you dare let go of me,' came her voice from seemingly thin air.

'Never.'

They crept through the woods, now at a much slower pace than before. About five minutes on, they heard the shrieking again, but it didn't seem any closer than before. They took this as a positive sign.

The relative silence now that they weren't talking was rather eerie, and served to remind them exactly where they were. Even Harry had never been this deep into this part of the forest before; they had no real idea what to expect.

As if to drive the point home, the horrible screeching sound erupted again, not twenty feet above and behind them.

Heart in his throat, Harry jumped and spun around, wand at the ready, expecing to see some kind of terrifying, monstrous creature. He could sense Ginny doing the same; it was a miracle they'd both had enough self control to keep from screaming themselves.

Dual beams of wandlight searched about, but there was nothing. Was the creature invisible? Could it move so quickly they'd already missed it? He'd heard of creatures in America that could alter their shape in such a way that they could hide behind literally anything. But what would one of those be doing in Scotland?

Pulse hammering, Harry fought to control his breating as he scanned the area, wracking his brain for anything Hagrid might have told him about creatures that lived deep in the forest. He couldn't think of anything.

He was about to give the whole thing up as a bad job, grab Ginny, and make a break for it when the screech boomed again, from roughly the same spot as before. Harry and Ginny's wands both zeroed in on the spot, and what they saw brought Harry relief so palpable he wanted to laugh.

'Merlin's bloody bollocks,' Ginny sighed. 'I damn near pissed myself. Stupid thing. Get out of here.' Her wandlight flickered as if she'd flicked her wand, and she must have cast a stinging hex or something because the mauve-breasted mimicwren, the culprit behind their near heart attacks, screeched once more and flew off into the night as if struck by something.

'That was an adventure,' Harry said, taking deep, calming breaths. His heart rate should be back to normal in a minute or so.

'I could do with a few less of those,' Ginny replied, still getting her breathing under control as well.

'Did you notice the grotto behind those trees over there?' Harry asked. It took a second before he remembered she couldn't see where he was pointing. 'Off to the right a bit?'

'No,' she said. 'What about it?'

'When we were shining our light all around, there was a part of it that stayed shadowed the whole time. I was a bit nervous to look in there, if I'm honest, but it's as good a place as any to check for some deadly night creeper, don't you think?'

'I suppose,' she said. 'Have you got your glove on?'

'Just a second,' he said, pulling said glove out of his pocket and slipping it onto his hand. 'I think I should cancel my disillusionment for this part too, so you can see what's going on.'

'Not a bad idea.'

Once again visible, Harry extinguished the light from his own wand and carefully crept over toward the shadowed grotto. There could be deadly night creeper in there, or there could be any number of other things. He would have to reach in blindly and hope for the best. This really had been a horrible plan, he thought to himself.

Ginny crept alongside him, taking care to point her lit wand away from the area he was targeting. No sense causing the plant to retreat before he could get to it if it was there.

There was a small opening between two trees, with a fallen log just behind them that made something of an archway. Harry couldn't tell, but he thought he could make out the silhouette of a third tree farther back. If the creeper was in there, his best bet would be around the trunk of this tree.

Slowly, carefully, reminding himself he was protected by a very well made dragonhide glove, Harry eased his hand into the opening. The one downside to the glve was that he couldn't feel much, so he wouldn't know if he'd struck paydirt until -

'AH!' He gasped in shock. A small tendril had brushed against he finger of his glove and almost immediately lashed out and started wrapping itself around his digits.

'You found some?' Ginny said excitedly, thankfully remembering not to shine her light on it just yet.

'Fuck, this hurts!' Harry groaned. The plant was putting a lot more pressure on him than even he had expected. He waited until it was circling around his wrist, and then…

'OW, OW, OW!' he howled. Making a fist was almost impossible; if he'd waited a second longer, he might not have been able to do it at all. As it was, he could feel the bones in his fingers grinding together as he tried to grip the plant as tightly as it was gripping him. It was like trying to shake hands with someone very strong and very aggressive.

Finally he was able to clench his hand tight enough that he didn't think the creepers would be able to escape.

'I've got it!' he yelled. Ginny turned her light on his hand, which was now almost buried beneath wiry creepers with long, pointy leaves like pen nibs all around them. The second the light hit them, they tried to retreat, but Harry held firm. Just how long he'd be able to do that, he couldn't say.

'Cut it!' he cried, biting back the pain in his voice.

'I can't!' she snapped. 'You're squirming around too much; I could slice one of your fingers off.'

'Ginny, if you don't cut it in the next few seconds, I'll lose more than a finger. It's about to tear my whole arm off!' The creeper was trying with the strength of a giant to pull Harry with it back into the holes in the tree in its desperation to get away from the light. Harry had forgotten to take into account when forming this plan that his body was that of a twelve year old.

'All right, get ready,' she said. He wished he'd thought to remove her disillusionment too so he could see what she was doing. He trusted her, but the creeper was jerking his arm around a lot…

'Diffindo!'

Harry almost fell over backwards and actually stumbled back several steps at the sudden end to the struggle. The creepers went limp in his hand, providing sweet relief to his poor fingers, which would be sore for days if they weren't broken. Seconds later he could feel Ginny's hands gripping his; though he couldn't see her he knew she was checking him over to see he was all right. She grunted in frustration and pulled off his glove, then went back to have a better look.

'I'll be all right,' he said, working and flexing his fingers. None of them felt broken.

'Well, that's the hard part done, at least,' Ginny said, unwinding the creepers from his glove and stowing them in a small pouch worn at her waist. Even cut, they would start to lose potency if exposed to too much light.

'Too right,' said Harry, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pair of "borrowed" school brooms (he wasn't about to shrink his own broom in case something went wrong; the charms on brooms could make enchanting them in any additional way tricky). 'Let's get the hell out of here.'

'What's your hurry?' Ginny asked. 'I mean, I suppose it's possible a centaur might have overheard the racket we were making...'

'There's that,' said Harry, 'but that mimicwren also has me worried.'

'What? Why?' asked Ginny.

'Come on, Ginny, you know why,' he said, handing her one of the unshrunken brooms. 'Mimicwrens can only copy sounds they've heard somewhere else.'

Her eyes went wide, but she was on her broom and in the air with him a split second later.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

It only took them a few minutes to reach the grove of tall pines where Harry expected to find the lunar ringworm they were after. Now that they had the deadly night creeper, there was no longer any need to travel on foot. Just as well, too, he thought. At the pace they'd been going, it would have taken them half the night to reach the giant trees; they'd have been lucky to make it back to the castle by the first hints of twilight before dawn.

They had to fly low, roughly even with the treetops, so anyone looking out of the castle wouldn't see their silhouettes flying through the night sky, as unlikely as that was. He'd forgotten just how much he hated school brooms. No matter how firmly he directed the bloody thing, it kept listing ever so slightly to the left. Ginny's kept losing altitude unless she constantly pulled up on it.

'Here we are,' said Harry as the towering pines sprang up before them. 'Let's get up there and grab this stuff so we can go to bed.' It had been a long night, and he had quidditch practice in the morning. Wood was keen to win the cup for the second year in a row. Considering the margin by which they'd beaten both Slytherin and Hufflepuff, Harry didn't know why he was worried. He supposed that was just Wood being Wood.

Up near the very tops of the trees, there were winding growths of a mildy glowing, pearlescent fungus. They grew like small branching tubes, almost like coral, around the trunks of the pines, and shimmered in the moonlight.

Lunar ringworm didn't have any dangerous properties that he knew of, but Professor Sprout had drilled caution into him over seven years. Donning his gloves once more, Harry took out his silver knife and began removing small piece of the fungus, careful not to cut it, and dropping them into a small leather pouch. Ginny was doing the same at the next tree over.

Once both of their pouches were full, they put all of their equipment away and headed back to the castle. They never did find out what originally made the sound that mimicwren had been copying, and with luck, they never would.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

The last stages of brewing the potion involved letting it sit and stew for several days at a time in between each step, so the only thing they had to do most days was check on it periodically to make sure the temperature and lighting was still all right. Exams were coming up, which of course meant Hermione wanted to spend every spare minute studying. Harry couldn't duck out of this too often without facing a number of questions he didn't want to answer, so once again a vast amount of his free time was spent revising material he'd learnt over a decade ago and had long since become second nature to him. Tedious did not begin to describe it.

Whatever time he wasn't spending on unnecessary revising, he was spending on unnecessary (for him, anyway) quidditch practice. Perhaps it should have worried him that for once in his life he found himself dreading quidditch, but then playing and drilling were two separate things, and Wood had surpassed his previous level of madness and taken things to new, unimagined extremes. They would run the same play sixteen, seventeen times, until the team threatened to mutiny if he made them do it again. Harry didn't remember it ever being this bad before, even in his third year when they hadn't won the cup already and weren't going into the final as the top ranked and favored team to win.

The only explanation Harry could think of was that the only thing more important to Wood than winning the Quidditch Cup was keeping it – a thought which made him dread next year as much as having to face Voldemort again. If Wood was this bad with one Cup win under his belt, how bad would he be with two?

Then there was the matter of Lockhart. The aletheialixer was nearly finished and as far as they could tell, made correctly. The only thing that remained was deciding when to dose him with it. This had been labeled "TBD" in their plans, since the optimal time would be when the whole school was assembled, but they couldn't afford to wait until the leaving feast in case something went wrong and they had to improvise or go to a contingency.

Their other idea was the quidditch final, which most of the school usually attended, but unfortunately neither Lockhart nor Dumbledore had a habit of attending every school quidditch match – including the final – and if either one of them was missing the plan wouldn't work.

They settled on engineering an appropriate scenario instead, though Harry thought it wasn't going to make him very popular. At least Cho might finally get over her feelings for him, he thought grimly. Though he didn't exactly want her to hate him, either.

'It won't be as terrible as you're imagining, Harry,' Ginny consoled him as they finalized their strategy. 'It's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened before, and if you're subtle enough, there's no reason for anyone to suspect you were doing it on purpose.'

'Mr Subtlety, that's me,' quipped Harry. Ginny swatted him lightly on the back of his head.

'Stop moping. Of all the things for you to be concerned about. Quidditch popularity? What's gotten into you?'

'I don't like making people upset,' he said. 'Either with me or in general.'

Her face and her tone softened.

'I know you don't,' she said. 'But I'm telling you it's not going to be a problem. You assume everyone's going to think you're this arrogant mastermind, messing them about just because you can, when really all they're going to see is a twelve year old seeker who's having a relatively off day. It'll be fine. You know, as long as you don't go in too hard and accidentally let Chang catch the thing.'

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

I'm perhaps having too much fun alluding to what their plan is without actually saying, but the name of the potion should give at least one clue.

As always, please leave a review with your thoughts. I always enjoy reading them, even if you think Harry is a pathetic beta male loser and this story should be rewritten from the beginning to make it just how you want. Those are funny.