- CHAPTER TWO -
The Barrier
"Quickly, Harry, come on!"
Harry felt like the ball in a pinball machine, being fired from place to place without a spare moment to stop and breathe. Mad-Eye Moody had devised a fiendishly complicated schedule for getting him to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters that involved thirteen different stopovers, six modes of transport, and three costume changes. Ten minutes into the plan, and Harry was so thoroughly befuddled he probably wouldn't have even noticed if he was suddenly kidnapped by Death Eaters.
However, instead, he managed to make it to the station with three and half minutes to spare, most of the clothes he'd started out in, and only a minimal case of seasickness. He was still wearing an embarrassingly pink shirt that was Tonks's idea of an amusing disguise, but fortunately his school robes covered that up if he pulled them in tight enough at the neck. He added a quick sealing charm with his wand to make sure they stayed that way.
Ron and Hermione both rushed him with cries of relief when they spotted him. "Harry!" Ron had, impossible at it seemed, grown even taller and ganglier over the holidays. And Hermione had got, well, er, noticeably more... female. Harry was glad she was chattering away too much to see his slight flush when she hugged him.
"-And Professor Flitwick sent me a note to say that he hoped very much I'd be willing to take Charms, because he had a special project that he thought I'd be able to help him with in the seventh year. But I really want to do Arithmancy as well, and that means I can't possibly take the Ancient Runes course-"
"What subjects are you taking, Harry?" Ron asked tolerantly. No doubt Hermione had been talking his ear off for an hour already.
It was wonderful to see them both again.
"Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration and Potions," he rattled off without stopping to think about it.
"Potions? Are you off your rocker?" Ron demanded incredulously. "We finally get a chance to escape from Snape, and you're taking his class voluntarily?"
"Ron!" Hermione elbowed him. "That's great, Harry," she said, smiling warmly at him. "Don't let Snape bully you out of it. Potions is a very important subject if you want to-"
"Oh, put a sock in it," Ron sighed. "Come on, or we'll miss the train."
They scrambled into a carriage on the Hogwarts Express, Ron and Hermione electing to skip out on the alleged privilege of riding in the Prefect cars. "If I have to spend the whole journey staring at Draco Malfoy's smug little rat-face, then I won't be responsible for anything I turn him into," Hermione said curtly. Draco's father was currently languishing in the Azkaban wizard prison after his part in the attack on the Ministry of Magic, but Harry had a horrible suspicion he'd find some way to slime his way out of it sooner or later.
Neville Longbottom joined them in their alternative carriage, with a shy grin. He'd grown more confident since joining Harry's unofficial Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons and holding his own in the battle in the Department of Mysteries last year, but Neville would never be somebody who put himself forward.
He was carrying a small, fluffy plant that looked rather like a cactus that had put out blue puffballs instead of spikes. "It's a Fluctuating Flaxweed," Neville explained. "I grew it from a seed. It blooms in the presence of other magical plants, so it's bound to really thrive in the Hogwarts greenhouses."
Neville was a natural with Herbology; they'd all expected it to be the first subject he put down for his NEWTs. "What other classes are you taking this year, Neville?" Hermione asked him.
"Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, and Astronomy." He beamed. "And best of all, no more Potions ever." Neville was perhaps the only person in the world who suffered worse in Professor Snape's classes than Harry did.
"Awesome!" said Ron. "You're taking exactly the same subjects as I am." He looked a bit happier about the prospect of being stuck with two classes he wasn't sharing with Harry.
"I still can't decide," Hermione moaned helplessly. She had a whole stack of different career leaflets in her hands, and was flicking through them urgently, apparently trying to devise some sort of scoring system to figure out which combination of subjects was most efficient.
"Just close your eyes and stab the list with a quill a few times," Ron suggested, rolling his eyes.
Harry didn't talk much during the journey, just let the sound of the train wash over him and gave the occasional smile when the conversation drifted his way. It was funny how one of the things he was most grateful for from his friends was the fact that they could, at times, ignore him. After his childhood with the Dursleys he would never have believed that a blessing, but five years of being stared at and whispered over soon put him straight. To everyone else he was The Boy Who Lived, a marvel to be poked and prodded and gawped at, but with his friends he could just be Harry.
Just Harry. That provoked a bitter smirk that only the landscape passing by got to see. No, he would never truly have the chance to be that. Even the people who loved him never fully lost sight of who he was, it just meant something different to them. They didn't idolise or fear him, but they pitied him and worried for him, and in some ways that was worse.
The loss of Sirius was a sharp, keen ache that never went away. Gone, the only person who hadn't cared. Hadn't cared that he was not just James Potter's son, but Voldemort's sworn enemy, that he was The Boy Who Lived. Sirius had never pitied him, never tried to hold him back 'for his own protection', never once looked at him with that expression of painful sorrow that so many people wore for him when they thought he couldn't see. And maybe that meant he'd been as reckless as everyone had always thought - but Harry had loved him for it, more than anything.
And now that love was in the past tense. Forever. Sirius was gone, and it was Harry's fault, and what made it even worse was that they pitied him instead of hating him for that as well.
The sound of a scuffle in the next carriage along was really a rather welcome distraction.
Exchanging glances, they all went for their wands, even Neville. Not the reflexes of older students ready to dutifully break up the squabbles of their less mature fellows, but those of a group of warriors who knew all too well that danger could come from anywhere, at any time.
Constant vigilance, Harry thought, and smiled darkly.
Ron kicked open the door to the next compartment, and they charged in.
Not a Death Eater raid, at least not of the grown-up kind. Harry's relief duelled with a kind of frustrated disappointment, until both were pushed aside by anger. A group of fifth-year Slytherins had a Ravenclaw boy bent back over one of the seats, at an angle that surely threatened to snap his neck.
"Care to repeat that, Dolorus?" growled the apparent ringleader, a flat-faced boy with an ugly haircut. None of them were paying attention to the Gryffindors who'd just burst in.
"Back off, Ferus." Ron strode in to loom over his sister's classmates.
"Oh, wow, it's the Weasel," snickered another boy. "What's up, Weasley, got your knickers in a twist? Heard you wear your mother's 'cause you can't afford your own."
Ron's ears turned a little pinker, but he kept his cool better than he would once have done. "Yeah? I heard your mother got arrested by the Ministry because your baby pictures contravened the Obscene Images of Dark Creatures Act."
"Ooh, the Ministry." He knocked his knees together in mock fear. "Going to join your daddy's little office and play with Muggle toys? Maybe then your family can move into a bigger shoebox."
Neville, meanwhile, had fixed his attention on the trapped Ravenclaw. "Let him go," he ordered Ferus, with a calm authority that would have made most of his teachers and classmates keel over from shock.
"Make me, Fatbottom." Ferus sneered and went for his wand.
"Expelliarmus!" Neville knocked it out of his hand, but the third Slytherin boy was moving to back up his friends.
"Acinaceo!"
A silver blade flashed across the railway carriage towards him, and Neville blocked it just in time with a hasty, "Resiliatem!" Score one for Harry's Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons.
It was time he intervened. "Adhaereosum!" Harry shot the Sticking Curse at the boy who'd been trading words with Ron.
"Restringeo!" Having near the same idea simultaneously, Hermione aimed at the one Neville had disarmed, tightly binding him to the nearest seat. With the other two restrained, Ron blasted Ferus away from his victim.
"Iacto Aversium!" The Slytherin knocked heads with the boy Harry had immobilised, and promptly stuck to him, groaning.
Harry went to help up the Ravenclaw they'd been harassing. "It's Tiberius Dolorus, isn't it?" said Hermione. She always seemed to know everybody's name. Knowing her, she'd drawn up a list and memorised it as soon as she was made Prefect. If not earlier.
The Ravenclaw, a small, skinny boy with scruffy dark hair and square glasses, nodded awkwardly. He appeared to suddenly register who'd come to his rescue, and drew back from Harry as if he'd been burned.
Harry knew exactly what that was about. "Lucky for you we came along," he said, more bluntly than he would have done otherwise.
"I can take care of myself," Dolorus said sullenly, rubbing his face on a grubby sleeve, and eyeing his rescuers with great suspicion.
"Looked like it." Ron stepped in to stand beside Harry. "Or was Ferus just helping you shave?"
"Harry. Ron," Hermione said warningly. Harry made himself step backwards, knowing it was stupid to feel angry at the kid for not showing much gratitude, but angry all the same. Were people ever going to stop treating him like some dangerous lunatic? What more did he have to do to prove his version of events, drag Voldemort's smoking corpse into the middle of the Great Hall and drop it? Even if he did there'd probably just be a collective gasp and rumours flying around that Harry Potter had been murdering people.
Neville gave the Ravenclaw boy a cautious smile. "Don't let those three idiots get to you," he advised.
Ron relaxed. "Yeah." He shot the three imprisoned Slytherins a dark look as they moved back towards their own carriage. "Ginny's told me about that bunch of tosspots. Maynard Ferus, Patrick Trage and Todd Dempsey. They even fight with the other Slytherins."
"They're a disgrace to right-thinking wizards everywhere," said Dolorus, green eyes flashing passionately behind his glasses.
"Yes, well, whatever they do, you shouldn't try to take them on yourself," Hermione lectured sternly. "If they're bullying you, call a Prefect." Behind her, Ron took some of the impact out of this message by rolling his eyes theatrically.
Dolorus appeared no more impressed with this snippet of wisdom. "Of course," he said, with great sarcasm, and escaped into the next carriage.
"Well," said Hermione indignantly. The expression on her face was momentarily so reminiscent of McGonagall that Harry had to firmly press a hand to his mouth to stop himself from snickering.
"What should we do about those three back there?" Neville asked, after a moment.
"Leave 'em stuck there," Ron said firmly.
Hermione nodded in agreement. "The staff will check the train and set them loose when we get to Hogwarts." The perfect Prefect mask finally cracked a little to expose a grin. "Probably," she added.
The rest of the journey passed less dramatically. When they arrived at the school, however, they were met immediately by a stern-faced McGonagall.
"Everybody form a line, please. You'll be escorted into the school grounds- No, don't worry about getting into your year groups or houses, just an orderly line. Line, Mr. Ackerley, that generally means one behind the other. Thank you."
She gave Harry and the others a small, relieved smile as they filed past her. "Mr. Potter. Good to see you made it on time and in the traditional manner for a change." Her voice was as dry as ever, but there was a subtle thread of affection buried in there somewhere.
Once they were safely out of the Transfiguration Professor's earshot, Harry leaned closer to Ron, ahead of him in the line. "Why are they keeping everybody on such a strict path?" Staff were stationed at several points ahead of them, ordering anybody who strayed by so much as a few steps back into position.
"They must have put in some new defences," said Hermione from behind him. "Probably something horrible happens if you travel too far from the path."
Although he was walking through open air, Harry suddenly felt horribly oppressed. He looked up, and fancied he saw the air above him shimmer slightly, like his Invisibility Cloak. What would happen if he was to fly through it on his broom? Would he be teleported out, or paralysed, or vaporized completely...?
"Oh, no!" Neville cried out in dismay. Harry turned back towards him, and was immediately hit in the face by a big ball of blue fluff.
"What the-?" Ron staggered against him, caught off guard.
"My Fluctuating Flaxweed! It's seeding!" Neville struggled to conceal the little plant under his robe as it fired off fluffy seed pods in all directions. "It's not supposed to do this until it's been planted in a whole bed full of magical plants!"
"Could it be reacting to the Forbidden Forest?" Hermione wondered.
"From this distance?" asked Ron incredulously, ducking another projectile.
"It shouldn't be doing this!" Neville finally succeeded in trapping it under a bunched up section of his robes, and then tried to hold onto it as it shook and jumped about. His face was a picture of misery. "I must have done something wrong when I used the Growth-Quickening Charm."
"Maybe you just got a duff one, Neville," Ron said kindly.
The plant finally quieted down when it had no more seed pods left to fire. Harry swiped away the remains of the one that had stuck to his lips, and picked another from his shoulder. Acting on a whim, he set it on the palm of his hand, and blew on it softly. It drifted off into the darkness... and bounced.
There was something there. Some kind of invisible wall, perhaps... He cautiously reached out to feel for it-
"Mr. Potter." Oh, wonderful. Snape. "Kindly keep your hands at your sides when you are directed to do so. I shudder to think how much more abysmal your Potions marks could become should you happen to lose a limb."
Harry managed to keep the several replies that sprang to mind on the inside, and shuffled onwards without comment. Ron closed his eyes, and tilted his head back. "I'm so glad I don't take Potions any more," he told the world at large, with great sincerity.
"All right, Ron, no need to rub it in," Harry grumbled.
They followed the snaking path they'd been directed to take until they were all congregated on the lake shore. All the staff seemed to be there, bar Dumbledore; Harry tried to spot anybody who might be their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, but it was too dark to pick out any but the most familiar figures. Professors Sprout and McGonagall met up a short distance away from him, and he managed to innocently drift through the crowd until he could overhear.
"You checked the train?" McGonagall asked.
"They're all out," Sprout confirmed with a nod. "Had to free a few Slytherin boys from a rather well-applied Sticking Curse in one of the carriages. They wouldn't say who was responsible for it, but it was certainly an impressive effort."
Harry grinned quietly to himself, but McGonagall just sighed. "Unfortunately, I fear this may only be the tip of the iceberg. Tensions are running very high in Slytherin house when so many of the children have relatives in Azkaban or else under suspicion of Dark wizardry."
Sprout looked similarly grave. "Yes. It's always the children that suffer for the parents' actions, the poor lambs."
Harry thought of Draco Malfoy, and had a great deal of trouble juxtaposing that image with any such fluffy description. The trouble was, as he knew from bitter personal experience, no matter what their teenage charges did or went through, adults could never bring themselves to think of them as anything other than innocent children who needed protecting.
"We're sure we have everybody?" McGonagall asked.
"As sure as we can be. There's no time to gather everybody up and check the registers, I'm afraid; Filius warned me that he can't keep an illusion this size up for much longer."
"Right." McGonagall lit her wand with a flick of the wrist, and straightened up. She didn't use the Sonorus charm, but her voice rang out clearly over the crowd quite without magical amplification. "Everyone, your attention please! First-years, go with Hagrid. Everyone else, proceed in an orderly - and I do mean orderly - fashion to the Great Hall. Do not approach the edge of the grounds, and please do not attempt to use any magic whatsoever until you are inside the castle walls."
"Blimey, this is a bit excessive, isn't it?" murmured Ron, close to Harry's shoulder.
"There's no such thing as too much when it comes to taking safety precautions," Hermione chided him firmly. Harry knew the remark had absolutely nothing to do with him, but it felt like a knife in his gut anyway. Yes. Safety precautions. Those things he should have taken instead of rushing head first into trouble and getting Sirius killed through his own stupidity.
He didn't realise how long he'd been standing until Neville jostled the three of them anxiously. "Come on," he urged, "we'll get in trouble."
"With who?" Ron demanded. "We're the Prefects!"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Ron, you're incorrigible. Now come on. We should be setting an example." He trailed helplessly in her wake as she seized him by the arm of his robes and marched off in the direction of the castle.
They were only halfway there, however, when the sky suddenly disappeared.
To be more precise, it was obscured by an enormous dome that blinked instantly into existence, big enough to cover the whole of Hogwarts and much of the surrounding grounds. It shimmered with a blur of iridescent colours, like petrol film on a puddle. It gave Harry the rather unpleasant feeling that his eyes were being sucked out of his head. He hurriedly looked down at the grass.
Around them, people were beginning to panic. Hagrid had hustled the first-years inside, but right now the older students had their own reasons to be extremely edgy. There were screams of fright and shouts about Death Eater attacks and Hogwarts' defences failing...
"Everyone, into the school building!" Snape strode through the chaos like the world's least likeable Quidditch referee. "Inside!"
"Proceed to the Great Hall!" called McGonagall, from somewhere else. With one last glance at the unnatural sky, Harry followed the others inside.
He had no idea what kind of magic it took to enclose the school in a bubble that size, or what the shimmering surface represented. But one thing was for certain: as long as that magical dome stayed up, Hogwarts was utterly sealed off from the outside world.