Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If you do not know who actually owns Harry Potter by now you might be in the wrong place.

Chapter 39: Small Tests

Harry looked over the Room of Requirement, and at the slightly organized chaos contained within its changeable walls. It was now nearly February, and he at least felt that he was making progress with his club. Other endeavors hadn't been quite so successful.

He walked among the other students, complimenting and correcting, and occasionally throwing up a shielding spell when someone's attempts to hex their partner went haywire and scattered randomly across the room. At least it wasn't happening quite so often now as it had at the beginning of the year, when they had had to deal with an influx of the curious and the afraid.

More of the afraid remained than the curious, because they had more motivation.

Harry looked over at the far side of the room where Neville was practicing. The boy wasn't working with a partner, but rather with a target. This was not, as some who did not really know him would suspect, because he was so inordinately clumsy that he would hex any partner, or anyone in the general vicinity, into next week on accident –though Harry suspected that this figure of speech could become reality with Neville involved, at least at first.

No, Neville was working by himself because he had become so focused that it was dangerous to go at a practice bout with him. The last meeting, he and Gradley, who, though a Slytherin, or perhaps because of this, had fit himself rather well into the workings of the DA, had been partnered. This had ended with Gradley unconscious. Harry had thought for a moment that they would need to carry him up to the hospital wing. And this was with the use of a simple disarming hex.

If Harry didn't know him so well, he would be inclined to be fearful of the other boy's drive. But he knew the reasons for it, and so he understood completely. Nonetheless, he would not want to get on Neville's bad side, and even had reservations about partnering him himself.

The dummy target was looking rather the worse for wear.

"Good job, Neville." Harry congratulated him, as Neville fired off another shot that reduced the target to smoking cinders. Harry concentrated for a moment, and the room dutifully provided another one.

"Thanks, Harry." Neville said. And Harry was struck by something about his face. He was smiling, but his eyes were ice. He thought that if Neville and Bellatrix were to meet again, it would be a toss up as to who would be the winner.

Harry made a circle around the room and eventually ended up near Hermione, who was not taking part in the practice at the moment. Instead she was surrounded by a pile of books, and only some of them had anything to do with the DA. He picked one up and leafed through it idly, listening to her as she made thoughtful noises and scribbled something down in a notebook that she had spread open across her lap.

He closed his book again with a snap, and read the title with a sigh, 'A Treatise on the Properties of Death' by Mortimer Stone. As this book had been on a pile of discards, he could assume that she had found nothing helpful in its moldering yellow pages. He tossed it back and sat down next to the feverishly scribbling girl.

"Anything?" He asked quietly, his eyes scanning the room for signs that anything was getting out of hand.

Hermione looked up, her eyes wide and startled. "Oh! Harry, I didn't notice you there." There was a smudge of ink on her cheek and he could swear that her curly brown hair looked more frazzled than usual. She set her quill down and echoed his earlier sigh. "Remember when I said, a long time ago, that this would be like looking for a needle in a haystack?"

Harry nodded.

"Well, I was wrong. This is worse."

He grimaced. "Hermione…"

"I'm not saying I don't think that there's something there, Harry. I'm just at a loss as to where it might be." She shuffled some parchments, trying to avoid looking at him. "And I still have no idea how this could be connected to the gypsies."

"That's what she said." Harry said with absolute conviction. "She said 'Sirius' and then she said 'gypsy'. I didn't mishear."

Hermione rubbed her forehead. "I just haven't found anything connecting the Romany way of life, to the Book of Karsis, not a single word. And all of the information about it is legend and supposition. I wish Sarven could remember what the title of that book he read was."

Harry stood up. Then he sagged against the bookshelves while Hermione looked at him with compassion. "Maybe…" He picked at one of the peeling bindings, "maybe it was a…name? Maybe she was talking about someone NAMED Gypsy."

"In which case it's even worse. How many people named Gypsy could there be in the world? The only one I remember offhand was a burlesque dancer sometime in…" She cut off, looking around at the room. "I…did it just get darker in here?"

Harry looked up sharply. "Something's…."

The darkness intensified, as the candles blew out one by one. A feel of clammy chill started to settle over the room, like the air inside of a crypt. Harry stepped away from the bookshelves, his wand at the ready every nerve tight and tingling. There was silence among all the other club members, and Harry noted that they, too, had their wands out. He made a circular movement with his hand, and they drifted towards the walls, their eyes shining and darting in the light of the Lumos spells a few had thought to intone.

"Harry." An urgent whisper sounded by his right ear. He glanced over and saw Ginny right beside him, her eyes not staying in one place for more than a few seconds. "What should we do?"

There was a bang and the door flew open.

Harry swung into action. "Stupify!" The spell shot at the door and encountered nothing. "Everyone find cover! We don't know what this is, but it's not right! And douse your wands, you don't want to be an easy target!" He moved as he spoke, so that any spells fired at the sound of his voice would hit where he had been rather than where he actually was.

Then there was complete darkness, broken only around the open doorway where a cold green light seeped in from the dim hall. He heard a voice whisper, and he closed his eyes. Just in time, for a blinding light issued from the hall, and he could hear startled shouts from others whose eyes had been open.

"Ginny," He whispered in the silences of his mind. He could feel her start. "Don't say anything, just move away from me. I'm going to try to get to the door." The shouting continued, and he hoped that they were remembering what they had learned.

He slid around the walls, keeping his wand in front of him, but never trained on just one spot.

He heard the voice whisper again, somewhere off to his left, in the heavier darkness caused by the wooden door shading the wall. He concentrated, "Lumos!" He shouted again, aiming where the shadow was thickest. Then he threw himself to the side and rolled, as a beam of light hit where he had been standing. Now if only the others had been paying attention…

The room lit up with criss-crossed spells, aimed at where the light had emerged. Some bounced off of a shield spell, as the intruder finally showed itself.

A long, black hooded robe, a flash of white beneath as it turned its head. A thin hand held its wand before it, as it moved out into the room.

"Death-eater…" Harry could hear breathed from a number of throats.

"Don't panic." He whispered fervently. "Don't let it make you panic." He aimed at the robed figure's back, "Stupify!" It didn't seem to notice as the spell passed through the robes with not even a shift to mark its passage. Harry froze for a moment. No one else seemed to have seen what he had.

He considered for a moment calling out to the others, but no, then that would alert the attacker that he was onto it.

In the room the air flashed with magical currents.

Suddenly he realized. It was still… He crept to the open doorway, keeping low against the wall, and reached out his hand until he felt it brush against something. He took a deep breath, brought his wand up, took a good handful, and pulled.

Everything stopped. The image of the Death-Eater vanished, and the candles began to light themselves one after the other.

Harry blinked several times in the sudden return of the light, and found himself looking up at Professor Lanya, his wand at her throat. The invisibility cloak dangled from his hand as he straightened, his wand still trained upon his Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"Why?" He asked, listening to everyone behind him starting to realize that it was over.

She smiled, ignoring the point of his wand still at her throat. "Because, Harry. I found you." She laughed then, as Harry let his wand drop slightly. "It was a very good job, you did, that it took me so long to discover this room." She looked down at him, her purple eyes piercing. "Don't you know you shouldn't point your wand at a teacher?"

"You attacked us!"

"And you passed that test."

Harry turned slightly and looked at the rest of the room. Everyone was slowly getting up from where they had found cover, with tentative smiles twitching across their faces. Hermione was standing by the bookshelves, a heavy tome in her hands. She looked as though she were fighting a case of the giggles, while Ron, who had somehow found his way to her side, was so pale that his freckles stood out like currants.

Neville was leaning over the table that held the Dark Detectors, breathing hoarsely, his arms supporting him and his entire body stiff as he tried to regain his composure. Ginny was, thankfully, where she should have been.

All around the room there were tables and chairs upturned and a few pillows were shredded. Cho and Roger Davies were collapsed in the middle of the floor, leaning back to back and back and staring up at the ceiling as though surprised that they were alive to see it. But all in all, everyone looked to have weathered the 'test' just fine.

Harry let out a deep breath and let his wand drop.

"Now." Professor Lanya said cheerily, rubbing her hands together, "Show me around this room." She looked around. "But where are the chamber pots?"

Some time later, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna, who had apparently been the only one to think clearly through the whole ordeal and therefore had not worried, were surveying the damage.

"I knew as soon as I saw it," She said airily, "That it couldn't have been real. Dumbledore would never let a Death Eater into the school. Now if it had been a Cwoled Wobbler, then I would have been worried."

"And what's that…whatever it was?" Ron asked dutifully.

"It's a creature seven feet tall with claws for hands, the head of a chicken…" Luna began.

"In other words," Hermione interrupted. "It doesn't exist."

"…And they tend to live in damp basements." Luna continued, ignoring her. Their relationship seemed to work best that way. If they talked to each other, things tended to get loud and heated. Often it was up to Ron to end the fight by dragging his girlfriend, gently of course, away.

Harry straightened a chair in a half-hearted manner. He knew that the house elves would be more than willing to clean the mess up themselves. But Hermione insisted. He sighed and moved over to where Ginny was re-filling the shelves with the books that Hermione had been perusing during the meeting. He knelt beside her and picked a few up, shoving them in amongst the other books randomly. On the other side of the room, Neville was picking up the cushions that had survived.

"Harry?" Ginny asked after a few minutes of re-filing.

"Hmm?"

"How did you do it?" She didn't look at him, and he didn't look at her. "When I heard you, inside my head…"

"I've gotten a lot better at it." He said quietly, "And because we're…especially close…it was easier."

"Texi taught you?"

He leaned back on his heels, staring at an invisible point some few inches beyond his nose. "No." He said slowly. "I never tried it with anyone other than her. I guess I just …picked it up."

"Picked it up?" Her voice was suffused with disbelief. "That's extremely powerful stuff to just pick up."

He turned to look at her. Then he held his finger to his lips. "Let's just keep it between us, okay?"

"Alright, Harry." Ginny agreed reluctantly, glancing guiltily to where Hermione was trying to pick up all the feathers from the disemboweled pillows. When she looked back he smiled at her, and he thought he saw a slight blush suffuse her cheeks as she smiled back.

"It's getting late," Ron finally announced when Hermione started slanting measuring looks at a couple of scorch marks on the wall. "And we had better get back to our dormitories. I'm sure Dobby won't mind finishing up." He told the curly-haired girl.

"Okay, then." Ginny said. "I'm going to walk Luna back to the Ravenclaw tower, then." Harry insisted that they travel in twos whenever possible. So as much as he would have liked to have walked with Ginny, all he could do was agree. A few minutes after the two girls left, Ron and Hermione made their way out. Harry checked his watch. In a few minutes he and Neville would go to the Gryffindor tower as well, though by a different route.

"Neville, are you ready?" Harry asked. Receiving no reply, he turned to see what was wrong. "Neville?" His eyes searched the room, until he found the boy sitting in a pile of pillows. He seemed to be trying to make himself smaller, all crunched in upon himself. Harry hurriedly walked over and crouched beside him. "Oy, Neville, are you all right, mate?"

Neville lifted his head, and Harry grew even more concerned at the tortured expression on his face. "Neville," Harry desperately wished that someone, like Hermione, would come back, he just wasn't good at this sort of thing. "Tell, me what's wrong."

"I almost…I felt like I could have killed her, Harry…" Neville said in a small voice. "Before the lights came back on…I saw her, and I thought, I thought for a second that she was…" Neville generally good-natured face screwed up and Harry could see that he was trying to get control of himself. The eyes that he had thought looked like ice before had melted.

"Her." Harry said gently.

"YES." Neville scraped his sleeve across his face. "I had my wand out and I could feel the words trying to come out, those words. And I had to fight not to say them…"

Harry sat back, thinking as he watched Neville pull his long ponytail over his shoulder and worry it in his hands. He looked as though he would pull it out if he weren't careful. Harry truly hadn't thought that Neville's new quasi-rebellious hairstyle would survive the Christmas holidays, and he had been very surprised to see it when they all returned. Neville hadn't said anything, but Harry had noticed a new confidence in him, perhaps because he had won out against his rather formidable grandmother.

"And you didn't, Neville." He finally said. "You didn't say those words."

Neville looked up at him. "But I could have."

"But you didn't." Harry repeated, "And that means that you have true strength." Harry swept his fingers through his fringe. "Let me tell you about something that happened that night at the ministry…"

Neville's mouth dropped open as Harry recounted what had happened between he and Bellatrix Lestrange after they had fled the Death Chamber.

"You used an unforgivable?" Neville said finally.

Harry nodded, not taking his eyes off of those of the other boy. "And I thought I meant it. Because of what she did, to Sirius." He had never really spoken to Neville about Sirius before. "My godfather. So I think, I know how you feel, Neville."

"I think…I would have done the same thing…maybe." Neville trailed off. "When I saw it was p-professor Lanya, and I thought about what I almost did..." He turned his face away, and Harry stood up and turned away so Neville wouldn't think he was watching him cry.

"It's alright, Neville." He said to the window. "Take your time, and we'll go back when you're ready."

"Okay…" Neville sniffed noisily. "Thanks, Harry."

It was almost midnight when they finally made their way back to the dormitory, both huddled under Harry's cloak and both alert for any signs of those who usually roamed the halls that late at night. Mrs. Norris, Filch and Snape all came easily to mind. And they certainly did not want to run into any of them.

They were just crossing the corridor near the Transfiguration classroom when Harry heard someone coming down the hallway at them. He immediately led Neville back towards a suit of armor that perched against the wall and peered out to see who it could be.

It was Professor Dumbledore, whom Harry had not seen in quite some time. He was moving with an uncharacteristic haste through the dark hall towards McGonagall's classroom. As he swept past Harry saw a more shadowy figure trailing in his wake. At first he thought it was Snape, but knew a second later that it was Sarven. He didn't sweep quite so grandly as his father did. Neither seemed to see him and Neville as they pushed open the door to McGonagall's office and swept in.

"We really should be getting to bed, Harry." Neville nervously tugged at his sleeve. But stopping Harry when his curiosity had been peaked was like trying to stop a rampaging hippogriff. And Neville was pulled along with him as he tiptoed to the door and put his ear against the crack.

"It's happened again, Headmaster…" Came a pale-sounding voice.

"She had just come in for some tea…neither of us could sleep," He recognized McGonagall's strong tones. "And we were having some ginger newts when she just…" She trailed off. "Well, you can see."

"Larissa," Harry heard Dumbledore say. "How do you feel?"

"I feel, Headmaster…"

"Please, call me Albus."

"I feel like I'm…not all…here…Albus." The pale voice belonged to Lanya. But how could she sound so completely different from how she usually did. And they had just seen her a few hours ago.

Harry heard some whispers and he strained to make sense of them. He wished he dared to take a peek, but Neville's fingers were clutching at the sleeve of his robe, and he wouldn't put it past the other boy to make a run for it at any moment. He held up two fingers in front of Neville's bulging eyes, mouthing 'two minutes', and the boy subsided, though he still kept a death-grip on Harry's sleeve

"Is it what we feared, then, Larissa?" Professor Dumbledore asked.

"It may be, Albus. But I don't think…that Voldemort has it." He voice grew a little stronger as she talked, as though she were coming back to herself.

"Why do you say that, Miss Lanya?" Sarven spoke.

"Because…I don't think…he would hesitate." Lanya replied. "To use it…"

"In 'Tides of Life and Death'," Sarven said suddenly, as though to himself, "the author spoke of something called a 'Surety'. Is this what he meant? This sort of…"

"Yes, Sarven." Dumbledore interrupted him. "But very few people know about that clause." He seemed to trail off into thought, "But someone does know… Who?"

"I wish I could tell you, Albus." Lanya said tiredly, "I truly wish that I knew."

"As do I, Larissa." Dumbledore told her gently. "Minerva, would you help Larissa to her bedchamber. I do believe she could do with some rest."

"Certainly, Albus."

Neville's hands fastened around Harry's arm, as the boy forcibly pulled him around and propelled him down the hallway towards their tower.

Harry glanced back once, just before they went around the corner, and he saw Professor McGonagall's thin form helping someone else out the door. It must have been Lanya, but something was off about her. Harry couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Later, Harry lay on his bed, his head supported on his intertwined fingers as he stared up at the draperies above him. Beside his ear Durry purred in untroubled dreams. Harry wished that he could drop off as easily as Neville, who had collapsed fully clothed upon his own bed and began to snore immediately. Harry had helpfully taken off his shoes.

Sarven hadn't forgotten the name of the book, he thought angrily. He had been keeping it from him. Well, now he knew. And tomorrow at breakfast he would give the title of the book to Hermione, who would know what to do with it. It was unfortunate that Sarven hadn't provided the author's name as well, though.

Harry rolled over and fluffed his pillow up around his ears. As he was on the verge of finally dropping off to sleep, it came to him what had been strange about Lanya. He knew that she had very dark-red hair. He had seen her earlier that night, and there had been nothing different about it. But in the hall outside McGonagall's office…

There was an old chair in the common room by the window. He knew that it had once been a bright red, as he had had occasion to search for Hermione's revealer under it one afternoon. Now it was more of a dull rose…almost exactly the same color Professor Lanya's hair had been as she and McGonagall had moved through the light in the doorway.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my pre-readers Peorth and RuroniKen-ouki for their comments and suggestions. And thanks to Rob who finally got me to actually break down my writer's block and WRITE. Also to Chaos and Confusion. You know who you are. …Did that make sense?

Feedback is always appreciated and sorry for the huge time lapse between chapters.