Chapter Four:

"Hogwarts letters!" Mrs. Weasley announced. It had been about two weeks since Harry had gotten to the Weasleys' house by way of flying car. Mrs. Weasley handed out the letters over breakfast. "Dumbledore already knows you're here, Harry. Doesn't miss a beat, that one," she commented, handing his to him as Fred and George (looking like the personifications of one of Felan's 'wrong phase of the moon' jokes) slumped down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Being at the Weasleys' house was sort of everything being with the Fianna wasn't. At the Weasleys, he didn't have to kill his own seconds, he didn't have graveyard duty (which was exactly what it sounded like) every Friday from eight to ten, no Theurge training, and the games weren't based on what type of bird you were able to kill (crows were ten points, and if you got an owl, you won the game). The house was more comforting in some odd way and, everybody spoke English, so that was also excellent.

"Look at all of the Lockhart books on the list," George pointed out. "New Defence teacher must be a fan"

"Ten to one it's a witch," Fred continued the thought.

"Uhh... Lockhart?" Harry asked. "What's that?"

The twins shared a look, and George imitated a high-pitched voice. "He's only the most handsome, useful wizard this century!" he squealed.

"That was frighteningly girl, George," Harry said.

"I did it right then."

"Mum's obsessed with him too," Ron grimaced. "She swears he's like the best thing since store-bought wands."

"That was frightening girly as well, Ron," Fred joked.

"Stuff it," Ron snarled around a mouth full of toast. Harry smiled as he perused the rest of the booklist.

"You boys better get dressed," Mrs. Weasley said, looking at Fred and George. "We're going to Diagon Alley today."

"This lot," George gestured to the list, his voice lowered to a whisper, "won't come cheap. All of Lockharts books cost an arm and a leg."

Another good thing about the Burrow. When people made comments with references to the removal of any important part of the anatomy, they were usually just making a figure of speech. Harry full on knew that if something cost 'an arm and a leg' back in the forest, they would be expected to get an arm and a leg (preferably off of an animal, as humans were off limits).

"We'll manage," Mrs. Weasley said briskly. "I expect we'll be picking up a lot of Ginny's things secondhand."

"Ginny's starting at Hogwarts this year as well?" Harry asked.

"Oh yeah," Ron said. "She's just thrilled about it. You know, being in the same vicinity as you, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Expect to be seeing her out of the corner of your eye for the rest of term."


"What do you mean'she stole his owl'?"

"I mean," Charlie cleared his throat dramatically. "I was goin' in on a dare, from Dee the chit's a real sadist, right up to Sam Sutherson herself it was run of the mill, steal an undergarment from Sutherson's armoire you know that huge thing that she has on one wall and I open it and there's that bloody owl, all broken up."

"Broken up?" Felan asked, taking a bite out of a carrot. "What do you mean, 'broken up'? Dead?"

"Dismembered?" Fi questioned, biting into a strawberry while simultaneously petting Drunkard the cat, who was sleeping on her lap. "Burned? Beheaded? Bled to death?"

"Wing broken and looks like she twisted it's foot or something as well," Charlie said. "I'm not exactly the leading owl physicist, but I know the outlook's pretty damn bleak, all right?" He punctuated the last sentence by pushing a piece of lettuce into his mouth.

"So it's going to die?" Fi asked.

"It looked a bit runty "

"As owls tend to do," Fi interrupted him. Charlie glared.

"It looked a bit skinny, so I'll say she hasn't been feeding it very much. Probably trying to hold it hostage. It's just the sort of thing that bitch would do."

"Well, Harry's about a million kilometers away, so I bet that throws a spanner in the works," Felan tossed the carrot top over his shoulder and started peeling apart a cabbage head. Fi stood up (Drunkard rolled off of her lap but continued to sleep like the dead) and brushed off her shirt.

"I'm going to get some more strawberries," she said.

"I hear that Torra's patch has some good ones," Felan called after her. "But then again, after that trick you pulled on her, I doubt that she'll be very sympathetic to the cause," he muttered.

"So, I've got a plan about how to get Harry's owl to safety," Charlie continued. Felan shook his head.

"No, no plans from you. I'm still pissing blood from when we got punished for the Durbin Street incident," he shuddered.

"That was indeed a mishap and totally my responsibility and I intend to pay back Yesmina in time, but this is a lot better than that one!" Charlie said. "In fact, it's fool-proof. That means, even a fool like you could pull it off."

"I know what fool-proof means," Felan sneered. "I'm not an idiot."

"Totally," Charlie added. "So, anyways, this plan..."

"Yes, go on."

"Sarah Sutherson told Marlaina who told Dee that Samantha Sutherson fraternizes with the Get of Fenris help every Sunday sundown I know, skisky, right?"

"Skisky?" Fi asked, coming back with the strawberries. "What the hell is 'skisky'?"

"I donno, I just made it up," Charlie said. "As I was telling Felan here "

"Yeah, yeah, Sutherson is bonk buddies with one of the hired," Fi shuddered. "Go on."

"Actually, it's three of them. But that isn't the point," Charlie corrected. "The point is, she's out of her cave on Sunday night and doesn't come back in until 0300, and there's that whole time period in which we can stole back Harry's bird and... I donno can we mail live owls?"

"One big flaw in this 'fool-proof' plan of yours, Char," Felan said, reaching to pull a turnip out of the ground. "We nab that bird, Sutherson'll know it was us."

"Correct," Fi agreed. "It's just the sort of demented idea that Felan would come up with."

"Demented?" Felan asked.

"Shut, rab," Fi said quickly. "She'll go after us quicker than you can say her name."

"That's why we have this," Charlie held out what looked like a wax stick.

"What the hell is it?" Felan asked, dropping the turnip and reaching for it. Fi snatched it first and sniffed it, then dropped it on the ground.

"Pheromones," she snarled. "But how?"

"God, Fi, do you really want to know?" Charlie exclaimed. Fi shook her head.

"Smells like Marlaina," Felan said offhandedly.

"That's because he probably got them from Marlaina," Fi said. "Right?"

"Once again, you don't really want to know," Charlie said. "But, I took me three nights to get this thing last year, and I was almost certain it would come in handy."

"Why did you get it?" Felan asked.

"Because he's a pervert masochist with no common sense?" Fi guessed. "Or Torra was willing to pay big for female pheromones, and Charlie here was ready and willing."

"Second," Charlie said. "But the point is, rub this on your arms and neck, go into Sutherson's cave and you're off the hook."

"There's no way in hell I'm rubbing Marlaina's crystalized piss on me," Fi snarled.

"Actually, it's sweat," Charlie corrected her. "From when she was in heat a while back."

"Marlaina goes into heat?" Felan asked.

"Already?" Fi shrieked. "That bitch just about outdoes me in everything, doesn't she?" Felan shrugged and was about to pick another carrot out of the ground when he stopped.

"Shit! Tolliver's coming," he said, hopping to his feet. "Quick, look like you're harvesting something."


Being a Theurge meant that you had to know many types of meditation and prayer and religion in general. Harry was a Theurge, and it wasn't exactly the funnest thing in the world to watch the other Theurges in class go slightly crazy from the mind-altering fumes they had to inhale during classes. During one such class, Harry learned a very important thing when Maeve, looking just about a sickly and pinched as ever, stood up to give a small definition of the religion 'voodoo'.

Voodoo. The way it works is that a so-called witch doctor puts a so-called curse on someone by making a doll that looks like that someone and sticks a needle into said doll's heart. He leaves the doll at the house of the man who is under the so-called curse. When the man sees it, he becomes very frightened and dies of ten consecutive strokes.

The lesson he had learned? Not only was Maeve a drunk (and somewhat high) atheist, but that fear was something to be avoided at all costs. A few days later, Maeve had to give a larger definition of Buddhism as well. Needless to say, it was the same definition in slightly different wording with the word 'ambiguity' inserted every few sentences.

But indeed, fear was to be avoided at all costs. Including that instinctive fear of silver and wolfsbane. The fear that had more or less taken ahold of Harry on the day that everybody was about ready to go to Diagon Alley, when he had seen that bracelet that Mrs. Weasley was wearing.

"Mrs. Weasley, is that bracelet silver?" Harry asked. Mrs. Weasley looked at the bracelet.

"Yes, in fact. Arthur gave this to me on our first anniversary."

Harry felt nauseous. Which was interesting, because it was probable that Mrs. Weasley never took the thing off, which meant that he should have felt nauseous before this, but I digress. He felt like retching now, and that was what mattered.

Of course, he had been exposed to silver before. Only once before, and that was two years ago. Dee Philips had dared him to steal a silver ring from a jewelry shop and wear it for two days. Needless to say, he ended up in a coma for three weeks after the initial aggressive reaction to having silver on his skin of course.

"Harry, are you okay?" Ron asked tentatively.

"What?" Harry asked. "I mean... yeah, I'm fine." When in fact he wasn't fine. He was far from it, in fact. But the one thing he could be thankful for, was that he wasn't a pureblood like Felan or Marlaina. When Dee tried the same dare on Marlaina, she had to call it to a halt because Marlaina's skin started getting third-degree burns when she went within a few inches of silver (well, according to Felan, who had 'supervised' the dare, her skin caught aflame, but Harry had to assume that she only got burned).

"Really? Because you look a little bit pale," Ron said.

"I said I was fine," Harry snapped. Once again, not fine.

By the time midday rolled around, Harry felt like he'd been runover by a... erm... very large truck multiple times.

"You look horrible, Harry," George commented. "Are you sure you're not ill?"

"I've been worse," Harry said truthfully, although in a scratchy voice. It would pass, he told himself. "Trust me, I'm fine."

"'You sure?" Fred asked. "We're going by Floo powder, and we wouldn't want you blowing chunks or anything."

"I'm fine!" Harry growled as Mrs. Weasley took the pot of Floo powder and held it out towards Ginny first.

"You've used Floo powder before, right Harry?" she asked. Harry nodded as Ginny seemed to burst into flames in the fireplace (which wasn't the most comforting thing in the world). Ron went after Ginny, and then Fred and George, then it was Harry's turn.

He grabbed a handful of the Floo powder and stepped into the fireplace. His heart raced, his mind reeled as he dropped the Floo powder. He accidently breathed in a lungful of the ashes as he was saying his destination and was soon spinning off and away.


"Seventy-five percent certainty," Fi said suddenly.

"What?" Felan asked.

"There's a seventy-five percent certainty that Sutherson'll be makin' it with the handy boys tomorrow," Fi explicated.

"Is that what you've been working on?" Felan exclaimed. "You're supposed to be doing my maths!"

"And you're supposed to be doing my astronomy work," Fi countered. Felan glared at her and grabbed the paper she had been writing on.

"What does this say?" he asked. "Why is this all in Arabic or something?"

"I don't know Arabic," Fi sneered.

"Well then you should stop writing in it," Felan snapped. "I don't get it, how is any of this " he gestured to one side of the paper, "relevant to Sam Sutherson's Sunday nights?" Fi looked at the paper and shook her head.

"No, that has nothing to do with it. You see, I got this problem wrong in Philodox training yesterday, and it bugged me, so I tried to figure it out. See, all there... and there..." Fi pointed. "Turns out it was a trick equation, the answer doesn't exist."

"What about my maths?" Felan asked. Fi picked up a paper off of the ground.

"I got that finished hours ago," she said with a shrug, handing the homework to Felan. "What about my astronomy?" she asked. Felan glanced down at the homework that he had abandoned for a bag of potato crisps.

"I'm working on it," he said. "I forgot the name ... yeah," he tossed the crisps aside and picked up the homework again.

"So are you going to use Harry's books when you go to Hogwarts or are you going to buy new ones?" Felan asked casually. Fi looked up from the circle she was doodling on her paper.

"I told you, I'm not going," she said in a low voice. "Drop it and leave it alone."

"Not according to the letter you sent that McGonagall bird," Felan said.

"What?" Fi asked. Felan could practically see her weighing the odds in her head. "You changed the letter, didn't you?"

"You know, you shouldn't always write in pencil, Fi," Felan said with a grin.

"Felan, you idiot!" Fi shrieked. "Did I not get the message across when I told you that I'm not going to Hogwarts?" Felan grimaced.

"No, you got the message across, but it was a little late in the game for you to do so," Felan said. "You're not going to kick me in the balls again, are you?" he asked innocently.

"No, this time I'm going to cut them off!" Fi said darkly. "But not before you finish my astronomy work, because I suck in that class. And if you get me a bad grade, I might consider full castration as well."


Harry miraculously ended up in the Leaky Cauldron. If he had religion, he would have probably thanked some deity for looking after him.

"Harry!" a familiar voice greeted. "You look ill."

"I am ill, very ill, happy?" Harry snarled. "Hermione?" he asked.

"Didn't I tell you that Hermione would be here?" Ron asked. Harry shook his head. "Could have sworn I did," Ron muttered.

"Sorry," Harry said, climbing out of the fireplace and into the pub, dusting himself off. "I'm... off."

"Off?" Hermione asked, clutching the package in her hands.

"For lack of a better word, yes, I'm off," Harry said. Hermione frowned.

"Well, you don't have to be snippy about it," she said loftily. Harry looked towards Ron.

"Where to first?" he asked, stepping forward right before Mrs. Weasley came through the giant fireplace after him.