Chapter 16: Difficult Beginnings

Disclaimer: I've asked God, Allah, Mithras, Jupiter, Odin, Osiris, Minerva, Aphrodite, the Muses, Dr. Pepper, Chocolate, the IPU and Draco Malfoy (a mixture of my favourite deities and the most highly-regarded ones) numerous times, and still none of them have granted me ownership of Harry Potter. How rude.

(special mentions and virtual chocolate go to the first person who knows what the IPU is!)

Thanks for 468 reviews goes to: Kaydera, skygazing, draconas, storm079, awkward, Cho Chang-Emotional Dark Hole, Go10, JoeBob1379, Simpson-Girl, heavengurl899 (happy belated birthday!) Cuppy/Kami, mesmer, Sam8, OBXglider, kessi1011, Arafel2, willowfairy, jessiac (x2), KrystyWroth, PhAnToM-ChIK, ToOtHpIcK, Haystack8190, kat6528, PinkTribeChick, RedWitch1, Kiyoko, IceCristal, Gizelle, citcat299, MsLessa.

A/N: For those of you that didn't get the Slytherin password meaning, remember that the Latin I is our J, so change the I to J and read it aloud. I was being distinctly unsubtle with that one, so it's not difficult to guess! As to whether Muggleborns can actually get sorted into Slytherin, we aren't told specifically one way or another. The Sorting Hat lists it as one of the qualifications of a Slytherin 'those/ whose ancestry is purest', but I doubt most people have all the characteristics of the house they're in. Plus, the Sorting Hat appears able to make its own decisions regarding where people go as opposed to having to rigidly follow a set of rules – remember when it told Harry he'd be best in Slytherin but allowed him to go for Gryffindor?

That out of the way… I actually don't have anything to say this week. The first week back at school has tired me out! GCSEs are looming on the horizon quite frighteningly. I'm hoping to do well – cross your fingers! The hardest subject will be History, I think, as there's such a lot of dates and details to learn. And names. I have a complete mental block with names. I can remember Edwin Chadwick and that's it.

Anyway, onto Fallen. Pleased to announce that this chapter contains rather a lot of characters and Things Happening. It's quite scary to see how many plotlines I'm trying to weave together here… anyway. Read and Enjoy!

~*~

Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

Dean Koontz

~*~

'Dirty little rat, isn't it?'

The third-year Slytherin held the unfortunate rodent at arms length, pinching two fingers tightly round its middle as though the animal were infected and smirking cruelly as it squeaked and scrabbled, trying frantically to escape. He laughed, and the knot of his friends crowded around them joined in

'Stop it!' pleaded a young dark-haired girl, making a grab for her pet, but the taller Slytherin dangled it out of her reached and grinned as he stood on tiptoe, trying to get it back. 'You're hurting him, you're hurting Pip!'

The boy ignored her. 'Dirty little rat. Perfect pet for a dirty little…'

'What is going on here?' interrupted a new voice, and the Slytherins looked up in sudden fear to see Hermione storming towards them, her expression furious. 'What are you doing to that rat?'

The Slytherin tried to hold Pip properly, giving the frightened animal a clumsy stroke. 'Only playing with him…' he said innocently.

The girl, a Hufflepuff by the badge on her robes, was quick to contradict him. 'He snatched my rat, and then he grabbed him round the middle and started scaring him and hurting him,' she complained, her chubby round face woebegone.

Hermione, her anger ebbing slightly to be replaced by pity, frowned at the Slytherin, who was shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. 'You're Patrick Heffernan, aren't you?' The boy nodded. 'Give her back her rat, and if I ever catch you doing something like this again I shall speak to your Head of House and make certain you end up in detention. Is that clear?'

The boy nodded sulkily, giving the Hufflepuff back her pet, and his knot of friends glared at Hermione before slouching off into breakfast. Hermione sighed and knelt down beside the little girl, who was trying to calm her frightened pet.

'Are you alright? Is Pip?' she asked as the rat ran up the girl's sleeve, to hide by her elbow. The girl nodded.

'I'm okay, and Pip'll be okay too.' she said, awkwardly supporting the rodent with her free hand. 'Thanks for stopping them, I was scared they'd hurt him…'

Hermione gave her a warm smile. 'It was nothing, really,' she said. 'Now come on, we're missing breakfast…'

They walked in together, and the girl gave her a wide dimpled smile before running off to join her friends at the Hufflepuff table. Hermione smiled after her, but her expression quickly faded into a worried frown. Slowly, she made her way to the Gryffindor table to sit beside the early-rising Ginny, already halfway through her breakfast and chatting to one of her friends.

'Hey,' said Ginny as Hermione sat down, 'Where's Ron and Harry? And what's wrong? You look like you just swallowed Cockroach Cluster.'

'They're upstairs, finishing an essay,' Hermione sighed, pouring herself a glass of orange juice. 'And as to what's wrong, I just had to stop a Slytherin from bullying a poor Hufflepuff girl. He'd stolen her rat and was being really mean to it. The poor thing was terrified.'

'Poor thing? Do you mean the girl or the rat?' asked Ginny's friend, biting into a thickly-buttered slice of toast.

'The rat, but the girl was scared too,' Hermione clarified. 'And I think they were about to call her a… you know… a Mudblood.' She shuddered as she said the word, anger and distaste crossing her face.

'What were they saying?' Ginny asked, helping herself to a sausage.

'Something like, 'Dirty little rat for a dirty little…' and then I interrupted them,' Hermione said with a sigh. 'It doesn't take much to guess what was coming next…'

Ginny's friend shrugged. 'What's so unusual about that? People call people Mudbloods all the time,' she pointed out.

Hermione gave her a serious look, not unlike the one she wore when attempting to convince people of the importance of SPEW. 'Because it's prejudice,' she said earnestly, 'and its prejudice like this which leads to things like Voldemort.'

'Don't say the name!' she hissed, flinching. 'And it's just a word, I mean, its not like they were going to use an Unforgivable on her…'

Hermione met Ginny's eyes. 'I'll talk to her later,' Ginny mouthed. Hermione nodded her thanks and went back to her breakfast, tearing absently at a piece of toast.

~*~

He'd arranged to meet her in the library, at a little table in the back corner not many people knew about. Draco knew of it, of course – he'd made it his business to discover everything he could about the castle – and Hermione often used it for studying and homework.

She was there first, waiting for him in a shadowed corner, scribbling on a piece of parchment. He got close enough to read the title on the top – Proposal for the Continuation and Expansion of Dumbledore's Army – before she realised he was there; she jumped slightly, before giving him a hesitant smile.

'Hi,' she said, a little awkwardly, rolling her parchment up and slipping it back into her bag. Her bushy hair was scooped haphazardly into a messy pile atop her head, held up with what appeared to be an elastic band in an attempt to keep the hair out of her eyes. An attempt that was failing miserably.

He nodded a greeting, sliding silently into the nearest seat, diagonally across from Hermione. She looked up from putting her quill and inkpot away in her bag with a frown, and caught his eyes with a curious look; he quickly looked away. There was a silence.

The situation felt strangely awkward, neither of them appearing sure what to do next. Frowning, Draco shifted uncomfortably in his seat without realising he was moving at all. He'd accepted her offer because he knew he needed hep. It hadn't occurred to him that he didn't even know how he could be helped.

'So…' Hermione began, obviously at a similar loss, 'have the books helped?'

He inclined his head. 'A little,' he said. 'Sometimes things are a bit confusing and contradictory. I've worked some things out…'

She nodded, knocking a persistent strand of hair out of her eyes. 'What things are confusing?'

He paused for a moment, feeling for some reason uncomfortable about saying any of this aloud, to her. After all, she'd been an enemy until recently… he couldn't count her as one any more, he realised. He didn't know what she was any longer.

He forced his mind back to the question. 'Compassion,' he said at last.

'Okay,' Hermione began,  'well, compassion basically means…'

He interrupted her, 'Yes, I know what it is,' he said, rather more snappily than he meant to. Something about this felt like having an insect with very thin, very sharp legs walking softly up his spine. Uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat. 'What I mean is, it doesn't make any sense.'

She frowned at this, leaning forward. 'Why not?' she asked, appearing puzzled.

'Because it's illogical,' he said simply, irritably. A kind of anger was rising in him as he talked about it, the kind he felt whenever he wrestled with the problem for hours on end and couldn't see the solution. 'Because… why would you help someone when it doesn't benefit yourself?'

'It's the moral thing to do…' she said simply, then paused for a moment, one hand playing with a fraying thread on the sleeve of her robe. 'Draco… when you were reading the books, did you ever feel the same way as the characters were?'

'Yes…' he frowned. 'Sometimes.'

'Well, that's compassion,' she replied simply. 'When you can feel someone else's pain as though it were your own.'

Draco paused for a moment. He could grasp the concept of feeling what someone else did – all that took was imagination – but the consequences of it were irrational. He tried to think his way around it.

'So when people feel compassion, they help the other person in order to stop themselves feeling the emotion?' he asked, finding the only explanation that made sense. One of the few things he did know about emotions was that they were painful.

But Hermione seemed uncertain. 'No…' she said at last, the syllable long and thoughtful. 'Not really. It's more that… you know what it'd feel like to be in their situation, and you want to help them out of it.'

'Why?' he asked blankly.

'Because… because you do,' Hermione said pathetically, sweeping a hand through the messy, loose bits of hair at the side of her head and managing to make it even worse. 'Its hard to explain why. There isn't a logical reason.'

'But no one would put themselves in danger without a good reason,' Draco protested. 'If it was something easy, something small, I could understand it. Like giving money to charity or something. But people die for it. Why?'

Hermione appeared to be having difficulty answering, rubbing at the knuckle of her thumb pensively, and Draco felt a surge of annoyance. How was she meant to help him when she didn't have a clue herself? How hard could it be for her to come up with an answer? After all, she'd felt emotions all her life.

'I don't know why they do,' she said at last, frowning. 'At least, there isn't a logical reason why…'

'There has to be,' Draco snapped. 'If people are sacrificing themselves because of it…'

'There isn't,' she cut in firmly. 'They do it because they care about other people… because they feel compassion for the other person and want them to live.'

He glared at her. 'Granger, you aren't making any sense. It's completely illogical.'

'Well emotions aren't logical,' she pointed out, frustrated. 'I am trying, you know, but emotions are tricky…'

'Really? I hadn't realised.' Draco snapped, getting suddenly to his feet.

'What are you doing?'

'Going,' he replied. 'If all we're going to do is sit here going in circles, I may as well leave.'

With that, he strode away, ignoring Hermione's protests. He felt… some form of anger, if you made it less intense and put a sharp edge on it. She hadn't helped at all, only made him more confused.

Now where could he go to get advice?

~*~

'Come on, Harry,' grumbled Ron. He looked at his watch for the tenth time in two minutes, slouching against the wall of the Quidditch changing rooms, holding his broomstick in one hand. 'I've been waiting ages!'

Inside, Harry was startled out of his thoughts by his friend's complaint. 'Er… okay, give me a minute,' he called, even though he was already changed, and had been for five minutes. Harry hadn't meant to keep Ron waiting, but he'd gotten distracted.

He ran his hand once again over the smooth, polished wood that made the handle of his Firebolt. It was filled with memories – memories of receiving the mysterious package after his Nimbus was shattered, of Ron's elations, Hermione's suspicions and the subsequent barrage of tests… they'd fallen out at the time, but the funny thing was, Hermione had been right. Sirius Black had sent the broomstick…

Sirius…

Harry was trying to forget, but it was hard. Little things kept bringing the memory of Sirius to mind – his Firebolt for example. Or Ron's little owl, or any mention of dogs, or looking out at the night sky on a clear night; Sirius, the Dog Star, was always shining.

Harry missed him terribly, with a terribly painful ache that felt like his very heart was choking. He'd needed an adult like him, someone old enough and knowledgeable enough to help when he needed it, but with the wicked grin and impish ways that made him different to Dumbledore or Lupin. Sirius had never grown up, not at heart.

And if he closed his eyes, Harry could still see Sirius falling backwards into the veil, as if the image had been tattooed onto the back of his eyelids. That made it worse. The guilt.

Ron was still waiting outside, Harry remembered. Pushing himself to his feet, he slowly made his way to the door and pushed it open, meeting his friend's impatient expression.

'You were ages getting ready,' he complained, falling into step beside his friend as they walked up to the Quidditch pitch. 'I can't wait to get flying again, I've been reading that book on Keeper strategies and there's some really amazing things in there I want to try. There's this one thing I read where you position yourself so it looks like you're going to go one way, so they go the opposite way. But you're actually ready to go and intercept them. It's kind of complicated, I'll have to show you… Harry?'

Harry glanced up; he'd been staring gloomily at the dusty path. 'What?' he asked.

'Were you listening to anything I was saying?' Ron asked, his forehead creasing in a frown.

'Sorry, I guess I was distracted,' Harry replied with a rather small smile. 'What were you saying?'

Ron rolled his eyes. 'I was talking about this new Keeper strategy I read about, where you look like you're going to go one way, and then…' Ron trailed off, seeing that Harry was staring distantly at the ground in front of him again. 'And then a flock of penguins invades the Quidditch pitch, lights a barbeque and turns the opposing team into kebabs,' he finished, just to make sure Harry wasn't paying attention. He wasn't.

'Harry?' Ron called, waving a hand in front of his friends face. Harry started, stopping dead.

'Sorry,' he said again when he realised he'd not been paying attention. 'I'm just a little…'

'Is it about Sirius?'

Ron's question stopped Harry dead; he hadn't expected Ron to realise, and certainly not to be so upfront about it. Most of the others still tiptoed around the subject. Quietly, avoiding eye contact, he said. 'Yeah…'

Ron gave him a worried grin. 'It's okay,' he said, 'I mean…' There was rather a long pause, and Ron sighed. 'I wish Hermione or Ginny were here, I'm awful at thinking up things to say.'

Harry looked up. 'Don't worry; you don't need to say anything. It's my problem…'

'Yes, and you're my friend,' Ron pointed out firmly. 'I want to help, I'm just useless at it.'

'You aren't,' Harry tried to tell him, 'really, you aren't useless at all.'

Ron gave a strange smile with only one side of his mouth. 'Nah, I'm useless,' he proclaimed. 'Come on, lets go flying. That'll cheer you up.'

Harry glanced at his broomstick, clutched tightly in one hand. Sirius would have wanted him to fly on it. That was why he'd bought it, after all. He remembered Sirius saying how he'd snuck into the Quidditch stadium during games in his dog form, just to watch him play. You fly like your father, Harry… The memory brought a smile to his face.

'Lets go flying,' Harry agreed.

~*~

'No, no, no, no, no!' Ginny protested, shaking her head firmly. 'You absolutely cannot drink Butterbeer with apple juice in it. I forbid you.'

Dean, sitting beside her on the couch, grinned and shrugged. 'Its actually really nice. If a little weird,' he admitted. 'But you get used to it.'

She shook her head, looking absolutely disgusted, and leant back into the padded crimson cushions. 'I can't believe you'd actually drink that,' she muttered.

'It's nice,' Dean repeated, sounding hurt. 'You should try it. How can you know you don't like it unless you've tried it?'

'Because the very idea is repulsive. You'll never get me to try it in a million years,' Ginny said firmly.

'I'll slip you a glass when you aren't expecting it.'

'Don't you dare!'

Dean gave her a leisurely grin, the threat sparkling in his eyes. 'We're in Gryffindor, remember, we're meant to be daring.'

'Yes, but I don't recall the Sorting Hat describing us as 'very likely to have their internal organs decorating the walls of the Great Hall for many years to come if they ever so much as try getting their girlfriends to drink apple juice mixed with Butterbeer,' she smirked.

'Alright, alright. Consider me warned,' Dean replied. 'Besides, the Sorting Hat wouldn't have said that, it doesn't rhyme. Or have rhythm.'

Ginny waved a hand vaguely. 'Poetic licence.'

Dean snorted, and was about to reply when Hermione, burst through the portrait hole, grinning widely and clutching a bundle of papers in her hand.

'Guess what?' she asked, sitting down beside Ginny and beaming at her.

Dean cut in with his reply. 'I know! Aliens invaded the school, turned the Great Hall into their base of operation, and are setting about Transfiguring all the really annoying people in England into ants.'

Ginny raised an eyebrow at him. 'Well, you'll be the first to go then, won't you?' He replied very maturely by sticking his tongue out at her.

Hermione, meanwhile, was humming with excitement. 'No, nothing to do with aliens,' she proclaimed.

'Just tell us, Hermione,' Ginny protested.

'Alright,' Hermione held up the sheets she was holding. 'I just went to Dumbledore with the proposal to carry on the DA, and he said it was a brilliant idea, so we've got permission to start organising it!'

'Cool!' exclaimed Dean. 'So you're doing it again, are you?'

'Yup,' Ginny nodded. 'And we're doing a separate one for first to third years – did he say yes to that too?'

Hermione nodded. 'But we have to have one sixth or seventh-year for every ten students. Safety precautions, and they need to be properly supervised. Oh, and he wants the official name to be the Defence Association – political stuff, Fudge is still pretty paranoid… But of course, we'll all know what it really is.'

'Brilliant,' Ginny grinned. 'It's going to be great. When did you find the time to write it all out, Hermione? It must have taken ages…'

'Only an hour or so, I did it after my Transfiguration homework…'

Dean's face fell. 'We have Transfiguration homework?' he asked. 'When for…?'

'Tomorrow's lesson,' Hermione replied. 'The essay on combining two spells to produce an advanced or difficult effect…?'

Dean swore sharply. 'I forgot all about that!' he moaned. 'I'd better go do it now… bye, Ginny…' He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before leaping up and running off to find parchment and a quill.

Ginny shook her head. 'Dean forgets everything,' she remarked. 'He'd forget his ears if they weren't glued on…'

Hermione nodded, a slight frown on her face. Ginny and Dean were going out, weren't they? She couldn't really have missed that fact, Ron had been touchy about it all summer. But, apart from Dean's brief kiss, they'd been acting more like friends than boyfriend and girlfriend.

'How… serious… are you and Dean?' Hermione asked, before realising that it might not be the best of subjects. 'Er… I mean…'

'Serious?' Ginny asked with a frown. 'I've not really thought… I guess we aren't very serious, really.'

Hermione nodded. 'I thought you might not be,' she admitted. 'You do… like him, don't you?'

'Like him? Yeah, I wouldn't have said yes when he asked me out if I didn't,' she replied. 'He's witty, friendly, good fun to chat to… oh, and he has a really gorgeous arse.'

Hermione raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. Ginny laughed. 'What? He has!'

'I'll take your word for it,' Hermione said with an amused smile, and turned back to matters with which she was more familiar – the DA planning. 'Okay, we need to decide how we're going to advertise the DA, we want to get plenty of interest in it…

~*~

A/N: And we've come to the end of another week's odyssey into the weird and wonderful world that my twisted little mind's plunged you into. My twisted little mind is doing very well in the asylum, and the wardens tell me they have high hopes of being able to unstrap it from the bed soon and let it run around in just a straitjacket. If you'd like to thank it for the story, the review box is ready and waiting to take your comments… if you don't thank it, it might turn into a raging psychopath and murder you bloodily. It's very disturbed, you see…

Review!