"Harry?...HARRY!"

The voice woke Harry suddenly, and he wrenched his head upwards, staring around wildly for who might be yelling at him. Arthur Weasley was hurrying into the kitchen, a look of surprise and concern upon his face. Harry glanced at his watch as the red-headed figure approached. It was 6:30. He had got a solid hour and a half of troubled, oft-interrupted sleep. Truthfully, it was more than he could have hoped for.

"Mr. Weasley!" Harry began, "Sorry I had to sneak in last night, I didn't want to dist-"

"Never mind that," Mr. Weasley cut him off, "Are you all right?"

The concern was etched in every line of his face, and Harry felt a wave of gratitude and warmth flood over him. There were people in his life who had genuine love for him, and who needed to be sure that he was safe in order to be at peace. Harry smiled slowly, his dry lips cracking slightly as he did.

"Yeah... Yeah, I'm fine, thanks Mr. Weasley. And... and I'm sorry I haven't been in touch, I just, I wasn't..." his stammering trailed off, and he looked up into the older man's eyes, hoping that he would understand.

"Wait here. I'm going to get Molly."

Mr. Weasley turned his back, and rushed towards the stairs, his threadbare house coat flapping slightly behind his slippers which were slapping noisily on the ground. He stopped just before the stairs and turned to look at Harry. There was a sadness on his face, which Harry couldn't understand, and which worried him slightly, but it was gone with the swish of the housecoat.

The early risers in the Weasley's living room were beginning to stir, much to the obvious annoyance of those who liked to lie in:

"Oy, what the fuck do you fink your doing?"

"Sorry, sorry Cecil, didn't meant. Didn't see you there did I?"

"You treaded right on me fuckin' face, you bullocks! 'Ow could you not see me fuckin' face?"

"Sorry, mate, sorry. You know I wouldn't tread on me own cousin on purpose, dontcha?

Harry chuckled to himself quietly. Just how he had imagined Ron's relatives. He had worked out during the night that the multitude of people staying in the Weasley's house were direct members of the family; aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. This had become quite obvious as the mornings early light had filtered through the Burrow's windows, igniting dozens and dozens of blazing red heads. That meant that the bungalows outside would belong to friends and business associates. In total, Harry guessed, there must have been at least 400 witches and wizards on the premises. This would be quite a party. Harry got up, and sidled over to the mirror that hung by the doorway. He hadn't seen himself in days. As he drew nearer though, he thought he must have got the mirror confused with a rather hideous portrait, because that certainly wasn't his reflection staring back at him.

"Let yerself go a bit, haven't you mate?" said the face on the wall. It was his voice. Harry gasped, nearly falling to his knees. The skin across from him looked as though it had been shoved forcefully into a pile of chalk dust, so white and blotchy was the complexion. The eyes were sunken, and encircled with wreaths of darkness, while the eyelashes were caked with shards of sleep and smears of off-yellow puss. His normally untidy hair was so drenched with stale sweat and was so long that it simply hung lankly over his ears and over his forehead to his eyebrows. His lips were broken and anointed with several open wounds so that they stood out like a massive smear of blood across a serene, snowy landscape. Harry stepped back in horror, his lips quivering and curling slightly, showing off golden teeth and tinted gums. With a feeling of deep dread, he raised his hand to his forehead and pushed his hair back from his brow, looking for his scar. It was not a difficult search. The wound looked more jagged, more angry, and was such a deep hue of flaming red that it was nearly purple. Against his skin, it might as well have screamed out for attention. Despite his horror, Harry was transfixed; his eyes, which looked like green lanterns, could not be ripped away from the creature that stared back.

"Told you, didn't I? You've got to take car of yourself son!" said his reflection.

He stumbled backwards, coming to rest very unsteadily in the chair he had been sitting in earlier. The young man who had trode upon Cecil's face was watching him warily, clearly not recognizing him as Harry Potter.

"Harry!", came a yell from up the stairs. Molly Weasley. "HARRY!", she screamed again, closer this time. He was not about to let himself be surrendered to her painfully loving care. Not in this state. He stood up quickly from the chair, causing his head to reel, and tried to run for the door, realizing for the first time just how weak he was. After two unsteady steps, he fell, crashing down upon the dusty hardwood, and lay sprawled their as Mrs. Weasley came bounding into the kitchen.

"Oh Harry," she said quietly, "Harry, what have you been up to?"

The pity in her eyes was apparent, and it was accentuated by the tone of her voice. It brought tears to Harry's eyes, and he tried to prop himself up from his position on the floor, shame consuming him as he stared up at the Weasley's.

"Ummm, Molly...", began the man who had been watching Harry, "Molly, who is this? What's he doing here?"

"Shut up Richard," Molly whispered, still staring at Harry as he lay in his filthy suit upon the floor, "Come on Harry, let's find you a room. You can have one for yourself. I'll bring you some food up. You should probably spend a few days just lying in, not seeing anybody and-"

"But the wedding! I've got to go the wedding! That's why I'm here!" He was becoming unnecessarily frantic.

"Harry dear, the wedding's not for four days. You should just rest until then. You'll look as good as new in that time." There was doubt in her voice.

Harry could not remember very much of the first three days he spent in his private room near the top of the Weasley's house. He had seen no one but Mrs. Weasley, who had brought him meals and led him to the bath. He found that he could not eat very much, having gone for so many weeks living off table scraps which he had been given by Simon, and also could not bear to have lights present for long periods of time, having become accustomed to darker, grimier surroundings. On the second day in the room, his trunk had arrived, filled with his suits, guns, muggle money, and Hogwarts apparel. It had been a welcome addition to the room, because it meant that he could finally remove the filthy undergarments he had been wearing for nearly a week. The Weasley's had not opened the trunk, nor had they touched the clothes he was wearing. It seemed as though they either wanted to give Harry his privacy, or were simply to afraid of what they might find. A combination of the two, Harry realized, was probably most likely, and this relieved him, because to have Mr. Weasley searching through his trunk was an idea that made him sick.

By the third day, the day before the wedding, Harry felt much stronger, and, in his opinion, he looked much healthier as well. His eyes were still encircled by fairly dark circles, and his complexion was still very pale, but his scar was less inflamed, his teeth much whiter, and hair back to its normally unruly state, if slightly longer than before. Mrs. Weasley was a magnificent cook, and Harry suspected that some of the drinks she had supplied him with may have been tainted with different potions. The gratitude he felt for her was beyond words. Death would have been a very apparent danger for him if not for her help.

The prospect of seeing his friends again was a slightly forboding idea. Would they be angry with his long absence from their lives? Would they demand to know what he had been up to, which he did not intend on telling them? What would they think of his slightly frightening appearance. The thoughts swirled in his head, confusing and frustrating him. He had also thought frequently of Ginny. He knew that the inevitable encounter between them would be a tense, probably anger-filled affair, and he was not looking forward to it.

All of these worries, Harry knew, would become reality within a few hours, when the wedding would begin. He sat at the end of his bed, staring at his trunk. The decision of whether or not to return to Hogwarts had still not been made, and with everyday, his deadline came closer. Half of him, the half he was most familiar with, wanted desperately to return , to be a student and a child for one more year. The other half, the half which had surfaced over the last weeks, could not bear the idea of being under the constant surveillance and direction of teachers and other figures of authority. Also, Harry feared, this half would miss the killing, miss the gunshots, miss the look in the face of evil men as they died at his hands. He loved the control he had over so many peoples fates, the way he could make a man fall on his knees and beg for mercy with the simple twitch his lips.

Inside his trunk, Harry found his one suit which wasn't made of the dark material. It was an off-white, creamy color, and made of a very light cloth. He chose a blue, silk shirt with thin white stripes through it, and left the two top buttons undone. He then threw on the suit pants and jacket and found some sunglasses whose tint matched the blue of his shirt. He turned to the mirror.

"That's a bit more like it laddy!" said his reflection. "Top notch really."

Harry grinned widely at the mirror, but quickly stifled it, remembering as he saw his smile that his teeth were still slightly yellow and his gums still slightly grey.

Voices were rising softly up from the garden, which was far below his window, and he knew it was time to stop avoiding the inevitable. With another quick, though close lipped, smile at his reflection, Harry turned and made his way down the stairs.

There were people everywhere, bustling in and out of each and every room, most of them in what looked like old and faithful dress robes, although some of the younger members of the vast mass of people in the house wore muggle suits like Harry. At each turn Harry saw a similar scene; a wife adjusting a tie, a father yelling at his children to behave, an older child looking bored and surely, and all of them looking rather flustered. Harry was able to slip quietly and unnoticed through the crowd, which he was very pleased about, until suddenly a hand reached from nowhere and gripped him firmly above his left elbow. His right hand, acting on impulse, shot to his waist band, but he found no gun. He had left it on his dresser along with his wand. Completely unarmed! He turned, ready to fight to the death, but was greeted only by the surprised face of Ron Weasley, looking rather dapper in a black suit and red shirt and tie, which actually matched his hair.

"Ron!" Harry gasped, exhaling slowly as he tried to calm down, "It's you."

"'Course it's fuckin' me, mate," he replied, looking shocked at Harry's unusual behavior, "Who were you expecting? King fucking Kong?"

Harry smiled slightly, trying to put Ron at ease.

"How long have you been here?" Ron continued, "Mum said someone arrived a couple nights ago, but we couldn't figure out who the fuck it was. It wasn't you, was it?"

"Yea," replied Harry, "Yeah it was. I had to sneak in so as not to disturb nobody." He was having to shout over the din of the people around him. Ron was looking scandalized.

"You've been here for four fuckin' days and you never fuckin' told me? What the fuck is that?"

"Ron, I wasn't fuckin' conscious for most of it, all right. Your mum told me to rest."

"Not fuckin' conscious? What the fuck have you been up to anyway?"

The band in the garden started playing a loud, upbeat tune, the signal for the guests to sit down.

"Look," said Harry, "We'll talk later. Let's just enjoy the wedding now, all right? Where's Hermione."

"With Ginny," said Ron, a touch of bitterness on his voice, "She'll be along."

With that they moved out of the kitchen and into the glorious day.