Chapter 10: AUNT MARGE FINDS OUT
"We did good today!" Cho said happily as they left the front entrance and headed towards the car.
It was dusk and the remnants of the sun was painting the horizon pink, the ground, it's usual gray. Harry had no memory of spending an entire day with someone -- especially someone he liked, a lot -- on a breezy summer's day and he felt the day was complete when, amongst all the bags they were carrying in each hand, Cho's hand still managed to grab onto his. He wasn't really paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth (they had something to do with what her sister would say to all the money she spent). As a strong gust of wind blew that messed up Harry's hair entirely, he gazed around the parking lot. It was very empty but that didn't really surprise him -- it was fairly late and there was a mass murderer running loose.
"You never told me you had a sister!" Harry said a little more loudly than he intended.
Cho turned to him and grinned.
"D'you like that necklace I bought?" she said.
"Looks a lot like this one," said Harry, switching the bag in his right hand to his left and holding up the Order of Merlin plaque.
Right away, he noticed that holding it had no effect on him (which he thought was good but would still like to know what about that feeling inside him made it not do anything). Cho pulled the golden necklace out of one of her bags.
"Yeah," she said thickly and barely moving her lips because she was concentrating too hard on comparing the two. "It does, doesn't it?" she added and then after one more look between the two, stuffed it back into it's box and into the bag.
Harry put the other bag back in his right hand as they continued down the parking lot towards the white Ford Taurus. He longed for a driver's license of his own but doubted whether the Dursleys would ever trust him with a go-kart let alone a fully blown motor vehicle. Even if he couldn't get one, he still had his Dragonback and that could go farther and faster than any car ever built.
As the Ford Taurus came closer and closer into view, Harry saw the person with the leather jacket coming at them from the other direction. Harry ignored him completely.
Cho popped the trunk open and they stuffed all the bags they could into the trunk and would have to stick the last one in the back seat ("I needed new clothes anyway," Cho explained, "my sister likes to borrow mine and she gets them all dirty. I don't know how she does it").
As Cho closed the trunk and unlocked Harry's door, a barely familiar voice behind him spoke.
"Hey, kid!" it said in a tone that brought back many unpleasant memories of Draco Malfoy.
Harry wheeled around and saw that person with the shaved head and leather jacket standing behind him with a smirk on his face. He really didn't want to find out why only one of person's hands was rolled into a fist but it was instinct that told him to run sideways and just as he did that, Harry heard a bang of skin on metal -- he clearly wanted to get better revenge for losing.
"You've got that scar!" he shouted, sneering.
He grabbed Harry by the arm and parted his bangs to get a better look at the scar on his forehead.
"Oh, it does exist," he said quietly. "So did you really kill that guy when you were just a teeny, tiny baby or did you get word of that legend of the scar and carve that thing yourself?" he added, smiling wickedly.
Harry didn't know which way to reply. He had a sick feeling this wasn't going to end nicely no matter what he said. Figuring no one would believe him anyway --
"Yeah, I killed him," said Harry and, feeling he might as well do the thing properly, he added, "Shoulda seen the look on his face. He pleaded with me."
But that wasn't exactly the right thing to say because the next moment, the person pulled out -- to Harry's horror -- a switchblade. Harry pulled his hand away and the person just laughed. Cho stood there, transfixed. She didn't know what to do either. If either of them used magic, that would definitely count as a violation of the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, not to mention neither of them knew how to perform a Memory Charm, a convenient spell to make someone -- Muggle, witch or wizard -- forget something.
He tutted, saying, "Tsk, tsk. You stupid prat, you know what I do to posers who want to get themself a bit of fame? I've seen people with fake lightning scars, nowhere as realistic as yours" -- and Harry felt like he had just been stabbed -- "but I showed them all what it's like to feel as stupid as they really are," he went on, drawling, with that same wicked grin.
Throwing away all pretense, the first move Harry made was to take the Order of Merlin necklace off and hold it in his hand. Immediately, it had the effect he wanted of giving him whatever wits he needed to defend himself. The other person, on the other hand, swung and missed with his knife at Harry's stomach. Harry thought he got away with it but the next second he had the wind knocked out of him as he felt a fist hit his stomach very hard, knocking him backwards and then the other fist connect with the side of his face. Both hits knocked him onto his back.
"That necklace is your only weapon?" said their attacker, laughing harder than ever.
"You don't want to see my weapon," Harry muttered through gritted teeth, thinking of the wand tucked safely away under his jacket.
"What's that you said? Don't want me to hurt you? What about her, this your girlfriend?" the person said, backing into a very scared Cho.
He pulled her arms around her back and stuck the knife up to her throat. Cho's pulse rose so high that the blood vessels in her neck were throbbing. She wasn't looking anywhere except at Harry.
"LET -- HER -- GO!" Harry roared, getting to his feet and clenching his own fists. He had to fight down the terrible urge to grab his wand and use magic.
"Aww," the person sneered. "Going to miss her that much if I, well..."
Harry saw blood trickling down Cho's throat and her eyes start to water and wince with pain. He felt a hot surge of anger and was surprised that she wasn't crying -- or perhaps she was counting on him to do something? Harry assessed his options. If he let go of the necklace, he feared that his legs would take him in the other direction, leaving Cho to just... If he used his wand, he was surely going to be in deep trouble with the Ministry of Magic and it wouldn't be his first offense. He wished that he thought of the idea of taking Raides under the Invisibility Cloak... All he really wanted was for the person to just leave them be, let them go and let them both go home.
Standing there, watching blood trickle down Cho's throat and begin to color her otherwise pretty striped shirt, he wished the attacker would leave them alone harder and harder. In fact, he was wishing so hard that it caused his vision to become blurry.
Harry's body gave a sharp jolt all over and he went tingly from head to toe. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he felt very weak. All he could think of was the mad laughter that echoed horribly in his ears. And then, just as suddenly as it started, his body fell under it's own weight and just before his head hit the ground with a thud, he heard Cho scream.
He did wake, but nothing was quite as it should have been. He was holding a knife up to Cho's neck. Having absolutely no idea what he was doing, he dropped her and looked up: his body was on the ground in front of him. Harry looked around at Cho, who, for a reason he didn't know, was scared to death of him. He didn't say anything, he just walked off and as his legs began to move, his body went tingly all over. He saw Cho run past him as his body went weak once again and felt himself collapse.
When he woke again, the person was gone, Cho was clutching her bleeding throat and kneeling over Harry. Bits of her own blood had dropped onto him. He stood up very suddenly.
"What happened," was all he could think to say, his voice shaking.
"I -- I don't know," Cho said, looking at Harry nervously. "You just sort of fell and then a few seconds later, that guy just walked away. When he was gone, you woke up."
Harry was visited with a ridiculous idea: he could possess someone else's body. He didn't voice this to Cho, he'd had enough experience with strange abilities no one else seemed to have. It was bad enough he was a Parselmouth, a wizard who could talk to snakes. Salazar Slytherin himself was famous for this. This bit got Harry into quite a bit of trouble in his second year at Hogwarts when he was blamed for setting a snake that appeared to be too large to even exist on the students. Fifty years before, the exact same thing had happened and it ended up being the death of one student. Back then, it was Tom Riddle. Fifty years later, it was a diary from Tom which had bewitched Ginny Weasley (Ron's little sister who had something of a crush on Harry) to do it. Harry had come face to face with the snake and killed it.
"You're bleeding," Cho said which made Harry remind her that, "You are, too."
Both of them stood up, Cho clutching her bleeding throat and Harry pressing his hand against a cut on the side of his head that he probably got from falling on the ground. With their free arms, they grabbed each other around the back and walked limpily towards the car. The first thing that Harry on his mind was tending to her wound.
As Cho went to open the trunk to get something to stop the bleeding, it wasn't the smile on her face that made him worry as she said, "Look, forget about it. He's gone, we're safe, it's over." It was the blood that dribbled down her mouth, the heavy, strangling cough she gave followed by more blood and her falling limp in his arms that made his mouth open in pure terror.
He felt the panic in him rising as the reality of the situation set in. He couldn't believe it. All he had was his wand, a stupid watch and the Order of Merlin necklace. A fat lot of help those three things were to him right now... For a terrifying few seconds, he looked into the eyes of the girl he, well... not having any idea what to do. He didn't know any spells to heal wounds and he certainly wasn't going to attempt to drive that car.
Panic reaching extreme heights, he took a fistful of his own shirt and wiped away as much blood from Cho's neck as possible. He wasn't happy at all to see more coming.
Thinking quickly, Harry took the keys from Cho's fingers and opened the trunk. He took out the scarf she had bought and wrapped it around her neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. When he was sure it was wrapped snug, he put her in the car, locked the doors, stuffed the keys in his pocket and held his wand out.
There was one last thought, probably a very stupid one, that was the only thing he could think to do: he would have to try his hand at Disapparating all the way back to Privet Drive, regardless of Aunt Marge, to get at the Phoenix Bracelet.
"Deliquesco!" he shouted, hoping no Muggles were watching and hoping for dear life not to get splinched, not now, not when it was so urgent...
It worked. And there was no way he could ever care less when his bedroom door swung wide open with Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia staring at him, his wand in his hand.
"WHAT -- HAVE -- I -- TOLD -- YOU!" thundered Aunt Petunia.
Her face was positively shaking with anger and Harry could not care less what was going on in Aunt Marge's mind.
"Don't ask," he said calmly.
Without saying another word to either of them, he pulled the Staff of Cybele out from under his bed, put on the Phoenix Bracelet and shouted, "Deliquesco!" once more, this time taking him right back to Cho's side.
Raides sprang to life and with one look at Cho, transformed into the great golden and scarlet lion.
"You can tell me the details later," said Raides to Harry's great relief.
He held onto Cho's hand and Disapparated the three of them back to his bedroom in Privet Drive. Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia were now accompanied by Uncle Vernon.
Raides, realizing what Harry must've had to have done to get her, said to Harry's relatives, "Would you mind? The girl's hurt badly, here."
Harry set Cho down on her bed and removed the scarf. The inside of it had absorbed quite a bit of blood.
His relatives, however, didn't seem to have any feeling in their legs and watched, horrified, as Harry bent over Cho and proceeded to heal the wound on her neck with the bracelet. Raides transformed back into the Staff of Cybele. Harry heard the words "Ennervate" in his head, and, taking the hint, grabbed it, stood up and pointed the crystal at Cho. He knew that this was the spell to wake someone up who had been unconscious. It glowed white for a few seconds and then shot a pearly-white ball at her that was accompanied by a gasp of Aunt Petunia. Aunt Marge's mouth was open in a sort of silent bark, typical of the sound she usually made when she was yelling at Harry.
Cho's eyes opened. She smiled for a fraction of a second before catching sight of the staff in Harry's hand, the bracelet on his wrist and Aunt Marge standing behind him, terrified.
"I don't care," he said flatly, noticing the look on Cho's face.
He wheeled around to face Aunt Marge and dropped the staff. Raides transformed into the lion on her way down. Aunt Marge backed up against the wall in the hallway at the very sight.
"Petunia?" she said faintly.
Aunt Petunia, to Harry's great surprise, had dropped her anger and he watched it curiously change to pure confusion. Uncle Vernon's face had gone from purple to a grotesque maroon. For a brief moment, Harry thought it would be funny to try the Phoenix Bracelet out on him and see if that's just an ability he has, being able to turn his face different colors, or if it was just a defect. Aunt Petunia grabbed her hips with her hands and nervously spun around, clearly not knowing what to do.
"Surprise!" growled Raides haughtily. "He doesn't go to St. Brutus'!"
Harry had a hard time forcing down a laugh even in a situation as serious as this. He was glad when, a moment later, Uncle Vernon grabbed Aunt Marge by the wrist and ran down the stairs with her. Aunt Petunia looked somewhat indifferent, mumbled something indistinct about Dudley and then she, too, ran down the stairs.
Harry and Cho gave one great, big simultaneous sigh and then turned to look at one another. The next thing that crossed Harry's mind was none too pleasant.
"So when d'you think" -- and Harry heard an indistinct popping noise behind him but didn't turn around to see what it was -- "the Ministry of Magic is going to come busting down the door and send me to Azkaban."
"We're not sending you to Azkaban for that," said a friendly, familiar voice right behind Harry causing him to jump. He turned around to face Mr. Weasley in robes of gray and white. Mr. Weasley took one look at the blood stain on Harry's shirt and shrieked.
"It's not mine," Harry explained. "I'm fine. It was her's but she's okay now."
"Oh, yes, well, very good. In that case, then, while I agree with Raides here that there was nothing to be done once Cho had been hurt, you shouldn't have, well... everything's okay now except for Miss Dursley, then?"
Harry knew that he had been teetering on the verge of saying "left the house." Just then, he had a quick thought.
"Can you leave her just the way she is?" he asked hopefully. "Maybe if she -- er -- knows and it wasn't such a bad experience as -- that she won't -- ?"
He could see the gears going in Mr. Weasley's head as he seemed to be considering the idea.
"You know, I was notified right away and had to wheedle my boss into sending me and not someone else to take care of this. I don't know, Harry," said Mr. Weasley uncertainly, looking sideways at Harry.
Before Mr. Weasley could say another word, Cho said quickly, "You know, Dudley got an acceptance letter and ever since, Harry and I have been trying to convince his aunt and uncle to send Dudley to Hogwarts. Maybe if they... ?"
Cho didn't have to finish the sentence, it's what he, himself, had been thinking for a long time now. Maybe if they knew enough, had seen enough and if it made their thick, cold hearts care enough, they wouldn't hate him as much.
Feeling thoroughly miserable, Harry walked over to his desk, picked up the very same pen he had been holding when Cho said three little words and crossed off another day on his calendar until his return to Hogwarts. "A little less than a month," he mumbled to himself. What made him feel even more miserable was that it was his last year at Hogwarts and he had no idea what he would be doing after he graduated aside from living with the Dursleys for the rest of his life.
He felt a pair of arms grab him from around the back and Mr. Weasley's reasoning fell soft under the weight of what was in front of him.
"All right," he said finally, "I'll not put a Memory Charm on her but I will be speaking to her. Leave me to handle the car, you two should get some dinner."
Harry was pleased to see his face contour itself into a smile. Mr. Weasley didn't think it a good idea for Harry and Cho to be having dinner with the Dursleys that night. He saw fit to bring up dinner to Harry's room for the two of them and after whatever talk he had with Aunt Marge, Disapparated back to the Burrow. Neither Harry nor Cho weren't keen on discussing the night's events, especially Harry who still had the ridiculous idea that he could possess people. Maybe he would share this with Sirius, Ron or Hermione but certainly not anybody else.
Harry gave the keys to Mr. Weasley and as soon as he was gone, Cho ordered Harry to change. Red was never her favorite color...
"Turn around or close your eyes," Harry told Raides and Cho as he took another shirt out of his closet.
After making sure that Cho's hands were firmly planted over her eyes and Raides' head was under the bed, he took off the shirt he was wearing. As he put the new one on, he didn't see as Cho opened two fingers to look at him, giggling (he just thought she was giggling because she knew what he was doing), and by the time he made sure she was still covering her eyes and said "okay," Cho had her fingers back in place. He wouldn't have done that with her even in the room just a short month ago. Harry had been increasingly comfortable around her but that didn't stop him from turning cherry-red.
They spent the entire night talking with Raides about the upcoming Triwizard Tournament taking place at Hogwarts and came to a silent agreement that enough had been said about tonight.
Harry still wasn't keen on becoming a Hogwarts champion like he had been forced to be the last time the Triwizard Tournament had taken place. Cho conveniently reminded him that the inter-house Quidditch Cup wouldn't take place. He always needed something to take his mind off schoolwork, among other things. And so after a few hours of talking, Harry was a little closer to deciding on taking part in it than he was just a few hours ago as he fell asleep that night, thinking about it. He almost felt like hearing those three little words again but knew Cho wouldn't be saying them again for a long, long time. There wasn't any way he could bring himself to say them, either.
"We did good today!" Cho said happily as they left the front entrance and headed towards the car.
It was dusk and the remnants of the sun was painting the horizon pink, the ground, it's usual gray. Harry had no memory of spending an entire day with someone -- especially someone he liked, a lot -- on a breezy summer's day and he felt the day was complete when, amongst all the bags they were carrying in each hand, Cho's hand still managed to grab onto his. He wasn't really paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth (they had something to do with what her sister would say to all the money she spent). As a strong gust of wind blew that messed up Harry's hair entirely, he gazed around the parking lot. It was very empty but that didn't really surprise him -- it was fairly late and there was a mass murderer running loose.
"You never told me you had a sister!" Harry said a little more loudly than he intended.
Cho turned to him and grinned.
"D'you like that necklace I bought?" she said.
"Looks a lot like this one," said Harry, switching the bag in his right hand to his left and holding up the Order of Merlin plaque.
Right away, he noticed that holding it had no effect on him (which he thought was good but would still like to know what about that feeling inside him made it not do anything). Cho pulled the golden necklace out of one of her bags.
"Yeah," she said thickly and barely moving her lips because she was concentrating too hard on comparing the two. "It does, doesn't it?" she added and then after one more look between the two, stuffed it back into it's box and into the bag.
Harry put the other bag back in his right hand as they continued down the parking lot towards the white Ford Taurus. He longed for a driver's license of his own but doubted whether the Dursleys would ever trust him with a go-kart let alone a fully blown motor vehicle. Even if he couldn't get one, he still had his Dragonback and that could go farther and faster than any car ever built.
As the Ford Taurus came closer and closer into view, Harry saw the person with the leather jacket coming at them from the other direction. Harry ignored him completely.
Cho popped the trunk open and they stuffed all the bags they could into the trunk and would have to stick the last one in the back seat ("I needed new clothes anyway," Cho explained, "my sister likes to borrow mine and she gets them all dirty. I don't know how she does it").
As Cho closed the trunk and unlocked Harry's door, a barely familiar voice behind him spoke.
"Hey, kid!" it said in a tone that brought back many unpleasant memories of Draco Malfoy.
Harry wheeled around and saw that person with the shaved head and leather jacket standing behind him with a smirk on his face. He really didn't want to find out why only one of person's hands was rolled into a fist but it was instinct that told him to run sideways and just as he did that, Harry heard a bang of skin on metal -- he clearly wanted to get better revenge for losing.
"You've got that scar!" he shouted, sneering.
He grabbed Harry by the arm and parted his bangs to get a better look at the scar on his forehead.
"Oh, it does exist," he said quietly. "So did you really kill that guy when you were just a teeny, tiny baby or did you get word of that legend of the scar and carve that thing yourself?" he added, smiling wickedly.
Harry didn't know which way to reply. He had a sick feeling this wasn't going to end nicely no matter what he said. Figuring no one would believe him anyway --
"Yeah, I killed him," said Harry and, feeling he might as well do the thing properly, he added, "Shoulda seen the look on his face. He pleaded with me."
But that wasn't exactly the right thing to say because the next moment, the person pulled out -- to Harry's horror -- a switchblade. Harry pulled his hand away and the person just laughed. Cho stood there, transfixed. She didn't know what to do either. If either of them used magic, that would definitely count as a violation of the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, not to mention neither of them knew how to perform a Memory Charm, a convenient spell to make someone -- Muggle, witch or wizard -- forget something.
He tutted, saying, "Tsk, tsk. You stupid prat, you know what I do to posers who want to get themself a bit of fame? I've seen people with fake lightning scars, nowhere as realistic as yours" -- and Harry felt like he had just been stabbed -- "but I showed them all what it's like to feel as stupid as they really are," he went on, drawling, with that same wicked grin.
Throwing away all pretense, the first move Harry made was to take the Order of Merlin necklace off and hold it in his hand. Immediately, it had the effect he wanted of giving him whatever wits he needed to defend himself. The other person, on the other hand, swung and missed with his knife at Harry's stomach. Harry thought he got away with it but the next second he had the wind knocked out of him as he felt a fist hit his stomach very hard, knocking him backwards and then the other fist connect with the side of his face. Both hits knocked him onto his back.
"That necklace is your only weapon?" said their attacker, laughing harder than ever.
"You don't want to see my weapon," Harry muttered through gritted teeth, thinking of the wand tucked safely away under his jacket.
"What's that you said? Don't want me to hurt you? What about her, this your girlfriend?" the person said, backing into a very scared Cho.
He pulled her arms around her back and stuck the knife up to her throat. Cho's pulse rose so high that the blood vessels in her neck were throbbing. She wasn't looking anywhere except at Harry.
"LET -- HER -- GO!" Harry roared, getting to his feet and clenching his own fists. He had to fight down the terrible urge to grab his wand and use magic.
"Aww," the person sneered. "Going to miss her that much if I, well..."
Harry saw blood trickling down Cho's throat and her eyes start to water and wince with pain. He felt a hot surge of anger and was surprised that she wasn't crying -- or perhaps she was counting on him to do something? Harry assessed his options. If he let go of the necklace, he feared that his legs would take him in the other direction, leaving Cho to just... If he used his wand, he was surely going to be in deep trouble with the Ministry of Magic and it wouldn't be his first offense. He wished that he thought of the idea of taking Raides under the Invisibility Cloak... All he really wanted was for the person to just leave them be, let them go and let them both go home.
Standing there, watching blood trickle down Cho's throat and begin to color her otherwise pretty striped shirt, he wished the attacker would leave them alone harder and harder. In fact, he was wishing so hard that it caused his vision to become blurry.
Harry's body gave a sharp jolt all over and he went tingly from head to toe. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he felt very weak. All he could think of was the mad laughter that echoed horribly in his ears. And then, just as suddenly as it started, his body fell under it's own weight and just before his head hit the ground with a thud, he heard Cho scream.
He did wake, but nothing was quite as it should have been. He was holding a knife up to Cho's neck. Having absolutely no idea what he was doing, he dropped her and looked up: his body was on the ground in front of him. Harry looked around at Cho, who, for a reason he didn't know, was scared to death of him. He didn't say anything, he just walked off and as his legs began to move, his body went tingly all over. He saw Cho run past him as his body went weak once again and felt himself collapse.
When he woke again, the person was gone, Cho was clutching her bleeding throat and kneeling over Harry. Bits of her own blood had dropped onto him. He stood up very suddenly.
"What happened," was all he could think to say, his voice shaking.
"I -- I don't know," Cho said, looking at Harry nervously. "You just sort of fell and then a few seconds later, that guy just walked away. When he was gone, you woke up."
Harry was visited with a ridiculous idea: he could possess someone else's body. He didn't voice this to Cho, he'd had enough experience with strange abilities no one else seemed to have. It was bad enough he was a Parselmouth, a wizard who could talk to snakes. Salazar Slytherin himself was famous for this. This bit got Harry into quite a bit of trouble in his second year at Hogwarts when he was blamed for setting a snake that appeared to be too large to even exist on the students. Fifty years before, the exact same thing had happened and it ended up being the death of one student. Back then, it was Tom Riddle. Fifty years later, it was a diary from Tom which had bewitched Ginny Weasley (Ron's little sister who had something of a crush on Harry) to do it. Harry had come face to face with the snake and killed it.
"You're bleeding," Cho said which made Harry remind her that, "You are, too."
Both of them stood up, Cho clutching her bleeding throat and Harry pressing his hand against a cut on the side of his head that he probably got from falling on the ground. With their free arms, they grabbed each other around the back and walked limpily towards the car. The first thing that Harry on his mind was tending to her wound.
As Cho went to open the trunk to get something to stop the bleeding, it wasn't the smile on her face that made him worry as she said, "Look, forget about it. He's gone, we're safe, it's over." It was the blood that dribbled down her mouth, the heavy, strangling cough she gave followed by more blood and her falling limp in his arms that made his mouth open in pure terror.
He felt the panic in him rising as the reality of the situation set in. He couldn't believe it. All he had was his wand, a stupid watch and the Order of Merlin necklace. A fat lot of help those three things were to him right now... For a terrifying few seconds, he looked into the eyes of the girl he, well... not having any idea what to do. He didn't know any spells to heal wounds and he certainly wasn't going to attempt to drive that car.
Panic reaching extreme heights, he took a fistful of his own shirt and wiped away as much blood from Cho's neck as possible. He wasn't happy at all to see more coming.
Thinking quickly, Harry took the keys from Cho's fingers and opened the trunk. He took out the scarf she had bought and wrapped it around her neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. When he was sure it was wrapped snug, he put her in the car, locked the doors, stuffed the keys in his pocket and held his wand out.
There was one last thought, probably a very stupid one, that was the only thing he could think to do: he would have to try his hand at Disapparating all the way back to Privet Drive, regardless of Aunt Marge, to get at the Phoenix Bracelet.
"Deliquesco!" he shouted, hoping no Muggles were watching and hoping for dear life not to get splinched, not now, not when it was so urgent...
It worked. And there was no way he could ever care less when his bedroom door swung wide open with Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia staring at him, his wand in his hand.
"WHAT -- HAVE -- I -- TOLD -- YOU!" thundered Aunt Petunia.
Her face was positively shaking with anger and Harry could not care less what was going on in Aunt Marge's mind.
"Don't ask," he said calmly.
Without saying another word to either of them, he pulled the Staff of Cybele out from under his bed, put on the Phoenix Bracelet and shouted, "Deliquesco!" once more, this time taking him right back to Cho's side.
Raides sprang to life and with one look at Cho, transformed into the great golden and scarlet lion.
"You can tell me the details later," said Raides to Harry's great relief.
He held onto Cho's hand and Disapparated the three of them back to his bedroom in Privet Drive. Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia were now accompanied by Uncle Vernon.
Raides, realizing what Harry must've had to have done to get her, said to Harry's relatives, "Would you mind? The girl's hurt badly, here."
Harry set Cho down on her bed and removed the scarf. The inside of it had absorbed quite a bit of blood.
His relatives, however, didn't seem to have any feeling in their legs and watched, horrified, as Harry bent over Cho and proceeded to heal the wound on her neck with the bracelet. Raides transformed back into the Staff of Cybele. Harry heard the words "Ennervate" in his head, and, taking the hint, grabbed it, stood up and pointed the crystal at Cho. He knew that this was the spell to wake someone up who had been unconscious. It glowed white for a few seconds and then shot a pearly-white ball at her that was accompanied by a gasp of Aunt Petunia. Aunt Marge's mouth was open in a sort of silent bark, typical of the sound she usually made when she was yelling at Harry.
Cho's eyes opened. She smiled for a fraction of a second before catching sight of the staff in Harry's hand, the bracelet on his wrist and Aunt Marge standing behind him, terrified.
"I don't care," he said flatly, noticing the look on Cho's face.
He wheeled around to face Aunt Marge and dropped the staff. Raides transformed into the lion on her way down. Aunt Marge backed up against the wall in the hallway at the very sight.
"Petunia?" she said faintly.
Aunt Petunia, to Harry's great surprise, had dropped her anger and he watched it curiously change to pure confusion. Uncle Vernon's face had gone from purple to a grotesque maroon. For a brief moment, Harry thought it would be funny to try the Phoenix Bracelet out on him and see if that's just an ability he has, being able to turn his face different colors, or if it was just a defect. Aunt Petunia grabbed her hips with her hands and nervously spun around, clearly not knowing what to do.
"Surprise!" growled Raides haughtily. "He doesn't go to St. Brutus'!"
Harry had a hard time forcing down a laugh even in a situation as serious as this. He was glad when, a moment later, Uncle Vernon grabbed Aunt Marge by the wrist and ran down the stairs with her. Aunt Petunia looked somewhat indifferent, mumbled something indistinct about Dudley and then she, too, ran down the stairs.
Harry and Cho gave one great, big simultaneous sigh and then turned to look at one another. The next thing that crossed Harry's mind was none too pleasant.
"So when d'you think" -- and Harry heard an indistinct popping noise behind him but didn't turn around to see what it was -- "the Ministry of Magic is going to come busting down the door and send me to Azkaban."
"We're not sending you to Azkaban for that," said a friendly, familiar voice right behind Harry causing him to jump. He turned around to face Mr. Weasley in robes of gray and white. Mr. Weasley took one look at the blood stain on Harry's shirt and shrieked.
"It's not mine," Harry explained. "I'm fine. It was her's but she's okay now."
"Oh, yes, well, very good. In that case, then, while I agree with Raides here that there was nothing to be done once Cho had been hurt, you shouldn't have, well... everything's okay now except for Miss Dursley, then?"
Harry knew that he had been teetering on the verge of saying "left the house." Just then, he had a quick thought.
"Can you leave her just the way she is?" he asked hopefully. "Maybe if she -- er -- knows and it wasn't such a bad experience as -- that she won't -- ?"
He could see the gears going in Mr. Weasley's head as he seemed to be considering the idea.
"You know, I was notified right away and had to wheedle my boss into sending me and not someone else to take care of this. I don't know, Harry," said Mr. Weasley uncertainly, looking sideways at Harry.
Before Mr. Weasley could say another word, Cho said quickly, "You know, Dudley got an acceptance letter and ever since, Harry and I have been trying to convince his aunt and uncle to send Dudley to Hogwarts. Maybe if they... ?"
Cho didn't have to finish the sentence, it's what he, himself, had been thinking for a long time now. Maybe if they knew enough, had seen enough and if it made their thick, cold hearts care enough, they wouldn't hate him as much.
Feeling thoroughly miserable, Harry walked over to his desk, picked up the very same pen he had been holding when Cho said three little words and crossed off another day on his calendar until his return to Hogwarts. "A little less than a month," he mumbled to himself. What made him feel even more miserable was that it was his last year at Hogwarts and he had no idea what he would be doing after he graduated aside from living with the Dursleys for the rest of his life.
He felt a pair of arms grab him from around the back and Mr. Weasley's reasoning fell soft under the weight of what was in front of him.
"All right," he said finally, "I'll not put a Memory Charm on her but I will be speaking to her. Leave me to handle the car, you two should get some dinner."
Harry was pleased to see his face contour itself into a smile. Mr. Weasley didn't think it a good idea for Harry and Cho to be having dinner with the Dursleys that night. He saw fit to bring up dinner to Harry's room for the two of them and after whatever talk he had with Aunt Marge, Disapparated back to the Burrow. Neither Harry nor Cho weren't keen on discussing the night's events, especially Harry who still had the ridiculous idea that he could possess people. Maybe he would share this with Sirius, Ron or Hermione but certainly not anybody else.
Harry gave the keys to Mr. Weasley and as soon as he was gone, Cho ordered Harry to change. Red was never her favorite color...
"Turn around or close your eyes," Harry told Raides and Cho as he took another shirt out of his closet.
After making sure that Cho's hands were firmly planted over her eyes and Raides' head was under the bed, he took off the shirt he was wearing. As he put the new one on, he didn't see as Cho opened two fingers to look at him, giggling (he just thought she was giggling because she knew what he was doing), and by the time he made sure she was still covering her eyes and said "okay," Cho had her fingers back in place. He wouldn't have done that with her even in the room just a short month ago. Harry had been increasingly comfortable around her but that didn't stop him from turning cherry-red.
They spent the entire night talking with Raides about the upcoming Triwizard Tournament taking place at Hogwarts and came to a silent agreement that enough had been said about tonight.
Harry still wasn't keen on becoming a Hogwarts champion like he had been forced to be the last time the Triwizard Tournament had taken place. Cho conveniently reminded him that the inter-house Quidditch Cup wouldn't take place. He always needed something to take his mind off schoolwork, among other things. And so after a few hours of talking, Harry was a little closer to deciding on taking part in it than he was just a few hours ago as he fell asleep that night, thinking about it. He almost felt like hearing those three little words again but knew Cho wouldn't be saying them again for a long, long time. There wasn't any way he could bring himself to say them, either.