The Mystery of the Lake
The sun was setting at the Burrow and its last rays of light shown through the kitchen window that Harry was looking through. Although it had been weeks since he had moved to the Weasley's house for the summer to escape from the Dursleys, Harry still enjoyed staring out in to the vast farmland and thinking about what he was finally leaving behind.
For once he finished his last year of Hogwarts, he was gone for good; off to fight Voldemort in the final battle of truth and justice, with his friend's right beside him, willing to help in any way possible. Once the sun had dropped its last light beneath the ground with the sincere promise of returning the next morning, Harry grudgingly pulled himself up from his position, stretched, and started to head up the long flights of stairs to where he and Ron were bunking.
At the door, he put an ear to it, knocked, and when no reply came, he knew it was safe. Last time he had gone in without doing any one of that, and had ended up walking in to the middle of a vortex that Ron hade made on accident. It was later explained (once Harry returned from the 17th century) that all Ron was trying to do was summon some lime flavored desserts from the kitchen, but mistook the words "appear" with "disappear" and "lime" with "time". This time he opened the door to find the room in its usual mess; scattered books and bits of parchment were on every inch of the floor, the owl cages had yet to be cleaned out, and just about everything Harry and Ron owned was misplaced somewhere. The only sign that life could even inhabit the room was two rather large stacks of freshly done laundry folded nicely and ready to be packed away before leaving for school.
Harry stepped over the ground (or what was left of it) and on to a large pile of blankets that didn't seem to quite make it to the laundry room. Suddenly a loud yelp came from beneath the bundle and a familiar red-headed face poked out from under its folds. "Blood hell, Harry," Ron grumbled as he shook off the many layers of fabric and stood up. "I can't even sleep without you being a pain in the…" and he left the sentence there, for his mother had just come in, holding letters with the two's names on it and sealed with the Hogwarts stamp.
"Your letters are here," said Mrs. Weasley as she handed them to Ron and Harry. "And you should get dressed; we will be leaving to go to Diagon Ally to get your school supplies in about fifteen minutes." And with that she bustled out of the room, leaving them to read over their list and giving Hermione some time to replace where she was standing at the doorway.
After a couple of seconds, the two boys looked up from their lists to see her there with a very happy smile across her lips. "Let me guess, you are our new Head Girl?" asked Ron with an I-already-know look on his face. She seemed taken aback by this statement. "Well, yes. Aren't you Head Boy?" Ron looked back down on his letter and read through it a few more times. Turning it around in his hands to see if he missed something, Ron looked back at her. "Nope. Guess not, wonder who is then…" "Oh well, it doesn't matter. I mean, I guess not. It's probably someone else we know. Anyways, the reason I came was to see what books you need, because I think some of mine our off. I'm taking ancient runes but my booklist says…"
"Hermione, will you shut up for a second. We just found our new Head Boy. Congrats, Harry!" exclaimed Ron, though it was obvious he was hiding his grief, naturally he thought if he was picked as a prefect, he would become Head Boy. "This is great. With you two being the head people of the school, you can make it so Malfoy gets detention forever! Sounds like fun, just make sure I'm there when you do it, eh Harry?"
Harry awoke from a daze, which had nothing to do with the news. "Oh, um, yeah. Sounds like fun." He faked a smile, but it was hard.
For some reason during his reading he saw something that wasn't on the parchment. It was shinning, blue, and constantly in motion; almost as if it were hypnotizing him, drawing him closer, closer to a certain death. "Harry!" This snapped him back once again, though he couldn't blame it on anything for the Ron and Hermione were staring at him as if he just said he was going to live underground with the sewer rats.
"Wu-what?" he asked, trying to regain focus. "I, I'm just a little tired. You know, tomorrow we go back to school, just not ready for it yet," once again faking the plastic grin. "C'mon, we're supposed to be getting ready to go," and with that he walked down the stair leaving his best friends still in the room, too confused to move.