Said I would be updating more often!!!

Chapter 7 : New Friends

Looking back just a short while later Harry wondered what it was about Tank and Sam that made him feel so safe and so willing to talk to them? Harry had been very careful not to let slip anything that would give him away as being magical or anything about the wizarding world.

After fixing his glasses Sam and Tank set about preparing a meal which they all enjoyed in the cosy galley while the storm raged outside. The boat bobbed up and down only slightly at its mooring and the movement seemed to reflect Harry's mood. The timber craft seemed to be eager to be out on the sea in motion instead of tied up at safe anchor and Harry felt the same way but he reckoned his safest way to get to Grimmauld Place was on this boat with Sam. So he stayed put and talked to the two old friends.

Tank and Sam now believed that he went to a charity-run boarding school for gifted children and that his least favourite teacher taught chemistry and not potions. When it came to mentioning some of his other lessons though Harry had a great deal of difficulty trying to think of Muggle equivalents of Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Fortunately he could talk about History with no problem – aside from mentioning that his history teacher was a ghost or mentioning his obsession with Goblin Rebellions.

When Harry came to mention that he had taken lessons on Astronomy both Tank and Sam's faces lit up. Working on the rigs, explained Tank, the skies are not polluted by lights from towns and cities and you can see a great deal of detail in the heavens. Quite a lot of the crew of his rig had expensive telescopes and they did a lot of stargazing in their free time.

"Look up now Seeker." Said Tank when they Harry had calmed down from his upset "And tell me what's the brightest thing in the sky."

Harry looked at him with a puzzled expression on his face.

"Mars! Mars is bright tonight!" Tank exclaimed.

Harry's jaw nearly hit the deck!

"What do you know about Mars being bright?" queried Harry worriedly.

"Well all the planets in the solar system have a slight wobble in their orbits so occasionally – such as now – the planets move closer than they normally are so their light shines brighter than usual. Simple. Its like shining a torch at the end of a football pitch at midnight then moving it closer to say, the half-way line."

Harry positively laughed out loud and replied "Dean would love that analogy but I don't reckon Firenze would."

"Dean? Is he one of your classmates then? Asked Sam who had just come up on deck with some mugs of hot chocolate. It was now about 11.30pm and Harry knew that he and Sam had to be up at 5am to catch the morning tide.

"Yes, I've shared a dormitory with Dean for the last five years but I don't know a lot about him. He's got the same surname as you, Thomas, but I think his family came from the West Indies. I know his Dad is a milkman and he's a great fan of West Ham United. He's got a poster on the wall by his bed of the current team but Seamus always takes the mickey out of him for it but then he doesn't understand football."

"Doesn't understand football!" exclaimed Tank and Sam in unison. They looked at each other and roared with laughter.

Tank continued "With a name like Seamus the lad's gotta be Irish so what sport is he into then? Rugby I suppose!"

"Er! No. I don't think he's into that kind of sport much." Harry lied, trying to get the conversation and his mind off in a safer direction. He still missed Quidditch so much it was like a dull toothache in the back of his mind. Most of the time he could ignore it but just occasionally he reacted to something and the pain flared up.

"Oh, so Seamus prefers "indoor" sports does he?" Sam's innuendo was not lost on Harry.

Sam and Tank took Harry's comment to mean that Seamus was into a different kind of sport. The female, feminine, girly kind of sport that occupied the minds of a lot of 16 year old lads!

"Well what kind of "sport" do you prefer then Seeker me lad? The kind with the lads or with the lasses? Eh?"

In a vain attempt to keep the conversation away from himself Harry told them "Well, I think my best mate Ron's little sister, Ginny, is interested in Dean. On the train home at the end of last term she told us she had just given her old boyfriend, Michael, the elbow and she had now decided to go out with Dean."

"How old's this Ginny then?" asked Sam. Behind Harry's back Sam and Tank exchanged looks and raised their eyebrows.

"She's in the year below us." Replied Harry but his words were lost in his mug of chocolate.

"Sorry mate.... Didn't quite catch that."

"Somehow Sam I get a feeling that Seeker here wouldn't mind being in Dean's shoes and to have young Ginny seeking him out! What do you reckon? Read the signs right have I?"

Harry blushed to the tips of his ears, just like Ron. The two men realised that Harry's feelings on the subject of Ginny were not something to laugh at however. Tank gestured to Sam in a way that old friends understand without words. Sam stood up, collected the three mugs and went below decks leaving Tank and Harry alone under the velvety blackness of the midnight sky.

"She doesn't know you like her, does she?" Tank stated bluntly.

Harry just continued staring at the deck and shook his head. When, after a long minute's silence, he raised his eyes Tank was surprised to see yet more tears on his lashes.

"I hope to God she thinks I don't like her as anything other than Ron's little sister" and Harry silently added in his mind "and I hope that no one else thinks that either or her life wouldn't be worth a damn!" The end of his sentence went unspoken

"Why?" That simple word asked so many questions.

"Because, I'm not someone she should love. She should be with someone whose life is less.... complicated .... less dangerous!" Replied Harry.

"Complicated? Dangerous? For goodness sake Seeker, you're only, what 16? What can there possibly be in your life that can be complicated or dangerous?"

"You don't understand. You can't possibly understand. From the day I was born I was .... destined I suppose you could say ... to do something that only I can do. I don't have a choice. The problem is that now it's going to be almost impossible for me to do. Things have changed... I've changed ....... I've done things I regret and wish to God I hadn't done. All last year people believed the worst of me and then when the truth came out most people were too scared to act. The Minister didn't change anything. Oh sure he sent out leaflets warning of possible dangers but what good's that if an attack happens! You can't hide behind a leaflet and hope it will keep you alive! He needed to act! Be decisive! But no.... he sends out leaflets!" Harry ended sarcastically.

Harry's mouth was running away with him and Tank sat and looked at him with a deep frown on his face. The fact was that, as a Muggle, Tank wouldn't have a clue what Harry was talking about, would probably think Harry was living in a fantasy world.

"What do you mean attack? What kind of attack? You almost make it sound as though there's a war going on. Calm down. There hasn't been any kind of war in England since 1945. You're safe. Don't worry."

Harry shook his head and looked Tank in the eye. "You can't possibly understand. I'm sorry I even mentioned it. Just forget it, okay?"

"Forget it! How can I possibly forget it when I can see that whatever it is it's tearing you up? Look mate, I know we only met a short while ago but ... Oh I don't know, I can't really explain it, but I believe you. I may not understand what you are going through but there's something about you...." Tank's voice trailed off.

"Destiny."

The single word was spoken by Sam. He was standing with the harbour light behind him and his face was in shadow. Harry screwed his eyes up as he looked from one man to the other.

"My old gran she used to say to me that you can't fight your destiny! You can fight everyone else, even yourself, but you can't fight destiny!"

Sam continued "A great believer she was in divination, never went anywhere without her Tarot cards and she always read the leaves! I used to be absolutely terrified of her when I was a kid 'cos she used to look at me and say you got a great battle to fight.... not for a long time yet but fight you will! My Dad died during the war in Korea and everytime that Gran mentioned fighting my Mum would get so mad!

I remember one time Gran ended up hitting Mum with her handbag saying that she knew it, she'd seen it and knew it could not be denied. Strange thing was that my Mum just nodded her head crying fit to bust all the while. The she looks at me with tears pouring from her eyes and runs from the room!"

Right up to the end of here days Gran would say "You promise me now that when the time comes you will do what you have to do. He'll need all the friends he can get and you gotta make sure you're the best friend you can be. Sacrifice and Duty. Hah! To the younger generation that have already given so much, sacrifice and duty have become dirty words. You though, you know don't you that when the call comes you just can't leave it unanswered."

"He?" questioned Harry and Tank together. They both smiled after speaking in unison. Harry continued "Who did your Gran mean by "He"?"

"Mum always made me think Gran was going on about a new Messiah or something and said that Gran was loosing her marbles. Whenever Gran overhead her saying this she used to look me straight in the eye and shake her head emphatically. What we never understood though was her obsessions, apart from the divination that is."

Now it was Tank's turn to ask a question. "What sort of obsessions?"

"Well, Gran always loved to make things, sewing, knitting, baking, painting and drawing. Always though whatever she made had the same animals on them. Well not just animals, signs and initials too."

Harry was getting more and more intrigued as Sam went on.

"Animals.....?" Harry prompted.

"A lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake."

Harry's mouth went dry. He tried to speak and couldn't. In his stead Tank posed Harry's unasked question.

"And what signs and initials?"

"Well the sign used to really freak me out. It was a green skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. The initials were always the same two."

Harry waited with baited breath.

"The letters H and P!"