Warning: From this point on, I'm going to be incorporating bits of HBP. I don't know if there's any HP fan out there who hasn't gotten around to reading it yet, but, spoiler warning, just in case.

Author's Notes: Yeah, I know it took me forever to get this chapter out. I really am very sorry, but I have no excuse to offer you. I'll try to get the next part out sooner.

...And apparently, is having issues with how I was trying to format the poem in this chapter, so I'll just have to make due. (Which kind of makes me sad, since I liked the original format of the poem.)

Disclaimer: Yeah… I really don't think anyone believes that I'm JK Rowling, or that I'm making any money off of Harry Potter. If you do believe that… well, did you know they removed the word 'gullible' from the dictionary?

How about some beat poetry to start us off?

36th Chorus

No direction
No direction to go

Burroughs says it's a time-space
travel ship
Connected with mystiques
and mysteries
Of he claims transcendental
majesties,
Pulque green crabapples
of hypnotic dream
In hanging Ecuad vine.
Burroughs says, We have destiny,
Last of the Faustian Men.

No direction in the void
Is the news from the void
In touch with the void
Everywhere void

No direction to go
(but)
(in) ward

Hm
(ripping of paper indicates
helplessness anyway)

-Jack Kerouac

The Atrocity of Sunsets

Part V

Oblivious to the distress of the four adults, Harry Potter slept peacefully through the night.

Or, at least, he slept peacefully for a couple hours. His peace was disrupted about a half an hour after midnight, when a sharp spike of pain shot through his scar; had he been awake and not in a deep sleep, Harry would have identified it as a surge of intense anger from Voldemort. Mere seconds after his scar started searing, he was pulled into REM—he dreamt he was flying and bludgers kept flying straight into his skull, no matter how hard he was trying to out maneuver them. Strangely enough, the pain (which got more intense with each successive bludger) seemed be coming from within his head; it felt like they were forcefully ramming into a stubborn wall actually built inside his brain.

It was when the hammering bludger managed to break this wall that Harry was pulled into the first vision of Voldemort that he'd had in months.

The only figures he saw were Riddle himself and a figure prostrated at the megalomaniac's feet. They seemed to be standing in an opulent room, which looked like it was an office. Fire crackling in the grand fireplace on the opposite side of the room as the figures was the only light in the room, and the flickering light only served to make the scene more ominous, casting eerie shadows on the walls.

The prostrate figure was shaking, and Voldemort was glaring down at it.

"Let that be a lesson to you, as a small taste of how you will be punished if you let another of my possessions be destroyed."

"Y-yes, my Lord," the figure answered, in a voice Harry immediately recognized.

Lucius Malfoy.

"You are fortunate, Lucius. You have the chance to redeem yourself."

"Thank you, my Lord."

"Seek out two more of my less-secure possessions, and make sure they are indeed accounted for. I will very disappointed if I find that you have also let my ri—"

At that moment, Harry woke with a start, gasping for breath, with a pair of hands shaking his shoulders.

"Harry! Harry, mate, are you alright?"

Still breathing quickly, Harry looked up to see a red-headed blur leaning over him. There were a few other blurry figures hovering nervously in the background. The red-headed blur backed away slightly when it was clear that Harry was awake.

"I'm fine, Ron," he said shakily.

"Are you sure? Your hands were clamped to your scar, and you were almost hyperventilating. Was it… was it You-Know-Who?"

Harry groped on the nightstand for his glasses, and slid them on. Ron looked worried and concerned, and very tired. The black-haired Gryffindor sat up, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"It's—I'm fine, Ron, really," he said, as steadily as he could. "Go back to sleep. I just… I need to go talk to Dumbledore."

Quickly managing to slip on a robe and a pair of shoes, Harry hastily grabbed the invisibility cloak and hurried from the dorm, leaving behind a very concerned best friend.

Harry raced through the corridors as quickly as he could, not bothering to be quiet. In a matter of minutes, he reached the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster's office, and started rattling off names of sweets.

"Drooble's best blowing gum… fizzing whizbees…sherbert lemons…chocolate frogs…sugar quills…come on!"

The gargoyle refused to step aside. In a fit of desperation, gasped out the name of a candy he'd only ever heard Dean mention in the context of some joke. "Er… crunchy frog!"

To his immense surprise, the gargoyle actually moved aside at that. As he moved quickly up the moving staircase, Harry tried to avoid thinking about why Dumbledore was using 'crunchy frog' as the password to his office.

Soon enough, he reached the door Dumbledore's office, removed his invisibility cloak, and knocked urgently.

"Come in!" answered the Headmaster's voice.

He opened the door quickly and came in. McGonagall looked surprised at seeing him but Professor Dumbledore looked, as always, unruffled.

"What is the matter, my boy?"

Harry took a couple deep breaths before replying. "Sir… I just had a vision." He saw the Headmaster and McGonagall exchange a brief look, and hurried to speak again. "I think the only reason it got through was because he was really angry. My shields held up for a while, at least I think so—I was dreaming at the time, but I remember my occlumency shield trying to hold it back because I thought it was bludgers pounding against my head in the dream, but then they broke and then the vision started—"

"It's alright, Harry," the Headmaster assured him calmly, interrupting his nervous babbling. "We know you've been doing all you can to build up your occlumency shields. It's not your fault Voldemort managed to break through."

Still feeling ashamed that he couldn't keep Voldemort out, Harry tentatively nodded.

"Am I right in assuming that you feel there's important information in this vision?"

"Yes, sir. Well, at least I think so; I'm not completely sure, but it seemed important." He was aware that he was babbling again, so he just forced himself to get to the vision. "Voldemort—he seemed really angry about something. Lucius Malfoy was the only other person there, and I think he'd had Cruciatus cast on him; punishment for letting some possession of Voldemort's be destroyed. Then—then, he said he was sending him to look for other possessions, which he thought might not be secure. That's when Ron woke me up."

Dumbledore sat in silence for a few moments, looking contemplative. Harry glanced over at McGonagall, to find her staring at him, a strange expression on her face. Still anxious, he turned back to look at Dumbledore. Another moment and he finally spoke.

"Thank you for sharing this, Harry. This is indeed insightful. However," the Headmaster added, leaning forward and looking gravely at him, "I still would like you to keep developing your mental shields. Not all such visions are as… helpful as this one."

Harry was reminded of Sirius, and nodded ashamedly. Still, though he felt some kind of comforting whisper in the back of his mind.

Dumbledore gently dismissed him and told him to return to Gryffindor Tower. As he left the office, he heard McGonagall speaking in low, worried tones.

"It's simply not right, Albus. All these things shouldn't happen to—"

But then the door shut, effectively cutting off whatever his Transfiguration Professor was saying. Harry once again put on his invisibility cloak, and made his quiet way back to his dormitory.

By the time that Harry returned to Gryffindor Tower, Ron was back asleep. For the second time that night, he crawled into bed and drew the curtains of his four-poster closed. However, he was not to sleep peacefully for the rest of the night; the vision of Voldemort, uninformative as it was to him, left him unsettled. He tossed and turned all night, resulting in him waking up late, and barely in time to go to breakfast with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.

Racing down the stairs, Harry stopped just before entering the common room proper to see that Ron and Hermione were once again bickering.

"I don't see why you still write to him," Ron said with an obstinate look on his face.

"And I don't see why that is any of your concern," retorted Hermione.

"Well, because he's not good enough for you, is he?"

Harry couldn't tell if Hermione was angry, bemused, or pleased. He had a feeling that she currently wasn't able to make the distinction, either.

She didn't say anything for a moment, but then she dryly responded: "Would you care to elaborate?"

Ginny, from her spot across the common room, spotted Harry and grinned at him. She waved him over, presumably inviting him to watch the carnage from a better vantage point. Cautiously, he descended the last two stairs and made his way over to Ginny.

The arguing pair made no notice of his entrance.

"I mean, you're too smart for him," stated an increasingly flustered Ron, "and too interesting, and bloody-minded, and—and, er…"

A bemused Hermione stared at Ron, whose ears were an impressive shade of red.

"Only Ron can manage to botch up a compliment that spectacularly," Ginny whispered in Harry's ear. For reasons he couldn't fathom, a chill went down his spine.

"Oh, er, I don't know about that," Harry shakily replied.

Hermione finally got around to responding to Ron. "I still think it's my right to decide whom I write to, but thanks for the compliment… I think…"

The pair was looking at each other very awkwardly. Ginny apparently felt it was time to interrupt, for the next moment, she loudly cleared her throat. Ron and Hermione spun around to look at her and Harry.

"So," Ginny said casually, "if that's settled, how about we go get breakfast?"

Everyone was quick to agree, and soon the four were off to the Great Hall. When they were about half-way there, Ron abruptly turned to Harry with a concerned look on his face.

"Harry, what was the vision you had last night? Are you alright? What did Dumbledore say?"

He was speaking in a hushed voice, so nobody passing by would overhear, but he was loud enough for Hermione and Ginny to hear. Harry sighed as the two witches glanced anxiously at him.

"Nothing. I'm fine, don't worry about it."

Despite being told all morning not to worry about Harry's vision, Ron and Hermione refused to stop asking questions or casting slightly worried looks at their best friend. By the time they got to Herbology, it was nearly unbearable.

Not five minutes after the class started, Ron glanced worriedly one too many times. On the pretext of very carefully trimming the trio's reiki bonsai tree (whose leaves were used in certain varieties of healing potions), the black-haired Gryffindor leaned closer to the other two.

"Look, I know you are both worried, but there's really nothing to tell. It's not worth worrying over." The skeptical expressions on their faces elicited a sigh from the last member of the so-called 'Golden Trio.' "A vision got through, but no new information really came of it. Plus, there are some things Dumbledore insists on keeping secret."

The last sentence was technically true, though at the same time, it had nothing to do with Harry's vision the previous night.

However, the explanation seemed to satisfy Harry's friends, and the trio went back to trimming their bonsai. One member of the trio was slightly more content with completing the assignment than the others.

Really, there was nothing more relaxing than tending to a garden; for the moment, though, completing an assignment in a Herbology class was close enough.

By the time Sunday rolled around, Harry had managed to completely shake off the worried looks of his friends, and everything was back to normal—or as normal as his life ever was.

Hermione managed to browbeat him and Ron into spending their time before lunch studying. Ron belatedly started on the transfigurations essay due the next morning while Hermione had seemed to be reading ahead in the potions text. Harry, who had, by some miracle, actually finished all of his assignments for his classes, read a book on advanced defense techniques that Lupin had recommended.

Study time didn't last long, however, and after lunch the trio headed outside. Of course, Hermione brought along some 'light reading,' but the two boys immediately grabbed their brooms and took to the air. Ginny joined them a short time later, and the three of them joyfully spent the entire afternoon racing each other and practicing Quidditch moves.

After dinner, Harry headed off to one of his extra lessons—tonight, with Professor Dumbledore. The Headmaster greeted him when he entered his office, bid him to have a seat, and then wasted no time in launching directly into the lesson.

"Now, Harry," he began, "previously we were working on methods of defensive transfiguration in duels, but I thought I'd shift the focus of these lessons for the time being. While knowing how to defend yourself is of the utmost importance, it is just as important to know and understand your enemy."

Harry watched as Dumbledore rose from his seat and walked over to a cabinet beside the door, from which he removed a familiar Pensieve. The Headmaster placed it on the desk in front of Harry.

"So," continued Dumbledore from where he left off, "from this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundations of fact and spellwork and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets if wildest guesswork about Voldemort's past."

Remembering his past experiences with Pensieves, Harry looked warily at the stone basin, but said nothing. He briefly looked up at the Headmaster, whom looked as if he wanted to say something. When he saw Harry's glance, however, he simply smiled at him and moved to stand behind him.

"Tonight, we will be going on a trip down Bob Ogden's memory lane," he informed Harry. Seeing his student's inquisitive glance, he elaborated, "Bob Ogden was employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He died some time ago, but not before I had tracked him down and persuaded him to confide these recollections to me. We are about to accompany him on a visit he made in the course of his duties. If you will stand, Harry…"

Dumbledore easily pulled the stopper out of a crystal bottle and tipped its silvery contents into the Pensieve.

"After you," he said, gesturing toward the bowl.(1)

Harry awoke the next morning in his four-poster. For a few moments, he simply lay on his side, staring at his red bed-curtains and remembering what he had seen in Dumbledore's Pensieve the night before.

It had been a bit disturbing. All the Gaunts seemed to have something fundamentally wrong with them, even Merope, in her own cringing and servile way.

Well, at least that had answered the question as to where Voldemort got his insane and sadistic side from.

Pushing the thoughts away, Harry forced himself to get up and ready for the day. When he had showered, dressed, and otherwise made himself presentable, he went down to the common room, where he met up with Hermione. Ron came running the stairs a couple minutes later, and the trio made their way to the Great Hall.

Breakfast was largely unremarkable. Ron gorged on food, and Hermione tutted at him. At one point, Harry inadvertently caught the eye of Ginny, who was sitting further down the table with a few girls from her year. She smiled widely at him, and he quickly looked away.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Hermione had asked him then, "You look a bit flushed."

Harry assured her that he was fine.

As they were about to leave the Great Hall, a tawny owl flew over to Harry and landed on his shoulder. As soon as he removed the note it was carrying, the owl took off again. Curious, he opened the note.

Harry,

I have decided that it is prudent to allot one more night

each week for your training. In addition to your current

schedule, please report to the Room of Requirement at

8 o' clock on Thursday.

Professor Dumbledore

At his friends' questioning looks, Harry whispered, "Note from Dumbledore. I'll tell you later."

They nodded their acquiescence, and the three made their way to their first class of the day.

It was Wednesday, and Ginny Weasley was watching one Harry Potter very closely. Technically, she was supposed to be practicing Flash-Bang Spells with the rest of the DA, but she was already satisfied that she could perform it, and Harry-watching seemed much more important at the moment, anyway.

Ginny had told Hermione that she'd "given up" on Harry, but that wasn't true, not really. It was more correct to say that Ginny had given up on Harry spontaneously announcing that he had feelings for her and grandly sweeping her off her feet in front of all of Hogwarts, like in one of the muggle pixie-tales.

First, she knew now that Harry was much too private of a person to ever go for that public of a display. Perhaps, if he was feeling especially daring, he might show how he felt in front of Gryffindor House. But that was definitely a long way off as well, if it was ever going to happen at all.

Secondly, Ginny had finally realized that Harry didn't know her all that well, and had only started seeing her as someone other than 'Ron's little sister' sometime late last year.

As a way to remedy this second problem, she'd taken to spending more time with Harry. Her brother and Hermione were usually there as well, and Harry seemed to be slowly opening up to her, while she learned more about his own personality. She'd even flirted with him a bit and the way he reacted seemed favorably.

So Ginny Weasley hadn't totally given up on the idea of dating Harry, but for now she was moving very slowly. And she was watching him. Because, as much as she'd learned about him since Hogwarts restarted, Harry still didn't completely make sense to her.

She'd started noticing in her second year, when she was mostly over being star-struck and was no longer being distracted by an evil diary, that there were things about the black-haired Gryffindor that just didn't seem to add up. It was nothing she could really put her finger on—everything could be explained away. If he was completely open and smiling one minute, and completely withdrawn the next, well, lots of people had mood swings. When he lashed out so much last year, and Ginny never remembered seeing him with so short a fuse, she rationalized that he was still dealing with what happened in the Third Task and (like any other boy she knew) refused to talk about or deal with his feelings in any productive way. That he absolutely never talked about his childhood, and avoided talk, even passing mentions, about his family was sad, but understandable; she'd never personally met the Dursleys, but she'd seen them glaring balefully at Harry when they picked him at King's Cross. And she'd heard about the bars placed on his bedroom window from Fred, George, and Ron.

There were lots of other little things she noticed, things that were easily explainable, and that should not have really bothered her at all—except that they did. And, having watched and overheard snippets of conversation between Ron and Hermione, she knew had the same sense of vague worry about their friend. Perhaps they worried even more, as they had been closer to him for a longer time.

So, Ginny was watching Harry. And until she could figure out why she felt an unexplainable apprehension for him, she would continue watching.

Author's Note:

The "crunchy frog" candy is taken from the actual Crunchy Frog Sketch as written and performed by Monty Python. (Coincidentally, the sketch also make mention of another nasty candy—cockroach clusters. Methinks that Jo is a Monty Python fan…)

(1)HBP, pg 197-199 (slightly altered)