Title: The Worth of an Enemy
Author: ScribbleDream
Rating: PG-13 (just in case, language and such silly things as that)
Summary: "And we must unite inside her, or crumble from within." Thus far, no one has taken the Sorting Hat's words to heart. But with the war seeming futile, in Harry's 7th year, it seems to be time to turn enemies into allies, and hatred into trust.
Author's Notes: This is the first thing I have written in a very long while, and I apologize for the lack of updates... I just haven't been into my other stories. However, I do love this one, so I think that it will actually be finished. No pairings as of yet, but there will be romance, worry not! Reviews good, constructive criticism better. Um... let's see... yes, I think I've covered it all.
Much love,
Scribs

"I don't know a greater advantage than to appreciate the worth of an enemy." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Chapter One

Professor Minerva McGonagall felt very out-of-place in her new office. She had been in this office countless times, but never on this end of the desk, and never with her own things on the shelves. She felt as though she was imposing on some sanctity that the Board of Education had overlooked when they appointed her. She had the childish, semi-hopeful notion that Albus would walk in at any moment and calmly ask her what she was doing in his seat.

She sighed and sipped her tea. It was a lovely hope, but a false one.

Minerva could hear rain pelting on the roof of the tower. It was a soft, relaxing sound, muffled against the many spells and wards that had been put on this office. It made it seem as if it was only drizzling, when Minerva knew from looking out the window that there was quite a storm going on outside. Sometimes she thought she heard the lightning, but it was such a dull sound that she couldn't be sure. She wondered how cold it must be outside.

She shivered at the thought. She had never liked the rain. She didn't disliked it, but she didn't liked it either. So many things were inconvenienced by the rain, and Minerva was not one for inconveniences.

Minerva suddenly became aware, her ears being as sharp as a cat's, of someone coming up the stairs of her office. Two someones. Three. They were yelling, and even with the wards and a normal person's hearing, it would have been hard not to notice them now. Two of the someones were trying to get the third to stop and come back, but the third someone was shouting some very colorful words at them and otherwise ignoring their pleas. As they neared her door, Minerva recognized the first two voices as Madame Pomfrey and Argus Filch. The third was familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"You come back here this instant, young man!" cried Madame Pomfrey's fussing voice. "You need to come with me to infirmary before seeing the Headmistress"

"Sod off, you flaming fu-"

At this vulgarity, Minerva stood up in an instant and, waving her wand nimbly, opened the door. She opened her mouth to scold whoever had been making the racket, but instead her breath caught in her throat. Before her stood a young man, dripping wet and battered nearly to death, that she had never thought to see again inside her school.

"Mr. Malfoy," she said, unable to keep her eyes from widening and her voice from shuddering a bit. His sharp glare intensified at the sound of his name. So many thoughts were running through her head. She concentrated on the most prominent one: How dare he?

"I'm sorry, Headmistress, but we couldn't stop him from coming up to ya." Minerva had barely registered Filch, or Madame Pomfrey, standing on the first step to the landing. They seemed to draw back from Malfoy, as if afraid that she would think they were associated with him.

She turned back to Malfoy, who was smirking with grim satisfaction, and he raised an eyebrow as if to say, Damn straight, they couldn't stop me.

Minerva promptly set her mouth into a prim line. "Mr. Malfoy," she said again, fighting the name even as it came out of her mouth. It was a damned name, a traitor's name. He helped kill Albus. "You've got quite a lot of nerve showing up here. You're lucky."

"Lucky?" he repeated with a coolly perplexed look.

"That you weren't killed as soon as you entered the grounds," Minerva replied. The statement seemed to shock him, if only for a moment, after which he retained his indifference.

"If that is what you meant to do with me," he said, "your security is quite lax. I made it safely here, didn't I?"

Minerva studied the boy. His face was bruised and bloodied, and by the looks of his tattered clothes, what was underneath them hadn't fared much better against whatever foe he had fought. "Safely" wasn't the word that she would have used.

"Why are you here, Malfoy?" she demanded, having the slightly embarrassing wish that she could achieve his coolness.

His eyes darkened, though the rest of him remained uneffected. "I needed to speak with you."

"I do not speak to traitors and murderers, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said, coldly. "You have fifteen minutes to leave the premises before I call the Ministry to arrest you-"

"How can I be a murderer, Professor," Malfoy interrupted through clenched teeth, "when I didn't kill anyone!"

Minerva was a bit too shocked to say anything. She had never had a student, current or former, raise his voice to her. She opened her mouth to say something, although she still wasn't sure what it was, but he continued in a softer but somehow more dangerous tone.

"I tried, didn't I? But I couldn't do it. I didn't kill your precious Dumbledore. I didn't kill anyone. And... and I wouldn't, either, unless I had to. Not anymore... not after I found out what they were..."

It was hard to miss the note of sadness and regret in the last statement. Minerva looked at the boy (for he was only a boy really), suddenly much more compassionate.

She became painfully aware of the staring eyes of Filch and Madame Pomfrey. Without looking their way, she motioned for Malfoy to come toward her. "Come here, Mr. Malfoy. You have things to explain to me."

She shut the door behind them, knowing that her quiet evening in her office was about to be postponed indefinitely.

Hermione Granger had a plan.

George Weasley was the first to notice it. About a week and a half into the summer vacations she began to behave suspiciously. Sneaking off to her room in the middle of meals. Huddling in a corner with her parchement and a quill. Carefully evading questions as to what she was doing. It was much the same way that he and Fred had spent their time at Hogwarts. George knew plotting when he saw it.

Fred would have noticed to, had he been paying any attention. When George alerted him to his suspicions, Fred was quick to agree that Hermione was, indeed, planning something. Fred, at first finding the whole thing rather amusing, spent much of his time trying to find out what exactly it was that Hermione was doing, but to no avail. George tried to leave her alone as much as possible, but if he would have been lying had he said he wasn't curious.

It wasn't long before most of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place knew that Hermione had something in the works. Despite many theories as to what it was, no one was able to give Fred or George any actual facts about it. Fred had long since lost any amusement from Hermione's plan, and was now generally in a foul mood whenever it was brought up.

"She's bloody good at keeping things under wraps, isn't she?" Fred fumed at his brother, pacing the study they had claimed as their own early on in the summer. Though they still lived in the apartment above their shop, they had been spending much more time at Number Twelve lately, to be closer to their family. Neither had said it to the other, but they both knew that it was true.

George, who lay sprawled out on the tattered couch of the small, grimy room, nodded. "We should have included her in some of our schemes at school, eh, Fred? She'd have been a good conspirator."

"She wouldn't have done it," Fred said in a tense, slightly envious voice. "Bloody girl only breaks the rules when it fits her needs, and not anyone elses."

"Too true, mate," agreed George, folding his arms under his head and staring at the spider webs on the ceiling. "What do you think all of it's about?"

"Hell if I know," said Fred, flopping himself into the old, leather swivel chair next to their desk. He rested his forehead in his hand and frowned. "It's probably nothing important. Some way to get Ron to notice her, or some stupid plot to free those bloody House Elves she used to rave about."

"If it's so stupid," George teased, "it shouldn't bother you so much."

Fred glared at the floor and said nothing. George watched his brother and could nearly see the wheels in his mind turning. He gave a cheeky half grin that Fred didn't see, and sat up.

He knew why the whole thing bothered Fred. Fred was a brilliant planner, the closest thing to a criminal mastermind that George had ever met. Fred could take almost anything and turn it into a prank. He had more ideas than anyone George knew. To think that someone who had tried to squash so many of those ideas was making plans of her own... it was driving Fred insane.

"Ron and Harry don't even know," Fred said suddenly. "The bloody Golden Trio doesn't even know."

"Or maybe they do and they just aren't telling you," said George. Fred dismissed it with a wave of his hand as he stood up to pace again.

"If Ron knew, I would know that he knew," Fred explained, his frown deepening. "I know how to know when he knows something that he doesn't think you know, especially if you're not suppose to know that he knows it."

George raised an amused eyebrow. Fred rolled his eyes. "Don't pretend you didn't understand that," he said, and continued to glare at the floorboards. George grinned. Of course he had understood it - he understood everything Fred said, even if no one else did.

Which, granted, was most of the time.

There was a knock at the study door. Fred looked up and glared at it instead of the floor, making no motions towards the door. George sighed and yelled, "Go away!"

Ginny opened the door, paying no mind at all to their obvious distaste. "Mum says dinner's almost ready and she wants you two down there to help set the table."

"Tell her to make Ron do it," Fred said.

"Ron's at the Ministry with Dad."

"Tell her to make you do it then," Fred growled. "We're busy."

Ginny crossed her arms and raised a warning eyebrow at them. "So is the rest of the world," Ginny said. "And they're doing a lot more important things than you are."

"You don't even know what we're doing, baby sister," Fred pointed out.

"I most certainly do," Ginny replied, sitting on the couch next to George. "And I also know that you will never figure out what Hermione is doing. She hasn't told anybody anything about it, not even me."

"You sound bitter," George said, grinning. Ginny glared at him.

"Hermione is allowed to keep whatever secrets she wants to," she replied, attempting haughtiness, and almost succeeding. Fred and George exchanged a skeptical look. Ginny rolled her eyes and stomped out of the room.

"Go to dinner!" she shouted over her shoulder. Fred and George looked at each other and started to walk downstairs.

"Why is it that women, be it our little sister or Hermione or what have you, have so much control over us?" George marvelled out loud. Fred shrugged.

"I don't know. But it is really beginning to piss me off."

Harry stared at the page in front of him, the dim lighting of the fourth floor bedchamber making his eyes hurt. He had read the same paragraph six or seven times, and yet he still had no idea what it said.

Harry was dimmly aware of Buckbeak staring at him. Harry reached out a hand to pet the hippogriff, who made a noise halfway between a purr and a hoot. Harry smiled, not looking up from his book. He concentrated on the feathers in between his fingers, on the way Buckbeak's chest heaved up and down when he breathed, and tried desperately to breathe the same way.

He realized it had been a very long time since he had last relaxed.

Harry had overtaken the fourth floor bedchamber as his own almost as soon as moving into Number Twelve, finding that it was nearly the only place that his constant memories of his godfather didn't hurt.

He had thought that when he moved into Number Twelve he would have everything under control, but it seemed as though everything in the house reminded him of Sirius. He had begun, at first, to be very depressed, until finding out that Buckbeak was going through quite a similar predicament. Harry heard one day from Lupin that Buckbeak had refused to eat for almost a week. Harry had instantly gone to his side. It turned out that Harry was the only person who could calm Buckbeak's nerves.

The strange part was, it didn't bother Harry at all that the only person he felt shared the same grief for Sirius that he himself did couldn't even talk about it. In fact, he found himself rather enjoying the silence.

"Harry?" a voice called softly through the door. Harry recognized it almost instantly, and wished that he hadn't.

"Come in, Ginny," he said, fighting hard to keep the sigh from his voice. She opened the door and slipped into the room through the smallest crack possible. She closed the door and leaned against it.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she apologized. He saw her blushing, even in the dark. "Mum is having me call everyone to dinner, and she wanted to know if you'd be eating with us today."

"I don't think so, Ginny," Harry replied, eyes downcast. She looked so disappointed.

"It's just... well, it's Sturgis Podmore's birthday today, and we were going to celebrate."

A dim flash of recognition hit Harry as he realized he had known it was Sturgis's birthday, but hadn't bothered to remember it. "Have fun, then," Harry said. "There hasn't been much to celebrate for a long time."

"Not that you would know." Harry was surprised at the hint of bitterness that she obviously hadn't been trying very hard to restrain.

"Excuse me?"

"Harry, don't play stupid," she spat at him. "Do you realize there are members of the Order whom you haven't even met? You're the bloody Chosen One, for Merlin's sake, and you haven't left this pitiful room for weeks!"

Buckbeak gave an offended growl and Ginny sent him an apologetic look.

"I'm busy, Ginny," Harry said as if that finalized everything. He should have known better. Ginny was no the type of person to let things go.

"Do you have any idea what that's doing for morale?" she demanded of him, hands on hips, looking like a skinnier, younger version of her mother scolding the twins. "Everyone thinks you've given up! No one even knows what you're doing, and they're confused, and their scared, and they need you. There's even a rumor that you're not going back to Hogwarts next year."

Harry looked down. "I'm not, Gin."

"That is possibly the stupidest decision you could make," she informed him.

"If I go back to Hogwarts, it will be a target."

"It's already a target, Harry!" Ginny cried, throwing her hands up in the air. "Every child going to school next year knows it's a target. But they had hope, at first, because they thought that you'd be there to protect them if anything happened. I've been talking with some of the girls in my year, and they're absolutely terrified of going to school if you're not going be there."

"My being there is not going to help anything," Harry pointed out. "I can't protect the entire school."

"You don't have to," Ginny said, sounding calmer. "You just need to make it seem like you can."

Harry looked at her, randomly wondering what she would think if he kissed her just then. He knew that he couldn't, because it couldn't lead to anything. He wouldn't let her become a target. He just... he knew that she was right. He hadn't been getting enough contact with people, lately, especially people he cared about. Not for the first time he wished that he could have her without it being a danger to her... but he would never be able to forgive himself if something happened to her.

"Come down to dinner, Harry," she said, softly, her eyes sparkling sadly. "We miss you... I miss you..."

"Nothing can come from this, Ginny," he whispered.

"I know," she agreed. "I just... just come down, okay?"

He nodded and watched her leave. He waited a few seconds after the door clicked shut to stand up and close his book. He patted Buckbeak's head as he passed him, and left the darkened room. It didn't seem much emptier without him.

A/N: Don't forget to review! I really appreciate them.