Chapter 27

March 1993

Silvery laugh rang out and her amber eyes brightened up. She reached for him and he grasped her little hand in his. Spinning around in circles, her dark-red hair was glistering like flames in the light of the sunrise. She let go off him and began to run. One moment he remained staying, gazed after her lithe figure and followed her then. Quickly he caught up with her, but she got away from him playfully. Her laughter disappeared. Her dark eyes filled with tears, which ran down her cheeks like little shimmering pearls. She began to fade and suddenly he was alone. She had disappeared.

With a start he opened his eyes. He needed a moment to realize where he was. The dream had been so real. After so many years, why did he dream of her now of all times? While staring into the darkness, his lips formed a name; a name he had buried deep within himself for a long time. Cathy, he thought and he was powerless against the memories which rose in him.

Harry gazed nervously to the door, riveted his eyes on Caro shortly afterwards and whispered,

"Did you find anything?"

Without looking up, Caro shook her head.

"No, not yet. If you would help me, it certainly would go quicker," the black-haired girl replied and bent deeper over a sheet of parchment which she was holding in her hands. Harry sighed, stepped to the table where he dropped his wand and began to study the shelves which were standing in front of him. On the thick files which lined up there only the year stood and as he saw how many files there were from the year 1988, he realized why Caro hadn't found anything yet. Reaching for one file, he opened the first page and stopped hesitatingly.

It had taken them long until they had discovered that the archives of the Order of the Phoenix were located near Dumbledore's office and even longer they had needed to wait until an opportunity had arisen to sneak in there without anyone missing them. Today finally a major part of the Order had left Hogwarts for fighting, lessons had been cancelled in the afternoon and so Caro and Harry had seized the opportunity. They had been forced to leave Draco behind since he had landed himself with detention. Remus Lupin, the teacher in Defence against the Dark Arts had had the bright idea to let them work together in pairs and Draco had got Ron Weasley as a partner. That however had turned out to be a great mistake. Before Harry would have been able to prevent it both had stood facing each other in a duel.

Since Caro hadn't wanted to pass this opportunity under no circumstances, they had dressed warmly, had gone for a walk in the snow and had waited near the right window until no one had been in sight. As soon as the air had been clear Harry had changed into a phoenix. Caro had charmed herself invisible and so they had flown to the window.

Harry stared at the many files and cursed the Order that it had been so carelessly to not put any protection charms on the windows. In such a case he perhaps could have still found an excuse and could have talked Caro out of breaking in here. But so he hadn't had a choice as to come along. The faster they would disappear from here the better, Harry thought but first they had to find for what they had come here. Harry pulled himself together and began to read. A little later he was so absorbed that he neither heard how Caro took abruptly a breath, nor the door which opened. The angry voice which suddenly rang out startled him so much that he dropped the file.

"How dare you!"

Before Harry knew what happen to him the wizard who, dressed with a scarlet cloak, had to belong to the members of the Order, had hit Caro with a curse. While Caro sank to the ground, Harry leaped to his wand. But the red light which was speeding towards him, didn't give him a possibility to grab his wand anymore. He wrenched his hands up and felt the magic surrounding him. As the curse of his attacker hit his protection shield, the power of the impact caused him to stumble backwards.

The curse backfired. The man ducked down and the red buzzing light hit the heavy book-shelf that crashed down on the wizard. Harry was paralyzed for a moment. With trembling hands he grabbed his wand and with a shaking movement the shelf got up again. The books also flew back to their places. Harry ran to Caro, threw himself next to her and tried to waken her with the Ennervate charm. Relief rushed trough him as Caro opened her eyes, sat up and stared at him with a dazed expression. For one instant Harry hugged Caro fiercely to himself. Then he helped her up. Caro's eyes burned angrily, as she reached for her wand and walked over to their attacker who was lying motionless on the ground. A little later, Caro said,

"He is dead."

Harry's eyes widened and he looked down on the silent figure while everything seemed to start blurring before his eyes. Caro stood up and seized Harry's arms.

"Harry, he has attacked us! You had to defend yourself."

"Caro, it just happened. I didn't want it. My magic….I had no…the book-shelf collapsed." he stammered and stared at her with wide eyes.

"I didn't want to kill him."

"I know, Harry." She said absent-minded while frantically thinking what to do now. Looking at Harry, she said urgently,

"Harry, we have to disappear as soon as possible from here. If someone sees us here…"

As Caro had evoked the devil with her loudly said remark, the door abruptly flung open.

"Alfred, what's taking you..."

The young man with the red hair, broke up, stared at them and clapped a hand to his mouth. Before he could react in some way however Caro had pointed her wand on him. As he fell to the floor, Harry seemed to wake up out of his lethargy for the first time.

"Caro! What shall we only do?"

Both looked at each other, searching for help. Harry ran a trembling hand through his hair.

"He'll betray us." He realized with suppressed panic in his voice.

„ We could put a memory charm on him." Caro suggested and Harry nodded hesitantly.

Caro, who saw that Harry wouldn't do anything, gripped her wand more tightly and sighed. She had the funny feeling that forgetting charms didn't function on unconsciousness persons. It was Charlie's brother she saw a moment later and while she still hesitated, Caro heard steps and murmur. Her gaze flickered to the open door, to Harry who stood there with a strange absent look and to her wand. She spun around and grabbed Harry's arm.

"Transform, Harry, quick."

Harry however only stared at her helplessly. Caro cursed, snatched the one file, grabbed once more Harry's hand and pulled him to the door. They had hardly passed through the door, as a shrill loud alarm signal rang out that began to echoed through the castle with an ear-deafening sound. Startled Caro and Harry flinched. As they stormed down the corridor Caro didn't need to drag Harry behind her any longer.

Remus who pushed his way trough the door with the other Order members, halted abruptly as he saw the Dark Mark which was hovering in the air in the middle of the room. In the light of the sunrise the bracelets flung around the wrists of the wizards and witches flashed.

The shrill alarm signal stopped but no one of the members who stood there like frozen became aware of this one bit. Finally movement came into the crowd and the first kneeled down on the ground. Fear and shock entered their faces as they realized that both wizards were dead. Remus stumbled to the table and bent down heavily. With sleepwalking slowness he stared at the scarf which he was holding in his hands. Charlotte had given the children among other presents scarves to Christmas and as he saw now the embedded' H in the green material, he felt how he froze.

Harry and Caro came only to a halt in front of the entrance of the Slytherins, completely out of breath, where they met Draco who looked relieved as he caught sight of them.

"What happened? As the alarm rang out, Lupin allowed me to go. I've feared already that they've discovered you."

„We'll explain everything later. But first we've to leave the castle as soon as possible."

While Caro ran in her dormitory, Draco followed Harry with a rather confused expression on his face. His second attempt to find out what had happened, failed as well since Harry only shook his head. Harry, who in the meantime clumsily packed his things tried with all his might not to think of what had just taken place. The little wooden box he had found in Godric's Hollow three and a half years ago fell out of his hands.

It hit the ground, the cover slid aside and the content scattered on the thick, soft carpet. Ordering Nell, who rang her hands with wide worried eyes to pack on, he hurriedly picked up the things and stuffed them back into the box. As he collected the necklace with the black stone he had found also in the ruins of Godric's Hollow he halted and following an impulse he slipped it over. Immediately he felt how immense warmth surrounded him which strangely seemed to comfort him. Still wondering about this he found himself a moment later together with Draco and Nell in the Slytherin common room where they waited for Caro.

It didn't take long until she appeared. As they ran across the grounds of Hogwarts Draco tried once more to discover the reason for their sudden escape. While Caro, gasping for breath, set Draco into the picture of what had happened in short version, they reached the wall of wards which shielded Hogwarts from the remaining world. They stopped and Caro leaned forwards, her hands pressed against her sides and with a red face.

"How on earth shall we go through? We don't have any bracelets," she moaned loudly.

"We could go through in our Animagi forms, but not you." Draco said who still hadn't really understood what actually had happened. Caro cast him a look which spoke volumes.

Harry had remembered something in the meantime.

"We've forgotten Peter!"

Now it was him who Caro stared at.

„And? Do you want to run back now? Try to think of something how to get through!"

"There is someone going," Draco remarked. Caro whirled around.

„ What did I say? Perhaps he can borrow us a bracelet."

Harry closed his eyes and waited for his two friends to return while he had the more and more increasing feeling to stick in a terrible nightmare.

„He had one!" Draco explained triumphantly and held the slender silver band up. Harry nodded only.

He just wanted to reach out for the bracelet, as a movement caught his attention.

"Peter!" Harry said relieved and let the rat disappearing in his pocket. They reached out their hands, touched the piece of jewellery and passed the wards. In the same instant the bracelet solved into thin air but no one of them paid much attention to it as they began to hurry. In Hogsmeade, near the Shrieking Shack, they came to an abrupt halt.

"Where are we going actually?" Draco asked and cast a look at Caro and Harry.

"Does anyone have a suggestion?" he added.

Caro glared at him angrily.

"Knockturn Alley. We search for a little hotel and then we see on. Come, Harry."

While they were flying it started to rain. Heavy, cold raindrops lashed in Harry's face but he didn't make any attempt to pull up his cloak.

It was late in the evening as they arrived in Knockturn Alley. Wet and frozen to the bone they hurried through the narrow street and searched for a little hotel. In front of a little old house they stopped. The letters on the sign were already peeled off which swung gloomily back and forth in the wind. The room, which the owner showed them after some Galleons, was tiny and shabby. For a temporary accommodation it would be enough however.

Harry dropped on the next best bed and shuddered. Caro and Draco also sank on the beds. Rainbow trilled sadly and Nell's eyes looked enormous as she scared crunched down on the blanket. Finally Draco said,

"Could someone perhaps finally tell me what exactly happened? I have understood only half of it what you've tried to tell me earlier, Caro."

Caro looked over to Harry.

"Well…"

"You can tell him," Harry said flatly and standing up, he stepped to the window and looked out into the darkness which occasionally was brighten up by dim lights.

Caro sighed, rose as well, went to the chimney and while she made use of her wand to get a fire going, she slowly told what had happened. As Caro had come to the part where they had realized that their attacker was dead, Harry clenched his fists, so tightly that his nails left bloody half-moons in his palms.

As Caro had ended, Draco shook his head.

"My goodness….so you haven't found out anything about the murderer of your father?"

Caro hesitated one moment, shook then her head and said,

"No, unfortunately not."

She stepped to Harry and laid a hand on his arm.

"Harry, he attacked us. You had to defend yourself."

Furiously Harry spun around.

"I've murdered him! Can't you understand what that means?"

"Harry…" Caro said helplessly.

"I bed that he would have murdered you had you given him a chance. Harry, don't take it too seriously." Draco threw in.

Harry stared speechless at his friend.

"That is not the point at all. That is…"

Harry broke up and was silent, went to his bed and sat down. Draco stood up and took care of a poor supper. Although Caro tried to convince Harry to eat a bit Harry only drank a little tea. Shortly afterwards he laid on his bed and turned his face towards the wall.

Sometime, in the middle of the night, Harry felt the urgent need to laugh. He snorted in the pillow to not waking up Caro and Draco. It shook him so fiercely that you could think he suffered from the shivers. There his adoptive father tried to bring him to step in his footsteps for all the years and to learn how to torture and kill and he resisted fiercely and now he had committed a murder. His adoptive father would surely have been proud if he would have done this deed in his presence. As the laughter ebbed, a desperate sobbing rose in him while he saw again and again how the book-shelf fell down on the wizard. Trying to sleep was pointless.

The following day promised to become foggy and dully. The breakfast went silently. No one really knew what to say.

"What will we do now? We can't stay here forever," Draco dared to break the silence.

Harry, who had eaten only little and who was completely overtired, went to his things and fished the wooden box out. Holding it in his hand, he remembered last Christmas.

„Terley," he whispered and without any warning he was overcome by the strange and highly disconcerting feeling to fly through the air with a terrific speed. Harry fell hard on the ground. Dazed he clambered to his feet and froze while beginning to doubt his senses. The little room of the inn had disappeared, also neither Caro nor Draco could be seen anywhere. Harry stared awed up to the tremendous castle which soared into the sky on the little hill. He looked up to the gate. In the middle of the iron bars the crest of the Potters was set: fiercely flickering flames and in their midst a golden 'P'. His mind began to understand. The wooden box he still was holding in his hand had to be a port key. Sighing Harry began to walk towards the gate.

That had been all he needed. How should he now return again? Somehow he had the feeling that his box wouldn't transport him back to the uncomfortable hotel. He reached out a hand in the direction of the iron bars and hardly had he touched them the gate swung open. Stunned Harry walked through. Running up the little hill, he stopped, having arrived on the top with wide eyes. The ocean stretched itself so incredibly far in front of him. Foaming waves broke themselves at the beach. Harry inhaled the air and tasted salt. The wind was heavy but Harry stretched out his arms and braced himself against it absorbed in the sight of the ocean which he had never seen before. How beautiful the ocean was. For one moment he forgot everything around him as he looked at the incredibly width.

Then he reached slowly into his pocked and fetched out his wand. Thoughtful he regarded it an instant and remembered involuntarily the wand shop, where he had bought his wand and his adoptive father had murdered the shop owner. Swinging his arm back he threw his wand down the cliffs. His eyes followed his wand fall and then he watched how he was swallowed from the white foaming waves. From now on, he vowed, he would never again use his magic, neither with his wand nor without it. Harry stood there, on the cliffs, for a long time and stared at the sea.

As he finally turned around the pictures of his parents' wedding came into his mind. Sighing he climbed up the stairs and halted in front of the portal which was also decorated with the family crest. He reached out his hand once more and like before the winged doors opened and let him enter.

With thumping heart he stepped over thethreshold. Harry's timid steps echoed loudly through the great hall. His gazes slid up to the arched, artfully decorated ceiling, to the broad staircase which led to the upper floors, to the corridors which branched from the hall and to the walls where countless pictures hung and finally to a little table which was standing in one of the corners where a bunch of red roses was standing in a vase. Harry crossed the hall and stepping nearer he saw that they were real flowers. A shudder seized him. Who had put the roses here? Looking down on the floor he also realized that he could see nowhere any dust. He looked to the stairs and said to himself that it was unlikely that danger would threaten him here if he would draw attention to himself and even if, it didn't play a role anymore.

"Hello? Is there anyone here?" he shouted and did several steeps forward.

As a thin voice rang out, his heart nearly stopped beating. Spinning around, he saw a little creature standing in front of him which bowed deeply. With large eyes it stared at him.

"Master has called?"

Harry nodded relieved. How stupid of him not to think immediately of house-elves. Then an idea struck him.

"You wouldn't know by chance how I could get back to Knocktourn Alley, would you?"

The house-elf inclined her head.

"You could use the chimney, master."

A little moment later Harry stood in front of a marvellous chimney and reaching for the floo powder that was in a silvery bowl the house-elf handed to him, he looked once more around. Here they would be able to stay and forget the events which had taken place yesterday but in the same moment Harry knew that he never would be able to.

"No!"

Sirius hit his fist against the wall while everything in him refused to believe that Harry had betrayed them so. But whichever way he looked at it, it didn't change anything at the facts. Harry had been in the archives of the Order, it was hardly possible that the scarf had got there by accident and then the escape during they had had cursed Felix and had stolen his bracelet. Felix had identified the three without a doubt.

If they were innocent of the crime they wouldn't have fled. The bitter feeling he had for being betrayed was so much stronger as then. Peter had been his friend but Harry he had loved, he had been his godson.

'Why? Why did you do this, Harry?'

Only when Charlotte began to speak, he realized that he had spoken it aloud,

"Sirius, we don't know what exactly happened. Perhaps…"

Sirius whirled around.

„What? What do you want to say, Charlotte? That it hadn't been Harry? His scarf was there and apart from that they came through the window, probably he turned into a phoenix and Alfred and Bill are dead, murdered and the Dark Mark was hovering exactly in the middle. Of course Harry knows how to conjure it up and little later they attack Felix and flee! If they hadn't anything to do with the murders, then they hardly would have left the castle so hurriedly!"

„Sirius…," Charlotte tried to say but her husband looked at her with an expression in his eyes that clearly said she should be silent, spun around and marched out of the room. The door crashed loudly shut. Charlotte sighed and cursed Sirius' stubbornness. It was right, she thought, all evidence pointed towards Harry and his friends being the culprits, at least Harry and Caro since Draco had been under Remus' supervision. Nevertheless she found that the events made no sense.

She was aware of it and had not forgotten it one time that Harry had grown up under Voldemort's care but she doubted it strongly that it had been Voldemort's plan to kill an Auror who even hadn't a high rank within the Order and a young man which had begun to work for the Order only a short time ago. Strangely no one wanted to hear this. Apart from that she didn't understand what the children had wanted in the archives. To spy and to find out their planned tactics and their newest strategies in the war it would have been much more logical to break into Akbus' office which was simultaneously the assembly room for his closest confidents. Those thoughts no one wanted to her as well.

She didn't try after all to amiss the events as not so tragic, she was shocked and speechless the same as the others but she had grew fond of Harry and now she should have been completely wrong about him? She thought back to Christmas, how sad and at the same time so unbelievable eager he had looked as Sirius and Remus had told him stories about his parents. Could it really be that Harry was capable of murder? She couldn't believe it, didn't want it, but neither Sirius nor Dumbledore, yes not even Remus who had been always so sensible, wanted to listen to her if she said that it didn't make any sense. Perhaps Charlotte thought the feeling of disappointment and betrayal went to deep. Sirius had loved Harry so much and Dumbledore as well, Charlotte was sure of it.

And they all had been so happy as Harry had appeared in Hogwarts with his friends. Sadly she sighed and stood up. Snatching a warmer cloak she set off to the lake. She needed a bit fresh air. Arriving at the portal shortly afterwards and inhaling the cold air, she shook her head. If the three had murdered Albus, she would have understood it. Voldemort would have let his worst adversary be eliminated by three children; that would have been an ingenious plan and she could quite believe the Dark Lord to be capable of doing this, but Alfred and Bill?

Involuntarily thinking of how Sirius had found Harry and his friends, she shook her head. Had been everything only theatre then? But Harry had been magically overexerted and had glowed. There must have had been a reason for this. Something she had to do, Charlotte decided, she only hadn't the faintest idea what. Looking over to the lake she saw Ginny, Hermione's best friend, sitting on the shore. For one moment she wondered why Ginny was sitting by the lake in such a cold; then her thoughts occupied themselves again with the confusing situation which had broken over them so unexpectedly.

Ginny looked motionless at the lake. The water was more grey then blue and also the waves which sloshed on the shore were higher than usual. The wind which was blowing against Ginny's face was fierce and she was cold in her much too thin robe. She hadn't though of taking a warmer cloak. Tears ran down her cheeks.

She couldn't believe it that her brother was dead. Bill, she thought and her heart clenched painfully. Suddenly she looked down on the white glistering bracelet which was flung around her wrist. She had never told anyone who had given it to her. Not even Hermione knew of the charmed Christmas night where she had met Harry high up on one of the towers. She couldn't explain it, but she clung with all her might she was capable of to the certainty that Harry hadn't been it. As the alarm had rung out she had been in the library and had looked for books with Hermione that could help them by one of their homework.

She had been worried but only when Charlie had come to her with ashen face she had realized that something terrible must have happened. Only bit by bit she had discovered what had happened. Harry, Caro and Draco had disappeared into thin air and everyone thought them guilty. Only she didn't believe it. The reason for this she wouldn't have been able to explain but she knew deep down in her heart that Harry hadn't done it. Raising her hand, she put her cheek on the coolly bracelet and forlorn she stared at the lake.