Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or any of the Potter-verse. Everything you recognise belongs to the magnificent Ms Rowling. I do, however own any characters you don't recognise.
A/N: No long wait this time! You get Allie's reaction here, and you begin to see a little of what Harry does after his fifth year, though there isn't much in this chapter. It's getting late, and I want to get this posted, so no review responses this time, but thank you to everyone who reviews.
Fulfilling Prophecies
Chapter eleven
Still October 29th, 2000
"He explained about who I am, about my parents, but most importantly he explained about what I am." Deep breath, just say it, "Allie, I'm a wizard."
Silence; there was a pause when nobody spoke. Allie was wearing an expression that would've been amusing if Harry hadn't been quite so nervous. Connie was sitting quietly still, looking cautiously at her blonde friend. But Allie didn't even notice she was being watched, she just sat there, silently looking at him.
Then she laughed a short laugh. It sounded harsh and forced, particularly since she was looking slightly angry. "I thought you were going to tell me what was going on in your life, Harry; not feed me some pathetic attempt at a joke."
"You don't believe me," Harry stated flatly.
"How can I when you tell me that you are a wizard?" Allie was definitely angry now; she was gesturing wildly with her hands and staring straight at the black-haired young man sitting opposite her. "I suppose you wave around magic wands and wear pointed hats, do you?" She said sarcastically, a tone of voice she seldom used.
Harry blinked once, "yes, actually we do. Though I only wear the hat when I absolutely have to, I very much dislike them. As for the magic wands," he pulled his own from its customary place in his forearm holster, "most witches and wizards need to use them, though a few can do a very small amount of magic without them."
Allie was staring indignantly at Harry, while Connie was looking interested at the mention of wandless magic. Turning her attention to her long-time friend, Allie addressed Connie, "you don't actually believe this, do you?"
"Well, yes. I already knew Harry was a wizard, my cousin, Hermione, was one too, and she showed and told me a few things" The brown-haired girl spoke calmly, and this seemed to settle things down a little, though Allie still looked disbelieving.
She turned once again to Harry and said, "Prove it. Prove magic is real, and that you, being a wizard, can do it."
Obviously expecting some objection, she looked slightly surprised when Harry just shrugged and said, "Sure."
Thinking for a moment about what he would show Allie, Harry kept his grip on his wand relaxed. Making up his mind, he spoke clearly and said "Wingardium Leviosa" pointing his wand at his glass on the table.
Harry thought Allie was going to actually faint. He saw her eyes widen and her face pale as she watched the glass float from the low coffee table to her eye-level. "H-how? How is it possible?" Allie waved her hand above and below the glass, looking as though she expected to feel some sort of resistance in the form of invisible string holding it up.
She turned to Connie, trying to gauge her reaction to the strange phenomenon. Connie Granger was still sitting quietly, watching, not the glass, but her friend. "I know it takes a bit to get used to, Allie. It seems to be much easier to deal with if you learn about it when you're younger."
"Are you okay, Allie?" Harry asked her nervously. He didn't want his friend to be scared of him, it was the main reason he had never told her, that and the fact that he was trying to get away from thinking about any of it.
"I – I think I'm okay. It's just a lot to take in." She laughed nervously, all traces of anger gone as she watched Harry float the glass back onto the table. "Can you do anything else?"
Harry grinned at her, "Yup, I can do loads more." He proceeded to demonstrate by transfiguring the table so that it had legs, animating it so that it walked around the room at a slow pace; he then placed a charm on Allie's clothes to make them change colours every couple of seconds, though it took her a while to notice it as she was still watching the table make its way around the furniture. Harry was noticing that Connie was also very interested in what he was doing.
"I'll show you one last thing, and then I really need to tell you more." The two girls focussed their attention on him, he casually removed his previous spell work, leaving the table on the other side of the couch from where it usually was. Then, closing his eyes and concentrating for a moment – it had been a while since he had tried this piece of magic – Harry thought in his mind animus.
The two girls gave small shrieks when he transformed into a rather large black panther. It had been a very proud moment for him when he completed his first transformation into his animagus form. He thought the panther was a very suitable animal for him, while not quite as Gryffindor as, say, a lion it was still a brave creature, just a slightly more cunning one. It was this latter aspect that pleased Harry the most, when he finally started to grow out of his naivety after his fifth year, he had embraced some of his Slytherin qualities and realised he could be quite cunning and sneaky when he needed to be. Hermione had given him the nickname Bagheera when he had shown her, and the two of them had laughed at Ron's confused face before explaining that it was 'a muggle thing' – a phrase they had had to use a lot for Ron and most of the other pure-blood wizards.
Tilting his black head up to the two stock-still girls, Harry gave a big yawn, showing off all his teeth, before licking his lips and walking up to Allie. The poor girl was too scared to move, but Harry merely started purring and rubbing his head against her legs – with almost enough weight to push her over.
This seemed to bring her out of her fear, and she said in a cautious whisper, "Harry?" When he looked up again and nodded his large head, she began to tentatively scratch behind his ears. His purring grew louder and he rolled on his back in pleasure.
"You're just a big kitten!" Allie said to Connie without too much nervousness.
Harry enjoyed the two girls' ministrations for a few moments longer before padding softly away and transforming back into himself.
"So, what did you think?" He asked them with a soft smile. He received two big grins in response.
After his display of magic to Allie and Connie, Harry explained about most of the rest of his life at Hogwarts. He missed out a few things that he didn't want her to know, such as Ginny's involvement in opening the Chamber of Secrets. It was when he was getting to the end of his fifth year that things became more difficult to recall.
Allie had been asking a few questions when she really didn't understand something, but for the most part she just let Harry keep his narrative going. Connie had been filling in a few little details she had gotten from Hermione that she thought Allie might be interested in, but had otherwise been quiet. However, when Harry got to telling his friends about the Department of Mysteries, he frowned and slowed his story down.
"What happened at the end of my fifth year was difficult in ways that nothing before it had been. It's still kind of hard for me to think about it, so I hope you don't mind if I don't go into too much detail." Seeing only understanding, Harry continued. "I got a vision from Voldemort that my Godfather, that's Sirius, was being held by him. So I, naturally, had to go and try to rescue him.
"Despite a few attempts at stopping me, including my nasty Defence professor threatening to curse me with a highly illegal curse, I managed to escape the castle with five of my close friends. Once we were at the Ministry of Magic, where the vision had showed Sirius to be, it didn't take long for us to get to where I knew he was being held." Harry sighed, "But he wasn't there. I had been tricked. There was something else of interest there though, a sphere that had my name written on the shelf below it. Once I picked it up, the Death Eaters showed up, demanding I give them the prophecy. I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but it didn't take long for me to realise that they wanted the sphere I now had, and they wanted it undamaged. We managed to hold the Death Eaters off for a while, but there were too many injuries within the group for us to be able to get out on our own. Luckily the Order showed up. I told you about them, right?" Allie nodded. "Well, Sirius was one of the ones who came – he had been itching to get out of headquarters for ages, and was enjoying the fight, which was now going well for our side."
Harry took a deep breath in, this was the hardest part. "Sirius was fighting his cousin in this strange room with a veiled archway in the centre. She… she got him with a curse, right after he had been laughing at her, and he fell through the veil. He… he never came out of it, he died because of my foolishness." Closing his eyes tight to stave off tears, Harry listened to the silence. Neither of the girls was moving, they both had sad and horrified expressions and didn't dare to break the tension.
After a minute of silence, Harry spoke again. "After that everything was different. Later that same night I got very angry with my Headmaster for not explaining things to me when it could have prevented Sirius' death. You see, he told me a prophecy. It involved Voldemort and myself, and basically said that I either had to kill him, or be killed by him. It's rather a lot to take in for a fifteen-year-old who had just lost the closest thing they had to a father." Harry gave a small chuckle, "his office was a disaster area after I was through." It's a good thing Albus never got me angry in his office again, Harry thought to himself, I don't think he ever bought enough to replace his broken possessions.
Not letting either of the girls interrupt, Harry ploughed onwards, into his sixth year. "I grew up a lot over that summer. I was annoyed with Dumbledore for the secret he had kept from me my whole life, but I understood that I needed him, so I didn't push him away. He arranged for me to receive training from several different Aurors – Wizarding police really – and had at least one of them there to supervise my continued Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape." Snape had particularly hated it when Moody was supervising; the old auror didn't trust him and liked to show it. "My training eased off a little when I started school, but I still had private lessons to help me get ready. I was also admitted into the Order as a non-active member once I had completed my Occlumency training." That had been a battle and a half trying to convince Sev that I was ready for any mind attacks that might come at me. Harry remembered his potions professor using legillimency on him at random occasions – in classes, when he was walking down the hallways, in the Great Hall at dinner time – it had taken Harry a whole month of being able to fend off these attacks completely before the man had grudgingly said it was the best he could hope for.
"Not a lot happened for most of the year, Voldemort made attacks, which I wasn't allowed to help fight against, but there wasn't anything that directly affected me like in previous years at Hogwarts; not until a few months before the end of the school year anyway." What had happened to Harry at the end of his sixth year had been more trying than his Godfather's death, and he knew it would be more difficult to talk about. He wasn't going to tell them everything that happened to him, but it didn't stop him from seeing, and feeling, it all again as he recalled it.
"It was the middle of March, and I got called into Dumbledore's office. I didn't expect to see my muggle aunt and uncle standing there, looking absolutely terrified, along with my squib neighbour, Mrs. Figg."
A/N: Okay, now review! Please?
Let me know what you like and dislike! Is there anything that really sucks? Or anything that you really like? Do you think Allie's reaction is believable? What do you think happened at the end of Harry's sixth year (the next chapter will show it in a flashback)? Do you like Harry's animagus name? I can imagine Harry and Hermione having to say 'it's a muggle thing' a lot to Ron! Anyway, thanks everyone for reading - and reviewing, hopefully ;)
