Disclaimer: I own nothing of the 'Harry Potter' universe. I make no money writing any of this stuff.

(Word Count: 3837)

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Chapter 10: An Odd New Friend

Saturday, December 24th, 1988 11:14 PM

Jaana was having a very odd dream… of course, most of her dreams over the previous few months have been very odd.

This particular dream placed her back in Hogwarts sometime during her sixth year. She was running through the halls, trying to get to her Charms class, but she couldn't remember where the classroom was. Panic was starting to set in, as she knew she was late and she didn't want to be responsible for losing any house points.

She found herself rushing down one of the moving staircases, but it suddenly stopped mid-swing. She turned around to intending to climb back up to the landing to find another route, but was surprised to find an entrance to the dungeons at the top of the stairs. Being a dream, she thought this to be perfectly normal.

After a short jog through the dank dungeon passages, she finally came to an area that she recognized. She could even see the stone stairs at the end of the hallway that would lead up from the Potions corridor that she was currently in. She had only taken a few hurried steps when the door to the Potions classroom opened and the Potions professor stepped out into the hallway right in front of her, causing her to stop short to avoid running right into him.

"Out wandering the halls after curfew, are you?" uttered Snape contemptuously, but wearing the slightest of smiles… obviously relishing the thought of docking Ravenclaw a few house points.

"I… I was just on my way…"

"And you, Mr. Barrows… looking for a broom closet for a midnight snog with your girlfriend?" continued Snape with his sinister smile growing wider.

Jaana glanced behind her and saw her seventh-year Gryffindor boyfriend, Michael Barrows, standing right behind her. She felt a flush wash over her face as she looked into his eyes… she hadn't seen him since he broke up with her just before his graduation from Hogwarts. He had said that he couldn't wait for her to finish her last year, as he didn't want a long-distance relationship.

She suddenly realized that they were standing in a small broom cupboard, one that she distinctively remembered utilizing quite often in their after-hours rendezvous. She found herself kissing her boyfriend, feeling his hands traveling up her sided under her school jumper, unmistakably making their way up to her chest. She felt a longing, a need for him to take her… something that she had never before allowed, but now she felt that she was mature enough to bring their relationship to the next level.

She removed her lips from his, dragging them across his rough cheek and finding the soft skin of his neck. She was about to tell him that she was ready, but he ended up speaking first.

"Jaana, get up," said Michael, but his voice sounded much lower than she remembered… and very oddly accented. She thought the question strange, as she was already standing.

She felt Snape grab her shoulder from behind as he said in a similarly deep and accented voice, "Wake up, woman, we're in trouble!"

Jaana jumped in alarm as she awoke to the incessant shaking of her shoulder. She opened her eyes to see Raymond Cooley standing beside her bed.

"The Apparition ward was triggered a few minutes ago," said Cooley urgently, "I got here as fast as I could."

"Harry!" exclaimed Jaana as she jumped out of her bed, not realizing that she was dressed only in a rather flimsy nightgown and a pair of knickers. She let out an embarrassed, "Eep!" as she hastily grabbed for her robe that was hanging on the bedpost.

"Never mind that, woman!" said Cooley urgently as he grabbed her hand and began pulling her from the room and towards Harry's bedroom down the hall. Jaana had just managed to pull her robe over her shoulders when they reached Harry's door.

"Gather up whatever things of his that you can," said Cooley hurriedly as he wrenched open the door, "I'll take the boy and…"

Jaana could see for herself why Cooley went silent. Harry's bed was quite empty, although a bit rumpled from when she had tucked him in a little more than an hour earlier.

Jaana's blood ran cold.

"I thought you said that the new wards would prevent anyone from Apparating into here!" hissed Jaana accusingly, "It must be the Ministry! How could they have found out where he was?"

"Nobody got through the ward," said Cooley as he opened the cupboard door looking for Harry, "Whoever attempted to Apparate into the house got bounced out… very roughly, I might add. That's why we need to move. If anyone is trying to get in here, that means that someone found you out… unless…"

Jaana looked up from the floor where she was checking under Harry's bed. She saw his thoughtful expression and suddenly realized what he was thinking.

"You think that Harry had left and tried to get back in?"

"If he has, then we had better find him quickly. I can't imagine he'd be in very good shape if he did try to Apparate in here… I didn't even know he could Apparate."

"I only began training him last week…" said Jaana worriedly, "he hasn't managed to do it yet."

"Well, let's make sure he isn't here in the house," Cooley said to Jaana before he called out, "Glyph? Barrow?"

With two nearly identical 'pops,' two house elves appeared in the room.

"Do either of you know where Harry is?" asked Cooley as Jaana ran into the adjoining bathroom to see if Harry was there.

"No, Master," came the simultaneous replies from the two elves.

"Quickly, check the house and see if you can find him. Report back to me when you find him, or if he isn't here in the house."

Both of the elves gave a slight bow as they popped away. Cooley could hear the random noises of the elves' Apparitions as they systematically searched the rooms. Not ten seconds had passed when they both appeared before Cooley.

"Glyph and Barrow is not finding the young Master Harry in the house, Master," reported Glyph.

"Glyph, check the garden and the orchard behind the house. Barrow, search the pasture and the woods beyond the front gates. Come get me if you find him."

Cooley turned to Jaana who, by that time, was sitting on Harry's bed with her face in her hands.

"Come on, woman," said Cooley softly, "Let's go check around the stables. If he did try to Apparate into the ward, he'll be needing us."

"I don't know if I can do this anymore, Ray," said Jaana in a cracking voice, "What was I thinking, taking in a child and believing that I could protect him? I thought I was doing the right thing when I saw how those wretched muggles were abusing him, but now… now I think I've bitten off more than I can chew…"

"No time for that nonsense, girl!" said Cooley firmly, hoping to pull the young woman out of the self-censuring mood she was hurling herself into, "We need to… "

Cooley's hand flew to his neckline and grasped the thick beaded necklace he was wearing and said, "Damn it… not again!"

"What?" asked Jaana as she quickly stood from the bed.

"Hurry, gather what you can, we have to leave!" said Cooley urgently, "The ward was banged again, by two this time. Whoever they are, they're persistent!"

With a wave of her wand, Harry's room became a flurry of activity as various items and articles of clothing began flying from the dressers and the cupboard towards a trunk that slid from the foot of Harry's bed to the center of the room. Within moments, the trunk was fully packed and shrunk to the size of a matchbox, which Jaana scooped from the floor and shoved into the pocket of her robe.

I'll have my stuff packed in a moment," said Jaana as she rushed from the room. She paused just outside the bedroom door and called back to Cooley, "The presents! Go get the presents under the tree!"

Cooley nodded and rushed down to the parlor where the Christmas tree was standing. He transfigured a throw pillow that was resting on the nearby sofa into a large bag, then magically gathered all of the presents and guided them into it. After that was shrunk down and placed in his pocket, he turned to see Jaana enter the parlor through the doorway.

"I've got everything," said Jaana breathlessly, let's go."

Just then, a small pop announced the arrival of one of the house elves. The elf seemed panicked as he squeaked out, "Barrow is not finding Master Harry, but Barrow is seeing two Ministry wizards coming from the pasture."

"Lordy, I knew it," said Cooley in a sigh, "Go back to searching for the boy. If you find him, bring him to the bungalow, and let Glyph know… neither of you are allowed back into this house until I say so, understood?"

"Yes, master," replied the elf before he popped away on his mission.

"We've got to hurry," said Cooley, "if Harry's out there, the elves will find him, but we have to go now."

Jaana was shaking uncontrollably as she silently nodded and followed Cooley from the room. They rushed to the front of the house towards the front door. The moment the door was opened, Cooley gasped and Jaana let out a startled scream as their eyes spotted the figure on the doorstep.

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Saturday, December 24th, 1988 11:14 PM

Harry could immediately tell that something was wrong… very wrong. He had Apparated twice before in his life, once while being chased by his cousin and his gang at school, the other was to escape the beating that his uncle was inflicting upon him back in Dudley's second bedroom. While he didn't remember the second instance, he clearly remembered the first. At the time, he had no idea how he had managed to appear on the school's roof, but he recalled that whatever had occurred was certainly uncomfortable, but not painful at all.

What Harry was now experiencing could in no way be described as 'painless.' His head felt like a balloon was expanding inside of it and squeezing his brain towards his face, every bone in his body felt as though it had been broken in numerous places, he could actually feel his internal organs squirming and seething as if they were trying to rearrange themselves in his body, and to top it all off, he found himself lying in about an inch and a half of wet, freezing slush and snow.

He made only one attempt to move and discovered that it was an unimaginably bad idea. He couldn't even lift his face, which was partially immersed in the slush. With every labored breath he took, he could feel a bit of icy slush enter his left nostril, but he could do nothing about it in the condition he was in.

He could, however, open his right eye, but all he could see was an expansive winter landscape. The clouds that had dumped all of the snow had moved on the previous day, leaving the sky dotted with stars and a meanest crescent of a moon that hardly cast any light at all. All around him he could see wisps of foggy mist rising up from the clumps of snow, creating eerie, ghostlike shapes that hovered close to the ground in the cold but humid air. He knew that the wispy fog was quite common during the cold winter months in England.

Somewhere in the distance, he could just see the pinpricks of light given off by some lampposts that presumably lined a road. He could also see the shape of a distant, large house silhouetted against the night sky. With the extreme pain and disorientation he was feeling, it took a few moments for him to realize that the structure was actually The Gables, Healer Cooley's ancestral home that he had been staying in these past few months.

What he couldn't figure out was how he came to be lying in a field well outside of the house when he should have appeared inside of his bedroom. Nothing in the training that Jaana had been giving him had mentioned that anything like this could happen in a failed Apparition attempt… the worst that could happen would be to splinch one's self…

A feeling of terror washed over the young boy as he vainly attempted to take inventory of all of his body parts, but he was in so much pain that it seemed impossible for him to tell if he was missing any bits of himself…

Another thought suddenly struck him… if he did manage to splinch himself, which seemed to him to be a distinct possibility given his current incapacitation, that would mean that the Ministry's Accidental Magic Reversal Squad would soon arrive.

The panic that he had felt back in the Granger house returned in full force as he tried once again to move, but it seemed even more unlikely that he would succeed this time than with his last attempt. The deep breath he drew as he tried to move caused a fresh batch of slushy snow to enter his sinuses, intensifying the pain he was feeling in the front of his head and giving him the worst case of 'brain freeze' he ever had in his life. He was so agitated that he didn't even think to try Shifting.

As he lay there, he could barely feel the wetness of the melting snow beneath him quickly soaking into his clothes. The pain was beginning to slowly ebb, being replaced by a bone-numbing cold that seemed just as bad. After a few minutes, he couldn't feel the side of his face that was mired in the slush. He felt an odd sleepiness creep over his entire being, and suddenly felt that taking a nice nap wouldn't be a bad thing… maybe he'd wake up in a nice, warm bed…

Harry's eyes began to get very heavy as he fought to keep his lids open. He could just barely see the strange wisps of mist that seemed to dance around him as his vision continued to get blurrier by the moment. Then he noticed something that suddenly brought his eyes into focus and made his breath hitch once again.

One of the strands of foggy mist that was hovering near to him seemed to gradually coalesce and formed into a small, roughly humanoid shape. At first, he thought he was hallucinating, or maybe dreaming, but the tiny figure solidified right before his face.

Harry found himself looking into a pair of white, pupilless eyes that seemed to be regarding him curiously. The small creature looked somewhat like a fairy, with wild, flowing white hair, a very pale, flat face, the tiniest bump of a nose, and a pointy chin supporting a small, thin-lipped mouth. The creature's foot-long body was obviously female, seeing that it was completely unclothed, and had a pair of dainty white wings on its back that had the shape and texture of snowflakes.

Harry opened his mouth to speak to the tiny creature, intending to say 'hello,' but all he managed to do was to let out a hoarse gurgle. The sound seemed to startle the slight creature, who immediately jumped and flitted away from him, evaporating back into a foggy mist that remained hovering a few feet away.

Harry laid still for a few tense moments before the wispy vapor resumed the shape of the tiny creature, who remained well away from the scary human child, but was still watching him obvious curiosity.

The creature flitted in a little closer to Harry and said something to him that he couldn't hope to understand. Her voice sounded to him like tiny shards of glass tinkling against each other. The creature looked at him expectantly, but when Harry made no reply, the creature spoke again, this time in a high-pitched squeaking that did sound like some sort of lilting words this time, but nothing he could understand.

Harry's eyes pleaded with the creature as he just managed to softly croak out a feeble, "Help me…"

The creature hovered a bit closer to him, cocked her head curiously to the side, and then said in a barely-audible peep, "Help me…"

"Yes…" said Harry weakly.

"Yes…" repeated the tiny creature with a beaming smile.

Harry's heart sank as he realized that the creature was only repeating what he was saying and didn't understand what he was trying to tell her.

The little creature must have noticed the disheartened look on what she could see of Harry's face because she looked at him critically for a moment before she inched closer to him.

Harry's eyes followed her as she flitted closely above the side of his head. She then did something that he certainly didn't expect. She bent forward and blew a slight puff of breath into his exposed ear.

At first, Harry felt a slight tingling in his ear, but almost immediately the tingling became a stinging, and then an electric sensation coursed through his head, nearly eclipsing the pounding headache that he already had. He clenched his eyes tightly against the pain, but as soon as it came, it passed, leaving him with a slightly euphoric, dizzy sensation that spread throughout his body.

Harry quickly discovered that, while he was still in pain, and he still couldn't move, he didn't feel nearly as cold as he had the moment before. His eyes were still clenched shut when he heard a light, airy voice ask, "Who are you?"

Harry opened his eyes and saw the small creature fluttering just a few inches from his face and staring inquisitively into his eyes. If he hadn't been in such a miserable condition, he would have been embarrassed at seeing a tiny, naked woman that was so near to him that he could see every detail of her thin, pale body.

Harry was just about to try to answer when an unusually loud duet of bangs sounded from nearby and echoed across the countryside.

"Bloody Hell!" bellowed a deep, unfamiliar male voice that sounded as though it were only a few yards away.

When the tiny creature saw Harry's eyes widen in alarm, she quickly flitted up to Harry's head, grabbed a fistful of his hair, which in reality was only a few strands, and faded back into a wispy mist.

At the same time, Harry felt the strangest sensation he had ever experienced in his life. All the pain and stiffness he was feeling throughout his body vanished. He couldn't feel his soaking wet clothes, or even the slushy ground that had been supporting his weight. He suddenly became aware that he could move, but when he tried to push himself up from the ground, he found that he had no arms. It took him a moment to also realize that he had no legs or body, either.

"Be very still," whispered the airy voice from somewhere very near to him.

Despite the panic he felt at discovering that he had no corporeal form at all, he obeyed the whispered voice and remained motionless. Harry took a moment to survey his surroundings, and was very much surprised that he could see the surrounding area as though it were broad daylight, although everything seemed to be in shades of pale and gray, with no discernable colors at all.

He then noticed two forms slowly rising from the snowy ground just a few meters away. They were two men, one short, hefty man with short hair, and the other a much larger and darker man with no hair at all.

"Apparition ward…" said the shorter man needlessly as he sat up and held his head in his hands.

The larger man rose unsteadily to his feet as he said, "No… really? I hadn't noticed."

The smaller man glared at his partner while saying, "We did get the location right, didn't we?"

"Yes, but who in their right mind would purposely Apparate into a ward? Surely, he knew the ward was there."

The shorter man finally got to his feet with a pained groan. He looked around, and, just for a moment, Harry could have sworn that the man looked directly at him.

"Over there," the larger man said, pointing towards The Gables.

"Let's pay the owners a little visit, shall we?"

The two men began walking slowly towards the house in the distance, each massaging their aching muscles and joints, obviously affected by their encounter with the anti-Apparition ward.

"I've got to get to that house before them… to warn them…" whispered Harry. He was surprised to find that his voice has an airy, almost ghostly quality to it. He wasn't even sure he said anything until he heard a soft reply.

"Let us go, then."

Harry felt his being drift lazily over the ground, as if he were a leaf being blown across the ground by a gentle wind. After a few seconds he felt himself accelerating uncomfortably, continually moving more swiftly until it felt like he was being pushed along by a hurricane rather than a breeze. It only took a few seconds for him to cover the distance to the house, stopping when he reached the front door."

"Thank you, it was kind of you to help me," said Harry to whatever it was that brought him home.

"Help me…?" repeated the voice questioningly, "Help me… Yes… I understand."

Harry wondered what the being meant by 'understanding' him until he heard the sound of hurried footsteps from inside of the house.

"I will help you," said the ethereal voice as Harry felt himself coalesce and solidify. A moment later, he found himself lying on the doorstep of the mansion… with all of the pain and stiffness he had felt a minute before while back in the pasture.

The door to the house opened and he heard a startled gasp followed by a muffled scream that he instantly recognized as Jaana's. Harry then felt himself being painfully lifted from the ground by a pair of strong arms.

"What have you been up to, little man?" he heard Healer Cooley ask.

With no small effort, Harry managed to croak out, "Wizards… coming…"

"Yes, I see them," said Cooley quietly, "We'll have a look at you as soon as we're away from here."

For a few moments he felt his body being painfully jostled as he was carried along the house in the opposite direction from where the strange wizards were coming. Feeling that he was finally in safe hands, he allowed the exhaustion he had been feeling to overcome him and he fell into a deep sleep.

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