Disclaimer: I do not own anything of the Harry Potter universe, nor do I make any money playing with the characters. This is presented solely for the enjoyment of myself and any others who wish to have their sanity assaulted by the utter crap that my mind produces.

A/N: What a chore it was to write this chapter. I thought I had completed it no less than four times, but ended up deleting the whole mess and restarted it. Sorry, but no cliffhanger at the end of this chapter… well, not much of one, anyway. (heh heh… let me know what you think of my little prank on Vernon… it will be a running subplot throughout the story.) On with the show! (Word Count: 5987)

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Chapter 18: Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

From The Life of Harry James Potter – Excerpt from Chapter 15: The Purge

Upon Voldemort's defeat at the end of the Purity War, there was a population boom even larger than what had occurred after The Rise. The Purebloods were forced to concede that the half-bloods and muggleborns had a substantial place in wizarding society, especially when the atrocities committed by the pureblood Death Eaters and their sympathizers became public knowledge. There was a short period of time where the pureblood elite denied the extent of the atrocities, but after almost two years of very public trials where the crimes of the Death Eaters, using liberal application of Veritaserum, were confirmed and confessed to, the hard-liners had no legs left to stand on.

There were soon calls for reparations and apologies, which were grudgingly paid by the families and estates of the convicted Death Eaters to the affected victims… the ones that were still alive, that is. Consequently, the sudden wealth of the half-blood and muggleborn witches made them irresistibly desirable, regardless of their physical appearance. Weddings of the newly affluent non-pures to the newly near-destitute purebloods became quite common, as were the results of the numerous honeymoons that followed.

It was mildly amusing to me at the time, for as hard as Tom Riddle and his thugs tried to eradicate the 'inferior' classes of magicals, it was ultimately their machinations that did more for magical unity and the expansion of mixed bloodlines than anything else had ever done… ever.

Alas, that unity was only fleeting. A handful of Death Eaters still remained at large, and it was commonly believed that they had fled Britain in the wake of the Dark Lord's demise. With the Ministry's use of Legilimency and Veritaserum, both of which were not used during the Death Eater trials after 'The Rise,' none could claim the Imperious Curse as a defense. Getting captured and questioned had invariably led to a death sentence, as Azkaban Prison could no longer be trusted to keep the worst sort of magicals secure.

Thus came the fateful day that started 'The Purge.' Although there was an obvious, but at the time mostly unnoticed, absence of 'elite' pureblooded children on the Hogwarts Express, and the fact that three new carriages had been added to the train several years earlier, the train was filled to near capacity. In an instant, nearly an entire generation of mixed-blood and muggleborn children had been ruthlessly removed from magical society when the train was destroyed. There were hardly any families that were left untouched by the tragedy.

Little did anyone know at the time, but the destruction of the Hogwarts Express was just the beginning.

As Draco Malfoy had bought his way into the Ministry's Department of Magical Education as a Clerk in the registry of records, he was privy to the list of magical children born in the United Kingdom. As soon as a magical child was born, whether from magical, mixed, or muggle parents, a file was created in the registry. Malfoy had access to the names and addresses of every one of them.

Within a fortnight of the Express's destruction, over ninety percent of the names of muggleborn children in the registry were marked as 'Deceased.' Of course, nothing was printed in any of the wizarding publications about the disturbing number of muggle children who vanished without a trace or had turned up dead. It was a muggle problem, after all…

Notice within the magical community quickly picked up when half-blooded children started disappearing at an alarming rate. Due to the recent rise in the desirability of muggleborn and mixed-blood witches, there was a rich harvest of mixed-blood children.

Even with the growing panic and increased awareness amongst the non-pureblood families, within six months, the entire list of pre-school aged children mainly consisted of the most notable pureblood names.

By this time, Draco Malfoy had long since resigned his position at the Ministry to pursue a more lucrative career as an… 'Entrepreneur.' The subsequent news that a multitude of foreign pureblood children were turning up missing was lost on the majority of the British wizarding populace… as they were blinded by their own miserable grief and couldn't be bothered to pay attention to foreign affairs.

The black market on magical children in Britain boomed. The self-exiled Death Eaters were shipping in hundreds upon hundreds of pureblooded children from all over the globe. After a quick memory modification, the young magicals suddenly believed they were orphans and were anxious to join a proper wizarding family. More often than not, these 'adopted' children, once of marrying age, were quickly and quietly matched to the natural children within the elite pureblood community. Malfoy's newly established orphanage was soon trading prime pureblood children as though they were cattle… with the proceeds being used to develop the method that would eventually return Tom Riddle back from the brink of oblivion.

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Wednesday, July 7th, 1989 3:25 PM

Pale gray eyes stared out through a second-story bedroom window, absently looking down upon the back garden of a modest house in the north of London. In that garden, a teenaged girl sat at a small table which held a white china tea service. The girl carefully poured tea into a set of small china cups and placed each individually in front of the three other seats around the table while chatting amicably to her guests seated there.

The gray eyes scanned each 'guest' that was seated at the table. There was a pink erumpent gracefully lifting her trunk in order to pretend to take a sip of the newly poured tea, a fuchsia dragon that was dressed in a frilly yellow sundress, who seemed to be completely ignoring the tea and was content to blow wispy smoke rings into the air above the table, and a rather worn looking jackalope whose animating magic seemed to be fading, as its jerky movements were causing it to spill a considerable amount of tea from the cup before it ever reached its stitched-on lips.

The boy watched his cousin in a detached sort of contemplation. She was nearly seventeen and still playing 'tea party' with stuffed animals? He always knew that she was somewhat immature, but what she was now doing was downright childish. Why wasn't she out cavorting with her friends, hanging around Diagon Alley and giggling to each other over the young wizards who would pass by?

He absently studied her face as she conducted her make-believe party. She had the same pale complexion, dark blue eyes, and high-cheekboned, heart-shaped face as her mother… and his mother, for that matter, which seemed to be a defining trait for the Black women. Only her hair seemed to display the genes donated by her mudblood father. The Black women usually had jet black hair, like his Aunt Andromeda, or platinum blonde, like his mother, Narcissa.

His cousin had wavy, light brown hair… or she did at that moment. He was told that the way she looked at the moment was her 'natural' appearance. He was well aware that she could change the way she looked at any given moment, and if she wasn't paying attention, it could change involuntarily to suit her mood. She had even tried to cheer him up when he first arrived by changing her nose and mouth into an orange duck's bill surrounded by metallic green feathers and began quacking and waddling around the room. He was loathe to admit, but he almost did laugh at her childish antics…

Almost laughed…

The deaths of his parents were still too fresh in his mind. He merely turned away from her and plodded up to his new room… the room in which he was now occupying.

He glumly scanned his current surroundings, noting that there wasn't much unoccupied space in this small bedroom. Every cupboard, bookshelf, every nook and cranny was taken up by all the things he took from his old, much larger bedroom. There were many things he had to leave behind simply because there wasn't enough space in his new room to store it all. The thing he missed most was his wand. His new guardians had taken it away from him when they discovered his parents had allowed him to carry one, and were appalled to find out that he was actually encouraged to practice magic with it.

He sighed and turned his gaze back to the garden just in time to see his cousin jump up and start waving her arms frantically about. He briefly wondered what she was doing until he saw the small bee that had just landed on the girl's upper chest, just above the neckline of her shirt. Sure enough, the girl let out a surprised scream as the bee stung her.

Draco's eyes widened at what he saw… or thought he saw. For the briefest instant, his cousin's hair changed to a deep, coppery red. Not only that, but her facial features shifted from its usual high-cheekboned, pointy-chinned shape to more of an oval shape with a squared chin. Her nose seemed to shrink and widen to accommodate her suddenly wider spread, teary eyes… eyes that he could tell, even from that distance, were not her usual cobalt blue color…

…and then it was gone. She was back to 'normal.'

The change happened so fast that he wasn't even sure he had seen it. It wasn't until he saw the girl look around quickly before she noticed him in the upper window. When their eyes met, a shocked, guilty look washed across her face before she sprinted from the garden and out through the back gate.

Why did she look so guilty? He initially assumed that the form she reflexively shifted to was some random manifestation caused by the pain of the sting, but now he was wondering… did she somehow revert to her 'real' natural appearance? And if she did, why was she hiding it?

He turned away from the window and the now deserted garden beyond with his pale brows furrowed in thought. He would have to keep a closer eye on his cousin.

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Wednesday, July 7th, 1989 4:22 PM

Vernon Dursley was the talk of the neighborhood in recent months. For years, all the people along Privet Drive had seen the morbidly obese man who lived at Number Four shuffle to and from his auto as he left and returned from his place of work. Many had inwardly cringed as the man entered his vehicle, causing the shocks and springs of its suspension system to audibly groan in protest each time. It was even worse when the man's equally obese son climbed in the car with him, and many couldn't understand why there weren't showers of sparks from the undercarriage grinding on the pavement each time they went for a drive.

Lately, however, the neighbors of Number Four had a different reason to stare at Mister Dursley whenever he ventured from his house. At first, they noticed that the strained suspension didn't groan quite as loudly as the man gradually looked marginally less corpulent. As the months passed, they noticed that the man had lost so much weight that he apparently had to buy a complete new wardrobe… not once, but twice.

It was this day that Vernon had returned from work and saw the usual neighbors puttering around in their respective yards. Mrs. Number Three next door was clipping a shrubbery by her front door… the same shrubbery she was clipping the day before, and the day before that. Mrs. Number Five, a tall, skinny woman who was only slightly older than he, was busy washing her husband's car for the third time since Saturday, which seemed somewhat odd to Vernon, as her husband had been away on business for the past week so the auto had not really been driven anywhere to get dirty.

Across the street, Miss Number Twenty One, a rather plain young woman of about thirty who lived alone there, just happened to be checking her post outside of her front door. This also seemed a bit odd to Vernon, as the post would have been delivered almost four hours earlier, and placed into the slot in the door. Even those two peculiar young chaps who roomed together at Number One were loitering in their front garden and were rather obviously watching him as he exited his car and walked towards his front door.

"Good afternoon, Vernon," chimed Mrs. Number Five as she waved the sponge that she was washing the car with above her head with unnecessary vigor, making her water-soaked tee shirt stretch across her rather ample and jiggling bosom, making it quite clear to him that she wasn't wearing any undergarments beneath the shirt.

"G'afternoon, Guv," chirped the young lass from across the street as she also waved at him. He nodded to her with an uncomfortable smile as he walked to his door. He glanced over to Mrs Number Three, a short, stocky woman with a withered face and graying hair, and saw her clipping the air above the shrubbery as she unabashedly stared at him. If that wasn't uncomfortable enough, he looked beyond Number Three and noticed the two gents waving at him in a rather limp-wristed way.

Vernon hurried his pace for the last few steps, wrenched the door open, and practically fell into his house. He leaned his back against the closed door and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Vernon, is that you?" he heard his wife Petunia's voice come from the kitchen.

"Yes, it's me," snapped Vernon irritably as he shrugged off his suit jacket and loosened his bow tie, "Who else were you expecting?"

Petunia appeared in the doorway to the kitchen as he made his way to the stairs to take a bit of a kip. His foot had just touched the first step when his wife's comment froze him in his tracks.

"Umm… dinner will be ready in an hour," stated Petunia nervously, as if she expected that the simple statement would set her husband off on some tirade, "I'll… I'll call you when it's… umm… ready… yes…"

Vernon took a quick, deep breath, and it initially looked as though Petunia's fears were spot on, but he just noisily puffed the breath back out through his bushy moustache as his shoulders slumped in apparent defeat.

"Fine," was all he said as he resumed his trek up the stairs, down the hall, and into his bedroom.

Vernon laid out a set of casual wear on the bed and stripped off the remainder of his business suit. His eyes drifted towards the full length mirror which stood in the corner of the room and he took in his drastically altered appearance.

His tired, sunken eyes just stared at the depressing reflection. Gone were the folds of engorged flab that used to encompass his frame. Now in its wake were folds of loosely hanging skin around his chest and waist that resembled large, deflated party balloons. He watched himself as his reflection ran his thin, bony hands down the clearly defined ribs along his chest. He noted, not for the first time, the dangling skin that hung loosely from his arms. He even held up one of his limbs in an 'Armstrong' pose and morosely batted the drooping flesh hanging from his bicep. He thought to himself that maybe a bit of exercise might tone up his sagging flesh, but he barely had the energy to make it to work every day, much less to exercise.

He almost chuckled to himself as he imagined the reactions of the lusty ladies that lived around Number Four if they actually had the opportunity to view what was hidden under the expensive suits that he wore…

Almost chuckled…

With a depressed sigh, Vernon had lain down on the bed intending to just rest his eyes, but the weakness and fatigue from the many months of self-imposed starvation caused him to fall asleep almost immediately.

An hour later, Petunia's voice stirred Vernon from his restless slumber. He nervously glanced over to his wife in the doorway, not missing the disturbed expression on her worried face just before she scurried out of their room.

"I'm not insane!" Vernon whispered under his breath, but it was painfully obvious that he, just like his wife and son, didn't really believe it himself.

After donning his leisure clothes, he left the bedroom and slowly walked to the kitchen, dragging his feet as if he were heading to the gallows. He stopped in front of the kitchen door and drew a steadying breath. He carefully pushed the door open and looked cautiously into the kitchen.

There, he saw the bane to his existence… the dining table.

Summoning up as much courage as he could, Vernon stepped into the kitchen and over to the dining table. He saw Petunia and Dudley, both of whom were already seated, watching him with no small amount of apprehension. He squared his shoulders and sat down in front of his plate, which was already filled with food, and internally dreading what he knew was about to occur.

He looked vacantly down at the volcano-shaped hill of mashed potato filled with brown gravy, the pile of steamed mixed vegetables, and the thick slab of meat loaf that had even more thick gravy covering it than the potatoes had. He drew a steadying breath as he reached for his fork with a trembling hand. He noticed that his wife and son had yet to pick up their own utensils, as they were both watching him rather intently. He sent a warning glare towards his family, causing both wife and son to drop their gazes to their own plates.

Vernon directed his shaking fork unsteadily towards the meatloaf, stopping its advance a mere inch away from the slab. He glanced up to see that both Petunia and Dudley were, once again, watching him intently until they noticed that they were caught staring again and quickly averted their eyes.

The trembling in his hand became increasingly worse as memories of past meals worked their way to the front of his mind. It all started the previous year after a visit from Petunia's odd nephew, Harry… Planter or something… It was a cordial enough visit, albeit quite short, where he said he wouldn't be able to visit anymore because he and his family were taking an extended vacation abroad, and would not likely be returning for a few years. At the time, he thought it was odd, as he couldn't remember the young lad ever visiting before.

It seemed that right after that visit, he had some sort of breakdown and ended up in the hospital. He had apparently passed out at the top of the landing and fell down the length of the stairs, suffering a few broken bones and more than a few contusions. The doctors said he would be fine, but then something quite terrifying began happening to him shortly after he returned home.

The first time it happened, he was propped up to the table with his left arm and both of his legs bound up in casts. Petunia had set down a plate with a Cornish game hen along with all the trimmings. Petunia had offered to cut up the hen for him, but he insisted that he was quite well off doing it himself.

In hindsight, he should have let her do it. He remembered picking up the fork, intending to skewer the bird with it and hold it in place with his cast, freeing his right hand to carve the bird. In a quick motion, he jabbed his fork into the bird.

Vernon had nearly jumped out of his skin as a blood-curdling wail assaulted his ears. It took him a moment to discover who… or more precisely, what had made the awful sound. He looked disbelievingly at the squirming hen on his plate. His eyes opened in shock as blood began squirting out from around the tines, spraying over the front of his shirt and tie. He remembered yelling at his wife for serving him a bird that was still alive, only realizing after a second glance that the still screaming hen had no head and appeared to be fully cooked.

The worst part about it was that nobody else could hear the wails or see the blood. Petunia looked as though she'd been slapped as Vernon knocked the screeching bird from his plate and onto the floor. He thought she was mad as she scolded him for ruining perfectly good food, and if he wanted something else, then he should have asked for it beforehand instead of insulting her cooking.

After calming himself down, and getting a new fork, he was determined to finish his meal, but as soon as he pushed his fork into the pile of steamed carrots, they, too, seemed to scream out in pain and started to bleed out from where the fork had stabbed into them, spraying bloody gore all over the table that apparently only he could see.

Ever since then, every meal had been the same. Even when they went out to eat, the result was the same… screaming and bleeding food. He even tried picking up the food directly and putting it in his mouth, but the moment he bit down on whatever food he was eating, the screaming, squirming, and squirting commenced. His regular physician had referred him to a psychiatric doctor, who, after many months and thousands of Quid later, almost had the man committed. Upon realizing how close he was to being locked up in a loony bin, he feigned a 'miraculous breakthrough,' and declared himself cured of those odd visions.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Vernon felt the perspiration running down the side of his face. He stared at his trembling fork which was poised to sink into the meat loaf on his plate. He knew what was going to happen. It happened every time, but he had skipped so many meals that his need for food overcame his need to preserve what little sanity he had left. He closed his eyes and jabbed the fork downward.

Nothing…

Vernon cracked open one eye and peeked down at his plate. He initially thought he had missed the meatloaf, but there it was… well and fully skewered, just lying on the plate silent, motionless, and definitely not spurting blood all over the place.

He opened his other eye, just to be sure he wasn't seeing things, or rather, he wasn't 'wasn't' seeing things. He pulled the fork out and quickly stabbed it back into a different spot. He pulled it out and stuck it into the mashed potato volcano and lifted out a forkful, only to let it drop back down into the gravy with a splat.

Vernon's moustache twitched for a moment as his eyes continued to stare at the fork in his hand, which caused both Petunia and Dudley to look at each other concernedly. Suddenly, Vernon cracked a wide grin just before he burst out laughing. His laughter continued for a full minute, which was causing Petunia to glance at the telephone with increasing frequency, obviously debating with herself whether or not to send for the ambulance again.

"It's over!" cried Vernon as moisture leaked from his eyes caused by the extended laughter and the profound relief he was feeling, "Nothing! No blood! No screams!"

"Mum, does this mean that dad isn't bonkers anymore?" asked Dudley, who was quickly shushed by his mother as she studied her husband to determine if he really wasn't bonkers anymore. It wouldn't be the first time he faked his lucidity.

Just to prove it to his family as well as himself, Vernon cut off a rather large bite of the meat loaf, stuffed it into his mouth, and then began to chew happily. A look of relief washed over Petunia's face as she realized he was showing absolutely no sign of his previous mania.

A disillusioned figure that was standing just outside the open kitchen window in the back garden of Number Four Privet Drive intently watched the family inside as they began their meal. She had ended the previous curse the moment the man inside had sat down at the table. She grinned evilly while she waited for the man's reaction to not being cursed anymore. Her smile only grew as she watched the man laughing out loud.

The figure waited until the man of the house stuffed the first forkful into his mouth, after which she theatrically twirled her wand between her fingers before gripping the handle and sending a silent curse through the window towards the formerly morbidly obese man.

'If he liked that last curse, he's really going to love this one!' thought the figure as she double checked that the groceries she had just purchased were still securely packed in her pockets before she disappeared with a muffled 'pop.'

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Wednesday, July 7th, 1989 5:09 PM

Harry burst through the doorway at the top of the cellar stairs and immediately fell to his hands and knees on the carpeted marble floor. His eyes were wide and wild, and his breath was coming out in very short puffs, on the verge of hyperventilating. Panic gripped his chest as his mind raced to comprehend what he had just seen in the secret den below.

'How did that happen?' he thought desperately, 'What am I going to do?'

As if summoned, Wynmae came quickly flitting from the kitchen area and approached the distraught boy. As if sensing her presence, Harry lifted his face to look at the little creature, and a flicker of hope sparked in his watering eyes.

"Wynmae!" yelled Harry as he scrambled to his feet, causing the little sprite to momentarily cower back, "You've got to help her! Come on!"

Harry rushed down the stairs, only pausing for a moment to make sure that the little creature was following him. He wasn't quite sure, but she seemed a little slow and unsteady, at least compared to her usual self.

"Come on! Hurry!" said Harry in a cracking voice as he led Wynmae to the large cask against the wall, "She's hurt… so much blood… she was supposed to be out shopping

He roughly pulled the monstrous keg aside, revealing the blank expanse of wall and the off-colored stone. He tapped his wand, and the narrow doorway appeared once again.

Harry's breath hitched as he once again looked down upon the motionless form of his guardian and friend. Jaana was laying in the middle of darkened room, in what looked like a puddle of blood. Her wide open, blankly staring eyes made Harry's heart drop further into his stomach. He turned away from the doorway and croaked, "Wynmae, can you… can you help her?"

Harry looked into Wynmae's tired, pupil-less eyes. He saw her shrug her little shoulders as she glided over his head and into the room.

Wynmae suddenly let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek. At the exact same instant, Harry saw the cellar in front of him illuminate with an orange glow. A moment later, he felt a searing heat radiating from the small den behind him. If he thought Wynmae was sluggish a moment before, she certainly didn't appear that way as she flew back over his shoulder and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt, burrowing her terrified face into his chest.

Harry instinctively jumped ahead a few paces to get away from the intense heat that he could tell had singed the hair on the back of his head. His first thought was that something like a trap exploded in the hidden den, which led to the horrible conclusion that if Jaana wasn't dead before, she was certainly dead now.

Harry spun around and looked into the hidden room where he saw… well, he wasn't sure what he was looking at. It seemed to be roughly humanoid shaped, but was apparently made out of fire. He didn't know why, but a vague memory pushed its way to the front of his mind… an article, or something that he read somewhere that had a hand-drawn image of what he was now looking at. An instant later, he remembered where he had seen it. It was in the glass case in the Lovegood house, right next to the photograph of a creature that bore a striking resemblance to Wynmae.

'A heliopath?' Harry questioned himself briefly before he realized that knowing the name of the burning creature wasn't helping him in the least.

He started backpedaling away from the advancing creature as he carefully grabbed Wynmae with his left hand and raised the wand that was in his right. He ran through the limited inventory of spells that he knew and started firing off anything that he could think of. He transfigured a few of the wine bottles that lined the wall into small glass javelins, then expanded them horizontally to pierce the creature, but they just passed through its fiery form and melted away in less than a second.

Harry then tried to vanish the floor beneath the creature, instantly creating a deep pit, intending to collapse the sides of the hole on top of it, but the creature dropped down only a few feet before it seemed to flow up the near end of the hole in the floor. In a last desperate move, He vanished some of the corks from the bottles in the racks and summoned the wine out of each of them, levitated the different wines into a large liquid ball and pushed it into the advancing creature. It seemed to slow for only an instant before it continued its menacing advance. He wished he knew that water creation spell, but never thought that that particular conjuration would help in what he knew he had to do in the future.

Harry glanced down at Wynmae in his hand and saw that she was paralyzed in fear. Not only that, but she also seemed to be sagging rather limply. He realized that the quickly building heat in the room was probably killing her. He had to get them out of there, and fast. Harry was about to turn and run for the stairs when the air crackled beside him as a spell whizzed past, striking the creature and blowing a hole right through it's center. The heliopath staggered for a moment, then paused as the empty hole slowly filled in. He turned towards the stairs and saw Jaana bounding down towards him.

"Harry! What the hell is that thing?" screeched Jaana as she sent another concussion spell at the creature. She rushed to place herself protectively between him and the fire-beast.

"I… I think it's a heliopath…, I just… Huh?"

The moment that Jaana stepped in front of Harry and effectively broke the unnoticed Wynmae's terrified stare, the creature stopped in its tracks. It seemed to coalesce upon itself, extinguishing the flames that made up its body and morphed into a tall, good looking, and very familiar man. A man that Harry thought for sure was dead.

Harry heard Jaana's breath hitch as the man spoke to her in his thick Icelandic accent, "Well, well… the little whore has come to play again."

Harry felt Wynmae's body begin to stir in his hand. He let go of the little sprite, who instantly vanished into a puff of mist and drifted towards the stairs. Just as he turned back to Jaana, he saw her wand slip from her hand and clatter onto the stone floor.

"No…" whispered Jaana with a terrified voice that wasn't quite her own. He saw his trembling guardian drop to her knees on the floor in front of him.

"Aye, we're going to have loads of fun now, aren't we?" cackled Jonsson with an evil, leering grin as he advanced towards the whimpering Jaana.

It was Harry's turn to step between a loved one and danger. He already had one of the larger empty wine magnums levitating and was preparing to shatter it while banishing the shards towards Jaana's would-be rapist when the man staggered back a step and then fell to the floor in a heap. Once again, Harry was looking upon the corpse of his friend and guardian.

He stared at the prone figure in shock, watching the seeping blood stain her lemon yellow hair in an expanding pool of crimson, never thinking to just look around at his real guardian. Harry jumped when he heard a broken voice curse out behind him. He turned around and saw another Jaana, one that was very much alive and wiping the tears from her face.

"Damn it!" Jaana hissed angrily as she picked up her wand from the floor, "I should have known!"

Harry's head swung back and forth between the two Jaanas until he heard the very much alive one calmly say to him, "Stay still, Harry, and don't panic. Just keep looking at it and don't move."

Harry looked back to the unmoving corpse on the floor. Deep down, he understood that it wasn't really Jaana, but the magic that was the creature before him kept whispering from the dark corners of his subconscious that she was gone and that he'd be going back to the Dursleys. It took all of his will to stand his ground and not run away in terror. He was also sure that if he hadn't been so practiced in subduing his emotions, he would already be fleeing up the stairs.

Jaana levitated a large, empty ale cask from across the room and set it beside the creature. After removing the lid from the barrel, she levitated the mock corpse from the floor and hovered it over the opening, being careful not to look directly at it while doing so. In a quick series of motions, she let the body drop into the cask and immediately slammed the lid on top of it. Only after she cast a sealing ward around the barrel did she let out the breath she was holding.

Harry was staring dumbly at the now violently shaking barrel when he was suddenly engulfed in a crushing hug from his guardian. After a few moments, she pulled her face back and looked into his still tearing eyes.

"Are you alright?" asked Jaana worriedly as she inspected his singed hair and still smoldering clothes.

Harry only just realized how hurt he was. He tentatively touched his face and felt a stinging sensation. He saw that the skin on his hands were red and felt very tight. He reached further up on his head and felt his burned hair crumble under his touch.

"Hang on a moment," said Jaana as she pointed her wand at the far end of the room and sprayed a stream of water at the smoldering barrels and wine racks. After ensuring that the cellar wasn't going to go up in flames, she turned her attention back Harry.

"Come on, let's get you fixed up," said Jaana as she motioned towards the stairs, "I'll get rid of that thing and clean up down here later."

As Harry silently climbed the stairs, he briefly glanced back at the smoky cellar. The opening to the hidden den was closed. In his panic, he didn't notice when the doorway had closed and wondered if Jaana had seen it. He supposed it didn't matter as he turned and continued up the stairs.