Author's Note: Thank you to Lana D and Chase Cassie Chase for being excellent betas.
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The Bodyguard
Chapter 24: Draco's Diary
"Has Dobby broken Harry Potter's heart by talking about the Unbreakable Vow, sir? Dobby must punish himself most severely, sir!" The house elf stared up at Harry with wide, miserable eyes and a wobbling lower lip. He grabbed one of his batwing-shaped ears. "Dobby will start by slamming his ear in the oven door-"
"No!" cried Harry. With an effort, he strengthened his Occlumency, sat up straight, and smiled. "I'm fine, Dobby. You did exactly the right thing, telling me what the Unbreakable Vow meant. Thank you," he lied, in the most cheerful voice he could manage. Inside, he wanted to scream in torment, but he forced it down. "If you'll please excuse us, Dobby, we have to pack up Draco's things now."
Maintaining his Occlumency, with so many turbulent feelings inside, was the hardest thing Harry had ever done, but he knew he'd been successful, when Dobby released his ear and his lower lip stopped wobbling. "Dobby is good at packing, sir," squeaked the elf much more cheerfully, and clicked his fingers. All around them, Draco's possessions rose into the air, and flew into his now-open trunk.
Harry saw the contents of the trunk sorting and folding, before the lid shut with a snap. "Thanks again, Dobby."
"Dobby left Draco Malfoy's diary, under his pillow, sir. Draco Malfoy has told Dobby before not to touch it, sir."
"That's fine, Dobby," said Harry absently, but he saw Ron perk up, like a dog smelling a bone.
"Harry Potter will be seeing Professor Hagrid now, sir? Professor Hagrid is living on the sixth floor with his creatures and Dobby is cleaning up after them all the time, sir. One of them tried to eat Mrs Norris last week, but unfortunately, she survived, sir." Dobby bowed low. "Goodbye, Harry Potter and Ron Wheezy, sir." He clicked his fingers and vanished.
Ron lay back on Draco's bed, and expelled a breath. "So THAT'S what the Vow was about. It IS some kind of Love Potion. Umbridge is SICK."
Harry could barely hear Ron over the screaming of the creature in his chest. He released his Occlumency and felt himself slump, like a marionette when the strings are cut.
"Poor Draco. Enslaved all his life. Unable to ever marry and have kids," said Ron with feeling.
"Forced to love me," said Harry tonelessly. "I can't think of anything worse."
Sitting up in a hurry, Ron said, "Don't say that, Harry. Draco's lucky to have you-"
"Lucky to have a master like me?" asked Harry bitterly, not looking at him. He sensed Ron was thinking hard about his next words.
"I mean, lucky to have a boyfriend like you. I've never seen Draco so happy since you started dating. Even his Slytherin friends have mentioned it. He was always such a sulky, miserable brat at school-"
"And now he's as happy as a house elf with a good master?" finished Harry, inwardly vowing to give Hermione money for SPEW. He was starting to understand, as never before, the true horror of a house elf's existence. Not only were they forced to be servants, but they were also forced to be HAPPY about it. The emotional control was ten times worse than the physical control.
Ron groaned. "I never thought I'd ever be saying this about Draco Malfoy, but don't be hard on him. He's not doing this to hurt you," he said, misinterpreting Harry completely.
"I know," said Harry, coldly. "It's not Draco's fault that he loves me. It's mine. I didn't defend him properly at the Wizengamot and now he's been saddled with a spell bond that makes a house elf feel free by comparison. Poor Draco would have been better off in Azkaban." Harry's voice cracked slightly at the last word and he fell backwards onto the bed. He was trembling all over. His eyes stung with tears and he blinked them back but they overflowed.
Ron looked like he was biting back what he had planned to say, in case he made things worse. After a pause, he admitted, "I'm rubbish at times like this, Harry. I never know what to say. Hermione always said I had the emotional range of a teaspoon, and she's right, as always." He patted Harry's shoulder, very quickly, in an awkward, embarrassed fashion. "Don't be upset, mate. Please! It will all turn out all right. Just wait until we can talk to Hermione, she'll make you feel better. She's read the Vow and I bet she knows exactly what it does."
Harry's heart seemed to implode as he considered this. "You're right, Ron. Hermione MUST know what the Vow does. Which means she knew all this time and didn't tell me." Ron's mouth opened in protest but Harry didn't let him get a word in. "She knew Draco wasn't really in love with me, but she watched me fall in love with him and didn't WARN me." Harry's sense of betrayal was absolute. It pushed him onto his feet and made him pace the room. He wiped his eyes harshly on his sleeve.
Ron watched, his face a mask of horror.
"And I bet Hermione isn't the only person who knows what the Vow means," Harry added. The Order and Hermione's accidental hints about the Vow, over the last few days, now seemed like a conspiracy. "Lupin and Moody know about the Vow for sure. They said Barnes told them something outside the Wizengamot, but they wouldn't tell me what. And Tonks must know. I bet ALL the Order know. No wonder they allowed an ex-Death Eater like Draco into the Headquarters, they KNEW that he couldn't betray them. Maybe they were even laughing at him behind his back?" Harry felt furious on Draco's behalf.
Ron's mouth was opening and shutting like a goldfish's. "I didn't know what the Vow meant," he insisted weakly. His face was so pale, his freckles stood out starkly. "If I'd known, I swear I would've told you."
Harry stopped pacing and looked at his best friend. "I know, Ron. You're the only person I can trust," he said, and started pacing again.
"You don't KNOW that Hermione and the Order betrayed you," Ron insisted. "Maybe Draco loved you anyway? Maybe that's why Hermione and the Order didn't tell you about the Vow? Because it didn't really change anything?"
"You sound like you're making up excuses for them," said Harry angrily. "Draco TOLD me he hated me, before he took the Vow. And how could ANYONE look at the way Draco treated me at school and think that he secretly loved me? He followed me around all the time, so he could insult me. He invented those 'Potter Stinks' badges. He taunted me during Quidditch. He tried to Crucio me..." Harry's heart ached and he berated himself for being so thoroughly taken in. A few days of loving treatment and he had opened his heart to someone who, in truth, hated him. How could he have been so STUPID as to believe Draco loved him? How could ANYONE love him? He felt hot tears of self-pity run down his face, and he hated himself. Resting his forehead against the wall, he willed himself to stop crying.
Ron was silent for a while. Then Harry heard him mutter something.
"What did you say?" asked Harry bleakly, turning around. His insides felt numb and the tears were drying on his face.
Much more clearly, Ron said, "Draco's diary. I know Draco always treated you badly, Harry, but we've got his diary right here. If he secretly loved you, maybe he wrote about it?"
"We can't read Draco's diary, it's private," snapped Harry. Then he gave a miserable bark of laughter. "I sound like Hermione."
"You do, Harry," said Ron, wryly. "But what if I'm right? You can't face Draco, knowing what you know now, without at least checking to see if he loved you before he took the Vow."
"Draco did say he had no secrets from me..." Harry's voice trailed off. He was burning with curiosity, but the thought of reading Draco's diary without permission filled him with guilt. It wasn't as bad as forcibly using Legilimency, but it was close.
"Draco must have made some HUGE confessions," said Ron, sliding over to the pillow and taking out his wand. "He's Locked his diary with a powerful Curse. I checked it while you were talking to Dobby." With an eager glance at Harry, he said, "What could be a bigger confession than saying he's in love with you? I don't know about you, mate, but I'm tempted to have a look."
It WAS too tempting for words. "All right," said Harry, guiltily.
"Cool!" said Ron, grinning. "Just give me a minute. Bill breaks Curses like this for a living and he showed me how..." A look of intense concentration came over his freckled face and held the tip of his wand on the pillow for a long moment, his lips working silently. Then, smirking with triumph, he flipped the pillow to one side, revealing a tiny book.
Bound in dark green leather, Draco's diary was only the size of a postage stamp, though much thicker. The cover was decorated with a coiled serpent, smaller than Harry's little fingernail and embossed deeply into the leather.
Harry picked up the diary. It was feather-light. He'd seen such tiny books in Flourish and Blotts but he had always assumed that they were a joke.
"It's a Shrinking Diary," Ron explained. "Dad bought one for Ginny, after you destroyed Riddle's Diary. He wanted her to have something to write in that wouldn't try to steal her soul. You can hide Shrinking Diaries anywhere because they're so small."
"So how do you write in one?" asked Harry. He turned the pages, but they were an illegible blur. "Let alone read one?" he added. The diary seemed to be full of tiny, pasted-in objects. He ran his finger over a swatch of black fabric, on the first page of the diary.
"You have to stroke the spine," said Ron, not looking his friend in the eye, and Harry guessed he'd been reading Ginny's diary behind her back. Silently swearing never to keep a secret diary with Ron around, Harry ran his index finger down the spine and staggered; the diary had suddenly swelled into a huge, heavy volume he could barely get his arms around. He dropped it onto the bed, and mattress springs pinged at the onslaught.
Fascinated, Harry ran his fingers over the embossed snake, now the size of his head. The diary was well cared for, but showed signs of years of use. Mysterious things protruded from between the pages, which changed colour in blocks, as if Draco had added more pages as the previous ones were used up.
"Wicked!" muttered Ron with relish, flipping opening the diary at random. He and Harry leant in closer and saw...
...the mutilated image of Hermione staring up at them.
Harry and Ron recoiled. Ron's knuckles turned white on the cover, and Harry moaned softly. It was one of Colin Creevy's photographs, taken during dinner at the Yule Ball in Fourth Year and Spellotaped into the diary. Hermione was wearing her blue, floaty dress, and her hair was smoothed back into an elegant knot. But Draco had drawn devil's horns, a moustache, long fangs, and beard on her, in green ink. The Hermione in the photograph was trying to duck out of the way of the graffiti, but it followed her. After a few seconds, she gave up and stared resignedly out of the photograph at Harry and Ron, the horns coming to rest on her forehead.
Ron was lost for words, and Harry tried to rub out the graffiti with his sleeve, making Hermione duck and squeal, but the horns and fangs stayed put.
"Doesn't think much of her, does he?" Harry said, pointing at the caption, 'MUDBLOOD!' "I wonder if Hermione would have been so keen to stay with Draco outside Hogwarts, just now, if she'd known he'd done this to her photo?"
Ron still didn't seem capable of speech, but when Harry started flicking through the diary, he raised a hand in protest, as if he wanted Harry to stop. Harry ignored him and kept going. It was more like a scrapbook than a diary. The photograph of Hermione wasn't the only thing Draco had Spellotaped inside. Harry flicked past magazine articles, newspaper headlines, and chocolate frog cards. But there was a certain theme to everything Draco had Spellotaped in...
"Me," said Harry. "Draco has been collecting articles about me." He pointed to the Rita Skeeter article, where she'd alleged Harry still cried about his parents. The words were underlined, and below, Draco's overly neat handwriting recorded how he'd read the article aloud to the Slytherins in their common room, and they'd all laughed themselves sick.
"I've never seem Potter cry," admitted the green writing below the article. "Perhaps I should watch him more closely? It would be really funny to watch..." Harry felt his stomach churn.
"It looks like Draco's collected every article ever printed about you, Harry," said Ron, finally finding his voice again, as Harry continued to flick through the diary. "YOU don't even collect your own articles like that."
"I prefer to pretend they don't exist," said Harry grimly, passing over an article he'd not been previously aware of, which informed him he must be a Dark wizard because he was a Parselmouth and brooded over the horrible things he might have been doing to the other students at Hogwarts. Draco appeared to have agreed completely with the article, and had even ticked off the things Harry had done to him.
"I'd forgotten what Draco used to be like," admitted Ron, frowning at the diary.
"IS like," Harry insisted miserably. "If it weren't for the Vow..." He pointed to another article, torn from the Daily Prophet. The headline read, 'MINISTRY OF MAGIC EMPLOYEE SCOOPS GRAND PRIZE'. Underneath was a picture of the Weasley family on holiday in Egypt. Draco had scribbled nasty comments about Mrs Weasley's weight, Mr Weasley's bald patch, Ron's freckles and had gloated at length about the fact that Harry must have been spending his summer holidays alone.
"He hates us," whispered Harry. "He truly hates all of us. Especially me..." He gagged. His mouth was filling up with saliva and he had an overpowering urge to be sick.
Ron stared at him with concern, and abruptly slammed the diary shut.
With a yelp of pain, Harry yanked his hand out from the closed book and sucked on his pinched fingers. "What did you do that for, Ron?" he snapped.
"I'm sorry, Harry. Reading Draco's diary was a really bad idea. Let's go and get Hagrid and get out of here," said Ron. He ran his hands down the spine of the diary and it shrank. Then he quickly dropped it into his robe pocket and started to get up. He stopped when Harry rested a hand on his upper arm.
"Ron, give it back," said Harry quietly, but there was an undertone of warning to his voice.
"No," muttered Ron, his cheeks going pink. " I won't let you sit here and torture yourself reading this stuff. Let's go and get Hagrid, then go see Hermione and Draco. We should be talking to them, not brooding here."
"I was reading the diary, Ron. Give it back," growled Harry, as if Ron hadn't spoken.
Scooting back a bit from Harry, Ron said: "No way." But he looked a little frightened.
"Give it to me!" With a cry of fury, Harry dived at Ron's pocket. Ron grabbed his arms and they fought. Ron was much taller than Harry, but Harry was quicker and stronger. With both of them yelling at the tops of their voices, Harry forced Ron down and managed to get one hand into his pocket. He must have stroked the spine accidentally, for Ron's pocket split, and the diary grew to full size, pressing down on Ron's chest and making him gasp for breath. He slid it off, and seized one end. Harry grabbed the other, and they were engaged in a full-scale tug-of-war, complete with loud swearing, when there was a meow near the door.
Wheeling around, Harry saw Mrs Norris staring at them, drawn by the sound of fighting, or perhaps by the presence of the only two people in Hogwarts, apart from staff and house elves, that she could spy on and report to Filch. She certainly had something to report now. Harry saw the bandage on her tail, as she spun around and whisked away.
Ron stopped fighting at once. "Great, Harry! Now we're going to have Filch coming in to tell us off," he grumbled, surrendering the diary.
Harry wrapped his arms around it, feeling more ashamed than victorious. "Good," he said. "I wanted to speak to Filch away from Madam Pince anyway. Pince could be dangerous, if she's really a Death Eater, but Filch is just a harmless squib."
"You haven't got any proof that Madam Pince is really Eileen Prince," grumbled Ron, rubbing his arms and looking at Harry crossly.
He was right, Harry knew, and he wracked his brains, wondering what proof he could come up within the couple of minutes before Filch arrived. Suddenly, a wonderful idea occurred to him. "I think I can find proof," he said. He got to his feet, put the diary down and walked towards Draco's trunk. Ron seized his chance to grab the diary and Harry said, "Wait!"
"I don't want you to read it any more-"
"I'm not going to read it, I'm going to write in it. Turn to a blank page, Ron."
Ron looked at him doubtfully, then opened the diary at the last page. Harry opened the trunk and peered inside. Dobby's reorganization had made everything very easy to find, and he spotted a quill and a bottle of green ink right away. "Don't you think Irma Pince is a rather strange name?" asked Harry conversationally. He was glad he and Ron weren't fighting any more.
"I thought her name had something to do with pince-nez. You know, those weird glasses that she wears," said Ron, shrugging.
"Maybe. But I've noticed that there's often more than meets the eye to wizarding names. They mean something about the person. Like Sirius Black - his name meant Black Dog Star," said Harry. He paused for a moment, reminiscing about his dear, departed Animagus godfather, who certainly had lived up to his name. "Or they're a scrambled version of their true name. Like Tom Marvolo Riddle became 'I am Lord Voldemort'." He ignored Ron's shudder, sat down next to the diary, dipped the quill and wrote IRMA PINCE on the blank page.
"This is not going to work," said Ron, leaning closer. "There's not enough letters, Harry. You'll never get 'Eileen Prince' out of Irma Pince."
Harry stared at the name. Ron was right. But he had to do something. He scribbled out the R and moved it next to the P. And that was all he needed to do. The answer was staring him in the face and he had all the proof he needed. It had helped that the scribbled out R looked a bit like an apostrophe...
The sound of Filch's wheezing breathing came through the door. More out of habit than necessity, Harry activated his Occlumency and Legilimency and turned his apparently cheerful, twinkling-eyed face towards the caretaker.
"What's all this I hear about fighting? Explain yourselves!" wheezed Filch, glaring at the two teenage boys. His words were angry but his tone was pleased. Harry knew there was nothing Filch liked better than catching and punishing students, even ex-students.
"I think it's more important YOU explain why you're concealing a known Death Eater, Eileen Prince, from the Ministry. I know she's been hiding out here as Irma Pince, the Librarian," said Harry cheerfully. He was pleased to see Filch couldn't have been more floored by this remark, than if Harry had punched him in the face. The caretaker's jaw worked, but no sound came out.
After a few incriminating moments of silence, Filch took refuge in bluster. "How dare you! I've never heard anything so ridiculous! The Hogwarts librarian? A Death Eater? Is this the gratitude we get for letting you into Hogwarts? We won't be letting you in again!" he roared.
But Harry thought he looked more terrified than angry. Sweat was popping out of Filch's forehead, and even without his Legilimency, Harry could tell Filch was lying. "Don't lie to me, Filch," said Harry sweetly. "One word to the Ministry and I could have both you and Prince thrown in Azkaban for the rest of your lives." He could see Ron giving him a rather startled look.
Only Filch's ragged breathing could be heard, for a few moments. "What do you want?" wheedled Filch, his tone oily and subservient.
"The truth," said Harry. Filch looked up, glaring right into Harry's eyes. This was what Harry had been waiting for. He stared into Filch's squinting eyes with his Legilimency...
A tall, majestic wizard, with a long, white beard and hair, dressed in magnificent, embroidered robes, was presiding over a wedding. "Do you, Argus Filch, take Eileen Prince to be your lawfully wedded wife?" asked Dumbledore, beaming from ear to ear. Beside him Filch stood Severus Snape, who was looking uncharacteristically happy, and holding out two gold rings on a cushion. On the other side of Filch stood a woman, who was holding Filch's hand, and it wasn't just her happy expression that made her look like an older, female version of Snape...
Filch broke eye contact and the memory ended. "Irma's not a Death Eater!" he whined insistently. "I know what you want. You want to blackmail us! We don't have a lot of money. I'm just a caretaker and-"
"How dare you!" exclaimed Ron indignantly. "Harry is the Chosen One. He isn't going to blackmail you." But he sounded a little uncertain. "Isn't that right, Harry?"
Filch looked back at Harry, who took the opportunity to plunge into his mind again...
The wound on Severus Snape's leg looked nasty and Filch was handing him bandages. Snape was quivering with anger. "Potter saw my leg!" he snarled, a vein flickering in his temple. "If the boy tells everyone, how will I explain it to Quirrell ... and that THING he's carrying on the back of his head?"
Filch held out a bandage and muttered something soothingly.
But Snape was too furious to listen and he could barely sit still as his stepfather bound his leg. "Harry Potter is JUST like his father. A bully and a trouble-maker through and through..."
When his rush of rage at seeing Snape faded, Harry realised both Filch and Ron were staring at him, waiting for his reply. Filch showed no anger at having his mind read, and Harry realised a squib like him probably couldn't even detect Legilimency being performed, let alone protect his mind against it. "Of course, I'm not going to blackmail you," Harry said coldly. "But you have to convince me that Prince isn't dangerous. Some of the Death Eaters have tortured and murdered hundreds of people. What is Prince doing here at Hogwarts? Waiting for orders from Voldemort to kill school children?"
Filch shuddered at the name and took a step backwards. "No! Never!" he cried out desperately. "She's not a Death Eater-" Harry met his eyes...
Hogwart's library was dark and deserted, apart from the hook-nosed woman with the haunted expression, who was sitting at the library counter and whispering to an ill-favoured man. Neglected cups of tea steamed in front of them. "Toby Snape used to beat me and Severus," whispered Prince to Filch. She kept pausing as she spoke, as if reliving each nightmarish scene. "He's the reason I joined the Death Eaters. After Toby ... I thought all the Muggles were just like him. I wanted revenge..." She looked down at her cup of tea, tears of shame leaking from the corners of her eyes. "But that first day ... we Apparated to a Muggle village. I saw the Dark Lord use the Killing Curse on an old lady ... and I..." For a moment Prince couldn't go on. "She looked like somebody's grandmother, Argus." Prince started to sob, tears running freely down her face now. "The Dark Lord told me to kill her husband ... I couldn't..." Prince broke down completely and buried her face in a white, lacy handkerchief.
Filch patted her hand sympathetically. "There, there," he wheezed. Harry could feel his love and concern
But Prince gripped his hand fiercely and looked up. "I saved him," she said. "I grabbed his arm and Apparated both of us to Hogwarts. Professor Dumbledore was outside ... I begged him to hide the man. I wasn't thinking of myself. But Professor Dumbledore offered to hide me as well, with the Fidelius Charm. I wasn't a killer, he said..." She blew her nose loudly. "Dumbledore is my Secret Keeper. That's why my face changed, when I asked Dumbledore to tell you my real name..."
The dorm reappeared. Harry was shaken by the memory he'd seen. Not a killer - Dumbledore had said that to Draco on the Astronomy Tower. Then Filch's stepson had come running up the stairs...
Harry felt his rage at Snape projecting onto the caretaker. "She WAS a Death Eater, Filch," he stated in a voice that, on the surface, sounded cold and thoughtful. "I KNOW Irma Pince is Eileen Prince. I know she's concealed herself under a veil since Dumbledore's funeral because he was her secret keeper and she was afraid people would recognise her." Thunderous rage was building up inside him. "But that doesn't explain why you both had the gall to turn up for Dumbledore's funeral, when it was Severus Snape who murdered him!"
Filch took a step backwards in alarm, as Harry got up from the bed with his fists clenched. "Dumbledore wasn't as good as Umbridge," Filch babbled, intimidated by Harry's approach. The mention of Umbridge did nothing for Harry's temper. "But I was sorry to see him go-" Filch began. He yelped in terror, as Harry grabbed him by the lapels of his old coat and slammed him against the wall.
"Harry..." said Ron warningly, but Harry wasn't listening.
"How DARE you talk about Albus Dumbledore? You're the stepfather of the man who MURDERED him!" Harry roared. "Prince and Snape may have fooled Dumbledore into thinking they'd changed their ways, but none of you fool me! Not after what happened to Dumbledore! I'll tell the Ministry about you and Prince and they'll haul you both off to Azkaban where you belong!" He spun Filch around and pinioned his arms behind his back. "Ron, hold him while I go and search for Prince!"
"No! It's not right!" wailed Filch despairingly, his mouth muffled by the wall. "Dumbledore wouldn't have wanted us to die in Azkaban. You're making a mistake!"
"Shut up!" Harry shouted, without pity.
Filch was almost sobbing. "I can't go to Azkaban! Oh, if only Eileen had taken up Dumbledore's offer of a new secret keeper..."
Now it was Harry's turn to be floored. His ears rang with what he'd just heard and his grip on Filch's arms loosened, but Filch was too terrorized to move. "Dumbledore offered Prince a new secret keeper?" echoed Harry. His hands dropped off limply off Filch's arms.
Filch flicked his eyes at his captor. Very cautiously, the caretaker turned around and Harry read the memory in his eyes. Dumbledore had indeed offered Prince a new Secret Keeper, a few days before his murder.
"Yes," Filch wheezed, desperate enough to take refuge in the truth. "Dumbledore said Kingsley Shacklebolt would take over from him. But Eileen wanted to trust to disguise. Kingsley wasn't in on all of Dumbledore's plans, and with him as the secret keeper, Eileen would have lost contact with her son forever."
"But ... but ... Dumbledore COULDN'T have known that Eileen Prince was going to need a new secret keeper. Unless..." Harry's voice trailed off.
"Unless Dumbledore KNEW Snape was going to kill him," finished Ron.
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Author's Notes: Yes, it's review-begging time again. Please ... please ... please ... please review! Feedback makes writing so much easier!
Replies To Reviews:
Thanks to the following people for reviewing: A Raven's last song, Rigel7, nordic knowledge goddess, xoxSasukexox, Katharina-B, HecateDeMort, Your Mom Is My Heart, ThePotionsMiss, Lady Ichabod, sasunaru lover, Yellowwolf, Emu Alive and Kicking, demonicange1, CatWriter, NinjaoftheDarkness, reicheruchan, Potter's Wifey, Esgalhothwen, GreenEyedCatDragon, Stefania Mo, Moonsign, AmaranthineAnathema, thrnbrooke, ProperT, Kittendragon, Riku-Rocks, Kit turned Mighty, LunaSky, rekahneko, AngelLuva,
Keya127: Thanks for your review. Chapter 9 is the worse offender, as far as fanfic/review reply ratio is concerned. I'd merge some of those earlier chapters, but FF doesn't allow it. In later chapters I made sure the fanfic part massively exceeds the review part. e.g. Chapter 19 is over 8000 words long and only a tiny fraction of that is review reply. I feel I have to put the replies in, because to not reply to people who have made the effort, would be rude. Time I spend fiddling around on FF trying to reply separately to approximately 40-60 reviews per chapter is time I'm not writing, so I put replies at the bottom of the next chapter, so I can write faster. Replying to reviews publicly also saves time because I don't have to answer the same questions over and over again.
The Earth Mystic: Glad you liked the dream. Dreams are meant to be odd. The impression I got about teenage Snape from his potions book, was he was a bit of Hermione, as far as brains were concerned, and a bit of a Ron, for trouble.
Melissa: In theory, the ring of fire should appear around Draco's neck when he disobeys, so why didn't it when Draco went to get Nagini against Harry's orders? Perhaps Hermione will know... ;-)
Fmh: It's definitely Harry's upbringing that makes him so angry.
claire2007: Thanks. Ginny's currently dating Dean in this fanfic.
Mak Felton: Thanks for staying up all night to read. I hope your eyes are okay.
catseye348: Thanks! Actually, I intended The Bodyguard to take place a month after the events of HBP. (You can probably see clues to this, where I haven't edited them out. For instance, Harry being considered too young to use magic in the kitchen.) Harry was supposed to be 16 and Draco just turned 17 (his birthday's in June). But someone pointed out 16 wasn't the homosexual age of consent for some countries, so I bumped their ages up to 18 so the story wouldn't be illegal.