Chapter 3
What Have I Done
After several more days in Liverpool, Harry felt more comfortable with the city and grew to appreciate it. He enjoyed sitting in various sites to watch normal people live their daily lives. Businessmen in suits rushing up stairs into multistory buildings; young couples walking hand in hand; mothers pushing their babies in prams; teenagers not much older than he strutting along, trying in vain to impress their elders. Perhaps the city had seen better days, Harry mused, but he preferred it that way. Harry realized how much of real life he missed by being alternately holed up in Hogwarts and 4 Privet Drive.
He developed a routine of sorts. In the morning, he breakfasted in one of two restaurants near his room. Lunch would normally be purchased from a street vendor, and for supper, Harry found a different restaurant every evening. The Dursleys almost never included Harry in their infrequent excursions to restaurants, so Harry found eating in muggle eateries to be something of a cultural experience. He enjoyed his meals immensely.
Trying his best to blend in, and to hide his scar, he always wore his Liverpool FC hat, and on a lark even bought one of the football club's red jerseys. He figured he would appear to be nothing more than a football crazy teenager, of whom millions exist throughout Britain.
The remainder of his days passed less enjoyably. Mostly he roamed the streets and parks of the metropolis, observing Liverpudlians and mulling over his predicament. He reviewed all that he knew from his "lessons" with Professor Dumbledore, only to conclude that he still understood pitifully little. He hoped to devise a plan of attack, but so far the only item on his agenda remained his upcoming meeting with his aunt in a week's time.
Loneliness replaced the initial exhilaration of his escape. More and more he thought about Ron, Ginny and Hermione, his closest friends in the world. With so much time on his hands, he mulled over his decision to break up with Ginny following Dumbledore's funeral. He did not want her to be involved in the mess his life had become, but he realized the futility of his gesture.
The fact of the matter became crystal clear. Being a friend of Harry Potter meant placing one's life in peril. Ginny and he made no effort to disguise their brief courtship at Hogwarts, walking hand-in-hand openly, even kissing in public on occasion. Everyone at Hogwarts knew, even the Slytherins. Probably even Malfoy, though he had not been around much during those weeks. By now, Voldemort would know about all of his friends, Ginny included.
He desperately wished to call Hermione, but he resisted the temptation. Who knew what measures the Ministry possessed? Perhaps they had some magical means to listen to her phone, and Harry assumed that her house would be watched in the belief that he would try to meet with her. The thought of sending her an owl occurred to him, but he realized that he had no owl to send, and no idea where to find one in Liverpool. Besides, he resolved to avoid all things magical, at least for a couple of weeks. Still, he needed Hermione's advice, and he felt lost without her.
All of these thoughts and more filled Harry's head during his supper late in the evening, when a strange feeling snapped him out of his trance. He felt the eyes of somebody watching him, and immediately tensed. Could the Ministry have found him? Could an auror be hidden under an invisibility cloak? Slowly and casually, Harry lifted his head and glanced around the sparsely populated restaurant. In a moment he determined the source of his disquiet.
A pretty girl of about Harry's age appeared to be staring at him. Their eyes briefly met, and Harry thought that she seemed familiar, but he broke off the contact immediately. His initial tension lessened, but he wished the girl would quit looking at him. Over the next several minutes, Harry briefly glanced in her direction, pretending not to notice her, but she continued to focus on him. He started to eat the remainder of his sandwich and chips quickly so that he could leave.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl stand and move towards him. Harry instinctively reached his hand down to touch his wand, just in case, but he tried to ignore her presence. Perhaps she actually had been looking elsewhere, Harry thought, and he only imagined that she was staring at him. In a few seconds, he knew otherwise, for she stopped directly in front of Harry's table.
"You're Harry Potter, aren't you?" she asked abruptly, though in a friendly manner. Harry looked up and for the first time had a good look at the teenage girl. Of average height, she had beautiful long wavy brown hair, almost black, which set off the lighter skin of her face. She dressed as a typical muggle teenage girl, jeans and a tank top on the warm day, over which she wore a light unzippered sweatshirt due to the temperature's drop in the evening. In the one second it took Harry to look her over, he concluded that before him stood a very pretty girl.
Harry did not want to answer her question, so instead he asked his own, "Do I know you? You seem familiar." He tried to smile but could not be sure how it appeared to the girl.
"If you are Harry Potter from Little Whinging, then you do. Or you did." She stared pointedly at Harry's scar, which from close up she could see more clearly through Harry's tangle of black hair (he had removed his hat inside the restaurant). "You ARE Harry Potter. I recognize your scar."
I know this person, Harry told himself, and he knew it to be true the more he examined her, but a name did not come to him.
Suddenly he blurted out, "We went to school together, didn't we? I'm trying to remember your name." She opened her mouth, causing Harry to lift a hand. "Don't tell me. Let me try to remember." The girl smiled broadly, and Harry returned a less enthusiastic grin while he racked his brain.
"MELISSA," he suddenly blurted out in a half yell, then lowering his voice, "Your name is Melissa, right? But I don't remember your last name, I'm afraid. It's been a long time since I attended school in Little Whinging."
"You're right. My name is Melissa. Melissa Montgomery," she confirmed with another smile, and Harry nodded his head upon hearing her surname, "I haven't attended school in Little Whinging for a long time either. If I recall, you left school the year before my family moved to Liverpool."
The two former classmates stared at each other for a few seconds, neither sure exactly what to do next, now that the mystery had been solved.
To break the silence, Melissa shook her head and commented, "I can't believe we ran into each other like this. What are the odds?"
"Well, as they say, it's a small world," Harry replied, then remembering his manners, "Why don't you sit down?"
"OK, but just for a few minutes," she agreed, "My friends will be waiting for me." Harry glanced over to her table to see two other girls, both of whom carefully witnessed the meeting between Melissa and the stranger. His old schoolmate sat in the chair across from Harry. "You've changed quite a lot since I last saw you. If it wasn't for your scar and your hair, I wouldn't have recognized you."
"Yeah, well, the scar does set me off a bit. Always has." He tried to remember back to his muggle school days, but found that six years as a wizard at Hogwarts had largely erased those memories. He only vaguely recalled Melissa Montgomery, and surprised himself that he even knew her name.
"What are you doing here in Liverpool? You don't live here, do you?" Melissa inquired. She sensed Harry's unease and considered cutting their chance meeting short, but something about him peaked her curiosity. She remembered his vibrant green eyes from their younger days, but those eyes seemed to have a depth to them that she would not expect from a boy of her own age. There seemed to be nothing frivolous about him.
Harry never considered the need to invent an alibi for his presence in this city, and he tried his best to evade the question.
"Oh, I'm just here for a few days. Had a little extra time, and I always wanted to see Liverpool, the Mersey, the Beatles, and all that." He decided the best way to deflect her inquiry would be to change the subject. "I never knew that you moved to Liverpool. When did you do that?"
Their intended short conversation lasted two hours. Harry gradually fashioned a way to tell his life story in a way that did not exactly include lies. He informed her that his aunt and uncle sent him to a boarding school in Scotland, and that he preferred the school to living with his relatives. Melissa informed him that due to her father's employment, her family moved to Liverpool from Little Whinging the year after Harry left school. Seemingly she lived a happy, normal life in her new home, and Harry could not help but notice that she had adopted the Liverpudlian accent, though less pronouncedly than natives of the region.
All the while that they conversed, Harry silently scolded himself. He should not be talking with her this long. They were becoming too friendly, and he was enjoying this conversation far too much. His life did not allow for friendships with muggle girls, yet he continued to talk, enjoying every minute. Melissa seemed to be a genuinely happy person, laughing easily, but also showing genuine interest in Harry and his life. And the more Harry looked at her, the more he liked what he saw.
Melissa's friends had long since left, and as the hour approached eleven in the evening, she informed Harry that she needed to return to her home before her parents worried. Harry nodded his understanding, and after paying for his meal and the extra drinks they consumed during their conversation, he walked her out the door to the street.
"I really enjoyed seeing you again, Harry. If you're going to be here a few days, let's get together. I'm on break, so I can show you around the city. It would be fun." Melissa's mouth twitched slightly from nerves, not sure of Harry's response, and not sure that she should be offering such a proposal to a boy she truly did not know. Sure she knew him years ago when they both attended primary school, but they had never been close friends in school, and she had no way of knowing what kind of person he had become.
Yet she liked him and found him handsome in a funny way. Certainly Harry had grown over the years, now approaching six feet tall, but he had not filled out much, leaving him perhaps not scrawny but hardly well-built. Yet she loved his messy black hair and his penetrating green eyes. More than that, however, she felt that this boy had something inside of him that the boys she knew in Liverpool did not, that he had experienced more of life than they.
If she only knew!
Harry immediately knew that he must turn down her offer. They had passed a wonderful evening together, and Harry truly appreciated the interruption to his loneliness, but he could not allow himself to become close to her. It made no sense. He would stay in Liverpool only another few days, with no intention to return. Why should he set themselves up for inevitable heartache? And he had to take great care in all of his actions. Surely the Ministry was tracking him, and maybe Voldemort too for all Harry knew. He could not put Melissa into that kind of danger.
But he liked her. Would it be so bad to have her show him around one day? He may as well have a little fun while in town. It did not take much to convince himself to do what he wanted to do from the beginning.
"That would be wonderful," Harry responded after a brief pause, "If it's OK with your parents, of course. I mean, you barely know me. For all you know, I could be a dangerous criminal." Melissa laughed.
"I'll take my chances, Harry. How about tomorrow? I'm free."
Harry walked back to his room after they made arrangements to meet at eleven the next morning, shaking his head, all the while thinking, What have I done? What am I doing?
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"When did he leave?" Remus Lupin, Harry's former professor, asked Arthur Weasley, the newly designated head of the Order of the Phoenix. Professor Minerva McGonagall, newly designated headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardly, also attended the meeting. Though Arthur officially led the secret organization, in reality the three of them jointly assumed leadership.
"Kingsley believes about a week ago, but he's not part of the team trying to locate Harry, so his information is spotty," Arthur clarified, "What we do know is that Scrimgeour wants them to bring Harry in, and sooner rather than later. His disappearance has created quite a lot of turmoil." Arthur stood and moved next to the fireplace in the sitting room of the Burrow. With age, his formerly bright red hair had dulled to a reddish brown, and in recent years, his hairline began to recede. Combined with the effects of the stresses of his life on his face, Arthur appeared a decade older than his true age.
"Any theories as to why Harry would leave?" McGonagall asked dryly, slightly irritated, "The blood protection on the house in Little Whinging would have lasted until his birthday at the end of the month. It seems strange that he would disappear in the middle of July."
Arthur shook his head, explaining, "Obviously, only Harry knows for sure. We have our theories. Harry knew that the Order had a watch on him, but we always gave him his space. Possibly he discovered that the Ministry was tracking him. The blood magic would not prevent the Ministry from acting, as we discovered with the dementor incident a couple of years back. It's the only idea that makes any sense."
"Who was on watch for the Order? How did Harry escape his notice?" Remus asked, also with a hint of irritation. More than once Harry's minders had failed in their duty.
"You mean 'her notice,'" Arthur responded with a similar tone of voice, "Tonks. Can't really blame her though. Harry had returned to the house for the evening, and she had no reason to believe that he would leave. She overheard some shouting between Harry and his uncle, but apparently that was not uncommon. They've been going at it all summer. He probably left under his invisibility cloak."
McGonagall, dressed in her black dress and robe as usual, pursed her lips, deep in thought. Other than an extra line or two around her eyes, she appeared to be holding up well following the death of Headmaster Dumbledore.
"Why does Scrimgeour find this situation to be of such importance? " she asked, "You'd think he has bigger fish to fry."
"That we don't know," Arthur replied, "We know that Harry and the Minister have met at least twice, once right here at the Burrow and once after Dumbledore's funeral. We don't know what they said, but quite clearly the meetings did not go well. Ron told me that Harry and Scrimgeour do not get along, but we don't know more."
"Have we questioned Ron and Hermione yet?" Remus suggested, "Harry might have contacted them."
"Not yet," Arthur explained with a frown, "We only found out ourselves a couple of days ago, and I haven't wanted to worry them, but that's the next item on our agenda. One thing is for sure. We need to find Harry before the Ministry does."
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
A pudgy rat paced erratically about the bedroom of Peter Pettigrew at Sarazen Manor. He dared not let his human brain think the thoughts currently caroming about. Long before, Peter learned that Voldemort could sense his anger when he thought in his human form. But when the animagus transformed into a rat, he discovered that he could express all of his frustrations without the dark lord sensing it later.
All of the death eaters in the Manor felt frustrated at their inactivity. Voldemort informed them daily that soon they would take their leave of the mansion, yet every day nothing happened. Beyond knowing glances among them, no death eater would dream of expressing their frustration openly, and in fact they tried their best not even to think such thoughts.
Peter's frustrations, however, derived from yet another insult-laden tongue lashing administered by his master, who for reasons unknown saved his worst tirades for Peter. The unfairness of it ate away at Peter day after day and month after month. After all, who found the dark lord's spirit in the forests of Albania? Who performed the spells to allow his spirit to regain a physical form? Who cared for that disgusting being? Who found Bertha Jorkins? Who cut off his OWN HAND to allow the master to regain his body? Yet how did the master repay him? By treating him like dirt.
In his rat form, he fumed to his heart's content, and barely kept his sanity. But he increasingly asked himself how much longer he could stand it.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Hermione appeared out of thin air near the River Otter, about half a mile south of Ottery St. Catchpole. More than a week had passed since she received Harry's note, yet not a word from him. Each day her anxiety level increased, but she refrained from informing anyone else about his disappearance. Surely the Ministry knew by now, and the Order of the Phoenix normally followed him too, according to what Harry told her previously. Finally her resolve broke, and she decided to confer with Ron.
She walked up the country path from the river to the Weasley residence, The Burrow. The ramshackle house had not changed a bit, in Hermione's estimation, but she had other matters on her mind and did not give it a second thought.
From the kitchen, Molly Weasley spotted Hermione walking across the unkempt lawn, and the older witch quickly removed her apron and rushed to the side door to greet her unexpected guest.
"Hermione dear," she gushed, "What a pleasant surprise. Come in, come in." The two witches hugged briefly.
"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione responded with a grin, "I've been a bit lonely, so I thought I'd visit with Ron and Ginny."
"Of course, dear," Molly reassured, "I think they are on their brooms on the quidditch pitch. Go ahead and walk on back."
Hermione felt the stiff breeze, and found it refreshing in the warm weather. After a minute she rounded the house and saw Ron and Ginny lazily throwing a quaffle back and forth, sometimes a little to the left or right or above or below. They easily maneuvered their brooms to receive the quaffle. Ginny first noticed the figure walking towards them and immediately recognized Hermione's gait. The two Weasleys promptly tilted their brooms towards the ground, and moments later they greeted their friend.
Almost immediately, Ron and Ginny sensed that something was bothering Hermione, and she admitted as much.
"Let's go somewhere that nobody can see or hear us. I have something to show you," she requested ominously. Ron led them to the edge of the forest, and the three entered several yards until they could no longer be seen. Hermione pulled Harry's letter from the pocket of her robe and handed it to her red-headed friends.
Ginny opened the letter, and Ron and she read it silently. They looked up at Hermione without the expression of surprise that she expected.
"We already knew," Ron explained in response to Hermione's confusion, "Dad told us yesterday. He asked if we knew anything about it, if we knew where Harry might be. Of course, we told him that we didn't, which is the truth."
"Has he called you on the tellyphone?" asked Ginny hopefully. Hermione shook her head, ignoring her pure-blood friend's mispronunciation.
"The letter doesn't tell us anything," Ron concluded after rereading it quickly, "Harry could be anywhere."
"I know," Hermione fretted, "I thought I should tell you. I didn't know that you already knew. If your father asked you about it, that means the Order is after Harry too. The Ministry, the Order and Voldemort. This is not good."
Harry's three friends stared at each other silently for several seconds, as Hermione's statement pretty much summed it up. They heard the leaves about them rustling in the breeze.
"What can we do?" asked Ginny in little more than a whisper while pulling a few hairs from her eyes, "Do you have any idea where Harry went?"
"No, I don't," Hermione admitted, "I've tried to read Harry's mind, so to speak, but there's no way to know. I don't think he would have gone to London; that would be too predictable and too close to the Ministry. Probably he took the train to another large city, but it could be anywhere in England or Scotland, or even Wales. I've been thinking and thinking, all the time, what can I do? It's so frustrating, but all we can do it wait until we hear from him."
"And hope the Ministry doesn't find him first," added Ron, to which Ginny and Hermione nodded their heads dejectedly.
The three walked back to the house a short time later to discover the presence of Arthur Weasley, summoned by Molly so that he could speak with Hermione. Arthur smiled genuinely at his favorite muggle-born witch from whom he had learned so much about muggle culture. After brief greetings, Hermione decided to get to the point.
"I don't know where Harry is, Mr. Weasley," she informed him sadly, "Ron and Ginny told me that you know that he left his house. He sent me a short note about a week ago, and I haven't heard from him since." She saw no reason to hide Harry's short letter, so she handed it to Arthur, who took a few seconds to read it before handing it back.
"Well, that doesn't help much," he sighed, "but I truly did not expect you to know. Harry is smarter than that."
"What can you tell us about this, Mr. Weasley?" Hermione asked, hoping to glean whatever information she could, "Why would the Ministry want to follow Harry?"
Arthur paused before answering, not sure how much he should reveal to Hermione and his children, but in the end he saw no harm in filling them in, since the Order knew so little in the first place.
"All we know is that Scrimgeour wants to bring Harry in. Arrest him and hold him. We don't know why exactly, but you know that Harry and the Minister are not on friendly terms." Hermione had never seen Arthur more serious than at that moment, and he stared at the three teenagers for a few seconds. "The Order is trying to find him, but we have no leads, few resources, and limited information from the Ministry. An auror by the name of Harrington is in charge of locating Harry. He's experienced and talented. Relentless. But he's also fair and careful. We don't think he'd hurt Harry unless he had to, but we can't let the Ministry find him first. Once he's under its control, there won't be anything the Order can do."
Ron, Ginny and Hermione gazed back at Arthur with similarly serious expressions, and the four of them shared the same feeling of helplessness.