Chapter 2: The formative years.

Disclaimer: I strive to write smart Dark Lords with a better agenda & motivation than to just kill people. The Harry Potter series features Tom Riddle. I clearly didn't write or own any licences for Harry Potter. My evil people are of the competent kind with a clearly defined outcome in mind. Harry Potter's evil people are none of these things.

A/N: And this is the last bit of massive exposition you're going to get, folks. After this, we get to the exciting bits full of blood, guts and intrigue. But I like to think that this piece will be okay until then. Hope you like it.

September 1st, 1987:

Hermione's meditation exercises (though she insisted on calling them Force meditations) worked well for Harry. He'd realised early on that when he concentrated on a single thing happening when he meditated, he could make it happen. It didn't matter what it was, as long as he could get his mind to see it happening. He'd taken that realisation and applied it to everything he now did. If he concentrated on maths hard enough, it was no longer hard. If he concentrated on English using the Force, it was easy. Anything he did, arts, sports, languages, physics, classical studies, he was the best when he concentrated on it. Or at least the second best, always a step behind his teacher and friend. After she'd taught him the basics, she'd told him to keep practising until he no longer had to concentrate on what he was doing so much. The training did exhaust him rather quickly, often leaving him dizzy and tired despite having not done anything. Concentrating on not feeling tired anymore just seemed to make it worse, too. Though he was feeling a bit better now when he did it.

Again, that was because Hermione brought him food for lunch and told him that if he achieved something she wanted him to, she'd give him the food. She'd taken to slipping him snacks after Dudley started stealing his lunchbox with its one buttered toast in it. And after explaining to her parents that he was being bullied at school, Hermione's mom started packing him a nice lunch too! That was when her parents became his second best friends in the whole world.

It had been a lonely summer for him though. No school meant no Learning, no books, no Hermione, no after-school studying. He had taken to Force meditating and training his skills as hard as he could, day in day out, to drown out the loneliness he didn't want to feel. Chores, filching food whilst cooking, Gardening, he applied as much force to whatever he did as he felt he could get away with. He'd found that he could use the force to make himself stronger, faster, more alert and more observant. He could feel the currents of the force flowing through him, even the warm feeling of that curtain of processed Force that Hermione said looked like a copper dome. It tasted like tin to his senses, and the sound it gave off sounded weak and off-tune. He'd soon found that, unlike Hermione, he was blind to the shape of the Force around him. However, he could hear, taste and feel it flow through him. He may not be able to see through a blindfold like Hermione could, but he could still navigate his way through a pitch-black room, instinctively trusting the force to guide him true. He could also shield his Force presence from his relatives, making his Force field disappear on command.

That was a skill that had saved him at the Dursleys when his grades came in. Had he not shielded himself from his relatives' sight using the Force to steal his report card, he had no doubts that they would have been angry at his grades. Dudley had gotten a passing grade. Harry had been second out of the entire school. Hermione had, predictably, been first. He couldn't help but feel that he'd dodged a pretty hefty bullet there.

There were other things that he sensed he could do through the force, like exploit what he felt were cracks, tunnels in the Force. He'd decided to wait until he'd talked to his teacher, Hermione, before trying them out. Those cracks in particular could be useful if he could control how to enter and leave them at will, but he would wait until Hermione deemed his Mastery of the Force to be sufficient before trying. He made a list of what he felt happening in the force around him, the sounds, tastes, occasional sharp metallic smells that came to him exploring the numerous and varied flows around Little Whinging. He then looked at that list every weekend, sketching out ideas and wondering what he could attempt safely. Flashy and dangerous things were out. However, that still left a lot of things that he could try and do with the opportunities his Force-sharpened wits could ferret out. So far, he'd managed to revive dead flowers in the backyard, he'd bent a small rivulet of the Force that ran underneath the flowerbed into the shape of water and held it for long enough to feed the plants, he'd made the entire house shine with but one pass through with the broom, he'd outrun Dudley scant seconds after sensing the boy's malevolence through the Force, running a hundred meters in under five seconds... Every week, he'd discovered and jotted down what he'd observed, what he thought this sound or that sensation meant in the Force, how he came to that conclusion and how he could exploit it.

And then he'd seen his best friend and teacher getting out of her parent's car this morning. He felt joy, happiness and a ton of new emotions he hadn't even felt through the Force before. When he came up to her, he'd hugged her hard. His happiness continued to mount as he felt her hug him back. He dumped the emotions into the force, allowing his friend to pick up what he was feeling. She gasped.

"Harry! Was that you?" He smiled at her surprised expression. "Why yes Hermione, yes it was." He still felt weird around other girls, but nothing like that even entered his mind when he looked at his best friend in the whole wide world.

"It's... beautiful, Harry." She seemed to be following something with her eyes. He guessed that those were the swirls and vortices his emotions had created as they interacted with the Force, strengthening both their connections to it for a brief time period. The bushy haired girl giggled a bit. "Harry, did you know that your emotions created a stag? It's prancing around, trying to hit Dudley in the butt with its antlers." A stag? By the Force... why does it make me feel so happy to hear her say that? And for a brief moment, he saw an outline of bright light appear at the edge of his peripheral vision before disappearing. "Harry? Harry, Earth to Harry. Come on apprentice, we're going to be late!"

Harry hurried after his bushy-haired friend and teacher, testing out his new title in the privacy of his own mind. And to him, it felt right.

October 31st, 1988:

There were no Jedi, no Sith and no Imperial agents that they had run across... yet. None of the meditations in the supplemental materials (books, games etc...) actually worked. Only the vague instructions given in the films actually seemed to work for them. It was incredibly frustrating. Both of them had felt the presence of Force users far away from where they were, but detected nothing but the intent to go about their daily lives through the Force. They were not good enough yet at perceiving others through the Force to try and make contact, either. Though both of them were good enough to sense whenever Dudley was in the area and hightail it out of there. It wouldn't do for Dudley to go tattling to the wrong people or, even worse, start blackmailing them using this information.

Not even a hint of the Empire's existence could be detected anywhere. Yet, they remained on alert, knowing full well of the emperor's treachery.

Did he not, after all, show what he truly was in the film? Did he truly expect a Force user to not pick up the flaws in seeing the Empire lose to a bunch of teddy bears? The emperor's way is the way of manipulation and deceit. It was clear, despite all the materials stating otherwise, that he won that battle. And even should he have died at the hands of his apprentice (and Harry still growled whenever he saw the treason on TV, though he understood why Lord Vader did what he did), the traitor himself still had the training and the skills to rule either alone or with his children at his side. There was no way the empire would lose. Hermione had been very much insulted by the implication that such a powerful force would lose to such a rag-tag resistance, Jedi or no Jedi. Such was his Master's judgement. Such would he believe until proven wrong.

She'd insisted he call her Master, actually. Saying something about how silly she felt when he'd tried to call her Mistress after watching the films. Still, she liked the title and so kept it, awkward connotations be damned.

Hermione and Harry gathered their study notes together, eager to get on with their schedule. Hermione had tested Harry's observations through her Force vision, corroborating some findings whilst refuting others. Her emotional control had become exceptional, allowing her to isolate which feelings got the best reactions when manipulating one aspect or another of the Force. She'd also figured out that Harry's interactions with the Force and hers were fundamentally different. She was more attuned to the shapes the Force took, while he was better at feeling out the Force itself. Both interactions had their drawbacks and benefits. For while Hermione could see the definite shapes that the flow of the Force took, Harry could feel what the Force was like under several different layers of the Force. Yet, she felt that the next stage of their training would only be able to be undertaken once they were both on an equal footing in terms of capabilities. They had to combine their powers.

So Hermione had proposed something that had shocked her apprentice to the core: that they guide each other through the various exercises the other undertook before interacting with the Force. After watching the films and reading whatever books he could get his hands on, Harry was very much aware of what the title of apprentice entailed. To call oneself an apprentice was to mark oneself as a member of the Sith in the eyes of the Jedi, as far as they could tell. And yet, the title fit. He could not deny that that was the title he wanted to bear, since both him and Hermione were the only ones who could do what they could.

Yet nowhere did it say that an apprentice could teach his Master. And she'd pointed out how much she'd learned by listening to his observations and his thoughts on what the Force could and couldn't do. That, maybe, they would have to learn together to achieve a higher level of understanding in the Force.

December 26th, 1988

It had been a long month and a half, but it was starting to pay off.

Both of them had come to understand that to connect to the Force was an almost purely mental effort. It required concentration and focus, and the larger the amount of force one channeled, the more exhausted the subject felt. Though even their exhaustion was different.

Hermione, by using more emotions to connect with the Force, was emotionally exhausted at the end of her sessions, unable to rouse either a cheerful or sad expression. She was just... blank at the end. It frightened Harry on the rare occasions that his Master had exhausted herself in front of him. Her face was more of a mask at that point than the face of his Master and best friend.

As for Harry, it wasn't rare for him to just keel over in a dead faint whenever his Master asked him to push himself to the limit. She'd panicked the first time that had happened in front of her. Her Apprentice had been lucky she hadn't Force Choked him when he explained that that was how he managed to fall asleep at night, though it was getting harder for him to use that technique to do so.

So, over the past month, they'd adopted each other's meditation style for testing. The early results were encouraging, if a bit worrying.

Hermione's emotionally enhanced Force connections often got out of control for Harry, who wasn't used to acknowledging emotions of any kind outside of those he shared with her. A simple effort to use regret to chill a glass of water through the Force had shattered the glass when the water turned into a massive ice block, for example. Using Pain to mentally focus on one topic led to the object he was staring at catching on fire. And the truly massive amounts of Hate he could conjure using mere memories frightened Hermione badly. Love was, arguably, even worse. She used love as a focus when she wanted things to blossom, grow, heal and come into their own. In the dead of winter at the Little Whinging Park, Harry's Love had made the entire place bloom as if spring had come before Winter had even set in. And the less said about how they'd used Loss, the better.

For Hermione, the use of Harry's techniques was just as successful yet oddly frustrating. Harry had layered his techniques, one on top of the other, as his powers grew. As a result, Hermione had to fully master every single Force meditation technique and ability in sequence before proceeding. Patience had never been Hermione's strong suit when it came to learning new abilities, especially as she compared it to just how much easier it would be for her to just use emotions to do this. In response, Harry had dumped the emotions of Frustration, Anger and Disappointment right into a Force Stream that ran between the two. She'd been in awe, if slightly intimidated by the way he'd chosed to scold her for her uncharacteristic petulance. Afterwards, Harry had made a point of explaining that he'd spent a year mastering what she had achieved so far.

And now was the first time the two were going to test their progress.

"Alright Harry, try again." Harry closed his eyes, his entire being disappearing into the Emotional Force meditation techniques Hermione had taught him. His task was to locate the Force without using his Force feeling abilities. This was the second day of his 'sleep-over' at Hermione's. He'd started this exercise the night he had arrived, and was still at square one. But Hermione's Apprentice was nothing if not patient and methodical. So he closed his eyes again, cleared out his thoughts, and guided himself through the Force Meditation, focusing various emotionally charged pulses of the Force through where Hermione had explained his optical nerve should be. He thought he felt something-damn it! No sensations! He lost control of his emotions, suddenly dumping massive amounts of frustration and weariness directly into the focus of his conscience. And he finally saw a dim outline of the room around him through closed eyes. Something broke at the back of his mind, unleashing a torrent of Force through a connection he hadn't even known he'd had. Pretty soon, a massive wave of positive emotions rushed through a now open pathway, each wave increasing what he could see through his closed eyes. It... felt incredible.

"Hermione, I can see! I can finally see!" he felt like laughing, crying and dancing all at the same time. He opened up his other senses to full capacity, completely immersed in a world nobody but him could truly be a part of. And pretty soon, he would get Hermione to follow him there.

Hermione just stared at Harry. She'd expected him to fail yet again at entering Force vision, preparing herself to offer him the encouragement & comfort a good apprentice needed to succeed and a good friend needed from another. She'd felt him get angry with himself, the small whisps of emotion being channelled unconsciously into the Force starting to multiply and rage out of control. Then, it seemed like the very Force itself caught on fire in front of her. The amount of strangely coloured tendrils that'd blasted through and connected to the Force was staggering. What was shocking, though, was that those tendrils had nothing to do with his emotions. Rather, they anchored themselves to his body.

And then, two things happened in rapid succession. First, that weird-looking scar that seemed to be almost like an anti-Force field in her vision... vanished. Just poof, a strange scream, a cloud of smoke and the anti-Force field was gone. Second, his skin and hair started strobing through colours. He stopped dancing and looked at his gawking master and best friend, her shock tattooed across her face.

"Is something wrong, Hermione?" She didn't know what to say.

January 1st, 1989

Hermione's turn had been slightly belayed by the Christmas spirit. Harry's meditation style was heavily slanted towards what she understood to be the ways of the old Jedi order. She'd broken it down into a three-fold path to success: objectivity, persistence and focus. Whatever you did required absolute focus and dedication to achieve the first time, then got gradually easier the more you trained with whatever you set out with. And Christmas is not the best of times for a young girl to have to concentrate, especially when her Apprentice was still busy simultaneously exploring and ruthlessly imposing control on his body's new connection to the Force. But today was morning of New Year's day, and her parents were unlikely to wake up long before noon, so now was the time for her to finally accomplish something that her Apprentice had achieved after mere months of study.

No, she wasn't jealous at all, of course not. And if she kept telling herself that, maybe she would be able to ignore the reality of it. Still, if she wanted to emulate Harry and gain a Force connection for her body, the first step was to be able to feel the Force flowing through the area. It did not help that her sight was telling her all about just how disruptive Harry's Morphing abilities were to the flows of the Force around them. The normally placid Force lake she could see in her room looked more like a storm-swept sea nowadays, with massive flows suddenly changing direction without any warning at all. She could swear she heard Harry giggling when that happened. This was starting to annoy her. Okay, focus girl.

She deliberately did the hardest thing at the beginning of the exercise, namely cut off her Force vision and dump all the negative emotions into where she'd memorised a Force rivulet to be beforehand. She then extended a tendril of the Force and started probing the area. It was hard, reining in her emotions and avoiding the normal shortcuts her abilities allowed her to take. That was part of the reason she required absolute concentration when doing this. One unconscious slip-up and she would have to do it all over again. Not because she really had to, but because she knew taking a shortcut in this would result in her abilities being less than they could have been to her.

Harry's way required a complete understanding of what was going on before mastery could be declared. And Hermione had spent a month ploughing through the exercises without any shortcuts at all, all in an effort to completely understand what was going on. She understood perfectly how to relate to the Force, blindly connect to it by drawing it to you, how to channel it through the desired parts of your body and how to combine tendrils into a single, multi-layered tendril of the Force. She'd been fascinated by the technique ever since Harry had shown her the previous year. Their studies were slow, given that they still attended school and did what kids did, but they were really good at what they did. Which meant that everything they'd learned in three years could be learned by a dedicated Force user in under three months. They had a long way to go still before being even remotely ready. And this was a true test of just how good she was and how well she would be able to defend herself when the Emperor showed his hand.

Harry's best friend and Master sat there, probing around for a connection of some sort. He could see just how much work she'd put into building the tendril of raw, focused Force. It was a true work of art, that one. Whenever he sent out a multi-layered probe, he tended to make it fairly simple, with three or four layers rather than what he was seeing there. Her probe was prehensile! The damn thing was so heavily layered, she could twitch her thumb and the probe would veer to the left or right. He could see what looked for all the world like muscles about the fifth layer in, the small tendrils moving the rest of the tail whenever their size expanded or contracted. She'd created an extra appendage rather than a probe! Interesting, he'd try that out later. First though, he was going to help Master along for a bit.

Hermione gasped as a sensation rippled down from her probe. She'd touched something! Or rather, something had touched her. Was still touching her. Guiding her... By the force! She jumped as if she'd stuck a fork in an electrical outlet, the sheer power she'd felt through the probe almost giving the 10-year-old girl a heart attack. She angrily opened her eyes and hissed "APPRENTICE! What was that, exactly?"

Harry just smiled that infuriating half-smile he gave her when he was being a prat. "Why Master, I just helped you along". "And how, exactly, did you do that?" "Why, by stuffing that beautiful probe of yours into the Force that seems to have piled up on your floor in a big, chaotic mess my dear."

Her jaw clenched upon hearing that. By the force, had enough of the Force trickled up the probe, it would have knocked her out cold. She was about to explode when Harry raised his hands. "Before you say anything Master, why don't you go through the exercise again?" Scowling at him, Hermione ran through the meditation exercises again before opening herself up to the probe. And gasped.

"Harry, is this what the Force feels like to you?" He looked at his oldest friend, her shoulders shaking as she cried out of joy. "It sounds so... beautiful! It feels... it feels..." Something... swam into view. Playing around in the flow of the Force was an Otter, glowing brighter and brighter as Hermione kept staring at it. And then his stag came out and started playing with the otter. He barely even noticed his hair acquire red and green tips, the two colours he associated with happiness. "Look, Master. It's your avatar of happiness. From now on, you'll be able to see it around you when you are happy and using Force sight."(A/N: feel the schmaltz. Feel it.)

January 2nd, 1989

"Alright Harry, it's time we stepped up our training."

Harry didn't look up from the TV show he was watching. He'd come to realise that he loved science fiction shows... a lot. Funnily enough, he preferred Star Trek to Star Wars. Hermione just said that optimists and realists preferred Star Trek, but cynics and pessimists preferred Star Wars. "And what are we to do Hermione?"

"We are going to learn how to fight with our bodies and with swords, of course." Somehow, Hermione's evil smirk became more pronounced. Harry got out of the couch and faced her.

"Are you kidding, Hermione?" Harry shouted. "Do you know how dangerous that is? You could get hurt!" Hermione sneered at her student.

"And I have had enough of your excuses, apprentice! The reason we are doing this is so that you can finally learn how to control your body without having to focus on the force every damn second in the day. It is driving me mad, having to repeat myself over and over again just to get you to do simple things for me. So either we do this training or I stop teaching and helping you, you hear me? I will not tolerate insubordination from you on this matter. Is that perfectly understood?"

Harry, knowing what was expected of him, dropped to his knees and bowed. "Yes, my Master."

Her ugly expression turned into one of self-satisfaction as her anger started to dissipate. "Good, good. Now go get dressed, Mom wants to take us out for lunch and I want to finally see you wearing decent clothing."

Still bowing, Harry intoned "yes, Master" before getting up and heading for the guest room.

"And don't dawdle! I will know if you do!"

"Yes Master!"

Hermione smirked. Being the Master had its perks.

February 14th, 1989

Harry looked around, his instincts telling him something wasn't right. Ever since the confrontation between him and Hermione over learning how to fight, Harry had been attacked once a day by his Master. Though they'd started on a roughly equal footing thanks to the Force Channelling trick he'd taught her and the Rage amplifier the two had discovered, Hermione had quickly pulled ahead of him in both martial arts and swordfighting. It just wasn't fair. Within a week of her starting to ambush him, he had lost every engagement he'd had with the girl. Hell, one of the times that she'd gotten sloppy and counter-ambushed her, he still hadn't come close. Now, he was spending the majority of his nightly Force channelling time focused on the memories of his encounters with Hermione, trying to figure out what her style was. After reading through a bunch of martial arts and swordfighting books, it became apparent that she was trying out a new technique every time she ambushed him. And she was pulling off the moves perfectly every time. How did she do that, exactly? And just how many fighting styles were there? That was a question for another day.

Whenever the two fought each other, it was either in a secluded area or in the park. In secluded areas, they merely used their bodies and a small amount of force to prevent injuries. In the park, however, they fought using solid wooden training swords. When asked, she'd said that her father Kyle had been an avid swordfighter when she was little. Both them and the swords had a substantial amount of Force kneaded into a protective barrier for both sword and swordsman. Only, due to the surprise attacks, Harry had often started with a handicap early on, when the shield didn't go up on time. Nowadays, he was prepared for it anywhere. There was even that one time where she'd grabbed his arm and displaced the two of them onto the main building's roof, where they promptly engaged each other in a Force and Fists duel. Apparently, the roof was still dented and leaking in places. And today, he'd positioned himself perfectly for the counter-attack.

He set off a Force Pulse, instantly tagging any Force-imbued object that was in the area, invisible or not. And another, checking relative positions of said objects against his enhanced memory. And then the final pulse, which isolated the one object that had moved during all three pulses. It was heading towards him. Game on. He summoned the sword from invisible Hermione's grip, pulling the hapless brunette along with the sword. Cursing, she let go of the sword and flung herself to the side, only to find herself being hugged by her Apprentice. "Happy Valentine's Day, Hermione. Would you rather be my Valentine or my Master today?"

Her eyes widened, then smiled at the apparent non sequitur. He was so cute when he did something like this... wait, where'd that come from? "Valentine, Harry. I want to spend Valentine with you."

He smiled at her. "Thank you! You really are my best friend, you know?"

After which she'd picked up the sword and whacked him over the head with it. "Ouch! Hermione, what was that for?"

"Well Harry, that is for thinking you could get out of fighting. Tomorrow, we are going to have two fights, is that clear Potter?"

Harry gulped. "Clear Miss Granger ma'am."

"Good, now hug me, you big doof."

September 19th, 1990

"Come on, fight harder! I know you can, Harry! Last week, remember?"

"Sorry Master, just getting over a bit of trouble from yesterday."

"Oh, what was it?" Harry sighed. "They got a call from the principal last night, asking why they'd never signed my report cards. They found out about my marks. I only found out about them knowing after they caught me Displacing into the back yard."

Hermione winced. Despite being provided with sufficient food and space to be the kid he was by her and her parents, it was hard for Harry to accept that his relatives would never love him because of his use of the Force. He still held out hope that they would one day turn around and accept his as a son, at least acknowledge the fact that they were family. He'd confided in her that every time he saw Kyle and Sarah Granger he had a hard time not calling them Mom and Dad since they returned any affection he displayed, although not as much as either of them would like. To them, he was still Hermione's weird little friend, the two having decided that telling her parents about the full story of Harry's daily life was only going to make things worse. "How bad?"

"Had to mind-trick them after forcing them to sign the report cards. Nothing too bad, but..." And there was the awkward pause. She hated awkward pauses. "So, are you looking forward to this year?" Oh yeah Harry, real smooth. "It's just the usual, Apprentice. And maybe I should teach you how to change subjects more subtly, given that I am now tempted to ask about the 'but'." Harry kept his face blank in the face of her threat, blatantly unimpressed by his Master attempting to force a conversation. "Why yes Master, I would be glad to learn how to change subjects smoothly". Ha. "Good, now fight me!" He sent a quick stab of force lightning her way, the flash and crackle of the electricity wasting itself against her Force-hardened training Katana. "I see you are getting better Apprentice. That effort almost left scorch marks on my blade. My turn!"

She Displaced herself behind him, Pushing him in the back as she finished swinging herself into a defensive stance. He rolled around in mid-air, launching himself sideways before he even landed. A muffled Boom echoed from the spot he was supposed to land on, smoking debris spewing everywhere. Upon landing, he slammed his hand into the ground and pulled on something only the two of them could see. Cursing, Hermione jumped up as a literal tidal wave of Force washed over where she was standing. As she reached the apex of her climb without descending, she realised that he'd trapped her in a stasis bubble. Tricky bastard. Now normally, there wouldn't be any way for her to overcome her predicament, as a stasis bubble grows stronger the more Force it comes into contact with. But Hermione could siphon the Force out of objects to a certain degree. It was probably enough to destabilise her stasis bubble. At any rate, it was the only way out. So she sucked up some of the bubble's force for herself, the bubble disintegrating with a lout 'pop', only to see her apprentice accelerating upwards towards her, perfectly positioned on top of a massive burst of the Force, training sword ready for the killing blow. She slumped.

"Stop! Alright Harry, you win this one." Even as they both fell gently back to Earth, Harry cheering as he went along, Hermione extended her senses to see if anyone had seen through the Force shield. She sighed. She had watched for five years for any sign of other Force sensitives catching them or even normal people wondering where all the weird noises came from. She and Harry had found that Force wielders did exist here, as they'd inadvertently sensed a few wandering around here and there. They could never figure out who they were, though. The two were always a bit too late, or they found that the fellow wielder had displaced him or herself using the cracks in the Force. There had even been one case where they'd sensed a fellow Wielder, but hadn't seen him. The Wielder had somehow disappeared from view without shielding himself from the Force! But today, they only picked up on a Wielder. Hang on... She Pulsed again. This time, the tone she received back was louder. Whoever they were, they were moving in her direction. She landed, turning to her friend and Apprentice of almost five years.

"Harry! Extend your senses, there's a Wielder coming closer to where we are." Harry frowned, extending an area Probe (a new type of probe he'd developed last year, covering an entire area rather than a single point) and then targeting the conscience he detected.

"Hmm. The mind is almost like a cat's on that one. She's coming here, she has something to announce. It seems that her subject is... you."

There was a couple of seconds' worth of silence. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to hear what she'd have to say, would it?"

He cocked his head to the side, straining to listen to something very quiet. "No Master, not according to what I can hear from her mind."

"Then go get Mom and Dad. It seems we have a guest."

A/N: And there you have it folks. Chapter 2, major snippets of how Harry and Hermione train together over the years and how they form their master/apprentice relationship. Next chapter-everything up until after their first week at Hogwarts. Bear in mind that that's a full year's worth of stuff... Anyone else feels that it's weird, how McGonnagall manages to visit Hermione on her birthday, September 19th, which happens to be in the middle of the second busiest time of the year for a school? Just saying. Oh, and i've also got a new fic up that has Harry Potter and Cat People in it. Check it out if you're bored.