AN: The main part of this chapter will begin with Chapter Thirty-Two of The Goblet of Fire. J.R. Rowling's words are in italics. After that, my own narrative picks up.

Bonus points to whomever gets the reference in the chapter title.

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are."

- J.K. Rowling, The Chamber of Secrets, Chapter Eighteen

Chapter 7: The Prince Did Sit Aside the Sea Blushing with his Siren

As twilight drew around June the twenty-fourth, a number of small things began stirring in the long shadows that covered the various parts of England.

In a long-abandoned manor house, a giant snake slithered past a small, twitchy little man, who bent over an armchair housing a sickly, grotesque, childlike figure.

In an office in a tower at Hogwarts, the headmaster summoned his two most trusted staff to a secret meeting.

From a cave in the heights, a great black dog emerged, and made his way slowly down the mountain.

And in a quiet corner of the countryside, Remus Lupin and Kara Thrace checked that their wands were secure for the tenth time in as many minutes, and smiled at each other ruefully.

"Guess we're in for it," Remus said.

Kara felt grim. They were in over their heads, and they both knew it, and she had dragged her best friend, of all people, into this.

"Remus, I..."

He held up a hand. "It's worth it, Kara. It's the same as the vows we took our first meeting with the Order. Do you remember?"

She remembered, not the words, but the weight of them.

He cocked his head slightly at her. "Will you promise me something though?"

She waited.

From his soft smile, she never would have guessed he meant mischief. The Marauder of old, and the thirty-five year old man in front of her, were a long ways removed from each other - most days.

"Once the dust has settled, don't let him get away with holding you at arms' length again. One of you has to have the courage to bridge the gap. If you still love him, tell him."

That was a weighty promise to make. She wasn't sure she could, or that she wanted that hanging over her going into this fight.

"Or at least that you'll...how is it you say it? 'jump him' at the first opportunity."

She smiled now, and held up her right hand.

"I solemnly swear that, given the opportunity, I will shag Sirius Black...Also given his consent, of course."

"Of course." Remus' eyes sparkled.

"But I want you to promise me something in return."

It was his turn to look wary.

"If Dumbledore offers you the Defense position again, you'll take it."

He hesitated, and she felt the arguments that were coming.

"Remus, you always wanted to be a teacher, and, from what I hear, you were an excellent one. And you don't get to tell me to reach for what I want if you're not going to do the same yourself. We've known each other too long for that bullshit."

After a long moment, he nodded. Then, "Ready?"

"Absolutely not. Let's go."

Harry felt his feet slam into the ground; his injured leg gave way, and he fell forward; his hand let go of the Triwizard Cip at last. He raised his head.

"Where are we?" he said.

Cedric shook his head. He got up, pulled Harry to his feet, and they looked around.

They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously traveled miles - perhaps hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left. Harry could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry.

"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked.

"Nope," said Harry. He was looking around the graveyard. it was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"

"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"

"Yeah," said Harry, glad that Cedric had made the suggestion rather than him.

They pulled out their wands. Harry kept looking around him. He had, yet again, the strange feeling that they were being watched.

"Someone's coming," he said suddenly.

Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. Harry couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, he could tell that it was carrying something. Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And - several paces nearer, the gap between them closing all the time - Harry saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby...or was it merely a bundle of robes?

Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric. Cedric shot him a quizzical look. They both turned back to watch the approaching figure.

It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second, Harry and Cedric and the short figure simply look at one another.

Then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split open.

From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."

A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"

And, to his right, another voice, sharp and simultaneous: "Protego!"

And, still another, familiar voice, directly behind him, "Down!" and he and Cedric were being shoved behind a large, rather blocky headstone.

There was a cry of rage, and Harry's scar exploded again. Someone was holding him up by the shoulders. "Harry! Harry!" He could hear rock shattering around him, and an assortment of spells. Cedric, beside him, was crouched and firing back around the headstone.

"Professor!" Cedric was saying, "What is going on?"

"It's a long story, Cedric," the familiar voice said quietly. "We need to get you both someplace more protected. Come!"

It was Lupin. Harry's wand was shoved into his hand, and then he felt himself half-carried, half-pulled away from the headstone, and they were running. They were running, and then they all collapsed in a heap behind a crypt. Various shouted spells and the sounds of rock cracking echoed behind them.

"Harry, look at me," Lupin demanded tensely. "I know you're in pain, but I need you to stay here with Cedric and let us sort this out. Cedric - keep him close. Do not come out for any reason, do you understand? And if-" he swallowed, "if worse comes to worst, run. Run like hell. Both of you."

He was gone, as suddenly as he had arrived, and through the burning in his forehead, Harry looked at Cedric in his bewilderment.

Around the other side of the crypt, they could hear Lupin shouting. His voice was hoarse with emotion. "Not a lot of options, Peter!" he snapped. "What will you do? Abandon your master? We have you cornered."

Harry could see now, crouched around another headstone, a woman, her wand in her hand, and...was that the Sword of Gryffindor on her back? He stared. Her face was fierce.

"That's Kara Thrace," Cedric said in wonder.

"Who?" Harry asked.

A louder explosion, and they both ducked. Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know who had blown up what. The woman looked still angrier and charged out from behind the stone.

"Peter! You can't hide from me, Wormtail!"

"Who the hell is Peter?" Cedric asked leaning further out around the crypt wall than was wise.

"Peter Pettigrew," said Harry, and suddenly, resolve hardened in his chest. Beyond the pain in his forehead, beyond his fear and confusion and his rage that Pettigrew had gotten away, his constant terror for Sirius sharpened into something like determination. He started to his feet -

- Only to be pushed back down again, firmly. "No," a voice said. "It's not your fight. Not this time."

It was the woman. She looked at Cedric. "Keep him here. It's-"

They never found out what it was. The woman titled her head, listening, hearing something else, something besides the continued shouts of Lupin and Wormtail doing battle, and the endless sounds of ancient stone cracking around them.

She drew the sword, and Harry heard it too. A hiss, a parting of the grass, and change in the environment around them as the monster passed. And then...nothing.

The woman - Thrace, Cedric had called her - stood slowly to her feet. She had slipped her wand into a pocket, and Harry noted with detached surprise that she wore Muggle clothing. The sword she gripped two-handed in front of her. She glanced at them briefly, a warning in her eyes to stay quiet and to stay down, then listened.

The hiss came again, soft as the wind through headstones, from above.

Thrace shot out of the way as the snake shot straight down at her, rolled, ducked, lunged, as it came again, and then as it struck one final time, with a roar, she shot to the side and, swinging the sword, took its head off.

She stood, breathing hard and staring at it, for a moment, then said, casually, as if she were counting a handful of beans, "Two down, five to go." She looked at him and Cedric again. "Stay here."

She stepped out around the crypt.

"You," the cold voice intoned.

So he had known. The understanding seemed to come from far away, from a place she couldn't feel, not yet. She removed the scabbard from her back and sheathed the sword. Replacing it, she took out her wand. It felt foreign in her hands, unlike the sword.

Some small distance away, she could feel Remus panting, could hear the note of pain in his breaths. What had Wormtail done to him? She heard him shout another spell, but that was his battle. She needed all her attention for the bundle of robes in front of her, the one leaning, small as a child, against the very base of its father's headstone.

"I know what you are."

"I had gathered as much, thank you."

She approached him, wand out. He was armed, of course.

"I searched for you, you know."

Perhaps it was meant to sound silky. It made the bile rise in her throat.

"I could give you so much."

She wanted so little.

"I could send you home."

She stopped dead.

Home.

The place she had come from, the place Dumbledore had told her in no uncertain terms she could never go back to. The place where all of this was a twisted dream and, of course it didn't make sense, because it wasn't real.

The place where her friends would laugh at such an adventure as this.

The place where everything felt like that mirror: familiar, comfortable, safe.

The place where war and magic could have the covers closed on them once you decided to get up out of your armchair and stretch. You'd been there all day, hadn't you? Reading. It was time to move around.

Here, every moment took her further into this place, closer to people she knew she was would lose.

Could he do it? She didn't know.

To her left, a strangled cry of Stupefy!, and she heard Wormtail's body fly through the air, collide with a taller headstone, and collapse, cracking the names of the dead as he slid to the base. She heard the ragged breathing of Remus, who had at last defeated the traitor, while she had stood there listening to the Dark Lord's promises.

Her friend through many trials and long, long loneliness.

And even now, waiting at the school, another friend, and the ache that accompanied every thought of him.

It would never be gone, even in another world.

She felt the scrying mirror's reassuring touch, though it was miles away. She knelt before the creature in front of her, her hand to the grass.

"I am home," she told him, and magic shot through her bare palm across the earth and to him, and when it reached him, shattered his wand.

Kara Thrace stood, stepped over to him, and kicked the broken pieces out of his wasted hand.

Lupin had shackled Wormtail. Thrace was gathering up whatever was in the bundle of robes. Harry and Cedric, having been given permission to emerge, stared at them both.

Lupin smiled at them reassuringly, though his face was tired. "Has anyone seen what happened to the Cup?"

Cedric and Harry both looked around until they found it.

"Thank you," said Lupin. "I think we'll use it to get back."

"Sir," said Cedric.

"Unfortunately, I think we need to be quick about this. Explanations will have to wait."

"Harry," said Thrace. He didn't ask how she knew his name. Her face was contorted with disgust, but he knew it was for the bundle in her arms, which she carried against her chest like a small child. "We know there is a spy at the school. Once we get back, he may try to get you on your own, and he is almost certainly someone you trust."

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Lupin give her an odd look. She met it with one of her own, before returning her attention to Harry.

"Once we - err, land, I want you to go straight to Dumbledore and stay with him, whatever happens. Do you understand? Cedric - will you help him?"

Cedric nodded, and Harry, slightly annoyed, did so as well.

"Let's go," said Lupin impatiently. "I want this over with."

"You and me both," Thrace muttered.

Lupin spoke a spell over the Triwizard Cup. "On three," he said to them. "One, two..."