All that week Harry was pricked relentlessly by the neverending welter of praise that the Golden Trio inspired. People often bustled him out of their way to get closer to poor paralyzed Kraug or Mecha Granger 20-30 or the Time Child, ignoring him completely.

Every day it was, "Time Child!" this, and "Kraug take a selfie with me!" that. Everywhere they went were Mecha Granger 20-30 cosplayers and hangers-on. A constant deluge of fans.

Neville no longer had any interest in Harry either which stung something fierce. Harry had been feeling like the two were finally growing close. All that had been snatched away in the bouncing sunbeam-colored curls of the 'Golden Trio.'

The whole weekend Harry was extra crabby, snipping at just about anyone who acknowledged him, a growing minority it seemed. He began spending more and more time with his erstwhile neglected friend, Ron, and Ron's new romantic intriuge, Padma. Padma was going through a bit of a dark phase and had dyed her hair raven black in mourning for her lost twin.

Ron did his best to keep Padma's spirits up with his insatiable enthusiasm. He had no idea why she'd suddenly become so dispondent upon the long heralded return of the Golden Trio. She had seemed to have made so much progress until that point. But on that very afternoon her glum insistancy returned with a passion and although she suffered Ron's embarasing interventions with good grace for her love of him she did so only out of an adjunct of pity. And he could tell. He was too brazenly optimistic to have noticed this outright, but his subconcious nagged him mercilessly with the half form, semi accepted jangled edges of truth that the girl he loved was only humoring him.

In a way she was. But she still loved him, in a way. A fierce passion pulsed for him in the darkly tangled byways of her twisting heart. She meant well, but feared her very affections were poison gifts, to be doled out with sorrow and bitter tears...

Padma hung out with Luna after class with growing frequency. Ron didn't know what the two chatty girls yammed on about and often feared he was the subject of many late night giggles of malice and spite.

Maybe the truth would have disheartened him.

Maybe.

Not all can be as brave as Harry Potter, ever seeking to unlock grim and esoteric mysteries on a daily basis. Harry would have noted with philosophical dispassion the fact that he was never even mentioned on girl's night. Not Ron. It would have left a hole in his heart for sure. It was lucky for them both that Harry Potter wasn't on that particular case. This was one pandora's box Ron couldn't afford to pry into.

"So my dad was running a whole series last week, in the Q, about this ancient race," Luna was prattling on. Padma smiled, feigning delighted interest.

They were at their usual spot, the moonlit terrace outside of the Occlumency tower. Padma was laying on her back, luxuriating in the bath of light cool night shine while Luna stood, paced, and stood. Luna kept her left hand tangled in her blonde hair and a stream of nonsense theories and half baked idealogies poured out her feckless mouth.

"They were the original Wizards, but they got frozen in ice you see..." Luna was spouting.

Padma nodded.

She nodded, and plotted...

After potions class Harry stuck around, with the majority of his classmates and quite a few passerby, to watch the argument between Snape and Sirius. Sirius had been strolling cockily down the hall when Snape had slipped from behind obscured and oily shadow and clutched Sirius's arm, whispering some fierce approbation for his ears only.

They argued in hisses and whispers for quite some time and the ever growing crowd oozed closer to hear, but were unable. Whatever it was, it soon inspired blows. Snape had suddenly shoved Sirius, sending him spilling through the hall. The crowd gasped.

Sirius landed with a heavy thud. "You're lucky I don't paralyze you," Snape warned before Sirius had regained his feet with an intentionally infuriating arrogant sneer.

Sirius laughed a darkly glower and spat. "A paralyzing hex? Like what Voldemort did to Kraug!"

The crowd gasped once more, even louder. This blow, though not physical, had force in a category all of its own. A category... of devastation.

"Oy! Voldemort! He's that bloke who done in Kraug right nasty!" Someone in the crowd jeered. Severus had surely lost the crowd. All the kids gathered glared at him viciously.

"Ye!" Someone else rejoined, "He done paralyzed our God Kraug, he did!"

With that the gaggle of onlookers was on the verge of becoming a ferocious mob. Only instead of having pitchforks and torches and shotguns, each with a dangerous wand raised in righteous malice. Snape began to fold in on himself and the catcalls doulbed and trippled, echoing about the stone enclosure by some magic of masonry.

The ceaseless, houdning accusations of death eating had plauged Snape grievously. And now this. He had misspoken foolishly and here fate was, kicking him while he was down, which seemed like all the time, these days. It was all he could do, accepting the charity of Dumbledore, without grovelly reversions. Snape began to cry, fiercely. His sorrow was componded by the shame his wet eyes and cheeks brought upon him via spectacle. He rushed away before anyone could puzzle just what had started the conflict.

Harry was about to start sluething out the details of this shadowy encounter when he was suddenly aware of the presence of MG23. She had disentangled from her normally inescapable star struck retinue during the distraction and had been tangling her gun hands up and down in Harry's cloak affectionately and in secret. She blushed and began to scamper away when Harry finally noticed her fertive strokings.

"No!" Harry gasped, shocking even himself, "don't go! I don't mind, really." He thought it was rather nice. All that time they'd spent together in the prehistoric dessertscape of interminadable waiting they had grown awfully close. But Harry had been distracted with Kraug's paralysis and hadn't noticed that the bulky constructs affections for him had evolved much beyond the enclosures of friendship. But her affections had broken out and they galloped off brazenly into the surrounding wild expanses of love.

He thought, just maybe, he was ready to meet her there. To share that grand journey.

"Want to go out tonight? Some Butterbeer? Maybe the new Simon Pegg movie or somesuch?" He offered and MG23 clanked riotously up and down in anticipation.

The two spent the rest of the afternoon together in a blurry haze of easy conversation and frequent laughs. There were also not a few content and blissfully silent moments peppered like golden nuggets of tranquil joy throughout.

Though sadly their time could not stretch out like that forever. "I've got to go recharge my power cells," MG23 said, even then unable to stifle a yawn.

"Oh you poor, tired thing," said Harry, giving her his cloak and draping it over her sleek metallic shoulders. She was sorry to go, but already dreaming about the dinner and movie that awaited her later that evening.

"I can't wait to go watch a Simon Pegg movie with you later tonight," Harry said.

"See you then, bioform designate: Harry Potter," MG23 intoned over her shoulder as she subtly blended with the shadows of the distance with her passing.

To pass the time Harry decided to begin inspecting the scene of Sirius and Snape's earlier fight. To his surprised delight he met Ron there, hanging about with a stolid sort of dejected boredom.

"Oy pal, what're you doing here on a Friday?" he called out to his red headed pal as he approached.

Ron looked up suddenly, he had zoned out and quite forgotten himself til just then. "Oh, Harry, err... What's the deal? What're you getting into mate?"

Harry plucked a magnifying glass out of his immaculate robes and began pacing about, all huntched over like some ghoul. But a ghoul that devoured clues, not corpses.

"Hanging about in hallways after class now, eh?" Harry joked while searching.

Ron become momentarily defensive. "What's your ear on fire about then mate?" He huffed, "just doing a spot of loitering, yeah? No crime there..." he trailed off into a halfhearted mutter. Scuffed his hand me down sneakers on the stone floor.

"Ease off, mate, just having a laugh," Harry chided, still absorbed in his measurements and deductions. Ron felt somewhat indignant that he couldn't hold all of Harry's attentions, though his friend had always had a soft spot for intriuge. Ron figured he oughtn't fault Harry for that. Might as well judge the moon for shinning or the earth for spinning.

"Been chewing over that spat earlier I take it," Ron said finally.

Harry put away his detective equipment. He cracked his knuckles cagily, with that restless energy that always flooded him when a mystery caught his fervors.

"Yeah.." Harry responded after a few dragging seconds. "It's awfull suspicious, Snape throwing around threats like that, might be he's up to something..."

Ron flinched. He knew Harry was still raw about Kraug's paralysis. Heck, everyone was. But Harry seemed to take it a step too far, into a maladaptive region of obsession. "You think he had something to do with..."

Harry spun to face Ron with a frenzied sussuration of whirling robes. His face was pinched and not a little red. "If there's even the slightest chance that he was involved..." His passion was too great to articulate and he gagged on his words and the bitter taste of his impotent rage.

While Ron waited indulgently Harry composed himself with visible effort. "If there's even a chance that they know the same spell... We must know, he may be able to reverse the effects..." He managed.

Ron sighed. This again.

"Harry, mate. Voldemort's been dead. You of all people should know, you witnessed it for yourself. There's no way Snape is a death eater, there's no way he could know Voldemorts secret hexes!"

Witnessed

Why was it, Harry wondered, that Kraug and MG23 were always remembered as complicent in the downfall of the dark lord while he was always cast as the innefectual witness. The Time Child was the only one who'd actually done anything. MG23 and Kraug, paralyzed as she was, were both as inactive as Harry had been. Yet they had been deified by Hogwarts as aspects of a holy trinity of hip.

And where did that leave Harry? Right at the corner of Bitter Street and Disillusioned Junction.

"Not all that you've heard, the 'Golden Trio'" he spat the popular nickname with bitter envy. "Anyone can dye there hair that color... doesn't mean it looks good."

Ron was dumbfounded. "What's all this? You're starting to sound like Padma!" He blurted out in his confusion. 'I thought the Golden Trio and Harry were besties, like d'Artangan and the Three Musketeers...' Ron thought.

Harry sighed, deflating. His blood pressure equalized and suddenly he was purely calm. "Let's just leave off it. I don't know what I was on about."

Ron nodded, "Right... Well anyhow, finding the source of that fight's not like to bring Kraug the use of her body back. No matter how bad you wish it." Before Harry could react badly to that he added, with equal parts sincerity and haste, "We all do."

His emphatic earnestness broke through Harry's defenses. The two shared a nod of affinity. "The best we can do for her is to support her in this transitory stage. It can't be easy on her, the poor thing..." Ron continued and concluded.

They nodded silently once more. A little ritual to assuage the tragedy of the once upon a time Goddess of the ancients.

Just then they heard a loud scuffle erupt right outside of the school. They rushed to the nearest exit in a reckless abadonment of curiosity. The fight seemed to be growing in pitch; snarls, rips, slaps, blows and howls of pain and fury could now be heard plainly.

"Whatever it is, it's close!" Harry yelled as he scurried down the corridor shoulder to shoulder with Ron.

They were nearly upon it, when, out of nowhere, Neville Longbottom! They crashed into Neville at great speed, having just rounded a corner and thereupon deplete of the wherewithal to slow down in anticipation. The dazed trio fell tangled to the floor while the ferocious fracas continued to resound just outside the school's walls.

By the time they had loosed themselves from the stammering and confused Longbottom fellow the whole ordeal abruptly cut short. As fast as they'd occured the frantic sounds had cut short.

Ron and Harry heaved gasping out into the cool night air and heard just off in the distance a scampering as if of padded feet fleeing swiftly into the brush. They both stumbled to a halt outside in the cool dark, hands on their knees, huffing air greedily.

It was Neville who heard the moans from the bushes. He had followed the two in his own time eager to find out what all the fuss was about.

He soon found out more than he had bargained for.

Laying, battered in the holly bushes adorning the walls was Susan Bones. She was unconscious and quite the mess. While Neville waited with her Ron and Harry dashed off to rouse Madame Pomfrey.

The whole madcap flight to the nurses station Harry couldn't block out the horrific images of Susan Bone's condition. She had been attacked no doubt. As if by some beast. The cold full moon shone relentlessly overhead and as he ran, Harry wondered.

Completely unaware of the growing hubbub on the far side of the school Luna and Padma wore their girls night out to an end. Luna had babbled on for quite some time about her father's theories about the goblin wars, "the war of goblin agression" she had called it, along with a handfull of her fahter's only marginally crazier views.

Padma tolerated Luna's guilable parrot routine for covert reasons. In it's own unique way... it had its uses.

Earlier that semester Luna had started her very own paper, The Hogwarts Daily, and it had, to everyones bemusement, proven a surprise success.

Maybe a large precentage of the subscribers only collected it for the daily Sudoku puzzles, as it was the latest study hall procrastination trend, but still, enough students read it to have an effect. Padma had a sharp ear for details and couldn't help but notice that people had begun casually referring to things they'd read in the Daily as fact.

It had given her many exciting, elicit ideas.

Luna was likely to believe and repeat anything she heard. So were many of her many subscribers. It wasn't too far a logical leap for Padma to miss the obvious application and benefit of these character quirks.

With ineluctable patience she began laying the seeds for a narrative. One that would paint the Golden Trio as she saw them in the dark eye of her hearts twisted, woe corrupted core. She wove a thread of nonstop insinuations and hints into Luna's foolish, guileless ears.

She loved Ron and wished that could be enough. But her soul was yearning for two now, and Parvati's restless spirit clamored for defamation and slander, a darker sort of nourishment.