Leaving Privet Drive by Lynney

Rating: PG13
Genres: Action & Adventure, Mystery
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 19/03/2006
Last Updated: 28/03/2006
Status: Completed

These are the first three chapters originally cut from Here With Me to start that story at
Hogwarts. ***From Chapter 3: “Please don’t let us change,” Hermione said stormily into his neck. “I
always want to be your friend, whatever it brings.” “You’ve got it,” he told her, letting himself
draw her close. She felt wonderful, warm and sweet with the smell of grass in her hair, and he was
lost. Even if she never felt any more for him than that, he knew with certainty he was lucky with
what he had. “You always will be. No matter what.”***




1. Chapter 1
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**Disclaimer**: None of it’s mine. Rats. The name you’re looking for is Rowling. JK
Rowling.

A/N: This is the beginning chapter I wrote while working on Here With Me, another story posted
here on Portkey. I originally cut this bit to jump right into the action in the Forbidden Forest
that sets up the conflict for HWM, frankly because almost everyone’s done Privet Drive before sixth
year, most quite probably better than this! I’ve posted it now because people have asked and
because it does ultimately blend into HWM, just in case anyone cares. Two more chapters follow
this, allowing Harry some revenge on the Dursley’s and getting him his books in Diagon Alley and
back to Hogwarts for his sixth year. As I noted in chapter 11 of Here With Me, only two details
from this story are truly integral to that, and I will do my best to explain them thoroughly there.
Enjoy if you are interested, and thanks for reading.


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Harry opened his eyes, peered blearily at the dimly lit clock by the bed and let them fall
closed again. Half six. He had fifteen minutes until he should get up and start the Dursleys’
breakfast, twenty if he wanted to wait for the pounding on his door. He stretched cautiously,
feeling the stiffness in his shoulders from the previous days’ occupation: trimming the privet
hedge that enclosed his relatives’ back garden.

It was ironic really; that the year Harry finally had staunch defenders in the Order of the
Phoenix to put a real fear of magic into Vernon and Dudley Dursley arrived just when Harry himself
ceased to care. About anything at all. He was quite content to store his school trunk in the
cupboard under the stairs this year; the only Hogwarts things he brought up to Dudley’s old spare
room were a couple of text books, Hedwig’s cage and his wand. The texts and cage he placed upon the
desk and dutifully opened occasionally or cleaned as necessary while Hedwig was out hunting of an
evening, the wand he hid under the mattress. Constant vigilance be damned. He was half ready to let
Voldemort have at him at this point, and welcome to it.

Brave words, until he lay down to sleep and the memories of the Department of Mysteries came
back full force. Sirius’s expression as he’d disappeared through the veil. The torturous pain in
his scar and the subsequent horror that was having Voldemort inside his head and forming words with
his lips. Hermione, and the way his mind had buzzed with helpless panic as she lay wounded before
him until Neville had found her pulse. He was scared then, bloody terrified, more like. Not that
his wand would have made the slightest difference in any of it, really.

At first neither Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia had worked up the nerve to remind Harry of his
usual summer occupations at Privet Drive, but Harry saw no real point in changing the well
established pattern of the last four summers. As the weeks past he came to welcome the mindlessness
of the routine, the tiredness that pervaded his body after the days’ labors. His sole goal for the
summer break was to slip into the comforting numbness of forgetting, and his one act of aggression
was to relieve Dudley of one of his three CD walkmans. He spent his small hoard of muggle money on
some CDs on a furtive side trip during an extensive and gut-wrenchingly (for Harry, at least)
boring day-long excursion to kit out Dudley in baby-whale sized summer clothing. That night he
allowed himself a luxury Hogwarts denied; listening to some really loud, angst pulverizing music
locked in the private world of earphones. Not *all* muggle things lacked magic. It had become
a nightly occurrence since.

It had occurred to Harry just the night before, when Hedwig had flown in the window with a
freshly caught mouse for her dinner that he had hardly spoken in the weeks since arriving at King’s
Cross. His voice as he had greeted the snowy owl had sounded hoarse and strange, unfamiliar.
Nothing the Dursleys said to him required an answer other than his physical obedience.

He had dutifully written to Ron (“*Fine, thanks. What are you up to? Played any Quidditch?
Privet Drive is the same as ever. Well, better get back to the lawn. See you. Harry.*”)

Hermione, however, had been a much more difficult proposition.

*Dear Hermione, my brain is slowly dissolving, and I am beginning to like it…*

*Dear Hermione, are you real, or did I imagine you? Is Hogwarts just some fantastic dream I
made up to make myself feel almost normal? After everything we went though together third year to
save him, did I really kill my own Godfather by being completely clueless? Is Sirius really
gone?*

*Dear Hermione, my heart stopped the moment you fell. I lost myself in the time it took for
Neville to find your pulse and I don’t think I can ever let myself love anyone, ever again. Maybe
the scar is supposed to be a warning: Danger! Doomed individual! To maintain personal safety please
remain at least ten feet back at all times!*

*Dear Hermione, the back of my hand tells me I must not tell lies… Umbridge carved it there
forever. I’m beginning to think you mean more to me than I knew, and I am so damned scared.*

In the end he wrote;

*Dear Hermione, how are you? I am okay. Thanks for checking on me. I haven’t heard a word from
Dumbledore, so I don’t know if or when I will get to leave Privet Drive. It might just be safer to
stay here – I wouldn’t mind much if a Voldemort plot backfired on the Dursleys! I hope you are
feeling better. Stay safe. Good luck when your O.W.L.s arrive. love, Harry*

He’d cranked the CD player *really* loud that night.

Harry sighed and rolled from the bed, looking for clothes. His wardrobe situation was truly dire
this summer. The Dursleys could no longer pretend that Dudley’s cast offs would *ever* fit
Harry. Recast from overweight school boy into the role of boxing athlete, Dudley loomed larger then
ever. Harry was no longer the scrawny, underfed waif he had been when he entered Hogwarts at
eleven; five years of decent meals at school and exercise playing Quidditch and the sheer adrenalin
pumping fear of surviving gold old You-Know-Who had taken care of that. He would never be as tall
as Ron, but he’d filled out okay for his size… it was just that his size happened to be
significantly less than half of Dudley’s. Realizing this, and fearful that Harry might try to mow
the front lawn in his Hogwarts robes, Aunt Petunia had attended the St. Brutus’ School for
Incurably Criminal Boys’ jumble sale to kit him out. He knew there was probably a great deal to be
read into her clothing selections, for he now more closely resembled the thug they had always made
him out to be. Holey old black jeans and t shirts that had clearly known a prison laundry made for
hot work under the summer sun.

Padding down stairs in his socks to avoid prematurely rousing either Dudley or Vernon, Harry
began making their breakfast to the buzzing, mosquito-like annoyance of Petunia’s nasal whining
about the decline of civilization since the day before.

Just another lovely day in Little Whinging.


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After the breakfast dishes Harry made his way out to the back garden to finish the last section
of hedging behind the garage. He lost himself in the rhythm of the work under the warming sun, the
swish and clip of the loppers, the fresh-cut smell of the privet as he bent and layered the trimmed
branches into piles, his mind blank. The two sharp cracks of apparition behind him shocked him out
of his numbness with enough force to drive his heart halfway up his throat.

“I think we surprised the boy, Fred,”

“I think we almost killed the boy, George.”

“Alright then, Harry? Didn’t mean to creep up on you like that..”

“… just trying keep clear of the muggles.”

Harry swallowed, trying to find his voice. The twins grinned, enjoying the effect of their
entrance.

“We’re on our way to the shop. Ron wanted to come,”

“But Mum had other plans for him today. He’s gardening too, you might say.”

“Crookshanks sicked up a gnome at breakfast this morning and Mum’s on a right rampage about the
state of things around the house. Good thing Charlie’s owl came when it did…”

*‘Crookshanks?* *Hermione was at the Burrow? I wonder if Hedwig found her there.’*
Harry thought, a stab of something threatening the comfortable numbness.

“Almost took her mind off it, I tell you. Haven’t heard from Charlie in a good while, things
being what they are. He sent a lovely long letter too, nice and chatty, he’s found himself a girl
in Romania…”

“And he sent along something for you.”

Fred or George, Harry wasn’t entirely sure which was which, held out a small package wrapped in
brown paper and string. He took it, puzzled. Harry hadn’t seen Charlie since the Tri-wizard
tournament almost two years before.

“Open it, Harry,”

“We promised Ron we’d tell him what it was.”

Harry undid the knot in the string and folded back the brown paper to reveal… a tooth. A long,
curved, sharply pointed fang of some sort, about three inches in length gleamed palely in his hand.
The upper root portion had been drilled through and wrapped with silver wire to form a loop and
hung on a length of black leather cord.

“Cool!” the twins chorused, peering over his shoulder.

Underneath the tooth was a folded scrap of parchment. Harry extracted it and opened it to find a
handwritten note.

*Dear Harry,* it began.

*Mom wrote to let us know about Sirius. I can only imagine that it must be a wrench losing him
so soon after just getting to know him, and having him to talk to about your Mum and Dad. I’m
sorry. Seems good news is thin on the ground these days.*

Something of an understatement, that, Harry reflected.

*The enclosed is a baby tooth from one of the hatchlings of the Hungarian Horntail you “met”
during the first task. I’ve been working with the young ones and the first to hatch was a male,
black and mean as could be, just like his mother. Always had to be on my toes around that one! You
could have knocked me over with a feather when he actually approached me and dropped the tooth in
my hand. Dragon’s teeth are pretty magical on their own, but ‘the tooth of a dragon, willingly
given’ is very potent and used in some really powerful potions and charms. I would have kept it
myself, but the odd thing was that the little guy kept looking at me with those yellow eyes,
staring and staring, and all the time he did your name kept running through my mind. Finally I held
the tooth up and said “Harry Potter?” and the bloody thing like as nodded its head and waddled off.
So there you are. What it means I haven’t a clue, but Ron always said strange things happened to
you left and right so this ought to fit right in.*

*Hope it helps out somehow.*

*Charlie*

“Well, Harry, that’s a bit of good luck, then, isn’t it?”

“Ron’ll want to see that, alright. Any luck getting sprung from the muggles yet?”

Harry shook his head, running his thumb along the smoothness of the tooth.

“Well, let us know if you do. What with Perce still playing the prat and Dad working overtime at
the Ministry the Burrow’s getting entirely run over by females…”

“Mum, Ginny, Hermione, and Loony Lovegood’s good as taken up residence lately for all that she
lives in the next village. We’re outnumbered. At least we can escape to the store. Ron’s had to
discover his feminine side, he has.”

“We’ll be off, then Harry.”

“Give us a shout if you’re in Diagon Alley!”

And with twin *cracks!* the twins disapparated. Harry ducked his head and settled the cord
around his neck, tucking the tooth beneath his t shirt and turned back to the hedge. Only now, the
nothingness seemed to have escaped him.


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Dudley’s repeated flushing of the loo effectively spoiled any pleasure Harry might have taken in
his shower before dinner, as the knowledge that any remaining dirt would cause Vernon to banish him
without his meager meal kept him from leaping out of the alternately boiling and freezing water to
throttle his cousin. When he appeared in the kitchen that evening to serve up the Dursley’s dinner
Harry was scalded as well as hungry, and to be honest more than just a tad pissed off as well.

After setting the table and carrying the serving dishes for his Aunt, Harry sat in his customary
place, steeling himself for the nightly ritual of Vernon’s displeasure at finding him at the table.
Dudley watched avidly as his father found the smallest potato, gristliest piece of meat and limpest
vegetable to serve his nephew. At sixteen, he was still not beyond kicking Harry beneath the table
if he felt things were going too smoothly. Petunia kept up her usual nervous chatter, asking about
Vernon’s day at the office and trying to distract him from thinking about Harry. Harry sat in
silence and pondered how one stupid prophecy could have ended him up *here*.

“Well, boy, did you finish that hedge today?”

Harry nodded. Vernon looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“What is *that*?”

Harry felt Vernon’s eyes at his neck.

“That *thing*. That thing around you neck. What is it?”

Harry considered his options and quickly realized there weren’t any.

“Just a dragon’s tooth.” He pulled it free of the neck of his t shirt so there could be no
question. Vernon’s face began its journey to puce.

“There’s no such thing! Where did THAT come from? We locked your school nonsense in the
cupboard. I haven’t seen that before. What unnaturalness have you been up to now, you freak! Answer
me, boy! I’ll not have you exposing Dudley to any of that rot.”

“My friend Ron, his brother sent it from Romania.” Harry knew better than to mention that the
twins had been within a mile of Privet Drive after their visit to retrieve him fourth year had
resulted in Dudley growing a four foot long tongue when he snuck one of their deliberately dropped
ton tongue toffees.

“Give it here, then. You look enough like a delinquent as it is without a great pointed fang
hanging around your scrawny neck. You’ll be getting things pierced next, I’m sure. And for the last
time do something about that hair!”

Harry was beginning to see red, and it wasn’t just Uncle Vernon’s face. It always came to this,
no matter how hard he tried, no matter how careful he was. They always found something, pushed and
prodded until it came to a line Harry just couldn’t cross. He took a deep, shaky breath and picked
up his fork, poking at his baked potato, imagining Dudley’s fat moronic face instead.

“I told you to give it to me, boy!”

“I have a name, and it’s not *boy*,” Harry growled, looking up through his fringe without
lifting his head, trying to veil the anger growing in his eyes.

He heard Aunt Petunia’s gasp and knew things were heading rapidly downhill. Well then…

It was time.

“My name’s not boy; my father wasn’t a drunk or a layabout and my parents were NOT killed in a
car crash. They were killed standing up to an evil maniac whose fondest dream is to rid the world
of disbelieving, non-magical muggles like you, and I’ve been bitten by basilisks, tormented by
dementors, tied to a tombstone and had my blood stolen trying to stop him. I’ve seen people killed,
watched my friends suffer just for knowing me. So if you want to hide here in Surrey with your head
in the sand and pretend that nothing exists that you can’t see, that’s fine with me. But I’m not
giving you *this*,” and he stood, tucking the dragon’s fang back into his shirt, “And I’m not
cutting my hair, because it’ll just grow back anyway, and while we’re on the subject I’ll pierce
anything I bloody want if I want to, because it’s my bloody body and I’m sick to death of listening
to this tired old line of crap from you!”

Harry noticed vaguely that Petunia was in tears; much as she might want to share her husband’s
point of view, her own sister’s life and death exposed the truth and she knew it. Dudley was
dumbfounded, immobile, mouth gaping at his cousin’s audacity. Vernon rose to his feet as well.

“Give it to me, boy. You’ve gone too far this time. I will not be spoken to that way in my own
home by some son of a freak! Give it to me, right now.” He extended one beefy, shaking hand toward
Harry. Harry noticed the other still holding the carving knife. He’d always known Vernon as a
bully, although most of the actual bullying of his youth had been perpetrated by Dudley. He didn’t
think Vernon had it in him to be a killer, but he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to put any
theories to the test tonight.

“No.” Harry edged round the table, clearing his shot to the hall.

“Right now!” Vernon reiterated, spit flying with his barely restrained fury. He began to make
his way round the other side of the table. Harry made his break for the front of the house,
reaching the hall just steps before his uncle. Much as he wanted to flee the house he knew that he
needed his wand first. At least he knew he could get up the stairs faster than Vernon… If he held
true to pattern his uncle would probably just lock him into his room again. There was no real
reason to think he wouldn’t. Unpleasant, but nothing new; he’d lived through that before. He raced
up the stairs and into his bedroom, threw himself face down on to the bed and scrabbled beneath the
mattress for his wand.

Tactical error – or major miscalculation of his opponent.

He heard his uncle behind him closer than he’d thought possible, felt a crushing weight on his
lower back and a sudden strangling pressure around his neck. Vernon grabbed the leather cord with
one hand, held Harry’s head down with the other and pulled, his knee pinning his nephew to the bed.
The cord bit into his neck but refused to break. Harry continued to try and reach his wand, hand
reaching blindly under the mattress as the cord tightened. The pressure on his back was too much;
Harry heard something crack and felt a sharp, stabbing pain shoot through his right side. Just when
the tightness around his neck had begun to claim his consciousness it slackened and then bit again.
Vernon let go of Harry’s head and hauled him off the bed using only the cord around his neck,
spinning him around and crashing him against the wardrobe. Still it held. Harry felt himself slide
to the floor, blinded on one side where his head had struck the corner of the door, blood running
from his forehead into his eye.

Vernon reached down with a grunt of victory to claim his prize…and squealed like an enormous pig
when his hand connected with the tooth. He fell back howling, flapping his hand as if he’d been
burned. Aunt Petunia raced through the door to his side, pulling him well away from Harry on the
floor.

“Leave him! Vernon, Vernon, we’ll just lock the door again. I’ll put his meals through the cat
flap. You’ll forget he’s even here.”

“He’s burnt me with that thing, look! What if it’s poisonous? Or c… c….cursed! It must have come
from something hideous from the size of it.” Vernon gabbled, allowing himself to be led away.
Petunia murmured something about ice, assuring him it just *couldn’t* be poisonous.

Dudley lingered behind in the door frame, eyeing Harry intently. When he saw him roll onto his
side without rising and clearly vulnerable, he strode over with a confident grin, stomped on his
hated cousin several times soundly while whistling happily and retreated, laughing, locking the
door as he went.

The sound of the locks hurt, but it was the laughter that *almost* made him cry.


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Harry lay on the floor, too tired, too sickened and sore even to crawl to the bed.

What now? Sooner or later someone from the Order would be sent to check on him; Mrs. Fig might
report not seeing him out and about the yard and Tonks or Lupin would arrive to see how he was
doing. He was alright. He was fine. Then why was he crying? Stop. Breathe. Don’t think. Just don’t
think.

His eyes closed, but he couldn’t stop shaking. He’d really done it now.

A scrabbling sound at the window stirred him, and he lifted his head and peered blearily through
his uninjured eye to see Hedwig waiting at the window. With a soft sigh he drew himself up to a
sitting position and grabbed the edge of the bed to rise and let her in. As he pulled himself to
his feet a wave of pain in his side from whatever Vernon had cracked by kneeling on him washed over
him and he sunk back to his knees. He tried to crawl from the bed to the window but felt suddenly
sick to his stomach and had to stop, the floor tilting wildly beneath him. He gave up then, easing
himself back down. Later. Hedwig would be fine, she was a smart bird. A little rest and he’d let
her in. He barely registered it when the tapping noise ceased and Hedwig flew away.

The next thing Harry knew was a popping sound directly above him and a bright golden feather
floated down beside him, a scrap of parchment rolled around its tip. Fawkes. Fawkes meant
Dumbledore. Harry pushed himself up and propped his back against the bed, unrolling the note. His
glasses lay broken on the floor beside him. His hands shook as he put them on; he had to squint a
bit to see through the cracked lens.

*Harry,* it began,

*I have been monitoring the activity of the wards as closely as possible this summer in an
attempt to learn from the mistakes of the past. I do not know what has gone wrong, but indications
tell me something has. Hold on, dear boy, help is on the way.*

*APWBD*

Wow. Something of his frustration and despair certainly must have finally gotten through to
Dumbledore during that last conversation in his office. He remembered how after he had smashed his
way through the Headmaster’s delicate silver instruments in his anger and grief for Sirius the old
wizard had locked the door and forced him to hear the truth, the truth about how Dumbledore himself
had become too fond of Harry to reveal the prophecy that was inexorably guiding his life until that
moment.

He had finally explained to Harry that night why he had to spend time at the Dursleys’ each year
to renew the magical bond his mother had bestowed to save his life. He knew that his Headmaster had
long tried to turn a blind eye to Harry’s trials with his Muggle relatives, believing the
protection outweighed the danger. Rationally, Harry knew the difference between discomfort and
danger, knew that he was in no where *near* as much danger with Vernon or Dudley as he was
facing the Death Eaters or Voldemort. Each time he rose to the Dursleys’ feeble bait he only showed
how far he was from readiness to face Voldemort. But did it always have to be this way, black or
white, either/or, one or the other?

Another soft *crack* pierced the silence of the room, and Harry turned to find a tall
figure with a flaming red ponytail haloed in the gleam of the streetlight outside the window. Ron’s
eldest brother, a member of the Order as well.

“Hey there, Harry,” Bill Weasley said. “What’s up, then?”

Harry tried to smile, but it hurt his eye. “Same old, same old. I’m okay, really. That was
fast.”

Bill crouched down on Harry’s level and gave him a look over.

“Looks like time to go to me. This just isn’t right, Harry. Dumbledore understands that things
are changing faster now, it might not even matter about the, well, you know. Don’t need to explain
things to you. Let’s just get you back to the Burrow and let Mum at you. You can always come back
later if you have to. Or Dad or I can collect your trunk. I’ll just explain to your Uncle and then
we’ll be off, right?”

He stood up and tried Harry’s door, securely locked from the other side. Harry heard something
that sounded suspiciously like ‘*arseholes**’* followed by an ‘*alohamora**’*
and then another. And another. And another. “Bloody fucking hell!” said Bill Weasley, revealing the
probable origins of Ron’s favorite phrase. “How many locks have they got on here? You’d think you
were bloody Houdini or something, Harry. *Reducto**!”* The door banged open at last,
probably permanently. A quick glance at the clock revealed it was eleven pm and the hall beyond the
door was dark.

“We should probably just leave him a note,” Harry called softly as he could, but Bill was
already across the hall to Vernon and Petunia’s bedroom, flicking the light switch off and on like
a beacon. Harry heard Vernon’s bellow of fright and fury followed by Bill’s grim ‘Hallo there, Mr.
Dursley. I’m Bill Weasley. You and I need to have a little chat.” The door shut, muffling whatever
was said.

Harry rose to his feet, hissing at the pain in his side, and retrieved his wand from the
mattress. All he wanted or needed from this place now. His spirits rose slightly at the thought of
spending time at Ron’s home even if it was only overnight. Harry adored the Burrow, loved its
tatty, familiar comfort overrun with Weasleys. And Hermione, too... Who would have thought being
almost strangled by Vernon could have an upside?

“Lovely seeing you both again, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley. You’ll be able to move in an hour or so,
and the horns and tails should fall off in about a week. I’m sure the neighbors won’t notice a
thing in the meantime. Take care, then. Harry’ll be in touch,” he heard Bill say, and the door
across the hall shut again. Bill reappeared in the doorway; face suffused in a wide grin, and
removed an old fashioned hoop key ring from the pocket of his robes.

“Up to a portkey yet? Good. Just grab hold and away we’ll go. On three.”

The familiar tug behind his navel hadn’t felt so good since it had saved him and Ced… Nope,
didn’t want to go *there*. Never mind.


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Dumbledore and Bill might have discussed removing Harry to the Burrow if necessary but clearly
no one had informed Molly Weasley. Bill and Harry’s sudden appearance in the Weasley’s comfortably
worn kitchen was greeted with a shriek and the sound of breaking china.

“Goodness, Harry! Whatever’s happened now?” she gasped, stepping over the remains of a soup bowl
and pulling out one of the chairs at the well-scrubbed table. “*Reparo**!* Sit down at
once. Bill, I thought you were…”

“I was,” Bill interrupted, cutting off whatever it was he had been up to before Dumbledore’s
summons. They still wouldn’t speak of Order business in front of him, for all he was supposed to
save the whole of the Wizarding world at some point. Harry realized he no longer cared quite so
keenly; whatever secrets they had, they were more then welcome to them. He had, as Dumbledore had
said, ‘quite enough to be going on with’ without more to consider.

Harry dutifully sat while Molly bustled back to the sink for a bowl of clean water, shouting for
Ginny.

She appeared at the bend in the stairs with a “*What*, Mum?” pushing her flaming Weasley
hair behind an ear. Her eyes grew round as she took in the scene below. “Harry?”

“*Harry?*” came another voice from behind her on the landing, and Hermione quickly skirted
her and clattered rapidly down the remaining steps.

“Harry? I had the oddest feeling you were going to turn up soon,” a faintly dreamy voice
informed him, and Luna Lovegood appeared behind Ginny.

“Like the chorus from a Greek tragedy in here,” Bill said, laughing.

“Ginny, run and bring me the emergency potions from upstairs please. No, Hermione, don’t hug him
love, wait, you’ll get all bloody. Luna, would you bring some clean towels from the airing
cupboard? Bill, if you don’t have to run right off perhaps you’d start some tea.”

Hermione seemed to quickly deduce he was only really seeing her out of one eye and moved round
to his good side. If her expression was anything to go by, he looked quite a bit worse off than he
probably was.

“Hi,” he said, attempting reassurance with normalcy. She was dressed in muggle clothing, knee
length jeans and a pale lavender tee shirt that somehow made her dark brown eyes seem enormous. Her
hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and her skin was browned by the sun, nose dusted with
freckles. She looked vibrantly healthy and lovely, as thought the clash in the Department of
Mysteries had been long months rather than mere weeks ago, and Harry felt like something that
belonged under a rock beside her.

“Oh, *Harry*,” she said again, and the little furrow between her eyebrows that spelled
worry on Hermione’s face appeared. Harry felt his heart give an odd, unrhythmic pulse, regret that
he’d brought it out on her face warring with a small fierce pleasure that he even could. Molly set
a bowl of warm water on the table and handed Hermione a tea towel. “Clean up that eye a bit, will
you, and we’ll see what needs doing to mend it.” She bustled back to the sink and Luna sat down on
Harry’s other side. Hermione dipped the tea towel into the water, rung it out and began cautiously
dabbing at Harry’s forehead, pushing his fringe out of the way.

“Looks like your scar might have company for a while,” she said, biting her own lip as she
worked. Harry closed his other eye as the water ran slowly down his face and neck, reveling in the
gentle comfort of her touch.

“Right through his eyebrow isn’t it? Those are the devil to heal, they’re shallow but they’ll
bleed and bleed. The twins were forever banging their heads into each other just there when they
were little.” Molly’s voice came from somewhere behind Hermione. “Here’s a fresh towel, wipe up the
drips and I’ll have a go at… Merlin, Harry, whatever happened to your neck?”

Harry swallowed and felt the ghost of the cord against his throat.

“Looks like someone tried to do you a Nearly Headless Nick, mate,” another voice added. Harry
recognized Ron and smiled. “Hey, Ron.”

“Nearly Headless Harry!” Ginny snorted, depositing a basket of clinking potion bottles before
her mother.

“Ginevra Weasley! That’s not a bit funny. Goodness me; Harry, one of these on your neck is quite
deep. I think perhaps we should flue Dumbledore and have Poppy Pomfrey look at you. None of the
children ever managed anything like *this*. I’m afraid it might be a bit beyond any of my
homemade potions to set you right. You’ll need a healer for that.”

Harry knew he should add his suspicions about where Vernon had knelt on his back to the list,
but it was so warm and comfortable there in the kitchen surrounded by Weasleys with Molly mothering
him and Hermione sitting almost in his lap, gently cleaning his eye. He wanted it to go on and on,
to forget Privet Drive and Grimmauld Place for a bit and pretend it was just another summer evening
at the Burrow and that he was part of whatever pleasant activity they’d been in the middle of.

“No, it’s fine, really,” he protested. “I just… please, I’d rather stay here, if that’s alright.
I’m just tired.”

“Hungry, too, I’d wager, aren’t you Harry?” Ron said hopefully, his own dinner already
forgotten. Bill reappeared in Harry’s limited line of sight with a collection of butterbeer
bottles.

“Seemed more the thing than tea,” he said, passing them round. Molly began applying some sort of
dark blue potion to the cut on Harry’s neck. It stung fiercely and Harry forced his shaking hands
down to grip his own thighs rather than anything breakable.

Bill sat himself on Hermione’s other side and attempted to distract him.. “So, what set that fat
git of an uncle of yours off this time? I’ll need to put something official down in my report.”

“He was… upset… about the dragon’s tooth from Charlie. The twins brought it by this morning and
I’d forgotten I had it on. He was trying to pull it off but the string wouldn’t break.”

“So that’s what it was. I should think not. Who’d put a dragon’s tooth on something flimsy
enough to risk losing it, I ask you. Valuable things, dragon’s teeth,” Bill said. “Nice of Charlie
to send you one.”

Harry sensed rather than saw Hermione’s hand move toward the cord and pull it free of his shirt.
He suddenly remembered his uncle’s reaction to touching it and was about to warn her when he saw
her finger run down the smooth ivory colored surface without evidence of discomfort.

“That’s wicked, that is,” Ron said. “What kind of dragon was it? Did Charlie say?”

“A Hungarian Horntail. He said it was one of the hatchlings from the dragon I drew in the
Tri-wizard Tournament. It’s a baby tooth.”

“But why did that make your uncle want to hit you?” Luna asked dreamily, her eyes wandering
vaguely over Harry.

“Don’t blame the poor dragon’s tooth! He’s never bothered with an excuse before,” Ginny said
stormily. “He doesn’t like *anything* magical at all, from what Dad says.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Harry admitted tiredly. “I really tried this time, just to get along
and do what they expected and keep my head down. I think it’s gone on too long, it’s rubbed him
raw. He was just looking for an excuse to explode… but I gave it to him. I think the exact words
were something along the lines of ‘*My name’s not boy, my father was not a drunk or a layabout
and my parents were NOT killed in a car crash…’* I told him how I knew now that they died
standing up to an evil maniac whose fondest dream is to rid the world of disbelieving, non-magical
muggles like him. Smooth, right? You’d think I’d’ve learned to just shut it by now.”

“Don’t!” Hermione said fiercely, setting her bottle down with a small *slam* on the table.
“Don’t apologize and don’t make excuses for them, Harry. There’s no excuse for this, no reason
could make *this*, what he did to you right. It *has* gone on too long for all of you and
*we’ve* all let it, Dumbledore most of all. It’s never once worked the last four summers, why
should this be any different?”

Harry thought of the prophecy, but the idea of trying to explain Dumbledore’s real reason for
sending him back to the Dursleys’ seemed insurmountable just then. “It *was* different this
time, though, Hermione,” he pointed out gently. “Dumbledore was watching the wards; he knew somehow
that something had gone wrong. He sent Bill.”

“And a good thing, too,” Molly broke in. “Now it’s well past time for all of you to go to bed.
Bill can ask Poppy to come in the morning, then. Tomorrow will show itself soon enough and I’m sure
Dumbledore will have made a decision about it all. Go on. Off you go, the lot of you.”

Harry staggered to his feet and followed Ron toward the stairs, pleasantly aware of Hermione’s
steadying presence behind him. Ginny and Luna trailed after her, yawning widely.

“Never a dull moment with you, Harry,” Luna told him as the girls turned off to Ginny’s room. He
grinned at her as best he could, feeling the pull at his swollen eye, and continued on towards
Ron’s. At the door he paused and turned, trying to catch Hermione’s eye to say goodnight, but she
had already disappeared behind Ginny and it was she who caught his look instead.

“Night, Harry!” she chirped.

Ron found spare pajama pants for Harry, brightly emblazoned with the Chudley Cannons’ logo. He
stripped down and donned them quickly, rolling his bloody shirt into a ball to deal with in the
morning.

“Merlin, Harry, you really are a right mess. What’s that on your back?” Ron asked, settling into
bed.

Harry twisted gingerly but couldn’t manage to move far enough to see whatever Ron did. “D’nno.
Bruise, I guess. Thanks for the… well thanks for everything. How about you? Have you had a good
summer so far? When did Hermione and Luna arrive? I thought Hermione was going to France with her
parents.”

“She did. Lasted about two weeks and said she couldn’t enjoy it worrying about her O.W.L.s. You
know her, she’s *mental*. She’s been here about a week. Luna’s been almost *two* weeks
now. Her Dad’s on some snorkel horned expedition or other and Ginny invited her to stay. Too many
bloody girls everywhere if you ask me. Good to have you, mate. Hope they let you stay. Sorry about,
well… Sorry.”

“Thanks,” Harry said.

Ron yawned, and Harry lowered himself carefully onto the spare bed across from him under the
window, taking off his glasses and setting them on the sill with his wand. It seemed to take no
time at all for Ron’s breathing to deepen, but tired as he was sleep remained elusive for Harry.
His side hurt if he lay flat but his eye throbbed if he tried to lie on his other side. He heard a
soft *‘purrt?’* and Crookshanks leapt onto his bed.

“Hallo, fur face,” he told him fondly, tickling behind ginger ears and enjoying the thrumming
purr it produced. Ron had never liked Hermione’s cat and the feeling was mutual, but he usually
tolerated Harry happily enough. “I hear you’ve been sicking up gnomes this summer. That’s just not
nice, you puss.”

Crookshanks had the distinct look of a Cheshire grin about him and settled down in the crook of
Harry’s arm. Then last thing he heard that night was Ron’s snoring and the comforting rumble of
Hermione’s cat.

It beat the snick of a lock and Dudley’s nasty laugh hands down.


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2. Chapter 2 of 3
-----------------

**Official Fine Print:** Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling.
Just playing with them. Nothing worth suing about. Put down the pen, nice and slow.

**Leaving Privet Drive**

**Chapter 2 of 3**


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He realized he must have slept deeply and dreamlessly, a real rarity for him. He awoke utterly
disorientated and very stiff and sore, blinking in the sunlight pouring in the window beside him.
The angle was low and Ron slept on in the next bed so it couldn’t be all that late. Harry realized
he had become accustomed to waking in time to make the Dursley’s breakfasts and his brain hadn’t
remarked that the change of venue meant he was relieved of that particular chore, at least for
today. He allowed himself a soft sigh, eased back into the comfort of his pillow and stretched.

And almost let out a growl of pain that would have plastered his sleeping friend to the ceiling
if it had come loose. He bit his lip, curling on to his side and breathing hard through his nose.
Holy hell, but that *hurt*. Bloody Vernon Dursley. For the first time Harry felt anger poke
its head through his usual forced acceptance and take a good long sniff round. And after its’
little reconnoiter, anger seemed to find it kind of liked what it saw from this vantage point,
thank you very much. Why yes, it *would* stick around.

Harry was well and truly tired of cowering around Vernon and Dudley. He remembered his cousin
watching him last night as he lay on the floor and what had followed. Hermione was right, there
wasn’t any excuse for it, and he was a bloody idiot to keep on walking back through that locked and
cat flapped door as if he didn’t really *mind* so much the way they treated him as long as
they kept him sheltered. He wasn’t eleven any more, and Voldemort had stolen his blood to make his
new body and touched him and everything, so how was the shelter of his mother’s blood relation any
real protection anymore?

There had to be another answer. He wasn’t going back there, ever again. Voldemort could go suck
an egg. As could Dumbledore for that matter, although he *had* been watching the wards and
sent Bill… And Vernon Dursley; well, Harry’d opt for a Hungarian Horntail egg for him, with its Mum
nice and close and thoroughly brassed off nearby. That would give him a taste of magic he’d never
forget. Don’t worry Uncle Vernon! They don’t really exist! *Much*.

Harry’s stomach rumbled and he realized that he hadn’t eaten since his meager Petunia-provided
lunch of a half sandwich and half-rotten apple at noon the day before. He’d exploded at Vernon
before eating his dinner last night, another thought to file away for future reference. Eat first,
argue later. Except it didn’t really matter, because he *wasn’t* ever going back there. He
pushed himself cautiously into an upright position, turning to find the floor with his feet. He
felt vaguely dizzy, from hunger, he decided, and his vision was obstructed by the still obviously
somewhat swollen eye. “Wash up, Harry,” he told himself, sternly, but his recalcitrant self was
thinking longingly of just laying back down on the nice soft bed. Just for a minute. Or two…

He heard a door along the hall open and close, and footsteps descend the stairs toward the
kitchen. He knew those footsteps. Sure, even, purposeful. Hermione. Getting up abruptly won the
battle.

He found his jeans with no trouble, but his shirt was an unattractive blood-stained ball on the
floor where he had left in the night before. He helped himself to an old one of Ron’s from the
bottom of his drawer and made his way gingerly to the loo. It was a brief interlude before he was
heading down the stairs as well, thankful that no one else had been around to hear the Weasley’s
bathroom mirror’s comments on his appearance. Like he didn’t know he looked like something a dragon
wouldn’t stoop to eating. Thanks ever so. Save it for Percy.

He made his way into the kitchen to find Mrs. Weasley, Hermione and Tonks of all people. Another
wave of guilt hit Harry and the pain of it became real when he found even mental squirming
translated into a flinch that did nasty things to his side. Tonks had come out of the Department of
Mysteries skirmish rather badly and been in St. Mungo’s for awhile; she was wearing her auror robes
but must have only been newly returned to the job because she looked a pale, wan version of her
usual colorful self. Her hair was *brown* for goodness sake. Mousy brown, at that. And it was
all his fault she’d been hurt, his fault that Sirius was gone.

“There’s the one and only. Wotcher, Harry. You look like something…”

“I know, the mirror clued me in, thanks,” he snapped, far from angry with her for noticing
*his* misery but pinched and miserable from picking up on *hers*. They exchanged wary
glances. He really liked Tonks, but he wasn’t going back, even for her.

“Don’t take anything that old mirror tells you seriously, Harry,” Mrs. Weasley told him,
bustling about the stove. “There’s only so much one mirror can take over the years from six boys
without getting slightly hasty in its opinions. That one is long past due to be replaced. It’s
gotten so Arthur can’t find a tie that pleases it in the morning at all anymore; he was almost late
for work two days ago. Come and get some food into you and you won’t feel so snappish.”

“*Not* snappish,” Harry mumbled, dropping into a chair and hating himself; because he
*was* too snappish and he knew it, but he despaired of feeling any different.

Hermione brought him over a plate of still-warm pancakes running with butter and set a small
pitcher of syrup on the table near his elbow. His stomach rumbled again.

“Goodness, Harry,” she said. “Mrs. Weasley’s likely right. When did you eat last?”

He admitted it was lunch the day before, though not what he’d eaten or the reason he’d missed
dinner. It didn’t seem to matter; Mrs. Weasley banged a pan rather unnecessarily loudly on the
cooker and told Tonks in no uncertain terms that the Dursleys had no business being responsible for
a child of any sort, magical or not.

“And he’s not just magical, is he; he’d been orphaned and exposed to an unforgivable. He’d got a
curse scar, for magic’s sake, any number of excellent, experienced witches would have taken him in
and loved him like their own. There was little Ron, only nineteen months old at the time, it would
have been nothing to have another one then. Ginny was still in her swaddles, it would have kept him
out from underfoot. But no, Albus wouldn’t hear it, not even from Minerva McGonagall. She said she
watched that house for hours before Dumbledore and Hagrid showed up; she knew what they were
like.”

Harry squirmed again at the thought of Ron as a toddler and Ginny in her blankets, and snorted
when the sharp bite of pain re-attacked his side. How different could his life have been if he’d
grown up here? Normal, or relatively at least, and understanding magic and magical things… And
quite probably getting the family he loved *killed*. There was no way the Weasley’s could have
had a normal life with him around; he’d have spoiled just what he loved most about them.

Hermione’s dark eyes leveled on him assessingly over her pumpkin juice. She was soaking in every
word as if there’d be a bloody test or something, and he was uncomfortably sure she knew what he
was thinking.

“We’ve always been told he had to stay there because it was safe,” Tonks admitted, stirring her
half-empty tea listlessly as she spoke. “But none of us ever could figure out what was so safe
about it. No offense, Harry, but they never seemed a bit pleased to have you around.”

Harry raised his head and looked at her incredulously; could she not actually *see* him or
something? She’d just told him what he looked like, or tried to. What did she THINK had happened?
“Erm, no,” he said. “They weren’t. Ever. And I’m not going back again, so if you’ve come to take me
you can just pi… um, forget it.”

Mrs. Weasley’s face clearly reflected a battle between sympathy and taking a strip off him
herself. Harry knew he was out of line, but he was finding it hard to rein his anger back in now
that it had found its head.

“Of course you aren’t,” Hermione said, as if the conclusion of the matter were forgone.

“We’ll see what the Headmaster has to say, I’ve invited him for breakfast and he should be here
shortly. Hermione, be a love and tell Ron and Ginny and Luna it’s past time to rouse themselves,
will you?” Mrs. Weasley said.


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Harry was just finished his pancakes and pumpkin juice and not contemplating the thought of
anything more strenuous then digestion when Professor Dumbledore stepped surprisingly lightly
through the Weasley’s kitchen hearth and into the room. Bill Weasley followed shortly behind
him.

Harry noticed Dumbledore’s eyes looked far from twinkley this morning and his face was lined and
grave. And that was *before* he’d locked gazes with Harry. Harry sensed the Headmaster wasn’t
looking forward to a repeat performance of the scene in his office, but Harry wasn’t in any hurry
to reveal he was in no shape to pull it off, either. Let him sweat it a bit first

He greeted Mrs. Weasley and accepted her offer of a cup of tea, but asked if there were
someplace he could meet privately with Harry before partaking of his pancakes. Harry was
half-hoping there wasn’t, but she led him to the door to the little room that was nominally Mr.
Weasley’s study, but in reality little more than a cache of cast-off of Muggle items that had
captured his curiosity. Dumbledore indicated that Harry should follow him, and disappeared
inside.

Harry pulled himself stiffly to his feet and prepared to follow; Hermione’s hand brushed his
reassuringly as he passed her, and squeezed his fingers. The single touch warmed his hand like a
open flame. It was July, and hot enough in the Burrow already even though still quite early in the
morning. How did she manage to make it feel even warmer still? He tried to grin back, but his eye
was still swollen and sore and he was afraid it probably came off as more of a grimace.

*Way to go there, Harry.*

Dumbledore had seated himself in Arthur’s chair and was sipping his tea with evident enjoyment.
Harry took the chair he was fairly certain the Weasley boys were sat in when they were about to get
a talking to, only he reckoned Dumbledore could stay on topic and maintain his anger a bit longer
than Mr. Weasley probably could. Of the two of them, *he’d* have chosen Mr. Weasley, anyway.
He could feel something within him stiffen even further with resolve not to go back, but much like
everything else today he found that his resolve ached too.

“Harry,” said Dumbledore, inclining his head.

Harry stayed quite motionless and only swallowed, still angry, but when Dumbledore raised his
craggy face again to meet Harry’s he could see that there wasn’t any anger there to sustain his
own. Dumbledore looked… regretful. Not pitying, or impatient that Harry hadn’t been able to keep
his temper and handle things as he had been expected to, but as if Dumbledore were truly regretting
something that was beyond the control of even the most powerful of wizards.

It was the last thing Harry had expected, and so it was his undoing. He suddenly felt everything
he’d kept locked away for so long about the Dursleys come bubbling up through him like an uncapped
spring. Why? Why were they so mean to him, why couldn’t they love him, what was *wrong* with
him, why had life chosen him for this? It took his breath away and gagged him with a single
un-issued sob; his nose prickled. Please, oh *please* let him not actually cry.

He heard his own voice inside his head issuing the words of challenge to Vernon that had led to
his present condition: *My name’s not boy; my father wasn’t a drunk… my parents were NOT killed
in a car crash….* *I’ve seen people killed, watched my friends suffer just for knowing me…if
you want to hide here in Surrey with your head in the sand and pretend that nothing exists that you
can’t see… I’m not cutting my hair… I’ll pierce anything I bloody want if I want to…I’m sick to
death of listening to this tired old line of crap from you!*

Everything he had felt vibrated again through his anger and resistance as if his own body and
mind were at war with each other and *oh,* but it really, really did hurt, both his recent
injuries and in deeper and darker places within him. And then Dumbledore seemed to break their gaze
and the legilimency with it.

Seemed to, because it took Harry a moment to realize that wasn’t the case. The surprise dawned
in Dumbledore’s eyes around the same moment it came to Harry that the Headmaster hadn’t
intentionally broken anything off. *He* had. Harry had. He’d occluded his mind against
*Dumbledore*.

“Whoa,” said Harry.

“Indeed,” said Albus Dumbledore, cleaning his already sparkling glasses with the sleeve of his
robes and slightly shaking hands. “Most impressive.”

“I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t know…” Harry began, but Dumbledore shook his head and replaced his
glasses.

“You are not truly sorry, Harry. Nor should I expect you to be. Do not start apologizing for
your strengths, or you will never stop. Just remember that with increasing power comes the
increased potential for misuse, and be wary.”

*Like skipping around blithely in other people’s minds and playing God with your
decisions*, Harry thought, vowing that *that* would be one thing he never learned to do.
Harry’d grown up in a cupboard with nothing; the sanctity of his thoughts was the only thing he’d
truly owned and something he’d never violate in anyone else. The raw feeling of being forced and
intruded on by Snape was with him still. Just because Dumbledore was more subtle and painless about
it didn’t make it right.

“Exactly,” said Dumbledore wryly, “but then, you never told me any of this, did you?”

*He’d obviously gotten right back in, smart arse. So much for newly powerful Harry.*

“Don’t *do* that,” Harry told him, shaking.

Dumbledore smiled gently. “I didn’t. You may have grown a great deal in your mental magic,
Harry, but your face is still something of an open book.”

*Figures.*

“It is I who should be sorry, Harry,” the Headmaster told him. “I always knew things were not
going to be pleasant with the Dursleys, and I confess to being surprised to learn the extent to
which they had hidden your true self from you when you joined us at Hogwarts five years ago.
Surprised, but not dismayed, because you were still all, indeed perhaps *more,* than I had
hoped for when I laid your basket on their doorstep.”

“What, you’d hoped for *less* that an entirely clueless cupboard-stunted little runt who
was just desperately grateful to escape?” Harry asked, truthfully if rudely. “You knew how I lived;
those letters were even addressed to the exact cupboard.”

“A most charming, strong-willed and resilient cupboard-stunted runt,” Dumbledore countered,
“who’d managed to make two indelible friends by the time he stepped off the train to school, and
many more after that. Not a spoiled, pampered princeling who for all his privileges still twists
like a fish on a hook, like certain of your classmates.”

It took Harry more than just a moment to associate those images with himself and Malfoy.

Dumbledore continued on into his stunned silence. “None of this is what I would have wished for
you, Harry. I am sure I will have much to answer for if ever I see your parents again. But never
think for a moment that I have been unthinking in my choices. If I have made mistakes, I am truly
sorry, but there were reasons to believe better could have come from each one.”

Harry gave in to the mental shrug he employed more and more now, when there was nothing to be
gained from fighting the past and everything to be said for getting on with the future. “I’m not
going back there,” he said.

“Clearly,” Dumbledore agreed. “Although in deciding so, you are forfeiting the protection I told
you of last time we discussed the matter.”

“I know I’m still a year from being able to make that decision myself,” Harry admitted, eyeing
him.

“Harry, none of us would send you back now against your will. To ask a young wizard to risk
living in an abusive situation without benefit of his magic to protect himself profits no one.
There is that possible option, though. What if we were able to win you a dispensation from the
Ministry to be able to use your magic in the Dursley’s home for reasons of self protection alone?
Could you handle it? You are not twelve any longer, or thirteen. You are both more mature, and
conversely, more capable of wreaking far more havoc than blowing up your aunt.”

“She’s not my *aunt,*” Harry said poisonously. “She’s Vernon’s sister.”

“Proving my point,” Dumbledore agreed. “They are none of them close to you, nor do you bear the
slightest fondness for them. If I let you go back there with magic to even the playing field you
have suffered such injustice on, could you manage to use it wisely?”

It didn’t take much to come to that conclusion. Harry didn’t know if it was Voldemort’s return,
losing Sirius, shifting magical abilities or teenage hormones, but he didn’t exactly feel very
responsible at the moment.

“No, Sir,” he admitted. “Probably not.”

Dumbledore nodded. “I should have to agree. Still, keep in mind Harry, that it is no small thing
to speak the truth or truly know yourself that well. Both are signs that maturity is close on the
horizon if not yet within reach.”

“Great,” said Harry tiredly. “Brilliant. Only what does that mean for me now?”

“First things first, I suppose. Madam Pomfrey is visiting with her niece and unavailable at the
moment, and I do not wish the more public spectacle and resultant questions of a visit to St.
Mungo’s for you. I should like this whole incident to go as unnoticed as possible by both the
Ministry and Voldemort’s supporters, not to mention those special few who are members of both
categories.”

*That made two of them. Look, they agreed on something!*

“I’m fine,” Harry said.

“You are, as I said before, resilient. They are not one and the same. In any case it would
behoove us to have documented proof of your injuries if questions were to arise. I only meant it
would Evening before Madam Pomfrey will arrive, and I was hoping you would allow me to assist you
until then. I believe I can add a little to Mrs. Weasley’s good-hearted efforts if you will permit
me.”

“Are you going to make me better, or just make me *feel* that way?” Harry asked
suspiciously.

“I believe I can do quite a bit of actual repair to the most grievous wound that is keeping your
eye closed. Even if you fail to feel better, which I do not believe will be the case; it will
certainly not fail to relieve the rest of us. It’s actually quite difficult to speak with you at
the moment without…” Dumbledore allowed his own eye to shut in a small grimace and reopen. “Simple
human empathy, Harry. Do us all the favor, if not for yourself.”

Put that way, it was hard to refuse. Hermione had been looking at him rather avidly; he hardly
wanted to walk around making people either wince or itch to heal him.

“Okay,” he agreed, and Dumbledore rose from Mr. Weasley’s desk chair and moved around the desk
to his side. Harry removed his glasses and Dumbledore gently cupped his aged but still surprisingly
strong fingers over his eye, and murmured several charms Harry recognized from years of repetition
over one bit if him or another. The difference between Madam Pomfrey’s wand and Dumbledore’s
fingers was striking though. He could feel his own magic rising up to meet Dumbledore’s, circling
it like a cautious dog and finally allowing it through. The sense of healing was far more extensive
and immediate; where Madam’s Pomfrey’s bone-mending sort of tickle-itched, Dumbledore’s snicked the
bits firmly and somehow irreversibly in place; his eyes watered with it, but he was quite sure
*that* particular bit would never break off again. The anti swelling charm actually seemed
likely to suck his eye out; Dumbledore clucked once thoughtfully and readjusted it. Harry just
hoped he still *had* an eye when he was done. It simply drove home, however, that Dumbledore’s
power was no myth, and Harry was not entirely unsure that wasn’t more the message than the
healing.

At last the Headmaster seemed satisfied with his results and stepped back appraisingly.

“Much better,” he said. “With all the bleeding within the eye itself, you almost seemed to have
had one of Lord Voldemort’s revolting red ones. Most disconcerting with the other being green. Stop
and go at once, you know. I think you’ll find this an improvement. And now, breakfast!”

Harry put on his glasses again, and followed him reluctantly back to the kitchen.


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It was decided that Harry should be allowed to stay with the Weasley’s for the rest of the
summer, as Grimmauld place was busier than ever as a center for piecing together the slow trickle
of sightings and events that made up the Order’s meager knowledge of Voldemort’s movements. *And
Merlin forbid he know anything about the movements of the man who was sworn to kill him!* Tonks
and Bill were to help with reinforcing and adding additional wards to the Burrow.

“It’s only four weeks, really, just August left and you’re off to school again,” Mrs. Weasley
fussed. “It seems you lot only just got home; there are robes to let down and trunks to air out and
books to buy…” Her eyes grew suddenly round. “Harry, it’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it?”

He did some quick mental calculations on the date. So it was. He nodded, but hastened to follow
it with, “Please, don’t feel you have to make anything out of it, they never would have back there
and I won’t notice the difference. The best part every year was the cards from all of you, being
with you is even better. *Really*,” he added hastily, when he saw her determined look.

Ron just laughed. “Give over, Harry. You won’t stop her. Sit back and enjoy the cake.”

He supposed he could do that.

They were sent outside while the adults talked *again,* but since it was a gorgeous
scorching late July day it was hard to mind. They weren’t allowed far (*‘and don’t even think of
getting on a broom Harry Potter!*’ Mrs. Wesley had reminded him, quite unnecessarily for once)
so they made for the nearest and deepest patch of shade they could find.

Hermione had brought their Newt Potions text to read ahead; Ron had a newly-arrived Quidditch
magazine. Luna was happily braiding some particular weed into a long, apparently meaningful chain.
Harry settled gingerly down beside Hermione and tried to find a comfortable position in which to
become oblivious while Ginny skittered around like some corporeal form of Ron’s patronus from one
to the next of them, restless and bored. Harry, apparently unoccupied, became her focus of
interest.

“We could play Gob Stones,” she suggested. “I could go and get mine.”

The thought of being spat at was even less appetizing than usual. “No thinks, Gin.”

“Exploding Snap, then.”

Not with reflexes as frayed as his were now, he wasn’t. “Nope. No thanks.”

“Wizard’s Chess. We don’t have to use that cheating set of Ron’s, Bill has his home.”

He supposed Wizard’s chess was safe enough, although all he *really* wanted to do was take
a nap in peace. He was just about to agree reluctantly to a game when Hermione came to his rescue.
Without looking up from her own book she said mildly, “He’s meant to be resting, Ginny. Your Mum’s
new Witch Weekly came with the Owl post this morning.”

Ginny bounced off to retrieve the magazine and Harry managed to get himself reasonably
comfortable, although the holey black denim St. Brutus’ cast offs were sticking to him even in the
shade. Thank goodness the shirt he’d borrowed from Ron was overlarge and moved even with the
occasional feeble breeze.

He dozed and woke; drifted, woke and dozed again. He felt something creeping along his knee and
shook it carefully; both were still bruised where he’d fallen on them. At least it wasn’t a spider,
he reassured himself, or Ron would have surely noticed and tore off screaming by now.

Whatever it was moved to his thigh and began climbing upward, light and skittery. He slapped it
away, but his eyes flew open when he realized they *were fingers.* Ginny grinned cheekily at
him.

“I’m *bored*,” she reiterated, as if it were Harry’s fault somehow. Which he guessed it
was; technically, since it was his fault the half the Order was now in the Burrow discussing
things. But what was *he* supposed to do about it? He let his eyelids droop closed again.

“You could try sleeping,” he suggested. “It wasn’t boring me at all a moment ago.”

“Okay,” she said, and plopped herself down next to him. Right next to him. Almost *on top of
him* next to him. And started to hum.

Harry opened his eyes again to find hers disconcertingly close but thankfully closed. He glared
beyond them to Ron for a moment until he was sure he was about to ignite his best friends’ ear. Ron
rubbed at it absently and suddenly saw Harry’s predicament.

Harry mouthed him a question that included the words “what’s” “up” “with” “your” “bloody” (more
than once) and “sister.”

Ron shrugged helplessly, torn between amusement and sympathy.

Harry shifted away as subtly as he could, considering movement was still not his first choice of
activities at the moment. This direction, however, brought a whole new set of concerns with it;
namely Hermione, who was sitting cross-legged and reading her book. She grinned at him and shifted
position, straightening her legs out before her to give him more room. He shifted gratefully closer
and still further away from Ginny’s absent minded droning.

He closed his eyes again and felt himself begin to relax into the heat like melting candlewax,
the stiffness of his injuries growing slowly more pliant and his mood gradually improving as they
did.

Luna announced to no one in particular that she needed more Lugewort and wandered happily off to
go and find some. He heard a soft snore some moments later and opened one eye to find Ron
effortlessly asleep under his magazine. Lucky bugger never had the slightest trouble falling
asleep.

Hermione was still reading on his other side, twisting several strands of her hair mindlessly
around her finger as she did. She was so peaceable, Hermione, you could certainly count on
her….

Not to be doing *that!* Bugger him if that wasn’t Ginny Weasley’s hand under his shirt.
Ron’s shirt. Her brother’s shirt; his best friend’s chest. Harry’s chest. There were so many things
wrong with that it wasn’t even funny.

Harry lay absolutely still and took stock of the situation while Ginny’s fingers explored bits
of him that while harmless enough he had no interest in sharing with her. Or did he? *Nope*.
But how would he know? Well, he’d have to be a bloody idiot not to know the answer to that,
wouldn’t he? She was Ron’s little sister, Mrs. Weasley’s only daughter. She was moody and
mercurial, and to be honest bore a strong association with Voldemort for him; the cold, wet taint
of the Chamber where she’d lay dieing and thrust him into the role of basilisk-bait. It wasn’t
*him* she liked; it was that jumble of hero worship and gratitude. And he wasn’t feeling
anything he oughtn’t to, which he ought to if he actually wanted her to be doing it, right? Now if
those fingers inching their way steadily down toward the button of his jeans were Hermione’s,
say….

*Oh, no, no, no, no. Don’t say it, then. Don’t think it. Holy hell, stop that!*

He was certainly feeling something he ought not to be feeling now, something that until right
this particular minute he had never consciously associated with Hermione, either. His eyes flew
open as he brushed Ginny’s hand from his stomach, and settled not on her but across from her on
Hermione, deep in her book and entirely unaware of the mind-bending revelation exploding through
Harry beside her.

He watched, mesmerized, as the slight breeze lifted her hair slightly and his bookish best
friend changed into a something more before his very eyes. Her face was entirely the same, and yet
he suddenly noticed keenly the composition of her features within it; it was as if he was seeing
her for the very first time all over again, but at sixteen rather than eleven. He’d panicked
helplessly when he thought she was dead in the Department of Mysteries, agonized over what that
meant about her as his friend earlier this summer, about what he meant to anyone who loved him. He
killed his friends, he couldn’t possibly love her. And now some very irrefutable physical evidence
was telling him that not only did he love her for all that she’d always been for him, he might
actually, erm… *love* her, because he’d sure as hell wished it had been her touching him in
place of Ginny.

Holy bloody hell.

Not to mention he was having a now fairly obvious physical reaction in front of
not-quite-fifteen-year-old Ginny Weasley, who was quite evidently not unaware of it. She smiled
beguiling at him and he sat up abruptly, every Dursley-ized muscle screaming at him to stop while
the last coherent portion of his brain urgently told the rest of him to shut up and *sit
down*. Now!

Hermione turned from her book to find him obviously agitated and shaking slightly, glaring at
Ginny. Ginny seemed rather flushed and extremely pleased with herself at the moment and Hermione
wondered what she had managed to prank Harry with. She’d had the feeling all morning that Harry was
unhappy and on edge, perhaps for more than the obvious reasons, though there was certainly enough
in the obvious department to save one the trouble of really *having* to look any further.

She guessed that he was tired and sore and just not in the mood to be played with. Hermione had
thought Ginny’s childish obsession with Harry had quite thankfully moved on to fondness (with a
residual propensity to tease for the purely satisfying physicality of it) when the reality that he
didn’t return her feelings had finally set in. God only knew, Harry didn’t seem fully capable of
really recognizing or returning *anyone’s* feelings, and given what they were finding out now,
who could blame him?

“Leave him alone, Ginny. You’ll only make him crankier. Let him sleep. Look, I’ll even play Gob
Stones if you like,” she offered.

“Never mind,” Ginny grinned impishly. “I think I’ll go find Luna for a chat. She must have found
loads of Lugewort by now.” She moved off, all but skipping.

Harry groaned inwardly; there was no comfortable and yet truly obscuring position open to him.
Ron snored away blissfully beside him, and once again Harry reckoned he had no idea how good he
really had it. On the plus side, Hermione had an open book on her own lap and had never been one to
notice anything like that before when reading material was available (or to comment if she did. For
all he knew she noticed it all, she’d been for all intents and purposes living with two best
friends who were boys since the age of eleven, hadn’t she?) Her eyes met his, and he did his best
for a change to keep them there.

“Are you alright? What did Ginny get you with?”

*Her hand making a beeline for my zipper, but I’m only hard ‘cause I wish it was you.*
Harry thanked every remotely concerned Saint and Wizard both that she had never shown the slightest
interest in legilmency herself. Yet.

“It’s my own fault, I let her get to me,” he mumbled, neatly avoiding the issue of how. “I never
like to just tell her to piss off because of the whole Chamber thing I guess, but she really is a….
tease. It sounds awful to say, her being only a year younger than us, but I can’t wait until she
grows up a bit.”

*And moves on to some other oh-so-lucky boy who can deal with the manic moods swings and six
older brothers.*

“She will,” Hermione said confidently. “She only teases you because she likes you Harry, and
it’s the only way she knows to get a rise out of you.”

*Brilliant.* *Double meaning, or completely innocent? How the hell were you supposed to
tell?*

“Well, I wish she’d quit liking me then,” Harry said, shifting his arms over his lap and trying
to drag things back into the open where he could hopefully understand what was being said. “I like
her well enough as Ron’s little sister, but that’s the end of it for me.”

Hermione nodded, seeming to understand, and he was just starting to relax (although not
*enough*, and he suspected that had something to do with the fact it was still her he was
talking to) when she said “You’ve just got to be consistent with her then, because Ginny does get
her hopes up. You two are exactly opposite that way. She’s very open, she’s been adored all her
life and she loves very easily. You… don’t.”

*Well, that was the painful truth, wasn’t it?*

“No,” was all Harry could think to say. It was certainly helping in the deflation department,
anyway, to realize she thought of him as distant and unloving. “Sorry.”

Her eyes softened appreciably, even to him. “No, I am. That wasn’t very tactfully put, Harry.
I’m not very good at this sort of thing, really. I just know that when Ginny talks about you, I
don’t recognize the person she’s talking about… and I like to think I know you better than that.
You aren’t exactly ideal boyfriend material for her sort of girl, but you are a great boy for a
friend.”

‘What about *your* sort of girl?’ buzzed around in his head; unsaid. She’d seemed to have a
bit of a thing for Ron for awhile there, while Harry had always appeared to be more or less a
project, something to try and keep safe but not get too attached to. He didn’t know if she still
thought about Ron differently, but he hadn’t seen her with anyone else since Viktor Krum, either.
Actually, Viktor seemed to have been what mostly put the stopper on the whole Ron thing; she hadn’t
like living with Ron’s jealousy any better that Harry had.

“Thanks,” he said, but something of what he was thinking must have seeped through the single
word, because she continued to stare at him thoughtfully.

“Do you know, Harry, I know you aren’t feeling a bit of it at the moment thanks to those awful
people, but you’ve grown up a lot this summer. Sort of come into yourself or something. You look
different than when we left you at King’s Cross. Sort of…” Hermione seemed to struggle a bit to
find the right words. Hermione stumped for words! He never thought he’d see the day. And she was
sort of blushing too; a most becoming flush of pink colored her cheeks and made her dark eyes
darker still. Harry found himself entranced. “I expect you’ll find yourself getting all sorts of
attention from the girls next year,” she finished, evidently giving up on ways to describe his
newfound … whatever it was. “Maybe if you find someone you like, Ginny will accept that you just
aren’t interested.”

“‘Look, if you find me in the least bit fanciable perhaps Ginny Weasley won’t.’ Now there’s a
line sure to bring them running,” Harry laughed, but he felt a small irrational flicker of hope
somewhere inside him that he’d do anything to keep flickering. She thought he’d grown up. In a good
way. Him.

If he could just lose the red-eyed evil sidekick, he might actually have a chance.



3. Chapter 3 of 3
-----------------

**Official Fine Print:** Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling.
Just playing with them. Nothing worth suing about. Put down the pen, nice and slow.

**Leaving Privet Drive**

**Chapter 3 of 3**


<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

They’d set out from the Weasley’s that evening shortly before midnight and floo-ed to Mrs.
Figg’s house; Mr. Weasley, Bill, Tonks, Ron and Harry. The plan was simply to retrieve his stuff.
The adults had allowed Harry along to make sure they got all of it since he’d steadily maintained
he was *never* going back, and Ron because he said Harry wasn’t going anywhere near those
vicious snot bags without him along as well. Mrs. Weasley had used an ear tweaking charm on him and
told him to watch his language, but uttered not another word against his going after that. Harry
was grateful for his company. He got the feeling that they were all behind him this time and their
solidarity had helped convince Dumbledore that further argument was useless. Tonks had tried to go
during the day disguised as an utterly normal looking muggle (less of a stretch than usual thanks
to her currently muted appearance) but Petunia had apparently taken on a suspicious look once his
name had passed her lips and announced Harry Potter no longed lived there and she might try one of
the local prisons, Wandsworth, perhaps.

The irony wasn’t lost on Tonks, and she’d insisted on joining them as well.

Mrs. Figg greeted them cheerfully and gave Harry a rather enormous and deeply embarrassing hug
that hurt like nobody’s business afterward. Thankfully she seemed to take his eyes watering with
the pain in his side for emotion.

“Not that I haven’t enjoyed it, dear, not a bad home for the kitties all these years, but I’ll
be glad to be off now. They were awful to you, those people, and I never liked to watch it. It was
wretched; always making sure you never really enjoyed yourself here, knowing they wouldn’t send you
back if you did. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone but Dumbledore and I’m won’t be sad to see the
back of them. Off to the country we are, nice little cottage with a field full of mousies next to
it. Mr. Tibbles’ll be in his element, and all his lady friends with him.”

He managed to choke out something about being very happy for all of them, by now feeling if not
remotely close to tears at least fairly bad that she’d lived for almost fifteen years in a
neighborhood she’d never actually liked just to watch over him. It was an awful thought. He
remembered how utterly floored he’d been to learn she was a squib and a plant of Dumbledore’s after
he’d saved Dudley from the Dementors the summer before.

He’d thought they’d be right off then, but they hung around Mrs. Figg’s kitchen, seemingly
waiting for someone or something.

“What’re we waiting for?” Harry whispered to Bill.

“Lupin,” Bill said back in quite a normal voice, his eyes on Tonks. “He wants to help out, same
as the rest of us. He’s hated having to get you out of there before himself; it’ll be nice for him
to see you shut of them.”

Tonks brightened before Harry’s eyes. Visibly. Her expression remained the same, perhaps even a
shade quieter, but everything else seemed almost to shimmer. Her skin glowed; her hair took on the
most interesting highlights.

“Oh *hell*,” she said after a moment, noticing them staring at her, even Mrs. Figg. “I’m
doing it again, aren’t I?”

Bill nodded, grinning. If Harry wasn’t imagining things, Ron’s dad just blushed.

“That’s right, lets all play tease the Metamorphmagus,” she said, and sighed gustily.

“He really is coming, any minute now,” Bill told her. “And you should just tell him…”

“I have! He knows! He just has to get over the stupid idea that he’s bad for me and being a
werewolf is like the curse of death for his friends. I know he’s lost so many, but it wasn’t like
it was his fault..”

Tonks was talking about Lupin. Tonks *liked* Lupin. Rather more than liked Lupin,
obviously. Where the hell had Harry been once again? Why was he suddenly noticing this all this
stuff? Sirius had fallen through the veil and taken life as Harry knew it with him; *nothing*
was familiar anymore, even his friends.

He glanced sideways at Ron, who met his gaze with a shrug.

There was a clatter from the hearth in the next room, and Lupin himself appeared in the doorway
with his familiar, ragged smile. Tonks gleamed at him, and the smile grew ever so slightly, and
deepened.

“Well, Harry,” he said, “ready to leave home for good, are you?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They moved quietly across the dark pavements to #4, familiar and foreboding both to Harry. It
had been a constant in his life; a constant pain in his arse and elsewhere, but a constant none the
less. To understand he was leaving it forever both thrilled and frightened him a bit. He had a
sense of snowballing change, carrying him too fast toward a fate he didn’t yet understand how to
meet.

A whispered *Alohamora* from Remus took care of Vernon’s costly and elaborate locks. They
entered, closing the door after them once inside.

‘My trunk should be under the stairs,” Harry told them softly. “There are just a few text books
and Hedwig’s cage up there.” He pointed to the floor above.

Bill unlocked the cupboard door and Ron scooted ahead of Harry to help him lever the trunk free.
“Not you, mate,” he whispered. “Take it easy this time, yeah?”

And so he watched his best friend, unable to fit through the door, drop to his knees to guide
the corner of his school trunk through to the hall. From that angle he could see Ron’s eyes taking
in the whole of his earliest memories. It had not been an unhappy room for Harry; only the notion
that he was different and his relatives felt the need to hide him had bothered him at first; the
space itself had seemed cozy, private and secure to a young boy. He might not have liked the sound
of the latch, but it shut the others out when it shut him in, and then he was safe. It was only as
he grew older it truly became a prison.

He realized suddenly just how accepting a child he had been. All of his instincts had been to
get along, get by, cause the least fuss, draw the least attention.

Was he naturally that passive? Or had Dumbledore somehow charmed him as an infant to withstand
it all, and it was the charm that was somehow breaking down inside him now? Because something
inside him was surely going to pieces.

Once the trunk was removed the little cupboard was almost empty; all that remained was the lumpy
mattress that had served for his bed those years ago, his one holey blanket still neatly folded at
the foot. Suddenly Harry couldn’t bear the evidence of it; he wanted the cupboard to be nothing but
a cupboard again, reveal no clue it was ever anything else. He turned to Bill. “Can I borrow your
wand?” he whispered. “So they don’t know it’s me? Just for a moment. One spell.”

“Have at it,” Bill told him softly, handing it over.

“*Evanesco**.*”

The blanket and mattress disappeared, leaving nothing but a faint cloud of dust to settle on the
almost empty floor. Almost empty, because one small object remained.

It was a child’s bedraggled stuffed dragon with disintegrating velvet wings, flattened somewhat
by the weight of the mattress upon it for some thirteen years and no more than 15 centimeters from
tip to tail.

Ron picked it up gingerly and blew on it, raising a plume of dust like smoke from its nose.

“Forgot something, mate,” he said.

“I never had a toy,” Harry heard himself respond, but something in him recognized that dragon.
Preverbal flashes of memory assaulted him, jumbled images that included bits of it; the snout
against his pillow, stuffing the tail between the bars of his cot. He could remember just how the
wing felt between his fingers, soft and thick and… *chewy*.

He saw Dudley, a terrorizing toddler Dudley, yank it from his grasp, heard or imagined his own
howl that surely must have followed. What came after was unclear, not an actual memory so much as
something pieced together from remembered emotions. Harry knew Petunia would have defended Dudley’s
right to take it from him, could imagine her response.

*Stop that noise this instant, you nasty little boy. Diddy doesn’t want that filthy thing, do
you Diddy? Diddy’s got lots of lovely soft toys. Look, lovey, here’s your hippo. We’ll just put
that horrid thing away until you stop that crying. Did you hear me? Stop it at once!*

It wasn’t real, he knew it wasn’t, but his mind could fill in the blanks all too easily. What
was real was the blurry vision of Petunia slamming the cupboard door, only this time he was on the
outside, beating his small hands on the door to get *it,* to get in. It hadn’t been his room
yet, and Vernon had probably thumped the mattress down on top of the dragon later without ever
noticing it when they’d moved him in there after he outgrew his cot.

He’d never known it was there. Time had passed and with its comfort beyond his ability to reach
he had given up and forgotten it entirely. He reached for it now and took it from Ron’s hand,
examining it more closely. It had been handmade; imperfect, quirky and clearly a work of love, its
happy expression having nothing to do with a real dragon’s fierceness and everything to do with
coaxing a smile from the one it had been made for. Him.

“Thanks,” he told Ron. “Forgotten all about her.” Because it had been a *she* to him, he
knew it had. She had even had a name but it was just beyond his grasp, lost in the depths of his
own mind, and there was no one left to remind him. He stuffed her into the back pocket of his jeans
as if she was no more than a mislaid pair of socks, but inside of him whatever was cracking
stilled.

He turned to hand the wand back to Bill to find his Uncle, glowering, at the foot of the stairs.
Tonks and Lupin’s wands were already out and leveled at his chest.

“What is the meaning of this?” Vernon ground out furiously. His eyes had the same slightly
manic, pushed-too-far glaze they’d had the night Harry left and the reminder was unpleasant to say
the least. The pair of short, curved goatish horns still sprouting from either side of his head
probably accounted for at least some of it. Bill was *good*. He bet none of them had left the
house since he had.

“We’ve come to get my stuff,” Harry told him, careful to meet his piggy little eyes head on.
“I’m leaving.”

“And not a moment too soon! How dare you sneak in here in the middle of the night, allow these
freak friends of yours in *our* house…”

“Here, now,” started Mr. Weasley equally furiously, and it was the first time Harry had seen a
flash of temper to truly match his wife’s in mild Arthur Weasley. “Don’t you speak to him like
that. You’re bloody lucky he’s not pressing charges. He could still, you know. That’s assault with
batteries and child, er, misuse at the very least. We know how your laws work even if you haven’t
got a clue about ours!”

“Watch your tongue,” Remus added in a low growl. “And don’t make a single move anywhere near the
boy.”

“We tried to come in the middle of the day; and in your sort of kit too. But your wife told us
to check the prisons for him. It’s you that ought to be in prison, beating a child not allowed to
defend himself…” Tonks spat at him.

“He’s not a child! He’s not even human! He’s a bloody freak and a nuisance, he’s been an
imposition on us for too many years now…”

“So sorry about the imposition of cooking your food and scrubbing your floors all those years,
Uncle Vernon. How rude of me. And mowing your lawn, trimming your hedges, cleaning out your bloody
gutters. How ever did you stand it?” Harry asked him grimly. “Best of luck getting that ruddy great
whale you call a son to do it now.”

“You shut up! We kept you safe from that Lord Voldythingy. Petunia explained it to me after the
dementoids. Without us you’d be dead by now, not like that would be any great loss to anyone!”
Vernon shouted, and Petunia and Dudley appeared around the corner at the top of the stairs as his
voice raised dangerously close to neighbor-alerting levels, huddled together.

“You keep saying it as though it’s just *me* he wants,” Harry shouted back, unable to stop
himself any longer. He felt Ron’s hand land on his shoulder, but it was steadying rather than
stopping him, and he raged on. “He only wants to kill me because I’m supposed to be able to kill
him too. He wants to kill *you* just because you exist. And you think *you* protected
*me*?”

Harry laughed, though it felt more like choking. “That blood bond protected you too. You broke
it yourself when you attacked me, and now *you’re* the one who’s helpless. Voldemort may come
after me, but at least I stand a chance against him. He can come after you any time he wants once I
walk out that door and what will you do? Yell at him? Go ahead. Try hitting him. There’s no
underage magic laws at work on him, he’ll point *his* “thingie” at you and you’ll be dead
before you take the second step. So how does it feel to be the helpless one for a change, Uncle
Vernon? How does it feel to be hated just for being what *you* are?”

Vernon’s face slowly drained of color and his eyes rose to the top of the stairs. “Is that
right, Petunia? If the boy leaves, is it… are we… can that …”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I don’t understand it, I never really have. Dumbledore just said
that it was something Lily did to protect him, I don’t know how it works.”

Bill leveled his wand at Harry’s trunk and shrunk it to pocket size.

“Boys, go up and get anything Harry needs from the room upstairs. Quickly now,” Mr. Weasley told
them. Remus and Tonks kept their wands leveled on Vernon as Harry and Ron went round him, probably
quite needlessly as he was now pale as a ghost and trembling. Petunia and Dudley drew back
fearfully as they passed.

Harry found his textbooks and completed essays had been destroyed, the pages ripped out and
shredded around the room like feathers, the covers partially burned in the metal rubbish bin.
Dudley, most likely. His few things were all broken, ripped or smashed beyond repair, including
Hedwig’s cage. Even his parents’ picture, Dudley’s own Aunt, for all he never knew her. Nothing was
left worth taking; he turned to see Ron’s stunned expression, surveying the damage, and shook his
head. Harry picked up the pieces of his parents’ ruined photograph and they turned without a word
to head back downstairs.

As they passed his Aunt and cousin to descend the stairs again, Petunia reached out and grasped
Harry’s wrist, her bony fingers surprisingly strong.

“Don’t do this, Harry. She wouldn’t have wanted it, your mother. It won’t happen again.”

Harry tried to pull free of her but she clung tightly.

“How do *you* know she wouldn’t?” he said angrily. “I don’t reckon she would have wanted
you to take me in and then treat me like you did, either. And who’s going to stop him? You never
lifted a finger to before.”

He shook his arm again but failed to displace her grip and it was starting to hurt, his fingers
numbing from the raw terror of her grasp. “You knew,” he accused her. “Vernon didn’t understand but
*you* knew all along. You knew about Dementors and Azkaban and Sirius being my godfather and
*you never said a word to me*. You never gave me a single good word about your own sister to
hold on to, never even told me the truth about the way my parents died. You pretended nothing was
ever going to happen and I didn’t need to know. Well, just keep pretending. Maybe you’ll be
fine.”

Ron raised his wand at her and growled “get off him, then” in a voice unlike Harry any had ever
heard him use before.

Dudley flailed at the close proximity of the wand and shoved Ron away, hard. He stumbled into
Harry, the force of it prizing his arm from his Aunt’s desperate hold. Harry managed to hang on to
him and they caught each other precariously at the top step. He grabbed hold of Ron’s wand hand,
pushing it down and muttering urgently ‘it’s not worth it, Ron; you don’t want to end up expelled
over *him*,” but Bill had already loosed a spell from the bottom of the stairs. Dudley was
briefly bathed in a warm orange glow.

“What was that?” Petunia shrieked, and Dudley began to circle around himself like a dog chasing
its own tail. “Mummy! Mummy! What did they do to me this time?”

“What *was* that, Bill?” asked Ron interestedly as they carefully descended the stairs,
skirting Vernon once more.

“D’nno,” said Bill with a grin and loud enough so Dudley could hear him. “Something the
Egyptians used to use on cat mummies. I memorized it one summer while we trying to break the curse
on a necklace for Gringotts; I spent the whole day cleaning sand out of the hieroglyphs for it in
the tomb. I sort of memorized it by accident. Could be anything, really.”

Harry reckoned he was pulling Dudley’s leg, but with Bill you never knew, and who cared? With
any luck Dudley would spend the rest of his life trying to research what it was to get it lifted.
How perfect.

“We’ll be leaving now,” Remus said, locking eyes with Harry, who nodded.

“You can’t!” Vernon said, trembling with apparent rage; only now with his friends securely
around him and knowing he wasn’t returning Harry could see it more clearly for the frightened
bluster it had always been.

“Watch me,” he said, and walked to the front door and opened it. Ron and his Dad followed and
passed through without a backward glance as Harry held it open. Bill grinned and waved his goodbye.
Tonks and Lupin remained with their wands leveled, taking no chances, and indicated he should go
before them.

“The words you want to worry about,” Harry told his Uncle seriously, “Are Avada and Kedavra. If
you hear the first one duck and say your prayers to whoever might still listen to you, because by
the time you hear the second one, you’re dead. It’s only ever not worked once, and you don’t want
one of these either,” he said, lifting his fringe to reveal the scar. “Remember that then. It’s my
payment for what you think I owe you. Oh, and you might want to move or something. Don’t worry
about a forwarding address. It was… well it hasn’t really been nice, has it? So I guess it’s just
goodbye.”

“You’ll be back,” Vernon told his departing back. “You mark my words; you’ll be begging to sleep
in that cupboard when your lot see you’re nothing but a boy with a scar. Where will you be then?
You can all wipe each other out with your bloody war for all we care.”

“You’ll know if we have,” said Lupin, holding the door for Tonks. “When there’s no more magic
left in this world, even your kind will know. Good evening.”

They proceeded in silence up the darkened road toward Mrs. Figg’s floo. Harry halfway expected
something huge and dynamic to happen; for number 4 to explode in flames or shimmer out of existence
or be over run by Death Eaters. It remained dark and prim, perfectly respectable, irreproachable,
really.

The neighbors would never know.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry woke the next morning in Ron’s room again, but the two awakenings could not have been more
different. He was still stiff but the pain had dulled considerably and he was no longer
disorientated at all. His first thought was that he would never again make Vernon and Dudley
Dursley breakfast. His second was that it was his birthday, and that first thought just might have
been his best present ever.

They had reported to Dumbledore by way of the fire when they returned last night and he had
counseled Harry to tell no one of the change and think of it as simply visiting his friends before
returning to school just a little earlier than planned. “For all they have wronged you,” the
Headmaster had told him, “They are defenseless now. It will not take long, I think, for fate to
catch them up if they do not acknowledge that all they refused to believe in is true. You know how
deep your connection to Riddle runs. Don’t give him reason to believe anything has changed and the
time you buy them may mean their lives.”

Dumbledore had refused to discuss what might happen next summer with him, and Harry reckoned his
reasoning was two-fold. If the option for the following year was pleasant and he looked forward to
it, there was every reason to believe Voldemort would pick up on it, and even if he didn’t, there
was also always the chance Harry wouldn’t survive long enough to *need* a shelter next summer,
pleasant or not.

Still, for the moment at least he was finally sixteen, not of age yet as a wizard, but, after a
fashion, free. It was with considerably more optimism that Harry dragged himself from his bed and
went to face the Weasley’s picky mirror. He wondered if reminding it that today was his birthday
would buy him any slack.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The weeks before school passed in a completely different sort of blur for Harry.

The busy comings and goings of the Burrow helped keep his mind distracted from the events that
had so haunted him alone at Privet Drive. There wasn’t a night Harry didn’t lie down to feel the
empty place in his heart that the comforting presence of Sirius in the world had once filled, but
during the day time he could mostly keep the thought at bay. It was healing as well to be with Ron
and Hermione and Luna, and even Ginny; to be able to see and hear and feel their recovered health
and well-being after all that had befallen them at the Department of Mysteries. It eased his
conscience a bit. He’d made a mistake he hoped he’d never make again, and their very continued
presence around him was a constant reminder.

He still suffered nightmares, both his own and others that reminded him that Voldemort knew he
could reach Harry despite his best efforts at the mystery that was Occlumency. He couldn’t quite
grasp what Snape had been trying to teach him even though he continued to practice on his own, and
he feared his abruptly severed lessons might leave him a failure at that particular magical skill
forever. He often found himself wondering if that wasn’t in fact Snape’s actual intent.

Still, it was far easier to wake up to Ron’s weary shaking (he’d taken to putting silencing
charms on himself each night, but his thrashing around still sometimes woke his friend in the tiny
room) or, one particularly memorable afternoon when he’d fallen asleep and dreamed outside in the
Weasley’s magical hammock (no trees required!) to Hermione’s anxious eyes.

The dream cruciatus he’d been sweating out in a net at Voldemort’s feet had almost seemed
*worth* it to be awakened by her attempts to soothe him. He’d realized the hammock had been
the net in his dream as soon as she’d tried to help him extricate himself from it; her helpfulness
had landed him flat on his back on the ground below with one trainer still tangled thought the mesh
above him.

The anxious, self-reproachful look that came over her face as he thumped abruptly to the ground
had been enough to push him over the edge into laughter. Laughing turned out to be a really useful
emotional escape valve, because he’d surprised himself with the rawness of his urge to pull her
down on top of him and snog her senseless once he landed. *Hermione!* To his greatly mixed
delight and dismay she’d flopped down beside him and given in to laughter of her own.

What was happening to him? Why was he suddenly so aware of her when nothing had really…. Well,
come to think of it, everything had changed, hadn’t it? He thought back to his revelatory image of
her in the shade the day Ginny had been teasing him. Was he having some kind of usual sixteen year
old hormonal flare and all would go back to normal if he ignored it, or did he really have feelings
beyond friendship for one of his best friends? He’d always talked to Hermione about the weird
things that happened to him; it felt strange not to be able to go to her now.

They lay peacefully in companionable silence after their laughter gave way, sunk in the too-tall
grass and watching clouds drift lazily across the summer sky. Harry’s trainer was still stuck in
the hammock above, but it wasn’t twisted or anything and he left it there, swinging gently. The
Dursley’s would have been outraged by the condition of the Weasley’s yard, but Harry was very
comfortable with it. He doubted witches and wizards were any different from muggles, really. There
must be good and bad ones, neat ones and sloppy ones, uptight and laid back types. Lacking family
he had no idea what he might have been, but growing up Dursley seemed to have pushed him firmly
toward the Weasley end of things. He wondered what his own nature really was.

He could hear the faint chatter of gnomes from somewhere behind them and Crookshanks stalked
stealthily past, whiskers twitching. No matter how the rest of them fared, Crookshanks was having a
brilliant summer.

“All prepared for start of term then?” he asked. It seemed best at the moment to stay on
familiar ground where he could trust his own behavior. “You seem to have finished most of the books
by now.”

“I’m not entirely happy with my conclusion for Professor McGonagall’s transfiguration essay, the
one on using liquids to simulate solid objects. Did you go with texture or displacement as your
primary focus?” she responded.

He let his head flop sideways and grinned sheepishly.

“Please tell me you’ve at least started it…”

“I did start it. I read the assignment and I even tried it out. I can do the tea to a book one,
but the pages were all stuck together. Water is even trickier though; I keep forgetting you need to
do something about the glass as well.”

“Well, that’s something I suppose,” she grumbled. “Ron hasn’t even started his.”

“It’s harder to get motivated here, there’s always something interesting to do. I did mine back
at the Dursley’s,” he admitted. “That was one of the few to survive Dudley.”

“That might have been the only good thing about them, then.”

He snorted at that, feeling too content and lazy to dispute her. There was *nothing* good
about them; he’d had to sneak the books up there to avoid having to do a summers worth of homework
on the train ride back to school. It’d be such a shame not to have time for his biennial bout of
train wide insults with Malfoy.

“This is nice,” Hermione said suddenly, “just you and me for a change. I love the Weasley’s too,
but sometimes there’s so *much* going on at once I just can’t take it all in. It’s exhausting.
I think it comes from being an only child. Do you ever feel that?” Her serious brown eyes were
watching him, waiting for his answer. He wondered when her eyelashes had multiplied and grown so
long.

“Sometimes. I don’t mind it, really, it’s nice compared to what I knew, but I can see where it
would get on anyone’s nerves eventually. It’s good that they’ve got all this space outdoors to get
away from each other when they need a break.”

Hermione rolled over onto her stomach, supporting herself on her elbows so that she was looking
down on him. “What are you going to do this year, Harry? Now that everyone knows he’s back? Has
Dumbledore said anything? Is there a plan?”

Dumbledore in truth had said little about any plans for Harry. He did know that he was being
pulled from the regular DADA class for extra instruction in wand work and “self defense” but other
than that no one had mentioned anything to him.

“Not that *I* know of anyway, but then I never get to know anything. That’s the worst part.
I’d feel better if I had any idea of what was coming next, even if there wasn’t really anything I
could do to stop it happening.”

Hermione nodded sympathetically; Harry could see she had thought of the issue before herself.
Just knowing that she and Ron were thinking the same thoughts and wondering the same questions even
though in theory it was not their fate to have to do so warmed Harry; he felt so much less
alone.

Looking up at her caused her hair to take on a nimbus effect, a halo lit by the sun dancing
through the leaves behind her. He closed his eyes against the brightness and wished almost to the
point of aching that she would touch him now the way Ginny had, that she would suddenly see him the
way he had begun to see her.

“Mum says dinner’s ready,” came a voice from behind his head, and Harry stiffened, recognizing
Ginny, as if by merely thinking of her he had called her into being.

He sat up to attempt to extricate his foot but the position pulled on the sore spot he’d never
gotten around to doing anything about and the sudden, sharp bite of it in his side made spots dance
before his eyes. He fell back and closed his them, mumbling his thanks for the summons. “Be there
in a minute.”

He heard Ginny make a stifled sound that could have been anything from a sob to a snicker and
then head back toward the house. He felt Hermione’s fingers working around his ankle and his foot
fell free of the hammock.

“Thanks,” he told her.

“Harry, are you sure you’re alright? You haven’t seemed quite yourself… I mean, I know you don’t
get over being attacked in a day or anything, that’s the problem with magic, isn’t it? We can make
things *look* all better, but there isn’t always a spell to clean up the rest.”

He opened his eyes again to find hers fixed unblinkingly on him, puzzling him out. “I’d say it
was missing Sirius, but much as that hurts it shouldn’t be making you actually *flinch*,” she
said thoughtfully.

Much as it could be a pain, having someone know you that well was a reassurance also. Harry’d
seen how Mrs. Weasley knew each of her sons for all their differences; none of them could truly
sneak a thing past her for long despite the different ways they went about trying to do so.

It was a comfort somehow. Having another person being so attuned to you made you real. It proved
you existed, grounded and anchored you when you might have drifted off into any kind of
self-deception, unnoticed. He’d always known on some sort of level within himself that he liked
being bossed about by Hermione because he *needed* it; he had greater patience with it than
Ron because no one else had ever bothered about him enough to do it for him. For the first time he
saw it less as being picked apart or told what to do as… loved. You *had* to care about
someone to invest that much of yourself in their inner workings. Much as he cared for Ron, his
voice had never spoke up for Harry’s conscience. They were friends and they lived and let live
comfortably within those boundaries.

If Hermione loved him that way, was it even possible for her to think of him in the other way
he’d begun to hope she might? Could she still see him as someone touchable? Snogable? Or did that
mean she only felt responsible for him? Why was it such a mine field suddenly?

“I’m okay,” he told her, although part of him wanted to show her the place that hurt and ask for
her help. The other part was desperately afraid that it would be just one more thing to pity him
over, and all of a sudden he wanted so more from her than that. “Really.”

“Good,” she after a moment, her face unreadable. And then she abruptly threw herself at him in
the kind of hug she hadn’t employed since third year, fierce, bone-bending and unmistakably
Hermione. It was too sudden to tense himself against the assault of it, but as her weight came
against him he felt instead of the expected pain a quicker stab and shift, as if something nagging
and out of place had moved back where it belonged. He could still feel it, but it was the duller
ache of something that would heal instead.

“Please don’t let us change,” Hermione said stormily into his neck. “I always want to be your
friend, *whatever* it brings.”

“You’ve got it,” he told her, letting himself draw her close. She felt wonderful, warm and sweet
with the smell of grass in her hair, and he was lost. Even if she never felt any more for him than
that, he knew with certainty he was lucky with what he had. “You always will be. No matter
what.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There was, as far as Harry could tell, no overt sign of increased activity on Voldemort’s part.
From what he could glean from an occasional comment between Mr. and Mrs. Weasley or Bill when he
came by the members of the Order were busy with pre-emptive moves; closing ranks and circling the
thestrals, so to speak.

Because of the general busyness of the adults and the chafing assessment that increased risk
making it impossible to go without them, the trip to Diagon Alley for school supplies finally took
place the day before they were set to leave for Kings Cross. “About bloody time,” Ron said when
they were informed the night before. “We could have easily gone ourselves, but no…”

Mrs. Weasley herded them into the floo for the twins shop bright and early after breakfast and
sent them stumbling out into the sunshine of Diagon Alley, blinking, almost as soon as they got
there.

“Go on, go on!” She urged them before her, “You’ll have plenty of time to visit with the twins
and play with that nonsense once you’ve got your books and things.”

“Doesn’t like to think that Fred and George left before NEWTs for a joke shop,” Ron explained as
they walked ahead. “They’ve done well though. Won’t tell anyone where the money to get it all
started came from, but they must have more than paid it back by now, whoever it was. Likely Bill, I
expect.”

“Good investment for him,” Harry agreed, mentally tallying his own list for the day to keep from
grinning.

The trip was made to Gringotts for funds, but took twice as long as usual with the new security
measures in place. They were checked and double checked for polyjuice and the presence of an
imperius curse before they could ride down to the vaults. Back out on the streets and ready to shop
the changed spirit of the Alley struck them once more; people hurried from shop to shop glancing
worriedly around them as they went and window shoppers were few and far between. Many shop owners
only unlocked their doors if you rang the bell first and a few had security measures almost as
strict as Gringotts.

“Well that’s taken the fun right out of it,” grumbled Ron, and Harry had to agree. He felt he
was getting particular scrutiny and the response was mixed. A few people shook his hand and assured
him they’d always believed him, several others moved away from him as if he’d caught some visibly
contagious disease.

They worked their way steadily down through their lists, and this years’ traditional sighting of
the Malfoys took place at Flourish and Blotts once more, thankfully without Gilderoy Lockhart
looking on this time. Malfoy Sr. secured at least for the moment in Azkaban, it was Narcissa who
was buying Draco his books; although as Ron pointed out, from the back it was sort of hard to tell
the difference.

Harry had laughed at that, and Draco spun around, glare already in place.

*‘Yuck,’* thought Harry. *‘He recognized me by my* laugh*. That’s just not
right.’*

“Potter,” Malfoy sneered.

“Malfoy,” Harry acknowledged him. “Made your way down from the luggage rack I see.”

He said it softly enough; Malfoy’s Mum was nearby conversing earnestly with Pansy Parkinson’s
while Pansy sneaked a copy of *Hideous Hexes: Show Them You Really Meant It* under her
Herbology text, her dark eyes glittering at Harry’s when they caught him watching.

Great. Just what the world needed; Pansy, fully primed.

Malfoy had, to Harry’s surprise, grown somewhat this summer as well. Or perhaps it was just the
difference since having left him hexed spineless on the train at the end of term. What ever it was,
he looked different somehow. His hair was longer though no less immaculate; still he seemed to be
deliberately trying to hide behind the fall of it, a ridiculous notion because who else had hair
like that? Harry would have sworn the scornful icy blue eyes were spooked and that Malfoy himself
was just about ready to jump out of his own skin. Interesting.

Ron came up to get his back, and Draco’s sneer deepened. “And if it isn’t the Weasel.”

“Mind your cauldron this time Ginny,” Ron said, eyeing him distrustfully. Harry actually looked
back to see what she was carrying. She had a pile of books in her hands and an expression that
Harry had never seen before on her face. There was a trickle of fascinated fear there, but
something else as well, something he’d seen in her eyes when she looked at him lately too. Double
yuck. How could she possibly share expressions for *him* and *Malfoy*?

Hermione suddenly caught his eye from halfway up the stairs to the second floor and motioned to
him to follow her. He wasn’t sure if she had something to show him or she was just trying to keep
him out of trouble, but he nodded and began to move away anyway.

“Still obeying the mudblood’s every whim,” Malfoy noted, but Harry only looked pointedly at
Pansy, then Hermione and back at Draco, his message given in the international language of boys
everywhere, wizard or muggle, and his meaning clear. *Better mine then yours!*

Draco lunged, but Harry was ready and swung round the banister onto the bottom step of the
stairs, well clear but not fast enough to seem like he was running. Ron followed him apparently
leisurely, but swinging well wide, his hand closed over the end of his wand protruding from his
pocket. Draco took a grim interest in a stack of discounted Quidditch books near where they would
have to return, as if they had been his only goal all along. Narcissa chattered nervously on to
Pansy’s mother, apparently unaware of it all. Mrs. Weasley was having a moment to herself in the
amongst the memoirs.

Harry tracked Hermione to the third aisle from the end on the second floor, in the history
section. Just the smell of the books there made him want to yawn, and he wondered what she wanted
to show him. Ron seemed to agree.

“It’s like just reading the names of the books makes me want to sleep,” he observed. “How could
*all* this stuff be so dead boring?”

“Dead boring to you, maybe,” Hermione scolded him. “But this is… oh never mind. You wouldn’t
listen anyway. Try this instead.” And she quietly pushed the stepstool at the end of the aisle back
and crouched down to peel back the edge of the worn and dusty carpet beneath her feet.

There was a sizeable crack between two floor boards beneath the carpet. So sizeable Harry
started to wonder about the structural integrity if the whole building. Still, i was probably all
stuck together with magic somehow, so what was the big deal? He was at a loss what Hermione was
showing him.

“What’s directly under history?” she whispered.

“More history?” whispered Ron back with a grin. “They dig it all up, don’t they?”

Harry tried to envision the layout of the lower floor and failed.

She pointed and motioned them to look. Taking a quick peek around to make sure no one was
observing them they dropped to their knees and pressed their eyes to the floorboards.

The top of two heads came into view, black and blond. Draco had evidently left his post at the
bottom of the stairs and was perusing the shelves, and Pansy was attempting to distract him.

Flourish and Blotts did not have a Dark Arts section; Harry wondered what Malfoy might be
finding so fascinating on the shelves below. He was definitely looking for something; his fingers
running nimbly along the spines and every so often taking out a book to thumb through it. Pansy
prattled on as he did, mentioning the names of several other Slytherins in their year and the one
ahead of them.

“Did you hear?” she said suddenly. “Adrian Pucey’s died. He was on a… jaunt, with Flint and some
older ones. Up in the mountains. It was unsuccessful.”

“No,” said Malfoy.

Though he showed no sign of particular interest Harry got the feeling he was listening
intently.

“He tried to explain *why*,” Pansy said with a shudder. “I heard his own brother finished
him off after; he was beyond saving. A puddle.”

“Idiot.” Malfoy blanched visibly at the puddle part. Harry remembered his own brief experience
under Voldemort’s cruciatus, when he felt like his bones themselves were melting.

“Has even one of those been successful yet?” Malfoy asked, still intent on the shelves.

Pansy looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so, or they would have stopped, wouldn’t they. Good
thing school’s starting or it could have been you next, and Crabbe and Goyle with you.”

“And you and Bulstrode, he’s hardly a chauvinist when it comes to fodder for his doomed ideas,”
Malfoy sneered. “He’s got other plans for me. He wants me at Hogwarts this year especially. I’m
alright.”

“Is that why you’re suddenly browsing the Herbology section?” Pansy sneered back, stung. “Not
content to be Snape’s pet any more? What’s Sprout know that could possibly get anyone
anywhere?”

Harry glanced across the crack and saw Hermione’s lip curl at that; it was such a Slytherin
thing to say. Knowledge was useful only if it advanced one’s options in the game.

“That’s for me to know,” Malfoy told her, “and you to find out. Now off you go. I need to make
sure of what I’m looking for before we leave, can’t find it at Hogwarts even in Snape’s stuff. If
this works there might not have to be anymore of those… jaunts, for any of us. Tell my Mum I’ll
meet her in Slug and Jiggers next if she’s ready to go on.”

“Alright,” Pansy agreed reluctantly. “Find a good poison for Potter while you’re at it.
Something slow acting and painful with a built in muffling charm so we don’t have to hear about it
while it does him in. Oh and leave him unmarked; he might belong in grotty Gryffindor but he’s come
up rather nicely over the summer. He’d do a lovely open coffin.” She kissed him then, a lingering
open-mouthed affair out of sight of their parents. Harry saw Malfoy’s eyes stray to the shelf in
the middle of it.

Ron had pulled back from the floorboards at the kiss, repulsed, and cracked heads with Hermione
with an audible thump and a hastily bit back *‘bloody hell!’* Harry stilled himself, afraid
Malfoy’d look up but saw he was instead staring intently not at the shelf in front of him but the
one just across the aisle. Ginny was there, replacing a book back on the shelf. She looked up and
noticed Malfoy’s eyes on her, and froze like a trapped rabbit. Just as Harry was about to pound
down the stairs to defend her, teasing pest or not, she seemed to come to herself and finished
shoving the book into its place before hurrying away.

Harry wasn’t sure whether to be chuffed or disgusted by Pansy’s comment; Ron was holding his
head but trying desperately not to laugh. Hermione seemed thoroughly unamused.

“It’s going to be an interesting year,” she told them both.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The trip to King’s Cross was its usual Weasley chaos; Harry and Hermione had both learned from
previous years to get their things ready ahead of time and stay well out of the way. Even with just
Ron and Ginny going this year there seemed to be twice as many left out items or last minute
repairs. Bill and Tonks were to escort them along with Mrs. Weasley; Mr. Weasley was once more
working overtime at the still defensive Ministry.

Bill had managed to borrow a car, so the trip itself was not bad at all and achieved in record
time with only a single obliviation of a muggle police office. (Tonks seemed a bit put out about
the paperwork involved; Bill just grinned widely and kept quiet.) There were quite a lot of very
official looking wizards patrolling the parameters of the Hogwart’s Express platform, and if the
student boarding was as crowded and rowdy as always the parents on the platform seemed unusually
subdued.

Mrs. Weasley fussed anxiously as they loaded their trunks and found their places. Hermione and
Ron said their goodbyes and went ahead to the prefects carriage. Harry took a last look round the
platform, remembering Sirius’ gamboling across it the previous year. Mrs. Weasley’s face suddenly
softened as though she recognized what he saw, and he found himself enveloped in a tearful hug.

“You keep safe,” she told him fiercely. “Be careful. Stay out of trouble. Listen to Dumbledore.
Oh and Harry, enjoy yourself, dear. Do try.”

A tall order if there ever was one. He hugged her tentatively back instead of just allowing it,
and thanked her for his safe August haven, and then the train was moving and she was shouting
instructions to Ginny. Harry moved on toward the back of the train searching for a friendly
face.

It was like Diagon Alley all over again; he was hailed by some who claimed to have always
believed him while others physically shrunk back as if his taint was catching. Some of the younger
student’s eyes grew wide when they saw him, and fingers pointed. He was enormously relieved to find
an empty carriage at the end of the train and to hoist up his trunk and settle down in it. Luna
arrived shortly thereafter and he helped her with her trunk; she gifted him with a vague smile and
set to her magazine without another word. Neville showed up several moments later, still clutching
Trevor with one hand and his cactus – far more of a familiar to Neville in Harry’s eyes than Trevor
had ever been – in the other. He too had grown over the summer, both taller and less hesitant, and
Harry was certain that the events at the Department of Mysteries that he had found so devastating
had been galvanizing instead for Neville.

Perhaps Neville *was* the one after all. Except now, with all that Harry had been through
and all he knew, he would not wish that role on his worst enemy, little alone someone as decent and
likable as Neville Longbottom. If Dumbledore told him he could walk away now and let Neville take
over, would he?

The answer was no, and he knew it. Whether it was to avenge those loved and lost or simply a
saving people thing about those he still had, he didn’t know. Harry reckoned there was something
inside him, something about the magic that had protected him from that first deadly spell that
would not let him stop now.

He was ready for another year at Hogwarts.


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A/N: And that’s that – the next chapter to this would be Chapter 1 of Here With Me. I think that
stands alone without this, but I always said I’d get this up and now it is, updated and all. Hope
you enjoyed it. ~Lindsay



