It came as no surprise that the news of Sirius' trial had already spread like Fiendfyre by the time Harry, Remus, Sirius and Alice sat down for dinner that evening. Newly returned from her job abroad that very afternoon, Alice regaled them with tale after tale of the many conversations she'd overheard on the streets (the Muggle streets, no less) from passing witches and wizards, most of them coming to London for the sake of saying they were in the city on the very same day Sirius Black's trial took place.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before," she enthused, a forkful of mashed potatoes waving across the air as she emphasized her point, "it's like no one was even thinking about the Statute of Secrecy anymore. There were groups of dozens of witches and wizards just flitting about the train station as if it were an everyday occurrence. The poor Muggles looked like they didn't know what to do with themselves as more of us kept stepping off trains in wizard robes, pointed hats, the whole package. I think I even saw a woman carrying a broom. A broom, Sirius."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Sirius shrugged. "They're more likely to chalk it up to some sort of obscure pagan holiday or book convention than think, for one second, that they're surrounded by actual witches."

"They've figured it out plenty of times before. I don't see why they can't do it again," she argued.

"They're Muggles, Ali-cat."

"I'm very much aware of what they are, Black. What's your point?"

"My point is, it's been hundreds of years since the last time we seriously had to worry about them coming after us and that was when they knew there were witches in the world. Or at least, they wanted to believe that there were." Sirius ran a napkin across his lips and took a sip of wine. "They have their sciences now; they don't need magic to explain what they think they already know about the world. They've left us behind and forgotten we even existed. We're nothing but a fairy tale to them."

"Fairy tale or not, times are changing. The world is getting smaller by the minute and I'd rather we had a say in how we come out to the world rather than have them show up at our doorsteps with machine guns instead of torches and pitchforks," said Alice.

"Exactly as I think it," added Remus. "The very notion of keeping entire species and civilizations hidden from the Muggles is preposterous in this day and age. It might have worked in the past when it took weeks just to get a message from one city to another, but we've come past that way of doing things now and it's about time we caught up ourselves with the world around us."

"I don't understand how they haven't figured it out by now. I know the Dursleys only accepted us as real because they didn't have a choice, but not even half the world is like that. What did they think of all the people disappearing and turning up dead because of Voldemort?" asked Harry.

"It was difficult to keep much from the Muggle press since most of the attacks were on Muggle-borns and half-bloods living amongst the Muggles." Remus looked thoughtful as he continued to say: "It was also a pretty tumultuous decade all things considered and I think that helped keep us hidden. Not all deaths and disappearances could be linked to riots and strikes gone wrong, but there were also a couple of incidents which were chalked up to natural disasters and then other natural disasters which were actually magical warfare.

"It was a time of political turmoil and fast changes for both Muggles and wizards, and I think that made it easier for some things to slip through the cracks as we attempted to staunch the rest of the flow."

Sirius nodded his head and, in good humour, added, "Thinking back on it now, we should've been done for on the thirty-first when news spread that Harry had defeated Voldemort. I wasn't around for much of the celebration, but I saw enough on my way to his house to realize that the Muggles couldn't possibly ignore what was right before their eyes this time."

"How come they did, then?" asked Alice.

"I think it was dumb luck," Sirius shrugged. "It was All Hallow's Eve. What better time to chalk up all the weird things you see on the streets than to the one night a year saved for ghosts, witches, vampires and whatever other creature you can think of? We were lucky, that's all."

Harry thought he heard Alice mutter, "I'm not sure luck is the right word", but she said nothing more on the subject and turned the conversation back to Sirius' hearing. They discussed the event until there wasn't a single eye in the room that wasn't threatening to fall shut at the end of the next sentence. They went to sleep shortly thereafter.

Although he said nothing, Harry didn't fail to notice Sirius leading Alice into his room after they'd wished everyone a good night. His lips pulled at the corners in a soft smile as he watched them go. He was relieved his godfather had found someone who could be there for him like Ginny was there for Harry; they'd have to find someone for Remus next. The young Professor had just won back one of his lifelong friends and Harry planned on making Remus ride on the waves of good fortune that had headed their way and find his own special someone.

In the meantime, he had a certain young witch fighting sleep as she waited for his call and he wasn't planning on disappointing her.

The news of Sirius Black's innocence and Peter Pettigrew's resurrection from the dead had left the citizens of magical Great Britain shaken. Flashbacks to a time not so far behind them when it had been commonplace to open the newspaper to page upon page of obituaries, disappearances and attacks haunted the British populace. Until the situation with Black and Pettigrew had come to light, they'd believed themselves to have moved past those horrible times. The past was the past and there is nothing you could do to change that.

But if the past suddenly clashed with the present?

For weeks after Sirius' visit to the Ministry, the media had been ravenous for news of the newly returned Black heir who was now reportedly living with his godson. Grimmauld Place was already hidden from all sorts of eyes with any charms, spells, wards and potions available to the imagination and Harry soon learned the difference between hiding out of a desire not to be seen and hiding out of a fear of being found.

Though he had wanted to celebrate his freedom by showing his godson all the places their merry little gang of marauders had frequented in their youth, Sirius soon realized that all it took was one young, upstart photographer eager to be the first to discover Sirius Black's dwelling to blow up their carefully constructed routine. Sirius had only been followed as far as his preferred Apparition Point in the park in front of Grimmauld Place before he realized what had happened and quickly changed into his Animagus form and left the young man fumbling in the bushes for his vanished front-page model.

A couple of hours later, the park had been crawling with self-proclaimed bird watchers donning funny robes and carrying antiquated cameras. Still, Sirius was determined not to let that deter him and the members of the park soon became accustomed to the friendly black dog who skipped around with the children and knew how to dutifully bring back anything that was thrown for him to chase.

The last turning point that would push Sirius over the edge came in the form of a stampede of photographers running over the beloved stray in the park. A dark-haired man turning the corner had been spotted by a member of the media and mistaken for Sirius. In their hurry to catch a picture of the poor Muggle man, the gaggle of photographers had overlooked the dog sunning himself on the grass. Sirius had come back to Grimmauld Place with a bloody nose and scrapes all over his arms and legs. He told everyone to pack their things and be ready to leave the next day and then disappeared to lick his wounds in his room.

That had been two weeks ago, which meant that for fourteen days and counting Harry, Sirius and Remus had been living in the countryside in a house that had once belonged to Harry's great-great-great-grandmother and had now been passed on to him. The house (if it could even be called that—Harry likened it to a small mansion in his head) was very old and it showed in the washed out greens and browns creeping down the outside walls and the inescapable mustiness inside that could only come about from years of seclusion and neglect.

The move had been a long time coming and other than freeing Sirius of one more tether linking him to his hateful past, it also served the purpose of freeing up a fully protected, fully functional (if a bit on the Dark side) house capable of housing dozens of people. Grimmauld Place had quickly become the perfect headquarter.

Having revived the Order of the Phoenix shortly after Sirius' trial, Dumbledore jumped on the opportunity to ask Sirius if he would mind loaning his house to the Order. Sirius had blinked, stared at him oddly, and then proceeded to break out into wheezing laughter. Blinking back the tears in his eyes, he'd fished out the keys to the front door and dropped them into the Professor's stunned hands with the words "Why not? It's bad enough having to listen to the senseless rants of my mother's portrait, we might as well give her something proper to complain about. The Black family home as the Order's headquarters! Now that's something, all right."

Adelaide's Manor, as Harry's great-great-great-grandfather had dubbed it when he'd gifted it to his wife, was a two story house with a basement fitted for potion work, a garden (the size of which Harry had yet to finish exploring), five bedrooms, six baths, a kitchen, a dining room and a ballroom fit to host parties in the mid-18th century.

"Are you sure this is mine now?" Harry asked the first time they stepped foot on the property. "It looks like it should be made into a museum or a high-end restaurant."

"They weren't ones to flaunt their wealth, but the Potters were—and, with you, continue to be—a wealthy family," said Sirius. "You've seen proof of it enough in the family vault, it shouldn't come as such a shock to have a house like this."

"A house," Harry snorted. "This is a mansion. This is the type of place they'd show on the telly when it was Aunt Petunia's turn to choose the channel." The front door opened with a loud screech, dragging up clouds of dust and leaves on its way. "When was the last time anyone was even in here?"

"If I had to guess, no one's been in this house since your many times great-grandfather's passing," Remus coughed when the swish of a curtain dropped dirt on his head. "We have a lot of work to do."

They had slowly but surely turned the old house around. The home improvement project took up most of their time and as they couldn't entertain any visitors until the proper safety precautions had been put in place, they had an added incentive to finish the work quickly.

It took three weeks before they deemed the house fit enough to receive guests and two more days before they actually followed through with the invitations. Those two days gave them time enough to set up some wards on the property and when it came time to perform the most important of them all, Sirius was adamant that he would be Secret Keeper.

The Weasley family were the first to see Adelaide Manor. Mr and Mrs Weasley, Ron and Ginny visited on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. While the latter two awwed and ahhed in all the right places, Mrs Weasley—and to a certain extent (mostly due to loyalty than anything else) Mr Weasley as well—remained tight lipped throughout the tour, letting out only a few hums and brisk nods to show she was listening. The warm and open woman Harry had come to know had retreated into herself and become someone he was sad to say he didn't recognize.

"Have I done something to upset your mother?" Harry asked Ron and Ginny as he was leading them around the enormous backyard.

"What? Our mum?" asked Ron.

"No, the neighbour's," Harry said drily. "She seems a bit different today," he turned back to the house where Sirius, Remus, and Mr and Mrs Weasley were seated around a table drinking pumpkin juice and making extremely polite conversation if Mrs Weasley's squared shoulders and absent smile were anything to go by. "Not her usual self."

"That's just mum for you," said Ginny, the back of her hand lightly brushing against his as they walked. "She does this sometimes when she doesn't know what to think about something, or when she knows it's something she can't voice yet."

"I did do something to upset her then," Harry said worriedly.

"No, nothing like that," Ginny hurried to assure him. "It's just…the stuff with Sirius and him going to Azkaban but then breaking out to find you because it turns out he's not guilty, and now you live with him…" Ginny shrugged. "I don't think she knows what to make of it. Or him."

"If you ask me, she needs some time to get to know him," said Ron. "Mum's very protective of us and she hadn't even met Sirius before today. I think she's worried all those years in Azkaban did something to him and now that you're living with him..."

Harry nodded mutely. He looked back to where the adults were gathered together and observed that Mrs Weasley hadn't moved an inch from her previous position, though Mr Weasley appeared to be having a spirited discussion with Remus and Sirius without an ounce of the tension Mrs Weasley held.

"Give her time," Ginny advised. "She'll come around."

Mrs Weasley did not warm up to Sirius that day, nor the one after that, or even the week following when Hermione made it back from her vacation in Spain and finally got to see Harry's new home. With ten days to go before the end of the summer holidays, Harry was at his wits' end. The relationship between Mrs Weasley and Sirius hadn't gotten any better and the worst part (at least to him) was that neither one of them seemed to be in any hurry to rectify the situation.

"She'll come around when she's ready," Sirius said to him with all the wisdom of a man of Dumbledore's age. This was the fifth time Harry had brought it up. "I've learned a thing or two about women in all my years and though I've been out of the game for the past decade, some things just never change. Now that you have a girlfriend of your own, it would do you well to remember this: Never rush a woman who doesn't want to be rushed. No matter the place, time or circumstances, women are sensible and sometimes mercurial creatures and when they're ready to listen to you, they will, but not a moment sooner. Molly Weasley isn't ready to listen yet. I'll be there when she is." Having said his piece, Sirius snapped open his newspaper and retreated into its monochrome pages. Harry did not bring up the topic again after that, though his godfather's words had done little to assuage his worry.

When his time wasn't taken over by his preoccupation with Sirius and Mrs Weasley it was better spent with Professor Dumbledore. The Professor had returned from his trip visiting his friend (the expert in Occlumency and Legilimency) and had come back bearing the news Harry had expected: lots of suggestions, but not one concrete answer. Dumbledore's friend had never encountered a situation like Harry's before where a bond (no matter how unwanted it was) ran soul deep between two people, inextricably connecting them in ways which had yet to be fully explored. He posited that unless the bond were to be severed, there was no sure-fire way of Harry permanently closing the door on their connection, particularly in sleep when he had little to no control over his own mind's wanderings.

Dumbledore's solution had been to teach Harry how to create a fortress in his mind, a secluded safe where he could store his memories of his Voldemort-induced-nightmares so they wouldn't plague him during his waking hours. With time, those memories would age and fade just like any other, but never disappear entirely.

Professor Dumbledore established a new pattern for his lessons with Harry. He would walk into the room, get comfortable, poke at Harry's mental defences until they turned to dust under his expert care and then show Harry new exercises to strengthen his Occlumency shields. At the end of each session Dumbledore would leave Harry with odd tasks to complete for their next get-together: he should think of his oldest memory, prepare a list of his top 76 favourite meals, memorize a passage from a book and, on a most memorable occasion while they still resided at Grimmauld Place, paint the walls of a forgotten bedroom a faded yellow without using magic. The pungent smell of paint had followed him around that entire week.

"You want me to do what?" demanded Harry.

"I would like it if you could count the leaves on the peach tree at the back of the house," said Dumbledore, entirely too serious in his request for Harry's taste. "Without magic, if you please."

"I do not bloody well please at all," said Harry, too lost in his outrage to remember who he was talking to. "It's almost impossible without magic. It would take me hours just to count half the leaves on the tree and that's if I don't lose track of the ones I've already counted. Why do you want me to do this?"

"I believe it could be of great use some day, particularly if you wish to develop a method to protect your secrets from any Legilimens, not just Voldemort," said Dumbledore.

"Is this a riddle? Or a metaphor. Or some other cryptic way of yours to teach me a lesson?" Harry had been a good sport until that point, he hadn't complained when Professor Dumbledore left him with the odd task or two for the week and wouldn't have bothered to put up a fight right now if it weren't for the absurdity of the task ahead. "Hermione is much better at those than I am, I wouldn't hold out hope for me figuring it out if I were you, Professor."

Dumbledore laughed. "You give yourself too little credit, Harry, and myself, too much. These requests I've been making of you, the exercises I've been giving you, they serve a higher purpose other than keeping you entertained over the weekend. The only reason I forewent an explanation is because you did not ask," he said. "Now, rather than explain, allow me to give you a demonstration."

Professor Dumbledore raised his wand invitingly and Harry bobbed his head in a hesitant nod. Instantly, he sensed a presence lurking on the outskirts of his mind, calmly prowling its edges.

Over the course of the summer Harry had learned that Professor Dumbledore liked to vary his approaches in Legilimency from week to week. Harry never knew what to expect when the Professor set out to enter his mind and that made it all the more difficult for him to protect himself against the coordinated attacks which sometimes weren't even attacks at all, but calculated and sneaky manoeuvres that slithered past Harry's protections without him even realizing.

Professor Dumbledore lingered on the edges of Harry's consciousness for a long time—so long that Harry did not see it coming when the Professor pulled out all his punches and bulldozed a monster sized hole through Harry's mental walls and stomped through his carefully constructed labyrinth, leaving only the dust of destruction in his wake. Harry scrambled. He pulled up every one of his last resort measures but they come up short in the face of the Headmaster's strength. Harry was so caught up in the struggle waging in his mind that he almost did not notice a change outside of it.

The smell was one he'd never be able to forget—chemical, acrid and sweet, not like the candies at Honeydukes, but like burnt caramel. With the smell came an influx of memories, of days spent painting four walls of Grimmauld Place by hand, the brush going up and down, up and down, up and down, then dip, shake and repeat. Up and down, up and down… It was hypnotic in a way. It was all he could think about. It invaded and took over his thoughts like little else had before and Harry suddenly realized the gift he'd been given—the weapon.

He fashioned the memory into a web, hit the repeat button and wrapped the Headmaster in it. He spun it round and round until he himself couldn't tell one instant from the next and as he twisted the last of the web around Dumbledore, he gave him a push and banished him out of his mind.

Harry opened his eyes to broken porcelain, an overturned coffee table and a pot of paint lying sideways on the floor, its contents making a valiant effort to turn the carpet completely blue.

"Professor!"

Harry fell to his knees, hooked his trembling hands under Professor Dumbledore's arms and helped pull him back onto his armchair. The old wizard had his eyes screwed shut like he'd spent too long staring at the sun and he had sweat dripping down his face onto his white beard.

"Professor, what happened? Are you all right? What can I do to help? Should I go look for someone? What do—"

Dumbledore wheezed out a chuckle and waved off Harry's fretful hands. "I must admit, when I said that you underestimate yourself, I wasn't quite ready to be proven right so quickly," he said, bracing his arms against the cushions to push himself upright. "You need not worry, Harry, this is nothing a warm cup of tea and some biscuits cannot fix."

"Professor, you just collapsed onto the floor, I think that's reason enough for anyone to worry."

"Ah, but I had very good reason to do so. When I conjured the pot of paint, I wasn't sure what to expect but you put up an excellent fight, Harry. A much better one than I was expecting and I had high expectations of you to begin with." Dumbledore jabbed his wand at the pieces of porcelain strewn on the ground and watched them assemble themselves back into a flower-patterned tea set.

"I did this to you," Harry breathed out. "I… Professor, I didn't mean to hurt you, I swear."

"I don't think for a second that was your intention, but it was a fortunate outcome nonetheless." At Harry's blank look, Dumbledore smiled, shook his head and gestured for him to retake his seat. "My wish was for you to fight my Legilimency attack using the tools I've been providing you over the past several weeks as well as everything you've learned under Ms Hansford's tutelage. Not only did you repel my attack, you also pushed me back into my own mind and could have caused me serious bodily harm had we been anywhere else other than this lovely sitting room."

"You say that like it's a good thing," said Harry uncertainly.

"It's an exceptional thing. Imagine the advantage it would give you in a duel to incapacitate your opponent, even if only momentarily. Those are precious seconds that could potentially end up saving your life." Dumbledore gave Harry a moment to process, then said, "The pot of paint served its purpose and successfully triggered a monotonous, repetitive memory which, as you learned, can be used as a smokescreen during a Legilimency attack to ambush and confuse your attacker."

"So you don't just get a kick out of asking me to do weird, random tasks every now and then," Harry concluded, though he still wasn't certain the Headmaster didn't get a small, mean thrill out of picturing Harry spending hours at home fruitlessly trying to count the leaves on a tree.

Dumbledore smiled and said, "I assure you that if that were the case, I would employ considerably more imaginative effort in thinking up the tasks I give you." Somewhere in Adelaide Manor, a grandfather clock struck the hour and was soon joined in its clanging and ringing by the other clocks in the grand house. "I believe that means our time is up."

Harry escorted Dumbledore to the front door. Before leaving, the man paused in his tracks and turned to face his student.

"We are stuck in limbo," mused Dumbledore, "Voldemort has found a way back to his body—he's likely come back stronger than he ever was before—but as long as he sticks to the shadows and does not betray his hand, the Ministry won't allow his reappearance to become public, even if they do believe it to be true. Which they do not," Dumbledore added, almost as an afterthought, "not yet."

"No one will listen to me," said Harry, "not with the Daily Prophet spreading rumours about me and calling me a chronic liar."

"Yes, neither one of us is on the best of terms with the Ministry at the moment and they certainly don't wish for us to have any semblance of credibility with the public." Dumbledore reached into his robes and pulled out a feathered bowler hat which he fastened onto his head. "As I said before, we are in limbo—Voldemort is returned but, once again, he has proven to be a formidable opponent. Few other than ourselves believe he's out there; the wizarding world is once again at war, but with no battles to fight, they do not know it yet."

"And the Order?"

Dumbledore straightened the folds of his robes. "What of it?"

Harry narrowed his eyes and bit his lip to keep from saying something he might later come to regret. "Has the Order been doing anything to try to prove that Voldemort is back? To get people to believe us."

"It's not that simple, Harry."

"Then enlighten me," Harry said through clenched teeth. "I see Voldemort nearly every night in my mind. He's out there and he's gathering his forces, recruiting more Death Eaters every day. Sirius and Remus have been to every Order meeting and all they've had to report is a lot of talking and not a lot of doing."

"The hard truth is that there's not much to be done with the situation as it is," Dumbledore confessed heavily. "Voldemort has been keeping quiet and while that is fortunate for the people he would otherwise hurt, it is unfortunate for our own purposes. We cannot know where he is hiding, where his base of operations is, how many Death Eaters he has at his disposal, or even what creatures he's managed to sway to his side without him making an appearance. We are stuck in limbo, Harry. Betwixt and between," Dumbledore finished tiredly. "The best we can do is campaign ourselves, feel out the werewolves, the mermaids, the vampires, the goblins, the giants—all manners of groups that Voldemort might approach."

Harry nodded, absently tapping a finger on the frame of the door. "You'd tell me if I could be of use? There just...there has to be a way to make people believe us, Professor."

"I have no doubt there is and we'll find it in due time," For a second, Dumbledore's eyes shone like aquamarine gems before dimming back to their normal azure. "There are a multitude of things out of my control, but I fear that in these new times, I may find out that even where I am most secure, my position will be called into question by those who seek to undermine me and those who fight alongside me. Do you understand now, Harry?"

Harry didn't, but pinned under the influence of Dumbledore's intense gaze, Harry sealed his lips shut and nodded. He stayed by the door and watched the Professor calmly walk down the cobblestone path to reach the end of Adelaide Manor's wards. The air shimmered around Dumbledore as he stepped out of the house's protections. He turned around to face Harry, raised his hand in salute and disapparated with a twist.

It didn't take Harry long to figure out that while Dumbledore may have promised to cease with his word games, he had certainly been trying to tell him something before he left. Harry just had no clue what that could be.

"Oi! Watch it, you almost bowled me over!" yelled Ron. The second year Ravenclaw in question risked a glance down the wagon to roll his eyes at him, then pulled the door open and slid into the next train. "The little bugger! He didn't even bother looking even a little bit sorry. When you guys do your rounds around the castle, make sure to keep an eye out for that kid, he's up to no good."

"We haven't been Prefects for a day and you're already asking us to abuse our power to torment the second year who accidentally pushed you?" asked Hermione, she was going for a stern expression but she couldn't control the mirth present in her eyes.

"That was no accident," argued Ron, "and if you don't get cracking early on kids like him, who knows what type of things you'll be allowing free reign of Hogwarts."

"Things? They're people, too, Ron," said Hermione.

Ron gave a shrug that was both careless and all-knowing. Hermione rolled her eyes and opened the door to their compartment, allowing Ron and a silent Harry to enter first. They settled in comfortably, Hermione pulled out a book from her purse and Ron took out a rolled up Chudley Cannons magazine from his back pocket. Having brought nothing to entertain himself with, Harry sat back and gazed out the window at the passing buildings, watching as they turned to houses, then interspersed farms, and finally to open fields.

Hermione hummed as she read a particularly titillating scene in her book while Ron flipped to the next page in his magazine and scrunched his eyebrows together in agreement with something he was reading. Harry watched them. His friends—his first real companions—who had no idea of the tendrils of evil living, festering, feeding inside Harry. No idea of the price he would have to pay to rid the world of that same evil that was now slinking through the streets because of him.

The door to the compartment swished open, dragging Harry's attention with it and snagging it on the redhead sliding into the compartment. He had eyes only for her as Ginny let the door shut behind her with a click and exchanged friendly greetings with Hermione and spared Ron a sisterly pinch of his cheek, to which he glared at her and lifted the magazine to cover his face.

Something was rolling in his chest—stretching, yawning, preening, sharpening and coming alive with every step she took to get to him. Ginny sank down next to Harry, her side plastered to his as she lifted her feet from the ground and draped her legs across his lap. He welcomed the warmth, the weight of her, and placed a hand on her knee to pull her closer still.

Her eyes were twin chocolate moons in a sky of coral freckles for stars and he got a glimpse of them up close, of the face he'd yearned to touch for the past three weeks where sparse letters and drawn out mirror conversations hadn't been nearly enough to soothe the unexplainable hole he'd harboured inside him.

Her lips were dry but velvet soft as they met his, brushing softly, pulling and moulding together until he thought that if they stayed like this long enough, he might not be able to tell where he ended and she began.

Ginny shifted, one of her legs twitched atop his and their whisper soft kiss turned into something else which was firmer and stronger, a tentative inquiry instead of a kiss hello. There was a sigh, hot air that Harry swallowed as his own before he ventured a bit further by stroking her bottom lip with his tongue.

Ron coughed obnoxiously loud and Harry remembered where they were. He was slow to pull back, but Ginny didn't seem to mind as she stole one last peck before leaning against the seat cushions, back turned to the brother who was studiously pretending to read. Ginny looped an arm around Harry's neck and said, "Hello to you, too, Mr Potter."

Harry grinned wider than he could ever remember doing it and replied, "Always a pleasure, Ms Weasley."

"Anything life-altering happen since we last saw each other?" asked Ginny.

From the corner next to the door, Ron mumbled, "You talk to each other almost every day for Merlin's sake, if something happened, you'd already know," and was swiftly ignored.

"Nothing to report," Harry sighed, pretending he didn't feel the punch to his gut as the word Horcrux Horcrux Horcrux ran through his head in a flashing banner. "You?"

"Same as always. We thought we'd see Charlie this summer since he said he could come visit this year, but something came up and he couldn't make it. Mum was crushed and cooked up a storm the day she received his Floo Call. Bill's been working for Gringotts though, so he's in and out of the house a lot more than before but still not as much as mum would like I think." Ginny paused for a moment, then said, "It's strange, I don't think I've ever seen him work this hard before. He's always loved his job a lot, but now it's like he spends as much time as he can at Gringotts and I don't think he's been doing much curse breaking either, just paperwork and inspections… In any case, it's been nice having him around again."

"What about Percy?"

A cloud fell over Ginny and dusted her in shadow. That was the only way Harry could describe the sudden tightness to her mouth, the stiff set of her shoulders and the quick glance she stole behind her back to Ron, whose white knuckled grip on his magazine threatened to tear the paper in two. On the opposite bench, Hermione took notice of the change in the air and subtly lowered her book but made no other move.

"Percy's been…"

"A bloody asshole," spat Ron.

"I was going to say an arrogant prick but I suppose that works, too," Ginny said darkly. "He moved out of the Burrow a few days after Sirius' trial. He got into a huge fight with mum and dad—especially dad. The next day, he got up early in the morning and was gone before we even sat down to breakfast. He hasn't spoken to mum and dad since. Or any of us."

"Do you know what they argued about?" asked Harry.

Ginny and Ron exchanged looks and Harry felt a boulder drop into his stomach as he connected the dots. Percy's job at the Ministry, the timing of the fight so soon after Sirius' trial, Harry's testimony, the Minister's stance on Voldemort…

Harry's throat was sand dry as he said, "I see. He doesn't believe me about Voldemort. And your parents do."

"It isn't your fault," Ginny jumped in, spotting the beginnings of the dangerous Harry Potter Guilt Spiral.

"It really isn't, Harry," added Ron. "Percy has always been like this. When he gets it into his head that he's right there's no power in the universe strong enough to convince him he's wrong and now that he's working for the Minister himself…" Ron shook his head. "Clearly there's nothing in the world he wouldn't risk to keep that position."

His words were cold and mean and Harry had no doubt those were the two things his girlfriend and best friend had been relying on for the past months to get through their brother's betrayal. The hand wrapped around Ginny's knee pulled her closer to him and he pressed a consoling kiss to the frown lines etched on her forehead, lingering with his lips on her skin when she leaned into his touch.

Hermione chose that moment to chime in with a completely different topic and engaged Ron's attention for the rest of the trip, eventually getting Harry and Ginny to join in as well. The case of Percy Weasley wasn't brought up again.

An hour into their journey, Hermione and Harry left the two Weasleys in favour of attending their first Prefects meeting some carriages away. To Harry, it was dull and repetitive, the seventh year Head Boy and Head Girl seemed more concerned with establishing their superiority over their Prefect subjects than explaining the duties required of them. They were sitting in a larger compartment with room for a large table and enough chairs to sit all the Prefects while the Head Boy and Head Girl stood at one end, a blackboard full of scribbles at their backs.

Hermione listened attentively, though her lips twitched into a minute frown every now and then when one of the Head Prefects said something she disagreed with. On the pair's third strike, Hermione pulled out a little notebook and pencil from her back pocket and began scribbling furiously. Clearly it was something none of the other first time Prefects had ever done before for the Head Boy and Head Girl exchanged nervous glances and spent the next twenty minutes choking on their words and stumbling through their instructions at every scratch of lead on paper.

Other than taking them down a peg or two, Hermione's antics also had the advantage of distracting the other Prefects from staring at Harry. They were all facing the head of the table, ostensibly listening to what the Heads had to say, but their eyes would shift to Harry every once in a while, like magnets reaching for the poles, and some of them would keep at it for a while, tracing phantom lines down his face as though he were nothing more than a photograph plastered on the front page of the newspaper. It was the same way they'd looked at him in the past years; after the Stone, after the Chamber, after the Tournament—only worse.

They divided themselves into House pairs after that and patrolled the halls. For what? Harry wasn't entirely sure and other than a particularly loud group of third year boys, their one hour of patrol went by listlessly and uneventfully. They returned to their compartment to find Ginny and Ron in the midst of a game of chess.

With minutes to spare before their arrival, Harry and Ron left the compartment and waited by the door as Ginny and Hermione changed into their Hogwarts robes, then the four of them changed positions so the boys could get changed.

A sharp, keening whistle announced their arrival; it was soon drowned out by the dull screech of the wheels scratching against the tracks as the train slowed down to come to a stop at the station. The doors swished open on running plumes of smoke so the students who rushed out of the train first appeared to be walking on clouds. There was the usual rushed confusion as the first years took their time to stare around in wonder, only to be jostled and pushed by everyone else dashing to get to the horseless carriages.

As Harry and his friends harboured no secret wish to be carried off and trampled by a herd of over-excited children, they waited patiently in their carriage until the majority of the students had left and then went in search of their own means of transport.

It was as Harry rounded the last of the carriages and finally got a good look at the shafts which usually hovered in the air, pulling the carriages with what he'd thought to be nothing but magic, that he stumbled over his feet.

Large animals the size of horses with the wings of bats and the beaked face of falcons were calmly roped in pairs in front of every carriage. Their bodies were hairless and grey, their skeletal limbs covered in the same stretched-out skin that made up their wings. Harry stared as a hoofed foot struck the earth and left an open patch of fresh dirt on the grass.

"What are they?" he breathed out, not daring to take his eyes off the beasts.

Ginny, one foot already on the step to the carriage, heard him over the din of chattering students. "What are what?"

"Them. Those things—the beasts." Harry felt her come up next to him and place a hand on his arm, head angling to peer at the creatures.

Her hand tightened on his arm, pinching his skin. "I don't see anything."

"They're right there," Harry insisted. "I'm not crazy, I can see them."

"I see them too, you know. I haven't always been able to see them I think, though I can't be absolutely certain I wasn't always meant to." Luna's dreamy voice broke in, the girl suddenly appearing from behind the two creatures tethered to Harry's carriage. She ran a pale hand over one of the beast's faces and it closed its eyes at the caress, butting the palm of her hand with its massive head when she paused. "I would say you're no crazier than I am." A glint entered her eyes, one Harry wasn't sure he was meant to notice but that he'd seen plenty of times dusting the Headmaster's eyes.

Luna was teasing him. Testing him, too.

"Why haven't you ever said anything before?" Ginny looked at Luna intently, the hurt naked on her face. "I would've understood if you'd explained—"

"It wasn't a matter of trust, Ginevra," Luna's eyes, as she locked them with Ginny's own, were perfectly clear. "You'll see them one day, I think, but Thestrals… They're wonderfully lonely creatures. If you ask any of the adults at Hogwarts, I'm sure they'll all be able to see them, too. But only a handful of us, the younger generation, are able to."

"But why?"

"Haven't you figured it out by now, Harry Potter? You've stared Death in the eyes." One of the streetlamps lining the rocky path illuminated Luna's face, her eyes glowed with a knowing, silver sheen. "And it looked back."

Harry was silent on the ride to the castle. Everyone noticed, but at a glance from Ginny, no one said a word. Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Harry had been joined in their carriage by an equally quiet Luna, but her silence was the calm sister to Harry's own broiling stillness. Neither Ron nor Hermione had been brought up to speed on what happened before they'd mounted the carriage, though from the heaviness lingering in the enclosed space, they knew something was wrong.

Their carriage (led by Thestrals, as Harry had found out) reached the gates to Hogwarts and all five of them got out wordlessly. They were walking up the sloping grass hills to the castle when a shrill, human whistle rose up to meet them. They turned as one and were met with four Hufflepuff boys trotting up to meet them.

"Potter," the tallest of the brood drawled, hazel eyes zeroing in on Harry. "I was hoping we'd catch up with you. Have a chance to talk."

"Do I know you?" asked Harry.

"No, but we know you," the boy said. "We also knew Cedric. Diggory, in case you'd forgotten." Harry felt the rug being pulled out from under him, felt his feet dangle in the air helplessly as he heard the name he'd only been able to say in desperate screams during the night.

"I know who Cedric is," Harry managed to choke out, barely registering the warm hand suddenly gripping his numb fingers like a vice.

"We thought you might. You see, we've been following the news, my friends and I," the hazel eyed boy gestured to the three Hufflepuffs surrounding him, all with varying degrees of disdain on their faces as they looked at Harry. "And we weren't too happy with what we found. The Dark Lord rising again? Really? Is that the best you could up with or was that something you and your Death Eater godfather cooked up while he was on the run?"

The breath whooshed out of Harry like he'd been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer. His eyes lost their focus for a second, the four Hufflepuffs becoming nothing but big splashes of black in a canvas of greens and greys.

Ron was saying something, something cruel and pointed by the blazing look in his eyes, but Harry couldn't hear anything over the roar in his ears, his head.

"What do you want?" His voice was thin and distant, as if coming not from him, but from someone else a hundred yards away. From another world. Maybe even another time.

The Hufflepuff boy's face froze and sharpened. "We want to know what you did to Cedric. Why you're lying about his death. What aren't you telling us? What doesn't the great Harry Potter want the world to know about?" The disgust swirling in the boy's eyes ran so deep, Harry thought he could easily drown in it. "Why are you lying?"

He might have said something else, Harry didn't know. He couldn't hear him because he wasn't at Hogwarts anymore. He was in the graveyard. Little Hangleton. And there was Cedric.

"Maybe it's faulty… I'll take a look."

Harry watched as Cedric approached the Cup, watched him turn around at the sound of rustling leaves and meet Harry down on his knees, clutching at his head like he could dig his nails in deep enough and cut out the tendrils of magic infusing his every thought with agony.

The Killing Curse surged from Pettigrew's wand and, for a second, wrapped Cedric in a halo of green light. He was a specimen caught in emerald instead of amber. If Harry could preserve him like this for all eternity, maybe he would.

Cedric dropped and Harry heard the crunch as his body hit the ground with no hands to reach out to brace against the fall, no conscious thought to register his descent. The crack his head made when it bounced off the ground.

He hadn't noticed these things in the graveyard at the time—the sounds of death. But they'd come back to him at night, in his nightmares. The stores of his mind had been blown wide open to torment Harry with every last detail he had missed and now, it was every detail he could not escape from.

Cedric's eyes were still open. Harry knew this was the part where he was screaming, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from Cedric. What were his last thoughts? Was he regretting grabbing the Cup with Harry? Was he cursing his name, wishing he'd been killed with his parents? Wishing his name had never come out of the Goblet, like Harry did?

Or was he wishing his death would give Harry time? Time to escape, to get help. To save himself, at least.

It was this thought that broke him.

"What do you look to gain by doing this? Asking these questions. If you'd really cared about Cedric then you wouldn't be disgracing his memory like this." Ginny's voice. She was seething. "Leave us alone. Leave Harry alone, or else."

"Or else what?" Another Hufflepuff boy, this one dark skinned and blue eyed. "What's a pretty bird like you going to do to us? Run your mouth until we can't bear to hear the sound of your voice." His voice dropped, taking on a suggestive tone. "I can think of better uses for that mouth of yours."

Harry saw red. His wand was out and marking the tip of the boy's nose.

Hermione clutched Ron's sleeve as he made a move to pull out his own wand but wasn't fast enough to stop Ginny from taking out hers, though she left it hanging at her side.

"Never," Harry ground out, "talk to her like that ever again. You won't like what I'll do to you if you do."

The Hufflepuff at the end of Harry's wand didn't say anything, but out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw his friends shifting to reach into their own pockets.

"Hem-hem."

Both groups tensed at the sound of that voice, but only Harry did it out of recognition and not surprise. His wand dropped as he turned around to face Dolores Umbridge.

She was standing feet away wearing a lavender, knee length dress overlaid with a mauve blazer, a purse the size of a small dog hung from her arm, the same colour as her dress, and a hat spangled with orchids rested on her head.

"What, exactly, is it that you'll do, Mr Potter?" Umbridge's dulcet words flew out of her mouth like poison darts. "I'm really quite curious to find out. After all, not many educators can say that on their first day on the job they had to break apart a violent altercation between students. One of them, The Boy Who Lived, no less."

Anger bubbled up inside Harry but amidst its scarlet fumes, one word burned brighter than the rest. "Educator?"

Umbridge's lips pulled at the corners in an approximation of a smile, but Harry thought she was making a very good impersonation of what a shark must look like before it struck.

"Minister Fudge was...concerned about the topics being taught to the students at this school. Our future leaders. I offered my services in the name of the Ministry of Magic to help improve the effectiveness of this school, return its Professors to the tried and true methods of teaching, and guide its students down the path of responsibility, honesty and civic duty." Like a cat, Umbridge tilted her head to the side and smiled sweetly.

Hermione had relaxed at Umbridge's first appearance but the longer she spoke, the further she drifted from Ron until she stood neck and neck with Harry facing Umbridge. "But Hogwarts is a private institution. The Ministry cannot—"

"The Ministry," Umbridge interrupted, looking for all intents and purposes as though she was swatting away a bothersome fly, "is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of its citizens. The best way to do that is to instil a healthy dose of discipline and respect into those responsible for carrying our country forward. What better place to do that than Hogwarts?" She turned to Harry. "That being said, we wouldn't be setting a good example this year if we started off on the wrong foot now, would we? A warning this time, Mr Potter. You only get one of those."

Umbridge twirled on her heel and strutted off to the castle. Harry kept his eyes on her until she'd passed the double doors and was firmly out of sight, only then did he notice that his friends had been curiously mute and as he looked back, he noted the Hufflepuffs were gone.

Ginny broke the silence. "Is that who I think it was?"

"Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Or at least, that's what she was last time I saw her."

"She's the one you told us about after they questioned you and Viktor," said Hermione, missing the sharp glance Ron shot her at the other boy's name. "The woman you said had something against you."

"I don't think he was far off on that front. She seemed ecstatic to find you pointing a wand at that Hufflepuff prick, even if he more than deserved it," Ron said darkly.

"Of course, she would be, she works for the Ministry and there's no one who's spoken out more against them than Harry," said Hermione, shaking her as she started the trek up to the castle.

"I haven't spoken against them," argued Harry. "I told them the truth and they wouldn't believe me. Dumbledore did as well."

"And why do you think they sent her here?" Hermione retorted. "It's no secret Dumbledore's your biggest advocate and with him being the most powerful wizard of the age and the Headmaster of Hogwarts..."

"What," scoffed Ron, "you think she was sent here as some sort of spy?"

"A long time ago, humans believed that whenever their children grew sickly and weak as babies, it was because they had been changed after birth and were actually faerie offspring—changelings," said Luna, either ignoring or not heeding to the looks shot her way. "They'd leave the changeling out in the woods at night in the hopes that the faerie would return their real child and take their own faerie baby away. Of course," she intoned somberly, "human babies are unlikely to survive a night out in the woods alone, especially during the winter, so when the parents would come back for their child the next day and find its corpse, they'd just assume the faeries hadn't shown up. But when they encountered a perfectly healthy baby they thought it was their own, restored to them at last. They didn't pause to consider that the baby they now held in their arms was actually a faerie, planted there by its parents in the place of the sickly human baby that had been left out in the cold. They didn't know that they now housed the very creature they'd been trying to get rid of. That they were being watched, assessed, and measured up by something other."

Harry shivered. From the expressions on Hermione, Ron and Ginny's faces, they were experiencing something similar.

"I don't know," Luna continued, "maybe there's something to take away from these myths after all. They might not even be just myths."