A/N: Welcome back, everyone! This is part 3 of my twisted canon series - if you haven't read parts 1 & 2 ('Circumstances of an Unexpected Trio' & 'Secret of the Serpent's House', respectively), I highly suggest doing so before continuing on - both can be found on my profile. JKR owns all things Potter, I just play. Please R&R, & enjoy! :)

Harry Potter lay flat on his back in the grass behind his house, staring up at the sky. High above his head, Draco Black was doing lazy loops on his broom as he played some sort of chase game with their Quaffle, but Harry didn't feel like flying at the moment – he had too much on his mind. His thoughts kept wandering back to the strange encounter in Professor Dumbledore's office near the end of their last term, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't get the Sorting Hat's cryptic words out of his head:

Three join four when six are gone
And the Chosen One teams with his closest
To bring down darkness immortal.
The legend in her sacred vault
Unlocks magic within the stone.
Bronze and black together in friendship,
Silver and gold given freely
In the name of the enemy's ignorance.
Learn who your friends really are
To break a blood chain forged at birth:
Not all is as it appears –
Look to the safe for the answers.
Blades and bonds join wands and words.
Ghosts will be your cloak
As Hogwarts herself joins the chase.
Let strengths be your guide,
Let differences unite you,
And evil will meet its end.

The prophecy – for that's what Dumbledore had said it was – seemed to carry rather a lot of weight, but nobody had yet made any sense of the details. It seemed that Hogwarts had a store of magic to offer, and if Harry's suspicions about the colors were correct, it had something to do with the four houses, but what, they had no idea. To make matters even more complicated, the Sorting Hat had never said anything at all before, aside from its annual performance at the Sorting Ceremony, so they knew that this had to be extremely important.

Dumbledore had sat them all down again the instant the Sorting Hat had finished speaking, only to tell them of another prophecy, this one made by the Hogwarts Divination professor nearly thirteen years earlier:

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord has arrived in Wizarding Britain. In the darkest hour just before dawn, he will join forces with legends of old, and when the smoke clears, the final score shall be known.

The old headmaster seemed to think that the two prophecies were linked somehow, but as Harry, Draco, and Ginny had all been beyond exhausted by that point, he hadn't said much more, and they hadn't gotten a chance to talk again before term ended. The last few days had been too full of packing and reuniting with Hermione to do anything else.

Ah…Hermione. Harry smiled widely at the thought of his best friend. She'd spent several months of the previous term Petrified in the hospital wing, and it had taken quite a lot of snooping and a thrilling adventure or two to put her to rights. The bushy-haired brunette was overjoyed that they'd deciphered her messages so successfully, and she'd smirked in satisfaction when an early summer headline screamed, "Gilderoy Lockhart: Azkaban's Newest Addition". Lockhart, their former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, had turned out to be a fraud, having tracked down a number of prominent witches and wizards all over the world to learn of their accomplishments before casting powerful Memory Charms and attributing his victims' work as his own. Hermione, exceptionally clever girl that she was, had uncovered his secret, but Lockhart, through the influence of Tom Riddle's diary, Petrified her before she could spread the word, and it was only under intense questioning from his colleagues and Hermione's friends that Lockhart finally broke. In their opinion, he'd gotten what he deserved.

In addition to thinking about the prophecies, Harry was waiting for Hermione to come home. She and her parents had left for a month-long holiday in France less than a week after the Hogwarts Express had arrived at Kings Cross, and they were due back any day now. Although Harry had been excited for his friend – it was the biggest vacation she'd ever taken and her first trip out of Britain – the Grangers' trip to France combined with Hermione's Petrification made for the longest time they'd gone without seeing each other since they'd first met, and he was anxious for the trio to reunite once more.

Glancing once more up at his brother, Harry rolled over, propped himself up on his elbows, and began to reread the letter he'd received that morning – it was from Ginny Weasley, who was currently on holiday in Egypt:

Dear Harry,

You wouldn't believe some of the stuff we've seen here – Egypt is absolutely amazing! Draco probably wouldn't like it much, as it's super hot and he'd be burnt to a crisp in seconds, but still. Bill's taken us all around the pyramids, some of which had some pretty nasty curses put up when they were first built. Mum wouldn't even let me go in the last one, which I personally think is a little ridiculous – I killed a basilisk at the end of last term, I think I can handle a few mutant skeletons. But no, I wasn't allowed. She also (unfortunately) stopped Fred and George's attempt at shutting Percy in a pyramid – Percy's been absolutely intolerable since he found out he wasn't made Head Boy. I can't wait to get to Hogwarts just so I can get away from him!

I'm going to wish you a happy birthday now, since I have no idea when I'll have a chance to write next (Bill's got us on the move from sunup to sundown), nor do I have any clue how long it takes for one of my letters to get to you from here in the first place. Hopefully we can coordinate things so that we can all meet up in Diagon Alley to get our school stuff, and if not, I'll see you all on September first! Say hi to Draco and Hermione for me.

Cheers,

Ginny

Harry laughed a little as he set the parchment aside. It sounded like the Weasley family was having a blast. Mr. Weasley had won the Daily Prophet's annual grand prize drawing, and he and his wife had used a large portion of the gold to take their children to visit their eldest brother, who worked as a curse breaker for Gringotts bank. Harry was very happy for his friends – the Weasleys were extremely poor and would never have been able to afford such a trip under normal circumstances, and he knew Ginny was thrilled at the prospect of seeing Bill, who had finished Hogwarts and moved away when she was still quite small.

A shout from the front yard, followed by a voice he knew well, interrupted Harry's thoughts:

"It's good to see you too, Padfoot – where are the boys?"

In an instant, Harry was on his feet and racing towards the front of the house, Draco not far behind. Sirius and Lily were in the front yard conversing with a family of three, the youngest of whom was the very person Harry had been waiting for.

"Hermione!"

The girl in question shrieked with delight as she launched herself at her two best friends. They met halfway across the lawn where Hermione gave them each a fierce hug and a kiss on the cheek, causing both boys to turn bright red in embarrassment.

"Oh, it's so good to be back!" Hermione said, surveying them both happily. "I missed you."

"We missed you too, Maya," Harry replied once he'd found his voice again. Draco stepped forward and embraced Hermione once more.

"Welcome home, Lotte," he said. Hermione smiled fondly at them.

"I've got so much to tell you – oh, I really wish you could've been there with me!" she said as they walked towards the backyard. "Paris alone – the Eiffel Tower at night is so beautiful…and the Louvre, oh, I could've spent weeks in there…the gardens at Versailles…the beaches in the south of France…"

"Is that where you picked up your tan?" Draco asked. "You make me look like a ghost." Hermione laughed – she was indeed quite a bit darker than when she'd left, and as Draco was much paler than the average person to begin with, the contrast was quite noticeable.

"Yeah, it is," she said. "And let's not forget about the Wizarding districts – the one in Paris is fabulous, of course, but I think the one in Normandy was my favorite." Hermione spent a large part of the afternoon regaling her adventures for the boys, showing them dozens of photographs to supplement her stories. She'd also brought them each a poster signed by a local Quidditch team she'd seen play in her first week there, as well as large boxes of chocolates from a Wizarding shop that had won international awards every year since its founding some three hundred years prior. As they dug into the creamy treats, the friends agreed that the awards were more than deserved.

"So what's on the agenda for the rest of the summer?" Hermione asked, finally spent from all her talking.

"Padfoot wants to start with physical training," Harry replied. Sirius and Lily had been talking for quite some time about continuing the teenagers' instruction outside of school – they were limited in what magic they could teach them until the trio turned seventeen, but there were plenty of other things to learn. Some were things that Narcissa, Draco's birth mother, had asked Lily and Sirius to teach him when she'd given her son to their care, and others were things that Sirius and Lily felt would better equip their children to deal with the ever-escalating conflict in the Wizarding world. Physical training fell into this latter category.

"Sounds intense," Hermione replied, "but if it's going to help us, I'm game."

"Me too," Draco agreed. "What happens if we're in a duel and we lose our wands? We're screwed unless we have some other way of defending ourselves. I say it's a great place to start."

Sirius and Lily started their training bright and early the next morning, and for the next several weeks, Harry, Hermione, and Draco worked on their physical combat skills. Sirius taught them a number of moves that could easily incapacitate an opponent without proving fatal, and Lily gave them all valuable lessons in the art of self-defense. In between sparring sessions, Sirius worked them through drills on their broomsticks as a means of building their stamina, and Lily had them running laps and jumping hurdles in the backyard. Halfway through the summer, Remus Lupin, who was a close friend of both adults, came to visit and added his own exercises to the mix. The trio ended each day sweaty and exhausted, but they couldn't deny that the grueling sessions were working wonders for their physical fitness. By the end of the summer, they were all pretty sure they'd never been in better shape before in their lives. They'd also grown quite close to Lupin and were very excited when he said he'd be taking up the Defense post that year. He'd previously been visiting as many werewolf settlements as he could in hopes of convincing more of them to join the Order's cause – Lupin himself was a werewolf, as they'd learned not three days after they'd met him – but Dumbledore had decided that the young man had done all he could for now and would do remarkably well in the teaching position.

"I hate agility drills," Hermione groaned as she flopped down in the grass one evening near the end of August.

"Which ones – the ones on the ground, or on brooms?" Draco asked.

"Both," Hermione answered. The boys laughed.

"You'll be thankful for them when you're dodging curses somewhere down the road," Harry reminded her.

"I know – I still hate them though."

"You're getting pretty good on a broom, Maya – fancy trying out for Quidditch?" Harry asked.

"Harry, you know I still can't catch a Quaffle to save my life," Hermione said with a laugh. "Considering my inability to fly one-handed for any length of time, the only position I could feasibly play would be Seeker, and there's no way I'm getting that job anytime soon."

"Of course, coz there's no way you could beat me," Harry teased.

"Oh, shut up." Hermione smacked his arm. "Prat."

"You know you love me for it."

"I love you both," Hermione said, smiling slightly. She resumed her prostrate position to stare up at the sky. "Made any headway on the prophecies?"

"Nope," Harry said. "Nothing."

"I've never heard such a detailed prophecy before," Draco commented as he laced his fingers behind his head. Harry rolled over to look at him.

"Just exactly how many prophecies have you heard?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Only the same ones you have…but still, the Sorting Hat's is really specific, isn't it? It seems like a lot is going to have to happen for that one to be fulfilled."

"And I wonder why the hat chose now to reveal it," Hermione mused. "I mean, prophecies are supposed to come forth at specific times, aren't they? There's obviously a reason the hat spoke when it did – clearly, the prophecy wasn't meant to be heard any time before now – but what exactly does that mean?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Harry said with a shrug. "Dumbledore said he was going to look further into this 'legend of old' – he thinks that might have something to do with the magic mentioned in the longer prophecy – and he said he'd tell us if he found anything promising."

"If nothing else, we're definitely gearing up for another interesting year," Draco said. Harry and Hermione quickly agreed, and the trio fell silent as the clouds dissipated to reveal late summer stars.