A/N: Wait, what's this? A new chapter? Merlin's balls!

I wasn't really happy with this one and in the end I decided to write half of it all over again and that's why it took me a lot longer than it should have (and of course university started. It's my BA-research year, so it's been pretty stressful). I apologize. However long it takes me I intend to finish, so don't worry (if you actually care).

While writing this chapter I realized that all of this has actually happened in the span of one day and a night! And there's more to come before everyone can get their sleep… Except Harry. He slept just fine. And had a weird dream. …Which WAS significant by the way. Just thought to mention.

Thanks to everyone who's faved, followed and especially to those that reviewed the story thus far! You make my days. :)

CHAPTER FIVE: GIVING AWAY AND NOT GETTING

In the Headquarters of the Alliance, a lone, magnificent door stood in a brightly lit corridor. Behind that door a meeting was taking place. It was a very unusual meeting, since it was called in haste the very same day by one of the members of the high council. Such a meeting had not been held in fifty-seven years, the last time being when a small incident concerning the key of the treasury being lost (and subsequently found from a troll's stomach) occurred.

This time, though, the matter was not so small and a lot louder and when standing just outside the door, your ear pressed to the wood, you could nearly perfectly hear what the talk was about. Conveniently this was just what Madbran was doing.

Inside, a dazzlingly beautiful woman straightened her spine and stood up regally.

"Director Ragnok, I do not doubt your proficiency in the matters of money, but this..How can you be so sure? The prophecy of our ancestors states that there shall be only six after Gorgala's rise that carry the mark of Death before the Seventh. Those six have already been. You do understand the consequences if you are mistaken?"

The woman flicked her blond hair behind her shoulder and sneered at Ragnok in a condescending manner. The goblin bared his teeth at her.

"Do not underestimate me Belinda. I did not come to be the Director of Gringotts only for my 'proficiency in the matters of money'! I am sure. This is the Seventh. The childe marked by Death."

The spokesman of the werewolves rose to take his turn.

"And can you tell us in what way the childe was marked by death, besides the bracelet of course?"

"I apologize, but that would compromise the identity of my customer, and as such I cannot answer this question."

At this the veela slammed her hands on her desk angrily and shouted:

"To Hell with that! If you will not tell us, all of us will be compromised! Who knows what that child is doing with the Bracelet! Or already has! They might be leading a troop of wizards right into the alleys already at this moment!"

At this the crowd flared up, and a panicked whispering was heard. Ragnok, the Director of Gringotts bank and the one that had called the meeting looked amused.

"I can assure you that that will not happen. Firstly, the childe does not even know of the existence of the Four Alleys, and secondly, even if they did, they would not wish us any harm I'm sure. This childe is-"

Suddenly a soldier of the incubus sort opened the door to the servants' entrance with a loud creak and stood at attention. The room silenced.

"Sirs and madams, I am sorry to disturb you, but we have a problem at the Diagon entrance to the Vertic Alley. The entrance seems to be locked. No one can get out or in."

"What?! But that is impossible!" shouted Gimweld, the resident high warder of the Alliance, "The entrance can only be locked by the senior warders, and we're all here!"

"And none of us has surely done anything to the entrance!" another warder added. A murmur of agreeing voices floated through the air.

"But so it seems. A crowd has already formed to the entrance trying to get in or out. At this rate, the entrance might get compromised." The whole hall froze for a second until breaking into frenzied whispers. Chairman Cicerro rose from his seat, the unforgiving eyes of the dark elf scanning the attendees and spoke:

"Warders, I believe this to be a matter of greater haste than the one we have been discussing, if not of greater importance. Please do go immediately to the site and find out what has happened."

A few grumbles was heard, but none too loud. The warders (a peculiar mix of daemons all exhibiting the blue sash of the warder's guild) stood up and some collected the instruments they had been playing with before the events had stolen their attention, and filed out of the room. The door closed.

On the other side a man stumbled out of the way of the opening door and promptly tripped over someone's robes, in the process crashing the whole line of warders to the ground with numerous books, staffs and pieces of chalk.

The man who brought to pass this chain-reaction was of course named Maddrow, and at the first, angry syllable of his name out of warder Gimweld's mouth he fled. Straight inside the room still holding the on-going council meeting, standing awkwardly in the middle of a mix of gazes; perplexed, angry, disapproving.

For a second the chairman's brow shot to skies. Then he frowned.

"Maddrow. I don't believe you are a part of the council."

The scarred man rubbed the back of his neck, "No, umm, yes, I mean I've got something to tell you," he chuckled nervously.

"Then please do so promptly. And Filidh help you if this is something ignorant," the chairman growled.

Maddrow rubbed his hands together nervously and clapped them decisively.

"Ah, you see, I don't know if Director Ragnok has already told you" -at this point the whole audience stood at attention- "but there seems to be this kid who might maybe have gotten his hands on Balor's Bracelet and gotten himself something like…chosen?" he ended carefully. The room exploded with noise. The chairman took it to be in his best interest to do what he pleased and silenced the room down to the last counsellor, no questions asked. He regarded Maddrow's sweating form calculatingly.

"Where have you come across this information exactly? And what of it?"

Maddrow swallowed in apprehension. 'Shite. It's true. It's true. Shite.' He bit his lip and continued slowly: "Well, then you might want to visit the infirmary."

The chairman tsked impatiently and drummed his fingers against the dark stand.

"Why on Earth might we want to do that?"

If the elf had known Maddrow's answer beforehand he would have strengthened the hold he had on his composure. But as he did not, it was not so much of a stretch to believe that his jaw slacked.

"The kid's there. He fought an orc."

Someone dropped a quill. The resounding echo reached all ears.

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At first Harry was annoyed. He couldn't see a thing! Of course he should've thought about it. His bed held a white curtain around it, so logically all the other bed's did too. Next, he thought, 'if I could pull back mine, then I can pull that one back too', and felt victorious. And third, he felt annoyed again, since when he tried to get out of the bed Mundungus flipped ("You crazy boy you are injured get down now not on my watch they'll kill me already-!"). And when he had asked Dung about the person in the other bed he said that he didn't know and didn't give Merlin's flying balls and certainly wouldn't find out for Harry. And for good measure dragged his chair in between the two beds. 'Great. Just great.' The young wizard gritted his teeth. 'I'm on the verge of finding out how this man escaped from Voldemort and now I can't because that wretched idiot won't co-operate!' Harry had never really hated Fletcher but this, he thought, really gave him reason to.

And what in the name of Merlin was happening here anyways? He had found a bracelet which led him to a hidden enclave for magical creatures! Harry furrowed his brow when he was hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu. '…Sounds familiar. To think about it, it might not be such an odd thing to find a hidden enclave inside another hidden enclave.' He rubbed his eyes and sighed. It was just his luck to find it, though, and be mauled by a man-eating monster the first hour of his first visit. He didn't think he liked this place much. Harry's brain was running sluggishly and he leaned down on the soft pillow. A feather tickled his nose. 'A down pillow, huh…That's nice..' His eyelids felt heavy and the boy closed them for a while.

Sunlight was blazing down on him and a salty wind blew his hair into a mess. This was a place where summer was, not only now, not only next month -if such a crude count of life even existed here- but always. How Harry knew that, he wasn't sure, but it didn't matter. The wind carried sounds of laughter and waves from the other side of the small grassy hill Harry was standing at the feet of. Suddenly a longing to be there with the voices took over his mind and he started running, up the hill and over it, until he saw the wide ocean -which he knew would be there- and the sirens playing in the water -whom he knew he would find there-, splashing each other with their tails, screeching gleefully in mermish like little children. Harry smiled. And suddenly halted his step and his smile. What was going on? Where was he? How did he get here? Was this even real? '…This is real,' Harry thought, and gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, since he didn't know how he without a doubt, without fail, unhesitatingly knew that.

Without warning a bright light blinded him and Harry opened his eyes. Or the other one at least; someone was holding his right eyelid open and pointing magical light right into his pupil. He wrenched himself free and shouted an unvoluntary four-letter word. The person took a few steps backwards and apologized.

"Ah, I'm sorry. You were conscious then, I started to wonder. Well, welcome back Mr. Potter," the man smiled with good humor (and very pointed teeth, Harry noticed), "I believe there are quite a few messieurs who have been awaiting you." And true, when Harry cleared the bright spots in his vision and looked around, he noticed a gathering of about twenty creatures of all sorts around his bed. Harry's hand gripped the bedcovers tensely, his eyes wide and even the last shreds of thought about the weird reality-dream were banished from his mind.

The tall man -or elf, from the looks of his ears- closest to the bed cleared his throat and nodded his head in greeting.

"Welcome, Mr. Potter, to our home. I am Cicerro, the Chairman of the Alliance of the Seven Alleyways, and am sorry that you have already met with the crude side of our domain. You can rest assured that encounters such as yours today with our daemons are exceedingly atypical."

Harry felt slightly stupefied. What was going on in here? This elf, obviously holding a very high position in this government was talking to him like his opinion of anything mattered! This could of course be a boy-who-lived -thing, but Harry doubted the Alliance really cared much about Voldemort either way.

"Ah.. Really? That's..nice to hear, I suppose," he answered carefully, when it became obvious by the stretching silence that an answer was expected of him. The chairman looked at him in silence for a few seconds assentingly and Harry felt increasingly confused and embarrassed. What were they expecting of him? The chairman continued:

"Gathered here at your..krhm, bedside are the representatives of the vampires, were-species, dwarves, incubi, dark elves, light elves, high elves, goblins, mermen, phoenixes, satyrs, centaurs, hags and chimaeras. The representatives of dementors, sphinxes, unicorns and winged horses could not be allowed to enter I'm afraid."

"A-alright," Harry's eye's bugged out. 'This is getting dangerous,' he thought slightly hysterically and continued:

"Umm. What exactly is this? What do you want of me?"

A slow smile spread over the chairman's lips and Harry leaned away warily.

"Not much. Yet. Right at this time we only wished to confirm that you are indeed well and to offer our apologies. Also, we wished to make sure that you kept your mouth shut. About everything you've seen here thus far and everything you will see here from this point onwards," the smile wavered not once.

Harry narrowed his eyes and straightened his back. 'So, they are here to threaten me into silence. Of course.'

"I'm not one to give away other's secrets. But just out of curiosity, how were you going to make sure of that?" Harry said flippantly and cursed his Gryffindorish recklessness the second the words slipped out. An expression of surprise flashed across the chairman's face.

"Hmm. I might have thought that the threat imminent in my words was enough. But maybe I assessed you wrongly?"

Harry might have taken those words as yet another threat, but the obvious curiosity behind them was real and the words held no malice. Harry furrowed his brow in perplexion.

"…As I said, I'm not one to give away other's secrets so whether you did or not is irrelevant."

The chairman let out a loud, amused laugh at this, startling Harry and making him jump. The sound quieted into a sly smile on the elf's face.

"Yes, yes… I believe you will do. With a bit of training."

Harry bit his lip and looked at the other with mistrust. This elf seemed a bit too much like Dumbledore for his liking. He almost thought he shouldn't ask, but…

"I will do for what?"

The elf just smiled at the boy knowingly. His eyes flicked to the bracelet for a few seconds and suddenly an expression of epiphany crossed his face.

"Oh! You came here from the Diagon Entrance didn't you?"

"Yes. But what will I do for?" Harry enquired stubbornly. Cicerro smiled.

"Let's make a deal shall we? You will help us with a small problem we have and I will tell you what you will do for. And maybe even some more. How does that sound to you?"

'Not good,' thought Harry.

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A few hours later Maddrow was walking down the stairs of Vertic Alley alongside Mundungus and the boy, following chairman Cicerro. Dung was grinning, looking very pleased with himself. 'He should be! That rat!', thought Maddrow. He had been forced to give back all the discount he had gotten and more when rescuing the Potter boy. The chairman had told him to make that pile of Dung a friend by using any means necessary. He had had to buy the man in the end, but the thief had finally agreed to support and protect the boy holding the Bracelet while in the wizarding world. But Maddrow knew well that a coward's word was good only so far. He looked down in shame, thoughts upon the happiness that once had been.

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The number twelve Grimmauld place was in chaos. Almost seven hours earlier Harry Potter had vanished from Diagon Alley like into thin air. Six hours and 47 minutes ago Mad Eye had noticed the boy missing and in 15 minutes the whole of Diagon Alley had been searched. And now Albus Dumbledore was desperate.

The headmaster was sitting in front of his desk, staring at a softly glowing crystal ball, which was enchanted to tell you of Harry's condition. A while ago it had glowed red. Now it was a light yellow. A knock was heard from the door.

"Enter."

The door's hinge's creaked, and the dark being of the school's resident potions master appeared in the opening. The headmaster lifted his gaze, the usual twinkle missing from his eyes.

"I would ask you to sit, my boy, but I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to leave immediately."

"I have to wonder why you would call me if you now wish me to leave? Have you finally gone senile?" Snape sneered dryly. The headmaster's lip curved in a humorless smile.

"Oh I wish, my boy, but alas my wits have not yet stranded me. I mean that I have a mission for you. Go to Voldemort's headquarters and see if Harry is there, or if anyone has any knowledge of where he might be. But please do be careful with the information of the boy's status as missing. I would rather have Voldemort not know of this if he doesn't already before we can safely retrieve the child."

Severus grimaced inwardly, 'That blasted boy will be the death of me,' and promptly turned on his heels, to march into the lair of the most dangerous wizard in Britain and yet again spy on his secrets.

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A/N: So, R&R? Personally I think this chap was boring as hell. Next time I'm hoping for something more interesting.