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Author: Bring and Fly Story: Of Knowledge and the Loving Heart Rating: Mature Setting: Pre-DH Status: Completed Reviews: 29 Words: 10,726 …There Is No Limit. This tale refers to an incident that
occurs in ‘The First Rule’ but will stand alone. A certain witch’s
comment will make more sense if you have read TFR beforehand though!
Harry stepped out of the shower and swore under his breath. No towels. He heard his cousin snigger beyond the door and came to the conclusion that this was intentional. Was this another of Dudley's ritual attempts at humiliation? Harry hesitated only a moment before manfully opening the bathroom door, shooting a glare at Dudley who was waiting beyond it, and stalking to the airing cupboard along the landing. From the obsessively ordered shelves – a psychologist's dream – he removed the first towel his hand landed on. Shaking it out, he discovered it was one of the huge and expensive bath sheets reserved for Dudley's exclusive use. "You're a freak!" Harry towelled his hair first, enjoying the rare luxury of a warm, dry towel in this house before squinting at his cousin and noticing where his attention was fixed. "I'm a freak?" Harry repeated, drying his face. Dudley nodded emphatically. Harry snorted and kilted the towel about his waist. It went round him twice. "You're the one staring where you shouldn’t be but I'm the freak? Grow up!" he grumbled and made his way back to the room he used. Drying off properly, Harry wondered what his cousin was up to now. Probably trying to make him feel bad by insinuating that he was inadequate in the underpants department. It would be typical of him. Dropping the towel, Harry dismissed it from consideration. He had more important things on his mind, even if sharing a dormitory and bathroom had not been sufficiently instructive, comparatively speaking. Experience over the years had shown him that he was average, and as Oliver had frequently said, "It's not the equipment you've got, but how you play the game," although Oliver had been talking about Quidditch. At least, at the time, Harry had been innocently sure that was what he meant. Now, several years on, and after some interesting 'walks' with a certain redhead, Harry was starting to think that the sentiment might be just as applicable to other, equally exhilarating pursuits. He pulled on clothes that still carried the scent of his last refuge, Hogwarts, and slid the fake Horcrux into his pocket. The cool weight of the metal against his hip reminded him how far he had yet to go, but he wouldn't let it make him downhearted. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," Hermione had said to him when they had parted at King's Cross. Reconsidering many things in the intervening days, Harry began to understand what she was telling him; no matter how impossible a thing looked it would be conquered one step at a time. Taken as a whole, defeating Voldemort looked impossible; taken one Horcrux at a time... He heard again Ginny's reply after he had expressed another near-impossibility to her: You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve. Thinking of his girlfriend – exgirlfriend – only revitalised the pangs he had felt at finishing with her; the ache that made him not want to sleep because he knew she would be in his dreams and waking from them was to give her up all over again, honing the hurt. Dumbledore had said his ability to hurt was one of his strengths and so Harry did what he had always done; made the best of it. He descended the stairs quietly, listening for the Dursleys. Under his arm was a notebook fat with 'useful snippets' that Hermione had gleaned from the Hogwarts library. There would be answers in here to questions he probably hadn't framed yet but, true to the 'thousand miles' image, he decided to tackle the most pressing need first. By the time breakfast was over he needed to have worked out how to 'fly under the radar', to pinch an expression much abused by the TV newshounds, and make himself Unplottable. Aunt Petunia was in the kitchen, grilling low fat sausages and rashers of bacon so thin they were translucent. She regarded him, and his book, oddly but placed a cooked breakfast before him in silence, not even acknowledging Harry's quiet 'thanks'. Harry rather had the impression she had something she wanted to say to him and no idea how to begin. Uncle Vernon had already left the house; Harry had heard the car while he was in the shower and while this was unusual for a Saturday, to Harry it held no interest. Dudley barged into the kitchen, complaining he'd cut himself shaving, fat fingers pressed to several nicks on his round face. As Aunt Petunia switched her attention to ‘her poor darling’, Harry switched his off them entirely and onto Hermione's notebook. Everything was indexed and colour-coded; Harry smiled as he turned the pages to the start of the 'U's and ate quickly. Hermione had seventeen pages on being Unplottable, including lots of theory, and a two page Arithmancic spell diagram of why it worked that left Harry none the wiser. Towards the end, her writing was so cramped that Harry was glad, for once in his life, that he was short-sighted. Having read to the end, he leaned back in the chair and screwed up his aching eyes. Somehow, Harry wasn't surprised to discover that a potion would be required, as well as powerful spells. The Potion work would require a bit of thought and planning, he could hardly set up in the kitchen or bathroom. Loading his plate and cutlery into the state-of-the-art dishwasher that had appeared since he was last at Privet Drive, and ignoring Dudley whining to his mother, Harry went back upstairs, considering the options open to him. * That evening, and desperate for a pee, Harry burst into the bathroom with one hand already on his zip. So abruptly did he stop that it was a wonder he didn't fall over and crack his head on the wash handbowl as he went down. Dudley stood there, trousers round his thick ankles, and he had his mother's measuring tape extended and he was trying to… Harry bit his lip until he tasted his own blood so that he wouldn't break out in howls of laughter. For a split second he and Dudley stared at each other in shock before Harry choked out, "What you doing?" and ducked the fist that came his way. Beetroot and snorting like a broken bellows, his cousin lashed out with a vicious uppercut that might have broken Harry's jaw, had it connected, but Harry had been dodging Bludgers whilst flying faster than the average superbike for over six years, and the outcome was predictable. Dudley missed. "Aunt Petunia uses that tape to measure her tatting, you know," Harry sniggered. "She'd probably burn it if she caught you." Dudley lashed out again but Harry danced easily out of his reach. Harry-with-jeans-up was much more agile than Dudley-with-trousers-down. The instant he crossed the threshold, Dudley took the opportunity to slam the bathroom door on him and Harry heard his bulk crash against it; it shuddered but held. Rather urgently reminded of his original reason for coming upstairs, Harry found himself wondering how long Dudley could hide in there. Knowing his cousin's attitude, hours, if it meant he could land Harry in trouble. Starting to get a pain low down in his belly, Harry swore and turned to pad softly back downstairs and peer round the lounge door. Aunt Petunia was perched on the edge of her armchair, fussing with her tatting threads and workbox and distractedly watching the television. Harry hoped she was looking for her missing tape measure; he grinned and then winced as his distended bladder said 'relieve me now'. Uncle Vernon was not in the lounge; leaning back and peering round another door, Harry saw the kitchen was empty too. A few noiseless steps down the hall betrayed the sound of tuneless whistling in the downstairs lavatory; it had to be Uncle Vernon 'reading the paper'. Harry decided he would risk a trip into the garden and hope it was dark enough that he wouldn't get caught abusing the bushes. He couldn't hang on any longer. * After the incident in the bathroom, Dudley perfected his avoidance act of his 'abnormal' cousin, which suited Harry to perfection. During that week, Harry spent much of his time in his room, reading and re-reading Hermione's notebook and the Defence books Remus and Sirius had given him, adding his own notations from these in the margins of Hermione’s notebook. Dudley's birthday came and went unobserved by Harry; he was waiting for another date on his makeshift calendar. The day he could become Unplottable. When midnight became his seventeenth birthday, he charmed the bedroom door shut and prepared the Potion in silence, napping through the early hours so that he could stir it at the required intervals. With Snape's sarcastic, "Tell me, Potter, can you read?" in mind, Harry attentively re-read Hermione's neat instructions, tracing a finger over one particular line; 'Add the blood'. It would be logical to assume it meant 'the blood of the person desiring to become Unplottable', in which case… Carefully considered Transfiguration turned a couple of Dudley's pristine books into wide necked bottles, enabling him to save two portions of the Potion. Ron and Hermione could add their own blood and he would Vanish the remainder. Another Charm transferred Potion to the waiting bottles and sealed them securely. It was interesting that one bottle contained half an inch more in it than the other. Harry added an Unbreakable Charm to each bottle to be on the safe side and turned round on his bony knees to face his cauldron. Harry had his obsidian Potion knife ready when Hedwig astonished him rigid by flipping her empty water dish in his direction. She hissed and leapt to peer intently into the cooling Potion and then at him. "You want to be Unplottable," Harry surmised. Hedwig whisked her tail feathers as though to say, 'dead right.' "Hedwig," Harry said in a sigh. How could he get through to her? She could be more stubborn than Ginny when her owlish mind was made up and he'd seen enough of that behaviour over the years to know. Hedwig hissed again, flexing her talons on the edge of his cauldron. "These are probably the most secretive months I’ll ever live through and apart from the fact that you're very distinctive and stand out like a -whoa!" he yelped and grabbed for the cauldron, heart racing. Hedwig nipped at his hands, continuing her shuffle round the rim, her weight unbalancing its three legs so that it wobbled. When Harry made to steady it, she hunched low and hissed. Harry glared at her through narrowed eyes while she perched, threatening to waste his hard work and regarding him almost smugly. The deal was evident; either I get to be Unplottable and come too or I spill the lot. "It won't be a damaged wing this time, Hedwig," he pleaded, trying to sneak an unobtrusive hand to the cauldron and was glad of his Seeker reflexes when her snapping beak missed by fractions. "Everyone knows I have a snowy owl -one sight of a snowy anywhere suspicious and you're dead, and I really don't want that to happen!" Hedwig shuffled and the cauldron rocked again, so that Harry grabbed for it heedless of her beak, succeeding this time while Hedwig was spreading her wings for balance. The idea popped in his head like a bulb going on. "I could transfigure you…" he murmured thoughtfully and sat up straighter. "Yeah! Transfigure you so that you'd look like an ordinary owl. How about that?" he asked eagerly, angling to look into her face. Harry would have sworn that his owl leaned away, suddenly wary. "There is nothing wrong with my Transfiguration!" he snapped in a mutter, dipping some potion into her water dish and holding it back. "Do you want to be Unplottable or not? That's the deal. You accept being transfigured, get to be Unplottable and come with me or you live with the Weasleys until I come home." He took her bob for assent. "Okay. I'll take it first and then we'll finish yours. You'll have to peck yourself or something," he said, setting Hedwig's water dish carefully to one side. "I'm not hurting you." The obsidian was so sharp he didn't feel the cut. With each drip from his clenched fist, more of the potion became opaque shiny red and Harry smiled in grim satisfaction. "I'll show you who's useless at Potions, Snivellus," he muttered. He gave the Potion 'one final anti-clockwise stir to ensure homogeneity of the solution', as per instructions and felt slightly less guilty at helping himself to the ingredients in Professor Slughorn's store cupboard before leaving Hogwarts. One step closer down that long road. Taking a deep breath, Harry dipped out the measure of potion required for a slightly skinny, just-of-age male wizard and looked back at his reflection. He could have been holding a tumbler of paint, except that the smell was wrong. It really did resemble blood. "On three," Harry muttered. It couldn't be worse than gulping down the lumpy mud that had been Polyjuice Potion. Or the mouthful of stinging fiery nails that had regrown bones overnight. Harry put the glass to his lips in readiness. "One, two-" Moving quickly, before he could over-think it, he tipped the glass and threw his head back. The Potion was cold in his mouth, decidedly metallic-tasting and he nearly gagged, forcing himself to swallow. Panting slightly, he waited for something to happen, not entirely sure what he expected. He could feel the chill of the Potion going down, pooling in his stomach, giving him shivers. Snatching his wand from his pocket, and still expecting something untoward to occur, Harry pressed the tip of the holly wand over his heart and spoke the ancient words that would render him Unplottable. “Hic sunt Dracones!” Nothing seemed to be any different but Harry knew he had followed Hermione's instructions accurately, so he didn't waste time worrying over it. Hedwig gave one of her rattling cackles and hopped awkwardly to his knee, weaving her head from side to side as she surveyed him. Harry swallowed away the horrible aftertaste lingering at the back of his throat. "Yeah, m'okay. Your turn," he said and held out the dish of potion. One sharp peck later and Hedwig's blood was reacting with her portion. Harry gave it the final stir and held it steady so she could gulp the potion down. When she straightened so that her master could complete the process, the dribble of shiny liquid from her beak reminded Harry of blood once more. Owl and master regarded eachother; Hedwig's beak hung open and her feathers heaved as though she was panting in distress. With a hand pressed over the icicle in his own midriff Harry said, "you okay?" Hedwig gave him the owl equivalent of 'you don't get rid of me that easily!' and Harry shuffled nearer, holding out his arm for her to hop on. "I'll have a word with Hermione when she gets here. Decide what kind of owl would blend in best and we'll change you then. Okay?" Hedwig hissed her approval and leaned across to rub her head against his chest in one of her rare displays. Harry snorted softly, smiling into her yellow eyes as he smoothed her feathers. "Yeah, I love you too." One of Madame Pomfrey's minor healing spells took care of Hedwig's foot and another spell Vanished the rest of the evidence, enabling Harry to contemplate the next step along the path. There was no need to glance at his makeshift calendar. Ron and Hermione would be here in the morning, accompanying him to The Burrow as they had said they would. They would share the experience of Bill's wedding, where he would see Ginny again, and then go hunting. His insides exhibiting an interestingly jerky emulation of Fred and Angelina's dance at the Yule Ball, Harry sorted out his belongings into two piles; things to take with him and those he would pack in his trunk. * Dudley approached his cousin late in the night before he was leaving. He knocked on the door and waited, in itself an unheard-of occurrence. "Harry?" Cramming his cauldron down so he could make room for his Quidditch robes, Harry froze. It sounded like Dudley but if he'd ever spoken so politely before, then Harry hadn't been around to hear it. Harry kept his voice down. "What?" The door knob rattled and then Dudley snapped, "Open the door!" A quick breath and, with more control, "Harry, open the door. I want a word." Intrigued, Harry hid his bag under the bed and pushed his school trunk shut on his way to lift the locking spell and open the door a few inches. They regarded each other in prickly silence. "Can I come in?" Dudley muttered at last. Harry was now doubly on his guard and certain that his cousin was up to something. "You can say what you've got to say from there." Dudley leaned closer into the crack. On the other side, Harry drew his wand from his back pocket, where he kept it in defiance of Mad-Eye's order. He trusted Dudders about as far as Hermione could spit. "Mum's on the phone in the hall," he muttered. In the light escaping his room, Harry could see tiny beads of sweat in his cousin's hairline. "Let me in." Now Harry was curious; what could Dudders want from him that he didn't want his mother to overhear? Harry stood aside and let his cousin barge in. He shut the door in a great waft and lowered himself to the foot of Harry's bed. The legs of the head end left the floor slightly. "So what's up that you come to me, the freak?" Harry asked when Dudley didn't speak, and had a 'light bulb' moment. "Is it something to do with the other night?" Dudley regarded him sullenly for a minute and raised a meaty fist to threaten Harry with it. "If you bloody laugh, I swear I'll-" Harry stared back at his cousin, unimpressed, undaunted. "You mean you'll try," he said quietly and then, fed up of Dudley's posturing, he reclined into the other end of the saggy bed. "Spit it out, Big D." "For every thirty pounds overweight you are, you lose an inch," Dudley muttered as though this revelation should make the situation crystal clear to Harry. His piggy eyes watched intently, clearly daring his cousin to crack the merest hint of a grin. Harry frowned. "So?" "So, that's why... 'Cause I'm a bit overweight." Harry considered that the first occasion that his cousin had brushed up against the unpalatable truth. "It's also genetic," he said, thinking of Seamus; poor bloke. "What?" Dudley looked as though Harry had spoken another language. "It runs in families," Harry said promptly. "Didn't you do any science at that expensive private school or did you just nick stuff from the labs? Even I've heard about genetics." "Shut it, freak!" were the first words out of his cousin's mouth as he jumped to his feet. Harry tossed onto his side in dismissal, wand in hand. "You really know how to win friends and influence people, don't you, Dud?" Dudley's mean expression told Harry that the couch pumpkin was working through that to find the insult he was sure was in there somewhere. "What?" he asked at length. "You came to me looking for something, not the other way round, but you really can't help being your obnoxious bloody self, can you?" His cousin was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as though readying a jab or a right hook. Harry waited to see if Dudley would have the nerve to say what was on his mind. Harry already knew what his cousin wanted. Dudley's eyes darted around the room before he muttered, "Mum said she could change teacups into rats." Harry frowned. This was a leap worthy of Lavender Brown. The recollected piercing squeal of 'Won-Won' gave him shudders. "Who could?" "Don't pretend you don't know what I mean!" Dudley snarled and the minute the words were out must have remembered he was trying to get his cousin on his side. Harry watched his expression contort as he tried to rein his temper back under control. When he spoke again, his tone was tight. "Your, y’know.” He jerked his head meaningfully and made his extra chins wobble. “My Mum, you mean?” Harry said quietly. “Your Aunt Lily,” he added, determined to make the point. Dudley shuddered and faced the opposite wall briefly. “I remember hearing Mum say it in that bloody awful shack. She changed teacups into rats and her pockets were full of frogspawn." "So?" Harry remembered that as well but was surprised his cousin had. He flopped onto his back, thought that position too vulnerable and trusting – Dudley was not Ginny – and pushed upright against the wall. "So, you can do it as well." Harry snorted. "If I wanted. It's called Transfiguration. But why would you want me to turn a teacup into a rat?" Deliberately misunderstanding Dudley had been one of the few bits of fun Harry got when he was younger and he supposed that this old habit was too ingrained by now for him to stop it. Dudley clenched his fists, leaning closer, and Harry was startled to see a vein pulsing in the side of his cousin's head, in exactly the same place as his Uncle's did when he was getting riled. "I don't want a bloody rat, Freak, and you bloody know it," Dudley snarled, sounding remarkably like his father. "Temper, temper," Harry tutted, unaware that this was akin to the cauldron calling the kettle black. "What do you want?" he demanded coolly, deciding to go straight to the point. "An effortless weight loss so you can find your tackle again? Or maybe you just expect me to make it bigger?" He moved the wand in idle circles, drawing Dudley's anxious eyes. "That would be an Engorgement Charm; learned those back in, er," he pretended to consider, "third year." His eyes sparkled at the memory. "Remember the 'Ton-Tongue Toffee'? Same charm." Dudley's white-eyed terror made it abundantly clear that he did remember. His fat hands went instantly to shield his groin. "No!" he whimpered. "I suppose I could make a Potion," Harry said, pretending to consider. Dudley's hands twitched. "What's that?" "You'd have to drink it." "Would it be permanent?" Harry shuffled to the edge of the bed and had his hand on the lid of his trunk before his blood boiled afresh; he equated potions with Snape and Snape was a black-hearted traitorous murdering b-. "Why are you so bothered about this suddenly?" Harry demanded, his voice harsh from the rage evoked thinking about the last time he'd seen that greasy, cowardly git. The bedside lamp flickered and flared up to an impossible brightness before dying with a loud 'pop'. The bed moved as Dudley jumped. "Lumos!" Harry muttered in the sudden darkness. "Bollocks!" His cousin's face was bloodless in the clear light blazing from the tip of the holly wand; even his lips were white as he gaped at Harry. "Yeah, that was me. It happens sometimes when I lose my temper." "T-the light!" Dudley pointed with a shaking finger. "It's a basic Charm," Harry said impatiently. "It's magic," he said, when Dudley continued staring dumbfounded. "Why now? Been bragging have you, or did your girlfriend have a laughing fit?" Dudley forgot his fear of magic and turned threatening again in the blink of an eye. "You shut it! You know nothing about it! Like anyone would fancy you, you freak!'' he spat. Instead of giving him a mouthful of lip as he expected, his cousin leaned back with the corner of his mouth lifting. Dudley frowned stupidly. "Yeah?" Dudley stared. Suddenly, his cousin was a mystery to him. The small, skinny kid had grown up and turned into the kind of authority figure that Dudley generally avoided. He stared, trying to make sense of the change he could sense but not define or understand. He had spent all his life thinking of Harry as 'the freak', sure in his own mind that he had been given the more choice selections from the cornucopia that Life had to offer. Looking at Harry now, he wasn't so sure and it annoyed him. Dudley did not like this feeling of being excluded, so he fell back on old habits; goading the freak. "You've got no idea, you've never had a girlfriend," Dudley taunted and felt uneasy when Harry's thin face softened. What kind of girl would stoop to touch him? It had to be a wind-up. Yeah -that was it- the freak was jerking his chain. "Stop bullshitting! You've never been with a girl – no way!" His cousin grinned good-naturedly. "Yeah?" he said. "You think what you like, Dud, because I'm not going to say a word." After another five minutes of silent glaring on Dudley's part, Harry began to see a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. "You're not going to help me at all, are you?" The house was incredibly still, not even the distant quacking of the tv downstairs could be heard. Harry remembered the sting of Hermione accusing him of having a ‘saving-people thing'… Except doing what Dudley wanted wouldn't help him, it would only make his behaviour and attitude worse. "You chose to hate me because I was different and you've always treated me with contempt. Give me one good reason why I should?" Harry replied. Dudley made a graphic gesture that Harry assumed was obscene in nature and left the door wide open. Harry charmed it shut behind him. His dreams that night were filled with a bewildering array of cups, while a disembodied voice bade him choose and choose wisely. ~*~ Harry woke early with an unaccustomed churning sensation in his belly. Unwilling to lie in bed and think about all the 'what-ifs' he sat up, found his glasses and got ready, making as little noise as possible. Even knowing he was walking into the longest darkest journey of his life so far, he couldn't wait to be free of this house. He checked the room one last time, locked his trunk, zipped his backpack closed and then sat on the edge of the unmade bed, watching the second hand on the little bedside clock sweep round. There was a hypnotic quality to it that was soothing. Five minutes before Ron and Hermione were due to arrive, Harry sneaked downstairs, perching on the third stair from the bottom, watching the shadows pass over the glass-fronted door. He couldn't risk bringing down his school trunk in case any of the Dursleys broke the habit of a lifetime and woke early. Harry knew that most of Little Whinging would be sleeping in this Sunday morning; sleeping off their Golf Club dinners, or the Bridge club’s cheese and wine evening, or whatever exercise in one-upmanship they had attended the previous evening. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were no different. A shadow appeared, setting his heart faster, and diminished to a lad posting leaflets as it reached the door. Harry disregarded this post with a grin. He wouldn't get the Dursleys' post on this day, or any other. With precisely a minute to go, another huge shadow appeared in the early light. This shadow defined more slowly, seeming reluctant to approach. Harry slid to his feet, blending with the deeper shadows in the corner of the hall, wand in hand and aware of his pulse bounding. Had Ron and Hermione been prevented from coming? Was this Hagrid? Or someone altogether less welcome? Watching intently, Harry waited as the seconds ticked on. A few more steps and he could see that what he'd taken for one person was indeed two, looking around as they approached and he let out a long slow breath, resting his hip on the wall. The letterbox opened with a metallic squeak. "Harry? Harry!" Hermione's voice was a tense whisper in the growing light. "Are you there?" Harry sidled closer, keeping to the deepest shadows just the same. "Hermione?" "Yes! Harry, open the door and let us in!" Harry had had several hours to mull over this and he said, "Is Ron there?" There was a pause before Hermione agreed that of course he was. The taller shadow crouched and Ron's terse grumble came through the letterbox. "Harry? Let us in, it's bloody freezing out here!" Harry stayed put. "Ron, what's Golpalott's Third law?" There was a pause. "What?" Ron muttered. "I dunno, ask Hermione!" he replied in exasperation and the next bit was muffled, as though Ron had turned away from the letterbox, as indeed, he had. "He's mental! We're bloody freezing out here and he wants to know what Golpalott's third law is!" Grinning in satisfaction, Harry heard Hermione exclaim, "Ooo yes -security questions!" Harry heard Ron's 'oof' as Hermione made him budge over and her smaller shadow covered the door. Harry could make out the thick folds of her duffel coat through the glass. "Hermione?" "Yes?" She pushed even closer to the rectangular opening, sounding eager to find out what question he would put to her. Harry leaned over at an awkward angle and lowered his voice to a bare whisper. "Who was your other choice to annoy Ron?" Hermione cleared her throat and so close did she press it looked as though she was trying to post her mouth. "Zacharias Smith," she breathed, "now open the door!" Harry could hear Ron muttering in the background, wanting to know whether they shouldn't check that he was Harry and was reminded of Mad-Eye asking the same thing the previous year. "I've thought of that," Hermione said briskly. "Harry, kneel down." Harry crouched at the letterbox. A second later, a pale folded square plopped across his knee. Before he had chance to touch it, the floral smell that Harry equated with only one person filled his head and jolted his belly. "Ginny," he murmured and obeyed Hermione's repeated instruction to open the door in a daze. Hermione was beaming at him. Ron wore the same face as he had back in the common-room; if you must. Hermione started fussing before Ron had shut the front door. "You did pack several layers, like I told you to?" "You did pack clothes and not books?" Harry countered, stung by the assertion he couldn't think for himself and disappointed that Hermione had taken back Ginny's handkerchief and pocketed it. "I'm more used to packing for the vagaries of the weather than you are, Harry!" Eager to avoid any discussion on the state of his wardrobe, Harry put a finger to his mouth and beckoned them to follow him down the hall. "We can talk in here. I'm over the dining room so as long as we keep it down, they," he pointed at the photographs proudly displayed on the walls, "won't know anything." Ron and Hermione were frowning around the room so Harry indicated the table, and the two bottles of potion, waiting. "Oh!" Hermione exclaimed softly and then, "did you have any problems?" "Well, I followed your instructions and it turned the right colour, but..." Harry shrugged. "I've got no way of knowing if it's worked." "You've taken it already?" Ron asked and looked like he had another handful of questions but Hermione shushed him. "You could have sent Hedwig out to us. In theory, she shouldn't be able to find you." "But she'd just have come back here though, wouldn't she?" Harry said, pointing out the obvious flaw in this argument before adding, "Besides, she insisted on being Unplottable and coming too." Harry expected them to argue the inadvisability of this but Ron and Hermione exchanged a knowing smile. "What?" Harry asked. "We didn't think Hedwig would let you go without her," Ron said. Hermione merely nodded although Harry could tell she was bursting to add more. He blinked. “I thought we could transfigure her into something less noticeable than a Snowy. I told her I’d have word with you.” Ron squeezed Hermione’s hand tightly and she winced instead of saying whatever she had been about to say. "Yeah, good idea. It’d be dead useful to have an owl like Hedwig with us.” "You have to add your own blood," Harry said quietly and offered Hermione his obsidian potion blade. She stared at it for what seemed like ages and flinched when he put it into her hand. She seemed to have some difficulty gripping the handle; it slid in her hand as though greased. "It is clean," Harry said, when Hermione showed no signs of getting on with it. He and Ron exchanged puzzled faces; Hermione didn’t normally have a problem in Potions. With the piece of volcanic glass in one hand, Hermione raised it once, twice and each time, her hand shook and dropped away. "I can't do it!" she said in a breathless sob. She offered the potion knife to Ron. "You do it for me." Ron did his impression of a fish out of water. Her huge eyes were watery, mesmerising. He took Hermione's hand and became instantly aware of her tension. He was suddenly aware of how small her hand was as he held it over the wide necked bottle and felt her recoil as the knife approached. Her eyes were screwed up, face averted from him, and Harry. She was trembling and Ron was in awe of the trust she placed in him. This was the same witch who had chased after a winged key on a broomstick, the witch who had slapped Malfoy, the witch who had taken ten different healing potions without a word of complaint and she couldn't prick her finger? He held the sharp point poised over the pale pink curve of her palm and discovered he couldn't bring himself to cut her, to hurt her on purpose. He turned to his best friend. "Harry?" he croaked. Harry could see the desperation in his almost-brother’s face; he knew it had to be done but couldn't make himself to deliberately hurt her. The small blade changed hands. "This is why Ginny and I…" he whispered. Ron nodded, looking lost. "Hold her," Harry mouthed and took Hermione's hand, gripping around her lax fingers and bunching them together. Ron braced himself against the solid dining table and folded Hermione into a bearhug so that all that was visible was her wild hair above his crossed arms. He rested his cheek on her head, turning to put his mouth close to her ear. As once before, Harry did his best not to hear the soothing words his best friend mumbled to his other best friend but concentrated fiercely on squeezing blood into Hermione's fingertips until they were dark with it. Recalling a scene from one of the medical dramas Aunt Petunia inflicted on them twice a week, Harry patted the tips of Hermione's fingers briskly, and then jabbed the point of the blade into three of them. "Ready? On three," he lied and held her dripping hand over the potion. "Do it!" Ron muttered hoarsely, relaying Hermione's muffled instruction. The Potion became the same opaque shiny red as his own had done and Harry puffed out a long breath. "It's done. Sanatio!" The small punctures healed and Harry let Hermione snatch her hand back. Ron nodded but Harry wasn’t sure if the gesture was intended for him or not. Ron was stroking over Hermione's back, reminding Harry of the funeral when he had done the same thing. "It tastes of blood. The Potion," Harry said to the table. Ron's Weasley jumper was not thick enough to completely muffle Hermione sniffles. "How d'you know?" Ron asked gruffly as Harry headed to the door. Harry angled the glassy black blade, following the sliver of light running along the edge. "When you've been punched in the face as many times as I have, you get to know." Both their heads came up, staring at him in shocked silence. "I'll er, I'll…" Harry jerked this thumb at the hall, holding the blade up and Ron simply nodded. Harry hurried into the pristine kitchen and rinsed the knife under the tap, wiping it on his shirtsleeve rather than disturb the precision folds of Aunt Petunia’s tea towel. He lingered to give Hermione time to calm down and to avoid the possibility of seeing a more affectionate exchange. "Wimp, Potter!" he muttered. When he judged that Hermione would be more herself, he made his steps deliberately noisy and returned to the dining room. Ron was just downing the last of his potion with a grimace. "I've had worse," he muttered, "but not often!" Another Potion knife lay discarded, reflected in the high polish of Aunt Petunia's table. Together, Ron and Hermione enunciated the ancient spell as Harry made his presence known. Hermione turned immediately to him and although her eyes were red, she was more composed. "Sorry, Harry. I've always been useless with needles and things. Mum says I was a nightmare when it was time for inoculations." Harry waved the apology away; they all had weak spots. He hadn't minded the jabs; the nurse would sit him on her knee and give him a sweet for keeping still. "S'okay. Dudley used to scream until he was sick." "Inoculations?" Ron asked, having followed this exchange. Harry thought Hermione weighed up what to say before admitting, "It's a Muggle method doctors use to try and prevent children getting things like chicken pox and measles." After Ron's reaction to his Dad 'having his skin sewn back together' and the business over his freckles being mistaken for 'spattergoit', Harry thought it was probably best to keep quiet about being injected with bits of diseases designed to stop you catching it. Ron's eyes widened as he digested this. "You mean you've not had First Pox or measles? Neither of you?" Harry and Hermione shook their heads in unison. "Blimey! Don't tell Mum!" he snorted. "She'll get you round to play with the next kid that comes down with it." Harry smiled but Hermione stared back in comic disbelief. "Your Mum would deliberately make sure we caught an infectious disease?" Ron caught Harry's eye; Harry shrugged minutely. "Yeah. She reckoned it was easier for the lot of us to be ill together and that it made you less susceptible to other germs." Ron's eyes took on the light of challenge. "Or did you never notice it was always the Muggle-borns queuing up for Pepper Up Potion when it got to the end of October?" Hermione took a sharp breath, probably to retaliate with statistics, judging by the light in her eye but Harry got in first. "Look, can we discuss wizarding health issues later? I want to be gone from here when the Dursleys wake up." There was an awkward silence. "I'll give you a hand with your stuff," Ron muttered, heading to the foot of the stairs. "I'll make sure we haven't left any traces behind," Hermione said quickly and ducked back round Harry into the dining room. * "You are never going to believe what my cousin wanted me to do to him!" Harry said in a smothered mutter as they carried his trunk along the landing. Ron leaned nearer, his interest showing in a gleeful grin. "Yeah?" Harry nodded and looked round for their other best friend; he did not need Hermione walking in on this recitation. She wasn't on the stairs so she must still be in the dining room. What on earth was she doing? "Tell you later, when you can laugh yourself sick. Where's Hermione?" Ron set his end of the trunk down and leaned over the banister. A glance showed the Prefect glaring at a fat, blonde newcomer. More prolonged attention showed she was itching to land another open-handed slap. "Uh oh," Ron muttered, taking the stairs down in easy twos. Three long strides took him to her side. "S'up, Hermione?" "Who're you?" Dudley snarled, readying a fist. "My best friends," Harry said from the top of the stairs. “My cousin, Dudley.” Dudley mouthed something that sounded like 'freaks' into Hermione's furious glare. Hermione burst out, "I thought he had to be! I caught movement from the corner of my eye! He's lucky I didn't Stun him, sneaking in to the conservatory like a burglar!" Harry smiled darkly. "Yeah, the lock's broken but Uncle Vernon hasn't noticed yet." His bulky cousin kept his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, eyeing them all belligerently, which made Harry more suspicious of him. There had been a recent spate of unsolved petty thefts that had the local paper screaming about 'police inadequacy', to Uncle Vernon's complete agreement, and Harry now wondered how many of them were down to Dudley and his gang. "Well, I won't be here to take the blame. Ron?" Ron held up a hand, watching Hermione intently. "What did he say to you?" "He wanted to know if Harry's popular at school with 'the birds'!" she said and her glacial tone was worthy of Professor McGonagall at her most disapproving. "What've the owls got to do with it?" Ron demanded, curiosity taking control of his mouth. Hermione rolled her eyes and transferred her glare to him. Harry grinned and leaned over the banister. "He doesn't mean the post, Ron." Ron glanced back at his best friend and his jaw slipped as he worked it out. "Oh... Right...!" Recognising Hermione's increasingly irate expression, Ron thought it best to distract her before she had a go and woke the adults. He put a hand on Hermione's arm and exerted a gentle pressure. “Hey, it's nearly time… will you check the street for us, Hermione? Nothing gets past you." His smile and tone, as he drew he closer, implied the lard-arse was wasted effort and was gratified to see Hermione's shoulders round down more naturally. She nodded up at him and after skewering Dudley with a stare implying his emotional range was considerably less than that of a teaspoon, Hermione marched past both wizards to the glass-panelled front door. Ron took a minute to satisfy himself that Hermione's attention was on the street, wand at the ready, and then he advanced on Dudley. Dudley gave ground – Ron was taller and therefore had the longer reach for a punch. Ron stopped at a conspiratorial distance that left Dudley with the lounge door handle pressing into his back. "Just so you know... Harry is popular at school; the girls would do anything to go out with him – and I do mean anything –" he added with a nudge and a wink that only Fred could have carried off more naturally. "Not only is he popular, but he's got a small fortune in gold, a ten bedroom mansion in central London, the Minister for Magic drops round to chat with him-" "-That's like the Prime Minister," Harry interrupted. Ron grinned at the look of sick disbelief growing brighter on Dudley's face. "He's dead loyal, Harry - he'd do anything for his friends... Oh yeah - and he's a great and powerful wizard. Did I forget anything?" he added, turning to grin at Harry who was regarding him with amused scepticism. "Just the mad megalomaniac hell-bent on killing me." Ron waved his hand as though this was understood. "Yeah, but he's not interested in that, just the material stuff that you can flash about. The kind of things that look good, not what really counts -friends and loyalty." Ron checked his watch again and became shifty-looking. "Er, Harry mate, you should check you haven't forgotten anything, y'know, upstairs, in your room. Check the windows are locked and, er, whatnot." It was the hurried and slightly pained tone that suggested another reason for the would-be casual comment to Harry. Even as he took the stairs, he heard a 'crack' that could only mean Apparition; his insides leaped but he still drew his wand. * Left alone as the tall redhead sauntered away with a final dismissive glance, Dudley saw the bag slung low over his left shoulder and decided something was up. Probably the quickest way to get information was to goad them into spilling it. "What're you freaks doing here anyway? Some kind of school trip, is it?" Without moving from his protective stance at Hermione's back, because Ron knew that sly glint in the git's wandering eye meant he was a lech, he spoke over his shoulder. "What did Harry tell you?" Dudley shrugged, piggy eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Nothing." He watched Ron turn this over. "Then that's all you need to know." Dudley was furious; the snotty git's tone oozed satisfaction. When he turned to mutter something to the wild-haired skinny piece that had turned up with him, Dudley glanced up the stairs, sure he could hear voices. Suddenly, another explanation for the redhead's odd suggestion to his cousin grew in Dudley's head. Starting with a nasty smirk, he edged silently – despite his size, Dudley could move quickly and quietly – to the spot where he could get on foot on the edge of the balustrade and climb over. It wasn't difficult; no worse than getting over someone's fence or garden wall really and Dudley had had plenty of practice at that. Sneaking a look and satisfied that the two freaks hadn't noticed him, Dudley took the remaining stairs in pairs. * Harry pushed open the door to his bedroom. Standing with her back to him looking out of the window, exactly as he had done so many times over the years, was Ginny. His breath caught in his throat; only two weeks since he'd seen her and yet he'd forgotten how lovely she was. The sight of her was so completely unexpected that he forgot his natural caution. "Ginny," he whispered. Her hair was loose and now so long that it scraped over the pockets of her jeans. She turned and regarded him over one shoulder, having heard his voice. "You sure?" She had that hard, blazing look on her face again as she turned slowly and sauntered across the carpet to him. "Little Ginny isn't old enough to Apparate. I could be a Death Eater." Her wand landed with a 'tap' on his left shoulder and trailed diagonally downward across his chest, stopping at Harry's right hip bone. Harry watched her, quelling his shivers forcibly. "Okay. Complete the sentence; fish paste and?" Ginny grinned immediately. "Trust you to remember that! Fish paste and haemorrhoid cream, Harry, you nutcase." She went to put her arms round him but Harry held her back. "And where's my mole?" Ginny frowned, her upper arms firmly restrained by Harry's encircling hands. "Your what? You don't have a mole!" She pushed forward, pressing her cheek to his chest, relaxing into him, and Harry found his arms had circled her narrow shoulders before he could stop them. "For future reference, I do actually but it's somewhere you aren't likely to see it." Ginny pulled out of his embrace while he was still talking and stared at him with intense interest as Harry grinned back at her. "How did you get here anyway? I thought I heard someone Apparate--" Ginny waved that away. "Never mind that! Where's your mole?" she demanded. "On your bum?" "No. Did you Apparate?" "Yeah, the twins taught me." Ginny tugged her hair free from Harry's caressing hand. "On your belly?" "No. The twins taught you?" Ginny put her fingertips flat over the lean muscles of Harry's back, right below his ribcage and moved them in small, slow circles. "Yeah. They thought it would be a useful skill for me to have, under the circumstances. Gives me an extra advantage… On your head? Am I getting warmer?" "Uh?" Harry mumbled, paying more attention to her hands, circling, very distractingly, over his kidneys. That wasn't fair "Your mole?" Ginny demanded, bringing him out of it with an impatient shake. "I can't be out too long, Mum'll get suspicious." "Wha?" "And anyway," Ginny continued, her mood hardening subtly, "what kind of 'hello' is this for your girlfriend. Anyone would think you weren't pleased to see me!" Harry's face, which had run through various expressions conveying his thoughts and feelings, was now fixed on vexation as he looked at Ginny's upturned face. "You started the questions!" he said hotly, feeling a stab of something feral at the word 'girlfriend'. "Because you were being too trusting!" Ginny snapped, jabbing a rigid finger rather forcefully into his ribs. "You're seventeen now; the blood protection has ended, hasn't it? So, you have to be more wary!" Not liking the way this meeting was going, Harry let her go. "Fine, I'll go all 'Mad-Eye' then. What does Hermione think of you Apparating?" Ginny looked smug. "She doesn't know. Only the twins know. Ron made a shrewd guess when he caught me turning in the paddock, and the mindless snogging with Lav-Lav must have swept his brain of fluff because he thought it was a good idea as well. He's promised to keep his mouth shut." "You mean you hexed him this time?" Harry said, recalling that particular spat between brother and sister with no difficulty. "I did not!" Ginny retorted. Harry started when she whipped round to face the door, wand ready. Trusting her instincts, he raised his own and moved in front of her. They listened intently, stretching their ears over rapid heartbeats. Outside, on the landing, Dudley froze. The freak definitely had a girl in there with him and she'd used the word 'girlfriend'. What did she see in his freak of a cousin? Dudley was a proper man; his dad, Aunt Marge and his mum had told him so all his life, so why did the freak have the girls after him and he didn't? It made no sense. It wasn't fair. He sidled closer until he could see them through the gap of the partly open door. They were standing very close and bugger me if she wasn't a redhead too! Sister of the thug downstairs, probably. She wasn't very big, could tuck her head under the freak's chin easily but she looked pretty enough, with the kind of arse that just begged for a grope in passing. They looked pretty cosy… Dudley took another step closer so that he could overhear more clearly. "I thought I heard something. I'm getting jumpy," the girl said quietly, turning back to face the tall, black-haired man watching her. "Ginny, I need to know that you're safe so I can go and do this," Harry said and it sounded to Dudley as though he was begging, even as his hands loosely clasped her shoulders. The girl – Ginny – was looking up into his face, her fingers drawing patterns on his shirt. "I know where the safest place is," she murmured. Harry stiffened and inadvertently drew her closer. "You do? Promise me that you'll stay there! Promise me!" He repeated the demand more firmly when Ginny looked mutinous. The seconds stretched out as they stared into eachother's eyes and the girl backed down first. "I promise," Ginny said softly and Harry's taut shoulders dropped momentarily and then he tensed again. He regarded her more intently, leaning closer to her eyes. "You do?" He sounded as though he'd expected more of an argument over this. She looked into his face. "Yes. I promise you I'll stay in the safest place I know of." Harry rested his forehead to hers; his eyes closed and his sigh was clear relief until the redhead spoke again. "You didn't ask where it was, Harry." Something in her tone made Harry start and pull away; she was trying not to grin up at him. "Ginny?" Harry demanded warningly, eyes tightening. ''The safest place for me is right by your side," Ginny murmured. "Thanks for encouraging me to come along." And as Dudley watched she stretched up on tiptoe, gliding her hands familiarly up his chest until she grabbed his face and silenced his cousin's furious objection with the kind of kiss he'd only ever seen in Piers's films and never experienced. Judging where Harry's hands were, it wasn't the first time they'd done this either. Dudley felt sick, and something else that took several puzzled minutes of observation to identify; jealous. They separated, short of breath. "I told you once before, Harry. I didn't give up on you last time and I'm not about to give up on you now." Dudley watched her place one last, more chaste, kiss on his mouth and then she disappeared from sight with a noise like a cork coming out of a whisky bottle. Frozen in place by everything he had seen and heard, Dudley failed to notice the door opening. The next thing he knew, Harry had him hard against the airing cupboard door, with a handful of his clothes twisted in a white-knuckled fist and that bloody wand in his throat. "How long were you standing there? Well?" Harry jabbed the wand harder into Dudley's fat neck, not really caring that he was causing him pain. His only concern was for Ginny and that, to save his own carcass, Dudley would blab everything he knew to any Death Eater who cared to come enquiring, politely or otherwise. "Couple minutes," Dudley wheezed. He knew how to handle himself in the boxing ring, or behind the garages in a free-for-all, and he'd always been able to thrash Harry whenever he wanted but this time… For the third time in his life, Dudley was terrified. He shivered, feeling the air chill with menace and power, and tried to avoid his cousin's eyes. He might as well have tried to fly. "If you breathe one word and Ginny comes to any harm because of it, I swear by the magic running in my veins, you will spend the rest of your life wishing -praying- you'd stayed downstairs and seen nothing. Do we understand eachother?" His cousin was shaking as he leaned into him, wild-eyed and dangerous. He looked capable of anything. Dudley was too shocked and awed to do anything other than nod. Harry's blazing eyes calmed gradually and returned to their normal shade. "You're leaving, aren't you?" Dudley mumbled as Harry released him warily and took a step away. "Yeah. Never coming back to darken this doorstep again. You're getting what you always wanted." The Muggle and the Wizard regarded eachother. "Was he having me on before?" Harry frowned while Dudley gingerly examined his neck. "Who? Ron?" "He said the girls would do anything to go out with you." Harry thought of Romilda Vane's attempt to drug him with a love potion and poor Merope, who had once tried the same thing with disastrous results, and wondered if Romilda had learned sense in the meantime. "What about it?" he asked wearily. His legs were starting to tremble with reaction; seeing Ginny here, where he least expected her to be, his cousin's plea for help; again, the last thing he expected of him, and the enormity of the dimly sketched future growing clearly on the horizon with each second that ticked away. He rested his shoulder on the wall to give his legs a chance. "I don't have time to humour you, Dud," he added with a hint of asperity when Dudley remained silent. "Just tell me what you want." "How do I get a girlfriend like her?" Harry's renewed stare was incisive, sharper than any drill Grunnings were capable of manufacturing. Dudley got the sick feeling that his skinny cousin could read all his resentment and unhappiness at seeing his mates pair off while he, always the ringleader in whatever they did, was left behind. Harry sighed and the feeling in his head vanished as quickly as it had come. Dudley watched him take one final look around the bedroom he had been given so grudgingly, and close the door, leaving them both standing in a kind of half-light filtering up from the hall below. A loud snort attracted Dudley’s attention to the closed door of the master bedroom; a sure sign Dad would wake soon. "You'd have to stop being a spoilt, selfish, arrogant bully and learn to think about other people first." His cousin looked sideways at him, over the tops of his glasses in a way that reminded Dudley of someone he couldn't exactly place. "I don't think it's possible. Just find yourself a doting doormat who'll be happy for you to treat her badly and before you have any kids, remember that my mum and yours were sisters and that magic is a strong and resilient gene." Dudley's mouth fell open as Harry spoke and although his cousin had spoken frankly -bluntly- even, a small part of Dudley, deep inside, knew that every word was true. Then the last sentence made its way through his understanding. He lunged to grab hold of Harry even as he moved to the head of the stairs. "You mean I could have -that one of my kids could be…" "A freak?" Harry said quietly, looking down the stairs. "Yeah." He took the first step down, breaking free from Dudley's now limp hold. It was the work of a few seconds to couch his thoughts in term his cousin would understand; he'd overheard enough of it at school. "And don't think that you could pick a Muggle girl and stay safe that way. The witch downstairs -my best friend, Hermione? Her family is Muggle for as many generations as you care to look but there isn't a spell that she can't work. If magic decides to show itself, you won't stop it." Harry stared out of the landing window. "A freak for a grandchild… I can hear Uncle Vernon now… If you want to avoid that I can only see one way out, Dudley, and, well, it's a bit extreme. It means no sex. Ever. At least with a girl, I don't think you could get a bloke pregnant," he added thoughtfully. Dudley took a horrified breath but Harry seemed to have read his mind. He opened his mouth, appeared to reconsider and said, “I presume that was why you removed the bathroom towels while I was in the shower?” He shook his head. “Look, forget all the rubbish your mates tell you. A man is defined by what’s in his heart and his head, not anything else.” Dudley was leaning heavily against the wall, gaping, when Harry glanced at him. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but then it never had been. “Some day, you’ll learn that other people judge you by every action, every choice you make and that they don’t think the sun shines out of you the way Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon do… If you want a girlfriend who’s even a tenth of the woman that Ginny is now, you’d better learn to think about others before yourself.” He moved forward and all that remained was the slight sound of his descending footsteps on the expensive carpet. The last image Harry had of his cousin was of him sitting in a slumped position, slack-mouthed, against the door to the airing cupboard. At the foot of the stairs, Ron was waiting to help him on with his backpack. "That was very 'Slytherin', Harry." Harry shrugged. "If it gets him thinking and turns on his conscience, I couldn't care less. If I've saved some poor woman from his crappy attitude and prejudices, I think it's a job well done." He met Ron's eyes and admitted something that had bothered him when he was younger. "The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin and you know what they say, 'it takes one to know one'. You ready for this?" Ron grinned bravely. "Nah, but let's do it anyway." He turned to the witch. "Okay?" Hermione nodded, her pack already in place, opened the door and slipped out first. Ron followed and stood beside her, his right hand under his jacket. Harry was reminded of his Dad the day he had escorted him, Harry, to the 'trial' at the Ministry. "I sent your trunk and Hedwig's cage to Mrs Weasley." "Bill said he'll find a quiet spot in The Burrow to hide it from Mum until she calms down, or we get back, whichever comes first," Ron volunteered quietly. Harry nodded, grateful for Bill's help. If anyone understood why he had to do this and could bring Mrs Weasley round it was Bill. He was coming back; he had decided, just not to this house. He closed the door for the last time, adjusted the straps of his pack and looked up and down the skies over Privet Drive. "Where's Hedwig?" Hermione looked around; she seemed a little flustered. "Hedwig? Erm, I'm not exactly sure." Her voice was higher pitched than usual. “I don’t think she’ll be far away.” Harry eyed Ron, who was silently chortling and surmised there was a hitch. He stood straighter and wrapped both hands round the straps of his pack. "Hermione," he started firmly, "what kind of owl did you Transfigure Hedwig into?" Hermione's forehead scrunched up. "Which way, Harry, left or right?" she asked, fiddling with her own straps and evidently reluctant to confess. "Hermione?" Ron leaned past Harry and ran his hands down her sleeves. "Come on, Hermione, you know he has to find out sooner or later. Get it over with now." "You'll laugh," Hermione said in a small voice to her shoes. "I won't," Harry assured her. "And Ron won’t. Will you?" he added significantly to his other best friend. Ron shook his head. Hermione held up her arm and a large black bird with white flashes shot from the bushes nearby and landed awkwardly, the raucous calls harsh on the ears. The beady eye was baleful. Having promised not to laugh, Harry had to bite the inside of his mouth again. A glance showed Ron wore a similarly smothered expression. Hedwig was a magpie and obviously very unhappy about it. "I thought she'd be less obvious," Hermione said huffily. "I mean, they're indigenous birds and you see them in the towns as much as the country!" Both wizards hastened to agree with this assessment. With a final cry, Hedwig took to the skies again. As they walked down the pavement, Harry suggested that Hermione put her hood up. "Just in case she decides to express her feelings in true avian fashion," he said straightfaced when Hermione shot him an interrogative glance. Bet you're sorry you didn't let me do it now, aren't you, girl? he thought. Leaving the cul-de-sac and heading for the main road, his two best friends on either side of him, Harry grinned mischievously at the cracked flags under his trainers. Never again would he have to listen to Uncle Vernon rant loudly about the 'inferior materials and shoddy workmanship' of the local council. Harry could have told them Dudley hadn't tripped over an uneven flag and fallen; drunk out of his skull would have been closer to the truth. Wherever in the country this search took them, the thought that he would never again have to walk down this road, unless he chose to, gave Harry an immense feeling of satisfaction. Another step on his journey of a thousand miles. ~*~*~*~ A/N: A large potted Poinsetta to my Beta, the eagle-eyed Katieay, for her insightful comments and ‘LOL’ in all the right places! Further seasonal blooms go to the lovely Asli, who pre-betaed this and offered constructive pruning advice! Cheers m’dears! The title is from a lyric by U2. The original line speaks of ‘science and the human heart’ but I amended it to suit the Potterverse and my own purpose. |