Living without Danger
Chapter 21: Disclosures and Departures (Year 2)
By Anne B. Walsh
Chapter 21: Disclosures and Departures
To arise or not to arise, that is the question...
Most people would have been a little startled to be awakened by a fractured Shakespearean quotation in their heads.
Good morning to you too.
Remus Lupin wasn’t most people.
And it’s nice to hear that it’s a question, he continued, sliding his hands into the mass of hair that was all he could currently see of his wife. It hasn’t even been that these past few days — it’s just been "You go on, I’ll stay here."
When they said the power transfer would knock me down, they weren’t kidding. One day completely out of it — was I unconscious, or asleep?
More asleep, by the feel of your mind, but it was a very deep sleep. Remus gently parted Danger’s hair and started caressing her shoulders. I think you need to get this stuff cut.
Probably. And then three days in bed, not asleep, but not wanting to go anywhere either, and getting my entertainment from your descriptions of the cubs trying to keep up with the housework...
Do you think they’ve been punished enough?
Yes, I think so. You’re really holding them to a high standard, aren’t you?
Free work — child labor laws don’t apply to one’s own children. Or wards, or whatever.
None of them thought to challenge you on the "you’re not my guardian, I don’t have to do what you say" standpoint?
I don’t think any of them really think about that anymore. Not that they ever did, except when it came up in court. I don’t think about it myself — they’re just mine, legal or not.
Here’s hoping we never have to try to defend it in court.
Amen.
Danger rolled over and planted a kiss on Remus’ cheek. Don’t let me forget, I have something to tell everyone at breakfast. Now, shall I go relieve Harry of his toast-burning duties?
Now, now, he hasn’t burned anything since the first day. And Sirius put the fire out before it got too far.
Where were you?
Rescuing Hermione and Meghan from the evil avalanching closet. How did we get so much stuff in there anyway?
I think it was magic.
Should have seen that coming.
What did Molly do to Ron and Ginny?
A few extra chores and a lecture. Nothing too terrible.
A Molly Weasley lecture and you call that "nothing too terrible"?
Of course. I live with you.
xXxXx
The rest of the Pack was greatly entertained that morning by the spectacle of Remus running for his life from an infuriated Danger, who snatched the frying pan from which Harry had just removed a large amount of bacon and started swinging at Remus with it. He dodged her first swing, ducked the second, and came up in time to catch her wrist as she hauled off for a third. With that grip on her, he could pull her in and kiss her soundly.
"You see, that’s what girls like," said Aletha in satisfaction. "A little adventure and a little romance."
"Having a hot frying pan swung at my head is not my idea of romance." Sirius edged his chair a little farther away from Aletha as Harry, hands muffled in potholders, reclaimed the pan from Danger just in time to keep it from falling to the floor.
Domestic harmony reestablished, the Pack settled in for breakfast. Maya, Aletha’s screech owl, arrived with a letter from Augusta Longbottom, agreeing that Neville could come to stay with the Pack for the last two weeks of summer vacation. The Pack’s offer to take Neville shopping in Diagon Alley with them was gratefully accepted — she would send money with him to cover what he’d need — and she had no doubt of their ability to put him on the train for school.
"Second year," said Sirius in satisfaction, surveying the breakfast table. "You’re going out for the team, aren’t you, fox?"
"Try and stop me." Draco folded his buttered toast in half and took a bite.
"Ron probably will too," said Hermione in a long-suffering tone. "I’ll have no one to talk to — they’ll all be Quidditch-mad."
"I’m someone to talk to!" protested Meghan.
"You’re not going to be at Hogwarts, Pearl," said Harry in a tone of someone hating to point out the obvious.
Sirius hastily cleared his throat, cutting off what Meghan had been about to say.
"You’ll have Ginny and Luna, Neenie," said Aletha. "Or will it injure your reputation to be seen with lowly first years?"
Hermione bristled at the thought that she would be expected to care if her friends were first years, seventh years, or not even in school yet, then looked slightly shamefaced as she realized she’d been had.
"All these years in this house and she still has trouble being teased," said Aletha after breakfast was over and the cubs, their punishment finished, had gone looking for their friends. "It must be a family trait."
Danger threw a wadded-up toast ball at her Pack-sister.
"See?"
"If we can dispense with the pleasantries," said Remus, smiling benignly at his Pack. "What did you have to tell everyone, love?"
"Oh, drat, I was supposed to talk to the cubs about it too — but I suppose we can catch them later. I was upstairs again last night." Her lifted eyebrows made it clear she meant something different than the first floor of the Den. "And I got to watch the argument of the century — Alex vs. all. Apparently they were very put out with him that he didn’t tell them about something he came up with on his own. Secondary Heirs."
"Secondary Heirs?" repeated Sirius. "What’s that, backups in case your primaries fail?"
"Something like that — he called it being a sort of cousin to the line, or being a friend of the family — he used you as an example, actually, mangy mutt. The way you lived with the Potters. It seems he made Harry a secondary Heir of Slytherin."
Remus nodded. "That makes sense. Harry does have many Slytherin qualities. The good ones."
Sirius looked down at his pendants a little regretfully. "Do you think I could become a secondary Heir of Gryffindor?" he asked. "Not that I don’t appreciate this, but I’d like a little reminder that it’s not all I am."
"That was one of the topics of the argument," said Danger with a smile. "The Gryffindors were saying that since we all belong to them, the adults and older cubs at least — there was general consensus that I would have been in Gryffindor if I’d gone to Hogwarts — they should have given us all secondary rights."
"I was a little surprised to be tapped for Ravenclaw," said Aletha. "I do love learning, but I would never have thought of myself as that intellectual a type."
"So you wouldn’t mind becoming Gryffindor secondaries, then?"
"Not at all," said Aletha, shaking her head.
"Mind?" was Sirius’ incredulous comment. "She asks if I’d mind?"
"Hold still, then." Danger pointed her finger at first Sirius, then Aletha, and a thin lance of red light shot from it to them. "Look, I’m a ray gun."
"You need to make ray gun noises, then," said Aletha. "Like pshew, pshew."
"Why can’t ray guns go bang, bang?"
"They just don’t."
"Mine does." Danger aimed her finger at Aletha again. "Bang, you’re dead."
Aletha obediently slumped in her chair. Sirius jumped up, his face filled with fury. "Hoy, you’re not allowed to kill her! I’m the only one allowed to kill her! How would you like it if I went like this — pow!"
He aimed a shot at Remus, who dodged it and shot back, and the game was on. The Den was shortly filled with so-called adults chasing each other around, shooting pretend bolts of energy from their fingers, and having spirited arguments over whether or not they’d been hit. When a hit was declared, the person on whom it had been scored would flop over and "die" in agony, lie still for a few moments, then jump back up and start shooting again. Sirius was the first to make fifty "kills," and was thus declared the winner.
"How do people have fun who don’t have a Pack?" asked Aletha rhetorically when they were relaxing after the game.
xXxXx
Danger "Gryffindorized" (Sirius’ word) Hermione and Draco when they returned home for lunch. Oddly, the location of the differently colored gem varied from person to person. For instance, Hermione’s red gem was on the pendant that showed her Pridemates — the ones for her blood parents, her Pack-parents, and the Pack-friends had remained blue — while Draco’s red one was on the medallion for the Pack-parents. Sirius’, like Draco’s, was on the pendant showing winged horse, wolf, and lion, whereas Aletha’s resided above depictions of wolf, fox, cat, and doe.
Meghan was slightly put out that she didn’t get the same treatment, but it was pointed out to her, ever so delicately, that she might not turn out to be a Gryffindor after all, that it was always possible she’d actually be Sorted into Ravenclaw.
"Possible, but unlikely," said Remus later, after Meghan’s pouting fit had been dealt with. "With that determination to prove herself, she’s more likely to become a Slytherin."
"No," said Sirius definitely. "I don’t want her in that House. It’s too dangerous."
"For Meghan, or for the rest of the students?" asked Aletha mischievously.
xXxXx
The next week and a half passed more or less pleasantly, with the cubs playing outdoors when it was fine and indoors when it rained, and laying deep, dark plans for the coming school year. Siss was seldom home this summer, taking advantage of the open fields around the Den to meander around and catch her own food. Harry knew how much the snake ordinarily disliked being cooped up, since it reminded her of the bin where he had found her at the Apothecary, so he encouraged her to get her roaming done while she could, as it would be difficult for her to get outdoors at Hogwarts.
Neville arrived by Floo two Sundays before term started, falling out of the Den’s fireplace and narrowly missing being hit by his trunk. Trevor the toad erupted from his pocket and vanished into a corner of the music room, and everyone laughed, even Neville, as Harry and Ron helped him up.
Neville agreed to becoming a secondary Heir of Gryffindor, so Danger "zapped" his pendants as well, turning red the gem that was set in the medallion with his Pridemates’ carvings on it. His other three remained yellow — the one for his parents, which featured a wand shooting flowers and one shooting sparks, the one that was the same for everyone, and the blank one.
The Pack-parents, when asked, partially enlightened the Pride about the pendant that had puzzled them — it was representative of Pack-friends, apparently, with one of the birds being a phoenix, which stood for Dumbledore, the dragon meaning Hagrid, and the cat McGonagall.
"But what’s the other bird, then?" asked Draco, examining it closely. "It looks a bit like a crow..."
"We’ve never figured that one out," said Danger quickly. "I suppose we’ll get it eventually."
"All right."
It still seemed to surprise Neville that the Pride existed, and that he was part of it. For the first few days at the Den, he didn’t speak up much, and acted startled when people asked him questions or chose him for their team at something. Harry was a bit ashamed when he realized that part of Neville’s attitude was due to him and the others, that they had been more tolerating him than really being his friend over the past year. But that would change, now that they were the Pride.
Neville didn’t have his own broomstick, but that didn’t matter, since Harry’s old Nimbus One Thousand flew just fine. Initially, he was a bit hesitant to fly — he hadn’t improved much from his first disastrous flying lesson over the course of the year — but seeing the rest of the Pride in the air, even Hermione, seemed to spark his interest, and with more or less patient coaching from the other boys, he managed to get into the air without running into anything or falling too often.
Still, Neville generally preferred to keep his feet on the ground. He would take part in relays or the occasional race, but stayed out of the games of Quidditch, cheering from the sidelines. He and Meghan were often to be found together, usually in the garden behind the Den, either tending it or working on lessons — Meghan was teaching Neville to read music, in return for his going over his homework with her.
"Even if I won’t be entering Hogwarts for two more years, that’s no reason I can’t start learning now," she said with dignity.
It was amazing, thought Harry, how often Meghan could ask just the right questions to get Neville to see something that even Hermione had despaired of ever getting him to understand. It was as if she knew how his mind worked.
Their Hogwarts letters had arrived a day after Ginny’s acceptance letter on the eleventh of August. Neville had brought his with him, since it had his supply list in it, and for a wonder hadn’t misplaced it. They needed Volume 2 of The Standard Book of Spells, of course, and whoever the new Defense professor was, he or she wanted them to purchase The Dark Arts Outsmarted, by Gentian Guartec.
"That’s quite a good book," said Moony, reading over Draco’s shoulder. "It has sections for all skill levels — beginner to expert — so it should serve you for several years to come. Hang on to that one."
Any Defense teacher whose book choice Moony praised was likely to be good, Harry thought, and thus it was in a cheerful mood that he arrived in Diagon Alley the Saturday after Neville had come to stay. Their first stop, of course, was Gringotts Bank, where Harry and Draco amused themselves by playing rock, paper, scissors to decide whose money they would use today. Draco’s rock broke Harry’s scissors, so it was to the Malfoy vault that the small, rattling cart took them.
"I must admit," said Padfoot with an expression of satisfaction on his face as Draco returned from the vault with a bulging bag, "I do love spending Lucius Malfoy’s money."
The bag was decidedly less full when Draco had split his haul into quarters (a share each for himself, Harry, Hermione, and Letha for various household expenses), but it was still quite a lot. Neville’s gran had gone to the bank for him before he’d left, so he had his gold with him, and had stayed aboveground with Moony and Danger. Mrs. Weasley had taken another cart with her children and Luna, since Mr. Lovegood had gladly accepted her offer to do Luna’s Hogwarts shopping.
They all met up on the marble steps of Gringotts in the gorgeous August sunshine. Draco offered to treat everyone to ice cream at Florian Fortescue’s, and when they were all finished, Mrs. Weasley took Ginny and Luna in hand, off to do the traditional first year round of the stores. Hermione briskly removed Ron’s nose from the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, which was displaying a set of bright orange Chudley Cannon robes, and hauled him and the other boys into the stationery store next door to stock up on ink and parchment.
It was no surprise to anyone to find Fred and George with their friend Lee Jordan in Gambol and Japes Wizarding Joke Shop, buying enormous amounts of Dr. Filibuster’s Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks. "Are those things really as good as they say they are?" asked Draco, eyeing them curiously.
"Oh, they’re great," said Fred. "Go off anywhere, and the stars stick around for half an hour at least. Why?"
"Oh, no reason," said Draco casually. "But I bet your mum would love to know you’d been buying all these."
George looked hard at Draco. "Are you trying to threaten us?"
"Why would you think that?"
Fred groaned. "How many d’you want?"
"The noble art of blackmail," said Draco airily as the Pride left the store, Ron carrying a bag with eight large fireworks in it.
Neville led them to a little junk shop where he said his gran often went, since you could sometimes get good bargains there. Hermione picked up a book and opened it, only to have it blow a raspberry at her, and Ron nearly got them all thrown out by experimenting with one of the broken wands.
"What on earth is going on up here?" said a disapproving voice from the back of the store after the shopkeeper had cleaned up the large purple frogs and left them with an admonition not to be playing with anything they weren’t intending to buy.
"Percy?" Ron squinted into the darkness. "What’re you doing in here?"
"I was reading, until you disturbed me," said the middle Weasley brother rather irritably, emerging from the shadows.
"What are you reading?" asked Neville, looking at the little book hanging from Percy’s hand.
"Prefects Who Gained Power," read Hermione aloud. "A study of Hogwarts prefects and their later careers."
"Looking for role models, Perce?" said Ron.
Percy scowled at them all. "There are worse things," he said, then turned on his heel and went back to wherever he’d been sitting.
"How can he see to read back there?" Harry wondered, peering into the gloom of the shop.
"Not our problem," said Draco. "Let’s get out of here, unless anyone wants to get anything..."
"Percy ought to’ve been in Slytherin," said Ron disgustedly as they returned to the sunny street. "He’s got enough ambition for the whole family — I think he’s hoping to be Minister of Magic someday."
Their last stop was at Flourish and Blotts, where they had promised to meet everyone. As usual, Hermione gave a sigh of deep contentment as she walked through the doors. The only place Harry ever saw her happier was in the library at the Hogwarts Den, which he thought might be responsive to her very thoughts, since its ceiling had become nearly twice as high since they’d first found it, and it had sprouted an odd wooden construction in one corner which looked surprisingly like Hermione’s favorite reading tree...
They had tea at the Leaky Cauldron before returning home, supplies bought and another year at Hogwarts prepared for, as much as it could be. Harry challenged Ron to a game of wizard chess outdoors in the yard, while the others pulled out the Go Fish cards. Ginny excused herself from the game, and asked Hermione if she had a second to talk. Harry watched them go, until Ron’s snicker and the yell of one of his pawns being taken pulled his attention back to the game.
xXxXx
"Is something wrong?" asked Hermione, closing the door of the cubs’ bedroom.
"Yes. No. Yes." Ginny sat down on one of the beds.
"Well, it has to be one of those." Hermione sat on another bed, facing her friend.
"I don’t know."
"Or it could be that."
"It’s about Harry," blurted Ginny, looking up from the floor. "Hermione, I think I like him!"
Hermione nodded slowly. "Is this something new?" she asked, trying to keep her words from sounding hurtful. "You’ve been acting like you have a crush on him ever since you found out who he really was."
"I know — I did — I do — and I know I’ve acted like an idiot around him, I still do — that’s what I wanted to ask you. What can I do? To make him like me?"
Hermione shook her head. "You’re asking the wrong question," she said with certainty. "There’s no way to make Harry do just about anything. But I know you didn’t mean it that way, did you?"
"No, of course not — but that’s the problem," Ginny confessed, shaking her own head. "I don’t know what I mean!"
"Let me try, then?"
"All right."
"You want to know how you can act so that Harry will like you. At least as a friend, if not the way you like him. Am I close?"
Ginny nodded.
"All right." Hermione sat back on the bed, feeling more in control of the situation. If there was anything she knew, it was how Harry Potter’s mind worked. "I think you ought to start by just trying to be his friend. Can you do that?"
"I guess — but how, when I blush every time I see him?" Ginny was blushing a little just thinking about it. "I want to impress him, Hermione — I want him to like me — but at the same time, I don’t want him to notice me at all!"
"Well, you have a common interest. Quidditch. Start with that. Ask him something about one of the teams — anything you like."
"But what if he thinks I’m stupid?" The last word was almost wailed. "I’m a girl, I’m younger than he is, he won’t want to talk about Quidditch with me!"
Hermione smiled knowingly. "Ginny, trust me, Harry would talk about Quidditch with a blind slug if it knew what it was talking about."
Ginny made a face. "Thanks."
"I didn’t mean that the way it sounded — sorry... Or you could talk about these." Hermione tapped her pendants. "You were the only girl to get chosen Heir of Gryffindor. All the rest of us were Ravenclaw. Why was that?"
"I don’t know..."
"That’s not the point. The point is, it’s something to talk about. Something Harry will be interested in." Hermione rubbed a knuckle along her lips, then decided to tell the younger girl something she’d noticed. "Harry wants to be your friend. I’m almost certain of it. But when you blush and run away, he thinks that means you don’t like him."
Ginny looked horrified.
"Exactly. He doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he ignores you. But if you just try to be his friend — even if you feel like you’re putting your foot in your mouth so deep you could tie your shoes with your tonsils — he’ll try to be yours."
Ginny giggled at the image.
"And with both of you trying, I think something could get done," Hermione finished.
"Do you think I’ll ever get over this?" Ginny asked a bit wistfully. "The blushing thing?"
"Only one way to find out." Hermione stood up. "Come on, let’s get started."
The girls came down the stairs and out the front door. Harry and Ron were sitting in the shade of one tree, and the Go Fish players in another. Hermione and Ginny made their way over to Harry and Ron and sat down beside them.
Ginny looked over the chessboard carefully. "He’s setting you up, Harry," she burst out suddenly, just as Harry was about to make his move. "Queen-side castle."
Harry jumped a bit at this and looked at Ginny in surprise, then looked down at the chessboard and groaned. "Ron, you prat — how’d I miss that?"
"Thanks a lot, Ginny," said Ron, scowling, as Harry directed a bishop to remove the offending castle.
"Yeah, thanks, Gin," said Harry, smiling at her. Predictably, Ginny blushed, but managed a creditable return smile as well. Hermione gave her a thumbs up when the boys weren’t looking.
It’s a start.
xXxXx
Over the last week before school, Ginny initiated three more conversations with Harry, the last of which, on Friday, lasted nearly an hour and got rather heated, as she and Harry debated the virtues of various Quidditch teams — Ginny was a fan of the Holyhead Harpies, because of their all-witch hiring policy, while Harry, like his godfather, supported the Ballycastle Bats. They only stopped arguing when Letha firecalled the Burrow to bring the cubs home for dinner.
After dinner, Moony and Padfoot came upstairs to levitate the cubs’ Hogwarts trunks out of the attic so they could start packing. As Harry crawled out from under his bed, covered in dust mice and with three socks and a piece of last year’s Transfiguration homework in his hand, he noticed Hermione flipping through a stack of parchments, muttering to herself.
"Something wrong?"
"No... not really... do you remember the first letter the Pack-parents wrote us at Hogwarts?"
"Sort of. Why?"
"Well, I could have sworn I kept every letter they sent us, but I can’t find that one."
"Maybe Draco has it," suggested Harry.
"No, he never keeps things like that. You didn’t take it, did you?"
Harry shook his head, sending dust everywhere. "If I did, I don’t remember it." He sneezed.
"Gesundheit," said Hermione. "Hold still." She came over to him and started brushing him off. "If we were at school, I’d Scourgify you, but we’re not, and I’d rather not get in trouble two days before a new year starts. There, that’s better."
Moony appeared in the doorway, levitating two trunks with his wand, one stacked on top of the other. Padfoot was right behind him with the other one. "At the foot of the beds?" asked Moony.
Harry shrugged. "I guess."
Padfoot set down Hermione’s trunk and reached into his pocket. "Got something here," he said. "At least I think I do — ah, there it is." He pulled out a miniature trunk, in every way the duplicate of the three already in the room.
"Is that for Meghan?" asked Hermione, smiling.
"Yes, actually." Padfoot set it on the floor at the foot of Meghan’s bed. "Engorgio." The trunk grew to normal proportions.
"Why does she need a trunk?" asked Draco, coming in from the hall.
"We just thought she should have one," said Moony, with his favorite secretive smile.
The cubs exchanged a three-way look that said as clearly as words, Pull the other one. The Pack-parents were without a doubt up to something.
"Hermione, have you seen my blue robes?" asked Meghan, trotting into the room.
"No, I haven’t — what are you doing?"
Meghan had pulled open a drawer of the bureau the girls shared and was busily removing armfuls of her underwear. "Packing," she said, as if that should have been obvious.
"Are you going somewhere?"
"Hogwarts, of course."
"Of course," repeated Hermione bemusedly. "Of course."
"Pearl, you’re too young," said Harry as kindly as he could. "They won’t take you."
"I’m too young to be a student," said Meghan, dumping the underwear into the trunk and returning for another load. "But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a guest."
Draco shook his head. "Do you really think they’ll just let you be a guest there all year?" he asked. "Without doing anything?"
"Don’t be silly, I’ll do things. I can run errands, or help Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing, or Madam Pince in the library, or even help Hagrid take care of the vegetable gardens. I can do lots of things."
As one, the older cubs looked at their Pack-fathers, who were listening from the doorway. "She’s not, really," said Harry. "She’s just playing. Right?"
"Now why should we tell you that?" asked Padfoot. "It would spoil all the fun."
"Gangway," called Letha from the hall, and Moony and Padfoot moved aside to allow her through. She was levitating a large basket piled with clean clothes, which she parked on Harry’s bed. "Good for you, sweetheart, getting started. Here’s the rest of your clothes — and yes, your blue robes are in here, I found them under the stairs."
"Thanks, Mama Letha."
"And for you," said Letha, levitating a pile towards Draco. "And you." Hermione caught her pile carefully. "And the rest are yours, Greeneyes. Remember to leave two changes out for tomorrow and Sunday."
"Letha, is Meghan really going with us to Hogwarts?" asked Draco, dropping his clothes onto his bed.
Letha shook her finger in his direction, smiling. "Shame on you, little fox, trying to get around us like that. You ought to know, if one of us won’t tell you something, neither will the others."
Harry sat down hard on his bed. A realization had just struck him.
I never did what I wanted to at Neville’s house. I never told him, or the others, about the prophecy.
I was going to do it after we made the pendants, so I could swear them to den-secrecy — I guess I wasn’t expecting to get kidnapped in my dreams by the Founders of Hogwarts...
It’ll have to be tomorrow.
xXxXx
"Everyone be quiet," said Luna the next morning as the cubs and Neville arrived at the Weasleys’ orchard. "Harry has something important to tell us." She looked at Harry. "It’s safe to talk here. No one is nearby."
Harry closed his mouth. The one Ravenclaw daughter did say Luna was a seer. I guess she saw this.
"It’s about me and You-Know-Who," he said, opting not to make waves — what he had to tell would be bad enough. "About why he tried to kill me when I was a baby, and again in June."
The Pride gathered into a circle to listen to the prophecy.
"You can beat You-Know-Who?" said Ron, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and admiration. "Wicked!"
"Oh, Harry," breathed Hermione. "This is awful. Does it mean he’ll come after you again?"
"Probably. He’s not going to want to wait for me to grow up — the older I get, the more I know, and the better fighter I’ll be."
"I’ll fight with you," said Meghan, hugging Harry. "He’ll have to go through me first."
Draco met Harry’s eyes and gave him a small, understanding smile.
"You’re a good fighter now, Harry," said Neville. "You’re really fast with your wand."
"Thanks." Harry tried to smile at the other boy. "There was one other thing about the prophecy, though. It might not have meant me. That’s why I’m telling you all. There was another boy it could have meant. Another boy born at the end of July that year, whose parents were fighting Vol — sorry, You-Know-Who — and had gotten away from him three times."
He looked at Neville. Everyone looked at Neville.
Neville’s eyes went very big.
"Me?"
"Is there any more to it?" asked Draco. "Something that might say which one of you it is?"
"I know there’s more, but the Pack-parents didn’t tell me. They said they’ll tell me when I need to know."
"The prophecy speaks of Harry," said Luna, making everyone whip around to face her. Her eyes were oddly unfocused, as if she were not using them at all, and she had her head tilted to one side, as if listening hard...
"And I shall speak to you again, little seer, so heed my voice well when you hear it."
Sophia Ravenclaw’s words came back to Harry, and he shivered slightly.
Luna must be hearing her now... I wonder what that’s like, to hear voices no one else can hear?
"Have I judged the day correctly?" asked a voice by his leg.
"Siss! You scared me — shh, Luna’s telling us something..."
"The prophecy speaks of Harry, not of Neville," Luna repeated. "But it could have spoken of Neville. Once, it could have — but the Dark One’s own actions chose his destiny and his doom." Her voice fell into a poetic cadence.
"Cat and dragon, phoenix bright,
"And raven, once redeemed from night,
"Twin and warrior, star and truth,
"Shall guard the Pride through days of youth.
"Silver pearl and silent snow
"Shall help to make the darkness go,
"But black to red and red to brown
"Shall truly bring the darkness down."
Luna blinked a few times, then looked around the circle. "Why are you all looking at me that way?" she inquired. "I didn’t think it was so bad a verse as all that."
"It’s not that," said Neville, closing his mouth. "It’s... you made a prophecy. Right here in front of us."
Luna nodded. "I might do it again sometime, you know," she said. "Whenever Sophia tells me to, I have to."
"Hermione, did you get that?" asked Harry, shaking off his feeling of being in a trance himself.
Hermione nodded. "I don’t know what it means, but I could recite it."
"Oh, come on," said Draco impatiently. "Cat and dragon, phoenix bright — it’s talking about our pendants, about the Pack-friends. What’s the next line? Something about a raven?"
Hermione and Luna both nodded.
"So that must be what the other bird is. But we still don’t know who it stands for."
"We’ll probably find out when we need to," said Harry.
"Star and truth are Dadfoot and Mama Letha," said Meghan. "For what their names mean."
"What were the other ones on that line?" Ron asked Hermione. "There were four, I think."
"Twin and warrior."
"That would probably be Mr. Moony and Mrs. Danger, then, wouldn’t it? If the other two are Mr. Padfoot and Mrs. Letha?"
"Remus means twin, of course," said Hermione, hitting herself lightly on the forehead. "And Gertrude means warrior woman. That’s who that is."
"Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know," said Draco. "They take care of us and make sure we don’t get ourselves into anything we can’t get out of."
"Who’s the end part, then?" asked Ron. "Silver snow or whatever it was?"
"Silver pearl and silent snow," corrected Hermione. "I don’t know."
"Pearl is me," said Meghan. "Could silver mean Moony somehow?"
"Maybe." Harry frowned. "Maybe not. What was the other line, the one with the colors?"
"Black to red and red to brown," said Luna.
Ginny looked around the circle, swallowed hard, and went into a coughing fit. Ron thumped her on the back. "Are you all right?" he asked her when she’d recovered her breath.
"Fine — something caught the wrong way in my throat."
"Did you think of something?"
"I thought I did, but I forgot it. Sorry."
"Silent snow," said Hermione thoughtfully. "But when is snow noisy?"
"Try to remember," Ron encouraged Ginny. "Really try."
The circle fractured into two smaller ones, each with its own conversation going on, both of which excluded Harry. He changed positions and lay on his stomach, lowering his arm to the grass. "That was exciting," he remarked sibilantly.
"How so?" Siss wound herself around the proffered wrist.
"Luna future-saw. Or maybe it was past-seeing, I don’t know. She said the future-seeing about me is really about me, and not about Neville..."
Explaining the prophecy to Siss in terms she understood took a little while, and she was more or less unmoved when Harry finished. "All of life is fighting, eggling. A fight to survive, to continue living. You will fight well and strongly. I know you."
"Thanks. I hope I will."
xXxXx
The next morning was more or less chaotic, as mornings, in Draco’s experience, often were at the Den, but more so even than usual, since this morning brought with it the stress of getting five trunks (the Pack-parents levitated Meghan’s out as matter-of-factly as any of the other four) down the stairs and into the front hall, from whence they couldn’t go any farther until Mr. Weasley arrived with the car, since it was drizzling out.
Padfoot and Letha would be staying home this year, to save space in the car, since even Mr. Weasley’s magical modifications had limits, and fifteen people, eleven trunks, two owls, a snake, and a toad would push right up against those limits. Draco was watching, but they kissed Meghan goodbye as earnestly as they did all the other cubs. If Meghan going to Hogwarts was a joke, it was one of the best the Pack had ever played.
Neville emerged from the ground floor bathroom, triumphantly holding a squirming Trevor in both hands, at about the same time as the Weasleys’ car finally pulled up in the front yard, honking its horn to the tune of "Oranges and Lemons." Padfoot and Letha held the rain off with their wands while Moony and Danger levitated the trunks into the boot and the cubs got into the car with their friends.
Hermione and Meghan got into the front seat, where Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were already sitting; Harry and Neville climbed in the driver’s side back door to sit next to Ron; and Draco went around the other side of the car to get in by the other door, where Luna was waiting for him.
"I’m excited," she said when he had shut the door behind himself. "Are you excited?"
"Yes. Very."
"Even though it’s your second year?"
"I don’t think you ever really stop being excited about going to Hogwarts." Draco allowed his eyes to wander through the car until they lit on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. "Unless you were never excited in the first place."
Luna followed his gaze and giggled.
"Where’s your dad?" asked Draco, realizing Mr. Lovegood was not present.
"He said goodbye this morning, before the Weasleys picked me up. Like Neville’s gran did before he came to stay. He trusts your family and the Weasleys to get me on the train safely."
"We’re going to need to make up time, we’re running late," said Mr. Weasley as Moony got in next to Draco and Danger joined the other women in the front seat. He glanced over meaningfully at Mrs. Weasley.
"No, Arthur," she said sternly. "Not in the middle of the morning."
"But I’ve got the Invisibility Booster all set here — that would get us above the clouds — ten minutes, that’s all it would take—"
"I said no — do you want to get a caution from your own office?"
They pulled up in front of King’s Cross at ten forty-five. Moony and Mr. Weasley brought back trolleys for all the trunks, and they hurried into the station in a long, strung-out line, Weasleys first, Luna and Neville next, Pack bringing up the rear.
Draco hurried through the barrier between platforms nine and ten at two minutes to eleven and shoved his trolley up next to the door, hoisting his trunk inside, where Ron and Fred grabbed it and started hauling it down the corridor. He quickly pushed his trolley aside to make room for Hermione’s, and then for Meghan’s — but surely Moony and Danger wouldn’t let her actually get on the train...
But Moony was nowhere to be seen, and Danger was hugging Hermione good-bye as George and Neville pulled Meghan’s trunk on board. Meghan herself ran over to Danger to claim a hug of her own, and Draco followed her. "Where’s Moony?" he asked.
"He’s been delayed in the station — but he sends his love — good-bye, cubs, be good and have fun—"
"How are we supposed to do both?" asked Meghan.
"And I’ll see you at your first Quidditch match if not sooner—"
The departing whistle blew. "Hurry, get on!" Danger exclaimed, hugging them all once more, then shooing them quickly towards the train. Meghan leapt aboard, then Hermione, and Draco swung himself up just as the Hogwarts Express started to move. He leaned out the door to wave goodbye to Danger and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, then shut it behind himself as the train started to pick up speed.
The Pride had managed to get themselves into one compartment, though there wasn’t much room left over. Ginny, Luna, and Meghan were all chattering at one another, while Hermione read and Ron and Neville talked about Quidditch. It was so crowded, and so very ordinary, that it took Draco a few moments to realize what was causing his feeling that something was wrong.
"Where’s Harry?" he asked.