Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter 19
Tapping, Again

After helping to carry the heavy stacks of papers down to the great hall just in time for breakfast, Harry had to admit defeat, and admit too that handling any of Hagrid's favorite animals while seriously sleep deprived would not have flown as a suggestion in Professor Grubbly-Plank's safety lecture, so he asked Hermione to give Hagrid his explanation and apology, and he went upstairs and collapsed at last into bed.

Only at lunchtime, over strong tea, did he find out how the Hogwarts X-Press's ultimate issue had fared. Colin had managed to stay awake with a stopwatch, and he had measured an impressive forty-three minutes from the time the newspaper staff deposited their labors on the four house tables to the time the parchment appeared on the announcements board:

"Be it known henceforth:

"For the duration of the Educational Emergency, the content of all Hogwarts student publications are subject to review by the Senior Field Minister for Education and by the Hogwarts High Inquisitor."

Apparently Umbridge was developing a delusion of actually being two separate people, although to any Hogwarts student, Senior Field Minister Umbridge and High Inquisitor Umbridge were indistinguishable. Also in evidence, Hermione pointed out, was a perhaps-related delusion that the word "content" was a plural.

Lee and the rest of the Hex's staff, however, may well have had the best possible revenge. Even before the fatal forty-three minutes had elapsed, so Harry was told, this issue was the most avidly read and discussed thing that had hit the school yet. Dumbledore's interview was surprisingly bland; the discussion Harry had heard on the tape about Fawkes' feathers was perhaps the most interesting part, and the only subversive thing in it was an oblique "I stand by what was said," when Ginny brought up last year's end-of-term feast and Voldemort's return. The "coffin nail" editorial had struck the chord; reading it provided many with a moment of "eureka!", a name and face for the malaise they had been feeling but only murkily understood, and by the end of the day, it seemed most students knew choice bits of the piece by heart.

"I wonder if we'll ever know who wrote it," Hermione remarked, re-reading it again over dinner.

"Like you don't know already," Harry replied with a narrow-eyed smirk.

"You don't think it was me?"

"Well," Ron said, "whoever it was did use the word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' in a sentence."

"Now, that one's really not hard if you break it down," she argued.

For the first time since the Quidditch game, Harry and Ron shared a knowing glance and gave her a concerted look.

"Oh, come on!" George broke in. "You guys are blaming her for everything lately!"

"To hear you talk, she's just about cutting into our action," Fred added. "That'll be the day..."

As the week continued, Snape made Harry pay dearly for his excuse from class. In the lab, he called Harry to the front of the room to singlehandedly demonstrate the concoction described in Monday morning's lecture — which Harry, having missed it, was at a total loss about. Hermione tried to subtly sign to him and got him through the first few steps before Snape noticed and ordered her out to stand in the hall. "And be glad I'll let this shameful bit of academic dishonesty off at only that!" he pronounced.

Harry watched her go with forlorn desperation. What was he supposed to do now? It seemed to be a variation on a Stone Bending Potion, so maybe Black Glass next...? Snape glared over him impassively, but when he touched the jar of pepper-gray granules, someone on the Slytherin side of the room squelched a laugh. Okay, that's not right... Meanwhile the potion was bubbling fast and changing color.

"Whatever you're going to add, Mr. Potter, I suggest you do it soon," Snape warned.

Then tell me what you want me to do, you—! Harry was breathing hard in frustration; he'd had enough of Snape playing these tricks just to humiliate him, and there was nothing else to do. He glared straight into the teacher's eyes. What do you want me to do!

The next moment, he hardly knew what had happened. Completely unlike any of the times he had gone into people's eyes before, this attempt sent his mind sliding endlessly over a perfectly rigid, perfectly smooth, perfectly opaque surface, as if he were trying to find a way into a ball bearing that only spun round and round under his fingers.

"This, perhaps?" Snape snarled, proffering an apothecary jar and snapping Harry back to reality.

Off-balance from the experience, Harry numbly took the container and ladled out a dollop of the smelly, slimy, green-and-gray lumps inside. Seconds after they disappeared into the cauldron, the potion turned a sickly greenish brown and sprouted huge toadlike bubbles. Two of the largest burst at once, releasing a black mist with an odor so foul that one breath sent Harry dashing for the door, clutching his mouth to hold back his vomit.

He slammed the door behind him; through it he heard the entire class groan at the smell and the teacher crow "...And that is why you must be certain your pickled slugs are truly gangrenous and have not merely gone off."

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked, still waiting there where Snape had ordered her.

Harry shook his head; he didn't dare open his mouth.

For the rest of class, he and Hermione waited in the hallway. The professor never called them back in, and not only was Harry still struggling to control his roiling stomach, he saw no point in returning and hardly any point in returning to Potions class ever again. At this rate he was sure to flunk this year; what would happen then? He didn't mention his concerns to Hermione, not because he feared she wouldn't have constructive suggestions, but because he knew that she would and didn't care at the moment to be on the receiving end of plans for an elaborate study regimen.

At last he heard the other students shuffling loose from class. Ron was the first out the door, carrying Harry and Hermione's bags, but right behind him came Draco Malfoy.

"Now Potter, when I made that Potions Marks crack on the train, I didn't intend you to take it as a challenge!" Draco laughed.

Harry turned to attempt a retort, but when he took a breath, a hint of the failed potion's stink had wafted out the door and reached him, perhaps not enough for someone else to notice, but for Harry, who had spent the last hour and a half battling its effects, one more faint whiff was more than his stomach could take. It doubled him over, and Draco was standing too close...

Draco's scream made it all seem worth it, even when Filch made Harry clean up the mess himself with a mop.

Umbridge's new rules didn't officially shut the paper down, but Lee shrugged off suggestions that he continue. He along with most of the staff resigned rather than work under Umbridge's oversight, although neither of the reporters did so. Marietta declared that she didn't see what all the huff was about; after all, they'd always had McGonagall looking over their shoulder, so what was so different about this? Ginny, on the other hand, insisted that Umbridge would have to sack her from the Hex before she would leave it.

As soon as the next issue went into production, with Umbridge herself as both faculty sponsor and interim editor, Ginny got her wish, but when the resulting paper hit the tables, it was a scrawny thing that no one much cared to read except the Slytherins, who found an echoing chamber for their delusions of grandeur in Montague's now-sole proprietorship of the Sports page, while the "Potter is a Twerp" column at last became a reality. Harry saw no reason to read the snipes; he would hear them all soon enough...

In weeks to come, the Hex did give one dying spark of glory when Umbridge's paper came out with the title image altered to read not "The Hogwarts X-Press" but "Hogwarts' Ex-Press." Susan Bones, whom Umbridge had kept on as proofreader, admitted to the "E" — "so that it would finally be spelled like the train," she innocently claimed — but she could not account for the missing "The" or the possessive apostrophe and was sacked. On the occasion of such a reverse, the atmosphere at the Hufflepuff table was surprisingly festive, but Lee still went to give Susan his condolences on more than one occasion. From then on the paper was referred to by most, on the increasingly-rare occasions when it came up at all, not as "the Hex" but as "the Ex."

Meanwhile, Dean was still refining his new title image, and versions of it were surreptitiously circulating around the school. No one quite knew what to do about them yet, but Hermione checked out a copy of A History of Magical Publishing and Pamphleteering from the library in search of possibilities.

For the most part, however, the end of Lee's Hogwarts X-Press robbed the school of a major source of vitality, beyond what a newspaper would seem to explain. Hermione engrossed herself in homework and personal research, Ron had been standoffish and avoided Harry's eyes ever since the day of the near-disastrous Quidditch game, and Harry began to feel quite alone. Maybe without the paper and the reassuringly argumentative student voices of its editorial page, everyone was feeling rather more alone.

November dribbled on like that, increasingly frigid, and turned gray and black without snowing. Even the remaining Quidditch game of the semester was a miserable affair, especially for the Hufflepuffs. They played against Ravenclaw, and after finding his first game as a spectator surprisingly enjoyable, Harry decided to attend this one and watch Cho. However, as the game wore on and on into the afternoon, it was clear that playing Cedric's old team left her a bit shaken. The Hufflepuffs, for their part, had not a single incompetent player among them, but as Cedric's old team, they all seemed to be still in shock. The Ravenclaw Chasers outscored them by an agonising two hundred ten points before, after a four-hour game which most of the spectators had already abandoned, Cedric's successor as Hufflepuff Seeker caught the Snitch just to put his own team out of its misery.

Cho did catch Harry afterward, however. She shook her silken black hair down out of its ponytail, and they sat in the stands, bundled up in their winter robes and chatting even after everyone else had left. The Hufflepuffs had deserved the Snitch that time at least, they agreed, and Cho thanked him for coming, realising that it must be difficult to watch Quidditch when he couldn't play. Somehow she had gotten confused and thought he'd been grounded for standing up to Umbridge the first week of class; he grinned when he explained that it was actually for turning Snape into a canary. Cho didn't find that amusing as most of Harry's friends would, but she didn't think any less of him for speaking out at the cost of five detentions instead, even though he preferred not to show her his arm or explain the details. Finally they made plans to meet at Madam Puddifoot's in the village on the next Hogsmeade weekend, which was coming up shortly before Christmas Holiday. Only after they had gone their separate ways back in the castle for dinner did it dawn on Harry that he had never been to Madam Puddifoot's and didn't know where it was, but he was sure he could find it.

That evening everyone in Gryffindor tower teased Harry about his "girlfriend," but somehow it failed to annoy him. The way he and Cho had sat and talked... They'd even made a date in the village! She was his girlfriend! Surely he had the right to say that, and basking in its glow, he thought nothing could annoy him anymore.

That was until everyone else had moved on to their own business and Hermione at last emerged from her pile of books and sat down next to him. "Harry, I wanted to talk to you, about you and Cho..."

"Hm?" he looked up from a head-shaking snigger at his Defense reading.

"Just, be careful with her, okay?" Hermione said.

"What do you mean, 'be careful'?"

"Well, that is, you're both nice people, but she's got some problems, you know?"

Harry stiffened in vicarious defense. "What 'problems'?"

"A lot's happened to her lately," Hermione said. "It's just... Well, she's not over Cedric."

He swatted it away with an "Oh, come on!" but for the first time since last year, the feeling of jealousy and rivalry sparked inside him. Now that Cedric was dead, it felt sickening.

"It's as plain as the nose on her face, she's not over him!" Hermione pressed on obliviously. "I know she really appreciates that you tried to help and that you... well, that you brought him back, but if she's still hurt and she wants to be with somebody, well... Maybe she thinks she appreciates it more than she really does, if you know what I mean."

"No, I don't know what you mean!" Harry snapped, even though he really did. "When did you become the expert, anyway? I suppose one dance with Krum taught you everything there is to know!"

"Oy, what's going on over here?" Ron asked, finally attracted to the scuffle. He looked at Hermione, not Harry.

But she ignored him. "He actually is very intelligent when people aren't pestering him about Quidditch," she insisted of her last year's Yule Ball escort, the Triwizard Champion of Durmstrang and Bulgarian Quidditch star Viktor Krum. "But he's got nothing to do with this. I'm just trying to tell you to be careful because I don't want either of you to get hurt! I've got eyes and brains and feelings — I think that's two points ahead of you when you're head over heels!"

"Go back to the books, Hermione," Harry grumped. "This one needs more research."

"Fine! Fine, don't listen to me, just find out your own way..." She stormed back to her nest of books in a huff; Ron gave Harry only a flick of a sidelong glance before following her.

After all, they'd been half-abandoning him lately anyway, Harry thought. It must grate on them that they couldn't just leave him all alone anymore. Probably they were nothing more than jealous...

That Thursday, the last day of November, Hermione raised her hand in Charms and asked about a spell she had seen mentioned in A History of Magical Publishing and Pamphleteering but couldn't find in any of the Standard Books of Spells...

"A Copying Charm," she queried. "Ah... 'Facsimilate'?"

"Oh, yes!" Professor Flitwick said brightly. "A most useful spell, sadly not in the latest editions of the textbooks. Some of the newer enchanted quills and such are supposed to have made it obsolete, but I don't agree at all. If you'll all open your books to any page you please and find some scraps of parchment... Let's see if I have some for you to use..."

The professor happily instructed them to lay the scraps over the print in their books and to say "Facsimilate!" with a swish of the wand and a quick tap on the parchment. The spell caused every mark on the page to rise up to the surface of the parchment scrap while remaining untouched beneath, producing a perfect copy.

Hermione tried to contain herself until the evening, thinking the great hall an unsafe place to talk, but Dean and Seamus couldn't wait, and at lunch the Gryffindor table was alive with whispers. A way to copy and distribute a paper without access to the presses! If they could somehow teach the Copying Charm to the entire school, then every student could make their own copy from that of a classmate — and teaching everyone the spell shouldn't be hard, Ron pointed out, given how happy Flitwick had been to share it; just get the word to everyone to raise their hands in his class.

Indeed, Friday afternoon saw Umbridge in a foul mood unimproved by Ron's now-traditional mischief. By then a half-dozen more classes knew the Copying Charm, and Umbridge's attempts over dinner to curb Professor Flitwick came to naught. He patiently argued that students who wanted to know a spell would only make worse messes trying to teach it to themselves if he didn't oblige them, and besides, what could a Copying Charm hurt? Mightn't it be useful to the students in study and research? Not only Professor McGonagall came over to weigh in on Flitwick's side, but also Madam Pince: "I've been finding torn-out pages ever since they took that out of the Goshawk books! I say Filius should teach it to first-years as a matter of course!"

That reminded Harry of his own recent temptation to steal a page out of the library, and he went there after the meal and got out the yearbooks from his parents' school careers again. It took some practice to successfully lift a photograph with the copying charm, but before long he was able to do it in full motion and color, and he copied several duelling league photos and the Gryffindor Quidditch pictures that had his father in them, as well as the pictures of his parents from the House galleries, and also Sirius and Lupin, although it was somehow more uncomfortable seeing those two as innocently smiling young boys instead of their present careworn selves. At least he could distract himself by watching Lupin's ponytail progress from a first little puff third year to achieving sixth year something like its current state except unsilvered. In the next book after that, he copied the page near the front picturing James Potter and Lily Evans as Head Boy and Head Girl, although he thought his father seemed strangely grave in that picture. One flip of a page told him why; just before that, at the head of that yearbook, he found another photo of the "Henrietta" whom he thought must have been his aunt — or who would have been. The page contained only a photo of her with her name and a fatal pair of dates, "March the Eighteenth, Nineteen Sixty-Six ~ August the Second, Ninteen Seventy-Seven." Feeling a little sick, he made a copy of that page, too, but at that he couldn't continue any longer and put the books away. The Nineteen Forty-Two yearbook was still there, with the photo of Tom Riddle inside, but just a look at the spine and the memory of that picture sent Harry fleeing from the library. When he got back to Gryffindor tower, he went upstairs to change out of his school robes and pack all the Facsimilated photographs away in his trunk.

More pieces of the underground newspaper puzzle fell into place when he had come back down and settled in the common room. For ease of distribution, Lee and the other former Hex staffers were already deciding on a single-page format for the Hogwarts Underground —

"What'll we call, that?" Fred questioned. "'The Hug'?"

"Why not?" Ginny said.

"It's scary, but you know, 'give me a hug' could actually work as a cover..." Lee realised.

"Sorry I asked..."

Neville unexpectedly spoke up. "One page at a time, that's still going to be a lot of parchment. Where will everybody get that much extra? Won't it look suspicious?"

"Well, this would be a more dangerous spell to teach everybody," Harry said, "but I saw Umbridge use a memory charm to..." He trailed off, remembering that everyone in the room already knew about his arm, which by now had healed but with a such a vivid scar that he might never be able to wear short sleeves again. "That's how she blanked the parchment between tries, when she was making me do the lines over and over with that Cutting Quill."

"So all we have to do is find something worthless that we can erase to reuse the parchment," Lee surmised. A slow grin of vindictive satisfaction spread across his face and gave way to a lordly laugh. "I love poetic justice!"

That night brought a thick blanket of December snow, and the following morning, Umbridge's Hogwarts X-Press was for the first time a success.

That weekend, students ventured out in their heavy cloaks and scarves for snowball fights and snow-sculptures.

Harry had begun counting the days until the Hogsmeade weekend — only one week away now! — and also until Christmas Holiday, when he was sure that someone who knew the secret would take him back to Sirius's house and he could spend the break with his godfather. At the least, anyone he could get hold of from the Order who refused to take him there for Christmas was going to end up sorry, so he didn't sign up on McGonagall's list of students spending the holiday at Hogwarts when it came around on Monday.

That night he went to bed as more fat flakes of snow sifted down past the window. Magic or no magic, the castle's stone walls were always cold this time of year, making a night's sleep under thick blankets more inviting than ever. This one was cut short, though, at some indeterminate midnight hour.

tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap!

Harry resisted waking up at the sound. His dreaming mind connected it with that summer, with Professor Lupin tapping on his window, and he finally had to rouse himself somewhat to make certain he wasn't bundled up in bed at the Dursleys' house on Privet Drive.

tap-tap-tap! tap-tap-tap!

Whatever was tapping, it was at the window just next to him, between his bed and Ron's, and it was a harder, louder sound than a person could make with their fingernails — if such a person could scale Gryffindor Tower to this height. He grudgingly started to drag himself up to see what it was.

Ron was ahead of him, and shuffled out of bed. "...Do you want in or something...?"

tap-tap-tap!

Harry put on his glasses and pulled aside his bedcurtains just in time to feel a burst of winter air on his face as Ron opened the window. Two black birds flapped in the window and straight past Harry's head; their wings flung stray snowflakes as they fluttered into the canopy of his bed.

Ron shut the window again. "Lumiere." He stayed standing, but pulled Harry's bedcurtains around himself as he lit the canopy-lantern to reveal the birds clinging to its wirework frame.

Harry blinked into the light for a moment before his eyes adjusted enough to see them. Two bright-eyed ravens looked back at him attentively; the lantern-light picked out a peacock sheen to their jet-black feathers. One of them carried a piece of parchment in its beak — a letter! The message wasn't tied to the raven's leg the way a post-owl would carry it, but took the form of a scroll tied with a leather thong, which the bird simply held in its beak. Harry reached for it, the raven dropped it into his hand, then the two of them fluttered out past him and back onto the windowsill.

Ron had just lifted the pane to let them fly out when Seamus rolled out of bed and came over to them. "What are you two up to over here?"

"Nothing," Ron said, closing the window again. "Just wanted some fresh air."

"Right you did," he said skeptically. "Come on now, I saw some birds; heard them flapping, too."

"It's our top secret plan to destroy the Ministry," Harry blurted out, more punch-drunk from the rude awakening than cautious.

"Right, so lay off before you know so much we have to kill you," Ron said.

Seamus laughed. "Well, in that case, keep up the good work," he said, and shuffled back to bed.

Once he was gone, Ron seated himself beside Harry, who slipped off the leather tie and unrolled the parchment. Both boys read it in silence.

"Dear Harry,

"As you might guess, this is a letter from home. My Dear Friend is back from his 'business trip' and he was able to borrow some specially-trained letter carriers. The two you will just have seen are named Locke and Kant. I know that you'll be home for Christmas soon, but I couldn't resist going ahead and writing to you, and I'm sure you don't want to be kept in the dark any longer than you have to, either. The Secret Thing is still safe (and still Secret, so don't ask). My Friend and I, and Mr. W's folks, and I think everyone you would know is still all right, but we have lost someone in the recent disappearances."

"Hestia Jones, I bet, like you said," Ron whispered.

Harry shushed him. After Seamus looking in on them, he didn't want to risk anything else getting out.

"...We're doing what we can to look into that. My Sherlock is coming up short so far, but of course we all suspect Mr. V, and he's not allowed to look too deeply into that."

"That's a weird thing to call him." Ron only breathed the words this time as he pointed to the "Mr. V" designation. Harry let it pass.

"As for myself, with My Friend back I'm feeling much better than I was for a time — my health is fine, please don't worry about that, but alone in the house with The Help and The Decor isn't my favorite place to be, and after a certain newspaper story I can't put my nose out without having it hit by a rolled-up copy of the thing. I wish I could be there with you. I'm sure you're making me proud, but I suppose I'm a little old to go back to school, so I'm just counting the days until you get home for the holiday and can tell me all about it.

"We have your Christmas present picked out, by the way. I think you'll like it.

"I could go on forever but I don't want to weigh our messengers down, and at any rate it's not the same as having you here. I know I'm belaboring the point that I'm looking forward to you coming home for the holiday, but I've been missing you.

"Until then, good luck in your classes, and Don't Get Caught.

"Love you and miss you, Snuffles B. Paterson

"P. S.: If you need to contact me, tie a letter to a biscuit and leave it on the sill for the couriers."

By the end of the letter, Harry was wishing that Ron would show enough discretion to go back to bed, but no such luck.

"Sounds like he has been alone in the house too much."

"Look," Harry sighed, "if this had been a letter from your Mum, would you want me picking on it?"

Ron kept his eyes on the parchment even as Harry turned to him, but he agreed. "No, I guess I wouldn't. 'Night, Harry," he said, and went back to his bed, never meeting Harry's eyes.

That gesture almost disturbed Harry more than the desperate tone of the letter's affection, and between the two of them, he lay awake for some time after he had put out the light over his bed.

There was not a doubt in Harry's mind that Seamus was on his side against Umbridge, even if he still didn't seem to believe Harry's story about Voldemort. In a certain way he would have trusted Seamus, but now before the next day was out the whole school seemed to have heard about the Ravens bringing Harry a letter at midnight, and why in the world did he have to repeat the crack about a secret plan to destroy the Ministry? Surely he knew by now that Umbridge couldn't take that kind of joke.

With less than two weeks left until Holiday and his godfather's safety at stake, Harry smuggled a biscuit from dinner and tied it to a quick note:

"Mr. Paterson - Someone saw the couriers, so better save them for emergencies. Looking forward to holiday!

"~Your Sweepstakes Entrant"

He couldn't bring himself to write "do not send anymore mail" again, and the ravens' cargo wasn't in danger of being checked, so maybe if their visits were kept rare, that channel could remain open... As instructed, he left the biscuit and letter outside on the sill when he went to bed, and he lay awake until he heard beating wings at the window. He sprang up from bed, having left his wand to hand, and cast Lumos in time to see the two birds; one took his letter in its beak, the other took the biscuit in its claws, and they flew away into the night.

The next morning, Lee and Dean gave all the Gryffindors copies of the first Hogwarts Underground, Facsimilated onto blanked pages of Umbridge's paper. "Kind of bare-bones this time around, but it seemed like the most important thing to say," Dean explained as he gave Harry, Ron, and Hermione copies. "We need to get these out by the weekend, of course."

That much was obvious given the contents of the little bulletin:

"Umbridge-itis getting you down?

"We've all seen the rules, but what is she going to do when we're out in the village? Meet us at the Other Pub. We'll start making plans to take our school back!"

Just those few sentences below the underground train image, but it was enough — and again in that Dictating-Quill script, so someone in Gryffindor Tower must own one...

"The Hog's Head?" Ron questioned. It was the "Other Pub" in Hogsmeade, which even the more daring students tended to avoid.

"Well, we figure we won't run into any Ministry robes there," Dean said. "Can you imagine Madam Umbridge in a place like that?"

"I guess not," Ron agreed.

Harry frowned; he saw the point about the Ministry, but he could imagine Death Eaters there, and it dawned on him that everyone was so concerned with Umbridge that they were forgetting the larger fight — if indeed any of them believed him. Even he had been letting the Educational Emergency distract him from the fact that Voldemort was out there somewhere, apparently disappearing people at random... Then there was the realisation that he had already planned to meet Cho. His mind tried to chase in three directions and ended up badly muddled.

It was a bit late to object to the plan now, anyway, and he guiltily refrained from distributing the bulletin himself, not least because he couldn't think of anyone to distribute it to. Ginny found Michael Corner to give him a copy of it and a kiss, which only made Harry more uncomfortable. How was it that he suddenly didn't seem to know anyone? Ron and Hermione were being a bit remote and had their own firsthand copies anyway. He could give a copy to Cho, perhaps, but didn't really want to — and besides, Umbridge had set her sights on him such that he would probably just make the fledgling resistance more of a target if he got too involved with it. That wasn't exactly a comforting thought, but he settled on it and stayed quiet.

In the last half of the week, he muddled through another Potions lab and another class with Umbridge and Slinkhard, while Lee and company put together a Hogwarts Underground issue not for in-school consumption but to be spread around in the village, containing a manifesto of student grievances against the Educational Emergency regime. Hermione worked feverishly on a lengthy composition that Harry had thought might be homework — hopefully Arithmancy or Runes and thus not something he himself was forgetting — but that Saturday morning, she stuffed it all in an envelope addressed to Viktor Krum in Bulgaria and smuggled it in her schoolbag out to the village.

Everyone seemed to hold their breath as they went through the school's winged-boar-topped gates, as if afraid Umbridge might have decided to lock them inside after all, but no, they arrived safely in Hogsmeade's main street. There had been some worry too, that she might have the village crawling with Ministry operatives, that despite the Underground's assumptions, she might have made ready to police the students even here, but her reach seemed to go no further than copies of the Emergency Measures pasted up outside the Owl-Post Office.

Nonetheless, Parvati dauntlessly went inside with a letter for her father, and when she came back out with the news that the clerks were scoffing at Umbridge's rules, dozens of students, including Hermione with her letter for Krum, flooded in to follow her example. Ron split off in the direction of Honeydukes, leaving Harry behind on the street, but of course he had other plans.

He caught Dean in The Three Broomsticks passing out The Hogwarts Underground to the locals and asked where he might find Madam Puddifoot's. The explanation that he'd never been there and was supposed to meet someone brought a round of indulgent laughter that made him blush, but Alicia Spinnet overheard and gave him a fair set of directions.

"...The street is so quiet, you might think you're lost, but just look for the sign shaped like a teacup," she said to wrap it all up.

"Thanks."

"Hey, you," one of the adult wizards stopped Dean as he started to move on to another table. "I'm looking at this... Intercepting an order for Healy's salve and keeping the money? Lifting pages out of a test-prep course? Are you kids just fooling with us?"

"No! So help me, that stuff really happened," Dean replied.

"To people I know," Alicia added. "You want me to find them so they can tell you about it?"

Harry turned from the conversation and left the Three Broomsticks in search of Madam Puddifoot's, but doing so made him feel strangely unsettled. What's wrong with me? I'm meeting Cho, I should be happy! But he couldn't just wave away a tug of regret inside him. Dean and Alicia were back there standing up to Umbridge — fighting as best they knew how, even if it wasn't against Voldemort. Even Hermione and the rest of the crowd at the Owl Post Office were doing their part, and now here he was, Harry Potter, going off to sip tea instead of helping them.

Well, every year before, it's been me who was fighting and everyone else who wasn't, he thought. Don't I deserve a break for a date with Cho? Besides, the way Umbridge is, they probably would be better off without me; I'd just get them all in more trouble... Telling himself that was enough to keep him on course toward Madam Puddifoot's and Cho rather than The Hog's Head and the resistance meeting, but it made that niggle inside him tighten, not go away. His thoughts rang more and more loudly as he followed Alicia's prescribed twists and turns onto quieter streets. There were tracks of fresh footprints in the snow, so he thought some of his fellow students must have gone there ahead of him, but no one was here now, just echoes stamped in the whiteness that only made him feel more alone in their silence.

There's no reason for me to go to the meeting, he thought, trying to coax himself on toward the teacup-sign that he could now see a little further down the winding street. There's not much I could really do for them... Sure, I was the one who saw Voldemort, but I didn't really manage to do anything to him or set him back at all, did I? I even let them take my blood for that resurrection spell. I even let them... With Cho waiting just ahead, he couldn't even bear to finish a thought about Cedric. I couldn't even chase off those Dementors. What does everybody need me for?

He came to stand just under the wooden teacup painted with a rose and the Madam Puddifoot's name, but his self-talk had the opposite of its intended effect. He stopped beneath the sign and froze there as if rooted to the ground, unable to take another step.

What am I doing here?

He stood there for a long moment as the December breeze rubbed his cheeks and nudged the sign into motion, then finally a jingling bell on the door brought him back to himself. Cho was looking out at him, warm air and color radiating out from the doorway around her. She wore her silky hair loose over an attractively-patterned sweater and a long skirt, making Harry rather self-conscious about his own school uniform under his cloak, but she smiled brightly. "Did you have trouble finding it?"

"No, ah, not much..."

"Well, don't stand out there in the cold; you found the right place," she said, putting one dainty shoe out in the snow to take his arm and guide him inside. Cho unwound his scarf and hung it up for him on the coat-rack as he unbuttoned his cloak, and then she took that, too. He looked around at the place and found it very cosy, decorated in ivory and gold and pink, with rose motifs much in evidence and a crackling fireplace in peach-colored stone, leaving the seasonal holly and pointsettias looking rather tacked-on. Potted flowers sat in the deep, narrow sills of the front windows. The china was ivory-colored with gold trim and roses, just like on the sign outside. No more than a dozen tables were scattered around, each just the size for two, and of those that were occupied, only one was taken by two girls and one other by an older local couple. The rest each belonged to a matched pair of students, a boy and a girl — including, off in a corner, Draco and Pansy, but Harry just hastily looked away from them, hoping that if he pretended not to see Draco then Draco would pretend not to see him.

Now, too, the couples present included Harry and Cho, as she led him to a little table where a teapot sat steaming beside a basket of biscuits. Two cups were laid out, not across the table from each other but side-by-side — and thankfully facing away from Draco and Pansy's corner. One of the cups was already full, and as Harry sat down beside the other one he noticed that even the tea was pink and the biscuits ivory heart shapes with pink rose motifs stamped onto them. He reached for the teapot, but Cho stopped him.

"Oh, no, please," she said, exchanging her own cup for his empty one. "I like it a little sweet, but..."

She trailed off but without a hint of uncertainty, so Harry had to think that this was perfectly normal and took a sip. It was much oversweetened, but that was probably for the best; what he could taste of the tea itself was entirely too floral for him, so better to taste the sugar instead — and he couldn't help but notice a hint of flavor on the rim, enough to confirm that Cho had indeed drunk from this cup before passing it to him.

By this time she had prepared another cup and switched back with him, but as she drank from the one she had lent, a smile in her eyes told him that he hadn't done anything wrong by taking a sip, although he felt a bit awkward about it himself. Sampling from the fresh cup she had poured for him confirmed that the tea couldn't stand on its own without the sugar, but he hardly dared to add more, lest it be an insulting gesture that Cho had prepared it wrong, even though she hadn't asked what he liked...

Their gazes met, and Harry almost desperately let himself sink into the shining depths of Cho's eyes where again he was awash in warmth, where he could see his echo in her mind, his own reflection handsome and heroic and charming — heavily sugared, because like the flower-tea, he wasn't so palatable without it. For the first time some part of him resisted the spell of Cho's eyes; he didn't feel handsome or charming. He didn't feel heroic, sitting here while his friends were elsewhere fighting Umbridge's deathgrip on their school. That awkward feeling deep down was untouched: What am I doing here?

What am I supposed to do now? Even this question had grown thornier. Cho still smiled at him, but he feared that any tiny guesture could make that smile fall, would give away that he wasn't enjoying himself wonderfully — Why aren't I, anyway? What's wrong with me? He was half-afraid even to sip his tea lest it somehow throw off Cho's finely-crafted cup-switching scheme, but then, could he wreck it also by not drinking when he was supposed to?

While munching as quietly as he could manage on a biscuit, he surreptitiously looked around the room for some examples of how he should act. The older couple were tucking biscuits into each other's mouths. Harry discarded that and desperately kept looking; the next table he settled his eyes on, all the way across the room, was Draco and Pansy's — but at the least he realised he had no need to worry about being noticed; Draco's attention was fully engaged as he twirled a lock of Pansy's hair around his finger and their faces met in a kiss.

Harry raised his eyes away from them — and saw a sprig of mistletoe above their heads. For the first time, he realised that ribbons had been hung from the rafters, dangling mistletoe over many of the patrons, and he turned back to he and Cho's table and looked up. Sure enough, looking back down at him were the green leaves and ivory berries, bound with a pink ribbon bow.

"I was wondering when you'd notice," Cho said. When he looked back down at her, her laughing eyes and smiling lips were wonderfully forgiving. She leaned closer by hardly an inch, letting her mouth draw inward and her eyelids lower just the tiniest bit, but for once, it was utterly clear what came next, and Harry leaned closer to her until their eyes closed and their faces touched. He didn't know when to let go, and just trusted Cho to know, but she seemed to want it to last forever, and maybe he was supposed to be the one to...

Unthinkingly, he looked to her across the point of contact, searching for some idea of how this should go...

Cedric kissed harder. This isn't the same...

Harry's jaw went slack; he pulled back from her, but when he was far enough away to see her eyes, they looked back at him in innocent confusion.

"Is something wrong?"

"No... No, it's nothing..." That was a lie, but the truth would be impossible to admit.

Cho let her eyelids drift lower again, and again he understood the cue and leaned closer to her, but this time he could barely feel her face against his. All he could feel was the shadow of Cedric Diggory looking over his shoulder.

to be continued in...
Chapter Twenty: Did You Just Want...?

Author's Notes on Chapter Nineteen:

For some reason, my favorite sentence from this chapter is this one: "November dribbled on like that, increasingly frigid, and turned gray and black without snowing." I don't know why, but that's what sticks with me.

Once I got into it, I rather enjoyed doing the scene with Cho. I admit, I got a kick out of planting Draco and Pansy there, and I liked the line about "Cho's finely-crafted cup-switching scheme," which struck me funny but I think also captured the sense of awkwardness. And once again poor Harry ends a chapter in a puddle of angst...

The ravens may represent a bit of World-Builder's disease (as I've invented and become rather attached to the place where Lupin got them), but the check-in with Sirius is worth something at least. I already struggled in the letter and foresee a challenge of Christmas holiday as showing him properly out of sorts and lonely (the word I'm looking for is "pathetic") without taking it too far. And Harry again finds that having loving parents can be a mixed bag...

Just as a nit, too, while in both Hand-Me-Downs and Chapter 8 I mentioned Lupin's hair being "tied back," this is the first time I actually used the word ponytail — and I'll admit the canon doesn't support him having one very well. A big enough deal is made about Bill's, it's doubtful another man could have one and escape comment on it, but my mental image of Remus was much affected by a certain picture of him (Koge-Donbo's version at Moonless Night, now defunct but you can find it in the Way Back Machine if you try hard enough), and I'm just not shaking that mental image now. Besides, if I was going to excise everything canon doesn't support, this whole story would just be off the cards, wouldn't it? ^_~;

Oh, and shortly after Sirius's letter, at about 6pm, November 30th, despite slightly relaxing the rules to work on a pre-existing story, I won NaNoWriMo.

...

NaNoWriMo 2005.

So you can tell just how totally I fell off my game after that, and with this chapter posted I'll have cleared my backlog (I have Ch. 20 but it's such a horrible cliffhanger I don't want to post it until I at least have 21 too), so it's back on indefinite hiatus... Sorry, everybody...