Phoenix Trilogy: Together Again

Chapter 3-Prefect Blues

Harry could feel nothing but cold--and how cold it was! He blew on his hands to warm them up, but it felt as if he´d never been warm, never would be warm. He glanced up when he felt another presence in the room, and saw a transparent figure who looked vaguely familiar. He had dark, dark hair that stuck up in all places, and cold, deep brown eyes. He half-walked, half-floated over to the small circle of men in the room, and began to speak.

"She has returned to England," he said simply. Who´s "she?"Harry wondered. He kept his thoughts to himself, however, and kept listening.

"What?" another voice said, sending shivers down his already trembling spine, and Harry believed his lips and fingers had gone blue. "How can that be? It´s past the fifth year of life!" Harry furrowed his brow. What were they talking about?

"Nevertheless, she has returned."

"Is she at Hogwarts?"

"Yes." The ghost´s eyes began to burn with an inner flame Harry had only seen in one person´s eyes before. The second man stepped forward, and Harry gasped. It was Voldemort!

"You can fight if you wish, but you´ll never break free," he said to the struggling ghost. The ghost spat on Voldemort, who shivered slightly and frowned. He pulled out his wand and, much to Harry´s surprise, pointed it at the ghost.

"Crucio!"

~*~

Harry sat bolt upright in the dark of his dormitory, cold and sweaty and breathing hard. His scar burned like fire on his forehead. A slight cry reached his ears from the common room, so he got quickly out of bed and headed down to see what the problem was. Audry was laying on the floor, also breathing hard, the same purple fleece blanket around her on the floor.

"What´s the matter?" he asked curiously.

"N-nothin´...bad dream." She gazed around, her eyes practically leaving gouge marks on the walls and furniture. "It...um, it startled me, dat´s all." She took a deep breath and lifted herself off the floor. The blanket, now lying forgotten on the floor, had hidden a light blue tank top that was very tight and very low. Harry gulped slightly and averted his eyes.

"I´m going back up to bed. By the way, why weren´t you in your room?" he asked her, turning as he started to head back to his dormitory.

"I git de feelin´ dat Hermione doesn´t like me fer some reason. I haven´t figured out why."

"So...you´re not staying there because you think Hermione will snub you or something?"

"Exactly. Well, if it´s warmer up dere den it is down here, I think I´ll go up too. Good night!"

"´Night." Harry turned again and suddenly stopped when he heard Audry humming. The song was so familiar. He shrugged, thinking he´d heard it on the radio at the Dursley´s or something and went back up to bed.

~*~

"Who got up late last night? Was that you?" Ron asked Harry the next morning as the two of them dressed.

"Yeah," Harry told him, finally locating a pair of socks that weren´t all stretched out. "I heard someone in the common room, so I went to go check it out." The two of them bumped into Hermione and Audry in the common room.

"Mornin´," Audry said with a barely suppressed yawn.

"Didn´t sleep well?" Ron asked, pushing open the portrait guarding Gryffindor tower.

"Nah; I had weird dreams last night."

"You too?" Ginny Weasley said, popping up behind them. "I dreamed that I was flying upside down over a pineapple cake using a licorice wand for a broom!" They all laughed and Audry grinned at her.

"You must´ve had too many sweets last night!"

"Oo, look! Schedules!" Hermione cried, reaching for one out of a pile that was suddenly thrust magically into her hands. Harry´s hands were also full. He looked at the first one on top. The card read, "FIRST THROUGH THIRD" in big, bold letters.

"See you all later," he said wearily, fingering the necklace that Hermione had given him for his birthday. She must have seen him touch it, for she smiled warmly at him and set off, handing the cards out to the owners. He heard Ron groan loudly and emit a small string of explicatives as he realized that they were still stuck with the Slytherins in Potions.

"Why can´t McGonagall just put us with the Hufflepuffs for once?" he roared over Ginny´s excited squeal. Harry pulled out the first years´ schedules and riffled through them. Sighing heavily, he handed the bunch to them, glad that those ones, unlike the fourth through seventh years, didn´t have specific names that they were supposed to go to.

When he had finally finished ten minutes later, he gazed around the table, looking for Ron or Hermione. He spotted Fred Weasley first, who saw him at the same time. Fred stood up and walked over to him.

"Happy with your schedule?" he asked jovially.

"I haven´t even gotten the chance to see it yet," Harry answered, reaching for an empty glass. He located the nearest pitcher of juice and poured it into the cup.

"That´s because you didn´t do enough naughty things," Fred said, a mourning tone in his voice. Harry snorted into his glass.

"Naughty things?" he said with a laugh. Fred shrugged.

"In any case, George and I have decided that we´re going to be the new c--"

"Says who?" Katie Bell, the Gryffindor chaser, walked up behind Fred and looked at Harry. When she saw the prefect badge on Harry´s robes, her eyes widened a little bit. "You´re a prefect?"

"Yeah," Harry said sadly. She raised an eyebrow but let it lie. "When´s the first match of the year?"

"Oh, come on; you´re not really going to let these two be captain, are you?"

"I don´t care who´s captain!" He said, exasperated. "Just so long as we can play!"

"We also need one new chaser and a keeper," Alicia Spinnet, another of Harry´s Quidditch teammates said from behind Harry, making him jump. "Know anyone who might be a good candidate?"

"Nope," Harry said. "Well, maybe Ron."

"Are you kidding?" George said, joining them with his mouth half full with a piece of toast. "He´s an okay keeper, but he´d never want to be on a school team. He prefers to watch, as far as I know. He does like to play for fun, though." Harry grinned at them.

"What, you don´t call what we do fun?"

"When you have someone like Wood for captain, you´re better off going pro," Fred pointed out.

"I say one of you four should be captain; you´ve had the most experience with quidditch." Harry said, changing the subject.

"Why don´t we discuss this later?" Katie suggested. "I don´t know about you, but I´m starving." She then left with Alicia hot on her trail, the two of them talking about something to do with Flitwick´s class. Harry shrugged and looked around again for Ron and Hermione. He saw them sitting near the end closest to the top table. Hermione had her nose glued to her DADA book, whereas Ron was thoroughly engrossed in a conversation with Audry. Harry shook his head and walked over, helping himself to a bagel in front of Hermione´s book. She looked up when she felt his arm brush her shoulder and smiled.

"Where have you been?" she asked as he sat down.

"Impromptu quidditch meeting," he said around a chunk of the bagel.

"Hmm," she murmured, taking a sip of the liquid in the mug that was in her left hand and turned the page.

"Is that all you´re having?" Ron asked suddenly, looking hungrily at Hermione´s near-empty plate. Hermione looked up.

"Why?"

"I just want the bagels if it is; they look delicious, don´t they?"

"They are good," Harry said through another mouthful. Hermione shrugged and pushed the plate towards Ron. Audry narrowed her eyes slightly but said nothing. Again Harry heard the faint whispering in his head that he had heard at the feast the night before. He tried to tune into it, furrowing his brow in concentration. Again it evaded him, and he sat down and tried to ignore it.

Harry sat undisturbed for the rest of the meal. He listened to Ron and Audry´s argument about the best sport ("Soccer!" "No, it´s quidditch, stupid!" "Oh, so now you´re callin´ me stupid?") and vaguely watched Hermione leaf through her book. Harry and Ron were just getting up to show Audry around the grounds for a bit ("Soccer!") when Dumbledore also rose from a heated argument between several of the teachers and tapped his fork against his glass of pumpkin juice. Everyone stopped talking almost immediately--Dumbledore never had anything to say on weekends.

"The teachers and I have decided to hold a mini-ball for the older students in two weeks. The fourth years and above are invited. As the first through third years held small parties in their common rooms last year during the Yule Ball, we have also decided to hold a party for them in one of the roomier dungeons. Have a wonderful weekend!"

"A mini-ball?" Audry moaned. "What am I gonna wear? (Soccer!)"

~*~

The only thing everyone talked about for the rest of the weekend was the upcoming dance. Audry had sent out an order form given to her by (surprise, surprise) Hermione, who was still being cold as ice towards her, for a pair of dress robes. Neither girl would reveal what it looked like, though Parvarti Patil and Lavender Brown, the two gossip queens of Gryffindor, heavily discussed about what it might look like. There were many versions, ranging from see-through black silk finery that should only be seen by one self to a luxurious gown made of satin that was popular in the 1600s. Audry enjoyed all the attention but gave no answers, and turned down every request from every boy ranging from the shyest first year to the snobbiest seventh year. On Monday morning during breakfast as Harry entered the great hall, he noticed Draco Malfoy cornering Audry, trying to talk to her. She sneered and said something that Harry couldn´t hear, but the back of Malfoy´s neck and his ears went bright pink. Audry stalked past him, making sure to bump his shoulder hard as she passed.

"Of all de nerve," she growled, angrily throwing food onto her plate.

"What is it?" Hermione asked idly, rummaging through her bag.

"Draco Malfoy...hah! What a joke...a sick, demented joke, dat is..."

"What´s a sick demented joke?" Ron and Harry asked in unison, but Harry had a slight idea of what was bothering her so much.

"He asked me te de ball! Excuse me while I go puke out what little is in my stomach at the moment...disgustin´!" She kept murmuring as she stomped out of the room, something that brought a small smile to Hermione´s face.

"You know, I´m starting to like that girl," she said, grabbing a cup and pouring herself a very tiny amount of apple juice.

The first class of the day, much to Harry and Ron´s annoyance, was Divination. Audry seemed slightly curious about it, as she had it too. Hermione waved to them as usual as the friends split up, heading towards her Arithmancy class.

"What does she do in dere anyways?" Audry asked as she panted while they were three staircases from the top of the tower.

"No idea," Ron answered. "Don´t talk to me until we get up there...I think I´ll collapse from lack of energy!" Luckily for Harry and Audry he didn´t, and they got to the top with time to spare. No one else was there yet, but Harry could hear high-pitched laughter from a few flights down, meaning that Lavender and Parvarti were approaching.

The trap door opened mysteriously when the two girls reached the top, both pink faced and out of breath. Harry climbed up first and grabbed a seat closest to the window. He opened it a few inches to let some of the perfumed air that he remembered only all too well to be the cause of sleeping in class out of the window. When Audry stuck her head up through the hole, she looked around, sniffed, and sneezed violently. There was a loud crash when she hit the ground below, and Lavender and Parvarti came up looking very annoyed.

"Who pushed her?"

"No one; she sneezed." Ron said with a smile.

"What a violent sneeze, my dear," Professor Trelawney said in her mystical voice as she entered from some unseen door near the far left-hand corner of the room. Harry jumped slightly. He had forgotten about her strange entering habits over the summer. When she saw whom the owner of the sneeze was, her eyes widened slightly. "It cannot be," she murmured loud enough for all the students to hear. She opened her mouth to say something else, and then shook her head. Audry rolled her eyes and plunked down beside Ron and Harry, her hair flopping around. She sighed and blew a puff of air towards an offending lock of hair to settle it into a different spot.

"Jeez, it´s hot up here! Professor, can I open a window?"

"And disturb the clairvoyant vibrations of my tower? Certainly, not!"

"But dat one´s open a bit already! If we open it a bit more, it´s not gonna let any out. Besides, I think I´m allergic to whatever incense you´ve used in here." And with that, she sneezed again, throwing herself from the pouf. Professor Trelawney was giving her a look quite like the one that she often gave Hermione back in Harry and Ron´s third year. Harry tried to stifle a smile, and heard Ron give out a strange strangling sound that might have been covering a snigger. Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, who were standing on the ladder, listened to Audry as she let out her small and `disturbing´ speech and then caused the sound of two more loud thumps at the bottom of the ladder, followed by roaring laughter could be heard quite clearly. Professor Trelawney´s face mirrored the look of anger that Professor McGonagall often wore when regarding her students after one of them did something naughty in her classes.

"Let us get started, then," she said sharply. Harry chanced a glance at Audry. Her lips were twitching as if she were trying to contain a grin. When the eerie teacher turned away, she let the smile grow to consume her entire face. The quiet whispering that had been bothering Harry started up in his mind again, and this time instead of trying to catch it, he ignored it, hoping that it would just leave him alone.

"Crazy old hag!" Audry whispered in his ear suddenly.

"She always has been," Harry whispered back.

"We will be going over everything that we have learned in the past two years this year for the upcoming OWLs." Audry´s hand shot up into the air, causing Harry and Ron to duck in fear of being hit. Professor Trelawney blinked.

"What´re `OWLs´?" she asked curiously.

"A test that all fifth years must take," she answered crisply. She opened her mouth to say something else and Audry´s arm was in the air again.

"You mean, an exam?"

"No, it´s more difficult than an exam. Now can we please move on to the subject that I teach? Thank-you, Ms..."

"Just Audry. No last name," she added when Professor Trelawney opened her mouth to disapprove.

"Alright then. We will start again with the tea le- what is it, Ms...Audry?"

"Tea leaves´re an extremely imprecise order of Divination, Professor; de shapes would look different te each person who looked at it. Wouldn´t we be much better off doing something like crystal ball readin´?"

"My dear, you do not read a crystal ball," she snapped waspishly. Audry looked slightly confused.

"If you don´t call dat readin´, den what is it?"

"It´s...my dear, if you´re really that curious, I would be happy to explain it to you after class. Now, would everybody please go over to the china cabinet and take one blue teacup? Neville, please wait till everyone else is done and move slowly when you´re getting one. Oh, and stay away from the top shelf." Harry, Audry, and Ron stood up to go get cups from the cupboard, and while they did, Audry began to snicker.

"What´s so funny?" Ron asked while reaching over Seamus´ head to grab a cup.

"She´s not a real Seer!" she snorted.

"We´ve known that for years," Harry told her.

"Dey´ve put up wit´ her fer dat long?"

When nobody spoke, Ron supplied, "There was another teacher before her, but she disappeared before Voldemort´s downfall. It was all hushed up, but Charlie, my second oldest brother," he said as Audry looked slight confused, "was at the school at the time, and he took Divination for some strange reason. You wouldn´t be able to get anyone to talk about it, and it´s not recorded anywhere." The three of them went and sat back down, cups clasped tightly in their hands, and waited for Professor Trelawney to pour them some tea.

"Ye know, I really wish dere was some other liquid dat did this dat we could drink," Audry stated, wrinkling her nose at the bitter taste of the drink. "I don´t like tea very much. I drink juice more often, but dat doesn´t leave dregs." She polished off the cup with a grimace and a slight shudder, and then passed her cup to Ron, who was still drinking his. Harry turned and looked out the open window, which Professor Trelawney still hadn´t closed, and sipped his. Audry sat with a bored expression on her face, her chin cradled in her hands.

Ten minutes later, they were all thoroughly engrossed in explaining what shapes they saw in the cups. Ron mentioned Seeing several large boulders in Audry´s cup. She furrowed her brow at the comment while Harry sniggered.

"Well, ye have a large cat in here--no, two large cats," she corrected herself, reading Harry´s cup.

"Cats? I don´t like cats very much."

"I didn´t say dat ye did. I just said dat dere were two cats, dat´s all. And dey´re not house cats. Look here," she said, pointing at it and leaning over. Harry peered over her shoulder and looked. Sure enough, plain as day, there were to cats, one with a ruff around its neck, possibly a mane, and the other had strips missing from it.

"Their tails are entwined," Harry said. "I wonder what that means."

"Dunno. But lookkit dis! It´s a fish...like, Pisces?"

"That´s strange...my birthday´s in July, not March."

"Maybe it means somethin´ else...?"

"Like what?"

"Maybe we´re having fish for dinner," Ron interrupted them. Harry shrugged and looked at his cup.

"Err..." he said, turning the cup. "Talk about strange...get a load of this!" He showed the other two his and Audry´s cups combined. "Look at this! They´re almost exactly the same! Well, with the exception of these two squiggly lines in yours, Audry." Audry stared.

"Dat is strange."

"That´s not supposed to happen, is it?"

"My dears, your destinies are intertwined," Professor Trelawney said from behind them. She pointed to the fish, the cats, and to a strange blob that Harry couldn´t make out. "The fish: to understand; two cats, intertwined at the tails: life meetings that were not and never will be completely separated; and--no!" She gasped. Harry sighed. Audry frowned.

"Now what?" she asked haughtily.

"The Grim!" She wailed. Audry´s look of disbelief faded and turned to fear, which could only be seen in her eyes. A throbbing bell rang from a great distance below them. Harry began to pack up his stuff and kicked open the trap door.

"Well, she´s managed to get Audry off the hook," Ron said sarcastically as they waited for her at the top of the stairs.

"Did you see her face though?" Harry asked, slightly confused. "Did you see her face all through when Trelawney was giving her speech?"

"No; why?"

"Remember how I told you what Trelawney did at the third year exams? When she made the prediction that Wormtail would go back do Voldemort?" Ron flinched when Harry finished the sentence.

"Yeah, what´s the point?"

"She had the--"

"Wait up, guys!" Audry interrupted him as she stepped off the ladder, her bag swinging wildly from her shoulder. Her expression had completely changed, and she was once again cheerful.

"I´ll tell you later," Harry whispered as she joined up with them.

~*~

"I can´t believe one teacher could be so mean te a whole house!" Audry remarked as she, Ron, Harry, and Hermione left Potions just before lunch.

"He´s always been like that," Ron said mournfully. Audry grinned at him.

"I could fix dat fer ´im with a cheerin´ charm," she said, fingering her wand. Though Harry dearly wished that he could see Snape smiling without menace towards the students, he had a feeling that all four of them would be in deep trouble, no matter who had done it.

"I´ll talk to you guys later," Hermione said, branching off when they reached the corridor towards the library. "I need to look something up for my Arithmancy class."

"See you downstairs, then," Harry said, and he and Ron waved to her as she walked out of sight. Harry looked back to Audry and saw her frowning again.

"What´s up?" Ron asked, seeing the expression too.

"Something´s just buggin´ me, dat´s all," she told him. Just to prove it was nothing, she replaced the frown with her heart-melting smile. Ron just about did melt on the spot, and it took every shred of will that Harry had to keep from laughing out loud.

The rest of the walk down to the Great Hall was uneventful. Harry was quiet, thinking about the tea leaves. What had been read in them was much different then what was in it during his third year. Professor Trelawney had been predicting bad things would happen to him for the entire year. This time, it seemed that his and Audry´s destinies were intertwined for some reason. It just didn´t make any sense.

They arrived in the Great Hall ten minutes later to the cheerful noisiness that it always was. Harry grabbed a seat quickly, actually having to scuffle his way into one to avoid being trampled by a burly new sixth year who seemed to be having a row with someone halfway down the table.

"Too many people here," Harry yelled to Ron over the noise. There was some cheering, followed quickly by what sounded like skin hitting more skin. Harry sighed and got up, deciding to use his prefect duties and to stop the fight. Once he got over to where the fight was occurring, he discovered that it had already been taken care of by Cho Chang, who was glaring at the sixth year. She looked up when she heard Harry coming.

"Solved the problem?" he asked her.

"Yeah. You know, new students, trying to fit in, causing problems..." she trailed off with a shrug. Both of them stood there for a few moments, just looking (though trying not to) at each other. Harry opened his mouth to speak at the same time that Cho did, making up his mind within a split second.

"D´you want to go to the mini ball with me?" Harry asked before she could form the words. She quickly closed her mouth and smiled.

"You know, I was just about to ask you the exact same thing. Sure, I´d love to go." Harry smiled widely, his stomach full of butterflies, and turned back to the Gryffindor table.

"Okay, then. See you."

"Bye," she waved to him and walked off towards the Ravenclaw table. Harry headed back over to his seat, and found Ron thoroughly engrossed in a conversation with the American, explaining something that Harry couldn´t hear. When he sat down next to Ron, he looked up.

"What were you doing talking to Cho?" he asked.

"Prefect stuff," he said simply. Ron grinned as Audry butted in.

"No ye weren´t. You were too busy asking her te de ball te talk `bout prefect stuff." When Harry blushed, Ron´s mouth fell open.

"You asked a sixth year to the mini ball?" he said, astounded.

"Who cares?" Audry asked. She grabbed a bowl that was near Harry´s elbow and filled it to the brim with soup. "In any case, at least he has a date, unlike some people here." She elbowed Ron in the stomach when she said that, causing him to spit a large portion of his mouthful onto the tablecloth. He glared at her before continuing to spoon the scalding soup into his mouth.

"Where´s Hermione?" Harry asked when most people were leaving to go to their next class. "She said she´d meet us down here, and she never did. What do we have next?"

"Umm...DADA, it seems. Audry?"

"Same here. We have all de same courses, it seems." She and Ron huddled closer together, pointing out the classes that they had that were the same. Harry checked his watch.

"We should get moving, guys, whether or not Hermione has showed up yet. We have two minutes, and we´ll never get there in time now in any case." Audry leapt to her feet and grabbed her bag.

"You showed us where dat class was, right?" she asked.

"No, I don´t think we did. Come on, if we run, we might be able to make it on time." The three of them took off for the staircase, oblivious to the rat with a silver claw sitting just underneath the bench.

Sorry that that took so long to get out. I´ve been slightly busy...yah...Anyway...Next chapter should be up soon...