Harry Potter and the Secret-Keeper

The only thing that saved her from screaming out in terror was the look in his eyes. They were not what she expected from a person that had just threatened to perform one of the Unforgivable Curses on her. His eyes were frightened. They also had concern in them. She could tell. But, she thought, only concern for himself.

It was a good thing she did not scream out at that time, for there was a slow slithering sound coming from around the dark corridor. She immediately stiffened in to a board, trying her hardest to start breathing calmly through her nose, to make no noise. He looked at her again, but with more menace, as if to warn her that this was only a delay in her pain... or death.

The sound paused for a second, but then continued. In only this second, she realized how bad she was hurt already. Her attacker had sent out a jet of fiery sparks at her arm. She would not have realized what he had done by looking at her wounded arm, but by hearing him speak the spell, "Relashio", she knew exactly what he had done. He obviously wanted her attention first, for this was a harmless spell compared to the Cruciatus Curse.

She felt on her other arm, a sudden tightening. She looked and found his hand twitching involuntarily as it tightened even more. His eyes were not on her but further down, towards a statue of a gargoyle. He seemed to scream within his own eyes, and she wondered if he could see something more than she could. Her fear subsided somewhat, as curiosity replaced it. She looked back at the gargoyle, moving only a little, to see if there was something above it.

Someone whispers behind them, "Stupefy!"

She regained her stiffness, full of fear once again. A body falls on top of her legs, and she suddenly whimpered out a cry, which sounded oddly like "esley". She realized what she did, and immediately began to cry silently. Her will was gone. She knew what she had done.

She had lost.

~~

"No way am I going down there. There is no way you will be seeing my arse anywhere near those stairs." The flaming red hair became even redder, if that was possible, "Do you even know what is down there? I'll tell you what's down there. There is an evil you will never imagine." He pauses to make sure his little sister understands how evil the thing is, "There are SPIDERS!!"

"Ron, don't be daft. Spiders will only hurt you if you hurt them. I mean, don't you think they're going to be more scared of us, being a hundred times taller and bigger than them?" Hermione says reasonably.

Ron quickly shakes his head, remembering his experience with Hagrid's friend spider, Aragog, in his second year. "You don't know how big they can be, Hermione."

Harry smiles at this, but also gives a shudder, and says to Ginny, "I think it would be best if we did not go down to the basement." His mind instantly goes back to his Firebolt upstairs. "How about we try out some Quidditch tactics?"

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Well, if you want to waist your time practicing Quidditch, fine. I'll stay here looking through our new books. This one book sounds familiar. I think I read about it," Ron mumbles incoherent words at this. Hermione gives him a look, and continues, "I think I read about it while searching through Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions last year. Remember, Harry? We were doing research for the second task!" Hermione was becoming more excited by the second, and as Ron continued to stare at her, she began to scrounge through the pages of the book.

Ginny finally intrudes and says, "Well, I was thinking that I might want to try out for the Quidditch team this year. I'm not that great, but I think that if I don't try out, I'll regret it. But, I'd rather not make an arse out of myself, so I was wondering if you could give me some tips, Harry?" She gives him a smile, but even though she is smiling more boldly than she has before, she continues to blush furiously.

Harry, excited at the fact that he'll be able to fly on his broom again since his third year, quickly agrees.

"I'll go see if Fred and George want to come with his," Ron says as he runs up the stairs. This causes Percy to glare at Ron, from his door.

Before Percy disappears behind his door once again, he says, "I can't wait until I have my own house."

And I'm sure everyone else feels the same way, Harry thinks to himself. Percy's snobbish attitude towards everyone else was aggravating even Mr. And Mrs. Weasley. Mrs. Weasley was more prone not to show her annoyance, for she believed Percy's attitude was far better then the Twins'. She continued her usual argument of how they should "be more like Percy; working so hard at the Ministry". She was still fairly annoyed by their constant and determined work on Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, but after the Twins' first payment, she quieted down quite a bit.

Fred and George come tumbling down the stairs with their arms over their heads, as if they were protecting themselves from something. There was no need to wonder, for exactly one second after, a tremor vibrated through the house. The members in the house went immediately still, expecting something more from the tiny quake, or expecting Mrs. Weasley's large booming voice to come and trumpet them all back to the time when she "was their age". Harry suspected both.

There were no more tremors, and there was no Mrs. Weasley trying to out-due her very own Holwer. This was even more surprising than the sight they all saw, as Ron Weasley came down stairs with his wand in front of him, looking quite miffed. He looked at his wand for a second, and then quickly looked at the twins in bewilderment.

"Ronny? Are you okay?" The twins obviously found Ron's surprised look funny, since they were probably expecting a rather harsher response.

"Oh, sod off!" Ron clearly replaces his bewilderment with the exact thing Fred and George were expecting. "I come up there to invite you to play Quidditch with us and you..."

"Great idea, Ron! We'll go get our brooms!" Fred says cheerfully.

~~

Walking up the hill towards the public Quidditch field (much smaller than Hogwarts' field), Harry's mind wanders towards Hedwig's last delivery. It had been a letter from Sirius. He had received it one month after arriving at the Dursley's from Hogwart's. Harry had been worrying for a while, but assured himself that Sirius was just busy working for Professor Dumbledore, and that if anything did happen to Sirius, Dumbledore would surely contact Harry the first chance he could.

The letter from Sirius was quite short. He had demanded Harry to go to the Weasley's immediately. He said that he had already made arrangements for how Harry was to be picked up. He had also said that he was staying at Lupin's for a little while, but he should hopefully see Harry before he starts school again. In the end, it was signed Snuffles. At this, Harry had snorted, but quickly realized this was the first time Sirius was actually telling him where he was staying... and in a house!

With the mystery of the letter, Harry became aware of everything around him instantly. He began to have strange dreams of giants, vampires, house-elves, and many other strange creatures of the Wizarding world. What was also strange, was his scar hadn't hurt during any dream that occurred. He half-expected his severe headache to start up again with each dream, which kept him half-awake during dream filled sleep. He had not been getting a good night sleep until the night when the Grangers came to pick him up.

~~

Harry had noticed that the Dursleys were quite fidgety that night. Aunt Petunia was running around wildly, trying to make the house spotless. Many times she ran upon Harry, and started licking her hand and pushing mightily for his hair to stay down in an orderly fashion. Many times she failed, and continued on her trail of cleaning. Uncle Vernon was the most calm, but seemed to go through sudden spasms every couple of minutes. As he sat in the living room, he crossed his legs beginning to read the newspaper. He unfolded his legs and looked at the T.V. He crossed his legs again and continued reading the newspaper. He turned the page, and uncrossed his legs. He looked up from the newspaper and looked at the clock. His eyes twitched, and he crossed his legs again. He continued in this pattern for nearly half an hour, until Dudley came running down the stairs, creating a tremendous earthquake.

Dudley's face, usually always a newborn baby pink, turned quite red and wailed once. Seeing Harry at the kitchen table at the corner of his eye, he started whimpering. Aunt Petunia took this time to stop her cleaning frenzy, and walked over to Dudley.

As Aunt Petunia cradled Dudley's enormous head, she asked him, "What's the matter, my poor Diddy darling? What did you see?"

"The -- the-- toilet!!! It -- growled - and - and said my name!!" Dudley finally convulsed in to bursts of tears. Harry stared at Dudley. This was something he would normally be bursting out in laughter with, but Dudley seemed truly frightened. And living in the Wizarding world now for around 4 years, Harry considered this, and thought that it might be best if he took a peek.

The only thing Harry found, was an over-flowed toilet. It was alright now to laugh at Dudley, so he made his way down stairs laughing harder than he had in months. His laughter quickly stopped at the site of one familiar face at the door.

"Harry!" Hermione ran past the pale Dursleys and squeezed Harry so hard around the neck, he fell backwards with Hermione on top of him. Realizing how this must look, he quickly sat up, and looked at the Hermione's parents smiling, looking at them from the door.

"We've come to save you, Harry! Come on now, let's go get your things." Hermione said, while dragging him upstairs.

"But - Hermione - why? Your parents - Hermione!" Harry stopped at his door and looked at Hermione.

"Don't worry, Harry. Sirius wrote me a letter telling me we should pick you up and bring you to the Burrow. Since my parents are muggles, Sirius figured they'd be better able to negotiate with your Aunt and Uncle about staying the rest of the summer with us!"

Harry thought about this, and nodded in agreement. "But why didn't you tell me?"

Hermione gave him a concerned look and said, "Sirius told us not to. I don't know why. He said that it was important for you not to know any details. Of course we found this mysterious, but we thought it best to go along with what he said. I already sent Ron a letter, telling him we'd be there later today."

Harry and Hermione quickly retrieved all of his things, and walked downstairs carrying Harry's trunk, with Hedwig's cage on top. Harry was expecting to walk downstairs to the Dursleys that he had seen earlier today, but instead, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were sitting on the couch in the living room looking very proud. Dudley was, uncomfortably, sitting in a rocking chair that could barely hold him. Instead of making the usual squeaking noises the rocking chair created, it made loud, groaning noises, threatening of collapsing to the floor. The Grangers were sitting stiffly on the loveseat. Hermione noticed their expressions, and walked over to them.

"Oh, Hermione, dear. Has Harry gotten all of his things together?" Mrs. Granger asked anxiously.

Mr. Granger stood up and rounded over to Harry. "It's nice to see you again Harry. Here, let me help you with that." As Mr. Granger took one side of the trunk, he looked over his shoulder to the Dursley Family. "It was nice meeting you all. I'm afraid we must be going now. Mr. Dursley, I hope that your drilling company rises out of your drought. Mrs. Dursley, your house is very... clean." Mr. Granger, all the gentleman, commented.

Aunt Petunia blushed, and scurried to the door, opening it for Mr. Granger and Harry. Mrs. Granger said her good-byes and quickly pushed Hermione out of the door in front of her.

Hermione whispered to Harry, once they were in the car, "I think my dad has decided not to buy any drills from your Uncle's company."

Harry smiled, and fell asleep on the car ride to the Burrow. He finally got the sleep that he had needed, without any dreams or any other interruptions.

~~

Harry rises above the rest on his Firebolt, feeling the air ride with him. He hears George explaining to Ron, and whoever else who would listen about their lock on the door to their room.

"You see, if someone uses Alohomora on our locked door, a small quake will shudder through our room. This is to wake us up if we are asleep. In this case, Ron, we were busy working on this charm at the time you tried to open the door. So, the quake spread through the entire house." Geroge smiled pleasantly at Ron, "It's best if you don't come in to our room at this time. We have some more spells keeping people from our new products."

Fred adds, "Yes, and it's a good thing our parents aren't home right now, or else they might've discovered our new one. If someone walks in without saying the password, they will experience a most painful death." This last part, Fred said with a very good imitation of Professor Dumbledore.

Ginny looks at Fred with a yeah, right look.

Harry starts swooping around in circles, feeling the breeze blow his hair back. He suddenly wonders what his hair must look like after a Quidditch game. But, Harry is not one for caring about his hair, and he quickly dives in to his own Quidditch thoughts again.

"Mum!" Ron suddenly yells. Everyone looks down to see Mrs. Weasley looking up at them all.

"It's time for dinner," She says, and starts to walk back down to Burrow slowly.

"What's wrong with her?" Ron asks.

"Oh, you're such a prat sometimes. She just got back from a meeting with dad and other people at the ministry. It's about You-Know-Who," Ginny says.

Ron wrinkles his nose and says, "I'm not a prat. How was I supposed to know?" But Ron quickly goes silent, as he sees Harry's distant, glazed look.

"Ron?"

"Yeah?"

Harry turns his gaze from the sunset to Ron, "Nevermind. Let's go in."

As they all land on the ground softly, Harry looks back at some smoke rising in the distance. He realizes then, that he probably won't get as good a night's sleep as he had on the ride here.

**~~**