Hand of the Enemy

***

The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.

Exodus 15:9

***

Harry Potter, the not so normal Boy Who Lived stared out of his murky second floor bedroom window out into the streets of Privet Drive. Outside, the rain poured down on that quiet July evening and a leaf occasionally wafted past his window in the wind outside. Harry smiled to himself. It was July 31st, his day of birth and hopefully the last day that he would ever have to spend at the Dursley’s house. The people in question were not in the house that day. Why they picked such a wretched day to go out only Harry knew, but he was glad that he had the house to himself. His room was empty of living things, too. Hedwig, his snowy white owl was outside in the disgusting winter-like weather, and Harry was holed up inside Dudley’s second-hand room, wearing his second-hand clothes, and sleeping in his second-hand bed.

But soon there would be no more of that, Harry thought happily to himself, for just yesterday he had received a letter from his best friend Ron, telling him that the Weasleys would be there on August 1st to pick him up and take him to their home, The Burrow. Ron had apologized in the letter, saying that they would have picked him up earlier but Ron’s Aunt Weasley had shown up a few days before and they couldn’t get away. Harry had put Ron’s letter under his bed, along with all his other things that came from the wizarding world, including his wand, his Firebolt broomstick and all his school supplies. He dared only take them out in the dark of night, ever since the Dursleys had found out that his Godfather, Sirius Black, was innocent. Whomever tipped them off was going to have a lot of explaining to do when Harry got back to Hogwarts but deep down Harry suspected that it was Dumbledore, the smiling Headmaster of the school.

Harry’s head shot up from the book he was reading—Magical Mysteries,-- at the sound of a loud tapping on his window. His eyes followed the sound to the source, and saw Hedwig—with a small package tied to her leg--tapping madly at the dirty window. Harry quickly got off his bed and opened it. Hedwig flew in with a shower of rain pelting off her feathers and hooting angrily. She perched on her cage and glared at Harry as if he was the spawn of all things evil, and indignantly held out her foot as if demanding he pay the closest attention to it. Harry looked at her oddly and reached out to pet her on the head, but she snapped at him and refused to look at him again.

"Fine then, be that way." He said and untied the package, all the while muttering under his breath about PMSing owls. Hedwig didn’t seemed bothered however, and when he was done she promptly flew into her cage and turned her back to him.

From the writing on the package, which clearly read: 'To: Mr. Harry J. Potter', in small, neat letters, Harry surmised that it was from his other best friend and fellow student at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger. Sure enough, when he ripped open the brown paper to reveal the box, a neatly folded letter fell to the floor. Discarding the box to his bed, Harry picked up the letter and carefully opened it:

Dear Harry,

Greetings! How is everything at the Dursleys? How’re you feeling…how’s your scar? I hope everything’s fine where you are. My summer has been incredibly boring, since we’ve been visiting America for a Dentist’s Convention and my parents won’t let me go into any wizarding communities. I’ve run out of homework to do and books to read, so I’ve been stuck here with nothing to do—but I have discovered Soap Operas…why hadn’t I noticed them back home? Oh well…

I hope you enjoy your present, Harry. I first thought of getting you a Pensieve, but I realized that a Pensieve would probably not be the best idea for you, considering who you have in your dorm room—namely Neville. So instead, I found this wonderful little trinket. It’s called a Sententia, and it has the same purpose as a Pensieve. No, don’t try to look inside, there’s nothing there yet. I thought about first putting something inside, but decided not to—after all, it is your present. Anyway, to put a memory, a thought, anything you want to forget or store away for later use (Potions notes! Transfiguration spells!), you just put your wand to the Sententia and think only of that thing you want inside it. To retrieve something, you choose what you want to extract and say the spell, ‘extracto’, and it will come back to you. Be careful when carrying it though! I suggest you keep it in the dragon-hide pouch it came with, because if you aren’t careful you might end up putting something you don’t want inside of it…it’s quite sensitive.

Anyway, I hope you have fun with it Harry, I know I always seem to get you boring gifts, but I thought that maybe this one could be fun and beneficial for you. I hear you’re going to Ron’s house in August? I hope this gets to you before you go, I wouldn’t want Hedwig to have to go all the way to the Dursley’s and then to Ron’s house, too!

Have a good rest of the summer!

Love, Hermione

Now this Harry had to see. He had seen Dumbledore’s Pensieve on more then one occasion, and he quite liked the idea of being able to store his ideas away for later use. He put Hermione’s letter in a shoebox with other gifts (A pair of socks from Dobby the House Elf, some cookies from Hagrid, a new pair of gloves from Sirius), opened the box which held the Sententia and extracted the dragon hide bag which held it. It was small, small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, and it was clear and seamless. It reminded Harry greatly of Neville’s Rememberall, and yet there was something different about it. Harry thought for a long time about what he could put inside it that he didn’t need, but everything in his head seemed so important that he couldn’t bear to part with it. He finally decided on his fourth birthday, when the Dudley got him a toilet seat for his birthday. That was definitely something he didn’t want to remember. He put his wand to the ball and concentrated hard on the memory, until it completely vanished from his head. He opened his eyes to see it playing like a movie in the ball, twisting around and around the outer rim. He smiled to himself as he watched it, then put the ball back into its pouch, and carefully put it in the trunk that would go with him to Hogwarts.

Harry checked his watch. It was late, and the sky was getting dark. 9:34 his old watch said, something of Dudley’s that he had discarded because it was the wrong color. Harry knew that the Weasley twins would be coming to get him around 3:00 in the morning the next day and he decided he had better get some rest before they came. He deftly heard the Dursley’s car pull up in the driveway and saw the shadows from the car’s headlights dance upon the walls before they went off. He heard his Aunt Petunia’s shriek as she ran through the rain into the house and he heard the door slam before opening again to admit his Uncle and cousin. He drifted off to sleep to the sound of the television in Dudley’s room just across the hall.

***

Draco Malfoy pulled away from his mother’s grasp as she tried to pull him, along with her trunk outside the Malfoy Manor. As he wrestled away from her grip, he could hear her sobbing, and his mind was in a blank rage as he tried to get back into the mansion that he once called home.

"Draco! Stop, please! He’s not in there…he’s gone! He left!" Narcissa cried, and Draco’s thrashing subsided. He looked at his mother, who let go of his robes.

"When he comes back, I’m going to hex him!" Draco yelled, preparing to storm up the front steps again. The stone gargoyles near the roof looked down at them with amused looks on their faces, every once and awhile blinking to get the rain out of their eyes. Narcissa shook her head, and grabbed his hand. He looked down at it. It was something she hadn’t done since he was five, and of course he hadn’t held anyone's hand since. When he finally looked at her face again, she was blinking at him.

"We have to go, Voldemort is on the rise and your father is too in his grasp to escape again. It can only get worse. There is only one place that we can be safe."

"Hogwarts." Draco mumbled angrily and picked up his own trunk, which lay on the ground where he had left it a few yards back. His eagle owl, Aries, perched in his cage and looked at him in sympathy. The rain poured down on the two blond haired figures, and the mansion stared down at them from its place on a rise. In a fit of fury, Draco cursed it, his father, his name and his family, and he stormed past his mother to the great Iron Gate that kept all things out and many things in.

"Bellum!" he yelled, pushing his wet hand against it. It creaked for a long minute, before finally swinging open, Draco, with Narcissa following closely behind, escaped the Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa closed the gate behind her as they made the long walk down to the road while the darkness started to close in around them. Narcissa quickly caught up with Draco, every once in a while looking over her shoulder as if something was following them. She finally took Draco’s hand again and, without looking at him, continued to pull her trunk along until they reached the road.

***

Something ticked in Harry’s room. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew that it was annoying and all he wanted to do was go back to sleep. He thought he would be able to sleep through the clicking noise, after all he had been able to sleep through Dudley’s TV, along with his constant whine every morning about not having the cereal he liked. But for the life of him, Harry could not sleep through the blasted ticking, whatever it was. Harry knew what he would do. He would get up, destroy/hex whatever was making that noise and then go back to sleep. Blindly he reached for his glasses and put them on, his room coming into focus in the dim light of the outside street lamps. He fumbled to get out of bed, but made it to the other side of the room and turned on the light. Unfortunately, when he did this he was facing the window and the light shining from the outside and the light shining from the inside gave Fred Weasley’s face an eerie glow. Needless to say, Harry almost wet himself. Fred grinned and Harry ran to open the window. Hedwig gave a contented sigh, and turned around on her perch before hooting and drifting off again.

Sopping wet, Fred and George Weasley climbed through Harry’s window with their broomsticks and saluted him like it wasn’t 3:12 in the morning.

"Hullo, Harry!" Fred said, wiping a bit of grime off of his hand where he had been tapping on the window, "You ready to get out of this pit o’ crap and head back to the Burrow?"

"Gladly." Harry said, and pulled out his trunk from the closet. After he was done, he grabbed the shoebox from under his bed, along with all his Hogwarts things and threw them into the trunk as well. Last, but not least, he pulled out his Firebolt and looked at Fred and George expectantly.

"Erm, we’re taking the Knight Bus Harry, but we had to use our brooms to get up here. Why don’t you let me and Fred take your trunk, and you can follow with anything else you want to take."

"There’s nothing else." Harry said, looking around the room. Yes, there were many things that he had ‘owned’ since living with the Dursleys, but none of them he wanted to keep. He couldn’t imagine taking one of Dudley’s old socks, or a sweatshirt that he could use as a sleeping bag to the Weasley’s, and he didn’t even want to think about it. That was a thought that he would like to put in his Sententia.

"Okay then. Oy, George! Why don’t you toss me that trunk once I get out the window?" Fred said, as he mounted his broomstick. Before Harry could get a word in, Fred had jumped out the window and George had already hefted Harry’s trunk to the sill.

"Toss?" Harry squeaked out, holding on to his Firebolt for dear life.

"Okay. Ready, Fred?" George said, and Harry heard Fred’s muffled call of ‘Send her down!’ before George literally dropped Harry’s trunk out the window. "You okay?"

"I got it!" Fred called, flying up to hover on his broomstick just outside the window. He had a few leaves sticking out of his wet red hair, and Harry wondered if he wanted to bring himself to looking at the bush below. "C’mon, let’s go. Mum’s expecting us in about a half hour or so."

The boys nodded, climbed to the window and flew out of it. Harry shut it and said goodbye to the Dursley’s one last time.

***

Draco stuck out his wand into the street and waved it about for a few moments before the Knight bus nearly ran him over.

"Blast!" he yelled from a hedge that was lining the road.

"Oh, Draco dear, are you all right?" Narcissa’s voice sounded worried, something she hadn't even hinted at since Draco was old enough to bathe himself.

"Yes, the bush just attacked me." he said deftly, and the doors to the Knight Bus swung open. Out of courtesy to his mother, Draco let Narcissa board first, before finally getting on himself. The bus driver took one look at him and then looked back at the road.

"Bringin’ yer mother this time, eh, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Shut up, Ed. Hogwarts." Draco said, dropping a few coins in the jar up front. Ed looked at him in confusion.

"Hogwarts don’t start for another month…why ye goin’ there, with yer mum of all people?"

"Mind your own business." Draco growled, and walked to the back of the bus to find where Narcissa had sat down.

"It’ll be about an hour or so, young Malfoy! I can drop ye right up front!" Ed called back, howling with laughter. Draco rolled his eyes and pulled out a brush from his pocket. His hair was an absolute disaster. Narcissa had already fallen asleep on one of the beds and Draco took it upon himself to stack their trunks against the back of the bus so they wouldn’t go tumbling about as they jumped from place to place. Draco himself fell upon one of the beds nearby and didn’t even bother to change into dry clothes before falling asleep.

An hour later, Draco was roused by a young witch who was going around waking people for their destinations.

"Your stop is up in a moment, Mr. Malfoy. Would you like to wake your mother, or shall I?"

"I’ll do it, thanks." Draco coughed out. Maybe sleeping in wet clothes wasn’t a good idea. At least Narcissa had the right mind to dry herself off before falling asleep. Draco looked over at her. Her long platinum blond hair was strewn across the pillow and she looked like she hadn’t slept for days. Draco tried to put the thought out of his mind as he woke her, She roused easily and quickly.

"We’re almost to Hogwarts, Ma’am." he said.

"When did you start calling me that?" She asked in a quiet voice, looking upset.

"A long time ago. Around the same time that I started calling him ‘Sir’."

"I never asked you to," she said, "I always liked it when you called me ‘Mum’."

"He told me to. So I did. No one stopped me and you certainly didn’t say anything," Draco stopped and coughed for a moment, "so I assumed I was right." He smirked coldly, "Besides, how would it sound me calling you ‘Mum’ and calling him ‘Sir’?" He didn’t wait for her answer, just got up and straightened his clothes. The bus screeched to a halt and Ed’s voice filled the bus:

"Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,"

***

Fred stuck out his wand and waved it madly in the street. By the time he was done, he was practically jumping up and down and screaming, 'Come to us! Come to us!’ Harry looked sideways at George, who just shrugged.

"It’s an old habit. We used to do it when we were younger to see if Ron would catch on and make a fool of himself somewhere else. It worked, but it appears that Fred doesn’t know how to get rid of it. Either that, or he’s just putting on a show." George explained. Harry nodded. He decided to take the latter theory, and when the bus stopped, they all boarded.

"Why, more young students. I’ve seen more of you to’tonigh' then I’ve any other nigh’! School startin’ early this year or sumthin’?" The busdriver asked.

George shook his head, "No, why?" He asked.

"Jest saw some other student headin’ to Hogwarts…had his mother with 'im but I ain’t sure why…" The bus driver appeared to be confusing himself, so George stopped him from talking more by putting up a hand.

"Actually, we just wanted to go to The Burrow." Fred said, "Remember, me and George came on earlier?"

"Oh! Tha’s righ’! I remember the freckles and red hair! All righ’, young masters! The Burrow it is then!"

***