Harry Potter and the Sisters Three

        Chapter 6: There Will Be Blood And Pain

    Long before the rest of Gryffindor House had stirred from their beds, Harry was making his careful way up to the Owlery, taking pains to keep quiet and avoid anyone else who might have been up and stirring. Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he ducked under the low beams and between the rows of sleeping owls until he came to his own snowy owl, Hedwig. She blinked at him somnolently, ruffled her feathers, and turned around. Harry's shoulder's slumped in frustration.

    "Come on, Hed! I really need to get this letter out to Remus as soon as possible!" He tried to coax the grumpy owl from her perch, but she clung fast. Harry sighed, blowing a twisted tuft of black hair off his forehead with the force of his breath. "I don't want to be up this early either, you know. Come on, Hed, it's important!" An irritated screech from a cubby at the end of the row told Harry that his presence was disturbing more than one of the Owlery's aviary occupants. He looked at the stoic Hedwig, ready to play his final card.

    "Fine. If you won't do it, I guess I'll just have to use one of the school owls then. Probably safer to send to the Order, anyway." His arrow had hit its mark. Hedwig's feathers ruffled again as she flapped out her wings as far as she could in the narrow perch. She stuck her leg out to Harry sullenly. He smiled at her.

    "There's an extra owl treat in it for you if you get back before supper." Hedwig blinked concordingly, and took off into the rosy-grey light of dawn. Harry sighed, more gently this time, and slumped to a seat on the Owlery floor. He had spent half a sleepless night composing that letter to Remus Lupin, trying to explain all that he felt was happening without raising too much concern. He knew that Lupin, the werewolf-turned-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher he had met and come to know as one of his parents' close friends, was considerably less reckless than Sirius was...had been. But the last thing he wanted was to distract the Order of the Phoenix from more important tasks with his queries, no matter how desperately he felt he needed advice.

    He remembered a similar letter that he had sent last year, carrying only one innocent complaint. His scar had hurt. That had been enough to bring Sirius running. So what would happen this time, when he wrote not only of a pain that cut across his forehead like molten glass, but also of the presence that seemed to cause it? Three suspicious sisters that he had never before seen, that could read his thoughts, follow him everywhere, and potentially meant him harm? Not to mention Malfoy. The petulant boy had become something much more sinister and threatening. He, too, it seemed, could tear Harry's resolve to shreds with nothing more than a look and that malicious smile. For the first time in his life, Harry's courage had deserted him.

    He was afraid. It was an emotion that was completely alien to him. Despite his short tenure of life, Harry had already seen and endured much: death, hate, anger, love. And none of these things had yet inspired true fear in him, whether through his obliviousness to their proximity or knowledge of their purpose. He had faced them all with the courage he had come to believe he had inherited, from both his mother and father. To know now, that things he had faced in similar circumstances could wither him into a coward, too frightened to move, was galling. He sickened himself.

    He sighed and dropped his head between his knees. Although the new tricks Malfoy seemed to have picked up over the summer were terrifying in themselves, he feared Aedain and her sisters more. There was something about the way that they looked at him, the color of their eyes seeming to flicker like colored smoke caught in a glass ball, that unnerved him more deeply than any of Malfoy's sinister smirks. It was as if they could looking through him, into him, rather than at him. And Aedain's falsely lighthearted comments about Sirius the day before after Divination...Harry was certain that she knew more than she should...and more than she let on.

    'I wonder," he thought, his head rising, 'if she'll be IN my head next.' The thought petrified him beyond anything else he had known. He remembered the dreams of last year, walking Voldemort's steps down the corridor in the Department of Mysteries, the ruse implanted in his own mind that had led him there on that fateful night. If only he could have blocked the dreams, Sirius might still be alive. Harry gritted his teeth and rose swiftly to his feet. He slammed both his fists into the flimsy wall of the Owlery, the garret's occupants protesting loudly. If only...

    Harry let out a strangled cry of rage as he banged his fists against the wall again, then touched them to his streaming face. Until that moment, he had been unaware that he was even crying. He squinched his eyes tightly shut and let out a long shuddery sob.

    "He thrusts his fists against the posts."

    The words, spoken in the singsong accent that drove frozen nails up his spine, shocked his eyes open. It was Aedain.

    "And still insists he sees the ghosts. What ghosts still haunt you, Harry?" She approached him, hand outstretched. He backed away from her clumsily, knocking the backs his calves against a wooden crate and budging it out of the way. She still reached him and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. Her face looked almost motherly. She smiled at him wistfully.

    "Your glasses are all fogged up," she said, gently pulling them from his face.

    "I've been crying." His words were stones dropped in an empty pail. He saw no sense in lying to her, as the evidence had made its wild tracks all over his face. She nodded with what he thought looked like a rueful expression. Then she stopped and looked him in the eyes. He couldn't pull his gaze away, even as he saw her eyes go from blue to green and back again.

    "Why won't you let go of the past, Harry?" She pulled his hands up between them, like a supplicant. "In your heart you know that it wasn't your fault." Her face was so close to his now, and her eyes flashed like stars dipped in silver. His mind flashed to the moment with Cho under the mistletoe last year, and he wondered if Aedain was going to kiss him.

    Flash.

    His head had split in half at the searing jagged line of his scar. He wrenched away from Aedain's hands. She looked after him, the calculating stare replacing her look of appeal.

    "It's hurting you again, isn't it?"

    He wouldn't answer, he couldn't. Her face hardened.

    "There may come a day that you regret not telling me things. You can trust me, Harry." Her voice had grown soft. Dangerously so. He turned from her and looked out the window, the hand that had traced the line of pain on his face falling away.

    "I'll be fine, thanks," he muttered unconvincingly. He didn't turn back around, but he could hear her make her way around the boxes and other objects littering the floor. She stopped where Harry thought the stairway must have been.

    "Take care, Harry." With that final admonishment, he heard her footsteps fade away down the staircase. Harry clenched his hands on the windowsill and his jaw tightened. At that moment, he resolved to figure out exactly what the three strange sisters were planning. He straightened, a new purpose in his movements. With a final look at the blank sky before him, he turned on his heel and made his way down to breakfast.

        *~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*

    "Where have you been?" Ron interrogated, unaware that a dollop of marmalade was hanging doggedly on at the corner of his mouth. "I woke up and you'd already gone, so I told Hermione there was no sense in waiting for you. We thought that you'd be down here!"

    Harry blinked a few times, clearing the haze of his thought from his vision as he looked at his best friend. Ron was looking at him quizzically. Harry thought, had he been a dog, his head would have been cocked to one side. Ron's brow furrowed.

    "Are you alright? Your nose looks a bit red, and your eyes look a bit off."

    "I'm fine," Harry smiled weakly. "I didn't sleep well." He sat down heavily across from Ron just as Hermione returned to the table, abuzz with excitement.

    I managed to read a little more about you-know-whats," she looked pointedly at Aedain, who was sitting a few feet away and conversing quite amicably with Parvati Patil. Harry could hear snatches of their conversation, and ascertained they were discussing Divination.

    "So are they trying to kill Harry?" Ron asked absentmindedly, finally wiping his mouth (and thus removing the errant blob of marmalade). Hermione shot him a withering look.

    "Unfortunately, Ron," she began in the most scathing tone she could manage, "that sort of information doesn't lie about in books. But I DID manage to find a few little tricks that ought to keep them from hurting him or enchanting him. Look!" She slammed a burdensome leatherbound book down onto the table, causing Seamus Finnigan's glass of pumpkin juice to give a little jump. A cloud of dust flew up from the volume, sending Ron into a coughing fit. He waved his hand in front of his face to disperse the dust, making a disgusted face.

    "In what law is it written that every useful thing you pull out of the library has to be some immense heavy book, at least a billion years old and covered in dust and cobwebs?" Ron asked, scowling.

    "Is that a rhetorical question?" Harry teased, picking a clingy bit of spiderweb from his hair. Hermione rolled her eyes at the both of them and commenced to scanning the thick parchment pages with her finger. She tapped briskly at a paragraph halfway down one page.

    "Here. There are certain charms that can be made to ward them off, and even some simple ward spells that can be cast on certain objects that one fears might be attacked or enchanted." She looked up at Harry, looking into his eyes very seriously. "I thought that it would be a good idea to use one of those on your broom, maybe even all the Quidditch things." Harry nodded, remembering the rogue Bludger from his second year that had broken his arm and nearly killed him.

    "Yeah, definitely. And what about the charms? Do we have everything we need to make them?" Hermione colored.

    "Not exactly," she began. She opened her mouth to continue when a small voice piped into their conversation.

    "Hi Harry," said Colin Creevey, raising one hand halfway in greeting. He was dancing lightly from foot to foot, and Harry could tell that he was both nervous and a little embarrassed. He groaned inwardly, sure that Colin's purpose had to do with the Quidditch tryouts the day before. He was right.

    "I just wanted to come by and let you know that I'm not mad or anything. About the Quidditch team, I mean. I know that you have to be really good to make the House teams. Don't know why I bothered to try out, really." Colin gave a nervous little laugh that only served to make him more excited.

    "Er, ah, don't worry about it, Colin," Harry mumbled, ducking his head so Ron and Hermione wouldn't see how red his face was. He prayed that the boy would take the hint and leave before he lost his powers of speech altogether. Something about the mindless adoration that Colin had always shown him made him very uneasy. Colin kept on.

    "I suppose that's all the chance I've got, though. To make the team, that is. I doubt I'll have improved all that much by seventh year, do you?" he laughed again, a high-pitched sound that set Harry's teeth on edge. "I don't suppose-"

    But Colin's attempts to make conversation were interrupted by the hugely amplified screaming coming from further down the table. Every head in the Great Hall turned to look as the Howler exploded upon a timid little second-year girl, whose face was as red as her Gryffindor jumper. She looked anxiously from side to side as the red letter's tirade continued. Then Harry caught the name it was shouting through all its abuse.

    "Dennis Creevey! I am beyond disappointed in you!" the Howler shouted at the upset girl. Colin's eyes grew even rounder than normal.

    "Crikey!" he exclaimed, craning his neck for sight of his third-year brother. "That must be the Howler that mum sent Dennis because he forgot to pack his books in his trunks!" He looked around at Harry, Ron, and Hermione apologetically. "She's a muggle, never sent a Howler before." His own ears began to grow a little red as he watched the girl who was the mistaken target of all the racket shrink in her seat. "She must have addressed it wrong," he mumbled, and he quickly moved away to find his brother. Finally spent of all its rage, the Howler fluttered to the tabletop and melted away into ashes. Hermione turned back to Ron and Harry, her eyebrows raised.

    "Well," she began, "I believe that's enough excitement for one day." A smile twitched at the corners of her lips. Ron laughed.

    "Yeah, but it's a good thing we had it. We've got History of Magic right after Charms," he said wryly. He unfolded his lanky form from underneath the table and seized his books. "We'd better go or we'll be late."

    Harry groaned. History of Magic was by far their most boring class. Professor Binns, the only ghost on the faculty at Hogwarts, had simply got up from his chair beside the staff room fire to teach one morning, completely oblivious to the fact that he was dead. Harry often wondered if his classes had been any more interesting when the professor had been alive.

    They arrived in Charms in the nick of time. The class was settling into their seats under the squeaky supervision of Professor Flitwick. Taking a page from the book of Trelawney, he decided to pass their first N.E.W.T. class by reviewing the spells they had learned in the five years previous. Harry sighed, unable to mask his boredom. He probably could use a little practice and refresh himself on some older spells, but he could already foresee the tedium that would ensue. The class dragged slowly past, livened only by Seamus setting the ink in his bottle afire and Neville accidentally summoning the stack of books Professor Flitwick was standing on. Years later, it seemed, the bell rang to dismiss them to the most boring hour of all: History of Magic.

    The three marched reluctantly to their class, one of the few which was composed only of Gryffindors. Ron cast looks about the room, scowling at the fussy chalkboards, rows of neat desks, and stacks of books.

    "I don't see why," he huffed, "we have to continue to take this class. I thought that sixth and seventh years we are supposed to be focusing on our careers. I don't think that knowing anything further about the exploits of Uric the Oddball are going to make much difference to me after I'm out of school."

    "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," Hermione intoned ominously.

    "What's she on about?" Ron muttered to Harry under his breath. Hermione shot him a look.

    "Besides, I find the history behind the wizarding world of today to be very interesting indeed!" she exclaimed. Harry could tell she was winding her way into a serious lecture. He laughed to himself, picturing the title of the laborious speech she was preparing to deliver: 'A Dissertation on the Significance of Historical Knowledge in Everyday Life'.

    "For one thing, it-" Hermione had taken the sort of deep breath that usually signified (for her) a long, calmly stated argument, but she was interrupted by the ghostly professor's entrance into his classroom.

    "Be seated, be seated please," he droned offhand as he readied himself at the head of the class. The remainder of the Gryffindors slowly moved to take their seats. No one, it seemed, was looking forward to the first History of Magic class of the year. Harry sighed and sat his elbow on the desktop, his chin cradled in his hand. He looked at Professor Binns over the top of his glasses, turning him into an even foggier version of himself. He was simply waiting now. Professor Binns's lectures had never failed to put Harry (and, in fact, everyone else in the class save Hermione) to sleep. He and Ron often had to resort to copying her notes outside of class to make passing marks at all. He looked around listlessly. Dean Thomas already had his head resting on his unopened book, eyes closed and mouth open. Lavender was doggedly trying to keep her eyes open to no avail. Ron's head rested upright on his folded arms, but as Harry watched, it slumped lower and lower to one side.

    "And that is how Malcolm the Malevolent overthrew Vladimir Bogdanov, the muggle king of Lithuania," Professor Binns concluded before beginning on another long rant. Harry heard a low snore coming from Neville's direction. He allowed his eyes to flutter closed, his chin still planted in his hand. All he could hear now were the quiet sounds of breathing, Professor Binns's droning hum, and the scratch of Hermione's quill as she frantically scribbled down the teacher's words, verbatim. All the little noises and sounds began to merge to a soporific counterpoint, and before he knew it, Harry was fast asleep.

    "Retson mese ehceht mai."

    Words spoken in a strange language, in the voice of an old bent woman. All Harry could see were flickering shadows on the lumpy stone walls that surrounded him. He waved his hand in front of his face, fully aware that he was dreaming, but struggling to reconcile the clarity of the images around him with the blurred edges and warped colors he usually associated with his dreams. This moment, he thought, was more like falling into the memories swirling in a Pensieve than a real dream. That, and he did not know where he was.

    "Puteg t'nac dnane llafe vai."

    The words, somehow, seemed to be drawing him closer to their origin. He watched as the lights sputtered more rapidly on the walls, the shadows that blocked the torches moving as if blown by the wind. But down so deep, Harry thought, there could be no wind. He licked his lips, and they grew warm and dry again almost instantly. He looked down, shocked to see that it was his own feet that brought him nearer to the place where *they* were. But who were they? He could only now make out figures in the murky dark in front of him, figures both backlit and obscured by the dancing flames.

    "Sitel merhe vanul dhun."

    More voices had joined in the chorus, for Harry's dream-self now recognized the strange words as a chant. The solemnity of their sound, the quiet whisper as their echoes faded into the rough-hewn stone, the words could be a spell. He squinted as he stepped into the light fully, into the circle that had been drawn messily with chalk. Candles burned weakly around its perimeter, the torches in their stone brackets provided most of the illumination. But Harry suddenly didn't want to see. His blood had turned to basilisk scales in his veins, and his bones to glass. His eyeballs grew cold as his mouth dropped open. He wasn't sure when he began screaming, but it was probably a few seconds after his mind could comprehend what it saw: Aedain, Muirgen, and Aracelis, all robed in black. They were dancing around the circle that had a triangle circumscribed within it. And they were changing. Different features, skewed and grotesque, moved over their faces like the swirling colors on the surface of a soap bubble. Their toes were dragging the ground slightly as they floated about eerily. And still they sang the strange spell-chant, three young girls with the voices of crones.

    "Bashna ihul raide mhun."

    "HARRY!"

    "He was shocked awake. He gasped, drawing in a deep breath that he immediately choked upon, and he coughed as though he had sucked in water rather than air. Dank, wet, and heavy air from some unknown grotto, rather than the warm, stale air of Professor Binns's classroom. The professor had stopped teaching. He was looking over towards Harry's desk with a slight air of impatience. The rest of the class was gathered around, looking at Harry with large, frightened eyes. Hermione and Ron were still seated, but were also looking at him as though he were something to be feared. He drew another shuddery breath, and looked at Hermione with questions in his eyes.

    "You stopped breathing, Harry," she explained in a small voice. "You were turning blue, and your hands were so cold." He looked down, just then realizing that one of his hands was clasped in hers. She was shaking. He looked back up and met her gaze. She blushed a little and dropped her eyes.

    "Then you started screaming," Ron said, picking up where Hermione had left off. He, too, appeared to have discovered something fascinating to look at on his lap. "So we woke you up."

    The other Gryffindors still waited, gathered around as though they expected an explanation. Harry found that he couldn't look at them too long. He was too afraid of seeing her, standing so innocently amongst the crowd. If she could reduce him to terror when he was asleep, what could she do when he was awake? She had already shown that she had no problem attacking him with other people around. He laughed once, quietly and bitterly. After all, he thought, who but he would know that she was responsible for his wild actions and outbursts. He looked back down at his hand, trapped in Hermione's.

    pat.

    A small noise, like the first drop of rain hitting the pavement. Hermione gasped. One spot of blood, as shiny and perfect as a spilled drop of sealing wax, had fallen on her hand. She lifted it away from Harry, and the drop ran down to her thumb.

    "Harry," she breathed again, horrified. Everyone else was looking at him with identical expressions of shock and fear.

    "Your nose!" Ron pointed. Harry, startled, raised his hand and wiped it beneath his nose. It came away bloody. He turned his hand slightly. Then he noticed the red half-moons oozing from beneath his fingernails. His eyes widened. He heard the people collected around him gasp and draw away. His eyes began to feel heavy, as if sand had collected in his tear ducts. He wiggled his toes inside his trainers, feeling the wet of the blood seeping out from his toenails. He raised his streaming hands to his face as a thin line of red trickled down over his eyebrow to drip into his lashes. His scar had split open. He flew out of his chair as someone screamed.

    "What's going on over there?" Professor Binns asked irritably. Harry turned toward the sound wildly, and at that moment he finally saw her. She was standing still as a stone, despite the fact that those around her were either rushing to or from Harry, however their loyalties dictated. He thought he detected the hint of a smile around her mouth. He staggered toward her, forgetting that a table blocked his path. He fell over it a little as it screeched forward. The hint of a smile grew. She opened her mouth and spoke. Or maybe she just whispered.

    "Retson mese ehceht mai."

    "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?" he screamed at her. He was enraged. She was taunting him. He was leaking blood from everywhere now. He could feel it trickling from his eyes like gory tears, making little puddles in the curves of his ears and griming into the lines in his palms. He rushed at her, throwing the table out of his way, which prompted a few more screams. Aedain had a moment to look startled just before his bloody hands closed around her throat.

    "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

    "STOP IT!" Every movement in the class was stilled. Harry let go of Aedain, and turned around to face Hermione, who was standing, her face still a little red from screaming. She looked around the room at the stunned faces, then purposefully seized Ron and Harry by their respective collars and dragged them from the room, leaving everyone (including Professor Binns) to stare at the door that clicked shut just behind them.

    Hermione didn't let go of Ron or Harry until they reached the nearest bathroom. She looked around the empty hallway furtively before diving into it and pulling them after her. The bathroom was blessedly empty. She turned the lock and then whirled around to face Harry.

    "What were you thinking?" she hissed.

    "She was in my dream," Harry said dully, turning the knobs on the sink and washing his hands. "She and her sisters were casting a spell. Then I woke up," he continued, his tone darkening, "and I begin bleeding from every orifice. What would you have done, Hermione? Asked her around for a spot of tea so you could tactfully bring the conversation round? 'So sorry to trouble you, Aedain, but are you entering my mind while I sleep and trying to kill me with Dark Magic?'" He faced the mirror, wincing at the sight he made. He had stopped bleeding, but his face was streaked with dried and drying blood that ran in narrow vertical lines from his eyes, nose, and scar. He bared his teeth. Dark maroon lines could still be seen where his gums met his teeth. He spat into the sink. It was bright red.

    "No, I wouldn't even have bothered asking." Hermione answered, wrinkling her nose at the bloody spittle ringing the drain of the sink. "But I certainly wouldn't have pounced on her like a wild animal in the middle of a class. Half the people at Hogwarts still believe you're crazy, Harry. Attempting to kill another student who hasn't openly done anything to you is not a good way to dispell that myth!" She grabbed a few paper towels from the dispenser and wet them, attempting to clean the blood from Harry's ears. He waved her away.

    "Don't bother," he explained glumly. "I'm soaked with it. I'll have to have a bath."

    "You still didn't say what you would have done in his situation," Ron cut in. "It's agreed that he shouldn't have attacked Aedain in the middle of class--more or less," he amended after a dark look from Harry.

    "He should have just left," Hermione said coolly, tossing the paper towels into the wastebasket. Ron snorted.

    "Right. Calmly leaving the class when you're bleeding like you're throat's been cut is really simple. People still would have stared, and who knows what they would have thought? It's not like he was thinking all that clearly, either. You were pretty frantic yourself, you know," he said smugly.

    "So were you!" she shot back. "And leaving would have prompted less discussion than what he did. Attacking Aedain only added fuel to the fire!"

    "Enough!" shouted Harry, silencing them both. "At the very least, we can agree that what's done is done. There's no way to make everyone think I DID just walk calmly out of the classroom, blood or no blood."

    "Well, I have been practicing that Obliviate charm," Ron muttered, and was immediately shot a reproachful look by Hermione.

    "Anyway," Harry continued, "I think the best course of action now would be to decide what to do about those three." Hermione nodded.

    "I should take a little more time to read up on them," she said, "but I think it would be a good idea to learn a few of the charms I found this morning."

    "Alright. Ron?"

    "Yeah. But isn't there something else we can do? Wouldn't it be easier to find out how to guard against them if we knew what they were really after?" Ron asked. Hermione's face hardened.

    "I'm on it," she declared. "Ron, you and I had better get back to class."

    "Right," said Harry. He rubbed his hair ruefully, conscious of his still-bloodied appearance. "And I'll go get cleaned up."

    "Use the prefect's bathroom if you want to, Harry. The password's still 'pine fresh'." Ron clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder, then he and Hermione left the bathroom, leaving Harry to stiffen his jaw and square his shoulders before slipping through the door himself, leaving only the plink-plink of water in the sink to disturb the marble silence of the bathroom.

        *~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*

    Harry emerged from the bathroom a little later, rubbing a hand over his still-wet hair to smooth it down. The rest of the school had taken to the hallways, making their way to the Great Hall for lunch. Harry ducked his head and strode purposefully through the crowd. He hoped that Ron and Hermione had been conscientious enough to bring his books. He didn't want to go back in Professor Binns's room ever again--or at least not until the next class.

    He sighed as he brushed past a chattering group of second-year girls and a rowdy bunch of Slytherin boys. His lips tightened as he wondered what Malfoy would think of all the fuss when he heard about it. He'd probably be delighted, Harry thought.

    "He'll probably give her a medal," he muttered to himself just before a stern voice interrupted his musings.

    "Harry. A word, please." Harry looked up into the severe face of Professor McGonagall. She wasn't smiling, but this didn't necessarily bode ill for Harry, as seeing Professor McGonagall smile was only slightly less rare than the sight of Snape in a tunic dancing the female lead of Swan Lake. He followed her into an empty classroom, whereupon she shut and locked the door. Harry squirmed, her stiff posture and silence making him a little uneasy. She glared at him over the tops of her spectacles, not blinking. She drew in a deep breath, and let it come rushing out as she slowly paced to the window. Harry nervously ran a hand over his wet hair again.

    "I heard what happened to you in class today, Potter." Harry breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Her voice had betrayed nothing, but he was sure that the incident could inspire nothing but concern for his welfare. He had opened his mouth to ask the whereabouts of Dumbledore when a fresh sentence broke the thread of tense silence.

    "You attacked a student." Harry was given pause by the note of anger that had crept into McGonagall's voice. He waited, sure that she would have more to say. He was right. She wheeled around to face him, her eyes blazing.

    "The whole school knows about it, Potter!! The guards that the Ministry put in place have reported it to Fudge!! Without a doubt, he'll be calling for your expulsion by the end of the day!! Do you have any idea what you've done? You have attacked an innocent girl for no reason!! You'll be lucky if they don't send you to St. Mungo's wing for the Criminally Insane!" Her tirade was only halted by her need for breath.

    "But she's not innocent, Professor, I-" Harry tried to explain.

    "I don't want to hear it, Potter." Professor McGonagall's mouth had compressed itself into a tight, narrow band. "There's no excuse for what you've done today, and I simply can't fathom what could have made you do such a thing."

    "She's trying to KILL ME!" Harry bellowed, pulling the bloodsoaked washrag he had been taking down to the laundry elves out of his robes and waving it in her face. "What made me try to attack her was the fact that she set me to bleeding to death in the middle of History of Magic!!" He stopped short, aware that he had been advancing on her and her eyes betrayed fear, mingled with something else not so easily understood. Could it have been pity?

    "Nonsense, Potter. Now get out of here and get to class. I don't want to hear another word about any of this." She turned on her heel and marched to the door, unlocking it hurriedly and flinging it wide open before exiting. Harry stared after her, his feelings of frustration and confusion making him feel nearly as powerless as the attack brought on him by the three strange sisters. McGonagall didn't believe him, and neither would Professor Dumbledore. He couldn't expect any of the teachers to help him after what he'd done. Without a doubt, they'd all believe he was crazy. And then that note of fear mixed with pity would creep into all their eyes whenever they looked at him. Harry thought he truly would go mad if he had to watch it. He left the classroom, his expression bleak, hoping against hope that Hermione would be able to unearth the force that lay behind the three sisters.

        *~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*

    "Might I have a moment, Professor?" Minerva McGonagall sounded almost timid as she stood in front of Dumbledore's desk. He sat listlessly behind it, observing her with careworn eyes.

    "Yes, you may. I shall hazard a guess that the topic of your inquiry is Harry and his, er, accident today." Professor McGonagall stepped forward in agitation.

    "Sir, what happened today was no accident. I understand that certain measures are necessary, but how can we be sure-"

    "Professor," Dumbledore said, a note of warning in his voice.

    "His actions today could have put him in great danger to himself!! Not to mention the repercussions that this will have at the Ministry and the Daily Prophet! The other parents might even take their children out of school!! They all think he's insane!!" she protested.

    "Minerva, we all know that such is not the case," Dumbledore replied with the fatigue of long hours.

    "We do, certainly. But not the students, and not the rest of the wizarding community. And not, for that matter, the object of discussion himself. Harry has been under considerable strain..."

    "I know," the headmaster said quietly, his eyes dropping to one of the tattered copies of the Daily Prophet papering his desk.

    "And who knows what he's capable of, what he might do? Especially if he believes himself or anyone else to be in danger!" Professor McGonagall moved back a trifle, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glittering. A twitching smile appeared under Dumbledore's beard.

    "I trust them implicitly to take care of one another," he said with finality. "All FOUR of them," he added pointedly. McGonagall knew her point had been taken and rejected again just as quickly. Recognizing defeat, she turned on her heel and left Dumbledore sitting alone in his office, a wistful expression spreading over his face.

    "Don't do anything rash, Harry," he apostrophed, taking up a highly polished piece of wood into his hand. It was carved all over with ornate symbols that had been blackened into the wood, symbols that were long forgotten by all but a few. He rolled the little fragment in his hands as he stared into space, determination wrinkling his brow.

    "And don't let them do anything rash, either."

        *~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*><*~><~*