Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Six
My Lady's Lowest Servant

It turned out that Mrs. Weasley had been coming up to tell them dinner was ready, but once Lupin had dressed, she sent Harry and his friends downstairs under their former teacher's supervision; "...I need to have a little talk with Mr. Black," she said, and Sirius rolled his eyes behind her back. Harry desperately wanted to know what passed between them, but didn't dare try to sneak a listen under Lupin's nose, so they all just went downstairs and washed their hands very thoroughly before sitting down to Mrs. Weasley's meat pie.

Harry refused to enjoy it too much; apparently she was in favor of keeping him in the dark. He had already pushed back his plate when Mrs. Weasley and Sirius came to join them. Harry was glad to note that Sirius didn't seem much worse for the wear, but he still sullenly resisted Molly's insistence that he eat more.

Harry spent the following days working on cleaning up Sirius's house together with his godfather and his best friends, and despite Mrs. Weasley's continuing tensions with her twin sons and Sirius, plus the unimagined malices and aggravations hidden in every crevice of the house, he was wonderfully happy. He helped tend Buckbeak the Hippogriff, whom Sirius and the others were boarding in the attic. He and Ron talked Quidditch and racing brooms. Hedwig and Pigwidgeon flew in and out after them, and even Hermione's ginger cat Crookshanks was a delighting presence, although he kept turning up with dead animals in his mouth; a still-squirming quetzicalle with its head chewed off was his most gruesome prize, and Harry hoped it wasn't the same one he'd seen in the sitting room.

Ron once smuggled a stray issue of Muggle Machines magazine over under his sweater --- "Dad used to take it, but Mum binned them all and made him drop. We still find some now and then, though," Ron explained.

"Enough for Mum to wrap Fred and George's stuff in torn-out pages when she tosses it," Ginny added.

--- And Harry and Hermione did their best to explain what all the vehicles and machinery pictured did. Hermione was ahead of Harry in that she knew the difference between a bulldozer and a power-loader, but neither of them understood why even a Muggle would want a leaf-blower. Uncle Vernon's had been used once, then mouldered in the garage ever since while the Dursleys hired uniformed professionals to do any serious lawn work.

Cleaning, while usually an unenviable task, was sometimes interesting; on one occasion they found a nest of pink, rubbery-looking, miniature hedgehogs living underwater in an upstairs toilet. Sirius identified them as Water-Knarls, and Mrs. Weasley's copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests --- they tried to ignore Lockhart's self-consciously charming grin from the cover-photo as he had been another of their ill-fated Defense professors --- revealed that they were harmless, even helpful and fastidiously clean animals who lived in the pipes of wizard homes, where their bristle-brush-like spines dislodged debris which the Water-Knarls fed on, keeping the pipes clean and preventing drain-clogs. The book then warned against unthinkingly putting potions down drains where they might be living, recounting an instance where, from the pipes beneath an absent-minded Potions Master's home, there emerged a Water-Knarl the size of a bus that terrorised the city of Wolverhampton for several hours before Lockhart singlehandedly brought it to heel, enlisted the help of the Puddlemere United Quidditch team to airlift the animal to the Scamander Zoo and Research Institute for Fantastical Creatures in London, then, in a masterful solo oratory, calmed the town full of panicked Muggles and convinced them that the monster they had seen was only the picture showing at a large-screen drive-up cinema, thus saving the Ministry from a highly difficult and expensive Obliviation and Disinformation campaign.

For when they got into inappropriate areas of the plumbing, Lockhart's book suggested a spell to heat the water and kill them, but Hermione wouldn't stand for it and insisted that she would sit guard on the pot all day if necessary to protect the animals. The book was of no further help, and after some awkward consideration, Harry thought to ask Professor Lupin what to do --- he had taught them about all sorts of Dark Creatures in his Defense class and seemed generally very knowledgeable about animals, so Harry went to the master bedroom and hestitantly prodded him awake. Once Lupin roused himself enough to understand the question, he told Harry to handle the babies, that the mother would find the human scent on them and move them somewhere more private; he said it as if barely having to think and then rolled over and settled into the pillow again. Back in the upstairs lavatory they did indeed handle the little creatures amid disgusted grimaces from Ron and appreciative coos from Ginny as one scoured her palm with its toothless mouth. And then, again, they all washed their hands very thoroughly before dinner.

For Harry, it seemed almost too good to be true to think that this was his home now, with Sirius and Professor Lupin living here and Hermione and the Weasleys coming every day, she and Ron staying over more nights than not. If Harry didn't dare believe it, he at least made up the difference by indulging the notion as a pleasant fantasy.

He barely even thought to be surprised at how quickly the resentments of his incarceration at the Dursleys' melted away, and in fact he half-forgot about the trouble with the Ministry, although when it resurfaced in his mind he had a nasty start, realising he had left the letter back at Privet Drive and didn't know when his hearing was. Mr. Weasley looked into it for him and came back with the news that it was a week and a half away, and in speaking to him, Harry could see what Ron meant about his father's harassment at work beginning to show. Mr. Weasley seemed more absentminded than usual, and Harry thought that he had lost some weight in the last few months; certainly he had lost some hair.

As Harry lay in bed that night, the hearing looming ten days away already gave him a sense of dread. What would it mean to be expelled from Hogwarts? Firstly that he would be cut off from his friends while they were there, and probably it meant being doomed to a life as the Dishwasher at the Leaky Cauldron, or the Knight Bus Conductor, or some similarly thankless job. But the idea of expulsion didn't squeeze his guts as tightly as it had when he had first gotten the Ministry's letter. After all, he thought, I've still got lots of gold from my parents in the vault at Gringotts. Apparently Sirius has a lot, too. If we were careful, that would probably be enough to get by... More importantly, expulsion no longer meant an eternity at Privet Drive. He could live here, with Sirius; he would get the Order to teach him what he would need, and he would help them fight Voldemort. That did a tremendous amount to lighten the threatened sentence.

But the prospect was far from ideal. Harry had begun to dream about what great things he wanted to do after his school years were done --- the fake Moody's insistence that he would be an excellent Auror had lodged firmly in his mind, and he had read and re-read the all-too-brief section in Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland regarding the professional teams' recruiting practices. Expulsion from Hogwarts would mean all those possibilities gone, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. It wouldn't be the end of the world... Harry told himself that over and over as he lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, although it was only mildly soothing.

The next morning saw them all working in the drawing room again under the gaze of the Black family tapestry, whose presence Harry found strangely unnerving. Fred and George followed them up from breakfast and even helped sort through boxes for a few minutes before getting sidetracked attempting to append "The Amazing Bouncing Ferret" to Draco Malfoy's gilded name. The explanation of the joke --- the fake Moody had once become annoyed with Draco last school year and transfigured him into a ferret --- led onto the subject of anecdotes, and soon the twins were cajoling Sirius for stories about his Hogwarts days. He was one of the twins' "maestros" too, after all, even if he was more comfortable with their praise and thus less fun to heap it on than Lupin.

Sirius was just at the climax of a story in which he had used the Reverse Gravity charm and become stranded on the ceiling of Hogwarts' great hall during dinner --- Harry's father James was streaking in on a broomstick barely too late; the charm wore off, and Sirius fell but made sure at least to hit the Slytherin table, snapping it in the middle and sending food flying in all directions --- when Mrs. Weasley came into the room and took Fred and George back to the Burrow despite their protests. By the look on their mother's face, Harry supposed that she didn't want Sirius's stories giving the twins any new ideas.

After they had left, Harry, Ron, and Ginny pressed Sirius to continue, but his eyes had taken on a far-away look. "That was all such a long time ago," he said dully, and Hermione stepped in to change the subject.

The tapestry had resisted Fred and George's attempts to change it, and they hadn't managed to do so before their mother took them away, so it was left for Ginny to write "The Amazing Bouncing Ferret" in gold letters on a scrap of parchment and attach it under Draco's name with pins. "How did this get back on here?" she said as she climbed down from the armoire she had been using to reach. Harry turned and found that Mrs. Black's brooch had been replaced next to Regulus's name. Ginny took it and started to unfasten it again.

"Ginny, wait---!" Sirius shouted.

But too late. Suddenly the brooch flew out of Ginny's hand and across the room --- straight at Hermione, pin-point first, and she screamed as it came at her.

"Finite!" Sirius commanded, pointing his wand; the brooch went limp and landed on the floor at Hermione's feet with a jangle. He crossed to it in three long strides and picked it up. "Dear Old Mummy enchanted a lot of her jewelry to attack any Muggle blood it came near," he explained. "When we first opened up her jewelry-box, Bill and I had to pick about a dozen of the accursed things out of Remus."

"Professor Lupin?" Ron questioned. "I didn't know he was..."

"Half-blood," Sirius said. Harry felt a little strange, not at the revelation about Lupin, but at the thought that the brooch could easily have attacked him --- and that it had gone after Hermione instead.

"But how'd it get back on the tapestry?" Ginny asked. "You took it down the other day."

"I've got a pretty good idea who put it back," Sirius growled. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted. "Kreacher! Kreacher come here!!"

Harry heard a small clattering sound, as if someone were fiddling with a latch, and looked around to find it. The handle of a cabinet which he had previously tried and found locked turned seemingly of its own accord and slowly opened. The figure that emerged was quite small, little higher than Harry's knee, and shrivelled and leathery, with large pointed ears and the same almost-batlike upturned spade of a nose that was common to all the house-elf heads along the stairway. Harry had seen house-elves before --- his friend Dobby was an elf who had been accidentally freed from servitude to the Malfoys --- but he had never seen one this old, wrinkled, or sour-faced. Like all unfreed house-elves, Kreacher did not wear actual clothes; he had a faded purple tea-towel wrapped as a sort of loincloth, the embroidered monogram "B" proudly displayed on the hanging sash end.

"Young Master calls for Kreacher...?" the phrase was one of deferrence, but the elf's wizened voice was full of contempt.

"Yes, he did. Firstly," Sirius said, and pointed at Harry, "this is my godson, Harry Potter. I won't have you following him around or bothering him, but as long as he's in this house, you must see that no harm comes to him, understand?"

Kreacher cast Harry a glance of pure hatred. "Kreacher obeys his master," he grumbled, "sees no harm come to Half-blood worm he brings to My Lady's noble house..."

Harry barely felt the insult, but he saw Sirius's jaw clench and his fingers tighten around the brooch as he held it up to show his house-elf. "And this. When was the last time you handled this?"

"Oh, Young Master, My Lady's lowest servant Kreacher would never dare to disturb her precious things..." he said, but he was looking away and pulling hard at his ear --- punishing himself for evading his Master's question?

"That's not an answer," Sirius pursued. "Tell me about the last time you handled this brooch."

"Kreacher put it back where My Lady wanted it to always stay; was placed on the Great Tapestry to honor Master Regulus who loved his mother, not like ungrateful Young Master who betrays his family for dogs and human filth, who breaks his mother's heart and drives his father---"

"You won't handle it again," Sirius cut him off. "Do you have any more of Mum's jewelry?"

Kreacher paused sullenly for a moment, then slunk back into the cabinet. He pulled the door shut behind him, and a little jangling and rattling issued from behind it.

Sirius suddenly caught his breath. "Kreacher, don't---!"

Before he could finish the order, the cabinet door burst open with a BAM! and a flurry of objects flew out: more brooches and hatpins, and also the larger flying shapes of a pair of gloves and a few silk scarves.

"Finite!" Sirius shouted, aiming his wand at the swarm, but only a few of the pins fell on the floor, the rest kept flying, aiming themselves at Hermione and Harry.

"Behind the tapestry!" Ginny shouted. Ron covered Hermione and ran with her to the back wall as Ginny grabbed the hem of the tapestry and pulled the bottom edge open. They ushered Hermione up onto the armoire so that the tapestry covered her, then held it out so that the pins only plunged themselves into it and stuck there in the fabric, unable to get to her.

Harry ran for the back wall as well, with his godfather blocking the attacking jewelry's path toward him, but Sirius had problems of his own. Two of the silk scarves were wrapping themselves around his wand and trying to wrest it away from him, while a third tried to tie itself around his neck and the gloves yanked at his hair. When Harry got to the tapestry, there was no furniture there for him to climb on, and it only hung down as far as his shoulders...

Sirius snatched the green scarf away from his throat and spun around just long enough to touch Harry with the tip of his wand --- "Arachnomanus!" --- before turning back to fend off the attackers. Harry felt his body become not weightless but suddenly much lighter. "Up the wall! Climb!" Sirius shouted.

"Right!" Harry put his hands and the toe of his sneaker to the wall and found that they gripped it like an insect's feet, letting him indeed climb right up behind the tapestry. Holding on with his feet and one hand, he stretched out his other arm to lift the cloth away from him and keep the pins safely clear; with the tapestry thus held out, tentlike, he could look down the length of it and see Hermione standing on the armoire. Her legs would still have been exposed, but Ginny and Ron were hugging them tightly. Turning back to his own section of the cloth, Harry saw several needles burst through a few inches and wriggle against the fabric trying in vain to get at him.

Then one of them stabbed through the cloth and straight into the tip of his middle finger. It sent a bolt of agony shooting up his arm and he screamed in pain.

"Harry!" Hermione cried.

"Are you all right??" Ron called.

"IT HURTS!"

"KREACHER!!!" Sirius roared, but Harry heard no response from the house-elf.

He clung to the wall and kept holding the fabric out, although it was an awful struggle to keep stretching out that hand. With the pin through his finger, his whole arm throbbed as if it might seize up and collapse in the next moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked each breath through his teeth against the pain. When he heard a small sound, he opened his eyes a little and saw the lower pins being pulled out, stabbed obliquely through the fabric, and trapped there one by one; Sirius was fastening the brooches onto the tapestry so that they couldn't move, but he was moving so slowly... "Get it off me!!" Harry cried.

"I'w tryeng, Harry!" Sirius shouted back; by the sound, he was holding his wand in his mouth.

"What's happening?" came Lupin's voice from across the room.

"More uph Wum's jew'lry. Phinite didn' werk 'iss time," Sirius said breathlessly.

"One of them got Harry," Ron added.

"It went through my finger!" Harry screamed.

"Sirius, stand back." Lupin said; Harry only barely heard him.

"Remus, no!" Sirius snapped, suddenly clear. "Don't you---!!"

But the next instant, the pin in Harry's finger pulled out with a small thwup!, along with a few others stuck in the tapestry that Sirius hadn't gotten yet. It was a fresh burst of pain, but also one of relief, so that it took a moment for Lupin's gasp to register in Harry's mind. He tossed the tapestry aside and jumped down from the wall.

"You insufferable berk," Sirius was saying.

"Go take care of the others, would you?" Lupin asked softly. To judge from his voice and appearance, the commotion had woken him up again --- he'd have been sleeping immediately above the Drawing Room after all.

Sirius dashed down to where Ron and Ginny were still guarding Hermione and started fastening more pins, taking his wand in his teeth again to attack them with both hands.

Harry looked back and saw that on the tapestry behind him, not only were the brooches struggling against the fabric, but they had been used to affix the gloves and scarves to it as well. At a jangle on the floor, he turned to the professor again, and even as Harry gingerly held his own throbbing hand, his stomach leapt up into his throat. More pins were buried in Lupin's palm, and Harry could see the bloodstained points of some of them where they had gone all the way through . "P- Professor Lupin??"

"I'll be all right. These shouldn't give you any more trouble." Harry felt a rasp in his teeth as Lupin pulled out a long jewelled hatpin and dropped it on the floor. It happened to land so that the ruby glaze of his blood on it caught the light, but it didn't struggle like the pins in the tapestry, just lay perfectly still.

"How did you...?" Harry asked.

Lupin took a deep breath as he pulled the last brooch out of himself. "Intention and Blood," he said; his voice was calm but tight.

"You don't need to tell him about that kind of thing, Professor!" Sirius took the wand from his mouth to shout across the room. Ginny had climbed up on the armoire next to Hermione and was fastening the last few pins above Sirius's reach.

Lupin gently took Harry's wrist and looked at his injured finger, even as his own other hand dripped blood onto the floor. "Is Molly in the house?" he called.

"Last I knew, she took Fred and George back home," Ron answered.

"Would you go and get her please, Ron?"

"Right," he said, and dashed out of the room.

When the murderous fashion accessories had been dealt with, they all went down to the kitchen, where Ron and his mother soon returned through the fireplace, medicine and bandages in hand. Mrs. Weasley took care of Harry's finger first, slathering generous amounts of Ludmilla Healy's Salubrious Salve on it and then binding it up with an embarassing little bow of gauze. The size of the bandage almost made the wound look trivial, and surely a pin in a fingertip sounded trivial, but the pain it had caused Harry had been out of all proportion to that. Even now that the salve was soothing it, he felt as if his friends' questioning --- "Are you okay?" "Is it feeling better now?" --- was patronising him, that it concealed a note of "why'd you make so much noise over one little finger??," but of course they didn't know how much it hurt... Harry did, however, accept Sirius holding him tightly around the shoulders.

Mrs. Weasley clucked as she spread a thick coat of salve on Lupin's hand, front and back --- she was using a butter-knife where with Harry she had spread the salve with her fingers. "My goodness, it's just one thing after another around this place! I can't leave for two hours without something happening..."

"Well, what would you have done!?" Sirius snapped, squeezing Harry's shoulder a bit too hard. "I suppose if you'd been there, nobody would've gotten a scratch!!"

Mrs. Weasley looked up at him in surprise. "What? Oh, I didn't mean you."

But his face had already turned dark. "Blast that Kreacher..."

"Well, it's probably not his fault," Hermione ventured. "He's so old, he might just be confused. Maybe your mother or Regulus told him to---"

"He doesn't have to obey them once they're dead," Sirius said. "If he acts like this now, it's because he wants to."

"Well, maybe you should set him free."

"So he can blab!?" Ron shot back.

"We thought about it, maybe with a Memory Charm, but no, not 'My Lady's Lowest Servant' Kreacher," Sirius said with a bitter laugh. "I did ask him once, you might be interested to know. Sent him off on the whole tirade: 'Kreacher must never ever leave My Lady's house; Ancient and Most Noble House of Black has never in many hundred years dismissed a house-elf...'"

"So you cut off their heads and hung them up on the wall instead!?" Hermione demanded. Sirius's bad mood was apparently infectious.

"That's what my Noble Ancestors did with the ones they liked. Once Kreacher got all weepy about how he knew Mum had wanted to do it, but someone had to take care of Her Exalted Ladyship and in the end she just didn't have the strength to lift the sword, poor sweet thing that she was..." He paused for a long moment and let the sarcastic twist fall from his lips. "I'm sorry, Hermione; I shouldn't be taking things out on you. If you want to try with Kreacher, more power to you --- but you saw what clothes did for Crouch's Winky, and I'd be shocked if she was half as batty as he is."

"That's true..." Hermione said sadly. The previous year when Hermione had become interested in House-Elf Rights, Harry and his friends had seen Mr. Crouch's dismissal of his house-elf Winky drive her to despondency and drink, despite Dobby's efforts to befriend and help her as both elves got jobs at Hogwarts.

"Just be careful about him, all right?" Sirius added. "That upstairs shows what he can do, even when I try to tell him not to."

"Okay."

Lupin yawned as Mrs. Weasley fastened off the bandages on his hand. "If you'll all excuse me, I should be getting back to bed..."

"Yes, you should," Sirius told him, and they all saw him off with a chorus of "Sleep well!"

Harry kept watching his gauze-wrapped hand until it disappeared through the kitchen's heavy wooden door, then looked back at the much smaller wrapping on his own finger. Apparently Lupin had reached toward the pins and lured them to attack himself instead of Harry. Was that what he had meant about "Intention and Blood," that he'd been able to break the curse on the objects with such a conscious sacrifice? It rang true --- after all, as Headmaster Dumbledore had explained, it had been his mother's sacrifice of her very life that had protected Harry from Voldemort for so many years --- but Harry found he didn't like the thought of it.

Sirius apparently didn't, either. He didn't want Lupin to tell me about 'that kind of thing'... Could that be a clue to the secret, the one thing Sirius refused to tell him? If so, Harry didn't have the first idea what to make of it and wasn't fully sure that he wanted to.

The pin in his finger had been more painful than his little bandage could convey, but... I could have stood it a little longer. Did he think I couldn't?? He didn't have to do that...

Harry looked around at a whoof! sound in the fireplace, and found himself with another, different look at the power of blood. Mrs. Weasley had taken the stained towel on which Lupin had rested his injured hand and had tossed it it into the flames. Now, as Harry watched, she took a scrub-brush from the hot suds in the sink and began attacking every spot his blood had touched. Harry didn't think someone could catch lycanthropy from a werewolf's blood --- from everything he'd read, only a penetrating bite would do it --- but Molly clearly intended not to take the chance.

The salve, at least, healed the wounds quickly. By evening, Harry barely felt it at all, although Hermione still wouldn't let him use that hand as they picked through that cabinet in the drawing room. Kreacher had turned it into a sort of den and hoarded a number of objects from around the house, and Hermione argued for letting him keep anything that wasn't actively dangerous, including a framed photo of a heavy-lidded woman whom Harry was disgusted to recognise as Bellatrix Lestrange.

A few days later, the bandages were off and not even a mark was left when Harry went with Sirius down to the kitchen early in the morning. Lupin was on "night duty," and Sirius was in the habit of waking up early on such mornings and waiting in the kitchen until his friend returned safely. With Hermione and Ron spending that night at the Burrow, Harry also had some trouble sleeping in the quiet Blue Room, especially knowing that Professor Lupin might be in harm's way, so he had come down in his pyjamas and was waiting, too.

Before Lupin returned, however, the fireplace flared and Hermione and the Weasleys arrived via the Floo, letters in hand and smiling and chatting excitedly. "Harry, this one's for you," Mrs. Weasley said, handing him an envelope from Hogwarts.

"Well, someone doesn't think I'm getting expelled, anyway," he said, tearing it open.

"Oh, you're not going to be expelled!" Mrs. Weasley clucked, getting out the frying pan to start breakfast.

Ron already had his letter open. "They are assigning The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, aren't they?" Hermione asked him. "I hope I did the right thing, going ahead and buying it..."

"What do you think?" Ron questioned.

Harry opened his own letter and found that it was indeed the start-of-term announcement and booklist:

"...You're safe, Hermione," Harry said; Ron would have kept teasing her a bit longer.

Harry looked up and noticed that Hermione was still leaning back and forth to look over Ron and Ginny's shoulders. Didn't she get a letter? Did they send it to her parents' house? Surely Dumbledore would have known where she was --- but then he noticed that she was holding a little wrapped parcel against her chest. He glanced back at his own letter:"Prefects especially are requested to arrive..." It was Fifth Year when Prefects were named. That parcel must be...

"Hermione, why don't you just open that thing?" Ron questioned.

"I don't know, I'm nervous," she said. "I mean, what if it isn't what I think...?"

"Oh, it is, don't worry," Ginny assured her. "I saw the package when... ah..." She looked back at her Mother, having come to the point of mentioning Percy.

As if to spare her the awkwardness, a POOF! sounded through the room, and Professor Lupin emerged from under an Invisibility Cloak. "Good Morning, everyone."

"Hey, Moony," Sirius greeted.

P-POOF! "MAESTRO! You're back!"

"Fred! George!" Mrs. Weasley shouted.

"Molly, they're not hurting anything!" Sirius insisted.

"Start-of-term announcements?" Lupin questioned, glancing over Ginny's shoulder as he came around to sit beside Harry, with Fred and George in tow. Harry nodded.

"We've got the Slinkhard book for Defense; do you know that one?" Hermione asked.

"'Slinkhard'...?"

"Uh..." She leaned back to look at Ron's letter again. "'Defensive Alterna---'"

"Just open the bloody badge, Hermione!" Ron snapped.

"Ronald! Language!" his mother scolded.

"Sorry, Mum."

Harry showed Lupin his letter, pointing out the new Defense textbook. Lupin blinked at it for a moment, then waved it off with his hand. "Oh, well, I don't suppose it's any of my business what text your professor wants to use..." he said, a bit dejectedly.

Ron frowned. "That bad, eh?"

"Hermione, you were named a Prefect?" Lupin asked.

"Well, I think so..." she said, setting her parcel on the table. "That is, I won't know until---"

"Then open it!" Ron insisted.

"Oh, she's just savoring the anticipation," Fred said. "Give her a break."

"After all, it would've been nice if Percy had volunteered to put off the gloating a little longer like that," George added.

Harry heard Mrs. Weasley bang something on the stove.

"That does look like the Prefect package," Lupin said. "Assuming they haven't changed it in twenty years..."

"Maestro? You...?"

"Well," Sirius answered, "there were only the four Gryffindor boys in our year. Which one of us did you think got the badge?"

But Harry was unpleasantly surprised. He frowned internally at himself; he ought to be happy for his former teacher and family friend, but he knew his father had been Head Boy his last year of school. He had unthinkingly assumed that he had been a Prefect as well, and now was disappointed to find out otherwise.

"Yes, they wanted me to keep the rest of you out of trouble. I can't say I did a very good job," Lupin said.

"And I suppose your marks had nothing to do with it?" Sirius asked.

"Everyone knew you and James were more talented than I was..."

"Yes, but you didn't blow off classes like we did," Sirius pointed out. "Talent or no talent, I know I didn't want to go up against you after all that studying. Although being the best at playing innocent couldn't have hurt..."

A crackle of wrapping paper brought a hush to the room as Hermione opened her parcel at last. Even Mrs. Weasley turned away from her pan of frying eggs; their sizzling was the only sound for a long moment, until Hermione indeed drew out a gold badge with a capital P superimposed over a rampant lion. Ginny clapped her hands; when Sirius and Lupin followed suit, Harry thought about joining in the applause, but felt too awkward.

"Oooh. Ahhh," Fred and George intoned.

Hermione turned pink and tucked the badge back inside the parcel; she pulled out a thick letter, several more leaves than the others had received, and began reading.

"I wonder who got the other one," Ginny remarked.

The disappointed feeling that had rattled in Harry's stomach earlier came loose and dropped. That question had been there in his mind, but Ginny asking it aloud brought it to the fore at last. It wasn't me. I would have thought... His marks were just as good as any of his housemates, and after everything he'd done, surely he'd earned it... If it wasn't me, I would have thought Ron --- but if it was between me and Ron, surely---! he shut off the thought, disgusted with himself, but he simply couldn't understand it. If neither he nor Ron had gotten the Prefect's badge, that left the other three Gryffindor boys; Dean and Seamus were good students, but Harry didn't think they came close to outshining him, and surely it couldn't have been Neville, who was always scraping through Potions by just a hair and forgetting important matters such as the whereabouts of his toad...

Harry had to forcibly stop himself from a recitation of all his friends' faults, but still, None of them have ever faced Voldemort, he thought. None of them saved the school three and four times...

None of them are getting expelled, a nasty little voice in his head added.

But maybe that was the answer! If he were Headmaster and a deserving student were facing a hearing, wouldn't he wait until it was all settled before sending the badge? That must be it! Harry had been chosen; once the hearing was done --- and surely it would go all right --- then his Prefect badge would arrive.

He smiled, but found Ron looking away with a sour frown. His mother had begun setting the table, and he scratched at the wood with the end of his fork, reminding Harry that his friend had no way out of the disappointment.

But he didn't want to get involved in that. After all, Ron was probably sitting there thinking of reasons why it should have been him, not Harry or anyone else. Harry just let himself enjoy his own now-more-pleasant anticipation as Mrs. Weasley set out a great plate of buttered toast and started around the table, dishing up fried eggs.

to be continued in...
Chapter Seven: The Wizengamot