Harry Potter and the Final Prophecy

     -- Chapter One --

     Massacres and Mayhem

``There has been a further unexplained sighting of giant ape-like creatures in the Scottish Highlands, ..." Harry strained to hear the news as his aunt and uncle muttered and sent accusing glares in his direction at the breakfast table.

`Scotland, isn't that where your mad school is?' sneered Uncle Vernon, `what've they been doing now, setting Yetis loose, eh?'

`` ... gas explosion in Ottery St Catchpole has destroyed a house, several people are feared to have died. The area has been cordoned off and the police have warned that it remains a danger to the public ..."

`What!' Harry shouted. A numbing chill of horror shot through him. Ignoring Uncle Vernon's furious expression at his outburst, he immediately apparated to the Burrow, arriving in the Weasley's paddock, further away from their house than he'd intended, but he could see that a smouldering ruin was all that was left of it, the wreckage of rooms and belongings lay scattered over a wide area, surrounded by yellow police tape. Twenty feet above, the vestiges of a giant green skull-shaped totem hung ominously in the air, a silver snake protruding from its mouth like a macabre tongue ... the Dark Mark ... He stood watching smoke drift up from the ruins, mind numbed with fear, afraid to go nearer in case he saw the dead bodies of the Weasleys. The Dark Mark started to fade away and become invisible. As he crept closer down the path to the tape barrier a wizard wearing an orange tabard over his robes suddenly emerged from behind a tree and challenged him `What are you doing here, son?' he scowled at Harry, then as his glance went to Harry's forehead his eyes widened in recognition and he started to raise his wand. Harry needed no further warning and instantly apparated back to his bedroom at Privet Drive. Two owls were waiting for him, a large official-looking barn owl which glared at him in a disapproving manner, a fat roll of parchment clasped in its claw, and an overexcited midget owl buzzing from wall to wall around the bedroom like a confused bee. Downstairs he could hear Uncle Vernon shouting angrily about his abrupt disappearance from the kitchen table `I won't have him in the house again after this summer, he's caused nothing but trouble since he's been here. He can find somewhere else to live, anywhere will do, I don't care as long as it's nowhere near us ...'

He snatched the small owl, Pigwidgeon, from the air and hurriedly undid its letter. It was from Ron. `Harry, don't worry if you hear anything about our house being attacked -- we all got away ok, Mum and Dad held them off while Ginny and me escaped, then they disapparated, just in time. The house is a wreck though, Mum is in a real state. Everything we ever owned is destroyed. See you soon, I hope, Ron. PS: Happy birthday.'

A great tide of relief rose in Harry, he scribbled a short reply to Ron, and Pigwidgeon hurtled out of the window cheeping with happiness at his successful delivery. Harry leant forward and undid the Ministry letter, not caring what it said.

Dear Mr Potter, I write with regret to inform you that your provisional license for apparition has been revoked for two violations of the code of use of apparition, viz, at 8.09am today, (i) disapparating in front of two Muggles and (ii) apparating into a Muggle-inhabited area without taking any precautions to avoid being seen. You are warned that any attempt to apparate without a license will be referred to the Improper Use of Magic Office. You may apply for a new license in 6 months time. With best wishes, Yours faithfully, Blossom Willowby, Department of Magical Transportation, Ministry of Magic

Harry crumpled up the parchment into a tight ball and threw it into the bin as the Ministry owl flew out of his window. A further howl of outrage came from downstairs; Uncle Vernon must have seen the owl swooping away across his pristine garden. Moments later he came pounding up the stairs and burst into Harry's bedroom, pointing a thick accusatory finger at him, his moustache quivering. `What do you mean by suddenly disappearing like that, you nearly gave your aunt a heart attack! _And_ you've made me late for work!'

`It was an emergency,' Harry tried to explain, as Aunt Petunia appeared at the door, glaring at him with an expression of distaste and annoyance perfectly matching that of her husband, `my friends ... it was on the news ... their house got blown up ...'

`Blown up! Your lot are a ruddy menace, I'm telling you, you're not coming back here again, once you've finished at that freak school you're not going to come anywhere near us, you're not going to get us blown up as well!'

`You're safe while I'm here,' Harry explained patiently, `Voldemort can't attack us, because you're the last, er, family, that I have.' It required considerable effort for Harry to connect the word `family' to the Dursleys. Always he felt a painful regret and sadness at never knowing his real family, his parents ...

`And when you leave?' queried Aunt Petunia.

`If we win the war against Voldemort, then you'll be ok, but if he defeats us no-one will be safe, especially not Muggles.'

`But there's no reason he should attack us if you're not here, is there?'

`He might not kill all the Muggles. He could keep some of you as slaves, or pets, I suppose,' Harry said cynically, angry that the Dursleys refused to acknowledge that he was fighting for their sake, as well as for the wizarding world he knew.

Finally they left him alone, slamming the door behind them. Harry slumped back exhausted on his bed. So far it had not been a particularly enjoyable 17th birthday; he had woken early in the morning with his scar throbbing dully, the first time it had hurt in months, his mind still filled with a dream of terrifying cinematic vividness. He had left an underground station platform and had started to go down a stairway for some reason, perhaps to change to another line, but the stairway had extended endlessly, the cracked and stained concrete giving way to crude filth-encrusted stone steps, enclosed in an infinite vertical square shaft lit dimly by the green phosphorescence of decay. Other people only penetrated some way down before abandoning the descent and attempting futilely to climb back up to the normal world, but he had wanted to stay forever there ... When he woke he could still smell and see the putrid septic water which seeped endlessly down from step to step, draining from the rotting corpses of those who had died trying to escape, their flesh decaying over years in the fetid darkness ... He shuddered in horror again recalling this bleak vision of hell. The birthday cakes and cards from Hermione and Sirius and Hagrid had briefly made him feel somewhat better, and were now safely stashed beneath the loose floorboard under the bed. But then had come the news of Voldemort's attack on the Weasley's house ...

Hedwig was still asleep, head under one wing, exhausted from her journey bringing Hermione's present. None of his friends had told him where they were staying, and while he understood the security reasons for this, it only increased his own frustration at being incarcerated in the Dursley's house for most of the summer.

His happiness at the rescue of Sirius from the laboratory of death within the Department of Mysteries in June had barely lasted for two weeks in the face of the miserable reality of his life at number four Privet Drive. The only positive thing was that Dudley was away, he'd gone off interrailing around Europe with his gang of thuggish cronies, probably doing their best to live up to the worst stereotype of the British abroad, getting into drunken brawls, insulting `foreigners' and wrecking youth hostels. Dudley's absence had not improved the Dursley's attitude to him however; Aunt Petunia, when she was not wailing about her dear `Diddykins' and worrying over how he was coping on his own, was making unfavourable comparisons with Harry. `Clean your room!' she continually nagged at him, `Dudley always kept his room tidy!'

`Yes, because he was never here, he was always out terrorising the neighbourhood, beating up some poor kid half his size, wasn't he,' Harry longed to retort.

He woke Hedwig, who clicked her beak at him resentfully, and sent her off back to Hermione with a letter filling her in on the attack, omitting to mention his own illicit trip to the Burrow, and asking again if she knew when Dumbledore would let him rejoin them. He'd gleaned from her and Ron's letters that they had been spending lots of time together with other members of the Order of the Phoenix, but he had no idea where. Since the order had lost its headquarters it had been using several different places to meet, Fred and George's joke shop in Diagon Alley, Mad Eye Moody's house, the Weasley's house and even in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. But none of these were completely safe, as this morning's attack had shown. Harry suspected that Dumbledore had other reasons to keep him at Privet Drive, though, apart from his protection. Ever since Voldemort had realised that his attack on Harry 16 years ago had created a link between their minds, Dumbledore had been concerned that Voldemort could use Harry to spy on the order. Hence his refusal to admit Harry to the order despite all he had done against Voldemort, and his reluctance to tell Harry ``anything more than he needs to know" about the order's plans.

`He just wants to keep me out of the way,' Harry thought dispiritedly as he watched Hedwig flying with tired sweeps of her huge white wings high into the sky and out of sight, `stick me here where I can't cause any trouble and can't find out what the order is doing ...' Not that it seemed to be doing very much. The attack on the Weasleys was only the latest in a series of incidents, strange disappearances and deaths, which the Ministry seemed helpless to prevent. Gradually the most reliable and vociferous opponents of Voldemort were being eliminated. Only two weeks ago Ernie Macmillan's family had been murdered in a dawn attack. Harry couldn't help but feel guilty in part over this, it was he who had encouraged Ernie to get involved in the DA, the junior version of the order, and so helped to make Ernie's family more of a target for the Death Eaters.

Then last week Amelia Bones, head of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry, had simply vanished, on her way home from work. Fudge had given his usual blustering assurances in the Daily Prophet that everything was being done to find her, but Harry suspected that she too had been killed, being one of the few at the top of the Ministry who had seemed genuinely interested in justice and truth instead of manoeuvring for personal power.

Lunch was a couple of soggy lettuce sandwiches which Aunt Petunia left on his plate and told him to eat on his own upstairs. He took a few mouthfuls of the sodden slices and then threw them away, instead munching his way through Hermione's birthday cake as he sat watching out of his bedroom window waiting for Hedwig to return. They'll have to come and collect me soon, he decided, unable to bear the thought of another month of this isolation. And then after school, where could he live? Perhaps with Sirius, if Voldemort had been defeated? He could begin his training as an Auror, provided his NEWT results were good enough ... But somehow, whenever he tried to imagine his life after Hogwarts, there was just a void in his mind.

He heard the midday news come on the kitchen TV downstairs and opened his bedroom door to listen to it. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but there had been a spate of very suspicious deaths of Muggles over the last month -- three climbers had been found dead in the Cairngorms, beaten to a pulp; a major train accident had killed fifty people in the North when a set of points had somehow moved of its own accord to direct one express into head-on collision with another, and a reservoir in London had been poisoned with an unknown substance which had caused thousands of victims to turn green and wail like banshees for several days before lapsing into glassy-eyed catatonia ...

If only he was able to do something ... but now he couldn't even apparate without getting into serious trouble with the Ministry. Hermione had spurred them on last year to learn apparition as early as possible, but both he and Ron had struggled, apparating in the wrong place, or upside down, or, in Ron's case, halfway inside a tree, which had required the intervention of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. Harry had finally passed his test at the third attempt, but Ron had failed badly each time. Fred and George had teased him unmercifully about this, which Harry felt only undermined his confidence even more.

The TV was abruptly switched off and Harry dived back to the window as he heard his aunt coming up the stairs. `I'm just going out to the shops,' Aunt Petunia told him, giving him a mistrustful stare, `and I want to find the house in one piece when I return, so just stay in your room and don't _do anything_, do you understand?'

`Ok,' said Harry, too tired to argue.

As he heard the street door slam behind his aunt a column of golden fire suddenly erupted in the middle of the room, blinding Harry. As abruptly it vanished, and in its place Professor Dumbledore was standing there, holding a blackened iron kettle. `Hello Harry,' said Dumbledore calmly, as if it was an everyday occurrence for the headmaster of Hogwarts to materialise in the bedroom of a Muggle house, `I think it is time for you to leave here now.'

`What? How?' stammered Harry, taken totally by surprise.

`By portkey,' Dumbledore said, carefully placing the kettle on the floor, `please gather up everything you want to take. You will never return here again. If you want to leave a message for your aunt and uncle, please be quick. I have already written a letter to them, thanking them for their part in protecting you all these years.' He took a thick parchment envelope from the pocket of his purple robes and placed it on the bed as Harry hastily threw all his clothes and books and presents into his trunk. Harry couldn't think of anything he wanted to say to his relatives, except `goodbye'.

`Where are we going?' he asked.

`To rejoin the others,' said Dumbledore, and as he looked directly at Harry for the first time, Harry felt a surge of venomous hate arise within himself, which he knew came from Voldemort, still dwelling inside his mind despite all the training he had undergone to shut out this demonic interference. `Have you got everything?' Dumbledore asked, deliberately looking away again.

`Yes,' said Harry, pulling his trunk over to where the kettle lay, and placing his broomstick and Hedgwig's cage on it. He looked around the tiny bedroom with a strange feeling of nostalgia and loss, despite all the horrible years he'd spent in this house. He'd never see this room again ... He picked up Dumbledore's letter and added his own brief note of thanks on the outside of the envelope.

`Put one hand on the kettle and the other on your trunk,' Dumbledore instructed him after he'd replaced the letter. He also touched the kettle and quickly counted down `one ... two ... three ...'. They were instantly swept away from Privet Drive in a whirl of light and moments later landed on the floor of Dumbledore's office. The former headmasters and headmistresses in the portraits that covered the walls of the circular tower room waved in welcome, apart from Phineas Nigellus, who gave his usual sneer at the sight of Harry.

`The order is using the castle as a base?' Harry asked.

`Yes, it is one of the last places that is well-protected, but unfortunately it is not so very convenient, and of course we cannot use it during term-time, it would be most unfair to put the other students at risk ...'

Dumbledore touched one of the strange instruments whose purpose he had never explained to Harry, and a panel at the back of the office opened, revealing a narrow curving stairway of stone stairs, spiralling sharply downwards. Harry followed Dumbledore down these, the doorway to the office closing of its own accord behind him. After a few turns, the stairway levelled out into a corridor with windows on either side, looking out onto the grounds far below, strangely deserted in the bright July sun. At the end a curiously shaped contorted triangular door led into a part of the castle that Harry had never seen before, he guessed these were Dumbledore's private lodgings, the walls and ceilings were of some glowing golden stone, and the staircases twisted and wound in a completely illogical fashion, switching back and forth in flamboyant loops and misplaced landings, seemingly for their own amusement. Finally Dumbledore reached another triangular doorway and ushered Harry inside a large circular dining room, the panelled walls decorated with paintings of famous wizards.

Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Mr and Mrs Weasley and Kingsley Shaklebolt were sitting round a table at the far side of the room, the detritus of lunch scattered in front of them. The Weasleys still looked in a state of shock, and Ron was very pale. `Are you ok?' Harry asked him after everyone had greeted him and the adults had become engrossed in a muttered conversation with Dumbledore at the other end of the table.

`Yeah, sort of,' said Ron, `it was terrifying ... I really thought we'd had it ... those bastards ...'

`Is all your family here?' Harry asked.

`No, Bill and Fred and George are still staying in Diagon Alley, well it should be safe enough, for now ...'

`My parents are here,' said Hermione, `and Luna Lovegood and her dad. After all these attacks Dumbledore offered this place to everyone who he thought might be in particular danger, well ... you know, anyone with a connection to you, actually,' she admitted hesitantly, `... there was even talk of bringing Snape's family here as well.'

`Snape has a family?' Ron queried incredulously, `I'd always assumed he'd been hatched out from under a toad or something, like a basilisk.'

Dumbledore departed and Mrs Weasley asked Harry how his summer had been. He told them what he'd seen when he'd apparated to the Burrow, and how the Ministry official had made as if to attack him.

`I'm not surprised,' said Mr Weasley tiredly, `there are people at all levels of the Ministry who support Voldemort, many of them are simply people who can see the tide turning in his favour and want to be on the winning side and keep their jobs under a new regime, as well as those actually working for him. The place is riddled with his agents and spies, they sabotage every action the Ministry tries to take against Voldemort, which isn't much to begin with.'

`My money's on Umbridge,' said Ron, `she's the most foul, evil, sadistic ...' he grimaced in disgust.

`She's a menace,' agreed Kingsley, `but Fudge won't hear a word against her, and if anything happens to him she's the obvious successor as Minister of Magic.'

`I'd rather have Lucius Malfoy,' said Ron.

`Don't joke, it may yet come to that,' said Mr Weasley grimly, `I haven't seen any real effort being made to track him down, or the other Death Eaters either. None have been caught for months now. Fudge himself would switch sides if Voldemort offered to keep him as Minister for Magic, I'm sure of it, and Percy is just the same, all he thinks about now is power. He didn't even come to see us after the attack to check if we were ok,' he finished bitterly.

`He blames us,' Mrs Weasley sobbed, `he told us we were putting the family in danger by ``getting mixed up in Dumbledore's harebrained schemes". ``Let the Ministry deal with everything," he told us. My own son.'

There was an angry silence around the table.

`We must do something to stop Voldemort,' Harry said fervently, `if the Ministry won't take any action, we can't simply sit here letting him take over, killing more and more people.'

Mr Weasley and Kingsley shared a cautionary look. `Well, er, there are some plans,' Mr Weasley began, `but that's a matter which has to be kept within the order for now. You'll be seeing some results soon, I hope.'

`Voldemort hasn't interfered with my mind for months now,' Harry protested at their secretiveness, but then remembered the sinister dream and the pain in his scar he'd experienced this morning ...

`Nevertheless, Dumbledore thinks that it's best not to take the risk, or put you at risk either ... but you can take my word that we're doing everything possible to stop any more deaths, of wizards or Muggles.'

Ginny sat listening in fascination to the discussion, her bright ginger hair shining in the calm golden light of the tower-top room. Harry couldn't help but notice once again how attractive she looked. But she's been with Dean for two years now, he told himself sternly, I shouldn't interfere. And the stronger I let my feelings for her become the more danger she'll be in ... the more likely Voldemort will try to use her to entrap and destroy me ...

Kingsley left to go back to the Ministry and in the evening Harry and Hermione ate dinner with all the other Weasleys, except Percy, and Hermione's parents, who were mainly monopolised by Mr Weasley interrogating them on the workings of televisions and video machines. Fred and George told Harry their joke shop was doing so well that they were thinking of expanding and taking over the next-door business as well. `It's only a wizarding travel agents at the moment,' George said quietly, `and their orders are right down ... what with all that's going on, so we should be able to get it cheap ...'

Mrs Weasley was having a worried discussion with Bill and Charlie about their safety. `I'd be so much happier if you were both staying here as well ...' she said, `and Bill, you'd be much less recognisable if you cut your hair short for once and got rid of that stupid thing in your ear ...'

`Don't worry, Mum,' Charlie reassured her, `no-one's going to cause trouble in a dragon reservation, are they? And Bill's got Fleur to protect him.' He grinned at his older brother, who was nursing a black eye and did not return the grin.

`All the same ...'

`Tell you what, Mum, Dad,' Fred interrupted, `why don't you come and live in our shop after term starts? We've got a couple of rooms on the top floor that we use just for storage, you could stay there, no trouble. Of course they're not anything fancy ...'

`And just _what_ do you store in these rooms?' Mrs Weasley asked doubtfully. Harry remembered that she had never approved of the twins' choice of career, and despite their success, had only moderated her views from outright objection to silent glowering if the subject was raised.

`Oh, just bits and pieces,' said George innocently.

`This and that, ... you know,' added Fred.

`It _would_ be well protected, Molly,' said Mr Weasley, `the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol covers Diagon Alley day and night now, and there are undercover Aurors standing guard as well ... that's really good of you to offer to help, boys, thanks.'

Mrs Weasley still looked very sceptical. `Well, we'll discuss it before we come to a decision, won't we, Arthur?' she prompted her husband.

Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione were escorted to Gryffindor tower by Professor McGonagall, who was dressed relatively informally, by her own exacting standards. This didn't stop her lecturing them as they arrived at the common room. `Now this may be the holidays, but I expect you to behave sensibly and responsibly in the castle, just as if it were term-time!'

They climbed into the familiar circular room and sat around the fire, and carried on discussing the attack and its aftermath, while Crookshanks prowled menacingly around the walls, conducting his usual inspection of the mouseruns. Harry had really wanted to see Sirius and Hagrid again, and was very disappointed that they were not at the castle. `Sirius is still in hiding, I think,' said Ron, `and Hagrid is off doing stuff with his mad giants again. We've seen Lupin several times though, he's always flitting back and forth doing something for the order, and Tonks was here once. But if anything major's going on they're doing a good job of keeping it quiet, even from us.'

`They _have_ to keep it from us, Ron,' Hermione reminded him, `if we know then Harry will know, and if Harry knows, so will Voldemort.'

`Oh thanks for that vote of confidence, Hermione,' Harry said angrily, `I've done my best to keep Voldemort out of my mind for a year now, and if that's all the recognition I'm going to get I might as well have not bothered!'

`I'm not criticising you, Harry,' she said, looking at him seriously, `I'd have gone mad by now if I'd have had to put up with all that myself, really I would, but you can't tell when he might break through again, so really it's best, as Arthur said, not to take the risk in the first place. Don't you think I'd like to know if my parents are the next target for the Death Eaters? But if Dumbledore knows, because Snape has told him, perhaps, and Voldemort finds out that the order knows, that endangers Snape or any other spies we have in the enemy camp.'

`Ok, ok,' agreed Harry, feeling beaten down by her implacable logic, `it's been a long day, I think I'm going to turn in now.'

`Yeah, I'll come too,' said Ron, still looking abnormally pale.

`Ok, see you in the morning then!' Hermione said brightly, `it's going to be really good staying here, isn't it? It'll be a wonderful opportunity to start revising early for our NEWTs!' Ginny stared at her in disbelief and Ron blanched even whiter as he silently raised his eyebrows at Harry and headed for the stairways up to their dormitory.