Who to trust

But it would appear that if indeed his parents were sent from Voldemort to kill him, they had plans to kill him somewhere other than at the Weasleys'. Harry tried to avoid them, spending loads of time playing Quidditch with Fred and George and Bill and Charlie and Ron, taking long walks at sunset and under the moon and even in the rain with Hermione, sitting in Ron's room doing homework or playing Wizards Chess, and things like that. However, he could not avoid them at all times, like meals and family game nights (something the Weasleys had decided to try). James occasionally came to watch the boys play Quidditch, but he soon would tire of watching and, lacking a broomstick, would wander off to talk with Lily.

Not for the first time, though for the first time at the Weasleys', Harry couldn't wait until the end of the summer holidays. While it was true that his parents (it caused him a pang to think of them that way, but what else could he call them?) were going back to Hogwarts as well, they would be much easier to avoid in the maze of endless stairs and corridors, not to mention classes, Quidditch practices, and nights in the common room.

September first came quickly. Lily and James Apparated shortly after breakfast that morning, and the children returning to Hogwarts piled into Mr. Weasley's "new" car, a candy-apple green, junked-up car with a lightning bolt and "Greased Lightning" painted on the side. Mr. Weasley drove them off to King's Cross, just like he always did. Arriving at the station, he shooed the kids over to the barrier between Platforms Nine and Ten. Mr. Weasley turned to the kids.

"We'll go in pairs," he said, glancing at his watch. "Fred, George, you two go together. Then Ginny and Ron, then Harry and Hermione. Molly and I will follow."

Fred and George strode over to the barrier and disappeared. Ginny and Ron went right after them, and Harry and Hermione weren't far behind. The compartments were so tiny in the car they loaded on to that they could only seat four people comfortably. Ginny was nervous for some reason and didn't want to leave her brothers, so the four of them sat together in a compartment, leaving Harry and Hermione to find one of their own.

The pair settled down and watched the station slip away, waving to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley the whole time. When the station disappeared in the distance, Harry settled back in his seat. He began staring fixedly out the window, and Hermione knew that he was trying to memorise the scenery in case he never saw it again. She felt a pang as she realised that he wasn't expecting to live through the school year.

"Harry," she said quietly, "no one can hurt you while Dumbledore is headmaster."

"They can if he trusts them," said Harry bitterly. "What if one of them finds out the password to Gryffindor tower? If they come in while I'm asleep, I'm vulnerable and unprotected."

He took Hermione's hands in his. "I really don't want to worry you, Hermione," he said gently, staring into her brown eyes so full of fear. "You know I don't, but...but I had to tell someone. Ron doesn't really understand, he still thinks it's great and all that my parents are alive. He might know that we think it's a trap, but he doesn't believe it, especially after they didn't hurt me all summer..."

"They probably didn't want to do anything in front of the Ministry of Magic," said Hermione. "Oh, Harry!"

She flung her arms around him and began sobbing. Harry held her and comforted her gently. "Hermione, Hermione, it's okay. You're right, they can't hurt me at Hogwarts, not easily..."

Hermione drew away from him tearfully. "Oh, Harry...I'm only fooling myself. I know it. You're in danger--"

"Mione, so are you," said Harry softly. "You and Ron and everyone else at Hogwarts. If Dumbledore trusts my parents, they have access to everyone. I'm not really worried about myself, it's you and Ron--and Dumbledore--and Professor Lupin--and even Snape and the Slytherins. Everyone at Hogwarts is in as much danger as I am, perhaps more."

"Why more?" asked Hermione, looking up at him.

Harry stared into space. "It's something Voldemort said last year...he said the--the protection surrounding me was too great to overcome...there's some kind of spell on the Dursleys' house...Ron's dad and brother work for the Ministry...then Dumbledore's at Hogwarts..."

"See, Harry?" said Hermione, fighting back tears. "You're safe...there's so many people looking out for you..."

"Not if Dumbledore trusts them," replied Harry hollowly. A sudden realisation struck him. "And if they are working for Voldemort, they would simply remove any obstruction in their path to me, including and especially Dumbledore. If he doesn't trust them..."

"Please, Harry," begged Hermione, "please don't talk like that. It's not going to happen, it scares me when you talk like that..." She couldn't help it and began to cry.

Harry was overcome by guilt. "Oh, Mione, I'm sorry," he said softly. "You're right, I'm being ridiculous. I'll stop." He put his arm around her comfortingly.

The train suddenly began to slow down. "What?" said Hermione, forgetting her tears, confused. "We can't be there yet!"

"So why're we stopping?" asked Harry. His green eyes suddenly widened in fear. "Oh, no..."

Hermione's eyes widened too.

The train stopped with a jolt. Thuds and bangs told them that once again, large amounts of luggage had fallen from the racks. Without warning, the lanterns all went out at once, plunging them into blackness only heightened by the rain pounding the windows, obscuring view.

Harry reached quickly into his trunk and pulled out his wand. He didn't light it as Hermione expected him to, but simply reached for the door, looking worried but determined. Before he reached it, the door opened.

There stood a dementor; tall, dark, and foreboding, it hovered above them. It began to suck the happiness out of the room. Harry concentrated fiercely on the moment when he first performed the spell he was about to do, and how good it had made him feel, and said, "Expecto patronum!"

A silver stag shot out of the end of Harry's wand, as it had done twice before, and charged the dementor. The dementor in question backed slowly out of the compartment, the door sliding shut behind it.

As soon as it was gone, Harry collapsed on his seat, head in his hands, and began crying quietly. The dementor--and his own happy memory, not to mention the Patronus--had reminded him painfully of his father. The dementors' only power was to suck the happiness out of a place, leaving their victims with only the worst memories of their lives. Harry's worst memories, of course, were of his parent's dying. The first time he had produced a Patronus properly, he had been saving himself and Hermione and Sirius from about a hundred dementors. He had gone back in time to rescue Sirius, and the story took a few odd twists and turns, but the point was he, while being attacked by dementors, had seen himself across the lake performing the spell, and being only semiconscious had thought it was his father. His father had been an unregistered Animagus. He could turn into a stag, which was what the Patronus had been.

Hermione put her arm around him and bit her lip, thinking hard how she could comfort him. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. "Harry!" she said. Harry looked up at her. "This could be a good thing! Do you remember what your father could turn into?"

"A stag," said Harry slowly. Suddenly his face brightened. "You're right, Mione." He gave her a hug. "Thanks. That'll help."

~~~

When the Sorting was over, Dumbledore stood up. "I have two things I wish to say to you, and as one of them is quite important I wish to get it out of the way before you are befuddled with your excellent feast. First of all, but not most important, I wish to apologise for any scares students may have had as a result of the dementors. They are not allowed within twenty yards of Hogwarts or the Hogwarts Express, and have been dealt with strictly."

He looked around at the relieved faces. "Second of all--and I need you all to pay very close attention to this, because it is quite important," he added, and the hall fell silent. Dumbledore cleared his throat and continued.

"We currently have two guests staying with us. These guests are very similar to, and may possibly be, the parents of one of our students. These two have been dead for several years."

A whisper rose through the hall. Looks came Harry's way. The buzz died down as quickly as it had arisen and Dumbledore continued.

"While they are here," he said very sternly, " I want it made absolutely clear that they are to be treated with caution. They may not be who they claim to be. It is possible that they may even be spies sent from Voldemort. You may talk to them if you wish, but do not reveal anything you would not want spies to know. I look to the prefects, and our new head boy and girl, to make sure no student runs afoul of them."

He sat down. Food appeared on the plates, but for once there wasn't a mad scramble to load plates. Everyone was too busy talking, wondering who could possibly be so dangerous as to require the students to keep them happy.

Seamus leaned down the table. "How much you want to bet it's Draco Malfoy's parents?" he said to Harry and Ron.

"Absolutely nothing," said both boys in unison.

"For one thing," said Ron, "Dumbledore said they had been dead for several years."

"And for another," said Harry, "it's actually mine."

Seamus stared at him then started to chuckle. "Yeah, right," he giggled. "Your parents, working for You-Know-Who, even if they could come back to life, which they can't?"

"It might not be them," said Harry shortly, putting a spoonful of mashed potatoes on his plate. He was starting to get tired of explaining this.

Seamus, however, was pretty thick and didn't realise that Harry wasn't in the mood. "What makes you think it's your parents, anyway?"

Ron shrugged. "Oh, I dunno, maybe the fact that they were staying with my family this summer."

Seamus finally got the message and applied himself to his food.

~~~

Remus stood up, brushing the soot off his robes. "Sirius!" he called. "Sirius! You here?"

His life-long friend came into the kitchen. "Remus! What are you doing here?"

Remus sighed. "I came to get you, Siri," he said. "There's someone at Hogwarts you need to meet."

Sirius's eyes widened, and he backed away a bit. "This isn't a trap to put me back in Azkaban, is it?"

"No, Sirius," Remus replied heavily. "It's a trap of a different sort. A trap set for someone else."

"Who?" asked Sirius, coming over.

Remus shook his head. "I'll tell you later. Dumbledore says you're to stay at Hogwarts. Come on."

The two men stepped into the fire. They arrived a few minutes later in Dumbledore's office.

Dumbledore stood up. "Ah, Sirius, nice to see you. Thank you, Remus."

"My pleasure, sir," Remus answered.

"Hello, sir," said Sirius.

Dumbledore nodded to Sirius. To Remus he said, "Please take him down to your classroom, walk five doors past it, and take a right. Go to the end of the hallway. It dead-ends at a door. That's where he is."

Remus nodded and led Sirius down several flights of stairs and down a long hallway. At the door, Remus turned to Sirius. "D'you want to go alone or do you want me to come with you?"

"Please do," said Sirius nervously.

Together, the two men entered the room to find James Potter sitting in a window seat. He turned around. "Hello, Remus," he said with a smile. He turned to the other man. "Sirius?"

Sirius trembled. His knees buckled. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted.

~~~

Harry, Ron, and Hermione headed up the stairs to the Gryffindor Tower behind everyone else. Harry noticed somebody take a wrong turn, and he had a feeling he knew who it was. "You guys go ahead," he told Ron and Hermione. "I'll catch up."

Ron and Hermione exchanged a bemused look and followed the crowd.

Harry walked stealthily along the corridor and discovered a small room. Odd sounds were coming from inside it. Harry walked quietly into the room. "Neville?"

Neville was hunched in a corner, crying softly. Harry went over and sat next to him. "Neville, what's wrong?"

Neville shook his head, still crying.

"It's about your parents, isn't it?"

Neville looked up at Harry, his face streaked with tears. He nodded, gulped, and said, "Dumbledore said--said they'd been dead for several years...you know, the people staying here..."

Harry put his arm around his friend. "Neville, your parents aren't dead, are they?"

"I don't know," whispered Neville. "I haven't been to see them in a long time..." He looked up at Harry again, almost as though waiting for Harry to ask what he meant.

"Neville, I know," Harry said softly. "I found out last year. It was--sort of an accident. I thought you went to see them every summer."

"I used to," said Neville. "Then, when I was about nine, Gran told me she didn't think I could handle it anymore and that I wasn't allowed to go see them. I know that's a load of baloney, so I've been wondering if they died and she just doesn't want to tell me."

Neville raised his head and straightened proudly. "I'm not stupid, Harry. I can do magic just as well as everyone else, and I'm going to. But, Harry, I used to not want to. I know it's dumb, but I was scared."

"I understand," said Harry, nodding. "You were only two or three when it happened, and all you knew was that a spell had taken them away from you. You didn't understand that not all spells were bad, or that a specific spell had taken them away from you, so you were afraid that if you did magic, you'd take someone else's parents away too."

Neville nodded. "Exactly. But there's something else, too. I could be good at Potions, I really could. But my problem is with--with Snape. I knew--Gran told me--that a Death Eater performed the Crutacious Curse on my parents. I was looking through some papers when I was seven, trying to see if I could find anything on who had done it, and I found a paper that said Snape had been accused of being a Death Eater, but he'd been cleared. When I got here, I knew he'd been accused, but I thought that--maybe--"

"He was the one who took away your parents," finished Harry.

"That, and that maybe potions were another way Death Eaters hurt people."

Harry gave Neville a hug. "Don't worry, Neville. First of all, Snape isn't a Death Eater. He turned spy for Voldemort, at great personal risk to himself. Second of all, I know who tortured your parents, and believe me, it wasn't Snape."

"Who was it?" asked Neville.

Harry sighed. "Barty Crouch, Junior. Anyway, there's one more thing you should know. The people who are staying with us aren't your parents. They're mine."

Neville's jaw dropped. "No way!"

"Yeah," affirmed Harry. "Anyway, it does no good sitting around talking about it. Let's go to bed."

Neville grinned. The two boys stood up, arms around each other's shoulders, and went to bed.

~~~

Sirius groaned. He heard voices over his head.

"Did he get a concussion?"

"I don't think so. God, I'm sorry."

"You didn't do anything."

Sirius opened his eyes. He could see Remus's concerned face over his head.

"He's awake!"

"Sirius, are you all right?" asked James, leaning over his friend.

Sirius's eyes rolled back in his head and he closed them.

Remus laughed and shook his friend's shoulder. "Okay, now your faking it! Get up!"

Sirius opened his eyes and sat up. "Okay, okay." He glanced warily at James. "What are you doing here?"

"I have absolutely no clue," said James, looking a bit worried. "I'm not entirely sure that I'm actually James Potter. I wish there were some way I could know..."

"There is!" said Sirius suddenly. "Remember?"

James brightened. "Oh, yeah!" With a pop, he turned into a large stag.

Sirius grinned. "I believe you," he told James.

Remus grinned too, though not as widely as his friend.

James turned back into himself. "Something wrong, Remus?"

"No, not really," said Remus, forcing a bigger smile on his face. All the time, though, he was thinking, and those thoughts disturbed him.

He was positive that this man was, in fact, James Potter, but he wasn't sure how he had come back the way he had. Furthermore, he was not sure if James was working for Voldemort or not. And what about Lily? Was she working for Voldemort as well?

Remus couldn't believe it. Had he been like this when he was in school? No, of course not. He'd been very shy and reserved. It was only where Harry was concerned that he got this way. He was concerned for Harry's safety. If he allowed himself to trust James completely, and he turned out to be working for Voldemort, it could mean Harry's death.

~~~

"Ha!"

"I see nothing funny in here," said Harry as he and Ron joined Hermione in the library.

Hermione turned around. "Harry! I was just going to come get you. I think I may have found something!"

"What is it?" asked Harry as he sat down. Ron sat next to him.

Hermione pulled a book out of a large pile of them next to her. "I've been in here all morning, researching ways that the dead might come back to life, and I think I've found something that just might apply to your parents."

Harry's heart gave a huge bound. "What did you find?"

"Actually, I found two things. One is an old bit of dark magic. It's very powerful and very dangerous. It brings the dead back to life, but they are more or less at the mercy of those who revive them. They can only be brought back for a purpose. When that purpose is executed, whether or not the people brought back from the dead had a hand in helping or hindering, they die again. They can be killed by other ways, however, whether or not the purpose has been reached."

Harry's heart fell. He had been hoping his parents had come back for a reason other than to kill him. "The other?"

Hermione smiled and picked up another book. "The other is perhaps a bit more fanciful, but hey, Dumbledore said no spell could reawaken the dead. Dumbledore is usually never wrong, but this time he is. At this point anything is possible."

She placed her hand on the cover of the book. "This book is one I haven't read cover-to-cover since I was six, but I've read a bit of it often. At any rate, I remember something that could be helpful."

"Hermione, could you please just get to the point?" snapped Ron. Perhaps he had noticed the faint light that had come back into his friend's eyes and was hoping not to extinguish it.

"The point is," said Hermione, a bit nettled, "that I found a passage that may be helpful."

She opened the book, thumbed to a page and began.

"And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." She flipped a page and went on. "Fear not ye, for I know who ye seek, who was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said."
Hermione closed the book with an air of authority. "It says 'three days' but who cares if it's off a dozen or so years?"

"Wait a minute," said Harry, looking at the scarlet bound book. "That's the Bible, isn't it?"

"Yeah," affirmed Hermione. "It could happen, right?"

Harry felt his heart drop into his stomach, and the two of them decided to go out on a date to the Bistro in the nearest town, which was several thousand miles away. "Right," he said. He got up and left. Ron watched him go, then rounded on Hermione.

"Hermione, how could you do that to him?" he demanded. "You know perfectly well that the Bible doesn't happen to your average Joe. You've killed pretty much any hope he had, any hope you gave him when you said you might know how his parents came back. He was so badly hoping his parents weren't trying to kill him..."

"They might not be," argued Hermione. "I just said that was a possibility. There may be other ways, but until I can get into the Restricted Section I won't know."

Ron threw up his hands. "Whatever." He turned on his heel and strode out of the room.