Destiny Trilogy: The War

Chapter 2: The New Girl

Mist was gathering in the dark, overgrown graveyard. Not too far away, Harry could just make out a faint outline of the Riddle house, looming ominously like a vague monster. Sensing someone behind him, he turned sharply.

Cedric Diggory.

Harry opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. There was something wrong with the fact that Cedric was standing just behind him, but Harry couldn't point out just what was so wrong. They exchanged weak smiles. Then out of the fog, hooded and masked figures began to appear, forming a circle around the two boys. Harry turned to find himself facing a pair of livid scarlet eyes set in a thin, deathly pale face.

Seemingly from very far away, he heard high, cold laughter and a voice almost whisper in his ear, "Kill the spare." A bright flash of eerie green light blinded him as the curse hit someone behind him, and then the screaming began, echoing over and over again with increasing volume, and it wasn't just Cedric anymore, it was his parents as well, and it just went on and on...

"Harry! Harry! Wake up, it's alright, it was just a nightmare..."

Harry jerked awake with a start, sweat and tears mingling on his face, belatedly realising that it was he who had been screaming. Without his glasses, he could just make out blurred outlines of four someones standing by his bed. He grabbed at his glasses and sat up. He was still safe and sound in his dorm with the four-poster beds and scarlet curtains. The other fifth-year boys were crowded around his bed, looking pale and worried...and tired. Harry felt bad immediately. It was the third time he'd woken the dorm up this month.

"Sorry guys," he mumbled.

"But Harry..." Ron began.

"No, I'm okay, really," Harry replied firmly. "It was just a nightmare that's all. Go back to sleep."

After the dorm had gone quiet again, Harry lay on his back, eyes wide open, afraid of going back to sleep. He had tried not to think about the events of the past year, but it was hard. For the first two weeks of the summer holidays, he had woken up the Dursleys every night with his screaming from that very same dream. After locking him up in his room and even belting him once, his uncharacteristic silence had turned their initial anger and irritation into fear and even worry. By the time Aunt Marge popped by for her yearly visit the Dursleys had been worried enough to excuse Harry from her presence by pretending he was down with something nasty and contagious. Harry hadn't really cared. Even though he did know, deep down inside, that he couldn't blame himself for everything that had happened, it didn't stop making him feel that for once, he deserved the insults. Jinx! You're nothing but trouble and bad luck to everyone around you! Should have been drowned as an infant! Worthless, useless thing...should have been the one who died...it's all your fault...

Harry stayed awake staring at the ceiling until dawn.

*~*~~*~**~*~*~~*

"It's unforgivable!" Ron bellowed as they made their way up the stairs to Charms class. Some second years turned to look at what he was getting so angry about.

"Ron, get a hold on yourself," Hermione snapped, barely able to control her own anger as well. They had just heard from a furious Angelina that Katie Bell, one of the Gryffindor Chasers, had been seriously injured by Adrian Montague, who also played Chaser on the Slytherin team.

"They should suspend him! I can't believe they accepted his pathetic excuse!" Ron thundered. "He deliberately pushed her down the stairs when it was changing!"

Harry was so angry he couldn't even speak. Montague must have done it in blind revenge since Gryffindor had broke the Slytherin winning streak by winning the Quidditch Cup the previous year. He was so upset he didn't see where he was going and bumped into someone.

"Oops, sorry," he said as the someone dropped her heavy Runes textbook. Straightening up, he was surprised to find himself handing the book back to Kera Ladon.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Potions?" Harry blurted out as she muttered her thanks. He had memorised the first year timetables just in case he could be of any help to Yue Chang, Cho's sister. Kera eyed him, looking slightly amused.

"And how would you know where I'm supposed to be?"

"First years shouldn't be wandering along the corridors on their own," Hermione said bossily, stepping forward. "Are you lost? I'll bring you down to the dungeons."

"I can find my own way, thank you," Kera replied curtly, making a move to leave.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of you know," Hermione persisted patiently. "Besides I'm a Prefect, Professor Flitwick would understand."

"Speak for yourself." Kera shot her a contemptuous Malfoy-ish look, and walked away.

"Honestly," sighed Hermione exasperatedly as Kera went down the third floor corridor.

"Maybe she decided to skip Snape and go off to the library," Ron said, still too caught up in his fury to care about lost first years.

"The library is on the fourth floor," Hermione pointed out. "Besides, you shouldn't be condoning..."

They carried on all the way down the corridor, with Harry sandwiched in the middle and wincing as the volume of their argument rose. Just as they reached the classroom, Harry stopped in his tracks. "She's only a first year. Why was she carrying a Runes textbook?"

*~*~~*~**~*~*~~*

"Maybe she thought it'd make interesting reading material," Hermione said after class as they sat down to dinner.

"You think everybody's like you," Ron scoffed. He spotted Yue Chang and waved her over.

"Did you have Potions class this afternoon? I didn't see Kera at the dungeons."

"She doesn't take classes with us," Yue replied. "Always goes off to do her own stuff. Anyway she doesn't sleep in our dormitory."

"That would explain the Rune book," Hermione mused after Yue left. "She must have been given special permission to skip years. Although I don't understand why Kera..."

"Then perhaps you should be asking me, instead of discussing me behind my back...Prefect Granger."

They turned around to find Kera standing behind them, eyebrow raised.

Hermione started to defend herself, but before she could say anything, Kera stalked away to the other end of the table. Hermione was looking flushed and extremely irritated.

"Forget what I said about her," She said loudly, scooping mashed potatoes on all their plates with too much force. "You're right. She's just another of those people who think too highly of themselves."

*~*~~*~**~*~*~~*

Harry couldn't wait for Friday to end. After all the mountains of homework his teachers had been piling on the fifth-years, who'd be taking their O.W.L.s this year, it'd be a well-earned first Hogsmeade weekend tomorrow.

But the real reason was that he had all his least favourite classes today. First lesson of the day had been Divination, where they were starting on I Ching. Harry had found it very hard to concentrate on broken and unbroken lines in the heavily perfumed classroom, and Professor Trelawney kept telling him over his shoulder that his Yin and Yang energies were very unbalanced thus a terrible catastrophe was likely to befall him soon. She was also quite happy to acknowledge her prediction of Voldemort's return now, which made Harry feel rather sick.

Immediately after that was Potions with the Slytherins, which was, as usual, hell on earth. Snape wanted them to make an extremely complicated Invisibility Potion, which included ingredients that were time-consuming to prepare, like the fragile skin of the Elbisiv root, which Ron kept tearing accidentally in his haste. Snape took diabolical delight in breathing down poor Neville's neck and making him so nervous he cut himself slicing his long-legged caterpillars.

After lunch they had History of Magic, which was so incredibly boring, even Hermione had stopped listening to Professor Binns, preferring to read the text herself or do her Arithmancy homework. To top it all off, after that they had Defence Against the Dark Arts. Although Fleur Delacour was always nice to Harry and Ron--uncomfortably nice, in fact--most of the guys in class (including Ron), spent most of the lesson gazing at her in a blissful dreamy daze, resulting in mutinous looks on all the girls' faces throughout the lesson. There was also the unfortunate fact that Fleur's accent was sometimes possibly harder to understand than Quirrell's stutter.

"Finally," Ron sighed as he collapsed on his bed. "Hogsmeade weekend."

"I hope Kera doesn't go though," Harry frowned as he flopped onto his bed.

Of course that was hoping for too much. It was, after all, her first year at Hogwarts. To say Hermione didn't like Kera Ladon very much would have been the greatest understatement of the year. The few times she had bumped into Kera over the past few weeks (which thankfully wasn't very often because Kera seemed to appear near Gryffindors only around during mealtimes), she had ended up with an increasingly bad impression of her, and it was starting to get tiring especially since neither of them found Kera particularly worth all that dislike.

Not that any of the other Gryffindors, especially the fourth- and fifth-year girls, liked Kera very much either, and there was no love lost. The only people who had anything good to say about her were Fred and George, who had spotted her taking flying lessons from Madam Hooch and claimed that she was a pretty good flyer. Harry was beginning to suspect the Sorting Hat had put Kera Ladon in the wrong house.

They had a great time the next day. As a Halloween special, Honeydukes had a new kind of chocolate with blood-red cherry syrup fillings made in the shape of tiny bats that really fluttered their wings, and made squeaky sounds in your stomach after you ate them. They had a good time jostling for space with the rest of the students, contemplating whether they dared to try a new entry at the 'Unusual Tastes' section (raw steak jelly whips) just because it was Halloween.

At Zonko's Harry and Hermione nearly collapsed with laughter when Ron very nearly ran screaming out of the shop when Ginny mischievously dropped a huge enchanted fake spider on his shoulder. Still chortling and giggling at a very cross Ron, they popped into the Three Broomsticks for some butterbeer. They drank quietly as they listened to a group of wizards in a corner, discussing not just missing person reports in the wizarding world, but also the unrest in the Muggle world. "They're killing each other like ants over there!" they heard one say.

"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Harry sighed. He had been so busy with all the homework they'd been having, he only seemed to remember Voldemort in his nightmares.

"Oh cheer up, Harry," Ginny said kindly. "He can't have gained much power yet. Professor Dumbledore will see to that."

But they went back to Hogwarts with less laughter along the way.

They dropped Ginny off at her own room to put her purchases before continuing up to Hermione's room. Ron and Harry were discussing Quidditch in slightly half-hearted tones. When they reached the top of the staircase, they were surprised to find Crookshanks playing with an unfamiliar grey tabby. The tabby was rather pretty and had white markings on its feet like socks. It swatted Crookshanks playfully across his nose. Crookshanks yawned lazily, looking almost like he was grinning at the tabby.

"Who's your new friend, Crookshanks?" Hermione asked bending down to pet the tabby.

The tabby looked up at her with her big sea-green eyes and slipped into the fifth-year girls' dorm. Harry frowned. Those eyes were awfully familiar. Taking care not to step on Crookshanks, who was blocking up the entire passageway, Hermione walked into her dormitory and found herself face-to-face with a pair of sea-green eyes almost exactly like the tabby's.

"Hello," Kera said evenly, as if nothing had been going on between them for the past few weeks. In her arms was the grey tabby they had seen earlier.

"What are you doing in here?" Hermione scowled.

"Why not? It's mine as much as it's yours." Kera put down her cat on a fourth bed that had never been there before. There was also an ancient-looking trunk at the foot of it, with a faintly visible 'Ladon' carved in ornate letters. Hermione stared. Harry and Ron just gaped.