Harry Potter and the Heart of Regenesis

Chapter Three

The Houseguest

As Harry drove back to Cresheim in his '14 across' he reflected that he had spent more time in the last couple of days thinking about his old friends and acquaintances from England than he had in months - years even. Life with Ginny had been so happy, he thought, that they hadn't seemed to need anyone else. They'd heard fairly regularly from Arthur and Molly, of course and also from Rufus and Rowena, their little nephew and niece - it was good that George had finally learned to live happily again after taking a long, long time to come to terms with losing his twin, Fred.

Harry worked out that there were just 4 more weeks until the end of term (he still couldn't get used to calling them semesters). He made up his mind: when the term ended he would get on board a jumbo jet and fly back to Heathrow. He could stay in one of the rooms at The Leaky Cauldron - he was fairly sure he could still get in and out of Diagon Alley although he'd never tried - and visit Gringotts to check his interest rates. Then he could use Hedwig to contact some of his old friends and travel around the country visiting them for a couple of weeks. A disguise for the Alley might be a good idea, he noted. That was the trouble being the wizard who had defeated Voldemort - twice!

Feeling rather refreshed and having made this decision, he parked his car and went into the cottage. No sooner had he shut the door and filled the kettle than he heard a loud 'crack' from the living room. Wondering if a clock had fallen from the wall he rushed in and saw Jem Stone, the girl he had been speaking to the day before, her back towards him, facing the fireplace wall, on which the clock still sat happily, ticking away to itself.

"What the...?" he gabbled. "What are YOU doing in here? Jem? You're not allowed in here? How did you g--?" he stopped as if he'd been hit by the strongest stunning curse. "Hermione!" he exclaimed as she turned around smiling broadly at him and looking every bit as radiant as she'd ever looked. "You Apparated here from England?" He was astonished. He'd heard of powerful wizards who could Apparate long distances (less common in witches) but London to Philadelphia was something else!

"Hello to you, too," she smiled and opened her arms to him. He muttered something about being sorry and that he was just amazed at how far she'd come by that means but it was all lost as he disappeared into her hair and robes. What he didn't see, sadly, was the satisfied grin on Hermione's face - she'd wanted to impress him and she certainly had. She had always been the best and most powerful witch in her year and had achieved one of the highest sets of OWL and NEWT results in Hogwarts' history. They had joked that she would, undoubtedly, appear in later editions of her favourite book - and, of course, there she now was! Two whole paragraphs about Hermione Granger had been added to the new editions at the end of the chapter titled 'How To Study Efficiently: the Benefits of Endeavour'.

He felt her holding him closely, glad to feel the warmth of human contact and to receive her love and affection. It was a long time since he'd even touched another person, let alone hugged them. As their bodies pressed lightly against each other and he smelt her perfume through her hair his mind could not help remembering when they were both 15 - the year they had spent as boyfriend and girlfriend; their liaisons in 'Fluffy's Lair' and the Prefect's Bathroom...

After the embrace they pulled themselves apart and she looked him up and down. Then her eyebrows creased and she challenged him,

"Who's Jem?"

A good half minute passed embarrassingly as Harry tried to come to terms with what had just happened. Hermione's arrival had completely thrown what happened immediately before it right out of his mind. He had to mentally retrace his steps from entering the house before he understood her question. Then he smiled at Hermione and said, with his eyes wide open,

"Oh, she's just this little 5th Year from the school here I'm having a rip-roaring affair with." He could tease too although he could see she had been at least a little taken in - her jaw dropped momentarily before they both laughed out loud and he gestured for her to take a seat. She sat on the armchair near the fireplace while he lounged on the sofa opposite it. He told her the truth.

" I was only thinking of you the other day. There is this girl here who, from a distance, looks just like you - but not close up. I saw her walking across the fields a few days ago, her arms full of books, hair blowing wildly on the breeze. Then I saw her again down by the Quidditch pitch yesterday and she spoke to me. She told me she thought I looked a bit like Harry Potter - no-one here knows who I am, of course - turns out she's got a bit of a crush...she and the girls in her dorm have posters of a teenage me on their walls. Makes me feel a bit weird, to be honest! I told her my name was Neville Finnegan and she said hers was Jem Stone.

Hermione mouthed a "Ugh!" and Harry nodded. He explained that she, obviously, hated her name as well.

"So. Do you fancy her?"

"Hermione!"

"I'm only kidding! Lots of men would be flattered to have dozens of teenage girls mooning over him, dreaming of him being their knight in shining armour, come to snatch them up and whisk them away to an enchanted castle..." Her eyes glazed over and a soppy grin covered her face like she was twelve again and fawning over Lockhart.

"Enough already!" he insisted but she just laughed again.

"Oh you! Silly. That's what I love about you. They really WOULD - I mean, most other men! You? You just get embarrassed and get all flustered!" Then she got that strange look on her face again and teased him some more: "So...who would you have rather it was here? Me? Or Jem?" She said this last name as if it was particularly distasteful...like most of the times in his life Harry had said 'Malfoy'.

"You! You, of course!" he nodded furiously as he smiled his response! "You and Cho were enough teenage girls to last me a lifetime! That's another 'game' I've retired from! Besides, I seriously thought for a few moments there that my cover was blown and they'd found out who I really was!"

Oh...gosh...what if they had really found out who you were?"

"Well, that's what threw me! That's what I thought must have happened when I came in and saw you standing there! I mean, she'd only have to get in and look around a bit - parchments addressed to me, photos, my old badges and certificates. He pointed to a shelf with Quidditch caps and medals and all manner of other mementos - there was even one of the infamous 'Potter Stinks' badges from the Tri-Wizard Tournament there. He often wondered why he kept that!

Then he held up a hand and there was a moment's silence.

"Why are we here like this talking utter nonsense? Hermione." He paused. " It is wonderful to see you. Can I get you anything? Some pumpkin juice?" She nodded and he went to the fridge and brought back an iced jug of bright orange liquid and held two glasses in his other hand.

He put them down on a small table and poured out two very generous measures. They drank and then she said, quite matter-of-factly,

"Ron and I are really sorry about you and Ginny. It's not fair, is it? Life should treat people better than that. And people like you deserve so much more." What could Harry do but shake his head, shrug his shoulders and wait for her to go on. "What was it like while she was first away? Did you keep in touch?"

"We spoke every day at first," he replied. "I'd be sitting here in front of the fire at 7 every evening and suddenly - there would be her face in the fireplace smiling at me." It was obvious he was recalling these times with lots of fondness yet Hermione knew Harry well enough to recognise the immense torture he was putting himself through in simply forcing himself to recall these events. His heart was very obviously broken and she knew he needed healing that neither she, St Mungo's nor even dear old Poppy Pomfrey could offer him. She also knew that talking about it to someone else would be part of the eventual healing process so she encouraged him to continue.

"It made my day to see her smiling at me, even though I couldn't hold her or touch her and I missed her so much. We would chat for ages, telling each other about the kind of day we'd had. I think she got a bit fed up after a few weeks - she was always blithering on about how fantastic it all was - I spent my half of the conversation telling her about the drive to school, mowing the pitch...hardly riveting stuff! Trouble was, she was enjoying it all, I was miserable. She was too busy to spend time moping about missing me, I had long, lonely evenings without her and Dai - who spent most of the time with a child minder, by the way - and I can't really blame her: she would be having a great time flying every day on the best brooms money could buy over a Quidditch pitch surrounded by grandstands that can hold over 100,000 people!

When they told her, after a couple of weeks, that they wished she could get dual nationality so she could be their seeker she was more excited than I'd seen her for years! Back here as she told me about it I was nothing other than jealous. I wanted it to be ME who was flying all day AND I was jealous of the team who had MY Ginny." He was getting angrier as he poured out his heart, his talking building a crescendo so that, after a while, he was shouting. Hermione was also aware of the tears starting to wet his eyes and saw the light glisten on the first tear which escaped onto his cheek. She came to sit next to him on the sofa and grasped his now shaking hand. This calmed him down a bit and the volume dropped again accordingly.

"And then, I was jealous of Ginny 'cos she had Dai to keep her company...everything was hers and I had..." He almost broke. "I had...nothing!" Hermione shook her head placatingly. "Not even my magic," he finished with a spasmodic sob and he once again sank into Hermione's hair as she pulled him into another embrace.

They sat and rocked like that for a few minutes. Harry didn't really know this but Hermione and Ron also found it hard to accept the existence of a 'squib-like' Harry Potter. He who had been the most powerful wizard in generations - probably the most powerful in the Wizarding World save for the great Albus Dumbledore now reduced to a squib? It was almost too much to believe. Even though Harry had made the sacrifice willingly while performing the Enuma Elish charm his own psyche had hidden the truth from him by rendering him blind for some time afterwards. Only when his mind was ready to accept his ultimate fate did it let him see. It had been on the station platform at Hogsmeade and he had been unable to see the shining, red engine as anything more than rusted, scrap iron; Hogwarts as nothing more than a pile of ruins. He was unable to see through the anti-muggle charms. Within a few minutes, though, he was able to force himself to see the train - he knew that squibs could do this - after all Filch - a well-known squib - had worked at Hogwarts for years.

But Harry and Hermione now talked quietly about how, in the seven years since, he had performed no more magic than talking to Sandy, touching his amulet and seeing past anti-muggle charms, which he now did as a matter of course, whether he knew they were there or not. He could speak to Sandy because the magical powers he needed to talk Parselmouth - snake language - were not part of his original magical powers. Voldemort had accidentally endowed that gift on him the night he got his scar. Therefore he had not lost it in his sacrifice.

As regards the amulet, he rarely took it from its place by his bedside anymore. It seemed that every time he touched it for months all he saw was Ginny at a party, Ginny flying in enraptured joy, Ginny having a laugh and drink with other men after training. Just twice he'd managed to see her asleep in her bed - once lying with Dai in her arms - the two of them looked so beautiful and he noticed how Dai had grown and changed a lot in their time away. He wanted to reach out and hold them so much he felt the Cruciatus curse might have hurt him less. After a while he had taken off the amulet and hung it over his bedside lamp. He had not picked it up for quite some time now but he kept this to himself and did not tell Hermione.

Hermione let her curiosity get the better of her.

"Do you still have your wand, Harry?" she asked him suddenly.

"Of course I do," he reassured her and he rose from the sofa and walked to the nearby cabinet under the shelf of mementos. He slowly pulled open a narrow drawer and took out a black, wooden box with the word 'Ollivanders' written in silver on its lid. Inside it was lined with silk and there, lying in the folds of the pure white silk was Harry's holly wand - the twin of Voldemort's and containing as its core a single phoenix feather. When Harry had first held the wand he had immediately been surrounded by what seemed like a strange light, he had felt a sudden warmth in his fingers and when he waved it a stream of red and gold sparks had shot from the end like a firework. He took it out now - he smiled ruefully at Hermione and waved it. He may as well have waved a cold sausage. Absolutely nothing happened. He hadn't expected anything else.

"May I?" Hermione asked tentatively. Harry nodded his silent approval and forced a weak, encouraging smile in her direction. He watched her take it in her gentle hand as if it were a precious, holy relic. He had only ever seen her hold the bow of her cello in such a revered way. Then a wicked smile appeared on her lips and with eyes slightly narrowed she turned to Harry and said,

"Time was you looked a bit...happier than that when I fingered your wand!" Harry pretended to be utterly shocked for a split second but then he grinned and was, for a few moments a carefree teenager again - or at least as carefree as the teenage Harry Potter had ever been able to feel.

After this exchange things lightened up and Harry and his dearest friend spent a very pleasant evening together. Hermione cooked for him - he couldn't recall eating a full meal she'd cooked since their 'last supper' at the Dursley's at the end of the summer of his 15^th birthday. She was as good at cooking as she was at everything else. The only thing she was not brilliant at was flying - and she never did that anyway! They stayed up late, reminisced lots more and, eventually, he showed her to the guest room where they shared a goodnight hug, she closed the door behind her and he opened the door to his own room. After the good food, good company - any company, he thought - and the couple of bottles of butterbeer they'd downed he slept soundly as soon as his head hit the pillows.

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Chapter Four

News and Ancient History

Harry woke to the smell of freshly ground coffee and bacon. Hermione placed a steaming mug and a plate of bacon sandwiches on his bedside table and sat on the edge of his bed. She was wearing pale blue pyjamas and a thin, cotton dressing gown. Harry immediately thought she must have transfigured her robes as she certainly hadn't brought any luggage with her but then he remembered that Ginny had stored some of her clothes in the tallboy in the spare room so he switched to that line of reasoning instead.

As if she could read his mind Hermione said,

"Morning, Harry. Hope you don't mind - I found these in my room - more comfortable than sleeping in my robes, I thought." Unable to resist another early morning 'Hermione-tease' she added, "And I didn't think I'd better sleep in the buff unless you decided to sleep-walk!" There was that silly, lopsided smile again, he noticed as he quickly pulled the covers securely over his lower half and remembered her quip about his 'wand' the previous evening. 'Black boxers' came to mind for some reason he couldn't immediately recall... He told himself off - he really shouldn't be thinking like that! But he couldn't help it - this was Hermione!

"Minx!" he smiled at her and he reached for his glasses to put the day in focus. He still wore black-rimmed, round glasses like he'd done all his life - or since he was seven anyway...

He had been walking back from the supermarket with Dudley and Petunia one afternoon on a wet weekend when she had barked at him:

"You there! What's the time?"

Harry stopped walking and looked around him, somewhat confusedly. He was carrying four carrier bags full of fresh vegetables and tins and he looked at her, the bemused expression written all over his face. Of course, Dudley wasn't carrying bags of groceries - he had a 1lb bag of sweets which he'd predictably failed to share with either his mother or Harry and, in which, just a few jellies now remained.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia. I don't have a clue. I've never had a watch - you know that!"

"Yes, I know that. Stupid boy! Why on earth should we waste our money buying you a watch?" She shook her head as if he'd proposed that she emigrate to Jupiter - which he actually wished she would! "The clock! Over there! On the church tower!" she almost screamed at him, pointing furiously like a demented weather vane. Dudley just stood and laughed at his cousin, chewing and dribbling a red river of molten sweet down his chins (for he already had two). "You can tell the time can't you? Or are you a complete idiot?" Now she half-smiled. Insulting her nephew was one of the few things in life that gave her visible pleasure.

"Yes, Aunt Petunia." Harry never dared be less than polite to his aunt and uncle despite their constant provocation. "I can tell the time, thank you, but...but I can't see any clock. I know the church is there because when we pass it I can see the board with the details about when the services are and the vicar's phone number but...but I can't see all the way up there." He had said this so matter-of-factly - as if he had never realised other people could see 'all the way up there'.

Aunt Petunia looked as though she was about to start shouting again, then - with a look of confusion Harry had only ever seen once again in his life since - the look on the face of the stunned mountain troll Quirrell had let loose on Hallowe'en in Harry's first year at Hogwarts immediately after it had been hit on the head by its own club when Ron had incanted Wingardium Leviosa - she seemed to realise what he had meant and said,

"You're blind! You can't see past the end of your own face, can you? Oh, this is just...Duddy, come here - Harry can't see properly!" The smile on her face throughout this 'dawning' had grown and grown.

The two of them got so much enjoyment from the next few moments as they discovered Harry was short-sighted that anyone else passing by in the street must have thought them very peculiar as they literally rocked with laughter. Harry, meanwhile, just stood there and shrugged his shoulders. He was used to their meanness but was able to, mostly, just shut it out. He got a bit tense inside as he watched them laugh uncontrollably but he thought he'd managed to hide it.

Just then a large, grey pigeon swooped out of a tree directly above Aunt Petunia's head and deposited a large, white splat on the shoulder of her black jacket. As she stopped screaming with laughter at Harry and started screaming at the 'stupid bloody bird' instead Dudley stepped backwards and right into the centre of a big, brown pile of 'doggy-dos' that he was sure had not been there a few moments before. He cried, not just because he'd trodden in the mess but mainly because, in his shock, he'd dropped his last handful of jellies, which sat scattered atop the pile like cherries on a chocolate ice-cream sundae. Harry had found it very hard not to laugh back at them both...

Having put on his glasses he looked at Hermione and thanked her for his 'breakfast in bed'. She took a sandwich from the pile and so did he. Then he took a swig off coffee and tried to say, with his mouth full,

"Sho mush be'er van instan'"

She smiled at him and, as the early morning sun caught her face and accented the bronze, copper and golden tones hidden in her curls he thought, once again, how lovely she was - how that hair, for which she had been teased mercilessly when still a child in her early years at Hogwarts, was now, truly, her 'crowning glory'. He was so pleased to have a friend like her: one who could make him laugh and smile, share his grief, console, sympathise and enhance his existence in so many ways. He reflected that she'd been doing just that now for some thirteen or fourteen years. Over half his life. Sitting eating sandwiches and joking with each other on a bed like this made him feel young again.

How many times in the last few months had he wished he could be back at Hogwarts again, climbing ladders up to Divination, re-potting mandrakes with Professor Sprout, hiding behind statues of magical creatures so he, Ron and Hermione could avoid Filch and Mrs. Norris. And the fun they had with his invisibility cloak...

Harry realised she hadn't mentioned Ron that much the night before so he asked about him now.

"Oh, he's fine. Same old Ron, you know? Happy if the Cannons win, miserable for weeks when they don't. He is still working with Remus at the Ministry in 'Werewolf Affairs'. Apparently they have loads of affairs - werewolves that is!" she laughed. "It's a joke, Harry. A very bad one but still only a joke!" she added when she saw he didn't laugh immediately. She gave him another playful punch on the arm. "He knows what'd happen if he ever thought about one, anyway," she added with another smile - but one of her more frightening ones this time! It was clear from the happy, relaxed way she could talk about Ron that they were still very much in love. It also explained how she was able to be so flirty with Harry - she didn't see anything threatening her relationship with her beloved husband.

It was Harry who was reacting nervously to the flirting. He couldn't help thinking he was enjoying it a bit too much and when, in the shower a while later, he found himself imagining Hermione having been standing right where he was now, barely half an hour before, he turned the water to cold and forced himself to stop.

Downstairs, the coffee having been refreshed, she carried on talking about Ron. He was thinking of adding an extension to their house in Stratford, she told him. She suspected it was his next way of trying to persuade her to start a family. She seemed quite sensitive about this. Harry knew from the letters he and Ginny had received as a result of Pigwidgeon's frequent visits that Molly had been badgering them for years to add to the Weasley line. Harry got the impression that Ron was quite keen - especially evident, he recalled, while his sister was pregnant with Dai - but he dared not let on to the 'committed career girl'. Then Harry remembered the Prophet story about Sherilyn Salt. He asked, excitedly,

"Hey! Is he working with that Salt girl on this new treatment?"

Hermione's face instantly turned to thunder.

"Her?" she sneered. "A real quack, Harry! She arrives at the Ministry every few weeks - always without an appointment - insisting on seeing either Ron or Remus with her little case of vials. What does she expect them to do - just stand there and take a swig? I wouldn't give her the time of day!"

It sounded a bit personal to Harry.

"Did you cross swords with her at school, by any chance?" he asked her, realising at once that she obviously had.

"Hmm," she mumbled, her head shaking with exasperation every bit like McGonagall's did when admonishing some naughty Gryffindor 1^st Year. "Don't you remember her?" she asked him. If he didn't, he thought, he was about to be 'introduced' to her right now.

"She was the one who got Snape to take 25 points off us because we switched labels on her potions bottles one day. She used to always be there doing extra work, trying to get Snape to...oh, whatever...we made her put essence of boomslang in her precious potion instead of pepperwort solution and she ended up with green nipples!"

Harry sniggered, but something else had grabbed his attention, not that. It wasn't even the totally inappropriate innuendo, from Hermione Granger of all people, that there might be something wrong about someone doing extra work!

"Never mind that! What - and this I can't even begin to guess - did she want with Snape?"

"Oh, Harry - she was known to us girls as the 'Slytherin Slut'. If there was a Slytherin boy she didn't sleep with it would only have been because he was one of the gay ones! She was famous for it! Rumour was she was chasing Narcissa Malfoy's all-time record. They reckon she got round every Slytherin boy in her year - including the gay ones!"

"Bloody Hell!" exclaimed Harry. "Ugh! That means she must have had Snape!" He made a revolted face. All his early memories of Professor Snape were bad ones. Although his opinion of him had changed many times - in more ways he could list in anything less than a novel - all the 'Snapes' he could recall prior to his 6^th Year pretty much revolted him.

"That's what it was all about! She pretended to be mad on potions so she could spend half of every day in his dungeon. She was after him! For the record! As far as we know she never got any more off him than a top grade NEWT but she did develop another insatiable appetite - this time for potion-making."

"And you reckon she's now trying to impress Remus and Ron?" smiled Harry.

"I don't know, but I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw Hagrid!" she shrugged. "I'm a little worried she might be a little too tempting for Remus, to be honest. Since he split with Alex Wood a couple of years ago he's gone back to being more interested in girls again. He's had a few flings with some of the secretaries at the Ministry but Ron says he thinks Salt might have got Remus to take her to lunch last week."

Then, as if this chit-chat had gone on a bit too long she suddenly sat up straight and said,

"Harry, I need to talk to you. Properly," she added as though they'd done anything but chat since her arrival. "It's why I came here."

The thought that Hermione might have Apparated to the USA for any other reason than for the chit-chat and flirting hadn't even crossed Harry's mind. Her arrival had so thrown him, for one thing, then, in the whirl of fun and crying and talking the possibility of there having been a real reason for her visit had totally eluded him.

"Hermione!" he interrupted. "Sorry. Have I been wasting your time? I just got carried away I was so glad you came! I didn't even ask if you meant to stay the night! You're here on official business, aren't you?"

"Yes, Harry, I am on business - but I wouldn't have swapped spending the time with you for anything. It's been fun - and so lovely to see you again. Besides," she continued, "If anyone ever needed a friend to talk to it was you. We haven't even started, really...doing all the talking you need, I mean."

Once again his eternal gratitude that there were such things as dentists' daughters leapt up the scale.

"Officially," she continued, in her 'business' voice, "I'm here as an Unspeakable. Rumours have started to spread about new 'dark magic activities'. Now, we know Voldemort can't be behind it this time - he's dead and gone for good. But, there were always a small number of his Death Eaters we never tracked down - even after thorough interrogation of all those we caught - and, sadly, there are always new witches and wizards who have some axe to grind against the 'establishment' and who will end up becoming 'dark'. Grindelwald was once, after all, just a disaffected young wizard, Tom Riddle was even Head Boy at Hogwarts. People go bad, they always have done and probably always will - and we fear some are doing so again right now.

"I don't know if you ever heard but Dumbledore went back to using the Sorting Hat this year at Hogwarts. The whole House System had broken down. There were wizards going dark in Gryffindor, swots in Slytherin, 'bravehearts' in Ravenclaw and much disloyalty in Hufflepuff. All that happened, eventually, was that the students 'sorted' themselves and mixed in those groups best suited to their tastes and natural inclinations rather than in their randomly given houses.

"Everyone, everywhere knew all the passwords and the 'bravehearts', for want of a better word all ended up spending their time in Gryffindor Tower, the true Slytherins down in the dungeons and so on.

"No amount of pressure from Dumbledore and the other staff could do anything about it. In the end, after a very long meeting with the teachers and governors, Dumbledore stood in assembly and announced that, 'in the words of an old muggle proverb - birds of a feather flock together'. The Sorting Hat was sent for - he sang a very rude song* about 'interfering busybodies' who tried to 'ruin thousands of years of tradition' before sorting every single student in the school. And you know what?" She paused. "Not one single student had to move! They were all where the Sorting Hat said they belonged already."

"Amazing," Harry said. "I really thought it was good idea not 'tarring' the pupils with a general 'brush' when they first arrived at school. But, I guess, they just wanted to 'tar' themselves after all." He shrugged. "Still, we tried, didn't we?"

Hermione nodded, equally ruefully. She had also had to, largely, concede defeat on her own 'prime objective' - SPEW. The majority of house-elves had chosen quite decisively to remain, in her opinion, enslaved. She had knitted hundreds of elf scarves, hats and socks to try to cajole them into freedom - but the vast majority of these all ended up in the possession of an elf called Dobby, who had eventually given his life in one of the 'final battles' with Voldemort. Having received Harry's help in gaining his own freedom from a life of drudgery and ill-treatment with the Malfoy family, he had helped Hermione try to persuade all the other Hogwarts house-elves to accept clothes (the sign of elf-freedom) and, henceforth, wages and time off - but only another twenty or so had ever decided to do so. The main concession virtually all elves had gone along with was the now traditional Boxing Day switch where students and staff waited on the elves for one day a year. Serving the elves had become known as 'Grangering' them, although most students these days had absolutely no idea why!

Things had not really got much better either after their situation was discovered to have been the result of a curse. They still wanted to be servants even after it was lifted and things had remained pretty much the same for most elves since.

"We're all worried about the new Slytherin set up since the resorting. Snape, as Head of House, is trying very hard to keep things as 'level' as he can but the students are in danger of turning away from him because they see him as being 'on Dumbledore's side'. The Slytherin pupils are very sensitive - about 50 percent of them are still, effectively, orphans, having parents either dead from the final battles or incarcerated for life in New Azkaban. Slytherin is still definitely the breeding ground for most of the potential dark witches and wizards, although, in the Hogwarts 'house anarchy' period a few seem to have spread to Ravenclaw as well. That's not entirely a new problem, though, is it?" Hermione continued, putting aside the more gossipy topic they had once more digressed onto.

Harry thought for a moment then agreed.

"No, you're right. Roger and Evan Davies were both Ravenclaw...and Cho," he added sadly. Somehow he still had more than a 'soft spot' for Cho. He squarely blamed himself for her fate and was, therefore, embarrassed to even remember her. He still refused to forgive himself for his part in her first boyfriend Cedric Diggory's death and then he and Hermione had paired her with Viktor Krum, the heir of Slytherin, purely for their own convenience. She had eventually turned herself over to Voldemort and became one of his Death Eaters. Harry had been there when she entered St Mungo's in her animagus form, a sea eagle, or erne, to kill on his orders.

"Dumbledore is extremely worried that students are being recruited once more to 'go dark'. He wants to strengthen the loyal students' skills in Defence Against the Dark Arts and set up something similar to our old Duelling Club again." She started to look a little nervous. She stopped talking and looked into Harry's eyes, smiling a thin, watery smile that made Harry a bit nervous too.

"What?" he asked, rather nonplussed.

"Well, Harry..." she stammered. "That's...that's why I'm...here." She finally got it out and, looked at him hopefully.

Harry still did not understand what on earth she meant. He looked at her with her wide eyes and her sort of 'pleading' expression for a short while before the penny finally dropped. It dropped, rattled around his insides for another short while before landing in the pit of his stomach with an extra loud 'clang'!

"Me?" he asked her, incredulously. "They want ME to be involved with this, somehow?" His mind seemed to be bursting with a thousand unanswered (and unanswerable) questions all shouting at once.

"Not they, Harry." Hermione tried her best now to look authoritative. "Dumbledore asked for you - personally. He wants you to return to Hogwarts to teach Dark Arts and run the new Duelling Club. He wants you to help him sort the place out!"

Harry was speechless.

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*The Sorting Hat's Return

This is a record of the song and diatribe sang and shouted by the Sorting Hat upon its return to The Great Hall for the 'Totally Sorted' party. As you will see the song degenerated suddenly into a rant. The very end of the poem was interrupted by Albus Dumbledore's loudest "Silence!" since he had to calm a mad panic amongst the students caused by Professor Quirrell's announcement that a troll was running loose inside Hogwarts.

In Hogwart's mighty history

There is no greater mystery

Than why your servant, humble

Had seen my status tumble.

Our great four-fathers deemed it right

That on each wondrous welcome night

Each student nervous, mild and meek

Should venture here - their house to seek!

Since Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw,

Slytherin and Gryffindor

Set this ancient rule in stone -

It should be damned well left alone!

Yet one whose wisdom few had doubted

Ope'd his mouth and nonsense spouted.

Shortly after, though I cussed,

I was left to gather dust.

I, whose value all had lauded -

And generations had applauded -

Cast aside in tortured pain;

My heritage in scorned disdain.

No more attention's centre, I,

Condemned on murky shelf to lie

Accepted sadly such a fate -

'Twas near too much to contemplate.

For six long years I bided time;

No songs to sing, no rhymes to rhyme.

The houses - they meant less and less

What was left? A bloody mess!

Passwords shared and rules a'flaunted!

Ghosts unsure quite who they haunted!

Pandemonium all around

No solution could be found.

As for Quidditch - broken hearted!

Trouble? Don't you get me started...

...I mean - for goodness sake! Beaters aiming bludgers at their own seekers because they want the other team to win? Chasers scoring own goals for the same reason? Forced to wear colours of a house they hate...no wonder they didn't want to win! If you were a true Slytherin how do you think it felt to see the points pouring into the Gryffindor counter? You had to have points taken away from your house to balance out the fact that some other prat had done a good Charms essay!

(Dumbledore stood and shook his head at the hat at this point.)

I'm sorry - I'll continue, if I may, headmaster?

So they sent for me - at last

This 'mouldy has-been' from the past!

To end the Hogwarts anarchy

And end this crass insanity.

So now I'm back - and order too!

I'm here to sort the LOT of you!

So get in line and wait your turn

To try me on - your fate to learn.

And nevermore will Hogwarts try

To break traditions; let them die.

For 'tried and tested' is the way

That things are done - and how they'll stay!

And interfering busybodies,

Keep your noses out! My God he's

Got a nerve, so wish me luck...

And Harry Potter? Go to...

(this was where Dumbledore intervened, of course, more than adequately drowning out the hat's final word!)

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