Harry Potter and the Heart of Regenesis

Chapter Nineteen

An Unexpected Visitor

Harry would have loved to have been part of the Gryffindor celebrations. He had lots of vivid memories of the parties and revelry he had enjoyed after winning the Quidditch Cup during his own school days - and he had beamed with happiness for little Verity as she had been carried off on shoulders, remembering fondly when this had happened to him.

It had been a wonderful afternoon up in the grandstands watching such a marvellous spectacle. What had impressed him as much as anything was the way the whole of Hogwarts was united in its support of the team (by the start of the game there were only a small handful of Slytherin dissenters left). The pupil-filled West Goal End of the stadium had been a sea of purple banners (it reminded Harry somewhat of the effect of the 'Merlin's Cloak' charm in the Crown Duels) and the red, blue, yellow and green rivalries were forgotten for a couple of hours of total unity.

Harry couldn't help thinking about the Sorting Hat again. If only such a spirit had existed in the school at the time of the 'experiment' maybe pupils wouldn't still be being 'condemned' at the drop (or at least the whim) of a Hat! Having thought that he then reflected on the changes he'd noticed in the past couple of months...

The Slytherins really did not seem so bad as when he had been at school. None of them seemed to be as downright sinister as Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, for instance and some that he'd encountered (Crispin St.John, Brenda McLauchlin - the second year in the Duelling Club with a heavy lisp and her friend Tamara Bulstrode came to mind) seemed positively...nice!

Then it had been nice to be shouting for the same team as Snape - sorry, Severus, he thought - he hadn't done that for along time. And Sprout, Flitwick and McGonagall forming a little line of staff cheerleaders had been very funny indeed - especially when Flitwick conjured those purple pom-poms and blonde wigs!

When the game ended Harry remained in his seat until the ground was almost empty. He could hear happy voiced revellers walking along the road back to Hogsmeade Village and the higher-pitched hum of the pupils heading back up to the castle and he soaked up the atmosphere.

"If only I could store all this in a pensieve," he said quietly to himself. And then he sat back in his seat and looked up into the sky where a few clouds had gathered and made greyish purple shapes against what was left of the (now paler) blue sky. Later, of course, the sun would set and he hoped it would the kind of evening where the sky would shine with shades of gold and salmon pink, interspersed with lines of dark mauve and yet still having that special blue as its backdrop. Some muggles called it 'sky blue pink' - which he understood but the term hardly did the effect justice.

Painting such a picture in his mind made him think of Dean again and, as he glanced down to the grass below him he saw his old friend there once again, carefully dismantling the tripods which had held his omnioculars, assisted by his beautiful fiancée. Harry smiled as he suddenly recalled a memory of Dean hopping round and round the Dark Arts classroom, like a demented bunny rabbit, while singing the national anthem. Then he frowned as he remembered why he had been doing that - Barty Crouch Jr, posing as Moody, had put him under Imperius. That was not so funny.

Dean and Ayshea left and Harry sat back in his seat again. For the next twenty minutes or so he was up in the air. It was Slytherin v Gryffindor once more and Harry was face to face with Draco Malfoy. He imagined himself on his old Firebolt, red Gryffindor robes flying out behind him, the stands once more filled with cheering people. He easily dodged away from bludgers, gliding through the air, changing direction with a tiny flick of the wrist. Then he would see the snitch and accelerate in its direction seeing as he did the sneering, disappointed face of his rival seeker as he realised he'd lost to Potter once again.

"Remember the mirror, Harry," came a voice behind him. Pulled out of his reveries by the voice's familiar tones Harry responded with,

"Hello, Professor."

Of course Harry remembered the mirror. The 'Mirror of Erised', which showed you your heart's greatest desire. Harry had spent many hours in front of this mirror in his 1^st Year at Hogwarts - seeing himself with his parents. Until then he hadn't even known what they looked like and it was only the fact that everyone kept telling him how much he looked like James that he was able to realise who they were. Professor Dumbledore had eventually needed to move it away to prevent Harry from wasting so much of his time looking into it. It hadn't seemed like a waste of time back then, of course - and if Dumbledore had never left it where Harry would find it he would never have known what it was and how it worked. Both these pieces of knowledge were vital in his later thwarting of the 'Quirrell parasite' incarnation of Voldemort.

Harry smiled. He realised he'd just been 'in front of the mirror' again. He didn't need to look round and see the old man but he sat there feeling happier and more relaxed than he'd been for ages and chatted.

"Do you know, professor, if I could look in the Mirror of Erised today I don't think I'd see my parents at all?" Somehow, he could see Dumbledore nodding behind him.

"And what does your heart desire?" his old mentor asked.

Harry wondered. He thought about saying Ginny - but he didn't really know if that was true anymore. He had thought it might have been earlier in the day when he'd been reminiscing about the changing rooms but not when he'd looked down and actually seen her later. Then, he thought he ought to say Ginny - but he also remembered not seeing her in the amulet...

"I want to fly," he said, finally. "I want to play Quidditch. I want to be able to use a wand." He spoke faster and faster. "I want to transform into a Golden Griffin and fly over the Forbidden Forest, I want to be able to open a door by saying Alohomora...I..." he suddenly ground to a halt. "...I want to be magic again," he trailed off, lowering his head.

"You want magic?" the old man asked him rhetorically. "Turn around, Harry."

Harry turned quickly. Did the old master have a cure? Some magical panacea to help him?

The old man smiled warmly.

"This...is magic, Harry," he whispered gently. On his lap was a sleeping boy covered in a pale blue blanket. "And it belongs to you, I believe," he smiled.

Harry's heart leapt again as Dumbledore handed his son to him. As he did so the boy's eyes opened - they were 'Lily' green like his father and grandmother. If he didn't recognise Harry then he was at least not frightened to wake up in the arms of a stranger. But Harry thought there was some recognition - some instinctive memory of the man who had sung him to sleep with Suo Gan from his very earliest days. Harry smiled with joy and his Dai smiled back at him.

"Daddy," the little boy said, his face lighting up.

"Magic!" Harry grinned at Dumbledore as they left the grandstand together.

*********************

When Harry and Dai got back to the staff quarters Harry knocked the door of Maggie and Severus on the way to his own rooms. When Aunt Maggie saw her nephew squealed with delight and she immediately picked him up from where he was standing and gave him a big hug and kiss.

"Hello!" she exclaimed. "Wow, you're a big boy now," she said happily. She lifted him above her head and twirled him round. Dai giggled with glee. They had spent a lot of time together over the previous Christmas at The Burrow and he was comfortable with Maggie - plus she looked enough like his mum that it would be hard for him to have ever thought of Maggie as a stranger! Dai, though, was more astute than any of the adults gave him credit for.

"Where's Vanna?" he suddenly asked. Maggie realised at once he meant Savannah, his little cousin.

"She's gone to bed," Maggie told him. His little face fell. He had idolised the little girl over the holiday, she remembered and had been allowed to hold her while he was sat down. He had been so pleased when little Savannah fell asleep in his arms. With Stu Dai had not been quite as comfortable, however. It was probably a 'boy' thing.

"Are you taking Dai down to the Great Hall for breakfast?" Maggie asked Harry.

"I hadn't thought about it but, yes - I will, of course," he replied.

"Well," Maggie now spoke to Dai again, bending her knees so she was at his level and could talk to him face to face. "You'll see the twins at breakfast. Go and have a nice sleep now with daddy and in the morning you can all have lots of fun!"

She leant forward and kissed her nephew goodnight. He threw his arms around her again saying 'night-night' like hundreds of generations of children before him.

Harry now took his hand, said his own goodnight and walked Dai the rest of the way to their rooms hand in hand. It felt so nice to be a dad again, Harry thought.

Harry showed Dai around his living quarters. He said hello to the pretty lady but she just smiled back, he watched the countryside scene for a moment but nothing was happening and he got bored very quickly.

Harry took the small rucksack Dumbledore had given him off his back and found a clean pair of pyjamas and some washing things inside, as well as clean clothes for tomorrow. He laid the clothes on the settee and took Dai to the bathroom for a quick wash.

But when Dai saw the big, white bathtub he immediately found a few reserves of energy the long day had not stolen from him. He ran over to it then turned and looked at his dad in that pleading way little children do.

"OK," Harry smiled at him. "There's time for a quick bath." The little boy jumped with glee. "What colour bubbles do you want?"

Like a true Welshman (or was it a true Gryffindor?) Dai replied straightaway,

"Red ones! Red ones!"

Harry pulled a tiny lever on the side of the bathtub and when he turned on the taps the water filled the enormous tub in what seemed like no time at all. Just like in the Prefects' Bathroom the water was already impregnated with some sort of solution to turn the water red and make it bubble. Harry sniffed. It seemed to him that he could smell roses but also cherries. He shrugged and put his hand in the water. (This was another muggle thing. No wizard or witch ever put his or her hand into a bath to see if it was too hot, or dipped their elbows in like muggle mothers with babies. Harry did it out of habit, a habit which after fourteen years living in the Wizarding World he had still failed to break.) Of course, the temperature was perfect - a little cooler than he would have had it himself but just right for young Dai.

No sooner had Harry's 'little man' been lifted up into the tub, however, than a great swooshing sound that seemed to emanate from under the floor completely drowned out Dai's giggles. It was followed by an almighty splash of red water and bubbles and, suddenly, there was not one but two people in the bath!

"Myrtle!" Harry cried in astonishment. "What the...?" But he didn't get chance to finish his sentence. The dark-haired bespectacled girl turned to face him.

"Oh? You remember me then?" she said, a sinister, accusing look on her plain, squat face. Then, as was her wont, she started howling with tears.

"Over two months Harry Potter's been back at Hogwarts," she wailed. "And did he come to see poor Myrtle? Poor, ugly Myrtle?" she whined. "Sad, 'moaning' Myrtle?" she continued, accompanied by her usual fake howls and sobs. "Unhappy, dead Myrtle!" she then exclaimed - twice as loud - and she fixed a glare on Harry that might have scared him had he not encountered the real emotion so many times.

"I hadn't forgotten you," he tried to placate. "I've been very busy you know?"

That wouldn't work, he saw. So he tried again. "My godfather has a nephew and niece here I haven't even had the chance to spend any time with them either."

Harry actually felt very guilty that he hadn't made more of an effort to become reacquainted with Leo and Mercy. Leo was the Gryffindor 6^th Year prefect and Mercy, though only a 4^th Year, was thought by Professor McGonagall to be a probable future Head Girl. He had seen them around and had said 'hi' or waved to them but Sirius had only owled him a couple of days before to say that he'd heard they were disappointed not to have seen much of him out of class. Harry didn't even teach Leo as he was studying Ancient Runes and Potions at NEWT level and not DADA.

Harry looked at the surprised expression on Dai's face. Had he even seen a ghost before? He certainly didn't seem to mind. He was more concerned about this strange, white, see-through girl sharing his bath while wearing full school uniform. He tried to splash her but the red wave he created simply bounced back off the enamel side of the bath. He kept trying, giggling ever more as his attempts were unsuccessful. Myrtle gave a rare smile.

"Ooooh! He's lovely!" She tried blowing some bubbles in Dai's direction but nothing happened. "It isn't easy being a ghost you know?" she turned and said to Harry in a very matter-of-fact way. Then she sucked herself back in to the overflow pipe and gushed back out making as big a splash again as she had at her first appearance. Harry looked down at the floor - there was a small red sea on the black and white tiles and his feet were nearly ankle deep by now. His white trainers were ruined!

"Myrtle!" Harry frowned, only half annoyed, really. Then he smiled again - Dai was having too much fun for him to really be cross with the hapless ex-girl! "Anyway," he raised an eyebrow, "What if it'd been me in the bath!"

Myrtle suddenly pretended to be aloof and put her nose in the air like a snooty Slytherin prefect. "Nothing I haven't seen before," she announced nonchalantly. Then Harry remembered her spying on him in the Prefect's Bathroom and coughed, a little embarrassed as Myrtle smirked.

"Ahem!" he coughed again, making his eyes go wide at her in a way that said 'enough!' "It is nice to see you smiling, though, Myrtle. How's your cubicle?"

It was the wrong thing to say. She started wailing like a banshee again.

"Oh, don't talk to me about that," she moaned, justifying her name. "The 4^th Year girls have started using them again just to get at me," she cried to Harry in an extremely whiny 'little girl' voice. "It's that Olivia and her friends. She's just like her grandmother - and its her fault I'm dead! Always teasing me and calling me four-eyes."

Harry finally remembered where he knew Olivia Hornby from. It must have been her grandmother who had been in school with Hagrid and Tom Riddle when the latter opened the Chamber of Secrets for the first time. Myrtle had been hiding in the toilets to get away from Olive Hornby teasing her about her glasses. It was, in a way, why Myrtle was dead!

"Oh dear," thought Harry, trying his very best not to laugh. "That - that must be terrible for you," he said. He also hoped that it sounded more sincere than he meant it. He could imagine a grandmother priming her granddaughter to 'make sure she goes down to the disused girl's toilets and find Moaning Myrtle'.

Dai decided he'd been ignored for long enough.

"I wanna get out now, daddy!" he announced, bringing his hand down once more into the suds, some of which flew up and landed on his nose, making him look even more cute and some more of which landed on his dad's already drenched, pink trainers.

Harry looked at Myrtle and said,

"Well, thanks for coming to see us, Myrtle. Nice to see you." This was her invitation to leave and she recognised it.

"Come down and see me, will you Harry?" Harry nodded.

"Yes, OK!" he said with a wave of his head towards the overflow pipe.

She said another goodbye and waved at little Dai once more before whooshing away back into the plumbing system.

Harry splashed his way over to the towel rail and took a large, warm, fluffy red towel from it and splashed back to lift his son from the bathtub.

"Was that fun?" he asked him.

"Great. Much nicer than a boring old shower. Splish, splash splosh!" he giggled again. "Who was that funny lady?"

Harry thought for a moment then answered him.

"That was Moaning Myrtle," he said, smiling. "She's one of the Hogwarts ghosts. Have you ever seen a ghost before?"

Dai shook his little, wet head and replied,

"Jerry says there's one in our house...but I never seen anyone there except him and mommy. And the old lady."

Several things crossed Harry's mind at this point. Little Dai's American accent, the fact he called Ginny 'mommy' rather than 'mummy' - but mostly it was his little boy referring to 'Jerry' and 'home' as being connected. That hurt. He tried not to show it, however and, while rubbing the towel over Dai's hair to dry it asked,

"What old lady?"

"She sits in the chair when I'm in bed watching me and doing her knitting. She's very old - her skin doesn't fit her anymore."

Harry loved the way children put sentences together. Dai was close to four years old now and was at the age now where he was confident enough to try making up his own descriptions. Harry had certainly not heard wrinkles described in that way before - it was clever, cute and very apt to boot. Harry also realised that either Dai had a very old babysitter when Ginny went out or - he had seen the ghost Jerry had told him about!

When Dai was dried and wrapped in the towel, Harry looked around the soaking wreck of a room again.

"I'd better clean this floor up, young man." Dai's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Can I do it? Can I do it?" Harry was surprised.

"Well..." he started to say.

"I do at home," Dai interrupted. "Mommy lets me!"

He looked so keen to help his dad tidy up. 'When did a three year old want to use a mop?' Harry thought.

"Ok, you can help me," Harry said not wanting to upset him.

"OK!!!" said little Dai, is if he'd just been given a golden galleon. "Where is it?" Dai asked, holding out his hand.

"Where's what?" Harry asked, somewhat confused.

"Your wand, silly!" Dai laughed.

Yet another penny dropped in Harry's head.

"What?" he thought, out loud. That little Dai was already magical hadn't even crossed his mind. He was utterly astonished...but also extremely excited. "Wait here!" he told Dai - and Dai kept smiling and was bouncing up and down with excitement.

Stopping just inside the bathroom door to pull off his wet footwear Harry ran to his bedroom and pulled out the Ollivanders box from the bedside cabinet drawer. He took out the holly wand and raced back to the bathroom almost as excited as he could ever remember being.

Dai held out his hand and Harry, almost breathless with trepidation, extended his own arm and placed his 'lifeless stick' into his son's eager hand.

Dai took the wand. His eyebrows shot up as he felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.*

The look on Dai's face told Harry that, if he had ever really held a wand before, as he had just claimed he had - he had not encountered a reaction like that. It was an exact repeat of what Harry had experienced when he had first taken the same wand from Mr Ollivander nearly fifteen years earlier.

"Go on, then, little man!" Harry encouraged his son.

Dai took a deep breath, pointed the wand at the floor and said,

"Dessicatio!"

Instantly the bathroom was restored to a pristine, clean, dry and polished condition. Dai laughed with joy and immediately handed the wand back to his amazed father.

"Wow!" was all Harry could say as he took Dai's hand and, together, they walked back out to the living room.

*********************

*The description of what happened when Dai took Harry's wand was an almost direct quotation of the words written by JK Rowling in HP&TPS/SS when Harry first held the same wand.

*********************

Chapter Twenty

A New Beginning

While Harry and Dai enjoyed another beautiful, sunny day in the grounds of Hogwarts Castle (and, in truth, just inside the Forest, where Harry knew they would be safe) down in the dungeons Grendel Chambers and his 'Acolytes' were meeting one more time before the holidays.

"The history of the Wizarding World is full of - littered with, one might say - many, often pitifully feeble, attempts by those who follow the darker pathway of magic to persuade the unenlightened majority of the benefits all true witches and wizards could enjoy in a world uncluttered with mudbloods and muggle-lovers.

Some have tried through peaceful means to convince - all of those have failed.

Some have tried by force - either by becoming powerful political leaders and imposing their ideals, principles and standards on the areas of the world they have found under their control or through, shall we say, alternate routes - the most recent example of this being, of course, our fellow Slytherin Tom Riddle who, as Lord Voldemort, came very - very - close to achieving his aims and was only thwarted at the last hurdle by a most unfortunate and unforeseeable combination of trickery, disloyalty and - the one thing we hate more than anything else - voluntary self-sacrifice.

Well, the time has come for more sacrifices. Lambs are going to be slaughtered, my friends! The difference is," he laughed with an empty, emotionless voice "- these will not be willing victims!

"Within the next year," he addressed the sixteen others, "dark magic will once more rise into prominence. For the first time since the time of the great Dark Lord Voldemort followers of dark magic will not have to hide their allegiances - and they will no longer have to fear for their freedom - or even their lives. They will no longer be locked up or worse for daring to believe in things different from those things the 'establishment' tells us are acceptable.

"New Azkaban will open its doors and those of us who have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends incarcerated in its hellish grip will see them walk free once more - free to exercise their right to choose what they believe is the right way for them to live and think. Mind control is the biggest evil binding the Wizarding World."

As Chambers spoke it was rather like some old film of a Nuremberg rally. His voice grew ever louder so that, after a while he was shouting (even though everyone present could have heard him even if he had whispered). He waved his arms and encouraged verbal responses from the 'Acolytes', feeding on their growing enthusiasm to fuel his own monologue.

"Over the summer to come the first signs of this new revolution will begin to be seen - wizards and witches who are against our worthy cause will die and poor, useless muggles will perish as we once again see dark magic rise in power and prominence. Be ready for the predictable 'cover stories' and excuses - accidents, explosions caused by chemicals overheating... ONLY WE WILL KNOW THE TRUTH! And once more, a Dark Mark will grace the skies as a new Dark Lord prepares to take the reigns of this renaissance, which will affect the whole earth. It will not just change the Wizarding World but it will finally transform the whole world, to let it be, at last, what many of us believe it should always have been.

"And you and I will bear upon our arms a mark of allegiance to the new dark Lord, just as our predecessors wore Morsmordre with pride in days gone by. Our new Lord will reward us for our faithfulness and our steadfast loyalty - our unswerving adherence to what we believe in. 'The Acolytes' will become known as leaders - no longer followers - and we will be amongst those who lead the Wizarding World into this brave new future.

"You will have to be loyal to the cause - there will be penalties to pay for those who are not entirely loyal," he announced in a most threatening tone. "Even Lord Voldemort had to ultimately punish and even kill some of his most loyal servants when they failed to show him the faithfulness he both expected and deserved.

A hand was raised from the floor where the others sat, soaking up Grendel's words with a mixture of excitement, fear and awed respect.

Several of the group were privately concerned that they were being dragged in far deeper than they had either thought or, truly, desired.

Finally, one brave voice managed to find the courage to be heard.

"I...I'm s-sorry. I...I really d-don't w-want to be..." It was Tabitha Tait, the 'mole' they had placed in Harry Potter's Duelling Club.

Grendel shouted fiercely, interrupting her.

"Stand up Tabitha! Come forward!" He beckoned her with a long finger.

Tabitha was so afraid she found it extremely difficult to stand up. She also had eyes full of tears.

Grendel's voice changed. He became like a kindly father for a moment.

"Tabitha," he said gently, smiling with both his mouth and his eyes. "Did anyone force you to come and join our little group?"

She shook her head timidly.

"And...have I not taught you selflessly and patiently?"

Again she responded silently, this time nodding.

"Dear girl...do you remember my little pet mice? Weren't they cute? All nice and white." He was talking to the sixteen-year-old girl as though she were a toddler. Everyone in the room, though, knew that a volcano was poised to explode. Even Tabitha knew and her face reflected this fear.

He continued for a few moments reminding her of his 'lovely little mice'; how they ran up and down her arms and squeaked a lot.

Then he asked her the loaded question.

"And what happened to my dear, sweet little mice, Tabitha?"

She shook violently, completely unable to control her body. She did not answer.

"What happened, Tabitha?" asked Grendel louder and more impatiently, the menace growing.

"Th-they..." She couldn't go on.

"What happened!" he shouted with the full force of his voice and drawing his wand at the same time.

"They...died," she blurted out, the tears now flooding down her face both in fear and revulsion.

"Yes they died!" he reiterated. "They died after sixteen students practiced curses on them for as long as their weak, pathetic bodies could stand.

"You," he pointed at her. "You, practiced Cruciatus on those poor little mousey-wouseys, Tabitha Tait, until their stupid fucking bodies practically exploded with the pain!" He looked around to see the reaction in the room. It was practically 50-50 - half of them were enjoying every moment, the rest were almost as scared as Tabitha. The he turned back to Tabitha, in 'nice' mode again.

"Ever felt the Cruciatus curse, Tabby?" he smiled.

She shook her head, a somewhat puzzled expression on her tear-stained face - not seeing what was coming next...

"CRUCIO!" he immediately shouted, pointing his wand at her.

The girl fell to the floor, writhing in agony and suddenly feeling more pain than she had ever known existed. Every fibre of her being convulsed and twitched in agony as a thousand knives pierced her head, her legs, her stomach - and hot acid raced through every vein - burning her from within. She threw out her arms and flailed her head back and forth, back and forth, crashing it repeatedly into the stone floor until small trickles of blood ran from both her mouth and her nose.

"Squeak, little mousey!" roared Grendel Chambers. Tabitha screamed and wailed in absolute agony, before curling herself up into a foetal position as her torturer finally lowered his wand and left her sobbing quietly, bloodied and lying, completely robbed of dignity, in a pool of her own urine.

"Pick her up," he sneered at two other girls sitting nearby - they had both been in the 'scared' half. They stood and helped their friend to stand. Tabitha's face was deathly white, the red from her nose and mouth making a stark contrast with it. Her hair was dishevelled, her clothes untidied and wet.

"Look at her!" Grendel ordered the whole group. "That's what she did to the mice. That's what you all did. And you've done so much more than that as well!"

He turned his head to face to Tabitha. "Ever want to feel that again?" he asked her.

Tabitha shook her head extremely quickly and for several seconds.

"No!" she managed to say. "No! NO!!"

"That, then, is why you will be loyal to the truths you have been taught this past year. Or does anyone else want to question our noble mission?"

That was the ultimate rhetorical question. No-one at all was going to volunteer to be his next mouse. They had also been forced to realise, if they hadn't already, that they had all done more than enough to warrant spending a large proportion of the rest of their lives in New Azkaban.

Grendel then continued as though Tabitha had never raised her hand. Tabitha, herself, he ordered to sit back down - whatever her discomfort.

"My time with you here as a student, dear fellow Slytherins, is almost at its end - likewise for dear Ramona and Cardew. We will, however, be replaced and our numbers will soon grow. My brother Ahab will become your new figurehead - with Sergei at his right hand. I will still be here at Hogwarts however, in a new capacity, and I will do all I can to guide and advise them as they seek to continue to teach you what the weak, muggle and mud-blood loving Hogwarts hierarchy will not, until the day they are finally replaced by others who will be actually worthy of such lofty and influential positions.

"Greet Ahab and Sergei. I commend them to you."

He began to clap as the two stood and made their way to his side. The remainder of the group joined him in the slow, steady applause with stony, cold, hard and expressionless faces hiding the pumping adrenaline that coursed through every vein in each one of the trembling bodies.

*********************

Exam week passed and Harry found that he missed being in his classroom. Having to stand watching rows after row of pupils scratching over parchments in the Great Hall was no substitute for teaching them, he found and he was missing Dai terribly, he having been returned to Ginny (via Angelina) and, by now, taken to China - on the other side of the world.

The pupils were subdued, making far less noise in the corridors and on the stairs and going to bed much earlier than usual. The practical tests were better. Not only did Harry conduct the ones for DADA exams but he was also invited to be an independent observer in some Charms OWLs and a 2^nd Year Potions practical. It was his job to be on hand if pupils needed extra (or replacement) ingredients, to clean up after spills etc. and to check for any attempted cheating or talking, that sort of thing.

Severus told the class that they would be making an 'odour repelling' potion under timed examination conditions. (In fact, he was fed up with foul smelling nappies and had rigged the task to provide him with enough 'anti-stink' potion to see Savannah and Stu right through toilet-training even if only half the students got it right!) Row after row of gleaming copper cauldrons (it was a Hogwarts tradition that most cauldrons only ever got polished the week before exams) sat ready for the test, as Professor Snape looked his condescending best at them. Then he sneered the way only he could (Harry had finally learnt it was all an act - he knew well enough that his brother-in-law could be just as nice - or nasty - as he wished with little more than a curl of a lip or a raised eyebrow) and he ordered them to 'begin!'

Twitching, shaking fingers tried to prise apart the tightly bound instruction scrolls and, after a few minutes, chopping could be heard along with the sounds of the sloshing of liquids being measured and poured and fires being lit.

Harrietta Hepscott, a little Ravenclaw 2^nd Year with freckles who was still waiting for her chance to join the Duelling Club, was the first to raise her hand and ask Harry to go over to where she was working.

"I think I've chopped my rose petals too finely," she explained. "I've done them the size that the buttercup roots ought to be. Please may I have some more?"

Harry walked over to Severus and quietly explained. Then the Professor took a fresh pile of petals over to Harrietta, who said 'thank you' and, upon returning to where Harry stood he whispered in the younger professor's ear,

"Chopped that size, the only thing they'd make the potion useful for would be curing flatulent dragons!" he scorned. Harry was always amazed that there were potions for so many obscure things. 'A potion for treating dragon flatulence', he thought, smiling and wondering what a dragon fart smelt like anyway!

About half an hour into the exam just about everyone became aware of one particular student encountering a problem. A loud whistle, almost like an air raid siren rose from the back of the room and all heads turned to see what had caused it. I seemed to be coming, along with some rather putrid olive-green smoke from one particular cauldron. On closer inspection it was found to be that of another Ravenclaw, Bradley Bradley (he of the unimaginative parents, as Professor Flitwick had re-christened him).

Bradley admitted that he had 'gone wrong somewhere' and Snape quickly diagnosed that a unicorn tail-hair had been added both before the optimum temperature had been reached and also before the 'very volatile' suspension of denatured chlorophyll in alcohol. By the time the green liquid had finally been added the unicorn hair had transformed the contents of the cauldron into a very dangerous and unstable gas that had both laxative and aphrodisiac properties.

"Oh, bugger! We've got problems now!" Severus muttered to Harry as he began clearing the smoke with some wild wand waving. As the smoke had spread from the cauldron around the room Harry noticed lots of thirteen-year-old pupils looking at each other in ways usually reserved for the corner of the Common Room. Boys eyed up girls, girls eyed up boys - some boys even eyed up boys and didn't necessarily have the looks returned in the friendliest way! Then, after a few more minutes, hands started going into the air asking for permission to visit the loo...

By the end of the Potions exam Harry once again felt an enormous relief that he never had to do another Potions lesson or exam - he'd felt the same way years earlier, he remembered, when still at school. He and cauldrons had never, really, got on all that well!

Well over three-quarters of the pupils had succeeded in making perfect potions and Severus put some of one successful student's product into a small glass vial and handed it to Harry. They were standing in Snape's office where he and Harry had shared many good (and bad) times in the past.

"What's that for?" he asked. Severus nodded at the vial and said,

"You may find that very useful. Do you like the smell of child's vomit?" It was one of Harry's least favourite fragrances. Ever since he'd been small and Dudley had been sick all over his one and only teddy bear Harry had hated 'eau de regurgitation'. He'd only had to see another pupil throw up at school and he'd wanted to do the same thing. Actually seeing a pool of the stuff had almost been too much and it frequently made his own gorge rise to the back of his throat. Once or twice he'd actually had to swallow it back down just in time but on another occasion he'd been too late and horribly - horribly - some had come out through his nose.

"Come," Severus gestured. He walked to one of the many shelves of jars that lined the room. He opened a jar. "Sniff!" he told Harry. "Go on!"

Very gingerly Harry bent his head over the open jar. It was the foulest smell he had ever experienced - a putrid mix of rotting fish, bad eggs and boiling vinegar. It caught the back of your nose like smelling salts but filled your whole body with absolute revulsion.

"Ugh! What the hell is that?" Harry managed to splutter, half choking and half trying not to bring back his breakfast.

"That, Harry, is grindylow liver. Absolutely revolting, isn't it." Harry swallowed and nodded.

"Now, open your vial." Harry obliged. "Go on, sniff!" Harry sniffed. He couldn't smell anything. Considering the rose petals and orchid stamens etc. he had seen the pupils put into the potion he was surprised.

"It's inert, for now, Harry. Put some on your fingertip." Harry did. "Now, smear it onto your upper lip. Harry did, although he seemed to have so little of the oily liquid on his finger that his lip still felt dry.

Once again Snape opened the jar of grindylow liver.

"Go on!" he smiled. Harry was very unsure - he wasn't sure he could sniff that again without producing something else, vaguely kipper smelling, for Snape to put in a jar! "Trust me!"

Although there were probably hundreds of times in his life when a 'trust me' from Severus Snape would have made Harry run a mile, for some reason he now bent his head over the jar again. When he sniffed this time a wonderful aroma of roses, freshly cut grass and vanilla filled his nostrils. It was like walking in a beautiful garden on a summer's day. Not a trace of rotting fish or eggs anywhere.

"Think you'll find it useful?" Severus smiled.

"You bet!" replied Harry, grinning.

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