Harry Potter and the Second Prophecy

Chapter 15 - Drawing Closer

Days passed, and finally Harry, Ron and Hermione were talking again, friends as ever. Harry talked things over with Ginny, and they decided to continue to date, but not exclusively. Camilia drew farther from the group and spent the vast majority of her time with the Slytherins; she still spoke to her fellow Gryffindors, but not with any great regularity. Harry tried on a number of occasions to discuss with her the evening they'd had their confrontation, but Camilia was unwilling, and even more unwilling to discuss the book she had left in Harry's possession. All he could get from her, in fact, was that she had discontinued her lessons with Professor Dumbledore.

"Do you think that's wise?" he had asked her.

"I know what I'm doing," she had told him, and that had been the end of the conversation.

Days turned into weeks, and Camilia became more distant. Harry, Ron and Hermione did their best to keep her included in their circle of friends, but she seemed less and less interested in spending time with them. On one occasion, because her behavior had been so strange, Harry found himself examining her forearms from across the room and knew that, if he was even now searching for a Dark Mark, Camilia was traveling roads she oughtn't.

It was at the beginning of May that Harry found his opportunity to get on Camilia's good side. He was up studying late one night, lying in his bed with his Potions textbook open on his lap, when he had the strong impression that he should reach for the Marauder's Map. After fishing around in his trunk for it, he tapped the map with his wand and muttered the proper incantation to get it to work its magic: "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." The map came to life, and after he'd studied it for only a little while, he found what he'd been looking for. On the third floor, where Hagrid had once kept Fluffy, were two names; Draco Malfoy and Camilia Pritchard. He wasn't sure how long they'd been there, but that was not what got his attention. Mrs. Norris' name was hovering outside the door behind which the two were positioned, and then it was moving away from the door...and advancing up the stairs...and heading straight towards Filch's office, whose name was hovering inside.

Harry knew he had no time to waste; he threw his invisibility cloak on over his pajamas, donned his sneakers, which he deemed less noisy than his slippers, and made for the door. Ron and Hermione noticed only a breeze pass outside his curtains...they never broke away from their activities to see what might have been happening, and wouldn't have anyway, knowing that Hermione was supposed to be nowhere near Ron's bed.

* * * * * * * *

Malfoy had planned his speech to the letter; he was determined to give her just enough information to make her believe he had her best interests at heart, but not enough to give away anything that might endanger his mission. It was working beautifully. Camilia believed only that Malfoy had had this information weighing on his heart, and that he cared so much for her that he found this to be the right time to make his confession.

"By the time he found you, he'd been looking for two years. Every orphanage, every foster care family...it took him ages. He even came across another Pritchard girl, and she had a temper like nothing he'd ever seen, but she never showed any signs of magic, even when she was explosively angry, he told me. But when he found you, he said he knew immediately. You were undeniably the girl from the prophecy. He was baffled, he said, that you had been oblivious to your abilities for so long."

At this point Malfoy made a very strategic move: he took Camilia's hand, and verbally feigned his own surprise at the news that she hadn't recognized how different, how superior she was to all those around her. If Draco Malfoy had learned anything from his parents, it was that flattery could and did get you everywhere.

He then proceeded with his tale. "He sent Belletrix, you'll meet her, she's one of my favorite family members, to arrange with your school to come to England...a historical reward for their wonderful job as the top orphanage in Massachusetts. She even offered the school some sort of scholarship; my father spent quite literally thousands of Galleons to pay the Muggle aeroplane fares to bring you and the Muggles to London. Muggles do a fine job of vacationing, of course, so it took very little effort on the part of my family to schedule their trip. It was when you were at King's Cross that you were to be taken; it was my mother who came up with the idea. She had an old handbag my father had given her years ago...just some Christmas present. The Muggles would have paid a fortune for it. She left it in the ladies' toilet, full of as many Muggle items as she could lay hands on, and when you passed by, she was waiting. The only way she knew to get you into the ladies' room was to put you under Imperius; she wasn't too keen on the idea, but it was the best she and father could come up with.

"Father had seen you in Boston; he had said that he knew the handbag would tempt you, and that would be the first step to confirming your heritage. When mother entered the ladies' toilet a few minutes after you'd gone in and you and the handbag had vanished, she apparated into our living room and informed my father, who disapparated immediately. He arrived moments later in the Forbidden Forest, and he said he was quite concerned when he discovered you could not fight off the Acromantulas, but he was still quite sure you were who you are, so he halted them with a mass stunning spell. He asked a werewolf in the service of the Dark Lord, one Greyback, if he'd be willing to undergo a forced transformation to prove you a Pritchard, and of course Greyback agreed, provided if you weren't the Pritchard of the prophecy, you'd be his dinner."

At this point Camilia had to interrupt. "His what?" she exclaimed.

"Dinner," repeated Malfoy.

"Are you serious?" she asked, incredulous. Malfoy nodded. "How could your father possibly agree to that? If I hadn't been a witch, he'd have let me be eaten by a werewolf?" She was horrified.

"Camilia, you are the one. It doesn't matter what might have happened; the point is that it is you. My father watched from the trees at the edge of the forest as you erected a wandless defense against one of the most ferocious and sadistic creatures of the magical world. Your magic - he said it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. I would argue that he was wrong, of course," he added, winking and continuing his flattery, "but he said it was exquisite: a virtual shield of transparent blue light surrounding your entire body. You, Camilia, are She. You are the one about whom the Oracle at Delphi prophesied. And my father found you," he finished with a spoken flourish.

"He almost killed me," she corrected him.

"He brought us together," he countered. "He introduced you to the world in which you should have been raised, surrounded by the people who would have befriended you."

Camilia thought a moment. The people who would have befriended me. Harry. Ron. Hermione. Ginny. Draco. The Weasleys. TheGryffindors. Somehow the rest of Malfoy's friends, his parents, and even a healthy portion the Slytherins didn't fit into that mental image Camilia had of those who would have befriended her. She shook off the fear that leapt to her mind - the fear that those who whom she had united herself were not those with whom she should have allowed herself to be united.

"Something wrong, love?" asked Draco, trying hard not to choke on the term of endearment.

"Nothing, Draco. I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about that werewolf. And those spiders. Ugh. I thought I was going to die, you know."

"My father asked me to express his deepest apologies; he could think of no other way to confirm that you are indeed the one so desperately sought after."

"Why was he so desperate to know? He's a Death Eater, Draco, and so are you. Are you guys planning on turning me over to old Voldy or something?" she asked, attempting to sound cavalier.

Camilia's phrasing was, to Draco, perfect, and enabled him to be earnest in his reply. He looked deeply into her eyes and said, "Camilia, I could never turn you over 'Old Voldy.' Never." He kissed her on the mouth then, deeply, savoring the taste of her, the smell of her. He wrapped his hand in her tresses and drank deeply of the foolish young woman before him.

She, on the other hand, was not relishing their activities as much as she had in the past. Though she willingly kissed Malfoy back, her mind was racing with images of the people she'd forsaken, Lucius Malfoy standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest watching her be attacked by a violent animal, the clacking jaws of a giant spider inches from her face, and Albus Dumbledore, weeping like a child after a draught of Polyjuice Potion wore off.

Just as she was beginning to feel woozy, the door to the room burst open. She was waiting for Filch's cackle to denote her and Malfoy's having been caught, but instead she heard Malfoy say, "That's you, isn't it, Potter? You in your illegal cloak. Is voyeurism a habit of all Gryffindors, or just you?"

Malfoy knows Harry has an invisibility cloak? thought Camilia, but before she had time to process the possible meaning of that revelation, Harry's head had appeared floating before her eyes.

"I'm saving you from detention, you stupid git," answered Harry. "Filch is on his way here now, and unless we leave this very instant, we'll all be caught out of bounds after hours."

"Noble, Potter, but we can't all fit under your cloak, now, can we?" drawled Malfoy.

"We don't all have to fit under my cloak. You're headed to the dungeons. Camilia and I are the only two who need cover to get back to the tower. So, if I were you - and thank Merlin I'm not - I'd be on my way, because you don't have an invisibility cloak, illegal or not."

Malfoy paused just a moment to consider an alternative - any other alternative, because he'd hoped to feed Camilia's ego and attend to her physical desires a bit longer - but when he realized there were none, he turned toward the door and slipped through without another word.

"Draco!" she hissed after him, hoping he'd hear her, but hoping also not to be heard by Filch. When he did not return, she succumbed to Harry's kindness and allowed him to sweep the cloak over the both of them.

They crept past Filch and Mrs. Norris, not daring to breathe as they walked by, hoping against hope that Mrs. Norris would not sense them. She turned in their direction when they were a few feet beyond Filch, but meowed softly - a cat's version of shaking her head - and proceeded on with her master.

When the two had reached the portrait hole, Harry slipped out from underneath the cloak and gave the password. The Fat Lady, who had been sleeping, awoke with a start, wondering why she hadn't heard Harry approach, but did not question how it was that he came to be before her, nor what he was doing out at that late hour. Harry had had late night detentions before; she assumed this was nothing more than another punishment.

He looked in Camilia's direction, tilting his head slightly toward the portrait hole to motion her inside, when she spoke. "I'm not going in there."

"Who was that?" demanded the Fat Lady. The portrait, having swung away from the wall, was in a position that kept her from seeing who else might have joined Harry.

"You have to. You'll get caught if you stay out here."

"I don't care."

"Look, you," Harry said, becoming irritable, "I just risked my skin to come save yours from Filch - "

"Why did you do that, Harry? Nothing better to do on a Thursday night than interrupt a girl and her boyfriend?" she mused coldly.

"What's your problem?" Harry demanded.

"You want to know what my problem is?" inquired Camilia. "I sure as hell can't tell you in there!"

"Who IS that?" The Fat Lady was furious that Harry and his unknown companion were in her way; she could neither turn to see who Harry was speaking to, nor close the portrait hole with Harry in the way.

"Sorry," muttered Harry, and he pretended to enter into the common room, slipping under the cloak as he did so. Once underneath the cloak, he grabbed Camilia by the arm and steered her back toward the room she and Harry had just come from.

"Where are we going?" she asked him.

"Right back where we started from," he replied.

Camilia looked alarmed. "What about Filch?"

"Just let him catch me," said Harry. "But he won't. He never checks the same place twice...at least, not until a couple hours have passed."

"How do you know that?" she queried.

Harry wasn't about to tell her that he'd studied Filch's movements using the Marauder's Map. "We all have our secrets."

He stormed back into Fluffy's old room and finally let go of Camilia's arm, then spun toward the door and performed both a locking spell and a silencing spell, ensuring better than Malfoy had bothered that they wouldn't be interrupted. Harry was ready to have it out with Camilia, and he wasn't about to be stopped.

"Talk to me," he stated simply.

She looked long and hard at him. "I have nothing to say."

"Then you'd damn well better think of something to say, Camilia Pritchard, because I'm about ready to beat the living piss out of you," declared Harry.

"I'd like to see you try," she challenged.

Harry stared at her a moment, and then softened, visibly. "You would, wouldn't you? It would be easier to do battle with me than to talk with me, wouldn't it? You'd much prefer to make use of that astronomical power of yours than to understand the love your friends still have for you. Why is that?"

She took a deep breath, then turned to look out a window. "What do you want, Harry?" she questioned him.

"Why are you with Malfoy?" he asked by way of answer.

"We've been through this," she rejoined.

"Draco Malfoy is a vile, ruthless, wretched, scheming, wicked, depraved, immoral, contemptible, callous, cold blooded, unfeeling, miserable git. There is not an ounce of sincerity in his entire being. He has you fooled, Camilia. He wants you for Voldemort - nothing else - unless, of course, you count the occasional snog. He has never done anything for anyone but himself, unless it served him in some fashion. He has tricked you, Camilia. You have been duped. I don't know what it is he's planning or when he's planning it, but I know he is up to something, and whatever it is, it will put you in the gravest of danger. You refuse to hear anything say anything against him, calling it slander, but for God's sake! IT'S THE TRUTH!" Harry was yelling now, hoping that if nothing had gotten through Camilia's thick skull thus far, his volume might.

Camilia was silent for a long time, staring at the floor. Finally she looked Harry in the eye. "I know what this is," she said. "I know what you're trying to do."

"Tell me then, Camilia, what am I trying to do?"

"You're jealous of Draco. You want to break us up. That's what this is. The proverbial green-eyed monster finally makes its appearance, and would you look at that? It's got green eyes after all."

Harry wanted to slap the smug look off her face, but he restrained himself, using every ounce of self control he could muster.

"You're jealous, Harry, admit it. Draco is smarter than you, he's better looking than you, he certainly has a better body than you, he's more fun, more entertaining, he's easygoing, he's rich and powerful and he has me. You, Harry, are nothing like him, and it kills you."

Rather than react as he might have, Harry simply smiled and said, "At least I'm a better kisser than Draco...you've said it yourself."

Camilia felt like someone had pulled a rug out from under her. She did not even think to deny it, because Harry was right. And she knew that she'd been lying to Harry and to herself: Harry was intellectually gifted, terribly sexy, loads more fun and far more easygoing than Draco, and, because of his place in the original Prophecy and as the only wizard Voldemort feared, aside from Dumbledore, Harry was far more powerful than her boyfriend. She had also lied about the fact that Draco had her; since she'd first laid eyes on Harry, she had been thoroughly smitten by him.

Her pause was too long, and Harry knew he had her. "You're lying, Camilia. Why are you lying to me?"

"What does it matter?" she countered.

Harry took a deep breath. "Sometimes I hate you, you know that?"

"The feeling is mutual," she replied. "And sometimes, despite the fact that I'd love to throw you against a wall and watch you crumble to the floor...I also want to wrap you in my arms and...and..." She hung her head.

He could not be shocked, or even surprised, because he felt exactly the same way about her.

When she lifted her head again, he saw the tears streaming down her face and reached to wipe them. "DON'T - " she began, but then started to cry in earnest and fell against him, sobbing.

He took her in his arms, wiped her tears, and once more, as they had so many months ago, they began to kiss. Softly, at first, and then in earnest. Their kisses grew more passionate, and Harry took the liberty of exploring her tongue with his own. When he no longer felt sated by her mouth, he moved his lips to her neck and her ear, making her shudder. And when it finally dawned on him that the two could not afford any marks to be visible on her neck, he opted to move his kisses lower still. Before either of them knew what was happening, their robes had hit the floor. Moments later Camilia's shirt followed, and Harry saw for the first time the voluptuous curve of her bosom. He reached tentatively for her breasts, but Camilia stopped him; instead she unhooked her bra and let her breasts hang free, supple and touchable. Harry hesitated once again, wondering if that had been an invitation, so Camilia took his hands for him and placed them on her. He explored with his hands, soft at first, and then, as she began to respond to a firmer touch, he became rough. He was too riled up not to explore with his mouth, eliciting loud moans as his mouth took advantage of her bosom.

In her passion, she thrust his head away from her and attacked his clothes, scattering them about the room. She slid off her skirt just as easily, and then, still clad in her panties, she sat back and admired Harry's naked body. He had a young, strong, muscular build, and though he was at first put off by the feeling of being examined, he discovered quickly how pleased she was with what she saw; so pleased, in fact, that she slunk forward on her hands and knees until she was directly in front of Harry, kneeling before him. She pleasured him as best she could, inexperienced as she was, but Harry felt no reason to protest...no reason to do anything but thoroughly enjoy her attentions. He thought to himself, She really can do powerful magic, and, denying himself the opportunity to have her continue, he caught her by the arm and pulled her up next to him so he could remove her panties.

She was certainly a sight for sore eyes; her body was far more hourglass-shaped than many of the girls at Hogwarts. She had ample hips, a trim waist, a round, firm bottom, and looked like a pinup. Harry had tired of the long, skinny, straight-looking girls at the school; here was a curvaceous teenager with the body of a woman. Where some girls at sixteen would have been embarrassed by their curves, Camilia seemed proud of them, confident in her sexuality, and it made her ever-so-much sexier to Harry. She advanced toward Harry, pressing her naked body against him, feeling his hardness. He could resist no longer and, enfolding her in his arms, he pulled her toward the floor. He laid her down as carefully as he could in his ridiculously aroused state, wanting instead to throw her to the floor and pin her there. As he made to climb on top of her, she wrapped her legs around him, pulling him ever closer.

Sinking into her body was by far the most gratifying feeling he'd ever had; he was completely surrounded by her, safe and taken in, and she looked and smelled and sounded and felt heavenly. Harry could not get enough, relishing every thrust, and Camilia was hypnotized by their passion. So it was that there, on the hard stone floor of Fluffy's old room, Harry drove Camilia to heights of passion she had never before experienced; heights of passion she had never imagined possible. The two lost their collective virginity to each other, to their great surprise, and basked in their pleasure together well into the wee hours.

Eventually they would collect their clothes and make their way back to Gryffindor Tower, sneak into the common room and up to their dormitories, and crawl into their respective beds to sleep soundly until breakfast...but that was hours away, and they had plenty of time to finally fully enjoy the company of one another...the person for whom each of them had secretly yearned since the October before. Eventually they would continue with their individual lives at Hogwarts...but not yet.