Staff of Cybele

Chapter 9: THE LEGEND OF THE SCAR

Cho met up with Harry the following morning outside his tent just as he finished getting dressed. Mr. Chang, sucking up some of his pride, had walked over with his daughter to meet Harry.

For a good ten seconds, no one said anything, and then, breaking the unsettling silence in which Harry's finger twitched convulsively, Cho said, "Harry, I'd like you to meet my dad, Jun."

"Hello, Mr. Chang," said Harry awkwardly as Mr. Chang advanced on him in what, at first, he thought was threatening until he stuck a hand out to let Harry shake. He made a very strained smile, reminding Harry of the one Uncle Vernon gave when he first saw Sirius.

Everyone noticed a change for the better though as the three of them talked about yesterday's events and how Harry was doing at Hogwarts. Harry was particularly happy that the conversation had not once mentioned things such as Lord Voldemort and company and when Mrs. Chang insisted that they go home as they had kept getting called back to their tent, (Mrs. Chang's sister, a non-fan of Fire Quidditch due to it's violence, wanted her to come home already and did so by sticking her head in the living room fire of the tent), Mr. and Mrs. Chang left Cho with Harry and the Weasleys and Disapparated with a hearty good-bye.

Feeling slightly relieved about Cho's father, Harry wasn't keen on returning to Privet Drive. They first used Raides to Disapparate to the Burrow and then rode Mr. Weasley's Dodge Viper all the way to Privet Drive, skipping ahead, car to car, to the beginning of lines of cars at red lights along the way. Mrs. Weasley scowled each time Mr. Weasley did this.

With a glum face, Harry knocked on the door and Aunt Petunia opened it. Aunt Marge was still there, as was her nasty dog, Ripper and Harry refrained from looking at them all that day, being more keen on keeping the past two day's events fresh in his head.

The next night during dinner, Aunt Marge wasn't too successful on restraining herself on her favorite subject: Harry's faults. Harry was keeping to himself, eating his dinner without speaking. Cho must have sensed Harry's wish to keep the Fire Quidditch game in his head and did the same. Aunt Marge, of course, wasn't going to let things stay just fine.

"I must get your recipe for beef casserole," Aunt Marge was saying, licking her lips clean after every bite.

"It's nothing, Marge, really," said Aunt Petunia, flattered. "I just use a bit of spice my mother used to use."

Feeling fully overwhelmed by the unpleasantness of Privet Drive once again, Harry kept his eyes on his food, trying not to let Aunt Marge catch his gaze. There was a quick picture in his head of the three hundred foot ice dragon facing Aunt Marge, barring it's mountain-sized teeth at her. Harry didn't think his beef casserole was so fantastic and, according to Cho's glare at Aunt Marge when she had her eyes closed for a bit, neither did she. For a moment, it looked as though Uncle Vernon was going to reprimand Cho but thought better of it.

"Such excellent nosh, Petunia," boomed Aunt Marge thickly, chewing on a mouthful of rice. "I'm surprised you haven't gained any more weight!" Aunt Petunia dangerously flicked her eyes towards her sister-in-law and then back, looking slightly insulted that Aunt Marge had just suggested that she, Petunia, be fatter. "Dudley, here, I'm sure, just can't resist..." And Dudley beamed at her.

Noticing his wife's slight disgust (and Harry wondered when in the world his aunt had picked up this slight hostility towards Aunt Marge), Uncle Vernon pointed his finger at the corner of his lips, looking purposefully at his sister. She picked up a napkin and cleaned her rubber-sized lips of excess food.

"You do normally feed this boy food, don't you, Petunia?" snarled Aunt Marge, gazing over at Harry.

There's a whole year of Quidditch in just one, short month, Harry thought to himself at once. And then he remembered that Ron told him the Triwizard Tournament was taking place.

"Of course," Aunt Petunia drawled in her most reassuring voice. "He's just got his parents -- Dudley has tried several diets you know, none of them worked," she added quickly.

There was a most grievous pause while Aunt Petunia thought desperately for a change of subject. Harry was at least half-grateful that she didn't pursue it. Aunt Marge wasn't so easily diverted.

"Speaking of which, Petunia, you never told me, what did the boy's father do for a living?"

It had come to this once before and Harry had come off the worse. Everyone except Aunt Marge flicked their eyes in the direction of Harry, who thought quickly back to his story about his parents.

"Doctor," said Harry quickly. "He worked at a hospital." He had a strange feeling of deja vu.

Aunt Marge narrowed her bloodshot eyes (too much Brandy) suspiciously at Harry. Harry stared determinedly back at her, though he probably shouldn't have because then she barked, "Such a prestigious job, one wonders how they get themselves killed in a car crash."

Harry and Cho had been sitting very close to each other and not without good reason. Cho, who had most likely grown a nose for smelling danger a mile away in her own house, put an arm around Harry and clutched his shoulder, making it look like she was consoling him for the loss -- and truthfully, she was. She knew it had had the effect she wanted as she felt Harry's tense shoulder slowly drop a good inch.

"Didn't make a good good living, did he?" said Aunt Marge, her beady eyes still narrowed in suspicion. "Couldn't have, with the way you turned out..."

"He did," said Harry, now sitting a little taller. "I inherited a small fortune." This wasn't going so bad, Harry thought. Now that he had something to fight with, it was keeping the other dog in the house at bay.

"A small fortune? How much?" She looked strangely interested.

"Er," Harry said, stumped. He didn't exactly know how much money he had if you converted his small fortune of golden Galleons, silver Sickles and bronze Knuts locked away in his vault at Gringott's, the wizard bank, to Muggle money.

"A couple hundred thousand pounds, wasn't that you told me, Harry?" Cho said as Uncle Vernon's eyes lit up like spotlights at the sound of so much money.

"Oh, yeah, right," Harry said. Evidently, Cho had some experience in the matter.

Maybe that wasn't such a good thing to say, as the Dursleys never knew of Harry's small fortune at Gringott's. But, then again, there was no way in the world to convert wizard money to Muggle money without attracting some attention and there was further no way in the world that Harry was going to let them have any of it. Just when he realized this, however, Aunt Marge exploded, saying exactly what Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were thinking.

"YOU'VE HAD A SMALL FORTUNE AND NOT LET YOUR HARDWORKING AUNT AND UNCLE SEE ANY OF IT?" she roared.

Dudley's fork fell with a clatter to the floor. Apparently his dislike for Harry didn't extend to a small fortune, either. To make matters worse, Harry's finger was trembling and Cho sensed more danger. Now that Harry was becoming fairly adept at magic without a wand...

"YOUR RELATIVES SPEND THEIR HARD-EARNED MONEY ON YOU WHILE YOU HAVE HALF A MILLION POUNDS STASHED AWAY IN A BANK!" she continued roaring. Harry thought she would make a good impression of a dragon if asked to do so.

"Spend their money on me?" Harry said, narrowing his own eyes and looking at his aunt dangerously through the top of his round glasses. "They give me Dudley's old clothing which fits me like elephant skin and the only reason she feeds me is because if she doesn't I'll die and then the police will arrest her," he said fiercely.

And with one nasty look at his two aunts and uncle, he stood up to go upstairs to which Aunt Marge barked, "You sit down, you nasty, insolent little prat!"

"You're such a pleasant woman," Cho said scathingly.

"And you!" Aunt Marge said, now rounding on Cho. "You're another one!"

Cho looked absolutely horrified this woman would dare talk to her with only barely knowing her.

"Come on, Harry," Cho said and she wheeled around, grabbed his hand and walked up the stairs with him. "I'm not going to last here," she then said when they had reached his bedroom. "Haven't you got a place to go besides this house?"

"No," Harry said, sitting heavily upon Cho's bed. "And how are we going to get anywhere. Can you drive a car?"

"Yes. Passed my driver's test just before the end of last term."

For a split second, he wanted to stand up, but then he remembered something. "There's no way they'll let us take one of theirs, though."

It was Cho's turn to sit heavily (next to Harry). Both of them let out a huge breath of disappointment at the same time and for some reason they were staring at Hedwig, whose amber eyes kept darting between the both of them uncertainly. Hedwig?

"Hedwig!" Harry hissed, getting up very quickly walking over to Hedwig on Harry's desk. "What are you doing back here?" Cho got up, too. "You're supposed to be at Ron's!"

"There's a letter tied to her leg," Cho said, pointing. She took it off and read it aloud.

Harry and Cho,

Mrs. Weasley, bless her, suggested something that I'm sure you're both going to agree to. I guess she felt that you're going to want to get out of that house. Cho passed her driving test recently so if you two want, you can borrow one of our cars. I barely ever use mine, and I think you're going to need it more than I will. Feel free.

PS: The Weasley's used Hedwig because their owl, Errol, was not feeling up to it, Ron's owl was busy, my owl was busy and we felt this was rather urgent. Just send her back to the Weasleys and they'll notify me.

Happy summer,

Blossom

Harry's face had slowly turned from gloom to bloom in the minute it took Cho to finish reading and so had hers. Hedwig, on the other hand, was looking ready for a long sleep.

"We have to let her stay for a day," Cho said. Harry nodded, as did Hedwig.

Suddenly, the three of them looked at each other and then at the door. Hedwig was hungry and there was no way Harry or Cho was going to go back downstairs until tomorrow morning.

"Raides," Harry said, as he poked his head under his bed and grabbed the Staff of Cybele, making it spring to life.

Raides took one look at Hedwig when Harry had sat back down and said, "Need some food for the owl and don't want to go back downstairs?" Harry and Cho nodded at her. "The words, well, word, is 'Ambrosia.' Conjures up whatever you're thinking of. I like beef casserole, myself."

Neither Harry nor Cho bothered to voice a comment but both of them silently wanted to just hit Raides.

Hoping this would count as necessary magic, Harry said quietly, "Ambrosia," thinking of a meal consisting of bacon strips and Hedwig's favorite, a rat (except he pictured the rat cut and served up like chicken). It was immeasurably better than the dead rats that Hedwig sometimes turned up with. Harry didn't mind it though, he was used to gross things while he had taken residence in the cupboard under the stairs for ten years. He had to. There were lots of spiders in there.

There was a pop that they all hoped no one but them could hear and a bacon strip and a few slices of neatly prepared rat meat appeared in front of Hedwig. Her amber eyes widened in delight and she began eating, occasionally fluttering over to her cage and taking a sip of the water. Eventually she just picked it all up and dropped it at the bottom of the cage. Cho promptly ordered Harry to clean the greasy spot the bacon had left.

Sitting down and watching Hedwig eat, Harry had to think. He wanted to keep it to himself but the words came tumbling out his mouth before he knew what he was doing.

"Why are you staying here? They treat you just as bad as they treat me."

This had caught Cho by surprise. She turned quickly from Hedwig to Harry but didn't reply, she just sat there. He suddenly felt extremely stupid. What was she thinking, Harry thought desperately, and what words were forming in her head? What did that mean, her mouth being half open?

He knew. He should have kept that to himself. He was assured this as Cho's head slowly turned back to Hedwig and her mouth closed.

"Sorry," he said quietly, looking at the floor in front of him.

Harry sat up, crossed the room, took out a pen and crossed off another day on his calendar until September the first. Harry couldn't see but Cho was watching him with both of her eyes, watched him stand up, watched him open the desk drawer and watched him take out a pen. Harry stopped writing and stared at the pen for a second. A sudden feeling in spite of the mood of what just happened downstairs crossed over Cho.

"I'm staying because I -- I -- I love you."

Harry dropped the pen.

"You what?" he croaked without turning around, or, in fact, moving at all (his hand was still shaped as if clutching a pen). Those three simple words had the same effect a torch would if brushed up against his insides: it burned them all away.

"You heard."

Harry heard, but he wished he didn't because it a strange effect on him he couldn't explain. He didn't particularly feel like moving, those three words from Cho had frozen his entire body. They made his mind go completely numb and he didn't know what to do, say or think so he settled for just standing there and not moving a muscle. He did hear Cho calling his name but it sounded far away and distant, like he was standing in a humongous, echoing cave. The picture of the calendar in front of him became blurred and indistinguishable.

She called his name again, this time tugging on his arm as well. Harry didn't budge, and so Cho gave up.

She sat down and the sound of her sigh somehow unlocked Harry's body -- he was at least able to drop his arm. Raides, who both of them forgot was still full of life, kept her silence, hoping this would resolve itself. Harry sat down in the chair at his desk. His body tensed up again and he couldn't answer himself when he asked why this was happening, why his head had frozen up and why his heart just felt like mush.

Maybe it was because no one, in seventeen years, had said those three words to him? Well, he guessed his parents might have said it but he only knew one moment of his life with them and recalling it didn't bring any comfort.

Cho stood up and left the room. It wasn't that Harry didn't want her to stay, it was just that he couldn't make any sound exit his mouth and his legs seemed to be disconnected from the rest of his body. Cho didn't come back at all that night and when Harry's eyes drooped, he had the dream again.

The following morning, Harry woke up all on his own and it was fairly late in the day: around two in the afternoon. He picked up his glasses on the table next to him to have a look around. Cho was gone and someone had left a plate on his desk with a bagel, buttered the way he liked it (not too little, but not enough to make it seep out the sides). He noticed that Hedwig was gone again and that his head was sore, possibly from sleeping so long, or was that last night's events still spinning around in it?

He rubbed his stomach and pushed in on it just to make sure that his insides had indeed come back. Assured he wasn't going to eat the bagel and have to go charging to the bathroom, spitting it up, he sat down at his desk, picked it up, took a bite, chewed slightly, swallowed it mostly whole, dropped it onto the plate, stood up and then exited the room. Harry absolutely had to find and talk to Cho -- now.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Aunt Petunia had Aunt Marge in an engrossing conversation he was sure was absolutely wonderful but he couldn't give two gnomes in a garden about (the home shopping channel's latest endeavours in designer bathrooms). Not daring to interrupt them, Harry wondered where she could be when at that moment he saw her hair out of the corner of his eye, watching television on the couch in the living room. Shaking, a strong urge to run upstairs and get the Order of Merlin necklace bearing down on him (and ignoring the silent sniggers from his porky cousin Dudley in the kitchen), he screwed up what remained of his courage and walked over.

He opened his mouth to speak but before he got a word out, Cho held up a pair of car keys and dangled them in front of him. It would appear she didn't want to talk about it any more than Harry did and he was okay with that.

"Go get changed," Cho said. "My Aunt Blossom let me borrow her white Ford Taurus. I already squeezed directions out of your aunt for the Surrey Place Mall."

"I've never been to a mall before..." Harry thought out loud.

Cho was clearly upset by this statement and while Aunt Petunia was getting up to get a cup of tea, she gave the back of hers and Aunt Marge's head a rude look.

"You two better be careful," Aunt Petunia said while waving a threatening, bony finger (which, by the shape of it, wasn't really all that threatening) at Harry. Aunt Marge waved one of her own tree-thick fingers as well.

"Whatever," Harry said dismissively as Cho told him to go finish the bagel she made for him and get changed.

Harry wanted to take Raides and pass her off as a pet but he was forcefully reminded of what people would say when looking at an animal of her stature when Harry and Cho told her where they were going. And, following Harry and Cho's lead, Raides didn't mention last night either.

They didn't really think they'd need them, but each of them hid their wands inside their pants and took a light jacket to cover it. Harry didn't go anywhere in the wizarding world without it and the Muggle world was just as strange to him, having not stepped foot outside Privet Drive in six years except to go to Hogwarts. It was a little windy, after all... But before he left the room, Harry's eyes grazed over the Order of Merlin necklace and, in one quick motion, snatched it from his desk and put it on. He certainly couldn't wear the Phoenix Bracelet. What would a Muggle say if they saw a bracelet engulfed in flames?

Harry liked driving with Cho a lot more than with his aunt and uncle: he could talk and not get snapped at.

"I remember having a dream a while ago about a flying motorcycle," Harry was saying as Cho pointed out the one that her uncle wanted. "That was the night --"But he quickly stopped talking. It was painful to finish that sentence.

"Flying motorcycle?" Cho said, turning to look at Harry while stopped at a red light.

Harry suddenly grinned and added, "I mentioned it once in the car with my aunt and uncle. My uncle was driving and he nearly hit the car in front of us. Then he turned around and screamed at me that motorcycles don't fly."

"Do you know who's it was?"

"Sirius lent it to Hagrid to -- er -- before --" It was painful to finish that sentence, too.

Cho abruptly changed the subject to all of the stores she wanted to take a look at. Her aunt performed an Exchanging Charm on her wizard money to turn it into Muggle money; she had about five hundred pounds to spend on anything but items of note were jewelry and clothes. Harry had no objections in paying her back for any money he wanted to spend.

"First thing we do is get you some new clothes," she said, parking the car, getting out with Harry, locking it and looking up at the huge mall in front of her, a sparkle of longing in her eye like this was a heaven. All Harry noticed was that when the wind blew, his already untidy hair became even more untidy.

"Flatten it, will you?" Cho snapped.

Harry glared at her. She ran her fingers through his hair like a comb and the best she managed was, well, nothing.

Upon entering Surrey Place Mall, the first store Cho dragged him into by the sleeve was Bloomingdale's.

Cho's eyes lit up like someone had just started a candle in them and said, "I would just die to go visit the one in New York. It takes up an entire block! And New York's blocks are huge! Wouldn't you?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I would."

Apart from the large selection of designer fashion, Harry wasn't all that interested in clothing. Cho bought a scarf that was longer than he was tall, doning a small picture at one end of a thirty-year-old Muggle he never heard of named Daniel Radcliffe. She was just giddy about it.

Harry thought some of the people they passed while walking in the high-ceiled, beautifully decorated mall, coupled with lavish water fountains and glass elevators, to be a rather unpleasant lot. He wasn't pleased to see that even some Muggles, who had never heard of Lord Voldemort, could be seen flicking their eyes up at his forehead. Cho helped him to cover it with his bangs...

"Did you hear about that guy that's terrorizing all of England?" Harry heard some young girl say when they were eating lunch at a place Harry picked out that he thought was sort of interesting: McDonalds.

"Yeah," said some young boy, though slightly older than the girl, excitedly. "They say he killed his dad because his mom married some foreigner and when she died giving birth to him, his dad disowned him because he hated the way he turned out!"

Harry knew that to be mostly correct but he knew that, Lord Voldemort, formerly known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, had a dad who hated having a wizard as a son and a witch for a wife -- it wasn't just that his wife was a foreigner. Tom exacted his revenge against his hateful father by killing him and changed his name to Lord Voldemort after he left Hogwarts.

Cho tried to say something but Harry silenced her with a finger to his lips. He wanted to hear what the Muggles knew. Cho was partially interested, too, but she was more concerned about Harry getting upset by hearing it.

"Dad told me that some nutter about fifteen years ago was doing the same thing. They say he died. You think it's the same person?"

"Don't be stupid," the boy said while laughing airily. "People don't come back from the dead."

"He didn't die," Harry muttered under his breath. "He's immortal."

"My mom told me some legend about it, it's the most coolest thing!" Harry heard the girl say. "It said that some one year old baby killed him and the most the baby got was a scar on his forehead! Shaped like a lightning bolt! And the baby was a wizard! Killed him with one spell!"

Cho looked to make sure the scar was still well-hidden.

"Don't be stupid," the boy repeated. "If that's true then I'll eat my shorts. And no one gets lightning-shaped scars on their foreheads, you'd have to make that yourself and I'm willing to bet it would hurt a lot."

"Want to know what the Cruciatus Curse feels like?" Harry mumbled irritably which made Cho give him a very angry look.

"Sarah said she saw someone with a scar walking around in the mall today!" the girl said. "She did! Just before we left! On the phone!"

Harry looked around for them to know where not to turn his face to.

"He's got black, messy hair and round glasses!" the young girl went on feverishly.

Harry couldn't find them.

"Come on, Lucy," said the boy, now sounding slightly annoyed. "Do you really expect me to believe a normal, human, one year old baby can kill a fully grown person? Listen to yourself!" He tutted loudly, sounding a lot like Hermione, Harry thought. "It's an urban legend."

"What's an urban legend?" said the young girl, sounding excited to find out what an urban legend is. "What is it! What is it! What is it!" she chanted.

"Shh!" he said forcefully. "Mom's going to have my head if we get kicked out again!"

"Hey! There's a boy with black, messy hair and glasses!" the girl shouted very loudly. Harry could only guess that, wherever she was, she was pointing at him.

"We better go," Cho said quietly. Harry nodded before she even finished speaking.

They both threw out their empty hamburger wrappers and cups of coke but kept their box of fries and munched on them as they stood up and tried to walk out of the crowded eatery inconspicuously.

"It's rude to point, Lucy," the boy said, to Harry and Cho's great relief.

Other people had evidently heard this seemingly tall tale and more than one head turned, trying it's best to look nonchalant, to look at Harry as he passed.

Harry kept his eyes on this one toddler who jumped up and town, shouting "You! You! You!" as he bent his head closer to Cho's ear and whispered desperately, "Can we go home now?" The fries were very good but they were so greasy they would only make it harder to shove people out of the way if he had to run for it.

"No!" Cho hissed fiercely. "I haven't even shown you Hot Topic!"

"Hot -- what?"

Cho dragged Harry by the arm to a store full of clothing that Cho said she would never buy but sometimes liked to look at. Artfully ripped, blood-red jeans, shirts by Muggle music bands with very strange names... One by the name of Creed looked quite odd but Harry resisted the urge he had to buy it.

"Can I help you?" the store clerk asked. She had violently yellow hair and was wearing a black shirt with red claw marks on it.

"Just looking," Cho told her in a distance voice, distracted by the pair of pants she was holding up that had what looked like -- and Harry hoped it was fake -- human hair at the bottom.

Harry spotted the very same cloak that Jeff Uder had worn except it wasn't white, it was dark blue and it wasn't made of dragon hide, it was made of leather.

"They shouldn't bother trying to imitate wizard clothes," Harry said to Cho, chuckling softly.

They left Hot Topic, a black leather belt with a metal clip (it had a picture of a golden lion with a scarlet tail on it) sitting safely at the bottom of Cho's bag from Bloomingdale's. It was the last one on the rack.

Harry needed a break -- his feet were starting to hurt from non-stop walking for the past two hours. Cho suggested video games would be a good way to relieve their feet.

Harry's first choice (and Cho's last) was a game with six buttons and a joystick. Three punches, three kicks and a lot of motions with the stick that Harry knew he would never memorize. His first victory (against the computer) pushed his confidence up a little, making the second round a whole lot easier. And then someone a little older than him, wearing a leather jacket and a shaved head, tried his luck against Harry.

"No, no, you're doing it all wrong," he said as Harry accidentally pulled a thirty-nine hit combination move on him.

He showed Harry how it was really done and managed ninety-nine hits. Cho cheered Harry on and in the end, it was Harry who won purely due to luck. The person with the shaved head gave Harry a forceful push on the shoulder, colored the air with some rather rude words, clearly upset by his loss, and then stalked away.

Harry gave up after the third round and decided it was best to move on. After trying his hand at a game where you sat on a fake motorcycle and raced through several tracks (and losing horribly), Cho then proceeded to drag him into a store that actually carried men's clothing.

"Ooh look at these nice tops -- oh fifty percent off!" Cho said gleefully, coming up to a table full of t-shirts of a variety of colors, including Harry's least favorite: pink.

"You can buy that but that doesn't mean I'm going to wear it," he told her.

He pulled Cho away from the table of shirts and walked towards a bunch of shirts that caught his eye on a rack on the far back wall.

"Those are nice," Cho said, feeling the material and pulling one off the rack.

She held it against him, seeing if it even remotely fit him.

"You're going to make me try them on, aren't you," said Harry, reading Cho's mind.

"Yes," she said, pointing a stern finger in the direction of the changing rooms. "Do you want to try them on two weeks from now and find out they don't fit and then we have to come back?"

They walked out with one new pair of pants and two shirts for Harry.

On the way towards a bunch other stores, he couldn't help but ask why she wore Muggle clothing most of the time and not wizard robes. Her reply was that she had half a closet full of robes and the other half with Muggle clothing. The only robes he had were the ones that he wore at Hogwarts. Harry just couldn't picture himself dressed as something like Albus Dumbledore for quite some time, that is if he even, well... never mind. He just hoped that Voldemort would never get his wish.

By the time Cho deemed their visit to the mall finished, she had made Harry visit what seemed like every store and every muscle in his foot -- all nineteen of them, according to the sign in Foot Locker, a shoe store (and all twenty-six bones) -- was screaming for help.

Chapter 10: AUNT MARGE FINDS OUT

"We did good today!" Cho said happily as they left the front entrance and headed towards the car.

It was dusk and the remnants of the sun was painting the horizon pink, the ground, it's usual gray. Harry had no memory of spending an entire day with someone -- especially someone he liked, a lot -- on a breezy summer's day and he felt the day was complete when, amongst all the bags they were carrying in each hand, Cho's hand still managed to grab onto his. He wasn't really paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth (they had something to do with what her sister would say to all the money she spent). As a strong gust of wind blew that messed up Harry's hair entirely, he gazed around the parking lot. It was very empty but that didn't really surprise him -- it was fairly late and there was a mass murderer running loose.

"You never told me you had a sister!" Harry said a little more loudly than he intended.

Cho turned to him and grinned.

"D'you like that necklace I bought?" she said.

"Looks a lot like this one," said Harry, switching the bag in his right hand to his left and holding up the Order of Merlin plaque.

Right away, he noticed that holding it had no effect on him (which he thought was good but would still like to know what about that feeling inside him made it not do anything). Cho pulled the golden necklace out of one of her bags.

"Yeah," she said thickly and barely moving her lips because she was concentrating too hard on comparing the two. "It does, doesn't it?" she added and then after one more look between the two, stuffed it back into it's box and into the bag.

Harry put the other bag back in his right hand as they continued down the parking lot towards the white Ford Taurus. He longed for a driver's license of his own but doubted whether the Dursleys would ever trust him with a go-cart let alone a fully blown motor vehicle. Even if he couldn't get one, he still had his Dragonback and that could go farther and faster than any car ever built.

As the Ford Taurus came closer and closer into view, Harry saw the person with the leather jacket coming at them from the other direction. Harry ignored him completely.

Cho popped the trunk open and they stuffed all the bags they could into the trunk and would have to stick the last one in the back seat ("I needed new clothes anyway," Cho explained, "my sister likes to borrow mine and she gets them all dirty. I don't know how she does it").

As Cho closed the trunk and unlocked Harry's door, a barely familiar voice behind him spoke.

"Hey, kid!" it said in a tone that brought back many unpleasant memories of Draco Malfoy.

Harry wheeled around and saw that person with the shaved head and leather jacket standing behind him with a smirk on his face. He really didn't want to find out why only one of person's hands was rolled into a fist but it was instinct that told him to run sideways and just as he did that, Harry heard a bang of skin on metal -- he clearly wanted to get better revenge for losing.

"You've got that scar!" he shouted, sneering.

He grabbed Harry by the arm and parted his bangs to get a better look at the scar on his forehead.

"Oh, it does exist," he said quietly. "So did you really kill that guy when you were just a teeny, tiny baby or did you get word of that legend of the scar and carve that thing yourself?" he added, smiling wickedly.

Harry didn't know which way to reply. He had a sick feeling this wasn't going to end nicely no matter what he said. Figuring no one would believe him anyway --

"Yeah, I killed him," said Harry and, feeling he might as well do the thing properly, he added, "Shoulda seen the look on his face. He pleaded with me."

But that wasn't exactly the right thing to say because the next moment, the person pulled out -- to Harry's horror -- a switchblade. Harry pulled his hand away and the person just laughed. Cho stood there, transfixed. She didn't know what to do either. If either of them used magic, that would definitely count as a violation of the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, not to mention neither of them knew how to perform a Memory Charm, a convenient spell to make someone -- Muggle, witch or wizard -- forget something.

He tutted, saying, "Tsk, tsk. You stupid prat, you know what I do to posers who want to get themselves a bit of fame? I've seen people with fake lightning scars, nowhere as realistic as yours" -- and Harry felt like he had just been stabbed -- "but I showed them all what it's like to feel as stupid as they really are," he went on, drawling, with that same wicked grin.

Throwing away all pretense, the first move Harry made was to take the Order of Merlin necklace off and hold it in his hand. Immediately, it had the effect he wanted of giving him whatever wits he needed to defend himself. The other person, on the other hand, swung and missed with his knife at Harry's stomach. Harry thought he got away with it but the next second he had the wind knocked out of him as he felt a fist hit his stomach very hard, knocking him backwards and then the other fist connect with the side of his face. Both hits knocked him onto his back.

"That necklace is your only weapon?" said their attacker, laughing harder than ever.

"You don't want to see my weapon," Harry muttered through gritted teeth, thinking of the wand tucked safely away under his jacket.

"What's that you said? Don't want me to hurt you? What about her, this your girlfriend?" the person said, backing into a very scared Cho.

He pulled her arms around her back and stuck the knife up to her throat. Cho's pulse rose so high that the blood vessels in her neck were throbbing. She wasn't looking anywhere except at Harry.

"LET -- HER -- GO!" Harry roared, getting to his feet and clenching his own fists. He had to fight down the terrible urge to grab his wand and use magic.

"Aww," the person sneered. "Going to miss her that much if I, well..."

Harry saw blood trickling down Cho's throat and her eyes start to water and wince with pain. He felt a hot surge of anger and was surprised that she wasn't crying -- or perhaps she was counting on him to do something? Harry assessed his options. If he let go of the necklace, he feared that his legs would take him in the other direction, leaving Cho to just... If he used his wand, he was surely going to be in deep trouble with the Ministry of Magic and it wouldn't be his first offense. He wished that he thought of the idea of taking Raides under the Invisibility Cloak... All he really wanted was for the person to just leave them be, let them go and let them both go home.

Standing there, watching blood trickle down Cho's throat and begin to color her otherwise pretty striped shirt, he wished the attacker would leave them alone harder and harder. In fact, he was wishing so hard that it caused his vision to become blurry.

Harry's body gave a sharp jolt all over and he went tingly from head to toe. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he felt very weak. All he could think of was the mad laughter that echoed horribly in his ears. And then, just as suddenly as it started, his body fell under it's own weight and just before his head hit the ground with a thud, he heard Cho scream.

He did wake, but nothing was quite as it should have been. He was holding a knife up to Cho's neck. Having absolutely no idea what he was doing, he dropped her and looked up: his body was on the ground in front of him. Harry looked around at Cho, who, for a reason he didn't know, was scared to death of him. He didn't say anything, he just walked off and as his legs began to move, his body went tingly all over. He saw Cho run past him as his body went weak once again and felt himself collapse.

When he woke again, the person was gone, Cho was clutching her bleeding throat and kneeling over Harry. Bits of her own blood had dropped onto him. He stood up very suddenly.

"What happened," was all he could think to say, his voice shaking.

"I -- I don't know," Cho said, looking at Harry nervously. "You just sort of fell and then a few seconds later, that guy just walked away. When he was gone, you woke up."

Harry was visited with a ridiculous idea: he could possess someone else's body. He didn't voice this to Cho, he'd had enough experience with strange abilities no one else seemed to have. It was bad enough he was a Parselmouth, a wizard who could talk to snakes. Salazar Slytherin himself was famous for this. This bit got Harry into quite a bit of trouble in his second year at Hogwarts when he was blamed for setting a snake that appeared to be too large to even exist on the students. Fifty years before, the exact same thing had happened and it ended up being the death of one student. Back then, it was Tom Riddle. Fifty years later, it was a diary from Tom which had bewitched Ginny Weasley (Ron's little sister who had something of a crush on Harry) to do it. Harry had come face to face with the snake and killed it.

"You're bleeding," Cho said which made Harry remind her that, "You are, too."

Both of them stood up, Cho clutching her bleeding throat and Harry pressing his hand against a cut on the side of his head that he probably got from falling on the ground. With their free arms, they grabbed each other around the back and walked limpily towards the car. The first thing that Harry on his mind was tending to her wound.

As Cho went to open the trunk to get something to stop the bleeding, it wasn't the smile on her face that made him worry as she said, "Look, forget about it. He's gone, we're safe, it's over." It was the blood that dribbled down her mouth, the heavy, strangling cough she gave followed by more blood and her falling limp in his arms that made his mouth open in pure terror.

He felt the panic in him rising as the reality of the situation set in. He couldn't believe it. All he had was his wand, a stupid watch and the Order of Merlin necklace. A fat lot of help those three things were to him right now... For a terrifying few seconds, he looked into the eyes of the girl he, well... not having any idea what to do. He didn't know any spells to heal wounds and he certainly wasn't going to attempt to drive that car.

Panic reaching extreme heights, he took a fistful of his own shirt and wiped away as much blood from Cho's neck as possible. He wasn't happy at all to see more coming.

Thinking quickly, Harry took the keys from Cho's fingers and opened the trunk. He took out the scarf she had bought and wrapped it around her neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. When he was sure it was wrapped snug, he put her in the car, locked the doors, stuffed the keys in his pocket and held his wand out.

There was one last thought, probably a very stupid one, that was the only thing he could think to do: he would have to try his hand at Disapparating all the way back to Privet Drive, regardless of Aunt Marge, to get at the Phoenix Bracelet.

"Deliquesco!" he shouted, hoping no Muggles were watching and hoping for dear life not to get splinched, not now, not when it was so urgent...

It worked. And there was no way he could ever care less when his bedroom door swung wide open with Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia staring at him, his wand in his hand.

"WHAT -- HAVE -- I -- TOLD -- YOU!" thundered Aunt Petunia.

Her face was positively shaking with anger and Harry could not care less what was going on in Aunt Marge's mind.

"Don't ask," he said calmly.

Without saying another word to either of them, he pulled the Staff of Cybele out from under his bed, put on the Phoenix Bracelet and shouted, "Deliquesco!" once more, this time taking him right back to Cho's side.

Raides sprang to life and with one look at Cho, transformed into the great golden and scarlet lion.

"You can tell me the details later," said Raides to Harry's great relief.

He held onto Cho's hand and Disapparated the three of them back to his bedroom in Privet Drive. Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia were now accompanied by Uncle Vernon.

Raides, realizing what Harry must've had to have done to get her, said to Harry's relatives, "Would you mind? The girl's hurt badly, here."

Harry set Cho down on her bed and removed the scarf. The inside of it had absorbed quite a bit of blood.

His relatives, however, didn't seem to have any feeling in their legs and watched, horrified, as Harry bent over Cho and proceeded to heal the wound on her neck with the bracelet. Raides transformed back into the Staff of Cybele. Harry heard the words "Ennervate" in his head, and, taking the hint, grabbed it, stood up and pointed the crystal at Cho. He knew that this was the spell to wake someone up who had been unconscious. It glowed white for a few seconds and then shot a pearly-white ball at her that was accompanied by a gasp of Aunt Petunia. Aunt Marge's mouth was open in a sort of silent bark, typical of the sound she usually made when she was yelling at Harry.

Cho's eyes opened. She smiled for a fraction of a second before catching sight of the staff in Harry's hand, the bracelet on his wrist and Aunt Marge standing behind him, terrified.

"I don't care," he said flatly, noticing the look on Cho's face.

He wheeled around to face Aunt Marge and dropped the staff. Raides transformed into the lion on her way down. Aunt Marge backed up against the wall in the hallway at the very sight.

"Petunia?" she said faintly.

Aunt Petunia, to Harry's great surprise, had dropped her anger and he watched it curiously change to pure confusion. Uncle Vernon's face had gone from purple to a grotesque maroon. For a brief moment, Harry thought it would be funny to try the Phoenix Bracelet out on him and see if that's just an ability he has, being able to turn his face different colors, or if it was just a defect. Aunt Petunia grabbed her hips with her hands and nervously spun around, clearly not knowing what to do.

"Surprise!" growled Raides haughtily. "He doesn't go to St. Brutus'!"

Harry had a hard time forcing down a laugh even in a situation as serious as this. He was glad when, a moment later, Uncle Vernon grabbed Aunt Marge by the wrist and ran down the stairs with her. Aunt Petunia looked somewhat indifferent, mumbled something indistinct about Dudley and then she, too, ran down the stairs.

Harry and Cho gave one great, big simultaneous sigh and then turned to look at one another. The next thing that crossed Harry's mind was none too pleasant.

"So when d'you think" -- and Harry heard an indistinct popping noise behind him but didn't turn around to see what it was -- "the Ministry of Magic is going to come busting down the door and send me to Azkaban."

"We're not sending you to Azkaban for that," said a friendly, familiar voice right behind Harry causing him to jump. He turned around to face Mr. Weasley in robes of gray and white. Mr. Weasley took one look at the blood stain on Harry's shirt and shrieked.

"It's not mine," Harry explained. "I'm fine. It was hers but she's okay now."

"Oh, yes, well, very good. In that case, then, while I agree with Raides here that there was nothing to be done once Cho had been hurt, you shouldn't have, well... everything's okay now except for Miss Dursley, then?"

Harry knew that he had been teetering on the verge of saying "left the house." Just then, he had a quick thought.

"Can you leave her just the way she is?" he asked hopefully. "Maybe if she -- er -- knows and it wasn't such a bad experience as -- that she won't -- ?"

He could see the gears going in Mr. Weasley's head as he seemed to be considering the idea.

"You know, I was notified right away and had to wheedle my boss into sending me and not someone else to take care of this. I don't know, Harry," said Mr. Weasley uncertainly, looking sideways at Harry.

Before Mr. Weasley could say another word, Cho said quickly, "You know, Dudley got an acceptance letter and ever since, Harry and I have been trying to convince his aunt and uncle to send Dudley to Hogwarts. Maybe if they... ?"

Cho didn't have to finish the sentence, it's what he, himself, had been thinking for a long time now. Maybe if they knew enough, had seen enough and if it made their thick, cold hearts care enough, they wouldn't hate him as much.

Feeling thoroughly miserable, Harry walked over to his desk, picked up the very same pen he had been holding when Cho said three little words and crossed off another day on his calendar until his return to Hogwarts. "A little less than a month," he mumbled to himself. What made him feel even more miserable was that it was his last year at Hogwarts and he had no idea what he would be doing after he graduated aside from living with the Dursleys for the rest of his life.

He felt a pair of arms grab him from around the back and Mr. Weasley's reasoning fell soft under the weight of what was in front of him.

"All right," he said finally, "I'll not put a Memory Charm on her but I will be speaking to her. Leave me to handle the car, you two should get some dinner."

Harry was pleased to see his face contour itself into a smile. Mr. Weasley didn't think it a good idea for Harry and Cho to be having dinner with the Dursleys that night. He saw fit to bring up dinner to Harry's room for the two of them and after whatever talk he had with Aunt Marge, Disapparated back to the Burrow. Neither Harry nor Cho weren't keen on discussing the night's events, especially Harry who still had the ridiculous idea that he could possess people. Maybe he would share this with Sirius, Ron or Hermione but certainly not anybody else.

Harry gave the keys to Mr. Weasley and as soon as he was gone, Cho ordered Harry to change. Red was never her favorite color...

"Turn around or close your eyes," Harry told Raides and Cho as he took another shirt out of his closet.

After making sure that Cho's hands were firmly planted over her eyes and Raides' head was under the bed, he took off the shirt he was wearing. As he put the new one on, he didn't see as Cho opened two fingers to look at him, giggling (he just thought she was giggling because she knew what he was doing), and by the time he made sure she was still covering her eyes and said "okay," Cho had her fingers back in place. He wouldn't have done that with her even in the room just a short month ago. Harry had been increasingly comfortable around her but that didn't stop him from turning cherry-red.

They spent the entire night talking with Raides about the upcoming Triwizard Tournament taking place at Hogwarts and came to a silent agreement that enough had been said about tonight.

Harry still wasn't keen on becoming a Hogwarts champion like he had been forced to be the last time the Triwizard Tournament had taken place. Cho conveniently reminded him that the inter-house Quidditch Cup wouldn't take place. He always needed something to take his mind off schoolwork, among other things. And so after a few hours of talking, Harry was a little closer to deciding on taking part in it than he was just a few hours ago as he fell asleep that night, thinking about it. He almost felt like hearing those three little words again but knew Cho wouldn't be saying them again for a long, long time. There wasn't any way he could bring himself to say them, either.