Before the Storm

He decided it would never be sunny again.

Never. The skies would continue to piss on them until the swelling lake finally rose up and swept Hogwarts away.

"You're not actually going to have Quidditch practice in this mess, are you?"

Harry glanced over his shoulder. He was not surprised to see Hermione standing behind him, hands on her thin hips and a scolding scowl on her face. Ron was not far behind her.

"We need to stay in shape," Ron replied, reclining in an armchair by the fireplace.

"And getting yourselves drowned is the way to do it, then?"

"I wasn't thinking about practice," interrupted Harry, turning back to the window. The lake had engulfed Hagrid's hut and the giant squid was perched on it like some kind of mad parakeet. It seemed like it to was trying to get away from the wet.

"Isn't this storm funny?" remarked Ron, watching Harry closely. "Never seen it rain this much before. Four straight days. That's a lot even for England."

"The WWN says its just Hogwarts and Hogsmeade that's getting it," said Hermione, sitting down next to Ron. "Everywhere else is normal."

"We're probably just going through a wet spell," said Ron.

"Yeah," sighed Harry. He was only half-listening. The rest of his mind was thinking about the storm. There was something about the hulking black clouds outside that seemed more sinister and ominous than usual. It filled Harry's stomach with the ball of squirming worms that usual meant fear and with every lightning strike he swore he could feel a flash of barely perceptible pain running through his scar. He had wondered if perhaps Voldemort had started investing in demon storms, but dismissed it as stupid. It was just a storm.

Wasn't it?

"C'mon," said Hermione, interrupting Harry's thoughts. "Its time for Potions."

Ron sighed.

"I'll get my galoshes."

Snape's dungeon had flooded so that about half a foot of water covered the classroom floor, soaking the bottom of their robes and turning the students' toes into little hunks of ice. Snape, however, refused to move to higher ground, and instead instructed everyone to bring galoshes to class. Some people had to improvise and turn socks, sneakers, and even discarded household items into boots. Harry could have sworn Hermione's had a picture of a very brawny elf kissing some cleavage with lips on it, along with gold lettering spelling out, "Elves of the Rampant Wood," but she refused to comment whenever he asked about it.

Harry had just managed to light a fire in the water using some of Parvati's hairspray, when Snape swooped in. His hauteur and billowing black ensemble was somewhat dampened by his pink bunny rain boots, but he did not let them stop him. No one could figure out whether someone had hexed them that way or if Snape just really had a thing for cute, cuddly bunnies.

"Put out your fires," commanded Snape, sloshing through the classroom. "Today we will be brewing a cold potion, one more...suited to our current environment."

"Check these out." Harry looked around and was not surprised to see Malfoy standing with his cronies, rolling up his pants to show off his galoshes. They were new--silver with green snakes painted on them. As far as galoshes go, they were pretty nifty.

"Jealous, Potter?" Draco sneered when he caught Harry watching him. "Bet you never saw anything like these, have you?"

"They're just bloody galoshes, Malfoy," Harry replied, more incredulous than annoyed. Draco looked slightly surprised.

"Well, yes, but--"

"Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter, for language and for upsetting Mr. Malfoy," drawled Snape. "Nice boots, by the way," he said to Draco.

"Thank you, Professor," smirked Draco. He shot Harry a superior look. Harry just rolled his eyes and turned back to his cauldron.

"We will be making a memory potion," said Snape as he continued his rounds. "Not one to erase the memory, but to enhance it, to bring it to life again. It is particularly useful in treating victims of memory charms. Ours is a weaker, more elementary potions that will only bring you back about a year or so, but you should get the general idea." He glanced pointedly at Harry as he added, "Hopefully."

"Yeah, Potter," sniggered Malfoy, for no reason whatsoever. Despite Draco's sudden lack of insulting skill, Harry still felt the need to retort.

"Oh go puke in your designer galoshes."

"You will be working in pairs, as usual," said Snape. "Weasley, you're with Granger. Crabbe-Goyle. Potter-Malfoy."

"Why do I always end up with him?" hissed Harry angrily through his teeth.

"Because Snape knows how he gets under your skin," replied Hermione.

"It's common sense, really," said Ron. "If you just ignored him for a bit, he'd probably grow sick of tormenting you, and then you two would graduate, go to college, get jobs, and when you come back in ten years for a reunion you'd find that neither one of you was really that bad."

Hermione and Harry just started at him in silence.

"At least, that's what I've heard," Ron said, squirming uncomfortably.

"Are you feeling all right?" Hermione asked, squinting at him. Ron cocked his head to the side, thinking.

"I don't know," he said.

Harry sighed and glanced over to where Malfoy was standing. He was looking at his feet. He seemed to be practicing smirking at his reflection in the water.

"Stupid narcissist," muttered Harry under his breath. "Well, I'll talk to you guy later," he sighed. He grabbed his books and waded over to Malfoy's cauldron.

"Listen here, Malfoy," said Harry the second he plunked his things down on the desk. "I don't want any teasing or irritating behavior or mother-bashing, alright? I just want to make this potion and get out of this stinking hole before mold starts growing out of my ears. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," replied Malfoy.

Harry continued to glare at him warily as he picked up several glass bottles with various-colored infusions. Malfoy's smooth, pale forehead was wrinkled in concentration, which was an odd yet attractive look on him.

"You're really not going to bother me?" asked Harry, skeptical. Draco measured out two cups of an infusion of lemongrass into the cauldron.

"Just make the bloody potion, Potter," said Draco without looking up. "You can start by measuring out two teaspoons of this." He tossed Harry a bottle of pale yellow liquid. It was quite viscous, moving around the bottle like thickened honey.

"What is it?" asked Harry, holding it up to the dim candlelight. He uncorked it and gave it a sniff. It had a pungent, slightly rancid odor.

"Dragon urine from the Carpathian Mountains," said Draco, who was already pouring some more ingredients into the cauldron. "Careful," he said, smirking as Harry quickly recorked it with a look of horror and disgust. "It's quite rare and hard to come by."

"And we have to drink this stuff?" said Harry as he poured the piss into a pewter spoon.

"Buck up, Potter. It adds flavor."

"You can drink it first, then," grumbled Harry.

When they had finished, the potion was a pleasant pale red color and had a faintly floral odor. It would have been nice to wear as a perfume, but the idea of drinking it was completely repulsive to Harry.

"Ladies first," said Draco, scooping up a goblet full and offering it to Harry with a benevolent smile. Harry glared and snatched the cup out of his hand.

"Fine," he said, annoyed by Draco's expression. "Let's just get this over with."

Plugging his nose so he would not feel like he was drinking woman's toiletries, he downed all of the potion in one big gulp.

At first nothing happened. He was about to turn to Malfoy and inform him he had fucked up again, when the room began to grow fuzzy and spin. His head suddenly felt light, like he had just stood up too fast. Draco, whose mouth was moving but was not making any sound, grew very blurry and warped, until Harry realized that it wasn't Draco anymore, but Sirius.

"Siri-?" slurred Harry, feeling a strange lethargy pass over him. He felt like he was drunk. Not that he'd ever been drunk before.

"I haven't looked at this in ages," said Sirius, looking not at Harry but at the wall. Harry looked around and realized he was standing in the moldy old living room of Grimmauld place. It looked just like it had last year, when Harry had helped Sirius clean the old house out.

"Sirius--" Harry began again, but then he felt a sick feeing in his stomach, as though foam was churning around inside of him. Suddenly, he realized he was back at Hogwarts, in the Gryffindor common room, peering at Sirius's head in the fireplace. Sirius was looking at him very intently.

"I guess you're less like your father than I thought," he said.

"No, wait!" cried Harry, but it was too late. The world had morphed again, and now he was in his dormitory, watching himself thrash about on his bed as he dreamed. He continued to spin around the mad slid show of his memories, seeing familiar faces over and over again. They became still frames that spilled out the story of his fifth year at Hogwarts. At last, the memories slowed down and stopped right when he was at the Department of Secrets. He was back in the amphitheater, watching Sirius fall again. Before he passed through the archway, he seemed to turn to glance at Harry, to look at him in disbelief and ask what was happening.

"NO! SIRIUS!"

"Potter!"

"SIRIUS!!"

"Potter, you stupid wanker, wake up."

Harry jolted awake. He felt like he was floating in a cold pool of water. Then he realized he had fallen and really was floating in the sludge of the Snape's dungeon.

The entire class was standing over him, peering at him curiously. Malfoy had a bemused expression on his face that made Harry want to slap him in the face with a wet toad.

"Harry, are you all right?" asked Hermione, looking at him with a tender, worried expression.

"Y-yeah," said Harry, sitting up. He felt drained, exhausted, as if he had just ran a marathon.

Ron and Hermione pulled him to his feet, his robes dripping steadily. Snape was sneering at him with a look of extreme haughtiness, and was about to ask him what had happened when an odd cracking sound echoed off the wall of the room.

"What's that?" said Ron to no one in particular.

Draco studied the opposite wall carefully, and the look of concentration on his face was quickly replaced with on of complete horror.

"That wall's going to blow!" he cried.

There was a second of confused murmurs before hell broke loose. Harry was knocked back down in the mad rush for the door, and the splashing and sloshing about got the last of him that was dry absolutely soaking.

"Come back here! I haven't dismissed you yet!" Snape shouted over the commotion. "It's all perfectly fine. The wall is not going to-"

As he spoke, the wall broke open with a WHOOSH! of water that knocked Snape off his feet. The wall of water that ensued covered Harry, immersing him completely. He might have drowned if a hand had not reached down and grabbed his bicep, pulling him up and out of the flood.

"C'mon, Potter." Harry looked up and was quite surprised to see Malfoy on the other end of the hand the arm that was dragging him. He was not looking at him at all, but seemed intent on making it to the stairs.

"Malfoy-?" Harry began, but Draco just tossed him onto the first dry step of the stairs, where Ron and Hermione were waiting for him.

"Harry, are you okay?" asked Hermione, wrapping her arms around his completely wet body.

"Yeah, just a little damp," replied Harry.

"Learn how to swim, Potter," said Draco as he walked pass. Without looking at any of them, he headed up the stairs.

"Weird," said Ron, watching him leave.

"I wonder what's come over him," remarked Hermione.

"Who cares," said Ron. "C'mon, let's go eat."

He did not feel like eating.

Instead, he went down to the Slytherin common room. Like Snape's dungeon, it had begun to flood a little, but the walls were much more waterproof, so it was just a little drippy. Personally, Draco preferred it that way. It was much more soothing to fall asleep to the sound of water than to Goyle's snores or other more...disturbing noises.

Draco flopped down on one of the green leather couches. It was a bit stiff and sometimes he swore he heard the sounds of dead cows mooing, but otherwise it was the perfect place to sit and ponder one's situation in life.

He had not heard a word from his father since he escaped from Azkaban. He knew his father was a bit busy, being the Dark Lord's right hand man (or maybe just his left nostril man-he wasn't quite that important) but he could have dropped a wire every now and then.

Before, Draco's life goal had been to become just like his father. After all, who wouldn't want to be dashingly good looking, filthy rich, and evil? But lately Draco had begun to do something that was dangerous to his Malfoy equilibrium. Thinking.

He had watched Harry Potter, the boy who should have been the most miserable being on earth. After all, he had no vast inheritance like Draco had, or family like Draco had, and the most evil, vile wizard since Salazar Slytherin himself had been trying to kill him since his first baby teeth came in. Yet every time he looked at him from across the Great Hall he was laughing with his friends, smiling. Despite everything, Harry Potter seemed happy, happier than Draco could ever remember being.

And Draco began to wonder: Did he really want to be like his father, if this unhappiness was how his father made him feel?

"Ha ha." Draco sat up and looked over the back of the couch. Crabbe and Goyle had just walked in. Goyle was holding something in his ham of hand for both of them to see. "Pretty colors."

"What are you two looking at?" snapped Draco, annoyed that they had destroyed his reverie with their stupidity.

"Uh, just this, Draco," said Goyle. He held out a glass of water.

"It's water," said Draco in a deadpan tone.

"Yeah," replied Goyle.

"Why did you say, 'Pretty colors'?"

"Because...there were pretty colors."

That was it. That was the last straw. Draco got up and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" asked Crabbe.

"Out for a walk," said Draco without turning around.

The dungeon door slammed closed behind him.

Harry walked with his two friends, a sort of companionable silence hanging in the air. Every once in a while he reached down to squeeze some more water out of his robe.

"Mmmm can you smell that?" Ron asked, taking in a deep breath and leaning close to Hermione.

"Your breath? Yes," she said, making a face. She looked over at Harry. "Are you coming?"

Harry shook his head, letting droplets of water fly everywhere.

"No, I'm not hungry," he said. "I think I'm just going to go upstairs and change."

"All right. See you later," said Hermione. She and Ron headed down the hall.

"What's wrong with my breath?" Harry heard Ron say.

A grin spread across Harry's face, and immediately died as he remembered Potions. Those memories had seemed so real, as though he had been living it once again.

And he never wanted to live some of those again.

He went up to the tower and through the common room without remembering how his feet had got him there, and he ended up in his dormitory, on his bed, staring at the ceiling. For a moment he closed his eyes and listened to the storm outside.

He wished Sirius was there.

A grumble of protest rose from Harry's stomach. He was beginning to regret not going to dinner. He could not imagine going downstairs though, so instead he sloughed off his still-soaked robe and curled up in the bed.

It was then that he saw it.

It was wrapped up in old copies of the Daily Prophet, pictures moving eerily across its surface. Taped to it was a note that read in green ink:

I thought you should have this.

Harry reached over and grabbed it, the paper crinkly crisply under his fingers. Curious, he slowly peeled away a piece of tape, and then with it a piece of paper, to reveal...

A snow globe.

Except there was no snow in it. Instead, silver droplets that looked like tiny bits of rain came pelting down on two little figures standing about an inch away from each other. He didn't even have to shake it.

He squinted at the people inside, trying to get a better idea of what they looked like. They were so tiny. One, he decided, was a girl with long, silvery-blonde hair. The other was a boy with dark hair.

The sound of tumbling, stumbling boys came from the stairwell. Feeling oddly possessive, Harry shoved the globe into his pocket and grabbed his cloak just as Seamus and Dean walked in.

"Hallo, Harry," said Seamus pleasantly. "Why aren't you at dinner?"

"Not hungry," mumbled Harry, trying to repress yet another grumble from his stomach.

"Going somewhere?" asked Dean, glancing at his cloak.

"Uh, Hagrid's," said Harry, picking the first place outside he could think of. "Wanted to make sure he hasn't drowned or been eaten by the squid's babies or anything."

"Ah," said Seamus, looking a bit confused. "Right."

"Well, see you later." Harry tossed his cloak around his shoulders and dashed out the door.

It was not until he had left the Gryffindor tower that he realized he had no idea where he was going. He still did not feel like going to the Great Hall, and he did not want to go to the library or any other place where he might see more people. At least, he decided to go to the one place where no one in their right minds would go: outside.

The second he stepped out of the door he was pelted by a sheet of rain. He quickly did the Impervius charm on his glasses so he could see, and the first thing he spotted when the little specks of water cleared was Malfoy, sitting on a rock and throwing stick at the giant squid.

"What the hell are you doing out here, Malfoy?" demanded Harry. Draco turned and glared at him.

"I'm soaking up the rain," he replied. "Got to keep up my pale, clammy allure, you know. And what, pray tell, are you doing out on this beautific day?"

"Beautific isn't a word, Malfoy."

"Just answer the question, Potter."

Harry plopped down on the other side of the rock, his back facing Malfoy's. He looked at his shoes. There was a dead earthworm floating past his left big toe.

"Thinking," he said at last.

"Hm. Didn't think you had the capacity for that."

Harry sighed deeply, partly from exhaustion, mostly from annoyance.

"I really don't need this right now, Malfoy," he said, getting up. "Particularly from you."

"Oh really?" said Malfoy, smirking up at him through the rain. "Why's that? What did that little memory potion dig up out of that lump of a brain of yours?"

"Malfoy..."

"Don't get mad at me, Potter," spat Draco. "Don't try to pin some of the blame for your little godfather's death on me in your mind. Not when you really know you're the one that's really responsible."

A roaring noise filled Harry's ears, one that was not from the storm, as rage filled him.

"How dare you," he snarled, his hands balled up into fists that quivered with the intense desire to hit Malfoy in his pale, sneering mouth. "How dare you. It was your father and his friends--" he spat at the word, as though the idea of the Death Eaters was a tangible thing to be expelled before it poisoned the body, "--were the ones that killed Sirius!"

"Don't be--" began Malfoy.

He was interrupted by the sound of a train whistle.

"That's odd," Harry remarked, cocking his head to the side. "We're not close enough to the station to hear a train."

"I think the sound's coming from that funnel thing over there," said Draco casually, pointing behind Harry.

"What?" Harry glanced over his shoulder to see what Draco was talking about.

He almost fell over in shock.

A tornado was sweeping over the Forbidden Forest.

"Looks sort of like a vase. Or maybe a beak," said Draco.

"It's-it's?"

"Yes?"

"It's--"

"Oh hurry up and say it already."

"IT'S A TORNADO!"

"Gesund heigt?" said Draco, confused.

"TORNADO! RUN!!"

Harry took off in the opposite direction of the twisting, sucking cyclone. He could feel its wind pulling at his hair and clothes, at the air he was trying to breathe. Draco appeared next to him.

"Is it dangerous?"

"It sucks stuff up, spins it around, and spits it back out, from what I've heard," said Harry. "I read about them in primary school. They mostly happen in the middle of America, though."

"How do we stop it, then?"

"Um, I don't think we can."

"Well, we better do something," shouted Draco over the roar that had come over them. "I can't keep running for--"

But Draco was suddenly cut off as both boys were plucked off the ground. Harry managed to gasp in one last breath before everything went dark.

When Harry awoke, he was lying on his back, every muscle in his body aching as though ten Hagrids had rolled over him. It was still raining; every minute or so he felt a droplet land on his skin. It had definitely slowed down, however. It seemed like the storm was puttering out at last.

"James?"

Harry blinked a few times. Everything was blurry. For a second he thought maybe something had hit him in the head and blinded him, but then he realized he wasn't wearing his glasses.

"James, are you all right?"

"M'names not James," Harry said fuzzily.

"You're delusional, pal. Snap out of it."

That voice...where had he heard that voice before?
"Here are your glasses."

With great effort, Harry sat up and took the glasses proffered by a indistinguishable hand. He slipped them onto his face.

His eyes widened.

"Sirius?"