The Chalice of Morgridar

Chapter 1

The Power the Dark Lord Knew Not

The rain was soft but cold. It lashed out across the face of the wizard as he paced nervously back and forth at the mouth of the darkened alleyway, frequently examining the gold chain from his pocket. Perhaps he'd been wrong about the meeting place after all, he thought. Perhaps this character never meant to show. The whole thing had the air of a hoax. If not for the straitened circumstances in which the wizard found himself, he would have been sorely tempted to leave the whole thing be and retreat to the nearest watering hole to soothe his chilling bones with a warm glass of mead. As it was, however, he chose to wait, a little longer in any case.

Five minutes, possibly less, had passed before a soft crack indicated the presence of another wizard in front of the alleyway. He was much shorter and older than the first; large white sideburns framed a round, egg-shaped face. A pair of keen and penetrating eyes stared out at the tall wizard from behind a single monocle.

"Good evening, sir," he said in a stage whisper.

A sudden prickle of fear ran up the back of the younger wizard. He took out his wand.

"Surely you recognize me?" said the older wizard.

The younger wizard did not put away his wand.

"Yeah, I recognize you," he finally said, almost grudgingly. "But I still don't see why we have to meet here, now."

"My dear sir," said the older wizard in a slightly louder, more gravelly tone of voice. "Not everyone would approve of our business here tonight."

"That's because you're a dark wizard!"

The older man frowned and, for a moment, the younger wizard was certain he had angered him but then a wide plasticine smile returned to his face. He slowly shook his head.

"I would have thought you of all people would know," he said. "There are no more dark wizards."

"I'm still not so sure about that."

The old man tutted.

"If you continue to doubt me, I promise that before our meeting is over, I shall have provided you with proof that I am no Dark Wizard. I am simply as I told you before: a businessman like yourself, but one with the magical knowledge to improve your business."

The younger wizard's eyes narrowed. "And why should you want to do that?" he asked.

The older wizard raised his eyebrows. "Because my business would benefit even more. Not everything in life is a zero-sum game, my young friend, especially when one puts one's magic to best use. But I don't think you came here to discuss philosophy with me - do you have the Chalice?"

The younger wizard shifted uncomfortably. There was something about the way the older man looked at him: he was not only a skilled orator - it had not escaped the younger wizard that his interlocutor had just fashioned his questions as a diversion in order to get the topic that interested him - but he suddenly had the impression he was in the company of a skilled Legilimens. He tried quickly to shield his thoughts but almost as soon as he did so, the Chalice (and its location) zoomed instinctively to the forefront of his mind; he simply had never had very much practice at this.

The older wizard made a sudden movement and the younger wizard tensed. Was he about to Apparate? Did he already know where to -

"Oh, dear," said the older wizard suddenly. "You seem terribly frightened. I assure you I was only reaching for my gloves; it's rather chilly, don't you think? Perhaps not for one as young as you, but at my age, the cold seeps into one's bones quite quickly. I confess I'd hoped this discussion would not prove so lengthy so I'll ask you again: do you have the Chalice?"

The younger wizard looked into the older wizard's eyes again. Was this a bluff? Did he already know? The penetrating eyes continued to gaze at him expectantly and the younger wizard decided it would be foolish to delay the inevitable any longer.

"No," he said finally. "I don't have it but it's safe. My - my - the person who - it was a gift, you see? The person who gave it - "

"You don't want to be seen without it should this mysterious individual come calling unexpectedly?"

"W - well, yes, look, isn't it possible for you to perform the magic without actually - "

The older wizard shook his head and smiled. "I'm afraid not, my friend. In order to work perfectly, I need to be able to touch and feel the Chalice, to know it, to restore its past glory. With distance, the effect will fade."

"And how will this help you?"

"As I told you before," said the older wizard, staring straight into the younger man's eyes. "It was once in my possession; I bear no grudge, you see; I divested of it fair and square, but if I were to have it again just for a week, it could make all the difference in the world. I have a client, you see, who shares your reluctance for important deals, and I'm afraid I may have over-indulged in Felix Felicis once too often in the past."

"I - I - " The younger wizard started to feel angry.

"You've never backed down from a deal; I expect you haven't. There's no need to feel ashamed; until recently, you've been very lucky in your dealings, but luck is always bound to run out sometime; you just need some way to give it an encouraging hand again, don't you?"

"Well, y - yes, I - "

"Good." The older wizard smiled and nodded. "I will only be able to meet with you once more, at the same time, next week; you must bring the Chalice. If you do not, the opportunity will have passed and I fear our paths will not cross again. Think on it, sir; think on it."

The old man turned around for the moment almost as though he planned to walk down the darkened alleyway, then suddenly and sharply turned back.

"I almost forgot," he added silkily. "I intend, at the very least, to keep my part of the bargain."

He held out his right hand slowly, slightly melodramatically, then turned it over and showed the younger wizard what lay in his palm.

"A galleon?" the younger wizard asked, a bit perplexed.

"Not just a galleon."

The younger wizard peered closely at the coin. There was something shifting about on its surface; it was as though - his eyes widened; he instinctively took a step back.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded.

"My dear sir, I think you know full well that there is only one way this coin could have come into my possession."

"Too bloody wrong, you are! I would know you!"

The older man smiled. "And perhaps you do; as I said before, not everyone would approve of our business. Good night to you, sir."

And before the younger wizard could react to this information, his mysterious interlocutor had Disapparated.

***

It was dark. Not pitch dark but dark enough that Harry couldn't see very clearly where he was walking. He took a cautious step forward and then felt himself stumble. A long vine snapped across his face. Yet still he kept walking; he felt he had to. Something kept driving him on - an unseen force in the back of his mind, an oddly familiar and yet uncomfortable sensation that even now he was dreaming and not yet dreaming.

He kept walking through the forest, losing his balance occasionally as his foot struck an uneven patch of earth. He could hear the sounds of water near him. He felt a cool breeze, more vivid and real than any breeze in his waking world, softly caress his face. He knew where he was; he could already sense it somehow, but he had to know for sure. He began to walk faster, stumbling again once, then twice more. More twigs and branches snapped back across his face, stinging and cutting him. Finally, the last branch receded and his bare feet fell into cool, dark water.

He was standing on the edge of a lake. Water circled closely around the place where he stood; he was on an island. A brilliant full moon shone brightly overhead in a sky Harry already knew would never cloud over. The moonlight twisted and broke in its reflection on the lake. The seamless white of its light in sky and water was interrupted only by a low ridge of new trees at the lake's far end.

Even in the darkness, Harry knew which trees he was looking at. He also knew exactly where he himself was standing. He had stood in this same spot only a few days before in the daylight, but what had brought him here now again so soon? Was it really only his own wandering mind? Could it be that -

Harry's thoughts came to an abrupt end. A low, haunting, yet beautiful sound broke up toward him from the surface of the lake. He had heard that sound before at a time when everything had seemed lost, when -

"Hello, Harry."

Harry swung around. Dumbledore was standing behind him, dressed from head to toe in a purple robe with silver stars and half-moons sparkling on its surface. His crescent spectacles glimmered in the light of the moon, and his long hair, beard, and skin, too, seemed to glow unnaturally bright in their whiteness, almost as though -

"You know why I have brought you here, I think."

"No, sir, I mean, I - "

Dumbledore smiled benignly but there was deep look in his eyes that seemed to challenge Harry to trust his suspicions, however fearful acknowledging them would prove.

"You're - you're - "

Dumbledore nodded even though Harry had been unable to finish the sentence himself. Somehow, both of them knew.

"I have taken on the second greatest adventure of them all, Harry. I am talking to you now not as myself, but as an echo. I believe you saw an echo once before in your parents' form?"

Harry nodded, still looking at Dumbledore a little numbly.

"It can't have been long ago that it happened, Harry," he went on. "I arranged this echo to speak to you shortly after the moment had come. There's no need to concern yourself with me; others have already been alerted and the magic protecting this island will be lifted long enough for the necessary arrangements to be made. But there is one thing I do require your help with Harry. I think you know what that is."

"You - you need me to find your successor; someone else who can watch over the forces on this island?"

"That's right, Harry."

"I - I can - "

But Dumbledore shook his head.

"No, Harry. You have a family and you cannot bring them with you. This is a job for one person, one person who is prepared to live a solitary life, and who will understand the consequences of his or her actions and someone, forgive me, with an even longer lifetime of magical experience than you yourself now possess."

"Then why ask me to help you, sir? Surely you're much more likely than I am to know someone who could succeed you?"

"Perhaps, Harry, perhaps. But the magic binding me to this island necessitates that you alone find my successor: you are my Secret-Keeper, Harry, and not only my Secret-Keeper but the secret keeper of this island, and it will be your task to remain in the world and find a successor to each occupant as he or she passes beyond the gateway. One day, perhaps also, the occupant of the island will have to find a successor for you but I hope that that day will still be a long time in coming. Do you understand?"

Harry nodded, but he couldn't help but think somewhere in the back of his mind that Dumbledore hadn't really quite broken all these details on him those many years ago when he had first agreed merely to be his Secret-Keeper.

"But couldn't you think of - aaahhh!"

Harry looked down quickly at his hand. The wizard ring on his finger was crackling with emotional energy: sudden fear and terror surged through him. He stared at the ring for a moment not understanding, then Dumbledore said:

"You are urgently needed elsewhere, Harry. I have said all I needed to say. There is enough magic to protect this island for nine months, no longer. It is imperative that you have my successor in place by then. If not, the forces of this island will be unleashed and I fear to say I will not be able to predict the consequences."

"But what - what does that mean - and how - "

Harry winced again as the ring seemed to explode off his finger.

"Go now, Harry," said Dumbledore. "There isn't time - there isn't time for either of us - you will know when you have found the one you have been seeking. Trust yourself, just as I trust you."

Dumbledore suddenly vanished. Harry was about to protest again when the earth beneath his feet, the trees that rustled their branches in the wind around him, the cool moonlit lake, and the clear starlit sky all lifted away like a painting.

And he was awake. Momentarily disoriented, Harry realized it was still dark outside, much darker in fact than it had been on the island. There was no moon in the sky outside the window of his hidden cottage on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Soft rain fell through the chilly September sky onto the windowpane behind his bed. His mind still unclear, Harry began to wonder what had woken him when the ring on his finger erupted again. His heart began to beat fast and adrenalin surged through his body. It was as though someone had bottled anguish and fear and begun injecting them inside him.

At almost the very same instant that Harry felt the oddly foreign and rootless feeling of raw elemental fear coursing through his body, a soft moan had pierced the air. It was not the first time he had experienced the two sensations alongside one another and, now wide awake, Harry knew exactly what he had to do.

"Ginny!" he called out into the dark, still room. "Ginny, wake up! Ginny, please wake up!"

There was another moan, a little louder this time. A fresh surge of fear ran up through Harry's hand. Goose bumps formed on his skin like a fast-growing rash; the air suddenly seemed to grow very cold. He reached out on the bed beside him, his fingers finding strands of long silky hair and the side of a warm, soft face. There was another moan as he did so. It sounded to Harry as beautiful as a phoenix rising out from the depths of its own ashes but Harry also knew - and felt - that it was a sound conceived from the bowels of a tortured soul. For this reason, he wrapped his arms tightly around the witch lying next to him, took hold of her shoulders, and began rocking her back and forth in a tender but persistent motion.

"Ginny!" he hissed.

"No, don't, please don't, I - "

"Ginny!"

Harry shook her harder, fighting off the urge to cry out himself as fresh waves of terror rushed through him like the crests of waves from a rising storm front. Finally, he released one arm and fumbled on the bedside table behind him. He knocked over a glass of water, sending its contents to the floor and collapsed a small picture frame but finally his hand reached around the handle of a wand. He grabbed it so quickly his fingers almost lost their grip but finally the wand came away in his hand. He flicked it through the air.

"Lumos!"

A small white beam of light ignited from the tip of the wand. The hungry fingers of darkness retreated and the bedroom once again became a familiar space. The soft hues of a large red and gold bedspread came into view. Quidditch players zoomed around a faraway pitch in a large poster on the wall. Another smaller picture on the top of an enormously large chest of drawers showed a bespectacled wizard standing next to a witch with long red hair and green eyes holding a small baby boy between them and waving its hand. Next to that was another picture of a wizard and witch only slightly younger. The wizard also had dark black hair and wore glasses, but his eyes were green like his mother's before him. His lips were slightly pursed as though he was unsure whether to close them in solemn contemplation or laugh out loud. The witch standing next to him with long, straight red hair and brown eyes beamed unabashedly. In her arms was a tiny auburn-haired girl staring straight ahead at the camera as though out of her innocence she had understood something far deeper than either of her parents put together.

The name of the girl was Siosia and it was her parents who now lay tussled in each other's arms on top of the four-poster bed. If the very young baby in that photograph had truly held the wisdom she'd appeared to possess, it might have been because her parents were far from ordinary: they were - or had once been - the Boy and Girl Who Lived - the only living creatures ever to have survived an Avada Kedavra curse, though both in entirely different ways.

"Ginny," repeated Harry again. "Ginny, wake - "

The soft, deep brown eyes of the witch who had once been known as Ginny Weasley slowly opened.

"Harry?" she said tentatively. "Oh, Harry!"

Harry took hold of Ginny's shoulders and eased her tightly but gently into his arms once more. Where moments before there had been fear and terror now warm waves of relief flooded toward him through the ring. The relief matched Harry's own emotion; indeed, it was often very difficult for Harry to separate his own feelings from those coming to him through the ring, which was exactly how it was meant to be. If anything, though, he tried to amplify the relief to soothe and calm Ginny in time with the slow, rhythmic movement with which he continued to rock her. After all, he knew that she could feel his feelings through her ring also.

It had been thirteen years and a few months since the fateful few days which had carved Harry and Ginny's lives into before and after: it had been during those days that, in a forgotten cavern underneath a distant lake, Harry and Ginny had been the only ones who had stood between the final incarnation of Lord Voldemort and his plans to gain immortality by puncturing a hole between the world of the living and the world of the dead, an action which Voldemort's megalomaniac vision had prevented him from seeing would annihilate both worlds forever. They had succeeded in stopping Voldemort's plans and Harry had killed Voldemort, exactly as a prophecy had once predicted, but only at the cost of Ginny's life.

But Ginny had not remained dead for long. Protected both by the need to readjust the balances that Voldemort himself had upset and through an ancient and powerful magic no wizard or witch understood, Ginny's soul had returned to her mortal body three days after it had been released through Voldemort's curse.

Still in disbelief that they could begin to live the years together that Harry had once been convinced would be forever denied to them, both Ginny and Harry had wasted little time planning their new future. Shunning the publicity of the wizarding world and retreating to a close circle of friends and family, they quickly and almost without ever consciously deciding it made plans for their own marriage, plans that came into fruition one day before Ginny's eighteenth birthday.

Even before that, however, they had decided to purchase and fit a pair of wizard rings following from Harry's best friends Ron and Hermione. The shock that this had caused poor Mrs. Weasley, who had only recovered from the wizard ring pairing of her youngest son, made Harry and Ginny's subsequent wedding slightly banal by comparison.

Union by wizard ring was very uncommon; even lifelong partners in marriage rarely chose to bond by wizard ring - neither Harry nor Ginny's parents, both of whom had enjoyed young and very passionate marriages, had chosen to bond in this way. Wizard rings were also the subject of many a nightmare for the parents of teenage witches and wizards for one simple reason: once two lovers were bonded by wizard ring, neither the rings nor the magic that bound them could be removed until one of the partners died. Wizard history was dotted with many examples of young romance that bonded for life an unfortunate couple who later grew to detest one another.

But Harry and Ginny had never regretted their bonding. The wizard ring was no mere symbolic connection. The wizard and witch who wore each half of the pair shared an empathetic link: though their thoughts remained their own, any emotion experienced by one would be felt by the other through the ring. Distance dampened the link but the connection rarely subsided completely. The advantage of the ring for true soulmates was obvious: joy, pain, fear, and bliss were shared; miscommunication was by necessity short-lived. And intimacy was exquisite: each lover could know exactly where and how the other wanted to be touched and felt; every moment of pleasure felt by one was instantly shared by each.

But equally if not more important than this, the wizard rings had helped Harry and Ginny to heal the emotional scars of childhoods that had been tarnished in different though equally horrific ways by the creature that had once been Lord Voldemort. It was at these moments, when haunting, brooding fears threatened to close like a dark glove over the wounded souls of the two lovers that the other could reach out to expose those worries and doubts as mere castles in the dark clouds of a stormy past. Even in the nightmares of the sleeping mind where rational, conscious thought could protect neither Ginny nor Harry from their now imagined horrors, the wizard rings could often awake the other even from a deep slumber to bring those nightmares to an end.

"It's all right," Harry whispered softly into Ginny's ear as he had so many times before. "Whatever it was isn't real, not anymore anyway. Just forget about it."

Ginny drew herself back slowly and looked closely at Harry through tired, bloodshot eyes as though needing to convince herself he was real. A few strands of her long red hair remained to tickle the side of his face.

"Tell me about your nightmare," Harry said.

"Oh, Harry, you know I don't like - "

"Tell me about it," said Harry, in a gentle but determined voice, "and it won't seem real to you anymore. Were you in the Chamber? The cavern? The original room?"

Ginny hesitated for a moment. Harry sensed fresh anxiety and then something more like confusion.

"No, it wasn't in any of those. It was - " Ginny's brow furrowed. "It was - I'm not sure - I - I don't think I've ever been there before. I was somewhere very dark and dusty - a sort of big room, a bit like a cellar. I was frozen; I - I couldn't move. I think then someone was - was pointing a wand at me - they kept sending off a Cruciatus - oh, Harry, it was horrible."

Ginny wound herself back into Harry's arms.

"It's okay; it's all right," Harry whispered to her again. "Whatever it was isn't real," he repeated.

But Ginny didn't seem so easily mollified.

"This is the third time this week I've woken us up like this."

"It doesn't matter. I don't care if it's every night; I'm not - "

"Each time I'm in a different place," Ginny went on as though Harry hadn't said anything. "It's all - oh, Harry, I know it's because of Siosia. I'm still worried about her."

Harry unwound himself from Ginny again and looked into her eyes with what he hoped was an expression of reassurance.

"I know it's hard to get used to, but Dumbledore said - "

"Dumbledore could be wrong, Harry, you know that. He was wrong before."

Harry sighed. He didn't really have a response to give Ginny. And what was worse, he knew that she could be right.

Ginny had been only nineteen when she gave birth to their first and only child, whom they decided to name after Ginny's very young elfin friend Siosia. This was for two reasons: the first was to express their gratitude to Siosia, who had saved Ginny's life when she had passed the pentrax necklace to her, the magical properties of which had kept Ginny's soul whole while it was separated from her body, thus facilitating its return to a corporeal form. The second was because of what the name Siosia meant - the New Becoming. It represented the hope of all the wizarding world, and Harry and Ginny in particular, for a new life and a new world after Voldemort's death.

Both Ginny and Harry had originally planned to have at least one other child but so far they hadn't. Though neither acknowledged it particularly, both knew this was because the early years of Siosia's upbringing had been far more difficult than either of them had expected. While still a toddler, Siosia had gone through episodes of violent mood swings and temper tantrums, followed by strange periods of asocial quietness and withdrawal. At first, Harry and Ginny, reassured by Ginny's supportive parents and extended family, had seen these as a passing phase. But when Siosia's bizarre behavior had still continued on into her early childhood years, they had sought the advice of healers and even Muggle doctors and psychiatrists. By the age of four, Siosia had not yet spoken a word and she would still break into violent fits. When these started to be accompanied by bouts of uncontrolled magic, far more powerful than any four-year-old witch should ever have been capable of, Ginny finally decided to take Siosia away with her to the elfin village where she herself had lived for nearly two months prior to their final battle with Voldemort.

The elves, or house-elves as they had once been called, would only allow Ginny and Siosia into their village. They would not allow any other wizard or witch - including Harry - inside their world even though they once had entertained both Dumbledore and Remus Lupin. The elves themselves never discussed this but Ginny had been told long ago when their mysterious priests - called navigators - had brought her back from beyond the gateway that it was because she had been the first of their kind who had refused to betray the elves even at the cost of her own life, thereby fulfilling an old elfin prophecy. For six months, Harry had been separated from his wife and daughter. By the time they returned, however, Siosia's behavior had changed dramatically. The mood swings had subsided; she was lucid, bright, and highly precocious. She could speak both English and fluent Elfish. In the years that followed, Siosia's problems had been less the unusual condition of an abnormal young witch and more the difficulties of any early childhood. She also came to reflect the best and worst traits of her parents: a quick temper, a dangerous sense of curiosity and disregard for personal safety, and a highly sensitive but also deeply compassionate disposition. In comparison to her early years, however, she had given them little further cause to worry.

That was until ten days ago when Siosia, now eleven, had started her first year at Hogwarts and, in front of her father's own bewildered eyes, had found herself sorted into Slytherin House, the house both Harry and Ginny still associated with the ex-followers of Voldemort, and not into Gryffindor, the house of both her parents and grandparents.

After spending a week trying and failing to talk Professor McGonagall into seeing that a horrible mistake had been made, Harry had begun to fear that the Sorting Hat had placed Siosia into Slytherin because of a vestigial imprint that had been passed on through him to her. It had been during Harry's own sorting that the Hat had revealed itself to be strongly disposed to putting him in Slytherin. Harry might have acquiesced, even, had he not been informed by his new found friend, Ginny's brother Ron, that Slytherin was the home of every wizard or witch that had ever gone bad, and throughout his subsequent years as at Hogwarts, Harry had had little cause to doubt both the statement and its converse. As a teacher in a world after Voldemort, he had mellowed somewhat and tried to see his students equally, no matter what house they had been sorted into, but the idea that his own daughter was in Slytherin had been too much to bear and Harry now found his old suspicions and fears rising to the surface of his thoughts once more.

It had been during Harry's second year that he had discovered that the Sorting Hat had considered putting him in Slytherin in part because Voldemort had unwittingly imparted some of his powers to Harry the night he had killed his parents. And now he and Ginny both feared that Harry had imparted some of his darkness in turn to their daughter. It seemed that the architect of their nightmares was returning from beyond the deepest of graves for one final laugh.

Neither Ginny nor Harry were inclined to spend a very long time stewing over a course of action before acting on it, but Ginny had been the most insistent that Harry visit the one wizard who possessed the knowledge and experience to settle their problem, even to intervene if necessary.

Thirteen years earlier, following the aftermath of Voldemort's unexpected return and subsequent defeat, Albus Dumbledore had resigned as headmaster of Hogwarts to guard an island of unstable energies, all that remained of a gateway once built to connect two worlds that were never meant to be joined. Dumbledore had asked Harry to be his Secret-Keeper. Only Harry could contact Dumbledore and the old headmaster had told him explicitly not to do so save for in the gravest of emergencies. Harry had not fully appreciated when he had first undertaken the job how difficult that would prove to be. In addition to the need to shy away from others because of his own celebrity status, he now had to restrain the barrage of Ministry officials, assorted Hogwarts personnel, well-wishers, and truth-seekers who begged him for an audience with Dumbledore. In the end, however, he had sought out Dumbledore's counsel for his own reasons, telling himself that there was more at stake here than just two anxious parents and their only daughter.

But Dumbledore had managed to convince Harry that Siosia's sorting into Slytherin was perfectly normal for a child who had grown up in the shadow of two parents who were still idolized throughout the Wizarding world; in short, a child who had grown up very much wanting to prove herself, a trait which the Sorting Hat had told Harry many years before had led it to strongly consider placing him in the house.

Harry had explained Dumbledore's ideas to Ginny and while she had seemed persuaded that nothing exceptionally dark was at work, her concerns had returned to Siosia's safety in a house which she remained convinced was full of scheming dark wizards and witches in training. Her continued anxieties had pricked the shallow shell of her mental defenses and led to a renewed spate of nightmares.

"We have to give her the chance," Harry finally said. "I know it's not much consolation, but would either of us have liked it if our parents had gotten quite this involved in our sorting?"

Ginny let out a laugh in spite of herself. "My parents would probably have pulled me out of Hogwarts if I'd been sorted into Slytherin. And it was about all I could do to persuade them not to pull me out anyway after what happened to me my first year."

"And did you like that?"

"Of course not."

"Well...."

Ginny sighed. "I didn't say we were going to pull her out. I just wish - " She stopped herself. "I think you can feel how worried I am."

Harry smiled and ran his fingers slowly through Ginny's hair once again. "Look, we're probably a lot more worried than she is right now. I bet she's fast asleep surrounded by new friends thinking only of the D.A.D.A. essay she has due tomorrow."

Ginny giggled. "I wouldn't flatter yourself."

Harry smiled, too. They looked at each other for another moment. Harry waved his wand again and the light went out. Ginny lay back down on the bed and nestled her head near the nape of Harry's neck. He tangled his fingers slowly through her hair for a few minutes and then both fell into a dreamless sleep.

***

At that same moment, however, Siosia Potter was far from asleep. She was standing on top of a chair in the Slytherin common room, her wand aimed at a short blonde-haired girl whose face bore the messy evidence of an attack from several large, bat-shaped bogeys. Standing in front of her was a large number of curious onlookers, all awoken from their sleep by the noise and now engrossed in the unfolding drama in front of them. Two prefects seemed to be trying, with no success, to get Siosia to put her wand down. Neither tried to conceal their relief when the entranceway to the common room opened to reveal Peter Hall, Charms Master and head of Slytherin House.

"What's going on?" he demanded. He swiftly strode over, stood in front of Siosia and gave her a strangely calculating look. He was still taller than she was even while she was standing on top of a chair, but Siosia had not spent much of her young life being easily frightened by others, and this didn't seem a good time to start.

"Why don't you ask her?" she demanded shrilly, pointing down at the defenseless looking girl on the floor.

There were a few gasps from the onlookers, mostly the younger students, Siosia noted, but still she did not flinch.

"I'm asking you; I think that's because you're the one standing on a chair with your wand drawn out, but then I suppose you knew that already."

Gone was the rich almost inviting tone that Hall had conjured for their lessons; in its place was an sharp, cutting voice which complemented the steely, penetrating expression in his ice blue eyes. Her father had always warned her that a Slytherin could easily wear two faces; she had been expecting to see the true side of Peter Hall for two weeks now and she wasn't going to appear surprised or intimidated.

"I don't use my wand for no reason - unlike some people."

"Then pray tell me what your reason is."

"She called me a blood traitor."

Hall's jaw stiffened for a moment. Siosia had the strange feeling he was going to tell her that she was; something inside her almost wanted him to, but whatever internal battle Professor Hall might have been waging, it quickly ended. He turned his attention to the girl lying on the floor.

"Is this true?" he demanded, in an equally icy tone of voice.

The girl hesitated for a moment, the malice in her eyes evident as she stared back up at Siosia.

"Well, she is," she hissed finally.

Hall said nothing more; he turned back up to Siosia.

"You're going to have to develop slightly thicker skin, Miss Potter."

"I don't expect you to understand."

More gasps.

Hall stared at Siosia for another moment, then a sardonic smile found its way onto his lips.

"You don't know how much you remind me of - "

" - My father?" finished Siosia, color rising in her cheeks.

Hall didn't respond for a moment. He stroked his chin thoughtfully.

" - Perhaps, but I was going to say your uncle."

"What about my uncle?"

But Hall just smiled.

"Fifty points will be taken from Slytherin for your failure to control yourself in front of your classmate and another thirty for your insolence. I shall reprieve of you of detention this time for your sake - and your father's."

He started to walk away; he had nearly reached the door when he added, almost as an afterthought.

"And Miss Caldwell: I hope to see the floor of this common room spotless by tomorrow morning - no magic. And if you ever call Miss Potter or anyone else that again, I will personally wash out your mouth with a Scouring Potion."

In with that, Hall was gone.

There was a long awkward moment of silence. Siosia stared out ahead at the darkened common room for a moment. She suddenly felt as though she would have to fight off the urge to cry, but then immediately the feeling was gone. She was vaguely aware that Clarissa Caldwell had just picked herself off of the floor, hate bleeding out of eyes that were just as vividly blue as Hall's own. But she wasn't glaring at Siosia this time; the main door through which Hall himself had just retreated was the target of her intensity and the expression on her face was that of the deepest betrayal. It was as though she believed she had the power to reach into Peter Hall's soul wherever he was and brand it forever with a nightmare of her own will. She briefly looked up at Siosia with a flicker of loathing and then marched off to their shared dormitory, slamming the door behind her.

Siosia was vaguely aware that the prefect was talking again.

"Come on; down from there!" he snapped. "You heard what Professor Hall said. Or do you want to disgrace us further? This isn't a house accustomed to falling into negative points!"

Siosia did not make eye contact with the prefect but she stepped down almost absently from the chair and began to make her way back to the same dormitory. The other students walked back to their dormitories as well and seemingly satisfied that Siosia was heading back to bed, the prefect returned to his own dormitory, stifling a yawn as he did so. Somewhere in the distant corner of her otherwise absent mind, Siosia could hear doors opening. Her hand was almost on the handle to the door when a deep but slightly lazy voice said:

"I'm never sure whether to like him, you know, but now I think I will."

Siosia felt a sudden chill. It was as though someone had just put a freezing charm on her neck, yet she felt certain that no one had. Suddenly Siosia felt far more afraid than she had when Clarissa had threatened her or Hall had confronted her on the chair. She looked around; everyone else had entered their dormitories; no one else seemed to have noticed the voice but her and yet she found she knew right away exactly who it was that was speaking.

He (or should she say she?) was sitting not on one of the sofas but on the floor in front of it with his knees pulled up against his chest. No doubt he had been there all the time. None of the prefects would have noticed that he hadn't returned to bed, nor would they have wanted anything to do with returning him if they had.

Siosia couldn't remember if he'd looked at her before but she supposed that after her behavior that night she'd become difficult for anyone to ignore, even him. His long black curls fell down in a shaggy veil around his face so it was impossible to tell whether his pale yellow irises were looking in her direction. She could see that even now his waxy skin had taken on a slight shade of green, matching that of the sofa.

"You're looking at me now," Nybyn remarked. "You always used to look away. I've been watching you for a while now, you know. You're not like the others."

"I - "

Siosia suddenly turned around to try the door handle.

"Oh please don't go. No one ever talks to me."

There was such a sudden pitying note in the Windylsyde's voice that Siosia felt compelled to turn around and face him again. It was that moment that he let out a very high-pitched girlish laugh and it suddenly became obvious to Siosia that Nybyn was really a she; and then his jaw straightened and he wasn't again. Talking to Nybyn, Siosia quickly decided, was like looking at a figure-ground reversal; you couldn't really tell which part was meant to be forward.

In the days that her father and mother had attended Hogwarts, it had been a school for, well, for humans. There were werewolves, of course, like her Uncle Remus, but then he hadn't been born as a werewolf and he had lived all his life around non-werewolves, trying his best to assimilate to human culture. Of course, it was not as though Hogwarts was crawling with students who had once been called "magical creatures," a term that had now been denounced as politically incorrect, although listening to her fellow Slytherins, one would have thought that humans were an endangered species. There were only a few and Nybyn, as far as Siosia knew, was the only Windylsyde. Moreover, he had been raised by humans, but he still didn't behave exactly human, not as far as Siosia was concerned. Though in a part of her mind, she was aware of her prejudice, and though she seethed whenever she heard the homoracism of the other Slytherins, Siosia had still found herself giving Nybyn a wide berth.

It wasn't as though Siosia was a stranger to magical creatures. She still returned to the house-elf village from time to time, although her memory of the first four years of her life, including the several months she had lived in the village, was non-existent. Her aunt Hermione had led the first ever movement to protect the rights of magical creatures and then made it her whole life's work; her mother had worked tirelessly to push the conservative bureaucracy of the Ministry to write more and more of those rights into law; and her grandfather, in his later years of work before his retirement, had fought for more legislation protecting Muggle rights and making Muggle Studies a mandatory O.W.L. for any wizard or witch considering a career in the Ministry. Yet there was something about Nybyn that engendered a kind of primal fear in Siosia. She didn't believe most of the rumors about him, of course, that he was feral and dangerous and had been sorted into Slytherin because of his ambition to devour the student population of Hogwarts for tea. His modest abilities to camouflage himself, slightly stunted compared with wild Windylsydes, unnerved Siosia but did not terrify her. The thing that bothered her the most, though she was slightly loathe to admit it to herself, was that Nybyn was neither really a he nor a she. And even at Siosia's age she realized, however unconsciously, that, to a race of creatures like human beings that ordered their world in successive pairs of opposites, it is deeply disturbing not to know whether the person to whom one is talking is female or male.

Windylsydes were androgynous, or non-gendered, or something. When encountering humans, Windylsydes were said to assume the characteristics of the opposite gender to their interlocutors, but the transformation was not complete. Thus for the most part, in their very brief interactions, Nybyn appeared to Siosia as a boy, but every now and then, such as just a moment before, he took on the obvious characteristics of a girl. Siosia did not know how far this change went and she had decided her first week that she definitely did not want to find out. There had been an obvious problem trying to place Nybyn, who was now in his second year, into a dormitory. His human parents had tried very hard to bring him up as a boy and had insisted he be placed into the boys' dormitory. This had not gone over very well with the first year Slytherin boys, however, since within the first week, "he" had begun to noticeably change into a "she." After a brief and even less successful experiment in the girls' dormitory, Nybyn had finally been given a room of his/her own and no one had seemed inclined to object that this wasn't fair. Nybyn for his part, however, spent very little time in the room and instead was most often seen sitting curled up in the common room night after night staring off into space.

Siosia paused in front of the door.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying and then felt immediately disturbed at how tepid her voice seemed to sound. She stopped and looked at Nybyn.

"That's better," he said, a little lazily. "You can even come closer if you like. I won't eat you - contrary to popular belief."

Without really thinking much about it, Siosia started to walk in Nybyn's direction; she stood facing him before he let out another very girlish giggle.

"I'm - " she began.

"I know who you are and no doubt you know who I am, so let's not pretend otherwise, shall we? What fascinates me is how you ended up in this house."

"I - I didn't want it!" said Siosia, a little surprised at the suppressed anger that had come out with her words. "I never thought the Sorting Hat - I don't why it sorted me here; I don't belong here!" She sighed, wondering why she was now pouring out her frustrations to someone who still made her feel so uneasy.

"Oh, well, that's easy," Nybyn replied, a little glibly, still eyeing Siosia up and down as though it was she who was the unusual magical creature. "You're here for the same reason I am. You want to prove you're something more than everyone else thinks of you as being."

"Right now, I just want to be somewhere where I'm not afraid I'm going to be attacked in my sleep by my own roommate."

Nybyn smiled. "Believe me, I quite understand. That's another reason I like you."

Siosia started to feel uncomfortable again. She suddenly felt a little cold and ran her hands up and down her elbows to warm them.

"Well, thanks," she said, a little hollowly, beginning to step away from Nybyn, who continued to regard her curiously. "I - I should probably get back to - I mean - "

"Get back to your room and your wonderful roommate?" Nybyn raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, well, I - "

Siosia stopped talking as Nybyn reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a parchment and quill. He scribbled something on it and handed it to Siosia.

"Use this spell once before you go to bed. It will keep you safe."

Siosia must have looked very suspicious for Nybyn smiled again.

"Trust me. Your alternatives are much worse - she's a horrible little thing that girl. You could tell your father, of course, but I don't think you want to do that, do you?"

Siosia shook her head. "I don't have much choice, I suppose. Hall will tell him. He'll want to get me into trouble."

But Nybyn shook his head. His slanted pupils elongated even further and his eyes seemed to look at something far away. Siosia had the sudden impression that their Head of House was more fascinating to Nybyn that she was.

"I don't think he will, actually. Isn't it interesting? Actually, I think he might like you."

"Are you joking? After what he said about my uncle?"

"You don't know about him and your uncle, do you?" Nybyn looked at Siosia as though deciding she was interesting once more. "It must fascinating to be you: there must be all sorts of things you know that nobody else does but then there must also be things that everyone else knows but you."

Siosia quickly decided that she didn't like the way this conversation was heading at all. Feeling resentment quickly replace her fear, she turned around and walked back to her room.

"Oh, dear. I've said something wrong again, haven't I? Humans are so sensitive sometimes. Let me put it this way then: he's no Death Eater."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

Siosia had reached the door to her dormitory now; she turned the handle.

"Use the spell; I mean it," Nybyn called after her.

Siosia turned around and briefly caught his eye again.

"I - I will," she mumbled. "Thanks."

And then she entered her room and closed the door behind her.

***

A sliver of sunlight pierced the gap between the windows and lit up Ginny's face. She winced for a moment, groaned, and then settled her head into a more comfortable position on Harry's chest. A moment later, however, her eyes snapped wide open and she sat bolt upright.

"Harry!"

Harry groaned.

Ginny shook him.

Harry groaned louder.

"Harry, wake up! It's twenty minutes to nine; I've got to be at work! What happened to the alarm owl? You didn't forget to put out the treats again, did you?"

"No, you put them out."

Ginny frowned for a moment.

"But I took them away again," Harry said.

"Why?"

Harry turned around in bed so that Ginny could see the half-sleepy smile that had formed around the corners of his mouth, but he still did not open his eyes.

"I wanted you to get a good night's sleep. You needed it."

"No, Harry! I need to get to work on time. We've got a meeting with the Centaur Alliance. They threatened to tie us to our desks the last time we kept them waiting!"

Harry mumbled something incoherent.

Ginny looked back at him, sighing, then made her way to the long thin wardrobe at the corner of the room. She opened it, letting a whole pile of clothes fall out onto the floor. Pushing her elbows up to her face, she made a running jump into the pile of clothes, twirled around once inside the wardrobe and then came out dressed in a set of long lime green robes with a short tweed hat. Ginny then made her way to the mirror and adjusted the hat to an angle on her head, then back straight again, frowning both times. She then looked disapprovingly at her face and stretched her skin several times as though it would make her wrinkles disappear. In truth, however, though Ginny had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday several weeks before, an occasion at which her brothers had been unforgivably merciless, from a combination of anti-aging potion and the naturally longer life of witches and wizards, she would have appeared to any passing Muggle as a woman in her early twenties.

"Oh, that suits you nicely, dear," said a voice in the croaky lilt of a Scottish bard that Ginny recognized as belonging to the mirror. "You're like a distant fire blazing in an Irish meadow on the first bright day of spring."

Ginny ignored the mirror entirely. Having failed to stretch her imaginary wrinkles into non-existence, she picked her wand up from the floor and flicked it once in the air. The peel of an avocado, several cloves of garlic, and a large square of chocolate flew up from her chest of drawers, circled in the air for a brief moment, and then landed in a bowl. A small pestle immediately arrived to start crushing them all into bits. Ginny waved her wand around quickly and flicked it twice; a bright orange flame shot up into the air and low simmering vapor began to coalesce on the top of the potion. Without hesitation, Ginny stuck her left hand into the mixture and began applying globs of it liberally to her face.

"Really, Harry, you're going to be late!"

"Not if I fly there."

"You know McGonagall doesn't like it when you fly."

Harry groaned again lazily and shifted position. "She won't know," he remarked.

"And you've missed breakfast again," Ginny went on, waving her wand up and down her hair which elongated all the way down to the floor and then shortened back up to her chin in less than a second. "If you're not careful, McGonagall will make you live up at the castle with the other teachers and I, for one, will not be happy."

"Really?" said Harry drowsily.

Ginny's face went slightly red and she looked down at her wizard ring.

"I hope that's me you're thinking about, Potter."

"I was just thinking I might get up if you snogged me."

"Well, you'll have to be quick, because I'm not going to be late for work!"

Ginny finally settled on a shoulder length hairstyle. The mirror began another verse but Ginny ignored it again. She quickly found an earthen-colored handbag, decided it went nicely with her robes, and then flicked her wand to send a number of assorted contents into it including a parchment briefing for the meeting that curled itself up carefully inside. She marched out of the room to go downstairs to the fireplace, vaguely aware of a crashing noise behind her. She had not yet taken a handful of Floo into her hand when she saw Harry flying down the staircase behind her on his Firebolt, now fully if somewhat carelessly dressed.

"Harry, be careful!" She straightened the front of his robes as he came to a quick landing in front of her. "And don't let McGonagall see you!"

"Where's my kiss then? I'm going back to bed otherwise!"

Ginny turned around and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. She moved away again to the fireplace but Harry caught his arm around her waist and tugged her back toward him. There was a rogue smile on his face but it faded an instant before their lips met again, replaced by an expression of slightly giddy anticipation. He held onto her fiercely but the lips and the tongue that moved inside her mouth were as soft and impossibly gentle as the first time she had ever kissed him, long ago in a childhood where neither had dared dream of any future at all, much less the one they were living.

Harry finally let go. Ginny could feel her face burning and found she'd become slightly short of breath, a discovery that made her feel equal parts surprised and a little embarrassed.

"Damn you, Potter," she said softly. "After all these years of marriage, you can still make me blush. Now get to work."

Ginny smiled, winked, and then grabbed a handful of Floo. She threw it in the fireplace and managed to yell out: "MINISTRY OF MAGIC!" As she did so, she could have sworn she could see in the mirror in front of her a short red-haired girl whose brother's best friend had just arrived for the first time at the Burrow, then the room and the girl vanished completely from sight.

***

Harry had managed to weave his beloved Firebolt in a circuitous route around the edge of the Forbidden Forest using the tall trees to mask his flight. At the last moment, he shot quickly up toward the Astronomy Tower narrowly avoiding the Whomping Willow which flailed its branches menacingly as he sped past. He was fairly sure he hadn't been seen by anyone who might have been inclined to tell the tale and managed to arrive, albeit somewhat windswept, one minute prior to the scheduled start of his first lesson. His parting kiss with Ginny and the ease with which his arrival by broomstick had worked to arrive him on time and unseen had sent Harry into a very happy mood. He cheerfully breezed through a lesson on disarming charms to a group of second-year Hufflepuffs. Harry's good spirits came to a crushing halt by the end of the lesson, however, when Meredith Macmillan, her long blonde hair in two pigtails, handed him a parchment which she had apparently forgotten to deliver at the beginning of class.

A sinking feeling already beginning to tighten his insides as Meredith turned around to leave the room, Harry opened the parchment and cringed in dread as he read:

Dear Professor Potter,

Kindly come to my office as soon as you finish teaching your first lesson.

Yours Sincerely,

M. McGonagall

Harry thought fleetingly of protesting that he had another lesson to teach or some other urgent matter but, of course, McGonagall would know that he hadn't. There was nothing for it. A horrible image of Ginny's accusing face rose ominously into his mind as he imagined telling her that she would have to move their belongings into a dank, clammy chamber in the castle. Perhaps it would even be worse: perhaps McGonagall intended to discipline him, even suspend him from his teaching duties. After all, Ginny was right: she had told him before, hadn't she? And she had been very firm about it.

Harry's negative thoughts continued to accelerate so that by the time his body had reached the stone gargoyle that still guarded the entrance to the headmistress's office, in his mind, he was standing before the Wizengamot while Meredith Macmillan, her eyes wide with fear, testified at how frightened she'd been to see their teacher rushing up from the grounds on his broomstick to teach their lesson. Harry managed to compose himself long enough to remember the password from his last visit to the office. He swallowed fearfully as it worked and then stepped onto the rotating staircase that led up to McGonagall's office.

Little about the room had changed since Dumbledore's time. There was, however, a slight, almost intangible orderliness to the place now: even the portraits of the headmasters on the walls were a little quieter than before as though wary of a sharp reprimand from its living occupant. McGonagall herself was sitting at her desk when Harry approached. Her hair had now gone entirely grey though she still kept it up in a severe bun. Her face was lined with many more wrinkles than it had seen during Harry's student days but her eyes were still as piercing as ever. As she looked up to watch him approach, Harry thought she looked particularly weary, though. He quickly decided this did not bode well at all.

"Good morning, Harry," she said, forcing a smile. "Please sit down."

Harry.

Harry quickly decided that this was not good either. McGonagall only addressed him by his first name when she had something particularly important to say or when she was in an unusually unguarded mood which tended to occur only around Christmas. Harry quickly decided that mid-September wasn't nearly close enough to Christmas for that to be the case. His knees seem to give way of their own accord and he slumped down into the chair. He briefly considered heading off McGonagall's proposed punishment with a confession of his own but it seemed that no words could come out from his mouth. Before he knew what was happening, McGonagall was talking.

"Biscuit?" she said, offering him a tray of Scottish shortbread.

A wave of nausea billowed in Harry's stomach. He managed to shake his head.

"Very well then, I'll come straight to the point."

"Professor McGonagall," Harry blurted out suddenly. "I'm really sorry I - "

But McGonagall didn't seem to have heard him. She continued to plough straight on. Harry managed to stop talking in time to catch the very end of her sentence.

" - word this morning. Professor Dumbledore died last night on his island. I thought you ought to know. I'm very sorry."

His fears and preoccupations of a moment before vanishing like a mirage, Harry looked back at McGonagall in shock. Then he remembered: the lake in the dream and Dumbledore's words. They were real, then, and so was the task that now faced him.

***

A bank of dark clouds billowed overhead. Light rain had begun to fall and more was probably on the way. A young witch with old-looking eyes shifted a lock of reddish-auburn hair behind her ear as she knelt in front of the grave. A single tear escaped her face as she carefully arranged a bouquet of bluebells into an urn in front of the headstone. There were six names etched onto its face: three of them had died on the same date in 1977; another three had died on the same date in 1998. As the witch reached out the palm of her hand to touch the stone, an image of all six appeared and their hands moved out to reach hers. Another tear fell.

"I thought I would find you here."

The witch gasped and looked up abruptly. An old, stooping wizard had Apparated on the other side of the gravestone. The witch had been so preoccupied she hadn't seen him come. In fact, he was the same old wizard who had been so concerned to do business in the darkened shadows of the darkened alley the night before. The witch wiped quickly at her tears. The sad distant look in her eyes was instantly replaced by one of almost feverish anticipation.

"Do you have it?" she hissed.

The older wizard smiled benignly and shook his head.

"You didn't expect he would part with it so easily, did you?"

The witch clenched her teeth. Her face flushed angrily.

"I expected that he would want to do anything he could to save his business from the ruin it is facing. I trust you haven't failed me on that front."

"Believe me, business has never looked bleaker."

"Then why won't he give up the Chalice?"

"Patience, my dear. I believe he will surrender it soon, once he is sure that his dear family will be none the wiser."

"And you're sure you can perform the magic?"

"The spell is complicated but as I've told you many times before, my dear, I don't think it will present me with any significant difficulties. Yet I feel I must ask you again: are you sure that you want to be a party to such dark magic? For a corrupt old wizard such as myself, it matters very little, but for one such as yourself, it could be the first step on a very bleak and dangerous path."

The witch's eyes narrowed.

"Would I have gone this far already if I wasn't sure?" She looked down at the gravestone, anger and hurt blazing from her eyes. "Potter and Weasley betrayed us long ago. They took the secrets for which we had all sacrificed so much and kept them to themselves. I am only seeking what rightfully belongs to me. I no longer care what means I must take to obtain it."

"As you wish."

The wizard managed to keep his tone of voice neutral, but unseen to the angry witch as she continued to look down at the gravestone, his face broke into a secret smile.