It May Be Raining

Chapter One

Letters

"why don´t you come to your senses..."

In the smallest bedroom at the top of the stairs at number four Privet Drive, Harry Potter lay awake on his bed unable to sleep, musing over the events that had taken place only a month ago. Voldemort had gained full physical strength and was amassing an army of Death Eaters, Harry assumed, at this very moment. The Dark Lord´s return was made possible when Harry was captured and forced to supply an ingredient to Voldemort´s regeneration potion. "The blood of the Enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe." Harry gave an involuntary shudder at the memory that suddenly crept into his mind. He tried to distract himself with other thoughts--thoughts no less unpleasant to dwell on, however.

How will I be able to face all of those Hufflepuffs when I return for fifth year? He usually pondered this and other questions of the same nature well into the night. He would be going back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in little more than a month. He thought nervously about the negative attention he was sure to receive from the students upon his return.

Harry had spent nearly every night since that of Voldemort´sreturn in this somber manner. He thought about Cedric Diggory, the popular Quidditch Seeker and pride of the Hufflepuff House: about how he was murdered by Voldemort, about how it was all his, Harry´s, fault. He let out a small sigh and shifted his head on his pillow. He knew that the rest of the school did not blame him for Cedric´s death, but he couldn´t help feeling that there was some way that he could have prevented it.

His mind wandered in this fashion for several minutes before settling on another thought. Cho Chang, the beautiful RavenclawSeeker that he had admired for the better part of a year, had gone to the Yule Ball last Christmas with Cedric. Harry had a pretty good suspicion that she and Cedric had grown very close during the months between the ball and Cedric´s death. This point had troubled Harry to no end the entire summer. Cho was supposed to be his. He had asked her to go to the Yule Ball with him only to be rejected as Choawkwardly informed him that she was already accompanying Cedric to the ball. Was he feeling jealousy toward Cedric?

"Get over it, Harry," he muttered to himself. "You can´t have Cho, she was Cedric´s girl. How could you do that to him?" He sighed and shifted.

Glancing at the alarm clock on the corner of his textbook-and-parchment-littered desk, Harry was not surprised to see that it read a quarter after one in the morning. Hedwig, Harry´s snowy-white owl, was asleep in her open cage on the opposite side of the desk. She had been sleeping for hours after her return from delivering a weekly letter of Harry´s, keeping his godfather, Sirius, informed of all that was happening at the Dursley residence. This was indeed boring stuff to relay as nothing particularly interesting ever happened at number four. Nonetheless, Harry had promised Sirius that he would write to him every week. Hedwig had returned with no reply.

He must be extremely busy, Harry thought as he dismissed the fact that there was no letter for him upon his owl´s return. Absently, Harry returned to his reverie. "Remus Lupin, MundungusFletcher, and Arabella Figg, you know, the old crowd." Dumbledore´s voice echoed in Harry´s ears. Harry had heard Dumbledore speaking these words only a month earlier to his godfather on the night that Voldemorthad come back. Harry hadn´t seen Sirius since. Moreover, only a few times had he received an owl from him since that time.

What could Dumbledore have meant by this? Harry´s head swam with the theories of powerful Aurors and Death Eaters. He knew RemusLupin was connected with Sirius. They had gone to school together, and they were close friends. Two years ago, they had reconnected and, as far as Harry knew, had kept in touch with one another. But what about the other two? Harry was sure that he had heard those names somewhere before. What could Dumbledore possibly want with them? How were they all connected? He let out another agitated breath. There were never any answers to these questions no matter how much sleep he had lost over them.

Harry looked over at the sleeping Hedwig and decided to follow her example and get some rest. He rolled over on his side and stuffed his pillow under his head. Just as he started to drift off, he heard a tapping sound on his window. It was Pigwidgeon.

"I´m never going to get any sleep tonight," Harry muttered with resignation as he kicked off his coverings and made his way to the window to let the tiny owl in. Pigwidgeon--Pig for short--was the owl that belonged to his best friend, Ron Weasley. The little ball of energy zipped inside the room and began to circle excitedly over Harry´s head. He rolled his eyes at the bird´s enthusiasm at such an early hour. He snatched him out of the air to untie the letter that it was carrying on its tiny leg. The letter was addressed to Harry in Ron´s unmistakable scrawl. Harry opened the letter hurriedly, letting Pig alone to flutter about the room. Harry read:

Hey Harry,

That fat, stupid gitDudley isn´t bothering you too much, is he? I hope your summer is going well. Fred and George are helping me with Quidditchnearly every day. They reckon I´ll have just as good of a chance as anyone at the Keeper position. Do you know if Dean and Seamus are going to go out for the team? Oh no, do you think they will cancel Quidditchthis year on account of You-Know-Who?

Anyway, Harry, I have a bit of bad news. Mum´s been in touch with Dumbledore lots in the last month or so and she´s asked if you could come and stay, but he thinks that you would still be safer with your Muggle relatives. He reckons you should stay the whole summer there until you catch the train. It´s not fair! It´s been almost like a tradition for us to get together before school starts. I mean, Hermione´s still coming, but it won´t be the same without you. She might actually make me study. Well, Harry, I don´t want to spend the rest of the summer not hearing from you anyway. So, write me back and tell me every evil trick you play on Dudley. Maybe we could meet in Diagon Alley on the Friday before school starts? Write me back soon, Harry!

-Ron

The contents of the letter hadn´t surprised Harry in the least. He knew that Mrs. Weasley was pulling every string that she could get her hands on. Somehow, with all that was going on in the wizardingworld, he hadn´t expected Dumbledore to concede, no matter how much Ron´s mum had protested.

Harry glanced over at the calendar on his wall where he counted down the days until he was to catch the Hogwarts Express at King´s Cross Station on September the First. To his dismay, he saw that he had just over a month left until then. He shrugged his shoulders, threw the letter on top of his open Potions textbook and climbed into bed. He would just have to make do with his time at the Dursley´s. The thought of two more months in that house was not a promising one. He shut his eyes and went to sleep.

***

Nearly two hours later Harry shot upright in his bed, horrified by the images he had just seen. The lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead was searing with pain.

The fact that dreams such as this one had been waking him more frequently was not reassuring. Harry had been having nightmares in which Voldemortwas capturing, torturing and killing innocent people--people he did not recognize for the most part. Harry knew that these were much more than dreams that would disappear, as the morning grew brighter. The pain in the scar on his forehead served almost as a warning signal, set off by particularly murderous thoughts or actions of Voldemort´s.

Harry had experienced the same pain from his scar last summer when he had a vision of Voldemort murdering an old Muggleand performing an Unforgivable Curse on his servant, Wormtail. Dumbledore had thought that this was more than a dream. Harry was somehow connected to Voldemort because of the curse that had backfired on him, giving Harry his now famous scar. He believed that Harry was witnessing actual episodes of the Dark Lord´s terror.

His head was throbbing with pain. He clapped a hand over his scar that was burning fiercely on his forehead. He sucked in a breath of air through his teeth and held it, waiting for the pain to subside. After several excruciating minutes, the throbbing finally stopped.

Harry removed the hand that was covering his scar and wiped his watering eyes, reaching for his glasses with the other. As soon as the room came into focus, Harry turned to glance at the alarm clock, which read three-thirty in the morning. He let out a long, deep sigh and fell back on his pillow. Taking even breaths to calm his racing heart, Harry closed his eyes and tried to recall the exact scene that had startled him out of his sleep. Unlike most of his other dreams, he recognized one of the faces in it. The man who owed his very life to Harry, yet the same man who had betrayed his parents, had his outstretched hand wound around the neck of another man whose back was to Harry. He was almost sure that he had recognized the second man, but could not think who it might be.

In another flash of white light, Harry had seen this same man on the ground, screaming with pain as Pettigrew stood over him silently mouthing a curse and pointing his wand at him. Harry´s eyes suddenly shot open as he tried to recall whether this scene had come first in his dream or last. He wasn´t sure that it mattered in which order the man was tortured and murdered, but he was certain that it was the same man and that he was familiar. Even the sound of the man´s voice, as he howled in pain, had a familiar ring to it that Harry recognized. He knew that this man would soon die in the exact manner that Harry had witnessed in his dream--or maybe he already had.

Harry sat up and pulled the coverings off of his legs. Getting to his feet, he walked over to his desk and rifled through a few rolls of parchment before he found a blank piece and a quill.

Sirius had specifically requested that Harry owl him immediately if he was experiencing anymore pain in his scar. He agreed with Dumbledore that Harry´s scar served as an indicator of Voldemort´s evil intentions.

Complying, somewhat reluctantly, with Sirius´ request, Harry began his letter. He was worried that it may distract Sirius from whatever important mission Dumbledore had sent him on. He was too busy to reply to my last letter, he thought logically. Harry felt guilty for burdening his godfather with all of his problems, when Sirius was dealing with far more difficult ones of his own. Harry let out a sigh and determined that the letter had to be written. Putting his quill to the parchment, Harry wrote:

Sirius,

I hope my other letter reached you, wherever you are. I wasn´t sure it had because Hedwig returned without a reply. I don´t want to bother you even more, but I had another dream tonight and when I woke up, my scar was hurting me. Voldemort wasn´t killing anyone, but Peter Pettigrew was. He performed the CruciatusCurse on a man, or at least, I think it was the CruciatusCurse. I couldn´t tell who the man was, though--his back was to me. And then Peter reached out with the silver hand that Voldemorthad given him and he strangled the guy who then collapsed in front of him. I think he killed the man.

Anyway, you asked me to write you if my scar started hurting me again. This is the first time that it has since I left school for the summer. I´ve had other dreams about Voldemort´svictims, but this is the first time my scar woke me up. Sorry to bother you. I know that you must be very busy. You don´t have to write back, I just thought that I would let you know. I hope everything is fine with you.

-Harry.

Harry reread the letter to make sure that it contained everything that he wanted to say. He shoved the letter into an envelope and stroked Hedwig until she opened an eye.

"You have to take this to Sirius right away." He gave the envelope to his owl and opened the window as she flew out with a screech. Harry stopped to listen. No sounds came from his aunt and uncle´s room; they were still asleep.

Knowing that he wouldn´t be able to fall asleep again, Harry used the last few hours before dawn to finish his Potions essay on `The discovery of Boomslang Skin and its importance in magical mixtures.´