The Song of the Trees

Chapter Twelve: The Other One

Frog End was a small town lost in acres of square fields, an isolated island of houses and naked trees, amidst a flat and sullen-looking countryside that stretched interminably under the low, grey sky. A few bushes of dark-leaved evergreens stood at the entrance of the town like watchful sentinels; during the summer, they would provide perfect hiding spots for the children of Frog End. But in the chilly dampness of the coming winter they remained solitary and neglected, except for a few birds dozing on the frail branches, their feathers puffed out against the cold.

The largest bush suddenly shuddered, the branches bent by an invisible strength, dark green leaves rustling as the birds took off with indignant chirps. Then two thick branches parted to let through a man wrapped in a long, dark and quite rumpled travelling coat, a bag hanging from his shoulder.

Harry took a couple of steps out of the bush he had Apparated in, blinking rapidly as he attempted to recognise his surroundings. He was only a few feet away from the rectangular sign bearing the words FROG END in black capital letters, the white rectangle gleaming in the dull light of the cloudy Saturday afternoon. Behind it, the long road of dark grey asphalt ran through the town, splitting in half the group of white houses surrounded by their small gardens.

Harry set off at a quick pace, past the sign and into the town. He absentmindedly whispered the address he had memorised as he walked on the pavement bordering the road, searching for Daphne Greengrass's house. Twice he halted, pretending to look for something in his bag while he quickly scanned his surroundings, his left hand holding tightly on the wand tucked in his belt.

It didn't matter how curious he was at the idea of meeting Daphne again; being asked to stay at her house while investigating on the enigmatic Third Kind, when he had only just noticed a weird connection between the girl and him, was too much of an extraordinary coincidence for his taste. This feeling of a too-good-to-be-true stroke of luck had increased when he had leafed through the 'Magical Beasts' file, the case that served as his "cover", only to find out that those mysterious animals located in Frog End had left wolfish prints all over the place. What was more, those prints were described as too large to belong to actual wolves, but different from a typical werewolf's paw prints.

Unidentified wolf-like creatures haunting Frog End... Harry's cover might well turn out to be much more significant for his actual mission than initially planned.

But what were the odds that Robards would accidentally pick this particular case as his cover? And how could it be another coincidence that, among all the magical inhabitants of the town -- and there were quite a few -- he would be asked to stay at Daphne's?

The more Harry thought about it, the more convinced he was that the Head Auror knew more than what he had told him. Of course, Gawain Robards couldn't have foreseen that Harry had seen large grey-furred wolves in Hogsmeade -- or that he had had a fleeting contact with Daphne the previous week. If neither of those events had occurred, Harry doubted he would have noticed the strangeness of those two choices of Robards'. Such as things were, however, Harry had come to think that he might be nothing more than a puppet, whose strings were being pulled by the Auror Department as well as by the Department of Mysteries... It was even a possibility that Robards and Martin had agreed on putting up a little act in front of him, faking a mutual dislike and distrust... Unless the two of them were in competition on that case...

Those thoughts were all but pleasant. More than anything, Harry hated being manipulated. He just couldn't accept being just a tool, even if it was "for his own good"; at sixteen, when he had only been an underage thus technically powerless wizard, he had arrogantly proclaimed himself to be Dumbledore's man -- against Scrimgeour, no less. Finding himself in the position of being used like a clueless instrument, now that he was an adult and in full possession of his powers, was infuriating.

A few years ago, he would probably have vehemently confronted Robards about it; or pointedly refused to do what he was asked. The idea remained extremely tempting. However, by giving him the case, Robards had given him the means to finally solve the mysteries hovering over his head for the past three years; Harry could not afford to let the opportunity slip. He would have to play along for a while.

Whether or not he would keep Robards informed of his discoveries was another question.

A shudder unexpectedly ran up Harry's spine and he slowed down again, and although he couldn't hear anything, he had the certitude that there was something behind him -- something that shouldn't be there. Digging a hand in his pocket, he discreetly took out a square wallet of black leather and dropped it to the ground. The worn out leather met the asphalt with a dull thud, releasing as it fell several papers and Muggle coins that scattered on the pavement. Cursing just loudly enough to be heard by someone standing -- or hiding -- within a few feet, Harry crouched down and started gathering the spilled contents of his wallet. He looked all around him, seemingly looking for more coins that might have rolled further, in reality observing the area. The ominous feeling wasn't faltering.

But then, once more, he found no sign of life save for a couple of harmless, perfectly dull Muggles walking down the street. He wondered if he was getting paranoid.

He slowly rose again to a standing position, putting the wallet back in his pocket and readjusting the bag on his shoulder as he did, and raised his head to check the house number on the fence he was passing.

As it turned out, he stood precisely in front of Daphne Greengrass's house.

Nothing could have distinguished it from any other house he had seen in Frog End; it was a small, square building with walls covered in neutral white roughcast, the garden surrounding it equally ordinary and unimpressive. It was strange to think that this perfectly normal house was a magical dwelling; what was more, a dwelling that served as day nursery for magical children unable to control their own power.

Harry pushed open the white gate that ran all around the garden, and instantly felt the almost imperceptible rippling of the air that signalled the presence of Muggle-Repelling Charms. This was definitely the house he had been looking for.

He crossed in a few quick strides a lawn of grass growing in sparse, graceless tufts, and reached the front door painted in pale blue. At close distance, it was obvious that the house had seen better days: the paint of the door was flaking, and the roughcast on the walls was dirtied by long greyish streaks, left there by rain and pollution; little dirty hands had maculated the lower part of the walls with mud, gouache and colour pencils. Finger marks spotted the panes of the nearest window, which was otherwise blinded by white curtains. No sound filtered through the close door.

Harry rang the bell, at the same time drawing his wand from his belt -- just as an extra precaution.

The sound of hurried footsteps reached his ears and quickly grew closer; then a feminine voice spoke up from behind the door, snappish but hushed, as if its owner was trying to sound harsh while making as less noise as possible.

"Who's there?"

"Auror Potter," Harry answered in a ringing voice, curious as to why the woman was murmuring. "I thought I was expect--"

"SHH!" the woman interrupted in a frantic whisper. "For the love of Merlin, keep your voice down! You're going to wake up the kids!"

Harry grinned.

"So you're Daphne Greengrass," he said without lowering his voice.

"Yeah, and you're still speaking too loudly!" hissed Daphne from behind the closed door.

"I'm sorry, I'm not used to whispered conversations with a door," Harry pleasantly answered. "Would you mind letting me in? I'm supposed to spend some time here. You ought to have received a call from the Ministry about it."

There was a short silence, which was broken by the rattle of a latch being pushed. The door opened at last, revealing the petite blonde woman Harry had met the previous week. She was dressed in faded robes, maculated with stains of baby food, and a greyish scarf covered her hair; Harry was amused to notice a line of bright blue paint running across her cheek.

"Interesting makeup," he noted, smirking.

"I make a point in never getting in the way of a child's creativity," she replied stiffly.

"Even when they try to paint you blue?"

"Even then. Are you coming in or what?"

Harry nodded and Daphne stepped aside to let him in; but just as he stepped over the threshold, something moved behind him, on his right -- and catching the slight motion out of the corner of his eye, he whirled about, wand at the ready.

But once again, there was nothing.

Except his conviction that something was lurking somewhere close, watching him.

"Potter, it's cold out there. Get in."

"Coming," Harry mumbled, keeping his wand pointed at a corner of the garden; but the skeletal shrubs growing there were perfectly still once more.

He lowered his wand and reluctantly turned round, walking past Daphne who shut the door behind him; if it hadn't been for his increasing anxiety, Harry would have found comical the exaggerated precautions she took in closing the door, obviously doing her best to prevent it from grating or slamming.

Harry detached his eyes from the girl leaning against the door and took a quick look at his surroundings. He was in a narrow, dimly lit hallway cluttered with children toys, most of which had obviously suffered bursts of accidental magic: the bright-coloured wood sported several burns and cracks, and in some places, it had even been twisted in unlikely angles as if it was nothing more than modelling clay. The flowery wallpaper covering the walls was maculated in its lower part with dirty fingerprints, scribbles and more gouache. Here and there, patches of newer wallpaper had been glued to the wall, probably in order to hide the effects of other magical accidents. There was a door on either side of him; at a few steps from where he stood, the hallway stretched on as a narrow corridor, running round a flight of stairs that climbed to the first floor.

"So," breathed Daphne's voice behind him. "Err... Hi."

Harry turned to her and found that she had extended her hand for him to shake, ill-disguised excitement shining in her eyes as she seemed to have forgotten her less-than-inviting behaviour of earlier.

Harry reached out and clasped her hand with his.

It happened immediately: something warm, something pulsating with a kind of wild life, rushed through his arm and spread into his whole body, making his breath quicken and his blood run faster; and for a fleeting instant he was able to feel the softness of Daphne's palm against his, her smooth and warm skin, and a slightly sticky spot on one of her fingers -- jam, or honey, maybe -- as the sensitive skin of his hand suddenly came back to life.

The Slytherin shuddered and grabbed his hand with both of hers, squeezing with all her might, and her frightfully greedy expression would not have been different if she had been drinking from a spring of clear water in the middle of the desert. But as quick as it had started, the strange flux of living energy between the two of them stopped, leaving them both cold and shivering in the dimly lit hallway.

Daphne slowly let go of his hand, her gaze heavy with wonderment as she stared at him.

"What do you reckon just happened?" she whispered.

Was it the semi obscurity, the sleepy silence lying over the house, or this frail woman whose eyes were glinting oddly as they devoured him? At her question, Harry suddenly felt an icy cold seeping into his chest, bringing with it an unpleasant sense of uncertainty and the greasy stench of fear... Fear of the unknown, fear of what was lurking in the dark, a fear coming from another era. After the rush of fiery energy that had filled him before abandoning him again, the contrast was harsh.

"What? What happened?" he asked tensely in return.

Daphne blinked, and the cold pressure on Harry's heart seemed to lift a little, as if the ancient power that brought back into his veins a fear as old as mankind was taken aback as well.

"Just... just now... We..."

"Shook hands," Harry briskly completed, drawing his wand from his belt and waving it around. A storm lantern, fixed to the wall above the door by a heavy iron bracket, instantly burst into flames and forced the shadows into a hurried retreat. Harry held back a sigh of relief, and experienced at the same time a vague shame at being scared of the dark and the silence.

"We shook hands," he repeated more calmly, putting his wand away. "I agree that's a surprising display of politeness between me and a friend of Malfoy's, but I figured that if I am to stay here, we could just as well get along."

"I... uh... wasn't exactly a friend of Malfoy's..." she said, looking a bit lost.

"Then that's even better," Harry interrupted, smiling in spite of himself at the girl's confusion. "Now, it's not that I don't enjoy talking to you, but I'd like to get to work as quickly as possible... Do you have, I don't know, rules that I am to follow, given that I'm staying at your place? Or can you show me right away where I'm sleeping?"

Daphne blinked again, absentmindedly raising a hand to massage the back of her neck.

"Rules," she repeated slowly, as she visibly struggled to gather her thoughts. "Yeah... Err, not much to say actually... The kids are dropped here around eight in the morning, so that'd be better if you could stay out of the way so as not to freak them out... I'm not washing your dishes, I'm not paying for your food and I'm not cleaning your room. I have enough work as it is. There are a couple of good restaurants in the town so it shouldn't be a problem... Oh, and I'm not doing your laundry either. I think... yeah, I think that's all..."

"Okay," Harry shortly agreed. "Where am I staying?"

"Room on the ground floor. Third door on the right, down the corridor."

"Perfect. See you later then."

Once more, Harry readjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and decidedly turned his back on Daphne. His hostess followed him at first, then visibly changed her mind and started climbing the stairs two at a time instead, her slippers making no sound on the wooden boards. From the corner of his eye, Harry saw her vanish in the shadows that gradually drowned the first floor as the late afternoon light declined.

Another storm lamp ignited at Harry's command in the corridor. The passage was so narrow that he had to push his bag behind his back and maintain it there with one arm as he walked, forcing his shoulders into an oddly distorted position.

"I'd better not get any fatter," he muttered to himself in disbelief as he finally found the door Daphne had indicated. It opened on a rectangular room, which looked like a portion of corridor artificially transformed into a bedroom. It was much longer than it was wide, and it had been soberly furnished with a bed and a desk that were lined up against one wall -- thus restricting even more the vacant space in the room. There was only one window, facing the door, and it was taking up the full width of the wall.

Harry slipped inside the room and carefully closed the door behind him. Letting his bag slide along his arm and silently fall to the wooden floor, he raised the wand he had never dropped and started waving it around. Ribbons of colourful light erupted in the darkening room and instantly went to crawl up and down the walls, wind across the floor and lick the ceiling. It lasted two or three minutes, but none of his spells detected a system of surveillance of any kind. The room seemed safe. Having protected the door with a Locking Spell and thrown a Calfeutre Curse around the whole room, Harry sat on a narrow bed covered with a worn-out, but impeccably clean grey bedspread, with the satisfaction of accomplished duties.

"Right," he sighed as he rested his elbows on his knees and pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. "Now think."

Their handshake. Her hand. A sticky spot on one of her fingers. He thought he could still feel it against the back of his hand; he who, for years, had not been able to tell the difference, to the touch, between silk and denim... What did it mean? Why had he briefly recovered his sensitivity before losing it again? What was the influx of energy he had felt rushing through his fingers, and why did it seem both completely opposite and eerily similar to the cold, animal fear he had experienced only seconds later?

It didn't make sense.

It was completely absurd.

And he was starting to get bloody tired of it.

"Think, think, think," he muttered furiously, flopping onto his back on his bed, eyes tightly shut.

The energy was related to something Daphne had, or was. That, at least, he was sure of: he had only felt it twice, and both times he had been touching her. But the fear was also related to Daphne; he felt that it was her he had been instinctively scared of, for a second. He had not been able to answer her questions or even hold her gaze. He had had to put on the lights so that he could pull himself together. In short, it was as if the girl had two different auras, and he responded to them in two ways that were diametrically opposed.

Of course, he also had to consider the fact that she seemed as genuinely shocked as he was by the consequences of their brief contact. Shocked and excited about it, as if she had been waiting all her life for such a thing to occur... Had she felt, too, that there was between them an otherworldly connection -- something Harry had never experienced with any other human being, Muggle or wizard? It was like two persons coming from the same planet, and meeting for the first time in a world peopled with aliens.

Harry's eyes flew open, and he unseeingly stared at the ceiling of his room as a startling idea emerged from the tangle of his thoughts.

"Bloody hell... She's another one."

Another one...

Another one of the Third Kind, that Kind he had thought extinct except for him and those wolfish creatures roaming about Hogsmeade. Could Daphne have been one of the Wolves that had gathered around him while he killed Greyback? Had she left there traces of her presence that had enabled Robards, or Hermione, to identify her? That would explain why she had been chosen to accommodate Harry during his mission...

Another one. Excitement and nervousness mingled in Harry's mind, causing him to sit bolt upright as he suddenly felt too reckless to lie down. He hoped and feared at the same time that his theory was true. He longed to touch her again, feel again that strangely, wonderfully familiar warmth spread within him; and yet he dreaded the ancient malevolence clinging to her like an invisible shadow...

...Another one?

If they were of the same kind, why had she scared him so much?

Harry ran a hand through his hair and gripped the black locks tightly in a gesture of sheer exasperation.

"Damnit!" he burst out. "No matter how I look at it, I'm always in a deadlock!"

He stood up and started pacing in the extremely restricted space of his room, and he was so deeply lost in his thoughts that he hardly paid attention when his legs knocked repeatedly against the sharp corners of the bed and desk. Daphne was almost certainly related to the Third Kind, in some way or another, but because of that reaction of rejection he had had earlier, he was reluctant to definitely label her as one of them. He needed irrefutable evidence; evidence such as the one he had had in Hogsmeade, when it was revealed than his aura was the same, though more powerful, as those of the Wolves.

He would sit back for the time being.

Watch and wait.

Harry suddenly stumbled forward as his foot got caught in something, and barely saved himself from a heavy and graceless fall by throwing out his hands in front of him. Both hands hit the door before him with a loud bang that reverberated along his outstretched arms and up to his shoulders; Harry thought he heard the bones rattle with the violence of it. Swearing under his breath, he straightened up and looked down to see his foot tangled in the strap of his abandoned bag. Under the shock, the bag had opened, spilling out half of its contents over the floor.

Harry bent down to retrieve the clothes that had most conveniently spread out under his bed, and as he rummaged through the crumpled robes and Muggle clothes, his eyes fell on the greenish folder that he had brought with him. His cover.

He slowly picked up the folder and opened it, his eyes quickly scanning the first pages.

Right. That was where he needed to start.

***

The rain was pouring again when Harry slipped out of Daphne's house; the moon was masked and the only light came from scarce streetlamps, burning with a half-hearted orange glow that was hardly able to pierce the blackness of the December night. In the dark and silent town, his head bent and his hands buried deeply in the pockets of his long black coat, Harry was just another shadow.

It wasn't long before he had once more the certitude of being followed. There was a strange noise breaking the monotonous patter of the rain, somewhere behind him; something quicker than a man's footsteps and not quite like the pounding of shoes or bare feet hitting the ground. Yet it was following him. It was steady, stopping whenever he halted and reaching his ears again as soon as he resumed his walk. Harry took the risk of closing his eyes without slowing down, straining his ears in his effort to identify the strange noise -- and crossing his fingers at the same time in the hope he wouldn't run headfirst into the next streetlamp.

Nails. Nails or claws, scratching the wet asphalt.

Harry opened his eyes again and abruptly Disapparated.

He had used his strange affinity with the wind again; he seldom used regular Apparition now. When he found himself three blocks further, the air was still swirling around his legs, like long, fresh tentacles slowly uncoiling themselves from him. He stayed immobile for a few seconds, taking in his surroundings; he had Apparated -- for lack of a better word -- directly at the place where wolfish paw prints had last been discovered. It was a small garden, at the back of a house.

He took a deep breath. It had been a bit of a reckless decision, to walk half the way to this place just to see whether or not he would be followed; but at least now he knew.

"Finite Incantatem."

In response to the incantation, the air seemed to tremble like jelly all around the small garden. Concealing Charms, hastily applied there by the Ministry wizard who had first found out about the Wolves haunting Frog End, wore off completely; and paw prints suddenly appeared in the wet ground before his eyes, as if an invisible animal was walking away from him. The prints had been protected by more charms from being erased by time and rain, but it was visible that they had been made several nights ago already. They were definitely, indisputably wolf prints.

Harry crouched down to take a better look at them.

The scratching sound reached his ears at that precise moment. It was behind him -- on the small concreted alley that ran through the garden. Right behind him.

Harry abruptly straightened up and wheeled around, his wand in his hand, and came face to face with a gigantic wolf.

It was the grey-furred, blue-eyed beast he had seen in Hogsmeade. It kept its eyes fixed on Harry's wand, its breathing even, its stance calm and fearless. Not a muscle rippled under the rich silvery fur. The Wolf looked as if it had been standing there since the beginning of the world.

Harry's wand fell from his loosened grasp and clattered as it hit the wet concrete. He hardly noticed and didn't spare it a glance. The Wolf's dark blue eyes travelled up to meet his, and again Harry was struck by how deeply human those eyes looked.

The scratching of claws on concrete again, and a low growl. Harry's head snapped to the side. Another Wolf stood on his left, where a second before there had been only air and rain. It looked wilder than the first one. Its limbs quivered with the same kind of barely repressed excitement that had shone in Daphne's eyes, earlier on that same day, and its hazel eyes were just as intelligent as the first Wolf's; but there was also a touch of hunger in its gaze, a greed that reminded Harry of Daphne as well.

The hazel-eyed Wolf let out an odd kind of whimper, its tongue slipping in and out of sight between its long pointed teeth, as it panted in impatience. The first Wolf turned its head to the hazel-eyed one, the motion slow and deliberate, and although nothing in its stance betrayed the slightest aggressiveness, the second Wolf flinched under its gaze and took a couple of steps backward. Its eyes remained fixed on Harry.

The pounding of music accompanied with the low rumbling of an engine made Harry snap out of his trance. Turning around, he distinguished between the houses the headlights of a car running on the main road and heading towards them. Half a minute later, the car took a sharp turn in a narrow street, which was much too close to them to Harry's taste.

The Wolves' claws screeched against the concrete again as they abruptly whirled around and crossed the small garden to the high hedge bordering it. Harry spotted his wand on the ground and hurriedly bent down to grab it; as he straightened up, his eyes met the first Wolf's. Both beasts were immobile near the hedge and staring at him.

Then in a split second, there were no more Wolves standing next to that hedge. Precisely where they had been, Harry caught a glimpse of two tall human silhouettes -- feminine, as far as he could tell -- carrying on their back quivers full of green-feathered arrows.

"Until next time," whispered one of them in his direction.

Harry suddenly remembered what legs were used for and dashed forwards, his wand held tightly in his hand, while he instinctively called out to both creatures.

"Hey, wait!"

But in the blink of an eye, the two women were gone in a whirlwind.

Harry skidded to a halt just as the headlights of the car swept the garden in which he stood. A second before the beam of crude white light reached him, he Disapparated.

***

Until next time.

Lying on his bed in his small dark room, Harry whispered the woman's words in the sleepy silent that lay over Daphne Greengrass's house. Until next time. They had brought him here... There was no doubt about that. They had had him come here, in this town, in this house. They had been following him. They had deliberately shown themselves. What did they want from him?

Until next time.

When and where would be next time? He had the feeling that they were in control, not him. They would be the ones to pick up the time and place of their next meeting, just as they had done tonight.

Until next time.

Women. Green arrows. They were the ones who had shot Ron, Luna and Parletoo. It meant that they were the key to their recovery as well. They were those, in fact, that Hermione had been desperately trying to find for over a year... He will lead us precisely to the answers we're looking for... Indeed he had.

But there was no way he would let the Department of Mysteries or the Auror Department lay their hands on those creatures. The Unspeakables wanted to lock them up inside the ninth floor, study them, and keep all information to themselves; the Aurors saw them as the deadliest form of Dark Arts and wanted their annihilation. Harry wanted more; he wanted answers. He wanted something to believe in, something to cling to in the uncertainty that surrounded his life and identity. He wanted...

Harry closed his hand into a fist, squeezing until the nails bit in the flesh. He slowly unfolded his fingers and stared up at the red marks, in crescent moons, that his nails had carved into his palm. It looked painful. It wasn't.

...He wanted to be whole again.

The hand that he held up in front of his face started shaking uncontrollably, and he had to close his eyes for a minute as an icy vertigo threatened to engulf him. He was exhausted; he hadn't had any rest for the past four days... He needed to put his body at rest, at least for a few hours, before continuing his investigation...

With a sigh, Harry turned on his side and reached for an empty sphere placed on his bedside table, the glass gleaming dully with the orange light that filtered from the streetlamps through the closed curtains. The sphere was a couple of inches out of his reach. Harry really didn't want to sit up in order to grab it. He really didn't want to straighten up ever again.

"If you would just... roll a little towards me," he tiredly muttered, outstretching his fingers as far as possible.

To his great surprise, the Dream-Injector stirred on the bedside table, as if pushed towards Harry by a small breeze. His eyebrows shot upwards in surprise, the exhaustion weighting on his limbs momentarily forgotten.

Harry's eyes slowly detached themselves from the sphere to focus back on his still outstretched hand; and he froze. There was something moving around his fingers. He could only describe it as wisps of smoke, an incredibly light, barely visible smoke curling around his phalanges. Like small tentacles made of air.

Harry folded down four of his fingers, keeping only his index pointed at the Dream-Injector. He drew one small circle in the air, in a slow, purposeful motion, and he thought he felt a small pressure on the skin of his finger as the wisps of smoke gathered within the circle he traced. It was as if he had created, with the tip of his finger, a closed space in which gas was concentrating...

The circular motions of Harry's index finger grew quicker, more precise, and the pressure immediately intensified. Harry stared, wide-eyed, as the air contained within the limits drawn by his finger condensed in a thick, opaque white mass, which soon glowed with the same orange light that flooded into the room from the window.

He quickly had the feeling that this small ball of white smoke wouldn't take much more of this. It had stopped condensing, looking now almost solid, but the pressure was still growing and would soon become unbearable. Maintaining his arm outstretched required now a great effort on his part. The sound of his laboured breathing filled his ears, his lungs were working furiously -- as if there just wasn't enough air in this room for them to fill completely -- and his heart was hammering disorderly against his ribcage. He wouldn't be able to go on for long...

With a grunt of effort, Harry folded down his index finger and briefly closed his hand into a fist, leaving the ball of white fog hovering unprotected in the air. Almost immediately though, driven by a sudden intuition, he opened his hand again in one brusque motion, his fingers spread in a fan.

The effect was instantaneous: the ball of smoke hurled itself forward and hit squarely the Dream-Injector, with such force that the glass sphere bounced off the bedside table and was projected towards the opposite wall.

"Oh, fuck!" Harry exclaimed in panic. Spurred on by pure reflexes, he jumped to his feet and threw out his right hand again, succeeding in catching the glass ball right before it connected with the opposite wall.

It would have been perfect, had he not been taken too far by his momentum. He barely managed to shield the Dream-Injector by pinning it to his chest before he violently collided with the wall. Harry caught an ominous crack coming from the shoulder that had taken the worst of the shock, but he disregarded it; the most important was that the Injector was intact.

"Okay, enough experimenting for tonight," he grunted, absently massaging his shoulder as he went back to his bed with the Dream-Injector in his other hand.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the glass sphere resting in his lap, and pulling his wand from his pocket he tapped the Injector once with it. A small thread of what also appeared to be smoke -- though it was quite more consistent than the wisps he had just been playing with -- erupted from the sphere, like a silky thread from a spider's belly, and lazily stretched out until it was about a foot long. A needle was tied to its extremity.

Harry finally lay down with a sigh of relief and, placing the sphere next to him, he carefully drove the needle into his arm and inside the blue vein running under his pale skin. Immediately the sphere slowly rose in the air, hovering over Harry's lying form, and gradually filled with a bluish mist. Harry sighed again and, after removing his glasses, closed his eyes.

Well, that was one weird day, he thought drowsily as the Injector started to act. The Wolves... Until next time... How did I strangle Lance? ... Wisps of air around my fingers... Lance's windpipe... He couldn't breathe... Wisps... of air... I was out of breath... Not enough air in this room... The air... Wait... The wind in Malfoy's tower... That's... it... I need to...

But there was another sound filling his head now; the familiar song of the trees sounded again from the back of his memory, growing louder and louder, gradually drowning all of Harry's coherent thoughts, while his vision was clouded by hundreds of branches and leaves dancing at a rhythm older than time.

"...Answer me!"

A high-pitched voice tore through Harry's dream, and the vision of dark green leaves shattered as a bright light flashed in front of his face. He opened his eyes in shock, but only to squeeze them shut a second later as he was dazzled again by a lamp held very close to his face.

"What the..." he said thickly, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the light.

He froze when he felt the tip of a wand digging into his throat.

"Answer me," the voice repeated, now less high-pitched but trembling with rage. "No more eluding my questions, no more denying the truth, Potter. Or else."

"Lower the damn light," Harry muttered. The Dream-Injector made him slightly nauseous. "And the needle in my arm. Pull it off."

There was a pause, then the person standing in front of him shifted; the light mercifully dulled, and seconds later a hand felt the crook of his arm and disconnected the Dream-Injector. Harry lowered his hand and blinked several times to clear his swimming vision.

Daphne Greengrass stood in front of him in a worn-out dressing gown, dishevelled blonde hair spilled onto her shoulders and eyes literally blazing with anger. She had dropped her storm lantern to the floor and held a firm grip onto the wand that was still pointed at Harry's throat.

"And whatever could I have possibly done to deserve being awakened at this hour of the night?" Harry slowly uttered.

"Don't act as if you didn't know," Daphne barked, driving the wand further into Harry's flesh. Harry then caught a faint smell, vaguely fruity, that emanated from Daphne every time she made a brusque move.

"What was that anyway?" she added with a glance at the glass sphere resting on the sheets next to Harry. "Some kind of drug?"

"None of your business," Harry snapped. "Now drop that wand before you hurt yourself."

"Not before you answer. What are you? How come you can speak it?"

"Speak what?" Harry shot back at her. "Parseltongue? English? The language of sane people?"

Daphne's eyes flashed with barely controlled fury. "Don't make me hex you," she said in a voice that she tried to make calm.

Harry smirked. "Hex me?" he repeated, his voice tinged with disbelief.

"I have you at the tip of my wand," she hissed. "You're disarmed. One gesture and I'll curse you."

Harry raised his eyebrows at her. "Okay," he pleasantly said. "Watch that closely."

Quicker than a snake, he brutally grabbed her slim forearm and deflected her wand, and the curse she screamed out in surprise only managed to burn a hole in Harry's pillow. He pulled her down to him, causing her to lose her balance, at the same time using his other arm to push himself off the mattress and to the side. A split second later, he had her pinned to the bed, her legs trapped between his knees.

Ah, apricot-flavoured soap, he thought, finally identifying the fruity smell that floated around Daphne.

She yelled out in rage and raised her free hand to dig her nails into his cheek. Harry experienced again a slight surge of hot, electrical energy as her fingers made contact with his skin; it only lasted a second before he snatched her hand with one of his and forced it down on the pillow, right above her head. He joined both of her wrists and held them into place with one hand, making sure that he only touched the portion of her arms that was covered with the sleeves of her dressing gown, thus avoiding the contact of her bare skin. He needed to stay focused.

"Now we're talking," he said cheerfully as he looked down at the girl struggling against his grip. Her wand had fallen out of her hand at some time during the fight; Harry spotted it out of the corner of his eye, thrown over the rumpled sheets on his right side. He used his free hand to pick it up, then slid it inside his belt.

"Let go!" Daphne shrieked.

"No."

She was writhing under him in a desperate attempt to escape him; Harry remained silent, patiently waiting until she stopped her vain fight against his grasp and calmed down. And sure enough, it wasn't long before she gave up.

"Let go of me," she pleaded, her eyes closed and her breathing laboured.

"You woke me up holding a wand to my throat," Harry coolly replied. "You'll need to give me a damn good reason to let go of you."

"You'll regret it if you don't," she murmured in a barely audible whisper.

Harry frowned. "What do you think will happen if I don't?" he calmly inquired.

She did not answer. Her eyes were closed and her face was screwed in concentration, as if she was struggling with particularly nasty mental arithmetic. Her breathing went more difficult still, her chest heaving painfully with each inhalation, and Harry found out that he, too, was out of breath; as if the air in the room was rarefying.

Just like when I was experimenting earlier, he thought with a jolt of excitation.

It lasted maybe two or three seconds before Harry caught the smell of burning. He looked up and his eyes widened when he caught sight of Daphne's immobilised wrists: thin wisps of grey smoke escaped from under his fingers, and the material of her dressing gown was rapidly blackening, as if they were in contact with white-hot iron.

"Can you smell anything?" Daphne drawled, causing Harry to tear his gaze off her smoking wrists and look down at her. She had opened her eyes again and was smirking quite unpleasantly.

"Yeah, your dressing gown is burning," Harry calmly replied. "I'm afraid you'll have to throw it away."

Her smirk widened until Harry caught a glimpse of a row of white teeth. "I suppose you Aurors are trained to resist to pain or something?" she went on, her voice completely devoid of the rage and fear she had expressed earlier. "But I'm not sure you'll last long. Burns are horribly painful, you know. It'll be easier to just let go of me."

"I have my doubts about that," Harry said evenly. "Now, what about telling me exactly why you woke me up?"

Daphne blinked a couple of time, and for a few seconds neither of them spoke as they studied each other's face. In the silence Harry distinctly heard the sizzling of the flesh of his palms, burning along with Daphne's dressing gown. The heavy, sickening smell of grilling flesh had Daphne grimace in disgust, but her features relaxed again in an expression of wonder and confusion as she failed to see the slightest wince of pain on Harry's face.

"Why did you wake me up?" Harry repeated without raising his voice.

Daphne sighed, her eyes closing in defeat.

"I heard you speak it," she said dismissively. "And I had to confront you for that one. This afternoon in the hallway you wouldn't tell me, but... this, this you couldn't..."

"Speak what?" Harry interrupted.

"Don't," Daphne begged in a low, quavering voice. "Please don't do that, Potter. I'm -- I'm going crazy."

"I swear I don't understand a word of what you're saying," Harry said sincerely, but without loosening his grip on her. The smell of burned flesh was stronger than ever. "Did I speak Parseltongue in my sleep? It wouldn't be the first time."

She opened her eyes again and sought his, something like despair veiling her gaze. "No, it wasn't Parseltongue... It was that... language, like whispers," she said, her voice quavering even more than before. "I know only a few words of it, I've known them for as long as I can remember. But you spoke it very clearly in your sleep."

The desperate tone of her voice gradually faded as she surveyed Harry's face, to be replaced by perplexity. "You... didn't know?" she hesitantly said.

Harry shook his head. Daphne's eyes widened slightly, then she glanced sideways at the glass sphere resting on the sheets next to her head.

"Maybe it's got something to do with that thing?" she murmured, more to herself than to him. "Maybe it provokes hallucinations?"

"That's possible," Harry shortly said. He finally straightened up, releasing her, and stood up without looking at her. He picked up his wand on the floor and pointed it at the Dream-Injector.

"Accio!"

The sphere flew into his hand under Daphne's excited gaze. "Can't I try it?" she asked, her face shining with hope. "Just once?"

"No," Harry flatly said. He walked up to his bedside table and dropped the Injector inside the bag that lay there, abandoned on the floor.

"Why not?"

"For God's sake, Greengrass," Harry impatiently said. "Try to act a little grown-up! I'm an Auror, if I don't want you to use a rare magical object, I have a bloody good reason for it!"

He fumbled with the bag as he closed it over the Injector; his fingers were folding with difficulty, and he grimaced as he noticed his burned skin, red and quickly covering in white blisters. He picked up his wand again and used a basic healing charm. "What did you do to my hands?" he asked Daphne curiously.

Daphne bared her teeth at him in a derisive smirk, her gaze hard and resentful.

"If I don't want to answer your questions, Potter, I have a bloody good reason for it," she smoothly replied.

Harry arched his eyebrows at her as he leaned against the wall, facing the bed on which she was sitting. He noted that the sleeves of her dressing gown had stopped burning the moment he had let go of her. He was suddenly devoured by the desire to know exactly what she had done, and how she had done it. Her concentration, the way the air seemed to have been momentarily sucked out of the room, just as it had when Harry had created a ball of condensed air, earlier that day... It was significant. Daphne, he knew it, was a precious source of information -- whether she belonged to the Third Kind or not. Maybe it was time to try and gain that information from her.

"You want to know about the language? About what happens when we touch?" he asked her quietly.

He could almost feel her going tense as she nodded her agreement. Remembering how she had begged him earlier, how she had whispered that she was going crazy, he felt a stab of pity for her; she craved for knowledge as much as he did, probably even more... and he was going to use that at his advantage.

"Fine," he said brusquely. "I ask a question, you answer truthfully; then it's your turn. An answer for an answer."

She seemed to ponder that for a while before accepting with a short, "Fair enough."

Harry licked his lips, his eyes boring into hers.

"How did you burn my hands?" he shot at her.

"Air," she answered immediately. "I'm not very good at conventional magic, but I can make air do things... Like gather in a very precise location and grow unbearably hot. A talent like another."

Yeah, I'm sure. Harry's pulse sped up as he thought that, most probably, his earlier experimenting with the Dream-Injector had been a manifestation of the same kind of power. Making air do things... Things like create a ball of condensed air able to hit solid objects, maybe?

"Okay, my turn." Daphne seemed to think for a moment, then slowly asked, "What do you think happens when we touch one another? I mean, I'm having déjà vu, as if I knew you from a past life... Or as if we were from the same family... Do you feel the same way or--"

"Your question, Greengrass," Harry cut in. "Make up your mind."

"Right," she quickly said. "Err, here it is: what do you feel when we touch, that you don't feel with most other wizards?"

"Warmth. You've got a warm skin."

"Potter--"

"You've asked me," Harry defensively said. "I answered. I swear on my parents' grave that it's the truth."

She rolled her eyes at him. "That's all?" she impatiently said. As Harry nodded, she incredulously repeated, "Warmth?"

"Warmth is underrated," Harry pointed out, enigmatic. He fought to keep a smirk off his face; had he given that answer to Hermione, or anyone who knew about his insensitiveness, they would have known exactly how significant it was. They would have known Daphne had the power to make him recover his lost abilities, even if it was only for a few seconds. Daphne herself, however, had no idea.

Ignoring the exclamation of revolted disbelief that escaped his opponent's lips, he idly went on, "I believe it's my turn... So, what is that language you were talking about?"

Daphne visibly struggled with herself for a few seconds, torn between her frustration at Harry's laconic answer and her thirst for answers. Finally yielding to curiosity, she grudgingly replied, "Well, it's this kind of whispered, lilting language I heard in my dreams when I was a kid... I only know a few words though."

She didn't tell him the words she knew, much to Harry's regret; but then he could hardly expect anything else after he had so cruelly disappointed her.

"How do you know of that language?" she asked in a slightly trembling voice; her mouth was still distorted into a hateful grimace but her eyes shone with unconcealed avidity.

"I can't answer that question, Greengrass," Harry apologetically said. "I'm not sure what language you're talking about, since I had no idea I was talking in my sleep; it might have been only the influence of the Injector. But it also could be something I've heard years ago, during the war."

"Tell me," she urged him, but Harry shook his head.

"Not before I'm sure. It could be dangerous information," he said. "And to be sure I'll need to hear what you know of it. What little you can speak of it."

Her gaze hardened. She was smart enough to realise that he had her trapped: he would make her say exactly what he needed to know before he deigned share with her the one bit of information she cared about. She pursed her lips into a thin line and remained obstinately silent, her back straightened up in a defiant stance. She would not give in; not yet anyway.

"Fine," Harry sighed. "Can you Apparate?"

Her eyebrows shot upwards. "That's your question?"

"Yes."

She eyed him, mistrustful, obviously trying to find the trap in the seemingly trivial question. At last she slowly answered, "No... I failed my license twice. Hmm, how could you ignore the burn of your hand?"

"High resistance to pain. I didn't even feel it. What's your favourite colour?"

"Excuse me?"

Harry flashed a smile at her. "I've run out of ideas," he explained. "That, and I'd like to go back to sleep, so the quicker we end this game, the better."

She blinked, then allowed a reluctant smile to brighten her darkened features. "Green," she mumbled. "Yours?"

"None. I can safely say that I don't like pink, but that's about it."

Daphne nodded distractedly, her eyes cast down. Her frustrated expression gone, she looked tired and a little lost, all of sudden, sitting in the unmade bed with her too large dressing gown hanging over her frail form; and again, Harry was moved by how helpless she seemed. "Shall we call it a night, Greengrass?" he kindly asked.

"Just one more question," she unexpectedly said, her voice tense and low.

Harry stilled once more.

"I'm listening."

Daphne raised her head to meet his gaze again, and Harry was shocked to see her eyes shining with tears that wouldn't fall. Her voice was quavering like a very small child's when she asked, "Are we special, Potter?"

Harry slowly straightened up and closed in two steps the short distance separating him from his distraught hostess. Seizing her arm, he gently tugged on it to help her stand up. He was at least a head taller than she was.

"Yeah, we're special, Greengrass," he said in a very low voice. "I just need to figure out how."

She nodded again, sniffing slightly; she stood very close to him now, but didn't seem to want to step away. "You'll tell me then?" she croaked out as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

Harry didn't know what prompted him to give her the answer she wanted. She was just too frail, too small, too tired of not knowing, and he was just too used to taking care of everyone's problems.

"Yeah, I'll tell you," he muttered as he led her to the door of his room, then out in the corridor. There she turned to him again and, in a thoughtful gesture, brushed her knuckles against the line of his jaw. Harry repressed a shiver as warmth spread again from her fingers and into his whole body.

"Just warm then?" she whispered, her eyes seeking his. "It's just warm?" Her fingers lingered on Harry's jaw, stretching out to caress his cheek. A different kind of heat flooded through him, as his eyes unconsciously dropped from her face and followed her neckline, sliding down to the point where the dressing gown closed over her chest, barely revealing the hint of a cleavage. He had forgotten what a feminine hand felt like on his skin...

"You really don't feel anything else?" the petite blonde whispered as she edged closer to him still; her hand slid down his face to cup his cheek, and her thumb brushed against Harry's lips.

"Too many questions, Greengrass," Harry finally replied with some effort. "Game's over."

And stepping away from her, he went back into his bedroom and closed the door behind him, this time making sure the Locking Spell was activated. The scent of apricot-flavoured soap lingered in the still air of his dark, empty room.