“Dear Hermione,
Thank you for your last letter. I’m feeling fine, the Dursleys are ... the Dursleys. I think Moody and the others scared them.
Hermione, there is really nothing to worry about. It’s my business.
Greets,
Harry.”
“Dear Harry,
You’re completely right, Harry. It is your business. It was your business in first year that Voldemort wanted the Philosopher’s Stone. It was your business that Tom Riddle kidnapped Ginny. It was your business to rescue Sirius in third year. It was your business to complete the three tasks. It was completely your business to go after Sirius in the Ministry.
Harry!! When did I ever care if anything was your business? It is our business, it always was. That’s what friends are for. Please don’t forget that. And stop denying ... everything.
Then there’s something else. I had an exciting thought last night and I looked it up instantly, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in the books. I wish I had a book about the Ministry. Maybe you could try and look it up in your Divination book?
Anyway : Do you remember what was written on the Prophecy when we found it?
‘S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.
Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter’
Now, I really couldn’t make anything out of those many letters at the beginning, but yesterday it came to me! A.P.W.B.D. , that’s almost certainly Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore! (You can look up the names in ‘Hogwarts, a history’.) But why would Dumbledore be written on it? Well, because S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D. means that S.P.T. made the prophecy to Professor Dumbledore.
That means he knows its contents!
What do you think about it?
Yours,
Hermione.”
“Hermione,
You’d like it to be your business?
You’re right. It was prophesied to Dumbledore, by Trelawney. I already knew this. He told me after the fight. In his study. He showed me his memories of the prophecy. It is about me and Voldemort.
It says that in July the year I was born, a child would be born to people who have thrice defied him and that this child would be able to destroy Voldemort. Then it said Voldemort would ‘mark the child as his equal’ and that the child and Voldemort must kill each other, because none can live while the other survives. And that the child would have some kind of power which Voldemort has not.
The child, though, could have been me “ or Neville. But Dumbledore says that by trying to kill me, Voldemort marked me, so it is me. Well, the rest is pretty much clear. I have to kill him or he will kill me. Guess I really have a fat chance, huh? Also, because Voldemort heard the first part of the prophecy, he came to kill my parents and me.
So you see : this time it is pretty much my business. You can’t handle it. Only I can. Only I could all the time! I had no choice. Because I’m marked his equal! Isn’t that just wonderful? It wasn’t just bad luck from the start. It was fate.
Harry.”
With a shocked hiss, Hermione nearly let the parchment drop to her feet. Harry’s last words would have hurt her, if not for the folly she immediately realised.
Harry had told her to whole prophecy in A LETTER. A letter which could easily be intercepted by anyone. It was almost like plastering big posters with the text of the prophecy everywhere on the wall at Diagon Alley.
And what it said, that prophecy! That Voldemort had to kill Harry. Which he wanted anyway, but knowing this, he would want it twice as much.
With shaking fingers she gingerly laid the letter onto the brown plaid blanket on her bed and looked at Hedwig, who was waiting patiently for the return letter.
“What should I do?” she whispered. Should she try to find out whether the letter had actually been intercepted? Like all owl post it looked a little worn. Hedwig herself didn’t look troubled at all. She probably should be able to find a spell somewhere to find out, but that would take its time “ time she didn’t have “ and would be illegal as she was still an underage witch. She remembered Harry’s trial well.
She might write to Dumbledore, or anybody else of the Order. Or she could write back to Harry, telling him how stupid that had been “ maybe a little more diplomatically “ and to look for cover. But where? He should be safe where he was, shouldn’t he?
So she should probably warn the Order.
But that meant that she would invade Harry’s privacy, that she would embarrass him and would surely make him feel like things were decided above his head again. She gnawed her lip frantically.
But she had to. She simply had to. She would never be able to forgive herself if she didn’t warn Dumbledore and something bad happened.
A small figure walked over a plain of endless white, under a sky of infinite black. Lost and tiny in the snow, blurred and distorted now and then, it still walked straight to the edge of an endless abyss. Down there were a myriad of darkest waves in a bottomless ocean, down, there were the souls of the lost ones.
Upon reaching the abyss, the figure stopped. It was a young man, thin and small and dark. In his hands, clothed in black rags, he carried something as if it were his own child, his heart and soul : a small, infinitely bright light.
His face was illuminated by the light so brightly that its features couldn’t be discerned, but then he looked up for a small instant, and green eyes searched the stars above him.
Harry woke with a start, panting and cold. He had never seen himself in a dream before so clearly. Mostly, he was the actor, the protagonist of his own dreams, or the subject of his dreams was Voldemort. But he had never before looked into his own eyes in a dream.
Even though it was July, goosebumps shivered down his sweaty limbs. He untangled himself from the sheets. Harry had learned that dreams can mean a lot and nowadays he was often asking himself what they meant. Whenever they were visions from Voldemort, he could discern them by the pain in his scar, the searing hotness of something that was close to bursting.
He had dreamt of himself on a plain covered in snow, and a huge cliff above an ocean. What had been that ocean? It had looked like thousands of dusky shadows, black and ghostlike, and in his dream he had just known that they were the souls of the dead. But he had been holding a white light, and somehow he had the feeling that this was a soul, too.
He looked around the twilight of his room. The yellow street lights from Privet Drive almost completely illuminated it, so that it rarely ever became truly dark. Harry resented this ever since he had come to know the stars of a velvety night sky sprinkled with stars and crowned with a pure moon as it spread over Hogwarts at night. Hedwig was still away.
Harry had sent her to Hermione this morning, with a letter in which he told her the truth about the prophecy. It felt good to know that it was out of his hands now... and thinking that thought he nearly bit his own tongue off.
He had written down the prophecy in a LETTER! How could he ever have been so stupid! Voldemort had gone through all that work just to get it, and now Harry sent it away with a letter? He could have hit himself. He couldn’t call it back now, he could only hope that his letters wouldn’t be intercepted.
For once, he couldn’t deny that it was his fault, and his alone. Why hadn’t he realised it this morning? He just couldn’t understand himself. There was no Snape, no Dumbledore to blame. He rubbed his hot forehead and hated himself for being so impulsive. If he hadn’t been so impulsive, Sirius might still be alive. If, if, if. Everyday he found new ways how Sirius could have stayed alive.
If Voldemort got this letter, he would know that the only thing he had to do was to kill Harry. Actually, Harry thought, this didn’t change a lot. Voldemort wanted to kill him anyway, didn’t he? And he was save at the Dursleys. But why then had Dumbledore undergone all the procedures to keep the prophecy from Lord Voldemort? Was it about the power Harry should possess which Voldemort didn’t possess?
Slowly, Harry dived back into his dream reality. And suddenly he knew it! He had been behind the veil! He was behind the veil, in the land of the dead, and he was carry a soul. Whose soul? Whose soul could it be?
“Sirius,” he whispered into the night, and with unnoticed tears on his cheeks he fell asleep.