The remainder of the summer holidays was rather uneventful for Harry, given the chaos and tumult that was going on throughout the wizarding world as well as even the Muggle world. The fact that Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters were at large and had a particular grudge against him meant that Harry was kept sheltered under lock and key in the Burrow for most of the time after his birthday on the Ministry’s orders. Even his plans of visiting his parents’ graves at Godric’s Hollow were not fulfilled. The one exception to these new rules of protection was the day that Harry was taken to the Ministry of Magic to take his Apparition test only a few days before term was to begin. He passed narrowly, despite the fact that he inadvertently splinched off the ends of his fingernails. To celebrate having gotten his Apparition license, he decided to Apparate straight from the confines of the Ministry to Fred and George’s empty room in the Burrow to pay them back for all the times that they had startled him by Apparating into his room. The effect was somewhat dampened by the fact that Fred and George happened to be over in Diagon Alley working at their joke shop, Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, at the time that Harry chose to arrive. However, as far as Harry was concerned, the sentimental symbolism was still there.

Before anyone knew it, it was the last night at the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley cooked a magnificent dinner and many people came over to help eat it, including Mad-Eye Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks, Lupin, and, to Mrs. Weasley’s displeasure, Mundungus Fletcher. Mrs. Weasley became cross towards the end of the evening, when the rest of her family insisted on socializing without having packed properly to leave the next morning, and she became even more upset when she caught Moody keeping Harry up past eleven, telling him stories of his youth that were certainly not appropriate for school-age wizards. Mrs. Weasley very severely told Moody off and tucked Harry into bed herself.

The next morning, things went fairly smoothly, except for the presence of no fewer than half a dozen Aurors, who insisted on driving Harry in a separate car. It was quite an uncomfortable journey, with four beefy Aurors sitting all around him, one sitting on his head, and one taking the place of the seat cushion. Harry was quite glad when they arrived at King’s Cross, although the six Aurors insisted on surrounding him closely so that he could barely walk and on accompanying him all the way to the doors of the train. Harry observed that at least one of them had forgotten to cast a Body-Odor-Vanquishing charm on himself that morning, but noticing his raised wand and threatening expression, Harry chose not to say anything. The Aurors only gave him space when Hermione, Ron, Mrs. Weasley, and Ginny came running to meet him.

“Oh, Harry,” Mrs. Weasley sobbed as she flung her arms around him, “do take care of yourself, won’t you? Don’t go out looking for You-Know-Who!”

Harry didn’t say anything, as he really didn’t have the heart to inform her that it was his primary goal and duty to do just that.

“And you two take care of yourselves, too,” continued Mrs. Weasley, gulping down more tears. “Just because you’re not specifically on You-Know-Who’s top-ten list of people to slaughter doesn’t mean that you should get too confident! Oh, oh, oh!” Her sobs redoubled. “I know someone’s going to die this year, I just know it! Last year it came so close for you, Ron…”

“Don’t be stupid, Mum,” said Ron in an obvious attempt to comfort her. “Just you wait and see; You-Know-Who will be destroyed by Christmas.”

“Dumbledore will take care of everything, Mrs. Weasley,” said Hermione. “I mean, at least this time around, he will.”

“No, you mark my words,” wailed Mrs. Weasley. “By the end of another year, somebody standing here is going to be dead. I dream about it all the time!”

Just then, however, the train doors began to close, and this rather morbid conversation was forced to end. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny ran into the train.

“Blimey,” muttered Ron, as he watched the receding figure of Mrs. Weasley out the window as the train began to move. “Has she been getting together with Professor Trelawney or something?”

“Let’s go find a compartment, then,” said Harry briskly.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other. Harry couldn’t shake off a strong feeling of dejà vu.

“Erm, Harry?” said Hermione. “I know it may take you three years to get used to this, but Ron and I have to go to the prefects’ carriage.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Harry dully. “That good old prefect’s carriage.”

“You understand what we’re doing, don’t you?” said Ron anxiously. “I mean, it’s not something we do for fun. We have to meet with a crowd of other prefects and memorize instructions. It’s not like we’re going off to have the first part of the journey alone or something like that. I mean, not that we’d want to… It’s dull work, nothing more. Not that we would have anything more in mind, of course…” He awkwardly broke off.

“Ginny can keep you company,” said Hermione brightly to Harry.

Ginny took one terrified look at Harry and said, “No, I can’t, I have to meet, erm…” She then seemed to remember that she no longer had a boyfriend to meet, and Harry could see the wheels spinning furiously in her head. Before she could say anything more, however, she was tapped on the shoulder by Luna Lovegood.

“Oh, hello, Ginny and Harry,” said Luna dreamily. “I’ve missed you over the summer. Ginny, you would have loved the exhibition on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks my father took me to see…”

And so, Ginny had no choice but to follow Luna and Harry into the nearest compartment, where Neville was already sitting with his mimbulus mimbletonia.

“Had good summers?” Neville asked them. “Mine’s been kind of scary.”

“Oh, no,” gasped Harry. “Nobody close to you has been attacked, have they?”

“Worse,” said Neville grimly. “My gran decided that I am as talented as my father was after all. She’s been putting me through rigorous Auror-level defense training programs at the Ministry and saying that I have to be your second in a duel against You-Know-Who. If he kills you and I’m not there to destroy him in response, the family honor will suffer its worst damage in fifty years!”

“You’ve been taking classes at the Ministry?” said Harry in amazement.

“Yeah,” said Neville. “They say I’m awkward but impeccable. Try hexing me; just see how I react!”

Neville was looking at Harry expectantly, but it was Ginny who, without warning, thrust her wand in Neville’s direction and muttered, “Impedimenta!”

Neville’s shield charm was so strong that when Ginny’s curse bounced off it, it flew through the glass pane of the compartment door and shattered the glass. Harry jumped up to repair it.

Luna was reading the Daily Prophet, apparently paying no attention to the commotion around her. “Oh, this is interesting,” she mused. “An article about mutant house-elves drinking unicorn blood.”

“In the Daily Prophet?” said Harry incredulously. “Can I see that?”

Luna handed the paper over to him. At the top of one of the pages ran the headline, “DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOKESWOMAN NOT DEAD AFTER ALL”.

This was indeed a very intriguing headline, and it contained the expression “Deathly Hallows,” which Harry had heard several times lately. He read on:

The woman who served as the public voice for the Deathly Hallows, who goes by the title Madam Browne, spoke to the Ministry of Magic last night in her first public appearance in over sixteen years.

“I apologize for pretending to be dead for sixteen years,” she said in a statement to Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister of Magic. “I had my reasons, but I am not at liberty to explain them.”

Browne is reported to have resumed her old position as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry.

“She’s been working to resolve the inconsistency to between the you-know-whats and the other thingies in order to aid the opposition to You-Know-Who,” explained a Department of Mysteries representative awkwardly. “Well, we know you know who You-Know-Who is, but you’re not allowed to know what the aforementioned you-know-whats and thingies are.”

Harry looked up at Luna. “I don’t understand what Deathly Hallows are!”

“I thought everybody know what they were,” said Luna matter-of-factly. “They’re gigantic mutant house-elves, of course. They want to use unicorn blood to develop devastating powers in order to wipe out both camps in this war.”

Harry knew better than to swallow this piece of information from Luna without a huge grain of salt.

The rest of the morning passed fairly uneventfully, except for Romilda Vane, a third-year girl who had been trying to win Harry’s affection for the last year, sticking her head into their compartment to say hi to Harry.

“I hope you defeat You-Know-Who soon so that you get back together with Ginny,” said Luna mistily to Harry when Romilda left. “Ginny loves you, you know. It was really very cruel of you to break up with her like that at the end of last year.”

Harry frantically tried to think of a way to change the subject and suspected that Ginny was doing the same, but thankfully, at that moment, Ron and Hermione arrived. When Hermione opened the compartment door with a mild bang, Neville was looking in the other direction. His reaction was immediate. “Expelliarmus!” he shouted, waving his wand wildly and blindly in Hermione’s direction.

Hermione was blasted into the wall and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, clearly knocked out.

Ron pushed his way in and stared at Hermione’s attacker as though he’d never seen him before. “Who are you and what have you done to Neville?” he gasped.

“I’ve been getting extra training at defense by the Ministry,” said Neville proudly. “I bet my reaction times are up to par with Mad-Eye Moody’s by now!”

“So’s your paranoia,” muttered Ron.

Neville glared at him. “Don’t mess with me, or I’ll knock you unconscious, too!”

Ron eyed Neville apprehensively and, with slight resentment, dropped his gaze to the ground. He sat down next to Harry and propped Hermione up against the seat opposite them.

Not long after that, there was a banging knock at the compartment door. Harry got up to open it and found himself face-to-face with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, the stooges of his former arch-enemy at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy.

“What do you want?” said Harry aggressively.

Crabbe looked at Goyle, and Goyle looked at Crabbe. Then Crabbe took a grubby-looking piece of parchment from inside his robes and struggled to focus his piggy eyes on it. He began to read from the parchment in a dull voice:

“So, how are Potty and the Weasel doing this year? Had good summers? I hope that Potter hasn’t suffered yet another in… in…”

He mouthed wordlessly as he stared at the next word, apparently unable to read it.

“Injury,” Goyle supplied after staring at the word that Crabbe was pointing to.

“…injury since I last saw him, so that the Dark Lord will at least be able to have a bit of fun with him before killing him. Hey, how are you doing, Granger? Don’t you dare smirk at me that way, you Mudblood!”

“Wait a minute,” said Harry. “Hermione’s not smirking! She’s unconscious, look!”

Crabbe and Goyle stared down at Hermione’s limp form.

“Oh, right,” said Goyle. “Well, Malfoy told us to say that stuff to you, anyway. And then he told us to beat you up.”

He and Crabbe approached the other six with their fists raised.

Neville calmly pointed his wand at the two aggressors and wordlessly cast the leg-locker curse on them. A moment later, they were lying rigidly on the ground.

“Now the only problem is that I’m not strong enough to carry them back to their own compartment,” said Neville as though nothing had happened, displaying his pudgy arms. “I guess I should have worked out over the summer as well.”

“Never mind that,” said Ginny briskly. “Levicorpus.” Ron followed suit and the two of them led the floating bodies of Crabbe and Goyle out of the compartment. By the time they came back, the train was beginning to slow down.

“We’re going to have to levitate Hermione’s body as well,” Ron remarked. “Not that I’m not strong enough to hold it myself.” As it was, there was barely time to change into their Hogwarts robes before they had to get off the train. The six formed a line, with Harry at the lead, levitating Hermione’s body in front of him. They had decided on Harry because he was the one most accustomed to being stared at while getting off the train. Then, one by one, they stepped out of the front doors of the train and into the cool night air.