Ron left the hospital wing first thing on Monday morning, restored to full health by the ministrations of Madam Pomfrey and now able to enjoy the benefits of having been knocked out and poisoned, the best of which was that Hermione was friends with Ron again. Hermione even escorted them down to breakfast, bringing with her the news that Ginny had argued with Dean.

"What did they row about?" Elara asked as they turned onto a seventh-floor corridor that was deserted but fora very small girl who had been examining a tapestry of trolls in tutus.

She looked terrified at the sight of the approaching sixth years and dropped the heavy brass scales she was carrying.

"It's all right!" said Hermione kindly, hurrying forward to helpher. "Here . . ." She tapped the broken scales with her wand and said, "Reparo."

The girl did not say thank you, but remained rooted to the spot as they passed and watched them out of sight; Elara glanced back at her.

"I swear they're getting smaller," said Elara. "Anways, what did Ginny and Dean fight about, Hermione?"

"Oh, Dean was laughing about McLaggen hitting that Bludger at Harry," said Hermione.

"It must've looked funny," said Ron reasonably.

"It didn't look funny at all!" said Hermione hotly. "It looked terrible and if Lara hadn't caught Harry he could have died!"

"We've punched McLaggen" said Elara, glancing at Hermione, "feel like punching Dean?"

Hermione laughed quite loudly, loud enough that Elara almost didn't hear Luna calling for her and Harry.

"Hi, Luna!" said Elara, turning around to greet her.

"I went to the hospital wing to find you and Harry," said Luna, rummaging in her bag. "But they said you'd left. . . ."

She thrust what appeared to be a green onion, a large spotted toadstool, and a considerable amount of what looked like cat litter into Ron's hands, finally pulling out a rather grubby scroll of parchment that she handed to Elara.

". . . I've been told to give you this."

It was a small roll of parchment, which Elara recognized at once as another invitation to a lesson with Dumbledore. Harry moved to peer over her shoulder.

"Tonight," she told Ron and Hermione, once she had unrolled it.

"What is this, by the way?" said Ron, holding the onion like object up to eye level.

"Oh, it's a Gurdyroot," said Luna, stuffing the cat litter and the toadstool back into her bag. "You can keep it if you like, I've got a few of them. They're really excellent for warding off Gulping Plimpies."

And she walked away, leaving Ron chortling, still clutching the Gurdyroot.

"You know, she's grown on me, Luna," he said, as they set off again for the Great Hall. "I know she's insane, but it's in a good —"

He stopped talking very suddenly. Lavender Brown was standing at the foot of the marble staircase looking thunderous.

"Hi," said Ron nervously.

"C'mon," Harry muttered to Elara and Hermione, and they sped past, though not before they had heard Lavender say, "Why didn't you tell me you were getting out today? And why was she with you?"

Ron looked both sulky and annoyed when he appeared at breakfast half an hour later, and though he sat with Lavender, Elara did not see them exchange a word all the time they were together. Hermione was acting as though she was quite oblivious to all of this, but once or twice Elara saw an inexplicable smirk cross her face.

Elara was in the middle of eating a cinnamon roll when a loud voice yelled out, "ROMILDA VANE!"

She swivelled on the spot to find a bright red envelope in front of Romilda Vane. She looked mightily embarrassed.

"How dare you try to slip someone a love potion! That is heavily illegal and it will not go unpunished! Harry Potter's poor friend ate the potion and in turn got poisoned! If I hear of you putting another toe out of line, you will be homeschooled for the rest of your life! I am beside myself," yelled the Howler from Romilda's mum, "It's enough you tried to trick a young man into drinking a love potion, but I hear he has a girlfriend and that the pair of them have said REPEATEDLY they were together? You count your lucky stars she only wrote to me, Romilda. That girl is the Savior of the Wizarding World and she quite possibly holds your life in her hands! You saw what she did to that awful keeper! I am sorely disappointed in you! We will discuss punishment when summer holiday starts!"

The Howler tore itself up. Every eye in the Great Hall was peering back and forth from Romilda Vane, who looked murderous, to Elara, who looked quite smug.

All that day Elara was in a particularly good mood. Not even nasty looks from McLaggen flared her temper. He wouldn't dare try anything after what happened in the Quidditch pitch. Even Romilda Vane's friends seemed to be quite terrified of Elara, as they flung themselves from her path in the corridors.

Later in the common room, Hermione had agreed to finish writing Harry's Herbology essay, seeing as she refused to before because she knew Ron would look it over.

"Thanks a lot, Hermione," said Harry as he checked his watch, "Listen, Lara and we've got to hurry or we'll be late for Dumbledore. . . ."

Hermione did not answer, but merely crossed out a few of his feebler sentences in a weary sort of way. Elara moved to leave, but her hip bumped into the corner of the table they were at.

"Mother — "

"What the hell?" exclaimed Harry, as his hand flew to his side.

A million questions ran through Elara's mind. However, she looked Harry dead in the eye and slammed her arm into the edge of the table. Once again, he swore loudly and looked mightily confused. Hermione picked up on what was happening and seemed to already have a question.

"Harry," said Hermione sharply, "stub your toe."

"What?"

"Just do it!"

Harry huffed and kicked the side of one of the couches. Pain tingled through Elara's foot.

"What the bloody fuck!?" said Elara, a tad freaked out.

"You two can feel each other's pain. . ." said Hermione rather quietly, seemingly in awe.

"I don't know why or how, but thank Merlin I didn't feel that bludger McLaggen hit."

Very confused, Elara and Harry hurried out through the portrait hole and off to the headmaster's office. The gargoyle leapt aside at the mention of toffee éclairs, and they took the spiral staircase two steps at a time, knocking on the door just as a clock within chimed eight.

"Enter," called Dumbledore, but as Elara put out a hand to push the door, it was wrenched open from inside.

There stood Professor Trelawney.

"Aha!" she cried, pointing dramatically at Elara and Harry as she blinked at them through her magnifying spectacles. "So this is the reason I am to be thrown unceremoniously from your office, Dumbledore!"

"My dear Sybill," said Dumbledore in a slightly exasperated voice, "there is no question of throwing you unceremoniously from anywhere, but Elara and Harry do have an appointment, and I really don't think there is any more to be said —"

"Very well," said Professor Trelawney, in a deeply wounded voice. "If you will not banish the usurping nag, so be it. . . . Perhaps I shall find a school where my talents are better appreciated. . . ."

She pushed past Elara and disappeared down the spiral staircase; they heard her stumble halfway down, and Elara guessed that she had tripped over one of her trailing shawls.

"Please close the door and sit down, you two," said Dumbledore, sounding rather tired.

Elara and Harry obeyed, noticing as she took her usual seat beside Harry and in front of Dumbledore's desk that the Pensieve lay between them once more, as did two more tiny crystal bottles full of swirling memory.

"Professor Trelawney still isn't happy Firenze is teaching, then?" Elara asked.

"No," said Dumbledore, "Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself. I cannot ask Firenze to return to the forest, where he is now an outcast, nor can I ask Sybill Trelawney to leave. Between ourselves, she has no idea of the danger she would be in outside the castle. She does not know — and I think it would be unwise to enlighten her — that she made the prophecies about you two, you see."

Dumbledore heaved a deep sigh, then said, "But never mind my staffing problems. We have much more important matters to discuss. Firstly — have you managed the task I set you at the end of our previous lesson?"

"Ah," said Harry, brought up short, "Well, I asked Professor Slughorn about it at the end of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn't give it to me."

There was a little silence.

"I see," said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles, "And you feel that you have exerted your very best efforts in this matter, do you? That you have exercised all of your considerable ingenuity? That you have left no depth of cunning unplumbed in your quest to retrieve the memory?"

"Well," Harry stalled, seemingly at a loss for what to say next, "Well . . . the day Ron swallowed love potion by mistake Lara and I took him to Professor Slughorn. I thought maybe if I got Professor Slughorn in a good enough mood —"

"And did that work?" asked Dumbledore.

"Well, no, sir, because Ron got poisoned —"

"— which, naturally, made you forget all about trying to retrieve the memory; I would have expected nothing else, while your best friend was in danger. Once it became clear that Mr. Weasley was going to make a full recovery, however, I would have hoped that you returned to the task I set you. I thought I made it clear to you how very important that memory is. Indeed, I did my best to impress upon you that it is the most crucial memory of all and that we will be wasting our time without it."

Harry looked down at the floor, clearly embarrassed.

"Sir," he said, a little desperately, "it isn't that I wasn't bothered or anything, I've just had other — other things . . ."

"Other things on your mind," Dumbledore finished the sentence for him. "I see."

"Yeah, like his best friend almost losing his life and then getting his skull cracked open," said Elara, a little annoyed, seeing as Dumbledore wasn't showing much sympathy for everything that's happened. "Not to mention Cormac McLaggen is such an ass — "

"Professor?" said Harry, thankfully interrupting Elara, "when we were in the common room, something really strange happened. . . ."

"Such as?"

"Well, Lara bumped into the edge of a table, but I felt it. And then she slammed her arm into the table to find out what would happen, and then I intentionally stubbed my toe and then Lara felt it too. . ."

"Ah," was all Dumbledore said as he stood up and strode to a bookshelf adjacent from his desk. He pulled a rather thick book out fro the shelf and flipped through it. "Anya said this would happen."

"Anya never told me any of this," said Elara rather angrily.

"No, I presumed not," said Dumbledore, not seeming to take note of the outrage in her voice. "Anyhow, seeing as what happened on the Quidditch Pitch happened, it seems whatever forces are controlling fate seemed to decide it was time to let the two of you further your bond."

"Why now? Why not when I was at Anya's? Or when we were at the Ministry?"

"It seems that every time one of you does something selflessly for the other, another aspect of your unique relationship opens up."

"So, when Lara forgot her fear of heights and flew to catch me," said Harry slowly, as if he was thinking through the new information, "that action. . . opened this up?"

Dumbledore nodded. He set the book on the desk in front of them. Elara and Harry both leaned over the book and glanced over the page it was opened to. There was only a paragraph, but the page seemed worn down as if it was thousands of years old.

When two fated by the stars find each other, their relationship is like no other. Only happening once every hundred years, the stars give them unique tools to destroy the evil set out before them.

"How is this an 'unique tool?" questioned Elara, "All I see this as is an opportunity to annoy Harry endlessly."

"Just for that," said Harry, swinging his foot into the leg of Dumbledore's desk, smiling as Elara flinched. "You're welcome."

"You're the absolute worst."

"No, you — "

" — I expect this is meant for you to know when the other is in danger," interrupted Dumbledore, smiling fondly at the two.

"Wait, hold on," said Elara, a new thought striking her, "Does this mean when one of us dies — "

" — The other does too? No, the pain is purely mental, there will be no physical trace of it anywhere on your bodies."

Elara smiled and pinched herself. Harry whacked his arm.

"I suspect we should continue with our story where we left off," said Dumbledore rather amusedly, "You remember where that was?"

"Yeah," said Elara, all the while shooting Harry a glare. "Voldemort killed his father and his grandparents and made it look as though his Uncle Morfin didit. Then he went back to Hogwarts and he asked Professor Slughorn about Horcruxes."

"Very good," said Dumbledore. "Now, you will remember, I hope, that I told you at the very outset of these meetings of ours that we would be entering the realms of guesswork and speculation?"

"Yes, sir," said Harry as Elara nodded alongside him.

"Thus far, as I hope you agree, I have shown you reasonably firm sources of fact for my deductions as to what Voldemort did until the age of seventeen?"

They nodded.

"But now," said Dumbledore, "now things become murkier and stranger. If it was difficult to find evidence about the boy Riddle, it has been almost impossible to find anyone prepared to reminisce about the man Voldemort. In fact, I doubt whether there is a soul alive, apart from himself, who could give us a full account of his life since he left Hogwarts. However, I have two last memories that I would like to share with the both you."

Dumbledore indicated the two little crystal bottles gleaming beside the Pensieve.

"I shall then be glad of your opinion as to whether the conclusions I have drawn from them seem likely."

The idea that Dumbledore valued his opinion this highly surprised Elara slightly, seeing as Dumbledore still held many, many secrets from the two of them.

"I hope you are not tired of diving into other people's memories, for they are curious recollections, these two," he said. "This first one came from a very old house-elf by the name of Hokey. Before we see what Hokey witnessed, I must quickly recount how Lord Voldemort left Hogwarts.

"He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Award for Special Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes."

"At Borgin and Burkes?" Elara repeated, stunned.

"At Borgin and Burkes," repeated Dumbledore calmly. "I think you will see what attractions the place held for him when we have entered Hokey's memory. But this was not Voldemort's first choice of job. Hardly anyone knew of it at the time — I was one of the few in whom the then headmaster confided — but Voldemort first approached Professor Dippet and asked whether he could remain at Hogwarts as a teacher."

"He wanted to stay here? Why?" asked Harry.

"I believe he had several reasons, though he confided none of them to Professor Dippet," said Dumbledore. "Firstly, and very importantly, Voldemort was, I believe, more attached to this school than he has ever been to a person. Hogwarts was where he had been happiest; the first and only place he had felt at home.

"Secondly, the castle is a stronghold of ancient magic. Undoubtedly Voldemort had penetrated many more of its secrets than most of the students who pass through the place, but he may have felt that there were still mysteries to unravel, stores of magic to tap.

"And thirdly, as a teacher, he would have had great power and influence over young witches and wizards. Perhaps he had gained the idea from Professor Slughorn, the teacher with whom he was on best terms, who had demonstrated how influential a role a teacher can play. I do not imagine for an instant that Voldemort envisaged spending the rest of his life at Hogwarts, but I do think that he saw it as a useful recruiting ground, and a place where he might begin to build himself an army."

"But he didn't get the job?" asked Elara.

"No, he did not. Professor Dippet told him that he was too young at eighteen, but invited him to reapply in a few years, if he still wished to teach."

"How did you feel about that, sir?" asked Harry hesitantly.

"Deeply uneasy," said Dumbledore. "I had advised Armando against the appointment — I did not give the reasons I have given you, for Professor Dippet was very fond of Voldemort and convinced of his honesty. But I did not want Lord Voldemort back at this school, and especially not in a position of power."

"Which job did he want? What subject did he want to teach?"