My Protector | A Harry Potter love story

chapter 2

"Anything from the trolley? Anything from the trolley?" Hermione and I sit next to each other reading from the Daily Prophet paper about the Quidditch World Cup attack. Thankfully no lives were lost, but many witches and wizards sustained burn injuries. Harry and Ron are scrambling to get coins out for the trolley. "Anything from the trolley, dears?" The trolley lady asks us.

I reach into my coin bag and grab a couple galleons out. "Packet of Drooble's and a... Licorice Wand..." Ron glances at the price of the candy and hesitates, "on second thought just the Droobles." "It's all right Ron, I'll get it." Harry tells him. As I'm about to ask the trolley lady for some Fever Fudge and Sherbet Lemons a voice interrupts me. "Two Pumpkin Pasties, please." I look over and see Cho Chang, a Ravenclaw fourth year that I've had some classes with over the years. "Oh hi, Cho!" I go and squeeze past the trolley lady and give her a hug that she returns. "Have a good summer?" I ask her as she hands the trolley lady her money. "My summer was great, I need to go right now, but I'll tell you all about it later, okay?" She gives me a quick smile and glances behind me before smiling once more and leaving with her other Ravenclaw friends. I turn around to see who she smiled at, and I see Harry looking back behind me in a daze. I clear my throat loudly at him and he snaps his attention back over to me. I raise my eyebrows at him expectantly. A small blush forms on his face. "We're talking about this later." I turn to the trolley lady. "Can I get, a pack of fever Fudge and Sherbert Lemons miss?" I ask her. She hands me the candy and holds out her hand. "Oh, Mr. Harry Potter here is buying for us today. Aren't you Harry? There's a good lad."

I squeeze past him and tap him on the shoulder blade sarcastically before sitting down in my seat huffing my breath as I do. Hermione looks up from the paper and sees my pissed off face. "What?" She asks me, "Nothing." I reply. "I'll tell you later. Just understand that boys are so incredibly thick." Ron looks over at me as if I'm gone mad before letting out a low whistle and goes back to pretending his reading one of his books. Harry comes back and sits across from me handing Ron his licorice wand. "Thanks mate." He tells him. Hermione looks up from the Daily Prophet with a shocked look on her face. "This is horrible. How can the ministry not know who conjured it? Wasn't there any security, or-?" "Loads, according to Dad. That's what worried them so much. Happened right under their noses." Ron explains with him mouth full of sweets. I see Harry start to rub his scar on his forehead. "It's hurting you again, isn't it?" I question him. "Your scar." "I'm fine." He trys to insist. "You know Sirius will want to hear about this. What you saw at the world cup and the dream." Hermione tells him.

Harry explained to the rest of us a while back about his nightmare on the morning of the world cup. This year feels scarier than the others. Like there's this dark cloud that's been slowly growing and festering. I'm scared of the unknown and right now there's one person who can give me answers. I stand up from my seat and start to march out of the compartment. "Where are you going?" Hermione asks me worried. I look around at my friends and see their worried faces. "To get some answers." I tell them before storming out of the compartment, on my way to find my brother.

I went to the front of the cabins and found him sitting and laughing about with his friends. I slammed open their door. "You and I need to talk, Draco." Everyone goes silent and I get evil glares from all of his friends. "Want me to hex her, Draco?" Pansy Parkinson asks. "Bugger off Pugface, I'm talking to my brother." I glare back at her. "I have nothing to say to you, sister." He sneers at me before looking back to his friends and they all start to laugh at me. I go over to Draco and grab him by the ear, tug him up, and we walk our of the compartment. "Ow, damn it Arabella! Get off of me! What the hell is the matter with you?" He yells out as I drag him to a quieter place on the train.

"Did he plan that?" I ask him staring deadly into his eyes. "Plan what?!" He asks me with a disgusted look on his face. "Did our father, set up the attack on the night of the World Cup?" I ask him dead faced. Draco slightly widens his eyes and takes a deep breath before looking away at me, closing his eyes and sighs out heavily. "Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. Arabella, you have always known that one day, You-Know-Who- would return. Our family is forever connected with him. You need to accept that and come back home."

"He is NOT coming back. He can't come back." I try to insist. "Please, Arabella, you are not thick. You haven't been home in the last two years; you have no idea what's been happening. They have been meeting more and more frequently. They talk. They plan. The world cup was only the beginning."

I remember when Draco and I were small, we were once all a happy family. It all changed and went dark right before the start of my first year at Hogwarts, I remember Draco and I were snooping outside of our father's office and he and mother were arguing about You-Know-Who. Father was at the time an inactive member of the Death Eaters once Voldemort died, but other active members were hearing tales and rumors about his inevitable return. Mother wanted us to leave the country, to run away and hide. She argued that we needed to be protected. Father argued about how it was duty and if Voldemort did come back one day, he would hunt us all down for not returning to the Death Eaters.

That was the first time the painful ringing in my ears began. It felt like my mind was going to explode from the inside. I felt so much uncontrollable rage, and pain. I couldn't move from the floor. Draco tried to help me off the floor but wasn't able to. Mother and Father came bursting in to see me writing on the floor in front of them in agony. I've never seen my parents look so scared in their life. After a while, the pain receded, and I hadn't felt that pain ever again. Until the world cup.

"Do you know who it was that casted the Dark Mark in the sky that night?" "No... I asked father who it was, but he wouldn't say. Said it was unimportant." Draco is hiding something. I can tell. Even under all the smugness and arrogance he's grown to have the past years, I can always tell when he's not being truthful. "Fine. Don't tell me. I'll figure it out myself. Have a nice year Draco." I storm off from him back to my compartment.

When I enter the compartment everyone around me starts asking questions. "Where did you run off to?" "Who did you talk to?" "What happened?" I sit down back in my original seat next to Hermione and look out the window. "I tried to talk to Draco. He wouldn't tell me anything." "Why would Draco know anything?" I look around to all my friends and my palms start to feel sweaty. "I just thought that with my father working so closely with the minister, he might've known more about what happened. That's all. But as usual, it was fruitless." They all seem to accept that as answer with nods on their faces. I see on Harry's lap he has an envelope ready to mail. "Is that for Sirius?" I ask him. He nods at me quietly before giving the letter to Hedwig and opens the window, letting her fly off to wherever Sirius is at. I hope he's okay.

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Today's year at Hogwarts is going to be a special one, many of the students have rumored since we all got off the train earlier this evening.

"To all Hogwarts students." Professor McGonagall says over the intercom. "There is a surprise arriving, if you wish to do so, please head over to the Courtyard immediately. Thank you." My friends and I all look over at each other and we, including all the other Gryffindor's in the common room head over as fast as we can to the Courtyard. When we all heard over to the Courtyard, other students start to crowd around the pillars to look outside the grounds. "Guys, come on!" I yell for them to follow me. I grab onto Hermione's and Ginny's hand and have them run along with me to the ledge to see all the commotion. As we all look up at the sky we see a carriage being flown by a bunch of pegasus's with no coachmen driving them. There's excited chatter all around us as we all try to squeeze in and see better.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day!" said George. From down in the black lake, we all see a mast sticking out from the surface. "NO that can't be..." I drift off. A pirate ship breaks out from the black lake making its way to us.

What is going to happen this year?