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Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine!

Hogsmeade was both more and less than Harry had expected after hearing the other students talk about the village. In truth, it was basically another Diagon Alley except with different shops, residential homes, and no confused muggles wandering around trying to take everything in. He could only conclude that it wasn't Hogsmeade itself that inspired all the excitement, but the permission of being outside Hogwarts grounds without parental supervision; it was also a chance to gloat over and regale the younger years with stories about a place that was forbidden to them.

Harry had left Hogwarts through the secret passage along with Blaise and the twins, coming up out of the cellar in Honeydukes basement; it had been really easy to sneak out of the basement and act as if they had been there the whole time that Harry hadn't even bothered with the invisibility cloak that he had taken to carrying in his bag so that it was on hand for whenever needed. There they had joined the throng of students already in the village and spent a good half-hour pouring over all the different flavors of candy, some which could only be found in Honeydukes, and arranged for an owl-order package to be sent to Manuel with the wizarding sweets. Then, the quartet headed for Zonko's.

There they found themselves to be in heaven, or the next place to it. They loaded up on anything and everything they thought they could use in a prank, from magick string to dungbombs and enchanted paint. As they shopped, Harry and Blaise imagined all the new pranks they could come up with and cursing the fact that they wouldn't be able to use them at home unless they pranked Manuel or Trevor's rooms, and that was a line they weren't foolish enough to cross. Hallways and public rooms were fair game, even the offices had been hit by pranks, but private rooms were considered off-limits. The guards wouldn't even attempt to prank their bunkmates within their shared rooms, knowing that the bedrooms were the only true sanctuary for the ones who had no home other than the Manor. Harry and Blaise still felt a bit awkward about the odd prank they had set up in one of the Slytherin dorm rooms because of the unspoken rule they had grown up under.

"Hey!" Fred yelled them over to one corner of Zonko's, where he had stumbled upon a new product "over here! Look what I found!"

"Singing Pills," Blaise read the label, "slip in victim's food or drink for an entertaining evening."

Harry continued to read further, "we can even spell the pills to specific songs, or stick with the random song already spelled to the pill."

"We can get any number of people in the Great Hall at dinner with these," the twins were grinning in a way that boded ill for anyone who had crossed them recently, "but we need something more to the prank."

Harry and Blaise exchanged glances and chimed together, "costumes!" before beginning to outline a plan with the twins.

~~ ~~ ~*~

"No!" Harry shook his head adamantly, "there is no way I want to see Snape spelled into a tutu. I like being alive, thank you very much, in fact staying alive has sort of become a hobby of mine. Pick someone else for the tutu and leave Snape out of this altogether. If he ends up involved and we're found out, which we most likely will be since all pranks are immediately pointed at you two, we'll spend the rest of the year cleaning caustic potions out of cauldrons with our tongues."

The twins pouted for a moment before seeing the wisdom in this and then perked up as they latched onto their favorite victim, "Filch!"

Blaise shuddered at the imagery, "eugh, I'd rather be forced to see Hagrid in a tutu than Filch, that's just nasty."

The twins exchanged looks and shrugged, "that works just as well. Hagrid gets the tutu. Filch will get the evening gown."

Blaise shuddered again, but refrained from commenting in case the twins decided to stick Filch in a swimsuit instead. It was going to be quite the entertaining evening by the time they were done planning this massive prank.

"What about Dumbledore in-" Harry abruptly cut off, turning his head slightly and motioning for silence as he did; after a moment the other three were able to hear the conversation taking place on the other side of the slightly ajar door right behind where Harry was sitting.

"Sirius Black has been seen in the area," the voice was that of a man, filled with pomp and assumed authority, "I of course decided to come out to see that there was enough security around the school."

"Do you think he'll try and get into the school, Minister?" The silently listening quartet easily recognized Madam Rosmerta's distinctive voice.

The first voice, that of the Minister returned, "I'm sure of it. It's what he escaped to do, get the Potter boy and all."

"I still can't believe Sirius was capable of betraying Lily and James," McGonagall almost sounded as if she were about to try, "they were always such friends, troublemakers, but James and Sirius were like brothers to each other."

"I met him!" growled Hagrid. "I musta bin the last ter see him before he killed all them people. I COMFORTED THE MURDERIN' TRAITOR!-"

"Hagrid, please!" McGonagall shushed the big man, "keep your voice down!"

"-how was I ter know he wasn' upset abou' Lily an' James? He told me ter give Harry to him, he was his godfather he said, but I'd had me orders for Dumbledore. What if I'd given Harry to him, eh? I bet he'd've pitched him off that motorbike of his halfway out ter sea. His bes' friends' son! But when a wizard goes over ter the Dark Side, there's nothin' and no one that matters to 'em anymore..."

A long silence followed Hagrid's story, a story Harry already knew from Trevor, and he didn't feel like listening to anymore of it.

"Come on," he whispered softly to the other three, "let's get out of here before they decide to leave. We don't need to get caught, McGonagall knows Blaise and I aren't allowed out of the castle."

Nodding, they all rose and quietly slipped out the front door without drawing too much attention to themselves. In silent agreement they meandered aimlessly away from the Three Broomsticks as if they had not a care in the world, acting as if nothing more was going on than four friends spending the day in Hogsmeade. Tactfully, the twins didn't ask anything about what they had heard in the Three Broomsticks. After a bit of this aimless wandering, they made a brief stop into the local bookstore where Harry bought a new book on jinxes and dueling magic.

"I still want a drink," George said as they left the store, "lets head on over to the Hog's Head bar. It's not as nice or as clean as the Three Broomsticks, but it's there or Madam Puddifoot's and we refuse to go to that place of horror."

Harry glanced at Blaise and she shrugged back, neither of them were really strangers to the darker and more slummier environs, but they were also used to having either their fathers or a few Guards with them when they went to such places.

"Sure, let's go to the Hog's Head," Harry decided it couldn't hurt to check the place out, "I heard some of the girls giggling about Madam Puddifoot's earlier and I don't want to get anywhere near that place."

"Lead on good sirs," Blaise said teasingly to the twins to show her agreement.

In high spirits, the twins lead the way to the Hog's Head, but calmed down drastically once they reached the actual establishment and Harry and Blaise could understand why as they sensed the hushed atmosphere around the place. Exchanging looks warning the other to be watchful, they slipped into the bar after the twins, fingers tingling and ready to grab for weapons at a moments notice so that it was almost a let down when no one attacked them.

~~ ~~ ~*~

"That place wasn't so bad," Blaise said as they emerged about an hour later, "even the glasses were fine after a scouring charm and a refill."

"It would-" Harry was abruptly cut off as two men slid from the shadowed alley next to the Hog's Head, he vaguely recognized having seen them leave the bar a while before them.

"Well, well," one of the men sneered, "it seems the rumors are true. The Little Darkov Prince is a wizard, and known as Harry Potter no less."

"Damn," Harry muttered softly under his breath, edging back a few steps to give him room to fight only to find the way blocked.

"Oy!" the twins were now standing right behind Harry and Blaise, "what's going on here?"

"Nothing that concerns you," the second man sneered.

"I think it does," Fred just had to go and act like a Gryffindor.

"Fred, George," Harry kept his voice under control, "get out of here."

"What!" The twins were disbelieving as the two unknown men laughed, "we're not leaving you!"

Harry and Blaise attacked, using the strangers' amusement against them. The men were good though, and while Harry and Blaise managed to make contact with their assailant, they were easily repelled. A few more times Harry and Blaise attempted to take the men out with martial arts, but after Harry founds himself doing an awkward flip to regain his balance when thrown back he and Blaise stopped. Realizing that this wasn't going to be a simple knock-your-opponent-out fight, Harry and Blaise slipped their wands free from beneath their robes and stood at the ready.

"Oh ho, the little kitties have wands."

"We have claws too," Blaise retorted, incensed, her fingers caressing her knife a bit nervously.

"I'm sure you do," the first man retorted, sending a spell hurtling towards them.

Harry and Blaise fell into a routine of dodging and spell-casting, mentally repeating in their heads the tactics and tricks Severus and Trevor had taught them of dueling. Thankfully, the men seemed less skilled with their wands, their strong point apparently being physical fighting. Then, the men made a mistake; they forgot about the twins and dismissed them as not being a threat compared to Harry and Blaise. Fred shot off a jelly-leg jinx at the one man, allowing Blaise the chance to stun him. George actually jumped at the other man, giving Harry the chance to use a trick one of the Guards had taught him where he applied pressure with his thumb on a pressure point at the man's neck, knocking him unconscious.

"What now?" Blaise was panting, Harry not doing much better as he fought to calm his body down from the adrenaline rush that had hit him.

"I don't know," Harry was lost on what to do, "we can't let them go, can't let enemies at our back, but I don't know who to turn them into either considering Dumbledore banned us from the village."

"What if we said we were the ones attacked and we knocked them out," Fred spoke up.

Harry shook his head, "they'd want to know why you were attacked, how you defeated them, and something would end up slipping. Always stick to as close to the truth as you can, lies often change and get too hard to keep straight after a while."

"I remember Manuel saying that," Blaise commented, her eyes on the two men as she reluctantly signed to Harry and asked if they would have to 'finish the job'.

Harry shook his head in reply to the silent question, he had been thinking the same thing and he didn't really want to kill the men despite the fact that they probably would have killed him in the end. He would have felt bad to kill the men in a fight, but to kill them while unconscious like they were...he just couldn't see himself doing it even though he knew one of the Guards were if they were here. Then there was the fact that Fred and George were still standing there, watching both him and Blaise with interest. A shuffling sound from behind them had Harry and Blaise instantly whirling, wands out, the twins mimicking the movement a bit slower.

"I'll take care of these," it was the bartender from the Hog's Head, "they won't bother you anymore. You just tell Trevor I said hi."

Then with nothing more than a muttered spell, the bartender levitated the two unconscious forms away down the alley, leaving the four Hogwarts students standing there to stare after him for as long as he was visible.

"Weird," George muttered, voicing the thought that was echoing within all their minds.

Fred nodded and turned to Harry and Blaise, "and speaking of weird, you need to teach us how to fight like that!"

Harry sighed, "we'll worry about that later. Right now I really think we should slip back through Honeydukes to Hogwarts. We've been lucky that our duel didn't attract any attention, but we don't know how much longer that'll last. We need to go."

Splitting into pairs, Fred and George openly made their way to Honeydukes while Harry and Blaise slipped in and out of the alleyways between the shops. Thankfully, Honeydukes was still pretty crowded when they headed for the trap door, many students trying to spend the last of their pocket money and stock up on sweets before they had to head back to the castle for the dinner-time curfew. All the while, Harry and Blaise remained tense and alert, wondering who else might be waiting to attack them since the first pair had discovered Harry. The two men had obviously had Mafia connections since they had called Harry the Little Darkov Prince, which meant that the wizarding and muggle world was more entwined than they had previously guessed. They would have to send an owl home as soon as it was possible to do so.

Of course, it seemed as if things no longer wanted to go their way that day, for the moment they stepped foot in the Slytherin common room to grab parchment and quill Severus was waiting for them with raised eyebrow.

"Imagine my surprise when I came looking to see if you wanted to work on some dueling earlier. Did you have fun in Hogsmeade today?"

Harry nearly groaned, but managed a forced smirk instead, "loads."



"I'm not sure what to think," Fred broke the silence, "we knew there was something we didn't know, but now...I think it's bigger than we ever imagined."

George sighed and shifted his position on the bed and double checked to make sure the privacy wards were still undisturbed; both he and Fred were feeling unusually paranoid that night. Sure they had reason to be after the attack that afternoon, but most of their unease wasn't because of the attack but because of the mystery surrounding their two friends.

"We knew they were rich," George started to frame some of his thoughts out loud, "and thought that all the guards were because of that, like the guards were a non-magical form of the wards the rich purebloods have around their estates-"

"But now we're not sure," Fred picked up the thought, "not after today's confrontation and some of the weird things that were said. The man called Harry the Darkov Prince the way most wizards call him as the Boy-who-lived."

"A title..."

"...an identity."

"And the way they fought..."

"It was like they were trained to do it..."

"...like they were taught to expect to be attacked."

The twins fell back into silent contemplation for a while, both thinking back to small happenings that had occurred when they had stayed over at Harry's house. Little things that hadn't seemed much more than odd occurrences, such as a plan to go outside suddenly changing after a strange noise or a glance at one of the guards, now began to become incidents with meaning. The only problem was that Fred and George had no idea what the meaning was. Sure they now knew a lot more about the muggle world than what they had before meeting Harry and Blaise, but they also knew that what they had learned was limited to small areas of the muggle world and it wasn't enough to make a factual guess on. It was Fred's turn to sigh.

"I think we shouldn't say anything right now," he flopped back onto a pillow, "we need more facts, but I don't want to bug those two to tell us something they don't want to."

George lay down next to his twin, "they'd probably hex us into oblivion if we pried, but maybe they'll tell us something soon, after all, they haven't told us to get lost yet."

George felt more than saw Fred's grin, "we do need to get them to teach us how to fight without wands though."

"Yeah, that was cool."

"Harry and Blaise kicked ass."

George snorted, "if they teach us that'll give them permission to kick our ass."

Fred grinned, "then we'll prank them in retaliation."

"They'll just prank us right back."

"It'll start a prank war to end all prank wars."

"Let's do it," the two chimed together, glad they had the privacy ward up as their excited voices strayed above a whisper.

"G'night Gred," Fred burrowed down into the mound of blankets and pillows.

"G'night Forge," George yawned back and turned onto his side to extinguish the floating globe of light that hovered above them to cast a soft glow over the bed, plunging their little world behind the curtains into darkness.

~~ ~~ ~*~

The roof had been surprisingly easy to get to, which was actually a relief for Harry and Blaise as they weren't quite feeling up to a challenge as they normally would. They had considered staying in the Slytherin common room for their discussion, but didn't feel like disabling any of the listening charms that were probably scattered through the room by some other Slytherin looking for blackmail to use. Most of the castle itself was unsuitable as well thanks to the presence of the ever-inquisitive portraits, so they had settled for the roof where they could lie out under the stars the twinkled in the still embrace of night.

"I didn't like it," Harry finally whispered to Blaise, for once wanting to admit to feeling out of his league, "I felt myself hesitating to go into the fight, wanted to second guess the moves I made."

"Me too," Blaise seemed to scoot closer to his side, "the whole fight felt wrong, and it wasn't just because the twins were there."

"It was because we didn't have backup," Harry forced the brutal truth out from between his lips, "I felt like this last year when I went into the Chamber of Secrets, but let my resolve to avenge you push the feeling away. We've never been in fights before where we didn't have backup or know that help was within a short distance; that gave us confidence and a reckless courage."

"And this time we also had the twins to worry about," Blaise added, "before we only had each other's backs to watch even though we knew someone else was watching them as well. We got a taste of what our dad's must go through every time an attack happens, knowing that others could get hurt because of something we did or didn't do."

"The burden of leadership," Harry murmured, "the burden of another's life. If the bartender hadn't come out when he did we would have had to make a decision over those men's lives."

Harry closed his eyes as images flashed through his mind, memories of some of the training he had been undergoing with his father. Even then, even when his father had been teaching him to fight with the knowledge that he would someday have to kill an enemy that might already be down, he hadn't been without the support and backup of an adult. Blaise's hand covered his own and he turned it so that their palms touched and they could lock fingers.

"We would have had to obliviate the twins then," Blaise said unhappily, "and while they wouldn't have looked at us any differently after that, we would have known that they had seen us take a life."

"It's bad enough they've seen anything at all," Harry squeezed Blaise's hand, "and I worry that we've made them targets just by being their friends. Do we really want to draw them into our lifestyle? I wish the answer to this was something that our father's could have taught to us, not something that we must learn by through trial and error. This is something, these doubts are something, that they could never prepare us for even though they probably went through it themselves."

"I wish they were here now to tell us that everything will be alright," Blaise didn't care at that moment if she seemed weak and childish, only the stars and Harry were there to hear her, "I wish they were here so that we knew they were alright."

One corner of Harry's mouth lifted up into a half-smile, "and I wish there was a shooting star right now so that your wishes could come true. It's almost a shame that real magic isn't more like the fairytales so that our wishes would come true."

Blaise laughed softly, "we wouldn't have any fun if it were though and speaking of which, we have classes and 'detention' with Severus tomorrow. We should probably head in."

"That is one detention I'm not looking forward to," Harry shook his head with a snort, "if all the students hadn't started coming back just then Severus would have had us spilling the whole story earlier. Now he'll have more time to think on what he wants to ask us."

"Basic truth will be the best," Blaise sighed as she voiced what both of them knew, "and at least we got one unsupervised outing in Hogsmeade even if we never get another one anytime soon. We should find out more about the bartender, and what should we do about the twins? We can't exactly avoid them tomorrow or people will know something's up."

"I think it'll be better to wait and ask Trevor about the bartender, and as for the twins we'll act as we normally would. Act as if nothing had happened. I don't want to pull the twins any further into anything and I don't think they'll press us for answers right yet, though I'd bet anything that they know something is up. If they weren't so carefree about a lot of things those two would have been in Slytherin. I am seriously considering their request on teaching them to fight hand-to-hand though, we'll think on it a bit more before actually doing anything though."

Blaise nodded and the two fell silent as they continued to gaze up at the sky, trying to think of anything they still needed to discuss before heading in to sleep. It didn't take long for both of them to conclude that they had covered the most important parts for the time being, anything else could wait for another day when they were so emotionally keyed up, but neither of them made a move to pick up the broom they had used to get onto the roof. It was such a peaceful night despite the upheaval of the day and both were content to just lay there and enjoy it until the necessity of time drove them back indoors to the closed confines of the dungeons where they parted ways for their beds. No matter how long they wanted to bask in the peace of the starry night and hide from the whispered revelations that had occurred upon the silent roof, tomorrow would come and the only thing they could do was be ready to face it.