I've forgotten to include this note before so I'll do it now: The characters of Laura Chant, Sorry Carlisle and the entire Carlisle family are borrowed from the excellent Margaret Mahy novel "The Changeover."

HARRY POTTER AND THE PARADIGM OF UNCERTAINTY

Chapter 4: Friends in Low Places

After the action-packed weekend, several days went by without incident. Harry, who had planned to be gone for at least a week, came home instead after Hermione's insistence that his defenses were low and he needed to rest for a few days. George returned from his buying trip and he and Laura were sat down and told everything...they both professed to have suspected it all along, but they still subjected poor Harry to the third degree for several hours. Harry sent Hedwig with a note for Cho, bringing her up to speed...Hermione suspected that he'd also made reference to a chat he planned to have with her about just how she'd found out, not to mention what had possessed her to reveal classified information.

Hermione went back to work, though her office seemed even smaller and stuffier than it had before. Now that she'd admitted it out loud, her distaste for her own work had reached an all-time high and she developed zero tolerance for anything work-related. She found herself counting the hours until she could leave. By Wednesday she was inventing reasons to knock off early.

The only smile to grace her features all day appeared as she steered past the gate onto the long drive leading to the house...curving over the gateposts was a wrought-iron sign bearing the name the six housemates had given their home: Bailicroft. She parked her Mercedes (a gift to herself when she'd gotten her promotion) in the dooryard between Laura's Volkswagen beetle and Harry's Jeep and happily ran up the stairs to the door.

The first thing she heard upon entering the house was music and the sound of people laughing. She followed her ears to the large ballroom that took up most of the first two floors of the west wing...it was a grand, elegant room they hadn't had time to do much with. The polished parquet floor was bare, the eight French doors that gave on to the west verandah were covered with cloth draperies, and the few furnishings that still remained around the room's perimeter were merely shapeless lumps underneath dusty dropcloths. She stepped through the large double doors to find Justin, Laura and George inside. George was sitting by a CD player and watching as Justin and Laura danced, looking like they were engaging in some sort of strange partnered standing version of a grand mal seizure. Hermione set down her briefacse and grinned. "What's all this, then?"

George jumped up, excited. "Blimey, here's just the person we need!"

Justin dropped Laura's hands. "We're trying to learn to swing dance."

Hermione laughed. "How, by trial and error?"

George flapped his hands at them impatiently. "No need for that anymore, kids. Hermione can show us what's what."

Laura snorted. "Oh, naturally! She's a dancing fool, she is!"

George wagged a finger at her. "Just shows how much you know, Miss Smartypants. It so happens that our Hermione was the belle of the swing dance circuit back in the day. She and Harry used to really cut a rug. Where do you think all these discs we're playing came from?" Hermione flushed scarlet as Laura's eyebrows shot up.

"Pull the other one! When was this, then?"

George was in his element, relating dishy stories about his friends to their unsuspecting roommates. "When they were living in London. Times were pretty tight...all Harry's money was tied up in investments and Hermione was just a grad student. They couldn't even afford a telly. They were far away from most of their friends and didn't have much to do, so they took up swing dancing."

Laura elbowed Hermione, who'd come to join the little group. "Is he having me on?"

"Sadly, no. He's right, there really wasn't anything to do, so we started going to swing clubs...mostly because we both like the music, and those are the only places to get decent mixed drinks that aren't completely populated with middle-aged post-boomers. Anyway, we'd watch the dancers...a lot of them were really good. It looked like fun so we tried it. After a few weeks we decided to take some lessons. I think we both enjoyed having something to do with other people. After the communal living of Hogwarts, a life of urban isolation was a rude awakening. We were spending almost every evening at one of the clubs; it didn't take long before we were quite good."

George jumped in. "'Quite good' is a slight understatement. I was down to visit once and I went to the club with them...I'm telling you it was the damndest thing I ever saw. They walk in the door and everything stops, everyone shouts their names. They step on the dance floor and everyone stops dancing, clears a circle and just watches. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like something out of a movie. Our Hermione with her skirt twirling and Harry's flipping her all over the place and they're doing all these funky slides and lifts and spins and I just sat there and wished I could jump in and dance like that because it looked like just about the most fun anyone ever had."

Hermione nodded, remembering. "It was fun, and it felt wonderful to be good at something again...most of the time it seems as if the whole purpose of graduate school is to make sure you never feel good at anything. We had about eight or nine different clubs we'd visit, and we used to go to a different one every night. We got to be pretty well known. One night a bartender we knew said we should enter a contest. We didn't even know they had contests...turns out there's a whole contest circuit. So we thought, why not?"

"Did you ever win?" Laura said.

"Did they win!" George exclaimed. "She's got a whole bloody crate of trophies upstairs, you should see them! They were royalty, it was like Saturday Night Fever without the Bee Gees!"

Hermione just rolled her eyes. "George is just being melodramatic."

"I am not! Some swing band even wanted them to star in their music video!"

Justin burst out laughing. "Cor, that's rich!"

"Well, we turned it down," Hermione mumbled.

Laura was just shaking her head. "I can't believe this is the first I'm hearing of this. Why don't you talk about it? Why did you stop doing it?"

Hermioe shrugged. "We stopped when I got my degree and a real job, then we found this place...I dunno, it just seems like something we used to play at, like Exploding Snap. I never talk about that, either."

"Enough chatter, let's get down to it. Hermione, are you going to help the woefully rythym-deficient?"

She backed up a step. "Oh no, I don't think so. Harry was always better at it than I was."

"But you're a much better teacher. Harry has no patience," George said. "He's tried to teach me a few times and he always ends up making me feel like the most uncoordinated person on the face of the earth. Come on then, just the basics."

"It's so long ago, I don't remember."

"Oh, you liar!" came a new voice. They turned to find Harry leaning in the doorway. He came forward to stand next to Hermione. "Of course you remember."

George grinned. "Well, if it isn't Potter...Harry Potter."

Harry shot him a look. Hermione was still protesting the swing-dance question. "No really, it's been years..."

"Only a few. It'll come back to you."

"There you are!" Laura said, excited. "Show us some moves! Shake your groove thang!" Hermione tossed a dirty look in her direction.

Harry elbowed her. "C'mon, what do you say? Old times' sake?"

She shook her head. "I haven't got proper shoes," she said, grasping at straws.

"Easily fixed." He leaned over, held out a hand towards her feet, and a second later her Doc Martens were gone and her old Bliers character shoes were on her feet. They felt so comfortable and familiar, like one's favorite pair of jeans.

She looked up at him, a beseeching expression on her face. "I'm going to end up on my arse, you know."

"Not you. Light as a feather, you are." He grinned at George. "Spin us a tune then, G." George sprang for the CD player, glad to oblige.

Laura and Justin drew away to watch. Harry took Hermione's hand, lightly, and as the music started they walked to the center of the dance floor, their steps in time with the beat, looking like they were just out for a stroll...then the song's introduction was over, the music swung into gear and all at once they were dancing, moving in tight circles around each other, gripping one hand alternately with the other. Laura's jaw dropped open. They were so fast they seemed to glide across the floor, their feet scarcely touching the hardwood panels as they executed the steps, quick and light. Hermione was starting to smile, her skirt twirling up around her hips as she spun and swiveled, just as George had described. Their confidence seemed to grow as their feet remembered what to do; the steps increased in speed and complexity. Laura clapped as Harry flipped Hermione over his arm easily, as if she weighed nothing at all. They were both grinning hugely now as they whirled around the room, dipping and twirling and leaping and throwing.

Laura could have watched them for hours, but soon enough the song came to an end and everyone cheered. Harry and Hermione exchanged a high-five, laughing. "I can't believe I remembered how to do that," she said, breathless.

"Smashing!" Harry said, beaming. "I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it."

"That was amazing! Brilliant!" Laura exclaimed. "Now I really want to learn, though I doubt I'll ever be that good." She elbowed Justin. "Care to partner me up, roomie?"

"My pleasure. You sure Sorry won't mind you stepping out with another man?"

They all laughed...except Harry. Hermione glanced up at him, the laughter dying in her throat as she saw his face. He was staring fixedly at Laura and looked like he'd just seen a ghost. "What did you say?" he asked sharply. The group grew quiet quickly.

"What do you mean?" Laura said, puzzled.

"Who? Who won't mind?"

She glanced at Hermione. "Um...Sorry. My boyfriend? You know him."

"I thought his name was Sorenson," Harry said, his tone intense as if this were very important.

"It is, but...most people call him Sorry. Friends, family, that sort of thing."

Harry nodded. "And other wizards, no doubt."

Hermione put a hand on his arm. He was so tense it felt like touching marble. "Harry, what is it? What's wrong?"

He looked down at her, the oddest expression on his face, as if he were trying to solve a very difficult math problem in his head. "I gotta go," he said.

"Right now? But..."

"No time to explain. I'll be back soon," he said, turning and *running* out of the ballroom. The four roomates were left to stare at each other.

"What the blazes was that all about?" Justin murmured.

Hermione shook her head. "I haven't the foggiest idea."

**********

It was after hours, so when Harry Apparated to Confinement he arrived in the secured entry area instead of inside the facility. The wizard guarding the entrance stood up. "No visitors, sir," he said.

Harry strode forward, whipping his badge out of his back pocket. The guard scrutinized it with what would have been amusing intensity under different circumstances. "I need to see Dr. Stillwagon at once."

"I'm sorry, it's after hours."

"You're not hearing me. This is an emergency! I need to see Elektra right now!"

"No exceptions! Dr. Stillwagon isn't available!"

Harry drew himself up to his full six feet of height and mustered the deadliest glare he could, preparing to do something he'd never done before...play the fame card. "Don't you know who I am? I'm Harry bloody Potter and this can't wait! Now call her up here this minute!"

The guard stammered for a response. Before he could speak, the screening charm behind the door shimmered out of existence to reveal Elektra standing there. "It's all right, Nigel. Let the Chief in." Off the hook, the guard felt safe in glaring at Harry as he passed by and through the entry. The charm dropped back into place behind them and Elektra trotted after Harry, who was hurrying along the corridor without waiting for her. "Harry, what the devil's going on? What's so urgent that it couldn't wait till tomorrow?"

"I need to see Leland."

"I don't think that'll help! He's worse," she said, putting out an arm and forcing him to stop. Harry sighed, letting his urgency lapse for the moment.

"Worse? How?"

"We've tried every counter-curse potion we have and nothing's helping. He's slipped further into catatonia, he's completely non-responsive. I don't know what you can hope to learn from him."

"I have to try," Harry said, taking off again down the hall, continuing as they went. "Do you remember what he kept saying?"

"How could I forget? It's all we could get out of him...he just kept saying he was sorry, and 'tam htab.' We still can't figure out what that means."

"I think I have an idea about the apologies," he said, coming up to Leland's door. Elektra opened it and Harry pushed past her into the darkened room. Leland was lying on a couch against the wall. "Leland!" Harry said, kneeling next to the couch. "Leland, can you hear me?" No response. He looked up at Elektra. "Can't you do something?"

She threw her arms wide. "What did I just say? We've done everything we can!"

Harry bent over Leland again. "Sorry, Leland...was there something about Sorry you wanted to tell me?" Nothing. "Leland!" he said one last time. He stood up, frustration running its sharp fingernails around the inside of his skull. He just felt like grabbing something and ripping it to pieces to get rid of this need to know...the only person who could tell him if he was right wasn't talking.

"What's going on here?" Elektra said, her tone sharper and demanding of a response. Harry turned towards her, raking one hand through his hair.

"Didn't you think it was odd how he just kept saying 'sorry, sorry' without ever saying I'm sorry? And for a moment he pulled together all his concentration to say 'sorry' to me, as if it were very important."

"Harry, you can't draw conclusions from the words of a man whose mind is mostly gone. Maybe to him, the apology *was* that important."

"Except I don't think it's an apology at all," Harry said. "I think it's a name. I think he was trying to tell me who attacked him."

**********

Hermione waved her wand at the pot on the stove and it began to simmer and bubble; she dumped in some cocoa powder and stirred. "So, let me see if I understand this," she said. "You think that Laura's boyfriend is a minion of the dark forces just because a spy who's one small step away from brain-death didn't use the proper subjective pronoun while apologizing to you for letting himself get kidnapped?"

Harry sighed and accepted a cup of cocoa, looking up at her sheepishly. "It doesn't sound nearly as plausible when you say it."

She sat down next to him at the mammoth kitchen table. "You must admit it's a tad flimsy."

"You weren't there," he said, tapping his fist on the table. "I'm telling you, it sounded strange, stilted. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but it just didn't sound as though he were apologizing to me. He acted like the word 'Sorry' was very significant."

"That doesn't mean it's a name."

"No, but I don't know what else it could be."

"A place? An object or a street name or someone's pet spaniel?"

"I checked the Lexicon of Magical Nominatives and there was nothing under any spelling variation that made any sense."

"It occurs to me that there are a number of spells that begin with a sound like 'sorry.' Sauriarbus maximacatis, for example...though I don't know why he'd want to turn you into a giant gila monster. Perhaps he was trying to cast in some way, or tell you what spell had been used on him."

Harry smiled at her. "You're not bad at this, you know."

She shrugged. "I could check for you."

"Thanks. We should at least rule it out. I still think that a name is the most likely scenario. And it just happens to be the name of a wizard that we know? I don't believe in coincidence."

"But we're saying that he's evil."

"Do we know that he's not? We've never even met him."

"I don't believe Laura would be involved with someone like that."

"Nor do I, but who's to say she knows? She's only seen him once since she moved here, a lot can change in three years."

Hermione sighed. "I hope you're wrong about this. She really loves him, and it seems mutual judging by what she's told me."

"I don't want to cause Laura pain, but I have to know if Sorry is what he says he is, or if he's someone I need to be babysitting."

**********

"You wanted to see me, Chief?"

"Yes, Remus, come on in. And you are aware that you're allowed to call me Harry."

Lupin sat down in one of the chairs in front of Harry's desk. "'Chief' sounds better, don't you think?"

"I'm always afraid it just makes me sound like the shift supervisor at the curry take-away shop."

"Only when you ask if I want some tea with that."

Harry sobered. "You can have no illusion about why I've asked you here."

Lupin shook his head. "I imagine it's about what I overheard just before you collapsed."

"Argo spoke out of turn, that information was classified."

"If it makes you feel any better, I have no idea what you were talking about. But if you need to do a Memory Charm on me I understand."

Harry stood up and came around his desk to perch on the edge, examining Lupin's face and deciding how much he trusted him. If I don't trust him by now I never will, he thought. This man has never done anything to make me question his integrity...and he's one of my closest friends. "I'm going to bring you in on this," he said, his decision made. "Because I need your help, and given what happened to Leland I can't justify keeping you out of it."

Lupin straightened up. "I appreciate the confidence."

"You've earned it." He fixed Lupin with a penetrating stare. "Argo asked me about 'the pattern,' and if Leland's disappearance conformed to it."

"Yes. What is that, exactly?"

"Over the last few years, those of us who pay attention to such things have noticed a trend emerging in the activities of the dark forces. Acts of violence that seem to lack motive, but only until you place them in the larger context. Theft of archaic magical artifacts and talismans. Threats, intimidations, blackmail...coercion of wizards in important positions."

"Sounds commonplace enough."

"Not altogether. The fact is that all of this activity is extremely reminiscient of the tactics Voldemort used to gain power. Too much so to be dismissed as coincidence."

Lupin's eyes widened. "That can't be. He's gone...you should know that better than anyone!"

"Gone he may be, but forgotten he most certainly is not. We suspect that someone is using his name, his trademarks, and his strategies to raise a new following for dark magic. Since we first took note of it, the events that fit the pattern have grown more and more frequent, though whomever is orchestrating this has been careful to keep their activities in the shadows. Leland's kidnapping was the most overt act so far, and it makes us think that we should be bracing for an escalation."

"Harry...if someone really is trying to step into Lord Voldemort's shoes, then part of that would involve..."

"A fixation on me, yes, I'm all too aware of that. I've spent a great deal of time since taking this office pondering all the ways that Voldemort tried to eliminate me before I finally got the chance to defeat him."

"It's not just you that might be at risk. He attacked everyone around you, people close to you."

Harry swallowed hard. Lupin had just voiced his deepest fear...that Voldemort's new disciple might come after the people he cared about. His roommates, his friends...and the one best friend that the dark wizard hadn't succeeded in killing the first time. His mind turned away from the thought of harm coming to Hermione, it was simply something he couldn't bear to think about. "I'm aware of that, too. I've been taking some steps to insure the safety of people around me, but I'd rather eliminate the risk by finding this new disciple and demonstrating to him in graphic detail exactly how I dispatched his master."

**********

Hermione glanced surreptitiously at Laura, whose head was bent over the worktable as she wrapped the stems and placed them in the curing humidor. They were in the potting room, which they'd turned into a workroom for preparing potion ingredients and raising herbs and magical plants. They'd been putting off curing a new batch of dragonwort stems for weeks, it was a tedious and time-consuming process, but tonight Hermione had suggested they set to it. She did have ulterior motives; the task would give her ample time to pick Laura's brain. Hermione was carefully harvesting and stripping the stems for Laura to wrap tightly with Dead Seaweed, after which they were placed in a special curing chest and left to stew in a vapor chamber for a full lunar cycle.

"I saw that you got a letter from Sorry today," Hermione said.

"Yeah. He tries to write at least once a week."

"Where is he these days?"

"Greenland. He's working with a group of native wizards trying to eradicate the infestations of greater kudzu that have been invading all their indiginous magical plants." She glanced up at Hermione, smiling. "In the mood for true confessions?"

"How do you mean?" she asked innocently.

"You've always been curious about my past."

"You never talk about it, naturally I'm curious."

"I don't talk about it because it's so personal...and strange." She hesitated. "I suppose I'm afraid people will think I'm unnatural if they know the truth."

Hermione stopped stripping stems, intrigued. She hadn't suspected anything out of the ordinary in Laura's past, she'd just wanted more information about Sorry. "Laura, you're one of my favorite people. I would never think you were unnatural!"

"Whether you would or not, I guess it's time I told you." She set down her binding wires and swiveled around on her stool to face Hermione, who sat down on the bench facing her. "Herm...I wasn't born a witch."

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean I'm more than just Muggle-born. I was born a Muggle, with no magical ability to speak of."

"I didn't know that was possible."

"It is, I'm living proof. Even so, I wasn't exactly normal by Muggle standards. I was...special. I knew things, I could feel things."

"You must have been a sensitive."

Laura looked puzzled. "A what?"

"A sensitive. Some Muggles have just a touch of magical blood in them, not enough to do magic themselves, but they can sense its presence. They usually call themselves psychics...some of them can see the future, or get impressions from objects or people or places. Some can move things with their minds, that sort of thing."

"Well, if I was a sensitive I was a pretty low-grade sensitive. I used to get warnings. I can't really explain what they were, just that all of a sudden the world would go all funny and everything would be shrieking 'warning!' to my mind. I still get them sometimes. The person who affected me the most by far was Sorry. He's three years older than me, and he was a prefect at my school. I knew he was a wizard the moment I laid eyes on him, and I wasn't wrong."

"You just knew?"

"Yes. And he knew that I knew. He could see it in my eyes. It might have all come to nothing except that my little brother Jacko was attacked by an incubus. I went to Sorry and his family for help."

"His family?"

"His mother Miryam and his grandmother Winter are both witches. They told me that only I could help my brother, and to do it I'd have to become a witch myself."

Hermione looked at her with a serious expression. "You know that's not true, don't you?"

"Yes, I know. They had their own reasons for wanting me on their team. Winter and Miryam helped me perform a changeover, and I became a witch."

Hermione was fascinated. "This changeover...what did it entail?"

"I know now that it was a deep state of autohypnosis in which I was able to rewire my own brain to be magically receptive. It all took place in their bathroom, but I felt as though I was on a journey through a strange land...forests of thorns, rivers that ran with my blood. But I was in the bathroom the entire time. I was...I suppose you'd say I was on the other side of the bathroom; occasionally in the changeover when my concentration would falter, I'd see the words 'tam htab' floating in the air before me."

"Tam htab?"

"Yes. There was a rug with 'bath mat' printed on it in that bathroom, and my eyes were seeing it in reverse. Anyway, when I came out of it Sorry was holding me...he'd had his own role to play in my changeover...and I was a witch."

"Laura, that's astonishing! I never knew such a procedure existed!"

"It does, though one can see how it might be best kept secret. There are those among us who would be horrified at the prospects of Muggles joining our ranks. Some feel it's quite bad enough that wizards are born from Muggle parents."

Hermione thought of the Malfoy family. Lucius had been tried and convicted of aiding and abetting attempts on Harry's life years earlier, but he'd vanished before he could be taken to Azkaban. As for Draco, he had ended his years at Hogwarts on far more amiable terms with Harry than anyone would have expected though no one would have called him a real friend...all the same, it had been disturbing when he'd disappeared from off the Hogwarts Express on his way back to school after Christmas vacation. He'd been in his cabin when the train left King's Cross and when it arrived at Hogsmeade he was nowhere to be found. Hermione changed the subject quickly. "What about your brother?"

"I drove out the incubus and he recovered. I never did, though. Sorry and I have been together ever since."

"So you never attended a witchcraft school like Hogwarts?"

"Oh no. What I know of magic I learned on my own, or from Sorry and his family. Miryam is very polite and proper, but Winter is a very powerful witch. She doesn't know that I'm aware of just how powerful she is."

Hermione mulled this information over. It was amazing, but so far nothing suspicious. "Tell me about him," she prompted.

Laura grinned, going back to her stem wrapping. "What do you want to know?"

Hermione thought fast. Oh not much...is he by any chance the sort that would go all evil? "What's he like?"

"Such a complicated question. I've been with him ten years and I scarcely know myself." She thought for a moment. "He's quiet and reserved, but he's got a real core of rebelliousness that pops up at the oddest moments."

"Ten years," Hermione mused, impressed. "I can't imagine being able to captivate a man for that long."

"Bollocks. You must have captivated your share of men."

Hermione made a sarcastic raspberry sound. "Well, they haven't exactly been beating a path to my doorstep."

"They should. You're smart and interesting and beautiful..." Hermione couldn't hold back her laughter. "You are! I'd committ murder to have hair like yours!"

"Oh Laura, you're a dear sweet person and I absolutely adore you, but I think you must be blind. I'm the plainest Jane in the realm."

"Well, I think you're stunning and you won't convince me otherwise." Hermione bent over the stems again, flushing pink. "And I'm not the only one who thinks so," she sing-songed in a teasing 'I know something you don't know' tone."

"What's that mean?"

"Just after I moved here, Harry and I had one of those silly conversations about rock stars and films and which celebrities we thought were yummy, that sort of thing. I said that I thought Paul McGann was the most gorgeous man in England and that I'd shag his socks off in a minute. When I asked him who he'd pick, he said he didn't know of anyone who was as pretty as you."

Hermione's mouth dropped open. "He did not!"

"As I'm standing here now, he did."

She smiled, embarrassed, and bent over the stems again. "He was probably having you on."

"You think that if it makes you feel better, Herm."

Hermione put down her shears and turned towards Laura, a sudden thought occurring to her. "Can I ask you something?"

"Ask away."

"Have you ever gotten the idea that Harry and I have...well, had sex?"

Laura looked up, surprised. "Are you implying that you haven't?"

Hermione threw her hands in the air. "Unbelieveable! Harry told me that this was a commonly held belief but I didn't quite believe him."

Laura fixed her with a penetrating stare. "All right. You look me in the eye and tell me that during all those years in the same castle, the same flat, the same life...you never took him out for a test drive?"

Hermione leaned toward her, hands on the table, and matched her stare. "No. Never."

Laura seemed reluctant to believe her. "So you've never slept with him."

"I have on a few occasions shared a bed with him when circumstances demanded it, but all we did was sleep and fight over the covers."

Laura shook her head. "You've got more willpower than I, then. I don't think I would have been able to keep my hands to myself in similar circumstances."

The way she said that made Hermione suspicious. "Laura, do you have a crush on Harry? I don't think Sorry would appreciate that!"

"I'm not saying I want to shag him, I'm saying I'm amazed that you don't. He's so dishy. And before you accuse me of being all juvenile and hormonal again, I state that observation objectively and with the utmost clinical detachment."

"He's my best friend, and that's all. We don't have those kinds of feelings for each other," Hermione said, eager to close the subject. She'd started this conversation to find out more about Sorry...how on earth had they ended up talking about her and Harry?

"If you say so," Laura said, picking up a fresh stem. "Though I do believe those are what's called 'famous last words.'"

**********