As Harry moves to the edge of the Shrieking Shack, where Sirius had kicked out a few boards in order to get in and out last year, he pulls on his cloak again, and he's invisible as he makes his way slowly down the hill and into the edge of the woods. He's careful about glancing around, and then he pulls off his cloak, setting it neatly inside the satchel.

After making sure his fringe is pulled down over his eyes, he puts his hands in his pockets, and he makes his way out of he woods and into the village. He's conscious of the way he walks, wondering if it in itself is recognizable, and he's not stupid enough to go into the Three Broomsticks or into the Hog's Head, where he knows Madam Rosmerta or the old man in the Hog's Head will immediately recognize him, vague disguise or not.

There are people walking in Hogsmeade, chatting together and buying pastries from a stall on the green; with the early summer sun shining down, various wizards and witches are walking through the streets of Hogsmeade in mixed kinds of brightly coloured clothes, and he can see people on dates, people out with their families, children playing over the green. Harry's only ever seen groups of magical people this big in King's Cross Station or the Ministry, or in Diagon Alley, and it feels completely different to see them in Hogsmeade like this.

It seems so naked and lacking in the usual secrecy - there are no cavernous ceilings over the crowd, and no high walls on every side. Harry never realized how good the brim of a wizard's hat was for keeping off the glare of the sunshine.

He takes a step away from the main street of Hogsmeade and down to a side street; the post office is here, as well as a small pet shop, a modest stationery store and a secondhand store. It's the latter that Harry makes his way towards, and as soon as he's inside, he feels the pleasant difference in temperature, letting the coolness of the cluttered room settle on his skin.

He likes antique shops and secondhand stores, the way they pile up junk and flotsam around on all the shelves, and he takes a long time moving slowly through the room, peering with interest at all the objects on the shelves. There are toys, records, knick-knacks, clothes, jewellery, instruments...

Harry reaches up and onto a shelf, taking down something that glints in the light from the window. The dagger is perhaps six inches long with a bronzed hilt, and he finds that he likes the weight of it in his hand. On a whim, he places it on the side of his hand, and the hilt and blade are perfectly balanced, remaining still and not bobbing at all one way or the other.

He takes it over to the front of the shop, and he looks at the old man behind the counter. He's a wizened old wizard with slight bags under his eyes, and he squints at Harry for a few moments as he sets the dagger down on the glass surface between them.

"Shouldn't you be in school, young man?" comes the quavering question, and Harry stares directly into his face for a second or two.

"Er, no, sir," Harry says. He glances down at his feet, making himself sway awkwardly as he tries to think desperately of something. Being expelled would be too much to explain, and Harry doesn't know enough about any of the other schools to use them as a lie... "Er- I'm here with my family for the day. I'm a Squib, sir." Immediately, the man's suspicious demeanour drains away like water down a plughole, and he hurriedly takes up a brown paper bag, neatly wrapping up the dagger and mumbling the price. Harry hands over the coins, offering the old man a small smile, and he gives a nod of his head in response, obviously trying to be as friendly as possible without actually talking to him.

Harry steps out into the street, neatly placing the wrapped dagger into his bag, and he thinks as he walks, his hands in his pockets. He walks more casually than he had before, not overthinking every step he makes: instead, he thinks about the old man's reaction to having a Squib in his shop. It wasn't hostility or anger or fear, but simple embarrassment, maybe mixed with sympathy, and Harry can't help but keep on thinking about it.

The dagger in his bag had been a complete whim, and he doesn't even know what he'll do with it - maybe use it as a letter-opener - but this is something slightly different. He doesn't wish to linger in Hogsmeade, and instead he dips into the woods again and out of the way, throwing his cloak on over his shoulders and dipping his head down, but rather than making his way back to the Shrieking Shack, he begins to walk up the path towards the mountains.

Keeping his Invisibility Cloak on his back and fastened shut, he walks quietly in the middle of the dirt path, keeping away from the outcrops of rock and the trees on either side. He keeps his eyes open for the signs of thick strung webbing between the trees, but he doesn't see any at all, and he's almost disappointed: he'd been interested in seeing how the Acromantula were adjusting to the lighter forests outside in Hogsmeade. They're far enough from Muggle towns that they can linger for the time being, but Harry knows that the Ministry will try to contain them if they branch out as they had done in the Forbidden Forest.

He knows the path up towards the mountains, even though he hasn't walked it very often, but he doesn't really have a focused idea of how far he's going to walk or where precisely he's going. He just knows that he has no real wish to be in Hogsmeade, where he can't risk going in too many places even whilst pretending to be a Squib, and he knows he'll not really cross paths with anyone up near the cliff edges, where the mountains tower high above you. Harry's seen videos on the news of people climbing or abseiling, and he vaguely thinks that he might like to do it as he lets his gaze flicker up to the yellow cliff side that banks up before him in the distance.

It must be so exciting, to climb like that without knowing at any time if you might fall or not, trying to get footholds and handholds in the side of something as huge and unyielding as a mountain...

Harry reaches, after walking for maybe forty minutes or so, a wide, open clearing, trees on all three sides with the fourth opening right up against the cliff face. The path continues in two directions, both clinging to the side of the mountain to the left and to the right, and when Harry turns around, looking down the path he'd taken, Hogsmeade is further away than he'd thought it could be. The path hadn't been too steep, but he realizes now how much he'd climbed, and he feels a vague sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, sitting down on a smooth rock to the edge of the flat space.

He'll stay here for a little while to think, letting his legs have a rest, and then he'll make his way back into town and in towards the Shrieking Shack. He glances around the clearing, and then he frowns slightly.

The floor of the clearing is... Very smooth.

It isn't like the dirt path he'd walked up of, naturally giving away in places under the pressure of his boots or with weeds growing here and there. There are no weeds at all, and the the oval of space between the trees has no weeds at all, no imperfections. The stone Harry is sat on is one of the only different things about the smooth, flat ground, but the other large pieces of rock are the same: no moss on them, no plants, and each smooth and at the perfect height for someone to sit on.

Six of them.

Harry freezes in his place, even under the safety of the Invisibility Cloak, and he looks to the side of the mountain, he sees absolutely nothing odd about it. It seems just as normal as the rest of the cliff spanning up above him, or to the sides, but the ground here is so smooth.

Harry pulls himself to the edge of the stone to walk down the path again, but he freezes as he turns to look the other way. With a quiet pop of sound, Gilderoy Lockhart appears before Harry's wide eyes, a smile on his face. He's wearing a set of forest-green robes at the height of fashion, and his hair is longer than Harry's ever seen it, down to his shoulders and tied neatly behind his head by a green ribbon. It's thick and wavy, and the ribbon seems to be struggling to contain its volume.

"Now then," Lockhart says, clapping his hands together, and he leads a group of four people forwards - but Lockhart couldn't possibly have Side-Along Apparated with four people. Harry scans the faces of each of them, and finds he vaguely recognizes them all, but he doesn't know any of their names. A keeper of records for the Ministry, a butcher who works in Diagon Alley, a model Harry recognizes from a poster of Fred's, and a train conductor Harry's seen the past few years on the Hogwarts Express all stand around Lockhart, who looks more serious than Harry's ever seen him.

Lockhart's lost a little weight, and the effect is to make the bones in his face stand out more, but there's a pink scar under his jawline against his neck that Harry's never noticed again, and Lockhart's hands have more muscle on them than Harry's seen before. He looks like a completely different man, and he steps forwards into the centre of the cliffside, glancing back to the people with him.

"Well, then!" Lockhart says, and then, "I suppose this is your last chance to back out, really. We shan't do anything about it, if you do change your minds - we shan't force you."

"We want to be here," says the train conductor - he has a thick Scottish accent. "You know we do, Gilderoy, after weeks of this." Lockhart's smile is small, not one of the big, fake things Harry's seen before, and so he takes another step back.

"Well," Lockhart says, "The secret hideout of ours is located... Just here!" He flourishes his hands in the overdramatic way Harry is used to, and Harry follows the point of his hands. For one moment, the cliffside is completely the same as it had been before, but when Harry blinks, there's a broad opening to a cave, and Harry can't believe he hadn't noticed it before. It had been right there, after all - it's like his eyes have just come into focus. Inside the cave is a red rug covering its floor, and hanging from its ceiling are oil lanterns. There is normal furniture inside - sofas, a chair, even a huge, old-fashioned stove with a small chimney. "Come in," Lockhart says. "We've a lot to talk about."

Lockhart leads his little crew of people into the cave, and Harry creeps after them, taking a little distance.

At the back of Lockhart's effective entrance hall is an archway, and Harry follows as silently as he can up the little corridor until they all arrive in a huge atrium of sorts. Harry has never seen wallpaper on the walls of a cave before, but it is extremely fashionable in black and gold, and somehow Lockhart's managed to make it look like it should be there.

Around this great hall are a lot of circular tables with chairs dotted around them, and with different people sat at them, people Harry recognizes and those that Harry does not.

"Welcome, all of you," says a voice Harry recognizes, and he turns to see Gladys Gudgeon with her arms open and a smile on her face. "Come, take a seat - Sara is just bringing in a few more people, and then we're all going to eat together." Gudgeon smiles at them, and then she moves to Lockhart, catching him by the arm with one of her perfectly manicured nails. Harry creeps forwards, ensuring he keep out of the way of people moving, and he follows Gudgeon and Lockhart as they walk down another corridor and into a beautifully decorated room with several ovens running, the stove tops covered. Harry sees several corridors leading off the atrium, and there are others leading off this kitchen. How much have they carved into the mountain, these people?

"Did they all come, Gilderoy?" asks Jacqueline Flockhart, who is sat at the table in the kitchen, and Lockhart nods his head. Bonnie Darling, who is moving at speed around the kitchen with her wand in her hand shoos Lockhart and Gudgeon to sit down at the table, and with casual wand work sets a dozen plates on the surface of the table, beginning to fill them with food. Harry stares at the perfectly prepared little pies, chips, plates of pork and chicken wings, and when he breathes in, he's reminded of how hungry he is.

"They all came," Lockhart confirms, and he smiles slightly. "Ladies, I do believe we'll be able to go right ahead."

"Shouldn't Sara be back by now?" Darling asks, a little anxiously, and Flockhart hushes her quietly, reaching out and touching her back as she stops beside them, a spatula in hand.

"She'll be back in a few minutes, Bonnie, don't worry so. She's not nearly so young as she looks." Darling huffs, but she gives a reluctant nod of his head, and Harry frowns from the side of the room, looking between the lot of them and trying to figure out what is going on. "We're ready, Gilderoy, I'm sure. This is brave of you, I hope you realize."

"What else could we do, at this point?" Lockhart asks, and Harry's frown deepens. "With Chad dead-" He trails off, and then he nods his head. "After food, we'll get into it." Lockhart actually looks worried, and Harry can't really believe it: Lockhart has lines on his face, a frown twisting his features, and he awkwardly moves his knee under the table, bouncing it again and again. What the Hell could possibly be going on?

"I'll help you, Bonnie," Flockhart says, standing as Darling puts out another set of plates, and before Flockhart can make her way down corridor with the plates hovering behind her, Darling grabs her by the front of the robes, and kisses her on the mouth. Harry stares, shocked, as the two old women kiss, smile into each other's mouths, and then draw apart again, with Flockhart taking a series of plates down the corridor with her.

Lockhart and Gudgeon didn't seem to have even noticed.

"You're ready, darling," Gudgeon is saying quietly, and she puts one of her hands on Lockhart's. "And we're all ready with you. Come on, now." Harry stays stockstill as Lockhart and Gudgeon move down the corridor, and he keeps in his place as Darling finishes plating up her day's labour, making the plates hover down the corridor in front of her.

For a long few moments, Harry stays still in the empty kitchen, wondering if he's having some sort of very real, very abstract dream.

And then, steeling himself, he follows Darling down the corridor.