In The Fight To Survive (Golden Trio Era) {4}

Ron's Timely Return

As darkness fell on the 28th of December, Harry once again refused Hermione's offer to keep watch overnight. Since their narrow escape from Godric's Hollow four days ago, Harry was on edge, Voldemort seemed somehow closer to them than before, more threatening to their mission. Harry was fighting off sleep as much as he possibly could, to avoid entering Voldemort's mind and leaving behind clues as to what he and his friends were up to. Hermione promised him that she would get some rest, and swap with him in the early hours of the morning, so he could get some supervised sleep.

Harry moved an old cushion to the mouth of the tent, where he would be residing for the night, after wrapping himself up in all the sweaters he owned. The chill of the winter night still creeped past all of his layers and sent shivers through him, but not enough that he couldn't get comfortable. Harry rested Hermione's wand on the ground next to him, where it would be easy to grab and he didn't run the risk of snapping it by sitting on it, because it was the only wand they had. He severely regretted not bringing along Sirius' wand, leaving it behind at Grimmauld Place for safe keeping.

Harry watched as the sun completely disappeared beyond the horizon, blackness chased away the remaining shades of navy, as twinkling stars became more prominent in the vast night sky. Listening as Hermione shut off the radio in the tent before she climbed into bed, and the lights inside the tent went out. For a few minutes he sat in silence, staring out into the empty void that surrounded him while sifting through his thoughts. This has become a daily practice, recollecting every memory since their journey began to see if he would remember something that he might've missed at the time.

He remembered Mikayla's rushed note that was left on his parents' grave in Godric's Hollow. She had asked for their help to figure out the key she had been left by Dumbledore. Hermione has been too busy buried in her copy of 'The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore' by Rita Skeeter hoping to find something helped her figure out what the symbol drawn in her 'Tales of Beedle the Bard' is. Harry decided that he should probably start the research now, since he couldn't check on Ginny with the Marauders' Map at the moment since she's home for Christmas.

Harry summoned Hermione's copy of 'Sonnets of a Sorcerer', the contents of the book didn't really match the title. Just under half of the poems in the book couldn't be considered sonnets, including the poem that Mikayla had mentioned. Harry scanned the index page in search for the poem, he watched as ink began to appear on the pages he was skimming through. The same symbol that is in Hermione's book, on Xenophilous' necklace, scrawled on Dumbledore's letters and on the gravestone back in Godric's Hollow.

The symbol rested in the margins next to three poems: 'Crown' by Charles Sangster, 'Claw' by Lia Crawley, and 'The Raven' by P.L Carra. Harry stared blankly at the pages, wondering what the markings meant. He immediately picked up on that P.L Carra is an ancestor of Mikayla's, but he was confused why Hermione's book had the symbols drawn into it but Mikayla's copy didn't. For the next few minutes, Harry debated whether he was expected to figure out a hidden message with the poets' names acting as anagrams, or if he was to read and analyse all three poems.

After a few pathetic attempts of trying to figure out what the secret message could possible be, Harry groaned in annoyance and in disbelief of his own stupidity as the answer dawned on him. All he had to do was read the titles of the marked poems from bottom to top to uncover the secret. "The Ravenclaw Crown. I made that much more difficult than it had to be..." Harry sighed to himself, a part of him proud that he figure it out without Hermione's help, and glad that she hadn't witnessed the 20 minutes long solving process.

Harry made a quick copy of the pages, however when he looked at the copy he saw that the markings hadn't transferred over to duplicate page. Harry's eyes widened in realisation as he turned the book over, opening up the back cover. Harry smiled proudly as he saw proof that his theory of how Hermione obtained the book had been correct. The proof being the words scrawled into the back cover that read;