Rune stone path

A new year

Harry let out a murmured groan of pleasure as he felt Tonks' fingers digging into his forehead. He had thought that it would just be Hermione and him on the Hogwarts Express until Tonks had announced that there was no way he'd be on the train without an escort. Harry hadn't been able to tell whether she was going because she was actually worried about a potential attack or if she just wanted to spend a few extra hours with him before school started back up and their time together would drop precipitously. Either way, he didn't particularly care since he was getting to spend just a bit longer with his partner. Fleur surprisingly hadn't actually tried to tag along. She had claimed she was busy doing research at the moment and that she was simply going to monopolize the first Hogsmeade trip.

He didn't know how Tonks had done it but she'd found a way to make her head massages actually relieve some of the issues he'd been having with the Horcrux. She'd apparently taught her technique to Hermione as well so that his first partner would be able to keep helping him during the school year. Fleur hadn't been able to replicate their efforts unfortunately. Ideally none of their massages would be needed soon. Hopefully…maybe…if Merlin decided to come back from Avalon and personally tutor him perhaps…

His efforts on fixing the Soul Cage were hitting wall after all. The main problem seemed to be that the rune stone was trying to pull the larger soul – his own – instead of targeting Voldemort's hitchhiker. It wasn't something that should be happening since he'd included a targeting aspect to the scheme and every expert he'd talked to had agreed that the rune stone should be working. Shiva and Harry had been trying to figure out just what was going wrong nearly every day since his birthday with no noticeable progress at all.

He let out a sigh and then grunted as Tonks dug hard into his head. "Stop angsting, Wonder Boy. Concentrate on your massage."

"I'm not angsting," he muttered.

"Sure you aren't," she said amused. "And my hair isn't pink."

Hermione flipped a page in her book and gestured to Tonks without even looking up. "Your hair is blue today, love."

Tonks' fingers froze for a moment and Harry opened his eyes quickly enough to see her hair flash to pink and a blush spread across her features. He smiled up at her and chuckled as he closed his eyes again and relaxed back onto her lap again. "Nice, Nym."

"My point still stands," she said starting up her fingers again.

"Sorry, just musing on why the stupid Cage isn't working."

Hermione reached over and lightly flicked his arm. "We'll figure it out. There is a reason that the Egyptians didn't get it working you know. With all the modifications that you've made, Harry, I'm sure that it's going to end up being something incredibly small that has been overlooked. Just keep focused on how things will be after this is all over."

Harry felt Tonks nodding above him in agreement. "Mione's right. You can't be expected to fix something in two months that those crazy pyramid builders couldn't get right in two thousand years." She paused and he felt her silent chuckle ripple all the way down through her legs. "And I just heard how depressing that could sound so let's treat it like a joke instead, yeah? The positive thoughts are still holding the soul shard back right?"

"Yeah. That's not the secret to the massage thing is it? Because that would be kind of lame to be honest," Harry said smiling. Amazingly enough, keeping positive and happy had actually helped to keep the bonds around the Horcrux from straining too often. He wasn't naïve enough to think that it was because of any actual power behind the feelings hurting the Horcrux; it was far more likely that simply by keeping his spirits up he subconsciously reinforced the power in his mental walls. Whatever the actual mechanism behind it, the shard hadn't been able to influence him enough to convince him to try the slightly modified Soul Cage a second time. He was still getting nightmares, but at least it wasn't every night anymore.