Harry Potter and the Serpent Items: Nov 1st to Nov 13th
_Harry
was in deep trouble.
When he’d come home from his second year at Hogwarts it had been with triumph as he had bested a basilisk, defeated the ghost of Voldemort for a second time and saved Ginny’s life.
Except that he didn’t remember any of it.
The last thing he remembered was putting on the strange bracer he’d spotted at the bottom of the pool in the Chamber of Secrets. The next thing after that was escorting Ginny from the Chamber, sorting hat in one hand, Gryffindor’s sword in the other and a very dead basilisk behind him and he had no idea how it had happened.
Which had made explaining to everyone what had happened in the Chamber rather difficult. He’d tried to come up with something convincing but Dumbledore had known and when he’d questioned Harry on his own, the boy had shown the Headmaster the golden bracer he’d found.
Which was when Dumbledore had gained a rather odd look and told him in an enigmatic tone to take care of the bracer and told him not to worry.
Harry would have been more than happy to comply with that request, after all the bracer wasn’t exactly heavy, was obviously magical since the snake that wrapped itself around the protective piece of equipment had tightened its coils specifically to fit his arm and loosened again when he wanted to take it off at night, and the Headmaster had mentioned that it came with gifts and told him that he would give him more information when he found it.
However the blackout in the Chamber hadn’t been the only one. From the moment he’d gotten off the train and met up with his Uncle, he’d gone through the rigmarole of typical daily life with the Dursleys. Until things had started happening. Things that couldn’t possibly be classed as ‘good’.
Dudley’s friend Piers had been bullying him, Harry had had a blackout and Piers had been found the next day babbling like a lunatic.
Petunia had been starving him like she normally had, favouring her whale of a son over the nephew that she had been forced to take in when his parents had been killed and after one particularly bad morning where she’d forced him to cook breakfast but not let him prepare enough for himself, he’d had a blackout and woken up in the cupboard under the stairs with enough food to feed him for a week.
But this one had to be the worst. Uncle Vernon had started on him, about how worthless he was and how he was another mouth to feed and it wasn’t even like he was doing anything useful, and he’d clipped Harry around the head. Now this hadn’t been anything new. It had happened before. Never hard enough to do damage but it had been enough to trigger an episode and Harry had had a blackout.
Now he was on the run, kicked out of the Dursley home for having been caught at the scene of the crime, having somehow used magic to turn Vernon comatose, and he had no idea where he should go. It wouldn’t be long, he was certain, before someone reported it to the Aurors and he had a horrible feeling that ‘I don’t remember’ wouldn’t be a viable excuse. Nor would it stand up if it was taken to trial.
The problem was he had no options. He had no Muggle money and all of his wealth was tied up as wizarding galleons, sickles and knuts, which meant that before he could do anything he needed to get to Diagon Alley.
This was perfect. Except that he had absolutely no clue how to get there, short of flying on his broom, which, he supposed, he could do if he put on his invisibility cloak and it wasn’t like he could get into much more trouble than he was already in. Still it was a last bar one resort, having learnt his lesson about flying objects and how much trouble they could get you in when he and Ron had driven his dad’s flying car to school after Dobby had barricaded the gateway to platform 9 and 3/4.
“Great, just great.” Harry grouched, as he kicked the kerb, trying to think. “No train fair, no flying cars and no...” Harry trailed off as he realised that he was being watched out of the windows of number 4, Privet Drive. They’d probably already called the Muggle police to come and arrest him already and were just watching to see when it would happen.
That thought made his mind up for him. He started walking. Not to Diagon Alley of course, just away from the Dursley home, half worried about explaining himself to the police, who most definitely wouldn’t take ‘magic’ as an excuse and half worried because he still couldn’t remember what had happened to leave Vernon like he was.
“Oi! Freak!” Harry winced as his cousin caught up to him, his tone furious. Understandably so.
Dudley seized Harry by the jacket and spun him around to face him. Rage was obvious on his features and Harry had a horrible feeling he wasn’t getting out of this one without a lot of bruising.
“You better fix whatever you did to Dad or I’ll punch your face in.” Dudley threatened, meaty fist raised, prepared to strike.
“I can’t.” Harry admitted, though he knew it wouldn’t aid his situation any.
He was right, Dudley’s fist struck his stomach hard, winding the almost thirteen year old and causing him to crumple up in a ball on the ground, coughing hard.
“Fix. It. Now.” His cousin punctuated each of his growled words with a boot to Harry’s stomach, “And whatever you did to Piers.”
Harry felt it, felt the Bracer on his arm grow warm as Dudley backed off slightly, and then darkness overtook him as he fell into a warm sleep.
When he awoke he was on a bus. Not any kind of bus. This one was apparently called the Knight Bus and it swerved between cars at a horrendously erratic rate, squeezing itself into gaps that there was no way it should fit and somehow managing to drive up the wrong side of one of the roads entirely without being noticed by a single Muggle.
Harry had no idea how they did it, or how he had ended up on the bus in the first place, but he wasn't going to complain as moments after he had 'woken up' he arrived at Diagon Alley and had disembarked along with all of his luggage.
Part of him was curious as to what had happened to Dudley and then another part had already decided that it was a really really bad idea to ask and focused purely on getting himself inside the Leakey Cauldron and then on to Gringotts the first opportunity he had. After all if he was going to be on the run for the rest of his life the wanted to at least be able to afford food and drink, along with somewhere to stay.
The moment he walked into the wizarding pub, he knew something was up, as people had obviously noticed him, but unlike the last time he had come without the Weasleys, he wasn't mobbed. He didn't think news of what had happened in Surry could have reached here that quickly but then he couldn't know everything that was possible with magic...
"Mr Potter. Welcome." Tom, the barkeeper here, hurried over gesturing for one of his staff members to take over behind the bar before ushering Harry upstairs and out of the public eye. "I wasn't aware you were coming."
"It's an unexpected stop." Harry admitted, hoping not to get drawn into a conversation about why he was visiting. "I'm only passing through on my way to Gringotts."
"You want to be careful wandering around on your own." Tom sounded honestly concerned, "It's all over the newspapers, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban last night and everyone's up in arms about it. It's not safe for anyone to be wondering around alone right now, least of all you."
Harry blinked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Sirius Black was a Death Eater, one of the worst." Tom looked shocked that he didn't know that, "And you're the one who stopped You-Know-Who." Tom glanced around nervously for a moment and then continued on a completely different note, "Now if you stop here for a moment and have some of our pub grub, there's a Pure Blood family who pre-ordered their food arriving in a few minutes, the Lovegoods. They'll watch out for you and you'll never be bored."
"I don't know..." Harry hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to hang around a predominant Pure Blood family right now. Not when he was uncertain when he was going to have another black out and was trying to stay out of sight.
“They’re as loopy as fruit cakes the pair of them.” Tom continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “But they’re good people. Besides, the girl’s about your age. You’ve probably seen her around the school.”
The name was familiar. Harry had met a Luna Lovegood last year when everyone except his friends had thought that he was the Heir of Slytherin. The girl had seemed fascinated by his ability to talk to snakes and had even attempted to see if she could learn a little bit, but she had been weird. There had been occasions where Luna hadn’t really seemed like herself and others where she had seemed as nutty as a fruit cake.
Thinking about it in those terms, it was probably the same family.
Harry’s grumbling stomach seemed to answer the question for Tom who ushered him into a private room and handed him a menu, “Just you wait here, Mr Potter, I’ll bring your food to you.”
Once Tom had left, taking Harry’s order and the menu with him, the black haired boy just stared after him.
“So you’ll get me into trouble, but you won’t get me out of it?” Harry grouched at the golden bracer that was poking out from under his jacket sleeve, the snake on it seeming to look delighted, though he knew that it was a figment of his imagination.
He should take it off. Take it off and throw it away, or get it melted or something, but Harry didn’t want to and not only because Dumbledore had asked him to look after it. There was something about it, something special that made him rather protective of the golden item, even though he hadn’t heard anything about it before and neither, surprisingly, had Hermione.
Really, he thought, the one who he needed to speak with the most was Dumbledore. He had seemed to know what the bracer really was, even if he hadn’t given Harry any real information besides ‘look after it and it will look after you’. He would know what these blackouts were and how to stop them.
He had just finished his meal when there was a knock on his door.
Harry’s hand strayed to the pocket that held his wand as he approached the door, wary considering his experiences today. “Who is it?”
“A friend.” A bright voice informed him, one he knew rather well, “And her father.”
Harry opened the door to find Luna stood on the other side, long dirty blonde hair tucked up neatly and pinned in place by a golden decorative haircomb adorned by a serpent, a sharp contrast to her robe which was a garish combination of all of the colours of the Hogwarts houses in a zigzag pattern that left Harry dizzy after looking at it for too long.
“Mr Potter.” Mr Lovegood nodded to him as the pair entered the room, “I hear you need an escort for the day.”
“I don’t want to be a bother.” Harry tried, knowing that this could be one of his few opportunities to lose the Lovegoods before they were dragged into whatever he had gotten himself into.
“No bother. No bother at all.” Mr Lovegood waved it off with a smile, “If a friend of Luna’s needs an escort, I’m more than willing to oblige. Xenophillius Lovegood,” The man offered Harry his right hand, “Nice to meet you.”
“Harry Potter. It’s nice to meet you too.” Harry nervously offered his own, before realising too late that the bracer was still showing. It didn’t matter too much. Mr Lovegood gained an odd look for a moment before shaking Harry’s hand briskly.
“And now we’re acquainted shall we go?” Mr Lovegood asked, “I’m sure that you have lots of places you need to get to and our shopping list isn’t small either.”
“Actually I was just...” Harry trailed off as Luna latched onto his arm and pulled him out of the room and down the stairs, before heading towards the entrance to Diagon Alley. “Gringotts...”
“Well of course we’re stopping at the bank first.” Mr Lovegood informed him with a slight chuckle, “Can’t buy anything without money after all.”
Luna nodded briskly, still hanging onto Harry’s arm like a limpet. The boy thought he heard a comment about ‘Potter and Loony Lovegood’ from a couple of the students who were here with their parents on a trip , but he tried to ignore them. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the insult after all.
He was surprised to feel Luna stiffen slightly and he touched one of her arms, unsure what to do to help her relax. It appeared to help though as Luna blinked at him and gained a smile as they stepped through the archway to the biggest wizarding high street in Britain
Once through Harry almost forgot his problems. Having been escorted by Hagrid, who had had strict orders to get him everything on his list and then get him home and the Wealsey’s who had been herding their own mob and as such had had to run a tight schedule, he’d never really explored Diagon Alley properly before and he was astounded.
Of course the thing that stuck out most in his mind was the broom in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, the new one that was supposed to be better than anything before it. The Firebolt.
Oh how Harry wanted one, but he had a perfectly good Nimbus 2000 and there was no point buying a ridiculously expensive broomstick, especially when he would need that money much more when he was on the run.
There were Aurors visible all along Diagon Alley, but, to Harry’s surprise none of them seem particularly interested in him. There were several who stopped anyone wearing a hood that covered their face to show themselves and it took Harry a while but he finally realised that they weren’t looking for him. It wasn’t until he overheard a conversation between a particularly peeved shopper and a member of the police force patrolling the area however that he realised that they were, in fact, here for Sirius Black.
That was about the time that he realised that as he and Luna examined things in windows, Mr Lovegood was interviewing people on the street. Neither Auror nor civilian escaped as the man took page after page of notes.
“Luna?” Harry asked, startling the girl, who had had a farway look on her face, “Why’s your dad interviewing people?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Luna asked, surprised, “My father runs the Quibbler. It’s a rival to the Daily Prophet.”
“Oh.” Harry blinked. He supposed that made sense. After all Muggles had seven or eight different newspapers, so he guessed there had to be more than one wizarding one, he’d just never heard of it before.
“I’ll let you see a few of our spare copies.” Luna promised with a smile as Mr Lovegood finished his latest interview and the three of them continued on their way, finally reaching Gringotts about half an hour after they’d left the pub.
The bank was packed. Busy goblins served stressed out wizards as everyone tried to get what they wanted immediately and though it wasn’t as hectic as it was during the last couple of weeks before term started when everyone tried to buy their school supplies, it was busy enough to hold Harry up a little longer than he would have liked.
Between the queues, the harsh attitudes of the goblins when they discovered that he didn’t have his key and they had to use a different method of telling if he really was Harry James Potter or not and his embarrassment at having forgotten that Mrs Weasley still had his vault key, though why she had it now instead of Hagrid was beyond him, Harry was just happy to get into the cart and take the short rollercoaster like ride down to his vault.
Once there Harry bagged up as much as he could carry, only making a small dent in the pile of gold there was staring him in the face. He wanted to take more but, in a worst case scenario it was there, safe in the vault, for if he needed it later on.
Luna, who had come down with him while her father had settled affairs at their vault, had been silent for a moment when the goblin had opened the vault but had then started babbling away happily, talking about something called dingbats, which Harry had thought was just a Muggle insult, but apparently, according to Luna, were creatures that infested vaults and fed on the gold.
The goblin with them seemed less than amused when Luna asked him if they had any living in their cave system, causing Harry to wonder if it was because of the implication that Harry’s gold wasn’t safe in the care of the goblins or if it was because they actually had some of them living there and had caught them feasting off the gold in the vaults. He also couldn’t help but wonder if the dragons that apparently guarded some of the vaults ate them as snacks.
Harry attempted to lose Luna again when they reached the surface again but didn’t get very far. A commotion at the doors about some kind of huge black dog, apparently called a Grim, let the Lovegoods catch up to him.
“Anyone would think you didn’t like us.” Mr Lovegood joked. Harry would have apologised and given some false statement about him being tired and maybe they could go shopping another day when Luna said something that made him pause in his tracks.
“Harry’s preoccupied with the fact the Aurors went to his house this morning daddy.” Luna informed her father, making Harry wonder what she knew already. Then confusion set in.
If they had already been to his house why wasn’t he under arrest already?
“Ah.” Xenophillius nodded as he escorted the pair out of the doors and ushered them towards Flourish and Blotts, “Quite understandable really. It’s never fun to have people turn up uninvited.”
Harry stared at the man for a moment as they stepped into the huge bookstore, wondering if they’d heard why the Aurors had shown up at his house yet and if he’d have been as easy around him if he had.
“Come on Harry.” Luna took his hand and dragged him into the history section, where Harry spotted a copy of Hogwarts, A History, the book that Hermione had buried her nose into during their third year. Remembering how scary a peeved Hermione was and how ticked she’d been when all the copies of it had been booked out of the library last year he picked it up from the shelf before looking around for old books on magical artifacts, wondering if there was a book available that might tell him exactly what it was that he was wearing.
There were hundreds of books on artefacts and none of the ones he had time to go through before Luna and her father came looking for him had anything useful in them. Of course, he mused, after purchasing his copy of Hermione’s most read book as he sat down at a table at Fortescues with the Lovegoods with a rather large ice cream, it would help if he had a name to go on. Somehow he didn’t think that it would be easy to find anything on his bracer if he didn’t know that.
Luna finished her ice cream long before the two guys with her did and while Harry was fighting with his ice cream, trying to avoid losing half of it which was trying to fall off of the cone on the opposite side to him, she pulled a small box out of her bag and pulled out some playing cards. Except they weren’t like any cards Harry had seen before.
“What’re those?” Harry asked as Luna examined the cards in her hand carefully, took two out of the pile, put two from a second box into the pile, examining each of the cards carefully before doing so. Once he’d finished his ice cream and had washed his fingers, she passed a packet across the table to him.
“Duel Monsters.” She explained as Harry examined the packaging, wondering what kind of creature the animal depicted on it was, “It’s a Muggle game.”
Harry blinked at her, wondering why a pure blood girl who seemed like she wouldn’t be very comfortable in Muggle society would carry around cards from a Muggle game that most people probably hadn’t heard of.
“Go on.” Luna gestured to him when he didn’t open the packet, “I have plenty.”
Harry frowned slightly and opened the pack, tipping out the eleven cards inside and examining each one carefully. Luna moved her chair over so she could get a better look at what he was holding and explain about the cards as he went through them.
“That’s a monster card.” Luna informed him as Harry examined the first card out of the packet, a Silver Fang, “It’s a normal monster, you can tell that because it’s yellow. Effect monsters have an orange background and more information about their abilities in the box, instead of just a blurb.”
Harry just nodded, not quite sure what she meant by that.
“You see those stars right there?” She asked, pointing to the three stars in the corner of the card just under the black symbol in the corner which had the word ‘Earth’ written on it, “Those are its level. I’m not quite sure why they’re important right now, other than the more stars a monster has the more powerful it is.”
Again Harry nodded, pretending that he understood, after all if Luna didn’t understand the reason for them and she played the game, there was no way he would.
“The things you really want to pay attention to are this bit of text here,” She pointed just under the picture, “Which tells you what type of monster it is and these scores down here.” She pointed at the bottom right hand of the card. “These are Silver Fang’s attack and defence scores. They’re what determines what he can fight and defend against without dying.”
Harry actually understood that part and took in his Beast monster’s twelve hundred attack points and eight hundred defence points along with the fact it was a three star monster. “Is Silver Fang powerful?”
“It’s alright, but there are things much more powerful than Silver Fang out there.” Luna replied, as Harry continued to look through his cards which consisted of several monsters, and a couple of spells, which apparently had green backgrounds and informed the player of what they did in the text box.
Luna hummed as she looked them over, tutting slightly as she searched through the smaller pile of the two on her side of the table and offered a card to Harry. “Trade you my Rising Air Current for your De-Spell.”
Harry wasn’t even sure what Rising Air Current or De-Spell did, though the latter was pretty self explanatory, but he nodded and took the card in her hand in exchange for the De-Spell card in his small pile of cards.
“They’re not that expensive,” Luna informed him as she reorganised his small pile before handing it back to him. “I’d suggest you look in newsagents or comic shops.”
Harry blinked at her, confused but before he could say anything a pair of Aurors had come over to their table.
“Mr Potter, we need you to come with us.”
Harry’s stomach flipped as he got to his feet, pocketing his cards, though he didn’t think that he’d be needing them much longer where he was going. “Thanks for today.” He nodded to the Lovegoods before following the rather solemn looking and constantly alert Aurors back to the Leaky Cauldron and of into one of the side rooms where Harry was shocked to see the Minister for Magic waiting for him.
“Sit down Harry.” Fudge spoke, indicating a seat by the fire, which was roaring away in the hearth.
Harry sat nervously, goosebumps rising on his arms. If this was about what had happened to Vernon, he was surprised that he wasn’t being escorted straight to Azkaban, unless they wanted to snap his wand first...
Fudge sat down in a chair opposite him and looked him over carefully before speaking, “I am Cornelius Fudge, Harry. I am the Minister for Magic.”
Harry knew that already but Fudge didn’t know that Harry had seen him arresting Hagrid, nor could he be allowed to know unless he wanted to get a large group of people into trouble.
Tom entered the room, carrying a tray of tea and crumpets, confusing Harry further. The innkeeper placed the food on the table and then left. The reassuring smile Tom had on his face didn’t help matters at all.
“Well Harry. You’ve had all of us in a bit of a panic.” Fudge told the very confused boy. Harry just stared at him, wondering why there wasn’t shouting and threatening and demands for him to hand over his wand, “Running away from your Aunt’s home like that! Thank goodness we had Aurors out already...”
“S...Sir?” Harry asked, too confused to know what else to say.
“I have a bit of bad news for you.” Fudge’s face turned grave, “Unfortunately we sent out an Accidental Magic Reversal team to deal with both your Uncle and your Cousin and none of them could do a thing to help them.”
Harry wasn’t sure if he should be happy or sad about that news.
“However we have had them taken into St. Mungos and placed on the Janus Thickly Ward, which is where those with long term spell damage are hosted during their recovery.”
There was something about Dudley and his Uncle being looked after in the same ward as Lockheart that amused Harry, though he still wasn’t quite sure what this was about since they didn’t seem too angry about his uncle’s unresponsive state.
“We are still talking to your aunt regarding you going back to her next summer. The woman seems quite certain you’re possessed or some such rot, but we can test for that easily enough and we did assure her that we’d keep a close eye on you while you were there, but I’m certain that she’s worrying about nothing. Accidental magic is understandable in a child, you just need to learn a bit better control.” Fudge paused for a moment, “Assuming it was accidental.”
Harry nodded, “I don’t even know how I did it.”
Fudge nodded at Harry’s not quite a lie. Harry could imagine that whatever he had done while he’d been ‘asleep’ he’d probably meant to do at the time, but he could honestly say that he had no clue how it had happened.
“So all that remains is to decide where you will stay for the rest of the summer.” Fudge said as he buttered one of the crumpets and took a big bite, “I suggest that you take a room here for the rest of the...”
“Hang on!” Harry blurted out, “You mean I’m not being punished?”
Fudge grew confused and Harry could practically see the Minister for Magic trying to put together what was going on. Then he chuckled, “My dear boy, we’re not going to punish you for a couple of incidents of accidental magic,” He was gesticulating with both arms, the crumpet forgotten, “We don’t send people to Azkaban for defending themselves.”
Harry blinked at him, wondering what Fudge knew about his actions during his blackouts that he didn’t and was horribly tempted to ask. “But last year...”
Suddenly the amusement fled from Fudge’s face and fear replaced it, “Circumstances change Harry. We have to take into account the current climate...” In other words something had happened to change their attitude towards him, at least for now, and Harry had a feeling that it was something to do with the same Sirius Black that Tom had mentioned earlier. “Surely you don’t want to be expelled.”
Harry shook his head, more than happy to take advantage of the situation in order to remain out of jail and to keep his wand. “No, sir.”
“Then I don’t see what else there is to discuss.” Fudge got to his feet, “Now you understand, of course, that you can’t go wandering off into Muggle London,” Well there went his plan to get more cards, if only so he could understand what Luna was talking about, “Nor should you go wandering down Knockturn Alley. You’re much better and safer off wandering around Diagon...”
Where the Aurors could keep an eye on him was the unspoken ending to that sentence. Harry nodded of course. Anything to keep the Minister of Magic happy and him out of trouble after all and it was better than being sent straight back to the Dursleys where he could just imagine that his aunt would make his life a living hell.
Right up until she triggered a blackout at least...
“As regards to the charge of possession, Shacklebolt,” He gestured to the man next to the door who walked over, nodding to Harry as he did so, “Can test for that right now.”
“Afternoon, Mr Potter.” Shacklebolt spoke, “If you’d just take off anything magical that might mess with the readings and put them and your wand on the table.” Harry did just that, removing the bracer and dumping both his wand and it on the table, covered by his jacket, “Now just hold still for a moment. This won’t hurt in the least.” Harry couldn’t help the flinch that came when the Auror raised his wand and spoke so swiftly that Harry didn’t catch what he was saying.
A bolt of yellow light hit Harry’s chest and before he could say a word a glow suddenly appeared out of nowhere, surrounding him. Harry stared at his hand in shock and examined it, intrigued by the pale green light. It was obviously not normal as Shacklebolt looked rather surprised, but when it died down the Minister turned all of his attention on the Auror.
“So?” Fudge demanded.
“Clean. He’s not possessed.” Shacklebolt commented, still giving Harry an odd look. “B...”
“Good, good that settles that.” Fudge interrupted as Shacklebolt went to say something else, “I’d hate to have to send him through after all.”
“Definitely no need for that.” Whatever the Minister had meant by that seemed to knock the Auror back into ‘duty’ mode and Harry could practically see him snap back to attention. “He’s not possessed, so...”
“In that case,” Minister Fudge headed for the door, “I’ll just have a word with Tom and check there’s a room here for you.”
Harry pocketed his wand and was just slipping the bracer back on when Shacklebolt caught his arm. “Potter, a word?”
Harry didn’t have much choice in the matter but he nodded anyway.
“You’re not possessed but I would suggest you lay low for a while.” Shacklebolt informed him, “If they decide to test you again someone might not be as lenient as I was. That glow was supposed to be white. That it was partly another colour suggests that you have been possessed recently or have had soul to soul contact with someone. People don’t survive possession normally. You could land up in the Department of Mysteries as an experiment or worse. I don’t know what it means, but I’ve heard of the term ‘sending them through’ before and when I asked, I got told that the person in question was no longer alive so...”
Harry paled slightly at Shacklebolt’s words, “Thanks for the warning.”
Shacklebolt let him go and Harry finished adjusting the bracer, feeling slightly more secure when the snake on it tightened itself, securing the bracer on his arm.
Shacklebolt was giving it a curious look and was about to open his mouth to ask something when the Minister walked into the room looking rather pleased with himself.
“It’s all settled. Room 11 will be yours for the rest of the summer.” Fudge grinned at him as Harry hastily shoved the arm with the bracer into his jacket sleeve, not wanting Fudge to see the golden item for an odd reason that he couldn’t quite explain besides ‘it felt like a bad idea’. “You’re to be back here before dark and Tom will be keeping an eye on you for me.”
Harry frowned, confused as to why Fudge was trying to keep him under his thumb when he hadn’t cared enough to look into Harry’s situation before. It was all because of Black, Harry was almost certain of that. “But...” Harry trailed off at the look on Fudge’s face. “Yes, Minister.”
“Good.” Fudge nodded, “Have a good summer Harry and try not to get into any more trouble. Remember if you have any problems the Aurors are around to protect the public, so don’t be afraid to ask.”
With that the Minister left, Shacklebolt nodding to him as he followed the Minister out, leaving Harry feeling rather irritated about the fact that he’d basically just been told to sit and stay by the Minister for Magic.
Harry hastily ate a couple of the crumpets and tried to work out what he was going to do. School didn’t start back until September and he basically had free rein on what he could do. Except he didn’t. He was basically confined to The Leaky Cauldron and the magical shops hidden beyond.
Tom was waiting for him when he left the room and the first thing the innkeeper did before he tidied up the room was show Harry to his room. The trunk and the owl cage he’d left behind the bar earlier were already in his room, while Hedwig, who he had let out of her cage when he’d left the Dursley’s, was preening on the perch just inside his window.
“Smart bird you have there, Mr Potter.” Tom said approvingly as Harry gave her a couple of owl treats and filled up the water bowl from the jug on the bedside table, “She flew in the window the moment I brought your stuff up.”
“Thank you for that by the way.” Harry nodded to the innkeeper who just smiled back at him and waved it off before heading downstairs, leaving Harry alone in his room.
The moment the door had shut Harry collapsed backwards onto the bed, not quite able to believe the way that his summer had changed in just a few short hours. Just this morning he’d had a list of chores to do, including mowing the lawn and it had been that list of chores, which Vernon had accused him of slacking on that had put into motion the events of today.
If it hadn’t been for the fact he’d had blackouts before today, he would have been convinced that he was going to wake up and find that today had been one hell of an insane dream, even the fact that he apparently had an escaped Death Eater after him kind of fit considering his past experiences.
Still there were pluses and minuses to the whole situation and he had had a reprieve from the Ministry when Shacklebolt had...
Harry paused, attempted to wrench the bracer off, had to pause while the snake uncoiled itself slightly, and then chucked it onto the bed, glaring at it.
The Auror had said he’d been possessed recently and the only thing that had changed in the last few weeks was the bracer. It all fit too. The blackouts, doing spells he would never have known about... It wasn’t that different from when Riddle’s diary and the spirit within had been possessing Ginny and made her attack the students.
Except while Ginny had been writing in the diary, Harry had been telling the spirit of the bracer nothing about himself, nor had he, hopefully, given him any openings. If anything Harry was surprised that the spirit appeared to be trying to help him. Every time he’d had a blackout it had been following pain, be it from a blow or hunger pangs.
Harry blinked as he realised this, sitting down on the bed and poking the golden bracer with a finger. “Who are you?” He asked it, wondering if it was another fragment of Voldemort’s soul, as the diary’s spirit had been or whether it was someone else who had sealed himself in his item for some strange reason.
Harry got no reply, not that he was really expecting one, and he spent a few more minutes glowering at the gaudy golden trinket. Somehow he had thought he’d feel relieved when he knew what the blackouts were but the knowledge he was being possessed didn’t ease his mind any.
Nor did he really know what to do. Dumbledore had told him to look after it, but Harry didn’t know if Dumbledore had known about the spirit within it. If he told his friends that the bracer was possessing him from time to time, Hermione would freak and demand he give it to a teacher, while Ron would probably want to destroy it or put it back where it came from.
Of course those were all perfectly justified things to do, or would have been if the spirit hadn’t been trying to help him. If there were just a way for Harry to talk to the spirit and tell him that while he appreciated the help he would really rather not get into trouble because he was being possessed by an over protective spirit who apparently thought that it was okay to drive people insane, it would be better.
Until he could find such a way, however, he was stuck trying to make sure he didn’t get hurt by anyone or anything, in case it triggered an episode.
Thinking about the spirit of the bracer made him think harder about what he was going to do over the summer. His best bet, he finally decided, was to make use of the huge bookstore on Diagon Alley, which might be able to help him work out what the bracer was and how to either remove the spirit from it or get in contact with his possessor.
If there was nothing in there there were other options, after all there were plenty of magical trinket shops around and, though he was loath to admit even thinking about using the last option, he was sure that Knockturn Alley had somewhere that could have information on it. Hell he’d been in Borgen and Burkes last year and seen the sorts of magical artifacts they had on offer. It was highly possible that he could take it to them and find out exactly what it was and why Dumbledore thought it was so important.
That, however, was most definitely a last chance option. He had no great urge to get lost down the dark, dank alley where dark magic lurked and there were plenty who would be willing to off ‘the Boy-Who-Lived’ for any reason, including that he looked at them in a funny tone of voice.
Somehow he thought that while there might be some down there that might deserve whatever the spirit had done to Vernon and Dudley, and he was certain he should feel more guilty about that than he did, if people suddenly started turning up insane or worse he would be the first person the Aurors went to and they probably wouldn’t be as nice about it as Shacklebolt had been.
A knock on his door made him jump a mile. “Hello?”
“Harry?” Luna asked from the other side of the door.
Harry hastily opened the door, realising that Luna was quite possibly the only person he could talk about this with without sounding alarm bells in their head, and was surprised to find that Luna’s father wasn’t with her. “Where’s...”
“He went home.” Luna smiled at him, “Too many notes to write up to hang around all day having fun. I wanted to say hello before you left.”
Harry just nodded, knowing better than to question Luna on anything though he had had no intention of going anywhere until he’d worked out some sort of plan. “Hi. Come on in.”
Luna nodded gracefully at his welcome and entered the room, her eyes resting briefly on the rest of Harry’s things and a small smile forming at the sight of Hedwig, before coming to land on the bracer.
“I was right,” Luna breathed, except that Harry had this weird sense that the girl he was speaking to wasn’t Luna, which made no sense considering that it looked and sounded like his friend, “You do have one.”
“One what?” Harry asked, wondering what Luna meant by that.
“Serpent Item.” The girl stated matter of factly, closing the door behind Harry and waving her hand.
“What’s a Serpent Item?” Harry asked as a purple glow surrounded the door. “And what’s that for?”
“We won’t be heard now.” Luna stated matter of factly, “Now, you need to listen to me carefully. Over a thousand years ago, when Hogwarts was still young, the Muggle populace were terrified of witches and wizards and between their actions and those of others of our kind, the school became unsafe. So Salazar Slytherin, in an act of great love for the school he’d helped to build, used a tome translated from an Ancient Egyptian wizard’s text to create the five Serpent Items. One for each of the founders and a fifth, whose owner would be found in due time.”
Harry nodded his understanding of what she’d told him so far, “And this bracer’s one of them?”
“The five items are the Dagger, the Comb,” She gestured to the comb in her hair, “The Bracer,” She gestured to the item on the bed, “The Pendant and the Helm.
“This,” Harry held up the bracer, surprised, “Belonged to a Founder?”
“No. The Serpent Bracer was eventually claimed by one of the Teachers who worked under the Founders.” Luna shook her head, “The Comb belonged to Helga and was passed on to her female descendants. The Pendant was Rowena’s and it was a symbol of the knowledge and power in the school for many years before being squirreled away safely. The Helm belonged to Godric and vanished along with Salazar’s Dagger during the final battle between the pair and Salazar hid the Bracer after Powel, the man who held it, was killed protecting the school.”
Harry examined the golden bracer. It didn’t look that old. Considering that it had been down in the Chamber for thousands of years, he would have expected it to be dirtier, or damaged in some way. It was possible that whatever Salazar had done to make it a ‘Serpent Item’ had made it indestructible, supposed, but surely after all this time the enchantments on it would have worn off?
A thought hit him. Was it possible that the spirit of the Bracer was the teacher who had been killed while using it? Then another one hit him.
“Wait, you never told me what’s so special about these things or how they helped the Founders defend the school.” Harry informed Luna, shaking the bracer at her and trying to ignore the mental image of the spirit inside getting nauseous. “I mean...” Harry stopped at the strange look the other Item holder had on her face and put the Bracer back on.
“You don’t know very much about Voldemort’s reign, do you?” She asked after a few moments where silence ruled supreme.
Harry shook his head, wondering why she sounded so disappointed and why he felt so guilty.
“Tell you what.” Luna, her expression matching her tone, “You look into why we need to be very careful with these, and when you feel you know enough, write to me. I’ll know where you’re staying after all.”
With that Luna turned to leave.
Harry would never be quite sure what possessed him to blurt out the thing he said next, but before she could lower the spell on the door and exit the room, Harry asked, “Does yours possess you too?”
Luna stiffened and turned to look at him, as if examining him carefully, as if she wasn’t certain if he was suddenly going to bite. “You have blackouts?”
Harry nodded.
“Wake up having done things you don’t remember and couldn’t do if you tried?”
Harry nodded again.
“Sometimes in different locations?”
When Harry nodded a third time Luna frowned slightly, “I suppose if I did it then it’s possible he did too...”
“Luna?” Harry asked, trying to resist the urge to put the Bracer back on.
Luna’s eyes flickered from the Bracer to Harry’s face and back again then the girl let out a heavy sigh, “While you’re researching, see what you can find on Powel Redgrave. That might give you some more answers.” When Harry nodded for yet another time, Luna turned, dispelled the magic on the door and left, leaving Harry with more questions.
At least, he thought locked up and headed downstairs, he now knew what his bracer was. That it was a magical item made by Salazar Slytherin narrowed down the search radius quite considerably. There couldn’t be very many out there, at least he hoped there wasn’t. And even if there were there probably weren’t many that had been influential during the First War.
Still slightly irritated over the fact that he was under surveillance, but grateful that he appeared to have gotten away without any repercussions for the spirit’s actions, Harry slipped into Diagon Alley again, heading straight for the bookstore where he swiftly got frustrated by the fact that there was absolutely no sense to the system that organised the books beyond ‘history’, ‘potions’, ‘transfiguration’ and so on and so forth.
In the end he had to ask one of the shop keepers, who had been about to ask him to leave as the store was closing and was more than willing to pile text book upon text book on him if it meant that he was going to leave. After all, as he joked to Harry as he added up the cost and took Harry’s money, not everyone could live on books alone.
Unfortunately there was nothing specifically on the Serpent Items available, though the clerk had promised to look as he had ushered Harry out of the store, but there had been a bit about Powel Redgrave in a book about the Founding of Hogwarts, and another bit about the items of power held by the four founders, and there was plenty available on Voldemort’s reign.
Carrying a magically enhanced bag that was designed to hold much more than it looked and had been offered to Harry at a discounted price when the clerk had realised that there was no way that they were getting all of Harry’s books into any less than four bags, Harry stepped back onto Diagon Alley a few hours later only to be surprised by the fact that the street was almost deserted as most of the shops had closed hours ago.
He sighed as he headed for the pub. Though he had plenty to read, it wasn’t going to be fun spending the next couple of months above a pub unless the rooms had spells that kept noise out, since if The Leaky Cauldron was anything like the Muggle pubs he’d often heard his uncle describing, it would get rather rowdy downstairs on the night times.
He was in the middle of making a mental note to write letters to his friends explaining where he was and half asking, half pleading with them to come and visit, when Harry was shocked out of his thoughts by a spell shooting past his cheek, the heat of it brushing his cheek as the spell narrowly missed its target and struck a wall, which exploded.
Immediately the two Aurors who had still been patrolling the streets, went into action, but by the time they’d acted the assailant, who had been hiding between two of the shops, was pinned down by a huge, messy furred dog who was growling ferociously and baring his teeth at the man, one of its legs pressing down firmly on the man’s wand arm.
“The dog yours, Potter?” One of the Aurors asked him, stopping him from retreating to the safety of the pub.
“Yes, he’s mine.” He replied, knowing the canine was nothing to do with him, but feeling a sense of loyalty to it, since it had, quite obviously, defended him and not wanting to know what the wizarding equivalent of a dog pound was like. Considering some of the magical creatures he’d met so far, it was possible the dog would get eaten while there.
The dog, whose fur was white and looked rather matted, barked and wagged its tail at the sound of Harry’s voice but didn’t move from its place on top of the man until the Auror who’d asked had physically shoved it aside.
In the split second between moving the dog and an Auror grabbing the attacker, the man on the ground vanished into thin air with a pop.
“Damn it. Apperated away.” The Auror growled, starting to cast spells a moment later in order to try and find clues.
“Are you alright Potter?” A second Auror asked, looking Harry over.
“That was a Reducto, you moron.” His partner informed him in the same tone someone would speak to a small child, “If it had hit him, you’d know about it.”
The second man scowled at his partner for a moment before turning back to Harry, “You need to get a collar on your dog.” The man paused and looked at the canine in question, “He’s covered in paint by the way, did you know?”
He had kind of guessed from the smell when the huge canine had stood up on its hind legs and, though it had looked thin, managed to knock him over before proceeding to lick his face, that the matted fur wasn’t a natural thing, but he had no idea how to get paint out of fur short of a long bath and... He paused as he realised where his train of thoughts was going.
The dog wasn’t his, it was someone else’s. It wasn’t his job to deal with the paint matted fur and even if it had been his dog he didn’t know if The Leaky Cauldron allowed pets besides owls.
“I’m hopeless with household magic.” The second Auror looked sheepish, “Or I’d clean him up for you.”
“It’s okay.” He waved it off as he pushed the canine away and got to his feet, “I’ll work something out.”
“Escort Potter and his pet back to the pub.” The first Auror told the second, “That might have been Black and he might try again.”
The dog growled at the sound of Black’s name and didn’t stop until Harry put his hand on the dog’s neck. Before he could really decide what he was going to do with the huge, furry menace he’d been walked back to the pub where Tom had taken one look at the Auror and ushered Harry upstairs, promising to bring food with him when he came up.
The barkeeper didn’t even say a word against it when the dog followed Harry upstairs, wagging its tail and panting happily. Hedwig didn’t like it though. She screeched at the dog repeatedly for a good five minutes before she settled down and even then Harry had had to promise her owl treats every day for the next month before she’d calmed down at all
Then had come the fun part of trying to remove rather thick white paint from rather unruly fur. It was very wet, very hard work as the dog, who had climbed into the bath without a whimper of complaint had decided for some strange reason that if he had to be wet, so did Harry.
When Tom came up, Harry requested a scrubbing brush or something from the kitchen. Tom did one better, not only did he bring up the requested brush, but he cast a pair of spells, one which removed all of the paint from the dog almost instantly, though it took several attempts, and one that set the brush to brushing the dog’s fur on its own without any input from Harry, allowing him to settle down and have his meal while the canine wolfed his down as if he hadn’t eaten in months and get straightened out.
Clean and brushed, the dog was actually quite a handsome animal. Harry had absolutely no clue what breed it was, but it had apparently adopted him and Tom had had nothing against the mutt staying here until Harry found his owner as long as it didn’t make a mess. “I wish I knew what your name was.” Harry told the dog, who was looking at him hopefully as he ate his dinner, begging for scraps off of the table. “They’re going to ask for it tomorrow when I pick up a collar and a leash...”
Harry trailed off as the dog appeared to glower at him at the words collar and leash.
“What? It’s the law... why am I talking to a dog like it can understand me?” Harry groaned at himself, “And I thought I was going crazy last year when I heard a giant snake in the walls...” The dog licked his hand and the same hand started scratching behind the dog’s ear automatically. “You’re not mine you know.”
The dog whimpered and leant against him.
“What? I’m only allowed to take one pet to Hogwarts and I already have an owl.” At the word owl, Hedwig hooted at him and Harry scooted across the room, done with his meal, and paid attention to her as well. “Feel up to taking some letters to my friends?” He asked the owl, who spread her wings in response as if to say ‘I’m ready to leave now’.
Harry chuckled and pulled a quill out of his bag, along with some spare parchment from his trunk and settled at the small table in the corner of the room. Hedwig landed on the back of the second chair, watching him write as the dog curled up at his feet.
It was surprisingly relaxing to have the two animals so close and by the time Harry had finished his letters and sent Hedwig off with them he had almost calmed down from the day’s scares. Though he still wanted to know who the man who had attacked him was. He couldn’t help but think that Black would have to be very stupid to enter Diagon Alley and attack him like he had so close to escaping from Azkaban.
It did make him realise something though. While he had hated the Dursleys he had been much safer there than he would have been if he’d been in the wizarding world before. If it hadn’t been for Black’s horrendous aim and the huge dog now snoring away happily it was quite possible that he would be dead.
Suddenly obeying the Minister’s request seemed like a very good idea. He had no illusions that the last two escapes from Voldemort had been anything but sheer dumb luck and he probably stood about as much chance against a Death Eater as food did against Ron.
At least here, in his room, the only people who knew exactly where he was were Tom, Fudge and Shacklebolt, and two of the people on that list he liked and though he didn’t know Tom well enough to trust him, the Auror had saved Harry’s life once already and as such the almost-teen felt like he could at least trust that he wouldn’t give Harry’s location away to someone who might want to kill him.
He wondered how the man had done that, teleported away like he had as he got changed and slumped onto the bed, putting his wand under his pillow as he had at the Dursleys, before he pulled one of his texts out of the magically expanded bag.
“Hey!” Harry protested as the huge canine clambered up onto the bed as he turned the first page and led across his legs, pinning him to the bed. “Get down.”
The dog gave him a mournful look.
“If you don’t get down I’ll give you an embarrassing name like Fluffy.” Harry scowled at it, figuring that if it was intelligent enough to understand him it was intelligent enough to have a sense of pride.
The dog shifted rather quickly at that, giving him a rather dirty look as it did so.
Harry just chuckled at it, trying to remind himself not to get too attached as someone would probably come forward for the dog before too long and then he’d have to hand it over to its owner. It was probably a good thing, he couldn’t imagine trying to explain to his friends why he was suddenly the proud owner of a huge, overly friendly, dog. Nor could he imagine trying to explain in a letter to Professor McGonagall why he had to bring two pets to school.
Harry fell asleep in the middle of reading a paragraph about how the school had been built using magic, might and sheer force of will against the wishes of the local populace and sleep right through the night, other than for a brief few minutes when Tom knocked on the door, wanting to collect Harry’s plate, and set the dog off.
The following morning Harry had a wash and headed downstairs to find Tom had a message for him.
“Ah, Mr Potter. I have some good news for you and some bad news.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, being careful not to lose his page as he settled at the bar, wand easily to hand in case of a repeat of yesterday’s events.
Tom nodded, “Which would you like first.”
“Good news please.” Harry informed him as he started looking over the menu, enjoying the fact that he wouldn’t have to cook breakfast for anyone for the first time in ages.
“That stray you brought in last night, I found out its name.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, surprised, “How?”
“That’s the bad news. Padfoot’s owner came in last night asking if anyone had found his dog.” Tom said, watching as Harry digested the name. When the pre-teen nodded, the barkeeper continued, “I mentioned that a lodger here had found him and that I’d be more than willing to bring him down if he, Grey he mentioned his name was, would wait just a few minutes. Grey told me not to bother.”
“What?” Harry demanded.
“Apparently Grey was just trying to make sure that the dog had actually found another owner. Apparently Padfoot has been trying to escape from him for the last few weeks and since Padfoot found him in the first place and appeared to be rather intelligent for a dog, he figured that he wanted to move on. Grey said something about ‘your turn’ and left before I could take down a way of getting in contact with him. Sorry.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment. “Wait.” He said, blinking at Tom, “Padfoot’s mine now?”
“Apparently.”
“Great. Just great.” Harry groaned, wondering what he was going to do with the massive canine during the school year. It wasn’t like he could send him back to his Aunt’s. After what the spirit of the Bracer had done, Harry could just see Aunt Petunia trying to poison the mutt. That was, of course, if the dog stayed there. If it was as prone to running away as ‘Grey’, whoever he had been, had told Tom he was, then Harry half expected Padfoot to be gone before Petunia had had the chance to kick him outside.
Of course this did mean that Harry was going to have to ignore the Minster's advice on leaving Diagon Alley if the Magical Menagerie didn't have what he needed. Somehow the subject of dogs as pets had never come up amongst the students at school and he wasn't sure if the pet shop would cater to them.
It was the first thing he checked after breakfast after collecting Padfoot from his room and heading out, heading straight for the shop and trying to ignore the cries around him of 'the Grim!'
No wonder people didn't have dogs if others reacted to them like that. He didn't even know what a Grim was but it was enough to make him nervous.
Once in the shop he found that he had been right in thinking that he wouldn't find what he needed in there. Though they sold collars for cats, they had very little on sale for dogs and Harry found himself wondering where pure bloods got their dog food, if any pure bloods kept dogs at all. Somehow the thought of Lucius Malfoy taking a huge, scruffy dog like Padfoot for a walk seemed like a rather absurd idea. Perhaps one of those little handbag dogs that the rich and famous Muggles were so fond of but not a great big beast like the one that had adopted him.
The lack of ability to purchase what he needed brought up a real problem. He wasn't supposed to leave Diagon Alley, but he needed dog food and to get a collar for the canine. It was his responsibility as Padfoot's owner, however temporarily he might be filling that role. Though he could afford to pay whatever fine was levied against him, he didn't see the point of encouraging one when he could just as easily pick up what he needed.
The only problem with that was getting permission to leave. Since he wasn't apparently any safer in Diagon Alley then he was anywhere else, he was tempted to just leave and apologise later but considering the trouble he had almost been in he figured that he should probably tell someone where he was going first.
As such he informed the next Auror he saw.
Luckily the Auror he spoke to had spoken with one of the ones from the night before and he'd informed his colleague before escorting Harry to Gringotts to change some of his impressive stash of Galleons into Muggle currency, then through the pub, where Harry locked Padfoot in his room for the time being and the man changed into some surprisingly Muggle clothes before entering Muggle London.
Harry had absolutely no clue where to look for what he was looking for and ended up making a complete idiot of himself in front of the Auror, whose name was Andrew Savage, as the pair of them ended up wandering around and getting rather lost, ending up with Harry finally finding a pet store miles from their starting point.
He had, at least, found somewhere to buy the cards Luna had been showing him the previous day. 'Forbidden Planet' had been advertising the game of Duel Monsters in their window. Harry had popped in and picked up a 'starter deck' and a couple of boxes of the 'booster packs', shocking the clerk in the store with the amount he could afford on their way past and figuring that he could probably share the cards with his friends so he had someone to play against other than Luna.
Still it was several hours later when he and Savage finally returned to the Leaky Cauldron, by which point it was time to take Padfoot, who absolutely hated his new collar and lead with a passion, for a walk. Harry didn't enjoy that chore too much, but once he was done he could finally slump onto his bed and read without distraction.
Or that had been the plan before he'd started reading the rule book that had come with his starter deck and then he'd been distracted by that and the cards he'd bought until long after he'd had dinner. When he finally realised how distracted he'd been he pulled his book on the founding of Hogwarts over and started reading that again.
Powel's name came up, intriguing the boy. Apparently the wizard had been picked for his skills in transfigurative magics to teach the students and while the Founders had done most of the work in the school they had still required those with skill sets that were different to their own to teach what they couldn't.
This was fair enough, but Harry could just imagine the conversation that could possibly occur between the spirit of his Bracer and his Head of House. It would be an interesting one to say the least. Shame he wouldn't be aware of it at the time.
There was no mention of him wearing the Serpent Bracer, but there hadn't been a single mention of the golden items anywhere in the text so far which made Harry wonder if they had been omitted for a reason, or if they just hadn't been important enough for someone to put in. Either reason was viable. Things were left out of Muggle text books all the time for such reasons and he could imagine that the Serpent Items weren't as important as the creation of the school.
He changed his mind when he started on the book he'd picked up about Voldemort at the height of his reign.
Apparently before he'd even taken over Wizarding Britain, Voldemort had been a threat to be taken seriously because of his skills in magic, his control over strange shadow creatures and his oft used knack in Shadow Games that would kill, maim or steal the soul or sanity of anyone who dared challenge him and the two latter of that list were skills he had because of an item he had held, claiming that it was destined for him, called the Serpent Dagger.
Just seeing those words together made Harry frown, wondering if, considering that he'd found the Bracer in the Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle could have been searching for the Dagger down there and happened to find the giant snake that had been guarding the Chamber and set it on the other students or whether he'd stumbled across the Dagger in an act of sheer dumb luck, and had opened the Chamber of Secrets later.
A small part of Harry worried that if Powel's spirit was still attached to the Bracer, that Salazar was stuck inside Voldemort's Dagger much the same way. That was a rather terrifying thought.
Harry carried on reading, learning from the text book that Voldemort had used his Serpent Item many times over the years, using the powers it granted him and his ability to rally the purebloods to his side, with his demands for 'Blood Purity' to take over the Wizarding world in a short amount of time and though there had been many assassination attempts during the many years that Voldemort had been in power, and many who had fought against him, it hadn't been until Voldemort had tried to Avada Kedava a small child, aka him, that anyone had been able to stop the insane madman.
None of this was reassuring. He could, however, now see why Luna had wanted him to look up why he had to be so careful with the Bracer before she had told him anymore. The item could be dangerous.
Then he stumbled across something in the book that made him pause and look at the cards he'd left strewn across the table. There was a moving image on the page he'd happened to stop on that showed Voldemort directing an army of the 'shadow creatures' only to recognise one of the beasts he was directing as one of the monsters on one of the cards he'd picked up earlier that day.
On that note Harry put the cards away and put the book down, not awake enough to process the implications of that and went to sleep.
The following day the answers still looked the same as they had the night before and Harry had to stop off at the post office since Hedwig hadn't come back yet in order to send Luna a letter before settling in to read more about the founders and try and find out something about the Serpent Items that didn't involve Voldemort and his apparently rather impressive collection of souls.
He didn't get very far before Hedwig was back with just one letter. Harry recognised Hermione's handwriting almost instantly, having 'read' i.e. copied her homework one too many times not to, and tore open the letter, wincing in anticipation of the lecture that was to come.
He wasn't that far off either. Though she started the letter with an rant about the stupidity of running away from home without letting either Ron or her know where he was going or what he was planning, she did trail off after a couple of hundred words and start answering the questions he'd thrown at her about if she was able to visit him at the Leaky Cauldron any time soon, if she’d made any progress on their search, which was a bit redundant now he’d found what he had, and how her summer had been in general.
Quickly sending Hedwig off with a reply, his musings about why Ron hadn’t sent a letter back were disturbed by the fact a knock at the door set Padfoot barking.
Harry grinned as the words ‘Blimey, do you think we’ve got the right door?’ filtered through as he calmed his dog and opened the door to find the Wealsey twins hovering on the other side of it.
“Hello Harry!” One of them grinned at him as the other eyed Padfoot warily.
“Nice dog.” The other spoke up, moving into the room cautiously.
“Thanks. His name’s Padfoot. His owner gave him to me.” Harry moved aside, becoming surprised when Padfoot stopped growling the moment the rest of the Weasleys were revealed and settled quite happily at his side. “I wasn’t expecting a visit.”
“You told Ron that you’re staying at the Leaky Cauldron over the summer,” Molly spoke as she entered the room, sweeping across it and pulling Harry into a hug, “How could we not visit?”
Harry stiffed for a moment in the hug, unused to bodily contact that didn’t precede pain, then relaxed slightly when he remembered that it was Mrs Weasley doing the hugging. It was enough for Molly to let go quickly though and she backed off slightly and looked him and his great big pile of books over. “Of course you could have come to us. The Knight Bus would have brought you right to our door.”
“Sorry.” Harry apologised, though even if he’d known about the Knight Bus before he’d been thrown out of the Weasley’s, he wouldn’t have gone there. Not until he could get his blackouts under control. He didn’t want to get injured by accident and suddenly wake up having attacked one of them.
“You alright Harry?” Ron asked, giving his friend a concerned look as he did so.
Harry just nodded, not wanting to bring up the fact that he was being possessed by the spirit of his Bracer in front of the rest of the Weasleys.
“I just can’t believe that those blasted Muggles kicked you out. Especially with Black on the...” Molly trailed off as if she’d said too much, but Harry already knew what she’d been about to say, after all Black had taken a pot shot at him the night before last.
“Is that why you got the dog?” Ginny, who was distracted by the big dog trying to lick her to death, as if to say ‘I’m not scary really’, asked as she stroked Padfoot’s fur.
“No. He found me.” Harry answered, trying to avoid another Molly Weasley type glomp by avoiding mention of the attack, “And his owner said I could keep him. He seems to like me and I think he’d great,” Harry couldn’t help but think that after the dog had possibly saved his life, “So I did.”
“He seems nice...” Ron hesitated to get close to the huge canine who reminded him rather too well of the Grims in horror stories.
“Harry, dear.” Molly interrupted the conversation, “You always have a bed at our house. Why don’t you come and stay with us? A pub is no place for a child to stay for any length of time after all...”
“I would, but Minister Fudge has already booked out the room for me for the summer and arranged for Aurors to stand guard.” Harry shook his head, hoping Molly wouldn’t push it. He really didn’t want to risk living with the Weasleys. He liked them too much to do that.
Molly’s face fell at Harry’s words. “Oh.” She considered him for a moment longer then smiled at him, “That doesn’t mean we can’t come and visit.” She informed him, secretly planning to see if she could convince Arthur to try and get Harry transferred into their home. “Now...”
“What’s this?” Fred or George asked, picking up the notes Harry had been making on the history of Hogwarts, “Ickle Harry doing his homework?”
“Give me that.” Harry snatched at the paper, not wanting to share his research outside of Ron, Hermione and Luna, only for it to be dangled out of reach. “Guys!” He complained.
Before anyone could say anything, Ron’s rat, Scabbers, had leapt from Ron’s pocket and gone running out of the open door. Padfoot, with a loud bark and a deep growl shot off after him, causing both Harry and Ron to run after them, both calling their pets back to them.
Neither paid any attention and Scabbers finally took cover in a cupboard, while Padfoot stood outside barking like mad.
“Padfoot!” Harry shouted over the noise, getting embarrassed by his dog’s actions and the looks he was getting from other residents at the inn, “Padfoot sit.”
The dog sat but kept growling and Harry had to get George’s help to pull the huge canine away from the cupboard so Ron could retrieve his rat.
“Sorry Ron. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” Harry groaned as he shut the dog in his room and they gathered in the corridor, “He’s been so well behaved.”
Ron just glowered at the door and the dog that was growling like mad on the other side. “Well he better leave Scabbers alone. He’s not been well. We were going to get some medicine from the pet store.”
“I’ll get him to behave.” Harry promised, “Give me one minute.”
Harry slipped into his room, just about managing to stop Padfoot from escaping as he did so and locked the door behind him. “Padfoot sit.”
The dog growled at door once more and then sat, looking incredibly pissed off.
“Those are my friends out there.” Harry growled at Padfoot, worried that the Weasleys might not come back if his dog wanted to eat their pets, “And that was their rat. You can’t eat their rat.”
Padfoot growled at him in response.
“No.” Harry told the dog firmly, trying not to roll his eyes at the fact while Harry wasn’t saying anything that the dog didn’t want to hear Padfoot understood him perfectly. When it came to understanding a command not to do something however, the comprehension was very much lacking. Harry had thought it was just cats that had that issue, but obviously not. “No eating Scabbers. No hunting Scabbers and no chasing Scabbers.”
Padfoot whined at him.
“No. I don’t want you scaring the Weasleys off. I don’t have many friends and I don’t want to lose the ones I have. If you won’t leave Scabbers alone then I’m just going to have to send you back where you came from.”
That made the dog shut up hastily and Padfoot hung his head in shame, licking Harry apologetically as the boy attached leash to collar.
“I’m not really mad.” Harry promised the dog with a sigh, “I just...” Harry trailed off. Perhaps the problem was that he needed a day or two for everything to sink in. The last few days had been rather hectic and he hadn’t really stopped yet.
When Padfoot licked him again, Harry chuckled and ruffled the fur on the dog’s head.
“Come on then you monster.” Harry chuckled as he opened the door, holding tightly onto the lead, just in case Padfoot decided to make a break for it again. No such incident occurred though and by the time they reached Diagon Alley, Harry was almost certain that Padfoot had only chased Scabbers out of boredom. Scabbers had poked his head out of Ron’s pocket twice since then and though Padfoot had let out a low growl the one time he had seen the rat, he did seem to be behaving otherwise.
They made a stop at the pet store for some Rat Tonic, which looked to quite possibly be the most vile substance in existence from what Harry could see of it and then headed for Fortescue’s ice cream parlor where Harry treated everyone to an ice cream and tried to ignore the blush on Ginny’s face whenever he said even a word to the girl.
Obviously whatever he’d said or done while he’d been possessed by Powel down in the Chamber of Secrets had only increased the crush she had on him.
“Hey Ginny?” Harry asked when something occurred to him.
The girl jumped a mile and stared at him for a moment, as if internally squeezing over the fact that he’d started a conversation with her, “Y…Yes Harry?”
“What do you know about Luna Lovegood?”
“Loon...” Ginny paused at the look on Harry’s face, remembering too late that Harry was friends with the girl in question and mentally wincing at her own stupidity. “Only what everyone knows.”
“Which is?” Harry asked, wondering if Luna’s Comb had shown some of its powers off yet, or whether Luna had much better control over her item than he did.
“She talks to herself.” Ginny started listing things off, “She often spaces out. She doesn’t really hear what you’re saying and we’re half convinced she’s a Seer, because she often talks about things that haven’t happened yet but happen hours later.”
“The poor girl lost her mother a couple of years ago.” Molly spoke up, her face a picture of concern, “Selene was a lovely woman, a little... different, like her daughter, but sweet enough. Unfortunately she was prone to playing with potions and got herself caught up in some dark arts ritual that went wrong and well...” Molly sighed, “Xenophilius has to raise her on his own now so it’s no wonder she’s a little strange, what with all the nonsense he believes.”
Harry gave the woman a curious look, but Molly wasn’t willing to share any other information and Ginny had gone quiet so instead Harry got to listen to the Weasley twins talking about the upcoming rollover in the lottery that was apparently held by the Daily Prophet.
Harry hadn’t known about the lottery, but the twins were more than willing to share what they knew. Including the fact that the upcoming prize was a couple of thousand Galleons but they were too young to enter.
That hadn’t apparently, stopped their parents from entering multiple times. Harry supposed, though he didn’t know how it worked, that the more times you entered the more chances you had to win, but if that was the case, then there would be people who entered hundreds of times. It seemed a bit pointless to him.
Still he kept his mouth closed and listened to the twins rambling on about what they’d do with a couple of thousand Galleons, liking their idea of starting up a joke shop. He had been about to inform them of that and offer some of the ridiculous amounts of money in his account towards that goal when Molly had started ranting about how ridiculous the idea was that if Fred and George didn’t take their studies seriously, then they’d never amount to anything.
Harry, who honestly thought the twins were awesome and envied their pranking ability, was surprised to hear her lay into them so harshly but filed the thought about giving them some money away for a later date.
Once they’d all finished their ice cream, Harry had all but dragged Ron to see the new broomstick and they, along with the other Weasley children, drooled over the Firebolt in the window. Horribly tempted to buy one for each of them, Harry wondered how many of those he could afford and if it would clean out the rest of the gold in his account.
Before he could do something ridiculous with his money, Mrs Weasley ushered all of the children away, muttering something about the time and how they needed to be getting back. They parted ways at the fireplace, where Molly told him that he was welcome to visit any time even if it was at some absurd time of the morning, and that all he’d need to do was call for ‘The Burrow’ when he used the floo and he’d end up in their kitchen.
It was a nice thought, having somewhere that he could go if he needed to, and it left Harry buzzing a little as he headed back upstairs and back to his research. Hermione would have been proud as he went through the texts carefully, scouring them for information.
There was a little on the razing of a village of Muggles, which had burned to the ground and left no survivors, killing around a hundred people in one of the texts on history around the time of the Founders, but there wasn’t much else on that subject and Harry dismissed it as frankly unimportant in favour of pouring over a mention of the golden Dagger Salazar Slytherin had been wielding in his battle with Godric Gryffindor.
There were no actual images of course. As there hadn’t been any cameras during the age of the Founders. There was, however, a copy of a painted picture, which depicted Slytherin with sword in one hand, Dagger in the other, locked in combat against Gryffindor, who had the more traditional shield and sword combination, and was wearing a golden helmet.
Harry took in the sight of the two items, knowing them to be two of the Serpent Items he had been researching and he quickly read the text, hoping to find something out about the pair. What he actually found was a rather bland section on how Gryffindor had lost all trust in Slytherin, discovered the incredibly dark magic he had been using behind the back of all the others and challenged him to a Shadow Duel.
Harry had no idea what a Shadow Duel was but it sounded important. However there wasn’t another mention of it in the entire rest of the book. Instead the book simply mentioned the fact that neither man had survived the Duel and gone on to mention how the last surviving Founder, Hufflepuff, worked to finish setting Hogwarts up, ready for her retirement and been found one morning in an everlasting sleep, just as her friend Ravenclaw had nearly five years previously. The last of the Founders died, while still sleeping three months later.
Harry frowned slightly, wondering what had happened to the Dagger and the Helm after the battle. He knew what had happened to the Comb. It had been passed on from generation to generation until eventually it had reached the hands of Luna. But he had no idea how the Dagger had fallen into the hands of Voldemort, nor did he have a single clue where the Helm had vanished to.
If the other items could survive this long, the Pendant and the Helm had to be around somewhere. Not that he wanted another Serpent Item. One ghost on a timeshare in his body was more than enough for him, but it would have been interesting to find out if they’d been destroyed somehow or if they were simply in someone’s vault for safe keeping or... there were hundreds of options, including that the pair were buried in some field somewhere, just waiting for archaeologists to dig them up.
Harry gave up on that book when it started on a completely different tangent and went back to his book on Voldemort, wondering if he’d find the term ‘Shadow Duel’ in there. It wasn’t but Harry hadn’t gotten too far before he’d realised he’d had a stupid moment and compared the things going on in the painted image of the ‘Shadow Duel’ and some of the things described in Voldemort’s Shadow Games.
They were exactly the same thing. The book on the last war had also, he realised, called them ‘Dark Games’ and ‘Dark Duels’. It was a lot of terms for exactly the same thing and it had thrown him but the evidence was right there, he just hadn’t seen it.
Looking at the possible effects of a Shadow Game made Harry realise something else too. He now knew exactly what had had happened to Vernon and Dudley and he didn’t think it was something that would be fixable no matter how much magic was poured into the problem. If he was right, Powel, while in control of his body, had challenged his relations to a Shadow Game and they had to have lost.
Part of Harry wanted to be sorry about it, wanted to feel guilty that his lack of ability to control the spirit of his item had resulted in the injury of his Uncle and his cousin, but he couldn’t. There had been one too many incidents over the years, one too many bruises for Harry to feel sympathetic towards them. Between that and the fact that Powel wasn’t prone to taking over and challenging people randomly, Harry couldn’t help but feel that perhaps whatever ‘Judgement’ or ‘Penalty’ Powel had inflicted had been justified.
Feeling a bit like he’d tried to cram too much for an exam, he took the night off, piling up his books on a table before spreading out on the floor with his cards, trying to ignore the fact niggling at the back of his mind that these same creatures had been the ones that Voldemort had been summoning during the last war to oppress the wizarding public. The game was Muggle. It was possible that it had been based on the creatures, especially if they had been on the news during the last war.
Working through the hundreds of cards in the box of boosters and with a rough knowledge of what he was doing, using the starter deck as a base, Harry slowly went through every last card, picking out the ones which appealed to him, which appeared to mostly be the Winged Beasts, and combining them with a few spell and trap cards, things like the Rising Air Current Luna had traded with him working well with the birds he’d picked out.
When he was finally happy with the forty cards in his deck he sorted the rest of his cards into piles dependant on type. Those piles he then sorted into name and attribute. He was almost finished with his pile of Fairy monsters when he realised he was procrastinating on deciding what he was going to do next.
He’d already sent a letter off to Luna, asking her for more information and explaining that he knew about Voldemort’s Shadow Games so that part of the decision was made for him. Luna had asked him to inform her when he’d known that much and he was curious about what more she could tell him.
Perhaps that was the best option. There wasn’t much he could do about what had happened before. Nor could he interact with the spirit of the Bracer. His best bet now was to go to the only other person he knew who held another Serpent Item, either that or Professor Dumbledore and he didn’t know how to reach the Headmaster during the holidays.
If he wanted it to be safe to go and visit the family who were more than willing to take him in, he needed her help. He just hoped she’d be willing to do something about the problem.
Another meal, another walk and another night’s sleep later Harry was just contemplating if he should carry his deck around like Luna did when the dirty blonde haired girl slipped into his room without a single warning, causing Padfoot to snarl at her.
A hiss and burst of golden light later, Padfoot was frozen in place.
“Harry, you have a not-a-dog in your room. Did you know?” She asked curiously as the dog let out a startled yelp.
“Huh?” Harry asked, confused, “Yes, I’m aware that Padfoot’s in the room. He’s mine. Padfoot Luna, Luna Padfoot. Please get on.”
“Huh.” Luna considered Padfoot for a moment longer, then suddenly Padfoot could move again. The dog barked at her sharply for a moment before hiding under the bed causing Harry to peer at the dog, worried. “I wouldn’t suggest transfiguration as a Penalty Game.” Luna commented as Harry straightened up, “It’s not really a fair way to punish someone since they can lose their mind in the form they’re trapped in.”
“Oh no. No no no.” Harry shook his head rapidly, “Padfoot’s not from one of my Penalty Games. I’ve never even...” Harry trailed off. “Wait, he’s human?”
“You didn’t know?” Luna asked, worried.
“I just thought he was a smart dog.” Harry shook his head, suddenly warier of the dog under his bed and moving away from him quickly.
“Maybe we should deal with him before we talk about important matters.” When Harry nodded in response Luna helped him to drag the dog out from under the bed.
“Take human form.” Something about Luna changed and suddenly she seemed a lot more regal than before, more like the way she’d acted when she’d spoken to him in his room before. For the first time he noticed that instead of the silvery grey eyes she’d had before, her eyes were now brown. “Now. Before I make you.”
Padfoot growled at her.
“Don’t test me, Padfoot.” Luna growled, “Unless you think you’re a match for my Item.”
The dog growled again.
“De-Spell.”
Harry missed the card between Luna’s fingers but he didn’t miss the way that Padfoot stiffened suddenly, nor could he look away as Padfoot went through a rather weird and painful looking transformation from four legged furry friend to the man Harry had seen on the posters of Sirius Black.
Before Sirius finished his transformation back to human form Harry had blacked out.
Luna glanced at Harry as the Bracer glowed and Harry’s black hair took on a browner tone, his eyes going amber.
“This one is yours, Powel.” Luna said, curtsying and gesturing to Sirius who had been frozen in place with a glower and a wave of the Bracer spirit’s hand. “But I want a word with you afterwards.”
“I understand Helga.” Powel nodded.
The spirit of the Serpent Comb blinked at him, surprised and then smiled at him and waved towards Sirius again.
“What’s going on here?” Sirius demanded.
“That’s what I should be asking you.” Powel glowered, “Pretending to be my host’s pet. I’m guessing that ‘Grey’ character was you too.”
“Your host?” Sirius’s eyes widened, “Who are you and what have you done to my Godson!?”
“Your Godson?” Powel demanded, “I think you gave up the right to call him that when you tried to kill him.”
“If you’ll remember I stopped that Death Eater from getting a second shot in.” Sirius shot back.
“Why would you stop one of your own allies fro...?”
“Me?” Allies with that!” Sirius looked severely offended, “How dare you?”
“You’re a Death Eater.” Powel pointed out, “A mass murderer who apparently wants my host dead. Why would I suspect otherwise.”
“I was never a Death Eater!” Sirius snarled at him, “Nor was I the one who killed all those Muggles! And Pettigrew is still alive!”
“Who?”
“The scum who betrayed Harry’s parents to Voldemort. He’s alive.”
“Where?”
“You think I went after that rat because I was bored?” Sirius demanded. “That was Pettigrew. He’s an Animagus. Like me. And he’s probably fled by now!”
Powel paused, grimaced and ran a hand down his face. “Scabbers? Is Pettigrew?”
Helga frowned slightly as she wondered why Powel suddenly looked like he wanted to throttle someone.
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Sirius snapped back.
“Damn it.” Powel growled.
“Who are you?” Sirius demanded of Powel, “And why are you possessing my Godson?”
“My name is Powel Redgrave. I’m a Master of Transfiguration and a Teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Powel replied, standing straighter as he spoke, “And I’m possessing your Godson because he’s wearing my item and I’m stuck in it.” Powel paused, “Oh don’t worry. He’s unharmed. If he takes my Bracer off, I can’t possess him.” He saw an idea forming in Sirius’s head, “Try and take it from Harry without his permission and I’ll Shadow Game you.”
Sirius had been active during the last war, he knew the horror stories, and though he glowered at the spirit in control of Harry’s body, he wasn’t stupid enough to risk doing more than that.
Powel considered the man in front of him, then let out an irritable noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a growl, releasing the spell he had petrifying the man.
It took Sirius a moment to realise that he could move again and when he did, he sat down on one of the chairs. “So what are you going to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t keep possessing my Godson. You could kill him.” Sirius pointed out.
“Wrong, actually.” Helga spoke up, interfering in the conversation for the first time, “What kills the host is the suppression of their soul when a second one moves into the body. We don’t live in their bodies, we live in our items and when we need to take control, it’s the True Self who enters the item. There’s never two of us in the body at the same time.”
Sirius blinked at her, “So this,” He gestured towards the pair of them, “Is harmless?”
“Relatively.” Helga looked less than concerned, “I’ve been doing this for over a thousand years and the only harm that’s ever come to a host due to my actions is when I ran into someone else’s Shadow Game while trying to talk some sense into them.”
Sirius didn’t look completely reassured. In his situation neither spirit could imagine that they’d be much better.
“You need to speak to my host, but I would suggest that you spend most of your time in canine form.” Powel told Sirius. “There are Aurors all over Diagon looking for you and I doubt you want to be taken back to Azkaban.”
“You’re on my side?” Sirius looked surprised.
“Too much of what you said makes sense.” Powel scowled, “But if you try anything that harms my host and you will regret it.”
“Why are you so protective of him?” Sirius wanted to know, “Is it just because you need his body?”
“Yes and no. The Serpent Bracer was mine, I got myself killed and sealed within it.” There was embarrassment there, and frustration, “Now it belongs to your Godson. I’d rather the same didn’t happen to him. It’s not a good way to spend a thousand years.”
“What happened during that battle?” Helga asked, watching Powel with concern, “You should have been able to handle that mob easily.”
“I don’t remember.” Powel admitted heavily, “The last thing I remember is talking with Salazar before we parted ways and then,” He sighed, “Nothing. I have no memory of how I was sealed, nor do I remember what happened during the fight.” Helga frowned slightly but Powel looked at Sirius. “I will answer any questions you may have at another time, but now, if you don’t mind, I have an old friend to catch up with.”
Sirius just nodded, trying to process exactly what he’d been told as the former Transfiguration professor turned to one of the women who had been his boss when he’d been alive.
“Madam Hufflepuff, please excuse my earlier failure to follow protocol.” Powel bowed to the woman currently in control of Luna’s body, “It is good to see another of our time.”
“I would say the same except that you have been foolish, Redgrave.” Helga scolded him, “I understand the need to protect your host. I have looked after many before my current holder inherited my Item. But you are more idiotic than I realised if you believe that you can keep using the Penalties you have.”
“I cannot lift the Penalties I’ve set,” Powel scowled at her, having not expected the lecture for what was, in his opinion, a fully justified challenge and Penalty, “Nor would I do so if I could. Vernon and Dudley Dursley...”
“I understand. I was thinking about doing something about his situation myself.” Helga held up a hand as she spoke, “But this time is not like our own. If it gets out that you are possessing him, they will send him through Rowena’s Veil.”
With that the spirit in control of Harry’s body froze, a look of disgust and anger on his features. “They would not...”
“You know the dangers of the Shadow Realm, Powel. Just as I do. Do you really want to risk your host’s life?”
“But he’s a child.” Powel’s growl mollified Sirius’s concerns about if Powel was really protective of Harry because he was worried about the boy, or just because he needed a body, but only slightly.
“That won’t matter to them. People without Items don’t survive possession, so to the Ministry they’re already classed as dead and... well... you know what walking through Rowena’s Veil is like...”
Indeed Powel did. The Veil had been designed by Ravenclaw as an easy method of getting back out of the Shadow Realm. A permanent gate that had taken the powers of all five Serpent Items to create and fix so nothing could escape. After a scare where they’d nearly lost Helga because she’d drained herself too heavily and not had the power left to escape the grasp the Shadows had had on her, it had seemed like a good idea. The Items were drawn to the Gate and, in the Shadows, the reverse was true.
That the Ministry for Magic was using it to feed the Shadows with souls whenever they discovered someone who was possessed was worrying.
“You need to stop and think about what you’re doing.” Helga spoke again when she saw that her words had almost sunk in, “I have waited over a decade for someone other than Slytherin to emerge.” Powel frowned slightly when Helga said Slytherin, catching the combination of hurt, anger and shame, “It would be nice for you to be around longer than a few days.”
Powel scowled but nodded. “I’ll be a little more careful.”
“Good.” Helga looked pleased, then suddenly it wasn’t Helga anymore, it was Luna who grinned at Powel and settled on the bed.
“Can Harry come out to play now?” She asked, giving Powel a sweet and innocent look.
Powel just snorted, amused by Luna’s complete lack of concern, and closed his eyes. Sirius watched in shock as Harry’s hair returned to its normal raven black colour and, when Harry opened his eyes and looked around, panicked, until he saw Luna unharmed and waving happily at him, the dog animagus saw that Harry’s eyes were green again.
“It’s an illusion.” Luna explained, “They do it subconsciously. Helga trained herself not to though so she normally only does it if she’s cross or trying to make a point.”
Harry just blinked at her, then turned to face Black, his eyes widening for a moment as he went for his wand, then confusion crossing his face as he realised something.
“You’re not in a coma.”
“No.” Sirius replied, looking amused at the total confusion on Harry’s face, “I don’t appear to be.”
“You’re not insane either.”
“No more than usual.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment longer then lowered his wand. “If you’re not insane or worse, then you either won or you got away without one, which means you didn’t attack me which means... You’re not trying to kill me?”
“Worked it out faster than your tenant.” Sirius snorted, amused.
“My... you met Powel?” Harry asked, pausing for a moment before pulling himself back on track. “If you don’t want to kill me why does everyone think you do? Aren’t you a Death Eater?”
“Because I was an idiot and no.” The last was said so firmly that Harry winced slightly, “I was never a Death Eater, but I made the mistake of trusting one, as did your parents. Now.” Sirius straightened slightly, not wanting to have the same conversation twice, “As your Godfather it’s my job to look after you, so I think I’m going to stick around for a while as your pet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re apparently a trouble magnet and I can’t walk around on two legs.” Sirius chuckled, “Disguise charms only go so far after all. Besides, everyone thinks you have a dog now, so it’s a good cover.”
Harry couldn’t deny that fact. “So you’re really not trying to kill me?”
“No.” Sirius looked less amused this time, “Or do you not remember the guy who attacked you a couple of days ago?”
“People kept telling me that was you.” Harry defended himself, “Besides, I don’t remember anything after I felt the spell go past.”
Sirius grumbled something about ‘Powel not Harry’ and then shrugged, “It doesn’t matter. Now, if you don’t mind, I want a nap.” With that Sirius took dog form again and curled up under the table and went to sleep. Harry stared at him for a moment, trying to work out how Sirius was in clothes when he took human form, but had is collar when a dog then shrugged and turned to Luna.
“I was hoping you could help me with something...”
“Helga’s already spoken to Powel.” Luna smiled at him, “So don’t worry. Unless he forgets he’s not going to get you chucked out of reality.”
“Chucked out of...” Harry trailed off, deciding that since it was Luna he probably wasn’t going to understand everything that came out of her mouth and the faster he understood that and worked around the fact the better.
Luna got off the bed and scooped something up off of the floor. Harry recognised it as one of the cards that he’d missed when he’d been collecting up his small army of Duel Monsters cards.
“You didn’t get this one from me.” Luna commented, showing his the Shining Friendship card that she’d picked up.
“No, I went into London and found Forbidden Planet. Then I bought almost all their stock...”
“It’s nice to have that sort of money in the Muggle world.” Luna nodded, amused by Harry’s embarrassment. “Do you have a deck built or would you like some help?”
“I have one built from cards that seem to like me. It’s untested though.”
Harry recognised the look Luna got. It was very similar to the one Ron gained when someone suggested a game of chess and he couldn’t help but be amused.
Several hours later he was in a rather different frame of mind as while he’d put up a decent challenge, Luna had squashed him six of the eight times they’d played against each other.
“It was the Ludios.” Luna patted his hand consolingly as she shuffled her deck and slipped it into her box, “They were stealing all your luck.”
“Maybe.” Harry let out a soft sigh and nodded, shuffling his bird cards and putting them away.
Luna got up and dusted herself off before offering Harry a hand to his feet. “You did well for your first time.” She informed him with an oddly serious look on her face. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Harry nodded, surprised that Luna was willing to spend so much time with him, “I mean unless you have something you need to...”
Luna gave him a patient look, “I’m Loony Lovegood, remember?”
Harry did and then he felt a little guilty about thinking that Luna might just be humouring him. After all, while he had Hermione and the Weasleys, Luna didn’t have anyone except him to talk to. “Sorry.”
Luna just waved it off with a smile. “It doesn’t matter.” She turned to leave but paused at the doors, “Actually you’re going to be busy tomorrow, and for a few weeks... See you on the train?”
“Huh?” Harry replied intelligently, not used to Luna’s predictions.
“Enjoy your trip. Make sure you take lots of photos.” Before Harry could get Luna to explain she was gone, slipping out the door.
“I swear,” Harry complained at Padfoot, “She picks when to be crazy.”
Sirius just barked his agreement on that one, wondering when his Godson would work out that it was a female trait.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Harry insisted, “Though if the spirit of the Bracer’s going to behave I might visit the Weasleys...” Still musing he stepped into the bathroom attached to his room, got undressed, dumping the Bracer on a high shelf, told Padfoot to stay in the main room and started having a bath, only to get interrupted by a knock on the door and the sound of Padfoot barking.
“One minute.” Harry yelled, wrapping his towel around him and pulling on a robe, grateful that they were rather covering as he opened to door to an assortment of Weasleys at the door with huge grins on their faces. “Uh. Hi?”
Before he could get another word in edgeways, he had been glomped by a rather overenthusiastic Ginny, who swiftly realised he was soggy and not wearing anything under the robes and let go, blushing bright red.
“Not that I mind the invasion.” Harry spoke, just as tomato like as Ginny, “But I was kind of in the middle of a bath.”
“I apologise Harry.” Arthur said as he entered the room, “But the kids wanted to share the news and I was hoping to extend an invitation.”
“News?” Harry asked, his hand on Padfoot’s collar as he watched Ron’s wriggling pocket, surprised that his friend had brought the rat back here after the last little episode.
“We won the lottery.” Ron grinned, “Us. The Wealseys. We won.”
Harry blinked at him, “What?”
“The Daily Prophet’s lottery. You know, the grand prize rollover jackpot?” Fred asked, settling on Harry’s bed, “The one we were talking about the other day?”
The information finally sank into Harry’s head and he grinned at the family who had been looking out for him since he’d met them, “Really?”
“Uh huh.” Ron nodded, amused that his little sister had gone silent after her enthusiastic hug, “Three thousand Galleons. All for us. And...”
“And that’s where my offer comes in, Harry.” Arthur interrupted his son, “I know Molly’s extended an invitation to you to stay with us over the summer, but we’re planning on using the money to fund a holiday in Egypt and we were kind of hoping you’d join us.”
Harry stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Of course if you don’t want to, we understand but...”
“No, no, of course I’d like to come.” Harry shook his head, “I just...” Harry glanced at Padfoot, who licked his hand and nudged him towards the oldest Weasley, “I’d have to find someone to look after Padfoot for me and I don’t have a passport.”
“You only need to fill out a couple of forms to get assigned a magical passport,” Mr Weasley grinned, “Unlike Muggles we have ways of making sure you’re who you say you are and we’re not going for a week or so. I need to arrange cover for my shifts in work after all. Why don’t you take the opportunity to send a letter to Hermione or Luna and see if they’ll take your dog for the duration of the holiday?”
Harry paused for a moment, then decided he was going to ask Luna since she knew about Sirius, while Hermione had been told about Padfoot but didn’t know about the bigger issue.
“You’ll finally get to meet Bill.” Fred or George grinned at him, “He’s wicked. He works for Gringotts as a Curse Breaker, gets to explore all sorts of ruins and tombs in Egypt. He’s got this awesome earring and...”
“And your mother will murder you if you even think about getting one like it.” Arthur told the twins, who looked like they were sulking. Harry knew better. If he was right they were probably scheming ways to get one without angering their mother.
“So where do I get a passport and how much do I need to pay?”
“I picked up the paperwork on my way out.” Arthur grinned at him and handing it over, “We need passports too after all. And don’t worry. We have it covered.”
“But...” Harry started to protest, thinking of how much money was in his vault and how little money the Weasleys had.
“Now don’t go thinking that we shouldn’t be spending the prize money on you.” Arthur chuckled, interrupting Harry before he could get going, “We’re using it to treat the family to something we wouldn’t normally get and you’re family.” Harry frowned slightly, confused, “I assure you, Molly decided that back before you stole the flying car.”
Both Harry and Ron grimaced at the mention of the damned car that was currently haunting the Forbidden Forest.
“If it helps, think of it as eleven years worth of Birthday presents.” Arthur suggested, “Since we missed your first eleven.”
Harry nodded, still shocked that they would be willing to take him along on their family holiday, and made a note to take plenty of money with him anyway, so he didn’t have to spend the Weasleys’ any more than necessary.
“Now, as much as you all want to talk plans I think we should probably leave Harry to his bath, don’t you?” Arthur asked his children. Ginny and Harry went bright red again, but Fred and George took a rather different route. They picked Harry up by his armpits and his legs, carried him into the bathroom and dropped him into the bath.
Harry surfaced, coughing up bubbly water, to find Padfoot sat on one of the twins, while Percy was lecturing the other.
“You stupid idiot, you could have killed him...” Harry listened, rather amused, as Percy laid into the twins, but stayed in the bath, not really wanting to climb out in wet clothes while he had company. “...Don’t you ever think about what you’re doing?”
“Lighten up Perce,” Fred spoke, having been identified by his brother halfway through the rant, “It was only a bit of fun.”
“Yeah,” George added from his position underneath Sirius, “After all we have to prank our brothers. It’s mandatory.”
Any irritation Harry felt at getting dunked was washed away at that. He liked Fred and George. He wouldn’t have been able to get through the second year quite so easily without their teasing, and that they liked him enough to go along with his inclusion into the family was a relief and a joy.
Still he let the Weasleys see themselves out and quickly locked the door behind them, before darting back into the bathroom and his nice, luckily still warm, bath.
Harry really was busy the next day. He refused to go on holiday looking like a tramp. He had a funny feeling that he wouldn’t get through customs if he looked like someone who had just rolled off of the street, so, without so much as a hello to any of the Aurors, he slipped back out into Muggle London, this time cheating and using the Knight Bus rather than going on foot, and purchased a whole new wardrobe as well as another box of cards, this time from the new set of boosters that had been released the day before.
When he finally got back to the Leaky Cauldron, he half expected to get an earful from whoever was supposed to be on duty, but the only complaints he had were from Sirius, who had not enjoyed the fact he’d been cooped up all day and wanted to stretch his legs, and from Hedwig who had brought yet another letter from Hermione, who was planning on visiting the next day if he wasn’t busy.
Harry sent a message back again, leaving Hedwig staring at him irritably, since she wanted a rest, and took Padfoot for a walk and then settled down with his purchases, organising his new clothes and sorting through the hundreds of new cards, making note of a few that Luna might like, simply enjoying the peace that came with having a few days away from Dursleys.
When Hermione arrived the next day however, that peace and quiet was shattered, at least for a little while as she ranted at him in person for not going to her or Ron when he had been kicked out of his house. Right up until Padfoot licked her hand. Then she was too engrossed in finding out where he’d gotten the dog and where he was planning on keeping it during term time and did he know how to look after it properly, and had he taken it to the vets yet?
Hermione’s questions only stopped when Harry presented her with the books he’d bought. The wizard swiftly wished he’d waited till after he’d introduced her to the game of Duel Monsters because she proceeded to skim through all of them. She did, however, come to the same conclusion he had about the Serpent Items, minus knowledge about Powel, in half the time it had taken him.
Then their conversation had taken a rather different route. Instead of ranting at him Hermione started fussing, worrying for her friend and what using and owning such a dangerous dark artefact could do. She did suggest that he got rid of it, much as she had before they’d left school for the summer, but bit her tongue when Harry reminded her that Dumbledore had stated that he should keep it with him at all times.
Harry got to watch, amused, as Hermione was torn between concern for her friend, anger that Harry should shrug off the danger so easily and confusion since she still wasn’t sure if Dumbledore was really looking out for Harry or not.
“You are going to be careful with it, aren’t you?” Hermione asked finally, biting her lower lip and watching her friend carefully, knowing him far too well to ask him to stay out of trouble.
“Of course.” Harry agreed, not particularly wanting to become known as the Boy-Who-Sealed-Souls, “Though you know what I’m like. I’ll try and be careful and end up getting eaten by a dragon or something...”
Hermione glowered at Harry’s nochatlent shrug. “Harry James Potter. If I find out that you’ve been playing with dragons, I’ll... I’ll...” She seized one of the pillows off of his bed and swatted him with it repeatedly.
Harry let out a yelp of shock, having never expected it from his bookworm of a friend and grabbed the other, counter attacking and the pillow war didn’t stop until next door complained that could whoever had let the herd of hippogriffs into the room please let them back out again.
Neither kid could resist dissolving into laughter the moment the door was shut behind the complainer.
“We sound nothing like a herd of hippogriffs.” Hermione stated as they pair of them calmed down, stroking the fur on Padfoot’s back. “There’s much less squawking and roaring for a start.”
“What’s a hippogriff?” Harry asked only to earn himself a despairing look from his friend.
“I swear Harry, you don’t read anything you don’t have to, do you?”
“I read all those books I showed you.” Harry stated a little defensively.
“Only because they had information about your Bracer in them.” Hermione pointed out, looking like the cat that’s gotten the crème as Harry couldn’t deny her point. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have even thought about going into Flourish and Blotts would you?”
“Maybe.” Harry grouched, wondering, once again, why Hermione was a Gryffindor when clearly her love of knowledge should have made her a Ravenclaw.
Hermione just let out a soft snort and leaned back, using her hands to support her as she stared at the ceiling. “Mum and Dad have gone into London. Made me promise to stay here and talk to you. I told them the Dursleys kicked you out and they asked me if you’d consider staying with them?”
Harry blinked, wondering where this had come from. Unlike Ron’s parents, Hermione’s barely knew him. Certainly not enough, in his opinion, to make an offer like that. “Why?”
Hermione chuckled at him softly, though the sound was a mixture of bitter and something Harry couldn’t quite catch. “You were my first real friend. My parents think that’s important.”
Harry stared at her. “You’re kidding? There was no one...?”
“I don’t know where you went to school but no one wants to be friends with the nerd.” Hermione snorted, “We tried a few schools, but it was always the same. The kids my age didn’t want to know me, and the kids in the year I was always placed in couldn’t stand that they had to deal with having a younger class member.”
“You got to skip years?” Harry asked, slightly envious since if he’d been jumped up a year, he would no longer have had to share lessons with his cousin Dudley. His envy vanished just moments later as he both envisioned the reactions of his Aunt and Uncle if he had been jumped up a year and pulled ahead of their precious ‘Duddykins’ and heard the soft snort that Hermione let out.
“It’s not as good as it sounds. It just means you take tests quicker. Have to change school faster and have more to unlearn when you go to Hogwarts.” Hermione sounded frustrated.
“Is that why you took every class you could when we picked our options?” Harry asked, curious.
“I’m bored in normal classes.” Hermione admitted, “And hopefully that much work will keep me occupied. I mean I probably won’t get accepted for all of them, not unless they can work out the schedules and that would be a nightmare. I’m sure Professor McGonagall has enough on her plate already without having to worry about reorganising all of our classes.”
Harry just nodded his agreement. Between her duties as Head of Gryffindor House, the fact she was Deputy Headmistress and all of her classes, he could well imagine that scheduling headaches were the last thing she needed.
“Well, think you’ll have time to learn one more thing?” Harry asked. “I mean it’s for recreation, and that’s a necessary part of studying, isn’t it?”
“I might. It depends what it is.” Hermione looked curious. “It doesn’t have anything to do with broomsticks, does it?”
“No. No flying. A few things that could fly, but no flying ourselves.”
“Oh?” Hermione asked, curious now, “Do tell.”
“It’s called Duel Monsters and...”
“You’re not talking about the Muggle trading card game that’s been hovering around the edges of popularity for a couple of years?” Hermione asked, confused. “Where did you even learn about it?”
“Luna.” Harry replied simply with a small smile.
“Ah.” Hermione nodded in understanding. After all she’d learned that ‘Luna’ was a perfectly rational excuse for almost anything, “I have a few cards, but I never really got into the game.”
“Luna’s teaching me how to play.” Harry replied, “I have plenty of spare cards if you’re interested.”
Hermione was and they spent an enjoyable afternoon going through Harry’s cards and beating each other with their decks, Hermione favouring Spellcasters and sneak attacks over Harry’s favoured heads on rush attack policy.
Midway through their fourth test of Hermione’s deck a thought popped into Harry’s head.
“Hey Hermione?” Harry asked, curious about something.
“Hmm?” Hermione replied, almost as engrossed in her cards as she had been in the books earlier.
“What do you know about Egypt?”
The question threw Hermione, who looked up as him, confused. “Why?”
“Uh...” Suddenly Harry wished he hadn’t asked since he had no idea if the Weasleys had invited Hermione on their holiday. “Because Luna said these,” He held up the arm with the Bracer on, “Have a base in Egyptian magic and I was curious as to what you know.”
“Well I’ve never really looked into Egyptian forms of magic.” Hermione admitted, “Thought about it when Ron mentioned that his brother was a curse breaker for Gringotts, but never got around to it. I was a little busy trying to learn ahead. After all the Pure-Bloods have been around magic for much longer than we have and...” She looked a little embarrassed, “I might have been asking the upper years for book suggestions.” She paused at the look on Harry’s face, “Yes I know, I’m being a know-it-all.”
“No, no it’s not that.” Harry shook his head, though the thought had crossed his mind, “I’m just surprised that anyone was willing to give you a book list. I mean other than the Weasley twins none of the upper years seem to like us...”
Hermione chuckled slightly. “Oh believe me Harry, the upper year students from our house love you for your Quidditch skills and the fact you brought Gryffindor the house cup for the last two years running. But no, the ones who gave me the information I wanted were the Ravenclaws.”
“How?”
“They appreciate anyone trying to get ahead.” Hermione chuckled, “Keep wondering why I’m not a Claw too.”
“Why aren’t you a Ravenclaw if you’re so interested in learning?” Harry asked.
“Nearly was. The hat was torn between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.” Hermione blushed, “I had to ask to be put in Gryffindor. Embarrassing huh?”
“No.” Harry thought about how he’d pleaded with the Sorting Hat not to be put into Slytherin. “Not really but why Gryffindor?”
“Well, the only people I knew I wanted to be Gryffindors.” Hermione blushed, “And I kind of hoped...” She mumbled the next bit but Harry grinned at her the same.
“Well considering how little people seem to spend time with others outside their own house. I’d say it’s a good thing, right?” The smile that grew on Hermione’s face was enough to tell Harry that had been the right thing to say, even if he wasn’t quite sure where it came from.
Hermione had to leave before their duel ended, having realised the time and needing to meet up with her parents who had agreed to come back for her after they went shopping in London. Harry saw her out and then took Padfoot for a walk, taking a slightly different route again as he successfully got himself lost down the various alleys that led away from the main shops, the ones that he was always taken to when he came to Diagon with his friends, and towards the little shops that had sprung up on the outskirts.
He felt a little safer, taking a different route back to the pub every time as the only part of his walk that was predictable was the four or five yards he had to walk to enter the leaky Cauldron. Not that he seemed to have come under attack again since that one incident, causing him to wonder if it had been planned or if he’d just happened to have the bad luck to run into a drunk Death Eater.
At worst it might have been Lucius Malfoy. Harry hadn’t forgotten about the promise Draco’s father had made after he’d outed him as the man who had set the problems of last year into motion. He had a funny feeling that if Dobby hadn’t intervened when he had, either he wouldn’t be walking around or he’d have had another Penalty on his conscious.
Somehow he doubted he’d get away as lightly as he had over the Dursleys if the spirit of his Bracer had sent a member of a rich Pure-Blood family insane. Harry was under the impression that, considering how well Mr. Malfoy appeared to get on with a certain family, that the Weasleys wouldn’t be sorry if Powel had taken matters into his own hands and they probably wouldn’t have been the only ones.
When his stomach rumbled he headed back the way he’d come, finding his way by trying to recognise the shops he’d passed, all of whom had closed by the time he had finally hunted down Padfoot’s lead which had somehow ‘mysteriously’ ended up under the bed. He was a couple of alleys away from home when he overheard a conversation he probably shouldn’t have done.
“Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything you have to say.” The voice of someone Harry didn’t know but set Sirius’s tail wagging echoed around the corridor.
“I need your help.” The second voice, a panicked man’s voice, made Padfoot start growling and Harry had to dig his feet in to prevent the huge dog rushing around the corner, “Please, you’re the only one I could turn to.”
“You’re dead.” The first voice growled, deep and rough, a tone that was rather similar to Padfoot’s.
“Please Remus.” The second man begged, “I had to hide. Sirius had friends that would have been out to get me. I...”
“You had to hide for ten years, Peter?” Remus deadpanned.
“Just listen to me.” Peter pleaded, “Harry has a new pet. A dog...”
“Black?” Remus’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“I would recognise him anywhere.” Peter agreed, “Harry doesn’t know the danger he’s...”
The leash escaped Harry’s hands, leaving a rope burn behind as he lost control of his dog. Padfooit bounded around the corner, Harry milliseconds behind, and pounced on one of the men.
The other drew his wand, but Harry was faster and shot off the one useful thing he’d learnt in the school’s Dueling Club. “Expelliamus!”
The other man’s wand flew into Harry’s hand as the boy tried to pull his dog off of the ratty looking man who looked like he’d lost a lot a weight recently.
“Padfoot.” Harry pleaded, trying to ignore the fact the man whose wand he’d taken was storming over. “Padfoot down.”
“Move away from that dog.” The second man, Remus, demanded of Harry, “And give me my wand back.”
“He’s mine.” Harry growled, “And no.”
“You don’t know who...”
“Sirius Black, my Godfather.” Harry shot back, “And my guardian.”
“He’s a dangerous criminal!” Remus protested.
“He saved my life.” Harry growled at him.
“He murdered thirteen Muggles and our friend Pe...”
“I did not!” Sirius transformed back, seizing the back of Peter’s robes as the man tried to flee, “It was all Pe...”
The man in question transformed into a rat and scurried away into the darkness.
“Damn it!” Sirius snarled before shifting back into a dog and chasing after the escaped rat.
“Padfoot!”
“Black!”
Harry and Remus darted after the pair but lost them in the dark alleys.
“Wand. Now.” Remus demanded of Harry.
“Promise you won’t attack Padfoot.” Harry shook his head, backing away from the thin, light brown haired man, his wand pointed at him.
“I swear I won’t attack Padfoot as long as he doesn’t attack either of us.” Remus swore.
The moment Harry handed Remus back his wand the man held it out on his hand, “Point Me Sirius Black.”
The wand hovered above his hand for a moment and then pointed in a rather specific direction.
Harry chased after Remus who followed his wand to find a rather angry dog that turned into an incredibly angry man.
“The bastard got away!” Sirius snarled, “That treacherous, lying, backstabbing rat!”
“Black.” Remus pointed his wand at the man, “I should kill you for betraying Lily and James.”
“What?” Harry yelped, stunned.
“It. Wasn’t. Me.” Sirius growled. “We swapped Secret Keepers. I was too obvious a choice. I should never have suggested Peter. When he heard what happened he fled and I hunted him down. The prick cut off his own toe and blew up half a street escaping.” Sirius snorted angrily, “I’ll swear it under Veratasirum if nessessary.”
“Why didn’t you..." Remus trailed off as he remembered the fact that the most they’d ever found of Pettigrew was his toe, “You thought I was the spy.”
“I’m sorry, my friend.” Sirius hung his head in shame,
Remus considered Black for a few moments then lowered his wand. “We should have known that it would be the rat.”
“Excuse me.” Harry spoke up when it became obvious that Remus wasn’t going to blast Sirius, “But who are you?”
“This Harry,” Sirius said with a grin, wrapping his arm around his friend and becoming amused when Remus pulled away, “Is Moony.”
“Remus Lupin.” Remus introduced himself while glowering at Sirius, “I was a friend of your parents.”
“Nice to meet you.” Harry nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else but stopped when the sound of people running down the alley. Sirius swiftly transformed into his canine form before anyone could see him.
“What’s going on?” Harry recognised the man as the Auror who had helped him when he’d been attacked as Padfoot wandered up to Harry’s side. “Are you alright?” He asked Harry, who nodded.
“Sorry, my dog decided he was going to lick Mr Lupin to death and I had trouble pulling him off.” Harry apologised, “Sorry if the noise worried you.”
The Auror looked a little putout but didn’t say anything as he escorted the three of them back to the pub where Remus and Harry sat and had a meal, with Padfoot sat at Harry’s feet.
When he’d come home from his second year at Hogwarts it had been with triumph as he had bested a basilisk, defeated the ghost of Voldemort for a second time and saved Ginny’s life.
Except that he didn’t remember any of it.
The last thing he remembered was putting on the strange bracer he’d spotted at the bottom of the pool in the Chamber of Secrets. The next thing after that was escorting Ginny from the Chamber, sorting hat in one hand, Gryffindor’s sword in the other and a very dead basilisk behind him and he had no idea how it had happened.
Which had made explaining to everyone what had happened in the Chamber rather difficult. He’d tried to come up with something convincing but Dumbledore had known and when he’d questioned Harry on his own, the boy had shown the Headmaster the golden bracer he’d found.
Which was when Dumbledore had gained a rather odd look and told him in an enigmatic tone to take care of the bracer and told him not to worry.
Harry would have been more than happy to comply with that request, after all the bracer wasn’t exactly heavy, was obviously magical since the snake that wrapped itself around the protective piece of equipment had tightened its coils specifically to fit his arm and loosened again when he wanted to take it off at night, and the Headmaster had mentioned that it came with gifts and told him that he would give him more information when he found it.
However the blackout in the Chamber hadn’t been the only one. From the moment he’d gotten off the train and met up with his Uncle, he’d gone through the rigmarole of typical daily life with the Dursleys. Until things had started happening. Things that couldn’t possibly be classed as ‘good’.
Dudley’s friend Piers had been bullying him, Harry had had a blackout and Piers had been found the next day babbling like a lunatic.
Petunia had been starving him like she normally had, favouring her whale of a son over the nephew that she had been forced to take in when his parents had been killed and after one particularly bad morning where she’d forced him to cook breakfast but not let him prepare enough for himself, he’d had a blackout and woken up in the cupboard under the stairs with enough food to feed him for a week.
But this one had to be the worst. Uncle Vernon had started on him, about how worthless he was and how he was another mouth to feed and it wasn’t even like he was doing anything useful, and he’d clipped Harry around the head. Now this hadn’t been anything new. It had happened before. Never hard enough to do damage but it had been enough to trigger an episode and Harry had had a blackout.
Now he was on the run, kicked out of the Dursley home for having been caught at the scene of the crime, having somehow used magic to turn Vernon comatose, and he had no idea where he should go. It wouldn’t be long, he was certain, before someone reported it to the Aurors and he had a horrible feeling that ‘I don’t remember’ wouldn’t be a viable excuse. Nor would it stand up if it was taken to trial.
The problem was he had no options. He had no Muggle money and all of his wealth was tied up as wizarding galleons, sickles and knuts, which meant that before he could do anything he needed to get to Diagon Alley.
This was perfect. Except that he had absolutely no clue how to get there, short of flying on his broom, which, he supposed, he could do if he put on his invisibility cloak and it wasn’t like he could get into much more trouble than he was already in. Still it was a last bar one resort, having learnt his lesson about flying objects and how much trouble they could get you in when he and Ron had driven his dad’s flying car to school after Dobby had barricaded the gateway to platform 9 and 3/4.
“Great, just great.” Harry grouched, as he kicked the kerb, trying to think. “No train fair, no flying cars and no...” Harry trailed off as he realised that he was being watched out of the windows of number 4, Privet Drive. They’d probably already called the Muggle police to come and arrest him already and were just watching to see when it would happen.
That thought made his mind up for him. He started walking. Not to Diagon Alley of course, just away from the Dursley home, half worried about explaining himself to the police, who most definitely wouldn’t take ‘magic’ as an excuse and half worried because he still couldn’t remember what had happened to leave Vernon like he was.
“Oi! Freak!” Harry winced as his cousin caught up to him, his tone furious. Understandably so.
Dudley seized Harry by the jacket and spun him around to face him. Rage was obvious on his features and Harry had a horrible feeling he wasn’t getting out of this one without a lot of bruising.
“You better fix whatever you did to Dad or I’ll punch your face in.” Dudley threatened, meaty fist raised, prepared to strike.
“I can’t.” Harry admitted, though he knew it wouldn’t aid his situation any.
He was right, Dudley’s fist struck his stomach hard, winding the almost thirteen year old and causing him to crumple up in a ball on the ground, coughing hard.
“Fix. It. Now.” His cousin punctuated each of his growled words with a boot to Harry’s stomach, “And whatever you did to Piers.”
Harry felt it, felt the Bracer on his arm grow warm as Dudley backed off slightly, and then darkness overtook him as he fell into a warm sleep.
When he awoke he was on a bus. Not any kind of bus. This one was apparently called the Knight Bus and it swerved between cars at a horrendously erratic rate, squeezing itself into gaps that there was no way it should fit and somehow managing to drive up the wrong side of one of the roads entirely without being noticed by a single Muggle.
Harry had no idea how they did it, or how he had ended up on the bus in the first place, but he wasn't going to complain as moments after he had 'woken up' he arrived at Diagon Alley and had disembarked along with all of his luggage.
Part of him was curious as to what had happened to Dudley and then another part had already decided that it was a really really bad idea to ask and focused purely on getting himself inside the Leakey Cauldron and then on to Gringotts the first opportunity he had. After all if he was going to be on the run for the rest of his life the wanted to at least be able to afford food and drink, along with somewhere to stay.
The moment he walked into the wizarding pub, he knew something was up, as people had obviously noticed him, but unlike the last time he had come without the Weasleys, he wasn't mobbed. He didn't think news of what had happened in Surry could have reached here that quickly but then he couldn't know everything that was possible with magic...
"Mr Potter. Welcome." Tom, the barkeeper here, hurried over gesturing for one of his staff members to take over behind the bar before ushering Harry upstairs and out of the public eye. "I wasn't aware you were coming."
"It's an unexpected stop." Harry admitted, hoping not to get drawn into a conversation about why he was visiting. "I'm only passing through on my way to Gringotts."
"You want to be careful wandering around on your own." Tom sounded honestly concerned, "It's all over the newspapers, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban last night and everyone's up in arms about it. It's not safe for anyone to be wondering around alone right now, least of all you."
Harry blinked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Sirius Black was a Death Eater, one of the worst." Tom looked shocked that he didn't know that, "And you're the one who stopped You-Know-Who." Tom glanced around nervously for a moment and then continued on a completely different note, "Now if you stop here for a moment and have some of our pub grub, there's a Pure Blood family who pre-ordered their food arriving in a few minutes, the Lovegoods. They'll watch out for you and you'll never be bored."
"I don't know..." Harry hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to hang around a predominant Pure Blood family right now. Not when he was uncertain when he was going to have another black out and was trying to stay out of sight.
“They’re as loopy as fruit cakes the pair of them.” Tom continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “But they’re good people. Besides, the girl’s about your age. You’ve probably seen her around the school.”
The name was familiar. Harry had met a Luna Lovegood last year when everyone except his friends had thought that he was the Heir of Slytherin. The girl had seemed fascinated by his ability to talk to snakes and had even attempted to see if she could learn a little bit, but she had been weird. There had been occasions where Luna hadn’t really seemed like herself and others where she had seemed as nutty as a fruit cake.
Thinking about it in those terms, it was probably the same family.
Harry’s grumbling stomach seemed to answer the question for Tom who ushered him into a private room and handed him a menu, “Just you wait here, Mr Potter, I’ll bring your food to you.”
Once Tom had left, taking Harry’s order and the menu with him, the black haired boy just stared after him.
“So you’ll get me into trouble, but you won’t get me out of it?” Harry grouched at the golden bracer that was poking out from under his jacket sleeve, the snake on it seeming to look delighted, though he knew that it was a figment of his imagination.
He should take it off. Take it off and throw it away, or get it melted or something, but Harry didn’t want to and not only because Dumbledore had asked him to look after it. There was something about it, something special that made him rather protective of the golden item, even though he hadn’t heard anything about it before and neither, surprisingly, had Hermione.
Really, he thought, the one who he needed to speak with the most was Dumbledore. He had seemed to know what the bracer really was, even if he hadn’t given Harry any real information besides ‘look after it and it will look after you’. He would know what these blackouts were and how to stop them.
He had just finished his meal when there was a knock on his door.
Harry’s hand strayed to the pocket that held his wand as he approached the door, wary considering his experiences today. “Who is it?”
“A friend.” A bright voice informed him, one he knew rather well, “And her father.”
Harry opened the door to find Luna stood on the other side, long dirty blonde hair tucked up neatly and pinned in place by a golden decorative haircomb adorned by a serpent, a sharp contrast to her robe which was a garish combination of all of the colours of the Hogwarts houses in a zigzag pattern that left Harry dizzy after looking at it for too long.
“Mr Potter.” Mr Lovegood nodded to him as the pair entered the room, “I hear you need an escort for the day.”
“I don’t want to be a bother.” Harry tried, knowing that this could be one of his few opportunities to lose the Lovegoods before they were dragged into whatever he had gotten himself into.
“No bother. No bother at all.” Mr Lovegood waved it off with a smile, “If a friend of Luna’s needs an escort, I’m more than willing to oblige. Xenophillius Lovegood,” The man offered Harry his right hand, “Nice to meet you.”
“Harry Potter. It’s nice to meet you too.” Harry nervously offered his own, before realising too late that the bracer was still showing. It didn’t matter too much. Mr Lovegood gained an odd look for a moment before shaking Harry’s hand briskly.
“And now we’re acquainted shall we go?” Mr Lovegood asked, “I’m sure that you have lots of places you need to get to and our shopping list isn’t small either.”
“Actually I was just...” Harry trailed off as Luna latched onto his arm and pulled him out of the room and down the stairs, before heading towards the entrance to Diagon Alley. “Gringotts...”
“Well of course we’re stopping at the bank first.” Mr Lovegood informed him with a slight chuckle, “Can’t buy anything without money after all.”
Luna nodded briskly, still hanging onto Harry’s arm like a limpet. The boy thought he heard a comment about ‘Potter and Loony Lovegood’ from a couple of the students who were here with their parents on a trip , but he tried to ignore them. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the insult after all.
He was surprised to feel Luna stiffen slightly and he touched one of her arms, unsure what to do to help her relax. It appeared to help though as Luna blinked at him and gained a smile as they stepped through the archway to the biggest wizarding high street in Britain
Once through Harry almost forgot his problems. Having been escorted by Hagrid, who had had strict orders to get him everything on his list and then get him home and the Wealsey’s who had been herding their own mob and as such had had to run a tight schedule, he’d never really explored Diagon Alley properly before and he was astounded.
Of course the thing that stuck out most in his mind was the broom in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, the new one that was supposed to be better than anything before it. The Firebolt.
Oh how Harry wanted one, but he had a perfectly good Nimbus 2000 and there was no point buying a ridiculously expensive broomstick, especially when he would need that money much more when he was on the run.
There were Aurors visible all along Diagon Alley, but, to Harry’s surprise none of them seem particularly interested in him. There were several who stopped anyone wearing a hood that covered their face to show themselves and it took Harry a while but he finally realised that they weren’t looking for him. It wasn’t until he overheard a conversation between a particularly peeved shopper and a member of the police force patrolling the area however that he realised that they were, in fact, here for Sirius Black.
That was about the time that he realised that as he and Luna examined things in windows, Mr Lovegood was interviewing people on the street. Neither Auror nor civilian escaped as the man took page after page of notes.
“Luna?” Harry asked, startling the girl, who had had a farway look on her face, “Why’s your dad interviewing people?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Luna asked, surprised, “My father runs the Quibbler. It’s a rival to the Daily Prophet.”
“Oh.” Harry blinked. He supposed that made sense. After all Muggles had seven or eight different newspapers, so he guessed there had to be more than one wizarding one, he’d just never heard of it before.
“I’ll let you see a few of our spare copies.” Luna promised with a smile as Mr Lovegood finished his latest interview and the three of them continued on their way, finally reaching Gringotts about half an hour after they’d left the pub.
The bank was packed. Busy goblins served stressed out wizards as everyone tried to get what they wanted immediately and though it wasn’t as hectic as it was during the last couple of weeks before term started when everyone tried to buy their school supplies, it was busy enough to hold Harry up a little longer than he would have liked.
Between the queues, the harsh attitudes of the goblins when they discovered that he didn’t have his key and they had to use a different method of telling if he really was Harry James Potter or not and his embarrassment at having forgotten that Mrs Weasley still had his vault key, though why she had it now instead of Hagrid was beyond him, Harry was just happy to get into the cart and take the short rollercoaster like ride down to his vault.
Once there Harry bagged up as much as he could carry, only making a small dent in the pile of gold there was staring him in the face. He wanted to take more but, in a worst case scenario it was there, safe in the vault, for if he needed it later on.
Luna, who had come down with him while her father had settled affairs at their vault, had been silent for a moment when the goblin had opened the vault but had then started babbling away happily, talking about something called dingbats, which Harry had thought was just a Muggle insult, but apparently, according to Luna, were creatures that infested vaults and fed on the gold.
The goblin with them seemed less than amused when Luna asked him if they had any living in their cave system, causing Harry to wonder if it was because of the implication that Harry’s gold wasn’t safe in the care of the goblins or if it was because they actually had some of them living there and had caught them feasting off the gold in the vaults. He also couldn’t help but wonder if the dragons that apparently guarded some of the vaults ate them as snacks.
Harry attempted to lose Luna again when they reached the surface again but didn’t get very far. A commotion at the doors about some kind of huge black dog, apparently called a Grim, let the Lovegoods catch up to him.
“Anyone would think you didn’t like us.” Mr Lovegood joked. Harry would have apologised and given some false statement about him being tired and maybe they could go shopping another day when Luna said something that made him pause in his tracks.
“Harry’s preoccupied with the fact the Aurors went to his house this morning daddy.” Luna informed her father, making Harry wonder what she knew already. Then confusion set in.
If they had already been to his house why wasn’t he under arrest already?
“Ah.” Xenophillius nodded as he escorted the pair out of the doors and ushered them towards Flourish and Blotts, “Quite understandable really. It’s never fun to have people turn up uninvited.”
Harry stared at the man for a moment as they stepped into the huge bookstore, wondering if they’d heard why the Aurors had shown up at his house yet and if he’d have been as easy around him if he had.
“Come on Harry.” Luna took his hand and dragged him into the history section, where Harry spotted a copy of Hogwarts, A History, the book that Hermione had buried her nose into during their third year. Remembering how scary a peeved Hermione was and how ticked she’d been when all the copies of it had been booked out of the library last year he picked it up from the shelf before looking around for old books on magical artifacts, wondering if there was a book available that might tell him exactly what it was that he was wearing.
There were hundreds of books on artefacts and none of the ones he had time to go through before Luna and her father came looking for him had anything useful in them. Of course, he mused, after purchasing his copy of Hermione’s most read book as he sat down at a table at Fortescues with the Lovegoods with a rather large ice cream, it would help if he had a name to go on. Somehow he didn’t think that it would be easy to find anything on his bracer if he didn’t know that.
Luna finished her ice cream long before the two guys with her did and while Harry was fighting with his ice cream, trying to avoid losing half of it which was trying to fall off of the cone on the opposite side to him, she pulled a small box out of her bag and pulled out some playing cards. Except they weren’t like any cards Harry had seen before.
“What’re those?” Harry asked as Luna examined the cards in her hand carefully, took two out of the pile, put two from a second box into the pile, examining each of the cards carefully before doing so. Once he’d finished his ice cream and had washed his fingers, she passed a packet across the table to him.
“Duel Monsters.” She explained as Harry examined the packaging, wondering what kind of creature the animal depicted on it was, “It’s a Muggle game.”
Harry blinked at her, wondering why a pure blood girl who seemed like she wouldn’t be very comfortable in Muggle society would carry around cards from a Muggle game that most people probably hadn’t heard of.
“Go on.” Luna gestured to him when he didn’t open the packet, “I have plenty.”
Harry frowned slightly and opened the pack, tipping out the eleven cards inside and examining each one carefully. Luna moved her chair over so she could get a better look at what he was holding and explain about the cards as he went through them.
“That’s a monster card.” Luna informed him as Harry examined the first card out of the packet, a Silver Fang, “It’s a normal monster, you can tell that because it’s yellow. Effect monsters have an orange background and more information about their abilities in the box, instead of just a blurb.”
Harry just nodded, not quite sure what she meant by that.
“You see those stars right there?” She asked, pointing to the three stars in the corner of the card just under the black symbol in the corner which had the word ‘Earth’ written on it, “Those are its level. I’m not quite sure why they’re important right now, other than the more stars a monster has the more powerful it is.”
Again Harry nodded, pretending that he understood, after all if Luna didn’t understand the reason for them and she played the game, there was no way he would.
“The things you really want to pay attention to are this bit of text here,” She pointed just under the picture, “Which tells you what type of monster it is and these scores down here.” She pointed at the bottom right hand of the card. “These are Silver Fang’s attack and defence scores. They’re what determines what he can fight and defend against without dying.”
Harry actually understood that part and took in his Beast monster’s twelve hundred attack points and eight hundred defence points along with the fact it was a three star monster. “Is Silver Fang powerful?”
“It’s alright, but there are things much more powerful than Silver Fang out there.” Luna replied, as Harry continued to look through his cards which consisted of several monsters, and a couple of spells, which apparently had green backgrounds and informed the player of what they did in the text box.
Luna hummed as she looked them over, tutting slightly as she searched through the smaller pile of the two on her side of the table and offered a card to Harry. “Trade you my Rising Air Current for your De-Spell.”
Harry wasn’t even sure what Rising Air Current or De-Spell did, though the latter was pretty self explanatory, but he nodded and took the card in her hand in exchange for the De-Spell card in his small pile of cards.
“They’re not that expensive,” Luna informed him as she reorganised his small pile before handing it back to him. “I’d suggest you look in newsagents or comic shops.”
Harry blinked at her, confused but before he could say anything a pair of Aurors had come over to their table.
“Mr Potter, we need you to come with us.”
Harry’s stomach flipped as he got to his feet, pocketing his cards, though he didn’t think that he’d be needing them much longer where he was going. “Thanks for today.” He nodded to the Lovegoods before following the rather solemn looking and constantly alert Aurors back to the Leaky Cauldron and of into one of the side rooms where Harry was shocked to see the Minister for Magic waiting for him.
“Sit down Harry.” Fudge spoke, indicating a seat by the fire, which was roaring away in the hearth.
Harry sat nervously, goosebumps rising on his arms. If this was about what had happened to Vernon, he was surprised that he wasn’t being escorted straight to Azkaban, unless they wanted to snap his wand first...
Fudge sat down in a chair opposite him and looked him over carefully before speaking, “I am Cornelius Fudge, Harry. I am the Minister for Magic.”
Harry knew that already but Fudge didn’t know that Harry had seen him arresting Hagrid, nor could he be allowed to know unless he wanted to get a large group of people into trouble.
Tom entered the room, carrying a tray of tea and crumpets, confusing Harry further. The innkeeper placed the food on the table and then left. The reassuring smile Tom had on his face didn’t help matters at all.
“Well Harry. You’ve had all of us in a bit of a panic.” Fudge told the very confused boy. Harry just stared at him, wondering why there wasn’t shouting and threatening and demands for him to hand over his wand, “Running away from your Aunt’s home like that! Thank goodness we had Aurors out already...”
“S...Sir?” Harry asked, too confused to know what else to say.
“I have a bit of bad news for you.” Fudge’s face turned grave, “Unfortunately we sent out an Accidental Magic Reversal team to deal with both your Uncle and your Cousin and none of them could do a thing to help them.”
Harry wasn’t sure if he should be happy or sad about that news.
“However we have had them taken into St. Mungos and placed on the Janus Thickly Ward, which is where those with long term spell damage are hosted during their recovery.”
There was something about Dudley and his Uncle being looked after in the same ward as Lockheart that amused Harry, though he still wasn’t quite sure what this was about since they didn’t seem too angry about his uncle’s unresponsive state.
“We are still talking to your aunt regarding you going back to her next summer. The woman seems quite certain you’re possessed or some such rot, but we can test for that easily enough and we did assure her that we’d keep a close eye on you while you were there, but I’m certain that she’s worrying about nothing. Accidental magic is understandable in a child, you just need to learn a bit better control.” Fudge paused for a moment, “Assuming it was accidental.”
Harry nodded, “I don’t even know how I did it.”
Fudge nodded at Harry’s not quite a lie. Harry could imagine that whatever he had done while he’d been ‘asleep’ he’d probably meant to do at the time, but he could honestly say that he had no clue how it had happened.
“So all that remains is to decide where you will stay for the rest of the summer.” Fudge said as he buttered one of the crumpets and took a big bite, “I suggest that you take a room here for the rest of the...”
“Hang on!” Harry blurted out, “You mean I’m not being punished?”
Fudge grew confused and Harry could practically see the Minister for Magic trying to put together what was going on. Then he chuckled, “My dear boy, we’re not going to punish you for a couple of incidents of accidental magic,” He was gesticulating with both arms, the crumpet forgotten, “We don’t send people to Azkaban for defending themselves.”
Harry blinked at him, wondering what Fudge knew about his actions during his blackouts that he didn’t and was horribly tempted to ask. “But last year...”
Suddenly the amusement fled from Fudge’s face and fear replaced it, “Circumstances change Harry. We have to take into account the current climate...” In other words something had happened to change their attitude towards him, at least for now, and Harry had a feeling that it was something to do with the same Sirius Black that Tom had mentioned earlier. “Surely you don’t want to be expelled.”
Harry shook his head, more than happy to take advantage of the situation in order to remain out of jail and to keep his wand. “No, sir.”
“Then I don’t see what else there is to discuss.” Fudge got to his feet, “Now you understand, of course, that you can’t go wandering off into Muggle London,” Well there went his plan to get more cards, if only so he could understand what Luna was talking about, “Nor should you go wandering down Knockturn Alley. You’re much better and safer off wandering around Diagon...”
Where the Aurors could keep an eye on him was the unspoken ending to that sentence. Harry nodded of course. Anything to keep the Minister of Magic happy and him out of trouble after all and it was better than being sent straight back to the Dursleys where he could just imagine that his aunt would make his life a living hell.
Right up until she triggered a blackout at least...
“As regards to the charge of possession, Shacklebolt,” He gestured to the man next to the door who walked over, nodding to Harry as he did so, “Can test for that right now.”
“Afternoon, Mr Potter.” Shacklebolt spoke, “If you’d just take off anything magical that might mess with the readings and put them and your wand on the table.” Harry did just that, removing the bracer and dumping both his wand and it on the table, covered by his jacket, “Now just hold still for a moment. This won’t hurt in the least.” Harry couldn’t help the flinch that came when the Auror raised his wand and spoke so swiftly that Harry didn’t catch what he was saying.
A bolt of yellow light hit Harry’s chest and before he could say a word a glow suddenly appeared out of nowhere, surrounding him. Harry stared at his hand in shock and examined it, intrigued by the pale green light. It was obviously not normal as Shacklebolt looked rather surprised, but when it died down the Minister turned all of his attention on the Auror.
“So?” Fudge demanded.
“Clean. He’s not possessed.” Shacklebolt commented, still giving Harry an odd look. “B...”
“Good, good that settles that.” Fudge interrupted as Shacklebolt went to say something else, “I’d hate to have to send him through after all.”
“Definitely no need for that.” Whatever the Minister had meant by that seemed to knock the Auror back into ‘duty’ mode and Harry could practically see him snap back to attention. “He’s not possessed, so...”
“In that case,” Minister Fudge headed for the door, “I’ll just have a word with Tom and check there’s a room here for you.”
Harry pocketed his wand and was just slipping the bracer back on when Shacklebolt caught his arm. “Potter, a word?”
Harry didn’t have much choice in the matter but he nodded anyway.
“You’re not possessed but I would suggest you lay low for a while.” Shacklebolt informed him, “If they decide to test you again someone might not be as lenient as I was. That glow was supposed to be white. That it was partly another colour suggests that you have been possessed recently or have had soul to soul contact with someone. People don’t survive possession normally. You could land up in the Department of Mysteries as an experiment or worse. I don’t know what it means, but I’ve heard of the term ‘sending them through’ before and when I asked, I got told that the person in question was no longer alive so...”
Harry paled slightly at Shacklebolt’s words, “Thanks for the warning.”
Shacklebolt let him go and Harry finished adjusting the bracer, feeling slightly more secure when the snake on it tightened itself, securing the bracer on his arm.
Shacklebolt was giving it a curious look and was about to open his mouth to ask something when the Minister walked into the room looking rather pleased with himself.
“It’s all settled. Room 11 will be yours for the rest of the summer.” Fudge grinned at him as Harry hastily shoved the arm with the bracer into his jacket sleeve, not wanting Fudge to see the golden item for an odd reason that he couldn’t quite explain besides ‘it felt like a bad idea’. “You’re to be back here before dark and Tom will be keeping an eye on you for me.”
Harry frowned, confused as to why Fudge was trying to keep him under his thumb when he hadn’t cared enough to look into Harry’s situation before. It was all because of Black, Harry was almost certain of that. “But...” Harry trailed off at the look on Fudge’s face. “Yes, Minister.”
“Good.” Fudge nodded, “Have a good summer Harry and try not to get into any more trouble. Remember if you have any problems the Aurors are around to protect the public, so don’t be afraid to ask.”
With that the Minister left, Shacklebolt nodding to him as he followed the Minister out, leaving Harry feeling rather irritated about the fact that he’d basically just been told to sit and stay by the Minister for Magic.
Harry hastily ate a couple of the crumpets and tried to work out what he was going to do. School didn’t start back until September and he basically had free rein on what he could do. Except he didn’t. He was basically confined to The Leaky Cauldron and the magical shops hidden beyond.
Tom was waiting for him when he left the room and the first thing the innkeeper did before he tidied up the room was show Harry to his room. The trunk and the owl cage he’d left behind the bar earlier were already in his room, while Hedwig, who he had let out of her cage when he’d left the Dursley’s, was preening on the perch just inside his window.
“Smart bird you have there, Mr Potter.” Tom said approvingly as Harry gave her a couple of owl treats and filled up the water bowl from the jug on the bedside table, “She flew in the window the moment I brought your stuff up.”
“Thank you for that by the way.” Harry nodded to the innkeeper who just smiled back at him and waved it off before heading downstairs, leaving Harry alone in his room.
The moment the door had shut Harry collapsed backwards onto the bed, not quite able to believe the way that his summer had changed in just a few short hours. Just this morning he’d had a list of chores to do, including mowing the lawn and it had been that list of chores, which Vernon had accused him of slacking on that had put into motion the events of today.
If it hadn’t been for the fact he’d had blackouts before today, he would have been convinced that he was going to wake up and find that today had been one hell of an insane dream, even the fact that he apparently had an escaped Death Eater after him kind of fit considering his past experiences.
Still there were pluses and minuses to the whole situation and he had had a reprieve from the Ministry when Shacklebolt had...
Harry paused, attempted to wrench the bracer off, had to pause while the snake uncoiled itself slightly, and then chucked it onto the bed, glaring at it.
The Auror had said he’d been possessed recently and the only thing that had changed in the last few weeks was the bracer. It all fit too. The blackouts, doing spells he would never have known about... It wasn’t that different from when Riddle’s diary and the spirit within had been possessing Ginny and made her attack the students.
Except while Ginny had been writing in the diary, Harry had been telling the spirit of the bracer nothing about himself, nor had he, hopefully, given him any openings. If anything Harry was surprised that the spirit appeared to be trying to help him. Every time he’d had a blackout it had been following pain, be it from a blow or hunger pangs.
Harry blinked as he realised this, sitting down on the bed and poking the golden bracer with a finger. “Who are you?” He asked it, wondering if it was another fragment of Voldemort’s soul, as the diary’s spirit had been or whether it was someone else who had sealed himself in his item for some strange reason.
Harry got no reply, not that he was really expecting one, and he spent a few more minutes glowering at the gaudy golden trinket. Somehow he had thought he’d feel relieved when he knew what the blackouts were but the knowledge he was being possessed didn’t ease his mind any.
Nor did he really know what to do. Dumbledore had told him to look after it, but Harry didn’t know if Dumbledore had known about the spirit within it. If he told his friends that the bracer was possessing him from time to time, Hermione would freak and demand he give it to a teacher, while Ron would probably want to destroy it or put it back where it came from.
Of course those were all perfectly justified things to do, or would have been if the spirit hadn’t been trying to help him. If there were just a way for Harry to talk to the spirit and tell him that while he appreciated the help he would really rather not get into trouble because he was being possessed by an over protective spirit who apparently thought that it was okay to drive people insane, it would be better.
Until he could find such a way, however, he was stuck trying to make sure he didn’t get hurt by anyone or anything, in case it triggered an episode.
Thinking about the spirit of the bracer made him think harder about what he was going to do over the summer. His best bet, he finally decided, was to make use of the huge bookstore on Diagon Alley, which might be able to help him work out what the bracer was and how to either remove the spirit from it or get in contact with his possessor.
If there was nothing in there there were other options, after all there were plenty of magical trinket shops around and, though he was loath to admit even thinking about using the last option, he was sure that Knockturn Alley had somewhere that could have information on it. Hell he’d been in Borgen and Burkes last year and seen the sorts of magical artifacts they had on offer. It was highly possible that he could take it to them and find out exactly what it was and why Dumbledore thought it was so important.
That, however, was most definitely a last chance option. He had no great urge to get lost down the dark, dank alley where dark magic lurked and there were plenty who would be willing to off ‘the Boy-Who-Lived’ for any reason, including that he looked at them in a funny tone of voice.
Somehow he thought that while there might be some down there that might deserve whatever the spirit had done to Vernon and Dudley, and he was certain he should feel more guilty about that than he did, if people suddenly started turning up insane or worse he would be the first person the Aurors went to and they probably wouldn’t be as nice about it as Shacklebolt had been.
A knock on his door made him jump a mile. “Hello?”
“Harry?” Luna asked from the other side of the door.
Harry hastily opened the door, realising that Luna was quite possibly the only person he could talk about this with without sounding alarm bells in their head, and was surprised to find that Luna’s father wasn’t with her. “Where’s...”
“He went home.” Luna smiled at him, “Too many notes to write up to hang around all day having fun. I wanted to say hello before you left.”
Harry just nodded, knowing better than to question Luna on anything though he had had no intention of going anywhere until he’d worked out some sort of plan. “Hi. Come on in.”
Luna nodded gracefully at his welcome and entered the room, her eyes resting briefly on the rest of Harry’s things and a small smile forming at the sight of Hedwig, before coming to land on the bracer.
“I was right,” Luna breathed, except that Harry had this weird sense that the girl he was speaking to wasn’t Luna, which made no sense considering that it looked and sounded like his friend, “You do have one.”
“One what?” Harry asked, wondering what Luna meant by that.
“Serpent Item.” The girl stated matter of factly, closing the door behind Harry and waving her hand.
“What’s a Serpent Item?” Harry asked as a purple glow surrounded the door. “And what’s that for?”
“We won’t be heard now.” Luna stated matter of factly, “Now, you need to listen to me carefully. Over a thousand years ago, when Hogwarts was still young, the Muggle populace were terrified of witches and wizards and between their actions and those of others of our kind, the school became unsafe. So Salazar Slytherin, in an act of great love for the school he’d helped to build, used a tome translated from an Ancient Egyptian wizard’s text to create the five Serpent Items. One for each of the founders and a fifth, whose owner would be found in due time.”
Harry nodded his understanding of what she’d told him so far, “And this bracer’s one of them?”
“The five items are the Dagger, the Comb,” She gestured to the comb in her hair, “The Bracer,” She gestured to the item on the bed, “The Pendant and the Helm.
“This,” Harry held up the bracer, surprised, “Belonged to a Founder?”
“No. The Serpent Bracer was eventually claimed by one of the Teachers who worked under the Founders.” Luna shook her head, “The Comb belonged to Helga and was passed on to her female descendants. The Pendant was Rowena’s and it was a symbol of the knowledge and power in the school for many years before being squirreled away safely. The Helm belonged to Godric and vanished along with Salazar’s Dagger during the final battle between the pair and Salazar hid the Bracer after Powel, the man who held it, was killed protecting the school.”
Harry examined the golden bracer. It didn’t look that old. Considering that it had been down in the Chamber for thousands of years, he would have expected it to be dirtier, or damaged in some way. It was possible that whatever Salazar had done to make it a ‘Serpent Item’ had made it indestructible, supposed, but surely after all this time the enchantments on it would have worn off?
A thought hit him. Was it possible that the spirit of the Bracer was the teacher who had been killed while using it? Then another one hit him.
“Wait, you never told me what’s so special about these things or how they helped the Founders defend the school.” Harry informed Luna, shaking the bracer at her and trying to ignore the mental image of the spirit inside getting nauseous. “I mean...” Harry stopped at the strange look the other Item holder had on her face and put the Bracer back on.
“You don’t know very much about Voldemort’s reign, do you?” She asked after a few moments where silence ruled supreme.
Harry shook his head, wondering why she sounded so disappointed and why he felt so guilty.
“Tell you what.” Luna, her expression matching her tone, “You look into why we need to be very careful with these, and when you feel you know enough, write to me. I’ll know where you’re staying after all.”
With that Luna turned to leave.
Harry would never be quite sure what possessed him to blurt out the thing he said next, but before she could lower the spell on the door and exit the room, Harry asked, “Does yours possess you too?”
Luna stiffened and turned to look at him, as if examining him carefully, as if she wasn’t certain if he was suddenly going to bite. “You have blackouts?”
Harry nodded.
“Wake up having done things you don’t remember and couldn’t do if you tried?”
Harry nodded again.
“Sometimes in different locations?”
When Harry nodded a third time Luna frowned slightly, “I suppose if I did it then it’s possible he did too...”
“Luna?” Harry asked, trying to resist the urge to put the Bracer back on.
Luna’s eyes flickered from the Bracer to Harry’s face and back again then the girl let out a heavy sigh, “While you’re researching, see what you can find on Powel Redgrave. That might give you some more answers.” When Harry nodded for yet another time, Luna turned, dispelled the magic on the door and left, leaving Harry with more questions.
At least, he thought locked up and headed downstairs, he now knew what his bracer was. That it was a magical item made by Salazar Slytherin narrowed down the search radius quite considerably. There couldn’t be very many out there, at least he hoped there wasn’t. And even if there were there probably weren’t many that had been influential during the First War.
Still slightly irritated over the fact that he was under surveillance, but grateful that he appeared to have gotten away without any repercussions for the spirit’s actions, Harry slipped into Diagon Alley again, heading straight for the bookstore where he swiftly got frustrated by the fact that there was absolutely no sense to the system that organised the books beyond ‘history’, ‘potions’, ‘transfiguration’ and so on and so forth.
In the end he had to ask one of the shop keepers, who had been about to ask him to leave as the store was closing and was more than willing to pile text book upon text book on him if it meant that he was going to leave. After all, as he joked to Harry as he added up the cost and took Harry’s money, not everyone could live on books alone.
Unfortunately there was nothing specifically on the Serpent Items available, though the clerk had promised to look as he had ushered Harry out of the store, but there had been a bit about Powel Redgrave in a book about the Founding of Hogwarts, and another bit about the items of power held by the four founders, and there was plenty available on Voldemort’s reign.
Carrying a magically enhanced bag that was designed to hold much more than it looked and had been offered to Harry at a discounted price when the clerk had realised that there was no way that they were getting all of Harry’s books into any less than four bags, Harry stepped back onto Diagon Alley a few hours later only to be surprised by the fact that the street was almost deserted as most of the shops had closed hours ago.
He sighed as he headed for the pub. Though he had plenty to read, it wasn’t going to be fun spending the next couple of months above a pub unless the rooms had spells that kept noise out, since if The Leaky Cauldron was anything like the Muggle pubs he’d often heard his uncle describing, it would get rather rowdy downstairs on the night times.
He was in the middle of making a mental note to write letters to his friends explaining where he was and half asking, half pleading with them to come and visit, when Harry was shocked out of his thoughts by a spell shooting past his cheek, the heat of it brushing his cheek as the spell narrowly missed its target and struck a wall, which exploded.
Immediately the two Aurors who had still been patrolling the streets, went into action, but by the time they’d acted the assailant, who had been hiding between two of the shops, was pinned down by a huge, messy furred dog who was growling ferociously and baring his teeth at the man, one of its legs pressing down firmly on the man’s wand arm.
“The dog yours, Potter?” One of the Aurors asked him, stopping him from retreating to the safety of the pub.
“Yes, he’s mine.” He replied, knowing the canine was nothing to do with him, but feeling a sense of loyalty to it, since it had, quite obviously, defended him and not wanting to know what the wizarding equivalent of a dog pound was like. Considering some of the magical creatures he’d met so far, it was possible the dog would get eaten while there.
The dog, whose fur was white and looked rather matted, barked and wagged its tail at the sound of Harry’s voice but didn’t move from its place on top of the man until the Auror who’d asked had physically shoved it aside.
In the split second between moving the dog and an Auror grabbing the attacker, the man on the ground vanished into thin air with a pop.
“Damn it. Apperated away.” The Auror growled, starting to cast spells a moment later in order to try and find clues.
“Are you alright Potter?” A second Auror asked, looking Harry over.
“That was a Reducto, you moron.” His partner informed him in the same tone someone would speak to a small child, “If it had hit him, you’d know about it.”
The second man scowled at his partner for a moment before turning back to Harry, “You need to get a collar on your dog.” The man paused and looked at the canine in question, “He’s covered in paint by the way, did you know?”
He had kind of guessed from the smell when the huge canine had stood up on its hind legs and, though it had looked thin, managed to knock him over before proceeding to lick his face, that the matted fur wasn’t a natural thing, but he had no idea how to get paint out of fur short of a long bath and... He paused as he realised where his train of thoughts was going.
The dog wasn’t his, it was someone else’s. It wasn’t his job to deal with the paint matted fur and even if it had been his dog he didn’t know if The Leaky Cauldron allowed pets besides owls.
“I’m hopeless with household magic.” The second Auror looked sheepish, “Or I’d clean him up for you.”
“It’s okay.” He waved it off as he pushed the canine away and got to his feet, “I’ll work something out.”
“Escort Potter and his pet back to the pub.” The first Auror told the second, “That might have been Black and he might try again.”
The dog growled at the sound of Black’s name and didn’t stop until Harry put his hand on the dog’s neck. Before he could really decide what he was going to do with the huge, furry menace he’d been walked back to the pub where Tom had taken one look at the Auror and ushered Harry upstairs, promising to bring food with him when he came up.
The barkeeper didn’t even say a word against it when the dog followed Harry upstairs, wagging its tail and panting happily. Hedwig didn’t like it though. She screeched at the dog repeatedly for a good five minutes before she settled down and even then Harry had had to promise her owl treats every day for the next month before she’d calmed down at all
Then had come the fun part of trying to remove rather thick white paint from rather unruly fur. It was very wet, very hard work as the dog, who had climbed into the bath without a whimper of complaint had decided for some strange reason that if he had to be wet, so did Harry.
When Tom came up, Harry requested a scrubbing brush or something from the kitchen. Tom did one better, not only did he bring up the requested brush, but he cast a pair of spells, one which removed all of the paint from the dog almost instantly, though it took several attempts, and one that set the brush to brushing the dog’s fur on its own without any input from Harry, allowing him to settle down and have his meal while the canine wolfed his down as if he hadn’t eaten in months and get straightened out.
Clean and brushed, the dog was actually quite a handsome animal. Harry had absolutely no clue what breed it was, but it had apparently adopted him and Tom had had nothing against the mutt staying here until Harry found his owner as long as it didn’t make a mess. “I wish I knew what your name was.” Harry told the dog, who was looking at him hopefully as he ate his dinner, begging for scraps off of the table. “They’re going to ask for it tomorrow when I pick up a collar and a leash...”
Harry trailed off as the dog appeared to glower at him at the words collar and leash.
“What? It’s the law... why am I talking to a dog like it can understand me?” Harry groaned at himself, “And I thought I was going crazy last year when I heard a giant snake in the walls...” The dog licked his hand and the same hand started scratching behind the dog’s ear automatically. “You’re not mine you know.”
The dog whimpered and leant against him.
“What? I’m only allowed to take one pet to Hogwarts and I already have an owl.” At the word owl, Hedwig hooted at him and Harry scooted across the room, done with his meal, and paid attention to her as well. “Feel up to taking some letters to my friends?” He asked the owl, who spread her wings in response as if to say ‘I’m ready to leave now’.
Harry chuckled and pulled a quill out of his bag, along with some spare parchment from his trunk and settled at the small table in the corner of the room. Hedwig landed on the back of the second chair, watching him write as the dog curled up at his feet.
It was surprisingly relaxing to have the two animals so close and by the time Harry had finished his letters and sent Hedwig off with them he had almost calmed down from the day’s scares. Though he still wanted to know who the man who had attacked him was. He couldn’t help but think that Black would have to be very stupid to enter Diagon Alley and attack him like he had so close to escaping from Azkaban.
It did make him realise something though. While he had hated the Dursleys he had been much safer there than he would have been if he’d been in the wizarding world before. If it hadn’t been for Black’s horrendous aim and the huge dog now snoring away happily it was quite possible that he would be dead.
Suddenly obeying the Minister’s request seemed like a very good idea. He had no illusions that the last two escapes from Voldemort had been anything but sheer dumb luck and he probably stood about as much chance against a Death Eater as food did against Ron.
At least here, in his room, the only people who knew exactly where he was were Tom, Fudge and Shacklebolt, and two of the people on that list he liked and though he didn’t know Tom well enough to trust him, the Auror had saved Harry’s life once already and as such the almost-teen felt like he could at least trust that he wouldn’t give Harry’s location away to someone who might want to kill him.
He wondered how the man had done that, teleported away like he had as he got changed and slumped onto the bed, putting his wand under his pillow as he had at the Dursleys, before he pulled one of his texts out of the magically expanded bag.
“Hey!” Harry protested as the huge canine clambered up onto the bed as he turned the first page and led across his legs, pinning him to the bed. “Get down.”
The dog gave him a mournful look.
“If you don’t get down I’ll give you an embarrassing name like Fluffy.” Harry scowled at it, figuring that if it was intelligent enough to understand him it was intelligent enough to have a sense of pride.
The dog shifted rather quickly at that, giving him a rather dirty look as it did so.
Harry just chuckled at it, trying to remind himself not to get too attached as someone would probably come forward for the dog before too long and then he’d have to hand it over to its owner. It was probably a good thing, he couldn’t imagine trying to explain to his friends why he was suddenly the proud owner of a huge, overly friendly, dog. Nor could he imagine trying to explain in a letter to Professor McGonagall why he had to bring two pets to school.
Harry fell asleep in the middle of reading a paragraph about how the school had been built using magic, might and sheer force of will against the wishes of the local populace and sleep right through the night, other than for a brief few minutes when Tom knocked on the door, wanting to collect Harry’s plate, and set the dog off.
The following morning Harry had a wash and headed downstairs to find Tom had a message for him.
“Ah, Mr Potter. I have some good news for you and some bad news.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, being careful not to lose his page as he settled at the bar, wand easily to hand in case of a repeat of yesterday’s events.
Tom nodded, “Which would you like first.”
“Good news please.” Harry informed him as he started looking over the menu, enjoying the fact that he wouldn’t have to cook breakfast for anyone for the first time in ages.
“That stray you brought in last night, I found out its name.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, surprised, “How?”
“That’s the bad news. Padfoot’s owner came in last night asking if anyone had found his dog.” Tom said, watching as Harry digested the name. When the pre-teen nodded, the barkeeper continued, “I mentioned that a lodger here had found him and that I’d be more than willing to bring him down if he, Grey he mentioned his name was, would wait just a few minutes. Grey told me not to bother.”
“What?” Harry demanded.
“Apparently Grey was just trying to make sure that the dog had actually found another owner. Apparently Padfoot has been trying to escape from him for the last few weeks and since Padfoot found him in the first place and appeared to be rather intelligent for a dog, he figured that he wanted to move on. Grey said something about ‘your turn’ and left before I could take down a way of getting in contact with him. Sorry.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment. “Wait.” He said, blinking at Tom, “Padfoot’s mine now?”
“Apparently.”
“Great. Just great.” Harry groaned, wondering what he was going to do with the massive canine during the school year. It wasn’t like he could send him back to his Aunt’s. After what the spirit of the Bracer had done, Harry could just see Aunt Petunia trying to poison the mutt. That was, of course, if the dog stayed there. If it was as prone to running away as ‘Grey’, whoever he had been, had told Tom he was, then Harry half expected Padfoot to be gone before Petunia had had the chance to kick him outside.
Of course this did mean that Harry was going to have to ignore the Minster's advice on leaving Diagon Alley if the Magical Menagerie didn't have what he needed. Somehow the subject of dogs as pets had never come up amongst the students at school and he wasn't sure if the pet shop would cater to them.
It was the first thing he checked after breakfast after collecting Padfoot from his room and heading out, heading straight for the shop and trying to ignore the cries around him of 'the Grim!'
No wonder people didn't have dogs if others reacted to them like that. He didn't even know what a Grim was but it was enough to make him nervous.
Once in the shop he found that he had been right in thinking that he wouldn't find what he needed in there. Though they sold collars for cats, they had very little on sale for dogs and Harry found himself wondering where pure bloods got their dog food, if any pure bloods kept dogs at all. Somehow the thought of Lucius Malfoy taking a huge, scruffy dog like Padfoot for a walk seemed like a rather absurd idea. Perhaps one of those little handbag dogs that the rich and famous Muggles were so fond of but not a great big beast like the one that had adopted him.
The lack of ability to purchase what he needed brought up a real problem. He wasn't supposed to leave Diagon Alley, but he needed dog food and to get a collar for the canine. It was his responsibility as Padfoot's owner, however temporarily he might be filling that role. Though he could afford to pay whatever fine was levied against him, he didn't see the point of encouraging one when he could just as easily pick up what he needed.
The only problem with that was getting permission to leave. Since he wasn't apparently any safer in Diagon Alley then he was anywhere else, he was tempted to just leave and apologise later but considering the trouble he had almost been in he figured that he should probably tell someone where he was going first.
As such he informed the next Auror he saw.
Luckily the Auror he spoke to had spoken with one of the ones from the night before and he'd informed his colleague before escorting Harry to Gringotts to change some of his impressive stash of Galleons into Muggle currency, then through the pub, where Harry locked Padfoot in his room for the time being and the man changed into some surprisingly Muggle clothes before entering Muggle London.
Harry had absolutely no clue where to look for what he was looking for and ended up making a complete idiot of himself in front of the Auror, whose name was Andrew Savage, as the pair of them ended up wandering around and getting rather lost, ending up with Harry finally finding a pet store miles from their starting point.
He had, at least, found somewhere to buy the cards Luna had been showing him the previous day. 'Forbidden Planet' had been advertising the game of Duel Monsters in their window. Harry had popped in and picked up a 'starter deck' and a couple of boxes of the 'booster packs', shocking the clerk in the store with the amount he could afford on their way past and figuring that he could probably share the cards with his friends so he had someone to play against other than Luna.
Still it was several hours later when he and Savage finally returned to the Leaky Cauldron, by which point it was time to take Padfoot, who absolutely hated his new collar and lead with a passion, for a walk. Harry didn't enjoy that chore too much, but once he was done he could finally slump onto his bed and read without distraction.
Or that had been the plan before he'd started reading the rule book that had come with his starter deck and then he'd been distracted by that and the cards he'd bought until long after he'd had dinner. When he finally realised how distracted he'd been he pulled his book on the founding of Hogwarts over and started reading that again.
Powel's name came up, intriguing the boy. Apparently the wizard had been picked for his skills in transfigurative magics to teach the students and while the Founders had done most of the work in the school they had still required those with skill sets that were different to their own to teach what they couldn't.
This was fair enough, but Harry could just imagine the conversation that could possibly occur between the spirit of his Bracer and his Head of House. It would be an interesting one to say the least. Shame he wouldn't be aware of it at the time.
There was no mention of him wearing the Serpent Bracer, but there hadn't been a single mention of the golden items anywhere in the text so far which made Harry wonder if they had been omitted for a reason, or if they just hadn't been important enough for someone to put in. Either reason was viable. Things were left out of Muggle text books all the time for such reasons and he could imagine that the Serpent Items weren't as important as the creation of the school.
He changed his mind when he started on the book he'd picked up about Voldemort at the height of his reign.
Apparently before he'd even taken over Wizarding Britain, Voldemort had been a threat to be taken seriously because of his skills in magic, his control over strange shadow creatures and his oft used knack in Shadow Games that would kill, maim or steal the soul or sanity of anyone who dared challenge him and the two latter of that list were skills he had because of an item he had held, claiming that it was destined for him, called the Serpent Dagger.
Just seeing those words together made Harry frown, wondering if, considering that he'd found the Bracer in the Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle could have been searching for the Dagger down there and happened to find the giant snake that had been guarding the Chamber and set it on the other students or whether he'd stumbled across the Dagger in an act of sheer dumb luck, and had opened the Chamber of Secrets later.
A small part of Harry worried that if Powel's spirit was still attached to the Bracer, that Salazar was stuck inside Voldemort's Dagger much the same way. That was a rather terrifying thought.
Harry carried on reading, learning from the text book that Voldemort had used his Serpent Item many times over the years, using the powers it granted him and his ability to rally the purebloods to his side, with his demands for 'Blood Purity' to take over the Wizarding world in a short amount of time and though there had been many assassination attempts during the many years that Voldemort had been in power, and many who had fought against him, it hadn't been until Voldemort had tried to Avada Kedava a small child, aka him, that anyone had been able to stop the insane madman.
None of this was reassuring. He could, however, now see why Luna had wanted him to look up why he had to be so careful with the Bracer before she had told him anymore. The item could be dangerous.
Then he stumbled across something in the book that made him pause and look at the cards he'd left strewn across the table. There was a moving image on the page he'd happened to stop on that showed Voldemort directing an army of the 'shadow creatures' only to recognise one of the beasts he was directing as one of the monsters on one of the cards he'd picked up earlier that day.
On that note Harry put the cards away and put the book down, not awake enough to process the implications of that and went to sleep.
The following day the answers still looked the same as they had the night before and Harry had to stop off at the post office since Hedwig hadn't come back yet in order to send Luna a letter before settling in to read more about the founders and try and find out something about the Serpent Items that didn't involve Voldemort and his apparently rather impressive collection of souls.
He didn't get very far before Hedwig was back with just one letter. Harry recognised Hermione's handwriting almost instantly, having 'read' i.e. copied her homework one too many times not to, and tore open the letter, wincing in anticipation of the lecture that was to come.
He wasn't that far off either. Though she started the letter with an rant about the stupidity of running away from home without letting either Ron or her know where he was going or what he was planning, she did trail off after a couple of hundred words and start answering the questions he'd thrown at her about if she was able to visit him at the Leaky Cauldron any time soon, if she’d made any progress on their search, which was a bit redundant now he’d found what he had, and how her summer had been in general.
Quickly sending Hedwig off with a reply, his musings about why Ron hadn’t sent a letter back were disturbed by the fact a knock at the door set Padfoot barking.
Harry grinned as the words ‘Blimey, do you think we’ve got the right door?’ filtered through as he calmed his dog and opened the door to find the Wealsey twins hovering on the other side of it.
“Hello Harry!” One of them grinned at him as the other eyed Padfoot warily.
“Nice dog.” The other spoke up, moving into the room cautiously.
“Thanks. His name’s Padfoot. His owner gave him to me.” Harry moved aside, becoming surprised when Padfoot stopped growling the moment the rest of the Weasleys were revealed and settled quite happily at his side. “I wasn’t expecting a visit.”
“You told Ron that you’re staying at the Leaky Cauldron over the summer,” Molly spoke as she entered the room, sweeping across it and pulling Harry into a hug, “How could we not visit?”
Harry stiffed for a moment in the hug, unused to bodily contact that didn’t precede pain, then relaxed slightly when he remembered that it was Mrs Weasley doing the hugging. It was enough for Molly to let go quickly though and she backed off slightly and looked him and his great big pile of books over. “Of course you could have come to us. The Knight Bus would have brought you right to our door.”
“Sorry.” Harry apologised, though even if he’d known about the Knight Bus before he’d been thrown out of the Weasley’s, he wouldn’t have gone there. Not until he could get his blackouts under control. He didn’t want to get injured by accident and suddenly wake up having attacked one of them.
“You alright Harry?” Ron asked, giving his friend a concerned look as he did so.
Harry just nodded, not wanting to bring up the fact that he was being possessed by the spirit of his Bracer in front of the rest of the Weasleys.
“I just can’t believe that those blasted Muggles kicked you out. Especially with Black on the...” Molly trailed off as if she’d said too much, but Harry already knew what she’d been about to say, after all Black had taken a pot shot at him the night before last.
“Is that why you got the dog?” Ginny, who was distracted by the big dog trying to lick her to death, as if to say ‘I’m not scary really’, asked as she stroked Padfoot’s fur.
“No. He found me.” Harry answered, trying to avoid another Molly Weasley type glomp by avoiding mention of the attack, “And his owner said I could keep him. He seems to like me and I think he’d great,” Harry couldn’t help but think that after the dog had possibly saved his life, “So I did.”
“He seems nice...” Ron hesitated to get close to the huge canine who reminded him rather too well of the Grims in horror stories.
“Harry, dear.” Molly interrupted the conversation, “You always have a bed at our house. Why don’t you come and stay with us? A pub is no place for a child to stay for any length of time after all...”
“I would, but Minister Fudge has already booked out the room for me for the summer and arranged for Aurors to stand guard.” Harry shook his head, hoping Molly wouldn’t push it. He really didn’t want to risk living with the Weasleys. He liked them too much to do that.
Molly’s face fell at Harry’s words. “Oh.” She considered him for a moment longer then smiled at him, “That doesn’t mean we can’t come and visit.” She informed him, secretly planning to see if she could convince Arthur to try and get Harry transferred into their home. “Now...”
“What’s this?” Fred or George asked, picking up the notes Harry had been making on the history of Hogwarts, “Ickle Harry doing his homework?”
“Give me that.” Harry snatched at the paper, not wanting to share his research outside of Ron, Hermione and Luna, only for it to be dangled out of reach. “Guys!” He complained.
Before anyone could say anything, Ron’s rat, Scabbers, had leapt from Ron’s pocket and gone running out of the open door. Padfoot, with a loud bark and a deep growl shot off after him, causing both Harry and Ron to run after them, both calling their pets back to them.
Neither paid any attention and Scabbers finally took cover in a cupboard, while Padfoot stood outside barking like mad.
“Padfoot!” Harry shouted over the noise, getting embarrassed by his dog’s actions and the looks he was getting from other residents at the inn, “Padfoot sit.”
The dog sat but kept growling and Harry had to get George’s help to pull the huge canine away from the cupboard so Ron could retrieve his rat.
“Sorry Ron. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” Harry groaned as he shut the dog in his room and they gathered in the corridor, “He’s been so well behaved.”
Ron just glowered at the door and the dog that was growling like mad on the other side. “Well he better leave Scabbers alone. He’s not been well. We were going to get some medicine from the pet store.”
“I’ll get him to behave.” Harry promised, “Give me one minute.”
Harry slipped into his room, just about managing to stop Padfoot from escaping as he did so and locked the door behind him. “Padfoot sit.”
The dog growled at door once more and then sat, looking incredibly pissed off.
“Those are my friends out there.” Harry growled at Padfoot, worried that the Weasleys might not come back if his dog wanted to eat their pets, “And that was their rat. You can’t eat their rat.”
Padfoot growled at him in response.
“No.” Harry told the dog firmly, trying not to roll his eyes at the fact while Harry wasn’t saying anything that the dog didn’t want to hear Padfoot understood him perfectly. When it came to understanding a command not to do something however, the comprehension was very much lacking. Harry had thought it was just cats that had that issue, but obviously not. “No eating Scabbers. No hunting Scabbers and no chasing Scabbers.”
Padfoot whined at him.
“No. I don’t want you scaring the Weasleys off. I don’t have many friends and I don’t want to lose the ones I have. If you won’t leave Scabbers alone then I’m just going to have to send you back where you came from.”
That made the dog shut up hastily and Padfoot hung his head in shame, licking Harry apologetically as the boy attached leash to collar.
“I’m not really mad.” Harry promised the dog with a sigh, “I just...” Harry trailed off. Perhaps the problem was that he needed a day or two for everything to sink in. The last few days had been rather hectic and he hadn’t really stopped yet.
When Padfoot licked him again, Harry chuckled and ruffled the fur on the dog’s head.
“Come on then you monster.” Harry chuckled as he opened the door, holding tightly onto the lead, just in case Padfoot decided to make a break for it again. No such incident occurred though and by the time they reached Diagon Alley, Harry was almost certain that Padfoot had only chased Scabbers out of boredom. Scabbers had poked his head out of Ron’s pocket twice since then and though Padfoot had let out a low growl the one time he had seen the rat, he did seem to be behaving otherwise.
They made a stop at the pet store for some Rat Tonic, which looked to quite possibly be the most vile substance in existence from what Harry could see of it and then headed for Fortescue’s ice cream parlor where Harry treated everyone to an ice cream and tried to ignore the blush on Ginny’s face whenever he said even a word to the girl.
Obviously whatever he’d said or done while he’d been possessed by Powel down in the Chamber of Secrets had only increased the crush she had on him.
“Hey Ginny?” Harry asked when something occurred to him.
The girl jumped a mile and stared at him for a moment, as if internally squeezing over the fact that he’d started a conversation with her, “Y…Yes Harry?”
“What do you know about Luna Lovegood?”
“Loon...” Ginny paused at the look on Harry’s face, remembering too late that Harry was friends with the girl in question and mentally wincing at her own stupidity. “Only what everyone knows.”
“Which is?” Harry asked, wondering if Luna’s Comb had shown some of its powers off yet, or whether Luna had much better control over her item than he did.
“She talks to herself.” Ginny started listing things off, “She often spaces out. She doesn’t really hear what you’re saying and we’re half convinced she’s a Seer, because she often talks about things that haven’t happened yet but happen hours later.”
“The poor girl lost her mother a couple of years ago.” Molly spoke up, her face a picture of concern, “Selene was a lovely woman, a little... different, like her daughter, but sweet enough. Unfortunately she was prone to playing with potions and got herself caught up in some dark arts ritual that went wrong and well...” Molly sighed, “Xenophilius has to raise her on his own now so it’s no wonder she’s a little strange, what with all the nonsense he believes.”
Harry gave the woman a curious look, but Molly wasn’t willing to share any other information and Ginny had gone quiet so instead Harry got to listen to the Weasley twins talking about the upcoming rollover in the lottery that was apparently held by the Daily Prophet.
Harry hadn’t known about the lottery, but the twins were more than willing to share what they knew. Including the fact that the upcoming prize was a couple of thousand Galleons but they were too young to enter.
That hadn’t apparently, stopped their parents from entering multiple times. Harry supposed, though he didn’t know how it worked, that the more times you entered the more chances you had to win, but if that was the case, then there would be people who entered hundreds of times. It seemed a bit pointless to him.
Still he kept his mouth closed and listened to the twins rambling on about what they’d do with a couple of thousand Galleons, liking their idea of starting up a joke shop. He had been about to inform them of that and offer some of the ridiculous amounts of money in his account towards that goal when Molly had started ranting about how ridiculous the idea was that if Fred and George didn’t take their studies seriously, then they’d never amount to anything.
Harry, who honestly thought the twins were awesome and envied their pranking ability, was surprised to hear her lay into them so harshly but filed the thought about giving them some money away for a later date.
Once they’d all finished their ice cream, Harry had all but dragged Ron to see the new broomstick and they, along with the other Weasley children, drooled over the Firebolt in the window. Horribly tempted to buy one for each of them, Harry wondered how many of those he could afford and if it would clean out the rest of the gold in his account.
Before he could do something ridiculous with his money, Mrs Weasley ushered all of the children away, muttering something about the time and how they needed to be getting back. They parted ways at the fireplace, where Molly told him that he was welcome to visit any time even if it was at some absurd time of the morning, and that all he’d need to do was call for ‘The Burrow’ when he used the floo and he’d end up in their kitchen.
It was a nice thought, having somewhere that he could go if he needed to, and it left Harry buzzing a little as he headed back upstairs and back to his research. Hermione would have been proud as he went through the texts carefully, scouring them for information.
There was a little on the razing of a village of Muggles, which had burned to the ground and left no survivors, killing around a hundred people in one of the texts on history around the time of the Founders, but there wasn’t much else on that subject and Harry dismissed it as frankly unimportant in favour of pouring over a mention of the golden Dagger Salazar Slytherin had been wielding in his battle with Godric Gryffindor.
There were no actual images of course. As there hadn’t been any cameras during the age of the Founders. There was, however, a copy of a painted picture, which depicted Slytherin with sword in one hand, Dagger in the other, locked in combat against Gryffindor, who had the more traditional shield and sword combination, and was wearing a golden helmet.
Harry took in the sight of the two items, knowing them to be two of the Serpent Items he had been researching and he quickly read the text, hoping to find something out about the pair. What he actually found was a rather bland section on how Gryffindor had lost all trust in Slytherin, discovered the incredibly dark magic he had been using behind the back of all the others and challenged him to a Shadow Duel.
Harry had no idea what a Shadow Duel was but it sounded important. However there wasn’t another mention of it in the entire rest of the book. Instead the book simply mentioned the fact that neither man had survived the Duel and gone on to mention how the last surviving Founder, Hufflepuff, worked to finish setting Hogwarts up, ready for her retirement and been found one morning in an everlasting sleep, just as her friend Ravenclaw had nearly five years previously. The last of the Founders died, while still sleeping three months later.
Harry frowned slightly, wondering what had happened to the Dagger and the Helm after the battle. He knew what had happened to the Comb. It had been passed on from generation to generation until eventually it had reached the hands of Luna. But he had no idea how the Dagger had fallen into the hands of Voldemort, nor did he have a single clue where the Helm had vanished to.
If the other items could survive this long, the Pendant and the Helm had to be around somewhere. Not that he wanted another Serpent Item. One ghost on a timeshare in his body was more than enough for him, but it would have been interesting to find out if they’d been destroyed somehow or if they were simply in someone’s vault for safe keeping or... there were hundreds of options, including that the pair were buried in some field somewhere, just waiting for archaeologists to dig them up.
Harry gave up on that book when it started on a completely different tangent and went back to his book on Voldemort, wondering if he’d find the term ‘Shadow Duel’ in there. It wasn’t but Harry hadn’t gotten too far before he’d realised he’d had a stupid moment and compared the things going on in the painted image of the ‘Shadow Duel’ and some of the things described in Voldemort’s Shadow Games.
They were exactly the same thing. The book on the last war had also, he realised, called them ‘Dark Games’ and ‘Dark Duels’. It was a lot of terms for exactly the same thing and it had thrown him but the evidence was right there, he just hadn’t seen it.
Looking at the possible effects of a Shadow Game made Harry realise something else too. He now knew exactly what had had happened to Vernon and Dudley and he didn’t think it was something that would be fixable no matter how much magic was poured into the problem. If he was right, Powel, while in control of his body, had challenged his relations to a Shadow Game and they had to have lost.
Part of Harry wanted to be sorry about it, wanted to feel guilty that his lack of ability to control the spirit of his item had resulted in the injury of his Uncle and his cousin, but he couldn’t. There had been one too many incidents over the years, one too many bruises for Harry to feel sympathetic towards them. Between that and the fact that Powel wasn’t prone to taking over and challenging people randomly, Harry couldn’t help but feel that perhaps whatever ‘Judgement’ or ‘Penalty’ Powel had inflicted had been justified.
Feeling a bit like he’d tried to cram too much for an exam, he took the night off, piling up his books on a table before spreading out on the floor with his cards, trying to ignore the fact niggling at the back of his mind that these same creatures had been the ones that Voldemort had been summoning during the last war to oppress the wizarding public. The game was Muggle. It was possible that it had been based on the creatures, especially if they had been on the news during the last war.
Working through the hundreds of cards in the box of boosters and with a rough knowledge of what he was doing, using the starter deck as a base, Harry slowly went through every last card, picking out the ones which appealed to him, which appeared to mostly be the Winged Beasts, and combining them with a few spell and trap cards, things like the Rising Air Current Luna had traded with him working well with the birds he’d picked out.
When he was finally happy with the forty cards in his deck he sorted the rest of his cards into piles dependant on type. Those piles he then sorted into name and attribute. He was almost finished with his pile of Fairy monsters when he realised he was procrastinating on deciding what he was going to do next.
He’d already sent a letter off to Luna, asking her for more information and explaining that he knew about Voldemort’s Shadow Games so that part of the decision was made for him. Luna had asked him to inform her when he’d known that much and he was curious about what more she could tell him.
Perhaps that was the best option. There wasn’t much he could do about what had happened before. Nor could he interact with the spirit of the Bracer. His best bet now was to go to the only other person he knew who held another Serpent Item, either that or Professor Dumbledore and he didn’t know how to reach the Headmaster during the holidays.
If he wanted it to be safe to go and visit the family who were more than willing to take him in, he needed her help. He just hoped she’d be willing to do something about the problem.
Another meal, another walk and another night’s sleep later Harry was just contemplating if he should carry his deck around like Luna did when the dirty blonde haired girl slipped into his room without a single warning, causing Padfoot to snarl at her.
A hiss and burst of golden light later, Padfoot was frozen in place.
“Harry, you have a not-a-dog in your room. Did you know?” She asked curiously as the dog let out a startled yelp.
“Huh?” Harry asked, confused, “Yes, I’m aware that Padfoot’s in the room. He’s mine. Padfoot Luna, Luna Padfoot. Please get on.”
“Huh.” Luna considered Padfoot for a moment longer, then suddenly Padfoot could move again. The dog barked at her sharply for a moment before hiding under the bed causing Harry to peer at the dog, worried. “I wouldn’t suggest transfiguration as a Penalty Game.” Luna commented as Harry straightened up, “It’s not really a fair way to punish someone since they can lose their mind in the form they’re trapped in.”
“Oh no. No no no.” Harry shook his head rapidly, “Padfoot’s not from one of my Penalty Games. I’ve never even...” Harry trailed off. “Wait, he’s human?”
“You didn’t know?” Luna asked, worried.
“I just thought he was a smart dog.” Harry shook his head, suddenly warier of the dog under his bed and moving away from him quickly.
“Maybe we should deal with him before we talk about important matters.” When Harry nodded in response Luna helped him to drag the dog out from under the bed.
“Take human form.” Something about Luna changed and suddenly she seemed a lot more regal than before, more like the way she’d acted when she’d spoken to him in his room before. For the first time he noticed that instead of the silvery grey eyes she’d had before, her eyes were now brown. “Now. Before I make you.”
Padfoot growled at her.
“Don’t test me, Padfoot.” Luna growled, “Unless you think you’re a match for my Item.”
The dog growled again.
“De-Spell.”
Harry missed the card between Luna’s fingers but he didn’t miss the way that Padfoot stiffened suddenly, nor could he look away as Padfoot went through a rather weird and painful looking transformation from four legged furry friend to the man Harry had seen on the posters of Sirius Black.
Before Sirius finished his transformation back to human form Harry had blacked out.
Luna glanced at Harry as the Bracer glowed and Harry’s black hair took on a browner tone, his eyes going amber.
“This one is yours, Powel.” Luna said, curtsying and gesturing to Sirius who had been frozen in place with a glower and a wave of the Bracer spirit’s hand. “But I want a word with you afterwards.”
“I understand Helga.” Powel nodded.
The spirit of the Serpent Comb blinked at him, surprised and then smiled at him and waved towards Sirius again.
“What’s going on here?” Sirius demanded.
“That’s what I should be asking you.” Powel glowered, “Pretending to be my host’s pet. I’m guessing that ‘Grey’ character was you too.”
“Your host?” Sirius’s eyes widened, “Who are you and what have you done to my Godson!?”
“Your Godson?” Powel demanded, “I think you gave up the right to call him that when you tried to kill him.”
“If you’ll remember I stopped that Death Eater from getting a second shot in.” Sirius shot back.
“Why would you stop one of your own allies fro...?”
“Me?” Allies with that!” Sirius looked severely offended, “How dare you?”
“You’re a Death Eater.” Powel pointed out, “A mass murderer who apparently wants my host dead. Why would I suspect otherwise.”
“I was never a Death Eater!” Sirius snarled at him, “Nor was I the one who killed all those Muggles! And Pettigrew is still alive!”
“Who?”
“The scum who betrayed Harry’s parents to Voldemort. He’s alive.”
“Where?”
“You think I went after that rat because I was bored?” Sirius demanded. “That was Pettigrew. He’s an Animagus. Like me. And he’s probably fled by now!”
Powel paused, grimaced and ran a hand down his face. “Scabbers? Is Pettigrew?”
Helga frowned slightly as she wondered why Powel suddenly looked like he wanted to throttle someone.
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Sirius snapped back.
“Damn it.” Powel growled.
“Who are you?” Sirius demanded of Powel, “And why are you possessing my Godson?”
“My name is Powel Redgrave. I’m a Master of Transfiguration and a Teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Powel replied, standing straighter as he spoke, “And I’m possessing your Godson because he’s wearing my item and I’m stuck in it.” Powel paused, “Oh don’t worry. He’s unharmed. If he takes my Bracer off, I can’t possess him.” He saw an idea forming in Sirius’s head, “Try and take it from Harry without his permission and I’ll Shadow Game you.”
Sirius had been active during the last war, he knew the horror stories, and though he glowered at the spirit in control of Harry’s body, he wasn’t stupid enough to risk doing more than that.
Powel considered the man in front of him, then let out an irritable noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a growl, releasing the spell he had petrifying the man.
It took Sirius a moment to realise that he could move again and when he did, he sat down on one of the chairs. “So what are you going to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t keep possessing my Godson. You could kill him.” Sirius pointed out.
“Wrong, actually.” Helga spoke up, interfering in the conversation for the first time, “What kills the host is the suppression of their soul when a second one moves into the body. We don’t live in their bodies, we live in our items and when we need to take control, it’s the True Self who enters the item. There’s never two of us in the body at the same time.”
Sirius blinked at her, “So this,” He gestured towards the pair of them, “Is harmless?”
“Relatively.” Helga looked less than concerned, “I’ve been doing this for over a thousand years and the only harm that’s ever come to a host due to my actions is when I ran into someone else’s Shadow Game while trying to talk some sense into them.”
Sirius didn’t look completely reassured. In his situation neither spirit could imagine that they’d be much better.
“You need to speak to my host, but I would suggest that you spend most of your time in canine form.” Powel told Sirius. “There are Aurors all over Diagon looking for you and I doubt you want to be taken back to Azkaban.”
“You’re on my side?” Sirius looked surprised.
“Too much of what you said makes sense.” Powel scowled, “But if you try anything that harms my host and you will regret it.”
“Why are you so protective of him?” Sirius wanted to know, “Is it just because you need his body?”
“Yes and no. The Serpent Bracer was mine, I got myself killed and sealed within it.” There was embarrassment there, and frustration, “Now it belongs to your Godson. I’d rather the same didn’t happen to him. It’s not a good way to spend a thousand years.”
“What happened during that battle?” Helga asked, watching Powel with concern, “You should have been able to handle that mob easily.”
“I don’t remember.” Powel admitted heavily, “The last thing I remember is talking with Salazar before we parted ways and then,” He sighed, “Nothing. I have no memory of how I was sealed, nor do I remember what happened during the fight.” Helga frowned slightly but Powel looked at Sirius. “I will answer any questions you may have at another time, but now, if you don’t mind, I have an old friend to catch up with.”
Sirius just nodded, trying to process exactly what he’d been told as the former Transfiguration professor turned to one of the women who had been his boss when he’d been alive.
“Madam Hufflepuff, please excuse my earlier failure to follow protocol.” Powel bowed to the woman currently in control of Luna’s body, “It is good to see another of our time.”
“I would say the same except that you have been foolish, Redgrave.” Helga scolded him, “I understand the need to protect your host. I have looked after many before my current holder inherited my Item. But you are more idiotic than I realised if you believe that you can keep using the Penalties you have.”
“I cannot lift the Penalties I’ve set,” Powel scowled at her, having not expected the lecture for what was, in his opinion, a fully justified challenge and Penalty, “Nor would I do so if I could. Vernon and Dudley Dursley...”
“I understand. I was thinking about doing something about his situation myself.” Helga held up a hand as she spoke, “But this time is not like our own. If it gets out that you are possessing him, they will send him through Rowena’s Veil.”
With that the spirit in control of Harry’s body froze, a look of disgust and anger on his features. “They would not...”
“You know the dangers of the Shadow Realm, Powel. Just as I do. Do you really want to risk your host’s life?”
“But he’s a child.” Powel’s growl mollified Sirius’s concerns about if Powel was really protective of Harry because he was worried about the boy, or just because he needed a body, but only slightly.
“That won’t matter to them. People without Items don’t survive possession, so to the Ministry they’re already classed as dead and... well... you know what walking through Rowena’s Veil is like...”
Indeed Powel did. The Veil had been designed by Ravenclaw as an easy method of getting back out of the Shadow Realm. A permanent gate that had taken the powers of all five Serpent Items to create and fix so nothing could escape. After a scare where they’d nearly lost Helga because she’d drained herself too heavily and not had the power left to escape the grasp the Shadows had had on her, it had seemed like a good idea. The Items were drawn to the Gate and, in the Shadows, the reverse was true.
That the Ministry for Magic was using it to feed the Shadows with souls whenever they discovered someone who was possessed was worrying.
“You need to stop and think about what you’re doing.” Helga spoke again when she saw that her words had almost sunk in, “I have waited over a decade for someone other than Slytherin to emerge.” Powel frowned slightly when Helga said Slytherin, catching the combination of hurt, anger and shame, “It would be nice for you to be around longer than a few days.”
Powel scowled but nodded. “I’ll be a little more careful.”
“Good.” Helga looked pleased, then suddenly it wasn’t Helga anymore, it was Luna who grinned at Powel and settled on the bed.
“Can Harry come out to play now?” She asked, giving Powel a sweet and innocent look.
Powel just snorted, amused by Luna’s complete lack of concern, and closed his eyes. Sirius watched in shock as Harry’s hair returned to its normal raven black colour and, when Harry opened his eyes and looked around, panicked, until he saw Luna unharmed and waving happily at him, the dog animagus saw that Harry’s eyes were green again.
“It’s an illusion.” Luna explained, “They do it subconsciously. Helga trained herself not to though so she normally only does it if she’s cross or trying to make a point.”
Harry just blinked at her, then turned to face Black, his eyes widening for a moment as he went for his wand, then confusion crossing his face as he realised something.
“You’re not in a coma.”
“No.” Sirius replied, looking amused at the total confusion on Harry’s face, “I don’t appear to be.”
“You’re not insane either.”
“No more than usual.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment longer then lowered his wand. “If you’re not insane or worse, then you either won or you got away without one, which means you didn’t attack me which means... You’re not trying to kill me?”
“Worked it out faster than your tenant.” Sirius snorted, amused.
“My... you met Powel?” Harry asked, pausing for a moment before pulling himself back on track. “If you don’t want to kill me why does everyone think you do? Aren’t you a Death Eater?”
“Because I was an idiot and no.” The last was said so firmly that Harry winced slightly, “I was never a Death Eater, but I made the mistake of trusting one, as did your parents. Now.” Sirius straightened slightly, not wanting to have the same conversation twice, “As your Godfather it’s my job to look after you, so I think I’m going to stick around for a while as your pet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re apparently a trouble magnet and I can’t walk around on two legs.” Sirius chuckled, “Disguise charms only go so far after all. Besides, everyone thinks you have a dog now, so it’s a good cover.”
Harry couldn’t deny that fact. “So you’re really not trying to kill me?”
“No.” Sirius looked less amused this time, “Or do you not remember the guy who attacked you a couple of days ago?”
“People kept telling me that was you.” Harry defended himself, “Besides, I don’t remember anything after I felt the spell go past.”
Sirius grumbled something about ‘Powel not Harry’ and then shrugged, “It doesn’t matter. Now, if you don’t mind, I want a nap.” With that Sirius took dog form again and curled up under the table and went to sleep. Harry stared at him for a moment, trying to work out how Sirius was in clothes when he took human form, but had is collar when a dog then shrugged and turned to Luna.
“I was hoping you could help me with something...”
“Helga’s already spoken to Powel.” Luna smiled at him, “So don’t worry. Unless he forgets he’s not going to get you chucked out of reality.”
“Chucked out of...” Harry trailed off, deciding that since it was Luna he probably wasn’t going to understand everything that came out of her mouth and the faster he understood that and worked around the fact the better.
Luna got off the bed and scooped something up off of the floor. Harry recognised it as one of the cards that he’d missed when he’d been collecting up his small army of Duel Monsters cards.
“You didn’t get this one from me.” Luna commented, showing his the Shining Friendship card that she’d picked up.
“No, I went into London and found Forbidden Planet. Then I bought almost all their stock...”
“It’s nice to have that sort of money in the Muggle world.” Luna nodded, amused by Harry’s embarrassment. “Do you have a deck built or would you like some help?”
“I have one built from cards that seem to like me. It’s untested though.”
Harry recognised the look Luna got. It was very similar to the one Ron gained when someone suggested a game of chess and he couldn’t help but be amused.
Several hours later he was in a rather different frame of mind as while he’d put up a decent challenge, Luna had squashed him six of the eight times they’d played against each other.
“It was the Ludios.” Luna patted his hand consolingly as she shuffled her deck and slipped it into her box, “They were stealing all your luck.”
“Maybe.” Harry let out a soft sigh and nodded, shuffling his bird cards and putting them away.
Luna got up and dusted herself off before offering Harry a hand to his feet. “You did well for your first time.” She informed him with an oddly serious look on her face. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Harry nodded, surprised that Luna was willing to spend so much time with him, “I mean unless you have something you need to...”
Luna gave him a patient look, “I’m Loony Lovegood, remember?”
Harry did and then he felt a little guilty about thinking that Luna might just be humouring him. After all, while he had Hermione and the Weasleys, Luna didn’t have anyone except him to talk to. “Sorry.”
Luna just waved it off with a smile. “It doesn’t matter.” She turned to leave but paused at the doors, “Actually you’re going to be busy tomorrow, and for a few weeks... See you on the train?”
“Huh?” Harry replied intelligently, not used to Luna’s predictions.
“Enjoy your trip. Make sure you take lots of photos.” Before Harry could get Luna to explain she was gone, slipping out the door.
“I swear,” Harry complained at Padfoot, “She picks when to be crazy.”
Sirius just barked his agreement on that one, wondering when his Godson would work out that it was a female trait.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Harry insisted, “Though if the spirit of the Bracer’s going to behave I might visit the Weasleys...” Still musing he stepped into the bathroom attached to his room, got undressed, dumping the Bracer on a high shelf, told Padfoot to stay in the main room and started having a bath, only to get interrupted by a knock on the door and the sound of Padfoot barking.
“One minute.” Harry yelled, wrapping his towel around him and pulling on a robe, grateful that they were rather covering as he opened to door to an assortment of Weasleys at the door with huge grins on their faces. “Uh. Hi?”
Before he could get another word in edgeways, he had been glomped by a rather overenthusiastic Ginny, who swiftly realised he was soggy and not wearing anything under the robes and let go, blushing bright red.
“Not that I mind the invasion.” Harry spoke, just as tomato like as Ginny, “But I was kind of in the middle of a bath.”
“I apologise Harry.” Arthur said as he entered the room, “But the kids wanted to share the news and I was hoping to extend an invitation.”
“News?” Harry asked, his hand on Padfoot’s collar as he watched Ron’s wriggling pocket, surprised that his friend had brought the rat back here after the last little episode.
“We won the lottery.” Ron grinned, “Us. The Wealseys. We won.”
Harry blinked at him, “What?”
“The Daily Prophet’s lottery. You know, the grand prize rollover jackpot?” Fred asked, settling on Harry’s bed, “The one we were talking about the other day?”
The information finally sank into Harry’s head and he grinned at the family who had been looking out for him since he’d met them, “Really?”
“Uh huh.” Ron nodded, amused that his little sister had gone silent after her enthusiastic hug, “Three thousand Galleons. All for us. And...”
“And that’s where my offer comes in, Harry.” Arthur interrupted his son, “I know Molly’s extended an invitation to you to stay with us over the summer, but we’re planning on using the money to fund a holiday in Egypt and we were kind of hoping you’d join us.”
Harry stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Of course if you don’t want to, we understand but...”
“No, no, of course I’d like to come.” Harry shook his head, “I just...” Harry glanced at Padfoot, who licked his hand and nudged him towards the oldest Weasley, “I’d have to find someone to look after Padfoot for me and I don’t have a passport.”
“You only need to fill out a couple of forms to get assigned a magical passport,” Mr Weasley grinned, “Unlike Muggles we have ways of making sure you’re who you say you are and we’re not going for a week or so. I need to arrange cover for my shifts in work after all. Why don’t you take the opportunity to send a letter to Hermione or Luna and see if they’ll take your dog for the duration of the holiday?”
Harry paused for a moment, then decided he was going to ask Luna since she knew about Sirius, while Hermione had been told about Padfoot but didn’t know about the bigger issue.
“You’ll finally get to meet Bill.” Fred or George grinned at him, “He’s wicked. He works for Gringotts as a Curse Breaker, gets to explore all sorts of ruins and tombs in Egypt. He’s got this awesome earring and...”
“And your mother will murder you if you even think about getting one like it.” Arthur told the twins, who looked like they were sulking. Harry knew better. If he was right they were probably scheming ways to get one without angering their mother.
“So where do I get a passport and how much do I need to pay?”
“I picked up the paperwork on my way out.” Arthur grinned at him and handing it over, “We need passports too after all. And don’t worry. We have it covered.”
“But...” Harry started to protest, thinking of how much money was in his vault and how little money the Weasleys had.
“Now don’t go thinking that we shouldn’t be spending the prize money on you.” Arthur chuckled, interrupting Harry before he could get going, “We’re using it to treat the family to something we wouldn’t normally get and you’re family.” Harry frowned slightly, confused, “I assure you, Molly decided that back before you stole the flying car.”
Both Harry and Ron grimaced at the mention of the damned car that was currently haunting the Forbidden Forest.
“If it helps, think of it as eleven years worth of Birthday presents.” Arthur suggested, “Since we missed your first eleven.”
Harry nodded, still shocked that they would be willing to take him along on their family holiday, and made a note to take plenty of money with him anyway, so he didn’t have to spend the Weasleys’ any more than necessary.
“Now, as much as you all want to talk plans I think we should probably leave Harry to his bath, don’t you?” Arthur asked his children. Ginny and Harry went bright red again, but Fred and George took a rather different route. They picked Harry up by his armpits and his legs, carried him into the bathroom and dropped him into the bath.
Harry surfaced, coughing up bubbly water, to find Padfoot sat on one of the twins, while Percy was lecturing the other.
“You stupid idiot, you could have killed him...” Harry listened, rather amused, as Percy laid into the twins, but stayed in the bath, not really wanting to climb out in wet clothes while he had company. “...Don’t you ever think about what you’re doing?”
“Lighten up Perce,” Fred spoke, having been identified by his brother halfway through the rant, “It was only a bit of fun.”
“Yeah,” George added from his position underneath Sirius, “After all we have to prank our brothers. It’s mandatory.”
Any irritation Harry felt at getting dunked was washed away at that. He liked Fred and George. He wouldn’t have been able to get through the second year quite so easily without their teasing, and that they liked him enough to go along with his inclusion into the family was a relief and a joy.
Still he let the Weasleys see themselves out and quickly locked the door behind them, before darting back into the bathroom and his nice, luckily still warm, bath.
Harry really was busy the next day. He refused to go on holiday looking like a tramp. He had a funny feeling that he wouldn’t get through customs if he looked like someone who had just rolled off of the street, so, without so much as a hello to any of the Aurors, he slipped back out into Muggle London, this time cheating and using the Knight Bus rather than going on foot, and purchased a whole new wardrobe as well as another box of cards, this time from the new set of boosters that had been released the day before.
When he finally got back to the Leaky Cauldron, he half expected to get an earful from whoever was supposed to be on duty, but the only complaints he had were from Sirius, who had not enjoyed the fact he’d been cooped up all day and wanted to stretch his legs, and from Hedwig who had brought yet another letter from Hermione, who was planning on visiting the next day if he wasn’t busy.
Harry sent a message back again, leaving Hedwig staring at him irritably, since she wanted a rest, and took Padfoot for a walk and then settled down with his purchases, organising his new clothes and sorting through the hundreds of new cards, making note of a few that Luna might like, simply enjoying the peace that came with having a few days away from Dursleys.
When Hermione arrived the next day however, that peace and quiet was shattered, at least for a little while as she ranted at him in person for not going to her or Ron when he had been kicked out of his house. Right up until Padfoot licked her hand. Then she was too engrossed in finding out where he’d gotten the dog and where he was planning on keeping it during term time and did he know how to look after it properly, and had he taken it to the vets yet?
Hermione’s questions only stopped when Harry presented her with the books he’d bought. The wizard swiftly wished he’d waited till after he’d introduced her to the game of Duel Monsters because she proceeded to skim through all of them. She did, however, come to the same conclusion he had about the Serpent Items, minus knowledge about Powel, in half the time it had taken him.
Then their conversation had taken a rather different route. Instead of ranting at him Hermione started fussing, worrying for her friend and what using and owning such a dangerous dark artefact could do. She did suggest that he got rid of it, much as she had before they’d left school for the summer, but bit her tongue when Harry reminded her that Dumbledore had stated that he should keep it with him at all times.
Harry got to watch, amused, as Hermione was torn between concern for her friend, anger that Harry should shrug off the danger so easily and confusion since she still wasn’t sure if Dumbledore was really looking out for Harry or not.
“You are going to be careful with it, aren’t you?” Hermione asked finally, biting her lower lip and watching her friend carefully, knowing him far too well to ask him to stay out of trouble.
“Of course.” Harry agreed, not particularly wanting to become known as the Boy-Who-Sealed-Souls, “Though you know what I’m like. I’ll try and be careful and end up getting eaten by a dragon or something...”
Hermione glowered at Harry’s nochatlent shrug. “Harry James Potter. If I find out that you’ve been playing with dragons, I’ll... I’ll...” She seized one of the pillows off of his bed and swatted him with it repeatedly.
Harry let out a yelp of shock, having never expected it from his bookworm of a friend and grabbed the other, counter attacking and the pillow war didn’t stop until next door complained that could whoever had let the herd of hippogriffs into the room please let them back out again.
Neither kid could resist dissolving into laughter the moment the door was shut behind the complainer.
“We sound nothing like a herd of hippogriffs.” Hermione stated as they pair of them calmed down, stroking the fur on Padfoot’s back. “There’s much less squawking and roaring for a start.”
“What’s a hippogriff?” Harry asked only to earn himself a despairing look from his friend.
“I swear Harry, you don’t read anything you don’t have to, do you?”
“I read all those books I showed you.” Harry stated a little defensively.
“Only because they had information about your Bracer in them.” Hermione pointed out, looking like the cat that’s gotten the crème as Harry couldn’t deny her point. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have even thought about going into Flourish and Blotts would you?”
“Maybe.” Harry grouched, wondering, once again, why Hermione was a Gryffindor when clearly her love of knowledge should have made her a Ravenclaw.
Hermione just let out a soft snort and leaned back, using her hands to support her as she stared at the ceiling. “Mum and Dad have gone into London. Made me promise to stay here and talk to you. I told them the Dursleys kicked you out and they asked me if you’d consider staying with them?”
Harry blinked, wondering where this had come from. Unlike Ron’s parents, Hermione’s barely knew him. Certainly not enough, in his opinion, to make an offer like that. “Why?”
Hermione chuckled at him softly, though the sound was a mixture of bitter and something Harry couldn’t quite catch. “You were my first real friend. My parents think that’s important.”
Harry stared at her. “You’re kidding? There was no one...?”
“I don’t know where you went to school but no one wants to be friends with the nerd.” Hermione snorted, “We tried a few schools, but it was always the same. The kids my age didn’t want to know me, and the kids in the year I was always placed in couldn’t stand that they had to deal with having a younger class member.”
“You got to skip years?” Harry asked, slightly envious since if he’d been jumped up a year, he would no longer have had to share lessons with his cousin Dudley. His envy vanished just moments later as he both envisioned the reactions of his Aunt and Uncle if he had been jumped up a year and pulled ahead of their precious ‘Duddykins’ and heard the soft snort that Hermione let out.
“It’s not as good as it sounds. It just means you take tests quicker. Have to change school faster and have more to unlearn when you go to Hogwarts.” Hermione sounded frustrated.
“Is that why you took every class you could when we picked our options?” Harry asked, curious.
“I’m bored in normal classes.” Hermione admitted, “And hopefully that much work will keep me occupied. I mean I probably won’t get accepted for all of them, not unless they can work out the schedules and that would be a nightmare. I’m sure Professor McGonagall has enough on her plate already without having to worry about reorganising all of our classes.”
Harry just nodded his agreement. Between her duties as Head of Gryffindor House, the fact she was Deputy Headmistress and all of her classes, he could well imagine that scheduling headaches were the last thing she needed.
“Well, think you’ll have time to learn one more thing?” Harry asked. “I mean it’s for recreation, and that’s a necessary part of studying, isn’t it?”
“I might. It depends what it is.” Hermione looked curious. “It doesn’t have anything to do with broomsticks, does it?”
“No. No flying. A few things that could fly, but no flying ourselves.”
“Oh?” Hermione asked, curious now, “Do tell.”
“It’s called Duel Monsters and...”
“You’re not talking about the Muggle trading card game that’s been hovering around the edges of popularity for a couple of years?” Hermione asked, confused. “Where did you even learn about it?”
“Luna.” Harry replied simply with a small smile.
“Ah.” Hermione nodded in understanding. After all she’d learned that ‘Luna’ was a perfectly rational excuse for almost anything, “I have a few cards, but I never really got into the game.”
“Luna’s teaching me how to play.” Harry replied, “I have plenty of spare cards if you’re interested.”
Hermione was and they spent an enjoyable afternoon going through Harry’s cards and beating each other with their decks, Hermione favouring Spellcasters and sneak attacks over Harry’s favoured heads on rush attack policy.
Midway through their fourth test of Hermione’s deck a thought popped into Harry’s head.
“Hey Hermione?” Harry asked, curious about something.
“Hmm?” Hermione replied, almost as engrossed in her cards as she had been in the books earlier.
“What do you know about Egypt?”
The question threw Hermione, who looked up as him, confused. “Why?”
“Uh...” Suddenly Harry wished he hadn’t asked since he had no idea if the Weasleys had invited Hermione on their holiday. “Because Luna said these,” He held up the arm with the Bracer on, “Have a base in Egyptian magic and I was curious as to what you know.”
“Well I’ve never really looked into Egyptian forms of magic.” Hermione admitted, “Thought about it when Ron mentioned that his brother was a curse breaker for Gringotts, but never got around to it. I was a little busy trying to learn ahead. After all the Pure-Bloods have been around magic for much longer than we have and...” She looked a little embarrassed, “I might have been asking the upper years for book suggestions.” She paused at the look on Harry’s face, “Yes I know, I’m being a know-it-all.”
“No, no it’s not that.” Harry shook his head, though the thought had crossed his mind, “I’m just surprised that anyone was willing to give you a book list. I mean other than the Weasley twins none of the upper years seem to like us...”
Hermione chuckled slightly. “Oh believe me Harry, the upper year students from our house love you for your Quidditch skills and the fact you brought Gryffindor the house cup for the last two years running. But no, the ones who gave me the information I wanted were the Ravenclaws.”
“How?”
“They appreciate anyone trying to get ahead.” Hermione chuckled, “Keep wondering why I’m not a Claw too.”
“Why aren’t you a Ravenclaw if you’re so interested in learning?” Harry asked.
“Nearly was. The hat was torn between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.” Hermione blushed, “I had to ask to be put in Gryffindor. Embarrassing huh?”
“No.” Harry thought about how he’d pleaded with the Sorting Hat not to be put into Slytherin. “Not really but why Gryffindor?”
“Well, the only people I knew I wanted to be Gryffindors.” Hermione blushed, “And I kind of hoped...” She mumbled the next bit but Harry grinned at her the same.
“Well considering how little people seem to spend time with others outside their own house. I’d say it’s a good thing, right?” The smile that grew on Hermione’s face was enough to tell Harry that had been the right thing to say, even if he wasn’t quite sure where it came from.
Hermione had to leave before their duel ended, having realised the time and needing to meet up with her parents who had agreed to come back for her after they went shopping in London. Harry saw her out and then took Padfoot for a walk, taking a slightly different route again as he successfully got himself lost down the various alleys that led away from the main shops, the ones that he was always taken to when he came to Diagon with his friends, and towards the little shops that had sprung up on the outskirts.
He felt a little safer, taking a different route back to the pub every time as the only part of his walk that was predictable was the four or five yards he had to walk to enter the leaky Cauldron. Not that he seemed to have come under attack again since that one incident, causing him to wonder if it had been planned or if he’d just happened to have the bad luck to run into a drunk Death Eater.
At worst it might have been Lucius Malfoy. Harry hadn’t forgotten about the promise Draco’s father had made after he’d outed him as the man who had set the problems of last year into motion. He had a funny feeling that if Dobby hadn’t intervened when he had, either he wouldn’t be walking around or he’d have had another Penalty on his conscious.
Somehow he doubted he’d get away as lightly as he had over the Dursleys if the spirit of his Bracer had sent a member of a rich Pure-Blood family insane. Harry was under the impression that, considering how well Mr. Malfoy appeared to get on with a certain family, that the Weasleys wouldn’t be sorry if Powel had taken matters into his own hands and they probably wouldn’t have been the only ones.
When his stomach rumbled he headed back the way he’d come, finding his way by trying to recognise the shops he’d passed, all of whom had closed by the time he had finally hunted down Padfoot’s lead which had somehow ‘mysteriously’ ended up under the bed. He was a couple of alleys away from home when he overheard a conversation he probably shouldn’t have done.
“Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything you have to say.” The voice of someone Harry didn’t know but set Sirius’s tail wagging echoed around the corridor.
“I need your help.” The second voice, a panicked man’s voice, made Padfoot start growling and Harry had to dig his feet in to prevent the huge dog rushing around the corner, “Please, you’re the only one I could turn to.”
“You’re dead.” The first voice growled, deep and rough, a tone that was rather similar to Padfoot’s.
“Please Remus.” The second man begged, “I had to hide. Sirius had friends that would have been out to get me. I...”
“You had to hide for ten years, Peter?” Remus deadpanned.
“Just listen to me.” Peter pleaded, “Harry has a new pet. A dog...”
“Black?” Remus’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“I would recognise him anywhere.” Peter agreed, “Harry doesn’t know the danger he’s...”
The leash escaped Harry’s hands, leaving a rope burn behind as he lost control of his dog. Padfooit bounded around the corner, Harry milliseconds behind, and pounced on one of the men.
The other drew his wand, but Harry was faster and shot off the one useful thing he’d learnt in the school’s Dueling Club. “Expelliamus!”
The other man’s wand flew into Harry’s hand as the boy tried to pull his dog off of the ratty looking man who looked like he’d lost a lot a weight recently.
“Padfoot.” Harry pleaded, trying to ignore the fact the man whose wand he’d taken was storming over. “Padfoot down.”
“Move away from that dog.” The second man, Remus, demanded of Harry, “And give me my wand back.”
“He’s mine.” Harry growled, “And no.”
“You don’t know who...”
“Sirius Black, my Godfather.” Harry shot back, “And my guardian.”
“He’s a dangerous criminal!” Remus protested.
“He saved my life.” Harry growled at him.
“He murdered thirteen Muggles and our friend Pe...”
“I did not!” Sirius transformed back, seizing the back of Peter’s robes as the man tried to flee, “It was all Pe...”
The man in question transformed into a rat and scurried away into the darkness.
“Damn it!” Sirius snarled before shifting back into a dog and chasing after the escaped rat.
“Padfoot!”
“Black!”
Harry and Remus darted after the pair but lost them in the dark alleys.
“Wand. Now.” Remus demanded of Harry.
“Promise you won’t attack Padfoot.” Harry shook his head, backing away from the thin, light brown haired man, his wand pointed at him.
“I swear I won’t attack Padfoot as long as he doesn’t attack either of us.” Remus swore.
The moment Harry handed Remus back his wand the man held it out on his hand, “Point Me Sirius Black.”
The wand hovered above his hand for a moment and then pointed in a rather specific direction.
Harry chased after Remus who followed his wand to find a rather angry dog that turned into an incredibly angry man.
“The bastard got away!” Sirius snarled, “That treacherous, lying, backstabbing rat!”
“Black.” Remus pointed his wand at the man, “I should kill you for betraying Lily and James.”
“What?” Harry yelped, stunned.
“It. Wasn’t. Me.” Sirius growled. “We swapped Secret Keepers. I was too obvious a choice. I should never have suggested Peter. When he heard what happened he fled and I hunted him down. The prick cut off his own toe and blew up half a street escaping.” Sirius snorted angrily, “I’ll swear it under Veratasirum if nessessary.”
“Why didn’t you..." Remus trailed off as he remembered the fact that the most they’d ever found of Pettigrew was his toe, “You thought I was the spy.”
“I’m sorry, my friend.” Sirius hung his head in shame,
Remus considered Black for a few moments then lowered his wand. “We should have known that it would be the rat.”
“Excuse me.” Harry spoke up when it became obvious that Remus wasn’t going to blast Sirius, “But who are you?”
“This Harry,” Sirius said with a grin, wrapping his arm around his friend and becoming amused when Remus pulled away, “Is Moony.”
“Remus Lupin.” Remus introduced himself while glowering at Sirius, “I was a friend of your parents.”
“Nice to meet you.” Harry nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else but stopped when the sound of people running down the alley. Sirius swiftly transformed into his canine form before anyone could see him.
“What’s going on?” Harry recognised the man as the Auror who had helped him when he’d been attacked as Padfoot wandered up to Harry’s side. “Are you alright?” He asked Harry, who nodded.
“Sorry, my dog decided he was going to lick Mr Lupin to death and I had trouble pulling him off.” Harry apologised, “Sorry if the noise worried you.”
The Auror looked a little putout but didn’t say anything as he escorted the three of them back to the pub where Remus and Harry sat and had a meal, with Padfoot sat at Harry’s feet.