DISCLAIMER:
I have had no part in writing Harry Potter and I am simply using/messing with it to my own delight! The Harry Potter universe, all its characters, places and events are owned by Joanne K. Rowling and the people she sold the rights to for the film version of the book series! Naturally this means that I don´t gain anything from writing or posting this little piece of Fanfiction and have no intention of earning money or gain any other form of profit with "Harsh truth´s"!
INFO:
This is just a little idea of mine and I am not sure if it´s good or not as it´s my first Fanfiction I publish insetead of giving my mentors, teachers and frieds to read. I did my best to correct mistakes I´ve noticed and ran the check but please inform me of every other mistake you may find and I will change it as soon as possible!
LEGEND:
** = thoughts of a character kept to him or herself
() = my way of fitting in information or other titbits I wanted to add but had no idea how to present otherwise
## = Parseltounge
Chapter 1: Harsh Truth
Sighing desperately the young boy continued his way down the street leading away from the house he recently left in a hurry. On his way he started contemplating his life so far and couldn´t help himself but wondering about the things he had done and said in the past four years which were very much out of character. If he was honest to himself he had spent the last four years reacting instead of thinking things trough, a trait he had learned the hard way while living with his so called family, or at least all his new friends told him so. In his growing anger at himself he sped up his pace never noticing the chaos he left behind. He had fled as soon as he had felt his surroundings growing cold and made the connection to the creature that was behind said sudden temperature drop.
*Why did I hear out the opinion of Ron and Hermione, people I only recently met and acted on this instead of forming my own opinion first? It´s not like I haven´t done that my previous years before magic and Hogwarts, damn it! Stealth, Cunning, hiding in the shadows, planning every word careful, reading people and their body language was keeping me alive and healthy (or as healthy as humanly possible with relatives that hated your guts), for Heaven´s sake! And why was it so freaking hard to wake up in Hogwarts when I´ve had to rise at 5:30 am during every week the seven years of my life (the years after my fourth birthday where it was deemed "safe" for me to learn cooking) anyway?*
Pondering this questions he stumbled at another problem, one that would solve most of his recent issues with himself. His thoughts were foggy and he had difficulty focusing after dwelling on his previous life for the better part of half an hour, it was like his thoughts kept drifting away from him and he had to use mental and magical energy to gasp them again. That was not how his mind worked, never had been since he started using his "free time" to sort through his memories at the tender age of three creating a "safe heaven" after one particular vicious slap on his head from Vernon.
The anger or indifference of Petunia (he privately refused to call her Aunt) every time she saw him or the blunt hatred of Vernon every time he came in his reach were only a few of his early memories but with each year he started remembering other things like the date he was born or that his parents were dead and how they looked. Four years before "The Disaster" (the title he had given the days when owls started to drive Vernon mad, carrying letters of yellow thick paper- the address written with green ink, leading up to the day in the shag on the island where Hagrid destroyed the door) he had remembered how his parents used to call him and how they named him only to get the confirmation a month later when he started primary school. He needed to hide far away and let someone check his health before he could do much more thinking seeing as he couldn´t grasp most of what was on his mind at all.
To run away and stay away he needed a plan, fast. Trying to clear his mind like he had done his whole life he thought about ways to escape the Ministry and Dumbeldore before either of them could catch him and put him back to the Dursleys. He couldn´t, for the live of him, figure out why everyone insisted on calling them his family or Number four his home without noticing his uncomfortable squirms or the rolling of his eyes. Oh how he had hoped Sirius, at least, would help him and take him in, but with the recent events not even this was possible. Finally, after another hour of walk, he had cleared his mind well enough for him to face a new problem.
Should he risk hiding in Diagon Alley, was that even possible or an oxymoron in its own right and how could he trust the information that this was the only magical shopping district in Britain? After a short while he came to the conclusion that he had to go to Kings Cross and once there he had to buy a ticket with the hard earned money in his hastily packed rucksack, the plan to flee firmly on his mind hours before he felt the Dementors drawing closer.
Because it was hastily he had left his whole school things in the house, knowing that Vernon had locked them into the cellar so he could force him to watch when he burnt it all down. He had heard Vernon talk about this plan with Petunia shortly after Dudley catched Hedwig and broke her wings before slicing his beloved familiar while the poor thing was still alive. Harry had been heartbroken, despite the fact that he couldn´t even see the whole thing as he was locked, once again, in the cupboard. The only reason he knew of it during the fact were hearing Hedwig's desperate screeches and smelled the scent of blood His sadistic Cousin told him about it after they had burnt the owls dead body in the garden and even discussed the possibility of eating the remains which Petunia had protested furiously. Only thinking at it caused his stomach turn violently and a wave of cold hatred to wash over him for their sheer cruelty.
Sighing once agein he returned hi thoughts back to the real problem at hand now firmly believing that he needed to see a healer, and fast. Thinking of important needs he really needed an idea which way he was heading before he could buy a ticket with the money. It was one of the things he had been allowed to do when Petunia was around with the other members of the Dursley family gone. She had allowed him to help their neighbours with gardening, painting the fences or babysitting. What his aunt never realised was that doing this helped the neighbours see the true young Harry and not the cruel, stupid boy Petunia and Vernon made him out to be whenever someone asked about him. He had done minor chores in each house in Private Drive and earned quite a bit on money albeit his Aunt taking away half of his earnings. The young torment boy never had a way to buy himself something unnoticed which was the reason his little fortune; as he called it silently very proud of having been able to hide it from Vernon and Dudley's greedy fingers; had steadily grown. He could have bought himself more things to eat seeing as he had not gotten much from his relatives but he somehow had felt the need to save it all.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks as each of his thoughts became clearer and he turned around to check his surroundings the first time he had left his so called home. He had left Little Whining and was on the way through a Forrest which would shortly end and reveal the first tails of London. From there he only needed to walk another hour to reach his destination- Kings Cross. Only now he realised that Dudley Dursley had received the punishment for everything he had ever done to Harry as had his friends and the first but quickly squashed pang of guilt flashed in him. It was not his fault that the boys were stupid enough to run into the Dementors while chasing Harry, thinking he was running away from them instead of the crisp coldness and darkness behind them. It was his twisted way of luck, he supposed, that the boys never realised what hit them until it was too late giving Harry the one much needed opportunity to escape the guards of Askaban without using magic.
It made him laugh out loud a little hysterical before his mind suddenly cleared fully making him wonder why it happened. Enjoying the feeling of his mind working properly and filing away the past two years, going through each memory in the process a little voice in his head whispered the word magic as if it wanted to answer the questions flooding into his process of thought. This one word made him freeze on the spot and his inwards turn cold like ice. When there was magic that could expand rooms and made people fall in love with persons they had hated with a passion only a few days ago or hide a chamber in the size of half of Hogwarts underneath its very grounds there sure as hell would be a magic that helped control someone's mind and train of thoughts or simply suppress someone's personality to a certain point at least.
Having this thought made him, once again, want to vomit but he ignored it in order to finally reach Kings Cross. And he still wasn´t certain if the Dementors were looking for him now that they had had their meal. Thinking hard he had to admit that his feet began aching very fast and his mouth felt dry with each step he did but he had to reach Kings Cross before they found him. Knowing that he only had one hour left he speed up his pace again and thought back at the few books he had read and the things Hermione was so fond of pushing in his brain to figure out if there was a city where he could do his business and shopping in order to avoid walking along Diagon Alley. Pushing all the now very clear questions in his head aside he thought at the only valid thing, finally his urge to survive kicking in, reaching Kings Cross and leaving as fast as possible.
While he half walked and half ran memories of the past four years flashed in his brain and he filed them away in the mental library in his little mansion that he had built after reading about mediation and mental capacity training, which he started doing as soon as he had grasp the concept behind it and the usefulness of it had hit him in full force. So he had started rebuilding his private sanctuary within his mind and reviewed his whole life putting each memory or information into books with different titles. What once was a place in his own mind he replayed memories to escape reality suddenly became something important, a skill he wanted to master as he knew that no one could take away his mind from him. * Well, that was a wrong assumption seeing as I suddenly lost it all. The mindscape, the mansion gone the moment I set one foot onto Hogwarts grounds*
His time at the Dursleys now owned a whole bookcase with the titles "The Hell Hole Part one to seven" and "The Pigs part one to eleven" followed by "Family? Part One to seven" and "The Stupidity of People Part one to five" with the "Code of Abusing and How to Not Raise Children" including "The Chamber of Secrets and All You Ever Wanted to Know about Basilisks" and "How to enter a Magically Binding Contract Without Your Notice and How You Come Out Alive" right down to "Crazy Rituals you Never, Ever Want To Be Part of Again" the last few only now forming books after his mind finally began organising itself the first time after four hard years with more than three near-death experiences he happily would have passed up. All of this was pure magic if he thought about it but it had never occurred to him and he asked himself only one question on his way. *Someone screwed with my mind! Very much so as I don´t even recall having a mindscape at all and it never occurred to me that I acted out of character, no wonder the beatings and the starving went up after my return from Hogwarts when I even forgot how to fucking stay away from the Dursleys or read Vernon's moods….!*, Harry stopped in his tracks this one thought had him shaking in a mixture of fear and anger. Fear that whoever had done this would do it again and anger at the implications of it all and his own stupidity to go four years without the slightest suspicion. Refocusing on his immediate plans he began to walk again, his feet shaking wits anger and exhaustion, his eyes clouds from unshed tears.
The raven haired teen reached Kings Cross just as the sun started rising and came to a halt when he saw a information board about all trains leaving, where they were heading and their stops in between. One city in particular caught his eyes and he had the sudden urge to go to Coventry. He ignored the voice in his head, sounding suspicious like Hermione, that told him to sit in a nice café and wait onto some adult that could help him and approached the next counter where he smiled in a, what he hoped would be a happy and friendly way before he asked the Muggle for the next available train to Coventry. Getting one ticket was complicated and he had to convince the confused and tired looking man that he had, in fact, parental permission to visit his Aunt as his parents would meet up with him at the train station. This seemed to placate the man and he smiled obviously relieved at him before handing him the ticket alongside his change.
Secretly relieved at his acting skills, the emerald green eyed teen took one look at his ticket before he walked towards the right platform where he boarded the waiting train. Searching for a place to sit while hiding his astonishment when there were only a few compartments and the rest was open space with many seats. Sitting down near a window he sunk back feeling suddenly very tired. Deciding to take a nap he closed his eyes, his mind working at high speed to progress everything that had happened these past two years and six hours.
When Harry opened his eyes one and a half hours later the train slowly came to a halt, having reached Coventry. Rising from his seat he groggily took his rucksack and left the train. For some reason he felt himself pulled towards a park not far from the train station and as he had followed the same pull at Kings Cross, gave in. He stopped in his tracks when, after a few steps, he entered a pavilion no one else seemed to notice only to freeze when he suddenly stood in a shopping mall just like Harold's but the shops sold magical items.
"Holy shit!" To his surprise no one seemed to mind his loud shout. *A whole fucking mall, and no one ever told me?* he asked himself while looking around to see magical elevators and shops on all four upper stories. Stepping further inside he saw a shop for joke products, clothes, games, sweets and brooms. Each of the shops on the first floor held all things kids and teenagers liked including two pet shops. On the second level- so he thought after glancing upwards a few times, were bookshops and shops for school supplies and robes for all occasions while at the third level were potion shops and other things only adults would look trough. Deciding that he really needed money first he saw a sign that led him to believe that Gringotts was somewhere in the back of the, in its size growing, shopping mall.
Deciding to stop wondering and wooing about the wonders of magic he headed towards the branch of Gringotts where he approached one of the counters. "Good day, I wish to withdraw money from my vault!" he said respectfully. "And who are you, young wizard?" asked the goblin looking at him much friendlier than he was used to. "I am Harry Potter and due to circumstances I had no input in my key is out of my reach!" he replied after remembering that Mrs. Weasley had done his shopping the last time around and actually never returned his key to him which only added to the increasingly amount of questions he had.
The goblin looked at him while pressing a button on his counter, watching his every movement. "I have called Silverclaw one of our Account managers who currently only is watching the Potter Account in this branch of Gringotts!" he explained slowly after a small staring contest between the teen wizard and himself. Just as he had finished a goblin dressed in a dark blue suit cleared his throat behind them, causing Harry to turn around and face the newcomer. "If you would follow me, Mr Potter? We will retire in my office to speak about a few things." Having no idea whatsoever why he should do this he simply filed this questions away figuring that speaking in an office, with no wizards that could possible recognize him around, wouldn´t be all that bad. Trying and failing spectacularly to remember the way back after the second sharp turn to the right and one staircase leading them down and deeper into the building he enjoyed the quiet journey quite well. After another turn to the left Silverclaw opened one of the office doors at the end of the floor and walked to his table, sitting down upon his chair while gesturing to Harry at the visitor's chair, indicating that the raven haired teen should sit down.
"To be blunt, Mr Potter, my colleagues and I have wondered when you would ask for a private conversation concerning your inheritance, but we assumed you would do so at our main branch of Great Britain which is in Diagon Alley, London. But we suspected that you simply were happy with your quarterly account statements!" Silverclaw began, coming straight to business. Harry looked at the goblin trying to steel himself for the next deep blow as it seemed that there were more things going on than the obvious in this past four years that threatened to make his head implode very soon. He didn´t need one ounce of information about Divination to know that this was very, very bad and that there would be a mental and emotional breakdown in his near future. "I am sorry, Silverclaw but I have no idea what you are talking about. I´ve never received such statements, hell the first time I saw my vault key was when Hagrid escorted me to Diagon Alley and drew it out of one of his countless bags. You see, the only mail I ever received the first eleven years of my live was the one Hogwarts letter!" he added hastily as the goblin seemed to get angrier with each new bit of information.
The goblin seeing this reaction from his costumer schooled his features as to not scare the boy even further while pressing a few buttons underneath the surface of his table. "Your magical guardian should have forwarded them to you, then!" he stated as clam as possible but the young boys face falling apart made his anger spike again. "You have no idea about this, do you?" he asked casually watching his costumer intently. "That I actually have someone as guardian I do not know anything of or that he or she should care about me and inform me about my bank accounts, you mean? No, I don't. But it isn't as surprising as I feared seeing as I have no idea about wizarding costumes or the law or how the whole wizarding world operates and everything else, it´s not like someone bothered to tell me about it" pausing he looked back at the goblin and saw, for the first time, a real slightly scary goblin grin. "That answers a few of my other questions regarding you, Mr Potter! Now I have ordered your documents to be brought here but I fear I can´t do anything more unless you want us to transfer all your money and belongings in our branch instead of Diagon Alley. However, "he said after watching the teens face change into a slight mask of indifference and concentration "the things I am able to do are very important and could be very interesting for you too, Mr Potter. If you would allow me to start the transfer we could make an inheritance test as well as an ancestor and ability test, which would make everything a little bit easier on both of us!"
Harry felt like the hammer blow would come soon enough and mentally cancelled all his further plans for this day before he nodded at the goblin while thinking about something to drink or eat having the sinking suspicion that he would spend a few long hours in here. This was the second prediction that Harry made mentally at this day and both would become come true very soon.
"Good. Now please cut into your palm with this dagger and place seven drops of blood on each of this sheets of paper!" the goblin said after mere moments of tapping and pressing another button before handing the youngest Seeker in a century aforementioned dagger while placing aforementioned sheets before him. Nodding Harry did just that and watched in slight irritation as his blood began to form lines on them, changing into some runic language before Silverclaw took them out of his reach and tapped them with his index finger murmuring some incarnation in what had to be the language of Goblins. Placing the Dagger back on the desk and smiling when he saw that his fresh wound was already healed he sat back in his seat waiting for the goblin to return with the sheets. Unbeknown to him the goblin had put on a slight show while changing the runes into English and was now feeling like a cold hand had grasped his inwards.
While Silverclaw took his time to chant and wave at the parchment, his eyes grew wider and he thanked all his gods that his costumer seemed contend sitting on the couch. Harry had sunk back into his mindscape to find most of his memories in perfect order while he had started to write a mental list of all questions. One of them was crossed out after he thought that Private Drive had never been and would never be his home. The Dursleys were monsters instead of family. That one thought, however, sent the wards around Private Drive crashing down and destroyed half of the instruments in Albus Dumbledore's office at Hogwarts.
Simultaneously the only scion of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter, repairing his mindscape and sitting on a couch in an office of Gringotts, felt a rush of magical and physical energy like some unknown weight had been lifted from him, starling him out of his intense mind-work. "If you would join me again, Mr Potter, I would like to show you your Ancestors List first!" Silverclaw said watching the boy's attention focus back at him while the wizard now seemed to feel more in tune with himself. Receiving a nod he picked up the sheet and turned it around so Harry could look at it.
"It basically works like a family tree going back in time until the beginning of the Potter line. Your lineage starts with Edmund Gryffin-Potter the son of Maritha Gryffin who was the daughter of Godric Gryffindors only child with Helga Huffelpuff. They both were rumoured to have a relationship but it was never confirmed until now. The reason is that the Potters have always been very tight lipped about their linage, their relation to Gryffindor was only a rumour too. Edmund married yet another grandchild of Helga Huffelpuff and both decided to use "Potter" alone. A few hundred years later, at the near end of the tree are your grandparents, Dorea Potter nee Black and Charlus Potter with a line to their son James!"
Harry had listened to this very carefully filing the information away and saw something that explained his sometimes ridiculous amount of loyalty but he also saw his relation to the Black family and trough it to Draco Malfoy and his relation to Neville Longbottom who was his cousin first grade as Charlus Potters brother Damian had married Augusta Longbottom which was Neville's grandmother if he remembered correctly. Filing it all away in his study as a really big family tree warded with everything he could think of he looked up and into the goblins eyes. "I am related to two founders?" The goblins face split into a broader grin than before, looking slightly predatory making Harry wonder if three goblin wars were the accurate number in the last thousand years.
"I showed you this tree for a reason, Mr Potter. You are not only related to Godric Gryffindor and Helga Huffelpuff, you are their heir apparent. The tree should help you understand how you came to be heir apparent and heir presumptive to this houses!" Searching furiously in his head what this meant he took a look at his inheritance test and felt the need to faint. "As you see" Silverclaw said his feral grin still in place "you are a very wealthy young man, Mr Potter! As we are currently moving all this in our branch do you have anything to say?"
His hands were shaking but his brain capacity was back in full force, finally and he really hoped that someone could explain to him why the hell it had escaped his notice for an unknown amount of time that his brain was, indeed, nuts. While he was still writing new questions on his mental list he slowly clamed down. "Is there a way to merge the vaults? Instead of a few dozen vaults for one of the families only four really big ones? Near each other if possible?" The Goblin looked at him in concentration before he scribbled something on a sheet of parchment in front of him and looking up again. "We could put the money in two vaults and the other things like books and weapons in another two of our currently free high security vaults. If this is acceptable?"
"Yes, thank you. Could you make an inventory list and check for the properties of some of the stuff and its worth? If possible in form of a very boring book?" Seeing where the black haired teen was heading with this Silverclaw smiled before he started to scribble again before looking up and considering his options. "We probably have to wait an hour before everything is finished, care for some refreshments and snacks?" "That would be great, thank you. The matter with my key?"
"I already made the current key worthless and it will have vanished from wherever it has been until that time. As you are soon one of our highly wealthy costumers we will give you a plastic which you can use just like a credit card in the Muggle world!" Thanking the goblin again Harry allowed himself a small smile as a tray with sandwiches and pumpkin juice appeared at the table between them. Smelling the food and having it in front of his eyes made his stomach grumble, loud, but he ignored it just like Silverclaw while he took one sandwich and began slowly to eat it.
Thankfully his mental and emotional state were back to what he knew was "normal", despite the fact that he had never missed it these past four years. Having himself under control again felt better than anything in these previous years but this was really something for later, when he had found a healer he could trust and had been checked trough and trough. Thinking this again he ate with his soon to be account manager and waited for the explosion to happen.
