Harry Potter and Humanity's Curse
I.
When Harry met Sal
(and Humanity is the coolest ever)
AN: This fic will include an AU beginning after PoA and before GoF. A couple of OCs, but they will not be main characters as the story line progresses. Just in Harry's orbit. Also, there will be a more mature version of this story available on AO3, as there are elements of this fic later on that do not fit in the guidelines of FF.N. This fic will be long, but I aim for bi-weekly updates, so stay tuned. I hope you all enjoy! R&R. 3
Sprouts.
They're green and smelly and mushy if over-boiled. Slimy. Bitter. There is really no way to make them tolerable.
Not even making them into jelly beans.
Bleurgh.
Wait. Did Bertie Botts actually use sprouts to make sprouts flavoured beans? Or was it all artificial and chemical like the muggles use for flavouring sweets? Or magical, maybe?
Harry Potter was brought out of his musing when a sleek black cat rubbed itself against his denim cut-offs clad leg. He had been weeding the vegetable patch Aunt Petunia had insisted he plant, and was nearly done with the sprouts section, when the cat appeared and started the nudging and bunting and purring.
Harry stared at the cat for a moment in stunned silence; Privet Drive housed aproximately zero stray animals, to Harry's knowledge. The inhabitants of the community just did not stand for it; the pound was always called in at once to take care of the nuisance. Harry always felt bad for the animals when he stopped and thought about their probable ill treatment in the control centers. Locked up and neglected. He tried not to compare himself to them, but it was nearly impossible.
After blowing up Aunt Marge and the subsequent freedom of being on his own in Diagon Alley he'd experienced last summer, followed by helping his godfather Sirius Black, who was innocent of the mass murder he'd been accused of, escape the dementors of Azkaban Prison, Harry had believed that there was no way he'd be sent back to live another summer with his horrible relatives. How naive he'd been.
Sirius was now a fugitive and out, who knows where, in the world. Therefore, unable to care for Harry. So the boy was shipped back to his mother's sister, Petunia Dursley, her husband Vernon, and their son Dudley. Harry was, at best, treated like an overworked and underfed house elf, at worst, beaten by his massive cousin, starved by his vindictive aunt, and locked in a dark, dank, and tiny boot cupboard by his awful uncle.
A particularly loud purr refocussed Harry's attention back onto the shiny black feline still rubbing itself (himself? herself?) against and inbetween his ankles. Now that he was more closely inspecting the cat, he realized that it was quite well kept and to his surprise had a clean emerald green leather collar with what appered to be a delicate platinum bauble dangling from it. So not a stray, then. Still. It was an unfamiliar cat. A house cat. Outside. A guest in the Dursley's back garden. And an unwelcome one at that. If there was one thing Aunt Petunia disliked more than her 'freak' of a nephew, it was cats. In fact, he wouldn't put it past Uncle Vernon to hit the trespasser round the head with a shovel if his wife raised enough fuss about it being out there.
Harry on the other hand rather liked cats. This one, in particular, was quite nice and very sweet. So he knelt down to the animal and gently said, "Shoo". The cat blinked huge, intelligent looking blue eyes at him, meowed, and sauntered back to the fence and exited the garden through a small gap, from which it must've entered.
Harry stood back up, stretched out his back and shoulders, took a drink of water from the hose, and got back to his weeding.
As June faded into July, Surrrey was hit with an unusual amount of rainy days. The Dursleys spent a lot of time at various cinemas, arcades, and shopping centers. Harry spent a lot of time locked out of the house and looking for places to shelter himself from the downpours.
On one such occasion, as he was lying on his back, reading the grafitti in the giant concrete tube in one of the neighborhood's play parks, Harry heard a hiss and immediately had his stomach pounced upon by an irate, sopping wet black cat.
The cat hissed again and curled it's upper lip away from it's sharp teeth, and Harry looked around to see a small, familiar dog growling at the end of the tube. Once it caught sight of Harry, however, it took off running back to Number 18 Primrose Park. That maltese mix belonged to an elderly man a handful of streets over from the Dursley's house and every so often would pull the lead out of his owner's hand and terrorize small children, birds, or rose bushes until he got bored or was returned by frustrated neighbors.
Looking back down at the soaked cat, Harry saw that it was visibly relaxing now that immenent death and dismemberment had been averted. It did look quite irritated at being wet, however. Harry, who was also quite damp, picked him (yes, definitely a male, he noticed idly) up and cradled him to his chest. The cat instantly began to purr and rub his head against Harry's chin and jaw.
Together the boy and the cat waited until the rain stopped, and then Harry decided it was probably time to take the cat home. He curiously looked towards the bauble attached to the feline's collar, now noting that it was in the shape of the skeleton of an ouroboros surrounding the name "Sal". Turning the name tag over, Harry saw a telephone number and the address 11 Fig Tree Grove.
Harry knew where Fig Tree Grove was. It was hard not to. The bit of Little Whinging named for trees was "the fancy bit". The houses there were large and state of the art. With big open floorplans and grand staircases and huge chef kitchens, if Aunt Petunia was to be believed anyways. She could natter on and on to Uncle Vernon about how she wished they had one of the houses over in the newly constructed portion of Little Whinging. It had been erected only about five years previously, and while he had seen the expansive lawns, and automatic gates opening to long, smooth paved driveways from the back seat of Uncle Vernon's car, Harry had never walked through that portion of the neighborhood before as it was really very fancy, and he looked rather like a street rat in his too-large cast offs, sello-taped glasses, soil caked fingernails, and wild curls.
Now though, Harry was curious about who Sal the cat belonged to. He wanted to warn them that some of the neighbors, his aunt and uncle included, would not take too kindly to an unaccompanied feline wandering aroung the community, even though he didn't mind, and in fact felt quite fond of the little guy.
That thought in mind Harry set off in the opposite direction of his relatives' home and made his way to 11 Fig Tree Grove, Sal napping against his shoulder.
Harry had never seen a muggle house he'd liked better than this one.
Number 11 Fig Tree Grove was a relatively tall and narrow three story tudor style house with multi paned windows, light gray brick, and a charcoal gray shingled roof. It had a dark orangeish red front door and the perfect front garden; well kept, but just busy enough to look wild. It was one of the very few homes on the street to not feature the preferred coded gate, instead had a lovely poured concrete drive lined on either side by fine gravel the same shade as the front door.
There was a collection of very fast looking cars along the paved side of the house, and there even appered to be a motorbike or two there in the mix.
Harry had just caught the scent of baking cookies when he heard a strangely accented voice from surprisingly close by say, "Well hello there, young man."
Shocked, Harry turned about too quickly and promptly tripped over his own feet falling onto his rear end and accidentally dropping Sal, who thankfully landed on his feet and, judging by the purrs he still let out, wasn't bothered by the treatment at all.
"I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean to startle you." The voice said.
Harry looked up and met the amused eyes of a striking woman. She had bright brown, nearly amber coloured eyes, heavily freckeled skin, and long blonde and dark brown dreadlocked hair with a few beads and charms scattered throughout. She had tattoos and was wearing a black silk, deeply cut and thin strapped top that showed off what could have only been a brand in an intricate design that may have been a honeycomb. What was most unusual about this woman however was her stature. She had to have been at least six feet tall and if Harry had to wager, he'd bet no more than 120 pounds. She was like a very tall skin covered skeleton. A very pretty one though, Harry reckoned. Well, if one had quite alternative tastes.
She reached out a hand to help him up while thanking him for bringing Sal home.
"I didn't even realize he'd gotten out of the house. Blasted cat. We recently moved from Stockholm, and he's not used to the amount of space he has to run here. Back in Sweden, we just had a townhouse, so no garden to play in. I'm afraid he's not quite figured out that there's a boundary that he shouldn't cross, yet."
Harry shook off his surprise and replied, "Yeah, he made it all the way over to Privet Drive, that's all the way on the other side of Little Whinging. Some of the neighbors over there don't take too kindly to wandering cats and dogs whether they've got owners or not."
The woman chuckled a little and just said, "I think old Sal can bloody well take care of himself."
She took a look at Harry, seemed to study him, and then suddenly suggested that he join her in the back yard for some coffee.
"Oh," said Harry uncertainly. This was, after all a stranger, "I don't know..."
"Of course," the woman said, shaking her head, "We've not even introduced ourselves. I'm Humanity O'Flannigan-Petrushkin. Which is a fuckin' mouthful, I know. I just go by Ani. What's your name, lad?"
"Harry. Harry Potter." he responded.
"Well Harry, what do you say? Coffee?"
Harry really should have gone back to the Dursleys. It was nearing lunch time, and surely they'd be getting home soon. But Ani was staring at him with warm eyes, and Sal was back to bunting at his legs, and he'd never tried coffee before, and if the front of the house was anything to go on, he thought the back garden must be heaven on Earth. So he said, "Yeah, alright then. Thanks."
Hours later, when Harry had made his way back to Number 4 Privet Drive as the sun set, and Sal the cat had tucked himself into the plush throw at the foot of the guest bed, Humanity walked into the kitchen pantry and pulled a box of weetabix halfway off of the top shelf. A hidden door sprung open, and she quickly made her way down to the basement.
It was a room with stone walls and floor and a ceiling of wooden framework and ducting. there were utility shelves full of jars and boxes full of a wide variety of both common and rare plants and creature parts. A heavy stainless steel table on one wall held gallons and gallons of magically purified water, and a natural cut stone table along the opposite wall held a massive collection of crystals and stones. Hanging from hooks in one of the support beams along the ceiling were cauldrons of every fathomable shape, size, and material. In the far corner of the room was a large stone fireplace, which is where Humanity purposefully strode.
She grabbed a small handful of a glittering powder from the jar on the mantle, tossed it into the grate and called out her destination.
Humanity swept into the intended study, pulled her wand and cast a siphoning charm to remove the soot from her clothes, and waited for the owner of said study to appear, making herself comfortable in the chair in front of the ornate desk and propping her dragonhide boots on top of it. She knew it wouldn't take long, because the wards automatically tripped upon her arrival, and sure enough they rushed in only moments later wand raised and ready.
Stopping short upon seeing the intruder, the proprieter sighed heavily, returned their wand to their pocket and said, "So?"
She looked up, and replied, "It worked. Just like you said it would. I found Harry."