I've read several Harry-returns-to-Privet-Drive-after-the-war fanfictions and couln't help but want to write my own.
Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I if had written them a lot of thing would have been done differently, like Sirius and Remus dying.
And a giant thank you to a friend from school who will remain unnamed for being my beta on this one.
Two faint pops were the only sign of a disturbance on Privet Drive, along with the sudden appearances of two young people, one male, one female. The male had dark black hair and brilliant, glowing emerald eyes. The female had red hair the color of flames and molten brown eyes. The two walked down the street, mindfully watching for cars, and turned up the driveway of number four, Privet Drive. The young man, Harry James Potter, had called the house's owners, his aunt and uncle, only a few days before and received permission from his aunt to return to the house where he once lived and retrieve the belongings he had left there when leaving before what would have been his seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The doorbell rang loudly through the house as the young woman pressed it, alerting its occupants to their visitors. Harry barely recognized his cousin when the blonde opened the door, hiding having obviously done to the once overweight young man what years of different diets could not. He was even more surprised when he and his companion were waved in with a slight smile.
"Mum's in the sitting room with tea," the blonde told them before ushering them through the entryway and into the brightly lit room. Seeing his aunt there wringing her hands was also a new sight for the eighteen year old wizard, as was the smile that lit up her face at the sight of him and his girlfriend. He was about to speak when his aunt stunned him into silence with a hug that enveloped both him and his girlfriend.
"It's good to see you, Harry," the blonde woman said. "Come, sit, sit." She ushered the two magic-users to the couch, sitting down next to her son on the couch across from them. Harry smiled slightly at that.
"Aunt Petunia, Dudley, this is my girlfriend, Ginny Weasley. Gin, my aunt and cousin, Petunia and Dudley Dursley."
While the redhead only nodded, Petunia spoke up with a slight smile on her face. "Were you with Harry this past year?" Seeing the stunned looks on the faces of the two teens she explained her previous statement carefully. "While we were in hiding Dudley and I would listen to the radio station – Potterwatch, was it? – while Vernon sulked."
"No, ma'am. I was still at school. I'm a year younger than Harry, Ron, and Hermione, so I was still underage. I was in charge of the rebel group there called the DA. We all fought in the Final Battle, though."
Petunia and Dudley nodded, and continued questioning Harry and Ginny on the past year as they sipped their tea and nibbled on cookies from a platter in the idle of the coffee table. Both of the Dusleys looked thoroughly appalled at the explanation of Horcruxes when Harry explained what he had been doing the months before the battle at Hogwarts, and Petunia teared up when she heard of what had to be done to rid Harry of the part of Voldemort's soul that was sealed in his lightning-shaped scar. She started crying in earnest when she heard of the atrocities that occurred at the school from Ginny, and Dudley had to close his eyes for several minutes to prevent the same thing from happening to him. Harry and Ginny smiled when they heard of Dudley's and Petunia's weekly listening to Potterwatch and reading of both the Daily Prophet and Quibbler and laughed when Dudley proclaimed the Prophet useless before agreeing with the statement. When the tea was gone and only crumbs remained, Petunia motioned for Ginny to stay seated while Harry and Dudley returned to the room that Harry had once lived in.
"She was real worried, you know," Dudley told his younger cousin as they entered the room. Harry nodded before gasping at what lay on his former bed. Several twigs were bent, but the Firebolt looked almost as good as it had when he had first received the broom from his now-deceased godfather, Sirius Black.
"How – ?" he gasped at the sight of the broom he had thought lost. He had not been able to bear the thought that the broom had been destroyed, and now here it sat like it had never been through an aerial battle.
"It almost crashed into the car when we were going into hiding. Both of the people in the car with us recognized it and I asked if I could return it to you after everything ended." Harry blinked tears out of his eyes and enveloped his cousin in a hug.
"Thank you," he told the blonde, sincerity ringing in his voice. "I couldn't bear the thought of it being destroyed. Now, do you want to give me a hand with this mess?"
The room was indeed a mess. Robes and Muggle clothing were strewn about the floor, each needing to be folded before it could be place in the trunk with the Gryffindor crest stuck on it at an angle that rested at the foot of the bed. Books from classes and on Quidditch were also laying in various places on the floor, though several of the Quidditch and history books were in a stack next to the door. When Harry turned to his cousin the other boy shrugged and said that he had gotten curious about them and that the books on spells and potions would not mean anything to him. Harry agreed, saying that they could be boring at times.
"What's that crest on your trunk, anyway?" the blonde boy questioned his black-haired counterpart as they continued to fold clothes, Harry handling the complex robes and Dudley folding pants and shirts.
"It was my house at Hogwarts. There are four of them: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, named after the school's four founders. Voldemort was in Slytherin, one of his descendants. Cedric Diggory, the boy I was shouting about after my fourth year, was in Hufflepuff. Ginny's best friend, the daughter of the editor of The Quibbler, Luna Lovegood, is in Ravenclaw. Both my mum and dad were in Gryffindor as well, along with my godfather and their best friend."
Dudley nodded in understanding and placed the last pair of pants in the open trunk. He glanced at how full it was, then turned to Harry. "You sure we can fit all this in here?" Harry nodded and flicked his wrist to pull his wand out of the sheath he kept it in on his forearm, casting a quick enlargement charm on the truck before tucking the piece of holly wood away again.
"Downright useful, that spell. I don't know how we would have survived if Hermione hadn't managed to do that to her purse to carry everything we needed."
They continued putting thing in the case, before Harry came across his photo album and sat down heavily on the bed. He glanced at the cover before looking over at his cousin.
"Hey, Dudley. How would you like to see some pictures of your aunt and uncle?"
The blonde smiled slightly before replying. "Why don't we wait until we go back down. I'm sure Mum will want to see them."
The rest of the packing continued in much the same manner, Dudley asking about things he came across and Harry answering any of the questions he could. The boy had been particularly surprised by the gold-tone egg from the Triwizard Tournament and the various trophies and medals that inhabited the same space in the closet as the egg. When Harry had explained what happened during the tournament, Dudley apologized for making fun of Harry for his nightmares. When Harry found the stack of letters from Sirius, he had to sit on the bed of several long moments to compose himself. When Dudley asked what was wrong, Harry explained about the fight at the Ministry, choking out the part about Sirius falling through the Veil thanks to his fight with the insane Bellatrix Lestrange. Dudley asked about Quidditch and applauded his cousin when he learned of Harry's position in the dangerous game, wincing along with his cousin at the story of Gilderoy Lockhart vanishing all the bones in his arm. He learned about the Chamber of Secrets and Harry's Parseltongue abilities when he found an unbreakable glass orb containing the basilisk fang that Harry had used to destroy Tom Riddle's diary in his second year. He asked about Buckbeak when he found the large grey feathers that the large creature had shed, nodding in understanding at what had happened during third year. The Marauders' Map was also something that Dudley asked about in great detail, as was the invisibility cloak that Harry had inherited from his father what Harry mentioned it in his story. The Map, along with the list of DA signatures from his fifth year, letters from Sirius, various notes from Dumbledore, and the note from Regulus Black were tucked into the photo album on his bed rather than into his trunk. The Firebolt also stayed on the bed rather than going in the trunk, while the cage that had once held his snowy owl Hedwig was shrunk and thrown in along with the awards and golden egg. Over an hour passed before Harry and Dudley journeyed back to the sitting room, the teenaged wizard holding his broom and picture album while the heavy trunk floated down the stairs behind them.
"Aunt Petunia," Harry started as he and Dudley walked back into the sitting room, "would you like to see some of the pictures I have of my mum and dad?"
Petunia looked up from her conversation with Ginny and gave Harry a watery smile, her eyes fill with tears again, no doubt at the memories of her sister. "May I?" she questioned.
Harry nodded, sat down next to his aunt, and passed her the scrapbook-like album. "You may have noticed from the picture of my parents that used to be on my dresser that photos in the wizarding world move. Most of these are like that, but a few aren't."
Petunia opened the book and immediately put a hand to her mouth. Hermione had spelled the book to be endless and to update itself in chronological order whenever something was placed into it. The picture on the first page was one that he had retrieved from a box of pictures in his Gringotts vault, obviously taken before the fallout between the Evans sisters as Petunia and Lily were standing arm-in-arm and smiling. The second was a picture of Lily with Serverus Snape, one of Harry's former teachers and a former neighbor of the Evans family. The next pages went on in a similar manner, alternating between Lily's life and James's life. Harry saw his paternal grandparents smiling and waving from a wizard photo when James got his Hogwarts letter. Petunia saw her parents what she reached a professionally taken portrait that, she revealed, had been taken only a few weeks before Lily got her letter. They flipped through the Hogwarts years, Harry and Ginny explaining about the different houses and the magical Great Hall. Dudley chucked when he saw a picture of the Slytherin table after one of the Marauders' more infamous pranks. Petunia smiled when she learned that James's protective nature in regards to Lily had been the starting point for the prank. Harry could not help but get choked up when he saw the picture of the four Marauders and Lily, the one female reprimanding James and Sirius, a Head Girl badge pinned to her robes, before getting swung around by her fellow Head. Moving pictures from the wedding of Lily Evans and James Potter were next, Sirius Black standing next to James while the woman who would become Alice Longbottom stood next to Lily. The months progressed, moving through the original Order of the Phoenix, Lily's pregnancy, and Harry's first year of life before a ten year break. After the ten years the pictures were all wizard: Harry with Ron and Hermione, the castle ghosts, Hagrid and the other Hogwarts professors, Hogsmead and Hogwarts, the second Order of the Phoenix and the DA in addition to those responsible for Potterwatch. Harry and Ginny both had tears running down their faces by the end of that parade of images, and only the picture of a small sapphire-haired boy made them smile.
Petunia touched the picture of Harry and the Lupin family, Harry holding the small Teddy with Remus and Tonks standing proudly behind them, gently before turning to her nephew. "You look so happy. I'm just sorry that I couldn't have seen that in person."
That statement caused Harry to reach forward himself before turning to Ginny and nodding. The redhead vanished with a slight pop, allowing Harry to look back at his aunt. "Teddy is my godson. Remus and Tonks, his parents, were killed during the Final Battle. Andromeda, Tonks's mother, was originally going to raise him, but she couldn't. I'm taking care of him now. Ginny's mother was watching him for me while we were here, but I want you to meet him. Ginny just left to get him."
It was amazing the reaction those few simple words inspired in Petunia Dursley and her son. Both were openly weeping and doing nothing to hide that fact from Harry. When Ginny arrived in the living room with Teddy, Petunia started crying even more. The rest of the day was spent playing with Teddy, watching the small boy change his features, though his eyes never changed. They remained the deep golden amber of his father.
So, tell me what you think? Was it terrible? Was it good? I'm thinking of writing a story where Sirius rescues Harry before POA. Should I?