Author's Note and Disclaimers:
I generally don't like to write Author's Notes, as I'd prefer the actual writing to stand on its own without me explaining things outside of the work. However, I thought for this first installment, one was necessary. This is a story I started nearly two years ago, and abandoned after sixteen chapters because I lost the drive to complete it. I am currently deployed, and as such, have ample time to return to and hopefully finish the story. My writing style has changed a bit, though, so I will be rewriting the previous chapters and possibly removing some of them altogether. If you are interested in the original, I will not be deleting it, but it will not be updated. I welcome any and all reviews, good or bad, and look forward to updating this story as often as possible. I do not own Harry Potter, obviously, but I do hope I can do the universe that was created by J.K. Rowling justice.
Harry Potter and the Approaching Darkness (Remastered)
Chapter 1: The Calm Before the Storm
The start of a new term at school was always a strange time in the Potter house. Harry looked around the kitchen, "It feels odd, the house being so empty, he thought aloud. Of course, the house was not at all empty, it still bore all the signs of the loving family that lived within. Pictures of the Potters adorned the walls smiling outward and interacting with one another the way all photos did in the wizarding world. Near the staircase, leading up to the children's bedrooms, lay the pile of items he and Ginny had confiscated from James prior to allowing him to leave the house this morning. Harry suspected that, despite their best efforts, they had missed quite a few items which were sure to make their way back to the house via owls from Neville, the head of Gryphindor House.
Lily was still at home also, sulking about the music room, occasionally tapping the keys on the small piano that she and Albus had begged Harry to get them for Christmas a few years prior. Harry thought they were both excellent, almost prodigious, pianists. Harry took this moment to comfort his daughter, "You know, there's a room at Hogwarts, I'll have to show you where it is, that I expect would furnish a Grand Piano if you wanted it too."
"Really?" Lily's eyes lit up at the thought of having access to such an instrument.
"Of course," Harry replied, sitting down beside her. "I expect it would furnish a whole orchestra's worth of instruments if you needed it to."
"Do you think there will be other children that play instruments at the school?" Lily asked looking up at him, "All James ever talks about is quidditch, and I'm awful at quidditch." Harry looked down at her thoughtfully and remembered something Dumbledore had said on his very first night at Hogwarts.
"Of course, Lily." He said staring into his daughter's eyes, they were nearly identical to his own, though she clearly got her hair from the Weasley side, "A great man once told me that music was a greater magic than any taught at Hogwarts. Admittedly, at the time I thought him mad, but seeing you and your brother with your music has utterly changed my perspective." Lily beamed up at him and he pecked her on the forehead, "Now, go get ready, your mother and I have a party to get to."
The Weasley clan always got together on the first day of school, free of most of the children. The children that weren't already in school were usually stolen away by Arthur and Molly Weasley as quickly as possible. Harry looked at Ginny, who was moving like a tornado between her writing desk and the kitchen, preparing for the quickly approaching party. "You know, I can help with the cooking if you're busy with a story. I promise I won't burn the house down," Harry said, over the sound of the wireless blaring Quidditch Today, Ginny's favorite source of entertainment, even though the vast majority of the information came from her reports. Harry expected she only listened to it to stroke her own ego.
This was the busiest time of the year for the Potter household. The start of the professional quidditch season came along quickly after the start of the school year. Since ending her playing career to pursue the life of a journalist, Ginny was much busier than she had ever been as a player. At least back then she had the off-season.
"I'm okay," Ginny said, absentmindedly as she moved from the desk back to the stovetop, "I just wish we could have apparated back instead of taking that bloody car to King's Cross." She slipped on the damp floor just as she said this, which would have been a disaster as she was holding a tray of hot biscuits. The disaster was averted, though, when Harry caught her around the waist. She only dropped one of the biscuits, which Harry promptly removed from the floor.
"Five second rule," He said, before biting into it and burning his tongue. Ginny seemed to find this amusing. "You really should slow down, Gin," Harry said after painfully swallowing the much too hot first bite. "You don't want to tire yourself out before the party."
"I'll slow down when the season starts," Ginny said, "The preseason is the only time my job is more fun than actually playing." With that, she moved swiftly back to her writing desk before looking back at Harry. "That shirt needs to be pressed, by the way. It's far too wrinkled to wear to the party."
Harry looked down at his shirt and laughed, "You sound more like Molly every day, you know?" He unbuttoned the shirt and threw it over the back of the desk chair, which had been pushed out of the way of the desk when Ginny had decided to multi-task. "Maybe I'll just go shirtless tonight," Harry joked.
"First, you had better be talking about mum, not Percy's spoiled whelp," Ginny said, tossing a grape at him, "and second, as much as I would enjoy that... I'm not sure that any establishment in wizarding Britain is going to abide a shirtless Harry Potter running around."
"I wouldn't dream of comparing you to our precious niece," Harry replied, running his wand up and down his shirt and watching the wrinkles disappear. "Speaking of nieces, do you think George and Angelina will be bringing Roxie tonight?"
"I doubt it," Ginny replied, "she always has trouble coping when her brother leaves for school. Mum will probably have already whisked her off to the Burrow." Molly did always have a way with calming her grandchildren, although Harry had often suspected it had much more to do with the Burrow itself, as it had always been one of the places Harry felt the most at peace when he was growing up. "Do you think we should drop off Lily before the party?"
"Only if Hugo is already there. Lily would never forgive us if we left her behind while Ron and Hermione brought him," Harry said, "I'll check with Ron." He walked to the fireplace and casually tossed in a bit of the green floo powder from the bowl atop the mantle. He stepped into the green flames and said clearly, "Ron's Flat." As he spun out of existence in his own home, he heard his wife shout for him to hurry back.
Harry arrived in his best friends' loft just in time to be hit in the face by a crumpled-up piece of parchment. After recovering from the initial shock, he laughed, "Hard at work, I see."
Ron looked up at his friend stepping out of the fireplace and as the flames returned to their usual orange color he grumbled. "I never thought a joke shop would come with so much bloody paperwork. I swear it's like writing one of McGonagall's papers every single day, and without Hermione's help." He pulled a new roll of parchment from the desk and harry noticed the pile of discarded parchment on the ground. "I'd go back to being an Auror right now if I didn't think Hermione would kill me on the spot."
"I'm just thankful you didn't throw the ink bottle," Harry said, "Ginny would have gone mad if I had to change before the party. Plus, I think this is her favorite shirt." Harry spun on the spot, sarcastically showing off the striped shirt. "Where're Hugo and Hermione?"
Ron chuckled, "Gin always did have a horrible fashion sense." He added, "I expect they're at the Burrow by now, left a while ago."
"Let me guess," Harry said, grabbing a bottle of firewhiskey from Ron's desk and pouring a glass. "Trying to cheer up Roxanne." Harry walked over to a lavish recliner situated in front of the television and searched for the remote.
Ron, seeing his friend searching, tossed it to him. "As is tradition." Harry caught the remote with a seeker's reflexes and started flipping through the channels. "I still don't really know how that damned thing works, Hermione bought it last year and Hugo loves watching cartoons on it."
Harry found a promising channel that seemed to be showing a football match, and said, "The Dursleys had a television, I never got to watch it much other than the news or whatever my cousin Dudley was watching."
"Well, I don't really care for it much, just seems like a picture that can't hear you." Just then, as one of the players was shown a yellow card for a particularly rough foul, the flames Harry had arrived in turned green and the face of Arthur Weasley, Harry's father in law, appeared in them.
"Harry! Ginny said you'd be here, all right?" Arthur said, rather loudly. Ron, who hadn't been paying attention, was startled and spilled ink across the piece of parchment he was working on.
"Bloody hell, give me a little warning next time, won't you?" Ron said as he magically cleaned the ink from his desk and discarded the parchment. "I suppose paperwork can wait until tomorrow."
"Sorry Ron," Arthur chuckled, "Gin said you would be here so I figured I'd let you know we'll be taking Lily off your hands, along with the rest of the younger children. The Burrow has seemed woefully empty the past couple of weeks with everyone getting ready to go back to school and Molly wanted to liven it up a bit. You can retrieve her next Thursday." Harry wasn't surprised, Molly and Arthur did have a habit of stealing his children away for a week or two at a time. They also had an uncanny ability to do it at exactly when he and Ginny were busiest and needed the help.
"Thanks for the heads up, Arthur," Harry said, smiling. "You should pop over here for a drink before you have too many kids running around."
"I'd love to, but I think Molly would blow a Gasket." He laughed as he spoke, Harry knew it was because he had gotten to use the muggle expression Harry had taught him last Christmas.
"Well, some other time then," Harry said. "Don't let Lily burn down the Burrow." Harry's face fell momentarily at his choice of words, remembering the time Bellatrix and a group of Death Eaters had burned it down all those years ago.
Arthur just laughed, "Please, Harry. The Burrow survived Fred and George, I don't think we have anything to worry about with Lily."
Ron had finally finished cleaning up the mountain of discarded parchment around his desk and fell onto the couch, "So, what do you have planned for our little monsters?" He asked.
"Well, we'll likely take them to Diagon Alley for ice cream, and Lily says she wants to go see Luna and Rolf's new pet shop," Arthur said this last part with a slightly mischievous grin.
"Just don't let her bring home anything too dangerous, please," Harry sighed. He knew all too well that any pet shop of Luna's would likely be stocked with all manner of creatures that most would almost certainly not consider good pets. "I expect all the time with Hagrid has skewed her view of what is and isn't 'safe'." Two small arms suddenly appeared around Arthurs neck in the fireplace and pulled him, laughing, out of site.
When the flames had returned to their normal shade, Harry stood up. "You should probably get ready, Merlin knows Hermione will hex both of us into another dimension if we're late."
"Get ready?" Ron looked up, surprised, "I was just going to wear this."
"Ink and all?" Harry asked.
"I guess you're right," Ron said, getting up and moving toward his room. "Muggle, or Magic?"
"Dunno," Harry said, "I'd assume muggle wear would be appropriate, and we'll likely go somewhere with dancing if the girls have their way, so wear comfortable shoes." As an afterthought, he added, "Ginny told me to press my shirt, if that tells you anything." He moved back to the fireplace, and a flash of green later he was back in his own house.
"That was quick," his wife's voice called from her desk. Harry noticed she was sitting down, a change of pace from when he left and she was practically sprinting back and forth through the kitchen. She looked tired, and Harry knew why. She had scarcely slept through the night all Summer, mostly from being worried about Albus. He looked so much like Harry that the whispers Harry was constantly followed by, seemed to follow Albus too. Ginny noticed this, even though Albus was usually oblivious to it. She worried that when he got to Hogwarts, he wouldn't be able to escape the publicity that came along with being the child of the "chosen one". Harry, admittedly, shared her concern. James had basked in the popularity and thrived during his first years at Hogwarts, Albus was much more shy and would likely hate the spotlight as much as Harry had.
"Ron seemed distracted," Harry said, moving his mind away from the worry he felt for his second child. "I think the joke shop is going to bury him under a stack of paperwork the size of Fluffy." He moved to his wife's side and noticed she was looking at an old piece of parchment he recognized as the Marauder's Map. "Has the sorting started yet?"
"Just about," Ginny replied. He pulled her out of the chair and summoned the loveseat from the upstairs study. They deposited themselves into the seat and watched as the dots of the first years started filing into the Great Hall. Harry found Albus' dot near the back with Rose Weasley's. He and Ginny had only watched two sorting ceremonies with the map, Teddy's and James'.
They watched as, one by one, the dots marched to the front, to a dot labeled Neville Longbottom, and then they moved to their respective house tables. Albus was the first of the children Harry cared to watch and he was seated by Neville for what seemed like an eternity, before practically flying across the room to the Gryffindor table. The relief on Ginny's face was palpable. The first truly unexpected thing happened when Scorpius Malfoy walked between the Slytherin and Hufflepuff tables… But, instead of taking his seat at Slytherin, he moved to the end of the Hufflepuff table. "Draco is going to lose his shit," Harry laughed, "Hufflepuff," He said in disbelief. By the time Harry had managed to control himself, the time had come for Rose to be sorted, Harry could imagine the words the hat said when placed upon her head. Another Weasley, I know just what to do with you… She expectedly walked to the Gryffindor table and took her place next to Albus.
After the sorting was over, Harry noticed a dot labelled Draco Malfoy leaving the staff table at the front of the room. Ginny apparently noticed this as well, because her voice was icy when she next spoke. "What the hell is that slimy little git doing there?" She asked.
"My guess?" Harry said, "He's the new potions professor, Slughorn is notably absent, I guess he couldn't teach forever." An amused look painted his face.
"You're not surprised or angry at all?" Ginny asked, distressed. "You and Draco hated each other, and now he's going to be teaching our children. It'll be like Snape all over again." She was nearly hysterical at this point.
"I'm obviously not thrilled about it, but Neville is there and I'm sure he's more than a match for Malfoy. Besides, Draco has been a great help to the Auror department since the war." Harry looked at his wife, who was still fuming. "Also, with all the Weasleys and Potters at the school now he'd be mad to single any of them out. Who knows, it'll probably be good for all of them, somehow. And Draco was always more than decent at potions."
"Well I still don't like it," Ginny fumed, "Draco was an absolute nightmare at school, and I'm not sure I believe he's changed from the little git he was back then."
"If he is," Harry said, running his had through her hair, "then it'll give you the chance to bring back your famous bat-bogey hex."
"You're lucky I'm not using it on you for not being as upset as I am, Potter," she said playfully. Then, a bemused expression crossed her face. "Ron doesn't know about this, does he?" And they both laughed, knowing that he would take the news much worse than either of them had.
"I think we should let the kids tell him," Harry said, "That way he can't shoot the messenger."
"You read my mind."