Disclaimer: Most of this was shamelessly borrowed and adulterate by the authors from J.K. Rowling. However, the answer to the question, why does pure blood matter?, and all related tidbits, are ours. If you'd like to play with them, please ask. If you steal them, we will find you. =D
Chapter 1
"I'm fine."
Scrawled in messy script by a hand that had never learned how to properly hold a quill, the words loomed up from the ratty desk in the smallest bedroom, number four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. The words were promptly obscured by ink-stained fingers folding the missive. The fingers in question belonged to one, Harry Potter. It was the third such message to be penned in as many minutes, the latest addressed to Hermione Granger.
Harry bundled the three letters together with an old shoelace and attached them to the leg of his only companion, his owl. "The usual, Hedwig" Harry instructed, stroking her head and receiving only a reproachful peck for his efforts. Harry wondered absently if owls could read.
He moved away from the window, threading his way between boxes of broken toys and a tv with the screen kicked in. This wasn't a bedroom, more a place where rejected things went to be forgotten, or hopefully forgotten. Even the bed that Harry sank down onto groaned from the memory of another body, abusing its springs. The bed and everything else in the room were the abandoned and ignored cast-offs of an overweight and over-indulged child, Dudley Dursley. Unfortunately for the Dursleys, the presence of an almost-sixteen-year-old teenage nephew proved as un-ignorable as it was undesired.
Ironic, Harry thought, that, despite mutual distaste, he and the Dursleys were bound together by as flimsy a chain as ink and parchment.
How are you? It's not your fault. Can't tell you. It's not safe. Top secret. Don't take risks. We're guarding you. Don't worry. What happened is not your fault. Trust Dumbledore. Stay safe…
Stay there.
And so he stayed, like the good little Golden Boy they wanted him to be, though he didn't feel very much like a Golden Boy anymore, but black with shame and regret, and red from the blood on his hands, all used up, like an old man.
The one thing that Privet Drive did provide in abundance was time to think. As Harry stared up at the stained and cracked ceiling, he wondered if this was a good thing.
Hermione liked things organized, she liked things neat. But this was just wrong. Books were meant to be shelved and ordered, rows and rows of familiar sameness. People were not.
Suppressing a shudder, she pressed a finger to the doorbell of Number Four, Privet Drive. A faint chime could be heard beyond the door, no doubt the same chime as every other doorbell on the street.
But when the door swung open, she highly doubted that the particular blend of arrogance, obesity and sheer stupidity could have its double in the world. The boy in front of her certainly took the cake and, under his leering gaze, she became uncomfortably aware of the shortness of her skirt.
She'd always thought that Harry's descriptions of his cousin were exaggerated, but she had to agree, he did rather resemble a pig, in more ways than one. "Well, hello," he said, leaning against the door in an effort to incite a reaction, though Hermione highly doubted the violent protests of the hinges was the desired one. "What can I do for you?"
Before she could respond, the incongruous form of a rail-thin woman appeared behind the boy. "Oh, Dudders, who's this?" She stuck out one bony hand, which Hermione shook. "Hello, I'm Petunia Dursley, Dudley's mother."
"It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Dursley," Hermione responded. "I'm Hermione Granger, and I'm a friend of Harry's. Is he home?"
The reaction was immediate. Mrs. Dursley went white, and withdrew her hand as if she'd just touched something unclean and rather smelly. "What do you want?"
"To see Harry. Is he home?" Hermione reiterated.
"Dad?" Dudley called, moving further into the house. "There's a freak at the door!" Hermione took advantage of the large opening to duck into the entryway. Petunia Dursley was nonplussed, but seemed to quickly decide that a scene in her entryway was preferable to a scene on her front porch, and shut the door.
"Now see here, I won't have you people waltzing into my house whenever you bloody well please!" Hermione found that there was indeed another like Dudley Dursley in the world, and he was quickly waddling towards her in the form of Vernon Dursley, twice as large and twice as arrogant as his son.
"Hermione?"
She looked to the top of the stairs, where a thin and tired-looking Harry Potter regarded her with a mixture of horror and surprise. She ran up the stairs as he came down to meet her and, without a thought, she wrapped him in a tight hug. He flinched briefly in her arms, before encircling her with his own.
Pulling away, Harry pulled her towards the top of the stairs. "Boy!" Vernon yelled, "I'll have no hanky-panky in my house!"
"What? But she's not…"
"Shut up!" Hermione hissed at him, pushing him up the stairs to the relative safety of his room.
Just inside the door, she halted, staring in wide-eyed horror at the junk yard that was his room. Harry quickly maneuvered them to sit on the bed. "Hermione, why are you here? Is something wrong?"
She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and started picking at the hem of her skirt. "Well," she said in a small voice. "I got a letter from Gringotts yesterday. It's about my biological parents." She looked up at him, eyes wide. "I mean, I've always known I was adopted, but I'd never thought…"
In an effort to stem the panic rising in her eyes, he did the only thing guaranteed to focus Hermione: he started asking questions.
"What did the letter say?"
"Read it for yourself. I don't know what I'm going to do, I don't know a thing about wizard banking…" She pulled a heavy parchment envelope from her purse and passed it to him.
To Miss Hermione Granger,
This is to inform you that, as a member of an Ancient House, you will be granted full access to your family accounts upon reaching the age of sixteen. Summaries of the accounts in question, vaults 027 and 221 of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Desprit, are included, to be perused at your leisure.
May your gold increase,
Ragnuk
Head Goblin of Gringotts Bank
Harry looked up at her in shock. "Hermione," he began.
"I know, ironic, isn't it, that the star Mudblood turned out to be nothing more than another sodding Pureblood!" And to Harry's horror, she sniffed wetly.
"I looked them up, of course. My parents, I mean. They and the family Manor were lost in the First War. Seems we're more similar than I thought, Harry." She looked at him with watery eyes, and Harry mustered the courage to lay his hand on her shoulder.
She flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him for a second time and burying her face in his shoulder. Harry flinched at the sudden contact, but quickly suppressed it in favor of awkwardly patting her on the back in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Hermione," he said slowly after a minute had passed, "you know this doesn't change anything, don't you?"
She looked at him sharply. "You're still Hermione, greatest witch of her age… and know-it-all bookworm," he said with a crooked grin.
She regarded him for a long moment, so long that Harry wonder if he would soon be on the wrong end of Hermione's temper before she relaxed in his arms.
"You're right, Harry." She said, stepping back from his embrace and squaring her shoulders. She began digging around in her bag. "I've been doing a bit of research..."
Harry burst out laughing.
An indignant sniff was all that signified Hermione heard him as she began pulling books from her bag at an alarming rate. The pile on his bed soon exceed the amount of books that any reasonable human being could be expected to carry. The new leather covers of "A Wizarding Genealogy", "Pure Blood, Pure Culture", and "Distinguishing the Fuss from the Facts: A Comprehensive Guide to Pure Blood Culture" looked out of place on the dingy mattress. They were soon joined by titles that left Harry feeling vaguely ill, a deep chill settling itself in his belly. "Fogging the Mind" and "The Fortress in Your Head: A Beginner's Guide to Occlumency" were the last to join the pile on the mattress, the brightly colored covers glaring up at him mockingly. Harry turned away quickly, over to the window, where the rows of grey roofs did nothing to improve his mood. He cursed the image of Sirius falling through the veil that appeared in his mind's eye. The cold in his belly twisted viciously, and filled him until he choked with the ache of it.
"Harry?" Hermione's hand was warm where it rested on his shoulder and the horrible chill receded a bit. "It wasn't your fault you know, from what you told me about Professor Snape, he doesn't seem to have been a very good Occlumency teacher".
Harry's harsh laugh accompanied this statement. "He never taught me, Hermione! It was just 'Clear your mind, Potter', 'Get up, Potter', 'The Dark Lord will crush you to a pulp, Potter', again and again! It doesn't matter anyway, I am hopeless at it, Snape had that much right, the slimy git."
"But you have to learn it, Harry! That's why I brought the books. I've read them and I think they could really help." She smirked, "We'll practice together."
He grinned, until she pulled four of the books out of the pile and dropped them in his lap. "I have to go now, I told my parents I'd be home for dinner. But I'll be back next week. Read these."
"Homework, Professor?" he groaned.
"Get to work, Potter, we haven't got all day."
Harry's startled laugh at her surprisingly accurate portrayal of their not-so-well-liked Potions professor followed her down the stairs. She slipped behind Petunia Dursley, who was assiduously trying to prevent her increasingly loud and red husband from "Getting these freaks out of my house!" The Dursley's didn't notice as one such freak escaped onto the perfectly manicured sidewalks of Privet Drive, with only a backwards glance for the freak watching from the upstairs window.
Authors' note: This is our first collaborative fic, suggestions/critiques are welcome, flames will be extinguished.
Purely Yours,
The Slytherin Systers