CHAPTER 2: Visits
After besting his Godfather at Exploding Snape another seven times, Harry bide everyone good night, thanking them for their presents again before heading up to bed with lingering calls of "Happy Birthday Harry" to accompany him.
Turning into his room Harry stripped his shirt off so that the holsters beneath it were visible. As he unpacked, he became aware of a pair of eyes on him. His magical eye dipped into the back of his head and scoped out the room behind him.
On his bed was a house elf, a normally common occurrence as Harry had befriended them early on, but this elf he had never seen before. He took a gun from his holster, a simple .38 though he had a 45 magnum in his sock drawer. Turning quickly he had the elf pinned.
"Who are you? Who sent you?!"
"Please Mr. Harry Potter sir! I is Dobby and no one is sending me! I is coming with a warning."
Harry holstered his gun grudgingly and apologized, which sent Dobby into a fit of hysterics. Harry, used to such reactions from Kreature, who had quickly become attacked to Harry when he was a child, simply held the creatures arms and legs as he tried to punish himself for scarring "Mr. Harry Potter Sir!"
"Please stop calling me that." Harry begged.
"But it is your name!"
"Not the Harry Potter part. The other thing."
"But it is custom for elves to be addressing higher rakes as sirs, Sir/"
Harry winced.
"Dobby has come to warn Mr. Potter of terrible dangers at Hogwarts. Mr. Harry Potter must stay here where he is safe, Sir. He must not be involved in the plots."
"What plots? What danger?" Harry demanded ignoring the "Sir" to the best of his abilities.
"You is needing help that Dobby can not provide Mr. Harry Potter." Some how, Harry knew that they were no longer talking about the plots at Hogwarts. "A house elf is always a house elf, no matter what clothes his new masters are giving him."
With that the pest was gone, and Harry was left to look at himself in the full length mirror across from the bed.
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"Harry?"
The small seven year-old pushed farther back under the bed.
"Please come out Harry. I just want to talk."
Heavy feet plodded through the room coming to a rest in front of the bed.
"I brought some food and some things that belong to you."
Smaller feet rushed in, barefoot and dainty.
"And someone to see you. Say "hello" Evangeline."
"Hello" piped up a small childish voice.
Her feet disappeared from sight and Harry, despite to see the small angle, climbed out from under the bed to see her in Sirius's arms.
After a while Sirius coxed Harry too eat with Eva's help.
"I think these belong to you." Sirius began when Harry set aside the plate, still half full. Sirius pulled out a bag, packed with objects, which he turned out onto the bed.
Several books, stamp-less letters, scrap books and a few pages of stamps fell out.
"Do you want to tell me about these things Harry?"
The small boy shook his head.
"There are two kinds of secrets Harry. Those we keep from others and those we keep from ourselves."
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Harry bolted awake, sweat pouring down his face, stinging his eyes and dripping into his open mouth.Shaking himself he glanced at the clock to see it was 4:30 in the morning.
Prodigy?
Harry looked to the foot of his bed to see his faithful familiar sitting there licking his paws.
Feel like going for a run Vex?
Pulling on a pair of sweat pants, Harry ran out of the house and down the street, his familiar lopping along beside him.
Every since Dobby's visit on his birthday a little over a week ago, Harry had been dreaming of his past. The least enjoyable experience since Neville showed the Gryffindor first years his Stink Sap Pod.
The elf's final words still reverberated through his head, slamming into his consciousness with a resounding "always a house elf" and tangoed with Sirius's "two kinds of secrets" around his mind. He hadn't told any one about the elf's visit, and was relieved that the creature's visit didn't shake him as much on the outside as it did on the inside.
The only exception was his almost involuntary tendency to pick a fight on his birthday. As he ran, the images from his first birthday came floating out of his memory to join their dancing words.
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He was sitting in the living room, playing with a dirty rag his aunt had tossed him after his slight whimpering had given her a headache.
He was smiling to himself, tossing it in the air and catching it, careful not to laugh too loud, less he attract his cousin's attention.
Even at the age of two, Harry knew better than to let his relatives know he was having fun.
No matter how secretive he was about his plaything, Dudley somehow found out about his toys and took them or broke them if he had no intention of playing with them. The three year old toddled out, a lollypop in his mouth and an evil smile on his face.
He dribbled a bit of drool onto his bib as a means of speech to which Harry kindly responded with "Play?"
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Dudley Dursley did not 'Play' with anyone smaller than him, or if he did the small never thought of it as play. He took the small rag and ran. Harry sniffled back a sob, knowing that crying only made it worse. Standing himself up, he walked after his waddling cousin.
"Duddy!" Harry pleaded with the boy.
More drool.
"Peas!"
A giant raspberry to the face. Dudley pushed his cousin down while the smaller boy whipped the spit from his eyes. Harry was launched from the fifth stair to the floor in one fell swoop, catching his head on a rather pointy side table.
He seemed to hang their, held by momentum and the fall and the amount of table now in his head before he dropped to the ground, motion less.
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Fingering the small patch of hairless scalp where his scar from the stitches still white and wrinkled. Shaking himself off, he picked up the pace turning the corner, waving to the old witch who lived in the house on the corner.
He plowed himself even more diligently into his daily routine, surrounding himself in books at any chance he got. He trained from morning to night and kept himself awake for as long as he could, hoping to sleep in a bit the next morn, so as not to hint to his problems when his family noted he went running at 4 in the morning everyday.
He practiced spells and fighting in the morning with flying and dueling after lunch till dinner and animagus forms well into the night. Each of the children had at lest one form completed. For Harry it was Firefly, the Phoenix, for Draco it Icicle, the dragon, for Eva it was Jinx a black cat. Dante only had his wolf form, as a Potion Baby, or a Fake, he had inherited the werewolf genes from his father despite Remus and Sirius's best efforts to prevent it.
Draco and Eva both had three other forms. Draco's second was a panther and his third a ferret and Eva's was a snow leopard and her third a rabbit. Both second forms provided the family with much laughter and the two blonde's with plenty of motive for the pranks that followed.
That left Harry as the oddity of the year once more. He told his family that he only had two forms when in reality he had five. He knew three of them, the first being Firefly, the second being a Hawk, deemed Hunter. His third was a big black wolf, though he still couldn't achieve this form or the hawk, practiced them both avidly, researching the magics he could perform while in them.
The other two were mysteries. The first was another bird of some kind and his second was a total mystery. His pack believed him to know only the hawk and phoenix, which was more than enough for them to be proud of Harry, but he could see that they worried about him, wondering if he still had secrets from the time he spent with the Dursleys.
He did but he wasn't about to share them.
They were still secrets he kept from himself.
Picking up the pace, Harry ran faster, ignoring Vexation's cries of "Prodigy! No one's chasing you. Save it for the final haul."
"Keep up Vex. Someone's not chasing us now, but who's to say someone won't be tomorrow."
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Harry ended up running for longer than he expected, lost in thoughts and memory no matter how much he had fought it.
He came into the house to find everyone in the den, clamored around Remus who was reading a letter that was apparently just delivered.
"Hey guys. What's up?" Harry asked, shedding his shoes at the front door.
"Shush!" They all put their fingers to their mouths before Eva beckoned him over with a wave of her hand.
"Dear Mr. Lupin,
We are pleased to inform you that the book you submitted for publishing has passed through the final stage. We would be most honored if you would drop by later today and discus your text with us in person.
Truly yours,
Fletcher VanHort
Head Chief of Blotter Jotters Press"
"Remmy this is fantastic!" Sirius scooped up hiss mate and sung him around in the air.
Remus was beaming down at them all as Regulus and all the kids clamored around to congratulate him. Harry hung back. "I'd hug you but I think you'd rather not get bathed in sweat." He laughed shaking his uncle's hand instead. Remus smiled.
Suddenly someone was on his back.
"Gotcha now!
Harry lunged out as Evangeline launched her attack from the banister on the high ceiling staircase. She planted, redirecting and launched a second attack before Harry had time to move his second foot. She pinned him to the wall and held his attention with a pair of the deadliest looking fans Harry had ever seen.
"Do you yield?" her voice was singsong with and over flowed with pride.
"Haven't we done this before?"
While Eva had busied herself with victory, Harry had summoned two battle-axes from where he'd dropped them before. Before he could swing however, Eva had a poisoned tipped dagger at his throat.
"Do…You…Yield?" She put some space between the words moving forward, jabbing the knife into Harry's throat little by little. "I'll only ask you this once more, Potter."
You never learn Prodigy! Always guard your flank. Vexation yawned from his corner of the dueling arena. He had stayed his same size but his seriousness and his no-nonsense fighting style had doubled.
"For know." He laughed. She smiled and pulled back the dagger. Dropping his axes Harry scooped her up and swung her around, ignoring her desperate cries for land.
Sirius and Remus exchanged amused looks before seeing the three boys off.
"Harry! Time to go!"
"Rematch when I get back kid." He put her on the ground and patted her head before dashing up the stairs two at a time to avoid her hex.
"Harry!"
"Coming Draco!" Harry shook his head and followed his familiar up to the annoying whine back to the house where Draco and Dante were sitting with Sirius and Regulus.
"Come on! You're holding us up! We took these lessons for you, you know!" Dante smiled mockingly at his brother.
"Yeah shut up."
Every Wednesday the boys biked into the nearby muggle town where they took hand-to-hand lessons at the local dojo. At first Dante and Harry had been reluctant when Draco suggested it, tired of Harry's gripping about learning more, because of the shear mass of muggles that would be around.
In the end Harry's will to learn and improve, drove him past his paranoia leaving Dante outnumbered.
It had been to the werewolf's relief to find out it was a class of seven, three of which he knew, Harry, Draco and Neville Longbottom.
Apparently, Neville lived out in Harry's area when his grandmother felt to crowded in the 1st Longbottom mansion and Neville, not wanting to stay cooped up with the hag, he had decided to take fighting/defense lessons, though Harry got the feeling, from the question she asked that she didn't fully comprehend what went on inside the building. Not that Neville seemed in no hurry to inform her.
The three boys hand bounded to Neville quickly and usually ended up sparing with him. Neville was fast becoming a part of their clan and had even with stood their pregnant Aunt Bella's test when she dropped by with Eva one day on when she had driven by on her way to get more ice cream, which had been in unusual abundance in the Safe House that summer.
Their summer had been filled with training, whether spell work or dueling or sword play, or even animagus training, it didn't matter they were working from four in the morning to ten at night, and they loved it. Harry was thrilled with the progress he had been making and the precision they were making with Evangeline. His run in with Voldemort the previous year had fueled his push for extra workouts and target practice moving him from stationary targets to sensor targeting to blindfold targeting fast than adults expected an Auror would advance.
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Sirius and Regulus were fiddling with the bikes, escaping the wrath of the hormonal Bella and the bored Narcissa. Nether were particularly welcoming. The kids had taken off for their fighting, Eva was working on her gypsy fighting, and Remus was meeting the Publishing Board about his book. Life was good.
The kids came thundering back just as Regulus and Sirius straightened up, oil smudged and smelling of bike fumes, but with wide smiles spreading across their faces. The two were in identical black shirts and tight jeans making the family resemblance stick out more than ever. The two waved to the kids and cleaned up.
Harry, Dante, and Draco entered the house just as green flames lit the fireplace.
"BUGGER!"
"Remus's home." Bella called from the study.
As soon as the werewolf had cleared the fireplace, the three boys were on him. They landed before the hybrid without a twitch, their boundless energy coming to an abrupt halt with expert training, called forth by Remus's firm hand successfully halting the onslaught of male testosterone.
"What happened?" They cried in unison.
"The market for defense books is limited. So airhead's got his book floating about, closing the market for new authors. They liked the book a lot but can not publish it till next year at least."
"Bull shit!"
Remus looked agape at his son.
"Who the hell is this prick?" Harry demanded.
"Gilderoy Lockhart, Brake with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holiday with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wanderings with Werewolves, Year with the Yeti." Sirius walked in, unaware of the death trap he was setting up for himself.
"That's him." Remus huffed.
"The new teacher must be a witch." Regulus pointed out reading over his brother's shoulder.
Silence.
"Those…are the…book lists?!?" Remus growled, his hands curling into fists.
The three boys left in a hurry.
"We are not taking him to Diagon Alley. He'd burn down Flourish and Blots!" Draco cried. Dante punched him.
A.N: Thanks to all my reviewers. I probably will not post again until after Christmas, but I felt I owed you all as a Holiday present to put up one more chapter before my miniature hiatus.
♥LastCornerStone