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Harry Potter and the Blind Seer of Durmstrang

Chapter 2

Shortly after Sirius brought Harry home to 12 Grimmauld Place, Lupin joined them, as planned. Living with the two bachelors, who had been close friends of his parents, seemed as different to Harry as if he'd moved to another planet.

They quickly settled into a routine that revolved around pampering Sirius who still seemed weak and listless. Lupin gave Harry daily lessons on how to do everything from cooking a meal without sight to navigating the busy streets and Underground, an interesting experience for both of them, since Lupin wasn't overly familiar with the Muggle world.

Each morning, Lupin and Harry cooked breakfast together. Harry had cooked before at the Dursleys, of course, but cooking almost entirely by touch and sound and smell, along with cooking in Sirius's enormous fireplace rather than on the Dursley's electric range made for a different procedure entirely. On the very first day he tried an omelette, hoping to surprise Sirius and Lupin when they came downstairs.

He located a big cast-iron pan without trouble and managed to get a fire going. He wasn't sure if he would get in trouble for using his wand to light the fire, so he did it the old-fashioned Muggle way with matches and bits of paper. It took a lot of matches and he was covered with soot by the time he managed it. Next, he melted butter in the pan and explored the larder for eggs and cheese and vegetables. He wasn't sure what sort of vegetables one put in an omelette. He found a box that when he shook it he found it contained peas. Another seemed to be full of bits of broccoli.

With little trouble he broke the eggs into the pan and added chunks of cheese and some of the vegetables, and then let it cook over the fire. He was surprised how much like Potions class it seemed. Since his sight had failed and he'd learned to be slower and more precise, Potions class had been surprisingly successful; now cooking seemed to be going well also.

When Sirius came down the stairs yawning not long after he started cooking, Harry ordered him to pull out a plate. Grinning from ear to ear, Harry produced the pan with his omelette in it, holding the hot handle with a dingy tea-towel and feeling quite pleased with himself.

A dead silence greeted him as Sirius peered into the pan.

"Oh no," said Harry bleakly. "What's wrong with it?"

"I've never seen purple eggs before," said Sirius slowly.

"Purple?" asked Harry in confusion. "What… how did they turn purple?"

"I have no idea," said Sirius solemnly, but mirth had begun to bubble up under his voice as if he was trying to keep it hidden but it would soon burst forth anyway. "What did you put into them?"

"Nothing but a few vegetables! Peas, and some broccoli," said Harry in dismay.

Lupin chose this auspicious moment to enter the kitchen, shuffling in bedroom slippers and running fingers through his hair. "What have you got there?" he asked, drawing near the table. "Purple eggs!"

"I didn't mean to make purple eggs!" wailed Harry.

Sirius, meanwhile, had been rummaging in the larder. "I don't have any peas in here, Harry. Where did you get peas?"

Harry joined him and took out the rest of the box of frozen peas.

Sirius did not even try to contain his laughter. He fairly roared. Lupin, on joining him, looked at the box and roared too. Harry felt completely lost and not a little miffed. What was so funny about a boring old box of peas?

"These aren't peas," huffed Sirius through his laughter. "This is a box of blackcurrants I had gotten to make a bit of wine."

"I've never heard of peas in omelette," said Lupin solemnly.

"Nor blackcurrants either," added Sirius, still laughing. "Master Moony, would you care much for some delicious, gourmet blackcurrant omelette this morning?"

Harry couldn't help it. Watching his godfather and teacher together was like watching Fred and George. It was as if Sirius was shedding years even as he watched. Harry burst into laughter too, joining the other two at the table where the pan of unfortunate eggs sat.

They all tried the purple eggs and declared them unfit to eat, whereupon Lupin whipped up another batch of scrambled eggs and promised Harry to teach him in the upcoming days how to identify food before he invented new concoctions with it. Sirius read the Daily Prophet aloud. Harry couldn't remember a breakfast ever being filled with such laughter and fun.

[break]

On the third week of summer holidays, 12 Grimmauld Place received a visit from the Weasley family. Molly insisted she needed to check on Harry, but Sirius told him in an aside that she just wanted to clean the house. This she certainly did, starting in immediately on the drawing room, fussing and scolding and exclaiming over and over how she did not understand how they could live in such a mess.

"C'mon, Harry," Ron said, pulling Harry away from his mother. "Let's get out of here before she makes us help her."

They darted up the stairs to Harry's room. Ron had brought along a new book about the Chudley Cannons, his favorite Quidditch team. He sprawled on Harry's bed, reading excerpts and facts about Quidditch. Sitting on his trunk, Harry listened and thought about Ravenclaw winning the Cup last year and how that had been mostly his fault.

"Next year, Gryffindor should win the Cup," he said confidently.

"I heard Quidditch was canceled next year," said Ron, rolling over and sitting up.

"What?" asked Harry, leaping to his feet. "Cancel Quidditch?"

"At the end of last term," said Ron. "Dumbledore said there would be no Quidditch next year. Instead they're having some sort of inter-school exchange program and a big tournament."

"But no Quidditch?" asked Harry in disbelief.

"We'll have the World Cup in August," said Ron as if in consolation.

"What's this exchange thing?" asked Harry.

"I'm not exactly sure," said Ron. "From what it sounded like, witches and wizards from other schools come to Hogwarts for the year, while some of our students study at schools like Durmstrang and Beauxbatons."

"I wonder which students will get chosen to do that," said Harry slowly.

"No idea," said Ron, turning back to his book.

Harry said no more about it, but he wondered about the upcoming Tournament and the students who would be coming to Hogwarts. He had never met wizards or witches from other schools; he wondered whether they would behave like the ones he knew at Hogwarts.

Soon Ron left with his book and Harry thought he'd grab one of his own books and follow. He went to the reading table to find one. His hands met an empty shelf. Harry frowned. He was sure he'd put three Braille books there. In fact he'd picked one up last week and read a page or so from it halfheartedly. But now, at this moment, they were nowhere near the shelf.

"Ron?" Harry called, pounding down the stairs. By this time he knew every step and didn't think twice about them as he rounded the corner onto the second-floor hallway. "Ron? Did you take my books?"

"Your books?" asked Ron, poking his head out of a doorway. "Why would I take your books? I can't bloody well read them."

"Ronald Weasley! Watch your mouth!" Mrs. Weasley's voice floated upward toward them on the dusty air.

"Ears like a bat," muttered Ron.

"You didn't take them?" queried Harry. "I can't find them."

"No, mate," said Ron. "Maybe you just stuck them somewhere else and forgot." Having listened to Harry rant about losing something on numerous occasions over the past year, Ron didn't seem to want to waste brain cells on the problem, but Harry frowned thoughtfully. He hadn't set them anywhere else. He was sure of it.

For now, though, he shrugged and followed Fred, George and Ron downstairs, enjoying the delicious smells of dinner wafting up toward them from the kitchen.

[break]

Thus the happy summer passed; each day was with laughter and friends, and before he knew it, it was July 31st and Harry's birthday. Nobody spoke of the date and all day Harry thought Sirius had forgotten it. It was so unexpected and so Dursley-ish that Harry began to feel rather waspish as he lay on his bed in his room after lunch staring at the underside of the bed canopy and wondering how many spiders lived there just above him.

"Harry!" Lupin called up the stairs. "It's a fine afternoon. We ought to go for a walk and work on your cane technique. You could use the practice on street crossing still."

Harry scowled to himself. Lessons on his birthday, he thought indignantly, and the indignity of practicing street crossings! When would he need to know how to cross a busy Muggle street in the wizarding world anyway? In a few years he'd be able to apparate to the other side of the street if he wanted to. But he didn't have anything better to do and so pulled himself up off his bed and stumped downstairs, collecting his cane from the troll-leg umbrella stand where it now lived.

"As you know," began Lupin in his best lecturing voice, "drivers of cars ought to always stop for a white stick, but you can never assume they see you and will stop."

Harry, who had heard this speech several times before, nodded mutely as they stood on the kerb listening to traffic rushing in front of them. The light changed, and Harry watched the blurred shapes and listened to the cars beside him begin to move as motors idled directly in front of him. He was about to step out, but Lupin's arm held him back. A lorry whooshed past them, the wind from its passing sucking at Harry's hair.

"Where did that come from?" Harry gasped as his adrenaline surged.

"It turned left without looking properly," said Lupin sourly. "Rather dramatically proving my point, I must say."

Harry winced and agreed. The light changed again and they waited through another cycle; this time, Harry listened carefully before determining that it was safe to cross. Lupin walked soberly beside him. They crossed several more streets before retracing their steps toward 12 Grimmauld Place. As they approached, Lupin told him how the house grew magically into view between number eleven and number thirteen. Sirius had told Harry of this phenomenon before, of course, but Harry never tired hearing about the hidden house, even though he couldn't see it happening.

Automatically stepping to his left to avoid the umbrella stand, Harry closed the door quietly. He wanted to avoid the shrieking and scolding of the portrait of Madame Black, but he'd hardly gotten well into the hall when a chorus of voices shouted from the basement stairs at the end of the hall, "Surprise!" which, of course, woke old Mrs. Black.

"Mudbloods! Traitors in my house!" she wailed, and everyone on the stairs laughed. Mrs. Black did not take to this at all, and her protests could be heard throughout the house as she howled in disgust. Harry and Lupin brushed past her portrait and into the warm glow of friends who filled the kitchen. Hermione was there and the Weasleys. Sirius had even invited Dobby, who cowered in a corner next to Kreacher who sourly watched the goings on, so Harry was later told.

"I thought you forgot!" Harry said to Sirius, pulling him aside to whisper so the others would not hear.

"Never, Harry," said Sirius. "Forget that wonderful day you were born? Waiting in Godric's Hollow, with your dad fairly bursting with pride that he had a son? And then the day you came home with your mum and dad… we all thought you were the most amazing thing we'd ever seen."

Harry smiled wistfully, thinking that once he'd had a family who loved him. Sirius seemed to read his thoughts and gave him a quick squeeze. "I miss them too," he said, drawing Harry back toward his friends, who had piled the old wooden table high with parcels and packages for Harry.

Harry sat before the pile and exclaimed on the size of it.

Opening the parcels, he discovered a new pack of Braille Exploding Snap cards from Lupin, an owl-parcel-pack for Hedwig from Hermione, and from Sirius a Mokeskin Expandable Wallet with a waist belt. The Wallet would fit as many items as a room, but looked merely the size and weight of a small belt-pack. Harry knew these bags cost quite a few Galleons in Diagon Alley, and he gave Sirius a grateful smile.

To his surprise, Arthur Weasley pushed a very tiny parcel into his hand. Harry unwrapped it and found a small earpiece, nested inside a velvet box full of soft cotton. He held it in his palm and looked up at Arthur quizzically.

"I found it in a Muggle bin," said Arthur gleefully and Harry tried not to wince. "It's an earpiece that Muggles use to hear better, but I fiddled with it just a little bit."

"What does it do?" asked Ron, pushing past his father to peer at the tiny object in Harry's hand.

"It automatically translates forty-two different languages," said Arthur proudly. "It makes traveling a breeze!"

Harry opened his mouth to say he wasn't planning to travel anytime soon, but he closed it again and forced himself to smile warmly. "Thanks," he said. "It's brilliant."

Arthur straightened his shoulders in pride but said self-deprecatingly, "merely a trifle."

Harry put the earpiece back into its nest of cotton and thrust the box into his pocket. He opened more gifts of licorice wands from Ron and some joke false teeth from Fred and George. Ginny shyly pushed a small, flat packet across the table to him and he found a loose-leaf diary.

"I-I-I thought since the pages came out, you could use Braille," she said shyly. "I know you said you can't put a piece of paper in the writer thingy if it's bound, but I thought, you know… if it's loose… well, you can keep a diary."

"Thanks," Harry said with a smile, and next he opened a package from Dobby that turned out to contain a dog collar with two tinkling tags.

Molly Weasley had brought with her a chocolate frosted birthday cake in a rather squashy box and a pot of soup for dinner. Sirius produced a loaf of bread and a jug of pumpkin juice, so they all dove in, Harry opting to eat a slice of birthday cake before dinner, just because he could.

At the end of the meal, Harry pushed his chair back with a contented sigh. It had been the best birthday he could ever remember. Unbidden into his mind came the memory of his thirteenth birthday last year, sitting alone in the smallest bedroom of Privet Drive. No one had remembered it was his birthday, and he'd been too insecure to venture out into a world full of searing, glaring light that he did not know how to navigate.

What a difference it made to be surrounded by friends and to have a year of training by a competent teacher like Lupin! Harry hoped he'd never have to be alone again.

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