Swedish Blondes and Floor Vents
Thirteen-year-old Harry Potter stepped through the kitchen door into the back garden and scanned the opaque sky for owls. It had become a habit in the last few weeks leading up to September first. He knew Ron was still in Egypt on holiday with his family. He did not expect another letter from him after the one Harry had received on his birthday, but Hermione had since returned from France and the two of them had been corresponding almost daily. Hedwig wasn't exactly thrilled with Harry for the repetitive flights, but he tried to make it up to her with extra attention and owl treats each time she returned with a new message from Hermione.
The dreary expression of the sky matched Harry's mood that afternoon as he walked down the worn, stone path through the garden to the rear gate leading into the deserted lane. It was hard not to be annoyed with his dad acting the way he was. School was always a source of contention between the two of them, but once Harry's Hogwarts letter arrived, James had resumed previous talks of keeping him home that year.
Perhaps if he hadn't met Tom Riddle's memory in the Chamber of Secrets last year his dad wouldn't be so concerned. Maybe if he hadn't fought over the Stone with shady remnants of one of the darkest wizards of all time at the end of his first year, Harry's father would not be considering pulling him from Hogwarts. And the recent news of a prisoner escape from Azkaban had James even more paranoid than usual.
Frustrated by his dad's fears, Harry walked along the rocky lane behind the house and pulled his wand from the back pocket of his jeans. He wasn't supposed to have it, but James was too preoccupied with his own issues to even notice that Harry had removed it from his trunk and taken to carrying it around. Twirling it lazily, he hiked down the hill to the west.
The Potters lived on the dullest piece of countryside in all of Buckinghamshire, in Harry's opinion. Nothing but wooded hillsides and Muggle farmland, there wasn't another witch or wizard within walking distance. At least not that he knew of. Knowing his father, James probably made sure that none of their neighbors were of the magical sort just to maintain anonymity. It was his way of trying to protect Harry, but his son sometimes thought it was more of an excuse for James not to have to face the world.
Harry took a familiar short cut through a hidden path in a cluster of brush which lined the low stone wall of a neighboring property. The Ottosson family were Swedish dairy farmers with a daughter not much older than Harry who liked to spend her summer holidays sunbathing in a lounge chair in the back garden. The stone wall ran along the east end of the yard close to the house before curving off to the right and meandering into the dense forest growth below the Potter cottage. Harry had been working up the courage all summer to speak to her but had yet to do so. He was fairly certain she knew that he frequently walked that way. Where once she used to face her chair to the west for optimal sun rays, she had recently taken to pointing the tail end at the wall while keeping her shades firmly in place over her eyes, appearing disinterested.
Since the sun had not shone its face all day, Harry wasn't sure she would be out. He was pleasantly surprised to see that she was. With her blonde hair pulled up, wearing a pair of short cutoffs and over-sized forest green cardigan, she sat curled in the lounger with her bare feet tucked beneath her while reading a book on the stone patio behind the house. Sunglasses firmly in place, she did not look up as Harry approached. Summer was almost over. He would be leaving for London the next day to meet up with Ron and Hermione to purchase their supplies for school. He was running out of chances to speak to this Swedish sunbather, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He had no clue how to begin.
Harry did have the sense to tuck his wand away before he accidentally did something stupid that might catch her attention and that of the Ministry of Magic. Slipping it out of sight, he shoved his hands deep into the two front pockets of his jeans, glanced furtively over the wall, and prepared to simply walk on by as he always did, back into the trees and around to the front lane and home again.
"I leave for school tomorrow," the young woman spoke suddenly, causing Harry to startle and stop in his tracks.
Turning to the wall, he stood there like a fool, not quite sure if he had heard her right. "Sorry?"
"For school," she repeated, setting down her book, lowering her sunglasses, and turning in her seat. Getting up, she wrapped her cardigan tighter around her to ward of a chill and met his confused expression with a playful smile while stepping up to the wall standing between them. "I won't be here again until next summer, just in case you wanted to know."
"Oh," Harry acknowledged her awkwardly, trying desperately not to blush under her blue-eyed gaze.
"I thought I would save you the trouble of walking down here." She held back the urge to laugh. "You know, to see for yourself."
"Right." The effort to appear cool was failing for Harry. "Good to know."
"It's a shame, really." She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. "I did so hope you would have stepped over and said hi one of these days."
"Sorry." Harry smiled sheepishly, shifting on the path so that he moved a step closer without appearing too obvious in doing so. "But, you have a dog." He nodded toward the house where a desperate Yorkie barked through a sliding glass door. "I wasn't quite sure what he would do if I dared."
"She is quite harmless," she assured him with a light laugh before biting her lower lip and considering him with an interested gaze. "My name is Carla, but my friends call me Carie."
"Harry." He held out a hand and took hers for a shake.
"I know." She held on to his hand for a prolonged moment before releasing it. "Harry Potter."
"Yeah." He was surprised that she knew it. He was use to people knowing his name, but not muggles.
"Well, Harry Potter." Carie pushed away from the wall. "Next summer I expect you to stop by for a chat any time you fancy a walk down my lane."
Harry laughed, unable to hide the blush this time. "Yeah, alright—" A loud crack followed by the rumble of an engine interrupted their conversation, and he glanced over his shoulder back up the path toward the road.
"What was that?" Carie asked, following his gaze.
Harry stepped reluctantly away from his side of the wall and absentmindedly touched the grip of his wand sticking out of his pocket. "Nothing," he said lightly, "just my guard dog."
Carie appeared confused, but Harry merely grinned with a small wave as he began to retreat. "Have a good year at school."
"You too, Harry." She watched him go. "Promise me I'll see you next summer."
"Promise!" he called back over his shoulder as he picked up the pace and jogged up the path to the lane. Sirius had the worst timing ever. Harry knew if he didn't return to the house immediately, both his godfather and his dad would be calling for him. He did not need that in front of Carla. James had a rule about getting too close to their muggle neighbors. Sirius didn't agree, but he would be merciless with the jeering if he found out it was a girl Harry was talking too.
His godfather had already parked his flying motorcycle beside the back gate when Harry reached the cottage. The kitchen door stood open, and he stepped in to find Sirius at the table seated comfortably with his feet up while James was at the fridge pulling out a cold jug of pumpkin juice.
"Where have you been?" he demanded the second Harry appeared.
"Out," Harry responded with equal shortness. They had already quarreled enough that morning, he wasn't in the mood to continue.
James passed him a dark look of disapproval over pouring out three glasses of juice, but said nothing more about it. Leaning against the door frame, Harry ignored the glass where it sat waiting for him beside an open seat at the table. James took his own chair across from Sirius and picked up the most recent issue of the Daily Prophet which his oldest friend had brought with him.
"The incompetency of the Ministry never ceases to amaze me," James muttered while scanning the front page.
"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Sirius responded blandly.
"How has he not been caught yet?" James dropped the paper on the table and disregarded Sirius's sarcasm. "He's a bloody rat for Merlin's sake."
"Exactly." Sirius leaned back and balanced on the back two legs of his chair lazily. "A rat running around London like a damn strand of hay in a haystack, that's all he is. That's why I keep saying—"
"Forget it, Sirius." James wouldn't hear of it. "I don't work for the Ministry anymore."
Sirius shrugged and let it go but didn't appear very happy about it. "Well, then stop complaining. We're doing all we can. He's just very good at hiding."
"I'm more upset about him getting out at all, you know that," James snapped.
"Yes, I do," Sirius muttered ungraciously and took a swig of his juice to cover his own frustration, glancing briefly at Harry in the process.
"I blame Fudge for that," James went on.
"You're not the only one. He was a fool to think Wormtail wasn't a flight risk anymore."
"They should have sealed him in a box if they weren't going to bother with magically keeping him from transforming."
"Last I saw him," Sirius thought about it, "he was so debilitated by the dementors I wouldn't have thought he could pull it off either. No doubt the others had a hand in convincing Peter to make a move. Shacklebolt believes he was supposed to help get the others free but fled the moment he escaped his cell and left them all behind. Smart move really," he chuckled humorlessly. "No doubt Lestrange would have probably murdered him the first chance she got."
"Why?" Harry couldn't help from asking.
James looked up as if suddenly remembering he was there. "You should be packing," he said. "Go, get that room cleaned up or you can forget about London tomorrow."
Sirius ducked his head and covered an irritated grimace, but Harry didn't so readily accept his father's commanding tone.
"I'm almost done," he told him. "Why would the Death Eaters want Pettigrew killed?" he wanted to know. James and Sirius' old schoolmate was a big part of the reason why Harry's mother was dead, and he had served twelve years in wizard prison for betrayal and mass murder. His dad never wanted to talk about the ordeal with Harry, but he felt like he had a right to know.
"There are no loyalties in the Dark Lord's army—" Sirius was willing to explain, but James cut him off.
"Go to your room, Harry," he snapped. "I won't tell you again."
The two men at the table met each other's eye in strained silence, and Harry pushed away from the door. Crossing the kitchen and fighting the urge to curse out loud, he passed the table without looking at his father. James noticed the wand sticking out of Harry's pocket, and whisked it out with a scowl. Harry could have kicked himself for forgetting to hide it better, and he stopped and waited for the inevitable scolding with his jaw clenched in annoyance.
James didn't appear to feel it was worth the effort, merely expelling a frustrated sigh and tossing the wand on the table. "Go," he sent him off again, and Harry quickly left, using the back stairs to the second floor to his room.
Between the bed and the dresser was a floor vent which opened up to the kitchen below. Moving his overflowing wastebasket, Harry spread out on his back on the floor with his head near the vent and continued to listen in on the conversation between James and Sirius. His room was actually a mess of school robes, old spell books, and crumpled parchment, but it could wait.
"…you could lighten up a little for a start," Sirius was saying in response to James' exasperated question. "He's a good kid, Prongs."
"Then why can't he stay out of trouble?"
"Probably the same reasons you couldn't. Everything you've gone through in the last thirteen years, he's gone through, only worse. Look at how he handled the last two years. Neither one of us could have endured all that and fared as well as Harry."
"He never should have had to," James grumbled to the point that Harry almost missed what he said.
"Such is life." Sirius took a careless approach to the whole thing. "Just give him some credit. It wouldn't hurt for him to know a few things seeing how it's his life that's in danger here. Did you read the Prophet?" The sound of the newspaper slapping the table reached the vent overhead. "Bottom half of the front page, read it."
It was silent a moment as James did as he was told. Sirius's glass clinked against the wood surface of the table and his chair legs went thud on the floor as he got up to get a refill from the fridge.
"And this is supposed to make me feel better?" James demanded after reading.
"I didn't say anything about that." Sirius poured and returned the jug to the fridge. "I just thought you should know. More importantly I thought you should warn him. He knows, James. I don't know how word got to Azkaban, but Pettigrew knows Voldemort made an attempt to revive his body a year ago. Hogwarts is going to be the first place he goes."
"And that's precisely why I should keep Harry home."
Sirius barked out a derisive laugh, slumping back in his chair and scraping up the floor. "You think you can protect him better than Dumbledore and a fleet of dementors?"
Harry didn't need to see his father's face to pick up on the tension created by Sirius' remark. He was surprised James didn't throw him out of the house. The issue of his ability to protect his son was a sore one which the man did not tolerate lightly.
"I'm sorry," Sirius conceded before James could speak. "But be rational, would you? Pettigrew can try what he likes, he's not getting in. I personally will see to that."
"How?" James demanded. "Are you going to seal up every rat hole and passage? If he can slip by dementors in Azkaban, he can slip into Hogwarts."
"Come on, James." Sirius suddenly didn't find the prospect to be such a threat. "We're talking about Wormtail here."
"I've already underestimated him once," Harry's father stated coldly. "I won't do it again."
"He may be desperate," Sirius told him seriously, "but he's also gutless. Harry needs to be in school, you know that."
The kitchen fell silent once more as the two old friends contemplated the argument to themselves. Harry lay and stared at the ceiling while giving it careful consideration as well. So Peter Pettigrew escaped from Azkaban to come after him. Why, he wasn't so sure. Revenge maybe, or did he actually think that killing Harry would bring back his master? It was laughable, and Harry was with Sirius on this one. Pettigrew was nothing, he was barely a threat. He was a sniveling rat who, according to Harry's godfather, had never been anything but a follower all his life. The fact that James seemed reluctant to let Harry go back to school because of one pathetic wannabe Death Eater irked him even further. He had faced Voldemort's influence three times in his life already, what was Pettigrew compared to that?
Chairs scraped the floor downstairs once more, and Harry realized that James was beginning to climb the stair. Jumping up from the floor, he slid the wastebasket over the vent and busied himself with his school things to appear as if he had been packing all along.
James poked his head through the half-closed door and glanced around at the mess spilling off the bed and desk, out of dresser drawers and all over the floor. His frown deepened across his brow, and he appeared old to Harry, who stopped with an armload of books over his open trunk to look at him.
"Sirius is staying for supper," James said, pushing open the door all the way. "I was going to ask for your help in preparing it, but it looks as though you have plenty to do here."
"Are we still going to London tomorrow?" Harry asked.
James hesitated, playing with Harry's wand which he held in his hand. "We'll see," he said vaguely, holding out the wand for his son to take. "Pack that away. I don't want to see you with it again until school starts, got it?"
Harry took it pointed end first, flipping it around and grasping the handle without making any promises. If his dad couldn't give him a direct answer, than why should he in return?
"I'll call you down when supper's ready." James slipped back out into the hall, and Harry dropped his books into his trunk before kicking the lid closed and tossing his wand on the unmade bed. He didn't care what his father's final decision on the matter was. Harry would be on that train to Hogwarts on September first. The atmosphere in that house was stifling, and he wasn't sure if he could take much more.
Looking up, Harry caught sight of Hedwig as she flew to the window. Crossing the room to greet her, he pushed open the pane, and stood back to let her in. Hedwig landed on her perch on Harry's desk and hooted dolefully, giving him the impression that she would not be taking any return messages back to Hermione any time soon. Harry smiled and scratched under her feathers. "Alright," he conceded, "you can have a day off or two." Giving her an owl treat, he removed Hermione's letter and prepared to read.