Synopsis: The young couple explore the Potter Mansion, and meet some portraits.
Beyond the door marked "Up and Down", Harry found there was no floor. The room was only a few metres square, but the room extended many storeys below him into darkness, and looking up, he saw there was a glass skylight several floors above. A few seconds after he opened the door, and squinted into the dark below, a carpet rose from the darkness and drew level, like an elevator.
"Flying carpets are illegal in Britain." Hermione complained.
"Maybe it doesn't count if it's indoors?" Harry suggested.
"Well, maybe. I haven't read the actual statute."
Once they were both standing on the carpet, which felt just like solid ground, Harry found there were markings on the carpet itself for each floor. "G" was in gold, and on its left there were circles containing "D", "Q", and on the right "B", "L", and "R", all in red.
"Hmm, I don't know which floor is which, none of these are numbers." Harry wondered.
"Well, the two nearest floors are B and D, so maybe, B stands for basement?"
"But then what would L mean? Lower basement?"
"Well, let's just try one." Hermione stomped on the circle marked Q.
The carpet descended probably twenty stories to the bottom of the shaft, passing an unmarked door reinforced with studs on the way. At the bottom, there were a few broomsticks scattered, Harry supposed they had been used before the carpet-elevator was installed. There was another door here, which was wooden and unpainted like the outer door of the house.
The door opened into a vast open space, much larger than the house above. The ground was dirt and was marked with a large oval in chalk, and at each end of the oval there were three hoops on poles. Harry soon realized that he was looking at an indoor Quidditch pitch, lit by a huge, unnaturally bright bonfire attached to the stone ceiling by chains.
The walls of the space were many yards apart, and were decorated with forested mountains in stone-cut bas-relief, descending to a frieze along the ground of trees in full-scale high relief. Had they only been painted, Hermione might have mistaken them for a real indoor forest. The stone roots of the trees extended into the ground realistically, even.
"Wicked!" Harry yelled.
"..wicked!" it echoed from the stone walls of the chamber.
"To think that your house would have an underground quidditch pitch, it seems your love of flying really does run in the family." Hermione chuckled.
"I should have brought my Firebolt!"
"There's a broom closet over there." Hermione pointed out an open shed with some brooms leaning on it.
"Hermione, hold my hat for a moment." Hermione obliged him.
Harry ran over to the shed and snatched a broom. As Hermione watched, he sprinted across the pitch, mounted it and took off while still running. He did some circles in the air at various angles and then flew out to the wall and along it at high speed, around the pitch. Having circled the pitch once, he came in low along the ground toward her and went from flying to running as smoothly as he had taken off.
"It's unbelievable, Hermione, this is full-scale, the same size as the Hogwarts pitch or any pitch for international competition!"
"Yes, and it's not just that." said a voice they didn't recognize, and Hermione practically jumped as she spun around.
Standing beneath one of the stone trees in the frieze was a stone man, also attached to the walls, with a large moustache, messy hair and wearing wizards' robes, all carved in stone. He waved at them to come closer.
"It's got runic charms to simulate weather of any kind you can think of, and altitude too. Right now it's set to simulate the weather outside. Oh, pardon me, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Charlie Potter, and if I'm not mistaken, you're Harry. You've got my hair, and Lily's eyes."
"So you're my grandfather? I've heard a bit about you recently." Harry replied.
"Only recently?"
"From Hagrid. He told us you fought on a broomstick during World War Two, er, I mean the second great war." Hermione explained.
"Oh, yes I did. Well, Harry, aren't you going to introduce this young lady?" Charlie changed the subject.
"Er, okay, um, Grandpa Charlie, this is Hermione Granger, my friend, er, girlfriend."
"I see. A charming girl she is. Now, I'd like to know where my grandson has been these many years."
Harry wasn't sure where to begin. "I've been with the Dursleys, that is, Aunt Petunia..."
For half an hour Harry told the statue of his grandfather the story of his life; how his parents had died at the hands of Voldemort; how Voldemort had failed, three times so far, to kill him; how he had grown up under very poor conditions at the Dursleys; how he had met Hermione, and saved her life from a mountain troll; and how he had saved Sirius from being caught by dementors.
For his part, Charlie was sympathetic. He had long assumed that his son had died since James had never returned after he left in such a rush. The fact that Harry had survived was great news to him.
"Well, you've handled those challenges admirably, Harry. I've certainly never heard of anyone achieving as much at such a young age, besides perhaps Mozart. Personally I was twenty-one years old when I fought my first battle of life and death. But never mind that. How did you find this house again?"
"I'll answer that" Hermione interjected "it started when Sirius Black sent me a letter saying he was concerned with Harry's wellbeing. He pointed out some things, and he encouraged me to act on my, er, crush on Harry. And I realized that I wanted Harry to be happy and it just wasn't fair the way he had to live with that horrible woman and dress poorly and eat poorly, why didn't Dumbledore do something!" By the end her voice was strained.
"I'm sure that Dumbledore had the best of intentions hiding Harry in the muggle world during wartime, but there's no reason he can't live here now, in his true home. Although, I'm just a portrait, not a solicitor or legal scholar."
"You look more like a statue than a portrait, though." Harry commented.
"Well, my frame is in the library. This frieze is flat enough that the charms let the portraits walk into it."
"Library? There's a private library here?" Hermione asked, suddenly excited.
"Of course. Most old homes have one. In this case it's rather large since my mother and wife each brought in large collections."
"Speaking of whom, does Dorea Potter have a portrait here?"
"Yes, she's in the same frame as me, but she's asleep right now. We've lost track of night and day since the house has been shuttered all this time."
Harry wanted to see the rest of the house. "Grandpa, can you follow us around the house?"
"Yes, there are paintings in most rooms, except the WC and bedrooms. Well, some of the bedrooms."
"Ok then, let's go to the next floor up. We'll leave the library till Grandma is awake."
Hermione wanted to see the library next, but it wouldn't be nice to wake an old woman up, even if she was a portrait.
They took the carpet-elevator to the floor marked D. The heavy door opened and immediately Hermione realized what D stood for. "Dungeon!"
It was stone hallway with barred windows in several of the doors. There was a glowing fresco on the hallway's ceiling of a starry sky, with the stars in many colors. Grandpa Charlie soon flew into that night sky. Now they could see him in color, his black hair so clearly resembled Harry's, and his clothing was identical to Harry's regalia.
"Sorry for the wait, had to fetch a broom from another painting. This is the only painting on this floor."
Harry noted that there weren't any convenient signs on any of the doors. "What are in all these rooms?"
"Er, there's a potions lab, a ritual room, a kitchen, a wine cellar, and some storage rooms full of weapons, muggle artefacts, and other junk. There's also some empty rooms."
"Hmm, none of that sounds too interesting, maybe I'll look into the storage rooms later. Let's keep going." Harry decided.
They once again mounted the elevator, and ascended to the floor marked B, since they had already explored the ground floor.
There was a similar hallway to the ground floor's here, and the doors were labelled in a similar manner. Between each door, rather than portraits, there were landscape paintings. Each one was an iconic street scene of a different European city in the late 19th century. The one of Paris included a half-finished Eiffel Tower.
The first door on the left was labelled "Bath" and the one on the right, "Toilet". After that were bedrooms, labeled simply "Padfoot", "Moony", "Master", and... "Harry".
Harry opened the door of what he presumed was Sirius' room first. It was decorated in Gryffindor gold with red carpet. There was a sagging, unmade bed, and posters all over the walls of famous quidditch players, sports cars, and girls in lingerie. There was a window overlooking London, and a chair and desk. Harry noted that there weren't any obvious belongings of Sirius left in the room.
"There's a huge bath, Harry!" Hermione had been checking out the bathroom and returned to find Harry examining Sirius' room.
Unlike Harry, she thought to look at the ceiling, and noticed that there was an oil painting stuck to it right above Sirius' bed, showing a well-endowed young woman in a corset and a miniskirt, sitting on a bed in what looked like the Gryffindor girls' dorms. At first she thought the painting was non-magical, but she could see the woman breathing.
She tapped Harry on the shoulder and gestured to point out the painting.
"Aww, you're no fun at all!" the young woman complained, "I wanted to see how long it took Harry to notice me!"
"Er, hello, what's your name?" Harry greeted the girl on the ceiling.
"I'm Jenny Black. No relation to Padfoot, since I was a Muggleborn."
"Er, okay, and why are you on the ceiling?"
"Well, when I was alive, I entertained men for a living, and I still do that now that I'm a painting, for fun. I can sing, dance, and do other things. You're too young to know about that though."
Hermione did know what Jenny was insinuating, and blushed. "And you obviously knew Sirius." She changed the subject.
"Yes, of course, I've been with him since he was in fifth year. He found this portrait of me gathering dust in one of the storerooms of Hogwarts and got Moony to animate it for him. It was originally a self-portrait by the way."
At this point an adult witch wearing a large-brimmed black witch hat walked into the frame. Her hair was black with red streaks dyed into it,
and she had fierce grey eyes.
"Miss Black! I hope you're not corrupting my grandson already!" she squared up to the younger witch, but her tone was more joking than scolding.
Harry was startled. "Er, Grandma Dorry?" He noted that neither of his grandparents looked very old.
"Yes, Harry, that's who I am. I have a lot of questions for you and the young lady you're here with. What was your name dear?"
"Hermione Granger."
"Well Harry, Hermione, come up to the library, and we'll talk without you two breaking your necks looking at the ceiling."