"Ok, but if I tell you, you have to promise that you won't interrupt. You can react once you've heard the whole story but not before. Agreed?" Harry stipulated.
Both Sirius and Remus nodded their consent and joined Harry and his friends as they sat on the beach.
"I guess that it started on my eleventh birthday when Hagrid took me to Diagon Ally for my school supplies. While we were at Gringotts Hagrid went to a well protected vault and removed a small grubby package, telling me that I wasn't to mention it to anyone. Later we found out that Gringotts had been robbed later that day but the vault had already been emptied. Anyway, I met Ron on the train and we became friends over lots of sweets. We didn't become friends with Hermione until Halloween. Someone had let a troll loose in the dungeons. We were told to go back to the tower but we'd upset Hermione earlier so she was in the toilets and hadn't heard about the troll," Harry explained, giving the two adults time to digest what they were hearing.
"They were really brave," Hermione continued, unwilling to let her friend take sole responsibility for what happened. "They came to get me and take me back to the tower but the troll had already left the dungeons and had made its way up to the toilets. Ron started levitating bits of the walls at it while Harry stuck his wand up its nose. Ron ended up knocking it out with its own club."
"And Snape got his leg mangled by Fluffy!" Ron added, looking pleased with Hermione's praise. "By the way, you didn't tell them about the whole remembrall thing and its consequences."
"What consequences?" Sirius asked before remembering his agreement and making a zipping motion across his lips.
"Malfoy stole Neville's Remembrall during our first flying lesson and then took off, so I followed him, dived after it when he threw it, McGonagall saw and made me a Seeker."
"The youngest seeker in a century!" Ron added.
"It was at the first Quiddich match against Slytherin when someone tried to jinx my broom. We thought that it was Snape at the time but he was actually trying to save me. After that Hagrid won a dragon egg of some guy down the pub, who was actually Voldemort," Harry continued, noticing the grins on both of the Marauders faces. "Hagrid called him Norbert."
"He was a Norwegian Ridgeback. We managed to convince Hagrid to send him to Charlie, but Harry and Hermione got caught on the way back and were given a detention in the Forbidden Forest. I was in the infirmary after being bitten," Ron resumed the tale.
"We found Voldemort feeding off a dead unicorn to stay alive until he could steal the stone. Then Hagrid let slip that Nicholas Flamel was involved so we look in the library to find out what he had done. We realised that Hagrid had removed the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts and that Voldemort was after it."
"We even told Professor McGonagall but she told us the stone was well protected. So we decided to go after V…v…voldemort when we realised that Dumbledore had left for London," Hermione took over, but suddenly stopped, not willing to carry one.
Harry took the hint and continued.
"Hagrid had let it slip that music put Fluffy straight to sleep so I used the flute he had given me and we managed to get down the trap door he was stood on. Hermione saved us from the Devil's Snare we landed on, which was Professor Sprout's defence. Madame Hooch had made the keys for the next door into birds, which we used brooms to catch. The troll in the next room was already knocked out and then we came to McGonagall's giant chess board. Ron, being the master player that he is, played us across before getting knocked out by the queen. Me and Hermione went on to Snape's defence, which was a logic puzzle. Hermione aced it and she went back to rouse Ron and the summon Dumbledore whilst I went on. Still with me?"
Harry's audience nodded, too dumbstruck to respond verbally.
"Dumbledore had hidden the stone in the Mirror of Erised and Quirrel was stood there trying to figure out how to get it."
"Wait a minute. Quirrel? Your Defence professor? WHY?" Remus asked, trying to remember whether he had been mentioned before.
"Yeah, he was sharing his body with Voldemort, who told him to use me to get the stone. Dumbledore told me later that only someone who wanted the stone, but not to use it could get it out of the mirror. I just wanted to keep it away from Voldemort. Anyway, he grabbed hold of me but Quirrel couldn't touch me without burning. He died and Voldemort escaped while I was knocked unconscious. I came round a few days later. The stone had been destroyed and Voldemort had fled abroad again," Harry concluded, nervously waiting for his godfather's reaction.
Sure enough, Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't have to wait long for the infamous Black temper to make itself known.
"You mean to say that Dumbledore allowed three 11 year old kids to gallivant around after Voldemort and didn't even lift a finger to help!" exclaimed Sirius.
"Why couldn't Quirrel touch you?" Remus asked, much calmer that his friend, hoping that he would be able to temper Sirius's reaction.
"Dumbledore said that because my mum died to save me that she left protection in my blood, which Voldemort has now got around," Harry explained, reminding the Marauders about the events at the end of last year.
"Oh right. Still, it doesn't excuse that fact that Dumbledore left you to face Voldemort. It shouldn't have happened!" Sirius yelled, still trying to get his head around everything
"So what about your second year?" Remus asked, assuming that it was an average school year.
"Oh you know the usual… ghosts, acromantula, basilisks… nothing very important," Harry replied, knowing how this was likely to be received.
"Nothing very important... NOTHING VERY IMPORTANT! What do you think you are… invincible?" Sirius demanded, both wanting and not wanting to hear the whole story.
"Harry… stop trying to scare your godfather and tell us everything. Lockheart was the Defence professor wasn't he?" Remus asked, waiting until he knew everything before he reacted.
"Yeah… God he was a prat!"
"Not as much of one as you two… arriving in a flying car!" Hermione defended him indignantly.
"Flying car?" Sirius actually sounded impressed. "That beats any entrance we ever made!"
"I guess that it starts with Dobby. He visited me at Privet Drive to 'persuade' me not to return to Hogwarts. He floated a pudding which got me in trouble with the Ministry, which led to the Dursleys finding out about the whole no-magic-during-the-holidays thing. They would have stopped me from going but the Weasleys rescued me," Harry explained.
"Harry hadn't been replying to my letters so Fred, George and I took Dad's car, that he had enchanted to fly, and we flew to Surry. The Dursleys had locked Harry in his room with bars on the window so we pulled them off and took him back to the Burrow."
Ron didn't get any further before Remus interrupted.
"Did you say BARS? As in prison?"
"Yes Moony. Harry told me earlier," Sirius replied, looking carefully neutral.
"Anyway, when we went to Kings Cross everyone went through the barrier but Harry and I couldn't get through, so we decided to take the car and follow the train to Hogwarts. Unfortunately by the time we got to the castle the car gave up and we crashed."
"Into the Whomping Willow," Hermione scolded, causing the Marauders to raise their eyebrows.
"Bet that was fun," Sirius whistled, grinning slightly.
"Not so much. The tree definitely didn't like it. The professors weren't very impressed either," Harry confided, recalling McGonagall's speech.
"Yeah," Ron agreed. "One more stunt and we would have been expelled!"
"You never mentioned that!" Hermione yelled, looking angry.
"Only because we didn't want to worry you. Especially after the whole polyjuice thing."
"Hey! Slow down you three. Don't go skipping ahead," Remus warned, wondering how much worse the situation could get.
"Sorry. I guess the next thing you need to know is that we went to Nearly Headless Nick's death-day party. He wanted us to convince the headless hunt that he should be allowed to join. There wasn't any decent food there," Ron complained.
Harry just rolled his eyes. "We were leaving the party when I heard a voice talking about killing and eating people. I'm the only one who could hear it though, so apart from Ron and Hermione I didn't tell anyone."
"Why not?" Remus asked, curious.
"Because hearing voices is never a good sign. Then there was the fact that Gilderoy Lockheart was our DADA professor. Completely useless. After a bludger broke my arm he tried to fix it and ended up removing all the bones in my arm. Madam Pomfrey had to keep me overnight to re-grow them. That was when Dobby visited again and pretty much repeated his warnings. He worried me more when he cried whenever I was nice to him," Harry explained.
"Wasn't that also when Colin Creevey was petrified?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, he was trying to sneak into the infirmary. Everyone thought that I did it. Although that was after the whole duelling club disaster," Harry replied thoughtfully.
"What happened?" Sirius had noticed the way his godson's expression darkened at his current thoughts.
"Lockheart and Snape started a duelling club and gave a demonstration. Snape summoned a snake…" Harry trailed off as he replayed what happened.
"The snake attacked a Hufflepuff, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Harry told it to leave him alone," Hermione faltered, not sure how to continue.
"And? So? Therefore?"
"I spoke to it. In Parseltounge. Which made everyone stare even more. After the first attack on Mrs. Norris and the message written on the wall about the Chamber of Secrets being open everyone assumed that I was responsible because I'm a parselmouth." Harry's eyes were fixed firmly on his feet, not wanting to see his godfather's reaction.
"How? I mean… it's supposed to be hereditary but James couldn't," Remus' lack of reaction made Harry wonder if Dumbledore had said something during his third year.
"Dumbledore thinks that when Voldemort tried to kill me he passed on some of his own skills, such as parseltounge, which he inherited from Salazar Slytherin."
"You mean that Voldemort is Slytherin's heir?" Sirius demanded, shocked.
The two remaining Marauders exchanged a look at the new information, realising why it wasn't widely known.
"Anyway, everyone started avoiding me, except Fred and George who found the whole thing ridiculous. The situation just got worse as more people were petrified."
"We ended up wondering if Malfoy was behind it all as he was the only one enjoying the situation, and his father had been at Hogwarts around the time it was opened before, or so we thought. I ended up brewing a polyjuice potion for Harry and Ron in Moaning Myrtles bathroom so they could ask Malfoy about it."
"Over Christmas we locked Crabbe and Goyle in a cupboard and used their hair so we could get into the Slytherin common room."
"You got into the Slytherin common room? What was the password?" Sirius was practically jumping for joy that the son of a Marauder had been in their.
"Pureblood. Who would have guessed?"
"We tried that in our fourth year but never got in," Sirius explained enviously.
"I don't recommend it. It's dark, dank and full of Slytherins!" Ron joked.
"So what happened next?" Remus asked, more interested in the Chamber of Secrets.
"Harry and Ron found that it wasn't Malfoy, although he was willing to help, so we had to concentrate on what the monster inside the chamber was. Hagrid's roosters had all been killed. Combine that with people being petrified and I had an idea of what was in the chamber. However I was petrified myself before I could tell Ron or Harry." Having told her part of the tale Hermione was content to sit and listen to the boys tell their part, wondering if anything would change since they had told her.
"After that we went to see Hagrid. Harry had found Tom Riddle's diary, who had been at the school when the chamber was last opened. The diary wrote back and then showed Hagrid being expelled for having a dangerous creature in the school. When we got to his hut under the invisibility cloak Hagrid was being arrested and he told us to follow the spiders." Ron couldn't continue, remembering what happened when they followed Hagrid's instructions.
"So after we watched Mr Malfoy telling Dumbledore that the school governors had decided to remove him as headmaster, we followed the spiders into the Forbidden Forest with Fang and we were led to Aragog, the head of a family of Acromantula, and Hagrid's pet. He told us that a girl had been killed in a bathroom the last time but refused to tell us what killed her."
"He then ordered his children to eat us, even though we were Hagrid's friends. We were rescued by dad's car, which had been living wild in the forest since the whomping willow incident. Once we were back in the castle Harry realised that the murdered girl might still be in the bathroom," Ron explained, still impressed with his friends deduction.
"Moaning Myrtle? You went to Moaning Myrtle for help?" Sirius demanded incredulously.
"Well we went to see Hermione first. It was the only excuse we could think of to get away from the teachers. Harry noticed that she was holding a page about basilisks with pipes written on it."
"The voice no one else could hear was the basilisk in the pipes," Remus realised.
"Exactly. We found a small snake carved on one of the taps in Myrtle's bathroom. I told it to open in parseltounge and the sink moved away…"
"You went knowing there was a basilisk down there?" Sirius was livid and he wasn't going to hide it.
"We had gone to tell Lockheart about what we'd figured out after we heard that Ginny had been taken down into the chamber. We dragged Lockheart with us down into the chamber," Harry clarified.
"Bet he was a lot of use," Remus muttered.
"He grabbed my broken, sellotaped wand and tried to memory charm us, which was the only spell he could do. Thought he didn't expect my wand to backfire, causing a cave-in with Harry on one side and me and Lockheart on the other. I tried to clear the rubble while he sat there humming since he'd erased his own memory. Harry went further into the chamber for Ginny."
"There was another set of doors that needed to be opened by a parselmouth beyond one of the skins the basilisk had shedded."
"Harry, stop stalling and tell me what happened so I can yell at you!"
"Ok, ok. When I got into the chamber Tom Riddle was standing there having used Ginny's energy to escape from the diary. He did this thing where he rearranged the letters of his full name, Tom Marvolo Riddle, to spell I am Lord Voldemort. He had already been using the name before he left Hogwarts. He said that he wanted to meet me after everything that Ginny had told him about me. He carried on with all this stuff about how similar we were, both orphans, misunderstood, etc, etc, before he summoned the basilisk to kill me. I got lucky I'll be the first to admit that. Fawkes turned up with the Sorting Hat and blinded the basilisk while the Sorting Hat gave me Gryffindor's sword. I was bitten by the basilisk when I stabbed it through the roof of its mouth…"
"You were BITTEN?"
Harry just blinked at his Godfather's yelling, used to it after living with the Dursleys.
"Yes, down to the bone I think. Anyway, while I thought I was dying and Voldemort was gloating about his victory Fawkes managed to heal me. When Voldemort realised he tried to curse me with my own wand until Fawkes dropped the diary in my lap and I stabbed it with a basilisk fang."
"By destroying the diary you destroyed whatever part was kept in there," Remus surmised.
"That was what Dumbledore said once we were all back in McGonagall's office. Ginny had woken up once the diary was ruined and Ron had cleared enough rubble so that we were able to get out. With Dumbledore back Lucius Malfoy came back trying to get the last word, which didn't work because the other governors had written to Dumbledore to tell him about the threats Malfoy had made in order to get rid of him and to reinstate him. Anyway, Malfoy had brought Dobby with him who started pointing at Malfoy and then the diary before hitting himself over the head as punishment. I realised that Malfoy had slipped the diary into Ginny's schoolbooks when we bumped into him in Diagon Alley before term started. So I gave the diary back to Mr Malfoy in my sock, which he promptly ripped off and threw to Dobby," Harry concluded, looking to his friends to make sure he hadn't left anything out.
"The only thing that I remember that you've missed happened once we were back at Kings Cross," Hermione spoke up.
At Harry's blank look she continued in a tone of voice that made it obvious that she thought he was an idiot for not remembering.
"You know, when I asked you if you thought the Dursleys would be proud of you and you said that they'd just be disappointed that you hadn't managed to die with all the opportunities you'd had."
"Oh, that!" Harry's inflection made it clear that he didn't think of it as anything unusual.
Silence reigned while the Marauders tried to come to terms with everything they'd heard, especially the topic of Harry's relatives. Unsurprisingly Remus was the first to break the silence, addressing Ron and Hermione.
"You two didn't have to get involved with any of this and while I'm angry that you put yourselves in unnecessary danger, I'm also glad that Harry has friends like you looking out for him."
Both Hermione and Ron blushed at the compliment and stammered out an unintelligible reply.
"I appreciate it as well. Now if you'd excuse us I need a word with my godson."
The two teens exchanged a glance and swiftly stood, heading back to the villa. Neither of them wanted to be in the firing line when Sirius unleashed his temper. He waited until they were out of earshot until he turned to Harry.
"Let me get this straight. Even though you KNOW that you have a mad mass murderer actively trying to kill you, you still WILLINGLY went to confront him as a fully grown wizard and when he had a pet basilisk." Sirius' voice was completely flat and emotionless, letting Harry know that he was really mad.
"Umm… pretty much," he replied nervously, shuffling his feet.
"ARE YOU COMLETELY STUPID? DO YOU WANT TO DIE? I'VE DONE A LOT OF STUPID THINGS BUT THIS TAKES THE CAKE! IT'S COMPLETE MADNESS!"
At this point Sirius walked away, trying to gain some measure of control, something he never would have done before Azkaban and his friend's deaths.
"Do your relatives know about any of this?" Remus asked, upset by the revelations but not particularly surprised.
"No, I never told them. They wouldn't care anyway," Harry replied calmly, not that bothered anymore with his family's opinions and behaviour.
"And we will be talking about them at a later date. However, for the moment we are discussing your complete lack of common sense," Sirius said as he returned once again ready to take part in the conversation.
"Your Aunt and Uncle may not care but I do and you ARE going to be punished. I just haven't figured out how yet. And you will avoid any life threatening situations or I'll take you out of Hogwarts and lock you up somewhere very remote!"
"It's not like I try to get into trouble. It just happens!" Harry protested.
"Oh. It just happened that you didn't tell anyone who could have helped about the basilisk did it?"
"I didn't think anyone would believe me! McGonagall didn't when I told her that Voldemort was after the Philosopher's Stone!"
"Did it ever occur to you to tell someone else?"
"Who? Snape? Or perhaps the Dursleys? There wasn't anyone else I could tell!" Harry had made his point and all three of them knew it. "Professor McGonagall is the head of Gryffindor," he continued. "I'm supposed to tell her when I'm having problems!"
"Ok, so that wasn't an option but you've got no excuse now. If there's something weird going on I expect you to tell me about it OK?"
"Ok, I'll send Hedwig," Harry capitulated quickly, hoping to forestall anymore stipulations from his overprotective godfather.
"Or you can use this," Sirius added, handing Harry a small object.
"A mirror?"
"I've got the other one. Say my name and we'll be able to talk. James and I used to use them to talk to each other in detentions to plan pranks," Sirius explained, remembering his own school days.
"Cool. Thanks," Harry replied, thrilled at the link to his parents.
"So now you've got no excuse for walking willingly into dangerous situations with no one to help you!"
Remus realised that Sirius was still angry, but not at Harry. He knew that Dumbledore was going to be hearing about just how put-out Sirius was. Most likely at some ridiculous volume.
"So what kind of pranks did you lot pull?" Harry asked, eager to know more about his guardians.
The remaining Marauders regaled their charge with ridiculous stories from their own school days as they made their way back to the villa.