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The End Or The Beginning?
The one with Grimmauld Place.
Harry groaned, squirming his eyes against the afternoon sun. Unfortunately the room he was staying in was on the west side of the house.
He moved to grab the pillow and covered his head but the loud thumbing on the door, brought him unmercifully back to awareness more than he would wish for.
He groaned again and mumbled into the pillow that he wanted to be left alone.
Expired potions, what a great idea!
His head hurt like hell, even his joints ached, although he did understand the reason for a headache, he couldn't find any explanation for the later. Not to mention the taste in his mouth. At the moment, Harry wasn't sure that the meeting with Hermione had been worth it, even if some part of him was extremely relieved that his friend wasn't dead. Maybe she was different, but it still was Hermione. He couldn't help feeling reassured, she was always good to talk to, and it made him somewhat pacified, maybe living in this world wouldn't be bad. Maybe he would finally have some peace.
Another series of loud 'THUDS' on the door, brought him back from his half-sleep state to harsh reality.
"I'm up!" He tried to yell but cringed at the loud sound.
"Are you decent?" A woman's voice asked.
"Yeah." Harry mumbled looking at himself, he was still wearing the clothes from yesterday.
The door opened and in walked Rose. She covered her nose and made a disgusted face.
"Bloody Hell. You're lucky that mum sent me and dad to wake you. She would flip if she saw you like this." She paused for a moment and then added. "You're even more lucky that dad is waking Sirius." At Harry's questioning look she added. "I can't use my wand out of school, yet."
He was still wondering what would be different if she had a wand, when a splash, loud shrill and a thud was heard from the direction of the shared bathroom, where the second bedroom had been located.
"What do you thing you're doing, James, You bloody wan…" A muffled voice of Sirius could be heard, followed by much more quieter "Ahh... my head." When he probably had realized that he was screaming.
"See." She smiled at him "mum wants you for lunch, it's already after two o'clock, in the afternoon. And dad said that Dumbledore asked to meet with you again. Something about documents."
She sat at the edge of the bed and shook his arm.
"Are you up. I said mum calls us for lunch."
"I'm up, I'm up." said Harry trying to uncover from the sheets he was mingled with.
"I'll be ready in a minute." He sat up, his head in his hands, the world spinning around painfully. "And I've promised myself I would never do that again." He mumbled to himself trying to stop the world from spinning.
After a short, yet very much needed shower and a new set of cloths, thanks to the courtesy of James Potter again, he was ready to face the world, more or less.
"I think you should refresh the room. If mum come here, I don't think she would be too impressed." Rose said suddenly when Harry declared that he was ready to go.
He looked at her a little embraced, "I think a don't remember any household spells."
"Oh, well, Could I use your wand then?" she asked.
"No wand, remember?" he showed her his empty hands.
"Right." Ross furrowed her brow, "I will ask dad or Sirius for wand. For now you can leave windows open." She started going to do just that.
Harry smiled at her and gestured for her to stop. With a casual wave of his other hand, the windows opened silently letting fresh air into the stuffed room.
"Wow, You have to teach me that." Rose said in awe. "Is it possible to learn or do you have to have some kind of special talent to do that?"
"As I said before it was a necessity. And I think it can be learnt, at least to some extend. My friends did learn wandless magic as well."
The fact that the level of easiness in which one could operate magic without the wand was way more dependent on the level of power than ability. However, Rose didn't need to know that.
"And you are a Potter, aren't you?" Harry smiled at her proudly, "I am sure you can learn."
The thought of teaching, his sister, was very appealing and made him feel warm inside. Maybe being here indeed will be good.
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They reached the kitchen few minutes later, the wonderful smells attacked their senses some time earlier when their were descending the stairs.
The kitchen was rather huge, combined with a dining place near the enormous window. The view was breathtaking, the house was in some kind of a meadow, surrounded with a forest on one side and what look like a sea or ocean on the other. Harry didn't notice that yesterday. He didn't know that Godric's Hollow stood by the sea. He wasn't sure anymore that this was Godric's Hollow.
His mother was finishing lunch when they walked in.
"Rose, honey, prepare the table. Hello Harry, sit down, James and Sirius will be here in a moment."
"Hello…" somehow he stopped with just that. Harry desperately wanted to call her, mum, but the word had stuck in his throat. Maybe not yet, he thought sadly.
Lily must had noticed because she stopped what she was doing and walked up to him.
"You can call me Lily," she smiled at his disappointed expression, "for now." Lily added after a moment, her eyes a little misty. "But I expect you to call me mum, soon."
She embraced him into a hug only mother could give.
"Thanks." Harry breathed into her hair, using his occlumancy training to stop himself from crying.
Suppressing positive emotions was always many times harder than any others. At least for Harry.
"I'll help with the table." He said more cheerfully.
After a while James came into the kitchen with Sirius dragging himself after his friend. Lily took pity on them and gave Harry and Sirius two vials of stemming potion.
"How many times did I tell you not to overdo alcohol. And you are dragging poor Harry with you."
Rose snored into her food and Harry quickly drunk his potion thankful that the attention was directed to someone else.
Sirius however, only grinned at her and with a silent "Cheers," drunk his dose.
"Oh, Lily, I didn't dragged Harry anywhere he didn't want to go, right mate?"
Harry groaned, bracing himself for the teasing that would probably come. But James interrupted saving him for the moment.
"Leave a man alone," he smiled at Harry kindly, Harry smiled back and relaxed a little.
"You're making him blush like a girl." James finish with a glint in his eyes. Rose and Lily tried to stiffen their smiles, because Harry actually was starting to blush.
After a few more accurate comments from her husband Lily interrupted James. "Oh, stop it. Lets eat."
For the first few minutes only sounds in the room were of the knifes and forks connecting the plates, but after some time conversation begun again.
"Remus called earlier today," Lily said, "he will be coming later, after work."
"Well I know, I've asked him when we were laving Dumbledore." James answered taking a sip of the wine.
"Yes, but he said that he will bring Hermione Granger. I didn't know that they were dating, I didn't remember Remus dating anyone for some time and as far as I know, Hermione was engaged to someone from the Ministry, some guy named Michael Skinner, or something."
Sirius and James had burst laughing, "It's Skylar Mitchel, Lils," said James when he got control over himself, "he's from Cooperation."
"And he is a stiff git" muttered Sirius under his breath.
"Yeah, and he is a stiff git." James added aloud with a laugh.
Harry thought about Hermione, he remembered when she said about being engaged. At first he had thought that maybe she was engage to Ron, but she mentioned this man Skylar. Somehow Harry didn't like the man from the start. He didn't remember the bloke from his world, and he had met and shook hands with all of the people who had followed him, at least once. It was Aberforth's and Hermione's idea that he needed to know the men he would lead.
The fact that his father and Sirius didn't like him made Harry feel rather pleased.
"…rry. Harry!"
He was jerked back from his musings by the voice of his mother.
"Huh?"
"I asked if it is true that it was you who had asked Hermione to come?"
He looked around everyone was looking at him with curious expression. Everyone apart from Sirius who was finishing his meal, ignoring everyone else.
"Yes, we went to her apartment and I talked to her."
"Don't you think that you should ask Dumbledore before telling anyone about yourself?"
Surprisingly it was Lily who said that in a rather harsh tone. Harry thought it would be James or maybe Remus, if he was there, but not his mum. He sighed inwardly, he had hoped that he had made his point clear with Dumbledore.
The atmosphere in the kitchen tensed, in an instant gone was a young man, laughing and being teased. In his place there sat the dangerous and powerful wizard, the one James and Sirius saw in the Department of Mysteries and later the rest of them in the Hospital Wing.
"I think it is my decision, and my only, who I choose to tell about me. You can trust Hermione." He said in a quiet but cold and demanding voice.
"But what if she…"
"She" Harry interrupted his mum and looked at her. But when he did so he had noticed her worried eyes. And then he understood. They didn't question his decision, they didn't think he wasn't capable of making a right one. They were just worried about him.
He looked at the similar expression in the eyes of his sister and a troubled look of James, and took a deep breath, loosing some of his coldness.
They were worried because they cared.
"Look," he said in a much warmer voice, "as I've already told you, there were a lot of people in my life that tried to manipulate me, into one thing or another. No matter if their intentions were good or not. I had to grow up pretty fast and I became very cautious of how to live my life."
Harry paused to gather his thoughts, he didn't want to offend them but they would have to understand.
"I think, I know why you reacted the way you did," he smiled at Lily reassuringly, "And I really appreciate your concern, but I wouldn't survive last six years if I allowed someone to dictate me how to live and who to trust. When I said that you could trust Hermione I meant it. I trust her. She wont tell anyone."
Seeing that they were still a little concerned Harry sighed again and said simply, "She made the Oath."
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The visit with Dumbledore went well. Harry had informed him that he had told Hermione about himself and was pleasantly surprised when the man didn't frown at him for that. He had asked Harry to be cautious and that he would appreciate if he could be informed who would be told. Harry had agreed to the request. He was wondering what had changed, but didn't ask.
Rest of the day he had spent with Rose and Lily and then with Hermione and Remus, as well, asking them about the wizarding world. James and Sirius had also joined them later.
As it turned out this wizarding world was much more tolerant about other beings. Remus was a Head of the Magical Being's Department and it seemed they had a lot more rights, making them equal to people in many aspects. There was, however, a strong opposition in the form of Malfoy and some other old Pureblood families, like Blacks.
Aparently, apart from Sirius, Regulus Black lived. Harry wasn't sure what to think about that. They didn't trust him but they were still on a speaking terms with him, as well as, with Bellatrix Black.
She, on the other hand, had never married into the Lestrange family and was a quite good friends with Sirius and Andromeda and was sometimes a mediator in the family. This was probably most surprising fact Harry had learned, and a very hard to accept.
In his world she was within the three people he hated most apart from Voldemort. Bellatrix Lestrange, Severus Snape and Peter Pettigrew.
Here they had stopped meeting with Pettigrew after school, and when he became a head of his house and backed up Malfoys in the Wizengamot, they publicly became enemies.
But unfortunately, in Harry's opinion, Severus Snape was still a Potion Master and fortunately a most hated person by the old Marauders. With the last one, Harry had readily joined with the Marauders to the displeasure of Lily and Hermione.
In Harry's opinion Snivellus was the worst of the three, he was even more Slytherin than Voldemort himself. In Harry's world, Snape had tried, and almost succeeded in convincing everyone that he was working on Dumbledore's orders, that Dumbledore was dying and had asked him, had ordered him, to interfere when there was a possibility to save someone. He had said that Dumbledore pleaded with him to save Malfoy's soul. He had even passed the veritaserum test. It was dumb luck, that Harry, after some training, had started experiment with his link with Voldemort, and happened to whiteness his meeting with Riddle. Much later, it turned out that Severus Snape, was loyal only to himself, and in everything he did, his interest was first and foremost.
Ironically it was Severus Snape and the way he had stopped and humiliated Harry at the end of Harry's sixth year, had opened Harry's eyes. He realized how much he had needed to learn to have at least a slight chance in the real world. His Patronus, in his third year, was nothing compared to the knowledge and power that he had had to have to end the war.
But as Aberforth had said "You have to start somewhere, and this mark" he had tapped Harry on his forehead "is a better start than any."
Yes, Severus Snape, is a true Slytherin. Thought Harry grimly, he wouldn't let him know where he came from and more especially, what he had to do there.
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Many hours later, when Hermione had gone home with an eager promise of another meeting and that Harry could borrow some of her historic books and when Remus was leaving as well, Harry had noticed that Sirius had decided to stay again.
Before he could ask why, Rose did. "Why are you staying here?"
Sirius looked affronted "Don't you like it when I stay? I thought I was your favorite uncle?"
"You never stay, you usually just come for breakfast. But I don't remember you actually staying here, other than when you are too drunk to apparate or to floo."
"Hey!" he said but then he looked around at the others and than hesitantly at Harry. He shrugged coming to some kind of a decision. "Well my house vanished."
"What?" Harry asked astounded. "What about Regulus? Where does he stay?"
"Oh, he has a castle in Wales."
"I thought that The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was in London?"
"Do you think that the Blacks would lower themselves to live with the plebs in a city." he snorted.
But other adults were looking at Harry strangely.
"How do you know where Sirius' house is?" James asked slowly.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the Headquarter is under the Fidelius Charm, Dumbledore is supposed to be a Secret Keeper."
"So?" Harry asked into the silence.
Then Remus' eyes winded in surprise and he started laughing.
"What Moony!?" Irritated James asked, he knew that Remus had figured it out.
Then Lily said "Oh my..., wow."
"Could you please tell us normal people what you know?" Sirius had said patiently. This must had been a normal occurrence in the group.
"You were a Secret Keeper of the place in your world, right?" Remus asked eagerly.
"Yes." Harry answered guessing that he was talking about Grimmauld Place.
"Wow," Lily whispered again.
"Yeah wow," said Remus, "I think that when you came to our world, you somehow overpowered Albus' as a Secret Keeper. Incredible." He breathed, his academic mind way ahead in front of everyone, Lily's probably right next to him.
"Does he mean that you know where I live?" Sirius asked stupidly.
James eyes winded when he understood the meaning of all of that. They had just got the real proof that Harry was more powerful than Dumbledore. Not knowledge and its use in some areas of live power, but the level of raw power.
"Well," Harry said, "if I am correct, you are living at 12 Grimmauld Place… London."
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AN:
Next chapter, next bunch of Reviews, please.
I know that the chapter is slow, but some things had to be said.
Thanks for all your Reviews. I am extremely pleased with myself. You make me blush so much that it might stay permanent. Oh, and so you know, I don't mind.
That said, one last request; REVIEW.
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