The Return of the Father: Findings

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and anyone else. Thanks to all of the reviewers.

I do believe it's that time for question answering again. Please, read the answers this time, because I keep getting a few questions that I've answered before each time I do this. You can skip over the ones that you don't need, but please at least read to see if you do need an answer to the question.

By the way, this is supposed to be a few days after the last chapter.

------------------------------Hogwarts –Sanctuary

Harry had pretty much flown to get Ron and Hermione after he'd found his little hallway. They'd seemed a bit surprised – to say the least – after he'd managed to relay the whole story. But years of being his best friends had conditioned them to just go with it.

That had been three days ago. Now they spent a great deal of their time in what they had dubbed "Sanctuary". The name fit, and there hadn't been a better suggestion.

With each room that they opened, there was something gasp worthy. The first five were just bedrooms. They were done up in different color themes each. One had a whole family of reds, the other blues, greens, silvers, and yellows. The bedrooms contained their own beds, desks, and empty bookshelves. There were various objects and paintings. The paintings, unfortunately, were very tightlipped about previous owners.

The bedrooms were exciting in their own right. Everything in them gave off an air of magic that gave you the shivers when you were to walk in.

These rooms were situated on the left side of the hallway, and started at the very end. When they had opened the sixth door Hermione'd had to be supported by Ron and Harry.

It was a library. One with titles in it that even Hermione had not seen before. They had yet to find a book in it that had been published in the last two centuries. Many were defense books, with curses in them that had been forgotten over time out of respect for human life. There was everything from divination texts, books on strategies, and potion books that Professor Snape would gladly trade his nastiness for.

Hermione was truly beside herself.

One thing that the library had proved was that the rooms were all spelled to take up less space. Because, as the rows of books went farther and farther back, there was no way that the room was that big on the outside.

A room completely made up by magical artifacts followed the library. There were things in there that not even Ron – who had been raised to know things like that – knew of. They tried not to touch the things that they hadn't figured out yet and Hermione spent time researching some of the more lethal-looking objects.

The seventh room on the left side was a potions lab. It was very similar to their own potions lab, with six cauldrons set up with their own desks and countertops. There were a few shelves to house common ingredients, though there were none in the room.

The next room up cleared that up. It was a smaller room filled with potion ingredients. There were shelves of things that Harry hadn't heard of before. Though, he was annoyed to see, there was gillyweed. The room was spelled to keep it's contents fresh. So the centuries old potion ingredients were still as good as they day they were bottled.

One room up was Ron's favorite. It was a room completely dedicated to strategy. Detailed maps of Europe, and every other location in the world, adorned the walls and were piled in the shelves. Tiny figurines were located in drawers, and they magically followed orders to create a simulation of battle plans.

The last room on the left was merely an office. Four desks sat in the middle, all facing each other. Each desk was decorated differently, one with snakes, another with lions, then ravens and then with hedgehogs. They were clearly done in honor of the four houses of the school, and Harry secretly wondered if the founders had ever used them.

One the right side, the first room was a medical wing. Ten beds lined the walls and other medical equipment and tables sat at one end. There was a door that connected the wing to the second room on the right. This was a supply room. It contained both bandages and potions. There were other books on healing for quick reference, instead of running to the library.

Room number three was obviously a training room. It was fairly empty in the center. Along the walls there were cushions and pillows and a few seats. Harry and Ron had been grinning with anticipation for what they could do in there without worry of teachers discovering their activities.

The fourth was a weaponry room. Apparently, when all else failed, they could use swords or any other form of gleaming metal that was available to them now. Hermione had scoffed and called it barbaric, but Ron and Harry felt differently. There were swords, daggers, axes, and even a few maces hanging on the wall.

By the fourteenth room they'd looked at, they were more than a little overwhelmed with the contents of all of the rooms. Which meant that they weren't disappointed in the slightest when room five on the right side turned out to be a sitting room. The room was white when they walked in, with bare furniture and walls. But once they closed the door, it changed. Everything in the room had given off a silvery glow before dimming to show the Gryffindor common room. Now, whenever they walked in, it just seemed as though they were in their own common room, without it needing to change to suit what they wanted.

Whatever reprieve they'd been given with their sitting room, the next room up took away. Harry had been quite confused when he'd first walked in. There were two mirrors per each side of the room. Long mirrors, taller and wider than the Mirror of Erised. But these mirrors didn't show his greatest desire, or even his own reflection.

They showed the castle.

Various areas in the castle were displayed through the mirrors. When you looked into them, they showed you the station that they had been assigned. It was their own surveillance room. From there, they could see the Great Hall, directly outside of the Headmaster's office, outside at all four sides, the dungeons, the hallways in front of the Slytherin and Gryffindor entrances and – most interestingly – a blank wall. Ron had immediately claimed that it had to hide quite a large secret passageway. They checked the Marauder's Map, but it showed nothing irregular about the wall. Either way, they needed a password to get it open, and they did not know what it was.

From their surveillance room, the next room was filled with great long lists. The walls were covered with parchment-like wallpaper. One these were ever changing words. Names really. In alphabetical order, every person in the castle was listed with his or her location next to their name. The teachers were listed in blue, with students in black, and visitors in red. They were amused to see that they were listed as being in "Sanctuary".

The seventh room had been more than confusing for them. For the first two days, they had no idea what to do with it. There were tables, all set up along the walls and in the center. Picture frames with scrolls underneath them lined the tables. But there was nothing in the picture frames and nothing on the scrolls. And somehow, a room dedicated to family pictures wasn't likely to be in a wing dedicated to war preparations.

It had been Ron who had inadvertently figured out the secret of the room. They had spent hours trying to figure out what to do with the room, with no results. And, in frustration, Ron had spat that it was, "Too bad we don't have the great Albus Dumbledore to riddle us the answer to this!"

When Ron had said Dumbledore's name the picture frame's glass had swirled and come up with a picture of the Headmaster. On the scroll, ornate script had appeared and written out "Albus Dumbledore" with "Anxiety – Sadness – Guilt – Arthritis - Itchy Nose" below it.

It appeared that each picture frame gave a current image of the person it was assigned to watch, along with their physical and mental feelings written on the scroll. The spells only responded when the caster loved – or at least cared – about the person they were naming. Which meant that Lucius Malfoy wasn't going to be pictured in the room anytime in the near future. When they figured it out it hadn't taken a long time before Dumbledore was joined by James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Percy Weasley – albeit grudgingly, Charlie Weasley, Bill Weasley, David Granger and Serena Granger. All with frames to spare.

For kicks, Ron had given Hermione permission to put Lockhart in one of the frames.

The eighth room on the right was another rather shocking room. There were five doorways, parallel to the door that opened into the hallway. Behind the doorways was just open space. Above the first doorway was the same script from the scrolls in the picture frame room, it read "Ministry of Magic". When Harry had opened the door, a completely unfamiliar hallway was what lay on the other side. People rushed past him, not noticing the boy that had just opened a door in the complete center of what had to be the foyer of the Ministry of Magic.

The next door read "Front Steps, Hogwarts", and when opened lead to just there. The other three doors had nothing written above them and opened to nothing but the wall behind them. They were sure that they could set the doors to go to where they wanted, but they hadn't found a way to yet.

The ninth room was their own personal Room of Requirement. Harry had needed to explain it out to Ron and Hermione, after he realized what he was dealing with.

And, in the final room of their secret wing, there were only two things inside. One was a small circular table with intricate wood carvings and designs. It was tall and reached up to one's chest.

On top of it was what Harry and Ron had recognized as a pensieve. What a room like that would accomplish in war was beyond them all, but it was an interesting thing to have.

Their exploration of the wing had been three days beforehand, and now the trio sat in their sitting room thoroughly exhausted.

Harry gave a long stretch from where he lay in front of the fire, the stretch was followed by a moan. From her spot on the couch, Hermione giggled. "Too much cleaning for you, Harry?"

Wondrous things aside, Sanctuary included quite a lot of dust. It obviously hadn't been used in quiet a while. They had needed to clean off quite a bit of it, and mostly without magic. "Well, if someone would quit researching everything under the sun and just found us a book on cleaning charms, we might have been done by now." Harry shot back.

"Why don't you find a book on cleaning charms?" Hermione smoothly countered.

To the left of her sitting in a armchair, Ron snorted. "And enter your domain? No thanks."

"Exactly." Harry agreed empathetically, nodding his head. "You'd kill us if we messed anything up."

Hermione scowled, "I just want to figure out what type of books we have on our hands now." She informed them. "And you could have gone to the actual library."

"Somehow, I'd think that if anyone saw Harry and I with a book on cleaning, it might raise some questions, 'Mione." Ron answered as though he'd already thought of her suggestion and had realized it would not have worked.

Harry agreed with Ron again. "Yeah, we can't let everyone get suspicious." They had already decided to keep everything a secret unless completely necessary to do otherwise.

Another point raised itself in Harry's mind. "But if we're missing for long periods of time it'll look suspicious too. So we'll have to make sure that we let ourselves be seen throughout the day."

"Especially with the twins and three marauders running around at the same time." Ron reminded, sounding as though he were turning a little green at the thought.

Hermione nodded, seemingly surprised that the normally rash boys had put in that much thought on the subject. "Well, at least most of the cleaning is done."

"Yeah, just the room full of the magical artifacts and the green bedroom." Harry responded. "And we should probably leave the first one alone."

"We'd be liable to get our fingers blown off while we dust." Ron added. "Find anything else out about some of the things in there, Hermione?"

A sigh was met with his question. "Not very much. I've been more interested in finding some sort of book that would tell us how to get those doors to take us where we want." She responded.

"Don't stress out over it too much, Hermione." Harry advised. "We have all summer."

Quietly, Hermione continued. "I know, but I want to try and figure out how to make one go to my house. It would be nice to be able to go home on a whim." She was looking down, but the two boys smiled sympathetically anyway.

Harry shifted from his spot on the ground, replaying their progress through his mind. They had each taken on different rooms to clean, starting with the bedrooms that they'd chosen for themselves. Harry had taken the red room, and had almost expected a fight from Ron about it. But the other boy had been drawn to the room done in silvers. Hermione had chosen the room in yellows, leaving the blue and green bedrooms open.

Some of the rooms hadn't required much cleaning, like the training room and the pensieve room. But the library and it's dust books along with the room filled to the brim with weapons that needed to be dealt with carefully had proved to be more challenging. Harry and Ron had come out of the weaponry room covered in little nicks and cuts from sharp blades. But that didn't matter much, as they had a room dedicated to just such occasions. On top of that, it seemed that Ron had a bit of a gift for healing.

"I looked into the pensieve a bit. To see why it might have been placed there." Hermione stated out of the blue. Harry was a little startled, having been pulled out of his thoughts. But he sat up anyway and nodded for her to continue. "The obvious use would be to replay things to see if you had missed something. Get a better look at a room or recall a conversation. It's rather brilliant for getting the details you may have missed." She explained.

The boys watched as she launched into a second purpose. "But, also, when a memory is placed inside, it makes the emotional part just a bit less." She said.

Ron looked confused and asked, "What do you mean? Lessening emotions?"

"Well, think about it this way," Hermione said, leaning forward, "If you were to have been kidnapped, you would be inside the enemy's hideout. You might not notice things being in a predicament like that. But if you put the memory in the pensieve, you could see things over." She explained, using her hands for gestures. It was clear that she'd had a wonderful time researching. "But at the same time, the memories are still in your mind, just as it was without all those added details. But it's less sharp, and the feelings that you have about such a memory would be fuzzier – less intense and clear. Something like a kidnapping would be traumatic, right? So by putting it in a pensieve, you'd still remember, but it wouldn't hurt quite as much. Do you understand?"

Harry nodded, finding this to be quite the useful bit of information. "I get it." He said, just as Ron said another variation of the same thing.

"So that makes sense. If this is all for wars and being apart of them, it's quite possible that someone could have some pretty horrible experiences under their belt." Ron surmised, keeping himself from glancing Harry's way.

They didn't' lapse into silence again, as Hermione wasn't done. With a stern look that would make McGonagall proud, she offered to them something else. "I found a few books on sword training and other such things. If you two insist on learning how, then you can have them. But don't try and teach yourselves with no guidelines."

"We weren't thinking of it." Harry rushed to assure her. "You might consider joining us."

This did not lessen Hermione's glare. "I would rather not, thanks."

"She might feel differently if she saw that sword we found in there." Ron said, leaning over and whispering in a conspiring tone. He was only teasing, as he was well awrae that Hermione could hear him.

Harry grinned as Hermione tried to look bored. They had found a sword in the room that had a swirling pattern cut out of the middle of the blade. Barbaric or not, Hermione would have a hard time saying the sword was ugly.

"All right, so what's left to do?" Harry asked, taking pity on Hermione. Ron sent him a mock glare for changing the subject. But Hermione jumped right in.

Ticking off tasks on her fingers, Hermione summed up what they had left to do. "Well, clean up the green room. But that shouldn't take long at all."

"Especially if you'd just give us a book on cleaning charms." Ron said through the side of his mouth.

Choosing to ignore Ron – which she did a lot – Hermione continued. "Clean the green room, and then we need to research all those things in the artifacts room before we really do much in there."

"Likely to blow us up, some of that stuff!" Ron exclaimed, interrupting Hermione again.

She merely rolled her eyes at the interruption and continued on again. Ron caught the eye roll and smiled, not at all guilty. "We need to figure out those doors too. And of course, finish checking all the subjects of those books. I think we should change the organization of them and put them in categories." She said eagerly.

Ron looked horrified at the prospect of such great amounts of time in a library during the summer. And Harry was right there with him. But he was also aware of what kind of books could be in that library. "What kinds of transfiguration books have you found, Hermione?" he asked slowly.

She looked a little puzzled by his question, but answered anyway. "Well, some really advanced stuff. Certainly nothing that most kids in school would be…able to do." She finished slowly, trailing off. It seemed to dawn on her, the meaning of his question.

Ron looked bad and forth between them, seeing the look on their faces and adopting a confused one of his own. "What are you two talking about?"

"I'll look into it Harry. If a book like that would be anywhere, it'd been in our new library." She assured him. Then, adding a bit more apprehensively, "You could ask your dad." She suggested.

Harry shook his head. "I want to do this on our own."

That got Ron's attention. The pieces fell into place in his mind. The confused look dropped as he nodded resolutely.

With that in place, Harry got to his feet. "All right, let's get back to Gryffindor. I think I need a shower or something. Maybe a dusting. Either would work."

All right, I don't know how good this chapter was, as most of it was spent in describing Sanctuary. I gotta tell you, when I came up for the idea of a secret wing, I figured I should add a lot of rooms. I thought I would be having to choose which ideas were best. When it came down to it, by room fifteen I was at a total loss.

Here we are, questions and answers. There may be quite a bit this time, so you're warned.

You are aware that James came after Lily with the wands in the fourth book, right?

Some people are still a little confused here, so allow me to clear it up again. I was NOT aware that they had fixed the mistake. In the original additions they had it where James came out first. I wrote my outline operating on the original non-fixed version. It is very key to my plot. So, please, I'm sorry for all the confusion, but Lily came out last.

Does James know that Snape is a spy for Dumbledore?

Personally, I always was under the assumption that the Order knew about Snape's spy duties. I was also under the assumption that Peter was not in the Order. I'm pretty much sticking with that, unless I missed a bit in Book 5. So yes, since Lily and James were in the Order, I do think that James knows.

Why didn't you show McGonagall meeting James and Sirius again!?

Actually, until some people mentioned it, I hadn't really thought it would be that important. I have been toying with an idea of writing up a missing scene series for this, since I did take stuff out of my outline, because it was just too obscure and people have complained about my slow pace. If I do end up doing that, I will show her meeting them. But until then, sorry you didn't get to see it.

What did you mean, James couldn't love his son anymore?

Hmm…well…sorry. The word meshed together. It was supposed to be that he couldn't love him any more than he already did. I think I squashed the any and the more, so it came out wrong. But when I read it back, it sounded right to me since I knew what I meant.

Where's Sirius!?

He's around, have no fear. In fact, he makes his return in the next chapter.

When is Snape going to get pranked?

Eventually…perhaps…you'll see.

Where is Remus? We need more Remus!

Again, he's around. But he doesn't make an appearance next chapter, so don't think that it's Sirius and Remus. Just Sirius. He'll be back eventually. ::Runs to find her outline:: Um, well, don't hold your breath or anything.

Have you played the Harry Potter computer game, because there's a spell in that to make the paintings go transparent like in the last chapter?

Really? No, I haven't. I didn't realize.

The way you write this almost makes it sound like you've lost a parent of your own.

I was a little surprised by that. But no, I haven't. It's off the top of my head.

Does Harry find out what James said to Dumbledore?

Maybe, don't really know.

Jeez, layer on the angst why don't you?

::Runs and hides::

How much of Book 5 are you putting in?

A fair bit of it…

Does Harry know of the prophecy?

Nope.

Does James ever find out about Harry's patronus?

He knows that Harry can do one, when they talked about Harry's life and such. But I've purposely left it so that James doesn't know what it is. He'll find out eventually.

MOST IMPROTANT QUESTIONS – PLEASE READ

Is this story almost done?

About a fourth of the way, if that gives you an idea. We've got a LONG way to go.

Is Lily coming back?

No.

Please reveiw.

Stars Enchantress