Well, this was half-written already, so I completed it in decent time, I think.

Here you go, summer adventures :D

Chapter 34: Summer activities

When Harry stepped through the barrier that separated platform 9¾ from the muggle King's Cross there was a bounce to his steps. Ron had invited him to the quidditch World Cup that would be held in August here at Great Britain, saying his father would get tickets at work. Sirius had sent a letter, explaining that he was into hiding now, that he had been the one to send Harry his Firebolt —Hermione had been smug to learn her guess had been accurate, even if the broom had been no threat— and said the owl he had sent the letter with was a present for Ron, as an apology for his lost rat. He had also sent a slip of parchment authorizing Harry to go to Hogsmeade, which would be enough for Dumbledore to allow him to go next year.

Harry said goodbye to his friends when he spotted Uncle Vernon, who was giving him an apprehensive look that reminded Harry all over again that Marco had paid the Dursleys a visit last summer to ensure they wouldn't give Harry trouble over the incident with Marge. Harry still wished he could have been there.

Harry grinned, and Uncle Vernon grunted something that was supposed to pass for a greeting before turning around and stalking to the exit. Harry pushed his cart to follow, very pointedly placing himself to walk next to Uncle Vernon instead of trailing behind.

Uncle Vernon eyed the letter Harry still carried in one hand.

"If that's another form…" Uncle Vernon started in s voice that implied he wouldn't sign it.

Harry scoffed, cutting him off before he could finish the sentence.

"Please, we both know all I'd have to do —and I would after last summer— is call Marco," Uncle Vernon flinched at the name, "and you'd sign it as soon as you were done peeing yourself."

Uncle Vernon very visibly refrained from replying, his face an unhealthy shade of purple. An idea crossed Harry's mind, and he smirked.

"Besides, this isn't an authorization form. It's a letter from my godfather."

"You don't have a godfather," Uncle Vernon replied, just as Harry had known he would.

"I do. He's a convicted mass murderer who has escaped from the wizarding prison. He wants to be more involved in my life, know how I'm doing and all that."

Harry nearly laughed out loud at Uncle Vernon's face right then.

After giving it much thought, Marco had decided against renting a different apartment for the summer. Not only had he already talked everything with the owner to rent it by the time he had learned that Black had followed Ace there, but Marco had realized that Black already knew where Ace lived, and he could learn of a new location as easily as he had the first one.

If Black decided to look further into where Ace had gone last summer after leaving the Dursleys… well, Marco would see what to do. It would depend on the circumstances.

For now, Marco was busy buying groceries to restock the kitchen, as well as miscellaneous things they would need for the summer. He had arrived to Surrey three hours ahead of the estimated time the Hogwarts Express was expected to reach King's Cross, and he had no doubt that Ace would come to the apartment as soon as he returned to Privet Drive.

Marco scooped up five large tubes of ice cream and put them in his cart. He had promised Ace ice cream, and the muggle varieties would have to do for now. Marco would drop by Diagon Alley when he had time and buy some of the more extravagant wizarding flavours.

Severus woke up to the unforgiving wood of the old kitchen table, the too bright light of an annoyingly sunny morning entering freely through the window. Yesterday he hadn't even thought of closing the window.

He rubbed his dry eyes in a vain attempt to push the throbbing headache off his head. The action was as useless as every other time he had done it in the past.

Standing up, Severus headed for his potions cabinet in search of a hangover remedy, but stopped halfway to it. Maybe he should just get drunk all over again and leave the potion for tomorrow.

Or for whenever he felt like dealing with his brain.

Shaking his head, Severus took the two steps that separated him from the cabinet, opened the door and downed the potion before he could talk himself out of it.

That bloody bird, he thought, setting the flask on the countertop with more strength than necessary.

Severus wanted to dismiss it all as a cruel joke, just someone else who had used him for his own amusement. Except…

Except the first time he had tried, he had remembered James Potter's horrified face when Fawkes —Marco— had dumped a potion on him that had dyed his hair green and silver for a week.

The second time, he had remembered Marco showing up at Severus' office when Severus had returned to the school after his trial back in 1981 and the week he had spent in Azkaban prior to it. Marco had brought with him a magical pouch with an undetectable extension charm so full of chocolate and drinks that they had toppled off Severus' desk. Back then Severus had been too out of it to wonder how a phoenix could have managed to get all that, but now it made perfect sense.

As he drank yesterday —which had started less than an hour after the conversation— his bitter thoughts had been interspersed with not-so-bitter memories.

Shaking his head again, Severus turned around and went to the sitting room. He had come here to get drunk because Spinner's End had a particular gloom to it that always helped to bring back unpleasant feelings, but he still wasn't done packing his things at Hogwarts.

Maybe he could convince Albus to lend him his pensieve, if he could spin it in a way that made it sound like Severus needed it to deal with his foul mood of the past week. Albus had been trying, in his horribly annoying manner, to make him calm down.

A trip down memory lane might help with the mess that was now Severus' brain.

Harry had a plan for this summer. Not just occasional ideas to do one day, but something that would occupy most of his free time during the holidays. His whole life, the Dursleys hadn't allowed Harry to watch movies, and there were many of which he knew little more than what he had heard from his cupboard. While it was true he had watched some movies the past two summers, he still had a long list left.

Marco raised an eyebrow from his position on the couch when Harry entered the apartment carrying five VHS boxes with him.

"What?" Harry asked, setting the three Star Wars movies and the first two Indiana Jones ones on the table. "They didn't let me rent more."

Ace's movie-watching binge was a serious thing. Whenever they weren't training —or eating, talking or out somewhere— he could usually be found on the couch surrounded by assorted snacks.

Today, however, they were at the cinema. It had taken Ace a few days to ask, Marco knew it had been mostly due to embarrassment than anything else, but here they were now. Ignoring a few strange looks they received, Marco and Ace sat down and Marco, balancing his popcorn so it wouldn't spill, placed the bag of other food they had bought on the floor between their feet. He knew a grown man and a teenager stood out in a room full of parents and little kids, but neither of them cared about the looks and soon the room's lights were dimmed.

A few advertisements and movie trailers later, The Lion King started.

"What's the issue with Potter?" Severus, leaning against one of the kitchen's countertops, asked as soon as Marco had transformed in the middle of the room.

"You'll have to be more specific," Marco answered, moving to sit in the only remaining chair in the kitchen at Spinner's End. Two other chairs had fallen victim to Severus' rage over the years since Marco had first come here, and Marco didn't know if there had been more than three chairs to begin with.

"I've been revisiting some memories, and he is… confusing," Severus replied reluctantly.

Marco smiled softly, glad that Severus had actually taken his words to heart on this topic.

"There is no issue with Ace, he just has his own personality. What have you noticed?"

Severus grimaced.

"He doesn't target anybody, unlike his bully of a father," he admitted, and he seemed pained to do so.

"No, he usually doesn't." Unless he was up against an enemy, but Marco wouldn't go into those details now. "When he attacks someone it's usually because they've exhausted his patience or angered him too much."

"Like Draco?" Severus asked wryly, and Marco scoffed.

"You have to admit Malfoy riles him up on purpose."

Severus grunted. Not even he could deny that Draco Malfoy had a stupid fixation with trying to get under Ace's skin.

"You're calm," Marco observed when the silence had stretched too long.

"I've spent the last week drunk and throwing curses in the basement whenever I wasn't reviving a past I'd rather left forgotten," Severus countered, and Marco could picture it easily. Severus looked exhausted, there were dark circles under his eyes and Marco was willing to bet the closest thing he had done to sleep in days was toss around in bed a couple hours before giving up, with a nightmare thrown here and there when he did manage to fall asleep.

"And what did you see in that past?"

"Why didn't you show yourself earlier?" Severus threw back, moving away from the counter and facing Marco fully. "You claim to be my friend, yet you let me walk down the dark path without doing a single thing to stop me."

"You wouldn't have listened," Marco pointed out. He had expected to have this conversation sooner rather than later, and had come with his arguments ready for it. "Lily tried to convince you, and you didn't listen to her. If I had shown you I was human, you would have assumed I was using you to spy on the future Death Eaters on Albus' orders or something like that. You did anyway, later." It had been one of the most frustrating times Marco had experienced in a long while before Ace's arrival at Hogwarts. Early in Severus' sixth year, after Black's attempt on Severus' life, Albus had forbidden Severus to tell anyone what had happened at the Shrieking Shack as well as Lupin's secret. Severus had been wary of Marco for some time before that, ever since he had discovered he was Albus Dumbledore's phoenix a year before, but after that day Severus had refused to let Marco anywhere near him.

Severus looked away.

"It made sense at that time," he defended himself. "I didn't see another reason why you would keep me company."

"Do you, now?"

"No," Severus admitted, and by his frustrated tone Marco could guess he had spent some time trying to come up with an explanation.

Marco leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.

"I hadn't intended to, at first," he started to explain. "I've been at Hogwarts for many decades, and as you know children can be very cruel. I don't like bullies, so I always make a point of humbling them when I see them do something. With you… well, I usually do it without showing myself, but the first two times I did that with the Marauders they just assumed you were behind it and targeted you in retaliation, which ruined the purpose of my actions. So I started to make it clear that I was the one doing it. Then you decided to investigate me. I thought it was amusing, so I kept an eye on you when you did. And you talked to me, not as a simple bird, but as if I really could understand you. It was nice, not many people do that when they only know me as Fawkes, so I stuck around."

It had been unexpected. Severus had been bitter even as a kid, a bitter mix of anger, shame and a thirst to prove himself that only relaxed around Lily Evans, yet he had accepted Marco's company with no complaint. Because Severus had only known him as a bird, Marco had realized even then, but at that point the only people he could really call friends had been Albus and Hagrid. Having someone else had felt good. And it had hurt to see him fall for Voldemort's lies, to let his desperation to be someone taking precedence over everything else in his life. Not that there had been much else to begin with, and Marco knew that was precisely one of the reasons things had gone down the way they had. Marco could admit now he had been willingly blind back then. He had known Severus wasn't like the other future Death Eaters, and had thought he wouldn't really follow them. By the time it became clear that Severus following them was actually a very real possibility, Severus was too suspicious of Marco for him to be able to intervene in any way.

"What are you, anyway?" Severus asked, not acknowledging Marco's words. He had an exasperating tendency to avoid showing emotion whenever he was in control of himself. "You implied you are human, but you are obviously not an animagus."

"Now that is a long story," Marco said, standing up. "You have anything to drink?" he asked, going to the door that led into the rest of the house. There were an armchair and a functional couch that would work well enough.

"Do you need a straw?" Severus asked after him, and Marco flipped him off without turning around.

"How did the talk with Snape go?" Ace asked when Marco came in through the front door the next morning. The conversation had lasted well past midnight, and Marco had decided to crash on Severus' couch for the remainder of the night. That thing was surprisingly comfortable for a decrepit piece of furniture that had outlived its expected time of use a few decades ago.

"It went well. Mostly." And it had. Marco had decided to stay away from the subjects that were most touchy for Severus. He would bring them up at a later date if necessary, but he had already thrown Severus' world off balance enough. Not that their conversation hadn't unsettled his worldview anyway, it just had been on less personal matters.

Marco went straight for the kitchen. Severus had this horrible habit of barely keeping any food at home, so they hadn't eaten much.

Ace paused the movie —Beauty and the Beast, Marco wasn't going to let him live that down— and followed him.

"What did you talk about?"

"The past. He's not surprised at all you were a pirate." What Severus had been surprised, and sceptical, about had been Marco's affirmation that Ace was doing his best to control his temper. He had been more willing to believe it once Marco told him the tale of Ace's first few months on the Moby Dick and his countless failed assassination attempts.

Ace scoffed.

"I can imagine."

Marco opened the fridge and bent down to look in it. At the meagre contents in it.

"What the hell happened to the eggs and bacon?"

He turned to look at Ace, who grinned sheepishly up at him.

"I was hungry."

Marco sighed and shoved the door shut. There wasn't much he could eat in that fridge other than a tomato and half a carton of milk.

"Let's go eat out."

Marco had a bit of a dilemma. He had just returned from Hogwarts, where he had learned a very interesting titbit about the following school year. Due to Marco's anger with Albus and his refusal to be anywhere near him during the last few months of school, he had missed out on the fact preparations to resume the centuries-old tradition of the Triwizard Tournament —which had been cancelled for a very good reason, mind you, given the amount of dead champions— had started. Not only that, but they were almost over and everything was set for the tournament to be held next year at Hogwarts.

At first, Marco had thought that Ace would jump at the idea of a death-defying competition against dangers that he wouldn't normally encounter in his life as a wizard, and he had started to plot how to increase Ace's training to prepare him best for the tasks, but then Albus had mentioned the age line to ensure no one under a certain age could enter the tournament. Ace was under that age.

Now Marco was wondering if he should even tell Ace about the tournament. The matter was being handled with the utmost secrecy, and the secret was being kept for now. If things continued this way, it was likely Ace wouldn't learn of the tournament until it was announced to the entire school if Marco didn't tell him.

The question was: did Marco want to witness Ace's massive temper tantrum when he discovered he was being kept from such a prime opportunity to have fun in private or did the idea of seeing said reaction in a room full of people who would be absolutely boggled by it sound better?

Finally, Marco chose to let Ace discover the news with the rest of the Hogwarts students.

Harry's summer study was a particularly boring affair. With the knowledge that Voldemort would be back any time now —sooner rather than later, given Harry's luck— Marco had suggested that Harry should learn nonverbal magic, because saying the spells he cast out loud would give his enemies an advantage over him. The problem was that, due to the restriction on underage magic, Harry's learning until classes started anew was limited to theory. Again. Theory was boring, and the theory on nonverbal magic was no exception.

At least the spell books Harry was checking this summer had some promising material and provided a distraction when Harry grew too bored of the heavy book on nonverbal magic that Marco had pilfered from the library.

Harry's birthday snuck up on him, and he was surprised when he learned that, unlike Harry, Marco hadn't forgotten about it.

They left Surrey very early in the morning, Marco refusing to tell Harry their destination and threatening to kick Harry out of the car when he started asking if they had arrived in the most obnoxious way he could manage, copied from an American show he had caught on TV a few times.

Marco had rented a ship. Granted, it was small and a modern one, nothing like the ones from the Pirate Age that Harry remembered, but Marco knew how to pilot it himself and the experience of sailing after so long was amazing. It was the first time he did it in this life if he didn't count Uncle Vernon's ill-advised attempt to escape the Hogwarts letters and his short boat trip across the lake his first night at school.

Marco even started teaching him how to handle the ship's controls himself.

They returned to Marco's apartment late that night to a pile of presents that included cakes from Sirius, Hagrid and Ron, though Ron explained the cake was really from his mother. Hermione wrote that she would have sent sweets under different circumstances, but she was certain he had eaten far more than was healthy for him today. She was right, of course, but that didn't stop Harry from polishing off Mrs. Weasley's cake as a second dinner.

Harry spent the night at the apartment.

Harry startled awake and sat up, looking frantically around the bedroom until his brain reacted enough to process that what he had seen had just been a dream and there was no Voldemort, no giant snake and no Wormtail to worry about here.

Except that they were somewhere, Harry thought bitterly as he rubbed his aching scar with his left hand. He and Marco had already figured out that the reason his scar had hurt back in his first year was the horcrux —Harry grimaced at the thought of that thing— reacting to Voldemort's proximity. The fact that the scar hurt now could only mean what he had seen hadn't been a normal dream, but something that had really happened.

Peter Pettigrew had already found Voldemort, who just so happened to have a plan to get to Harry.

Wonderful, Harry thought bitterly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed to stand up.

A look out the window proved that it hadn't even started to dawn yet, but Harry shrugged and went to get the clean change of clothes that he had brought from Marco's apartment yesterday. He still didn't think it was a good idea to have nice things in this house, so he kept everything at Marco's place and brought it here on a day to day basis.

He would take a shower —he was soaked in sweat from the dream— and get dressed. With some luck, that would buy him the time to leave the house when there was at least some light outside.

"Bertha Jorkins?" Marco asked, interrupting Ace's tale.

Ace shrugged and nodded. He had rushed into the apartment just past dawn, rudely awakening Marco, talking about visions and Voldemort.

"Yeah, that's the name they said. You know her?"

"No," Marco replied, shaking his head. "I just think I've read that name somewhere. A Ministry worker, probably," he said with a shrug. Given the size of the British wizarding community, even the least important of the employees at the Ministry of Magic were mentioned at the press at one point or another. It had the inconvenience that this way most names sounded familiar at least, and it was impossible to remember why most of the time.

Ace's eyes slid to the shelf where Marco kept the summer's newspapers piled up. It was for unexpected events like this that Marco kept copies of the newspaper around.

"Have fun reading," Ace told him, and Marco glared half-heartedly.

"What else did they say?" He didn't bother mentioning that if this Bertha Jorkins had indeed run into Voldemort Marco wouldn't have to look much. Either her death or her disappearance would eventually be reported in the Prophet.

"Voldemort mentioned something about a faithful follower at Hogwarts. Do you think it could be the new Defence Professor?"

Marco scoffed in amusement.

"No. That guy's as likely to be a Death Eater as Albus."

"You know him?" Ace asked, leaning forward on the couch in curiosity.

"Not personally," Marco replied, shaking his head. "I didn't take an active role in the war against Voldemort past keeping an eye on the students." Something he regretted now, but Marco had stayed out of most conflicts for millennia, and he had seen no reason to being involved in this one at the time. "But Alastor Moody was an auror, the person Death Eaters were most afraid of after Albus himself, and he was part of the Order of the Phoenix. In fact, that is why Albus convinced him to come teach Defence Against the Dark Arts this year."

"Why?" Ace asked, and Marco sighed. He had thought the tournament couldn't give them any trouble, because Ace couldn't participate in it, but of course Voldemort had found a way to use it to his advantage nonetheless.

And now he didn't even get to witness Ace's public temper tantrum.

"Have you heard of something called the Triwizard Tournament?"

To be continued

In case anyone was wondering, The Lion King was released on June 15th. And yes, I actually went and checked that. You can imagine these two getting incredibly invested in the plot, and then satisfied that Scar died but angry that his death wasn't really at Simba's hands.

Reviews?