Chapter 58: Harry and the Hotel

The only Muggle hotel Harry had ever visited had consisted of gloomy rooms furnished with small beds and damp, musty sheets. The Dursleys had stayed there for one night in a futile attempt to keep Harry from receiving his Hogwarts letter.

That Muggle hotel bore no resemblance to the Muggle hotel to which Sirius had taken him. (Side-along Apparition, Portkey, side-along Apparition again.) Harry wouldn't have thought that this hotel was a Muggle hotel at all. It felt magical. It felt a bit like his birthday party, which might have meant that it felt like Sirius.

The beds in their room were enormous and soft. The sheets were the brightest white Harry could imagine, as if they were daring someone to challenge their cleanliness. There was a television so large that Harry knew that it would make Dudley jealous. There was a round table surrounded by chairs; atop the table sat a menu inviting them to order whatever food they liked to be brought to their room within fifteen minutes. The room was decorated with many paintings: some colorful, some more muted, but all of them welcoming.

Best of all was the balcony. When Harry stepped onto it, he was greeted by an enormous bright pink bird that looked up at him from beside the lagoon below.

"Sirius?" asked Harry. "Why is there a flamingo outside?"

"Why shouldn't there be a flamingo outside?" asked Sirius nonchalantly. "Let me know if one of the zebras comes over. I've never seen one of those."

"How much did this cost?" asked Harry.

"It's crass to ask about money," said Sirius. Harry had to peek quickly around the corner to make certain that Sirius was joking. Sirius grinned. "About 67 galleons a night. Why?"

"Just curious," said Harry. He wasn't certain whether he really was merely curious, but it was nice to be able to ask questions and get answers. Meanwhile, one of the zebras did come over, along with a gazelle and something the chart affixed to the balcony wall informed him was called a kudu.

The chart was printed in ten different languages. That made sense; Harry had heard people speaking several languages, and speaking English with more accents than he could identify, in the hotel lobby.

"Why are we living in a zoo?" he asked Sirius.

"It's not a zoo, it's a resort," Sirius corrected loftily. "And I offered to let you choose where to go, and you didn't have any suggestions."

"So do we just sit on the balcony and watch the animals?" Harry asked. He thought that that might get boring after a while.

"Maybe later. It's almost time for your first swimming lesson, now, so you should get ready for that."

Harry's stomach turned over unpleasantly. During the Triwizard Tournament, Sirius had said that he wanted Harry to take swimming lessons this summer. Harry had hoped that Sirius had forgotten. "I can swim well enough," he tried.

"No, you can't," said Sirius. "I want to know that if a Death Eater drops you in the middle of the Black Lake, you'll be able to swim back to the shore before you freeze to death. Right now I don't know that."

"Wouldn't the Death Eater just kill me?" Harry asked.

"Death Eaters do strange things. I heard Bellatrix bragging once that—" Sirius broke off with a scowl on his face. Harry knew that Sirius didn't like to talk about his cousins (other than Andromeda and Tonks, of course), and so he dropped the subject and got ready for his swimming lesson.

They were several thousand miles from home, he reminded himself. He wouldn't know anyone. And if he was going to be three times the age of his classmates, well, what was that compared to knowing that Voldemort would kill him if he and his friends didn't manage to kill Voldemort first?

To Harry's surprise, they bypassed the enormous pool with its waterslide and canopy of palm trees. Instead, they ducked through an almost-invisible gap in the foliage that led them to a small lagoon surrounded by bright green leaves and bright red flowers. The only other person in sight was a man who smiled as if he had been waiting for them.

"Harry and Sirius?" he asked, reaching out to shake their hands. "I'm Alex." Alex had an American accent and a smile that was a bit too wide. He looked at Sirius curiously. "Were your parents astronomers?"

"Yes," said Sirius. "My brother Regulus was lucky— he could go by Reggie and no one thought the name was odd."

Alex laughed, apparently thinking that Sirius was joking. "Are you ready for your swimming lesson, Harry?"

It was to be a private lesson, then, Harry realized with relief. He mentally apologized to Sirius for doubting him and agreed that he was ready for the lesson after all. "I can swim," he explained to Alex. "I'm just not very good at it."

"Because of the glasses?" asked Alex. Harry didn't know what to say. He certainly wasn't in the mood to answer because my cousin is a mean, bullying git, and my aunt and uncle hate me. "How bad is your eyesight?" Alex prompted when Harry didn't answer.

"It's awful," said Harry. Sirius chuckled from behind him, and Alex turned his attention to Sirius.

"This happens a lot with kids who can't see very well without their glasses. Swimming is that much harder to learn if they have to do it blind. More and more of my clients lately are adults who didn't swim as children. With that LASIK surgery becoming more and more popular, they come to me to re-learn now that they can see in the water."

Harry watched as Sirius pretended to know what LASIK surgery was. Harry didn't know, either, and he doubted that he wanted to know. He didn't entirely agree with Ron when Ron referred to doctors as "those Muggle nutters who cut people up" but he didn't want anyone taking a knife to his eyes, either.

"… Of course for someone Harry's age, there's always prescription swim goggles if he's really into it. Pricey, though. Is that something you and your son would like?"

Harry didn't hear what Sirius said in response. His head was spinning with the strangeness of hearing Alex refer to Sirius as his father.

It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, of course. Sirius had probably told the hotel that they were father and son; they weren't hiding from anyone, exactly, but they were less likely to draw attention to themselves that way. Even if Sirius hadn't said anything, he and Harry were clearly both from England. They had the same pale skin and black hair.

He remembered the day he'd overheard Professor McGonagall talking about his father and Sirius. You'd have thought they were brothers…

In the wizarding world, strangers often knew more about Harry than Harry knew about himself. Harry never had to explain that his parents were dead or that he had recently made the acquaintance of his wrongfully imprisoned godfather. Everyone realized that already. No one ever assumed that Harry had a father.

This world, the one he and Sirius had stepped into, was strange.

The very air around them was strange. It was hot and almost liquid against his skin. He had never experienced anything quite like it: not on the hottest days of summer on Privet Drive, and certainly not at Hogwarts where even the warm spring days led to cold nights when the fires burned purposefully in the house common rooms. The hot liquid air would have been very unpleasant if he hadn't been able to walk into a cool building or slide into the water whenever he liked.

His mind returned to his lesson only when Alex told him to get into the water and swim across the lagoon. He obeyed, enjoying the feel of the water against every inch of his body.

"Well, you won't drown," said Alex cheerfully after Harry had swum two laps of the lagoon. "But I think we can make this more fun for you." And for the next half-hour, Alex chattered on about when Harry should turn his head and at what angle he should put his hands into the water and how one of Harry's legs was moving faster than the other. Alex's corrections were always interspersed with praise so effusive that it was almost embarrassing.

"Great work, Harry," said Alex at the end of the session. "See you tomorrow."

Harry was barely able to reply before Sirius had rushed him back to their room. With a quick flick of Sirius' wand, Harry was clean and dry again. "Get dressed," said Sirius. "We're going to see the optometrist." He pronounced optometrist in the way wizards always pronounced new Muggle words that they were proud to have learned. Harry was intimately familiar with this particular intonation, having conversed on multiple occasions with Arthur Weasley.

"Why?" asked Harry. One of the few things Aunt Petunia had always done to make Harry's life better was make certain that his prescription was up-to-date. Of course, Dudley always punched Harry on the nose and broke Harry's glasses every time he got new ones. And Aunt Petunia probably only bothered because she didn't want the neighbors or the teachers to talk about her half-blind nephew stumbling about without proper medical treatment. But however bitterly she'd complained each time she'd driven Harry to get his vision checked, she had always done it.

"So you can get goggles," said Sirius, as if Harry were being very stupid.

"If the Death Eaters try to drown me, I don't think they'll give me a chance to get my special prescription goggles," said Harry. "If they were going to let me get something, I'd rather get my wand."

"Very amusing," said Sirius. "You can't use your wand while you're having lessons with a Muggle instructor, and you'll be able to use your goggles when you play Quidditch too."

Harry's heart leapt. He remembered well the first time he'd been blinded by rain while playing Quidditch. He'd been hopeless until Hermione had thought to put a water-repelling charm on his glasses. Proper goggles would be even better.

"Let's go," he said to Sirius, who asked the nice clerk at the reception desk to call them a car.

Three days later, Harry had new prescription goggles. He'd already been enjoying the swimming lessons; he'd always liked his PE classes in primary school even though Dudley had made sure that he was picked last whenever they'd had to choose teams for any reason. But now that he could see underwater— and without magic!— the lessons became great fun. He hadn't realized how much energy he'd been spending on trying to see what he was doing.

Now Alex was of the opinion that Harry ought to join his school's swim team and Sirius looked extremely satisfied with himself.

When Harry wasn't at swimming lessons, he and Sirius found plenty of other things to do. One day, as they walked past a beach, a group of Muggles playing volleyball invited them to join in. Harry had never played volleyball before, but he found it great fun and he helped his team win. Sirius rolled his eyes and said he was going to sign Harry up for every class the resort offered to see if he could find something Harry was bad at. The fencing class, Harry found, was rather strange; but, as with Dudley's half-hearted boxing lesson, he noticed that there was some overlap with dueling. Sirius took the rock climbing class alongside Harry, and they both decided that they ought to do it again at the soonest opportunity.

They went on a safari through the part of the resort where the wild animals lived and watched the animals being fed. Harry couldn't help but remember Dudley's eleventh birthday trip to the zoo with a smile. He asked their guide whether there were any snakes, wondering whether he could ask a snake whether it disliked living here as much as the snake in the London Zoo had disliked living there. "None that we've brought in," said the guide. "But there are a lot of native snakes and we can't always control where they go."

"What kind?" asked Harry keenly.

The guide shook his head as if there were too many to count. "Copperheads, cottonmouths, racers, water snakes, pythons, boa constrictors, rattlesnakes… if you see one, let someone who works here know, don't try to make friends with it."

Harry nodded and pretended to agree. He didn't see any snakes, though, so it didn't matter in the end.

The next day, Harry and Sirius rented a boat and might have gotten stuck in the winding stream that circled the resort had Sirius not surreptitiously used his wand to free them.

At night, the resort showed films projected on a large screen outdoors. Harry hadn't heard of most of the films because they had been released after he'd begun spending ten months out of the year at Hogwarts. He was surprised when Sirius casually said that Tonks had gone to see Four Weddings and a Funeral with one of her friends and enjoyed it. He was slightly uncomfortable throughout The Lion King, although he couldn't have said why. And he was worried when, after they watched something called The Shawshank Redemption, Sirius barely said a word for the next two days.

It was very abrupt, then, when Sirius asked whether Harry wanted to invite Hermione and the Weasleys to stay with them for the last week of the holiday.

Harry almost said no. Sirius seemed so darkly unhappy; would the presence of the Weasleys and Hermione make it worse? Would Hermione tell another adult that she thought Sirius was dangerous— as she'd done with the Firebolt— and convince someone to keep Harry from spending time with Sirius? What if the whole plan to defeat Voldemort unravelled?

Then he remembered how many times Ron had invited Harry to stay at the Burrow, and thought about how much Ron would like to eat the banana-stuffed french toast served for breakfast in the restaurant across from the pool, and he decided that he couldn't refuse to invite them.

"Yes," he told Sirius.

Sirius pointed at the telephone. "You know how to use that? To call Hermione?"

Harry nodded.

"We can't send an owl across the ocean. If she and the others say they can come, tell them to owl Remus. He'll get them here."

Hermione, in a fit of overstudying and paranoia, had once insisted that Harry memorize her telephone number. Harry supposed that he had to admit that she'd been right to do it, and he dialed the numbers carefully. There was a long pause, and a crackling sound, before Hermione herself answered.

"Hi, Hermione," he said. "It's Harry."

There was a long pause. Hermione said hello again as if she couldn't hear him; then she called his name with delight. "Harry, where are you? You sound really far away. There shouldn't be a delay like that."

"I'm in the United States," he told her. "In Florida. Do you and Ron and Ginny and the twins want to come?"

"Yes! I've never been there! I know Ron and Ginny will want to come, too, we've been wondering where Sirius took you, Ron even had his father ask Auror Tonks where you'd gone but she said she was sworn to secrecy. Fred and George won't be able to come, I don't think. Mrs. Weasley saw their marks and she's furious with them again. Then she found their Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes account book— they were really organized about their finances, I'm surprised— and she realized that someone gave them a startup loan. They won't tell her where they got the money, and she's grounded them until they do, and they've threatened to drop out of school—"

Harry listened with concern as Hermione explained what had happened. Mrs. Weasley was very nice, and she had always treated Harry almost as a seventh son (when surely six sons and a daughter were enough for anyone). He knew perfectly well that Sirius had given the money to Fred and George and, what's more, that Sirius was letting them store their products in his little house in Hogsmeade. He ought to tell Mrs. Weasley… he ought to tell Sirius to tell Mrs. Weasley.

He didn't say any of that to Hermione. Instead, he told her to owl Professor Lupin and that he would see her soon.

"It'll be wonderful!" Hermione gushed.

It would be wonderful, Harry agreed.

But not quite as wonderful as it would have been if Sirius hadn't silently stopped eating and Mrs. Weasley wasn't furious with the twins.

He couldn't quite bring himself to ask Sirius to fix the argument between Mrs. Weasley and her sons, not when Sirius was staring at the wall as if he hadn't been able to hear Harry's end of the conversation (and most likely Hermione's part, too, as excitedly as she'd been talking).

He could only tell Sirius that Hermione had said that she would come and she thought that Ron and Ginny would come as well. Sirius pulled his gaze away from the wall with an obvious effort and forced something like a smile.

Harry knew what it looked like when Sirius smiled. This wasn't it.

But Sirius said that he would get another room, and that if Hermione and Ginny and Tonks all came, they would stay there, and Ron and Lupin would stay with Sirius and Harry.

It was less than a day later when Harry heard the familiar sound of Ron and Hermione arguing.

"It's not as if it's Harry's fault!" Ron shouted.

"I didn't say it was!" Hermione answered, rather shrilly. "That's a straw man argument. You're only trying to make it about Harry because you know I'm right."

"I don't even know what a straw man argument is!" objected Ron. "And it's about Harry because the article was about his birthday party."

"I don't care who the article was about. I care that the writer decided to name the boys, at least some of you, but only talked about what the girls were wearing. Or not wearing. It made it sound like Harry invited the boys because of who they are and the girls because of what we look like. If you want to make this about Harry, you should be insulted on his behalf."

Harry threw the door open. "I don't need anyone to be insulted on my behalf," he told them, enjoying their surprise as they took two long strides past the room before stopping short, comically, and turning to look at him.

Ginny, who had been trailing behind the others, bounded into the room, brushing past Harry like a puff of flowery air. "Don't even bother to try to stop them," she advised. "They've been having this argument for four hours. And I have a secret message for you." She pulled Harry out onto the balcony before Ron and Hermione realized what had happened.

"A secret message?" asked Harry.

"From Fred and George," said Ginny. She'd been confident enough when she'd grabbed Harry by the arm, but now she looked again like the shy girl who hadn't been able to sit in the same room as Harry without blushing. "They wanted me to tell you that they said they would make it up to you for being utter prats about you talking to me last spring, and they said to tell you that this is it."

"What is?"

"Mum didn't really want any of us to come," said Ginny. "She thought it was too far away, too close to the beginning of the school year, and she doesn't know Sirius. She likes Professor Lupin, and he nearly talked her around, but that article in the Daily Prophet— the one Hermione hated— Mum thinks Sirius threw you the wrong sort of party."

"Like a drunken orgy?" Harry asked, remembering Tonks' words.

Ginny giggled. "She didn't use those words, but I reckon that's what she meant. We told her what the party was really like but she didn't understand. She says that you're such a sweet boy, and it isn't right for you to be spending so much time with such a wild man."

"He's not wild!" said Harry, even though he wasn't sure whether that was true.

"I like him," said Ginny. "I like the way he listens to me when I talk to him and takes what I say seriously."

"He does do that," said Harry, slightly mollified that Ginny appreciated Sirius too.

"Anyway, Mum thinks he might be… touched… because of all that time he spent in Azkaban. She thought you should come to us like you always have instead of us coming to you. So she said she couldn't stop Hermione's parents from letting her go all over the world on her own— she didn't like that Hermione went to Bulgaria with Krum, either— but that we weren't going to go. That's when Fred and George said that if she'd let them go, they'd tell her where they got the money to start their business. Of course she went spare that they'd even try to bargain like that, and that's how she ended up letting Ron and me go. She barely noticed, really, she was so angry, and Dad said we'd better—"

The door flew open. "You've had enough time to tell him Fred's secret message," said Ron.

"I have, but Harry and I didn't want to listen to you and Hermione anymore."

"Harry hasn't heard anything Hermione and I said," Ron retorted.

Harry decided not to point out that he'd been able to hear Ron and Hermione all the way down the hall and asked instead what Ron wanted to do first.

From the sound of it, Ron wanted to do everything first— and so did Hermione and Ginny. Tonks and Lupin had arrived, too, and Harry noticed that Lupin was watching Sirius carefully. He wondered if he ought to get Lupin alone and ask what they ought to do about Sirius, but Sirius loudly suggested that they start with a walk around the resort so everyone could get a better idea of what they most wanted to do.

And so the seven of them set out together, a strange group wending its way through the strange hot liquid air.

To be continued.

Recommendation:

The Shape of His Hands by Nyx Fixx . It is story ID number 2063883 on this site.

Summary: Harry accidentally sees Remus and Sirius together during a stay at Grimmauld Place. He must try to sort out his confusion as best he can afterward. - OotP, Some adult ideas, suggested slash, no bad language or sex.

This is Sirius/Remus slash, and Harry has some thoughts that are squicky to me and may be squicky to you. (They're also squicky to poor confused Harry, for what that's worth.) That said, it has one of my all-time favorite descriptions of Sirius: But Sirius… he's … he's like the wind. Can you understand what I mean? You can't bolt the doors and close the drapes tight enough to keep him out.