(A/N: I'm back again folks. Once again I am here to provide you with yet another chapter of this wonderful fic. Anyway, I hope that you will enjoy it, so on with the show!)

A Cold Sleep

Part 29

After the initial excitement with the owl from Dudley, Harry very much wanted to curl back up with Tom in their bed and go back to sleep. After all he had not gotten very much sleep thanks to going to bed late, much like the rest of the house. But it seemed that he was to be denied his wish as outside of their room he could hear the sounds of the rest of the residents of the Manor beginning to wake up and move about the Family Wing.

Harry and Tom both took a turn in Tom's bathroom, getting dressed separately as they always did so as to avoid any embarrassment. And by the time they were done, the house was well and truly awake, with the sounds of voices in the hallway and feet on the stairs. It seemed that everyone had collectively decided that they needed to get their sleep schedules back on track by waking up as early as possible and getting on with their day.

For Tom that meant yet another exhausting full meeting with his Death Eaters, something that he was not entirely looking forward to. But for Harry, the mission of the day involved more books and reading. He gathered the maps that had been drawn to recreate the Ley Lines and rolled them up carefully for storage in his robe pocket. After breakfast it would be off to the Library to read up on how to commune with a Nexus. He already knew how to share magic with Tom, at least somewhat, since they used Tom's mental shielding to sleep at night. But this he figured would be much bigger and scarier and more intimate than even that had been.

"Breakfast first, yeah?" Harry asked softly as he and Tom made for the door to their room at the same time.

"Of course, I wouldn't dream of dealing with my Death Eaters on an empty stomach," Tom said with a chuckle and Harry smiled in response. He joined their hands and pulled open the door. Without regard to what kind of looks it usually generated, Harry tugged Tom along with him towards the Family Dining Room, and Tom allowed himself to be led.

They soon joined most of the rest of the family at the vastly expanded breakfast table. Food hadn't yet appeared, but there was a French press full of coffee waiting between Harry's and Tom's usual seats that had both of them smiling at the thoughtfulness of the House Elves that worked for Lucius.

"Good morning you two," Remus said genially as they took their seats.

"Good morning Uncle Remus," Harry responded cheerfully. Tom's response was not a verbal one; instead he inclined his head in Remus's direction and gave him a wide smile.

"I didn't expect to see the two of you up so early, I must admit," Remus continued and Harry blushed, until Tom's sleep schedule had become both of their sleep schedules, Harry had been notorious for sleeping late.

"Ah, well we likely would have slept longer but for an early owl," Harry admitted and watched as confusion filtered over the faces of several members of the household.

"That is interesting, the Wards should have held anything for you back until you were ready to come to breakfast. Do you mind if I ask what the nature of this owl was?" Lucius said, clearly concerned by the development.

"It was a letter from my cousin Dudley in the Muggle world. He's the one who freed me from my Aunt and Uncle's house. I still don't quite understand how he called an owl to himself, or got it to me, but Tom seems to suggest that Dudley isn't quite a Muggle like we thought," Harry said and produced the letter that he had received, handing it across the table for Lucius to look over.

"No, if he was able to write you a letter and send it to you via an owl, he is at least a Squib. Interesting. Did he never show any inclination towards magic when you lived with him?" Lucius questioned and Harry frowned as he thought over the last 16 or so years of his life.

"I don't think so. But if he had he probably would have hidden it. His parents were always trying to beat the magic out of me, punishing me for accidental magic and the like. What I don't understand is why they threw him out; they loved him more than they loved each other. Especially Petunia, he's her little baby. You know?" Harry said and conversation at the table seemed to die down as people passed the note around. Harry wasn't ashamed to share his past with them, most of them had seen him in bad shape, and the rest knew that he had been abused by his relatives.

"My personal opinion is that Dumbledore is somehow involved, I just haven't come to a conclusion as to how," Tom explained and watched in fascination as Hermione tapped the note with her wand over and over, muttering incantations under her breath at breakneck speed.

"This letter was written by a Wizard. Not a Muggle or a Squib. There's a magical signature on this paper and in the ink," Hermione volunteered almost instantly and Harry nearly dropped his coffee cup.

"But that's my cousin's hand writing. I'd recognize it anywhere. How could we not know that he was a Wizard?" Harry questioned after he regained himself enough to be able to speak.

"I begin to see the shape of it now. He's only able to call an owl to himself now that he is out of his parents' house. That is no coincidence," Lucius said grimly.

"You think that the Wards Dumbledore had around the place were also suppressing the magic of Harry's cousin?" Tom questioned and Lucius nodded.

"But how could that be? Wouldn't Dudley's name have shown up in the Book of Names when he was born?" Severus spoke up, looking rather alarmed by the implication that they had missed a child in their education pool.

"That much is easy, once he realized who it belonged to, Dumbledore could have struck it from the book. He could have made it seem like the family left the country or refused Hogwarts invitation," Remus chimed in, but his expression was dark and stormy much like those of the rest of the table.

"Just like the Tapestry at Grimmauld, the book of names operates on Blood Magic, you can be stricken from its record rather easily," Sirius provided and Harry shuddered.

"Harry I think that you should write a response to your cousin soon. If he was able to call an owl to himself then it won't be long before he starts having outbursts of accidental magic. Which even with my Ministry influences I don't think I will be able to prevent him from getting in trouble for breaking the Statute of Secrecy," Tom said with a sense of urgency.

"Same here, I can protect him if he comes to us, but I cannot do a damn thing if he is stuck out in the Muggle world," Lucius added quietly and Harry promptly decided that contacting Dudley was far more important than reading up on the Nexus, at least for the moment. Drafting a letter should only take him an hour; he could read more while he waited for a response.

(A/N: Well there you have it folks, another chapter done and dusted. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you will leave me a review or a comment to let me know what you thought. As always, thanks for reading.)