Chapter 3:
Changes
Harry obeyed Penelope's endless instructions as she examined every inch of his body for flaws.
He was unpleasantly surprised by how Muggle her techniques were. Stethoscope monitored breathing, heartbeats and reflex tests didn't take a backseat to her wandaided examinations but instead added to them. She even had an x-ray machine, like that of a dentist office, hanging from the ceiling, which she was currently using on his scalp now.
"What's the point of that? I'm pretty sure I have a concussion." Harry complained, not for the first time since waking up in her lounge.
Honestly, she was even worse than Pomfrey.
"This is the last thing before a blood and urine test. I'm just trying to ascertain your age."
Harry blinked at her.
"Well. I was born July thirty first, nineteen..."
"Oh! I know sweety. I meant your biological age." She explained by way of interruption. "We know you were kept under some kind of magical stasis. I'm going to examine how the plates of your skull have fused to estimate how much time dilation you've experienced."
Oh. Well that made sense. Harry knew he was taller than he remembered. And more muscular, which made no sense at all. He was dying to look in a full length bathroom mirror.
"Aaaand done!" She said cheerfully as a photo negative appeared on the monitor over her desk.
An impossibly thin and sleek monitor very unlike the one he remembered Dudley having for his computer. He'd have to ask about that.
She pressed a few buttons and a series of ruled lines appeared on the screen. She still used a quill to write out some calculations on a yellow notepad, the only indication she had ever stepped foot in Hogwarts.
"If I'm not mistaken, you've been aged by three years." Penelope concluded. "You'll be eighteen in a few weeks. I'll share the news with the others."
After subjecting him to a needle stick and directing him to her bathroom his new mediwitch handed him a bottle of anti-inflammatories and several supplements. Calcium and vitamin D he knew, glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate he did not.
"We won't know what they put in you until the lab work comes back." Penelope told him. "But I recognize the effects of many strength, agility and other developmental enhancements in you. And I'm pretty sure they implanted some kind of muscle memory into you while magically increasing your bone and muscle density."
Harry nodded, figuring it was best to at least pretend he understood her.
"That doesn't sound very medically advisable." He said offhandedly.
"It's not. Very few super-soldier treatments or dark magic enhancements are. If dark wizards bothered to actually consult medical professionals, one might actually have managed to conquer the world by now. In your case your joints haven't developed properly from lack of use and I pray we don't have to worry about organ atrophy. These supplements are for your joints. I'll ask Dudley to help me come up with an exercise routine when ..."
"Wait!" Harry stopped her.
She patiently nodded and motioned for him to ask his question.
"Moldywart was putting me through super-soldier enhancements?"
She nodded.
"Why would he do that?"
"Well. We don't even know the exact nature of these enhancements yet. And we have no way of knowing what magical rituals may have been performed on you while under his loving care. Once we get the lab work back we can try to make an educated guess as to his reasoning and methods." She explained. "Until then I advise restraint in all things. Be extra gentle when handling objects, doing any kind of exercise or having physical contact with others like handshakes or hugs."
Harry nodded dumbly. He figured people smarter and more experienced than him would be able to figure out why Voldemort would give his enemy any kind of edge. Hell, it sounded as if the snake-faced bastard had done everything in his power, shy of training Harry personally, to make him a greater threat.
Maybe that was it? He was bored and wanted a challenge? If that whole prophecy nonsense was true then Harry would be the only person from whom the dark lord would find such a challenge. Or maybe he was stupid enough to believe that Harry would succeed him? Be his 'second coming' as he predicted in that graveyard?
Questions for later.
"Speaking of hugs." Penelope said, interrupting his thoughts by squeezing him tighter than an anaconda. "Welcome back Harry! You can expect a lot more of these from everyone in the coming days."
Harry didn't reciprocate, out of fear of her warning to be gentle. He did still blush at the affection though.
"Thanks Penny. Oh. I forgot to tell you. I've learned to channel my inner Trelawny." He told her as he took her left hand, fiddling with the diamond ring and gold wedding band thereupon before wailing in his best loony divination teacher impression. "Youuuuuu marrrriiiiiieeed Peeeeeeeercyyyyyy!"
She tried to cover her mouth with the other had to stop the uncontrollable laughter that got out of her. She still snorted when she laughed. Somehow he forgot about that.
"That's incredible Harry!" She said, sounding every bit amazed as she was pretending to be. "You might have a lucrative future as a seer."
She dropped the sarcasm and swiped him playfully on the back of the head.
"Cedric and Norberta have agreed to show you around. They're waiting outside." She told him.
He didn't need telling twice.
"And don't forget the bottles!" She called after him as he bolted.
Cedric and Norberta made for great tour guides.
"Welcome to the Dragon Lodge!" Norberta hollered after dragging him to the front gate. "Malfoy home, Marauder base of operations in Hong Kong and one of the most infamously haunted places in the city."
Harry was already sweating in the summer heat and humidity. Better push this along.
"Haunted as in actual ghosts or haunted as in a lot of noise comes from it every full moon like the Shrieking Shack?" He asked as he started back down the winding concrete path to the mansion and past the Diricrawler's resting spot.
"Oh it's never been haunted at all." Cedric answered as he and Norberta hurried to keep up. "It used to have wards that made it look derelict to Muggles."
Oh yeah! Hogwarts had those too.
"So are most haunted places around the world really just warded wizarding properties?" Harry asked
"Well duh. Or just wizards living in the open using the 'Oh it was ghosts!' excuse for their magic." Roberta explained.
The land around the Dragon Lodge was massive. Surrounded on all sides by thick forestry that stretched for miles down the mountain. As such the main building was well hidden, as was the small Quidditch pitch that somebody had clearly modeled after the one from the Burrow. They lead him the long way around the ivy coated building to show him a greenhouse - which he couldn't see himself ever entering in this weather, even under threat of death and dismemberment - and down a set of stone steps to the back courtyard.
Gaps in the brick pattern served as small gardens for exotic flowers and as resting places for peacocks he had mistaken for exotic flowers at first glance. He could see the entire city and bay over the balcony of the courtyard.
He could get used to staring out at such a view during morning tea.
They found Hermione's son in the garage near the mouth of the courtyard. The remains of a candy-red convertible that looked like it was snatched right out of the 1950's lay strewn about in an order he couldn't make heads or tails of but he was sure made sense the blonde boy. He had the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up, which was good thinking by the look of the caked-on grease and rust covering his hands and arms.
"Mister Harry Potter!" The boy greeted as he tiptoed over his mess as fast as he could. "I'm Scorpius Malfoy. It's an honor to meet you, sir!"
The boy practically gushed as he shook his hand. Harry was so taken aback by the respectful form of address that he could only nod dumbly.
"My parents speak legends of you! It's like a dream to properly meet you in the flesh." He explained, still shaking Harry's hand.
Harry just kept nodding and resisted the temptation to clarify if he really meant both parents. The boy looked like he'd just crawled out of a shoulder deep pool, and Harry was worried he'd be just as drenched in his own sweat if he didn't get inside soon. Still, better to be polite.
"What are you working on here?" He asked Scorpius as he finally let go of his hand.
Scorpius glanced back at his mess and shuffled a bit in embarrassment.
"Oh what, this? It's a 1950 Jaguar XK120." He said. "I found it in complete ruin at a junk shop. Spent an entire years allowance and chore money to buy it. Just finished repairing and painting the body. Now I'm cleaning, repairing and enchanting the internal parts. It's great fun."
Harry believed him. Suddenly forgetting the grimy discomfort of being outside he pushed on the conversation.
"What kind of enchanting?"
"Nothing fancy. Just some lightening and friction reducing charms. The real hard part is trying to transfigure replacement parts for what's missing or too rusted through to repair." He explained before picking up a phone book sized manual detailing each and every part and mechanism of the vehicle. "I'd conjure them but I'm no good at it."
The book was solely devoted to that exact model of vehicle, and somehow that seemed more intimidating to Harry than a rematch with the horntail. Looks like both Malfoy heirs inherited his best friend's mind. The world may very well be doomed.
"Well we have to finish giving him the tour." Norberta said impatiently.
"Oh yeah, right. I'll see you at dinner, sir." Scorpius said, giving Harry another handshake before getting back to work.
Harry didn't find himself all too interested in the interior of the house beyond the sleeping quarters and bathrooms. Beyond that the rest of it, like the library, game room, admittedly impressive alchemical/electrical lab in the basement, and rooftop lounge would become hardwired into his memory with repeated use. He could honestly care less about the gymnasium.
Still. He played the part of attentive guest throughout each explanation.
"And this is the room us youngins will be sleeping in!" Norberta explained as she flung open a door.
Hermione's daughter jumped at the interruption to her reading time, but smiled politely at the sight of them before putting her book on one of the two beds.
"He's awake! You had us so worried Mister Potter, sir." She said with a bow, hands clasped in front of her.
Harry decided to let the 'mister's and 'sir's go unchallenged for now. He didn't have the energy to start correcting them.
"I met your brother, Scorpius, downstairs. I failed to ask him what your name was." Harry told her with a polite smile of his own.
The girl absolutely glowed with a blush and showed off her teeth again. He noted she didn't share her mother's oversized incisors.
"My name is Monika Malfoy." She introduced herself with a curtsy as she lifted the hem of her skirt ever so slightly. "I was named after my late grandmother. Did you know her?"
If only Lucius had instilled such fine manner's into his son, Harry could very well have wound up in Slytherin.
"I met her and your grandfather once in Diagon Alley." He told her. "I never had occasion to speak with them. I understand they were dentists?"
She nodded somberly. Harry grasped for a change of subject.
"You said all four of you sleep in here, but I only see two beds." He pointed out.
Monika reacted just as he expected and jumped at the opportunity to explain something.
"That's because this is the girl's side. Here, let me show you." She said as she hopped out of the room, closing the door as she did so.
"Clockwise." She said, turning the handle clockwise and opening the door to reveal the same room she just exited. "Girl's room."
She closed the door again.
"Counter-clockwise." She said, turning the knob counter-clockwise and opening the door to reveal a room completely coated with posters. One half was of formula 1 racers and classic cars, the other of Quidditch teams and racing brooms. "Boy's room. If you couldn't tell by the decorations."
He was pretty sure he could tell which side of the room belonged to which boy too, based on the very same decorations.
"That's wicked. Where do the Durslkey's sleep?"
"Diricrawler." Monika answered simply.
"Do you guys know where I'll be sleeping?" He asked as she closed the door again.
"Mhm." Monika said, pointing to another door down the hallway. "Mama spent the afternoon renovating that one for you. Has its own shower."
"Good. I'm in desperate need of one of those. See you guys at supper." He excused himself.
"She left your wand under the pillow." Monika called after him.
He turned back to look at her.
"Where'd she get my wand?"
"I gave it to her." She said.
"And where did YOU get my wand?"
"It was in that sarcophagus with you." Cedric said. "Little D grabbed it before letting you out. Just in case."
Damn, these kids were battlesmart. You'd think they were raised by Moody.
"That was some good thinking. Thanks." He said before closing the door.
Hermione had gone all out for him. For a split second he could almost make-believe he'd stepped foot into the Gryffindor dorm. A perfect replica of his four poster bed sat at the back wall with blood-red drapes to match the chair next to a small study desk.
There was also a set of cubbies on the wall next to the bathroom door. They were arranged seven by three. There was already a pair of slacks, freshly shined shoes, a dress shirt and tie in one on the middle rows. The labels told him that the bottom row was for day clothes, the middle was for dinner clothes and top was for night wear.
Purebloods and their etiquette. Oh well. Best to dress properly for dinner.
Cedric called him down to dinner from the door just as Harry finished the knot on his tie. He was feeling the three years without food catching up to him as he ran down to the dining room with the Quidditch fan. Cedric won, naturally.
They had failed to show him this room or the kitchen during their tour. A fireplace in a Hong Kong home was a clear sign that this place was built by wizards, for wizards.
Everyone else was already there.
Draco and Hermione sat at the head of the table with their children on either side of them. Charlie, his wife, Oliver, Heidi and Norberta took up the left side. Dudley, the raven haired pilot - who he now realized must be his wife - and Junior took up the right side with Penelope and a high-seat laden three-year-old girl near his end.
Cedric joined his parents on the left side leaving Harry to sit at the opposite head of the table to his former classmates and right between Penelope's daughter and Cedric Wood.
"Hold your neighbor's hand and bow your heads for grace." Draco commanded as he did exactly that with his wife and daughter.
Harry struggled to hold the giggling toddler's hand as Draco gave thanks for the gathering and Harry's safe return. With the food sufficiently blessed, Hermione waved a hand and the lids to each dish vanished at once as crystal glasses of wine appeared for the adults, including Harry, and glass cups of one juice or another appeared for the children.
"That's a lot of green." Harry pointed out.
Aside from a large fillet of what may have been swordfish at the center of the table, there was nothing but vegetable dishes. He spotted green bean casserole, broccoli pasta, breaded tomato slices, baked cucumber chips, several bowls of spinach pesto and a pot of cabbage soup.
Honestly, it all looked delectable. But he was hungry enough to eat a cow. And he wanted cow.
"Dad's a prescitarian." Scorpius told him as he poured himself some soup.
"The religion?" Harry asked confusedly.
"No you're thinking of presbyterians. Prescitarians are like vegetarians but they eat fish too." Monika told him.
Her father nodded to her with an approving smile.
"Pass your plate down, Potter. I'll load you up with some of Mione's fish and pasta to start you off." Draco instructed him.
Harry obliged and was soon stuffing his face with lemon-lime soaked swordfish. It was feathery in texture but spectacular. Since when was Hermione such an excellent cook? Maybe she started cooking all of her own food in objection to the school elves?
As with most meals the world over, the first few minutes were filled not with conversation, but the sound of everyone practically making love to the food. With his first serving finished Harry saw fit to correct that.
"So, um. When did the world go all blade runner?" He asked no one in particular.
Dudley Senior at least got the reference. If his snorting at it was any indication.
"You've seen blade runner?" He asked Harry incredulously.
"Yeah."
"When?"
"When I was twelve."
"How?"
"I borrowed it from the library and watched it on your old tv. The one with the built-in vhs player?"
Dudley seemed to have resorted to digging through his memories at Harry's last answer. He took the time to load his plate with the breaded tomato slices and dried cucumber chips. They were alright on their own. With a little pesto they became more addictive than butterbeer flavored hard candies.
"Didn't I break that?"
"I repaired it. Didn't have much else to do in Privet Drive other than fix all of your old broken junk."
He conceded the point with an impressed nod and ferried the question to Hermione. She finished chewing her food, placed her fork and knife on the plate at a deliberate angle, wiped her mouth, and answered him.
"The world has changed so much in your absence, Harry." She said.
She was rather stiff in her mannerisms, more snooty in facial expressions and stony in voice than the Hermione he remembered. It was reminding him of Narcissa at the world cup.
"We wanted to slowly immerse you into it all, so don't expect us to tell you everything at once." She finished the disclaimer. "But three major things happened that lead to the world - " she sighed " - going all blade runner."
"First. The statute of secrecy was completely shattered and the magical world laid bare." She raised a finger as she said it. "Which is a story all its own. You'll hear it some other time. Second, after a period of adapting, we - as in witches and wizards in general - sold magic in all of its forms to the Muggle world and became filthy rich."
She stopped her explanation to take a small sip of her wine after this, then went back to eating as if the conversation was ended.
"What's the third thing?" He dared to ask.
"Then they sold it BACK to us!" Charlie answered with a gleeful slap to the table.
"Better than it ever was before." Oliver added, finishing his glass and magicing it full again.
"Everything we had, they made better." Hermione explained. "They capsulized our potions, perfected or debunked the mathematical proofs of our greatest theories, devised the most unbelievable uses for spells we never considered before."
Harry was expecting a whole lot of bad news and horror stories of war. He liked this much better. He absentmindedly started on the wine, only to discover that he liked wine a lot.
"And we kept selling to each-other and improving magic and technology. Dad owns the world's largest automobile conversion company." Charlie kept on. "It started off as enchanting the internal workings to be more lightweight and frictionless for improved mileage and flying cars for the more spendthrift. Then it snowballed into people building vehicles from scratch for flying."
"And as you might expect." Dudley Senior cut in. "A lot of people based their designs off of popular vehicles from science-fiction. One eccentric billionaire even built a fully scaled Enterprise from Star Trek just to piss everyone off."
Harry looked to his cousin in abject confusion.
"Why in the world would that piss anybody off?"
"Because he designed it to be an unholy Frankenstein's monster of other fictional ships." He explained. "It had a Millennium Falcon instead of the disk, connected to the Justice Leagues WatchTower, with the Pillar of Autumn and Ishimura in place of the propulsion things."
Harry didn't know what half of those were, but he got the general idea.
"I think I spotted the Bepop near the bay once." Junior added.
"Oh yeah, that belongs to old man Jenkin's." Draco said. "He's run cargo for me before. He also has another gorgeous replica called the Silvana. I looked it up and it's from one of those Japanese cartoons Little-D likes. I think you'd enjoy it Scorpius."
His son made a gesture as if to say 'Who? Me?' At his father's suggestion.
"Yeah. The show has a lot of smaller ships people fly on, van ships or something like that. They're right up your alley." His father told him.
Scorpius seemed to consider this and shrugged.
"I'll be sure to check that out." He said before adding some of the green bean casserole to his plate.
Harry realized he hadn't had any yet so passed his plate down.
"And how long did all of this take?" He asked between bites of the crunchy onions on top.
The adults all shared a nervous glanced.
"Oh come on! Just tell me how long I've been gone. I can take it."
Hermione closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Having been his best friend it made sense for her to feel like it was her responsibility to tell him. But still, she was acting like it was the end of the world.
"Fifteen years." She finally said, just above a whisper.
"Oh! That's it?"
The nervous glances they kept sharing were beginning to grate on his nerves.
"What do you mean, that's it?" Oliver asked tentatively, as if afraid for his mental health.
"Well fifteen is much less that I was expecting. I thought it would be closer to twenty five, especially considering all the youngins..." Harry trailed off.
He stared at Scorpius.
Scorpius stared back.
He glanced between Draco and Hermione.
They looked oddly guilty.
"Scorpius. How old are you?"
The blonde boy put his utensils down and swallowed nervously.
"Almost fourteen. Why?" The boy said, sounding more confused than defensive, but definitely defensive
Oh god.
"Fourteen. Hmm. And I've been gone fifteen years?" He clarified to a room of nodding heads. "When I disappeared I was fourteen years old myself. And if I'm not very much mistaken, your parents were both in my year at school."
He paused to give them a chance to explain. They didn't take it, but the children present all seemed to have grasped his meaning.
"By all means. Tell me if my math is off. I'd love to be wrong here."
"Harry. It was a very strange time." Hermione started.
Oh, that's rich.
"It was war." Draco corrected. "Of a strange variety to be sure, but war all the same. One that still rages and has grown to span the globe. And I was on the wrong side of it."
He took his wife's hand and squeezed it.
"Things got really bad, really fast. Hermione and I, enemies at the time, found ourselves trapped and injured in a bunker in Siberia after the battle of Durmstrang." He told them.
Harry found himself already more enthralled by the story than he was outraged by the outcome moments earlier.
"We had little food, no source of warmth and we were too exhausted from a terrifying battle to properly warm ourselves, or do any magic at all." Hermione took over. "Several hours of glaring at each other as we froze to death slowly turned into an evening sharing a single robe and blanket."
Draco nodded to his wife.
"When I later found out she was pregnant and trying to hide it I was having none of it." He said. "I rose hell and high water to shotgun wedding her. It started out as a sense of responsibility, I wouldn't let a child of mine grow up without a father, or mother for that matter. But as time went on... Well..."
Harry did his best impression of his former rival's insufferable smirk.
"She grew on you, didn't she?"
"Like a mold!" He scowled back at him.
Hermione grabbed him by the head with both hands and planted a firm kiss on his cheek. The matching smiles they wore when his best friend leaned her head on her husband's shoulder told him he had nothing to worry about.
"I became a much better man after that." He confessed. "I cut off my own arm for her. Rid myself of that accursed mark." He raised his left arm and Harry noticed a distinctly rubber sheen to it. Prosthetic? "And she sacrificed just as much for me. She learned my culture, my customs and adopted them fully. She's been a better wife to me than I could have ever hoped for."
That still didn't answer the biggest hurdle Harry had to overcome to believe any of this.
"And her heritage wasn't an issue?"
Draco gave him the oddest look. It wasn't a glare. It was more like a challenging glance.
"It was never about purity of blood, Harry. While it does matter, likelihood of having Squib children and all that, it was never the reason for the wizarding world's distrust of Muggle-borns." He explained. "I think I told you as such when we first met, though as a dumb eleven year-old I may not have been as eloquent as I am now. It's culture."
"Culture in the Keynesian, subjectivist, Alynskeyite hellscape that is the modern Muggle world is so destructive, so economically unstable and damaging to the heart and mind that us in the wizarding world wanted nothing to do with it." Draco explained further. "We've already suffered the introduction of some Prussian Model practices being introduced into our schools for one thing. But I tell you this. A woman who leaves all of that behind and embraces what it means to be a witch, is worth ten thousand times as much as a pureblood who attends a liberal arts university and brings that nonsense home to roost."
He looked to his son and daughter.
"Blood matters children." He told them. "But it's not all that matters. You better think long and hard on the consequences before giving your heart to somebody of Muggle birth or culture. But I have faith that if you ever do, I can be confident that it's the right choice."
Silence rang as his story ended. There were a lot of words in there Harry didn't know, but the passion behind them made up for it. Harry doubted if he'd ever agree with a word of it, but it all at least sounded reasonable. Respectable. Not knowing what to say to such a beautiful tale, he decided to finish his wine.
"That was soooooo romantic." Norberta moaned from where she sat, chin in both hands and eyes glazed over.
"It get's significantly less romantic when you realize that bunker was filled to the brim with booze and we spent three whole days drunk out of our minds and don't remember a wink of it." Hermione deadpanned.
Harry couldn't help it. He spat his wine clear across the table.
"Oh come on! I remember it perfectly. There was only one bottle of fire whisky about yay big." Draco countered, holding his hands apart to depict the size.
Hermione took his hands and separated them further.
"Okay it was a rather large bottle."
Hermione spread his hands further apart.
"It might have been magically expanded and filled with the contents of several bottles, now that I think about it."
She spread them further still.
"You know what, I lied. It wasn't a bottle. It was a barrel and we went through the whole thing."
She spread them even further.
"One of those big barrels they keep on their sides and drill taps into."
She spread them as far as they could go.
"Actually we weren't in a bunker at all. It was a whiskey refinery and we went swimming in those big metal fermentation vats."
He somehow managed to say all of this in complete deadpan, just like his wife, and the joke elicited all the more laughter from everyone at the table because of it. Scorpius, for his part, glowed red with embarrassment.
Author's notes
Dragon Lodge is a real place. Illsight did a video tour of the decimated mansion if you want to see it.
I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed thus far, even if it was just to give support and tell me how much they liked this story so far.
I've kept you waiting long enough. We're meeting Gabrielle next chapter.