~PROMPT: Tig in a bathrobe, a hasty spell and a panicked Harry.~
The thrum and rattle of the metal beast rang true and hard as Harry twisted the throttle of Sirius's motorbike, swiftly turning the sharp corner to carry herself into the town that a yellowing, old sign boldly stated was Charming, just off the interstate she had been driving down. No matter how long since Sirius's death, no matter the time since she had inherited his bike, in her mind and heart it would always be his bike and never hers.
In a way, it kept him alive to her, as if he was back in England, in Grimmauld place with fire whiskey in one hand and cheeky smile etched on his face, waiting for her to return it. Harry had never fully accepted his death and she was pretty damn sure she never would. It was easier to pretend than it was to sit up and look the truth square in the face. And in this instance, she wasn't hurting anything or anyone, but maybe her psyche, in doing such.
The wind was ruffling through her hair, likely messing up the already aggravated rat's nest it was since her cramped plane ride next to a man twice her size, who thought it a brilliant idea to fall asleep on her... Drooling. If she wasn't at risk of outing the entire wizarding world, within ten minutes of being pushed up at the window to try and give herself some space from the monster of a man with sweat stains, she would have hexed the man right then and there, in a place no man would ever want to be hexed in. Sadly, she had not and had to spend the rest of her long and arduous plane ride, her first ever mind you, in that horrid position.
Now however, she felt a hell of a lot better. The sun was shining down, not a cloud in the sky, no one was draped over her, snoring away obnoxiously loud in her ear. Things were looking up. She had to ditch her leather jacket into her bag pretty much as soon as her feet hit California soil. Harry was used to English summers, sometimes sunny and warm with an easy breeze that took the edge off, but even the hottest of days back home had nothing on the boiling weather she was greeted with in America.
She was surprised people weren't puddles of goop around here, for if the wind wasn't currently blowing passed her, through her as she rode Sirius's bike, cooling her down, she was adamant that she would be a mass of gunk on concrete. It reminded her of the Triwizard tournament, battling the Hungarian horn tail, the skin crackling heat as it aimed dragon fire at her, missing by mere inches, thankfully. Merlin damn it, she was a redhead, she wasn't built for this sunshine or heat. Her shoulders were already flushing pink, tingling in that annoying way that happened before full out sunburn set up shop.
Though, to be entirely fair, from what little she had seen from driving from the airport to here, it was a stunning place. Alien compared to the rolling and lush hills of Scotland, or the concrete jungle of London, but just as beautiful in its own way. It was all very... Bright. Yellows, whites, golds, damn, even the asphalt of the roads looked to be brighter then it should have. How the hell could dark grey shine like that? She could almost understand why her mother had bought a holiday home here, if it weren't for the ominous note that kept replaying in Harry's mind, making her focus in on the words rather than the beautiful surroundings passing her by as she drove through Charming.
...Forgive me...
Forgive her for what? What had she done? What had she said? No matter how much Harry racked her brains for the answer, tried to see the meaning, she just couldn't. The truth was she didn't know her mother. She had never met Lily Potter. Her one and sole memory of Lily was her dying scream and a flash of putrid green. How were you meant to guess the reasoning behind someone you didn't know? You couldn't. And it hurt Harry all that more, it shoved the bitter and foul truth in her face and forced her to bite down.
She didn't know her parents. They were strangers to her. Dead strangers at that, and the real kick in her gut was that everyone who knew them truly were dead too. Harry had no one to turn to and ask what her mother could be talking about. No one at all. She was on her own in this endeavour. Harry could have laughed at herself for that, when wasn't she alone when facing one of the many things fate thought great to chuck her way? Yeah, she had Ron and Hermione, two people she wouldn't trade for the world, but at the end of the day, when it mattered most, when the dust settled and the earth stood still, Harry was always the one standing a part from the crowd... Alone. Often with blood on her hands and tears in her eyes.
The very worst was she wasn't sure if she would believe anyone, even if they were alive to tell her. If she had learnt one thing from Albus Dumbledoore, from her sketchy and hard life, it was so incredibly easy for people to manipulate you, treat you as nothing but a chess piece, especially if they thought it was for the 'greater good'. She prayed, by Merlin did she pray, her mother hadn't done the same. Harry wasn't sure she would be able to handle that, not when she had seen first hand what this greater good did to people, to families, to society itself. To Harry, the ends never justified the means. Never.
So, as she pulled up to a rather large house, all blue and white and very picket fence like, no one could really blame her for the dread and apprehension sinking her gut like one of Hagrid's cupcakes. Switching the engine off and kicking out the kickstand to the big bike, Harry had to fight with herself to even muster up motivation to swing her leg over and stand. This was it, this was what she had crossed a continent for. For a holiday, it really doesn't feel like one, Harry mused as she finally did come to a stand by the bike, delving her hand into her jeans pocket, bringing out a packet of half crushed cigarettes and an old zippo that, once again, belonged to Sirius.
It was a nasty habit she had picked up in the aftermath of the war, something to keep her hands busy and not shaking violently with twisted memories and glazed dead faces. In the end, it was either smoke, drink, or go insane and she thought she had chosen the lesser of three evils. Even if Hermione got on her case about it every other day.
Flipping the stick into her mouth, lighting and taking a hardy drag, Harry wearily eyed the house that looked just as the town was called, charming. She felt so out of place standing in the small drive way, leaning on the bike, puffing from the cig perched between her fingers, almost as if someone had tried to make a collage and accidentally glued in the wrong figure, totally destroying hours of painstaking cutting and glueing.
She must have looked out of place too, especially by the look shot at her from a jogging man as he made his way down the side walk, passing her with squinted eyes as he did so. She didn't blame the man, she was used to being stared at. As a child for her scrawniness and baggy boy clothes, as a teen for her scar and name, and now because... Well, she still had the scar, the flaming red hair didn't help matters either, no matter if she kept it haphazardly in something that could be taken as a bun, she had also grown in the years following aftermath of the war as she wasn't either starved by the Dursley's, on the run, or nearly dying every week or so.
The growth spurt had hit her fast and hard, seemingly happening over night. One week she was five foot two, barely thicker than a rake, the next she was standing five foot eleven, nearly six foot, curvy with actual God given tits that just managed to fit into a D cup. To be frankly honest, she could have done perfectly fine without the latter happening, at least her height helped her intimidate people from coming up and asking incessant and mundane questions.
As her fingertips brushed the cooling metal of the motorcycle, Harry glanced down and ran a loving hand along it. Then again, the bike didn't help passing by unnoticed either. Kicking off from the bike, Harry ditched the cigarette butt on the drive way and ground on it with the heel of her flat boot for good measure. If she didn't bottle up and go in there now, she never would. She had faced Voldemort, faced death, she needed to get her shit together if a little picturesque house threw her off her game now.
Marching to the front door, which was flaking slightly, letting the cherry wood peak out behind the white gloss in some places, Harry reached into her jeans once more and brought out the key the lawyer had given her, sliding it into the lock soundly. With one last steadying breath, Harry twisted the key sharply, pulled the handle and stepped inside with sure footsteps.
The inside of the house looked... Frozen. Not cold or icy in anyway, but as if her mother had been here just yesterday and not two decades ago. There was still a book open on the dining table, a mug perched next to it. A jacket, denim and obviously belonging to a woman, was slung over the back of a leather couch in the front room. Dishes and some cups were still on the draining board in the kitchen, ready to be put away.
Wearily, Harry made her way into each of the bottom rooms, feeling more and more confused with each new sight. There was no dust, no decay, nothing that would show time had passed in this house at all. Either her mother had placed a stasis charm on the whole house and it somehow held up even after her death, which was impossible, or someone new was living here and she had just broken in to this poor persons home. Which didn't make sense either, her mother never sold the house, or Harry would have never got it from her will. What in Godric's name was going on?
With more than an ounce of trepidation, Harry clambered up the stairs. There was only one way to find out if someone else was living in this house, and that was to snoop in the bedroom. If her mother's things were still there, then the house had simply held up better than expected. If not, well, Harry was getting the hell out of dodge before some angry muggle mob ran her down for breaking and entering. Could it still be classed as burglary if she had a key? Who the fuck knew any more.
Getting to the top of the stairs, Harry cursed her luck with a muted breath. Three doors, all closed. Which one, or two, was the bedroom? One of them she guessed was a bathroom, but from the outside and doors closed they all looked identical. Sliding passed the banister, Harry nearly began to whisper the eenie, meenie poem before she straightened herself out, thought fuck it, and marched towards one of the doors... Only for another to swing open.
Startled, Harry snapped around, growing wide eyed at the man standing in the entry way of one of the doors, belonging to the bathroom Harry guessed, in nothing but a fluffy bathrobe. The muggle, Harry could tell as there was no magical signature filtering through the air, was slightly bigger than Harry, broader too, middle aged with black hair that was as curly as her own, with a matching goatee and moustache to go along with it. However, it was his very clear, very blue eyes that were the most attention grabbing as they tripled in size at the appearance of Harry, his jaw going slightly slack as he stared at her.
Harry was already reaching for her wand, which she had jammed into her bun for safe keeping, when the man got his bearings and stuttered a sentence, lurching towards her with spread arms, right before Harry prematurely slammed the poor guy with a less than gentle stupefy.
"Lils? Baby? But you're dead... Wait... You're not Lily, you're too tall-"
Lily... This man, this muggle man knew her mother? It couldn't possibly be a coincidence, Harry's life never ran with coincidences. And what had she done before she could get any answers? She had knocked him out with a stunner, making him slam back into the bathroom and flop to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Shit...
The stunner could easily be explained away, if she stayed to get answers that is and didn't count her luck and run for it. What was she thinking? Of course she was going to stay. Harry knew her weakness's and strengths intimately, and curiosity always got the better of her. Just take that bloody chamber of secrets for example. She would just wait around, keep a level head, if she could calm the fuck down and once he awoke she would say he saw her and hit the deck... But that didn't explain what she was doing in his house... Well, her mothers... What was this man doing in her mothers house anyhow?
"Merlin's balls..."
Harry roughly shoved her wand back in her hair and scrubbed her eyes with a harsh hand, beginning to pace in the small hallway. How did she always manage to get into these messes? Why her? Couldn't she be the one to hear this story from Hermione or Ron for once and not be the one telling it over cringes and a pint of butter beer?
There was a passed out man in a dressing gown sprawled in the bathroom, who subsequently thought she was Lily, who called her mother baby apparently, in the house of her dead mother's, in America of all places... And yes, that was the door down stairs banging open and a woman's voice ringing out for who she guessed was the passed out man. Harry froze in mid stride, heart picking up pace. Had she already said shit? Because that was the only word that kept springing to mind with every passing second.
"Tig, Clay wants you at the garage ASAP! Have you found my jacket yet?"
Harry's eyes flickered between the stairway and the unconscious man, weighing whether she could leg it or not. However, as the stairs started creaking, telling Harry someone was on their way up, all Harry could do was look heavenwards and pray for a miracle that the woman didn't think she was a burglar that had knocked her friend out and was in the process of either killing him, or taking all his valuables. She really didn't want to obliviate two muggles who had done nothing wrong but stumble into her path.
Then, as if she hadn't known since she was eleven, she was hit in the face with the fact that she was a witch. Calming down a fraction, Harry tried to apparate out of there, only for the tugging in her gut that should have sent her somewhere else to jar inside her violently and splutter out like a waning candle. Anti-apparition wards... There were bloody anti-apparition wards on her mothers house! If she wasn't cursing her mothers memory before, she sure as hell was now.
"Fuck my life."
As the woman's face came into view, her eyes instantly locking onto Harry, the girl in question tried to smile disarmingly, likely looking all the more like a guilty grimace, and held her hands up in the universal sign of surrender. However, the woman's disbelief filled tone stated something Harry had not expected, but really should have at this point. It seemed like her mother was a well known person around these parts, despite twenty years having passed.
"Lily? Sweetheart?"
No, this new comer didn't think she was a robber, or even a stray, just her long deceased mother... Lily Potter had a lot to answer for.
A.N: I hardly expected one person to favourite, follow or review this but the response has been, while not expected, really heart warming. So, here is chapter two! I hope you liked it. I know I said this would be in a thousand word drabbles, but as always, my fingers got away with me. I don't know whether the next one will be the same or not, but I'll try to keep them as snappy as possible. I know this hasn't got much drama in it, or Jax for that matter, but it is only Chapter two, so please wait awhile, it will pick up I promise.
IMPORTANT: like my I See You story, if you read it, this fic will be based on prompts. So please, don't be shy and send one my way. As I can't carry on the story without said prompts. P.M me, leave it in a review, damn, send it by owl if you have to (Or want to) just keep 'em coming.
For my followers, the next thing to be updated is I See You, as all I have to do is fine tune some points in the chapter. After that has been updated, this fic is likely to be next, as I still need some time to work on my other ones.
A giant THANK YOU to everyone who followed, favourited and reviewed, especially you beautiful reviewers! Honestly, I wouldn't be writing anything without you guys egging me on or giving me things to think about! Please, if you have the time, or want to leave a prompt for chapter three, leave a review, they're like my version of catnip :)
Until next time, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21.
