Title: Sing Me Home
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen other than brief mentions of James/Lily
Rating: PG
Content Notes: Angst, ignores the epilogue, Master of Death Harry, mention of past character deaths
Wordcount: 3500
Summary: Harry goes back to the house in Godric's Hollow where his story began, and discovers that he has the power to call it back to life.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Songs of Summer" one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This prompt is from ShatterGlassDragon, who asked for a non-traditional necromancer Harry who can resurrect destroyed family homes. While this is more of a prequel to a longer story of Harry practicing this as a career or living in the house rather than the longer story itself, I still hope you enjoy.
Sing Me Home
Harry landed in Godric's Hollow with a soft crack of Apparition.
No one came out to look. It was past midnight, so that wasn't unusual. Harry lit his wand with a murmured Lumos and walked down the paths of the village, pausing for a moment near the statue of his parents holding him as a baby.
He wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. After long moments, Harry shook his head and moved on.
He did say something when he crouched in the graveyard in front of his parents' slightly tilted headstones. Reaching out to brush his fingers down the inscriptions, he breathed, "I wish there was something I could have done for you. I wish it had been different. I wish you'd got to live."
There was nothing but wind and darkness to answer him. Harry stood and turned towards the half-destroyed cottage where his mother had once faced Lord Voldemort.
It looked worse and more wrecked than it had. Walls had collapsed. Floors were gone, or were only floorboards projecting out into midair. The ivy had strangled the chimney, and the hedge was high enough that Harry couldn't see the cottage over it standing on his toes.
Frowning, Harry ignored the sign and stepped through the gates, glancing around. He sighed as he spotted some scorch marks on the stones. It seemed as though Death Eaters or someone else had come and worked on ruining the cottage further, maybe after the war when they were upset that Harry had defeated Voldemort, or after Harry had visited here.
Harry stood there in the late summer night and wondered what he really wanted. Everyone else assumed that he would be going back to Hogwarts on September 1st. The letter Professor McGonagall had owled him didn't require a response, and Hermione had bought his books and other supplies for him in Diagon Alley without asking, since Harry appearing in public meant he was mobbed wherever he went.
But Harry didn't know if he wanted that. Not when his holly wand had quietly disappeared from the holster he now wore on his wrist and the Elder Wand had replaced it. Not when he had opened his eyes one morning and seen a silver ring glimmering on his finger with the Resurrection Stone set in it, a ring he couldn't remove.
Not when he knew that he didn't need to wear the Cloak to hide from Death as long as he wished to.
Harry swallowed and approached the cottage. Closure, maybe. That was what he wanted. He had come to face his past before he went off to face his future.
Soft sounds came as he laid his hand on the door. Harry tensed and turned around. The Elder Wand was in his hand even though he hadn't intended to draw it. It just did things like that.
The sounds ceased. Harry wondered if he'd just heard someone turning over in bed in an adjacent house. The night was so clear and mild that he could imagine noises from a distance would sound closer. He bit his lip and eased the front door slowly open, even though he could have stepped through a hole in one of the ruined walls. It felt right to do it this way.
When he was inside the house, the sounds showed up again. Harry looked around. They were soft murmuring, not like anything in particular. Maybe rodents moving around on the ground floor?
He could see splinters of wood that looked as if they might have come from a dining room table instead of a floor, and moved forwards, stepping carefully around holes and rubble and ivy growing, to touch one of the pieces.
Silvery-white light flared around it, as if he was touching a Patronus, and with it came song.
Harry jumped back, his eyes wide. The song blended with the other sounds in the room, the ones he had thought were rodents, and suddenly he was seeing—
Images of his parents sitting around the table, throwing pieces of cheese and bread at each other and laughing. An image of Harry himself, forehead unmarked, sat on the other side of the table in a floating child-sized chair, clapping his hands and laughing along.
Harry flinched, and the light and the song ceased as the splinter of the table slipped out of his hand. Harry stared around wildly, swallowing. It seemed unlikely to be a trap laid by the Death Eaters, but what else could it be? Nothing had reacted like this the first time he visited the house.
Something nudged at his hand. Harry jumped a few inches before he realized it was the Elder Wand. Harry held it up, feeling stupid, but sure that if there was a threat here, the Wand would react to it.
"What's going on?" Harry whispered to it. "What can you show me?"
The Wand rolled back and forth on his palm, upside-down, for a moment. Then it began to shine with the same silver-white light that had surrounded the table. A nudge came from the silver ring on Harry's left hand, and then from the pocket in the corner of his robe where the Invisibility Cloak always hung now.
Harry took the Cloak out slowly. Something all three Hallows wanted him to see wasn't something he necessarily wanted to see.
But once he had the Cloak in his hands, it began to glow, and that silvery-white shine was the way the Cloak might have appeared in normal light if it wasn't completely transparent, Harry thought. The Wand shone. The silver ring spiraled with light, too, up to the absolute darkness that was the Resurrection Stone.
And with it came the song.
Harry watched open-mouthed as the music played around him, music that seemed composed of snatches of lullaby, fragments of wizarding songs on the wireless, laughter, humming that his father might have had made as he puttered around the kitchen, tapping feet, cracking knuckles, a baby crying, and the cascade of flowing water. And screams, too. The screams of his parents as they faced Voldemort.
Harry shuddered, and the sounds died. Once again, he stood in a kitchen that was silent and dark, except for the soft glow that shrouded the Deathly Hallows.
Harry shook his head. "What is going on?" he whispered, staring around and wishing that one of the ghosts of his parents would appear to answer him. His fingers twitched towards the Resurrection Stone, wondering if he should summon one to answer his questions, but he eased his hand back. He might have no choice about wearing the bloody thing, but he could keep his promise to himself not to use it.
The Wand turned and pointed at his heart. Harry tightened his grip, half-afraid it would shoot something, but instead, a cool, genderless voice spoke into his head.
You have the power to bring what was here back. The house, the memories embedded in the walls. It remembers what it was, dreams of it. Sing it into being.
Harry licked his lips. "Dumbledore…Dumbledore said there was no magic that could bring back the dead."
Not the people. The house. Objects do not die in the same way that people do. You have rejected the power that we would have given you as the Master of Death, power over the afterlife of souls. A definite tone of disapproval in the Wand's voice. But our magic and what you acquired must go somewhere. This is the way.
Harry stood there and stared into the distance for a long moment. The Wand said nothing further, but the glow around the Hallows didn't subside, either. Harry nibbled his lips and finally decided to say, "I don't have a great singing voice."
Laughter moving through him, and this time Harry thought it was the Cloak's voice. It was gentler and deadlier than the Wand's. The song you heard before was not all voices. Many things go to make up the music of a house. Sing it. Let it pour through you and sing itself.
Slowly, not sure how he knew what to do but not inclined to question it, Harry draped the Cloak over his arm and laid the Wand across it. There was a long shiver, and black threads spun out of the Resurrection Stone, stringing across the Cloak. The cloth embraced the threads and hardened, and the Wand shimmered and transformed. Between one blink and the next, Harry found that he was holding a silvery fiddle with dark strings, and a bow that had the color of elder wood.
"I don't know how to play the fiddle, either," he said, and knew he was whining. But seriously. He didn't.
We and you and the house shall play it together if you move the bow.
Harry shuddered. Yes, that was the Stone's voice, no doubt, hollow and bereft of everything except cold power.
The fiddle continued to glow. Harry looked around at the broken kitchen table, the wild plants springing up here and there, the shattered floor overhead where the confrontation had occurred that had defined so much of his life.
"All right," Harry whispered, and lifted the bow, and began to play.
What poured from the fiddle was the music of the kitchen.
The saws and the axes that had brought down the trees that had made the table and the counters and the cabinets had a stern, busy sound, as though they would forever be cutting away at thick trunks. The charms that had made the wood into objects for a magical house sang like little windchimes. Harry could hear the splashing of soup as he stood there playing, the sizzling of meat cooking, and the fires burning beneath pots and cauldrons.
And then his parents' voices.
"James, I told you not to feed the baby like that!"
"Come on, Lils—"
"Harry, do you want a bite?"
"Look at him, porridge all down his front—"
Harry closed his eyes against the sting of tears and kept playing. When he felt light beating against his eyelids, he opened them again, and saw the table fitted back together, standing in the center of the room.
Flitting around it were the bright images of his parents and his baby self, and images of chairs. As Harry continued playing, the chairs resurrected themselves, too, pouring back together from motes of dust and wood and substance. The walls were floating back into place, stones starting with a core of an atom and then weaving into existence, piled like walls built by masons—which Harry supposed was at least appropriate. The floor became whole. The ivy cringed back and then unwove itself from roots to leaves, becoming smooth wall.
The ceiling arched overhead, gleaming wooden beams, and only when they shone with polish did the music stop pouring through Harry. He lowered his fiddle, panting, and stared around.
It was back. A room he couldn't remember, but had brought into being, thanks to the gifts of the Deathly Hallows. Harry stared down at them, and had no idea what to say.
The library next, sang a voice that was cool and joyous and hollow.
Harry nodded, and turned and walked in the direction of what must have been that room, covered with scraps of leather and moldy paper.
The library coming back to life was accompanied by a storm of words.
Harry felt them traveling through his head like the songs of birds, heard but not understood except for a snatch of melody here and there. Art—panting—portraits—charms like the—darkness on the—Auror training—cooking this delicate—
Just standing there, the music of the Master of Death singing through his hands, Harry felt like he understood so much more about his parents than he had before.
James was interested in cooking, having lived all his life with house-elves. The laughter he had shared with Lily over those books flowed into Harry and out of the bow that was the Elder Wand, settling back on the shelves as books called 101 Ways to Surprise Your Spouse and Journeys in Cake Creation.
Lily had been researching Charms. Harry wasn't entirely sure what for, since her interests seemed incredibly varied, but he found (heard) books on household charms, protective charms, anti-Apparition spells, wards in general, charms that would strengthen someone's ability to detect lies, and overpowering your charms so that a simple Incendio would come out with enough power to burn down a house. Perhaps the war?
The books settled into their leather covers, their paper ones, and their scroll cases. The shelves spun into being like neat whirlwinds of glass and wood and metal. Harry lifted his head and swallowed when he saw the fireplace back in existence, too, with a cheerful fire crackling on the hearth. He hadn't been aware of singing that at all.
There were no memories of him in this room. Harry wondered if he hadn't been allowed in here because he was too young.
You know that. You would never have known that if not for us.
Harry bit his lip and swallowed, then turned to seek out other rooms that he could bring back.
His footsteps creaked on the repaired steps, which had regained their structural integrity with little fuss. Harry stopped and closed his eyes.
He no longer had to worry about the sagging upper floor. Notes of pure magic and power had put it back and strengthened every beam that had broken, along with raising the stones from the dead.
No, he was hesitating because he had to face the room where his mother had died. He had done the other bedroom and the bathroom on the first floor already and then gone back down to the ground floor, but he hadn't touched this one.
You were putting it off.
Yeah, Harry whispered, and leaned his head on the railing of the stairs. It shone as if to comfort him. I'll have to face the memories at the end. The last ones. I do that every time I face a Dementor, but this will be different.
The Hallows were silent. Harry straightened back up and kept walking.
He stepped into the nursery and shuddered. The torn Magical Alphabet poster on the wall waved forlornly at him. He found himself glancing sideways at what might be shattered pieces of his cot or just more floorboards. The door hung on its hinges. The doorframe was square and neat, which only made him shudder further.
This was a place where he had slept, once, when he was a child, utterly convinced that no one could harm him. This was a place where he had played with toys that would come back when he sang, toys that he no longer remembered or even knew about, except the toy broom that had been in that torn photograph in Grimmauld Place.
This was the place where his mother had died.
You've faced it before, Harry chided himself, and stepped into the room, pausing when the floor creaked. Right, he'd better repair that before he tried to walk any further.
The fiddle slipped into his hands without prompting, even though he hadn't been carrying it there on his way upstairs. Harry closed his eyes and stood a moment, waiting for the song to pour through him.
When it came, it was laughter.
His own voice, laughing and squealing and saying random words like "Mama!" and "Play with me!" The voice of a child he had been and couldn't ever remember being. A child that was dead.
Maybe he was bringing back more to life than the house, despite the limitations on his power that the Deathly Hallows had talked about.
Harry bowed his head and began to play.
The laughter came first, spinning plush dragons and unicorns with soft horns into being. Then came the toy broom that he had seen in the photograph, leaning against a far wall that suddenly didn't have a hole in it. The Magical Alphabet poster flapped once more and then was still, tacked to the wall with charms that had been renewed along with it.
And he heard the tread of footsteps, and Lily Potter's voice whispering, "Mama loves you, darling."
He opened his eyes in time to see her turning to face Voldemort.
The song couldn't stop; his hands went on moving in those instinctive movements guided by the Hallows, since he didn't know how to play the fiddle. But along with her voice pleading with Voldemort not to take Harry, Harry also saw the way she spread her hands to shield him, the utter defiance in her eyes, and the way they shone like his.
Everyone had told him he had the color of her eyes. No one had told him that he had her spirit.
Voldemort's Killing Curse flew. The image of it faded before it hit the cot, and Harry saw an orange cat jump up to touch his face with curious whiskers, before Lily shooed it away and picked him up, swinging him in a circle. The earlier memory ended with Harry nestled in her arms, both of them laughing.
It was all of this, said a voice in his head that might have been his own, or hers. The horror and the laughter. The seeds of death are always in life, that's true, but the other way around is also true.
Harry closed his eyes as the ceiling healed, as the floor stabilized itself completely, as the window reformed so that it looked out in the same direction it always had, with the slightly tilted glass it had always had. And he felt as though someone had healed a broken bone that he hadn't known was broken. He exhaled, long and slow.
He had been this child, lost to time and memory, but not anymore.
He could welcome that child back home.
It wasn't until Harry walked slowly down the stairs and out the front door that he became aware of something odd. He blinked and turned his head. The ivy was gone, of course, the hedges once more under control and blooming with a variety of night flowers, but that slight buzz at the edge of his hearing—
The wards. I reckon I resurrected the wards, too.
Harry bit his lip and leaned back against the house for a moment, staring straight ahead. The sign that had once welcomed the public to the monument at Godric's Hollow was gone as if it had never been. Harry supposed there might be legal problems since the house was still technically a monument, but he also thought that he could raise strong enough wards to discourage people from approaching.
He looked down at the ring on his finger, and for the first time smiled at the Resurrection Stone. The Hallows had separated themselves again as soon as Harry was done recreating the nursery.
You're welcome, said the Stone's cold voice.
Harry stepped up to the gates and leaned his arms on them, staring out over the village. There was a slight tinge of dawn in the east. He blinked. That had taken a lot less time than he'd suspected.
And now he had a secure home, behind wards. And a talent to explore that he'd had no idea he had.
A home he would have to leave behind and a talent he would have to hide when he went back to Hogwarts.
Harry paused.
Do I want to go back to Hogwarts?
He hadn't been sure, before. On the one hand, he didn't want to go back to the scene of so much death and dying. Perhaps he'd be ready someday, but not this year.
On the other hand, he hadn't known where he would go or what he would do if he didn't go. Ron and Hermione and Ginny were all going. And he couldn't actually just…stay in the Burrow when his friends weren't there and half the time the only person who was was Mrs. Weasley. And he hadn't wanted to go back to Grimmauld Place even more than he hadn't wanted to go back to Hogwarts.
But now, he had a home of his own. And he had a gift that glowed in his mind like a sunlit jewel as he thought about it, stronger and stronger.
Harry took a deep breath and stepped back through the gates. The wards around the house sealed tight at a flicker of his will. He turned and trekked upstairs to the bedroom where once his parents had slept.
He would probably buy a new bed. And of course bring his own books over. And some of his other possessions.
But for now, he wanted to close his eyes and savor the sensation of, for the first time in his life as he remembered it, coming home.
The End.
