Uncle Dudley walked into the hotel room, beaming to himself. "I got everything set," he said with pleasure. "No one comes up here without our permission. Now," he said, clapping his hands. "Let's all get some food."
Shelton and Pernella looked at the Potter children, who were sharing a chair and looking at the hotel suite in awe. "Surely you don't mean for them to go, do you dad?" Shelton asked sweetly, indicating James and Lily.
"Well, uh." Uncle Dudley started to sweat and as a result loosened his tie and undid his top button. "I'm afraid you two can't come," he told them, looking as apologetic as he could, although he'd be glad to have them out of their sight. "It's better for your, uh, safety."
"We don't mind, Uncle Dudley," Lily said sweetly. She and James had talked it over at dawn in the plane. They had to have some time to themselves to search for the letters. Truthfully, it disgusted her to have to be this nice to Uncle Dudley, but it had to be done.
Aunt Evian ran out of the room, Shelton and Pernella following closely. Only Uncle Dudley hesitated in the doorway long enough to say, "Room service will be up soon. Tell them to bill it to the room."
James and Lily nodded. As soon as the door shut, they leaped up.
"I'll look in the closet!" shouted James.
"I've got the suitcases!" Lily chimed in.
They went into Uncle Dudley and Aunt Evian's room and searched, but didn't find anything. They switched positions, but all they succeeded in doing was messing up the luggage. However, they did find that Uncle Dudley had two holes in his jacket collection.
They went back into the main room, panting.
"We could watch TV," James pointed out.
"And there is a nice view," Lily said thoughtfully.
In the kitchen, they heard the sound of something being knocked over. James heard, Whoopsss.
"Poison!" James shouted, jumping up. "I completely forgot about him. I can't believe I did that!" He walked into the kitchen. "Oh, no," he moaned.
Lily stood up and hurried to where James was standing. "What is it?" she asked. Though as soon as she walked into the kitchen, she knew.
Poison was stretched out in the middle of the kitchen floor, reclining among snack food, spilt milk, opened bottles of water, and several other foods that the Dursleys had bought for the hotel room, perfect for late-night snacks. Poison glanced at Lily and decided that she wasn't worth his attention. He proceeded to dive into the Gummi Bears Shelton and Pernella had bought.
"Do you still have Brownie with you?" James asked her. He stooped and picked up a Gummi bear, looking at it from all sides. Except for a bit of butter on the ear, it looked all right. He popped it into his mouth and grinned as Lily groaned.
She felt the back of her neck and then scooped up the spider to be sure. "Yeah."
What? Brownie asked irritably.
Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you were there. After what Poison did...
My Athena. What has that brute gotten into now?
Lily turned her hand around so that Brownie could see Poison, who was at that moment testing to see what Gummi Bears dipped in butter tasted like.
"Gross," Lily muttered as she saw him swallow one greedily.
Just then, the doorbell rang. "Crud," James muttered as he dodged past Lily. He ran to the door and threw it open. A man and a woman were wearing street robes, standing behind a cart that was loaded with plates and dishes. James could smell the delicious smell, even from under the porcelain that was covering the hot things to keep them warm.
"Room service," the man said happily as he wheeled the cart into the room.
James closed the door and looked back at them. For some reason, they weren't getting ready to leave. Instead, they were eagerly watching him and Lily, who had come to stand in the doorway of the kitchen to see what was going on.
"I'm sorry," James said slowly, "but we don't have any money for tips. Our uncle said to bill it to the room."
The man's eyes flashed in anger. It quieted when the woman grabbed his arm.
"We aren't here about that, James. Why don't you come in here, Lily? We're here to talk to you about Hogwarts."
"I'd like to," Lily said quietly, "but Poison got a mess all over the kitchen, and James and I stepped in it. I don't want to ruin the carpet."
James looked behind him and saw that he had, as a matter of fact, stepped in all of the things Poison had somehow gotten from the refrigerator, tracking splotchy footprints across the carpet. "Oops."
The woman smiled at the man next to her. "Your specialty."
The man took a stick out of his shirt. He waved it around at the footprints and said a word. Quickly, in a fuzzy flash of light and with a sigh, the footsteps disappeared. "Bottom of your shoes, please, James." James obediently sat on the floor, showing the bottoms of his shoes, hoping to see more magic. The man said the word again, and James felt a vibration lift his feet like those things he'd seen on ER that the doctors put on the person's chest to make them jump. The feeling went up to his knees, decreasing as it went. "Now for the kitchen," the man muttered. He started walking towards Lily, and James got up to follow. He wasn't scared of these people, and he didn't think they'd hurt them, but just to be on the safe side...
Still, their voices seemed familiar somehow.
"May I see your shoes?" the man asked Lily. "I don't want you to be afraid to walk on the carpet."
Lily jumped on the counter and held up her shoes to him. As she felt the pleasant tickling spread through her legs and feet, she commented, "Brownie says that you're the ones who were on the plane. The ones who were invisible."
The man nearly dropped his wand. He and the woman looked at each other.
"Who's Brownie?" the woman asked cautiously.
"She's my pet," Lily said casually. "Sorry she bit you. She saw you watching us, and I guess she's a bit protective."
"Huh," the man said. He cleaned the mess in the kitchen, leaving Poison in a state of awe.
Where did all of the food go? he asked James. Where are my Gummi Bearsss?
James shook his head as he carried the garter snake into the living room. The woman gave a bit of a start when she saw him carrying his pet snake.
"May I ask what that is and where you got it from?" she asked.
"We found Poison- that's my snake- and Brownie a long time ago. Must have been, what?" he asked, turning to Lily. "Two or three years ago?"
She nodded. "Two. He can talk to Poison, just like I can talk to Brownie. Is that magic? Have we been magic all along? I thought you needed spells for that."
The woman smiled. "First things first. Introductions. I'm Hermione. Hermione Granger. And that," she said as she pointed to the man, "-is Ron Weasley. We went to Hogwarts with your father."
"Our dad?" Lily asked in a rush. "What was he like? Was he a wizard?"
Shush, Brownie instructed her sharply. You're making my exoskeleton ache.
Lily settled back in her chair, embarrassed and glowing red at her outburst of asking questions.
"You're dad is great."
"Wait," James interrupted. "You said 'is.' Our parents died a long time ago. In a plane crash."
Ron sighed. "That's a trademark of the Dursleys. They're what we call muggles. People who have no magic in them at all. Or at least not wizard blood. Your relatives, save your mom and dad, are not exactly good people. They're afraid of magic. They did the same stuff to your dad."
"Is our mum alive?" Lily asked.
Hermione and Ron looked at each other. "Uh, no," Hermione said slowly. "We're having some problems in the wizarding world. There's a powerful wizard, uh, warlock, named Voldemort, the most evil, strongest warlock the wizarding world had ever seen. He killed your mother. After he killed your mother, he started to come for you and your father. Your father had already worked a protection spell for himself, but you didn't have one, because for that particular spell, you have to say the words yourself. And of course, you couldn't speak yet, so he started doing a very complex spell that sapped the strength out of him. If Ron and I hadn't arrived, well..." She looked at Ron before she continued. "That's how you got those scars on your foreheads. After that, your dad decided that it wasn't safe for you. He had us bring you to these muggles. It was hard on us all, but I think he knew we'd do what he asked, even if he couldn't do it himself. We left you with these muggles, your only living other relatives. We knew they 'd be mean to you; they were mean to your dad, too. But we knew that it would only be for nine years and then two months in between. We started counting the days as soon as we got back. And now, here we are," Hermione finished, waving her wand and free hand around at the hotel room. She looked up at Ron, searching for some sign that she'd done well.
"How do you know our names, though?" James asked.
"Well, we're friends with your father, but you two are famous, too."
The Potters gaped. "Famous?" James asked.
What about 'Famousss.' Poison said as he crawled out of the kitchen towards James.
"So you can talk to that snake, huh?"
James looked away from the snake to Ron. "Yeah."
"It's called Parseltongue. Your dad can do that too."
James felt his cheeks grew warm. His dad could talk to snakes too. After knowing nothing- at least nothing true- about his father for so long, James never thought he'd know that.
"Can he talk to spiders?" Lily asked.
Ron and Hermione shook their heads. "Talk to the overflowing vat of information," Ron told her, indicating Hermione.
Hermione grinned. "Talking to spiders is a very rare gift. The chances of being able to speak Areanatu, the language of the spiders, is one in a million, if not less. I doubt anyone has been recorded as having it in the past," she paused and seemed to be doing math in her head before she continued, "two hundred years. And that person, a man, upset a lot of spiders. One night they rallied together and poisoned him."
Lily cringed, thinking a newborn spider she had insulted when she was little. Then again, the spider had been trying to make a home in her shoe.
"Well, I think we should get out of here before those muggles come back. We have to get your school supplies."
"School supplies?" James and Lily echoed.
"Yeah, you know. You'll be first years at Hogwarts, so you'll need the usual. Wands, robes, books, cauldron." Ron looked at them. "Didn't you read the letter?"
James shook his head. "Uncle Dudley took it away before we got the chance to finish. All we saw was the 'Hogwarts School of Wizardry.'"
Ron nodded slowly. "Dear Dudley," he said sourly. "If I'd known... What do you say, Hermione? Should we leave a little surprise for our dear friend?"
"'A little surprise?' I was thinking more along the lines of colossal."
Ron grinned and looked at James and Lily. "You two had better wait here. Wait. Do you have your things?" They shook their heads. "Are you packed? We can wait, I suppose."
"We aren't packed. But it won't take us long, Mr. Weasley."
He flashed her a toothy smile, saying, "Don't bother to call me 'Mister.' When we're at Hogwarts, it'll have to be 'Professor Weasley-' unless we're in private, that is. And then besides that, you can call me Ron, or Uncle Ron, or whatever you like."
"So you're our uncle?"
This time, Ron laughed. "No, no. Just a good friend of your dad's. Go ahead and call me Ron."
"Okay, Ron." Her mouth felt odd as the name rolled off her tongue. She smacked her mouth a few times and muttered it under her breath, looking intently at a vase. "Ron." She'd never called a grownup by their first name before; she hadn't dared. It would take some getting used to.
"Same here," Hermione added.
"Okay, Ron." James smiled. After all, she had said, "Same here." Didn't that mean calling her Ron also?
Hermione grinned, catching on. "Keep it up, and I'll glue your mouth shut."
James hastily shut his mouth, looking at her with suspicion. She laughed and motioned to Ron to follow her into Uncle Dudley and Aunt Evian's room. "Time to make trouble," she told Lily with a grin.
When they had gone, James and Lily ran to their rooms, smiling and running so fast that their pets had to yell at them to stop. As soon as they had shut the door to their room, James shouted, "Can you believe it! We're wizards! Real wizards! Going to an actual Wizards' school! Hog- something or other!"
"Hogwarts," Lily supplied. "I can't believe that we're finding out about Dad! They actually knew him. Know him! Can you imagine!"
James laughed as he threw some oversized shirts into his suitcase.
They walked out of the room, pets tucked into their usual hiding places, suitcases held tightly in their fists. As soon as they stepped across the threshold, they saw Ron and Hermione in the living room, talking and waiting for them.
Hermione saw the two first. She stood up. "Ready?"
The Potters nodded.
Ron clapped his hands together. "Then it's off to Diagon Alley."
"What's that?" Lily asked.
"Diagon Alley is where all the magic- good magic people go to get their supplies. That's where we'll be going so we can get your things for Hogwarts."
"Won't Uncle Dudley and Aunt Evian worry? Or at least wonder?"
Hermione looked at Ron and chose to answer for the both of them. "I, uh, think we've made it quite clear to him where you've gone." She grinned as she lifted her wand and shook it, sending silver sparks around the Potters, Ron, and herself. She said a word, and then the world began to spin...