SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1D/C: I don't own anything.
A/N: You don't know how happy I am to have so many reviews...I'm glad everyone love Richard, but I think in this chapter you'll start to hate him a bit. I made him a little evil. This is where the secret is revealed: They find out the truth! *dum dun dum!* Thank you for the reviews! I love every single one of them! (J-chan burst into tears, and her alter ego comes and drags her away.) On with the fic!
Family Portrait
Chapter Three: Blood and Wands
J-chan
I had spent the rest of the day manly in the library, looking up things about Harry's parents and extended family. According to him, the really hard part was this:
"My dad didn't have a dad." He said, and I looked at him funny. I climbed off the ladder, looking at the book he had.
"What on Earth are you talking about?" I said, my attention turned to the book. Indeed, it was his father's birth certificate. And there wasn't a name under the part labeled Father.
"And look at this." He pointed out, in this one book, that Faith Potter had never married. She also died right after she gave birth to James, and her brother, Luke, had not known anything about his sister's pregnancy, much less who the father was.
This had given me the perfect idea.
"You know what this means, Potter?" I said, and Harry shook his head. I screwed my face up, making it look as though I was curious as well.
"It means, Potter, that you may still have family alive." His mouth dropped, his eyes widened, and he dropped the book he had in his hand. (Mind you, I didn't know he was my grandson.) His green pupils seemed to jump from their safe haven of his eyes. He was in complete shock. Then he said the one thing I had hoped he would.
"Is there any way to find out?" Bingo. I was in.
You see, there is a spell to find out about your family. But it is entirely too difficult, and very, very painful. Pain to Harry, of course. This would help move me along into killing him.
"Yes, there is..." I made my face look understanding. I tried to look worried. It worked.
"Really? Can you tell me how? I mean, I might have a grandfather..." He started to ramble on and on, like a child on Christmas Eve. I had never given it thought, but if you had lived with family you hated all your life, finding out that there is someone else out there is exciting. I just didn't know how it would effect me.
"Slow down, child." I told him, and he stopped, smiling. "Yes, there is a spell that can show you your entire family tree. That may help you with your report. It also shows you things that books can't show you...It's shows you who's blood you have." I saw a confused look on his face.
"I mean, it's shows you your blood relatives. If we did this spell to you, Harry..." I stopped, took a deep breath, and released. "It would show you who your grandfather is, Harry." The teenager shrieked, and I got a terrible look from the librarian.
"Can you, I mean, do you know how to do the spell? When can we do it? Can we do it know? How does it work..."
"Slow down, kiddo. Yes, I know how to do the spell. However, I'm afraid it might be too advance for you." I said, and he looked at me like I was crazy.
"I can drive away Dementors! I can handle something a little advance..." He carried on, and his head full with a new dream: A dream of leaving the family he had.
"A little advance? Harry, I don't know...Besides, the spell is dangerous, none the less painful." He continued to give a crazy look.
"Painful? How can a spell be painful?" He asked, and I sighed. No wonder the kid has won against Tom, he's too damn curious for his own good.
"Because it's more than a spell. Do you want me to tell you what you do?" I asked, and he shook his head yes. "You must take your wand, pry from it a small splinter..." I stopped. I couldn't do this to the kid, even if I was going to kill him eventually, I couldn't put him through the pain I had been through...
Now would be a good time to insert a flashback...
Professor Binns never changes. He assigns the same thing year after year after year. When I was a fifth year, I had to do a report on my family as well. And not a bone in my body wanted to. You see, my mum, the only person I had left, had died the previous year. I, much similar to James, had not known my father. But there was also another problem: I didn't know a damn thing about my family. I had asked the Transfiguration teacher, Professor Dumbledore, to help me with my report. He had suggested the Decisess spell. I had never been in more pain in my life.
You see, the spell works like this: You take your wand, and you pry a single splinter from it. You take the splinter, and you...you...jam it, into your left index finger. You must jam it until it hits bone. And that hurts. When it has been jammed in there real good, you must say the incarnation: Deciess. It will make the splinter move. But you must also mix these ingredients: green tea herbs, cinnamon, a piece of a unicorn's horn, a spiders eye, and the blood from your finger. A lot of blood from your finger. And trust me, when the splinter has been driven into your finger so deep, it takes a long time for a single drop of blood to drop. The splinter moves into a shape that represents your family. Mine was a lightning bolt, much similar to the one on top of Harry's forehead.
Once the ingredients have been mixed, they create a green liquid that you must pour on a single piece of parchment that has been coated with tea herbs. If everything goes right, then the liquid should dissolve into the parchment. (A/N: Think Tom Riddle's dairy, how whenever you wrote something, the ink would sink into the paper, and then come up again with what Tom wrote.) If correct, the liquid would began to form into writing, creating a family tree.
After I had explained this to Harry, and told him all the pain it would cause, he still seemed eager to do the spell. I told him to come to my classroom at 8:00 that evening, to perform the spell. I had never seen the boy so excited in his life. His relatives must be terrible for the boy to go through that much pain to find outside family.
***
"Sorry I'm late, Richard. Quidditch practice ran over a bit." Harry said, still in his Quidditch robes, with sweat running down his face. I smiled at him, putting the final coat of tea herbs on the parchment.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Harry? I'm here to tell you, this hurts." I said, and he shook his head yes. He looked so determined, so full of life. And so familiar. That was probably the first time I had noticed that he looked like someone I knew.
"Right then, Harry. Come over here." I told him, and he did as he was told. He laid down on the cot I had made for him.
"Hand me your wand, Harry." I said, and he handed me his wand. Flexible, I thought. Much like my own. Luckily for me, a splinter was already hanging out of the wand. I pulled it out, and I looked at Harry.
"Hold still. This hurts a lot more if your wiggling...give me your left hand." I said. Shaking, he pulled out his left hand. I think he was a lot more scared now that it was happening than when I was talking about it. And then, it happened.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He screamed as I dug the small piece of wood into his finger. I held it there, holding it steadily. His screaming did not stop, not until I let go of the wood. He had tears running down his face, hard, cold tears that made me feel guilty. He was bitting his bottom lip hard, hard enough that it started bleeding.
"Harry." I said, and he looked at me, tears still running down hard. His lip bled even more, and I grabbed a towel and held it to his lip.
"Harry, I realize your in pain, but you must say this incarnation!" I screamed, and his tears continued to fall due to the pain. A put in his right hand his wand, holding on to his hand tightly.
" Deciess." I said, and he looked at me like I was a complete idiot.
"De...de ca...decie...deciess." He finally spit out, and the splinter began to move. He screamed again, making me have large memories. The splinter moved. It moved, and blood began dripping from his finger. Drip, drip...the sound became a little unbearable. I had forgotten exactly how long it took to get the proper amount of blood. Harry stopped crying, his head feeling woozy from the pain and lack of blood. Drip...a little bit more...
I couldn't help but notice that the direction the splinter was moving was much in the same way you draw a lightning bolt. I also noticed, as from examining his wand, that it contained a phoenix feather, like mine. And, if you studied his face, he looked like me. It was then when it hit me. What if I... No, I told myself. There was no way. No possible way.
"There's a boy, Harry. Now try to sit up...Here, eat something." I said, handing him a piece of chocolate. Chocolate was the best healer for anything, in my opinion. He didn't eat it, but instead watched me mix the blood with the other ingredients. I mixed the blood well, for if it was the least bit clogged, the spell wouldn't work, and Harry would have done all of that for nothing. Finally, it turned green. Harry, after eating a bit of the chocolate, walked up beside me. He was curious as to how it worked. Slowly I began to pour the liquid on to the parchment, watching as it absorbed it, making it seem as though the entire thing was useless. When the last drop of the potion was gone, I sat down beside Harry, holding the parchment carefully.
Then, suddenly, a burst of light entered the room. The parchment began to shake violently as the writing began to make it's way into the shape of a tree. Name after name began to pour onto the paper, and for a second I had wondered if it worked at all. Then, it stopped. It stopped right at the very end of the paper, where the name Harry Potter was written with fancy writing. We both stopped, looked at the paper with great anticipation, and then I saw it:
Richard Patterson