A/N: Thanks to everybody who reviewed the prologue! And this story is finally getting off of the ground!
Disclaimer: It's not mine, it belongs to JKR and all of those big name companies like Bloomsbury and Warner Bros. They can keep it, really, I'm just here to play.
Won't somebody tell me
How I got to this stage
When consequence is inconsequential
- Surreal by Sister Hazel
Chapter One: 916 Wreckage
It started the day Vernon and Petunia Dursley purchased a new motorbike for their son. It was the newest of Italian racing bikes, it was very boldly yellow, and it was the envy of every male under the age of twenty-five in the surrounding area of Little Whingeing.
Except one.
The day Dudley was given the bike, Harry was lying on the roof of the Dursley home, waiting for his seventeenth birthday to come and go. Unkempt black hair ruffled in the breeze, occasionally blowing into bright green eyes. Although he was a bit on the tall side, he had never lost the childish scrawniness that hung about his bones, only accented by the cast-offs he was forced to wear during the summertime. His feather-light build actually gave him an advantage, for he could scale the drainpipe along the side of the house quite easily by now. None of the Dursleys even thought to look for him up on their roof for nearly a month, so Harry could go for days undisturbed. Only Dudley knew that he was up there. Harry went inside only for meals and to sleep in Dudley's second bedroom, which he occupied in the summer months.
He had been listening Dudley and his long-time best friend Piers Polkiss for nearly half an hour now. They were making quite sure to admire Dudley's new bike in very loud voices so that all of the neighbourhood boys would hear them. Of course, most of the neighbourhood boys were too afraid of Dudley to even come near enough for them to hear Dudley's appraisal of his newest toy. Years of being terrorised by Dudley's gang had taught the neighbourhood, including Harry, to lie low when Dudley emerged from the front doorway of number four, Privet Drive.
Although Harry wasn't particularly interested in the bike, there was nothing better to do than laugh at Dudley's idiocy at the moment. That bike would stay in the garage past Dudley's first ride, for, although he had been partly reduced from the size and weight of a telephone booth, Dudley was nowhere near lightweight. He would tip the bike, Harry was sure, and then place the fault on the bike itself. Of course, Aunt Petunia would back him up fully in this accusation.
"Like my new bike, Harry?" Dudley snickered up to the roof.
Harry, who had been pretending to sunbathe, now made a show of opening one eye and looking at the bike rather sceptically. "It's all right," he replied disinterestedly. "Not as nice as my broom, though. Breaks two hundred in a dive, or didn't you know?"
He fought back a smile as Dudley hastened to explain to Piers that even St. Brutus's locked Harry into a cupboard, and Harry had grown a strange obsession with brooms. It was actually pretty clever for something Dudley would say, Harry had to admit.
The summer had gone rather peacefully so far. Post came regularly, delivered by either Hedwig, Harry's owl, or Pig, Ron's owl. The days were rather languidly wasted away, spent on the thoughts of the upcoming school year, and all the promising subjects that were going to be taught. Harry had learned how to keep his mind purposely blank, and he spent that summer putting his theories to practice. Of course, a month into vacation, and those practices were starting to slip…
Forcing himself away from that path, he thought of his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who had finally stopped skirting around each other like skittish kittens. He thought of his friend and professor, Rubeus Hagrid, who was off on some secret assignment Professor Dumbledore had given him concerning something in the mountains. Hagrid always spent the summers gone and doing secretive things. The summer before fifth year it had been giants, but Harry knew that Hagrid was now working some something entirely different.
Harry thought of Professor Dumbledore, also, and half-smiled whenever he thought about the sage old wizard, just bursting at the very edge of sanity. Amends had been made between the two in sixth year, fortunately. He thought of the Weasley family, who let him come and live with them at the end of every summer when it was possible. He even thought of stern Professor McGonagall, with her Quidditch obsessions and strict demeanour.
He did not think of Voldemort.
He made it a point never to think of all of the horrific experiences he had suffered at the hands of the most evil Dark Lord to rise. He did not think of them as worthless., or try to convince himself that they never happened. Those points were never moot, but he did not see the point of drowning himself in darkness for an entire summer. He had done that before, and had come off so angry that he had nearly shoved everything he loved away from him. It was as Hermione had pointed out sometime in their sixth year, "Why let him win by destroying your life like you're trying to do?"
So Harry thought about the good things in his life.
He had been doing this for the entire month of July, and with his birthday two days away, his thoughts kept wandering to the magic he would be able to perform. Although he would not be qualified to work in any magical positions in any magical institute, seventeen was the ideal age for a young wizard or witch to start working magic outside of school. Harry spent most of his time daydreaming about what horrible pranks he could pull on the Dursleys. Maybe he could even learn how to Apparate…
The loud heckling of a motorbike cut through his thoughts, and Harry rolled onto his side. Dudley had somehow managed to cram the helmet onto his fat head (how, Harry wasn't sure, but he was pretty positive that there was no blood going to Dudley's already-starved brain), and had just mounted the bike. Silently, Harry wagered that he would make it at least two blocks before taking his spill. Dudley wobbled his way out of the driveway, leaving Piers and Harry behind. Harry, head propped up on his arm, was content to ignore Dudley's bothersome little friend.
Piers, however, had other ideas. He wandered over to the rose garden, where he could get a proper view of Harry. "Dudley says they beat you at St. Brutus's. Is that true?"
"Uhm," said Harry agreeably, not really listening. He was debating how Uncle Vernon would look with pink polka dots and purple stripes, once he was able to work magic.
"Really? Do they use a pike?" Piers's eyes shone.
"Pike, club, staff, you name it." The Uncle Vernon in Harry's mind was now sporting a very unbecoming ballerina's tutu and lime-green tie. "I reckon they used bits of glass on my friend once."
"Bits of glass?" Piers echoed, his eyes growing as round as saucers. "Really?"
Harry was saved from carrying on this inane conversation by the arrival of a brown, regal-looking bird that he immediately recognised to be a Ministry owl. Both he and Piers watched it flutter across the sky, sending a shadow over Harry for the flickering of a moment, and fly into Harry's bedroom. "St. Brutus's must really want me back," Harry told Piers with a cheeky grin, easily standing up on the slanted roof. Knowing that Piers was goggling after him, he shimmied down the drainpipe and levered himself into the bedroom.
Blinking to get rid of the sunspots, Harry looked around for the owl, finally spotting it on the unmade bed. Hedwig chattered out a cautious greeting as the owl relinquished its message to Harry. Without waiting for him to read it, the owl took flight through the window again. "Wonder what this is about," he said aloud to Hedwig, and broke the seal.
The Gringotts letterhead flashed across the top of Harry's message, causing him to wrinkle his brow. "Why would Gringotts send me a letter?" It was actually more of a note, he corrected silently as he scanned over the message.
'Dear Mr. Potter,
Our records indicate that your seventeenth birthday is drawing near. Gringotts has taken the liberty to schedule you an appointment at 10.00 a. m. sharp on July 31st to discuss the contents of vault 909 and your account with us.
Please be prompt.
Kind regards,
Glomsnag'
Well, this certainly presented a few problems. Harry glanced at the calendar. It was early afternoon of the 29th of July, which did not give him much time to work out how to get to London by the 31st. With no Muggle money to his name, Harry didn't possibly dream of taking the train. He supposed that he could just ask his uncle for a ride, but that would mean swallowing his pride and admitting that he was dependent on the Dursleys. Harry would rather swallow gillyweed.
A loud wail outside drew his attention to the window.
Limping up the driveway was a very disgruntled Dudley Dursley, with his sidekick pulling up a very scratched, very expensive motorbike up the drive. The front tire looked a bit bent, but that may have been a trick in the light. As Harry watched, unnoticed, Piers put down the kick-stand and the pair looked mournfully at the wrecked bike. "Dad is going to kill me," drifted through the open window.
"Oh, come off it, Duds. He didn't kill you when you ran over Mrs. Figg back when we were eleven, did he?"
If anything, Dudley just looked more miserable. "Piers, do you realise that Mrs. Figg is nothing compared to a telephone pole and a very expensive motorbike?" Harry, who never realised that his cousin could make comparisons like that, was astonished that the glutton actually knew the difference between a full-grown woman and a telephone pole.
His aunt and uncle wouldn't be home until that evening, he knew. Aunt Petunia was off, shopping or mingling with the other wives in the hierarchy of Grunnings Drill Co. Uncle Vernon was of course at work, yelling at some random Joe at the bottom of the food chain, and feeling all too good for it. It was Monday, which meant that the 31st was a Wednesday. If he figured it correctly, Aunt Petunia had some club to attend that day, and Uncle Vernon would be bellowing at a new Joe. And they'd want him out of the house on Wednesday anyway, for they were having company that night…Before the plan had fully formed in his head, Harry was out the window, scurrying down the drainpipe.
"Dudley!" he called, racing across the yard.
Piers and Dudley looked up at him as though he was mad. They were both crouched, examining the bent wheel of the motorbike. Blood was dribbling from a cut on Dudley's arm onto the bike, but the paunchy young man had not noticed. "What do you want?" Dudley asked in a guarded voice.
Harry eyed the bike, which had certainly been dinged up by Dudley's encounter with the telephone pole. "I can fix the bike," he offered in a rush.
Even Dudley wasn't stupid enough to believe that a boy who had hated him for over a decade would offer to fix up his most prized possession without recompense. "Right," he said uncertainly. "You can't use—what do you want for it, then?" He barely caught himself from uttering the word 'magic' in front of Piers.
Harry looked his cousin straight in the eye, a feat he hadn't managed since Dudley started to retain the effects of a very glutinous ogre. "I need to borrow it."
He was expecting disbelief; he was not, however, expecting Dudley and Piers to throw their heads back and howl as though this was the funniest joke he had ever told. He frowned at the pair of them until they settled down enough for Piers to ask, "What are you, crazy? Duds would never let you borrow his bike."
"He would if he knew that I have…ways…of preventing it from ever getting scratched again," Harry said mildly. "And I can fix that in a jiffy, really." He looked from one boy to the other; Piers was still chuckling with disbelief, but Dudley for once looked thoughtful. "Either way, if you need me, I'll be on the roof."
It did not take long after Piers left for Dudley to approach the rose garden and shout up, "Could you really fix it? I thought you weren't supposed to work—er, you know—outside of school!"
Rolling his eyes at Dudley's fear of voicing the word "magic," Harry turned onto his side for a better view of his obese cousin. "Fat lot you know!" he called back. "I'm seventeen then, and fully able to work magic on Wednesday."
"Shh!" Dudley hissed, glancing at the neighbour's house with some trepidation. Harry didn't bother to hide his sigh of exasperation and rolled onto his back, his eyes once again staring at the clouds. He could hear Dudley muttering to himself, probably thinking aloud. The thought of his portly relative actually engaging in such a novel activity (to Dudley, at least) made Harry furrow his brow. Was Dudley Dursley even capable of anything that didn't involve grunting, eating, or hitting things?
"Er, how long do you want it for?" Dudley asked after a moment.
Harry shrugged, not looking down from the roof. "Wednesday." He kept his answer purposely blank, not wanting to reveal exactly where he was headed with the bike.
"Can you really fix it?" Dudley pressed uncertainly. "Normally, I don't care, but Dad spent over thirty-thousand pounds on this and…" To Harry's amusement, he was wringing his fat hands nervously, like Neville did whenever he mucked another potion up.
In the end, Dudley finally agreed to let Harry have the motorbike for as long as he needed it (within reasonable bounds), and Harry only needed a repairing charm and a charm that would guard the bike against dents and scratches. Really, Harry thought, he walked away at the better end of the deal. This charm was easily located in Harry's broomstick servicing manual, after all. Harry went inside that night and went down to dinner with the Dursleys feeling quite excited about Wednesday.
How Dudley managed to hide the bike for two days, Harry would never find out. He wasn't bothered too much to learn, either. Instead, he had spent Monday evening and all of Tuesday preparing for the journey into London. A rucksack full of provisions was propped up next to the front door. The Dursleys had bought his excuse that he was going up to London with Mrs. Figg on Wednesday with alarming eagerness (they had forgotten that Mrs. Figg had left at the beginning of that week to visit her daughter).
He was not going into Wednesday completely unprepared. Two hours before his birthday, he was lying flat on his stomach on his bed, chin resting on his palms as he read the manual on Dudley's Ducati 916 Corsa. It was one of the most powerful motorbikes to date, Harry learned, and very, very expensive. Years of studying with Hermione gave Harry an added benefit as he moved through the pages, memorising the theory behind driving the Corsa.
He hoped it would become easier once he actually got on the bike.
By falling asleep, he missed the flurry of owls that came at midnight to mark his seventeenth birthday. Instead, he saw them sitting on his bedposts when he awoke at five in the morning, hooting rather sleepily. At such an early hour, Harry had a bit of trouble comprehending the fact that they wanted payment, not just to be stared at. Hedwig's authoritative hoot finally drew him to his senses, and he fed them broken biscuits from the nearly-empty tin on his desk. Instead of opening the letters and packages they brought, however, he stuffed those under the floorboard and waited in the entrance hall for Dudley to come downstairs. They could wait until that evening, even though he was dreadfully curious. He needed to get away from the house before the Dursleys woke if he ever wanted to reach London.
Dudley had stashed the bike in an abandoned shed a few houses away, hidden rather hastily under some fronds he had plucked from the bushes outside. Harry brushed these off, not bothering to notice that Dudley winced every time he touched the Ducati. "Hmm," he muttered to himself. "You did a right proper job of banging this up, didn't you?" Even in the early morning darkness, he could see the wrecked wheel, and the gash alongside the yellow tank. Dudley squeaked when Harry removed his wand, but Harry once again ignored him. "Reparo!" Harry said, and the bike sprang to its original condition. "There. It's fixed." Using one of the spells he had found in his broomstick servicing manual, he spelled the bike against dents and scratches.
"Don't tell anybody about this!" he hissed to Dudley as the two wheeled the bike out of the shed and onto the road. He swung up onto the bike rather awkwardly and moved the kick-stand up with his foot. "If the Ministry finds out that I've been messing around with a Muggle artefact, I'm in trouble."
"Like I would!" Dudley snapped caustically, looking downright scandalised. He was a perfectly normal boy, after all, and didn't want anybody to know that he was connected to such freakishness. He snorted as Harry shrank the massive bike helmet, fitting it perfectly on his own unruly head. "Do you even know how to drive it?"
Harry's answer was the healthy cough of the engine.
"You crash this thing, and I will kill you if it doesn't," Dudley promised before Harry could remember how to accelerate. Without so much as a look back, Harry took off and left his porcine relative in the dust.
*
James Potter choked as dust clouded about his face. "Why'd you do that?" He coughed twice and glared at Sirius, who was rapidly making his getaway, leaving very dusty footprints behind. Luckily, nobody had seen the minor prank; James merely shook his head and the dust floated off.
Nearly ten o'clock at night, the library was virtually abandoned. Sirius Black had just darted through the doors, leaving a gagging James Potter and, some tables away, Severus Snape. Madam Pince, the librarian, glared over at James, as though it were his fault that he was having difficulty breathing. Besides the rather unlikely trio, the library was deserted.
James closed Everything You Really Never Wanted to Know About Ghouls, Ghosts, and Poltergeists, tired of writing his Care of Magical Creatures essay. The red book almost seemed to smile wickedly at him. Professor Kettleburn was feeling particularly vindictive towards the Marauders, especially in light of the fact that their prank had nearly made him lose another finger. Who could have known that Crups would react so oddly to powdered Laughing Liquid? Well, Sirius had known, but that was beside the point. All four of the Marauders were still bogged down with terrible essays on meaningless things like petty house ghosts who pestered Muggles in their sleep.
"The library closes in ten minutes. I expect the both of you to be gone by then," Madam Pince called to the two seventh-years. James barely glanced up from rereading his essay to give her an affirming smile. He double-checked the last sentence and rolled up the parchment, glancing easily over his shoulder at where Severus Snape was finishing up his own essay.
The relationship between Severus Snape and the Marauders had always been a sticky one, defined by very murky, hostile boundaries. Although Snape's group and James's group were known for their explosive and often-harmful fights, lately it had been a simple matter of ignoring each other. James knew as well as Snape did that Sirius did not feel remorseful for the prank he had pulled the year before, just as Snape did not feel remorseful for putting the lives of half of the school in danger. Even though James had indeed gone into the labyrinth beneath the Whomping Willow to save his classmate, the two were not anywhere near the stages of friendship. Too much existed in their past for that. As the brightest minds in the school, they might have at once had a camaraderie or at least a strange kinship, but House and war lines had drawn them apart. Most of the school knew that Severus Snape was a Death Eater.
James did nothing to disprove the rumour.
He stretched now and tucked his schoolbooks into his already-bulging bag, frowning as the seams strained. Piling the books he had collected from the brimming shelves, he sauntered to Madam Pince's desk and waited politely while she marked down which books he was taking. His brown eyes roamed over the shelves behind the librarian's desk, familiar from seven years of seeing the same thing. Once Madam Pince had finished with the books, James carefully picked them up, making sure Everything You Really Never Wanted To Know About Ghouls, Ghosts, and Poltergeists was on top. He had to finish that essay first.
Severus Snape did not look up as James passed his table. He did not even move from his essay until at least two minutes after James had left the library completely. Instead of turning right to head off to the Slytherin dormitories, however, Snape turned left, headed for the grounds, and furthermore, the Forbidden Forest.
*
Harry Potter had never felt such a sense of freedom.
Driving through the streets of London while not very familiar with a motorbike and not entirely certain on traffic regulations was a dangerous task, but Harry had always thrived on danger. The Ducati alternately heckled and purred as he slowly grew accustomed to the pull of the Muggle bike. He even began to relax and enjoy the rather terrifying ride, trusting that the map he had found in the phone directory was reliable. The bike was powerfully manoeuvrable, a feat that allowed him to weave through London morning traffic and make good time on the way to the city. He arrived in the city around 7.30, and used the next half hour to find a good parking spot.
Finding a free place to park in the vicinity of The Leaky Cauldron almost proved harder than dealing with the bike, and as it was, Harry had to walk several blocks to reach his destination. Placing an anti-theft charm on the Ducati hadn't been complex at all. He still had two hours before his meeting with the goblins, which gave him plenty of time to amble down the street and look at the window displays. Before he had found out about Hogwarts and his world, Harry had spent hours window shopping. Now that he actually had money, it was still a bit hard to break habits. He arrived at The Leaky Cauldron with a few Sickles to waste and plenty of time to kill.
His stomach rumbled even as Tom prepared him a plate of eggs and toast. "Here on Hogwarts business, Mr. Potter?" the bartender asked as he dropped egg yolk and white into a frying pan.
Harry shook his head. "I'll probably go later in the summer with the Weasleys. Right now, I'm on Gringotts business." It felt good to say that, like he worked for Gringotts like Ron's older brother Bill. "How's business at the Cauldron?"
"We get a fair few of out-of-towners, but right now, it's mostly regulars." Tom flashed his trademark toothless grin, spurring Harry to smile back. "Otherwise, business is the same as it's always been." Despite the friendly overtures in the bartender's tone, Harry caught the subtle message buried beneath: "There is absolutely nothing going on that would change business." Many wizards still believed that Voldemort had not come back to life—he merely had some less-dangerous counterpart terrorising everybody. The Aurors would deal with him shortly, they all believed.
The injustice of it all usually made Harry's blood boil, but now he was too shaken by the ride on the motorbike to argue. "Very well," he said evenly, taking a large drink of tea to hide the inevitable scowl. No matter how many times he pulled back his sleeve to show the remnants of the bite of Wormtail's blade, or even touched his forehead, people would rather follow the fear than truth. That was the end of that conversation; Tom pushed the plate to Harry, who nodded thankfully and sat hunched over his food in a way that suggested conversation was unwelcome. He'd learned how to do that without being offensive, mostly for Ron and Hermione's sakes.
Instead of making short work of his meal like he normally did, he took his time, surreptitiously watching the steady flow of patrons enter through the grate and the front door. Most were regulars, shop-keepers on the way to work, Harry didn't doubt as he watched Tom call out salutations to a fair number. For the most part, Harry kept his hair down, glad that he had remembered a cap to cover the betraying mop of hair and distinctive scar. Most of the passers-by didn't even give him a second glance as he finished his breakfast and paid Tom. Nodding his thanks for the meal, he headed into Diagon Alley with an hour and a half to waste.
It was outside Quality Quidditch Supplies where the twinge started. It began, oddly enough, in his left elbow of all places. Said elbow had been leaning against a fence post outside of his favourite store. Entranced by the new Speed Sweeper 18, he did not notice at first. When the twinge refused to go away after continued shaking of his arm, he clutched his elbow and examined it, frowning. A muttered spell didn't stop the twinge.
His frown deepened. While the twinge didn't hurt, it was certainly quite annoying. It didn't leave his arm at all, either, even as he browsed through the racks of used Quidditch paraphernalia. In fact, it stuck around even as he crossed to the gargantuan front doors of Gringotts over an hour later. By then, he was slowly learning to ignore it, but occasionally, the twinge would become just the slightest bit painful, and the cycle would start again. As a result, Harry was very grumpy by the time he nearly stomped into Gringotts.
"Do you have a habit of being late, Mr. Potter, or do you make it a special occasion for goblins?" asked the head goblin as Harry moved to the front desk to find out where his appointment was scheduled.
"I'm not late," Harry said, bewildered. A glance at the gigantic clock mounted above the head desk told him otherwise; the minute hand (labelled that way for the Muggle-born, obviously, for there were twelve hands and planets spinning about) had just landed on the second tick from the highest planet, making him exactly two minutes late for an appointment. Grumbling and rubbing his elbow for good measure, he muttered, "Sorry about that."
The goblin looked at him shrewdly. "We will overlook it this time." His manner spoke as though he were doing Harry the world's greatest favour. The Boy-Who-Lived narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as he was directed to the office of Glomsnag. Of course, his elbow twitched like a mental patient through the twisting corridors to the gloomy lair (for Harry refused to call it an office after just one glimpse at the dark walls and cave-like furniture). "This is my office, Mr. Potter."
"It's, er, nice," Harry said, feeling insanely tall. He was nowhere near the height his best friend had reached in their sixth year, but his head was mere centimetres from the ceiling nonetheless. At Glomsnag's instructions, he took a very awkward seat in one of the stone-grey chairs. "Your, er, your message didn't mention why it was exactly that you summoned here."
Glomsnag had pulled out a gold-tipped quill and was now rummaging about for a pair of reading glasses. He looked exactly like every other goblin Harry had laid eyes on, with only the slightest glimmer of red in his stiff beard to identify him. The robes he wore bore the Gringotts crest on the lapels and back of the collar. "It is custom, Mr. Potter, to call a wizard in to read off his estate when he becomes of-age." Even though the goblin was shorter than him, Harry got the distinct feeling that Glomsnag was looking down his nose at the young wizard. "It is also customary to have your next-of-kin present as well, but both Sirius Black and Mr. and Mrs. Potter were unavailable."
What a sick, horrible joke, Harry thought, but said nothing. He felt nauseous, as he did whenever Sirius's name was mentioned in public. A goblin by the name of Pinchpocket ended up standing in for Sirius Black.
The reading of the estate was very boring, even with the carbon copy Harry held in front of him. After the words "comeuppance," "therein," "hereafter," and "aforementioned" had started to war with the twinge in his elbow, he stopped listening to Glomsnag and started scanning the list of things he had inherited. Seeing his fortune on paper made him feel extremely uncomfortable, but underneath that was…
"I've got my parent's old house?" he asked without thinking, interrupting Glomsnag's long-winded description of the number of Galleons in his vault. "The one in Godric's Hollow?"
Clearly confused, Glomsnag just blinked down at his young client. "Godric's Hollow is a series of safehouses owned by the Ministry of Magic, Mr. Potter. They haven't been used in years. You are entitled to all rights belonging and pertaining to the Potter estate outside of Brighton, which was the next item on my list if you would be so kind as to cease your incessant blathering."
Harry bristled, but listened carefully as Glomsnag described the Potter estate in fuller detail. A photograph was passed from goblin to human, and Harry forgot the twitch in his elbow as he stared at the picture of the expansive mansion. "I own that?" he asked.
Glomsnag looked down at his documents, clearly annoyed that Harry kept interrupting. Pinchpocket also looked annoyed, but that may have been the neutral expression for a goblin. "When you sign for it, yes, you do. Would you like me to finish reading your assets now?"
"What?—oh, sure, go ahead." Fascinated with the photograph, Harry did not pay attention at all until he heard, "And those are all of the assets of Mr. Harry Potter. Mr. Potter, if you will please sign here?"
"Can I keep this picture?" Harry asked, waving it at the goblins. They looked at him as though he were quite daft, but he did not mind. After all, he had a photograph—picture evidence—that his parents were not the layabouts that his uncle always claimed they were. And he owned this, a mansion that had be twice the size of the Burrow on its side. Of course, he wasn't going to show it to Ron just yet, but he and Ron could live there as flatmates after Hogwarts!
"If you sign the documents claiming you as owner to the Potter estate and all of its assets, you could even feed it to a lethifold, if you so such desire," Glomsnag snapped, his patience finally wearing out. "But we request that you sign the documents—"
"And quickly," Pinchpocket added, the first words he had uttered in front of Harry.
"—So that we may get back to work."
His elbow twitched harder, as though agreeing with them, so Harry relented and leaned forward, taking the gold-tipped quill from Glomsnag. His eyes scanned the document once more, skimming over the confusing words in barely-legible script, before he signed a very messy "Harry Potter" at the bottom of the scroll. He wanted desperately to say, "There. Happy?" but knew that was entirely too childish for a new adult wizard. Instead, he creased the photograph and slid it into his back pocket. "Will that be all?"
It wasn't, apparently; Pinchpocket leaned forward as well and signed in the "Witness" position, and then Glomsnag confirmed that yes, indeed, that was everything. Pinchpocket escorted Harry to the main foyer once again, but before the young man could leave, the goblin stopped him by dropping a ring full of keys into his hand. "Your keys, sir."
"Keys?" Harry asked, bewildered once again.
"Yes, of course. They're labelled—the house keys are gold, the key to your vault is once again bronze, and the silver key is for the motorcycle parked out front. It was, after all left in your possession by Sirius Black's last will and testament."
Why would Sirius give me his motorbike? Harry thought to himself, but aloud he just thanked the goblin and mentioned that he would like to take some money from his vault. Sirius had been born to an entirely wizarding family, and the motorbike was about as Muggle as they came. Of course, he knew very little about his godfather, so he could be entirely wrong. He puzzled this over even as the cart raced haphazardly along the winding tracks to his vault.
Standing next to his vault and looking quite harassed was Remus J. Lupin.
*
The fact that James could only hear two people breathing heavily was perhaps the only warning he had when he pulled open his curtains and saw Sirius sitting cross-legged in the centre of his own bed, looking as though he belonged there.
The other boy did not waste time; he started in immediately, fury hidden beneath the deceptively calm blue eyes. He had obviously waited a long time for James to appear from the rendezvous. "That's the fifth time this month, Prongs. You keep disappearing—and you're not going to the kitchens, bring you can't escape from there without bringing food back. Lily's asleep in her bed, so she's never out with you. I checked every time. Are you cheating on her?"
It had already been a long night, and from this point, it looked like it was getting longer. Normally, James would have been angry at Sirius's accusations, but they were grounded in what the other boy believed to be fact. James hadn't proven anything otherwise as of yet; he was too busy covering the hides of himself and several other people to think of a logical story to feed to Sirius. It was no use trying to lie to the other boy, either; Sirius had a nose for when James was lying. "No," James said truthfully, "I'm not cheating on Lily, Padfoot."
"Then where are you going?" Sirius hissed. He had not moved, but James could see that his back was rigid. The other boy was just as tired as he felt. Warning bells went off in James's head; if they were both exhausted beyond all measure, things could be said that weren't meant to be said. They would both regret an argument in the morning. "Your behaviour is awfully suspicious for somebody who's not cheating on his girlfriend."
The first stab of angry broke through James's calm façade, but he pushed it back. Getting hot-headed in a situation like this would do nobody any good. "Why would I want to cheat on Lily?" he demanded, removing the Invisibility Cloak from his shoulders so that more than his head was visible. "Geez, Padfoot, you know this better than I do. Lily's the best thing that ever happened to me. I was…well, I was an idiot before her. You know that."
He could see his words working to crumple the calm exterior, but Sirius Black had never been known to back down easily. He still believed himself to be right in what Lily had tactfully taken to calling the Whomping Willow Incident, even though he had jeopardised a lot of lives that night. Snape hadn't been alone, after all. "Does she know where you go?" Sirius asked softly, the exterior cracking with every syllable. James blinked; Sirius looked absolutely betrayed. There was supposed to be no secrets between friends in this bunch.
Once again caught away from a lie, James just nodded. "Yes, she knows." He didn't say who else knew; he didn't want to push Sirius any farther than necessary. "Look, Padfoot, I couldn't tell you—I wanted to—"
"I see how it is." Sirius's voice was a whisper now, and he wouldn't look at James. "That's all right, then. If you want to tell her things you won't tell me, then I see how it is."
"Oh, climb off your high horse, we both know you don't feel that way." Exhausted beyond all reason, James plunked himself down on his trunk, not bothering to be quiet about it. Peter could sleep harder than a dead man, and Remus had just suffered a full moon two nights before, and was still sleeping the pain off. He played with the Invisibility Cloak, letting the quicksilver fabric slip through his fingers. "Nobody but Lily knows where I go for a reason. It's dangerous—if you know where I am, your life is automatically in danger. Lily doesn't really have a choice, as she's involved, too."
"I can keep a secret!" Sirius protested, leaning forward onto his hands so that his knees shifted under him.
But James just shook his head. "No, you can't," he said, rather sadly, as though somebody close to them had passed away. "The people I'm meeting know about the Whomping Willow Incident and who caused it." He didn't say that the only reason they knew was because the Incident had actually driven them to him.
As expected, Sirius puffed up like an angry hen. "That was not my fault! Snape's the git who was poking around—can't take the consequences—"
"And you're the git that told him what he needed to know—to kill himself!" James snapped, temper finally breaking. "Look, the gist is that they don't trust anybody, so I can't tell you. I can't even tell Moony or Wormtail. Do you think I like keeping secrets from you? I don't! It's bloody hard, the sneaking out, the keeping everything from you. If I could change it, I would—in a heartbeat. But I can't." He blinked furiously at Sirius. "Now, go to bed. There's a Charms exam tomorrow, and we're both tired. I'll tell you as much as I can—when I can."
When James was being final, everybody knew it. Maybe it was in the set of his shoulders or his mouth, or the look in his eyes that clearly told anybody near enough that he could and would take on the world if he had to. Such determination was rare, even for a Gryffindor. Perhaps this was why Sirius hastily shut his mouth and climbed off of James's bed and stiffly crossed the room to his own bed.
And so it was that the ten-day silence, the longest James and Sirius had gone without speaking to each other, began.
Even in the end, Sirius never did figure out where it was that James went to.
