A/N: Yeah, okay so I'm back after like a month of being in Boston (yeah Explo), just in cause you were wondering if I died or something. I really need a beta reader, if anyone here is interested I would appreciate it! Just think, you would be able to read a new chapter before anyone else! Once again, thanks to my reviewers:
Renea Malfoy: Thanks for the compliment! I love hearing them! As for your question, when I originally thought out this plot I was trying to get away from romantic plots but you guys should know how much I love my HPOC's, so this next chapter should answer your question!
DreamingFantisies: Megan! You're going to be a terrible mother! You're supposed to be wishing for a healthy baby! Anyways, I'm glad you like Brody's character. I kept thinking Wynter instead of Brody, cause in the original story that was the girl's name! Oops!
Pink Princess Kirsty: Thanks for the review! You guys know I love to hear 'I love this story.' Makes me feel like a fluffy puff marshmallow. Seriously. I'm so glad you guys like Brody, for some reason I felt like I didn't show too much of her character in the last chapter.
Zhemshug: I love it when people use 'hella'. It just cracks me up...anyways. You should know that everything I do 'screams of cuteness in a non bad way'. Haha, man I love you guys. I have deemed you my faithful reviewer...officially.
SparkyKnight: Yes, yes, I am trying to develop the plot as the summary says as fast as possible! I'm so happy you enjoy Brody's character! Thanks for reviewing!
Sarah: Oh I'm writing more...I've just been gone for a month. Have no fear, I'm back now. I just hope I can get a lot of this story done before school starts again. Thanks for dropping a line!
Eric2: Haha, yeah me too. Like I said before I wrote this plot as an AFI fanfic which I never got to finish and those original ideas can't really apply to HP so I'm wondering how everything is going to work out too.
Shdurrani: Eh, haha I'm neither a big Hermione or Ginny fan but sure...Brody is overactive. Like...on pixies stix. Yes. Thanks for reviewing!
Sarah (x2): Haha, this was to your first review. I didn't even see you reviewed twice till now. That's so awesome. I love you for it. I've just been gone for awhile but don't fret I'm back.
AuroraAbbie Snape: Hey man, thanks for all the support! I'm trying to speed up things now that I'm back! I'm glad you think it's 'aw' worthy.
War Mage Black: Yeah, it seems to be a sweet story so far. I have no idea where I'm going with it. That's a false statement. I actually do have a lot of ideas, but none are set in stone haha. Thanks for reviewing!
Lil LJ: Yeah, I wasn't on vacation in Boston, I was at Explo summer programs. Haha, the worst and yet best summer of my life. Anyways, I love love love little children. My newest cousin was just born a few weeks ago, I haven't even seen him yet! His name is actually Brody, and when I heard that was what they were considering for a name a month ago I decided to use it.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Harry Potter related.
"Got a good reason for taking the easy way out
Got a good reason for taking the easy way out now
She was a day tripper, a one way ticket yeah
It took me so long to find out, and I found out
She's a big teaser, she took me half the way there
She's a big teaser, she took me half the way there now
Tried to please her, she only played one night stands
Tried to please her, she only played one night stands now
She was a day tripper, a Sunday driver yeah
Took me so long to find out, and I found out
Day tripper
Day tripper yeah" -the Beatles
Eight Days a Week
Chapter 3
"Har-ray, Har-ray!" a high pitched voice squeaked. "Wake up! I'm bored!"
I thought I broke things off with Tess, Harry mused as he felt himself brought slowly back to consciousness. What's she doing in my apartment? Ouch, what's she hitting me with? That woman needs to be put on something, seriously.
"Ouch! Okay, okay, I'm awake!" Harry yelled as he pulled himself up, mentally groaning at the tight muscles he was using to do so. His head swam as he looked around and tried to focus on anything, which ended up being a blurred figure in front of him who was holding something out to him. His hands blindly grabbed them, realizing they were his glasses, which had previously been used to hit him with. Slipping them on hastily he found himself face to face with a small child.
"Good morn-ing Har-ray!" the little girl said. Her hair was sloppily falling out of the pigtails they had been placed in, and her eyes were still somewhat dulled by the sleep.
"Brody?" Harry asked confused. He looked around the room, which happened to be the living room, as the past few days' events came to mind. The last thought that came was the fact he had to take Brody back today to the orphanage.
"We fell asleep out here on the couch!" Brody exclaimed as if that answered all his questions. She jumped down off the couch and meandered into the small kitchenette.
Harry sat there dazed with questions wondering how he got himself into all of this and how he was going to deal with taking her back to the orphanage. He wasn't able to ponder these things long before he heard a whine from within the kitchen.
"Harry! I'm hungry!"
"Alright, what do you want to eat then?" Harry asked, slowly pulling his legs out from under the tangled blanket. He stood up and somewhat limped into the kitchen from his sore muscles.
"Puppy chow!" Brody exclaimed. She bounced up and down after giving up on crawling on the counter, saying she couldn't jump up there by herself.
"Why in the world do you want dog food for breakfast?!" Harry asked, scrunching his eyebrows together. He watched her fidget next to him, before sighing and picking her up. He placed her gently on the counter and she smiled brightly at him as if saying thanks. Her smile then vanished and was replaced with a more business like face.
"It's not dog food, it's good," she stated. Her face was calm and collected for once. Harry could tell she was trying to keep her smile away, but every once in awhile the corners of her mouth would lift, though quickly replaced with the frown.
Harry however could not keep from smiling. He burst out laughing from her attempts, and after Brody stubbornly crossed her arms and turned her head to the side, he ended up staggering back a few steps from laughing so hard. Brody made a small noise, and Harry slowly tried to calm himself. It was then he noticed his answering machine was flashing. He quickly reached across and pushed play while moving to the fridge to see what he could fix for breakfast.
"Hey Harry, just wanted to see how you were doing," Harry heard Draco's voice say. "I'll be stopping by later on to see if you need anything too. Anyways, I called Coach Kollman today and told him you were quite sick, so you're officially excused from practice. I don't know if you still plan on taking her back today, but if you need any moral support you know I'm here for you or Megan too. I'll be there after practice! Bye."
Harry chuckled at Draco's faltering voice during the message. He knew that Draco hated using the phone, but Megan had insisted on getting one so he made use of it. He smiled thinking how humorous some of his first attempts at making a call were. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Brody had stopped her pouting and was sitting relatively still.
"Okay, how about I make some...er," Harry faltered after bringing himself back to the job at hand.
"You're sending me back?" a small timid voice asked. Harry looked over at her. No wonder she was sitting so still now, she had heard Draco's message. Her usual bounce was amiss for a moment as she stared at Harry.
"Brody...I can't keep you. You're not my responsibility. I'm just a kid myself, I couldn't take care of you. Look, I can't even find anything to feed you."
She didn't have anything to respond with to this, so she merely looked down, her messy hair obscuring her face. After a moment she hopped down off the counter and walked away. Harry could only wonder were she was heading to, so he quickly followed her. She ended up in his laundry room, where she sat down next to Hedwig and began to stroke her feathers.
Harry didn't know what to say. He stood there and nervously scratched at his head. He shuffled his feet around, wanting to walk out the door, like he did in all his relationships.
"Brody," Harry mumbled as he walked over and kneeled next to her, "why don't we go out for breakfast? We can go wherever you'd like."
"Are you going to take me back after breakfast?" Brody asked sheepishly. Harry watched her tiny fingers as they made the same patterns over his owl's feathers. He recognized one of them as a heart, smiling as it ruffled Hedwig's coat up in some places.
"I'm afraid I have to," Harry said quietly. "But how about that breakfast now? What's your personal preference; waffles or pancakes?"
"Waffles!"
"What now? I have to say pancakes own all."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
This continued on for a few minutes as Harry picked her up and carried her to the living room. He turned on some muggle cartoons for her as he went to change clothes quickly. He tried to decide whether or not he should dress somewhat nicely or not. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the idea of adoption was still there. Even though he adored Brody, there was a part of him that wasn't ready to give up some of the freedoms he would have to.
Annoyed at himself, he decided on a faded pair of jeans and a dark blue shirt. Casual dress, but he knew he looked great in it. He hastily put in some eye drops for his contacts before grabbing his coat and scarf. He frowned when he realized Brody didn't have anything to protect herself against the cold.
Searching through his belonging, he found an old gray hoodie and heavy jean jacket of his, which he muttered a quick shrinking spell to adjust for her size. He did the same to a pair of gloves (even changing the color from black to pink for her) and then grabbing a scarf, which he chose to keep the size the same.
"Okay you, come here," Harry said as he walked back out into the living room. He held up the hoodie first. She skipped over to him from the couch and stopped, bouncing up and down in front of him.
"Arms up," Harry ordered. Brody did as was told, and he placed the clothing over her head, and with some difficulty, pulled her arms through the long and still oversized sleeves one at a time. He then grabbed the end of the hoodie and tugged it down, watching her head pop up through the opening finally. He smiled as he saw that her hair had now turned to absolute frizz.
Harry quickly helped her put on the jean jacket on over the bulky hoodie, then he put on her gloves ("They're pink! Why do you have pink gloves?") and scarf (which wrapped around her whole body several times). Harry had to laugh as he stepped back and looked at her. She now looked about three times bigger and wasn't too happy about it.
"Don't look at me like that! You've got to stay warm!"
"What about my hair?" Brody asked as she pulled out the colored rubber bands holding it into pig tails which had been falling apart after sleeping with them in.
"What about it? Do you want a hat?"
"No, I want you to braid it!"
Harry frowned at this. He was a guy, after all, how was he supposed to know how to braid hair? He remembered one time in detention in seventh year when Ron and he had been bored enough to let Hermione teach them to braid friendship bracelets, which they later made into a contest of who could keep their bracelet on the longest. Ron ended up wearing his the rest of the year, despite Harry's protest after seeing the state of the moldy thing.
Figuring it couldn't be that hard, Harry placed her into one of the higher chairs at the counter and retrieved a brush. He started out by brushing it only, and was dismayed to see just how frizzy her hair could get. Frustrated, he got the brush wet before going back to work again. It seemed to work a bit better for a bit, however not long.
He gathered up all her hair in one hand and smoothed it out into a ponytail. He decided she'd have to be happy with just the ponytail, because he was already confused by all the hair. Trying to pull it tight so there wouldn't be any of those bumps in her hair that girls got, he reached for the rubber band and pulled the hair through, only getting lost once.
"Ouch!" Brody said making a pouting face as he finished. "You're not very good at this!"
Harry rolled his eyes as he put on his coat and scarf. He still felt drained from everything that had happened, but he sluggishly picked her up and snuggled her close to him for warmth. Brody was still bouncing, even in his arms, though after a few minutes of being outside in the cold she snuggled back.
He decided to take his car, saying it was a rather long walk to Denny's, and all he had was an address for the orphanage. His little black Sunfire was buried under snow and frost, and after placing Brody in the car where she couldn't see out of the windows, he barely pulled out his wand before muttering a charm to get rid of it all for him.
Swiftly stepping into his car and dodging any questions, he started the car and began the drive to the small diner. The whole drive there he couldn't help but laugh at how careful he was being with the extra person now in his car. Brody was sitting and looking out the window with a blank face as the snowy landscapes passed by.
The drive, despite the slower mileage, was a short one, and about an hour later Harry walked back out carrying the champ of a waffle/pancake eating contest. She had gone through blueberry waffles and then strawberry pancakes in record timing, and now she seemed ready to settle down for a nap.
Harry spent the next hour looking for the right building, having no help at all from Brody, who had fallen asleep fifteen minutes into the ride (not even long enough for her to help find the right town). A large brick building with a small playground next to it came into view, and with a frown he realized he'd found the right place.
The state of the building wasn't great at all, hardly good. There was a large set of stairs leading up to the door which Harry carried the still sleeping Brody feeling like he was stepping into the city hall. She woke up with a jolt as he swung open the door and stepped in.
Brody looked up at him with a sad face before kicking a bit, which Harry had found out meant 'let me down.' Doing so she grabbed his hand before pulling him past the main desk, which he noticed was empty, and through some of the hallways. They proceeded up one of the stair cases, and before he could ask where they were going, she pushed him into one of the rooms, what he guessed to be a personal office by the looks of it.
"This is Bill's room. We're not allowed in here," Brody said from the doorway. Looking around, Harry found that not only was the room empty, but the place was a complete mess. The desk and chair were stacked high with papers, occasionally fluttering to the floor by a breeze from the ceiling fan. There was even a Chinese container that looked like it was a day or two old spilled across some of the papers. In the corner of the room there was two filing cabinets, both which had drawers opened at different levels.
Just then a loud chorus of voices was heard, shouting and echoing as they came up the stairs. The voices consisted of four boys, all who looked around the age of eight or nine, as they ran up the stairs laughing. They almost ran right past them, but one of them spotted Brody and stopped.
"If it isn't the little princess," he said. The boy had blonde hair and blue eyes, and with his sneer completed reminded Harry of Draco when he first met him. He, along with the others as well, had several different colored stains on his shirt which Harry could only guess where they came from.
"Decided to come back, eh?" another boy asked. This one was covered with scratches, bruises, and grass stains. While Harry thought their words were meant to taunt Brody, she flung herself smiling into the first's arms and he struggled a bit before picking her up. Another moment later and another set of footsteps were heard making there way up the stairs.
"Run!" the boy holding Brody yelled, and they all simply darted off, taking Brody with them.
Harry stood his ground, after considering following them, before he caught a glimpse of the person chasing them. It was a woman, one in her early twenties around his own age. She had long golden blonde hair that was pulled back into a messy bun that was falling down in several places, leaving long strands loose in front. The next thing he noticed was the fact she was dressed in a black shirt and nice shirt, while topping it off with high heels, which he thought was particularly brave of her. As she got closer to him he noticed that she was sweating a bit. She was a whole head shorter than him and had a petite frame. Her shirt had several of the same stains that had decorated the boys' shirts, and he could tell her make up was beginning to run at this point. Her ice blue eyes were flashing when she finally made it up the stairs. (A/N: I'm thinking a little Reese Witherspoon look alike!)
"Who are you?" she asked as she huffed, finally getting a rest.
"Harry Potter," he replied sticking out his hand. The woman had hunched over and was taking a few deep breaths. She completely ignored his hand. A slight shock set into Harry's mind, he wasn't used to being treated like that, but she was just a muggle after all.
"What do you want? This section of the facility is restricted, you should have waited down at the front desk," she said straightening out again. She smoothed out her skirt before tucking some of the loose strands of hair behind her ear.
"A few days ago I rescued a little girl from a frozen lake, one that apparently is in your care," Harry said, a little frustrated now.
"Brody? Brody Corelli?" the woman asked. "Where is she now?"
"She ran off in that direction with those boys," Harry said pointing. He heard her huff again when he mentioned the boys before rolling her eyes and walking into the office. She walked over to the filing cabinets and kicked all of the drawers shut before opening one of them again, pulling out one of the files. She walked back over to the desk and plopped down into the chair, not even bothering to acknowledge that she had sat down on several papers. She kicked off her shoes and pulled out a pen from her hair and began to scribble down things. She began asking him questions about finding her and what he did for her afterwards, taking notes on everything he said.
"I'd like to thank you Mr. Potter," she said finally after finishing with her questions. "We obviously owe a lot to you. However, if you haven't guessed already I do not run this facility. A man named Bill Besig does, who is currently taking a break for his own health. I was hired less than a week ago and just started work today. My name is Mischa Weiss, by the way."
"Harry," he mumbled as she finally stuck out her hand to shake his.
"So you've told me," Mischa said making him blush. "Anyways, I have never met our little Brody so you'll have to forgive my lack of information on her. I am barely used to the little boys here. I hadn't even started work here when Brody ran off, which I believe happened during a field trip to the park. Continuing on though, Bill might call you when he gets back if he has any questions, otherwise you are free to go. I need to go check in with Brody-"
"Excuse me, but I'd like to talk to you about adoption," Harry said, grabbing her before she could walk out the door. He couldn't believe he had said it.
"Excuse me?" Mischa asked.
"Adoption. I'd like to adopt," Harry rambled off.
"You want to adopt Brody?" she said skeptically. "Are you married?"
"No," Harry answered truthfully though a little angered by her expression which seemed to be only making fun of him.
"Well, how old are you?" she asked again, her expression becoming a little softer.
"I'm twenty-one," Harry answered. "I'm fully capable-"
"Mr. Potter, while I have no right to tell you if you're capable or not, I can tell you that the state normally only gives children to married couples, and being single doesn't help one's case, especially a man your age. However, I'll have you know that I am not the one to decide to pass the request for adoption."
Harry looked down at his feet, his cheeks red from both embarrassment and anger. He raised a hand to his face and rubbed his forehead. Mischa was looking at him sympathetically now.
"Look, I'm sorry. I probably wouldn't be passed either. Couples usually have to wait for years before even getting a child. It's really hard," she said taking a step closer.
Harry only nodded before stepping out the door. He thought about trying to find Brody to say goodbye before he left, but decided against it. He was about to start down the stairs when the blonde called after him.
"Mr. Potter, there is a program we run here. It allows prospect couples to take home a child for a few weeks just to get the feel of the situation without committing to anything serious. If you would like more time with the little girl I could sign her out for you. That's about the extent of my power though."
"Could you? I mean, I'd really appreciate it," Harry said smiling at her. She smiled back and nodded.
"However, I need to inspect your home and I need to run some background checks. Normally just this program can take several months to approve as well but I'll see what I can do. You could say that Bill was, um, a little lacking in directions when he left. I'll see if I can speed up the process for you. I also need to speak with Brody about you as well. She what she has to say about you," Mischa said smiling at him.
"Thank you so much!" Harry said, shaking her hand again. They both smiled at each other (though Harry was secretly laughing at how silly she looked bare footed in the hallway) before Mischa cleared her throat.
"Well, I have your number from earlier, I will give you a call hopefully tomorrow so I can establish a time to visit your home," she stated, still smiling. Harry decided it was a nice smile, and it made her look her age and not like a business woman. They both nodded and Harry went on his way.
Driving back to his apartment, Harry's thoughts didn't linger on Brody so much anymore. He could hardly think of anything other than Mischa, with her messy hair and her efforts of keeping everything together. She had a beautiful smile, if she only used it more often. And her eyes, they could pull you in and hold you there...Harry grinned and figured he didn't have a problem with a woman like that inspecting his apartment, even if he had to straighten it up a bit.
A/N: Eh, finally I got that done. Anyways, I haven't address Voldemort or anything Dark in this fic yet, but it's coming. And also, don't forget I need a beta reader!