"TWO
WHOLE DAYS!"
Harry's air rushed out of him in one quick
blow.
"DO YOU KNOW HOW HUNGRY WE'VE BEEN?! HAD TO ORDER OUT
LAST NIGHT!"
Harry winced as the small of his back met the
corner of a table.
"ALMOST FOULED UP DUDLEY'S BIRTHDAY, YOU
INSOLENT WHELP!"
Harry clamped his mouth closed to keep from
coughing the blood out.
"NOW GET YOUR FILTHY ARSE INTO THAT
KITCHEN AND GET TO WORK, BOY!"
Shakily, Harry got to his feet
again and walked from the living room to the kitchen. He had turned up at just
after 7AM that morning, hoping to sneak in while everyone was still sleeping.
But, apparently, Vernon had been waiting for him. Now, forcing himself to
swallow the blood he had prevented from hitting any of the Dursley's furniture,
Harry washed his hands and started making breakfast.
He had assumed
he would be hurt for being gone for so long, so it hadn't been a complete
surprise when Vernon had laid into him. But it hurt, nonetheless. Carefully
putting a few rashers of bacon into the frying pan, Harry looked over to the
table out of the corner of his eyes. His Aunt Petunia was busy pining over how
'cute' her portly son was becoming and how much fun they would have
today.
Dudley had a small mountain of birthday presents stacked up
beside the table, making for some tricky maneuvering on Vernon's part. Dudley seemed
to be ignoring his mother, instead choosing to count how many presents had been
wrapped up. It was almost sickening to Harry how much his aunt and uncle would
spend on their whale of a son. In his mind, he prayed that someday, someone
would give them all exactly what they deserved.
As he began
preparing some sausages for cooking, he thought back to the previous night at
the Tonks' house. It had been very different there. For one thing, Andromeda
seemed to treat him twice as nicely (and less obnoxiously) as the Dursley's
treated Dudley. And she seemed to let her daughter, who refused to be called by
her given name, quite a bit of freedom. Somehow, Andromeda had gotten a hold of
some pajamas that fit him perfectly. He had asked how and, winking, Andromeda
said
one word: "Magic!"
This got Harry to thinking
quite a bit more than his mind was used to. Magic... if only such a thing
really existed. Harry had gone over all of the things he would have done to the
Dursley's had he been able to use it. The first thing that crossed his mind was
turning his cousin into an actual pig. He went on to make up ideas on spells
that would repel food away from his uncle whenever he got close to it.
He
had had a wonderful time spending the night with Tonks and her mother. But
reality had set in early the next morning when he realized that he had to
return to Number Four. Andromeda promised that he could stop by at any time,
day or night, if anything bad ever happened. And, while extremely nice of her,
Harry didn't think it would be polite to ask if he could stay the night two
days in a row. Especially since he had just met them.
Tonks had told
him, as she walked to the end of Privet Drive with him, that he should keep an
eye out for any letters for him. Harry asked what she meant, but she just
grinned at him and shook her head. In any case, wondering about letters and
wishing for magic powers didn't get breakfast cooked. And Harry would, in all
honesty, rather sit in his cupboard than listen to his aunt make a fuss over
his cousin.
"And we'll even take you and Piers to the zoo! How
does that sound, my sweet Duddykins?" Petunia cooed.
Dudley
nodded vigorously, which made all five of his chins wobble slightly. Harry
carted breakfast over after sneaking a rasher of bacon for his own. His cousin
immediately dove into what was presented to him, wolfing it down at an
astonishing rate. Vernon reached around the paper he was reading and grabbed a
sausage with his fingers. His aunt continued to fuss about and make sure
everything was perfect.
Harry was just about to collect the dishes
to wash them when the phone rang. As Vernon was just finishing his paper, he
set it down and waddled over to answer it. "Dursley Residence." He
said. He was silent for a few moments as the person on the other end of the
line spoke. With each passing second, he seemed to get paler and paler. There
was an audible click from the other end and, after snapping out of his state,
Vernon hung his end up, as well.
"That was Mrs. Figg." He
said, looking over to Petunia. "She says she can't take the boy today
because she's in the hospital with a broken leg."
"What?!"
Petunia screeched, dropping the present she was holding. (and ignoring the
"Ouch!" Dudley made when it landed on his fat fingers) "She HAS
to take him! I'm certainly not leaving him here! Who knows WHAT he'd
do!"
Vernon rubbed his chins as if stroking an imaginary beard.
He fixed a piercing glare at Harry as he did this, making the boy feel more
than a little uncomfortable. "Well," he began slowly. "Couldn't
we get one of your friends to watch him? Or, perhaps, Marge?"
"I'm
not letting MY friends know about HIM." Petunia said, pointedly. "And
Marge is vacationing somewhere in Wales, I think."
Dudley was
looking from one parent to the other, looking as if he were watching a tennis
match. As the grim reality of the situation finally hit him, he stomped his
food and cried, "I don't WANT him to come to the zoo with us!"
Vernon
was just about to reply when there came a hard knock at the door. Vernon and
Petunia exchanged horrified looks before she took off to answer it. Harry was
still trying to process what had just happened.
"Dudley! Your
friend is here!" Petunia called from the other room. Dudley looked once to
his father, then to Harry, sneered, and took off as fast as his stubby legs
could carry him. Once alone in the kitchen with his uncle, Harry quickly
resumed gathering the dishes up. The sound of Dudley chatting animatedly with
Piers emanated from the general direction of the living room.
"Right.
No other alternative." Vernon hissed out through clenched teeth. He
stormed over to Harry and grabbed him by the shoulder, glaring daggers at him
as he growled, "Suppose you think this is funny, don't you? Us not having
any other choice but to take you with us. Well, you know this, boy. If you put
a single toe out of line while we're out - if you do anything FUNNY - you won't
be able to walk for a bloody MONTH!"
His voice was kept
dangerously low so as not to alert the guests as to what was going on, but
Harry shuddered anyway. He nodded and, when his uncle let him go and made to
leave the room, he let out the breath he had been holding. There must have been
some kind of higher power watching over him. Beating aside, this would be the
second day in a row in which an enjoyable activity was presented to him.
He
had just finished washing and drying the dishes when his aunt reappeared,
carrying some folded up clothes. She tossed them onto the counter beside the
sink and glared at Harry. "You'll put these on and be out to the car in
five minutes! Can't have you running around in public in THAT
outfit!"
As she left again, Harry turned to see that some of
his cousin's uglier clothing had been picked out for him. They were perfectly bland
and consisted of very large, brown trousers and an equally hideous, beige
t-shirt. He figured that he was to use his usual, tattered belt to hold the
trousers up.
However atrocious the clothing was, the fact remained
that Harry would be going to the zoo for the first time in his life. He smiled
as he changed, the morning's beating already pushed from his mind.
Alas,
all good things must end - sometimes in ways that no one could have predicted.
Something very peculiar had happened during their trip to the zoo. Something
that, while everyone knew Harry couldn't have possibly done it, he got blamed
for anyway. And when they had arrived back at Number Four late in the
afternoon, Vernon and Petunia went off upstairs. Petunia had been in a right
state ever since the ordeal unfolded and needed calming.
This left
Harry to fend for himself downstairs against Dudley and Piers. The trio looked
at each other, tension growing as the seconds ticked by. Harry saw his cousin
twitch a split-second before he actually moved, and used it to turn tail and
run. The sound of footsteps rang out behind him, and he knew he had to get away
as fast as humanly possible. While his uncle never hurt him in a place readily
visible to the public. But his cousin and his friends never had any qualms
against beating him black and blue.
His cousin wasn't the primary
concern, though. Harry knew he was faster than Dudley. But Piers wasn't slow by
any means. Oftentimes, he would rush out and tackle Harry to the ground, giving
Dudley enough time to catch up and commence the beating. He would sit himself down
on Harry's chest, which was punishment in and of itself. He would then take any
open shots he could until he felt Harry had had enough.
Eventually,
Harry made his way back through the house and out the front door. At least if
he were outside, he would make his cousin think twice about doing anything. His
relatives were frightfully concerned with how the neighbors saw them. And so,
they always acted disturbingly pleasant when out in public.
But as
he bolted out and into the yard, his eyes went wide. He was greeted by a
smiling, if slightly confused, face.
"Wotc--HEY!" Tonks
began, then yelped as Harry suddenly grabbed her by the arm and resumed
running. "Harry! What are you doing?!"
"Look behind
you and keep running!" Harry said, not bothering to look back. The slight
delay in Tonks' surprising appearance had slowed him down enough for Piers to
be close to tackling range. Sure enough, Tonks let out a little squeak when she
saw the two boys chasing after them.
"Wait! Harry, stop!"
She exclaimed, looking to him. "I have an idea!"
"What
is it?" He asked, showing no signs of slowing.
"You'll
see! Just...stop, alright?"
Against his better judgment, Harry
stopped. Piers and Dudley, who was some ways behind his friend, weren't quite
expecting a dead halt in their victim.
"Wotcher!" Tonks
said cheerfully as she turned to look at Dudley and Piers. Harry gaped at
her.
"Why're you two chasing Harry, eh?" She asked, tilting
her head and looking amazingly confused and innocent.
Dudley
sputtered for a minute before turning to Harry and asking, "Who's
this?!"
"Name's Tonks." Said the girl in
question.
"Tonks? What kind of a name is TONKS?" Piers
sneered.
Tonks turned and glared at him. "And what's YOUR name?
Ratty the Rat Boy? Wormy McBudgeover?"
Piers glared at the
girl. Dudley was about to open his mouth again when she turned on him, as well.
"What about you? Pudge O'Lumpkin? Titanic Gitman?"
Neither
Dudley nor Piers were used to people talking to them like that. Much less when
the speaker was a GIRL. Tonks was dressed in jeans that seemed a few shades
darker than the ones she had on the day before, and was wearing a pink t-shirt.
And, Harry noticed with a look of utter confusion, her hair had changed. It was
still short and very much spiky, but it was a furious orange now.
"Cat
got your tongues?" Tonks asked, her innocently sweet voice back once more.
"Well, if neither of you are gonna talk, Harry and I should get going. I
forgot that I said we'd go visit the park again today." Here, she turned
to Harry and offered an apologetic sort of smile, along with a wink that was
hidden from Dudley and Piers.
"How do you know HIM?"
Dudley asked, eyes narrowing as he looked from the girl to his thin cousin.
"And why're you hanging around him?"
"Well, not that
it's any o' your business, y'great lump, but we met in the park a few weeks
ago. And I'm hanging around him because... well... he's my boyfriend, isn't he? Boyfriends and girlfriends spend
time with each other, see..."
All three boys gaped at her as
she said this, though Harry tried to force himself to recover first. He wasn't
sure whether Tonks was trying to shock his cousin and Piers into a coma or
what, but he wasn't getting pummeled, so it was obviously working.
"Now,
if you two will excuse us, we should get going. Mum's probably waiting for us.
She packed your favorite sandwiches for lunch again, Harry." Tonks said,
whirling about, taking Harry by the arm, and starting off down the sidewalk
with him.
They got halfway down the block before Harry dared look
over his shoulder. Dudley and Piers were staring after him, mouths still hanging
open. Grinning crookedly, Harry looked to Tonks and, after finding his voice
again, asked, "What was THAT?"
Tonks let go of his arm and
crossed hers behind her head, smiling at him. "Mum says I talk too much...
but it comes in handy sometimes. M'good at thinkin' on my feet."
"Yeah,
but... well, I've never seen anyone stand up to them like that. Last person
that tried apparently got a few teeth knocked out. And... and no, it wasn't
me." Harry said. And then, noticing her hair again, asked, "And what
on earth did you do to your hair?"
"Huh? Oh, that? Um... I
dyed it! Mum wouldn't let me get any of the nicer colors like blue or violet...
but she said orange wasn't that bad. Say, did you get your letter this morning,
Harry?"
"Huh? Oh, uhm... no, I didn't." Harry
replied, brow creasing. "And I didn't see any laying about when we got
home, either."
"Got home? Thoughtcha said they didn't take
you anywhere."
Harry had spent a few hours the previous night
talking a bit more openly about his life at Number Four. He said it made him
feel a bit better, getting it out in the open with someone.
"Zoo."
Harry said with a shrug. "Mrs. Figg is in the hospital or something and
they wouldn't dream of letting me stay at the house by myself..."
"Ahh,
gotcha." Tonks said. "Guess that's why you're
wearing...THAT?"
Harry made a face. "My aunt picked the
clothes out for me."
In addition to learning to like Tonks and
her mother, he had stopped speaking so jerkily. It only happened from time to
time when speaking to either of them, and usually only if they asked too
personal a question. It was still bad around his relatives, though.
"Well,"
Tonks said, grinning once more, "I got MY letter today. C'mon, I'll letcha
see it! Mum told me you should have gotten yours today, too. Maybe she knows
why you didn't..."
"Maybe." Harry said, raising his
eyebrows. "What kind of letter is it?"
"You'll see!
Come on!"
With this, Tonks grabbed Harry by the arm and started
running. Harry blinked, but kept up with her, wanting to figure out what this
whole business with letters was about. He hadn't given much thought to the subject,
but looking back, he thought he should have. It did seem rather odd that both
of them mentioned receiving a mysterious letter out of the blue.
Once
they had arrived safely back at Tonks' house, without being followed by Dudley
and Piers, Tonks took a good look at her new friend. "Blimey, what
happened to you? Y'look like someone set a rogue bludger off on ya!"
Harry
started to reply when he blinked and frowned. "What's a bludger?" He
asked.
Tonks winced, then waved a hand dismissively. "Isn't important.
Look, Harry... did those Mu-- uh...relatives of yours punish you for being gone
for so long...?"
Harry looked off and muttered,
"No."
Tonks raised an eyebrow. "C'mon, Harry. Might
not've known you for very long, but you're a horrible liar."
Harry
shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I get punished for being alive most of
the time. One more won't hurt."
"Harry!" Tonks
exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "I toldja last night after dinner! If
they started whompin' on ya, for you to come back here! How many times d'we
hafta tell ya before it sinks in?"
"Sorry." Harry
offered, not quite meeting Tonks' gaze.
Tonks winced again.
"Look, don't be sorry. Where'd you get it this time, huh?"
"Stomach.
Got knocked into a table, and my lower back started hurting after I took off
running...so I've probably got a bit of skin taken out of it..." Harry
said in a monotone.
"You're gonna make me old before my
time." Tonks said under her breath. "Right...mum might sit by and
letcha get pounded, but I've never been one to follow in her footsteps. Come
with me."
Harry blinked, suddenly feeling tense. "Where
are we going?"
"To talk to a friend of mum's." Tonks
said, walking with Harry into the living room. "Right, you
stand...here." She said, positioning Harry in front and slightly to the
left of the fireplace. She then reached up into a bowl on the mantle, spilling
a bit of the powder that she withdrew.
"Whassat?" Harry
asked, squinting at her hand.
"Floo Powder. Now don't go
getting spooked on me, alright? Now then... Albus Dumbledore's Office, Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! ...Hey, I actually remembered it!"
Tonks said, smiling.
Harry goggled as the powder erupted into green
flames upon hitting the bottom of the fireplace. A moment later, he let out a yelp
and fell over onto his rear end as the face of a very old man suddenly appeared
IN the flames. "Andromeda? Is somethi--"
The face of Albus
Dumbledore froze when it saw two children instead of a full-grown witch. His
surprise lasted but a second before he turned to Tonks and smiled. "Young
Nymphadora, was it? Ahh, and to what do I owe this unexpected call?"
Tonks
stuck her bottom lip out and pointed a finger at Harry. "Don't call me
Nymphadora. And HE is the reason I called, sir. Jus' look at him!"
Dumbledore's
head moved from Tonks to Harry. His eyes went over the boy's thin frame slowly.
"This," he began, addressing Tonks, "is who I believe it to
be?"
"It is. And he said he didn't get his letter, sir!
You DID send him one, didn't you?" Tonks asked, frowning.
"It
went out along with your own." Dumbledore said, brow creasing momentarily.
"I do not believe the owl was intercepted...and it returned with no
post...very curious, indeed."
"Sir, you've gotta do
something. His relatives... well, they..." Tonks sputtered briefly before
looking to Harry. Harry, for his part, looked (and felt) more confused than he
had ever been in his life. "They -hurt- him, sir... he's shown me. Not
just little things, either. Had this honkin' big bruise on his shoulder the other
night!"
"I see." Dumbledore said, surveying Harry
once more. "Perhaps I should pay your residence a visit tonight, then. Say...around
suppertime?"
"Sure! I'll let mum know. I'm sure she
wouldn't mind. She's been worried about him, too, but..."
Dumbledore
nodded at Tonks' unfinished sentence. He then smiled pleasantly and said,
"Well, I should go make preparations, then. I will see you both later this
evening. Until then, have a good day."
And with that, the
green-tinted head of the Headmaster of Hogwarts was gone. The flames slowly
faded away and eventually died out completely. When they were gone, Tonks
turned to Harry and smiled happily, hands on her hips. "Well, that's that,
innit? You're gonna be just fine, Harry!"
It took nearly a
minute before Harry found his voice again. But when he did, he pointed at the
empty fireplace and asked in a voice a few octaves higher than the one he
normally spoke in, "What...what just happened?!"
Tonks
blew out a long sigh, walking over and offering Harry a hand up. "Long
story, Harry. C'mon, the couch is comfier than the floor. I hope you don't mind
a quick version of the story, though..."
Harry looked up at
her, confusion evident in his eyes. But he nodded once, taking the lift to his
feet. The two walked to the couch and Harry flopped back down. Tonks ran out of
the room for a moment, coming back with a sizable scrapbook in her hands.
"First
thing you need to know," she said as she sat back onto the couch, "is
that me an' my mum aren't like you are. No, wait, that isn't right. Lemme start
over. You, me, and my mum aren't like your relatives. There, that sounds a bit better."
"Whattaya
mean?" Harry asked, eyeballing the scrapbook.
"We're
wizards." Tonks said, shrugging. "Or, rather, you're a wizard. Since
we're girls, me an' mum are witches. Same thing, though."
again?"
"You're a wizard." Tonks said, smiling
crookedly at Harry.
"What are you playing at?" He finally
managed to say, gaping at Tonks as if she had sprouted an elephant's
trunk.
"C'mon, Harry. Haven't ya ever done anything strange?
Y'know, without really doing it on purpose?"
Harry was about to
ask another question when that afternoon's events at the zoo flashed through
his mind. His eyes grew wide. "...But no," he murmured to himself.
"That...that was just... it couldn't have been..."
"Mind
sharing, or wouldja rather keep talking to yourself like a nutter?" Tonks
asked, grinning.
"Huh? Oh... I...I just remembered WHY I got
beat this afternoon. It... well, it's Dudley's birthday today, see... and since
they couldn't get a babysitter for me, I got taken along to the zoo with my
aunt, uncle, cousin, and his best friend. Actually got treated fairly well
while we were out in public, this awful outfit notwithstanding... but... but
while we were there..."
Harry hesitated, looking up into Tonks'
eyes. He COULD tell her... but what if she thought he really WAS a bit on the
loony side? Then again, he told himself as his eyes wandered up to her hair,
she was pretty odd in her own right. Licking his lips, Harry finished,
"I... I THINK I made a huge pane of glass guarding a snake
disappear..." He paused, then frowned. "And my hair never wants to
stay cut. Got my head shaved nearly bald once, and my hair completely grew back
overnight."
Tonks dropped the scrapbook.
When Harry
looked up at her, she was staring at him with a mixture of horror and shock on
her face. "Your...hair grew back overnight?" She asked, voice
quiet.
"Yeah... why? I mean, I know it's strange,
but--ACK!"
Harry had been cut off by Tonks quite literally
propelling herself across the couch. Arms were wrapped around him and Harry
soon found himself being held onto by a whimpering girl. Feeling very nervous and
not quite sure how to act, Harry sort of patted her on the back and said,
"Um, there there? Why....why are you upset?"
Tonks drew
back, wiping at her eyes quickly. She then beamed up at Harry and shook her
head quickly. "M'not upset... I...I just never thought..."
"Never
thought...what?"
Tonks scooted back to her original position,
suddenly blushing as she grabbed the scrapbook again. "That'll hafta come
after I explain everything else. Look... Harry, I dunno how to tell ya this,
but... well... in our world - that is, the Wizarding world... you're a regular
hero..."
"...A hero." Harry repeated.
"Yeah...
look, I can prove it." She said, flipping the scrapbook over to one of the
first pages. A newspaper clipping covered the page. In the photograph - which,
to Harry's amazement, was moving - a giant, skull-shaped object seemed to be
hovering in the air over a group of houses. The headline read 'The Dark Lord's
Rise.'
"Long time ago...the Wizarding world was bein'
terrorized by a group of... well, bad guys, I guess you could call 'em, though
they were more than 'bad,' really... a group of bad guys went around, killing people
an' causing panic... their leader was a guy that was feared so much, people
wouldn't even call him by his name. Scared of it, see. They just called him
'You-Know-Who' or 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'...
"He was a
powerful dark wizard, Harry. Mum told me there hadn't been a wizard as evil as
him since Grindlewald waaaay back in the 40s... Anyway, he went around, mainly
killin' Muggles and--"
"Muggles?" Harry
interrupted.
"Oh, sorry... uh, we call non-Wizarding people
'Muggles'... people like your fat little cousin, for instance." Tonks
said, making a face at the all-too-recent memory of Dudley.
"Oh..."
"Went
around killing Muggles and Muggle-born wizards as he pleased, since no one was
brave enough to try an' stop him." Tonks said. She started flipping
through the pages of the scrapbook. On each one, there was at least a single
news article about attacks, deaths, and other nasty subjects. All of them
mentioned the dark wizard that Tonks had told him about, though none called him
by his true name.
"Strange thing is," Tonks began again,
flipping ahead to the back of the book, "he got stopped...an' no one was
really sure how..."
Harry blinked at the news article he was
being shown. The picture was of a house that had been all but burned to the
ground. The headline under it read, "DARK LORD DEFEATED!"
The
article went on to detail how 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' led an attack on
Godric's Hollow and how he, Harry, had somehow managed to rebound what it called
the 'Killing Curse.'
"Killing Curse?" Harry asked,
blankly. His eyes didn't leave the clipping.
"Dark magic. Does
what it sounds like it does. S'illegal." Tonks said, watching Harry
carefully.
When he finished reading, Harry sat back, gazing over towards
the fireplace with a glazed look on his face.
"Harry? You
alright...?"
"They told me my mum and dad died in a car
crash." He said quietly. "Told me that that's how I got my
scar..."
Tonks closed the book, setting it onto a small table
at her end of the couch. Slowly, she scooted closer and put a hand on Harry's
arm.
"Always wondered why they forbid me to ask about my
parents..." Harry continued, his voice sounding strangely hollow.
"Must be why... the Dursley's hate anything that doesn't fit their vision
of 'normal.'"
Harry closed his eyes. "S'far back as I can
remember, I've had dreams about a strange, green light..."
"Sounds
like the Killing Curse, alright... overheard mum talking to some friends awhile
back..." Tonks said. She let out a groan and glared at the fireplace.
"Sorry I didn't tell ya yesterday, Harry. I should've as soon as I saw
what awful shape you were in... but Dumbledore – the guy I was talkin' to in
the fire - he wanted you to grow up as a Muggle. No clue why, really... anytime
I asked about you, he always said that it was 'in your best interests to not
know of our world until
you were ready for it.'"
Harry
scowled. "Yeah, I've had a lovely time at Number Four." He muttered
darkly, rubbing at his stomach lightly. "S'been a real ball."
"Hey,
don't get uppity with me... I didn't like it, either. An' I really didn't like
havin' to sendja BACK there this mornin'. I tried talking mum into just lettin'
ya stay here, but..." Tonks trailed off, pouting once again.
"Sorry.
But... but it IS a lot to take in at once." Harry said, voice distant.
"So... I'm FAMOUS?"
"Famous as they get. You-Know-Who
vanished after he got gobsmacked with his own Curse. Some folks say he died,
but Dumbledore doesn't seem to think so... not from what I've heard him saying
to mum and her friends, anyway. Thinks he's still out there, somewhere. All'a his
followers scattered like rats, though... Wizarding world's been peaceful ever
since..." Tonks said, her hand still on Harry's arm.
"...What
was his name?"
"Whose?"
"This
'You-Know-Who' guy."
Tonks bit her lower lip. "Oh...
Harry, I dunno... mum says that we mustn't say his name. I tried it once, just
to see what kinda reaction it got. Mum recoiled, then grounded me for almost a
MONTH. People are still scared of it, she told me."
"I
wanna know," Harry began, reaching up and brushing his hair away from his
scar. "the name of the guy who gave this to me."
Tonks
looked around nervously, licking her lips. Then she sighed and leaned over,
whispering, "Fine, but it's your fault if I get into trouble. It's... it's
'Voldemort.' Don't make me say it again, either."
"Voldemort."
Harry repeated slowly.
Tonks shivered visibly. "Don't go
throwin' it around, or you'll get into trouble, too." She warned.
"Look, mum's gonna be home from work anytime now. It'll be easier now that
you know whatcha are."
Harry's eyes lit up. "Is... is that
how she made supper so quickly last night? Magic?"
"Yup!"
Tonks said, grinning. "She's great at conjuring things up! Keeps telling me
I should be pretty good at it, once I get into Hogwarts an' start
learning..."
"Hogwarts?"
"Yeah. Best Wizarding
school around this chunk o' the world. Albus Dumbledore's in charge o' the
place. Ya know, mum told me that he was the only one You-Know-Who was scared
of." Tonks said.
"Albus Dumbledore...the guy from the
fire?"
"The very same."
"Okay,"
Harry said, rubbing his temples. "So... I'm a wizard... my parents were
killed by this Voldemort guy, he couldn't kill me and his spell took HIM out,
instead...and I'm famous for this?"
"That about covers
it." Tonks grinned.
Harry let out a groan. "I think I need
a nap. My head hurts from having all of this getting pounded into it at once.
...Besides that, I ache all over."
"Ahh," Tonks said,
smirking as she hopped up. "We'll be able to fix you up proper, now that I
toldja whatcha were, too. Y'can heal people if you know the right spells. Mum
got taught some basic healing spells while she was pregnant with me. She was
kinda clumsy when she was younger, and she wanted to be ready in case I started
walking and fell down the stairs or somethin'. Go on upstairs and rest. I'll
wake ya up when mum gets home."
Harry nodded once, picked
himself up, and walked upstairs. He was asleep almost immediately.
